Imprimatur Feb. 13. 1689. Carolus Alston R. P. D. Hen. Episc Lond. Ã sacris Protestant Certainty Or A Short TREATISE Shewing how a PROTESTANT May be well Assured of the ARTICLES OF HIS FAITH Let every Man be fully Assured in his own Mind Rom. 14.5 LONDON Printed for Henry Mortlock at the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard and at the White-Hart in Westminster-Hall 1689. Protestant Certainty Or a short TREATISE Shewing how a PROTESTANT May be assured of the Articles of his FAITH ALthough I doubt not but every real Christian is well perswaded in his own Mind of the Truth of that Evangelical Doctrine taught by our Blessed Saviour and his Holy Apostles which is indispensibly to be believed in order to his Salvation Yet seeing that in these times there is abroad so great a paroxism and fermentation of Dispute about the Certainty of Faith and the means whereby it my be attained and such endeavours used by some Men to unsettle us therein It will be our Wisdom to recollect and consider well of the Grounds which we have gone upon that we may be the better able to hold fast the form of sound of Words that which is good our Faith and Confidence and our Profession of it without wavering unto the End. According as we are Exhorted 1 Thess 5.21 2 Tim. 1.13 Heb. 3.6.10.23 By firmness of Assent and constancy of Profession notwithstanding all the force and fraud whereby we are or may be assaulted And this the rather because our Faith is Precious and a Treasure the keeping whereof is of infinite Concernment to our Souls and because we have been forewarned by Christ and his Apostles that there should come Wolves in Sheeps Cloathing false Prophets pretending infallible Revelation from God false Apostles pretending Mission and Commission from Christ False Teachers bringing in privily damnable Heresies Men of corrupt Minds resisting the Truth Reprobates concerning the Faith and of this sort are they that creep into Houses and lead Captive silly Women laden with Sins led away with divers Lusts ever learning and never able to come unto the knowledg of the Truth Matth. 7.15 Ch. 24.3.6 8. Against such Men we have seen many worthy and learned Champions of the Truth enter the Lists being raised up by God to be helpers of our Faith and to contend earnestly for that Faith which was once delivered unto the Saints And although their Antagonists have used all the slights of cunning Wrestlers stripping and oiling themselves by superficial and slippery Representations like false Arms that their Adversaries might not know where to have them where to assault them or where to fasten their hold upon them and Proteus like transforming themselves into all Shapes that if possible they might twist themselves out of their Gripe and Grasp yet have they been so effectually handled by them that one would think that were they capable of any impressions from truth or shame they would either have come over or at least have given over before this time Both sides in making their appeals to the Readers do seem to allow us a judgment of discerning both the cause and their defence at least for our own private Safety and Satisfaction But yet they will be understood with this difference The one will allow you to use your Eyes until you have chosen their Side but then you must resign them lest you should chance to see whither they lead you but the other exhort you to keep your Eyes still in your Heads and to make the best use of them you can for your own satisfaction and security that you are fairly dealt withal and not betrayed into Error and Perdition which is certainly the most ingenuous Method of the two and most becoming a good Cause and a good Conscience The Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles is that Faith which all Christians make Profession to believe and they question not but it is the Word of God and therefore infallibly true seeing God is Truth it self and cannot lye But it is much Controverted whether this Doctrine be all contained in the Holy Scriptures or some of it transmitted to these times by oral Tradition or by some other way And seeing we Protestants do profess that all the Articles of our present Faith are contained in the Holy Scriptures as the Doctrine taught by Christ and his Holy Apostles let us sit down and calmly consider with our selves what assurance we have of these and then come to take into consideration those other Articles which are offered to us some other way In both which Inquiries we may receive much Assistance from what hath been publickly offered to us by the Writings of excellent and Learned Men. And I think if we can make out to our selves but these two things we shall have a good Certainty of the Truth of what we believe as all may who have the use of Reason I and will make use of it as they ought 1. That the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God revealed by him and committed to Writing by the infallible Guidance of the Holy-Ghost and contain the Doctrine of Christ his Holy Prophets and Apostles 2. That all the Articles of Faith which we Protestants do believe and profess are recorded in the Holy Scriptures as taught by Christ his Holy Prophets and Apostles and there contained either in express Words or in Principle from which they may be firmly deduced and concluded But before we come to consider these Particulars I shall observe two or three things for our more clear Proceeding and distinguish 1. Between the kinds of Certainty There is a certainty of the thing or Object which is here in the Doctrine believed or the Fides qua creditur