G. D. My Noblest Lord and most honoured Friend MY unsteady abode in the town and frequent suddain excursions out of it of late have cast me so far behinde-hand with your Lordship not onely for what civility requireth of me but for what duty bindeth me unto as I was grown to a belief that I could make no other amends for my long silence but by coming on purpose to Sherburn to you to excuse it And therefore out of an ill bashfulness I forbore acknowledging my fault by Letter referring that till I was in state to repair it by mine own personal attendance But that being not likely to fall out so soon I being to go to morrow to my Mothers and thence to my own house for some weekes and I having lately received a picture from my Lord Russel with command to send it as soon as I could to your Lordship I durst not make that a prisoner till I got liberty my selfe to wait upon you By which means I am engaged without being able to defer it any longer to give you humble thanks for your letter of the second of November and to crave your pardon that I came thus late to doe it So sudden and distracted an houre as I have now to write in would deterre me from offering at any return to so obliging and judicious a Letter till I had a greater freedom both of time and thoughts But I can never be taken unprovided for the first part my sincere affection to your Lordship and sence of your favours ever outweighing any other humane object that may busie my mind for the second of answering your judicious objections I shall confide more for the solution of them in your owne calme and impartiall reflections upon them then in ought I shall be able to reply Therefore had I never so much time I would for this intent imploy it onely in reducing the matters into your remembrance and intreating you to commit the appearances on both sides fairly one against another into the balances and let your owne Reason hold the Scale which I must acknowledge with excesse of joy to be the strongest and most sincere that I know in any man I should begin the performance of this task with complaining to your Lordship in the Fathers behalfe and representing their grievances to your Lordship that you are so rigorous to them as to exclude them from being witnesses in matters of Religion Their humility as well of understanding as of manners will not let them be troubled when they are recused as Judges They never pronounce any thing out of their own breasts unto which they will confine other mens assents But when they tell you plainly what they were taught and what they sinde believed and practised generally throughout the whole Church have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected If you will examine their veracity by al those circumstances that are usually considered in taking mens depositions you will find them strong on their side They were right honest men not onely believed but known to be such by all the world They are acknowledged on all hands to be so judicious as would more blemish ones owne judgement then theirs but to cal it in question What they wrote of are matters belonging to their own Art and Trade in which surely they would have great care and attention not to mistake since their own and their posterities eternall salvation depended on it Since then there is will and ability to inform us of truth why should we suspect them What can appeare stronger to us in opposition of what they deliver as witnesses to make us doubt their evidence and consequently to brand them with the imputation of falshood and ignorance flattering our selves that new and clearer lights shine to us and that we know more then they Their private opinions for the establishing of which your Lordship saith you discover too prone a Bias in most of their evidence doe not interest our beliefs in such poynts we are as free as they Nor can I believe so ill of any of them as to make those to passe for currant they would stamp upon them the seale of being taught from hand to hand and of tradition from Christ and his Apostles and of the generall and uncontrouled beliefe and practise of the Church or if they did certainly their numerous adversaries would not have let such foul play scape their note It is true they were ever as your Lordship observes earnest and severe against them who were such as if they had been mild against their Heresies they would never have gained the name of Fathers and Pillars of the Church nor have been reverenced as Saints by succeeding Ages The faction and sectary-passion that your Lordship remarketh even neer the springs of verity belongeth onely to their adversaries their warmth is just and due zeale And for those three Fathers of whom your Lordship sayes that we as well as you may allow them an Expurgator I professe my slender reading never met to my best remembrance with any doctrine of faith in them that I doe not entirely assent unto In the next place my Lord I must cleare what I mean by the infallible Authority from whence the Fathers derived what they were taught which I distinguished against what of themselves they teach Of this later sort are the reflections that they make upon the Scriptures when in their Comments or Sermons they deliver to us what occurred to them in the interpretation of the Texts of it And when they are but barely such I conceive they are to have no more weight with those that have ability to examine them then the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them But the other points of Doctrine I take to have been taught by Christ to his Apostles and by them preached through the world and then again delivered to the ensuing age by them that had these points inculcated into their hearts by the Apostles and in this manner with care and every where handed over from age to age which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to sum up and produce against Innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received Faith of the Church Doctrines thus delivered I conceive to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures and withall that it is so safely conveyed to us as we are as deeply obliged to beleeve it as what the Scriptures teach us and in governing the tenor of our Faith to give them much the precedency Because by such Tradition we are fully plainly and practically taught how to understand it and the business and errand of it is to deliver it so unto us whereas the causes of writing the particular Books of Scripture were for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of Faith And those Articles of it that they do deliver us are not so plainly expressed that every body can understand them So that if
