conceit, so oft condemned by Augustin*, so to separate free-will from grace, as if, without it, we could do or think any thing answerable to the will of God? That we are able, by the power of our will, to avoid sins; that we can overcome "the slighter motions of temptation," as Bellarmin † speaks; that we can keep God's commandments, as Scotus t and Durandus §; that we can reject or receive the inspiration of the Spirit, as the Tridentine Fathers ||; that we can dispose ourselves to the receiving of grace, as Thomas and Suarez; that we do naturally co-operate with grace, and make our conversion effectual, as Tapperus: what is it else, but to steal glory from God, that we may prank up this carrion-nature of ours? Yet it was modestly done of Tiberius **, who, of those many buildings which he repaired and perfected, challenged not one to himself; but gave them still the names of those men, by whom they were begun to be built: but these men challenge the whole house, when as they have not laid so much as one tile upon the roof. Far be this shameful sacrilege from us, when that truly jealous God challenges to himself, to work in us both the will and the deed: yea, that we can will to believe, is his work; as Austin ++ rightly speaks. See, then, he doth not excite, but work in us; EVERYET. He works in us, both, that which is first, to will; and, that which is last, to work. Jerome says worthily, "To will, and to run, is mine: but, without God's continual help, it will not be mine." Without me, you can do nothing, saith Christ; no, not think any thing, saith Paul. Alas, what can we do, who are not lame, but dead in sins? Eph. ii. 1. By the influence of God's Spirit, therefore, a new life must be created in us, that was not; Col. iii. 1. and not the former life excited: which was according to that of the Psalmist, Create in me a clean heart; Ps. li. 10. and not stir up that clean one I have. Neither, indeed, is there, as yet, any place for this: the first heart must be taken out; another must be put in. I will take away their stony heart, and give them a heart of flesh, saith God, by the mouth of Ezekiel; ch. xxxvi. 26. "He will give it, but," thou sayest perhaps, "into their breasts, which have predisposed and prepared themselves for the gift:" yea, contrarily, to those, that do not a little resist him. The wisdom of the flesh is enmity: but there are some enmities more secret, and which do not outwardly bewray themselves; but, behold, here is public resistance: oux UroTάGGETai; It is not subject. Aug. Epist. 46. et 47. Petr. Chrysol. Ser. 114. Christus quicquid suarum virtutum est, refert ad gloriam Patris; et homo, cujus suum nihil est, sibi vendicare quod per Christum resurrexit elaborat. + Leviores quasque titillationes superare. Bell. § Dur. ibid. qu. 4. ** Xiphilin. Tiber. Hier. ad Ctesiphont. Sess. 6. c. 5. et Can. 4. Scot. 2. d. 28. Citat, Bell. ibid. †† De Grat. et Lib. Ar. c, 16. "But, perhaps, it will once yield of itself:" où dúvaras; It can not, saith the Spirit of God. See in how rebellious an estate we are to God. What proneness is here, to will good; what ability, to perform it? Let the Papists, if they will, sacrifice to themselves, as Sejanus* had wont of old; or to their nets, as the Prophet speaketh: as for us, come what can come upon our opposition, we neither can nor dare arrogate unto ourselves those things, which, by a holy reservation and incommunicableness, are proper only to the Highest. It is safe, indeed, for the Papists, when they will to come up to us; but we cannot go down to them, without a fearful precipitation of our souls. Let Cassander † witness this for us. Let Bonaventure himself witness it for him: "This is the property of holy minds, to attribute nothing to themselves, but all to the grace of God: so that, how much soever a man ascribe to the grace of God, he swerveth not from true piety; though, by giving much to grace, he withdraw something from the power of nature or free-will: but, when any thing is withdrawn from the grace of God, and ought attributed to nature which is due to grace, there may be great danger to the soul." Thus far those two ingenuous Papists. But, to infer, we give all to grace, the Papists something to nature; and what they give to nature, we give to God. Therefore, we do and say that, which is fit for holy minds: they, if Bonaventure may be witness, that, which swerves from piety, and is joined with much danger of their soul. (3.) The foundation of Popish Justification is the freedom of our will; and, upon the walls of justification, is Merit raised. We will have no quarrel about the word. The holy Fathers of old, as we all grant, took the word in a good sense, which the latter Divines have miserably corrupted ‡. About the thing itself, we must strive eternally. We promise a reward to good works; yea, an everlasting one: It is a true word of the Jews §, "He, that labours on the Even, shall eat on the Sabbath:" for God hath promised it, and will perform: who yet crowneth us in mercy and compassion, as the Psalmist speaks; not, as the Papists, "in the rigour of justice;" not, as Andradius ¶, "according to the due desert of our work :" "by the free gift of God, and not our merits;" as Cajetan **, wisely and worthily: or, if any man like that word better, "God doth it in justice, but in respect of his own promise; not the very dignity of our works." "That a just man's work in the truth of the thing itself, is of a value worthy of the reward of heaven," which industrious and learned Morton cites out of the English Professor of Doway ††; "and hath a meet proportion both of equality and dignity, to the recom Xiphil. Epit. Dionis. † Consult. Cass. cit. Bonavent. in hæc verba, Hoc piarum mentium est, ut nil sibi tribuunt, &c. Bucer. cit. à Cass. Cypr. 1. iii. ep. 20. § Prov. Jud. Qui laboravit in Vesperá, comedet in Sabbatho. Conc. Trident. Orthod. Expl. l. vi. tt Weston. de Trip. Hom. Off, 1. ii. ** Cajet. in Galat. pence of eternal life," as Pererius; and that, "in itself, without any respect of the merits and death of Christ," which Suarez and Bayus shamed not to write *; seems justly to us little less than blasphemy. "But," say our modern Papists, "Christ hath merited this merit of ours:" "neither can any other works challenge this to themselves, but those, which are done in God," as Andradius speaks; "but those, which are dipped and dyed in the blood of Christ," as our latter Papists elegantly and emphatically speak. But, what is this, but to cozen the world, and to cast a mist before the eyes of the unskilful? Our sins are dyed in the blood of Christ; not our merits or, if they also, hath Christ then deserved that our works. should be perfect? how comes it about, that the works of the best men are so lame and defective? Hath he deserved, that, though they be imperfect, yet they might merit! what injury is this to God! what contradiction of terms ! Behold now, so many Saviours, as good men! What I do, is mine; what I merit, is mine; whosoever gives me, either to do or to merit. Whosoever rides on a lame horse, cannot but move unevenly, uneasily, uncertainly. What insolent over-weeners of their own works are these Papists, which proclaim the actions, which proceed from themselves, worthy of no less than heaven! To whom we may justly say, as Constantine said to Acesius the Novatian †, "Set up ladders, O ye Papists, and climb up to heaven alone. Who can abide that noted speech of Bellarmin ‡, "A just man hath, by a double title, right to the same glory: one, by the merits of Christ imparted to him by grace; another, by his own merits?" contrary to that of the Spirit of God, The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life; upon which words, another Cardinal, Cajetan, speaks in a holier fashion, thus; "He doth not say, that the wages of our righteousness is eternal life; but, the gift of God is eternal life; that we may understand and learn, that we attain eternal life, not by our own merits, but by the free gift of God for which cause also he adds, by Jesus Christ, our Lord; Rom. vi. 25. Behold the merit, behold the righteousness, whose wages is eternal life: but to us, in respect of Jesus Christ, it is a free gift." Thus Cajetan §. What could either Luther or Calvin, or any Protestant say more plainly? How imperfect doth the Scripture every where proclaim, both God's graces in us, and our works to him! and, though the graces of God were absolutely perfect, yet they are not ours: if our works were so, yet they are formerly due: and, if they be due to God, what recompence of transcendent glory is due to us? Behold, we are both servants, and unprofitable. Not worthy, saith God: "Wor * Vid. Protest. Appeal. I. ii. c. 11. Tom. 1. in Th. 3. d. 11. + Socr. I. i. c. 7. Erigite vobis scalas, &c. § Cajet. Com. in Rom. vi. Homojustus duplici titulo, &c. thy, and more," say the Papists. By grace ye are saved through faith, and not of yourselves, saith God; Eph. ii. 8: "By grace, indeed; but yet of ourselves," say the Papists. What insolency is this! Let our monks now go, and profess wilful poverty; while Hezekiah did never so boast of his heaps of treasure, as these of their spiritual wealth. Jerome said truly; "It was more hard to be stripped of our pride, than of our gold and jewels; for even when those outward ornaments are gone, many times these inward rags swell up the soul." Gregory Ariminensis, their old Schoolman, was ashained of this wicked arrogance; and so was Durandus, and Pighius, and other their Divines of a more modest temper. I would the Jesuits could have had the grace to have been no less ashamed; and the Tridentine Doctors, together with their executioners, the Inquisitors. But, what other men have holily and truly spoken, that they have