Donne has the same problem as Hooker, in the Holy Sonnet, "Show me, Dear 
Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear ... is it shee which / Goes richly 
painted? or [she] which ... mourns in Germany and here:  Sleeps she a 
thousand, then peeps one year?"  So the problem as found in Bullinger, on 
"Whether the church of God may err," as quoted in Analogy 211, and likewise 
in Milton, Reason of Church Government, (on) trying to explain how "sixteen 
ages should taxed with an error."

For Hooker, see,  as suggested, his Learned Discourse of Justification, sub 
"General Repentence Not Intended," where the place formerly sought may be: 
 "so many ways I [= Hooker, the author] have showed whereby we may hope that 
thousands of our fathers living in popish superstitions might be saved," 
even while these "fathers" were subscribing to a life-long belief in the 
efficacy of works for salvation (note implicit deathbed conversion 
motif—"mine eyes dazzle").  Again, the larger problem goes back, beyond the 
circumcising Galatians, to the salvation of the Old Testament saints--cf. 
Paul on Hagar, Mt. Sinai in Arabia, at Gal. 4, etc. Hooker later says that 
it is possible to err without being a complete heretic:  "Surely, I must 
confess unto you, if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to 
save men even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error: were it not 
for the love I bear unto this error, I would neither wish to speak nor to 
live."  Hooker also mentions and then rejects any hope for god-fearers 
(Luke's term) among the pagans, who had, in veiled form, beliefs that are 
also part of the Xtian faith.  As good think an ignorant ploughman 
implicitly learned.

See last paragraph of quotes, at ***--> … <--*** below, for the Hooker 
quotes above.

HOOKER:
Concerning general repentance, therefore: what? a murderer, a blasphemer, an 
unclean person, a Turk, a Jew, any sinner to escape the wrath of God by a 
general "God forgive me"? Truly, it never came within my heart that a 
general repentance doth serve for all sins or for all sinners: it serveth 
only for the common oversights of our sinful life, and for faults which 
either we do not mark, or do not know that they are faults. Our fathers were 
actually penitent for sins wherein they knew they displeased God, or else 
they come not within the compass of my first speech. Again, that otherwise 
they could not be saved than holding the foundation of Christian faith, we 
have not only affirmed but proved. Why is it not then confessed that 
thousands of our fathers, although they lived in popish superstitions, might 
yet, by the mercy of God, be saved? FIRST, if they had directly denied the 
very foundation of Christianity, without repenting them particularly of that 
sin, he who saith there could be no salvation for them, according to the 
ordinary course which God doth use in saving men, granteth plainly, or at 
the leastwise closely insinuateth, that an extraordinary privilege of mercy 
might deliver their souls from hell; which is more than I required. 
SECONDLY, if the foundation be denied, it is denied by force of some heresy 
which the Church of Rome maintaineth. But how many were there amongst our 
fathers who, being seduced by the common error of that church, never knew 
the meaning of her heresies! So that if all popish heretics did perish, 
thousands of them who lived in popish superstitions might be saved.

