“First; I taught that the things which God promises in his Word are surer than what we touch, handle, or see:  but are we so sure and certain of them?  If we be, why doth God so often prove his promises to us as he doth, by arguments drawn from our sensible experience?  For we must be surer of the proof than of the things proved; otherwise it is no proof.  For example; how is it that many men looking on the moon, at the same time, every one knoweth it to be the moon as certainly as the other doth? but many believing one and the same promise, have not all one and the same fulness of persuasion.  For how falleth it out, that men being assured of any thing by sense, can be no surer of it than they are; when as the strongest in faith that liveth upon the earth hath always need to labour, strive, and pray, that his assurance concerning heavenly and spiritual things may grow, increase, and be augmented?”

[Sidenote:  Hooker’s sermon]

The Sermon, that gave him the cause of this his justification, makes the case more plain, by declaring “That there is, besides this certainty of evidence, a certainty of adherence.”  In which having most excellently demonstrated what the certainty of adherence is, he makes this comfortable use of it, “Comfortable,” he says, “as to weak believers, who suppose themselves to be faithless, not to believe, when notwithstanding they have their adherence; the Holy Spirit hath his private operations, and worketh secretly in them, and effectually too, though they want the inward testimony of it.”

Tell this, saith he, to a man that hath a mind too much dejected by a sad sense of his sin; to one that, by a too severe judging of himself, concludes that he wants faith, because he wants the comfortable assurance of it; and his answer will be, do not persuade me against my knowledge, against what I find and feel in myself:  I do not, I know, I do not believe.—­Mr. Hooker’s own words follow.—­“Well then, to favour such men a little in their weakness, let that be granted which they do imagine; be it, that they adhere not to God’s promises, but are faithless, and without belief:  but are they not grieved for their unbelief?  They confess they are; do they not wish it might, and also strive that it may be otherwise?  We know they do.  Whence cometh this, but from a secret love and liking, that they have of those things believed?  For no man can love those things which in his own opinion are not; and if they think those things to be, which they show they love, when they desire to believe them; then must it be, that, by desiring to believe, they prove themselves true believers:  for without faith no man thinketh that things believed are:  which argument all the subtilties of infernal powers will never be able to dissolve.”  This is an abridgement of part of the reasons Mr. Hooker gives for his justification of this his opinion, for which he was excepted against by Mr. Travers.

[Sidenote:  Answers to Travers]