It puzzles me to understand what sense Field gave to the word, heresy. Surely every slight error, even though persevered in, is not to be held a heresy, or its asserters accursed. The error ought at least to respect some point of faith essential to the great ends of the Gospel. Thus the phrase 'cursing Eutyches,' is to me shockingly unchristian. I could not dare call even the opinion cursed, till I saw how it injured the faith in Christ, weakened our confidence in him, or lessened our love and gratitude.
Ib.
p.71.
If ye be circumcised ye are fallen from grace, and Christ can profit you nothing.
It seems impossible but that these words had a relation to the particular state of feeling and belief, out of which the anxiety to be circumcised did in those particular persons proceed, and not absolutely, and at all times to the act itself, seeing that St. Paul himself circumcised Timothy from motives of charity and prudence.
Ib.
c.3. p.76.
The things that pertain to the Christian faith and religion are of two sorts; for there are some things explicite, some things implicite credenda; that is, there are some things that must be particularly and expressly known and believed, as that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Ghost God, and yet they are not three Gods but one God; and some other, which though all men, at all times, be not bound upon the peril of damnation to know and believe expressly, yet whosoever will be saved must believe them at least implicite, and in generality, as that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus fled into Egypt.
Merciful Heaven! Eternal misery and the immitigable wrath of God, and the inextinguishable fire of hell amid devils, parricides, and haters of God and all goodness — this is the verdict which a Protestant divine passes against the man, who though sincerely believing the whole Nicene creed and every doctrine and precept taught in the New Testament, and living accordingly, should yet have convinced himself that the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke were not parts of the original Gospels!
Ib.