LETTERS BETWEEN The Ld GEORGE DIGBY, AND Sr KENELM DIGBY kt, CONCERNING Religion.  
London, Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his Shop, at the sign of the Prince's Arms in Saint Paul's Churchyard, 1651.   

To the Reader.  
IT is no EXCUSE (though too often it is made one) to tell Thee these LETTERS are now made public to prevent false Copies: for really, if you have not these, you will be abused with others, so imperfect and mangled, that we may justly pronounce them to be none of the Authors own. In Matters of Religion there ought to be greatest care to publish nothing but what is genuine, which here (without more words) thou wilt soon find is faithfully offered thee.  
Farewell.   

LETTERS BETWEEN The Ld GEORGE DIGBY AND Sr KENELM DIGBY kt, CONCERNING RELIGION.  

My noblest Cousin and dearest friend.  
I Ever thought myself a Rich man in the many testimonies of your favour, being persuaded that the authority of your esteeming me, may work more upon the World to my advantage, than many personal defects of mine own to my prejudice. Among my best titles to valuation with Worthy men, I treasure up your last Letter, expecting to receive thereby as much Credit hereafter, as I do now obligation; when those that find it, (knowing your eminence and only my name) shall happily misconceive my praises there to have been of your judgement, which I must refer merely to your love and civility. Persist I beseech you in the former of these, and restrain yourself in the excess of the latter, permitting and owning me to be your friend, without making me mine own flatterer; of which I can never come in danger, but by your Commendations. I think myself as happy to bear the name of your friend, and promise to myself as much eternity by the relation, as he who ingraved Sir Philip Sydnie's friendship on his Monument.  
But I must tell you, I aspire yet to a far greater felicity, that is, to be made worthy of so brave an appellation, to which you can best contribute, if you please to impart freely to me your own rare abilities, and my weaknesses, rather than to darken these unto me, in exercising but the slightest part that you excel in, Courtliness. To take you off from this, and to engage you in the other, give me leave to lay hold on that part of your Letter which concerns my Studies. Wherein, as your example and advice have ever been my prime directory in the way of them, so in the several judgements of what I read, yours must be ever with me of singular Authority:  
Yet in the particular concerning the Fathers, I must confess, as I came unto them, perhaps with different preparations, so I have likewise perused many of them with reflections upon their usefulness, far differing from those you specify. I am so far from receiving them as Judges, that in many cases I cannot admit them as witnesses Authentic enough, whereon to pass a Verdict in Religion. I discover methinks too prone a bias in most of their evidence, either to the establishing of their own private opinions, or to the destruction of their adversaries. And this even in the most Primitive of them faction it seems, and a kind of Sectary passion, having had as strong, though not so various a Current, even near to the very springs of verity, as afterward in the remoter Channels, as you can much better instance (if you please) than I, out of Eusebius, Epiphanius, and St Augustin; who themselves also, as they seem to adhere to the Catholic Church, and as the Roman glories in them, may well be by both sides allowed an Expurgator.  
For that which you say, Secondly, that you rely more upon the Fathers, for what they tell us they were taught, then upon what they teach, I profess I should do so too, could I be but half so well assured of the first part of your reason; namely, that the former was derived from an infallible Authority, as I am of the other, that their own reasons were liable to Error. But to tell you true, as I can yet find no reason to make me acknowledge that there is any infallible Authority, but only the Scriptures (which I conceive is not that you mean;) so do I find as little that the Fathers (especially those before the first Nicene Council) were persuaded of any such. And grant they were, I can least of all discern which of the various doctrines they deliver, were rightly delivered to them from that unerring authority. Since it is apparent, methinks, that they do teach many uncertainties and errors, as Dogmatically, and with as solemn confirmations, as they do the most authentic truths. Hardly shall you find Scripture alleged more frankly by them, or the Church tradition proclaimed more loudly in any point of Faith, then by Justin and Tertullian, in the rigid censure of the use of Images, and in the same Tertullian in affirming Christ's descent to free the Patriarches; and in these two, and divers others, the gross assertion of the Angel's copulation with women: and lastly, then in all the Millenaries most confident authorising of their Judaic doctrine. These are perhaps of the slighter instances, such as flow easiest into a Letter from a bad memory, and yet I pray you resolve me which of them I shall let pass, as derived from infallibility? whether that which our Church approves, and the Roman condemns, as the first; or that which the Roman agrees to, and we disallow, as the second; or the second last, which both sides reject? I profess I am as yet to distinguish which of them these Fathers meant we should swallow as delivered to them, and which chew and consider as only delivered by them. These and many more irreconcilable passages in them, have rendered me much alike affected both to what you say they tell us they were taught, and to what they teach; that is, to have my reason, as much as I can cleared and enlightened by both, but to suffer it to be hoodwinked and lead implicitly by neither. I reverence those holy Fathers, as divine establishers of Faith in things where they all concur, and where not, as happy aides of the understanding, and as it were sacred bellows of the soul whether to make it glow unto contrition, and fervour of zeal, or to subtilise and exalt it into flames of contemplation.  
It is now high time for me to beg your pardon, for having licenced myself so much to your trouble. It is an inconvenience drawn upon you by your excess of favour and obligingness, that have encouraged me freely to express to yourself my ill-digested opinions; wherein toward any other I should have been restrained by shame and the consciousness of mine own incapacities, but from you I ever promise myself rectifying, where from another I might look for contempt: All your just censures, I am sure will be sweetened instantly by this one consideration, that this penance hath been laid upon you by  
Noblest Cousin, Your faithful Servant SHERBURN, Novemb. 2. 1638. G. D.   

My Noblest Lord, and most honoured Friend;  
MY unsteady abode in the town, and frequent sudden excursions out of it of late, have cast me so far behinde-hand with your Lordship, not only for what civility requireth of me, but for what duty bindeth me unto, as I was grown to a belief that I could make no other amends for my long silence, but by coming on purpose to Sherburn to you to excuse it. And therefore out of an ill bashfulness I forbore acknowledging my fault by Letter, referring that till I was in state to repair it by mine own personal attendance. But that being not likely to fall out so soon, I being to go to morrow to my Mothers, and thence to my own house for some weeks; and I having lately received a picture from my Lord Russel, with command to send it as soon as I could to your Lordship, I durst not make that a prisoner till I got liberty myself to wait upon you. By which means I am engaged, without being able to defer it any longer, to give you humble thanks for your letter of the second of November, and to crave your pardon that I came thus late to do it. So sudden and distracted an hour as I have now to write in, would deter me from offering at any return to so obliging and judicious a Letter, till I had a greater freedom both of time and thoughts. But I can never be taken unprovided for the first part, my sincere affection to your Lordship, and sense of your favours ever outweighing any other humane object that may busy my mind: & for the second, of answering your judicious objections, I shall confide more for the solution of them in your own calm and impartial reflections upon them, then in aught I shall be able to reply. Therefore had I never so much time, I would for this intent employ it only in reducing the matters into your remembrance, and entreating you to commit the appearances on both sides fairly one against another into the balances, and let your own Reason hold the Scale, which I must acknowledge with excess of joy, to be the strongest and most sincere that I know in any man. I should begin the performance of this task with complaining to your Lordship in the Father's behalf, and representing their grievances to your Lordship, that you are so rigorous to them, as to exclude them from being witnesses in matters of Religion. Their humility, as well of understanding, as of manners, will not let them be troubled when they are recused as Judges: They never pronounce any thing out of their own breasts unto which they will confine other men's assents. But when they tell you plainly what they were taught, and what they finde believed and practised generally throughout the whole Church, have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected. If you will examine their veracity by all those circumstances that are usually considered in taking men's depositions, you will find them strong on their side. They were right honest men, not only believed, but known to be such by all the world. They are acknowledged on all hands to be so judicious, as would more blemish one's own judgement than theirs, but to call it in question. What they wrote of, are matters belonging to their own Art and Trade, in which surely they would have great care and attention not to mistake, since their own and their posterities eternal salvation depended on it: Since than there is will and ability to inform us of truth, why should we suspect them? What can appear stronger to us in opposition of what they deliver as witnesses, to make us doubt their evidence? and consequently to brand them with the imputation of falsehood and ignorance, flattering ourselves that new and clearer lights shine to us, and that we know more than they? Their private opinions (for the establishing of which your Lordship saith, you discover too prone a Bias in most of their evidence) do not interest our beliefs; in such points we are as free as they. Nor can I believe so ill of any of them, as to make those to pass for currant, they would stamp upon them the seal of being taught from hand to hand, and of tradition from Christ and his Apostles, and of the general and uncontrolled belief and practice of the Church; or if they did, certainly their numerous adversaries would not have let such foul play scape their note. It is true, they were ever, as your Lordship observes, earnest and severe against them who were such, as if they had been mild against their Heresies, they would never have gained the name of Fathers and Pillars of the Church, nor have been reverenced as Saints by succeeding Ages. The faction and sectary-passion that your Lordship remarketh even near the springs of verity, belongeth only to their adversaries; their warmth is just and due zeal: And for those three Fathers of whom your Lordship says, that we as well as you may allow them an Expurgator; I profess my slender reading never met, to my best remembrance, with any doctrine of faith in them, that I do not entirely assent unto. In the next place, my Lord, I must clear what I mean by the infallible Authority from whence the Fathers derived what they were taught, which I distinguished against what of themselves they teach. Of this later sort are the reflections that they make upon the Scriptures, when in their Comments or Sermons they deliver to us what occurred to them in the interpretation of the Texts of it. And when they are but barely such, I conceive they are to have no more weight with those that have ability to examine them, than the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them. But the other points of Doctrine I take to have been taught by Christ to his Apostles, and by them preached through the world, and then again delivered to the ensuing age by them that had these points inculcated into their hearts by the Apostles, and in this manner with care (and every where) handed over from age to age; which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to sum up and produce against Innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received Faith of the Church. Doctrines thus delivered, I conceive, to be derived from infallible Authority, as well as the Scriptures, and withal, that it is so safely conveyed to us, as we are as deeply obliged to believe it, as what the Scriptures teach us, and in governing the tenor of our Faith, to give them much the precedency: Because by such Tradition, we are fully, plainly, and practically taught how to understand it, and the business and errand of it is, to deliver it so unto us; whereas the causes of writing the particular Books of Scripture, were for other particular ends, and not to give us a complete body of Faith. And those Articles of it that they do deliver us, are not so plainly expressed, that every body can understand them. So that if it be once admitted, that by such tradition, there can be had in all ages a complete and true knowledge of what Christ taught, it cannot be denied, but that it is an easier and better rule to guide our understanding in the affairs of Religion, then to resort for that end to the Scripture alone. And that such tradition is infallible, I have endeavoured to prove in another discourse which your Lordship hath, so that I will not trouble you here with any repetitions upon that Subject. Now when I wrote to your Lordship my opinion of the use to be made of reading the Fathers, relying upon them more for what they were taught, then for what they teach; it was as taking them for faithful Collectors of the tradition that they found general through the Church in their times, and sincere conveyors of them to us: And this course you shall find even among the ancientest of them. When St. Austin will establish the doctrine of praying for the dead, he telleth that it hath been the practice of the whole Church from the Apostles time. The like he doth against the Pelagians, and upon several other occasions; and directeth us to inquire what faith is professed in the Churches established by the Apostles; from whom he reckoneth on the uninterrupted succession of Pastors unto his time: And by them he deriveth the present Doctrine from the first preachers, who had it immediately from Christ. Tertullian, when he prescribeth against Heresy, giveth you a Catalogue of the Bishops of several Churches, from the several Apostles that planted them; and with the successions of the persons urgeth the succession in those Churches of the Doctrine he seeketh to establish. Irenaeus doth the like, and generally all of them; which they do not only when they use those formal positive words that the whole Church hath received from the Apostles, and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine: but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their discourses, which intimation is such as is easily perceptible to whosoever of judgement shall read them impartially. Therefore to summon up as short and as plainly as I can, the use, as I conceive is to be made of reading the Fathers; I say that letting pass what they writ as Commentors upon the Scriptures, and as Phliosophers, and all which is but as Divines and Scholars, we are generally to take hold of what they deliver us as Pastors of the Church, which appeareth chief by what they writ against those they brand with Heresy, which they could not do, were not those points which they censure, against the known and general tradition of the Church: And next when they deliver us dogmatically and professedly any doctrine, in such sort as we may reasonably conceive they intended we should take it as matter of faith, not giving it as conceptions of their own, which they bring only learned arguments on texts of Scripture to maintain: In all which a free & good judgement will easily discern by reading them, which way to incline; which I knowing your Lordship to be, do beseech you to apply it a little industriously, to collect throughout their sense, and by what they say to frame a model of the Government, Beleif, and practise of the Church wherein they lived, and then tell me whether it be like yours or ours: It is worth the while; Critics labour to get some knowledge of the manners and customs of Ages long since past by little fragments of antiquity that have hardly scaped into their hands. And Lawyers get a knowledge of the Government and frame of the State in Kings reigns long ago, by broken and disjointed Records, that they meet with scattered in several Files. And these maimed evidences by chance fallen into their Hands, do serve to beget a fairer body of knowledge, when they know how to make a right use of them, and such as will convince an indifferent and equal hearer: much more certainly the Father's works that handle professedly and at large the affairs of the Church and Religion, and whereof we have such plenty, will fairly inform a rational and discoursing man of the true state of them in their times, and what they conceived and had been taught, imported Heaven or Hell in man's belief and practice; which I am sure your Lordship will allow to carry a great stroke in ours, and from which it is madness, if not impiety, to departed upon less grounds than a demonstration to convince the contrary. Though I have already too much trespassed upon your Lordship's patience by my tedious Letter, yet I may not conclude it, till I have said a word or two to the four instances your Lordship giveth toward the latter end of yours. First, for the use of Images, I do not conceive it to be a precept given by Christ, but since introduced by the Governors of the Church, as a thing convenient to raise devotion in the people.  
Now things of that nature may be convenient at one time, and unfit at another. When I dolatry was fresh in the memory and practice of the world, it was dangerous to admit it, therefore in the primitive times Justin and Tertullian might have reason to cry it down. But because there was no precept of Christ in that behalf conserved in the Church, you see they urge not the authority of Tradition of the Church to beat down their use, but arguments of their own, and Texts of Scripture produced by them; whereas now in times secured from that danger, and a great good appearing in them (they being as a Father said, the books of unlettered persons to beget knowledge and stir up devotion in them) as strong arguments, and as pregnant Texts of Scripture are produced for their use, and to justify the Governors of the Church in recommending them to the people. Your second instance is of Tertullias affirming Christ's descent to free the Patriarches; which I conceive not only he, but all the Fathers that ever spoke of that particular, deliver it in a matter of faith, and so it hath been ever held by the Church: which word of Descent I take it is to be understood, as we all do, the Article of the Creed, He descended into Hell, that is, by his power and operation at least, by which he confounded the damned, comforted the souls in Purgatory, and brought to the sight of God, those in Abraham's bosom, that is, a place of rest, where yet they enjoyed not the beatifical vision. For to give other motion and place to a soul, is a question in Philosophy, and concerns not faith; and such was the assertion of the Angel's copulation with women; for many, or rather most of the Fathers were of opinion, that they were not pure Spirits, but had very subtle & immortal bodies (the contrary of which was never yet delivered as matter of faith, howbeit by force of Argument now the corporiety of Angels is exploded out of the Schools) and thus supposing that opinion, the way is obvious enough in commenting some Texts of Scripture, to fall into that error, which so becometh an error in Philosophy, and in no wise concerning faith. And that other of the Millenaries, which is the last your Lordship urgeth, appeareth plainly to have grown among some of the Fathers, (with whom the authority of Papias weighed much) by literally interpreting a Text of the Apocalypse; but never any of them urged the generally received opinion of the Church, nor public Tradition from Christ and the Apostles. And besides, the Church has never yet to this day condemned as an heresy, that part of the Millenaries belief, which some of the Fathers held (which is, of the Saints reigning with Christ a thousand years upon earth after their resurrection, and enjoying only spiritual delights) but only other foul enormities which went under the name of the Millenaries heresies. Now by what I have said to those instances in particular, and bringing that spirit that I said before was required to the reading of the Fathers, I conceive it will be no hard matter to determine which of them, as your Lordship says, we are to swallow as delivered to them, and which to chaw and consider as only delivered by them. One thing more I shall add in general, which is, That a large and great soul, like yours, expresseth itself more to its advantage in weighing in the powerful scale of reason, that it hath the main bulk of what it is to judge of, rather than to dwell with too scrupulous a diligence upon little quillets and niceties, which admit arguments on both sides, and in the mean time let slide away unnoted, that great deal which is  and plain, as though one were but to declaim in School to exercise one's wit, and therefore he maketh choice of some ingenious Paradox against a known and received truth; and to impugn it, can bring but against the skirts of it arguments or rather cavils of wit, without being able to grapple with the main body of it, and seeks rather to puzzle and embroil his adversary, then weightily to establish the solid truth. This is a subject that is deeply to be considered for use, (the importantest that we can have, not argued upon for ostentation) and that a wise man ought to seek a settlement in, and not aim at the applause of being sharp-sighted, by reducing all things to uncertainty. Therefore, good my Lord, apply that great understanding you are so excellently endowed withal, to build as well as to pull down, and read not the Fathers with a forelaid design to enerve their authority; but with an indifferency to yield your assent to what upon the whole matter you shall judge reasonable for you so to do. And since I know that your judgement must in all things that are controverted before it, of this nature, tend to a settlement one way or other, (for only sciolous wits float only in uncertainty, as delighting to make objections, and raise a dust which afterward their weak eyes cannot look through) let me recommend to you not only to examine whether the opinion you meet with in your reading, repugnant to what you were formerly imbued with, be concludingly demonstrated or no, but likewise examine as strictly the reason you have for your own, and where the scale weighs heaviest, give your assent. For since of contradictory propositions one must necessarily be true, and the other false, a man proceedeth upon safe grounds, if he take for a firm truth what is opposite to an assertion that betrays its own weakness; whereas if you look only upon the true, you may happily at the instant not find a full resolution to every objection that may be raised against it; which proceedeth not from the weakness of the thing, but from ours, that cannot at the first sight look into the bottom of it.  
