Full and easy satisfaction which is the true and safe religion in a conference…Full and easie satisfaction which is the true and safe religion in a conference…

R. And are not Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Abassines and Protestants, all Christians as well as they? Their proud schismatical unchristening all but the subjects of the Pope, is a silly proof that we are no Christians, or that they are any better than others; unless Malignity, uncharitableness and Schism be the true Excellency. 1. And are not other Christians More than the Papists? Bishop Bramhall reckons the Papists to be about the fifth part of Christians: Suppose they be a third part? They are still the Minor part. 2. And are not the Protestants as Learned as the Papists? Why then will not your argument hold against them as well as for them? Have not all these Christians souls to save or lose? And do they not take that for the true Religion on which they trust their souls?

D. But though all these set together are more than the Church of Rome, yet no one Sect of them is so great; and what matter is it how many various Sects are?

R. 1. The Greek Church is judged by wise men, to be yet bigger than the Roman, even in this its broken state: But there is no doubt but it was much bigger long after the first division, before the Turk did win the Eastern Empire. ⟨p. 168⟩2. But, if it were not so, your objection is frivolous. The Question is either of Different Churches, or of Different opinions and parties in the same Church. As to the first, There are but two opinions in the Christian world, that I know of, about the Constitution of the Catholic Church. The one is the opinion of the Papists only, ☞ that The Catholic Church is essentially constituted both of Christ, and the Pope as his Vicar and universal Monarch, with all his subjects; as the pars Imperans and pars subdita. The other is the judgement of all other Christians, (that I know or hear of,) that The Catholic Church is essentially constituted only of Christ as the supreme Head, or King, or pars Imperans, and his subjects as the pars subdita; ☞ And that Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, &c. are but Officials & subditi primarii vel nobiles, constitutive parts indeed of their particular Churches (some humane, and some Divine) but no essential parts of the Catholic Church. ☞ This is the Grand difference between the Papists and all other Christians in the World, What the Catholic Church is? Whether it have any Constitutive Universal Head or Monarch besides Christ? Now seeing that Greeks, Abassines, Armenians and all agree with us in this against the Papists, it is evident to them that are willing to see that we are all of the same Catholic Church, though not of the same particular Churches, nor all for the same Official Ministers; Because we are all for the same Constitutive Head, and his subjects as such, and agree in all the Essential parts, ☞ So that our differences among all these parties or particular Churches or