is most pleased), but edifying
and scandalising, according to my first proposition. Now, will anybody
except Paybody say, that obedience to the magistrate in a thing
indifferent, out of which scandal riseth, is a better duty than forbearing
for the edification of many Christian souls, and for shunning to
scandalise them. This we must take to be his meaning, or else he saith
nothing to the purpose.

_Sect._ 19. His fourth answer is, that all those scriptures condemning
scandal, must needs especially condemn that which is greatest. Peter and
his companions coming to Antioch, were in danger of a double scandal;
either of the Jews by eating with the Gentiles, which was the less, or of
the Gentiles in refusing their company, as if they had not been brethren,
which was far the greater. Now Paul blamed Peter very much, that for the
avoiding the lesser scandal, he and his companions fell into the greater.

_Ans._ 1. He is greatly mistaken whilst he thinks that a man can be so
straitened betwixt two scandals, that he cannot choose but give the one of
them. For, _nulla datur talis perplexitas, ut necessarium sit pro homini
sive hoc sive illud faciat, scandalum alicui dare_.(425)

2. That sentence of choosing the least of two evils, must be understood of
evils of punishment, not of evils of sin, as I showed before,(426) so that
he is in a foul error whilst he would have us to choose the least of two
scandals.

3. As for the example which he allegeth, he deceiveth himself to think
that Peter had given scandal to the Jews by his eating with the Gentiles.
_Cum Gentibus cibum capiens, recte utebatur libertate Christiana_, say the
Magdeburgians;(427) but when certain Jews came from James, he withdrew
himself, fearing the Jews, and so _quod ante de libertate Christiana
aedificarat, rursus destruebat_, by eating, then, with the Gentiles, he
gave no scandal, but by the contrary he did edify. And farther, I say,
that his eating with the Gentiles was a thing necessary, and that for
shunning of two great scandals; the one of the Gentiles, by compelling
them to Judaise; the other of the Jews, by confirming them in Judaism,
both which followed upon his withdrawing from the Gentiles; so that by his
eating with the Gentiles no scandal could be given, and if any had been
taken, it was not to be cared for. Wherefore there was but one scandal
which Peter and his companions were in danger of, which also they did
give, and for which Paul apprehen