and consists in its immutable Truth founded on God's Immutable Verity There is also a Certainty of the Person or Subject which is the firmness of the assent given unto that certain Doctrine of Faith on cogent Arguments and exists in the Person of him that Believes As for Instance That Jesus Christ came into the World to save Sinners is a Truth certain in it self even before we hear of it But it is not certain unto us till we do know it certainly to be true This last is called Subjective Certainty and this it is which we are now chiefly inquiring after 2. Distinguish between this subjective Certainty or the Certainty of the Assent and the Kind of the Assent given The Assent for its kind may be an Assent of divine Faith caused by a divine Testimony and yet this Faith will have more or less Certainty in it according to the greater or less Certainty which we have of the Divine Testimony that the matter of it is true and that God doth testifie it 3. We must distinguish also between the Certainty or assurance given to another rational Man by discoursive Argument and that further Certainty which every faithful Soul hath particularly within it self For the Arguments causing them are differing and shall be considered
from thence returning to recover as much as we can of that which we laid aside to try the Experiment And lastly for the new Demonstrations which some have lately advanced to prove the infallibility of Oral Tradition from the impossibility of its miscarrying and that what is this day declared for Apostolical Doctrine must needs have been always so declared because it cannot be imagined that those who delivered it one day for such should have forgotten what they had heard but the day before or that they would report that to others which they had not heard themselves This I say doth require and needs more Charity and good nature in an Adversary than it is like to meet withal out of their own Communion and but rarely there And really the Demonstration is so extraordinary that did not we see it made use of by themselves we might rather have supposed it to have been hatched by the heat and sweat of some Man's Brain who was no well-wisher to the Doctrines which it is brought in favour of But however that be I am confident that seven Cities will hardly contend for the honour of his Birth who had the felicity to be the first Inventor and for our selves we shall desire to be well assured not only of the goodness and infallibility of their Memories and of their Honesty who all along delivered these things but also of their due attention to and right apprehension of the things which they heard And also that Men of so good Memories might not likewise have so good Inventions or at least some of them as to light upon some private opinions of their own which they might impart unto others and which might insensibly in tract of time be spread abroad and so far liked by the generality that for the very agreableness of them to their Minds and conveniences for their Interests they might be worthy to be ascribed either to some extraordinary Spirit in the Author if known or else to the Apostles themselves And this be spoken without any worse reflection upon their Memories or Fidelity which have been shewn to be a very insufficient enumeration of the possible yea and probable causes of a miscarriage in Oral Tradition But this demonstration has convinced Protestants of this at least that as far as this is confided in Demonstration at present runs very low in the Church of Rome And to keep our Country People from being overmuch convinced by it we shall need only to put them to read a leaf in Chaucer where they may perceive that our Language notwithstanding daily use and Tradition is so much altered from what it was three hundred Years ago that what was then ordinarily spoken is now hardly to be understood But wherever the Romanists shall at length agree to place this their Infallibility nay though every one of their Communion might have it who would but pretend to it let them make the best use of it they can for their own private assurance and comfort But if they will needs make it Argumentative to convince others of the Divine Authority of what they deliver we hope they will first prove to us such their Infallibility by clear promises in Scripture or testimonies from Scripture or else by universal Tradition of the Churches of Christ concerning it or else shew us some unquestionable works of divine Power wrought in Confirmation I say not of their Doctrines but of their own Infallibility in testifying that the Doctrines were taught by Christ and his Apostles which is pretended to have accompanied the Tradition through all Ages and therefore the Miracles must run parallel with it and accompany it in a constant Succession to be the Credential Letters of the successive deliverers and reporters to the Men of each particular Generation For it seems a very unreasonable thing for any Disputant to require such a Postulatum to be granted him by his Antagonist that whatsoever he shall say is not only true but infallibly true which is such a begging of the Question as shews how poorly he is provided to give Men a just satisfaction and is as much as to say He is resolved never to dispute about any thing which he proposes I will add no more but only this upon the whole Master That while the Romanists do offer us more Certainty for the Scriptures being the Word of God than we need They cannot perform to us so much Certainty for those unscriptural Doctrines as we do justly require and expect before we entertain