Aphorisms of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…Aphorismes of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…

2. And therefore is not properly the object of Faith: whereas the seals are for confirmation of Faith.

3. Otherwise every man rightly receiving the seals, must needs be certainly justified & saved.

4. And no Minister can groundedly administer the Sacraments to any man but himself, because he can be certain of no mans justification and salvation, being not certain of the sincerity of their Faith. And if he should adventure to administer it upon probabilities and charitable conjectures, then should he be guilty of profaning the ordinance, and every time he mistaketh, ⟨p. 259⟩he should set the seal of God to a lye: And who then durst ever administer a Sacrament, being never certain: but that he shall thus abuse it? I confess ingenuously to you, that it was the ignorance of this one point which chiefly caused me to abstain from administering the Lords Supper so many years: I did not understand, that it was neither the minor, nor conclusion, but only the major proposition of the foresaid Argument, which God thus sealeth. And I am sorry to see what advantage many of our most learned Divines have given the Papists here. As one error draws on many, and leadeth a man into a labyrinth of absurdities; so our Divines being first mistaken in the nature of justifying faith thinking that it consisteth in A Belief of the pardon of my own sins, (which is this conclusion) have therefore thought that this is it which the Sacrament sealeth. And when the Papists allege, that it is no where written that such or such a man is justified we answer them that it being written That he that believeth is justified this is equivalent: A gross mistake: As if the major proposition alone were equivalent to the conclusion; or as if the conclusion must, or can be merely Credenda, a proper object of Faith, when but one of the promises is ⟨p. 260⟩