The twelfth heresy imputed to us is the heresy of Jovinian, concerning whom we must observe, that Augustine ascribeth unto him two opinions which Hierome mentioneth not; who yet was not likely to spare him, if he might truly have been charged with them. The first, that Mary ceased to be a virgin when she had borne Christ; the second, that all sins are equal.
Neither this nor that is worthy the name of opinion; it is mere unscriptural, nay, anti-scriptural gossiping. Are we to blame, or not rather to praise, the anxiety manifested by the great divines of the church of England under the Stuarts not to remove further than necessary from the Romish doctrines? Yet one wishes a bolder method; for example, as to Mary's private history after the conception and birth of Christ, we neither know nor care about it.
Ib. c. 31. p. 146.
For the opinions wherewith Hierome chargeth him, this we briefly answer. First, if he absolutely denied that the Saints departed do pray for us, as it seemeth he did by Hierome's reprehension, we think he erred.
Yet not heretically; and if he meant only that we being wholly ignorant, whether they do or no, ought to act as if we knew they did not, he is perfectly right; for whatever ye do, do it in faith. As to the ubiquity of saints, it is Jerome who is the heretic, nay, idolater, if he reduced his opinion to practice. It perplexes me, that Field speaks so doubtingly on a matter so plain as the incommunicability of omnipresence.
Ib. c. 32. p. 147.
Touching the second objection, that Bucer and Calvin deny original sin, though not generally, as did Zuinglius, yet at least in the children of the faithful. If he had said that these men affirm the earth doth move, and the heavens stand still, he might have as soon justified it against them, as this he now saith.
Very noticeable. A similar passage occurs even so late as in Sir Thomas Brown, just at the dawn of the Newtonian system, and after Kepler. What a lesson of diffidence!26
Ib. p. 148.
For we do not deny the distinction of venial and mortal sins; but do think, that some sins are rightly said to be mortal and some venial; not for that some are worthy of eternal punishment and therefore named mortal, others of temporal only, and therefore judged venial as the Papists imagine: but for that some exclude grace out of that man in which they are found and so leave him in a state wherein he hath nothing in himself that can or will procure him pardon: and other, which though in themselves considered, and never remitted, they be worthy of eternal punishment, yet do not so far prevail as to banish grace, the fountain of remission of all misdoings.
Would not the necessary consequence of this be, that there are no actions that can be pronounced mortal sins by mortals; and that what we might fancy venial might in individual cases be mortal and vice versa.
Ib.
First, because every offence against God may justly be punished by him in the strictness of his righteous judgments with eternal death, yea, with annihilation; which appeareth to be most true, for that there is no punishment so evil, and so much to be avoided, as the least sin that may be imagined. So that a man should rather choose eternal death, yea, utter annihilation, than commit the least offence in the world.
I admit this to be Scriptural; but what is wanted is, clearly to state the difference between eternal death and annihilation. For who would not prefer the latter, if the former mean everlasting misery?
Ib. c. 41. p. 62.
But he will say, Cyprian calleth the Roman Church the principal Church whence sacerdotal unity hath her spring; hereunto we answer, that the Roman Church, not in power of overruling all, but in order is the first and principal; and that therefore while she continueth to hold the truth, and encroacheth not upon the right of other Churches, she is to have the priority; but that in either of these cases she may be forsaken without breach of that unity, which is essentially required in the parts of the Church.
This is too large a concession. The real ground of the priority of the Roman see was that Rome, for the first three or perhaps four centuries, was the metropolis of the Christian world. Afterwards for the very same reason the Patriarch of New Rome or Constantinople claimed it; and never ceased to assert at least a co-equality. Had the Apostolic foundation been the cause, Jerusalem and Antioch must have had priority; not to add that the Roman Church was not founded by either Paul or Peter as is evident from the epistle to the Romans.
Append. B. III. p. 205. I do not think the attack on Transubstantiation the most successful point of the orthodox Protestant controversialists. The question is, what is meant in Scripture, as in John vi. by Christ's body or flesh and blood. Surely not the visible, tangible, accidental body, that is, a cycle of images and sensations in the imagination of the beholders; but his supersensual body, the noumenon of his human nature which was united to his divine nature. In this sense I understand the Lutheran ubiquity. But may not the "oblations" referred to by Field in the old canon of the Mass, have meant the alms, offerings always given at the Eucharist? If by "substance" in the enunciation of the article be meant id quod vere est, and if the divine nature be the sole ens vere ens, then it is possible to give a philosophically intelligible sense to Luther's doctrine of consubstantiation; at least to a doctrine that might bear the same name; – at all events the mystery is not greater than, if it be not rather the same as, the assumption of the human by the divine nature. Now for the possible conception of this we must accurately discriminate the incompossibile negativum from the incompatibile privativum. Of the latter are all positive imperfections, as error, vice, and evil passions; of the former simple limitation. Thus if (per impossible) human nature could make itself sinless and perfect, it would become or pass into God; and if God should abstract from human nature all imperfection, it might without impropriety be affirmed, even as Scripture doth affirm, that God assumed or took up into himself the human nature. Thus, to use a dim similitude and merely as a faint illustration, all materiality abstracted from a circle, it would become space, and though not infinite, yet one with infinite space. The mystery of omnipresence greatly aids this conception; totus in omni parte: and in truth this is the divine character of all the Christian mysteries, that they aid each other, and many incomprehensibles render each of them, in a certain qualified sense, less incomprehensible.
Ib.p. 208.
But first, it is impious to think of destroying Christ in any sort. For though it be true, that in sacrificing of Christ on the altar of the cross, the destroying and killing of him was implied, and this his death was the life of the world, yet all that concurred to the killing of him, as the Jews, the Roman soldiers, Pilate, and Judas sinned damnably, and so had done, though they had shed his blood with an intention and desire, that by it the world might be redeemed.
Is not this going too far? Would it not imply almost that Christ himself could not righteously sacrifice himself, especially when we consider that the Romanists would have a right to say, that Christ himself had commanded it? But Bellarmine's conceit27 is so absurd that it scarce deserves the compliment of a serious confutation. For if sacramental being be opposed to natural or material, as noumenon to phænomenon, place is no attribute or possible accident of it in se; consequently, no alteration of place relatively to us can affect, much less destroy, it; and even were it otherwise, yet translocation is not destruction; for the body of Christ, according to themselves, doth indeed nourish our souls, even as a fish eaten sustains another fish, but yet with this essential difference, that it ceases not to be and remain itself, and instead of being converted converts; so that truly the only things sacrificed in the strict sense are all the evil qualities or deficiencies which divide our souls from Christ.
Ib. p. 218.
That which we do is done in remembrance of that which was then done; for he saith, Do this in remembrance of me.
This is a metastasis of Scripture. Do this in remembrance of me, that is, that which Christ was then doing. But Christ was not then suffering, or dying on the cross.
Ib. p. 223.
That