this distinction in several places of his Treatise And as to his denying the freedom or rather the liberty of the Will because as he alledgeth it always follows and of necessity is acted by the last Dictate of the Understanding He answers it in this Paragraph by contradicting himself in these very syllables Men cannot therefore believe what they please nor think what they please that such or such an opinion or thing is true or false Indeed a man may act contrary to his understanding which is hypocrisie and which if the Gent. pleases he may call wilful hypocrisie And he if he pleases may likewise take notice that this act of hypocrisie which he saith is contrary to mens understandings whilst such mens judgments and perswasions disallow of their practice must be an effect of and can have no other cause than the freedoom or liberty of the Will But if he be unwilling to be Convicted from his own contradiction I refer him to the words of the Sorceress in Ovid. Video meliora proboque Deteriora sequor Page 82. He gives as he fancieth sage Counsel to the Clergy by advising them not to meddle with the Government in the Pulpit but forgot to observe it himself in Composing this Apologie in which he hath made many pert and bold Essays to admonish our Governors like an Atheist or a Pagan to suffer our Religion to truckle to our Trade by hinting that the Phanaticks as a Pack of formidable Heroes should not be disturbed but Experience informs us That the due execution of our Laws will prove this Pretence to be as groundless and false as the rest of his Apologie however we will agree with him That the direful sparks which heretofore have set the Kingdom in a flame have flown from the Pulpit as well as from Pamphlets Page 84. He Combates his Principal again in these words I think it is best to be of the Religion of a man's Country externally He means hypocritically at least and sure I am there is nothing morally evil in ours and for external Worship in Religion as to time and place it is determinable by the Supream Magistrate But how can this be Consistent with the Fundamental Doctrine of the Text as he styles it that every one ought to have leave to govern himself from within not having any regard to Example or Authority or any thing else there can be no Salvo for this Contradiction but that he being a very great Wit may have a very ill memory In the next place I acknowledge I cannot make sense of this Expression Page 92. I mean all Protestants of what Species soever here in England For how can those Votaries who differ specifically in their Worship and Religion be comprehended under the same Denomination our Laws also owning but one sort of Protestants as agreeable to the Principles of the true Protestant or Catholick Church whose Members are obliged to hold and confess the same Doctrine and Faith and to be of the same Communion but it seems you have found out some Centaures in Religion who have coined a new Name for themselves very suitable to this Fiction viz. Protestant Dissenters a Title very agreeable also to the rest of their and your Notions being a Contradiction in terms Thus much for your Apologie Now I come to your Review and Appendix made upon so long Consideration wherefore I did expect in it an absolute Retraction or at least a general amendment of the vain and impertinent Errors and Contradictions in your precedent Reply But instead of that I find it full gorged with a Pragmatick Censure to call it no worse of the Conversation and Deportment as well of the Gentry as Clergie of the Writings of worthy Authors and of the Affairs of Publick Government an excursion so much above your Capacity and Station and so foreign to your Province and the subject of your Discourse that doubtless all sober men will agree that it deserves the severest blame and reprehension rather than the honour of an Answer However I cannot but take notice of two Passages in it which are two other sorts of Ingredients that make it distasteful and nauseous to all Catholick Christians The first is your loose Question to the Parson of Bocking Page 130. Whether if I believed in God and Christ I were obliged to be a Member of any particular Church or no I shall answer it in short You know very well that you may believe in as well as worship the true God and our Saviour after a wrong and false manner as the various and opposite Subdivisions under Christianity at large make too much manifest and then what satisfaction and assurance you can have out of the Communion of the Catholick Church which worships the true God after the true manner according to his revealed and ordinary Declarations not to meddle with his extraordinary Dispensations I leave you to consider And as to the Parson of Bocking's Golden Answer as you call it That if you were one of God's Vniversal Church 't was no great matter whether you were joyned to any petty Church policy here on earth or no. He might make use of this Saying to palliate a Compliance with the several Changes in the Times as if any or no Discipline at all were very indifferent therefore to come up close to him I