CHAP. X. Prove them but guilty of one Error in Faith, and all Popery is confuted
CHAP. X. Prove them but guilty of one Error in Faith, and all Popery is confuted.
I come now to the next and principal part of my task, which is to open to you their Deceits, and give you Directions for the discovery and confutation of them, that by the help of these you may see the Truth.
Detect. 1. Remember this ground which they have given you, that If you prove them guilty but of any one Error in points of belief determined by their Church, you thereby disprove the whole body of Popery, as such. For you pull up the foundation which they build on, and the Authority into which they resolve their faith. They will grant you, that if they are deceived by the Church in one thing, they have no Certainty of anything upon the Churches credit. So that if you read Paul's discourse against Praying in an unknown tongue, or the many precepts for our reading and meditating in the Law of God, or the like, and can but perceive that the Popish Latin service, or their forbidding men to read the Scripture, &c. are contrary hereto, or if you find out but any one of their Errors, you cannot be a Papist, if you understand their Profession.
But it is not so with us: for though we know that the Scripture and all that is in it is of infallible Truth, and that every true Christian (while such) is infallible in the Essentials of Christianity; (for else he were no Christian) yet we profess that we know but in part, and that our own Writings and Confessions may possibly in some things be besides the sense of Scripture, and there being much more propounded in Scripture to our faith, then what is of absolute necessity to salvation, we may possibly after our studying and praying mistake in some things that are not of the Essence but the Integrity of Christianity, and are necessary to the Melius esse, the strength or comfort, though not to the being of a Christian. So that every Error in their faith destroys their grounds, and so their new Religion; but so doth not every Error of ours.
Or to speak more distinctly; let us distinguish between the Fides quae & qua; their Objective faith, and our Subjective faith. 1. Their Objective Faith hath Errors in it, but ours hath none by their own confession: For theirs is all the Decrees of their Popes and Councils: and ours is only the Holy
Scripture, which they confess to be infallible. Our own writings do but show how we understand the Scriptures, and so whether our subjective faith be right or not. 2. We confess that it is not only possible but probable, that we are mistaken in some lower points, about the meaning of the Scriptures, and yet our foundation is still sure. But they have in a sort confounded their
Subjective and Objective faith: and one believes it on that account because others do believe it; and so one age or part do but seek for the Object of their faith in the Actual faith of the other. Yea 3. They conclude that every point which is of faith, that is, thats determined by the Church to be so, is of such necessity to salvation that no man can be saved that denieth it, or that doth not believe it (if sufficiently proposed.) But we are assured, that
though all that is in Scripture be most true, yet through misunderstanding, some points there proposed to our faith, may possibly be denied and disputed against by a true believer; and yet his salvation not be overthrown by it. The Papists cry out against us for distinguishing between the Fundamentals (or essentials) of Religion and the Integrals: but we know it to be necessary.