them So prone are some Men to dream of Supererogating while in truth they fall shamefully short of doing their necessary Duty FINIS A Catalogue of some Books Printed for Henry Mortlack at the Phoenix in St. Paul's Church-yard A Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion being a Vindication of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury's Relation of a Conference c. from the pretended Answer by T. C. Wherein the true Grounds of Faith are cleared and the False discovered the Church of England vindicated from the Imputation of Schism and the most important particular Controversie between us and those of the Church of Rome throughly examined By Edward Stillingfleet D. D. and Dean of St. Paul's Folio The second Edition Origines Britannicae Or the Antiquity of the British Churches with a Preface concerning some pretended Antiquities relating to Britain in vindication of the Bishop of St. Asaph By Edward Stillingfleet D. D. Dean of St. Pauls Folio The Rule of Faith Or an Answer to the Treatise of Mr. J. S. Entituled Sure Footing c. By John Tillotson D. D. To which is adjoyned A reply to Mr. J. S.'s third Appendix c. By Edward Stillingfleet D. D. Octavo A Letter to Mr. G giving a true Account of a late Conference at the D. of Pauls A second Letter to Mr. G. in answer to two Letters lately published concerning the Conference at the D. of Pauls Veteres Vindicati In an Expostulary Letter to Mr. Sclater of Putny upon his Consensus Veterum c. wherein the absurdity of his Method and the weakness of Reasons are shewn his false Aspersions upon the Church of England are wiped off and his Faith concerning the Eucharist proved to be that of the Primitive Church Together with Animadversions on Dean Boileu's French translation of and Remarks upon Bertram An Answer to the Compiler of Nubes Testium Wherein is shewn That Antiquity in relation to the Points in Controversie set down by him did not for the first five hundred Years Believe Teach and Practice as the Church of Rome doth at present Believe Teach and Practice together with a Vindication of Veteres Vindicati from the late weak and dis-ingenuous Attempts of the Author of Transubstantion defended by the Author of the Answer to Mr. Sclater of Putney A Letter to Father Lewis Sabran Jesuit in answer to his Letter to a Peer of the Church of England wherein the Postscript to the Answer to the Nubes Testium is vindicated and Father Sabran's Mistakes farther discovered A second Letter to Father Lewis Sabran Jesuite in answer to his Reply A Vindication of the Principles of the Author of the Answer to the Compiler of Nubes Testium in Answer to a late pretended Letter from a Dissenter to the Divines of the Church of England Scripture and Tradition compared in a Sermon Preached at Guild-Hall Chappel Nov. 27. 1687. By Edward Stillingfleet D. D. Dean of St. Pauls the second Edition A discourse concerning the Nature and Grounds of the Certainty of Faith in Answer to J. S. his Catholick Letters by Edward Stillingfleet D. D. Dean of St Pauls The Council of Trent examined and disproved by Catholick Tradition in the main Points in Controversie between us and the Church of Rome with a particular Account of the Times and Occasions of introducing them Part I. To which a Preface is prefixed concerning the true Sense of the Council of Trent and the Notion of Transubstantiation By Ed. Stillingfleet D. D. Dean of St. Pauls
apart Now we assent unto all the Articles of our Faith by a Divine Faith and this Faith is firm and certain subjective But the Romanists pretend to give an infallible subjective Certainty of them and so by out-bidding us invite Men over into their Communion And it is to be considered whether our subjective Certainty be sufficient for saving Faith or an infallible subjective Certainty be required to it As for our parts we do not at all doubt but that God will infallibly in the event bring all his Elect unto true Faith and by it unto Salvation though he do not make them all infallibly perswaded of it in this Life A Subjective Certainty of what we believe is sufficient for adhering unto Jesus Christ and Obedience the Fruit thereof and for our own Comfort and therefore to bring us to Salvation without being infallibly certain Subjective of all the things which we do believe And one cannot readily give an account why any Men should so covet to be infallibly certain of their Belief and yet in the mean while take up and content themselves with a conjectural Certainty or certainty of Hope only concerning their own Salvation unless it were because it is the Interest of some Men to have others fully perswaded of their Doctrines of Purgatory Superogation Infallibility c. that so they may lead them by a blind Belief and Obedience to what they please but to keep them in the mean while uncertain of their Salvation that they may the more willingly take off their Masses Merits and Pardons and such like Commodities in barter for their Earthly Gold and Silver But let us come now to consider the first Proposition and how we are assured of it which is That the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God revealed by Him and committed to Writing by the infallible Guidance of the Holy-Ghost and contain the Doctrine of Christ and of his Holy Prophets and Apostles And that we may take our Rise a little backward That there is a God and he infallible in Knowledge and Veracity and that he Created Man after his own Image are Truths which the World hath been so long in quiet Possession of that I think I may take them for granted at least for