of all the rest He pretends it is this That all Men ought to understand their Religion This I confess is a Reasoning I did not think of nor would it hardly I fear have been used but by one who had first took up his Opinion from the Recommendation of Fashion or Interest and then sought Topicks to make it good Perhaps the deference due to your Character excused you from the trouble of quoting the Page where I pretend as you say and it is so little like my way of Reasoning that I shall not look for it in a Book where I remember nothing of it and where without your Direction I fear the Reader will scarce find it Though I have not that vivacity of Thought that elevation of Mind which Mr. Ed's demands yet common sense would have kept me from contending that there is but one Article because all Men ought to understand their Religion Numbers of Propositions may be harder to be remembred but 't is the abstruseness of the Notions or obscurity inconsistency or doubtfulness of the Terms or Expressions that makes them hard to be understood And one single Proposition may more perplex the Understanding than twenty other But where did you find I contended for one single Article so as to exclude all the rest You might have remembred that I say p. 44. That the Article of the One only true God was also necessary to be believed This might have satisfied you that I did not so contend for one Article of Faith as to be at defiance with more than one However you insist on the word one with great vigour from p. 108. to 121. And you did well you had else lost all the force of that killing stroke reserved for the Close in that sharp Jest of Vnitarians and a clinch or two more of great moment Having found by a careful perusal of the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles that the Religion they proposed consisted in that short plain easie and intelligible Summary which I set down p. 301. in these words Believing Jesus to be the Saviour promised and taking him now raised from the Dead and constituted the Lord and Judge of Men to be their King and Ruler I could not forbear magnifying the Wisdom and Goodness of God which infinitely exceeds the thoughts of ignorant vain and narrow-minded Man in these following words The All-Merciful God seems herein to have consulted the Poor of this World and the Bulk of Mankind THESE ARE ARTICLES that the Labouring and Illiterate Man may comprehend Having thus plainly mentioned more than one Article I might have taken it amiss that Mr. Ed's should be at so much pains as he is to blame me for contending for one Article because I thought more than one could not be understood had he not had many fine things to say in his declamation upon one Article which affords him so much Matter that less than seven pages could not hold it Only here and there as Men of Oratory often do he mistakes the business as p. 115. where he says I urge that there must be nothing in Christianity that is not plain and exactly levelled to all mens Mother Wit I desire to know where I said so or that the very manner of every thing in Christianity must be clear and intelligible every thing must be presently comprehended by the weakest Noddle or else it 's no part of Religion especially of Christianity As he has it p. 119. I am sure it is not in pag. 255. 289. 292. of my Book These therefore to convince him that I am of another Opinion I shall desire some body to read to Mr. Edwards For he himself reads my Book with such Spectacles as make him find Meanings and Words in it neither of which I put there He should have remembred that I speak not of all the Doctrines of Christianity nor all that is published to the World in it but of those Truths only which are absolutely required to be believed to make any one a Christian. And these I find are so plain and easie that I see no Reason why every body with me should not Magnifie the Goodness and Condescension of the Almighty who having out of his free Grace proposed a new Law of Faith to sinful and lost Man hath by that Law required no harder terms nothing as absolutely necessary to be believed but what is suited to Vulgar Capacities and the Comprehension of Illiterate Men. You are a little out again p. 118. where you Ironically say as if it were my sense Let us have but one Article though it be with defiance to all the rest Jesting apart Sir This is a serious Truth That what our Saviour and his Apostles preached and admitted Men into the Church for believing is all that is absolutely required to make a Man a Christian. But this is without any Defiance of all the rest taught in the Word of God This excludes not the belief of any one of those many other Truths contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments which it is the Duty of every Christian to study and thereby build himself up on our most Holy Faith receiving with stedfast Belief and ready Obedience all those things which the Spirit of Truth hath therein revealed But that all the rest of the inspired Writings or if you please Articles are of equal necessity to be believed to make a Man a Christian with what was preached by our Saviour and his Apostles that I deny A Man as I have shewn may be a Christian and a Believer without actually believing them Because those whom our Saviour and his Apostles by their Preaching and Discourses converted to the Faith were made Christians and Believers barely upon the receiving what they preached to them I hope it is no derogation to the Christian Religion to say that the Fundamentals of it i. e. all that is necessary to be believed in it by all Men is easie to be understood by all Men. This I thought my self authorized to say by the very easie and very intelligible Articles insisted on by our Saviour and his Apostles which contain nothing but what could be understood by the bulk of Mankind a Term which I know not why Mr. Ed's p. 117. is offended at and thereupon is after his fashion sharp upon me about Captain Tom and his Myrmidons for whom he tells me I am going to make a Religion The making of Religions and Creeds I leave to others I only set down the Christian Religion as I find our Saviour and his Apostles preached it and preached it to and left it for the Ignorant and unlearned Multitude For I hope you do not think how contemptibly soever you speak of the Venerable Mob as you are pleased to dignifie them p. 117. that the Bulk of Mankind or in your Phrase the Rabble are not concerned in Religion or ought not to understand it in order to their Salvation Nor are you I hope acquainted with any
our Saviour and the Apostles in their Preaching urged them not as necessary to be believed to make Men Christians is by our own Authority to add Prejudices to Prejudices and to block up our own way to those Men whom we would have access to and prevail upon But some Men had rather you should write Booty and cross your own design of removing mens Prejudices to Christianity than leave out one tittle of what they put into their Systems To such I say Convince but Men of the Mission of Jesus Christ make them but see the Truth Simplicity and Reasonableness of what he himself Taught and required to be believed by his Followers and you need not doubt but being once fully perswaded of his Doctrine and the Advantages which all Christians agree are received by him such Converts will not lay by the Scriptures but by a constant Reading and Study of them get all the Light they can from this Divine Revelation and nourish themselves up in the words of Faith and of good Doctrin as St. Paul speaks to Timothy But some Men will not bear it that any one should speak of Religion but according to the Model that they themselves have made of it Nay though he proposes it upon the very Terms and in the very Words which our Saviour and his Apostles preached it in yet he shall not escape Censures and the severest Insinuations To deviate in the least or to omit any thing contained in their Articles is Heresie under the most invidious Names in fashion and 't is well if he escapes being a down-right Atheist Whether this be the way for Teachers to make themselves hearkened to as Men in earnest in Religion and really concerned for the Salvation of mens Souls I leave them to consider What success it has had towards perswading Men of the Truth of Christianity their own Complaints of the prevalency of Atheism on the one hand and the Number of Deists on the other sufficiently shew Another thing laid to my Charge p. 105. 107. is my forgetting or rather wilful omitting some plain and obvious Passages and some Famous Testimonies in the Evangelists namely Mat. 28. 19. Go teach all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost And Iohn 1. 1. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God And verse 14. And the Word was made Flesh. Mine it seems in this Book are all sins of Omission And yet when it came out the buz and flutter and noise which was made and the Reports which were raised would have perswaded the World that it subverted all Morality and was designed against the Christian Religion I must confess Discourses of this kind which I met with spread up and down at first amazed me knowing the sincerity of those Thoughts which perswaded me to publish it not without some hope of doing some Service to decaying Piety and mistaken and slandered Christianity I satisfied my self against those Heats with this assurance that if there was any thing in my Book against what any one called Religion it was not against the Religion contained in the Gospel And for that I appeal to all Mankind But to return to Mr. Ed's in particular I must take leave to tell him that if omitting plain and obvious Passages and famous Testimonies in the Evangelists be a fault in me I wonder why he among so many of this kind that I am guilty of mentions so few For I must acknowledge I have omitted more nay many more that are plain and obvious Passages and famous Testimonies in the Evangelists than those he takes notice of But if I have left out none of those Passages or Testimonies which contain what our Saviour and his Apostles preached and required assent to to make men Believers I shall think my Omissions let them be what they will no faults in the present case What ever Doctrines Mr. Edwards would have to be believed if they are such as our Saviour and his Apostles required to be believed to make a Man a Christian he will be sure to find them in those Preachings and Famous Testimonies of our Saviour and his Apostles that I have quoted And if they are not there he may rest satisfied that they were not proposed by our Saviour and his Apostles as necessary to be believed to make Men Christ's Disciples If the Omission of other Texts in the Evangelists which are all true also and no one of them to be disbelieved be a fault it might have been expected that Mr. Edwards should have accused me for leaving out Mat. 1. 