tisma discipulis suis tradidit;" "Our Lord did, as it were, impose a sign upon every mystery, and delivered one baptism to his disciples in three immersions or dippings:" and therefore says, 'that, though this descended by tradition, yet it hath the authority of a law. And the same thing we find affirmed by Pope Pelagius, as he is cited by Gratian P. And Theodoret, speaking of the heretic Eunomius, who first of all, without authority and against reason, did use but single immersion, says, that 'he subverted the rite of holy baptism, which at first was delivered by our Lord and his apostles.'

14. Now in these particulars, it is evident that the ancient churches did otherwise than we do: but that is not sufficient to force us to break the ecclesiastical custom, which is of long abode with us. But when they say, these things are to be done by divine precepts, we are to consider that upon its own account: and though some of the fathers did say so, yet it can never be proved to be so; and it were strange that there should be a divine commandment, of which there is no mention made in the four Gospels, nor in the Acts or Epistles of the apostles. But then that there is in dipping, and in the repetition of it, more correspondency to the analogy and mystery of the sacrament, is evident; the one being a sacrament of the death and burial of Christ, the other a confession of, and an admission to, the faith and profession of God in the most holy Trinity: and therefore I say, it is sufficient warrant that every single person break that custom of sprinkling, which is against the ecclesiastical law; and it is also a sufficient reason to move the church to introduce a contrary custom to the other of single immersion, concerning which as yet there is no law. But because there is, even in sprinkling, something of the analogy of the mystery, as is rightly observed by Aquinas and Dominicus à Soto; and because it is not certain, that the best representation and the most expressive ceremony are required; therefore the church, upon great cause, may lawfully do either: but because it is better to use dipping, and it is more agreeable to the mystery to use it three times, and that so the ancient church understood it, therefore these things are a sufficient warrant to acquit

1

us from the obligation of the contrary custom; because a custom, against which there is so much probability, and in which there is no necessity and no advantage, is to be presumed unreasonable.

15. But if the custom of single immersion should, by some new-arising necessity, become reasonable, then it not only might be retained, but ought to be complied with. Thus it happened in Spain in the year 600, the Arian bishops finding their advantage in the readily-prepared custom of trine immersion, used it and expounded it to signify the substantial difference of the Son and the Holy Ghost from the Father. Upon this, Leander, the bishop of Seville, gives advice and notice to St. Gregory bishop of Rome; who commends Leander for using a single immersion, which he did to signify the unity of nature in the Divinity, and that he might not comply with the Arians: and this was afterward brought into custom, and then into a law by the fourth council of Toledo. But unless such an accident happen, and that the reason be changed, every church is to use her first customs, those which be right, and agreeable to the sense and purpose of the sacrament. But otherwise, an evil custom is better broken than kept.

RULE XVI.

The Decrees and Canons of the Bishops of Rome oblige the Conscience of none but his own Subjects.

1. THIS must needs follow from divers of the former discourses: for if bishops, in their spiritual capacity, have no power of making laws of external regiment without the leave of their princes, or the consent of their people, then supposing the pope's great pretence were true, that he is the head or chief of the ecclesiastical order, that from him they receive immediately all the spiritual power they have, yet this will afford him no more than what Christ left to the whole order; of which I have already given accounts.

Can. 5. alias 6.
F2

2. But in this, there will be the less need of inquiry: for since the bishop of Rome by arts, which all the world knows, had raised an intolerable empire, he used it as violently as he got it, and made his little finger heavier than all the loins of princes. And in the council of Trents, when in the twenty-fifth session the fathers confirmed and commanded the observation of all canons, general councils, apostolical ordinances made in favour of ecclesiastical persons and ecclesiastical liberty, -they at once, by establishing the pope's empire, destroyed it quite, for they made it impossible to obey; and the consciences of people were set at liberty, because they were commanded, every man, to bear a steeple upon his back. For first there were an infinite number of apostolical ordinances, saith Cardinal Cusanust, which were never received even when they were made. Then let it be considered what there is to be done to Gratian's 'decretum,' which is made part of the pope's law: and who knows, in that 'Concordantia Discordantiarum,' that contradictory heap of sayings, which shall, and which shall not, oblige the conscience? But then the Decretals of Gregory IX. and of Boniface VIII., the Clementines and Extravagants, all those laws in that book which is called "Collectio Diversarum Constitutionum et Literarum Romanorum Pontificum,' and in another called 'Epistolæ Decretales Summorum Pontificum,' in three volumes, and in another called 'Eclogæ Bullarum et Motuum Propriorum,' and in another called 'Summa Pontificum,' and in the seventh book of the 'Decretals, not long since composed, and in their rules of chancery, their penitentiary taxes, and some other books of such loads as these, that I need not add to this intolerable heap: but that a Christian bishop should impose, and a council of Christian bishops and priests should tie, upon the consciences of men such burdens, which they can never reckon, never tell over, never know, never understand; and that they should do it then, when a Christian emperor had given advice that the decrees and canons should be reduced to a less number, and made to conform to the laws of God, is so sad a story, so unlike the spirit of Christ and to government apostolical, that it represents the happiness of Christendom, that they are not obliged to such laws, and the unhappiness that would be upon them, if the pope had the rule and real obligations of the consciences of Christendom.

