Zwinglius first came unto the knowledge and preaching of the Gospel Perkins saith We say that (d) In his Exposâ—t on upon the Creed Pag. 400. bâ—fore the dayes of Luther for the space of many hundâ—ed years an Universal Apostacy overspread the whole face of the earth and that our Protestant Church was not then visible to the world Napper upon the Revelations teacheth that from the year of (e) Propos 37. Pag 68. Christ three hundred and sixteen the Antichristian and Papistical raign hath begun raigning universally and without any debatable contradiction one thousand two hundred sixty years that is till Luther's time And that from the year of (f) Ibid. cap. 12. Pag. 161. col 3. Christ three hundred and sixteen God hath withdrawn his Visible Church from open Assemblies to the hearts of particular godly men c. during the space of one thousand two hundred threescore years And that the (g) Ibid. in cap. 11. Pag. 145. Pope and Clergy have possessed the outward Visible Church of Christians even one thousand two hundred threescore years And that the (h) Ibid. Pag. 191. true Church abode latent and invisible And Brocard (i) Fol. 110. 123. upon the Revelations professeth to joyn in opinion with Napper Fulk affirmeth that in the (k) Answer to a counterfeit Catholique Pag. 16. time of Boniface the third which was the year six hundred and seven the Church was invisible and fled into the wilderness there to remain a long season Luther saith Primò solus eram At the first (l) In praef at operum suorum I was alone Jacob Hailbronerus one of the Disputants for the Protestant Patty in the conference at Ratisbon affirmeth (m) In suo Acatholico vol. à . 15. cap. 9. p. 479 that the true Church was interrupted by Apostasie from the true Faith Calvin saith It is absurd in the very (n) Epist 141. beginning to break one from another after we have been forced to make a separation from the whole world It were over-long to alledge the words of Joannes Regius Daniel Chamierus Beza Ochimus Castalio and others to the same purpose The reason which cast them upon this wicked Doctrin was a desperate voluntary necessity because they being resolved not to acknowledge the Roman Church to be Christ's true Church and yet being convinced by all manner of evidence that for divers Ages before Luther there was no other Congregation of Christians which could be the Church of Christ there was no remedy but to affirm that upon earth Christ had no visible Church which they would never have avouched if they had known how to avoid the foresaid inconvenience as they apprehended it of submitting themselves to the Roman Church 10. Against these exterminating spirits D. Potter and other more moderate Protestants profess that Christ always had and always will have upon earth a Visible Church otherwise saith he our Lord's (o) Pag. 154. promise of her stable (p) Mat. 16.18 edification should be of no value And in another place having affirmed that Protestants have not left the Church of Rome but her corruptions and acknowledging her still to be a member of Christ's body he seeketh to clear himself and others from Schism because saith he the property (q) Pag. 76. of Schism is witness the Donatists and Lucitâ—rians to cut off from the Body of Christ and the hope of Salvation the Church from which it separates And if any Zâ—lots amongst us have proceeded to heavier censures their zeal may be excused but their charity and wisdom cannot be justified And elsewhere he acknowledgeth that the Roman Church hath those main and (r) Pag. 83. essential truths which give her the name and essence of a Church 11. It being therefore granted by D. Potter and the chiefest and best learned English Protestants that Christ's Visible Church cannot perish it will be needless for me in this occasion to prove it S. Augustine doubted not to say The Prophets (s) In Psal 30. Com. 2. spoke more obscurely of Christ then of the Church because as I think they did forsee in spirit that men were to make parties against the Church and that they were not to have so great strife concerning Christ therefore that was more plainly foretold and more openly prophesied about which greater contentions were to rise that it might turn to the condemnation of them who have seen it and yet gone forth And in another place he saith How do we confide (t) Epist 48. to have received manifestly Christ himself from holy Scriptures if we have not also manifestly received the Church from them And indeed to what Congregation shall a man have recourse for the affairs of his soul if upon earth there be no Visible Church of Christ Beside to imagine a company of men believing one thing in their heart and with their mouth professing the contrary as they must be supposed to do for if they had professed what they believed they would have become Visible is to dream of a damned crew of dissembling Sycophants but not to conceive a right notion of the Church of Christ our Lord. And therefore S. Augustine saith We cannot be saved unless labouring also for the (u) S. Aug. de Fide Symbolâ— c. 1. Salvation of others we profess with our mouths the same Faith which we bear in our hearts And if any man hold it lawful to dissemble and deny matters of Faith we cannot be assured but that they actually dissemble and hide Anabaptism Arianism yea Turcism and even Atheism or any other false belief under the outward profession of Calvinism Do not Protestants teach that preaching of the World and administration of Sacraments which cannot but make a Church Visible are inseparable notes of the true Church And therefore they must either grant a Visible Church or none at all No wonder then if S. Austin account this Heresie so gross that he saith against those who in his time defended the like error But this Church which (w) In Psal 101. hath been of all Nations is no more she hath perished so say they that are in not in her O impudent speech And afterward This voice so abominable so detestable so full of presumption and falshood which is sustained with no truth inlightned with no wisdom seasoned with no salt vain rash heady pernitious the holy Ghost foresaw c. And peradventure some (x) De ovib c. â— one may say there are other sheep I know not where with which I am not acquainted yet God hath care of them But he is too absurd in humane sense that can imagine such things And these men do not consider that while then deny the perpetuity of a Visible Church they destroy their own present Church according to the argument which S. Augustine urged against the Donatists in these words (y) De Bapt. cont Donat. If the Church were lost in Cyprian's we may say in Gregory's
most certain and infallible wherein it surpasseth humane Opinion it must relie upon some motive and ground which may be able to give it certainly and yet not release it from Obscurity For if this motive ground or formal Object of Faith were any thing evidently presented to our understanding and if also we did evidently know that it had a necessary connection with the Articles which we believe our assent to such Articles could not be obscure but evident which as we said is against the nature of our faith If likewise the motive and ground of our faith were obscurely propounded to us but were not in it self infallible it would leave our assent in obscurity but could not endue it with certainty We must therefore for the ground of our faith find out a motive obscure to us but most certain in it self that the act of faith may remain both obscure and certain Such a motive as this can be no other but the divine authority of Almighty God revealing or speaking those truths which our faith believes For it is manifest that God's infallible testimony may transfâ—â—â— Certainty to our faith and yet not draw it out of obscurity because no humane discourse or demonstration can evince that God revealeth any supernatural truth since God hath been no less perfect than he is although hâ—â—â—â— never revealed any of those objects which we now believe 4 Nevertheless because Almighty God out of his infinite wisdom and sweetness doth conour with his Creatures in such sort as may befit the temper and exigence of their natures and because Man is a Creature endued with reason God doth not exact of his Will or Understanding any other then as the Apostle faith rationabile (f) Rom. 12.1 obsequium an Obedience sweetned with good reason which could not so appear if our Understanding were summoned to believe with certainty things no way represented as infallible and certain And therefore Almighty God obliging us under pain of eternal camnation to believe with greatest certainty divers verities not known by the light of natural reason cannot fail to furnish our Understanding with such inducements motives and arguments as may sufficiently perswade any mind which is not partial or passionate that the objects which we believe proceed from an Authority so Wise that it cannot be deceived so Good that it cannot deceive according to the words of David Thy Testimonies are made (g) Psal 92. credible exceedingly These inducements are by Divines called argumenta credibilitatis arguments of credibility which though they cannot make us evidently see what we believe yet they evidently convince that in one wisdom and prudence the objects of faith deserve credit and ought to be accepted as things revealed by God For without such reasons and inducements our judgment of faith could not be conceived prudent holy Scripture telling us that be who soon (h) Eccles 19. â— believes is light of heart By these arguments and inducements our Understanding is both satisfied with evidence of credibility and the objects of faith retain their obsenrity because it is a different thing to be evidently credible and evidently true as those who were present at the Miracles wrought by our blessed Saviour and his Apostles did not evidently see their doctrin to be true for then it had not been Faith but Science and all had been necessitated to believe which we see fell out otherwise but they were evidently convinced that the things confirmed by such Miracles were most credible and worthy to be imbraced as truth revealed by God 5 These evident arguments of Credibility are in great abundance found in the Visible Church of Christ perpetually existing on earth For that there hath been a company of men professing such and such doctrines we have from our next Predecessors and these from theirs upward till we come to the Apostles and our Blessed Saviour which gradation is known by evidence of sense by reading books or hearing what one man delivers to another And it is evident that there was neither cause nor possibility that men so distant in place so different in temper so repugnant in private ends did or could agree to tell one and the self same thing if it had been but a fiction invented by themselves as ancient Tertullian well saith How is it likely that so many (i) Praescript c. 28. and so great Churches should err in one saith Among many events there is not one issue the error of the Churches must needs have varied But that which among many is sound to be One is not mistaken but delivered Dare then any body say that they erred who delivered it With this never-interrupted existence of the Church are joyned the many and great miracles wrought by mâ—n of that Congregation or Church the sanctity of the persons the renowned victories over so many persecutions both of all sorts of men and of the infernal spirits and lastly the perpetual existence of so holy a Church being brought up to the Apostles themselves she comes to partake of the same assurance of truth which They by so many powerful ways did communicate to their Doctrin to the Church of their times together with the divine Certainty which they received from our blessed Saviour himself revealing to Mankind what he heard from his Father and so we conclude with Tertullian We receive it from the Churches the Churches (k) Praese c. 21. 37. from the Apostles the Apostles from Christ Christ from his Father And if we once interrupt this line of succession most certainly made known by means of holy Tradition we cannot conjoyn the present Church and doctrin with the Church and doctrin of the Apostles buâ— must invent some new means and arguments sufficient of themselves to find out and prove a true Church and faith independently of the preaching and writing of the Apostles neither of which can be known but by Tradition as is truly observed by Tertullian saying I will prescribe that (l) Praesc c. 22. there is no means to prove what the Apostles preached but by the same Church which they sounded 6 Thus then we are to proceed By evidence of manifest and incorrupt Tradition I know that there hath always been a never interrupted Succession of men from the Apostles time believing professing and practising such and such doctrines By evident arguments of credibility as Miracles Sanctity Unity c. and by all those ways whereby the Apostles and our Blessed Saviour himself confirmed their doctrin we are assured that what the said never-interrupted Church proposeth doth deserve to be accepted and acknowledged as a divine truth By evidence of Sense we see that the same Church proposeth such and such doctrins as divine truths that is as revealed and testified by Almighty God By this divine Testimony we are infallibly assured of what we believe and so the last period ground motive and formal object of our Faith is the infallible testimony of that supreme Verity which
adhere For you abuse the world and them if you pretend that they hold the first of your two principles That these particular Books are the word of God for so I think you mean either to be in it selfe evidently certain or of it self and being devested of the motives of credibility evidently credible For they are not so fond as to conceive nor so vain as to pretend that all men do assent to it which they would if it were evidently certain nor so ridiculous as to imagine that if an Indian that never heard of Christ or Scripture should by chance find a Bible in his owne Language and were able to read it that upon the reading it he would certainly without a miracle believe it to be the word of God which he could not chuse if it were evidently credible What then do they affirm of it Certainly no more than this that whatsoever man that is not of a perverse minde shall weigh with serious and mature deliberation those great moments of reason which may incline him to believe the Divine authority of Scripture and compare them with the leight objections that in prudence can be made against it he shall not chuse but finde sufficient nay abundant inducements to yeeld unto it firm faith and sincere obedience Let that learned man Hugo Grotius speak for all the rest in his Book of the truth of Christian Religion which Book whosoever attentively peruses shall find that a man may have great reason to be a Christian without dependance upon your Church for any part of it and that your Religion is no foundation of but rather a scandal and an objection against Christianity He then in the last Chapter of his second Book hath these excellent words If any be not satisfied with these arguments above-said but desires more forcible reasons for confirmation of the excellency of Christian Religion let such know that as there are variety of things which be true so are there divers wayes of proving or manifesting the truth Thus is there one way in Mathematicks another in Physicks a third in Ethicks and lastly another kind when a matter of fact is in question wherein verily we must rest content with such testimonies as are free from all suspicion of untruth otherwise down goes all the frame and use of history and a great part of the Art of Physick together with all dutifulness that ought to be between parents and children for matters of practice can no way else be known but by such testimonies Now it is the pleasure of Almighty God that those things which he would have us to believe so that the very belief thereof may be imputed to us for obedience should not so evidently appear as those things which are apprehended by sense and plain demonstration but only be so farre forth revealed as may beget faith and a perswasion thereof in the hearts and minds of such as are not obstinate That so the Gospel may be as a touch-stone for triall of mens judgements whether they be sound or unsound For seeing these arguments whereof we have spoken have induced so many honest godly and wise men to approve of this Religion it is thereby plain enough that the fault of other mens infidelity is not for want of sufficient testimony but because they would not have that to be had and embraced for truth which is contrary to their wilful desires it being a hard matter for them to relinquish their honors and set at naught other commodities which thing they know they ought to do if they admit of Christ's doctrin and obey what he hath commanded And this is the rather to be noted of them for that many other historical narrations are approved by them to be true which notwithstanding are only manifest by authority and not by any such strong proofs and perswasions or tokens as do declare the history of Christ to be true 52. And now you see I hope that Protestants neither do need nor protend to any such evidence in the doctrin they believe as cannot well consist both with the essence and the obedience of faith Let us come now to the last Nullity which you impute