rate you think you say that for which the world is bound to return you many thanks and our Churches will now be soon emptied to fill the Tavern and the Alehouse and the jugling Priests be forced either to starve or stand to your courtesie whether they shall be entertain'd at your doors with a hard crust or a harder cudgel But be not angry I beseech you if I be bold to tell you that if these be your thoughts you flatter your self too much and may possibly stay as long for thanks from men that can consider what they do as you would make the poor Priests you so freely abuse stand for an alms at your gates They who rightly understand the meaning of your words and have so much wit as to think on any thing beyond their present lusts would hardly be perswaded to think any thing save that Hell which you deny more dreadful than that other Hell which this your wild inference if once generally assented to would make upon Earth Nay I dare say that could you win all men to be of the same mind of which you at present seem to be your self would be the first that would begin to contradict your self and be ready to cut your own throat to be revenged on your rashness in teaching men this mad lesson Suppose that every Prince should bring his Subjects every Lord his Tenants every Father his Children and every Master his Servants first to be of this opinion that nothing remains either to be feared or hoped for after death and that they should next from this opinion take up the same resolution to live as they list and enjoy their pleasure without all check of conscience I am very confident that if the Subjects should take arms to redeem their liberty the Tenant keep back his rent and not own his Landlord Children deny obedience to their Parents and Servants refuse to labour for their Masters those very same persons who first unadvisedly put this dangerous fancy into their heads would rather work all means to have those heads taken off from their shoulders than it should continue any longer there How unreasonable a thing is it then in you to triumph in derision over the Faith of Christians which you cannot but confess is the main buttress that upholds your own best beloved interests when should this your darling humour on which you now most blindly dote as much bewitch your inferiors as it hath done your selves it would at once make havock of your estates and honours and force you to do penance for your follies in sackcloth and ashes Can you yet hug your selves in your licentious thoughts and dream that wise men will admire and magnifie your wit Though most men do indeed express too great a fondness for their liberty yet I dare say a very few would be content to enjoy it upon those terms as you do promise it Most men do dread the effects of libertinism and licentiousness no less than they love the causes that produce them before they understand the evils they are pregnant with and therefore although too many ears be already set too wide open to your Syren notes yet is it a thing incredible that they should be so unwise when their eyes are opened too to see the rocks and whirlpools into the midst of which this ravishing musick would invite them as wilfully to run upon their own destruction Would it not think you be a very pleasing thing for men to live in perpetual feuds tumults and confusions What a gallant incouragement would it be to the poor husbandman when he durst not go to plough without his guard lest the next that comes should take away his oxen nor could cast the seed into the furrows without very reasonable fears that another should reap the crop when he builds an house to think that his next neighbour will set it on fire or thrust him out of his possession and when he is laid down to rest not to dare to shut his eyes lest his wife or child should cut his throat If all the fears of Hell and endless torments which Religion possesseth men withall are found weak enough to keep them within the bounds of honesty and good-neighbourhood then I must be bold to tell you Sir and all wise men will easily believe me that the reins of religion once cut in pieces by your Sophistry and nothing after this life left for men to fear or long for all the laws of man will be as easily broken as Sampson's Wit hs the Magistrates authority will be set at nought and the greatest power you can imagine in the civil sword will prove too weak to secure the publick peace or restrain the libertine from those outrages and extravagances which would render death a thousand times more eligible than life This is a thing too apparently the consequence of your doctrine for who are the men I pray you that dare despise the gibbet and the halter for any petty prey but those whom you have taught or else have been before-hand with you in believing that as well their misery as their happiness shall end there But your selves know very well the truth of what I now say and are too ready to make ill use of it to our present disturbance and your own future misery You can tell us when you list that Religion hath the greatest power to keep the World in awe and order but then you would perswade us to believe withall that it is no more but a politick invention which necessity set the wit of man on work to find out for that purpose I am not now to disprove any of your assertions being resolved to represent you to your own eyes with all the advantages you can desire you will find when you can but once allow your selves the liberty to consider things that you stand in need of more than all to win you the approbation even of your own judgments For supposing this that you would have are not you the only politick wise men of the world and do not we all owe you abundant thanks for thus opening a wide gap to all confusion and disorder and your own ruine amongst the rest of mankind whilest you endeavour to pull down that fence which you confess was wisely made and not without great cause to secure the peace and comfort of the world If all this be not yet enough to let you see how much you befool your selves whilest you deride our Faith and call your selves wise for living as you list consider but this one thing more how you must needs hereby deprive your selves of that only thing besides your wit wherein you seem to glory I mean the honour of being Loyal to your Prince It is most evident that you thus betray your selves to be the worst of subjects and the most dangerous of all that plead for Toleration in a State or Kingdom I confess indeed there is a sort of people that would be thought the only
