RELIGION AND REASON Mutually corresponding and assisting each other. FIRST ESSAY. A Reply to the vindicative Answer lately published against a Letter, in which the sense of a Bull and Council concerning the duration of Purgatory, was discussed. By Thomas White Gent.  Vinc. Lir. cap. 27. Intelligatur te exponente illustriùs, quod anteà obscuriùs credebatur. Per te Posteritas intellectum gratuletur, quod ante Vetustas non intellectum venerabatur. Eadem tamen quae didicisti ita doce, ut cum dicas nouè, non dicas nova. 
PARIS MMLX.   

THE AUTHOR TO THE JUDICIOUS READER.  
I Suppose you have perused the Book I here pretend to Answer; And, how do you like it? has he done his work? I dare not say, demonstrated, for sure he will not offer at what he thinks impossible; but has he proved, which is a modest word, and he must not be offended at it? has he solidly proved, That the position he sustains is a Truth traditionarily delivered from the Apostles to us as a point of Catholic Faith? Or, secondly, That It is defined either in the Bull or Council? if he had done this, I should heartily rejoice in his Victory, though over myself: But if, as to the first branch, he have only proved it the common persuasion of later Ages; and that, without clearing in what quality it is held, whether as Faith or Opinion, even by the Moderns: If, instead of the Consent of Fathers he bring but One, above Exception, and out of that One, the first and chief testimony is indifferent both to him and me, and the only difficulty of the rest objected and answered by myself, and unreplied to by him: If, of the three passages he citys out of the public liturgies, one only bear any show of difficulty; the other two being either plainly neutral or grossly abused: And, if in the second branch, he have only proved that it was supposed, or, as their Title-page warily calls it, contained in the Bull and Council, and not determined, I cannot see my case so desperate as he imagines. Scripture it self oftentimes proceeding upon Suppositions conformable to the fore-entertained apprehensions of those it speaks to, without engaging that every such supposition is a revealed Truth. But, on the other side, if I have plentifully alleged both Scriptures and Fathers, and liturgies, and Reasons too (of which methinks a little does well even among Divines) and to none of these has he given the least satisfactory answer; I cannot see but my case is hopeful; and when you have read this little Treatise, I cannot doubt but you will see it so too.  
But all this engages only a particular Controversy, the next is of a far more high and universal importance, of a far different strain from other single and ordinary Questions. For in this, we agree that what the Church says is the truth; we agree in the words wherein the Church delivers us that truth, our only dispute is about the sense of those words; or rather what ought to be the means to come to the knowledge of that sense. We find by daily experience the same Creed recited in the mouths of children, of men, and of the learned: We cannot doubt but the apprehensions of children and men are different, and that our young thoughts are to be corrected by Age; but whether the Learned and the Prudential make the same apprehensions, is the great Controversy between us. My Antagonist seeing the largest part of the Church consist of this degree of Prudential men, persuades himself, that not only their Belief, but their very apprehensions are uncontrollable and unamendable: I conceive, God has given that privilege to Learning, to make us understand the truth of our Faith better, then by vulgar and popular conceptions. On my side stand the endeavours of the whole Schools, whose direct Profession it is, to explicate and declare the true sense of Scripture, and the words in which Faith is left us. On his side stands the multitude of the common People, whose fancies are not elevated, nor their judgements improved by Study: this Multitude he loudly calls the Church, All Christianity, and such brave names: but be not astonished at his great words, for he distinguishes not between the Church, and the weaker part of it which he follows; nor offended at me that I observe not a grave and regular progress, where I am set to catch a bird that hops up and down from twig to twig, chirps upon this a little, and then flies immediately to another; but rather pity the condition of an old clumsy man too slow and heavy for so wild a chase. Wherein, yet, by the help of God, I am resolved to follow him, as fast as I can. As the whole Book in a manner is made up of little else but boutades and flashes, so you are only to expect from me short hints of what might be said more dilatedly, which I hope may suffice to counterblast those sudden gusts. If any other, as is threatened, come out with stronger Ordnance, I shall endeavour to oppose stronger Bulwarks. I hope he will write hereafter more closely and with less distemper; especially, since now, as I understand, he intends to read my Books; I would he had done so before he had written against them; for than I might have hoped a few hours would have sufficed to make my Answer, which now has cost me all my spare time of a whole fortnight.  
Tho. White.   

INDEX.  

A  
EVery Act (even a sinful one) has some perfection, as to what's positive in it, pag. 132.  
That Affections got here are not distinct from the Soul, no singular Opinion, p. 131, 132.  
Antiquity not favouring ante-judiciary Delivery, shown from the miscarriage of his best Testimonies thence, p. 105, 106, 107.  
Arraignment of the Author feebly attempted. p. 90, 91, 92.   

C.  
CEnsuring of doctrines, and who may lawfully do it, p. 6, 7, 8.  
Controversy, in what manner to be handled, p. 5, 6.  
Corporeal Affections remain after separation, p. 137, 138, 141, 142, 143.  
Best corporeal pleasures most conducive to Beatitude, from p. 133. to p. 137.  
The Council of Florence, examined. p. 49. It (and the Bull) wrongly descanted on by his eminently learned Divine, p. 53. not holding ante-judiciary Delivery a material point, nor of Faith, p. 58, 59, 60, 61.  
Councils, how held by the Author, how by some other Divines, p. 64, 65, 66. Infallible in things necessary, and proceeding advisedly, p. 68, 69. Their Errability, speaking in common, and abstractedly from all matters and manners of proceeding, held by all, p. 121, 122, 123. Fewer, easier, and less deceivable requisites to their Infallibility in the author's doctrine than in others. p. 71. 121. 123.  
The Council of Trent's doctrine concerning Remission and Satisfaction exactly observed by the Author, p. 177, 178, 179.   

D.  
DEfinitions may proceed upon Suppositions only probable, p. 96. 97.  
Delivery so speedily expected by privileged Altars, diminishing the care of assisting our dead Friends, p. 88, 89. and our amendment here, p. 184, 185. The opinion of ante-judiciary Delivery never taught as certain, p. 83, 84. 87. It's beginning and progress, p. 77. to 81.  
True Discourse in Angels following from the Vindicators tenet, p. 162, 163.  
Distinguishers between Faith and Opinion must neither be illiterate nor meanly learned, p. 76, 84, 85, 87.  
Divinity grafted on the stock of our natural speech; and, so, on Philosophy, p. 24.   

E.  
EYmericus his mistake, p. 47, 48. His censoriousness p. 39, 40.   

F.  
FAith not endangered by true Science, p. 12, 13. but its objects better understood by it p. 9, 10, 14, 15. not diversified according to the several Apppehensions of the faithful. p. 9, 10, 11. 14. 191. 198. 199.  
So●e False-dealings and disingenuities touched at, p. 22, 23. 27, 28. 31. 48, 49, 50, 52, 61. 93, 94. 112, 113, 115, 120, 121, 125, 126, 174.  
Father and Son spoken of God metaphorically, 102, 103, 104.  
That Foundations contradict ante-judiciary Delivery, p. 79.   

G.  
THat a governor dispossessed aught to be restored when the common Good requires it, the professed and express doctrine of the Author, p. 116.  
S. Gregory not the Author of those Dialogues which gave us the first news of an ante-judiciary Delivery, p. 77, 78. Hence, the origin of that Opinion much later, p. 107.   

I.  
I Dentification of the Soul and Body necessary for a Body's action on her, p. 153. 155.  
Identity of the Soul and Body, p. 154, 155.  
Infallibility, when certainly found in decrees of a Pope and Council, p. 72, 73.  
Inquest not necessary to find our Faith p. 73.  
Interpretation of the Bull and Council by the Vindicator, manifoldly defective, p. 75.   

M  
THe Method of a Divine in seeking Truth, p. 8. to 14.  
Diverse Mistakes about the Council of Florence, p. 92, 93. of a Censure, p. 16, 17. of the occasion of my writing the Middle State, p. 28, 29. of a Metaphor, p. 101. of the liturgies manifoldly, p. 109, 110. of my doctrine concerning a dispossessed governor, p. 116. and the uncertainty of Scriptures letter, 110, 117, 118. of best corporeal pleasures, p. 134. of eternal Happiness to be no Good at all, p. 166, 167. of the soul's nature at reunion, p. 183.  
Mysteries of Faith not knowable without Revelation, p. 11.   

P.  
PAganism uncharitably and weakly objected, p. 187.  
Pains of Purgatory what, in the true opinion of the Author, p. 144.  
Prayers and Alms for the Dead in use before the Opinion of ante-judiciary Delivery, p. 78, 79. and many ways beneficial to them in the author's doctrine, p. 167. to 173.  
A Prohibition of a Book no Censure, p. 16. to p. 20.  
Punishments of pure Spirits agreed by all to be Acts of the Will, p. 88   

Q.  
THE Question stated as in the Bull, p. 34.   

S.  
Scriptures Letter uncertain without the aid of Tradition, p. 117.  
The Soul, how substantially changed by separation, yet the same, p. 139, 140.  
Pure Spirits know all things together and perpetually, p. 156. to p. 161.  
The Sufferings of our Saviour not prejudiced by the unyeeldingness of separated Souls to external torments, p. 146, 147.   

T.  
TRadition not examinable, p. 72. More or less Time coexisting adds or dimininishes nothing to a pure Spirit, p. 149. to 153.    

Errata.  
P. 114 l. 19, 20. these terms; but the Terms expressing those Mysteries, which were— p. 147. l. 9 conform. p. 157. l. 12. appetit.   
RELIGION AND REASON.  
First Essay.  

Introduction.  
SIR,  
HAD your Answer to the unknown Author been written in my fresher days, I should have endeavoured to have given you an ampler satisfaction: Now, being come forth in my frozen Age, when my long ague hath made me fitter to think of death than of School-quarrels, I hope you will be patient with me, if, in as short a method as I can, I give you rather hints by which a little endeavour of your own may find out satisfaction, than dilate myself so far that every weak eye may see it.  
Doctor Hammond, as I am told, about the same time hath bent himself against my Doctrine: whom, though I much esteem, being assured by friends common to us both that he is a very courteous and civil person, and hath spent much time in reading good Authors; yet have I rather preferred the answering you; both because I expect better quarter at your hands, since the stricter bond of Religion should make us apt to interpret one another more fairly; as also, and indeed far more (for I see that Tye very slippery in many) because you have some tincture of the School; and, to my thinking, are much sharper and abler to set off an argument, and write a style solid and proper to the matter: Whereas, that loose way of preaching and affecttaion of words the Doctor uses, shows more vanity than substance in his Discourses. Besides he has an Adversary from satisfying whom he seems to me very short; and I am gladly willing to excuse my pains when I see the same or more fruit come from another's Pen.  
Returning then to you, I hold it my first duty to give you many thanks for your work; you being the first, who (though somewhat late for me, now scarce able to keep myself warm by a fire) have given me the occasion to speak for myself, that the world may see whether those many smothered slanders, which so long have lain heavy on me and my works, bear a value proportionable to the noise they have made. Which to examine in short, I divide your Treatise (and so, my Reply) into two Parts; the first holding twenty two of your Sections, and belonging chiefly to the Middle State of Souls: the second, containing the rest of your Sections, touching upon many points of my doctrine in which you find fault.   

FIRST PART.  
Refuting some of the Vindicators Objections, as they lie in his Book; chiefly those that concern the Middle State.  

FIRST DIVISION Containing an Answer to his five first Sections.  
The Vindicator's mistake of the manner of treating Controversies, and of the nature of a Censure. The Method a knowing Divine aught to pursue. Diverse Errors rectified.  
TO begin then with your first Section, I confess you speak very fairly, had your patience but held out, not to have broke your word in that very Section: which I intend presently to declare, if first I desire you to beware how you take principles out of heretics mouths. The Nobleman out of whom you cite the Maxim that writing of Controversies ought to carry as much sweetness as Love-letters, was a very ingenious and worthy Person; but, if you inquire of his Religion you shall find it in Chillingworth's book, in which he is thought to have had a great hand. And Mr Chillingworth's Religion how sound it was you may guess out of the answers made by himself to himself which go before his book. In one whereof he candidly professes, that if tomorrow he sees more reason for another Religion, and next day for a third, he will change his Religion as often.  
Now, who can doubt but he that has his Religion tacked on him with such slight pins that he may change it a la mode, has reason neither to take offence nor give any upon that account, but civilly to proceed with a gentile and unengaged indifferency as in a business that concerns him not enough to be angry about: And, if you have such an esteem of your Religion, you shall do very well to follow that Maxim: But, if you conceit writing in Religion to be one of the most efficacious courses to breed an eternal and incomparable mischief to the readers, if it be so handled that he may think both sides (as men call it) probable, and that it sinks into neither's heart, than I believe your pen will prove sharp and stinging, as we see the Fathers is in such occasions; though some milk and honey towards the Persons be mingled for Charity and Edifications sake.  
Now let me perform my promise. You say you cannot digest their boldness who usurp the Authority of the supreme tribunal to brand any opinion with the title of Heresy whilst the Church has not done it to their hands. Yet presently after you do it yourself, branding this opinion of Purgatory as heretical, and bringing your Evidence that you are convinced it is condemned.  
And, I pray, who off●●s to censure another, but he takes himself to be convinced that it is against some Rule which he supposes sufficient to make a Catholic Truth; as, against Scripture, Councils, the generality of the Fathers, or (as you do) against the Definition of a Pope; and this to him is a Conviction that it is Condemned before he censures it. Nor have you any more to build on than your own persuasion that it is defined; yourself professing that the Question is brought to those niceties that one need have his understanding perfectly calm to judge of it. So that, on your perfectly calm judgement entirely relies this your censure. Thus much to yourself: But, as to the universal proposition of censuring opinions, you seem a great stranger in the world. For, what famous Divine, what University, what Bishop is not thought fit to censure a malignant proposition? Is there not regularly in all Dioceses some Censor Librorum expressly appointed? Is not every Preacher subject to be forbidden the Chair if he advance a proposition that the Bishops Theologall thinks not fit to be suffered? Are you ignorant of the pother at Paris about censuring Monsieur Arnaulds letters, which censure was not approved at Rome? And yet you cannot digest their boldness who usurp the Authority of the supreme Tribunal to brand any opinion with the title of Heresy while the Church has not done it to their hands. Know, great Divine, that the Pastor or Doctor who lets a wicked proposition run uncontrolled among the people till means be made to get it censu●'d and forbidden in Rome (which how hard it is if the maintainer have great Friends may appear by the long contest betwixt the order of Saint Dominick and the Jesuits about certain propositions of Molina) wrongs his own conscience and is unfaithful to his vocation, in suffering the infection to sink deeply into the hearts of the faithful ere he prepare an Antidote. Besides, when would the Pope take notice of what is published in France or England if nobody cry Fire? How many, how violent outcries were there in France before the Jesuits wicked cases were condemned at Rome. So that this principle of yours betrays the Church into the hands of any potent Heresy that shall spring in a far Country. Let me therefore entreat you not to use so uncivil terms towards all the learned Doctors of the Church.  
I hope you will not be offended that I omit to answer some smallshot of yours in this Section, that I may pass to the next; in which I find myself taxed of a wrong Method in seeking Truth, out of a story which as I do not particularly remember, so am I far from denying; for the Method you report, as I understand you, is truly mine; that is, as a Divine, to find out the Truths in Philosophy, and then the Mysteries of our Faith will square well enough with them; and so I doubt not but I have been subject to declare it many times. Nor can I conjecture who it was that gave me the Answer you mention, but shrewdly guess that he either did not understand me, or the matter, or both. And, because by your proceeding I fear you are in the same error, I will endeavour to explicate my sentiments, and leave the judgement of the cause to upright Understanders. My conceit of matters of Faith is that the Scriptures and Creeds and sometimes also our Doctors deliver them in words well known, but whose vulgar sense Divines see impossible to be true. For example, where it is sung that the eternal son descended from heaven, the vulgar conceive a local motion by which he came down into the B. virgin's womb: and, as I remember I saw it painted thus at Frankford in a Catholic Church whither I went to Mass: The Holy Ghost above coming towards the Virgin, and sending rays before it, in which was a little child carried by them towards that Blessed Mother: An apprehension which the learned know to be impossible. So, by our expression of Christ's sitting at the right hand of his father, what doth a vulgar hearer imagine but an old man sitting in an high chair, and his young Son in another, set at his right hand. I cannot believe you think it possible this meaning should be literally true. To find out then the true sense, I conceive Philosophy a fitting instrument; So that by Philosophy we come thus to understand our Faith, and by understanding it, to be able both to defend it and propagate science out of it. A certain sort of Divines (if I wrong them not in calling them so) there is, who, conceiting as soon as they have the words they know the meaning, reckon not upon this way; but cast about to find out more and other words that shall lead them to the defence and propagation of the known truths; and think they must not look what Philosophy says, but teach her what she ought to say. This I conceive to have been the difference between me and the eminent scholar that conferred with me.  
When I had read thus far, I expected to see the other Method strongly maintained, & mine as strongly laid flat on the ground; but, looking farther I only find your own censure, and that such a one as is hard to judge whether it be a dispraise or a commendation: But, whatsoever it is, with mistake or addition. From which last to begin, you suppose I intend out of Philosophy to frame a Divinity; and, if I understand you right, independently from Revelation; which I am sure you can find neither in my words nor my writings; but only that revealed propositions were to be explicated by Philosophical ones known without Revelation. Do you make no difference between inventing Divinity-truths and finding out the Meanings of the Words in which they are delivered? Do not Lawyers dispute the meaning of the Laws after they see the Words lie before them? Do Scripturists invent Scriptures when they seek out the sense hidden in those writings? I pray then take notice that you either add to or mistake what I say; for, how often do I expressly affirm those Mysteries could not be known without Revelation; though, after they are revealed, they may by nature be explicated, and new truths propagated out of them. You seem to be sore afraid that my Method should bring forth a natural and new Divinity. Had you said a connatural one, I could not have desired a greater praise at your hands; for so all supernatural Qualities, at least the good ones, are termed by Divines. But you say a natural one: what mean you by this term? That it shall be one never revealed by God, and yet expressed by the very words in which God revealed his? Truly, if this be your meaning, I am beholding to you for a great honour and commendation. But I must tell you I suspect you understand not well your own proposition. For, if it be true that the Holy Ghost means in his words all true senses which they afford, there is no denying but such a Divinity will be a revealed one, however it may be proved by natural Principles; For, you will not deny but the same object sometimes may be knowable both by Faith and by Philosophy. If the Divinity you mean be false, it is either against the other which you say is revealed, or against natural Principles: This latter you cannot press while you grant it is a natural one, that is, according to natural Principles. The former leaves still this quarrel undecided which is the true Divinity, since the words bear both the senses; and, this, by your own plea, hath the advantage of conformity to nature, as indeed any true Divinity must have. Besides, the novelty you fear, supposing it contradict no truth already known, is a great praise; for to discover new Truths especially in Divinity, and such as are of moment, is to advance and give a Progress to that sacred Science, and so the highest pitch a Divine can aim at.  
Thus much being spoken to your fearful thoughts, let me consider the two sayings, that of your eminent scholar, and mine own. I desired to be assured of natural Truths, and said (as yourself report) that the mysteries of Faith would square well enough with them. And I appeal to yourself whether I spoke Truth or no. If I mistake not your Person you have been a Reader of Philosophy, and so cannot be ignorant that ex veris non sequitur falsum, and that Verum vero minime contradicit. If then we have once certainly found the Truths of Philosophy, can there be any danger that what we have so found should contradict our Mysteries? Much help may proceed out of such Principles, much direction; no harm, no danger of erring. So that I doubt not but yourself, if you consider it, will find this resolution perfectly secure.  
Now let us turn the leaf and examine the course of your eminent scholar; and you may easily descry how he commands us to take unkonwn Principles to prove Truths which may be known by other plain ways. Do not mistake me, I call not the Principles of Faith unknown as not being demonstrated, but as not being understood. I grant the Letter to be certain and certainly known, I grant a quaedam tenus of the sense to be known; but the sense which in rigour is literally verifiable, that I do not grant to be always and entirely known out of the pure force of Faith. Yourself will easily apply this doctrine to the Article of our saviour's sitting at the right hand of his Father. It is certainly known those words are true; it is certainly known the material sense which the vulgar takes has a proportion to the true sense: For, the true sense being that he arrived to perfect Quiet after the troublesome economy he had passed in this world, which Rest hath sitting for its concomitant in an active man; That he remained the first and chiefest Instrument, and in the French phrase, le premier Ministre d' Estat in God's Government of the World; to which dignity is annexed a kind of perpetual presence and conference with the Prince: Now, why this is well expressed by being on the right hand of another, may we not consult some other skill than that of Faith? Wherefore, in such cases as these I cannot doubt to affirm that true Philosophy is both an useful and necessary and always obedient servant of Faith. And let your eminent scholar without the assistance of any other knowledge than the bare words of the Article attempt to determine out of them what sitting, and what on the right hand is, and this according to the way and profession of a Divine, I fear he will come out with some such notion as others of his form learnedly give to Person, Nature, Vbi's, Actio's, &c. that is, some strange puzzlling thing, which not only leaves us altogether ignorant what it is in God, but wholly confounds the knowledge we have of it in Nature.  
Neither do I deliver this purely by Discourse but by Experience; which Experience jointly with my reading S. Thomas were the Instruments by which God conducted me to this way. I thought it fit to dilated myself a little in this point, that you who are in your flourishing age, and hopeful to be a great Light in God's Church, if you be put in the right way, may be little and little mark the difference of them who go under the common name of Divines, and see how many such as you esteem eminent scholars are only historical, not scientifical Divines: They can tell you after the manner of an history or Narrative what the most celebrated Doctors teach; what is in their opinion the more common sentence of Schoolmen; and, the multitude or reputed worth of such Doctors is the scale in which they weigh theological truths; though they read even in those very Doctors that their Authority is of no more value than the proofs they bring. Now, if Divinity be a Science, as I am sure you will not deny, it being voiced so by those very Divines, though slightly executed, there must of necessity be, or be possible a sort of Divines who in true speaking know theological Truths, who therefore will properly and with Justice claim the title of Divines, whereas these others will be but Discoursers in theological Subjects. If an old man's Experience may prevail with you, I exhort you to study true divinity.  
Looking into your third Section, at the very door I met with a scruple which I must endeavour to remove. You say, The Authority of our Supreme Pastor hath interposed his sharp but justly deserved Censures against diverse of my books. I confess it is gravely spoken; but I find not any sense within to maintain so peremptory an outside. I pray which of your eminent Scholars teach that the prohibition of a book is a censure. The holy Bible if printed I do not say in a vulgar language, but even in an Heretical Country, especially by an heretic, is prohibited; and your way of speaking which makes a prohibition a Censure, I and a sharp one too, would make us believe that the Bible, that is, God's word is sharply censured by the Pope. Can you imagine a greater scandal, considering the place where you live? In Luther's time there was a Decree that whatever Book was printed by any book seller who had printed any of Luther's works should be prohibited. Read the Rules of the Index expurgatorius in the Council of Trent, and see how far wide you have strayed from the Catholic practice and opinion.  
As for the special prohibition against my book, though Doctor Holden hath learnedly declared the quality of it and that be sufficient, yet I have these two notes to offer you; one, that I am now fortified in my plea (which hitherto has been accused as a mere shift to cover my disaffection) that a simple Condemnation of a Book at Rome, without singling out any particular proposition, leaves the whole doctrine of the Book untouched. I am confirmed, I say, now by a fresh Authority out of Stubrockius his new Notes upon Wendrockius his Commentaries on the provincial Letters; where, at the bottom of the page before the first, you may see how unscrupulously those Children of Obedience take up the same undutiful pretence against Roman Condemnations with others when their case is the same with others. This you may plainly see if you busy not your thoughts too much at the seeming contradiction of my words [the page before the first] for I observe your Art is excellent in descanting on a Bull. But, because the words prohibited, condemned, make a noise a great deal louder than their signification, I shall so far comply with my Reader's either unexperience or indisposition as to cite that disguised Jesuit Stubrockius his words; that the world may know how Religious men and those whose chief strictness consists in Obedience, can put by the blow of a Superiour's command when they are concerned in it, how loudly soever they exclaim against others for a less matter. Si nihil prorsus in eo (Libro prohibito) sigillatim config●tur, sed prohibeatur generatim, nemo sapiens neget eo duntaxat nomine prohibitum fuisse quod contra regulas a Concilio Tridentino praescriptas, editus sit. If nothing at all in particular be struck at in that Book, but it be prohibited in general terms; no wise man can deny but that it was only in this regard prohibited, because it was set forth against the Rules prescribed by the Council of Trent; as that the author's name was not printed (by which, observe, that this your Book, according to the Council of Trent Sess. 4. is prohibited) or Approbation of superiors obtained, or such like. And the Book Stubrockius thus strives to defend is neither better nor worse than the intolerable Apology for the Casuists, condemned and prohibited by the Pope the last August.  
My other Note is, that amongst all the two Books of mine (for your diverse are no more) prohibited in Rome, this which you except at is none: So that your Censure is the first; how well grounded your following discourse will tell us. The reason that Court would not proceed against it (though the doctrine it delivers might justly expect a stronger opposition, than some others that have had worse luck, from the Interest of its most zealous Adversaries) is because they see my opinion supported by an Universality of Fathers, of contrasting with whom they are cautious in Rome, being persons of great prudence. And the Ex-Jesuit who writ so bitterly against me here in England, though solicited to oppose that Book, would not, answering he knew diverse Fathers of that mind, particularly S. Austin, whom (Says he) I have read over no less than fourteen times.  
You promise me in the end of this Section to concern yourself only with this one Controversy of the State of Souls dying in grace not as yet fully purged, and with the positions and grounds on which (my) explication of Purgatory stands; unless some one doctrine (of mine) or other, having a near alliance with the business in hand so offer itself that the Discourse and Subject would be illustrated by it. You promise me a great favour; for, I naturally love to speak to one question at once, and points connected with it, that so it may be more fully illustrated and the Reader informed; which, when many are touched slightly and only catched at, especially if disparate and not tending to the same difficulty, the Reader's eye is distractedly drawn diverse ways, and no occasion offered of clearing any thing fully. But I must not be so happy as to hope performance from you in any thing. You promised me formerly the sweet style of Love-Letters; but anon very furiously and unkindly call me Epicurean, Pagan, Heathen, and what not? You promised you would not censure me; and yet proceed even in the same place and all over to censure me most sharply. You promised p. 5. strength of sense in treating this Subject; but have hitherto afforded me nothing but the contrary weakness, and I mainly fear the like performance in the rest of your Book. You promised civility towards my person, and that you combated only my doctrine; yet more than once quarrel with my very name, which I assure you, Sir, is only personal, and not a jot doctrinal. And now you promise me the treating only one question and points nearly allied with it, which is a procedure worthy a scholar; but yet afterwards you ramble to the Apocalypse, the two wings of the woman, the eternal Generation of the second person, my expression of my name and quality, and diverse such discourses; which are not only not nearly but not at all allied to the present question: Which shows that you are very regardless of your word and credit, and unconstant to your own thoughts; and that you aim more to cavil and make a noise against me, by picking out of my works two or three Paragraphs here and there from their fellows by connexion with which they subsisted (a method which should one attempt in God's Holy Word itself, your own heart tells you nothing's so absurd but might be fathered upon it) rather than to confute any piece end ways as a scholar should do.  
Your fourth Section (the substance of it being nothing but the copying another Book) I am glad to have nothing to except against, only you insinuate a fault in the Translation, which not having the Latin copy by me I cannot judge of. Had you endeavoured to mend it, you should have obliged both the worthy translator and myself.  
In your fifth Section by a malignant slight you seek to bite Sir Kenelm Digby, saying, the book of the Immortality of the Soul was fathered upon him. I know you would do me the honour to entitle me to it. But, as that eloquently proper Style, the diffusion of the Discourse, the multitude of experiences even in Arts wherein I am totally ignorant, do exclude me from the vanity of pretending to so excellent a piece, so do they discover to the world the rashness of your impotent Envy. My part follows next in the subscription of my peripatetical Institutions, the natural sense whereof being, Thomas an English man, of the Whites of Essex, you are pleased to transform according to your good will. You add I say my Institutions are according to the mind of that most eminent man and excellent Philosopher. And, as for the first Epithet I have the unanimous Testimony of all that know him and are able to judge in what consists the worth of abilities in the arts both of peace and war. And, for the second, concur with me all those in Italy, France, Germany and England, whom their own industry and aequability of mind have made worthy to read his Book. What your following discourse says of my Institutions I candidly confess and am bound to thank you for sealing it with your good word; saving still what you cite out of the Consilium Authoris, where is no such matter as you express, though your sincerity can allow the putting it in a different letter as a citation from the place: And, therefore I see even when you make show to cite the very words, the Reader must look the place if he will not be mistaken. Though you seem to speak of a Point which all peripatetics acknowledge to be done by Aristotle long since, and so needs no greater excellency to perform than to have read and understood him. It seems by your requiring Faith in your Reader, that in your schools you do not use to let your scholars see evidence to anchor them in your doctrine, but you propound some easy and plausible persuasion to tickle and inveigle their belief; and so need none of those strange terms, fit, sequitur, consequens est, &c. for no one thing follows another in your doctrine. All are either primò nota or postremò ignota in your Philosophy.  
Your next quarrel is that I say Divinity is inaedificata to Philosophy. Lord! how you would have been troubled if I should have said that Faith is grafted upon the stock of our natural understanding, and Charity on our Will; and yet I believe this will prove the tenet of your eminent scholars. Now, if this be so, sure it is less absurd but not less necessary that our Divinity be grafted into the stock of our natural Speech and words, whose meanings and Definitions Philosophy must open to us. I pray then be not offended with this word Inaedificatàe; for it signifies not super aedificatae, nor has the force to signify that the strength of Divinity comes from Philosophy, but that Philosophy is the wax into which the seal of Divinity is printed, which no learned ingenuous man will deny. For, if Definitions be the Principles of Science, and Philosophy defines the words Divinity uses, it must needs have a material priority to it.  
Next, you tell your Reader my Philosophy and Divinity are so perfectly squared, that if I had not made a Division of the Books it had been impossible to know where one ended and the other began. honoured Sir, you know I am but a poor man, and cannot give rewards for good turns done to me; therefore I beseech you to be content with humble thanks: For I owe them from my heart; First to God who gave me to perform what you say or rather did it by me; next, to yourself who so kindly acknowledge and divulge it. For I see not how you could give a scholar a greater praise, than to signify that the contexture of (not his Paragraphs, but) even his Books are so closely connected. But to check my too much feeding on your praises, you give me a knock with every bit; you say I banish supernaturality, evacuate Christian Faith, admit nothing on other grounds than Demonstration, all calumnies as false as bold; and so can do me no harm where your bare word is not blindly believed.   

