True and hee expresses himself to do it lest Adversaries from his being wholly silent should take occasion to bee more impudent That is the reason of the thing requir'd it not but the unresaonableness of the Carping humour of Adversaries You alledge his words That Faith which was profest by the Fathers in the Nicene Council according to the Scriptures 315. l. 3. 4. c. is to mee sufficient c. Whence your discourse makes his opinion to bee that Scripture is the sufficient Rule of Faith Lord Sir where are your thoughts wandring or what 's the Nominative Case in that clause is to mee sufficient to the word is Is it not that Faith to wit the Nicene which you mistake for the Rule of Faith and joyn the Epithet sufficient to Rule of Faith which in the Testimony is joyned to Faith Your conceit that it seems hence the Scripture was to him the Rule to judge the Creeds of Generall Councills is a very weak one hee told you before his Faith came to him by Tradition of Ancestours all that is here intimated is that hee judg'd the Nicene Creed to be according to the Scriptures and what Catholik judges not so of that and the Council of Trent too and yet holds not Scripture which is to bee interpreted by the Church the Rule and Standard to judge the Church by To use your own words p. 332. You use a wretched importunity to perswade Testimonies to bee pertinent yet all will not do and your too violent straining them makes them the more confess their naturall reluctancy But now comes the Testimony of Clemens Alexandrinus charg'd to be taken not by mee but by the Authour I borrowed it of out of the middle of a long Sentence and both before it and after it Scripture nam'd so as to make it quite opposit to our Tenet I have already given account of my action and my Adversary now become my Judge charges it not wholly upon mee Alas I am not able to read the Testimonies in the books and understand them there 't is such a peece of mastery and therefore am fain to take them upon trust from others that can read them there But my Seducer how hee will acquit himself of so foul an Imputation is left to any Ingenuous Papist to judge c Sir let mee tell you you should consider circumstances ere you come to lay on such heavy charges I beseech you was the book in which this Seducer forsooth us'd this Testimony writ against Protestants who hold Scripture the Rule of Faith or against some Catholik Divines holding the Opinion of Personall Infallibility Clearly against the later This being so what was hee concern'd to transcribe the whole large Testimony no wrong being done to them either position of Ecclesiasticall Tradition which hee cites or of Scripture which hee cites not equally making against that Tenet or rather that passage of Ecclesiasticall Tradition being far more efficacious upon them than that which concern'd Scripture which they account not obligatory unless interpreted by the Church By this time the Reader will discern there was a great deal of rashness in the Accuser but no Insincerity at all in the Alledger Nor is there the least danger of the Testimonies following upbraiding them who patch together abundance of false words and fictions that they may seem rationally not to admit the Scriptures For what is this to us whose endeavours are to lay 〈◊〉 beginning from First Principles why wee and every man may and ought rationally admit the Scriptures and neither make our Faith ridiculous by admitting into it what 's uncertain nor leaving any excuse to Atheisticall Impiety in not admitting what 's Certain This is the summe of my aim and endeavours though nothing will content you but that wee admit the Letter to bee plain to all and by consequence to you and then your Fancy is to bee accepted for God's Word and your pride of understanding will bee well at ease You pass over nine of my Testimonies two from St. Basil and three from St. Austin alledg'd by mee Sure-footing p. 135 136 137. one from Ireneus and two from Tertullian and another from St. Peter Chrysologus Sure-footing p. 138 139. sleighting them as but a few whereas speaking of Testimonies from the Fathers as you do here you had answer'd but eight in all which you seem by your words to judge such a great multitude in comparison of 9 and those 9 or those few which remain as you call them so inconsiderable for their number in respect of the other numerous or innumera le 8 that the paucity of their number made them less deserve speaking to Yet a careless generall kind of Answer you give such as it is p. 318. telling the Reader that there is nothing of Argument in those few which remain but from the ambiguity of this word Tradition which wee will needs take for unwritten Tradition You add p. 318. that you need not show this of every one of them in particular for whosoever shall read them with this Key will find that they are of no force to conclude what hee drives at I was going Sir to use your own words and to ask with what face you could pretend this Let 's bring the book I 'le undertake it shall not blush to tell you how careless you are of what you say I omit that the word Tradition doth by Ecclesiasticall use signifie in the first place unwritten Tradition Moreover that wee may let Mercy triumph over Justice wee will pardon the first Testimony found p. 135. though St. Basil by counterposing Tradition of Faith to the conceits of the Heretick Eunomius seems to mean by Tradition Sense receiv'd from Fathers attesting this being the most opposit to Conceits or new-invented Fancies that can bee for even an Interpretation of Scripture may bee a Conceit or Fancy newly invented whereas what 's barely deliver'd cannot bee such The 2d is the same St. Basil's p. 136. Let Tradition bridle thee Our Lord taught thus the Apostles preach't it the Fathers conserv'd it our Ancestours confirm'd it bee content to say as thou art taught Is not here enough to signifie unwritten Tradition Did Christ teach it by reading it in a written Book or the Apostles preach it by book or is the perpetuating it by Fathers and Ancestours the keeping it by way of writing The third is St. Austin's p. 136. I will rather beleeve those things which are Celebrated now by the Consent of Learned and unlearned and are confirm'd throughout all Nations by most grave Authority Is universall consent and most grave Authority of all nations the book of Scripture or written Tradition or rather is it not most Evidently unwritten universall Tradition or Sense in the hearts of all Beleevers learned and unlearned or the Church Essentiall The 4th is from the same St. Austin 'T is manifest that the Authority of the Catholik Church is of force to cause Faith and assurance Do these
words Authority of the Catholick Church mean the Book of Scriptures Or can I desire more then this Father offers mee in express terms or a greater Testimony that you are to seek for an Answer to it then the strange Evasion you substitute instead of a reply Especially if wee take the Testimony immediatly following which from the best establisht Seats of the Apostles even to this very day is strengthen'd by the Series of Bishops succeeding them and by the Assertion of so many nations Is here the word Tradition pretended Indifferent and apt to bee taken ambiguously and not rather Assertions of so many nations or Consent of nations and Authority of the Catholik Church of force to cause Faith and Assu rance which to demonstrate is the whole Endeavour of Sure-fooring The 5th is the same Fathers cited p. 137. The Faithfull do possess perseveringly a Rule of Faith common to little and great in the Church Is the word Church the same with the word Tradition or in danger of being ambiguous or as you say of the word Tradition p. 318. commonly us'd by the Fathers to signify to us the Scriptures The 6th is of St. Irenaeus All those who will hear Truth may at present perfectly discern in the Church the Tradition of the Apostles manifest in the whole world What means the world at present but that the Tradition of the Apostles is yet vigorous and fresh in the Church which remark had very unfitly suted with Scriptures The 7th and 8th are Tertullians Both say the same Sence that what is establisht as Sacred or profest at this present day in the Churches of the Apostles is manifestly deliver'd by the Apostles or a Tradition of the Apostles which is incompetent to Scripture it not being a Tradition or point delivered but the Delivery The last is of Chrysologus which has indeed the word Tradition but by the additionall words of the Fathers not left ambiguous but determin'd to unwritten Tradition For the Fathers according to you are not to give or diliver down the Sence of Scriptures it being plain of it self This Sir is the upshot of your skill in Notebook-learning the three first Testimonies from Scripture you answerd not mistaking quite what they were brought for the 4th you omitted You have given pittiful answers to eight from the Fathers and shufled off nine more without answer pleading you had given us a Key to open them which was never made for those locks By which I see you reserve your greatest Kindnesses like a right friendly man till the last You will not have the Councill of Trent make Tradition the onely Rule of Faith you had oblig'd mee had you answer'd my reason for it in my 4th note p. 145. 146. But this is not your way you still slip over my reasons all along as if none had been brought and then say some sleight thing or other to the Conclusion as if it had never been inferrd by mee but meerly gratis and rawly affirm'd I have explicated our Divines that seem to differ from mee herein Sure footing p. 187. 188. and the Council it self takes my part in it by defining and practising the taking the Sence of Scripture from that quod tenuit tenet Sanct a Mater Ecclesia which in this antecedency to Scriptures Sence can no where bee had but from Tradition You cavill at mee for not putting down the words in which that Councill declares it self to honour the Holy Scripture and Tradition with equall pious affection and reverence Why should I you see I was very short in all my allegations thence and rather touch't at them for Catholicks to read them more at large than transcrib'd them fully But how groundless your Cavill is may bee understood hence that I took notice of a far more dangerous point to wit it's putting the Holy Scriptures constantly before Tradition and show'd good reason why But you approve not even of any honour done to the Scriptures upon those Terms and your interest makes you wish that rather it's Letter and Sence both should remain uncertain than it should owe any thing to the Catholick Church You ask how an Apostle and Evangelist should bee more present by the Scripture ascertain'd as to words and Sence then by or all Tradition I answer because that Book is in that case Evident to bee peculiarly and adequately his whereas Orall Tradition was common to all and 't is doubtable what hand some of those Apostles or Evangelists might have had in the source of that which was lineally deriv'd to us Sir I wonder how you hit so right once as not to answer likewise the Testimony I brought p. 152. of the Catholick Clergy's adhering to Tradition in the â—ick of the breach you might as well have spoke to that as to the Council of Trent divers others But I perceive it had some peculiar difficulty as had divers of the neglected nine else your Genius leads you naturally to flie at any thing that has but the semblance or even name of a Testimony whereas unactive I stoop at no such game till I see certainly 't is worth my pains and I fear yours will scarce prove so THey come in play p. 320. And because they are huddled together here something confusedly it were not amiss to sort them under Dr. Pierce's Heads found Sure-footing p. 170. To the first Head which comprises those which are onely brought to vapour with belongs that of St. Hierom. p. 323. To the second Head which consists of those which are raw unapply'd and onely say something in common which never comes home to the point belong all those of Eusebius That of St. Chrysostome and St. Austin's p. 324. of Iustin and Theodoret p. 325. That of Hilary p. 327. of St. Basil. p. 328. of Chrysostom p. 328. and 329. and those of St. Austin in the same place Of Theoph. Alexandr p. 330. Theodoret p. 330. 331. The 2d and 3d. from Gerson p. 331. To the 4th that of St. Austin p. 325. To the 7th Head which comprises those which are false and signifie not the thing they are quoted for appertain that of Ireneus p. 326. of St. Austin St. Hierome and the 2d of Theoph. Alexandrinus p. 330. To the 8th consisting of those which labour of obscurity by an evidently ambiguous word that of Optatus p. 327. The first from Gerson p. 331. and that from Lyra p. 332. St. Cyprian's Testimony was writ by him to defend an Errour which both wee and the Protestants hold for such and therefore no wonder if as Bellarmin sayes more errantium ratiocinaretur hee discoursed after the rate of those that err that is assumes false Grounds to build his errour on Whence the inferring an acknowledg'd false Conclusion from it is an argument rather his Principle was not sound I know Sir you will fume at this usage of your Testimonies but with what reason For first you putting them down rawly without particularizing their force or import
admit not I have no more to do but to alledge experience confest by all that many Sects who have the outward Letter inform it with different Sences which evidently argues a Divisibility or Distinction between that Letter and it's Sence Admitting then this Distinction and that the Sence of words is the Soul of them I cannot allow that Letter with any propriety to be called Gods word unless inform'd and enlivened with Gods Sence but onely dead Characters for sincerely Sr I never saw a Bible creep about and move it self that I should call it that is the paper and characters Living Now taking those Letters in complexion with Gods Sence and as inform'd by it I challenge your utmost spight which most of your book especially the end of this Section shows to be very bitter against me whether you ever read any man give a higher respect to those Oracles then my self See my words Sure-Footing p. 40. 