You see, my Lord, how confident I am with you, to tell you what upon the present in such shortness and distraction of time occurreth to me upon this subject, which your goodness hath invited me unto, and I beg the continuance of it, first in pardoning me; and next, in imparting to me your reflections upon them, which I profess sincerely, I value beyond any man's, and most of all, in loving me as you have ever done, which is the happiest condition that can give a blessing unto  
London Decem. 29. 1638. My Lord, your Lordship's most humble and most faithful servant, K. D.   

My dear Lord,  
WHen I wrote my Letter, I intended to review and copy it; but it held me much longer time than I designed to it. It should not have been with my dull head and hand, an after-suppers work, and after coming home from vain entertainment with some impertinent she-wits that most tyrannically had seized upon me: They had tuned my brains to so cross a Key, as afterward all serious Images came so lamely into my fancy, as I may be ashamed to send you this rough draught of them, and so slowly halting, as I was in good faith three hours about those blotted and interlined sheets. For it was an hour past midnight afore I had done, which was not one to enter upon so tedious a task, as to lick this abortive and misshapen Embryo into form. And now this morning my company calls upon me to be gone, so that I am in a straight to appear before your Lordship, either extremely negligent if I defer till my return to town, the answering of your Letter, and the sending my Lord russel's Picture; or extremely indiscreet, if I send you so rude and indigested reflections upon your so judicious and strong discourse, wherein the instances, though your Lordship be pleased to call them slight ones, and such as flow easiest into a Letter from a bad memory, yet you must give me leave to believe them the strongest and sharpest that can be urged upon this subject, and the flower and Quintessence of what Mr. Chillingworth and the best wits have produced against the tradition of the Church, and the authority of the Fathers. But I will choose rather to fall into your hands for the latter, then under your censure for the first; and so ask you a thousand pardons, I send you this, by which, all I can hope, is, that you will at least discern in me a great willingness to come out of your debt in this kind (for all other I know impossible) though I am but a flow and imperfect paymaster: and that you will in some measure, guess at what I would say if I had time to digest and range it as it should be. I shall here only by way of supplement, add this more concerning the Millenaries (because I would not render my Letters more illegible by new interlining it) that as I remember Justin Martyr himself, saith it is an opinion not generally believed in the Church, but that many of the Orthodox reject it; howbeit he professeth to hold it for true, and accordingly endeavoureth to prove it by authority of Scripture; all which manifestly declareth, that it was not avowed tradition of the Church from Christ; it is true, Papias seemeth to intimate as though it were in some obscure manner derived from Christ, but not as a thing commanded to be preached and taught. He telleth it as a mystery or secret, whispered by him to some of the Apostles, whom he would oblige more than their fellows, by imparting some thing to them for their knowledge, that the rest should be ignorant of. But no such by-rivolet (though it should come from the true fountain) can ever fall into the main and avowed Channel of Ecclesiastical tradition; Indeed it is likely that Cerinthus the Heretic to justify his new device in that particular, fathered it on Saint John as whispered to him by Christ in confidence; and from him Papias that was an easy and simple man, taking it, passed by his name, and vouched only the Apostles, which some believed as a private truth, and others denied, as is apparent.  
December 26, 1638. Your Lordship's most humble and faithful Servant K. D.   

My Noblest Cousin, and best friend,  
I Beg your pardon, for making you so slow a return of my humble thanks for your excellent Letter of the 26 of December; and I should have needed your pardon much more, if your favours in it had been lesser. The excess of them in such variety of obligations, justifies me in the leisure I take to taste and enjoy each endearing circumstance apart; weighing and comparing with one another the several delights I owe you, whilst every where I find myself either courted by him I love most, or applauded by him I emulate most, or instructed by the person whose abilities I admire most; and all this by you dear Cousin, the prime object of my noblest affections. My heart is so much affected with these favours, that were this Letter (or rather Volume, whose bulk may well affright you with the trouble it threatens) filled with nothing but acknowledgements, it would fall as short of satisfaction to myself in the thankful part, a● I fear it will of giving it you in the rest that it treats of. But as in the first it is impossible for me to utter the hundredth part of my thoughts, so in the other could I express all and more than ever I can think of, I should yet despair of efficacy to convince you by any thing that can flow from a Pen animated with such dull reflections as mine, which here notwithstanding I venture to set down chief in obedience to your commands in the close of your Letter, and partly through fear that I might else in some kind incur the tax, either of Hypocrisy if I should by silence confess an assent in matters of Religion where I am not convinced, or of perverseness, should I d ssent without showing cause for it; which I shall here endeavour to manifest, but still with this protestation, that could I admit of such a doctrine, that in the affair of our faith I ought to be swayed by any humane authority, either of one or many, I should at this instant publish a valediction to my opinions, what great wits soever may sustain them, as willingly as I do here grant you the pre-eminence above the highest that I have known.  
And here in the first place I do most hearty wish I could concur with you in all the rest, as I do in the Introduction of your discourse, that so I might be united to you in opinion, as I am most entirely in affection. I join with you in full admiration of the Piety, Learning, and Integrity of those reverend Fathers of the Church, whose Lives, whose Zeals, whose Deaths abundantly merited that title with everlasting celebrations of their memories; their veracity I attribute infinitely unto, from a due consideration of all those happy circumstances wherewith your eloquence authorises it. You cannot aggravate their impieties enough, who would offer to exclude such sages from being witnesses in the most important matters of Religion: If any former slip of my pen can be but wrested to such an injustice, let me purge myself by a solemn Recantation. But I hope my words imported not any such sense, I am sure my sense intended not any such words; those of my Letter were as I remember, that I could not admit them for witnesses Authentic enough, whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion: Wherein by two restrictions, I am safely protected from any just imputation of so unjust a negative, since the one by the very exception of many cases, attributes to their testimony a validity in many, the other allows it an inducing power in the very denying it a convincing one, and tends no way to an exclusion, but only to a qualification of their evidence. Many indeed are the cases wherein I hold their Testimonials most sacred and unquestionable; such are the grand Fundamentals of Christianity, the doctrine of believing in one God, of the incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and some other the constitutive Articles of Christian Faith. These (to use your own terms) were matters indeed that concerned their Art and Trade, matters indeed whereon their own and their posterities Salvation undoubtedly depended, matters indeed that challenged their whole care and attention, both to receive them rightly, and transferr them faithfully. In these, when they tell us (as they often do plainly and unanimously) what they were taught, and what they found believed generally through the whole Church: Let their affirmation be as definitive as Pythagoras' to his Disciples, in these it is too mild a word to say, have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected? Be it sacrilege but to question their veracity; but on the other side many cases too there are wherein I can in no wise venture to give sentence upon their evidence; Such are most, if not all the now controverted points, between the Romish Church and ours, and as in my former Letter, levelling at these, I could not admit the Fathers for witnesses authentical enough, whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion; so likewise I must again profess in this, that I am as far as ever from allowing them in these such a determining or convincing Authority; witnesses of such an over ruling testimony, though they bear the name of witnesses, are judges in effect, and they do give the Law, though another pronounce it. Now to be Judges, I could cite you many passages wherein they themselves do utterly renounce the pretention; and you say yourself, that their modesty will not let them be troubled when they are recused for such. Neither will I wrong that virtue of theirs so much, as to embrace their testimonies with any closer adherence than itself desires. For be they what they will in point of interpreting to us the Doctrines of Church and Scripture, I am sure they are the best declarers and limiters of their own, both for their proper sense, and the degrees of our receiving them. Now that I have explained the sense of my former Letter, let me tell you the design both of that and this; It was to express unto you in the general (industriously avoiding particular questions) how little certainty or satisfaction, I think, can be found on either side, that shall rely on the Father's testimonies for a clear determination of our differences. I confess I launched into the Ocean of them with eager hopes of such a discovery, and from them at length can draw just as certain conclusions as Seamen of the Soil and dimensions of old Brasill.  
The reasons prevalent with me of the uncertainty, or rather in my conceit impossibility of drawing out of the Fathers any such proofs either way in our controversies, whereon an enquiring and judicious person should be obliged to rely and acquiesce, are so amply and so learnedly set down by Mr. Dailby in Emploides peers, that I think little of material or weighty can be said on this Subject, that his rare and piercing observation hath not anticipated: But because you will expect from me somewhat more than a bare reverence, take in short the chief inducements I will set down as briefly and perspicuously as I can; not to insist upon the more frequent ones, namely, the few writings extant of the Primitive Doctors of the first, second, and third ages after Christ; The many supposititious, children that bear the name of Fathers, they do not so much as Over refer; the alterations, rasures, and insertions which through ignorance, fraud, or maliciousness, have defaced, maimed, and corrupted even those few monuments that remain of venerable antiquity; I say, (not to dwell upon these, supposing that in your fair and noble way of ratiocination, you will not draw arguments from any, but such as are on both sides received for entire and legitimate pieces, differences being rightly reconcileable only by such mediums as both parties consent in) those which seem of greatest force with me to invalidate their authority in our questions, are these Four.  
First, Their contradictions to one another.  
Secondly, their variance from themselves.  
Thirdly, their repugnances both to Papists and Protestants.  
Fourthly, and lastly, Their want of ability in many points of our controversies; in most, of will to decide them.  
Their thwart of one another both in their writings, and votes in Counsels, will easily appear to any man that shall but with indifferent observation survey their works; and this in matters of government, of practice, and of belief, which are the three particulars, wherein you advise me out of the Fathers to judge the conformity of your Church, or ours to antiquity.  
For their Clashing in point of government, to name the superiority of the Sea of Rome, will be enough to call to your memory the Epistles of 
* Epist. 53. ad Anatol. 54. ad Martian. 55. ad Pul●her. 59 ad Martian. 61. ad Juvenal.  Leo contrary to the 28. Canon of the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon, who had elevated that of Constantinople to an equal height with the other: And likewise those Epistles of Gregory the great, 32. ad Maurit. 34. Constant. L. 4. wherein he inveighs in sharp terms against whosoever should take upon him the title of Universal Bishop; hardly reconcilable with those passages of the Fathers that the Roman Doctors cite for the Pope's supremacy, and least of all with the practice of Boniface the 3d, that soon after assumed the Appellation.  
To name the question of Appeals to Rome will suffice to draw an acknowledgement from you, of the great contestations between the African Bishops and the Roman, condemning that point; which was likewise oppositely decreed by the Synods of Sardis and Chalcedon. Concil. Sard. Can. 3. 2 Concil. Calced. Can. 9  
To name the election of Bishops, will be sufficient to recall to your thoughts the direct opposition in that point of the Fathers, of the eighth General Council, in their two and twentieth Canon, against what 
* Epist. 68 p. 166  Cyprian taught at large to be Apostolic tradition; to wit, that the people should have their votes also in the choice of Bishops.  
And lastly, not to dwell too long upon the least material point, you will easily be put in mind, how that which is delivered by many, and particularly by Epiphanius, p. 908. against Arrius for a received sense of the Church, touching the preeminence of a Bishop above a Presbyter, is flatly impugned by S. Jerom. Ep. ad Occan. 83. p. 614. and others.  
Their clashings about matters of practice are altogether as obvious.  
Call but to mind Victor's heats against the Bishops of Asia, touching the observance of Easter day. Tatianus and Tertullian's tenants concerning marriage, against the opinion of so many Fathers as would be endless to name: But because the first was declared an Heretic for holding all marriage pollution, & the last for esteeming the second unlawful; I beseech you turn over S. Jerom's Epistles to Furia, to Agerachia, and weigh some passages in his first book against Jovinian; And then tell me not how far he is from making Marriage a Sacrament of the Church; but how far his words are from importing the others Heresy.  
Cast but your Eye upon that passage of Origen Cont. Cells. l. 5. to p. 479. Where speaking of Angels, he saith, that in consideration of their divine nature, they are sometimes in the Scriptures called gods, but not so as that we should be commanded to adore them, or worship them with divine honours, although they be the conveyors of God's gifts unto us: for all desires, all prayers, all deprecations, all thanksgivings, are to be sent up to God the Lord of all things, by the high Priest who is above all Angels, who is the living word and God. Be pleased likewise to consider the 394. pag. of Athanasius in his first Oration against the Arrians, where he teaches that God only is to be worshipped, etc. And inform me how I shall compromise the matter betwixt them and those passages of other Fathers alleged by Bellarmine, for the worship and invocation of Saints. L. de Beatitudine sanctorum. c. 13. Where those which he citys out of Justine and Augustine are not like the rest so impertinent, but they may stand in some opposition with the two above mentioned.  
Let me but remember you of the opinion that Heretics ought to be baptised, so contradicted by Optatus, by Austin, and generally by all that impugn the Donatists, which was notwithstanding most peremtorily maintained by Tertullian, Cyprian, Ep. ad Pompeium & Firmilian, so far as that Cyprian for this cause broke into most notorious heats against Stephanus Bishop of Rome; (both Stephanus and Cyprian, urging tradition for contrary Doctrines) and Firmilian against all the Roman Church in general, saying, in an Epistle of his, which is the seventy fifth among Cyprian's works; that Rome did not in all things observe the tradition of the Apostles, and in vain boasted of their Authority. Accord I beseech you that passage of S. Austin, Serm. 17. de verbis Apost. (Injuria est pro Martyre orare) with the practice of the Church in that point, which appears to have been general, and is recorded in divers of the Fathers; as Clemens, Cyprian, Austin 17. Serm. de verbo Apost. and particularly by Epiphanius against Aerius, p. 911. Lastly, in point of confession & penitence be pleased to confront those passages of chrysostom: Homil. de poenit. & confess. It is not necessary (saith he) that thou shouldest confess in the presence of witnesses, let the inquiry of thy offences be made in thy thought, let this Judgement be without a witness, let God only see thee confessing. And again, in Epist. ad Heb. c. 12. Hom. 31. I do not say to thee bring thyself upon the Stage, nor accuse thyself unto others; and likewise that of St. Augustine, Confess. lib. 10. cap. 3. What have I to do with men, that they should hear my Confessions, as though they could heal my diseases? Be pleased. I say to confront these with some passages of other Fathers cited by Arcudius upon that subject; and likewise by Bellarmine, l. 3. c. 2. de Poenitentiâ. and confess the Fathers in matter of practice, as well as of government, irreconcilable.  
Their contradictions in matters of Belief, are infinite; I shall only sum up such as I esteem most important, either in the points themselves which they concern, or in relation to our controversies in the Doctrine of the Trinity: That of Justine Martyr, p. 357. against Tryphon, which cannot be solved from making a distinction of nature betwixt the Father and the Son: That of Tertullian, advers. Prax. c. 9.10. Pater tota substantia est, Filius vero derivatio totius et portio; and many other passages in the same book: That of Origen tract. in Joan. tom. 3. where he implies little less, as Genebrard observes, then that the Father is as much above the Son and the Holy Ghost, as they above the Creatures. That of Theodoret, part 3. council. Ephes. p. 496. where refuting Cyrils ninth Anathema, he saith, that in it Cyril doth anathematise all the Apostles, and the Archangel Gabriel himself, whilst impiously and blasphemously, (they are his words) he curseth such as do not believe the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Son: I can easilyer accord these Doctors which Arrius, then with Athanasius, or the three hundred and eighteenth Fathers of the first Nicene Council: Of the state of the Soul after death, in point of reward and punishment; and likewise concerning Christ's descent into Hell. I could here cite you multitudes of oppositions; but I shall have occasion to speak of these in another place.  
