AN EPISTLE TO The Author Of the ANIMADVERSIONS UPON FIAT LUX. In excuse and justification of Fiat Lux against the said Animadversions. Psal. 120. Quid detur tibi aut quid apponatur tibi ad linguam dolosam? Sagittae potentis acutae, cum carbonibus desolatoriis. Cùm his qui oderunt pacem eram pacificus: cùm loquebar illis impugnabant me gratis. 1663. An Epistle to the Author of the Animadversions upon Fiat Lux. SIR, I Was in my Journey in the North, far enough from London, when your Animadversions upon Fiat Lux came forth. Nor did I ever set eye upon them, till my return in February, about half a year after: which I tell you Sir, to excuse my silence. And now in brief: For your labour I thank you; for your endeavour I pity you; for your purpose I pardon you: that being as I believe, intended for gentlemen's satisfaction, the other for Fiat Lux his confutation, this for the Authors confusion. I may not go about to reply unto you; because this would be against the very end and principles of Fiat Lux itself, which speaks forth nothing more than this, That Controversies about Religion are vain and fruitless. And lest this should not be able to detain me from any such reply, you add your own threats, That if I shall dare to write again, you will make me know what manner of man you are. However Sir, let me crave leave to thank you for the pastime your Animadversions have given me since my return. But Sir, you mistake the very drift and design of Fiat Lux, which makes you to err ever and anon, and almost continually throughout your whole Book, whiles you take that as spoken absolutely which is only said upon an hypothesis of our present condition here in England, which is distraction, disputes, and wars, in order to a contrary end of unity, love, and concord, designed by Fiat Lux. By virtue of this capital mistake, what by me is said of the obscurity of God, Nature, and Providence, is with you impertinent; that of Light and Spirit, impious; that of Plea of Parties, frivolous; that of Reason, dissonant and to no purpose; that of Scripture blasphemous; that of the History of Religion, no less inconsequent than untrue. In a word, this thing, that thing, every thing, a wild, dishonest illiterate discourse. Some would wonder, that he who writes in consutation of a Book, should be himself the only man that understands it not? But the reason is apparent: It is your only advantage to mistake. The whole discourse of Fiat Lux chained together, one part with another, from that which is supposed to that which is designed, would breathe so much of charity and soberness, that my Commentatour could not have told how to make any mad versions upon it. It is not yet too late. Now that you have finished your Animadversions, or Comment, or Notes upon it, you may do well to take my Book again into your hands, read it calmly, and understand it. That which you speak so frequently of Fiat Lux his ignorance, is not altogether amiss: for he pretends not much to learning, although he knows what he says. But yet Sir, if you had defied and vilified him with less violence, and more seldom, and not so universally in every point of History, Language, and Philosophy, nor just then when you had least cause, it had been more for your honour. And in my mind you too much forget yourself, when you recount so often with regret and anger, that some Gentlemen of the Land should it seems, through their own inconsideration, have any liking of a Book which you judge so slight, airy, vain, fallacious, and simple: As if they had none, and you all the judgement of discerning. Gentlemen, Sir, must be allowed a since of Religion as well as Ministers; and their portion of reason must not therefore be less, because their Blood is more noble, the company they keep more accomplished, and their education better. They have the body, although they wear not the Cloak of Religion; and masters they are of their own reason, though not of yours. This is one difference between Catholic Countries and ours, that there the Clergy man is only regarded for his virtue, and the power he hath received, or is at least believed to have received from God in the great ministry of our Reconciliation. And if he have any addition of learning besides, it is looked upon as a good accidental Ornament, but not as any essential compliment of his Profession: so that it often happens without any wonderment at all, that the Gentleman Patron is the learned man, and the Priest his Chaplain of little or no science in comparison; but here in England our Gentlemen are disparaged by their own Black Coats, and not suffered to use their judgements in any kind of learning, without a gibe from them. The Gentleman is reasonles, and the scribbling Cassock is the only Scholar: he alone must speak all, know all, and only understand. I cannot but smile to see you turn so dexterously every thing that is said in Fiat Lux, to your own use. His discourse of innocence and moderation, gives you occasion to speak and amply dilate of wars, murders, adulteries, lies, hypocrisies, villainies: And when he cries, Peace, Peace, it is motive enough for you to cry, Guns and Daggers. You rave and rage's against him and the whole earth, you load your pen and pages with the tyrannies, desolations, disorders have been aforetime in the world, not heeding that you had not so much as heard at this day of any such abuses, if their holy and renowned Clergymen, who still declaimed against the vices of their times, had not left them upon record, or so much as considering, that even now in these best times of Reformation are as grand disorders in all kinds as ever were in the worst times of Popish corruption: nay there was never any crow or magpie so pecked and cawed upon the back of a sheep, as you do upon Fiat Lux, and if he do but stir or wag, you threaten, if I understand you right, to peck out his eyes. And all this, because Fiat Lux endeavours to show, that animosities about matters of Religion are groundless, prejudicial to peace and neighbourhood, ruinous, desolatory, endless, and consequently vain, fruitless, and sinful, (there may indeed be some advantage on the Defendants side, which is not in the Plaintiff or Actor, but this at present I am not to take notice of) nay finally, that they have ever done much harm in Kingdoms, but never good. In all this Sir, you do like yourself, you love nois and whirlwinds, and when you hear of Peace, prepare yourself to Battle: so ill do you understand the sound of a retreat, or, because it suits not with your ends and inclinations, will not. But all this discourse of Fiat Lux, tends, say you, to Popery. A fearful thing, and ungrateful news to Ministers; for whose foolish, endless, and ungrounded quarrels, we have lately engaged our honour, peace, livelihood, lives, and all that is dear unto us; and yet we are still, but where we were before we began: nay, ten times farther off from any reconcilement, unity, or satisfaction then before? And such success have all wars ever had, where the alarm was given in the Pulpit. But why must it tend to Popery? Because Fiat Lux is bold to say, that Popery in its own likeness is not so ugly as we imagine it. Lord! what a strange thing is this, that either Fiat Lux or any else should presume to say, that we in England, or other Nations may be carried by the reports of some interested men, to think worse of a thing than it may deserv; especially considering that we come all to Church to hear God's Word, and there meet with a man, who in the first opening of his lips, cries, Harken my Beloved to the word of the Lord; and so having with that airy hony-comb sweetened the edges of our ears, pours into them afterward what poison of his own conceived interests he pleases; all which we his dearly beloved let down greedily into our hearts, as that precious word of the Lord, which he at first proclaimed. By which fallacies, we have been in the time of these our late wars, so far inveigled (I speak to men now alive, who all know I speak true) that it became then a most dangerous thing, yea, treason itself, to say, God save the King, who was by this our Pulpit rhetoric made as odious then throughout the Land, as Popery, what ever it be, ever was or can be? And are not neighbours thus abused daily almost in every thing? where is that man who hath not by such like means been one time or other induced, to think amiss, even of his most innocent and dearest friends, till himself by trial found the contrary. O but God forbidden, you will say, that ever we should come by trial to know what Popery is. Sir, may it be far from us, so long as heaven pleases: But i'th' interim, what harm can it be to us to mitigate our passions! which if there be no mistake, are prejudicial notwithstanding to our own peace; and if a mistake there should be, are double injurious, and desperately sinful before God and man. Oh but mistake there can be none! Sir, let me tell you roundly. By your own Book of Animadversions I do as clearly see, as ever I beheld Sun in the Firmament, that you do not yourself understand what Popery is; even no more, than the poorest meanest peasant in the Parish. But who is able to make this good and clear unto you? no body Sir, so long as you are in passion; in a calm of indifferency, your very self. Nor could I without that serenity, have been ever able to discern it. But yet, there is one thing more, which will hinder your acknowledgement, although you should come to know it. It is their interest to justify themselves, and yours to condemn them. Had not you with your threats so much frighted me from any thought of writing any more, I could I think myself (who am in your judgement one of the greatest ingrams in the Land) make it yet appear that the present Popish Religion, if to pleas you they will give me leave to call it so, is not only less ugly than we conceive it, but far more innocent and amiable than I have made it. And, if there were not so much as one Catholic, or Romanist, or Papist upon earth, yet so far am I from any interest herein, that in that judgement I would notwithstanding die alone. Nor had I set before my eyes any other end in that my Fiat of moderation, against which you writ your hot Animadversions, than the peace and welfar of my Country, which under the pretended shadow of Popery, inflamed by the alarms of Vicars and their Wives, for whom we fight as it were pro aris & focis, hates and mischiefs, strikes and destroys one another without end. And yet (which is a strange thing) whilst every one conceits himself to fight for Purity of Gospel against Popery, they fight all for Popery against Purity of Gospel. And this you cannot deny, if you will but aver what in your Book of Animadversions you do yourself so frequently assert, that what good soever the Papists or Roman catholics either do or have amongst them, they have and do the same as Christians and not as Papists; and that Popery is itself nothing else, but pride, interest, ambition, tyranny, worldly respects, thirst of blood, affectation of Dominion, etc. As on the other side, grace charity and peace is, I am sure, the pure quintessence of Gospel, and the very extract of true Religion. Either then I had reason to tell you, that you understand not what Popery is; or if you do, you must needs acknowledge, that those who here in England betwixt the years of 1640. and 1660. with guns and daggers, as you often phrase it, with field rhetoric and pulpit cannon, subverted all before them, even Church and State too, let them call themselves Puritan, Independents, Presbyterians, or what they pleas, were all of them by this your own rule, as arch Papists as ever trod upon the earth. Nor is it of concernment, so they have the reality of the thing, whence they may borrow their name; whether some man upon earth be their Pope, or whether the Devil be himself their ghostly father. And I fear Sir (give me leave to express my fears) I do very deeply fear, that you were yourself some part of that dismal tempest, which in the last years of our woeful Anarchy overbore all before it, not only Church and State, but reason, right, honesty, all true Religion, and even good nature too. The very flashings of your pen move me to this thought. The whole physiognomy of your Book speaks the hot and fiery spirit of the Author. First, you cannot abide to hear of moderation, it is with you most wicked, hypocritical, and devilish, especially as it comes from me. And for this one thing Fiat Lux suffers more from you, then for all the contents of the Book put together. My reason is your passion; my moderation inflames your wrath; and you are therefore stark wild, because I utter so much of sobriety. Secondly, your so frequent talking of sword and blood, fire and faggot, guns and daggers do more than show, you have not yet let go those hot and furious imaginations. And in a frenzy you upbraid your adversary with that, which succeeded not as you would have had it in yourself. Thirdly, your prophetic assurance so often inculcated, that if you could but once come to whisper me in the ear, I would plainly acknowledge, either that I understand not myself what I say, or if I do, believe it not, gius a fair character of those fanatic times, wherein ignorance and hypocrisy prevailed over worth and truth; whereof if yourself were any part, it is no wonder you should think that I or any man else, should either speak he knows not what, or believe not what himself speaks. It was the proper badge of those times; when after the alarm sounded in the Pulpit, that our people thereupon went forth in troops to battle, neither did the peasant understand nor the man in black believe, although the sound rung generally in their ears, that it was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, which they brandished against the loyal band, their foes. Fourthly, your pert assertion so often occurring in your Book, that there is neither reason, truth, nor honesty in my words, is but the overflowing of that former intemperate zeal: and the more frequent it occurs, the less approbation it will find. Fiftly, your sharp and frequent menaces, that if I writ or speak again, I shall hear more, find more, feel more, more to my smart, more than I imagine, more than I would, relishes too much of that insulting humour our poor bleeding Land then groaned under, the many years of our anarchical confusion. Sixtly, the absence of your name in the frontispiece of your book, which I have never before observed in all my life of any Protestant writer, that hath ever in my time set forth a book here in England against Popery, givs no small suspicion that the Author of our Animadversions is no such Protestant as he would be thought to be. Lastly, that I may omit other special reasons, your other general trick of charging me then most of all with fraud, ignorance, and wickedness, when in your own heart you find me most clear from any such blemish, thereby to put a vail upon your own cause, which would otherways be disparaged, makes me smell a fox, a notorious one; sic notus Ulysses. This has been too often acted here in England to be soon forgotten. The better the cause, the louder still was the cry against those who stood for it, that the blustering nois of calumnies might drown all report of their innocence. And by all this I cannot Sir but suspect, that if the description of Popery your Animadversions gives us, be right, you are a Papist yourself, a great one, and no true Protestant. But as it is, so let it be. Thus much I only tell you, that you may see I am neither neglective of your book, nor idle; but have perused and read it over. And although what for the threats of your Animadversions, and what for the reasons of my own Fiat Lux, I may not enter into controversies: yet I hope I may let you know that I have seen your work. And that you may the better credit me, I will give you a short account of it, first in general, then in particular. All the whole design of Fiat Lux you do utterly mistake, throughout all your book of Animadversions; so that you conceiv that to be a Controversy, which is none; that to be absolutely asserted, which is but hypothetically discoursed; that to be only for one side, which is indifferently for all; although I speak most for them that are most spoken against, and am in very deed absolutely against all speaking, quarrelling, disputing about Religion. If you will but have patience to hear my purpose and design, which to all men not interested and blinded with a prejudice, is clear enough relucent in the whole context of Fiat Lux, what I say will easily appear to yourself. Fiat Lux says one thing, and supposes it, another thing he desires and aims at: that he dislikes, this commends. We are at this day at variance about Religion, this Fiat Lux supposes? but it were better to have peace, this he aims at and desires. And both these things are intermingled up and down in my Book, according to that small faculty that God hath given me, though not according to the usual method of Books now adays. Here Sir in few words you have the whole sum of Fiat Lux. And I hope you will grant that that to be the scope of my book, which I made it for. That we are now at variance is most clear and certain, by me supposed, and not to be denied. And that it were better to have peace, is as absolutely expedient, as the other is evidently true. These then being things both of them which no man can resist; either by denying the one, or disliking the other; I thought them better intermingled than set apart, and with more reason to be supposed then industriously proved. Yet to superinduce a disposition unto peace, my only work was to demonstrate an uselesnes, an endlesnes, an unprofitableness of quarrels, which I laboured quite through my book, beginning it with an intimation of our quarrels, which S. Paul calls the fruits and works of the flesh; and ending it with a commendation of charity, which is the great fruit and blessing of God's holy Spirit. Now the easier to persuade my Countrymen to a belief both of the one and the other; first, is insinuated in Fiat Lux both the ill grounds and worst effects of feuds; then is the plea of