146. which you might have had the Candour to acknowledge And as for the Author of Rushworths Dialogues whom you accuse of the same crimes I know not whether you will take my word or no but I assure those who will that when on occasion I was moving him to write a Comment on the Books of the New Testament he shook his head and reply'd Ah Sr do you know what you ask They are so full of profound heavenly sence that 't is beyond the wit of man to declare it without injuring it assuring me it was to sublime a task and required such perfection of Science especially Divinity that he durst not undertake it I challenge you therefore as you hope to bee held an honest man to show mee any one expression in all my writings where I speak of the Letter of Scripture in Complexion with it's Sence which onely is truly Gods word otherwise then with highest reverence nay of that very Letter as manag'd by any method of arriving at a Certain and determinate Sence of it but with respect For otherwise the meer Letter of Scripture quoted by the Devill and taken in his sence is the Devills Word not Gods and for the same reason the same Letter cited by you to signify your Sence is your Word though you tell your Auditors boldly that all is Gods Word you talk out of the Pulpit unless you first make Evident you adhere to a Certain method of interpreting it right which you shall never evince nay Certainer Solider then is the living Voice and Practice of the Church Essentiall which you so laugh at and would perswade your Readers to renounce and disbeleeve it to adhere to your Grammatical Quibbling Criticisms So that all your anger at us in reality springs hence that we will not let Your Word bee taken for Gods and honour'd forsooth and reverenc't with a sacred and Divine veneration Hence all this heat and foam of ill language And good reason for this one point of not permitting your private Interpretations of Scripture that is your Word to be held Gods so deeply concerns your Copy-hold that if this cheat bee once discover'd your self all the Books you write nay all your whole Profession signifies just nothing This short and plain Discourse once understood by our Readers as I hope it will your fierce Calumny against mee as a Blasphemous person devolves to this that you venerate your own Talent or Fancy in sencing the Letter of Scripture as a most Sacred thing nay place it in stead of the Holy Ghost who first dictated that Sence to the Divine Writers And can you do mee a greater Kindness than to discover this and bee so highly concern'd for it 9. You tell the Reader p. 13. that whatever I attribute to Scripture for fashion's sake or say you to avoid Calumny with the vulgar as hee sayes very ingeniously in this Explication of the 15th Corollary nevertheless 't is plain that according to his own Hypothesis hee cannot but look upon it as perfectly useless and pernicious By which words you would make mee acknowledge I attribute nothing to Scripture but to avoyd Calumny with the vulgar whereas in the place you cite there is no such matter but only that some of our Controvertists not I condescended to the Protestants sleight-way of quibbling out of Scripture lest they should calumniate them to desert Scripture it self But this is your usuall sincerity 10. You quoted after you have discours't as if there could bee no use of Scripture besides making it the Rule of Faith And that it is intolerably pernicious according to his Hypothesis is plain because every silly upstart heresy fathers it self upon it and then quote for these words Sure-footing p. 40. But look there and one may read I speak of Scripture only as ill-manag'd by you that is putting it without any distinction of the Persons in the peoples hands and leaving it to their Interpretation to make use of it for a Rule of Faith Now if Scripture as mis-manag'd bear the same notion with Scripture it self then you have dealt very honestly and done mee no Kindness in falsifying my intentions evident from my words in that very place and inveighing against mee accordingly As for your next citation that Scripture-words not senc't nor having any certain Interpreter under which notion I express my self to take them are waxen-natur'd that is appliable to diverse sences 't is so beat out by manifest experience that 't is beyond Cavill to confute it and the very Disputes between Iohn Biddle and the Protestants is sufficient to evince it But your Candour is pleased to confound Scripture's Letter taken as unsenc't with the same Letter as taken with it's true Sence that is taken as God's Word and that Letter as taken without any Certain Interpreter with the same Letter as certainly interpreted and then who so abhominable miscreants as the poor Papists who must bee forc't to say not what themselves in reality say but what their disingenuous though even therein kind Adversaries will needs have them say 11. Your third Section tells us that you are much puzled for Instances of Traditions Followers differing in Faith and you are so put to it that you cannot I mean you will not distinguish between the Head of our Church acting as a Definer of Faith or Proceeder upon Tradition and acting as a prudent Governour Please then to take notice how this Affair of Censuring Books is manag'd Diverse Books perhaps of twenty severall Authors are order'd to bee read over by some Divines and their Judgments concerning them to bee given in which they do The Chief Officers of the Church perhaps have twenty other things to handle that very day and Themselves have neither leasure to peruse the Books nor discuss the Propositions which coming clad in a Theologicall dress would in Prudence require a great deal of deliberation ere any of them were expresly and particularly to bee declar'd against with it's peculiar Censure All that the nature of their Circumstances permits
them to do is to trust those Divines and to proceed accordingly to warn the Faithfull to beware of those Books in which they are inform'd there is such danger So that the motive those Governours proceed upon is their care of preserving the Faithfull untainted and the Judgment of Divines not Christian Tradition And what motive proceed those Divines upon in these Censures Upon their best skill as Divines that is their best skill in drawing Consequences in which neither themselves nor any else say they are Infallible Thus much for the Censurers Now come wee to the Person censur'd and his Books Of what nature are they Theologicall Discourses And what do such Discourses rely on formally On Tradition Nothing less On this hee rely'd as a Beleever or Christian not as a Divine but on his own humane skill in explicating Faith or it's Ground and his talent in deducing right Consequences in which also hee and every man Living is Fallible You see Sir by this time the ripe fruits of your performance in this point and that you have brought a worthy Instance of Difference amongst Reliers on Tradition in a passage wherein neither side rely on Tradition Oh but they contradict one another in the very point of Tradition 'T is your weak and unproud conjecture and besides you cannot I mean still will not distinguish between the Substance of Tradition that is the Infallibility of the Living Voice and Practice of the Church Essentiall in conveying down uninterruptedly Christ's Doctrine and the Explication of it show the Church of Rome condemns the former and you have my free Confession I am at a loss for my Faith But though you show shee condemns and censures all the later that is all the Explications whether made by that Authour my self or any other yet as long as she condemns not the former shee hath done nothing against Tradition and so your wise Instance is spoil'd as it was no other likely being the weakest you could have invented against Tradition and the least concerning it in regard there is not one learned Catholick in the Church that looks upon the Acts of the Roman Inquisition in Censuring Books as on Infallible Definitions of Faith 12. You 'l ask where lies the Fault in such cases I answer no where that I know not in the Head of the Church who acted the most prudently and carefully that could be in such an affair neither censuring any particular Proposition where there was no more Certainty to ground that Censure than the Judgment of some Divines and yet providing by the Caution his censure imported that the conceived harmfullness in those Books might work no ill Effects whence 't is but an invidious presumption of your own that perhaps the Pope is censur'd for it in England Nor were those Roman Divines Faulty in case they judg'd secundum ultimum potentiae but were bound in conscience to give in to the Court what they thought Again those Explications of Divinity-points looking new to them and it being the naturall Genius of the Followers of Tradition to bee jealous of any thing that is new and this not onely in Faith but also in Explications of Faith in regard these pretend a coherence and connexion with Faith it self it seems to mee to sound a laudable zeal both in them and others to bee suspicious of and less a Friend at First to what 's new 'till it bee farther lookt into and appear innocent Nor can I say 't is a Fault in the person censur'd in case hee sincerely ment to write what he judg'd was truth and so most advantageous to the Church and submits to the Orders of his Chief Eccesiasticall Superiour You see Sir the whole case in which I am larger because you are kinder here than ordinary and your Instance falling pittifully short you peece it out with Falshoods p. 22. that wee in England censure perhaps the Pope for this Action that the person censur'd disobeyes the Summons of his Chief Pastour that p. 24. the Governours of the Church do professedly cherish Ignorance in the Generality of the Papists for the increasing their devotion These are grear favours indeed you are too liberall Sir and will undo your self unless you restrain your hand from this profuseness of kindness Your 4th Section is all Reason like the foregoing one in which you laid your grounds and fell to build so strong and firm that it needs more than an ordinary blast to blow it down Therefore I conceive 't is best to stay a while and gain more breath which is something short with mee at present 13. But your fifth even kills me with Kindness and acquaints the Reader with a dangerous oversight of mine enough to overthrow my whole Book 'T is this that I make Traditions Certainty a First and self-evident Principle and yet go about to demonstrate it which you soberly admonish mee to take heed how I take it upon me that Aristotle never demonstrated First Principles because they could not bee demonstrated that most prudent men are of Opinion that a self-evident principle of all things in the world should not bee demonstrated because it needs not you ask to what end should a man write a Book to proove that which every man must assent to without proof so soon as 't is propounded to him c. Now Sr in my mind you should onely have combated this and have given no other Answer to my whole Book but to this onely for nothing can bee so senceless nor so impertinent as to go about to proove that which that which can need no proof nor consequently less meriting an Answer I would then had I been in your case have thought it my best and most honourable play to omit all counterfeitings of my Adversaries defining all those multitudes of groundless Cavills voluntary mistaks Calumnies laughing at his First Principles Evidence demonstration c. together with all my wordish exceptions at his rumbling Rethorick perching upon the nature of things and other such expressions and have solely apply'd my self to this one Folly evacuating his whole Book and so excusing my Answer And this you might have done with far greater hopes of conquering than in any of the rest because that a First and self-evident Principle cannot bee evidenc't seems so clear that it even looks like a First Principle it self of which no other part of your confutation has the least Countenance or resemblance And be assur'd Sr since you would not use this advantage against mee as you might you shall never have mee upon the like lock again Caught in these streights by your entangling Logick I endeavour my escape on this manner Self-evidence is two-fold Speculative and Practicall Speculative self-evidence it that which cannot bee made Evident by any Speculation or Skill but is known meerly by the common light of understanding such is that which is found in those Principles I dicourst of before which were therefore Self-evident speculatively because their Subject and
Faith being confessedly the means to arrive at the Points of Faith and the Sence or meaning of Scripture being the Points of Faith it follows unavoidably that the Protestants must say if they will speak sence that the Rule of Faith must bee the means to bring them to the Sence or meaning of Scripture for which according to them the Letter of Scripture as significative being sufficient 't is consequent they can onely mean by Rule of Faith the Letter of Scripture as significative of God's Sence or Points Faith I beseech you Sir what say you to this Discourse Do you answer it or show that if you take Scripture in any other Sence for Rule of Faith than as thus consider'd you do not confound the Rule of Faith with the Points of Faith Not a jot Nor is it your fashion to speak to my Reasons or Consequences Thus you answer'd my First Discourse the most solid and most Fundamentall part of my Book Deforming the plain sayings I built on for Definitions denying my conclusions in a following Section and saying something against them but not a word I can find any where against the Proofs which inferr'd them deduc't at large there for 14. § § together that is from § 2. to the end Your way of answering is generally when you are gravell'd with the Reason to bring some ridiculous Parallell then laugh heartily and mock at that and so discountenance the other But here to do you right you bring two very good ones but the comfort is you understood them not to bee such else wee should not have had them which you put a little oddly and then triumph and think your self victorious Pray Sir lend me your Parallells a while to manage The first of them is found p. 62. concerning which I thus discourse Taking the Statute-book for the means to convey to us the Sence of that Book or the Laws I must still say you cannot mean by Statute-book the Sence of that Book or the Laws that is that Book as conjoyn'd with it's Sence for so it would signify that the same Thing is a means to it self that is is before and after it self you must onely mean then by Statute-book thus consider'd the Letter of that book as yet unsenc't or contradistinguisht from the same book as conjoyn'd with its sence that is the Letter of that Book as Significative Thus I conceive it perfectly parallell to mine and withall very rationall But you make it amount to this p. 62. l. 13. That a Book cannot convey to a man the Knowledge of any matter because if it did it would convey to him the Thing to bee known The later part of which is true though I percieve you know it not for these words Knowledge of a matter involves in their signification the thing Known as if you reflect on your own words Matter and Thing you will quickly discover But the Sophistry lies in this that when you say a Book cannot convey c. you equivocate in the word Book which I contend must either be taken for the Letter of it in conjunction with the Sence which is the thing known and then it cannot thus accepted bee a means of arriving at the Knowledge of the Thing or the Thing as known for then it would signify as much as if one should say the Letter with the thing known is the means of arriving at the thing known or else it must bee taken for the Letter as Significative onely or without the Sence and so it may bee conceiv'd a way of arriving at that Sence 't is judg'd apt to signify But Sir your contending here against a thing so Evident has a great deal of reason for it you would have the outward Letter of Scripture confounded with the Sense of it that those who hear you quote the Letter may thee fool'd to imagine you have still the Sense aoo whereas should these bee known to bear distinction it would bee very obvious to question whether you speak any thing of God's Word or no how much soever you have the outward Letter in your mouth and pen Which reflexion alone if it were considerately weigh'd would spoil all your writing and preaching too For thus go your First Principles The outward Letter lying in a book must first bee call'd God's Word and held so plain that it cannot bee misunderstood and then the Sence you give it must needs bee held God's Sence which politick Principles lay'd I see not what you are inferiour to those whom the Holy Ghost inspir'd and your sayings are to have the same force if the plot take as the words of a Prophet or Evangelist And who would not bee angry fume and take on against a Discourse which is likely to devest you of so considerable and beneficiall a Prerogative Your second Parallell applies my Distinction concerning Scripture to Orall Tradition for you have a speciall Faculty of your own in making men contradict themselves thus you us'd a whole cluster of our Authours p. 119 120. and as for poor mee if you take mee underhand I can scarce speak a word consonantly Now Sir wee are thus far agreed and better Friends than you took us to bee that I allow your Parallell to a tittle and stick not at all to grant what you would force upon mee p. 63. that When I say Orall Tradition is the Rule of Faith I can onely mean by Orall Tradition the Living Voice and Practice of the Church as apt to signify the Sence of Forefathers and not the Sence or those Points of Faith which they are apt to signify Also that those Words and Practices taken formally as the means to know Points of Faith are contradistinguish't from that Sence or those Points and oppos'd to it relatively as a means is oppos'd to an End and therefore taken as consider'd in this abstraction and contradistinction as a Means to cause their actuall Sence in us I say those Words and Practises are without Sence in the same manner as a Means taken formally for such is without the End and excludes it from it's notion All this I voluntarily grant and least you should conceit your strong Reason has brought mee to it I let you know I ever took them so formerly See Sure-footing p. 41. 2d Edition which I still intend to quote By Orall or Practicall Tradition wee mean a delivery down from hand to hand by Words and a constant course of frequent and visible Actions conformable to those Words of the Sence and Faith of Forefathers Where you see I make Sence or Faith the thing deliver'd and Words and Actions the Way of delivering which therefore must needs exclude one another formally Yet you think you have gotten a notable advantage against mee by this Parallell Discourse telling your Reader p. 63. When hee hath answer'd this Argument hee will have answer'd his own A shrewd Opponent who confutes mee by putting mee to answer an Argument thinking it would puzzle me grievously which is