do not understand what Church can be termed God's Church Universal except that which from its holding and professing all the Fundamentals of Doctrine and Faith contained in the Gospel is truly called Catholick which hath had power in all Ages to establish its own Discipline Rites and Ceremonies to all which its Member are obliged to Conform for the sake of Unity and Communion the two grand external Demonstrations and Accomplishments of the true Worship and Religion The next Passage is pag. 139. by which viz. Reason and by no other mediation it is possible for a man of good understanding and not clogged with false Principles to be satisfied that the natural Dictates of God Reason carry no repugnancy in them to the Law and Will of God revealed in the Scripture c. This Averment notwithstanding all your palliating Circumstances must necessarily be understood of Reason corrupted for right Reason being above our degenerated Capacity and likewise not the Province to defend can neither be the Subject of the Question in this Clause nor of any other part of your discourse Now then if lapsed Reason is so perfectly righteous and that the Will cannot but follow the last dictate of that as you have declared heretofore then no man can offend or need any repentance a Principle so prophane and of so hainous a tincture that we never hear of it mentioned by the most barbarous Heathens Nay had you but considered that in the short Epoche of Innocence when Adam was endued with Humane Reason in its highest and most perspicacious degree it was not so perfectly fixed as to guide him in his obedience to one Command of the Deity for his preservation in Paradice you must either out of shame or dread have been discouraged to have offered such Sentiments to the World But for an entire and final convincement of this Apologist let him own or disallow the Authority of the Scriptures it cannot on the one hand be denied but that the imbecility of our Understanding according to the tenor of Holy Writ is a just and genuine punishment for our first Parents Ambition to obtain a knowledge against the Command of the Deity and above the state of a Creature and on the other every days experience evinces without revelation that Fancy and Humour usurp a very great share in the Regiment here below of Humane Transactions which Reason claims to be its proper Sphere of activity and natural dominion To this it may be added for the confirming of this Argument that Infallibility is the peculiar as well as the inseparable Attribute of an Omniscient Being which admits of no higher Understanding to oppose or confute it And since this cannot be truly affirmed of any being that is created the Creature of it self must consequently labor under a general subjection to errour from its general imperfection and the highest instance to prove this is the fall of those Angels who revolted from the Worship as well as from their Allegiance to the Deity Therefore I leave the Reader to judge whether this Apologists fantastick Expression and Censure which he puts upon others is not due to himself That he ought to be reckoned among the number of the delirious for attempting to defend the Infallibility of Humane Reason without the least evidence to support it either Humane or Divine After all this advertisement if he shall be given to rescribling as he hath vaunted to Plain-dealing I hope the highest Bigots to Novelty from a luxuriancy of Wit will for the future be convinced that such wretched discourses as these can only deserve a publick Reprimand FINIS
REMARKS UPON A TRACT INTITULED A TREATISE OF HUMANE REASON AND Upon Mr. Warren's late Defence of it By Sir George Blundell LONDON Printed for Jacob Tonson at the Judges Head in Chancery-Lane near Fleetstreet 1683. AN ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER I Had no Intentions until lately to expose these REMARKS which were made in the year 76 for my privat Diversion to the Publick Censure of an Age so much distracted in Opinions but finding that the Approbation of this Treatise after some men's endeavours to refute it doth still remain in the minds of many upon whose Inclinations to Novelty it may be hoped that the Variety as well as force of Arguments may prevail to make a new Answer serviceable and seeing likewise the Enemies of the poor Protestant Religion encrease so much both in numbers and audacity as to attack it on every side by most graceless and inhumane attempts I thought it the Duty of an Orthodox tho' an unworthy Professor to put my Mite into the Corban to help to support it But if it shall be further objected that I have not well timed the publishing of these Remarks in regard the Author of the Treatise may possibly be dead to this I shall only answer That no Books in any Age have been priviledged from being Confuted or Suppressed after the death of their Authors if their Contents were offensive to our Laws or Religion REMARKS UPON A TREATISE OF HUMANE REASON To the Author of the Treatise SIR IN reading your Treatise I deal franckly with you I was much disappointed for I did expect a discourse of