A01130:162
The Pope confuted The holy and apostolic Church confuting the Pope. The first action.…The Pope confuted The holy and apostolique Church confuting the Pope. The first action.…
The Pope confuted The holy and apostolic Church confuting the Pope. The first action. Translated out of Latin into English, by James Bell.The Pope confuted The holy and apostolique Church confuting the Pope. The first action. Translated out of Latine into English, by Iames Bell.
London: printed by Thomas Dawson for Richard Sergier, 1580
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Neither are those other fables any whit more sau• •ie which those grave Tridentine Benchers have dreamed of works and eternal life.1 For although faith (as we confess) be for many great and urgent causes with charity by a certain necessary and unseparable coupling together of most absolute society: for what is more agreeable to convenience of reason, then that these which be endued with a through feeling of their renewing in Christ unto everlasting life, & of their free admission into heaven, should after so many & so manifold benefits received, not show themselves unthankful nor disobedient: should not welter in fleshly appetites: should not be carried away with the tickling delights of this world: should not be drowned in careless security, nor slumber in sloth: but so fashion and frame themselves, as men inflamed with a voluntary serious & earnest cheerfulness of mind, should not slack any point of most industrious endeavour to serve the Lord faithfully: should commit no action whatsoever to the prejudice and hurt of his neighbour. Admit, I say, that we grant all these to be, as they be in very deed most true,2 and withal confess such an unavoidable and necessary conjunction betwixt them, that faith neither possibly can nor ought in any wise be sequestered from godly conversation of life: what then? Shall we therefore yield over to good works this most sovereign benefit of everlasting life, which ⟨image 65⟩the heavenly Majesty hath vouchsafed to be free, by the only free mercy of God, as the proper and peculiar office of faith? and annihilate & make frustrate the grace of God? So that mans obedience shall be an es•oppell to Gods mercy: so that the law shall foreclose the Gospel, and merit be an hinderance, & prejudice to grace? But where did these famous Clerks learn this Logic so to jumble and chop the very things themselves which differ so far asunder in their ends and effects, and to make such a confused mingle mangle of them in one lump as it were without all order, without any respect of choice, as the Cooke s•irreth his pottage about?