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Ancient Books ~ Politics, Philosophy & Liberty Religio Medici, Hydriotahia, And The Letter To A Friend ~ Sect. 5.Sect. 5.--But, to difference myself nearer, and draw into a lesser circle; there is no church whose every part so squares unto my conscience, whose articles, constitu- tions, and customs, seem so consonant unto reason, and, as it were, framed to my particular devotion, as this whereof I hold my belief--the Church of England; to whose faith I am a sworn subject, and therefore, in a double obligation, subscribe unto her articles, and en- deavour to observe her constitutions: whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe, according to the rules of my private reason, or the humour and fashion of my devotion; neither believing this because Luther affirmed it, nor disproving that because Calvin hath dis- avouched it. I condemn not all things in the council of Trent, nor approve all in the synod of Dort.<3> In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is my text; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment;<4> where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but from the dictates of my own reason. It is an unjust scandal of our ad- versaries, and a gross error in ourselves, to compute the nativity of our religion from Henry the Eighth; who, though he rejected the Pope, refused not the faith of Rome,<5> and effected no more than what his own pre- decessors desired and essayed in ages past, and it was conceived the state of Venice would have attempted in our days.<6> It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of the Bishop of Rome, to whom, as a temporal prince, we owe the duty of good language. I confess there is a cause of passion between us: by his sentence I stand excommunicated; heretic is the best language he affords me: yet can no ear witness I ever returned to him the name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon. It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction: those usual satires and invectives of the pulpit may per- chance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears are opener to rhetoric than logic; yet do they, in no wise, confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know that a good cause needs not be pardoned by passion, but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute. Religio Medici, Hydriotahia, And The Letter To A Friend ~ |
