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nor be deceived in them. We are that semen Dei that Malachi speaks of, the seed of God 24, which he hath sowed in his church; and by that extraction we are consortes divinæ naturæ, partakers of the divine nature itself, and so grow to be filü Dei, the sons of God; and by that title, cohæredes Christi, joint heirs with Christ 26; and so to be Christi ipsi, Christs ourselves, as God calls all his faithful, his anointed, his Christs 27; and from thence we grow to that height, to be of the quorum in that commission, Dii estis, I have said you are gods, and not only gods by representation, but idem spiritus cum Domino, so become the same spirit with the Lord, that as a spirit cannot be divided in itself, so we are persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor any creature, shall be able to separate us from God28. If any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant still 29. If he will not study his own case, let him be subject to these scorns and these terrors still; but Christianus idiota persuasissimum habet 3, the unlearnedest Christian that is (be he a true Christian), hath learning enough to establish himself so, that neither scorns nor terrors can shake his foundations. So then you see what fellowship of the faithful, what household of the righteous, what communion of saints it is, that falls under this denomination, we, we that have laid our foundations in faith and made our superedifications in sanctimony and holiness of life; we that have learned, and learned by the right rule, the rule of Christianity, how to put a right value upon this world, and those things which can but concern our body in this world; for multis serviet qui corpori servit, says the oracle of moral men 31. That man is a common slave to every

24 Mal. ii. 15.
27 Psalm cv. 15.
30 Origen.

30

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body, that is a slave to his own body; that man dares displease no man, that dares not displease himself; that man will grovel, and prostrate, and prostitute himself at every great man's threshold, that is afraid to lose a dish from his table, or a pillow from his bed, at home. Multis serviet, qui corpori servit, et qui, pro illo, nimium timet, He is the true coward that is afraid of every inconvenience which another may cast upon his person or fortune. Honestum ei vile est, cui corpus nimis charum est, He that hath set too high a price upon his body will sell his soul cheap. But if we can say of the fires of tribulation as Origen says (whether he speak of the fires of conflagration at the last day, or these fires of purification in our way to it), Indigemus sacramento ignis, baptismo ignis, that all our fiery tribulations fall under the nature and definition of sacraments, that they are so many visible signs of invisible grace, that every correction from God's hand is a rebaptization to me, and that I can see that I should not have been so sure of salvation without this sacrament, without this baptism, without this fire of tribulation. If I can bring this fire to that temper which Lactantius speaks of, that it be ignis qui obtemperabit justis, a fire that shall conform itself to me, and do as I would have it, that is, concoct, and purge, and purify, and prepare me for God; if my Christianity make that impression in me which Socrates's philosophy did in him, who (as Gregory Nazianzen testifies of him) in carcere damnatus, egit cum discipulis, de corpore, sicut de alio ergastulo, who, when he lay a condemned man in prison, then in that prison taught his disciples, that the body of man was a worse prison than that he lay condemned in. If I can bring these fires to this compass and to this temI shall find, that as the ark was in the midst of the waters, and yet safe from the waters, and the bush

per,

in the midst of the fire, and yet safe from the fire; so, though St. Jerome say (and upon good grounds), Grandis audacia est, puræque conscientiæ, It is an act of greater boldness than any man, as man, can avow, and a testimony of a clearer conscience than any man, as man, can pretend to have, regnum Dei postulare, et judicium non timere, to press God for the day of judgment, and not to fear that day (for upon all men, considered but as men, falls that severe expostulation of the prophet Amos, Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord; to what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light) 32; yet I shall find that such a family, such a society, such a communion there is, and that I am of that quorum that can say, Come what scorns can come, come what terrors can come, in Christo omnia possumus, though we can do nothing of ourselves, yet as we are in Christ we can do all things, because we are fixed in him, secundum promissa; which is our fourth and next branch, According to his promises.