it be once admitted that by such tradition there can be had in all ages a compleat and true knowledg of what Christ taught it cannot be denied but that it is an easier and better rule to guide our understanding in the affairs of Religion then to resort for that end to the Scripture alone And that such tradition is infallible I have endeavoured to prove in another discourse which your Lordship hath so that I will not trouble you here with any repetitions upon that Subject Now when I wrote to your Lordship my opinion of the use to be made of reading the Fathers relying upon them more for what they were taught then for what they teach it was as taking them for faithful Collectors of the tradition that they found general through the Church in their times and sincere conveyers of them to us And this course you shall finde even among the ancientest of them When St. Austin will establish the doctrine of praying for the dead he telleth that it hath been the practise of the whole Church from the Apostles time The like he doth against the Pelagians and upon several other occasions and directeth us to enquire what faith is professed in the Churches established by the Apostles from whom he reckoneth on the uninterrupted succession of Pastors unto his time And by them he deriveth the present Doctrine from the first preachers who had it immediately from Christ Tertullian when he prescribeth against Heresie giveth you a Catalogue of the Bishops of several Churches from the several Apostles that planted them and with the successions of the persons urgeth the succession in those Churches of the Doctrine he seeketh to establish Irenaeus doth the like and generally all of them which they do not onely when they use those formal positive words that the whole Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their discourses which intimation is such as is easily perceptible to whosoever of judgement shall read them impartially Therefore to summon up as short and as plainly as I can the use as I conceive is to be made of reading the Fathers I say that letting pass what they writ as Commentors upon the Scriptures and as Phliosophers and all which is but as Divines and Schollers we are generally to take hold of what they deliver us as Pastors of the Church which appeareth chiefly by what they writ against those they brand with Heresie which they could not do were not those points which they censure against the known and general tradition of the Church And next when they deliver us dogmatically and professedly any doctrine in such sort as we may reasonably conceive they intended we should take it as matter of faith not giving it as conceptions of their own which they bring onely learned arguments on texts of Scripture to maintain In all which a free good judgement will easily discern by reading them which way to incline which I knowing your Lordship to be do beseech you to apply it a little industriously to collect throughout their sense and by what they say to frame a model of the Government Beleif and practise of the Church wherein they lived and then tell me whether it be like yours or ours It is worth the while Criticks labour to get some knowledge of the manners and customes of Ages long since past by little fragments of antiquity that have hardly scaped into their hands And Lawyers get a knowledge of the Government and frame of the State in Kings raigns long agoe by broken and disjoynted Records that they meet with scattered in several Files And these maimed evidences by chance fallen into their Hands do serve to beget a fairer body of knowledge when they know how to make a right use of them and such as will convince an indifferent and equal hearer much more certainly the Fathers works that handle professedly and at large the affairs of the Church and Religion and whereof we have such plenty will fairly inform a rational and discoursing man of the true state of them in their times and what they conceived and had been taught imported Heaven or Hell in mans belief and practise which I am sure your Lordship will allow to carry a great stroke in ours and from which it is madness if not impiety to depart upon less grounds then a demonstration to convince the contrary Though I have already too much trespassed upon your Lordships patience by my tedious Letter yet I may not conclude it till I have said a word or two to the foure instances your Lordship giveth toward the latter end of yours First for the use of Images I doe not conceive it to be a precept given by Christ but since introduced by the Governors of the Church as a thing convenient to raise devotion in the people Now things of that nature may be convenient at one time and unfit at another When I dolatry was fresh in the memory and practise of the world it was dangerous to admit it therefore in the primitive times Justin and Tertullian might have reason to cry it down But because there was no precept of Christ in that behalfe conserved in the Church you see they urge not the authority of Tradition of the Church to beat down their use but arguments of their own and Texts of Scripture produced by them whereas now in times secured from that danger and a great good appearing in them they being as a Father said the bookes of unlettered persons to beget knowledge and stirre up devotion in them as strong arguments and as pregnant Texts of Scripture are produced for their use and to justifie the Governours of the Church in recommending them to the people Your second instance is of Tertullians affirming Christs descent to free the Patriarkes which I conceive not onely he but all the Fathers that ever spake of that particular deliver it in a matter of faith and so it hath been ever held by the Church which word of Descent I take it is to be understood as we all doe the Article of the Creed He descended into Hell that is by his power and operation at least by which he confounded the damned comforted the soules in Purgatory and brought to the sight of God those in Abrahams bosome that is a place of rest where yet they enjoyed not the beatificall vision For to give other motion and place to a soule is a question in Philosophy and concernes not faith and such was the assertion of the Angels copulation with women for many or rather most of the Fathers were of opinion that they were not pure Spirits but had very subtile immortall bodies the contrary of which was never yet delivered as matter of faith howbeit by force of Argument now the corporiety of Angels is exploded out of the Schools and thus supposing that opinion the way is obvious enough in commenting