occasion for your pastime and merriment The next tast you give of mee is enough to give any Reader who loves sincerity a whole belly full of your manner of confuting 'T is found p. 65. where you make mee say that the Scripture cannot bee the Rule of Faith because those who are to bee rul'd and guided by the Scriptures Letter to Faith cannot bee Certain of the true Sence of it Upon this you descant thus Which is to say that unsenc't Letters and Characters cannot bee the Rule of Faith because the Rule of Faith must have a certain Sence that is must not bee unsenc't Letters and Characters which in plain English amounts to thus much Unsenc't Letters and Characters cannot bee the Rule of Faith that they cannot Here is not much rumbling of Rhetorick as you call it p. 63. but here is a strange jumbling of Sence Let 's see if I can set right what you have taken such pains to disorder I discourse then thus Points of Faith are determinate Sences and Faith is Certain therefore the Way or Means to Faith that is the Rule of Faith must bee a Certain Way of arriving at those determinate Sences These Sences say you Protestants are arriv'd at by the Scripture's Letter signifying it to you therefore you must bee Certain by it that those Determinate Sences were mean't by God Not that the Rule of Faith was those Sences but the Way to them and They the End of it of which that Rule must bee significative as I all over exprest so it was properly related to those Sences as the thing Signify'd Whence in proper Speech they are to bee called its Sence in the same manner as 't is call'd my Hand-writing which my Hand writ though neither my Hand is the writing nor involves writing in any part of it's Definition but is distinguisht from it as Cause from Effect nor yet does the Letter taken as the Way to Faith or God's Sence imply as any part of it self the Sence 't is to cause in my Knowing Power If by this time you bee awake you will see how you wilfully abuse mee and how far I am from tautologizing which for a blind to avoid a more pertinent Answer you pretend The pith of the Cavill lies in those words in your Descant The Rule of Faith must have a certain Sence that is as you put it upon mee it must not bee unsenc't Letters and Characters or it must bee senc't Letters c. Observe the words have and bee the former of which means no more than when wee say a Cause must have an Effect but wee do not therefore infer that the Cause taken as a Cause has in it self that very Effect which it produces in another for Example the Fire which causes or heats is not heated not the Cold that cools cooled nor for the same reason the Letters which are the Cause of Sence in us are not as such senc't that is have not that very Effect in themselves which they produce in another viz. in the understanding For Senc't means made to bee understood and they cannot bee made to bee understood taken as significative or as the way to bee understood I hope by this you see how the Rule of Faith being the Means Way or Cause of arriving at Faith or Sence may have a certain Sence caus'd by it as it's Effect and yet it self not bee or include the Effect it causes in another but for that very reason exclude it and so bee unsenc't but yet significative or apt to bee senc't After this follows the Triumph And thus I might trace him through all his Properties of the Rule of Faith Which I heartily yield too and I beleeve my Reader that examins these Passages will bee verily perswaded not onely that you may do it but that you will do it 't is so naturall to you and necessary to boot Now the greatest Favour you have done mee herein is that by a few unselected Passages you have so acquainted our Readers with your manner of writing and what may bee expected from it that it will render it needless for mee to spend time in laying you open any farther Besides I foresee your Reason such as it is begins to come into play Yet some few Favours scatter'd here and there will I fear not cease to sollicit my Gratitude You drop some of them upon my Friends Capt. Everard you say p. 75. or his Friend affirm there are plain contradictions in Scripture impossible to bee reconcil'd and therefore Protestants ought to submit to the Infallibility of the Church instancing in the third Series of Generations Mat. 1. said there to bee fourteen yet counted amount but to thirteen And has hee not good reason since neither can Scripture alone recommend it self to an Unbeleever to bee of God's enditing if it bee found by him to bee significative of irreconcileable Contradictions and so needs the Churches Authority to ascertain it to bee such nor can wee have any security such Contradictions might not bee found in the main points of Faith themselves did not the Churches Faith writ in her heart keep the Letter of it safe from such enormous Corruptions Yet you must have your jest and to bring it in you constantly mistake on set purpose asking p. 76. if the Infallibility of the Church can make Thirteen Fourteen notwithstanding you say p. 75. this difficulty has been sufficiently satisfy'd by Commentators I suppose therefore you judge those Commentators have sufficiently satisfy'd you that Thirteen are Fourteen Any body can sufficiently satisfy any difficulty with you provided the Church and her Infallibility have no hand in it On this occasion I beseech you Sir give mee leave to ask you what Commentator has reconcild that most Evident Contradiction in your Translation of the Scripture Look in your Psalms put in the Book of Common-Prayer and there Ps. 105 v. 28. wee have these words Hee sent darkness and it was dark and they were not obedient unto his word But in the same Psalm and verse put in the middle of the Bible these Hee sent darkness and made it dark and they rebelled not against his word the former place sayes they were not obedient the latter they were obedient I suppose you conceit mistaking the whole thing your Church without Infallibility can reconcile those things which ours even with Infallibility is at a horrible puzzle with Mr. Cressy's turn is next against whom you have many a fling but one especially p. 93. because hee sayes Schism is impossible in our Church Which you call absurd and ludicrous you tell him hee cannot deny but 't is possible for men to break from our Communion but that the Subtility of it lies here that therfore Schism is impossible in our Church because so soon as a man is a Schismatick hee is out of it This done you ask And is it not as impossible in the Church of England Sir I must tell you your whole Book in a
manner is compounded of putting tricks upon your Adversaries that is putting their sayings upon such accounts they never intended then impugning your own fictions 'T is not on the impossibility of any going out of us nor meerly because whenany one is out of our Church hee is not in it wee ground the Necessity of our Churches Unity but in this that her nature and Constitution is so fram'd that shee can admit no division in her Bowells but keeps her self distinguisht from Aliens If any one recede from Faith it must bee by not hearing the present Churches living voice teaching him points which the Knowledge Practice and Expressions of the Teachers determins and make Evident what they are whence his disbeleef if exprest is an Evident matter of Fact which is most apt to make a plain distinction between the disbeleever and the Beleevers and an Evidence beyond Cavill for the Church Governours to proceed upon This done as likewise in the case of high disobedience against Church-Laws or Governours shee Excommunicates that is solemnly separates the Schismaticall Offender from the Obedient Faithfull Hence those Faithfull look upon him as a Rebell or Outlaw or as our Saviour expresses as a Heathen or Publican no Church-officer admits him to Sacraments but upon his pennance and Satisfaction nor any Son of the Church will communicate with him in Sacred duties Pray you Sir is this the Temper of your Church of England Your Rule is the Letter of Scripture as conceiv'd significative of Gods word and this to private understandings Again you say all necessary points of Faith are plain in it nay that nothing is fundamentally necessary but what is plain there Hence all that hold the Letter to bee plainly Expressive of Gods Sence and intend to hold to what they conceive plain there whether Socinians Anabaptists Independents or whatever other faction all hold to your Rule of Faith and so are all Protestants For if you would ty any of these to any determinable points you force them from the Rule of Faith Scripture as seeming plain to them and would instead thereof bring them to a reliance on your Judgement And if you would punish them for not doing it you cannot evidence their Fault by way of matter of Fact that so you may proceed upon it for as long as they profess their intention to hold to what seems plain to them in Scripture and that your Text seems less plain to them there than their own you ought not to proceed against them Ecclesiastically without disannulling your avowed Rule of Faith And your carriage executes accordingly neither using Church-discipline against them for Tenets nor yet for denying or disobeying your Goverment Episcopacy though held by you divinely instituted When did you put any distinction by any solemn Ecclesiastical declaration between an Anabaptist Presbyterian Socinian c. and your selves When did you excommunicate them warn the purer Protestants by any Publick Ecclesiasticall Act not to joyn with them in Sacred Offices but to look upon them as Aliens Might not any of them come to receive the Communion if hee would or has any discipline past upon him to debar him from being admitted None that wee see Your Party then in indeed no Ecclesiasticall body cohering by Unity of Tenets or Government but a Medly rather consisting of men of any tenet almost and so bears division disunion and Schism that is the Formal cause of non-Entity of a Church in it's very Bowells These two flams of yours are Sir the Favours you have done my Friends and I can onely tell you in a country complement I thank you as much for them as if you had done them to my self Seeing your Reason begin to play it's part bravely in the following part of your Book I thought I had done my duty of Thanking but I percieve one main Engin your Reason made use of was to make mee perpetually contradict my self And this you perform'd by singling a few words out of my Book from their fellows introducing them in other circumstances and so almost in every Citation falsifying my Intentions and this purposely as will bee seen by this that you practis'd designe and Artifice in bringing it about This obliges mee in stead of making an End to return back and to show how sincerly you have us'd mee in almost all your Citations I omit your false pretence that I mean't to define contrary to my express words You tell your Reader p. 11. That if any presume to say this Book Scripture depends not on Tradition for it's Sence then the most scurrilous language is not bad enough then are those Sacred writings but Ink variously figur'd in a Book quoting for those words App. 4th p. 319. But if wee look there not a word is there found of it's depending or not depending on Tradition for it's Sence nor of making that the Cause why I us'd those words you object cite for it but onely that whereas my Lord of Downs sayes his Faith has for its object the Scriptures I tell him that since he means not by the word Scripture any determinate Sence which is the formall parts of words hee must mean the Characters or Ink thus figur'd in a Book as is evident there being nothing imaginable in them besides the matter and the form which every Schollar knows compound the thing This being then the plain tenour of my discourse there and not the least word of Tradition sencing Scripture Whatever the Truth of the Thing is 't is evident you have abus'd my words as found in the place you cite My Citation p. 12. which abstracts from what security wee can have of those parts of Scripture which concern not Faith you will needs restrain to signifie no security at all either of Letter or Sence which is neither found in my words nor meaning How you have abus'd my words to avoid Calumny with the Vulgar cited by you p. 13. as also the former of those cited p. 14. I have already shown § 9 and 10. P. 17. You quote my words 'T is certain the Apostles taught the same Doctrine they writ whence you infer they writ the same Doctrine they taught Which your introducing Discourse would make to signifie an Equality of Extent in Writing and Tradition by saying I grant this Doctrine which signifies there the First deliver'd Doctrine was afterwards by the Apostles committed to writing Whereas whoever reads my 29th Cor. will see I can onely mean by the word same Doctrine a not-different Doctrine Whatever the truth of the point is this shows you have an habituall imperfection not to let the words you cite signifie as the Authour evidently meant them but you must bee scruing them to serve your own turn You quote mee p. 36. to say that Primitive Antiquity learn'd their Faith by another method a long time before many of those Books were universally spread amongst the Vulgar The summe of your Answer is that when the Apostles who did miracles
that is from the Year 1537. that is for 128. Years and 't is plain that wee shall have 128. tenths that is near 13. times as many as liv'd in that whole Year Wherefore the Actuall Deserters of Tradition reaching but to one 4th of the mankind that liv'd in that Year as was shown above it follows that the number of those since Luther who dy'd without propagating their kind amounts to 4. times thirteen times that is above 50. times more than those who actually deserted Tradition since that time or those who fail'd to propagate their Faith Again let us weigh the multitudes found in any one Year to belong to the whole Ecclesiasticall Body of the Catholik Church whereever extended with the innumerable Companies of all the several Religious Orders of men and women with their Lay-Attendants and consider what proportion they may be held to bear to the whole Body of the Church living in the same Year and so to those that die in that Year That wee may not exceed wee will allot them to take up but a four hundreth part of the Church nay that wee may no more be troubled with Mr. Tillotsons uncharitable railery p. 172. 