18. to 23. and Mat. 17. 24. 35. 50. 60. for these are plain and obvious Passages and famous Testimonies in the Evangelists and such whereon these Articles of the Apostles Creed viz. Born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried are founded These being Articles of the Apostles Creed are look'd upon as Fundamental Doctrines And one would wonder why Mr. Edwards so quietly passes by their Omission did it not appear that he was so intent on fixing his Imputation of Socinianism upon me that rather than miss that he was content to drop the other Articles of his Creed For I must observe to him that if he had blamed me for the Omission of the places last quoted out of St. Matthew as he had as much reason as for any other it would planily have appeared how idle and ill-grounded his charging Socinianism on me was But at any rate he was to give the Book an ill Name Not because it was Socinian For he has no more reason to charge it with Socinianism for the Omissions he mentions than the Apostles Creed 'T is therefore well for the Compilers of that Creed that they lived not in Mr. Edwards's days For he would no doubt have found them all over Socinianized for omitting the Texts he quotes and the Doctrines he collects out of Ioh. 1. Ioh. 14. p. 107 108. Socinianism then is not the fault of the Book whatever else it be For I repeat it again there is not one word of Socinianism in it I that am not so good at Conjectures as Mr. Edwards shall leave it to him to say or to those who can bear the plainness and simplicity of the Gospel to guess what its fault is Some Men are shrewd guessers and others would be thought to be so But he must be carried far by his forward Inclination who does not take notice that the World is apt to think him a Diviner for any thing rather than for the sake of Truth who sets up his own Suspicions against the direct Evidence of things and pretends to know other mens Thoughts and Reasons better than they themselves I had said that the Epistles being writ to those who were already Believers could not be supposed to be writ to them to teach them Fundamentals without which they could not be
who are of that Muscovite Divine's Mind who to one that was talking to him about Religion and the other World replyed That for the Czar indeed and Bojars they might be permitted to raise their hopes to Heaven But that for such Poor Wretches as he they were not to think of Salvation I remember the Pharisees treated the Common People with Contempt and said Have any of the Rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him But this People who knoweth not the Law are cursed But yet these who in the Censure of the Pharisees were cursed were some of the Poor or if you please to have it so the Mobb to whom the Gospel was preached by our Saviour as he tells Iohn's Disciples Matth. XI 5. Pardon me Sir that I have here laid these Examples and Considerations before you a little to prevail with you not to let loose such a Torrent of Wit and Eloquence against the Bulk of Mankind another time and that for a meer Fancy of your own For I do not see how they here came in your way but that you were resolved to set up something to have a fling at and shew your Parts in what you call your Different strain though besides the purpose I know no body was going to ask the Mob what you must believe And as for me I suppose you will take my word for it that I think no Mob no not your Venerable Mob is to be asked what I am to believe Nor that Articles of Faith are to be received by the Vote of Club-men or any other sort of Men you will name instead of them In the following words pag. 115. you ask Whether a Man may not understand those Articles of Faith which you mentioned out of the Gospels and Epistles if they be explained to him as well as that one I speak of 'T is as the Articles are and as they are explained There are Articles that have been some Hundreds of Years explaining Which there are many and those not of the most illiterate who profess they do not yet understand And to instance in no other but He descended into Hell the learned are not yet agreed in the sense of it the great pains has been taken to explain it Next I ask who are to explain your Articles The Papists will explain some of them one way and the Reformed another The Remonstrants and Anti-Remonstrants give them different senses And probably the Trinitarians and Vnitarians will profess that they understand not each others explications And at last I think it may be doubted whether any Articles which need mens Explications can be so clearly and certainly understood as one which is made so very plain by the Scripture it self as not to need any Explication at all Such