the Church universal Such were their Symboles such Irenaeus his unity of Faith in lib. 1. cap. 2. such Origens introduction to his book de principiis such Tertullians rule of Faith in his prescription against Hereticks such Epiphanius his conclusion of his work which he calls the settlement of truth assurance of immortality such likewise to fit you with some of all ages was that work of Gennadius written within these two hundred years De rectâ Christianorum Fide I will not say in some of which but in all which together there is not one Article of Faith received by the Church of Rome and rejected by us so much as mentioned save only in Epiphanius of Christs discent into Hel a Point variously and uncertainly understood among the Fathers as shall in another place be demonstrated Now for farther proof of the little agitation or great neglect of our controverted points in the Primitive times although it will follow of consequence to what hath been allready alledged yet I beseech you let me appeal to your own observation Do you know of any of the Fathers for the first four hundred years that hath purposely and of designe composed the least Treatise of any one of our questions or in some other tract handled them so much as in a formal digestion Inform me I beseech you for I profess all the works that ever I have met with of them appear to have been wholy directed either to deride the Pagans to confute Philosophers to convince the Jewes to confound prodigious Heresies or deliver precepts of good life or else to expound some passages of Scripture most useful to the same ends These appear to me to have been the sole objects both of their wills and abilities to combate And shall we venture to give sentence in our intricate disputes upon words or passages that by the by may seem to concern them either casually let fall or directed to other purposes in most of which in my conscience we finde our own opinions as rationally as Whittington his turn Lord Major of London in the ring of bells or some melancholy Lover his Mistrisses picture in the graine of Wainscote and their intentions as rightly as Eudocia Homers and another Virgils when they made him Evangelize so little do I regard what they say in this our case but to their silence I attribute much and think it strongly expressive but nothing to the advantage of those that impose for necessary Articles of Faith Doctrines that those renowned Oracles of the Church either never heard of or thought not worth their mentioning Thus noble Cousin I have laid before you the principal reasons that led me to deny the Fathers Testimonies to have such a validity whereon we may justly pass a verdict in our questions of Religion which I beseech you not to take as meant in a way of further derogation from them then in those very particulars for there is no man living that in the general payes them more reverence then my self in the highest admiration of their erudition and piety And therefore where I have mark'd out their heates against one another and contradictions let them be understood to have sprung from holy fervor and zeal in whatsoever they were for the time perswaded was good and true when I note their variance from themselves let it recommend their ingenuity that would so clearly avow their own fallibility when I tax them for dissenting from us all in this age although S. Austin when the Donatists press him with antiquity sticks not to say that the younger Doctors are sharper sighted yet let not my words be driven farther then this modest since you so call it flattery to our selves not of seeing clearer or sharper then they but onely by their helps further as dwarfs upon Gyants shoulders And lastly when I deny them the ability to determine our points of controversies let it be of no more derogation from their learning and judgement then it were of lessening to an Ambassador or of flattery to his followers to say that at a publike audience some of them could give a good account of the things in the lower end of the room when he himself could say little or nothing of them having onely past them by with his attentions intirely fixt upon the higher and more noble objects These were the Considerations that possest me when I wrote my former Letter although I had then the leisure but to point at a few of them and since I cannot speak to you but with truth and freedom I must here profess they remain in full force with me still your Letter having given me great contentment but little satisfaction for I can by no means yeeld that there is any Assurance much less infallibility in the Rule which you at the first prescribed and still insist on of judging our Controversies by the Fathers namely to use our liberty of reason only in what they teach of themselves with confirmations out of Scripture or probable Arguments but to resign it up in an entire and implicite Assent to what they tell us they were taught and deliver to us as delivered to them for the received sense of the Church which is to be understood you say not only when they use these formall positive Words That the Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their Discourses where by the way I must needs tell you I ever thought intimations likelyer to beget Disputes then to end them If in this positive Rule you reserve a Liberty to except some particulars so delivered or some Catholick Fathers so delivering them Then without more adoe it is evident that this Way nothing can be decided for your Adversaries will claim in what thwarts them the like liberty of excepting If you lay the Rule absolutely generall to wit that what Article soever is delivered directly or by imtimation from the Fathers to have been a received Doctrine of the Church ought to be swallowed for an infallible verity it will easily be made appear that this method must betray you not only into some Protestant Tenents but also into Beliefs on both sides confessed to be erroneous It must draw you to be a Millenary it must draw you to hold a necessity of Childrens partaking the Eucharist it must draw you to abhorr that use of Images as Idolatrous and finally it must force you to reject out of the Canon those Books which we esteem Apochryphall for all these doe the Fathers deliver with somewhat more then intimations that they were taught to them as derived from the Apostles and from generall receptions of the Catholique Church First for the doctrine of the Millenaries I conceive you make a right judgement of the originall thereof from Papias whom St. Jerome the best Critick in Ecclesiasticall Antiquity sayes to have been the first Authour of it which error it is probable the
beleeve their partaking sufficient it must needs make that great Sacrament of the Church ineffectual and yet I do not think that the Church of Rome or scarce any Jesuite for her will have the confidence to pretend that Christ himself taught the mutilation or the belief of one Elements sufficiency since the contrary practise and belief is so evident for many ages after Christ and it is so easie to discover the very drie root it self of the custome to with-hold the cup from the people The like may be said of other doctrines Now for proof of the ground it self that all doctrines of Faith whatsoever admitted in the present Church were so taught by Christ to the Church which he planted himself you Alledge this argument The reason why the present Church beleeveth any proposition to be of Faith is because the immediate preceding Church of the age before delivered it unto her for such and so you may drive it on say you from age to age until you come to the Apostles and Christ an easie progress and which if you remember Mr. White much insisted upon at that time when Mr. Chillingworth did me the favour to give him a meeting for conference at your lodging although I set a great value upon that Gentlemans learning and fair way of disputation yet I confess his argument hath often made me smile it did so bring into my head that gallant consequence of Charles Thynnes wherewith all you once made me very merry by which he undertook to demonstrate that surely in the world there might be a man so disposed as having a good rise and with a convenient career to leap at once from England to Rome for said he Bring me the best Jumper you know and is it not likely that there may be another that you know not so active as to out-jump him a foot let him be brought I hope you will not deny but he may be out-jumpt an Inch so by inches straws-breadths of outleaping one another why not to a thousand miles I dare say that Mr. Hooper was better satisfied of the corruption of times in his pedigree from King Peppin then I was by that logick of the incorruption of times in his deduction of all Romish Doctrines from Christ nor am I yet better satisfied though I confess by your dwelling on the same Argument I see plainly that what may be liable to much slighting proposed by one man may be delivered with such weight and authority from another as though it convince not yet to require a serious pondering and discussion the scope of your reasoning as I understand it is this deduction ad Impossibile If the present Church say you hold a Doctrine of Tradition it is because all they of the precedent so held it and delivered it and the reason of the preceding Churches holding it so is the same relative to all those of the next before and so on till you come to the first Age of the Church Now this being so there cannot be admitted say you unto the avowed channell of the Church any corrupt Rivolet of erroneous Doctrine unless all they of one Age conspire in an untruth to deceive posterity which is impossible This latter Assertion which I must confess to be strangely jarring to my sense is built upon a supposition of the former which is it self of great ambiguity For besides that as I said formerly I doe not think but that the Church of Rome doth receive some unwritten doctrines for which she dares not pretend to so ancient a pedigree as to have been handed down to her from the Primitive Church that Christ himself hath planted I would fain know when the present Church as you say holds a thing for such because all they of the precedent age in Christs Church delivered it to them for such what is understood by Your all they of the Catholick Church in the age precedent by all they cannot be intended here what you say in your eleventh conclusion namely that you mean the whole Congregation of the faithful spread throughout the whole world for it is a far more evident impossibility then what you drive unto that the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in one age should confer with and teach the whole congregation of the faithful throughout the world in another If it be understood by all they all the Doctors and Governors of one age to all the faithful throughout the whole world of another I think you will finde that likewise to border upon impossibilitie By All they then as I conceive must be understood all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in one age to all the Doctors and Governors of the Church in another and from them the Doctrines spred among the whole multitudes of the faithful are said to be the traditions of the Catholick Church Now this is so narrow a confinement of universallity to the mouthes of the Doctors or Governors of a present Church that I think it no impossility for all those that have declared themselves in some point