Lastly, touching the Eucharist, in my opinion, the most important Article of any we differ in, let me marshal up the Father's oppositions somewhat more at large; That of Justin in Apol. 2. The sanctified food (saith he) wherewith our flesh and blood by conversion, are nourished, we are taught to be the flesh and blood of Jesus incarnate, being made such by the word of prayer, after the same manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour by the Word of God took on him flesh and blood for our salvation. How will it suit with the latter part of the fortieth Chap. of Tertull lib. 4. against Martion, where his whole Argument runs upon this, That in the Eucharist, the Bread and Wine are the figure and representation of Christ's body, (for it would have been a very extravagant argument to one that denied, as Martion did, Christ himself to have a body of flesh, to allege that bread was the flesh of his body) his words are, Having professed (saith he speaking of our Saviour) a desire to eat the Passover, he took bread, and having distributed it to his Disciples, he made it his body, saying, This is my Body, that is, the Figure of my Body; of which it could not have been the Figure, if he had not in truth a body. And again, with that other passage of the same Author, lib. de anima, chap. 14. The taste of the Wine which he consecrated for a memorial of his blood: and also with that, lib. 1. against Martion, cap. 14. The bread by which he represents his body; I dare not translate the rest, Etiam in Sacramentis propriis egens mendicitatibus creatoris. Survey that passage of Cyrillus Hierosol. Catech. cap. 4. under the form of bread his body is given thee, and under the form of Wine his blood, And again, knowing and holding this for a certainty, that the bread which we see is not bread, though our taste find it to be so: So how this will sound with that place of St. Austin upon the 98. Psalms, where he bringeth in our Saviour speaking of this matter after this manner: You shall not eat of this body which you see, nor drink that blood which they shall shed which will crucify me, I have commended a certain Sacrament unto you, that being spiritually understood will quicken you.  
Next, consider those passages of Gregory Nissene quoted by Bellarmin, we believe (saith he) the bread rightly sanctified by the word of God, to be changed into the body of God the word. And again a little after, This doth the virtue of the benediction effect, changing the nature of what we see (bread and wine) into the body of the Lord: To which I oppose that of Theodoret Dialog 2. The mystical Symbols are not removed from their own nature after sanctification, but remain in their former substance, form and figure; And Dialog 1. Our Lord, saith he, in delivering those mysteries, called the bread, body; and the mixture in the Cup, blood; And soon after saith he, our Saviour inverted the names, giving to his body the name of Symbol, and to the Symbol the name of his body; so having named himself Vine, he called the Symbol Blood. Next let us confront that of chrysostom Hom. de Encoeniis; Is it bread that you see? is it wine? do they go into the privy like other meats? away with such a thought, for as wax being put into the fire, unites itself so in substance to it, that nothing thereof remains; so imagine here that the mysteries are swallowed up in the substance of the body: Therefore when you approach thereunto, think not that you receive the divine body as from man, but fire from the pincers of the Seraphime which Esau saw; so think that you partake of the divine body, as if you joined your lips to his pure and spotless side.  
Confront this with that of Origen in Caep. 15. Matth. As nothing (says he) is impure in itself, but is made so to the polluted and incredulous, by his own uncleanness and unbelief; so, neither doth that which is sanctified by the Word of God and Prayer, in its own nature sanctify him that useth it. And for as much as belongs to that eating, we are neither defrauded of any good by the not eating, nor enriched with any good by the eating of the sanctified bread, which for as much as it hath of materials, goes into the belly, & the privy, but becomes useful and effectual according to the proportion of faith, making the soul perspicatious and considerate of what is profitable.  
Lastly to conclude this point, let me set before you, Macarius Homil. 17. and Theophylact, more remote from one another in this article of faith, then in the times wherein they lived: Macarius telling us that we offer bread and wine the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his flesh and blood, and they which are partakers of the visible bread, do eat the flesh of the Lord spiritually. And Theophylact teaching the directly contrary doctrine upon the 6. of Saint John: Note here (says he) that the bread which we eat in the mysteries, is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Lords flesh, but the very flesh of the Lord; and let no body be troubled, that the bread should be believed flesh, since the bread which he did eat when he walked here, was altered into his body, and made the same with his holy flesh; so would the wafer be turned into his flesh, if Christ as man did eat it, will the veriest Sacramentary say.  
I have insisted the longer upon this particular, as conceiving it the highest point of all our controversies, and wherein the Fathers should have most obliged us, had they left to posterity a right and unanimous intelligence, of that great mystery of the Eucharist: But the certainest conclusion I can draw from them in this and the rest, is of the uncertainty of concluding any thing in our differences, from those that differ so much amongst themselves. Justin Martyr in Orat. cohort. ad Gent. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. He should have my vote for a rare Musician that could contrive those their discords into a Harmony, fit to be the measure either of our practice or belief.  
My next Reason is, the Father's variance from themselves, a quality of much more prejudice to them then the other: for upon contradiction of testimonies, how point-blank soever a Judge may fall to examine the fame and reputed integrity of the witnesses, in which if he find a difference, he will not stick many times to pronounce a sentence according to the entire credit of the men; but who will ever give judgement upon ones evidence who in the same business is found in contrary tales? And here I could run over most of the materialest points wherein I made my former instances, and produce almost out of every Father pro & con examples, not only of variance, but almost of as eminent contradiction as that of St. Augustine concerning Purgatory, in Serm. 232. de Tempore, where he flatly denies that there is any third place besides Heaven and Hell, calling them deceivers that teach it. And likewise in his 21. Book de Civitate Dei, cap. 16. where he absolutely rejects the opinion of any Purgatory flames before the day of Judgement, to another passage in Cap. 24. of Lib. 21. de Civitate Dei, where he seems positively to affirm i● himself: but I forbear, in regard it would be tedious, and likewise for that I am unwilling to press a point of derogation from those holy Fathers (whom I reverence) further than I needs must, it being sufficient for what I intent to infer, that they appear oftentimes to vary from their own positions in divers Articles that we dispute of, and others fully as important; in which I may be well excused from the trouble to us both of alleging examples, since Genebrard and Pamelius thought it their best course to purge, the one (Origen) the other (Tertullian) from gross and impious error in many places, by showing how they teach the clean contrary in others, though by the way I must needs say, that Pamelius his manner appears to be very extravagant; for as to some poisonous doctrines of Tertullian, a Montanist, he rightly applies a cure from some other passage of Tertullian a Catholic; so at other times, to what he thought venomous in Tertullian a Catholic; he preposterously prescribes an Antitidote out of Tertullian an Heretic, as you may see in the eighth of his Paradoxes, where he confutes an error in his Apologetique, and de Testimonio Animae, Books which that Father wrote being a Catholic, with a passage of his Book de Anima, composed when he was turned Cataphrygian; and yet who so forward as Pamelius, when any passage in such books makes for us to cry, out away with it, 'twas a saying of Tertullian a Montanist: I may well help my cause the best I can, by this unsettledness of the Fathers, since the noblest pillar of the Roman Church, Cardinal Peron, so often wrists their variance from themselves so much to the advantage of his. See how in his reply to King James, p. 374. he makes bold with Gregory the Great, with Ruffinus, with Jerome touching the Maccabees reception into the Canon; wherein I do not think him more in the wrong in the particular, than I believe him right in the general, (to wit) that the Fathers did often vary their opinions, according to their several greenness or maturity of studies, from whence Vincentius Lyrenensis his directions will follow, count. haeres. c. 39 That the Father's depositions are only to be taken who living in the Catholic Faith and Communion holily and wisely, did constantly teach and persist even until their death in Christ, and further such only as did receive, preserve, and deliver their doctrines all or the greatest part, manifestly, and in one and the same sense; wherein what use soever some Papists make of that passage, I profess I think we are somewhat less beholding to him for the certainty of a rule and evidence to guide our faith by, then to Archimedes for his Engine to remove the World: For the Mathematitian disabuses us, and declares that there is not a solid place to be found whereon to fix his instrument, but th'other leaves us to that vain search of an impossibility; for truly as the case stands, I cannot think it less than an impossibility to know (with any competent assurance) what (in all or almost any of our debated questions) the Fathers hold with all those solid circumstances whereon Vincentius his rule is grounded, of holiness, wisdom, catholickness, immutability of the teachers, and perpetual identity of the doctrines sense, if with years they all improved, I might be comforted a little by relying on their last dictamen; but as I find a S. Augustin that with age retracted his errors, so on the other side I meet with a Tertullian that going forward in years and experience, went less in his judgement; how happy should we both be in one, that could assure us in the Legion of Fathers, when was the verticle point of each their erudition, whether at their summer or winter solstice; if I give you the notes of it, and tell you then only you have it certain, when they are in a perfect and palpable conjunction with Scripture, you will think it but an imperfect indication; if you say that then they were arrived to the high point of their perfection, when they were once exactly instructed in the full sense of the Church, I must not admit of that mark whilst you are proving the Church's receptions by theirs; and therefore if you please, let us both agree, that for either of us there is no resolving evidence to be taken from the Fathers, that are so irresolute themselves; when you meet with a passage in any of them that stands not with your belief, conceive their judgement not ripe, or rotten, when they writ it, or that their recantations are lost, the same liberty shall I take in mine; for truly had Saint Augustine's admirable monument of humble ingenuity (as well as high erudition) his Retractations perished as origen's, which as Saint Jerome saith, he had made in an Epistle to Fabian Bishop of Rome, 
Epist. 65. ad Pamach, et Occan.  did before him, Saint Austin might perhaps have had a place in some others Catalogue of heretics, as well as Saint Origen in his; And truly who can secure us that the like mishap hath not befallen others of the Fathers, now taxable with erroneous doctrines, by the loss perhaps of some after-survey of their own works?  
My Third consideration is of the Father's variousness and repugnancies to the Government, practice, and belief, of both the Romish Church and ours: In which I have prevented the need of examples by many of the instances, both of my former Letter and this, as that of the equality of Bishops & Presbyters, that of rebaptising, that of Angels, that of the Millenaries, etc. to which I will lonly add, that which so many, and most particularly S. Austin delivers of the necessity of children's partaking of the Eucharist, and his rigour against infants unbaptised; some of which I take to be beams, all more than motes, fit to be removed out of their eyes, before we can with reason resign up our own senses to their guidance and manuduction.  
My Fourth concluding reason, is, the want of ability in many of the Fathers, in most of will to determine the points of controversy, and this I hope I may safely affirm without wrong, either to their abilities or good wills. A general and potential ability to resolve difficulties every strong reason includes, if in the particulars wherein it should be brought forth unto act, there concur (upon proposal) means of informing one's self, and a will to use it: Such an ability those learned Fathers (rich in all the choice endowments of soul) had in most singular eminence, and as it were madness to rob them of those, so I think it is neither Logical, nor prudential, because they were knowing in the general, to attribute to them an actual ability to discern such particular questions, wherein it is so far from appearing that they had the means of informing themselves, or the will to use them, that I see no signs that in their ages they were ever in proposal; such and so far from agitation or controversy (the parents that give life and act to particular abilities) were, as I am persuaded, in the primitive times the doctrines of infallibility annexed to a Church of any one denomination, of adoring the Eucharist for God, of Purgatory with its compliments, of Indulgences, and many other choice points of our controversies; All which I profess appear to me as unthought of for the first 500 years after Christ, as the Antipodes, or the Antartique pole to Lactantius, or Justin Martyr, that took the heavens to be to the earth but as the flat cover of a box; In these I take it to be of no more derogation from them to deny their deciding abilities, then to say that they were not able to leave to posterity, an exact Map of America, which was not discovered in so many hundred years, after: so far is it from an injurious detraction, that to imagine them studious, definitive, or active in questions hardly ever moved, that had neither professed maintainers or impugners, were to imagine them idle, and Ayre-beaters, No marvel that to decide such, they should want wills, having neither means nor occasion to actuate their abilities, or that they should want abilities, having no provocations that might stimulate their wills. Those primitive Champions of the Gospel, the Fathers of the first 400. years, who in this business are most to be consulted with, had their time, their industry, their pens so incessantly exercised against the common enemy of Christ, the Jews and Gentiles, or else against those heinous heretics, that pretended the name of Christianity, but tended to the utter subversion of it, as the Ebionites, the Samosaterians Gnostics, the Marcionists, and divers other blasphemous or Chimerical innovators, that they had little leisure to raise to themselves imaginary enemies to combat with in such slight and trivial points as these we dispute of; or if perchance any such were presented, little care to subdue them. But that I may not be thought to frame a discourse upon two false suppositions: The one that our controverted points are of articles of Religion, little material; the other, that in the primitive times there were few of them in agitation, or neglected, if they were, let me tell you what induceth me to think so.  
For the first, that they were in themselves little material, or at least thought so by the Fathers (which is all one for our purpose) though now I confess grown highly important by being enjoined many of them under the pain of anathemas, to be believed as essential to salvation) I collect out of a survey of all those Ancient, yea and more modern rolls (where it is likely all necessary points of faith or practice would be recorded) where finding no news at all of them, I think I may safely conclude them but slight in comparison of what I find there registered.  
The first and prime inducement to me is, that I meet with them no where in Scripture; but this is none to you who do not allow that to be the perfect reconditory of all necessary Doctrines The next is, that in the Father's several Catalogues of Heretics, as that of Philastrius, Epiphanius, and S. Austin, I find none branded with Heresy, for not holding those Articles imposed on men's beliefs by the Church of Rome, and rejected by ours, whose note it is not likely such would have escaped, as had impugned any doctrines believed by them necessary to saulation: But to this perhaps you will say, that the denomination of Heretic was not incurred by the opinions that men held, but by their obstinate persisting in such after the Churches manifests against them, and that upon this reason divers who believed not all things necessary, might well miss a place in their denumeration of Heretics; wherefore setting these two aside, because though of much force with me, yet likely to be invalide with you, I only press upon your consideration my last, and I think, undeniable reason, taken from the non-appearance of such articles in those several pieces; wherein the Fathers of set purpose and design professedly do set down all the essential doctrines of Christianity agreed upon throughout the Church universal: Such were their Symbols, such Irenaeus his unity of Faith, in lib. 1. cap. 2. such origen's introduction to his book de principiis, such Tertullia's rule of Faith in his prescription against Heretics, such Epiphanius his conclusion of his work, which he calls the settlement of truth & assurance of immortality; such likewise (to fit you with some of all ages) was that work of Gennadius (written within these two hundred years) De rectâ Christianorum Fide: I will not say in some of which, but in all which together, there is not one Article of Faith received by the Church of Rome, and rejected by us, so much as mentioned, save only in Epiphanius of Christ's descent into Hell; a Point variously and uncertainly understood among the Fathers; as shall in another place be demonstrated.  
Now for farther proof of the little agitation or great neglect of our controverted points in the Primitive times (although it will follow of consequence to what hath been already alleged) yet I beseech you let me appeal to your own observation: Do you know of any of the Fathers for the first four hundred years that hath purposely and of design composed the least Treatise of any one of our questions? or in some other tract handled them so much as in a formal digestion? Inform me I beseech you; for I profess all the works that ever I have met with of them, appear to have been wholly directed either to deride the Pagans, to confute Philosophers, to convince the Jews, to confound prodigious Heresies, or deliver precepts of good life, or else to expound some passages of Scripture most useful to the same ends: These appear to me to have been the sole objects both of their wills and abilities to combat: And shall we venture to give sentence in our intricate disputes upon words or passages, that by the by may seem to concern them, either casually let fall, or directed to other purposes, in most of which in my conscience we find our own opinions as rationally, as Whittington his turn Lord Major of London in the ring of bells, or some melancholy Lover his Mistress' picture in the grain of Wainscot, and their intentions as rightly as Eudocia, Homer's, and another Virgil's, when they made him Evangelize; so little do I regard what they say in this our case; but to their silence I attribute much, and think it strongly expressive, but nothing to the advantage of those that impose for necessary Articles of Faith, Doctrines that those renowned Oracles of the Church, either never heard of, or thought not worth their mentioning.  
Thus noble Cousin, I have laid before you the principal reasons that led me to deny the Father's Testimonies to have such a validity whereon we may justly pass a verdict in our questions of Religion; which I beseech you, not to take as meant in a way of further derogation from them then in those very particulars; for there is no man living that in the general pays them more reverence than myself in the highest admiration of their erudition and piety. And therefore where I have marked out their heats against one another, and contradictions; let them be understood to have sprung from holy fervour and zeal in whatsoever they were for the time persuaded was good and true: when I note their variance from themselves, let it recommend their ingenuity that would so clearly avow their own fallibility: when I tax them for dissenting from us all in this age, (although S. Austin when the Donatists press him with antiquity, sticks not to say that the younger Doctors are sharper sighted) yet let not my words be driven farther than this modest (since you so call it) flattery to ourselves, not of seeing clearer or sharper than they, but only (by their helps) further, as dwarves upon Giant's shoulders: And lastly, when I deny them the ability to determine our points of controversies let it be of no more derogation from their learning and judgement, than it were of lessening to an Ambassador, or of flattery to his followers, to say, that at a public audience some of them could give a good account of the things in the lower end of the room, when he himself could say little or nothing of them, having only past them by, with his attentions entirely fixed upon the higher and more noble objects.  
