is in a manner made up of such study'd Insincerities 14 You give us another Instance of this Indisposition of your Will p. 13. where you tell us Mr. M. says that the first thing which was propos'd and indeed the onely subject Mr. G. had any purpose to discourse on was whether Protestants had a Ground of Absolute Certainty for their Faith or not This you do not deny but turn it off to a quite different business and then slide from that to another till you had wheel'd about the Question from what was intended to the Point you thought best serv'd your turn to shuffle in Here say you the Faith spoken of is that Faith whereby we are Christians How Are Protestants and Christians then Convertible Terms or Synonyma's Are there not many sorts of Christians which are not Protestants And is it not plain and not contradicted by your self that it was demanded whether your Protestants had a Ground of Absolute Certainty for their that is Protestant Faith Does not the word their signify theirs as distinct from all other sorts of Christians And is it come now to signify theirs simply as Christians or as conjoyn'd with all the rest This is too open dodging to pass upon the Reader 'T is granted you hold many of the same Christian Points which Catholicks do but 't is deny'd you can as you are Protestants I mean still such Protestants as are of your Principles hold them to be Absolutely Certain or hold them upon such Grounds as are able to support that Firm and Unalterable Assent call'd Faith The Grounds proper to your Protestants being as was shewn in my Former Letter Sect. 24. to hold them upon the Letter interpreted by your selves Of which Letter by virtue of your Principles you can have no Absolute Certainty as shall be shewn hereafter and of that Letter Interpreted by your private Iudgments much less In a word either you speak of Points held by Protestants which you pretend to be all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles and then you are distinguisht not onely from those Christians call'd Catholicks but from Socinians Lutherans and to omit others Calvinists too if you be one of those that hold Episcopacy to be of Divine Right Or else you mean the Assent given to those Points of Protestant Faith on their pretended Rule and then you must shew your Assent is more Absolutely Certain than that of the three last and divers others who Dissent from you in their Tenets and yet go upon the Same Rule and make it out to us that tho' it be both theirs and yours yet still ' t is yours in particular or peculiarly yours as you are such Protestants 15. Your next Prevarication is much worse After you had shov'd Protestant Faith into Christian Faith you throw it a Barr and a half further off by virtue of an Id est Absolute Certainty of the Christian Faith i. e. say you of the Grounds on which we believe the Scripture to contain the Word of God or all things necessary to be believ'd by us in order to salvation This Id est like Pacolets wooden Horse has a Charm to transfer us from one Pole to the other in an instant By virtue of its all-powerful Magick Christian Faith is made to be the same with the Grounds on which we believe the Scripture to contain the Word of God so that according to you Faith is the same with your Grounds for Scripture's being your Ground that is Faith is made the same with the Grounds for your Ground of Faith. What a medley of Sense is this and how many folds have we here involving one another Christian Faith is Divine these Grounds and the Faith built on them is Human being the Testimony of Men Are these two the same Notion Had I a mind to be Quarrelsome how easily how justly too might I retort your former Calumny against Tradition and object that this way of yours resolves all into meer Human Faith meer Natural Reason that it makes God's Grace and Assistance of the Holy Ghost unnecessary to Faith and then ask Is this the Faith Christians are to be sav'd by And reckon up twenty other absurdities springing from this ill-grounded Position But I am now to trace your transferring Faculty In your First Letter p. 7. you speak onely of Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of your Faith viz. the Scripture but here the case is alter'd and Certainty of Scripture is turn'd into Certainty of the Grounds on which we believe the Scripture to contain the Word of God. These slippery doings and not any Reasons you bring make you Inconfutable for we must set upon the Proteus in all his shapes ere we can bind him The Question is not whether Scripture Contains the Word of God that is his Sense or our Faith but which we cannot mind you of too often for all will be too little to make you take notice of it how the Sense contain'd there can be got out thence or be signify'd to us with Absolute Certainty even in the very highest Points of Christian Faith and what Grounds you have to bring about this Effect For you can profess no Absolute Certainty of any one point till you have made it out with Absolute Certainty that the Sense you pretend contain'd in Scripture is it 's genuin Meaning This is your true task if you would prove the Absolute Certainty of your Protestant Faith or your Faith as depending on your Principles But of this we hear not a syllable 16. And I beseech you to what end is it to tell us you are speaking of your Rule or Ground of Faith if it carry you not thorow to any one particular no not those Points which are most Fundamental and so most necessary for the Salvation of Mankind Since notwithstanding you have your Rule you are still as far to seek as before in all a Rule should be good for Remember the Question and Mr. T 's expectation was about the Absolute Certainty of Protestant Faith by vertue of your Rule or Ground and therefore if your Rule does not reach to Absolute Certainty of the main Points of Faith at least you are still at a loss both for your Faith and for a Ground of your Faith. Yet this conscious of it's failure you seem unwilling to stand to by still sliding silently over it or slipping by it when it lies just in your way For You tell us pag. 20. that your Faith rests on the Word of God as its Absolute Ground of Certainty Which by the way is another little shuffle for you should have said absolutely-Certain Ground not Absolute Ground of Certainty But let that pass and let the horse-mill go for the mill-horse You proceed But the particular Certainty as to this or that Doctrine depends on the Evidence that it is contain'd in Scripture You ought to have said if you would make your Faith so Certain as you
that Decree Sess. 4. was to repress the insolency of Hereticks wresting the Scripture to their own private sentiments contrary to the Sense of the Church or the unanimous Consent of the Fathers And how this is directly contrary to this power of obliging to believe somthing as in Scripture explicitly now which was not so known before is unconceivable unless you will prove that that Explicit Sense is directly contrary to the unanimous Consent of the Fathers or the Church which you will never do But t is a trivial Exploit to make Mr. M. clash with Mr. G. or the Church of Rome with the Council of Trent you can make that very Church clash with her self Suis et ipsa Roma and that openly and professedly too Nay which is most wonderful fall out with her self about her own Prerogatives For you tell us p. 23. that tho' it has assum'd this Power now spoken of yet it still disown'd it Now to assume a Power is to challenge it and to disown it is to renounce it which hang together much alter the rate of all your Discourse hitherto This Church of Rome is a most monstrous kind of Creature It goes backwards and forwards blows and sups declares for and against and all at once but we must imagin her to be such onely as she stands pourtray'd in Dr. St's Fancy 34. Your main Stratagem to elude all this discourse remains yet to be more fully detected tho' it has been occasionally toucht at diverse times formerly T is this that you are now upon the General Ground of Faith and not the particular Acts of it or the particular Certainty as to this or that Doctrine And you seem to have reason for it too because the main point in Dispute was whether Protestants could shew any Ground of Absolute Certainty for their Faith. And this you think justifies you for hovering in the ayr and onely talking of your Scripture-Rule in common without lighting on or applying it to any one particular point contain'd in that Rule But this will avail you nothing For first Neither does our Discourse pinch upon any one particular Point but upon the Uncertainty of your Faith in general or on all your Points of Faith at once as built on your Ground So that 't is the pretended Ground of your Faith we are disputing against all the while and not any one particular Tenet We bring indeed Instances now and then of some particular Articles but 't is to shew that if your Ground has not power to ascertain absolutely those most Fundamental Points it has power to ascertain none and so is no Ground of Faith at all Secondly A pretended Ground cannot be known or acknowledg'd to be a real and firm Ground till we see it grounds somthing It 's Notion plainly imports a Relation to the Superstructure and you may as well prove a man a Father without proving he has a Child as prove any thing to be a Ground without proving such and such Points to be grounded on it and this in our case with Absolute Certainty Pray take that along with you still otherwise you turn your back to the Question and run away from it in the open Field T is tedious and mortifying beyond measure to hear you still talking and pretending you have an Absolutely Certain Ground for Faith and yet never see you so much as once endeavouring to shew how it 's Ascertaining Virtue affects the Articles you build upon it and that this particular Sense of Scripture in each respective Point has such a close and necessary Connexion with the Letter on which 't is built as to give Absolute Certainty of it to all that are competent Judges of the Sense of Words Which the Experience of all Ages since Christ confutes and our own Eyes Witness to be false in the Socinians and others Thirdly Your self confest once upon a time that you are absolutely Certain you now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles Now this candid expression would make any honest well-meaning man verily believe that you meant you had been absolutely Certain of every particular Christian Doctrin by vertue of your Ground or Rule But your incomparable dexterity quite and clean over-reach't us For when you came to explain your self there it amounted to no more but that your Faith was resolv'd into Scripture that is that you pretended to Scripture which contains all or as you told us p. 17. that you were absolutely certain you hold all because you hold all not in your Soul or Mind where Points of Faith are to be held but in a kind of Purse as it were as one is said when he holds a Book in his hand to hold all that is in it being possest of which tho' you cannot come at it's sense which is little better than if it were lock't up in a Trunk you are in possession of all Christian Faith notwithstanding and hold very firmly in that Sense all that was taught by Christ and his Apostles Fourthly Hence you have not perform'd what you undertook viz. to shew that Protestants had any Absolutely Certain Ground of their Faith. For 't is not enough to point out a Book and cry out aloud T is your Ground but you must shew that 't is indeed such a Ground Now a Ground or Rule bears in it's notion Evidence to those who are to use it and to know other things by it's Direction Nay more Clear Evidence For as all Certainty must have some kind of Evidence to create it in us so this Effect of Absolute Certainty can have no less than Clear Evidence for it's Cause But you may as easily prove Mankind has no Eyes to see with as go about to shew that the Letter of Scripture is thus clear in order to the discovery of right Faith even in the highest and most concerning Points of our Christian Belief Fifthly T is pleasant to observe what a rare Resolution of your Faith you give us p. 24. Our Faith say you is resolv'd into the Scripture as the Word of God and whatever is built on the Word of God is absolutely Certain You must indeed having deserted the Tradition of the Church either pretend to Scripture or nothing unless you will confess your selves to be pure Phanaticks or Pagans and it looks mighty plausibly to say that whatever is built on the Word of God is absolutely Certain for 't is a great Truth But the only Point is still Are you absolutely-certain by your Grounds that your Faith is indeed built on the Word of God You say indeed Scripture is your Ground you pretend to it as your Ground perhaps you think it so too and 't is not about your saying pretending or thinking it to be such that we dispute with you for we should not scruple to grant you all this without any Dispute at all But does your saying pretending or thinking Prove it to be so really and indeed All
A LETTER To the D. of P. IN ANSWER TO THE Arguing Part OF HIS FIRST LETTER To Mr. G. Published with Allowance LONDON Printed by Henry Hills Printer to the King 's Most Excellent Majesty for His Houshold and Chappel 1687. A LETTER To the D. of P. In Answer to the Arguing Part of his First Letter 1. THAT you may not take it unkindly the Arguing Part of your Letter to Mr. G. should pass unregarded I have been prevail'd upon to accept of his Commission to hold his Cards while he is not in Circumstances to play out his Game himself But can assure you beforehand since Matter of Fact is clearing by other Hands more proper I mean to confine my self to Matter of Right and so shall give you the least and most excusable trouble that can be a short one 2. Your Letter tells us that the Conference was for the sake of a Gentleman who I heard desir'd to be satisfi'd that Protestants are absolutely certain of what they believe and made account you could satisfie him and profess'd if you could not he would quit your Communion And you take care to inform us p. 2. that he was satisfi'd and declar'd immediately after the Conference that he was much more confirm'd in the Communion of your Church by it and resolv'd to continue in it But could you not have afforded to inform us likewise by what he was satisfi'd For there is many a Man who would be as glad and is as much concern'd to be satisfi'd in that Point as that Gentleman and he would not have been a jot the less confirm'd or the less resolv'd if his Neighbor had been confirm'd and resolv'd with him I cannot for my life imagin why you should make a Secret of a thing which besides your own and your Churches Honor concerns the Salvation of thousands and thousands to know 3. Your Letter I perceive would shift it off to Mr. G. whom you desire p. 7. to prove that Protestants have no Absolute Certainty c. Of this Proposal there will be occasion to say more by and by At the present I pray you consider how you deal with those Souls who rely on you If you should move them to trust their Estates with a Man of your naming of whom you would give no other satisfaction that he were able to manage them and faithful and responsible but only to bid those who doubted prove the contrary I fancy there would need all the Credit you have to hinder the Motion from appearing very strange And yet you have the confidence to make them one as much stranger as their Souls are more worth than their Mony For you would have them hazard their Souls where they are not safe for any care you take to satisfie them that they are Why suppose