173. wee will allow them to amount but to a fivehundreth part of those who liv'd or dy'd in that Year wee pitcht on that is there died that Year onely a fivehundreth part of the Church that propagated their Faith and not their kind which low number is a most advantageous Concession of ours if wee take out as wee ought all those that dy'd from 14. to 24. formerly spoken of But bee it onely a fivehundreth part yet this multiply'd by 128. the number of the Years since there being four times 128. found in 500. rises to bee a full fourth part of the Totall living in the Year 537. that is full as many as were the Actuall deserters of Tradition since Luther Add that the persons now insisted on of whom wee might double the number are all of them absolutely the most Eminent parts of Tradition that are viz. the whole entire Body of the Church Governours or Ecclesiadocens a very few of whom experience has taught us to have been able to propagate our Holy Catholik Faith to many Nations in a few Years the rest such whose exemplary devout lives exhibit the practice of Christianity in so eminent a perfection and with such influence over the hearts of the Generality that next to the Sacred Authority and Exalted Sanctity of the others nothing more fruitfully propagates Christian Life and Doctrin than those who are thus barren to the world Thus much for the number of Propagaters of their Faith and not their Kind amongst those who were formerly Catholikes but what a strange counterpoise does it add if wee go about to compute those vast Nations which since Luther have of new accru'd to Tradition and who have been spiritually geniti in Evangelio and this which enhances our Advantage not by Lineall Descendents in the same place but a few Externs and in such places to wit Heathenism where there has been no Deserters of Tradition formerly nor any since to diminish their number by their counterballance Whence I have title to add not onely the first Adherers to Catholik Religion there but also all their Posterity since who have stuck to it they being Cleavers to Tradition and so counterdistinguish't to Relinquishers of Tradition Which if wee compute ever since the time about Luther who can averr considering the vastness of the Territories they possess they equall not the Totall of the Deserters of Tradition that have been from the beginning of the Church One Consideration is yet more than all the rest but I must not lay claim to it at present lest I break bargain having confin'd my self to the circumstance of time since Luther yet 't is not unlawfull to mention it 'T is this that for diverse Centuries before Luther there had not been any considerable number of Actuall Deserters of Tradition as who is read in Ecclesiasticall Histories cannot but know but almost all Followers of it that is Propagaters of it practically to the immediately undergrowing Faithfull During which time if wee calculate how many both in those lay-persons who dy'd from 14. to 24. and all those Religious and Sacred Persons the best Propagaters of Faith fail'd in propagating their kind it will bee very difficult I had almost said most impudent to deny but they unproportionably almost exceed the number of the Actuall Deserters of Tradition that have been since Christ. For I see no reason to iudge by what I have read in Ecclesiasticall History that the number of the Actuall Relinquishers of the Church have exceeded the number of the Churches Totall taken in any determinate time thrice repeated If you can show there were more you may please to acquaint us with the sight In the mean time I hope you understand by this time my position is so secure that I can allow you 40. times as many and yet fear no danger of being most impudent You may alledge perhaps this is but an Evasion now but was not my Sense when I writ To which I answer I have shown it to have been my meaning already out of my plain words and whoever reads Sure-footing p. 74. and 75. shall see there expresly the Grounds laid for each branch of this discourse which Sir had you been pleas'd to read over with a mind to admit them into your understanding faculty you might have sav'd mee this labour of dilating on them and your self the blemish of ranting against a position as that than which nothing can bee more impudent which onely your carelesness to read it or resolution not to heed it hinder'd from being most innocent It were not unseasonable perhaps if I should here amuse you with another Paradox namely that the deserting Tradition strengthens it I mean that Tradition when a Heresy arises gains more of Intensiveness and vigor than it loses in it's Extensiveness nay that the Intensiveness which accrues to it by that means is the way to make it branch out afterwards into a far greater Extent I begin my Explication of this from your words p. 176. If I should see a whole nation fail because no body would marry or contribute to propagate c. By which I perceive you misunderstand the nature of the things in hand In the business of marriage there is nothing to contrast with it on the other side but being naturall and held withall a holy state they that will that is they who will not voluntarily oblige themselves to another holier may undertake it whence it has no Universal Opposit and so takes it's free course when convenient and is liable onely to common Contingencies But in things of Corrupt Nature and Grace the matter is carry'd quite otherwise and because either side has a great opposition against the other and withall a very great or rather a kind of Universal sway and force hence the course
of such things consists in a kind of Undulation So that now Corrupt Nature when shee finds her self a little more free follows her own tendency or propension and bears downwards and now again Supernatural and Gracious Assistances with which the Wisdome of the Eternal Father had furnish't his Church superabundantly being shock't and excited even by this contrary motion of Nature begin to put themselves forwards into an opposit motion and strive more vigorously to raise themselves upwards For example Disciplin which is to apply Christian motives by tract of time grows remiss in the Church hence decay of virtue dissoluteness of life addiction to material goods and consequently Ignorance creep in by insensible degrees into diverse parts so that it happens there are multitudes of corrupt Members in the Church and regardless of any duty who therefore want nothing but a fair occasion and one to lead them to break all ties of Virtue and Obedience and run into the utmost Extravagancies Nor can wee think but in the course of such a vast variety as is found in a World now and then there will bee found amongst those wicked men some notable fellow of a subtle wit a bold spirit and a plausible tongue so circumstanc't that hee can hope for Impunity by the friendship of some great person and so dares give way to his proud desire of having followers or his private spleen to renounce the Church's Faith and shake of the yoak of her disciplin Hereupon the rampires of Government and disciplin being forc't and violently broken down presently like a Torrent or Inundation all those whose hearts were corrupted with spiritual pride or other vices like brute beasts leap after one another out of the Fold of the Church and threaten to trample down all that 's Sacred Reviling the Church and laying to her charge all the faults found in particular persons as if they were Effects of her Doctrin though their own knowledge tells them otherwise and make use of failings in particular Governours to renounce and extirpate the Government it self On the contrary those good Catholikes who by this Trial are made manifest stir up their zeal both in behalf of their Faith and their Governours instituted by Christ and detest the vicious Lives and Pride of those Rebels the Parents of such a horrid Revolt The Governours alarm'd begin to look into the Cause of this distraction and to provide wholesome Remedies They call Councils Generall ones if need bee to straiten afresh Ecclesiasticall Disciplin enjoyning the Officers of the Church to stand every one to his Charge They take order to promote worthy Officers and to advance Ecclesiastical Learning they recommend afresh by their grave Authority the points of Faith to the Ecclesia Credens as the depositum preserv'd uninterruptedly in the Church from Christ and his Apostles and establish them in a particular beleef of them nay make these more intelligible and rational by Explicating them more at large or if the Heretical party involve and confound them in ambiguous words they define and declare them in language most properly suting to the sence writ in the hearts of the Faithfull and lastly anathematize the Revolters if they prudently judge their contumacy irreducible that so the remaining Body may concieve a just horror and aversion against that Rebellious party and bee preserv'd uninfected with their contagious Communion All which Advantages and much more are visibly found in the Change made in the Church by that neverenough-renowned Synod the Council of Trent occasion'd by Luthers fall Nor is this all for the Faithfull not onely grow more virtuous by the reformation of Church-disciplin but even by the Calumnies of their Adversaries Again the learned party in the Church are excited to far greater industry and consequently Knowledge by the insulting opposition of the Churches enemies whose disgracing points of Faith for absurd and contradictions stir up divines to show their conformity with acknowledg'd naturall Truths as does their calling into question the Ground and Certainty of Faith open the understandings of those who defend it to look into the Causes on which Gods sweet and strong Providence has founded it's infallible Perpetuity and so demonstrate it A task no Heretick durst ever attempt finding Principles failing him to begin with that is Causes laid by Gods Providence to build his Congregation on whence all they can do is to talk gaily and plausibly about the Conclusions themselves and laugh at Principles From which discourse is Evident that by occasion of a Heresy which purifies the Church of all her ill humors and rectifies and makes sound what remains Tradition renews as it were it's Youth and recovers it's vigor whence also it must needs Propagate and extend it self still unto more and more Subjects as is also daily Experienc't 'T is seen also that the abundance of corrupt Humors begets Heresy at First for multitudes fall away then wheras afterwards scarce two or three in any Age desert the Catholick Banner It appears also that Secular interest or desire of Liberty and Spirituall Pride not zeal of Truth begun and continu'd the breach I mean in the Leaders for afterwads they are content to remain where they are without troubling themselves to propagate the Truth to other Nations nay they have let the large region of Nubia run to wrack for as Mr. T. to make us smile tells us p. 174. Alvarez sayes it was for want of Ministers and never sent so much as one single Protestant Parson to assist them It shows also how unconcern'd the Catholik Churches Stability is in all the Heresies that have or shall fall since they onely tend to confirm and radicate more deeply in the hearts of the Faithfull the Points of Faith they renounc't to occasion reformation of disciplin and so to purify their virtue Lastly it shows how Tradition or the Delivery of Faith by the Living Voice and Practice of the Catholik Church is so immovably planted by the hand of the Almighty that it loses nothing by all the Actuall Deserters of it that ever have been but is by that means onely prun'd of it's saples branches to shoot out in due season livelier and farther But to return my Friend I hope Sir you will pardon mee if I have rather taken pains to open your understanding a little in acquainting it more fully with that part of my doctrin is totally mistook than to proceed with your Faults in lieu of which I here pardon you all the Injuries you have done my meaning or words in neer the other half your book that is from p. 176. to p. 300. though I see them many and some of them very gross ones The Testimony part I would not here neglect because as you shall see shortly they concern not my book as any proofs of the point and so are improper to bee allow'd room in my future Answer which designes nothing but against your reasons You are resolv'd to bee brief in them and I hope
you to magnifie so highly such petty trifles and so totally unconcerning the main of the business You laugh p. 305. that I who confest my self a bad Transcriber transcrib'd him how childish a Cavill is this As if every one who is to bring Testimonies whether hee like his task or no must not transcribe them from some place or other yet you tell mee ironically you will do mee the right to assure the Reader that I do it very punctually and exactly I wish to requite you Sir I could assure the Reader you had as punctually and exactly transcrib'd mee you had sav'd a great deal of precious credit by it and I a great deal of precious time and ungratefull pains in laying open your Insincerity But to our Testimonies The first is from the Synod of Lateran The force of which you say p. 306. lies in the word deliver'd which is indifferently us'd for conveyance by writings or word of mouth But Sir there are also in that Testimony the words preaching and teaching and I do not beleeve it is so Indifferent to you whether you preach by word of mouth or no that you should say the word Preaching sounds not conveyance of a thing orally The next Testimony has the same Exception and the same Answer But you say this Council particularly this part of the Epistle were excepted against by some What matter 's it so they did not except against it for this passage or this Doctrin which may serve for Answer also to the mistaking Exceptions against the 7th Generall Councill which follows next Thus Origen and Tertullian are both excepted against yet are both commonly alledg'd and allow'd where the Reasons of those Exceptions have no place Next follow your Answers to the Fathers I alledg'd But first p. 310. you must mistake Rushworth next mee For Rushworth speaks not I mean in the first Citation of Delivery but of a point delivered nor do I here intend to convince thence the Certainty of Delivery or Tradition which you proceed upon for making Fathers parts of Tradition it would make the same thing prove it self Understand then rightly Sir what I am about and then I shall accept your impugning it for a favour The Truth of the thing is one thing and the Iudgment of a person concerning it is another And 't is not to evince the Truth of the point I produce these Testimonies for in the order of Discoursing the Knowledge of Traditions or First Authority's Certainty antecedes and gives strength to all the other inferiour and dependent ones What I only aim at then is only to show that thus they judg'd not to convince the Truth of the Thing from their Judgment and thence to show my self not to be singular in thus judging Whence also 't is that I entitled this part Consent of Authority c. Retract then I beseech you Sir any such thoughts or expressions as that I would hence convince Tradition to be the whole Truth of Faith demonstrate prove it For I intend to prove no more by the rest then by those from the Council of Trent which onely aim to show that so and so that Council said and held The First Testimony of a Father is Pope Celestines the force of which you think quite spoild p. 310. by Binnius his other Reading of such a word And why I pray unless he could make it out his reading were true the other false which I see not attempted But you let it pass and answer that retain'd by Succession from the Apostles till this very time may mean by Scripture as well as by Orall Tradition I conceive not and I give you my reason because who make Scripture their Rule are unconcern'd whether their Faith was retaind to this very time from the Apostles by Succession or no For though all the world apostatiz'd and so interrupted that Succession yet as long as they have the Letter of Scripture it being plain to all their Faith is retain'd still What you quote this Father afterwards to say of Scripture wee heartily say Amen to so you mean by Scriptures that Book sen'ct by its proper Interpreter as to points of Faith the Church And you are to show he meant otherwise You choke with an c. better half of Irenaeus his Testimony p. 311. which spoils your answer to the first for it speaks of his present dayes when the Scripture was not onely left by the Apostles but spread and to bee had and yet that many nations of those Barbarians who beleeve in Christ had even then salvation writ in their hearts without Characters and Ink diligently keeping the ancient Tradition The Substance of your Answer to Origen 312. is onely this that unless I mean by Churches Tradition preserv'd by order of Succession mysticall interpretations of Scripture so deliver'd down you assure mee Origen is not for my turn And I assure you Sir 't is so learned an Answer that I dare not oppose it Tertullian is next to whom by offering to wave him you show your self 312. little a Friend and no kindness is lost for hee is as little a Friend to you driving such as you in his Prescriptions from any Title to dispute out of or even handle Scripture yet you say he saies no more but beleeve what is Traditum deliverd though as alledg'd by mee Sure-footing p. 133. hee sayes much more in a large intire Testimony which you not so much as mention You tell mee also hee meant deliver'd by the Scriptures but you strain hard to make it come in And Tertullian is the unlikeliest man in the world to provoke to the Scriptures who tells us de praescrip c. 16. Nihil proficit congressus Scripturarum nisi plane ut aut Stomachi quis ineat eversionem aut cerebri Scripture-disputes avail nothing but meerly either to make ones Stomack or his head turn But alas Sir how are you gravell'd with the two First Testimonies from Athanasius and how slightly you pass them over p. 313. The Protestants first maxim is Beleeve no men nor Ancestors nor Church but search the Scriptures that is seek for your Faith there Against which way his whole discourse is bent as may bee seen surefoot p. 133. 134. Is Faiths coming down by Ancestours the same as coming down by a book or doe not the words from Christ by Fathers mean by words expressing the Sense in their hearts but by a book not to bee Senc't by them but plain of it self The third Testimony expresly saies 'T is to bee answer'd to those things which alone of it self suffices that those are not of the Orthodox Church and that our Ancestors never held so You tell mee it is a gross errour that hee thought this alone or without Scripture might bee sufficient I wonder what mean the words which alone of it self suffices if they bee not exclusive of any thing else as necessary words have lost their signification and I my reason I but hee quotes Scripture for it afterwards
