A FRVITEFULL AND BRIEF DISCOURSE IN TWO BOOKS: THE ONE OF NATURE, THE OTHER OF grace., WITH convenient answer to the enemies of Grace, upon incident occasions offered by the late Rhemish notes in their new translation of the new Testament, & others.  
Made by JOHN PRIME fellow of New College in Oxford.  1. Cor. 10.15. 
I speak as unto them which have understanding judge ye what I say.  
Imprinted at London by Thomas Vautrollier for George Bishop. 1583.   

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE S. FRANCIS WALSINGHAM KNIGHT, chief Secretary to her Majesty, Chancellor of the order, & one of her highness privy Counsel, all grace and peace in Christ jesus.  
NOW a long time, there hath been, no less learned than large writing in our English tongue, touching the just confutation of sundry points in popery, specially of their private Mass, Prayers in a strange language, Transubstantiation, the real presence, the Supremacy, and the like. But all this while concerning the Nature of man, and of the Grace of God, of Free will in nature, of concupiscence in the regenerate, of meritorious perfection, faith, works, & the whole substance of justification, the adversaries have brought us hitherto no great matter. Of late in their English Rhemish notes as the great mistress, and in M. Martin's discovery as the handmaid thereunto (for so he termeth his book) there is somewhat said, & shifts devised. The most of all, that may seem material is borrowed of M. Stapletons' dictates, their controversy reader at Douai. In regard whereof & in some other respects in this discourse I have dealt more with him, then with any Latin writer else, & yet so that the greatest benefit thereof may redound to them that have greatest need, and can not happily so well understand the Latin tongue, from whence most of their slights are first derived, & now put forth into English scholies & small pamphlets. Wherein if this my doing shall displease M. Stapleton, more than he would, or I wish, as perhaps it may, may it please him (for they of Rheims are otherwise like to be occupied) wast vagaries set apart, even as in the sight of God, without fraud & ambiguity, plainly, directly and shortly, to oppose as him liketh, for more trial herein, and he shall soon perceive, that the servants of truth, will not be ashamed in due sort by reply, to declare whose servants they are. The whole book of his lectures in convenient time shallbe answered (if God will) by a most godly, learned, and painful father. In the mean season (right honourable sir) this present duty, which I have performed, without recital of farther circumstances in many words, always troublesome to greater affairs, I offer in most humble manner I may, to your honours favourable, & experienced protection. The Lord God bless and preserve your honour's person, your virtuous Lady, your godly cares and counsels all in Christ jesus always.  
Your honours most humble and bounden JOHN PRIME.   


THE CHIEF POINTS HANDLED IN THE 1. BOOK.  
1. Of the fall of Adam, and of original sin in his posterity. pag. 1  
2. Of the blindness of man's understanding. pag. 4  
3. Of the frowardness of his will. pag. 6  
4. Of the sin of concupiscence yet remaining even in the regenerate. pag. 9  
5. At large of the whole question of free-will, and of the natural man's impossibility to observe the Law. pag. 15   

THE PRINCIPAL MATTERS TREATED IN THE second book.  
1. Of the freeness of the Lords gracious love and favour. pag. 41  
2. Against curiosity in the search of unsearchable mysteries. pag. 43  
3. Of election, vocation, and reprobation, and of a contented knowledge therein. pag. 46  
4. Of justification, the fullness, freeness, and comfort thereof. pag. 61  
5. Of righteousness by imputation, & of inherent justice. pag. 64  
6. Of the regenerate man's imperfection to fulfil the Law exactly. pag. 75  
7. Of the question of merits, and that there is no deserving at God's hands. pag. 95  
8. How only faith doth justify. pag. 115  
9 Of the most comfortable doctrine of the certainty of salvation by faith and hope, to be in every man particularly touching himself. pag. 141  
10. Of sanctification and the means thereunto in this life. pag. 176  
11. Of glorification in the life to come, and of due sobriety in questions therein of some moved. pag. 192    

A SHORT DISCOURSE OF NATURE, AND grace., AND FIRST OF NATURE CORRUPTED.  

LIBER. I.  
IN the discourse of the qualities of human nature corrupted, 
Man's creation.  we can not but lay the fault in man, where we find it, and not in God where we find it not. For above all things it is a truth most certain, 
Gen. 1  that in the beginning God created all things in their kind good; but man he made the perfection of all his works, and therefore most perfectly good: in dignity, little inferior to the Angels; in authority Lord of the world; by right the inheritor of life eternal; & in all resemblances of divine properties, in holiness and righteousness like himself. Thus he framed man at the first. For, only lo (saith the wiseman) this have I found out; 
Eccles. 7.31  that God made man righteous, That is, sound of body, sincere in soul, and perfect in both. And yet anon after this his so excellent a condition by creation there ensued a marvelous alteration, 
Man's fall Pet. Lomb li. 2. dist. 25  both in his body subjecteth to corruption, and also in his soul so strangely blasted, that the better qualities thereof all, were quite razed out, and clean defaced.  
The story is plain and known in all the world how Satan assaulted Eve, 
The propagation of sin. Gen. 3  and Eve enticed her husband to consent to eat, who in disobedience did eat of the forbidden fruit, and thereby (he being no private man, 
Rom. 5.12 Concil. An rasic. & Milevit. can. 2  but the root and head, and first of all posterity succeeding) from race to race along in and from him, though not personally then, when men yet were not, yet properly enough, in the guilt of sin we all became sinners; and now each man in his own person is polluted with the stain thereof, 
Eph. 2 3 job. 25.4  by a natural, and therefore by a most necessary propagation of sin one from another.  
For nature can not but necessarily work always after one & the same fashion, in all things naturally like cometh of like, in qualities many times worse, in kind always the same, insomuch that the children of Adam well may they be worse, better than their father from whom they came they can not be. Wherein for to view how bad we be, making as it were an anatomy of ourselves, we may apart consider each part of the whole man severally by itself.  
Concerning the body first in general, 
Sin in the body and every part thereof. Esay. 1.6.  may not the prophet's words be avouched of the natural man literally as they lie? From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, there is no sound part? Totum est pro vulnere corpus, All is full of boils and corruption.  
In particular, fancy occupieth the head, and pride the heart, and impudence is seen in the eyes; the natural man's ears are stopped to good, & itch after evil tidings, his throat is an open sepulchre; the poison of Asps is under his deceitful lips; stiff necked is he and obstinate in every wicked way; his feet are swift to slaughter, his hands imbrued and bathed in blood, and his right hand an apt instrument of all iniquity.  
These enormities appear not ever at all times, nor in all persons. 
An easy answer to no hard objection.  For certain men seem to be and be less unruly than some, but those that are overruled only by natures conduction, without any secret divine restraint, 
1. joh. 2.16.  have always ranged out of order without end or stay in any one member. And what if some did keep in, or rather have been kept in from such so manifest outrageousness? Nevertheless God counteth the body, and the parts thereof accessary to, and guilty of all the faults of the soul, as inferiors consenting to their superiors intent. 
Mat. 5.28  And because of their near conjunction in one person, albeit the external act doth not ever follow or outwardly appear.  
The residence and chief throne of sin in deed, 
The chief seat of sin  is in the soul, whence it riseth, & taketh head, where it remaineth & reigneth most: and therefore this part requireth more special consideration.  
The chiefest parts of the soul most spoken of among divines, & commonly known to Christian people are of the mind and the will. 
The parts of the soul  If the mind be wise, it is likely the will is better advised, & will the rather endeavour to do the better. But if the mind be out of her turn, the will can never be well in due order. Now let us see a little how it fareth with the natural man in both these.  

The blindness of man's understanding.  
THe natural man perceiveth not the things that are of God, 
1. Cor. 2.14  because they are spiritual & he natural: and therefore in God's matters he is not only weak sighted, but quite blind. 
Gen. 19.11  The case of the Sodomites that groped as men in the dark, and could not find Lot's door is one with the condition of the unregenerate, who seethe not the way, verily seeketh not, certainly findeth not the door that leadeth & openeth unto heaven. For in ourselves we are not only darkened, but darkness: 
1. Pet. 2.9 joh. 1.5  & can darkness comprehend the light? If the blind lead the blind, the one falleth under, & the other upon, but both into the dike. If that which should be thine eye to thine affections be dark how perverse also is the wilfulness of all thy lusts? But he that believeth not, but resteth only in the imagined purity of naturals, as the Pelagians, or is in some good liking of nature's ability, as is the Semipelagian the Papist, he seethe nothing, conceiveth nothing, understandeth nothing as he should, 
Stapl. de univer. justif. doctr. lib. 2 cap. 10  neither is he capable of heavenvly thoughts. For seem he never so mighty, potent, politic, wise, discrete, honest in all kind of honesty, yet because he hath not faith the true root of godliness, those fruits that he can bear, things fair in show, yet in truth they are but bastard fruits, and unpleasant to a good taste. For without faith and a sure confidence that we do well, 
Rom. 14.23 Heb. 11.6  which proceedeth of a true faith in God, 
Philip. 1.29  it is impossible to please the Lord. And this faith is not of nature but of grace as shall be showed afterwards. For nature being thoroughly poisoned bringeth forth nothing but poison; & who feedeth thereon, feedeth on poison, eateth & drinketh foolishness, and is nourished with folly, crawleth upon his belly, & groveleth upon the earth like the sinful serpent.  
The wisdom of the world is foolishness in God's judgement, who knoweth best what is true wisdom, 
1. Cor. 1.19 Esay. 29.14 jerem. 5.5.  and hath pronounced, that the prudency of the prudent, & worldly wise men he will reprove, because they and he agree not in any one part, neither in the entrance, end, or midway of any one action. Our ways are not his ways. 
Esay. 55.8 Psal. 99.8  Our inventions provoke him to wrath, our devices are divers and contrary, and therefore not for him.   

The perverseness & frowardness of man's will.  
NOw if the mind be ignorant & unskilful in that, that is to be wished for, how can the will, which taketh all her instruction thence rightly desire she can not tell what? Doth any man ame at the mark he never saw? or desire the thing, he never heard of? Christ our Saviour told the woman of Samaria, 
joh. 4.10  if she knew with whom she talked, she would crave the waters of life of him, but therefore she begged them not, because she knew him not, and could not tell, neither what, nor of whom to ask. The very philosopher could tech his scholars, and common experience doth testify the same, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  that no man loveth or longeth for the thing he never looked upon. And how little insight, or rather how perfectly blind by nature we are, is already showed.  
Farther, no man naturally wisheth for any thing, but he hath not only an insight, but also a delight therein, and it is grateful to his nature, & pleasant in his eyes, or at the least so supposed either in comparison of somewhat else, or in some sort or other so reputed.  
hereupon I will suppose an impossibility, that man hath a clear eye in that great mystery of godliness, 
1. Tim. 3.16  which the Apostle describeth and which is the ground of all knowledge. But I ask, how is he pleased, how is he delighted therewith?  
Be we Greeks reckoned the wisest of the Gentiles or jews once the people & peculiar chosen of God? The mystery of Christ crucified to either of these, is either marvelous folly, or wonderful offensive, & to both of them alike, if God in justice leave them to themselves, the preaching of the Gospel, 
1. Cor. 1.23  which should be the odor of life, if they could believe, love, and embrace it, is become a savour that they cannot brook, a savour of death to death everlasting, & in fine they perish in their sins, wherein their faithless nature took such delight.  
Wherefore if a natural man, & an unbeliever, would bear good men in hand, that natures case is not so hard: 
Orth. expl. lib. 3  if Andradius the commentator of the Council of Trent, as being privy to their secret meaning, herein speak never so honourably of the state of heathen men to be saved without Christ: if Pigghius or the school of Colen, 
Contro. Ratisb. 1 Dial. 2 Sarc. in dist. Scholar Doct  or all the schoolmen in the world, would qualify or allay the strength of sin, with vain reasoning, and fond but gay distinctions as they think of conveniency & congruity etc. What is to be done? touch these fair apples of Gomorrha with the finger of the holy Ghost, 
Aug. de civit. Dei lib. 21. c. 5  & they will fall strait all to dust. Or be it, that the wine that the harlot offereth be strong, the spice of distinctions sweet, the harlot subtle, her allurements many, fine, & forcible, yet the truth is stronger, and wholesomer, 
1. Esd. 4.4  will and must prevail.  
In flesh dwelleth no good, so saith the spirit of God. 
Rom. 7.18  Whereupon without contradiction it followeth, if no good, no degree of good at all, either spark of knowledge, or inclination of will, or ability to reach out hand towards the receiving of any good. For even the good willingness which is granted by grace, is hindered by nature as much as in her lieth.  
Therefore the old man must be quite put of, the old leaven clean purged out, our lusts not proined, but digged up by the roots, & thrown away, our flesh crucified, & of ourselves altogether denied. O Israel how long wilt thou tarry in a strange land, woe worth the man that delighteth in his natural corruption: O sinful flesh happy is he that taketh thy young children, I mean the very beginnings, even the concupiscences and first motions to sin and dasheth them against the stones, or smothereth them in their cradle, or killeth them in their mother's womb. For of flesh can come no good, & happy is he that maketh away a rebellious evil.   

Concupiscens is very sin in whom soever.  
ANd even these by name are full of evil nought and wicked, and very sins, although they come not to age, and thou consent not unto them, even in the regenerate man it is so, much more so in the natural. So speaketh S. Augustine in plain terms in handling one of the Psalms, 
Non illis consentis, etc. Aug. in Psalm. 75.  whom I the rather here mention because he is much alleged to the contrary very unskilfully, and chief for that our late Censurer sticketh not to vaunt and brag of S. Augustine, and that Master Charke hath neither show nor syllable in this case out of him.  
If thou be a scholar I refer thee to the place quoted in the margin: 
Defen. of the cens. pag. 133.  if thou art but only exercised in the word of God, the scripture alone may content thine humble mind, 
M. Traue. in his answer to the epist. suppl. p. 252. Rom. 5.  and instruct thy conscience most abundantly.  
It is forbidden in the Law, we being new borne in Christ are bidden to pray against it. S. Paul doth sigh in respect of it, & calleth it sin, I trow, properly enough when he saith it is the body of sin, and bond of death: although men that follow their lust, 
Conc. Trid. Sess. 5. dec. 1.  writ never so hotly in defence of lust, saying that S. Paul spoke not properly, and cursing all them that say the contrary.  
S. Paul saw many things in heaven, 
2. Cor. 12.4.  that he might not utter on earth, but the sin he spoke against, was an inhabitor in the tabernacle of his body, and within his bosom, he felt the sting thereof sharp, and could not but complain, how truly, how properly, and with how convenient words, they that have S. Paul's spirit, sense, and feeling, can say with tears and utter with grief.  
S. james when he would clear God of sin, he saith, God tempteth no man: 
jam. 1.13.  as who would say, if he did, then were the case altered. 
C oncupiscence a mother sin.  But every man (it is generally & in particular true) every man is tempted of his own lusts. This is the spring, the root, the cause of sin, which issueth out into diverse streams, & is deduced into sundry branches by consent, & then it is called commonly and named sin amongst men, who otherwise judge not but by the external act. And then also, (which in deed is S. Augustine's meaning) God is more provoked to wrath, 
Tom. 7. etc.  & without repentance foreprised counteth man quoad reatum crimen & regnum peccati, more guilty, and blamable, and thrauld to sin then, when by consenting to the sway of his sinful lusts, he is carried away wilfully with the stream of them.  
But S. Paul considering the weight of sin, as before God's exact judgement in the merit thereof, showeth that whereas we ought to serve and love him with all our powers, the least defect in the least part whether habitually or actually in the nature of sin is perfect sin, 
Rhem. notes: Rom. 7. vers. 7.  expressly against the commandment of the Law. But we will go on a little, and reason with them.  
Concupiscence tempteth, haileth back from good, and helpeth forward to evil. This is without question. Now whether thou consent or dissent, that is somewhat to the will, it is nothing to the lust, except to make it more manifest, if thou consent, and if thou descent, 
Rhem. not. in jam. cap. 1. vers. 15.  yet in the nature of sin it is nevertheless sinful, though it be stayed in the first degree.  
But if I be not deceived, concupiscence of nature corrupted, whereof I principally speak or in whom soever, jointly and indivisibly importeth always a consent withal immediately ensuing.  
To lust, to desire, to will, for doctrine and exhortions sake well they may be distinguished, I can not see how they may be separated or stayed, if we had rather hue at some bow of them, then strike at the root.  
The children of darkness are wise in their generation, 
Matt. 16.2.  in natural causes or signs to foresee a tempest, in policy to forecast the worst, to stop the beginnings, to give no place, no not a little to the raging sea. Why do we not the like? why are not spiritual harms discerned and prevented?  
M. Harding in some sort useth a vain defence of an unchaste toleration of the steewes at Rome, 
Confut. of the Apol. pag. 16 2. Deiect. lib. 5. cap. 4. Censur. of M. Ch. artic. 3. and Defence p. 113. Dist. 34. Fraternitatis.  by reason of the hotness of the country, as if Italy were hotter than jury which is not so, or if it were, what then? and for concupiscence he and his breathern have since written much. But doth the Law of God melt away with the heat of either nations or nature, of places or men?  
Me thinketh after so great light spread into the world, after so long debating though of sundry other sorry questions for the Church against the scriptures, for works & merits against faith, and mercy for ignorance against knowledge, 
Stapel. lib. 3. Epist. to the LL. of the Conc.  yet men should not come to this point to be so badly affected, and to excuse them, when they are oppugned. Verily if they had either conscience or remorse, their learning should not be thus abused, ad prostituted by open writing to maintain sinful lust.  
The midwives in Egypt preserved the children of Israel, 
Exod. 1.17  it was well done: if the midwives of Israel would destroy the children of Egypt it were better: and if the bond mother with her brats were quite cast out and banished, it were best of all, if God so would: but concupiscence the mother, and the first motions, and perverse will to sin as twins that come of her, together with froward minds, that foster up both mother & daughters can hardly or never be voided in this vale of sinners, & proctor's for sin: yea the perfectest men are imperfect, the cleanest unclean until the evening, 
Isych. lib. 5. in Leuit. cap. 15.  which as Isychius alludeth, is till men in repentance agnize & crave pardon for their faults, which shall be accomplished to the full in the evening, that is, in the end of the world.  
Yet if in the mean season we suffer natural corruptions & concupiscences to have their motions, 
Sudden motions entangle a man before a man can deliberate upon them Rhem. not. 7. Rom. v. 15.  motions naturally move their foot forward, and cannot stand at a stay, and will seek incontinently to provoke consent & will, & these once joining all in one, the hole man is become bound, head and heart, hand and foot: his head can not devise, his heart desire to do, or any member execute a good duty.  
And thus is man by these means subjecteth, made a servant, captived, and kept prisoner, and as a slave sold unto and under sin.   