Mr. G. could not prove that Protestants are not Certain are they therefore Certain Has Peter Twenty pounds in his Purse because Paul cannot prove he has not Or ever the more Title to an Estate because an Adversary may have the ill luck to be Non-suited Must not every body speak for himself one day and bring in his own Account which will pass or not pass as it is or is not faulty in it self whether any fault have been found in it before or no And will not the Happiness or Misery of their Souls for ever depend on that Account Can you suffer them to run that terrible hazard without making them able to justifie their Accounts themselves and furnishing them with assurance that they can and with no more to say but that they hop'd Dr. St. would make his Party good with Mr. G. That things so precious to God as Souls should be of no more value with those who set up for Ministers of the Gospel That their great and only care as far as I see should be to make a shew and pass for some body here let every one take his chance hereafter Besides Truth is therefore Truth because 't is built on Intrinsecal Grounds which prove it to be such and not on private Mens Abilities or their saying this or that wherefore till those Grounds be produc'd it cannot be with reason held Truth And Dr. St. is more particularly oblig'd to make good he has such Grounds having had such ill fortune formerly with the Principles to which he undertook to reduce Protestant Faith as appears by the Account given of them in Error Non-plust 4. But leaving these Matters to be Answer'd where we must all answer why we have believ'd so and so pray let us have fair play in the mean time Let every one bear his own Burthen and you not think to discharge your self by throwing your Load on another Man's Shoulders You affirm there is Absolute Certainty on the Protestants side and 't is for him to prove it who affirms it If you do it but half so well as Mr. G. can and has the Infallibility which he asserts you will earn Thanks from one side and Admiration from the other But it is for you to do it To trick off proving the contrary upon your Adversary is to own that Proving is a thing which agrees not with your Constitution and in which your Heart misgives you 5. Yet even so you were uneasie still and would not venture what Mr. G. could do as slightly as you think or would have others think of him You know well enough that to prove Protestants have no Absolute Certainty of their Faith is no hard Task even for a weak Man You know any Man may find it confess'd to his hand by Protestants And therefore you had reason to bethink your self of an Expedient to trick it off again from that Point and put Mr. G. to prove That Protestants have no Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of their Faith viz. the Scripture The Merits of this Cause too I think will return hereafter more fitly in this place I mind only the Art. Pray was not the very First Question at the Conference Whether Protestants are absolutely Certain that they hold now the same Tenets in Faith and All that our Saviour taught to his Apostles And your Answer that They are Did our Saviour teach and do Protestants believe no more than that the Book so call'd is Scripture Is Certainty of this more and Certainty of this Book all one And was not the Question plainly of the Certainty of this and of All this more Here is then an Enquiry after one thing plainly turn'd off to another Yes but this was one of the two things which the whole Conference depended upon As if the whole Conference did not depend on that thing which was to be made manifest by the Conference viz. the Absolute Certainty of Protestant Faith. Mr. G. indeed did himself ask some Questions about your Certainty of your Rule Questions whose course it was wisely done to cut off before they had question'd away your Certainty of Faith. For after they had caus'd it to be
set Solid Meat on the Board and all this done send them hungry away Pray when will that When of yours be When will the day come in which you will shew your Faith to be solidly-grounded on the Word of God Every Article as you word it to bring it I suppose to your solid Endless way of Quoting and Criticizing is too much at present We are not got so far yet It will be time to talk of This or That Article when This or That Article is in Question At present you are to shew if you can that you have any Means unless you take Ours to ground any Article solidly on the Word of God. You are to shew your interpretation of it is Absolutely Certain and that God's Word means as you teach it does Otherwise your Confident Talking will not hinder us from seeing that you wretchedly delude your Followers while you are your selves truly Vncertain whether any thing you teach them be True and Conscious that you are so 13. And yet tho' you have served us thus you have a fetch to lay the blame upon me for being harder to you than the Laws of Disputation are I will have them he says prove two things more First that they are absolutely certain of All This. By the way I take for granted that by All This you mean All which Dr. St. affirm'd which was All of which I desir'd Proof And Secondly Not only this but of All that more which Our Saviour taught his Apostles Of this Charge I own the first half I did demand proof of Absolute Certainty and that for All This and shall persist to demand it till you shew me the Disputation-Law-Book which allows a Disputant to say what he pleases and chuse whether he will prove it or no when he has done Dr. Stillingfleet did affirm that You are Absolutely Certain and absolutely Certain that you now hold All the same Doctrin that was Taught by Christ his Apostles And of All this all the Laws of Disputation that I ever read or heard of warrant me to demand proof And you shall permit me to believe there was something in the Wind besides those Laws which makes you decline to give it I had been Logician good enough if you had known how to have prov'd Yes but I make Absolutely-Certain and Infallible all one I make them all one Why all Mankind made them so before I was born Take all the Men who pretend to Absolute Certainty and all the ways by which they pretend Authority Demonstration Sense Experience or what you will and see whether all Mankind agree not that when there is room for Deceit there is no Absolute Certainty and let a man pretend to be Absolutely Certain as much as he will if he be or may be deceiv'd he will be but laught at for his pains and not thought Absolutely Certain by any man in the World no not by your Reflecting self And yet you would perswade us I break the Laws of Disputation by understanding that Word as every body else does Certainly you would make a pleasant Law-maker for Disputation For when you have forbid us to understand words as others do we could dispute no longer nor so much as converse for there would be no knowing one anothers meaning 14. But if I take that word ill how must I do to take it well Not to mistake a second time I would be glad to know how your self take it who to be sure take it right But this you keep to your self and you have reason if by Absolutely Certain you mean not Absolutely Certain which I suspect is the true case and must be unless you would have it mean nothing Otherwise why might not we know what you will let it mean if you will not let it mean what I and every body else think it does Since you leave me to my self I shall at the hazard of incurring again the Penalties of your Laws of Disputation venture to think that He who will not suffer those who are Absolutely Certain to be Infallible will have them Fallible that is Deceivable in that whereof they are Absolutely Certain and for ought they can tell actually deceiv'd And then he will have Protestants believe that their Religion is the same that is taught by Christ stand firm and draw over to it as many as they can and vex and persecute their Neighbours whom they cannot prefer it before the Unity of the Church and keep up differences in Religion with as much jealous Concern as if the Wall of Division in the Church were the only safe Fence of the Nation in a word stake their Souls and Eternity upon it When all the while he cannot Absolutely tell whether it be True or No nay knows he cannot Let him honestly tell Protestants so and if they will venture Persecution and Schism and Salvation on those terms the Fault is their own and he has wash'd his Hands Otherwise he deludes them shamefully If they waver and stand upon Security they are told they are Absolutely Certain and this confirms them for it is as good Security as Heart can wish But when it comes to be sifted it appears they may be deceiv'd for all their Security and their Absolutely-Certain Religion proves to be such as perhaps is arrantly False In short they have a bare Sound to rely upon for their Souls Call their Security Absolutely Certain and 't is good Protestant Doctrin but call it Infallible which is the same and 't is rank Popery and your Protestants will none of it And so they may if they will and must if they will continue to be of your principles be content with Sounds But if they will stand upon Security from Deceit they must look for it where it is to be had With all they can get here it remains They may be Deceiv'd 15. The second-half of your Charge is purely your own Invention and as pleasant an Invention as ever roving Fancy suggested Absolute Certainty of Protestant Faith was turn'd by Dr. St. to Absolute Certainty of Scripture Since then Protestants believe more than that Scripture is Scripture I said they were to prove their Absolute Certainty of the more which they believ'd besides You have taken such extraordinary pains to mistake me as plainly as I exprest my self that you fancy I would have them say they are thus certain of those Points which they deny to be in Scripture and think them to be added by the Council of Trent and which therefore they believe not And these Points you understand to be the more of which I demanded Proof and so by your power in Reflection to desire Proof of what they do believe is to desire Proof of what they do not believe Absolute Certainty of what is their Faith is Absolute Certainty of what is not their Faith and their not-not-Faith is their more-more-Faith Ridiculous Folly To pretend we expected Protestants should prove to us such Points as they deny'd and our selves
speak of the same Point and a Contradiction must be ad idem Secondly Our Divines bring Motives of Credibility to prove Christian Faith to be Divine and True such as are Miracles the Conversion of the World the Sufferings of the Martyrs c. Very good would Dr St. reply these might prove the Faith profest in those times to be True but you have alter'd that Faith since and therefore you are to prove that the Faith you profess now is the same which was of old So that out of the very nature of our circumstances This is the Only Point between us and the main business of our Controversy about the Rule of Faith or the Ground that can justify its Invariable Conveyance downwards for this being made out by us all the rest is admitted Thirdly Hence both the Protestants and We agree that That is to be called the Rule of Faith by which the knowledge of Christ's Doctrin is convey'd certainly down to us at the distance of so many Ages from the time of its first Delivery Does any of our School-Divines take the Words Rule of Faith in this Sense Not one They content themselves with what serves for their purpose and call that a Rule of Faith which barely contains Faith. Fourthly Our only Point being to know assuredly the former Faith by a Certain Conveyer how must this be made out to those who are enquiring what is Christ's True Doctrin Must we bid them rely on their Private Interpretations of Scripture No surely for this is the way Proper to all Hereticks Must we bring them the Publick Interpretation of it by the Church This might do the deed so we could manifest this by some Knowledges those Candidates are already possess'd of and did admit Must we then at the first dash alledge the Publick Interpretation of the Church Divinely assisted What effect can this have upon those who do not yet hold that Tenet and consequently how can this be a Proper Argument to convince them It remains then that we can only begin with their unelevated Reason by alledging the Church's Human-Authority or Tradition the most vast and best-qualify'd Testimony to convey down a notorious matter of Fact of Infinite Concern that ever was since the World was Created for a Certain Conveyer of Faith from the time that those Motives of Credibility proving the then Faith to be Divine were on foot And if so why not with the same labour and for the same Reasons to bring it down from the very Beginning of the Church And if we must alledge it are we not oblig'd as Disputants to bring such Arguments to prove that Authority Certain as do conclude that Point If they do not what are they good for in a Controversy or what signifies a Proof that Concludes nothing This is the Sum of my Procedure and my Reasons for it in short which are abundantly sufficient to shew to any man of Sense that while the Doctor objects our School-Divines to one in my Circumstances his hand is all the while in the wrong Box as will more at large be shewn hereafter He might have seen cited by me in my Clypeus Septemplex two Writers of great Eminency viz. Father Fisher the most Learned Controvertist of his Age here in England and a Modern Author Dominicus de Sancta Trinitate whose Book was Printed at Rome it self and appprov'd by the Magister Sacri Palatii who to omit divers others do abet each particular Branch of my Doctrin which renders insignificant all his pretence of my Singularity and my Opposition to the Catholick Controvertists But to leave off this necessary Digression and proceed As our Doctor has shuffled off the whole Question by taking the word Faith as treated of by us in a wrong Sense so he behaves himself as ill in every particular of the rest of his Title viz. in his discoursing of his pretended Certainty of Faith and of the Nature and the Grounds of it He cannot be won to give us any Account how his Grounds Influence the Points of Faith with the Absolute Certainty he pretended And as for the Certainty it self the only word of his Title that is left he never shews how any one Article even though it be most Fundamentall is absolutely secur'd from being False or Heretical by any Rule Ground or Way he assigns us Nor can I imagin any thing could tempt him to so strange Extravagances but the streight he was in being put to shew his Faith Absolutely Certain and his Despondency ever to perform an Vndertaking which he foresaw was by his shallow Principles impossible to be atchiev'd And hence he was necessitated to all these crafty Shifts and Wiles and all those Vnsound Methods which like so many complicated Diseases affect his languishing Discourse and dying Cause as shall be laid open in the Progress of this Discourse and particularly in the Concluding Section I shall only instance at present in two or three Material ones which like the Grain in wood run through his whole Work. For Example When any Question is propounded which grows too troublesome he never pursues that Game but flushes up another and flies at that 'till the true Point be out of sight Tell him our Point is whether the High Mysteries and other Spiritual Articles of Faith be Clear in Scripture he will never answer directly but runs to Points necessary to Salvation Ask him if the Tenet of Christ's Godhead be necessary to Salvation no direct Answer can we get to that neither tho' it be the very Point we instanc't in Press him that there are no Unnecessary Points and therefore that All are Necessary for the Generality of the Church he cries Alas for me but answers nothing Ask him what Points he accounts Necessary He is perfectly mute 'Till at length he shuffles about so that the true Question which is about a Rule of Faith comes to be chang'd into a Rule of Manners and those High Spiritual Points which are most properly Christian and could only be known to the World by Divine Revelation are thrown aside and Moral ones put in their place which were known to many even of the Heathen Writers And this is the best Sense I can pick out of a man who affects to wrap up those Tenets of his and their Consequences which he thinks would not be for his Credit to discover in Mysterious Reserves The like Shuffling he uses in the Notion of Certainty or any other that is of Concern in our present Dispute for he is a very Impartial man and treats them All alike Ask him then If Faith be Absolutely Certain by his Grounds He will not say it but more than once hints the contrary Are the Grounds of it at least Absolutely Certain tho' he makes them such ill-natur'd things that contrary to all other Grounds in the world they keep their Absolute Certainty to themselves and will let Faith have none of it Yes he 'll tell you they are provided
Equivocated in the Tenet of the Reall Presence and according to the Drs late Distinction making Not-Regulating to be one sort of Regulating would needs have the word Reall to mean Not-Reall whence it was judg'd expedient to put it past quibble by such a rigorously-express Definition And I much fear this vexes the Drs Sacramentarian Spirit far more then Transubstantiation it self I omit that he has forgot here the Common distinction of what Points are necessary Necessitate Medij and what Necessitate Praecepti I suppose because this Later did not sute with his Levelling Principles which set the Church and his Rabble on even Ground as to Matters of Faith. 64. I alledg'd that those Articles of the Trinity and Christ's Godhead were Fundamentall Points and therefore if his Rule could not Absolutely Ascertain People of all sorts coming to Faith of those Articles it could assure them of None and so is no Rule of Faith. He runs quite away from the Points and thinks he has done enough to say It is Absolutely Certain that God has reveal'd the Fundamentalls of our Faith. But the Question sticks still Are you Absolutely Certain by your Rule that the Trinity and Christ's Godhead are Christ's Doctrin or signify'd with Absolute Certainty by Scripture's Letter To this he says nothing but shifts it off most Shamelessly to another thing Let him set himself to do this which is his Task and we will undertake to examin the Nature of his Medium and show it Inconclusive I alledg'd that there is Experience by the Socinians taking the same way that his Medium or way to be Certain of this is not Certain He again turns off Experience that the way he takes is not Certain to Experience of his Inward Certainty or his Inward Persuasion And asks briskly whether he or I know best A pleasant Gentleman Why does he not confute all my Book by that Method Does he think 't is enough to show he is Absolutely Certain of the Sense of Scripture as to those Points with barely saying he knows he is thus Certain of it better than I What wretched Shifts are these In pursuance of this new Method of Proving and Confuting He asks again How comes Mr. S. to know we are not Certain when we say we are Because when you are most highly Concern'd and stood Engag'd by promise to show this Absolute Certainty and are Prest to it Vehemently and upon the brink of losing your Credit for not doing it you still decline the showing you have any such Certainty for the Sense of Scripture as to those Points Still he asks Are not we Certain because some that is the Socinians are not Certain No Sir not barely for that reason but because the Socinians proceeding upon the Same Rule are so far from being Certain of the Sense of Scripture as to those Points that they esteem themselves Certain by the same Scripture of Hereticall Tenets Point-blank Opposit to those Points Common Reason assures us no End can be compass'd without a Means and therefore you can never show us You are Certain till you show us you follow a better Way rely on a firmer Ground and Guide your selves by a Clearer Light to make you Certain of Scriptures Sense in those passages than They do which you can never show and as appears by your wriggling from that Point by the most untoward Shifts imaginable dare not Attempt But some are uncertain of Orall Tradition nay Censure it I do not know one man but holds and reverences it It lies upon his Credit to name those who Censure it For Lominus is a Chimaerical name and signifies no body that he knows But suppose Some did yet it being an object of Naturall Reason they and I in that case could not proceed on the Same Grounds or Reasons as his Protestants and the Socinians do upon the Same Rule of Faith. 65. I alledg'd that by his Principles he could be no more Certain of his Rule then he is of the Truth of the Letter of Scripture in regard the Truth of the Sense of Scripture depends on the Trueness of the Letter Does he deny this Or does he show that without the Care of the Church preserving the Letter Right all along he can have any Such Certainty of the Letter He not so much as Attempts either I alledg'd farther that he cannot be thus Certain of the Right Letter without having the same Certainty of the Right Translation or the True Copy nor that any Copy is True unless it be taken from the First Originall Does he deny this Or does he show that all these may not fail if the Churches's Care be set aside No neither What Shift has he then Why he says 1. That some of us are Concern'd to Answer this as well as He. Not at all for those who say that Part of Faith is Contain'd in Scripture do not for all that say that their Faith is built on Scripture's Letter interpreted by any but the Church nor do they say but the Church without Scripture could have ascertain'd them of their Faith. 2. He says This strikes at the Authentickness of the Vulgar Translation Not at all For we have other Grounds to go upon which they have Not. 3. He skips after bringing some words of mine for what they were never intended from the Translation to the Canon of Scripture which are a Mile wide from one another that so he may however he speeds in all the rest at least talk plausibly of the Concurrent Testimony for the Canon In order to which he stands up a Patron for those Christian Churches of his who thus concurr'd and will not condemn them as not truly Christian till their Cause be better heard and examin'd Yet 't is Evident from his Second Letter to Mr. G. p. 25. that some of those Churches were Arians Nestorians and Eutychians condemn'd for Hereticks by most Antient General Councils which he blames it seems for declaring so rashly against them and reprieves his Friends from their Censures till a fairer Hearing It had been happy for them had Dr. St. presided in those Councils for he would doubtless have dealt with them very kindly and have clapt them head and tail together with good Catholicks into one Latitudinarian Bill of Comprehension 5. I alledg'd that the same Sense in the heart of the Church enabled and oblig'd Her to correct the Copy when faulty in Texts containing Points of Faith which instead of shewing it Incompetent or Disagreeable to the Nature of things he confutes most Learnedly by pretending that Atheists and Unbelievers would be scandaliz'd at it Whereas they would be much more scandaliz'd to see no Certain Means assign'd to preserve the Letter right from the beginning the very first Originals being lost and all left the Churches Care set apart to so many contingences of Translating and Transcribing 6. We must prove it first to be impossible for the Sense of the Church to vary in any two
into Certainty of the Grounds on which we believe Scripture to contain the word of God. Why not a word of Reply to my Discourses there and in many other places shewing that Scripture's Containing Faith is nothing at all to our purpose but the Getting out from Scripture it 's true Meaning or Sense this only being our Faith and that his Faith is still Vncertain unless there be Certainty that such and such Articles Are Contain'd there Which Point tho' it be of the Highest Consequence yet he never sets himself to Solve our Arguments against it in his whole pretended Answer but he runs on still in the same Errour as if nothing had been alledg'd to shew his Discourses insignificant and frivolous Why no Answer to my Discourse proving that a Rule or Ground is none if it carry not thorough to the particular Points especially to those which are most Fundamentall unless granting it in effect p. 36. and allowing no Absolute Certainty to any particular Point of Faith may be called an Answer Why no Excuse for his Skewing Comment upon his own Answer which spoke of Absolute Certainty of all Christ's Doctrin which consists of such and such particular Tenets to the Writings of the Apostles whereas there was not a word of Writing in Mr. G's Question or in his own Answer either Nor any notice taken of my Argument manifesting that a Resolution of Faith speaks Connexion of the Motives that are to prove it Christ's Doctrin to the Points of Faith laid home to him in a Close Discourse demonstrating the Necessity it should be such Why no Account of his distinguishing between Christ's Doctrin and that of the Apostles that so he might mis-represent Tradition and alter the Question from a Publick to a Private Delivery Why no Reason given of his not Resolving his Faith into the Apostles Preaching but only into their Writing I mean no Answer to my Reasons why he ought to have resolv'd it into the former at least Equally Why no Answer to my Reasons shewing from his ill-laid Principles that Perfect Contradictories Points of Faith and wicked Heresies opposit to them are both Equally Certain Why no Excuse for his Shuffling from the New Testament's Containing all the Divine Revelations to the Church'es making men fix by degrees upon the Certain Canon of it which is there shewn and indeed appears of it self to be a quite disparate business Why not the least Excuse for his most abominable four-fold Prevarication in answering to one single Question expos'd there at large and why no Defence or particular Explication of his beloved Sufficient Certainty nor any Application of it to the Nature Ends and Uses of a firm Faith that any Point is Christ's true Doctrin shewing that his feeble Motives are sufficient for those particular purposes Why to make his odd Similitude of Scripture's being a Purse apposit does he not shew us some Certain Way how the Gold and Silver Points of Faith as he calls them may be got out of it without danger of extracting thence the impure Dross of Errour and Heresy instead of True Faith Again to make it square why does he not rather make the Heads and Hearts of the First Faithfull the Purses since as was shewn him Faith is more properly Contain'd there than in a Book Or if he will needs make use of an Improper Container of Faith too why does not he put two Purses viz. the Souls of the Faithfull and the Scripture And why not a word of Reply to my Plain Reasons why he ought to have done both these Why no Answer to my Reasons proving that All the Points of Faith are Necessary for the Salvation of Mankind and for the Church otherwise than by rambling to Transubstantiation p. 84. and that he sees no Necessity of it Which makes his often-alledg'd Distinction of Necessary Unnecessary Points brought to avoid the Question perfectly frivolous and why runs he still on with the same Distinction in this pretended Answer without taking off the Exceptions against it by only crying Alas for him when I askt him If Christ taught any unnecessary Articles and by saying they are not equally Necessary p. 33. Why nothing to justify that his Assent of Faith may not be False and so no Faith Why no Reply to my Reasons that notwithstanding his pretended Grounds He has no Absolute Certainty that even the Letter of Scripture is Right whereas if it be not he can have no Certainty but all is Wrong that is grounded upon it since in that case he may embrace a Grand Heresy for True Faith Why no Answer to my plainest Argument shewing how Christ's Doctrin continu'd all along in the Breast of the Church is the best Means to correct the Letter in Texts that contain Faith Why no Reply to my many Reasons shewing that the Ancient Church allow'd our way of Tradition and disallow'd his of Scripture privately Interpreted Why does he not confute my Discourses manifesting that he can have no Absolute Certainty by his Principles of the Number of Books or of each Chapter Verse and Material Word in each Verse that concerns any Point of Faith without doing which he cannot pretend to have Certainty of the Letter nor consequently of any one of those Points Why no Reply to that Important Objection that if Scripture were the Rule of Faith the Primitive Church had for some time but half or three-quarters of their Faith or less and so by his Principles were but three-quarters or half Christians according as the several pieces came by degrees to be spread accepted or universally acknowledg'd nay perhaps no Faith at all as was there shewn and why did he instead of replying turn it off to the single Epistle to the Hebrews and to an Insignificant If Why when it was objected that divers of his Christian Churches doubted of divers Books of Scripture and some late Brethren of his of some others does he again turn it off as to the former to the Canon of Scripture made afterwards and to the later says nothing Why not a word to my Clearest Proof that our Tradition or Testimony for Doctrin is incomparably more large in its source which gives it its chief force than his is for Scripture's Letter Why does he not clear himself of his preferring his Sober Enquirer before the Church the unreasonableness of which was urg'd home against him nor justify his weak discourses in some sleigter passages laid open p. 64.65 Why not a syllable of Answer to that most highly-concerning Discourse and which if it stands in its full force overthrows all the whole Fabrick of his Doctrin viz. that a Rule or Ground are Relative Words and therefore Scriptures Letter cannot be an Absolute Certain Rule or Ground unless its Ascertaining virtue affects the Articles known by it This Point has been prest upon him so vigorously
your Infallibility to contradict my 15 th Principle for the Faith of Protestants and full at unawares into the Snares laid for me in Error Nonplust from p. 90 to p. 96 which I have no mind to come near But whatever Reasons you had to make this Proposal I see none that Mr. G. has to accept it Do you prove if you please that you have Absolute Certainty you who bear those in hand who consult you that you have and Absolute Certainty too of that of which you profess'd your self absolutely Certain viz. That you now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles which by your own confession there is the true Point For you know very well one is not certain of his Faith by being certain of Scripture Your self take all who dissent from yours to have not only an Vncertain but a Wrong Faith else why do you dissent from them And yet they have all as much Certainty of Scripture as you The truth is if you were prest to make out your Absolute Certainty even of Scripture in your way you would perhaps find a hard Task of it for all your Appeal to Tradition But it was not the Point for which the Conference was nor ought it be the Point here neither ought Mr. G. to meddle with it and you trust much to his good Nature to propose it For besides that all the thanks he would have for his pains would be to have the Arguments against your Certainty turn'd against the Certainty of Scripture one day as if he did not believe Scripture Certain You would have him undertake a matter in which he has no concern to save you from an Undertaking in which you are deeply concern'd but with which you know not how to go thorow which is a very reasonable Request In a word it is for you either to make manifest now what you should have made manifest at the Conference viz. That Protestants have Absolute Certainty not only of the Scripture which they call their Rule but of the Faith which they pretend to have from that Rule or else to suffer another thing to be manifest viz. That I said true when I said you cannot do it and thither I am sure it will come 22. However I am glad to hear any Talk from you of Absolute Certainty even tho' it be but Talk 'T is a great Stranger as coming from your Quarters and has a friendly and an accommodating look and therefore for both regards deserves a hearty welcome For this very Profession makes a fair approach towards the Doctrin of Infallibility or rather 't is the self-same with it it being against Common Sense to say you judge your self Absolutely Certain of any thing if at the same time you judge you may be deceiv'd in thus judging But I accept the Omen that you seem to grant you are thus Absolutely Certain or Infallible by virtue of Tradition for this makes Tradition to be an Infallible Ascertainer in some things at least and so unless some special difficulty be found in other things that light into the same Channel it must needs bring them down infallibly too Now I cannot for my heart discern what great difficulty there can be 'to remember all along the yesterdays Faith or to be willing to be guided and instructed by their yesterdays Fathers Teachers and Pastors especially the sense of the Points to omit many other means being determin'd by open and daily Practice Yet I a little fear all this your seeming kindness for Tradition is only for your own Interest and that because you were necessitated to make use of it to abet Scripture's Letter you allow it in that regard these high Complements but in other things particularly in conveying down a Body of Christian Faith which is incomparably more easie it will presently become useless and good for nothing In the former exigency you esteem it A worthy Rule but in the later duty A Rule worthy 23. Now to let the Reader plainly see that it was meer Force and not Inclination which oblig'd you to grant an Absolute Certainty in Tradition conveying down Scriptures Letter we will examin what you allow'd it when you laid your Principles and so spoke your own free thoughts unconstrain'd by any Adversary Your fifteenth Principle is put down p. 90. in Error Nonplust and that part of it that concerns this present Point is thus reflected upon by your Adversary p. 92 93. Again tho all this were true and that the Scriptures were own'd as containing in them the whole Will of God so plainly reveal'd that no sober Enquirer can miss of what 's necessary to Salvation and that therefore there needed no Church to explain them Yet 't is a strange Consequence that therefore there can be no necessity of any Infallible Society of Men to Attest them or to witness that the Letter of Scripture is right This is so far from following out of the former part of Dr. St's Discourse that the contrary ought to follow or from prejudicing his own pretence that it conduces exceedingly to it For certainly his Sober Enquirer would less be in doubt to miss of what 's necessary to Salvation in case the Letter on which all depends be well attested than if it be not and most certainly an Infallible Society of Men can better attest that Letter than a Fallible one and those Writings can with better shew of Reason be own'd to contain in them the Will of God if their Letter be attested beyond possibility of being wrong than if left in a possibility of being such for if the Letter be wrong All is wrong in this case As manifest then as 't is that to be Absolutely Certain of any thing is not to be Fallibly Certain of it that is as manifest as 't is that to be Absolutely Certain of a thing is to be Infallibly Certain of it so manifest it is that you there contradict your self here and that however you may endeavour to come off you allow not heartily nor without some regret and reluctancy an Absolute Certainty to Tradition even in Attesting Scripture's Letter 24. In these words of yours p. 7 As to the Rule of our Faith give me leave to reflect on the word OVR and thence to ask you who are YOV A Question which I ask not of your Name or Sirname but of your Judgment as you call it of Discretion Are you a Socinian an Arian a Sabellian an Eutychian c. or what are you Are you a whole or a half or a Quarter-nine-and-thirty-Article Man Do you take them for Snares or Fences and when for the one and when for the other and wherefore These words The Rule of OVR Faith make you all these at once for all these profess unanimously Scripture's Letter is their Rule of Faith. Mr. G. when he came to your House imagin'd he was to treat with a Protestant or something like it and to have learn'd from you what
Absolute Certainty you would assign for your that is Protestant Faith and you give him only a Generical Latitudinarian Rule common to all the Heresies in the World. The Project of the Comprehension-Bill was a trifle to this It brings into one Fold all the most enormous Straglers that have been since Christ's time nay Wolves and Sheep and all It blends into one Mass the most heterogeneous and hitherto irreconcilable Sects Nay it miraculously makes Light and Darkness very consistent and Christ and Belial very good Friends For your own Credit sake then distinguish your kind of Protestants if you be indeed one of that Church from that infamous Rabble of stigmatiz'd Hereticks and let us know what is the Proper Difference that restrains that Notion of a Common Rule to your particular as such a kind of Protestant and shew us that specifical Rule to be Absolutely Certain I say such a kind for even the word Protestant too is a Subaltern Genus and has divers Species and 't is doubted by many who are no Papists under which Species you are to be rankt But why should I vex you with putting you upon manifest Impossibilities For the Letter being the common Rule to them all and as daily experience shews us variously explicable that which particularizes it to belong specially to this or that Sect as its proper Rule can be only this According as my self and those of my Iudgment understand or interpret it The Difference then constituting your Protestant Rule as distinguisht from that of those most abominable Heresies can only be as my own Iudgment or others of my side thus or thus interpret Scripture's Letter and wriggle which way you please there it will and must end at last Go to work then distinguish your self by your Ground of Faith and then make out this your proper Rule to be Absolutely Certain or Infallible and then who will not laugh at you for attempting it and assuming that to your self which you deny to God's Church and preferring your self as to the Gift of Understanding Scripture right before the whole body of those many and Learned Churches in Communion with Rome Nay and before the Socinians too without so much as pretending to make out to the World that you have better Means either Natural or Supernatural to interpret those Sacred Oracles than had the others 25. My last Exception is that you pretend the Letter of Scripture is a Rule of Faith for your People which not one in a Million even of your own Protestants relies on or ever thinks of relying on in order to make choice of their Faith or determining what to hold This pretence of yours looks so like a meer Jest that I cannot perswade my self you are in earnest when you advance such a Paradox For 't is manifest that while your Protestants are under Age and not yet at years of Discretion to judge they simply believe their Fathers and Teachers that is they follow the way of Tradition however misplac'd And when they come to Maturity pray tell us truly how many of your Sober Enquirers have you met with in your life who endeavour to abstract from all the prejudices they have imbib'd in their Minority and reducing their inclin'd thoughts to an equal Balance of Indifferency do with a wise Jealousie lest this Popish way of believing immediate Fathers and Pastors should delude them as it has done the whole World formerly resolve to examin the Book of Scripture it self read it attentively pray daily and fervently that God's Spirit would discover to them whether what they have learn'd hither to be true or no and what is and in a word use all the Fallible means for you allow them no other which your Sober Enquirers are to make use of to find out their Faith I doubt if you would please to answer sincerely you would seriously confess you scarce ever met with such a one in your life that is never met with any one who rely'd upon Scripture's Letter practically for his Rule of Faith whatever you may have taught them to talk by rote Can any Man of Reason imagin that all the Reformed in Denmark or Sueden to omit others did light to be so unanimously of one Religion meerly by means of reading your Letter-Rule and your Sober Enquiry Or can any be so blind as not to see that 't is the following the natural way of Tradition or Childrens believing Fathers that is indeed of Education that such multitudes in several places continue still of the same perswasion and that you consequently owe to this way which you so decry in Catholics that any considerable number of you do voluntarily hang together at all And that those Principles of yours which you take up for a shew when you write against Catholics would if put in practice in a short time crumble to Atoms all the Churches in the World Perhaps indeed when your Protestants come at Age they may receive some Confirmation from their Fathers and Preachers quoting Scripture-places against what Catholics hold or what they shall please to say they hold and by the same means come to believe a Trinity the Godhead of Christ Christ's Body being absent in the Sacrament and such like but do the Hearers and Learners make it their business to use all careful disquisition for a slubbering superficial diligence will not serve the turn in matters of such high Concern whether the Catholics and those great Scripturists who deny those other Points do not give more congruous explications of those places than their own Preachers do unless they do this or something equivalent 't is manifest the Letter of Scripture is not their Rule but honest Tradition And that they do no such thing is hence very apparent that they rest easily satisfi'd and well appaid with their Parson's interpretation of Scripture they presently accept it for right and good and readily swallow that sense which some Learned Men of their own Judgment assign it without thinking themselves oblig'd to observe your Method of Sober Enquiry You may rail against the Council of Trent as you will for forbidding any to interpret Scripture against the Sense which the Church holds but 't is no more than what your Hearers perpetually practise and the Preachers too for all their fair words expect from them And I much doubt even your self tho' your Principles are the most pernicious for taking matters out of the Churche's and putting them into private Hands of any Protestant I ever yet read would not take it very well if some Parishioner of yours presuming upon his Prayers for Direction c. should tell you that you err'd in Interpreting Scripture and that the Sense he gave it was sound and right Faith yours wrong and Heretical and I would be glad to know what you would say to him according to your Principles if he should hap to stand out against you that he understands Scripture to be plainly against a Trinity and Christ's Divinity as
possibly remain not the same Will it shew us that a Cause can be without its Effect or an Effect without its Cause Will it shew us that a thing can be and not be at once Unless it can do such Feats as these you may keep your Notwithstanding to your self for any Service it will do you here For all the Notwithstandings in the world cannot hinder a thing which is true from being true nor the Proof which proves it to be true from being a Proof Mr. G 's Proof shews that Tradition from Father to Son is an Infallible Conveyance of Faith as plainly as that Men are Men And would you persuade us with the Rhetorick of your Notwithstanding that we do not see what we see Tho' you had brought twenty of them instead of one we could see nothing by them but that you had a good Fancy for they shew us nothing of the Object nor offer at it You shew us not how the Operations of Human Nature should be suspended in our present Case nor any thing which should or could suspend them but would have us believe Men were prodigiously forgetful or malicious purely for the sake of an Imagination of yours I pray rub up afresh your old Logical Notions and reflect whether it were ever heard of in University Disputes that when an Argument is advanc'd the Defendant is allow'd to make Objections against it and instead of Answering bid the Arguer prove his Conclusions to be true Notwithstanding all his Objections Consider how perfectly this confounds the Offices of the Disputant and Defendent and makes all Regular Discourse impossible Consider how this new Method of yours destroys the very possibility of ever concluding any thing that is the very Faculty of Reasoning For Objections being generally multipliable without end if all of them must be Solv'd e're any Argument concludes nothing will be concluded nor any Conclusion admitted And so a long so Farewel to Rational Nature Consider that Truth is built on its own Intrinsecal Grounds and not on the Solving Objections For your own Credits sake then with Learned Men and Logicians do not seek to evade with Notwithstandings but Answer fairly and squarely to the Argument as it lies Consider that who has found the Cause has found the Effect Mr. G. has found us a Cause of Infallible Conveyance and therefore has shew'd us an Infallible Conveyance You pretend that tho' there was the Cause there was not the Effect and this 't is known beforehand cannot be and you knew it as well as any body But you knew likewise there was no saving your Stakes without playing a new Game and therefore give you your due did all that could be done in trying to divert our sight from a Matter plain before us and amuse us us with a Matter of Fact which you are sure will be obscure enough by that time it is handled long enough The Terms you put viz. Tradition Error and the Greek Church must needs bring into Dispute whether such and so many Quotations or some one or two Men disclaiming their Tenet to be a Novelty be a Proof of Tradition from Father to Son whether the Error be any Error and whether and for how much an Error in Faith and how much of it belongs to Divinity whether the Greek Church be ingag'd by a Citation from a Greek Author of two that be cited one against another which shall be preferr'd and thought to speak the sense of his Church and which is a Latiniz'd which a frank Grecian And who shall see through the Mists which these Disputes