SECOND DIVISION. Containing an Answer, from Section sixth, to the fifteenth.  
The groundwork of the Vindicator's impugnation of the Middle State found to be a most groundless Calumny. The occasion of writing the Middle State, the Letter of Vindication, and that in Answer to the Dispensers of the Bull and Canon. His weakness in arguing, in stating the Question, and opposing his Adversary.  
IN the sixth Section you seem to come to the Question, and cite a large Text our of my peripatetical Institutions, adding at the end this conclusion of your own. This is the Essence, the Substance of his Purgatory, this is his whole chain or deduction of it, this is the grief he admits in separated Souls, &c. Is it possible, Sir, you should thus forget all truth and honesty? First, you cite out of a Book where there is no more mention nor thought of Purgatory than of the Dungeon of Constantinople; where Method permitted me to treat of no more than I had before laid grounds for, where I had not made any mention of Christianity, or Christian Felicity or Unhappiness: Where, in a word, I could only speak to pure Naturalists; and yet you boldly pronounce this is the Essence, the Substance of his Purgatory, this is the grief he admits in separated Souls; whereas the whole business is both in the Sacred Institutions and Middle State (the Books which purposely treat that Subject) so quite differently and so at large explicated. Pray, Sir, furnish yourself and me with some excuse why you omit those Books which designedly handle that matter, and cite out of another which handles it not at all; and then, upon this false and abusive pretence, lay the whole groundwork of your future impugnation.  
The seventh and eighth Sections consist chiefly of my words, and so I may omit them till there arise some occasion of farther examination: only I must note that at the end of your eighth Section you profess your great care fully to deliver the foundations of my new fabric of Purgatory; yet make no mention at all of the Institutiones Sacrae; or that there is either Scripture, or Fathers, or theological reasons alleged in my Book of the Middle State; by this sly trick seeking to draw your credulous Reader into the conceit that there is no other ground for my opinion than a metaphysical Argument, whose force because they do not penetrate, you may shake it off with crying 'tis nonsense.  
In the ninth Section you tell a forged story (whether out of Ignorance or Malice I leave to your conscience) that my Lord of Chalcedon admonished me of this point and others, and that I was ready with a premeditated Apology. In which, though short, there lie three mistakes. First, that my Lord admonished me: For, though he were my superior; though one whom a long-well-spent Age, great study and many writings had made awful to our Church, yet was he far modester than you; and professed, as he did dislike my opinions, so he dissented no otherwise than as one Divine does from another, and had never descended to censure any of them. Perhaps, of this point you may have heard the contrary, but I have it under his own hand. The second mistake is, that he admonished me of this point; for he never descended to any particular; and this you might understand (as partly the other) out of my Dedicatory of my, Ratio villicationis written to him, and presented in his life-time. The third, that I had fore-prepared my Book of the Middle State, and presently sent it him. For, the reason of my composing it was the many popular noises raised against me by persons, some ignorant, some malicious, as if I were an heretic, which forced me to write the Treatise in mine own defence, and I dedicated it to my Lord, though I knew no particular Exception of his against this point, but judged he might have some, because the greatest cry was against it. The Translation, as far as came to my knowledge, was not made by any design upon earth, though by the event I perceive it was out of special Providence in Heaven. How things passed on your side, and what were the true mot●ves of your publishing the Bull, and that Testimony of the Council I can only collect from the phaenomenas of all concurrent circumstances, of which you may perhaps hereafter hear more.  
You say the Publishers of the Bull had no respect to the Letter of Vindication. I think you aim at one I wrote in Latin to a Person of Honour, which was presented Him, and by him showed to some Jesuits that frequented his House, and they can be witnesses of the Truth between us. This, afterwards, as I hear, was translated into English and printed. If this be the Letter you speak of, I would gladly understand why you imagine the Author conceits himself inspired with the Genius of Mont-alt: whose spirit, I confess, I take to be very solid and pious, and generously adhering to persecuted Truth: Nor, do I find it unlawful that any should wish to be inspired with it, but truly conceive myself far below the hope of such Excellences.  
What you heard well observed that all the Protestant Divines of England would subscribe to the same Protestation which is in that Letter, I believe purely upon your report. But tell me first, may a Catholic protest nothing that a Protestant will subscribe to? or can a Protestant profess nothing but what he will perform. Again, will any Protestant profess to renounce any doctrine found to contradict any Authority constantly acknowledged for Infallible in the Catholic Church, meaning the same by Catholic Church as my writings declare me to do, that is all those who adhere to Tradition? Will any Protestant be content to have lost his cause if any decree of a Pope be expressly repugnant to him, which I there also profess? How maliciously blind then was the observer you follow, who could not see such distinctive expressions? How uncharitable yourself who catch at and magnify every rash cavil, out of a tooth to disgrace and abuse him that never did you injury. Your calumny of my denying Decrees of Popes and Councils shall be answered in its due place.  
You say the Publishers intended not to enter into the lists of Disputation, which I easily believe; and that they were persuaded, the very reciting the Bull and Canon would have knocked down the Book (which you say was the occasion of their setting them forth) beyond all Reply. How weak a conceit was this for men that saw both Bull and Canon cited and explicated in that very book, and could not be ignorant that in many private Conferences the same Authorities had been debated? You thought your capital Letters would have dazzled the understanding, of the adverse party, so that none would have dared to look further into the meaning of those Authorities. But God provided that all should not be so light of belief, nor his Church led into Error by such a misgrounded Interpretation of its Decrees. You complain much in your tenth Section that this pious intention of the dispenser's was wronged. As though you did not know that Intentions are secret and must expect their reward from him that sees the heart: Men judge of Actions, and yourself confess the effect was that pious (that is, credulous) persons received satisfaction; that is, were seduced into error by that cunning practice; and yet you think it not occasion enough for an understanding man to discover so prejudicial an Interpretation forced on the Church; and would needs have it a wrong to you that one unknown & not intended to be hurt by you should take this pains; as if every honest and ableman were not interessed in the church's quarrel of so high a nature as to set up an Opinion, that may prove when examined erroneous, for an Article of Faith.  
In your eleventh Section you begin to produce your Arguments, whereof the first is, that all Orthodox writers who have treated this Subject of the State of separated Souls since the promulgation of the Bull a foresaid suppose it as a certain Truth. But how many such do you cite? Surely of five hundred which have written since those days your Readers might civilly expect at least half a score that positively assert it as an assured doctrine of the Church. But, such is the irregular way of discoursing your eminent Scholars use, that when they have audaciously advanced a proposition whereof they know nothing certain, if it be denied, against all Rules of Discourse and logic they put the Defendant to prove the contrary, which peradventure concerns not him a pin whether it be true or no. As in the present, what concerns it my Faith whether many or few interpret the Bull and council as you or I say? To make a new Article of Faith the definition must be so clear that none can doubt of it: And ipso facto that it needs Interpretation, 'tis evidently insufficient to make a new obligation of Faith. Again, suppose your Antecedent be true, does any number of Interpreters lock up the understandings of those that follow that they may not see more than their foregoers? If you say yes; show us some seal of Infallibility in their foreheads by which we may know so much, or else your Faith will be but probable; but a peradventure I, peradventure no; and Interest or Passion must supply the rest. And, such I believe is your Faith of this your newborn Article, though somewhat an older Opinion.  
In your twelfth Section you inquire into the state of the Question; and when you have recited it out of the bull, you presently cry, Victory, without ever looking into the words and sense; that one may note in you the wonted disposition of your great Masters, to read the words, but seldom take pains to understand them. The Bull then says, that in the days of the Pope's Predecessor there rose a Question among Divines concerning the vision of the Souls of Just men after their death, in which nothing was to be purged when they departed out of this world; or, if there were, it was now totally purged; whether they see the Divine Essence before the reassumption of their bodies, and the general judgement, and also concerning other matters, &c. I pray you now, in virtue of your logic, show us here what is the subject of the Question, what the Predicate. To my apprehension the Subject is divided into two parts; one is of Just men in whom at their death nothing is to be purged; the other of them who at their death had somewhat to be purged, but now are totally purged: The Predicate is, the seeing of God's Essence before the day of judgement. If this be so, then resolve me whether the Subject of the Proposition be affirmed by the Proposition, or be that of which the Predicate is affirmed. We whose logic tends to Demonstration, agree that the Subject is not affirmed, but is that of which the Predicate is affirmed? What your eminent scholars that square Philosophy and consequently logic to their not understood Faith, will say to this, I expect you to teach us who are a great professor (I doubt not) in their way. In the mean while give me leave to think and tell you, that the Question whether any Souls be purged before the reassumption of their bodies, is no part of the Pope's Answer, and neither part of the Predicate nor of the Copula; and this so evidently that no ingenuous person can reply upon it; which I may very well guess to be the reason why you would not scan the Pope's words. Nor need I make other answer to Cherubinus, he (as yourself say) agreeing with the Pope. This is the main prop of your whole cause; and yet how weak it proves when seriously and indifferently examined! though I freely confess it might easily be mistaken by an unwary Reader fully possess't of the contrary persuasion.  
You see, now, Sir, the way a Scholar that understands logic would have taken here, is, since every Question is of whether something be or be not (that is, of some Proposition, that is, whether some Predicate be identified to the Subject) to show that the Predicate of the proposition you would evince is the Predicate here; your Subject, the Subject. By this method you might have hoped to arrive to some strength of sense. But instead of doing this you only cry aloud the words are most plain and express for you, that they most clearly and evidently condemn us; and then to prove it, you are very high against your Adversary's over sight, his prepossession, his boldness, his confidence, Sometimes he is blamed for an absurdity almost impossible in overlooking it; Anon, you say, to do him right (as if you would confess you did him wrong before) he did see it and cite it. Strange challenge of oversight which consists with a grant of both seeing and citing! So that all you bring in your own behalf, and this in the main support of your cause, is contradiction to yourself, calumny of your Adversary, many bold sayings, and not one Schollar-like attempt of proof. Sweet Sir, will this serve think you to prove your Adversary a Puny, and yourself a great Clerk? or rather will not the Reader judge that the differences of your performance will transpose those appellations?  
In your thirteenth Section you reprehend your Adversary that he pretends there was but one Question only disputed and defined at that time, and affirm stoutly that it is not possible for him to persuade a● Intelligent Reader thereof; though both the Pope and Cherubinus by your confession call it a Question, and not Questions. 'Tis an hard case that the Pope's own word cannot protect him, but we must be put to prove the Pope spoke what he thought. But, let us see your Arguments. You say the Pope makes two Questions, and that Cherubinus does the same (their words being equivalent, I see not why I should make two disputings of the same case) the first of Souls in which nothing remained to be purged; the other of Souls in which something is to be purged. But since by your own confession, and by the words cited by yourself they say these two made but one Question, a man would have expected you should bring somewhat to prove what you say, and not upon your bare word force us to believe they contradict themselves in the same period. But, to speak sense as well as words, who knows not that the word Question may have two meanings; one, to signify what may be asked; another what is or may be doubted. An asking may be framed of any proposition we are ignorant of; a doubting only of those against which we have some kind of apparent reason. Now, you are pleased to look no farther than for what may be asked; but your Adversary goes on to what may be doubted of; and, therefore, finding no special doubt of one part of the persons you divide which was not in the other, he was so clear-sighted as to find that the Pope and Cherubinus expressed themselves properly and dogmatically; whereas you make them break the common Laws both of sense and Grammar; and, when they would speak of many Questions, to use the singular number. You add a confirmation out of the Title of the Bull, in which in the plural number Articles are said to be defined; not distinguishing betwixt Articles and Questions, whereas an Article must be fore-debated to be called a Question. So that, if there had been but one Article doubted of and debated, there was but one Question decided, though many Articles defined.  
Nor do you well appeal to the 2d. Scholion of Cherubinus, where you only find that ten Heresies are condemned by this Bull. for it is a far different thing to condemn a known falsity, and to determine a doubted question. So that your clear-sight failed you also in this point. As for Eymericus I easily confess of his worth, all that Pegna writes: But, as all that doth not except him from being a man, so neither from having had his imperfections; and this in particular that he was too censorious; which is pardonable in him, few Saints arriving to a perfect exinanition of proper interest, till towards the End of their days. Wherefore, as all Judges for the most part are subject to draw causes to their own Courts, so this inquisitor was willing to make many heads, upon which Delinquents might fall within the compass of the Inquisition, by which means he set great quarrels betwixt his own Order and that of Saint Francis, condemning Raymundus Lullus, whom the Franciscans maintain to be a Saint, of Heresy, for attempting to demonstrate the Trinity. In which controversy our modern Divines side much with the Franciscans. Hence I infer you can ground little upon this Author as to increasing Articles of Faith. Your citation out of Spondanus is less to the purpose, for his relation reports nothing more to your intent then what is formally in the Bull itself; and, so, already discussed: only I may note that this worthy Author, in that he says the opinion of the Saints not seeing God was not altogether reproved or condemned in John the two and twentieths days, is mistaken with divers others of your eminent Scholars, as may appear by the Universal outcry of the Church against him, and the Arts and violences he was fain to use to get doctors to side with him, as the History of those times doth manifest. I may conclude that notwithstanding your strong confidence that your Adversary never dreamed of these subtle Mysteries you think you have discovered, he saw the truth more clearly than you with all your great intelligence; and so may return your exhortation upon yourself, to beware of heat of youth, to beware of the secret snare of Interest, which many times lurk undiscovered in the hearts of men of greater age.  
In the fourteenth Section you come to the other question of what is the Subject of this Bull, which your Adversary says to consist in this, whether perfect Charity brings immediately to Heaven. And you very complementally beseech him to tell you how his clear-sighted friends could persuade him to impose so grossly upon you, as to settle the state of the question in that whose name is not recorded in the whole decree. I confess I hold him bound to yield you satisfaction. And because you have imposed by your first Section the burden upon me to answer for him, in return of your civility my request is, to know how a man of your worth and parts could persuade yourself to descend so low as to ask a question grounded on so trivial an error, that every schoolboy must see it. I imagine if two words have in a Dictionary the same signification, and a School boy should deny that his Latin had the sense in English which his Master asserted, because one of the two words was not in it. I fear his Master would think him negligent enough to deserve the rod. So if the word Justus signify one that is in charity, and you, who take upon you so high an Authority of censuring, will flatly and challengingly deny the thing to be there because the very word is not there, you seem to me most extremely unreasonable: What if instead of an Angel of gold, I give you half a Piece, is it not all one? or, which perhaps you will think more like our case, instead of the term defined suppose the definition? You object therefore more strongly, that he requires the Pope's positive is or is not; And if you do not show that, and yet will obstinately persist to draw from this Definition that Souls are delivered before the day of judgement you hazard to contradict both Bull and Council. The rest of the Argument though plainly and strongly urged you omit at the present, what you will do hereafter we shall see. This last point that you hazard to contradict the Council and Pope you stumble at. But why (I pray) if you know not their minds about that point do you not hazard to choose the wrong for the right. I understand no otherwise. But you insist upon his admission that the Pope was of that mind. First that admission comes after this speech of his. Secondly it is but a permission, not a certification, for out of it, you are never the securer that indeed it was so, and so still remain in hazard. As for his requiring an is or is not, I wonder you should except against it; this being the very substance of the question in hand. I pray, reflect (as any ingenious Reader I suppose will) that the Pope may either think that some Souls are purged before the day of judgement, and yet neither intend to say it, nor in fact say it: He may again both think so and intend to say it, and yet not say it; lastly, he may do all three: Let us then for Argument sake suppose, that, he did all three, and that this would make an Article of Faith of what was not so before, for some of your eminent scholars hold that. Doth any of them say his pure thought has that power, or his Will if it buds not into words? None that ever I heard of. The most demand publication and affixion ad Valvas Sancti Petri, and in acie Campi Florae, and such like formalities, far more visible than an ambiguous elocution or supposition; which you, without being able to show any express word, will needs fix upon us for a yoke to submit all understandings unto. Do not reprove so fiercely unless you can give a better account of your doctrine and actions. It becomes you not.   