to the faith of Protestants and that is want of Prudence Touching which point as I have already demonstrated that wisdome is not essential to faith but that a man may truly believe truth though upon insufficient motives So I doubt not but I shall make good that if prudence were necessary to faith we have better title to it than you and that if a wiser then Solomon were here he should have better reason to believe the Religion of Protestants than Papists the Bible rather than the Councel of Trent But let us hear what you can say 53. Ad § 31. You demand then first of all What wisdome was it to forsake a Church confessedly very ancient and besides which there could be demonstrated no other Visible Church of Christ upon earth I answer Against God and truth there lies no Prescription and therefore certainly it might be great wisdome to forsake ancient errors for more ancient Truths One God is rather to be follow'd then innumerable worlds of men And therefore it might be great wisdome either for the whole Visible Church nay for all the men in the world having wandred from the way of Truth to return unto it or for a part of it nay for one man to do so although all the world besides were madly resolute to do the contrary It might be great wisdome to forsake the errors though of the only Visible Church much more of the Roman which in conceiving her self the whole Visible Church does somwhat like the Frog in the Fable which thought the ditch he liv'd in to be all the world 54. You demand again What wisdome was it to forsake a Church acknowledg'd to want nothing necessary to Salvation indued with Succession of Bishops c. usque ad Election or Choice I answer Yet might it be great wisdome to forsake a Church not acknowledged to want nothing necessary to salvation but accused and convicted of Many damnable errors certainly damnable to them who were convicted of them had they still persisted in them after their conviction though perhaps pardonable which is all that is acknowledg'd to such as ignorantly continued in them A Church vainly arrogating without possibility of proof a perpetual Succession of Bishops holding alwaies the same doctrin and with a ridiculous impudence pretending perpetual possession of all the world whereas the world knowes that a little before Luther's arising your Church was confined to a part of a part of it Lastly a Church vainly glorying in the dependance of other Churches upon her which yet she supports no more than those crouching Anticks which seem in great buildings to labour under the weight they bear do indeed support the Fabrick For a corrupted and salfe Church may give authority to preach the truth and consequently against her own falshoods and corruptions Besides a
that trespass against us How few depend upon God only for their dayly bread viz. the good things of this life as upon the only giver of them so as neither to get nor keep any of them by any means which they know or fear to be offensive unto God How few desire in earnest to avoid temptation Nay who almost is there that takes not the Devils Office out of his hand and is not himself a tempter both to himself and others Lastly who almost is there that desires heartily and above all things so much as the thing deserves to be delivered from the greatest evill Sin I mean and the Anger of God Now beloved this is certain he that imployes not requisite industry to obtain what he pretends to desire does not desire indeed but only pretends to do so He that desires not what he prayes for prayes with tongue only and not with his heart indeed does not pray to God but play and dally with him And yet this is all which men generally do and therefore herein also accomplish this prophecy Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof And this were ill enough were it in private but we abuse God Almighty also with our publick and solemn formalities we make the Church a Stage whereon to act our parts and play our Pageants there we make a profession every day of confessing our sins with humble lowly and obedient hearts and yet when we have talked after this manner 20 30 40 years together our hearts for the most part continue as proud as impenitent as disobedient as they were in the beginning We make great Protestations when we assemble and meet together to render thanks to God Almighty for the benefits received at his hands and if this were to be performed with words with Hosanna's and Hallelujahs and Gloria Patri's and Psalms and Hymns and such like outward matters peradventure we should do it very sufficiently but in the mean time with our lives and actions we provoke the Almighty and that to his face with all variety of grievous and bitter provocations we do dayly and hourly such things as we know and he hath assured us to be odious unto him and contrary to his nature as any thing in the world is to the nature of any man in the world and all this upon poor trifling trivial no temptations If a man whom you had dealt well with should deal so with you one whom ye had redeemed from the Turkish slavery and instated in some indifferent good inheritance should make you fine Speeches entertain you with Panegyricks and have your prayses alwayes in your mouth but all this while do nothing that pleases you but upon all occasions put all affronts and indignities upon you Would you say this were a thankful man Nay would you not make heaven and earth ring of his unthankfulness and detest him almost as much for his fair speeches as his foul actions Beloved such is our unthankfulness to our God and Creatour to our Lord and Saviour our tongues ingeminate and cry aloud Hosanna Hosanna but the lowder voice of our lives and actions is Crucifie him Crucifie him We Court God Almighty and complement with him and profess to esteem his service perfect freedome but if any thing be to be done much more if any thing be to be suffered for him here we leave him We bow the knee before him and put a reed in his hand and a Crown upon his head and cry Hail King of the Jews But then with our customary sins we give him gall to eat and vinegar to drink we thrust a spear in his side nail him to the Cross and crucifie to our selves the Lord of Glory This is not the office of a friend to bewail a dead friend with vain lamentation Sed quae voluerit meminisse quae mandaverit exequi to remember what he desires and execute what he commands so said a dying Roman to his friend and so say I to you To be thankful to God is not to say God be praysed or God be thanked but to remember what he desires and execute what he commands To be thankful to God is certainly to love him and to love him is to keep his Commandements so saith our Saviour Joh. 19. If ye love me keep my Commandements If we do so we may justly pretend to thankfulness which believe me is not a word nor to be performed with words But if we do not so as general y we do not our talk of thankfulness is nothing else but meer talk and we accomplish Saint Pauls prophesie herein also Having a form of thankfulness but not the reality not the power of it If I should reckon up unto you how many direct lies every wicked man tels to God Almighty as often as he sayes Amen to this form of godliness which our Church hath prescribed If I should present unto you all our acting of Piety and playing of Humiliation and personating of devotion in the Psalms the Letanies the Collects and generally in the whole Service I should be infinite And therefore I have thought good to draw a vail over a great part of our Hypocrisie and to restrain the remainder of our discourse to the contrariety between our profession and performance only in two things I mean Faith and Repentance And first for Faith We profess and indeed generally because it is not safe to do otherwise that we believe the Scripture to be true and that it contains the plain and only way to infinite and eternal happiness But if we did generally believe what we do profess if this were the language of our hearts as well as our tongues How comes it to pass that the Study of it is so generally neglected Let a book that treats of the Philosophers stone promise never so many mountains of gold and even the restoring of the golden age again yet were it not marvail if few should study it and the reason is because few would believe it But if there were a book extant and ordinary to be had as the Bible is which men did generally believe to contain a plain and easie way for all men to become rich and to live in health and pleasure and this worlds happiness can any man imagine that this book would be unstudied by any man and why then should I not believe That if the Scriture were firmly and heartily believed the certain and only way to happiness which is perfect and eternal it would be studied by all men with all diligence Seeing therefore most Christians are so cold and negligent in the study of it preferr all other business all other pleasures before it is there not great reason to fear that many who pretend to believe firmly believe it not at all or very weakly and faintly If the General of an Army or an Embassadour to some Prince or State were assured by the King his Master that the transgressing any point of his Commission should cost him his
Christ as well from being a Judge to condemn the wicked For with as much reason and as great ease he might have given him a Writ of Ease a discharge from that Office as well as the other 55. And now I could wish I had said nothing all this while and likely enough so could you But it grieves me that the portion of time allowed me will not suffer me in any reasonable proportion to contemplate the wonderful mercy and goodness of God who to do us good has given such power to our Nature in Christ to make a new Heaven and a new Earth to restore a new Generation of creatures ten times more glorious and perfect than the first Only now tell me Did not S. Paul with good reason speaking of the Resurrection of Christ give it an advantage and pre-eminence even above his death Is not the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my Text the Yea rather verbum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word of great moment and weight Since the Resurrection of Christ actuates and ripens the fruit of Christs Death which without it would have withered and been of no help to us Is not the Doctrine of Christs Resurrection and exaltation with as good reason made an Article of our Creed and as necessarily if not rather to be lean'd upon as any of the rest Nay hath not S. Paul epitomized the whole Creed into that one Article saying in Rom. 10.9 If thou shalt believe in thine heart Rom. 10.9 that God raised the Lord Jesus from the dead thou shalt be saved 56. And now 't is time to consider who are the persons whom the Death yea rather the Resurrection of Christ will protect and warrant from condemnation In my Text as we find none to condemn so likewise we cannot light upon any to be condemned In the verse immediately before these words the Elect of God are those which are Justified and therefore must not be condemned And to say the truth though we dispute till the worlds end the event will shew that the Elect of God and only they shall reap the harvest of Christ's sufferings and bring their sheaves with them As for the wicked and Reprobates it shall not be so with them but why it shall not be so with them whether because they have wilfully excluded themselves or because God had no mind they should be any thing the better for these things I will not tell you 57. In the verses on both sides of my Text we find that We are those that must not be condemn'd We which we why Paul and the Romans Jews and Gentiles What all Jews and all Gentiles I told you I will not tell Only thus much let me tell you we may boldly maintain S. Paul's phrase nay it is unsafe and dangerous to alter it Why it is all the comfort we have to live by it is our glory and crown of rejoycing that we are those whose salvation Christ did so earnestly and unfeignedly desire and thirst after that to obtain power and authority to bestow it on us he suffered such torments and blasphemies that Never sorrow was like unto his sorrow which was done unto him wherewith the Lord afflicted him in the day of his fierce wrath 58. Wherefore I beseech you Beloved Brethren even by the bowels of this Jesus Christ that you would give me leave to advise you if there be any here fit to be advised by me if there be any in this company as weak and ignorant as my self And though my heart be deceitful above all things yet as far as I understand mine own heart If I speak these words out of partiality or faction let me be excluded from having my part in those merits I say let me desire you or rather let our holy Mother the Church perswade you in the 17. Article to receive Gods promises in such wise as they are generally set forth unto us in holy Scriptures 59. For consider impartially with your selves what an unreasonable horrible thing is it seeing there are so many several frequent expressions of Gods general love and gracious favour unto Mankind inforc'd and strengthned with such protestations and solemn oaths that the cunning'st Linguist of you all cannot with your whole lives study conceive or frame expressions more full and satisfactory I say then Is it not desperate madness for a man to shew such hatred and abomination at these comfortable and gracious professions of God that he can be content to spend almost his whole age in contriving and hunting after Interpretations utterly contradicting and destroying the plain apparent sense of those Scriptures and will be glad and heartily comforted to hear tidings of a New-found-out Gloss to pervert and rack and torment Gods holy word 60. On the other side Far be it from us to think that it is in our power when we list or have a mind to it to put our selves in the number of Gods elect faithful servants Or to imagine that we have God so sure chain'd and fettered to us by his Promises that we may dispense now then for the commission of a delightful gainful crime Or that when we have business for a sin to advantage us in our fortunes we need not be too scrupulous about it seeing God is bound upon our sorrow and contrition to receive us again into favour Thou wretched Fool Darest thou make an advantage of Gods goodness to assist and patronize thy security 'T is true God has promised Remission of sins to a repentant contrite sinner but has he assur'd thee that he will give thee Repentance whensoever thou pleasest to allow thy self leisure to seek it No Know that there is a time and presuming Security like sleep doth hasten and add wings to that time when there will be found no way for Repentance though thou seekest it with tears And thus more than I meant for the persons 61. And now what remains but that we try an experiment That we may know in what a comfortable state Christ hath set us let us consider and look about us to see if we can find any enemies that are likely to do us any harm For which purpose we shall not meet with a more acurate Spy and Intelligencer than S. Paul who in the remainder of his Chapter after my Text hath mustered them together in one Roll. But first there is one if he were our adversary he would be in stead of a thousand enemies unto us and that is GOD. But him we are sure of in the verse before my Text For it is he that Justifies therefore surely he will not condemn Therefore what say you to Tribulation or Distress or Persecution or Famine or Nakedness or Peril or the Sword Why these are not worthy the naming for over all these we are more than conquerours More than conquerours what is that Why they are not only overcome and disarm'd but they are brought over to our faction they war on our side 62. Well in the next
