Sales catalogue 513: Maggs Bros

Date:
1928
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/70
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 513: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    82/340 page 68
    638 in the propagation of the Roman Catholic religion. He also acted in April, 1639, with Digby as her majesty’s agent in collecting a contribu- tion from the catholics towards defraying the expense of the royal army. He became Abbot of St. Martin’s, near Pontoise. z . Then, state the question betweene the Romane Catholike Church, and the Reformers. She onely of all others in the world, layeth clayme to the doctrine of Christ upon this ground. . . The Reformers grant she was once the true Church, but they impute unto her, that errors have crept in w®%) they will weede out and reforme. How will they reforme and purifye her? Shall it be by bringing her to the test and touchstone we have shewed is the proper one to examine and try whether a pretended doctrine came from Christ and the Apostles or no? Will they produce their records and shew from age to age a cleare even thridde of the doctrine they now urge? Or att the least, will they but lett us see of whom they imediatly received it? None of all this. The truth they urge is not a lesson taught them by any others; the doctrine they proclaime is not derived unto them from Christ and his Apostles by this calme and easie streame that our church sayleth gently along in, while the holy Ghost according to his promise filleth her sailes: but they rowe laboursomely agt the current of antiquity, tradi- tion, succession, fathers, doctors and the consent of the whole church spread over all the world, conteyning in it a multitude of wise, learned and holy men; such as their very adversaries can not but reverence. . . I would my lord would make good his undertaking, web is, to demonstrate in all times a visible number of professors of the protestant doctrine, and a visible succession of Pastors in their church; for therein, he must be faine to build partly upon Waldo, Wicliffe, Husse, and other such heretikes that are more agt Protestantes then for them, when all their doctrine is throughly looked into, and partly to make up his visible succes- sion, he must till Luthers time take into his list the Bishops and Pastors of the Romane Church, Then I aske, what reason they that departed first from them had to desert their fellowsnip? . . . The apparent advantages web the Catholike church hath over the reformed, are such, as if this broacher of novelty bring not evident concluding and satisfactory arguments to proove her tenets, but leaveth the matter still disputable; she is to be accounted to have lost the day; as in a duell, the challenger is if he overcome not the defendant, who doth enough if he but keepe himselfe on foote in the field. . . For the breache mentioned by my lord in the succession of the Popes, there being sometimes a vacancy, sometimes a schisme by an Antipope : that obiection is of lithe weight; for of severall pretending att the same time to the Papacy, the church never admitted but one to be true Pope; and it was ever apparent, by what sinister and undue meanes the others were thrust into their clayme. And for the vacancy, it was alwayes filled as soone as the circumstances that necessarily concerned the morall part of this action, permitted it: whiles in the meane time, the church in generall wanted nothing for that end wch Christ instituted it for, by the want for a small time of one member of it (for the Pope is no other). . . As long as the Catholike church in generall remaineth sound, and preserveth uncorruptedly the saving doctrine of Christ, we have the end we ayme att in the succession of our Church.’’ Ete.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3