or driving them home to any point my very sorting them under these Heads sounds a greater particularity in my Exceptions and Answer than you show'd any in alledging them Next you had refus'd to do mee the reason I begg'd in my Letter to my Answerer § 8. in vouching you Testimonies to bee Conclusive or Satisfactory which unless you did I had already told you there it was my resolution to give them no other Answer And I shall candidly make known my Intention why I do so and shall ever do so till you come to some good point in that particular I had observ'd what multitudes of voluminous Books had and might bee writ in the way of Citation without any possibility of satisfying that is to the extream loss of time and prejudice to rational souls while any Citation however qualify'd was admitted and no Principles laid to sort them and show which were Conclusive wherefore I judg'd it the best way to drive you from that insignificant and endless way of writing to tell in short my exceptions against each Testimony and to force you to vouch them Conclusive And I pray why should I or any be put to show each of those Citations to our excessive pains inefficacious whereas your self who is the Alledger will not take pains to show any one of them to bee efficacious But your way here is the weakest in that kind I ever read or heard of You huddle together a clutter of Citations never apply them particularly as I constantly did mine Overleap all considerations of their qualifications nakedly set them down as you say p. 332 and then tell us they are enough to satisfie any unpassionate Reader that dare trust himself with the use of his own Eyes and Reason Which is plausible indeed to flatter fools that are passionately self-conceited otherwise I conceive an unpassionate Reader will require much more if he ever knew what Controversy meant Hee would know the variety of Circumstances Antecedents Consequents c. Besides speaking Equivocally or Rhetorically not distinctly and literally may alter every Testimony there Above all hee would consider whether they were expressive onely of some persons Opinions and not rather of the solid and constant sense of the faithful in that Age vvithout which they want the nature of Testimonies Is it clear to every man's Eyes and Reason none of these or other faults render all yours Inefficacious Is it clear that when they say Scripture is plain they mean plain to all even Heathens that never heard of Faith such must bee the Plainness of the Rule of Faith or onely to those who have learn't Christian Doctrin already by the Church that is who bring their Rule with them I am sure St. Austin de Doctrinâ Christianâ your best Testimony speaks of such Readers as are timentes Deum ac pietate mansueti those which fear God and are meek with piety that is those which are not onely Faithful or Christians already but pious and good Christians which makes it nothing to your purpose Again some one passage may bee so plain as a learned man may in the opinion of learned men plainly confound an Adversary but will it bee clear and plain in all necessary points to the vulgar who hear a great many hard words brought on both sides and have no skill to judge who has the better in such contests yet the Rule of Faith must bee plain even to the vulgar and able to give them Satisfaction Again when the Fathers provoke to the Scripture is it not against those who deny the Church but accept the Scripture and so the necessity of disputing out of some commonly-acknowledg'd Principle may bee the onely reason they take that method 'T is evidently so in that you quote from St. Austin against Maximinus p. 329. and against the Donatists who deny'd the Judgment of the Catholik Church quae ubique terrarum diffunditur and so hee was to prove his point ubi sit Ecclesia out of Scripture or no way Again is it clear out of the Citations nakedly set down what went before and after Is it clear for example that when they speak highly of Scripture they mean not Scripture unsenc't but onely taken as Significative of God's sence as it must to bee the Rule of Faith or if of Scripture senc't they mean not senc't by the Church but by the human skill of private persons which is the true point between us St. Austin without doubt makes the Church the Interpreter of Scripture as is clearly seen by his Discourse at the end of his 17. Chap. Of the Profit of Beleeving which spoils your pretence to his Authority Nay do not they often mean by Scripture the very Sence of it that is Christs Doctrine or the Gospel As oft as you hear them speak of the Things that are written or call them Principles or The Rule of Truth and Opinions or speak of conforming other Doctrines to them and such like so oft they speak of the Doctrin it self contain'd in Scripture or the Truths found there Such is that of Clemens cited by you p. 316. 317. which speaks meerly of the Sence of it or the Truths in it which hee makes deservedly the Rule to other Truths and hence now hee names Scripture then the Tradition of the Church then Scripture again it being indifferent to his purpose the same Sense which hee onely intends being included in both Such is also evidently your best Testimony to wit that of Irenaeus which speaks of the Gospell it self preach't and writ that is clearly of the Sence indifferent to either way of Expression But what is this or indeed all that is said there to the Letter of Scripture taken as Significative of God's Sense that is not for that Sense nor as including it but as the Means and Way to it as it must bee taken when 't is meant for a Rule of Faith and the plainness and Certainty of that Way to all that are yet to come to Faith taking that Letter as interpretable by private Skill and Maxims of Language-learning which is the true point between you and us Bring Testimonies for this and you will do wonders To use your own words p. 318. I need not shew what I have discours't here of every of his Testimonies in particular for whosoever shall read them with this Key will find they are of no force to conclude what hee drives or ought to drive at I am loath to suggest any Jealousie of your Insincerity in all these Citations though you have seldome fail'd in that point Present my service to your Friend Mr. Stillingfleet and assure him hee shall not bee neglected though there were no other reason but your high commendations of him Your humble Servant J. S. A Postscript to the Reader READER THough I write to Mr. T. yet I publish to thee and so have a Title to salute thee with a line or two Tell mee then dost not find thy Expectation deluded which Sure-footing
modest man in all your rationall performances and onely very brag and brisk when some jest haunts your fancy or when you are dispos'd to flout and rail at the impudence of my assertions is as high a favour as your great wit could have invented and so I am bound to yeeld you a return of Infinit Thanks for it which I beseech you accept in part of requitall till I come to show hereafter out of the nature of that Letter that all your Probable talk in this Book had been marr'd in case you had yeelded to do me the reason which I there requested 3. Next I am to thank you heartily that you begin your Impugnation with the most disingenuous Cavill that perhaps has ever been heard of Intending to frame my discourse as plain and unexceptionable as I could concerning the Rule of Faith I declared page 4. that I intended not rigorous definitions of either word but onely to reflect on and make use of some Attributes Predicates or Properties which in the sence of such who intelligently use those words are apprehended to bee involved in or truly appertaining to their signification I added that I gave that caution to avoid mistake and Cavill which might ensue upon pretence of defining but could not upon meerly predicating so my propositions were true This done I begun with the plainest sayings I could use and thence drew on the process of my discourse by the most immediate steps I could invent The tenour of my First discourse was thus A Rule signifies a thing which is able to regulate him who uses it therefore it must have in it those Qualities by which 't is able to do that it 's proper Effect therefore it must bee knowable as to it 's existence to the Persons it is to regulate as also it must be knowable to have in it a vertue to regulate or guide them right Again the word Faith being Equivocall and sometimes taken for Conscience sometimes for a strong Trust or Reliance sometimes for Fidelity or Honesty c. I had a mind to restrain it to our present purpose as it is taken for an Assent of the understanding upon Authority and so exprest my self § 8. that Faith is the same with beleeving thence I affirm'd something of Divine Beleef as much as would bring me to evince this that Faith in a Christian Sence imported Knowledge of Supernaturall things which is all I aym'd at in this Branch of my discourse So that I us'd all the art and care I could to avoid Cavil But Sr I perceive to my comfort your Disingenuity which is one of your chief kindnesses is beyond all prevention First you can by no means think my explication of those Terms sufficient p. 1. you should have said those affirmations true or those Predicates truely pronounc't of the subject for this is all I aym'd at and not to compile Explications Next you say this proposition A Rule is to regulate or guide him that uses it is a Discription which I beseech you beleeve was never intended Afterwards you complain I confound Rule and Guide by making regulating and guiding equivalent and I defend my self that those words being vulgarly confounded may without wronging Art be us'd so till wee have occasion to distinguish them which I have no where in my whole book Nor had I blam'd Mr. Whitby for this but that in the very discourse where he profest to distinguish Rule from Guide he notwithstanding even there confounded their notions Were I to distinguish them I should if you would not be angry put this difference between them that Guide hath something Personall in its signification which Rule abstracts from But you proceed with your kindnesses and pag. 2. call those words my definition though so unparallelld is your candor you quote my words a little after that I inrended here no definitions and then shew my definition forsooth Faulty because I fell Englishmen for their clearer understanding this word that 't is a Thing able to regulate c. whereas regulate is less removed from the Latin so less plain then Rule the word defined Whereas your self know I meant not to define and I beseech you beleeve mee when I tell you I as little meant to write to any English-men that did not understand the word Regulate as well as the word Rule Yet I must define whether I will or no though there be no other occasion why it should be so but onely that you might break a jest which tickled your Fancy and so your fingers itcht to put it down 'T is a Definition of your own parallell to my counterfeited one that a Law-giver is one that hath the power of Legislation And in this you have hit right for t is just such another definition as mine was 4. After this you bring in my other Definition as you call it that Faith is the same with beleeving and immediatly add my words disowning any sayings of mine in this first discourse to be definitions at all as had you transcrib'd a little farther you might have let the Reader see more visibly And so kind you are that my very not intending to define which is alone able one would think to excuse all the pretended faults in my mistaken definitions must have a little touch of a Cavill notwithstanding from that fertil wit of yours which minds not desert nor misdesert but follows it 's own Genius indifferently pours out it self meerly to vent its exuberancy Now the reason why those words Faith is the same with beleeving must needs be a Definition too is Evident you had another witty conceit came into your Fancy which was a Country-fellows Definition saying that an Invasion was as if hee should say an Invasion which would not have fitted unless you had made my words Faith is the same Beleeving a definition too and it had been a thousand pitties such a pretty jest should have been lost But Sr. since I ment to bring my notion from a more Equivocall to a less Equivocall word thence proceeded as you call it defining a great way farther that is indeed predicating or affirming diverse other things in that § why you should catch at my very first words Faith is the same with beleeving and make that alone a Definition neglecting all the following ones is impossible for such dull heads as mine to divine unless it were that the Country-definition had a very great Ascendent and Influence over your Conscience and Sincerity as well as your Fancy 5. This definition of mine to see how things will come about puts you in mind p. 3. of my First Principles 〈…〉 is a Rule Faith is Faith Upon which you triumph thus This ie the right self-evident method hee talks so much of and his Principles agree admirably well with his definitions If hee had proceeded in the same method and added that a Rule of Faith is a Rule of Faith Orall Tradition is Orall Tradition and that to say Orall
Tradition is the Rule of Faith is as much as to say Orall Tradition is the Rule of Faith the whole business had been concluded without any more ado and I think no body would have gone about to confute him What a terrible thing it is to deal with your great Wits Let 's see how a little honest plain Logick will dissipate this vapour To Conclude is to show evidently that two notions wee call the Subject and Predicate are identify'd or connected in that Proposition we call the Conclusion To do this wee find a Third notion call'd a medium or Argument to bee identify'd with those two whence wee infer them to be the same but how shall wee know that third notion to bee identify'd with those two others that is how shall wee know the major and minor propositions to bee true By finding another medium connected with them And how far must this go on Endlesly or no If endlesly since every following Connexion is prov'd by some foregoing ones in case wee cannot come to see some First Connexion or Principle wee could conclude or deduce nothing And how must we evidence the Connexion of the Terms or of the Subject and Predicate in these First Principles By another antecedent connexion of those Terms with a Third No for these are suppos'd the First Connexions Wherefore since they cannot be evidenc't by any thing out of themselves and yet must be Evident else nothing could bee evidenc't by them it follows they must bee Evident of themselves or self-Evident And in what consists this Self Evidence meerly in this that no medium middle Term or Argument can come between the notions of their Subject and Predicate which devolves finally into this that the Subject and Predicate are perfectly the same notion So that all Science about any thing is finally resolv'd into the nature or Essence of that thing that is into that things being what it is or which is all one it 's being the same with its self which your great Learning laughs at Hence what is is or Every thing is what it is as plain and course as it looks is the last resort of all Evidence in the world and in particular Sciences that the Subject of that Science is what it is as that man is a Man Quantity is Quantity and so a Rule is a Rule Faith is Faith must principle all that can bee solidly concluded either about Man Quantity Rule or Faith 6. Had you reflected on any maxims of Art and not stood pursuing your affected buffonerie when it became you to discourse like a solid Scholler you would have seen how little ground you had for your taunting non-sence To say that a Rule is a Rule is a First Principle had not been held a just occasion of giggling much less had you been so indiscreet as to parallell my Conclusion Orall Tradition is the Rule of Faith with my Principle A Rule is a Rule or to put it upon mee that because I make my Terms in my Principle self-evidently Identicall therefore I ought to do so in my Conclusion too whereas your Conscience tells you and my whole Book informs the Reader I go about at least to prove it in so rigorous a method that as you fear to admit and so wave speaking to my Letter so you and your fellow Probable-Christians judge it your best play to laugh at it And 't is a cheap way if you had a