the Origen Nature and Conveyance of Humane Reason to all the Generations of Men and in order to this that you would have treated First Of its primitive Inspiration and Descent from God himself to Man at his Creation 2ly Of its Perspicacity and Extent in the state of Innocency 3ly Of its impaired Condition in Adam himself and the first Ages before many of those vices which so much weaken it now were practised in the world 4ly That you would by some new Ratiocinations have either confirmed that Opinion of the Conveyance of Humane Reason to all Adam's Posterity which is generally agreed on to be the best account or that you would have discovered some other more satisfactory to the Readers Since the most prevalent Opinion is That the Rational Soul doth not inherit this Degeneration etraduce or by descent but that it is a Spirit infused indued with greater purity and intelligence than can possibly be exerted in the humane Compositum as it is now stated from which some Scepticks take occasion to Cavil And lastly That for the benefit and amendment of men and the vindication of our best Faculty you would have made some acute and new Essay at least to remind us that the exercise of Humane Reason is so much obstructed and dulled by meer sloth in some and injured and depraved by passions and Vices in others that it seems to be fallen from the Glory and Splendor of the great Luminary in the Heavens to the small appearance of a Star in the Sky For such was the proportion which Rationality bore in the uncorrupted Nature of Man to that which is so much decayed and weakned not only by Adam's Fall but also by the faults and ill management of his degenerated Posterity ever since But in lieu of all this I find a peremptory Claim made and Pretensions to assert Humane Reason's Title not only to an Office of Inquisition but also to a Power Judicial in Divine Matters for in searching out it must likewise determine in its own Court as you style it which is the right Religion and upon this account that the Orthodox Christian who is or ought to be its Friend and Subject upon the best and truest foundation doth above all others deny it its due station and dominion but how valid this Title is and the consequent Accusation must be discovered by examining the ensuing Treatise In the first Page whereof you declare your inducement to make an inquiry into the nature and quality of your Religion to be the duty of your private Condition and that your interest in humane society was the Cause of your offering to the view of others the effects of that search which if beneficial to your self and others as upon the score of Charity we may suppose you believe by your publishing it is thanks and praise-worthy but if otherwise then upon a sight and acknowledgment of your mistake a true Repentance and all possible endeavours to prevent the spreading of your Errours is only pardonable In the 2d and 3d. Pages you have laid the foundation of all your opinion contained in the following Treatise if therefore upon examination this shall be found faulty your small Fabrick will with much more ease be totally demolished Here you acknowledge the History of Adam's Fall as it is stated in the Scriptures and the miserable Consequence of it upon him and his lapsed Posterity as to the great vitiating and blurring the eye-sight of our understandings that to use your own expression One had great need of a better eye-sight than is left us by the fall of our first Fore-father to guide us amongst many erroneous to the right way of Salvation I question not but this will be allowed you as Orthodox and if instead of your so anxious Debate and Consideration in the next place you had applyed your self to receive the directions and obey the Precepts contained in the rest of the Scripture according to the Principles of the Catholick Church they would have convinced you that Tradition Revelation Miracles and the Grace of the Holy Spirit which teacheth the right use of the rest are prepared by the Divine Providence as the best Pilots to steer your Reason in this dubious Voyage and would certainly have preserved you from so sudden a revolt from the Truth and so direct a Contradiction to your own Notion within four lines after by pitching upon your own Reason for that clear-sighted Guide which it self so much wanted before This is that irreparable flaw in your Foundation which causes the ruine of your whole Superstructure You have penned the next Clause darkly for a blind I suppose to the contradiction in the former If Reason takes such directions as it ought and may do before it sets forth If you mean those Directions which I mentioned before as indeed it may and ought then the subject of the Question is altogether lost for so Reason alone cannot be stated as the best Guide but if you mean such Directions as Natural Reason shall give it self then the same thing will both guide and be guided to the same end Now a Guide subject to such Incongruities as these cannot but bring you into Errors but not through them to happiness at last which in this Clause also you as incongruously as vainly assert In the next place you digress by bidding defiance to those many Enemies which you expect