is this That Jesus is the Messiah For though you learnedly tell us that Messiah is a Hebrew word and no better understood by the Vulgar than Arabick Yet I guess it is so fully explained in the New Testament and in those places I have quoted out of it that no body who can understand any ordinary Sentence in the Scripture can be at a loss about it And 't is plain it needs no other Explication than what our Saviour and the Apostles gave it in their Preaching for as they preached it men received it and that sufficed to make them Believers To conclude when I heard that this Learned Gentleman who had a Name for his study of the Scriptures and Writings on them had done me the Honour to consider my Treatise I promised my self that his Degree Calling and Fame in the World would have secured to me something of weight in his Remarques which might have convinced me of my Mistakes and if he had found any in it justified my quitting of them But having examined what in his concerns my Book I to my wonder find that he has only taken pains to give it an ill Name without so much as attempting to refute any one Position in it how much soever he is pleased to make a noise against several Propositions which he might be free with because they are his own And I have no reason to take it amiss if he has shewn his Zeal and Skill against them He has been so favourable to what is mine as not to use any one Argument against any Passage in my Book This which I take for a Publick Testimony of his Approbation I shall return him my Thanks for when I know whether I owe it to his Mistake Conviction or Kindness But if he writ only for his Bookseller's sake he alone ought to thank him AFter the foregoing Papers were sent to the Press The Witnesses to Christianity of the Reverend and Learned Dr. Patrick now Lord Bishop of Ely fell into my hands I regretted the not having seen it before I writ my Treatise of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. I should then possibly by the Light given me by so good a Guide and so great a Man with more confidence directly have fallen into the knowledge of Christianity which in the way I sought it in its source required the comparing of Texts with Texts and the more than once reading over the Evangelists and Acts besides other parts of Scripture But I had the ill luck not to see that Treatise till so few hours since that I have had time only to read as far as the end of the Introduction or first Chapter And there Mr. Ed's may find that this Pious Bishop whose Writings shew he Studies as well as his Life that he believes the Scriptures owns what Mr. Ed's is pleased to call a plausible Conceit which he says I give over and over again in these formal words viz. That nothing is required to be believed by any Christian Man but this That Iesus is the Messiah The Liberty Mr. Ed's takes in other places deserves not it should be taken upon his word that these formal words are to be found over and over again in my Book unless he had quoted the Pages But I will set him down the formal words which are to be found in this Reverend Prelate's Book p. 14. To be the Son of God and to be Christ being but different expressions of the same thing And p. 10. It is the very same thing to believe that Iesus is the Christ and to believe that Iesus is the Son of God Express it how you please This ALONE is the Faith which can regenerate a Man and put a Divine Spirit into him that is makes him a Conquerour over the World as Iesus was I have quoted only these few words but Mr. Ed's if he pleases or any body else may in this first Chapter satisfie himself more fully that the Design of it is to shew that in our Saviour's time Son of God was a known and received Name or Appellation of the Messiah and so used in the Holy Writers And that the Faith that was to make Men Christians was only the believing that Iesus is the Messiah
taking Reprizals even on the most Priviledged sort of Men. Mr. Ed's who is entrenched in Orthodoxy and so is as safe in Matters of Faith almost as Infallibility it self is yet as apt to Err as others in Matter of Fact But he has not yet done with me about the Epistles All his fine Draught of my slighting that part of the Scripture will be lost unless the last strokes compleat it into Socinianism In his following words you have the Conclusion of the whole Matter His words are these And more especially if I may Conjecture by all means Sir Conjecturing is your proper Talent you have hitherto done nothing else And I will say that for you you have a lucky Hand at it He doth this i. e. pass by the Epistles with Contempt because he knew that there are so many and frequent and those so illustrious and eminent Attestations to the Doctrine of the ever to be adored Trinity in these Epistles Truly Sir if you will permit me to know what I know as well as you do allow your self to conjecture what you please you are out for this once The Reason why I went not through the Epistles as I did the Gospels and the Acts was that very Reason I printed and that will be found so sufficient a one to all considerate Readers that I believe they will think you need not strain your Conjectures for another And if you think it be so easie to distinguish Fundamentals from not Fundamentals in the Epistles I desire you to try your Skill again in giving the World a perfect Collection of Propositions out of the Epistles that contain all that is required and no more than what is absolutely required to be believed by all Christians without which Faith they cannot be of Christ's Church For I tell you notwithstanding the shew you have made you have not yet done it nor will you affirm that you have His next Page viz. 112. is made up of the same which he calls Not Uncharitable Conjectures I expound he says Iohn 14. 