. c. 12. p. 361.
For the better understanding whereof we must observe, as Occam fitly noteth, that an article of faith is sometimes strictly taken only for one of those divine verities, which are contained in the Creed of the Apostles: sometimes generally for any catholic verity.
I am persuaded, that this division will not bear to be expanded into all its legitimate consequences
sine periculo vel fidei vel charitatis
. I should substitute the following:
- The essentials of that saving faith, which having its root and its proper and primary seat in the moral will, that is, in the heart and affections, is necessary for each and every individual member of the church of Christ:
- Those truths which are essential and necessary in order to the logical and rational possibility of the former, and the belief and assertion of which are indispensable to the Church at large, as those truths without which the body of believers, the Christian world, could not have been and cannot be continued, though it be possible that in this body this or that individual may be saved without the conscious knowledge of, or an explicit belief in, them.
Ib.
And therefore before and without such determination, men seeing clearly the deduction of things of this nature from the former, and refusing to believe them, are condemned of heretical pertinacy.
Rather, I should think, of a nondescript lunacy than of heretical pravity. A child may explicitly know that 5 + 5 = 10, yet not see that therefore 10 - 5 = 5; but when he has seen it how he can refrain from believing the latter as much as the former, I have no conception.
Ib.