the present and then it is a thing most agreeable to the Wisdom Goodness and Justice of God to believe that seeing God doth expect that Man should know worship and obey him according as Man's dependence on him and the Preparations which he hath laid in for it in the Fabrick and Furniture of his Nature do require and it seems necessary that he should have made some sufficient Promulgation of his Will and Pleasure unto Man as a perfect and certain Rule of his Faith and Practice according to which he may take an account of him hereafter For which purpose the natural Reason of Man in this corrupt Estate is not a sufficient Rule as woful Experience teacheth and therefore it was necessary that God should make some further Revelation of his Mind unto us to clear up and correct our natural Notions and to discover what further he doth require us to believe and do in order to Salvation And for the certainty of such Rule it is very consentaneous to the Wisdom of God in this shortness of Man's Life and multitude of the Persons concerned to commit such Rule to Writing rather than to intrust it to the conveyance of oral Tradition which all just and wise Law-givers have found it necessary to decline But however a revealed Rule there must be and there is nothing in the World which can with any Reason or Probability lay claim to it but only the Holy Scriptures and this they do accordingly For we often find them challenging to themselves this Prerogative Thus saith the Lord and I the Lord have spoken it Jesus answered and said and he taught the People saying and all Scripture is given by divine Inspiration Holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost For tho' all the Books of Scripture were not then written when the Apostles wrote that yet all the necessary Articles of Faith were and many more Which claim had it not been a true one it would certainly have been the greatest Forgery Usurpation and Blasphemy against God himself that is Imaginable and then we might have rationally expected that the great and good God would have been so Jealous of his own Honour and Man's Salvation as in all this time by some signal Act of his Providence to disown it and discover the Imposture But since he hath not done any such thing but on the contrary hath made it his Work by his wonderful Providence to maintain and preserve it for so many Hundreds of Years and accompanied the Preaching of it for the Conversion of Souls unto himself and the Reformation of the World of Mankind What else can be thought but that he thereby owns it to be his Certainly such a Proof as this concerning any Man's Book would be a violent Presumption that he were the true Author of it and he would be thought a very unreasonable Man who should but call it into question But we have greater Certainty than this for the Matters contained in the Holy Scriptures I mean the Heavenliness of the Matter the Majesty of the Stile the Harmony of the Parts the Consent of the several Writers the design of the whole to lay Man low and to advance God's Glory in Man's Salvation These and such like Beams of divine Light are so agreeable to the Notion of God written in our Hearts that both of them do plainly appear to have been written by the same Finger of God and the one to confirm explain and perfect the other Which Heavenly Characters and claim have been owned and admitted and the certainty of the Holy Scriptures being the Word of God revealed by him and penned by the infallible direction of the Holy Ghost been thereupon believed and attested by all the Churches of Christ in all Ages notwithstanding other differences that were and are among them unanimoully by so many wise holy and learned Men in a matter which was of infinite concernment to them to be well assured of and wherein they could neither have any design nor opportunity of combining together for the deceiving of others Now this unanimous Testimony of the Church although it be but a humane Testimony and not infallible yet being corroborated by the aforesaid Considerations it is sufficient to give any reasonable Man a satisfaction and an assurance that the Holy Scriptures were revealed by God and penned by his infallible Guidance as great as any other matter of Fact and this is such can at this distance by humane testimony be capable of yea and a far greater For there is no Effect wrought by any Man that can verge forth so many Rays from the nature of the Act or thing done pointing at and singling out its Cause and owning its Original but that it
Bag together It seems very unworthy of the whole Blessed Trinity to assert that the Holy Ghost that holy Dove which was wont to inhabit only those Candida tecta of pure and sanctified Souls and to move and inspire only Holy Men of God 2 Pet. 1.21 under the mosaick Dispensation should now in times of a more plentiful effusion of its Grace and Holiness under the Gospel take up its residence in and give out Oracles from such impure Sinks of Sin Error and Ignorance as many of those who have pretended to this infallible Guidance are confessed to have been That the Holy Spirit who is so apt to be grieved by the resisting of his Motions and even by corrupt Communication Eph. 4.29 should digest things so contrary to his holy Nature and not withdraw from such a Soul Or can it be imagined that the Holy Jesus would ever by his Promise oblige the Holy Spirit to such an Office And for those few others among them who were holy and good Men we must be well assured that they were true Bishops but whether they were duly elected and ordained or so much as