who unprovoked mix with the management of their Cause Injuries and ill Language to those they differ from This at least I am sure Zeal or Love for Truth can never permit Falshood to be used in the Defence of it Your Mind I see prepar'd for Truth by resignation of it self not to the Traditions of Men but the Doctrine of the Gospel has made you more readily entertain and more easily enter into the meaning of my Book than most I have heard speak of it And since you seem to me to comprehend what I have laid together with the same Disposition of Mind and in the same Sence that I received it from the Holy Scriptures I shall as a mark of my respect to you give you a particular Account of the Occasion of it The Beginning of the Year in which it was Published the Controversie that made so much noise and heat amongst some of the Dissenters coming one Day accidentally into my Mind drew me by degrees into a stricter and more through Enquiry into the Question about Justification The Scripture was direct and plain that 't was Faith that justified The next Question then was what Faith that was that justified What it was which if a Man believed it should be imputed to him for Righteousness To find out this I thought the right way was to Search the Scriptures and thereupon betook my self seriously to the Reading of the New Testament only to that Purpose What that produced you and the World have seen The first View I had of it seem'd mightily to satisfie my mind in the Reasonableness and Plainness of this Doctrine But yet the general Silence I had in my little Reading met with concerning any such thing awed me with the Apprehension of Singularity Till going on in the Gospel History the whole tenour of it made it so clear and visible that I more wonder'd that every body did not see and imbrace it than that I should assent to what was so plainly laid down and so frequently inculcated in Holy Writ though Systems of Divinity said nothing of it That which added to my Satisfaction was that it led me into a Discovery of the marvellous and divine Wisdom of our Saviour's Conduct in all the Circumstances of his promulgating this Doctrine as well as of the necessity that such a Law-giver should be sent from God for the reforming the Morality of the World Two Points that I must confess I had not found so fully and advantageously explain'd in the Books of Divinity I had met with as the History of the Gospel seem'd to me upon an attentive Perusal to give Occasion and Matter for But the Necessity and Wisdom of our Saviour's opening the Doctrine which he came to publish as he did in Parables and figurative ways of speaking carries such a Thread of Evidence through the whole History of the Evangelists as I think is impossible to be resisted and makes it a Demonstration that the Sacred Historians did not write by concert as Advocates for a bad Cause or to give Colour and Credit to an Imposture they would Usher into the World Since they every one of them in some place or other omit some Passages of our Saviour's Life or Circumstances of his Actions which shew the Wisdom and Wariness of his Conduct and which even those of the Evangelists who have recorded do barely and transiently mention without laying any Stress on them or making the least remark of what Consequence they are to give us our Saviour's true Character and to prove the Truth of their History These are Evidences of Truth and Sincerity which result alone from the Nature of things and cannot be produced by any Art or Contrivance How much I was pleased with the growing Discovery every Day whilst I was employed in this search I need not say The wonderful Harmony that the farther I went disclosed it self tending to the same Points in all the parts of the sacred History of the Gospel was of no small Weight with me and another Person who every Day from the beginning to the end of my search saw the Progress of it and knew at my first setting out that I was ignorant whither it would lead me and therefore every Day asked me what more the Scripture had taught me So far was I from the thoughts of Socinianism or an Intention to write for that or any other Party or to publish any thing at all But when I had gone through the whole and saw what a plain simple reasonable thing Christianity was suited to all Conditions and Capacities and in the Morality of it now with divine Authority established into a legible Law so far surpassing all that Philosophy and humane Reason had attain'd to or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of Mankind I was flatter'd to think it might be of some use in the World especially to those who thought either that there was no need of Revelation at all or that the Revelation of our Saviour required the Belief of such Articles for Salvation which the settled Notions and their way of reasoning in some and want of Understanding in others made impossible to them Upon these two Topicks the Objections seemed to turn which were with most Assurance made by Deists against Christianity But against Christianity misunderstood It seem'd to me that there needed no more to shew them the Weakness of their Exceptions but to lay plainly before them the Doctrine of our Saviour and his Apostles as delivered in the Scriptures and not as taught by the several Sects of Christians This tempted me to publish it not thinking it deserved an Opposition from any Minister of the Gospel and least of all from any one in the Communion of the Church of England But so it is that Mr. Edwards's Zeal for he knows not what for he does not yet know his own Creed nor what is required to make him a Christian could not brook so plain simple and intelligible a Religion But yet not knowing what to say against it and the Evidence it has from the Word of God he thought fit to let the Book alone and fall upon the Author What great Matter he has done in it I need not tell you who have seen and shew'd the Weakness of his Wranglings You have here Sir the true History of the Birth of my Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures and my Design in publishing it c. What it contains and how much it tends to Peace and Union amongst Christians if they would receive Christianity as it is you have discovered I am SIR Your most humble Servant A. B. My Readers will pardon me that in my Preface to them I make this particular Address to Mr. Bold He hath thought it worth his while to defend my Book How well he has done it I am too much a Party to say I think it so sufficient to Mr. Edwards that I needed not have troubled my self any further about him on the account
Creeds you please are Just those neither more nor less that are every one of them required to be believed to make a Man a Christian and such as without the actual or since that word displeases you the explicit belief whereof he cannot be saved When you have answer'd this Question we shall then see which of us two is nearest the right But if you shall forbear Railing which I fear you take for arguing against that Summary of Faith which our Saviour and his Apostles taught and which only they propos'd to their Hearers to be believed to make them Christians till you have found another perfect Creed of only necessary Articles that you dare own for such you are like to have a large time of Silence Before I leave the Passage above cited I must desire the Reader to take notice of what he says concerning his List of Fundamentals viz. That these his Articles of Faith necessary to constitute a Christian are such as must IN SOME MEASURE be known and assented to by him A very wary Expression concerning Fundamentals The Question is about Articles necessary to be explicitly believed to make a Man a Christian. These in his List the Unmasker tells us are necessary to constitute a Christian and must IN SOME MEASURE be known and assented to I would now fain know of the Reader whether he understands hereby that the Unmasker means that these his necessary Articles must be explicitly believed or not If he means an explicit Knowledge and Belief why does he puzzle his Reader by so improper a way of speaking for what is as compleat and perfect as it ought to be cannot properly be said to be in some Measure If his in some Measure falls short of explicitly knowing and believing his Fundamentals his necessary Articles are such as a Man may be a Christian without explicitly knowing and believing i. e. are no Fundamentals no necessary Articles at all Thus Men uncertain what to say betray themselves by their great Caution Having pronounced it Folly in himself to make up the defects of my short and therefore so much blam'd Collection of Fundamentals by a full one of his own though his Attempt shews he would if he could he goes on thus p. 22. From what I the Unmasker have said it is evident that the Vindicator is grosly mistaken when he saith Whatever Doctrine the Apostles required to be believed to make a Man a Christian are to be found in those places of Scripture which he has quoted in his Book And a little lower I think I have sufficiently proved that there are other Doctrines besides that which are required to be believed to make a Man a Christian Answ. Whatever you have proved or as you never fail to do boast you have proved will signifie nothing till you have proved one of these Propositions and have shewn either X. That what our Saviour and his Apostles preach'd and admitted Men into the Church for believing is not all that is absolutely required to make a Man a Christian Or That the believing him to be the Messiah was not the only Article they insisted on to those who acknowledg'd one God and upon the belief whereof they admitted Converts into the Church in any one of those many places quoted by me out of the History of the New Testament I say any one For though it be evident throughout the whole Gospel and the Acts that this was the one Doctrine of Faith which in all their Preachings every where they principally drive at Yet if it were not so but that in other places they taught other things that would not prove that those other things were Articles of Faith absolutely necessarily required to be believed to make a Man a Christian unless it had been so said Because if it appears that ever any one was admitted into the Church by our Saviour or his Apostles without having that Article explicitly laid before him and without his explicit assent to it you must grant that an explicit assent to that Article is not necessary to make a Man a Christian Unless you will say that our Saviour and his Apostles admitted Men into the Church that were not qualified with such a Faith as was absolutely necessary to make a Man a Christian which is as much as to say that they allow'd and pronounced Men to be Christians who were not Christians For he that wants what is necessary to make a Man a Christian can no more be a Christian than he that wants what is necessary to make him a Man can be a Man For what is necessary to the being of any thing is Essential to its being and any thing may be as well without its Essence as without any thing that is necessary to its being and so a Man be a Man without being a Man and a Christian a Christian without being a Christian and an Unmasker may prove this without proving it You may therefore set up by your unquestionable Authority what Articles you please as necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian If our Saviour and his Apostles admitted Converts into the Church without preaching those your Articles to them or requiring an Explicit assent to what they did not Preach and explicitly lay down I shall prefer their Authority to yours and think it was rather by them than by you that God promulgated the Law of Faith and manifested what that Faith was upon which he would receive penitent Converts And though by his Apostles our Saviour taught a great many other Truths for the explaining this Fundamental Article of the Law of Faith that Jesus is the Messiah some whereof have a nearer and some a more remote connexion with it and so cannot be deny'd by any Christian who sees that connexion or knows they are so taught yet an explicit belief of any one of them is no more necessarily required to make a Man a Christian than an explicit belief of all those Truths which have a connexion with the being of a God or are reveal'd by him is necessarily required to make a Man not to be an Atheist Though none of them can be denied by any one who sees that connexion or acknowledges that revelation without his being an Atheist All these Truths taught us from God either by Reà son or Revelation are of great use to enlighten our Minds confirm our Faith stir up our Affections c. And the more we see of them the more we shall see admire and magnifie the Wisdom Goodness Mercy and Love of God in the Work of our Redemption This will oblige us to search and study the Scripture wherein it is contain'd and laid open to us All that we find in the Revelation of the New Testament being the declar'd Will and Mind of our Lord and Master the Messiah whom we have taken to be our King we are bound to receive as Right and Truth or else we are not his Subjects we do not believe him to be the Messiah our
me without Vanity in Mr. Chillingworth's the Protestants and Mr. Chillingworth's very words Chap. IV. § 65. will exactly serve for my Answer You trifle affectedly confounding the Apostles Belief of the whole Religion of Christ as it comprehends both what we are to do and what we are to believe with that part of it which contains not Duties of Obedience but only the necessary Articles of simple Faith Now though the Apostles Belief be in the former sense a larger thing than that which we call the Apostles Creed Yet in the latter sense of the word the Creed I say is a full Comprehension of their Belief which you your self have formerly confessed though somewhat fearfully and inconstantly And here again unwillingness to speak the Truth makes you speak that which is hardly sense and call it an Abridgment of some Articles of Faith For I demand those some Articles which you speak of which are they Those that are out of the Creed or those that are in it Those that are in it it comprehends at large and therefore it is not an Abridgment of them Those that are out of it it comprehends not at all and therefore it is not an Abridgment of them If you would call it now an Abridgment of Faith this would be sense and signifie thus much That all the necessary Articles of the Christian Faith are comprised in it For this is the proper Duty of Abridgments to leave out nothing necessary So that in Mr. Chillingworth's judgment of an Abridgment it is not sense to say as you do p. 47. That we are not to think that the Apostles Creed expresly contains in it all the necessary Points of our Belief it being only designed to be an Abstract or an Abridgment of Faith But on the contrary we must conclude it contains in it all the necessary Articles of Faith for that very reason because it is an Abridgment of Faith as the Unmasker calls it But whether this that Mr. Chillingworth has given us here be the nature of an Abridgment or no this is certain that the Apostles Creed cannot be a form of Profession of the Christian Faith if any part of the Faith necessary to make a Man a Christian be left out of it And yet such a Profession of Faith would the Unmasker have this Abridgment of Faith to be For a little lower in the 47. p. he says in express terms That if a Man believe no more than is in express terms in the Apostles Creed his Faith will not be the Faith of a Christian Wherein he does great Honour to the Primitive Church and particularly to the Church of England The Primitive Church admitted converted Heathens to Baptism upon the Faith contain'd in the Apostles Creed A bare Profession of that Faith and no more was required of them to be received into the Church and made Members of Christ's Body How little different the Faith of the Ancient Church was from the Faith I have mentioned may be seen in these words of Tertullian Regula fidei una omnino est sola immobilis irreformabilis Credendi scilicet in unicum deum omnipotentem Mundi conditorem filium ejus Iesum Christum natum ex Virgine Maria Crucifixum sub Pontio Pilato tertia die resuscitatum à Mortuis receptum in Coelis Sedentem nunc ad dextram Patris Venturum judicare vivos Mortuos per carnis etiam resurrectionem Hâc lege fidei manente caetera jam disciplinae conversationis admittunt novitatem correctionis Tert. de Virg. Velan in Principio This was the Faith that in Tertullian's time sufficed to make a Christian. And the Church of England as I have remarked already only proposes the Articles of the Apostles Creed to the Convert to be baptized and upon his Professing a Belief of them asks whether he will be Baptized in THIS FAITH which if we will believe the Unmasker is not the Faith of a Christian. However the Church without any more ado upon the Profession of THIS FAITH and no other Baptizes them into it So that the Ancient Church if the Unmasker may be believed baptized Converts into that Faith which is not the Faith of a Christian. And the Church of England when she Baptizes any one makes him not a Christian. For he that is Baptized only into a Faith that is not the Faith of a Christian I would fain know how he can thereby be made a Christian So that if the Omissions which he so much blames in my Book make me a Socinian I see not how the Church of England will escape that Censure Since those Omissions are in that very Confession of Faith which she proposes and upon a Profession whereof she Baptizes those whom she designs to make Christians But it seems that the Unmasker who has made bold to Unmask her too reasons right that the Church of England is mistaken and makes none but Socinian Christians or as he is pleased now to declare no Christians at all Which if true the Unmasker were best look to it whether he himself be a Christian or no For 't is to be fear'd he was baptized only into that Faith which he himself confesses is not the Faith of a Christian. But he brings himself off in these following words All matters of Faith in some manner may be reduced to this brief Platform of Belief Answ. If that be enough to make him a true and an Orthodox Christian he does not consider whom in this way he brings off with him For I think he cannot deny that all Matters of Faith in some manner may be reduced to that Abstract of Faith which I have given as well as to that brief Platform in the Apostles Creed So that for ought I see by this rule we are Christians or not Christians Orthodox or not Orthodox equally together But yet he says in the next words When he calls it an Abstract or Abbreviature it is implied that there are more Truths to be known and assented to by a Christian in order to making him really so than what we meet with here The quite contrary whereof as has been shewn is implied by its being called an Abstract But what is that to the purpose 'T is not sit Abstracts and Abbreviatures should stand in Unmasker's way They are Sounds Men have used for what they pleased and why may not the Unmasker do so too And use them in a Sense that may make the Apostles Creed be only a broken scrap of the Christian Faith However in great Condescention being willing to do the Apostles Creed what honour he could he says That all Matters of Faith in some manner may be reduced to this brief Platform of Belief But yet when it is set in competition with the Creed which he himself is making for it is not yet finish'd it is by no means to be allow'd as sufficient to make a Man a Christian. There are more Truths to be known and assented to in order to make a
in pieces by one another whilst every Sect assumes to it self a Power of declaring Fundamentals and severally thus narrow Christianity to their distinct Systems He that has a mind to see how Fundamentals come to be fram'd and fashion'd and upon what Motives and Considerations they are often taken up or laid down according to the Humours Interests or Designs of the Heads of Parties as if they were things depending on Mens pleasure and to be suited to their convenience may find an Example worth his notice in the Life of Mr. Baxter Part II. p. 197. 205. Whenever Men take upon them to go beyond those Fundamental Articles of Christianity which are to be found in the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles where will they stop Whenever any Set of Men will require more as necessary to be believed to make Men of their Church i. e. in their sense Christians than what our Saviour and his Apostles propos'd to those whom they made Christians and admitted into the Church of Christ however they may pretend to recommend the Scripture to their People in effect no more of it is recommended to them than just comports with what the Leaders of that Sect have resolv'd Christianity shall consist in 'T is no wonder therefore there is so much Ignorance amongst Christians and so much vain outcry against it whilst almost every distinct Society of Christians Magisterially ascribes Orthodoxy to a select Set of Fundamentals distinct from those proposed in the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles which in no one Point must be question'd by any of its Communion By this means their People are never sent to the Holy Scriptures that true Fountain of Light but hood-wink'd A Veil is cast over their eyes and then they are bid read the Bible They must make it all chime to their Churches Fundamentals or else they were better let it alone For if they find any thing there against the received Doctrines though they hold it and express it in the very terms the Holy Ghost has deliver'd it in that will not excuse them Heresie will be their lot and they shall be treated accordingly And thus we see how amongst other good effects Creed-making always has and always will necessarily produce and propagate Ignorance in the World however each Party blame others for it And therefore I have often wonder'd to hear Men of several Churches so heartily exclaim against the implicit Faith of the Church of Rome when the same implicit Faith is as much practised and required in their own though not so openly professed and ingenuously owned there In the next Section the Unmasker questions the Sincerity of mine and professes the greatness of his concern for the Salvation of Mens Souls And tells me of my Reflection on him upon that account in the 9th Page of my Vindication Answ. I wish he would for the right Information of the Reader every where set down what he has any thing to say to in my Book or my Defence of it and save me the Labour of repeating it My words in that place are Some Men will not bear 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 preach'd 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 Heresy under the most invidious Names in fashion and 't is well if he escapes being a downright Atheist Whether this be the Way for Teachers to make themselves hearken'd to as Men in Earnest in Religion and really concern'd 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 I have set down this Passage at large both as a confirmation of what I said but just now as also to shew that the Reflection I there made needed some other Answer than a bare Profession of his regard to the Salvation of Mens Souls The assuming an undue Authority to his own Opinions and using manifest Untruths in the defence of them I am sure is no mark that the directing Men right in the way to Salvation is his chief aim And I wish that the greater Liberties of that sort which he has again taken in his Socinianism Vnmask'd and which I have so often laid open had not confirm'd that Reflection I should have been glad that any thing in my Book had been fairly controverted and brought to the touch whether it had or had not been conâ—uted The matter of it would have deserved a serious debate if any had been necessary in the words of Sobriety and the Charitable temper of the Gospel as I desired in my Preâ—ace And that would not have mis-become the Vnmasker's Function But it did not consist it seems with his Design Christian Charity would not have allow'd those ill-meant Conjectures and groundless Censures which were necessary to his purpose and therefore he took a shorter course than to confute my Book and thereby convince me and others He makes it his business to rail at it and the Author of it that that might be taken for a confutation For by what he has hitherto done arguing seems not to be his Talent And thus far who can but allow his Wisdom But whether it be that Wisdom that is from above first pure then peaceable gentle easie to be intreated full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisie I shall leave to other Readers to judge His saying nothing to that other Reflection which his manner of expressing himself drew from me would make one suspect it favoured not altogether of the Wisdom of the Gospel nor shew'd an over great Care of the Salvation of Souls My Words Vindic. p. 25. are I know not how better to shew my Care of his Credit than by intreating him that when he takes next in hand such a Subject as this wherein the Salvation of Souls is concerned he would treat it a little more seriously and with a little more Candour lest 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 trifling mis-becoming 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 But this advice I am now satisfied by his Second Part of the same Strain was very improper for him and no more reasonable than if one should
