the dignities glory and revenues of their prelates when they could not otherwise get them into their own hands by their lamentable tones in Eloimi raised up the people of the land to further their design This trick of theirs they learned from wolves For these when they spy a waifaring man whom they would devour and yet by a narrow search perceiv him to be too strong for them starting aside upon som hillock there set upon their tails they howl for help And if any will not beleev Fiat Lux that such be the fruits of disputes and controversies and such their nature and genius let them beleev the Authour of Animadversions who as he sayes what he pleases and denies what he lists so to his frequent reproaches villifications and slanders he adjoyns his own Menaces of terrour to make my words good and justify Fiat Lux. You frequently threaten me that if I write again I shall hear more far more than you have said in your Animadversions but I promis you Sir if you write again you shall never hear more from me For now the flies begin to com into my chamber which may haply expect I should heed their flight and hearken to their buzz and I must not leav those greater employments to look upon your Animadversions or any your other books Farewell Given this V. of the Ides of April in the year of our Lord MDCLXIII J. V. C. EPISTOLA AD CROESVM AGAINST Mr. Whitby The occasion of this second Epistle Doctour Pierce had preached a Sermon in the Court upon that text In the beginning it was not so from whence he took occasion to speak of Popery which in this and that and the other particular he said in the beginning was not so and consequently all of it a novelty This sermon was afterwards printed and not a little applauded by those who are taken with such airs Mr. Cressy a Catholik Gentleman the Authours friend then sojourning in London wrote a book called Catholik doctrin no novelties in confutation of that Sermon and went presently away to Paris But after his departure Mr. Whitby set forth a huge bulk of a book against Cressy The Authour in this his epistle gives notice to Mr. Cressy his friend then in France of the contents and tenour of that his adversaries book Epistola ad Croesum against Mr. Whitby SIR IT is now about a year since Dr. Pierce made his pretty featous Sermon in the Court where by vertue of those few words of his text In the beginning it was not so Matth. 19.8 he confuted all Popery in the space of one hour as a meer bundle of novelties The Treatise you left here in the hands of som friends before your departure to Paris to prove against the tenour of the said Sermon That Catholik doctrines are no novelties printed afterward by I know not what good hand gave us here in England after your departur a great deal of good satisfaction This book of yours about a moneth or two after it was extant was seconded by another against Dr. Pierce penned by Jo. Sim. a small but a very quick and lively piece to invalidate his reasons So that Pierce had now two adversaries against him The latter J. S. hears not yet of any reply But your book Sir is lately answered not by Dr. Pierce himself who hath other irons in the fire and meets now with somthing in his own life which in the beginning was not so but by one Mr. Daniel Whitby a young man of a forward spirit and possest as it seems of a fair reformed library who hath undertaken or is willing atleast to undergo the quarrel This book of Whitbyes wherof my antient love and friendship hath here invited me to give you a brief account is a great volum of 512 pages so fruitful is the seed of controversie when it is once sown to increase and multiply A compendium it is I think of his whole library Whether this book of his be made up all by one hand by reason of the unity of the name and diversity of stiles discerned in it is not easy to guess But that Mr. Whitby if he had many coadjutors with him either in his own chamber or abroad should by their mutual consent alone reap the honour of all their labours wherof his own part may haply be the least you need Sir neither grutch nor fear nor envy nor any way dislike The book is of that natur that it more behoovs it should be thought to issue from one young head then many old ones that the insufficiency when it shall appear may be rather attributed to the weaknes of the Author then caus he pleads for Of this Sir I may out of Whitbyes own words in his Epistle Dedicatory and the whole progres of his book assure you that this volume of his is wholly made up of the many several replies of divers Protestant writers who have stretcht their wits to the utmost in this last age to evacuate the Catholik faith and all their grounds autorities and reasons for it not only such as have written here in England which are not a few but those also beyond the seas who are all met friendly here together though never so much differing in their wayes twenty at least or thirty of the chiefest to help to make up Mr. Whitbies book These writers he tells us in his Epistle som of them who they be Hammond Field Salmasius Baron Usher Fern Dally Taylor Crackanthorp Hall Andrews Calixtus Plessis Chamier and Chillingworth But he does not there mention Pareus Blondel Baxter and several others whom in the context of his book he makes as much use of as any of those he there honours with the title of Champions with whose sword and buckler he means to defend himself and knock you down You may easily guess the reason Although indeed even Chamier Plessis and Dally his first and chiefest three wer as great Puritans as Baxter Pareus or Blondel and no less enemies to the English Protestant then Roman Catholik Church And Baxter himself if he will but do so much as dye shall seven year hence if not sooner be put into the next calendar and sit among the Champions of the English Church cited no more then as guilty of faction and heresy but as a Protector and Patron of the truth famous Baxter incomparable Baxter So p. 230. he cites Dr. Reynolds as a great Champion of his Church who was indeed a Champion of the Puritans against it Every non-Papist is a good Protestant especially when he is dead When they fight for their wives and children against catholik traditions and faith then are they all holy zealous champions But they are damned and swerv notoriously from the truth if they may be themselvs beleeved when they contest with one another which ever happens after the first great victory with the common enemy obtained One thing is singular in this book of Whitbies that he frames no answers out of any
the pen of her own ungrateful Scribe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What Doctour Taylor against Popery And such a Disswasive as this But my amazement Sir is now blown over The Doctour appeared to me after some serious thoughts to be for a special reason that touches none so much as himself in some manner excusable That none should love Popery or ever come to know it concerns not only his wealth and dignity and life of ease which is the common caus of others also with himself but all the honour and fame he hath hitherto got by transcribing popish as now he calls but in former times named Catholik authors For having bin twenty years and upwards deeply plunged in reading and transcribing som of the in-numerous spiritual books that are amongst Catholiks not only in Latin but other languages of several Kingdoms where that Religion flourishes he hath culled out thence many fine treatises which he hath set forth in his own name and language to his much renown and no small wealth and dignity amongst us Nor is it to be doubted but that he means for his yet further glory reaped from other mens labours and that spirit of piety which thence he got into his own pen to write out yet one book more The same store-house that furnished him with the life of Christ will dictate to him also the lives of his twelve Apostles and many other raptures of divine love and heavenly devotion And if people be but kept from Popery as he hopes and labours they may it will never be known whence he gathers those his fragrant pieties It was not handsom yet a piece of wisdom it was in the Grecian Cynick to spit in the dish which pleased him best lest others should taste how good it was and deprive him therby of som of his content This book of Doctour Taylors called a Disswasive printed in Dublin and as I understand reprinted here in London I suppose in the very same words by reason of the Authors absence is large enough containing 173 pages in quarto marvellously bitter and contumeliously insulting over that Religion which he cannot but know he misreports Indeed Sir there is more popery in one page of Dr. Taylors Life of Christ which he transcribed from popish Authors than is in all this whole book which he writes against those Authors popery that is owned by them to be their religion all this he puts upon them under the notion of popery throughout his whole hundred and seventy three pages except haply som three or four words whose sence also he perverts no Catholik upon earth acknowledges for any parcel of his faith Is not this strange disingenuous dealing How he comes to act thus and what is the feat he makes use of to discolour their Religion you shall hear by and by when I have first opened his book and the things contained in it His Disswasive hath three chapters and each chapter several sections The first chapter is intitled thus The Doctrin of the Roman Church in the controverted articles is neither Catholik Apostolik nor Primitive The second thus The Church of Rome as it is at this day disordered teaches doctrins and uses practices which are in themselvs or in their true and immediat consequences direct impieties and give warranty to a wicked life The third thus The Church of Rome teaches doctrins which in many things are destructive of Christian society in general and of Monarchy in special both which the Religion of the Church of England and Ireland does by her doctrins greatly and Christianly support These three be things of importance and must either be great notorious crimes in the Defendant or monstrous slanders in the Plaintiff A Religion that is new impious and unsociable that is against antiquity piety and society is hardly good enough for Hell Who is he that shall dare to profess or countenance such a religion upon earth But let us see in order how all this is demonstrated to us by an old pious and sociable Doctour His first Chapter First then That the doctrin of the Roman Church in the controverted Articles is neither Catholik Apostolik nor Primitive he declares in eleven sections which make up that his first chapter First section sayes that the Roman Church pretends a power to make new Articles of faith and doubtles uses that power and for that end corrupts the Fathers and makes expurgatory Indices to alter their works The second that this power of making new articles is a novelty and yet beleeved by Papists Third that the Roman doctrin of Indulgences is unknown to antiquity Fourth that Purgatory is another novelty Fift Transubstantiation another Sixt Half-communion another Seventh Liturgy in an unknown tongue another Eighth Veneration of Images the like Ninth Pictures the same Tenth the Popes general Episcopacy likewise And the eleventh and last speaks almost as many more all of a heap to make up his one last section as Invocation of Saints sufficiency of scriptures absolving sinners before pennance simple Priests giving Confirmation selling Masses for nine pence circumgestation of the Eucharist intention in Sacraments Mass-sacrifice and supper without Communion All this is Popery all new and therfor the Roman Church is neither Catholik Apostolik nor Primitive This is the sum of his first Chapter What in the name of God does this Author of the Disswasive your learned Doctour mean by the Church of Rome and by the doctrin of the Roman Church This Sir is a main busines and ought if he had meant sincerity to have been firmly stated before any thing were treated either of the one or the other But this he utterly here omits which he should principally have heeded that he may speak loosely and hand over head any thing he may deem fit to black his own paper and other mens fame If he take them as he ought the Church of Rome for that universality of Catholik beleevers who live in several kingdoms of the world united in faith and sacraments under the Spirit of Jesus Christ and one visible Pastour and the doctrin of that Church for the body of faith and religion handed to them from age to age as taught and delivered from Christ and his Apostles which they call in the phrase of St. Paul Depositum fidei or treasure of faith I say if he mean this by the Roman Church and doctrin of that Church as he ought to do I will be bold to aver that ther is not any one claus or period in his book true and three parts of his book absolutely impertinent If he mean otherwis then Catholiks themselvs conceiv or profess he was bound in honour to make his mind known that the renown of an innocent Religion and worthy persons might not suffer prejudice by his ambiguous speech But perhaps he studied how to abuse that Religion that he may be thought worthy of the dignity and wealth he has now obtained in another slipt our of it But concerning the way he takes to
