A14461:1165
The Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Divided into three parts, dialogue wiseThe Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Deuided into three partes, dialogue wise
The Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Divided into three parts, dialogue wise: set out with such grace, that it cannot be, but that a man shall take great pleasure in the reading thereof. Translated out of French into English, by John Brooke of AsheThe Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Deuided into three partes, dialogue wise: set out with such grace, that it cannot be, but that a man shall take greate pleasure in the reading thereoff. Translated out of French into English, by Iohn Brooke of Ashe
London: printed by Thomas East, 1579
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.
Theophilus. Thou hast now beaten down the Limb of the young infants. For if the words of Saint Augustine be true, according to the sense which thou givest unto them, the little infants dying without baptism, are all damned and punished in eternal •re. They are then in hell. Wherefore it is not now need to forge and make for them a Limb. By that means all the doctrine of your doctors is here overthrown. And therefore they have not all allowed that ⟨image 245⟩sentence, but have judged it too rigorous and cruel, in such sort, that some, for that cause, have called S. Augustine, the hangman of the young Infants: notwithstanding 1that he is well worthy that they do speak of him more reverently. For I do not think, that he himself would that these words should be taken after such r• gour and extremity. And therefore it is need to consider the occasions which might have moved him to write after that sort. For if the necessity and the impossibility excuseth the great ones, wherefore shall the little ones •e less excusable, which have yet more excuse, then the great ones may have? For when they dye being young, or in their mothers belly, or out of it, what fault then was in them, that they were not baptised? hath God conceived more greater hatred against them then against the great ones? although the baptism of the water should be as much necessary unto salvation, as you do make it, if there be any exception for the ene, by what right & reason may it be denied unto the others, when the cause & the excuses are equal? But we ought to consider, that in the t••e of Saint Augustine there might be a great sort of people, which had not the Sacraments in such estimation and reverence as they ought to have, (as we 2have proved it in our time) in which some have so much attributed unto it, that they have made of the visible signs a Jesus Christ, and an Idol. The others to the contrary do hold them as signs, without virtue and efficacy, no more then the signs which the soldiers do bear, for to show what Prince they do serve.