Catholic Theology Plain Pure Peaceable

Yes; the Devils believe all this.

Quest. 8. And may we not exhort them to Repent, and Turn to God, and so to believe in Christ as to receive him, and give up themselves unto him?

Yes, you may exhort them: but they cannot do it of themselves.

Must we exhort them to nothing but what they can do of themselves? Quest. 9. Is not Exhortation God's means to bring them to Repentance and Faith in Christ?

Yes; I deny none of this; But that which you abuse men by, 1. Is bidding the ungodly pray, when the prayers of the wicked are abominable to God. And 2. In that you do not first call them to believe and come to Christ, before they do any other duty.

1. You granted me before that hearing and considering and searching the Scripture, and other things named, are to be done before Believing in Christ, by those that are yet unbelievers. He that believeth that there is a God, must behave himself accordingly in obeying God. 2. Men that believe in Christ but by Assent, that he is truly the Christ, and the Gospel true, and that there is a life to come, surely, if they love themselves, must do somewhat in order to a fuller Justifying Belief. 3. And are you so much against the very Law of Nature, worse than the Seamen that bid Jonas call upon his God, worse than the Ninevites, and than almost all mankind, as that you would have no men pray but godly men? Did not Peter bid Simon Magus repent and pray, Acts 8. And doth not God command the wicked, Isa. 55. to seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near? Should no graceless man ask Wisdom of God, who giveth liberally to all men, and upbraideth not, James 1. and giveth his Spirit to them that ask it? Must they not pray for Grace, Faith and Repentance, that want them? 4. But yet let me remember you, that we use not to exhort men to draw nigh to God with the lips alone; nor to pray without Desire. For Praying is but Desiring, and presenting that Desire to God. And when we bid men pray for Grace, we bid them desire it. And so bid them Repent and Pray, Believe and Pray; for Praying is a Returning act; And if we may not call them to pray, we may not call them to Turn to God. Mr. Eliot in New England teacheth the Indians another lesson, whose great work is to call them to pray, and the title that his Converts have, is the Praying Indians.

But without faith it is impossible to please God, or do anything which is not abominable to him.

1. But it is not impossible for one to have a common and temporary faith, and another a saving faith. 2. And one that believeth that God is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and this not savingly, may yet less displease God, and be less abominable than he was before without it: and also may do something that tendeth as a means, to that Faith by which he may please him.

1. A total unbeliever, and a wicked man as wicked, whose prayers are animated with wicked principles and ends, utterly displeaseth God, and his prayers and all such actions are abominable.

2. A convinced wicked man that doth somewhat from self-love for his own salvation, and specially one that is not far from the Kingdom of God, in the use of common grace, is less abominable, and pleaseth God secundum quid, or less displeaseth him, or seeketh that grace with which he may please him: And Christ is said to love such a man; Mark 10. 21.

3. But only the true Penitent believer so pleaseth him as to be an Adopted heir of life.

I Am greatly scandalized by a Sermon that you lately preached in London, in which you said (as many good people assure me) that the difference between the Protestants and the Papists was little more than in mere words: The City ringeth of it, and it is a common scandal, and offense.

Seeing you heard it not, you are unfit to receive satisfaction about it, save only by telling you that the Report is false, and that which I said of some particular Controversies only, they seign to be spoken of all, or most, or others: But of this when you bring one that heard it, I will give you a further account.

However I perceive by your words and writings, that you extenuate our difference about Mans Merits: And what is there that we more differ from the Papists about, than Merits; and from the Arminians, than their placing our Righteousness in our own Believing and Repenting? Is there anything that more evacuateth the Righteousness of Christ? and destroyeth the honor of free grace, and justly entitleth them to the name of Antichristian?

Forget not that before I further discourse with you, I premise, that I speak not a word to justify or excuse the Papists in general, or any one of them in particular, for any unsound word about this subject, nor to abate your just dislike of any of their errors: And before we proceed, I desire your promise that you will hear and speak with as little partiality, passion, and unrighteousness as you can, (for to lay by all, I cannot expect,) and that you will be true to what evidence of truth shall appear to you.

Do you think that I love not Truth and Sobriety? Why do you so suspect me?

Alas, how strange are our hearts oft to themselves! and how much of our own ignorance, temerity, passion and unjust partiality is there, in many a cause which we (sinfully) father upon God, and his Truth and Grace! But in order to our better understanding, I ask your answer to these Questions.

Quest. 1. Had you rather it did truly appear to you, that the Papists and Arminians do less differ from us, than most conceive, or not▪

I had rather they did differ less, and if it be so, I had rather know it than not; But I would not hear that it is so, when it is not.

Take heed that your heart deceive you not, and that you be not averse to know the truth, lest it should cross your own and other men's former censures.

Quest. 2. If it prove true, that the difference is less than most take it to be, is he that falsely aggravateth it to the procuring of unjust odium, or he that truly openeth and extenuateth it, the more to be commended or approved?

If you have the Truth on your side, no doubt but you do well, because Love and Peace also are on your side, and our fault is great that quarrel with you.

Quest. 3. Do you think it is justice in any Papists to charge the crude unsound expressions of particular Writers, on the Protestant party as their Doctrine? (as Mr. Parker, Mr. Patrick, Mr. Sherlock are blamed for doing by the Non-conformists:) or for us to do the same by them?

No: but where their Doctors agree, we may go further.

Quest. 4. Do you think that the bare name of Merit, is cause enough to accu • e any of false Doctrine, who meaneth by it nothing that is unsound? or that the name is reason enough for sharp accusations of such men?

I am willing to difference the controversy de nomine from that de re, and not to make a greater matter of a name than there is cause: But yet ill names do tend to introduce ill Doctrines.

Quest. 5. Do you hold that well-doing hath any Reward from God?

It is not vain▪ It hath that blessing freely given which is improperly called a Reward.

It is figuratively called Wages: And yet this is the commonest Scripture title, (and cannot you bear with God's Word?) But it is not improperly called Praemium a Reward: that is, A benefit given to one for well doing. Indeed if with the new Atheistical Philosophers, you take God but for a Physical Motor, and his Government, and Laws, and Judgment to be all but Motion, improperly and popularly so named, then you may say the same of his Rewards and Punishments.

Well: you know that Protestants deny not Reward.

Quest. 6. Is not Reward formally Related to some well-doing as the moral aptitude of the Receiver?

Yes: it is such a Relation formally.

Quest. 7. Are not they then of your judgment as to the Matter, who hold Merit in no other sense, than as it is [Rewardable well-doing] or [a Moral aptitude for Reward?]

I deny not that with such I differ but in the Name.

Quest. 8. Do not you know that it is the common usage of the word, in Civil and Ecclesiastical Writers, to take Meritum and Praemium so far for Relatives, as that omne Praemium est meriti premium; though omne meritum be not Praemii meritum. Reward and Rewardableness are thus meant as related.

It's true that Meritum is sometime taken less properly for any Dueness; • s a man is said to Merit his Fathers Legacy, that is, hath right to it: sometimes it is taken for any Moral Congruity: sometimes in malam partem for Commerit of punishment: and sometimes for a fault itself. As Calvin noteth on the word. But still every Reward is formally related to Merit or Rewardableness.

But (not only our late Lectures against Popery, but) many Protestants say, that It is not Merit, unless there be an Equality of it in worth to the Reward; And therefore their Arguments against Merit are (as there). 1. The Reward is merely of Mercy and Grace: therefore not of Merit. 2. It is God's Gift: therefore not deserved. 3. It is by Inheritance. 4. We owe all to God; and therefore cannot Merit. 5. Our works are imperfect. 6. We need pardon. 7. Our works are not equal in Goodness and Value to eternal life. 8. We cannot recompense God for what we have. 9. We cannot profit God. 10. Grace and debt are opposite. 11. We may not Trust our works (faith or love) therefore they merit not. So that the question is but of such a Merit as by equal worth maketh the Reward due in point of Justice.

All these reasons sufficiently confute Merit in point of Commutative Justice: But they go upon a mere mistake, as if this were the state of the controversy between us and the Roman Church, or they took Merit in any such sense; unless it be some rare ignorant fellow (such as Romaeus seemeth by some words, and some few others): But do you grant that you differ but de nomine and not de re with those that take not Merit in any such sense, but mean as you do de re ipsa?

That I must needs grant.

Before we proceed then, let me briefly and plainly open the case.

1. God standeth related to Man, 1. As the Owner of us and all things: 2. As our Rector by Laws: 3. As our Benefactor.

2. To Merit, 1. Of a Proprietor or Owner, must be giving him somewhat to his gain or pleasure, for the worth of which he is bound by Commutative Justice, to requite us. 2. To Merit of a Ruler is to do that which he is bound to Reward in Distributive Justice, to perform his Rewarding promises, or at least for the Ends of Government. 3. To merit of a mere Benefactor is no more than not to be uncapable of his Gift, which is improperly called Merit.

3. All our controversy is about the second: God as our Governor ruleth us 1. At first by the Law of Innocency, 2. By the Law of Grace; and that 1. As delivered to the World in Adam and Noah, 2. Or to the Jews with the addition of the Mosaical Law of Works, 3. Or as delivered in the Gospel by Christ and his Spirit.

4. To dream of that Merit from God as a proprietor in point of Commutative Justice which our Arguments militate against, is tantum non madness: and is not the Doctrine of the Church of Rome (that I know of.)

5. To assert our Meriting of God as Rector by the Law of Innocency is dotage. And I know none that hold that we do so (by ourselves, though some hold that we do so per alium.)

6. Nor do any but Jews that I know of assert Merit after the Jewish Law of Works.

7. But they that hold that Christ hath Merited and freely Given a Conditional pardon and right to life to all mankind, even on condition of a penitent believing acceptance of the free gift, and this by a Law of Grace, which we must now be Ruled and Judged by, do hold that this Law hath its Reward, and man's acts accordingly their worth or Merit.

8. This Merit in point of Distributive Justice, is to be conceived of and defined according to the Regiment which it respecteth, which is God's Paternal Government of freely Redeemed sinners, by a Law of Grace freely pardoning and saving them if they will believe and accept the gift. So that it is only Meriting under a Law made by a Governing Owner and Benefactor, for the sapiential orderly disposal of a free Gift. As a Father will teach a Child Obedience by telling him that he will give him Gold or Meat, if he will thankfully accept it.

9. It is not true therefore that it is only a free Gift: For as it is a free Gift in regard of the Value and quoad rem, so that Gift is a Reward in regard of the Order of Conveyance, and tenor of the Donation, and the moral capacity of the Receiver, which men call Merit.

10. That we cannot (per impotentiam voluntariam moralem) perform the Condition, without Divine Grace, is nothing against the Tenour of the Donation, nor the nature of the Relation of a Reward.

11. But Reward and Merit in this case are furthest from that of Commutation, and leaveth least to man to boast of.

12. Yet may he truly glory in the effects of Grace with thankfulness to God, as Paul did, 2 Cor. 1. 11, 12. that in simplicity and godly sincerity, &c. and 2 Tim. 4. 8. that he had fought a good fight, &c. And he may justify his sincerity with Job, chap. 13. 15, 16. And Christ will say, Well done good and faithful servant, &c. Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he knoweth me, (saith the Lord,) &c. And Paul would rather die, than any should make his glorying void, as to his free preaching the Gospel.

13. And it is very false that in this sense a Christian is not bound to trust to his Faith, Repentance, Love, Obedience, only in their own place and office assigned them by God; but no further: As we may trust to the Bible, Preacher, Parents, so to hearing, reading, praying, &c. for their proper part: else we shall take them all to be in vain. Are they Means, or no Means? If Means, they must be judged and trusted as they are, and no further: And people are not to be frightened from necessary truth, by putting an ill sense upon words.

14. And though here be nothing of Commutative Justice, yet there is that which Justifieth the name of Wages used analogically in the Scriptures: Because Love in a Father maketh a Childs interest to be partly his own; and the Pleasure of his Will, is that to God who is Love itself and delighteth in his Children's good, which Profit is to a human proprietor.

And now I will proceed with you in my Questions.

Quest. 9. Do you think that Papists or Arminians do believe, that either Man, or Angel, or Christ can merit of God by Profiting him, in Commutative Justice? Or that it is possible for any creature to have any Good which is not the free gift of God? supposing man a free agent in his duty.

I have hitherto thought that they so judge: Why else talk they of Merit of Congruity and Condignity, and that say some, ex dignitate, yea, and ex proportione operum?

It seemeth you think not that you hold all this yourself. Let us try.

1. By Merit, they still mean a subordinate Merit, which supposeth the Benefit 1. To be God's Gift, 2. Merited by Christ.

How prove you that?

It is the express words of the Trent Council de Justif. Can. 8,

And Anath. C. 26. they thus open their Doctrine of Merit:

Yes, this ridiculous Doctrine of our Meriting by God's Grace and Christ's Merits I have often read and heard of in them.

It is somewhat bold to deride that which Scripture, Reason and all the ancient Churches do accord in. That Christ merited that we should subordinately merit, that is, be Rewardable, as before explained, hath no less consent. And Contra Rationem nemo fobrius: Contra Scripturam nemo Christianus: Contra Ecclesiam nemo Catholicus.

But if the Council of Trent deny that Justification is at all merited, what is meant by the Papists Merit of Congruity▪

II. I think you hold not only as much of that as they, but (do you think it?) somewhat more.

1. As much: For 1. De nomine some of them deny that this is any merit at all, as well as you. And their Council asserteth it not (that I see.) 2. De re: They mean the same thing by Merit of Congruity, which Mr. Rogers, Bolton, Hooker and the rest call Preparation for Christ or for Conversion; And so the Council of Trent calls it: Which maketh a man a more Congruous Receiver of Grace than the unprepared, but doth not prove God obliged to give it him as a Reward. And do not you hold all this de re?

2. Yea and more: For the Council of Trent taketh Justification for Remission of sin and sanctification together, as after Faith: And so hold that Faith itself doth not merit Justification. But do not you hold more, de re, that Faith hath a flat promise of Justification (which is true)? And so God hath as it were obliged his fidelity to give it? which is it they mean by Merit.

But what is their Merit of Condignity then? Is not that abominable?

III. 1. You know that the words [Worthy] and [Worthiness] are used in the Scripture? Bear therefore with Scripture words. 2. And de re, they mean not all one thing, or use not the same expressions at least: Some (and many) with Scot •• say, that it is ex pacto, from God's Promise that the Merit and dueness do result; or from God's Decree and free acceptation.

I am sure your own friends say, that [These are few, and too modest, and indeed half Heretics for their pains.]

I love not to persuade the World that men mean worse than they speak: What you mean by [too modest] I know not; but it is not true either that they are few, or taken by their Church for half heretics. And truth is well served by nothing but truth. But the author you mean, doth well in not opposing those that are of this mind, nor those that deny all merit of congruity; and in acknowledging that such there are. He is a stranger to the Popish Doctors who either taketh the Scotists themselves to be few (or judged half heretics) or else that it is they only that are of that opinion: of which more anon.

But what mean they that say it is ex Dignitate, if not as profiting God?

1. I tell you they almost all conclude against commutative merit, and who is so mad as to think that we profit God? 2. I tell you that you may also ask what the Scripture meaneth by worthiness; And how else will you translate 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 but worthy or deserving? And what is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 but Mer •• 3. They mean [the Moral aptitude of Well-doing for the promised Reward:] And do you deny that?

But some of them say plainly that it is of Debt?

Yes: they oft say with Augustine that God by his promise hath made himself as a Debtor.

But some say that Merit of condignity is ex proportione operum to the reward.

It's impossible to know what every man meaneth, and impossible to make all men speak congruously: But as far as I can discern, most of them that so speak, mean, that the most wise God doth all things in order and harmony, and as he suiteth natural causes and effects, so he doth gracious ones: And that his free grace putteth into man's holiness, a suitableness to the Reward, which is but a suitableness of the habit and act to the object: And that he that Loved God much shall be much happy in that Love, and be much beloved by him: And so every Saint enjoy God according to the proportion of his Love or holiness; and Glory be varied according to the degrees of Grace.

This we all hold: But you make them sounder and wiser than they are.

Many of them and us want skill to speak very clearly: Confusion and darkness is found in all our conceptions and expressions so far as we know but in part: Those that you can prove to me are worse, prove it by them. I take this to be the common sense of those few that talk of Meritum ex proportione: For they most commonly disclaim the word equality, and all disclaim it as to commutation: And what else can they mean?

And here I offer you an argument for Reward even in this sense of proportion which all the world cannot answer: supposing that God will freely continue man in life and immortality. If the Reward be essential to or necessarily inseparable from true love and obedience, then true love and obedience have certainly a Reward (and a moral aptitude for that Reward, or a Rewardableness, called Merit:) But the former is certain. For 1. To Love God is the souls health, pleasure and felicity itself (including the Knowledge of him;) And perfect Knowledge and love is perfect happiness. 2. To obey God is formally to do that which Pleaseth him pleasedly because it pleaseth him: And to Please God is man's ultimate End and Reward. 3. It is impossible but that God, by his perfection, should Love and be pleased with everything that is Good according to the proportion of its goodness; and therefore with the Love and obedience of his Children. So that all those arguments of Protestants which well prove Holiness to be Happiness itself, prove the Reward to be essential or inseparable.

If this be all that those few highest Papists mean, then they are but more zealous in commending holiness than the looser sort, as the Religious Preachers with us are: And if this be indeed their meaning, they are unhappy in expressing themselves, or we in understanding them, and our hearers unhappy that upon such misunderstanding are taught to abhor them.

You know 1. That by Justification they mean Remission of sin and Holiness: 2. And that they hold that no works merit, but those that are done by the members of Christ and by his spirit, in love and holiness: 3. And that they merit nothing but what is primarily God's Gift: 4. Nor anything but what is merited by Christ by another sort of merit, to which ours is but subordinate; 5. And that they commonly say that even faith itself doth not merit Justification (or Holiness;) because though it have a Promise of it, and so ex pacto it is due; yet there is in the nature of the things no necessary connection between them: And now what can they mean after all this by condignity ex proportione ▪ operis ad pr • mium, but this which I have described? Holiness is happiness and connected to happiness, in its various degrees.

But some say that they are so Impudent as to say that from the intrinsic worth of the work, setting aside the consideration of the promise, it is meritorious.

1. Their commonest opinion is that the natural Aptitude of Holiness and obedience, and the Promise of God set together make them rewardable (or meritorious as they call it:) which is most certain. God promiseth not his blessings and happiness to men for things evil, or worthless and indifferent. But 2. Some among their Doctors say that Were there no promise Holiness would be Rewardable; that is, that God's perfection proveth that he is Pleased with it and Loveth the holy: 2. And that it is happiness itself as is aforesaid: And as this doth but speak the suitableness of God's Image to be the object of his Love, and of obedience to be the Pleasing of his will; so it seemeth to me only to mean that Were there no Positive supernatural promise, yet the very Law of nature (which is God's first Law) containeth such a signification of his will [that he will love, and bless those that love him and obey him] as is indeed a kind of natural promise.

And it is to be noted that all the Heathen World, who know not the written promise do agree in this as a natural Verity, that God loveth and is pleased with Goodness, love and obedience, and that it shall go well with them that are so qualified. And if we should forget the Papists, and preach to religious people with us, that there is no Goodness in the Divine Nature and Image of God, and in Holy love and obedient fruitful lives, for which God would love or be pleased with such as have them (supposing Redemption and the merits of Christ) anymore than with the wicked, if it were not that he hath promised▪ (as if he had been surprised into a promise, not suited to the nature of the thing,) this would be abhorred by the same professors, who in other words, as it seemeth to be against Popery, will applaud it.

But in all this you must remember, that it is presupposed that man's soul is before made Immortal by God as Creator; and that he might anni ••• late the most holy Creature if he will: But he hath declared that he will not, partly by the Nature of his soul, and partly by his natural and positive revelations: so that it is presupposed that God will continue us men; and then Holiness will be a proportionable Happiness.

But I pray you give me further proof that the Papists mean so well and near us • s you describe the case. Cite me the Authors.

1. You must take nothing for their Religion but what is in their Councils: And you must charge no error on them but what you can prove: For the Accuser is the prover. And I before cited to you the words of the Trent Council.

But I justify not all that they there say: And one passage as it soundeth I greatly abhor; which is, that a Just man doth not venially sin, much less deserve hell in every good work, Can. 11. de Justif. whereas I doubt not but the very culpable defect of Love to God and other holy qualifications defileth our best works with sin: and every sin deserveth some degree of a hell, according to the Law of Innocency: But if they mean, 1. That Good works as such are not sin, 2. Or that our infirmities are not such as to which the Law of Grace threateneth hell and will condemn us; we are then of their mind, but we much mislike their words: For were there not an antecedent desert of hell, and a sinfulness so deserving (though not by an unremediable guilt) there would be no need of pardon. But to speak freely, the Council Doctors seemed not well studied in the doctrine of the Covenants (even Suarez de Legibus, one of the best, is herein short,) and so to speak confusedly of these matters: But they seem mostly to take notice only of the Law of Grace, and because that accepteth sincerity, and condemneth none for mere Infirmities, therefore they thence measure both fault and guilt (which they should not do:) For I find that they still presuppose Redemption and Pardon of sin, in the present case.

But to proceed to their Doctors: Vega q. 4. defineth Merit thus, [Meritum est actio libera, acceptata ad aliquod premium.] And de re, do you deny this?

Davenport thus amendeth it [Meritum de condign • est actio libera ab homine in gratia elicita, qua ex Justitia acceptatur ad premium, &c.] (meaning Justitia promissoris.)

Scotus 1. d. 17. q. 1. &c. will not have it meritorious because is done by grace, but by Divine decree, promise and acceptance. And this he calleth Justice, ex suppositione decreti & promissi: Non igitur ex natura actus oritur obligatio ad premium, saith S. Clara: factâ autem pactione est debitum ex justitia: And thus say the generality of the Scotists.

Yet some will not yield that God is so much as a Promiser lest he be obliged, but only an Assertor: as S. Clara noteth.

Tho. Waldensis and some others deny all merit fitly so called. De sacram. tit. 1.

Eckius, Marsilius and Bellarmine saith S. Clara deny all merit of congruity.

Greg. Arim. 1. d. 17. q. 1. a 2. saith that there is no merit of blessedness by condignity.

Durand 1. d. 27. q. 2. saith there is no merit of condignity with God, nisi largo modo.

So Marsilius in 2. d. 27. Brugensis in Psal. 35. Eckius in Cent. de Pradest. Cusanus, Stapleton and others, of whom S. Clara referreth you to Suarez in 3 Tho. disp. 10. sect. 7. q. 3.

Bradwardine c. 39. fol. 338. laboreth to prove that the increase of Grace or Glory is not merited de condigno, but de congr • o, and that all Catholics so hold. And next denieth merit de congruo, and all by reasons which S. Clara taketh to be valid.

Soto a Thomist denieth all merit de congruo, and saith the Fathers held it not. 4. d. 14. q. 2. a. 5. & l. 2. de nat. & Grat. c. 4.

Bonaventure 2. d. 28. a. 2. saith Pelagius erred. 1. In holding that the first grace was merited; 2. That by the strength of Free-will we can dispose or prepare ourselves for grace.

Clara saith, Aestimo esse omnium Scholasticorum, non dari ex parte peccatoris ullam causam meritoriam, dispositionem, aut conditionem ad primam gratiam. For which he citeth August. P. Innoc. 1. ad Council. Carth. Council. Arausic. 2. can. 3, 4, 5. Council. Trident. Sess. 6. c. 5. concluding, Et sine dubio hoc est de fide apud omnes Catholicos Doctors, nec ullus unquam oppositum tenuit. Et Bradward. optimus divinae Gratiae propugnator dicit express—esse Pelagianismum, licet intelligeretur solùm de merito de congruo.

Yea Aquinas denieth all merit de congruo as to Justifying grace, 1. 2. q. 14. a. 7. & in Rom. c. 4.

Vega 's judgment is commonly known. See Carthusian in Jac. 2. &c. I may conclude then with S. Clara, that Cassander spake not unreasonably when he said, [Quo sensu hoc vocabulo Meriti & Merendi usi sunt Patres & Catholici, obscurum non est, nempe ut per illud gratiae Dei ex qua merita omnia oriuntur, nihil detrahatur. Quare nil est cur aut Ecclesiastici à loquendi forma & sententia in Ecclesia jam olim usitata discedant, aut Protestants eam tam odiose repudient aut condemnent.]

And that Bucer said well, colloq. Ratisb. [Si sancti patres aut alii intelligent Promereri, facere ex fide gratiae dei bona opera quibus Deus mercedem promisit; hoc sensu usurpare illud verbum minime damnabimus.]

Thus you seem to like the very word merit; which in your confession you do not.

1. I like the Scripture word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . And they that translate it worthy, and account condignity the highest notion of merit, seem to allow that it may be translated [Meriting.]

