ΤΟ THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL AND TRULY WORTHY KNIGHT SIR RICHARD ANDERSON, OF PENDLEY IN HERTFORDSHIRE, The blessings of this life, and of that to come, be multiplied. RIGHT WORSHIPFUL SIR, YOUR unfeigned love to learning and true religion, well known by real testimonies to all true lovers of them which have the happiness (as myself for long time have had) to be acquainted with you, drew this short treatise upon its first return unto me (to whom it hath been from its first birth a stranger) to take you for its foster-father. Could it speak for itself, it would, I am persuaded, complain of wrong, if I should direct it to seek another patron, being not acquainted with any family which bears a more lively image of a well ordered church than your family doth. Nor is there any other to whom I more heartily wish all furtherance in good beginnings and proceedings than I do to yours, and to that honourable family unto which you are happily united. Of this my desire, and of my best respect unto yourself and to your noble lady, I have no better token for the present, than this Treatise of the holy Catholic Faith and church. Thus commending both of you, with all yours, and it, unto the blessing of Him who is the sole fountain of faith, and head of the holy catholic church, I take my leave, and rest, Yours ever, in the surest bonds of sincere love and observance, THOMAS JACKSON. From my vicarage in Newcastle upon Tyne, this first of January, 1626. Courteous and Christian Reader. THE sum of this treatise was delivered in Catechism Lectures for the benefit of younger students in Pembroke college in Oxon, at the request of the master of that society, my reverend and worthy friend, and of some other good friends; to whose religious desires my hope was to have given better satisfaction, if my continuance in that ancient and sweet nursery of learning had been longer, or my studies there less interrupted with other occasions. But God be praised, that college hath been furnished since with one of their own body, of whose learned and polite labours, I hope one day to be, with others, a partaker. This Treatise, as now it is, hath been for the most part since, in the hands of others, being committed by me to the perusal of that great light of the northern parts, my then reverend and dearest friend, doctor Birkhead, from whose judicious censure I hoped then this and other of my labours should have received some perfection, and I much comfort from his company. But it pleased the Lord (whose good pleasure we must obey, not question) to call him from us, (no doubt to his greater good, though to the greater loss and sorrow of every true member of the English church which knew him,) before it was my hap (being then absent from those parts) to hear from him, or speak with him. Since his death, it hath passed through many hands, but all, as it seems, good friends, in that it returns unto me entire : and from it, as it is, I hope, no orthodox reader shall receive any discontent, nor any adversaries of the truth much advantage. Wherein it is for the matter deficient, or not so fully expressed, I shall have opportunity, whether by the advice of friends, or exceptions of the adversary, to amend or enlarge in other treatises of the same argument, which (by God's assistance) shall shortly be communicated to thee. And for this reason, in part, I have been the more willing to have it published at this time. Thine in Christ Jesus, THOMAS JACKSON. A TREATISE OF THE HOLY CATHOLIC FAITH AND CHURCH. BOOK XII. SECTION I. IN the Exposition of the Apostles' Creed, a work undertaken by me long ago, I did sequester four points from the body of that intended work, now almost finished. The first was, the doctrine of the holy and blessed Trinity, which I reserved for the last part of my labours, to be set down by way of prayer or soliloquies, as being an argument, in my judgment, both then and now, more fit for meditation than for controversy or scholastic discourse. The second point was, the article of the holy catholic church. The third, the communion of saints. The fourth, the forgiveness of sins. Points, which I knew not how to handle in that rank and order as they are propounded unto us in the Creed, without manifest interruption of my intended method, which I endeavoured should be continuate, each latter part immediately issuing out of the former. Nor could I find a commodious entrance into the article of Christ's coming to judge as well the dead as 809 the living, before I had treated of the resurrection of the dead. Nor could I finish what I had to say, or 810 what was to be said, concerning the last judgment itself, without some explication of the sentence to be awarded; and that is, life everlasting to all true believers, and everlasting death to the disobedient and unbelievers. So then the articles of the holy catholic church, of the communion of saints, of the forgiveness of sins, have been out of choice and intended method left altogether untouched, reserved for peculiar treatises. CHAP. I. That it is easier to oppose than to answer a Romanist in this argument of the church. The author's method for meeting with wrangling sophisms. First, then, of the holy catholic church. An argument fitting for these times, being specially insisted upon and enlarged by priests and Jesuits to our prejudice, they well perceiving their intricate disputes and sophistical discourses in this point to be the only net which Peter's pretended successors have left them for catching silly and uncatechised souls, or for entangling men of deep understanding, but of deeper discontent or dislike with their present governors or dispensers of preferment. For unto men, either not misled by discontented passion, or otherwise not uncapable of sound reason, it might easily appear, that there is no heresy at this day maintained in Christendom (at least so generally) which doth either so highly offend God and his Christ, or so grievously disturb the public peace of Christ's church, or so desperately endanger the soul of every one that subscribes unto it, as this heresy concerning the transcendent authority |