Faith 5. If you endeauour to abstaine from sinne for feare of offending so good a God 6. If you beginne to endeauour to liue godly and righteously because it is the will and commandement of God 7. If you take more delight then you did in praying to God 8. If you thanke God priuately for these his good motions By these eight points you may soone know whether you haue true faith or not Q. What is the infallible marke of true and iustifying Faith A. The effectuall applying of Christ and all his benefits to your owne soule in particular This application doeth make a difference betwixt iustifying Faith and all other kindes of faith which cannot saue vs As Historicall Faith which is a bare knowledge Faith of Miracles which is a bare assent Temporary Faith which is but a bare profession of the Faith for a time embraced onely for the desire of Knowledge Credite Profite Q. What is the meaning of this assertion of S. Paules that we are iustified by Faith alone A. The meaning is this Euen as when you giue your almes to a begger it is receiued by his hand alone and yet his hand is not alone when it receiues these alms but accompanied with an arme sinewes and arteries Euen so when God offers vnto you Christ and his righteousnesse you doe receiue him by Faith alone and yet this Faith which receiues Christ is neuer alone but still accompanied with Charitie and good workes In a word 1. To holde almes is proper to the hand and not the arme and to holde Christ proper to Faith and not good workes 2. You are iustified by Faith alone and yet if your faith be alone it cannot iustifie you Q. What is the meaning of S. Iames when hee sayth That wee are iustified by workes and not by Faith A. The meaning is this 1. Faith iustifieth vs before God good works before men 2. Faith makes vs good workes declare vs to bee iustified 3. Faith giues vs our first iustificatioÌ„ good works our second which is our Sanctification or holinesse Q. What is the least and weakest degree of Faith that I may build vpon to keepe mee from despaire in case I finde not all those alterations in my selfe which you spake of before A. 1. If you desire Faith or pray vnto God that you may desire Faith 2. If you can pray or desire of God to enable you to pray 3. If you find fault with your want of faith and desire sometimes of God to helpe this want You are for all that the childe of God RESOLVTIONS OPPOSITIVE DIVINITIE OR The ordinary Obiections of Papists against them of the reformed Churches DIALOGVE Papist Protestant CHAP. I. Of the Church Pap. THe Church of England is no Church 〈…〉 strange considering your owne Writers conclude a Church to be there where there is found 1 doctrine of saluation Georg. Cassan consult titul de Ecclesia according to Scripture 2 the vse of the Sacraments and 3 outward discipline or Ecclesiasticall gouernement although the Churchmen should fall short of those Apostolicall and primitiue perfectioÌ„s which flourished in their predecessours Pap. Yea but it is not the Catholike Church mentioned in the Creed I beleeue in the Catholike Church Prot. 1. No more is the Church of Rome for there was no Church at all in Rome when the Creed was made by the Apostles at Hierusalem Ruffin in Symb. Augustin Ser. 115. euery Apostle making his Article when they were to depart to plant particular Churches in Rome Id. Serm. 181. de Tempore England and other places 2. But our Church is a branch and portion of that Catholike Church as is also the a Theoriani collo Damianus à Gots Onuphrius in vita Iulij Greeke Armenian Aethiopian and Syrian as well if not rather then the Romane Church Pap. Peraduenture these other Churches may bee members of that Catholike Church as ioyned and vnited with vs but the vnion betwixt your Church and ours hath beene cut asunder aboue an hundred yeeres agone and therefore you are quite cut off from the Catholike Church Prot. This is more then you know or then I am bound to beleeue For Cassand consult pag. 930. meerly spirituall consisting in Faith Hope Charitie true Doctrine c. Institut of a Christian fol. 19. This vnion of the members of the Catholike Church is inward not outward and therefore discerned onely by God himselfe We neuer sundred our selues from the people or Church of Rome but from the Faction or Court of Rome not from the sincere doctrine of that Church but from the corruptions and innouations foisted into that Church And therefore although we be neuer so hated Cassand ibid. and excommunicated by your Priests yet we may be still vnited in internall societie with your Church if you retaine those principles of Religion sound and vnaltered in the which our forefathers died and as we well hope were saued Pap. How are you then gone from vs if you be still vnited with vs. Prot. As the Prophets went from the corrupt Churches of the Iewes and as Christ and his Apostles from the Scribes and Pharises clamando dissentiendo by crying out against your corruptions and dissenting from your