the presence of his Disciples which are not written in this Book So far his History is by his own Confession concise But these says he are written that ye might believe that Iesus is the Messiah the Son of God and that believing ye might have life through his Name As concise as it was there was yet if the Apostle's word may be taken for it against the Unmâ—sker's enough contain'd in his Gospel for the procuring of eternal life to those who believed it And whether it was that one Article that he there sets down viz. That Iesus was the Messiah or that Set of Articles which the Unmâ—sker gives us I shall leave to this Modern Divine to resolve And if he thinks still that all the Articles he has set down in his Roll are necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian I must desire him to shew them to me in St. Iohn's Gospel or else to convince the World that St. Iohn was mistaken when he said that he had written his Gospel that Men might believe that Iesus is the Messiah the Son of God and that believing they might have life thorugh his Name So that granting the History of the Scripture to be so concise as the Unmasker would have it viz. That in some places the infallible Writers recording the Discourses of our Saviour and his Apostles omitted all the other Fundamental Articles propos'd by them to be believed to make Men Christians but this one that Iesus was the Messiah Yet this will not remove the Objection that lies against his other Fundamentals which are not to be found in the Histories of the Four Evangelists nay which are not to be found in every one of them If every one of them contains the Gospel of Jesus Christ and consequently all things necessary to Salvation Whether this will not be a new ground of Accusation against me and give the Unmasker a right to charge me with laying by three of the Gospels with contempt as well as he did before charge me with a contempt of the Epistles must be left to his soveraign Authority to determine Having shew'd that allowing all he says here to be as he would have it yet it clears not the Objection that lies against his Fundamentals I shall now examine what truth there is in what he here pretends viz. that though the one Article that Jesus is the Messiah be mention'd alone in some places yet we have reason to be perswaded from the conciseness of the Scripture History that there were at the same time join'd with it other necessary Articles of Faith in the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles It is to be observed that the Unmasker builds upon this false Supposition that in some places other necessary Articles of Faith join'd with that of Iesus the Messiah are by the Evangelists mention'd to be propos'd by our Saviour and his Apostles as necessary to be believed to make those they Preach'd to Christians For his saying that in some places that one necessary Article is mention'd alone implies that in other places it is not mention'd alone but join'd with other necessary Articles And then it will remain upon him to shew XXXVI In what place either of the Gospels or of the Acts other Articles of Faith are join'd with this and propos'd as necessary to be believed to make Men Christians The Unmasker 't is probable will tell us that the Article of Christ's Resurrection is sometimes join'd with this of the Messiah as particularly in that first Sermon of St. Peter Acts II. by which there were Three Thousand added to the Church at one time Answ. This Sermon well consider'd will explain to us both the Preaching of the Apostles what it was that they propos'd to their unbelieving Auditors to make them Christians and also the manner of St. Luke's recording their Sermons 'T is true that here are deliver'd by St. Peter many other Matters of Faith besides that of Iesus being the Messiah For all that he said being of Divine Authority is Matter of Faith and may not be disbelieved The first Part of his Discourse is to prove to the Iews that what they had observed of Extraordinary at that time amongst the Disciples who spake variety of Tongues did not proceed from Wine but from the Holy Ghost And that this was the pouring out of the Spirit prophesied of by the Prophet Ioel. This is all Matter of Faith and is written that it might be believed But yet I think that neither the Unmasker nor any body else will say that this is such a necessary Article of Faith that no Man could without an explicit belief of it be a Christian Though being a Declaration of the Holy Ghost by St. Peter it is so much a Matter of Faith that no body to whom it is now propos'd can deny it and be a Christian. And thus all the Scripture of the New Testament given by Divine Inspiration is Matter of Faith and necessary to be believed by all Christians to whom it is propos'd But yet I do not think any one so unreasonable as to say that every Proposition in the New Testament is a Fundamental Article of Faith which is required explicitly to be believed to make a Man a Christian Here now is a matter of Faith join'd in the same Sermon with this Fundamental Article that Iesus is the Messiah And reported by the Sacred Historian so at large that it takes up a Third part of St. Peter's Sermon recorded by St. Luke And yet it is such a matter of Faith as is not contain'd in the Unmasker's Catalogue of necessary Articles I must ask him then whether St. Luke were so concise an Historian that he would so at large set down a matter of Faith propos'd by St. Peter that was not necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian and wholly leave out the very mention of all the Unmasker's additional necessary Articles if indeed they were necessary to be believed to make Men Christians I know not how any one could charge the Historian with greater unfaithfulness or greater folly But this the Unmasker sticks not at to preserve to himself the Power of appointing what shall and what shall not be necessary Articles and of making his System the Christianity necessary and only necessary to be received The next thing that St. Peter proceeds to in this his Sermon is to declare to the Unbelieving Iews that Iesus of Nazareth who had done Miracles amongst them whom they had Crucified and put to Death and whom God had raised again from the Dead was the Messiah Here indeed our Saviour's Crucifixion Death and Resurrection are mentioned And if they were no where else recorded are matters of Faith which with all the rest of the New Testament ought to be believed by every Christian to whom it is thus propos'd as a part of Divine Revelation But that these were not here propos'd to the Unbelieving Iews as the Fundamental Articles which
to quit mine for nothing I have then one that being set by mine I may compare them and so be able to chuse the true and perfect one and relinquish the other He that does not do this plainly declares that without shewing me the certain way to Salvation he expects that I should depend on him with an implicit Faith whilst he reserves to himself the liberty to require of me to believe what he shall think fit as he sees Occasion and in effect says thus Distrust those Fundamentals which the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles have shew'd to be all that is necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian and though I cannot tell you what are those other Articles which are necessary and sufficient to make a Man a Christian yet take me for your Guide and that is as good as if I made up in a compleat List the Defects of your Fundamentals To which this is a sufficient Answer Si quid novisti rectius imperti si non his ut ere mecum The Unmasker of his own accord p. 110. of his Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism sets down several which he calls Fundamental Doctrines I ask him whether those be all For answer he adds more to them in his Socinianism Unmask'd But in a great pet refuses to tell me whether this Second List of Fundamentals be compleat And instead of answering so reasonable a Demand pays me with ill Language in these words pag. 22. subjoyn'd to those last quoted If what I have said will not content him I am sure I can do nothing that will and therefore if he should Capriciously require any thing more it would be as great folly in me to comply with it as it is in him to move it If I did ask a Question which troubles you be not so angry you your self were the occasion of it I proposed my Collection of Fundamentals which I had with great care sought and thought I had found clear in the Scripture you tell me no it is imperfect and offer me one of your own I ask whether that be perfect Thereupon you grow into Choler and tell me 't is a foolish Question Why then I think it was not very wise in you so forwardly to offer one unless you had had one ready not liable to the same exception Would you have me so foolish to take a List of Fundamentals from you who have not yet one for your self nor are yet resolved with your self what Doctrines are to be put in or left out of it Farther pray tell me if you had a settled Collection of Fundamentals that you would stand to why should I take them from you upon your word rather than from an Anabaptist or a Quaker or an Arminian or a Socinian or a Lutheran or a Papist who I think are not perfectly agreed with you or one another in Fundamentals and yet there is none amongst them that I have not as much reason to believe upon his bare word as an Unmasker who to my certain knowledge will make bold with Truth If you set up for Infallibility you may have some claim to have your bare word taken before any other but the Pope But yet if you do demand to be an unquestionable Proposer of what is absolutely necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian you must perform it a little better than hitherto you have done For it is not enough sometimes to give us Texts of Scripture Sometimes Propositions of your own framing and sometimes Texts of Scripture out of which they are to be framed as p. 14. you say These and the like places afford us such Fundamental and Necessary Doctrines as these And again p. 16. after the naming several other Texts of Scripture you add which places yield us such Propositions as these and then in both places set down what you think fit to draw out of them And Page 15. you have these words And here likewise it were easie to shew that Adoption Iustification Pardon of Sins c. which are Privileges and Benefits bestow'd upon us by the Messiah are Necessary Matters of our Belief By all which as well as the whole frame wherein you make shew of giving us your Fundamental Articles it is plain that what you have given us there is nothing less than a compleat Collection of Fundamentals even in your own Opinion of it But Good Sir why is it a foolish Question in me you have found fault with my Summary for being short The defect in my Collection of Necessary Articles has raised your Zeal into so severe Censures and drawn upon me from you so heavy a Condemnation that if half that you have said of me be true I am in a very ill case for having so curtailed the Fundamental Doctrines of Christianity Is it folly then for me to ask from you a compleat Creed If it be so dangerous as certainly it is to fail in any necessary Article of Faith why is it folly in me to be instant with you to give me them all Or why is it folly in you to grant so reasonable a Demand a short Faith defective in Necessaries is no more tolerable in you than in me nay much more inexcuseable if it were for no other reason but this that you rest in it your self and would impose it on others and yet do not your self know or believe it to be compleat For if you do why dare you not say so and give it us all entire in plain Propositions and not as you have in great measure done here give only the Texts of Scripture from whence you say necessary Articles are to be drawn which is too great an uncertainty for Doctrines absolutely necessary For possibly all Men do not understand those Texts alike and some may draw Articles out of them quite different from your Systeme and so though they agree in the same Texts may not agree in the same Fundamentals and till you have set down plainly and distinctly your Articles that you think contain'd in them cannot tell whether you will allow them to be Christians or no. For you know Sir several Inferences are often drawn from the same Text and the different Systems of dissenting I was going to say Christians but that none must be so but those who receive your Collection of Fundamentals when you please to give it them Professors are all founded on the Scripture Why I beseech you is mine a foolish Question to ask What are the necessary Articles of Faith 'T is of no less consequence than nor much different from the Jaylor's Question in the 16th of the Acts What shall I do to be saved and that was not that ever I heard counted by any one a foolish Question You grant there are Articles necessary to be believed for Salvation would it not then be Wisdom to know them nay is it not our Duty to know and believe them If not why do you with so much outcry reprehend me
Writings being all of the same Divine Authority must all equally in every Article be Fundamental and necessary to be believed if that be a reason that makes any one Proposition in it necessary to be believed But the Law of Faith the Covenant of the Gospel being a Covenant of Grace and not of Natural Right or Debt nothing can be absolutely necessary to be believed but what by this new Law of Faith God of his good pleasure hath made to be so And this 't is plain by the preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles to all that believed not already in him was only the believing the only true God and Iesus to be the Messiah whom he hath sent The performance of this puts a Man within the Covenant and is that which God will impute to him for Righteousness All the other acts of assent to other Truths taught by our Saviour and his Apostles are not what make a Man a Christian but are necessary acts of Obedience to be performed by one who is a Christian and therefore being a Christian ought to live by the Laws of Christ's Kingdom Nor are we without some glimpse of Light why it hath pleased God of his Grace that the believing Iesus to be the Messiah should be that Faith which he would impute to Men for Righteousness 'T is evident from the Scripture that our Saviour despised the Shame and endured the Cross for the Joy that was set before him Which joy 't is also plain was a Kingdom But in this Kingdom which his Father had appointed to him he could have none but voluntary Subjects such as leaving the Kingdom of Darkness and of the Prince of this World with all the Pleasures Pomps and Vanities thereof would put themselves under his Dominion and translate themselves into his Kingdom which they did by believing and owning him to be the Messiah their King and thereby taking him to rule over them For the Faith for which God justiâ—ieth is not an empty Speculation but a Faith joyn'd with Repentance and working by Love And for this which was in effect to return to God himself and to their natural Allegiance due to him and advance as much as lay in them the Glory of the Kingdom which he had promised his Son God was pleased to declare he would accept them receive them to Grace and blot out all their former Transgressions This is evidently the Covenant of Grace as deliver'd in the Scriptures And if this be not I desire any one to tell me what it is and what are the terms of it 'T is a Law of Faith whereby God has promised to forgive all our Sins upon our Repentance and believing something and to impute that Faith to us for Righteousness Now I ask what 't is by the Law of Faith we are required to believe for till that be known the Law of Faith is not distinctly known nor the terms of the Covenant upon which the Almerciful God graciously offers us Salvation And if any one will say this is not known nay is not easily and certainly to be known under the Gospel I desire him to tell me what the greatest Enemies of Christianity can say worse against it For a way propos'd to Salvation that does not certainly lead thither or is propos'd so as not to be known are very little different as to their consequence and Mankind would be left to wander in darkness and uncertainty with the one as well as the other I do not write this for Controversies sake for had I minded Victory I would not have given the Unmasker this new Matter of exception I know whatever is said he must be bawling for his fashionable and profitable Orthodoxy and cry out against this too which I have here added as Socinianism and cast that Name upon all that differs from what is held by those he would recommend his Zeal to in Writing I call it bawling for whether what he has said be Reasoning I shall referr to those of his own Brotherhood if he be of any Brotherhood and there be any that will joyn with him in his Set of Fundamentals when his Creed is made Had I minded nothing but how to deal with him I had tied him up short to his List of Fundamentals without affording him Topicks of declaiming against what I have here said But I have enlarged on this point for the sake of such Readers who with a love of truth read Books of this kind and endeavour to inform themselves in the things of their everlasting concernment It being of greater consideration with me to give any light and satisfaction to one single Person who is really concerned to understand and be convinced of the Religion he professes than what a Thousand fashionable or titular Professors of any sort of Orthodoxy shall say or think of me for not doing as they do i. e. for not saying after others without understanding what is said or upon what Grounds or caring to understand it Let us now consider his Argument to prove the Articles he has given us to be Fundamentals In his Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism p. 119. he argues from 1 Tim. iii. 16. where he says Christianity is called a Mystery that all things in Christianity are not plain and exactly level to every common apprehension that every thing in Christianity is not clear and intelligible and comprehensible by the weakest Noddle Let us take this for proved as much as he pleases and then let us see the force of this subtle Disputant's Argument for the necessity there is that every Christian Man should believe those which he has given us for Fundamental Articles out of the Epistles The Reason of that Obligation and the Necessity of every Man and Woman's believing them he has laid in this that they are to be found in the Epistles or in the Bible This Argument for them we have over and over again in his Socinianism Unmask'd as here p. 9. thus Are they set down to no purpose in these inspired Epistles Why did the Apostles write these Doctrines was it not that those they writ to might give their assent to them P. 22. They are in our Bibles for that very purpose to be believed p. 25. Now I ask can any one more directly invalidate all he says here for the necessity of believing his Articles Can any one more apparently write booty than by saying that these his Doctrines these his Fundamental Articles which are after his fashion set down between the 8. and 20. Pages of this his First Chapter are of necessity to be believed by every one before he can be a Christian because they are in the Epistles and in the Bible and yet to affirm that in Christianity i. e. in the Epistles and in the Bible there are Mysteries there are things not plain not clear not intelligible to common apprehensions If his Articles some of which contain Mysteries are necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian because
vouchsafed to set down you tell us are in the Bible on purpose to be believed What must become of all the rest which you have omitted Are they there not to be believed And must the Reader understand your passing them by to be a publishing to the World your contempt of them If so you have Unmasked your self If not but you may pass by some parts of Scripture nay whole Epistles as you have those of St. Iames and St. Iude without contempt Why may not I without contempt pass by others But because you have a liberty to do what you will and I must do but what you in your good pleasure will allow me But if I ask you whence you have this Privilege above others You will have nothing to say except it be according to your usual Skill in Divining that you know my Heart and the Thoughts that are in it which you find not like yours right and orthodox and good But always evil and perverse such as I dare not own but hypocritically either say nothing of or declare against But yet with all my cunning I cannot hide them from you your all knowing penetration always finds them out You know them or you guess at them as is best for your turn and that 's as good And then presently I am confounded I doubt whether the World has ever had any two-eyed Man your equal for penetration and a quick sight The telling by the Spectators looks what Card he guesses is nothing to what you can do You take the heighth of an Author's Parts by numbring the Pages of his Book You can spy an Heresy in him by his saying not a syllable of it Distinguish him from the Orthodox by his understanding places of Scripture just as several of the Orthodox do You can repeat by heart whole Leaves of what is in his Mind to say before he speaks a word of it You can discover Designs before they are hatch'd and all the Intrigues of carrying them on by those who never thought of them All this and more you can do by the Spirit of Orthodoxy or which is as certain by your own good Spirit of Invention informing you Is not this to be an errant Conjurer But to your Reply You say after my TEDIOUS Collection out of the four Evangelists my passing by the Epistles and neglecting wholly what the Apostles say c. I wondred at first why you mention'd not the Acts here as well as the four Evangelists For I have not as you have in other places observed been sparing of Collections out of the Acts too But there was it seems a Necessity here for your omitting it For that would have stood too near what followed in these words and neglecting wholly what the Apostles say For if it appear'd to the Reader out of your own Confession that I allowed and built upon the Divine Authority of what the Apostles say in the Acts he could not so easily be mislead into an Opinion that I contemned what they say in their Epistles But this is but a slight touch of your Leger-de-main And now I ask the Reader what he will think of a Minister of the Gospel who cannot bear the Texts of Scripture I have produced nor my Quotations out of the four Evangelists This which in his Thoughts of the Causes of Atheism p. 114. was want of Vivacity and Elevation of Mind want of a Vein of Sense and Reason yea and of Elocution too is here in his Socinianism Unmask'd a tedious Collection out of the four Evangelists Those places I have quoted lie heavy it seems upon his Stomach and are too many to be got off But it was my business not to omit one of them that the Reader might have a full view of the whole tenour of the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles to the Unconverted Iews and Gentiles and might therein see what Faith they were Converted to and upon their assent to which they were pronounced Believers and admitted into the Christian Church But the Unmasker complains there are too many of them He thinks the Gospel the good News of Salvation tedious from the Mouth of our Saviour and his Apostles He is of opinion That before the Epistles were writ and without believing precisely what he thinks â—it to cull out of them there could be no Christians And if we had nothing but the four Evangelists we could not be saved And yet 't is plain that every single one of the Four contains the Gospel of Iesus Christ and at least they all together contain all that is necessary to Salvation If any one doubt of this I referr him to Mr. Chillingworth for Satisfaction who hath abundantly proved it His following words were he not the same Unmasker all through would be beyond Parallel But let us hear why the Vindicator did not attempt to Collect any Articles out of these Writings He assigns this as one Reason The Epistles being writ to those who were already Believers it could not be supposed that they were writ to them to teach them Fundamentals p. 13 14. Vindic. Certainly no Man would have conjectured that he would have used such an Evasion as this I will say that for him he goes beyond all surmises he is above all Conjectures he hath a faculty which no Creature on Earth can ever fathom Thus far the Unmasker in his Oratorical strain In what follows he comes to his closer reasoning against what I had said His words are Do we not know that the four Gospels were writ to and for Believers as well as Unbelievers Answ. I grant it Now let us see your Inference Therefore what these holy Historians recorded that our Saviour and his Apostles said and preach'd to Unbelievers was said and preach'd to Believers The Discourse which our Saviour had with the Woman of Samaria and her Townsmen was addressed to Believers because St. Iohn writ his Gospel wherein it is recorded as a part of our Saviour's History for Believers as well as Unbelievers St. Peter's Preaching to Cornelius and St. Paul's Preaching at Antioch at Thessalonica at Corinth c. was not to Unbelievers for their Conversion Because St. Luke dedicates his History of the Acts of the Apostles to Theophilus who was a Christian as the Unmasker strenuously proves in this Paragraph Just as if he should say that the Discourses which Caesar records he had upon several Occasions with the Gauls were not addressed to the Gauls alone but to the Romans also because his Commentaries were writ for the Romans as well as others Or that the Sayings of the Ancient Greeks and Romans in Plutarch were not spoke by them to their Contemporaries only because they are recorded by him for the benefit of Posterity I perused the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles to the Unconverted World to see what they taught and required to be believed to make Men Christians And these all I set down and leave the World to be judge what they contain'd The
