PROTESTANT DOCTRINE ON UNITY OF FAITH. 2G1
5. Protestants are not Siitisfied with your general imj)licit assent unto what your church teacheth and determineth, which you have invented to solve the difficulties that attend your description of the unity of faith. Of what use it may be unto other purposes, I do not now dispute; but as to this, of the preservation of the unity of faitli, it is certainly of none at all. The unity of faith consists in all men's express believing all that all men are bound expressly to believe, be it what it will. Now, you would have this preserved, by men's not believing what they are bound to believe: for what belongs to this keeping the unity of faith, they are bound to believe expressly ; and what they believe implicitly, they do indeed no more but not ex- pressly disbelieve, — for if they do any more than not disbelieve, they put forth some act of their understanding about it, and so far expressly believe it: so that, uj^ou the matter, you would have men to keep the imity of faith by a not believing of that which, that they may keep the unity of faith, they are bound expressly to believe ; nor can you do otherwise whilst you make all the propositions of your church of things to Ijc believed to belong to the unity of faith. Lastly, The determinations of your church you make to be the next efficient cause of your unity. Now these, not being absolutely infallible, leave it, like Delos, flitting up and down in the sea of prohahilities only. This we shall manifest unto you immediately; at least, we shall evi- dence that you have no cogent reasons nor stable gi'ounds to prove your church infallible in her determinations. At present, it shall suffice to mind you that she hath determined contradictions, and that in as eminent a manner as it is possible for her to declare her sense by, — namely, by councils confirmed by popes ; and an infallible determination of contradictions is not a notion of any easy digestion in the thoughts of a man in his right wits. We confess, then, that we cannot agi'ee with you in your rule of the unity of faith, though the thing itself we press after as our duty. For, (2.) Protestants do not conceive this unity to consist in a precise determination of all questions that are or may be raised in or about things belonging unto the faith, whether it be made by your church or any other way. Your Thomas of Aquine,^ who without question is the best and most sober of all your school doctors, hath in one book given us five hun- dred and twenty-two articles of religion, which you esteem miracu- lously stated : " Quot articuli, tot miracula." All these have at least five questions, one with another, stated and determined in explica- tion of them; which amount unto two thousand six hundred and ten conclusions in matters of religion. Now, we are far from think-
' Aquino, anciently Aquinum, is a city, now decayed, -within the kingdom of Naples. Our author invariably gives the word a French termination, and there seemed no neces- sity to change it into the modern form. — Ed.
2G2 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMABVEKSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
ing that all these determinations, or the like, belong unto the unity of faith, though much of the religion amongst some of you lies in not dissenting from them. The questions that your Bellarmine hath determined and asserted, the positions in them as of faith, and ne- cessary to be believed, are, I think, near forty times as many as the articles of the ancient creed of the church, and such as it is most evident that, if they be of the nature and importance pretended, it is impossible that any considerable number of men should ever be able to discharge their duty in this business of holding the unity of faith. That a man believe in general that the holy Scripture is given by insph-ation from God, and that all things proposed therein for him to believe are therefore infalhbly true, and to be as such believed ; and that, in particular, he believe every article or point of truth that he hath sufficient means for his instruction in, and conviction that it is so revealed; they judge to be necessary unto the holding of the unity of faith. And this also they know, that this sufficiency of means unto every one that enjoys the benefit of the Scriptures, ex- tends itself unto all those articles of truth which are necessary for him to believe, so as that he may yield unto God the obedience that he requireth, receive the Holy Spirit of promise, and be accepted with God. Herein doth that unity of faith which is amongst the disciples of Christ in the world consist, and ever did; nor can do so in any thing else. ISTor doth that variety of apprehensions that in many things is found among the disciples of Clnrist, and ever was, render this unity, like that you plead for, various and uncertain ; for the rule and formal reason of it, — namely, God's revelation in the Scrij)ture, — is still one and the same, perfectly unalterable. And the several degrees that men attain unto in their apprehensions of it do no more reflect a charge of variety upon it than the difference of seeing, as to the several degrees of the sharpness or obtuseness of our bodily eyes, doth upon the light given by the sun. The truth is, if there was any common measure of the assents of men, either as to the intension of it, as it is subjectively in their minds, or extension of it, as it respecteth truths revealed, that belonged unto the imity of faith, it were impossible there should be any such thing in the world, at least that any such thing should be known to be. Only this I acknowledge, that it is the duty of all men to come up to the full and explicit acknowledgment of all the truths revealed in the word of God, wherein the glory of God and the Christian's duty are con- cerned; as also to a joint consent in faith objective, or propositions of truth revealed, at least in things of most importance, — though their faith subjective, or the mternal assent of their minds, have, as it will have in several persons, various degrees, yea, in the same persons, it may be, at different seasons. And in our labouring to come up unto