numerically the same through all the successions of his natural Constitution although he hath the same Appellation But when we see the body of a man left uninformed and lifeless by the departure of his Soul from that time we declare the being of that Compositum and peculiar denomination to be determined and cease and if we could perceive the departed Soul according to Pythagoras his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 undertake the Information of another body we should as readily pronounce that to be a new Compositum or another person this is the case of your Disciples Conscience which you call the Soul of his Faith in its transmigration from the System or Body of the Protestant Faith to that of the Papists which from its dissonant Articles and Essentials to those of our Church hath been ever distinguished by a different Appellation so that these two neither in Name nor Essence are the same Faith and consequently if one is true the other is false therefore I shall leave your Disciple to be informed by your self after what manner with both these Faiths he shall behold his Saviour and thus you may observe how easie it is for you to mistake an equal Sincerity of Conscience for an Identity of Faith in your Allegorical Arguments From Page 20 to Page 26. you employ your confident Guide to assert its own Sufficiency by recriminating ours as not totally exempt from mistakes as well as its self but of the validity of that sort of arguing I shall leave the Reader to judge and proceed to the Merits of the Cause Thus much then we acknowledge that we do not think our selves obliged to believe the Pastors of Holy Church upon the bare account of Humanity to be absolutely infallible neither do we attribute to them so high Illuminations and Gifts as the first planting of the Gospel did require and Christ's Conversation afforded his Apostles who likewise was not altogether exempt from mistakes but yet we rely upon the Spirit of Truth which our Saviour promised to send to the Apostles and their Successors after his Ascension to preserve them from teaching such Errors as are inconsistent with the Divine Oeconomy in Affairs of Religion and the harmony of the Scriptures And this in one of your lucid Intervals Page 24. you in effect affirm in these very syllables And I verily believe if God had not stirred up some persons of excellent Abilities and worthy Spirits for such surely they were though not exempt from humane weakness to examine by the Rules of their own Reasons those Follies and dangerous Errors in Religion which c. Now in my poor Opinion it will neither blemish your style nor injure your Notion to Pen it plainly thus If God had not by the assistance of his Grace stirred up c. For that is the means according to the Promise of our Saviour and the Tenor of the Scripture by which God stirs up and enables the Minds of men to all religious Performances whether private or publick I choose to answer your Recrimination after this manner rather than to rake into Antiquity by reviving the exceptions to the Constitutions of those Counsels you quote in this Paragraph and therefore shall say no more to this Point but that our Saviour's not promising the same measure of his Spirit to every private man as to his Apostles and their Successors states the right Guides of Holy Church above the scandal of your Comparison Page 25 26. You again tell us that we are in much more danger of being drawn from the Christian Faith by building our Belief wholly upon the Authority of past or present Ages then to remit the Judgment of those things to our own Reasons in this Assertion the term wholly altogether excludes a Rational Satisfaction on the Believers part and therefore doth not assault the Protestant Principles for which only I am concerned You reinforce this Argument against the Authority of the Church with another absurd Allegation much of the same Class with the former that the Christian was neither the most ancient nor universal Religion in the world As to the last I doubt not but you will agree with us that immense Dominions or vast numbers of Votaries are not the inseparable Characteristicks of the true Religion for the greatest part of the World was inslaved to Idolatry and Gentilism as you observed in the time of the Law as well as of the Gospel and you who own the Scriptures must acknowledge with us that the first was dictated by God the Father and the other by his Son the Supream Testimony for the truth of both 2ly As to the Antiquity of the Christian Faith you cannot but know that the Contents of the Scriptures and the Consent of learned men assert the foundation of the Gospel to be laid in the Eternal Decree of a Messias before the Creation of the World and that the first notice of it here below was immediately after the Fall of our first Parents when God promised a great Redeemer for the Relief of man who should vanquish and be avenged of the subtilty of the Serpent and after this the Substance of the Christian