THIRD DIVISION. Containing an Answer to his fifteenth and sixteenth Sections.  
The true Question established, and the sense of the Bull and Canon defended against the mistakes of his learned Divine. Some Notes evidencing that nothing about the Duration of Purgatory was defined in the Council of Florence.  
SO much concerning your reply ad hominem. Now, let us say a word to your question itself. By the precedent discourse 'tis apparent there was but one formal question disputed in those times, though the predicate belonged to diverse subjects as all universal Predicates do. Of which kind (viz. universal Predicates) 'tis impossible to see one if the Questions must be counted as many as the subjects to which they are appliable. Now then in our present case I aver the Question to be utrum justus nihil habens purgandum immediate potiatur visione Dei. Nor do I see how possibly you can deny either the Question to be One, or to be this; Since the Pope himself both expressly calls it one and puts it to be this. Which being agreed on, let us see what signifies the Subject, [Justus nihil habens purgandum] Just men or Souls in which there remains nothing to be purged. To Divines a Just man or Soul signifies one that is endued with charity; and to have nothing to be purged, signifies to have not so much as a venial Sin left to be purged in them, that is, according to S. Thomas his doctrine, to have his Charity totally fervent & perfect. Now John the 22th. denied that such Souls went to heaven before the day of judgement: His opposites, the main Body of the Church, affirmed it. If then this explication be on all parts evident, what can be answered why this, according to your Adversary's tenet, was not the only-handled and debated Question? unless you will return to that trivial excuse, as to cry the word is not there but only the sense and meaning. And, where I pray, does your Adversary pretend that his very words are in the Bull, that you challenge him so vaporingly to show you the Question in terms? I find him indeed say that 'twas the design, aim, drift, intention of the Definers, but I do not see him undertake that perfect Charity brings an immediate Heaven were precisely the terms of the definition. Yourself cannot but observe he severally phrases the Question, as sometimes whether Souls perfect in charity see God immediately, sometimes in other words; attending to the sense as sober and intelligent Writers should do, not standing upon terms as dodging Sophisters do. Look but into the Testimonies which yourself cite, and indeed what all Historians and Divines report, and see whether they do not unanimously agree that this was the Question. I think I may after so much evidence excuse the answering of your Adversary's Argument drawn from the Pope's so pious recommends of Holy desires; for, since the Question is not changed, but by you mistaken and pitifully not understood, and that your whole solution relies upon that defect, His Argument remains in its full strength. Only, I will ask your pardon if I presume to direct you in the example of the Entychians and Monothelites. You argue thus: when the Church combated the Eutychians, it did not only define the plurality of wills against the Monothelites, &c. what you would say I cannot tell; If, that the Church defined both the plurality of Natures and Wills, you discover too much Ignorance, for it defined only the plurality of Natures: If, that it defined only the plurality of natures not of wills, you say right, but it comes quite cross to your intention, which strives to prove that something is defined by connexion, not formally set down in the Definition. Wherefore your Discourse seems to me imperfect and perplexed.  
Now than I may fairly proceed to your fifteenth Section where again I meet with Eymericus; but, because he either says no more than the Bull or obliges not so much, I shall agree with you that he is a grave and learned author, without contending any farther about what conduces so little to our main Conclusion. Only, give me leave to note this defect in him where he says these points were made of Faith by this Bull, If that be his meaning. 'twas a great weakness in a writer so near those times and living when the noise was not yet ceased. For, if the truth of these Articles were not known before this Bull, what reverence was it in the whole Christian world publicly to term the Pope an heretic, and preach against him, even in the Court of Avignon; as an Englishman of Eymericus his order, by name Thomas Wallis did, and was imprisoned for it. No; these points were the constant Tradition of the Church, and this Bull served not to bring in a new Faith, but to quiet the world, and by Authority to quell the spirits moved by John the 22th.  
In your sixteenth Section you pass on to the Council of Florence; but its definition being exactly according to the Bull, there is no hope of any new advantage to your cause from thence. Yet you will try again, though with the same Argument, and we beg your Readers patience if we repeat the same Answer. First you cite the Council that some Souls are purged by the punishments of Purgatory after their body's death Which would have seemed very little to the purpose, your Adversary professing the same, had not you long before laid a snake in the grass to use his sting when occasion should serve; which here you begin. presently adding that this can find no admittance in your new model. For all the suffering of souls which you fancy by their irregular and now unchangeable affections avail nothing as to the purging and cleansing of souls, &c. Now I see why you neglected my book of the middle state, and what I write of it in my Sacred Institutions, that you might freely slander the Catholic truth I teach about Purgatory, to those who know no more, than what you cited out of a treatise of philosophy, where there was no intention to speak either of purgatory or in deed Christianity. But because you will dilate yourself as I suppose more largely hereafter, I will defer the question till then.  
You will have your Adversary observe that when the Council in the fourth Article declares that Souls which are purged being unclothed of their bodies are immediately received into heaven, this doctrine by the Parenthesis of (as is abovesayd) is wholly built upon the former doctrine of the Purging itself. And I, Sir, would desire you to note, that because neither in the third nor in the fourth Article any time of completing the Purgation is expressed or insinuated, that your note is nothing to your Purpose, nor doth any way conduce to show a complete Purgation of them while unclothed; And this, though it were true that a Purgation by punishment in Purgatory were against your adversary; which is a pure conceit of your own brain.  
You proceed to an Antiparallel of the counsels doctrine to ours, and to manage it the better you most freely assume what you find not in the council. I mean these words being purged unclothed of their bodies, which signify in plain English that the purgation is perfected while they remain yet unclothed. The equivalent of which sense, if it be not in the Council as all my endeavours cannot find it, I must perforce protest that as I should be content you wronged me to do the Council right, so to slander the Council that you may wrong me is a thing unsufferable in any, much more in a religious Person. In the parallel you give for my side, you put a vast grief by reason those pleasures are now impossible to be enjoyed. show this in all my books ever applied to the souls in Purgatory and carry the question: if you cannot, consider what you make me suffer among them who believe you. You desire your adversary farther to note that sunt purgata is the preter perfect tense, and show that the purgation is passed. And are you so unadvised as not to know the Council speaks as well of the Souls to go out of their bodies the following ages, as in those before? so that this being passed must stay in some even to the day of judgement by your own explication?  
After this you seek farther into the roots of the Council even from its beginning at Ferrara. But as far as I see you are not very expert in the story. For at Ferrara was delivered to the Fathers of the Council a long oration by Marcus Ephesius who would never consent to the Councils resolutions about Purgatory. But his action concerns not us much, so we understand the meaning of the main body of the Greeks, whose propositions when you have recited, you infer 'twere absurd to deny that the question of Purgatory was here disputed and defined, by which you discover a great mind to play soul, but your fingers are not nimble enough to carry it handsomely; you craftily would persuade the incautious Reader that we denied Purgatory, but than you spoil all by putting a wrong term, for truly the question of Purgatory was not disputed, but from the beginning agreed on by both sides; but a question concerning Purgatory, that is, whether there were true fire in it was debated, and so, for any thing the Council says, or I know it may be debated still. Of the other points expressed in the decree of the Council there was an agreement without debate betwixt the generality of the Greeks and the Latins.  
You go on pronouncing that in these professions both sides agreed against us directly, and home to our point in question: without expressing in what, or bringing any proof of it. For yourself have before confessed we hold both expiation and delivery, and the only question betwixt us is whether before the day of judgement this expiation end: of which (though the very precise point we contend about) you still have the ill luck to fall short; you offer sometimes indeed to rack your Testimonies to confess what you desire, were not the words too faithful to their Speakers sense, to be corrupted by you: but if they will not do in Latin, you have a trick to turn them into English, and piece them our with stuff of your own; making their sense to be this, their present delivery whilst unclothed? this you say the Council intended to deliver as the Faith of the Church, in this both the Greek and Latin Fahers clearly agreed, and yet plainly the conclusion I sustain was neither agreed to, nor debated, nor questioned, if I be truly accused as the first inventor of it, nor so much as mentioned. You conclude, it must be an act not of understanding, but of will to say presently signifies, at the day of judgement. Truly it would be so, and in the mean while 'tis an act of ill will, to impose on your Adversary that he says it.  
Now a word to the discourse of an eminently learned Divine which you mark with the letter C. And for his learning I have nothing to say, why it should not be eminently above yours, but for his wyliness he is far short of you, and if any thing corrupt his judgement, it is self-conceit and downright passion, his unhappy humours, that strangely abound in him. But I cannot omit to note in you, that you had not the luck to give his Paper a convenient title, but printed it just as he had written it for his own memory. The entrance of his discourse is very good; But his first proposition concerning the matter, plainly and unexcusably mistaken; for he saith, the matter in dispute betwixt the Latins and the Greeks was what Souls were admitted or to be admitted to eternal Beatitude before the day of judgement. A question that neither you as far as I can guess, nor we ever found in this Council. Neither do I remember to have met with such a gradation of Saints in any Author: Therefore, I leave this great Doctor to prove that there ever was such a question moved. His next leap though he calleth it this question, yet is quite from the question in hand; being whether there be fire in Purgatory or no. Which how it appertains to his mainly proposed question I leave to better wits to consider. But I gather, that this Paper was only private notes, not written in a form to be printed, and that you have done very indiscreetly and to his dishonour, to expose them to the public. He puts next the Latins position, in which you who cannot pardon your adversary's sloth in perusing of the Council, omit a sentence most pertinent of any thing to the cause, to wit, that he who hath committed many offences is freed after a longer time of purgation, but he who hath committed a few is sooner delivered, which particularity had it been in the decision of the Council, would have been something to the purpose, and saved you the labour of corrupting the Council by your additions. But I must note that this eminent man useth this phrase in this world, and in the next for before the day of judgement and after, not (as I think) by affectation, but by negligence, which still more confirms me, that the whole draught were but private notes, and not framed for the print.  
He goes on to give the variety of opinions concerning their going to Heaven, in which he says the Greeks imagine that the Souls of just men have indeed obtained Beatitude, but not perfectly, and that they shall perfectly enjoy it when they shall be reunited to their bodies: which position, so far (by his leave) is common also to some principal Latin Fathers. He adds that the Greeks say that in the mean while they remain in a separated place, where they interiorly rejoice, entertaining their thoughts with the foreseen and fore-known perfect Beatitude and adoption which is prepared for them. But in the conclusion he seems to say that after many disputations the Greeks came to the ensuing resolutions which are well known. In which he slanders the Greek Church, for it was but a part of them that maintained this last mentioned position, upon the like Testimonies as John the two and twentieth did amongst the Latins, so you see that his master piece for which he esteems himself so highly, to wit, to understand what the opinion of the Eastern Church was, is a mere illusion bred out of the reading some schismatics works, whom he took to be the mouth of the Greek Church. For the Greeks themselves who at Rome write against heretics Profess that the Faith of the Greeks concerning Purgatory is contained in their Euchologies & rituals which are ancient and used both by Catholics and schismatics. For as to their writers, if you read one, you know not who else will agree with him. So various and irregular are their explications. Now if their rituals and Euchologies be not more express than the Latins for your opinion, you will easily see what will become of you, there being not one word of delivery before the day of judgement, but all that is any way express referred thither: which you are pleased to neglect though it be the public profession of the Church, and to seek birds-nests in the bushes of probable authors.  
Next then, your eminently learned man makes his reflections upon the word presently, just as wisely as you, persuading himself that we think the natural and formal signification of it is at the day of judgement, and insisting upon it, because it is added only to this member. As if the reason were not evident, to wit, because the time was to be set down uncertainly only in this member; Presently therefore signifieth as soon as purged, whensoever that be, according to the variety of opinions. He goes on to tell us that neither Greeks nor Latins doubted of the delivery of Souls at the day of judgement, which is very true, and therefore also they put no more down. He adds that the sole difficulty was of the precedent time, as both their declarations do manifest. But this manifestation was made in his learned brain, for in the text there is no sight of any such contest betwixt them. But it appears that the Greeks held their tongues about it, and the Latins were content they should do so. At last your learned man would persuade us that it is most plain in Benedictus his Bull, and that there the word [Presently] most manifestly signifies before the day of judgement. But because he sent me not the magnifying spectacles of Passion which he used, I could not perceive such evidence. He concludes with, what may he judge of me, who call this Definition of a holy Pope and Council, a new doctrine. I pray certify him that I neither believe him nor you, that the doctrine I call new is either the Popes or the Councils.  
Which that it may appear better, I give you a few notes for our side, upon the Council. The first was that there was no debate betwixt the Greeks and Latins concerning Purgatory but only about fire, and with some Greeks about the Vision of God by confessedly just men, so that your learned man's wilful supposition of a strife concerning the gradation of Saints coming to Beatitude is a pure fiction, without any ground of History, and his whole discourse built upon it, nothing but the humming of a Chimaera feeding upon entia rationis. My second note is that whereas the Latins put in their confession that some of those who required purgation came sooner to Beatitude, others later; The Greeks after they had seen the Latins confession, quite left out that point, and this upon the fourteenth day of June, whereas the Latins put in their propositions the fourth, so that you see it was not for haste or oversight, but because it was not settled amongst them, as it seemed to be amongst the Latins. My third note is, that the Greeks express the punishments of Purgatory to consist in griefs, to wit, for their sins and for the want of Beatitude which are the same in which I also think the pains of Purgatory consist, howsoever you please not to take notice of it. My fourth note is that the Latins never took notice of the Greeks disagreement in point of coming to bliss, some sooner, some later, but proceeded jointly to the Definition with words abstracting from both sides of this controversy. All this is so manifest in the letter of the Council, that there can be no dispute, in truth, of any part; though of this later, you and your learned assistant will force a disputation thrusting in a sense which the words bear not, without shame or care of your conscience in so wicked an attempt as to corrupt a Council.  
Now out of these Notes I frame a demonstration, as strong as the nature of such a case can bear.  
Where a difference is so plain betwixt 2 parties that it is not possible to be hidden from either, and yet neither part takes notice of it, it is plain they do not hold that difference to be material.  
But there was a known and plain and unconcealable difference between the Greeks and Latins concerning this tenet whether some souls were purged sooner than others, the Latins putting it down expressly, and the Greeks after having seen the Latins confession, leaving it quite out, and yet no quarrel or disputation arose betwixt them about this point.  
Therefore neither part took it for a material point of Religion and controversy.  
Now than you see wherein consisted the agreement of the two Churches concerning this point, to wit, in this that neither of them thought it a matter to contend about. I pray express your opinion in this point whether if the Latins had believed it an Heres'y to say one Soul was not delivered before another, could they in conscience have admitted the Greek Church to communion without declaring their mind in this point, and this after so open an opposition, as to leave out all mention of it when the Latins had so positively expressed it? If you think Councils can dissemble in points of this quality, I believe the world will soon confess that I, as stubborn as you reckon me, give far more reverence to counsels than you do. Wherefore I press you farther out of the Council. If any man should say it was an Heresy to hold there were no material fire in Purgatory, or that it was not lawful to consecrate in leavened Bread, you would not spare to tell him that since the Council had declared it indifferent, he stood not with the Council, but seemed at least to contradict it if he held it were a matter of Faith. So do I press you, since the Council hath passed this point for an indifferent one, He that will say the opposite is an Heresy is malapert beyond his strength. Arrogantia ejus plus quam fortitudo ejus.  
You give us another paper, which you say was written by a nameless scholar of mine. I could reply I have none. For who converse with me, I tell them they must see themselves, not trust me; which if they do, they are Scholars to truth, not to me; If they trust me they follow me not, and so are not my Scholars. But I have too much ground to suspect you aim at some advantage against me by charactering him a very able proficient in my School, and repeating it so often; as if you would have men think that both Friends and Foes were all against me. I must then once more tell you that the author of that Letter never was addicted to my doctrine, nor pretended to be my follower (however you have got a trick to call all my Followers that will not censure me as loud as you, nor willingly assent to your uncharitable carriage) nor was he ever given to be curious in such kind of dissertations, no not even to that degree as to have read my middle State, which made him more easily liable to surprise in mistaking the Council at the first sight, taking all for right which your learned Divine writ concerning it; so that it was candid credulity of your Friends wrong relation of it, not want of judgement which betrayed him into the error of imagining the Bull and Council on your side, nor did he dream his Letter should ever come into print, it being writ privately to the other as a Friend, otherwise in likelihood he would have sifted the Testimonies himself, and not have taken them on others account. So that you first uncivilly print a private Letter of his, surreptitiously procured, without his knowledge; then mischaracter him an able proficient in my School, my Follower, &c. whereas what he writes is only like a moderate and grave Christian, who knows he is not even by Principles of Charity to interpret as disobedient one who publicly submits to the Church; and so I look upon it as an act of charity, not of particular Friendship to me. But since you love to have it thought your party can gain some advantage against those who are proficients by my Books, I will show you one, your present Adversary, whom yourself character to be but a puny in my School, and as I hear never appeared in print, nor set himself to write before, yet has so prudently foiled you in every encounter in this Question, that he hath left nothing for me but to discover your falsehood in such by-questions as you thrust in to stuff out your Volume.   

