laid upon them by their own sovereign princes; and that whatever is determined in those councils, is not of any force or validity till it be received and admitted by that sovereign power. Where then shall this council meet? if in or near Rome, other parts of the Christian church will be at so great a distance, (and when all the world shall be Christian, which all good Christians hope it will, the distance will be much greater) that it will take up so much of the life of a man, that very few men would live to return to their country with the result of what that council concludes. And if all these objections were away, it is notoriously known that the church of Rome will never admit, nor by its own decrees of council can admit, any prelates or others to sit, consult, and vote with them, who are not already of the same faith; and the princes and people of those nations have little reason to submit to the authority, and to receive the dictates of such a general council. Therefore men shall with much more integrity insist upon the strength of those arguments which have prevailed upon their own understandings, than pretend to refer all to a general council, that they know, as much as they can know any thing, can never meet.

There is indeed another expedient, that would go far towards the removing or composing all those differences which bring scandal upon the church of

Christ; which is, that Christian princes would convene national councils in their several dominions, to enquire what corruptions have been introduced into the exercise of their religion, first by connivance, and then by faction improved and carried on for the advancement of particular interests; what was innocently and piously instituted, and in tract of time and ill manners of the age hath degenerated into practice that is prejudicial and hurtful to religion; and, lastly, what errors are so incorporated into the customs and natures and humours of the nation, that they can hardly be examined, much less reformed, without producing more inconveniences and mischiefs than it would remove. I am persuaded, there are very few kingdoms or nations which are possessed of peace, where such disquisitions, prudently governed by the supreme magistrate would not do much good, in altering some things, and reforming more persons: they might produce a good intelligence and correspondence between neighbour nations; and though neither of them would probably change their opinions or practice, it is very possible that they might discover the differences between them to be less important and more innocent than they imagined them to have been; and if some kingdoms did not agree together to refer all disputes which shall arise in their dominions to a third per

son, who resides in neither of them, they who will make none of those submissions, have no reason to be offended, or to censure the other; let them intend their own business. Nor is it reasonable to imagine, that any one national church (in which we may presume there are many learned and pious men) would not preserve and establish all the fundamentals of Christian religion, and that they would not otherwise differ from each other than as would consist with those foundations; and as there is no church so pure as to have no errors, so no one would introduce or permit such errors as would make them unworthy to be considered as a church. We know it was a national council that at Illiberis, which preserved and by degrees vindicated the catholic church from the poison of Arius, after it was countenanced and supported by a general council, and when the pope Liberius himself was infected with it. And as the peace of Christendom can be no other way procured and preserved and propagated, than by the good intelligence and correspondence that is produced between the princes thereof, by ambassadors and commissaries, from whence alliances, commerce, and leagues result, so a participation and mutual communication between those national councils, with the privity and licence of the sovereign princes, of the doubts which arise, and the reasons which prevail in their

several consultations, would be a much more hopeful expedient to extinguish errors, and to introduce unity in things wherein unity is necessary, (for a unity in all things never was, nor ever will be, in the catholic church) than to subject them all to the supercilious judicatory of one tribunal, which can never be truly informed, nor judge impartially; and all the differences which would remain, would appear to each other to be of that nature, as to be fit to be retained in either, or which ought not to interrupt their charity to each other: for that may be a truth and fit to be retained in France, where it hath the approbation of church and state, which is a great error in England, where it is rejected and condemned by both; as that concerning the pope's authority, and some other particulars.

In this manner, and with this consent and authority, it pleased God to reform the church of England, and to purge it from some errors and superstitions, which, unwarily brought in and connived at, had produced many inconveniences and mischiefs, and the continuance whereof would have multiplied those mischiefs: and it cannot be denied, that this necessary reformation was very prejudicial to the court of Rome; which being fast bound up to and with that church, by the joint imaginary authority, separated itself from communion with it, and excommunicated the other; and to make it

the more odious, and to draw in other secular interests to join with them in the quarrel, they endeavoured to persuade the world, that this great alteration and pretended Reformation proceeded only from the inordinate affection and infamous lust of Henry the Eighth; who, because the pope had refused to grant a divorce to that king, from a princess of great virtue, his lawful wife, that he might marry another whose beauty pleased him more, therefore separated himself from the communion of that church, and introduced the new religion and this uningenuity is still continued and practised by the Roman party, contrary to truth, and to the express knowledge of those who are conversant in the history of that time. In truth, that king might well be offended with the pope, for refusing to grant him the same dispensation, which a precedent pope within so few years before in his own time had granted to the King of France, Lewis the Twelfth, who was thereby set at liberty from his former wife, by whom he had children, and married the wife of the last king, the heir of the duchy of Brittany, that he might thereby annex that duchy to the crown of France, as it hath ever since remained: yet that refusal, though the pope had promised to grant it, and had first cherish. ed those scruples which made the king demand the dispensation, did not produce any part of the re