THIRDLY, seeing all that held popish heresies did not hold all the heresies 
of the pope, why might not thousands who were infected with other leaven 
live and die unsoured by this, and so be saved? FOURTHLY, if they all had 
held this heresy, many there were that held it no doubt only in a general 
form of words, which a favourable interpreter might expound in a sense 
differing far enough from the poisoned conceit of heresy; as, for example: 
did they hold that we cannot be saved by Christ without works? We ourselves 
do, I think, all say as much, with this construction, salvation being taken 
as in that sentence, "With the heart man believes unto justification and 
with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." [Rom 10:10] Except 
infants, and men cut off upon the point of their conversion, of the rest 
none shall see God but such as seek peace and holiness, though not as a 
cause of their salvation, yet as a way through which they must walk that 
will be saved. Did they hold that without works we are not justified? Take 
justification so that it may also imply sanctification, and St. James doth 
say as much; for except there be an ambiguity in some term, St. Paul and St. 
James do contradict each other, which cannot be. Now, there is no ambiguity 
in the name either of faith or of works, both being meant by them both in 
one and the same sense. Finding therefore that justification is spoken of by 
St. Paul without implying sanctification when he proveth that a man is 
justified by faith without works; finding likewise that justification doth 
sometimes imply sanctification also with it; I suppose nothing more sound 
than so to interpret St. James as speaking not in that sense, but in this. …
… no man hath faith unless he have received the Spirit of adoption, 
forasmuch as these do necessarily infer justification, but justification 
doth of necessity presuppose them; we must needs hold that imputed 
righteousness, in dignity being the chiefest, is notwithstanding in order 
the last of all these [belief, faith, adoption], but actual righteousness, 
which is the righteousness of good works, succeedeth all, followeth after 
all, both in order and in time. Which thing being attentively marked showeth 
plainly how the faith of true believers cannot be divorced from hope and 
love; how faith is a part of sanctification, and yet unto sanctification 
necessary; how faith is perfected by good works, and yet no works of ours 
good without faith; finally, how our fathers might hold, we are justified by 
faith alone, and yet hold truly that without good works we are not 
justified. Did they think that men do merit rewards in heaven by the works 
they perform on earth? The ancient fathers use meriting for obtaining, and 
in that sense they of Wittenberg have in their Confession: "We teach that 
good works commanded of God are necessarily to be done, and that by the free 
kindness of God they merit their certain rewards. [Confession of 
Wuerttemberg, ch 7] Others therefore, speaking as our fathers did, and we 
taking their speech in a sound meaning, as we may take our fathers', and 
ought, forasmuch as their meaning is doubtful and charity doth always 
interpret doubtful things favourably, what should induce us to think that 
rather the damage of the worse construction did light upon them all than 
that the blessing of the better was granted unto thousands?

FIFTHLY, if in the worst construction that can be made they had all embraced 
it living, might not many of them dying utterly renounce it? Howsoever men, 
when they sit at ease, do vainly tickle their own hearts with the wanton 
conceit of I know not what proportionable correspondence between their 
merits and their rewards, which, in the trance of their high speculations, 
they dream that God hath measured, weighed, and laid up, as it were, in 
bundles for them; notwithstanding we see by daily experience, in a number 
even of them, that when the hour of death approacheth, when they secretly 
hear themselves summoned forthwith to appear and stand at the bar of that 
Judge whose brightness causeth the eyes of angels themselves to dazzle, all 
those idle imaginations do then begin to hide their faces. To name merits 
then is to lay their souls upon the rack; the memory of their own deeds is 
loathsome unto them; they forsake all things wherein they have put any trust 
and confidence: no staff to lean upon, no ease, no rest, no comfort then, 
but only in Christ Jesus.

***--> Wherefore if this proposition were true, "To hold in such wise as the 
Church of Rome doth that we cannot be saved by Christ alone without works is 
directly to deny the foundation of faith" -- I say that if this proposition 
were true, nevertheless so many ways I have showed whereby we may hope that 
thousands of our fathers living in popish superstitions might be saved. 
<--*** But what if it be not true? What if neither that of the Galatians 
concerning circumcision nor this of the Church of Rome about works be any 
direct denial of the foundation, as it is affirmed that both are? I need not 
wade so far as to discuss this controversy, the matter which first was 
brought into question being so cleared, as I hope it is. Howbeit, because I 
desire that the truth even in this also may receive light, I will do mine 
endeavour to set down somewhat more plainly, first, the foundation of faith, 
what it is; secondly, what it is directly to deny the foundation; thirdly, 
whether they whom God hath chosen to be heirs of life may fall so far as 
directly to deny it; fourthly, whether the Galatians did so by admitting the 
error about circumcision and the law; last of all, whether the Church of 
Rome, for this one opinion of works, may be thought to do the like, and 
thereupon to be no more a Christian Church than are the assemblies of Turks 
or Jews.

[[ And from sections in same treatise further on: ]]

… was not theirs [a quasi-heretical and potentially damnable opinion] who 
thought that the Gospel should be preached only to the Jews? What more 
opposite to prophetical doctrine concerning the coming of Christ than the 
one, concerning the Catholic Church than the other? Yet they who had these 
fancies, even when they had them, were not the worst men in the world. The 
heresy of freewill was a millstone about the Pelagians' neck: shall we 
therefore give sentence of death inevitable against all those fathers in the 
Greek church who, being mispersuaded, died in the error of freewill?

