According to official papist teaching, if you deny this man is in heaven, you are in mortal sin and bound for hell

Why invoke the witness of the early church fathers so much? Don’t Protestants adhere to Sola Scriptura and reject anything that’s not found in the Bible?

As a matter of fact, that’s a misunderstanding of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura means that only the Bible is regarded as an infallible source of doctrine, while other sources are still useful for clarification of the scripture and edification of the faithful. The original reformers —Luther, Calvin, Knox, et al— studied the early church fathers extensively; it’s abundantly clear from their writings. Protestants are often caricatured and accused of crafting novel doctrines by reading the scripture only and misunderstanding everything they see. This is hugely unfair. In reality, Protestant theology is derived a great deal from a thorough study of the early church fathers, in addition to the Bible. Protestantism isn’t just Biblical; it’s apostolic tradition. We invoke the witness of the early church fathers to show that not only are we ourselves being mischaracterized; they are as well. But yes, we’d still place more weight on what’s written in the Bible, since it’s also evident that the church fathers didn’t get everything right and even disagreed with one another. St. John Cassian and St. Anthony the Great of Egypt, for example, would have disagreed on many points with St. Athanasius of Alexandria and St. Augustine of Hippo. It’s axiomatic —common sense even— that the way to reconcile such discrepancies would be to apply the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. This conclusion is further strengthened by the fact that Sola Scriptura was taught by some of the foremost theologians of the early church, like the aforementioned Athanasius and Augustine, and also St. John Chrysostom, among others. In short, that so many of the greatest early church fathers agree with our Protestant theology on so many points, is fatal to the accusation that we don’t keep the apostolic tradition or have any historical or spiritual link to the early church; we do.

Credit for the above image to Luke J. Wilson.

https://www.group-telegram.com/Reformed_Apologetics

“Fishers of men” isn’t a cute metaphor. It’s baptismal.

Christ finds us. Catches us. Draws us out of the deep.

You didn’t go looking for the hook. You weren’t treading water. The gospel is not a lifeline for a drowning man, but a gasp of air for the one already drowned. We are completely spiritually dead in trespasses (Ephesians 2:1). The faithless fallen flesh can only mock the waters like Noah’s neighbors or charge unaware into the Red Sea like Pharaoh’s army.

And yet when you were sinking to the bottom in the floods before—Christ now casts His net. By His Word. Through His Sacrament. He drags your lifeless body in.

You are completely passive in being caught—but tragically active in resisting.

Paul says it plainly: you can “make shipwreck” of the very thing trying to save you (1 Timothy 1:19). You don’t earn the net. You don’t climb into the boat. But you can thrash yourself free.

The only ones lost are those who jump.

So don’t resist the net.
Don’t despise the boat.
Don’t doubt the water.

Let yourself be caught. Let Christ save you, not your own works, but the working of Christ through the water and Word where HE promised to save you.