Certain disputations of right to sacraments, and the true nature of visible Christianity defending…

But yet as our Divines have observed against him, Bellarmine himself, when he hath superficially pleaded his own cause, doth frequently, in the pleading it, let fall such words at unawares that do destroy it, and grant what we say. As lib, 3. de Eccles. cap. 10. he saith [Verissime etiam dici potuisse ecclesiam fidelium, id est, eorum qui veram fidem habent in corde, unam esse: ecclesia enim praecipuè & ex intentione sideles tantum colligit; cum autem adm•scentur aliqui ficti, & qui vere non credunt, id accidit praeter intentionem ecclesiae. Si enim eos nôsse posset, nunquam admitteret, aut casu admissos continuò excluderet.] yet I confess it is but his nudus ascensus or fides informis that he seemeth here too mean. I pray you read over especially his 9. Chap. ibid. There (pag. 227) he answereth one of our Objections thus [Ad ultimum dico, malos non esse membra viva Corporis Christi; & hoc significari illis scripturis. Ad id quod addebatur igitur sunt aequivocè membra &c.] a multis solet concedi, malos non esse membra vera, nec simpliciter corporis ecclesiae sed tantum secundum quid & aequivocè. Ita Johan. Turrecremata, l. 1.57. ubi id probat ex Alex. de Ales, Hugone, & D. Thoma: idem etiam docent Petrus à Soto, Melchior Canus, & alii•qui tamen etsi dicant malos non esse membra vera, dicunt nihilominus verè esse in eeclesia, sive in corpore ecclesiae, & esse simpliciter sideles sen Christianos: neque enim solae membra sunt in corpore ⟨p. 50⟩sed etiam humores, dentes, pili, & alia quae non sunt membra. Neque sideles aut Christiani dicuntur tales à charitate, sed à side sive ù fidei profes•ione.] It appeareth then that the Papists are put of late to refine this fundamental doctrine of theirs, from the soundness that it formerly had among themselves and to fit it more to their own turns. And I blame them not, because their whole kingdom lieth on it; and would be subverted utterly, if the foresaid exposition hold (which is so much like to ours.) Its a cutting objection which turned Bellarmine out of his rode. [At si ita est, sequitur pontificem malum non esse c•put ecclesiae; & alios episcopos, si m•li sunt, non esse capita suarum ecclesiarum: Caput enim non est humor, aut pilus, sed membrum & quidem praecipuum.] This put him on distinguishing: