mOGRESS AND DECLENSION OF RELIGION. 405
imagine that the feigned jorofessions of subjection, which poverty and hopes of supphes from the court of Rome hath extorted of kxte from some few mean persons, whose titles only were of any consideration in the world, will deserve any place in this disquisition. Until you are pleased, therefore, to favour me with your information, I must abide in my ignorance of any such experiments as those which you intimate. The artifices, I confess, of your popes in former days to draw men, especially in the eastern church, to an acknowledgment of that autlio- rity which in their several seasons they claimed, have been many, and their success various. Sometimes they obtained a seeming com- pliance in some, and sometimes they procured their authors very shrewd rebukes. It may not be amiss to recount som.e of them : —
1. Upon all occasions they set forth themselves the dignity and 'pre-eminence of your see, with swelling encomiums and titles, assert- ing their own primacy and power. Such self-assumings are many of the old papal epistles stuffed witlial. A sober, humble Christian cannot but nauseate at the reading of them ; for it is easily discernible how anti-evangelical such courses are, and how unbecoming all that pretend themselves to be disciples of Jesus Christ. From these are their chiefest testimonies in this case taken; and we may say of them all, they bear witness to themselves, and that contrary to the Scrip- ture, and their witness is not true.
2. When and tvherever such letter's and epistles as proclaimed their privileges have been admitted, through the inadvertency or modesty of them to whom they were sent, unwilling to quarrel with them about the good opinion which they had of themselves (which kind of entertainment they yet sometimes met not withal), the next successors alwaj^s took for granted and pleaded what their predeces- sors had presumptuously broached, as that which of right and un- questionably belonged unto them. And this they made sure of, that they would never lose any ground, or take any one step backwards from what any of them had advanced unto.
3. Wherever they heard of sa\y difference among l)ishops, tJtey were still imposing their umpirage upon them; which commonly, by the one or other of the parties at variance, to balance thereby some dis- advantages that they had to wrestle Avithal, was admitted : yea, some- times they would begin to take part with them that were openly in the wrong, even heretics themselves, that they might thereby procure an address to them from others, which afterward they would interpret as an express of their subjection. And wherever their umpirage was admitted, they were never wanting to improve their own interest by it; like the old Romans, who, being chosen to determine a contro- versy between other people about some lands, adjudged them unto themselves.
406 A VINDICATION" OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
4. If any i^erson that luas really injured, or pretended so to be, made any address unto them for any kind of relief, immediately they laid hold of their address as an appeal to their authority, and acted in theu' behalf accordingly; though they Vfere sometimes chidden for theii' pains, and advised to meddle with what they had to do withal.
5. Did any bishops of note write them letters of respect, presently in their rescripts they return them thanks for their profession of subjection to the see apostolic ; so, supposing them to do that which in truth they did not, they promise to do for them that Avhich they never desired, and by both made way for the enlargement of the confines of their own authority.
6. Where any prince or emperor was entangled in his affairs, they were still ready to crush them into that condition of trouble from whence they could not be dehvered but by their assistance, or to make them believe that their adherence unto them was the only means to preserve them from ruin; and so procured their suffrage unto their authority.
Unto these and the like heads of corrupt and sinful artifices may the most of the testimonies commonly pleaded for the pope's supre- macy be referred. By such ways and means hath it been erected ; yet far enough from any such prevalency, for seven hundred years, as to afford us any of the experiments which you boast of
The next thing you except against in my story is my affirming " That Austin the monk, who came hither from Rome, was a man, as far as appears by the story, little acquainted with the gospel." In the repetition of which words, to keep your hand in ure,^ you leave out that expression, " As far as appears by the story," which is the evidence v/hereunto I appeal for the truth of my assertion, and add, to aggravate the matter, the words " Very, very little;" and then add, " Here is the thanks that good St Austin hath, who, out of his love and kindness, entered upon the wild forest of our Paganism, with great hazards and inexpressible sufferings of hunger, cold, and other cor- poral inconveniencies ! " But in the place you except against, I ac- knowledge that God made him a special instrument in bringing the Scripture or gospel amongst us, which I presume also he declared, according to the light and ability which he had. But you are your own mother's son ; nothing will serve your turn but " Absolute, most pure, and perfect." For what I have farther intimated of him, there are sundry things in the history of his coming hither, and proceed- ings here, that warrant the suggestion. The questions that he sent for resolution unto Gregory at Rome' discover what manner of man he was. Let a man be never so partially addicted unto him and his work, he must acknowledge that their frivolousness and impertinency, ' An obsolete term for use. — Ed.