Works, Book 4 · Letter 83
EPISTLE LXXXIII.
Mr. Mede's Letter to Mr. Hartlib, touching 2 sorts of Fundamental Articles, viz. Fundamentals of Salvation and Fundamentals of Ecclesiastical Communion: His Censure of a Book written against the Ecclesiastical State.
Mr. Hartlib,
I Received your last, with the continuation of Mr. Dury's progress and success. I gave it to read first to—, then to some others of lower rank, lastly, to—. I know not whom I shall communicate it with besides; yet I'le keep it a week longer to that purpose. But I'le tell you, so unwilling are ours here to acquaint themselves with any such business, that you shall scarce get them to read any thing that way without much entreaty. Yea I found—himself, when I carried him this, in somewhat a like disposition. Fain he would have declined the reading of it; You can tell (said he) the substance of it, &c. One Dr. a great Calvinist for the points of Predestination, being shewn it by a friend to whom I had lent it, could not be gotten, after he had read a leaf or thereabouts, to read one jot more, but cried out, It is a thing simply impossible, and never can or will be—I know one in the world, otherwise a wise, discreet, understanding man, to whom discoursing historically about Mr. Dury's negotiation and hopes, he commended it for a good and pious endeavour: But I pray God (saith he) he doth not much hurt, as things now stand at this time. He meant, as I supposed, give advantage to the Arminian party, whereunto he is a great opposite. Yea I'le tell you, but sub sigillo, that I have heard—himself say as much heretofore. You see how hard it is for men who have once drawn bloud in these Controversies, I mean have publickly engaged and declared themselves in them, to listen to any overture of Peace. But enough of this.
You long, you say, to hear my Answer to the particulars of your Letter. Which do you mean? I suppose chiefly that of Fundamental Articles. But if such great Prelates and learned Doctors (as you mention) detrect the defining of the Ratio of a Fundamental Article, or designing the Number of them, as a matter not only difficult, but inconvenient and dangerous; Quid ego miser homuncio facerem? I confess I am in part guilty of advising Mr. Dury to urge men to think of such a Definition, as a ground to examine the points of difference by, of what nature they are: But I intimated withal how likely they would be to detrect it, and wherefore; namely, lest by that means they might either declare some darling Opinion of their own not to be Fundamental, and thereby prejudice their own cause; or else exclude out of that number some Articles formerly determined by the Church, and so incur a suspicion or be liable to be upbraided with favouring some condemned Heresie.
But what if, to avoid the aforesaid Inconveniences, we should go this way to work, Make two sorts of Fundamental Articles, Fundamentals of Salvation, and Fundamentals of Ecclesiastical Communion? one, of such as are necessarii cognitu & creditu ad Salutem simply and absolutely, and therefore no Christian soul that shall be saved uncapable to understand them; another, of such as are necessarii creditu ad Communionem Ecclesiasticam in regard of the predecision of the Church.
The first not to be of such Truths as are merely Speculative, and contained only in the Understanding; but of such only as have a necessary influence upon Practice: and not all those neither, but such as have necessary influence upon the Act and Function of Christian life, or whereon the Acts without which a Christian lives not necessarily depend.
Such, namely, as without the knowledge and belief whereof we can neither invocate the Father aright, nor have that Faith and reliance upon him and his Son our Mediator Iesus Christ, which is requisite to Remission of sins and the hope of the Life to come.
How far this Ratio of a Fundamental Article will stretch, I know not; but believe it will fetch in most of the Articles of the Apostles Creed. And by it also those two main Errors of the Socinians, the one denying the Divine Nature, the other the Satisfaction of Christ, may be discerned to be Fundamental. For without the belief of the first, the Divine Majesty cannot be rightly, that is, incommunicably, worshipped, so as to have no other Gods besides him: For he that believes not Christ to be Consubstantial with the Father, and yet honours him with the same worship, worships not the Father incommunicably; which is the Formalis ratio of the worship of the true God, from whom we look for eternal Life. And without the belief of the Second (the Satisfaction of Christ) there can be (I suppose) no saving Faith or reliance upon Christ for Forgiveness of sin. After this manner may other Articles be examined. Thus much of the first sort of Fundamental Truths, measured by the necessitude they have with those Acts which are required to Salvation.
Concerning the second sort of Fundamentals, viz. necessary ad Communionem Ecclesiasticam; It is not fit that the Church should admit any to her Communion which shall professedly deny or refuse their assent to such Catholick Truths as she hath anciently declared, by universal Authority, for the Symbol and Badge of such as should have Communion with her.
And this sort of Articles without doubt fetches a greater compass, and comprehends more than the other, as being ordinate and measured by another End, to wit, of Discipline; and so contains not only such Truths, the knowledge whereof and assent whereto is necessary unto the being of Christian life, but also to the well-being thereof; and therefore not needful to be understood of every one distinctly and explicitely, as the former, but implicitely only and as far as they shall be capable or have means to come to the knowledge thereof. This is the Sum of my thoughts concerning Fundamentals: If I have not expressed my self so dilucidly as I should, I pray help it with some intention of your conceit in the reading.
For the Book you speak of, I like it not; I knew by hear-say much of the Author and his condition some years before the High-Commissi…n took notice of him, and wondred he escaped so long. For in every company he came, he took an intolerable liberty of Invectives and Contumelies against the Ecclesiastical State, when no occasion was offered him. Such Books as these never did good in our Church, and have been as disadvantageous to their Party who vent them, as they have been prejudicial to the common Cause. I durst almost affirm, that the alienation which appears in our Church of late from the rest of the Reformed hath grown for a great part from such intemperancy and indiscretion as this is, and will be still increased more and more, if those who seem to be the chief favourers of them go on in this manner. He hath too ready a Faculty in expressing himself with his pen, unless he would employ it better. For who can excuse him from a malignant disposition towards his own Mother, thus to publish her faults in Latin, of purpose to discover her shame to strangers, and to call her Sisters to see it, as Cham did his Brothers? Think what kind of crime it is for a man that is Civis and a Member, to traduce the Rulers of his people among foreiners; and what little good affection they are like to expect from ours, who are made partisans in such a kind.
—Thus with my best affection I rest, and am
Your assured Friend, Ioseph Mede. Christ's Coll. Febr. 6.