will raise More too will fall in in process of time There will be wrangling about the sense of Words the propriety of Phrases the preference of Readings and twenty such important quarrels which will tire out every body and satisfie no body In short you saw that if you could perswade People not to think the Church of Rome Infallible till all be said which will occur to be said of the Greek Church you are safe enough For Doomsday will come before that day Till then you may carry it with a shew of Erudition because there must be abundance of Greek cited And this is all which can come of your Instance and I wish it were not all you had in your Eye 31. In the mean time you have not answer'd Mr. G. because you have found no fault in any Proposition or in the Inference of his Argument and therefore it rests with you to answer it He has answer'd you because he has found this fault with your Instance which you make your Antecedent that it is not true and that the Greek Church did not at once err in Faith and adhere to Tradition and therefore it rests again with you to prove it and yet while you are Debtor both ways you call upon him to pay Ere we part Take this along with you that the Debt which you are precisely bound to satisfie first is to answer his Argument and till you do this you can claim no right to Object or Argue I am SIR Your humble Servant The Second Catholick Letter OR REFLECTIONS ON THE Reflecters Defence OF Dr. Stillingfleet's First Letter to Mr. G. Against the ANSWER To the Arguing Part of it Published with Allowance LONDON Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn 1687. TO THE READER PErhaps it has scarce been seen hitherto that all our Polemical Contests were reduc'd within so narrow a compass My First Letter insisted chiefly on Two short Discourses Whereof the one undertook to shew the Nullity of the Rule of Faith claim'd by Dr. St. and his Protestants The other the Absolute Certainty of the Catholic Rule and the whole Controversie was in short about the Certainty or Uncertainty of Christian Faith. Both of those Discourses were presum'd by us to be Conclusive and so we offer'd a fair Advantage to our Adversary if he could shew clearly any of our Propositions was false or their Connexion slack Hence I had good hopes that Reply of mine would have brought our Controversie very near an end had Dr. St's Return been suitable to our Attempts Especially it had brought the Business to a Crisis had he been pleas'd to shew the Absolute Certainty of his Rule or of his Faith as grounded on that Rule which was justly expected But Error Nonplust has already convinc'd the World That the bringing any Dispute to Principles or Grounds agrees not with their Constitution who have none While our Expectations were thus rais'd no News could we hear of Dr. St. An Answer comes out from another hand not very obliging to him in my opinion whether he were or were not preacquainted with it For if he were and 't is hard to imagine that a Piece writ in his Defence had not both his Direction Inspection and Approbation People will suspect he foresaw what would come of it and was glad the Shame should fall on another and that he has but little
Kindness for his Friend whom he suffers to Write on this manner If he were not they will suspect his Friends have as little Kindness for him and less Regard who manage his Cause without his Privity However it be the Answer affords no work for a Replier but the most ungrateful one in the World to be perpetually telling men of their Faults without the least hopes of doing them good or contributing to their amendment They being of such a nature that they are our Adversaries most necessary supports in their unlucky circumstances And indeed the whole Piece seems to have no other Design but to bring the Dispute into a Wrangle Yet this Profit may be hoped that every moderate Iudgment will see by the very methods we take which side desires and sincerely endeavours that Truth may appear It would be much a greater if Dr. St. or whom he pleases to employ would plainly shew the Absolute Certainty which he says they have or else plainly confess they have it not But this is not to be hoped Yet I entreat the Reader because I distrust my own Credit to sollicit him if he thinks it not too dangerous for him to do the one or the other and in doing it to use as much Reason as he will and as little Laughing as he can We are sufficiently satisfy'd of his faculty of Risibility and would be glad to see a touch or two of his Rationality REFLECTIONS ON Dr. St's Reflecters Defence Addrest to Himself 1. I Enquire not Sir since it concerns me not to know why you would needs become a Party or rather an Advocate in a Cause depending between Dr. St. and another If it were desir'd of you you are to be excus'd so you perform well what you undertook that is to defend the Dr. especially his Logick and his Absolute Certainty But if you had nothing to draw you in besides the Weight of what you had to say I think you might very well have kept out You begin like a man of Art with prepossessing your Reader against your Adversary and in favour of your self and so would have me pass for a pleasant artificial deluding Companion and your self for a man Godly even to scruple and who cannot barely repeat the Metaphor of holding ones Cards without asking Pardon The Reader will find by your writing to which of us your former Character is most like In the mean time I own the Confidence of talking of Self-evidence and Absolute Certainty and Infallibility and bless the Mercy of God for making me of a Communion in which that Language is Proper and humbly pray Him to preserve me from the Face if I must not say Confidence of setting up for a Guide without them For between a blind Guide and one who sees not his way I think the difference is not great Much good may your Modesty do you your Obscurity your Vncertainty and Fallibility If your Conscience perswade you these are the best qualifications of Christan Doctrin and best Security which God would provide for the Souls of men mine would sooner use Twenty Metaphors than perswade People to venture their Eternity upon them But at worst it is no greater fault in me sure than in Dr. St. to talk of Absolute Certainty Unless he perhaps repent and would be content an unfortunate Word inconsiderately blurted out should be retracted for him by another which 't is not so handsome to retract himself whereas I like a man of Confidence meant what I said and stand to it and can have no good opinion of those modest men that say and unsay as sutes with the occasion 2. To fall to our Business your Discourse has Three Parts The First reflects on what I said of turning Proof over from your Protestants to Catholicks The Second pretends to answer my Argument And the Third Mr. G's Some Gleanings in your Language there are besides but this is the main Crop. Upon the first Point since Proof does or does not belong to Protestants there is nothing more to be said to purpose but either to shew that Proof does not belong to them or to bring it if it does But let us see how you handle the matter 3. I had exprest my self to grieve and wonder there should be so little value for Souls among your Party as to send Men to the Tribunal of God without furnishing them with assurance that they can justifie their Accounts themselves But if say you they may be assured they can give up a good account may they not be assur'd that they have the Grace of God and of their Iustification and Salvation And then what becomes of the Council of Trent Of what Account do you speak I beseech you If as I did of an Account of Faith I hope you will not perswade us a man cannot know why he believes without knowing whether he be in the State of Grace or sure of his Salvation and therefore I hope you will not persist to think it hard to conceive how the bare assurance of the Truth of what is taught should enable a man to justifie his account without an Assurance of Grace too since his very Assurance of the Truth which he believes is a Iustification of his Account for believing it If you speak of an Account of our whole lives it becomes you huge well to talk of my Confidence who have your self the Confidence to turn things against the plain Scope of my Discourse against my plain Words and I much fear against your own Knowledge For where the only Question was of the Certainty of Protestant Faith or which is all one of Christian Faith upon your Protestant Grounds an Account why your Protestants believe who cannot tell whether Christ taught it was the only Account that belongs to that Question But what needs more Are not you I too fully perswaded while we are writing this very Controversie that we maintain the Truth of our Faith by such arguments as can justifie us not to have fail'd of that Duty and if we do so cannot both us justifie our selves in that particular and all who assent upon them to God as well as man And cannot either of us bring a solid Argument to prove that Christ Taught what we hold without being assur'd before-hand we are in the state of Grace and shall be sav'd Or Is this any thing to the Council of Trent as you pretend What paltring is this then to pretend that no Controvertist can bring a Proof that concludes Christ Taught such a Doctrin and so justifies them that adhere to the Truth it evinces for fear forsooth of making men sure of their Iustification and Salvation and of contradicting the Council of Trent A pretty fetch to excuse your selves from bringing any Arguments worth a Straw to justifie your Followers for believing upon them Alas you have store enough of them but out of pure Conscience we must think dare not produce them for fear of enabling your People
well knowing that the more Judgment a man has and the more he uses it the sooner and better he will discern that the Doctrin of Christ cannot be securely learnt from those of Your and Dr. St's Principles But Why all this Or How come I to stand in your way Do I hinder you from shewing Protestants that They are Certain of their Faith They allow a Judgment of Discretion if it stick there whether I do or no. But you cannot gratifie Catholics with Proof it seems because they are against Judgment of Discretion nor Protestants because they are for it that is in plain terms you will not prove the Certainty of your Faith at all You conclude very conformably that I have set us all on even Ground Yes most Mathematically even For I set Absolute Certainty on the one side and Vncertainty on the other and this in your Language is even Ground 7. Your next Paragraph says I fall upon the Certainty of Protestant Faith which I hope easily to overthrow The Reader cannot but apprehend now that I am making Arguments against it of which you know very well I did not think Where do I fall upon this Matter Why I said Suppose Mr. G. could not prove Protestants are certain are they therefore certain The meaning of which words is clearly this that the Certainty of Protestant Faith must depend on their own Proofs for it not on any Man 's being able or not able to prove the contrary which is what Dr. St. would have put upon us So that to avoid proving which was demanded you put upon me the direct contrary to what I affirm'd viz. That the Certainty of Protestant Faith does depend upon our not proving they have none whereas I contend it does not depend upon it What shifts are you put to that you may escape this dangerous business of proving your Faith Certain Well but did I say true or no You trouble not your Head with such impertinent thoughts but fall to prophesie what I imagin'd This say you he first imagins that all the certainty of our Faith is this That Papists cannot prove it to be uncertain and that then I make sport with my own Imagination Better and better Not to take notice of your shuffling in that Papists cannot prove Protestants are not Certain which I am very far from imagining because I said our not-proving the contrary is no Certainty to Protestants he will have me imagin it is their Certainty nay All their Certainty when he knows I am aware and confess they pretend to Scripture for it and p. 26. urg'd them to make out they had Absolute Certainty by It. The rest is to tell me I play and you will be serious And your way of being serious when you have chosen to fall upon this Question whether Protestants become Certain by our not proving them Uncertain is without saying a word to it to skip to another Paragraph of mine 8. Where I had said that Any man may find it confest to his hand by Protestants that they have no Absolute Certainty of their Faith For which I cited Dr. Tillotson And you tell me first that Dr. Tillotson is an excellent man and so he is for he excells even your self which requires a great Talent in your way of handling Controversie in all your Arts. Next to take your turn in imagining you imagin single Dr. Tillotson too many for all the Traditionary Catholicks to answer his Rule of Faith. And I imagin that Dr. Tillotson knows the contrary For I have been inform'd Dr. Tillotson had the offer of an Answer from a Traditionary Catholic long ago upon condition he would contribute his Credit to get it printed which he thought not sit to do Since I perceive you do not know an Answer when you see it unless the word Answer be in the Title-page I will not tell you it is answer'd already tho' I believe I can make it good But I will venture a fair Wager with you it will be answer'd in his own Formal way every jot as soon as Reason against Railery Lastly You deny that this Confession That Protestants have no Certainty no Absolute Certainty if it please you of their Faith is to be found in the pages cited or any other part of Dr. Tillotson's Book If you do not understand English I cannot help it but any one that does may find in the last of the pages cited As far as silence gives consent it is own'd by Dr. Tillotson himself For it was laid before him by Reason against Railery and with him it has lain these fifteen Years and yet you would perswade us you see it not nor I neither if I may be believ'd against my self 9. Your Rhetorick Sir is very great if it will do you this piece of Service but let us hear it however I had said to Dr. St. p. 23. You seem to grant you are thus Absolutely-Certain or Infallible by vertue of Tradition Upon which Theme you thus declame How confess we have no Certainty no Absolute Certainty I beseech you again and yet seem to grant we are Infallible and that too by Vertue of Tradition Some people had need of good Memories As if it were so strange a thing for Protestants to contradict one another or the same man himself or that there needed Memory to observe what passes every day By the favour of your Exclamations Dr. St. did say at the Conference that They are Absolutely Certain that they now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles by the Divine Revelations contained in the Writings of the New Testament and of those Revelations by the Vniversal Testimony of the Christian Church And in his First Letter he did desire Mr. G. to prove that they have no Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of their Faith altho' they have a larger and firmer Tradition for it than we can have for the points of Faith in difference And Dr. Tillotson did say in his Rule of Faith p. 118. We are not infallibly certain that any Book speaking of Scripture is so ancient as it pretends to be or that it was written by him whose Name it bears or that this is the sence of such and such passages in it It is possible all this may be otherwise Now if one of those Writers do not seem to grant that they are Absolutely Certain or Infallible and that too by vertue of Tradition and the Other confess that they have no Absolute Certainty of their Faith English is no intelligible Language in England If you think this a Contradiction you may talk with your excellent men about it and let me alone till you can shew I talk against my self by relating barely what others say Must my Memory be blam'd when their Judgments are in fault For a Contradiction it is if Absolutely Certain and Infallible be the same which I both prov'd formerly and it will come