material symbols Communion in one kind Liturgy in hebrew greek or latin tongus unknown generally to vulgar people Use and respect of images and sacred figures Spiritual Supremcay in one byshop over the rest Saints invocation and sacrifice of mass are all acknowledged by former Protestant Reformers for old errours errours indeed but old very old ones a thousand years older than your Disswader makes them who would here make us beleev they are but fresh novelties As for the antiquity of Indulgences so far as they belong to Catholik beleef I need not trouble my self with further testimonies then the only one of your Disswader himself who is instar omnium For p. 17. he acknowledges their use to be ancient and primitive As for the real presence Humpred in his Jesuitism sayes that Gregory the great who lived a thousand years ago taught Transubstantiation The Century writers Cent. 5. teach that Chrysostom who was two hundred years before Gregory is thought to confirm transubstantiation and Cent. 4. they place under the title of hurtful opinions and errours of the fathers that saying of S. Greg. Nyssen in his catechist sermon de divino sacramento Not becaus it is eaten doth the bread becom the body of the word but forthwith by the word it is changed into the body as it is said by the word This is my body And they say in the same century c. 10. That Eusebius Emissenus did speak unprofitably of Transubstantiation Antony de Adamo in his anotomy of the mass sayes That the book of Sacraments ascribed to Ambrose affirms the opinion of Christs bodily presence in the sacrament Peter Martyr in his defence wholly dislikes the judgment of St. Cyril in this point Mr. Whitgift in his defence against Cartwright testifies of St. Ignatius disciple to St. John the Evangelist that he should say of some hereticks in his time That they do not admit Eucharists and oblations becaus they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ which flesh suffered for our sins Adamus Francisci in his margarita theologica saith Commentum papistarum de transubstantiatione maturè in ecclesiam irrepsit And Antony de Adamo in his anatomy of the Mass saith I have not yet hitherto been able to know when this opinion of the real and bodily being of Christ in the Sacrament did begin This then according to the acknowledgment of Protestants and those very learned men is no novelty The indifferency of communion either in one kind or both is manifestly affirmed by Luther in his epistle ad Bohemos by Melanchton in his century of theological epistles and several other Protestants convinced therof by the current of primitive antiquity That the Christian Liturgy was in ancient times ever celebrated in Greek Chaldee Latin or other language unknown to vulgar Christians and in a part of the Church where lay people might not approach and great part of it secretly and out of the hearing of any body and with much pomp of vestments gold and silver chalices c. is amply testified by Theodore Beza in his eight epistle theological And therfor Queen Elizabeth did not think she acted against antiquity when she caused the Service to be read in English all over Wales where the people understand it not For which very same reason the great Cardinal Richlieu deservedly taxed heretical ministers who except at least in outward show against this ancient custom for their practising the very same thing as convinced in their own consciences that it was the ancient practice both in Bearn Narbo Province and other places where the ministers of those places read Service in the French Tongue which was not the language of those Provinces nor by any of those people any more understood than is Latin by the vulgar of mankind And yet the case is far otherwise in this affair affair amongst Catholiks than other people For these do but only come together to hear and attend to the Minister what he sayes But the Priests in the Catholik Church comes to make atonement for the people which may well be done so long as the said people are in a general disposition of heart fitly disposed to present themselvs before the face of their Lord for that end whether they hear and know the sighs and requests of their petitioner in particular for them or no so long as they are assured they are of that true Church by whom their priests are directed in their duty For thus it was in the law of Moyses dictated by God himself There shall be no man saith the sacred text Lev. 16. in the tabernacle of the congregation when the priest goeth in to make an atonment in the holy place untill he come out and have made an atonement for himself and for his houshold and for all the congregation of Israel If God allowed of this custom four thousand years ago it can neither be a novelty nor ill As for images and their due respect the Magdeburgian Centuriators in their 4. Century testifie That Lactantius affirms many superstitious things concerning the efficacy of Christs image And in their 8. century That S. Bede erred in the worshipping of images So Bale in his pageant of Popes sayes That Gregory by his indulgences established pilgrimages to images and defended worshipping of images As also That S. Leo allowed the worshipping of Images Functius another Protestant in his chronology at 494. addes That Xenaias who lived thirteen hundred years ago was specially noted and condemned for being the first that stirred up wars against images This is then no novelty neither As for Purgatory and prayer for the dead Fulk in his Retentive affirms That it prevailed within three hundred years after Christ And in his confutation of Purgatory That Ambrose allowed prayer for the dead and that it was the common errour of his time And again in the same book That Chrysostom and Jerom allowed prayer for the dead and in another place of the same book That Austin blindly defended it and again there That Tertullian Cyprian Austin Jerom and many others affirm that sacrifice for the dead is the tradition of the Apostles As also he had acknowledged about ten pages before in the same book That prayers for the dead is taught in the writings now extant under the name of Dionysius Areopagita mentioned in the acts of the Apostles which book though he doubt whether it be his or no yet himself writing against the Rhemish upon the 2. Thessalonians allows it to have been written above thirteen hundred years ago Chemnitius in his Examen sayes That it was taught by Austin Epiphanius and Chrysostom as nine pages before that he had said It was taught by Origen Ambrose Prudentius and Jerom. Mr. George Gifford in his Demonstration sayes That it was generally in the Church long before Austin as may be seen in Cyprian and Tertullian And Bucer in his Enarrations upon the Gospels speaks That prayer and alms were made for the dead
Diaphanta OR Three Attendants on FIAT LUX Wherin Catholik Religion is further excused against the opposition of severall Adversaries 1 Epistola ad Odoenum against Dr. Owen 2 Epistola ad Croesum against Mr. Whitby 3 Epistola ad Ampibolum against Dr. Taylor And by the way an Answer is given to Mr. Moulin Denton and Stillingfleet Quare fremuerunt gentes populi meditate sunt inania 1665. The occasion of this first Epistle THe Authour had wrote a little book called Fiat Lux to show that wrangling about Religion is irrational A Protestant understood afterward to be Dr. Owen set forth Animadversions against that book And this Epistle acquaints the Doctour with some of the ill qualities of those his Animadversions I. An Epistle to the Author of the Animadversions upon Fiat Lux. SIR I Was in my Journey in the North far enough from London when your Animadversions upon Fiat Lux came forth Nor did I ever set eye upon them till my return in February about half a year after which I tell you Sir to excuse my silence And now in brief For your labour I thank you for your endeavour I pitty you for your purpos I pardon you that being as I beleve intended for Gentlemens satisfaction the othet for Fiat Lux his confutation this for the Authors confusion I may not go about to reply unto you becaus this would be against the very end and principles of Fiat Lux it self which speaks forth nothing more then this That Controversies about Religion are vain and fruitless And lest this should not be able to detain me from any such reply you adde your own threats That if I shall dare to write again you will make me know what manner of man you are However Sir let we crave leave to thank you for the pastime your Animadversions have given me since my return But Sir you mistake the very drift and design of Fiat Lux which makes you to erre ever and anon throughout your whole Book whiles you take that as spoken absolutely which is only said upon an hypothesis of our present condition here in England distraction disputes and wars in order to a contrary end of unity love and concord designed by Fiat Lux and the Prosopopeia's brought in by me as Solomòn in his Ecclesiastes makes the fool and atheist ever and anon to speak their minds these you conceiv to be my doctrin By vertu of these capital mistakes what by me is said of the obscurity of God Nature and Providence is with you impertinent that of Light and Spirit impious that of Plea of Parties frivolous that of Reason dissonant and to no purpos that of Scripture blasphemous that of the History of Religion no less inconsequent than untrue In a word this thing that thing every thing a wilde dishonest illiterate discours Some would wonder that he who writes in confutation of a Book should be himself the only man that understands it not But the reason is apparent It is your onely advantage to mistake The whole discours of Fiat Lux chained together one part with another from that which is supposed to that which is designed would breath so much of charity and sobernes that my Commentatour could not have told how to make any mad versions upon it It is not yet too late Now that you have finished your Animadversions or Comment or Notes upon it you may do well to take my Book again into your hands read it calmly and understand it That which you speak so frequently of Fiat Lux his ignorance is not altogether amiss for he pretends not much to learning although he knows what he sayes But yet Sir if you had defied and villified him with less violence and more seldom and not so universally in every point of history language and philosophy nor just then when you had least caus it had been more for your honour A third part of your Book which is taken up in talking of my ignorance and other qualities might well have been spared had you had arguments to demonstrate it And in my minde you too much forget your self when you recount so often with regret and anger that som gentlemen of the land should through their own inconsideration have any liking of a Book which you judg so slight aiery vain fallacious and simple As if they had none and you all the judgment of discerning Gentlemen Sir must be allowed a sens of Religion as well as Ministers and their portion of reason must not therfor be less becaus their Blood is more noble the company they keep more accomplisht and their education better They have the body although they wear not the Cloak of Religion and masters they are of their own reason tho not of yours This is one difference