Fool to deal with who would let such weak evasions serve your turn But let mee summ up my obligations to you at present You have manifestly falsify'd my Intention pretending I mean't to define whenas I expresly disown'd it Sure Footing p. 4. You omit to answer whether those Propositions or Predications of mine bee true or false and if true whether my Consequences bee right or no which was all your task at present you lay the gull you have rais'd for your Ground and thereupon cavill and flout all the way without sense reason or the least occasion You laugh at the nature of First Principles bewraying either your Ignorance of those things on which all solid Discourse can onely bee built or your Necessity of scorning such unfriendly Discoverers of your weakness which is the worst of all you make this unsavoury kind of Talk the first part of your Onset and the first tast you give your Reader of your Sincerity and depth of Reasoning And now Sir bee Judge your self whether the confessing your self thus amply to bee a disingenuous and weak Caviller bee not strangely obliging to your thankfull Servant Really Sir unless you will bee so good as to take the telling you candidly of your Faults to bee sufficient Payment I am exceedingly afraid I shall live and dy in your debt I could make good sport with the word measure in your definition for you will define to excell mee though none requires it of you but I dare not imitate you nor pretend to so great a degree of witty and pleasant Eloquence Onely I will beg leave to transcribe your words which introduce your definitions p. 4. Rejecting then his way of definition as inept and frivolous and no wayes tending to give a clearer notion of things I shall endeavour to explain a little better if I can the meaning of these Terms And certainly Sir a man may with a little Astrology prognosticate your victory for you combat nothing but a Chimera your own brain had coin'd In the mean time 't is another small Kindness to show your self so vain as to build your own triumphs on a voluntary misprision But right or wrong you are resolv'd to conquer and I must have patience 7. I hop't when I came to your second Section your Reason which as your Friend Mr. Stillingfleet who hummes your Book as loud as you can do his for your heart tells us runs throughout your Book would have given some respite to your Kindnesses and my Thanks for them but I discern in this and your following Section that your very Reason it self is compounded of Kindness and that your soberest impugnation of my discourse is made up of Groundless Cavills and which I am loath to say voluntary mistakes I am sorry to see it because I intended to throw aside the rubbish of your Book in this Letter that in my Answer I might better lay open the admirable Fabrick of your Discourse and have nothing there to do but to speak to solid points But in this disappointment I must behave my self as well as I can and your Goodness must help mee out by pardoning me if I omit to thank you for innumerable Kindnesses which are involv'd in your Rational performances till God gives me health and leasure 8. You are pleas'd to honour me with a very loud and heavy Calumny all over your Book as reviling Scripture vilifying disgracing it and what not Now Sr I use still to distinguish in Scripture the Sence of it from the Outward Letter which distinction if you
Predicate being the very same notion no other middle notion could come between them by connexion with which they might bee shown connected with one another You remember them I suppose it was they that made you and your Friends such sport in your Book Practicall Self-evidence is that which wee are not thus imbu'd with by nature through the common light of Understanding nor yet is it acquir'd by rationall Discourses for this is Evidence by-deduction not Self-evidence but that which is stoln into us as it were at unawares by a common converse with things in this world which all mankind in a manner even those who are very rude are acquainted with Examples of the former are if you have done laughing A Rule is a Rule Faith is Faith also A whole or a part and more is more than a part or is a part and more Examples of the later for your better satisfaction I propose three or four One shall bee that in a square space 't is a neerer way to go from one corner to that which is opposite by the Diameter than to go by the two sides Another shall bee that things look less afar off and bigger neerer-hand A third shall bee that abstracting from madness 't is impossible Mr. T. or any other such you see how kind I am to you should take for his Text The Fool hath said in his heart there is no God and at the same time and in the same circumstances things stand now in England should preach Atheism and endeavour to perswade them out of that very Text there is no God The last shall bee the Existence of Q. Elizabeth or K. Henry the 8th Now I affirm that all these are Practically-self-evident for it was not by virtue of Speculative discourses the vulgar arriv'd to the Knowledge of these and such like things as is evident by this that they know not how to prove these or give an account of their assent by way of evident discourse but by virtue of the common knowledges of things in the world they are acquainted with Now what is thus self-evident is so far from being impossible to bee evidenc't Speculatively that 't is the proper task of Learned men by which I mean not those tedious mighty men of Talk who think it an excellent confutation of Sence to cavill at words and Expressions to look into Nature and discover or if you bee not offended demonstrate what were the proper Causes which wrought thus after a naturall manner that Effect call'd Certainty in rationall Souls as to all the aforesaid particulars which found they will appear to bee the mediums fit to demonstrate that Effect That this is so in the two first Examples you are so well skilled in Euclid the mathematicks though one Prophet T. say's I have not read him as to know that notwithstanding this Practical-self-evidence all mankind has of them Mathematicians notwithstanding go about to demonstrate them speculatively without fearing to do a needless action out of the nature of Quantity as I make account I could demonstrate the 4th the 3d. too out of the nature of Man or out of this if you please that a man is a man or a rationall Creature that is a Thing that acts not if hee have the use of Reason without a motive To come nearer home I concieve that 't is to all unprejudic't and unpreoccupated Understandings as are all Catholikes who have not their Faith from skill but by the naturall way of Education Self-evident Practically that the Doctrine deliver'd now as taught by Christ and his Apostles by such as profess to have it by way of Tradition or uninterrupted Succession from them is truly their Doctrine or that the Certainty of Traditions conveying down matters of Fact is practically-self-evident and thence I proceed to look speculatively into the Causes of such an Assurance and so demonstrate it Which when I go about I discover that besides what ascertain'd Humane Tradition in witnessing the Existence of Henry the 8th or any other matter of Fact infinite Advantages were found in Christian Tradition enabling it to bring down the first-preach't Doctrine above what was found in them But I expatiate too far I hope by this Sir you see at length what my whole Book ayms at though good man you were so taken up with cavilling at little wordish Exceptions you spy'd it nor before that is to demonstrate by way of Speculation what I conceiv'd before to bee self-evident practically you see also at the same time how infinitely you oblige mee by professing your Ignorance of this point for in so doing you profess withall that you are utterly Ignorant of what my whole Book meant And are not you rarely qualify'd to bee an Impugner of my Book who are so perfectly to seek in knowing what 's the main end it drives at Is it not evident hence that your endeavours to confute mee can never go to the bottom of the difficulty but onely talk superficially that is wordishly and withall mistakingly to some passages in it Surely plain reason tells us in every ordinary affair that if one man understands not the main end the other ayms at however hee may talk prettily and express himself in good language yet hee can never speak home and to the purpose And as this is plain à priori from it's proper Cause your Ignorance of my main intent so you have abundantly demonstrated the same à posteriori in your whole Book which no where as I hope to show you hereafter begins at the bottom but is wholly made up of a great many aiery gay prettinesses such as best befits one who mocks at Evidence and Demonstration But 't is no matter your Friend Mr. Stillingfleet will extoll you for it the more and the Generality of your party who are accustom'd and educated by you to loose sermonary Discourses will like it the better whereas had you profest the way of Evidence you had been character'd by him as monstrously opinionated of your self and that kind of Readers your onely admirers would not have understood you 14. Your second Part treats about the Properties of the Rule of Faith and whether they agree solely to Orall Tradition I assign'd seven of which you are pleas'd to mistake quite no fewer than all But I must not here take notice too much of your Reason but of your Kindnesses contradistinguisht by your Friend Mr. Stillingfleet to your Reasons that is which are Irrationall You tell mee p. 57. that I might have learn'd something from the same Authour from whom I borrow'd my Chief Properties of the Rule of Faith if I had but had the patience to have consider'd his Explication of them Surely learned Sir you have great skill in Judiciary Astrology or else you deal with Lilly and Booker or perhaps have an inchanted Glass which discovers to you all I do in my study For you know exactly all I do there nay which is yet more wonderfull all I do
never are more powerfull than when you use your wit to make Authours fall out with one another and unnaturall mee with my self But to the point In the first Citation I say That the common course of humane Conversation makes it a madness not to beleeve great multitudes of Knowers c. But I add Sure-footing p. 49. what you omit that in the way of Tradition all Deliverers or immediate Forefathers are Knowers all the Knowledge requisit being of what they were taught and practic 't accordingly all their lives I beseech you Sir are those great multitudes of immediate Forefathers Knowers when they deliver down a Book for a right one that is do they all know the Translation is right made the Copy right printed or written and all the Perquisits which are needfull that they may bee truly said to know this Book is rightly qualify'd You see then how far I am from contradicting my self unless you show that I hold all Recommenders or Accepters of a Book to bee Knowers as they are of the practicall Doctrine they were bred and brought up to which I neither do nor can with any Sence profess The Reader also will see that the stratagem by virtue of which you made mee contradict my self was your omitting those words of mine which made the contrary clear The next place you cite p. 104. from mee to the same purpose is this that none but madmen can suspect deceit where such multitudes agree unanimously in a matter of Fact Now the words such multitudes mean all their immediate Fore-fathers qualifi'd as Knowers as I exprest myself a little before which will veryill sute your purpose in regard the matters of Fact employ'd about the delivering a right Book as in translating transcribing pointing right c. of which their Sences onely can make them Knowers are so inumerable and minute yet such that very great miscarriages may ensue upon a very little over-sight that to think all Forefathers can know no Fault in any of these interven'd is such an extravagant conceit that onely a most obstinate passion could make a rationall soul entertain it The point is at present that you affect to represent mee to the half part and by that art you take mee up perpetually before I bee down For it is not an agreement in any matter of Fact but in such a one as may bee known by all in which I place the force of being able to oblige others to assent to their proposalls You treat mee far worse p. 105. making mee say that the Providence of God is no security against those Contingencies the Scripture is liable to because wee cannot bee certain of the divine Providence or Assistance to his Church but by the Letter of Scripture which is to put upon mee a ridiculous Argument making mee infer there is no such Assistance from this that wee cannot bee Certain of it but such a way Whereas Common sence tells every one that our Certainty being an Effect of the Thing 's Existence must depend indeed on their Existence in regard we cannot bee Certain of what is not But the things can exist whether wee bee Certain of them or no I affirm then and charge upon you that I have no where either such words or sence in my whole book as you with a strange precipitancy to say no worse affirm p. 104. that I tell you Sure-footing p. 18. where my discourse onely pretends to show that who will argue orderly must first bee Certain of that on which hee builds his Conclusion ere hee asserts the Conclusion it self This was the tenour of my discourse there which I conceive to bee evident beyond Cavill If I err'd any where 't was in supposing you onely took from Scripture that God assisted his Church in preserving a right Copy of Scripture and therefore argu'd preposterously if you inferr'd God has a Providence over his Church in preserving right Scripture therefore 't is preserv'd right But this I spoke onely with an If and besides had good grounds for it For I conceiv'd there being but two wayes to know this by Revelation which you profess to have onely by way of Scripture and by naturall Reason whence you could not have it For however meer nature might teach it's exact Followers there was a God and that hee had Providence over his Creatures as it taught Socrates Seneca and such like yet I remember not that wee have any Ground to say meer nature inform'd any God had a Church much less that there was no way to Provide for her continuance in Faith or deriving his Doctrine down in her but by way of Books Hence I concluded and conclude still it must bee either by Scripture or no way you can know God has such a kind of Providence over his Church You are pleased to tell your Reader p. 119. that this Principle That in matters of Religion a man cannot bee reasonably satisfy'd with any thing less than that Infallible Assurance which is wrought by Demonstration is the main Pillar of Mr. S' s. Book whereas I assure you Sir the last part of the kind slur you put upon mee which is wrought by Demonstration was never either my words nor sence neither Pillar nor the least part of Sure-footing wherefore as you put those words in a different Letter for mine so you had done well to have put down the place too where those words were found which you wisely omitted If I had affirm'd that that Assurance which grounds Faith must bee wrought by Demonstration how should I pretend the Vulgar can bee sav'd who are manifestly incapable of Demonstration as I also frequently acknowledge Understand then my Tenet at length which you ought to have done e're you begun to write against it but that to use your own words you thought it an absurd and ridiculous study to bend your brains to read my Book as you would do Euclid p. 292. which yet is no more but to consider attentively my Principles and my Consequences My Tenet is that all the Faithfull have and those who seek after Faith may have and those who seek after Faith may have Assurance of their Faith wrought in them by Practicall Self-evidence in the same naturall manner but with far better Reason than they beleeve there was a Henry the 8th and that 't is onely Schollars that go about to Demonstrate what the Faithfull know but for want of Study or Reflexion on their own thoughts and on the Causes and Manners with which they were so assur'd are ignorant how to make it out I beseech you Sir repress this overflowing of Kindness in giving mee so many Advantages against you and take a little pains to understand what I say nor to borrow your elegant expression p. 292. suffer your self to bee so demurely discharged of a Study so necessary and so honorable I had affirm'd in my Letter to my Answerer p. 5th that it was a civill piece of Atheistry to say Faith is possible