33

I have nothing to plead with God but only his own promises. I cannot plead birthright; the Jews were elder brothers, and yet were disinherited. I cannot plead descent; my mother was an Hittite (as the prophet Ezekiel speaks), I am but of the half blood at best, more of the first than of the second Adam, more corporal than spiritual. I cannot plead purchase; if I have given any thing for God's sake, if I have done any thing, suffered any thing for God's sake, all that is so far from merit, as that it is not the interest of my principal debt. Nay, I cannot plead mercy, for I am by nature the child of wrath too. All my plea is, that to which he carries me so often in his word, Quia fidelis Dominus, Because the Lord is a faithful God. So this apostle calls him fidelem Creatorem, a faithful 34 Eph. ii. 3.

32 Amos, v. 18.

33 Ezek. xvi. 3.

Creator: God had gracious purposes upon me when he created me, and will be faithful to those purposes. So St. Paul calls Christ fidelem pontificem, a faithful high priest 36; graciously he meant to sacrifice himself for the world, and faithfully he did it. So St. John calls him fidelem testem, a faithful witness37; of his mercy he did die for me, and his Spirit bears witness with my spirit that he did so. And in the same book, xix. 11, his very denomination, his very name, is Faithful for this faithfulness in God, which is so often recommended to me, must necessarily imply a former promise. If God be faithful, he is faithful to some contract, to some promise that he hath made, and that promise is my evidence. But then to any promise that is pretended, and not deduced from his Scriptures, he may justly plead non est factum, he made no such promise. For, as in cases of diffidence and distrust in his mercy, God puts us upon that issue, Ubi libellus, Produce your evidence; why are you jealous of me? Where is the bill of your mother's divorce whom I have put away, or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you 38? So in cases of presumption in ourselves, or pressing God with his promises (and so also in cases of innovation of matter of doctrine in his church), God puts us to the same issue, Ubi libellus, Produce your evidence; where in my Scriptures have I made any such contract, any such covenant, any such promise to you? My witness is in heaven, says Job, but yet my evidence is upon earth; God is that witness, but that witness hath been pleased to be examined ad perpetuam rei memoriam, and his testimony remains of record in the church; and there, from his Scriptures, exemplified to me by his public notary, the church, I may lawfully charge him with

35 1 Pet. iv. 19. 38 Isaiah, 1. 1.

36 Heb. ii. 17.
39 Job, xvi. 19.

37 Rev. i. 5.

his promise, his contract, his covenant, and else not. There is a general and a useful observation made by St. Augustine, Omnium hæreticorum quasi regularis est ista temeritas, This is a regular irregularity, this is a fixed and constant levity amongst all heretics, authoritatem stabilissimam fundatissimæ ecclesiæ quasi rationis nomine et pollicitatione superare, to overthrow the foundations of the church upon the appearance, and pretence, and colour of reason; God cannot have proceeded thus or thus, because there is this and this reason against it. Now the foundations of the church are the Scriptures; and when men present reasons of probability, of verisimilitude, of pious credulity, not deduced out of the Scriptures, they fall into that regular irregularity, and into that constant levity, which St. Augustine justly makes the character and specification of a heretic, to seem to proceed upon reasons, and not deduce those reasons from the Scriptures. When therefore they reason thus (as Bellarmine does), Non discretus Dominus, that God had not dealt discreetly, if he had not established a church, a certain, a visible, and infallible church, a church endowed with these and these, with those and those, and such and such, and more and more immunities and privileges, by which that particular church must be super-catholic and super-universal above all the churches in the world, we join not with them in that boldness to call God's discretion in question, but we join with them in that issue, Ubi libellus, Where is your evidence, which is your Scripture, which you will rely upon for that, for such a church? For we content not ourselves with such places of Scripture as may serve to illustrate that doctrine to them that believe it `aforehand without Scripture, but we ask such places of Scripture as may prove it to them who, till they see such Scriptures, believe, and believe truly, that they

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