Of those Galatians, therefore, who first were justified, and then deceived, 
as I can see no cause why as many as died before admonition might not by 
mercy be saved, even in error, so I make no doubt but as many as lived till 
they were admonished found the mercy of God effectual in converting them 
from their error, lest any one that is Christ's should perish. Of this, as I 
take it, there is no controversy. Only against the salvation of them who 
died, though before admonition, yet in error, it is objected that their 
opinion was a very plain direct denial of the foundation.

[[ And from further on still, on Error vs. Heresy:]]

And except we put a difference between them that err and them that 
obstinately persist in error, how is it possible that ever any man should 
hope to be saved?
…

[[ (Hooker clings to his belief that God forgives error, even if that is an 
error itself:) ]]

Is it a dangerous thing to imagine that such men (= those who err and yet 
subscribe to the foundations of the church’s faith)  may find mercy? The 
hour may come when we shall think it a blessed thing to hear that if our 
sins were as the sins of the pope and cardinals the bowels of the mercy of 
God are larger. I do not propose unto you a pope with the neck of an emperor 
under his foot, a cardinal riding his horse to the bridle in the blood of 
saints, but a pope or a cardinal sorrowful, penitent, disrobed, stripped, 
not only of usurped power, but also delivered and recalled from error and 
Antichrist, converted and lying prostrate at the feet of Christ; and shall I 
think that Christ will spurn him? Shall I cross and gainsay the merciful 
promises of God generally made unto penitent sinners by opposing the name of 
a pope or a cardinal? What difference is there between a pope and cardinal, 
and a John a Style, in this case? If we think it impossible for them, after 
they be once come within that rank, to be afterwards touched with any such 
remorse, let that be granted. The Apostle saith, "If I or an angel from 
heaven preach unto you," etc. [Gal 1:8] Let it be as likely that St. Paul or 
an angel from heaven should preach heresy as that a pope or a cardinal 
should be brought so far forth to acknowledge the truth; yet if a pope or a 
cardinal should, what could we find in their persons why they might not be 
saved? It is not their persons, you will say, but the error wherein I 
suppose them to die which excludeth them from hope of mercy: the opinion of 
merits doth take away all possibility of salvation from them. What, although 
they hold it only as an error; although they hold the truth soundly and 
sincerely in all other parts of Christian faith; although they have in some 
measure all the virtues and graces of the Spirit, all other tokens of God's 
elect children in them; although they be far from having any proud 
presumptuous opinion that they shall be saved for the worthiness of their 
deeds; although the only thing which troubleth and molesteth them be but a 
little too much dejection, somewhat too great a fear, rising from an 
erroneous conceit [conception] that God will require a worthiness in them 
which they are grieved to find wanting in themselves; although they be not 
obstinate in this persuasion; although they be willing and would be glad to 
forsake it, if any one reason were brought to disprove it; although the only 
let [hindrance] why they do not forsake it ere they die be the ignorance of 
the means whereby it might be disproved; although the cause why the 
ignorance in this point is not removed be the want of knowledge in such as 
should be able, and are not, to remove it? ***--> Let me die if ever it be 
proved that simply an error doth exclude a pope or a cardinal, in such a 
case, utterly from hope of life. Surely, I must confess unto you, if it be 
an error to think that God may be merciful to save men even when they err, 
my greatest comfort is my error: were it not for the love I bear unto this 
error, I would neither wish to speak nor to live. <--***

END OF SCROLL


On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:30:24 +0000
  Charles Butler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It's not directly relevant to Catholics except insofar as the writer was 
>in
> the process of ceasing to be a Catholic at the time he wrote it, and would
> have had these questions no doubt in mind with respect to his own family -
> but there's also Donne's suggestion in "Satire 3" that the virtue of the
> ancients might be "imputed faith" by God - in this case acting as a kind 
>of
> celestial clearing bank, where outdate pagan virtues that are no longer
> legal tender can be converted to crisp new Christian ones.
> 
> Charlie
> 
> -- 
> Website: www.charlesbutler.co.uk

[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121