A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many useful questions and cases of conscience are…A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many usefull questions and cases of conscience are…

'Tis another thing to dispute what are these truths, which in a Church where the Gospel is truly preached, all and every one, (come to years of knowledge and discretion) and having means and occasions to learn, are bound to know, (and according to the revealed will and ordinary dispensation of God) must learn, as they desire or expect to have a true fellowship with Christ in the Sacrament of the Lords supper, or to be accepted of God, and saved eternally: ⟨p. 113⟩2. We must not think that no man is a Heretic, but he who is consistorially or judicially admonished, and thereafter continueth pertinaciously in his error. For where 'tis said Tit: 3. 10 A man that is an Heretic after the first and second admonition, reject: 'Tis intimated that he is an Heretic before such admonition. Positively, I conceive that these six things do concur to make a Heresy. 1. Tis an error held by some Minister or member of a Church, I mean either a true Church or an assembly pretending and professing to be a true Church. For both Peter and Paul where they foretell that Heresies were to come, 2 Pet: 2. 1. 1 Cor: 11. 19. they add [Greek or Hebrew], among you, i.e. among you Christians. So Act: 20. 30. also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things. Therefore the Scripture gives no• the name of Heretics to these who are altogether without the visible Church, but it calleth such by the names of Heathens or unbelievers, or they that are without, or the like. 2. Tis an error voluntarily and freely chosen, both in the first invention and broaching of it, (which is proper to the Heresiarchs,) and in the maintaining of it, or adhering to it, (which is common to all Heretics.) This I collect from the very name which the Scripture gives to it for, [Greek or Hebrew], comes from [Greek or Hebrew], I choose. Therefore we give not the name of Heretics to such Christians as are compelled in time of persecution to profess such or such an error, which peradventure were a formal▪ Heresy, if voluntarily and without compulsion professed. They ought indeed to die, and to endure the greatest torments, before they profess what they know to be an error: but this their sin is not properly called Heresy, for an Heretic doth freely and voluntarily hold that which is his¹ error.