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9. CONCILIATION MOVEMENT AND JOHN DURIE. 295
their communion, and commends this as an example to the
Protestant Churches. The three points of difficulty to
which he specially refers are: (i) the doctrine of the pre
sence of Christ in the sacrament, where he dwells upon the
identity of belief in the communion gift; (2) controversies
as to the omnipresence of Christ and the communication of
His properties ;
and (3) the doctrines of predestination and
freewill. In regard to the last he presses the point that
what is really important is to attribute all grace and glory
to God s mercy; and to impute all the corruption of man s
nature, his obstinacy in sin, and the viciousness and servi
tude of his freewill, and all that draws mortals to Hell, to
our own demerits, and to remove it far from God (pp. 27-8,
E. T.). He takes it for granted that both the Saxon and
Helvetian Churches, i.e., the Lutheran and the Calvinist,
"acknowledge themselves to have and desire to retain
brotherly communion with the English, Scottish, Irish
and the foreign Reformed Churches
"
(p. 33). Why then
should they deprive each other of a like brotherly
communion?
That by
"
communion "
he means joint partaking in the
sacraments, especially the Lord s Supper, is quite clear,
and he goes into the point at length. For the purpose of
establishing it he recommends a conference of divines
chosen by the princes on each side rather than a general
council of Protestants, which would dispute for ever (p.
37). Then a careful distinction of fundamentals from non-
fundamentals (p. 42), expressed in few words, according to
Tertullian s maxim,
"
Certa semper in paucis
"
(de anima,
c. 2, ad finem). He deprecates bitter language, which
ought to be expunged from books of controversy, and
wishes
"
that those sirnames of Lutherans, Zwinglians,
and Calvinists were packed away and utterly abolished,
which are rather the ensignes of faction than badges of
brotherly union, and which never pleased the ancient
Fathers
"
(p. 46). Generally his motto is to avoid all diffi
cult controversies in public teaching and formularies.
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