parties specified; their probabilities acknowledged; and lastly an impossibility of ever bringing our debates to a conclusion, either by light, or spirit, reason or scripture texts, so long as we stand separated from any superior judicative power unto which all parties will submit, is I think with a strong probability, if not demonstrative evidence concluded. And therefore is it thought by Fiat Lux to be more rational and Christian like, to leave these endless, groundless, and ruinous contentions; and resign our selus to humility and peace. This is the design and whole sum of my book. And although I speak up and down here for Papists, there for Protestants, elsewhere for Presbyterians or Independents, commonly out of the very discourses they make for themselves, yet do I not defend either their ways or their arguments. Nor do I teach any doctrine at all, or hold there any opinion; but only giv to understand in that one little book, what is largely discoursed in a hundred; That all parties do make out to themselves such a probability, which as it stands joined with the actors resolution, and separated from any superior visible power to which they will submit, can never be subdued. And hath not long experience proved this as true as any thing else? What is there in Fiat Lux that can be denied? Is it not evident that we are now at variance? and too long indeed have been. Is it not also clear, that peace, charity, and neighbourhood is better than variance, dissension, and wars? do not parties strongly plead for themselves, so far persuaded each one that he is in the right, that he will not yield that truth is with any but himself. Is not all this evident? I am sure it is; and all England will witness it. And if any one should be able to evince, that any reasonings made in Fiat Lux either for Papists, Protestants, or others, be not certain, or perhaps not probable, yet he does nothing, except he be able to prove likewise, that they are not probable to Fiat Lux, or to those that use them, whether Protestants or Papists; which he can no more do, than he can pull a star out of the firmament. I say Sir again, and mark I pray you what I say: If you should chance to evince, that the reasons brought by Fiat Lux either for the doctrine or practices of Papists or others, be either not probable or untrue, yet is your labour all in vain, except you be able to demonstrate likewise, that they are not probable to Fiat Lux, or to Papists and others who use those reasons: which you can no more do, than any thing that is absolutely impossible. By this time Sir, you may discern how hard it is to deal with Fiat Lux, and impossible to confute him: sigh he speaks nothing, but what is as clearly true and evident, as what we see at midday. Nor do I in this any way exalt the ability of the Author, whom you are pleased so much and frequently to disable. A Tomfool may say that, which all the wise men in the world cannot gainsay: as he did, who said the Sun was above half an hour high at noon. It was Fiat Lux his fortune rather than choice, to utter words which will no sooner be read than acknowledged. And it was your misfortune Sir, to employ your greater talents in refuding evident truths, perhaps for no other reason, but because they issued from the pen of a man, who is not so great a friend to faction as you could wish. And although you proceed very harsh and furiously; yet am I verily persuaded, you now discern, though too late for your credit, that you had all this while, according to our English proverb, good Mr. Doctor, a wrong sow by the ear. Thus far in general. Now briefly to give you some account in particular. You spend four Chapters and a hundred and eighteen pages, which is the fourth part of your Book, before you come to the first line and paragraff of mine, The applaus and honour of this world, &c, And it is not unwittily done. For being to be led, as you heavily complain, out of your ordinary road of controversies, by the wild chase of Fiat Lux, it behoved you to draw some general common places of your own, for yourself to walk in, and exercise your rhetoric and anger, before you pursue a bird that flies not, you say, in any usual tract. Preface from page 1, to page 19 Your preface, wherein you speak of my subtlety and your own pretence, affords me nothing but the beginning of your mistake, which will run quite through your book. 1 Chap. from page 19 to 29. Your first Chapter beats me about the pate, for saying that I conceal my method, with a terrible syllogistical dilemma, He that useth no method, say you, cannot conceal it, and if he hath concealed it, he hath used one. But I must pass by store of such doughty stuff, being only fit for the young Oxford Scholar, who being come home to take air, would prove before his father and mother, that two eggs were three. Then going on you deny, that Protestants ever opposed the merit of good works; which at first I wondered at, seeing the sound of it has rung so often in mine own ears, and so many hundred books written in this last age, so apparently witness it in all places, till I found afterwards in my thorough perusal of your book, that you neither heed what you say, or how much you deny. At last giving a distinction of the intrinsic acceptability of our works, the easilier to silence me, you say as I say. 2 Chap. from page 29. to 110. Your second chapter collects out of Fiat Lux, as you say, ten general conclusions, spread all over like veins and arteries, in the body of that my book. And this you do that you may make yourself a campus Martius to sport in, without confinement to my method. But you name not any page of my book where those principles may all or any of them be found; and you do wisely; for in the since those words do either naturally make out, or in which you understand them, of all the whole ten I can hardly own any one. The first of my principles must be this, That we received the Gospel first from Rome. We, that is, we English first received it thence. But against this you reply, That we received it not first from Rome, but by Joseph of Arimathea from Palestin, as Fiat Lux himself acknowledges. Sir, if Fiat Lux say both these things, he cannot mean in your contradictory falls since, but in his own true one: We, that is, we Englishmen, the now actual inhabitants of this Land, and progeny of the Saxons, received first our Gospel and Christendom from Rome, though the Britain's that inhabited this Land before, differing as much from us as Antipodes, had some of them been Christened long before us. And yet the Christendom that prevailed and lasted among the Britain's, even they also as well as we, had it from Rome too, mark this likewise. But you reply, Though persons from Rome did first plant Christianity among the Saxons, was it the Pope's Religion they taught? did the Pope first find it out? or did they Baptism in the name of the Pope? Good Sir, it was the Pope's Religion, not invented, but professed by him, and from him derived unto us by his missioners. You add, Did not the Gospel come to Rome as well as to us? for it was not first preached there. Sir, properly speaking, it came not so to Rome as it came to us. For one of the twelve fountains, nay two of the thirteen, and those the largest and greatest was transferred to Rome, which they watered with their blood: we had never any such standing fountain of our Christian Religion here, but only a stream derived to us from thence. My second assertion must be, From whom we first received our Religion, with them we must still abide. This principle as it is never delivered by Fiat Lux, though you put it upon me, so is it in the latitude it carries, and wherein you understand it, absolutely falls, never thought of by me, and indeed impossible; for how can we abide with them in any truth, who may perhaps not abide in it themselves. Great part of Flanders was first converted by Englishmen, and yet are they not obliged, either by Fiat Lux or any lux whatsoever, to accompany the English in our now present ways. My third is, The Roman Religion is still the same? This indeed: though I do not where formally express it, yet I suppose it, because I know it hath been demonstratively proved a hundred times over. You deny it has been proved, why do you not then disprove it? because, you decline, say you, all common places: very good, so do I; let us come then to proper ones. You fall then upon my Queries in the end of my book. The Roman was once a true flourishing Church, and if she ever fell, she must fall either by apostasy, heresy, or schism, etc. So I speak there. And to this you reply, that the Church that then was in the Apostles time, was indeed true, not that Roman Church that now is. So, so; then say I, that former true Church must fall then, some time or other; when did she fall? and how did she fall? by apostasy, heresy, or schism? Perhaps, say you, neither way: for she might fall by an earthquake. Sir we speak not here of any causal or natural downfall or death of mortals by plague, famine or earthquake, but a moral and voluntary laps in faith. What do you speak to me of earthquakes! you add therefore the second time, that she might fall by idolatry; and so neither by apostasy, heresy, or schism. Good Sir, idolatry is a mixed misdemeanour both in faith and manners, I speak of the single one of faith. And he that falls by idolatry, if he keep still some parts of Christianity entire, he falls by heresy; by apostasy, if he keep none. At last finding yourself puzzled, in the third place you lay on load; She fell, say you, by apostasy, idolatry, heresy, schism, licentiousness, and profaneness of life. And in this you do, not much unlike the drunken youth, who being bid to hit his master's finger with his, when he perceived he could not do it, he ran his whole fist against it. But did she fall by apostasy? By a partial one, say you, not a total one. Good sir, in this division, apostasy is set to express a total relapse; in opposition to heresy, which is the partial. Did she then fall by heresy, in adhering to any error in faith, contrary to the approved doctrine of the Church? Here you smile seriously, and tell me, that since I take the Roman and catholic Church to be one, she could not indeed adhere to any thing but what she did adhere unto. Sir, I take them indeed to be one, but here I speak ad bominem, to one that does not take them so. And then, if indeed the Roman Church had ever swerved in faith, as you say she has, and be herself but as an other ordinary particular Church, as you say she is; then might you find some one or other more general Church, if any there were, to judge her, some Ecumenical council to condemn her, some father's either greek or latin, expressly to write against her, as Protestants now do, some or other grave solemn authority to censur her; or at least some company of believers out of whose body she went, and from whose faith she fell: none of which since you are not able to assign, my Query remains unanswered, and the Roman still as flourishing a Church, as ever she was. The fourth assertion, frequently, say you, pleaded by our Author is; that all things as to religion were ever quiet and in peace, before the Protestants relinquishment of the Roman Sea. This principle you pretend is drawn out of Fiat Lux, not because it is there; but only to open a door for yourself, to expatiate into some wide general discourse, about the many wars, distractions, and factious altercations, that have been aforetime up and down the world, in some several ages of Christianity: And you therefore say it is frequently pleaded by me, because indeed I never speak one word of it. And it is in truth a falls and fond assertion. Though neither you nor I can deny, that such as keep unity of faith with that Church, can never so long as they hold it, fall out upon that account. Fift is, that the first reformers were most of them contemptible persons, their means indirect, and ends sinister. Where is it sir, where is it, that I meddle with any men's persons, or say they are contemptible. What and how many are these persons, and where did they live? But this you add of your own, in a vast universal notion, to the end you may bring in the apostles and prophets, and some kings, into the list of persons by me surnamed contemptible, and liken my speech, who never speak any such thing, to the sarcasms of Celsus, Lucian, Porphiry, Julian, and other Pagans. So likewise in the very beginning of this your second chapter you spend four leaves in a parallel betwixt me and the Pagan Celsus, whereof there is not any one member of it true. Doth Fiat Lux, say you, lay the cause of all the troubles, disorders, tumults, wars within the Nations of Europe upon the Protestants? Doth he charge the Protestants that by their schisms and seditions they make a way for other revolts? doth he gather a rhapsody of insignificant words? doth he insist upon their divisions; doth he manage the arguments of the Jews against Christ, etc. so doth Celsus, who is confuted by learned Origen, etc. Where does Fiat Lux, where does, does he, does he any such thing. Are you not ashamed to talk at this rate. I give a hint indeed of the divisions that be amongst us, and the frequent argumentations that are made to imbroil and puzzle one another, with our much evil and little appearance of any good, in order to unity and peace, which is the end of my discourse. But must I therefore be Celsus? Did Celsus do any such thing to such an end? It is the end that moralises and specifies the action. To diminish Christianity by upbraiding our frailties is paganish: to exhort to unity by representing the inconvenience of faction is a Christian and pious work. When honest Protestants in the Pulpit speak ten times more full and vehemently against the divisions, wars and contentions that be amongst us, than ever came into my thoughts; must they therefore be, every one of them a Celsus, a pagan Celsus? what stuff is this! But it is not only my defamation you aim at, your own glory comes in the rear. If I be Celsus, the pagan Celsus, then must you forsooth be Origen that wrote against him, honest Origen. That is the thing. Pray sir, it is but a word, let me advice you by the way, that you do not forget yourself in your heat, and give your wife occasion to fall out with you. However you may, yet will not she like it perhaps so well, that her husband should be Origen. My sixth principle must be, that our departure from Rome hath been the cause of all our evils. This is but the same with the fourth, in other words, but added for one to make up the number, and it is, you say, every where spread over the face of Fiat Lux. Sir you may say what you pleas to be in his face, but I know best what is in the heart and bowels both of Fiat Lux, and his author. And sure I am this never came into my thoughts. Our dissensions in faith may well multiply, as we see with our eyes they do, by our further departur from unity; and this may cause much evil. But the branches of our too too manifold evils found among the sons of men, spread all, as Fiat Lux also speaks, from that fertile root of our innate concupiscence, which by evil customs rises up into a thick bowl of vicious inclinations, while we study not to impair but rather to augment and nourish it. However I must give you leave to number this among my silly principles, to the end you may talk more copiously of the disputes, and wars and broils that are and have been in several parts of Christendom, and fall again into your much affected and often iterated rhetorical strain, So the Pagans judged the Primitive Christians, etc. Seventh is, There is no remedy of our evils, but by a returnal to the Roman Sea. This and the principle foregoing, had not you warily cloven a hair, had been all one; and both are equally mine. But sir, that may remedy our difference in faith, which neither can nor will prevent varieties in philosophy or other worldly judgements: nor considering the infinite diversity of men's humours, is there any one thing equally prevalent with all men, and at all times, to the like good effect, and if it do certainly help one evil, it is not therefore a remedy for all. But it seems you have yet a little more mirth and choler to vent, and therefore I must permit you to add this principle for mine, that you may smilingly consider, how the Romans should cure our evils, that cannot prevent disorders differences and sins amongst themselves. The eight follows, That Scripture on sundry accounts is insufficient to settle us in the truth. And in this you flourish and triumph most copiously for fifteen pages together, as the champion of the word of God. But sir, you speak not one word to the purpose, or against me at all, if I had delivered any such principle. God's word is both the sufficient and only necessary means both of our conversion and settlement as well in truth as virtue. But sir, the thing you heed not, and unto which I only speak, is this: If the scripture be in two hands, for example of the Protestant Church in England, and of the Puritan who with that scripture risen up and rebelled against her, can the scripture alone of it sells decide the business, how shall it do it, has it ever done it? or can that written word now solitary and in private hands so settle any in a way that neither himself, nor present adherents, nor future generations shall question it, or with as much probability descent from it either totally or in part, as himself first set it. This sir is the case, unto which you do neither here nor in all your whole book speak one word. And what you speak otherwis of the scriptures excellency, I allow it for good. What is not against me, is with me. Ninth, The Pope is a good man and seeks nothing but our good. This also I no no where aver. For I never saw him, nor have any such acquaintance with him, as to know whether he be a good man or no, though in charity I do not use to judge hardly of any body. Much less could I say, that he whom I know to have a general solicitude for all Churches, seeks nothing but our good. Sir, if I had pondered my words in Fiat lux, no better than you heed yours