they might proceed one step further and say I my self alone think this to be true and therefore it is true but the Spirit of illumination is given onely to satisfie them that have it not to boast of it but to comfort themselves with it rather much less to obtrude it upon others onely light naturall is communicable unto others by rationall discourse light spirituall is not I cannot more communicate that to another than my seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting Disc Lastly If we build our Religion only upon the Scriptures the learned shall have a great prerogative above the unlearned in the matter of Faith and Religion and shall be more ingaged in thankefulness unto God than they and so Religion shall favor and cleave to good wits Also many have their senses exercised in the Scriptures or are more inventive than others therefore if a man could by disputing and reasoning consute some Thesis and as it were take away a mans opinion from him and become conqueror he should also take away his Religion and the other should be constrained either to take up his Conquerors Religion or against his conscience to keep his own Nor will that Answer serve the turn our Divines and Pastors can answer you though I cannot for then should I believe with another mans faith but saith must bee mine not another mans else should salvation also be another mans If Religion be the service of God certainly it is necessary that I should understand that service which I must perform to my Lord. Seeing God will not reckon another mans service for mine and cannot be served by a Substitute it remains that wee conclude Controversies are to be left to learned men and are not so very necessary It may be answered Then also Religion is to be left to learned men for Controversies are our very Religion for saving the consideration of them there is no difference but Papists are Protestants and Protestants are Papists look how much a man knowes of Controversies so much doth he know of his own Religion The state of a mans salvation is such as his Religion and his Faith Now there is but one salvation and but one faith But if Controversies belong to the learned onely wherefore have Lay-men indured so many afflictions distresses nay and death it self for these controversies sake I know indeed that a Calvinist Doctor one Doctor Bergius a Preacher at Breme affirms in his late published Sermons that Controversies are not meerly necessary to salvation that the Scripture is plain and clear about those things which are necessary to salvation and that there was never any contrariety between the Religious themselves At which also the Leipsich Collation between the Lutherans and the Calvinists seems to aim Consid In all professions whether liberall or mechanicall the learned have a prerogative above the unlearned and what inconvenience is there if it be so in Christian Religion also Doth not S. Peter tell us that the unlearned pervert the Scripture to their own destruction 2 Pet. 3. yet this prerogative is in learning onely not in holiness the unlearned may be as holy as the learned and have as great an interest both in sanctifying grace and in saving glory What said Austin of himself and such like Scholars in comparison of his mother Monica and such like holy though simple women Mulierculae istae lacrimis suis caelum nobis praeripiunt when we have done all we can with all our learning these women with their tears will get heaven before us And as for holiness so for faith an unlearned man may have faith as wel as the learned nay that faith which is called fides infusa may be found in a man unlearned when the faith of him that is learned is found to be no better than fides acquisita a faith naturall and they that have true faith by the inspiration of the holy Ghost shall not want gracious wits howsoever that Religion which is by faith naturall be accompanied with better naturall wits yet an idle wit be it never so good will hardly prove learned and be it never so learned if it be without grace such a mans Religion will prove but vain and though he be able to worst another in disputation yet shall he never pull true Religion in any childe of God be he never so weak and unlearned out of socket because our Faith and Religion consists not in wisdom of words but in the power of the Spirit as S. Paul speaks saying My word and my preaching stood not in the inticing speech of Mans wisdom but in plain evidence of the Spirit and Power That your Faith should not bee in the wisdom of Men but in the power of God 1 Cor. 2.4 5. Nay were my Faith only naturall and I had good evidence out of the Scripture for it though that knowledge be no other than such as is annexed to the common profession of Christianity yet the Philosopher tells me that I must not be beaten out of my hold in such a case because I am not able to answer every Sophism or Argument that is brought against it Nay the Philosopher in