whosoever persist in Division from the Communion and Faith of the Roman Church are guilty of Schism and Heresie That in regard of the Precept of Charity towards one's self Protestants are in state of sin while they remain divided from the Roman Church To all these Assertions I will content my self for the present to oppose this one That not one of them all is true Only I may not omit to tell you that if the first of them were as true as the Pope himself desires it should be yet the Corollary which you deduce from it would be utterly inconsequent That Whosoever denies any Point proposed by the Church is injurious to God's Divine Majesty as if He could deceive or be deceived For though your Church were indeed as Infallible a Propounder of Divine Truths as it pretends to be yet if it appeared not to me to be so I might very well believe God most true and your Church most false As though the Gospel of S. Matthew be the Word of God yet if I neither knew it to be so nor believed it I might believe in God and yet think that Gospel a Fable Hereafter therefore I must entreat you to remember that our being guilty of this impiety depends not only upon your being but upon our knowing that you are so Neither must you argue thus The Church of Rome is the Infallible Propounder of Divine Verities therefore he that opposeth Her calls God's Truth in Question But thus rather The Church of Rome is so and Protestants know it to be so therefore in opposing her they impute to God that either he deceives them or is deceived himself For as I may deny something which you upon your knowledge have affirmed and yet never disparage your honesty if I never knew that you affirmed it So I may be undoubtedly certain of God's Omniscience and Veracity and yet doubt of something which he hath revealed provided I do not know nor believe that he hath revealed it So that though your Church be the appointed witness of God's Revelations yet until you know that we know she is so you cannot without foul calumny impute to us That we charge God blasphemously with deceiving or being deceived You will say perhaps That this is directly consequent from our Doctrine That the Church may err which is directed by God in all her Proposals True if we knew it to be directed by him otherwise not much less if we believe and know the contrary But then if it were consequent from our Opinion have you so little Charity as to say that men are justly chargeable with all the consequences of their Opinions Such Consequences I mean as they do not own but disclaim and if there were a necessity of doing either would much rather forsake their Opinion than imbrace those Consequences What opinion is there that draws after it such a train of portentous blasphemies as that of the Dominicans by the judgement of the best Writers of your own Order And will you say now that the Dominicans are justly chargeable with all those Blasphemies If not seeing our case take it at the worst is but the same why should not your judgment of us be the same I appeal to all those Protestants that have gone over to your Side whether when they were most averse from it they did ever deny or doubt of God's Omniscience or Veracity whether they did ever believe or were taught that God did deceive them or was deceived himself Nay I provoke to you your self and desire you to deal truly and to tell Us whether you do in your heart believe that we do indeed not believe the eternal Veracity of the eternal Verity And if you judge so strangely of us having no better ground for it than you have or can have we shall not need any farther proof of your uncharitableness towards us this being the extremity of true uncharitableness If not then I hope having no other ground but this which sure is none at all to pronounce us damnable Heretiques you will cease to do so and hereafter as if your ground be true you may do with more Truth and Charity collect thus They only err damnably who oppose what they know God hath testified But Protestants sure do not oppose what they know God hath testified at least we cannot with Charity say they do Therefore they either do not err damnably or with Charity we cannot say they do so 13. Ad. § 17. Protestants you say according to their own grounds must hold that of persons contrary in whatsoever Point of Belief one part only can be saved therefore it is strangely done of them to charge Papists with want of Charity for holding the same The Consequence I acknowledge but wonder much what it should be that lays upon Protestants any necessity to do so You tell us it is their holding Scripture the sole Rule of Faith For this you say obligeth them to pronounce them damned that oppose any least Point delivered in Scripture This I grant If they oppose it after sufficient declaration so that either they know it to be contained in Scripture or have no just probable Reason and which may move an honest man to doubt Whether or no it be there contained For to oppose in the first case in a man that believes the Scripture to be the Word of God is to give God the lye To oppose in the second is to be obstinate against Reason and therefore a sin though not so great as the former But then this is nothing to the purpose of the necessity of damning all those that are of contrary belief and that for these Reasons First because the contrary belief may be touching a Point not at all mentioned in Scripture and such Points though indeed they be not matters of Faith yet by men in variance are often over-valued and esteemed to be so So that though it were damnable to oppose any Point contained in Scripture yet Persons of a contrary belief as Victor and Polycrates S. Cyprian and Stephen might both be saved because their contrary belief was not touching any Point contained in Scripture Secondly because the contrary belief may be about the sense of some place of Scripture which is ambiguous and with probability capable of divers senses and in such cases it is no marvel and sure no sin if several men go several ways Thirdly because the contrary belief may be concerning Points wherein Scripture may with so great probability be alledged on both sides which is a sure note of a Point not-necessary that men of honest and upright hearts true lovers of God and of Truth such as desire above all things to know God's will and to do it may without any fault at all some go one way and some another and some and those as good men as either of the former suspend their judgments and expect some Elias to solve doubts and reconcile repugnancies Now in all such Questions one side or other which
the Jewish Church endued with an absolutely infallible direction in case of moment as all Points belonging to divine Faith are Now the Church of Christ our Lord was before the Scriptures of the New Testament which were not written instantly nor all at one time but successively upon several occasions and some after the decease of most of the Apostles and after they were written they were not presently known to all Churches and of some there was doubt in the Church for some Ages after our Saviour Shall we then say that according as the Church by little and little received holy Scripture she was by the like degrees devested of her possessed Infallibility and power to decide Controversies in Religion That sometime Churches had one Judge of Controversies and others another That with moneths or years as new Canonical Scripture grew to be published the Church altered her whole Rule of Faith or Judge of Controversies After the Apostles time and after the writing of Scriptures Heresies would be sure to rise requiring in God's Church for their discovery and condemnation Infallibility either to write new Canonical Scripture as was done in the Apostles time by occasion of emergent Heresies or Infallibility to interpret Scriptures already written or without Scripture by divine unwritten Traditions and assistance of the holy Ghost to determine all Controversies as Tertullian saith The soul is h De test aniâ— cap. 5. before the letter and speech before Books and sense before style Certainly such addition of Scripture with derogation or substraction from the former power and infallibility of the Church would have brought to the world division in matters of faith and the Church had rather lost than gained by holy Scripture which ought to be farr from our tongues and thoughts it being manifest that for decision of Controversies Infallibility setled in a living Judge is incomparably more useful and fit than if it were conceived as inherent in some inanimate writing Is there such repugnance betwixt Infallibility of the Church and Existence of Scripture that the production of the one must be the destruction of the other Must the Church wax dry by giving to her Children the milk of sacred Writ No No. Her Infallibility was and is derived from an inexhausted Fountain If Protestants will have the Scripture alone for their Judge let them first produce some Scripture affirming that by the entring thereof Infallibility went out of the Church D. Potter may remember what himself teacheth That the Church is still endued with Infallibility in Points Fundamental and consequently that Infallibility in the Church doth well agree with the truth the sanctity yea with the sufficiency of Scripture for all matters necessary to Salvation I would therefore gladly know out of what Text he imagineth that the Church by the coming of Scripture was deprived of Infallibility in some Points and not in others He affirmeth that the Jewish Synagogue retained infallibility in herself notwithstanding the writing of the Old Testament and will he so unworthily and unjustly deprive the Church of Christ of Infallibility by reason of the New Testament Especially if we consider that in the Old Testament Laws Ceremonies Rites Punishments Judgements Sacraments Sacrifices c. were more particularly and minutely delivered to the Jews than in the New Testament is done our Saviour leaving the determination or declaration of particulars to his Spouse the Church which therefore stands in need of Infallibility more than the Jewish Synagogue D. Potter i Pag. 24. against this argument drawn from the power and infallibility of the Synagogue objects That we might as well inserr that Christians must have one Soveraign Prince over all because the Jews had one chief Judge But the disparity is very clear The Synagogue was a type and figure of the Church of Christ not so their civil Government of Christian Common-wealths or Kingdoms The Church succeeded to the Synagogue but not Christian Princes to Jewish Magistrates And the Church is compared to a house or k Heb. 13. family to an l Cant. 2. Army to a m 1 Cor. 10. Ephes 4. body to a n Mat. 12. kingdom c. all which require one Master one General one head one Magistrate one spiritual King as our blessed Saviour with fict Unum ovile o Joan. c. 10. joyned Unus Pastor One Sheepsold One Pastour But all distinct Kingdoms or Common-wealths are not one Army Family c. And finally it is necessary to Salvation that all have recourse to one Church but for temporal weale there is no need that all submit or depend upon one temporal Prince Kingdom or Common-wealth and therefore our Saviour hath left to his whole Church as being One one Law one Scripture the same Sacraments c. Whereas Kingdoms have their several Laws different governments diversity of Powers Magistracy c. And so this objection returneth upon D. Potter For as in the One Community of the Jews there was one Power and Judge to end debates and resolve difficulties so in the Church of Christ which is One there must be some one Authority to decide all Controversies in Religion 24. This Discourse is excellently proved by ancient S. Irenaeus p Lib. 5. c. 4. in these words What if the Apostles had not lest Scriptures ought we not to have followed the order of Tradition which they delivered to those to whom they committed the Churches to which order many Nations yield assent who believe in Christ having Salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit of God without letters or lake and diligent keeping ancient Tradition It is easie to receive the truth from God's Church seeing the Apostles have most fully deposited in her as in a rich store-house all things belonging to truth For what if there should arise any contention of some small question ought we not to have recourse to the most ancient Churches and from them to receive what is certain and clear concerning the present question 25. Besides all this the doctrine of Protestants is destructive of it self For either they have certain and infallible means not to err in interpreting Scripture or they have not If not then the Scripâ—ure to them cannot be a sufficient ground for infallible Faith nor a meet Judge of Controversies If they have certain infallible means and so cannot err in their interpretations of Scriptures then they are able with infallibility to hear examine and determine all Controversies of Faith and so they may be and are Judges of Controversies although they use the Scripture as a Rule And thus against their own doctrin they constitute another Judge of Controversies besides Scripture alone 26. Lastly I ask D. Potter Whether â—his Assertion Scripture alone is Judge of all Controversies in Faith be a fundamental Point of Faith or no He must be well advised before he say that it is a Fundamental Point For he will have against him as many Protestants as teach that by Scripture alone it
obedience and as our Saviour said of some so the Scripture could it speak I believe would say to you Why call ye me Lord Lord and do not that which I command you Cast away the vain and arrogant pretence of infallibility which makes your errors incurable Leave picturing God and worshipping him by pictures Teach not for Doctrin the commandements of men Debarr not the Laity of the Testament of Christ's Blood Let your publique Prayers and Psalms and Hymns be in such language as is for the edification of the Assistents Take not from the Clergy that liberty of Marriage which Christ hath left them Do not impose upon men that Humility of worshipping Angels which S. Paul condemns Teach no more proper sacrifices of Christ but one Acknowledg them that die in Christ to be blessed and to rest from their labours Acknowledge the Sacrament after Consecration to be Bread and Wine as well as Christs body and bloud Acknowledg the gift of continency without Marriage not to be given to all Let not the weapons of your warfare be carnal such as Massacres Treasons Persecutions and in a word all means either violent or fraudulent These and other things which the Scripture commands you do and then we shall willingly give you such Testimony as you deserve but till you do so to talk of estimation respect and reverence to the Scripture is nothing else but talk 2. For neither is that true which you pretend That we possess the Scripture from you or take it upon the integrity of your Custody but upon Universal Tradition of which you are but a little part Neither if it were true that Protestants acknowledged The integrity of it to have been guarded by your alone Custody were this any argument of your reverence towards them For first you might preserve them entire not for want of Will but of Power to corrupt them as it is a hard thing to poyson the Sea And then having prevailed so farr with men as either not to look at all into them or but only through such spectacles as you should please to make for them and to see nothing in them though as cleer as the sun if it any way made against you you might keep them entire without any thought or care to conform your doctrin to them or reform it by them which were indeed to reverence the Scriptures but out of a perswasion that you could qualify them well enough with your glosses and interpretations and make them sufficiently conformable to your present Doctrin at least in their judgement who were prepossessed with this perswasion that your Church was to Judge of the sense of Scripture not to be judged by it 3. For whereas you say No cause imaginable could avert your will for giving the function of supreme and sole Judge to holy Writ but that the thing is impossible and that by this means controversies are increased and not ended you mean perhaps That you can or will imagine no other cause but these But sure there is little reason you should measure other mens imaginations by your own who perhaps may be so clouded and vailed with prejudice that you cannot or will not see that which is most manifest For what indifferent and unprejudicate man may not easily conceive another cause which I do not say does but certainly may pervert your wills and avert your understandings from submitting your Religion and Church to a tryall by Scripture I mean the great and apparent and unavoidable danger which by this means you would fall into of losing the Opinion which men have of your Infallibility and consequently your power and authority over mens consciences and all that depends upon it So that though Diana of the Ephesians be cryed up yet it may be feared that with a great many among you though I censure or judge no man the other cause which wrought upon Demetrius and the Craftsmen may have with you also the more effectual though more secret influence and that is that by this craft we have our living by this craft I mean of keeping your Proselytes from an indifferent tryal of your Religion by Scripture and making them yield up and captivate their judgement unto yours Yet had you only said de facto that no other cause did avert your own will from this but only these which you pretend out of Charity I should have believed you But seeing you speak not of your self but of all of your Side whose hearts you cannot know and profess not only That there is no other cause but that No other is imaginable I could not let this passe without a censure As for the impossibility of Scriptures being the sole Judge of Controversies that is the sole Rule for men to judge them by for we mean nothing else you only affirm it without proof as if the thing were evident of it self And therefore I conceiving the contrary to be more evident might well content my self to deny it without refutation Yet I cannot but desire you to tell me If Scripture cannot be the Judge of any Controversie how shall that touching the Church and the Notes of it be determined And if it be the sole Judge of this one why may it not of others Why not of All Those only excepted wherein the Scripture it self is the subject of the Question which cannot be determined but by natural reason the only principle beside Scripture which is common to Christians 4. Then for the Imputation of increasing contentions and not ending them Scripture is innocent of it as also this opinion That controversies are to be decided by Scripture For if men did really and sincerely submit their judgements to Scripture and that only and would require no more of any man but to do so it were impossible but that all Controversies touching things necessary and very profitable should be ended and if others were continued or increased it were no matter 5. In the next words we have direct Boyes-play a thing given with one hand and taken away with the other an acknowledgment made in one line and retracted in the next We acknowledg say you Scripture to be a perfect rule for as much as a Writing can be a Rule only we deny that it excludes unwritten Tradition As if you should have said We acknowledg it to be as perfect a Rule as a Writing can be only we deny it to be as perfect a Rule as a writing may be Either therefore you must revoke your acknowledgment or retract your retractation of it for both cannot possibly stand together For if you will stand to what you have granted That Scripture is as perfect a Rule of Faith as a writing can be you must then grant it both so Compleat that it needs no addition and so evident that it needs no interpretation For both these properties are requisite to a perfect Rule and a writing is capable of both these properties 6. That both these properties are requisite to a perfect Rule
