The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…

First, Let it be first supposed that God hath given us a Law to judge by, and then we shall quickly tell you who shall be the Judge (A question which the confused world doth further their confusion by, when they are a thousand times answered past all rational contradiction) Judgement is private or public: The judicium privatum discretionis, which is but the guide of rational acts, belongeth to every private man (which none that is a man did ever yet deny) The judicium publicum is either in foro civili determining in order to corporal coaction, and this belongeth only to the Magistrates; Or it is in foro Ecclesiae determining in order to Church-communion or Excommunication; and this belongeth only to the Church; (but under the coactive Government of the Magistrate: the Pastors being the Governors, and the people in part the executioners.) He that requireth more understands not this.

First, Let it be first supposed that God hath given us a Law to judge by, and then we shall quickly tell you who shall be the Judge (A question which the confused world doth further their confusion by, when they are a thousand times answered past all rational contradiction) Iudgement is private or publick: The judicium privatum discretionis, which is but the guide of rational acts, belongeth to every private man (which none that is a man did ever yet deny) The judicium publicum is either in foro civili determining in order to corporal coaction, and this belongeth only to the Magistrates; Or it is in foro Ecclesiae determining in order to Church-communion or Excommunication; and this belongeth only to the Church; (but under the coactive Government of the Magistrate: the Pastors being the Governors, and the people in part the executioners.) He that requireth more understands not this.

Secondly, And what if ther• be a difficulty what points are necessary and what errors are ⟨p. 362⟩intolerable? Yet as long as it is certain that such a difference there is, and that accordingly men must do; doth it not rather concern both parties to search after it, and practise as far as they can discern, than to cast away Reason, because there is a difficulty in using it aright? Just thus the Papists do with us about the like notion of fundamentals or essentials of Christianity; They call to us for a just enumeration of the fundamentals, and because they find so much difficulty there, as may find words and work for a perverse wrangler, they insult as if they might therefore take either all things or nothing to be essentials, and of necessity: As if Christianity had no constitutive essential parts, and so were nothing. And when they have all done they are forced themselves in their writings to distinguish the fundamentals, essentials, and universally necessary points from the rest, (as Davenport, Costerus, Bellarmine, Holden, &c. do.) And doth it not then concern them as much as us, to know which they be? What if it be a hard thing to enumerate just how many bits a man may eat, and not be a glutton? or how many drops a man may drink and be no drunkard? or just what meats and drinks must be used, to avoid exces in quality? or just what sort of stuffs or silks or cloth or fashions may be used without excess in apparel? will you thence infer that men may eat and drink any thing in quantity and quality, or else nothing? or that he may wear any thing, or must go naked? What if you cannot justly enumerate what herbs or roots or drugs are wholesome and what are unwholesome? which