PROTESTANT DOCTRINE ON UNITY OF FAITH. 259
church, or else he is never the nearer to his end: but what that sense is in the most of your church's proposals, your doctors do so endlessly quarrel among themselves, that it is impossible a man should come unto any great certainty in his inquiry after it; yet a precise meaning in all her proposals your church must have, or she hath none at all. What shall a man do, when he comes unto one of youv great masters to be acquainted with the genuine sense of one of your church's pro- posals? this being the way that he takes for his satisfaction: — First, he speaks unto the article or question to be considered in general; then gives the different senses of it according to these and those fainous masters, the most of which he confutes, — who yet all of them professed themselves to explain and to speak according to the sense of your church ; and, lastly, gives his own interpretation of it, which, it may be, within a few months is confuted by another. (3.) Suppose a man have attained a knowledge of all that your church hath de- termined and proposed to be believed, and to a right understanding of her precise sense and meaning in all her determinations and propo- sals,— which I believe never yet man attained unto, — yet what assur- ance can he have, if he live in any place remote from Rome, but that your church may have made some new determinations in matters of faith, whose embracement, in the sense which she intends, belongs unto his keeping the unity of faith, which yet he is not acquainted withal ? Is it not simply impossible for him to be satisfied at any time that he believes all that is to be believed, or that he holds the unity of faith ? Your late pontifical determination in the case of the Jansenists and Molinists is sufiicient to illustrate this instance. For I suppose you are equally bound not to believe what your church condemneth as heretical, as you are bound to believe what it pro- poseth for Catholic doctrine. (4.) I desire to know when a man who lives here in England begins to be obliged to believe the deter- minations of your church that are made at Rome. It may be he first hears of them in a " Mercury" or weekly news-book ; or it may be he hath notice of them by some private letters, from some who live near the place; or it may be he hath a knowledge of them by common report; or it may be they are j^rinted in some books, or that there is a brief of them published somewhere under the name of the pope ; or they are put into some volume written about the councils; or some religious person, on whom lie much relies, assures him of them. I know you believe that your church's proposition is a sufiicient means of the revelation of any article, to make it necessary to be believed; but I desire to know what is necessary to cause a man to receive any dictate or doctrine as your church's proposition? — not only upon this account, that you are not very well agreed upon the " requisita " unto the making of such a proposition, but also because, be you as
260 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
infallible as you please in your proposals, the means and ways you use to communicate those proposals you make unto individuals in whom alone the faith whereof we treat exists are all of them fallible. Now, that which I desire to know is. What is or what are those certain means and ways of communicating the propositions of your church unto any person, wherein he is bound to acquiesce, and upon the application of them unto him to believe them, " fide divina cui non potest subesse falsum V Is it any one thing, or way, or means, that [forms] the hinge upon which his assent turns ? or is it a complication of many things concurring to the same purpose ? If it be any one thing, way, or medium, that you fix upon, pray let us know it, and we shall examine its fitness and sufficiency for the use you put it unto. I am sure we shall find it to be either infallible or fallible. If you say the /brmer, and that that particular upon which the assent of a man's mind unto any thing to be the proposal of your church de- pends, must, in the testimony it gives and evidence that it affords, be esteemed infallible, then you have as many infallible persons, things, or writings, as you make use of to acquaint one another with the determinations of your church; that is, upon the matter, you are all so, though I know in particular that you are not. If the latter, notwithstanding the first pretended infallible proj)osition, your faith will be found to be resolved immediately into a fallible information; for what will it advantage me that the proposal of your churcli cannot deceive me, if I may be deceived in the communicating of that proposal unto me ? And I can Avith no more firmness, certainty, or assurance, believe the thing proposed unto me, than I do believe that it is the proposal of the church wherein it is made. For you l^retend not unto any self- evidencing efficacy in your church's propo- sitions, or things proposed by it; but all their authority, as to me, turns upon the assurance that I have of their relation unto your church, or that they are the proposals of your church, concerning which I have nothing but very fallible evidence, and so cannot possi- bly believe them with faith divine and supernatural. If you shall say that there ai-e many things concurring unto this communication of your church's proposal unto a man, as the notoriety of the fact, suit- able lyroceedings wpon it, books written to prove it, testimonies of good men, and the like, I cannot but mind you that all these being " sigil- latim," every one apart fallible, they cannot in their conspiracy improve themselves into an infallibility. Strengthen a probability they may; testify infallibly they neither do nor can. So that, on this account, it is not only impossible for a man to know whether he holds the unity of faith or no, but, indeed, whether he believe any thing at all with faith supernatural and divine, seeing he hath xio infallible evi- dence for what is proposed unto him to believe, to build his faith upon.