Of justification four disputations clearing and amicably defending the truth against the unnecessary oppositions…

Suppose there be a mortal Disease that hath seized on a City, which no man can cure but one only Physician: nor he but by a Medicine that will cost him as much as the lives of the Citizens are worth: This Physician comes and sends to them, and offers then all without exception, that if they will but take him for their Physician and trust him with their lives, he will not only manifest his skill, that he is able to cure them, but he will do it, and pay for the Physic, and not put them to pay a penny. Hereupon some that are his enemies, and some that are mistaken in the man upon false reports, and some that judge of him by his outward appearance, do all conclude, [this is some Deceiver, he is not able to do any such matter; none but fools will trust him, and venture their lives in his hand: Let us stir about and labour and we shall overcome it, and do well enough.] On the contrary the Physician, having great compassion on the poor deluded people, knowing their case better then themselves, and having already bought the remedy for ⟨p. 393⟩them, doth send to them again, to tell them all, that those that will believe him and trust him, he will certainly cure, and the rest shall dye every man of them, for all they think to labour it away. I pray you now put our Questions here impartially: 1. Is believing and trusting the Physician some one single act, excluding all others? Or was it ever his intent to advance some one act of theirs? 2. Would it not be a learned madness to dispute whether the Physician make the act of Assent, or the act of Willing only: or Accepting, &c. or Affiance, or Recumbency to be the Healing act; and of what faculty that act was which must heal them? 3. Is it the Trusting and Receiving him only 1. as one that hath brought a Remedy: 2. Or as one that can and will cure us by it: or 3. Also as one that must be obeyed in the use of that remedy for the effecting the cure; which of these is it that he intends must be the Object of their Act? 4. Doth [Trusting him and Believing him] exclude a Resolution to obey his Directions and the future actual obedience? Surely no: it includeth both: But it excludeth both their trusting any other Physician, and their thinking to work away the Disease and cure themselves. 5 Doth Trusting or Believing him cure these men as the Instrument? or is it only a condition without which he will not cure them?

Suppose there be a mortal Disease that hath seized on a City, which no man can cure but one only Physitian: nor he but by a Medicine that will cost him as much as the lives of the Citizens are worth: This Physitian comes and sends to them, and offers then all without exception, that if they will but take him for their Physitian and trust him with their lives, he will not only manifest his skill, that he is able to cure them, but he will do it, and pay for the Physick, and not put them to pay a penny. Hereupon some that are his enemies, and some that are mistaken in the man upon false reports, and some that judge of him by his outward appearance, do all conclude, [this is some Deceiver, he is not able to do any such matter; none but fools will trust him, and venture their lives in his hand: Let us stir about and labour and we shall overcome it, and do well enough.] On the contrary the Physitian, having great compassion on the poor deluded people, knowing their case better then themselves, and having already bought the remedy for