be so stubborn and impudently refractory as to persist in disputation and so unreasonable as once more to call for any farther satisfaction in a thing so heterodoxly yet so magisterially asserted we shall usually see these tall gentlemen if they can find no fair opportunity of quitting the company and running away begin to stoop by little and little even so long till the bravado dwindle into a bare It may be so and yet possibly it may be thus and no man can tell us whether it be thus or so So that whatever conquest they obtain if ever they prove masters of the field must be wholly attributed to the weakness of their adversaries nothing to their own valour and prowesse To deal clearly with you after all that I have had to this day the opportunity to hear or read from any of these great wits who are so greedy of the honour to trample upon the Faith of Christians yet as impatient as the Devil himself would be though they deserve it much more to be called Atheists I could never see any thing offered as a conclusion which would amount to any more than one of your Sceptical premises and were these all with a thousand more as good as they laid together with all the art and confidence whereof you and your partners have good store how little strength they would have to secure you from as much folly as you charge upon others or defend the most tolerable of your desperate resolutions from the just imputation of madness requires no great skill in another to teach you nor sagacity in you to learn would you be at leisure from your vanities and have patience to consider without a teacher Who knows say you whether there be an Heaven and a life to come or no Suppose now that this your question were altogether unanswerable and be it as true as you would have it that no man knows this Yet are you far from having gain'd all that which you catch at such a victory over the poor Christian that you may without the just censure of vanity crow upon your beloved dunghill of uncleanness For if none know this then none knows whether you or he hold the truer though it will be easily seen anon which of you holds the safer opinion If the Christian think there is a life to come and yet there shall be no such thing then indeed he is in an error and his hopes are vain and yet I dare not say foolish because an eternal happy life after death is a thing so desirable of all that every man would be willing to lay hold on any grounds whereon he might build any though but the weakest hope and expectation of it It you think there is no life to come and yet there be one then are you in an error by so much the more dangerous by how much your loss will prove greater he losing only some temporal joys but you eternal and yet much more foolish inasmuch as you both despised what confessedly was in it self above all things desirable and rashly exposed your self to those torments which are of all things most formidable If then no man yet know whether there shall be any such thing or not then as no man can yet say which of you is in the error so certainly the folly must fall to your lot who make him the But of your scorn who for ought that either you or any man else upon your supposition can yet tell may be as wise yea and is probably even in his choice certainly in his modest behaviour much wiser than your self But yet good Sir if you and your confederates have authority to play the fools part and yet be thought the wisest on the Stage shew us whence you have it and we have done Again you say Who knows it This is your way you are ready at posing but as slow as others in answering and indeed this is your master-piece and you know whose character the Proverbial saying hath made it One fool can ask more questions than twenty wise men can answer But suppose that in answer to your question we should affirm that we know it or at least that it may be known what we should thus affirm whether truly or no you could never be able to disprove if you say and swear we know it not that is only to contradict not confute us and the world hath seen no more for it as yet but only your word and ours If neither of us as yet have so much command over men's Faith as to be credited in a matter of so great consequence upon our bare assirmation or negation then are we yet on even ground and you have no more cause of triumph over us then we have over you If either may be credited on his word why one and not both If both much good may it do you It cannot be in the contradiction but with respect to the divided parties We say we know it and are believed you say you know it not and are believed Say we both true then are we knowing and you ignorant Say we both falsey then are you alike guilty with us in cousening the world by a lie and your lie is the more pernicious by how much greater the good is out of which you cousen it Say we truly and you falsly I need not tell you what follows But if we say falsly and you truly you have only this advantage that you are ignorant and we are deceived both equally to be pitied by others but neither have cause of glorying over the other Yet without doubt you must be the only men who have searched into Nature's mysteries and have been fitted by the advantages of Education to discover the knaveries of jugling Priests and the follies of a deluded people If your word may be taken for it thus you shall be esteemed but if your great boastings of your selves will amount to no more but a piece of arrogance too well known to be essential to men of your complexion you must still go a begging as well as we fools for Faith to believe you Suppose it yet once more to be as you say that no man knows any thing of all this yet as this will afford you no ground of glorying over others simplicity so neither will the unreasonable inferences you fetch thence when throughly examined prove either acceptable to the considering part of the world or so much as safe or honourable to your selves I shall shew you the former of these now and the later in the close of this Letter You tell us that seeing these things cannot be known It is most reasonable that men should please themselves in a free enjoyment of all things they esteem good in this world and so make to themselves as much happiness as they can here seeing that happiness which men expect after death in another world is for ought we know no better than a dream I dare not doubt but whilest you talk at this
