Antidote Against Error Concerning Justification, Publisher to the reader
THE PUBLISHER Of this Posthumous Peice of Work, TO THE READER.
IT is a fruitless wish for me to utter, Oh that I were not enforced to adjoyn this Epilogue, Desiderantur caetera.
The rest is wanting, and wil be wanted. It wil be fitter for me to say, Placeat homini, qod placuit Deo. Let not that discontent man, which pleased God. And it seemed good to the Lord of the Vineyard to interrupt this faithful Servants labour with an acute disease, which supervening to age, which is an incurable sickness, put a period to his life; which was his day or season of work. He was not idle in the former part of the day, but took this business in hand at his verie evening, which man that knows not his time, could neither fore-see, nor put off.Eccl 9. 12. And now this unfinished Peice of his must stand, as an imperfect Table begun to be wrought by Apelles or Titian (famous in their Generations) which no surviving or succeeding Artist, wil adventure to accomplish with a less-skilful hand. But yet we ar not at an irrecoverable loss, since we have stil the living Oracles of Gods word, which are the original truth, whereof humane discourses are extract Copies and besides common Reason,Luk. 11. 1… we may by humble and earnest pra…e… obtain the assistance of Gods holie Spirit for the improvement of Reason in the prosecution of what is not here exprest. And tho this discourse be abruptly broken off, before it fully explain what faith is, yet we may from the Negative part, which cuts off all Notions pretending to that Title, conclude the affirmative, that justifying faith is an affiance in Christ, or in God through Christ, and for Christs sake, for absolution from our sinnes, and so conseqentlie for eternal salvation: and the justifying act of faith is to trust to, on, or in Christ, commonly called beleiving in or on him, by a speech somewhat improper, yet not without example in Exotick Authors.Bud. in Comment. Fides non modo credulitatem, sed & fiduciam significat, foreign pro confidete, sumitur. Aeschin. con… ▪ Cetesiph. foreign Diod. Sicul l. 26. foreign. Aristot. Politic. Tyr…orum esse notat, foreign. Latini pariter in eodem sensu usurpa… …edere. Val. Max. l. 6. Nemo debet nimium fortun… cr…dere. Virg. celog. 2. Nimium …crede coloti. i. e. confide, Serv. But if our Interpreters had ben so lucky, as insteed of beleiving on God, and on Christ, to have rendred the word foreign by trusting, (as e. g. John 14. 1. we read the words of our Savioor to his Disciples, Ye beleiv in God, beleiv also in me, but we may very wel read thus, Ye do trust, or, Do yee trust in God, or on God, trust also in me, or on me) use would have made the term familiar, and the thing it self obvious to the understanding, and it would have prevented many hot but impertinent contentions about words. But mine infirmities wil not permit me to enlarge in the explication of the nature of faith, which is a common Theam, but deserves exact handling. I entreat the Christian Reader to accept this final portion of heavenlie Treasure rescued from the dust, since the earthen vessel, by which it was conveyed to us, is broken by death, and crumbled into his primigenial Dust.
—Si qid novisti rectius hisce,
Candidus imperti: si non; his utere mecum. Hor.
FINIS.
End of the text · Thomas Gataker, Antidote Against Error Concerning Justification (1670)