388 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING The serpent, envying this happiness of the church, bath no way to undo us, ,but by drawingus '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 overdo against heretics, that he persuades them they must enlarge their creed, and add this clause against one, and that against an- other, 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 themwith a religious, zeal- ous 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 clear- ly revealed, or never laid so great a stress upon; yet he persuades them that there was Scripture proof enough for these ; only the Scripture spoke it but in thepremises 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 reverent zeal? And was not the devil seemingly now a'Christian of the'most judicious and forward sort? But what got he at this one game? 1. He necessitated implicit faith even in fundamentals, when he had got points be- yond avulgar reachamong fundamentals. 2. He necessitated some living judge for the determiningoffundamentals quoadnos,''though not ' in se,' (the soul ofPopish wickedness,) that is, what it is in sense that the people must take for fundamentals. 3. He got a standing verdict against-the perfection and sufficiency of Scripture, (and consequently against Christ, his Spirit, his apostles, and the Christian faith ;) and that it will not afford us so much as a cried or system of fundamentals, or points absolutely necessary to salva- tion and brotherly communion, in fit or tolerable phrases ; but we must mend the language at last. 4. He opened a gap for human additions, at which he might afterwards bring in more at his pleas- ure. 5. He framed an engine for infallible division, and to tear in pieces the church, casting out all as heretics that could not subscribe to his additions, and necessitating separation by all dissenters, to the world's end, till the devil's engine be overthrown. 6. And hereby he lays a ground upon the divisions of Christians, to bring men into doubt of all religion, as not knowing which is the right. 7. And he lays the ground of certain .heart-búrnings, and mutual hatred, contentions, revilings, and enmity. Is not here enough got at one cast? Doth there need any more to the establishingof the Romish and hellish darkness ? Did not this one act found the seat ofRome ? Did not the devil get more in his gown ina day than
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