his Ethicks teacheth me that some are as tenacious of their opinions for which they have but weak reasons as others are of their opinions which they hold confirmed with great strength of Argument so that every way it is an inficete fiction that the most learned must always conquer the Faith and the Religion of the unlearned without flying to any such sculking hole as to say Our Divines and Pastors can answer you though I cannot But I wonder much that any sober Christian upon any pretence should dispute against the building of our Religion onely upon Scripture unless with Papists hee would bring in Traditions or rely on the Church or on the decision of the Pope For if we fly from the Word of God we must rest either upon the word of Man or upon naturall reason A Christian I conceive should think the Scripture sufficient to direct us in the Service of God Our Saviour directs the Jews to the searching of Scripture for the discerning of him And if Controversies be left to learned men yet there is no cause why our Religion should but onely the defence of it controversially maintaining it by variety of Arguments and deductions out of holy Scripture and solving contrary Arguments brought against it in any particular point of Faith but the profession of it surely shall belong to him that sits at Gamaliels feet as well as to Gamaliel himself nor onely to such as sit at his feet but to such also as follow the plow-tail yea and to the weaker sex of women and to children too for even to such belongeth the Kingdom of God And were there no book at all written or Sermon preached in any point of Controversies or difference between us yet Papists should be Papists still and not Protestants and Protestants should be Protestants still and not Papists and
the cause of this mans perplexity was it not his own extreme superstition most abominable If the Author of this Discourse had proposed any thing on the other side to the Scripture and pretended ambiguity and perplexity which of them he preferred according whereunto to order his faith that Martialists resolution of the doubt might have been congruous enough But onely concerning the Scripture-doubts are here proposed how a man should ground his faith thereupon what he is I know not and whether this be res gesta or ficta I am to seek for the present world is full of jugling But when wee make such doubts unto our selves do we well consider the goodness and wisdom of God in giving us his holy Word to direct us in the wayes of everlasting life if still there were just cause to complain of a perplexed condition whereinto we were cast not knowing whether we shall take hold of it or run away from it as Moses did from his rod when it was turned into a Serpent But do we finde any the like Metamorphosis here yet when the Lord bid Moses take the Serpent by the tail he was bold to do it surely Gods Word is no Serpent but we rather and his Word alone hath power to charm us and make us vomit all our poyson of erroneous and unholy ways and the Lord Christ hath bid us to take hold of them saying Search the Scriptures yet if any thing in this my Answer seem amiss and not answerable to the Authors expectation but savouring as hee thinks of partiality prejudice or passion I confess prejudice against such discourses as these accompting them most vile and nothing becomming an understanding and godly Christian but as for the rest let him impute it to my ignorance that know not so much as what is the way of his passion for he seems to me to be neither Lutheran nor Calvinist and would not seem to bee a Papist though I am most prone to conceive it to be the trick of some Papist least of all doe I know his person or Countrey But let every sober Christian consider well and inquire whether that since the beginning that Gods Word was committed to writing there were at any time any such questions moved untill this last and worst Age of the world when Cajetan the Cardinall a great School-Divine first encountred with Martin Luther and found that no Authority prevailed with him but Scripturall hereupon hee was moved to study Scripture and wrote Commentaries upon it in his old age But Silvester Prierius of Rome he thought that way too far about and therefore took a shorter course and maintained that the Scriptures contained not all things necessary to salvation and therefore the rule of faith to be made compleat must be pieced up with the unwritten Word added to the written Word which unwritten Word they called Traditions Since that the Papists have strengthned themselves with the Authority of the Church yet confess the true Church cannot bee known to be a true Church nor the Authority thereof known but by the Scriptures and the issue of the resolution of the Church must bee the resolution of the Pope concerning the true interpretation of Scripture shamefully obtruding upon us that we make the resolution of our faith into our own private spirit whereas