Principles were existent in the Primitive Integrity of Abel and his Successors until the time of Abraham to whom it was revealed that the Messias should descend from his own Loins and afterward more particularly to Jacob of what Tribe he should be born After this manner the Christian Faith was preserved and conveyed down to the Penning of the Scriptures and then the Types and Predictions under the Law were the Harbingers of its manifestation in the Incarnation Doctrine and Miracles of our Saviour until he sealed it with his Passion Upon this account you may very well conclude as you do although against your foregoing Allegation in the same Page that there is more and greater reason to be found for the Belief of a Christian than for any other whatsoever In your 27 28 Pages I find such a medley of vile Contradictions as never before was vented by man for here in your Allegorical Style you take it for granted that there may be a thousand right Religions or ways of true Worship although you have acknowledged the truth of the Scriptures which admit but of one And secondly That your infallible Guide by wandring up and down in this multiplicity of Paths will by a long troublesom and tedious Voyage bring you to happiness at last Now for the applying this Allegory you should have made a new Demonstration That there are so many right ways to Eternal Salvation otherwise if you will measure your Metaphor by the Rules of Holy Writ it is a thousand to one but your Guide will deceive you As to the Contents of your 29 30 31 32 Page I acknowledge that it is not only an Act of Charity but the absolute duty of Christians to allow the Gate of Heaven to be as broad as the Scriptures have stated it And on the other
side you know the doom of those who shall attempt to press it more open than they have set it but in them the Way is said to be streight and the Gate narrow and that few shall enter therein Is it not plain therefore that leaving the right and following your wrong and natural Guide you are brought into a streight between two excesses that to shun Austerity as you term it on the one side you are put upon that profane and wretched belief of an equal possibility for the Salvation of Turks Heathens and Jews with that of the Christians nay of Atheists themselves if there be any such now if you will believe the Scriptures the fool hath said in his heart there is no God And amongst the Heathen Philosophers not to mention single Instances the whole Sect of the Epicureans could be no less who whilest they could not track the Methods of Divine Power and Providence denyed the Deitie's Creation and his Government of the World After all therefore it seems much safer to suspend your belief concerning the Fate of those People who are out of the Pale of Christianity and leave them as you acknowledge some do in the hands of the Creator than to descant in the least on his extraordinary Disposals not revealed to our Understandings But above all how heretical and horrid is your Conceit about the possibility of the Salvation of Devils from the excessive kindness of the Judge which contradicts all Divine Declarations nor is there any colour on their part to plead either invincible Ignorance or the Merits of a Redeemer the two grand means even according to your own Doctrine for the obtaining of Pardon Thus you see to what extravagancies your Natural Reason is brought by a high Conceit and Partiality to its self under a pretence of Charity to the World As to your Discourse Page 33. That although Christ is the onely Source and Cause of Eternal Felicity yet you may very well believe that there are secret and wonderful ways by which God may be pleased to apply his Merits to Mankind besides those direct open and ordinary ones of Baptism and Confession let it suffice those ways are not revealed and therefore ought not to be pryed into by the Rules of Christianity Page 34. In defiance of the Churches Anathemaes you assert That all sorts of Christians shall be saved except their Lives disagree from their Doctrines which likewise is a Disobedience to their Reasons and this also you in effect have affirmed of men of the worst Religions for brevity sake Therefore I shall endeavour to answer them both together That it is obvious enough to those who have any insight into the vast differences in the profession of Christianity at large that many pass under the Title of Christians because they in general profess the Mission of the Messias yet hold many Tenents heretical and derogatory both to his Nature and Office and those Opinions as an additional mischief so much influence their Actions that they lead ill Lives suitable to the Errors of their Understandings And this also is most true of the strictest Professors of the worst Religions and it is observable that those sorts of men who after this manner oppose the Catholick Church and the Precepts of the Scriptures are such as pay too much Obedience to their Natural Reasons in Divine Matters the Instances are too frequent and obvious in all Ages to need particular Quotations Page 35. Your discovery and stating