Baptised their Doctrine of the Priests Intention being necessary to a Sacrament makes it impossible for us to know and for one that is not so qualified such Assistance is not claimed or pretended to And as for Councils being infallible the claim allows it only to General Councils Which certainly may best of any pretend unto it from the Promise as being supposed to be the universal Church represented and thereby also impowered to conclude all by its Determinations But was there ever a true General Council besides that at Jerusalem Acts 15. whose Canons are recorded in the Holy Scriptures of which we are well assured that it was infallibly guided in decreeing as St. Luke was also in recording of its Canons but that Council tells us nothing of a successive Infallibility in the Church of Rome nor any thing of these its Doctrines And for all other Councils be they what they will all their decisions were to be guided by the Holy Scriptures and not to be received if contrary thereunto as the best and most ancient of them have professed and practised and so did the Holy Fathers own concerning them and acknowledge concerning their own Writings never pretending to give or admit of any infallible rule of Faith distinct from the Holy Scriptures And if they did not pretend to it but rather disclaim it we have little reason to believe others who pretend to it for them but rather to suspect that they do therein but serve their own private Interest And if we do but well consider the Pretence we shall find it clogged with so many Uncertainties that it can never make its way through them to give any tolerable Security to particular Christians which yet it is now made use of for 1. For first a private Christian may be convinced of Truths delivered in the Holy Scriptures and firmly believe them and yield Obedience to the Commands therein contained and be assured that in so doing he shall not fail to attain Salvation and not only morally and rationally assured but also have a Divine supernatural Faith thereof wrought in his Heart by the Gift of God and the Operation of the Holy Ghost as was shewed before Now either of these Convictions or Beliefs do bind the Man not to let go those Truths which he hath so believed whereof Christ will one day take an Account how they have been kept by him as he did of the Churches Revel 3.8.10 And therefore he must neither through Carelessness lose them nor through Cowardise deny them through Treachery betray them nor through Apostacy renounce or disclaim them Wherefore I see not how one that hath so believed the Truth can resign up himself to others and compromise his Faith to believe whatsoever they shall offer to him Since thereby he would trust his eternal Concernments in the Hands of Men foregoing that sure hold which God had given him on the sure word of Prophecy to which he ought to bind himself as unto a Rock or Mast But were that Lawful for him to resign up his Faith to the Decisions of a general Council yet before he could do it prudentially it were fit he should have good Assurance given him 1. That the Council whose Canons are offered to his Faith was really a General Council and duly elected by all that were to be represented and concluded by it But if he must suspend till the Church of Rome be agreed on a just list of general Councils I believe he may wait till Dooms-day for at present they fluctuate between Eight and one and twenty as they do for the Notes of the Church between Costerus his three and Bozius his Hundred 2 That the major number of Suffrages were always for the truth and had the infallible Guidance on their side and therefore that they were never contradicted by the greater number in any other such general Council and that the Canons made were the judgment of that major Part and not of the lesser 3. That these Canons which are now offered to us are the genuine Canons which that major part did then make and subscribe unto and not since counterfeited or corrupted and that here are all For Bellarmine and Baronius we see make no scruple to cashier a Canon out of an admitted Council if it be not for their turn upon pretence that the Pope consented not to that Canon though he did to all the rest and also that a like divine Providence hath watched over these Canons as hath done over the Holy Scriptures And yet further if the Romanists think by this Argument to produce in Christians an infallible Assent of a Divine Faith unto these Doctrines then the Priest who brings them to Mens Ears had need not only to be infallible in receiving and delivering them but also give Evidence that he is so by some unquestionable Miracle And yet after all this unless the faculty of the hearer be infallibly guided to assent unto it he will not believe infallibly for we find that many of the Jews did not so much as believe although they heard our Saviours Doctrine and saw his mighty Works All which and many more that might be named are so great Incertainties that they are sufficient to deterr any prudent Christian from ever parting with his present Security for a new one which is thus attended tho it were Lawful for him to do it But how much better is it a for a well-grounded Christian to keep his sure Footing on the Terra firma of Holy Scriptures than to commit himself to so great Uncertainty Which seems to be an adventure not much unlike the Methods of the new Philosopher who would perswade us to strip our selves of all the prejudices of Faith Sense Reason yea and of our very first notions that we may the better swim unto that rocky Truth That we have a Being and