FOURTH DIVISION. Containing an Answer to his seventeenth Section.  
The authors doctrine of Councils explicated; This new opinion of Purgatory in likelihood later than Saint Gregory.  
IN your seventeenth Section you first put upon me that I am armed against the Authority of Popes and Councils, and then you run headlong on with declamatory invectives upon that supposition. But, as the world is curious, I conceive some will light on my defence as well as on your calumny; to whom I thus explicate the true state of the question. It is known to all Christians that Christ and his Apostles taught the world the Christian faith. It is known to all Catholics, that this same faith has continued in the Catholic Church now fifteen ages. It is known to the same that the means of continuing this faith hath been by pastors, and Fathers teaching their Children what themselves had learned by the same way. It is likewise known that in divers ages there arose up divers heretics, who endeavoured to bring in doctrines contrary to the received Faith: and that Bishops, sometimes in particular (especially the Bishop of Rome) sometimes in Collections or Councils withstood and confounded such heretics confirming the old belief, and rejecting all new inventions. It is evident that to do this it fuffices to have veracity enough to attest what the old doctrine was, and power enough to suppress all such as stir against it; Thus far all goes well. Of late Ages among our curious schoolmen some have been so subtle that the Old faith would not serve them, but they thought it necessary to bring in new points of Faith, and because what was not of Faith could not become of Faith without a new revelation, they looked about for a new revelation; and, finding the two supreme Courts of Christian discipline, seated in General Councils and the Pope, they quickly resolved to attribute the power of increasing Christian Faith to these two Springs of Christianity. Now, the first difference betwixt the two parties engaged in the present controversy is, whether the Faith delivered by the Apostles be sufficient to govern the Church by, or there be necessary fresh Additions of such points as cannot be known without a new revelation. In which they whom I follow hold the negative, they whom I suppose you follow, the affirmative. Out of this question springs a second, whether in the Councils and in the Pope is to be acknowledged a Prophetical kind of Spirit, by which towards the ordinary government of the Church, they have a gift to reveal some things not before revealed, nor deducible out of things already revealed by the natural power of discourse which God has left to mankind to govern itself by. In which point also I follow them that deny, you and your eminent learned men stand up for the Affirmative.  
I hope by this any ingenious Reader will perceive that, if the Faith delivered by Jesus Christ joined with the natural power of discoursing be sufficient to govern the Church of God, than those who give power to Councils and Popes sufficient to govern by this way, give them as much as is necessary for the Church. But if new Articles be necessary to the government of the Church then, and only then, they fall short. So that no understanding person reading these lines can doubt but the true question is this, whether the Faith delivered by Christ be sufficient for the government of the Church; or, that we must expect new additions to our Faith every age, or when occasion presents itself. Whence it will easily appear that all the great noise you make, and furious rhetoric you use, of, my denying the Authority of Councils; my being armed against them; and such like angry stuff, are but uncharitable, uncivil, and highly injurious clamours without any true cause or ground at all. But we shall hear more of these hereafter.  
Now, any prudent Christian that shall, with moderate attention, have read but so far, will judge the question already decided: For who dare maintain Christ's doctrine was imperfect? And indeed all that have any little modesty on your side, will not say new Articles of Faith are necessary, but that whatsoever the Church defines was before revealed; though when they come to declare themselves they demand really new Articles, only calling them Explications of the former, or Deductions from them: And if they would justify that they were but such Deductions as natural reason can deduce, there would remain no controversy: which in very deed the church's practice shows to be the truth; In the first Council it being recorded, that there was Conquisitio magna, and all Councils, and Popes ever since proceeding in the same style.  
But here I must remember you what you said in the beginning concerning Pargatory, that the reason why you write against my opinion was because it was translated into English. And so I now protest, that you are the cause why I write of this subject in English. My books generally are to debate what I think in the points I write of with learned men, whose care it is to divulge truths to the people, dispensing to every one the quantity he is capable of, not to raise any new thoughts in ignorant heads. Your crying out against me forces me to a necessary defence before the people; wherefore if any disputings concerning this matter displease any person of judgement, let it light upon your head who are the provoker, and compeller of me into this new task, which both age and other thoughts make me slowly and unwillingly undertake. But I must not be mine own chooser, but follow God.  
As to what you say against this doctrine: first you desire your Reader to consider that if these grounds, to wit, that the Pope and the Council can err, (without distinguishing in what either matter or manner of proceeding) Christian Faith is a mere mockery. I confess the proposition grave in words, but in sense not worthy a schoolboy. For, first, I ask you, whether you mean in necessary points or unnecessary ones? If you say, in both, I doubt your whole School will desert you. For who is there that hath an ounce of brains who will give authority to the Church to determine all the subtle quirks of the School? But if you say only necessary ones, then before you went farther against me you should have proved that the verities come by inheritance from Jesus Christ are not all that are necessary, which question you never think on, and so brandish your logic against the apparitions in the clouds. Secondly, I ask you whether without counsel or with it? If you say without it, again your School will desert you. If you say with it, I ask you how much counsel, and to what period? In all which you will be at a loss. Must it hold till by reason they see a necessary connexion with the delivered Faith? if you say so you desert your virtue of prophesying, and come over to our School, which you so abominate as rational and faithless: yet this, experience teaches us, is the way that Popes and Councils use to take. If you say their consulting must not hold till they see it by reason, then tell me, what Oedipus or Geometrician can guess or fix the terminating line of counsel prerequisite? These points a Scholar would have settled. You distinguish nothing but jumble all your Bells together into a confused noise, and deafen more than instruct your Hearers. Now 'tis to much purpose to talk of the force of the word Anathema, whilst you have not settled a matter in which the Church hath a power to impose it. What an inconsiderate manner of arguing is this?  
You say catholics require no other assurance of their Faith, then upon this firm foundation that our holy Mother the Church is their infallible directress. The proposition is the very Tenet we mainly advance and stick to. Go but consequently to this, and we shall have no quarrel. You add another ground, that the Councils (her mouth) are the unerring deliverers of truth. This also is very true and never denied by us. But there rises a great question whether Councils be perpetually and in all cases the mouth of the Church: look upon Cariolanus his abridgement of the Councils, and read his division of General Councils into approbata and reprobata, and ex parte approbata, and ex parte improbata: and see how ignorantly you go to work even in the grounds of your own eminent learned men, who will oppose you peradventure more than I, and yet you preach Christian Religion is a mockery if this be taken away. I desire not to look into particulars, unless you force me to it. For I cannot discover even your errors, without discovering too the vanity of that School which you nickname the Church, and confidently take upon you to be one of her Masters. I doubt not if you attentively consider your eminent Scholars you will find many of them speak indeed gloriously of Councils; but, unless I be strangely deceived, they give them less of inward and real Authority than I; while they make them, in effect, but ciphers to the Pope, without whom they signify nothing, though added perhaps to him they increase his signification; yet surely not very much; since, in many of those Master's opinion, he alone is infallible, and I think in every one's opinion, all together are not much more. Whereas the doctrine I follow gives them an absolute Inerrancy in testifying received truths; which is clearly sufficient to conserve and propagate the Faith of the Church.  
I believe you mistake the meaning of that grave and worthy Person, whom, without any ground at all for your conceit, you call my Scholar, since he seriously protests, he never gave his mind that way, nor ever read over any considerable part of my Books, nor particularly, this of the Middle State: his true meaning I conceive is, we may know when Councils and consistories apply themselves right, by examining (not Tradition itself for that's evident in the sense of the faithful, but) their proceedings, by Tradition, whether they be conformable to it. Which is not only a maintainable but excellent truth. And by this method the Divines of those days examined the doctrine of John 22. For, Tradition is the Law of Christ planted in the hearts of all Christians, not to be examined; it being to be read, fair written there by their external words and conversations. Now if a Pope or Council be supposed to delver doctrine against this, 'tis past darkness and examining, since all the Christian world cannot choose but resent it, and know it to be against their Faith and judgement. So that you plainly misunderstand the meaning of Tradition, which is no hidden thing, but the public and settled belief of the Christian world.  
You will say, 'tis impossible a Pope or Council should proceed so grossly. I wish there were no examples of it. But the truth is, if instead of a Pope, considered only personally, you take him as presiding in his Church and Seat, and joined with it, which is a kind of more than a provincial Council; but much more if you take a General Council, without extraordinary violence without or within, both mainly visible, this cannot happen, and so they have infallibility in attesting the received doctrines, most absolutely sufficient to secure the Church against being misled by them.  
By the same error you look to determine Faith by Inquest, not knowing it cannot be unknown in a Catholic Country to them that live there. See the story of Luther. Were men doubtful of their Faith, before he and his fellows in iniquity set themselves to snarl at it? Therefore Inquest may be made how to answer their Argumments, but not to understand what the Church held before opposition rose. How much mistaken is all your discourse about the proceeding to higher Tribunals after so great diligence of scrutiny? There is no such thing as scrutiny necessary to find out Faith, nor ever was the Church to seek her Faith. Since she once received it from Jesus Christ she never lost it, and so is to look into it, not for it. If any thing be to be look? for, it is not faith, it may be some theological Verity, not faith. Your discourse therefore is wholly out of the way. No wonder than you find yourself at a loss, and cry out like a blind man for a hand to guide you, since instead of Christ's faith, you look for a new faith. One would have it an Article of our Christian faith, that his Order is a true Religious. Order, Another, that one hanged for treason is a true Martyr: others seek some private revelation that brings in profit, to be canonised for faith, and other such fine questions to be put in the Creeds of the Church; and if it be not yielded there's a power in the Church to impose such beliefs upon men, presently the denying doctrine is an Exterminating School, and pulls up by the roots all the foundations of Christian Religion.  
Nor will there want some to say, that though these things be true, they are not to be published, but Catholics are to be left in ignorance of such tender points: But will not the mischief by degrees grow intolerable, if once it should come to that height that the People by a preoccupated credence, be apt to be stirred seditiously against their natural and lawful governor, by any surreptitious Rescript fetched from beyond Sea, freshly sealed with the new stamp of faith: and to believe all Christianity is rained if such a Rescript, nay the Interpretation of the procurers be any way doubted of. O strange unhappy times!  
You press farther that according to me the Church hath de facto erred in the Bull and Council so long treated of. What a strange boldness is this? you bring an Interpretation against Grammar, against logic, and against Divinity, and if this be not accepted of, you cry the Church has erred. Your Interpretation is against Grammar by your own confession, complaining of your Adversary for demanding an Is or Is not, which is a plain acknowledgement that your sense is not formally in the words. It is against logic, because you put the subject to be part of the predicate; Against Divinity because you would make the grace of God and heavenly benefits be bought like Salads in the market, by him that has most money. Besides other inconveniences whereof I have explicated some in my Book of the Middle State, and may have occasion to say more hereafter; And yet, forsooth, if this sweet Interpretation be not gratis admitted of, the Church has erred, the Church has erred, and all's undone, well a day, well a day.  
You go farther and press that my rule of faith fails me in this very point. And first you appeal to the consciences of all illiterate Persons, whether this be not their present faith. Yau have found out a Tribunal very fit to gain your cause in. But I wonder you are so little skilled in spiritual direction, that you do not know, most illiterate men never reflect upon their inward acts, or farther than what belongs to the fancy, not one amongst ten thousand: And you deceive me if you hold faith to be an act of the fancy. Yet I dare not be too bold, for I have heard of one that wore a plush cloak and could neither read nor write. Wherefore it is enough for me to deny it, whether it be your opinion or no.  
Besides do you not know that even literate Persons, unless Divines, are not to mince the doctrine taught them by their pastors so far as to distinguish what is delivered for faith what as necessary to the explication of it, or to the practice of Christian life: Further you may know that many even of your own eminent Divines differ not only in what points are of faith what not, but in what makes them to be of faith what not. Though I think they all agree that an explication against Grammar and logic does not raise a position into an Article of faith, though the explication be of a Pope's Bull.  
Next, you tell your adversary that Master White himself says Saint Gregory the great was the first founder of that faith. I know well you account Master White a kind of a mad man, that dares advance such propositions as he cannot but foresee what strong opposition they were like to stir up against him. But I did not think he was so mad, as holding no doctrine to belong to faith which began since the Apostles days, who are the last revealers of public faith that he knows of, and besides professing this doctrine so far from faith that it is not true, yet should tell you that Saint Gregory founded this faith. As far as I remember, what I said was, that Saint Gregory reported this novelty first broke out in his days by the means of certain revelations. And this I said upon the authority of Venerable Bede, who attributes the book of Dialogues to Saint Gregory. But now I must tell you that upon fuller consideration, I rather believe Venerable Bede's information was defective, then to attribute so unworthy a book to so grave and learned a Pope; nothing like such winter tales as are told in that book being found in his most worthy and learned works. And I will make yourself, whom I know a great admirer of that learned and pious doctor, judge of the controversy. Do you think there is in the next world Excommunications and restorings to communion as is expressed in one of those Revelations? Do you think that one who died obstinate in schism was sent to Purgatory because he did many Alms as is reported in another Revelation? do you think it is not the fancy of an Idle brain to imagine Souls are sent to baths to scrub and rub men there to be acquitted of their sins? Other things there are in the same book worth the noting; but these are enough to show it unworthy of St. Gregory; as indeed it is for so great a doctor and Prelate to spend his time in gathering together private stories of obscure and petty Relaters. This will set this doctrine an hundred years later, and into an age one of the least cultivated since the beginning of the Church of God.  
Nor is it true that this carries after it a practice testified by Foundations, Prayers, Masses, alms, &c. For all these were in the Church before this doctrine, as may appear in Antiquity. The Church of Africa made a Canon to force the laity to contribute to Prayers for the dead about Saint Austin's time, who yet testifies that the question whether Souls were delivered out of Purgatory before the day of judgement had not yet been moved. Now Foundations contradict this doctrine, rather than promote it. For he that makes a Foundation intends it without limit of time; and so must imagine the Soul needs the assistance of that charity so long; which would much cool the devotion you pretend, and we see practised before our eyes, to get Masses enough in a morning to send a Soul to Heaven to dinner. Show me but one ancient Instance where two or three thousand Masses have been by Legacy procured to be said the very next morning after the Testator's departure, and little or nothing after that morning; and I will ingenuously confess it the best argument you have produced in the whole managing of your cause.  
After the Author of the Dialogue there was no more news of this opinion till Odilo, a Monk of Cluny's, time: who being a kind of a general of many Monasteries, dilated this doctrine in them, upon a goodly ground to build a matter of Faith on, to wit, the report of a French Pilgrim who said he had met with an hermit (I think a French man) who persuaded himself he had Visions of Souls being delivered out of Purgatory by the Prayers of the Monks of Clunie. Upon this ground the good Saint recommended the devotion for the dead warmly to his subjects, and they to the people who frequented their Monasteries: and hence this doctrine came to be common where his order was in esteem. And so, being a pious credulity stayed about one hundred years till the School began. Which; finding it very common, easily favoured it with such reasons and explications as they thought fit, though not universally, for some are found to have contradicted it, and so it was exalted to a probable opinion. In which state the Council of Florence found it, and practised it, giving communion 'to the Greeks, (who as is before declared) left it out of their confession, after the Latins had put it in theirs. And in this quality it persevered till my book de medio statu was turned into English. Then it began first to be a matter of faith, by the power of the great letters you put in the Edition of the Bull of Benedictus, and the Council of Florence. For, before that, even the consorts of your Tenet held it no otherwise then for the common opinion of Divines.   

LAST DIVISION. Containing an Answer from Section the eighteenth, to Section the two and twentieth.  
The Catholic Rule of Faith defended. The Vindicators weakness in making the unlearned Judges of Controversy. His frequently misrepresenting my doctrine, and manifold failings in his new attempts from the Bull and Council.  
YOur eighteenth Section you begin with saying, my doctrine (which is a close adhering to Tradition) is the way to make fools stray. You follow still the same truantly humour of using words without looking into the sense. For, if Tradition signify the delivery of the doctrine preached and taught by our forefathers, your proposition signifies that to follow what we are taught by our forefathers is the way to make fools go astray. Neither do I deny but that you speak consequently, if first you make the Pope's veracity the veracity of the whole Church, and that all the Church but he can err, and consequently he may correct the doctrine which was believed by the Church in the age immediately going before him; then 'tis true that to prefer the Belief of the former age before the Pope's word will lead fools astray. But for my part I desire to be one of those fools, and to go so astray. You run on in a full career, and tell us of the Authority of the Church and Councils in common, and that things settled by them must not be brought in question, not seeing because you will not, that what the Church believed in the last Age is more the Church's decree, than what she speaks either by Pope or Council, unless she speaks the same that she believed the last Age: and so, you continue your discoursing with words, not taking their meaning along with you.  
In your nineteenth Section you come so home as to judge and condemn me by mine own doctrine, a great shame to me, I confess, if you make it good. You argue therefore what have we seen but Masses, Dirges, alms, &c. so far is almost true; but why did you not put in, by which in express terms we prayed for the welfare of the Souls at the day of the General judgement? but you had reason to leave that out, for it would have set a shrewd puzzle in your Argument. We have heard constantly (say you) that Souls are delivered out of Purgatory by these powerful helps before the day of judgement? In this part you have mended your former fault, for there you said too little to serve your purpose, if you had proved all you said; and here you say more than can be proved to serve your purpose: do you mean that your way was preached constantly, that is, as a certain and established doctrine of faith? or that for a long time they preached it as a probable truth? or, without engaging at all into the degree of its assuredness? but perhaps you proceed more nicely, since you only said you heard it constantly, not that it was preached constantly▪ For to say a thing constantly, imports that the speaker teaches it to be certain, and it is not enough if for a long time he tells you it is likely to be so. Now so far as concerns the delivery of Souls from Purgatory by the potent means you speak of was ever constantly taught, but that the delivery should be made before the day of judgement, was taught but as a pious opinion, if the Preacher understood the sense of the doctors of the Schools themselves, who add no such qualification: because, their principles being either Authority or Reason, they find in Authority neither Fathers, nor Councils, nor Popes express in the point, and Reasons much less favourable, and to say the truth though they are apt enough to dispute whether there be a God, a Trinity, an Incarnation, &c. Yet I do not remember to have heard of any one who hath treated of his proposition so directly as to dispute it pro and con. Which being so, what certainty can we expect a Preacher should fix upon this doctrine.  
But to declare what I think those whom you appeal to will answer: I believe it is, that they never reflected to make any difference of the things the Preachers delivered them, and much less upon the degrees of assent they gave to this or that point, and as far as they can tell they gave the same assent to any place of Scripture the Preacher explicated, as they did to this point; unless some particular occasion put them in mind to qualify one and not the other. But, as they found by experience in other things that if any rub came to make them doubt of any thing a Preacher said, than first they began to consider on what grounds they were bound to believe the point proposed, so they have done in this, and of those who have spent any competent time in examining both sides, many have discovered your grounds unsafe to build any certainty on, and some confessed them too weak to sustain even so much as a probability. What the Gentleman, whose letter you cite (and with some imprudent circumstances) will say, why he was carried away with your Arguments, I know not; but had he read my Books as much as I esteem his learning and virtue; he would surely have met with full answers to your very objections: which they who read yours cannot do; nor so much as hear of the Arguments I use to maintain my opinion; you on set purpose concealing them; and proposing, in their stead, as my whole grounds, a discourse made to a mere Philosopher or Heathen, where the method of a regular writer obliged me to abstract from Revelation.  
But that this answer I set down is for the greatest part of those that follow this opinion, a true one, is not only manifest to all that reflect upon what passeth within them on the like occasions, but experience hath taught me it in every country where I have conversed since the publishing this doctrine. In all which I have found divers who upon hearing of it acknowledged that before they had in their hearts a certain dislike of your opinion, but they knew not why; it having a kind of an uncouth semblance, yet they could not pitch upon any thing to say solidly against it. One passage I will entreat your patience to let me tell you: Before I printed it, I communicated this point to one of the greatest Divines of Christendom, and confessed to be so. He presently replied it was against the Council of Florence, and went immediately to his Chamber and fetched down the Council; when we had a little debated the text, and he saw it did not reach home, he shut up the Book, with these words. Look to it, you will draw all the Regulars upon your back, meaning all such of them, as found great profit by persuading the people they should procure a sudden redemption of their friends out of Purgatory, which I believe, are those you speak of that hear not of this doctrine without horror. Therefore, Acute Sir, you will or may see that your Argument is two edged, and as the auditors you speak of did not distinguish the degree of assent to this position from that they give to Faith, so neither do they make any difference between it and the sleightest assent they have. Thus may your Adversary by your Argument conclude any practice of the Church, or common opinion of Preachers, or generally received ecclesiastical stories, nay even the new holy days to be points of faith, as well and as easily as you do this. What difference of assent, think you, do the People make between these truths, that there was a Saint Philip or Saint Jacob, and that there was a Saint Bennet, or Saint Augustin? they hear of these far oftener than of those, and seldom or never, of the several degrees wherein they are recommended to their assents. Even the more prudent in many such points run currently on with an undistinguishing assent, till something jog their thoughts, and awaken them to look into the business, than they begin to make it a question, to examine and sift it, and at last to settle it in its true box of Catholic, or Theological or Historical faith, or of some other inferior assent.  
You go on to persuade your Readers, that those who accept of this doctrine do it through comfortable apprehensions in lieu of great horrors before they were in, and because it eases their consciences from the incumbent care of assisting their dead friends. In the first, you manifestly show you understand not the doctrine of your own Divines; for, we agree in the grievousness of the punishments, or if we disagree in any thing, it is that mine is the severer. For the difference of our positions is not in what the punishments are, which we both agree to be acts of the will: Our difference is, whether these acts of the will be caused by the force of nature in spirits, as I say; or by the force of material fire, as your Divines maintain. Which was the cause why when I explicated the nature of Hell in a Divinity lecture, one of my Scholars told me, I made Hell worse than it was. For in truth the force of a material body is not to be compared to the strong activity of a subsistent spirit, as any Divine will easily guess.  
In your other point you seem to have framed your conceit out of conversation with Women and Children, whose desires are violent at the instant, but soon pass away; and not out of the consideration of men whose counsels are governed by a far prospect, and aim at perpetuity. So you flatter poor Women with the hopes of relieving their friends the first morning, or the first Saturday, or in some speedy time, and get present moneys fit to make merry with for one day; never reflecting that the ancient and manly charity for the dead was to establish Foundations, and perpetual Anniversaries; by which the memory of our friends, and prayers for them was often renewed, and long continued; whereas taking your Principles, we need neither much fear the terrors of Purgatory, nor seek new ways to ease our Consciences from the incumbent care of assisting our departed friends, since one Mass at a privileged Altar will do the work alone, and a very little sum of money procure that Mass without going to the cost of Dirige's and such like chargeable Offices. And here I must ask my Readers & my Adversary's leave to correct one suspicion I had unawares entertained, that Interest might have some influence upon the Defenders of this short stay in Purgatory; I was deceived, and now I see they are no ways accusable of that odious crime: anciently great alms were given, and those often repeated, for the assistance of one Soul; and so the Church and churchmen gained much, and grew rich apace; Now, there is opened a far cheaper way; one piece alone, and that of silver too, dispatches the business. Surely out fair and numerous and rich monasteries were not built and endowed with such petty Contributions.  
After this you proceed to the arraignment of me before my Bishop or a Nuncius Apostolicus. But there want two things to make your arraignment good: first that the people be enured to Tradition, and to prefer the received Faith of the Church before all other doctrines. From the danger of which your Divines will secure me, while they teach the People that the Church when it is said to be inerrable, signifies the Pope alone, that all the People may err, that General Councils have no strength till they be sealed by the Pope, and so I shall have this help to appeal from them to the Pope, let my doctrine be as opposite as it will to all that hath been hitherto the belief of the Christian world. The second thing that wants to the perfect arraignment is that you have not yet found out so weak a Bishop, that will believe a doctrine sprung from uncertain Visions, fostered by unlearned zeal, and strengthened with an Exposition of a Council or of a Pope's Bull, against the rules of Grammar, logic, and Divinity, is the belief of the present Church. In the mean while I give you great thanks both for your setting forth my plea against Luther, and honouring it with so high an approbation that it thunders and lightens home. For, besides that the knowledge of that form of proceeding against heretics is very necessary, it will give me a testimony that I am a good Christian, and if I be not a very beast I have not committed an error to fall under so gross and so well foreseen a Censure. To the charge itself, from what I have already said you may gather my clear and full Ansver; that the doctrine I sustain is not by me pretended to be of faith but only not against faith: as also, that the doctrine I oppose, is not and Article of faith, and supported by Fathers and Monuments of Antiquity and immemorable custom, but only an Opinion not very ancient, nor ratified by the consent of Fathers, nor of so long a standing that its beginning is not well enough known: perhaps, the later, yet for its time as much prevailing doctrine of privileged Altars may live to be as old as this is now, and as common too; will it therefore deserve to be put into our Creed? or can it ever become an Article of faith which the whole Church professes is but an Opinion now? And are not these differences betwixt Luther's case and mine, whom you so charitably endeavour to parallel, sufficient to distinguish our dooms? Examine them but once more, and I will make you my Judg. Only forget not these words which yourself put down as part of my method to convince an heretic, That the Authority of things which we stand bound to believe, descends handed down from CHRIST our B. saviour and no otherwise, even till this age.  
In your twentieth Section you pretend to examine the council of Florence once more against me. Your first mistake is that it was the business of the Council in Florence to declare the faith of the Church concerning the state of Souls which depart this life. I mean not to speak to your History, for as much as was determined of Souls was agreed in Ferrara, but to the word business; for their business was only to agree two points; one about material fire: the other, about the Just Souls presently seeing God, which was the business of Benedictus his Bull, and some of the Greeks were of the same apprehension with John the 22. But you like an Astronomer considering the phoenomenas of the Definition frame the question out of that, whereas all the rest was no business, but the completing of the doctrine by dilating it out of tenets agreed without and before any controversy. Your next error is, that whereas you pretend to compare my doctrine with the councils, you do it to the doctrine of the parts of the Council, when it is a clear case, the doctrine of one part is not the doctrine of the Council, but that in which the whole Council agrees. Your third error (if it be not a wilful equivocation) is, that you say the Latins believe material Fire in Purgatory; which, if you mean by belief, Catholic faith, is extremely absurd; Since they join communion with the Greeks, who profess the contrary; if you mean only they held it as a probable opinion, you cozen your Auditory, which expects you should speak of Faith, and not of that from which I may dissent by authority of the Council. Your fourth rather malice than mistakes is, that you impose upon me, that there is no purging of Souls before reunion; for all who know that actio is prior termino will allow a purging before a being purged, as going to London is before being there. Besides your oft repeated fault of mischarging me to hold that the souls irregular affections are the torments of purgatory. Your fifth error is, that you put an opposition betwixt the Latins and me where we perfectly agree in all, save only that intruded word by this Fire which comes out of a former, and spoils the whole tenet of the Latins from being a matter of Faith, making it but a probable-opinion in whole, though the other parts belong to faith. You add, the Latins must needs have thrust me out of communion, not reflecting that they gave communion to the Greeks who dissented in all you have alleged truly against me. As to the Greeks. First you say I hold against them that Souls are in no place. And though I cannot affirm positively what the meaning of the Greeks was at the Council in this point; yet knowing their father's use, when they speak of spirits, to call working in a place, being in a place, I am well assured they would not thrust me out of their Society for denying a true locality in spirits. The second objection is answered by my answer to the Latins, and the same is to be said to the third: Of your last objection concerning the efficacy of the helps because you say you will evidence it, I must expect the fulfilling your promise, till than it is but a threatning likely to be of little effect.  
You end with a great confidence that you have dispatched this business, and converted your adversary, unless he will stand upon the Errability of the Council. For you (imagining yourself inerrable in your rash and shallow interpretation of it) cannot (alas good Christian!) imagine any other possible way to maintain the conclusion: I on the other side, hope I have said somewhat that may help your imagination, but dare entertain no great apprehension that I shall convert you, knowing I have not spoken to the main foundation of your opinion, which is settled in your will, upon grounds beyond my removal.  
Yet in the 21 Section you are forced to retire from your fair hopes, for your great words satisfy your adversary no more than your Capital letters. His answer in substance is, that you misconstrue the Pope and Council as it hath been declared by him and me before? And that the purgation before the day of judgement may be supposed but not defined. And clearly enough, such is both the Popes and the Council's meaning as is before more largely insisted on; which being the only knot of the controversy, you do well to prepare loud clamours against it, and tell us it is a pitiful evasion. Let us than suppose it were judged by the Pope to be the more probable opinion amongst Divines that Souls were purged before the day of judgement, though he held the other was also probable, which I think you will not say impossible for a Pope, since divers have gone that way in other matters. In this case was it fit the Pope should define what became of such Souls or no? if you say he could and should define, what is become of all your clamours against defining upon a supposition which afterwards may be found to be impossible? For he that judges an opinion only probable, leaves a probability, that it is impossible to be true; since whoever says one side is but probable as far as concerns science says it may be false, for any thing he knows. Now, things that have a settled course in nature are so disposed that impossibility is concomitant to falsity, nor can it ever be proved to be false unless it be proved to be impossible. So that the Pope in defining the coming to heaven of such Souls, proceeds not consequently to his opinion if he doth not go upon a supposition that himself confesses may be impossible, and yet in all prudence he must define it as being but an extension of this his main question whether Saints go immediately to heaven. If you say he could not or ought not to define such a conditional case, who will or can believe you that hath any prudence; since, for the position itself, He both thought it the more probable and saw it concerned the most ample part of his division of Saints going to heaven. For all christians imagine more go to heaven through Purgatory, then either by the virtue of baptism or by eminency of Purity and Sanctity acquired in this world. So that I persuade myself you would easily allow the Pope not only could, but aught, in case he thought both sides probable to proceed as he did in his definition. Now, that this was the Pope's case is absolutely certain and more than probable: since we cannot doubt but it was the case of the Latins in the Council of Florence, in which the Greeks by their leaving our the expression of some being delivered sooner, some later, directly waved that position; and by consequence refused to profess an Article of faith, if this were one, and yet, without any repugnance or quarrelling about this circumstance, were admitted to communion and a common decree made in which the Latins position was abstracted from, as you may plainly see in the Council, and is before more fully declared.  
Now as to your argument, every one can see 'tis weakly done to talk of actions proceeding out of knowledge or apprehension, not according to the apprehension but according as things really are: He that thinks two opinions probable takes both as possible whether they be or no. For, howsoever they are in themselves, to him they appear so. Now to argue out of the nature of things, which he professes not to know, to the actions that must flow from his apprehension, is a clear inconsequence. Yet all your great clamours have no other ground, and therefore I think I may leave out your petty quarrels with your Adversary about his examples, as superfluous, and nothing conducing to the main point in controversy.    