Epistles which were all written to those who had imbraced the Faith and were all Christians already I thought would not so distinctly shew what were those Doctrines which were absolutely necessary to make Men Christians they being not writ to convert Unbelievers but to build up those who were already Believers in their most holy Faith This is plainly expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews V. 11 c Of whom i. e. Christ we have many things to say and hard to be utter'd seeing ye are all dull of hearing For when for the time ye ought to be Teachers ye have need that one teach you again which be the first Principles of the Oracles of God and are become such as have need of Milk and not of strong Meat For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness for he is a Babe But strong meat belongeth to him that is of full age even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and bad Therefore leaving the Principles of the Doctrine of Christ let us go on unto perfection not laying again the foundation of Repentance from dead Works and of Faith towards God and of the Doctrine of Baptism and of laying on of hands and of the resurrection of the Dead and of eternal Iudgment Here the Apostle shews what was his Design in writing this Epistle Not to teach them the Fundamental Doctrines of the Christian Religion but to lead them on to more Perfection That is to greater degrees of Knowledge of the wise Design and wonderful Contrivance and carrying on of the Gospel and the Evidence of it which he makes out in this Epistle by shewing its Correspondence with the Old Testament and particularly with the Oeconomy of the Mosaical Constitution Here I might ask the Unmasker whether those many things which St. Paul tells the Hebrews he had to say of Christ hard to be utter'd to them because they were dull of hearing had not an immediate respect to the Occasion Author Way Means or Issue of their Redemption and Salvation And therefore whether they were such things without the knowledge of which they could not be saved as the Unmasker says of such things p. 23. And the like I might ask him concerning those things which the Apostle tells the Corinthians 1 Ep. Chap. III. 2. that they were not yet able to bear For much to the same purpose he speaks to the Corinthians Ep. 1. Ch. III. as in the above-cited places he did to the Hebrews That he as a wise Master-Builder had laid the Foundation And that Foundation he himself tells us is Iesus the Messiah and that there is no other Foundation to be laid And that in this he laid the Foundation of Christianity at Corinth St. Luke records Act XVIII 4. in these words Paul at Corinth reason'd in the Synagogue every Sabbath-day and testified to the Iews that Iesus was the Messiah Upon which Foundation he tells them there might be a Superstructure But that what is built on the Foundation is not the Foundation I think I need not prove He further tells them that he had desired to build upon this Foundation But withal says he had fed them till then with Milk and not with Meat because they were Babes and had not been able to bear it neither were they yet able And therefore this Epistle we see is almost wholly spent in Reproofs of their Miscarriages and in Exhortations and Instructions relating to Practice and very little said in it for the explaining any part of the great Mystery of Salvation contain'd in the Gospel By these Passages we may see were it not evident to common sence it self from the Nature of things that the design of these Epistles was not to lay the Foundations or teach the Principles of the Christian Religion they being writ to those who had received them and were Christians already The same holds in all the other Epistles And therefore the Epistles seem'd not to me the properest parts of Scripture to give us that Foundation distinct from all the Superstructures built on it Because in the Epistles the latter was the thing propos'd rather than the former For the main intention of the Apostles in writing their Epistles could not be to do what was done already to lay down barely the Foundations of Christianity to those who were Christians already but to build upon it some â—arther Explication of it which either their particular Circumstances or a general evidencing of the Truth Wisdom Excellencies and Privileges c. of the Gospel required This was the reason that perswaded me to take the Articles of Faith absolutely necessary to be received to make a Man a Christian only from the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles to the Unconverted World as laid down in the Historical Part of the New Testament And I thought it a good Reason It being past doubt that they in their Preachings proposed to the Unconverted all that was necessary to be believed to make them Christians And also that that Faith upon a Profession whereof any one was admitted into the Church as a Believer had all that was necessary in it to make him a Christian because if it wanted any thing necessary he had necessarily not been admitted unless we can suppose that any one was admitted into the Christian Church by our Saviour and his Apostles who was not yet a Christian or pronounced a Believer who yet wanted something necessary to make him a Believer i. e. was a Believer and not a Believer at the same time But what those Articles were which had been Preach'd to those to whom the Epistles were writ and upon the Belief whereof they had been admitted into the Christian Church and became as they are called Believers Saints Faithful Elect c. could not be collected out of the Epistles This though it were my reason and must be a reason to every one who would make this Enquiry and the Unmasker quotes the place where I told him it was my reason Yet he according to his never erring Illumination flatly tells me p. 38. that it was not and adds Here then is want of Sincerity c. I must desire him therefore to prove what he says p. 38. viz. XV. That by the same Argument that I would perswade that the Fundamentals are not to be sought for in the Epistles he can prove that they are not to be sought for in the Gospels and in the Acts because even these were writ to those that believed And next I desire him to prove what he also says in the same Page viz. XVI That the Epistles being writ to those that believed was not an Argument that I did make use of He tells us p. 38. That it is the Argument whereby I would perswade and in the very same Page a few Lines lower says That it is not the Argument I did make use of Who but an arrant Unmasker would contradict himself so
flatly in the same breath And yet upon that he raises a Complaint of my want of Sincerity For want of Sincerity in one of us we need not go far for an Instance The next Paragraph p. 38. 40. affords us a gross one of it Wherein the Unmasker argues strongly not against any thing I had said but against an Untruth of his own setting up Towards the latter end of the Paragraph p. 40. he has these words It is manifest that the Apostles in their Epistles taught Fundamentals which is contrary to what this Gentleman says that such a thing could not be suppos'd And therefore the Unmasker has taken a great deal of pains to shew that there are Fundamental Doctrines to be found in the Epistles as if I had denied it And to lead the Reader into an Opinion that I had said so he sets down these words could not be suppos'd as if they were my words And so they are but not to that purpose And therefore he did well not to quote the Page lest the Reader by barely turning to the place should have a clear sight of Falshood instead of that Sincerity which he would make the Reader believe is wanting in me My words p. 294. Of the Reasonableness of Christianity are NOR CAN IT BE SUPPOS'D that the sending of such Fundamentals was the reason of the Apostles writing to any of them And a little lower The Epistles therefore being all written to those who were already Believers and Christians the occasion and end of writing them could not be to instruct them in that which was necessary to make them Christians The thing then that I deny'd was not that there were any Fundamentals in the Epistles For p. 295. I have these express words I do not deny but the great Doctrines of the Christian Faith are dropt here and there and scatter'd up and down in most of them And therefore he might have spared his Endeavours in the next Paragraph to prove that there may be Fundamentals found in the Epistles till he finds some body that denies it And here again I must repeat my usual Question that with this sincere Writer is so often necessary viz. XVII Where it is that I say that it cannot be suppos'd that there are Fundamental Articles in the Epistles If he hopes to shift it off by the word taught which seems fallaciously put in as if he meant that there were some Fundamental Articles taught necessary to be believed to make them Christians in the Epistles which those who they were writ to knew not before in this sense I do deny it and then this will be the XVII Proposition remaining upon him to prove viz. That there are Fundamental Articles necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian taught in the Epistles which those who they were writ to knew not before The former part of his next Paragraph p. 40. runs thus Hear another feigned Ground of his omitting the Epistles viz. Because the Fundamental Articles are here promiscuously and without distinction mixt with other Truths p. 14. But who sees not that this is a mere Elusion For on the same account he might have forborn to search for Fundamental Articles in the Gospels for they do not lie there together but are dispersed up and down The Doctrinal and Historical Parts are mix'd with one another but he pretends to sever them Why then did he not make a Separation between the Doctrines in the Epistles and those other Matters that are treated of there He has nothing to reply to this and therefore we must again look upon what he has suggested as a cast of his shuffling faculty The Argument contain'd in these words is this A Man cannot well distinguish Fundamental from Non-fundamental Doctrines in the Epistles where they are promiscuously mixed with Non-fundamental Doctrines Therefore he cannot well distinguish Fundamental Doctrines from others in the Gospels and the Acts where they are mixed with Matters of Fact As if he should say one cannot well distinguish a Batchellour of Divinity from other Divines where several of them stand together promiscuously in the same Habit Therefore one cannot distinguish a Batchellour of Divinity from a Billingsgate Orator where they stand together in their distinct habits Or that it is as easie to distinguish â—ine Gold from that of a little lower Allay where several pieces of each are mixed together as it is to distinguish pieces of fine Gold from pieces of Silver which they are mixed among But it seems the Unmasker thinks it is as easie to distinguish between Fundamental and not Fundamental Doctrines in a writing of the same Author where they are promiscuously mixed together as it is to distinguish between a Fundamental Doctrine of Faith and a relation of Matter of Fact where they are intermixedly reported in the same History When he has proved this the Unmasker will have more reason to tax me with Elusion Shuffling and Feigning in the reason I gave for not collecting Fundamentals out of the Epistles Till then all that noise must stand amongst those ridiculous Airs of Triumph and Victory which he so often gives himself without the least Advantage to his Cause or Edification of his Reader though he should a thousand times say that I have nothing to reply In the latter part of this Paragraph he says That necessary Truths Fundamental Principles may be distinguish'd from those that are not such in the Epistolary Writings by the Nature and Importance of them by their immediate respect to the Author and means of our Salvation Answ. If this be so I desire him to give me a definitive Collection of Fundamentals out of the Epistles as I have given one out of the Gospels and the Acts. If he cannot do that 'T is plain he hath here given a distinguishing mark of Fundamentals by which he himself cannot distinguish them But yet I am the Shuffler The Argument in the next Paragraph p. 41. is this Necessary Doctrines of Faith such as God absolutely demands to be believed for Justification may be distinguished from Rules of Holy Living with which they are mixed in the Epistles Therefore Doctrines of Faith necessary and not necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian may be distinguished as they stand mixed in the Epistles Which is as good sense as to say Lambs and Kids may be easily distinguish'd in the same Pen where they are together by their different Natures Therefore the Lambs I absolutely demand of you as necessary to satisfie me may be distinguish'd from others in the same Pen where they are mix'd without any distinction Doctrines of Faith and Precepts of Practice are as distinguishable as doing and believing And those as easily discernible one from another as thinking and walking But Doctrinal Propositions all of them of Divine Revelation are of the same Authority and of the same Species in respect of the necessity of believing them And will be eternally undistinguishable into necessary and not
And therefore we look upon this as all meer Sham and Sophistry Answ. Though the Unmasker teaches good breeding out of the Mishna yet I thought he had been a Minister of the Gospel and had taught Christianity out of the Scripture Why Good Sir would you teach Iews and Mahometans Christianity out of the Talmud and Alcoran because they are the Books that at present they attend to and believe Or would you laying by the Authority of all Books Preach Religion to Infidels in your own Name and by your own Authority laying aside the Scripture Is it not to be conceived no not by a Christian Divine that the way to make Unbelievers Christians is to shew them the Reasonableness of the Religion contained in the Scripture But it seems the Unmasker has a peculiar way of Preaching and propagating Christianity without the Scripture as some Men have a peculiar way of disputing without Reason In the beginning of this Paragraph p. 43. the Unmasker that is always a fair Interpreter of my meaning and never fails to know it better than I do tells me That by those that wholly disbelieve I must mean Atheists Turks Iews and Pagans and by those that are not firmly Christians a few weak Christians But did our Unmasker never hear of Unbelievers under a denomination distinct from that of Atheists Turks Iews and Pagans Whilst the Pulpit and the Press have so often had up the Name of Theists or Deists has that Name wholly scaped him 'T was these I chiefly designed and I believe no body of all that read my Vindication but the Unmasker mistook me if he did But there at least p. 9. he might have found the Name as of a sort of Unbelievers not unknown amongst us But whatever he thought it was convenient and a sort of Prudence in him when he would perswade others that I had not a Design which I say I had to lessen as much as he could and cover the need of any such Design and so make it that I could not intend my Book to work upon those that disbelieved or did not firmly believe by insinuating there were few or none such amongst us Hence he says that by those that are not throughly and firmly Christians I mean a FEW weak Christians as well as under those who wholly disbelieve he left the Theists out of my meaning I am very glad to hear from the Unmasker that there are but few weak Christians few that have Doubts about the Truth of Christianity amongst us But if there be not a great number of Deists and that the preventing their increase be noâ— worth every true Christian's Care and Endeavours those who have been so loud against them have been much to blame and I wish to God there were no reason for their Complaints For these therefore I take the liberty to say as I did before that I chiefly designed my Book And shall not be asham'd of this Sophistry as you call it if it can be Sophistry to alledge a Matter of Fact that I know Till you have Arguments to convince me that you know my intention in publishing it better than I do my self And I shall think it still no blameable Prudence however you exclaim against Prudence as perhaps you have some reason that I mention'd only those Advantages that all Christians are agreed in And that I observed that command of the Apostle Rom. XIV 1. Him that is weak in the Faith receive ye but not to doubtful Disputations without being a Socinian I think I did not amiss that I offer'd to the belief of those that stood off that and only that which our Saviour and his Apostles preach'd 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 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 I have repeated this again out of the 7th Page of my Vindication where there is more to the same purpose That the Reader may see how fully the Unmasker has answer'd it Because I said Would any one blame my Prudence if I mention'd only those Advantages which all Christians are agreed in The Unmasker adds p. 44. Socinian Christians and then as if the naming of that had gained him his Point he goes on victoriously thus He has bethought himself better since he first Publish'd his Notions and as the result of that he now begins to resolve what he writ into Prudence I know whence he had this Method and 't is likely he has taken more than this from the same hands viz. from the Missionary Iesuits that went to Preach the Gospel to the People of China We are told that they instructed them in some Matters relating to our Saviour they let them know that Iesus was the Messias the Person promised to be sent into the World But they conceal'd his Sufferings and Death and they would not let them know any thing of his Passion and Crucifixion So our Author their humble Imitator undertakes to instruct the World in Christianity with an omission of its Principal Articles and more especially that of the Advantage we have by Christ's Death which was the prime thing design'd in his coming into the World This he calls Prudence So that to hide from the People the main Articles of the Christian Religion to disguise the Faith of the Gospel to betray Christianity it self is according to this excellent Writer the Cardinal Virtue of Prudence May we be deliver'd then say I from a Prudential Racovian And there ends the ratling for this time not to be outdone by any Piece of Clock-work in the Town When he is once set a going he runs on like an Alarm always in the same strain of noisy empty Declamation wherein every thing is suppos'd and nothing prov'd till his own weight has brought him to the Ground And then being wound up with some new Topick takes another run whether it makes for or against him it matters not he has laid about him with ill Language let it light where it will and the Vindicator is paid off That I may keep the due distance in our different ways of Writing I shall shew the Reader that I say not this at random but that the place affords me occasion to say so He begins this Paragraph with these words p. 42. Let us hear farther what this Vindicator says to excuse his rejection of the Doctrines contain'd in the Epistles This rejection of the Doctrines contain'd in the Epistles was the not mentioning the Satisfaction of Christ amongst those Advantages
pertinent Now what can there be more impertinent than to confess the Matter of Fact upon which the Objection is grounded but instead of destroying the Inference drawn from that Matter of Fact only amuse the Reader with wrong Reasons why that Matter of Fact was so No considerate Man he says doth wonder that the Articles and Doctrines he mentioned are omitted in the Apostles Creed Because that Creed is a form of outward Profession Answ. A Profession of what I beseech you Is it a Form to be used for Form's sake I thought it had been a Profession of something even of the Christian Faith And if it be so any considerate Man may wonder necessary Articles of the Christian Faith should be lest out of it For how it can be an outward Profession of the Christian Faith without containing the Christian Faith I do not see unless a Man can outwardly profess the Christian Faith in words that do not contain or express it i. e. profess the Christian Faith when he does not profess it But he says 't is a Profession chiefly to be made use of in Assemblies Answ. Do those solemn Assemblies privilege it from containing the necessary Articles of the Christian Religion This proves not that it does not or was not designed to contain all Articles necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian unless the Unmasker can prove that a From of outward Profession of the Christian Faith that contains all such necessary Articles cannot be made use of in the Publick Assemblies In the Publick Assemblies says he when Prayers are put up by the Church and the Holy Scriptures are read then this Abridgment of Faith is properly used or when there is not generally time or opportunity to make an Enlargement Answ. But that which contains not what is absolutely necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian can no where be properly used as a form of outward Profession of the Christian Faith and least of all in the solemn Publick Assemblies All the sense I can make of this is That this Abridgment of the Christian Faith i. e. imperfect Collection as the Unmasker will have it of some of the Fundamental Articles of Christianity in the Apostles Creed which omits the greatest part of them is made use of as a form of outward Profession of but part of the Christian Faith in the Publick Assemblies when by reason of reading of the Scripture and Prayers there is not time or opportunity for a full and perfect Profession of it 'T is strange the Christian Church should not find time nor opportunity in Sixteen hundred Years to make in any of her Publick Assemblies a Profession of so much of her Faith as is necessary to make a Man a Christian. But pray tell me has the Church any such full and compleat form of Faith that hath in it all those Propositions you have given us for necessary Articles not to say any thing of those which you have reserved to your self in your own Breast and will not communicate of which the Apostles Creed is only a scanty form a brief imperfect abstract used only to save time in the Croud of other pressing Occasions that are always in hast to be dispatch'd If she has the Unmasker will do well to produce it If the Church has no such compleat form besides the Apostle's Creed any where of Fundamental Articles he will do well to leave talking idlely of this Abstract as he goes on to do in the following words But says he we are not to think that it expresly contains in it all the necessary and weighty Points all the important Doctrines of our Belief it being only designed to be an Abstract Answ. Of what I beseech you is it an Abstract For here the Unmasker stops short and as one that knows not well what to say speaks not out what it is an Abstract of But provides himself a Subterfuge in the generality of the preceding terms of necessary and weighty Points and Important Doctrines jumbled together which can be there of no other use but to cover his Ignorance or Sophistry For the Question being only about necessary Points to what purpose are weighty and important Doctrines join'd to them unless he will say that there is no difference between necessary and weighty Points Fundamental and important Doctrines And if so then the distinction of Points into necessary and not necessary will be foolish and impertinent And all the Doctrines contain'd in the Bible will be absolutely necessary to be explicitly believed by every Man to make him a Christian. But taking it for granted that the diction of Truths contain'd in the Gospel into Points absolutely necessary and not absolutely necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian is good I desire the Unmasker to tell us what the Apostles Creed is an Abstract of He will perhaps answer that he has told us already in this very Page where he says it is an Abridgment of Faith and he has said true in words but saying those words by rote after others without understanding them he has said so in a sense that is not true For he supposes it an Abridgment of Faith by containing only a few of the necessary Articles of Faith and leaving out the far greater part of them And so takes a part of a thing for an Abridgment of it Whereas an Abridgment or Abstract of any thing is the whole in little and if it be of a Science or Doctrine the Abridgment consists in the essentâ—al or necessary Parts of it contracted into a narrower compass than where it lies diffus'd in the ordinary way of delivery amongst a great number of Transitions Explanations Illustrations Proofs Reasonings Corollaries c. All which though they make a part of the Discourse wherein that Doctrine is deliver'd are lest out in the Abridgment of it wherein all the necessary parts of it are drawn together into a less room But though an Abridgment need to contain none but the essential and necessary parts yet all those it ought to contain Or else it will not be an Abridgment or Abstract of that thing but an Abridgment only of a part of it I think it could not be said to be an Abridgment of the Law contain'd in an Act of Parliament wherein any of the things required by that Act were omitted which yet commonly may be reduced into a very narrow compass when strip'd of all the Motives Ends Enacting Forms c. expressed in the Act it self If this does not satisfie the Unmasker what is properly an Abridgment I shall referr him to Mr. Chillingworth who I think will be allow'd to understand sense and to speak it properly at least as well as the Unmasker And what he says happens to be in the very same Question between Knot the Jesuit and him that is here between the Unmasker and me 'T is but putting the Unmasker in the Jesuit's place and my self if it may be allow'd
