Minority I should suspect the Pensilvanian had Tutor'd him with this Quakeristical Divinity But whether it be so or not here are these inevitable Consequences will follow from this Position First that Reason is the sole Guide of every mans Religion Secondly that Divine Revelation is not necessary to Salvation Thirdly that it is a most horrid Sin to lead men out of the Errours to which Natural Religion and bare Reason must of necessity lead men since its depravation Fourthly That men who believe a God and follow the dictates of Reason in his Worship may be saved in any in all Religions provided they know not a better For Reason will never can never lead us to the knowledge of the belief of a Trinity the Incarnation Death Passion Resurrection Ascention or Divinity of the Son of God the Saviour of the World And how prolifick a Parent of Idolatry Superstition Will-worship and a thousand absurdities in Religion Humane Reason is all times all places all ages of the World convince us in Fact beyond the possibility of a Denial Now had I been to follow his Graces blow upon the gaining of the Postulatum of the Being of a Supreme and Perfect Power and his Justice Goodness and Mercy being such superlative Attributes of his Essence I should have sent my Enquirer another Road. And first upon his granting a God his perfections and the obligations of Humane Nature to him I should have told him that he could not but grant by the strength of his own Reason that this excellent Supreme Being ought to be worshipped and Adored as the greatest Benefactor to Mankind that his Favour was to be had at any Rate as the most Supreme degree of Happiness and Satisfaction From his Justice I should have argued that so great Goodness and Justice the Rewarder of Virtue and Punisher of Vice who loves those that love him and therefore serve him could not possibly leave that Noble Creature Man to whom he had communicated something so near a kin to his own Nature without some manifestation of his will and pleasure and how he might be served acceptably I should have sent him to inquire if any such thing were to be found and among all the variety recommended those writings which have Antiquity and the greatest agreeableness to the Divine Nature as the Genuine Results of the benignity of that just and merciful God I mean the Holy Writings of the Inspired Pen-men Patriarchs Prophets Apostles and Evangelists who give such illuminations to the Soul and such advances to Reason such Rules of Piety and Devotion as are no where else to be found and which suit so exactly with the Idea of a Pure and Perfect Being And in regard there may be some things difficult to be understood I would for the sence and meaning of those places have directed him to the Opinion of that Society of Men called Christians their universal sence and practice and to the Golden Rule of Vincentius Lirinensis Quod ubique quod semper quod ab omnibus id verè quidem Catholicum est This would have shewed him a thousand Errours of times past and as many of the present in deviating either from the Letter or Publick Interpretation of the Revealed Will of God This would have taught him to avoid the Errours of Rome in transgressing an Apostolical Canon by praying publickly in an unknown Tongue locking the door of Knowledge from the People forbidding Religious Orders to Marry which is honourable in all men denying the Cup to the Laiety against the Institution and practice of the first and best Ages of Religion and the very Letters of the Command Drink ye all of this and a many more which I shall not insist upon This would have taught him to avoid the Cruel and Inhumane Divinity of Calvinists which his Grace lashes with so much Truth and Justice and the barbarous Principles and horrid Practices of Rebelling Covenanting Associating Excluding Pretended Protestants who act so directly contrary to the Innocent Religion of those who are Christs Sheep that they are onely a Herd of Wolves and Foxes Bears and Lions and the most Savage Animals in Protestant Skins And it may be it would have led him into the Communion of the Church of England the most Catholick Society of Men in the world both in Doctrine and Practice the best Christians and the best Subjects that the Sun sees in all his Travails round the Universe and here would I leave my Inquirer as in safe hands wishing all Mankind in the same condition and capacity of attaining Salvation and the fruition of the God of love Whereas a Jew a Turk a Pagan may all according to my Lords Hypothesis be safe so long as they believe in their own either weak or obstinate Reason which must not be imposed upon for fear of Antichristianism that they are in the Right and Worship God and with his Graces pardon even Mahomet himself will lay as good a claim to Heaven at this