to whom you write though they verily think they are Christians and believe the Gospel because they assent to the truth of it and would willingly die for it yet indeed are Infidels and believe nothing The Scripture tels us The heart of man knoweth no man but the spirit of man which is in him And Who are you to take upon you to make us believe that we do not believe what we know we do But if I may think verily that I believe the Scripture and yet not believe it how know you that you believe the Roman Church I am as verily and as strongly perswaded that I believe the Scripture as you are that you believe the Church And if I may be deceived why may not you Again what more ridiculous and against sense and experience than to affirm That there are not millions amongst you and us that believe upon no other reason than their education and the authority of their Parents and Teachers and the opinion they have of them The tenderness of the subject and aptness to receive impressions supplying the defect and imperfection of the Agent And will you proscribe from heaven all those believers of your own Creed who do indeed lay the foundation of their Faith for I cannot call it by any other name no deeper than upon the authority of their Father or Master or Parish-Priest Certainly if these have no true faith your Church is very full of Infidels Suppose Xaverius by the holiness of his life had converted some Indians to Christianity who could for so I will suppose have no knowledge of your Church but from him and therefore must last of all build their faith of the Church upon their opinion of Xaverius Do these remain as very Pagans after their conversion as they were before Are they brought to assent in their souls and obey in their lives the Gospel of Christ only to be Tantaliz'd and not saved and not benefited but deluded by it because forsooth it is a man and not the Church that begets faith in them What if their motive to believe be not in reason sufficient Do they therefore not believe what they do believe because they do it upon insufficient motives They choose the Faith imprudently perhaps but yet they do choose it Unless you will have us believe that that which is done is not done because it is not done upon good reason which is to say that never any man living ever did a foolish action But yet I know not why the Authority of one holy man which apparently hath no ends upon me joyn'd with the goodness of the Christian faith might not be a far greater and more rational motive to me to imbrace Christianity than any I can have to continue in Paganism And therefore for shame if not for love of Truth you must recant this fancy when you write again and suffer true faith to be many times where your Churches infallibility hath no hand in the begetting of it And be content to tell us hereafter that we believe not enough and not go about to perswade us we believe nothing for fear with telling us what we know to be manifestly false you should gain only this Not to be believed when you speak truth Some pretty sophisms you may haply bring us to make us believe we believe nothing but wise men know that Reason against Experience is alwaies Sophistical And therefore as he that could not answer Zeno's subtilties against the existence of Motion could yet confute them by doing that which he pretended could not be done So if you should give me a hundred Arguments to perswade me because I do not believe Transubstantiation I do not believe in God and the Knots of them I could not unty yet I should cut them in pieces with doing that and knowing that I do so which you pretend I cannot do 50. In the thirteenth Division we have again much ado about nothing A great deal of stir you keep in confuting some that pretend to know Canonical Scripture to be such by the Titles of the Books But these men you do not name which makes me suspect you cannot Yet it is possible there may be some such men in the world for Gusmen de Alfarache hath taught us that The Fools hospital is a large place 51. In the fourteenth § we have very artificial jugling D. Potter had said That the Scripture he desires to be understood of those books wherein all Christians agree is a principle and needs not be proved among Christians His reason was because that needs no farther proof which is believed already Now by this you say he means either that the Scripture is one of these first Principles and most known in all Sciences which cannot be proved which is to suppose it cannot be proved by the Church and that is to suppose the Question Or he means That it is not the most known in Christianity and then it may be proved Where we see plainly That two most different things Most known in all Sciences and Most known in Christianity are captiously confounded As if the Scripture might not be the first and most known Principle in Christianity and yet not the most known in all Sciences Or as if to be a First Principle in Christianity and in all Sciences were all one That Scripture is a Principle among Christians that is so received by all that it need not be proved in any emergent Controversie to any Christian but may be taken for granted I think few will deny You your selves are of this a sufficient Testimony for urging against us many texts of Scripture you offer no proof of the truth of them presuming we will not question it Yet this is not to deny that Tradition is a Principle more known than Scripture But to say It is a Principle not in Christianity but in Reason nor proper to Christians but common to all men 52. But It is repugnant to our practice to hold Scripture a Principle because we are wont to affirm that one part of Scripture may be known to be Canonical and may be interpreted by another Where the former device is again put in practice For to be known to be Canonical and to be interpreted is not all one That Scripture may be interpreted by Scripture that Protestants grant and Papists do not deny neither does that any way hinder but that this assertion Scripture is the word of God may be among Christians a common Principle But the first That one part of Scripture may prove another part Canonical and need no proof of its own being so for that you have produced divers Protestants that deny it but who they are that affirm it nondum constat 53. It is superfluous for you to prove out of S. Athanasius and S. Austine that we must receive the sacred Canon upon the credit of Gods Church Understanding by Church as here you explain your self The credit of Tradition And that not the Tradition of the Present
of Irenaeus alledged here by you is utterly and plainly impertinent Or whether by this discourse you mean as I think you do not your Discourse but your Conclusion which you discourse on that is that Your Church is the Infallible Judge in Controversies For neither hath Irenaeus one syllable to this purpose neither can it be deduced out of what he says with any colour of consequence For first in saying What if the Apostles had not left Scripture ought we not to have followed the order of Tradition And in saying That to this order many Nations yield assent who believe in Christ having Salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit of GOD without Letters or Ink and diligently keeping ancient Tradition Doth he not plainly shew that the Tradition he speaks of is nothing else but the very same that is written nothing but to believe in Christ To which whether Scripture alone to them that believe it be not a sufficient guide I leave it to you to judge And are not his words just as if a man should say If God had not given us the light of the Sun we must have made use of Candles and Torches If we had no eyes we must have felt out our way If we had no legs we must have used crutches And doth not this in effect import that while we have the Sun we need no Candles While we have our eyes we need not feel out our way While we enjoy our legs we need not crutches And by like reason Irenaeus in saying If we had no Scripture we must have followed Tradition and they that have none do well to do so Doth he not plainly import that to them that have Scripture and believe it Tradition is unnecessary Which could not be if the Scripture did not contain evidently the whole Tradition Which whether Irenaeus believed or no these words of his may inform you Non enim per alios c. we have received the disposition of our Salvation from no others but from them by whom the Gospel came unto us Which Gospel truly the Apostles first preached and afterwards by the will of God delivered in writing to us to be the Pillar and Foundation of our Faith Upon which place Bellarmine's two Observations and his acknowledgment ensuing upon them are very considerable and as I conceive as home to my purpose as I would wish them His first Notandum is That in the Christian Doctrin some things are simply necessary for the Salvation of all men as the knowledge of the Articles of the Apostle's Creed and besides the knowledge of the ten Commandments and some of the Sacraments Other things are not so necessary but that a man may be saved without the explicit knowledge and belief and profession of them His second Note is That those things which were simply necessary the Apostles were wont to preach to all men But of other things not all to all but some things to all to wit those things which were profitable for all other things only to Prelates and Priests These things premised he acknowledgeth That all those things were written by the Apostles which are necessary for all and which they were wont openly to preach to all But that other things were not all written And therefore when Irenaeus says that the Apostles wrote what they preached in the World it is true saith he and not against Traditions because they preached not to the People all things but only those things which were necessary or profitable for them 145. So that at the most you can infer from hence but only a suppositive necessity of having an infallible Guide and that grounded upon a false supposition in case we had no Scripture but an absolute necessity hereof and to them who have and believe the Scripture which is your Assumption cannot with any colour from hence be concluded but rather the contrary 146. Neither because as He says it was then easie to receive the Truth from God's Church then in the Age next after the Apostles Then when all the Ancient and Apostolique Churches were at an agreement about the Fundamentals of Faith Will it therefore follow that now 1600 years after when the ancient Churches are divided almost into as many Religions as they are Churches every one being the Church to it self and Heretical to all other that it is as easie but extreamly difficult or rather impossible to find the Church first independently of the true Doctrin and then to find the truth by the Church 147. As for the last clause of the sentence it will not any whit advantage but rather prejudice your Assertion Neither wil I seek to avoid the pressure of it by saying that he speaks of small Questions and therefore not of Questions touching things necessary to Salvation which can hardly be called small Questions But I will favour you so far as to suppose that saying this of small Questions it is probable he would have said it much more of the Great but I will answer that which is most certain and evident and which I am confident you your self were you as impudent as I believe you modest would not deny That the Ancient Apostolique Churches are not now as they were in Irenaeus his time then they were all at Unity about matters of Faith which Unity was a good assurance that what they so agreed in came from some one common Fountain and that no other than of Apostolique Preaching And this is the very ground of Tertullian's so often mistaken Prescription against Heretiques Variâsse debuerat Errer Ecclesiarum quod autem apud multos unum est non est erratum sed traditum If the Churches had erred they could not but have varied but that which is one among so many came not by Error but Tradition But now the case is altered and the mischief is that these ancient Churches are divided among themselves and if we have recourse to them one of them will say This is the way to heaven another that So that now in place of receiving from them certain and clear truths we must expect nothing but certain and clear contradictions 148. Neither will the Apostle's depositing with the Church all things belonging to truth be any proof that the Church shall certainly keep this depositum entire and sincere without adding to it or taking from it for this whole depositum was committed to every particular Church nay to every particular man which the Apostles converted And yet no man I think will say that there was any certainty that it should be kept whole and inviolate by every man and every Church It is apparent out of Scripture it was committed to Timothy and by him consigned to other faithful men and yet S. Paul thought it not superfluous earnestly to exhort him to the careful keeping of it which exhortation you must grant had been vain and superfluous if the not keeping of it had been impossible And therefore though Irenaeus says The Apostles fully deposited
Gods will For so it is in the 4. and 5. v. Call for Simon whose sirname is Peter he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do and at the 33. v. We are all here present before God to hear all things that are commanded thee of God So that though even in his Gentilism he was accepted in his present state yet if he had continued in it refused to believe in Christ after the sufficient revelation of the Gospel to him and God's will to have him believe it he that was accepted before would not have continued accepted still for then that condemnation had come upon him That light was come unto him and he loved darkness more than light So that to proceed a step farther to whom Faith in Christ is sufficiently propounded as necessary to Salvation to them it is simply necessary and fundamental to believe in Christ that is to expect remission of sins and Salvation from him upon the performance of the conditions he requires among which conditions one is that we believe what he hath revealed when it is sufficiently declared to have been revealed by him For by doing so we set to our seal that God is true and that Christ was sent by him Now that may be sufficiently declared to one all things considered which all things considered to another is not sufficiently declared and consequently that may be fundamental and necessary to one which to another is not so Which variety of Circumstances makes it impossible to set down an exact Catalogue of Fundamentals and proves your request as reasonable as if you should desire us according to the Fable to make a coat to fit the Moon in all her changes or to give you a garment that will fit all statures or to make you a Dial to serve all Meridians or to design particularly what provision will serve an Army for a year whereas there may be an Army of ten thousand there may be of one hundred thousand And therefore without setting down a Catalogue of Fundamentals in particular because none that can be given can universally serve for all men God requiring more of them to whom he gives more and less of them to whom he gives less we must content our selves by a general description to tell you what is Fundamental And to warrant us in doing so we have your own example § 19. where being engaged to give us a Catalogue of Fundamentals instead thereof you tell us only in general That all is Fundamental and not to be disbelieved under pain of damnation which the Church hath defined As you therefore think it enough to say in general That all is fundamental which the Church hath defined without setting down in particular a compleat Catalogue of all things which in any Age the Church hath defined which I believe you will not undertake to do and if you do it will be contradicted by your Fellows So in reason you might think it enough for us also to say in general That it is sufficient for any mans salvation to believe that the Scripture is true and contains all things necessary for salvation and to do his best endeavour to find and believe the true sense of it without delivering any particular Catalogue of the Fundamentals of Faith 14. Neither doth the want of such a Catalogue leave us in such a perplexed uncertainty as you pretend For though perhaps we cannot exactly distinguish in the Scripture what is