Man really a Christian. Which what they are the Church of England shall know when this new Reformer thinks fit And then she may be able to propose to those who are not yet so a Collection of Articles of Belief and Baptize them anew into a Faith which will really make them Christians But hitherto if the Unmasker may be credited she has failed in it Yet he craves leave to tell me in the following words p. 48. That the Apostles Creed hath more in it than I or my Brethren will subscribe to Were it not the Undoubted Privilege of the Unmasker to know me better than I do my self for he is always telling me something of my self which I did not know I would in my turn crave leave to tell him that this is the Faith I was baptized into no one tittle whereof I have renounced that I know And that I heretofore thought that gave me title to be a Christian. But the Unmasker hath otherwise determin'd And I know not now where to find a Christian. For the Belief of the Apostles Creed will not it seems make a Man one And what other Belief will it does not yet please the Unmasker to tell us But yet as to the Subscribing to the Apostles Creed I must take leave to say however the Unmasker may be right in the Faith he is out in the Morals of a Christian It being against the Charity of one that is really so to pronounce as he does peremptorily in a thing that he cannot know and to affirm positively what I know to be a downright Falsehood But what others will do it is not my talent to determine That belongs to the Unmasker Though as to all that are my Brethren in the Christian Faith I may answer for them too that they will also with me do that without which in that sense they cannot be my Brethren P. 49. The Unmasker smartly convinces me of no small Blunder in these words But was it not judiciously said by this Writer that it is well for the Compilers of the Creed that they lived not in my days P. 12. I tell you Friend it was impossible they should for the Learned Usher and Vossius and others have proved that that Symbol was drawn up not at once but that some Articles of it were adjoyn'd many years after far beyond the extent of any Man's Life and therefore the Compilers of the Creed could not live in my days nor could I live in theirs Answ. But it seems that had they liv'd altogether you could have liv'd in their days But says he I let this pass as one of the Blunders of our thoughtful and musing Author Answ. And I tell you Friend that unless it were to shew your reading in Usher and Vossius you had been better let this Blunder of mine alone Does not the Unmasker give here a clear Proof that he is no Changeling Whatever Argument he takes in hand weighty or trivial material or not material to the thing in question he brings it to the same sort of sense and force He would shew me guilty of an absurdity in saying It was well for the Compilers of the Creed that they lived not in his days This he proves to be a Blunder because they all lived not in one anothers days Therefore it was an absurdity to suppose they might all live in his days As if there were any greater absurdity to bring the Compilers who lived possibly within a few Centuries of one another by a Supposition into one time than it is to bring the Unmasker and any one of them who lived a Thousand Years distant one from another by a Supposition to be Contemporaries For 't is by reason of the Compilers living at a distance one from another that he proves it impossible for him to be their Contemporary As if it were not as impossible in Fact for him who was not born till above a Thousand Years after to live in any of their Days as it is for any one of them to live in either of those Compilers days that died before him The Supposition of their living together is as easie of one as the other at what distance soever they lived and how many soever there were of them This being so I think it had been better for the Unmasker to have let alone the Blunder and shew'd which was his Business that he does not accuse the Compilers of the Creed of being all over Socinianized as well as he does me since they were as guilty as I of the omission of those Articles viz. That Christ is the Word of God That God was incarnate The eternal and ineffable Generation of the Son of God That the Son is in the Father and Father in the Son which expresses their Unity for the omission whereof the Unmasker laid Socinianism to my Charge So that it remains still upon his Score to shew XXI Why these Omissions in the Apostles Creed not as well make that Abstract as my Abridgment of Faith to be Socinian Page 53. The Unmasker desires the Reader to observe that this lank Faith of mine is in a manner no other than the Faith of a Turk And I desire the Reader to observe that this Faith of mine was all that our Saviour and his Apostles preach'd to the Unbelieving World And this our Unmasker cannot deny As I think will appear to any one who observes what he says p. 76 and 77. of his Socinianism Vnmask'd And that they preach'd nothing but a Faith that was in a manner no other than the Faith of a Turk I think none amongst Christians but this bold Vnmasker will have the irreverence profanely to say He tells us p. 54. That the Musselmen or as he has for the Information of his Reader very pertinently proved should be writ Moslemim without which perhaps we should not have known his Skill in Arabick or in plain English the Mahometans believe that Christ is a good Man and not above the Nature of a Man and sent of God to give instruction to the World And my Faith he says is of the very same Scantling This I shall desire him to prove or which in other words he insinuates in this and the neighbouring Pages viz. XXII That that Faith which I have affirm'd to be the Faith which is required to make a Man a Christian is no other than what Turks believe and is contain'd in the Alchoran Or as he expresses it himself p. 55. That a Turk according to me is a Christian for I make the same Faith serve them both And particularly to shew where 't is I say XXIII That Christ is not above the Nature of a Man or have made that a necessary Article of the Christian Faith And next where it is XXIV That I speak as meanly of Christ's Suffering on the Cross and Death as if there were no such thing For thus he says of me p. 54. I seem to have consulted the Mahometan Bible which did say Christ did not
great Business And yet the good Unmasker in a fit of Zeal displays his Throat and crys out p. 59. Hear O ye Heavens and give ear O Earth judge whether this be not the way to introduce Darkness and Ignorance into Christendom whether this be not blinding of Mens Eyes c. For this mighty Pathos ends not there And all things consider'd I know not whether he had not reason in his want of Arguments this way to pour out his concern For neither the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles nor the Apostles Creed nor any thing else being with him the Faith of a Christian i. e. sufficient to make a Christian but just his set of Fundamental Articles when he himself knows what they be In fine nothing being Christianity but just his System 't is time to cry out Help Neighbours hold fast Friends Knowledge Religion Christianity is gone if this be once permitted that the People should read and understand the Scripture for themselves as God shall enlighten their Understandings in the use of the means and not be forced to depend upon me and upon my choosing and my Interpretation for the necessary Points they are to believe to make them Christians If I the great Unmasker have not the sole Power to decree what is or is not Fundamental and People be not bound to receive it for such Faith and the Gospel are given up Darkness and Barbarism will be brought in upon us by this Writer's Contrivance For he is an underhand Factor for that Communion which cries up ignorance for the Mother of Devotion and Religion i. e. in plain English for Popery For to this and nothing else tends all that sputter he makes in the Sections before mention'd I do not think there was ever a more through-paced Declaimer than our Unmasker He leaves out nothing that he thinks will make an affrighting noise in the Ears of his Orthodox Hearers though all the blame and censure he pours out upon others light only on himself For let me ask this Zealous Upholder of Light and Knowledge does he think it reasonable that any one who is not a Christian should be suffer'd to be undisturb'd in his Parish Nay does he think fit that any such should live free from the Lash of the Magistrate or from the Persecution of the Ecclesiastical Power He seems to talk with another Air p. 65. In the next place I ask whether any one is a Christian who hath not the Faith of a Christian Thirdly I ask whether he has the Faith of a Christian who does not explicitly believe all the Fundamental Articles of Christianity And to conclude I ask him whether all those that he has set down are not Fundamental necessary Articles When the Unmasker has fairly answer'd these Questions it will be seen who is for Popery and the Ignorance and Tyranny that accompanies it The Unmasker is for making and imposing Articles of Faith But he is for this Power in himself He likes not Popery which is nothing but the Tyranny and imposing upon Mens Understandings Faith and Consciences in the hands of the old Gentleman at Rome But it would he thinks do admirably well in his own hands And who can blame him for it Would not that be an excellent way to propagate Light and Knowledge by tying up all Men to a bundle of Articles of his own culling Or rather to the Authority of Christ and his Apostles residing in him For he does not nor ever will give us a full view of Fundamentals of his Christianity But like the Church of Rome to secure our Dependance reserves to himself a Power of declaring others and defining what is Matter of Faith as he shall see occasion Now therefore vail your Bonnets to the Unmasker all you that have a Mind to be Christians Break not your Heads about the Scriptures to examine what they require of you Submit your Faith implicitly to the Unmasker he will understand and find out the necessary Points for you to believe Take them just so many as he thinks fit to deliver them to you This is the way to be knowing Christians But be sure ask not whether those he is pleas'd to deliver be every one of them Fundamental and all the fundamental Articles necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian Such a capricious Question spoils all Overturns Christianity which is intrusted to the Unmasker's sole keeping to be dispensed out as he thinks fit Iâ— you refuse an implicit Faith to him he will presently find you have it for the whore of Babylon he will smell out Popery in it immediately For he has a very shrewd Scent and you will be discover'd to be an Underhand Factor for the Church of Rome But if the Unmasker were such an Enemy as he pretends to those Factors I wonder he should in what he has said concerning the Apostles Creed so exactly jump with Knot the Jesuit If any one doubt of this I desire him to look into the Fourth Chapter of Knot 's Charity maintain'd and there he will see how well our Unmasker and that Iesuit agree in Argument nay and Expressions too But yet I do not think him so far guilty as to be imployed as an Underhand Factor for Popery Every Body will I suppose be ready to pronounce him so far an Innocent as to clear him from that The Cunning of his Design goes not beyond the laying out of his preaching Oratory for the setting up his own System and making that the sole Christianity To that end he would be glad to have the Power of interpreting Scripture of defining and declaring Articles of Faith and imposing them This which makes the absolute Power of the Pope he would not I think establish at Rome but 't is plain he would have it himself if he could get it for the Support of the Christianity of his System An implicit Faith if he might have the Management of it and the taking Fundamentals upon Trust from his Authority would be of excellent Use. Such a Power in his Hands would spread Truth and Knowledge in the World i. e. his own Orthodoxy and Set of Opinions But if a Man differs nay questions any thing of that whether it be absolutely necessary to make one a Christian 't is immediately a Contrivance to let in Popery and to bring Darkness and Barbarism into the Christian World But I must tell the Innocent Unmasker whether he designs it or no That if his calling his System the only Christianity can bring the World to receive from him Articles of Faith of his own chusing as Fundamentals necessary to be believed by all Men to make them Christians which Christ and his Apostles did not propose to all Men to make them Christians he does only set up Popery in another Guise and lay the Foundatians of Ignorance Darkness and Barbarism in the Christian World For all the Ignorance and Blindness that Popery introduced was only upon this Foundation And if
he does not see this as there is Reason to excuse his Innocence 't would be no hard matter to demonstrate it If that were at present the Question between us But there are a great many other Propositions to be proved by him before we come to that new Matter of Debate But before I quit these Paragraphs I must go on with our Unmasker's Account and desire him to shew where it is XXV That I make it my Business to beat Men off from taking notice of any Divine Truths Next where it is XXVI That I cry down all Articles of Christian Faith but one Next how it appears XXVII That I will not suffer Mankind to look into Christianity Again where it is XXVIII That I labour industriously to keep People in Ignorance Or tell them That there is no necessity of knowing any other Doctrines of the Bible These and several others of the like strain particularly concerning One Article and the Epistles which are his common places are to be found in his 59. and 60. Pages And all this out of a Presumption that his System is the only Christianity And that if Men were not pressed and perswaded to receive that just every Article of it upon pain of Damnation Christianity would be lost And not to do this is to promote Ignorance and contemn the Bible But he fears where no fear is If his Orthodoxy be the truth and conformable to the Scriptures the laying the Foundation only where our Saviour and his Apostles have laid it will not overturn it And to shew him that it is so I desire him again to consider what I said in p. 8. of my Vindication Which because I do not remember he any where takes notice of in his Reply I will here offer again to his consideration Convince but Men of the Mission of Jesus Christ make them but see the Truth Simplicity and Reasonableness of what he himself hath 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 will get all the Light they can from this Divine Revelation and nourish themselves up in the words of Faith and good Doctrine as St. Paul speaks to Timothy If the reading and study of the Scripture were more pressed than it is and Men were fairly sent to the Bible to find their Religion and not the Bible put into their hands only to find the Opinions of their peculiar Sect or Party Christendom would have more Christians and those that are would be more knowing and more in the right than now they are That which hinders this is that select bundle of Doctrines which it has pleased every Sect to draw out of the Scriptures or their own inventions with an Omission and as our Unmasker would say a Contempt of all the rest These choice Truths as the Unmasker calls his are to be the standing Orthodoxy of that Party from which none of that Church must recede without the forfeiture of their Christianity and the loss of eternal Life But whilst People keep firm to these they are in the Church and the Way to Salvation Which in effect what is it but to incourage ignorance laziness and neglect of the Scriptures For what need they be at the pains of constantly reading the Bible Or perplex their Heads with considering and weighing what is there deliver'd when believing as the Church believes or saying after or not contradicting their Domine or Teacher serves the turn Further I desire it may be consider'd what Name that meer Mock-shew of recommending to Men the study of the Scripture deserves if when they read it they must understand it just as he that would be and they are too apt contrary to the Command of Christ to call their Master tells them If they find any thing in the Word of God that leads them into Opinions that he does not allow If any thing they meet with in Holy Writ seems to them to thwart or shake the received Doctrines the very proposing of their Doubts renders them suspected Reasoning about them and not acquiescing in what ever is said to them is interpreted want of due respect and deference to the Authority of their Spiritual Guides Disrepute and Censures follow And if in pursuance of their own Light they persist in what they think the Scripture teaches them they are turn'd out of the Church deliver'd to Sathan and no longer allow'd to be Christians And is thus a sincere and rightly directed study of the Scriptures that Men may understand and profit thereby incouraged This is the Consequence of Mens assuming to themselves a Power of declaring Fundamentals i. e. of setting up a Christianity of their own making For how else can they turn Men of as unblameable Lives as others of their Members out of the Church of Christ for so they count their Communion for Opinions unless those Opinions were concluded inconsistent with Christianity Thus Systems the Inventions of Men are turn'd into so many opposite Gospels and nothing is truth in each Sect but what just suits with them So that the Scripture serves but like a Nose of Wax to be turn'd and bent just as may sit the contrary Orthodoxies of different Societies For 't is these several Systems that to each Party are the just Standards of Truth and the meaning of the Scripture is to be measur'd only by them Whoever relinquishes any of those distinguishing Points immediately ceases to be a Christian. This is the Way that the Unmasker would have Truth and Religion preserv'd Light and Knowledge propagated But here too the differing Sects giving equal Authority to their own Orthodoxies will be quits with him For as far as I can observe the same Genius seems to influence them all even those who pretend most to freedom the Socinians themselves For when it is observed how positive and eager they are in their Disputes how forward to have their Interpretations of Scripture received for Authentick though to others in several places they seem very much strain'd How impatient they are of Contradiction and with what disrespect and roughness they often treat their Opposers May it not be suspected that this so visible warmth in their present Circumstances and Zeal for their Orthodoxy would had they the Power work in them as it does in others They in their turns would I fear be ready with their Set of Fundamentals which they would be as forward to impose on others as others have been to impose contrary Fundamentals on them This is and always will be the unavoidable effect of intruding on our Saviour's Authority and requiring more now as necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian than was at first required by our Saviour and his Apostles What else can be expected among Christians but their tearing and being torn
course Thread of Inconsistencies which runs quite through his Book That 't is with great justice I put him here in the Jesuits place and address the same Request to him His very next words give me a fresh reason to do it For thus he argues p. 72. May we not expect that those who deal thus with the Creed i. e. Discard all the Articles of it but one will use the same Method in reducing the ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer Abbreviate the former into one Precept and the latter into one Petition Answ. If he will tell me where this Creed he speaks of is it will be much more easie to answer his Demand Whilst his Creed which he here speaks of is yet no where it is ridiculous for him to ask Questions about it The Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer I know where to find in express words set down by themselves with peculiar marks of distinction Which is the Lord's Prayer we are plainly taught by this Command of our Saviour Luk. XI 1. When we pray SAY Our Father c. In the same manner and words we are taught what we should believe to make us his Disciples by his Command to the Apostles what they should Preach Mat. X. 7. As ye go preach SAYING What were they to say Only this the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand Or as St. Luke expresses it IX 2. They were sent to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the Sick Which what it was we have sufficiently explain'd But this Creed of the Unmasker which he talks of where is it Let him shew it us distinctly set out from the rest of the Scripture If he knows where it is let him produce it or leave talking of it till he can 'T is not the Apostles Creed that 's evident For that Creed he has discarded from being the Standard of Christian Faith and has told the World in words at length That if a Man believes no more than is in express terms in the Apostles Creed his Faith will not be the Faith of a Christian. Nay 't is plain that Creed has in the Unmasker's Opinion the same tendency to Atheism and Irreligion that my Summary has For the Apostles Creed reducing the Forty or perhaps Four hundred Fundamental Articles of his Christian Creed to Twelve and leaving out the greatest part of those necessary ones which he has already and will hereafter in good time give us does as much dispose Men to serve the Decalogue and the Lord's Prayer just so as my reducing those Twelve to Two For so many at least he has granted to be in my Summary viz. The Article of one God Maker of Heaven and Earth and the other of Jesus the Messiah though he every where calls them but ONE Which whether it be to shew with what love and regard to truth he continues and consequently began this Controversie or whether it be to beguile and startle unwary or confirm prejudiced Readers I shall leave to others to judge 'T is evident he thinks his Cause would be mightily maimed if he were forced to leave out the charge of ONE Article and he would not know what to do for Wit or Argument if he should call them two For then the whole weight and edge of his strong and sharp reasoning in his Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism p. 122. would be lost There you have it in these words When the Catholick Faith is thus brought down to one single Article it will soon be reduced to none the Unit will dwindle into a Cypher And here again it makes the whole Argument of his Atheistical Speech which he winds up with these convincing words We are glad to hear that Christianity is brought so low by this worthy Pen-man for this is a good Presage that it will dwindle into nothing What! ONE Article and that so brief too We like such a Faith and such a Religion because it is so near NONE But I must tell this Writer of equal Wit Sense and Modesty That this Religion which he thus makes a dull Farce of and calls near none is that very Religion which our Saviour Iesus Christ and his Apostles preach'd for the Conversion and Salvation of Mankind no one Article whereof which they propos'd as necessary to be received by Unbelievers to make them Christians is omitted And I ask him whether it be his Errand as one of our Saviour's Ambassadors to turn it thus into Ridicule For till he has shewn that they Preach'd otherwise and more than what the Spirit of Truth has recorded of their Preaching in their Histories which I have faithfully collected and set down all that he shall say reflecting upon the Plainness and Simplicity of their Doctrine however directed against me will by his Atheistical Rabble of all kinds now they are so well enter'd and instructed in it by him be all turn'd upon our Saviour and his Apostles What tendency this and all his other trifling in so serious a cause as this is has to the propagating of Atheism and Irreligion in this Age he were best to consider This I am sure the Doctrine of but one Article if the Author and finisher of our Faith and those he guided by his Spirit had Preach'd but one Article has no more tendency to Atheism than their Doctrine of one God But the Unmasker every where talks as if the Strength of our Religion lay in the number of its Articles and would be presently routed if it had but a few And therefore he has mustered up a pretty full band of them and has a reserve of the Lord knows how many more which shall be forthcoming upon occasion But I shall desire to mind this Learned Divine who is so afraid what will become of his Religion if it should propose but one or a few Articles as necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian that the Strength and Security of our Religion lies in the Divine Authority of those who first promulgated the terms of admittance into the Church and not in the Multitude of Articles suppos'd by some necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian And I would have him remember when he goes next to make use of this strong Argument of ONE dwindling into a Cypher that One is as remote as a Million from none And if this be not so I desire to know whether his way of arguing will not prove Pagan Polytheism to be more remote from Atheism than Christianity He will do well to try the force of his Speech in the Mouth of an Heathen complaining of the tendency of Christianity to Atheism by reducing his great number of Gods to but one which was so near none and would therefore soon be reduced to none The Unmasker seems to be upon the same Topick where he so pathetically complains of the Socinians p. 66. in these words Is it not enough to rob us of our God by denying Christ to be so But must they
Apostles if they were but ordinarily fair and prudent Men did in an History publish'd to instruct the World in a new Religion leave out the necessary and Fundamental parts of that Religion But let them be consider'd as inspired Writers under the Conduct of the infallible Spirit of God putting them upon and directing them in the writing of this History of the Gospel and then it is impossible for any Christian but the Unmasker to think that they made any such gross Omissions contrary to the design of their Writing without a Demonstration to convince him of it Now all the reason that our Unmasker gives is this That it is confessed by all intelligent and observing Men that the History of the Scripture is concise and that in relating Matters of Fact many Passages are omitted by the Sacred Penmen Answ. The Unmasker might have spar'd the Confession of intelligent and observing Men after so plain a Declaration of St. Iohn himself Chap. XX. 31. Many other things did Iesus in the presence of his Disciples which are not written in this Book And again XXI 25. There are also many other things that Iesus did the which if they should be written every one I suppose the world could not contain the Books that should be written There needs therefore no opinion of intelligent and observing Men to convince us that the History of the Gospel is so far Concise that a great many Matters of Fact are omitted and a great many less material Circumstances even of those that are set down But will any intelligent or observing Man any one that bears the Name of a Christian have the Impudence to say that the inspired Writers in the relation they give us of what Christ and his Apostles Preach'd to Unbelievers to convert them to the Faith omitted the Fundamental Articles which those Preachers proposed to make Men Christians and without a belief of which they could not be Christians The Unmasker talks after his wonted fashion seems to say something which when examin'd proves nothing to his Purpose He tells us That in some places where the Article of Iesus the Messiah is mention'd alone at the same time other matters of Faith were proposed I ask were these other matters of Faith all the Unmasker's necessary Articles If not what are those other matters of Faith to the Unmasker's Purpose As for Example in St. Peter's Sermon Act. II. Other matters of Faith were proposed with the Article of Iesus the Messiah But what does this make for His Fundamental Articles Were They all propos'd with the Articles of Iesus the Messiah If not Unbelievers were converted and brought into the Church without the Unmasker's necessary Articles Three Thousand were added to the Church by this one Sermon I pass by now St. Luke's not mentioning a Syllable of the greatest part of the Unmasker's necessary Articles and shall consider only how long that Sermon may have been 'T is plain from v. 15. that it began not till about Nine in the Morning and from v. 41. that before Night Three Thousand were converted and Baptized Now I ask the Unmasker whether so small a Number of Hours as St. Peter must necessarily imploy in Preaching to them were sufficient to instruct such a mixed Multitude so fully in all those Articles which he has propos'd as necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian as that every one of those Three Thousand that were that day Baptized did understand and explicitly believe every one of those his Articles just in the sense of our Unmasker's System Not to mention those remaining Articles which the Unmasker will not be able in twice as many Months to find and declare to us He says That in some places where the Article of Iesus the Messiah is mentioned alone at the same time other matters of Faith were proposed Let us take this for so at present yet this helps not the Unmasker's case The Fundamental Articles that were propos'd by our Saviour and his Apostles necessary to be believed to make Men Christians are not set down but only this single one of Iesus the Messiah Therefore will any one dare to say that they are omitted every where by the Evangelists Did the Historians of the Gospel make their relation so concise and short that giving an account in so many places of the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles for the Conversion of the Unbelieving World they did not in any one place nor in in all of them together set down the necessary Points of that Faith which their Unbelieving Hearers were converted to If they did not how can their Histories be called the Gospels of Iesus Christ Or how can they serve to the end for which they were written Which was to publish to the World the Doctrine of Iesus Christ that Men might be brought into his Religion Now I challenge the Unmasker to shew me not out of any one place but out of all the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles recorded in the four Gospels and the Acts all those Propositions which he has reckon'd up as Fundamental Articles of Faith If they are not to be found there 't is plain that either they are not Articles of Faith necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian or else that those inspired Writers have given us an account of the Gospel or Christian Religion wherein the greatest part of Doctrines necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian are wholly omitted Which in short is to say that the Christianity which is recorded in the Gospels and the Acts is not that Christianity which is sufficient to make a Man a Christian. This as absurd and impious as it is is what our Unmasker charges upon the Conciseness as he is pleased to call it of the Evangelical History And this we must take upon his word Though these inspired Writers tell us the direct contrary For St. Luke in his Preface to his Gospel tells Theophilus that having a perfect knowledge OF ALL THINGS the Design of his Writing was to set them in order that he might know the certainty of those things that were believed amongst Christians And his History of the Acts begins thus The former Treatise i. e. his Gospel have I made O Theophilus of ALL that Iesus began to do and to teach So that how concise soever the Unmasker will have his History to be he professes it to contain ALL that Jesus taught Which ALL must in the narrowest sense that can be given it contain at least all things necessary to make a Man a Christian. 'T would else be a very lame and imperfect History of ALL that Jesus taught if the Faith contained in it were not sufficient to make a Man a Christian. This indeed as the Unmasker hath been pleased to term it would be a very lank Faith a very lank Gospel St. Iohn also says thus of his History of the Gospel Ch. XX. 30 31. Many other signs truly did Iesus in
