And certainly our works are more ours than our faith is; and man concurs otherwise in the acting and perpetration of a good work, than he doth in the reception and admission of faith.
Why? Because Donne confounds the act of faith with the assent of the fancy and understanding to certain words and conceptions. Indeed, with all my reverence for Dr. Donne, I must warn against the contents of this page, as scarcely tenable in logic, unsound in metaphysics, and unsafe, slippery divinity; and principally in that he confounds faith — essentially an act, the fundamental work of the Spirit — with belief, which is then only good when it is the effect and accompaniment of faith.
Ib.
p. 80. D.
Because things good in their institution may he depraved in their practice — ergone nihil ceremoniarum rudioribus dabitur, ad juvandam eorum imperitiam?
Some ceremonies may be for the conservation of order and civility, or to prevent confusion and unseemliness; others are the natural or conventional language of our feelings, as bending the knees, or bowing the head; and to neither of these two sorts do I object. But as to the
adjuvandam rudiorum imperitiam
, I protest against all such ceremonies, and the pretexts for them,
in toto
. What? Can any ceremony be more instructive than the words required to explain the ceremony? I make but two exceptions, and those where the truths signified are so vital, so momentous, that the very occasion and necessity of explaining the sign are of the highest spiritual value. Yet, alas! to what gross and calamitous superstitions have not even the visible signs in Baptism and the Eucharist given occasion!