in your Animadversions upon it, they might even go together both of them to lap pepper and spices, or some other yet more vile employment. Tenth, that the devotion of Catholics far transcends that of Protestants. But sir I never made in Fiat lux any comparison between their devotions; nor can I say how much the one is, or how little the other. But you are the maddest Commentatour I have ever seen, you first make the Text, and then Animadversions upon it. Here at length you conclude your chapter, and would, say you, your book also; if you had none to deal with but ingenious and judicious readers. It seems what follows, is for readers neither judicious nor ingenious. And because I knew you took me for one of those, I went on in my view. Indeed, had I not undertaken to give you an account of your whole book, I could have been well content to stop here with ingenious and judicious readers, and look no further. Doubtless in this affair good wits will jump. You would write no more had you none but judicious readers, and these will read no more because they are judicious. But I poor ass must jog on. 3 ch. from page 110 to 119. Your third chapter concerns my preface, which in part you allow, and partly dislike. And I am equally content with both. 4. or 5 ch. from page 119 to 148. Your fourth chapter by mistake of press is named Fift, and so I must here call it. It gins my book, and takes up five of my paragraffs at once, You have loitered long about the gate like a trifling idlesbee, and mean now it seems, when you come to my own words, to go nimbly over them, as of lesser concernment than your own forestalled conceits, which you have hitherto made sport with. You first set up a maypole and then danced about it, and now at length half tired and almost out of breath, you come home to me. My first paragraff about Diversity of feuds you do not much except against. But I see you do not affect the schoolmen, haply for the same reason the French love not Talbot, having been used in their infancy to be frighted with that name. However you think I have good reason to make honourable mention of them, because they were, say you, the hammerers and forgers of Popery. Alas sir, I see that anger spoils your memory; for in the twelfth and thirteenth chapter of that very book of your Animadversions, you make Popery to be hammered and forged not a few hundreds of years, before any schoolmen were extant. You check me also for saying, that reformation of religion is pretended by emulous Plebeians, as though say you, Hezekiah, Josiah, and other good Kings and Princes also of our own were emulous plebeians. But sir, when I say in Fiat lux p. 20. what glory the emulous plebeian sees given to higher spirits, etc. I only speak of the times of vulgar insurrection against authority; as all men see except yourself, who will not. My second paragraff of the Ground of quarrels you like well, and explicate it with a text to help me out. I could not haply tell, how to cite James, the fourth chapter, the first and second verse of that chapter, without your help. However, it is kindness though it be but course, as sir Thomas Moor told his maid, when she kissed him as he was going to execution; and so I take it. My third paragraff about nullity of title would, you think, every period of it confute myself. But that saying of S. Paul, An à vobis verbum Dei processit an ad vos solos pervenit, which I make use of to stop the mouth of all vitilitigatours in religion, was cited by me, you think in an unhappy hour, because, say you, there is is not any one single text of scripture more fatal to papal pretensions. And why so Sir? because the Gospel you say, came to Rome as well as it came to us here in England. To this Sir I have already told you, that it came not to us as it came to Rome: and now I tell you again, that it came to us from Rome, and not to Rome from us. And therefore is that text fatal to us, not to them: It may open their mouths, but I am sure it stops ours. Heats and resolutions, the subject of my fourth paragraff, which yourself will not countenance, you will not permit me to dislike. You may talk against them, but I may not. But I may be excused; for I knew not then, such a man of art as yourself, would speak of that he understood better than I do. The motives of moderation in my sixth paragraff you laugh at; and I will not stop your merriment. But in all this say you Fiat lux hath a secret design, which your eagle-sighted eye has discovered. And in vain is the net spread before the eyes of a thing that hath a wing. And I must know, that the author of Animadversions, is that thing that hath a wing. 6 ch. from page 1 48 to 177. Your sixth chapter, which meets just with my sixth paragraff of the obscurity of God, in the beginning, where you declare the sufficient knowledge we have of God by divine revelation, whereunto by our humble belief we have subscribed our consent, is right and good; but not at all against me, who there treat a case of metaphysical concernment, which you apprehend not. It is no wonder then, you should so much dislike all that my plea of uncertainty, not only before any teacher appear, but after too; whiles you take the teacher and his words as they walk hand in hand actually linked together with our belief in him; which actual belief my supposition suspends and separates, to the end I may consider whether any such teacher can appear so accomplished as to move us, who live in this present age, and coin religion anew, to a belief invariable: so that through your too much haste you utterly mistake all my whole discourse, and speak nothing at all to the case I treat of. I speak wholly there, as in other parts of Fiat lux, upon a supposition of the condition, the generality of people are now actually in, here in England, where every one lets himself lose at pleasure to frame opinions and religions of themselves. And so cannot be thought to speak of a settled belief, but only of settling one, or one to be settled; which there and elsewhere in that book, I endeavour to show impossible to be so fixedly stated by any private man, but that himself and others may rationally doubt it. And that therefore our only way is to believe and not dispute, to submit to the old way we have formerly received, and not to surmise a new. This is the very substance scope and purpose not only of that paragraff, but of my whole book, which you do as utterly swerv from, as ever any blinded man, put to thrash a cock, misplaced his blow. Perhaps it is hard for you to conceiv yourself in a state you are not actually in at present: and if you cannot do this, you will be absolutely unfit to deal with such hypothetick discourses, as I see indeed you are. Beauties' little catechise had been a fit book for you to write Animadversions upon, than my Fiat lux. There is good positive doctrine, signed hic & nunc, and specified to your inclination and capacity, I meddle not with any: I deliver no positive doctrine at all; I never descend to any particular conclusion or thesis of faith; I defend no opinion but only this, That every opinion is defensible, and yet none impregnable. Do you not blush sir, to see your own gross mistake. God is my witness, when I find you, misled by your own error, so furiously to tax me with ignorance, fraud, blasphemy, atheism, I cannot but pity you. And generally you talk at random, as well in this chapter as others. Let me give some little hint of it in particular. Where I in my foresaid paragraff say that differences of faith in its branches are apt to infer a suspicion in its very root, and consequently atheism. To this you reply, that That discourse of mine is all rotten: that Christian religion itself might thus be questioned: that it is the argument of the pagan Celsus: that such contests have ever been; that Protestants are resolved: that Catholics turn atheists as well as others: that our religion is the same yesterday and to day: that our evils are from ourselves, etc. Doth this talk concern or plead to my assertion? I know all this, as well as you; but that it is nothing to the purpose, that I know, and it seems you do not. Though all this you say be true, yet still it remains notwithstanding as true and certain as it was before, and that is certain enough, That difference of faith in its branches are apt to infer a suspicion in its very root, and consequently atheism. You have but beaten the air. So likewise unto all that discourse of mine, If the Papist or Roman Catholik, who first brought us the news of our Christianity, be now become so odious, then may likewise the whole story of our Christianity be at length thought a Romance, You speak with the like extravagancy, and mind not my hypothetick at all, to speak directly to my inference, as it became a man of art to do. But neglecting my consequence, which in that discourse is principally and solely intended, you seem to deny my supposition, which, if my discourse had been drawn into a syllogism, would have been the minor part of it; And it consists of two categories; first that the Papist is now become odious: second, that the Papist delivered us the first news of Christianity. The first of these you little heed, the second you deny, That the Papist say you, or Roman catholic sirst brought Christ and his Christianity into this land is most untrue, I wonder, etc. And your reason is, because if any Romans came hither, they were not Papists, and indeed our Christianity came from the East, namely by Joseph of Arimathea, etc. And this is all you say to my hypothetick or conditional ratiocination; as if I had said nothing at all but that one absolute category, which being delivered before, I now only suppose. You use to call me a civil logician, but I fear a natural one as you are, will hardly be able to justify this motion of yours as artificial. A conditional hath a verity of its own, so far differing from the supposed category, that this being falls that may yet be true. For example, if I should say thus: A man who hath wings as an eagle, or if a man had wings as an eagle, he might fly in the air, as well as another bird. And such an assertion is not to be confuted by proving that a man hath not the wings of an eagle. Yet so you deal with me here, a great master of arts with a civil logician. But, that I may go along with you, we had not sir our Christianity immediately from the East, nor from Joseph of Arimathea, as I have already told you, we Englishmen had not. For as he delivered his Christianity to some Britons, when our land was not called England but Albion or Britain, and the inhabitants were not Englishmen but Britons or Kimbrians, so likewise did that Christianity and the whole news of it quite vanish, being suddenly overwhelmed by the ancient deluge of paganism: nor did it ever come from them to us. Nay the Britons themselves had so forgot and lost it, that even they also needed a second conversion, which they received from Pope Eleutherius. And that was the only news of Christianity which prevailed and lasted even amongst the very Britons: which seems to me a great secret of divine providence in planting and governing his Church; as if he would have nothing to stand firm and lasting but what was immediately fixed by and seated upon that rock. For all other conversions have vanished, and the very seats of the other Apostles failed, that all might the better cement in an unity of one head. Nay the tables which God wrote with his own hand were broken, but the other written by Moses remained, that we might learn to give a due respect to him whom God hath set over us as our head and ruler under him, and none exalt himself against him. I know you will laugh at this my observation, but I cannot but tell you what I think. To return then to my former discourse; when I speak good sir, of the news of Christianity first brought to this land, I mean not that which was first brought upon the earth or soil of this land, and spoken to any body then dwelling here, but which was delivered to the forefathers of the now present inhabitants, who be Saxes or Englishmen. And I say that we, the now present inhabitants of England, offspring of the English or Saxons, had the first news of our Christianity immediately from Rome, and from Pope Gregorius the Roman Patriarch, by the hands of his missioner Saint Austin. And this all men know to be as true, as they know, that Papists are now become odious. Sith then the categorick assertions are both clear; namely that the Papist first brought us the news of Christianity, and secondly, that the Papist is now become odious amongst us; what say you to my consequence? that the whole story of Christianity may as well be deemed a Romance, as any part of that Christianity we at first received, is now judged to be part of a Romance. This consequence of mine it behoved a man of those great parts you would be thought to have, to heed attentively, and yet you never mind it. You add in the close of your discourse, that many things delivered us at first with the first news of Christianity may be afterwards rejected for the love of Christ and by the commission of Christ? But sir, what love of Christ dictates, what commission of Christ allows you, to choos and reject at your own pleasure? what heretic was ever so much a fool, as not to pretend the love of Christ and commission of Christ for what he did? How shall any one know you do it, out of any such either love or commission? sigh those who delivered the articles of faith now rejected, pretended equal love of Christ and commission of Christ, for the delivery of them, as of any other. And why may we not at length reject all the rest, for love of something else? when this love of Christ, which is now crept out into the very outside of our lips, is slipped off thence. Do you think men cannot find a cavil against him, as well as his law delivered unto us with the first news of him? and as easily dig up the root, as cut up the branches. Is not the thing already done, and many become atheists upon that account. Pray speak to me something of reason. Did not the Jews by pretense of their love to that immortal God, whom their forefathers served, reject the whole gospel at once? and why may not we possibly as well do it by piece meals! Let us leave cavils: Grant my supposition which you know you cannot deny: then speak to my consequence which I deem most strong and good, to infer a conclusion which neither you nor I can grant. I tell you plainly and without tergiversation, before God and all his holy angels, what I should think if I descended unto any conclusion in this affair. And it is this: either the Papist, who holds at this day all those articles of faith which were delivered at the first conversion of this land by S. Austin, is unjustly become odious amongst us; or else my honest Parsons throw off your cassocks, and resign your benefices and glebe-lands into the hands of your neighbours, whose they were aforetime: my consequence is irrefragable. If any part, much more if many parts, great substantial parts of religion brought into the land with the first news of Christianity, be once rejected (as they are now amongst us) as Romish or Romancical, and that rejection or reformation be permitted, then may other parts and all parts, if the gap be not stopped, be looked upon at length as points of no better a condition. Nay it must needs be so: for the same way and means that lopped off some branches will do the like to others, and root too; A vilification of that Church, wherein they find themselves who have a mind to prevaricate, upon pretense of Scripture and power of interpreting it, light, spirit, or reason, adjoined with a personal obstinacy that will not submit, will do it roundly and to effect. This first brought off the Protestants from the Roman catholic Church, this lately separated the Presbyterian from the English Protestant Church, the Independent from the Presbyterian, the Quaker from the other Independents. And this last good man heeds nothing of Christian religion but only the moral part, which in deed and truth is but honest paganism. This speech is worthy of all serious consideration. And I could wish you would ponder it seriously. See if the Quaker deny not as resolutely the regenerating power of baptism, as you the efficacy of absolution. See if the Presbyterian do not with as much reason evacuate the prelacy of Protestants, as they the Papacy. See if the Socinian arguments against the Trinity, be not as strong as yours against the Eucharist. See if the Jew do not with as much plausibility deride Christ, as you his Church. See if Porphiry, Julian, and other ancient pagans do not as strongly confute all Christianity, as we any part of it. He is a fool that having a will and power enough, cannot find out as plausible a pretence for the pulling down of churches, as we had any for the destroying of monasteries. There be books lately set forth, and by more than one author, which do as powerfully dissipate the conceit we once had of hell, as any ever did elude Purgatory. Did we not lately find out texts and reasonings against our King and monarchy, as many as we found out long ago against Pope and popery? God's providence and our souls immortality if any list to deny, he may have more abundant argumentations every where occurring, than any other piece of popery now rejected ever felt. If one text of scripture be by a trope of rhetoric made to speak a sens, contrary to what was believed in catholic times in any one point, cannot another text by some such slight be forced to frustrate another. And thus when all articles are at last by such tricks of wit cashiered, can there be wanting several appearing incongruities, contradictions, tautologies, improbabilities, to disable all holy writ at once. And cannot the Jew afford us at last arguments enough, to dissipate at length the very name of Christ out of the world, which after the whole extirpation of his law will but float on men's lips like an empty shadow, till it quite vanish. These things fir, are not only true, but clear and evident. And nothing is wanting to justify them, but a serious consideration. These few words sir, which I have bestowed upon you by way of supererogation, above what I needed, will somewhat enlighten you to discern the goodness and necessity of my consequence. If the Papist who first brought us th●● news of Christianity be now become odious, the● may all Christianity at length be thought a Romance, etc. Religion like a house, if a breach he once made and not repaired to former unity will by degrees all moulder away, till no one room be left entire. 