rate of arguing as St. Peter and St. Paul and therefore I will leave this matter to his second and his better thoughts In the next place I think the Maxime concerning Persecution for Differences in Opinion concerning Religion and the fixing the Character of Antichristianism upon all such Prosecutions of Dissenters is built upon a mistake of the Reason Nature and Necessity of those Humane Laws which Dissenters call Persecuting Now first I take it to be true That punishing the Professors and Practicers of a True Religion purely for that Religion whilst they continue such by living innocently and inoffensively in all things to the Civil Government is real Persecution and truely Antichristian as being directly opposite to the Spirit of that Religion and impossible to be done by any but such as are Enemies to that Religion and thus the Heathen Emperours of Rome and their subordinate Officers were truely Persecutors and the Primitive Christians truely Persecuted But secondly I take it also to be as true that the punishing of Offenders whose Religion is false or seigned and who onely make a colour or shew of it to carry on other Designes is not onely Lawful but just and necessary May not a Christian Government endeavour by Penalties to hinder Mahometanisme or Paganisme from rooting out Christianity without being Antichristian for so doing Certainly this is a very illogical Principle and so far from overthrowing Atheism that it is the high Road to establish it And if Magistrates are to take care by vertue of their Office to support the Government of the World the Peace and Happiness of their People they must do it by Rewards and Punishments the Methods of Heaven better than which his Grace would do well if he would oblige us in shewing us others and what and wherein they consist Now if Men will set up Religions destructive of Peace Charity Order Government Obedience and the Happiness of Humane Society not onely all Religion but Society is come to its Conclamatum
A SHORT ANSWER To His GRACE the D. of Buckingham ' s PAPER CONCERNING RELIGION TOLERATION AND Liberty of Conscience LONDON Printed for S. G. and are to be sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers-Hall 1685. To the READER THat I have written this Pamphlet is plain and the Reason of it as plain in Answer to one Printed with His Grace the Duke of Buckingham's Name wherein I think he hath not rightly informed himself or his Readers I have no Apology to make for the Printing of it but only that I think a Sore always wants a Plaister till it hath got one Of how dangerous Consequence to Religion and the Peace of the State such Arguments may prove I hope his Grace did not give himself leave to consider And should he take the pains to do it it is not to be expected he should draw both Bill and Answer and act for the Plaintiff and Defendant successively one after another How pernicious an Animal this Mountain and Wild Conscience hath been to England is too well known and how fatal Toleration would be I hope in a few words to make evident in the ensuing Papers And the Nation being in a fair way of Composure the stirring of this extravagant Ferment which hath run us into so many Fevers of State seems very unseasonable at this time and requires something to precipitate the Lees of Sedition and keeping them from rising again and turning the Wine of our Hopes into the Vinegar of Despair My Opinion in these points having ever been diametrically opposite to those of his Grace's Paper and having been long convinced that nothing could more effectually contribute to the Ruin of this Monarchy Church and State than Toleration and Liberty of Conscience I have prevailed upon my self to expose my thoughts to the publick View and Censure upon this Subject and Occasion as being thoroughly perswaded I am in the Right as to the main and not much solicitous for the fate of a five or six hours Paper which the Ingenuous will pardon if it be not exact and the Rigorous would condemn tho an Angel had writ it That I do not affix my Name to it is because I do not design to be known And tho I am not ashamed to have writ it or think it will do me any disreputation yet I am unwilling to seem arrogant in attempting to answer a Person of so Great a Character and so Celebrated a Name to whom I desire to be known under no other Name than that of His Grace's most Humble Servant And a most True Friend to the Interest of ENGLAND A SHORT ANSWER To His GRACE the D. of BVCKINGHAM's Paper Concerning Religion Toleration c. IT is a pretty odd Adventure to see a Person of His Grace's High Character and Parts enter the Lists and advance himself the Champion of some things so much out of Countenance and Reputation that even those who formerly owned them would take it unkindly not to be thought wholly to have forsaken and abandoned them And in truth Whiggism in both its dresses of Toleration and Persecution which made her so amiable to the Noble Peer and others in the days of Association is now with sorrow become so abominably superannuated that she looks like a Cast Mistriss scorned and contemned even by the Porters and Footmen and it can be nothing but pure compassion and pity sure that procures her such a Glorious Protector But is it not as odd an Adventure to see any person so bold as to think upon such great disadvantages of coping with so disproportionate a Combatant as a Peer of the highest Rate of England whereby he must render himself liable not only to all the force of Wit and Sense but if he does not well guard himself with all Decency and Discretion to the fatal and murdering blow of Scandalum Magnatum And in truth if I had not put on the Armour of Conscience I durst never have taken up his Grace's Gantlet But I esteem my self invulnerable under that Mail and dare confidently believe my Lord would not for an unwary slip prove himself an Antichristian by persecuting an innocent person purely for what he believes his Religion exacts from him especially considering that his Grace's Maxim is infallible which assures us That no man believes because he has a mind to do so but because his Judgment being convinced he cannot chuse but believe it whether he will or not Nor do I believe should I be criminal in point of Deference or Good Manners towards his Grace that he would by animadverting severely upon me undo what he hath so publickly owned as an Opinion of which he hath been long convinced and to confute the labour of his brain by any action diametrically opposite to his Hypothesis But for fear of the worst neither my Nature or Education inclining me to any thing disobliging much less rude I will take care of my self And tho I cannot in approaching so near his Grace be procul a Jove yet I will be sure to keep my self procul a fulmine And I should be very angry with my felf if I should say any thing which even his Grace may think beneath the Dignity of his High Character for which I profess a most profound Veneration and Respect And my Lord being the Agressor I know he will not be displeased since we differ mightily in Opinion about Religion if I endeavour to defend my Belief which I cannot help very warmly and with some Opinionatrê And should I chance to pretend to be Comical and Pleasant now and then a Contagion no man can almost escape that comes but near his Grace's Pen which even in this serious matter is very facetious I hope he will look upon it but as my being stung with the Tarantula of his Paper which may make me dance and caper even contrary to my Nature and Inclination by the secret sympathy that is in the unaccountable poison of being Witty I confess my Lord writes with that taking air and pleasantness that it is impossible not to be delighted with it But not to flatter his Grace 't is too much of that nimble Contexture and seems to want not only the temperamentum ad pondus but the pondus it self and to make it in any measure currant must have many Grains not only of Salt but of Allowance too And in truth I cannot wonder to see a Peer write of Religion en Cavalier but do as much wonder to see a Noble Cavalier writing of Religion as I should to see a Blew-Apron-Knight correcting Euclids Elements or a Countrey-Clown drawing up Maxims of Politicks or Navigation I cannot be induced to believe our Noble Author hath made Polemical Divinity or the abstruse Notions of the Schools any one Scene of his diversion and therefore his Reasonings are witty and pleasant but not at all concluding his Notions are very fine and many of them very natural and true but not too Logical His Grace seems only to have done
est unless the Magistrate who is Virtute Officii Gods Vicegerent in rewarding the Good and punishing the Evil interpose and shew himself really a Terrour to Evil doers and a Rewarder and Encourager of such as do well Thirdly I take it also for an undoubted truth that by our English Laws no person is punished or as his Grace and the Discenters call it Persecuted purely for that which he calls his Religion which is his private Opinion And it raises my admiration to wonder how his Grace who hath had his share in the preparation of those Laws for the Royal Assent should be so far mistaken in the nature and necessity of them All the Laws of the Land shewing the Reason of their Penal Nature to be purely Political and not Spiritual and it is the Overt Acts of Treason Sedition and Rebellion and the fatal Consequences of pretended Religion which the Laws endeavour by Penalties to obviate or prevent and to punish if men be so wicked or so foolish not to take the fair Caution that is given them A man may be to himself