2. I would fain find a word to serve instead of merit, answering Reward, and I cannot: What word can you find? Premiability and Rewardableness are long and unhandsome, and I remember no other, without using many words.

3. Yet I wish it disused, to avoid abuse and offense.

But when Cassander saith, It is used as not encroaching on grace, I take all merit to encroach upon it and injure it.

I ask you, Quest. 1. If you preach that [a Holy Lover of God is fitter for Heaven and Happiness in God's love, than a wicked man, and hath a promise of it] and another preach, that [the Saints are no fitter for God's love and happiness than the wicked, but only it's promised them without any fitness;] which would good men more dislike? I think that the first is but the very thing that most of the School Doctors mean: And that we at once abhor their words, and abhor the contrary, as they are variously presented to men.

Quest. 2. And I ask you, Whether do you think it a greater Grace or Gift of God, to give a man that Holiness which shall fit him for Heaven (or as they call it Merit it,) or to give him Heaven without such Holy fitness (or merit?)

Heaven without Holiness is a contradiction. But if God could make a beast or bad man Happy without it, doubtless yet both is more than one. I had rather God would make me here fit for Heaven by holiness, than not, and so all Christians. But we all take Merit to signify somewhat which profiteth God and which is our own, and not of his gift and grace: In which I see we are mistaken.

Doubtless, as that God who can relieve your poor or sick friend without you, showeth you a double favor if he will make you his instrument in relieving him; so if he cause you to work out your own salvation, it is a greater mercy than if he would carry you asleep to Heaven: And it's strange that men that know that all that we have is of God, should think his grace dishonored by giving us the greater mercy.

But to return to my account of the Papists. I will mention Aquinas farther, because you know who numbereth him with the grosser sort.

1. 2. q. 114. a. 1. He concludeth that man meriteth not at all of God according to absolute or simple Justice, which goeth by equality; sed secundum divinae ordinationis quandam praesuppositionem, as man obtaineth that as a reward by his operation for which God gave him the operative virtue. And so that here is but modus quidam Justitiae, as a Father hath to a Child, and merit only secundum quid, at non simpliciter. And he addeth, that our voluntary doing our duty is our merit, not as profiting God, but manifesting his glory, and pleasing his will; and so God is not a Debtor to us, but to his own will or to himself.

And a. 2. he concludeth that without Grace even man in innocence, much less in sin could thus merit life eternal. When after therefore he speaks for merit of condignity as the acts are from the Holy Ghost, it is such a merit as aforesaid that he meaneth. But the first Grace he saith none meriteth.

But I desire you for the understanding of Aquinas and such others to take notice, that the foundation of many confused speeches of theirs, is their confused notions of God's Laws or Covenants. For Aquin. q. 106. a. 1. doth go the way of Mr. Sterry and Sr. H. Vane and the Quakers, and conclude that the New Law (of Grace) is not written but in the heart, that is, that Lex nova principaliter est ipsa gratia spiritus sancti in cord fidelium scripta; because unaquae{que} illud videtur esse quod in ea est potissimum: and so that Lex scripta is called a Law secondarily as a means to the former: Now this is gross abuse of an equivocal word by a vain pretence: For the word Law doth not first signify another thing because that other is most excellent; but less excellent things (as media ad finem) have their proper notions: And the world knoweth that the famosius significatum here is a Law ut signum voluntatis imperantis constituens debitum, as an instrument of Government; And that Sanctity of heart is the effect of the doctrine, and a disposition to obey; and is called a Law but in tropical sense.

But indeed Paul oft describeth the Gospel as in the heart, and the Law as a thing; But that contradicts not what I say: but it was because the New Testament was not then much of it, if any, written and received in the Churches as God's Law: But Baptism expounded by word of mouth (in the three Articles) was the Christianity which Paul bid Timothy keep and commit to faithful men that might teach it. The Christian Religion was by word committed to men's memory first, and so to their hearts before it was put in writing: But yet it was primarily and properly a Law, ut signum obligans, and but metonymically as the soul was holy by it. The Law was one thing, even in the mind and memory, and the Love of God and it another, though called a Law.

But from this notion (that the old Law was a writing, and the new Law was the spirit in us) no wonder if Aquinas gathered, that the word Justify chiefly signified to make us Good and holy persons; and that our Holiness being our real aptitude for our Glorifying and pleasing God, and so for our Happiness therein, was to be called our merit; meaning thereby but that same fitness for the End o • Reward, which Scripture calleth worthiness, and all religious Preachers and people among us zealously defend in other notions, where the Papists are forgotten.

It can never enter into my thoughts that so many Godly Learned Protestants would make odious the Papists, if some of them at least meant no worse.

Know you not that judicious George Major was made the head of Heretics, by Gallus, Amsdorfius, &c. for but saying, Bona opera sunt necessaria ad salutem: Read your Schlusselburgius of his heresy, and judge as you see cause.

But whereas our Divines in confuting merit, do still describe it as of commutative justice, and not as of paternal Governing distributive Justice according to the Law of Grace, I will yet tell you what is said by Vasquez the Jesuit in 1 Thom. qu. 21. disp. 83. c. 1. & 2. & sequent. Which when you have read, I will appeal to common Reason and Christianity, 1. Whether it be not a sinful thing for ignorant Protestants to take it upon one another's reports that the Papists hold that doctrine of merits, which they do not, and so to make them unjustly more erroneous and odious than they are? 2. Whether it be not a very sinful serving of the Devil, for unlearned Divines that have read little of the Papists writings, to backbite and calumniate those of us who truly state the Controversy, and narrow the differences, as if we made the Papists better than they are, and took their parts, merely because we would have no good men bely them? 3. Whether it be not the way to harden and increase the Papists, to find such false dealing among their adversaries?

Cap. 1. Vasquez falls upon some late Doctors who say that [Commutative Justice is properly and formally in God:] yet they say that it is not in God as it is in men, nor as including any imperfection: In the second Chapter he maintaineth, that Commutative Justice is not in God, according to propriety of speech: and that this is the judgment of all the former School Doctors to a man; He citeth many whom I recite to show that he is not singular: [Alex. Alens. 1. p. q. 39. m. 1. Scot. in 1. d. 46. q. 1. in solut. arg. Richard. art. 1. qu. 1. Durand. q. 1. Palud. q. 1. art. 1. Capreol. in 1. d. 45. q. 1. art. 1. Concl. 14. & art. 3. ad arg. S. Thom. 1. contra g. c. 39. & ibid. Ferrariens. Hosius in Confess. Polon. c. 73. Ruard. art. 11. Sot. 3. de nat. & grat. c. 7. & 3. de Justit. q. 5. art. ult. ad. 1. Cajet. in hunc art. Joh. Bunder. in Compend. Concert. tit. 6. art. 7. Gabr. Biel supplem. in 4. d. 49. q. 4. art. 4. dub. 3. Bonavent. in 4. d. 46. art. 2. q. 1. ad 2. S. Thom. 1. 2. q. 114. art. 1. Conrad. ibid. Durand. iterum in 2. d. 27. q. 2. Perrar. cont. Gent. 3. c. 179.] Then because some words of Medina and Cajet. and Romaus seem for Commutative Justice, he showeth that it was not their meaning: Next he vindicateth Scotus and Gabriel as having no such meaning in some words of theirs: Then he cometh to the case of Christ's own Merits, and saith, that some say [Christ satisfied for us in rigor of Justice.]

In Cap. 3. he layeth down several foundations against Commutative Justice, and confuteth Cajetan and Medina who said that indeed between God and man there was no Commutative Justice, but inter res, that is, inter meritum & premium there is; which he showeth is a contradiction of the former.

In Cap. 4. he disputeth against commutative Justice in God to man, and that 1. Because there is not aequalitas dati & accepti; and to be short, he brings against it the very same arguments as Protestants urge against Merit, which showeth that both sides mean and oppose the very same thing: And he is so much against any Merit of ours from God in Commutative Justice, that he labors to prove that Christ's satisfaction was not such, nor can any▪ Creature so merit of God; much less is man's penance or satisfaction such: yea indeed he goeth too far in his reasons, as I think: For he argueth that where there is no Damnum (damage) in the sin against God, there is no proper injustice, but a common sort of it: and therefore there can no merit in proper justice by satisfaction (by Christ or us;) and that our sin bringeth no damage to God, ergo, &c. But I deny his Major: There may be injury where there is no Damage; and consequently injustice: Suppose a King or Father so far above his subject or son, as that all his disobedience would no way hurt or damnify him: yet it would injure him; because the father hath Right to the sons obedience (and love,) and Juri • denegatio est injuria. So that I confess that God cannot possibly give us anything by Commutative Justice, in a strict and proper • ence; because we can so give him nothing in commutation: But I see not but that by sin, man sinneth against proper Justice, in not giving God his Own or Due, to his Injury, though not to his damage. But I confess the term Commutative nothing mutual Right, is improper; and their distinction of Commutative and distributive Justice is narrow, ambiguous, inep • , and therefore • eedeth and not endeth Controversies: The true distribution of Justice is from the three Grand Moral Relations, Dominii, Imperii & Beneficii vel Amicitiae. 1. God hath the true proper Right of Propriety in us, and to our service: 2. He hath a proper Right of Imperium Rule, and so to our obedience: 3. By his Goodness, Love and Benefits, he hath a proper Right to our greatest Love and Gratitude. And he that sinneth denieth God all these, and so doth violate proper Justice, denying him that to which he hath Right.

But to return to Vasquez, having said,

And Cap. 5. he proceedeth to prove his doctrine, from the Condition of God and the Creature, we being as Children and slaves, absolutely his own; therefore there can be no proper justice between us: And he cometh to the great objection, that

And hence he is so much against this merit of Justice, as to infer, that

Cap. 6. he proceedeth to show that though it be not true that some say, that full equal satisfaction may be refused, it being not the ipsum debitum, and that he proveth that a full equal satisfaction to proper justice cannot in justice be refused, and if it be refuseable, it is unequal; (though it may be equal condignitate meriti quae ad justitiam proprie non pertinet;) Yet even from God's promise itself, it is no obligation of proper justice, that is on God to us. Confuting Sotus that saith that God's Fidelity is not to be referred to the virtue of verity, but properly belongeth to commutative Justice.

If this be not enough, Dispute. 86. he cometh to the other branch, Whether God have distributive Justice to us? and denieth this also in proper sense. And proveth it by the authority of Bonavent. in 4. d. 46. art. 2. q. 1. ad 1. Scotus qu. 1. Durand. ib. q. 1. & in 2. d. 23. q. 2. num. 5. Palud. in 4. d. 46. q. 1. a. 1. Gabriel supplem. in 4. d. 49. q. 4. a. 3. dub. 3. Alex. 1. p. q. 39. in 1. & Thom. &c. & ex Anselm. & Aristot.

Cap. 3. he proveth it by many Reasons. Yet Cap. 4. granteth that Justice distributive is in God, secundum quandam rationem generalem, non autem secundum propriam; concluding, Distinguendum est; Aut enim Proprie opponitur Metaphorice, aut opponitur Communiter: si priori modo, Deo Proprie convenit Justitia distributiva; si posteriori, non convenit.

If in all this you can justify this Jesuit and all the Schoolmen who he saith agree with him, from giving too little to human merit, and God's Justice, I suppose few Protestants will accuse him of giving too much.

But yet this Jesuit elsewhere is one of the greatest defenders of merit, for all that he saith in the words recited.

Do you mean the Name or Thing? If the Name 1. Sure you will not make that a matter of much quarrel: 2. If you do, you must quarrel also with all the ancient Fathers; even with Augustine who (as Melancthon saith, Loc. come. de Lib. arb. of his use of the word free-will) doth use it throughout all his Volumes. 3. And if 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 be well translated Worthiness or Merit, you must quarrel with Christ and his Apostles also, (of which before.)

But Aquinas his followers use the word Merits in a worser sense, and many a volume they have written partly to assert it and defend it.

I hope you yourself would write to defend God's retributive Judgment, and that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him, Heb. 11. 6. If you would let an Infidel carry it, that pleadeth that obedience and patience have no Reward, the Christian cause is little beholden to you. Justice, Reward and Merit are Relatives in their sense; and you must deny All or none: For nothing can be Rewarded but a Rewardable act, which they mean by meritorious, (as nothing can be Punished, but a real or imputed sault; Poena and Culpa being so related also:) Though as Affliction may be without the commerit of culpability, so a mere Gift may be without Laudable merit. And Judicial Justice is the virtue of equal Judicial retribution, according to laudable or culpable actions.