between Catholik countreys and ours that there the Clergy-man is only regarded for his vertue the power he hath received or is at least believed to have received from God in the great ministery of our reconciliation And if he have any addition of learning besides it is looked upon as a good accidental ornament but not as any essential complement of his Profession So that it often happens without any wonderment at all that the Gentleman Patron is the learned man and the Priest his Chaplain of little or no science in comparison But here in England our Gentlemen are disparaged by their own Black Coats and not suffered to use their judgments in any kinde of learning without a gybe from them The Gentleman is reasonles and the scribling Cassock is the only Schollar he alone must speak all know all and only understand I cannot but smile to see you turn so dexterously every thing that is said in Fiat Lux to your own use His discours of innocence and moderation gives you occasion to speak and amply dilate of wars murders adulteries lyes hypocrisies villanies And when he cries Peace Peace it is motive enough for you to cry Guns and Daggers You rave and rage against him and the whole earth you load your pen and pages with the tyrannies desolations disorders have been aforetime in the world not heeding that you had not so much as heard at this day of any such abuses if their holy and renowned Clergy-men who still declaimed against the vices of their times had not left them upon record or so much as considering that even now in these best times of Reformation are as grand disorders in all kindes as ever were in the worst times of Popish corruption Nay there was never any crow or magpie so pecked and cawed upon the back of a sheep as you do upon Fiat Lux and if he do but stir or wag you threaten if I understand you right to peck out his eyes And all this because Fiat Lux endeavours to show that animosities about matters of Religion are groundless prejudicial to peace and neighbourhood ruinous desolatory endles and consequently vain fruitles and sinful ther may indeed be som advantage
go those hot and furious imaginations It is a phrase so ordinary with you that when another writer of your own judgment would have told me that my words are false or besides the purpos or the like you in a phrase of your own tell me still that I speak guns and daggers If he mean say you of me p 27. that ther is in good works an intrinsecal worth c. he speaks daggers and doth not himself beleev what he sayes And again p. 94. For men to come now in the end of the world and tell us That we must rest in the autority of the present Church c. is to speak daggers and swords to us upon a confidence that we will suffer our selves to be befoold So likewise p. 340. He tells us say you of me it is good to prefer a Translation before the Originals What shall we do with those men that speak such swords and daggers and are well neither full nor fasting I pray Sir where did you borrow this trope had you it from the school of Aristotle or Mars his camp Thirdly your prophetick assurance so often inculcated that if you could but once com to whisper me in the ear I would plainly acknowledg either that I understand not my self what I say or if I do beleev it not givs a fair character of those fanatick times wherin ignorance and hypocrisy prevailed over worth and truth wherof if your self wer any part it is no wonder you should think that I or any man els should either speak he knows not what or beleev not what himself speaks It was the proper badg of those times when after the alarm sounded in the Pulpit that our people therupon went forth in troops to battle neither did the peasant understand nor the man in black beleev although the sound rung generally in their ears that it was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon which they brandisht against the loyal band their foes Measuring me it seems by your self you tell me no less than seaven times in your book that I beleev not and I think seaventy times that I understand not what I speak my self It is a kind of charity in you to think your neighbour is as you know your self to be But I do not much care for that charity except you were better than I find you are Fourthly your pert assertion so often occurring in your book that ther is neither reason truth nor honesty in my words is but the overflowing of that former intemperat zeal and the more frequent it occurs the less approbation it will find Fiftly your sharp and frequent menaces that if I write or speak again I shall hear more find more feel more more to my smart more than I imagin more than I would rellishes too much of that insulting humour our bleeding Land then groaned under the many years of our anarchical confusion Sixthly the absence of your name in the frontispiece of your book which I have never before observed in all my life of any Protestant writer that hath ever in my time set forth a book here in England against Popery givs no small suspicion that the Authour of our Animadversione is no such Protestant as he would be thought to be Lastly that I may omit other special reasons your other general trick of charging me then most of all with fraud ignonorance and wickedness when in your own heart you find me most clear from any such blemish thereby to put a vail upon your own caus which would otherways be disparaged makes me smell a fox a notorious one Sic notus Vlysses This has been too often acted here in England to be soon forgotten The better the caus the lowder still was the cry against those who stood for it that the blustering nois of calumnies might drown all report of their innocence And by all this I cannot Sir but suspect that if the description of Popery your Animadversions givs us be right you are a Papist your self and no true Protestant a notorious Papist But as it is so let it be Thus much I only tell you that you may see I am neither neglective of your book nor idle but have perused and read it over And although what for the threats of your Animadversions and what for the reasons of my own Fiat I may not enter into controversie yet I hope I may let you know that I have seen your work And that you may the better credit me I will give you a short account of it first in general then in particular And this is all I mean here to do The whole design of Fiat Lux you do utterly mistake throughout all your book of Animadversions so that you conceiv that to be a controversy which is none that to be absolutely asserted which is but hypothetically discoursed out of the exceptions of other men that to be only for one side which is indifferently for all although I speak most for them that are most spoken against and am in very deed absolutely against all speaking quarrelling disputing about Religion If you will but have patience to hear my purpos and design which to all men not interested and blinded with a prejudice is clear enough relucent in the whole context of my Fiat what I say will easily appear to your self Fiat Lux sayes one thing and supposes it another thing he desires and aims at that he dislikes this he commends We are at this day at variance about Religion this Fiat Lux supposes But it were better to have peace this he aims at and desires And both these things are intermingled up and down in my book according to that small faculty that God hath given me though not according to the usual method that is found now adayes in books Here Sir in few words you have the summe of my Fiat And I hope you will grant that to be the scope of my book which I made it for That we are now at variance is most clear and certain by me supposed and not to be denied And that it were better to have peace is as absolutely expedient as the other is evidently true These then being things both of them which no man can resist either by denying the one or disliking the other I thought them better intermingled then set apart and with more reason to be supposed then industriously proved Yet to superinduce a disposition unto peace my only work was to demonstrate an uselesnes an endlesnes an unprofitablenes of quarrels which I laboured quite through my book beginning it with an intimation of our quarrels which St. Paul calls the fruits and works of the flesh and ending it with a commendation of charity which is the great fruit and blessing of Gods holy Spirit Now the easier to perswade my Countreymen to a belief both of the one and the other first is insinuated in Fiat Lux both the ill grounds and worst effects of feuds then is the plea of parties specified their
probabilities acknowledged and lastly an impossibility of ever bringing our debates to a conclusion either by light or spirit reason or scriptur texts so long as we stand separated from any superiour judicative power unto which all parties will submit is I think with a strong probability if not demonstrative evidence concluded And therfor is it thought by Fiat Lux to be more rational and Christian-like to leav these endles groundles and ruinous contentions and resign our selvs to humility and peace This is the design and whole summe of my book And although I speak up and down here for Papists there for Protestants elswhere for Presbyterians or Independants commonly out of the very discourses they make for themselvs yet do I not defend either their wayes or their arguments Nor do I teach any doctrin at all or hold there any opinion But I only giv to understand in that one little book what is largely discoursed in a hundred That all parties do make out to themselves such a probability which as it stands joyned with the actours resolution and separated from any superiour visible power to which they will submit can never be subdued And hath not long experience proved this as true as any thing els What then is ther in Fiat Lux that can be denied Is it not evident that we are now at variance and too long indeed have been Is it not also clear that peace charity and neighbourhood is better then variance dissention and wars Do not parties strongly plead for themselvs so far perswaded each one that himself is in the right that he will not yield the truth to be with any but himself Is not all this evident I am sure it is and all England will witnes it And if any one should be able to evince that any reasonings made in Fiat Lux either for Papists Protestants or others be not certain or perhaps not probable yet he does nothing except he be able to prove likewise that they are not probable to Fiat Lux or to those that use them whether Protestants or Papists which he can no more do than he can pull a star out of the firmament I say Sir again and mark I pray you what I say If you should chance to evince that the reasons brought by Fiat Lux either for the doctrin or practises of Papists or others be either not probable or untrue yet is your labour all in vain except you be able to demonstrate likewise that they are not probable to Fiat Lux or to Papists and others who use those reasons which you can no more do then any thing that is absolutely impossible By this time Sir you may discern how hard it is to deal with Fiat Lux and impossible to confute him Sith he speaks nothing but what is as clearly true and evident as what we see at mid-day Nor do I in this any way exalt the ability of the Authour whom you are pleased so much and frequently to disable A Tom-fool may say that which all the wisemen in the world cannot gain-say as he did who said the Sun was higher at noon than any other hour of the day It was Fiat Lux his fortune rather then chois to utter words which will no sooner be read than acknowledged And it was your misfortune Sir to employ your greater talents in refuting evident truths perhaps for no other reason but becaus they issued from the pen of a man who is not so great a friend to faction as you could wish And although you proceed very harsh and furiously yet am I verily perswaded you now discern though too late for your credit that you had all this while according to our English proverb good Mr. Doctor a wrong sow by the ear Thus far in general Now briefly to give you som account in particular You spend four Chapters and a hundred and eighteen pages which is the fourth part of your book before you com to the first line and paragraff of mine The