XLIV

of those our Saviour’s words? I confess they are very hardly to be reconciled with all the doctrines now unanimously received: nor is it any shame to confess the profoundness of the Scripture to be too great to be sounded by the shortness of human understanding. Nevertheless, I may propound such things to the consideration of more learned divines, as the text itself suggesteth. And first, seeing to speak against the Holy Ghost, as being the third person of the Trinity, is to speak against the Church, in which the Holy Ghost resideth; it seemeth the comparison is made between the easiness of our Saviour, in bearing with offences done to Him while He himself taught the world, that is, when He was on earth, and the severity of the pastors after Him, against those which should deny their authority, which was from the Holy Ghost. As if He should say, you that deny my power; nay, you that shall crucify me, shall be pardoned by me, as often as you turn unto me by repentance: but if you deny the power of them that teach you hereafter, by virtue of the Holy Ghost, they shall be inexorable, and shall not forgive you, but persecute you in this world, and leave you without absolution (though you turn to me, unless you turn also to them), to the punishments, as much as lies in them, of the world to come. And so the words may be taken as a prophecy, or prediction concerning the times, as they have long been in the Christian Church. Or if this be not the meaning (for I am not peremptory in such difficult places), perhaps there may be places left after the resurrection for the repentance of some sinners. And there is also another place that seemeth to agree therewith. For considering the words of St. Paul (1 Cor. 15:29), “What shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why also are they baptized for the dead?” a man may probably infer, as some have done, that in St. Paul’s time there was a custom, by receiving baptism for the dead (as men that now believe, are sureties and undertakers for the faith of infants, that are not capable of believing), to undertake for the persons of their deceased friends, that they should be ready to obey, and receive our Saviour for their king, at His coming again; and then the forgiveness of sins in the