I

LAUD AND FISHER

13

excellence. 'He that teacheth man knowledge shall not He know?' And therefore, though we reach not the order of their deductions, nor can in this life come to the vision of them, yet we yield as full and firm assent, not only to the articles, but to all the things rightly deduced from them, as we do to the most evident principles of natural reason. This assent is called faith; and 'faith being of things not seen,' would quite lose its honour, nay itself, if it met with sufficient grounds in natural reason whereon to stay itself. For faith is a mixed act of the will and the understanding; and the will inclines the understanding to yield full approbation to that whereof it sees not full proof. Not but that there is most full proof of them, but because the main grounds which prove them are concealed from our view and folded up in the unrevealed counsel of God; God in Christ resolving to bring mankind to their last happiness by faith and not by knowledge, that so the weakest among men may have their way to blessedness open."

Miracles, he very clearly asserts, even our Lord's and the Apostles' miracles, are not in themselves and by themselves "evident and convincing proofs."

And so the argument went on, till the Countess of Buckingham herself broached the question upon which all depended-Would the bishop grant the Roman Church to be the right Church?

The true
Church.

On this his answer developes the chief points on which his own position as an English churchman was based, and which he repeated in his history written in the Tower, as the only grounds on which the English Church can justify her separation from Rome.

There were errors in faith into which Rome had fallen which made it necessary for the Church of England to reform herself. This she did without departing from the Catholic faith once for all delivered to the saints. And she did not depart from the essential unity of which that faith is the bond, or from the Apostolic discipline and ministry which preserve it. Thus Rome is a true Church, though erring-yet not the true Church. England also is a true Church. Errors there were in the reformers, as there were in the popes: and the work of reformation is admittedly a most difficult one. And

yet, through it all, the essence has been preserved, and the English protest against nothing but the errors of the Roman Communion.

The Roman claim.

So

The Jesuit on the other side repeats the claim to infallibility based on the Rock of Peter: and Laud denies that the rock was Peter's person, and asserts that it was his faith. the English separation is not from the "General Church," but from the Church of Rome-and "even here the Protestants have not left the Church of Rome in her essence but in her errors; not in the things that constitute a church, but only in such abuses and corruptions as work toward the dissolution of a church."

How to be decided.

And who is to be the judge? A general council: it is Laud's appeal, and that of the whole English Church since the Reformation. And where that cannot be had we fall back on the Holy Scriptures; for the Council of Trent had no general assent of the Catholic Church, and the claim of the pope to continuous supremacy is contrary to historical fact. The Church in general cannot err in a fundamental point, having the perpetual presence of Christ. A particular Church can err, and particular Churches have erred. General councils may err, as that of Constance erred when it ordered that the Holy Eucharist should be received by laymen only under one kind, and made this rule " a law which may not be refused." Such judgments, being contrary to the command of Christ, may be reversed. So again the debate turns back upon the pope's infallibility; and Laud declares that the doctrine of intention alone, as defined by the Council of Trent, refutes the claim. For he cannot be infallible unless he be pope, and the intention of conferring the Sacraments by which he has received his spiritual powers and privileges cannot be proved.

From this he comes to the errors that he saw in the practice of the Roman Church of his own day in the common teaching of transubstantiation, of communion in one kind, of invocation of saints, of adoration of images-errors all of them practical, but not all to be found in the avowed teaching of the Roman Church.

As the debate narrows, the Jesuit turns from particulars, which are hard to defend, to a general assertion which appeals

II

RICHARD MOUNTAGUE

The claims

of the

Church.

15

powerfully to the timid. "You admit," he says in effect, "that we may be saved; are you not safer therefore with us, as we deny there is salvation in your Church ?" "This will not hold," replies Laud: "on this ground, indeed, you should accept the Anglican English doctrine of the Eucharist, for you only add the 'manner' of that Presence which we admit to be real. For we admit the salvation of Romanists, as individuals, not as members of the Roman communion-that is, as they believe the Creed and hold the foundation Christ Himself, not as they associate themselves willingly and knowingly to the gross superstitions of the Romish Church." Thus obstinate teachers of false doctrine are without excuse, though their sincere and simple followers may be in a state of salvation.

And so finally we return to the confidence which may be reposed in the English Church.

"To believe the Scripture and the Creeds, to believe these in the sense of the ancient primitive Church, to receive the four great General Councils, to believe all points of doctrine generally received as fundamental in the Church of Christ, is a faith in which to live and die cannot but give salvation."

This book went to the root of the matter; and it was on the lines which it developed that Charles desired to uphold the teaching and the position of the English Church. Of its Eucharistic doctrine something may be said later. It is time now to turn to the controversies which became public within a few years of the time when Laud met Fisher and before the results of their conference were given to the world.

Mountague

The case of the Countess of Buckingham had been but one example, in high place, of persistent Roman propagandism. The country was visited by many Roman agents, who used the Calvinist teaching that was so common to discredit the claim of the national Church to represent the and the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The case of Dr. Richard Mountague was a notable one. It showed both the importance of the Calvinist position among the laity of England and the strength of the reaction which was to restore the balance of theological teaching.

Romanists.

Richard Mountague, rector of Stanford Rivers, in Essex, was already a notable man. A scholar of King's College,

Cambridge, he had returned to Eton to join in the literary work of the great Sir Henry Savile, for whom he edited several orations of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and began to edit St. Basil the Great. Savile was, he noted, in later years, "the first means of his advancement"; and by his influence no doubt it was that Mountague was enabled, after his appointment as Dean of Hereford in 1616, to return, by exchange, to Windsor as a canon. He held several other preferments, and he soon attracted the attention of James I., by whom he was requested to undertake an answer, at first in conjunction with Casaubon, and after his death alone, to the Ecclesiastical History of Baronius. He published the first part of his work in 1622, which, says Fuller, "had he finished it, might be balanced with that of Baronius, and which would have swayed with it for learning and weighed it down for truth"; and he wrote also against Selden's book on tithes; so that when he again appeared in print, in 1624, he was a practised, as well as a learned, controversialist.

A New Gag

for an

Certain "Romish rangers" had been vexing his parish; and a pamphlet, entitled "A Gag for the New Gospel," had been circulated, which identified the teaching of the English Church with Calvinism. Mountague Old Goose. set himself to reply, and published "A Gag for the New Gospel? No! A New Gag for an Old Goose, who would needs undertake to stop all Protestants' mouths for ever with 276 places out of their own English Bible." He wrote in easy, familiar language, and he took up the position of the school of Andrewes, that though the Church of Rome was corrupt she was not apostate, and that England differed from her only in her errors. Denying transubstantiation, he asserted the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar. He asserted the power of absolution, but denied the necessity of confession in all cases. And for outward adornment of churches he wrote: "Not the making of images is misliked, but the profaning of them to unlawful uses in worshipping and adoring them." The style of the pamphlet was intentionally such as to catch the popular ear. Writing to his friend Cosin, the author admitted that he had written bitterly and tartly, "which I did purposely, It was a style in

because the ass deserved to be so rubbed."

II

THE APPELLO CÆSAREM

17

which he excelled. As Fuller quaintly puts it, "his great parts were attended with a tartness of writing; very sharp the nib of his pen, and much gall mingled in his ink, against such as opposed him. However, such the equability of the sharpness of his style, he was impartial therein; be he ancient or modern writer, Papist or Protestant, that stood in his way, they shared all equally taste thereof." He set himself, indeed, in his own words, "to stand in the gap against Puritanism and Popery, the Scylla and Charybdis of Ancient Piety." And such men were, indeed, like Shakespeare's Adam, "not for the fashion of those times." The House of Commons was always eager to enter the arena of theological controversy, and when it was addressed on the iniquity of Mountague's pamphlet, it at once applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Abbot was himself a Calvinist, and old age and misfortune had taught him caution. He advised Mountague to revise his opinions. Instead he applied to the king in person. It was

66

in the last days of James's life, yet the king's keen scent for theological discussion was not abated, and when he had heard the matter he exclaimed, "If that is to be a papist, so am I a papist." Mountague indeed was, as Laud saw, a very good scholar and a right honest man, a man every way able to do God, his Majesty, and the Church of England great service," and James was in no mind to discredit a The Appello student. To James, then, Mountague submitted a Casarem. new pamphlet, which was only published after the king's death" Appello Cæsarem: A Just Appeal from two Unjust Informers." It was a bold vindication. As to Calvinists and their doctrine of free-will he wrote plainly, "I am none, I profess, of that fraternity-no Calvinist, no Lutheran, but a Christian." His aim was to vindicate his interpretation of the English formularies as being the natural one, and his interpretation of the Bible as being that of the English Church. He refused to be bound by the Synod of Dort or by any private opinions. The Church of Rome, he asserted, is not a sound, yet a true, Church. All that papists say is not Popery. "Particular churches have and may err; the Catholic, Universal Church hath not, cannot, err."

Mountague was singularly free from the popular delusions of his day. There was no reason to believe the pope to be

C