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fore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.'
6. "Lastly, we affirm, that in the superstructions of Christian religion, the Church of Rome hath added and mixed sundry errors and abuses of greater consequence, and sinful innovations, in point of doctrine, and discipline, and administration of the Sacraments, and feasts and fasts, and this we are ready to maintain. Neither does she only profess and practise these errors and abuses, which perhaps by some persons at some times might be separated without a separation; but she obtrudes them upon all others as essential truths and necessary articles. She enjoins sundry of them as a condition of her communion. She commands all Christians to believe and practise them under pain of damnation; and whosoever refuseth, she casteth them out of her society. Such is their new creed in point of faith, directly contrary to the Canon of the General Council of Ephesus. Such is the Pope's supremacy of power in point of discipline, expressly contrary to the determinations of the Councils of Constance and Basle. Such is the adoration of the species of bread and wine, the detention of the cup from the people, their unknown language in the administration of the sacraments, and in the public service of God. From these sinful duties thus enjoined as necessary, all men ought to separate. Lawful authority of man may oblige one to suffer, but no authority of man can warrant or oblige one to do sinful duties. Such a cause justifies a separation until the abuse be reformed for which the separation was made. And being thus separated from sinful innovations, it may be lawful or convenient to reform lesser errors, which were not of such dangerous consequence, nor had been a sufficient cause of separation of themselves."[1]
In this quotation you will observe how the passages in italics bear out and confirm what I have said myself, and how the whole spirit of what the Archbishop says, bears upon the great sin of schism. The superiors may sin in their commands, as the Bishops of Rome did, and yet the members of that Church be innocent. Schism is a sin. Who are guilty now we know not, but this we know, that it is the duty of each one of us to pray for its cessation, and "leave the rest to God."
Well, then, if the Church of Rome be the true Church in Italy, a man in Italy must remain in her (the Church being one), or else he is guilty of schism, and we pray in the Litany to God to deliver us from schism as from a deadly sin. If again the Church of
- ↑ Bramhall. Replication to Bishop of Chalcedon. Disc. iii.
