Page:Apocalypse Revealed Vol I.djvu/26

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14
DOCTRINES OF THE

God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and that he who lives well and believes well, will be saved; and of the Lord that he is the Saviour; for they are ignorant of the mysteries of justification of their preachers, who, although they preach such things, yet, with the laity who hear them, they enter in at one ear and go out at the other; their teachers, indeed, think themselves learned, from knowing them, and labour much in their schools and universities to make themselves masters of them; therefore it is said above, that that faith is the faith of the clergy. But yet the teachers teach this same faith differently in the different kingdoms in which the Reformed Church is established; in Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, they say, that the Holy Spirit operates by that faith, and justifies and sanctifies men, and afterwards successively renovates and regenerates them, but without the works of the law; and they who are in that faith from trust and confidence, are in grace with God the Father; and that then the evils which they do, appear indeed, but are constantly remitted. In England, they teach, that that faith produces charity without man's knowledge, and that when man feels the Holy Spirit operate interiorly in himself, this operation also is the good of charity; and if he does not feel it, and yet does good for the sake of salvation, that it may be called good, but still that it derives somewhat from man, in that there is merit in it. Moreover, that such faith can operate this at the hour of death, yet they do not know how. In Holland, they teach, that God the Father, for the sake of the Son, justifies and purifies man interiorly by the Holy Spirit through that faith, but even to his own proper will, from which it turns back without touching it; some teach, that it does indeed lightly touch it, and that the evils of man's will do not appear in the sight of God. But a few only of the laity know any thing of these mysteries of the clergy, the latter indeed are unwilling to publish them as they are in themselves, because they know that the laity have no relish for them.