But what Aquinas and his followers hold, it's easy to see in himself, in Cajetan, in Ferrariensis and abundance such: I will now turn you but to such an Epitomizer as Carbo, (or Vignerius,) where it's soonest found. Carbo 1. 2. q. 21. art. 4. saith [Actus humani habent rationem meriti & demeriti per comparationem ad Deum; Quia omnes actus sunt referribiles in Deum ut est ultimus • inis, & ut regi • communitatem universi, & ità debet eis pro justitia retribuere; aliàs non haberet universi procurationem. 2. Homo quantum in se est, aliquid subtrahit vel exhibet Deo, cum servat, vel non servat ordinem à Deo constitutum. 3. Homo sic movetur à Deo ut Instrumentum, ut etiam moveat seipsum; & ideo meretur & demeretur. 4. Homo non ordinat se totum ad rempublicam, secundum omnia sua; & ideo non omnes ejus Actus sunt meritorii respectu reipublicae: sed totus ordinatur ad Deum, respectu cujus omnis actus est meritorius vel demeritorius.

So that here is a meriting of God in the same sense as there is a demeriting and a meriting of God as the Rector of the Universe: not for any real profit to God, but for a free referring all our actions to him as the end, and keeping the order he hath constituted in the World, & quantum in nobis with a loving and honoring mind returning to him that which is his own. And do you deny any of all this?

No, not the Matter, but this is not to be called Merit.

If you will needs be the Master of Language, openly profess then that it is the Name that you contend about.

Indeed Aquinas defendeth that which Vasquez seemeth to deny, that in God there is Distributive, though not Commutative Justice (quia à nullo accipit.) And that though God do all according to the good pleasure of his will, yet he doth all things Righteously, because his Will is the Rule of Justice, and he willeth what his Wisdom dictateth. And that he giveth himself his Due, in that he doth all to the glorifying of his goodness: and he giveth the creatures their due, in that he ordereth one for another, as its end, and the parts for the whole: yet he is not called a Debtor to any, because all are ordinated to Him: which Justice is called, The Condecency of his Goodness. And is there anything to be blamed in all this? I am sure that English ears are so used to hear that God is Just, yea, that the Glory of his Justice is a great End of his Government, that good men will hardly endure you to deny it: Though yet through prejudice they hardly digest the name of that Merit or Rewardableness which is the object of that Justice; because of other men's abuse of the word, and some men's hard interpretation of it. But God the Righteous Judge will give the Crown of Righteousness (2 Tim. 4. 8.) not according to Names and Logical Notions, but men's works.

But are other Jesuits of Vasquez 's mind, or many other Schoolmen of Aquinas his opinion? We commonly suppose them to give more to Merit.

There are many School Doctors so strict herein, that they will not grant that there is any such thing properly as Legal or Governing Justice in God. Ruiz citeth for this Argentin. 4. d. 46. q. 1. a. 1. Bassolis ibi q. 1. a. 1. Suarez (a Jesuit) de Just. Dei sect. 4. n. 8. Pesant. 1. p. q. 21. a. 1. disp. 1. concl. 2. But he thinketh that they differ but in words from others that assert God's Legal Justice (vid • licet Scotus, Sotus, Rubellus, Lorca, Navarret.) Yet all agree, that God is (in some sense) Just. And Ruiz saith that Suarez (passim) maintaineth that God's Promises are but naked assertions, by which he declareth his will to give the benefit. And Durand 2. d. 27. q. 2. n. 15. faith that God's promises signify not any obligation, but the mere disposition of God's liberality. And Greg. Arim. 1. d. 17. q. 1. a. 2. saith, that the Crown of Righteousness is not a debt, but only of God's free ordination. And Marsil. 2. q. 18. a. 4. absolutely denieth, that God is a Debtor, or doth any otherwise accept men's deserts, than by the free disposition of a gift. Scotus holdeth our acts are called Merit as relating to God's free Covenant or Promise to reward them, and not otherwise, but he absolutely denieth yet that God is thereby made our Debtor, 4. d. 46. Major. 2. d. 27. not only followeth him, but saith, God may deny Glory to good works; (but he meaneth as the rest.) Richard. 2. d. 27. q. 3. a. 2. ad 3. seemeth to deny even Debt upon the title of promise. Bon • vent. 2. d. 27. a. 2. q. 3. saith but that God is quodammodo, in some sort obliged to glorify them that love him. Ruiz who is against all this, and maketh God's Promises to be proper promises and Covenants, and more than bare assertions, and that God is become a kind of Debtor by his Promise (and so it is not his Veracity only that is our security, as Suarez thinketh) yet holdeth, that It is but the Things promised that are Due or obliged to us, and that God's obligation is properly to Himself: that he hath indeed true Governing or Legal Justice, but tanquam objectum Formal & primarium respicit universalissimum bonum & praestantissimum quod est Ipse: & tanquam Material & secundarium objectum respicit universal bonum totius mundi constantem ex omnibus creaturis, quod praeponit particularibus bonis singularum creaturarum. Indeed he saith, that this Justice in God, is that [Quae solo nature • lumine demonstrari potest: ac proinde nullam supponit liberam Dei promissionem aut pactum, nullumque supernaturalem concursum aut gratiam.] But this is mere confusion by ambiguous words. These men talk as if they considered not, that Creation was a free act of God, and made man a Law in the Nature of himself and the circumstant creatures; And in this Law of Nature is a signification of God's will to do good to the good, and reward the obedient, and this is a Natural promise. There could be no obedience, and so no merits, were there no Law: And if there be a Law of Nature, (and so God even by making us Rational free Governable Creatures was himself our Governor), these things supposed to be done by the very act of Creating, it is a contradiction to say that God is our Governor, and not a Just Governor, (being perfect as he is God) or to be Just, and yet not Resolved to use the obedient better than the disobedient. To be Governor, is to be the Orderer of Moral Agents: And what Moral Order is there, where the good and bad are not differenced in retributions? But the Papists conceits of all Promises to Adam and his merits being merely supernatural, confound them in many such dispu • ati •• s.

But do they not hold that a man may merit the remission of his own sins? (yea, and of the sins of others?) and justification also?

Let Medina answer you in 12. q. 113. a. 1. p. 651. [Ad authoritates sonantes quod non meremur Remissionem peccatorum nec vero justificationem, non oportet satisfacere: Nam omnes convenimus, in hanc sententiam Catholicam & irrefragabilem, quod non meremur remissionem peccatorum.—ut Augustine. Nulláne sunt merita justorum? Sunt plane quia justi sunt. sed ut justi fierent, merita non fuere.] None merit Remission or Justification, with them.

Not by merit of Condignity; but they say, that by merit of Congruity a man may merit Remission and Conversion and Justification.

Medina ibid. p. 652. [Sed cum Meritum de Congruo non innitatur Justitiae, sed Congruenti • , proprie appellationem meriti non meretur.] And so say many others of them.

But at least they hold that we may prepare ourselves for Justification or Conversion without Grace, or special Grace.

Preparatory Grace is not the same that the Grace to which it prepareth us: But let the same Medina answer you, q. 109. p. 592. Deus expectat nostrum consensum (inquit Pelagius) ut nos convertat: ergo ex parte voluntatis nostra est pr • paratio ad gratiam suscipiendam. Sed h • c sententia est haeretica & contra Scripturas & Concilia; Veritas Catholica est quod Gratia Justificans datur sine meritis, & quod nemo se valet ad • am praeparare sine auxilio specially. Et p. 593. Ultima dispositio ad gratiam ad quam infallibiliter se quitur Gratia, non habetur ex facultate naturae, sed tantum dono Dei specially. Do you say anymore against Preparation for Grace without Grace, or against man's power to prepare himself? or against merit than all this?

But sure Luther and his fellow Reformers had never so much inveighed against the Papists in the point of Works, Merits and Justification, if they had all taught no worse than these which you have cited; There are sure many others that say worse.

No question but the Ignorance of the Priests was so great, and the carnal ends so powerful with covetous proud men, which were served by the abuse of the Doctrine of Merits and Good Works, that multitudes of such did ordinarily abuse it: If all Protestants taught the Protestant Doctrine uncorruptly, we should not have had so many differences and divisions as we have had; nor would one condemn another as you do us.

But though the old Schoolmen might mean better, those that Luther had to do with, did sure speak much worse.

I tell you, the Carnal and Ignorant sort of Priests and Friars did each man talk according to his model, and so do all Sects: Few had the Wit and Skill to open aright the common Doctrine: But 1. Our Dr. Field (of the Church) undertaketh to prove, that (excepting the tyrannical Papal faction, and the carnal and ignorant that served their ends, and by violence bore down the rest) the chief of the Doctors in the Church of Rome itself, did hold the great Doctrines which the Protestants against the Papists do assert. 2. To tire you now with no more, I will cite but two of Luther's own adversaries in his days. 1. The first is the Learned Cardinal Contacenus who lived in the time of Luther's Reformation: Read but his Notes on Luther's Articles, and his Tract. of Justification, Free-will and Predestination, and you will see that he saith almost as much for what you plead, as you would do yourself. I am loath to tire the Reader with the citation of his words at large; Turn to them and read them, and see where he differeth from us. I confess the man was moderate; but never accused as differing herein from the Church of Rome, as in an Article determined of by their Councils: But their Doctors variously express themselves.

The other is Fisher Bishop of Rochester one of the chief Martyrs of the Roman Cause, beheaded by Henry the Eighth for denying his Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical: who in Opuscul. de fiducia & misericordia Dei (Printed Colon. 1556.) speaketh as much and plainly for the interest of Faith and Mercy and Christ's Redemption as Protestants use to do. fol. F. Fide in Christum sola quis etiam citra quaevis opera justificatur. Nam si propriis operibus quis justificatus fuerit, is habet unde glorietur apud se: gloriari enim potest de operibus suis quibus justificatus est: Caeterum qui non suis operibus, sed fide justus effectus est, huic de se neutiquam est gloriandum, sed de Deo qui fidem ei dedit qua justificatur.—Introducit itaque Scripturam Paulus quae non per opera, sed per fidem Abrahae justificationem imputat; nimirum ut ita non sibi sed Deo totam referat gloriam—Ecce quia credidit Abraham, ideo per fidem justificatus est: Nam si per opera sua justitiam fuisset consecutus, jam non gratis ei Justitia fuisset dat • , sed magis operum respectu.—Si justificatio propter opera conferatur, jam ex debito confertur potius quam gratis, hoc est, quam per gratiam & ex gratuita Dei liberalitate.—Caeterum e diverso quando citra opera quis ob id tantum quod credat in Christum qui justificat impium, justificationem adeptus est, jam so • a fides sua illi ad justificationem imputatur. Ecce jam hic audis cui jam fides ad justitiam imputatur; ei viz. qui non operatur sed credit in eum qui justificat impium solâ fide.

Et • ol. G. passim. & H. Per fidem in illum sic expurgaremur, ut ill nostra peccata ferret, nos ejus justitiam assequeremur:—Non dicit factum fuisse illum Peccatorem, & nos justos per illum, sed illum Peccatum, & nos Justitiam Dei: See the rest —Nec est ut quisquam secum haesitet num pro suis peccatis Christus seipsum tradiderit: Immo credat, & securus sit ad eorum se catalogum pertinere pro quorum peccatis Christus semetipsum donavit: Nam si istud non crediderit, plane sejunctus est ab eorum consortio: fides enim ea res est, qua nos agglutinamur ita Christo, ut meritorum ejus facti simus participes: & per hanc constituti sumus una cum eo filii Dei pariter & cohaeredes— fol. I. Hoc tu quisquis es peccator persuasissimum habeas, quod si resipueris ac in Christum constanter credideris, jam Christum induisti, jam ejus spirit • donatus es, • am denique communem cum illo patrem nactus es— See the rest. Et fol. I. 5. Nam satisfaciente pro nobis hoc potentissimo sanguine, quotquot in Christum credimus à peccatis omnibus abluimur & justificamur, insiti Christo, atque in unum cum ipso ferruminati, sic ut omnia mala nostra per ipsum deleta sint, bon • vero ipsius cuncta nobis effecta sint communia: Is not this high enough?

Fol. K. L. Is cord accedit quem veteris vitae poenitet—Quare fides in Christum una cum resipiscentia te justificat ab omn • peccato.

Fol. M. Gratis confertur nobis ista redemptio; non • llis meritis nostris—Namque ante quodvis Meritum justi constituimur, nimirum ut inde prodeant opera nostra justa: fiunt utique opera nostra justa per justitiam fidei—Quisquis igitur peccator fueris (nihil moror quo • quantaque & quam gravia peccata tua fuerint) si teipsum vere converteris ad Deum, teque ipsum in ejus misericordiam totum projeceris, credens Jesum Christum pro te mortuum, jam haud dubie primam istam Justificationem adeptus es. Sed cave te fallas, te conversum simulans quum non integre convertaris. Is quidem integre convertitur, qui toto cord peccatis renunciat, fiduciam plene suam collocans in Deo— What think you of all this? Do you differ from it?