could have remembred their Yesterday's Faith had not Scripture been writ Now pray Sir be serious and tell us Do you think there is any danger or even possibility of this among the very Protestants in England tho' they had never a Bible to read to morrow How many of them read not so much as a Chapter in three or four days how many not in a much longer time nay how few of them read all their Faith there in a Year or even in their whole Life and yet they retain the memory not only of their Yesterdays but last Years Faith What a weakness is this to suppose Miracles must be done for no other end but that you may answer our Argument The Reasons why Scripture was writ you might have read in St. Paul to Timothy where there is no such thing as to make men remember their Yesterdays Faith nor that Scripture is of Necessity at all but only that 't is Profitable for many Uses there enumerated Your Second Argument to confute our Demonstration is a Text 2 Pet. 1.15 by which you will convince us Mens memories are not alwaies so faithful You must mean to remember their Yesterdays Faith for this Degree of Memory only the Argument insists on But what says that B. Apostle I will endeavour that you may be able after my Decease to have these things alwaies in remembrance Now there is not so much as one Word in the whole Chapter concerning the remembring or forgetting their Faith much less the Faith they held Yesterday or leaving their Faith in Writing for that purpose but only Faith suppos'd of remembring his particular Exhortations to Good Life and by thus inculcating them to stir them up as 't is said v. 13. to Christian Virtue and leaving such things in Writing to that end Now such Spiritual and Moral Instructions are both easily Intelligible especially since he had taught the same to them formerly and Man 's Natural Corruption making even good men apt to slide back from the high degree of Perfection in which they had been educated no doubt a Letter left by that Holy Apostle now near his death as he there tells them would strike them more feelingly and excite them more effectually to pursue that Course of Holy Life in which he had instructed them What miserable Stuff is this Would not Faith have an excellent Basis did it depend on Scripture interpreted by your Private Judgments When this one Instance manifests you have the boldness to quote Scripture for any thing tho' never so disparate and unconcerning and then blasphemously nick-name it God's Word when 't is nothing at all to the purpose But I beseech you Sir let 's have the Return of one Scholar to another If our Argument lye too open or the Connexion in it be too slack speak to it as you ought but think not your Private Interpretations a competent Solution to Demonstrations If such wretched Answers may serve the turn the Schools and Universities may shut up Shop and Reasoning bid adieu to the World Every Fop will find a Text he can hook in nor will he fail of interpreting it blindly to his own purpose when he is gravell'd with an Argument and of calling it God's Word when he has done Who will not see you are sinking when you catch at such Straws and weak Twigs to keep you above Water 45. By this time the Reader will be satisfy'd that Notwithstanding all you have answer'd Men had Memory enough not to forget their Yesterdays Faith Next you go about to prove Christians may be malicious enough to alter it May not Christians say you p. 23. through malice and wickedness be as careless of preserving the Faith as in maintaining Holiness in themselves or their Posterity when they know that Sin is as damnable as Errour Be Judge your self Do not many of your Congregation and the like may be said of all Sects sin often and yet few or none of them desert their Faith once The reasons why the Parallel holds not are these 1. Sins are generally private at least Men do for the most part endeavour and hope to conceal their Faults for fear of shame and discredit But the Change of Faith must be profest and open otherwise it alters not the case and Posterity will still believe on according as things appear outwardly 2. Sinners are seldome Malicious to that degree as to resolve firmly to persist so to the end of their Lives but generally fall out of frailty and intend and hope to repent And so this very thing will oblige them still to hold to their former Faith which as Experience tells them furnishes Sinners with means of Repentance 3. Man's Nature being inclin'd to Truth scarce one man tells a Lye but hopes to cloak it But here when they deliver another Faith for the same that was held Yesterday every man must know his Neighbour to be an abominable shameless Lyar and the Concern being so Sacred must hold himself and all his fellow-Alterers the wickedst men living Unless it be said they went conscientiously upon some other ground than Tradition for to pretend to be sav'd by Tenets held upon no ground at all is absolutely impossible to consist with Rational Nature But 't is impossible they should take up another Ground Because if they could not innovate in Faith they could not innovate in that upon which they held all their Faith. Nor could they be certain but all their former Faith might be renounc'd if a new Rule of Faith were taken up To hear of which could not consist with the temper of Christians to bear a loss for all their Faith. Besides Men are more tenacious of their Principles especially if they have gain'd a vast Credit by their long Continuance than they are to relinquish all they have receiv'd upon those Principles Again Tradition is the Authority of the whole Ecclesia Docens the Chiefest part of I might say the Ecclesia Credens too witnessing the deliver'd Faith which is so vast a Body that it could never were there nothing but its own Interest permit it self to be thought to have attested a Lye hitherto Add That none could be competent Judges what was fit to be a Rule of Faith but They who were so concern'd both in Duty and Interest Tradition should not be set aside Which considerations clearly evince an Universal Change in the Rule of Faith and this over the whole Body of Believers is absolutely impracticable Lastly There must be some great time between their discarding Tradition and espousing a New Rule during which time we must imagin the whole Church except perhaps some few that discourse it first would be made up of Seekers some hovering one way some another in which case they would as yet have no Faith and consequently there could be no Church 'T is left then that if they could innovate in Faith they must pretend to Tradition still when they had evidently deserted it that is they must
most wicked Falsification so you close it up here with a double one and those too of so large a size that were they True they had carry'd all before them Your intermediate Endeavours are many of them of the same kind the rest Mistakes and generally wilful ones which I thought at first to have reckon'd up but they thicken'd so upon me that I saw it would be tedious to count them and so gave it over But your excuse for this insincere Carriage is That you do no more than all Writers use to do who have had the bad luck to defend an ill Cause and come to be prest with Close Truth All they can do when they are not able to give a good acount of themselves is to bend all their study and seek about for shifts how they may give no account And the D. of P. and you are of this prudent Generation I say once again 'T is your Chief Study how to shift and long Study of any thing with frequent practice makes a man Excellent at it every man loves most to do that he is Excellent at and so we are to expect it To convince the Reader whether I wrong you or no Put you your Arguments for the Absolute Certainty of your Rule in conveying to us Christ's Sense and for your following it as close and home as you can possibly and see whether I do not answer it directly fairly squarely without any of these shifting Excursions or Falsifications And let our different Carriage be the Test to distinguish the candid Asserters of Truth from the Insincere Abetters of Errour 53. After I had shew'd that Scripture privately interpreted could not be a Rule of Faith the nature and method of our Dispute led me into an Enquiry what was in reality your Rule as you are such a kind of Protestant and to this End I discours't thus That Scripture was a Generical Rule common to you and all Heresies in the world and That your Specifical Rule must be as my self and those of my Iudgment understand or interpret it And can there be any thing more Evident Do not they all strive to lay claim to the Letter of Scripture for their Rule as well as you Do not they all as much as you rely upon it and avail themselves by quoting it still and endeavouring to shew it favourable to their respective Tenets Plain Experience informs us and every one they all do this and that too with an ardour and earnestness equal to yours as far as we can discern In this then you all agree and therefore 't is beyond all dispute Scripture is your Common or Generical Rule if we may believe your Carriage and Profession Now let 's see what 't is you disagree in And 't is manifest you disagree in the Sense of Scripture otherwise the Sense of Scripture being God's Sense or your Faith you would be of the same Faith which cannot be pretended since you contradict them and they You in matters belonging to Faith and What 's the Way to arrive at the Sense of Scripture Certainly the Interpreting it for Interpretation signifies in proper speech the Giving or Assigning to Words their sense and do not you accept that Sense of Scripture for your Faith which your Private Judgment interpreting it conceives to be truly its meaning and they in like manner as they apprehend it ought to be interpreted Is it not for this very end you so cry up your Judgment of Discretion and that you are not to submit to the Decrees of Councils or Consent of Fathers farther than you conceive them agreeable to the Word of God Does not Dr. St. profess openly that his sober Enquirer may understand the Explicit Sense of Implicit Points that are Doubtful such as all main Points of Faith are without the Church's help Second Letter p. 21. that is without any Publick Interpreter And Will you after this deny that Scripture is your General Rule in which you agree with all Hereticks and your specifical peculiar or proper Rule in which you differ from them and they from one another is Scripture as Interpreted by your selves The thing is plain let 's see what you say to it You with a very dexterous artifice grant and not grant it as we shall see anon and tell us 1. That Scripture is and ought to be common to all Hereticks tho' they miserably abuse it Pray Sir use my words I said a Common Rule to them and you and Can that be truly a Rule which they direct themselves by and yet warp into Errour You tell us indeed they miserably abuse it and the Socinians will say the same of you while you pretend to prove thence Christ is God. And how shall this Quarrel be decided For 't is hitherto a drawn Match between you while you fight with that ambidextrous Weapon Scripture's Letter interpretable by Private Iudgments The Point still sticks How can an indifferent man seeking for Faith by your Rule be satisfy'd They abuse it more than You Must not you be oblig'd to shew him some clearer Light than They have and that this Light justifies you for judging thus harshly of them that they are such miserable Abusers of Scripture And if you do not must he not in true reason judge 't is pretended by you gratis as also that you are highly uncharitable to charge them downright with so hainous a Crime 'T is that farther degree of Light in You that must justifie you for these pretences which we would gladly see for whatever it is 't is That which distinguishes you from them and sets you up to be Right Vsers of Scripture that is it gives you the Right Sense of it or your Faith and so it must difference you Essentially from them in your Grounds or Rule 'T is this Light I say we would be at Why is it so shy to shew its Face 2. Tho' 't is hard to conceive how they can be said to abuse Scripture who follow it to their Power yet since you will have it allow'd you gratis Does not their pretended miserable Abuse of Scripture consist in misinterpreting it Certainly you must say it does And if so then your right Interpretation of it or your taking it in a right sense is that in which your right Vse of it consists wherefore your own Interpretation of it is beyond all Evasion that which differences you from them and so 't is your peculiar or specifical Rule of Faith. 3. Do those Hereticks who thus miserably abuse it do this out of Wilfulness that is do they indeed understand it right but pretend they do not or do they use their endeavour to understand it and yet hap to abuse it by misunderstanding it If the former then again you must tell us gratis and ought to make it out to an Indifferent man seeking for Faith that the Socinians and all the erring Sects are the most wickedly insincere and the most blasphemous men in the World nay