applaus and honour of this world c. And it is not unwittily done For being to be led as you heavily complain out of your ordinary road of controversies by the wilde chase of Fiat Lux it behoved you to draw som general common places of your own for your self to walk in and exercise your rhetorick and anger before you pursue a bird that flies not you say in any usual tract Preface from page 1. to page 19. Your preface wherin you speak of my subtilty and your own pretence affords me nothing but the beginning of your own mistake which will run quite through your book 1 Chap. from page 19. to 29. Your first chapter beats me about the pate for saying that I conceal my method with a terrible syllogistical dilemma He that useth no method say you cannot conceal it and if he hath concealed it he hath used one But I must pass by store of such doughty stuff being only fit for the young Oxford Schollar who being com home to take air would prove before his father and mother that two eggs were three Then going on you deny that Protestants ever opposed the doctrin and merit of good works which at first I wondered at seeing the sound of it has rung so often in mine own ears and so many hundred books written in this last age so apparently witnes it in all places till I found afterwards in my thorow perusal of your book that you neither heed what you say or how much you do deny But you perhaps love to talk of them better than your fore-fathers did though your thoughts be all the same And you will all equally bless your selvs from building of Churches as the Papists have don however your prattle goes 2 Chap. from page 29. to 110. Your second chapter collects out of Fiat Lux as you say ten general conclusions spread all over like veins and arteries in the body of that my book And this you do that you may make your self a campus Martius to sport in without confinement to my method But you name not any page of my book where those principles may all or any of them be found And you do wifely For in the sence those words do either naturally make out or in which you understand them of all the whole ten I cannot own any one for mine own set down in my book The first of my principles must be this That we received the Gospel first from Rome In your sence I never spoke this We that is we English first received it thence But you talk against it as if I meant that Brittans had it first from Rome We had it not first from Rome say you but by Joseph of Arimathea from Palestin as Fiat Lux himself acknowledges Sir if Fiat Lux say both these things he cannot mean in your contradictory fals sence but in his own true one We that is we Englishmen the now actual inhabitants of this Land and progeny of the Saxons received
first our Gospel and Christendom from Rome though the Brittans who inhabited this Land before us differing as much from us as Antipodes had some of them been Christned long before us And yet the Christendom that prevailed and lasted among the Brittans even they also as well as we had it from Rome too mark this likewise But you reply Though persons from Rome did first plant Christianity among the Saxons was it the Popes Religion they taught did the Pope first finde it out or did they Baptise in the name of the Pope Good Sir it was the Popes Religion not invented by him as your cavil fondly imagines but owned professed and put in practice by him and from him derived unto us by his missioners You adde Did not the Gospel come to Rome as well as to us for it was not first preached there Sir properly speaking it came not so to Rome as it came to us For one of the twelve fountains nay two of the thirteen and those the largest and greatest was transferred to Rome which they watered with their blood we had never any such standing fountain of Christian Religion here but only a stream derived to us from thence My second assertion must be From whom we first received our Religion with them we must still abide This principle as it is never delivered by Fiat Lux though you put it upon me so is it in the latitude it carries and wherin you understand it absolutely fals never thought of by me and indeed impossible For how can we abide with them in any truth who may perhaps not abide in it themselvs Great part of Flanders was first converted by Englishmen and yet are they not obliged either by Fiat Lux or any lux whatsoever to accompany the English in our now present wayes If Rome first taught us Christianity she may then rather plead a power to guide us than we her This or some such like thing I might speak and rationally speak it But that we or any other should be obliged still to abide or rather to follow them who first taught us Religion though they should themselvs forsake their own doctrin as you would make me speak is a piece of folly never came into my thoughts And you may be ashamed to put it upon me Why do you not set down my own words and the page of my book where I delivered this principle My third must be The Roman Religion is still the same This also I do no where formally express nor enter into any such common place You will say I suppose it But doth this justifie you who say here that I assert it as a principle let it then be supposed for I do indeed suppose it becaus I know it hath been demonstrativly proved a hundred times over You deny it has bin proved why do you not then disprove it Becaus you decline say you all common places Very good so do I let us com to proper ones You fall then upon my Queries in the end of my book The Roman was once a true flourishing Church and if she ever fell she must fall either by apostasie heresie or schism c. So I speak there And to this you reply that the Church that then was in the Apostles time was indeed true not that Roman Church that now is So so then say I that former true Church must fall then som time or other when did she fall and how did she fall by apostacy heresy or schism Perhaps say you neither way for she might fall by an earthquake Sir we speak not here of any casual or natural downfall or death of mortals by plague famine or earthquake but a moral and voluntary laps in faith What do you speak to me of earthquakes You adde therfor the second time that she might fall by idolatry and so neither by apostacy heresy or schism Good Sir idolatry is a mixt misdemeanour both in faith and manners I speak of the single one of faith And he that falls by idolatry if he keep still some parts of Christianity entire he falls by heresy by apostacy if he keep none At last finding your self pusled in the third place you lay on load She fell say you by apostacy idolatry heresy schism licentiousnes and prophanenes of life And in this you do not much unlike the drunken youth who being bid to hit his masters finger with his when he perceived he could not do it he ran his whole fist against it But did she fall by apostacy By a partial one say you not a total one Good Sir in this division apostasy is set to expres a total relaps in opposition to heresy which is the partial Did she then fall by heresy or partial apostasy in adhering to any error in faith contary to the approved doctrin of the Church Here you smile seriously and tell me that since I take the Roman and Catholik Church to be one she could not indeed adhere to any thing but what she did adhere unto Sir I take them indeed to be one but here I speak ad hominem to one that does not take them so And then if indeed the Roman Church had ever swerved in faith as you say she has and be her self but as another ordinary particular Church as you say she is then might you find som one or other more general Church if any ther were possitively to judg her som Oecumenical councel to condemn her som fathers either greek or latin expresly to write against her as Protestants now do som or other grave solemn autority to censur her or at least som company of beleevers out of whose body she went and from whose faith she fell Since you are no wayes able to assign any of these particulars my Query remains unanswered and the Roman still as flourishing a Church as ever she was The fourth assertion frequently say you pleaded by our Authour is that all things as to religion were ever quiet and in peace before the Protestants relinquishment of the Roman Sea This principle you pretend is drawn out of Fiat Lux not becaus it is there but only to open a door for your self to expatiate into som wide general discours about the many wars distractions and factious altercations that have been aforetime up and down the world in som several ages of Christianity And you therfor say it is frequently pleaded by me becaus indeed I never speak one word of it And it is in truth a fals and fond assertion Though neither you nor I can deny that such as keep unity of faith with that Church can never so long as they hold it fall out upon that account If you had either cited the place or set down my own words they would have spoke their meaning I might say perhaps that our Land had no part of those disturbances upon the account of religion all the thousand years it was Catholik which it hath suffered in one age since or the like But that all
to him whom God hath set over us as our head and ruler under him and none exalt himself against him I know you will laugh at this my observation but I cannot but tell you what I think To return then to my former discours when I speak good Sir of the news of Christianity first brought to this land I mean not that which was first brought upon the earth or soil of this land and spoken to any body then dwelling here but which was delivered to the fore-fathers of the now present inhabitants who be Saxes or Englishmen And I say that we the now present inhabitants of England off-spring of the English or Saxons had the first news of our Christianity immediately from Rome and from Pope Gregorius the Roman Patriarch by the hands of his missioner St. Austin And this all men know to be as true as they know that Papists are now becom odious Sith then the categorick assertions are both clear namely that the Papist first brought us the news of Christianity and secondly that the Papist is now becom odious amongst us what say you to my consequence that the whole story of Christianity may as well be deemed a Romance as any part of that Christianity we at first received as now judged to be part of a Romance This consequence of mine it behoved a man of those great parts you would be thought to have to heed attentively and yet you never mind it You adde in the close of your discours that many things delivered us at first with the first news of Christianity may be afterwards rejected for the love of Christ and by the commission of Christ But Sir what love of Christ dictates what commission of Christ allows you to choos and reject at your own pleasure what heretick was ever so much a fool as not to pretend the love of Christ and commission of Christ for what he did How shall any one know you do it out of any such either love or commission sith those who delivered the articles of faith now rejected pretended equal love of Christ and commission of Christ for the delivery of them as of any other And why may we not at length reject all the rest for love of something els when this love of Christ which is now crept out into the very outside of our lips is slipt off thence Do you think men cannot finde a cavil against him as well as his law delivered unto us with the first news of him and as easily dig up the root as cut up the branches Is not the thing already don and many becom atheists upon that account Pray speak to me somthing of reason Did not the Jews by pretens of their love to that immortal God whom their forefathers served reject the whole Gospel at once and why may not we possibly as well do it by peece-meals Let us leav cavils Grant my supposition which you know you cannot deny then speak to my consequence which I deem most strong and good to infer a conclusion which neither you nor I can grant I tell you plainly and without tergiversation before God and all his holy angels what I should think if I descended unto any conclusion in this affair And it is this either the Papist who holds at this day all those articles of faith which were delivered at the first conversion of this land by St. Austin is unjustly becom odious amongst us