I will not be so malignant as to disown the truth, because a Papist speaketh it: But still you shall give me leave to believe that so many Protestants would never have said so much against their Doctrine in this point, if they had indeed held what these words import, which are as much as any Protestant herein saith. And you yourself in your Confession cite abundance of them speaking for man's Merits.

1. I cited them as using commonly the term [Merit] which I told you I had rather (because of men's misunderstanding) were disused, so we could agree of some fitter safer word. 2. And I told you that one Rom • us foolishly pleadeth for Merit in point of Commutative Justice, which the most reject. 3. And I told you, that the paltry phrase of Merit [ex proportione operum] is used by some, and rejected by others: And some that use it, it's like, have an unsound meaning in it, and others mean but that different degrees of Glory or Reward shall be given according to different degrees of holiness, which Protestants approve.

But as I justify those Protestants who reprehend the unsound asscrtions of any Papists Writers, so I must advise you to charge nothing on any Sect or party of men, upon the words of particular men, but what that party owneth: nor to charge men with opinions, because others have so done before you, without finding what you charge them with in their own words.

Would you have me so uncharitable as to suspect so many Protestant Writers of Calumny?

1. It is no Calumny to charge that on some Papists, which those some do hold. 2. It is perverse charity to receive unproved accusations of others, for fear of suspecting the accusers of calumny. By that rule all the false reports that now fly about in London should be received, if a good man or woman (specially many) have once spoken them. 3. And tell me whether you would have others observe the same rule towards you▪ For instance, you may see in Tolet (a Cardinal Jesuit) on the Romans, that he chargeth the Heretics (as he calleth us) with holding that God doth only Hide or forget our sins, and not impute them to us, but doth not mortify them. Whereas we all hold, that he Remitteth actual sins past by Pardoning them as to the punishment; but that he mortifieth the present habits of sin, and preventeth the Reign of future sin (called Moral sin by them) in such as shall be saved. Which is the same in sense as they hold themselves. So he chargeth us as holding, that we have no Inherent Righteousness after Justification (no not Imperfect) but only Christ's Righteousness imputed; and that we hold obedience unnecessary as to our final or continued Justification: All which are false. And shall all the unlearned Papists believe this of us, for fear of an uncharitable suspicion of their Teachers? Multitudes of their Writers falsely charge us with these same errors.

The Papists are Liars, and therefore to be suspected, but so are not our Divines.

If once you fall upon such Rules as those (as that Accusations against adversaries are to be believed without proof, on one side and not on the other) God's Rule against receiving evil reports will be cast out; and Charity and Justice will be cast away; and mere siding and saction will possess the place: And then all the question will be, Who are those Accusers that are to be believed? And if you think that it is your Teachers, the Papists that have many more, will think that they have more reason to believe them: And •• the Anabaptists will believe theirs, and the Separatists theirs, and the Quakers theirs: and what falsehood and evil will not then be believed against all parties? and how odious will they appear to one another, and consequently all (Christians) to Infidels and Heathens?

A man that is set upon a sodering design, may palliate any Heresy in the world, and put a fair sense on the foulest words; but God hateth such cloaking of sin, and compliance with it.

May not Papists, Familists, Seekers, Quakers and all Sects say the same against Concord and Complyance with you?

I pray you tell me what you think of these following words, before you know who wrote them; and take heed what you say of them, lest you strike you know not whom.

I know not how much men may mean worse than they speak: but these words are such as the best Protestants use.

They are the words (translated) of the aforesaid Fr. Tolet a Jesuit and Cardinal on Rom. 3. pag. 157, 158, 159.

But still remember, that by Justification they mean the holy effect of the Spirit on the soul; and indeed by Remission of sin, they most commonly mean the destroying or mortifying sin within us, and ceasing to commit the act: And they are dark and confused in these matters.

But do not Papists hold forgiveness of deserved punishment?

Yes: but they bring it in disorderly, and on other occasions: But if they did not, how could they hold, that any sin past from our childhood till Conversion is Remitted or pardoned? For the Act is past as soon as done, & factum infectum fieri non potest: and so such past sins can have no remission, but forgiving the penalty, and healing the effects. And wrangling Papists consider not that this is the Remission that Protestants mean, who call their kind of Remission by the name of mortification: And so we endlessly quarrel about words, through our unhappy imperfection in the art of speaking, and words being arbitrary signs, the world is come to no agreement of their sense.

You confess then their confused Doctrine, and you cannot excuse many of their Doctors from gross error herein.

No, nor many honest pious persons that go for Protestants: What Papists have more plainly subverted the Gospel by their Doctrine on these subjects, than many of those called Antinomians have done by the contrary extreme? And who can justify all the sentences and phrases of many eminent Divines among us? yea, or of many of the most wise and accurate? For when all are much ignorant, who can say, I do not err?

But undoubtedly you will be as bitterly censured for these your favorable interpretations of the Papists in the point of Merit, as if you were half a Papist yourself, and were but such a Mongrel as Erasmus, Wicelius, Cassander, or Grotius, or as if your Conciliatory designs would carry you as far at last as Grotius, Mileterius, Baldwin, or at least, as Montague, Guil. Forbes, and such others went. And others will then say, that you are justly served for writing so much against Grotius and his followers on this account as you have done, of which Bishop Bramhall and his Epistoler have already told you.

Truth, honesty and God's approbation change not as men's interests, minds or tongues do: Time will come, that Truth will be more regarded, when Love and Peace are to be revived; unless God will forsake this contentious and unrighteous World. And I am so near, so very near that World, where there is nothing but Truth, Love and Righteousness, and where God is All, and the Fulness and felicitating object of holy souls, and where the censures of men are of no signification, that I am utterly inexcusable, if I should betray the Cause of Truth, Love and Concord, to avoid the obloquy of men, who speak evil of the things which they never understood.

NEighbour, I understand that you are one of those that divulge your desamatory Lamentations of me as inclining to Popery, for some passages which I lately Preached in the City: I pray you speak that to my face which you so freely speak behind my back.

Sir, the City ringeth of you as one that greatly wrongeth the cause of God, And my own ears heard you say that the difference between us and the Papists is little more than in ambiguous words, and points unsearchable.

And this I hear you are one that have divulged, and so it is by such as you that the City is made to ring of it. But if this be an untruth of great aggravation, do you then deserve the title you assume, or are you a fit defender of the truth? or can your Conscience tolerate you herein? That which I said was this:

Dare you deny that these were my words? If you do you are a falsifier.

When you speak so clowdily, who can remember every word you say?

Is not this plain English? Peruse it and consider. And dare you carry false reports abroad on pretence of pious zeal, and then say, You cannot remember? Why would you report that which you cannot remember? Why would you not stay till you had helped your memory, by speaking with me or someone that could have informed you? But are not we in a hard case with such hearers as you, when we must look to be as oft belied as your understanding or your memory faileth? because your loose Conscience faileth with them: which is very oft.

I am not alone in judging thus of you; City and Country ring of it: what company can one come into where you are not talked of? I daily hear good people lament you: and the best they say is, that God useth to let those men fall foully in some things who have been extraordinarily serviceable, that men may not idolize them.

They that know me but half as well as I know myself, will know that I have enough to abase me before God and man: But will that warrant a course of lying and backbiting in others? Do you partly receive, and partly make and propagate false reports, and then plead the Commonness for your excuse? He that set London on fire might so have excused himself because the flame was common when he had caused it. The effect and prospering of your sin should humble you, and not seem to justify you. But yet I must tell you that Backbiting Sectaries are not the greater part of London: There are many sober people that are ashamed of your sin and folly.

I will make this friendly motion to you: Instead of backbiting, Let us here to one another's faces, so friendly admonish each other of that which we take to be sin, as may help to bring each other to repentance: And do you begin, Tell me of all the evil that you know by me.

I have nothing to accuse you of, but that your Principles are too large, and you vent them too freely, and thereby you harden Papists, and dishonor the Protestant cause, and wrong free grace, and the Righteousness of Christ, by your doctrine of Justification and man's Righteousness; And by coming so near Conformity, you grieve the hearts of good people, and may bring persecution on those that cannot do as you can.

1. About Conformity, forbear me here, for I must deal with you of that by itself elsewhere.

2. As to my doctrine of Justification, if I have not fully justified it elsewhere, I shall not now on this occasion.

3. But whether you or I be righter about Popery, let us now debate. Have you read my Safe Relig. and my Key for Catholics, and my Treatise of the Certainty of Christianity without Popery, and my late Dialogue, and my Treat. against Johnson of the Visibility of the Church? and others against Popery?

I have somewhat else to do than read all your Writings.

Why have you not then somewhat else to do than hear me, and backbite me, and judge of things which you have not leisure to understand? Do we not still deal on hard terms with such men as you? that neither speaking nor writing can make them know our minds? Have all your party that revile me, done more each one against Popery than I have done?

But if this be all that you have to call me to repentance for, I have a great deal more to say against myself; And now I will deal faithfully with you: I beseech you try, whether it be not necessary that you speedily repent of all these following sins:

1. What a shame is it for one that would be taken for a Religious man to be so Ignorant as you are, and no better know the truth of Christ, from the errors of Popery, than (it appeareth) you do?

2. What a sin for one so Ignorant to be so rash and bold in venturing to judge of that which he understandeth not?

3. What a sin is it for one so Ignorant to be so proud of his pretended knowledge, as to venture to defame his Teachers for contradicting him in his er • oneous conceits? Have you studied these things as long and hard as I have done? or are you sure that you have done it more in partially; and that God hath illuminated you so much more, as your confidence would import?

4. What an unchristian crime is it, to make lies and carry them abroad of your Teachers, and then be forced to confess, that it was the failing of your memory as to what you heard?

5. What a sin is it to be a backbiter? Neither you, nor any one of your quality did ever come to my face either to know my meaning, or to hear what I had to say, nor to reprove my sin, or convince me of my error.

6. Is not unrighteousness a sin, in your judging and reports, as it is in public Judgments? Should not a man be heard before he be condemned? especially a Minister of Christ?

7. What a sin is it to receive false reports from others, and encourage backbites whom you should rebuke and frown away?

8. What a heinous sin is it thus to destroy the Hearers souls, and as those that have the Plague, to carry your infection from house to house, and kill men's Love, and breed in them false conceits and bitter injurious thoughts of others?

9. What a sin is it with such unthankfulness to requite Christ's servants that spend their days, and strength, and estates in laboring for men's good? When I take none of your money, when I have these twelve years preached (as I had liberty) freely without hire; when I had been put on to plead the Non-conformists Cause in the costlies • circumstances, and to bear the greatest odium for it; when I was I think the first that was silenced on such accounts; when I have been twelve or fourteen years deprived of all Ecclesiastical maintenance; when I refused a Bishopric▪ when I have labored in Writings and other duties to the consuming of my flesh in daily and hourly pain and weakness, and now look every Sermon for my last, and am ready to appear before my Judge: to be to the very last thus calumniated and reviled by peevish Sectaries, would be a sad reward, were your favor my reward! But is this just or grateful? or shall the unrighteous and unthankful be accounted the best men? I know I could have been one of the highest in your favor and applause, if I would have humoured and followed you: But I had rather that God should keep me from your honor, than buy it at so dear a rate.

10. And is it no sin thus to hinder the success of our labors, by making us odious or suspected by them that should profit by us?

11. Is it not hypocrisy, to cry out of the Bishops for silencing us, when you show that you would fain do it yourselves? Would not you silence me now if it were in your power? Yea, I doubt not but when I die, some of you will rejoice and say, that God did it in judgment on me.

12. And thus to make divisions among Christians, that should hold the Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, will one day be known to be a sin.

13. And so it is hereby to harden the enemies of Religion, by your clamours and the divisions which you cause; and tempt them to hate both you and us.

14. And it is worst of all to father all this on God, and Truth and Godliness, and use such holy Names for so bad a Cause.

15. And it aggravateth your sin, that you take no more notice of all those plain and terrible Scriptures, which as openly condemn your sin, as the sin of Drunkards or Swearers is condemned: were it but James 3. it would leave you utterly without excuse.

16. Yea, and that you can see the sins of such Drunkards and Swearers, yea, and see the Mote in the eyes of one that doth but use a Form or Ceremony which you dislike, and cannot see these Beams in your own. For all these sins I admonish you presently to repent.