revealed because it is necessary from what is necessary consequently and accidentally meerly because it is revealed yet we are sure enough that all that is necessary any way is there and therefore in believing all that is there we are sure to believe all that is necessary And if we err from the true intended sense of some nay of many obscure and ambiguous Texts of Scripture yet we may be sure enough that we err not damnably because if we do indeed desire and endeavour to find the Truth we may be sure we do so and as sure that it cannot consist with the revealed goodness of God to damn him for error that desires and indeavours to find the Truth 15. Ad § 2. The effect of this Paragraph for as much as concerns us is this That for any man to deny belief to any one thing be it great or small known by him to be revealed by Almighty God for a Truth is in effect to charge God with falshood for it is to say that God affirms that to be Truth which he either knows to be not a Truth or which he doth not know to be a Truth and therefore without all controversie this is a damnable sin To this I subscribe with hand and heart adding withall that not only he which knows but he which believes nay though it be erroneously any thing to be revealed by God and yet will not believe it nor assent unto it is in the same case and commits the same sin of derogation from Gods most perfect and pure Veracity 16. Ad § 3. I said purposely known by himself and believes himself For as without any disparagement of a mans honesty I may believe something to be false which he affirms of his certain knowledge to be true provided I neither know nor believe that he hath so affirmed So without any the least dishonour to Gods eternal never-failing veracity I may doubt of or deny some Truth revealed by him if I neither know nor believe it to be revealed by him 17. Seeing therefore the crime of calling Gods Veracity into question and consequently according to your grounds of erring Fundamentally is chargeable upon those only that believe the contrary of any one point known not by others but themselves to be testified by God I cannot but fear though I hope otherwise that your heart condemned you of a great calumny and egregious sophistry in imputing Fundamental and damnable Errors to disagreeing Protestants Because forfooth some of them disbelieve and directly wittingly and willingly oppose what others do believe to be testified by the Word of God The sophistry of your Discourse will be apparent if it be contrived into a Syllogism Thus therefore in effect you argue Whosoever disbelieves any thing known by himself to be revealed by God imputes falshood to God and therefore errs fundamentally But some Protestants disbelieve those things which Others believe to be testified by God Therefore they impute falshood to God and err Fundamentally Neither can you with any colour pretend that in these words known to be testified by God you meant not by himself but by any other Seeing he only in fact affirms that God doth deceive or is deceived who denyes some things which himself knows or believes to be revealed by God as before I have demonstrated For otherwise if I should deny belief to some things which God had revealed secretly to such a man as I had never heard of I should be guilty of calling Gods Veracity into Question which is evidently false
though I deny that it is required of us to be certain in the highest degree infallibly certain of the truth of the things which we believe for this were to know and not believe neither is it possible unless our evidence of it be it natural or supernatural were of the highest degree yet I deny not but we ought to be and may be infallibly certain that we are to believe the Religion of Christ For first this is most certain that we are in all things to do according to wisdom and reason rather than against it Secondly this is as certain That wisdom and Reason require that we should believe those things which are by many degrees more credible and probable than the contrary Thirdly this is as certain that to every man who considers impartially what great things may be said for the truth of Christianity and what poor things they are which may be said against it either for any other Religion or for none at all it cannot but appear by many degrees more credible that Christian Religion is true than the contrary And from all these premisses this conclusion evidently follows that it is infallibly certain that we are firmly to believe the truth of Christian Religion 9 Your discourse therefore touching the fourth requisite to faith which is Prudence I admit so far as to grant 1. That if we were required to believe with certainty I mean a Moral certainty things no way represented as infallible and certain I mean morally an unreasonable obedience were required of us And so likewise were it were we required to believe as absolutely certain that which is no way represented to us as absolutely certain 2. That whom God obligeth to believe any thing he will not fail to furnish their understandings with such inducements as are sufficient if they be not negligent or perverse to perswade them to believe 3. That there is an abundance of Arguments exceedingly credible inducing men to believe the Truth of Christianity I say so credible that though they cannot make us evidently see what we believe yet they evidently convince that in true wisdom and prudence the Articles of it deserve credit and ought to be accepted as things revealed by God 4. That without such reasons and inducements our choice even of the true faith is not to be commended as prudent but to be condemned of rashness and levity 10 But then for your making Prudence not only a commendation of a believer and a justification of his faith but also essential to it and part of the definition of it in that questionless you were mistaken and have done as if being to say what a man is you should define him A Reasonable creature that hath skill in Astronomy For as all Astronomers are men but all men are not Astronomers and therefore Astronomy ought not to be put into the definition of Men where nothing should have place but what agrees to all men So though all that are truly wise that is wise for eternity will believe aright yet many may believe aright which are not wise I could wish with all my heart as Moses did that all the Lords people could Prophesie That all that believe the true Religion were able according to S. Peter's injunction to give a reason of the hope that is in them a reason why they hope for eternal happiness by this way rather than any other neither do I think it any great difficulty that men of ordinary capacities if they would give their mind to it might quickly be enabled to do so But should I affirm that all true believers can do so I suppose it would be as much against experience and modesty as it is against Truth and Charity to say as you do that they which cannot do so either are not at all or to no purpose true believers And thus we see that the foundations you build upon are ruinous and deceitful and so unfit to support your Fabrick that they destroy one another I come now to shew that your Arguments to prove Protestants Heretiques are all of the same quality with your former grounds which I will do by opposing clear and satisfying Answers in order to them 11 Ad § 13. To the first then delivered by you § 13. That Protestants must be Heretiques because they opposed divers Truths propounded for divine by the Visible Church I answer It is not heresie to oppose any truth propounded by the Church but only such a Truth as is an essential part of the Gospel of Christ 2. The Doctrins which Protestants opposed were not Truths but plain and impious falshoods Neither thirdly were they propounded as Truths by the Visible Church but only by a Part of it and that a corrupted Part. 12 Ad § 14. The next Argument in the next Particle tell us That every error against any doctrin revealed by God is damnable Heresie Now either Protestants or the Roman Church must err against the word of God But the Roman Church we grant perforce doth not err damnably neither can she because she is the Catholique Church which we you say confess cannot err damnably Therefore Protestants must err against God's word and consequently are guilty of formal Heresie Whereunto I answer plainly that there be in this argument almost as many falshoods as assertions For neither is every error against any Doctrin revealed by God a damnable Heresie unless it be revealed publiquely and plainly with a command that a I should believe it 2. D. Potter no where grants that the Errors of the Roman Church are not in themselves damnable though he hopes by accident they may not actually damn some men amongst you and this you your self confess in divers places of your Book where you tell us that he allows no hope of Salvation to those amongst you whom ignorance cannot exouse 3. You beg the Question twice in taking for granted First That the Roman Church is the truly Catholique Church which without much favour can hardly pass for a part of it And again that the Catholique Church cannot fall into any error of it self damnable for it may do so and still be the Catholique Church if it retain those Truths which may be an antidote against the malignity of this error to those that held it out of a simple un-affected ignorance Lastly though the thing be true yet I might well require some proof of it from you that either Protestants or the Roman Church must err against God's word For if their contradiction be your only reason then also you or the Dominicans must be Heretiques because you contradict one another as much as Protestants and Papists 13 Ad § 15. The third Argument pretends that you have shewed already that the Visible Church is Judge of Controversies and therefore infallible from whence you suppose that it follows that to oppose her is to oppose God To which I answer that you have said only and not shewed that the Visible Church is Judg of Controversies
another age Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended but there are few or none to be found No Tradition but only of Scripture can derive it self from the Fountain but may be plainly prov'd either to have been brought in in such an age after Christ or that in such an age it was not in In a word there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only for any considering man to build upon This therefore and this only I have reason to believe This I will profess according to this I will live and for this if there be occasion I will not only willingly but even gladly lose my life though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me Propose me any thing out of this Book and require whether I believe or no and seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason I will subscribe it with hand and heart as knowing no Demonstration can bee stronger than this God hath said so therefore it is true In other things I will take no mans Liberty of judgement from him neither shall any man take mine from me I will think no man the worse man nor the worse Christian I will love no man the less for differing in opinion from me And what measure I mete to others I expect from them again I am fully assured that God does not and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this To believe the Scripture to be God's word to endeavour to find the true sense of it and to live according to it 57. This is the Religion which I have chosen after a long deliberation and I am verily perswaded that I have chosen wisely much more wisely than if I had guided my self according to your Churches authority For the Scripture being all true I am secur'd by believing nothing else that I shall believe no falshood as matter of faith And if I mistake the sense of Scripture and so fall into error yet am I secure from any danger thereby if but your grounds be true because endeavouring to finde the true sense of Scripture I cannot but hold my error without pertinacy and be ready to forsake it when a more true and a more probable sense shall appear unto me And then all necessary truth being as I have prov'd plainly set down in Scripture I am certain by believing Scripture to believe all necessary Truth And he that does so if his life be answerable to his faith how is it possible he should said of Salvation 58. Besides whatsoever may be pretended to gain to your Church the credit of a Guide all that and much more may be said for the Scripture Hath your Church been ancient The Scripture is more ancient Is your Church a means to keep men at unity So is the Scripture to keep those that believe it and will obey it in unity of belief in matters necessary or very profitable and in unity of Charity in points unnecessary Is your Church universal for time or place Certainly the Scripture is more universal For all the Christians in the world those I mean that in truth deserve this name do now and alwayes have believed the Scripture to be the word of God so much of it at least as contains all things necessary whereas only you say that you only are the Church of God and all Christians besides you deny it 59. Thirdly following the Scripture I follow that whereby you prove your Churches infallibility whereof were it not for Scripture what pretence could you have or what notion could we have and by so doing tacitely confess that your selves are surer of the truth of the Scripture than of your Churches authority For we must be surer of the proof than of the thing proved otherwise it is no proof 60 Fourthly following the Scripture I follow that which must be true if your Church be true for your Church gives attestation to it Whereas if I follow your Church I must follow that which though Scripture be true may be false nay which if Scripture be true must be false because the Scripture testifies against it 61. Fifthly to follow the Scripture I have God's express warrant and command and no colour of any prohibition But to believe your Church infallible I have no command at all much less an express command Nay I have reason to fear that I am prohibited to do so in these words Call no man Master on earth They fell by infidelity Thou standest by faith Be not high minded but fear The spirit of truth the world cannot receive 62. Following your Church I must hold many things not only above reason but against it if any thing be against it whereas following the Scripture I shall believe many mysteries but no impossibilities many things above reason but nothing against it many things which had they not been reveal'd reason could never have discover'd but nothing which by true reason may be confuted many things which reason cannot comprehend how they can be but nothing which reason can comprehend that it cannot be Nay I shall believe nothing which reason will not convince that I ought to believe it For reason will convince any man unless he be of a perverse mind that the Scripture is the word of God And then no reason can be greater than this God sayes so therefore it is true 63. Following your Church I must hold many things which to any mans judgement that will give himself the liberty of judgement will seem much more plainly contradicted by Scripture than the infalliblity of your Church appears to be confirm'd by it and consequently must be so foolish as to believe your Church exempted from error upon less evidence rather than subject to the common condition of mankind upon greater evidence Now if I take the Scripture only for my Guide I shall not need to do any thing so unreasonable 64. If I will follow your Church I must believe impossibilities and that with an absolute certainty upon motives which are confess'd to be but only Prudential and probable That is with a weak foundation I must firmly support a heavy a monstrous heavy building Now following the Scripture I shall have no necessity to undergoe any such difficulties 65. Following your Church I must be servant of Christ and a subject of the King but only ad placitum Papae I must be prepar'd in mind to renounce my allegiance to the King when the Pope shall declare him an Heretique and command me not to obey him and I must be prepar'd in mind to esteem Vertue Vice and Vice Vertue if the Pope shall so determine Indeed you say it is impossible he should do the later but that you know is a great question neither is it fit my obedience to God and the King should depend upon a questionable foundation And howsoever you must grant that if by an impossible supposition the Pope's commands should be contrary to the law of Christ that they of your Religion