3. But of these things, the world hath been long full of complaint: as appears in the writings of the Cardinal of Cusa", in Marsilius of Padua, in Aventinus, in Albericus Rosate", in Gregory Hambourg, in Matthew of Paris, Matthew of Westminsters, Nicolaus de Clemangis, Franciscus Duarenus, the Cardinal of Cambrayf, and many others, both collected by Guldastus, and the 'Catalogus Testium Veritatis' by Illyricus. Insomuch that if the people had not been ignorant and superstitious, "qui facilius vatibus quam ducibus parent suis," and "more willing to obey their priests than their princes," and if the princes had not been, by such means, overpowered, these decrees and canons would have been as easily rejected as many others have been. For if, by the Papal sanction, they do oblige the conscience, then they all oblige. If they all oblige, how comes it to pass that, as Cusanus says, infinite numbers of them are rejected, when they are newly made? And if so many of them may be rejected, then which of them shall oblige? If they oblige by the authority of the pope, that is alike in them all: if by the condition of the matter, then they bind as they agree with our duty to God and to princes, with the public good, and the edification of the church: and then the authority itself is nothing.

4. And it is no trifling consideration, that the body of the canon law was made by the worst and most ambitious popes. Alexander III. who made Gratian's decree to become law, was a schismatical pope, an antipope, and unduly elected: the rest were, Gregory IX. Boniface VIII. Clement V. and John XXII. persons bloody and ambitious, traitors to their princes, and butchers of Christendom by the sad wars they raised; and therefore their laws were

likely to be the productions of violence and war, not of a just and peaceable authority.

5. But to come nearer to the point of conscience; who made the bishop of Rome to be the ecclesiastical lawgiver to Christendom? For every bishop hath from Christ equal power, and there is no difference but what is introduced by men, that is, by laws positive, by consent, or by violence. "Ad Trinitatis instar, cujus una est atque individua potestas, unum est per diversos antistites sacerdotium;" said Pope Symmachus: "As is the power of the holy Trinity, one and undivided; so is the episcopacy, divided amongst all the bishops, but the power is the same." So St. Cyprianh; "Una est ecclesia per totum mundum in multa membra divisa: item episcopatus unus, episcoporum multorum concordi numerositate diffusus;" "As there is but one church in the whole world divided into many members, so there is but one bishoprick parted into an agreeing number of bishops." And again; "Let no man deceive the brotherhood with a lie, let no man corrupt the truth of faith with a perfidious prevarication :"-" Episcopatus unus est, cujus à singulis in solidum pars tenetur;" "There is but one bishoprick, and every one of us hath his share: a part of the flock is given to every pastor." Now if one were the universal bishop over all, then these zealous words of St. Cyprian had not been reconcilable to truth and sense: for then the unity of the church had been by a unity of subordination, not by an identity of office and a partition of charge. To the same purpose is that of Pope Damasus1, writing to the African bishops to require their aid in a matter of discipline: "Nos excusare non possumus, si ejus ecclesiam, quæ nobis generaliter commissa est, in quantum prævalemus puram à tam illicitis superstitionibus non custodiamus; quia non aliter unus grex et unus pastor sumus, nisi, quemadmodum apostolus docet, eadem dicamus omnes," &c. "The church is committed to us in common, and we have no other way of being one flock and one shepherd, but by speaking the same things," that is, consenting and joining in the common government. This is the same which St. Jerome affirmed; "Omnis episcopus, sive Romæ fuerit, sive Eugubii, sive Con

Baron. A. D. 499. n. 36. h 4. epist. 2, 3. et i. 3. i Epist. 5.