perfidiously wiped out. Witness their Index of Madrid †, in these words: "Out of the book which is entitled, The Order of Baptizing, together with the Manner of Visiting the Sick, printed at Venice, in the year 1575, let these words be blotted out; Dost thou believe, that, not by thine own merits, but by the virtue and merit of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, thou shalt come to glory," And, soon after ‡, "Dost thou believe, that our Lord Jesus Christ died for our salvation; and that no man can be saved by his own merits, or any other means, but only by the merit of his passion?" I wis, these are the scorpions and snakes of the ancient Divines; as Jerome § termed the errors of Origen; amongst which the reader must needs have walked, had not the grave senate of the Inquisition wisely provided for our safety. What hope is there now of peace? unless they could be content, which Bellarmin grants to be the safest way, renouncing the merits of their works, not so much for their uncertainty, as the imperfection of their justice and danger of vain-glory, both to resolve and teach men, to repose their confidence in the mercy and bounty of God: which we can, at once, both wish, and not hope for. (4.) Satisfaction hath near affinity with merit; and, indeed, is but as another twig, arising from the same root: than which, no opinion could be devised more injurious and reproachful to the merits of Christ. The word was not displeasing to the ancient Fathers; nor, in their sense, to us. Only this let me touch, in passing by: That the heedless abuses of words, to the great wrong of the Church, hath bred confusion of things: as, contrarily, that of Tertullian || is approved; "The assured sense of words is the safety of proprieties." Hier. Epitaph. Fabiola. † Ind. Expurg. Madriticus. p. 149. We have nothing to do here with Civil Satisfaction; nothing, with Ecclesiastical: whereof Luther not unfitly said, even in Cassander's own judgment, "Our mother, the Church, out of her good affection, desiring to prevent the hand of God, chastises her children with certain Satisfactions, lest they should fall under the scourges of God." This Canonical Satisfaction, as many call it, hath been too long out of use, on both sides. Yea, more than this, in all our sermons to our people, we beat importunately upon the necessity of penitence, and all the wholesome exercises thereof, as fruits worthy of repentance: not, as Cassander well interprets it, as if we desired they should offer unto God a ransom worthy and sufficient for the clearing of the score of their sins; but, that we teach them, those offices must be performed by them, which God requires of those sinners on whom he will bestow the satisfaction of his Son +. Let them call these satisfactions, if they will: we give them leave. But, that, after the most absolute passion of Christ, there should be yet behind certain remainders of punishment to be discharged by us, either here or in purgatory, with a purpose thereby to satisfy the divine justice, whether they be imposed by God, or by the priest, or by ourselves, as the Tridentine distinction runs, we neither may, nor can endure. For, how nicely soever these men distinguish, it cannot be, but this sacrilegious opinion must needs accuse the truly propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, of some imperfection. I know they say, that both satisfactions may well stand together: that, of the Mediator; and this, of man: whereof Bonaventure calls the one, perfect; the other, semi-perfect. But these are words. Let the sophisters tell me: doth not the full vessel contain in itself the half? or what need the one half apart, when we have the whole? and, lastly, can any thing be added to that, which is perfect? But, some of their heedfuller Divines will neither have these two opposite nor subordinate to each other. For, it is a shame to speak, what Suarez, what Durand, and other grosser Papists have discoursed of this point. Let them rather, if they will, hold (which opinion yet hath been controlled, not by the Cardinal § only, but by three Popes || before him) that men's satisfactions serve only to apply unto us that, which the satisfactions of Christ have promerited for us. Yet even this shift will not serve: for Christ's satisfaction, as they teach, respects eternal punishment, and not temporal: how, then, can it once be imagined, that we, by our satisfaction, should procure, that his suffering, which was destinated to the expiation of an eternal punishment, should serve to the discharge of a temporal? And, why should we do this, rather than Christ himself? Besides, how absurdly doth this sound, that He, whose bounty * Consult, c. de Satisfact. + Satisfactio penitentialis, nihil aliud est, quàm conatus infectum reddendi quod factum est. Alphons, Virvesius adv. Luth. Cit. Cass. Ibid. § Bellarm. de Indulg. l. i. c. 4. |