7 ch. from page 177. to 188. Your seventh chapter finished in five leaves runs, of flies over, no less than four of my paragraffs at once, which make up above fifty pages, concerning the obscurity of Nature and Providence. All which discourse of mine is, you say, nothing to my purpose, but foisted in for a blind to entertain my readers. But sir, those judicious readers you lately left behind you, that discern my purpose better than I see you do, will tell you, that it is so much to my purpose, that nothing could be more. At least you let all pass without either censure or commendation, till you meet happily at length with a word or too of mine (let fall in my ninth paragraff called Help) about scripture. This makes your heart leap; it is a common place you know how to sport in, and you never meet with that sound, but it makes you dance. Your chapter then, which is written against all my philosophical discourse of nature and providence, is called scripture vindicated, as though I had industriously wrote against scripture. And therein you sweetly dilate upon the excellency and goodness of the word of God, as if I had any way diminished it, or positively wrote against it; just according to the tone of our late dismal times. Lord, I am for thy cause Lord, I am left alone to plead thy cause Lord against thine enemies. But sir, the few words I there speak, only incidentally, in the end of that my paxagraff called Help, concerning the surmises that men may have about scripture, as they be but a small part of the many, which I know to be now vented up and down the land in this our present state of separation one from another; so if I had not given some touch of them in that metaphysic abstracted discourse of Fiat lux, which proceeds, as I have said, upon a supposition of our choosing and making religions here in England at pleasure, unto endless differences and divisions, it had been a maimed and imperfect work, and no ways satisfactory unto those judicious readers unto whom I writ, though you do not. And I cannot but tell you, whatsoever you think of yourself, you are in truth but a weak man, except you dissemble and mistake on purpose, to take that as spoken absolutely by me, and by way of positive doctrine, which I only deliver upon an hypothesis apparent to all the world besides yourself. I speak upon a supposition of doubting, which these times have brought upon us, of interpreting, accepting, rejecting, framing, forging religions and opinions to ourselves; and you reply against me words and discourses that presuppose an assent of believing. If a man believe, he cannot doubt. And if he doubt not of the scriptures truth, he cannot make exceptions against any of its properties. But if any begin to questions this, or that, or other part of doctrine contained in scripture, and delivered by those who first brought it, as every one does who swerves from the Church he found himself in, than I suppose such a one doubts. And being now thereby separated from that body of believers to which he before by faith adhered, he cannot now left to himself, but proceed, if he give attendance to the conduct of his own surmising thoughts, to more suspicions than I was willing to express. But sir, what you say here, and so often up and down your book, of Papists contempt of scripture, I beseech you will please to abstain from it for the time to come: I have conversed with the Roman catholics' of France, Flanders, and Germany; I have read more of their books, both histories, contemplatives, and scholastic divines, than I believe you have ever seen or heard of. I have seen the devotion both of common people, colleges of sacred priests, and religious houses, I have communed with all sorts of people, and perused their counsels. And after all this, I tell you, and out of my love I tell you, that their respect to scripture is real, absolute and cordial even to admiration. Others may talk of it, but they act it, and would be ready to stone that man that should diminish holy writ. Let us not wrong the innocent. The scripture is theirs, and Jesus Christ is theirs, who also will plead their cause when he sees time. 8 ch. from page 188 to 198. In your eight chapter, which falls upon my paragraff of Reason, you are absolutely in a wood, and wonder more than ordinary, how that discourse of mine, concerning reason to be excluded from the employment of framing articles of religion, can any ways concern Protestants, or be a confutation of Protestants. As though Fiat lux were written to any such concernment against Protestants. Your head is so full, it seems of that controverting faculty for Protestants against Papists, that if Popery be but mentioned in a book without an epithet of detestation, you conclude presently, that the book is written against Protestants. And if every thing therein contained, answer not the idea of your brain, than it is impertinent with you, it is silly, it is besides the purpose. And this censur you have given, still as you have gone along all my whole book hitherto, of every part and parcel of it, even from my preface to this present paragraff of Reason. You cannot see how all that vain flourishing discourse of mine, concerning diversity of feuds, ground of quarrels, nullity of title, heats and resolution, motives to moderation, obscurity of God, nature and providence, or the like, should confute Protestancy, or any way concern Protestants. And therefore it is wholly impertinent. Thus the famous Knight, when he had once conceived an idea of his own errantry, every flock of sheep must be an army, and every windmill a giant, or else it is impertinent to Don Quixot. 9 ch. from page 198 to 213. Your ninth chapter upon my paragraff of Light and Spirit; is wholly spent, neglecting all my other discourse, in solving the Jewish objection, which I answer myself. And if you have added any thing better than mine, I shall be thankful for it as soon as I see it. But I fear your vaunting flourishes about scripture which you love to talk on, will not without the help of your credo and humble resignation, solve the argument; which that you may the easilier be quit of, you never examine; but only run on in your usual flourishes about the use and excellency of God's word. I told you in Fiat lux, what the Jew will reply to all such reasonings, but you have the pregnant wit not to heed any thing that may hinder your flourishes. But sir, if you were kept up in a chamber with a learned Jew, without bread water and fire, till you had satisfied him in that objection; I am still well enough assured, for all your airy vaunts, that if you do not make use of your Credo, which here you contemn, you might there stay till hunger and cold had made an end of you. But I believe you love not such dry blows; however you may be delighted with pen encounters at a distance, where after your suppositum has been well inspired with the warm spirits blown hither out of the fortunate islands, you may cavil revile and threaten at your pleasure, and knock down the shadow of your adversary which your own spirits have raised up, and presented to you in your chamber. 10 ch. from page 213 to 228. Your tenth chapter runs over two of my paragraffs, which speak the plea of Independents, Presbyterians, and Protestants. That you esteem idle, the other senseless, the last insufficient. And to make this last good, you endeavour to disable both what I have set down to make against the prelate Protestant, and also what I have said for him. I said in Fiat lux, that it made not a little against our Protestants, that after the prelate Protestancy was settled in England, they were forced for their own preservation against Puritans, to take up some of those principles again, which former Protestants had cast down for Popish, as is the authority of a visible Church, efficacy of ordination, difference between clergy and laiety, etc. Here first you deny that those principles are popish. But sir, there be some Jews even at this day, who will deny any such man as Pontius Pilate, to have ever been in Jury. I have other things to do, than to fill volumes with useless texts, which here I might easily do, out of the books both of the first reformers, and catholic divines and counsels. Then secondly you challenge me to prove, that those principles were ever denied by our prelate Protestants. And this you do wittily and like yourself. You therefore bid me prove that those principles were ever denied by our prelate Protestants, because I say, that our prelate Protestant's here in England, as soon as they became such, took up again those forenamed principles, which Protestants their forefathers both here in England and beyond the seas, before our prelacy was set up, had still rejected. When I say then, that our prelate Protestant affirmed and asserted those principles which former Protestants denied; you bid me prove that our prelate Protestant ever denied them. Thus you contradict what I say is pleaded against our prelate Protestant. And again you do as stiffly gainsay what I plead for him myself. You laugh at me even with head and shoulders, and tell me, that the prelate-Protestant has far better arguments for themselves, than either mine is, or any I can bring; nor do they need the help of such a weak logician as myself, in this their cause. Sir give me leave to tell you here once for all, that I thought it sufficient for my design, to set down either for Papist or Protestant, when occasion required, such reasons as appeared plausible to myself; and to say all for them that can be said, was neither the work of my small ability, nor any purpose of my design. And it is enough to me, that I know no better. But let us see what my argument is, and how you crush it. The Church, say I, must have a bishop, or otherwise she will not have such a visible head, as she had at first, etc. This that you may evacuate, you tell me, that the Church hath still the same head she had, which is Christ, who is present with his Church by his Spirit and laws, and is man God still as much as ever he was, and ever the same will be: and if I would have any other visible bishop to be that head, than it seems I would not have the same head, and so would have the same and yet not the same. Thus you speak. But sir, I cannot in any reason be thought to speak otherwise, if we would use true Logic, of the identity of the head, than I do of the identity of the body of the Church. This body is not numerically the same: for the men of the first age are long ago gone out of the world, and another generation come, who yet are a body of Christians of the same kind; because they adhere to the same principles of faith. And as the body is of the same kind, though not numerically the same; so do I require, that since Jesus Christ as man, the head immediate of other believing men, is departed hence to the glory of his Father, that the Church should still have a head of the same kind, as visibly now present, as she had in the beginning; or else say I, she cannot be completely the same body, or a body of the same kind, completely visible as she was. But this she hath not, this she is not, except she have a visible bishop, as she had in the beginning, present with her, guiding and ruling under God. Christ our Lord is indeed still man-God, but his manhood is now separate; nor is he visibly now present as man, which immediately headed his believers under God, on whose influence that nature depended. His Godhead is still the same in all things, not only in itself, but in order also to his Church, as it was before, equally invisible, and in the like manner believed; but the nature delegate under God, and once ruling visibly amongst us by words and examples, is now utterly withdrawn. And if a nature of the same kind, be not now delegate with a power of exterior government, as at the first there was, then hath not the Church the same head now, which she had then. Qui habet aures audiendi audiat. And here by the way we may take notice what a sincere English Protestant you are, who labour so stoutly to evacuate my argument for episcopacy, and leave none of your own behind you, nor acquaint the world with any, although you know far better; but would make us believe notwithstanding those far better reasons for prelacy, that Christ himself, as he is the immediate and only head of invisible influence, so is he likewise the only and immediate head of visible direction and government among us, without the interposition of any person delegate in his stead, to oversee and rule under him in his Church on earth: which is against the tenor both of sacred gospel, and S. Paul's epistles, and all antiquity, and the present ecclesiastic polity of England; and is the doctrine not of any English Protestant, but of the Presbyterian, Independent and Quaker. Christ then in your way is immediate head not only of subministration and influence, but of exterior derivation also and government to his Church. Pray tell me, is he such an immediate head to all believers, or no? if he be to all, then is no man to be governed in affairs of religion by any other man: on the other side, if he be not immediate head to all, but ministers head the people, and Christ heads the ministers, this in effect is nothing else, but to make every minister a bishop. Why do you not plainly say, what it is more than manifest you would have. All this while you heed no more the laws of the land, than constitutions of gospel. As for gospel; That Lord, who had been visible governor and pastor of his flock on earth, when he was now to departed hence, as all the apostles expected one to be chosen to succeed him in his care, so did he, notwithstanding his own invisible presence and providence over his flock, publicly appoint one. And when he taught them, that he who were greatest among them should be as the least, he did not deny but suppose one greater, and taught in one and the same breath, both that he was over them and for what he was over them, namely to feed not to tyrannize, not to domineer abuse and hurt, but to direct comfort and conduct his flock, in all humility and tenderness, as the servant of all their spiritual necessities. And if a bishop be otherwise affected, it is the fault of his person, not his place. As for the laws of the land, it is there most strongly decreed by the consent and authority of the whole kingdom, not only that bishops are over ministers, but that the king's majesty is head of bishops also in the line of hierarchy, from whose hand they receiv both their place and jurisdiction. This was established not only by one, but several Parliament acts, both in the reign of King Edward and Queen Elizabeth. So that by the laws of the land there be two greeces between ministers and Christ, which you cut off, to the end you may secretly usurp the authority and place of both, to the overthrow at once both of gospel and our law too. By the laws of our land our series of ecclesiastical government stands thus, God Christ King Bishop Ministers People the Presbyterian predicament is this, God Christ Minister People. So that the ministers head in the Presbyterian predicament, touches Christ's feet immediately, and nothing intervenes. You pretend indeed, that hereby you do exalt Christ; but this is a mere cheat, as all men may see with their eyes; for Christ is but where he was; but the minister indeed is exalted, being now set in the King's place, one degree higher than the bishops, who by law is under both king and bishops too You will here say to me, What is the Papists line of Church government. There the Pope must sit next Christ, and Kings under his feet. Sir, I have not time in this short letter to discourse this subject, as it deserves. Nor does it now concern me, who have no more here to say than only this; that my argument for prelacy, howsoever in your words you may disable it, is not weakened by you in deeds at all, and as far as I can perceiv, not understood. Yet two things I shall tell you over and above what I need in this affair also. First is, that Roman catholics' do more truly and cordially acknowledge the respective Christian king of any kingdom to be supreme head of his catholic subjects even in affairs of religion, than any other, whether Independents, Presbyterians, or even prelate Protestant's have, if we speak of truth and reality, ever done. And this I could easily make good both by the laws and practices of all catholic kingdoms upon earth in any age on one side, and the opposite practices of all Protestants on the other. Second is, that for what reason Roman catholics' deny a prince to be head of the Church, for the same aught all others as they deny it in deeds, so, if they would speak sincerely as they think and act, to deny it in words also, as well as they. For catholics' do believe him to be head of the Church, from whom the channel of religion and all direction in it is derived and flows; for which reason a spring is said to be head of a river. But neither does any King upon earth, except he be priest and prophet too, ever trouble himself to derive religion, as the Pope has ever done: neither does either Protestant, Presbyterian or Independent, either in England or elsewhere, ever seek for religion from the hands of the King, or supplicate unto him when any doubt arises in those affairs, as they ought in conscience and honesty to do, for a final decision, any more than the Roman catholic does. So that whatever any of them may say, all Protestants do as much deny the thing in their behaviour as catholics' do in words; and catholics' do in their behaviour observe as much, as Protestants either practise or pretend. What is the reason that Roman catholics' in