SECOND PART  
Refuting the Vindicator's other scattered Objections; chiefly those which oppose several doctrines of the Author in other points.  

FIRST DIVISION, Containing an Answer from Sect. 22. to Sect. 27.  
The Vindicators unskilfulness in the nature of a Metaphor. The trial of his Tenet and mine by Fathers and Liturgies. His Drollish Calumnies shown groundless by the authors Explication of his tenets about the Church's future proficiency in science, a dispossessed governor, and the uncertainty of the Scripture's Letter by mere transcribing. His manifold abuses of the author in his citing him about Councils, and Hell. His miscalling God's doing what's wisest and best, Pagan Fatality.  
DEar Sir, (that I may, following your Directions though not your Example, begin like a Love-Letter) by chance I had turned over a leaf too much, and so lighted on the beginning of your 22 Section: in which you designed to give a clearer view of my doctrine, and so I hoped to have been quit of the former controversy, and could willingly upon that condition, have endured the bitter dissemblings wherewith you end this Chapter. But finding you fall back to the same quarrel again, I perceive you had condemned me to the Oar for another Caravan: And therefore I must repeat to you, that you talk so unskilfully of faith, as if there were none but in Pope's Bulls, and Definitions of Councils: As if the Apostles had gone about preaching that such a Council had defined such an Article, and such a Pope the other. And so you ask a monstrous question. How if some Imp of Hell should arise, and admit only a Metaphorical and not a real Son in Divinis, how could this blasphemy be repressed by Consubstantialem Patri? A shrewd question I confess, for it so confounds the terms, that it is very hard to make sense of them. First, I would know what you mean by that term in Divinis; Whether in the substance of God? or in The●logy, or speaking of God? For if you speak of the Essence, the Arrians never held a Metaphorical son in the Essence of God, but in the Essence of Christ.  
Nor do I think any who understand a Modicum of Divinity, can put so foolish a Position, that to be a Son should be to be God, or the very Essence of God; and yet should be so solely Metaphorical that it should be no reality. But if you mean that there was no Son in God, but some creature, was called Son as the Arians held, than what signifies this word in Divinis? rub over your old School-notions again a little, before you put yourself in print. Now against these was made the Nicen creed, and not against the former. But I must advertise you that by your high skill in Divinity, you should have framed a new nature of Metaphors, to have come home to your position. For I doubt not, you can as well square Grammar as Philosophy to Divinity. Then, in our way, who look into nature to know what a Metaphor is, it appears to be the use of a word in a second sense, derived from a former. And so, how you jumble together only a metaphorical and not a real Son, I do not understand. For they have no more connexion then green and d●l●ful, or what disparate terms you please to compound into strong nonsense? Reality speaks nature; metaphorical, a manner of speech, yet both these must be joined to condemn some Trinobant to be an Imp of Hell. And why such fierce unchristian words; Miscreant and Imp of Hell? I remember indeed the furious zeal of a Pharisee let fly at our blessed Saviour, language far worse than this; but whether my Chider be Pharisee, or Publican, or both, or neither, I know not, God knows, and God forgive him, and bless me with grace to take patiently all his injuries, and I hope he will give me strength to refute his arguments.  
But let us look into the thing itself, and seek how a Son is spoken of God. And, let our first question be, what those people who first brought the words of Father and Son into use meant to explicate by them. And I know nothing, but that they meant by Father a man▪ who by means of a Woman produced a creature like to himself; by Son, a creature thus produced. This then must be evidently the first signification of the words, and if another be attributed to them by design, not pure hazard, they must be acknowledged to be translated from this first signification to that next; as when he that converts one to faith or good life is called his Father, the person converted, his Son. Now, because translations are made upon divers kinds of connexions of the things signified, not all but such a one only, as is translated for a proportion or likeness, is called a Metaphor, as a governor or Gubernator in Latin, first signifies the Master or Pilot which governs a Ship, thence it's translated by reason of similitude or proportion to him that in a City or commonwealth behaves himself as the Master or Pilot doth in a Ship. Now, let us affirm something of God by this word Father, Will you say, the word was not translated to him from a former signification, but given him by pure hazard, without any respect to a fore-used sense? Sure either you or the Readers will not be so senseless. It remains then to see by what connexion it was translated. Certainly not that it was a cause or effect, or a concomitant, for all these are more improper, but because there is a similitude or proportion, seeing that in God, another Person proceeds in likeness to him, from him. Therefore a Father is spoken of God metaphorically. And if you but consider the language, you use by custom and not by understanding, you would know it were only metaphorically spoken of God, that is to say in no other signification of the Word; not by a metonymy, Synecdoche, or Catachresis, nor in the first signification: For these are the terms which are excluded when only is added to Metaphorically: and not the term really, which is a manner of being not of speaking, and so cannot be opposed to metaphorically, by one who understands the words he speaks. You will say you scorn these Grammatical Lectures, and I believe you; but such pride hath brought you to call the principal Fathers of the Church, and her best Divines, Imps of Hell, for all these say the same I do in this point. You must have some miscreants to accompany your Imps: Therefore you would have a miscreant teach that a moderate affection to a Concubine▪ is a less crime than an immoderate love to a Wife, and, because this latter is no breach of God's Commandments, as your Discourse imports, therefore he must be a miscreant that should say it. O what want had Solomon of such a Ghostly Father? to tell him that to love his Wives immoderately was no breach of the Commandments, And that to love them so, as out of that love to fill Jerusalem with Idols and Idolatrous Worship, was not far worse than a moderate, or rather an ordinary (for none is moderate, none but is sinful enough) love of a Concubine. Surely you have quite forgotten that excellent sentence of our Saviour; He that hates not his Wife, can be none of his Disciple; or, as it is expressed in another place, he that loveth his Wife more than him; For I have heard say, that by these words, is signified as much as he that loves his Wife immoderately. Surely he was no miscreant, that preached to men to loavo their Wives, if they would not let the● serve God quietly.  
After this in your 22 Sect. you arm up your Fathers, and set St. Austin in front to make a great show with his name, For in his words nothing is to be found for your purpose. And, indeed, it is an imprudence to cite him for your opinion, who professes expressly (ad Dulcit. quaest. 1.) the question had not yet been handled before his time, but might hereafter, but that he knew not whether side would prove true. Yet you will give him a paper in his hand to hold forth, though it contains nothing but the profession of your Adversary. And ●ot to take notice of the doubtfulness of the two latter Books you cite, there is nothing in them that your Adbersary will deny, but has already explicated them. But if you fail in Saint Austin, you will help it out by Origen who says too much for you, being known to speak heretically when he uses those phrases you cite out of him. For, his opinion was that Purgatory began after the day of judgement, and the sentence given by Christ; according to which some were to be longer, some shorter in torments, but all to be freed at last. And this he expresses by the words you cite, and you should have brought some words by which it might appear he spoke of Souls before the day of judgement. But you have a salve against this, saying, he wrote this before he was an heretic. By which it is clear you speak at random, for he fell not to be an heretic, by a set occasion, as some others did, but as long as he lived was accounted a great Doctor of the Church, and his Heresies not discovered until after his death, and even then defended to be none of his, but to have been foisted in by heretics.  
Your next Author is St. Gregory of Nyssa, a man of very great worth and au●hority, of whom Petavius that famous Jesuit says, that some in his time, more piously then either truly or wisely, strived to explicate some places of his which did savour of Origenism. But Germanus Bishop of Constantinople, ancienter than Photius, defends this great man; yet not without admitting the Origenists had mingled some sentences of their own here and there in his works. Now this Germanus his Book is not extant, and therefore such places as use the Origenists phrases are suspected ones. Specially the Book you cite is excepted against. Possevinus rejects it absolutely, others object against it, that 'tis corrupted by the Origenists in divers other points, so that it is neither certain the book you cite is his, nor if it be, that it can carry authority, where the phrase is Origenical, as this word Ignis Purgatorius is, and avoided much by Greek Fathers, because it is so notorious in Origen. I have not the Book, and so I cannot speak expressly to the words. In conclusion, you make the judgement of the Ages before those strange Revelations, which Gregorius Dialogus (as the Greeks call him, and say him to be the Pope whose successor was Zacharias, who lived about the midst of the eighth Age) hath left us, or rather Odilo who lived about six hundred years ago, out of three Fathers; whereof one says nothing special for your doctrine, and is certainly against it. The second was notoriously an heretic, and the words you cite pertinent to the explication of his Heresy. The third's words are certainly corrupted by the followers of the second, and the Book out of which you cite the place rejected by learned Catholics, yet this you call the consent of Fathers, and the apprehension of those ages to which I appeal.  
But now comes such an impiety as should make a Christian sink for shame, to wit, that I say Virgil's Purgatory is more rational than yours. But what would you have me do, I did not know that all the light of Christianity consisted in certain private Revelations, quarum nox conscia sola est. Now that you have told me so, I will mend as soon as I shall believe you: mean while, till then, I may conceive a man of wit may conjecture or feign likelier thing; then we find in such visions, as go generally accompanied with some circumstance against the nature of Christian life. Nor do I fear your exposition of the Councils will stand canonised in Christian Creeds; however you assume the confidence to nickname such shallow conceits of your own Catholic Faith all over your Book. You follow the same matter by citing places out of the public Liturgies; of which all but one are purely indifferent to both parties, even in the very out side of the words; and that one easily explicable in a sense consistent with mine. You brave me to find out a new construction of Ante diem rationis, and I tell you I have found one of which I never heard before, and 'tis in your book, and in this very place, pag. 83. wherein striving to apply that excellent Hymn to your purpose, you mistake it I think as much as 'tis possible. First you make the Priest speak in the person of the dead, whereas the whole style of the Hymn runs clearly in the person of him that prays, and in the singular; Quid sum miser tunc dicturus, &c. supplicanti parce Deus. Contremisco, mei finis. With which person suit these words best? that of the dead, or of the Priest? Secondly, your Argument must suppose him to pray for delivery from Purgatory; let's see how you hit it in this: Ne perenni cremer igne, can these words agree with Purgatory? Thirdly, you bring this passage to prove he asks Delivery before the day of judgement. Sure, in this branch you will have better luck; and yet he that reads the Hymn but once unslubberingly over (which certainly you have often red over) will easily pick out another meaning from Quando Judex est venturus, &c. cum resurget creatura, &c. ne me perdas illa die. Can there be possibly words more clearly contradictive of what you pretend? which yet is more confirmed & made plain by the fix last lines where the Hymn begins to change its meeter, and then passes evidently from the Priest to the person prayed for, Huic ergo, &c. spare him, whereas before it ran perpetually with me; and from eternal fire to the style used in praying for Souls in Purgatory. But perhaps you saw the Latin would not so well serve your passion, therefore you either find or make a Translation of it into English verse, and cite us three lines of it. Truly I do not take myself bound to answer such authorities, especially when they are grossly mistranslated with a soul corruption, of which I suspect you knew well enough; since the verses are printed in a late Book whose venerable Author you often converse with, and there they are, my long black score, &c. which you hastily if not maliciously change into their long, &c. Is this the performance of your promise in this very Section, to be no Niggard to your Reader? when you thus notably, in the Scotch phrase, spare the truth. Which indeed appears to mean in this Hymn, only an expression of fear concerning the rigorous examination at the day of judgement, with a desire to be handled then in mercy, else what an improbable request were it, to beg so solemnly one hour, nay, one minutes anticipation of delivery, for even thus much would satisfy (were yours the right interpretation) that moderate petition of Ante diem rationis. But because you will cry out upon Poetical expressions, though you use them yourself and those lewdly corrupted: I will entreat you to apprehend, this Hymn or Sequence was put into the Mass, not compos'● expressly for it, as the Gospels, Epistles, and other parts of the Mass were: but was made for a Meditation upon the judgement day. And so the true meaning of the words are before thou comest to count with me, that is, before my death. The other citations are not worth the writing over, being common to both sides.  
In the 23 Section, you begin to display your rhetoric which I am very well contented with for two reasons. The chief▪ because It is fitter than Divinity to be made a bauble of, The other because a little patience will be sufficient to answer as many leaves as you employ in it, that is some four whole Sections, which I intend almost quite to leave out, they being made for disport and without proof of any thing save only of this, that you mightily affect the humour of railing without sense or reason. Yet I would desire you to note, that it is one thing to say this is to be done, another to say I can do it. True it is, I think demonstrations may be made in Divinity, but I have not ever said of any particular point, that I have demonstrated it. (I leave that to the judgement of the Readers.) Nay not so much as that I ever attempted it. In my two Euclides I pretended to demonstrate, but so that I preferred not myself before greater demonstrators who had miss, and so I went with such care, considering that I also might err in some part. But, where I used not the form of demonstration, as in my Institutions and other my little Books, I never went about to demonstrate. For those who know never so little concerning demonstration, know it is one thing to put a medium which bears with it a possibility to be framed ●nto a demonstration; another, to frame the demonstration. The first is so common, that we cannot talk of our business without using it, in case what we say be truly consequent. Much less can any solid Divine frame a long discourse without doing it. The latter, nobody doth but he, that maketh it his proper task to proceed in form. Whence you may see how much you calumniate me. Besides, you quite forget the qualifications I add, in the places you cite by halves, out of my books; did you not read about the middle of Ratio Operis these words, Si enim non potuisse rationem, &c. to this sense, If you say Reason could never have reached these mysteries, I freely assent, but that after Revelation it cannot be satisfied I unwillingly believe, till it be proved? Go on, and you shall immediately meet another omitted Qualification; That even assisted by Revelation we cannot penetrate into the Deity nor any Mystery, thoroughly, that includes It. Then come the words, wherein my sentiment is plainly contained; But these hinder not, that such Demonstration as is given of God may be found out even of these Mysteries, that is, not thoroughly or perfectly, but some Predicates and truths concerning them; which every Divine agrees of God, and I only extend that kind of demonstrableness to other Articles. This I earnestly entreat the Reader to observe, and when ever he meets with this accusation laid to my Charge, that I would evacuate faith by Demonstration, evidence, knowledge, &c. to understand me still with these qualifications: which had you fairly mentioned, they would have very much allayed the heat of your exceptions. But you cite me sometimes so interruptedly, and translate me sometimes so craftily, that I fear you rather affect to contend plausibly, then improve either yourself, or me, or the world with any profitable truth. One passage here you very pardonably english to the worser sense, for the words indeed are easily mistakable; and they are these, Sed haec omnia, &c. where I meant not, Things in your sense that is, Mysteries of faith, expressed by these terms, expressing those Mysteries; but the terms which were taught us before Christ. As appears, by my words, Fides in humano nobis Idiomate tradita est, &c. words not so far off but a shorter sight than yours might have seen them.  
As for what you cite out of my letter to a Person of worth, that Divines do not profess demonstration. If you mean the form of Demonstration it is so plain there can be no question of it: If you mean only that they do not evidently prove; how can those Divines pretend it who think there is no certainty but in Faith? For the rest I say no such matter, but hold that both Saint Thomas and others have demonstrated many things, and that myself have followed them in such demonstrations. Another accusation is, that I pretend to take away Faith in the Manhood of the Church; which you should have proved. For though I conceive the great Scholars of that time shall have a large portion of Scierce, yet I do not know that I ever said the People should have it. The same I conceive hath ever been in the Church in a certain degree; Of which there are manifest signs in Saint Denys the Areopagite, Saint Basil, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, and others; as also in the Latin Church, specially in Saint Austin, Boetius, Saint Auselm, and others. But I conceive demonstration will be both in its matter, and in Divines much more diffused than it is yet. So that in the Church will ever march together Science and Faith, though in diverse measures.  
Some other little nibblings at my doctrine, (or rather at little bits of it snatched from the Context, as your custom is, because taken entire 'tis too difficult for your teeth) interlace your jollity in these your Sections of mirth and raillery. As that of a dispossessed governor; which you deform in the worst manner you can, by leaving out the Antecedents and Consequents; which would have let you see that my discourse proceeds in the case, that only his own private interest or particular good be opposed and counterballanced to the public; not if the public good be for his restorement: For then my whole Book favours him. Wherefore to make my doctrine invidious against the Person you mean, you must first subsume that his reentry is against the common good, otherwise I say nothing against him; but all for him; and if you subsume this; I believe you will deserve no great thanks for your officious mistake, but approve yourself his greatest enemy.  
Next, you are hugely troubled that in Rushworth's Dialogues (which you say are mine) I make the letter of the Scripture so uncertain. And this objection I may conceive you borrowed from Doctor Hammond, whose Book in which he has something against me, and (as I am told) this very passage, was extant long before yours; and I doubt not but you read very diligently whatever opposes me. Unless perhaps good wits jumped in their observations, which also may be likely; for you agree much (taken as Scholars) in your method of seeking for Truth. I must profess therefore (to answer both in one) that you are two of the prettiest men that ever I met with, and most hard to please with reason. Neither of you can endure I should attempt & profess certainty and evidence in things capable of it, that is, in matters scientifical; nor yet profess uncertainty in matters not capable of certitude; as in our present point about the delivery of words by way of transcriptions of Copyists or Scriveners relying upon their own human diligence; which 'tis impossible to secure against oversight; besides divers other miscarriages which the Fathers, as well as I, complain the Letter of the Scripture was liable to. But to satisfy your tender Conscience, and other Catholics like yours; I profess that that place speaks of the Letter of Scripture, as left to multitudes of human contingencies and imbecilities, and as taken abstractedly from, and unassisted by Tradition or the Churches living voice and practice, to guide securely the delivery of it downwards: But I ever profess that this guidance of Tradition did efficaciously preserve the Letter untainted in all that was coincident with Christian Tradition, that is, in all points necessary to mankind's salvation; and not only so, but so far the rest of the Scripture's Letter too, that nothing evidently contrary to the doctrine of Tradition or Christian Faith could light into it. So that catholics may with all security accept it and hold to it. And yet, notwithstanding the aid of tradition formerly, above 2000 faults were corrected in it by our late Popes, since the beginning of the Council of Trent, and more still remain to be a mended, as the Preface to the same Bible grants, nor is any person living able to stint us the ultimate completing of the true copy. Thus much to you; How I can satisfy Doctor Hammond (who holds Tradition only then when he can serve his turn of it, and otherwhiles impugns it) by what way in his grounds he can be certain of one little of it, I know not: and therefore must leave him to the Fruits of his Labour in impugning Tradition, that is to a perfect uncertainty of any thing that can concern his Faith. In a word, to a Catholic my position only signifies that we are beholding to the living voice of the Church even for any Certainty of the true Copy of the Scripture; which, why it deserves more exception that Saint Austin's noted saying of Evangelio non crederem, &c. I should be glad to learn. But you think Rushworth has made too long a Catalogue of uncertainties. To which I answer that if you please to scan the occasions of that long Catalogue, and then tell us how many we may safely abate. I shall in his behalf remain very much obliged to you; If not, 'tis plain you do not know we can abate any, or that his Catalogue is longer than it should be in his case.  
After this you give a wipe at my denying the Pope's personal Infallibility; and as for the point, you well know 'tis held but a probable opinion, and that many learned Authors hold the same opinion with me. As for my censuring it, I shall hope the reasons given for it in Tabulae Suffragiales will stand to justify me, till something of greater force than clamour appears to overthrow them, that is, till it can be shown less than archi-heretical to say that an opinion which confessedly is no more but probable can be a sufficient ground to build Christian Faith upon.  
Your next piece of Gallantry is your old and oft repeated clamour of my denying the Infallibility of Councils, which forces me to lay open to the world how far your Malice is above your Conscience in writing against me. To do which I offer the Reader those few notes. First that you only cite here three words, non est impossible, to prove confusedly that I deny all Authority of Councils, whereas in my Tab. Suffrag. p. 277. the place where it is found (which had you quoted the Reader might have rectified himself) it follows immediately, ut Concilium tentet hoc facere, & tentando in errorem incidat, It is not impossible a Council should attempt This, and so err. Now what this word This relates to is to be seen in the Paragraph immediately foregoing, to wit, to the making new Articles of Faith; so that I put Councils errable only in such a matter that is in creating us a new Faith, you by maiming purposely my words make me hold them to have no Authority in any thing. Can this consist with honesty or fair dealing? Next is to be noted that in the same Discourse there which gives account of my doctrine professedly concerning Councils, I maintain in express terms, that Councils are of Infallible Authority in declaring Articles of Faith, that the Pope declaring ex cathedra concerning a matter of Faith is infallible, and that the same is to be said of general and even provincial Councils, if they proceed duly in their discussion. And must all this be concealed, and only three general words which declare neither particular manner nor matter be barely alleged as a ground of all your spiteful rhetoric! How strange a proceeding is this for a Christian! My third note is that in case Christ be a perfect lawgiver, and that the Faith he left be sufficient and no more necessary for the Church, that is, if a Council have nothing to do in making new Articles of Faith, than I only deny Infallibility to Councils in things unnecessary for the Church, and unconcerning their duty as Definers of Faith, and give them an absolute Inerrancy in all points necessary for the Church, that is, in all that can truly concern their main purpose, that is, defining Faith. And more than this, I believe you will find an hundred Catholic Doctors to one, deny them as well as I. My fourth note shall be that you would make the denying Infallibility of Councils, abstracting both from all matters and manners of proceeding or acceptation of the Church (for so you treat it) my singular opinion, whereas thus spoken of, we have for their Errability amongst the Franciscans Castillo, and the learned Author of Systema Fidei, who citys him; for the Dominicans Sotus, who tells us that if God by his secret judgement suffers a Council to err, he will not permit it long to be concealed from the Church, but will take order that it be corrected by another following Council before it be received in the Church. For the Jesuits, Bacon, telling us it was the opinion of Saint Austin, and of all the writers of that Age, that the resolution of Faith was completed in the reception of the whole Christian world. For the father's Saint Austin himself, whose known words are that Plenary Councils have been corrected by following ones, where he seems also to speak even of matters of Faith. Of Cardinals, Cusanus, that it may be observed by all experience that an universal Council may fail. For your own Doctors, worthy Dean Cressy, in whom you may find most of these Authors cited, Exomol. c. 33. where he acknowledges the placing the Infallibility of Councils ultimately in the acceptation of the Church, an opinion at least allowable, and according to his eminent learning, and charity puts down the conveniences he observed in that doctrine to the reducing the Heterodox party. Nor only these, but indeed, who is there of any note that will say a Council is Infallilible unless it proceed Conciliariter? and that it may not proceed conciliarly, or after the regular way of a Council, I believe you are not unacquainted: if you be, let Pope Martin the fifth teach it you, who in the last Session of the Council of Constance, declares himself to hold and observe their Decrees made conciliariter, & non aliter nec alio modo, and this too expressly in matters of Faith, which caution of his shows he held a possibility of their proceeding illegally. Now what they call Conciliariter, I call (in definitions of Faith) attending to Tradition: which put, I hold and maintain them absolutely Infallible; whereas I believe, all except me (if you examine the matter well, and report it candidly) put more numerous, and more difficult conditions to their Infallibility, and far more liable to contingency than what I require; which is both extremely hard to fail, and when it does, must needs be most notorious to the whole world, and so beyond my power to pretend or excuse it, as you would wisely persuade the Reader, by saying this doctrine brings all into my hands.  
So that we have eminently learned men of all the chief orders in God's Church, Cardinals, and Fathers (to omit many, or rather all others) directly of my opinion in holding a Non est impossibile, speaking in general; or rather I of theirs, and yet I only must be railed at, as if none in the world held it or broached it but I. Turn now, I beseech you, valiant Sir, the mouth of your potgun against all these renowned Authors, and discharge your intemperate spleen against them as abandoning the Catholic Church, denying the Authority of Councils, and such like, (which make up a great part of your worthy work) and see how feeble an attempt you will make, and whether you will not deserve as great an hiss, as you have made a noise to no purpose but to breathe out some of your swelling passion. At least excuse yourself to charitable Christians, why omitting to mention all others' Authority who held the same doctrine with mine, leaping over the backs of all distinctions both of matter and manner, without which your discourse signifies nothing; and, lastly, why leaving out words of mine within the same comma which should clear me, you rawly took out three only which were general ones, applied them to what particular sense you pleased, nay, extended them to that which was invidious, and which I never held, and by these arts abused the veneration which the vulgar justly have of Councils, to stir up in them an undeserved ill opinion against me. I pass by in my Book many such like carriages of yours; this, because you so often, and so maliciously glance at, I could not leave totally unreflected on.  
If it would not spoil your sport, I would crave leave to right the reader in the conceit you would imprint in him of my Romancicall Hell, as you are pleased to term it; the ridiculousness of which lies in your expressions, not mine. One would think by your putting, Dancers, Bowlers, Fencers, &c. in other Letters, they were my words, but he would be mistaken. One would think that the words attempting now in Hell in all their several postures, which signified as if they were playing tricks there, were my words or sense, but would be mistaken again. One would have thought you might have had the candour not to omit the word quasi, which would have spoilt the exactness of the postures you fancy, and so have much qualified your jeft; Lastly, one that had not known you might have imagined you would have transcribed to the full point, and not still take two or three words single, and then you should have seen the mixture of desperation, fear and grief, marring the perfect moulds your Imagination had framed, and made me say no more but that the shapes of the damned were frightful and distracted.  
But (to omit other little advantages by which you strive in the translating 3 lines to render my sense ridiculous) I would gladly know where you find these words spoken of damned Souls, as you would here persuade us; I would gladly know where you find the word now which you put as mine [attempting now in Hell] whereas the whole Chapter is entitled & declares itself in each Paragraph, to speak of their bodies only, not Souls; and this not now, but expressly at the day of judgement, or rather (if it could be) after it. Were ever three lines singled out from their fellows so abused, corrupted and falsified to make a little sport! Acute Sir, when you have a mind to make merry hereafter, take heed yourself to sober and judicious persons who require and expect solidness and sincerity from you, become not the best part of the scene; however to Gigglers, who examine nothing, but laugh at Mares-nests, found only in your and their fancies, you pass for a very comical and witty blade. But, as I value the judgement of one serious examiner above a thousand of such lightheaded things, so it seems by your carriage through your whole Book, you intended such only for your Readers; I hear they are your only applauders, and that wiser persons, even those that perhaps set you on, seeing your passionate behaviour throughout the whole, will not hazard their own credits to commend your work before any man of prudence and moderation.  
Your next exception is against my sayings that the best happens to the damned that could happen, and that God himself had been worse had they been otherwise dealt with. And this you confute very learnedly with loud exclamations, as Pagan Fatality, Prodigious! and what not, whereas indeed could you rightly open the opinion, however told rawly 'tis to a vulgar head subject to misapprehension, you would have found it to be the greatest honour of God, both in his own Attributes and in the Government of the world, which mankind esteems of. In his own Attributes, because it takes God to be essentially wise, even to the least circumstance; and that he would be worse if he did any thing otherwise then according to the Rule of Wisdom, and that Wisdom in all things is the Principle to his will. Whence follows that if it be better to let the damned be damned than not, he should not have done so wisely as he now does, if they had not been damned, and therefore had been less wise, that is, worse in himself. In his Government, because it declares that in that very operation in which Creatures seem to be worft handled, even there they have the greatest goods which were possible to them. This Answer of mine perhaps you may have seen given to another upon occasion of the same difficulty raised. Now to oppose this doctrine, you must either say that God in the Government of the world does not behave himself most wisely, that is, does not what's most wise to do, or permits not what's most wise to permit, which if you do, I fear any Christian ear that hears you will abhor your blasphemy; or else you must say that to behave himself less wisely is not to be worse in himself, which is nonsense; If you grant both these you fall into my paganism, as you call it. For if God does what's wisest and best, and actually such or such a creature be damned, it follows 'tis wisest and best to permit it; therefore to do otherwise had been to do less wisely, that is to do worse; and so, if nothing limited the goodness in that action but what was in himself, to be worse. This you should have reflected on and spoken to, and not still think that to make a wide month over a point of Divinity is enough to confute it, without ever weighing, answering, or so much as mentioning the reasons 'tis built on.   

