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2. But it may be said, on the other hand, that, if we do not admit ourselves to be heretic, we necessarily must accuse the Romanists of being such; and that therefore, on our own ground, we have really no valid orders, as having received them from an heretical Church. True, Rome is heretical now; but she was not an heretical Church in the primitive ages. She has apostatized, but it was at the time of the Council of Trent. Then it was that the whole Roman Communion bound itself by a perpetual bond and covenant to the cause of Antichrist[1]. But before that time, grievous as were the corruptions in the Church, no individual Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, was bound by oath to the maintenance of them[2]. Extensively as they were spread, no Clergyman was shackled with obligations which prevented his resisting them; he could but suffer persecution for so doing. He did not commit himself in one breath to two vows, to serve faithfully in the Ministry, and yet to receive all the superstitions and impieties which human perverseness had introduced into the most gracious and holiest of God's gifts. On the contrary, we may say with the learned Dr. Field, "that none of those points of false doctrine and error which Romanists now maintain, and we condemn, were the doctrines of the Church before the Reformation constantly delivered or generally received by all them that were of it, but doubtfully broached, and devised without all certain resolution, or factiously defended by some certain only, who as a dangerous faction adulterated the sincerity of the Christian verity, and brought the Church into miserable bondage[3]." Accordingly, acknowledging and deploring all the errors of the dark ages, yet we need not fear to maintain, that after all they were but the errors of individuals, though of large
- ↑ The following is from the Life of Bernard Gilpin, vid. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. iv. p. 94. "Mr. Gilpin would often say that the Churches of the Protestants were not able to give any firme and solid reason of their seperation besides this, to wit, that the Pope is Antichrist .... The Church of Rome kept the rule of faith intire, untill that rule was changed and altered by the Council of Trent, and from that time it seemed to him a matter of necessitie to come out of the Church of Rome, that so that Church which is true and called out from thence might follow the word of God. ... But he did not these things violently, but by degrees."
- ↑ The Creed of Pope Pius IV., in which every Roman Priest professes and promises to maintain all the errors of Popery, was only imposed after the Council of Trent.
- ↑ See Field on the Church, Appendix to book iii. where he proves all this. See also Birkbeck's Protestant's Evidence.
