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

The chief adversaries therefore we have here to deal with, are the Papists, who over-magnify the visible face of the Church, & make the faith of men unjustified, to be true faith, though not formatacharitate, and make Hypocrites, and and wicked Professors, to be truly and properly fideles and members of the Church, whom the Protestants affirm to be but secundum quid, materially, analogically, yea equivocally called members or fideles; and therefore they make Baptism to be an appointed means to admit men into this visible Political Church, as into the ordinary way and passage to the state of saving grace, or justification; but not ordinarily into the present possession of it: And therefore in conformity to all this they maintain that we must admit persons to Baptism, upon the bare Profession of faith, that is, Assent, with consent to be under the Government of the Church and the use of ordinances in order to be a better state. For saith Bellarmine, it is not Charity but Faith which makes a Christian: which our divines admit as true in our sense of the word Faith which includeth the will, and is proper to the truly regenerate; but they deny it in his sense of it, who maketh faith to be the only Assent of the intellect. Against this adversary ⟨p. 52⟩therefore I shall principally bend the force of my Arguments, though to my great trouble, I must be forced to deal also with a Reverend Brother of our own; especially in answering his many fallacious arguments which he hath lately heaped up for that part which I must oppose.

The chief adversaries therefore we have here to deal with, are the Papists, who over-magnifie the visible face of the Church, & make the faith of men unjustified, to be true faith, though not formatacharitate, and make Hypocrites, and and wicked Professors, to be truly and properly fideles and members of the Church, whom the Protestants affirm to be but secundum quid, materially, analogically, yea equivocally called members or fideles; and therefore they make Baptism to be an appointed means to admit men into this visible Political Church, as into the ordinary way and passage to the state of saving grace, or justification; but not ordinarily into the present possession of it: And therefore in conformity to all this they maintain that we must admit persons to Baptism, upon the bare Profession of faith, that is, Assent, with consent to be under the Government of the Church and the use of ordinances in order to be a better state. For saith Bellarmine, it is not Charity but Faith which makes a Christian: which our divines admit as true in our sense of the word Faith which includeth the will, and is proper to the truly regenerate; but they deny it in his sense of it, who maketh faith to be the only Assent of the intellect. Against this adversary