Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

WEDDERBURN/PROBLEM OF CATHOLICITY’
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whosoever beleeved theire infallibilitie in matters divine, had a monstrous faith.
4.Those Romane Catholiques who from God’s tender care of his church labour
to prove the necessitie of one supreme, visible, and infalhble judge of controver¬
sies, should by the same ground be induced to thinke that God would never
have so tempted poore weake Christians (who make the farre greater number of
that church whereof he hath so tender a care) as to have tied theire faith to that
chaire wherein himselfe foresaw so many were successively to sitt as had neither
faith, nor charitie, nor any other Christian vertue, tie quid gravius dicam.35 [67r]
To retaine such in our communion as incline to leave it, and betake them¬
selves to that of Rome, it would be shewed, 1. that the reasons mooving
them are not sufficient; 2. that ther be sufficient reasons to moove them to
the contrarie.
For the reasons that moove them we will considder such only as seem to be of
some weight.
The first and most ordinary way which they use to withdraw good soules
from our communion is by makeing them beleive that Ecdesia Romana et Ecclesia
Catholica are termini convertibiles,36 and that themselves only ar the Catholick
church.
Concerning this wee say: 1 .That herein they doe as did the Donatists of old,
as might be shewd by infinite places of St Augustine, whereof I will here sett
down but a few. Reply to Cresconius:31 ‘Your error, or rather your fury, obliges you
thus to accuse not only CaeciHanus and his consecrators, but also the churches
of which we read in the apostolic and canonical scriptures....’ Where, if instead
of Caedlianum et ordinatores eius we read Lutherum et sectatores eius, we may truly
say that the present Church of Rome (at least her zealots) deals just so, not only
with the Protestants, but with all the churches he named, except themselves.
Ibid.,38 ‘I am in the church which has for its members all the churches born and
established thanks to the labours of the Apostles and identified in the canonical
scriptures. From their communion, in measure as the Lord gives me, I will not
depart, neither in Africa or elsewhere.’ I would gladly know whether they can
say this who hold such only to be of the Catholique church, as are of the Romane
obedience and beleeve the infallibilitie of the pope. Epistle 93, To Vincentius:39
35 ‘not to say anything more damning’.
36 ‘interchangeable terms’.
37 bk. 2, ch. 37 [vii, 162].
38 bk. 3, ch. 35 [vii, 169].
39 Epistle 48 [Wedderburn has 49] [ii,57]; ITfrrfes, vi,396.