innouations and this a Cas consult pag. 929. Gerson de pâ—â—â—…tate Ecclesiae your owne men allowed vs to doe Pap. I but some of your men say that wee had no true Church of God in the West of many yeeres before Luthers time Prot. Their meaning is to be limited in respect of the Predominant and preuailing Faction Your Church held I confesse a sauing profession of the Trueth of God but your Church-men mingled therewith many damnable impieties And these innouators onely carrying the greatest shew of the Church are denied by our Writers to bee the true Church of God Pap. This it is we Catholikes obserue You dare not for all your malice deny the Church of Rome to haue in some sort a sauing profession of the truth of God but our Priests conclude directly that your Church hath no truth at all and that a Barclaius paraenes li. 1. pag. 7. none can be saued in that Church Prot. As in euery kingdome the generall estate is nothing so forward actiue quicke and peremptorie as the priuate Factions and yet is found at the last more wise and stayed in finall resolution So in the Catholike Church the b Can. loc theol l. 4. c. 1. Lindan panopl. lib. 4. cap. 7. Factions are euer more headie and precipitate in their denunciations of Heauen and Hell then the maine body thereof Hence it commeth to passe that although the Greeke Armenian Ethiopian and Syrian and for the most part the Protestant doth censure charitably of those Laickes who liuing rather In then Of the Church of Rome hold the grounds of the doctrine of Saluation without any notorious mixtures with the late superstitions and impieties crept into the same yet doth the a Quodlibet
the Holy Ghost 2 A minde free from other thoughts and desirous of the truth 3 Knowledge of the Scriptures Creedes Catechismes Principles and other Axiomes of Diuinitie 4 A considerations how our meaning suites with other points of Christianitie 5 The weighing of circumstances antecedents and consequents 6 Knowledge of Histories Arts and Sciences 7 Continuall reading meditating and praying 8 Ioint and vniarring expositions of the Fathers 9 Consenting decrees of auncient Synods and Councels 10 Knowledge in the tongues Because therefore lay-men and women Papists Brownists and Anabaptists are wanting in all or some of these helpes they bring foorth many times such lame and prodigious interpretations Pap. If wee make the Scripture not the Church the rule of our Faith how shall we beleeue the Creed the Trinity the Sacraments the vnity of Essence the three persons in the Deity c. words neuer read in the Bible and yet necessarily to be apprehended of vs vpon paine of damnation Prot. I say that all these things are set downe in Scriptures either in so many syllables or at leastwise by necessarie inferences and deductions And wee doe not therefore beleeue them because they are onely taught by the Church but because they are rooted and grounded in the holie Scriptures the onelie stay and pillar of our affiance To summe vp therefore all this Chapter 1 The Church doeth prepare vs but the Scripture onely doeth force vs to beleeue 2 The whole Church cannot any part thereof may erre damnablie 3 Wee are taught the Scriptures to bee the word of God by the Holy Ghost mouing in our hearts and not by the Church sounding in our eares 4 Lay-men are to reade not to interprete Scriptures 5 The misse of some rules causeth wrong expositions of Scriptures 6 All things necessary to bee beleeued are either found in or collected and inferred from the Scriptures CHAP. 3. Of Iustification Pap. HOW then doe you learne out of the Scriptures that you are to be iustified and saued before God Prot. I am to bee iustified before God by an Act single in it selfe but double in our apprehension which is By Gods not imputing vnto me my sinnes and the same Gods imputing vnto mee Christs righteousnesse and withall by his creating of faith in my heart by the Holy Ghost to assure my Soule that God for the Actiue and Passiue obedience of Christ Iesus hath accomplished those two former Actes of not imputing my Sinne and of imputing vnto mee Christs righteousnesse Pap. A verie easie no doubt and reasonable religion which you haue learned out of the Scriptures Heere is no burthen left for your owne backe you cast all vpon Christs shoulders by the meanes of these two fine wordes Not imputing and imputing and a third swimming notion of your own conceipt which any man may haue with a little imagining termed by you faith it would be knowne therefore where your Church hath found out these words of Art in the holie Scriptures Prot. We do in all humilitie confesse that the globe of our sinnes and the world of that righteousnesse which is to appeare in the presence of Gods Iustice is too massie for vs to sustaine that are but dust and ashes and supportable only by that Atlas Verba Lutheri ep ad Henr. 8. tom 2. ep p. 290. Christ Iesus vpon whose shoulders not our conceits but the goodnes of God hath plac't and pressed them