well of the arguments but very ill of him that makes them as affirming so often without shame and conscience what he cannot but know to be plainly false and his reason is because he is so far from confessing or giving you any ground to pretend he does confess that your Religion is safe for all that are of it from whence only it will follow that all may safely embrace it that in this very place from which you take these words he professeth plainly that it is extreamly dangerous if not certainly damnable to all such as profess it when either they do or if their hearts were upright and not perversly obstinate might believe the contrary and that for us who are convinc'd in conscience that she the Roman Church errs in many things it lies upon us even under pain of damnation to forsake her in those errors And though here you take upon you a shew of great rigour and will seem to hold that in our way there is no hope of Salvation yet formerly you have been more liberal of your Charity towards us and will needs vye and contend with Doctor Potter Which of the two shall be more Charitable assuring us that you allow Protestants as much Charity as D. Potter spares you for whom he makes Ignorance the best hope of Salvation And now I appeal to any indifferâ—â—â— reader whether our disavowing to confess you free from damnable error were not as I pretend a full confutation of all that you say in these five foregoing Paragraphs And as for you I wonder what answer what evasion what shift you can devise to cleer your self from dishonesty for imputing to him almost a hundred times this acknowledgement which he never makes but very often and that so plainly that you take notice of it professeth the contrary 29. The best defence that possibly can be made for you I conceive is this that you were led into this error by mistaking a supposition of a confession for a confession a Rhetorical concession of the Doctors for a positive assertion He saies indeed of your errors Though of themselves they be not damnable to them which believe as they profess yet for us to profess what we believe not were without question damnable But to say Though your errors be not damnable we may not profess them is not to say your errors are not damnable but only though they be not As if you should say though the Church erre in points not fundamental yet you may not separate from it Or though we do erre in believing Christ really present yet our error frees us from Idolatry Or as if a Protestant should say Though you do not commit Idolatry in adoring the Host yet being uncertain of the Priests Intention to consecrate at least you expose your self to the danger of it I presume you would not think it fairly done if any man should interpret either this last speech as an acknowledgement that you do not commit Idolatry or the former as confessions that you do erre in points not fundamental that you do erre in believing the real presence And therefore you ought not so to have mistaken D. Potter's words as if he had confessed the errors of your Church not damnable when he saies no more but this though they be so or suppose or put the case they be so yet being errors we that know them may not profess them to be divine truths Yet this mistake might have been pardonable had not Doctor Potter in many places of his book by declaring his judgement touching the quality and malignity of your errors taken away from you all occasion of error But now that he saies plainly That your Church hath many wayes played the Harlot and in that regard deserv'd a Bill of divorce from Christ and the detestation of Christians page 11. That for that Mass of errors and abuses in judgement and practice which is proper to her and wherein she differs from us we judge a reconciliation impossible and to us who are convicted in conscience of her corruptions damnable page 20. That popery is the contagion or plague of the Church page 60. That we cannot we dare not communicate with her in her publique Liturgy which is manifestly polluted with gross Superstition page 68. That they who in former ages dyed in the Church of Rome dyed in many sinfull errors page 78. That they that have understanding and means to discover their errors and neglect to use them he dares not flatter them with so easie a censure as to give them hope of salvation page 79. That the way of the Roman Religion is not safe but very dangerous if not certainly damnable to such as profess it when they believe or if their hearts were upright and not perversely obstinate might believe the contrary p. 79. That your Church is but in some sense a true Church and your errors only to some men not damnable and that we who are convinc'd in conscience that she errs in many things are under pain of damnation to forsake her in those errors Seeing I say he sâ—â—â— all this so plainly and so frequently certainly your charging him falsely with this acknowledgement and building a great part not only of your discourse in this Chapter but of your whole book upon it possibly it may be palliated with some excuse but it can no way be defended with any lust apologie Especially seeing you your self more than once or twice take notice of these his severer censures of your Church and the errors of it and make your advantage of them In the first number of your first Chapter you set down three of the former places and from thence inferre That as you affirm Protestancy unrepented destroyes Salvation so D. Potter pronounces the like heavy doom against Roman Catholiques And again § 4. of the same chapter We allow Protestants as much charity as D. Potter spares us for whom he makes ignorance the best hope of salvation And c. 5. § 41. you have these words It is very strange that you judge us extreamly uncharitable in saying Protestants cannot be saved while your self avouch the same of all Learned Catholiques whom Ignorance cannot excuse Thus out of the same mouth you blow hot and cold and one while when it is for your purpose you profess D. Potter censures your errors as heavily as you do ours which is very true for he gives hope of Salvation to none among you but to those whose ignorance was the cause of their error and no sin cause of their ignorance and presently after when another project comes in your head you make his words softer than oile towards you you pretend he does and must confess That your doctrin contains no damnable error that your Church is certainly a true Church that your way to heaven is a safe way and all these acknowledgments you set down simple and absolute without any restriction or limitation whereas in the Doctor they are all so qualified that no
knowing Papist can promise himself any security or comfort from them We confess saith he the Church of Rome to be in some sense a true Church and her errors to some men not damnable we believe her Religion safe that is by Gods great mercy not damnable to some such as believe what they profess But we believe it not safe but very dangerous if not certainly damnable to such as profess it when they believe or if their hearts were upright and not perversly obstinate might believe the contrary Observe I pray you these restraining terms which formerly you have dissembled A true Church in some sense not damnable to some men a safe way that is by Gods great mercy not damnable to some And then seeing you have pretended these Confessions to be absolute which are thus plainly limited how can you avoid the imputation of an egregious Sophister You quarrel with the Doctor in the end of your Preface for using in his Book such ambiguous terms as these in some sort in some sense in some degree and desire him if he make any reply either to forbear them or to tell you roundly in what sort in what sense in what degree he understands these and the like mincing phrases But the truth is he hath not left them so ambiguous and undetermin'd as you pretend but told you plainly in what sense your Church may pass for a true Church viz. in regard we may hope that she retains those truths which are simply absolutely and indispensably necessary to Salvation which may suffice to bring those good souls to heaven who wanted means of discovering their errors this is the charitable construction in which you may pass for a Church And to what men your Religion may be safe and your errors not damnable viz. to such whom Ignorance may excuse and therefore he hath more cause to complain of you for quoting his words without those qualifications than you to find fault with him for using of them 30. That your Discourse in the 12 § presseth you as forcibly as Protestants I have shewed above I add here 1. Whereas you say that faith according to your rigid Calvinists is either so strong that once had it can never he lost or so more than weak and so much nothing that it can never be gotten That these are words without sense Never any Calvinist affirmed that faith was so weak and so much nothing that it can never be gotâ—en but it seems you wanted matter to make up your Antithesis and therefore were resolved to speak empty words rather than lose your figure Crimina rasis Librat in antithetis doctas posuisse Figuras Laudatur 2. That there is no Calvinist that will deny the Truth of this Proposition Christ died for all nor to subscribe to that sense of it which your Dominicans put upon it neither can you with coherence to the received Doctrin of your own Society deny that they as well as the Calvinists take away the distinction of sufficient and effectual grace and indeed hold none to be sufficient but only that which is effectual 3. Whereas you say They cannot make their calling certain by good works who do certainly believe that before any good works they are justified and justified by faith alone and by that faith whereby they certainly believe they are justified I answ There is no Protestant but believes that Faith Repentance and universal Obedience are necessary to the obtaining of Gods favour and eternal happiness This being granted the rest is but a speculative Controversie a Question about words which would quickly vanish but that men affect not to understand one another As if a company of Physitians were in consultation and should all agree that three medicines and no more were necessary for the recovery of the Patients health this were sufficient for his direction towards the recovery of his health though concerning the proper and specifical effects of these three medicines there should be amongst them as many differences as men So likewise being generally at accord that these three things Faith Hope and Charity are necessary to salvation so that whosoever wants any of them cannot obtain it and he which hath them all cannot fail of it is it not very evident that they are sufficiently agreed for mens directions to eternal Salvation And seeing Charity is a full comprehension of all good workes they requiring Charity as a necessary qualification in him that will be saved what sense is there in saying they cannot make their calling certain by good works They know what salvation is as well as you and have as much reason to desire it They believe it as heartily as you that there is no good work but shall have its proper reward and that there is no possibility of obtaining the eternal reward without good works and why then may not this Doctrin be a sufficient incitement and provocation unto good works 31. You say that they certainly believe that before any good works they are justified But this is a calumny There is no Protestant but requires to Justification Remission of sins and to Remission of sins they all require Repentance and Repentance I presume may not be denyed the name of a good work being indeed if it be rightly understood and according to the sense of the word in Scripture an effectual conversion from all sin to all holiness But though it be taken for meer Sorrow for sins past and a bare Purpose of amendment yet even this is a good work and therefore Protestants requiring this to Remission of sins and Remission of sins to Justification cannot with candor be pretended to believe that they are justified before any good work 32. You say They believe themselves justified by faith alone and that by that faith whereby they believe themselves justified Some peradventure do so but withal they believe that that faith which is alone and unaccompanied with sincere and universal obedience is to be esteem'd not faith but presumption and is at no hand sufficient to justification that though Charity be not imputed unto justification yet is it required as a necessary disposition in the person to be justified and that though in regard of the imperfection of it no man can be justified by it yet that on the other side no man can be justified without it So that upon the whole matter a man may truly and safely say that the Doctrin of these Protestants taken altogether is not a Doctrin of Liberty not a Doctrin that turns hope into presumtion and carnal security though it may justly be feared that many licentious persons taking it by halfes have made this wicked use of it For my part I do heartily wish that by publique Authority it were so ordered that no man should ever preach or print this Doctrin that Faith alone justifies unless he joyns this together with it that Universal Obedience is necessary to salvation And besides that those Chapters of Saint Paul which intreat of
of the expression of this Atheism viz. not in words or opinion to deny God but which is worse in the carriage and course of our life to allow him his Attributes and yet not to fear him not to stand in awe of his power which he acknowledgeth to be infinite to distrust his Providence to sleight his Promises neglect his Threatnings which is in effect as much as in him lyeth to tear and ravish from him all his glorious Attributes by living as if God himself were less powerful less wise then himself improvident not deserving so much fear of his power or respect to his command as he would perform to a wretched mortal man that is a little richer or in some place of Authority above him 10. I need travel no further for a division to my own Text Here we may observe likewise First The cause of Atheism and by consequence all the abominable impieties that follow in the Psalm and that is Ignorance Indiscretion Inconsiderance expressed in the person of Nabal The Fool Secondly We have the expression of it not by word of mouth or writing but per motum cordis by the inclination of the heart or affections 11. In the prosecution of the former part which may very well take up and spend this Hour-glass I shall proceed thus First I will consider wherein this folly consists and that is not so much in an utter ignorance of God and his holy Word as a not making a good use of it when it is known a suffering it to lye dead to swim unprofitably in the brain without any fruit thereof in the reformation of ones life and conversation And there I will shew you The extream folly for a man to seek to increase his knowledge of his Master's will without a desire and resolution to increase proportionably in a serious active performance thereof Secondly I will propose to your consideration the extream unavoidable danger and increase of guilt that knowledge without practice brings with it To both which considerations I shall severally annex Applications to the Consciences of you my Hearers and so spend out my time 12. Now I take it for granted that I have hit right in declaring wherein the folly of Nabal in my Text consists namely in an unfruitful knowledg a knowledg that lies fallow is not exercised which if it were not allowed me I would only referr my self for proof unto some of David's Psalms and almost all his Sons Proverbs I should sin against the plenty of matter in my Text more worth our consideration if I should enlarge my self in this point Only one place of David shall suffice and that is in Psal 111.10 where he repeats that old divine Proverb made by God himself Psal 111.10 the Lord knows how long since and by him delivered to man as Job telleth us ch 28. v. 28. The Psalmists words are these The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and a good understanding have all they that do thereafter 13. I do not now exclude Ignorance from making up some part of this Fool but because the other piece of extream desperate folly is rather the sin of these days namely a barren uneffectual Knowledge Therefore I shall rather insist upon it Yet by the way I shall not fail to discover to you the danger of the other too 14. It is a pretty Observation that the Author of the Narration of the English Seminary founded in Rome has concerning the Method and Order the Devil has used in assailing and disturbing the peace and quiet of the Church with Heresies and Schisms He began saith he with the first Article of our Creed concerning one God the Father Almighty Creatour of Heaven and Earth against which in the first 300. years he armed the Simonians Menandrians Basilidians Valentinians Marcionites Manichees and Gnosticks After the 300th year he opposed the second Article concerning the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ by his beloved Servants the Noetians Sabellians Paullians Photinians and Arrians After the four hundreth year he sought to undermine the fourth fifth sixth and seventh Articles of the Incarnation Passion Resurrection Ascension and the second coming to Judgment by the Heresies of Nestorius Theodorus Eutyches Dioscorus Cnapheus Sergius c. After the eight hundred and sixtieth he assailed the eighth Article concerning the Holy-Ghost by the Heresie and Schism of the Greek Church Lastly since the year one thousand till these times his business and craft has especially expressed it self in seeking to subvert the ninth and tenth concerning the Holy Catholique Church and forgiveness of sins by the aid and Ministery of the Pontificians Anabaptists Familists and the like And with the deceipts and snares of these his cunning Ministers hath he entangled the greatest part of the now Christian world 15. But our blessed and gracious God be praised for it we and some with us have escaped as a Bird out of the snare of the Fowler the Net was broken and we were delivered The whole Doctrine of Christian Faith is restored to the Primitive lustre and integrity Nay more which is a greater happiness then God ever created to those his chosen good servants which lived in the Infancy of the Church the profession of a pure unspotted Religion is so far from being dangerous or infamous that we have the Sword of the Civil Magistrate the power and inforcement of the Laws and Statutes to maintain this our precious Faith without stain and undefiled against all Heretical and Schismatical oppugners thereof 16. If ever we forget the goodness and mercy of God in this our deliverance then let our tongues cleave to the roof of our mouths Nay if in our Songs of joyfulness and melody we remember not our escape wherewith the Lord snatched us out of Egypt and our victorious passage through a Red-Sea of Bloud and Ruin Thou O Lord wilt not hear our prayers 27. It was a seasonable admonition that the Apostle Saint Paul gave to other Gentiles after such a glorious victory and deliverance as this of our's Be not high-minded but fear Rom. 11.20 Heresie is not the only Engine that Satan is furnished with to assault and infest the Church of Christ neither is it the most dangerous He has the cunning to destroy Foundations and make no use of Heresie in the work neither You would wonder how it should be possible for the Devil to make an Orthodox Christian one perfect and studyed in all the Points of the Creed and one that can for a need maintain the Truth thereof against all gain-sayers I say it would seem strange for the Devil to make such a one to destroy and utterly demolish the very Foundations of his Faith and yet not at all to alter his opinions neither Yet that it is not only a possible contrivance but too too ordinary and familiar in these times woful Experience hath made it evident 18. The Art and cunning whereby this great work of the Devil 's is brought
