358 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [XXV. 8. 



sufficiency of the information belong two considerations; 

 what points of religion are fundamental, and what perfec 

 tive, being matter of further building and perfection upon 

 one and the same foundation ; and again, how the grada 

 tions of light according to the dispensation of times are 

 material to the sufficiency of belief. 



9. Here again I may rather give it in advice than note 

 Degradibus it as deficient, that the points fundamental, 

 unitatis in and the points of further perfection only, 

 civitate Dei. OU ght to be with piety and wisdom distin 

 guished: a subject tending to much like end as that I 

 noted before ; for as that other were likely to abate the 

 number of controversies, so this is like to abate the 

 heat of many of them. We see Moses when he saw the 

 Israelite and the Egyptian fight, he did not say, Why strive 

 you? but drew his sword and slew the Egyptian: but 

 when he saw the two Israelites fight, he said, You are 

 brethren, why strive you? If the point of doctrine be an 

 Egyptian, it must be slain by the sword of the spirit, and 

 not reconciled; but if it be an Israelite, though in the 

 wrong, then, Why strive you ? We see of the fundamental 

 points, our Saviour penneth the league thus, He that is 

 not with us is against us ; but of points not fundamental, 

 thus, He that is not against us is with us. So we see the 

 coat of our Saviour was entire without seam, and so is 

 the doctrine of the scriptures in itself; but the garment 

 of the church was of divers colours and yet not divided. 

 We see the chaff may and ought to be severed from the 

 corn in the ear, but the tares may not be pulled up from 

 the corn in the field. So as it is a thing of great use well 

 to define what, and of what latitude those points are, which 

 do make men merely aliens and disincorporate from the 

 Church of God. 