we to the contrary extend the testimony of the spirit onely to each private mans best satisfaction and teach no other herein than the Papists themselves acknowledge to be most true as touching the resolution physicall of our faith as I am able to prove by variety of pregnant evidences ready at hand without any more adoe than the bare transcribing of them Now this light being not of a nature communicable unto others we meddle not with it in disputing upon any other point of Divinity with Papists or any other But therein walk in all our disputations by way of Resolution Logicall either into some confessed principles as concerning the Attributes Divine or into express passages of holy Scripture the meaning whereof if it be excepted against we are ready to justify it by rationall discourse against any adversary nothing doubting but we shall either convict him of obstinacy in shutting his eyes against the clear evidence of truth and make him condemned in his own conscience or at least in the conscience of all sober Christians being well assured that whosoever resisteth the evidence of Gods Word upon pretence of inevidence that Word shall be found of evidence enough to judge him at the last day ¶ This Jesuiticall Question was sent out of Germany when the Assembly of Divines were sitting at Westminster and was translated out of High-Dutch FINIS
THE Scriptures Sufficiency To Determine All Matters of Faith Made good against the PAPIST OR That a Christian may be infallibly certain of his Faith and Religion by the Holy Scriptures By that Great and Famous Light of Gods Church William Twisse D.D. And Prolocutor of the late Assembly of Divines LONDON Printed for Matthew Keynton at the Fountain in S. Pauls Church-yard 1656. SIR I Have read this learned and satisfactory Answer to the Perplexing Question and Doubtfull Case of Conscience in the life time of D. Twisse and if you shall please to give it your Imprimatur I think it may be advantageous in this juncture of time I rest Yours Ja. Cranford May 3. 1652. Imprimatur Edm. Calamy THE APPROBATION OF That Reverend Father of the Church Joseph Hall Bishop of NORWICH In a Letter to his worthily respected friend Mr. W. S. Worthy Sir I Return you many thanks for the favour you have done me in affording me the view of this solid and seasonable piece of Dr. Twisse in full answer to this pretended Questionist who under the colour of a Perplexing Case of Conscience from a Preacher of the Gospell sends forth a foolish kind of challenge to all Protestant Divines Had you not named the Author of the satisfactory Answer and seconded it by anothers attestation I could both have known and avouched him There is a face of a style by which we Scholars know one another no less than our persons by a visible countenance whosoever hath read the witty accute exercitations of this Author upon the writings of Doctor Jackson will easily finde him in this Tractate both for form and matter This sculking and disguised Chalenger could not have met with a meeter Combatant a man so eminent in School-Divinity that the Jesuits have felt and for ought I see shrunk under his strength in their Scientia Media and whom the States of the Netherlands out of the fame of his worth would fain have tempted away with large profers to a Publick Professorship in one of their Universities I onely wish he had met with a more able Adversary For certainly as I intimated to you in my last this Beagle whosoever he be whether out of misprision or craft hunts counter and runs all the while upon a wrong ground vainly supposing that differences in points not fundamentall make a diversity of Religions and weakly conceiving that because there are many false claims to Truth in the world God hath not left us means enough in his revealed Will to distinguish Truth from Error as if because there are store of counterfeit coyns abroad it could not be safe for a man to receive or possible to discern currant money whereas if his wit would have served him he might have considered that all both Agenda and Credenda necessary to salvation which only can difference Religion are clearly laid down in the sacred Oracles of Scripture with which if any refractory soul will unjustly quarrell he may by those helps which God hath left to his Church be either convinced or shamed in the mean while it is no reason that his absurd obstinacy should cast any blemish upon the clear face of truth or be any prejudice to others who are blessed with better apprehensions whose not-forestalled souls out of that judgment of discretion which God hath endowed all wise Christians withall upon due search may by those good means which God hath held forth to us give himself so ful satisfaction in all important Truths as wherein he may securely rest with a resolute defiance of all oppositions Had this Questionist but consulted with learned Bishop Davenant's irrefragable Discourse De judice ac norma fidei he had