all occurring difficulties of faith, both have their recours unto their papal Pastor (unto whom kings themselves for their own ease remit them) and acquiesce also to his decision and judgement, but only because they believe him to be head of the Church. And if Protestants have no such recours, nor will not acquiesce to his majesties authority in affairs of religion, but proceed to wars and quarrels without end, the prince neglected as wholly unconcerned in those resolus, they do as manifestly deny his headship, as if they professed none. Nay to acknowledge a headship in words and deny it in deeds is but mockery. By these two words Sir, it may appear, that the king's majesty is as much head of the Church to Roman catholics' as to any Protestants; and these no more than they either derive religion or decision of their doubts from the king's chair. Ith' interim it is a shame and general scandal to the whole world, that we in England should neither supplicate nor acquiesce in affairs of religion to his judgement, whom in words we acknowledge head of the Church, but fight and quarrel without end; and yet have the confidence to upbraid Roman catholics' with a contrary belief, who although they ever looked upon their papal patriarch as spiritual head and pastor and deriver of their faith, unto whom they so submit, that he who after his decision remains contumacious forfeits his Christianity, yet have they notwithstanding in all ages and kingdoms resigned with a most ready cordial reverence unto all decisions orders and acts of their temporal princes, even in spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs, as well as civil, so far as their laws reached, as supreme head and governor's of their respective kingdoms. And all kings and princes find in a very short space, however others may utter hypocritical words of flattery, that indeed none but catholic subjects do heed and fear and observe them universally, in all whatever their commands, being taught by their religion, of which they alone give account at times appointed for penance, to hearken and obey for conscience sake all higher powers, constituted over them for good. That catholics' do universally observe their king in all affairs as well ecclesiastic as civil, I need not, to make it good, send you Sir either to the testimonies of civil law and Codex of Justinian, or to the other various constitutions of so many several provinces and kingdoms, as are and have been in Christendom; our own home will suffice to justify it. Were not the spiritual courts, both court Christian, Prerogative court and Chancery, all set up in catholic times, about matters of religion and affairs of conscience, and all managed by clerks or clergy men under the king? In brief, where ever any civil coaction or coactive power intervenes, be it in what affair it will, all such power and action who ever uses it, hath it autoritatively only from the king. For neither Pope, nor Bishop, nor any Priest ought to be a striker, as S. Paul teaches: nor have they any lands, or live, or court, or power to compel or punish either in goods or body, but what is lent or given by princes and princely men, out of their love and respect to Jesus Christ and his holy gospel, whose news they first conveyed about the world; although a just donation is, I should think, as good a title, as either emption, inheritance, or conquest, if it be irrevocable. The king is the only striker in the land ex jure, and the sword of the almighty is only in his hand; and none can compel or punish either in body or goods, but only himself, or others by his commission, in any whatever affair. He can either by his authority and laws blunt the sword of those who have one in their hand, whether by pact or nature, as have masters over servants and parents over children; or put a civil power into the hands of those who otherwise have none, as prelate's, priests and bishops. So that although the Pope derive religion, and chief direct in it, yet is the king the only head of all civil coercition, as well in Church affairs as any other, which his commands and laws do reach unto. So that the line of Church government amongst Catholics, since the conversion of kings, runs in two streams; the one is of direction, the other of coercition, That of direrection is from Christ to the chief pastor, from him to patriarches, then to metropolitans, archbyshops, bishops, priests and people: and in this line is no corporal coaction at all, except it be borrowed; nor any other power to punish, but only by debarring men from sacraments. In the other line of corporal power and authority the King is immediately under God the Almighty, from whom he receivs the sword to keep and defend the dictates of truth and justice, as supreme governor, though himself for direction and faith be subject to the Church from whose hands he received it, as well as other people his subjects; after the king succeed his princes and governor's in order, with that portion of power all of them which they have from him their liege sovereign received. This in brief of papal Church government, which we in England by our canting talk of the Lord Christ, to the end we may be all lords and all Christ's, have utterly subverted. Indeed in primitive times the channel of religion for three hundred years ran apart, and separate from civil government which in those days persecuted it. And then the line of Christian government was unmixed. None but priests guided, defended, governed the Church and Christian flock; which they did by the power of their faith, virtue, secret strength, and courage in Jesus their Lord invisible. Afterward it pleased the God of mercies, to move the hearts of emperors and kings of the earth, to submit unto a participation of grace; unto which they were more easily inclined by the innocence and sanctity of Christian faith, especially in that particular of peaceful obedience unto kings and rulers, though aliens, and pagans, and persecutors of religion. And now kings being made Christian were looked upon by their subjects with a double reverence, more loved, more feared, more honoured than before. Nor could Christian people now tell, how to express that ineffable respect they bore their kings, now coheirs of heaven with them, whom before in their very paganism they were taught by their priests to observe as gods upon earth, not for wrath only or fear of punishment, but for conscience also and danger of hazarding not only their temporal contents, but their eternal salvation also, for their resisting authority though resident in pagans. And kings on the other side, who aforetime by the counsel of worldly senators enacted laws, such as they thought fit for present policy, and defended them by the sword of justice, wielded under God to the terror of evil doers and defence of the innocent, began now, as was incumbent on their duty, to use that sword for the protection of Christianity, and faith, and the better way now chalked out unto them by Christian priests, from Jesus the wisdom and Son of God. And by the direction of the same holy prelate's, abbots and other priests, who were now admitted with other senators into counsel, did they in all places enact special and particular laws answerable to the general rule of faith, which they found to be more excellent and perfect, than any judgement they had by natural reason hitherto discovered. Thus poor Christians, who had hitherto but only a head of derivation, of counsel and direction, which could but only bid them have patience for Christ's sake, and conform themselves to his meek passion, when they suffered from aliens, and when they suffered injury from one another, could only debar the evil doer, if he gave not satisfaction, from further use of sacraments; those Christians I say, who could hitherto have no other comfort or assistance in this world under their spiritual pastor, than what words of piety could afford, had now by the grace of heaven princely protectors, royal defenders, and head champions under God, to vindicate and make good all Christian rights, discipline, and truths now accepted and established from faith, as well as other civil rites and customs dictated aforetime from mere reason, equally revengers upon all evil doers indifferently, that were found criminal in affairs, as well purely Christian as civil, still using the advice and direction of their prelate's and Christian peers in the framing and establishing of all those laws they were now resolved to maintain. So it was done in England; so in all places of the Christian world. And then the line of Christian government ran mixed, which before was single. And Christians now had a Joshua to their Aaron, who were only led by Moses before. And although Aaron was head of the Church, yet Joshua was head and leader, prince and captain of all those people who were of that Church. The chief bishop is an Aaron, and every Christian king a Joshua. And as it is a content and support to Aaron to have a Joshua with him, to fight God's battles and keep the people in awe; so is it not a little comfort to Joshua to have an Aaron by him, with whom he may consult. And indeed no kingdom can have a perfect accomplishment without the presence of these two swords, civil and spiritual. Ecce duo gladij hîc! satis est. And although Christians even at this day, when any heresy or novelty arises, have still recours unto the same head of their religion for a decision of the doubt, whom they consulted before (for as the channel of Christianity is and must be still the same, so must the springhead be the same also) yet when the thing is once decided, they have none but kings and governor's under him, to see the direction executed, as the only overseers with coactive power to do it. And thus you see in brief how the Pope is head of the Church, and the King head likewise, and both immediately under God; but with this difference, that the king only governs Christianity established in his own royalty by law; the Pope without further law rules and guides all the streams and rivulets of religion, where ever it flows. He is head of primary direction; the king of sovereign execution: he of guidance and spiritual authority only; the king of civil and natural power invested in his place and dignity from God above, to maintain any laws as well purely Christian as civil, which himself shall accept establish and promulgate. The Pope persuades; but the King commands: and although the Pope should formally command, yet virtually and in effect such a command amounts only to a persuasion; and he that obeys not, feels no smart for it, except the king be pleased to espous his cause, and punish the contumacious; which if he justly do, then have kings a just authority in those affairs; if otherwise, then hath the Pope no means of help or defence in this world, any more after the conversion of kings than before it; and help himself he cannot any other way, than only by putting people out of his communion, who care not of it. The Pope is obeyed for conscience and love only to his religion; the King for wrath and conscience too: the Pope delivers the rule but in general only, and blunt on one side; the king particularises and gives it an edge: the Pope's headship is exercised in Aught and Should be; the Kings is Will and shall be: the Pope secludes the contumacious from heaven, which he that beleeus not feels not; the King over and above that, cuts off malefactors from the face of the earth too, and they shall be made by feeling to believe it. And these two defend and secure one another, and keep both Christians and their faith inviolate. And while Christians themselves do both tenderly love their Pape and chief pastor, and springhead of their religion, which is believed beyond him to flow invisibly from God the great ocean of truth; and withal do honour fear, and observe their King and princely governor, who only bears the sword of justice and not in vain, to take revenge upon all those, whom the love of religion and spiritual sword of their pastor will not keep in awe, they do their duty as they ought, and shall find happiness therein. I must make haste, and can say no more at present to this business, which as I have told you is somewhat besides my purpose. Only one thing I must needs tell you before I pass on. Although a king is in a good and proper sense styled head as well of Church as State within his own dominions: yet head of the Church absolutely, is so proper to the Roman Patriarch, that no man upon earth besides himself hath ever so much as pretended to it: and that for six reasons. First because head of the Church absolutely, intimates an universal right over the guidance of religion, not in one kingdom only but all, where ever that religion is. And the king of France, for example, neither did nor can pretend to be head of the Church of England, much less of Hungary, Spain, afric, Italy, Greece, Asia, etc. Yet such a head there must needs be, to the end the Church may be one mystic and spiritual body, at unity in itself. And that head must be unlimited to time and place, as the Church itself is ever permanent, and universally spread; nor must the government alter, as governments of particular kingdoms do. Secondly, head of the Church absolutely, involves a primacy both of conveying and interpreting faith: and all princes in Europe received their faith at first from priests, who sent for that end from their spiritual superior converted their kingdoms, but they never gave faith either to them or their pastor. Thirdly he that is head of the Church absolutely, must be of the same connatural condition with the whole hierarchy, to confirm, baptise, ordain, preach, atone the almighty by sacrifice, impose hands, segregate men from their worldly state unto his own spiritual one, and in a special manner to exercise those priestly functions, unto which he segregates them. Fourthly, head of the Church absolutely is to be indifferent unto kingdoms and all sorts of government, as the religion also is, and keep it like itself in all places unaltered in its nature, however in its general dictates it may concur to the direction and good of all people and governments. And therefore he cannot be confined to one place or government, but must be as it were separate and in a condition indifferent to all; as a general bishop, whose sole care is to heed those eradiations of faith spread up and down the world, may be and is; when princes heed but their own particular kingdoms, and care not how religion goes in another, any more than their wealth or polility. Thus the sunbeams though they fall upon several soils diversely affected, yet they keep their own nature unaltered, by virtue of one general fountainhead of light which is indifferent to every kingdom, and dispenses, distributes and keeps the rays unaltered. Fiftly, the ends and ways of religion are quite of another nature from all worldly businesses, and therefore require a particular superintendent set apart for them; as indeed they ever have had since the time of religions first master, who ●s he did educate his in order to a life eternal in a government apart, being himself a man distinct from Cesar, so used he to speak of religious duties as separate and differing from others; Reddite saith he, quae Caesaris sunt, Caesari, & quae Dei, Deo. In very truth, the Church and Christianity, as it is a thing accidental to all worldly states, so is it superinduced upon them as an influence of another rank and order, unto a particular end of future bliss; whereas all states do of themselves aim no further than the peace and happiness of this life. And so for the particular end and means answerable thereunto, which religion uses, it will require a particular and special overseer. Thus Aristotle, though he conceited the celestial orbs to be contiguous, and so all rapt together in a motion from East to West, yet because they had special motions of their own, he therefore allowed them particular Intelligences to guide those motions. So we see in ordinary affairs, a man that hath several ways and ends is guided by several directours, in this by a lawyer, in that by a physician, by a gardener, by a tradesman, etc. Sixtly, because head of the Church absolutely, must be one that succeeds in his chair, whom Jesus the master left and appointed personally to feed his flock. No king upon earth ever pretended to sit in that fisherman's chair, or to succeed him in it, which the Pope to my knowledge for sixteen hundred years hath both challenged as his right, and actually possessed. And Catholics are all so fixed in this judgement, that they can no more disbeleev it, than they can cease to believe in Jesus Christ. 11 ch from page 228. to 246. Your eleventh chapter falls directly upon my fifteenth paragraff of Scripture. And therefore I may here expect, you should insult over me to the purpose. But Sir I told you before, and now tell you again, that I know no other rule to Christians either for faith or manners, no other hope, no other comfort, but what scripture and holy gospel affords. But this is not any part of the debate now in hand, however you would persuade the world to think so. When four or five men of several judgements collected from the very scripture you and I talk of, rise up one against another, with one and the same scripture in their hands, with such equal pretence of light power and reason, that no one will either yield to another, or remain himself in the same faith, but run endless divisions without contronl: does scripture prevent this evil? does it, has it, can it remedy it? can any one man make a religion by the authority of scripture alone, which neither himself nor any other, upon the same grounds he framed it, shall rationally doubt of. This is our case and only this; which you do not so much as take notice of, to the end you may with a more plausible rhetoric, insult over me as a contemner of God's word. Nor do you heed any particle of my discourse in this paragraff, but according to your manner collect principles to the number of seven, out of it, you say, which I do not know to be so much as hinted in it, that as you did before, so you may now again play with your own bauble, and refute yourself. And they are in a manner the very same you sported with before in your second chapter. 