therefore that persons to bee converted may come to Faith without demonstration at all I may perhaps say that in an Assent thus grounded there is found at the bottom what is demonstrable by a learned man or apt to yeeld matter for a demonstration but that those who come to Faith must demonstrate or frame demonstrations which 't is manifest onely Schollers and good ones too can do is fa from my Tenet however 't is your Kindness to put it upon mee right or wrong You shall take your choice whether the Reader shall think you understand not the Tenet you are confuting or that understanding it you wilfully injure it You proceed p. 153. that according to Mr. S. Reason can never demonstrate that the one is a Certain and Infallible Rule the other not That never is a hard word and it will seem wonderfull to some Readers I should say Reason can never demonstrate this and yet in that very Book contend to demonstrate it by Reason my self nay make that the main scope of my Book But Sir those Readers know not yet the power of your wit and sincerity which can make mee say any thing nay say and unsay as it pleases Yet you quote my express words for it Sure-footing p. 53. where you say I tell you Tradition hath for it's basis Man's Nature not according to his Intellectualls because they do but darkly grope in the pursuit of Science c. I deny them Sir to bee my words or sence you have alter'd the whole face and frame of them by putting in the word Because which makes mee discourse as if man's Intellectualls could never arrive at Evidence nor consequently Certainty and you keep the Reader from knowing the true sence of my words by curtailing the sentence with an c. my words are not according to his Intellectualls darkly groping in the pursuit of Science by reflected thoughts or Speculations amidst the misty vapours exhal'd by his Passion predominant over his rationall will which discovers I speak of our Intellectualls plac't in such circumstances or employ'd about such a matter as our Passion or Affection is apt to blind and mislead us in it which wee experience too too often But do I therefore affirm our understanding can never arrive at Science at all or that our Passion exhales vapours to hinder us from seeing the Truth of the first Proposition in Euclid or was it ever heard that any man was transported so by his Passion as to deny there was a Henry the 8th Or can any one out of Passion bee ignorant of or forget what is inculcated into his Sences almost every day which naturall Knowledge I there make the Basis of Tradition Pray Sir reflect on my words once more and on the Tenour of my Discourse and you shall see it onely says that Tradition has for it's Basis man's Nature not according to his morall part which is of it self pervertible nor yet his Intellectualls as subject to his Moralls but on naturall Knowledges imprinted by direct Sensations not subject at all to his Will but necessary and inevitable and when you have done this you will easily see how you injure mee though I expect not from you any Acknowledgment of it You commit those Faults too often to concern your self in such a trifle as any handsome Satisfaction Your next Citation p. 153. layes on load 'T is taken out of my 2d Appendix p. 183. My whole Discourse there is to show how Reason behaves her self in finding out the Authority shee is to rely on that this is God's Sence or Faith and how in the points of Faith themselves Concerning the former I discourse there § 3. and have these Expressions that No Authority deserves assent farther than true Reason gives it to deserve that the Church's Authority is found by my Reason to bee Certain that 't is perfectly rationall to beleeve the Church assuring mee the Divine Authority is engag'd for such and such points that Gods and the Church's Authority as Objects imprinting a conceit of themselves in my mind as they are in themselves oblig'd my Reason to conclude and my Iudgment to hold them such as they were nor have I the least expression of diffidence of naturall Reason's certifying mee perfectly of the Ground of my Faith which can no wayes bee done by Acts of reflected Reason which I there speak of but by demonstrating it After this § 4. I come to discourse how differently Reason bears her self in order to the points of Faith or the mysteries themselves Hereupon I have these words p. 183. Reason acts now much differently than formerly Before I came at Faith shee acted about her own Objects Motives or Maxims by which shee scan'd the Autho rities wee spoke of but in Acts of Faith shee hath nothing to do with the Objects of those Acts or Points of Faith Then follow immediately the words you cite Shee is like a dim-sighted man who us'd his Reason to find a trusty Friend to lead him in the twy-light and then rely'd on his guidance rationally without using his own Reason at all about the Way it self Which most plainly signifies that as a dim-sighted man cannot use his Reason about the Way for that requir'd it should well affect his Senses and imprint it's right notion there which it did not but yet could use his Reason about chusing a trusty Friend to guide him for this depended not on his dim-sight but the converse and negotiation with his neighbours and relations which hee had been inur'd to and so was capable to wield and manage such a Discourse So our Reason dim-sighted in the Mysteries of Faith in which neither Senses nor Maxims of Human Science had given her light enough could not employ her talent of discoursing evidently and scientifically to conclude the Points of Faith themselves but yet was by Motives and Maxims within her own Sphere enabled to scan the nature of Authorities and find out on which as on a trusty Friend shee might safely rely This Sir is evidently my Discourse from whence you will needs force mee to say Reason is dim-sighted about the Authority wee come to Faith by or the Rule of Faith Now my whole Discourse in that very place aiming at the direct contrary and you leaving out the immediately foregoing words which clearly discover'd it I hope you will not take it ill Sir if I tell you I fear any sincere Examiner of it will judge that though you hold Plain-dealing a Jewell yet you would not bee willing to go to too much cost for it Especially when he reflects that you build better half your Confutation in your Book on such kind of willing mistakes and hope to blind it and make it take by Sophister-like quibbles flouts and jeers with which you use to sound your own triumph I expected sweet Sir some First Principles of your Discourse and I see now you intend those Artifices for such none else have I met with nor do you
where speaking of the Application of the Cause to the Patient p. 63. 64. 65. I end thus In a word Christianity urg'd to execution gives its followers a new Life and a new Nature than which a neerer Application cannot bee imagin'd So that you see I make account it's Application depends upon it's being urg'd to Execution and what is it that urges things to Execution but Government and Disciplin I wish Sir when you are to confute a rational Discourse you would not stand running after Butter-flies and catching by the way childishly at this little word and the other little word to play upon them jestingly but have patience to read it thorough and take the whole substance of it into your head and so endeavour to speak to it solidly This is the way to benefit your Readers to whom you owe this duty nay a far better to credit your self with understanding men than all those petty tricks of impertinent Wit and ironical Expressions which you so passionately dote upon I am heartily weary of so illiberal a task as to spend ink and paper much less time in discovering mens defects and I assure you Sir I am very sorry your carriage made it necessary whereupon though I see much rubbish of this nature behind and have overslipt too very much yet I should have ended did not I find my self highly concern'd to defend one Assertion of mine than which you who use no hot phrases but are all Civility and Sweetness say p. 173. nothing can be more impudent I humbly thank you Sir This most impudent position is this that Sure-footing p. 65. being to meet with the Objection that there have been many Hereticks or deserters of Tradition I say If wee look into Histories for experience of what has past in the world since the first Planting of Christianity wee shall find far more particulars fail in propagating their kind than their faith Now Sir if this bee prov'd not at all impudent which you judge most impudent I hope the rest which you judge less impudent may easily pass for blameless Let 's to work then and because 't is your business as well as mine I beseech you lend mee your thoughts to go along with mine from one end of the 7th discourse in Sure-footing to the other Company may do much in making them attentive otherwise I see plainly they will stand loitering and gazing by the way at this odd word or the inelegancy of that phrase or noting some passages that may bee prettily mistaken and make excellent good sport by which means You who as you say p. 292. are apt to unbend your brains without bidding will hardly ever bee drawn to go forwards with a deliberate pace half the way In the said discourse then p. 65. you see I design to clear an objection of my own which I conceiv'd obvious namely that there have been actually many Hereticks or deserters of Tradition I make my way to it p. 66. by asserting that the way of Tradition is as efficaciously establisht in the very grain of mans nature as what seems most naturall the propagation of their kind Hence I come at last to that most impudent assertion that more have faild in propagating their kind than their Faith Proceeding to proove it I show p. 66. how Heresy or a failing to propagate Faith happens and I allow p. 68. that it must bee perform'd by deserting Tradition and chusing at least for a show another Rule that so they may have occasion to break from the former Church But I affirm withall p. 65. § 3. that assoon as the breach is sufficienly made and the novellists begin to bee shap't into a body whatever for a show they still would seem to keep to yet that they presently desert the new Rule they had taken up and the naturall way of Tradition again recovers it self that the Reformers themselves make use of it to keep their company together that Children are taught they are to beleeve their Pastors and Fathers even in interpreting Scripture that the first Reformers punish them if they break from their body and hold not to the Sence of Scripture they give them And hence I conclude p. 74. that the number of the Actuall deserters of the naturall way of Tradition have been but few to wit the First Revolters that the descendents of these Revolters follow'd the way of Tradition however misplac't then I added some considerations for Grounds to ballance the number of Failers in propagation with the number of those who faild in Tradition and as reasons why I concluded this number less but you never use to speak to my reasons onely you mistake my discourse and my conclusion to mean not onely the First breakers but their descendents too which I make account return naturally to the Traditionary way then you denie and impugn like a learned logician the Conclusion it self amplify strangely upon your own mistake of it instancing in all the Countries almost East West North and South triumph mightily and would have mee show you a whole nation that refus'd to marry As if my Conclusion could not bee true unless such a rare sight were show'd you all at a clap E're I come closer to the proof of my Assertion I foresee I am to make good first that even the deserters of Tradition when they think themselves sufficiently enfranchiz'd from the disciplin of the former Church and that their followers settle into a kind of Body under them bring in again the way of Tradition or rather indeed permit nature to work both in the new brood that grow up under those Fathers who had lately deserted Tradition and in those deserters themselves nothing being more naturall than both for the Fathers Elders or Governours to desire and even expect the children Posterity and Subjects should follow their judgments and not to make themselves wiser than their betters nor for the descendents and young ones credulously to beleeve those whom they look't upon ever with an awe and respect and to permit their lives to bee fram'd by their conduct I affirm then that even in all those Sects that have faln from the Catholick Church whether Protestants Lutherans Presbyterians or whatever else they bee that pretend to hold to Scripture the Generality if not all are continu'd to the former body or immediately foregoing Generation by Tradition and not by virtue of Scripture Evidence uniting their understandings For what a wild conceit it is to imagin that the Children throughout a whole Kingdom of Lutherans for example should still light to interpret Scripture just as did their Forefather Lutherans and thence unanimously hold to the Lutheran Profession And the same in Protestants Presbyterians Arians Pelagians And the like may bee said in some sort even of Turks and Heathens that 't is not the virtue of any motive that they go upon which keeps up a Succession of men of the same Tenet but the naturall force of Education at first and Custome
afterwards which wee experience daily to have so strange a Power that the most evident Arguments are scarce able to wean persons otherwise very rationall from the most absurd and weakly grounded Prejudices and that to root out judgments thus planted from their Souls seems as violently to shock and strain nature in them as if one went about to tear a limb from their Body If it bee acknowledged then as it must that Education has such an incomparable force in preserving an unanimousness between Foregoers and Posterity and Education consists in making the descendents think act as did their Forefathers wee shall discover that Education hath in it the very nature of Tradition and consequently that 't is by virtue of Tradition any Sect continues the same which devolves into this that therefore as soon as any Sect is form'd it returns or slides back if it continues naturally into the way of Tradition I am afraid Sir by this time you are ready to object for 't is your way out of an over-zealous affection to find Absurdities in your Adversary to catch at any thing that seems so at first sight without maturely weighing it that by this means I make all Protestants Quakers nay Turks and Heathens too of our Religion by making them follow our Rule of Faith Tradition and you have a little to that purpose p. 147. and elsewhere much more if I remember right But Sir I shall undeceive you easily by distinguishing between Tradition taken at large or as I call it Sure-footing p. 74. the natural way of Tradition and Christian Tradition That has the abetment and Concern of many Natural ties to make it follow'd and in Publick and universally-concerning matters of fact it layes a kind of force upon man's Nature as in the Existence of William the Conquerour Mahomet Alexander c. This has besides Supernatural Assistances of the Holy Ghost to strengthen the greatest force of Nature But to omit other differences what concerns us most at present is that This pretends to bee an Uninterrupted Derivation from Christ whence 't is call'd Christian Tradition whereas any other for example yours in following your Fore-fathers can pretend uninterruptedness no farther than your first Reformer whose immediate Ancestors being Catholik your chain is broke or at an end whence for the same reason this short-lin'd Tradition ought to be called his for example the Lutheran and not Christian Tradition The more therefore you or any other adhere to any other Tradition so much farther you recede from and are more obstinate against Christian Tradition since doing so you hold more firmly to that which was a renouncing the other These rubs remov'd wee advance to our point which is to examin whether in likelihood more particulars have fail'd propagating their Kind than their Faith To do this the shorter and clearer wee will pitch upon one Instance which your self mention namely of the vast multitudes which since Luther in Germany Denmark Sueden England Scotland Ireland c. have renounc't the Roman-Catholik Faith And since by our former Discourse and indeed common Sense none in any of those Countries were Actual Deserters of Tradition by which I mean Catholik or Christian Tradition but those who once held it which their Descendents did not but either follow'd Tradition at large or their Tradition that is the Tradition of what these