These were the Considerations that possessed me when I wrote my former Letter; although I had then the leisure but to point at a few of them, (and since I cannot speak to you but with truth and freedom) I must here profess they remain in full force with me still, your Letter having given me great contentment, but little satisfaction; for I can by no means yield, that there is any Assurance, much less infallibility in the Rule which you at the first prescribed, and still insist on, of judging our Controversies by the Fathers; namely, to use our liberty of reason only in what they teach of themselves, with confirmations out of Scripture, or probable Arguments; but to resign it up in an entire and implicit Assent, to what they tell us they were taught, and deliver to us as delivered to them for the received sense of the Church; which is to be understood (you say) not only when they use these formal positive Words, That the Church hath received from the Apostles, and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine; but at other times also, when they do but intimate it in their Discourses, (where by the way I must needs tell you, I ever thought intimations likelier to beget Disputes then to end them.) If in this positive Rule you reserve a Liberty to except some particulars so delivered, or some Catholic Fathers so delivering them; Then without more ado it is evident that this Way, nothing can be decided; for your Adversaries will claim (in what thwarts them) the like liberty of excepting. If you lay the Rule absolutely general, to wit, that what Article soever is delivered directly, or by imtimation from the Fathers, to have been a received Doctrine of the Church, aught to be swallowed for an infallible verity, it will easily be made appear, that this method must betray you, not only into some Protestant Tenants, but also into Beliefs on both sides confessed to be erroneous: It must draw you to be a Millenary, it must draw you to hold a necessity of children's partaking the Eucharist; it must draw you to abhor that use of Images as Idolatrous; and finally, it must force you to reject out of the Canon those Books which we esteem Apocryphal; for all these do the Fathers deliver, with somewhat more than intimations that they were taught to them, as derived from the Apostles, and from general receptions of the Catholic Church.  
First, for the doctrine of the Millenaries, I conceive you make a right judgement of the original thereof from Papias, whom St. Jerome (the best Critic in Ecclesiastical Antiquity) says to have been the first Author of it; which error it is probable the said Papias ran into, either by a flattery to win upon the Jews, or else, as you say, by the gross understanding of a Text in the twentieth of the Apocalypse, himself being one but of a dull and easy spirit, which being taken from him by those that reverenced the antiquity and piety of the man, was delivered with recommendation to their successors, and so took possession of most of the Doctors of the following Ages. As for that of Cerinthus, I believe with Sextus Senensis, that it was a distinct heresy, which fed carnal men with hopes of beastly and sensual delights: for it is not likely that a doctrine taken from such an arch Heretic as Cerinthus, could have found such reception among the Catholic Fathers; and least of all is it probable, that Cerinthus could have fathered it upon St. John, whom the Apostle is said to have detested so much, that Iraeneus, lib. 3. cap. 3. advers. haeres. (a chief Champion of the Millenaries) in that very Chapter where (as you say) he reckons up the successions of Bishops in divers Churches, relates, that when St. John was entering into a Bath where Cerinthus washed himself, St. John no sooner saw him, but he stepped back, crying out, Let us forsake the place, lest that enemy of truth draw down the house upon our heads: a fit Author for so foul a Doctrine, but one very unlikely to be believed acquainted with Christ's whispers to St. John. But as this enormous part which passes also with most under the name of Millenaries heresy, was generally condemned: so the other more spiritual of Papias, was and is fare from being approved at this day, either by your Church or ours, much more from finding so firm and entire assent as you will be obliged to give it by your rule of swallowing for unquestionable and infallible what doctrine soever the Fathers deliver as taught unto them, and to be the general sense of the Christian Church in their times: And for proof that it was delivered for such by Papias (who gloried in nothing more than in being a careful collector of the doctrines taught by the Apostles viva voce) I refer you nlyto Nicephorus Calistus Hist. Eccles. lib. 3. c. 20.  
That Justine Martyr p. 307. delivered it for such a passage in his Dial. with Tryphon, will easily testify, where he saith, that he, and all in all parts orthodox Christians held it, and calls them Christians only in name, with many other circumstances of aggravation, that denied it. It is true (as you say) he confesses a little before, that some good and honest Christians did not acknowledge it; but this may be an argument how careless, and oftentimes repugnant to themselves some of the Fathers were in their writings, or else how little scrupulous of setting to doubtful doctrines that seal which you account so sacred; but it can no way salve him from having taught it with those circumstances which you esteem the notes of infallibility. That Iraeneus took it and taught it to be of tradition from Christ, I think is so manifest, that it were superfluous to insist upon particular passages in that Author.  
And lastly, to omit Tertullian, and others, who clearly (me thinks) imply as much, though not in the very terms. What can express more a doctrine rightly delivered, and generally received, than Lactantius, lib. 7. Institut. c. 26. his conclusion of his long discourse upon this subject; haec est doctrina sanctorum Prophetarum, quam Christiani sequimur, hoc est Christiana sapientia.  
Secondly, For the necessity of children's partaking of the Eucharist, although the evident practice of the Church for the first six hundred years, according to all our records of antiquity, might excuse me from proving by any particular instance, that some of the Fathers taught the necessity of it for a received tradition; yet take this of St. Austin lib. 1. de peccat. mer. & remiss. c. 24. rightly (saith he) do the Punic Christians call Baptism by no other names but health and safety; nor the Sacraments of Christ's body by no other than life, unde nisi ex antiquâ, ut existimo, et Apostolica traditione qua Ecclesiae Christi insitum tenent praeter Baptismum et participationem Dominicae mensae, non solum non ad Regnum Dei sed nec ad salutem et vitam aeternam posse quemquam hominum pervenire. So direct a passage, that I see not how in this point you can avoid the necessity either of retracting your rule of assurance, or of incurring an Anathema of the Council of Trent, Sess. 21. cap. 4. Can. 4. against any that should hold this very opinion which you find so delivered, and so Majestically sealed by Saint Austin.  

* Tertul. lib. de Idololatria, Orig. lib. 7. Cont. Cells. Arnob. lib. 6. Lactan. lib. 2. cap. ult. Epihan. Ep. ad Johan. Hierosol. inter oper. Hier. Epist. 60. Ambr. de suga. Secul. cap. 5. August. de fide cap. 7.  Thirdly, for the use of Images (a point likewise of my former letter) to which you say that the Fathers do not use the Authority or Tradition of the Church to beat it down, I am confident you will confess that affirmation a slip of observation or memory, when you shall but cast your Eyes upon those passages of the Fathers for brevity sake quoted only in the Margin; where doubtless in some at least you will find the interdiction of them so deeply stamped with your supposed great seal of Christianity, that if you stick to your own rule, it will not be enough to speak indifferently of the matter with the Moderator on your side, but you must be as rigid and severe against them as you can imagine any warm brother would be at Edenbourgh; for I do not think any Zealot of them all can be more invective in this point then most of those Fathers were, many to the abhorring of the very Trade of Imagery; but because you do insist somewhat upon justification of the contrary practice at this day in the Romish Church, I must beg leave to run over your Allegations, and to acquaint you freely how unsatisfied I am in the particulars.  
In the first place you evade the Authority of the Primitive Fathers, vouched formerly by me, namely, of Justine and Tertullian, by saying, In regard that Idolatry was then fresh in the memory and practice of the world, they might well think it dangerous to admit that which the following Governors of the Church might afterwards introduce upon a good ground of raising devotion in the people, since things of that nature, you say, may be convenient at one time, and unfit at another.  
And in the next, you labour to justify the use of Images now, by saying, First, that as strong Arguments, and as pregnant passages of Scripture are produced for it, as formerly against it. Secondly, by alleging that these times are secure from the danger of Idolatry, And lastly, by affirming that a great good appears in them.  
To your infirming of those Ancient Authorities in this point, it will be sufficient to put you in mind, that divers of the more modern Fathers far enough removed from the vicinity of Paganism after Christianity had taken possession of the world, were as peremptory Iconoclasts as those two I pitched upon. And for the variance of practice upon variance of times, your reason might hold, had they condemned the Religious use of Images only as inconvenient, and not as in its own Nature unlawful, but what's simply unlawful at one time, cannot be lawful at another, without a precept from God (which you say) in your first words upon this subject, You did not believe to have been given herein.  
To your first justification of this Practice, I must needs say, that for the strong Arguments for it, to which I am yet a stranger, I should be glad to be acquainted with them, but for the Texts of Scripture so pregnant as you speak of, truly I should be sorry to meet with them, for although where I find in holy Writ appearing repugnances, and difficult intricacies, I am as apt as any body (having perhaps most reason for it of any) to accuse my own ignorance, and to preserve all veneration to what I find there; yet I confess it would trouble me much, and be of dangerous temptation, should I meet with a passage in the sacred volume, as palpably direct for the use of Images, as I am sure the second Commandment is against it.  
For your Second Allegation, that these times are secure from the danger of Idolatry, some proofs would be necessary, since I am far from understanding them to be so; were that sin committed then only when the outward or inward act of veneration accompanied with that belief, and reliance which belongs to the Creator is exhibited to, and terminated in the creature, I should then be of your opinion, and pronounce these times in little danger of Idolatry; but withal, my vote should also go to acquit all ages from the Crime, as well as the present. For I do not think that the foulest Idolaters of the Heathen ever arrived to that height of stupidity, as to take those low and material objects of their devotion for God Almighty: Nay, the more bestial their Idolatry was, as of the Egyptians and Romans, in worshipping the vilest creatures, the less probability is there that they conceived the essence of the Deity to dwell under those contemptible forms that they adored; as I think the Jews little guilty of believing that the Calf which they had made of their earrings, though seemingly deified by their veneration, was the great God that hath wrought his wonders among them: but since it is as formal idolatry to frame to ones self, out of low, limited & corruptible forms, resemblances of the incomprehensible Deity, and to impart to them any kind of divine honour, whether you please to call them of adoration, of service, or of pious religion, since to worship the true God after an unfitting manner, involves men as well in this sin, as the service of a false God: since (I say) these practices as well as the other, amount to Idolatry; yea such, as for my part, I believe the Jews & Pagans were rarely guilty of any greater amidst their highest abominations. I must profess I think the world at present extremely liable to the sin; yea, many of the Romish Church deeply plunged therein by the easy abuse, if not by the single use of Images in their prayers: and this not only the simpler sort, but even the learned Doctors themselves, if one may believe them of themselves. Thomas of Aquine says, Summ. part. 3. quaest. 25. Art. 3. and hath many followers in it, That the same reverence is to be given to the Image of Christ, that is to Christ himself; and seeing Christ is adored with the adoration of Latria, that his Image also is to be adored with the adoration of Latria; so fare is that great Doctor and his Sectators transported, whom I do choose much rather to brand with the imputation of Idolatry, than many others of his own side, as learned, that impugn his doctrine with sacrilege; there being, as I conceive, no medium between those two impieties, where one denies adoration of the highest kind, to that unto which another pays it.  
Thirdly, for the great good which you say appears in the use of Images; I am persuaded it doth but appear: it is pretended they help the memory, and excite devotion in the people. If by aids of memory, be understood only in the general, that the lively representation of some holy History, is likely to call better thoughts into our minds then a prophaner; I like it well; by the same reason that the coursest picture of CHRIST crucified, aught in a good Christians Cabinet to take the wall of a Venus of Titian; the one being apt to mortify us through the same sense whereby the other may inflame us: but if by the help of memory any thing be meant of more particular assistance in the directing of our prayers, I think Images do just as much good in that point, as the art of memory would do to your excellent natural one, that is, help to dizzy and distract it: Or if by excitement to devotion, be meant any particular stimulation and guidance to the rightest way of true devotion, or furnishing us with a proper means of addressing it to the right and original object, I conceive them then so far from being of good use in this kind, that I hold their very stimulations to devotion dangerous, they excite, they warm the zeal of the ignorant, 'tis true, but with those strange fires that caused such combustions in Israel, whilst so many (as Gul. Pariensis de Legibus cap. 23. confesses) not distinguishing between the Image and the thing, adore the picture in stead of what it represents; wherein fare less sinful were a lukewarm piety rightly applied, than the ardentest devotion misdirected, by how much sins of omission are more pardonable then of act, and to worship the true God less intensely, then to serve a false one zealously. Of this danger there cannot be a better witness, for all his mincing of the matter, than Gregory the great (in his Epistle to Cirenus Bishop of Marcelles, in which that passage is which you cite) who there adviseth the Bishop to excuse to his flock the breaking down of Images in the Church, by alleging that he was forced to that Act by the people's abusing that to adoration, which was erected only for instruction of the ignorant and illiterate in matter of history. The Bishop truly was beholding unto him, for furnishing him with such an excuse, which might serve to justify all the fiercest Iconoclasts, since all the good that imagination can present in the use of Images throughout the whole Universe, cannot amount to recompense the mischief of one poor souls betraying to Idolatry.  
For my part I do conceive, that good use might be made of holy pictures, but hardly by the vulgar, which makes me wonder at that saying of Gregory which you glance at, wherein he seems to adapt them to the ignorant, styling them the books of the unlettered: For besides the small Divinity (me thinks there is so little Philosophy) in the saying; Books truly they may be for such Ignoramuses as cannot read and will not hear, wherein they may perhaps learn matters of fact (as some children that have an aversion from their books, are taught their letters in Dice) but are very unlikely to profit in any right devotion; had he appropriated the use of Images solely to the most knowing and speculative, it would have been more tolerable: such perhaps one might believe likely from material and sensible representments to raise spiritual meditations surpassing sense; and by the greater livelihood and glory of the object, to perfect the more, and purify their abstraction from all servile dependence on materiality; some such extaticall Contemplator as Dionysius that bears the name of the Areopagite (a notable Disciple I am sure of Plato's, what ever he was of Paul's) might perchance have an Art of erecting his soul by Images, to some admirable intelligence of the true one only to be adored. If they were hideous and deformed, he could inform you that the properest presentation of invisible things to sense, is by the unlikeliest representations; and that in their contemplation our soul is more elevated by 
* Dionys Arcop. de Caelest. Hierarch. cap. 2.  disagreeing Images, then by resembling one's. And therefore that the Celestial natures are expressed unto us usually in Scriptures by such Images as are irreconcilable with the Originals they signify, as of Eagles, Lions, Bulls, etc. to which I will be bold only to say this, that I believe more would have assented to his speculation, I am sure more would have understood it, had he inferred, that since God was pleased to paint out himself & his ministering spirits in such incompatible Images, we should not attempt the making such representations as we do of those incomprehensible forms. If the Images were of sweet proportion & lustre, he would find perchance a way in his negative Divinity, the more beauteous they were, to attribute the more to those celestial natures, by 
* Dionys. Arcop. de Diu. nom. c. 13. & de Mist. Theolog. c. 2.  removing from the splendidst glories of the sense, all capacity of proportion with their spiritual perfection; such uses as these of Images, might perhaps be credible with the Pere Golu of a Dionysius in his raptures, who could fancy to himself all the ceremonies of the Church, and the formal and majestic divisions of our Temples, after the manner of that at Jerusalem, before that our religion had any but private houses, or barns; who could perform religious visits to the body of the virgin Mary, either four years after she was dead, or as many before himself was a Christian, for else his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and his Epistle to Policarp cannot stand with Chronology. But to conceive that the vulgar, the ignorant, such whose souls are immersed (as you say) in the saeculence of matter, such as Mahomet fitted his law to, the multitude, to whom as Avicenna says in his book de Almahad their Prophet, was fain to promise a heaven proportionable to their souls, all of sensuality, sweets to be tasted, beauties visible, delights palpable, such who to abstract from matter, and to conceive any thing of incorporeal natures, had need be raised by some rarer Art than Amphibions' Mathematics, which because they partake of both Natures, of the one in their inherence, of the other in consideration; are called by Proclus, the bridge and ladder to pure and complete abstractions; such in whom Tertullias saying erroneous in the general, is verified in their particular, Anima animae sensus est. To prescribe I say, that such should be taught, as Gregory saith the ignorant aught to be by Images, whom to adore (he being infinite and invisible) or how to adore (since that must be free and spiritually) by fixing and fastening them upon visible, finite, corporeal and engaging objects of the sense, appears to me as judicious a course, as if a Pilot should cast an Anchor that his ship might sail the faster. Let me period this question with a much more divine, as well as more Platonic sentence of Clemens of Alexandria, All sorts of Images (says he) are directly forbidden by Moses, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
Now lastly, for conclusion of this part of my discourse, to show, that according to your Rule, you must reject out of the Canon those books which we esteem Apocryphal, I need no other proofs then that of 
* Praef. in lib. Solo. Epist. 115.  Jerom, Judith (saith he) Tobiae & Maccabaeorum libros legit quidem Ecclesia, sed inter Canonicas Scripturas non recipit, added unto that of Ruffinus (his great adversary in other things) in his exposition of the Apostles Creed, so solemn a passage, and alone so sufficient, as being most eminently signalised with all your circumstances of infallibility, that I cannot forbear setting it down at large: Ideo (saith he) quae sunt novi & veteris Testamenti volumina quae secundum majorem traditionem per ipsum Spiritum sanctum inspirata creduntur, & Ecclesiae Christi tradita, competens videtur, in hoc loco evidenti numero sicut ex patrum monumentis accepimus designare. And accordingly he denumerates only those books received by us for Canonical, and goes on, Haec sunt quae Patres intra Canonem concluserunt ex quibus Fidei nostrae assertiones constare voluerunt: sciendum tamen est quod & alii qui non Canonici, sed Ecclesiastici a majoribus appellati sunt: and reckons up all those which we reject; and thus concludes, Haec nobis à patribus, ut dixi, tradita opportunum visum est hoc in loco designare ad instructionem eorum qui prima sibi Ecclesiae ac Fidei elementa suscipiunt, ut sciant ex quibus sibi fontibus verbi Dei haurienda sint pocula. Should I meet with any Article of the Romish Church signalised, as I said before, so eminently as this of ours, with all the circumstances, which you count the notes of infallibility; as little as I agree with you in the general, I confess it would stagger me in the particular: and therefore I do not see how you can avoid either, the retracting your rule of assurance, or by concurring in this point with us to incur another heavy Anathema of the Council of TRENT, Sessione quarta. To these several instances I could add many more as considerable in other points both of Government, Practice, and Belief, but that so redious a recitation would seem a design to weary as well as convince you: besides that, to destroy the universality of your maxim, and to bring you to exceptions, one pregnant objection is as good as a thousand, and that is all I need to do: For as I said before, if in your positive rule you once take the liberty to except against particular Doctrines, or particular Fathers delivering them, I may then with out any further proof flatly conclude, that nothing can be this way concluded, since your adversaries will likewise claim in whatsoever shall thwart them, an equal liberty of excepting.  
