The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32…

Religion thence fled into Greece, where Arts Gave her the highest place in all mens hearts: Learning was posed: Philosophy was set; Sophisters taken in a Fishers Net. Plato and Aristotle were at a loss, And wheeled about again to spell Christs Cross. Prayers chased Syllogisms into their den, And Ergo was transformed into Amen.

Religion thence fled into Greece, where Arts Gave her the highest place in all mens hearts: Learning was pos'd: Philosophy was set; Sophisters taken in a Fishers Net. Plato and Aristotle were at a loss, And wheel'd about again to spell Christs Cross. Prayers chas't Syllogisms into their den, And Ergo was transform'd into Amen.

The Serpent envying this Happiness of ⟨p. 354⟩the Church, hath no way to undo us, but by drawing us from our Christian simplicity. By the occasion of Heretics quarrels and errors, the Serpent steps in, and will needs be a spirit of Zeal in the Church; and he will so Over-do against Heretics, that he persuades them, they must enlarge their Creed, and add this Clause against one, and that against another, and all was but for the perfecting and preserving of the Christian Faith: And so he brings it to be a Matter of so much Wit to be a Christian (as Erasmus complains) that ordinary heads were not able to reach it. He had got them with a Religious zealous Cruelty to their own and others souls, to lay all their Salvation, and the Peace of the Church upon some unsearchable mysteries about the Trinity, which God either never revealed, or never clearly revealed, or never laid so great a stress upon: Yet he persuades them, that there was Scripture-proof enough for these: Only the Scripture sp••e it but in the premises, or in darker terms, and they must but gather into their Creed the Consequences, and put it into plainer expressions which Heretics might not so easily corrupt, pervert or evade. Was not this Reverend Zeal? and was not the Devil seemingly now a Christian of the most judicious and forward sort? But what got he at this ⟨p. 355⟩