The letter writ by the last Assembly General of the Clergy of France to the Protestants, inviting them to return to their communion together with the methods proposed by them for their conviction / translated into English, and examined by Gilbert Burnet.

Remarks.

1. TO the greatest part of this, an∣swer has been already given: We acknowledge the Church of Rome was a True Church, and had in it the means of Salvation though it was over-run with Errours, and Christ is truly with his Church as long as those means of Salvation do remain in it. So was the Iewish Church a True Church after she was in many points corrupted in her Doctrine.

2. In those dark Ages many might have kept themselves free from the de∣filements of their Worship, though no account is given of them in story. So seven thousand had not bowed their knees to Baal in Elijah's time, who were not so much as known to that Prophet, though it might have been expected that they would all have willingly discovered themselves to him: And since he knew nothing of them, it is very probable they concealed themselves with great care from all others.

3. All good men have not all the de∣grees of Illumination, for there might have been great numbers that saw the

corruptions of their Church, but were so restrained by other opinions concerning the Unity of the Church, that they thought it enough to infuse their notions into some few Disciples, in whom they confided: and on some perhaps that which Elisha said to Naaman the Syrian, being wrong understood by them, had great in∣fluence. Others observing that the Apo∣stles continued to worship at the Tem∣ple, and offer Sacrifices, which S. Paul and those with him that purified them∣selves must have done, might have from that inferred that one might com∣ply in a Worship, though they disliked many things in it; which, if I am not much misinformed, is a Maxime that governs many in the Roman Commu∣nion to this day. I do not excuse this compliance, but it is not so criminal as at first view it may appear to be: If it is truly founded on a mistake of the mind, and not on a baseness in the will, or a rejecting of the Cross of Christ, especially in men that had so faint a twilight as that was which they were guided by in those blind times.

4. But to make the worst of this that can be, and should we grant that through fear they had complied against their

Consciences, this only must make the conclusion terrible to them, if they did not repent of it. But God might have ordered the conveyance of truth to be handed down by such defiled hands, and their not being personally holy, must not be urged too far, to prove that they could not be the true Church. This will come too near the Doctrines of the Do∣natists, and many of S. Austin's sayings which they unreasonably object to us, may be turned upon them. And it will very ill become a Church that ac∣knowledges the Succession of the Bishop of Rome to have been the chief convey∣ance of Tradition, which is a much greater matter in their principles than it is in ours, to urge the Holiness of the Members to be essential to the be∣ing of a Church, when it is acknow∣ledged what a sort of men the Heads of their Church have been for diverse Ages.