But that these wordes imputing and not imputing are such Greeke vnto you I doe impute it to your not reading of Scriptures and taking vp your religion by trust and credit from such Fripperers and Brokers as by lending your soules a false opinion of merits and good workes do diue into your purses and eat vp your estates by way of interest Not to trouble you as I might with a thousand places aske Dauid Psal 32.1 whether not imputing of sin and S. Paul Rom. 4.45 whether the imputing of Christs righteousnesse doth not make vs blessed and iustified For the words vse your owne eyes and inspection And for the meaning I referre you to a August tom 8 in psalm 31. S. Augustines vpon the one and b Amb. in ep ad Rom. c. 8. S. Ambrose his commentarie vpon the other passage Now that you fondlie imagine that Faith this heauenly hand that reacheth at this double Act and applies it to our owne Soules is such an apprehension as you may command when you please out of your owne phantasie it is such a poore opinion that no Soule warmed with the least touch or feeling of religion but contemnes with a most holie scorne and reproach I tell you and if you once haue it your conscience will tell you no lesse this Faith is the richest iewell in Gods cabinet Ephes 2.8 and can neuer be compas'd by any endeuour of ours vntill the Holy Ghost comes downe from heauen to set and enchase it in our hearts with his owne fingers as it were And being once obtained it new moldes and fashions the whole nature of man so as the vnderstanding becomes more enlightned to know God the will to obey God the affections to loue God and our brethren Nor can it bee preserued to the comfort of our conscience without daily praying meditating doing good workes reading the Scriptures hearing good Sermons and perusing of deuout and godly Treatises My beliefe therefore is this Gods not imputing of sinne and imputing of righteousnesse is the worker The Merits of Christ the procurer Faith wrought by the holy Ghost the instrument or applier good workes or my inherent righteousnesse poore as it is a consequent onely effect and follower of my iustification Pap. I haue heard some of your side raile against the very name of inherent righteousnesse which you seem now to acknowledge embrace Do Protestants therefore challenge any other righteousnesse besides that of Christs which is imputed Prot. They doe acknowledge a Sanctification or inherent righteousnes in the same sence as the auncient Fathers tooke the Word but not as Iesuits of late mistake it We haue righteousnesse inherent or subsisting in vs according to the which we shall be iudged but not according to the which wee shall be iustified You make your righteousnesse to goe before as the cause we ours to come after as the effect of Iustification You suppose yours so absolute as to euict from God all wee expect from ours is but to testifie vnto men that we are iustified You bragge of a perfection of degrees wee onely teach a perfection of parts in our righteousnesse For as in the dawning of the day euery part of the heauens is enlightened though none as yet in a full and compleat splendour so after the Act of Iustification apprehended by faith euery facultie of the soule is sanctified and made righteous the vnderstanding the will the affections the thoughts the words the deedes but none of those so exactly perfect as to implead a Iustification at the throne of
God We therfore waue off this little righteousnesse of our owne as a piece of * Esay 64.6 polluted cloth in the Act of our Iustification and cast anchor onely vpon the merits of Christ But according to your Doctrine of * Concil Trid. infused Charitie not the Almighty reconciled but the man qualified not Christ patient but an habite inherent not God by grace pardoning but an instilled vertue like a receipt of Mithridate expelling sinne is the cause of your Iustification Pap. But haue you any vse of your Free-wil in either righteousnes I meane that imputed or this inherent Or are you as some relate your opinions meerely suffering and passiue like so many stockes and stones casting not so much as a sigh grone or short wish towards this great worke of your conuersion Prot. In our first conuersion to be righteous and the Act of our Iustification wee are like so many Niobes or images of marble which moue not at all but as they are in the whole lumpe carted and transported Our vnderstandings not affoording themselues the least glymps of knowledge nor our wils the least shew of inclination vnto this Act but as they are either of them powerfully bended by the Holy Ghost to lay holde by Faith on this imputed righteousnesse But in our second conuersion to be more righteous which we call the Act of our Sanctification wee moue like * Arist polit 1. c. 1. Daedalus his statues or pageants vpon wheeles dull and vnweldy in our owne natures but so quickened and enliued by those engines of Grace and motions of the holy Ghost in our soules and