Who is it that is censorious? you or I? It is sin with you to open your sin.

I desired you to open it: But see now how hard a work Repentance is, when in a Professor such sins as these will not be confessed.

Well, come to the cause itself: Is it I or you that comply with Papists?

I make that the business of this Conference with you: It is not you only, but some wiser men than you, that look so much at the evil of Popery, that they forget the evil of an unrighteous opposition, and of the other extreme: And they do as one that by laboring to cure another of a Dead Palsy, casteth himself into a Frensy or a Feaver: or like one that to avoid a Carrion that stinketh in the Ditch, doth run himself into the Ditch on the other side the way. God's Truth must be vindicated only by Truth; and Wisdom is best justified of her own children by Wisdom. God hath no pleasure in fools, no • doth his Glory need our lie. There is a time when the Devil will seem to be against error and sin (and so against Popery): but it is in a way which shall promote it: which commonly is by ill-doing and over-doing. I tell you plainly, the Cause of Truth and Reformation gets nothing by some men that se • m most zealous for it. For an unstudied half-wise honest Minister or private man to believe false reports of the Papists, and to mis-state Controversies, and to rail on them on such suppositions, and to mix many errors of his own in his opposition, and to backbite those that know more of the matter, as symbolizing with the Papists, this is certainly serving the Devil, how honest soever the instruments in the main may be.

I perceive that you have an aking tooth at the Protestant Divines as well as at me: Are you wiser than all they? or are you not warping to Grotianism which you have written against?

Among the Protestant Divines there are well studied, knowing, solid men, that understand what they say, (such as Bishop Usher, Dr. Chaloner, Dr. Field, Dr. White, Chillingworth, Morton, Davenant, Andrew's, and many such; and abroad, Cameron, Dallaus, Blondell, Drelincourt, Amyra • dus, Placaeus, V • ssius, Junius, Martinius, Crocius, Bergius, Bucer, Musculus, Melanchthon and many others:) and there are ignorant, hot-headed, self-conceited men, that rave in extremes, (as Gallus, Ambsdorsius and their companions did against Georg. Major, for saying [Bona opera sunt necessaria ad salutem]). And it is no wonder, that the best Churches have many such; and if such are the forwardest to judge and cry down all that are not as ignorant as they. And in our times, the World is more beholden to the fewness of buyers, and the wit of Booksellers refusing to Print them, than to the humility or modesty of such men, that the Shops do not abound with such furious Writings, • s Mr. Brownes Antichristomachus, Mr. Danvers, Mr. Bagshaw, &c. and that Antichrist, Antichrist, is not made in Print the Universal Consutation of sober truth, as commonly as it is bawled out in words.

Is it not safest to get far enough from Antichrist and Popery? Your study is to teach men how near they may come to sin without sin; and how to dance about the brink of Hell: For my part, I will be one of them that shall come out of Babylon, and partake not of her sins, nor touch the unclean thing, and that keep their garments undefiled; and not one that like you is grown Lukewarm by being over-fond of Unity and Peace: You will follow Grotius it's doubt at last.

Uncleanness must not be touched, nor sin partaked of, nor lukewarm indifferency to sin entertained; we must go as far from sin as we can. But, poor deceived souls run into it, under the conceit of going far enough from it, and sometimes into greater than they avoid.

What sin have such Protestants run into in their opposition to Popery?

I will tell you some, I. In Doctrine: and II. In the consequent • and practice.

I. It is more than one injudicious Protestant Divine that hath printed such unfound Opinions as these in opposition to Popery for want of judgment.

1. While they plead against the Romish false Tradition, they have weakened faith, by denying that necessary use of Historical Tradition of Scripture which Christianity doth suppose: (As others have denied the necessary use of Reason unto faith.)

2. They have wronged the Church by undervaluing the Tradition of the Creed and the Essentials of Christianity, by many means besides the Scriptures.

3. They have much wronged the Protestant Cause by denying the perpetual Visibility of the Church, and almost given it away, as I have shown against Johnson.

4. And their d • nyal of its Universality, and confining it long to the Waldenses and such others, is an exceeding injury to the Church and Truth.

5. And so is some men's over-doing as for the Scripture, who teach men that they can be no surer of Christianity, (as delivered many years in Baptism before any of the New Testament was written,) than they are that there is no one error in all the Bible, by the carelessness of the Scribes and Printers, nor any human frailty in the phrase.

6. And also their feigning the Scripture perfection to consist, in its being a particular determiner of all those circumstances of which it is only a general rule.

7. And those that make every form of prayer, or Ceremony to be Antichristian.

8. And those that make Justifying faith to be a certainty or full persuasion that we are elected and pardoned and shall be saved.

9. And those that say, that To believe that I am justified is to believe God's Word, or • ides divina; either (as most say) because one of the premises is in Scripture, or (as excellent Chamier saith) because the Witness of the Spirit is God's Word.

10. And those that say All that have true faith, are sure they have such: (as Keckerman and too many others.)

11. Those that deny Christ to have made any Law.

12. And those also that assert Imputation of Christ's Righteousness in that sense which I have proved to subvert the Gospel.

13. And those that deny Faith itself to be Imputed for righteousness.

14. And those that deny that there is any personal Evangelical Righteousness in ourselves that is any way necessary to our Justification.

15. And those that lay all the stress of Faiths Justifying us on the notion of Instrumental efficiency.

16. And those that say we are Justified by no act of faith, but its receiving Christ's Righteousness; and all other acts of faith are the Wor • s by which none is justified.

17. And those that say, that Evangelical obedience is not meritorious as it signifieth only Rewardable in point of Paternal Evangelical Governing Justice, and as all the ancient Fathers used that word; because we merit not by Commutation.

18. And those that say, that man hath no free-will (at all, of any sort) to spiritual good.

19. And those that say, that Christ was in God's reputation, the greatest sinner, or wicked man, Adulterer, Murderer, hater of God in all the world.

20. And those that say, that he suffered in soul Pain altogether of the same kind with those that the damned suffer in H •• .

21. And those that in opposition to the Popish Government, Confession, Austerities, and several acts of Worship, do run into the con • rary extreme, against due Government, Confession, Austerities, &c. And those that from dark uncertainty or à minus noti • do gather many conclusions against known truth.

I pass by such as the Antinomians, who as I have proved▪ subve • t the Gospel itself, by running into the contrary extreme from Pope ••• .

You are as • ad as Parker, or the Debate-maker, that th • s l • y s •• ndal on the Reformers themselves. If these were their faults, you •••• cover them, and not open them. This had been enough for • Romish R • bshakeh.

You know not what it is that you say. This is to a • ho •• •••• tance, and to prefer the honor of man before the honor of God: yea, to let the shame be cast on God's Word and Religion, lest the erro • of •••• be shamed. But all men are liars (that is, fallible) and God is •••• ▪ He that confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall have mercy, but he that hideth it, shall not prosper. Are there not with you, even with you also (saith the Prophet) sins against the Lord our God? Why hath God recorded in Scripture the faults of so many of his servants, and foam • them to such open Confessions? Did Paul wrong Peter and •••• , Gal. • ? or the Ministry when he said, All seek their own thing • , and no • e the things of Jesus Christ? or did the Evangelists wrong all • he Disciples, by saying, that They all forsook him and fled? or James all C •• stians, saying In many things we offend • ll? I think the Prov • Impe • itence of many Professors, that will not confess sin, nor endure to be •• led to it, lest Religion be dishonored, is that great dishonor to Religion which God hath been long punishing us for. When such evils have •••• held and done as our age hath known, either it must be said that they are not evil, or that they are▪ If we deny it, and say they are God •••• and m • ns duty, we feign God, and Scripture, and Religion to be for all that evil, (which is to blaspheme). If we say It is evil, we must sa •• that we are the guilty causes of it. God will teach Ministers and Professors instead of Pharisaical self-justification, to take open shame to themselves that he and Religion may be vindicated, before he will deliver us from shame and sorrow: And he that will save his honor against this shame shall lose it, and he that will thus lose it and cast it away shall most effectually recover it.

I think you would fain persuade us, that Protestants are as bad as Papists, and persuade us into the Roman Tents.

That is but your peevish inference: But little do you know how much of Popery itself you have, while you think that you hate it more than I.

You would make me believe anything, if you make me think that I have more of Popery than you.

1. Do not you agree with them in consining the Catholic Church to one Sect or Party? only They to their Sect, and You to yours.

2. Do you not agree with them in your vehement condemnation of dissenters? only they excommunicate and burn them, and you deny them your communion and reproach them: But their charity extendeth much further than yours, and you condemn more dissenters than they do.

3. Do you not agree with them in being superstitious, by a great deal of self-made Duty and Sin? only theirs and yours are not in the same things: They say, Touch not, taste not, handle not some things, and you other things, while you say that God hath forbidden forms of prayer, and many lawful circumstances of Worship, and other such like.

And I now entreat you and all the servants of Christ soberly to consider, whether a wild injudicious calling sound Doctrine and Practices Antichristian, and using that name as a bugbear for want of solid argument, and an injudicious running from Papists into the contrary errors and extremes, hath not brought on many the guilt and misery which in all the following particulars I shall open to you.

1. Such men have corrupted the Gospel of Christ, by bringing in many doctrinal errors, and opening a door to the heretical to bring in more. Almost all the Libertine Antinomian errors, have come in by an injudicious opposition to Popery, as if they were the Vindication of Election, Free Grace, Christ's Righteousness, Justification by faith, Perseverance, against man's Works and Merits: And it is not to be denied, that the said Libertine Doctrines do more contradict the Doctrine of the Gospel, even Christianity itself, than the Doctrine of the Papists about the same subjects do. I know this to be true, whoever is offended at it: Aquinas, Scotus, Gabriel, Bellarmine, Pererids, Tolet, yea, Vasquez, Suarez and Molina are not near so erroneous about Justification, Grace, Faith and good works, as Richardson, Randal, Simpson, Town, Crisp, Saltmarsh, and many such others are. Yet how many Religious people have I known, that have gloried in these errors as the sweet discoveries of free grace!

2. Such erroneous extremes in opposition to Popery have greatly dishonored the Reformers, and Reformation. When it cannot be denied but such and such errors are found among them, it maketh all the Reformation suspected: as Illyricus his Doctrine of the substantiality of sin, and the non-necessity of Good works to salvation, and as Andr. Osianders Doctrine of Justification by God's essential righteousness did; and as many harsh passages in Piscator and Maccovins do, to name no more besides those before named. What a stir have our later Divines still with the Papists in defending some few harsh sayings of Luther, Calvin and Beza about the Cause of sin, and some such subjects? But downright errors cannot be defended.

3. Your injudicious opposition greatly hardeneth the Papists, and hindereth their conviction: When they find some errors in your writings, (as that all are bound to believe that they are elected and Justified; that this is the sense of the Article, I believe the forgiveness of sin; that this is sides divina, that we are Reputed of God to have fulfilled all the Law of Innocency habitually and actually in and by Christ, &c.) and then when they read that such men lay the great stress of the Reformation upon these, as the very cause of our rejecting Rome, and the artiouli stantisaut cadentis Ecclesiae, what can more harden them to a confidence that we are heretics and that they are in the right? As I have known the persons that had been in danger of turning Papists, if the error of Transubstantiation and some few more, had not been so palpable, as to resolve them, These men cannot be in the right; even so many Papists were like to have turned Protestants, had they not met with some notorious errors in such injudicious adversaries.

4. Yea we too very well know that your extremities have occasioned divers Protestants to turn Papists: Yea some Learned men, and such as have zealously run through many Sects in opposition to Popery themselves; (And some of my acquaintance that went as far in the profession of Godliness as most that I have known.) They have been so confounded to find partly palpable errors taken for sound doctrine, and sound doctrine railed at as Popery, and partly to see the shameful diversity and contentions of all the Sects among themselves, that it hath drawn them to think that there is no prosperity of the Church and Godliness to be expected but where there is unity, and Concord; and no Unity and Concord to be hoped for among Protestants; And therefore they must return for it to Rome: And Grotius professeth that it was this that moved him, to go so far towards them as he did. And I must needs say, that I believe from my very heart, that the shameful divisions, contentions, backbitings, revilings, censurings, persecutions, errors and scandals of Protestants among themselves, is a far stronger temptation to turn men to Popery, than anything that is to be found among the Papists to turn men to it: and that many are thus driven to it, that would not have been drawn.

5. And by calling good and lawful if not necessary things, Antichristian and Popish, you have made Religious people ridiculous and a scorn to many that have more wit than Conscience; as if we were all such humorous Novices, as would run mad by being frightened with the name of Antichrist: And as they deride you for it as Fanatical, so they the less fear Popery itself.

