I should help you to see, that saying as a priest saith, is not knowing the thing, nor believing God.

Stop therefore till you have evidence: follow no party as a party in the dark or if probability incline you more to them than to others, call not this Certainty, Religion, Divine Faith. Thus your faith will be faith indeed, and you will escape all that would corrupt and frustrate it. The business is great. God requireth you to refuse no light: but withal he chargeth you to believe no falsehood, nor put darkness for light much less to father men's lies, or errors, or conceits on God, and to lay your salvation on it, that they are all God's word. How dreadful a thing is this if it prove false! Is it not blaspheming God1?

No man in his wits then but a partial designer can look that you should make haste, or go any further than you have assuring or convincing evidence. If you know that any sect doth err, you need no preservative: if you do not, tell them, I am ignorant of this matter, I will learn as fast as I can; not neglecting greater matters; and I will be neither for you, nor against you, further than I can know.'

And as to the former objection, of being still infants, I further answer, that as feigned knowledge is no knowledge, so manhood consisteth not in being of many uncertain opinions; no not so much in knowing many little controverted things, as in getting a clearer, more affecting, powerful, practical knowledge and belief of our Christianity, and the great and sure things which we know already; and in love and obedience practising of them. He is the strongest Christian who loveth God best, and hath most holiness; and he knoweth God better than any others do.

By this much you may see that the world is full of counterfeit faith, and knowledge, and religion; even fancy and belief of men, and their own opinions, which go under these names. One turneth an Anabaptist, and another a Separatist, and another an Antinomian, and another a Pelagian, and another a Papist, when if you try them you shall find that they neither understand what they turn to, nor what they are against: they do but turn to his side, who hath the

1 Fathering errors on God, and saying that he saith what he never said, and forbad or commanded what he doth not, is the most direct breach of the third commandment. To father lies on God, is the taking of his name in vain.

best advantage to persuade them, either by insinuating into their affections, or by plausible reasonings; they talk for one doctrine, and against another, when they understand neither; much less discern true evidence of their truth. And as for the Papists, what wonder is it, when their religion is to believe as the Church believeth? And what the Church believeth, they know not but by believing a priest: and then though they know not what the Church believeth, some say they are Catholics; and others, that this implicit faith is that in the virtue of which all the explicit must proceed. And if God may but be allowed to be equal herein with their Church, and so that all may be saved who implicitly believe that all that he saith is true, though they know not what he saith at all, then I think few infidels would perish that believe there is a God.

Reader, I advise thee therefore as thou lovest thy soul, 1. Not to neglect or delay any true knowledge that thou canst attain. 2. But not to be rash and hasty in judging. 3. Nor to take shows and men's opinions, or any thing below a certifying or notifying evidence of truth, to make up thy Christian faith and knowledge. 4. And till thou see such certain evidence, suspend, and tell them that solicit thee, that thou understandest not the matter, and that thou art neither for them nor against them; but wilt yield as soon as truth doth certainly appear to thee.

If an Anabaptist persuade thee, yield to him as soon as thou art sure that God would not have believers' children now to be infant-members of his Church, as well as they were before Christ's coming; and that the infants of believing Jews were cut off from their church-state; and that there is any way besides baptism appointed by Christ, for the solemn initiating of church-members with the rest, which in my Treatise of Baptism I have produced.

If thou art solicited to renounce communion with other Churches of Christ as unlawful, either because they use the Common Prayer and Ceremonies, or because that ministers are faulty (if tolerable) or the people undisciplined; before thou venture thy soul upon an uncharitable and dividing principle make sure first that Christ hath commanded it. Try whether thou art sure that Christ sinned by communicating ordinarily with the Jewish Church and Synagogues, when the corruption of priests, people and worship was

so much worse than ours? Or whether that be a sin to us, which (in the general) Christ did then. And whether Paul's compliance, and his precept, (Rom. xiv. and xv.) was an error and Peter's separation (Gal. ii.) was not rather to be blamed. With much more the like. Are you sure that notwithstanding all this, God would have you avoid communion with the churches that in such forms and orders differ from you?

So if a Papist solicit you, yield to him as soon as you are certain that the Church is the body or Church of the Pope, and that none are Christians that are not subject to him, and that therefore three or two parts of all the Christian world are unchristianed; and that when the Roman emperor made patriarchs in his own dominion only, and there only called General Councils, all the world must now take such as the Church's heads, and must be their subjects: when you can be sure that all the senses of all the sound men in the world, are by a constant miracle deceived, in taking the consecrated bread and wine, to be bread and wine indeed, and that it is none; and that the bread only without the cup must be used, though Christ's command be equal for both: when you are certain, truly certain of these and many other such things, then turn Papist. If you do it sooner, you betray your souls by pretending to know and believe God's words, when you do but believe and embody with a faction.