The whole question of free will handled at large.  
THis being thus, 
Osor. de just. lib. 7.  we can not but marvel what our adversaries mean, when they cry out amain, we are free, we are free. Are they mad, or do they dream thus of a freedom in so great subjection of liberty, in the midst of captivity and extreme bondage? As if a man could or would look for health in sickness, for life in death, 
Eph. 1.2.  for the living amongst the dead. For naturally we are not only sick, but also dead & buried in sin. And I pray you, what sense, what ability, what will is there in a dead man, to perceive, desire, or endeavour to be revived?  
But stay: are men blocks say they and stones? yea a great deal worse. For timber and stones lift not up themselves against the carpenter, and mason: but man though he be dead from righteousness, yet he liveth and is quick, and full of agility in all evil, herein he hath a will free enough, 
Fulgent. de incar. Chr. 19 cap.  as it were a stream running down an hill, and yet not properly free, being thrawled to sin, as Augustine using the word (free) seemeth to correct himself by and by upon it. 
Serm. 13. de verbis Ap. Male agimus libera voluntate, quanquam non libera, sed serva ad peccatum. Conc. Aurasic. can. 7.  For concerning godliness his will is wounded, & maimed▪ it can neither look up, lift up hand, or stir foot to goodness, it was lost long ago and is not now to be found.  
Yet when God giveth grace, and inspireth from above, we are without comparison far better than the senseless matter, but all this is else whence, that we are thus enabled but to receive the print of his spirit.  
I will take away your stony heart, saith the Lord in his Prophets, 
Ezech. 36.26.  first he taketh away that which is ours, that he may give that which is his. Before this, if a stone may boast of his softness, then may we, if not the stone, then neither we. For our hearts are all of stone and rag, wherefore I will give you a new heart. This is more than to renew the old, and this will he do, and when he hath done so, than he will write his awe in our hearts, and make us to walk in his ways.  
Create within me a new heart, 
Psal. 51.11.  The Prophet David prayed, and if he prayed a better prayer than the sons of Zebedy, 
Marc. 10.38.  that is, he knew for what in truth and verity, and for the thing he wanted, then is it plain that our heart (for this is not David's case alone) must be created, as if it were not at all. And then observe that, that which is to be created is neither of counsel nor consent in a freeness of good will to the creator, or in a willingness towards his own creation. For how can it be, before it be framed first, and have his being?  
God often telleth us and we ought always to agnize that he doth all, and we nothing in good things. He it is that preventeth with his grace, prepareth by his word, inclineth us by his spirit, & worketh both the beginning, & the end, and the continuance of our good conversion at the first, 
Objections of the adversaries answered.  and conversation in his laws ever afterwards, notwithstanding all quarelings to the contrary.  
In the beginning say they when God had made man, 
Eccl. 15.14. Stapl. lib. 4. cap. 3.  he left him in the hand of his counsel, gave him his commandments & precepts: if thou wilt, thou shalt observe the commandments, & testify thy good will. Water and fire, good and evil I, life & death are set before him: he may stretch forth his hand to either, as he list, & liketh best. All this is true.  
In the beginning the case was so. But this is not the question, what man in the beginning by creation could, but what by nature now he can do. He is a fond Physician that to comfort his patient, can say nothing but this, this man once had a sound body, and a perfect constitution: it was in him to have lived long. The diseased cometh to the art of Physic, and seeketh help, not because he was once whole, but for that he is now sick.  
I will show in a word or two by an easy similitude, how sillely they conclude out of that place: I have this or that put into my hand, I may hold it fast or let it go. Here is a choice, a free will, but when once I have let go mine holdfast, or wilfully thrown away that which I held before, shall I still say, 
August. de Natur. & Gra. contra Pelag. cap. 53.  my hands are full, when I have emptied them? or when I have wounded mine own arms and hands in such sort, so that they are not able to reach forth themselves, & now being unapt & unfit to apprehend, or receive any thing else but infirmities, because these were otherwise, therefore shall I presumptuously conclude they are so? In Paradise it was so with us: ergo, it is so also in other places. What Logic doth reason after this fashion? it was, ergo it is. It was in Paradise, ergo elsewhere. God cast man out of Paradise, 
Gen. 3.24.  and at the east side of the garden of Eden, he set the Cherubins (his Angels) with a shaking naked sword in terrible manner to keep man from entering to, & so from eating of the tree of life. Where is now, reach forth thine hand to death, & unto life, etc. whereas he is barred from the better which is life.  
In considering this place of jesus the son of sirach, 
Cap. 15.14.  & also beholding the canonical scriptures wherein the ancient blissfulness of man is described, as his agility of body, his ability of mind, perfection in both. I know not how, I cannot but record a profane story or two. Milo Crotoniata when in his weak old age he beheld such as himself had been, 
Cic. in Cat. Maio.  young men mightily contending at some exercise of strength, he cast his eye, and looked upon himself, wept & said: These arms were arms once, but now they are dry and dead, & are not. Likewise Alexander the great at one time when he had cut but his finger, 
Plutar. de discrimen. amici & aedulator.  & at other times perceiving his affections subject to choler, lust, & the like faults, though his flatterets bore him still in hand, that he was a god's son, & a god in deed, he told them, no: the gods were not wont to bleed with pain, & live at pleasure fancifully as himself did.  
These stories need little application, if we consider our weakness, and conceive aright of our infirmities, these flattering colours, that want the oil of God's truth, wherewith they labour to paint out our deformednes to Godward, would soon be washed away and come to nothing.  
The best and fairest show at the first sight for free will is that of water and fire, life & death, good & bad, set before mankind in Adam. But look upon the place directly, albeit it be not Canonical scripture, and therefore not sufficient to inform thy faith, 
Hiero. praefat. in libr. Solom. Idem ad Le tam. Ruff. in expositione in Symb.  or to be alleged in a doubtful matter, look upon it with a single eye, and by way of comparison consider thereby thine own power. In the place thou shalt find the first word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, in the beginning, to refer thee to an other time, as hath been declared, and as Augustine doth show, 
Hyp. lib. 3. cap. 11. Stapl. lib. 2. cap. 15. josu. 7.19.  and the wiser Papists see well enough, and of thyself (O frail and mortal man) speak the truth, & shame the Devil, and so consequently glorify God. And if thou hast but a spark of humbleness, thou wilt frankly confess that thou art far from the liberty which these words import.  
And as for us what can it avail us to debase man's corruption, if it were as good or better than they make it? have we not equally our parts therein as well as they? If our fields had no blasted corn, our gardens no weeds, our garments no spots, our trees no shriveled apples, if our flesh were spirit, and not flesh, our wisdom right, and our will free, what harm can the protestant take for yielding to these things, if they were true?  
Only we know, that the friends of nature are enemies to grace, 
2. Cor. 3.5.  and that all our sufficiency or aptness is of God: and therefore nothing, but insufficiency in man. And this being known, shall it not be acknowledged? or may we join with them that are at variance with God in his word, which teacheth a quite contrary lesson, showing that the very frame of man's heart is only evil always. only evil: 
Gen. 6.5.  therefore perfectly nought & in no part good: always evil: ergo never good, & therefore extremely bad, whether we respect the nature of sin, or continuance in sinning.  
Moses hath the like place in sound of words to that out of Ecclesiast. 
Deut. 30.  much alleged, & in every particular circumstance urged & driven further than the Prophet meaneth, or in truth can be maintained. where, of the commandment, which in Deut. is commanded, it is protested before heaven & earth, that it is not hid from the people, or far of in heaven or beyond the sea, but near unto them, in their mouth, & in their heart, life & death, blessing & cursing are set before the people, & they commanded, & exhorted to choose life.  
Here, say free will men, here is an election or choice, a free wil Choose life: neither is the matter hard to do, life & death, cursedness & bliss are set before us, it is in us to receive either. & reason so: say they: for if we might not dissent, or consent, but were at a point, to what end serveth the exhortation? or if we could not consent to good (which is the harder thing) why are we commanded to choose life, to embrace it, and to consent thereunto, and to do accordingly.  
In all this. I note three things, that the adversary would infer, first a knowledge of the Law, than a will to receive it, and thirdly an ability to put it in practice. A knowledge he proveth by these words it is near thee, not above thee, nor beyond thy reach, not distant in place, thy mouth can talk thereof, thy heart meditate thereupon. A will he showeth because of the word choose. An abylity, for that these means are to the end, the Law be done, 
Discou. of haer. transl. cap. 10.  obeyed, executed, and put in ure: ut facias illud. M. Gregory Martin's great skill in grammar, can urge this matter no farther.  
All this being granted, the presumptuous Papist is never the near his purpose, to prove a free will, or any other ability in the natural man. For first God speaketh to a people, whom he had chosen, and called, and whom he had culled out of all the rest of the parts of the world.  
A long time (who knoweth not this?) God was chiefly worshipped amongst a few, in the family of Abraham & his race, 
4. Esd. 5.23  that vinearde only was his, alother trees were the trees of a forsake forest. He took and selected from out of all the multitudes of men, that only peculiar people, whom he loved & gave a law, his statutes & ordinances he made known unto them: 
Psal. 147.20. Matth. 15.26.  to other nations he did not so. The children's bread was made for children, whom he had made his children, and not for dogs. No uncircumcised person, no Cananitish foot might tread within his courts. But of this his people not only the heads, elders, and officers, 
Deut. 29.11  but also the drawer of water, and wood cleaver, were such, as unto whom the Lord revealed himself in familiar manner. And hence cometh the knowledge that is here spoken of, & hence also is the willingness of a good choice, when God by the hand of his spirit did circumcise their hearts, paring away the obstinacy of nature, & enduing them with faith, 
Deut. 30.6.  embracing Christ, & so in him fulfilling all that is required.  
And thus doth S. Paul expound this text (the word is near thee, etc.) calling it the word of faith which was preached in the Gospel. 
Rom. 10.8.  And so we grant, 
Ihon. 8.36.  that whom God doth teach, they are skilful, whom the son doth set at liberty, they are free, and who have Christ have all that is Christ's, the satisfaction of the father, the fulfilling of the law, & what ever else. Let us bear this yoke, 
Rhem. not. Mat. 11.30  it is sweet: take we up this burden it is light, sweet and light are they to them that are in Christ.  
But why are these very things also exacted even of all without difference, 
Stapl. 4. lib. cap. 3.  as may appear by other Scriptures, if yet some, & the most, and all whom nature ruleth, be so blind, so unwilling, & unable to do accordingly as is commanded? or wherefore are there such fair rewards, generally to all proposed, if in some certain it lie not, to go so far forth as to think a good thought, or to will well, much less to run out the race, & to win the crown of their salvation?  
One answer will serve for both these demands. 
The substance of the Law was given to Adam though not written till Moses time Mar. 12.30. & 31  Although the Law were not written, till Moses time, yet was it given to Adam and to all in him at the first, as to love God above all things, and his neighbour as himself. Which is an abridgement of the decalogue. Then might the commandment have been obeyed, and the reward obtained. Afterward when it was to be written, no reason it should be less perfit, then God made it, because man became by his own default more unperfit than God made him, specially whereas yet, there remain most evident, and excellent ends, and fruits thereof, as to know our duty, 
Gal. 3.24  though we can not do it, & thereby to endeavour to find that else where, that is not in ourselves. And when we see that we are out of the way, which leadeth to the reward of life, we may by Christ's help compass it an other way, and come to the same end in him.  
They say a drunken man hath a desire to seem sober, when his feet can not carry his body. There is no drunkenness like to that, which cometh by the wine of pride in vain men. Wherefore to repress this natural vanity in all, & to keep us in a sober opinion of ourselves, God giveth us a perfect law to measure our imperfections by.  
For otherwise we presume to touch heaven with our finger, till we see the distance. What burden can not our shoulders bear, till we feel the weight? eagle's eyes have we till we look into the son: we seem gold till the touchstone reprove us, strait, till the rule telleth us the contrary: like sores that seem to be sound till they be deeply searched.  
The young man in the Gospel though that the keeping of the Law was but a trick of youth. 
Mat. 19.20  All this have I done from my youth upward: But our Saviour as a skillefull Physician, touching the vain that went directly to his heart, 
Aug. Serm. de Temp. 124  bade him to go and sell all that he had, and to follow him, and the case was strait altered, and his hypocrisy displayed.  
And in deed these are singular uses of the law well expounded, and fitly applied, 
Ends and good uses whereunto the Law serveth.  both to convince infirmity, to accurse sin, and also to discover dissimulation, to root out ignorance, to bring a knowledge and a feeling that we have offended, to breed in us humility, and to lead us to Christ, and being now in Christ, that it may be a rule of living well to us who ever we be: and if we be public persons, that we make our Laws all according to the Lords Law. And albeit we cannot attain to perfection, yet the imitation thereof in his own children he accepteth. Neither is it reason whether in the regenerate, or in the unregenerate, that the Law should be such, as might be performed of any, either as it were a mark set up, where every man may hit it. For the level of our actions must be strait, though our deeds be crooked, the balance even, though our works deceitful, and the glass clear, though the face that looketh into it, have his natural deformity. And whereas they argue, that therefore man hath free will to good, because it is commanded, they may make the same reason also, that man naturally without grace may fulfil the whole Law, in work as well as in will, if he will. For the one is commanded as expressly as the other.  
It is manifest, that our ability or inability is nothing to or fro, to the commandment of God. Neither is his commandment any thing to our ableness or inability. Whether I can or can not pay my debtor, my debts are due: whether they be required or not demanded, they are equally still in the same nature of debt. And though by negligence or other casualty, I become bankrupt, yet my hand writing and promises stand in their full force and strength.  
In like manner our strength by sin is less than it was, but our duty is the same that it was ever. For Adam's fall, and men's faults, rather bind straighter, then set either him or us at greater liberty. As it is commonly seen in men, that grow in det further and further, when they begin once to break but a little.  
Among diverse presents, 
Dion. Nicae in vita Augusti.  that were brought to Augustus by the ambassadors of India, there was presented unto him a man without shoulders. How that should be, the historiographer saith he can not see only he reporteth a report. verily I see thus much in the view of our a duersaries arguments, that their reasons have neither shoulders to hold up their head, nor feet to go or stand upon, albeit they would seem to present them to the Church of God, as perfect and precious jewels.  
We are commanded to pay our detts: 
Stapl. lib. 4 cap. 3.  therefore we can pay them: we are exhorted thereunto, and promised our general acquittance, if we so do, and are threatened if we do not, 
Mat. 18.26.  ergo we are able to discharge the ten thousand talents! the reason will not hold. The parable of the debtor teacheth us a better way to crave forgiveness: and a man of common sense, can see and say that this reasoning wanteth reason.  
The partridge gathereth an hoard of other birds eggs, sitteth upon them, 
jer. 17.11  & hatcheth them: but when they are flush they fly a way from her: for they know that of right they belong not to the partridge: semblably the Papist, gleaneth arguments sometimes out of the Canonical Scripture though seldom, sometimes by drift of his own wit, when they are hatched, & come to light, they fly away from him, or stand him in little stead, or rather make against, then for him. In the lords commandments we learn our duty, in his punishments we feel the correction of our sinful demerits, and in his rewards proposed we record whereunto we were created, and agnize from whence we fell: And because we find an impossibility in the Law, 
Rom. 8.3 job. 14 4  and no remedy in nature, we do not as men ready to be drowned, catch at every straw, that cannot help, but appeal to the throne of grace, and lay handfast only upon his endless favour, and everlasting mercy, that exceedeth all his works.  
I dwell upon their chief places and reasons of theirs, longer than the intent of a brief treatise may seem to permit. The rather, because one of our late writers dareth avouch, 
Alen. apol. of E●ngl. Semi. c. 5. p. 59  (with what face, let the world judge) that in our show of answer we further their cause rather than our own: we only look backward a little, and bark, and fly from the light, and bay at them. As if this were all, that might be done in a matter of truth. And such are their cracks of victory, in disputing etc. But I guess few of them can speak better, than the most & best of them have written. Neither is it likely they can do more in the valleys, then in the mountains, I mean they can not do more with their tongues & disputes now, them their betters have heretofore done with their pen & writing. 
By the bysh of Sarum. M. Nowell. D. Calfild & others.  Wherein they have received full & just answer. Wherefore no cause of fe are for all their in finite and intolerable vaunts.  
For mine own part (I speak the truth & lie not even before Christ, that witnessed a good witness under Pontius Pilate) as in few I have declared man's undoubted imperfection out of the word of God, 
Hosius contra Brent. prolo. Mart Eisen. de Eccl. vind. Pigg. Hierarch. Sand Monar. vis. Stapl. de doct. pr. etc.  so in reading the adversaries books & namely touching this matter of man's corruption, I find that as all their labour elsewhere tendeth only to the advancing of human pomp under the name of the church, so under the title of nature they contend chief for the setting up of man & flesh, in extenuating original sin, in excusing concupiscence, in praising the works of infidels, in upholding the wisdom and will of corruption.  
To speak of all that hath been lately written, 
Stapl. de  justi ficationis doctr. 1582  were to general. The 'las that I have seen, and the largest is Master Stapleton, whom I quote often in the margin. The man I remember to have been of the College, whereof myself am now. In respect whereof, and in Christian charity I wish him the best. And if Samuel may awake Elie, 
1. Sam. 2.23  if the younger may warn the elder, to that end I have thus called upon him, and pulled him by the sleeve, that he go not away in a sleep.  
He knoweth Elie suffered his children to break his own neck. Verily the fancies and affections, that are bred in & of man, if he cocker them up, they will bring him to a worse end than Eli'S was, or if he correct & beat them lightly but with a feather, this will not amend the children of Belial, or the sons of Adam.  
Elie demanded of his sons, why did they such & such things? Do no more my sons, it is no good report, that I hear of you, which is, that you make the lords people to trespass: yet more than speaking roughly, he did not: but let them have their full fourth in sin: as if he had chid them with his tongue, and stroked them fairly on the head with his hand. Wherefore God denounceth that he loved his children above him, and therefore he would do a thing in Israel whereof whosoever should hear, his two ears should tingle at it. So the Papist can not but confess & say: The issue & offspring of nature corrupt, can not be but corrupt. As the mother sin is, so are the daughters of sin. Of a thistle a prick, of a bramble cometh a briar. And namely as concupiscence in the unregenerate man for some causes must needs be sin: 
Stapl. lib. 3 cap. 3  so in the regenerate no good report there goeth of it, neither yet of man's wisdom nor of his will.  
The Papist can chide a little on this fashion, but yet the natural man will honour his children, and make of himself more than of his maker. For he telleth every man (to speak a word of that, 
Suprae pa. 9  which in order was touched before) albeit concupiscence be evil and sin, yet is it not so properly, and in precise manner of speaking, but only because she leadeth the way to sin, & as it were causeth the lords people to transgress. 
Stap. l. 4. c. 5  Likewise man's wisdom is darkness for sooth in the Gentiles, and his will stony and obstinate, that is, say they, only depraved.  
Fie upon such fondness, fie master Stapleton. If our wills were only depraved, and but some way prone to evil, and not perfectly imperfect, and past all good, had the holy Ghost no softer words to show the imbecility thereof, but by stone and brass, and iron etc. And S. Paul when he telleth the Ephesians, that they were once darkness, in deed they were Gentiles, what then? what doth that distinction help? The unregenerate man's father is an Amorite, 
Ezech. 16.3  and his mother an Hittit, & all men are Gentiles, or in as bad case as any man may be, if they be respected in themselves, not lightened by his spirit, & instructed by grace. And as for concupiscence is it sin only, because she tempteth, & not in proper terms of speaking?  
A foolish woman & a sinful is described in Solomon to be troublesome. 
Prou. 9.13  She is ignorant, and knoweth nothing, sitteth at the door of her house, & enticeth them that pass by out of the right way. These properties prove the sinfulness of the woman sufficiently & properly. All which appear to be in the concupiscence of man. The one is as ignorant, & as busy as the other. Only the one provoketh openly, & sitteth at her door & allureth to her, the other lurketh in thy bosom, and therefore is the more dangerous, and never the less sinful, but to all purposes to be taken as a natural sinner. But hereof before more at large.  
These fig leaves then, fetched out of the orchard of man's brain, will not cover between God & us. 
Lib. 1. cap. 4  Yourself M. Stapleton and others begin to mislike, both certain schoolmen, and certain late writers, for falsely maintaining natures ability in preparing herself meritoriously toward God, & ingeniously you confess the hissing out of the opinion of merits de congruo, of deserts of conveniency. God grant that as he hath begun that good work, so he vouchsafe to make it perfect in you more & more in great measure, that you may see and detest the length & breadth & infinite deepness of man's natural transgressions: and likewise with joy of heart embrace the Lords unspeakable mercy revealed & given in the only and sole Saviour of the world jesus Christ the righteous. Amen.  
David was better, 
1. Sa. 17.47 2. Sam. 11.2  when he kept his father's sheep, then when he got the Kingdom. If the sin of Adam were less, and namely if the powers of man were more, & his will of greater ability, & more orderly, than I have proved it to be, yet I guess it were good that an horse should not know his strength. What need we flatter a wanton & a way ward thing, which is then best, when it is most kept short, and naturally it is never good, but always nought?  
When God intended to take just revengement of unthankful men, 
Rom. 1.24.  that became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were full of darkness, what did he? He gave them over to their own lusts, that is to say, to their own will and wilfulness.  
This grievous punishment had not been great, 
August. 6 Tract. in Epish. joh.  if the flexiblenesse & towardness of their wills had been so good, or but so indifferently ill, or else inclinable, & ready or free to receive, either good or evil, or able to consent, when grace is offered, which is the very hinge in deed, 
Stap. l. 4. c. 1.  whereon the question of free will most dependeth.  
Now but to consent to good is a good thing, hast thou this consent? what hast thou that thou hast not received, 
1. Cor. 4.7.  & if thou hast received of an other, then is it not in thyself. Again no goodness groweth out of the earth, but descendeth from above. And again flesh & blood, 
Mat. 16.17  doth neither reveal nor receive any good, but is enmity to all good, & therefore cannot consent (which is a point of friendship thereunto) Nay in the regenerate, 
Cic. de amic  the flesh still lusteth against the spirit, which we have received, and therefore doubtless in the unregenerate it much more doubtless in the unregenerate it much more dissenteth before grace be received, & less embraceth it when it is offered.  
When his graces are generally offered, man is recusant by nature, shutteth his eyes, claspeth his hands, & is altogether averse in heart, but yet whom God taketh & chooseth effectually, he turneth their hearts, as he did the Purple cellar's heart in the Acts, 
Act. 16.14 Act. 9.18  haileth and smiteth Paul down from his horse, doth away the scales from his eyes, & worketh mightily the conversion of them, that shallbe saved, and this he maketh men willing to receive that, which before they wilfully refused: & hereupon to imagine this willingness to be of man, because at length by God's gift it is in man, is a vain imagination to give that to man which is God's gift, as M. Stapleton doth, saying, 
Stap. l. 4. c. 4  that capacity of good things is of nature, and activity of Grace. No. both the beginning & the end, both capablenes & agility, to will & to work is of him.  
Fulgentius was troubled with the like fanciful men, 
Fulg. de incar. Christ. cap. 24  that thought, that because we were enabled by God to good, therefore we are also able of ourselves. The consequent is nought. For as the flesh of man hath no feeling and sense of itself, but the soul doth give it life & sense, & so it may have both: so man may (God so working in him) be well willing, but the life & soul of this willingness, is the mere & sole mercy of God.  
The wisdom of the Lord, 
prover. 9.1  in the book of proverbs whom he possessed from all beginnings hath built here an house & hewed out her pillars etc. This building & house is his Church & chosen. Now even as an house can not rear up itself, so is it with man, neither the first stone, nor any part, of itself can itself lay or set in the frame. And as the carpenter chooseth his timber, the mason his stone, the potter his clay, and not contrariwise, the clay his potter, the stone his mason, the timber his workman, the house her builder, so God chooseth the Church, not the Church him. That is a true word. I have chosen you & not you me. 
joh. 15.16  in any kind of choice.  
A wrangler may stretch a similitude farther than may stand with christian humility. As the carpenter in deed chooseth out 〈…〉 tree out of the wood, & worketh it alone, yet he chooseth the fairest, the fittest, and the straightest, because these qualities are in the timber: So God chooseth of men, the best qualified by nature, because of naturals, that were in them first. No not so. He knoweth (who foreknoweth all things) no doubt what persons will best serve his building, who are fittest, who unfit. But there for are sun fit, because he maketh them fit? For otherwise by nature we are utterly unfit all.  
And to demonstrate that all standeth upon mere choice, he chooseth the weak to confounded the strong, the simple to confute the wise, 
1 Cor. 1.23 johos. 6.20  as it were the blast of horns to overthrow the mighty walled city jericho. He chooseth the least likely, & the most unwilling to show that neither in man's will or any part of his corrupt nature else, is aught to this purpose.  
But of this his exceeding mercy, favour, & free grace more in special in the process following.  
Hitherto in the plenary view of man both within & without, in body & soul, in whole and in part, appeareth nothing since his fall, but misery, bondage, pollution, uncleanness, darkness, confusion, frowardness, obstinacy, rebellion, and (in a word) perfect sin & corruption. God looketh down from heaven upon all the children of men in earth, & findeth not any one, considered as he is in his own nature, 
Psalm. 14.2  with whom it fareth better than hath been declared.    

OF THE FREE GRACE OF God. LIBER. II.  
OF man's corruption hath been declared: touching almighty God, in the Scriptures amongst other proprieties uttered after the manner of men for the better understanding, are chief set forth his righteous judgements, & gracious mercy. His judgements pronounced by the Law, and executed in his wrath against the children of unbelief & disobedience: his mercy prepared for the elect in his son, & published by the gospel  
This Gospel & message of the joyfullest tidings that ever were, 
Luc. 2.10  was imparted first to Adam in paradise as a present remedy, immediately after his fall, applied to the weaker part affected, by name to Eue. Thy seed shall bruise the Serpent's head. 
Gen. 3.15  Afterward declared to Abraham. In thy seed shall all nations be blessed. 
Gen. 12.3  Then renewed again in Isaak, & so foreshowed in the sacrifices & old ceremonies, likewise enforced by the Law, and foretold by the Prophets, & in the fullness of time presented in the person of our Saviour, & lastly by his Apostles, & still by the work of the ministry (the partition wall being taken down) spread abroad and shed into the ears of all the world.  
Herein if we make search & diligent inquiry, for the first cause, and end of this so glad a message, wherefore, and to what end it was made to us so sinful men, we shall find nothing else to be the cause, but his love, and the end to be man's salvation, and his own glory, whereof he is a jealous God.  

The singular love of God.  In the cause which is his only grace and favour, if we consider it aright as it is, we shall agnize it, worthily to be the singular love of God, Whereby he so loved the world, 
john. 3.16.  that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have life ever lasting: thus and so he loved, as never love was like, so steadfast without change, so sufficient without want, so free without all desert, which is the point I now am at altogether.  
To love where a man is loved, no great thanks: 
Luc. 6.32.  the gentiles and sinners do so. The stork will leave one of her young ones to the owner of the house where she is permitted to make her nest, and breed up the rest. But to love where pure hatred is rendered for perfit love, that is excessive love. 
1. joh. 4.19  He loved us first, and even then when we were his enemies.  
And because he knoweth the frowardness of man's perverse heart, how lightly we esteem of his mercies, and how quickly we presume of supposed merits, as if because he loved us, therefore he must needs love us for some cause in us first, every where providing for the honour of his own glory, he maketh continual mention of his innumerable benefits, & of the root whereon they grew, which is his love, to the end that the mindfulness of his graces, & thankfulness for the same so often required, may bridle presumption & repress a natural pride incident to all flesh.  
Is the father beholding to the son, or the son (especially the adopted) to the father? 
Rom. 8.16.  we are all the sons of God not by nature: for by nature were we not all the children of wrath?  
Likewise doth the infant tender the nurse, or the nurse tend the infant? God is he that nurseth us up, that carrieth us, as the eagle her young ones in his arms from our youth until our grey hears, as it is in the Prophet.  
Again is not the prisoner bound to his deliverer, 
Deut. 32.11. isaiah. 46.4.  and not backward the deliverer to the captive? Who hath delivered us from the body of sin, but the grace of God through jesus Christ.  
In all the strong and golden chain of man's salvation there is not any one link made or framed by man himself: 
Rom. 7.24. Rom. 8.2.  whether we consider the Lords free choice before all worlds, our vocation by the preaching of the word, justification in his son, sanctification by the spirit, or our glorification in his kingdom to come.  

Against curiosity in the search of unsearchable mysteries.  
The translators of the English Testament at Rheims tell us, that the consideration of the place in S. Paul, 
Curiosity in God's matters.  wherein are set forth plainly Gods eternal predestination, purpose, love, etc. both hath been always, & in this age is a gulf wherein many proud persons have worthily perished. Proud persons? what then? we grant. For pride will have a fall in the plainest ground, and further when they say, these mysteries of Christian faith ought to be reverenced of all men with all humility, & not to be sought out, or disputed upon with presumptuous boldness: verily presumption, rashness, and all boldness we detest, as much as they, but they in thus saying insinuate an other matter: & feign would they have Christian men to tremble and start back for fear, or else with a light foot to trip over that altogether, which the spirit of God doth stand so much upon.  
Secret things belong unto the Lord, but things revealed to us & our children for ever, in which sentence of scripture we may see that there are secrets of two sorts, either still secret like the round ring, 
2. Esd. 5.42  whose beginning and ending are in itself, and known only to the maker: or there are secrets revealed to the children of men, the meditation and study whereof appertaineth to us. According to this the Apostle speaketh the will of the Lord, who hath known, 
1. Cor. 2.16.  that he might instruct him? We have the mind of Christ, the former of these sayings must be left to God, the latter of these do belong to us.  
Augustine findeth fault with curious heads, and bold minds, 
In Psal. 8.  whom he resembleth to fish, that plunge themselves in over deep questions and that walk in the paths of the bottomless seas, in matters to excellent for their knowledge. And truly who that modest is, and hath learned to be wise with sobriety, doth not utterly mislike and condemn the fact of the Bethshemites prying into the Ark, or the like pressing into hidden mysteries? 
1. Sam. 6.19.  Is not he an unwise man that when he may safely upon the pavement go in and out in the lords courts, yet hath a fancy to try, whether he can get up and trace it upon the high pinnacles of the temple? and yet because the pinnacles are as ornaments to set forth the majesty and the glory of the building, and builder, who dare hudwinck men's eyes, that they may not view the things that are therefore set in sight that they may be seen?  
These five chief points (which I intend some of them to touch, some of them to treat of more largely, and of them all reverently to speak) are they above mentioned, our Election, Vocation, justification, Sanctification, and Glorification.  
These mysteries verily are as holy as the mountain, 
Exo. 19.23. Exod. 3.5.  wherein God himself appeared, and as the ground, whereon Moses stood. Wherefore above all things first put we of our shows, I mean all profane cogitations, terrene and earthly thoughts, while we stand upon these matters, while we consider these his graces, & secreats in his word revealed in this behalf.   