attested and blame the Attestation and Tradition as it may be found to deserve but still when you would put your own Tenet as distinguish 't from ours be so kind as to put ours too and do not stand talking to us and fooling your Readers with the Rabbies pretended Tradition from Moses his mouth no more like ours than an Apple is like an Oyster Again this Resolution of your Faith gives every one Absolute Certainty of his Faith who believes he has Absolute Certainty of Scripture's letter and that it contains the Word of God. And yet Experience tells us that whole Bodys of Learned men believe all this and yet differ that is one side errs in the highest Mysteries of Christian Faith. Whence follows that both sides by this Doctrin are Absolutely Certain of their Faith one side for example is Absolutely Certain there is a Trinity and that Christ is God the other that there is no Trinity and that Christ is not God. This seems but a very odd account of the Certainty of Protestant Faith. 17. But you refine upon your self in your Answer to the 3 d Question p. 15. It was ask't there By what Certain Rule do you know that the New Testament which we now have does contain all the Divine Revelations of Christ and his Apostles This Question evidently aims at two things viz. First whether some Books writ by the Apostles were not lost as appears by those words which we now have For if they were then being penn'd by men divinely inspir'd they must necessarily contain some Divine Revelations in them too as well as did the other and then how does it appear there were not more or other Revelations contain'd in them than were contain'd in the books now extant The other is that you know well very many hold that diverse Divine Revelations were deliver'd down by Tradition and not all by Writing Let 's see now how your Answer sutes with this Question By the Vniversal Testimony say you of the Christian Church from the Apostles times downwards This Reply if pertinent to that Question must mean that this Vniversal Testimony ascertains us that the Scriptures we have now contains all the Divine Revelations But when you come to explain your self it comes to no more but that The Testimony of the Apostolical and the succeeding Churches did by degrees make men fix upon the Certain Canon of the New Testament What a flight have you taken on a sudden Where will you pitch when you light I am sure not on the place where you took wing and where you ought to have stay'd For What is their Testimony for the Books we now have to the Books which have or may have prerish't and to their containing some other Divine Revelations Or what is the fixing upon the Certain Canon of the Books to the difficulty whether some Divine Revelations did not descend by Tradition without Writing Do the Apostolical or succeeding Churches testify either of these Or do you so much as pretend they do Not a syllable of this do you say or take notice of and so not a syllable have you Answer'd to his Question Which was not about the Canon of Scripture or how you would resolve your Faith with which you keep such a pother over and over but whether the New Testament we have now contain'd all the Divine Revelations If you explicate Scripture no better for your Faith than you do your own words here you will questionless make a very extraordinary piece of work of it Your Answers come now and then pretty home the smartness of the Questions obliging you to it but your Explications of them immediately after seem purposely fram'd that we should not take you at your Word in your Answers 18. That Answer then prevaricating from the whole Question Mr. G. endeavour'd to press for a pertinent return to what was demanded and therefore puts his fourth Question thus Was that Vniversal Testimony an Infallible Rule to assure us certainly down to our time that the New Testament contain'd all the Divine Revelations of Christ and his Apostles Your Answer was The Vniversal Testimony of the Christian Church concerning the Book of Scripture and the Doctrin contain'd therein is a sufficient Ground to make us certain of all matters necessary to our Salvation 19. Here are many things worth our Admiration In the First Letter p. 7. this Universal Testimony was onely to ascertain the Scripture In the Answer to the Third Question here 't is onely to assure us that the New Testament contains all the Divine Revelations But here it is to certify us of the Doctrine too contain'd in it which if you mean as your Words seem to sound is all we require in our Tradition-Rule There may be some other subtle meaning lying yet coucht in those Words which Time may discover tho' we cannot yet till he that made the Lock bring the Key Again 't is ask't if it be an Infallible Rule T is answered T is a sufficient Ground T is ask't whether this Testimony assures us certainly the New Testament contains all the Divine Revelations T is answer'd it makes us certain of all Matters necessary to our Salvation which is clearly intended for a diminishing expression and argues some fear of undertaking for All the Divine Revelations being contain'd there or All the Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles as was pretended p. 14. One would verily imagin by this unsutable Answer that Dr. St. and Mr. G. were playing at Cross-purposes the Answer is so wide from the Question at least that there is some indirect design lies lurking it being so opposite to the wayes of honest Nature When one asks a positive Question all Mankind expects a Positive Answer to the very words as they ly I or No Or if the words be ambiguous 't is the duty of the Answerer to desire to be satisfied of the meaning of the Asker if present ere he answers without which in that case 't is impossible to reply pertinently But it is not your temper nor interest to use such clear and open candour For you saw that great multitudes had the Letter thus secur'd to them yet had not Absolute Certainty that all the Divine Revelations are contain'd in it therefore by adding and the Doctrin contain'd therein you had some faint hopes you might be safe Again you saw well that should you grant Universal Testimony to be an Infallible Rule you would hazard to grant too much to Tradition and all the learned Jests you have broke upon us for asserting Infallibility would fly back upon your self therefore grant it you durst not Nor yet durst you deny it to be an Infallible Rule for then since one of the two it must forcibly be you must affirm it to be a Fallible Rule And then the common sence of all Mankind Mr. T. amongst the rest would be justly scandaliz'd at the non sense For an intellectual Ground that may perhaps let sink
against Hereticks who had rejected the Authority of the Church even the Council of Trent does so another to say they had no firmer Ground for their Faith but their own private Iudgments of it's sense T is one thing to give it high Commendations for it's Excellency Divine Doctrin Usefulness and Sufficiency for the Ends for which it was Ordained by God 'T is another to say that in those places which relate to Spiritual Points and high Mysteries of our Faith it is so clear that private Fancies can with Absolute Certainty fix upon it's true sense and on that Ground their Faith. T is one thing to say sometimes 't is Plain and Evident when they are Arguing against Hereticks this is a thing not unusual even among us when we are disputing and have an opinion that what we alledge is manifest and those Fathers or Councils which insisted on it had good reason to have that opinion of what they alledg'd having the Doctrin of Faith Scripture's best Interpreter in their hearts Besides when there is full assurance of it's sense who doubts but it is of a vast Authority too being in that case the same as if the Apostle or Christ himself were there and spoke his Mind in the Point under debate Whence they confuted Hereticks with defining from Scripture upon the assurance that they had the true sense of it another Way than the Heretick had by his private Interpretations But 't is another thing to say that as manag'd by Private Judgments working on the bare Letter or relying on Fallible Interpreters it is so unavoidably convictive beyond all possibility of giving it another plausible sense that all Mankind must think him a Renouncer of the clear Light of Reason or stark blind with Passion and Interest and abhorr him as such who shall interpret it after another manner And such the Rule of Faith must be otherwise none could with Conscience think or say any Heretick is obstinate nor any man no not the Church it self condemn him much less abhorr him for being such as was ever her Custome All the former Perfections we as heartily fully and constantly ascribe to Scripture as any Protestant in the world nay we say moreover that this want of Clearness which unqualifies it for being a Rule springs from a very high perfection in it viz. It 's deep Sense onely this one of giving every particular man who by his private Judgment Interprets it such assurance of its sense as is competent to Ground his Faith on we cannot grant this being no less contrary to common Reason than 't is even to Experience also To return then to your Objection You see Sect. 10. that the Antient Fathers were not such Strangers to this Method of Tradition we follow and explicate And you might have observ'd many others both nam'd and cited Surefooting p. 131. to 137. What matters it that they did not express That our Tenet or Dilate upon it in such Terms as we do now so they taught others to hold to what was deliver'd and not to rely on their own private Interpretations of Scripture against the present Churches Doctrin Since in doing this they held the substance of that which we have since more diffusely explain'd and reduc't our Discourses to more Methodical and Formal Resolutions of Faith which were not so much in fashion in former Ages Besides you are not to be told we both have could alledge Fathers enow for our Tenet and the Obligation to hold to the Doctrin deliver'd from Fathers that is to Tradition and how smartly and unanswerably they prest it against Hereticks as a certain Determiner of the Controversies between the Catholicks and Them. On the other side how often they complain'd of the Vncertainty of the Scripture interpreted by private Men as Grounding all Heresies by reason of the mysterious Obscurity of the Letter and its liableness to be misinterpreted and misunderstood Whereas it was never heard that the Rule of Tradition taken in the sense in which we hold it viz. for a Delivery of a Practical Doctrin publickly preach't to great multitudes at first practised by them and held and recommended as Divine and the way to Salvation did ever give rise to any Heresy and impossible it should Which one Reflexion to a Considerate Man is sufficient to conclude the whole present Controversy about the Rule of Faith. 30. From the Qualities requisit to make Scripture's Letter a Rule of your Faith we come to consider the Quantity it ought to have or the Number of Books which you tell us p. 19. Mr. M. suggested In order to which I have onely two things to ask you 1. Whether as I said formerly you have any unanimous Consent of the Christian Church that there was never a Book lost that was writ by some who were Divinely inspir'd and consequently did contain some Divine Revelations Or if you cannot prove but there was how do you know but those Divine Revelations which that Book or Books contain'd were not different from or to be superadded to those contain'd in the Canon we have now If you cannot prove these two Points then 't is manifest you cannot prove with Absolute Certainty that the Books Wee have now contain'd all the Divine Revelations 2. You insist onely on this Universal Testimony for the Canonical Books of the New Testament but I would know whether this Testimony reaches to each Chapter and every Verse of those Chapters nay each material Word in those Verses If it does not as you neither say nor with any Reason can say for 't is hard to prove the former impossible to prove the later but by our Rule then you are as far from your Faith as ever unless you bring some other Testimony that is Absolutely Certain to assure you that such and such a Verse which you would quote and rely on for such and such a Point of Faith nay the main and most significant Word in that Verse is true Scripture which I am sure you cannot For what Testimony else can be invented to do this if the other which was of the whole Christian Church cannot reach it Is there any possible way to ascertain this but by our Doctrin-Rule Upon this occasion pray inform me with what reason you could reflect so severely pag. 15. on the Church of Rome for not receiving the Epistle to the Hebrews in St. Hierom's Time assoon as other Churches and not on the Greek Churches which you use to prefer before the Latin who in the same Father's time refus'd to admit the Apocalypse The accepting or not accepting such Books even according to your own Doctrin depended on their being satisfied of the Evidence produced for their Apostolical Authority and so was an Act of Prudence antecedent to the Judgment or Determination of any Church whether Greek or Latin. But so unreasonable is your pique against the Church of Rome that she cannot act prudently without forfeiting her Infallibility Tho' another man would have
Heresies in the world do as much as this comes to and yet are no less Heresies than if they did none of this T is your Proving it to be your Ground and that an Absolutely Certain one too which we would be at but we justly complain you flinch from the onely thing in Dispute and perpetually balk us We tell you once more and we cannot repeat it too often there is a necessary Connexion between the Ground and the Building for 't is not a Building if it have no Ground nor the Ground of a Building if nothing be built on it You are then to shew us Absolute Certainty of this necessary Connexion between the Scripture and your Faith or you do nothing but talk at random But alas You have not the Confidence to make out this or produce your Reasons to conelude this Ground and this Building have such a necessary Relation and I must tell you plainly you can never do it For pray tell me May not the Socinians and indeed all Hereticks that ever arose in the Church say pretend and perhaps think the same that you do Nay do not they all alledge the same Do not they all profess to resolve theit Faith I mean their abominable Errours into the written Word Do not they pretend it for their Ground and that they build their prophane Tenets on it lastly avow as stoutly as you do for your heart that whatever is built on Gods Word is absolutely Certain Will you allow these Pleas Argumentative for them or that their wicked Errours are therefore true Faith and Absolutely Certain because they alledge all this And can you be so unreasonable as to expect we should pass that for a good Argument or a conclusive Reason to prove you have Absolute Certainty for your Faith which your self disallows when 't is alledg'd for them nay which you must disallow and declare against unless you will patronize all their Heresies Pray lay your hand on your Heart and consider I am sure 't is more your own Good than mine you should into what a Lamentable or rather Chimerical Condition God's Church is reduc't by your Resolution of your Faith here and the Account you give of it The Pillar and Ground of Truth is reduc't by you into a confused Chaos of incoherent Errours Christ's immaculate Spouse is associated with all the Adulterate Synagogues of Sathan lastly Faith as to it's Certainty is in no better a Condition than Heresy and Heresy is upon even Ground with Faith. I have a better opinion of the Church of England than to believe Her most learned and genuin Members will own such a Resolution of her Faith as will make the Socinians and all other Hereticks in the World their fellow-Christians and Brothers as they must be forced to do if they own no other Resolution of it than all those pestilent Sects unanimously profess I see Mr. G had good reason to ask you in his 5 th Question What Churches you accounted Christian Churches For I much fear by your Discourse and Principles you exclude None Nor ought you so they heartily hold the same Gound of Faith with you for then all their Vnchristian Tenets are to pass for Material Errours not Formal Heresies They hold all true Faith in the Purse still tho' they mistake the coyn and mettal and that 's enough in all conscience for such a Church as that you are about rearing or dawbing up You pass a complement indeed upon the four first General Councils and that you reject all such Doctrins as were condemn'd by them which use to be words of course in your Controversies as your humble servant and such like are in our common Conversation but when you are once got out of the circumstance of pretending to hold to some Antiquity that so you may set a better face on it when you oppose the Papists when that job is over they are but Fallible Congregations and so perhaps were deceiv'd in all they defin'd against the Arians Eutychians c. Especially if one of your sober Enquirers comes to fancy otherwise and no doubt there were many such even in those dayes And then comes the 21 st Article of Q. Elizabeth's Symbol and knocks them down all at once with a Declaration that their Decrees have neither Strength nor Authority unless it may be declar'd that they be taken out of Holy Scripture and so all is with a turn of ones hand brought back to the same Point again and farewell Councils Your self and any one of