forborn the blurring of his Paper and spared the labor of this his perplexed and shuffling proposall of his pretend edly-perplexing Question which in very truth is no other than a stale and often exploded Cavill newly furbushed over with a false colour of a tenderly-conscientious irresolution The man will finde himself here over-answer'd and receive too much honour from such an Antagonist in that it may be said of him Aeneae magni dextrâ cadis Now since you are pleased to desire my Opinion of the whole work to speak freely One or two passages I confess to meet with in this learned and weighty Discourse as concerning the name and number of the Apocalypticall Beast 666. which doe not altogether carry my assent That Mysterie must and will lye still close after all the scanning of the sharpest Wits and Judgements But for all the Doctrinall points I cannot but applaud them as worthy of the Authour and satisfactory to the Reader and convictive of the Adversary Farewell from your much devoted J.H.B.N. Higham April 29. 1652. A Perplexing Question OR A doubtfull Case of CONSCIENCE Of a certain Preacher of the GOSPEL OVR Religion is our Faith Faith either saves or condemns justly ought we therefore to be able to understand and prove our Faith But now there ariseth a great doubt to me and other of the simpler sort of Christians Whether it be possible for us to have an infallible certainty of our Faith out of the holy Scriptures and so consequently to rely on and trust to this faith as to an unshaken foundation The reason of our doubting is this Both Papists and Calvinists holding contrary opinions do maintain and prove by the holy Scriptures as they suppose the contrary to that which the Lutherans hold seriously affirming that in the Scriptures the Lutheran Religion is condemned and theirs confirmed Which thing no man will deny to be an evident Argument of the obscurity of the holy Scriptures If there be two Physicians of equall learning and of the same intent in curing the sick that is alike desirous to cure the disease and if these Physicians should out of one and the same Book gather the one that a Fever is cured with wine and the other that wine is as bad as poyson to them that have the Fever how I pray shall we know which of these two to take part withall A man can gather nothing but that the remedy for that disease is obscurely expressed in that Book Some may object The Sects doe not follow the Scriptures onely but they add their traditions the Calvinists add their reason the Anabaptists their dreams I answer They do so in those things which are not cleerly taught in the holy Scriptures but in the controversies between them and Lutherans they proceed not so but by Scriptures they fight against Lutheran Tenents which are confirmed by the Scriptures and indeavour by the help of the Scriptures to sight for and defend their own which the Lutherans by Scriptures doe condemn Nay more there are some viz. the Anabaptists that urge the Scriptures in the very Letter more than the rest The Calvinists use their reason and out of the Scriptures draw Arguments which thing the Lutherans also doe never suffering any of theirs to reason against the Scriptures 2.
the Socinians of these dayes whose opinion was cried down at Paris and openly proclamed hereticall by the sound of a Trumpet 3. Or shall the Rule of interpretation of Scripture be the congruity of it to naturall reason as the Socinians make it This is most shamefull and unreasonable considering 1. That our naturall reason is much corrupt by the sin of Adam The things of God seem foolishness to the naturall man 1 Cor. 2.14 naturally we are all darkness 2. In the state of innocency do we think that Adam by naturall reason was able to find out or justifie the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Deitie We say God may be known by light of Nature Quod attinet ad Vnitatem naturae but not known quod attinet at Trinitatem Personarum God hath set the world in mans heart saith Solomon yet can he not finde out the works that he hath wrought from the beginning to the end Eccl. 3. and if he cannot finde out the works of God is he able to find out the nature of God himself we know he is said to dwell in a dark cloud Disc Obj. Some may object The Sects do not follow the Scriptures onely but they add the Papists their Traditions the Calvinists their Reasons the Anabaptists their Dreams I answer They do so in those things which are not cleerly taught in the holy Scriptures but in the controversies between them and Lutherans they proceed not so but by Scriptures they fight against Lutheran Tenents which are confirmed by the Scriptures and indeavour by the help of the Scriptures to sight for and defend their own which the Lutherans by Scriptures doe condemn Nay more there are some viz. the Anabaptists that urge the Scriptures in the very Letter more than the rest The Calvinists use their reason and out of the