XX. Their severity and haughtiness go to still greater lengths. Acknowledging no church but such as is pure from the smallest blemishes, they are even angry with honest teachers, because, by exhorting believers to progressive improvements, they teach them to groan under the burden of sins, and to seek for pardon all their lifetime. For hereby, they pretend, the people are drawn away from perfection. I confess, that in urging men to perfection, we ought to labour with unremitting ardour and diligence; but to inspire their minds with a persuasion that they have already attained it, while they are yet in the pursuit of it, I maintain to be a diabolical invention. Therefore, in the Creed, _the communion of saints_ is immediately followed by _the forgiveness of sins_, which can only be obtained by the citizens and members of the Church, as we read in the prophet.[759] The heavenly Jerusalem, therefore, ought first to be built, in which this favour of God may be enjoyed, that whoever shall enter it, their iniquity shall be blotted out. Now, I affirm that this ought first to be built; not that there can ever be any Church without remission of sins, but because God has not promised to impart his mercy, except in the communion of saints. Our first entrance, therefore, into the Church and kingdom of God, is the remission of sins, without which we have no covenant or union with God. For thus he speaks by the prophet: “In that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground; and I will break the bow and the sword, and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies.”[760] We see how God reconciles us to himself by his mercy. So in another place, where he foretells the restoration of the people whom he had scattered in his wrath, he says, “I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me.”[761] Wherefore it is by the sign of ablution, that we are initiated into the society of his Church; by which we are taught that there is no admittance for us into the family of God, unless our pollution be first taken away by his goodness.