consciences that now our vnderstandings wils and affections doe cooperate and runne along with the Grace of God in all our workes of pietie and deuotion To that imputed righteousnesse therfore we haue no freenesse or cooperation of our Willes to our inherent righteousnesse we haue Wee haue no concurrance in that first Act of our Iustification but we haue a cooperation of the will rouzed vp and excited by grace in all subsequent Acts of our Sanctification The points therfore of this Chapter are these 1. Iustification consists in Gods not imputing of Sinne and in his imputing of Christs righteousnesse vnto vs. 2. It is not our conceipt but the iustice and mercy of God which layes this loade on our Sauiour Christ 3. Whosoeuer is acquainted with the Scripture cannot be vnacquainted with imputed righteousnes 4. Imputed righteousnesse is soone apprehended but infused Faith must bee first obtained 5. We haue an inherent righteousnesse which is the effect but none which is the cause of our Iustification 6. Grace alone works our iustification Grace and we together but wee in the second place our Sanctification CHAP. 4. Of Saints Soules of the Dead and those dependant questions Pap. WEe are scandalized likewise at your Church because you giue no more reuerence to the Saints then you doe neither praying vnto them nor adorning their images nor giuing them any set imployment aboue in heauen or the least care of vs here on earth Which smels very much of the heresies of the a Epiphan Cainans and Eunomians condemned so many yeeres agone in the Christian Church Prot. What employment the Saints haue in heauen besides the contemplation of God face to face b Hugo de S. V. l. 2. de Sacram. c. 11. Alâ—is l. 3. we know not nor doe c Cassand in consult art 21. we deny their praying for vs. Vpon earth they receiue in our Church all that honour bespoken for them in the primitiue Church Wee keepe duely the memorials of the blessed Virgine and the twelue Apostles and a yeerely panegyricall commemoration of all the Martyrs Saints of God respecting them as our d August contr Faust l. 20. c. 2. fellowes and friends though not as our e Iouius hist lib. 24. Tutelar gods and young little Sauiours We admire their liues and as we doe not furiously deface so doe we not adore their images Because f August in Psal 113. S. Augustin would faine know where that Christian may be found that prayeth or adoreth beholding an image g Idem de ciuit Dei lib. 22. cap. 10. We reare them no Temples as to Gods but trophees onely of praise as to deseruing men h Epi. ad Hebr. cap. 11. S. Paul himselfe did all this and hee did no more We dignifie them as Saints by celebration wee dare not deifie them as Gods by inuocation Your i Eckius in his Enchirid. owne men confesse there is for this praying to Saints neither precept nor example in all the Bible And 1 Orig. l. 2. in Epist ad Rom. Origen made but a question 2 Basil cited by the Bishop of Lincolne S. Basil an If 3 NaZ Orat. 1. in Iulian orat in Gorgon Gregory Nazianzene a thinking or an opinion onely of this which you make an Article of Faith We are commanded to call vpon 4 Psal 50 15. God vpon him 5 Matth. 4.10 onely for he is our 6 Psal 74.12 King of old and we are starke mad if we thinke to better our selues by changing of Masters Pap. I but how will you answere Antiquitie For I haue beene told that there are found in the writings of the Auncient Fathers prayers made to many of the Saints and holy men departed Prot. If you please to obserue them well you shall finde they are no Orisons but Orations A certain kind of passionate and rhetoricall exclamations made vnto the dead concerning some notable euents happened vnto the Church in generall or the parties themselues in particular This is easily beleeued of them who vse to reade the Greeke Fathers which are full of such eiaculations in their affectionate Discourses And that their passages are no prayers this is an argument 1 Eliens resp ad Apolog. pag. 42. Because there is not any of all these Fathers when they treat of prayer as it is their vsuall theme of set purpose and handle all the obiects and kindes therof that euer mention one syllable of this prayer to Saints This is an answere will neuer be taken away by any of your side Now if your Priests tooke an hint hereby to erect Masses for the 2 Vide Epist Vratislauiens apud Sâ—â—ltetum Annal. decad 1. p. 150 dead I hope you know they loose nothing by the bargaine Pap. You likewise contemne and deride the Reliques of the Saints which are shewed preserued and adored in our Churches Prot. We are so farre from contemning any thing in this kinde that did wee knowe them to bee true reliques and no impostures we should honour them more then you doe to wit 1 K. Iames preface monit with an honourable and Christian buriall Wee heare indeed that there were of old 2 August de moribus Ecclesiae some Christians that attributed too much to the reliques of the Martyrs but we heare from the same