6. And by these extremities you corrupt the people's minds with a wrathful and contentious kind of Religion; which • s easily taken up in comparison of a holy and heavenly mind. When you should kindle in them a zeal for Love, and Good Works, the mark of God's peculiar people, you are killing Love and kindling wrath: Gunpowder may be set on fire without so much blowing of the coal: Long experience assureth us that a siding angry contentious zeal is easily kindled, but a lively faith, a confirmed hope of Glory, a Love to God and man, needs more ado.

Stay a little in the midst of your reproofs; Would you persuade us to a Union with Antichrist, and to live in Love and Concord with the members of the Devil? Are not the Papists such? Have you no way to reconcile us to Rome, but by pleading for Love and peace? Must we not contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the Saints, and not be Lukewarm to the doctrines of Jezebel that seduceth the people of God to Idolatry?

1. Were you perswadable I would persuade you, not ignorantly to contradict the truth of God, and call it Popery; nor to set up certain false or incongruous notions, and pretend them great and necessary verities; nor to make a stir for some odd unsound opinions, received upon trust from those that you thought best of, and to buzz abroad suspicious of Popery, against those that have more understanding and conscience than to imitate you; nor to fly in the faces of God's faithfullest servants (much less to use your tongues to backbite them) as if they were Antichristian, because they are not as shamefully ignorant and deceived as you are: And I would persuade you to study and digest well what you take the boldness to speak against; and not to talk confidently and furiously against that which you never understood: for it is the fool that rageth and is confident, Prov. 14. 16. I should think I had not a greater work than to build twenty such Cities as London or to conquer all the Turks dominions, if I could but persuade all that seem Religious to bridle their Tongues, lest their Religion be in vain, and instead of rash and busy talking of things that they understand not, and of rash judging and reviling men wiser than themselves, but to SUSPEND their JUDGEMENTS, and stay till they have taken time to hear, read or consider what is necessary to the true understanding of the case, and not to shame themselves, and abuse their brethren, and God himself, and wrong and corrupt the hearers minds, by railing at that today, which if they study hard and grow wiser, they will afterwards believe themselves.

2. And I would not have you think it good or lawful to bely a Papist, and say that he holdeth what he doth not; nor to pretend that they differ in the sense and matter, when the difference is but in the words: and then to think that all your injustice and false-dealing is excusable, if you do but say that some Godly Divines, or Religious people, said so before you, and you can prove out of their writings that you are not the first that did the wrong: Nor would I have you charge the unmeet or unsound expressions, of every ignorant, railing Papist, on all that are called Papists, no nor on all their Church: And therefore I would have you well read and understand their writings before you venture too far in your accusations. You would not be otherwise dealt with yourself; nor have the Protestant Religion (or the Non-conformists) charged with every unseasoned or unwarrantable sentence, of the many weak Writers that have self-esteem enough to obtrude their sentiments upon the world. The Papists have too many errors, and too great: you need not feign them to be more or greater than they are.

3. And I would persuade you not to take all that live under the Roman power and are called Papists to be of the same mind or rank, nor to damn anymore than you are sure Christ will damn: but to consider what the Judicious Dr. Field undertaketh (and B. Morton in his Apology hath performed) even to prove that there are no considerable doctrines which constitute the Protestant Religion as different from Popery, which were not before Luther's Reformation defended by the greatest Doctors in the Church of Rome, though the defenders of them were discountenanced and born down by the Papal faction by power and violence.

4. And I would persuade you to believe that the name of Antichrist will not warrant you to lay by that Love and meekness and Justice which is due to mankind, yea and which heathens used to each other, and which you would have all men use to you: The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle to all men, apt to teach, patient (or forbearing,) in meekness instructing opposers, 2 Tim. 2. 24, 25. and if it be possible, as much as in you lieth, you must live peaceably with all men, Rom. 12. 18. and therefore follow peace with all, Heb. 10. 14. At least make Conscience of rash calumniating and slandering the worst.

5. And as to the texts that you refer to, I wish you better to study them, and you will find that they were not spoken of the Papists then, but of the Heretics or Sectaries of that age: It was the Nicolaitans and such others that are likened to Jezebel, as the text showeth you: And it was such as they, called Carpocratians, and Gnostics that denied or subverted the faith which Christians were earnestly to contend for: And we would have you zealously defend Christianity, without Lukewarmness: but not to abuse the world so much, as to • eign all your dreams or opinions to be Christianity or the faith.

And so I still say that though Popery must be faithfully rejected, yet your over-doing and mistaking way of opposition to it, endangereth the people's souls, by tempting them into factious wrath and unrighteous calumny, and destroying that Love and common justice which is due to Papists themselves, and much more to those Protestants whom you ignorantly calumniate.

7. Yea I add, that hereby you make false glasses for the people to see their own faces in, and cheat poor souls, with a carnal sort of Religion and zeal, as if it were that which is true and saving. Men are loath to know that they are indeed unholy: and therefore will be pretending to some kind of Religion to cherish their presumption, for want of • ounder comfort: And O how many thousands are there that think that they are Godly persons, because they can rise up in the dark with confident reproach against this or that opinion or practice as coming too near to Popery! O that they hated all that cometh too near to a fleshly, worldly mind and life! or to selfishness and pride and overvaluing an ignorant understanding! It's pitiful to hear how many learned Preachers in Germany among the Lutherans, live in drunkenness, and worldliness, and how little of the spirit of holiness appeareth in their Sermons or lives, and how they make up all by a • ervent preaching against the Papists and the Calvinists. Were it as easy to get faith, hope and Love, as to talk against other men's opinions, or to call that Popery which is contrary to your raw conceits, how happy were it for such men! But you little think that they that have a Religious zeal for forms and ceremonies, and they that are as zealous against them, may be of the same spirit and temper of Religions, being both but Formalists, though ones formality work for, and the others against such kind of things. And you are not aware that If you are wiser than those that you talk against, you must show it by your works and meekness of wisdom, and that the envious wisdom and zeal which is not from above, but is earthly, sensual and diabolical, may work as well by crying down other men's opinions as Popish and Antichristian as in other ways.

8. And under pretence of zeal against Popery, you turn the people's minds from the great matters of their salvation, which need their daily and most diligent study, and their most intense affections and regard: And so you starve our and destroy true piety, by calling off the people's minds to Controversy: And when they should be edifying one another in the comfortable hopes of another world, they are backbiting one another with accusations of Popery.

9. Yea Preaching itself is thus corrupted: And that which is appointed of God to be the means of men's edification in Love and holiness, (Eph. 4. 14, 15, 16.) is turned to be the bellows of keeping hot the furnace of wrath and injury.

10. Yea Prayer which should be most holy is thus also corrupted and profaned by too many; while they boldly bespeak the holy and dreadful God against one another, and against those things, which their ignorance misrepresenteth to themselves.

And so God's ordinances are made a snare to souls, which are appointed for their salvation: and the man that can kindle in his hearers a transporting passion against this or that opinion or form as Popish, is cried up for an excellent preacher, and seemeth to edify the people while he destroveth them.

11. And by this means you seem to justify the Papists lies and calumnies against the Protestants, by doing as they do: They bely Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Beza, &c. with just such intentions and such a kind of zeal, as some over doing Sectaries bely them. And is it bad in them and good in you?

12. You teach the people a dangerous and perverse way of reasoning à minùs notis, which will let in almost any errors: From a dark text in the Revelations, or Daniel, or from the supposition that the Pope is the Antichrist, and all Papists have received the mark of the beast, you gather conclusions against the notorious duties of Love and peace, which the light of nature doth commend to all: Not that I am persuading you that the Pope is not Antichrist; but that all things be received but according to their proper degree of evidence.

Now you open yourself indeed: All that revolt to Popery begin there, with questioning whether the Pope be the Antichrist, and telling men of the darkness of the Book of Revelations.

I tell you I will abate no certainty that you have, but increase my own and yours if I could: but I would not have any falsely to pretend that they are certainer of anything than they are: And no certainty can go beyond the ascertaining evidence: And if all Scriptures be equally plain, St. Peter was deceived, that tells us of many things hard to be understood, which the unlearned wrest as other Scriptures to their own destruction. And if the Revelations be not one of the hardest, I crave your answer to these questions: 1. Why are five Expositors usually of four opinions in the expounding of it? when it is those that have spent much of their lives in studying it (as Napier, Brightman, &c.) who are the Expositors? 2. Why will none of you that find it so easy at last write one certain Commentary which may assure which of all the former (if any one of them) was in the right? 3. Why did Calvin take it to be too hard for him, and durst not venture to expound it? 4. And if you take it to be so necessary as you pretend, tell me whether it was so necessary, and so taken by all those Churches, that for a long time received it not as Canonical Scripture? Surely they were saved without believing it. Though no doubt but the book of Revelation is a great mercy to the Church, and all men should understand as much of it as they can. But all that I blame you for here, is the perverting of the order of proof, in arguing à minùs notis.

13. And these over-doers that run things into the contrary extremes, do most injuriously weaken the Protestant cause, by disabling themselves and all men of their principles to defend it, and arming the Papists against it by their errors. When it cometh to an open dispute by Word or Writing, one of these men's errors is like a wound that lets out blood and spirits, and puts words of triumph into the adversaries mouth: A cunning Papist will presently drive the ignorant disputant to resolve his cause into his mistake, and then will open the falsehood of that, and thence infer the falsehood of all the rest: And what an injury is that to the souls of the auditors, who may be betrayed by it, and to the cause itself? For instance, If one of our overdoers hold that we are reputed to have kept all the Law of Innocency and merited salvation ourselves by Christ, or that no act of faith is Justifying but the accepting of his righteousness, or that faith Justifieth only as the efficient instrumental cause, or that we have no righteousness which hath anything to do in our Justification, but only Christ's imputed Merits, or that man's faith, Love or obedience are not rewardable, &c. how easily will a Papist open the falsehood of such an opinion to the hearers, and then tell them that they may see by this who is in the right. And, alas, what work would one Learned Papist make in London by public disputing, if we had no wiser men to deal with him than these over-doers? They may call Truth and Sobriety Antichristian, and talk nonsense as against Popery successfully to their own party; but I hope never to see the cause managed by their public disputes, lest half the Congregation turn Papists on it at once. If Chillingworth had not been abler to confute a Papist than those that used to calumniate him as Popish or Socinian, he had done less service of that kind than he did.

14. And it is an odious injury that these Over-doers do to the ancient and the universal Church, while in many cases, they (ignorantly or willfully) reproach and condemn them, as if they were all the favorers of Popery, and call their ancient doctrine and practice Antichristian. Some of them ignorantly falsify the Fathers doctrine, and upon trust from their Leaders aver • that they held that which they plainly contradict: and that which they held indeed, they cry out against as Popery. Such an instance we have newly in a Soldier, Major Danvers, an Anabaptist, which I have detected. And will Christ take it well to have almost all his Church condemned as Antichristian?

15. And hereby what an honor is done to Popery, and what a dishonor to the Reformed Churches, when it shall be concluded that all the Churches heretofore, even next after the age of the Apostles, and almost all the present Churches, were and are against the doctrine of the Protestants, and on the Papists side? And yet how many do us this injury, and the Roman Church this honor? About the nature of Justifying faith, and its office to Justification, and about the nature of Justification itself, and Imputation of Righteousness, and free-will, and man's Works and Merits, and about assurance of salvation and perseverance, how many do call that Popery, which the whole current of Greek and Latin Fathers do assert, and all the ancient Churches owned, and most of all the present Churches in the world? And those that call all forms of prayer, Popery, or the English Liturgy at least, when almost all the Christian world have forms, and most such as are much worse, do but tell men that the Christian world is on the side that they oppose, and against their way.

16. And it is a crime of infamy to be taken for Separatists from the universal Church; And in doctrines and forms of Worship, not only to avoid what we take to have been a common weakness, but also to condemn them as Antichristian, or as holding pernicious errors, is but to persuade men that we are not of the same body, and to own a sinful dishonorable separation.

17. And by all these means these Over-doers do greatly increase Atheism and Infidelity and profaneness among us, while their zeal against Truth and reproaches of sound doctrine, do make men think that our Religion is nothing but proud humor and self-conceit; and while they see us so boldly condemn almost all the world except ourselves, they will think that so few as we deserve not to be excepted.

18. By this injurious extremity against the Papists, we do but kindle in them a bitterer enmity to us, and hatred of them breedeth hatred in them of us, and so we set them on plotting revenge against us, as implacable injurious enemies; when we should deal soberly and righteously with all men, and seek to win them by truth and gentleness.