in some age to have agreed together on the teaching of somewhat more then was true or at least such a major part of them as the dissentors may well have bin overborn or supprest so that the doctrine may with a succeeding age have past for a tradition generally agreed on and to such a conspiracy methinks they might have been drawn by appearances of good as well as through ill ends As for Example The Doctors conceiving that a great restraint might be laid upon ill-livers by Auricular confession the apprehension of a sensible witnesse being most lively unto them might have complotted to teach the necessity of it to the multitude for an universal tradition which perhaps they knew not to have been such and so in other points as the good or danger might appear more or less to the Governors of the Church so likewise for worse ends in point of the Popes Supremacy it being a Doctrine so essential to the Monarchy of the Church I beleeve it far from impossible that in some age all the Doctors of the Church of Rome that shall be heard may resolve to teach it to their several Congregations for universal tradition since the major part as a Pope Aeneas Sylvius himself confesseth affirms that the Pope is above Councels because he hath so many Bishopricks to bestow the Councels have none besides if your All they of a precedent Church of Christ instructing the present be reduced to so few as the Doctors that are heard deliver their mindes in any one age The natural Argument by which you would prove the impossibility of a conspiracy in an untruth will fall to the ground since that is built upon a supposition that those general traditions which cannot be erroneous because of Humane natures love of truth are delivered by such a multitude of men as contain in them all the variety of dispositions and affections incident to the nature
Faith that you doe not most intirely assent unto For my part I doe not know what you understand by an Article of Faith but I am sure I have cited out of St. Austin of the necessity of Childrens partaking of the Eucharist an Article in this discourse which 't is evident he held as an Article both of necessary faith and practice wherein I believe you will refuse to joyne with him As for Epiphanius his over-sights I referre you onely to the Jesuit Petavius and for Eusebius to Cardinall Perron who casts upon him a trifling aspersion but of Arrianism or if his authority suffice not let Jerome Ep. 65. ad Pamach Oc. be heard who gives him this good testimony Impietatis Arrii apertissimus propugnator est Now to your third and last ground That the traditions of the Church are infallible I say that in part we agree in this point for I am perswaded that no man in his right wits will ever deny the firmest assent he hath about him to traditions of the nature which you Character doctrines taught by Christ to his Apostles and by them preached through the world and then again delivered to the ensuing ages by them that had these points inculcated in their hearts by the Apostles in this manner with care and every where handed over from age to age which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to summe up and produce against innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received faith of the Church-Traditions of this nature Doctrines thus delivered I say we agree to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures and it is indifferent unto me whether I receive the waters of life from the Springs themselves from the originall cisternes and conserves into which they did immediarly flow or else conveyed through Aquiducts at sixteen hundred yeares distance so I be certain of the stanchnesse and purity of the pipes That such traditions and so exactly conveyed there are in the Church and to which is due as to the Scripture from every prudent man how ever a Sophister may cavill the strongest assent of his soule we likewise both agree such are those fore-named grand fundamentals of Christianity we agree further that by tradition we are as you say plainly fully and practifically taught how to understand Scripture I mean in those Fundamentals And much more must I agree with you that the businesse and errand of tradition is to deliver it so unto us since for my part I hold that those dignifying circumstances by which tradition may rightly pretend to be infallible belong onely to such doctrines as are either plainly or by necessary consequences deducibly coucht in Scripture in regard of which deductions we agree further that it cannot be denied but that it is as you say an easier and better rule to guide our understandings in the affairs of religion to use the help of such traditions then to resort for that end unto Scriptures alone as to read a book wherein there are difficulties with a judicious comment is likely to be more profitable then onely to peruse the single Text. And this last I assent unto without admitting of the supposition upon which you inferre it to wit that there can by tradition be had a compleat knowledge of all that Christ taught All this we are of accord in but what can you infer from hence to the advantage of the Romish cause since I peremptorily deny that there is such a qualified tradition really belonging to any Tenent of the Church of Rome disapproved by us or that seale with those quarterings and dignifyings wherewith you blazon it set by any of the primitive Fathers which yet were no sufficient warrant to any doctrine that doth so much as border upon our disputes since then I am sure you directed that part of your Letter to the same purpose that the rest I must answer what I conceive it tends to as well as what directly your words beare And as I have profest wherein we agree so now I must set down in what and why we differ concerning these particulars of Tradition and Scripture There are two principall poynts wherein I dissent from you First that in the generall you conceive all Traditions of the Church whatsoever infallible Secondly that you hold the Scripture to be no compleat body of Faith and therefore that we are to give tradition much the preheminency in governing the tenour of ours For the first namely that all the