Now Cousin, give me leave to examine a little nearer, the three grounds whereon you build the pretended certainty of this Method, in resolving your differences out of the Father's declarations; as I collect your sense they are these. First, That they were faithful Collectors of the general traditions of the Church in their times. Secondly, that they are sincere conveyors of them to us: And Thirdly, that the traditions collected and conveyed by them are infallible. Should I grant them all to be true, it would not follow that they were sufficient, till it did appear (which I think never will, though for the present we will suppose it) that there were general traditions preserved in the Church concerning all those points which we dispute of; but unless they appear to be true, I am sure they cannot pass for sufficient.  
First, That they were faithful Collectors of all the traditions of the Church; where, in faithful, I suppose, you comprise careful & able for in the other single sense of fidelity, faithful hath most proper relation to the following condition of Conveyers; industry and ability being as fully requisite in this the Collecting part as integrity: To this I say, that as in one place I have formerly professed how I believe them such faithful Collectors of the Church's receptions, that is, careful and able, as well as sincere in many things of greatest importance; so in another, I think, I have said enough whereby to prove it unlikely that in things of less moment, such as our controversies, the Primitive Fathers did apply their care and abilities to sound the bottom of them; whether in this way of collecting the traditions of the Church concerning them or any other. Industry requiring always stimulations in the particular businesses, where we are to expect it; and likewise some leisure & remission from other pressing occupations. Both which the Primitive Fathers totally wanted, by little provocation in our cases, and incessant alarms in more weighty ones. So that to your first ground, I will only make of new this demand: Was the knowledge and Collection of the Church's traditions & receptions easy and evident to all careful investigators, or hard and difficult? If the latter, which I believe, since so many circumstances are requisite to the exact knowledge of the Church's traditions; as first certain evidence, what is that Church universal whose traditions are so sacred. Secondly, a clear and unconfused delivery of the same unto them; & lastly, not only an exquisite apprehension of the substance of all the doctrines, but a perfect intelligence of the degrees and necessities either of belief or practise wherein the Church did hold them: if thus hard, I say, and intricate, the Father's being men, and liable (as you confess) to error, how can we be secured that they did not oftentimes mistake them, since it is evident that sometimes they did? If facile and obvious which is likeliest you take them to be, since you prefer them before Scriptures, because that you say is difficult; how comes it that they disagree having a plain easy and infallible Directory, whereby to regulate and conform their judgements? And truly Cousin, supposing it such, I know not how to free divers of them that descent from one another in matters where tradition is vouched from the imputation of stupidity, either in not understanding the common and manifest tenants of the Church; or of perverseness and malice, that knowing them would not own them; but by arguing from their variances that they were not all in all matters of Religion careful Collectors of the Church's traditions; Which, if you once admit, we cannot think to conclude any thing from the Fathers till some third authority assure us, which of the many (for aught appears to us) of equal abilities and zeal were the careful Collectors, which not; and in what particulars they were so, and in what not.  
To your second ground, that they are sincere Conveyers unto us of the traditions of the Church, I say, that to the just title of sincere Conveyers, two conditions are requisite: the one affirmative, that they should deliver to us (with all their rights that is, clearness, perspicavity & identity of sense as they received them) all the right traditions of the Church. And that the Fathers are not likely to have done this, may be inferred from what hath been said before of their want of care and industry in collecting the Churches seen concerning our affairs, matters being seldom right in the second digestion which were not good in the first. The other is negative, that they should not deliver any thing for a tradition of the Church universal, that was not rightly and evidently such. That the Fathers were not Scrupulous in this point, my former instances I conceive have sufficiently evinced. Wherein it is evident with what confidence, to doubtful, yea, and erroneous doctrines that themselves effected, they set this pretended great seal of infallibility. Believe me, Cousin, that saying of St. Hierom, Ingenium suum facit Ecclesiae Sacramenta, belongs not only unto Origen; it may without wrong be extended to most of the Fathers that I have been acquainted with. And no marvel that they should sometimes in heat of dispute be transported to vouch for tradition what was not, when so often they swerve from what was apparently the universal receptions of the Church, as hath been made evident by many examples. From which I do not infer that the Fathers had always such erroneous beliefs as their words would many times import, but only that it is likely that they (who in heat of dispute, or for some ends which they thought very important, would recede in their expressions from the confessed tradition of the Church in such high constitutive points of Christian Religion) would not be scrupulous in the like heats, or upon the like ends to misapply the seal of tradition to some points of lesser importance. For though it appear a greater falsehood to set a seal surreptitiously where it belongs not, yet it is nearer to Rebellion not to conform to that Authority where the Royal seal is manifestly stamped. There hath enough been said to maniest that the Fathers (that would sometimes thus licence themselves, be the occasion what it will, and the end how pious soever) cannot pass for Candid or sincere conveyors of all the Church's receptions unto us: and if less punctual in any, sure likeliest in our controverted doctrines, which rarely had they the occasion to mention: but as serving to greater ends, there were so many circumstances that might tempt and lead them from the exact punctuallities of a sincere conveyer, that I am not much scandalised at their prevarication.  
You shall find that where Gregory Neoces, Ariensis, said, that the Father and the Son, according to our conceptions were two, but but one in Hypostasis; St. Basil, Ep. 64. p. 849. Tom. 2. excuses him, saying, that it was spoken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and that being to persuade a Gentile, he thought it not necessary to be exact in his expressions; and that it may be convenient sometimes to indulge a little, to the use and manner of those one would persuade, that they may not fly back from what is more necessary and seasonable; by which means Gregory, saith he, may have let slip many expressions that Heretics perhaps will lay hold of for their advantage: likewise where Dionysius Alexandrinus had styled the Son the workmanship of the Father, as the ship to the shipwright, and many other expressions that no Arian could mend; Athanasius is ready with an Apology for him, p. 551.552. Tom. 1. de Sent. Dyonis. They were saith he, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and are not to be taken maliciously.  
If that Thaumaturgus, and that other great pillar of the Church Dionysius did licence themselves so far as to let their expressions (by which we are to judge of them, not by what they reserved in their hearts) swerve in so notorious a manner from the most eminent tradition of the Church, in such a grand fundamental, were it not irrational in us to expect from them and the rest a punctual transmission of the Church's traditions in all such petty points as most of ours, scarce ever touched upon by them, but in the way of those important disputes, which you see warmed them even to such great oversights? If those two excellent and most zealous of the Fathers, Athanasius and Basil were so forward in their excuse, allowing them a liberty both for their policy and passion in dispute to dally with a main tradition, were it not too unjust a rigour in us to brand them with the imputation of falsehood and ignorance; because, forsooth, they deliver us not with an exact fidelity the tradition of the Church in our questions, concerning which it is to be doubted, whether there was any general tradition in the Church or no? I profess I am as far from laying so heavy an imputation upon them, either for their negligence herein or falsity, as I am from expecting such a sincere punctuality, as you promise yourself from them. Furthermore, besides the heats, the artifice of Disputes, and desire of victory, which in contestations of great moment might easily through their humane frailty make them strain a Point by the by in some article less dangerous, when from it they may draw conclusions of great advantage in the main. And besides that, as a great 
* Arch. Bishop of Canterb. Epist. dedic.  Prelate lately made the Observation, Men are apt to think that they can never run far enough from what they hate; and so by a very natural motion run upon the other extreme, as a Father that in detestation of Nestorius would confound that heresy by the receptions of the Church, might easily overshoot himself so far, as to make the Church speak for Eutiches in aversion from Arianism, make the Church speak for Sabellius, and in profligation of the Manichees to shake hands with Pelagius, and so much more because the danger could hardlier be foreseen, they are likely to have tuned the voice of the Church, either to the Romish or Protestant Key, according as either was at the time most opposite to the Adversary they combated; Besides all these, I am persuaded that many of the Fathers held it a pious fraud to gain the subversion of a great error by sowing a little one, not foreseeing how process of time might improve that to as considerable a magnitude: Yea further I believe, and Saint Jerome implies little less, Ep. 50. ad Pamach. Com. 2. p. 136. that in the general the Fathers when they were in the Lists, held it no matter of conscience, either to affirm for the Church's receptions, some things that they did not think to be so, yea contrary to their knowledge; and to reject others that at another time they would have admitted, so it were conducible to their victory: And although this be a greater, as being a more wilful unfaithfulness than any other that I have remarked in them, yet neither for this nor the rest, dare I brand them with those heavy imputations which you seem Jealouss that I tend to: But since I find that those reverend and holy men do not stick to set the seal of tradition to conceits of their own, and other uncurrent doctrines, I do not fall presently, as you imply one must do of consequence, to lay to their charge impiety and profanation of the divinest Averments. But rather since they make so bold with that seal, to believe that they did not repute it so sacred as you imagine, but far inferior to proofs out of Scripture, and to be used freely as a Topick Argument only when they wanted demonstrations from thence; and indeed, throughout my slender reading, I have observed that when they can produce the written word for their opinion, they do rarely insist upon prescription, as pleading Lawyers fly then to precedents chief when they want a text for their cause; But whereas you say, the foul play would not have scaped their numerous adversaries note, had they set the sacred Character to counterfeit Coin; I think so too. But what are we the wiser if their notes scape ours, as needs they must, since of the numerous writings of their numerous adversaries, this age I think hath scarce a number. The Governors of the Church in all times have made it one of their chief cares to smother their impious Libels, dictated, as Saint Jerome says by the spirit of the devil: And however some do allege, that such suppressions make a cause suspected, for my part I think it (if not abused) both a wise and Religious course, since the scandal and weakening of the weakers faith, which are so many, is much more to be considered and regarded, than the satisfying of the curiosity of the learned, which are so few; it fares with Sabellius, with Manicheus, with Porphirie and the rest of the Heretics, or enemies of Christ, that live only in the works of their Antagonists, as with Celsus in Origen, and with Arius in Athanasius, and others whose confutations we are to thank; for all we know of their Arguments our Libraries are just as well furnished with them as you may imagine some good Fraters closet in Spain, that hath the Inquisitor for his neighbour, is with the works of Calvin, or Luther, or as the world is likely to be provided of those passages in the Fathers that make for them some ages hence, when time shall have worn out all Editions that are not according to the Index expurgatoricis, of which those I mentioned in my former Letter, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Saint. Austin have not missed their gentle wipe, though you say you have not met in either of them with any Article of Faith that you do not most entirely assent unto. For my part, I do not know what you understand by an Article of Faith; but I am sure I have cited out of St. Austin [of the necessity of children's partaking of the Eucharist] an Article in this discourse, which 'tis evident he held as an Article both of necessary faith and practice, wherein I believe you will refuse to join with him. As for Epiphanius his oversights, I refer you only to the Jesuit Petavius, and for Eusebius to Cardinal Perron, who casts upon him a trifling aspersion but of Arrianism: or if his authority suffice not, let Jerome (Ep. 65. ad Pamach. & Oc.) be heard, who gives him this good testimony, Impietatis Arrii apertissimus propugnator est.  
Now to your third and last ground, That the traditions of the Church are infallible: I say, that in part we agree in this point; for I am persuaded that no man in his right wits will ever deny the firmest assent he hath about him to traditions of the nature which you Character doctrines taught by Christ to his Apostles, and by them preached through the world, and then again delivered to the ensuing ages by them that had these points inculcated in their hearts by the Apostles, & in this manner with care, and every where handed over from age to age, which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to sum up and produce against innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received faith of the Church-Traditions of this nature: Doctrines thus delivered, I say, we agree to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures; and it is indifferent unto me, whether I receive the waters of life from the Springs themselves, from the original cisterns and conserveses into which they did immediarly flow, or else conveyed through Aquiducts at sixteen hundred year's distance, so I be certain of the stanchnesse and purity of the pipes. That such traditions, and so exactly conveyed there are in the Church, and to which is due, as to the Scripture, from every prudent man (how ever a Sophister may cavil) the strongest assent of his soul; we likewise both agree, such are those forenamed grand fundamentals of Christianity; we agree further, that by tradition we are (as you say) plainly, fully, and practifically taught how to understand Scripture, I mean, in those Fundamentals. And much more must I agree with you, that the business and errand of tradition is to deliver it so unto us, since for my part I hold, that those dignifying circumstances (by which tradition may rightly pretend to be infallible) belong only to such doctrines as are either plainly, or by necessary consequences deducibly couched in Scripture: in regard of which deductions we agree further, that it cannot be denied, but that it is (as you say) an easier and better rule to guide our understandings in the affairs of religion, to use the help of such traditions, then to resort for that end unto Scriptures alone: as to read a book wherein there are difficulties, with a judicious comment, is likely to be more profitable, then only to peruse the single Text. And this last I assent unto, without admitting of the supposition upon which you infer it, to wit, that there can by tradition be had a complete knowledge of all that Christ taught. All this we are of accord in; but what can you infer from hence to the advantage of the Romish cause, since I peremptorily deny that there is such a qualified tradition really belonging to any Tenent of the Church of Rome disapproved by us, or that seal with those quarterings and dignifying wherewith you blazon it, set by any of the primitive Fathers (which yet were no sufficient warrant) to any doctrine that doth so much as border upon our disputes; since than I am sure you directed that part of your Letter to the same purpose that the rest, I must answer what I conceive it tends to, as well as what directly your words bear. And as I have professed wherein we agree; so now I must set down in what and why we differ; concerning these particulars of Tradition and Scripture, There are two principal points wherein I descent from you: First, that in the general you conceive all Traditions of the Church whatsoever infallible. Secondly, that you hold the Scripture to be no complete body of Faith, and therefore that we are to give tradition much the preeminency in governing the tenor of ours. For the first, namely, that all the traditions of the Church are infallible, I could by one demand (of which is that Church whose traditions are infallible) either bring you to our confession that the true Church is to be known merely by its conformity to Scripture in belief and practice, or else into a circle whilst you are forced to prove the truth and infallibility of the Church, by her constant reception of those true and infallible traditions, whose truth and infallibility you are at the same time proving by the Churches constant receiving them. But I pass it by, because I would not seem to argue in any wise captiously; and also for that Mr. Chillingworth hath already excellently laid open all the intricacies of this labyrinth. And therefore taking the present Romish Church for that you mean, I proceed to answer your Arguments, whereby in your Letter to the Vicountesse of P. to which you refer me, you endeavour to prove all doctrines of the Church received or delivered by way of tradition, infallible: the chief that I find are in the 12, and 13. conclusions, as you call them, of that treatise; where first, for proof of your assertions, that no false doctrine of Faith whatsoever can be admitted or creep into the Catholic Church, you say, that whatsoever the present Church believeth, as a proposition of faith, is upon this ground, that Christ taught it as such unto the Church he planted himself; a special good ground, and that will soon end all controversies in this matter, if the ground appear to be well grounded; and that the Church of Rome, which you suppose the present Catholic, do never admit any doctrine of Faith but upon that ground. But first, the ground can never be made good, that whatsoever of Faith the Church of Rome teacheth was ab initio so taught by Christ himself. And secondly, I believe that the Church of Rome herself doth not always in all that she teaches for a tradition of Faith, suppose that Christ himself did teach the same; for this latter part, I am better persuaded of the modesty of the Church of Rome, then to think that she will so much as pretend it, for all her doctrines, as for example, that of communicating only in the bread, is a tradition, for you will not I suppose vouch Scripture for it, unless you mean to apply to it Christ's prayer that the Cup might be removed; it is a tradition of Faith, yea, and I think I may say of necessary faith, for unless the Communicants believe their partaking sufficient, it must needs make that great Sacrament of the Church ineffectual; and yet I do not think that the Church of Rome, or scarce any Jesuit for her, will have the confidence to pretend that Christ himself taught the mutilation, or the belief of one Elements sufficiency, since the contrary practice and belief is so evident for many ages after Christ; and it is so easy to discover the very dry root itself, of the custom to withhold the cup from the people; The like may be said of other doctrines; Now for proof of the ground itself, that all doctrines of Faith whatsoever admitted in the present Church, were so taught by Christ to the Church which he planted himself; you Allege this argument: The reason why the present Church believeth any proposition to be of Faith, is, because the immediate preceding Church of the age before delivered it unto her for such, and so you may drive it on (say you) from age to age until you come to the Apostles and Christ; an easy progress; and which, if you remember Mr. White much insisted upon at that time when Mr. Chillingworth did me the favour to give him a meeting for conference at your lodging; although I set a great value upon that Gentleman's learning and fair way of disputation; yet I confess his argument hath often made me smile; it did so bring into my head that gallant consequence of Charles Thynnes, wherewith all you once made me very merry, by which he undertook to demonstrate, that surely in the world there might be a man so disposed as (having a good rise, and with a convenient career) to leap at once from England to Rome; for (said he) Bring me the best Jumper you know, and is it not likely that there may be another that you know not, so active as to out-jump him a foot; let him be brought, I hope you will not deny but he may be out-jumpt an Inch: & so by inches & straws-breadths of outleaping one another, why not to a thousand miles? I dare say, that Mr. Hooper was better satisfied of the corruption of times in his pedigree from King Peppin, than I was by that logic of the incorruption of times in his deduction of all Romish Doctrines from Christ; nor am I yet better satisfied, though I confess by your dwelling on the same Argument, I see plainly, that what may be liable to much slighting, proposed by one man, may be delivered with such weight and authority from another, as though it convince not, yet to require a serious pondering and discussion; the scope of your reasoning, as I understand it, is this deduction ad Impossibile: If the present Church (say you) hold a Doctrine of Tradition, it is because all they of the precedent so held it and delivered it; and the reason of the preceding Churches holding it so, is the same relative to all those of the next before, and so on till you come to the first Age of the Church: Now this being so, there cannot be admitted (say you) unto the avowed channel of the Church, any corrupt Rivulet of erroneous Doctrine, unless all they of one Age conspire in an untruth to deceive posterity, which is impossible. This latter Assertion, which I must confess to be strangely jarring to my sense, is built upon a supposition of the former, which is itself of great ambiguity: For, besides that as I said formerly, I do not think but that the Church of Rome doth receive some unwritten doctrines for which she dares not pretend to so ancient a pedigree, as to have been handed down to her from the Primitive Church that Christ himself hath planted; I would fain know when the present Church, as you say, holds a thing for such, because (all they) of the precedent age in Christ's Church delivered it to them for such, what is understood by Your (all they) of the Catholic Church in the age precedent; by (all they) cannot be intended here, what you say in your eleventh conclusion, namely, that you mean the whole Congregation of the faithful, spread throughout the whole world, for it is a far more evident impossibility, than what you drive unto, that the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in one age should confer with and teach the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in another: If it be understood by (all they) all the Doctors and Governors of one age, to all the faithful throughout the whole world of another; I think you will find that likewise to border upon impossibility.  