SECOND DIVISION. Containing an Answer from Section the twenty seventh, to Section the thirtieth.  
The Identification of the Soul's affections with herself. The best corporeal pleasures most conducive to Beatitude. In what sense the Soul is not the same in the Body and out of it. Affections of Souls not retractable during their separation. Misinformations of that grief the Author puts in Purgatory, rectified. Our Saviour's sufferings not prejudiced by this doctrine.  
IN the twenty seventh Section you begin to speak like a man that aimed at a meaning and proving, and was not content with pure flashes of words as in your former Sections: Therefore I must look to myself, especially since you threaten me both with designs of your own and of abler Pens which will more largely confute my errors. And I must confess you frighten me, for I do not love to take pains. But the best remedy I can think of, is to hasten this petty answer to you, which peradventure may prevent some mistakes in others into which you are fallen; and so shorten in part their and my labour; your first onset is to ask how ridiculous a position it is to say the affections got in the body are not distinguished from the Soul? and your reason of doubting is because the soul was and can be without them. I give you this answer; 'Tis as ridiculous, as to say, that Relation is not distinguished from its subject; That intention and remission are not made by adding one degree to another; or that Charity is increased by a greater radication in the subject; That union is not distinguished from its Terms, or Action from the Agent and term, when it consists not in motion; and twenty such other position; which as I must not doubt but you have showed ridiculous in your Philosophy Papers; so because I have not seen them I must judge to be probable opinions in the sentiment of your eminent learned men, while so many maintain them in your Schools; and yet all the Arguments you bring, are commonly urged against all these opinions. The masters whereof peradventure may be of the same judgement with me, that the Soul is a creature in its Essence immutable, but mutable to a certain point▪ And, so, that other things may be joined to, or severed from her, whilst she remains perfectly the same, and neither better nor worse if we respect precisely her Essence. They who have a mind to know what I think in this point, may find it at large discoursed, in the Preface before the Latin Edition of Sir Kenelm Digby's Book, de Immortalitate Animae.  
Your next question is, how I can say that sinful acts are perfections, since the Soul is more perfect when she is deprived of them. Sir, my unwariness in this was, because I had heard that sin consists formally in a privation or want of something, and that all the positive act is good, and from God as far as positive, and so must be perfective, and in itself some perfection. Now, to your Arguments I reply, that in create perfections many times a greater puts out the lesser, as Science puts out Faith, Comprehension Hope, Innocence Repentance, &c. so doth the perfection of a virtuous act displace the imperfecter perfect on which is in a bad action.  
Your third Scruple is, that I say the life most full of corporal pleasure is the fittest to attain eternal Beatitude. And I cannot deny but I say so, and yourself bring my reason, because the Body being made for the Soul it cannot be (regularly speaking) but what is truly best for the Body, is also best for the Soul. Peradventure you can pray better when you are sick then in health and ease, and the like is of study: My imperfection is such I cannot. And, if eating my meat with a good stomach gives me health and strength to study and pray, I think I do well to put vinegar or some other sauce to my meat, which may make me eat what is fitting to perform those Actions strongly and perfectly. Neither do I understand that this is either against Saint Paul, or the doctrine of Mortification prescribed according to Saint Paul, who tells us, he chastised his body and kept in slavery in order to attaining Heaven, lest (saith he) I become a reprobate; to which end all that use mortification discreetly, employ it. I confess this doctrine is against them who think God is pleased with a kind of sacrificing their bodies to his honour, without any commensuration to their own salvation, but merely because they apprehend they make God beholding to them for the great honour they did him; as heathen Priests were anciently, and are yet used to do in some Countries.  
You say this Doctrine befits only Epicurus his School, and the life of Hogs. For Epicurus, the Eloquent Gassendus hath taken a great deal of pains to persuade the World you are in an error. And for the life of Hogs, unless you be better acquainted with it then a chaste religious man should, I think you no fit judge of the Comparison. But, whatever way you go, I'll tell you mine: which is, to think we feel or (as I may so speak) see no acts of our own immediately but corporeal ones, therefore those sensible pleasures, heats, violences of charity, which we read of in many Saints lives are corporeal ones, as appears by the very narrations, telling us of bones broken, those that were near them warmed, those that they preached to materially set on fire, and the like. Now, I say, there being such variety of corporeal pleasures, the understanding man chooses amongst them, what are fittest to breed in him those thoughts and desires which are the most efficacious dispositions of the Soul to Heaven: And these I hold the best and noblest, and which make a man's life the pleasantest. Of these (speaking in abstract) are generally those that follow or accompany Charity and Science, but in practise those which be the Instruments to increase solid Charity proportioned to the pitch of the Soul to be governed, which possibly is not capable as yet of so great acts as the Saints we spoke of. But there is none so low but if diligence and industry be not wanting, hath higher and greater pleasures than the Hogs which were your instructors to know what corporea pleasure is. And I cannot but marvel much on what your thoughts were wandering, that whereas you cannot but have read in the lives of Saints, and eminent Contemplators of the excessive and ravishing delight which they felt (that is, which was even in their body too, and affected it) so as they have judged it to be inexpressible and above all contents and delights this world could afford; yet forgetting all these, your thoughts could only pitch on those which Hogs feel, as the perfectest. Do you think a virtuous man has not a more solid, lasting and true corporeal pleasure in the calmness of his fancy, and the undisturbed temper of his passions, than a vicious man, who for a dram of delight which his mad frenzy of passion gave him, and scarce left him understanding enough to know he had it, has whole pounds of bitterest gall of discontent attending it, both in the perpetual fight of his fancy and appetite against reason, and the distemperature of other natural parts which vice must needs disorder. Nay, why should we not think the Saints who lived mortified, lives felt not as much corporeal pleasure, taking the whole extent of their lives, as those enormous livers who cloyed their senses with the surfeit of them. We experience so high a difference in our pleasure taken in meat when we are heartily hungry, in a warm fire when we are extremely pinched with cold, that we have good ground to think their deprivement of the degrees of the thing, is recompensed by the degrees of the perfect sense they have of what they admit of; which is by the rarity of it commended and received with as great a welcome as a necessity both natural and rational, that is, those powers unchecked in that action, could give it; All which amounts but to this, that a virtuous life is in all respects the pleasantest to the whole man. If this satisfy you not, what think you of Health and Sickness? Is not the former full of corporeal pleasure, the other of corporeal displeasure or pain? Can any thing be so agreeable to the Body as that, more disagreeable or unpleasant than this? Yet I believe neither yourself nor any understanding Christian had a scruple he was in health, but gave God thanks for it as a great benefit.  
This being so laid out, what have you to except why the pleasantest life is not the fittest to attain Heaven? You add, you have a Scruple to translate this doctrine, and you justly may to do it so raw and imperfectly, as to make a quite wrong apprehension in your Auditory of its being from what it is. But as you have a confidence of your Readers virtue to abhor the doctrine as you set it down, so have I, that any hath heard of me will give no credit to your shameless calumny.  
You begin your twenty eighth Section with my frivolous concluding that corporal affections remain in the Soul after Separation. And you seem to bring two Arguments to show it. First, that all these desires rise from the body, which being taken away, they remain no longer in the Soul; you may as wisely persuade a man not to seal his Letter, because the impression coming from the seal, as soon as he puts that in his pocket, there would remain no more print in the Wax. No, sweet Sir, Our foul hath certain Prints of efficacious judgements, which though they begin from the flesh, yet sink into her, and become as it were Limbs of her. For, as beasts work by Legs and Arms, and Teeth, so our soul by her judgements.  
Your second Argument presses, that as it will not concern the soul to see or hear, so neither to have corporeal pleasures when she hath all fullness of knowledge, so that you would make the unpurged souls follow reason, and desire nothing but what is fit for them; that is, to be totally purged, and by consequence go immediately to Heaven, and all to be Saints, and that their works follow them not. At least, you think a scholar could endure no punishment, who had no other irregular desires but of knowledge. Qui est hic? & laudabimus eum: but, putting the case (how impossible soever in the judgement of Christians, who hold grace necessary,) we must remember, he that hath much science, hath a better knowledge of his last end, how great it is, and seeing himself deprived of that, hath a larger share in the high part of damnation, which is in the poena damni then any other. But this you knew nothing of, nor care to consider, diverted by reflecting upon an admirable nonsense of mine. And, truly I do not wonder, that you who cannot understand that a thing may be changed in relation, or that water poured out of a square vessel into a round one, can change its figure, without taking away one company of little Jacks of the Box, and adding as many more, should conceive how a thing can be substantially changed, and yet remain the same thing. Neither do I intend to persuade you, only I presume to open how the one case is consequent to the other. Which consists in this; that if a substance be divisible in the formal ingredients which make it a substance, than also is it mutable according to its substance. Now the Ingredients of substance in this pitiful way of philosophising, which Aristotle and St. Thomas have taught me, are called Matter and Form, and Existence. Whereof Matter and Form constitute the essence of the individuum, and if either be changed, the Individuum is changed: But it is not so of Existence. For some of your great Divines will tell you, that Christ's Humanity were the same individual Humanity whether it had a proper human Existence or the Divine. Now, that which we speak of the soul is somewhat less than this. For, we put the soul to continue the same existence, but to have it sometimes jointly with the body, sometimes in her sole self; and, because Existence belongs to her substance, we say she is substantially changed, and yet remains the same. But to answer your difficulty formally, I pray remember that the notion of ens or a thing is habens Existentiam, or that which hath being. Now habens Existentiam may be understood two ways; for one that hath actually Being; or, for one that hath an aptitude to Being. Now, if you take it in this latter sense, the soul is still the same, for in the body it is capable to have its existence without the body, and out of the body 'tis capable to have it with the body. But, in the former sense, in the body it hath it commonly with the body; when the Whole, not She, is that which hath Being; whereas out of the Body, She, not the Whole, is that which hath being, and so in this sense, she is another thing out of the body than she was in it. There is your distinction, sweet Sir, with which I must entreat you to be content, since you will easily see your arguments or inconvenients, drawn from your mistake of the opinion, have no force against it, for we speak not of higher and lower degrees of Ens or Anima ut sic, but only of composition in the individual degree.  
In your 29 Section you fall upon a kind of rational question, whether an understanding creature can wish what's impossible, and you handle it as if you had never seen a man do against reason. Let my first question be, whether in all the explications you have heard of the fall of Angels, you find any but of some impossible object? some say they desired to be God; some the sight of God without due means; some a supreme Government of this World; some an hypostatical Union; none any thing but what depended of God, without whose pleasure they affected it. Therefore all put an absolute impossibility in the object, which made in the Angel a damned will. Are you better acquainted with human affairs? Did you never hear of Niggards that hanged themselves because of some great loss they had received? Never of an ambitious Courtier, that took a grief and died upon a disgrace offered him from his Prince? Did you never hear of a Lover that made himself away, because he could not compass the enjoying of his Mistress? Our life is so full of such instances, that 'tis a wonder you could not reflect on them. Are not all these griefs for what men cannot help? And doth not a grief include a desire of the contrary?  
But you reply these are frenetic men, our disputation goes of soul's perfect in knowledge, whose understandings represent unto them the lowness, vileness, baseness, unworthiness, &c. of these objects, and above all the impossibility which (as you say) at one blow cuts off all the will's pursuit: Thus you; but give me leave to tell you, all vicious desires are a kind of Phrensy's, there is no difference but of degrees in them; one hinders reason, the other masters it: and, besides, Wilfulness is as great or greater frenzy than Passion. So that, though Passion be not in souls, Wilfulness is. And as Passion hinders all those fine considerations which you mention of the baseness and foulness, &c. so much more doth Wilfulness.  
You reply again, that according to my doctrine, the affections remain in the soul in the same proportion which they have in the body, out of which your adversary will gather, that as they in the body conquer all good considerations, so they will in wicked souls out of the body. But you subsume that in this World they make no vast or considerable griefs, instancing that the most gluttonous or luxurious man, when he is satiated, desires no more the same pleasure till his Body be fit again. I wonder to hear one that lives (as the French call it) an grand mond, in all companies, talk so unexperiencedly of human affairs. Look upon Lovers, look upon those that seek after moneys, see whether their whole employments be not to think on their Mistresses, and gathering of Wealth? Remember how many have held envy and malice a greater torture than Artificers could invent. How doth Tully seem to compassionate himself for the torment of ambition? How pitiful a man was he when Clodius prevailed against him? But the great melancholies and disastrous ends I spoke of, make all this too plain to need many words. You conceit that in this doctrine he that goes out of the World in a great thirst, shall be tormented with the desire of drinking. No Sir, but he that is never well but when his nose is at the tap, shall have that torment. For he loves drink and makes it his last end, The other desires it out of need, not out of love, and so the need being past, desires it no longer. At last you take notice of the sordidness of Souls in separation, if they be troubled with such desires, I confess it Sir. I do conceive damned Souls in the next world, and vicious ones in this to be baser far than beasts. I confess, all you say of the contempt of drunkenness and carnality (which you seem to take for the only corporal pleasures) to be perfectly true; save only your opinion of Avicena, who killed himself by the excess of lust.  
Then you go on and teach me what I should have settled for the griefs of Purgatory. And to show how apt a Scholar I am, and how ready to follow your admonitions, I present you with two short lines out of Institutiones Sacrae, where having concluded that those who died in venial affections towards corporal objects, were not worthy the sight of God, presently add & per consequens cum illum (Deum) pro ultimo fine habeant, ex desiderio Ejus & paenitentia negligentiae suae gravissimas paenas sustinere, Tomi 2. lib. 3. Lect. 10. which is exactly your full sense, and not very different from your words: wherefore I hope since I have proved an obedient Scholar to my power, you will inform those your friends who intend to write against me, that we are agreed in this point, and that it is a wrong to report I say of Purgatory that the Souls are tormented with the desires of corporal pleasures, much less that I place the whole misery of Purgatory in the deprivement of those. And likewise that a farther design was cause that this would not content me, for you see I put no other but in Hell.  
You charge me farther to say that all external torments in Purgatory would be pure pleasures, because they were suffered out of an extreme desire to come to Heaven by a courage that yielded nothing to the force of the torments which the sufferers see to be their only way to felicity. I do not see any great difficulty in this to a sober Interpreter, that what an external Agent inflicts is not the grief▪ but breeds it; nor will it reach so far as to breed grief, if prevented still with a strong apprehension of an overbalancing advantage to be gained by it; which yet does not hinder, but that such outward punishments are, in their nature, properly torments; and 'tis the extraordinary considerations of the benefits they bring, that can sweeten them into pleasures; and, however, the want of Heaven must needs be cause of an excessive grief. You go on to object that this doctrine changes all your pious Meditations on our saviours Passion. Be of good courage man, and let no other pretence divert you, but proceed constantly and faithfully every day in those holy Exercises, and I fear not, God will assist you to satisfy all those scruples and difficulties, which seldom become unanswerable till we grow cold and negligent in performing our Meditations. Thus than you argue, Christ suffered with invincible courage; therefore all pains were pleasures to Him: I think you know there was in Christ two parts of his Soul, the Rational and the Animal. I do not know so much of the Souls of Purgatory. When you say then he suffered with an invincible courage, do you mean of both parts, or only of the rational? If you ask him, he will tell you, Spiritus promptus est, Caro autem infirma. If you reflect on his prayer in the Garden, you shall see when he speaks out of the motion of his inferior part, how earnest he is against his passion, you shall see he did pavere, and taedere; I pray put these points into your Meditations, and you will find room enough for pains, though the rational part was still fixed upon a fiat Voluntas tua. And this our Saviour suffered because he would. For the strength of his Soul was so great, that he could have had pure pleasures, but would not; that He might give us example, how to fix our upper Souls when we are not strong enough to confirm the lower part.   