or els my honest Parsons throw off your cassocks and resign your benefices and glebe-lands into the hands of your neighbours whose they were aforetime my consequence is irrefragable If any part much more if many parts great substantial parts of religion brought into the land with the first news of Christianity be once rejected as they are now amongst us as Romish or Romancical and that rejection or reformation be permitted then may other parts and all parts if the gap be not stopt be lookt upon at length as points of no better a condition Nay it must needs be so for the same way and means that lopt off som branches will do the like to others and root too A villification of that Church wherein they find themselvs who have a minde to prevaricate upon pretens of Scritur and power of interpreting light spirit or reason adjoyned with a personal obstinacy that will not submit will do it roundly and to effect This first brought off the Protestants from the Roman catholik Church this lately separated the Presbyterian from the English Protestant Church the Independent from the Presbyterian the Quaker from other Independents And this last good man heeds nothing of Christian religion but only the moral part which in deed and truth is but honest paganisme This speech is worthy of all serious consideration And I could wish you would ponder it seriously See if the Quaker deny not as resolutely the regenerating power of baptism as you the efficacy of absolution See if the Presbyterian do not with as much reason evacuate the prelacy of Protestants as they the Papacy See if the Socinian arguments against the Trinity be not as strong as yours against the real presence in the Eucharist See if the Jew do not with as much plausibility deride Christ as you his Church See if Porphiry Julian and other ancient pagans do not as strongly confute all Christianity as we any part of it He is a fool that having a will and power enough cannot find out as plausible a pretence for the pulling down of Churches as we had any for the destroying of Monasteries Ther be books lately set forth and by more then one authour here in this land which do as powerfully dissipate the conceit we once had of hell as any ever did elude Purgatory Did we not lately find out texts and reasonings against our King and monarchy as many as we found out long ago against Pope and popery Gods providence and our souls immortality if any list to deny he may have more abundant argumentations every where occurring than any other piece of popery now rejected ever felt If one text of scriptur be by a trope of rhetorick made to speak a sens contrarty to what was beleeved in catholik times in any one point cannot another text by some such slight be forced to frustrate another I am sure it may do so and has done so And thus when all articles are at last by such tricks of wit cashiered can there be wanting several appearing incongruities contradictions tautologies improbabilities to disable all holy writ at once And cannot the Jew afford us at last arguments enough to dissipate at length the very name of Christ out of the world which after the whole extirpation of his law will but float on mens lips like an empty shadow till it quite vanish These things Sir are not only true but clear and evident And nothing is wanting to justifie them but a serious consideration These few words Sir which I have bestowed upon you by way of
easily conveighed Christ our Lord drew a compendium of all divine truths into two words which his great apostle again abridged into one And if the several gospels for every day in the year which are or may be in the hands of all catholiks the chiefest particles of divine epistles books of sacred history and meditation upon all the mysteries of salvation and spiritual treatises for all occasions and uses which be numberles amongst catholiks adjoyned to the many several rites of examination of conscience daily and continual practis of prayer and fasting and an orderly commemoration of the things God hath wrought for us throughout the year which all by law are tied to observ and do observ them may not give a sufficient acquaintance of what concerns our salvation and promote them enough towards it I am to seek what it is that can or what further good it may do to read the letter of Saint Pauls epistles to the Romans for example or Corinthians wherin questions and cases and theological discourses are treated that vulgar people can neither understand nor are at all concerned to know And I pray you tell me ingeniously and without heat what more of good could accrew to any by the translated letter of a book whereof I will be bold to say that nine parts in ten concern not my particular either to know or practis than by the conceived substance of Gods will to me and my own duty towards him or what is ther now here in England when the letter of scriptur is set open to every mans eye any more either of peace or charity piety or justice than in former catholik times when the substance of Gods word and will was given people in short and the observance of their duty prolixly prest upon them What did they do in those ancient catholik times they flockt every day in the week to their Churches which stood continually open there to pray and meditate and renew their good purposes they sung psalms hymns and canticles all over the land both day and night they built all our churches that we have at this day remaining amongst us and as many more which we have razed and pulled down they founded our universities established our laws set out tythes and glebe-land for their clergy built hospitals erected corporations in a word did all the good things we found don for our good in this our native kingdom But Quid agitur in Anglia Consulitur de religione The former Christians practised and we dispute they had a religion we are still seeking one they exercised themselvs in good works by the guidance of their holy catholik faith which leads to them all these works we by our faith evacuate as menstruous rags they had the substance of true religion in their hearts we the text in our lips they had nothing to do but to conform their lives to Gods will all our endeavour is to apply Gods word to our own factions Sir mistake me not The question between us is not Whether the people are to have Gods word or no but whether that word consists in the letter left to the peoples disposal or in the substance urgently imposed upon people for their practis And this becaus you understand not but mistake the whole business all your talk in this your eighteenth chapter vades into nothing Where Fiat Lux sayes in that forenamed paragraff that the Pentateuch or hagiography was never by any High-priest among the Jew◠〈◊〉 into a vulgar tongue nor the Gospel or Litâ—… out of greek in the Eastern part of the Christian Church or latin in the Western You slight this discours of mine becaus hebrew greek and latin was say you vulgar tongues themselvs I know this well enough But when and how long ago were they so not for som hundreds of years to my knowledge And was the Bible Psalms or Christian liturgy then put into vulgar tongues when those they were first writ in ceased to be vulgar This you should have spoke to if you had meant to say any thing or gain-say me Nor is it to purpos to tell me that S. Jerome translated the Bible into Dalmatian I know well enough it has been so translated by some special persons into Gothish Armenian Ethiopian and other particular dialects But did the Church either of the Hebrews or Christians either greek or latin ever deliver it so translated to the generality of people or use it in their service or command it so to be don as a thing of general concernment and necessity So far is it from this that they would never permit it This I said and I first said it before you spoke and your meer gainsay without further reason or probability of proof cannot disposses me Dr. Cousins now byshop of Durham lately sojourneying in Paris when he understood of a grecian byshops arrival there did with some other English Gentlemen in his company give him a visit and with the same or like company went afterwards to see him The articles of our English Church were translated into greek and shown him Many questions were asked him about the service of the grecian Church praying for the dead invocation of Saints real presence confession c. Dr. Cousins can tell himself what answer he received from that venerable grave prelate Cyrillus archbishop of Trapesond for that was his name and title In brief he owned not those articles as any way consonant to the faith of the Greeks who beleeved and had ever practised the contrary He also told them distinctly and openly that Mass or Liturgy was and had ever been the great work of their Christianity all over the greek Church that confession of sins to a priest praying for the dead invocation of saints and such like points wherein we in England differ from papists were all great parts of their religion and their constant practis Finally he let them know that all the Liturgies both those of St. Basil St. Chrysostom St. Gregory Nazianzen were ever kept in the learned greek differing from the vulgar language And withall showed his own greek book of Liturgy which he used himself at the altar Dr. Cousins did himself see him officiate with his lay-brother a monk of St. Basil belonging to St. Catherins monastery in mount Sina ministring to him at the altar and found both by his words and practis that in all those and other essential parts and observances of Christianity the Greeks agreed perfectly with the Roman Church This testimony Sir of a venerable arch-byshop to such a worthy person as Dr. Cousins might I should think suffice to justifie my words and make you beleev with me that Christian Liturgies have ever been used as Fiat Lux speaks in a learned language distinct from the vulgar But we need not go far from home for a testimony Neither the Bible nor Service-book was ever seen here in England for a thousand years space in any other language but Latin before Edward the sixt dayes
Dally this testament can be of no value For it proceeds upon an uncertain if not fals supposition Who can say assuredly that either you are his son Caius or that Caius is indeed his son 3. Either quoth Chillingworth you must be his son and actual heir while he was alive or when he was dead Not while he was alive for the right can be but in one at once Not when he was dead for no man can be a son to one that is not no more then any person that is alive can be a father to one that has no being 4. Were this right quoth Baxter which is conveighed to you in your father only or in som others also besides himself If in himself alone why doth he say constituo which signifies simul statuo or I appoint together with others 5. It seems to me quoth Blondel that this testament Mr Caius is rather against then with you Either you pretend to be his son before his testament was made or after If before your own evidence witnesses against you Constituo Caium filium meum I make Caius my son If after then by this testament you are made his son but supposed only an heir and a title for that here is none at all 6. He does indeed quoth Plessis make him truly his heir But of what not of his estate which we contend about but only of his goods all his goods And can you think Mr. Caius that a dying man would speak improperly surely no. The goods of the mind vertue prudence temperance these as Aristotle witnesses are proprie bona properly are only to be called goods But the goods of the body and goods of fortune these are improperly and falssy so called 7. Let it be what kind of goods you will quoth Hall this very word meorum Mr. Caius quite overthrows all your pretensions These are your fathers words you say well then if it be so either the state you plead for is now his or now not his If it be now his then it is not yours if it be now not his then the very title you rely upon is fals 8. A testament is to be taken in its strict and rigorous sens quoth Field and so the word omnium spoils your plea Mr. Caius You must either have all his goods or none but you have neither his good face nor other his good endowments c. 9 Com com quoth Crackanthorp we needed not have gon so far or used so