traditions of the Church are infallible I could by one demand of which is that Church whose traditions are infallible either bring you to our confession that the true Church is to be known meerly by its conformity to Scripture in belief and practice or else into a circle whilst you are forc'd to prove the truth and infallibility of the Church by her constant reception of those true and infallible traditions whose truth and infallibility you are at the same time proving by the Churches constant receiving them But I passe it by because I would not seeme to argue in any wise captiously and also for that Mr. Chillingworth hath already excellently laid open all the intricasies of this labyrinth And therefore taking the present Romish Church for that you mean I proceed to answer your Arguments wherby in your Letter to the Vicountesse of P. to which you referre me you endeavour to prove all doctrines of the Church received or delivered by way of tradition infallible the chiefe that I finde are in the 12 and 13. conclusions as you call them of that treatise where first for proof of your assertions that no false doctrine of Faith whatsoever can be admitted or creep into the Catholick Church you say that whatsoever the present Church beleeveth as a proposition of faith is upon this ground that Christ taught it as such unto the Church he planted himself a special good ground and that will soon end all controversies in this matter if the ground appear to be well grounded and that the Church of Rome which you suppose the present Catholick do never admit any doctrine of Faith but upon that ground But first the ground can never be made good that whatsoever of Faith the Church of Rome teacheth was ab initio so taught by Christ himself And secondly I beleeve that the Church of Rome her self doth not alwayes in all that she teaches for a tradition of Faith suppose that Christ himself did teach the same for this latter part I am better perswaded of the modesty of the Church of Rome then to think that she will so much as pretend it for all her doctrines as for example that of communicating onely in the bread is a tradition for you will not I suppose vouch Scripture for it unless you mean to apply to it Christ's prayer that the Cup might be removed it is a tradition of Faith yea and I think I may say of necessary faith for unless the Communicants
and consequently the insufficiency of your rule of faith tradition hath been made appeare it will be fit to vindicate the sufficiency of that rule which we relie upon In which work the first hinderance that I meet with is this objection of yours That the particular books of Scripture were written for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of faith To which I answer that if by particular books of Scripture you understand each book a part severed from its relation to the whole I then agree with you that every particular book was no more intended for a compleat body of Faith then every particular Chapter for a compleat body of the book or then a Window or a Door to be a compleat body of a House but as the one was designed to give entrance the other light to some room or passage of the Edisice so the several books of Scripture were written some to give entrance to Christianity some to illustrate dark places of the whole some to inform us of matters of fact that we might understand in what chiefly to praise God some to discipline us in matters of practice that we might know how aptliest to serve and please him And others to instruct us in matter of belief that we might learn to relie upon him But on the other side if you remit the least of this abstract and Independent consideration of the particular books of Scripture I must then profess that I stedfastly beleeve that they were all designed to this chief and primary end of composing that compleat body of Faith whereon Christs perfect Church should be built as certainly as so many several parts of a building having each a particular end besides of their erection are yet in the general and main intention all destin'd to the making up of one compleat and intire Fabrick yea further without urging the comparison till it halt I am perswaded that as the Master Architect having an Idaea form'd of the whole directs many a part to the perfection of that when the subordinate workman that frames it thinks of nothing farther then of the peice he is in hand with So oftentimes the Almighty Architect when his Ministers perhaps never look'd further then that service in particular wherein they were imployed some perhaps in a Gospel in an Epistle some he by his infinite Wisdom directed each particular to the making up of the whole and compleat body and rule of Faith the written Word which by his admirable providence he hath and will I am consident ever preserve intire and uncorrupt in all parts necessary to its own perfection and harmony and to mans eternal safety and direction Insomuch that I cannot but think it at the best loss of time to be solicitous after any other rule and irreverence if not impiety to question the sufficiency of this But because my opinion is little considerable with one of so far a better Judgment take in this Point the Opinion of the Fathers which you so much relie upon To begin with Tertullian these are the last words of his 22. Chapter against Hermogines Scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina If it be not written saith he let him fear the Woe destin'd to such as shall adde or take away Can any thing be inferred more rightly then from this passage the sufficiency of Scripture and the superfluity of any other rule But take yet somewhat more direct from †Oratio ad Gentiles towards the beginning Athanasius The holy and from God inspired Scriptures saith he are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of themselves sufficient to the discovery of truth I appeal to St Basil himself of all the Fathers the greatest attributer to Tradition in all things wherein regard is justly due unto it Hear what he sayes handling a point wherein Scripture I think is as dark as in any necessary one whatsoever I mean that of the Trinity Believe what 's written saith * Hom. 29. advers Calum stan Trin. page 623. he what is not written seek not And in another place It is a manifest falling from the Faith sayes †De vera ac Pia side page 251. he and an argument of Arrogance either to reject any of those things that are written or to introduce any that are not of the written And lastly to sum up all that can be said by a Protestant in one sentence of a Father of greatest Learning and authority Listen but to St. Augustine De doctrina Christian lib. 2. cap. 9. In its quae appertè in Scriptura positasunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi He had need be a confident Sophister that would undertake to evade these Authorities but yet if they may not be admitted let Scripture be heard for it self It is a priviledge and preeminence solely peculiar to that sacred Volume to be Witness Advocate and Judge in its own cause Surely the Spirit spake in St. Paul when he told Timothy That holy Writ was able to make him wise unto salvation 2 Tim. 3. in fine And when numbring up almost all the particular parts that can be required to the compleat Institution of a Christian he concludes that in these by Scripture the man of God is made perfect and fitted to every good work And I am confident by the same Spirit he spake his own minde when he spake ours so directly to the Corinthians Vt dicsatis in nobis supra id quod scriptum est non sapere Epist 1. cap. 4. Where by the way it is to be noted that the Apostle applies this doctrine as an Antidote to that very inconvenience which I have heard some Papists object against the reliance on the search and use of Scripture namely that by it those of greater capacity were lkely to be blown up and to glory in their clearer discerning over weaker whereas the guidance of the Church and Tradition was equaller to all To this I say 't is worth observing what he delivers as it were by way of reason for the contrary Doctrine to wit of confining our selves to Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I profess Consin that these and many other passages of Scripture which for brevities sake I note only in the * Deut. cap. 4. cap. 12. Epist ad Gal. cap. 1. Margent prenounce to me in as clear a sense as may be the sufficiencie of Scripture and supersluity of relying on tradition for a rule of faith And yet I sweare I am none of those of whom St. Basil speaks p. 621. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How they may sound or what other sense they may bear to you I know not since now adayes Gods Word proves to men of divers opinions as the Apostles language when the devided tongues had sat upon them in Dr. * This was likewise the fantastique opinion of the Authour of the book de Spiritu sancto fathered upon Cyprian Alabasters conceit to severall Nations at one and the same
one partie is sure and firm setled when ever the other falls as certainly as in natural generation the decay of one thing is infallibly the parent of another And therefore in point of wrong and unfitting superstructures such as most of the Romish Tenents are which we lay battery to it may suffice to pull down those being demolisht what 's rightly built will stand fast of it self since both suppose a foundation Now for the second part of your direction namely that I should strictly examin the reason of my own belief I have obeyed you to the full And that you may be able to judg whether they be well weighed or no take here a sum of my belief I believe the unity and Omnipotence of God and an inexplicable Trinity in that unity I beleeve the incarnation of the second person of that Trinity that 's Gods assumption of perfect humanity from the womb of a Virgin And that he humbled himself not onely to manhood but also to mortallity that after he had set our practice an exact pattern by his life and by his words imbued our Theory with all necessary documents he might purge our staines with his blood redeem our forfeitures by the price of his passion and present a plenary satisfaction to his Fathers Justice for all our misdeeds I beleeve further that to make us capable of the effects of his merits Beatitude he illuminates our understanding by the gift of the holy Ghost by whom is created in us that divine faith by which these misteries are to be apprehended I beleeve also that our blessed Saviour gave his Apostles commission to preach to all the world his saving Doctrine who did accordingly and have left to posterity both written records and living ones in successions of the faithfull that shall preserve even to the end of the world these and all other articles necessary to salvation I likewise beleeve that the Apostles established Pastors in several Churches whom we are to hearken unto with reverence and to receive of them the Sacraments of regeneration to Christ and of Communion with him both which by Gods grace have a divine and supernatural effect in the cleansing us from sin I beleeve that heaven shall be the reward of the good and hell of the wicked and lastly in a word to supply whatsoever may have been omitted I firmly beleeve whatsoever is evidently contained in the Creed or Scripture or clearly deduceable from either I am perswaded that you will yeild that the reasons upon which these are built will abide the strictest examination None of these assertions I hope betrayeth its own weakness And yet these are the only opinions which I have been imbued with these are the parts of faith that integrate my Religion in these are comprised al points that I think necessary to be believed And he that believes any thing more if he have but his share of good works is safe in my opinion for he hath faith of supererrogation my firm and resolute settlement in these verities defends me from being at all concerned in those severall imputations which towards the close of your letter you do most judiciously and justly lay upon Sciolous and Sapticall witts that floating in uncertainty would fain reduce every thing to that pass seeking rather to puzle and imbroil an adversary then weightily to establish a solid truth 'T is that solid truth and such as bears no dispute that I wish we might all stick to and let pass those quillets and