Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor

A great stir is made in the world about the test of a Christian and true Church, with whom we may have Communion, and about that true Centre and Cement of the Unity of the Church, in and by which our Common calamitous breaches must be healed. And indeed the true Cause of our Contrived divisions and misery is for want of discerning the centre of our unity, and the terms on which it must be done: which is great pity, when it was once so easy a matter, till the ancient test was thought insufficient! If any of the Ancient Creeds might serve, we might be soon agreed. If Vinc•ntius Lirineus. test might serve, we might yet make some good shift, viz. To believe (explicitly) all that quod ubique quod semper quod ab omnibus creditum est For as he addeth [hoc est etenim verè proprièque Catholicum] But then we must come 1. That the first age may not be excluded which gave the rule to the rest. 2. And that this extend not to every Ceremony which never was taken for unalterable, but to matters of faith; and that the acts and Canons of Councils, which were not about such matters of faith, but mere variable order, and which newly constituted those things, which the Apostolic Age knew not, and therefore were not properly Credita, much less, semper, & ab omnibus, may have no hand in this work. I say if either the ancient Western, or Eastern Creed, or this Catholic faith of Vincentius might be taken as the test for explicit saith, or else rather all those Scripture texts, that ⟨p. 290⟩express the Credenda with a note of necessity, and the the whole Scripture moreover be confessed to be Gods word, and so believed (in other points) at least implicitly; this Course might produce a more general Communion and agreement; and more lines would meet in this Centre then otherwise are like to meet. And indeed till men can be again content to make the Scripture the sufficient Rule, in Necessaries to be explicitly believed, and in all the rest implicitly, we are never like to see a Catholic Christian durable Peace. If we must needs make the Council of Trent, or the Papal Judgement our test;

A great stir is made in the world about the test of a Christian and true Church, with whom we may have Communion, and about that true Center and Cement of the Unity of the Church, in and by which our Common calamitous breaches must be healed. And indeed the true Cause of our Contrived divisions and misery is for want of discerning the center of our unity, and the terms on which it must be done: which is great pity, when it was once so easie a matter, till the ancient test was thought insufficient! If any of the Ancient Creeds might serve, we might be soon agreed. If Vincntius Lirineus. test might serve, we might yet make some good shift, viz. To believe (explicitly) all that quod ubique quod semper quod ab omnibus creditum est For as he addeth [hoc est etenim verè proprièque Catholicum] But then we must come 1. That the first age may not be excluded which gave the rule to the rest. 2. And that this extend not to every Ceremony which never was taken for unalterable, but to matters of faith; and that the acts and Canons of Councils, which were not about such matters of faith, but meer variable order, and which newly constituted those things, which the Apostolike Age knew not, and therefore were not properly Credita, much less, semper, & ab omnibus, may have no hand in this work. I say if either the ancient Western, or Eastern Creed, or this Catholick faith of Vincentius might be taken as the test for explicit saith, or else rather all those Scripture texts, that