many words Caius pretends that his father who made this testament is the last of seventeen Knights of his family Out of his own mouth I will condemn him and with the very first word of his will he sayes his father made which is Ego For it is clear enough that Ego is the first person and not the last And all these are ushered in by a young Whitby To this hath Chamier told you that c. Can you not see what incomparable Chillingworth hath taught you that c. You will still be impertinent though learned Plessis hath informed you that c. Where were your eyes when great Dally hath told you that c. In these few words Sir I have given you a clear Emblem not only of this book of Mr. Whitbies but of all the writings have been made against catholik religion since the reformation Ther is no evidence so clear for that antient religion but it is endeavoured several wayes to be made frustrate Although unto Catholiks who understand their religion those evasions signifie no more then these I have specified against a title most irrefragable and firm Yet in that contest children and unexperienced people would judg poor Caius to be utterly lost And so indeed he will if those crafty Lawyers may determin the busines without recours to any Judg as is don in all our affairs and controversies of religion How many sophistical evasions is he to answer about one and the same thing How many captious snares to incur in any one of his answers to be overwhelmed without doubt while no Judg interposes either with their multitude of words or force of arms But enough of this which indeed can never be too much thought of Mr. Whitby Sir begins and ends his book just as you begin and end yours against which he writes For as you in the conclusion of your book set down som rules which you desire him that shall reply unto it for more clearnes and order and substantiallity of discours to observ so Whitby in the end of this his reply against your book wherin he hath not heeded to observ so much as any one of those your good rules does also prescribe laws for you if you mean to answer him again wherof the first is That you consider all the answers he hath given to any of your arguments and that otherwis if any one single answer remain your agument must be invalid p. 501. This is the first and wittiest of his conditions For the several shifts and evasions of above twenty men which he makes use of about most of the substantial points of controversie being all put together and multiplied as they be to som thousands would if they should be all spoken to in particular though never so briefly rais such a bulk of a book as hath been seldom seen and would never be read But being as I have already told you contradictory one to another and ten to one excessively childish would no less disable the repute and gravity of that man who should so much as take notice of them then to play with boyes at span-counter in the streets And as he ends his book with the same method of prescribing laws as you concluded yours so doth he begin his in the very self-same words as you enter yours I cannot forbid my self to wonder that c. So begins your book I cannot forbid my self to wonder that c. so begins this book of his which he writes against you imitating and repeating your very words for many lines together and returning them hand over head upon your self by the method of our good women of Billingsgate not caring so he say again what you speak how true or fals just or unjust his words be Thus much in general I shall say more by and by after I have briefly told you what he does in each particular chapter of his book His first ch from page 1 to 7. Is a bitter invective against Papists whom he concludes for their cruelties and disloyalty unworthy of mercy or any affection He acknowledges indeed that Catholik religion cannot stand justly charged with any such crimes p. 2. But yet he layes the crimes upon them all notwithstanding so indefinitely and only upon them that he excludes universally all professours of that religion and them alone from all compassion and love Although he knows in his heart both that the religion the very religion of som others in this land stands justly charged with those crimes whereof he
relation to the same death and passion when it was to com And this the very gospel if we would but understand it by the ancient practis of the Church which interprets all written words sufficiently declares And though this great sacrifice be exhibited in Eucharistian species and symbols yet do all Fathers and ancient Councels speak clearly that it is a real true and propitiatory sacrifice though accompanied also with a figur and not only a figurative and symbolical one A child may be the figur of his father and yet is he not rightly said to be only a figurative and symbolical child A sacrifice only symbolical a figurative altar and representative priesthood make only a symbolical figurative and representative religion Chap. 14. from page 230 to 247. Rejects images and sacred figures as both useles and sinful And Mr. Whitby seems here good Sir pardon me to have got indeed a real vantage over you Doubtles you were somwhat overseen when you wrote in your book most advised in other things and serious these ill pondered words to Protestants Were there represented to any of you thinking of other matters a pictur of our Lord hanging upon a Cross could you possibly avoid the calling to mind who our Lord was and what he hath done and suffered for you c. And again Ask your heart and you will find that you would not place St. Peters pictur or the Kings in an unclean place c. I say you are to blame Sir to think men of that way so scrupulous or prone to devotion For Whitby confutes you by an evident demonstration Alas quoth he I see every day Crucifixes in our Colledg windows and yet never find any such effect wrought in me as you talk of Indeed neither those Colledges nor windows in the colledges nor Crucifixes in the windows were ever set up by their good Catholik founders for any such students as Whitby is who findes it seems no effect wrought in him there by the sight of any thing but his good chamber distributions and dinner provided for him in the hall So likewise the connatural respect you plead for as due to figures by force of their representation of respected persons by an example of a Kings pictur he confutes it nimbly I would not fear quoth Whitby to tear his Majesties picturs which somtimes may be found in smoaky Alehouses c. he puts them in smoaky Ale-houses the better to cover his own rudenes nor would I scruple sayes he to put a piece of Popish Mass wherin were haply an Epistle or Gospel extant unto an unclean use And here also he puts the Gospel in a mass-Mass-book as before he set the Kings pictur in a smoaky alehouse to prevent offence that som tender one amongst themselvs might take at his uncivil talk In brief he will not allow any figur or image though it were a Crucifix to have any influence upon our minds unto good thoughts any more then the pictur of Bradshaw or Cromwell hell or the devil Somtimes he sayes they caus bad thoughts but never any good ones And yet he addes that Protestants do keep up picturs notwithstanding though the cries of fanaticks be never so loud against them becaus of the historical use they have What historical use can they have in the name of God if the sight of them as Whitby himself here speaks can bring no part of sacred history to our minds nor the very Crucifix have so much influence upon us as to mind us who our Lord was or what he hath don or suffered for us Unles he will say according to his usual method of answering that they bring into our minds the history of the civil wars betwixt Cesar and Pompey But surely if these kind of sacred images and figures caus only evil thoughts and no good ones the cry of fanaticks against them notwithstanding any historical use which according to Whitby although he talk of it is none at all will not be judged unjust In conclusion he will needs have the Papists both to worship their Images and pray to them And this becaus they use them commonly in their Oratories whither they retire from places of worldly busines to recollect themselvs and pray when time and devotion invites them to it But if for this the Papist must suffer his doom what will Whitby say when he shall be accused himself for worshipping the roof and rafters of the Church towards which he casts up his eyes when he stands in his pulpit to pray before and after his sermon Even the poor Jews were derided by the Roman Satyrist as adorers of the Welkin and clouds And who can escape the censur whether he have som pious representation before him to fix his fancy or turn only to the wall and stones He must still kneel before somthing whether he be within door or without in the open air And if he have the assistance of his crucified redeemer represented before him it is probable enough it may help to recollect his mind to humble his spirit and fix his fancy at least it can do no hurt And if I may and needs must frame an idea or pictur of him in my mind why may I not have it in mine eye too But Mr. Whitby will have it whatever you or the whole world knows to the contrary that Papists pray to picturs and consequently make a God of them And he will not have them any more excusable then those Israelites who worshipped God in a Calf Here Sir I learn what I never knew before that the idolatrous Israelites worshipped God in a calf He that shall worship a calf for God I could never in my life yet conceiv how he should worship God in a calf Moses worshipped God in a flaming bush And why Becaus God was by a peculiar presence in that bush or flame to terminate that worship Nor was he blamable in worshipping God so present there But God was not so present in that golden statue of the molten heifer which the Hebrews had set up in Moses absence as the very God which brought them out of Egypt that they could be said to worship God in it And if he had been so present in it they might surely as well have fallen down before him there as any where els The heathen whom the holy Prophet rebuked so earnestly for worshipping the stars and host of heaven did they also worship God in the stars or heavens surely then they were not blame-worthy Where ever God is by a peculiar presence as in heaven and Moses his flame there may and ought he to be worshipped And so Christians worshipped God even in the man Jesus our great and blessed Lord. But his figur or effigies has no more of Gods presence in it then the wall it hangs upon save only the reflection of his outward effigies to recollect the fancy And the respect if we will speak properly does not terminate upon the pictur but upon the person whom it represents