you may be the better able to go along with me in what remains of this Text briefly to discover unto you how farr I have already in another Auditory proceeded in it 2. First therefore I conceived by attending to the course and series of the Psalm and by comparing this place with many others in Holy Scripture in different language expressing the same sense That this Fool in my Text was not a man utterly ignorant and devoid of the knowledg of God and his Word For he is suppos'd by the Psalmist to be a man living within the pale of the Church and outwardly professing the true Religion and Worship of God And thereupon Secondly That his Atheism was no He athenish Philosopâ—ical Atheism no problematical maintaining an opinion That there is no God For even among the very Heathens we read not of above three or four of any account which have proceeded to this excelling degree and height of Impiety 3. But this Person whether Doeg the Edomite or whosoever he were is such a one as though in his Profession and even serious thoughts he do not question a Deity but would be a mortal Enemy to any one who should dare to deprive and rob Almighty God of any of his Glorious Attributes Notwithstanding in his Heart that is in the phrase of the Scripture in the propension and inclination of his Affections and by consequence in the course and practise of his life he denies and renounces God He accounts the spending a little time in thinking and meditating on the Providence or Mercy or Severity of God to be an employment very ungainful and disadvantageous to him a business likely to trouble and spoil many of his ungodly projects and to hinder him in his fortunes And for this reason he will put God farr away from him He will not suffer him to be as the Psalmist saith Psal 10.4 Psal 10.4 in all his crafty purposes 4. I yet willingly confess that this Saying in the Heart There is no God may reasonably be interpreted to be a secret whispering-suggestion an inward perswasion by fits which a wretched worldling may have that since he has thrived so well by his carelesness in observing Gods Word and obstinate opposing himself to his will it may be possible there is indeed no God at all or if there be that he will not vouchsafe to descend so low as to take notice what is done here on earth or to observe how each particular person behaves himself in this life Now because I will not set up one of these Expositions against the other I will hereafter as occasion shall offer it self make use of them both 5. Having therefore conceived the sense of the Text to be such as I have now told you In the words I observed two General Parts First the cause of Atheism and by consequence all the abominations following through the whole Psalm intimated in the person Nabal i. e. The Fool which is Folly i. e. Ignorance or rather Incogitancy Inconsideration Secondly The effect of this Folly which is Atheism and that seated not in the Brain but in the Heart or Affections I have already gone through the former part namely the cause of Atheism which is Folly in the prosecution whereof I endeavoured to discover wherein this Folly doth consist And that is not so much in an utter ignorance of God and his Holy Word as a not making a good use of it when it is known a suffering it to ly dead to swim unprofitably in the Brain without any fruit thereof in the reformation of a mans life and conversation And there I showed first what extream folly it was for a man to seek to encrease the knowledg of his Masters will without a resolution to encrease proportionably in a serious active performance thereof And secondly the extream unavoidable danger and encrease of guilt which knowledg without practise brings with it To both which Considerations I severally annexed Applications to the Consciences of them that heard me and should have proceeded to 6. The Second General Part which is the effect and fruit of the folly or inconsideration of Nabal the Fool in my Text which is Atheism practical not of the Understanding but the Will and Affections But the time being spent in the prosecution of the former General Part I was forced to reserve this Second General to be the employment of another Hour 7. Only thus much I then made promise of which debt I purpose now to discharge to you namely To demonstrate by infallible deductions out of Gods Word that many who profess Religion and a perfect knowledg of Gods Word yet whiles they allow him only the Brain and not what he almost only requires the Heart and Affections may prove in Gods account very Atheists Or to bring it nearer home I promised to shew how that many the ordinary courses and most incontrouled practises of men of this age do utterly contradict and formally destroy the very Foundations and Principles of that glorious Religion which they profess Of these c. 8. At the first sight indeed a man would think that of all the places in Holy Scripture and of all the ages which have been since the world began That this Text and these times should suit worst together For first if a man would strive with all the carnestness and even spite he could in all the abominable odious colours to describe the worst of all humane creatures even the Idolatrous self-devouring Indians What more horrible expression could he imagin to himself then to call them Fools and such Fools who say in their Heart There is no God Again if we shall enquire and ask the former Ages if ever the world was so stored and even oppressed with knowledg They will tell us That the Light was never a burden nor Knowledg a vice before now Never till now did all sorts and conditions of men pretend to be able to state the most intricate profound questions of our Religion Never till now was Moses his wish fulfilled I would to God that all the people of the Lord were Prophets though in a sense which would scarce have pleased him 9. These things considered were it not fit think you that I should renounce my Text or travel to find out a Nation whom it may concern and who have need to hear Atheists condemned I would to God my Beloved Brethren that whatsoever I shall speak against that fearful sin of Atheism may prove vain unprofitable words words which may return empty having found none to fasten upon I would to God that I might strive now as one that beateth the air so that you even you who know so much were innocent But David found this a Doctrin fit to be pressed in his days which were none of the worst neither Yea he hath a second time in Psal 51. almost in terminis terminantibus repeated whatsoever he here speaks of the Atheist We find not such an example through
and art afraid of the faces of men thou abhorrest the light And yet darest out-face him whose Eyes are ten thousand times brighter then the Sun Thou wouldest not have the confidence to commit filthiness if thy friend were in company And yet what injury is done to him by it what Commandement of his doest thou transgress in it Or if thou didst What power or authority has he over thee to punish thee Thou wouldest be ashamed to commit such a sin if thy Servant were by one whom thou art so farr from being afraid of that himself his words almost his very thoughts are in thy power Nay if a child were in company thou wouldst not have the face to do it 16. Thou canst not deny but respect to a friend to a servant even to a child will with-hold thee from such practises and yet withall confessest that Almighty God whom thou professest to serve to fear and to love that he all the while looks upon thee and observes thee his Eyes are never removed from thee and which is worse though thou mayest endeavour to forget and blot such actions out of thy remembrance yet it is impossible he should ever forget them He keeps a Register of all thy sins which no time shall ever be able to deface And what will it then profit thee to live a close conceal'd sinner from the world or to gain amongst men the reputation of a devout religious Christian when in the mean time thine own Heart and Conscience shall condemn thee Nay when Almighty God who is greater then thy Heart and knoweth all things when he shall be able to object unto thee all thy close ungodly projects all thy bosome private lusts yea when that conceit wherein thou didst so much please thy self of being able to delude and blind the observation of the World shall nothing avail thee but whatsoever mischiefs thou hast contrived in thy Closet whatsoever abominations thou hast practised in thy Bed all these with each aggravating Circumstance shall be discovered in the presence of all men and Angels and Devils when Satan whom before thou madest an Instrument and Bawd unto thy lusts to whose counsels and suggestions thou before would'st only hearken shall be the most forward and eager to appeach thee 17. When thou art brought to such an exigent as this which without a timely unfeigned repentance as sure as there is a God in Heaven thou shalt at last be brought to what will then they orthodox opinions do thee good what will it then profit thee to say Thou never didst maintain any impious dishonourable Tenents concerning God or any of his glorious Attributes Yea how happy hadst thou been if worse than the most ignorant heathenish Atheist no thought or consideration of God had entred into thy heart For this professing thy self a Christian rightly instructed in the knowledge of God will prove heavier to thee than a thousand milstones hanged about thy neck to sink thee into the bottome of that comfortless Lake of fire and brimstone For for example What a strange plea would it be for a Murderer to say I confess I have committed such or such a murder but all the excuse which I can alledge for my self is that I was well studied in the Laws which forbad murder and I knew that my Judge who tyed me to the observance of this Law upon pain of death was present and observ'd me when I commited the Fact Surely it would be more tolerable for him to say I never heard of any such Law or Judge or if I have been told of such things I gave but little heed to the report I did not at all believe it For though this plea will be very insufficient to acquit the malefactor yet it will be much more advantageous than the former for what were that but to flour the Judge to his face and to pretend a respectful worthy opinion of him for this end that his contempt and negligence in performing his Commandements may be more extream and inexcusable and by consequence without all hope or expectation of pardon I need make no application of the example the Similitude doth sufficiently apply it self 18. Therefore it I were to advise any man who is resolved by his practice to contradict that opinion which he saith he hath of God or that is not resolved to live with that reverence and awfulness due to the Majesty of Almighty God in whose presence he alwaies is I would counsel him not to believe himself when he professes the Omnipresence or Omniscience of God For without all contradiction though by living in a Nation where every one with whom he converses professeth so much he may have learned to say There is a God and that this God is every where present and takes particular notice of whatsoever is done in heaven and earth yet if this Notion were firmly rooted in his soul as a matter of Religion as a business upon which depends the everlasting welfare of his soul and body it is altogether impossible for him to continue in an habitual practice of such things as are evidently repugnant and destructive to such a conceit For tell me Would any man in his right senses when he shall see another drink down a poyson which he knows will suddenly prove mortal unto him I say will any man be so mad as to believe such a one though he should with all the most earnest protestations that can be imagined profess that he is not weary of his life but intends to prolong it as long as God and Nature will give him leave 19. The Case is altogether in each point and circumstance the same For he which saith He believeth or assenteth to any doctrine as a fundamental point of his Religion intends thus much by it that he has bound himself in certain bonds unto Almighty God for so the very name of Religion doth import to expect no benefit at all from him but upon condition of believing such divine Truths as it shall please him to reveal unto him namely as means and helps of a devout religious life and worship of him For God reveals nothing of himself to any man for this end to satisfie his curiosity or to afford him matter of discourse or news but to instruct him how he may behave himself here in this life that he may attain those promises which shall be fulfilled to those who sincerely and devoutly serve and obey him 20. Therefore he that shall say I believe such a Truth revealed by God and yet lives as if he had never heard of such a thing yea as if he had been perswaded of the contrary is as much to be believed as if he should say I will drink a deadly poyson to quench my thirst or will stab my self to the heart for physick to let out superfluous bloud So that that man who is not resolved to break off his wicked courses by repentance and conversion unto God that lives as if the