Deserters educated them to hence wee are to exclude all the innumerable Descendents from those Actuall Deserters as persons unconcern'd at all in my Discourse my express words ever excluding them And because those Deserters began not all with Luther but some fell 20. some 40. years after him I will put my self upon the disadvantage to put them all to be fal'n sooner to wit about 20. years after Luther it being all one to our Case for no more could fall but all those that actually then did fall in regard wee allow their Descendents to continue their Fathers steps though wee put them to fall all at once Imagin then that in the Year 1537. all were fall'n that did fall either then before I mean before that Year since Luther and after that time what proportion may wee conceive they might bear to all Catholikes then living whether in the Greek or Roman Church whether in those parts of the world or America whose Conversion was then well begun I conjecture wee should be very liberall to grant they equall'd one third that is were the fourth part of those who were found living in the Year assign'd and adhering to Tradition This lai'd let us consider next how many wee may conceive to have fail'd in that Year and ever since that is for 128. Years in propagating their kind And first wee will take a view of those who die by naturall Deaths or Casualties before they enter into the ordinary Circumstance of Propagation Marriage and yet conduc't in their proportion to the instilling Faith into those they converst with For assoon as any arrive to that pitch of age as to express themselves Christianly in their Language and Behaviour 't is evident they connaturally insinuate into others of an inferiour pitch they converse with to their slender Degree the same things they hold and practise and so are truly parts of the Church Essential as delivering or parts of Tradition and though wee might begin much sooner to reckon them such yet wee will to avoid dispute take them from the age of 14. to 24. before which time if any marry there are as many that marry later and if this be not enough to ballance it to an Equality wee will allow all lay-people that live unmarry'd and all that marry and yet die before they have children or never have any into the bargain Those then between the age of 14. and 24. reckoning the whole time of man's life 90. Years are the 9th part of mankind that were found living in our Age. Putting then all the present Livers in that Age to die in the Year wee pitch't upon that so wee may for clearness reduce our Discourse to the same determinate compass of time wee may well put the 9th part of mankind living in that Year to die between 14. and 24. that is to die without conducing to propagate their kind though they contribute to propagate their Faith and if this number bee thought too great because of the healthfulness of that Age wee will account it but a tenth part though in truth it deserves to bee held rather an 8th or 7th because of the numerousness of that Decad in comparison of the persons found Living in those Decads beginning from the 60th 70th and the 80th Year which are very few Certain then 't is according to our best morall Estimation a tenth part of mankind within that prefixt Year die I mean a tenth part of those who do then die who have had a hand in propagating Faith and not their Kind Next let us multiply that tenths part by the number of the Years elaps't since
to bee briefer in which I thank you you have helpt mee much by your manner of handling them I will pass by divers of your little quirks upon my whether real or pretended mistakes in things unconcerning and onely touch upon what is more pertinent And first I am sorry I must begin with the old complaint that you mistake quite whether purposely or no let others judge what was my intent in producing those Testimonies Can you really and in your heart think they were intended against the Protestants that you set your selves so formally to answer them or can you judge mee so weak a Disputant as to quote against you the 2d Council of Nice or the Council of Trent so elaborately whereas I know you would laugh at their Authority as heartily as you did at my First Principles Sure if I meant it I am the First Catholick Controvertist that ever fell into such an errour My intent manifest in the Title and the whole course of my writing there was this that having deduc't many particulars concerning the Rule of Faith which manner of Explication might seem new to Catholik Controvertists I would endeavour to show to them rather than to you that both others of old and the Catholik Church at present favourd my Explication This was my main scope however as divers Testimonies gave mee occasion I apply'd them by the way against Protestants Your second mistake is found p. 304. where you accuse mee to have committed as shamefull a circle c. and why because according to mee Scripture depends upon Tradition for it's Sense and yet I bring Scripture for Tradition Sir my Tenet is that nothing can sence Scripture with the Certainty requisit to build Faith upon but Tradition which yet well consists with this that both you and I may use our private wits to discourse topically what sence the words seem most favourably to bear And you may see I could mean no more by the many deductions I make thence alluding to my Tenet which yet I am far from your humour of thinking all to bee pure God's Word or Faith nor yet Demonstration as you put it upon mee in other Testimonies p. 308. Though I make account I use never a Citation thence but to my judgment I durst venture to defend in the way of human skill proceeding on such Maxims as are us'd in word-skirmishes to sound far more favourably for mee than for you But let 's see what work you make with my Authorities After you have unworthily abus'd Rushworth in alledging him rawly to say Scripture is no more fit to convince than a Beetle is to cut withall whereas his Discourse runs thus that as hee who maintains a Beetle can cut must cut with it but cannot in reason oblige others to do so so they who hold Scripture is the true Iudge of Controversies and fit and able to decide all quarrells and dissentions against the Christian Faith bind themselves c. After this prank I say of the old stamp you put down p. 303. three of my Testimonies from Scripture and immediately give a very full and ample Answer to them all in these words From which Texts if Mr. S. can prove Tradition to bee the onely Rule of Faith any more than the Philosopher Stone or the Longitude may bee prov'd from the 1 Cap. of Genesis I am content they should pass for valid Testimonies To which my parallell Answer is this From which Reply and our constant experience of the like formerly if it bee not evident that Mr. T. will never with his good will deal sincerely with his Adversary but in stead of confuting him impose on him still a False meaning and impugn that in stead of him I will yeeld all his frothy Book to be solid Reason I beseech you Sir where do you find mee say or make show of producing those Testimonies to prove Tradition the onely Rule of Faith For Truth 's sake use your Eyes and read Do not I express my self Sure-footing p. 126. to produce the first Citation to show how Scripture seconds or abets my foregoing Discourse meerly as to the Self-evidence of the Rule of Faith Does not the second contend for the Orality of the Rule of Faith it 's Uninterruptedness and perpetuall Assistance of God's Spirit and the third of imprinting it by the way of living Sense in men's hearts And though I say those places speak not of Books but deliver themselves in words not competent to another Rule yet I contend not they exclude another Rule or say there is but one Rule and no more There was indeed p. 12. another Testimony from St. Paul contradistinguishing the Law of Grace from Moses his Law which sounded exclusively but you were pleas'd to omit it and so I shall let it stand where it did You advance to my Testimonies from Fathers and Councils and never was young gentleman so fond and glad that hee had found a hare sitting as you are to have discovered whence I had those Citations Presently 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all is mirth and triumph and Jubilee You are a Seer Sir and will find out the Truth by Revelation and so I had as good ingenuously confess it 'T was thus then When my book was nere printed some Friends who had read my discourses dealt with mee to add some Authorities alledging that in regard I follow'd a way of Explication which was unusuall it would give it a greater currency to show it consonant though not in the whole Body of it yet in the most concerning particulars to the Sentiments both of the former and present Church I foresaw the disadvantage my little time would necessarily cause me yet willing to defer to the Judgment of my Betters I resolv'd it Casting about in what Common-place-book I might best look for I had not time to rummage Libraries nor am I so rich as to have a plentifull one of my own it came into my mind there were diverse of that nature in that book where you made so fortunate a Set and caught such a covy of Citations in one net together I ask't first the Authour's leave who answer'd that when a Book was once made publick it was any one 's that would use it nor knew I till you came to teach mee more manners I ow'd any account to any man else neither do I think your self in your Sermons stand quoting all the Common-place-books or private Authours where you meet a Testimony or Sentence transcrib'd you make use of Hereupon I took the book with mee to a Friend's Chamber near the Press where Proofs already expected my correcting hand and there having no other book by mee fell to work This hast made mee examin nothing being very secure of the perfect sincerity of the Authour I rely'd on but put them down in his words and order This Sir is candidly the true History of that affair which will spoil much of your discourteous vapour showing a great deal of empty vanity in
were dead Writing then became needfull But that in those Circumstances Orall Tradition was a sufficient way of conveying a Doctrine What I note is that you ended your citation at the words before those Books were universally spread amongst the Vulgar but had you added what follow'd immediately to compleat that period much less the Catalogue collected and acknowledged you had been put to confess too that Tradition was a sufficient way for diverse Ages after the Apostles were dead which had been little favourable to your Tenet I complain then that by citing mee by halves as you do frequently you slip the answering better half of my Arguments and here particularly as appears by the words much less that part in which I put the most force P. 41. You put mee to say expresly that Tradition is the best way imaginable to convey down such Laws to us Now if by the word such you onely meant such as it concerns every man to bee skilfull in and had so exprest it you had done well for 't is my position but you had brought an ill-resembling Instance of Magna Charta and make mee seem to allow your Instance and to affirm Tradition is the best way to bring down Magna Charta as appears by your words Mr. S. saith expresly it is but how truly I appeal to the Experience and the wisedome of our Law-givers who seem to think otherwise making my word such mean such as Magna Charta which is far from my meaning in regard I judge not Magna Charta a thing in which 't is every man's particular concern to bee skilfull in but Lawyers onely whom others trust few in England but they being thoroughly acquainted with the Laws found there Take your own Liberty Sir in making Parallells 't is my Advantage you should you pick out such aukward ones but when you have made them do not disingenuously put them upon mee and quote mee to say them expresly Thus you use my words Why may not hee mistrust his own Eyes which p. 16 and 17. were apply'd by mee to the business of mistaking or not mistaking in transcribing perfectly a whole Book or correcting the Press in which we daily experience miscarriage but you apply these words to your own senceless Parallell of seeing the City of Rome p. 83 and then by such an application endeavour to make them seem ridiculous as they must needs for you had discourst ridiculously and by making them part of your Discourse and not taking them as any part of mine had made them so too I could instance in many others of this nature but I am too long already P. 61. being to state the point you alledge my words Sure-footing p. 13. That the Protestants cannot by Scriptures mean the Sence of them but the Book that is such or such Characters not yet senc't or interpreted And there you stop my immediately following words explaining my meaning are these that is such and such Characters in a Book with their Aptness to signifie to them assuredly God's mind or ascertain them of their Faith And this Explication you omit which had been nothing had you not made an ill use of that omission but your Cavills afterwards and the loud out-cries in your Book in many places of a senceless Book my Ignorance of your Tenet what not are all grounded upon your own fly omitting those words in which I exprest your Tenet to bee that those Characters were significative of your Faith I wonder what else you would have a Rule of Faith to bee but a Mean's to signifie to you God's Sence or the Faith Christ taught those inspir'd Writers It was one of my requests in my Letter that wee might agree to acknowledge what was Truth in one another's Books but you use all the Arts Insincerity can suggest to deprave wrest or diminish my words rather than I should appear to speak reason in any thing All must bee monstrous in your Adversary when your pregnant Fancy and dextrous pencil come to delineate it which shews indeed much crafty wit but I doubt the Reader will think it argues not too much Honesty I affirm'd Sure-footing p. 17. that the numerous Comments writ upon the Scripture and the infinite Disputes about the Sence of it even in most concerning points as in that of Christ's Divinity beat it out so plain to us that this to wit to find out a Certain Sence of Scripture by their Interpretation is not the task of the Vulgar that 't is perfect phrenzy to deny it which you quote p. 85. and diverse other places leaving out still my words and sence that this is not the task of the Vulgar upon which that whole § proceeds and impugning it accordingly See your own words p. 86. making mee say The Protestants cannot bee certain of the true Sence of it as if Protestants and Vulgar were the same notion Also p. 86. Hee tells us say you the numerous Comments upon Scripture are an Evidence that no man can bee Certain of the true Sence of it This improves it into a very ample Falsification for the word no man excludes all Catholikes too and indeed all the world however proceeding to interpret it whereas I onely engage in the place cited against the Vulgar And after you have ended you Confute all built on your own omission of those important words you single out after your old fashion two or three of my words 't is perfect phrenzy to deny it and call it a hot phrase whereas 't is very luke-warm taken in the occasion I spoke it namely that the Vulgar could not bee certain of the right Interpretation of Scripture since even Learned Commentators so strangely differ'd about it How you will clear your self of this kind Insincerity without casting a mist before men's eyes that they cannot read right I cannot in your behalf imagin P. 104 You quote mee twice as endeavouring to prove that men may safely rely on a generall and uncontroll'd Tradition Which though you pretend not my words yet I count it an injury to impose upon mee such a Sence Uncontroll'd joyn'd to Tradition is such another Epithet as Sufficient joyn'd by you to Certainty I who contend for the absolute Certainty of Faith would say Uncontrollable not Uncontroll'd for a thing may be Uncontroll'd meerly because it had the good Fortune that none had occasion to look into it and so controll it whereas nothing can bee Uncontrollable but by virtue of it's Grounds 't is built on preserving it from a Possibility of ever being controll'd Your intent in producing those two Citations from mee is as you declare it p. 105. is to show the Unhappiness of my Demonstrations that in order to demonstrate the uncertainty of Books and Writings must suppose all those Principles to bee uncertain which I take to bee self-evident and unquestionable when I am to demonstrate the Infallibility of Orall Tradition A hard case yet it will bee harder to come of for you