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
A VINDICATION OF THE REASONABLENESS OF Christianity c. A VINDICATION OF THE REASONABLENESS OF Christianity c. From Mr. Edwards's REFLECTIONS LONDON Printed for Awnsham and Iohn Churchil at the Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row 1695. A VINDICATION OF THE REASONABLENESS OF Christianity c. MY Book had not been long out before it fell under the Correction of the Author of a Treatise Entituled Some Thoughts concerning the several Causes and Occasions of Atheism especially in the present Age. No contemptible Adversary I 'le assure you since as it seems he has got the Faculty to heigthen every thing that displeases him into the Capital Crime of Atheism And breaths against those who come in his way a Pestilential Air whereby every the least Distemper is turned into the Plague and becomes Mortal For whoever does not just say after Mr. Ed's cannot 't is evident escape being an Atheist or a promoter of Atheism I cannot but approve of any ones Zeal to Guard and Secure that great and Fundamental Article of all Religion and Morality That there is a God But Atheism being a Crime which for its Madness as well as Guilt ought to shut a Man out of all Sober and Civil Society should be very warily charged on any one by deductions and Consequences which he himself does not own or at least do not manifestly and unavoidably flow from what he asserts This Caution Charity I think obliges us to And our Author would possibly think himself hardly dealt with if for neglecting some of those Rules he himself gives p. 31. 34. against Atheism he should be pronounced a promoter of it As rational a Charge I imagine as some of those he makes And as fitly put together as the Treatise of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. brought in among the causes of Atheism However I shall not much complain of him since he joyns me p. 104. with no worse Company than two Eminently Pious and Learned Prelates of our Church whom he makes favourers of the same Conceit as he calls it But what has that Conceit to do with Atheism Very much That Conceit is of Kin to Socinianism and Socinianism to Atheism Let us hear Mr. Ed's himself He says p. 113. I am all over Socinianized and therefore my Book fit to be placed among the Causes of Atheism For in the 64. and following Pages he endeavours to shew That a Socinian is an Atheist or lest that should seem harsh one that favours the Cause of Atheism p. 75. For so he has been pleased to mollifie now it is published as a Treatise what was much more harsh and much more confident in it when it was Preached as a Sermon In this abatement he seems a little to comply with his own Advice against his fourth Cause of Atheism which we have in these words pag. 34. Wherefore that we may effectually prevent this folly in our selves let us banish Presumption Confidence and Self-conceit let us extirpate all Pride and Arrogance Let us not List our selves in the Number of Caprioious Opiniators I shall leave the Socinians themselves to answer his Charge against them and shall Examine his Proof of my being a Socinian It stands thus pag. 112. When he the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. proceeds to mention the Advantages and Benefits of Christ's coming into the World and appearing in the Flesh he hath not one Syllable of his satisfying for us or by his Death purchasing Life or Salvation or any thing that sounds like it This and several other things shew that he is all over Socinianized Which in effect is that because I have not set down all that this Author perhaps would have done therefore I am a Socinian But what if I should say I set down as much as my Argument required and yet am no Socinian Would he from my silence and omission give me the Lye and say I am one Surmizes that may be over-turned by a single denial are poor Arguments and such as some Men would be ashamed of At least if they are to be permitted to Men of this Gentleman's Skill and Zeal who knows how to make a good use of Conjectures Suspicions and Uncharitable Censures in the Cause of God yet even there too if the Cause of God can need such Arts they require a good Memory to keep them from recoiling upon the Author He might have taken notice of these words in my Book pag. 107. From this estate of Death Jesus CHRIST RESTORES all Mankind to Life And a little lower The Life which Jesus Christ restores to all Men. And p. 205. He that hath incurred Death for his own Transgression cannot LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR ANOTHER as our Saviour professes he did This methinks SOUNDS SOMETHING LIKE Christ's purchasing Life for us by his Death But this Reverend Gentleman has an Answer ready It was not in the place he would have had it in It was not where I mention the Advantages and Benefits of Christ's coming And therefore I not having one Syllable of Christ's Purchasing Life and Salvation for us by his Death or any thing that sounds like it this and several other things that might be offered shew that I am all over Socinianized A very clear and ingenuous Proof and let him enjoy it But what will become of me that I have not mentioned Satisfaction Possibly this Reverend Gentleman would have had Charity enough for a known Writer of the Brotherhood to have found it by an Inuendo in those words above quoted of laying down his Life for another But every thing is to be strained here the other way For the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. is of necessity to be represented as a Socinian or else his Book may be read and the Truths in it which Mr. Ed's likes not be received and People put upon examining Thus one as full of Happy Conjectures and Suspicions as this Gentleman might be apt to Argue But what if the Author designed his Treatise as the Title shews chiefly for those who were not yet throughly or firmly Christians proposing to work on those who either wholly disbelieved or doubted of the truth of the Christian Religion Would any one blame his Prudence if he mentioned only those Advantages which all Christians are agreed in Might he not remember and observe that Command of the Apostle Rom. 14. 1. Him that is weak in the Faith receive ye but not to doubtful disputations without being a Socinian Did he amiss that he offered to the belief of those who stood off that and only that which our Saviour and his Apostles preached for the reducing the unconverted World And would any one think he in earnest went about to perswade Men to be Christians who should use that as an Argument to recommend the Gospel which he has observed Men to lay hold on as an Objection against it To urge such Points of Controversie as necessary Articles of Faith when we see
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
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