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DE CORPORE POLITICO.

believe else, cannot be saved; it followeth, that there is no more required of the salvation of one man, than another, in matter of faith.

9. About these points fundamental, there is little controversy amongst Christians, though otherwise of different sects among themselves. And therefore the controversies of religion, are altogether about points unnecessary to salvation; whereof some are doctrines raised by human ratiocination, from the points "fundamental." As for example; such doctrines as concern the manner of the real presence, wherein are mingled tenets of faith concerning the omnipotency and divinity of Christ, with the tenets of Aristotle and the Peripatetics concerning substance and accidents, species, hypostasis, and the subsistence and migration of accidents from place to place; words some of them without meaning, and nothing but the canting of Grecian sophisters. And these doctrines are condemned expressly, Col. ii. 8, where after St. Paul had exhorted them to "be rooted and builded in Christ," he giveth them this further caveat: "Beware lest there be any man that spoil you through philosophy and vain deceits, through the traditions of men, according to the rudiments of the world." And such are such doctrines, as are raised out of such places of the Scriptures, as concern not the foundation, by men's natural reason; as about the concatenation of causes, and the manner of God's predestination; which are also mingled with philosophy: as if it were possible for men that know not in what manner God seeth, heareth, or speaketh, to know nevertheless the manner how he intendeth, and predestinateth. A man therefore ought not to examine by reason any point, or draw any consequence out of Scripture by reason, concerning the nature of God Almighty, of which reason is not capable. And therefore St. Paul, (Rom. xii. 3) giveth a good rule, "That no man presume to understand above that which is meet to understand, but that he