Part 549

_Direct._ IX. Though sense must be thus absolutely ruled, its proper power must neither be disabled, prohibited, nor denied. You must keep your horse strong and able for his work, though not headstrong and unruly; and you must not keep him from the use of his strength, though you grant him not the government. Nor will you deny but that he may be stronger than the rider, though the rider have the ruling power: he hath more of the power called δυναμις, natural power, though the εξουσια be yours. So it is here: 1. No man must destroy his bodily sense; the quickest sense is the best servant to the soul, if it be not headstrong and too impetuous. The body must be stricken so far as to be "kept under and brought into subjection," 1 Cor. ix. 27; but not be disabled from its service to the soul. 2. Nor must we forbid or forbear the exercise of the senses, in subordination to the exercise of the inferior senses, Heb. iv. 14. It is indeed a smaller loss to part with a right hand or a right eye, than with our salvation; but that proveth not that we are put to such straits as to be necessitated to either (unless persecution put us to it). 3. Nor must we deny the certainty of the sensitive apprehension, when it keepeth its place; as the papists do, that affirm it necessary to salvation to believe that the sight, and taste, and smell, and feeling of all men in the world, that take the sacrament, are certainly deceived, in taking that to be bread and wine which is not so. For if all the senses of all men, though never so sound and rational, be certainly deceived in this, we know not when they are not deceived, and there can be no certainty of faith or knowledge: for if you say that the church telleth us that sense is deceived in this, and only in this, I answer, If it be not first granted that sense (as so stated) is certain in its apprehension, there is no certainty then that there is a church, or a man, or a world, or what the church ever said, or any member of it. And if sense be so fallible, the church may be deceived, who by the means of sense doth come to all her knowledge. To deny faith is the property of an infidel; to deny reason is to deny humanity, and is fittest for a mad-man, or a beast (if without reason, reason could be denied); but to deny the certainty of sense itself, and of all the senses of all sound men, and that about the proper objects of sense, this showeth that ambition can make a religion, which shall bring man quite below the beasts, and make him a mushroom, that Rome may have subjects capable of her government; and all this under pretence of honouring faith, and saving souls; making God the destroyer of nature in order to its perfection, and the deceiver of nature in order to its edification.