And here they are at a loss already ; for as much as they fill our ears with a gi'eat noise and din of " the church ! " and can scarcely talk of any thing but " the church ! the church I " yet they are not so much agreed among themselves what this very church is, upon whose authority they build their faith, and would have us build ours. In several countries they have several churches, several supremacies, several infallibleships : a council is the church, and supreme and in- fallible, in France; and the pope is the same in Italy. And so (amongst the Papists), if you do but change your climate, you must change your faith too ; — if you but cross the Alps, you must translate your faith, and shift it from a council's shoulders to the pope's. A strange, vaiiable thiug you will find it, which must be calculated according to the meridian you are in, and will not serve indifferently for all places ; so that you must be sure to fix your habitation, ere you can settle your belief And yet, if this were agreed upon, you would still be at an uncertainty, as to the infallibility of whatsoever they call " the church : " — for you are likely to have nothing but their own word for it ; and if you will take it so, you may ; or if they prove it by the Scripture, they desert their cause, and own the Scripture as above them, and authentic without them; and so, while they would establish their infallibility, they lose their authority.
And so, to conclude, there is nothing certain, nothing solid, among them, nothing able to bear the weight of an immortal soul, — nothing upon which a man can venture his everlasting salvation. I see no such thing as a truly divine faith among them, unless it be therefore divine, because built upon the authority of their lord god, the pope. They call the pope eccleske catholicce principem et sj^onsum. In tlie
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mass at the election of Lira, they apply that to him which is said of the Holy Ghost : " I mil pray the Father, and he will send you an- other Comforter," John xiv. 16. And in the time of Leo X. it was disputed in their schools, among other blasphemies, whether the pope were a mere man, or quasi deus, " as it were a god ; " and whether he did not partake of both the natures of Christ, Momsei Myster. Iniquit., p. 636.
(2.) Our religion is more comfortable, as luell as more certain. Our faith being built upon the truth of God himself, and our comfort upon our faith, so long as our foundation remains immovable, we need not fear our superstructure. If our faith have good footing, our hopes and comforts will keep their standing. Faith in the promises is that from whence all the comfort of our heai'ts, and our " rejoicing in hope of the glory of God," doth proceed, Kom. v. 2. A Christian's joy, "is joy in believing;" and his peace, "the peace of God," Phil. iv. 7; and his comforts, the comforts of the Holy Ghost : but this can never be, if our faith be founded immediately on the testimony of men, and not of God ; or if we believe the promises of the word to be made by God, because men tell us he made them. So long as we hold to the "sure word," 2 Pet. i. 19, we have sure hopes and sure comforts, and no longer; and therefore a Papist can never have any "strong conso- lation" by his faith, Heb. vi. 18, when his faith itself hath so weak a foundation. How can they ever rejoice in hopes of heaven, when they beheve there is a heaven with no better a faith than they believe a pope or council to be infallible ? It is to little purpose to say they beheve there is a heaven (say the like of other articles), because God in the Scripture tells them so, when they would not have believed one tittle of that veiy Scripture, if a pope or a coimcil had not bid them believe it : for then their hopes and comforts are all resolved into the authority of this church (whatever it be), as well as their faith is; and both the one and the other rest not on the real infal- libility of the God of truth, but on the pretended infallibility of one single prelate at Rome, or a convention of them at Trent. From such a foundation for our faith, and such comforters of our consciences, the Lord deliver us !
By this you may gather what 5^ou must do, if you would be Papists. You must renounce your reason and faith too, if you would embrace their religion ; you must enslave your consciences to the authority of men, and so put out yom: own eyes that you may see with other men's. You must not be " built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets," Eph. ii. 20, but of popes and councils, — -it may be, of a single pope; and so hazard your eternal peace and welfare on the credit of a man who may be himself a mvirderer, an adulterer, a so- domite, a necromancer, a blasphemer, a heretic; and may be so flir