fundamentals the Romanists motives of credibility the Romanists doctrin about the material and formal object of faith c. For all this and several such like talk is but the theological discours of that Catholik Gentleman and of it self no Romanists doctrin at all For I know well enough what Stillingfleet means and would have meant by Romanists doctrin And all his Protestant readers understand therby only Catholik religion and he knows it well enough I should take it ill and be sorry and look upon it as an injury to the Church of God if any one should call my way of defending her faith the Romanists way or my talk the Romanists doctrin however the thing it self defended or excused by me is Roman or Catholik faith The Church has no one way but several methods and several schools and several wayes to declare and explicate and defend her religion And every writer does it according to his personall endowments and judgment some better some wors though the religion so explicated defended and declared be still and ever one and the very same And if indeed I had been to speak in that busines I should never have made any such argument as that Catholik Gentleman did nor will another man think himself obliged to discours as I do although he and I defend both of us the same thing This if Mr. Stillingfleet consider as he ought he will soon perceiv his own pittiful childishnes But thus Doctour OeN dealt with me to my very great pitty and regret Ever and anon Is this your Roman doctrin quoth he Who would have thought that the Romish Church should dare to utter so wicked blasphemies c. First misinterpreting my words and calling that a doctrin which was none at all but only a prosopopy of atheistical objections and then stiling that a Roman doctrin which was but the talk of a particular man So that what he called Roman doctrin and Romish doctrin was neither Romish nor doctrin neither But ministers care not what they say And so much the more wary does it behove all men to be who deal with them Too much care cannot be taken with such men who either cannot or will not distinguish between general faith and particular mens doctrin between religion and several school-methods of defending it between the faith of the whole Church of God and discourses of writers concerning it So ignorant they are all of them or wilfully malicious I find in my heart even a longing desire to expres to you in particular the various shifts and misdemeanours of Stillingfleet But here is now no time or place for it and such a thing if it were done would be but of little use to morrow I mention him only to let you know how much the French Hugonot religion begins here to prevail by means of Whitby Stillingfleet and others to the overthrow of our own Protestant Church here establisht and to let posterity who shall haply see any of these small writings have some little glimmerings of these our present times They doubtles will be glad to see the general cours of things now done even as we are to read the wayes of former reformers although neither we nor they can take any great pleasur in any long particular narrations of their fallacies either against logick or morality when the men are once past and gone Dr. Jeremy Taylor hath also put forth lately a very bitter insulting injurious book against Catholik religion which he calls a Disswasive from Popery Reddet illi dominus secundum opera ejus And God will bless his Catholik beleevers who trust in him and walk according to their holy rule in his fear and love unblamable the very contumelies of adversaries working at length to their greater good And I beseech God who revives all things and Jesus our Lord who gave his testimony under Pontius Pilate a good confession that they may ever observ the commandments of God and the Church his Spous possessing their souls in perfect patience unreprovable unto the coming of Jesus Christ our Lord whom in his own times will the blessed God shew forth the only potent one the King of kings and Lord of Lords who alone hath immortality and inhabits light inaccessible whom no mortal man hath ever seen nor yet can see him to whom be all honour domimion and power for evermore Amen This is the earnest desire and prayer of Sir Your real friend J. V. C. Given in the Nones of March 1664. EPISTOLA AD AMPHIBOLVM AGAINST Dr. Taylor The occasion of this Epistle THe first epistle was written to an adversary the second to a friend this third to a neuter who after he had began to think more moderately of Catholik religion returned upon his reading of Dr. Jeremy Taylor his Disswasive from Popery to his former misconceit And he is by this Epistle given to understand that the said Disswasive is of that nature that it can have no such force upon any judicious man Sermo Horatianus inter Davum Herum D. IAmdudum ausculto cupiens tibi dicere servus Pauca reformido H. Davusne D. Ita Davus amicum Mancipium Domino frugi quod sit satis hoc est Vt vitale putes H. Age libertate Decembri Quando it a majores voluerunt utere Narra D. Pars hominum vitiis gaudet constanter urget Propositum pars multa natat modo recta capessens Interdum pravis obnoxia H. Non dices hodie quorsum haec tam putida tendunt Furcifer D. Ad te inquam H. Quo pacto pessime D. Laudas Fortunam mores antiquae plebis idem Si quis ad illa Deus subitò te agat usque recuses Aut quia non sentis quod clamas rectius esse Aut quia non firmus rectum defendis haeres Nequicquam coeno cupiens evellere plantam Non horam tecum esse potes non otia recte Ponere teque ipsum vitas fugitivus erro H. Vnde mihi lapides D. Quorsum est opus H. Vnde sagittas Aut insanit homo aut versus facit Ocyus hinc te Ni rapis accedes opera agro nona Dunano Epistola ad Amphibolum against Doctour Taylor SIR YOu were pleased to say upon your reading of Fiat Lux that Popery may for ought you knew be more innocent then commonly it is reputed and no wayes so odious as some would make it But now upon the reading of Dr. Taylor 's Disswasive which you desire me to peruse I perceiv you look towards your former thoughts concerning this maligned Popery and invite them home again To deal freely with you I was amazed my self at the reading of that book though not Sir with your amazement but another of my own You startled at Popery whose uglines was there set before your eyes with such fresh colours I at those ugly colours which so injuriously defaced that Religion that most innocent Religion which under the name of Popery lies here traduced by
determining in such affairs Nor is ther any the least mention either in Luther's resistance or Leo his censure about constituting new articles but only deciding the old which Luther would have thought to be erroneous however strengthened by antiquity and from which old errours he would make himself a reformation and innovation by the right which was in himself not subjected to any man no not to the Pope himself in those affairs Is this a mistake think you in your Disswader or somthing wors Truly I cannot think he was so ignorant The like insincerity doth this your Disswader exhibit in all that his talk of the Catholiks dealing with the Fathers works and the indexes or tables adjoyned to them jumbling his words so confusedly together that his reader might beleev that to be don to the Fathers writings themselvs which the Churches care provided to be done to the false glosses tables and indexes annexed to those writings and that to be taken out of those writings which ever was and still is in them and Printers and Correctours complaining of that fault of making alterations in the Fathers Editions which they did not so much as think of Which is a most stupendious insincerity And thus saith he are the Fathers maimed and curtailed by Papists insomuch that Sixtus Senensis praises Pope Pius 5. for this his car ein purging the Fathers works I say this whole talk of his is most prodigiously unjust For that Index Expurgatorius extended not to any writings or works of the Fathers but only to the marginal notes and false glosses and indexes or tables put to them by the hereticks and therfor are Tertullian Origen and some others still printed intire though ther be not a few things in them contrary to Catholik faith And this the very words of Junius a Correctour of a Press cited by the Doctour clearly intimates What saith he Papists dare not do with the Fathers they practise upon us he means Protestant printers and writers and with their little forks thrust out our annotations in the margent and our sayings in the indices although they be consonant to the Fathers minds But saith he this care was so great in Pius 5. that Sixtus Senensis commends the Pope for his industry in purging the Fathers works He did so indeed but if the Doctour had spoken out the sentence he had betrayed his own false heart which he would not willingly do Expurgari saith Senensis emaculari curasti omnium Catholicorum Scriptorum ac praecipue veterum Patrum scripta haereticorum aetatis nostrae faecibus contaminata venenis infecta Your Doctour our Disswader makes Senensis praise the Pope for his purging the Fathers as though he had scowred and scraped off the substance whereas he commended him only for his care in cleansing them from the infectious notes and glosses superadded to them by the hereticks of our times But Sir that I may tell you once for all The falsifications of Authours perverted by this your Disswader are so many so notorious and gross ones that in the very relating them I shall tire both my self and you My design is only to let you know that this whole work of his Disswasive from Popery if the proofs and citations he brings for his talk were true as they are all false signifies nothing at all Two worthy Catholik Gentlemen have discovered by the help of the Libraries in London and Oxford so many most gross falsifications one of them a hundred and fifty the other yet more and greater that it cannot but amaze an honest minded reader to behold them Pray read them Sir and ponder seriously and so rid of that trouble I shall make the more haste in my own design It was their endeavour it seems to show him to be dishonest mine is only to prove him impertinent God reward them for their pains and help me in mine For my hand denies me now his office not able to write with that facility it was wont But becaus I saw no abler pen to appear as I thought they would in the confutation of this slanderous book I judged it my part Sir to give you som general hints of light concerning it till there might issue som more plenary confutation by a better hand And here Sir you must know too that I had no sooner finished this my Epistle but that I understood of another book against this Doctour Taylors Disswasive a very solid book written by Ja. Ser. in order to his own book called Sure-Footing lately set forth which made me doubt for a while whether I should let this of mine appear especially when I considered the industry care and solidity of those three men the last wherof had so taken up what the other two had left for me to say and so utterly confounded this Disswasive that I might well be silent But I remembred a story which I had sometime read in holy writ of Joas the King of Israel who coming to visit Elizeus the Prophet when he lay sick on his death-bed was bid by him for his encouragement against his enemies to strike the ground with the javelin he had in his hand Joas at his word struck the floor three times But the holy man of God was angry with him and said If thou hadst struck five or six or seven times thou hadst smote Syria even to an utter consummation but now thou shalt smite it but thrice So very faulty is this Disswasive that it cannot be smote too often even to an utter consummation § 2 Which is about a leash of new Articles Sayes that in the Church of Rome faith and Christianity encreas like the moon and that ther be now two new articles of faith a coining namely the immaculate Conception and the Popes being above the Councel and one other lately produced in the Councel of Trent sess 21. which is That although the antient Fathers did give the Communion to Infants yet they did not beleev it necessary to salvation Which decree is saith he beyond all bounds of modesty and evident truth Here your Doctour tells news of one Article lately made and two more a coining which will shortly be out of the mint both which news he knows but we know not Indeed Sir this section belongs more to a writer of Diurnals or weakly Intelligencer than to a Doctour of Divinity And therfor at the reading of it I turned suddenly to the frontispiece of the book to see whose Imprimatur it had to it And I found it licensed not by Mr. l' Estrange but Geo. Stradling First then he tells us news to come and then news past A pair of faith articles are now he saith in the mint and will shortly come forth The Virgins immaculate Conception and the Popes being above a Councel But how can your Disswader say that these two are shortly to com forth wheras in this very section he tells us a little afterward that the Councel of Basil decreed the second Article against the