Of Election, Vocation, and Reprobation.  
THat God electeth some unto salvation before the beginning of the world: 
Election.  some and therefore not all, before the beginning of the world, and therefore not for the desert of them, who then were not, (which also the very name of Election doth import) is so manifest, that the Apostle demandeth in vehement manner: who art thou, 
Rom. 9.20.  that wilt dispute hereof, and reason to the contrary, and gather absurdities thereupon, as if the case were not so? Wherein also it may be demanded: who art thou that coynest distinctions to shift of the freeness of the Lords choice? and darest thou avouch that albeit he chooseth before all worlds, yet he chooseth not freely, but for works foreseen, and likewise refuseth? S. Paul is amazed at the matter, and adoreth the Lords both certain and secret mercies, and justice herein, and canst thou distinguish with ease?  
Touching our vocation both inwardly by the finger of his spirit, 
Vocation.  and externally by the outward delivery of his word effectually to certain, and not so to some certain, is no less plain by our saviours prayer in S. Matthew, 
Matth. 11.25.  I give thanks O father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and men of understanding, & hast opened them to children. It is so O father, because thy good will is such.  
Wherein I observe three points, first thanks to the father, then for what things, and thirdly why the father himself was induced, or rather vouchsafed to bestow his benefits upon some & why not in like sort upon all.  
1. I thank thee O father, or I confess, 
1. Thankfulness. Serm. de diversis 3.  all is one. For, as Augustine sayeth, they are very meanly learned, that know not that there is a confession of praise and thanksgiving, aswell as of sins. Christ thanketh his father, of whom Christians may learn to be thankful for themselves, for shall he pray for us, and not we for ourselves: or shall he be thankful in our behalf, and shall not we also be thankful in our own cause?  
If one grape wax ripe and red, 
Vuáque conspecta livorem ducit abvua.  they say that the grape over that, doth ripen the faster, and take colour the sooner. It behoveth us that are green, and sour, considering the example of Christ, and his sweetness to grow in grace & like thankfulness to our God, confessing always, from what spring are derived our waters, or rather from what sea they issue, or rather from what heaven, or rather how from the father of heaven and earth they descend upon us, 
Gen. 18.27  which are but dust and ashes.  
He giveth us all that we have: only he reserveth the praise of all unto himself. 
Esa. 42.8.  He is the freest Landlord, that may be, father of heaven and earth, and Lord of all, and we his servants and the workmanship of his hands. Yet he suffereth us to have and enjoy freely the fruit and use of all, yielding him and paying nothing but this, that we acknowledge and confess that we hold of him and that we are his tenants.  
2. In special, for what is our Saviour thus thankful unto his father? 
2. For What.  Because he had hid the secrets and treasures of the Gospel, from the wise and learnedmen, and had revealed them unto babes. Consider your vocation saith S. Paul, 
1. Cor. 1.26.  not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, I add, were chosen. For whom he calleth in time, those he forechoose before all times, and whom he calleth not at all, no manner of way, those he never chose.  
What then? is all learning & wisdom utterly condemned hereby, or are the base and weaker sort only called, are women and weavers and beggars and young students to be admitted to the search and understanding of holy writ?  
We know & profess, that these have souls to save, & are bought with as dear a price, as the best doctors and rich men are. There is no kind of good learning but we commend it in the highest degree of due commendation: and yet withal we say: Godliness is great learning. 
Act. 18. ●4.  Apollo's was eloquent, but his might was in the scriptures. We despise not the inferior: we prefer the greater gifts. Notwithstanding both eloquence, and all other whatsoever excellent qualities of either nature's wisdom, or good arts, etc. except the person qualified with them be also endued with faith from above, they rather be occasions of evil in him then otherwise, greatly increasing his greater condemnation.  
If Agar can be content to obey Sara, 
1. Sam. 3.1. Revel. 4.10.  if our wisdom can submit itself to the lords wisdom, if our learning will serve as Samuel did in the temple, if the potent and mighty man subject his sceptre and crown, if he can stoop and fall before the throne of God, these former qualities are sanctified, and God accepteth them in the persons, whom he accepteth in faith. Not many wise wealthy or mighty, the scripture saith not, Not any are called.  
Because it is commonly seen, that Agar will contend with her mistress, the Grecian presumeth of Learning, the subtle head of his policies not meanly managed: therefore of the usual practice, and not how it goeth better in some specialties the scripture showeth. For God would have all (of all sorts) saved, 
1. Tim. 2.4.  and yet I say not all in general without any restraint. For who then could resist his will, if he will so have it? Or why are any damned, if he will have all to be saved without exception? The Lord's mercy is above all his works, and the sinful works of man can not be greater to his own condemnation, than the mercy of God to salvation, if God would so have it in all. Notwithstanding the commandments are given forth in general. Likewise the exhortations are uttered to all, grace openly offered, and publicly proclaimed. Many are called, and yet few are chosen. i. inwardly touched, 
Matth. 20.16.  and well accepted of the Lord. According to this general offer, there is somewhat, that may be said for the just, and deserved commendation of many, because all obey not their calling, all receive not their salvation proffered. And yet the conditional will of God to have all saved, if all would, is but a fancy. For many seek with endeavour, which is more than a will, to enter the strait gate, 
Luc. 13.24.  & shall not be able. Truly none shallbe saved, but whom God will, whom he will indurate, his heart is hardened, as Pharaoes' was. But most miserable were the condition of man's salvation, if it hung upon his own mutable, frail and froward will.  
Origen thinketh, 
August. de civit. Dei lib. 21. cap. 17.  perchance upon occasion of this saying, God will have all saved, that it will follow, that all and every one whosoever even the very devils, finally and one day shall be saved in the end. Concerning Origen it is well said that where he wrote well, no man wrote better: and where evil (and therefore not ever well: and in this, very badly) no man writeth worse, so manifestly against the Scriptures, and so fond beside the universal, catholic and Christian faith, 
Epist. ad Alexander.  touching the everlasting damnation of the damned, either spirits or men, in so much that himself else where was feign to excuse himself therein, and likewise utterly to detest the error.  
What sense then beareth that sentence: God will have all men saved? The Apostles meaning is not hard. God will have all saved, that is to say, of all sorts some, (as I said before) and therefore expressly by name, he willeth that prayers be made for magistrates, and for men in authority, among whom also he hath his chosen. 
Act. 10.34.  Neither doth he respect any person, in regard of sex, place, time, degrees, and the like external circumstances. For though not all, & every one of these sorts, yet out of all these he calleth some, and those not for any special properties naturally in them more than in the rest, that are not called.  
In the days of Elias when Achab had sold himself under sin, 
1. King. 19.10.  and the people adored Baal, 
Rom. 11.5.  and Idolatry getting the upper hand was openly practised in Israel, the Prophet complaining thereof, & that himself was left all alone, received answer of comfort from the Lord, that he had left 7000. that never had bowed knee to Baal. Whereupon Augustine doth well observe, & the text is pregnant to prove, that these who were reserved, 
Aug. de bono perseve cap. 7.  left not themselves to the Lord, but reliqui mihi, I left them to myself saith the Lord. For it is he alone, qui facit ut & accessamus ad eum: Sic & ne recessamus ab eo: Our first access to him is by him: and also that we recoil not from him, relapse and fall away again, but to persevere to the end is a work of God, & not of ourselves.  
M. Allen in his Apology of the seminaries assureth himself that no wise man can be a Protestant 23 years, 
In the Apol of the Semi. and in epist. ad. Greg. 13 before his book of the Sacraments and sacrifice.  or any long time together, & yet he seethe the contrary & is grieved thereat. But suppose that our religion were false, & his superstition right, doth it yet go by worldly wisdom, whereof he speaketh? Or are our Rabbis & masters of Rheims ignorant of this, that though God hath his kings & Queens, & worthy, noble and learned men, 
Esa. 49.23.  as foster fathers, & nurse mothers, & good instruments in and of his church, yet many times (& may I not say, most often?) the lettered, the prudent, the politic, the mighty, the noble, & the wise of this world are shut out of doors with God, neither are they able by natural reasons, or moral experience to discern no not a falsehood in the principal points of true Christianity. Wherefore God giveth entrance to poor and simple babes, and little ones, the lest of all their tribes, and smallest of account in their father's house.  

Humility a necessary virtue.  As in plumps & wells, where men draw water, from deep places, the bucket descendeth low, that the water may be brought up: so they that are to receive the waters of God's graces proceeding from the depth of his endless mercy in a true & an unfeigned humility must descend full low. For the lowly of heart, & meek of mind, he only filleth: The rich, which are rich but not in God, thee proud & presumptuous are sent empty away, & the poor receive the Gospel, strangers from the east come to see Christ, & simple sheepehards are they that hear & carry the first tidings of his birth. This hath been the Lords usage & dealing from the beginning. The younger breathern are preferred before the elder, the weak before the strong, the simple before the wise, the unlettered before them that love to be saluted as venerable Rabbis in long & side gowns, at the corners of the streets & in open places. So was Moses preferred before Pharaoh, the afflicted Israelits before their hard taskmasters, & the poor widow of Sarepta before all Israel, so was Peter the fisherman, and not Pilate the judge, Paul the tentmaker & neither Tertullus the orator nor Nero the Emperor: And as Daniel the child was esteemed before Darius' princes, so he chooseth & he calleth, such as those children were in the oven, humble & innocent men & none other. But first he maketh them as children and babes, that they may be (not because they are already) answerable to his everlasting choice in their effectual calling, and (as it were) first he mollifieth the wax & then after a sort he imprinteth his own image in them afresh, which once also they, aswell as others had defaced.  
For naturally as hath been declared in the former treatise, what was there in one, that was not in an other, and in all alike? What was there in Abraham, that was not in Nacor? what in the jews, that was not in the Gentiles? Before God called them, and not the Gentiles, all alike without exception we are detained in the self same darkness of mind, and disobedience of will. And afterward when the natural olive, not natural by nature, but right by choice and calling, began to wax wild again, when of children they became a bastard, a froward, and a perverse nation, God left them to themselves, he gave them over to their corrupt nature, and withdrew his grace, whereby they were a righteous seed. And now the best among them were worse than others, the scribe than the ignorant, the pharisee far worse than the publican. 
Act. 4.6  For these most resisted the preaching of the Gospel. And this was the just judgement of God, that rather opened the eyes of the simple amongst them, then of the greater personages. In the one appeareth his grace, in the other his justice: which doth the more set out his grace, & in respect of both Christ giveth thanks to the Father, 
Ps. 145.17  who is to be praised in all his works, and worshipped in all his ways.  
To prove that he hath gone this way, and wrought these works, blinded some eyes and opened some, stopped and hardened some ears and hearts, and (as the Scripture saith) circumcised and mollified some by his especial grace, is so clear, that if there were nothing else, but our saviours thanks for the same, 
Reprobation.  what needeth farther proofs? 
3 Why?   
3. Now but why doth God so? 
joh. 12.40  elect some, and reject some, clear some eyes, do out and darken some? Great cause why it should be so. Even so great, as is the wisdom of the eternal God, who provideth, that neither the willer, nor the runner, 
Rom. 9.16  do any thing, but himself taking mercy doth all in all, in the salvation of his saints, to the end, that the branches bear not the root, but the root the branches, that whosoever rejoiceth, may rejoice in the Lord, and his good pleasure.  
Yet all this rather concerneth his election and good choice in some, but why doth he reprobate any? why are not certain as effectually called as others?  
Who art thou that dost thus, why it & quarrel it with God? 
job. 9.4  May the vessel reason with the potter? 
Esay. 10.15  the axe with the carpenter? the saw with him that draweth it? dare any servant pry into all the counsels of his master's closet? canst thou follow & tract the way of the fish in the waters, of the foul in the air? If thou canst do impossible things then mayst thou see and discern things also invisible. For there is the like impossibility in both. If God should do equally well to all, then were he after a sort so much the less to be praised of some for his benefits more in special, 
Aug. de dono persever. cap. 12 Mat. 20.15  and singularly to them, then to others. Neither yet is there any iniquity in so doing. For may he not do with his own what he will, and that without man's witting? why? may he not illuminate what eye he list, lighten which candle he pleaseth, or shoot away what arrow he is disposed, without thy certain knowledge of his secret counsels in his most just doings?  
In this curiosity of searching farther, than may stand with the sobriety of creatures in the Creator's works, a man may aswell demand, why all in the field is not pure corn, & no chaff, why trees bear leaves at all, and not all fruit, why there are aswell frogs as fish in the pond, as well goats, that will not hear, as sheep that hear his voice in the fold of Christ? Christ the second person in Trinity adoreth the council of his Father herein, and confesseth that the reason of this is this: So it is, because it pleaseth thee o father so. The Papist dreameth of a better will in some, then in some, and that maketh much as he thinketh to the matter. I ask: will darkness willingly become light, will weeds be corn, goats, sheep, will thorns be vines and bear grapes? 
Aug. de verb. Apost. Serm. 2. Violentia fit cordi etc.  Doth the natural man savour of the things of God? would a wound be handled? can the flesh yield to the spirit? would sleep be awakened? Doth the dead in sin, that wanteth sense of a better life, desire to be revived any one more than an other. But hereof before. All are earthly by nature, hated by desert, condemned by justice, and reprobate in themselves. Why yet some are by grace beloved, saved by mercy, vouchsafed heaven by adoption, chosen in Christ, called to the Gospel, and receive it willingly, the highest roundel in the ladder, that man may ascend unto, is the Lords own pleasure, and this, that contented Christ, must content Christians.  
For the condemnation of the wicked, 
Prou. 16.4  there is more than sufficient desert in the reprobate, and albeit thou hear that God also is agent therein, yet beware thou imagine evil in the Lord, who as the Sun shineth into dark places, and is not darkened, and likewise as the rain moisteth the evil tree, and therefore it beareth his unhappy, & a bitter fruit: but mark: in that it beareth fruit it cometh of the moisture: in that it beareth evil fruit, it cometh of his own nature, and therefore worthily calleth for the axe to be cut down, and justly deserveth to be thrown into the fire: And know this that in one & the same action diverse may be agents, & they diversly to be termed, their intents and ends purposed, and also means in proceeding being diverse, according as the persons are diversly better or worse either affected, or skilled: even as the keeper (as Seneca saith in an other case) many times hath his prisoner linked to his girdle or hand wrest, 
Senec. lib. 2. epist. 5  and so they two may be detained both in one chain, notwithstanding the keeper be an innocent man, and a necessary officer, and the prisoner a very Barrabas, and an unprofitable member of the common wealth. I end this matter without farther debating. God hath to do, and sucketh out his own glory out of all things, especially he showeth his goodness to his Saints, and his justice upon sinners. To feel the one is a heaven on earth, to find out the other altogether by reasoning is utterly beyond the reach of flesh. Quod lego, credo: non autem discutio. What thou readest that believe, & go no nearer, either to the fire for fear of burning, or farther in to water, for fear of a whirl pool. Walk in thy vocation, follow the thread of thy calling, contend by orderly means to the end, God hath prefixed to the faithful in Christ his Son and thy Saviour.   

Of justification, the fullness and freeness thereof, and the comfort that cometh thereby.  
THe free pardon for sin, and the sufficient ransom thereof concur always and meet ever in the justified man. For whom the Lord forgiveth, to them also he giveth the possession of his Son, in whom all are made righteous, and without whom none shallbe justified. And when he doth the one, he doth the other, & both jointly in full mercy.  
M. Stapleton saith no, but showeth no reason nor glimpse, 
Lib. 7. ca 10.  or show of reason to the contrary, but this: that because our justification standeth not in remission of sins alone, therefore remission of sins inferreth not the imputation of righteousness by Christ, as coherent with it, & done also by God: as if the Lord in his doings would work five days himself, and leave the finishing & perfection of that which he had so carfully and graciously begun, to be accomplished the sixth day, or at leisure by some others. But his eye seethe not, that therefore in deed are our sins remitted, because Christ is imputed, and that neither are these forgiven, but to whom Christ is given first and in order before, though both without distinction of time are given together to the faithful man.  
The Physicians speak of a body neutral, 
Corpus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  neither whole nor sick, because they want a name to express the sickness by. Truly by true divinity we have no such either bodies or souls. Either we be whole or sick, quick in Christ, or dead in sin, either justified by him, or still remaining in our old corruption. There is no middle stay, 
Mat. 12.30  either we gather with him, or we scatter. All are to be sorted, either among the righteous or unrighteous, holy or profane, sons or bastards. As in the day of doom or general judgement, all shall be either sheep or goats, corn or chaff: when the judge shall have but a right or left, no third hand, to bid these go unto, who have their sins pardoned, and yet (as is feigned) are void of justice in their Saviour. Then that blessedness whereof David speaketh, Blessed are they, 
Psal. 32.1  whose sins are not imputed, and whose iniquities are covered, shall be either utterly denied men, or in full delivered, so pronounced by the Prophet, because of the not imputing of their sins, which cannot but imply the imputation of righteousness by Christ withal, 
The d ctrin of forgiveness of sins in Christ most comfortable.  which is the covering of sin.  
This blessedness most happy must be sought for ever, till it be fully found out here, and perfectly enjoyed in heaven. So we preach and so we believe, and this we pray for: the glad year, the acceptable time, the release of debts, the remission of sins, & the imputation of Christ with his merits. Verily, the very hinge of Christianity, the key of religion, the peace of conscience, the water that allayeth the whirl winds and tempests of a troubled soul, the wine that gladdeth the heavy heart, and the oil that cheereth the countenance of the sorrowful man that droupeth, and hangeth head as the bulrush in remorse of his offences, are contained herein, and depend upon this happy and heavenly doctrine, of our free justification in Christ jesus. 
The parts of justification.  The parts whereof properly taken to be are but two: the remission of sins, and imputation of righteousness: the sins are ours, the righteousness Christ's. The remitting of them unto us, and the imputing of that which is none of ours, are freely bestowed by special favour upon the faithful: and so of sinners and unjust, we are reputed just, and become saved souls for Christ's sake.   

Of the righteousness of Christ imputed unto, and not inherent in a Christian man.  
FArther, fitly to declare how far remission of sins stretcheth, and in what manner precisely Christ's righteousness is reckoned ours, requireth the longer stay herein, because the adversaries have enwrapped, & hedged in the matter round about with thorns, that an unwary hand can hardly come to the truth without danger of pricking. For of remission of sins, 
Stap. li. 5. et lib. 7. ca 10  they have made a rasing out of sin quite, as if no sin remained at all after baptism: & of imputation, 
Rhe. Note. Ro. c. 4. ver. 7.8  they make a very imprinting of a perfect righteousness in us: in both points erring very wide from the truth. For albeit the guilt of sin be remitted, and that no sin hath any such sting, as can wound to death everlasting: Yet the full abolishing of sin is not in this life, but after death in the life to come. And albeit upon our effectual calling, faith in Christ (which is the gift of God) strait way in convenient time frameth a new by grace in Christ all our thoughts, 
Phil. 3.29  
Concil. Milevit. can. 3  proineth our lusts, schooleth our affections, and ordereth a right the whole race of our life to a better course, and likewise although it be truly said Christ dwelleth in us and we are his holy temples, & that we have in us his righteousness, his, because it proceedeth from his spirit, when we believe rightly & live accordingly, yet that righteousness whereby we are justified, is resident only in the person of Christ, & is not inherent at all in us, for this were to make us not only his faithful servants, and obedient children, which is our duty and must be so: but to make ourselves very Christ's & saviours of ourselves, 
And. ortho. expl. li 6. ca de iustific.  if not in whole at the entry of the first receiving him, yet in the chiefest perfection thereof, in the end of our justification, purchasing it to be really inherent and perfect in us by means of deserts.  
The later Papists, 
Rhem. not. 2. Rom.  especially since the council of Trent have most mistaken our justification, which when thy have granted it to be free, calling it a first free justification, yet by glozing to & fro thereupon, have much also impaired the freeness thereof, and then in justification, which is but one, being very ill understood (as the madman thinketh he seethe two moons for one) they have found out another in themselves, 
Stap. lib. 10 cap. 2 justificatio imporiat ius ad vitam aeternam.  which being made up of good works, must present them just before the tribunal seat of God, and deserveth ever lasting life, & this they call a 2. justification.  
Verily we for our parts can not but ingeniously protest & confess: we have not so learned Christ, and herein nothing can comfort us more than this, that we have not been brought up in the school of Trent by Andradius, or as auditors at M. Stapletons' feet at Douai, or else at Rheims under our late translators there.  
Our righteousness is Christ. We are just in him, not in ourselves. For his sake our sins are not imputed, 
Coloss. 1.20  but his innocency is imputed. In him it hath pleased the Father to be reconciled. 
Eph. 1.7  And so are all justified freely by grace through the redemption which is in Christ jesus, both is in him, & by his means. But I say which is in him inherently, & not cleaving to us. For the truth is, the woman is clad with the Sun in the revelation: that is to say: 
Revel. 12.1  the church is covered with the righteousness of Christ, the Son of God. But as a garment sticketh not to the body, no more doth the perfection of Christ cleave or stick in the person of any Christian neither is he, or his righteousness, 
1. Tim. 2.6 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  or a righteousness in any degree in this life perfect imparted, or gotten, or purchased by any way of commixture & confusion, but he only is ours by imputation, the pay & ransom of our debts, though we personally defray and pay no farthing thereunto.  
The sons of men that meant to build a tower that should reach to heaven, when they all spoke one language, every one understanding his fellow in the same tongue, their work went forward. For an understanding consent is much to farther, either the evil intents of the wicked, or the godly endeavours of the good. Wherefore the Lord descended & confounded their tongues, that they might not all speak with one lip and language, and so was their building interrupted, and it came to nothing, the place receiving a fit name (Babel) of a deserved confusion. Our adversaries, whilst they nestle themselves, agreeably together in an opinion as it were legions of unclean spirits in the bosoms of the simple, they beguile the sooner, & the more. But in this their building, whereby they would pile up merits & works of deserts, & mortar them together, in the land of their own flesh, the top whereof should reach up to heaven, the Lord could not suffer such proud giants so ungraciously to impair his glory, & to have their forth, but by his providence hath descended, and divided their languages, among themselves. One saith one thing, another saith another thing. Pigghius a chief master workman with his fellows, & M. Stapleton a fine builder after the newer fashion with his mates, can not agree together about the foundation of the work. Pigghius will have works preparatory, & deferring the grace of God, 
Lib. 7. cap. 9  to be the ground work. M. Stapleton liketh not that so well. Again which way the frame should rise, and upon what pillars it should rest, they vary more. M. Stapleton would have man's righteousness to rely and be in & upon man himself. Piggh. being better skilled, in this cause of more remorse & humbleness of mind misliketh that, & shows by manifest demonstrations it must be otherwise. Yet Pigghius good advise largely laid forth in this respect in his books, could not be heard in the convent of Trent, amongst whom if any were wiser & better than others, they were least regarded, 
Sess. 6. can. 11  and soon rejected. But whether it were by reading M. Calvin, & in him the Scriptures of God fitly and forcibly applied, or otherwise God opening his heart by what and whom as instrumental means I can not tell, certainly Pigghius letteth not to speak the truth in plain terms, & concludeth it with evident & like sound reasons. M. Stapleton notwithstanding still buildeth his tower of Babel, without lime and sand, or rather upon the sand of frail and weak man, the fall whereof can not choose but be great in the day of trial.  
Very well & wisely (saith Pigghius) we are taught being void of righteousness to seek it, 
controvers. Ratisb. 2  extranos without ourselves, in illo in him, in Christ. Wherein if it be demanded how & by what right I can be righteous by the righteousness that is in an other: 
john. 15.14 Rom. 5.19 A rule of the Law & a good reason in Philosophy. Arist. Eth. l. 3. c. 3. That what a man doth by another, after a sort he doth by himself, and it is so accepted, except ever where a personal performance is required.  It is easily answered: by the right of friendship, whereunto Christ hath vouchsafed to accept us, communicating, & laying all that he hath in common unto us his friends. And as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, even in the guilt of sin, then whilst they were but yet in the loins of Adam: so by one man cometh righteousness upon all: and albeit we and his person be distinct, yet that which he the head hath paid for us the members of his mystical body is as sufficient, as if we the members had paid it ourselves. And a great deal better it is, that such treasures should be kept rather in the hands of a strong and safe keeper, then of them who once had been prodigal children & might be again, if their patrimony were delivered them now in as ample or more ample manner than it was at the first.  
This is once: harm there can come none by this doctrine, but good: For as the justice and mercy of God, hereby is the more perfectly established, so our righteousness is as well obtained, & likewise better confirmed in Christ our elder brother, under whose perfumed, & most fragrant & sweet attire, & in whose absolute perfection we appear perfect before God, & receive the blessing, as jacob did in Esawes garments, & not in his own, at his father Isaaks hands: 
Gen. 27.27 Ambr. de jacob. & vita beat. lib. 2. cap. 2 Gen. 27.1  which story S. Ambr. & others by way of all usion conveniently allege to this very purpose, of man's justification before the Lord.  
Yea, but God is not like Isaak in his old age, when his eyes were dim, that he will take one brother for an other, or impute righteousness to a man that is not righteous.  
In deed when we show, both by the natural propriety, and common use of the word justifying: that it doth not import any imprinting or an indument of any quality in a man, but an absolution, as in judgements & in the consistories of men, so before God, 
Stap. 2. prol in 5. lib.  when we are absolved, the reply is made, that God will not absolve the unrighteous man, and that he discerneth, who are who, well enough.  
And who denieth this? we know and acknowledge, that so great is the jealousy of our God, that he will not suffer the ungodly to take his * covenant in their mouths much less to enjoy his blessings. 
Psal. 5.16  * No unclean thing shall enter the holy city, 
Reu. 21.27  the workers of iniquity shall not come nigh him, 
Luc. 13.27  for his face is against them, to root them out. Thine eyes are clear o Lord, & thou canst not behold iniquity. 
Psal. 5.6   
But what shall we say then? Shall I say, we are righteous, & that we have no sin? Of sanctification shallbe spoken afterward which they blind & confound with justification. 
1. joh. 1.10  If we say we have (not only have had) but yet have no sin, our tongues will falter, for our hearts can teach us a contrary lesson: 
1. joh. 3.20  or if our hearts be a sleep, God is greater than our hearts. If he enter judgement not with his enemies, 
Psal. 130  but with his servants, who shall abide it? who can answer one for a thousand? 
job. 9.3  who shall appear innocent, & be pronounced righteous.  
The case is weighty, & requireth diligent attention. If we confess our unworthiness, health may seem to be far from sinners. For the wicked shall come to nought, yea and their hope shall perish. If thou darest deny thine unrighteousness, than art thou the more past grace, and the deeper in sin. And yet as when the patriarchs had thrown their brother into the pit, they went aside, 
Gen. 37.25  and without remorse fell to their meat, afterward their old sin, & unkind dealing, came fresh to their mind, so the fat heart that can not feel when he sinneth, and how he woundeth his soul in sinneing, the time shall come when it shall have a lively and a bleeding sense thereof, 
Wisd. 5.3.  and a sentence accordingly.  
Then, belike, whether we feel and confess our unrighteousness, or else brag & presume of a righteousness, all is one. No, not so, for happy are they, that finding their infinite defects, & innumeral wants, nakedness of good, and guilt of sin, thereby come to that grace and wisdom, by grace to seek for supply of better things, and helps in him, that is able and sufficient in this behalf. Wherein an humble agnition of sundry our imperfections unfeignedly made from the heart, and truly in respect of trespasses inevitably committed even of the best men, doth not repugn or withstand, but establish, as I said before, and marvelously settle in men's hearts, and greatly set forth and commend the righteousness and grace of God, whereby we obtain in Christ, that which is not in ourselves: perfect wisdom, true holiness, entire righteousness, and everlasting redemption. For look what he our mediator surely did in our names, and for our sakes, that the Lord accepteth as done to himself, by us conditionally, that we still rely upon him, trust in his mercies, embrace the promises, renounce ourselves, and lean to Christ.  
The Prophet Esay foretold what Christ's office should be, 
Esay. 50.11  and was to do: that he should justify many, and by what means, by bearing & sustaining their sins, which he did upon the cross, when he made due payment for them & full purchase of that holiness, which he began at his birth, and continued in the hole race of his life, and finished with his death, but declared more apparently by his rising again. As the Apostle speaketh to the Romans: 
Rom 4.25.  He died for our sins, and rose again for our justification. Who as in earth taking our nature upon him, became the mediator between God and man, so also now still in heaven, he is remaining an intercessor for us, to the father in our needs and necessities whatsoever. And this his continual intercession for us, amongst other things doth manifestly declare, that which a good Christians conscience doth oft tell him of, every night, when he goeth to bed, & every morning when he riseth, and every hour when he thinketh on his so many duties, that he oweth to the Lord, that questionless he hath not such a righteousness in him, as every sinful Papist prateth of, but in deed in account before God, hath no more true goodness, then proud men can have, and how much that can be, let the humble judge. But touching perfection or imperfection of righteousness more distinctly it shallbe said in that which followeth.   