niceties imposed by the Church of Rome for Articles of importance and which her adherents dwell upon with too scrupulous a diligence such as admit arguments on both sides and are fitter for a declamation then a Catechism in which whilst men vainly busie themselves they let slide away many times unnoted as you say that great deal which is uncontroulable and plain points which can be thought at best but at the skirts none belonging to the main body of religion doctrines for the most part at the least in my judgement so little material that I applaud the Fathers for spending so little time or labour on them such as I am so far from delighting to make objections in that where ever I have touch'd upon particulars it hath been a Contrecoeur and onely to disperse such dust as others raise for I swear there is no man living hath a stronger aversion then my self from all cavils in Religion it being justly to be feared as our great Prelate Arch-Bishop of Cant. in his Epistle to his Majestie sayes that Atheism and irreligion gathers strength while the truth is thus weakned by an unworthy way of contending for it and I am perswaded that moâ—â— men while their thoughts are so busied in chicanes of controverted points grow negligent of those more weighty ones that neerlyer import salvation and so runne out of the most essentiall good of their soules as impertinently as many a peevish freeholder that wasts a solid estate in endless law suits for a trifle as I think these points little important for use so I concur with you in esteeming both these and all other matters of Religion very unfit to be argued on for ostentation or applause which I am sure I am as farr from aiming at in this subject as I shall be farr from attaining it 'T is true the condition of the knowing ignorant is usually quite contrary to the Lords servants in the Gospel there he that had least wrapt up his single talent in a Napkin but amongst men now a-daies that pretend whoever hath least it is he longs most to shew how much he hath and so publishes how little yet thus far they oftentimes both agree that neither improve their store and thus by my ignorance unless you be charitable I confess my self liable to be suspected guilty of the vain appetite of oftentation that usually accompanies it but as my Ignorance exposes me to the suspition so my consciousness of it the sole knowledge that I can brag of frees me from the Ambition suspected and layes upon me a necessity of concluding with a huge Apologie for presuming to give you so much trouble and I fear so little satisfaction I confess I ought to have been restrained from venturing at all upon this Debate the Subject it self being so farr above the pitch of my literature And the Person with whom I presume to argue the difference of Opinion confestly my superiour in all advantages both of Nature and Acquisition beyond all hopes of comparison Considerations either of them able to deterr a much considenter man then my self But Friendship which always findes or makes men equall hath long since licenc't me from the latter and hardened me to impart my conceptions how low so ever as freely to you as I could doe to any inferiour Wit of mine own levell And for the first I have neglected it upon this perswasion that I shall be better able to answer to the Divines a young a Lay and ignorant mans adventuring to treat of their Business then to you and to my self so womanish a wrong as not subscription to the Dictamens of your strong and powerfull Soul without yeelding my reasons for the variance which how light soever they may be found when pondered by your excellent judgment yet being really such as are most convincing to mine they will serve to excuse me to you to justifie me to my self and I hope to make my Errours even pardonable with God who when by St. Peter he bids us be able to give a Reason of the hope that is in us I am confident he expects it no better then proportionable to the capacities that his goodness hath endowed us with Answerable to them is this Discourse weak I confess disjoynted and without Nerves and yet I doubt not but it may be so evictuated by Truth and the goodness of my Cause that I shall not be ashamed to have encountred a GOLIAH with a Sling A Straw kept in a right Line might batter a tower from which right line of truth and reason I may safely protest I have not so much as once voluntary swarved in this Treatise through any partaking passion or forelaid designe neither have I suffered my self herein to be so far wrought upon by civility as to forbear a free and round expression of my sense where ever it differed from yours and truly there was no cause why I should since in our disputes the strongest opposition that I or the best wit for me can possibly make to your opinions will derogate no more from your unquestionable exellency of judgement then it would conclude either of us ill-sighted should you affirm such a Garment to be red and I that it were green the object being a changeable Taffaty and we seated in contrary lights or looking through mediums diversly tincted a like affect upon the soul to these upon the sense hath diversity of education and discrepance of those principles wherewith men are at the first imbued and whereon all our after reasonings are founded Conformity and uniteness of minde as rarely flowing from contrary Educations as the same River from opposite springs sweet happy and I think sole is the self-sameness which arises from pure principles of nature never sophisticated by the artifices of our breeding but little derivation from those Fountaines hath this or that Sect of Religion so no marvel if we agree not therin to be one as we do in the other most true prime Emanation of nature Friendship which on your part to me I am confident must needs spring from thence since my small merit affords no other motive and for mine to you I am sure it is impossible without an intire concurrence of all the forces of Sympathy for any man to reverence admire and love another with that Ardour as I do you dearest Cousin and which you cannot but own in SHERBORN March 30. 1639. Your most faithful and most Affectionate Servant G. D. FINIS