1 from the Romans we received the gospel. 2 what is spoken in scripture of the Church belongs to the Roman. 3 the Roman every way the same it was, etc. of all which I do not remember that I have in that my paragraff so much as any word. Sir either speak to my discourse as you find it, or else hold your peace. As if than you had overheard me aforehand, to give you this deserved check, at the close of your chapter, you bring in some few words of mine, with a short answer of your own, annexed to the skirts of it; which I here set down as you place them yourself. No man can say, speaks Fiat lux, what ill popery ever did in the world, till Henry the eights days, when it was first rejected. Strange, say you in your Animadversions, when it did all the evils that ever were in the Christian world. With the Roman catholics' unity ever dwelled. Never Protestant's know their neighbour catholics', not their religion. They know both. Protestants are beholding to Catholics, for their benefices, books, pulpits, gospel. For some, not all. The Pope was once believed general pastor over all. Prove it. The scripture and gospel we had from the Pope. Not at all. You cannot believe the scripture, but upon the authority of the Church. We can and do. You count them who brought the scripture as liars. No otherwis. The gospel separated from the Church can prove nothing. Yes itself. This short work you make with me. And to all that serious discourse of mine concerning scripture, which takes up sixteen pages in Fiat lux, we have got now in reply thereunto, this your Laconic confutation. Strang. Never. Know both. Some not all. Prove it. Not at all. Can and do. No otherwis. Yes itself. 12 ch. from page 246 to 262. Your twelfth chapter meets with my history of Religion, as a flint with steel, only to strike fire. For not heeding my story which is serious temperate and sober, you tell another of your own, fraught with defamations and wrath, against all ages and people: and yet speak as confidently, as calm truth could do. First you say that Joseph of Arimathea was in England, but he taught the same religion that is in England now. But what religion is that Sir? Then; you tell us that the story of Fugatius and Damian missioners of Pope Eleutherius you do suspect for many reasons. But because you assign none, I am therefore moved to think they may be all reduced to one, which is, that you will not acknowledge any good thing, ever to have come from Rome: Then, say you, succeeded times of luxury, sloth, pride, ambition, scandalous riots and corruption both of faith and manners, over all the Christian world, both princes, priests, prelate's and people. Not a grain of virtue or any goodness we must think, in so many christian kingdoms and ages. Then did Goths and Vandals and other pagans overflow the Christian world. Either to punish we may believe, or teach them how to mend their manners. These pagans took at last to christianity. Haply, because it was a more lose and wicked life, than their own pagan profession. These men now christened advanced the Pope's authority, when Christian religion was now grown degenerate. And now we come to know, how the Roman bishop became a patriarch above the rest, by means namely of new converted pagans. It was an odd chance, they should think of advancing him to what they never knew, either himself or any other advanced before amongst Christians, whose rotten and corrupt faith they had lately embraced. And yet more odd and strange it was, that all Christendom should calmly submit to a power, set up anew by young converted pagans; no prince or bishop either there or of any other Christian kingdom, either then or ever after to this day excepting against it. Had not all the bishops and priests of Africa, Egypt, Syria, Thrace, Greece, and all the Christian world acknowledged by a hundred experiments the supreme spiritual authority of the Roman patriarch in all times, before this deluge of Goths and Vandals? But why do I expostulate with you, who writ these things not to judicious readers, but fools and children, who are not more apt to tell a truth, than to believe a lie. But what follows next. Towards the beginning of this lurry, say you, were the Britons extirpated by the Saxes, who in aftertimes received Austin from Rome, a man very little acquainted with the gospel. Here's the thanks good S. Austin hath, who out of his love and tenderness to our nations welfar, after so long and tedious journeys, entered upon the wild forest of our paganism, with great hazards and inexpressable sufferings of hunger cold and other corporal inconveniences, to communicate Christ Jesus and his life and grace unto our nation. After this, say you, religion daily more and more declined till the Reformation risen. This is the sum of your story; which if I like not, I may thank myself, say you, for putting you in mind of it. Indeed Sir, it is so falls and defamatory, and loaden with foul language, not only against all nations, ages and people of all conditions, but against the honour of sacred gospel itself, which must utterly die and have no life or power in the world for so many ages together, that I think neither I, or any else can like it, that bears any respect either to modesty religion or truth. You say in this your chapter that I am better at telling a tale then managing an argument: but I shall now believe, that you are equally good at both. 13 ch. from page 262 to 278. Your thirteenth chapter takes up my three following paragraffs about the history of religion; wherein, after that according to your wont manner you tell me, that I do not myself understand what this thing, that thing, the other thing means, although it be part of my own discourse, you say at length, that there is no such matter, as I speak; make another story of your own of the same mettle with your former, imposing afresh upon popery (by which: I do not indeed know what you mean) a wain-load of adulteries, drunkenness, atheism, poison, avarice, pride, cruelties, tumults, blasphemy, rebellions, wars, crimes, and yet threatening to say if you should chance to be provoked, far harder things than these. Sir, may no man provoke a wasp. But if this be the right character of popery, which here and elswher up and down your book you give us, I tell you first, it will be a difficult matter to know in what age or place popery most reigns; secondly, that it is a thing I am so far from excusing, that I wish it back to the pit of hell from whence it issued; thirdly, that Roman catholics', if you be indeed against this popery, are all on your side; for to my knowledge their religion is as opposite to it, as light to darkness, or God to Belial; lastly, that you need not be so tenderly fearful for the spreading of popery; for honest men will be ready to stone him that teaches it; and knaves, hypocrites, adulterers, traitors, thiefs, drunkards, atheists; rebels, if you have given a right description of popery, are all Papists already; these need no conversion, the other will by no rhetoric be moved to it. Indeed you fright us all from papistry. For though some love iniquity as it is gainful or pleasursom, and must needs suffer for it when they are condemned at the sessions, and cannot avoid it; yet is no man willing to suffer either loss of goods or imprisonment, death or banishment, for the bare name of popery, that hath neither gain nor pleasure in it. In a word, wicked men will act your popery, but not own it. And they which own a popery, which I see you are not acquainted withal, will not only dislike others, but hate themselves, if through any frailty or passion they should ever fall into any article of your popery here described. Good Sir, take heed of blaspheming that innocent Catholic flock, which the angels of God watch over to protect them. Be afraid to curs them, whom God hath blessed, or impose that upon their religion which it detests. 14 ch. from page 278 to 286. In your fourteenth chapter which is upon my title of Discovery, you labour to show that the contradictions, which I mentioned in Fiat lux to be put upon popery, are no contradictions at all. Well Sir, although slanders put upon them be never so contradictory and opposite, yet must they have patience: all is true enough, if it be but bad enough. While our King's reign in peace, than the Papists religion is persecuted, as contrary to monarchy: when we have destroyed that government, then is the papist harassed, spoiled, pillaged, murdered, because their religion is wholly addicted to monarchy, and Papists are all for Kings. Have not these things been done over and over, within the space of twenty years here lately in England? All men now alive have been eye-witnesses of it: These things as put upon Papists cease to be contradictions: And if they should be contradictions, both parts are therefore true in our country logic, because they are put upon Papists. Is there not something of the power of darkness in this? One latin word of mine which shuts up that my Paragraff of Discovery, Ejice ancillam cum puero suo, because I english it not, you translate it for me, or rather interpret it, Banish all men out of England but Papists: this according to your gloss must be my meaning. And you seem to exult, that Fiat lux, who in outward show pretends so much moderation, should let fall a word that betrays no little mischief in his heart. Good Lord whither does passion hurry man's spirit! All that period of mine in the end of the foresaid § is but merely copied out of one of Saint Paul's letters, which he wrote to the Galatians, the fourth chapter of that Epistle, wherein those very words, alluding to a passage in Moses his Pentateuch, are expressed. Do you either read in your English bible, Banish all men out of England? or understand any such meaning of Ejice ancillam cum puero suo, Gal. 4.30. Pray peruse the ten last verses of that chapter attentively; and see if I have not in my discourse so copied out their meaning and very words too, so far as it behoved; that I have done nothing else. Abraham had two sons, saith S. Paul, one of a handmaid, the other of a free woman, etc. These things are an allegory, etc. But as then, he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now. But what saith the scripture? cast out the bondwoman with her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman, etc. Pray tell me soberly; Did the apostle mean by those words, Cast out the bondwoman with her son, that the sons of Ishmael should be put to the sword or banished out of their kingdom? Now pray hear my discourse which I copied out of that original; If my reader here be cautious, he may easily discern a reason, why all these sects are so boisterous one against another, and every one of them against the Roman catholic. Ishmael disturbed the whole house, and was ever quarrelling and bustling against Isaac. The reason is the same both here and there. Ishmael was a natural son, and Isaac the legitimate heir. And natural sons be generally seditious, violent and clamorous. As Ishmael therefore was Isaac his natural brother; so is a protestant minister but the byblow of a catholic Priest; the Presbyterian likewise to him: and so forward, till you come to the Quaker, who was begot by a delusion, and brought into the world by a fright: his hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him. The remedy and only means of peace is, Ejice ancillam cum puero suo. These be my words out of S. Paul; and what is his meaning, the same is mine. But you will have me in spite of my teeth, because I speak nothing but good, still to mean some evil. I thought S. Paul had meant by those words, if I must needs discover my understanding to you, that the peaceable isaac's were the only sons of God's promised love and favour, the inheritance of which blessing boisterous ishmael's can never work out to themselves, by all their persecutions and bustling contentions. And according to this meaning I concluded, that to consider and think seriously of this, were the only remedy and means of peace amongst us here in England. Eijce ancillam cum puero suo is an antidote against all contentious emulations, which are a suspicious mark not of an elect but of a reprobate. But I must neither think nor speak, nor mean, but what you will have me to do; and that shall still be something that is odious. An emblem hereof was the rod of Moses, which taken in the right end was a walking staff; in the wrong, a serpent. 15 ch. from page 286. to 304. In your fifteench chapter, upon my paragraff of Messach, you are in a mighty plunge what this Messach should be, and what the etymology of that word. Latin it is not, greek it is not, and you are sure it is not hebrew; surely it is, say you, some uncouth word, like that of the Gnostics Paldabaoth. Alas good Sir, it is English, a pure English word; used here in England all the Saxons times, and some hundred years after the conquest, till the French monosyllable had by little and little worn out the last syllable of the word. And you may find it yet in the old Saxon laws which I have read myself, those especially of King Ina, if I rightly remember the name, which be yet extant, wherein strict care and provision is made that a due reverence be kept by all people in the Church all the time of their Messach, which now we call Mess or Mass. Then having laughed at my admiration of catholic service, you carp at me for saying that the first Christians were never called together to hear a sermon; and to convince me, you bring some places out of S. Paul's Epistles, and the Acts, which commend the ministry of the word: This indeed is your usual way of refuting my speeches; you flourish copiously in that which is not at all against me, and never apply it to my words, lest it should appear, as it is, impertinent. I deny not that converts were further instructed, or that the preaching of God's word is good and useful: but that which I say is, that primitive Christians were never called together for that end, as the great work of their Christianity. This I have so clearly proved, both in the second dialogue of the Reclaimed Papist, and also in the foresaid paragraff of Messach, that you divert from that, to declaim of the necessity and excellency of preaching, and bring neither text nor reason that may reach to my words at all. You go on, and wonder much, that we should hear nothing in scripture of this Christian sacrifice, if any such were. Sir, you will neither hear nor see. But, say you, the passion of our Lord is our Christian sacrifice. Do not I say so too? But that this incruent sacrifice was instituted by the same Lord before his death, to figur out daily before our eyes that passion of his, which was then approaching, in commemoration of his death, so long as the world should last; this, though I plainly speak it, you take no notice of it. But the Judaical sacrifice, say you, is said by the apostle in his epistle to the Hebrews, in this to differ from the sacrifice of Christians, that ours was done but once, theirs often. It is true the sacrifice of our Lord's passion, of which the apostle in that whole discourse intends only to treat, in opposition to that of bulls and goats, was so done but once, that it could not be done twice. But as the sacrifices of the old law, were instituted by almighty God, to be often iterated before the passion of the Messiah for a continual exercise of religion; so did the same Lord for the very same purpose institute another to be iterated after his death, unto which it were to have reference, when it should be passed, as the former had to the same death, when it was to come. And it hath a reference so much the more excellent, as that it doth by the almighty power of the same Messiah, exhibit to the eye of his believers, that very true real body as crucified amongst us, whereof the former Mosaical sacrifices gave merely a shadow. Did not our Lord do this? were not the apostles according to this rite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sacrificing to our great Lord God, when S. Paul was by imposition of hands segregated from the laity for his divine service, as I clearly in that my paragraff evince out of the history of the Acts of the apostles. No, say you, the apostles were not then about any sacrifice, but only preaching God's word, or some such thing to the people, in the name and behalf of God. But Sir, is this to be in earnest or to jest? The sacred text says, they were sacrificing to our Lord, liturgying, and ministering to him. You say they were not sacrificing to God, but only preaching to the people. And now the question is, whether you or I more rightly understand that apostolical book. For my sense and meaning I have all antiquity, as well as the plain words of sacred text, you have neither. 16 ch. from page 304 to 313. Your sixteenth chapter upon my paragraff of the Virgin Mary, which is, you say, the most disingenuous of all my book, is spent in an invective against calumnies, which brings you upon your often iterated common place of Pagan's reproaches to Christians. And whatever my paragraff may be, this your chapter seems to me as ingenious as the very best of your book, and absolutely frivolous. And must you inveigh against calumnies, whose whole book is nothing else? it is a bundle of slanders, and a mere quiver of sharp arrows of desolation. 