Believers And the Reason I gave why I had not gone through the Writings in the Epistles to Collect the Fundamental Articles of Faith as I had through the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles was Because those Fundamental Articles were in those Epistles promiscuously and without distinction mixed with other Truths And therefore we shall find and discern those great and necessary Points best in the Preachings of our Saviour and the Apostles to those who were yet ignorant of the Faith and unconverted This as far as I know my own thoughts was the reason why I did as Mr. Edwards complains p. 109. not proceed to the Epistles and not give an Account of them as I had done of the Gospels and Acts. This I imagined I had in the close of my Book so fully and clearly expressed particularly p. 125. that I supposed no body how willing soever could have mistaken me But this Gentleman is so much better acquainted with me than I am with my self sees so deeply into my Heart and knows so perfectly every thing that passes there that he with assurance tells the World p. 109. That I purposely omitted the Epistolary Writings of the Apostles because they are fraught with other Fundamental Doctrines beside that one which I mention And then he goes on to enumerate those Fundamental Articles p. 110 111. viz. The Corruption and Degeneracy of Humane Nature with the true Original of it the Defection of our first Parents the Propagation of Sin and Mortality our Restoration and Reconciliation by Christ's Blood the Eminency and Excellency of his Priesthood the Efficacy of his Death the full Satisfaction made thereby to Divine Iustice and his being made an All sufficient Sacrifice for Sin Christ's Righteousness our Iustification by it Election Adoption Sanctification Saving Faith The Nature of the Gospel The New Covenant The Riches of God's Mercy in the way of Salvation by Iesus Christ The certainty of the Resurrection of Humane Bodies and of the future Glory Give me leave now to ask you seriously whether these which you have here set down under the Title of Fundamental Doctrines are such when reduced to Propositions that every one of them is required to be believed to make a Man a Christian and such as without the actual belief thereof he cannot be saved If they are not so every one of them you may call them Fundamental Doctrines as much as you please they are not of those Doctrines of Faith I was speaking of which are only such as are required to be actually believed to make a Man a Christian. If you say some of them are such necessary Points of Faith and others not you by this specious List of well-sounding but unexplained terms arbitrarily collected only make good what I have said viz. That the necessary Articles of Faith are in the Epistles promiscuously delivered with other Truths and therefore they cannot be distinguished but by some other mark than being barely found in the Epistles If you say that they are all of them necessary Articles of Faith I shall then desire you to reduce them to so many plain Doctrines and then prove them to be every one of them required to be believed by every Christian Man to make him a Member of the Christian Church For to begin with the first 't is not enough to tell us as you do that the Corruption and Degeneracy of Humane Nature with the true Original of it the Defection of our first Parents the Propagation of Sin and Mortality is one of the great Heads of Christian Divinity But you are to tell us what are the Propositions we are required to believe concerning this matter For nothing can be an Article of Faith but some Proposition and then it will remain to be proved that these Articles are necessary to be believed to Salvation The Apostles Creed was taken in the first Ages of the Church to contain all things necessary to Salvation I mean necessary to be believed But you have now better thought on it and are pleased to enlarge it and we no doubt are bound to submit to your Orthodoxy The List of Materials for his Creed for the Articles are not yet formed Mr. Ed's closes p. 111. with these words These are the Matters of Faith contained in the Epistles and they are Essential and Integral parts of the Gospel it self What just these Neither more nor less If you are sure of it pray let us have them speedily for the Reconciling of Differences in the Christian Church which has been so cruelly torn about the Articles of the Christian Faith to the great Reproach of Christian Charity and Scandal of our true Religion Mr. Ed's having thus with two learned Terms of Essential and Integral Parts sufficiently proved the Matter in Question viz. That all those he has set down are Articles of Faith necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian he grows warm at my omission of them This I cannot complain of as unnatural The Spirit of Creed-making always arising from an heat of Zeal for our own Opinions and warm Endeavours by all ways possible to decry and bear down those who differ in a tittle from us What then could I expect more gentle and candid than what Mr. Ed's has subjoyned in these words And therefore it is no wonder that our Author being sensible of this viz. That the Points he has named were Essential and Integral parts of the Gospel would not vouchsafe to give us an Abstract of those inspired Writings the Epistles but passes them by with some Contempt Sir when your Angry Fit is over and the abatement of your Passion has given way to the return of your Sincerity I shall beg you to read this passage in 297 pag. of my Book These Holy Writers viz. the Pen-men of the Scriptures INSPIRED from above writ nothing but Truth and in most places very weighty Truths to us now for the expounding clearing and confirming of the Christian Doctrine and establishing those in it who had embraced it And again pag. 299. The other parts of DIVINE REVELATION are Objects of Faith and are so to be received They are Truths of which none that is once known to be such i. e. revealed may or ought to be disbelieved And if this does not satisfie you that I have as high a Veneration for the Epistles as you or any one can have I require you to publish to the World those passages which shew my Contempt of them In the mean time I shall desire my Reader to examine what I have writ concerning the Epistles which is all contained between p. 290 and 301 of my Book And then to Judge whether I have made bold with the Epistles in what I have said of them or this Gentleman made bold with Truth in what he has writ of me Humane Frailty will not I see easily quit its hold What it loses in one part it will be ready to regain in another and not be hindred from
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
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
'T is to the truth of this Proposition that he examines his Witnesses as he speaks pag. 21. And this if I mistake not in his Epist. Dedicatory he calls Christianity Fol. A. 3. where he calls them Witnesses to Christianity But these two Propositions viz. That SON of God in the Gospel stands for Messiah And that the Faith which alone makes Men Christians is the believing Iesus to be the Messiah displeases Mr. Ed's so much in my Book that he thinks himself Authorized from them to charge me with Socinianism and want of Sincerity How he will be pleased to treat this Reverend Prelate whilest he is alive for the Dead may with good Manners be made bold with must be left to his decisive Authority This I am sure which way soever he determine he must for the future either afford me more good Company or fairer Quarter FINIS Books lately Printed for and Sold by A. J. Churchill at the Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row A View of Universal History from the Creation to the Year of Christ 1695. wherein the most memorable Persons and Things in the known Kingdoms and Countries of the World are set down in several Columns by way of Synchronism according to their proper Centuries and Years By Francis Tallents sometime Fellow of Magdalen-College Cambridge The whole graven in 16 Copper-Plates each 15 Inches deep and 22 broad bound up into Books the Sheets lined A Work of great Exactness and Curiosity Price 16 s. Camden's Britannia newly Translated into English with large Additions and Improvements By Edmund Gibson of Queens-College in Oxford The General History of the Air. By Robert Boyle Esq Quarto A Compleat Journal of the Votes Speeches and Debates both of the House of Lords and House of Commons throughout the whole Reign of Queen Elizabeth Collected by Sir Simonds Dewes Baronet and Published by Paul Bowes of the Middle-Temple Esq The 2d Edition Fol. 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