your sober Enquirers are at full liberty still to judge of them by your Scripture-Rule and the Resolution of your Faith is establish't by that Article at least as you make use of it to be the same with that which is made and profest by all the vile Hereticks in the world For as Dr. Burnet sayes very candidly in his Answer to the Method of oonverting Protestants p. 83. and no doubt upon your Principles If any man after his strictest Enquiries is still perswaded that a Council has decreed against the true meaning of the Scriptures in a point necessary to Salvation then he must prefer God to Man and follow the Sounder tho' it should prove to be the lesser party And if any Company or Synod of Protestants have decree'd any thing contrary to this in so far they have departed from the Protestant Principles Where we see he gives every sober Enquirer leave to judge of Councils even tho' General ones for he excepts None and himself shews them the way by Judging Censuring the Councils of his own Church 35. Another scruple yet remains incumbent on you to clear which is that by your putting it upon Mr. G. to prove you have not Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of your Faith and by your innate Antipathy against Infallibility 't is very dubious whether your self do indeed hold the Tradition of all Christian Churches Absolutely Certain even for the Scripture however to save your Credit you then pretended it fearing your denying it might disedify Mr. T. Since then you ly under a shrewd suspicion that you do not deal really with him and the rest of your Readers in this forc't Profession it would become you in your Reply both to shew why you allow that Testimony to be Absolutely Certain and yet are such an Enemy to Infallibility since common sense tells us no man can judge himself Absolutely Certain of a thing if he judges he may at the same time be deceiv'd in it and withal that you may give more satisfaction to your Readers herein than an empty and scarce credible acknowledgment of it when you were in untoward Circumstances pray go to work like a Schollar and demonstrate to us by way of solid Reason working upon the Nature of the Thing for no Argument meerly probable will suffice to prove a Testimony Absolutely Certain how and by what vertue this Tradition of all Christian Churches comes to be thus Absolutely Certain for the
with his own hand and Seal'd with his Archiepiscopall Seal in these words Infrascripti testamur c. Wee underwritten do attest that we have read thorough diligently and accurately and that with both Profit and Pleasure three Books writ in the English Dialect Publish'd by that Learned Person Mr. Iohn Sergeant whose Titles and Arguments are these Surefooting in Christianity Faith vindicated and Reason against Raillery In which I have not only found nothing against the Integrity of the True Faith and of good manners but moreover Clear and Solid Principles which admirably conspire to the Estabishing and confirming the Catholick Doctrin For both by Reasons and Authorities they excellently impugn the Protestants affirming the Holy Scripture is the only Rule of Faith and vigorously maintain that the genuin Doctrin of Christ and his Apostles has descended by the force of Tradition from Century to Century nay from year to year incorruptedly to our time and still remains inviolably in the Orthodox Church In Testimony whereof we have Subscrib'd and have caus'd our portatil Seal to be assixt this 15 th of March 1674. at Armagh Oliversus Armachanus totius Hiberniae Primas Can any man imagin that this Grave and Learned Personage who had for twelve years profest Divinity in the Sacra Congregatio at Rome and had been advanc'd by them to this high Dignity would have hazarded his Credit there in approving so highly the Writings of one who was a Stranger to him and no ways capable to oblige him had he not been perfectly assur'd there was nothing Censurable in them Yet this tho' known to our ingenuous Dr. is nothing with him He crys still Lominus for my money let him be what he will and assures the Reader upon his Morall Honesty he is Infallibly Certain my Doctrin in my Letters is not Catholik 18. The next in Dignity is that Illustrious and Right Reverend Personage Mr. Peter Talbot Arch Bishop of Dublin who dy'd a Confessor of the Catholik Faith in Dublin Castle in the time of that truly Hellish tho' not Popish Plot. This Eminent Person more than once has approv'd and highly commended my Doctrin The Author of Surefooting says he has with great zeal writ divers Treatises of this matter viz. the force of Tradition and has overwhelm'd those who defend only Morall Certainty in Faith with so great Confusion that they can no way clear themselves from the blemish of Atheism to which their Principles and meer Probability of Faith lead of which crime the foresaid Author proves them Guilty beyond all possibility of Reply And a little after he acknowledges that the Rule of Faith viz. in our Controversies is the Humane Authority of the Church and that it must be an Infallible Directress otherwise it might lead us out of the way Unfortunate Dr. St. to quote an Authority against me which so highly approves my Doctrine and condemns his as leading to Atheism The Reader may hence discern how likely 't is the Archbishop of Dublin should be the Author of Lominus his Book where he and Dr. Tillotson are praised for Writing so Catholickly against mee whereas that Right Reverend Prelate so highly extolls my Books as writing so unanswerably against Them. Lastly in his Appendix to that Book of his cited above he has this solid Discourse Altho' Tradition does not demonstrate or conclude evidently the Divinity of Christ nor consequently can demonstrate or conclude evidently that the Revelation of our Faith was Divine yet 't is a Conclusive Argument ad hominem against Protestants and all those who acknowledge the Divinity of Christ that God reveal'd all the Articles which the Roman Catholick Church professes in regard they acknowledge Christ to be God. And thus the Author of Sure-footing Faith Vindicated c. argues invincibly against his Adversaries for the Conclusive Evidence by the force of Tradition that God reveal'd all the Articles of the Roman Catholick Faith out of the Supposition that Christ is God. Note that this Appendix was write purposely to clear me after the Conference in Abbot Montague's Chamber where tho' I would not then answer to propositions taken out of books when no Books were there to clear them by the Context Yet after I had the Objections in writing I did answer them and this to the Satisfaction of the Arch-Bishop himself and of Dr. Gough who was present and prejudic'd formerly against my Writings 19. I had compriz'd the Sum of my Doctrine into a short Treatise Entituled A Method to arrive at Satisfaction in Religion which when I was at Paris I translated into Latin and shew'd it to that Excellent Prelate the Bishop of Condom my singular Friend and Patron desiring his Judgment of it He read it and at my request made his Exceptions which being clear'd by me he askt me why I did not Print it I reply'd I would so his Grandeur would please to give me leave to Dedicate it to himself Which obtain'd it was propos'd to the Sorbon for their Approbation of it the former of them Monsieur Pirot testifying it contain'd nothing against Faith or good manners the later of them Dr Gage added that the most certain Rule of Faith was in that Treatise exactly settled and invincibly defended But still obscure Lominus is worth twenty Sorbons in Dr. St's Learned Judgment Tho' 't is here to be observed that the Bishop of Condoms Approbation was antecedent to theirs not only as allowing and owning the Book but as inviting me to Print it 20. I alledge in the Fourth place the Testimony of my Superiour here in England Mr. Humphry Ellice an Ancient Dr. and Professor of Divinity and late Dean of our Catholick Chapter whose Sanctity of Life and solid Judgment gave him a high Esteem with all that knew him This Grave and Venerable Person besides the Ordinary and Customary Approbation of my Books added that They do clearly demonstrate out of the very nature of Ecclesiastical Tradition that the Doctrin delivered by Christ and his Apostles was inviolably eonserv'd in the Roman-Catholick and Apostolick Church even to this Age in which we now live and by Irrefragable force of Reason did evidently convince the Grounds of the Hereticks meaning Dr. St. and Dr. Till against whom I had writ to be meer Tricks and vain Fallacies But still Lominus that is the Lord knows who is Dr. St's only Saint and Infallible Oracle 21. It were not amiss to add next the Testimony or rather Judgment of that deservedly Esteemed and Learned man Mr. R. H. Author of The Guide of Controversy This Excellent Writer though he inclines rather to the School-opinion of the sufficiency of Moral Certainty yet like a truly ingenuous and Charitable man preferring the Common Good of Christianity before his own private Sentiment after having discourst according to his own Grounds he in allusion to my way of proceeding subjoyns these words But then if any after all this can make good any farther
prov'd he has Absolute Certainty of the Faith he holds in case we could not prove some other Points which we hold Yet he has undertaken at all adventures this Great Design and will suddenly publish the First Part and if God gives him Life and Health he should have said Principles too he hopes to go thorough the rest As much as to say he designs to leave the Certainty of his Faith in the lurch to tell the World publickly he has done so and if God gives him Life and Health will continue to run away from that troublesome Point as far as ever he can He should first have answer'd Error Nonplust and clear'd himself from being a Man of no Principles before he can be fit to impugn others unless he thinks a man may dispute without Principles as I verily believe he does for his odd Methods of Reasoning and Answering need none 33. But tho' he has the ill luck to want Principles he is for all that a good man and desires no more to end our Controversies but to make Salvation our End and the Scripture our Rule But if there be no Means to come at the Sense of Scripture in those most important Articles with Absolute Certainty many may come as Millions have done to Misunderstand such places and thence to embrace a Grand Heresy instead of the Chief Points of True Faith and does he think Heretical Tenets in such concerning Points is saving Faith. Let him shew that his Principles lay such Grounds as absolutely secure the Truth of Faith e're he talks such Pious or rather Pernicious Nonsense of a Saving Faith. For should it hap to be False as by his Grounds it may 't is neither Faith nor the means to Salvation He pretends I exclude all from Salvation who do not penetrate Intrinsical Grounds But 't is a flam of his own coyning Errour Nonplust has long ago told him over and over that 't is enough they adhere to a Rule that is settled on Solid or Intrinsical Grounds and so cannot deceive them tho' they do not at all penetrate or as he calls it dig into the Intrinsical Grounds why that Authority or Rule is Inerrable Let the Truth of Faith be secured and they have what 's simply requisit to Salvation unless they be such persons as speculate or doubt or are to defend the Truth of Faith against Hereticks and thence come to need a deeper Inspection and Knowledge of the Reasons which conclude their Rule does absolutely secure the Reliers on it from Error Caeteram quippe turbam as St. Austin says Contra Ep. Fund non intelligendi vivacitas sed credendi simplicitas tutissimam facit For as for the others which are the vulgar they are render'd absolutely secure or out of danger of Erring not by the Sagacity of Understanding but by the simplicity of Believing 34. I know not certainly what past at the Conference about which he still keeps such a do 'T is high time to leave it off and follow our Point Things should have been better manag'd to give us a clearer light for want of which we are forc't to trust the Dr himself tho' a party and accept what he represents in his Second Letter to Mr G. Only I see it was confest on all hands that the sole End of it was that Dr. St. should manifest he had Grounds of Absolute Certainty for his Faith and to that I will stick and Level my Discourses accordingly The Dr is at his old shuffle again of Scripture's Letter being certain and containing all neither of which are to any purpose since neither of these reach his Faith which is an Assent to determinate Points I alledg'd that the Certainty of Scripture was not the Point for which the Conference was He asks how I know it By the very words that express it put down here and acknowledg'd by himself p. 15. But Mr G. knew it not That 's more than I know or the Dr. either It appears not what use he would have made of it after he had propos'd some Questions to gain light what the Drs. Principles were for the Dr. himself confesses Mr T. cut off his Discourse by declaring himself satisfied and asking Questions of his own But Mr. G. lost the Point by asking Questions about the Rule Not so neither For he was well acquainted with Common Sense which told him the word Rule is a Relative word and so is to regulate us about the particular Points of Faith which it relates to and that unless it does this 't is good for nothing being meerly ordain'd for that End which Dr. St. either knows not or will not seem to know lest he should come to be engag'd to shew how his pretended Rule influences any one Point with Absolute Certainty and yet if it does not this 't is no Ground for the Absolute Certainty of his Tenets or Faith. He says that by the Scripture they are to judge what they are to believe what not By which we are to understand that he has shuffled away from shewing his Rule to be a Qualifying Principle which is to give his Faith Absolute Certainty to the making it a Quantitative Measure shewing what 's Faith what not or how much is of Faith. It seems Quantity and Quality is all one with him and he would be Measuring his Faith before he knows he has Any As for his Containing Faith so often shown to be an insignificant pretence let him know that between his having the Letter of Scripture Containing all and the Doctrinal Points which is truly his Faith there intervenes a Quality in the Rule called Clearness or Plainness and such a one as is able to secure the Reliers on it that what they receive upon that Rule is not an Errour or a Heresy which is against Faith. 'T is this he is to make out and prove that this Clearness is found in his Rule apply'd to all sincere seekers after Faith and till he does this 't is a phrenzy to maintain those men can have Absolute Certainty of Faith by means of Scripture's Letter Yet hold him close to this plain Point and he 'l complain he 's trammell'd he should say gravell'd But he says he must not come near any one Point of his Faith because being to shew he held All the same Doctrin c. the word All made it necessary to assign a Rule in which All is contain'd Now I verily thought that All signify'd Every one but his Discourse makes it signify No one Again how shall we know he holds the Same Doctrin as he in his Answer pretended he did without particularizing the Points held By this Discourse the Arians and most of the Hereticks since Christs time held the Same Doctrin he taught for they all held the Scripture's Letter to be Certain and that it contain'd their Faith yet tell him this a hundred times over and demand how this is a particular Rule for his Protestants which is a Common