CHAP. X.

Inference 4. What is the great Plague and Divider of the Christian World.

FALSELY PRETENDED KNOWLEDGE and FAITH are the great plague and dividers of the Christian world.

I. As the number of articles and opinions, and precepts, what abundance of things go with many for certain truth of which no mortal man hath any certainty! And abundance which some rare wits may know, must go for evident certainties to all. It is not only our philosophy books, nor only our philosophical schoolmen's books, which are guilty of this. There is some modesty in their Videtur's: and indeed if they would not pretend to certainty, but profess only

many

to write for the sport and exercise of wit, without condemning those that differ from them, a man might fetch many a pleasant vagary, if not an over subtle Cajetan (who so often feigneth notions and distinctions), yet in Scotus, Ockam, Ariminensis, with abundance of their disciples, and in Thomas and of his learned followers. But their successors can hardly forbear hereticating one another. How many such a wound hath poor Durandus suffered! from many for his doctrine of Concourse; and by others for his pretty device to save the credit of our senses; (that there is still the matter of bread, but not the form, as being informed by the soul of Christ, as digested bread in us is turned to flesh;) which, saith Bellarmine, is an heresy, but Durandus no heretic, because he was ready to be taught of the Church.

But no where do these stinging hornets so swarm as in the Councils and the Canon Law: so that saith the preface to the Reformation Legum Ecclesiast. Edward VI. (John Fox,) In quo ipso jure, neque ullum modum tenet illius impudentia, quin leges legibus; decreta decretis, ac iis insuper decretalia, aliis alia, atque item alia accumulet, nec ullam pene statuit cumulandi finem, donec tandem suis Clementinis, Sixtinis, Intra et Extravagantibus, Constitutionibus Provincialibus et Synodalibus, Paleis, Glossulis, Sententiis, Capitulis, Summariis, Rescriptis, Breviculis, Casibus longis et brevibus, ac infinitis Rhapsodiis adeo orbem confarcinavit, ut Atlas mons quo sustineri cœlum dicitur, huic si imponeretur oneri, vix ferendo sufficeret.' Which made these two kings, Henry VIII. and Edward VI. appoint that Compendium of Ecclesiastical Laws as their own. King Henry first abolishing the Pope's Laws (whatever some say to the contrary), his words being, Hujus Potestatem huic cum divino munere sublatam esse manifestum est, ut quid superesset, quo non plane fractam illius Vim esse constaret, Leges omnes decreta atque instituta, quæ ab authore Episcopo Romano profecta sunt Prorsus abroganda censuimus.'

Is it possible that all the clergy and nobles of the Roman kingdom can be so ignorant of their own and other men's ignorance, as to take all the decrees of the huge volumes of their Councils for certain truths? Either they were certain in their evidence of truth, before they decree them, or not: if they were so, 1. How came the debates in the Councils

about them to be so hard, and so many to be dissenters as in many of them there were. I know where Arians or other heretics make up much of the Council, it is no wonder; but are the certainties of faith so uncertain to Catholic bishops, that a great part of them know not certain truths, till the majority of votes have told them they are certain? Have the poor dissenting bishops in Council nothing of certainty on which their own and all the poor people's faith and salvation must depend, but only this, that they are over-voted? As if the dissenters in the Council of Trent should say, 'We thought beforehand the contrary had been true; but now the Italian bishops being so numerous as to over-vote us, we will lay our own and all men's salvation on it, that we were deceived, though we have no other reason to think so.' O noble faith and certainty! It is possible one or two or three poor silly prelates may turn the scales and make up a majority, though as learned men Jansenius, Cusanus or Gerson were on the other side. And if the Jansenists' Articles were condemned or Cusanus' antipapal doctrine, lib. de Concordia, or Gerson's for the Supremacy of Councils and de Auferibilitate Papæ, they must presently believe that they were certainly deceived.

But what is become then of the contrary evidence which appeared before to these dissenters? As suppose it were in the Council of Basil about the immaculate conception of Mary; or the question whether the authority of the Pope or Council be greatest, decided there, and at Constance, and whereof at Trent the emperor and the French were of one opinion, and the Pope of another: was it evidently true before, which is made false after by a majority of votes ?

2. And if all these decreed things were evident truths before the said decrees, why have we not those antecedent evidences presented to us, to convince us?

3. But if they were not evident truths before, what made those prelates conclude them for truths? Did they know them to be such without evidence? This is grosser than a presumptuous man's believing that he shall be saved because he believeth it; or their doctrine that teach men to believe the thing is true (that Christ did for them,) that thereby they may make it true; as if the object must come after the act. For then these prelates do decree that to be true, which before was false (for ex natura rei,' one party had