Of the regenerate man's imperfection, yet remaining, and of an impossibility of the exact keeping of the law.  
Our Saviour preferreth common strumpets, 
Mat. 25.31 Luc. 15.3.  profane Publicans, and gross sinners before proud Pharisaical boasters. Yea the very Pelagian in show is better than the haughty Pharisey, though also somuch the worse, because in words he is more modest confessing his unworthiness, & yet in heart believing the contrary, and reckoning of a natural perfection, and of a faultless integrity. But who taught him to make a divorce betwixt his tongue & his heart? if his heart be pure, why dissemble his lips? if his lips speak truth, why doth his heart dissent? The Lord resisteth the proud in heart, and the lying lips he will destroy. 
Psal. 12.3.  This fine trick of hypocrisy, the Papist hath borrowed of the Pelagian. For they be of great familiarity, and near kin, and therefore may be bold one with an other.  
Ask any Papist, one or other, whether he think himself righteous or no: he will say no, and deny it with open protestation. Ask him what he thinketh of an other, he will answer if a man will contend, & endeavour thereunto, the Law is not so hard, but it may be done and fulfilled: 
Works of supererogation. Rhem. not. 1. Cor. 9.16.  nay he will go farther and defend a greater perfection to be in Friars, Monks, jesuits etc. then God either of his wisdom could, or of his justice would command in his law. But ask the Prophets, isaiah, Daniel, and David, 
Psal. 31.6. Daniel. 9.7 Esa. 64.6.  what their judgement is, and these because they are of an other spirit, will make a diverse answer: that there is not a Saint, but doth pray to be pardoned, shame and confusion belongeth to all, the very righteousness of man is as a stained cloth.  
Unto these last words out of the Prophet isaiah, 
Lib. 6. cap. 22.  Master Stapleton agnizeth, that: Now adays the writers of his own side, have answered, admodum vary, very variously. But is it possible? I had thought Papists could not have jarred, or varied on jot one from an other: for so they can falsely brag. I grant the spirit of an interpreter may be examined, & judged by others. 
1. Cor. 14.32.  For men are men, and being diverse, because all have not all truth in such measure and knowledge of every circumstance, they may write diversly. But what is the cause of this their so great variety in a matter not hard? Verily, 
Bert. de pro pri. verb. lib. 18. cap. 68  no marvel if you run sidelong, and aslant (like a hare down an hill) or, to and fro, some one way, some an other, and not forth out right and directly all, when you come near a text, that maketh after you, and in pursuit can not but overtake, and quite overthrow your errors.  
To omit all others, because you omit them to, how take you, M. Stapleton, the Prophet's meaning to be? Marry, that their former righteousness in the corrupt times under Achaz & Manas. was stained with their latter unrighteousness, them abounding, not that the words concern the works of the jews, that were good then, or may be applied to the righteousness of Christians now, and that the Prophet speaking as of himself among others withal, doth but after the manner of Preachers reprehending the people's vices seem to include themselves with the rest, howbeit, they be free from such popular enormities.  
So you say master Stapleton, and a man would think to the purpose altogether, if he see no more than you do, or no farther than you are disposed to show him. The Prophet doth not preach but pray in this place, and he giveth forth the confession of the whole Church, as may clearly appear by these words. 
isaiah. 64. vers. 8.9. etc.  O Lord we are all thy people, etc. It is true, that they had not only stained, but changed their righteousness into unrighteousness, the place of justice into a lodge of murderers, their wine into water, their gold into dross, etc. Yet in the prophets prayer there was more than this. For the Lord being provoked to just wrath, by unjust dealings, as he will punish their grosser faults, so will he not pardon, the imperfections of their best virtues, except they be content in humility to prostrate themselves, & confess their own unworthiness, not only when they openly sin, but also when they seem to do well, & to serve him most. 
job. 9.28.  So job a just man, yet feareth nothing more than his works: & Esay knoweth with how true words, he conceiveth his prayer.  
Let not M. Stapleton reply herein also, that Esay includeth himself generally in terms, and not in truth. For a man cannot abide a false rich beggar, specially if he knew him to be rich, and yet hear him to protest his poverty, & craving relief, & needeth none. But howsoever man may be deceived, or persuaded with the hypocrisy & feigned tears of importunate dissemblers, certainly God will not be mocked. As we believe, so must we pray, & so did Esay, whose prayer is therefore written, that it might be a pattern to all posterity, to believe, pray & confess in like manner.  
Neither doth the examples, of Noah, job, Zac. & the like disprove that which we avouch, that the righteousness of the best being exactly tried at the touchstone of the Law, shallbe found drossy, impure, and even as a defiled garment, which is not cleansed, but with that soap which purgeth all. And woe worth them who ever, that seek to admix their own sweat, with the blood of Christ.  
Noah was a just man, 
No●.  that is, was justified in expectation of the Messiah to come, and very just was he in comparison of the iniquities of the old world, unto whom he was a preacher of righteousness and godly life, 
Genes. 6.8.  but the Ark that he made was a type of his salvation to be sought for in Christ, for whose sake he found grace & favour in the eyes of God.  
Likewise jobs confidence was not in himself, 
job.  but in that he certainly knew that his redeemer lived in whom also he should be revived, & whereas somewhere he pleadeth his innocency, what sick man being extremely affected hath not now and then an extraordinary pang? Yet job, as he complaineth of his grief and heavy sorrow, so withal he maketh confession of his grievous sins, (which are, we know aswell the causes often of sorrow & sickness, as the instruments of trial) and in plea of his innocency he doth it not against God, but against his enemies, as likewise in respect of the folly of his unwise friends, who like miserable & unskilful Physicians, misapplied their physic, otherwise good enough, he termeth them, as they well deserved. And when he appealeth to the holy throne of God. What doth he? he layeth forth the ground of his heart unfeigned, because he defied the hypocrisy wherewith they falsely charged him.  

Zachary & Elizabeth.  So Zachary & Elyzabeth a just couple, patterns of godliness to all, and namely to all, that are in holy state of wedlock, and a most fair example, for ministers, & ministers wives, both for the lawfulness of their marriage, and also for their upright living therein, notwithstanding that condition of life. For these both though married, yet were they, 
Rhem. not. in Luc. cap. 1. vers. 6. Stapl. lib. 6. cap. 13.  Just before God and walked in all the commandments and justifications of the Lord without reproof. Which is as great a commendation as may be attributed to man. Just before God: walking in all the commandments (moral) and ordinances (ceremonial) without reproof. And verily at the first blush these words carry a great show of an absolute perfection against all, that hitherto hath been avouched. For, these two are said to be just, and we hold speaking strictly, no man is just. These are termed just before God, and we teach that no flesh shallbe justified in his sight of right in itself. These are here commmended to have walked in all the hests of God without reproof, & we show that this much was fulfilled only and solely of Christ.  
The solution and full answer of all this, hath been well made of many, and not very long since in writing by sundry learned, 
Fox. Ser. de Christ. cruc. L. Tomson against Feck. etc.  and godly men. I will but dip the same cloth in the same die again, because still our adversaries cease not to obscure & deface the true colour thereof as much as in them lieth. And first, these were just before God, not because God could not, but because God would not find fault with them. 
Psa. 130.3  For if thou observe what is done amiss, O Lord, who shall abide it? shall just Zachary? or is not Zacharies' distrustfulness recorded, and therefore the use of his tongue taken away for a time? or may we think diffidence & distrustfulness to be no fault? or if he offended but in this one fault alone, was he not even for that one fault in the rigour of justice made an offender of the whole law? 
jam. 2.10.  but how then saith the scripture, that Zachary was just? no doubt, not if God should have measured the righteousness of Zacharie, by the rule of the law, and yet no doubt was he a just man as job & so accepted, 
job. 1.1. Gen. 5.22.  and walking with God as Enoch in the lords sight, in singleness of mind and not in an heart, and an heart: but in sincerity, that is to say, before God, and that in all the commandments, endeavouring the observation of all without exception, and not specially keeping some and omitting the rest, as if a man would ward a gate of the city, and suffer all other places else void without their watch: neither is (all) so taken, as if all had been sim●ly performed to the full: For he offended in part, as is plain, in not believing the message from God, and it is said, they walked, which doth somewhat argue that they were but in the way, and not at their journeys end, whereunto they contended one ward, reverently before God, and carefully before men without reproof.  
And in this their journey to pass away the way, and the tediousness thereof Zachary singeth a joyful song concerning the Lords merciful visitation and his delivery from the hands of our enemies, & of remission of sins, & of a strong salvation in the house of David to be purchased by Christ, to Christians, & not by Christians to themselves. And Zachary was very well exercised & skilful in such ditties, & in none other but these. For whereas he was a Priest, his use and duty was to offer for sins, both for the peoples, and for his own first. 
Epist. 95. ad Sext.  Which thing (saith Augustine) some seem little to consider, who urged Zacharies' example in like sort, as the Papists do, unto whom he answered then, 
Rhem. not. Rom. cap. 3. vers. 10.  as we do to the Papists now adding withal, as Augustine doth, that the sacrifices of Christian prayers: Forgive us trespasses, importeth remnants of imperfections in Christians, even as the old oblations did in the jews, both priest and people, till this our imperfection in this world be changed into perfection in the world to come. And although some be juster than some, as gold compared with dross, or silver with tin, or gold with gold, or silver with silver, that is to say the good with the bad, or the good with the good, 〈…〉 or the best among themselves, or though all in common whom God vouchsafeth favour & pardon may be called just, because they are justified, and reputed so, & acquitted in Christ, yet this being well considered, that men after grace received, they have received but a measure of grace, is it not a folly to dream of perfection? The Philosopher could tell them, that that is perfect, 
Arist. lib. 1. de coel. cap. 1.  which wanteth nothing. But how many and how great are the defects even of the best? And then if the strong men fail what shall the weak do? If the horsemen yield & fly, shall the footmen undertake the battle, & win the field? If God find imperfections in his chiefest Saints, & dearest friends, & loving ●est children, in Abel, Enoch, 
August. de Natur. & Grac. cap. 36. Rhem. not. Mat. 19.21 Lib. 6. cap. 6  Melchisedeck Abraham, & the like: a great number of whom are reckoned up by name in Augustine. Shall a begging friar, or an idle monk, or a seditious jesuit vaunt of perfection before the Lord. To help out the matter M. Stapleton doth distinguish of perfections, though not perfect, yet perfect in suo genere, & suo modo, in their kind & after their own manner. In deed so may they be perfect in the highest degree, in their own kind, & after their own fashion, that is to say, perfectly bad, & so much the worse, as they more presume of a good perfection. But that imperfection in one kind, should naturally be a true perfection & yet unperfit in the same, is very strange & a monstrous speech in our ears. What? not after a sort? nor in his kind? no southly. For Pelagius might them, even as truly have answered with such kind of distinctions for the perfection of his pure naturals, that they were perfect in their kind. So mangle a man, & cut of the chief parts, head & all, & yet you may say it is a perfect body in that kind, as in such a case it may be. But where is Aristotle's definition: there is nothing perfect, that wanteth his parts? Yet because we build not upon men, what doth the word of God require? all our soul, all the body, all the powers & faculties of both. If ought be wanting in either, there wanteth that perfection, that the law requireth and Christ commandeth: Be you perfect even as your father is perfect. This is the mark, endeavouring toward it, shooting fair, or coming near is no perfection, except by way of comparison to them that are stark nought, or worse than they. For the law requireth more, & our duty is greater than so, they reply, no, not so, as though no more were exacted, then personally of ourselves can be performed, or else that there is an exemption from such exactness.  
The sick woman in the Gospel, 
Mar. 5.26.  the more she went to physic, the worse she was: so an error, the more it is defended, the bigger it groweth. And so it fareth, with these that would be their own saviours & shut out Christ. First they strive for a perfection: when that is disproved, they would be perfect with an imperfection at the least, & when we show, that that is a mere toy, as they mean it, than they say God requireth no more at our hands, than we can do. Now whether God doth so, or no, in process yet a little further shallbe considered, albeit hereof hath been sufficiently debated before.  
Our Saviour Christ, that justly could, unjustly would not, & never falsely upbraided, the people whom he loved so tenderly, 
joh. 7.19.  objected unto them, the breach of the Law: Did not Moses give you a Law, but none of you kept the Law? and least he should seem to touch some & those of the wickeder sort only, & not all in general the best amongst them are not excepted: None of you doth the law. None. Or be it (which I take epperly to be the meaning of the place) Christ speaketh only to the just reproach of the ungodly, and no marvel. For the godly agnize their imperfections most willingly, but the godless stand at staves end with God, & plead, not guilty, against their own conscience. Wherefore in special were such rather to be convinced of sin, than those that in humbleness of mind, confessed, they were sinners, and craved pardon for their sins. Yet in respect of either the voluntary confession of one sort, or the pretended hypocrisy of the other, reprehended of Christ, it is more than manifest, that the law was transgressed of al.  
But this was De non facto: they did it not: but might they not have done the law? or if they being nought, could not do well, could not their betters, or can not the best perform the law?  
I would be loath to call that, or them impure or polluted, 
Act. 10.15.  or any way imperfect, whom God hath sanctified, and perfected in his son. But this is not the question, what we are reputed to do in Christ: neither should this be the question, whether by the spirit of God and grace through Christ, we can fulfil the Law. 
Rom. 11.  For the Law exacteth full obedience proceeding as from ourselves, if we once seek to be justified thereby. Yet because our adversaries call that now only into controversy, what man can do by the help of grace, thereby at least to maintain somewhat in themselves, as if they would say, that they could swim if they were held up by the chin, and they can keep the law, 
Rhe. notes Ro. c. 8. v. 4.  by the grace of Christ, and spirit of God. I confess by the grace of God we are that we are, & the grace of God is not in vain in his own children: yet not in so full measure, or rather without measure, as it was in Christ, who only was able to undertake that, that no man ever hath done else, or shall do hereafter, or can do at any time. For if it were otherwise, what singular thing ascribe we more to him, then to some other? A greater matter than the fulfilling of the Law is hardly found. Therefore they set the birth, and life, & passion, & person of Christ, at a very small, & vile prize, that make no more account thereof, then to be as it were but a pair of oars to convey us somewhat the easilier thither, 
August, de verb. Apost 13  whither happily with more leisure, and some greater labour we might come at length, whereunto in deed we can never attain, but by him, and by him alone, as an wholly agent therein.  
M. Stapleton demandeth thus much: whether grace & power divine, have not that force, as to remove that our old corruption, which was contracted and drawn from Adam, and likewise to restore again the perfection that was at the first? whereunto his own simpering answer is such that it seemeth to burn his lips in the utterance of certain allegations out of Austin and Jerome. For both of these are more for us, he knoweth full well, then for him in all their discourses hereof, if they be well weighed and wisely considered. Who disputing to and fro, do rather precisely teach the omnipotent ability of God, then exactly define, that man is or may be, or certainly ever either was or shall be of such a perfection in this life. M. Stapleton himself, doth but say, 
Hierom.  Non abhorret Ieronimus ab ista sententia: Ieromes stomach doth scant serve him to taste of M. Stapletons' corrupt viands.  
The Law is possible, and the Law is impossible, two contrary sentences in sound, and yet they both true in some sense, as the two cherubins sitting opposite each to other yet both looking into the propitiatory: so these sentences though seeming contrary, yet respect either, a known truth in divinity. If we consider man either in his first creation, or in his glorified estate after this life, 
The substance of the Law remaineth in force even in the next life.  the Law was possible, and shallbe easy. By the way if any ask whether Moses Law shall serve in the world to come, I am of opinion in substance, as of loving God above all things, and others as ourselves, it shallbe the same, though not in circumstances which must needs suffer alteration, with the change of the whole world. Then again the Law is possible to be done, for it was done of Christ. And again in some sort it may be said to be possible, and done of Christians, for God deputeth all to be done, when he forgiveth all that is not done. But the Pelagian thought himself a trim man, when he could say as the Papist doth say, God doth not command impossible things. Yes (saith Augustine,) and showeth the end why, to humble men, & to teach them the goodness of the forgiver, & also their duty in craving forgiveness of the Lord.  
The same Augustine some where doth also in as express words as may be, 
Augustine  avouch that the Law is possible. True. But withal it is worth the labour the while to observe in so learned a doctor some certain circumstances, the better to attain to the true meaning of his doctrine, that the bare name of such a father carry no man away. If he did simply say so, yet the foundation of our belief is not grounded on man, 
Ep. add Higher 19 add Vincen. Don. 48.  as Augustine himself showeth full well in numbers of places. But concerning the present question, Augustine was far enough from a Papistical pride in an imagined ability of human perfection. When his auditors waxed slack, & weary of well doing, & yet because sin is never without a shift, they used to say: that they would do this or that, but could not do according to Augustins exhortations. For example. I can not love mine enemies, saith one, I can not refrain myself from drinking, saith an other, I must needs be drunk, especially when such or such a parsonage enforceth me: Austin replieth: Nolle in culpa est nostra, 
Serm. de Temp. 232  & non posse praetenditur. O sinful man when thou wilt not, thou pretendest that thou canst not do thy duty, either in loving thy neighbour, or in foregoing thy lusts. God that giveth more grace than so to his children, knoweth best, what thou canst do, and that so idle, and frivolous excuses will not serve. Neither doth Austin argue the plenary fulfilling of the whole Law exactly in all points, but only endeavouring to persuade to charitable dealing, saith, though thou canst not do this or that, fast, sell all, etc. Yet canst thou not love? canst thou not have charity? whereby I gather, as out of him so elsewhere out of other writers, 
The Law is not impossible in part, but in perfection.  that this word impossible is not taken for an impossibility in every kind of degree, which no wise man will yield unto. For albeit we can not possibly be so perfect in the same equality as is required, yet a desire by imitation, and in some degree by grace may be and is in us: 
Clem. Alex. poedag. lib. 1 cap. 6 Virg. aen. l. ●  as it is in the Poet of the son that followeth his father, though he could not keep pace with him: Sequitúr que Patrem non passibus aequis: we may follow, though we can not or run cheek by cheek, (as the proverb is) jump so fast, or just so far, as is commanded: yet no wise man dare call this that perfection that the Papist would have.  
But the nature of man is like the lazy housewife, that when she had more to do than she knew she cold well dispatch, taketh and sitteth her down, & letteth all undone. farther, from meriting. For imperfection meriteth nothing, but craveth pardon, because of default.  
But we will go on in precise terms to speak of merits. As grace is free, & can not stand with merits, so merits deserve, and need not grace, if they be merits. The East and west, will sooner meet together, then grace and merits will meet together and agree in one in the salvation of man. For if thou wilt be saved by the one, thou canst not by the other. Neither mayst thou part stakes betwixt them both. For the Apostle taketh away desert, before he establisheth favour and grace.  
M. Stapleton singeth in a quite contrary tune to this: 
Lib. 10. c. 2  and telleth us in plain and shrill words, that the inheritance of salvation (albeit the very word inheritance might have taught him an other lesson) is given to the sons of God, not because they are sons (freely by favour) but because they are his good children: neither yet because they are good, but (withal) because they are children and good. As if partly we inherit by faith, whereby we are his children, and partly by works, which must make us good, and whereby in great part we deserve, which Austin showeth to be no safe way.  
I ask this question by the way: may we be good, & yet not his children, or can we be his children, and yet consequently not good? What God hath coupled, why doth M. Stapletons' vain strength endeavour to hale, and rend a sunder? If we be not sons, then are we nought, neither posibly can we be good by any working. For all good works, before they deserve the name of good, are first hallowed in Christ, sprinkled with his blood, wrought by his Spirit, and offered in his name upon the altar of faith, as proceeding from his dear children, or else they be nought, and being nought, they can make nothing better. 
Act. 15.9  But we be once his sons by faith, which pufieth the heart, and endueth with his spirit, which sanctifieth the soul, how can we be but good? And now being his sons by a vouchsafed privilege, not of desert but of adoption, them are we also heirs, coheirs with Christ, in this life here both to do well, that 〈◊〉 gracious a father may be glorified in his children, and many times to suffer evil 〈◊〉 the world's hands, 
Rhem. notes Rom. 8.17  that we may be glorified with Christ in heaven, which is a condition expressed in S. Paul not as a cause precedent to make us sons, and so heirs, but as a consequent of duty, because we are sons, and heirs, that therefore we owe all duty, and in reason must, being members be correspondent, & answerable to the head, that in the end we may enjoy most freely the performance of what so ever was in most free manner before promised. For as the promise was free at the first, so the performance being greater and more comfortable in the effect, can not be less free in the end, than was the promise at the first offered.  
The greatness of salvation in our state to be glorified after the consummation of all things cometh afterward in due place to be spoken of. In the mean time to show how little such so infinite a blessing can be worthily and of desert attained unto, is thereby manifest, because that glory is infinite, and the desert, if it were desert, yet were it finite. For the glory is eternal, and the merit temporal, the one ended in a small momentary time, the other everlasting without end, in so much that whereas there is with out all doubt, no proportion nor comparison of equality betwixt the desert and the thing deserved, who can avouch that he can deserve, or who dare say, I merit, or I purchase with the rusty money of mine own frail works, the glorious crown of everlasting salvation, even as a hireling or a journey man doth his wages?  
As in bargains there is no even buying or selling, but where a penny worth is to be had for a penny, and a penny is a penny worth: so properly there is no desert, but where there is an answerable rate in deserving, which because it can not possibly be between us men & God, between God & man's salvation, farewell merits, as they are properly taken. Improperly how the word may be taken in sundry of the fathers is not directly to the point of the question concerning the prize, desert, worth and valour, of works and the nature of merits, 
Rhem. not. 1. Cor. 3.8  as the Papists take the name of merits.  
Wherefore with much a do M. Stapleton against the hair, and perforce, can not choose but grant, that in deed there is no equality in the former respects as we be men, but yet as we be Christian men, he saith there is an equality and his reasons be these: because the adopted sons heritage be it never so great, 
Stap. lib. 10 cap. 2  (as he thinketh) exceedeth not the worthiness of the person adopted: and again he imagineth that the Son is no farther bound then the Father will require: & being once sons by grace, them De nostro meremur, we merit of ourselves.  
There is never a true word in all this proud folly: for what should I call it else?  
First, the adopted son, as before his adoption he deserved not the inheritance be it never so little, so being adopted into a large inheritance, his No-desert is thereby the more manifested, and aught a great deal the more openly of the adopted son to be proclaimed. Moreover if the father would not require aught, but could content himself with slender thanks, what then? because the father is thus content, is the son the less bound, & not rather the bond doubled, & the son the deeper indebted & his duty increased in the highest degree of all thankfulness? The natural son can yield no equal recompense to his natural parents: how much more than is the adopted child beholding? As for that vile and presumptuous saying, that men are sons by grace, & then de nostro saved, by works, be it far from Christian, & humble minds. For shall a man begin with Christ & end in himself, or begin with the Gospel & end with Moses? 
Arist.  The end of every thing is the perfection thereof: but are our works so perfect, perfecter than grace? doth God but the first, & least part, and are ourselves authors, causers, & finishers, of the chiefest, the latest, & the greatest parts? who would think that the cloth of righteousness were thus patched up of some small piece of purple died in the blood of Christ, and all the rest to be made of man's own rags? Cost it so little to redeem sinners? why did the holy man fear his works as nothing more? was he like the simple bird, that ducketh at the barn door, where the door is high enough, and no fear of hurting her head? No. job was well advised in his saying. For might or did he merit, why did he fear? But therefore he feared because he knew that he could not merit, demerit he could a just condemnation, if he should rely upon the worthiness of his own works. And therefore he feared the lightness and insufficiency thereof, and leaned only to a better stay, to the mercy of God, and to the merits of Christ his Redeemer, which should buy out and pay for the unworthiness that otherwise was in his works.  
I never find the adversary without some shift. 
Rhem. not. 1. Cor. 3.8.  But of all tricks, that is most fond, & an impudent folly, 
Quicqwid in rei veritate habeant tamen etc.  whereby they say that job, and jobs like did merit, yet would they not glory in their merits, professing ever in words the contrary, as who would say in plain speech man might glory, 
Sta. l. 5. c. 17.  having sufficient matter of merits to glory in, yet of courtesy would not, but was content to yield the glory to God: to whom forsooth otherwise in full right, & in whole it did not so directly, & duly appertain: so that if good men were not beneficial and favourable in this behalf, the glory of God were and might be much diminished, and greatly impaired, if every one would but challenge his own and take his due.  
Our Saviour Christ schooleth his disciples after an other fashion, 
Luc. 17.7.  telling than, that when they had done all (if yet they could) that was commanded them, yet should they say that they were improfitable servants. 
Sta. l. 5. c. 17  What? say so, and not think so? that were hypocrisy. Say so, & it were not true? that were a , & therefore sin. Say so, for modesty's sake? There is no modesty, no humility against and without the truth, yet say so. Why? 
Psal. 16  doth God stand in need of man's glozing? No. he needeth not our best works. But why do not the Papists then say so much? Why say they not flat, without stammering that they are unprofitable servants? Nay, why say they that they are deservers? what they are, they will not readily say: what they are not, they brag, or at the least pretend that they are.  
As things (especially spiritual) are in their own nature, so must we conceive of them, or else we conceive amiss. 
Esay 5.20  And as we conceive, so must we confess of them and speak by them. Wherefore doubtless of ourselves (what ever boasters patter in pride to the contrary) we must both conceive humbly, and confess truly & plainly that we are in respect of meriting, but unprofitable servants.  
It is granted of all parts, that God hath ordained, that man should be profitable to man, and one commodious to an other, each man lending his help, & helping hand to his neighbour, wherein yet because frail flesh sometimes in the duties & many times in the degrees of charity offendeth, we are to crave pardon, even in this respect also. But when we speak of meriting with God, 
Rhem. not. Luc. 17.10.  we must show that we are profitable to him, or else of him we merit not profitably to ourselves, as our new notes would have it, but that is impossible. For what profit taketh the spring by him that tasteth of the waters that issue from the spring, 
Aug. de ciu Dei. l. 10. c. 5  or the Sun by the eye, that seethe by the suns light? Or God by our works, which proceed from himself, and therefore if yet they be profitable to him, yet are they not properly ours, and so not profitable to him as from us deserving of him, but as his own to himself: 
Rhem. notes 2. Tim. 4.8.  and therefore not worth thanks at our hands, much less available to merit truly & properly as they speak, and truly in that they but pass through us, they take some kind of our imperfection along with them, in so much, that albeit God the giver be perfect, and his gifts clean, notwithstanding man's unclean and leprous hand in the very receiving and usage of them doth after a sort soil them, so that there can be no claim of worthiness by them at all. Now as for servants to be profitable to themselves, is a strange shift, and I will not spend labour to confute that which common experience doth detest. For who will count him a profitable servant, that is profitable to himself and not to his master.  
It were better for man to enter low into himself, and to common with his own soul in these, and to common with his own soul in these cases especially that so nearly concern the soul, 
jud. 16.5.  and as Dalila relied in Samsons bosom to know where his strength lay, even so never to leave of till he hath traced & found out, his own weakness in good things, & his strength in sin, and then shall he the better be able to sit in judgement, and give sentence upon himself, no doubt against the merits of man with the mercy of God, in whose sight otherwise no flesh ever shallbe justified, or profitable unto himself in that respect.  
The Papists do but dally and play with God's judgements. The Prophet is plain, and speaketh from a conscience well informed, that in the sight of God none shallbe justified: None, that is to say, none before grace, saith a chief Papist. But Hosius, and out of him Stapleton, and others like not that: For David a man according to Gods own heart, and therefore in state of grace, yet said he of himself, and that none in the Lord's sight shallbe justified. For that which is right in the sight of man (because his eyesight may be deceived) yet therein God's sight can not be deceived. He seethe the inwards, searcheth, and soundeth the bottom of secret, 
1. joh. 1.8.  and unknown sins. Wherein if flesh will flatter itself, and lie, and say it hath no sin, yet God hath an eye that pierceth farther, and a stretched out arm, and he will reach his hand into the cockatrice nest, and pluck thence, and display abroad the serpent that lurketh and lodgeth in the den of a dead and rotten conscience, that hath no feeling nor sense of stinging sins. For in his sight hidden faults shall not so scape, and therefore it is good praying ever: Cleanse us, O Lord, even us they people, from our secret offences: we know & confess, that no flesh can be justified in thy sight.  
But I know not what M. Sapleton and Hosius mean to labour to prove that this saying of David, 
Stapl. lib. 6. cap. 1. Hos. lib. conf. ca 73.  is spoken by way of comparison, and that in his sight, is in comparison of God himself. For doth God in judgement mean to compare us to himself, and so to condemn us? Yet what gain they by this? we confess this is true, whether it be the natural meaning of this text or no. For in comparison of the sun in his strength, what is a candle or a star, or all the stars of the sky? in comparison of the almighty what is man? at his presence the mountains melt, the earth doth shake, the very Angels are not clean in his sight, how much less flesh & blood, that dwelleth in houses of clay, and whose foundation is but mortar? All this is true. But one truth is not contrary to an other. None shallbe justified before grace. It is true. None shallbe justified in comparison of God, it is true to. And it is most true also that David sayeth, & Jerome expoundeth, that not only in comparison, 
Hierom. in jer. 13. cap. Where he termeth this their exposition the exposition of heretics and of the patrons of heretics.  but also in the knowledge of God in his sight, no flesh shallbe justified. And all these truths prove this one truth, that none shallbe justified by their merits neither before nor after grace, but altogether by grace, which worketh not only at the first all and afterward somewhat, but beginneth all, continueth in all, and endeth all in all if they willbe justified in deed.  
This is S. Paul's doctrine throughout all his Epistles, who showeth that God worketh in us both to will and to work to the end that we may will effectually, 
Phil. 2.13.  and all for his own good will he worketh in us to will. I ask then where is free will? he worketh in us to work: them I ask where are merits? he worketh in us to will and to work, and all: and then I ask, where is any thing in man?  
It is not in the willer, nor in the runner, but of God that taketh mercy. 
Rom. 9  It is not in the willer, and then I ask once again, where is free will? it is not in the runner, and then where are works, and worthiness of works? If it be replied that therefore the Apostle, saith it is not in the runner nor in the willer, but in the mercy of God, 
Rhem. not. Rom. cap. 9.16. verse.  because it is not only in either of both these, but in them and withal in the mercy of God to: then see, if it be so, the sentence will be true, if we turn it backward thus by the same reason: It is not in the mercy of God, but in the runner, and in the willer, because as the Papist saith: all is not in mercy, but part in mercy, and part in fee will, part in works, part in merits, and therefore they may aswell say: it is not in mercy but in merits, in works, will, and well deserving.  
The adversaries would seem to favour much catholic words, and catholic manner of speaking. Was there ever Catholic or Christian under heaven that spoke thus, as they in effect do, that our salvation is not of God, that taketh mercy, but in deserts?  
The name of merit in Canoni. scripture is not only not commonly used (as they now can say) but no where found, 
Rhem. not. 1. Cor. 3.8.  the nature of meriting is flat against all scriptures. And must yet merits be set up in even place, with mercy? or rather displace mercy quit? For S Paul teacheth, 
Rom. 11.  that works & mercy can not stand together in respect of glory: truly no more than could Dagon and the Ark in the temple of the Philistines. Establish mercy, and let fall, (I say not the use) but the glory of works: set up works, & what need mercy? set them up I mean in the throne of meriting.  
Austin mentioneth the name of merits: 
Aug. epist. 105.  Barnard saith he is not without his merits, but both in an other meaning, than the Papist meaneth. For a merit with Augustine is no other matter, than good works, merely proceeding from the spirit of God, done in faith, and only accepted by mercy, & then rewarded, and so crowned, and neither as issuing out of free will, nor as equal mate, conjoined with grace, neither in working perfit, not in value deserving Bernard saith that he hath merits: 
Bar. in Ps. Qui habitat. de 14. ver. Serm. 15. isaiah. 50.1.  for the Lord hath mercies. Other merits Bernard hath none, that is, no merits in deed, but as it is said in the Prophet, that we must come and buy the waters of life freely, & that without money: which is in truth no buying, no more is the other meriting. The stipend of sin is death properly: that is true, but is life everlasting, the stipend of merits? 
Rom. 6.23.  no: the Apostle altereth the course of his speech. Yet might he as easily have so said, and most answerable to the tenor of his former saying if it had been so, but he saith, everlasting life is the gift of God, 
Rhem. not. 2. Tim. 4.8.  a gift, ergo not the stipend of desert, as they expressly term it in these words: good works done by grace after the first justification, be properly, and truly meritorious fully worthy of everlasting life. And thereupon heaven is the due stipend which God oweth to the persons so working by grace. But S. Paul calleth everlasting life a gift, & not a stipend as Austin well noteth: these men call it a just stipend. Now let the indifferent reader compare these contraries together & he shall soon discern the truth of them.  
M. Harding a man that could set a fair show upon a foul cause, presseth, 
Har. detect. lib. 5. cap. 12. Mat. 20.1.  & disputeth the parable mentioned in S. Matthew, where the kingdom of God is likened to a man that went out early in the morning, to hire servants into his vinearde: some he hired at one hour, some at an other, some at the third, others at the six, some at the tenth, and others at the eleventh. When evening came he gave every one alike, & then they which came first, and had borne the heat of the day, & the burden of the whole labour, murmured, because of the inequality of their pay. One of them was answered, that he should take his penny, wherefore he was hired, & if the householder would be more liberal to them that laboured less, what was that to him, that wrought more and longer time, and yet perchance less than of duty he should, may not a man do with his own, which way he will? out of this M. Harding reasoneth in sense this: (I will spin his argument as far as it can run). The householder is God, the labourer is working in our vocation, the penny is life everlasting, the householder bid the murmuring labourer to be content with his hire, and take that, which was his: then was it his: the price of his hire is the penny for his labour, and the penny is life everlasting, here is sufficient proof, for meriting, I trow, 
Rhem. not. 1. Tim. 4.8. Mat. 25.27 Luc. 16.8.  and so doth the Rhemish notes tell us. But soft, every part of a parable is not a good proof for a doctrine in belief. For so can I prove usury to be lawful, unfaithfulness to be laudable, and all most, what not? In proper words, without parable this is plain, we ought to serve the Lord withal our strength, and powers both of body and soul, all the hours of the day, that is, all the days of our life, and when evening is come and our life ended, after all our labours in the vinyeard of the Church militant, We have done but the duty that we ought, and due debt is no desert: quae debuimus facere, 
Luc. 17.10.  fecimus. This is plain and true, and shall we force some parts of a parable to prove it false? But the householder saith: Take that is thine: wherefore it was his, what? his that murmured, his whose eye was nought? repiners, and envious persons shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven, the penny of salvation is not for such. For such I say, without repentance, much less for such as call for it of precise desert. Nay the equality of a penny given a like to all, doth evidently declare, 
Ambros. de vocat. Gent. lib. 1. cap. 5.  that though their are diversities in time of vocations, which is the chief end of the parable, yet the reward standeth only upon mercy, which gave to the last as to the first. If all had gone by desert, than the greatest labourer, might duly have required the greatest wages. But I pray you, are we hirelings? nay, we are sons and heirs: we look not for a penny, as of hire, but yet we expect our penny, and that of mere gift, even because our God may do with his own what him please: and he will in time bestow it upon us his own, even for his Christ's sake, in whom alone we only trust, and not in ourselves.  
O, this opinion will decay good works marvelously, and greatly increase either idleness, or swarms of evil livers. Why? It was marvel then that Christ foresaw not the inconuevience, when he gave to the last as he gave to the first. In deed if we be vagabonds, or lazy drones, or if ●●ke the greedy Zuytzer that will not fight but for his guilt, it is an other matter. But if we be sons and children, we obey our father not to the end to merit but to show all duty, and because we are sons.  
The difference then betwixt us & the adversaries standeth on these points, both they and we work, they to merit, we to show our duty: they for hire, we for love, they as servants, we as sons, they to purchase, & we because Christ hath purchased for us life everlasting, they work and seek glory in their works, we work and glory only in Christ, they work & talk of perfection, we work, & agnize our imperfections in working. They if they do but a good deed, if it be once done, they stand upon it, walk and jet thereon, though it be but the ice of one nights freezing, we when we have done all, we say we are unprofitable servants. 
Ios. 7.21.  We dare not bury our sins like Acham in the earth, nor wrap them in a sort of fair green figleved distinctions: we speak with the words and in the sense, that Christ hath taught us, and in none other. We run, we labour, we fight, we keep the faith, and yet not we, but Christ in us. And when we have done all, yet have we done but our duty, and not deserved. And this is our judgement in few and plain words concerning meriting: wherein if we have spoken evil, let them convict us of error, 
joh. 12.48. Act. 17.11.  let the world bear witness, and the word be judge.   

