A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

your Church hath determined and proposed to be believed express Contradictions, which Determinations abiding on record, you are not agreed which of them to adhere unto, as is manifest in your Conciliary Decrees about the Power of the Pope and the Council, unto which of them the preeminence is due. Now this is a ⟨p. 123⟩strange Rule of the Unity of Faith, that is not only capable of increase, changes, and alterations, so that, that may belong unto it one day, which did not belong unto it another, as is evident from your Tridentine Decrees, wherein you made many things necessary to be believed which before were esteemed but probable, and were the subjects of Sophistical altercations in your Schools; but also compriseth in its self express Contradictions, which cannot at all belong unto faith because both of them may be false, one of them must be so; nor to Unity, because Contrary and adverse. 4. Whereas holding the Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, or the Unity of faith is so great and important a Duty unto all Christians, that they can no way discharge their Consciences unto God, without a well grounded satisfaction that they live in the performance of it, this description of its Nature, renders it morally impossible for any man explicitly to know, (and that only a man knows which he knows explicitly) that he doth answer his Duty herein. For 1. the Determinations of your Church of things to be believed are so many and various, that it is not within the Compass of an ordinary Diligence and ability to search and find them out. Nor when a man hath done his utmost, can he obtain any tolerable security, that there have not other Determinations been made, that he is not as yet come to an acquaintance with all, or that he ever shall so do; and how in this Case he can have any satisfactory persuasion that he keeps the Unity of Faith, is not as yet made evident. 2. In the Determinations he may meet withal, or by any means come to the knowledge of, he is to receive and believe the things determined and proposed unto him, in the sense intended by the Church, or else he is never the nearer to his ⟨p. 124⟩end. But what that sense is in the most of your Churches proposals, your Doctors do so endlessly quarrel among themselves, that it is impossible a man should come unto any great Certainty in his enquiry after it;

your Church hath determined and proposed to be believed express Contradictions, which Determinations abiding on record, you are not agreed which of them to adhere unto, as is manifest in your Conciliary Decrees about the Power of the Pope and the Councill, unto which of them the preheminence is due. Now this is a