St. Peter principally aimed at and endeavoured to convince them of is evident from hence That they are made use of as Arguments to perswade them of this Fundamental Truth viz. That Iesus was the Messiah whom they ought to take for their Lord and Ruler For whatsoever is brought as an Argument to prove another Truth cannot be thought to be the principal thing aimed at in that argumentation though it may have so strong and immediate a connexion with the Conclusion that you cannot deny it without denying even what is inferr'd from it and is therefore the fitter to be an Argument to prove it But that our Saviour's Crucifixion Death and Resurrection were used here as Arguments to perswade them into a belief of this Fundamental Article that Iesus was the Messiah and not as Propositions of a new Faith they were to receive is evident from hence that they Preach'd here to those who knew the Death and Crucifixion of Iesus as well as Peter And therefore these could not be propos'd to them as new Articles of Faith to be believed But those Matters of Fact being what the Iews knew already were a good Argument joyn'd with his Resurrection to convince them of that truth which he endeavoured to give them a Belief of And therefore he rightly inferred from these Facts joined together this Conclusion the believing whereof would make them Christians Therefore let all the House of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Iesus whom ye have crucified Lord and Christ. To the making good this sole Proposition his whole Discourse tended This was the sole Truth he laboured to convince them of This the Faith he endeavoured to bring them into which as soon as they had received with Repentance they were by Baptism admitted into the Church and three Thousand at once made Christians Here St. Luke's own Confession without that of intelligent and observing men which the Unmasker has recourse to might have satisfied him again that in relating matters of Fact many passages are omitted by the sacred Pen-men For says St. Luke here v. 40. And with many other words which are not set down One would at first sight wonder why the Unmasker neglects these demonstrative Authorities of the Holy Pen-men themselves where they own their Omissions to tell us that it is confessed by all intelligent and observing men that in relating matters of Fact many Passages are omitted by the sacred Pen-men St. Iohn in what he says of his Gospel directly professes large Omissions and so does St. Luke here But these Omissions would not serve the Unmasker's turn For they are directly against him and what he would have And therefore he had reason to pass them by For St. Iohn in that passage above-cited Ch. XX. 30 31. tells us that how much soever he had left out of his History he had incerted that which was enough to be believed to eternal Life But these are written that ye might believe and believing ye might have life But this is not all he assures us of viz. That he had recorded all that was necessary to be believed to eternal Life But he in express words tells us what is that ALL that is necessary to be believed to eternal Life and for the Proof of which Proposition alone he writ all the rest of his Gospel viz. That we might believe What Even this That Iesus is the Christ the Son of God and that believing this we might have life through his Name This may serve for a Key to us in reading the History of the New Testament And shew us why this Article that Iesus was the Messiah is no where omitted though a great part of the Arguments used to convince Men of it nay very often thâ— whole Discourse made to lead Men into the Belief of it be entirely omitted The Spirit of God directed them every where to set down the Article which was absolutely necessary to be believed to make Men Christians So that That could no ways be doubted of nor mistaken But the Arguments and Evidences which were to lead Men into this Faith would be sufficient if they were once found any where though scattered here and there in those Writings whereof that infallible Spirit was the Author This preserved the Decorum used in all Histories and avoided those continual large and unnecessary Repetitions which our critical Unmasker might have call'd tedious with juster Reason than he does the Repetition of this short Proposition that Iesus is the Messiah which I set down no oftner in my Book than the Holy Ghost thought fit to insert in the History of the New Testament as concise as it is But this it seems to our Nice Unmasker is tedious tedious and offensive And if a Christian and a Successor of the Apostles cannot bear the being so often told what it was that our Saviour and his Apostles every where preach'd to the Believers of one God though it be contain'd in one short Proposition What cause of Exception and disgust would it have been to Heathen Readers some whereof might perhaps have been as Critical as the Unmasker if this sacred History had in every Page been filled with the repeated Discourses of the Apostles all of them every where to the same purpose viz. to perswade Men to believe that Iesuâ— was the Messiah It was necessary even by the Laws of History as often as their preaching any where was mention'd to tell to what purpose they spoke which being always to convince Men of this one Fundamental Truth 't is no wonder we find it so often repeated But the Arguments and Reasonings with which this one Point is urged are as they ought to be in most places left out A constant Repetition of them had been superfluous and consequently might justly have been blam'd as tedious But there is enough recorded aboundantly to convince any rational Man any one not willfully blind that he is that promised Saviour And in this we have a reason of the Omissions in the History of the New Testament which were no other than such as became prudent as well as faithful Writers Much less did that Conciseness with which the Vnmasker would cover his bold Censure of the Gospels and the Acts and as it seems lay them by with Contempt make the holy Writers omit any thing in the preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles absolutely necessary to be known and believed to make Men Christians Conformable hereunto we shall find St. Luke writes his History of the Acts of the Apostles In the beginning of it he sets down at large some of the Discourses made to the unbelieving Iews But in most other Places unless it be where there was something particular in the Circumstances of the Matter he contents himself to tell to what purpose they spoke Which was every where only this That Iesus was the Messiah Nay St. Luke in the first Speech of St. Peter Act. 11. which he thought fit to give us a great part
of yet owns the Omission of several things that the Apostle said For having expressed this Fundamental Doctrine That Iesus was the Messiah and recorded several of the Arguments wherewith St. Peter urged it for the Conversion of the unbelieving Iews his Auditors he adds v. 40. And with many other words did he testifie and exhort saying Save your selves from this untoward Generation Here he confesses that he omitted a great deal which St. Peter had said to perswade them To what To that which in other words he had just said before v. 38. Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Iesus Christ i. e. Believe Iesus to be the Messiah take him as such for your Lord and King and reform your Lives by a sincere Resolution of Obedience to his Laws Thus we have an account of the Omissions in the Records of Matters of Fact in the New Testament But will the Unmasker say that the preaching of those Articles that he has given us as necessary to be believ'd to make a Man a Christian was part of those Matters of Fact which have been omitted in the History of the New Testament Can any one think 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 our Restoration and Reconciliation by Christ's blood the Eminency and Excellency of his Priesthood the Efficacy of his Death the full Satisfaction thereby made to divine Iustice and his being made an all-sufficient Sacrifice for Sin our Iustification by Christ's Righteousness Election Adoption c. were all proposed and that too in the Sense of our Authors System by our Saviour and his Apostles as Fundamental Articles of Faith necessary to be explicitely believed by every Man to make him a Christian in all their Discourses to Unbelievers And yet that the inspired Pen-men of those Histories every where left the mention of these Fundamental Articles wholly out This would have been to have writ not a concise but an imperfect History of all that Iesus and his Apostles taught What an account would it have been of the Gospel as it was first preached and propagated if the greatest part of the necessary Doctrines of it were wholly left out and a Man could not find from one end to the other of this whole History that Religion which is necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian And yet this is that which under the Notion of their being concise the Vnmasker would perswade us to have been done by St. Luke and the other Evangelists in their Histories And 't is no less than what he plainly says in his Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism p. 109. Where to aggravate my Fault in passing by the Epistles and to shew the Necessity of searchin them for Fundamentals he in words blames me But in effect condemns the Sacred History contain'd in the Gospels and the Acts. It is most evident says he to any thinking Man that the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity purposely omits the Epistolary Writings of the Apostles because they are fraught with other Fundamental Doctrines besides that one which he mentions There we are instructed concerning these grand heads of Christian Divinity Here i. e. in the Epistles says he There are Discoveries concerning Satisfaction c. and in the close of his List of his Grand Heads as he calls them some whereof I have above set down out of him he adds These are the Matters of Faith contained in the Epistles By all which Expressions he plainly signifies that these which he calls Fundamental Doctrines are none of those we are instructed in in the Gospels and the Acts that they are not discover'd nor contain'd in the historical Writings of the Evangelists Whereby he confesses that either our Saviour and his Apostles did not propose them in their Preachings to their unbelieving Hearers or else that the several faithful Writers of their History willfully i. e. unfaithfully every where omitted them in the account they have left us of those Preachings Which could scarce possibly be done by them all and every where without an actual Combination amongst them to smother the greatest and most material parts of our Saviour's and his Apostles Discourses For what else did they if all that the Unmasker has set down in his List be Fundamental Doctrines every one of them absolutely necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian which our Saviour and his Apostles every where preached to make Men Christians but yet St. Luke and the other Evangelists by a very guilty and unpardonable Conciseness every where omitted them and throughout their whole History never once tell us they were so much as proposed much less that they were those Articles which the Apostles laboured to establish and convince Men of every where before they admitted them to Baptism Nay the far greatest part of them the History they writ does not any where so much as once mention How after such an Imputation as this the Unmasker will clear himself from laying by the four Gospels and the Acts with contempt let him look if my not collecting Fundamentals out of the Epistles had that Guilt in it For I never denied all the Fundamental Doctrines to be there but only said that there they were not easie to be found out and distinguished from Doctrines not Fundamental Whereas our good Vnmasker charges the historical Books of the New Testament with a total Omission of the far greatest part of those Fundamental Doctrines of Christianity which he says are absolutely necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian. To convince the Reader what was absolutely required to be believed to make a Man a Christian and thereby clear the holy Writers from the Unmasker's Slander any one need but look a little further into the History of the Acts and observe St. Luke's Method in the Writing of it In the beginning as we observed before and in some few other places he sets down at large the Discourses made by the Preachers of Christianity to their unbelieving Auditors But in the Process of his History he generally contents himself to relate what it was their Discourses drive at what was the Doctrine they endeavour'd to convince their unbelieving Hearers of to make them Believers This we may observe is never omitted This is every where set down Thus Acts V. 42. he tells us that daily in the Temple and in every house the Apostles ceased not to teach and to preach IESUS THE MESSIAH The particulars of their Discourses he omits and the Arguments they used to induce Men to believe he omits But never fails to inform us carefully what it was the Apostles taught and preach'd and would have Men believe The account he gives us of St. Paul's Preaching at Thessalonica is this That three Sabbath Days he REASON'D with the Iews out of the Scriptures OPENING and ALLEDGING that the Messiah must needs
have Suffer'd and risen again from the Dead and that Iesus was the Messiah Act. XVII 2 3. At Corinth That he REASON'D in the Synagogue every Sabbath and PERSWADED the Iews and the Greeks and TESTIFIED that Iesus was the Messiah XVIII 4 5. That Apollos mightily convinced the Iews SHEWING BY THE SCRIPTURES that Iesus was the Messiah XVIII 27. By these and the like places we may be satisfied what it was that the Apostles Taught and Preach'd even this one Proposition that Iesus was the Messiah For this was the sole Proposition they reason'd about this alone they testified and they shew'd out of the Scriptures and of this alone they endeavour'd to convince the Iews and the Greeks that believed one God So that it is plain from hence that St. Luke omitted nothing that the Apostles Taught and Preach'd none of those Doctrines that it was necessary to convince Unbelievers of to make them Christians Though he in most places omitted as was fit the Passages of Scripture which they alledg'd and the Arguments those inspired Preachers used to perswade Men to believe and imbrace that Doctrine Another convincing Argument to shew that St. Luke omitted none of those Fundamental Doctrines which the Apostles any where propos'd as necessary to be believed is from that different account he gives us of their Preaching in other places and to Auditors otherwise dispos'd Where the Apostles had to do with Idolatrous Heathens who were not yet come to the knowledge of the only true God there he tells us they propos'd also the Article of the one Invisible God Maker of Heaven and Earth And this we find recorded in him out of their Preaching to the Lystrians Act. XIV and to the Athenians Act. XVII In the later of which St. Luke to convince his Reader that he out of conciseness omits none of those Fundamental Articles that were any where propos'd by the Preachers of the Gospel as necessary to be believed to make Men Christians sets down not only the Article of Iesus the Messiah but that also of the one invisible God Creator of all things which if any necessary one might this of all other Fundamental Articles might by an Author that affected brevity with the fairest excuse have been omitted as being implied in that other of the Messiah ordained by God Indeed in the Story of what Paul and Barnabas said at Lystra the Article of the Messiah is not mention'd Not that St. Luke omitted that Fundamental Article where the Apostles taught it But they having here begun their Preaching with that of the one living God they had not as appears time to proceed farther and propose to them what yet remain'd to make them Christians But they were by the instigation of the Iews fallen upon and Paul stoned before he could come to open to them this other Fundamental Article of the Gospel This by the way shews the Unmasker's Mistake in his first Particular p. 74. where he says as he does here again in his second Particular which we are now examining that believing Iesus to be the Messiah is the first step to Christianity and therefore this rather than any other was propounded to be believed by all those whom either our Saviour or the Apostles invited to imbrace Christianity The contrary whereof appears here Where the Article of one God is proposed in the first place to those whose Unbelief made such a proposal necessary And therefore if his Reason which he uses again here p. 76. were good viz. That the Article of the Messiah is expresly mention'd alone because it is a leading Article and makes way for the rest this Reason would rather conclude for the Article of one God And that alone should be expresly mentioned instead of the other Since as he argues for the other p. 74. if they did not believe this in the first place viz. That there was one God there could be no hopes that they would attend unto any other Proposal relating to the Christian Religion The Vanity and Falshood of which reasoning viz. That the Article of Jesus the Messiah was every where propounded rather than any other because it was the leading Article we see in the History of St. Paul's Preaching to the Athenians St. Luke mentions more than one Article where more than one was propos'd by St. Paul though the first of them was that leading Article of one God which if not received in the first place there could be no hope they would attend to the rest Something the Unmasker would make of this Argument of a leading Article for want of a better though he knows not what In his first particular p. 74. he makes use of it to shew why there was but that one Article propos'd by the first Preachers of the Gospel and how well that succeeds with him we have seen For this is Demonstration that if there were but that one propos'd by our Saviour and the Apostles there was but that one necessary to be believed to make Men Christians Unless he will impiously say that our Saviour and the Apostles went about Preaching to no purpose For if they propos'd not all that was necessary to make Men Christians 't was in vain for them to Preach and others to Hear if when they heard and believ'd all that was propos'd to them they were not yet Christians For if any Article was omitted in the Proposal which was necessary to make a Man a Christian though they believed all that was proposed to them they could not yet be Christians unless a Man can from an Infidel become a Christian without doing what is necessary to make him a Christian. Further if his Argument of its being a leading Article proves that that alone was propos'd It is a Contradiction to give it as a Reason why it was set down alone by the Historian where it was not proposed alone by the Preacher but other necessary matters of Faith were propos'd with it unless it can be true that this Article of Iesus is the Messiah was propos'd alone by our Saviour and his Apostles because it was a leading Article and was mention'd alone in the History of what they preach'd because it was a leading Article though it were not propos'd alone but jointly with other necessary matters of Faith For this is the use he makes here again p. 76. of his leading Article under his second Particular viz. To shew why the Historians mention'd this necessary Article of Iesus the Messiah alone in places where the Preachers of the Gospel propos'd it not alone but with other necessary Articles But in this latter case it has no shew of a Reason at all It may be granted as reasonable for the Teachers of any Religion not to go any farther where they see the first Article which they propose is rejected where the leading Truth on which all the rest depends is not received But it can be no reason at all for an Historian who writes the History of these first Preachers
Christ's Death and Resurrection of those Substantial Articles i. e. that he should die and rise again But we read in the Acts and in the Epistles that these were formal Articles of Faith afterwards and are ever since necessary to compleat the Christian belief So as to other great Verities the Gospel increased by degrees and was not perfect at once Which furnishes us with a reason why most of the choicest and sublimest truths of Christianity are to be met with in the Epistles of the Apostles they being such Doctrines as were not clearly discover'd and open'd in the Gospels and the Acts. Thus far the Vnmasker I thought hitherto that the Covenant of Grace in Christ Jesus had been but one immutably the same But our Vnmasker here makes two or I know not how many For I cannot tell how to conceive that the Conditions of any Covenant should be changed and the Covenant remain the same Every change of Conditions in my apprehension makes a new and another Covenant We are not to think says the Vnmasker That all the necessary Doctrines of the Christian Religion were clearly publish'd to the World in our Saviour's time not but that all that were necessary for that time were publish'd But some which were necessary for the Succeeding one were not then discover'd or at least not fully Answ. The Unmasker constant to himself speaks here doubtfully and cannot tell whether he should say that the Articles necessary to Succeeding times were discover'd in our Saviour's time or no And therefore that he may provide himself a retreat in the doubt he is in he says they were not clearly publish'd they were not then discover'd or at least not fully But we must desire him to pull off his Mask and to that purpose 1 o. I ask him how he can tell that all the necessary Doctrines were obscurely published or in part discover'd for an obscure publishing a Discovery in part is opposed to and intimated in not clearly published not fully discover'd And if a clear and full Discovery be all that he denies to them I ask XXXVII Which those Fundamental Articles are which were obscurely publish'd but not fully discovered in our Saviour's time And next I shall desire him to tell me XXXVIII Whether there are any Articles necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian that were not discover'd at all in our Saviour's time and which they are If he cannot shew these distinctly it is plain he talks at random about them But he has no clear and distinct conception of those that were publish'd or not publish'd clearly or obscurely discover'd in our Saviour's time It was necessary for him to say something for those his pretended necessary Articles which are not to be â—ound any where propos'd in the Preaching of our Saviour and his Apostles to their yet Unbelieving Auditors And therefore he says We are not to think all the necessary Doctrines of the Christian Religion were clearly published to the World in our Saviour's time But he barely says it without giving any Reason why we are not to think so It is enough that it is necessary to his Hypothesis He says we are not to think so and we are presently bound not to think so Else from another Man that did not usurp an Authority over our Thoughts it would have requir'd some Reason to make them think that something more was requir'd to make a Man a Christian after than in our Saviour's time For as I take it it is not a very probable much less a self-evident Proposition to be received without Proof That there was something necessary for that time to make a Man a Christian and something more that was necessary to make a Man a Christian in the succeeding time However since this great Master says we ought to think so let us in obedience think so as well as we can till he vouchsafes to give us some Reason to think that there was more requir'd to be believed to make a Man a Christian in the succeeding time than in our Saviour's This instead of removing does but increase the Difficulty For if more were necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian after our Saviour's time than was during his life how comes it that no more was propos'd by the Apostles in their Preaching to Unbelievers for the making them Christians after our Saviour's Death than there was before Even this one Article that he was the Messiah For I desire the Unmasker to shew me any of those other Articles mentioned in his List except the Resurrection and Ascension of our Saviour which were intervening Matters of Fact evidencing him to be the Messiah that were propos'd by the Apostles after our Saviour's time to their Unbelieving Hearers to make them Christians This one Doctrine that Iesus was the Messiah was that which was propos'd in our Saviour's time to be believed as necessary to make a Man a Christian The same Doctrine was likewise what was propos'd afterwards in the Preaching of the Apostles to Unbelievers to make them Christians I grant this was more clearly propos'd after than in our Saviour's time But in both of them it was all that was propos'd to the Believers of one God to make them Christians Let him shew that there were any other propos'd in or after our Saviour's time to be believed to make Unbelievers Christians If he means by necessary Articles published to the World the other Doctrines contain'd in the Epistles I grant they are all of them necessary Articles to be believed by every Christian as far as he understands them But I deny that they were propos'd to those they were writ to as necessary to make them Christians for this demonstrative Reason Because they were Christians already For Example many Doctrines proving and explaining and giving a farther Light into the Gospel are publish'd in the Epistles to the Corinthians and Thessalonians These are all of Divine Authority and none of them may be disbelieved by any one who is a Christian But yet what was propos'd or publish'd to both the Corinthians and Thessalonians to make them Christians was only this Doctrine that Iesus was the Messiah As may be seen Act. XVII and XVIII This then was the Doctrine necessary to make men Christians in our Saviour's time And this the only Doctrine necessary to make Unbelievers Christians after our Saviour's time The only difference was that it was more clearly propos'd after than before his Ascension The Reason whereof has been sufficiently explain'd But any other Doctrine but this propos'd clearly or obscurely in or after our Saviour's time as necessary to be believed to make Unbelievers Christians That remains yet to be shewn When the Unmasker speaks of the Doctrines that were necessary for the succeeding time after our Saviour he is in doubt whether he should say they were or were not discover'd in our Saviour's time and how far they were then discover'd And therefore he says some of them were
pleased to dose it no more nor no less than what is in his System He hath put himself into the Throne of Christ and pretends to tell you which are and which are not the indispensable Laws of his Kingdom Which parts of his divine Revelation you must necessarily know understand and believe and in what sense and which you need not trouble your head about but may pass by as not necessary to be believed He will tell you that some of his necessary Articles are Mysteries and yet as he does p. 115. of his Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism that they are easy to be understood by any Man when explained to him In answer to that I demanded of him who was to explain them The Papists I told him would explain some of them one way and the Reformed another The Remonstrants and Anti-remonstrants give them different senses And probably the Trinitarians and Unitarians will profess that they understand not each other 's Explications But to this in his reply he has not vouchsafed to give me any answer Which yet I expect and I will tell him why Because as there are different Explainers there will be different Fundamentals And therefore unless he can shew his Authority to be the sole Explainer of Fundamentals he will in vain make such a pudder about his Fundamentals Another Explainer of as good Authority as he will set up others against them And what then shall we be the better for all this stir and noise of Fundamentals And I desire it may be consider'd how much of the Divisions in the Church and bloody Persecutions amongst Christians has been owing to Christianity thus set up against Christianity in multiplied Fundamentals and Articles made necessary by the Infallibility of opposite Systems The Unmasker's Zeal wants nothing but Power to make good his to be the only Christianity for he has found the Apostles Creed to be defective He is as infallible as the Pope and another as infallible as he and where Humane Additions are made to the Terms of the Gospel Men seldom want Zeal for what is their own To conclude What was sufficient to make a Man a Christian in our Saviour's time is sufficient still viz. the taking him for our King and Lord ordained so by God What was necessary to be believed by all Christians in our Saviour's time as an indispensable Duty which they owed to their Lord and Master was the believing all divine Revelation as far as every one could understand it And just so it is still neither more nor less This being so the Unmasker may make what use he pleases of his Notion That Christianity was erected by Degrees it will no way in that sence in which it is true turn to the advantage of his select Fundamental necessary Doctrines The next Chapter has nothing in it but his great Bug-bear whereby he hopes to fright People from Reading my Book by crying out Socinianism Socinianism Whereas I challenge him again to shew one word of Socinianism in it But however it is worth while to write a Book to prove me a Socinian Truly I did not think my self so considerable that the World need be troubled about me whether I were a follower of Socinus Arminius Calvin or any other Leader of a Sect amongst Christians A Christian I am sure I am because I believe Iesus to be the Messiah the King and Saviour promised and sent by God And as a Subject of his Kingdom I take the rule of my Faith and Life from his Will declar'd and left upon Record in the inspired Writings of the Apostles and Evangelists in the New Testament Which I endeavour to the utmost of my power as is my Duty to understand in their true sense and meaning To lead me into their true meaning I know as I have above declar'd no infallible Guide but the same Holy Spirit from whom these Writings at first came If the Unmasker knows any other infallible Interpreter of Scripture I desire him to direct me to him Till then I shall think it according to my Master's Rule not to be called nor to call any Man on Earth Master No Man I think has a right to prescribe to my Faith or Magisterially to impose his Interpretations or Opinions on me Nor is it material to any one what mine are any farther than they carry their own Evidence with them If this which I think makes me of no Sect entitles me to the Name of a Papist or a Socinian because the Unmasker thinks these the worst and most invidious he can give me and labours to fix them on me for no other reason but because I will not take him for my Master on Earth and his System for my Gospel I shall leave him to recommend himself to the World by this Skill who no doubt will have reason to thank him for the rareness and subtility of his Discovery For I think I am the first Man that ever was found out to be at the same time a Socinian and a Factor for Rome But what is too hard for such an Unmasker I must be what he thinks fit When he pleases a Papist and when he pleases a Socinian and when he pleases a Mahometan And probably when he has consider'd a little better an Atheist for I hardly scaped it when he writ last My Book he says hath a tendency to it and if he can but go on as he has done hitherto from Surmises to Certainties by that time he writes next his Discovery will be advanced and he will certainly find me an Atheist Only one thing I dare assure him of that he shall never find that I treat the things of God or Religion so as if I made only a Trade or a Jest of them But let us now see how at present he proves me a Socinian His first Argument is my not answering for my leaving out Matth. XXVIII 19. and Iohn I. 1. Pag. 82. of his Socinianism Unmask'd This he takes to be a Confession that I am a Socinian I hope he means fairly and that if it be so on my side it must be taken for a standing Rule between us that where any thing is not answer'd it must be taken for granted And upon that score I must desire him to remember some Passages of my Vindication which I have already and others which I shall mind him of hereafter which he passed over in Silence and hath had nothing to say to which therefore by his own rule I shall desire the Reader to observe that he has granted This being premised I must tell the Unmasker that I perceive he reads my Book with the same Understanding that he writes his own If he had done otherwise he might have seen that I had given him a reason for my omission of those two and other plain and obvious Passages and famous Testimonies in the Evangelists as he calls them where I say p. 11. That if I have leâ—t out none of those Passages or
Testimonies which contain what our Saviour and his Apostles preach'd 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 Whatever Doctrines Mr. Edwards would have 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 I have quoted And if they are not there he may rest satisfied that they were not propos'd by our Saviour and his Apostles as necessary to be believed to make Men Christ's Disciples From which words any one but an Unmasker would have understood my Answer to be That all that was necessary to be believed to make Men Christians might be found in what our Saviour and the Apostles propos'd to Unbelievers for their Conversion But the two Passages abovemention'd as well as a great many others in the Evangelists being none of those I had no reason to take notice of them But the Unmasker having out of his good pleasure put it once upon me as he does in his Thoughts of the Causes of Atheism p. 107. That I was an Epitomizer of the Evangelical Writings though every one may see I make not that my Business yet `t is no matter for that I must always be accountable to that fancy of his But when he has proved XLVIII That this is not as just a reason for my omitting them as several other obvious Passages and famous Testimonies in the Evangelists which I there mention for whose Omission he does not blame me I will undertake to give him another Reason which I know not whether he were not better let alone The next Proof of my being a Socinian is that I take the Son of God to be an expression used to signifie the Messiah Slichtingius and Socinus understood it so and therefore I am the Unmasker says a Socinian Just as good an Argument as that I believe Iesus to be a Prophet and so do the Mahometans therefore I am a Mahometan Or thus The Unmaskert holds that the Apostles Creed does not contain all things necessary to Salvation and so says Knot the Jesuit Therefore the Unmasker is a Papist Let me turn the Tables and by the same Argument I am Orthodox again For two Orthodox Pious and very Eminent Prelates of our Church whom when I follow Authorities I shall prefer to Slichtingius and Socinus understand it as I do and therefore I am Orthodox Nay it so falls out that if it were of force either way the Argument would weigh most on this side Since I am not wholly a Stranger to the Writings of these two Orthodox Bishops but I never read a Page in either of those Socinians The never sufficiently admir'd and valued Archbishop Tillotson's words which I quoted the Unmasker says do not necessarily import any such thing I know no words that necessarily import any thing to a Caviller But he was known to have such clear Thoughts and so clear a Stile so far from having any thing doubtful or fallacious in what he said that I shall only set down his words as they are in his Sermon of Sincerity p. 2. to shew his meaning Nathaniel says he 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 The words of the other Eminent Prelate the Bishop of Ely whom our Church is still happy in are these To be the Son of God and to be Christ being but different Expressions of the same thing Witness p. 14. 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 it makes him a Conqueror over the World as Iesus was Of this the Unmasker says that this Reverend Author speaking only in a general way represents these two as the same thing viz. That Iesus is the Christ and that Jesus is the Son of God because these Expressions are applied to the same person and because they are both comprehended in one general Name viz. Jesus Answ. The Question is whether these two Expressions the Son of God and the Messiah in the Learned Bishop's Opinion signifie the same thing If his Opinion had been asked in the Point I know not how he could have declar'd it more clearly For he says they are Expressions of the same thing and that it is the very same thing to believe that Iesus is the Messiah and to believe that he is the Son of God Which cannot be so if Messiah and Son of God have different Significations For then they will make two distinct Propositions in different Sences which it can be no more the same thing to believe than it is the same thing to believe that Mr. Edwards is a Notable Preacher and a Notable Railer or than it is to believe one Truth and all Truths For by the same Reason that it is the same thing to believe two distinct Truths it will be the same thing to believe two thousand distinct Truths and consequently all Truths The Unmasker that he might seem to say something says that the Reverend Author represents these as the same thing Answ. The Unmasker never fails like Midas to turn every thing he touches into his own Metal The Learned Bishop says very directly and plainly that to be the Son of God and to be the Messiah are Expressions of the same thing And the Unmasker says he represents these Expressions as one thing For `t is of Expressions that both the Bishop and he speak Now Expressions can be one thing but one of these two ways Either in Sound and so these two Expressions are not one Or insignification and so they are And then the Unmasker says but in other words what the Bishop had said before viz. That these two to be the Son of God and to be the Messiah are Expressions of the same thing Only the Unmasker has put in the word Represents to amuse his Reader as if he had said something and so indeed he does after his fashion i. e. obscurely and fallaciously which when it comes to be examined is but the same thing under shew of a difference Or else if it has a different meaning is demonstratively false But so it be obscure enough to deceive a willing Reader who will not be at the pains to examine what he says it serves his turn But yet as if he had said something of weight he gives Reasons for putting Represents these two Expressions as one thing in stead of saying these two are but different Expressions of the same thing The First of his Reasons is Because the Reverend Author is here speaking only in a General way Answ. What does the Vnmasker mean by a General way The Learned Bishop speaks of two particular
strain in his Book Only to shew how well he understands or represents my sense I shall set down my Words as they are in the Pages he quotes and his Inferences from them Vindicat. p. 22. Socin Unmask'd p. 108. 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 sence of those Texts from those Writers but from the Scripture it self giving Light to its 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 sence 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 The professed Divines of England you must know are but a pitiful sort of Folks with this great Racovian Rabbi He tells us plainly that he is not mindful of what the generality of Divines declare for p. 22. He labours so concernedly to ingratiate himself with the Mobb the Multitude which he so often talks of that he hath no regard to these The generality of the Rabble are more considerable with him than the generality of Divines He tells me here of the Generality of Divines If he had said of the Church of England I could have understood him But he says The professed Divines of England And there being several sorts of Divines in England who I think do not every where agree in their Interpretations of Scripture which of them is it I must have regard to where they differ If he cannot tell me that he complains here of me for a Fault which he himself knows not how to mend Vindicat. p. 18. Socin Unmask'd p. 109. The list of Materials for his Creed for the Articles are not yet formed Mr. Edwards closes p. 111. with these words These are the Matters of Faith contain'd in the Epistles and they are Essential and Integral parts of the Gospel it self What just these neither more nor less l. 4. 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 This Author as demure and grave as he would sometimes seem to be can scoff at the matters of Faith contain'd in the Apostles Epistles p. 18. l. 4 c. Does the Vindicator here scoff at the Matters of Faith contain'd in the Epistles Or shew the vain Pretences of the Unmasker who undertakes to give us out of the Epistles a Collection of Fundamentals without being able to say whether those he sets down be all or no Vindicat. p. 33. Socin Unmask'd p. 110. I hope you do not think how contemptibly soever you speak of the Venerable Mob as you are pleas'd 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 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 Mob to whom the Gospel was Preach'd by our Saviour as he tells Iohns Disciples Mat. XI 5. To Coakse the Mob he prophanely brings in that place of Scripture Have any of the Rulers believed in him Where the Prophaneness of this is I do not see Unless some unknown Sacredness of the Unmasker's Person make it Prophaneness to shew that he like the Pharisees of old has a great contempt for the Common People i. e. the far greater part of Mankind as if they and their Salvation were below the regard of this elevated Rabbi But this of Prophaneness may be well born from him since in the next words my mentioning another part of his Carriage is no less than Irreligion Vindicat. p. 25. Socin Unmask'd p. 110. He prefers what I say to him my self to what is offer'd 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 the Acts which he computes p. 105. to take up three Quarters of my Book Ridiculously and irreligiously he pretends that I prefer what he saith to me to what is offer'd to me from the Word of God p. 25. The Matter of Fact is as I relate it and so is beyond pretence and for this I refer the Reader to the 105. and 114. Pages of his Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism But had I mistaken I know not how he could have call'd it Irreligiously Make the worst of it that can be how comes it to be Irreligious What is there Divine in an Vnmasker that one cannot pretend true or false that he prefers what I say to what is oâ—â—er'd him from the Word of God without doing it Irreligiously Does the very assuming the Power to deâ—ine Articles and determine who are and who are not Christians by a Creed not yet made erect an Unmasker presently into God's Throne and bestow on him the title of Dominus deusque noster whereby Offences against him come to be Irreligious Acts I have misrepresented his meaning Let it be so Where is the Irreligion of it Thus it is The Power of making a Religion for others and those that make Creeds do that being once got into any one's fancy must at last make all Oppositions to those Creeds and Creed-maker's Irreligion Thus we see in process of time it did in the Church of Rome But it was in length of time and by gentle degrees The Unmasker it seems cannot stay is in hast and at one jump leaps into the Chair He has given us yet but a piece of his Creed and yet that is enough to set him above the state of Humane Mistakes or Frailties and to mention any such thing in him is to do Irreligiously We may further see says the Unmasker p. 110. how counterfeit the Vindicator's Gravity is whil'st he condemns frothy and light Discourses p. 26. Vindic. And yet in many Pages together most irreverently treats a great part of the Apostolical Writings and throws aside the main Articles of Religion as unnecessary Answ. In my Vindic. p. 19. you may remember these words I require you to Publish to the World those Passages which shew my contempt
is to establish one of my own or to foster Scepticism by beating down all others For clear Reason or good Sence I do not think our Creed-maker ever had his fellow In the immediate preceding words of the same Sentence he charges me with a great Antipathy against Systems and before he comes to the end of it finds out my Design to be the establishing one of my own So that this my Antipathy against Systems makes me in love with one My Design he says is to establish a System of my own or to foster Scepticism in beating down all others Let my Book if he pleases be my System of Christianity Now is it in me any more fostering Scepticism to say my System is true and others not than it is in the Creed-maker to say so of all other Systems but his own For I hope he does not allow any System of Christianity to be true that differs from his any more than I do But I have spoke against all Systems Answ. And always shall so far as they are set up by particular Men or Parties as the just Measure of every Man's Faith wherein every thing that is contained is required and imposed to be believed to make a Man a Christian Such an Opinion and Use of Systems I shall always be against till the Creed-maker shall tell me amongst the Variety of them which alone is to be received and rested in in the absence of his Creed which is not yet finished and I fear will not as long as I live That every Man should receive from others or make to himself such a System of Christianity as he found most conformable to the Word of God according to the best of his understanding is what I never spake against but think it every one's Duty to Labour for and to take all opportunities as long as he lives by Studying the Scriptures every day to perfect But this I fear will not go easily down with our Author for then he cannot be a Creed-maker for others A thing he shews himself very forward to how able to perform it we shall see when his Creed is made In the mean time talking loudly and at Random about Fundamentals without knowing what is so may stand him in some stead This being all that is new which I think my self concerned in in this Socinian Creed I pass on to his Postscript In the first Page whereof I find these words I found that the Manager of the Reasonableness of Christianity had prevailed with a Gentleman to make a Sermon upon my Refutation of that Treatise and the Vindication of it Such a piece of Impertinency as this might have been born from a fair Adversary But the Sample Mr. Edwards has given of himself in his Socinianism Unmask'd perswades me this ought to be bound up with what he says of me in his Introduction to that Book in these words Among others they thought and made Choice of a Gentleman who they knew would be extraordinary useful to them And he it is probable was as forward to be made use of by them and presently accepted of the Office that was assigned him and more there to the same purpose All which I know to be utterly false 'T is pity that one who relies so entirely upon it should have no better an Invention The Socinians set the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. on Work to write that Book by which Discovery the World being as Mr. Edwards says let into the project that Book is confounded baffled blown off and by this Skilful Artifice there is an end of it Mr. Bold preaches and publishes a Sermon without this irrefragable Gentleman's good Leave and Liking What now must be done to discredit it and keep it from being read Why Mr. Bold too was set on Work by the Manager of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. In your whole Store-house of Stratagems you that are so great a Conquerour Have you but this one Way to destroy a Book which you set your Mightiness against but to tell the World it was a Jobb of Journey-work for some body you do not like Some other would have done better in this new Case had your happy Invention been ready with it For you are not so bashful or reserved but that you may be allowed to be as great a Wit as he who professed himself ready at any time to say a good or a new thing if he could but think of it But in good earnest Sir if one should ask you do you think no Books contain Truth in them which were Undertaken by the Procuration of a Bookseller I desire you to be a little tender in the Point not knowing how far it may reach Ay but such Booksellers live not at the Lower End of Pater-Noster-Row but in Paul's Church-Yard and are the Managers of other-guess Books than The Reasonableness of Christianity And therefore you very rightly subjoin Indeed it was a great Master-Piece of Procuration and we can't but think that Man must speak truth and defend it very Impartially and Substantially who is thus brought on to undertake the Cause And so Mr. Bold's Sermon is found to have neither Truth nor Sence in it because it was Printed by a Bookseller at the lower End of Pater-Noster-Row for that I dare say is all you know of the Matter But that is hint enough for a happy Diviner to be sure of the rest and with Confidence to report that for certain Matter of Fact which had never any being but in the forecasting Side of his Politick Brain But whatever were the Reason that moved Mr. B to Preach that Sermon of which I know nothing This I am sure it shews only the Weakness and Malice I will not say and ill Breeding for that concerns not one of Mr. Edward's Pitch of any one who excepts against it to take notice of any thing more than what the Author has Published Therein alone consists the Errour if there be any and that alone those meddle with who write for the sake of Truth But poor Cavillers have other Purposes and therefore must use other Shifts and make a bustle about something besides the Argument to prejudice and beguile unwary Readers The only Exception the Creed-maker makes to Mr. Bold's Sermon is the Contradiction he imputes to him in saying That there is but one Point or Article necessary to be believed for the making a Man a Christian And that there are many Points besides this which Jesus Christ hath taught and revealed which every sincere Christian is indispensibly obliged to endeavour to understand And That there are particular Points and Articles which being known to be revealed by Christ Christians must indispensibly assent to And where now is there any thing like a Contradiction in this Let it be granted for Example that the Creed-maker's Set of Articles let their Number be what they will when he has sound them all out are necessary to be believed for the making a