Bond-woman with her son that the sons of Ishmael should be put to the sword or banisht out of their kingdom Now pray hear my discours which I coppied out of that original If my reader here be cautious he may easily discern a reason why all these sects are so loisterous one against another and every one of them against the Roman catholik Ismael disturbed the whole hous and was ever quarrelling and bustling against Isaac The reason is the same both here and there I smael was a natural son and Isaac the legitimate heir And natural sons be generally seditious violent and clamorous As I smael therfor was Isaac his natural brother so is a Protestant Minister but the by-blow of a catholick Priest the Presbyterian likewise to him and so forward till you com to the Quaker who was begot by a delusion and brought into the world by a fright his hand is against every man and every mans hand against him The remedy and only means of peace is Ejice ancillam cum puero suo These be my words out of S. Paul and what is his meaning the same is mine But you will have me in spight of my teeth becaus I speak nothing but good still to mean som evil I thought S. Paul had meant by those words if I must needs discover my understanding to you that the peaceable Isaacs were the only sons of Gods promised love and favour the inheritance of which blessing boisterous Ishmaels can never work out to themselvs by all their persecutions and bustling contentions And according to this meaning I concluded that to consider and think seriously of this were the only remedy and means of peace amongst us here in England Ejice ancillam cum puero suo is an antidote against all contentious emulations which are a suspicious mark not of an elect but of a reprobate But whatever I say I must neither think nor mean but what you will have me to do and that shall still be somthing that is odious An emblem hereof was the rod of Moses which in Moses hand was a walking-staff but out of it a serpent 15 ch from page 286 to 304. In your fifteenth chapter upon my paragraff of Messach you are in a mighty plunge what this Messach should be and what the etimology of that word Latin it is not greek it is not and you are sure it is not hebrew surely it is say you some uncouth word like that of the Gnosticks Paldabaoth Alas good Sir it is English a pure English word used here in England all the Saxons time and som hundred years after the conquest till the French monosyllable had by little and little worn out the last syllable of the word And you may find it yet in the old Saxon laws which I have read my self those especially of King Ina if I rightly remember the name which be yet extant wherin strict care and provision is made that a due reverence be kept by all people in the Church all the time of their Messach which now we call Mess or Mass Then having laughed at my admiration of catholik Service you carp at me for saying that the first Christians were never called together to hear a sermon and to convince me you bring som places out of S. Pauls Epistles and the Acts which commend the ministery of the word This indeed is your usual way of refuting my speeches you flourish copiously in that which is not at all against me and never apply it to my words lest it should appear as it is impertinent I deny not that people were by Gods word converted or that converts were further instructed or that the preaching of Gods word is good and useful many wayes but that which I say is that primitive Christians were never called together for that end as the great work of their Christianity This I have so clearly proved both in the second dialogue of the Reclaimed Papist and also in the foresaid paragraff of Messach that you divert from that to declaim of the necessity and excellency of preaching and bring neither text nor reason that may reach to my words at all You go on and wonder much that we should hear nothing in scriptur of this Christian sacrifice if any such were Sir you will neither hear nor see But say you the passion of our Lord is our Christian sacrifice Do not I say so too But that this incruent sacrifice was instituted by the same Lord before his death to figur out daily before our eyes that passion of his which was then approaching in commemoration of his death so long as the world should last this â—ho I plainly speak it you take no notice of it But the Judaical sacrifice say you is said by the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews in this to differ from the sacrifice of Christians that ours was don but once theirs often It is true the sacrifice of our Lords passion of which the apostle in that whole discours only treats in opposition to that of bulls and goats was so don but once that it could not be don twice But as the sacrifices of the old law were instituted by almighty God to be often iterated before the passion of the Messias for a continual exercise of religion so did the same Lord for the very same purpos of religious exercise institute another to be iterated after his death unto which it were to have reference when it should be past as the former had to the same death when it was to com And it hath a reference so much the more excellent as that it doth by the almighty power of the same Messias exhibit to the faith of his beleevers that very true real body as crucified amongst us whereof the former Mosaical sacrifices gave meerly a shadow Did not our Lord do this Were not the apostles according to this rite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sacrificing to our great Lord God when S. Paul was by imposition of hands segregated from the laiety for his divine service as I clearly in that my paragraff evince out of the history of the Acts of the apostles No say you the apostles were not then about any sacrifice but only preaching Gods word or som such thing to the people in the name and behalf of God But Sir is this to be in earnest or to jest The sacred text sayes they were sacrificing to our Lord liturgying and ministring to him You say They were not sacrificing to God but only preaching to the people And now the question is whether you or I more rightly understand that Apostoloicall book For my sence and meaning I have all antiquity as well as the plain words of sacred text you have neither 16 ch from page 304 to 313. Your sixteenth chapter upon my paragraff of the Virgin Mary which is you say the most disingenious of all my book is spent in an invective against calumnies which brings you upon your often iterated common place of Pagans
reproaches of Christians And whatever my paragraff may be this your chapter seems to me as ingenious as the very best of your book and absolutely frivolous And must you invegh against calumnies whose whole book is nothing els It is a bundle of slanders and a meer quiver of fiery darts of desolation and malice 17. ch from page 313 to 325. Your seventeenth chapter upon my paragraff of Images or Figures nibbles at more of my discours made in that one paragraff then you have taken notice of in ten of my others A man say you may indeed have such thoughts of devotion as Fiat Lux speaks of upon the sight of images which be sees banging in Churches if he be a man distraught of his wits not if he be himself and sober So then mad men it seems can tell what figures represent sober and wise men cannot Again The violation of an image say you redounds to the prototype if it be rightly and duly represented not els And when then is Christ crucified for example rightly and duly represented Are you one of those mad men can tell what figures represent yea or no. The hanging up of traitors in effigie is don say you only to make a declaration of the fact and not to cast a dishonour upon the person So you say Becaus you know it don long after the fact has rung all the whole Kingdom over and don not in places of concours but ignominy not in the Exchange but Tyburn not with any characters declaring the fact but with a halter about his neck to denote the death and ignominy inflicted as far as is possible upon him You go on Where the Psalmist complains of Gods enemies breaking down his sculptures he means not therby any images or figures but only wainscot or carved ceiling Surely the Prophet wanted a word then to express himself or translatours to express the Prophet If we must guess at his meaning without heeding his words one might think it as probable what also holy scripture tells us that the hous of God was ordained with sculptures of Cherubims and other angels to represent his true hous that is above as with the circles quadrats triangels rhombos and rhomboides of wainscot The eye say you again may not have her species as well as the ear becaus God has commanded the one and not the other This Sir you only say Fiat Lux makes it appear that God commands and commends both and the nature of man requires both nor can you give any reason why I may not look upon him who was crucified as well as hear of him You adde Nor is the sole end of preaching as Fiat Lux would have it only to move the mind of the hearers unto corresponding affections Why do not you say then what els it is for you deny my words but declare your self no other end but what I have in those short words exprest You may haply conceal in your heart som other end of your preaching which you are loath to speak as to procure applaus to vent your rhetorick to get good benefices to show your fine cloth and silks your pure neat white starched bands and cuffs button'd handkerchiefs and ladies gloves to inflame factions get wives or the like but I could not think of all things at once nor needed I to express any more then that one end of preaching which is connatural apostolical and legal You go on God indeed commanded the Cherubims to be set upon the ark but those cherubims were images of nothing of what should they be images Nor were they set up to be adored Besides God who commanded them to be set up did no more gainsay his own prohibition of images to be made than he contradicted his own rule which forbids to steal when he commanded his people to spoil the Egyptians But Sir since the real Cherubims are not made of our beaten gold those set up by Moses must be only figures And of what els should they be figures but of those real ones Nor is it either to my purpos or yours that they are set up to be adored For images in catholick Churches are not set up for any such purpos nor do I any where say it No man alive has any such thought nor tradition no councel hath delivered it no practis infers it Christian Philosophers or Schoolmen have indeed raised a philosophical question Whether any respect may be terminated upon the figure purely as it such an absolute entity in it self besides that relative one that falls only upon the prototype But what they question or what they talk or what they resolve does no more belong becaus they say it unto catholik faith then if they had been asleep and said nothing All catholik councels and practis declares such sacred figures to be expedient assistants to our thoughts in our divine meditation and prayers and that is all that I know of it And the relative respect that is given to any figur as it is such a figur whether in a glass or in any more fixed postur to supply the defects of a mirrour that it terminates naturally upon the sampler or prototype is evident to right reason and philosophy And it cannot be otherwise That which you speak of the Israelites spoiling the Egyptians by Gods command hath som species of an argument in it But Sir we must know you as well as I that God who forbids men to steal did not then command to steal as you say he did when he bad his people spoil the Egyptians under the species of a loan Many things legitimate that their act of spoil and clear it from any notion of theft or robbery or stealing First they might have of themselvs a right to those few goods in satisfaction of the long oppression they had unjustly undergon and it may be that in that their great haste their own allowance was not then paid them But secondly becaus it is a thing of danger that any servant should be allowed to right himself by putting his hand to his masters goods though his case of wrong be never so clear therfor did the command of God intervene to justifie their action And the absolute dominion of the whole earth and all that is in it being inseparably in the hands of God made that by Gods express command to be truly now and justly the Hebrews right which by an inferiour and subordinate title such as is in the hand of creatures belonged to the Egyptians before So that the Hebrews in taking those goods with them did not steal nor did God command them to steal when he bad them carry those goods of the Egyptians with them for that upon that very command of God they now ceased to be the Egyptians any more But this can no wayes be applied to the busines of Images nor could God command the Hebrews to make any images if he had absolutely forbidden to have any at all made For this concerns not any affair between