An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations

Then I say, it must also follow, God shall forget, and hardly entreat some, for such nature and inclination hath he given to some of his creatures as is plainly proved.¹ I do mean (thou wilt say) of love only: but the scripture (which either ignorantly, or else maliciously thou corruptest) declareth the contrary for thou wilt make God to bear, because he causeth others to bear. That scripture I say thou doest pervert, as thou doest all the rest. For what the Prophet of God applieth ⟨p. 43⟩to the miraculous restoration of the church which then was most afflicted, that thou doest allege to make God have like affections with brute beasts. And that neither thou nor any other shall have occasion to report, that I accuse the wrongfully.² I will recite the hole words of the Prophet, who thus speaketh: Before she hath travelled of child birth she hath borne, and before that dolour come, she brought forth a man, who hath heard the like? or who hath seen the like unto this? was the earth builded (he meaneth set in order) in one day? was there ever a nation borne at once, and yet Zion hath travailed of child birth, and at once hath she brought forth her children, he addeth the cause of this supernatural multiplication and felicity, Saying: shall I bring to a strait? and shall I not cause to bear? saveth the eternal? shall I cause to bear and shall) make restraint saith thy God, They are more then blind which do not see, that God in these words hath neither respect to the natural inclination of beasts, neither yet to any common love that he beareth to his creatures. But to that incomprehensible and unchangeable love which he beareth to his church: the multiplication, the joy and felicity whereof, he will at once bring forth in such sort that his elect shall never remember to their grief that they sustained any passion or pain: Let the indifferent reader compare this interpretation with the plane words of the Prophet: and so let thy self judge, how irreverently thou doest abuse the most comfortable words of the holy Ghost, to establish thy error. But let it be, that thou didst mean of love, and of no affection else, Art thou become so bold, and impudent, that thou darest subject God, to the law, limits and bounds of nature? To speak the matter more plainly.

Then I say, it must also folow, God shall forgett, and hardly intreat som, for such nature and inclination hath he giuen to som of his creatures as is plainely proued.