17 ch. from page 313 to 325. Your seventeenth chapter upon my paragraff of Images or Figures, nibbles at more of my discourse made in that one paragraff, than you have taken notice of in ten of my others. And therefore I mean to come up close to you. A man, say you, may indeed have such thoughts of devotion, as Fiat lux speaks of, upon the sight of images which he sees hanging in Churches, if he be a man distraught of his wits, not if he be himself and sober. So then, mad men it seems can tell what figures represent, sober and wise men cannot. Again, The violation of an image, say you, redounds to the prototype, if it be rightly and duly represented, not else. And when then is Christ crucified, for example, rightly and duly represented? Are you one of those can tell what figures represent, or not. The hanging up of traitors in effigy is done say you, only to make a declaration of the fact, and not to cast a dishonour upon the person. So you say: Because you know it done long after the fact has rung all the whole kingdom over; and don not in places of concourse, but ignominy; not in the Exchange, but Tyburn; not with any characters declaring the fact, but with a halter about his neck, to denote the death and ignominy inflicted, as far as is possible, upon him. You go on. Where the Psalmist complains of God's enemies breaking down his sculptures, he means not thereby any images or figures, but only wainscot or carved ceiling. Surely the Prophet wanted a word then to express himself, or translatours to express the Prophet. If we must guests at his meaning without heeding his words, one might think it as probable, that the house of God was ordained with sculptures of Cherubims, and other angels, to represent his true house that is above, as with the circles, quadrats, triangls, rhombos, and rhomboides of wainscot. The eye, say you again, may not have her species as well as the ear, because God has commanded the one and not the other. This Sir you only say. Fiat lux makes it appear, that God commands and commends both, and the nature of man requires both: nor can you give any reason, why I may not look upon him who was crucified, as well as hear of him. You add. Nor is the sole end of preaching as Fiat lux would have it, only to move the mind of the hearers unto corresponding affections. Why do not you say then, what else it is for? you deny my words, but declare yourself no other end, but what I have in those short words expressed. You may haply conceal in your heart some other end of your preaching, which you are loath to speak; as to procure applaus, to vent your rhetoric, to get good benefices, to show your fine cloth and silks, your pure neat white starched bands and cuffs, buttoned handkerchiefs, and ladies gloves, to inflame factions, get wives, or the like; but I could not think of all things at once; nor needed I to express any more, than that one end of preaching which is connatural, apostolical, and legal. You go on. God indeed commanded the Cherubims to be set upon the ark, but those cherubims were images of nothing; of what should they be images. Nor were they set up to be adored. Besides God who commanded them to be set up, did no more gainsay his own prohibition of images to be made, than he contradicted his own rule which forbids to steal, when he commanded his people to spoil the Egyptians. But Sir, since the real Cherubims are not made of our beaten gold; those set up by Moses must be only figures. And of what else should they be figures but of those real ones. Nor is it either to my purpose or yours, that they are set up to be adored. For images in catholic Churches, are not set up for any such purpose; nor do I any where say it. No man alive has any such thought, no tradition, no council hath delivered it, no practice infers it. Christian Philosophers or Schooolmen have indeed raised a philosophical question; Whether any respect may be terminated upon the Figur, purely as it is such an absolute entity in itself, besides that relative one that falls only upon the prototype: But what they question, or what they talk, or what they resolve, does no more belong, because they say it, unto catholic faith, then if they had been asleep and said nothing. All catholic counsels and practice declares such sacred figurs, to be expedient assistants to our thoughts in our divine meditation and prayers: and that is all that I know of it. And the relative respect that is given to any figure as it is such a figure, whether in a glass, or in any more fixed posture to supply the defects of a mirror, that it terminates naturally upon the sampler or prototype is evident to right reason and philosophy. And it cannot be otherwise. That which you speak of the Israelites spoiling the Egyptians by God's command, hath some species of an argument in it. But Sir, we must know, you as well as I, that God who forbids men to steal, did not then command to steal, as you say he did, when he bade his people spoil the Egyptians under the species of a loan. Many things legitimate that their act of spoil, and clear it from any notion of theft or robbery or stealing. First, they might have of themselves a right to those few goods, in satisfaction of the long oppression they had unjustly undergon: and it may be that in that their great haste, their own allowance was not then paid them. But secondly, because it is a thing of danger, that any servant should be allowed to right himself, by putting his hand to his master's goods, though his case of wrong be never so clear, therefore did the command of God intervene to justify their action. And the absolute dominion of the whole earth and all that is in it, being inseparably in the hands of God, made that by God's express command to be truly now and justly the Hebrews right, which by an inferior and subordinate title, such as is in the hand of creatures, belonged to the Egyptians before. So that the Hebrews in taking those goods with them, did not steal: nor did God command them to steal, when he bade them carry those goods of the Egyptians with them; for that upon that very command of God they now ceased to be the Egyptians any more. But this can no ways be applied to the business of Images: nor could God command the Hebrews to make any images, if he had absolutely forbidden to have any at all made. For this concerns not any affair between neighbour and neighbour, whereof the supreme Lord hath absolute dominion, but the service only and adoration due from man to his maker, which God being essentially good and immutably true cannot alter or dispens with. Nor doth it stand with his nature and deity to change, dispens, or vary the first table of his law concerning himself, as he may the second which concerns neighbours; for want of that dominion over himself, which he hath over any creature, to give or take away its right, to preserv or destroy it, as himself pleases. God may disable my neighbours right, and enable me to take to myself that which before was his, but he cannot command me to commit idolatry or dishonour himself. If he should deny himself, he would not be God. From hence it must needs follow, that if it be the sens and mind of the almighty, that to set up any images in Churches be derogatory to his glory, then could not God possibly command any to be there set up. For these two precepts, Thou shalt set up images, and Thou shalt set up none, are not only contradictory in terms of the law proposed, enounced and promulgated, but infer also in God himself that contradiction, opposition and self-denial, which is inconsisting with such an unchangeable veracity. God may possibly allow me either to curs or spoil my neighbour, or in a case expressed not to help him; but he should deny himself (which the deity cannot do) if either he should command me to blaspheme himself, or the honour due to him either to refuse it him, or give it to another. When therefore one and the same God so often forbids his people to make to themselves any images; and yet in the same divine law commands them to set up Cherubims in his own temple; it cannot, being a concernment of his worship, be otherways meant, than that they should make no sculptures or figurs, but what himself commands, and which may assuredly represent persons dear to himself, as Fiat lux interprets it. And if an image in itself be opposite to God's glory, as Anticatholiks' think, than could not God possibly command the making or setting up of any, in his holy temple or place of divine worship. But you go on. Fiat lux says, God forbade foreign images, such as Moloch, Dagon, and Astaroth, but he commanded his own. But Fiat lux is deceived in this as well as other things, for God forbade any likenesses of himself; and he gives the reason, because, saith he, in Horeb ye saw no similitude of me. Sir, you may know and consider, that the statues and graven images of the heathens, towards whose land Israel then in the wilderness was journeying, to enter and take possession, were ever made by the pagans to represent God, and not any devils, although they were deluded in it. And therefore were they called the gods of the mountains, the gods of the valleys, the gods of Accaron, Moab, etc. There was therefore good reason; that the Hebrews, who should be cautioned from such snares, should be forbidden to make to themselves any similitude or likeness of God. What figure or similitude the true God had allowed his people, that let them hold and use, until the fullness of time should come, when the figure of his substance, the splendour of his glory, and only image of his nature should appear. And now good Sir, since God has been pleased to show us his face, pray give Christians leave to use, and keep, and honour it. If you be otherwise minded, and take pleasure in defacing his figurs, I think they have good reason on their sides, who honour them. You proceed. It is a pretty fancy in Fiat lux, to say we have as well a precept, Thou shalt make graven images, as we have, Thou shalt not. I wonder where Fiat lux finds that precept, sigh all ancients have it, and all translations read it, Thou shalt not. What is that It they have, what is that It they read. Do you think that Fiat lux reads one and the same text, both Thou shalt and Thou shalt not. Moses his making and the command given him to make Cherubims, is a rule good enough to Fiat lux, that some images may be made and set up in Churches: as also is that precept. Thou shalt not make to thyself any images, another rule to show him, that some images we are not to make to our selus on our own heads, in imitation of pagans. No less whimsical is that relation Fiat lux says an image hath to some one prototype, for example, to S. Peter rather then to Simon Magus: for there can be no relation, but what the imagination either of the framer of spectator makes. Sir, speaking as I do of a formal representation or relation, and not of the efficient cause of it, I cannot but wonder at this your illogical assertion. Is the pictur made by the spectator's imagination to represent this or that thing? or the imagination rather guided to it by the pictur? By this rule of yours the image of Caesar, did not my imagination help it, would no more represent a man than a mous. I know the imagination can, for want of real pictures, make fantastical ones to itself; in the clouds, walls, air, or fire, etc. But when she hath real ones, made her either by art or nature, she cannot make them to be otherways then they are; nor think or say, except she will abuse herself to derision, that a cat is a dog, or an ox a hare. Nor does it help you at all, that there may be mistakes; for we treat not here of the errors but natures of things. And you will not, I hope, maintain, that there is no real heat any any where, but what the imagination makes, because the good poor man of Norway sent out of his own country upon an errand, stood warming his fingers there, at a hedge of red roses. 18 ch. from page 325 to 365. Your eighteenth chapter, which is upon my paragraff of Tongues or Latin service, hath some colour of plausibility. But because you neither do, nor will understand the customs of that Church, which you are eager to oppose; all your words are but wind. I have heard many grave protestant divines, ingeniously acknowledge, that divine comfort and sanctity of life requisite to salvation which religion aims at, may with more perfection and less inconvenience be attained by the customs of the Roman Church, than that of ours. For religion is not to sit pierching upon the lips, but to be got by heart, it consists not in reading but doing; and in this not in that lives the substance of it, which is soon and easily conveyed. Christ our Lord drew a compendium of all divine truths into two words, which his great apostle again abridged into one. And if the several gospels for every day in the year, which are or may be in the hands of all catholics', the chiefest particles of divine epistles, books of sacred history and meditation upon all the mysteries of salvation, and spiritual treatises for all occasions and uses, which be numberless amongst catholics', adjoined to the many several rites of examination of conscience, daily and continual practice of prayer and fasting, and an orderly commemoration of the things God hath wrought for us throughout the year, which all by law are tied to observe, and do observe them, may not give a sufficient acquaintance of what concerns our salvation, and promote them enough towards it, I am to seek what it is that can; or what further good it may do, to read the letter of Saint Paul's epistles, to the Romans for example, or Corinthians, wherein questions, and cases and theological discourses are treated, that vulgar people can neither understand, nor are at all concerned to know. And I pray you tell me ingenuously, and without heat, what more of good could accrue to any by the translated letter of a book, whereof I will be bold to say that nine parts in ten concern not my particular, either to know or practice; than by the conceived substance of Gods will to me, and my own duty towards him? or what is there now here in England when the letter of scripture is set open to every man's eye, any more either of peace or charity, piety or justice, than in former catholic times, when the substance of God's word and will was given people in short, and the observance of their duty prolixly pressed upon them. What did they do in those ancient catholic times? they flocked every day in the week to their Churches, which stood continually open, there to pray and meditate and renew their good purposes; they sung psalms, hymns, and canticles all over the land both day and night; they built all our churches, that we have at this day remaining amongst us, and as many more, which we have razed and pulled down; they founded our universities, established our laws, set out tithes and glebe-land for their clergy, built hospitals, erected corporations; in a word, did all the good things we found done for our good in this our native kingdom. But now, Quid agitur in Anglia? Consulitur de religione. The former Christians practised, and we dispute; they had a religion, we are still seeking one: they exercised themselves in good works by the guidance of their holy catholic faith which leads to them; all these works we by our faith evacuate as menstruous rags: they had the substance of true religion in their hearts; we the text in our lips: they had nothing to do but to conform their lives to Gods will; all our endeavour is to apply God's word to our own factions. Sir mistake me not: The question between us, is not, whether the people are to have God's word or no: but whether that word, consist in the letter left to the people's disposal; or in the substance urgently imposed upon people for their practice. And this because you understand not, but mistake the whole business, all your talk in this your eighteenth chapter vades into nothing. Where Fiat lux says in that forenamed paragraff, that the Pentateuch or hagiography was never by any Highpriest among the Jews put into a vulgar tongue, nor the Gospel or Liturgy out of greek in the Eastern part of the Christian Church, or latin in the Western: You slight this discourse of mine, because hebrew, greek and latin was, say you, vulgar tongues themselves. I know this well enough. But when and how long ago were they so? not for some thousand years to my knowledge. And was the Bible, Psalms, or Christian Liturgy then put into vulgar tongues, when those they were first writ in, ceased to be vulgar? This you should have spoke to, if you had meant to say any thing, or gainsay me. Nor is it to purpose, to tell me that S. Jerom translated the Bible into Dalmatian; I know well enough it has been so translated by some special persons into Gothish, Armenian, Ethiopian, and other particular dialects. But did the Church either of the Hebrews or Christians, either greek or latin, ever deliver it so translated to the generality of people, or use it in their service, or command it so to be done, as a thing of general concernment and necessity? So far is it from that, that they would never permit it. This I said, and I first said it, before you spoke, and your mere gainsay without further reason or probability of proof cannot dispossess me. Syrian you would prov not to be any known language in Palestin, because the common people understood it not, as appears in the book of Kings, where Rabshakeh general of the host of Sennacherib, when he defied King Hezekiah under the walls of Jerusalem, was entreated by the Hebrew princes to speak Syriack, and not the Jews language to fright the poor people. But Sir you are mistaken: for that tongue the princes persuaded Rabshakeh to speak, was the Assyrian, his own language, which was learned by the gentry of Palestin, as we in England learn french; which although by abbreviation it be called Syriack, yet it differed as much from the Jews language, which was spoke by Christ and his apostles (whereof Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani is part) and was ever since that time called syrian or syriack, as french differs from english. And if you would read attentively, you may suspect by the very words of the text, that the Jews language even then was not Hebrew. For it had been a shorter and plainer expression, and more answerable to their custom so to call it, if it had been so, than by a paraphrase to name it the Jews language; which if then it was called Syrian, as afterwards it was, then had the prince's reason to call it rather the Jews language than Syrian, because that and the Assyrian differed more in nature than appellation; though some difference doubtless there was in the very word and name, although translatours have not heeded to deliver