men to whom the name of Saints is due and under a pretence of zeal and conscience have made bold to murder Kings and fire Kingdoms And possibly I shall not much mistake if I say that the world is beholden to the notorious hypocrisie of these zelots for very much of that Atheism under which it now groans Men apt to consider so little as you are and not able or else unwilling to see their own faces in these men hid under masks on which something is drawn resembling ours are ready enough to conclude that we shall not dare to disown them aud that all who have a real zeal for the Christian Faith are either as blind or hypocritical as they But good Sir I beseech you know that we are bold enough to pronounce both them and you to be dangerous enemies no less to State than Church as their zeal is only a disguise and trick to pass on undiscovered to their designed villanies so your open defiance to all religion and profession to seek your own pleasure in all things makes us more than suspect that your interest or lust shall at any time take place with you before your King or Countrey What confidence can your Prince have of your Loyalty farther than he shall be pleased to tolerate your vanities or you please to do him the favour to call him Soveraign Whatever obedience you yield unto him he must thank you for it as a courtesie but must not claim it as a duty It is clear as the noon-day's Sun that so long as you fear nothing in another world and thereupon resolve to gratifie your humour whilest you live in this you need not run to the Pope's universal power nor the Sectarie's blind zeal for a dispensation to turn rebel your own pleasure or your profit or any thing else you can esteem a part of your earthly happiness or which can court your humour can make all despensations to do mischief needless Yet still are you angry because we will not call our selves fools for believing that our Souls are something and that they shall not vanish into aire or nothing when we die and why because forsooth we cannot know it and all is still no more but Faith 'T is true the things we do believe are things unseen neither can sense or common reason assure us of the truth of those things which we believe shall be hereafter And yet it is no less true that neither of these can enable you to prove our Faith absurd Nay were you but half so much the masters of reason as you would have us think that very reason would assure you that our Faith is reasonable and your opinions fanciful and that we have much more cause to pity your folly whilest we can truly say your wicked and dangerous courses are all built upon an unreasonable fancy than you can have to laugh at us because our honest and conscientious lives are grounded as you suppose upon an uncertain Faith For let our Faith be certain or uncertain you must needs confess it very serviceable to the world it doth much good and hurt it can do none But your opinions be they true or false are so far from any possibility of producing the least good effect that they cannot chuse but be the parents of innumerable mischiefs Some of you indeed have been so rash as to affirm That religion hath been the cause of all the Wars which have disturbed the world with so impotent an eagerness of mind are you wont to declaim against what you do not love that you can regard neither truth nor modesty in those affected heats I will again confess unto you that some religions have been the cause of many wars but the true Christian religion of none and though it be most true that even the Christian Faith hath been the subject of very hot disputes lamentable divisions and most bloudy wars yet he that shall call it the cause of any of these shall only thereby bewray his malice or his ignorance in imputing that to the Christian Faith which is imputable only either to the hatred of its enemies or the errors imperfections and hypocrisies of its professors and always either to the want or too weak measure of it He that reads the Histories of all ages he that hath any insight into the Cabals and mysteries of States he that understands the rules that Christ hath left us cannot chuse but see that most of these evils do clearly spring from the ambition discontent and wantonness of men not truly Christian that punctilio's of honour priviledge and worldy interest kindle those fires which consume our peace and quiet yea he that is half blind may see that those very wars which have been managed with a pretence to Christian zeal have come from the same forementioned fountains and that religion hath only been made a cloak shamefully abused to cover most irreligious designs and actions For if the Faith we profess bind us to nothing more than peace and love and so severely prohibit all self-seeking malice and revenge that it commands us upon penalty of losing all we hope for and suffering all we can fear in another world to deny our selves and love our enemies and bear the cross with patience to return blessing for cursing and good for evil who sees not that the world is made miserable not by the multitude of those who sincerely profess the Christian Faith but because so few do yet imbrace it and so many of those who in shew only and for some secular advantage make profession of it are indeed and truth such as you are Shew me a rebel shew me an oppressor shew me a factious and seditious zelot in a word shew me the man that wittingly and willingly offers the least injury to his neighbour let him preach and pray yea let him wear for fashions-sake all the faces and formalities of religion I will be bold to return him to you again for none of ours and prove to his face and yours that he had never any more to do than you have with the Christian Faith that is to dishonour and blaspheme it and give occasion to unconsidering men to talk unreasonably of things they will not understand But yet our folly say you is most apparent for we pretend unto a certainty of Faith which you think it is impossible for any man to have But stay Sir our folly is not yet so evident as you would have it Such a certainty of Faith your selves I doubt not will be ready enough to grant in some cases as may make it very reasonable for you to acquiesce therein and not interrupt the satisfaction which you thence receive by any farther disputation or doubt Should any of us be so unmannerly as to call you fool because you do believe you are no bastard nay because you do not doubt but you were born of a woman and give you this reason for it that you rest content with a certainty