As for goodwill in specific, it can be attached to any heretical faith—
Socinian faith, faith in one’s own divine inspiration, Jewish faith, even
idolatrous faiths. People in these faiths believe that they have goodwill
since it looks the same in outward form; nevertheless, goodwill changes
its quality depending on the faith it is attached or united to. (This point
is clarified in the chapter on faith [§ 367 ].)
451 All goodwill that is not united to faith in the one God, who has a
divine trinity inside, is illegitimate.Take for example the goodwill prac-
ticed by the modern-day church, which has faith in three persons of the
same divinity in succession: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This constitutes a faith in three persons, each of whom is a self-sufficient
god, and thus it is a faith in three gods. Goodwill can be appended to
this faith—its proponents have in fact done this—but goodwill can never
become an integral part of it. Goodwill that is only appended to faith is
merely earthly; it is not spiritual. Therefore it is an illegitimate goodwill.
The same applies to the goodwill in many other heresies: for example,
the heresy of people who deny the existence of the divine Trinity and there-
fore turn to God the Father alone or the Holy Spirit alone, or turn to them
both rather than to God the Savior. Goodwill cannot become integral to
these people’s faith. Whether goodwill becomes integral to those faiths or is
merely attached to them, in either case the goodwill is illegitimate.
It is called illegitimate because it is like offspring from an unlawful
affair, like Hagar’s son by Abraham, who was thrown out of the house
(Genesis 21 : 9 [and following]).
This kind of goodwill is like fruit that did not grow on a tree but was
nailed there instead. It is like a carriage with horses that are attached to it
only by the reins in the driver’s hands; when the horses start to run, they
pull the driver from his seat, leaving the carriage behind.452 Hypocriticalgoodwill is what people have who in church or at home
bow themselves down until their heads almost touch the floor before
God, devoutly pour forth long prayers, wear holy expressions, kiss images
of the cross and bones of the dead, genuflect at graves, and mumble
words of sacred veneration of God with their lips, but all the while they
desire at heart to be worshiped themselves and intend to be adored as
divinities.
They are like the people the Lord describes in the following words:
When you make charitable donations, do not sound a trumpet before
you the way the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets in