Full and easy satisfaction which is the true and safe religion in a conference…Full and easie satisfaction which is the true and safe religion in a conference…

P. Why then do you call the thirty nine Articles the ⟨p. 14⟩Articles of your Religion? And what is their use? And why are all required to subscribe them?

R. 1. Their Use is to signify how the Conjunct Pastors who use them do understand the Holy Scriptures in those points: And that partly for the satisfaction of all foreign Churches, who may hear us accused of Heresy or Error; and partly to be a hedge to the Doctrine of young Preachers, to keep them from vending mistakes in the Churches, and also to try the soundness of their understandings. 2. The Confessions, and Articles, and Catechisms are our Religion, as the Writings of Perron, Bellarmine, Suarez, &c. or many of these agreeing, are the Roman Religion: They are not the Divine Revelation and Rule of faith and practice to us: But they are the expression of our own conceptions of the sense of several chief matters in that Rule or Revelation. So that they are the Expression of our faith or Religion taken subjectively (for acts and habits) and not our objective Rule it self. Our Sermons and Prayers are our Religion in this sense: that is, The Expression of our own Religious Conceptions: And so are your Sermons and your Writings also to you. But if this were our Rule of Faith and Life, and so our Divine Objective Religion, then we should be of as many Religions, as we are several persons: For every one hath his several Expressions: And every new Sermon, or Book, or Prayer, would be a new part of Religion. And so with you also. So that this doubt is past all doubt: Our Confessions are but the expressions of our personal belief, and not our Rule of Faith. III. And as to your third pretence (that we have other Articles as opposite to Popery) I answer, Our Religion as a Rule of Faith and Worship is one thing ▪ And our Rejecting all Corruptions and Additions is another. ⟨p. 15⟩E. g. My Religion is, that our God is only the true God. If now I say also, that Hercules is not God, and Bacchus is not God, and Venus, Mars, Mercury, Pallas, Neptune, Pluto, Ceres, &c. are not Gods; is this a new Religion, or an addition to the former? If the Baptismal Covenant be the Essentials of my Religion, and the Creed, Lords Prayer and Decalogue the Explication of it; and if the Scripture be my Entire Religion, and if the Papists will come and add a multitude of new Articles and Corruptions, my rejecting of those additions, is no more an alteration of my Religion, than the sweeping of my house, or the washing of my hands is an alteration of them.