How only faith doth justify and save.  
IF then justification come not by works, nor salvation by merits, what is the mean whereby both the one and the other is apprehended? First it hath been clearly proved hitherto, that there is no meriting without perfection, & likewise that perfection there can be none, 
Act. 15.10.  the yoke of the law being heavier, then that the father's strong shoulders could bear it up: & therefore to great a burden for their children, who came after and were weaker: and that not only in respect of the ceremonial Law, (which Master Stapleton supposeth) but rather in regard of the Law of deeds. 
Lib. 6. cap. 6  For their ceremonies were neither so many in number, nor in observation so hard: and how troublesome soever they were to the priesthood, notwithstanding generally to the people were they both very few, & very easy, to speak of. But yet because by the ceremonies, as namely the circumcision, if they trusted therein, they were become debtors of the whole Law, therefore was the Law an insupportable yoke, and whereby possibly came no perfection, in consideration whereof S. Peter preacheth in the Acts, that by grace in jesus Christ, through belief salvation is attained. The hand of favour reacheth it forth, the hand of faith receiveth it offered, and the spirit of adoption reposeth it in the hearts of believers, and sealeth it fast up in the assurance of a certain hope against the day of everlasting redemption.  
Herein we lean not to a broken reed, neither feeke we for moisture, 
job. 6.20.  as they that went to Tema and Scheba, in the wilderness, where the waters were dried up: we look not to try balm out of the hard flint. For worldly promotion cometh neither from the West nor from the East, much less eternal salvation. Only by grace we believe to be saved, and neither in part, 
The meaning of these words saith alone doth save expounded.  neither in whole by any thing else. And this is our meaning, when we say: Faith alone doth save, and justify: that is: we are wholly saved, and solely justified by God alone, in whom we believe and neither by the preparations of nature, nor by the liberty of will, or else by the worthiness of any deeds as parts & causes of our justification, our whole repose is only in the mercy of the father, that gave us his son, and in the merit of the son that laid down his life to save us then, when we were his enemies, & much more no doubt, now saveth he us when we are his friends, 
Phil. 1.29.  by faith in him, and that not for the dignity of faith. For the merit of salvation resteth still in him the Saviour, and not in us the persons saved. And faith itself although it be no cause of procuring, but a mean of receiving salvation, yet is it also the gift of God, who knoweth only, (as Augustine speaketh) how to give to, and not to take of his creatures, and therefore, we trust in him, and only in him. And this is the doctrine of faith, & of all the faithful of all ages, & of all places, that it is only faith, that receiveth salvation, that is in effect, that God alone & only he doth all as the sole cause of saving the faithful, that they may believe steadfastly in him, & in him alone.  
A while in these latter days & corrupt times, when the ruins of true doctrine were greatest, with bold faces a sort of ignorant & unreaden scribblers bore the world in hand, that Solafides, only faith was a monster never born, nor heard of till Luther forged it first. Since, being compelled to lay aside a little their school brabblers, & to take in hand the ancient fathers, and old doctors, whereunto they were skilfully directed, by the learned of this last age, their outcries, that those words (only faith) in good record can not be found, are well slaked.  
At length even M. Stapleton himself, can cite readily, 
Stapl. lib. 8. cap. 35.  Hylary, Origen, Chrisostom, Basile, Austin, & others, and he quoteth places in plain & pregnant words as clear as crystal that only faith doth justify. But now when he hath found, the words which were first found to his hands: 
Rhem. not. jam. 2.24  both he & out of him our M. of Rheims rejoine: that the fathers never wrote them in sensu Protestantum, in the sense & meaning that the Protestants take them: as if belike, they were very like our Papists, that sometime speak well, and mean ill, not only of the Prince, & the laws in the common wealth, but also of Christ, of his grace, & of the scripture in the Church of God. But concerning the point of this matter: Only faith doth justify. So say we, as said the fathers before us many years ago, their words be the same with ours, and why not their sense? First forsooth in saying that only faith doth justify, is meant that the Law cannot justify without faith. Doth then the Law justify with faith, and faith together with the Law? and do the fathers mean so? truly children would be more than ashamed of such contradictions, you let not most falsely to father upon those good men & fathers of reverend and godly memory. For if faith do justify alone as say they, & say truly, then doubtless without the law doth it justify, or if not without the law, or if the law with it, than not alone. For whosoever doth any thing alone, he doth it without the help of any other. Wherefore faith justifying alone doth it without the law, or any thing else except perchance alone signify not alone, which may be true in Rheims, & Douai, verily we that tarry at home, & roam not abroad, never hard the like interpretation in any of our schools  
Again only faith (they say) excludeth the works of nature, as the virtues of the Gentiles, & in case of necessity where time wanteth only faith is sufficient, neither are external works required, as of the thief on the cros. Farther, only faith is opposed either to the misbeleef of heretics, or unto the unbe lief of infidels, likewise is it set up against the pride of vaunting Phariseis, & also against the fond busy curiosity of vain heads. In these senses only, is only faith meant & taken in the fathers. Well, if this were so, what of all this? for the first of all these last answers heaped up together, be it agreed upon, that faith alone doth justify, without nature's work at all. For so upon good occasion & warrant out of the word of god, have the fathers spoken, & so you seem to agnize that they have. Well then, be it concluded as an everlasting truth, that in the case of justifying, nature hath not to do at all. And will you grant this? no not so, & why not so? because (as you dream) faith alone doth justify, is as much to say, as nature doth not justify without faith, but with faith it doth. This was the former starting hole: where faith alone was faith & the law, & here faith alone is faith & nature. Verily this is not faith alone, but sport alone for Satan: but to us that morn & thirst for your salvation, what a singular grief is it to consider how men that bear the name of Christians will needs be thus wilfully deceived, dancing & skipping up & down in the nets of their own devising, & think no man discerneth. The fathers intent by this word only faith to exclude both the Law of Moses and the Law of nature. But they conclude all together, & include the works of the one and the other within faith. Call ye me this excluding? then to go on with the rest, you say when some of the Fathers by only faith exclude, pride, infidelity, heresy, and curiosity, you may as well say, verum est, without faith: & yet notwithstanding conjoin them altogether faith and infidelity, faith and pride, faith and heresy, faith and curiosity, making up (as it were) a daniel's image of contrary metals, 
Dan. 2.33  that can not possibly cleave or hang together. But if excluding be including, you may say and conclude what you will, and distinguish at pleasure, and defend with ease, and all is well, specially if you get but favourable readers, that can and will think what soever cometh from beyond seas must needs go for good. Not withstanding that the simple may see the childish fondness, and the extreme falsity of this so absurd dealing, I will show it then in the like reason: I would have a garment made only of cloth, meaning by only cloth to exclude stitching, lacing, & facing with silk: shall the Tailor come, & stitch, lace and face my garment, & face me out, that when I willed it to be made of cloth alone, that without cloth forsooth, I would not have it stitched, laced & faced: but with cloth I would. Verily it had need be a very broad cloth, that can cover over all this folly, it is so broad: and a very cunning, not a Tailor but a Rhetorician, or rather a Magician that must persuade me so, and so bewitch a man against all sense & reason in the world.  
As for the thief, that was saved by faith alone without external works alleged by the Fathers, that doth very well prove that faith alone in saving doth the deed, 
Ambros. in Rom. 3  and not works. For the way to heaven is but single, and one & the same to all. The thief was saved and entered Paradise by faith only: therefore also must all so do, if they will enter. For God will not save some by himself in mercy, and save others by themselves, partly in mercy, and partly by their own works. If the thief had lived longer time he should & would have lived well: but his believing was the wing that carried him up, and the key that opened the door of heaven. When time wanteth not, only faith excludeth not either works or the goodness of works in earth, but the meritorious deserving by works with God in heaven, and hereby both in heaven and in earth the free mercy and grace of God is believed, embraced, and gloriously set forth, by this most excellent confession of only faith, whereby we agnize the gift, the free gift of God according to his purpose, promise, favour, grace, and mere mercy.  
In the story of the Gospel in particular, by examples thus much is proved, and where only faith is named, exacted, and commended even in bodily cares, much more in ghostly causes of the soul, where our Saviour doth not so much respect the tears of some, or in others their fear and trembling, nor their crying & calling after him, but their faith, and the greatness of their faith. 
Mat. 9.22 Luc. 7.50 Mat. 15.28 Luc. 8.50  Thy faith hath made the whole Thy faith hath saved thee. O woman great is thy faith. I have not found so great faith in Israel. And in the eight of Luke, and fift of Mark. Believe only. Only mark that. And withal mark, if you will the Papists doubling answer hereunto. 
Rhem. not. Mar. 5.36  Only believe, that is either especially, or only in cases of bodily diseases. What? I pray you why say you or and or? If only be not only but especially and principally, then say so. Or if only be only, then say so, and hover not up and down like the bird that was sent out of the ark, 
Gen. 8.9  and could not find where to set her foot. But in deed neither is only, especially, neither is only, only in bodily sickness alone, as shall plainly appear. And therefore herein ye have made us not only one lie alone, but two loud lies, and those together without taking breath one upon an another's head. For, as for the first, was Christ like your Physician, that biddeth his patient be of good cheer and only have a good heart, yet withal a good diet must be kept, and potions received, as things more requisite? O M. Allen, and M. Martin, and who ever else had finger in that your late gewgawe translation: was there, I say not were there other things, but was there any one thing, not only more requisite, but in equal degree as necessary as faith? 
Luc. 8.44  For would Christ require the less, and omit the more necessary? or if many things were to be required, would he say, only believe. No. when all other helps failed, than they came to our Saviour. And therefore other helps being preternecessarie he well required than wholly to put their trust in him: not that he could not cure, yea revive without their believing that he could, but that duty would he have at their hands, and only that in such respects.  
Wherefore when this former shift served not the turn, you added, though only faith be requisite and nothing else, yet that concerned the healing of the body, & not the saving of the soul. Of healing the body I grant: but withal of saving the soul, that these words are not spoken, is not so easily proved. For Christ jesus the Saviour both of body & soul, most principally saveth the most principal part, & therefore to show what, & how alone he worketh specially in recuring their souls diseased with sin, view those miraculous cures done so evidently upon their bodies. Wherefore by convenient reason it followeth, if faith alone be required in them, much rather in the other, wherein consisteth the greater cure in us, and whence ariseth the greater glory to himself that cureth.  
Contrary to this in the example of Mary Magdalen somewhat is brought forth as who therefore had her sins forgiven, 
Rhem. not. Luc. 7.50  because she loved much. So that love also was required, & not faith alone. Consider we the story a little for our better understanding: wherein it is said to her: Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace. & a little before both of & to her: Many sins are forgiven, because she loved much. Our of which I observe 4. notes, remission of sins, peace of conscience faith embracing salvation, & due love ensuing thereupon. Peace of mind cometh after ward in place to be spoken of. The sole mean of receiving remission is faith, the only cause of remitting is mercy. For otherwise remission were no remission. And were not faith the only mean, but her love also as the Rhemish note is: Christ when he said: Thy faith hath saved the, he should have said nay thy love & thy faith, or thy faith & thy love have saved thee: especially were love so noble, & so compendious, & so effectual a disposition thereunto, 
Lib. 8. c. 30.  as M. Stapleton beareth us in hand it is, & in her was, Many sins were for given her, because she loved. The Greek word doth signify therefore, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉  aswell as because But they urge the word because, as a precedent cause. But see the like even in the same word: we say, this apple tree is a good tree. why? because it beareth good fruit. Yet is not the fruit cause of the tré, nor the goodness of the apple cause of the good tree, but indeed because the tré is good, therefore it bringeth fruit according to his kind, & this is the proper natural cause, but we in common speech say it is a good tree because we taste the goodness in the fruit. But this kind of cause is an after cause & a cause in reasoning, but no making cause as neither was Mary's love, of her sins remitted. But therefore she loved, not that the dignity of her love was precedent to the pardon of her sins, but having received favour & pardon, consequently her dutiful love ensued thereupon. This appeareth by that saying inserted: to whom less is forgiven, he loveth less, to whom more, he loveth more. Marry had many sins forgiven her, & therefore she loved accordingly: & therefore Christ said. i. concluded, many sins were forgiven because she loved much. This objection hath been answered more than 1000 times. In a word I will show that neither did she, nor could she, love & love so entirly, before her sins were remitted. For being not in the state of grace, what could her love be but lust, and no love, fancy and no true dilection? a notorious sinner she was, and therefore very far from loving, and nothing near loving much aright. They that love God, keep his commandments: so do not sinners: then did not she. Calleth M. Stapleton this a noble disposition? God be merciful unto us, as he was to Marie, that we may show tokens of a true love, as she did, not before, but after the multitude of all our sins pardoned, and done away in jesus Christ our only Saviour.  
The fairest argument of all other to the show is a conclusion that S. james maketh: and at the first sight, would make a man think, greatly making against the doctrine of only faith, where he saith: ye see then how a man is justified of works & not of faith only. whereas notwithstanding S. Paul every where inculcateth nothing more than faith without works. Doubtless these noble Apostles are not contrary the one to the other: neither are the Scriptures as a house divided in itself. God forbidden they should.  
S. Paul teaching that we are saved by grace, and therefore not by works, yet for that there were certain vain persons crept in among them, he exhorteth withal that they should not receive the grace of God in vain. Likewise, when he had showed, that life everlasting was the gift of God, and therefore no purchase of works, yet withal also he warneth them, that they beware also how they turn the grace of God into wantonness. As Saint Paul is vehement in this case, so upon greater occasion S. james was most worthily as earnest as Saint Paul.  
For whilst some heard that faith without works did justify (unstable and unlearned minded men, as they were) perverting that Scripture, as also, other Scriptures to their own damnation, they bade adieu to all good deeds, saying in their foolish hearts, if faith without works can save, we can believe, that there is a God: & if only faith will serve, we can believe, and what need more? And thus contenting themselves in a generality of their profession of faith, falsely so called, little reckoning was made, how bad soever their conversation were.  
For remedy whereof S. james asketh, what such a faith could avail them? for either it was no faith and so nothing worth: or a devils faith, & so worse than nothing. Yet lest any imagine that S. james plainly & simply granteth a devils faith to be faith, mark further how he doth not. For when he speaketh of faith in deed, and properly in the first chapter, he saith it is no wave that is to say, no trembling leaf, no shivering reed, fully in S. Paul's meaning that it is an evident probation, & a certain, stable, grounded, strong thing. Wherefore S. james when he likeneth this supposed faith to the quaking faith of devils, he speaketh not properly but by comparison, and meaneth an other matter, then either himself speaketh of in his first chapter, or else S. Paul elsewhere in his Epistles. For properly he termeth this manner of faith a dead faith, that is, no faith at al. And this he proveth by asimilitude: that as a man may argue that a body is not quick but dead, without the spirit, that is, without all spiritual motions, life & sense, so is faith without works. For faith appeareth quick and lively in her operations and working. Yet not, as the Papist dreameth, that works are the soul of faith, but I say as the spirit and vital breath of faith, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  wherein it liketh well, and greatly delighteth, and manifestly showeth itself. For if a man be a faithful man, verily also that man will live uprightly, & walk honestly, and do works worthy of his faith, not that faith is made of works, but that where faith goeth before, works ever follow after. In so much that a man may well conclude, a faithful man, ergo fruitful, a fruitless man, ergo faithless. Thou wilt say, thou hast faith. that is a verbal faith, & nothing else. Faith is not made of words, but showed in deeds. As the sun is not without his beams, no more is faith without her bright shining works. Yet the Sun is not made of beams: no more is faith of works. Yet may I well argue thus. If it have no beams, it is no Sun, and so faith, if it have no works, well it may be called faith of vain men, in truth it is not. For the Christian faith of saved men, worketh ever in time convenient by charity, 
Gal. 5.6  & can not be idle.  
For as by it, and by it alone we have access to God, and trust in his promises, without all wavering embracing the benefits of Christ's death and passion, which is the chief duty of faith, so also where it lacketh root in the good ground of godly hearts, it bringeth out, & breaketh forth into other fruits. And those of sundry sorts to the use of men according to the diverse duties of discretion and charity. But still before God in the action of justifying, whereof Paul disputeth most, faith alone doth all, or rather receiveth all of God that doth all. In other respects she never is without her train, and as the eye and only the eye in beholding the serpent in the wilderness, recovered the children of Israel, and yet their eyes were not without the rest of the parts of their faces, & their eyes served them also, for directing their feet otherwise, so the only eye of faith, or only faith as the eye of the soul beholdeth Christ of whom the serpent was but a figure, & thereby only in him are we saved, yet although in this regard alone it doth the deed, yet is it not alone, but continually accompanied with godliness, & all good works, in so much that where we find not good works, it is bootless to seek for faith, for faith will no where lodge or live without works: the mother cannot be without her daughters. If you kill the children, you kill the parent to. So that chase away works, & faith will not tarry after. If a man will say, he retaineth her, & retaineth not her retinue, well may he say so, but in sooth & verity, in steed of a justifying faith he layeth hold on an unprofitable devilish faith, a dead faith, a verbal faith, a shadow of faith, a faith which he so calleth, yet is not faith at all, neither hath it any affinity with the justifying faith, which justifieth alone, yet is not alone, as hath been declared in many words and happily in more than was needful, but only for the simpler sort.  
As there is a double taking of this word faith, either true or verbal, so also is there a diverse acception of this word justifying, either for a believing & an apprehending the justice of Christ imputed, or for a declaration that we are such persons to the opinion of others by just living, which is a justification before men. Of the former meaning Saint Paul doth argue, the later sense S. james forceth and standeth most upon. For saith he, I am a man (and not God) that seethe the heart. I am but man show me thy faith etc. So that these Apostles, Paul and james, albeit they use the same terms, both of faith and justifying, yet because they treating in deed things diverse, they can not be said, to vary, when as they speak of sundry matters, and not both specially of one, and the same thing, though seeming so in terms. For Saint Paul treateth of one faith, & S. james of an other: S. Paul of one justification, Saint james of an other. Saint Paul upon a certain doctrine, and Saint james upon a supposition.  
If we look to heaven, faith only ascendeth thither, or rather grace descendeth unto faith in true manner of speaking. Works are left below, who only justify before men in earth. For otherwise men can not tell who is justified, and who not, but by works. But as only works do justify here, so no doubt doth only faith there in respect of heaven.  
The example of Abraham cleareth all, 
Gen. 15.6 Rom. 4.5 Gal. 3.6  and giveth great light hereunto. Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness. (that is) he was justified before God by faith. And then in offering his son was he called the friend of God, and so justified, called, and pronounced so. And so was his justice thoroughly completed, and his faith in proof perfected and allowed of. In the former of imputation of righteousness, Paul and james in express words, both agree. In the latter they disagree not. For Paul speaketh not thereof, but only james, who upon great occasions presseth the necessary sequels of a true faith, and justification to ensue, before men, strait upon a justification precedent before God. Whereupon as it were word for word, and in sense he reasoneth thus: If thine offences were pardoned in Christ, thy sins remitted, and Christ's righteousness imputed: that is, wearest thou justified by faith before God, it would follow necessarily, that thy faith would show itself, and thy deeds without, would declare what thou art within, and thereby shouldest thou be reputed a just man, and so be justified before men also. But he that wanteth the necessary consequences of such a cause, may it not be concluded, that he wanteth the cause itself?  
In the Gospel there were that boasted of the line and race of Abraham. But the children of Abraham, that are in deed his children are a posterity according to faith, and not after the flesh. 
Mat. 3.9  Wherefore saith our Saviour unto them. If ye were the children of Abraham by faith, ye would do the works of Abraham, as Abraham did. No workers, ergo no faithful children of his for all their vaunting. For though works made them not his children, but faith, yet where such works lacked, Christ thereupon reasoneth the wanting of faith itself. And it is true both in the nature of the things, and in the judgement of the world. Yet all this doth not disprove, that faith alone doth justify before God, neither doth it infer, that works do otherwise justify them only before men, & by the necessity of due consequent to ensue. Works have their uses, though not that use: one key will not serve for every lock. They show our faith to men, they are no parts of faith to make it up, they are good duties that follow of faith, and so they justify & no otherwise, in the eyes of men the beholders. I am over long herein.  
Touching the other example of Rahab the harlot: what were her works? she received & preserved Iosues messengers: thereby was she justified, that is so reputed in the camp. This one fact could not make her just. But being justified no doubt before by believing in God, opportunity serving well, she declared what she was in giving such entertainment to the Lords servants. Which story well showeth, that God hath his where a man would little think, even in that cursed city. Let no man despair. Rahab an inhabitante of wicked jericho, and she sometime an harlot is accepted, but see withal she changeth her former life, and of an harlot became the hostess of God's servants. Wherein I note: an harlot was far from meriting & therefore as afterwards her good works are recorded, so yet is not her former fault omitted, both to show what she obtained first by favour and pardon of her fault, and then in duty what she did is spoken of, whereby she became known to the Lords people, and this was her justification ensuing upon a belief that went in favour before. Whereby it appeared how S. james in these examples forced the use of good works not to justify before God, but in service, duty, and opinion of and to men.  
Greater amplifications may be brought, by the skilful in these cases, to this purpose. In effect, this is all that either the Apostle meaneth, or I can say upon his meaning: & so much is plainly meant, that though in some functions they may be diversly occupied, yet true faith, and good works ever meet together, and jointly rest in the justified man.  
But marvelous are the adversaries in their conceits. 
Rhem. not. 1. Cor. 13.13  For they imagine a faithful man to be without all faithful and good dealing, as if they could find us out great springs without the issue of many waters, or much water without any moisture, or a burning fire without his heat. We may distinguish matters in their natures by teaching, although we find them not sundered in the persons in whom we find them. And we do usually distinguish faith and works, but in the faithful they are never found apart: & therefore we do not separate them there. So that contrary to that, which sometimes we are charged withal, we ever set forth a faith adorned with virtues, and not make a naked faith stripped out of her attire, & still we tell them faith neither is nor can be found alone in the man justified, as hath been proved at large, in the examination of the place of james.  
But they to disprove this, labour by all means possibly, 
Rhem. not. 1. Cor. 13.13  & in special they allege S. Paul to the Corinth. in whom say they, faith is severed from love, and if from love, then from all good works, true, if from love. For all good works are summarily comprehended hended in love, which therefore is said to be the fulfilling of the law, because it is of a greater span, containing the works both of the first and second table in loving God above all things, & our neighbour as ourself. Then if faith be separated from love, them also from other works. Now that from love it may be severed, S. Paul speaketh say they in his own person: If I had all faith, and had not love, etc. ergo all faith may be had without love.  
S. Paul as he had faith, so was he not void of love, whose love was so great that he had care of all congregations, 
1. Cor. 11.28. Supposing doth not ever prove the thing supposed.  & therefore he doth but only put a case, neither is it generally granted, that all faith doth signify all faith in all kinds, but in some one kind all the degrees of that faith. And herein many judge that S. Paul meaneth a miraculous faith, & not the justifying, because he saith, If I had all faith, so that I could remove mountains, that is all such faith, and yet had not love, etc. But if this be the sense, then doth it not import that the justifying faith may lack love, but the miraculous faith, if yet it prove so much. Whether S. Paul mean a miraculous faith, or no, or whether a miraculous faith (let it be a faith) can be severed from the justifying or no, I will not greatly strive. There is no edification in multiplying of impertinent questions. This must be considered well, that the Apostle saith not down right, he hath faith, and that he hath not love, but If I had faith. Now I trust they will not prove matters with ifs and ands. Our Saviour said touching the beloved Disciple what if he would that he should tarry still till his coming? 
joh. 21.23.  upon this conditional (if) an error was strait spread abroad, that john should not die. In like manner S. Paul also saith, If I spoke with the tongues of men, 
1. Cor. 13.1.  and of Angels, etc. You will not go about hereby I trust, to prove that the Apostle had a very Angel's tongue, or that Angels had tongues. S. Paul maketh supposels, and thereupon he setteth forth the excellent commendation of love, which verily in sundry points is far more commendable than faith itself, in so much that a man may use the Poet's words in a better matter, O matre pulchra filia pulchrior? A beautiful mother faith, 
Horat.  a fairer daughter love. But S. Paul doth no where disjoin them, but concluding the praises of love, saith: there are three that remain (together) Faith, Hope, & Charity: faith believing in the promises, hope looking, and longing for them, charity loving the promiset, and in him and for his sake loving all that is to be beloved. Of all these the last is the greatest, what? in justifying? no. S. Paul debateth the matter to the contrary every where. Wherein then? in the multitude of other duties, and for the everlasting durance thereof both in this world, and also in the world to come. For when knowledge shall cease, & faith shall have his date, and hope shallbe expired in the lease of this life, in the life to come remaineth love. And this is all that the Apostle meaneth, which neither confuteth the adonnes of faith in her proper office of justifying, neither yet doth it any way confirm, that in other respects she can be alone in the man justified. And thus much of only faith, and yet of faith that is never alone.   

