Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor

Yea this disturbing vice doth also work by setting a higher rate of necessity upon some truths, then the Church of Christ had ever done; When we will needs make that to be of absolute Certainly, which hath been either not before received, or but as a dark & doubtful thing; and we will make that to be of necessity to salvation, which the former ages did hold but as a point of a far lower nature, which some were for, and some against, without any great disagreement or mutual censure. I confess I do hold ⟨p. 204⟩some points of Doctrine my self to be true, which I cannot find that the Church or any in it did hold of many ages after the Apostles; but then I cannot lay such a stress on them, as to think them of flat necessity to the welfare of the Church, and the saving of souls; As the Doctrine of the certain perseverance of all the Justified, and some few more: If I may think that Austin, Prosper, and all the Church in those Ages did err therein (as I think they did): Yet to think that they erred fundamentally, were to think that Christ had no Church: I will not take the Judgement or Practice of the Church in any age since the Apostles as my Rule of faith and life: but I will suppose that they had all things in the most defiled age, that were of absolute necessity to salvation. I know that we must be Justified in the same way as they were, and upon the same terms. Faith is the same thing now as it was then; and hath the same object to apprehend for our Justification, and the same office in order to our Justification. Many new notions are brought in by Disputers, which must not be made matters of necessity to the soundness or integrity of the Churches faith. We may talk of Peace as long as we live; but we shall never obtain it but by returning to the Apostolical simplicity. The Papists faith is too big for all men to agree upon: or all their own, if they enforced it not with arguments drawn from the fire, the halter, and the strappado. And many Anti-Papists do too much imitate them in the tedious length of their subscribed Confessions, and novelty of impositions, when they go furthest from them in the quality of the things imposed. I shall speak my mind to these in the words of Vincentim ⟨p. 205⟩Lirinensis, cap. 26. […] satis nequeo tantam quorundam hominum vaesaniam, tantam excoecatae mentis impietatem;

Yea this disturbing vice doth also work by setting a higher rate of necessity upon some truths, then the Church of Christ had ever done; When we will needs make that to be of absolute Certainly, which hath been either not before received, or but as a dark & doubtful thing; and we will make that to be of necessity to salvation, which the former ages did hold but as a point of a far lower nature, which some were for, and some against, without any great disagreement or mutual censure. I confess I do hold