By, All they, then, as I conceive must be understood all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in one age, to all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in another; and from them the Doctrines spread among the whole multitudes of the faithful, are said to be the traditions of the Catholic Church: Now this is so narrow a confinement of universality to the mouths of the Doctors or Governors of a present Church, that I think it no impossility for all those that have declared themselves in some point, in some age, to have agreed together on the teaching of somewhat more than was true, or at least such a major part of them, as the dissentors may well have been overborne or suppressed; so that the doctrine may with a succeeding age, have past for a tradition generally agreed on; and to such a conspiracy, methinks, they might have been drawn by appearances of good, as well as through ill ends: As for Example. The Doctors conceiving that a great restraint might be laid upon ill-livers by Auricular confession (the apprehension of a sensible witness being most lively unto them) might have complotted to teach the necessity of it to the multitude for an universal tradition, which perhaps they knew not to have been such: and so in other points, as the good or danger might appear more or less to the Governors of the Church: so likewise for worse ends, in point of the Pope's Supremacy, it being a Doctrine so essential to the Monarchy of the Church; I believe it far from impossible, that in some age all the Doctors of the Church of Rome, that shall be heard, may resolve to teach it to their several Congregations, for universal tradition, since the major part, as a Pope (Aeneas Silvius) himself confesseth, affirms that the Pope is above Counsels; because he hath so many Bishoprics to bestow, the Counsels have none; besides, if your (All they) of a precedent Church of Christ, instructing the present, be reduced to so few as the Doctors, that are heard deliver their minds in any one age, The natural Argument by which you would prove the impossibility of a conspiracy in an untruth, will fall to the ground, since that is built upon a supposition, that those general traditions which cannot be erroneous, because of Humane natures, love of truth are delivered by such a multitude of men as contain in them all the variety of dispositions and affections incident to the nature of man, which I doubt much whether it can truly be affirmed of all the Christians of the world; I am sure it cannot of the poor number of Doctors and Governors in any one age among them: But to let this supposition pass, supposing that the present Church understands what is meant by (All they) of the preceding, though I do not; and that all the present receives, she receives as delivered to her by all those of the preceding age: let us examine a little that which you infer upon it, to wit, That this being so, no false proposition of faith, nay (as you say afterwards) no false doctrine whatsoever can be admitted into the Church in any age, unless they of that age do unanimously conspire to deceive their children and youngers, in telling them they were taught by their Fathers, what indeed they were not; That this is not impossible, since only the Doctors & Pastors of the Church are to be understood by (All they) hath been already shown: But is there no other way, say you, but this for falsehood to creep into the Church? Truly (methinks) on the contrary it is with error and necessary truths, in the body Ecclesiastic, as with life and death in the body natural; And as there is only one way for life to enter at, but a thousand gates for death, so for necessary truths there is but one ordinary avenne to the Church, namely by Scripture read or taught, but for error to get in at a thousand passages, without supposing such a general conspiracy: For though many times when an error hath had a long Current, we cannot point directly at the spring, yet are we ne'er a whit less certain that it had an entrance, because we know not at which door; Nilus hath a head, though Geographers cannot say directly where it is: And lines many times that at first appear parallels to the eye, by that time they have been lengthened a great while, prove apparently uneven, though no man can assign the point whereat the deflexion began. The doctrine of the Chiliasts, a doctrine which if any other surely that may well be said to have been a generally received tenant of the Church universal for some ages, since in the whole Church for above 250. years after Christ, there appears not in that point one dissenting vote, till Dionysius of Alexandria opposed it; An error 'tis true, and yet I hope you will not be so uncharitable, as to accuse all the ancient Fathers of the second Centenary that they complotted to deceive posterity by teaching them a falsehood for Apostolic tradition, you are more  to them then so, in the last part of the Letter, where you yourself discover a way how without conspiracy, this error, and so another, may have overspread the Church by the Authority of one man delivering it for a whisper of the Apostles; And truly Cousin, what ever else may be said more probable in the particular, I am confident 'tis most true in the general, that the work is easy from one man of credit's Asseveration, to possess vast Multitudes with firm persuasions of a falsehood; and more in matters of Religion then in civil things, since in those this pium credere prevails much, and most will rather take upon trust what many affirm, and they discern no ill in, then put themselves to the ofttimes endless troubles of examining: Credulity being so easy and natural, Disproving so difficult.  
I warrant you the Common Faith of Romulus Ascent into Heaven, would have had upon your grounds as rational assertors in the State of Rome, as any tradition by us questioned at this day in the sea of Rome: See in that politic invention of Julius Proclus, what power the imagined piety of one man hath to make a fiction pass for an Epidemical verity, which as Tertullian says, Apol. cap. 8. Ab uno aliquando principe exorta, exinde in traduces linguarum, & aurium serpat, & ita modici seminis vitium, caetera rumoris obscurat, ut nemo recogitet num primum illud os mendatium seminaverit.  
The Jews, a much more numerous multitude heretofore, and still I think equal in number to any Christian Church of one denomination, were the most Religious, the most scrupulous conservators of unwritten truths in their Cabala. And yet what an error posfesses the whole Nation, and did so long before the curse fell upon them, concerning their Messiah; whose coming long before Christ, and since, they all expected and do expect in a temporal kingdom, of which they did derive, and do continue to posterity the hopes by Universal tradition; or if you will say that they build the doctrine, not upon tradition but Scripture; yet I am sure you cannot deny but that they continue the interpretation of Scripture that way by tradition, which comes all to one.  
Did you grant the possibility of a Multitudes Conspiracy, I am sure you would deny it in this, which is confestly the point upon which all of them agree, that their supreme felicity depended.  
It would pass for a very fallacious reasoning to drive up this belief to the Patriarches, and so conclude it infallible, because the present age received it for a tradition from the preceding; and that from the Antepenultime and so forward: Or because the instant where the error was admitted amongst them cannot Digito monstrari & dicere hic est. For truly Cousin, partly through a natural desire in all men, that others should think as they do, or do what they think convenient (from whence there springs an aptness in the teachers, to apply to their opinions the strongest Authorities they can devise, whether they do justly belong unto them or no) and partly through an aptness of the ignorant (which are the greatest part of Auditors) to swallow more, and retain better the words, and the outward literal part of what is taught them, then either to examine or hold fast the precise and inward sense; It may well happen that multitudes may mumble the shell, when a few have the kernel; and looking superficially only upon the outward stamp, toss up and down for currant among them counterfeit ofttimes and Adulterate Coin; The mistake is ordinary, and the propagation of the error easy; for instance sake, in the doctrine of praying for the dead, many of the Doctors of the Church, who believed that all the souls of the departed were kept in certain receptacles until the general resurrection, conceiving that prayer for the beatitude of the dead, came all to one with praying for the hastening of Christ's Kingdom, might teach it others, thinking, it no profanation of prayer to employ that holy Act even where we know it cannot avail, since Christ himself prayed to have the bitter Cup of his passion removed; and all the Doctors generally holding such prayers a convenient testimony of charity in the living, whether they were Commemorative, Eucharistical, or supplicatory, easily might the practice pass into a common doctrine.  
Now the word Necessary being often used for Convenient (as it had need) since under a less pretention then Necessary, it is hard imposing new duties upon the multitude; And the step being so easy, though so great from necessary to absolutely necessary, 'tis no marvel that all or most of the Pastors should have delivered it for such to their Flocks, and applied to it the seal of most Authority with the multitudes, Tradition; and so they have swallowed that according to the expression for a necessary duty, and given it the general voague of such in the Church, which was fare from being truly so in its first, and after so long a progress untraceable originals.  
So likewise of Christ's descent into Hell, concerning which I suppose all antiquity agrees in the shell of the Article, Descendit ad Inferos (though Ruffinus [in Symb.] says it was left out of the Symbol of the Church of Rome) few of the Fathers in the kernel, or inward sense, that is, what was understood by Inferi, and how, and why Christ descended thither. Some taking the Inferi to be a part of Hell, others understanding it with a little more colour of reason, that resting place called Abraham's Bosom, and a part of Heaven. Some thinking, and rightly, as I conceive, that he descended virtually only to triumph over the damned. Others, that locally, yea so fare as to preach in hell, and convert there; such was the extravagant opinion of Clemens of Alexandria [Strom. lib. 6. p: 639.] one of the learnedest of the pack, but all agreeing I say, in this outside, Descendit ad Inferos, or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. No marvel that the more gross and literal sense should be swallowed by the multitude, and gain the name (though an error) of common reception, handed to them from their Forefathers: so that it may be collected out of what hath been said, that falsehoods may creep into the Church either by want of exact fidelity in the Teachers (which want may be general when the collateral considerations are general, and the points themselves not thought so important as others they serve to:) Or by the frequent misapprehension of the teached, the matter often taking possession of them, when the manner of the doctrine usually most considerable, is either let slip or supplanted, or else by leisurable, yea and at first insensible mistakes either in Teachers or Learners, which notwithstanding in long progress of time grow manifest and vast, like the ebbings and flow of the Sea, which at the end of some hours make so great a difference, when at the brink no man can perceive how much ground each wave doth gain or lose: What then shall those discern that look upon the several billows at a remote and dazzeling distance? Nor can your arguments taken from humane Nature's prime appetence of Truth, serve to conclude an infallibility in whatsoever shall be embraced for a truth by a vast multitude of men of variety of natures, dispositions and interests.  
First, because no number whatsoever of Individuals, but that which makes up the universal, can be considered as other than a part, whereas your argument is not colourably applied to less than the whole. It is the infrustrable appetence of truth (an appropriate of humane nature in the general) that you insist upon, which is not made vain by any multitudes (which how great soever is still but a part) entertaining of a falsehood.  
Secondly, because if we admit of your Argument, it will conclude for Heretics once grown numerous, as the Arrians were, as well as for the best Catholics, since natural Appetences are not to be supposed more frustrate in the one then in the other: 
* Lactantius Divin. Inst. lib. 5. cap. 13.  An boni nostri qualitas ex populi potius pendebit erroribus quam ex conscientia nostra & judicio Dei.  
Thirdly, because though I grant your Argument, I am never a whit the surer of truth, where I find many professors of a doctrine held as by tradition, since the prime natural appetence of truth (whence you draw your ratiocination) is to the knowledge of truth, not the teaching of it. Now in our question this is as much or more requisite in the deliverers, than the other in the receivers, since they look no further than the hands they had it from, and to hold fast in truth what they presented them for such, and for so conveyed by their preceders to them.  
And lastly, your argumentation cannot be useful, because you extend it only to prove that multitudes cannot agree together, on an untruth to complot it; whereas to overthrow your imagined infallibility, it is enough that they agree in, or to an untruth to believe it; Between which two there is so great a difference, that I think the first very improbable, the other very frequent: Nay farther, I do conceive the very frequency and (if I may so say) aptness in Individuals, whether few or many (which makes a multitude) to be led into errors, to result from man's natural affection to truth, which is such and so transporting, that we are glad to embrace and hug the very shadows of it; And being rarely able in our imperfect and depressed condition here, to arrive to a solid enjoyment of that prime essence of Intellectual delight, we grow fond of the appearances, and cleave close to what is like it. Man's affection to this transcendent, expressing itself after the same manner that it usually doth to the other prime fellow appetence of our Nature (good) which our soul here below, interially and naturally aims at in all its pursuances: But the only true good being too far elevated for it to ascend to a full enjoyment thereof, whilst it bears the clog of flesh upon it, our ardour directs itself to what we think of nearest derivation from it. But alas, we miss even of that, and embrace false shadows for it, easily conceiting any thing the same that's but clad like unto what we love, whilst almost all mankind courts, pursues and enjoys what's ill, yet seldom or never, but sub ratione boni. And thus by easily believing what we fain would have, by a natural passion both to good and truth, we are betrayed to a mistaking credulity in both.  
Thus Cousin, I have presumed to give you an Answer in my immethodical and unpolished way, to what I find repugnant to my understanding, in the discourse to which you referred me for proof of infallibility in all the Traditions of the Church of Rome. To discuss that learned and eloquent Discourse throughout, in any correspondency to its weight and beauty, belongs I confess to fare greater eminence than I have vanity to aim at. And therefore what I have ventured upon, hath been only to show you, that although I am in the highest measure delighted, yea even ravished with that excellent piece, I am nothing a paid therewith in this particular; which may serve for an argument, that goodness many times delights the soul in spite of truth, and so proves a transcendent above it. Now that the fallibility, and consequently the insufficiency of your rule of faith, tradition, hath been made appear, it will be fit to vindicate the sufficiency of that rule which we rely upon. In which work the first hindrance that I meet with is this objection of yours, That the particular books of Scripture were written for other particular ends, and not to give us a complete body of faith.  