Of the certainty of grace and salvation by faith & hope in every particular man.  
Now then being justified by faith, 
Rom. 5.1.  we have peace toward God, through our Lord jesus Christ. For so the Apostle inferreth to the Romans upon former debating of the self same truth upon the self same grounds of justification, whereof we spoke last. So that necessarily the man justified by his faith, by faith also hath he the good fruits, that grow up withal. i. peace with his God, quiet in his soul, and firm possession of assured salvation in a certain hope.  
Whereof M. Stapleton speaking with the same spirit, that Tertullus did in the Acts, 
Act. 24.2.  termeth this doctrine a pestilent, & a pernicious teaching, tending only to presumption, pride, & security. M. Stapl. you speak your pleasure out of the abundance of a choleric heart. If we presume, God be praised, 
Presumere de gratia Christi non est arrogantia, sed fides. Aug. Serm. 28. de ver. dom. 2. Sam. 6.14.  we presume not of ourselves as you do, and if we be proud of Gods everlasting favour, it is a godly pride, and in security thereof we leap, and dance with an holy joy, as David did before the ark, though you like Michaol deride us as fools & reproach us therefore. Sir, ill words do neither prove a good matter, nor disprove a bad. Wherefore to let pass the rage of your heat, let us a little consider the weight of certain reasons you would seem to produce: you say, the certainty of salvation by faith is common to sundry heretics, 
1 Lib. 9 cap. 9  contrary to the fear of God, 
2 3 4  repugnant to the order of praying, and against the nature of the Sacraments.  
1. The first of your four allegations is that heretics also assure themselves in a vain persuasion that their opinions are most true, & that thereby they shall attain everlasting bliss, & yet be deceived, & there fore that there is no certain salvation by faith. We speak of the faithful, & you of heretics, we of faith, & you of fancy, we of a verity & the truth, & you of a pertinacy in pretending truth. And how then can you conclude from the one against the other? notwithstanding, 
The abuse of things doth not abolish the necessary & good usage of them.  if heretics could be faithful, & also heretics, which is impossble, yet being by faith well persuaded, suppose they were heretics withal, we must not refuse the good they have, because in other respects they be not good. For then belike (I will use an easy example & but one) when the Philistines took away the lords ark, & had it in their keeping, because the Philistines have it, Israel should not long to have it again, or when it was brought home, receive with joy. But in very deed unbelievers, & perfect heretics in capital points, as they have no faith, so have they not the good persuasion of the end of faith, 
1. Pet. 1.9.  which is salvation of their souls. For they shall never be able, either to take from us, or to keep in themselves the ark of a quiet conscience. And albeit they be suffered sometimes to rejoice in the light for a season, and to grow green in the filled, yet all this is but a glimpse, and in the end to their greater sorrow, as it were by a slender taste, to let them know what perfect joys the faithful man feeleth in himself, and feedeth on in his soul to everlasting life. But now if your saying concerning the persuasion of heretics were true, yet were your reason nought, but your saying being false, your reason is to to bad.  
2. Secondly you say that this persuasion is contrary to the fear of God, verily we teach, and no men more either with better words in speaking, or in more due manner in thinking rightly of the fear of God, that it is the root of all wisdom, and when we would express the enormities of any place or persons, we speak with the scripture, and as Abraham and David did, and as we take it, with the words of greatest dispraise: 
Gen 20.11 Psal. 36.1.  The fear of God is not in this place, or the fear of God is not before their eyes. Wherefore we exhort them to stand in awe, and sin not. The fear of God expelleth sin. Mater timidi nunquam plorat: the timerouse child is wary in all his ways & loath to venture further, then is behoveful, and therefore seldom causeth the careful mother to wet her eye for him.  
But we speak of the fear of God in his children, 
The divers acception of the word Fear. Mal. 1.6.  & his fear in them is twofold: either a reverence of the worthiness of his omnipotent majesty: If I be your father, where is my love? If I be your Lord, where is my fear? or else the fear of God is taken for the dreading of his justice against sin & iniquity: 
Prou. 3.7.  Fear God & departed from evil. But these & the like fears, which are lawful & profitable, & are required, certes, the certainty of faith doth establish them and they it.  
There are other fears of other sorts: a fear of the enemy, a fear of man's power, 〈◊〉 fear of death, hell, & damnation, etc. in regard whereof we teach on this wise. Fear ●our own captain, fear not thine, and his enemy. I will not fear, what man can do to me. Have a confidence, 
joh. 16.33. 1. joh. 5.4.  I have conquered the world, saith Christ. This is your victory even your faith, which overcometh not in one or two skirmishes, or conquereth some one part, but getteth the upper hand of the whole world. Wherefore quite yourselves like men, & trust in the Lord. O death where is thy sting? Hell gates shall not prevail against you, There is no condemnation to them, that are in Christ jesus. If God be with us, what can be against us? & why should we fear any thing but him? & yet not him otherwise then before I showed, not as the dog the whip: the slave his master, or the thief the gallows, but as an honourable Lord, a reverend father, & a just but a good God withal. Whom we must serve (as Zacharies' song is) in all respects in holiness & righteousness all the days of our life, without servile fear: nothing distrusting lest happily he should not keep promises where he once promiseth. For this kind of fear of all others directly oppugneth hope, & hope it, is flat against faith, & faith against it. If you mean such a fear, we grant faith is contrary to it, and laboureth still more & more to root it out. This we grant. feign would we hear what you or any of yours can say herein, without dallying in the diverse acceptions of the word (fear) directly to the contrary.  
3. In the third place you say, the assurance of faith overthroweth the use of praying. For what need man pray that he be not lead into temptation, if his faith be assured that he shall be saved notwithstanding temptation? O M. Stapleton, will you tempt God? The lords determination, concerning the ends in things doth not take away means and duties in the mid way of performing all that is commanded to man. My life is fixed, and the bounds & limits thereof certain: Shall I therefore in reason thereof refuse ordinary meat & drink, and daily food, or physic in time of sickness? what a folly were it, beside an extreme fault, contemning the Lord's ordinance? Likewise God suffereth no man to be tempted above measure. 
1. Cor. 10.13  Therefore because there is a measure set, shall no man power forth his prayers in that respect. Paul teacheth a better way. Pray always, & Christ willeth: Watch & pray that ye enter not into temptation. And yet none can not be tempted neither with inward, nor outward temptation above his measure, & how then doth the certainty of God's defence therein abolish man's duty, that he should not pray therefore? 
jam. 1.6.  I pray show us more at large, or rather briefly in plainer manner if you can. We teach no prayer is good but that which is made in faith & why then doth the certainty of faith take away the office of praying.  
4. In the last & fourth place, you say the certainty of faith perverteth the doctrine of the Sacraments. Well, I see either you do not see, which is gross ignorance, or of a frowardness you will not understand what we mean by the assurance of faith. We tell you, our salvation is built upon a sure ground, the Lord doth know who are his, & they who are the Lords, they know they are his. This is a firm foundation: the scripture & writing of the house of Israel, that the faithful are registered in the book of life, & this assuredly we do believe. But that there be no other helps to assure our faith we never denied. For herein as the word is a known writing to us, so the sacraments are the seals to double our assurance, as Pharaoh saw two dreams to ascertain him one thing, 
Gen. 51.25  neither doth the assurance that must be by faith destroy the helps that farther that assurance in faith, nay the assurance that should be therein is proved the rather by the helps thereto.  
But now as we have hard your tale (M. Stapl.) so give us a little leisure to show our own evidences for our own selves. It is God that promiseth, & all his promises are yea & amen. Then if he promise why should we doubt? again the spirit doth testify to our spirit, that we are his children. Shall we extinguish the spirit, & abandon these motions? again if we be faithful, faith is no wave, no waterish slippery matter (as Nazianz. word is) & why then should we not be assured? 
In Orat. de Pasc.  if we be Christ's house, we hold fast, 
Heb. 3.6.  the glory & confidence of hope, but if confidence, than no doubting, if glory & gladness than no pain, & so no fear, much less despair. The Papist doubteth not to say he can merit, and why should we more doubt in faith to believe and with mouth to confess, to the glory of God that we have found mercy? Forsooth they say, because debt is certain and mercy is uncertain: and when a thing is deserved, it may be challenged. They say well: for debt is certain, if it be due debt, and if it be lawfully demanded, it must be paid without question. To the confutation of which proud folly, I have spoken sufficiently before in the question of meriting. Concerning mercy, and the uncertainty thereof, if we speak of man, that can change his mind, and whose will is variable, it is true. But God is always the same, his gifts are without repentance, whom he loveth he loveth unto the end, and yet if his mercy were kept in secret, in his own bosom, and not made known to the sons of men, they might be uncertain. But being solemnly made by promise, fairly drawn forth in autentick scripture, openly published by proclamation, and preaching, confirmed by the oath of him that can not lie, ratified by the best rites that can be devised, sealed with holy sacraments, and with the holy ghost, and after all this fully finished by will and testament, why should we yet doubt, as if the matter were not certain enough?  
You reply, 
Lib. 9 c. 10.1  that all this assurance is general and conditional, general & therefore not sure in particular, 
2  conditional, & therefore uncertain depending upon a doubtful expectation. I will answer both these cavils.  
1. First, as for general supposels without their truth in particulars it is a mere toy in Philosophy, and in Divinity it hath no sense. For God doth not promise generally at adventures, catch who catch can, but directly & in special to all that receive.  
As sounds & colours are open abroad in the air, and yet in the senses of hearing and seeing are made particular, and in special both hard, and seen, so God's promises are uttered generally to all, but of the receivers, and believers are they particularly apprehended, or else not apprehended at all. For general apprehensions are dreams & no apprehending. If I believe remission of sins in a common generality & no more, without special application to myself, what availeth that: Wherefore Christ saith: My son have a confidence: thy sins are forgiven thee. Hold fast that, 
Matth. 9.2.  for there is the comfort, and there ariseth the certainty of faith and hope. And general promises why are they made to all, but to the end they may be believed of every one in special?  
If a mortal Prince under seal & writing proclaim a general pardon, there is no subject that hath offended, but would crave a particularity in the general, little doubting thereof for the safety of himself & pardon of his offence: or were he wise, or in his wits that when the prince had pardoned all that would receive the pardon, notwithstanding would stand amazed distrusting still whether he be one of the number, of that all which should be pardoned in special? If thou be a scholar, I say to thee in thine own terms, when thou hearest a general Mayor out of the word of God, examine whether thou canst find the minor in thine own conscience, and then doubt not, but the conclusion will follow necessarily upon thine own self. As for example for the simplers' capacity: all believers shall be saved: art thou a believer? then conclude, thou shalt be saved.  
2. The other cavil was, that these promises were made under condition & in some meaning, your saying is not amiss. For the promises are made with condition, If we believe, and if we believe not, be the promises never so general, yet the●e can never profit unbelievers. Even as when the Sun is in his greatest strength as bright, as bright may be, yet the blind man receaveeth neither light, nor comfort, for all that: so be the promises never so fair clear, and large, yet if the eye of faith be wanting, the faithless infidel hath no benefit by all this. 
Esay. 7.9  Wherefore the Prophet Esay foretold Ahaz specially of this fault and defect of faith: If you believe not, you shall not be established. We mislike not this condition. But you mean that God's promises are conditional in an other sense, and that not only in respect of them, to whom the promises are intended, 
God is not changed neither in essence nor else in his purposes & doings.  but on God's part that maketh the promise, as if he reserved an alteration to be made if need were. Which assertion and speech is perfect blasphemy, flat against Saint Paul, that saith, God's gifts are without repentance and therefore absolute, and so not conditional: and full contrary to S. james that saith, that there is no variableness, 
jam. 1.7  nor shadow of turning, with the father of lights, that is, of turning now up, now down, now rising, now falling, now one way, now an other, of promising and unpromising, etc. our God omniscient that made the eye, seethe, & foreseeth all at the first view what is best, so that he need not appoint with condition to change his mind, and repeal his purposes, upon better devise or advise, afterward taken. What he determineth shall stand, and what he promiseth, he will perform. I am God, and am not changed. Whence followeth a good argument, if he could be changed, he were not God, I say, if he could be changed, either in the essence of his being, either in the decrees and purposes of his own devising.  
Common Philosophy taught the Heathen that principle, Eternal things suffer not contrary passions. And shall Christians imagine the Eternal God to be subject to varieties, that stand upon the fickleness of uncertain conditions? Heaven and earth shall pass, but neither God nor his word, which is as firm as is himself shall pass. And how then sayeth Master Stapleton, God's promises are so conditional, as that they may be uncertain in respect of God that promiseth? And doth he not know but thus much, that the greatest difference between the faithful and faithless man consisteth herein, that the godly having received of God any promise, are thereby resolved, that coming he will come, & show his saving health in time convenient. For he is righteous & never disappointeth any, that trust in him: but the wicked, are not so satisfied, and therefore when God speaketh, sometimes they look to the right hand, sometimes on the left, sometimes before, and sometimes behind, sometimes into themselves, when they should only and steadfastly direct their hope and faith to God alone that will not fail? 
Psal. 78  Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Can he give them bread? Or is he able to provide flesh for his people? For his people, being in number so many thousands? bread and flesh in the wilderness, a place so barren and void of plenty? These and the like promises either temporal or eternal, are unlikely in the eyes of flesh that are dull of sight. And no marvel. For might we perceive near at hand the way, and the means, than were there no trial of Faith, nor exercise of hope. For faith and hope are of things that are not seen. But when the matter passeth our reach, and we judge it not possible, then is God glorified, if we believe.  
And to this end, concerning your examples are used the words: Siforte: if happily, by Daniel to Nabuchadnezzer, & Peter to Simon Magus in their exhortations, to equity, alms deeds, prayers, or in the like cases: not that any should believe, and believing remain doubtful, of the remission of their sins, but that forecasting the difficulty of such a great change to be made in their conversion, they should be ravished with a longing desire thereafter, and be inflamed the more, and so if it were possible believe, and in believing then no more to doubt.  
When this will not serve, 
1. Cor. 4.4  you bring forth the example of Paul, whom you say doubted and durst not judge himself. We shall consider the circumstances of your allegation, and of the text itself. There were amongst the Corinthians, that by odious and frivolous comparisons facciouslie held some with some, some with others, as if Christ were divided in the ministration of his servants, and of Paul a precious vessel of chief choice, they esteemed less than either his office required, or was expedient for their salvation. Whom Paul in effect schooleth on this wise: for mine own part as I am not altogether careless, so yet I pass not greatly to be judged of you. Nay I judge not myself much less should you. And albeit I know nothing by myself concerning my ministery (for thereof was the question) yet am I not therein in this, he saith not, in any thing else, but in this I am not justified. He that judgeth is the Lord. Therefore judge not you, and that before the time of judgement. Now I ask wherein and why Paul would not judge himself? He speaketh of his function, and therein to claim that which some of them gave to some that deserved happily little or less than he, in such sort & in so high a degree, he told them flat, albeit he were better than the best, and not guilty to himself of default in this behalf, yet he would not judge nor justify himself. Why? for judgement belongeth to an other person, and to an other time, and not to be usurped either of them or of him, by the way of deciding definitively like a judge. But God whose ways are not man's ways, and who seethe farther into man, than man into himself, in that day shall lighten things, that were hid in darkness, & make the counsels of hearts manifest, And then shall every man have praise of God: which last words of praise to be had then, are no trembling words of a doubtful mind, but a joyful good remembrance full of comfort, & of an infallible expectation. And all this upon occasion against them, 
2. Cor. 10.12  that would needs in contempt of Saint Paul set the garland upon their heads, that were least worthy to wear it, if all were known, as one day it shall appear. 
Lib. 9 cap. 6  But Master Stapleton and before him the censure of colon, Andradius, Hosius and others, & our new notes now, 
Rhem. notes 1. Cor. 44.  urge this: S. Paul would not judge, nor justify himself: and who is comparable to Paul? ergo there is no judgement now, no certainty of conscience in this world. But stay & know, upon a particular in one kind, you may not infer well, no not a general in the same kind: much less comprehend those things, that are of another sort. For not out of a generality of one sort, may you infer a particular in an other kind. Wherefore of the uncertainty of all men's facts, God examining them in the day of trial, you may not conclude the unstableness of faith, which is of another property, and founded, not in works, but on God himself, which can not fail. If I would justify myself (saith holy job) mine own mouth shall condemn me: 
job.  If I were perfect, he shall judge me wicked. In consideration of works & worthiness of deeds. job renounceth all, and standeth in fear therein to come to the touchstone. 
Malac. 3.6  For there can be no certainty built upon the sand of them. But in consideration of hope in God, he will trust in him, though he kill him: and concerning the life to come, he staggereth not at all, but is most assured: I know my Redeemer liveth. So Paul when he had treated of salvation, 
job.  how it depended upon God, shutteth up the whole matter, with full assurance of a thorough persuasion, that neither death, which is a bitter herb to many, nor life which most men much love, nor celestial spirits, nor the greatest powers of heaven, nor height, 
Rom. 8  nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any creature shallbe of ability to sever him from the love of God which is in Christ jesus the Lord. For in him is the root, of all bliss, and the sure bond, and certain seal of this assurance. The words of Scripture herein are so plain, so vehement, so resolute, that they can be never answered without infinite shifting. Let the reader turn to the viii. chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and consider what goeth before and what cometh after, 38. ver. with beginneth with certus sum, I am sure, as their own translations are. And withal to the places, where are mentioned the obsignation, the cry, the pledge, the earnest penny of the spirit in the faithful, etc. and then let him on God's name judge of all that hath been or shall be brought, either of the adversaries, or else of us.  
First of all, the chapter of Trent doth nothing but rage and storm at the matter, 
Conc. Trid.  as the manner of it is ever, in so much that as a man may know a Lion by his paw, or a bird by her feathers, so is that council discerned by nothing more than by banning and cursing. 
Controu. Ratisb. lib. 2  Pigghius better bethinketh himself, & calleth his wits about him, or rather calleth a counsel of all his fancies, and at length deviseth four answers and never a one against that we teach. 
1  Either S. Paul spoke not of all the faithful, or not of every faith, 
2 3  or not of himself at all times, 
4  or, but of himself with condition if he himself persevered.  
1. Not of all the faithful? yes. For those who were predestinate before all times, called and justified in time, God also had glorified, (saith Paul) whereupon I note, both the word (Those) to comprehend all, that shall be saved and glorified, and then that the Apostle saith: you hath God glorified, using the preter tense, because of the certainty of that which shall follow as surely, as if it were already past. And personally beginning with himself, I am sure, he endeth, with shall sever us, including others, aswell as himself. And elsewhere he saith generally, writing to a whole church prove yourself, whether you be in faith or no, 
1. Cor. 13.5  Know you not that Christ is in you, except ye be castaways, counting it a great absurdity in Christianity, not to be assured in particular knowledge of every man's own state.  
2. Secondly Paul speaketh not of every faith. Doth he speak of a true faith? of such a faith we mean. The precious faith of the Saints which is like in all. But let us agree upon this, that there is a certainty by some faith. Wherein as you agree with us, meaning a good faith, so yet you disagree both with the counsel of Trent, and likewise with Lyndan a great stickler on your side, who avoucheth that the certainty of everlasting life, quae est ex fide, which is by faith, never happened, 
Lind. panop lib. 3. ca 21  non modo Christianis omnibus verè credentibus, sed nec ipsis Apostolis in hac vita unquam. Not only not to Christians truly believing, but not to the Apostles themselves at any time in this life. Yet we had rather take Pigghius grant, being reasonably understood, & so leave Lindan to them, that like him better.  
3. Thirdly Paul doth not speak of himself, how he felt himself at all times. Perhaps so, and yet no man knoweth what was in Paul, but the spirit of Paul that was in him. We deny not but that the degrees of faith's assurance may be variable, not only in diverse men, but in one & the same man at divers times. Yet more or less in a degree doth not abolish the nature of faith, nor quite extinguish her propernecessarie qualities, whereof assurance is the chief. Which though it be eclipsed as it were by an interposition, sometimes of gross and heavy flesh, which the best carry about with them, yet in the end faith will return to her course, show her face, and break out again, neither can she be ever frustrate of the effect of assurance. For sorrow may lodge with us for a night, but mirth will return in the morning.  
As the wicked may feel some joy a while, that they may have a greater feeling of sorrow in the end: so sometimes the godly may suffer even the anguish, and terroures, as it were of cast aways, thereby afterwards to increase their joys the more. And this is a sure doctrine worthy to be embraced of all, that albeit we stumble, yet he will not suffer his to fall, or if to fall, not finally to fall away, if God wound he will heal, if he kill, he will revive, and if he break down the walls of thy faith, that they seem to shake and totter, and fall, doubt not, he will build them up, he will turn all to the good of his children, and if he darken thine eye, that is fixed upon himself, be assured he will not do it out, neither will he take his holy spirit from the holy and faithful, as he did the Spirit of the Regiment and fortitude from Saul. No, though he bring thee to hell, he will not leave thee there. Why then? What if faith be much assaulted, and sometimes brought into narrower straights than some, God knoweth best how long it is best to hold his own upon the rack, & it is the teacher's duty, and it is Saint Paul's endeavour thereby to give out doctrine of comfort, and not thereby to impair the faithful man's assurance as Pigghius doth.  
4. Fourthly he saith Saint Paul's faith, & confidence is with condition of his own persevering to the end, if he persevered. No For without ifs as of doubting, though not without condition of duty, the Apostle proveth that God will not alter, nor discontinue his everlasting favour to his dear children, and in the recital of sundry things, he saith that neither things present, nor things to come would disjoin God's love. Wherefore in respect of the future time to come, he religiously is most confident of God's goodness, and his own final salvation. Wherein to end, thus briefly we see Pigghius objections are little worth.  
Now let us hear how Master Stapleton can help out the matter. 
Lib. 9 c. 13  Who being instructed of the Colonistes saith, that when Saint Paul said, he was sure (for that place troubleth them much, and if they could answer that, they would wrangle in like manner with other scriptures as they could) by his assurance he meaneth a certain kind of hope not certain any otherwise than but as a charitable man may and must morally conceive one of an other, as Paul himself did of Timothy, and of the Romans. This is strange and inopinable. For did not Paul know himself better, than he knew others, or if he did (as do doubt he did) did not his greater knowledge therein assure himself more of himself then of others. 
Rhem. not. Rom. 8.38  The men of Rheims to persuade us herein say, the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth import only a probable persuasion: & yet they could not but fumble in their tale, & add withal that which they found in Hosius, that the Apostle might have some special extraordinary revelation, but they see evidently that the Apostle in that place speaketh of no revelations, but of ordinary doctrine to the Romans, or if he had a revelation special, it maketh more for his own assurance, and nothing against the assurance of others. Wherefore they seem to fancy the other opinion more, that Saint Paul was but probably persuaded, and uncertainly certain. I might allege that where their vulgar Latin is certus sum, I am sure, or certain. Hierom useth, I am confident. 
Gr. Mar. di seo. cap. 12  For that this assurance was not a probability, but a certainty, and a confidence, which is more. But let us rather reason the matter. Is Paul persuaded, and but probably persuaded? A man would think the Apostles persuasion in such a case were sure enough a very standing light, & no fading flash, as it were of lightning.  
Young scholars are taught and it is true, that there are probabilities of sundry sorts, either whereunto a man may answer indifferently yea or no, because of the unaparent notice of them, for they may be or they may not be, and whether part a man holdeth, it skilleth little. For both parts may be maintained with like reasons. If they mean such a probability to be in Saint Paul, he that defied both high and low, will little pass for such dreaming conjecturals, in respect of his knowledge of the mark that he shot at, or of the infallible means to attain thereunto.  
There are probabilities of an other kind absque formidine oppositi, proved and approved without fear and doubting of the contrary upon due trial, and just examination premised. If you mean, (but you are far from so good a meaning,) such a probable persuasion, you hit upon the Apostles meaning, who upon former discourse is certain and most certain, and upon the best certainties well persuaded. For thus he argueth, If God be with us, who can be against us, with us by his election, vocation, justification, etc. who can be against us? who shall lay to the charge of his chosen? who shall condemn, who sever? and reckoning many hard assaults, yet against all, he is sure that the elect, that is, the faithful in all these become more than conquerors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. more than conquerors, & common conquerors, whom they have thoroughly conquered, they are not probably nor half a feared of them, and then cometh in his persuasion, I am persuaded, I am certain, I am sure, I am confident. Take which interpretation they will, upon the proofs premised, that neither principalities nor powers (and therefore not a sort of uncertain Papistical distinctions) can remove from the eternal love of God in Christ the lord. But were our salvation no more certain, then are their answers, than were their answers somewhat, and our salvation very uncertain.  
As for the old objection out of the book of the Preacher, 
Eccl. 9.2  it hath been answered, and washed clean out long ago. In deed Master Stapleton hath lately done the part of a diligent Papist, 
Lib. 9 cap. 8  that seeketh all means to deceive himself, and saving that he wanteth the oil of truth, he hath set a few fresh colours thereon, then ever yet I could set eye on in any other, as I well remember, facing us out that Solomon first putteth it down generally, that there is no certainty, and that all things are uncertain, & that man knoweth not whether he be in case of love or hatred. And whereas we show out of the text, that it is meant that there is no certainty touching the event of our affairs, he telleth us that that is a second saying, and a particular confirmation, and no restraint of the former general unto such casualties as may beefall a man either in this life, or in the kind of his death. Again where we evidently prove that a man may assure himself of the hatred of God (who hateth sinners) if he be a sinner. And therefore where Solomon sayeth a man knoweth not whether he be hated or no, he respecteth necessarily not the sense and touch of an inward conscience, either of the love of God, if he be faithful, or of his hatred, if he be sinful, and faithless, Master Stapleton sayeth, the certainty of love, and hatred are not a like, and therefore that there is mention made of hatred, because when a man beginneth to questio whether he be to be believed strait way in that very moment, he misdeemeth whether he be not worthy of hatred also.  
Unto all this I answer briefly. But in the mean season well we perceive that, (as the wiseman saith) a dead fly may mar the good smell of the sweet ointment, so a cursed gloze may corrupt the fairest text. But I answer and ask: are all things detained in an uncertainty? he that saith all, seemeth verily to except nothing, and neither can any thing be exempted, which is subject to that all, which he meaneth that saith al. But that all things should be uncertain with ever (either in sense, or in faith, whereof Chrysostom saith, though sense may be deceived, 
Orat. 9 in 10. c. Heb.  yet can not faith) is far from Solomon's thoughts in this place. So that he maketh no absolute general saying, and then afterward cometh in with a particular matter of external events, he proveth a general uncertainty thereof and in that kind, and yieldeth the cause why, which must needs be as large as the effects, and the cause of like compass with the effects, eo quod, because all things fall out alike to the just and unjust, to the good, and to the bad, etc. And verily this is only the wise man's intent to show the vanity of mortal events under the sun, & therewithal to teach men not to decide by the outward face of things concerning God's favour. For had he meant to speak generally without exception of any thing, or specially to exclude the assurance of faith, a particular allegation of the events of afflictions or the like, had been but a cold conclusion or a slender proof. Wherefore (M. Stapl.) if you will argue an uncertainty of faith, which we deny, and disprove the certainty thereof, which we affirm, you must show an uncertainty to be in God the promiser, or in the holy Ghost the confirmer, or in the like grounds, whereupon we build, and not dispute of common events, which fall out indifferently to the one, and the other, either good or bad, and sometimes in heavier sort, as it may seem to the godly, them to the wicked man. For among the good the best, or among the best, the very best: or among the bad the better, and the less bad may be in the same case outwardly, as may be the worst. Whereof only, Solomon treateth, and not in general against all knowledge. For if he mean that nothing can be known, how knew he that he knew nothing? But we know of Solomons know ledge the scriptures speak much, & that of M. Stapletons' uncertainty in knowledge, and no assurance in faith, they are altogether silent, and speak nothing at all, no more than they do of that which he telleth us very impertinently to the text in Solomon, that when a man examineth his state, whether he be in the love of God immediately ever the doubt of hatred cometh always to mind. What frail flesh will do, is not our question. What faith ought to do is that, which we contend for. But if flesh doubt, yet must faith resolve all doubt. Thy flesh will suggest & bring into thy memory thy many sins, but incontinently thy faith must record the mercies of God, that are more in number, & greater in value, and most certain to this use to pardon and remit sins. The world doth storm, the flesh oppress, the Devil lie in wait, yet the Christian which is founded on the rock which is Christ, can not fall. Bernard saith well, Ego fidenter, quod ex me mihi deest; 
Bern. Serm. 61. supper Cant.  usurpo mihi ex visceribus Domini. Look what is wanting of myself unto myself, with confidence I usurp that unto myself, out of the bowels of the Lord. An excellent sentence full of comfort, and special confidence. M. Stapleton would qualify it, but can not, & therefore thought it better to misreport it otherwise then he found it in Bernard himself, 
Lib. 9.14.  and first of all he misquoteth the place 6. for 61. but that may be the negligence of his Printer, and so would I easily think, if there were no ill dealing otherwise. Secondly he saith this confidence is taken not for a confidence, but so far forth, as it is opposed to an astonishment, as if when I did a thing confidently, I did it only not with astonishment. Whereas a man astonished is past doing, but doing confidently, is doing, and doing with great boldness. Thirdly for fidenter he saith fideliter, changing Bernard's word, and four he saith fideliter-dico, as if Bernard spoke of faithful speaking, and not of confident usurping and taking, specially in the singular number ego, I, and properly mihi, to myself, take from the bowels of Christ, what is wanting to myself. The reasons of this his assurance Bernard yieldeth elsewhere, 
Serm. 3. de frag. septem.  upon three strong considerations, of the love of God's adoption, the truth of his promiss, and ability to perform, and then he pronounceth that he knoweth whom to believe, & in believing how to be assured.  
In truth, if we either rest or reckon of yourselves, so as M. Stapleton requireth, we cast the anchor of our hope in an unstable place, and not upward into heaven, (as the Apostle teacheth) and then no marvel, if hope be no hope, & faith, not faith. For what scripture ever teacheth us to hope or believe in ourselves? Accursed is he that maketh flesh his arm, or putteth his trust in man, either in himself or in an other man: in himself, for that is a dangerous pride, in an other, that is as Augustine's word is, an inordinate humility: inordinate humilis non levatur, 
Hom. 84. de temp.  periculose superbus praecipitatur, The proud man will hurl down himself headlong, but the inordinate humble no man can hold up. Wherefore pride, despair, and folly be far from us. Our hope, faith, and help, is only in the name of the Lord. We are ashamed of ourselves, & of men like ourselves, but not of the hope, which is in us toward him.  
The matter is weighty, yet would I be loath to be over long, I will end with remembrance of a story out of the book of Numbers, 
Numb. 13.  where joshua sent certain to survey the land of Chanaan, who upon their return, reported of the goodness of the land much, but more of the strength of the people, of the cruelty of the inhabitants, of their stature like giants, and in comparison that Israel were but grasshoppers, their towns marvelously defensed, and that every way it was impossible to go up, and prevail against it. But Caleb, whom the Lord had endued with a better spirit comforted the people on the contrary side and said cheerfully: Come let us go up, undoubtedly we shall possess it, little considering the strength of the people, or their cruelty, or the walls of their cities, but only rested upon the promises of God, and therein he stayed himself, and would oft have stilled Israel. Semblably notwithstanding the force of all the world, the difficulties of flesh and blood, the subtleties of sin, the arguments that certain adversaries like Iosues spies make against us, yet if we have Iosues faith, we must rely upon the Lord, and in the end we shall obtain a better land, than the land of Chanaan, even the land of the living, with the living God.  
He that sometime doubteth may remember he is a man, but because he is also a faith full man, he must not continued therein but shake away distrust, & conquer all doubts, & be well armed with the shield of faith against all assaults. The faithless they are at an other point, & they am uncertainly without a mark, beat the air, bath themselves in the pleasures of the world for a while, & in the end they die as they lived, they lived without hope, & perish everlastingly. But we who are believers, & know we are believers (as August. speaketh). For faith is no fancy, as we are risen again in newness of life in this life, so shall we be received again to life eternal in the life to come, our conversation and traffic is above, our hearts are set on heaven & heavenly things, we are friends with God, distance of place, diversities of periles, and doubts of dangers can not disjoin or cause distrust, for we also shall finally die as we lived, we lived in his fear, and reverence, we die in his faith: he is our God, God, and therefore able: our God, and therefore willing to bring his promises all to pass one day, and in the mean season there can happen nothing neither inwardly, nor outwardly, but it may be patiently borne, quietly digested, and with sufferance passed over, knowing always (as the Prophet saith) that the time shall come, either in this world, or in the world to come, when all shall confess: verily of a truth, there is fruit for the righteous, doubtless there is a God, 
Psal. 58.11  that judgeth the earth. The teeth of the cruel, the jaws of the Lion, the arrows, and all the arguments of proud imaginations shall come to nothing, & we shall certainly be saved.   

Of sanctification in this life and the means of direction therein,  
ACcording to the order, which I proposed to myself to show forth the frenes of God's grace, and favour, it remaineeth in this place next to speak of sanctification. For albeit S. Paul maketh it no express link of that chain wherein God doth all in all: and wherewith out of all controversy, there can be nothing in man, yet where he speaketh of man's duty to God, he showeth ever necessarily, that they who are justified by faith in Christ, are likewise sanctified by his spirit. For being manumitted or freed from sin by Christ, we are there withal made the servants of God to bring forth fruits unto sanctification.  
Their own Roffensis saw somewhat when he said: fides justificat ante partum. 
Stapl. lib. 8. cap. 31. Illyr. in cla. par. 2. tract 6.  Faith is the mother, works of sanctification are the children. The mother doth justify in order before the children be borne, and then she bringeth forth a godly offspring, who like good children cherish their mother, and comfort her with natural respect again.  
That no man mistake me, it would be observed, that the word sanctification is taken, either for justification in Christ, who is our wisdom, our righteousness, & sanctification, or else for holiness of life in Christians, who having received the spirit of adoption, & a measure of grace, are sanctified, renewed in their minds, & reform in their lives, dying to the world, & living unto God. Both these sanctifications, are ours For Christ is ours, & therefore his holiness & his righteousness are ours also. But there is a difference betwixt that which is in Christ being perfect in nature, precedent in order, & made ours but by imputation, and between our sanctification, which is imperfect in itself, issuing from his goodness, and really inherent in ourselves. The one is received by faith, the other consists in good works as of piety toward God, of up right dealing with men, & of temperate usage of our own persons, of faith in God's promises, of hope in his mercies, of loving his goodness, of zeal in religion, of praising his name, of continuance in prayers, of confession of sins, of severity against vice, of increase in virtues, of patience in troubles, of goodness towards all men, of meditation of death, of spiritual joy & intentive expectation of the joys to come. I am not to debate particulars, with intent to dilate any thing. For that is not my purpose, and the rather because look what hath been spoken of many the former matters, may with ease, or else without great labour be applied to this present argument.  
Philosophers make a difference of bodies. & it is evident in sense, how some bodies are gross & dark, as wood & stone, some clear and lightsome, & perspicuous, that a man may see through them, of which sort, are the air, fire, crystal, common glass, oiled paper, and the like. Whereunto I may resemble the outward actions of man, either his words or deeds. For through these a man doth as it were through a glass window look into a man's mind, from whence as from a spring both words & deeds do issue. I believe, & therefore I spoke saith David. Will you know a justified man? look whether he be sanctified & holy according to so holy a calling: will you know the goodness of the tree? try whether he bring forth according to his kind as it is in Moses.  
In the second of Kings, 
Genes. 1.2. Reg. 1.  king Ahaziah fell through a lettasse window from his upper chamber, & thereby fell into an extreme sickness. He calleth for his servants, sendeth certain of them to go & inquire of Beelzebub the idol of the Ekron concerning the recovery and event of his disease. Upon this the Angel of the Lord appeareth unto the Prophet Elias, and willeth him to go and to meet Ahazias servants & to say unto them: Is it not because there is no God in Israel, that he seeketh to belzebub? etc. Wherefore of Ahaziah the Lord saith: He shall not come down from the bed that he went up into but shall die the death. Elias doth the message to the servants, the servants return to their king: he museth at their sudden return, declaration is made what befell. The king demandeth what manner of man it was, that met them? they show him, that he was an hairy man, girded with leather. Then said he strait, It is Helias the Thesbite.  
Out of this story sundry instructions may be gathered. First that as the ox doth eat up the thistle, so may the axe overthrow the oak. i. as the poor sinful people shall surely be punished, so the unsanctified mighty man shall not ever escape. Again in destresses sinful men seek for simple helps, and not unto God the God of help, & all to no purpose, but to their greater hurt. Where as the holy man knoweth that our very hears, our tears, our names are in account with our almighty jehovah, our hears are in his register, our tears in his bottle, our names in his cook. But the purpose, why I record the story, principally is, to show how readily Ahaziah did guess by the Prophet's attire, that it was Elias, & thereby, by this example to declare, not that the hearines of our apparel, because happily there was some singular thing in Elias attire, as likewise in john Bapt. apparel, which was an other Elias, but that our attire & apparel in most modest manner generally be seemly, & that all our behaviour be such either in gate, words, or deeds, that when report is made thereof, a man may strait avouch, verily there is a Christian.  
There is no doubt, but dissimulation is spun now adays of so fine a thread, that it is hard to discern who is who. Gardiner could make a book of true obedience, & Bonner made the preface thereto, & now we lack not, & if time served (as God forbidden) we should have experience, that we want neither subtle gardiner's, nor cruel Bonars. But because some can semble to be that they are not, & dissemble to seem to be what they are, therefore yet may not the godly cease both to be in deed, and profess to be also true professors. Colours can not long continued. A grape may catch, or hang upon a brier, it groweth only & naturally upon the vine. Dissimulation is like Hermogines learning, 
Volater. lib. 15.  very towardly to show a while, but after a while it became flush and slew away: whereas the sincere holy man groweth still from faith to faith, from strength to strength, from virtue to virtue, till he become a perfect man in Christ jesus, knowing that this is the will of God, even his sanctification. 
2. Thes. 4.3.   
And were there nothing else but the will of God, & his commandment in this behalf, yet were this alone cause sufficient, that we offer up the sacrifice of our obedience to our God, & we should be holy, because he is holy, who hath commanded us so to be, 
jer. 35.14.  even as the children of jonadab, the son of Rechab obeyed their father, and abstained from wine, because their father, so commanded them, but infinite are the reasons that should move us to a godly life as not only his commandments thereunto, but the inhibition of the contrary, denunciation of penalty, if we live ill, or promise of reward if we live well: the hindrance of God's glory & the hurt to common weals, by the one, the edification of many by the other. Examples of good men to be followed, who were honourable men in their generations, & well reported in their times as Enoch, Noah Abraham, and many more, or the effect of sin upon sinners, that threw Adam out of paradise, turned Nebuchadnezzer into a beast, and judas into a Devil, slew kings, overthrew thousands, swallowed up rebels, drowned Pharaoh & all his host, burnt up whole cities, and wasted nations. But what shall I stand to reckon up reasons, to prove that day hath light, & that the night is dark, that virtue is good and vice is nought, or that the one ought to be embraced, and the other avoided? For, he is far gone, and past common sense, that will not confess all this. Howbeit in the practice of doing, it falleth out clean contrary. And the reason thereof, I take to be in them that have any knowledge (for to speak of the wilful ignorant it is bootless) because their knowledge occupieth only some small room in their brains, but hath no firm possession of the heart. My son give me thy heart (saith God by the pen of Solomon.) Keep it not they self but give it me, 
prover. 23.  bestow it not upon pleasures which fester, nor upon meats wherein is excess, nor upon riches, which will take the wings of the eagle & soon fly away, nor in honours, which man enjoying became a beast, nor in any corruptible vain thing under heaven. Give me thy heart, saith the wisdom of God, and he will teach thee to understand and follow righteousness, and judgement, and equity, & every good path. And as for riches, honour, pleasures, etc. know this, godliness is great riches, and as the highest honour, & as the true and perfect pleasure, & what not that good is?  

