be saved, but the name of Christ’ (Acts iv. 12). Those, doubtless, who rest in him by faith do not seek any thing without Christ.
Yet, for all that, we do neither despise the saints nor think basely of them; for we acknowledge them to be lively members of Christ, the friends of God, who have gloriously overcome the flesh and the world. We therefore love them as brethren, and honor them also; yet not with any worship, but with an honorable opinion of them, and with just praises of them. We also do imitate the saints, for we desire, with the most earnest affections and prayers, to be followers of their faith and virtues; to be partakers, also, with them of everlasting salvation; to dwell together with them everlastingly with God, and to rejoice with them in Christ. And in this point we approve that saying of St. Augustine, in his book De Vera Religione, ‘Let not the worship of men departed be any religion unto us; for, if they have lived holily, they are not so to be esteemed as that they seek such honors, but they will have us to worship Him by whose illumination they rejoice that we are fellow-servants as touching the reward. They are therefore to be honored for imitation, not to be worshiped for religion’s sake,’ etc.
And we much less believe that the relics of saints are to be adored and worshiped. Those ancient holy men seemed sufficiently to have honored their dead if they had honestly committed their bodies to the earth after the soul was gone up into heaven; and they thought that the most noble relics of their ancestors were their virtues, doctrine, and faith; which as they commended with the praise of the dead, so they did endeavor to express the same so long as they lived upon earth.
Those ancient men did not swear but by the name of the only Jehovah, as it is commanded by the law of God. Therefore, as we are forbidden to ‘swear by the name of strange gods’ (Exod. xxiii. 13; Josh. xxiii. 7), so we do not swear by saints, although we be requested thereunto. We therefore in all these things do reject that doctrine which gives too much honor unto the saints in heaven.
CHAPTER VI.—OF THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD
We believe that all things, both in heaven and in earth and in all creatures, are sustained and governed by the providence of this wise,