of Heresie is as insignificant as the rest of your Opinions for if any one shall stubbornly set up his own private Reason and Judgment against that of the Publick and shall upon that incompetent account broach Positions contrary to the Principles and Authority of the Catholick Church or Practice accordingly doubtless our Ecclesiastical Guides in these later Ages may pronounce the Censures of the Church against such persons according to the pattern of Primitive Governours who did as little as ours pretend to the Deities Title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or as you phrase it to have a perfect sight of the whole Contexture of mens thoughts and actions Lastly as to your feigned Law about Murder and its qualifying Circumstances to make the sentence Conditional I shall only answer that as a Comparison at best is no good argument of it self so neither can you deduce any from this for mens disobedience to the Church in matters of belief For the foundation of the Catholique Faith deduced from the Notions and Usage of Primitive times backed by the Scriptures is the highest accompt which the nature of the Subject is capable of therefore whoever it is proposed to may give their rational assent and is the best ground for an unqualified sentence upon all stubborn opposers Page 36. Thus much for Herisy as you say now for Schism but your way The remedy for that is the disease it self for Schism is defined to be a voluntary seperation from the Church upon a trivial account without any mention either of censure or connivance the first of which you say makes the other cures it but if this difinition be true then your individual Sects however allowed will be guilty of it after a most intolerable manner neither can your absolute Independency in affairs of Religion admit of any thing more than a civil Compliance in mens outward conversation but utterly ravels that continuity of Faith which is necessary to preserve that unity of the Church you your self mention nay should such a Licence be but admitted in Temporals in which Reasons Plea is much stronger to intitle it to an Independency than in matters of Religion it will utterly rase out all Society and Government in them as all order and communion in Spirituals You endeavour to reinforce this Argument for Independency in Religion from the great variety which God hath constituted in mans material parts their motions as if he may be delighted with no less variety not only in mans immaterial Parts but even in the most immaterial Actions of those Parts the Worship and Adoration of a Deity when the very nature of Truth and the Words of Holy Writ plainly informs us that it can be but one sutable to the unity of the object besides if a comparison altogether feigned by a wild supposition only without any demonstration betwixt beings of most dissimular natures may pass for an Argument what Proposition or Truth can be established among men Page 38. Of what weight or advantage to your Cause can you imagine your next Allegation can be that God without any distinction receives neither hurt nor advantage from the worship of man when this is a plain truth that his Essence indeed is not concerned at the operations of the Creature but his Glory is as it relates to the Creation and therefore for the magnifying of that here below he made man and instituted Divine Worship and hath expressed his delight in the uniformity of that devotion which himself hath
Salvation of all who have the fortune to be Misbelievers which hath I hope been sufficiently spoken to in the whole Series of these Remarks and therefore needs no other answer As to your fourth Reason if your Considering-men in that will but observe what Errors in Belief are consequential to this Presumption of their Natural Reason and such others which arise as this doth from the Depravity of the Will it will serve them for a Catalogue of all Errours that are damnable and prove very instrumental to help them to find out Salvation As to your fifth Reason a diligent Observation also of this plain distinction of Errors into wilful and unwilful joyn'd with a general Compunction for such as are unobserved or forgotten according to the Principles of the Catholick Church I will at once take off that vain Imputation of Cruelty which you would lay upon God and also cure your own pretended Incapacity to repent for want of a knowledge of your faults by clearing to your Understanding what Actions or Beliefs are truly Culpable which will direct your Devotion to the proper Subjects for Repentance As to your most vain Objection in your sixth Reason concerning Man's Incapacity to find out the Truth as it hath been fully answered before so it can have no other Fund beside that impious and colluding Doctrine of Probability framed by the Jesuits to patronize a Sinners living in sin Your own words are these If that be probable which all or most men or many or the most wise or some wise men receive for truth what Doctrine is there which in the whole Compass of Religions may not pass for probable But for a short Answer to this If there be so