Man a Christian. Is there any contradiction in it to say There are many Points besides these which Jesus Christ hath taught and revealed which every sincere Christian is indispensibly obliged to endeavour to understand If this be not so It is but for any one to be perfect in Mr. Edward's Creed and then he may lay by the Bible and from thenceforth he is absolutely dispensed with from studying or understanding any thing more of the Scripture But Mr. Edwards's Supremacy is not yet so far established that he will dare to say That Christians are not obliged to endeavour to understand any other Points revealed in the Scripture but what are contained in his Creed He cannot yet well Discard all the rest of the Scripture because he has yet need of it for the compleating of his Creed which is like to secure the Bible to us for some time yet For I will be answerable for it he will not be quickly able to resolve what Texts of the Scripture do and what do not contain Points necessary to be believed So that I am apt to imagine that the Creed-maker upon Second Thoughts will allow that Saying There is but One or there are but Twelve or there are but as many as he shall set down when he has resolved which they shall be necessary to the making a Man a Christian and the saying There are other Points besides contained in the Scripture which every sincere Christian is indispensibly obliged to endeavour to understand and must believe when he knows them to be revealed by Jesus Christ are two Propositions that may consist together without a Contradiction Every Christian is to partake of that Bread and that Cup which is the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. And is not every sincere Christian indispensibly obliged to endeavour to understand these Words of our Saviour's Institutions This is my Body and This is my Blood And if upon his serious Endeavour to do it he does understand them in a literal sence that Christ meant that that was really his Body and Blood and nothing else must he not necessarily believe that the Bread and Wine in the Lord's Supper is changed really into his Body and Blood though he doth not know how Or if having his Mind set otherwise he understands the Bread and Wine to be really the Body and Blood of Christ without ceasing to be true Bread and Wine Or else if he understands them that the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed given and received in the Sacrament in a Spiritual manner Or lastly If he understands our Saviour to mean by those words only the Bread and Wine to be a Representation of his Body and Blood In which was soever of these Four a Christian understands these words of our Saviour to be meant by him is he not obliged in that sence to believe them to be true and assent to them Or can he be a Christian and understand these words to be meant by our Saviour in one sence and deny his assent to them as true in that sence Would not this be to deny our Saviour's Veracity and consequently his being the Messiah sent from God And yet this is put upon a Christian where he understands the Scripture in one sence and is required to believe it in another From all which it is evident that to say there is One or any Number of Articles necessary to be known and believed to make a Man a Christian and that there are others contained in the Scripture which a Man is obliged to endeavour to understand and obliged also to assent to as he does understand them is no Contradiction To believe Jesus to be the Messiah and to take him to be his Lord and King let us suppose to be that only which is necessary to make a Man a Christian May it not yet be necessary for him being a Christian to study the Doctrine and Law of this his Lord and King and believe that all that he delivered is true Is there any Contradiction in holding of this But this Creed-maker to make sure Work and not to sail of a Contradiction in Mr. Bold's words misrepeats them p. 241. and quite contrary both to what they are in the Sermon and what they are as set down by the Creed-maker himself in the immediately preceding Page Mr. Bold says There are other Points that Jesus Christ hath taught and revealed which every sincere Christian is indispensibly obliged to understand and which being known to be revealed by Christ he must indispensibly assent to From which the Creed-maker argues thus p. 240. Now if there be other Points and particular Articles and those many which a sincere Christian is obliged and that necessarily and indispensibly to understand believe and assent to then this Writer hath in effect yielded to that Proposition I maintained viz. That the belief of one Article is not sufficient to make a Man a Christian and consequently he runs counter to the Proposition he had laid down Is there no difference I beseech you between being indispensibly obliged to endeavour to understand and being indispensibly obliged to understand any Point T is the first of these Mr. Bold says and 't is the latter of these you argue from and so conclude nothing against him nor can you to your purpose For till Mr. Bold says which he is far from saying that every sincere Christian is necessarily and indispensibly obliged to understand all those Texts of Scripture from whence you shall have drawn your necessary Articles when you have perfected your Creed in the same sence that you do you can conclude nothing against what he hath said concerning that one Article or any thing that looks like running Counter to it For it may be enough to constitute a Man a Christian and one of Christ's Subjects to take Iesus to be the Messiah his appointed King and yet without a Contradiction so that it may be his indispensible Duty as a Subject of that Kingdom to endeavour to understand all the Dictates of his Soveraign and to assent to the Truth of them as far as he understands them But that which the good Creed-maker aims at without which all his necessary Articles fall is that it should be granted him that every sincere Christian was necessarily and indispensibly obliged to understand all those parts of Divine Revelation from whence he pretends to draw his Articles in their true meaning i. e. just as he does But his infallibility is not yet so established but that there will need some proof of that Proposition And when he has proved that every sincere Christian is necessarily and indispensibly obliged to understand those Texts in their true meaning and that his Interpretation of them is that true meaning I shall then ask him whether every sincere Christian is not as necessarily and indispensibly obliged to understand other Texts of Scripture in their true meaning though they have no place in his System For
as well as great Impudence of putting his Name in Print to what is not his or taking it away from what he hath set it to whether it belongs to his Bookseller or Answerer Onely I cannot pass by the palpable falsifying of Mr. B d's Words in the beginning of his Epistle to the Reader without mention Mr. B d's Words are Whereby I came to be furnished with a truer and more just Notion of the main Design of that TREATISE and the Good Creed-maker set them down thus The main Design of MY OWN TREATISE OR SERMON A sure way for such a Champion for Truth to secure to himself the Laurel or the Whetstone This irresistible Disputant who silences all that come in his way so that those that would cannot answer him to make good the mighty Encomiums he has given himself ought one would think to clear all as he goes and leave nothing by the way unanswered for fear he should fall into the Number of those poor baffled Wretches whom he with so much scorn reproaches that they would answer if they could Mr. B d begins his Animadversions with this Remark that our Creed-maker had said That I give it 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 To which Mr. B d replies p. 4. in these Words Though I have read over the Reasonableness of Christianity c. with some Attention I have not observed those formal Words in any part of that Book nor any Words that are capable of that Construction provided they be consider'd with the Relation they have to and the manifest Dependance they have on what goes before or follows after them But to this Mr. Edwards answers not Whether it was because he would not or because he could not let the Reader judge But this is down upon his Score already and it is expected he should answer to it or else confess that he cannot And that there may be a fair Decision of this Dispute I expect the same Usage from him that he should set down any Proposition of his I have not answer'd to and call on me for an Answer if I can And if I cannot I promise him to own it in Print The Creed-maker had said That it is most evident to any thinking and considerate Person that I purposely omit the Epistolary Writings of the Apostles because they are fraught with other Fundamental Doctrines besides that which I mention To this Mr. B d answers p. 5. That if by Fundamental Articles Mr. Edwards means here all the Propositions delivered in the Epistles concerning just those particular Heads he Mr. Edwards had there mentioned it lies upon him to prove That Jesus Christ hath made it necessary that every Person must have an explicit Knowledge and Belief of all those before he can be a Christian. But to this Mr. Edwards answers not And yet without an Answer to it all his Talk about Fundamentals and those which he pretended to set down in that place under the Name of Fundamentals will signifie nothing in the present case Wherein by Fundamentals were meant such Propositions which every Person must necessarily have an explicit Knowledge and Belief of before he can be a Christian. Mr. B d in the same place p. 6 and 7. very truly and pertinently adds That it did not pertain to my undertaking to enquire what Doctrines either in the Epistles or the Evangelists and the Acts were of greatest moment to be understood by them who are Christians but what was necessary to be known and believed to a Person 's being a Christian. For there are many important Doctrines both in the Gospels and in the Acts besides this That Iesus is the Messiah But how many soever the Doctrines be which are taught in the Epistles if there be no Doctrine besides this That Iesus is the Messiah taught there as necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian all the Doctrines taught there will not make any thing against what this Author has asserted nor against the Method he hath observed Especially considering we have an Account in the Acts of the Apostles of what those Persons by whom the Epistles were writ did teach as necessary to be believed to Peoples being Christians This and what Mr. B d subjoins That it was not my design to give an Abstract of any of the inspired Books is so true and has so clear Reason in it that any but this Writer would have thought himself concerned to have answered something to it But to this Mr. Edwards answers not It not being it seems a Creed-maker's Business to convince Mens Understanding by Reason but to impose on their Belief by Authority or where that is wanting by Falshoods and Bauling And to such Mr. Bold observes well p. 8. that if I had given the like Account of the Epistles that would have been as little satisfactory as what I have done already to those who are resolved not to distinguish BETWIXT WHAT IS NECESSARY TO BE BELIEVED TO MAKE A MAN A CHRISTIAN AND THOSE ARTICLES WHICH ARE TO BE BELIEVED BY THOSE WHO ARE CHRISTIANS as they can attain to know that Christ hath taught them This Distinction the Creed-maker no where that I remember takes any Notice of unless it be p. 255. where he has something relating hereunto which we shall consider when we come to that place I shall now go on to shew what Mr. Bold has said to what he answers not Mr. Bold farther tells him p. 10. That if he will prove any thing in Opposition to the Reasonableness of Christianity c. it must be this That Jesus Christ and his Apostles have taught that the Belief of some one Article or certain Number of Articles distinct from this That Iesus is the Messiah either as exclusive of or in Conjunction with the Belief of this Article doth constitute and make a Person a Christian But that the Belief of this that Jesus is the Messias alone doth not make a Man a Christian But to this Mr. Edwards irresragably answers nothing Mr. Bold also p. 10. Charges him with his falsly accusing me in these words He pretends to contend for one single Article with the exclusion of all the rest for this reason because all Men ought to understand their Religion And again where he says I aim at this viz. That we must not have any Point of Doctrine in our Religion that the Mob doth not at the very first naming of it perfectly understand and agree to Mr. Bold has quoted my express words to the contrary But to this this answerable Gentleman answers nothing But if he be such a mighty Disputant that nothing can stand in his way I shall expect his direct Answer to it among those other Propositions which I have set down to his Score and I require him to prove if he can The Creed-maker spends Five Pages of his Reflections in a great stir
who is the Author of those Animadversions he is Reflecting on To which I tell him it matters not to a Lover of Truth or a Confuter of Errours who was the Author but what they contain He who makes such a deal of doe about that which is nothing to the Question shews he has but little Mind to the Argument that his hopes are more in the recommendation of Names and prejudice of Parties than in the Strength of his Reasons and the goodness of his Cause A Lover of Truth follows That whoever be for or against it and can suffer himself to pass by no Argument of his Adversary without taking notice of it either in allowing its force or giving it a fair Answer Were the Creed-maker capable of giving such an Evidence as this of his Love of Truth he would not have passed over the Twenty first Pages of Mr. Bold's Animadversions in silence The Falshoods that are therein charged upon him would have required an Answer of him if he could have given any And I tell him he must give an Answer or confess the Falshoods In his 255. p. he comes to take notice of these words of Mr. Bold in the 21. Page of his Animadversions viz. That a Convert to Christianity or a Christian must necessarily believe as many Articles as he shall attain to know that Christ Jesus hath taught Which says the Creed-maker wholly invalidates what he had said before in these words viz. That Iesus Christ and his Apostles did not teach any thing as necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian but only this one Proposition That Iesus of Nazareth was the Messiah The reason he 〈◊〉 to shew That the former of these Propositions in Mr. Bold invalidates the latter and that the Animadverter contradicts himself stands thus For says he if a Christian must give assent to all the Articles taught by our Saviour in the Gospel and that necessarily then all those Propositions reckon'd up in my late Discourse being taught by Christ or his Apostles are necessary to be believed Answ. And what I beseech you becomes of the rest of the Propositions taught by Christ or his Apostles which you have not reckon'd up in your late Discourse Are not they necessary to be believed if a Christian must give an assent to ALL the Articles taught by our Saviour and his Apostles Sir If you will argue right from that antecedent it must stand thus If a Christian must give an assent to ALL the Articles taught by our Saviour and his Apostles and that necessarily Then all the Propositions in the New Testament taught by Christ or his Apostles are necessarily to be believed This Consequence I grant to be true and necessarily to follow from that antecedent and pra◠〈◊〉 your best of it But withal remeâ—â—ber that it puts an utter end to your select Number of Fundamentals and makes all the Truths delivered in the New Testament necessary to be explicitly believed by every Christian But Sir I must take notice to you that if it be uncertain whether he that Writ the Animadversions be the same Person that Preached the Sermon yet it is very visible that 't is the very same Person that reflects on both Because he here again uses the same Trick in answering in the Animadversions the same thing that had been said in the Sermon viz. By pretending to argue from words as Mr. Bold's when Mr. Bold has said no such thing The Proposition you argue from here is this If a Christian must give assent to all the Articles taught by our Saviour and that necessarily But Mr. Bold says no such thing His words as set down by your self are A Christian must necessarily believe as many Articles as he shall attain to know that Christ Jesus hath taught And is there no difference â—â—â—ween ALL that Christ Iesus hath taught and AS MANY as any one shall attain to know that Christ Iesus hath taught There is so great a difference between these two that one can scarce think even such a Creed-maker could mistake it For one of them admits all those to be Christians who taking Iesus for the Messiah their Lord and King sincerely apply themselves to understand and obey his Doctrine and Law and do believe all that they understand to be taught by him The other shuts out if not all Mankind yet Nine Hundred Ninety Nine of a Thousand of those who profess themselves Christians from being really so For he speaks within Compass who says there is not one of a Thousand if there be any one Man at all who explicitly knows and believes that all that our Saviour and his Apostles taught i. e. All that is delivered in the New Testament in the true â—ence that it is there intended For if giving assent to it in any sence will serve the turn our Creed-maker can have no Exceptions against Socinians Papists Lutherans or any other who acknowledging the Scripture to be the Word of God do yet oppose his System But the Creed-maker goes on p. 255. and endeavours to prove that what is necessary to be believed by every Christian is necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian in these words But he will say the belief of those Propositions makes not a Man a Christian. Then I say they are not necessary and indispensible for what is absolutely necessary in Christianity is absolutely requisite to make a Man a Christian. Ignorance or something worse makes our Creed-maker always speak doubtfully or obscurely whenever he pretends to argue for here absolutely necessary in Christianity either signifies nothing but absolutely necessary to make a Man a Christian and then it is proving the same Proposition by the same Proposition Or else has a very obscure and doubtful Signification For if I ask him whether it be absolutely necessary in Christianity to obey every one of our Saviour's Commands what will he answer me If he answers NO I ask him which of our Saviour's Commands is it not in Christianity absolutely necessary to obey If he answers YES Then I tell him by his rule there are no Christians because there is no one that does in all things obey all our Saviour's Commands and therein fails to perform what is absolutely necessary in Christianity and so by his rule is no Christian. If he answers Sincere Endeavour to obey is all that is absolutely necessary I reply And so Sincere Endeavour to understand is all that is absolutely necessary Neither perfect Obedience nor perfect Understanding is absolutely necessary in Christianity But his Proposition being put in terms clear and not loose and fallacious should stand thus viz. What is absolutely necessary to every Christian is absolutely requisite to make a Man a Christian But then I deny that he can inferr from Mr. Bold's words that those Propositions i. e. which he has set down as Fundamental or necessary to be believed arâ— absolutely necessary to be believed by every Christian. For that
indispensible necessity Mr. Bold speaks of is not absolute but conditional His words are A Christian must believe as many Articles as he shall attain to know that Iesus Christ hath taught So that he places the indispensible necessity of Believing upon the condition of attaining to know that Christ taught so An endeavour to know what Iesus Christ taught Mr. B dsays truely is absolutely necessary to every one who is a Christian and to believe what he has attained to know that Iesus Christ taught that also he says is absolutely necessary to every Christian. But all this granted as true it is it still remains and eternally will remain to be proved from this which is all that Mr. Bold says that something else is absolutely required to make a Man a Christian besides the unfeigned taking Iesus to be the Messiah his King and Lord and accordingly a sincere resolution to obey and believe all that he commanded and taught The Jailor Acts XVI 30. in Answer to his Question what he should do to be saved was answer'd That he should believe in the Lord Iesus Christ. And the Text says that the Jailor took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized he and all his straight-way Now I will ask our Creed-maker whether St. Paul in speaking to him the Word of the Lord proposed and explained to him all those Propositions and Fundamental Heads of Doctrine which our Creed-maker has set down as necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian. Let it be consider'd the Jailor was a Heathen and one that seems to have no more Sense of Religion or Humanity than those of that Calling use to have For he had let them alone under the Pain of their Stripes without any Remedy or so much as the ease of washing them from the Day before till after his Conversion which was not till after Midnight And can any one think that between his asking what he should do to be saved and his being baptized which the Text says was the same hour and straightway there was time enough for St. Paul and Silas to explain to him all the Creed-maker's Articles and make such a Man as that and all his house understand the Creed-maker's whole System especially since we hear nothing of it in the Conversion of these or any others who were brought into the Faith in the whole History of the Preaching of our Saviour and the Apostles Now let me ask our Creed-maker whether the Jailor was not a Christian when he was baptized and whether if he had then immediately died he had not been saved without the Belief of any one Article more than what Paul and Silas had then â—aught him Whence it follows that what was then proposed to him to be believed which appears to be nothing but that Iesus was the Messiah was all that was absolutely necessary to be believed to make him a Christian though this hinders not but that afterwards it might be necessary for him indispensibly necessary to believe other Articles when he attained to the Knowledge that Christ had taught them And the reason of it is plain Because the knowing that Christ taught any thing and the not receiving it for true which is believing it is inconsistent with the believing him to be the Messiah sent from God to inlighten and save the World Every word of Divine Revelation is absolutely and indispensibly necessary to be believed by every Christian as soon as he comes to know it to be taught by our Saviour or his Apostles or to be of Divine Revelation But yet this is far enough from making it absolutely necessary to every Christian to know every Text in the Scripture much less to understand every Text in the Scripture and least of all to understand it as the Creed-maker is pleased to put his sence upon it This the good Creed-maker either will not or cannot understand But gives us a List of Articles culled out of the Scripture by his own Authority and tells us those are absolutely necessary to be believed by every one to make him a Christian. For what is of absolute Necessity in Christianity as those he says are he tells us is absolutely requisite to make a Man a Christian. But when he is asked whether these are all the Articles of absolute Necessity to be believed to make a Man a Christian This worthy Divine that takes upon him to be a Successor of the Apostles cannot tell And yet having taken upon him also to be a Creed-maker he must suffer himself to be called upon for it again and again till he tells us what is of absolute Necessity to be believed to make a Man a Christian or confess that he cannot In the mean time I take the liberty to say That every Proposition delivered in the New Testament by our Saviour or his Apostles and so received by any Christian as of Divine Revelation is of as absolute necessity to be assented to by him in the Sence he understands it to be taught by them as any one of those Propositions enumerated by the Creed-maker And if he thinks otherwise I shall desire him to prove it The Reason whereof is this that in divine Revelation the ground of Faith being onely the Authority of the Proposer where that is the same there is no difference in the Obligation or Measure of believing Whatever the Messiah that came from God taught is equally to be believed by every one who receives him as the Messiah as soon as he understands what it was he taught There is no such thing as garbling his Doctrine and making one part of it more necessary to be believed than another when it is understood His saying is and must be of unquestionable Authority to all that receive him as their heavenly King and carries with it an equal Obligation of assent to all that he says as true But since no Body can explicitly assent to any Proposition of our Saviour's as true but in the Sence he understands our Saviour to have spoken it in the same Authority of the Messiah his King obliges every one absolutely and indispensibly to believe every part of the New Testament in that Sence he understands it For else he rejects the Authority of the Deliverer if he refuses his Assent to it in that Sence which he is perswaded it was delivered in But the taking him for the Messiah his King and Lord laying upon every one who is his Subject and Obligation to endeavour to know his Will in all things every true Christian is under an absolute and indispensible necessity by being his Subject to study the Scriptures with an unprejudiced mind according to that Measure of Time Opportunity and Helps which he has that in these sacred Writings he may find what his Lord and Master hath by himself or by the Mouths of his Apostles required of him either to be believed or done The Creed-maker in the following Page 256. hath these Words