THIRD DIVISION. Containing an Answer from Section thirtieth to Section thirty fifth.  
The Duration of pure Spirits freed from the mistakes of Fancy. The Identification of the Soul and Body maintained by reason and Authority; and that this is requisite to the Souls change. The vindicators rude conceits of Angels. Vnalterableness of pure Spirits proved from the Indivisibility of their actions, His false pretence that the Author injured St. Thomas.  
IN the thirtieth Section you examine the Duration of separated Souls. And you readily advance a Conclusion that as it lies I shall not deny, but only beg leave to offer a distinction. For there being three parts▪ Angels, Souls, and their Operations, of which you pronounce, I distinguish upon your third or last branch of Operations▪ which scholars divide into external and internal ones, in the external ones I agree with you, that they are measured by succession, and by succession of time, as being corporal motions: But for their internal acts of understanding and will, I hold of them as of the substances: Your Propositions so jumble them together, that I know not what you say separately of them, and what in complexion: but because I defend the same both singly and in complexion, it doth not much concern me.  
But to proceed, you say, it is incomparably false, that to coexist to a greater or lesser part of time, adds or diminishes nothing to them: I ask, whether, that a greater or lesser time coexists to an Angel, makes any intrinsical change in the Angel? I think you must be a little besides your Philosophy if you say it doth, since common sense teaches the pure passing of time doth nothing even to us, much less to spirits. My next question is, whether if there be no intrinsical change, there can be any addition intrinsically made? I think this also will appear a plain truth, unless the fear of the sequel force you to contradict evidence: For the inference will manifestly follow, that purely to coexist to more or less time, (which is the same as that more or less time coexists to the Angel, for the variety and quantity of coexistency holds itself on the part of time) adds nothing to an Angel.  
Now let us see your Arguments. Your first is drawn from God, in whose Closet you have been, and can perfectly tell what he can do, what not, and so you press, what if on a sudden God should make a new Angel, would his duration be as long as that of the former Angels, or separated spirits?  
But Sir, I would advertise you, that when the speech is of an Action done, it is not enough to examine his Omnipotence, for that only reaches to a possibility of the creature; but you must also consult with his Wisdom as well as with his Omnipotency: For example, if you first ask whether it was in God's power to make, or not make the World, and finding it was, presently you would suppose; then, let him have made it and not made it, the permission would not be granted you. So likewise your assumption, that if there were no time at all, God could at his pleasure create and destroy a soul, would be denied you, or rather that God could have the pleasure to create and destroy a soul in that case. And to show your own consent in this point, mark your discourse; God could not do it in the same moment, therefore in two moments. Do you not see, as soon as you have denied time, you immediately put two moments, which cannot be without time. I pray remember St. Austin, St. Thomas, and others, answering the Heathens question, Why God made not the World sooner, say because sooner signifies in a former time, and that a former time, could not be, unless God had created it. Your other suppositions too of God's creating and anihilating souls, proceed from an unworthy apprehension of Almighty God, as if he should make and destroy Spirits, only to show tricks, they having no more difficulty to be answered, than the plain instance of one Souls separation before another's; and therefore is but the repetition of the same case.  
But well, what must be said to St. Peter's Soul and the Soul of St. Teresa, hath not St. Peter's a greater duration than St. Teresa's? To this I answer, what is immediately loosed out of God Almighty's hand, hath no respect to time, but is created for eternity, as the World and the Angels are. But, what God doth by the mediation of creatures, takes a tang from them, and so hath some savour of time from the very loose. Therefore Souls when they go out of their bodies, have a kind of individual difference from the causes and time by which they begin. This is a kind of a difference, when you compare one Soul to another, nothing if you compare the same Soul to itself. And out of this is taken that diversity of duration which is found in several Souls.  
Your next Argument is from the time, as the Divines call it, of the way of Angels to bliss, where you ask, who hath made evident that it could be done in one instant? to which I have nothing to say, though there want not Divines who hold it; but that St. Austin hath made it evident, that neither position prejudices Christian Religion, and therefore 'tis lawful to hold either side, and so let Divines dispute it, for no Argument can be drawn from thence, why succession should be necessary in the intrinsical operations of Angels.  
Your third Argument consists of some expressions cited out of Scripture, to which I answer, if you bring any Texts of the thoughts of Angels, I shall yield; but if they be only of outward actions, those are measured by time, as by twenty days, &c. and so argue no special duration in the inward acts of Angels. Those cries of the Martyrs under the Altar, are so plainly Allegorical, that it were lost time to show they signify nothing of importance to our controversy.  
In the 31 Section, you say it is groundlessly assumed, that the Identification of the body and soul is required for the Action of a bodily Agent upon the soul, and I cannot deny you have said it. But one that had spoken like a Philosopher, would have brought the seeming grounds on which it is built, and showed the vanity of them, and not opposed his bare word against another's reasons. You ask, who ever fancied such an Identity betwixt the Body and Soul? I answer, nobody, no more than they can fancy that parts are not actu in continuo. But as Aristotle and St. Thomas have raised their speculations above fancy, and understood this, and taught it their Scholars, so hath the Church done about this Identification of the Body and Soul, if the notion of forma corporis be rightly comprehended. Then you demand who ever believed, our Souls in this life are truly and really our Bodies, and our Bodies our Souls? nobody Sir, that I know of, is so grossly senseless; and so I think you are at the end of your Arguments.  
Now let us see your belief, which is, that the Soul and Body, as two distinct parts, concur to the building up of one man, who is one, not by simplicity, nor Identification of the parts, but by substantial union or composition. O how gay a thing it is to speak words and not understand them? We say the same you do; and nothing more, if you would make your words good. For if there be a substantial Union, than there must be an Unum substantialiter, or per se, or properly one. And if there be a truly one, it is not truly many, that is not many substances or things. And if there be not truly many substances or things, the parts of this truly one, are not distinguished really into things which are actually, but formally into things that may be made of this one thing: which is, to have its part in potentia. Now if truly and really the thing be but one thing, all that is spoken of that thing signifies nothing but that thing, so that the man is body according to the signification of one word. Another word will signify him as he is Soul, another as he hath the virtue of holding, and so he will be a hand; another as he hath the virtue of walking, and that will speak of him by the name of foot: and all this be but one thing, which we call man. Now Sir, this is a Catholic verity, defined by ancient Councils, in the Unity of a Person, that is, an individual substance or thing, against the Nestorians. The same was done in latter times under the notion of our souls being truly the Form, or giving the denomination of being a thing. Now the difference betwixt us is, that you examine the words by fancy, and we by understanding and discourse.  
You add further, it can never be evidenced that so much as a substantial union is necessary for a Soul to suffer from the Body. For who (say you) shall render it evident, that in the state of separation, by the omnipotent hand of God she may not be made passive by fire? Sir, I am so confident of your abilities, that I believe you are able to show, that God by his omnipotent hand cannot turn a separated Soul into wood, or straw, or some other combustible matter, by which she shall become passive by fire. And therefore your Divines use to speak more warily, when they say, God elevates the Action of the fire, not disposes the subject or soul. But this also, he that can prove Fire is but a body, and his action either rarefaction, or local motion, or some such other, may to such as carry sense along with their words, show, that, seeing an action cannot be elevated unless it be, that is, Fire cannot burn violently, unless it burn; and that the Action of fire can have no place in a spirit, which it cannot divide or burn, neither may it be elevated to torment a separated soul.  
Your 32 Section tells us, it is a purely voluntary and false assertion, that separated Souls know all things perpetually and together. And, as for the falsity, we may guess by your Arguments. But to say it is voluntary, you have no reason: since the proofs are set down in Institutiones Peripateticae, which I suppose you read (as all sober Adversaries do) before you went about to confute: Your Arguments are first, Our Angel Guardians every day learn our Actions what they be, as it were by seeing the outward effects of them. You speak this so confidently, that I may imagine you have talked with some of them, and they have told you so, and than who dares deny it? Otherwise I must confess I am hard of belief. But you ground it upon this, that only God is the searcher of the Hearts, which although one might interpret to signify the revealer of Hearts, and find Texts of Scripture to that purpose, yet I go not that way; but tell you, when God is said to be the knower of Hearts, he is condistinguished only to men, and if you will have the sense reach farther, you must prove it. For it is against the principles yourself uses, to wit, that Angels know all our material motions of our fantasy, and sensitive appeal. Now if there be no act of the understanding without a fancy agreeing to it, Nor an act of will without a proportionate motion in the appetite, you will leave few actions unknowable to Angels. But our Saviour [say you] tells us, Angels kn●w not the day of judgement. And truly if he had not included himself in the same phrase, the place would have born a great show, but since he that is to be the judge, cannot be thought ignorant of what he is to do, I believe the meaning is, that none makes that day known, but only the heavenly Father, whose proper day it is, in which he shall receive into his own hands the Kingdom which he had put in his Sons hands to be administered till that day, as being his right hand, and chief Instrument of Government and supernatural motion. And this is a known Hebraism, for in the Hebrew the same Verb in one voice signifies to know, in another to make known; nor want we such instances in our own Language, To learn one a Lesson, and to teach one a Lesson, that is, to make him learn it, being the same signification. Your other place that they rejoice at the new conversion of a sinner, wants one word to make it fit for your purpose, to wit, that they rejoice of new, For if they rejoice from the beginning, as God doth from all eternity, it will come but lamely to your design.  
In your 33 Section, you go on with your questions; easy to ask, but long ago resolved? but as to you, to little purpose, seeing you do not take the pains to understand the answers. As for the Arguments you bring out of Scripture, they are already answered in my Institutiones sacrae, but must be repeated, because you take no notice of them; yet so shortly that they may not be tedious to them who have read them. You object then that the Dragon drew after him the third part of the stars; but why this was not done in a moment, you bring not a word. You say also, this Doctrine that Angels cannot immediately act one upon the other, destroys their Conversation for all eternity. Sure you mean their grays-inn Walks, or Spring Garden, where they use to walk together and treat one another, or their Academies where they meet at musics, or bring their Poems or discourse of news, or some such like entertainments. Are you not ashamed to dream of such follies in pure Spirits? learn of Aristotle, that man is a sociable creature, but beasts or pure spirits not: the one being below it, the other above it: But did not in the great battle in Heaven one Angel work immediately on another? Yes, but not by gossipping and tampering one with another to dispute or persuade them into the conspiracy, but by example, and by being the Objects one to another: As when one scandalises another by sinning in his sight. But say you, the Indivisibility of their Actions which is the foundation of this doctrine is unsound, since it will never be evinced, that an act of a spirit cannot coexist to a greater or lesser part of time. Sir, If you gave us security of your spirit of prophecy, we would believe what you say of things to come; till than we will grant your Proposition as it lies unwarily couched, but not as you mean it. For the Acts of one spirit may be longer than those of another, as we said before of different souls, but that is not your meaning; but that the same spirit hath successive acts, one of more duration, another of less. And this you should have prophesied of, why the Argument of Indivisibility did not convince. For speaking of one only Angel, either he is in some act or in none? If in none, either his nature with the pure force of his Power, (which the schools call Actus primus) can burst into an act, or it cannot? If you say it can, than you must put a thing first not to do, after to do without any change, that is to be not productive, and productive of an Act, that is, two contradictories, without any variety. Put him now in act, either his Essence with this Act, abstracting from all other circumstances, is productive of a 2d act, or it is not? If it be not, then out of this Essence & this act abstracting from all accidents, he will never have a second. But if the Essence with this Act is productive of a second act, then as soon as he hath this act, he produces the second, that is both together (or else as we said before, the same thing without change will be productive and not productive, and so of as many acts as follow in this sort one of another, that is, all that be in an Angel by his own power, without external help or determination. So that the conclusion is, all such acts must be in the same moment altogether. Your answer is that this is true of one act but not of all. But you must show that the Argument doth not convince as much of every one as of any one, or otherwise it is but your bare word against a convincing Reason, though you boldly term it a gross error.  
But you press that I hold all causes are fixed, and set as to all effects whatsoever, from the very beginning to all future succession. I pray distinguish the proposition you infer against me, from this other, There is no effect but had a cause, and its cause had another cause, and so till the beginning of the World. For if you mean no more than this, I must admit it, howsoever you will please to miscall it. If you have another meaning, when you teach it me, I shall tell you whether it be concurrent with my sentiment or no. As for your crying out that 'tis Pagan Fatality, that it destroys the liberty of God, and the Contingency of all created things, if of these three words (though I doubt not but you have talked them over often enough) you understand any one, I will yield you the honour of being my learned Master, and shall not contest with you in Divinity.  
But in the mean while I must defend myself from your assaults in your four and thirtieth Section, wherein you accuse me that I fix upon Christianity and the Church an Ignorance of separated substances, meaning by these great words, those that hold the probable opinion which you maintain: as also, a most gross abuse upon the angelical St. Thomas. My fault is, that I say the opinion of Souls being delivered before the day of judgement proceeded from the not following a doctrine of St. Thomas, That in abstracted Spirits there is no discourse, or any manner of composition of knowledge. Whence I infer, there can be no falsity in them. This is my position, of which you tell us, that it importeth not to consider whether the knowledge of Angels be by true discourse, or only by virtual, to which, say you, suffices a priority of causality. But if a man should tell you, that the causality you imagine cannot be without true time, than peradventure it would be necessary to dispute, whether there be a true discourse in Angels; and this is the very case. For, take away succession, and all corporeal causes which depend on time are taken away. There remain than nothing but the spiritual qualities of the Angels to be causes, which neither are distinguished from one the other, nor from their subject, and so all notion of Cause and Effect, as they are proper to the Efficient, are quite taken away, and so there will not remain any discourse at all, but a pure clear sight framed on them by their creator, in which I believe you will not say there is any error or can be. So that the whole question resteth upon this, whether there be true discourse or no.  
Now how do you prove what you say is to the purpose? to wit, that it doth not follow out of this doctrine of St. Thomas that there is no error in Angels? Your proof is because St. Thomas notwithstanding this doctrine, acknowledges errors in Devils. Good Sir, as long as you have been a Divine, did you ever hear that it was a gross injury to St. Thomas, to say some opinion of his was not true, or not consequent to another? Truly I desire not to do an injury to any, much less to my reverenced Master, to whom, after God, I acknowledge it, if I know any thing either in Philosophy or Divinity. Yet I have no fear not to follow all his opinions, much less not to make good all his consequences. And so, Sir, I hope I am rid of your objections out of St. Thomas. only because you often repeat, that to say every thing hath a cause to make it before it be, is an Epicurean, Lucretian, Pagan principle, &c. I must entreat you again to look to the sense of your words, and not to beat so carelessly the air. If at anytime you happen to dispute of Liberty, I will endeavour to show you your Ignorance, but for vapouring words let others judge how far they become you.  
You go on in the same strain to except against the comparison of an embryos designing the Child to be born, and man's life framing the Soul delivered into the next World. But what you dislike I cannot tell, you say it has no connexion with the immutability of the future state. The answer is, it was not brought to that purpose, but to open the Readers understanding to aim at, of what disposition the Soul is at her going out. But if the Antecedent reach home, you say 'tis a position destructive of all Christianity. But you say not to what it should reach, but fain something as if you imagined I would have the body of a Child never grow in strength or good parts. When I shall know what you aim at I may know what to answer. So we may leave you to conclude your Chapter with a high conceit of the Victories you have obtained.   

FOURTH DIVISION. Containing an Answer from Section the thirty fifth, to Section the fortieth.  
The Vindicators forgetfulness that eternal Happiness was any Good at all. That Prayers for the dead in the authors doctrine manifoldly profit the Souls in Purgatory, and relieve them, even there. Charity asserted to be the immediate Disposition to Bliss. The authors doctrine consonant to the Council of Trent in the points of Remission and Satisfaction. Diverse Squibs and Insincerities of the vindicator touched at.  
THere follow●●our five and thirtieth Section in ●●ich you have after so long a digression, remembered again the question of Purgatory. And intend to show that prayers for the dead are of no profit, if Souls go not to Heaven before the day of judgement: An objection of every Gentlewoman, but I hope seeing you have come into the lifts as their Champion, you will set it high. And so you do, for scorning the lower ways of others, who press this difficulty, That the day of judgement will come of itself at the time appointed, and Then every one shall receive according to his deserts, whether any prayers have been said for them or no; you fly so high as to tell us, that though the prayers made for the dead impetrate eternal bliss for those in Purgatory, yet they are of no profit. Is not this a gallant attempt? What may be your Arms fit for so great an atchieument? Why (say you) the duration of separated Souls is (according to me) above time and comprehensive of it, therefore it is but a moment whether bliss ever come or never, therefore there is no profit in the prayers, though they bring bliss, and this is the full import of your discourse. Could a man have expected such an Argument from 〈◊〉 logic Master? not to distinguish betwixt substance and an Accident? yet undoubtedly, according to his ordinary phrase, All Christianity is ruined unless this consequence be good. You were assuredly in a great metaphysical rapture, when in the same short discourse you took two such hyper-metaphysical propositions, as that it was indifferent to have or not to have the greatest good God hath created for a Person, and that there could actually be an infinite Quantity or Time; I must confess they are both very fit for your sort of Learning, to bolt out words without looking into what they signify.  
But because this is only your private error, and the World is to be contented too, which doth not apprehend any great benefit in hastening of Christ's coming; I must a little show the good that the prayers of the faithful do for the dead. Let us then consider that our chief Good is Heaven, and the perfect sight of God, at which we aim in all our actions and progresses, from the first basis of our inclination to the End of nature, even to the highest step of Charity from whence we immediately reach it; This depends on two created causes, The perfection of the World; and The perfection of the private Person, which is to attain it. For God hath made the work of the World in so exact a method, that it shall happen to be wound up all in a day. St. Paul hath told us, he would not have the foregoers be perfected before the rest, the Apocalypse expresses the same. Therefore Christ taught us in his own Prayer, to say to his and our Father, Thy Kingdom come: Therefore he bade us, when we saw signs of the approaching judgement, to lift up our Heads with hope, because our redemption was near. Therefore St. Paul calls the good Christians, Those who love his coming: Therefore in the Apocalypse, Christ shows himself as coming, and adds, My Reward is with me. Therefore in the end of the apocalypse we read that importunate calling on him, Come, and let him that hears, say Come: and this was the primitive devotion, to desire to be with Christ. Now, to conclude, he that by his Prayers effects the coming of the day of judgement, as far as he doth that, so far he procures to his Friend the eternal Reward, the main good, the complete satisfaction of the desires of Nature elevated by Grace.  
The next consideration reaches to the particular good that accrues to the party prayed for. For the understanding whereof, you are to remember the doctrine of the Saints, that for ourselves we are heard as often as we ask in due manner what is good for us; for our friends not so, but according as is suitable to the rest of God's providence. Yet it is agreed, that many times such Prayers bring some advantage, even to the special party for whom they are made: but when and how God's providence doth carry such graces, we know not, unless the effect prove visible. Now we pray for the change of the soul of our friend from misery to bliss; If he be in capacity to be helped, without doubt our prayers are heard, but when, and in what degree, only he knows who grants it, unless he hath revealed it. And, as when we pray for a living sinner, the effect of our prayers (if it be fit they should be heard) is, that circumstances are so cast, in respect of this prayer, that he lights into convenient dispositions to bring on his conversion; so our prayers for the dead, work, that in the Resurrection such grace is increased to the party prayed for, as is fitting to be retributed to the prayers and affections devoutly poured out for him.  
The third Consideration reaches even to the rendering less and more tolerable to them those pains they suffer before the day of judgement in Purgatory; which is to relieve them there. To understand which, we are to consider, that the State of Purgatory differs from that of Hell, mainly in this; that this of Hell is ever accompanied with the horror of Despair; that of Purgatory, with the comfort of Hope to see God's divine face. Now all Hope of a future good, if it be rational, is grounded in knowing the strength and efficacy of the causes which are to effect and bring it; and the stronger causes appear to be laid in order to such an effect, the livelier and firmer is our Hope, and by consequence more vigorous and sweet the Comfort which springs from that hope thus erected: wherefore the suffering souls, by knowing that the releasement of all in general, and each in particular, is procured by the prayers of the Church; the more, and the more fervent prayers they see poured out for them, the stronger hope and comfort they conceive. To apply then this to particulars, as the aim and hope and present comfort of each Soul, is its future eternal Happiness as best improovable to it, by the order of Causes laid by God's Wisdom and Goodness; so the foreknowledge that the prayers of Friends will bring to each with proportionable advantage their due reward (as I expressed it in my second Consideration) gives each soul anticipatedly present sentiments even in Purgatory of Hope, Joy and Comforts for those advantages their Friends Prayers shall procure them in the day of judgement, which surely none that understand it can deny to be a very great relief.  
The fourth consideration extends this advantage of prayers for a particular Soul, even to the state of Heaven itself: which to explicate, we may remember the pious opinion commonly received, that S. Francis, S. Benedict, and other Saints in Heaven have new accidental joys there, for any good effect performed by the Order they founded, that is, for the arrivement of any good towards which they as Causes had any influence in this World: now, of all Goods imaginable, none is or can be comparable to the bringing of the Kingdom of Heaven or universal Bliss (this being the But and End of all our wishes, and of all, both natural and supernatural motion, nay the only aim of his Providence, who is Goodness itself) most certainly than they who in this World laid means of many efficacious prayers for the dead and for themselves in particular, will (in my doctrine) see themselves, and rejoice in Heaven, to have been particularly influential towards that happiest and noblest effect of bringing that day; Add, that this will be gratefully acknowledged by the whole Court of Heaven, and they respected accordingly, which will cause almost infinite multiplications of the best accidental joys; which they who in this World neglected to use and procure this devotion, will deservedly want. Reflecting then this thought back upon a Soul in Purgatory, who has deserved by her carriage in this World, and taken order to be efficaciously prayed for, that is, to have a particular share in bringing Christ's coming in Glory, she has antecedently even in Purgatory by foreknowledge of those accidental joys she shall futurely reap thereby, a sense of them at present, by means of the certain Hope to attain them; and thence in due measure a proportionable comfort, ease and relief, even in Purgatory. So that you see according to my doctrine, both Essential Bliss, and best accidental joys in Heaven, and (from the foreknown efficacy of prayers to accomplish these) a present comfort accrues to the Souls in that State, through our suffrages for them.  
You will say these motives will not be efficacious enough to stir up the hearts of your penitents. I can answer nothing, but that I doubt they are not well instructed and exhorted. And that it is the Preachers duty to endeavour to stir up their hearts with solid Christian truths, not by incertainties guilded over with a show of piety. For indeed, what is not true cannot be pious. When such Inventions have taken a good effect I bless God, that shows his goodness as well by weakness as by strength. But to advise any man to teach or preach that, out of which he and the Church through him may be upbraided to cozen the credulous faithful into false and prejudicial confidences, and make them rely upon such doctrines and practices as have no reality in them, I am not a fit counsellor; I leave that to you who like it.  
In your thirty sixth Section you overreached me again, for by your beginning I persuaded myself I was come to a period of my pains, and that the rest had been but personal quarrels, which I could easily have swallowed, how bitterly soever prepared by your rash and angry hand. But looking a little farther I perceived I must tug again. And first, as for that question whether you had intention to wrong me in printing your Bull, I believe you had not because you say so, and that only you pretended to make the doctrine pass for an Article of faith, the contrary of which all the world knew to be maintained by me. Secondly, I must remember you that you do indeed and inexcusably wrong me, when you say I deny that such Souls are received presently into Heaven: if you mean by the word such, Souls purged after separation, 'tis no better than a cunning calumny, and would represent me as holding directly contrary to the Bull and Council. Whereas our dispute is whether Souls may be so purged out of their bodies before the day of judgement; not, if they be so purged, whether they go to Heaven before that Day: this I agree to, and is of faith; that I deny, & is but an Opinion. Thirdly, you do not well justify your Friends for changing the Title from Concerning the Vision of God & the Beatitude and Damnation of Souls, to this shorter, but more general one. Concerning the State of departed Souls: while your answer signifies only that they are several expressions for the same thing, which to a wary considerer will easily appear an artifice. Is it all one to contend about white and black, and about colours in general? No more is it all one to define concerning Beatitude and Damnation, and to define concerning a State which is neither of them both. Fourthly, you often up and down your Book brand me with faithless Theology. What do you mean? do not your Doctors generally agree that something in Religion is demonstrable? are they all therefore presently to be condemned as faithless? cannot yourself demonstrate there's a God? and will you think yourself an Infidel for it. Or dare you tell the Ladies that for your part you are not so silly as to believe there's a God, you know it, and that as for belief of such things it belongs to the simple unlearned, not to Scolars. I hope in your next work you will proceed with more candour and manliness.  
Your thirty seventh Section being spent in petty quarrels, though some lines in it be both false and malicious, yet I will let all pass and go on to the thirty eighth Section where you rip up again the question, whether the matter of the Decree be, that perfect charity carries separated Souls immediately to Heaven. In which you tell us your Publisher is indifferent, and may yet choose whether he will say that good Souls at their decease be wholly purged from all irrational affections or no, in the first Instant. And this may peradventure be true. But if I am not deceived he will not say they are purged: For I am sure you would censure it deeply in me, if I should say that after this life there is any more disposing itself or meriting towards life eternal. But I must not be over confident; you may have two censures in your breast, for the same saying in the mouths of different Persons. You ask, if Charity brings a Soul immediately to Bliss: What then does your Adversary think of Lumen Gloriae? It is to me a hard question what he will think of it, for I see your great Divines cannot agree what to think of it. But I guess he may think, either Charity itself when perfect in a pure Spirit, is the Light of Glory, or causes it, as well as the beatifical Vision. You press farther the perfection of Charity in this life doth not give the beatifical Vision, therefore neither in abstracted Souls. But, if I should ask you how you knew the Antecedent, you would be at a stop. I can hear it defended that St. Benedict had the clear sight of God; And I was at a Sermon in Alcala made to the whole University, in which the Preacher asserted our Lady had Beatifical Vision in the first Instant of her Conception, and proved it out of his Text, which was Fundamenta ejus in montibus Sanctis. Fundamenta ejus her conception, in montibus Sanctis, in the heights or tops of Sanctity. Therefore believing Divines must take heed of denying as well as of saying. Besides I have read in St. Thomas and others, both more Ancient and more Modern, that there is a certain pitch of Charity to which when men arrive, God takes them out of this World. But however that stand, I think there is a large difference betwixt the Charity of pure Spirits and of men. So that the consequence may be true of one, and not of the other.  
Farther on you mention some reasons of mine against corporal punishing of Spirits: but you knock them all on the head with a Canon of the Council of Trent. To understand the state of the question, it is not amiss to consider that a Sin, specially a notorious one, hath three effects or parts. One in the rational Soul, where it is a judgement or resolution, or affection, that such an Action is to be done: A second in the Appetite or Body, where it makes certain motions and their causes which bring a likelihood of falling into the same sin. The third part is in the external action, where it brings in some disorder, which is subject to propagate itself farther into other subjects. The disorderly judgement and affection is that, which our schoolmen, when they speak formally, call the Sin; and account the sin remitted, when that is duly blotted out, whatever that signifies. But it is supposed to be done by Contrition and Absolution. And although they admit this to be sufficient to go to Heaven if one dies, yet in a living man they with reason require that the other two parts or effects of sin should also be taken away; which is to be done by Satisfaction. So may the Reader understand what Satisfaction is required for.  
Now let us see what you urge out of the Council. First you object the Council teaches that it is against the word of God to say that the fault is never remitted but that all the punishment is also forgiven. And so you see by the discourse above made that we say also. Secondly, the Council says, that it becomes the Divine clemency that sins should not be par●on'd without any Satisfaction: So we say also by the fore-made discourse. Thirdly, the Council charges Priests to impose Satisfaction so, that it be not only as to the guard of a new life, but also as in revenge and chastisement of their past sins: which is clearly necessary for the mending of the outward excesses brought in by the sin; and so we say directly the same. You press farther that the Council says, in Baptism the whole pains are remitted; And if you speak in opposition to sins remitted in Penance, the cause is clear. For the sins committed before Baptism belong not to the church's Court. But if you speak in regard of God Almighty, I fear it will require I should ask your judgement of a Case. Your Divines tell us that he who receives baptism cum fiction●, receives Baptism truly, yet if he die immediately, I suspect whether you will send him immediately into Heaven, though neither the Councils nor the Pope's words make any exception. I doubt then, when it is said, all pains are remitted in Baptism, the Councils suppose that Baptism is received with that disposition which out of the property of the Sacrament is due to it. Now, because your question is none of the intended ones, but only by the by, I need not give a more positive Answer to it, but leave it to your consideration.  
It being by this clear, that your calumny of saying I deny Satisfaction is fictitious: I may go to your nine and thirtieth Section: where having translated a long discourse of mine, you learnedly ask in what mood and figure it is? imagining your Reader to have so little understanding as to think a Demonstrative discourse ought to be just one Syllogism. How favourable, or otherwise your translation is I examine not, since your chief aim is only to make a little sport, which you seldom have the luck to do with the least degree of good manners. The Gentleman that translated the Book you mention, is a Person whom all that have the happiness of his acquaintance know to be completely civil and ingenious, and one who wants but the name (which you indeed have) to be every way accounted Religious; a name I confess very honourable, and which carries with it a presumption of virtue; but I have seen some instances where I fear it went no farther than a bare presumption. I did not say how faithful, but how favourable; since every Scholar knows the difficulty of rendering into significant and unbarbarous English, the terms of art used by the most abstemious schoolmen in their discourses both of Philosophy and Theology. All whom your rashness cares not to wound so it be through my sides. Yet this fair offer I make you, translate but your Dictates into smooth Love-letter English, and I will freely forgive you for my part all you have unhandsomely written in this whole Section.   