it. Shibbolet and Sibbolet may differ more in signification than sound; nor is British and Brutish so near in nature, as they are in name. And who knows not that Syria and Assyria were several kingdoms. As likewise were the languages. Dr. Cousins, now bishop of Durham, lately sojourneying in Paris, when he understood of a graecian bishop's arrival there, did with some other english gentlemen in his company give him a visit, and afterwards with the same or like company went frequently to see him. The articles of our English Church were translated into greek, and shown him. Many questions were asked him about the service of the graecian Church, praying for the dead, invocation of Saints, real presence, confession; etc. Dr. Cousins can tell himself what answer he received from that venerable grave prelate Cyrillus, archbishop of Trapesond; for that was his name and title. In brief, he owned not those articles, as any way consonant to the faith of the Greeks, who believed and had ever practised the contrary. He also told them distinctly and openly, that Mass or Liturgy was, and had ever been the great work of their Christianity all over the greek Church; that confession of sins to a priest, praying for the dead, invocation of saints, and such like points wherein we in England differ from papists, were all great parts of their religion, and their constant practice. Finally he let them know, that all the Liturgies, both those of S. Basil, S. Chrysostom, S. Gregory Nazianzen, were ever kept in the learned greek, differing from the vulgar language. And withal showed his own greek book of Liturgy, which he used himself at the altar. Dr. Cousins did himself see him officiate with his lay brother a monk of S. Basil, belonging to S. Catherins' monastery in mount Sina, ministering to him at the altar; and found both by his words and practice, that in all those and other essential parts and observances of Christianity the Greeks agreed perfectly with the Roman Church. This testimony, Sir, of a venerable archbishop to such a worthy person as Dr. Cousins, might I should think suffice to justify my words, and make you believe with me, that Christian Liturgies have ever been used, as Fiat lux speaks, in a learned language distinct from the vulgar. But we need not go far from home for a testimony. When was the Bible or Service-book seen here in England for a thousand years' space in any other language but Latin, before Edward the sixth days (except haply the Psalter, which the Saxons and almost all people, have ever had in their own tongue, being a chief part of Christians devotion) or in British or Welsh, before the bishop of S. Asaph his translation? You mightily insult over me in your 336 page, for saying, that the bible was kept by the Hebrews in an ark or tabernacle, not touched by the people, but brought out at times to the priest, that he might instruct the people out of it. Here, say you, the author of Fiat lux betrays his gross ignorance and something more: for the ark was placed in sanctum sanctorum, and not entered but by the priest only once a year, whereas the people were weekly instructed. But Sir, do I speak there of any sanctum sanctorum, or of any ark in that place? was there, or could there be, no more arks but one? If you had been only in these latter days, in any synagogue or convention of Jews, you might have seen even now, how the bible is kept still with them in an ark or tabernacle, in imitation of their forefathers, when they have now no sanctum sanctorum amongst them. You may also discern, how according to their custom, they cringe and prostrate at the bringing out of the Bible, which is the only solemn adoration left amongst them; and that there be more arks than that in sanctum sanctorum. If I had called it a box or chest or cuphoard, you had let it pass. But I used that word as more sacred. 19 ch. from page 365 to 386. I discerned in your ninteenth chapter which is upon my paragraff of Communion in one kind a somewhat more than ordinary swelling choler; which moved me to look over that my paragraff afresh. And I found my fault: there is in it so much of Christian reason and sobriety, that if I had since the time I first wrote it, swerved from my former judgement, of the probability I conceived to be in that Roman practice of communicating in one kind, I had there met with enough to convert myself. And therefore wondered no more, that you should load me so heavily with your wont imputations of fraud, ignorance, blasphemy, and the like. I ever perceiv you to be then most of all passionate, when you meet with most convincing reasons. When the exorcist is most innocent, his patient, they say, then frets and foams and curses most. 20 ch. from page 386 to 402. There is in your twentieth chapter, which prosecutes my paragraff of Saints or Hero's, one word of yours, that requires my notice. I say in that my paragraff, that the pagans derided the ancient Christians for three of their usages. First, for eating their own God: Secondly, for kneeling to their priests genitals: Thirdly, for worshipping an ass' head. This last you except against, and impute my story to my own simplicity and ignorance, if not to something worse; for that imputation, say you, was not laid upon Christians at all, but only upon Jews, as may be seen in Josephus. But Sir, you may know, that in odiosis the primitive Christians were ever numbered among the Jews; and what evil report lay upon these, was charged also upon them, though sometimes upon another ground. And although Josephus may excuse the Jews, and not the Christians; yet a long while after his time, if not even then also, that slander was generally all over the pagan world charged upon Christians also, as may be read in Tertullian, and other ancient writers; yea and very probably, by the very Jews themselves who bitterly hated them, cast off from themselves upon the poor Christians on another account, which I specified in Fiat lux. And through the whole Roman empire did the sound of this scandal ring up and down, for some ages together. Insomuch that Tertullian himself conceited, that as the Christian religion was derived from the Jews; so likewise that the imputation of the ass' head, first put upon the Jews, might from them be derived upon Christian religion. And the same Tertullian, in his Apologetic adds these words: The calumnies, saith he, invented to cry down our religion grew to such excess of impiety, that not long ago in this very city, a pictur of our God was shown by a certain infamous person, with the ears of an ass and a hoof on one of his feet, clothed with a gown, and a book in his hand; with this inscription, This is Onochoetes the God of Christians. And he adds, that the Christians in the city, as they were much offended with the impiety; so did they not a little wonder at the strange uncouth name the villain had put upon their lord and master; Onochoetes forsooth, he must be called Onochoetes. And are not you Sir a strange man, to tell me, p. 393. that what I speak of this business is notoriously falls, nay and that I know it is falls, and that I cannot produce one authentic testimony, no not one of any such thing. But this is but your ordinary confidence. 21 ch. from page 402 to 416. I must not marvel, that my following paragraff, called Dirge, is so wantonly played upon, in your one and twentieth chapter. You think of no body after they are dead; nor does it at all concern you, whether they be in hell, or heaven, or some third place, or not at all. But Sir, were not all the ancient monuments of the foundations of our churches, colleges, and chapels in England now destroyed, you would find yourself with that wretched opinion of yours, absolutely incapable to enter upon any benefice, cure, or employment in this land. But the times are changed, and you have nothing now to do, but to eat, drink, and preach; for to morrow you shall die. 22 ch. from page 416 to 435 In your two and twentieth chapter, which is of the Pope, you do but only repeat my words, and not understand, and deny, and laugh. 23 ch. from page 435 to Finis. Your last chapter is upon my paragraff of Popery, wherein I set down eleven other parcels of catholic profession, all of them innocent, unblamable and sacred. You only by't at the first of them, and having it seems enough filled yourself with that, your wearied bones go to rest. With Mas comedido, the title of my last paragraff you meddle not at all: It is doubtless to you who understand not the English word Messach, another Gnostick Paldabaoth. But I would you had Mas comedido by heart. You cannot but marvel, that I have taken so little notice all this while, of your only one strong and potent Argument, you stout Achilles that meets me in every paragraff and period, and beats me back into the walls of Troy. Wberever I am, whatsoever I say, your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is upon me. All the discourse of my whole one and thirty paragraffs, is by it felled to the ground, miserably bruised and battered with that one and the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. But I hope you will have me excused. I have not leisur; I am not willing; I want ability to answer it, or give you any corresponding satisfaction. The like to our Author for flourishing empty words and cunning sleights of subtlety hath been seldom, etc. Here our Author falls into a great misadventure, etc. Here our Author discovers not only his gross ignorance, but something more, &c Our Author believes not a word of all this, nor can, etc. We find our Author never to fail so palpably and grossly, as when, etc. Our Author speaks notoriously falls, nor hath he, etc. Our Authors history, philosophy and reason all alike, etc. Our Author speaks boldly, though he know it is not so, but. etc. Our Author, if I could come to speak to him, would not own any of this. etc. Never any such cunning dissembling hypocrite as our Author, etc. It is no marvel our Author should still fail both in philosophy antiquity, etc. who hath not, etc. In these and such like arguments, which occur almost as oft as the pages of your book, you rout Our Author utterly. I am in all this not able to say bough to a goose. Although I be not conscious of any either fraud in my breast, or fault in my book, or lie in either; yet in all such talk you must, and will, and shall have both the first and last word too. Another argument of yours expressed in twenty places of your Animadversions, by which you would dissipate at once great part of Fiat lux into the air, does as finely cant, as this does coarsely defy. The religion, say you, that is now professed in England, is that and only that which was first in ancient times received here, etc. This you speak, and the more confidently do you speak it, the less significant you know your words be, and yet sounding well enough for your design. What do you mean I pray you Sir, by that religion that is now professed in England? Why do you not specify it? Speak it in downright language. Is it Popery that has been peaceably professed in the land for almost a thousand years, and did all the good things we now find in it; as yet professed by some? No, this you will deny. Is it prelate-protestancy that for threescore years oppressed popery here? This if you had said, you had praised that too much, which yourself approves not. Is it Presbytery that warred the last twenty years, and utterly destroyed the foresaid Protestancy? In saying this you had to your own danger disabled the English Protestant Church, now to the great heartburning of the Presbyterians established again by law. Is it Independency that for six or seven years kerbed the Presbyterian here, in— Tectour oliver's time, and had almost past an Act for the abolishing of the three P.P.P. Papish, Protestant, and Presbyterian. Is it Quakery, that is now far enough spread, and openly professed by many, and judges the Papist stark naught, the Protestant half rotten, the Presbyterian quarter addle, and other Independents imperfect. Is it some general abstracted religion that is common to them all? Then Popery as well as any other may be justly styled the religion here first received. For that common notion in whatever you shall say it consists, so it be positive as it ought to be, will be found first and principally in the Papists faith. But this you have not thought good yourself to express, that you may seem to express something, that may be thought good to yourself, and ill to me. But you must deal candidly with me: I am an old ox that hath fixed his foot firmly, and am not to be outbraved either with your canting words or passionate execrations. I had told you Sir, of all your tricks from page to page in particular, if nothing had been required at my hands to write, but only my own reply: but being, if I should do so, obliged to set down your talk too, I think it not worth either my charge or labour to reflect upon you such your voluminous impertinencies. And I have I assure you taken notice of all in your book, that may seem to have any appearance of reason in it (though really there be none at all against me) and is not either manifestly untrue, or absolutely improper. This is all. And now good Sir, I could wish you had given me the first letter of your name; that I might have known how to salute you. I have been told of late, that the Author of the Animadversions upon Fiat lux is one Doctor O N, a Protestant against Popery which you found down, a Presbyterian against Protestancy which you threw down, an Independent against Presbyterianry which you kept down. But whether you be Doctor O N, or, to turn your inside outwards, you be N O doctor; since I cannot be assured, it shall be all one to me. All that I undertook at this time is to let you know, who ever you be, that I have read over your Animadversions upon my Fiat lux. And I thank you for your book; for it confirms my Fiat lux, and all the whole design of it, I think irrefragably. It shows to the eye and really verrifies by your own example, what Fiat lux did but speak in words: namely that controversies of religion are endless for want of some one thing to fix upon, which may not be depraved; that they are fraught with uncharitable animosities, which darken the understanding and deprave good manners; that they are mutable as men's fancies be, which can never be fixedly stated, sigh every man hath a spirit, hath a method, hath an opinion of his own, and says and denies with endless diversity; that they are guileful and delusory, sometimes falls on both sides, ever on one, and yet still made out with subtle words, so plausible to the eye and ear, that men employed in the multitude of affairs and troubles of this world, can never be able to disentangle those knots of pro and con; then especially at a loss, when they consider, that such as manage those disputes are all of them interested persons; fifthly that they are mad and irrational, while all parties pretend one and the same rule of holy scripture, and yet will admit of no exterior visible judge in their visible exterior contests: lastly that they are mischievous and fatal to all places where they rise: as they have been of late to this our distressed kingdom of England, where disputes and controversies about religion raised to a height, by the inferior scribes against their prelate's, drawn after them pikes and guns to make them good, for twenty years together, with much desolation and ruin; which times I think I may not unjustly call the Vicar's Wars. For the inferior Priests and Levites, envying the dignities, glory and revenues of their prelate's, when they could not otherwise get them into their own hands, by their lamentable tones in Eloimi, raised up the people of the land, to further their design. This trick of theirs they learned from wolves. For these, when they spy a waifaring man whom they would devour, and yet by a narrow search perceiv him to be too strong for them, starting aside upon some hillock, there set upon their tails, they howl for help. And if any will not believe Fiat lux, that such be the fruits of disputes and controversies, and such their nature and genius, let them believe the Author of Animadversions, who as he says what he pleases, and denies what he lists; so to his frequent reproaches, villifications and slanders he adjoins his own menaces of terror, to make my words good, and justify Fiat lux. You frequently threaten me, that if I writ again I shalt hear more, far more than you have said in your Animadversions: but I promise you Sir, if you writ again, you shall never hear more from me. For now the flies begin to come into my chamber, which may haply expect I should heed their flight and hearken to their buzz, and I must not leave those greater employments to look upon your Animadversions, or any your other books. This Epistolae my only daughter, comes as you see to chide you Sir for abusing her innocent Brother. But she does it so sparingly and with so many blushes, as though the blame were hers, though yours be the misdemeanour. And I hope she may so far work upon your good nature, if you have any left, that laying your hand upon your heart you may now sorrowing say, Quid feci? I have wronged the innocent. And for that end I wish you all grace and peace; and I wish it you with all my heart, who am natural father both of that innocent boy Fiat lux, and of this Epistola his sister; and if you will but reckon me so, your very true friend JUC. Given this V of the Ideses of April in the year of our Lord MDCLXIII. FINIS. The places of my Paragraffs in this Epistle. DIversity of feuds page 31 Ground of quarrels page 32 Nullity of title ibid. Heats and resolutions page 33 Motives of moderation ibid. Obscurity of God ibid. Darkness of nature page 44 Mystery of providence page 44 Help page 44 Reason page 47 Light and Spirit page 48 Plea of party's page 49 Scripture page 70 History of religion page 72 Discovery page 77 Messach page 80 Virgin Mary page 83 Images or Figurs page 84 Tongues or latin service page 93 Table or Communion page 101 Saints or Hero's page 102 Dirge page 104 Pope page 104 Popery ibid. Mas comedido ibid.