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CONCERNING SUBJECTION TO MAN AND GOD.
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understand according to sobriety"; which they do not, who presume out of Scripture, by their own interpretation, to raise any doctrine to the understanding, concerning those things which are incomprehensible. And this whole controversy concerning the predestination of God, and the free-will of man, is not peculiar to Christian men. For we have huge volumes of this subject, under the name of "fate" and contingency," disputed between the Epicureans and the Stoics, and consequently it is not matter of faith, but of philosophy: and so are also all the questions concerning any other point, but the foundation before named; and God receiveth a man, which part of the question soever he holdeth. It was a controversy in St. Paul's time, whether a Christian Gentile might eat freely of any thing which the Christian Jews did not; and the Jew condemned the Gentile that he did eat, to whom St. Paul saith, (Rom. xiv. 3): "Let not him that eateth not, judge him that eateth; for God hath received him." And verse 6, in the question concerning the observing of holy days, wherein the Gentiles and Jews differed, he saith unto them, "He that observeth the day, observeth it to the Lord; and he that observeth not the day, observeth it not to the Lord." And they who strive concerning such questions, and divide themselves into sects, are not therefore to be accounted zealous of the faith, their strife being but carnal, which is confirmed by St. Paul (1 Cor. iii. 4): "When one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Appollos, are ye not carnal?" For they are not questions of faith, but of wit, wherein, carnally, men are inclined to seek the mastery one of another. For nothing is truly a point of faith, but that "Jesus is the Christ; as St. Paul testifieth, (1 Cor. ii. 2): "For I esteemed not the knowledge of anything amongst you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." And Tim. vi. 20, 21: "O Timotheus, keep that which is committed unto thee, and avoid profane and vain babblings, and opposition of

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