It is worth the Reader 's observing That notwithstanding I had in twelve Pages together viz. from the Eighth to the Twentieth proved that several Propositions are necessary to be believed by us in order to our being Christians yet this Sham-Animadverter attends not to any one of the particulars which I had mentioned nor offers any thing against them but onely in a Lumping way dooms them all in those magisterial Words I do not see any Proof he produces p. 21. This is his wonderful way of confuting me by pretending that he cannot see any Proof in what I alledge and all the World must be led by his eyes Answ. It is worth the Reader 's observing That the Creed-maker does not reply to what Mr. Bold has said to him as we have already seen and shall see more as we go on and therefore he has little reason to complain of him for not having answered enough Mr. Bold did well to leave that which was an insignificant lump so as it was together For 't is no wonderful thing not to see any Proof where there is no Proof There is indeed in those Pages the Creedmaker mentions much Confidence much Assertion a great many Questions asked and a great deal said after his Fashion But for a Proof I deny there is any one And if what I have said in another place already does not convince him of it I challenge him with all his Eyes and those of the World to boot to find out in those Twelve renowned Pages one Proof Let him set down the Proposition and his Proof of its being absolutely and indispensibly necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian And I too will join with him in his Testimonial of himself that he is irrefragable But I must tell him before-hand talking a great deal loosely will not do it Mr. Bold and I say we cannot see any Proof in those Twelve Pages The way to make us see or to convince the World that we are blind is to single out one Proof out of that Wood of Words there which you seem to take for Arguments and set it down in a Syllogism which is the fair trial of a Proof or no Proof You have indeed a Syllogism in the 23 d. Page but that is not in those Twelve Pages you mention Besides I have shew'd in another place what that proves to which I referr you In Answer to the Creed-maker's Question about his other Fundamentals found in the Epistles Why did the Apostles Write these Doctrines Was it not that those they Writ to might give their Assent to them Mr. Bold p. 22. replies But then it may be asked again Were not those Persons Christians to whom the Apostles writ these Doctrines and whom they required to Assent to them Yes verily And if so What was it that made them Christians before their Assent to these Doctrines was required If it were any thing besides their Believing Iesus to be the Messiah it ought to be instanced in and made out But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not The next thing in Controversie between Mr. Bold and the Creed-maker for I follow Mr. B d's Order is about a Matter of Fact viz. Whether the Creed-maker has proved That Iesus Christ and his Apostles have taught That no Man can be a Christian or shall be saved unless he have an explicit Knowledge of all those things which have an immediate respect to the Occasion Author Way Means and Issue of our Salvation and which are necessary for the knowing the true Nature and Design of it This Mr. Bold p. 24. tells him he has not done To this the Creed-maker replies p. 258. And yet the Reader may satisfie himself that this is the very thing that I had been proving just before and indeed all along in the foregoing Chapter Answ. There have been those who have been seven Years proving a thing which at last they could not do And I give you seven Years to prove this Proposition which you should there have proved and I must add to your score here viz. LII That Iesus Christ or his Apostles have taught That no Man can be a Christian or can be saved unless he hath an explicit Knowledge of all those things which have an immediate respect to the Occasion Author Way Means and Issue of our Salvation and which are necessary for our knowing the true Nature and Design of it Nor must the poor Excuse of saying It was not necessary to add any farther Medium and then proceed to another Syllogism because you had secured that Proposition before go for Payment If you had secured it as you say it had been quite as easie and much more for your Credit to have produced the Proof whereby you had secured it than to say you had done it and thereupon to reproach Mr. Bold with Heedlessness and to tell the World that he cares not what he saith The Rule of fair Dispute is indispensibly to Prove where any thing is Denied To evade this is Shuffling and he that instead of it answers with ill Language in my Country is call'd a Foul-mouth'd Wrangler To the Creed-maker's Exception to my Demand about the Actual Belief of all his Fundamentals in his new Creed Mr. Bold asks p. 24. Whether a Man can believe particular Propositions and not actually believe them But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not Mr. Bold p. 25. farther acknowledges the Creed-maker's Fundamental Propositions to be in the Bible and that they are for this purpose there that they may be believed And so he saith is every other Proposition which is taught in our Bibles But asks How will it thence follow that no Man can be a Christian till he particularly know and actually assent to every Proposition in our Bibles But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not From p. 26 to 30. Mr. B d shews that the Creed-makers Reply concerning my not gathering of Fundamentals out of the Epistles is nothing to the purpose and this he demonstratively proves And to this Mr. Edwards Answers not The Creed-maker had falsly said That I bring no Tydings of an Evangelical Faith And thence very readily and charitably inferrs Which gives us to understand that he verily believes there is no such Christian Faith To this Mr. Bold thus softly replies p. 31. I think Mr. Edwards is much mistaken both in his Assertion and Inference And to shew that he could not so inferr adds If the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. had not brought any Tidings of such a Faith I think it could not be thence justly inferr'd that he verily believes there is no such Christian Faith Because his Enquiry and Search was not concerning Christianâ—Faith considered subjectively but objectively What the Articles be which must be believed to make a Man a Christian and not with what sort of Faith these Articles are to be believed To this the Creed-maker answers indeed But it is something as much worse than nothing as Falshood is
worse than Silence His words are p. 258. It may be questioned from what he the Animadverter hath the confidence to say p. 31. viz. There is no Enquiry in the Reasonableness of Christianity concerning Faith subjectively considered but only objectively c. And thus having set down Mr. B d's Words otherwise than they are for Mr. Bold does not say there is no Enquiry i. e. no Mention for so the Creed-maker explains Enquiries here For to convince Mr. Bold that there is an Enquiry i. e. Mention of Subjective Faith he alledges That Subjective Faith is spoken of in the 191. and 192. pages of my Book But Mr. Bold says not that Faith considered subjectively is not spoken of any where in the Reasonableness of Christianity c. But That the Author 's Enquiry and Search i. e. the Author's Search or Design of his Search was not concerning Christian Faith considered subjectively And thus the Creed-maker imposing on his Reader by perverting Mr. Bold's Sence from what was the Intention of my Enquiry and Search to what I had said in it he goes on after his scurrilous fashion to insult in these words which follow I say it may be guessed from this what a Liberty this Writer takes to assert what he pleases Answ. To assert what one pleases without Truth and without Certainty is the worst Character can be given a Writer And with Falshood to charge it on another is no mean Slander and Injury to a Man's Neighbour And yet to these shameful Arts must he be driven who finding his strength of managing a Cause to lie only in Fiction and Falshood has no other but the dull Billinsgate way of covering it by endeavouring to divert the Reader 's Observation and Censure from himself by a confident repeated Imputation of that to his Adversary which he himself is so frequent in the Commission of And of this the Instances I have given are a sufficient Proof In which I have been at the Pains to set down the Words on both Sides and the Pages where they are to be found for the Reader 's full Satisfaction The Cause in Debate between us is of great Weight and concerns every Christian That any Evidence in the Proposal or Defence of it can be sufficient to conquer all Men's Prejudices is a Vanity to imagine But this I think I may justly demand of every Reader that since there are great and visible Falshoods on one side or the other for the Accusations of this kind are positive and frequent he would examine on which Side they are And upon that I will venture the Cause in any Reader 's Judgment who will be but at the pains of turning to the Pages marked out to him And as for him that will not do that I care not much what he says The Creed-maker's following words p. 258. have the Natural Mark of their Author They are these How can this Animadverter come off with peremptory declaring that Subjective Faith is not enquired into in the Treatise of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. When in another place p. 35 and 36. he averrs That Christian Faith and Christianity consider'd Subjectively are the same Answ. In which words there are two manifest â—ntruths The one is That Mr. Bold peremptorily declares that Subjective Faith is not inquired into i. e. Spoken of in the Reasonableness of Christianity c. Whereas Mr. Bold says in that place p. 31. If he i. e. the Author had not said one word concerning Faith subjectively considered The Creed-maker's other Untruth is his saying That the Animadverter averrs p. 35. 36. that Christian Faith and Christianity considered subjectively are the same Whereas 't is evident that Mr. Bold arguing against these words of the Creed-maker The belief of Iesus being the Messiah was one of the first and leading Acts of Christian Faith speaks in that place of an act of Faith as these words of his demonstrate Now I apprehend that Christian Faith and Christianity consider'd subjectively and an ACT of Christian Faith I think cannot be understood in any other sence are the very same I must therefore desire him to set down the words wherein the Animadverter peremptorily declares LIII That subjective Faith is not enquired into or spoken of in the Treatise of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. And next to produce the words wherein the Animadverter averrs LIV. That Christian Faith and Christianity consider'd subjectively are the same To the Creed maker's saying That the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. brings us no tidings of Evangelical Faith belonging to Christianity Mr. Bold replies That I have done it in all those Pages where I speak of taking and accepting Iesus to be our King and Ruler and particularly he sets down my words out of p. 301. But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not The Creed-maker says p. 59. of his Socinianism Unmasked that the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity tells men again and again that a Christian Man or Member of Christ needs not know or believe any more than that one individual Point To which Mr. Bold thus replies p. 33. If any Man will shew me those words in any part of the Reasonableness c. I shall suspect I was not awake all the time I was reading that Book And I am as certain as one awake can be that there are several Passages in that Book directly contrary to these words And there are some Expressions in the Vindication of the Reasonableness c. one would think if Mr. Edwards had observed them they would have prevented that Mistake But to this Mr. Edwards answers not Mr. Bold p. 34. takes notice that the Creed-maker had not put the Query or Objection right which he says some and not without some shew of ground may be apt to start And therefore Mr. Bold puts the Query right viz. Why did Jesus Christ and his Apostles require assent to and belief of this one Article alone viz. That Iesus is the Messiah to constitute and make a Man a Christian or true Member of Christ as it is abundantly evident they did from the Reasonableness of Christianity if the belief of more Articles is absolutely necessary to make and constitute a Man a Christian. But to this Mr. Edwards answers not And therefore I put the Objection or Query to him again in Mr. Bold's words and expect an Answer to it viz. LV. Why did Iesus Christ and his Apostles require assent to and belief of this one Article alone viz. That Jesus is the Messiah to make a Man a Christian as it is abundantly evident they did from all their Preaching recorded throughout the whole History of the Evangelists and Acts if the belief of more Articles be absolutely necessary to make a Man a Christian The Creed-maker having made believing Iesus to be the Messiah only one of the first and leading Acts of Christian Faith Mr. Bold p. 35. rightly tells him That Christian Faith must be the belief
of something or other And if it be the belief of any thing besides this That Iesus is the Christ or Messias that other thing should be specified and it should be made appear that the Belief that Iesus is the Messiah without the Belief of that other Proposition is not Christian Faith But to this Mr. Edwards answers not Mr. B d in the four following Pages 36 39. has excellently explained the difference between that Faith which constitutes a Man a Christian and that Faith whereby one that is a Christian believes the Doctrines taught by our Saviour and the ground of that difference and therein has fully over-turned this Position that believing Iesus to be the Messiah is but a Step or the first Step to Christianity But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not To the Creed-makers supposing that other Matters of Faith were proposed with this That Iesus is the Messiah Mr. Bold replies That this should be proved viz. That other Articles were proposed as requisite to be believed to make Men Christians And p. 40. he gives a Reason why he is of another Mind viz. Because there is nothing but this recorded which was insisted on for that purpose But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not Mr. Bold p. 42. shews that Rom. X. 9. which the Creed-maker brought against it confirms the Assertion of the Author of the Reasonableness c. concerning the Faith that makes a Man a Christian. But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not The Creed-maker says p. 78. This is the main Answer to the Objection or Query above proposed viz. That Christianity was erected by degrees This Mr. Bold p. 43. proves to be nothing to the purpose by this Reason viz. Because what makes one Man a Christian or ever did make any Man a Christian will at any time to the End of the World make another Man a Christian And asks Will not that make a Christian now which made the Apostles themselves Christians But to this Mr. Edwards Answers not In Answer to his 6th Chapter Mr. Bold p. 45. tells him It was not my Business to discourse of the Trinity or any other particular Doctrines proposed to be believed by them who are Christians And that it is no fair and just Ground to accuse a Man for rejecting the Dotrines of the Trinity and that Jesus is God Because he does not interpret some particular Texts to the same purpose others do But to this Mr. Edwards answers not Indeed he takes notice of these words of Mr. Bold in this Paragraph viz. Hence Mr. Edwards takes occasion to write many Pages about these terms viz. Messiah and Son of God But I do not perceive that he pretends to offer any Proof that these were not Synonymous terms amongst the Iews at that time which is the Point he should have proved if he designed to invalidate what this Author saith about that matter To this the Creed-maker replies p. 257. The Animadverâ—er doth not so much as offer one syllable â—o disprove what I delivered and closely urged on that head Answer What need any Answer to disprove where there is no Proof brought that reaches the Proposition in Question If there had been any such Proof the producing of it in short had been a more convincing Argument to the Reader than so much bragging of what has been done For here are more Words spent for I have not set them all down than would have served to have expressed the Proof of this Proposition viz. That the terms above-mentioned were not Synonymous amongst the Iews if there had been any Proof of it But having already examined what the Creed-maker brags he has closely urged I shall say no more of it here To the Creed-makers making me a Socinian in his Eighth Chapter for not naming Christ's Satisfaction amongst the Advantages and Benefits of Christ's coming into the World Mr. Bold replies 1. That it is no Proof because I promised not to name every one of them And the mention of some is no denial of others 2. He replies That Satisfaction is not so strictly to be termed an Advantage as the effects and fruits of it are and that the Doctrine of Satisfaction instructs us in the way how Christ did by divine Appointment obtain those Advantages for us And this was an Answer that deserved some reply from the Creed-maker But to this he answers not Mr. Bold says right That this is a Doctrine that is of mighty Importance for a Christian to be well acquainted with And I will add to it that it is very hard for a Christian who reads the Scripture with Attention and an unprejudiced Mind to deny the Satisfaction of Christ But it being a term not used by the Holy Ghost in the Scripture and very variously explained by those that do use it and very much stumbled at by those I was there speaking to who were such as I there say who will not take a Blessing unless they be instructed what need they had of it and why it was bestowed upon them I left it with the other disputed Doctrines of Christianity to be looked into to see what it was Christ had taught concerning it by those who were Christians and believed Jesus to be the Saviour promised and sent from God And to those who yet doubted that he was so and made this Objection What need was there of a Saviour I thought it most reasonable to offer such Particulars only as were agreed on by all Christians and were capable of no Dispute but must be acknowledged by every body to be needful This though the Words above-quoted out of p. 254 256. of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. shew to be my Design yet the Creed-maker plainly gives me the Lye and tells me it was not my Design All the World are faithless false treacherous hypocritical Strainers upon their Reason and Conscience Dissemblers Iourney-men mercenary Hirelings except Mr. Edwards I mean all the World that opposes him And must not one think he is mightily beholding to the Excellency and Readiness of his own Nature who is no sooner engaged in Controversie but he immediately finds out in his Adversaries these Arts of Equivocation Lying and Effrontry in managing of it Reason and Learning and acquired Improvements might else have let him have gone on with others in the dull and ordinary way of fair arguing wherein possibly he might have done no great feats Must not a rich and fertile Soyle within and a prompt Genius wherein a Man may readily spie the Propensities of base and corrupt Nature be acknowledged to be an excellent Qualification for a Disputant to help him to the quick Discovery and laying open of the Faults of his Opponents which a Mind otherwise disposed would not so much as suspect Mr. Bold without this could not have been so soon found out to be a Iourney-man a Dissembler an hired Mercenary and stored with all those good Qualities wherein he hath his full share with me But why would he then
venture upon Mr. Edwards who is so very quick-sighted in these matters and knows so well what villainous Man is capable of I should not here in this my Vindication have given the Reader so much of Mr. Bold's Reasoning which though clear and strong yet has more Beauty and Force as it stands in the whole Piece in his Book Nor should I have so often repeated this Remark upon each Passage viz. to this Mr. Edwards answers not had it not been the shortest and properest Comment could be made on that triumphant Paragraph of his which begins in the 128. page of his Socinian Creed wherein amongst a great deal of no small strutting are these Words By their profound silence they acknowledge they have nothing to reply He that desires to see more of the same noble strain may have recourse to that eminent Place Besides it was fit the Reader should have this one taste more of the Creed-maker's Genius who passing by in silence all these clear and apposite Replies of Mr. Bold loudly complains of him p. 259. That where he Mr. Bold finds something that he dares not object against he shifts it off And again p. 260. That he doth not make any offer at Reason there is not the least shadow of an Argument As if he were only hired to say something against me the Creed-maker though not at all to the purpose And truly any Man may discern a Mercenary Stroke all along with a great deal more to the same purpose For such Language as this mixed with Scurrility neither fit to be spoken by nor of a Minister of the Gospel make up the remainder of his Postscript But to prevent this for the future I demand of him That if in either of his Treatises there be any thing against what I have said in my Reasonableness of Christianity which he thinks not fully answer'd he will set down the Proposition in direct Words and note the Page of his Book where it is to be found And I promise him an Answer to it For as for his Railing and other Stuff besides the Matter I shall hereafter no more trouble my self to take notice of it And so much for Mr. Edwards THere is another Gentleman and of another sort of Make Parts and Breeding who as it seems ashamed of Mr. Edwards's Way of handling Controversies in Religion has had something to say of my Reasonableness of Christianity c. And so has made it necessary for me to say a Word to him before I let these Papers go out of my Hand It is the Author of The Occasional Paper Numb 1. The 2 3 and 4 Pages of that Paper gave me great hopes to meet with a Man who would examine all the Mistakes which come abroad in Print with that Temper and Indifferency that might set an exact Pattern for Controversie to those who would approve themselves to be sincere Contenders for Truth and Knowledge and nothing else in the Disputes they engaged in Making him Allowance for the Mistakes that Self-Indulgence is apt to impose upon Humane Frailty I am apt to believe he thought his Performances had been such But I crave leave to observe That good and candid Men are often misled from a fair unbiassed pursuit of Truth by an over-great Zeal for something that they upon wrong Grounds take to be so And that it is not so easie to be a fair and unprejudiced Champion for Truth as some who profess it think it to be To acquaint him with the Occasion of this Remark I must desire him to read and consider his 19th Page and then to tell me 1. Whether he knows that the Doctrine proposed in the Reasonableness of Christianity c. was borrowed as he says from Hobbs's Leviathan For I tell him I borrowed it only from the Writers of the Four Gospels and the Acts and did not know that those words he quoted out of the Leviathan were there or any thing like them Nor do I know yet any farther than as I believe them to be there from his Quotation 2. Whether affirming as he does positively this which he could not know to be true and is in it self perfectly false were meant to encrease or lessen the Credit of the Author of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. in the Opinion of the World Or is consonant with his own Rule p. 3. of putting candid Constructions on what Adversaries say Or with what follows in these words The more Divine the Cause is still the greater should be the Caution The very Discoursing about Almighty God or our Holy Religion should compose our Passions and inspire us with Candour and Love It is very indecent to handle such Subjects in a manner that betrays Rancour and Spite These are Fiends that ought to vanish and should never mix either with a Search after Truth or the Defence of Religion 3. Whether the Propositions which he has out of my Book inserted into his 19th Page and says are consonant to the words of the Leviathan were those of all my Book which were likeliest to give the Reader a true and fair Notion of the Doctrine contained in it If they were not I must desire him to remember and beware of his Fiends Not but that he will find those Propositions there to be true But that neither he nor others may mistake my Book this is that in short which it says 1. That there is a Faith that makes Men Christians 2. That this Faith is the Believing Iesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah 3. That the Believing Iesus to be the Messiah includes in it a receiving Him for our Lord and King promised and sent from God And so lays upon all his Subjects an absolute and indisble necessity of assenting to all that they can attain the Knowledge that he taught and of a sincere Obedience to all that he commanded This whether it be the Doctrine of the Leviathan I know not This appears to me out of the New Testament from whence as I told him in the Preface I took it to be the Doctrine of our Saviour and his Apostles And I would not willingly be mistaken in it If therefore there be any other Faith besides this absolutely requisite to make a Man a Christian I shall here again desire this Gentleman to inform me what it is i. e. to set down all those Propositions which are so indispensibly to be believed for 't is of simple Believing I perceive the Controversie runs that no Man can be a Believer i. e. a Christian without an Actual Knowledge of and an Explicit Assent to them If he shall do this with that Candour and Fairness he declares to be necessary in such Matters I shall own my self obliged to him For I am in earnest and I would not be mistaken in it If he shall decline it I and the World too must conclude that upon a review of my Doctrine he is convinced of the Truth of it and is satisfied that I am in the