To which I answer, that if by particular books of Scripture you understand each book a part, severed from its relation to the whole, I then agree with you, that every particular book was no more intended for a complete body of Faith, than every particular Chapter for a complete body of the book, or then a Window or a Door, to be a complete body of a House; but as the one was designed to give entrance, the other light to some room or passage of the Edisice; so the several books of Scripture were written; some to give entrance to Christianity; some to illustrate dark places of the whole; some to inform us of matters of fact, that we might understand in what chief to praise God; some to discipline us in matters of practice, that we might know how aptliest to serve and please him: And others to instruct us in matter of belief, that we might learn to rely upon him. But on the other side, if you remit the least of this abstract and Independent consideration of the particular books of Scripture: I must then profess that I steadfastly believe that they were all designed to this chief and primary end of composing that complete body of Faith, whereon Christ's perfect Church should be built as certainly as so many several parts of a building having each a particular end, besides of their erection, are yet in the general and main intention all destined to the making up of one complete and entire Fabric; yea further, (without urging the comparison till it halt) I am persuaded that as the Master Architect having an Idea formed of the whole, directs many a part to the perfection of that, when the subordinate workman that frames it thinks of nothing farther than of the piece he is in hand with: So oftentimes the Almighty Architect, when his Ministers perhaps never looked further than that service in particular, wherein they were employed, some perhaps in a Gospel, in an Epistle some; he by his infinite Wisdom directed each particular to the making up of the whole and complete body and rule of Faith, the written Word; which by his admirable providence he hath, and will I am confident ever preserve entire and uncorrupt in all parts necessary to its own perfection and harmony, and to man's eternal safety and direction: Insomuch, that I cannot but think it at the best loss of time, to be solicitous after any other rule; and irreverence, if not impiety, to question the sufficiency of this. But because my opinion is little considerable with one of so far a better Judgement, take in this Point the Opinion of the Fathers, which you so much rely upon. To begin with Tertullian, these are the last words of his 22. Chapter against Hermogines, Scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina: If it be not written (saith he) let him fear the Woe destined to such as shall add or take away. Can any thing be inferred more rightly then from this passage, the sufficiency of Scripture, and the superfluity of any other rule. But take yet somewhat more direct from 
† Oratio ad Gentiles. towards the beginning.  Athanasius. The holy, and from God inspired Scriptures (saith he) are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, of themselves sufficient to the discovery of truth. I appeal to St Basil himself, of all the Fathers the greatest attributer to Tradition in all things wherein regard is justly due unto it. Hear what he says, handling a point wherein Scripture (I think) is as dark as in any necessary one whatsoever; I mean that of the Trinity: Believe what's written, (saith 
* Hom. 29. advers. Calum. stan. Trin. page 623.  he) what is not written, seek not. And in another place, It is a manifest falling from the Faith (says 
† De vera ac Pia side, page 251.  he) and an argument of Arrogance, either to reject any of those things that are written, or to introduce any that are not of the written. And lastly, to sum up all that can be said by a Protestant, in one sentence of a Father of greatest Learning and authority: Listen but to St. Augustine, De doctrina Christian. lib. 2. cap. 9 In its quae appertè in Scriptura positasunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi. He had need be a confident Sophister, that would undertake to evade these Authorities; but yet if they may not be admitted, let Scripture be heard for itself: It is a privilege and preeminence solely peculiar to that sacred Volume to be Witness, Advocate and Judge in its own cause. Surely the Spirit spoke in St. Paul, when he told Timothy, That holy Writ was able to make him wise unto salvation, 2 Tim. 3. in fine. And when numbering up almost all the particular parts that can be required to the complete Institution of a Christian, he concludes, that in these by Scripture the man of God is made perfect, and fitted to every good work. And I am confident by the same Spirit he spoke his own mind, when he spoke ours so directly to the Corinthians,  dicsatis in nobis supra id quod scriptum est non sapere, Epist. 1. cap. 4. Where by the way it is to be noted, that the Apostle applies this doctrine as an Antidote to that very inconvenience which I have heard some Papists object against the reliance on the search and use of Scripture, namely that by it those of greater capacity were lkely to be blown up, and to glory in their clearer discerning over weaker, whereas the guidance of the Church and Tradition was equaller to all. To this I say, 'tis worth observing what he delivers as it were by way of reason, for the contrary Doctrine, to wit of confining ourselves to Scripture, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
I profess Cousin, that these and many other passages of Scripture which for brevity's sake I note only in the 
* Deut. cap. 4. & cap. 12. Epist. ad Gal. cap. 1.  Margin, prenounce to me in as clear a sense as may be the sufficiency of Scripture, and supersluity of relying on tradition for a rule of faith. And yet I swear I am none of those of whom St. Basil speaks, p. 621. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
How they may sound, or what other sense they may bear to you I know not, since now adays God's Word proves to men of divers opinions, as the Apostles language, when the divided tongues had sat upon them in Dr. 
* This was likewise the fantastic opinion of the Author of the book de Spiritu sancto, fathered upon Cyprian.  Alabasters conceit to several Nations at one and the same time, Hebrew to the Jew, pure Greek to the Athenian, and Latin to the Roman. Lastly, if the Father's Testimony may not prevail, they being of an uncertain Authority, nor Scripture sway, as being of an uncertain sense, let common reason be heard in the cause, which for as much as I can judge of, it is as strong for the sufficiency of Scripture (that is, its containing all points necessary to salvation) as any prudent man need require for warrant of his belief. It is agreed upon by all sides, that Man being ordained to a supernatural end, nature is not sufficient to lead him thither, but that he must have some means above it, and proportionate to the end, such as may either show him the way, if he can discern, or lead him in it if he be blind, or which is happiest and surest of all, both instruct and conduct him in it. This last kind of guidance, it were presumption for man to claim, however God's grace may afford it unto some. The second, it were stupidity for all to expect, however some have little hopes without it; And therefore it is the first that belongs to man in general; that is a directory to all those paths and wind, without the knowledge of which he cannot arrive to his primary end; And by the knowledge of which he may, and is responsible himself if he do not follow the direction; which if God should withhold from us, although I could not venture with some to apply to his Justice that of Pharaoh's requiring brick where he gives no straw, nor to pronounce it a stain to his goodness, should he condemn us for missing the way, when he gave us no Map of the Country, since to a life actually forfeited as all man's was in Adam, the least reprieve is a grace, a grace to be let row in the Galleys; to him that the Gallows expected; A grace to take out of the ditch, a man that put out his own eyes, though you leave him to grope out the rest of his journey with perpetual hazards of falling in again: I say, though I dare not in this case pronounce the withholding a directory from us, inconsistent with his justice, wisdom or goodness, yet truly I think you will yield, the man hath not so fitting a belief of God's mercy & wisdom as he ought, who conceives that he would suffer those to perish for want of such a necessary directory, for whose sake he gave up his own Son to death. Now to suppose such a directory from God, and to think it defective, is again to fall into undue thoughts, either of his mercy or of his power; nay, it is to destroy what you do suppose, since the omission of any thing absolutely necessary in a direction, makes the direction none.  
This conclusion than I may safely draw, and I doubt not but with your consent, that the Supernatural Directory and rule whereby we are through God's grace and mercy to be instructed in the way to our supernatural end, must needs be complete and sufficient in all parts absolutely necessary to that end. It only remains then to show which is that rule and directory sufficient and complete in all necessary parts: Now as in a journey, directions of the way, how sufficient, how exact soever, will little advance you; unless you believe them, or the knowledge of the way, unless you have legs to go, or somewhat else to carry you: so in our Soul's progress to beatitude, it must have reliance and its instruments of gradation too, which is Faith, the strongest vehiculum of Humanity to Divinity.  
Now as I said before, that the means must be proportionate to the end, so it is certain that the way, & the Organs by which we move in it, must be proportionate one to another, or we shall never arrive at our end: As that let all other things be never so well fitted, yet if our way must be thorough the Air or the Sea, good legs or directions will little avail us. The Organ then of our motion to Heaven being Faith, and that Faith the strongest assent of our souls; the ground upon which it must march aught to be no less folid than infallibility, since the strongest Assent cannot be given but upon the strongest inducement: Forasmuch then as particular Tradition, that is the unanimous testimony of any Church, of what numerous parts soever, hath been already concluded fallible and universal Tradition, is, as it were, coincident with Scripture, being only, (as Clemens says, Strom. lib. 6. p. 679.) as it were, an unwritten Transcript of that in men's hearts, and gives attestation to no material Object of Faith, but what is deducible thence. It follows, That Scripture is the ground proportioned by unquestionable infallibility to Faith, as correspondent likewise in all things else, both to the goodness of God that gives the directory & to our necessities that are to follow it. The sufficiency and perfection of Scripture having been showed, and likewise the defectibility of that kind of Tradition for whose Authority you labour; The preferring of this latter before the first in governing the Tenure of our Faith, is of consequence such an error as I am sorry should be countenanced by your continuing in it. But because the precedency which you give to the Church's Tradition before Scripture, is pretended due upon another ground also, which I have yet spoke little unto: give me leave to say somewhat to that. You lay Obscurity to the charge of Scripture; That Articles of Faith are not there so plainly expressed, that every body can understand them. If it were so, truly the Laiety of the Church of Rome is much obliged to it, for easing them of the trouble of reading what is unintelligible unto them; but little beholding unto S. John, for passing for a precept of Christ's, Search the Scriptures. But how shall they take it now, forasmuch as the contrary to your Assertion, is a manifest Corollary to the proof of Scriptures sufficiency and perfection? the compleatness of a Rule or Directory consisting as well in its Evidence, as its Fullness; and must need Interpretation, as little as Addition. Yet let us grant your supposition a while. Scripture is obscure, you say. What follows? Tradition is to be preferred. Tradition then is easier; Tradition is clear, say you, to the Vulgar. I should rather think Tradition impossible to be learned, since Man can speak but with a few; and millions must make up that; unless you bring all lines that can be drawn from the Circumference, into a Centrical point, the Pope. But you are too much a friend to the Doctors of the Sorbon, to do that. Besides, if you do so, the difficulty will still remain: For here the Rule in Geometry will not hold. The lines drawn back from the Centre to the Circumference, are not equal. Men are not all at an equal distance from him; all cannot hear him: How shall the Vulgar understand him? By their Ghostly Fathers? You will not attribute to private men a clearer, fuller, and evidenter capacity to instruct, than the whole Body of Scripture: Or if you do, What are Private Instructions of kin to Traditions?  
Thomas of Aquine puts, in this kind, the highest compliment upon Idiots, towards the beginning of his first Book adversus Gentiles, by sinking down the learnedst to their level. For he teaches us, I remember, to this effect: That the wisest ought not to embrace by Natural Reason and Discourse any Article in Religion, were it as manifest as that the Whole is bigger than the Part; since there may be one so ignorant, as to have no notion of what the Whole is, or what the Part. And Religion, that imparts all alike, must be grounded (says he) upon some Principle common and equal to all. Herein the Doctor, I must needs say, is rightly Angelique: for he walks to me in the clouds. If he mean, by that Principle Faith, I understand not how that can be severed either from Reason and Discourse, of which it is the last result; or from Grace, which is not common. If he mean, by the Principle, that Tradition of the Church which you rely on, I know not how that can be an easy guidance to the Ignorant, since it is so difficult a matter to the wisest, to know which is the right Church, whose Traditions are so sacred: for unless that appear, neither the Ignorant, nor the Wise, are like to be much satisfied in conscience, by governing the tenor of their Faith according unto them. If we must judge of the Church by Bellarmine's Marks, in what mis-mazes shall the Ignorant be guided, whilst we find the most Knowing involved in such intricacies, in the examination of what is meant by Visibility, Succession, and Conformity with Antiquity; and to what Society of Christians those attributes belong! If you will have the true Church known by Scripture, which is surely the easiest and best course, (even in the opinion of many learned Papists) what is that but to flee back, and make Tradition clear and certain, by that Rule from which you flee, as from what you judge obscure to Tradition, that you pretend to be evident. And then the Protestants will have reason to take it heavily, that they should be condemned for founding each part of their Religion upon the same ground whereon the Papists build all theirs at once: Yea, great reason shall we have to resent it, unless a Patent be produced from God Almighty, declaring the Rule of Faith for such a Commodity as may be taken from Scripture in gross, but not by retail.  
Now that I have answered your Objections, I will not be nice in declaring unto you, to the full, my sense concerning the Sufficiency and Perspicuity of Scripture.  
I believe that those Canonical Books which God by his providence hath preserved unto these Times, and which are acknowledged by all Christians to have been Divinely dictated, do make up a complete Body of all the material objects of Faith necessary to salvation; whether explicitly or implicitly necessary to be believed.  
I further believe, that in that blessed Sacrary there is not only an inclusive sufficiency, to wit, a perfect comprisal of all Saving Doctrines absolutely essential to Christianity; but an exclusive also, that is, such a sufficiency as excludes and forbids any Doctrines should be imposed on Christians for a necessary Article of Faith, that is not recorded there. Nobis curiositate opus non est post Christum Jesum, nec inquisitione post Evangelium, cùm credimus; nihil desideramus ultra credere: hoc enim prius credimus, non esse quod ultra credere debemus. Tert. de prax. advers. Haeret. cap. 8.  
And lastly, I believe that all points whatsoever of Christian Religion are there set down as perspicuously, and as clearly intelligible to all capacities, as they are clearly necessary to be believed by all: And that God's mercy in the merits of Christ, accepting alike the Faith resultant from the dark mists of the Ignorant, and from the clearest intelligence of the Learned,  
The Lamb may wade to his bliss thorough the same water thorough which the Elephant may swim. Quicquid est (mihi crede) in Scriptures illis altum & divinum est, inest omnino verit as & reficiendis instaur andísque animis accommodatissima disciplina & plane it a modificata, ut nemo inde haurire non possit quod tibi satis est, si modo ad hauriendum devote & pie, ut vera Religio poscit, accedat. Here is the saying of Heraclitus most truly applicable. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
Nor truly do I conceive (besides God's equalizing capacities by his own gracious acceptance) that there needs more than a very ordinary one, to understand the Scripture in all points absolutely necessary to salvation. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  
It may be as well understood of the Word of God, as of God the Word, to whom Clemens (pag. 56. advers. Gent.) applies the saying. Magnifice igitur & salubriter Spiritus sanctus ita Scripture as sanctas modificavit, ut locis apertioribus famae occurreret obscurioribus autem fastidia detergeret. Nihil enim fere de illis obscuritatibus eruitur, quod non planissimè dictum alibi reperiatur. Aug. The great difficulties and obscurities which are there found, I understand chief to be in those less material points, wherein men's partaking subtleties have given to God's Word many various acceptions, whilst not seeking the doctrines of Scripture, but those that themselves are imbued with in it, they use it not as the strait and steadfast Rule to judge of, and avoid Obliquity by, for which it was ordained, but rather as a Lesbian Rule, to be bend and deflected according to the several purposes of their own Architecture.  
Verifying of the heavenly food of the soul, that fantastic imagination of Israel's heavenly food of the body, Manna, which was said to have been to all differing palates the morsel that each one would have it, and the taste that his mouth was made to.  
Since than I am thus persuaded, that God hath lodged within us a Pilot, Reason, how weak soever, yet proportionate to the Vessel and the Voyage; and that he hath likewise laid open before us a clear and faithful Card, that varies not for any Elevation, Scripture: you must pardon me, Cousin, if I choose rather to steer by that Compass thorough the depths of Religion, to our Haven of rest and beatitude, then like those ancient Navigators that wanted a true Directory, to coast it from Doctors to Fathers, from Fathers to Popes, from Popes to Counsels, and from all these to (but pretended unerring) Tradition. Quare oportet in care maxim, in qua vitae ratio versatur, sibi quemque confidere suóque judicio ac propriis sensibus nati ad investigandam & perpendendam Veritatem, quàm credentem alienis erroribus decipi, tanquam ipsum Rationis expertem. Dedit omnibus Deus pro virili portione sapientiam, ut & inaudita investigare possent, & audita perpendere: nec quia nos illi temporibus antecesserunt sapientia quoque antecesserunt, quae si omnibus aequaliter datur occupari ab antecedentibus non potest; sed hoc eos fallit, quod majorum nomine posito non putant fieri posse, & aut ipsi plus sapiant, quia minores vocantur, aut illi dissipuerint, quia majores nominantur. Lactan. Divin. Institut. lib. 1. cap. 8.  
And now (noble Cousin) that I have examined your Opinions, and discussed your Arguments, let me have your patience, or your pardon, a little further, while I give you an account concerning those Directions wherewith you favour me in your Letter, and in what state I am to follow some, and to excuse myself in others.  
To the first, namely, The use which you conceive we are to make of reading of the Fathers, I willingly conform myself in one part, that is, in letting pass those things which they writ as Divines and Scholars only, allowing them no more weight with me, than the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them. I am likewise very willing to let pass, for the most part, what they writ as Commentors upon the Scripture; their interpretations in that kind being many times (if I may so say) very Chimerical. Although I must tell you, that were I persuaded of any third Authority by whose seal the Fathers could transmit unto us, in all things of Religion, such certain and unquestionable resolutions as you imagine, I should not expect their aid more earnestly, nor take the omission more unkindly of them in any thing, then in point of giving us the right and well-handed interpretation of Scriptures. I further obey you, in laying hold and relying on what they teach us as Pastors of the Church; relying (I say) upon that chief, to wit, in the great Fundamentals of Christianity; but not generally, that is, not in those Questions which we disagree on; wherein they were neither willing nor able to be exact: and lest of all, when they inveigh against Heretics; their passions and transportments being at such times greatest. As for such Opinions as they deliver Dogmatically, without alleging texts of Scripture or learned Arguments to maintain them; although they appear delivered with never so earnest an intent, that they should be taken as matters of Faith, you must pardon me if they sink no deeper into my belief, than they are driven by such Arguments as my own or others discourse can find for them, either in Reason, Scripture, or Universal Tradition.  