Direction in the way of sanctification out of the word of God and by his spirit.  And now for direction herein in the way of godliness, whom should we rather follow than God himself? etc. & not the vain words of others, but (as the Apostle adviseth) walking as the children of the light, bringing forth the fruits of the spirit. Wherein we may note that to vain words we must oppose the word of God, and that the fruits of the spirit are specified to be good works, to teach us from whence good works come. The one sometimes is distinguished from, sometimes contained under the other. The word serveth to direct in the right way, and whereby we discern who are out of the right way. The spirit is Christ's vicar on earth: and as Christ himself the son of righteousness, and the day star in our hearts, a consuming fire of all distrust, and burning up the very roots of disobedience, and of all the stumbling blocks in the world. The one of these lightly is never received without the other. For the word is unprofitable without the Spirit. The Spirit of God leadeth into all truth. The things of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. But yet the Spirit of Christ to them that have age and opportunity never cometh but with the word.  

The Anabaptist. The Atheist. The Papist  There are three especial enemies of this word of God, and therefore enemies to the rule of goodness, and to the level of all sanctimony. The first is the fantastical Anabaptist, that dreameth of Revelations: the second is the wilful Atheist, that thinketh the word of God to be to troublesome, it hindereth his fancies, it forbiddeth his delights, and stoppeth all the baths of his vain pleasure, it talketh to much of sanctification. The third enemy is the wily Papist subtler than all the beasts of the earth beside, he knoweth his coin is adulterate, and therefore he feareth the touchstone, his chaff would not be winnowed. And no marvel. For would false prophets be sifted, or vain spirits be brought to their trial? Wherefore the man of sin goeth about to dissuade men from hearing, and reading this work of God, and in steed of the waters of the Scriptures they have digged up puddles of wilworshiping and such like mud, fit for the horse and camel, then for Christian souls: & in room of the light of God's word they have substituted false & mocklights of their own, in place of virgin wax, they have given us tallow, in room of a candle, they have reached us a snuff, & the candle of the Lords word, they have detained, under a bed or a bushel, that the faithful men might never know what they did, nor discern what they believed. As if to believe well, were to believe a man knew not what, or to live well, were to live in ignorance, and to do the works of darkness. And yet they pretend great reason for all this, and so did he, that said of one that could be mad with reason. I can not debate the controversy, I shall but touch a reason or two. The word is uncertain, the word is obscure, ergo not to be read and heard absolutely of all, etc. Uncertain? I know not what is blasphemy, if this be not. Where & in what place dare they thus speak? in the Church of God? before whom? before the Congregation of saints? The word is as a candle, which giveth light both to the house, and showeth withal what itself is, & is it then uncertain? but it is obscure. So you say. We ask to whom? we answer to them, that perish. It is harder somewhere then in some, to stir up thine attention, & therefore it is commanded, Search the Scripture, dig for wisdom, seek for knowledge as after silver and gold. Be it that it be obscure. Yet as that saying in great part is most false, so is the reason most faulty. The candle burneth dim, therefore top it. It is a good argument. There is a knot in the week, therefore open it, that the light may have easier entrance. It is a fit reason. But the candle burneth obscurely, therefore put it out, or throw it away, or any such like conclusion is stark nought. Yea the more obscure the Scripture is, the more it must be laboured, & the more incessantly studied, because it is that, wherein we know is life everlasting, and the way of life which is sanctification.  
To let go them that will not hear us, seek after this way, there are of those, that seek sundry sorts. Some seek only to the end they may be known, to be very skilful men in good things: this is an ambitious vanity, some only to know: this is fond curiosity, some to instruct themselves: this is true wisdom, and some to edify others, and this is perfect charity. The two former sorts are nought, the two later holy and good. For true religion and perfect holiness, is made neither of bragging words or peevish fancies: but this is true devotion, to visit the sick, the widow, the fatherless, & to keep a man's self blameless from the soil of the world. He that never saw honey may talk & think how sweet a thing it is: but he that tasteth thereof, can better tell what a gracious taste it hath in deed.  
Again there are others that though they cared little for seeking themselves, yet are they content to let others alone with such matters. But all their care is as they are carried away with some conceit or other. They rise up early in the morning, and go to bed late, and eat their bread in great care to compass purposes. But alas what mean they? Suppose thou be a Monarch, a noble, a merchant man, or what thou wilt, if thou gain all, and lose a good conscience, and thereby thy soul, thy loss is greater, than thy gain. Thou art a jolly fellow in thy country, a king of a wealthy land, a peer in a Realm, thou canst prevent foes, & join in with mighty friends, all the sheaves of the field must bow to the, the Sun and the Moon must stoop at thy presence: or if thou be a meaner man as of a town and corporation, thou canst cudgel, and compass matters, & convey things at pleasure, or if thou be a private occupier or a man of trade, thou canst buy cheap, and sell dear, all these and the like are but miserable comforts in the day of death or judgement. One sanctified soul then will be more worth, then innumerable sinners. O Lord sanctify them and us with a lively understanding of thy truth. Thy word is the truth, teach us, O Lord, good ways therein, that we may know & do thy will.  
I will record a story: David being certified of saul's death among his lamentations he breaketh forth on this wise: 
2. Sam. 1  O, tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ascalon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the children of the uncircumcised triumph. Gath and Askalon were of the chief cities of the uncircumcised. David wisheth, that saul's death might be concealed from them: that it might not be told to the enemies of Saul, and of God. With like affection it is to be desired, that either there were no saul's at all, or that they might die either obscurely, or live otherwise then to the slander of the profession they seem to be of, but in truth are not. They that have dwelled or dwell in Gath, & Askalon, in Louvain, Douai, Rone, or Rheims, the enemies of us, of our Land, and of our God, willbe glad to hear that he which is reckoned a justified man by faith, were yet a profane person like Esau in the race of his life. The stream of sin is strong, and carrieth the world with it, but he that thinketh he standeth, let him take heed he fall not. If a pillar fall, the house is in danger, if a mighty tree fall, it beareth down many bows and sprigs with it. O, what a shame were it for any that have begun in the spirit to end in the flesh, to rejoice in the light and afterward to love darkness more than light, to receive as it were a portion of faith, and then to misspend it? The children of the uncircumcised will make great triumphs, when they shall hear hereof, supposing they have gained much, when they can find a man that hath fallen from his God: but to the godly what sorrow is like to this, where such events are found? Wherefore let every man look to his ways, & stand to his watch, that he offend not God, neither that he give place to Satan, cause, of joy to the adversary, or of grief to the godly, that he defile not himself, drive away the spirit, receive the word in vain, stain his profession, and that he be not like the Ass and Mule, that carrieth on his back, wheat, or bread, or wine, and yet eateth only chaff, and drinketh nothing but water. To carry the name of a Christian is little worth, except you feed on the properties of Christianity, & express them in a good life. For not to talk of Christ, but to live in Christ, is indeed to be a Christian, unto whom it may & should be said, as it was unto Mary: thou shalt bear a son, and thou shalt call his name jesus. For they that hear God's word with pure affection, 
Luc. 8.22  and bring forth the fruits of the spirit, they are as it were, Christ's brethren and as dear as his mother, and after a sort his very mother, as in the womb of whose faith Christ is conceived, and in whose holy life Christ is spiritually born into the world daily. And this is true sanctification, always to be performed in us, taught in the word, imprinted by the Spirit, granted of God through the merits of Christ, in whose name we pray ever, to be sanctified more and more continually. And even as Anna prayed that God would give her a man child, and she would give him the Lord again, so we pray that God will make us his holy adopted children. But the benefit of this holiness and of this adoption, as likewise of our creation, when we were not, & of our justification, when we were nought, and of all things else, as he giveth them us, so we must give them him again, & render all the praise, to him alone the only giver of all good gifts, who is to be blessed for ever, both for all and of all. So be it.   

Of Glorification in the life to come, and of sobriety in certain questions that are moved therein.  
WHen sanctification endeth in this life, than glorification entereth, & taketh his beginning for the life to come. And then when we shall have escaped all the gins of mortality, when the times of temptation shall be passed over, when the stream of this world shall have quite run out his course: then this corruption of ours shallbe endued with incorruption, the old Phoenix shall be renewed: and even as Moses did put his leprous hand into his bosom, 
Exod. 4.7  and pulleth it forth a clean and a sound hand: so this frail flesh of ours, that is sown in dishonour, 
1. Cor. 15  and must rot in the mould of the earth, shall yet rise again in honour with great perfection in that glorious day.  
Saint Paul showeth that there were amongst the Philippians, 
Phil. 3  that walked much amiss, in number many, in conditions earthly minded men, servants to their belly, and enemies to the cross of Christ, & therefore in fine whose just end was to have an heavy doom, & a deserved damnation. But speaking of himself and of the godly he saith: our consolation is in heaven, from whence we look for a Saviour, even the Lord jesus, who shall change our vile bodies, that they may be like his glorious body according to the working, whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself. Wherein these four points are expressly set down: the conversation of Christians to be heavenly, their expectation to be of Christ's appearing in the clouds, the glorification to be even of our very bodies, and because no man should doubt of the issue thereof, after he had set down the former three, in the fourth place mention is made, of the omnipotent power of God. 
Reu. 14.13.  Wherefore without all question as the spirit saith in the revelation, Blessed are they that die in the Lord, for they neither fry nor freeze, as the Papists suppose, in purgatory, but rest from their labours. Now to die in the Lord, is to die, either in his cause, & quarrel for righteousness sake, or otherwise in his faith and fear, and in the course of their calling. And to die is to be dissolved, 
Eccl. 12.7  the body to the earth, from whence it was taken, and the soul to be rendered into the hands of God that gave it.  
Thy dead (saith Esay). 
Esay 26  O Lord shall live, even as my body shall they rise again Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust. For thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast up her dead. Not that all the dead, but that the Lords dead shall live the second life. And not who die in their sins and in old Adam, but who die in the Lord, and who lived in Christ, and Christ in them, and die in Christ, 
Mar. 12.24 Mat. 22.29  and in the Lord, They shall rise in glory. Let no man be deceived, as were the saducee, and Libertines, and as now is the whole family of love. The dew of God's power is as the dew of herbs. Herbs appear not in winter time. The dew from heaven softeneth the ground, doth away the frost, & openeth the earth, & the herbs spring again, and flourish a fresh. Likewise the moisture of God's omnipotency and power divine, will cause & command the earth to give an account of her dead, to yield forth the bodies of his Saints, that they may live. Even as my body (saith the Prophet) and putteth the matter out of doubt, pointeth to his own body, & proveth the restitution of God's people from banishment by this infallible argument, teaching that because they doubted not of this the greater, they should believe the less which was their restitution.  
So in ezechiel the people seemed to be in a dead and desperate case, 
Ezech. 37  as if their very bones were dried up, their hope gone, and themselves clean out of God showeth in a vision, to the Prophet; a plain field, full of dead bones: he will give them sinews, flesh shall grow over them, and he will call the dead, out of their sepulchres. And by this, god meaneth that he will restore his people, and convey them home, even as if they were taught & well knew, he would revive the dead.  
The Articles of our Crede touching the resurrection and life eternal is most largely proved by Saint Paul to the Corinthians. 
1. Cor. 15  But Christ confuteth the Saduceis sufficiently with this, 
Mat. 22.32 Mar. 12.26  that God is the God of Abraham, Isaak, and jacob. And that God is the God of the living, and not of the dead. Of them that live, and therefore are, and not of them that live not, and therefore are not, and of them that shall live, in whole and not only in part. And it is spoken in the present tense, of the living, as well for the certainty of the bodies rising, as for the assured being of the soul in the mean season in the hands of God. And herein concerning the soul (for of the body I have said sufficiently) what becometh of it when man is dissolved: I can not but marvel what M. Bristol meaneth to mention, 
Reply to D. Fulk cap. 8 part 2  that there be many texts to make it probable, that not any one entereth into heaven, no not since Christ's time, till the general resurrection. 
Bez. li. Theol. Epist. 2 Epist.  Al these probabilities are answered by a learned man of our own age in perfect manner particularly upon occasion, & hear I read it needless to trouble the simple with impertinent disputes. 
Immediately upon the departure out of this mortality the soul is received into the joys of heaven. Luc. 23.43 2. Cor. 12.2  It may suffice them to know that while we are in this body, we are pilgrims from the Lord, ergo not, so when the tabernacle thereof shall be laid aside. But then we shall be as it was said to the thief, even in the day thereof with Christ in Paradise. And what is Paradise, but heaven? for so Saint Paul when he talketh that he was taken up into Paradise, he termeth it the third heaven. Every man saith Austin, sleepeth with his cause, and shall rise with his cause. But in the middle time, as in our common sleeping, some sleep quietly, some have heavy and sorrowful dreams: so when we go into the common bed of the earth with our bodies, yet our soul hath her rest with a sense of joy, or hath a feeling of sorrowful pains. Habent omnes animae, 
Tract. in john. 49  quum de seculo hoc exierint etc. All souls when they depart out of this world (strait) they have their diverse places of receipt, if they be good, they have joy: if they be nought, they have torment, and when the general resurrection shall be, the joy of the good shall be more ample, and the torments of the wicked more grievous, when with their bodies also they shall be tormented, and this is only the difference. Wherefore in the hour of death, let no faith full man doubt, but that he hath a present entrance into heaven, and that he shall be with Christ there, and that he may pray, looking upward into heaven, both with Christ and with Steeven: Into thy hands O God I commend my spirit. O Lord jesus receive my spirit.  
And this is a kind of glorification, which shall be consummated after the consumption of all things. In the mean time while we yet remain in this world, there are duties to be done, and every man hath his talentes, few or many, or at least one, 
Mat. 25.14  and that one he may not hide in a napkin, like the idle man, nor dig it in the earth, where it may rust, much less throw it to the dunghill, that is bestow it upon bad and vile uses.  
The noble man is gone into a far country, the master to a wedding: but they will certainly return again, but when, that is uncertain, whether at the first, second, third, or fourth watch, 
Why the coming of Christ is not specially in the circumstances of time certainly known.  whether in the evening, or at the dawning of the day: and therefore is so uncertain, the rather to excite thy care, and stir up thy diligence, to provoke thy watchfulness, to set thee always in a continual expectation, both of his coming particularly to thee, and in general to judge the world.  
But if thou like the evil servant say, tush the Lord differreth to come, and being absent can not see what is done amiss, and cruelly shalt misuse thy fellow servants, or riotously misspend thy masters substance, wasting all in wantonness and excess, living in pleasure, and fatting thyself, as in the day of great slaughter and much feasting, & shall common with thy soul, after this manner: O my soul take thy rest, this jollity will not fail, this case on earth is everlasting: behold suddenly when thou thinkest least, 
Luc. 12.46  this night before ever the morning can come, death is at thy door, thy days are numbered, thy deeds are weighed, thy doom is come, and thy soul shall depart, not only this life and so an end, but shallbe sundered from the number of the living with God, and shall live in torments everlastingly with Satan and his angels without end  
Nay rather let us imitate the faithfulness of Saint Paul, who in respect of others, & namely of his brethren the jews, what a continual sorrow conceived he, how hearty was his desire, how fervent his prayers in their behalf? Yea, he had care of all congregations. Who is weak and I am not affected? Who is offended, and I not grieved? And in respect of himself he ran his race, he kept the faith, he fought a good fight, & knew that there was a crown reposed for him. And because we may not think, that this toucheth only Saint Paul, 
2. Tim. 4  he addeth, not only for me, but unto all, that love, and therefore look for Christ's coming, even with loins girded, that is with diligence, and with lights in their hands, that is, with skill, as it is in the Gospel.  
But he that in steed of running his race, shall sit him down lazily, or divert before he come to the goal, or in steed of keeping, shall make shipwreck of the faith, and in steed of fight, shall strive unlawfully, there is laid up also a reward for such, even the reward of iniquity, and when he little thinketh, the day of the Lord shall come upon him, much like to a thief in the night, and as the travel of a woman, suddenly in the twinkling of an eye, and then he shall be sent into his own place, as judas was, when he hung himself. But as for the godly, 
Act. 12.5.  we hope and pray for prepared minds, and though by infirmity we sleep, even as the wise virgins did, yet we shall not sleep to death, 
Mat. 25.2.  or without oil in our lamps as did the foolish.  
Natural men can judge the face of the evening, if it be red, they say we shall have a fair day, if the morning red, we shall have rain, & it is true, if the figtree or the mulberry sprout forth their leaves, every one knoweth, summer is nigh. We are to discern natural events by natural signs. Have we no skill (I trust we have as many as be spiritual) in spiritual matters?  
In the last times & wanes of the world, men shall attentively hearken to spirits of error, the doctrine of Devils shallbe spread abroad and be taught, marriages and the lawful use of meats as a matter of conscience shallbe interdicted. Antichrist shall sit in the holy place, and as Austin saith according to the Greek text, 
Aug. de civit. Dei lib. 20. cap. 19  in templo Dei, and shall challenge himself to be the Church of God. Know we not what these things mean. 
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I will go a little farther, and come from matters in religion unto men's manners. Charity shall wax cold, 
1. Thes. 2.4  iniquity shallbe rife and ab●●nd, and almost run over all the world like noah's flood, men shallbe selfelovers, there shallbe wars and rumours of wars in every corner, scant faith shallbe found in the earth except here and there, as it were an ear or two left after harvest. Is there nothing to be looked for upon consideration of this? verily almost there remaineth not any sign to be fulfilled, but the Sun to be darkened, or the Moon lose her light, and that the stars drop from heaven, and the very celestial powers be shaken and removed. The evening is red, yea blood red, will not the morrow therefore be fair, and joyful to all the godly? Lift up your heads, ye that mourn, for your redemption draweth near. Yea, the morning is red also, and shall not a tempest overtake the wicked? Clouds like woolpacks hover over our heads, and thicken in every coast, the harvest of the world is white, and calleth for a sickle. The end of all is at hand, yea the ends of the world are come upon us. Life eternal is the gift of God, and even anon he will make full delivery thereof. Every man shall receive his penny, his palm into his hands, his crown of life for his head, the white garment that never soileth, the everlasting food, that never perisheth, the waters that never fail, the candle that never goeth out shall even anon be delivered unto all. They who sowed a wind, shall reap a whirlwind, but they that sowed in justice shall reap mercy, they who gathered Manna on the six day, shall rest on the seventh. They that sowed in tears shall reap in joy, and their joy shall no man take from them.  
As the Geometrician by the measure of Hercules foot, proportionally conjectured of the stature of the whole body, so by humane similitudes we may conceive somewhat of those joys, and that glory, which in this day shallbe accomplished, but perfectly to the full to set them forth, because they are not yet revealed, it passeth all words, all writings, all imaginations of all the tongues, or pens, or hearts of mortal men.  
Wherefore the question that some move of higher or lower, 
The question of equality or inequality of glory not much material to faith and godliness.  greater degrees of more glory, in some then in some in the day of glory is to no great purpose. For in the highest degree, there is no difference of degrees, or if so, yet our glory shall be so much, as we will either desire, or can contain. And what need further reasoning in a matter not taught in the scriptures? wherefore both in this and all the like questions, I answer with the words that the woman of Samaria used to and of our Saviour. The well is deep and I have no vessel to draw up such water. 
joh. 4.11.   
Concerning a question, that in this place is much moved by some, & thoroughly resolved by none that I know, 
Whether we shall know on another in the next life.  I will say what I think, and the rather to take away the question if it may be then to decide it.  
Upon the apparition of Moses and Elias in mount Tabor in our saviours transfiguration, it hath been thought of some, that in our glorified state we shall know and be known one of an other. But by the way I will first give a more necessary note because of occasion of Moses appearing. Moses was buried, no man could tell where, but yet here he appeared. 
Dei  Whereupon ariseth a comfortable consideration, that though man can not tell what becometh of men's bodies & the bodies of many Matters, that are thrown to the lions, devoured of dogs, cast into Sequana, or thrown into the sea, burnt to ashes, etc. Yet God knoweth, and as he made Moses here to appear, so here after the bodies and souls of all his afflicted Saints, shall appear at his second coming, even at the blast of the trumpet.  
Now for the question how could those be known & discerned? there were many hundred years between Elias time, & peter's, and john's, who were with Christ in the mount, and there was a thousand years betwixt Moses time and theirs, and if there were but an age difference, yet how could they be known at the first blush? and than if they being before unknown were so soon known in this but transfiguration, how much rather shall we know them in our glorification, with whom we were acquainted, of whose bones we were bones, of whose flesh we are flesh, & of whose race we descended, whose kindness we loved, whose love in all manner of godly familiarity & tender friendship we enjoyed.  
For this, that Moses and Elias were discerned the text setteth down, how they were discerned it setteth not down. A simple answer is easiest and truest as I take it. God who made the apparition to Peter and john, gave unto Peter and john the knowledge to discern who they were that appeared, whether he will give them the like knowledge in the life to come because the scripture is silent, I dare not definitively say or argue to or fro.  
Farther it is reasoned: Adam in his innocency strait way, notwithstanding he were asleep, when Eué was taken out of his side, yet he knew, who Eué was: semblably, when this corruption shall put on incorruption, when sinfulness shall change for innocency, like to or else more perfect than Adam's in Paradise, when our knowledge in part shall be made perfect, and our charity intended to an higher degree and extended to more in number, than we may, if know the things that we knew not before, much more know the things, and recognise the persons we knew once.  
I will not dispute against this opinion, much, for peradventure it may be true.  
Farther it is reasoned, that if the damned spirit of the richman in hell, notwithstanding the great distance & chaos betwixt, could discern Lazarus & Abraham in heaven, that the souls of the just and perfect men shall much more see with a clearer eye the society of all, but especially certain in the city of the Saints.  
I will not answer this to be parabolical, & that every part of a parable doth not ever prove every matter, that it may be fitted unto. For it may be that this very part thus urged, is not of a thing altogether impossible.  
But that which I shall shortly remember by occasion of the question moved, is most true, and much to be considered.  
First it is true that death is a passage into a better life to all that believe, a door, & entrance into heaven, a ready means to be with Christ, and not where Christ is only (for Christ according to his Godhead is excluded no place) but with Christ, and in Paradise are they, who die a corporal death, but yet live unto Christ. And then this being thoroughly considered it doth lenify such natural passions as are incident to the sons of Adam, it maketh the bitter cup to have a sweet taste, it breedeth a desire to be dissolved, and a longing to be at our long and last home. For the things here are nothing to the things there: yet are we hardly induced to leave them, and herein they serve & love us most, and we them.  
But let us consider, when we die, we depart from the world, and therefore from worldly affections also we should departed, and betake ourselves wholly to a better habitation, and utterly to have nothing to do, with the things that are done under the sun after the disposition of our house and temporalities, as isaiah exhorted the king.  
A wet eye and an affectionate mind doth neither discern aright, nor judge uprightly in this case, and when we should be ravished with the love of his face, to whom we go, we look backward, whether we shall see the faces of our old friends any more.  
In the resurrection they neither marry nor are married, marriage is the nearest conjunction amongst men. But then the respects of man & wife shallbe swallowed up as it were a candle put out at the rising of the Sun. Therefore the affections toward father and mother, children and kindred, of consanguinity and blood of affinity or amity which are less, shall also cease then. For they will either hinder somewhat, or do much hurt in the quietness of our passage.  
I read of one Rotholdus (of whom Sigibert doth write) a man of name, and a Duke, when he should be baptized, he would know whether there were more in heaven or in hell, and what acquaintance he had in either place, was not this a great folly?  
In the second book of Samuel David maketh offer to an old aged man Barzelai, 
2. Sam. 19  that elswhen, had showed him kindness, & that now God had blessed David, and had brought him to the kingdom, he would requite the old man, and offered him that he should go with him, & be in his court at jerusalem. But Barzelay on the other side maketh a contrary request unto David, that he may return to Gilead, and die in his own country, and be buried in the graves of his ancestors, and as for any pleasure that he could take in the king's palace, he said he was overspent and worn, his sense of tasting was gone, & so of hearing, the voice of the singers and the court music did not affect the old man.  
In the story we see a contentation in the aged man, and also a love to his country whereby he preferred Gilead before jerusalem. I do not altogether discommend every point in his affection. But, by application, if I may speak, there are over many Barzelays now a days both in their lives, and in their deaths. They are so long time accustomed to the worse, that they disdain the better, they cannot taste the truth, they will not hear the music of the charmer, charm he never so cunningly. They began in superstition, they have long continued in error, and they will needs be buried in the idolatry of their forefathers, and they will go whether they think they have most acquaintance. But true religion goeth neither by the most, nor by those that seem to be most near a man commonly.  
In our life, the word is our direction, the spirit our guide. In our death we must, as we resign our bodily substance unto godly uses, and our bodies for a time, into the bosom of the earth, so without more ado, & without forecasting of doubts, or scruples, of curious, fanciful or affectionate questioning must we wholly yield up our souls unto God our father a safe keeper of them unto the glorious resurrection in Christ jesus, to whom with the holy spirit three persons, and one everliving God be everlasting praise, Amen.