9. c. after the Antitrinitarian Mode And I make Christ and Adam to be Sons of God in the same sense and by their Birth as the Racovians generally do I know not but it may be true that the Antitrinitarians and Racovians understand those places as I do But 't is more than I know that they do so I took not my sense of those Texts from those Writers but from the Scripture it self giving Light to it 's own meaning by one place compared with another What in this way appears to me its true meaning I shall not decline because I am told that it is so understood by the Racovians whom I never yet read nor embrace the contrary though the generality of Divines I more converse with should declare for it If the sense wherein I understand those Texts be a mistake I shall be beholding to you if you will set me right But they are not Popular Authorities or Frightful Names whereby I judge of Truth or Falshood You will now no doubt applaud your Conjectures The Point is gained and I am openly a Socinian since I will not disown that I think the Son of God was a Phrase that among the Iews in our Saviour's time was used for the Messiah though the Socinians understand it in the same sense And therefore I must certainly be of their Perswasion in every thing else I admire the acuteness force and fairness of your Reasoning and so I leave you to Triumph in your Conjectures Only I must desire you to take notice that that Ornament of our Church and every way Eminent Prelate the late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury understood that Phrase in the same sense that I do without being a Socinian You may read what he says concerning Nathanael in his first Serm. of Sincerity published this year His words are these p. 4. And being satisfied that he our Saviour was the Messiah he presently owned him for such calling him the SON OF GOD and the King of Israel Though this Gentleman know my Thoughts as perfectly as if he had for several years past lain in my Bosom yet he is mightily at a loss about my Person As if it at all concerned the Truth contained in my Book what Hand it came from However the Gentleman is mightily perplexed about the Author Why Sir What if it were writ by a Scribler of Bartholomew Fair Drolls with all that flourish of Declamatory Rhetorick and all that smartness of Wit and Jest about Capt. Tom Vnitarins Vnits and Cyphers c. Which are to be found between 115 and 123 Pages of a Book that came out during the merry time of Rope-Dancing and Puppet-Plays What is Truth would I hope nevertheless be Truth in it however odly sprused up by such an Author Though perhaps 't is likely some would be apt to say such Merriment became not the Gravity of my Subject and that I writ not in the stile of a Graduate in Divinity I confess as Mr. Ed's rightly says my fault lyes on the other side in a want of Vivacity and Elevation And I cannot wonder that one of his Character and Palate should find out and complain of my flatness which has so over-charged my Book with plain and direct Texts of Scripture in a matter capable of no other Proofs But yet I must acknowledge his excess of Civility to me He shews me more kindness than I could expect or wish since he prefers what I say to him my self to what is offered to him from the Word of God and makes me this Complement that I begin to mend about the Close i. e. when I leave off quoting of Scripture And the dull work was done of going through the History of the Evangelists and Acts which he computes p. 105. to take up three quarters of my Book Does not all this deserve at least that I should in return take some care of his Credit Which I know not how better to do than by entreating him that when he takes next in hand such a Subject as this is wherein the Salvation of Souls is concerned he would treat it a little more seriously and with a little more Candor left Men should find in his Writings another cause of Atheism which in this Treatise he has not thought fit to mention Ostentation of Wit in general he has made a Cause of Atheism p. 28. But the World will tell him That frothy light Discourses concerning the Serious Matters of Religion and Ostentation of triflng and misbecoming Wit in those who come as Ambassadors from God under the Title of Successors of the Apostles in the great Commission of the Gospel is none of the least Causes of Atheism Some Men have so peculiar a way of Arguing that one may see it influences them in the repeating another Man's Reasoning and seldom fails to make it their own In the next Paragraph I find these words What makes him contend for one single Article with the exclusion