— To the Worshipful M. George Summaster, Principal of Broad-Gates Hall, in Oxford, Henry Jackson wisheth all happiness.
YOUR kind acceptance of a former testification of that respect I owe you, hath made me venture to shew the world these godly sermons under your name. In which, as every point is worth observation, so some especially are to be noted. The first, that as the spirit of prophecy is from God himself, who doth inwardly heat and enlighten the hearts and minds of his holy penmen, (which if some would diligently consider, they would not puzzle themselves with the contentions of Scot and Thomas, Whether God only, or his ministering spirits, do infuse into men’s minds prophetical revelations “per species intelligibiles,”) so God framed their words also. Whence the holy father St. Augustine religiously observeth1, “That all those which understand the sacred writers, will also perceive that they ought not to use other words than they did, in expressing those heavenly mysteries which their hearts ‘conceived,’ as the blessed Virgin did our Saviour, ‘by the Holy Ghost.’ ” The greater is Castellio’s2 offence,3 who hath laboured to teach the Prophets to speak otherwise than they have already. Much like to that impious king of Spain, Alphonsus the Tenth4, who found fault with God’s works5, “Si,” inquit, “creationi affuissem, mundum melius ordinassem;” If he had been with God at the creation of the world, the world had gone better than now it doth. As this man found fault with God’s works, so did the other with God’s words; but, because “we have a most sure word of the Prophets6,” to which we must “take heed,” I will let his words pass with the wind, having elsewhere7 spoken to you more largely of his errors, whom, notwithstanding, for his other excellent parts, I much respect.
You shall moreover from hence understand, how Christianity consists not in formal and seeming “purity,” (under which who knows not notorious villainy to mask?) but in the heart-root. Whence the author truly teacheth, that mockers, which use religion as a cloak, to put off and on as the weather serveth, are worse than pagans and infidels. Where I cannot omit to shew how justly this kind of men hath been reproved by that renowned martyr of Jesus Christ, Bishop Latimer; both because it will be apposite to this purpose, and also free that Christian worthy from the slanderous reproaches of him8, who was, if ever any, a “mocker” of God, religion, and all good men. But first I must desire you, and in you all readers, not to think lightly of that excellent man, for using9 this and the like witty similitudes in his sermons. For whosoever will call to mind with what riff-raff God’s people were fed in those days, when their priests, “10whose lips should have preserved knowledge,” preached nothing else but dreams and false miracles of counterfeit saints, enrolled in that sottish Legend11, coined and amplified by a drowsy head between sleeping and waking: he that will consider this, and also how the people were delighted with such toys, (God sending them strong delusions that they should believe lies,) and how hard it would have been for any man wholly, and upon the sudden, to draw their minds to another bent, will easily perceive, both how necessary it was to use symbolical discourse, and how wisely and moderately it was applied by that religious father, to the end he might lead their understanding so far, till it were so convinced, informed, and settled, that it might forget the means and way by which it was led, and think only of that it had acquired. For in all such mystical speeches, who knows not that the end for which they are used is only to be thought upon?