great a probability of erring by following wise men how much more liable are the Ignorant then to erre when left to their own Conduct As to your second Argument to avoid tediousness I shall not examine all those defective and incongruous Instances in the first part of it because ordinary Capacities may discover their being unapplicable as well as untrue by their own experience but to shun the Censure of affirming this Gratis I shall hint at one of them viz. The seeming Crookedness of a streight Stick part in the Air and part in the Water the streightness of which may be discovered by an Appeal to the Touch but I shall proceed to the Objection which you make against them your self for if that can be made good against your own Answer it will most genuinely confute the whole Paragraph you object thus That the sight though it be subject to some particular Impediments yet it is generally by its own nature much more certain and exact in the judgment of Colours than the Vnderstanding can ever be made even without accidental hinderances in the knowledge of things spiritual Your Answer to it is this That if such things are the proper Objects of such a Faculty we are herein to be governed by the Dictates of it without considering whether that Faculty be as quick and perfect as God could make it in Apprehension of its Objects neither ought we to give less trust to our Vnderstanding in supernatural Truths because it is so much inferiour to that of Angels than we do to our Eye-sight in things visible though it be so far short of that of Eagles Briefly that which makes your Objection too strong for your Answer is that Angelical Intuition Truths supernatural are of the same state and so also is the Eye-sight and visible Objects here below although the Organs of Creatures may be differently qualified for as well as improved by the different occasion of their lives but our natural Understanding and Spiritual Things or Truths Supernatural are not of the same state and therefore in a true sence cannot be said to be its proper Objects which evinces that it needs Supernatural Helps to enable it to apprehend them I would gladly here have ended my Answer to this Argument but that I cannot but remind you of a gross failance in your Memory for you formerly in effect affirmed that the Worship of man is of no Concern to the Deity But here Page 76. You tell us that when God had Created all things else he thought the World imperfect as yet whilest there was nothing made that could Contemplate Thank and Worship the Maker of it which plainly states the Worship of Man to be of high Concern both to the Creation and the Creator But you immediately to these Premisses joyn a most incongruous Conclusion that the mannners and kinds of doing it are accidental but certainly you cannot hope to perswade any rational man when all means are proportioned to their ends by the order of the Universe that so considerable an end should have such inconsiderable ways to it or that the true Religion and its reward should be like no other valuable thing or end in the World to be utterly destitute of all certain Rules and Means to attain them Therefore I shall leave this Clause to the redargution of the Satyrist Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne Your third Argument to gain your Opinion an allowance in the World is an Affirmation that it is not only most safe and most natural for every man in particular but likewise most agreeable to the good and interest of Humane Society for all Wars of late ages have been either really for Religion or at least that hath been one of the chief Pretences which if it were quite taken away it would be difficult for those men who disguise their ambition with it to draw the People into the miseries and uncertainties either of a civil or a foreign War but it had been very requisite that you should have explain'd your self here whether you would have the pretence of fighting for it or Religion it self quite taken away for not only this Clause but indeed your whole Treatise seems to aim at that end for if all Forms and Ligaments of any Bodies whether Ecclesiastical or Civil shall be destroyed and broken their Fabricks must fall and this the admittance of your unlimited Liberty will effect in the Systems of all the Governments and Religions established in the World But to pass by this Peccadillo and to come to the body of your Argument if Unity in Religion will produce a general Amity amongst men which you seem to acknowledge Page 79. then the nearer the Constitution of the Universe approaches to this Unity the fewer occasions will arise of Discord and War and on the contrary when Differences in Religion shall be unaccountable and numberless they will consequently administer many more opportunities for Ambitious and turbulent men and such you confess there will be among the Herd of your Libertines to engage the People in Blood and War so that except you were endued with a Power to change the lapsed Nature of Man you will never find so good natured Disciples as to practise your Doctrine peaceably in this state Your