(3) Wherefore we conclude that sacred theology (which in our idiom we call divinity) is grounded only upon the word and oracle of God, and not upon the light of nature:  for it is written, Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei; but it is not written, Caeli enarrant voluntatem Dei:  but of that it is said, Ad legem et testimonium:  si non fecerint secundum verbum istud, &c.  This holdeth not only in those points of faith which concern the great mysteries of the Deity, of the creation, of the redemption, but likewise those which concern the law moral, truly interpreted:  “Love your enemies:  do good to them that hate you; be like to your heavenly Father, that suffereth His rain to fall upon the just and unjust.”  To this it ought to be applauded, Nec vox hominem sonat:  it is a voice beyond the light of nature.  So we see the heathen poets, when they fall upon a libertine passion, do still expostulate with laws and moralities, as if they were opposite and malignant to nature:  Et quod natura remittit, invida jura negant.  So said Dendamis the Indian unto Alexander’s messengers, that he had heard somewhat of Pythagoras, and some other of the wise men of Graecia, and that he held them for excellent men:  but that they had a fault, which was that they had in too great reverence and veneration a thing they called law and manners.  So it must be confessed that a great part of the law moral is of that perfection whereunto the light of nature cannot aspire:  how then is it that man is said to have, by the light and law of nature, some notions and conceits of virtue and vice, justice and wrong, good and evil?  Thus, because the light of nature is used in two several senses:  the one, that which springeth from reason, sense, induction, argument, according to the laws of heaven and earth; the other, that which is imprinted upon the spirit of man by an inward instinct, according to the law of conscience, which is a sparkle of the purity of his first estate:  in which latter sense only he is participant of some light and discerning touching the perfection of the moral law; but how? sufficient to check the vice but not to inform the duty.  So then the doctrine of religion, as well moral as mystical, is not to be attained but by inspiration and revelation from God.

(4) The use notwithstanding of reason in spiritual things, and the latitude thereof, is very great and general:  for it is not for nothing that the apostle calleth religion “our reasonable service of God;” insomuch as the very ceremonies and figures of the old law were full of reason and signification, much more than the ceremonies of idolatry and magic, that are full of non-significants and surd characters.  But most specially the Christian faith, as in all things so in this, deserveth to be highly magnified; holding and preserving the golden mediocrity in this point between the law of the heathen and the law of Mahomet, which have embraced the two extremes.  For the religion of the heathen had no constant belief or confession, but left all to the liberty of agent; and the religion of Mahomet on the other side interdicteth argument altogether:  the one having the very face of error, and the other of imposture; whereas the Faith doth both admit and reject disputation with difference.