LAST DIVISION. Containing an Answer from Section fortieth, to the End.  
The Vindicators mistakes of what passes in the Soul at reunion. The efficacy of his slightly grounded Devotions examined, on the by. His impotent malice in objecting Paganism. His many bogglings at Divinity-Explications, like to fright him out of his Faith, satisfied.  
IN your fortieth Section you are troubled that after the griefs of Purgatory the sight of Christ should change the imperfect Affections which are in Souls while they remain in Purgatory. So little do you understand the course of Nature, that precedent motion is quite of a different nature from the following quiet, which is the term of that motion. And, forgetting you had given leave to your publisher, to say his Souls were purged in Purgatory, now you will have it the faith of all Christians, that there is no acting for Bliss at the Resurrection. By which if you mean meriting, 'tis nothing to the purpose, for 'tis but your own fiction to put merit at the Resurrection. But, if you mean there is no change towards Beatitude, you are not well instructed. Neither is it a wonder, that this is a pleasure, seeing it is the very taking possession of Bliss after the pains of Purgatory; or as Philosophers would term it the Purgatum esse, which yet hinders not but what went before, and was their purging or purgation in via was painful enough. After this, to make your Comedy complete, you will have a touch at Hell, which (God be thanked) for my ease, you will reserve to a new discovery. Yet you very heartily beg to know, why the damned Souls do not repent themselves at the day of judgement, and become Saints? Which is a sign you understand not what you read, though you are able to put it in English. And that you conceive, this putting in the body again, makes the Soul not only fit to be perfected or totally framed to the proportion of her last end, but that she is returned again into the state of this World's mutability, of forgetting, working by abstract notions, gaining new science, &c. which are the proprieties of her changeable condition in this World. If you please to study to understand, what you intend to oppose, I shall be willing to contribute on my part what I can. In the mean while, (having already answered the other things you touch at in this Section) let me follow you in what you do understand.  
In your 41 Section, you accuse your Adversary of scoffing at hallowed Grains, sanctified Beads, &c. Which it seems you will not permit to be held external devices, (whatsoever your meaning is.) Nor utensils of a thriving devotion: which is a term of an indifferent signification, and there must be somewhat in you to make you wince at it. The next words of deluding privileges I looked for, but could not find in this place; yet afterwards reading them in the postscript, I conceive by their nearness to Quamcunque voluerit, that they glance at the too much confidence of such a promise: so large, that were it true, (and Doctors say the value of Indulgences is to be taken as they sound) I should reckon it a great temptation to neglect wholly both all venial sins, and all satisfaction for mortal, in this life. The only advantage that I know a privileged Altar pretends, (if we may believe the words of the privilege itself) is to deliver a soul out of Purgatory, by saying Mass there. This Mass we have daily experience may be procured, to say truth, at no unreasonable rate. What need I then, according to these Principles, be much frighted at Purgatory, and those dreadful pains they so often preach to me, when all may be healed with a little wisely-bestowed alms, if these men be as good as their words? But they say, 'tis advisable not to be too confident in one Mass, but to get more: and is there no suspicion incident to an advice so unnecessary, if the privilege speak true? and, however, so convenient in all cases? Pray you tell me in your next Discovery, to how many Masses on our common Altars is one of your privileged Ones equivalent? to ten? then the privilege alone is equal to nine; than which I think a greater blasphemy can scarce be spoken. Perhaps you may reply▪ I hold you too severely to your word, and that by our promising a full Delivery, we mean only to contribute extraordinarily towards it; but why do you give me your word, if I must not take it as it signifies? why do you not play fair, and tell me, that one Mass there, is something better than half two elsewhere? for at the end of the account, that's all your vast promises come to, for aught I see. Besides, may not all the other Altars, where the same great work is performed, justly complain, that you endeavour their impoverishment? other question's there are as easy to make, and as hard to answer: but of this enough, the theme's too plentiful, and I am even weary with thinking on't.  
Next you accuse your Adversary, that he says you think such things promote souls in Holy desires, though for my part, I think it is a great reason of the use of them, to make people be devout, when otherwise they would not. And for souls going to Heaven by them, if they take away the pains of Purgatory, with what face can you deny it? I remember a Doctor of Divinity, who having obtained a Scapular from the Carmes, and a privilege from the Jesuits to be admitted a Jesuit, at the hour of his death, was as confident to go directly to Heaven, as if he had had a Patent for it under Jesus Christ's own Hand. Why then are you so touchy, as if there could not be abuses in these things? why cannot you be patient in this case, as well as the Church is content to admit some abuses to have crept even into the administration of the Sacraments.  
Your last note I believe is quite mistaken, for I do not conceive your Adversary intended to make any comparisons; both because he does not specify any particular man to whom he should be supposed to compare me, and because there is no occasion for it. But peradventure he would not have the good life of any man, be an Argument to bear down a contrary doctrine. For myself, I profess no exemplarity. If my life be such as may not unbeseem my Calling, I have as much as I desire from men: neither do I see any reason, why any one should engage for me, supra id quod videt in me. I pray let not opinion-quarrels break into Personal dissensions. Si invicem mordetis invicem consumemini.  
To the same uncharitable end, I fear, tends your often repetition of diminishing words to those persons who think well of me or my doctrine, insisting especially on their small number: but I pray you tell me, how many you think have impartially and attentively read these few Books I have made? I believe, in proportion to them, it is not a small number who profess to have met, in many points, with great satisfaction; nor do I expect they should in all; I may sometimes be mistaken myself, and there I desire none to follow me; others may sometimes be mistaken in me; and there, I am so far from being followed, that my obscurity (which I confess a defect) will not let me be found: Nor do I see so much cause to be troubled at the fewness, as to bless God for the qualities of those who profess to have found good in my writings, being Persons both ingenuous, and virtuous, and of such frank and unbiased Principles, as well by their own inclination as the influence my way may have had upon them, that I am confident, they desire nothing more than to see my doctrine thoroughly examined, and speedily brought to a fair & impartial trial, by the sharpest Arguments that a pertinent opposer can make; and indeed they themselves have been the strongest, though not the fiercest Objectors I have met with. One reason possibly of this little number may be, that my Books have not as yet been long enough in the World to be fully perused by many: what time may produce God only knows, to whom I submit it.  
But to return to myself and speak to what you dislike in me, you absolve me from being an heretic, to make me a Pagan. Nor will I refuse to be what you shall please when you have explicated yourself. But this not marking nor understanding your own words, makes all the misintelligence. You make me a Pagan, but such an one as acknowledges Christ, and every word and tittle either of the Scripture, or any other Law of his. Such a Pagan, such a Naturalist was never heard of before. Will you have me give you an Instance? take this Bull and Canons which you cite, and put them to myself or your Adversary, and see whether we will either refuse to subscribe, or even swear to them. Then our Paganisus lies in this, that we do not think you have the right sense. And this is my Paganism through all things belonging to Christian Faith. You say I agree only in words with the Church; but, saying so, you say, I agree in words; and by consequence, the whole disagreement is about the sense of the words. In which controversy because I proceed out of Philosophy and reason, and you out of what Masters Dictatts I know not, you leave a great prejudice that my explication is the more reasonable.  
Wherein consists then my Paganism? Because I pretend to demonstrate what you think is not to be known but by Faith. Then if I do not pretend to demonstrate but only profess that they are demonstrable, and exhort men to seek out the Demonstrations (which is the true case, and what you add is out of the fullness of your heart) why do I not hold all the Articles by Faith? and where is my Paganism? But suppose some great Scholar possibly or impossibly (as the Schools speak) should have the demonstration of the Articles of Faith, would he therefore be▪ a Pagan? sure you never thought what a Pagan signified when you spoke so choleric a word: That peradventure might make him more than a man, or more than a Christian, as a Comprehensour is, if it reached to God's Essence, less it could not make him. Faith is not desirable for its Obscurity, but for its Certainty. We govern our lives by knowing the objects, not by the defect in the knowledge. Let a man see his way by the clear Sun, and sure he will be as able to walk in it as by the dimmer light of a Star.  
But you complain I reduce the mysteries of our faith to our narrow brains. Sir, you are mistaken. It is the quite contrary; you should rather accuse me of endeavouring to dilate our brains to the capacity of the mysteries by the help of Faith. Why God cannot elevate our brains to understand what he hath delivered us to be understood▪ You have not yet declared to my capacity.  
You say when you are told Souls are not purged in the state of separation but at the reu●ion, though the word remains, your Faith is gone. I easily believe you speak from your mind, and that truly you apprehend, the explication you frame to yourself is your Faith; and so, that as many Christians as fancy divers explications of the same Article have so many faiths, but by this way I see very few in the whole Church would be of the same faith, pray consider a little that reflection.  
Nothing is more clear than your next Example. You say you believe that Faith, Hope, and Charity are infused by the Holy Ghost into our Souls in Baptism. A Pope and a general Council too, declared that of two opinions of Divines, this was the probabler; and, by saying so, said this was not the faith of the Church, and yet if this be not true, your faith is gone.  
Your next Example is to the same purpose, that supernatural qualities are of a different series than nature. It is indeed St. Thomas his opinion, and a pure Scholastical one, nor Universally received. Yet if this notion of supernaturality be lost, your faith is gone: Good Sir, take faster hold on it, and let not your faith slip away so easily from you. Again you believe the mystery of the Trinity, but if it depends as to its deducibleness on what is Essential in God, you doubt it is not your faith, though all Divines will tell you, all that is in God is Essential. If St. Thomas explicate the Unity and Plurality in God by the Unity of Action and Passion in motion, your faith is lost. But chiefly, if any miscreant, or Imp of Hell (as your Love-letter compliment is) should say the names of Father and Son were derived to God from what we observe in natural Generation of living Creatures, which being a material thing can be no otherwise in God then by Metaphor, than your faith is different from those who explicate it so, that is all the Divines I have either read or heard of, who universally agree in transferring Aristotle's Definition of Generation to the blessed Trinity.  
You go on and tell us you have hitherto believed that God most freely and of his own goodness built this universe, and that he is not necessarily tied to the order and course of Nature: All this is well, but now you are taught that God must contradict himself, if he act any thing against nature. And what signifies this, but what is consequent to that? for if God be the builder of nature, He hath settled this order which we call nature, most freely, but yet he hath done it: and if he hath done it, he cannot undo it again, without undoing what he hath done? which in English is called contradicting himself. For one to contradict himself, is to change his mind or will, which it seems is your faith that God can do.  
Another Article of your faith seems to be, that out of the very series of nature, Judas might have escaped being damned; whereas all Catholics agree, that out of the pure series of Nature, St. Peter could not have scaped being damned. At last your faith descends to flies, and whereas peradventure if you had thought, should God have had the mind he had not formerly to make another fly, his resolution (that is his Essence) had not been the same it is now, your faith might have been the same with mine. But by falling immediately upon the fly, you have quite lost your faith. And your conclusion comes to be the same with this, that if God ties himself to any thing, and so remains tied, he is become a pagan Jupiter. I confess this is not my faith. You march forward, telling us, if God neither command nor forbid any thing, all morality is lost. All this would be well, if you told us what you meant by Command; if no more than Commonwealths do, when they appoint rewards for them who do well, and punishments for malefactors, upon which morality consists, your faith may be the same that mine is. For so I profess, God commands not only by setting rewards and punishments, but by denouncing them. But if you have a special notion of commands importing a mere will or humour to command without designing any benefit to the obeyer, than I cannot help your faith, though we agree in these words, God forbids to steal, commands to honour him, &c.  
Then you begin to prognosticate how you will discover out of my works a morality that Escobar never thought on. And truly I hope you will, if you take pains to understand them. But, if you only use words, and never look what they signify, you will do good neither to yourself nor others. To give an Essay of my Morality, you bring this position of mine, that Another man is no otherwise to me, than a piece of Cloth or Wood, which I cut and shape after my will. Even though I do him harm, or seek to ruin him, I do him no wrong. And you ask how this agrees with that Principle of Nature, that we ought to do to others, as we would have them do to us. I can only say, if it doth not agree I was mistaken; for I brought it to show the ground the second Principle had in nature, and my deduction is this. Reason teaches me to use Cloth like Cloth, and Wood like Wood, and consequently a man like a man, that is▪ to think that fitting for him, I think to be fitting for myself, seeing a man is of the same nature with the Considerer.  
Lastly you are afraid, if faith yield to evidence, our notions must be changed; and in that you are not much amiss. For I also conceive the notions of one who understands what he says, are different from the notions of him who doth not, and upon this subject, I will propose you a place of St. Austin, which seems to me very home to the purpose. 'Tis too long to copy out, therefore I pray read the 26, 27, and 28 Chapters of the 12th Book of his Confessions, and specially reflect upon the divers senses or understandings which divers Christians have of the same places of Scripture, and I may say of the same delivery of Faith. The example in the end of the 27th, and the beginning of the 28th, is in a manner our very case. There are two understandings of the Creation of the World; one weak, the other strong, both necessary for divers sorts of people. If the weak man when he hears the more intelligent explicate his faith, should cry him down for a Pagan, as taking away faith, it were no wonder. For so we read of a good Monk that had been an Anthropomorphite, who when he was taught that God was a Spirit: that is, had no hands, feet, face, &c. as he before had fancied him, cried out, he had lost his God, and perhaps, was likely enough to call him a Pagan too, that denied God such a shape, and explicated to him, according to the nature of a Spirit and like a Scholar, those places of Scripture which begot and so suited to that fancy of his; But no Scholar would judge him a great Divine for doing so. If you read these latter Books of St. Austin's Confessions you shall find that by natural knowledge he directed his understanding of Scripture and Faith, and consequently was as very a Pagan as myself. And so did all the Fathers by reason convince heretics follies, when they could, and this is the duty of a Scholar, which Saint Peter preaches to us, and Saint Paul told us he practised among the Perfect, giving to weaker stomachs Milk, and not strong Meat.  
By this, Sir, you easily perceive my principal aim, to wit, what I have learned by Faith and Tradition the same to understand and defend by the help of Sciences; which I think I cannot do, unless I first understand the Sciences themselves, and not frame the Sciences to Faith before we understand what Faith itself teaches us. How ridiculous is it that what apprehensions we made of our Creed when we were Children, the same we should retain when we are men. Or what Conceptions clowns frame to themselves in Religion, Philosophers and Divines should be obliged not to transcend, under pain of being esteemed Supplanters of Christ and his doctrine, Evacuaters of Faith, Miscreants, and I know not how many other such ill-favoured names as you give me too often up and down your Book. Think but how contrary 'tis to man's Nature, and the profession of the Church, to forbid Learning? to hinder men from searching the true Meaning of God's word? from endeavouring to come to Demonstration as near as we can? to cut off all hopes of Certainty? and confound all Sciences into a Chaos of probability? Good Sir, since God hath created us to Science, and set our Bliss in the knowledge of himself, since he hath given us a strong inclination to it, do not seek to plunge us into a despair of it, and confine us to the eternal darkness of knowing nothing. If yourself be discouraged, hinder not others to endeavour. Should six persons find out but six conclusions, there's so far advanced: those six may each of them produce six more; and so go on with an unbounded improvement; whose multiplying fruitfulness as we cannot conjecture, so surely we ought not either to envy or obstruct.  
IN your Postscript where you promise to make all such things good as depend on matter of fact, before any Person of Honour. I understand not well your meaning by this word matter of fact. But if false citations go under that name, I pray clear yourself of this imputation I charge you with, that you say I put the pains of Purgatory to be the irregular affections to worldly things. A proposition you have so often rvepeated and urged, that you cannot deny it to be deliberately and examinedly done; So false and injurious, that you cannot refuse to acquit yourself if you be indeed Innocent.  
And for a Close give me leave against your next Vindication, to offer you this note; not as a Rule (for who made me your superior, that I should flatter myself with thinking you would perhaps obey me?) but as a friendly entreaty, that since we have experience enough of your power in rhetoric, you would wholly apply yourself to solid and useful reason; This if you deny, at least let me prevail with you to put at the beginning and end of those periods where you intend to be bitter, some visible mark; that I may save the labour of reading stuff so unsuitable both to you and me; as also, that some other of your Readers, whose ears delight in such janglings, may directly pick out the parts that most agree with them, and not be diverted by your other less impertinent discourses: whereas in your last work all is so jumbled together and closely woven quite through the whole piece, that for my part I can scarce distinguish the strong sense from the blustering satire. If you intend to write like a Man and like a Scholar, take some Treatise or Book of mine end ways; then show either the Principles weak, or the Consequences slack; else every one knows that in Discourses single Paragraphs subsist by their fellows; and so, to impugn such taken apart signifies nothing.  
FINIS.