19. I And such dealings with them do draw Persecution on the Protestants that live under their Dominions; and if we refuse to use them here as Christians, no wonder if abroad they use not the Protestants as Men.

20. And by such great abuses of Reformation, men hinder Reformation for the time to come, and do their part to make it hopeless, while they discourage such attempts, by dishonoring the Reformation which is past Even as David George, and Munt • er, and the Munster Do • ages and Rebellions, do hinder the • eviving of Anabaptistry in the world, and the shame of their old practices and successes, is as a Grave stone upon the Sepuleher of their Cause; so do these men do their part to make it with the whole Reformation, that none hereafter may date to own or meddle with such work.

These that I have opened briefly to you, are the real fruits of false, injurious and ignorant zeal and over-doing against the Papists: And if Popery revive, it's like to be by such men.

But Popery is an heinous evil; and corrupt nature is so prone to evil, tha • you need not thus dissuade men from going too far from it, or from over-doing against it, no more than from being overmuch religious.

You may say the same as truly of the errors on the contrary extreme: All of them are evil, and men are prone to evil: But 1. Little know you how common it is in the world to spend men's zeal against the real or supposed evil of other men's Opinions, and thereby to strengthen the mortal evil of their own carnal affections and passions, and worldly lives, and to take a zeal for Truth and Orthodoxness for real Holiness, while usually such miss of Truth itself. 2. And you know not the wiles of Satan, how ordinarily he betrayeth a good Cause by the ill management of its most zealous friends, and doth undo by over-doing. When he will play the Devil indeed with Eve, he will seem to be more than God himself for Knowledge of Good and Evil, and for the advancement of mankind to be like God; and God shall be accused by him as if he were untrue, and envied our perfection. When he will play the Devil indeed with Christ, he will seem to be more for valiantness and trusting God than Christ was, and pleadeth Scripture for tempting God. When he will, play the Devil indeed in the Pharisees, he will be stricter for the • abbath, and for Discipline in avoiding the company of the Publicans and sinners, and stricter in fastings and diet and other observations than Christ himself; And he will be a zealous enemy to Blasphemy, and a zealous Royalist for Caesar, and a zealous honourer of the Temple and the Law, when Christ, or Paul, or other Apostles are to be destroyed by it. And when he will play the Devil in the Nicolaitans, Simonians, and Gnostic Heretics, he will seem to be for higher knowledge, and greater liberty than the Apostles were. And so when he would sow discord among Christians, and would kill their Love, and divide Christ's Church, and set them in a mental and oral War against each other, he will aggravate the errors and faults of others, and he will seem a more zealous friend of Truth, and enemy to Popery, Heresy, Error, Superstition, false Worship, or other faults than Christ is: But he knoweth why.

But God telleth us himself, that he is jealous about his Worship, and hath in Scripture more severely executed his Justice upon the corrupters of his Worship, than almost any other crime.

No doubt but God is jealous against Idolatry. He that knoweth not the true God from Idols, cannot honor him. And he that worshippeth him not as a most Great and Holy God, dishonoreth or blasphemeth him on pretence of worshipping him. And to worship him by an Image, is to persuade men that God is like that which that Image doth represent; which is to deny him to be God. And no doubt but the Jews great temptations to Idolatry from the Nations about them, were to be oppugned by great severities of God. And no doubt but Moses Law was to be honored by God's severe executions on the breakers of it.

But when you come to Christ's preaching, you find how oft he teacheth the Pharisees to go learn what that meaneth, I will have Mercy, and not Sacrifice. When he conferreth with the Woman of Samaria, John 4. she presently turneth from the doctrine of faith (as Sectaries do among us) to the Controversies of the times, [Our Fathers say, In this Mountain, and you say At Jerusalem, men ought to worship.] But Christ calleth her off such low discourse, and teacheth her to worship God as a Spirit, in spirit and truth, if ever she would be accepted of him.

But it is a time now when Popery is striving to rise again, and how unseasonably would you abate men's zeal against it?

No more than he was against his Lawyers Zeal, who grew hoarse with senseless bawling for him, saying, I am glad he hath lost his voice, or else I might have lost my Cause. I am so much against Popery, that I wish it wiser and abler adversaries, than self-conceited unstudied Zealots, who will honor Popery, by entitling it to the Truths of God, and the Consent of the Antient or Universal Church; or would make people believe, that it consisteth in some good or indifferent things, as in some Doctrines, Forms or Government, which others can see no harm in; And so teach men to say, If this be Popery, we will rather be Papists, than of them that rave as in their sleep, against they know not what. Could these men be persuaded to lay out their Zeal and diligence, in propagating the practical knowledge of Christianity itself, and let things alone which they understand not, and SUSPEND TILL THEY HAVE THROUGHLY STUDIED, or at least to forbear hindering wiser men, and calumniating and backbiting those that would by wisdom defend that truth which by folly and rashness they go about to betray, they might be meet for their share of that honor which now they forfeit.

You strive against God's Judgments by which he hath oft times disowned Popery among us; and would make that less odious, which God by wonders hath oft called us to abhor.

You still mistake: It is only your strengthening them, or sinning against God by false and ignorant accusations, and calumniating wiser men as favoring them, that I speak against. God hath oft marvelously preserved us from their attempts. But if you will use untruths against them, they will repay you two for one, and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you. Little know you how odious they render us by lies abroad where they are believed: and I would have no honest man to imitate them. I will instance to you in a few of their Stories.

Saith Thom. Waldensis (a Learned man) against Wycliffe, citante Tympio, pag. 104.

Saith the same Tympius Theatr. p. 148.

Ibid. id.

How like you such work as this? such horrid lies, of things fully known? Should not the detestation of them make us afraid of coming near them by any imitation, and to take heed what we believe or say of others? Abundance more such Stories, Miracles and Progidies you may find in Tympius and Caesarius besides many others. Read but those two Books and you will see who be the great pretenders to Prodigies and Miracles, and readiest to proclaim God's Judgments on others, when they that think they do it for the honor of God, alas, are unawares moved to it by the interest of that Cause and Party which is so much their own, as that it may be called Their own Interest.

Well, for all this, I take it to be God's Mercy to possess the unlearned Professors themselves, with so great a zeal against all that savoreth of Popery; so that were it not for them, the Ministers themselves would comply further than they do: But when they see that it is the sensus communis fidelium, and they must lose all the good people if they comply, it holds them in. Many that cannot dispute against Popish errors and practices, can hate them.

No doubt, but the habit of Divine Love, doth hold many good Christians much faster to God and the certain Essentials of Christianity and Piety, than the strongest disputing Reason would do without it. But if you will say the same of doubtful disputations, you will much mistake. In many such things the stricter professors go with the stream of their party, and follow them that carry it for the reputation of most godliness, or those leaders or friends that have most advantage on them. And do they not use the very same argument as you in different Countries for different and contrary causes? In Germany the Communis sensus fideliu •• is one thing, and in England another, and in France another in such matters. Yea, in the same Country in several times. I can remember since among the Religious stricter party, it was abominable to wear long hair, even to cover the ears, and now these twenty years they many of them exceed those that then were accounted Ruffians. It was then a crime with them to take Tobacco, and now it is none: and thus custom changes the matter with them. And now in some Congregations they will not sing Psalms, in others they will not read the Scripture; In others these can be endured, but not the use of the Creed, Lord's Prayer and Decalogue: In others that much, but no Forms of Prayer of man's devising: In others, the Ministers own self-imposed Form, but none imposed by Superiors: In one Congregation they are commonly for Universal Redemption and Free-will, and in another commonly against it: And why then would you persuade us, that in such things as these, the common sense of the faithful goeth all one way, when they usually are carried down the stream of pious reputation where they live?

And indeed you have small reason to be glad, that Ministers have the temptation of popular esteem or censure to conflict with, or that so many are conquered by it. Is it a lovely thing to hear silly women (ever learning, or rather hearing, but never coming to a competent knowledge of such matters) to cant out against their Teachers [Antichristian] and [Popery] upon words or actions not understood, which suit not with their vain conceits?

It is one of the artifices of the Papists which you have learned: when they would draw men to set light by the purity of Religion and the Worship of God, to cry up Love and Concord and Peace instead of it, and so to tie all men's tongues and hands from resisting their wicked Church-pollutions, by the fear of Schism, or being uncharitable to the polluters. And so you will draw men to an indifferency in Religion on pretence of Peace and Charity.

I am certain that the Wisdom from above is first pure, and then peaceable, and gentle, &c. James 3. 17. and it ever takes in both. And I am sure that Christ first and his Apostles after him make Love the sum of our Religion. I think it not amiss to tell you, of this, what an old Non-conformist saith in a Latin Treatise called De vera & genuina Jesu Christi Religion, Authore Ministro Anglo, p. 36, 37, 38, 39. The words are too large to recite, but in short he laboreth to prove, that next Faith in God and the Redeemer, Love is the Christian Religion itself, and set up instead of Ceremonies and penal Jewish Laws, as the Great Law of Christ, and the fulfilling of all Laws, answering his own Office, and so his new and great Commandment and the Character of his people, and so the Communion of the Saints is our faith and life. And that to believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and Love him and one another, is the Gospel, and our true Religion: And that when it cometh to Ceremonies, Rituals and externals, this still is Christ's voice, [Go learn what this meaneth, I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice.]

But know you not that you come up to the worser part of Popery, when you imitate the bloodiest men among them in your degree, by pleading for Sacrifice against Mercy? A cruel Religion, and burning and destroying men, and setting Kingdoms on fire, on pretence of keeping out Heresy and Schism, and preserving the right Faith, and Government, and Worship, is the malignity of Popery. When either They or You grow wrathfully zealous against your Brethren on pretence of purity of Faith or Worship, and to make you a Religion which quencheth Love, you know not what manner of Spirit you are of.

Is not the Church of Ephesus commended, Rev. 2. 3. that could not bear them that were evil, and that tried false Apostles and found them liars; and are they not blamed that did bear with the woman Jezebel and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans? And if God hate such doctrine, so must we.

All this is true and good; but do not you misapply it to defend your uncharitableness, or error? I am not persuading you to Indifferency as to truth and falsehood, good and evil, nor to abate your hatred of Idolatry or such doctrine of wickedness and uncleanness as the Nicolaitan 's was; nor yet to corrupt the Churches by neglecting Discipline. We would have a man that is an Heretic rejected after the first and second admonition: Bear not with any such evil in your Church Communion which should be cast out, and maketh men uncapable of Communion, (so far as it is in your power regularly to cast out such.) But as you must not take such for enemies, but still afford them a common sort of Charity, so you must not on this pretence, in your ignorance and rashness rave against truth or harmless things, or your Brethren that think not in all things as you do; nor call that Popery which sober wiser men than you, (yea, almost all Christ's Church on earth) do take to be sound doctrine, or laudable practice. It is the shame of the party among us that most inclineth to separation, when sober understanding men shall hear an ignorant fellow or woman with confident boldness, rail at a controverted Doctrine, or a Form of Prayer, or Ceremony as Popery, and admonish their Teachers not to receive the Mark of the Beast, when they do but show their pride and ignorance, in overvaluing their own conceptions and unfurnished understandings, and vilifying the knowledge of others in their dark presumption. If you would bring such lesser errors under Church Discipline or Separation, on pretence of not bearing with them that are evil, it is you yourselves that would soonest be found worthy to be separated from or cast out, who credit Popery by placing it in sound, good, decent or harmless things, and corrupt Doctrine and Worship by your▪ Errors and Superstitions, which you run into on the contrary extreme.

Your lax and loose principles would cast out all Discipline out of the Church.

You know not how much in your pretences to over-much strictness of Discipline, you agree with those Papists and Prelatists whom you seem to be most averse from. How hath the Pope subdued Emperors and Princes to himself, and captivated the World, but by the pretence of Discipline, by his Excommunications and Absolutions? How else have his Prelates disturbed this Kingdom in former Ages? And I myself had lately to do with one of the greatest Clergy-men that hath had a hand in our ejection, silencing and present Church-state, against whom I am fain to defend, that Kings and Chief Magistrates are not to be excommunicated: And I find the aforesaid English Non-conformist in the said Latin Tract. de Vera & Genuina Relig. pag. 280, 281. put upon the same task, and performing it by the same arguments which I used. I confess, the Papists and Worldly Tyrannical Clergy do corrupt Discipline, and cast out the true cleansing useful exercise of it; but for so much and such use as is conducible to maintain the interest of their Sect and Party and Carnality, no men are more hot: and is it not so with you?