Your second advice is, that I should apply my care to collect throughout the sense of the Fathers, and, by what they say, to frame to myself a Model of the Practice, Government, and Belief of the Church in their times; and then to tell you whether it be like to yours or ours. The Care and Attention you wished me, I brought at first to the study of the Fathers: but I cannot brag of the Model I have framed out of them; finding that truly a work hard enough for the best Antiquary: And to me 'tis an improvement of the difficulty to an impossibility, to be put to tell you which of the present Churches hath most resemblance to that of their times: I could as easily resolve you which of two men that stood before me, were likest to an hundred differing faces. For I do not think there is a greater variety of countenances at a Public Assembly, than there are differences in the several Ages wherein the Fathers lived, touching those three parts of Religion; especially these two, of Practice and Government; of which, Tertullian, having summed up all the chief particulars of the Creed, pronounces, Hac lege fidei manente, caetera jam disciplinae & conversationis admittunt novitatem correctionis. Tert. de Virg. Velan. cap. 1. For matters of Practice, 'tis a clear case, what liberty was taken to  them according to several evasions and ends, since some of the Apostles themselves, you know, did not stick to practise Circumcision: nor do the several ages appear to me ere a whit the more exquisite, in the imitation of their forefathers, than you will say the Church of Rome is at this day of the Apostles in that, and of those that followed after in administering the Eucharist to children, and yet 'tis she that pretends to be the Pantomime of antiquity for matters of Government, how Chameleon-like that hath been, how various, is as visible as green, and he that would reduce the Church now to the form of Government in the most primitive times, should not take in my opinion, the best nor wisest course, I am sure not the safest, for he would be found pecking toward the Presbytery of Scotland, which for my part, I believe in point of Government, hath a greater resemblance then either yours or ours, to the first age of Christ's Church, and yet is ne'er a whit the better for it, since it was a form not chosen for the best, but imposed by adversity and oppression, which in the beginning forced the Church from what it wished, to what it might, not suffering that dignity and state Ecclesiastical, which rightly belonged unto it, to manifest itself to the world; and which soon afterwards upon the least lucida intervalla, shone forth so gloriously in the happier, as well as more Monarchical condition of Episcopacy; of which way of Government I am so well persuaded, that I think it pity 'twas not made betimes, an article of the Scotish Catechism, that Bishops are jure divino. But as it is a true maxim in nature, Corruptio optimi pessima, so it holds likewise in Government, both civil and Ecclesiastical. The best of all, Monarchy, festers ofttimes and swells into the worst of all Tyranny. To which after the first 500 years, Policy having or'etopt Piety, the Church made a hasty progress, and of the following ages in this particular, I grant the present Church of Rome, to be a copy far exceeding the original, verifying now of the Roman, the imputation that Aristides laid by way of reproach on all other Empires; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. For matters of belief, the salvation of Christians depending chief upon them, 'tis true, in the primary and fundamental articles, they have been more constant, unanimous, and exact, and in those comparing the Church of their times with yours and ours, I think I may pronounce them all three alike to one another; but in points less material, such as I esteem those, wherein we two differ, I should contradict myself to undertake the framing out of the Fathers a certain judgement, which of the two present Churches were most correspondent to that of their times. Notwithstanding, if you command me to say for which side in my guess the Fathers do make most, I will tell you truly and freely what I think, holding then the balance as even as I can, I conceive the Fathers in some few points, do lean somewhat more to you, as in that of Christ's descent into hell, and also in that of freewill: (those excepted that wrote in heat against Pelagius) but in other differences, and those of greater importance, I collect, and probably, if I am not much deceived, that their sense is much clearer for us, as in the doctrines of Purgatory, and of the Eucharist, for as touching the first, although you may pretend in some that the words and outward shell, wherein the Father's opinions were conveyed, belong more to you; yet, if the matter be carefully picked and examined, I doubt not but the sense and kernel will prove ours; & it will be found that when ever any of the Fathers, Origen only excepted, and his adherents, who held the very flames of Hell but Purgatory & Temporal; I say, those set aside, all the expressions of the Fathers this way appear clearly to me to have been understood, not of a Purgatory, but only of a probatory fire, whether they meant that of affliction or that of the day of judgement; as for that place in St. Augustine formerly alleged for Purgatory, his best commentator Lod. Vives, confesses he could never meet with it in the ancienter copies of that Father's admirable works, however crept into the vulgar Editions.  
In point of the Eucharist, I believe my former instances will deserve a confession of the balances being so equally poised in this affair, as far forth as expression at least, that the overbearance of either scale is hardly perceptible: but did I grant that their words weighed incomparably more on your side, yet I should not doubt to challenge their sense for us, and that most confidently upon this reason; That supposing the Fathers to have believed as we do, the Sacrament to be Bread, great reason might they have notwithstanding, to raise the majesty of it in their expressions, and to term it the body of Christ, it being usual, and thought necessary in the primitive times to wrap up the Sacraments of the Church in mysteries, that the Catechumen might be possessed with a more awful reverence towards them, and be whetted and fanned as it were to a more keen and ardent desire of being admitted unto them; especially the danger being much more easy for them to think too meanly of what bore the name of Christ's body, but was palpably bread, then that they should fall to adore that for God, which their ear only told them was the flesh of Christ, and all their other senses assured them to be the commonest food of mankind; whereas supposing them to have believed as the Church of Rome doth, that the Sacrament is the very Flesh and blood of our Saviour, and to be received with the same reverence that belongs to God himself, there can be no warrantable reason why they should at any time lessen the majesty of so sacred an object of our adoration, or give it so often the name of those ordinary elements, whose evidence to our sense should they always have said all they could invent, of dignifying, would still have been apt enough to give an allay to the faith and veneration that's pretended to.  
These being as I conceive, two of the most important Articles of difference between your Church and ours, what hath been said will suffice to manifest unto you, that throughout this discourse I decline not the trial by the Fathers out of any distrust of our cause: for truly though I will not allow their, Writings to be the proper tribunal at which our controversies are to be judged, I should be content to refer with you the whole matter to their arbitration, and voluntarily to allow them that determinating power which in right they cannot claim; so fare am I from acknowledging a greater conformity in the Church of Rome then in ours to what they teach, to have been either the Government, Practice, or Belief of the primitive times, nor yet should I refuse them for Arbitrators as peremptorily as I do for Judges, I would not think my pains lost, or study of the Fathers not worth the while: For besides the addition of knowledge and general improvement of the Soul, which one must be a very stupid Reader of the Fathers, not to advance in, by the helps of their great and universal learning, besides the admirable excitations to piety and zeal; I conceive that even in the affair of directing us to a soulsaving Religion, a Christian by searching into their ancient memorials may as you say, reap a far greater advantage, than either Critics or Lawyers do in their several Sciences from their wormeaten monuments of Antiquity; for they, Cousin, from those maimed evidences of broken and disjointed Records, draw out principles; it is true, so probable, as may prudentially induce a rational and equal Surveyors assent, from which they frame perhaps some such text, whereby indifferent men, do consent to be regulated; but we by our holy search into the Sacraries of former ages are led to a text already divinely framed; A text perfectly comprising all parts requisite to the supreme Science it concerns; A text whose very affirmation, is an  resolution; from our Records of antiquity, we draw not only Topical Arguments, but proofs to any discoursing man above demonstration; such as it were madness and impiety to reject upon any argument to the contrary; and this in all points of Religion, mistake me not, I mean that do really and confestly on all hands import Heaven or Hell in men's beliefs and practise: and from hence, though I should deny the Fathers any usefulness at all in our controversies, yet, I should extremely gratulate to myself the labour and ambition to be in some good measure skilled in their Antiquities, and to you your great and (according to your principles) most judicious progress in them.  
Your next advice is, that I should apply my understanding and industry to build up as well as to pull down, and to examine as strictly the reasons of my own belief, to see whether that be well grounded; as those for the contrary opinion, to observe whether that be concludingly demonstrated; I must confess, I ever thought it a superfluous labour, to seek to establish one part of a contradiction, by any further proof than the destruction of the other; and you yourself supposing our Tenants contradictory, do warrant that for a truth, (to me) sufficiently proved, and press on me a necessity of embracing whatsoever is contradictory to a falsehood.  
'Tis true that St Jerome passes upon Lactantius, a censure in a wish; utinam tam nostra confirmare putuissit quam facile aliena distruxit; but his case and ours are not alike, 'twas not so convincing an Argument; Paganism is ridiculous, Judaisme exolete; Therefore Christians are in every thing in the right, as 'tis with us, the Church and tradition is not infallible in all things, therefore fallible in some; the bread is not transubstantiated, therefore it remains bread. There is no third place for us after death, besides heaven and hell, and no fall from the one, and no redemption from the other, therefore no Purgatory; In these and the like cases, one party is sure and firm settled when ever the other falls, as certainly as in natural generation, the decay of one thing is infallibly the parent of another: And therefore in point of wrong and unfitting superstructures, such as most of the Romish Tenants are, which we lay battery to, it may suffice to pull down, those being demolished, what's rightly built will stand fast of itself, since both suppose a foundation.  
Now for the second part of your direction, namely, that I should strictly examine the reason of my own belief, I have obeyed you to the full; And that you may be able to judge whether they be well weighed or no, take here a sum of my belief; I believe the unity and Omnipotence of God, and an inexplicable Trinity in that unity; I believe the incarnation of the second person of that Trinity, that's God's assumption of perfect humanity from the womb of a Virgin; And that he humbled himself, not only to manhood, but also to mortality; that after he had set our practice an exact pattern by his life, and by his words imbued our Theory with all necessary documents, he might purge our stains with his blood, redeem our forfeitures by the price of his passion, and present a plenary satisfaction to his Father's Justice for all our misdeeds; I believe further, that to make us capable of the effects of his merits, Beatitude, he illuminates our understanding by the gift of the holy Ghost, by whom is created in us that divine faith, by which these mysteries are to be apprehended: I believe also, that our blessed Saviour gave his Apostles commission to preach to all the world his saving Doctrine, who did accordingly, and have left to posterity, both written records, and living one's in successions of the faithful, that shall preserve even to the end of the world, these and all other articles necessary to salvation. I likewise believe that the Apostles established Pastors in several Churches, whom we are to hearken unto with reverence, and to receive of them the Sacraments of regeneration to Christ, and of Communion with him, both which by God's grace, have a divine and supernatural effect in the cleansing us from sin; I believe that heaven shall be the reward of the good, and hell of the wicked: and lastly in a word (to supply whatsoever may have been omitted) I firmly believe whatsoever is evidently contained in the Creed or Scripture, or clearly deduceable from either. I am persuaded that you will yield that the reasons upon which these are built, will abide the strictest examination. None of these assertions I hope betrayeth its own weakness? And yet these are the only opinions which I have been imbued with, these are the parts of faith that integrate my Religion, in these are comprised all points that I think necessary to be believed; And he that believes any thing more, if he have but his share of good works, is safe in my opinion, for he hath faith of supererrogation; my firm and resolute settlement in these verities, defends me from being at all concerned in those several imputations which towards the close of your letter you do most judiciously and justly lay upon Sciolous and Sapticall wits, that floating in uncertainty, would fain reduce every thing to that pass, seeking rather to puzzle and imbroil an adversary, then weightily to establish a solid truth. 'Tis that solid truth, and such as bears no dispute, that I wish we might all stick to; and let pass those quillets, and niceties imposed by the Church of Rome, for Articles of importance, and which her adherents dwell upon with too scrupulous a diligence; such as admit arguments on both sides, and are fit for a declamation then a Catechism, in which whilst mwn vainly busy themselves, they let slide away many times unnoted, as you say, that great deal which is  and plain points, which can be thought at best but at the skirts, none belonging to the main body of religion; doctrines for the most part (at the least in my judgement) so little material; that I applaud the Fathers for spending so little time or labour on them; such, as I am so far from delighting to make objections in, that where ever I have touched upon particulars, it hath been a Contrecoeur, and only to disperse such dust as others raise; for I swear there is no man living hath a stronger aversion than myself from all cavils in Religion; it being justly to be feared, as our great Prelate (Archbishop of Cant. in his Epistle to his Majesty) says, that Atheism and irreligion gathers strength, while the truth is thus weakened by an unworthy way of contending for it; and I am persuaded that mo●● men, while their thoughts are so busied in chicanes of controverted points, grow negligent of those more weighty ones that neerlyer import salvation, and so run out of the most essential good of their souls, as impertinently as many a peevish freeholder that wastes a solid estate, in endless law suits for a trifle; & as I think these points little important for use, so I concur with you in esteeming both these, and all other matters of Religion very unfit to be argued on for ostentation or applause, which I am sure I am as far from aiming at in this subject, as I shall be far from attaining it. 'Tis true, the condition of the knowing & ignorant, is usually quite contrary to the Lords servants in the Gospel, there he that had least, wrapped up his single talon in a Napkin; but amongst men now a-daies that pretend, whoever hath least, it is he longs most to show how much he hath, and so publishes how little; yet, thus far they oftentimes both agree, that neither improve their store: and thus by my ignorance unless you be charitable, I confess myself liable to be suspected guilty of the vain appetite of ostentation that usually accompanies it; but as my Ignorance exposes me to the suspicion, so my consciousness of it (the sole knowledge that I can brag of) frees me from the Ambition suspected, and lays upon me a necessity of concluding with a huge Apology, for presuming to give you so much trouble, and, I fear, so little satisfaction: I confess I ought to have been restrained from venturing at all upon this Debate, the Subject itself being so far above the pitch of my literature; And the Person with whom I presume to argue the difference of Opinion, confestly my superior in all advantages both of Nature and Acquisition, beyond all hopes of comparison; Considerations either of them able to deter a much considenter man than myself: But Friendship, which always finds, or makes men equal, hath long since licenc't me from the latter, and hardened me to impart my conceptions, how low so ever, as freely to you, as I could do to any inferior Wit of mine own level: And for the first, I have neglected it upon this persuasion, that I shall be better able to answer to the Divines, a young, a Lay, and ignorant man's adventuring to treat of their Business, then to you, and to myself so womanish a wrong, as not subscription to the Dictamen of your strong and powerful Soul, without yielding my reasons for the variance, which how light soever they may be found, when pondered by your excellent judgement, yet being really such, as are most convincing to mine, they will serve to excuse me to you, to justify me to myself, and I hope to make my Errors even pardonable with God, who when by St. Peter, he bids us be able to give a Reason of the hope that is in us; I am confident he expects it no better then proportionable to the capacities that his goodness hath endowed us with: Answerable to them is this Discourse, weak I confess, disjointed, and without Nerves; and yet I doubt not but it may be so evictuated by Truth and the goodness of my Cause, that I shall not be ashamed to have encountered a GOLIATH with a Sling. A Straw kept in a right Line, might batter a tower; from which right line of truth and reason, I may safely protest I have not so much as once voluntary swarved in this Treatise, through any partaking passion, or forelaid design, neither have I suffered myself; herein to be so far wrought upon by civility, as to forbear a free and round expression of my sense, where ever it differed from yours: and truly, there was no cause why I should, since in our disputes, the strongest opposition, that I or the best wit for me can possibly make to your opinions, will derogate no more from your unquestionable excellency of judgement, than it would conclude either of us ill-sighted should you affirm such a Garment to be red, and I that it were green, the object being a changeable Taffeta, and we seated in contrary lights, or looking through mediums diversely tincted; a like affect upon the soul, to these upon the sense, hath diversity of education, and discrepance of those principles wherewith men are at the first imbued, and whereon all our after reasonings are founded: Conformity and uniteness of mind, as rarely flowing from contrary Educations, as the same River from opposite springs; sweet, happy, and I think sole, is the self-sameness which arises from pure principles of nature, never sophisticated by the artifices of our breeding, but little derivation from those Fountains hath this or that Sect of Religion, & so no marvel if we agree not therein to be one, as we do in the other most true & prime Emanation of nature, Friendship; which, on your part to me I am confident must needs spring from thence, since my small merit affords no other motive; and for mine to you, I am sure it is impossible without an entire concurrence of all the forces of Sympathy, for any man to reverence, admire, and love another, with that Ardour as I do you dearest Cousin, and which you cannot but own in  
SHERBORN, March 30. 1639. Your most faithful and most Affectionate Servant. G. D.  
FINIS.