Scriptures draw Arguments which thing the Lutherans also doe never suffering any of theirs to reason against the Scriptures Consid This Author will have the making of his own bed and shapes his Reader at the first encounter to yeeld acknowledging the uncontradictable nature of his former one onely Argument which yet I have shewed to be both very weak very ridiculous and very untrue But we keep our ground professing to the world that the Scriptures alone being the Word of God are the rule of our faith and no word of man Papists add Traditions which yet they account the Word of God unwritten we abhor to make any thing the rule of our faith but the written Word of God It is falsly said that Calvinists add their Reason they rather suppose Reason than add it the Word of God being given to none but reasonable creatures Neither doe we make this Reason of ours a rule of faith added to Gods Word but it is that light which God hath given us wherewith to search into the meaning of his Word and by studious inquisition and observation to discover it and make it known to others and by good reason out of the Text to convict others of the truth And doth this Authors reason go to bed and sleep when he comes to read and studiously to consider the Word of God If it doth he will prove no better than a drowsie Student and I know no reason but such a one may be in love with dreams as well as Anabaptists 1. In his Answer he carrieth himself most absurdly and ridiculously For 1. Most insipidly he supposeth that the Controversies amongst Protestant Divines are about such things as are clearly taught in Scripture as if they agreed in those things which are not clearly set down in Scripture and differ onely about things which are clearly delivered there 2. He supposeth that Calvinists do not use reason in the controversies between them and the Lutherans but onely in other things which is most untrue and absurd withall for controversies cannot possibly be mannaged without reason both as touching the proof of their own Tenet and touching the disproof of the Tenet oposite And this must needs be the guise of the Lutherans also It is false which he saith of Anabaptists that they urge the very letter of Scriptures more than the rest For both Calvinists and Lutherans insist wholly upon the literall sense of Scripture and more than the Anabaptist in case they as formerly by this Author said did depend in dreams for so doe not Protestants but on Scripture only and that according unto sense literall not at all according to sense mysticall save onely in case the sense mysticall be expounded by some Apostle and thereby made literall 2. But herein this Authors ignorance discovers its self that hee confounds sense literall with the proper sense of the words We acknowledge sense literall to comprehend sense Metaphoricall as well as proper and to stand in contradiction onely to sense mysticall But in case we take that in a metaphoricall sense which our adversaries in any point take in a sense proper if we doe not prove the sense wherein we take it and disprove theirs by convincing Arguments we will allow the liberty to reject our Tenet and follow their own for we desire to make our faith evident to the consciences of all opposites and if they can make their Tenets in like manner evident to us we will renounce our own and imbrace theirs 3. And this Author speaks at random and he knows not what when he would have his Reader believe the Calvinists permit any to reason against the Scriptures for by reason to clear the meaning of Scripture is not I trust to reason against it but for it rather especially considering that by reason of Scripture onely we dispute the meaning of any place Disc Object 2. If it be objected unto them that they wilfully and against their consciences do condemn the Lutheran Tenets and confirm their own they will answer Ans This were a very grievous sin and that men ought not to presume that they would falsifie and corrupt the Letters and Commands of their Lord to his sons and subjects much less that they do maliciously erre and lead themselves and others into the dauger of their salvation and to say the truth it is not likely that so many hundred thousands of men would come to that pitch of malice though one should especially seeing they dare confirm their honest meaning with an Oath wherefore unless they be convicted of maliciously wilfull error we shall seem injuriously to slander them Consid I see no reason why such a censure should be passed upon the Calvinians more than upon the Lutherans more speciously it should be passed by them that are Orthodox upon them that are not though I justifie not this censure whosoever makes it and certainly there is no just cause to pass it upon them who are in the right and charity will forbid us rashly to pass this censure upon them who are in the wrong And as I finde defect of love in them who pass such censures hand over head upon