J. D. 13. There is no natural knowledge of man’s estate after death, much less of reward which is then to be given to breach of faith, but only a belief grounded upon other men’s saying, that they know it supernaturally, or that they know those that knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.
T. H. The thirteenth is good and fresh.
J. D. 14. David’s killing of Uriah was no injury to Uriah; because the right to do what he pleased, was given him by Uriah himself.
T. H. David himself makes this good, in saying, to thee only have I sinned.
J. D. 15. To whom it belongeth to determine controversies which may arise from the divers interpretations of Scripture, he hath an imperial power over all men, which acknowledge the Scripture to be the word of God.
16. What is theft, what is murder, what is adultery, and universally what is an injury, is known by the civil law, that is, by the commands of the sovereign.
T. H. For the fifteenth, he should have disputed it with the head of the church. And as to the sixteenth, I would have asked him by what other law his Lordship would have it determined what is theft, or what is injury, than by the laws made in parliament, or by the laws which distinguish between meum and tuum? His Lordship’s ignorance smells rankly ('tis his own phrase in this and many other places, which I have let pass) of his own interest. The King tells us what is sin, in that he tells us what is law. He hath authorized the clergy to dehort the people from sin, and to exhort them, by good motives both from Scripture and reason, to obey the laws; and supposeth them (though under forty years old), by the help they have in the university, able, in case the law be not written, to teach the people, old and young, what they ought to follow in doubtful cases of conscience; that is to say, they are authorized to expound the laws of nature; but not so as to make it a doubtful case, whether the King’s laws be to be obeyed or not. All they ought to do, is from the King’s authority. And therefore this my doctrine is no weed.
J. D. 17. He admitteth incestuous copulations of the heathens, according to their heathenish laws, to have been lawful marriages. Though the Scripture teach us (Levit. xviii. 28) expressly, that for those abominations the land of Canaan spued out her inhabitants.
T. H. The seventeenth he hath corrupted with a false interpretation of the text. For in that chapter, from the beginning to verse twenty, are forbidden marriages in certain degrees of kindred. From verse twenty, which begins with Moreover, to the twenty-eighth, are forbidden sacrificing of children to Moloch, and profaning of God’s name, and buggery with man and beast, with this cause expressed, (For all these abominations have the men of the land done which were before you, and the land is defiled,) that the land spue not you out also. As for marriages within the degrees prohibited, they are not referred to the abominations of the heathen. Besides, for some time after Adam, such marriages were necessary.
J. D. 18. I say that no other article of faith besides this, that Jesus is Christ, is necessary to a Christian man for salvation.