Devil only were every where and he resolved to please and delight him with his ungodly life let not such a one use himself to say I believe that God is alwaies present with me and a spectator of my actions for thereby he shall only add a lye to the rest of his sins and fewel to the lake of fire and brimstone He shall never perswade God to believe him that he was of such an opinion but that whatsoever his tongue said and his fancy now and then apprehended yet in his conscience he was alwaies a constant resolved Atheist and in his heart he said There is no God 21. In the second place thou acknowledgest that God whom thou professest obedience to is infinitely Righteous insomuch that it is impossible that he should not hate and abhorre unrighteousness in whomsoever he finds it Yea so natural and essential is his Justice unto him that he should deny himself if he should accept any mans person if he should not be avenged on sin if he should not most severely punish it Thou canst not be ignorant how many vowes and protestations he hath made almost every where through the Holy Scripture of his hatred and indignation against sin insomuch that heaven and earth may pass away but not one jot or tittle of those curses and plagues shall fall to the ground which he hath denounced against impenitent sinners 22. And shall not thy own mouth here once again condemn thee O thou wicked servant Darest thou then every hour wilfully and even contentedly do such things as must certainly procure his anger and indignation against thee for ever Wilt thou for the sinful pleasure of a few minutes put thy self in such a condition that God must of necessity be angry with thee that he must cease to be God unless he hate and abhorre thee Certainly if thou wouldest descend into thine own heart if thou wouldest give thy self leave carefully and unpartially to examine thy thoughts thou wouldest find that thy tongue has given thy soul the lye when it hath told thee that God is immutably Just and righteous and yet for all that that thou art resolved to run on in such courses as must of necessity pull down his heavy displeasure against thee 23. At least thou wilt find in thy heart earnest desires and wishes that God were not so righteous as Preachers tell thee he is Oh thinkest thou in thy heart that God were such an unrighteous person as I am Oh that he could be content to wink at me when I am about the fulfilling of my ungodly desires Alas what harm is it to him what inconvenience accrews to him by it if I enjoy the sinful pleasures of this life Or if he will needs be angry Oh that it were not in his power to revenge himself upon me Oh that his power were not so unlimited as they say it is 24. I know men will be apt to flatter themselves though they be never so vicious and to think that they are extremely wronged to have such imputations laid upon them They will be ready to answer me in the words of Hazael to the Prophet Elisha when he told him what horrible massacres he should commit among the Israelites when he should have the Crown of Syria set on his head What doest thou think us dogs that we should do such things as these We are so far from robbing God of his Justice that we would be mortal enemies to any that dare proceed to that height of impiety Nay we would be content to sacrifice our own lives rather than be brought to deny that or any other of his glorious Attributes 25. Truly I am so charitably minded as to think that there is none so wicked but would confidently make this defence for himself yea and believes he is in earnest when he speaks so But this will not serve the turn For God seeth not as man sees he judgeth not as man judgeth but he judgeth righteous judgment For instance in that great example which our Saviour gives of the fashion and course of judgment according to which he purposes to proceed in the last day He accuses the wicked and condemns them for neglect of visiting and feeding and cloathing Him The Apology which they make for themselves as having never seen him in that exigence would not be taken For though I am perswaded they there spake nothing but what they verily thought namely that if ever they had seen Christ himself in such want and necessity they would not have been so hard-hearted to him as they were to his poor servants yet Christ will not allow of that excuse but accounts of their uncharitableness to afflicted Christians as directed to himself 26. So likewise in the Case in hand Though I believe it would be hard to perswade even the most licentious professed sinner that he believes not indeed the Justice and righteousness of God yet he shall find at last and that miserably to his cost that God who knows his heart much better than himself for all his professions will yet esteem him an Atheist and will prove evidently and convincingly unto him that since that knowledge which he pretended to have of Gods Righteousness had been so fruitless and superficial that notwithstanding such a conceit he proceeded still on in his ungodly courses that therefore he did but delude himself all the while with phantastical ungrounded illusions so that whatsoever imagination swim in his brain yet in the language of his heart that is in the propension and sway of his affections he said There is no God Now what hath been said of the Omnipresence Infinite Knowledge and Justice of God may by the same reason and proportion be spoken of the rest of his glorious Attributes But the straitness of time will force me to leave the rest untouched I will proceed therefore to make the like collections from one or two Articles more of the Creed 27. Thou believest that after this life which cannot last very long it will and that shortly have an end there remain but two waies for all men of what stare and condition soever that ever were to be disposed of either into life and glory everlasting or else into pains and torments infinite and insupportable And by consequence that thy soul is an immortal substance which shall for ever continue somewhere and according to thy behaviour here during that short measure of time which thou livest upon the earth it must expect a reward proportionable thereto If thou canst perswade thy self to walk worthy of that calling whereunto thou art called in Jesus Christ If thou wilt not forswear and renounce that glorious profession which thou madest in thy Baptism If thou canst be content to submit thy self to the easie yoke of Christ propose to thy self what reward thou canst imagine give thy thoughts scope and licence to be excessive and overflowing in their desires if thou art not satisfied to the uttermost infinitely above what thou
by Hope And I bless Almighty God that he has dealt so graciously with me that I should dare to hope for it and not be shamed and confounded by my hope And if there be any amongst you that will vouchsafe to content himself with such a neglected degree of comfort with only hope and no more I will not enter into comparison with those that are perfect but I dare promise him that all those troublesome pleasures which do so ravish the men of this world shall be as nothing yea as afflictions and torments in comparison of those spiritual heavenly Joyes which Hope well and legally atchieved will be able to afford us No dangers will there be of terrours or jealousies as if God would happen to grow weary or repent himself of any grace or blessing which he hath bestowed upon us 59. For tell me Do you think that Adam while he continued in his Innocency had any grudgings of suspicions or fears Was he not during that time in as great a quiet and serenity of mind as any of us dare hope for And yet the most that he could do then was to hope that he might continue in that state even to the end The event shews he could not have an infallible Faith of his perseverance If then such a contented setled mind could accompany Adam in Paradise even when he knew it was in his power with but reaching out his hand and tasting an Apple yea with a sudden wicked word or an unsanctified thought utterly and irrecoverably to degrade himself from that happy estate surely we Christians have much more reason to rejoyce in our hope since we know assuredly that as God has been so gracious to begin this good work in us so he will not be wanting to perfect it even to the end if we will but perform our parts which he has already given us more then sufficient grace to do and will never fail to supply us with more for the asking nay more which are surer grounds to build upon than ever Adam had since we know that not one nor ten nor a hundred sins shall be able so irreparably to cast us out of God's favour but that he will be willing upon our Repentance especially calling to mind his old mercies to restore us again to our lost happiness 60. Neither are we utterly excluded from all assurance for there is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a full assurance of Hope saith S. Paul Heb. 6.11 Ibid. 9. Heb. 6.11 This Hope we have as a sure Anchor of the soul fastned on a Rock The Rock cannot fail us the Anchor will not all the danger is in the Cable or chain of spiritual Graces whereby we are fastned to this Rock If this chain but hold no tempest no winds no flouds can endanger us And part of our Hope respects this chain for God has promis'd his willingness and readiness to strengthen it every day more and more till our state shall be so chang'd that there shall be no such things as Tempests known no tossings of waves no tumults of winds nor fear of leaking or decay in the Vessel but all calmness and security And for the attaining to this happy unchangeable estate where is it that we place our Hope Truly our Hope is even in thee O God who if thou shalt think it convenient or necessary for us wilt enlarge this our Hope into confidence and add unto that assurance and swallow up all in possession And that not for any merits of ours but only for thy free undeserved Mercies in our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ in whom alone thou art well pleased To whom with thee O Father and the blessed Spirit be ascribed by us and thy whole Church the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory for ever and ever Amen The Ninth Sermon 1 COR. X. 13. God is Faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able WHatever punishments befel the disobedient Israelites who murmured and tempted God in the Wilderness Vers 6. Vers 11. They all happened unto them saith St. Paul for ensamples to us and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come This Priviledge we may have beyond our fore-fathers that we may present before our eyes a larger Series and History of God's Providence even since the foundation of the World We may take a view and prospect of his constant unaltered course of revenging himself upon sin in whatsoever persons he finds it And we ought from thence to collect that whatsoever immunities and priviledges we may conceive to ourselves whatsoever comfortable Errors we may take up upon trust yet that God will not for our sakes begin a new frame of Policy in the Administration of the World but that we also unless we break off our sins by repentance and conversion unto God We I say after the example of these murmuring Israelites as those upon whom the Tower of Siloe fell as those fourteen whose bloud Pilate mingled with the Sacrifices that we also unless we repent shall all likewise perish Nay certainly we upon whom the ends of the world are come shall be much more culpable our punishment and stripes shall be more in number and weightier if we notwithstanding that larger experience which we may have of Gods unpartial dealing with sinners shall yet promise to our selves impunity If we shall say we shall have peace though we walk in the imaginations of our hearts 2. The same collection we may proportionably make to our own benefit and advantage from Gods gracious dealing and behaviour to any of his beloved faithful servants we may appropriate to our selves all those blessings and promises which have been afforded unto them If our Consciences can assure us that we do obey Gods Commandements in the truth and sincerity of our hearts Now for warrant to this kind of collection instead of several examples in Holy Scripture I will only make use of one taken out of I think this our Apostle Heb. 13.5 where he saith Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as you have For God hath said I will never leave thee nor forsake thee Which words by him quoted as the margins of our Bibles will direct us are to be found Josh 1.5 Which Josh 1.5 though they be a particular Promise which God immediately made to Joshua thereby to encourage him after the death of Moses to take upon him the conducting of the Jews into the Land of Promise assuring unto him a continuation of his extraordinary assistance in the enterprise Yet notwithstanding St. Paul we see as if God had proclaim'd this Promise to the whole world applyes these words to all the Faithful among the Hebrews and by the same proportion to all Christians likewise 3. Upon which grounds I may as reasonably direct the words of this verse out of which my Text is taken to you that now hear me as the Apostle does
and then the comfort which your souls may feel in the consideration of what glorious rewards are promised unto your Patience shall make your afflictions even matters of rejoycing unto you in which respect as St. James saith you ought to count it all joy when you fall into divers Temptations Or if those Temptations and Afflictions reach so farr as to the destroying of your Lives yet notwithstanding all this they are so unable to make you miserable unless you will take part with them against your own souls by repining and murmuring under the mighty hand of God that when you shall consider that blessed change which death shall bring unto you when all tears shall be wiped from your eyes all fear and expectation of misery removed nothing but inexpressable and everlasting joys to be expected you shall bless the time that ever you were afflicted and with St. Paul confess That the afflictions of this life are worthy of that joy which shall be revealed This I say is a good Catholique Orthodox sense and which it is very probable that St. Paul might more directly intend in these words of my Text. 8. Notwithstanding I cannot exclude the other sense of the word Temptation from this Text for according to the Analogy of Faith and without any wrong done to the dependance and connexion of these words God will not suffer you to be tempted c. St. Paul's intent in them might be such as if it had been thus spread out more at large though considering the many disadvantages we have in the way of godliness in respect both of our powerful malicions industrious and subtile Enemy the Devil who continually waits upon us to entrap us in respect of our seeming flattering friend the world and vanities thereof alluring us But especially in respect of our own wicked and deceitful Hearts forward and desirous enough to embrace the wicked suggestions and temptations of both nay sufficient to destroy us without the assistance of either I say that though these things considered we may seem to be set in the expression of the Holy Ghost upon slippery places where it is almost impossible for us to keep our footing and to preserve our selves from falling dangerously and dashing our selves in pieces 9. Notwithstanding if our eyes were opened as were the eyes of the Prophet Elisha's servant we should find as well as he that they that be with us are more than they that be against us For God and his Holy Angels who are on our side are both wiser and stronger than the Devil and more willing to do us good than the other can be to hurt us Besides the expectation of those gloriousrewards which are laid up in Heaven for us are sufficient even to any reasonable man to dis-relish unto him the vain unsatisfying pleasures of this world And though our own hearts naturally be never so traiterous and unfaithful yet by the power of that Grace which is plentifully showred down upon every one of us in our Baptism and which is dayly encreased and supplyed unto us they may easily be corrected and renewed So that if the suggestion of any wicked Temptation get the mastery over us let us not impute too much to the valour and strength of our Enemies let us not accuse God of any unwillingness to succour us For never any Temptation hath or ever shall happen unto us but such as is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 suitable unto the nature of man such as a reasonable considerate and a circumspect man by the ordinary assistance of God's Grace and careful application of those means wherewith we are abundantly furnished out of Holy Scripture as Prayer Watchfulness Fasting and the like may easily conquer and subdue 10. This sense of these words may with as good reason and probability be suppos'd to be intended by St. Paul in this place as the former And indeed unless we inlarge St. Paul's words to this meaning also we shall receive no extraordinary comfort and encouragement from them For though indeed it is true that it is more than we can deserve at God's hands to obtain a Promise from him to secure us that no Temptations no outward Afflictions of this world shall be so violent and furious upon us as to exceed the strength of Reason and Grace to withstand them Yet since Sin is that only Enemy which is able to withdraw God's favour from us and make him our Enemy unless we can be put in some hope that there is a possible course for us to prevail against sin also and all the dangerous temptations and suggestions thereof we should live but an uncomfortable discontented life we should be continually affrighted with sad melancholick thoughts with disquieting jealousies and fears that however we may now and then please our selves with conceits of Gods favour for the present yet since he has pass'd no promise of securing us for the future it may happen that such a sinful Temptation may come upon us which may be able do what we can to over-whelm us irrecoverably Therefore since this latter sense which I mentioned of these words is more profitable and advantageous to us I will especially at this time insist upon it and labour to demonstrate undeniably to every one of us that God is faithful and will assuredly make good that promise which he hath made unto us all namely not to suffer us to be tempted that is by any sinful temptation above that we are able 11. Now he is said to be tempted above that he is able who do what he can though he strain his natural endowments to the uttermost and though he endeavour heartily to make use of all the outward helps and assistances which he finds prescribed unto him out of Gods Word though he extend that measure of Grace wherewith he is furnished to the extreamest activity thereof to resist such a Temptation yet in the end is forced to yield to the power of it utterly fainting and languishing in the combat So on the contrary that man who being compleatly furnish'd with all requisite weapons both for his own defence and encountring his Adversary and besides having in him both ability of body and courage enough and yet out of a sleepy negligence or obstinate sullenness will not take the pains to lift up his arm or otherways bestir himself to oppose his Enemy such a man if overcome can in no reason be said to be Over-match'd but is a mere Traytour to his own safety and reputation 12. And indeed before I can proceed any further I must either take this for granted That some men though de facto they have been overcome by a Temptation yet might have resisted it by the assistance of that Grace wherewith they were enabled Or truly I know not what to say For if this be a good inference a man is overcome by a Temptation therefore he could not possibly have resisted Adam for all he was seduc'd by the Devil is not so culpable as