of any Religion nay so great Indulgence does our Law give that they may privately exercise it provided they exceed not such a number besides their Family by which it is most evident that the Quarrel is not immediately at the Opinion which is pitied because False and indulged because the Assertors are obstinately Foolish but at the practical Consequences which by terrible Experience have been found to be fatal to the Prince and People to the Peace and Prosperity of the Community even that dreadful 35th of Eliz. tells us in the Title that it is An Act to retain the Queens Subjects in their due Obedience If there be severe Laws against Papists Priests and Jesuites the reason of them was for their Turbulency and continual Unchristian Machinations against the Life of the Prince and the Peace of the Nation for their Doctrines of the Lawfulness of Excommunicating Deposing and even Murdering Soveraign Princes and disposing of their Realms and Dominions for pretended Heresie or Incapacity Doctrines able to ruine the whole Earth and lay the Foundations of Eternal Mischiefs to mankind And if the Dissenters on the other hand complain of the severity of Penal Statutes or suffer by them it is because they have actually been guilty of the most horrible Crimes of Rebellion and the most consummated Wickedness in Murdering the Best of Princes and overturning the Best of Governments it is because the lewd Principles of Democracy are inconsistent with Monarchy and contain in them the Seeds of Sedition Rebellion Anarchy and Confusion And though in Charity we may conclude that all Dissenters of different Perswasions are not so tainted with the worst of Principles as to become Rebels and Regicides yet there being an absolute impossibility to distinguish the Innocent from the Criminal since none will acknowledge themselves such the Innocent must be content to suffer with the Criminal and partake of their Punishments unless they can make us Momus his Windows to see into their Hearts and Souls not onely what they are but what they will or may be And to conclude this particular I dare confidently aver That neither the Intention of the Laws was to punish men for their different Opinions or that any have been punished by virtue of any Penal or Capital Law but upon the account of the Political not Religious necessity to secure the Peace and Safety of the Government And if a Political punishing the Disturbers of publick Peace Order and Government be so great a Crime as in his Graces Opinion to be near a kin to the Sin against the Holy Ghost and to render men Persecutors and Antichristian the whole World and all Ages Places Times Governments and Governours must have been are and will be Antichristian and Persecuting to the World end even David and Solomon not excepted the one the Wisest and the other the Best King being a man after Gods own Heart And how his Grace will escape the lash of his own Censure I cannot imagine who hath I presume often given his Consent to penal Bills and may yet to others for the securing the Person of his Prince and the Peace of his Country from Religious Rumbalds and Conventicling Blunderbusses as he is in duty bound as well as from any other Irreligious Rebels And upon the whole if all those who prosecute Dissenters are Persecutors and all Persecutors Antichristian his Grace will be at a great loss where to finde any sort of People in the World that call themselves Christians who by this Logick may not be proved Antichristian And certainly this is a notable way of Arguing Men and Athiests into Religion to lay that down as a Fundamental Maxim which if admitted for Truth will infallibly prove there never was any true Religion in the World since it is impossible to finde any Society or Government which hath not endeavoured to preserve it self by Rewards and Punishments by Penal and Capital Laws against Usurpers Rebels and Seditious Persons and Principles though never so fairly gilded over with fine and glittering Titles of Holy Leagues Holy Covenants Gods People and Saints Vizors with which ill men have endeavoured to conceal the most Flagitious Crimes Having thus shortly run over the two main things I hope we shall with more ease surmount the third which seems by being put as the Sting in the Tayl to have been the efficient Cause of the Book which Logicians tell us is always first in Intention though last in the Execution and that is the necessity of a Toleration For in truth if Persecution be really Antichristian and no Man ought to be forced in Religious Matters then Toleration is absolutely necessary in order to the very Essence of being a Christian a good Man and able Polititian Now if I be able to shew that Toleration of all Religions is neither good Politicks nor Divinity in a Monarchy I think I shall have done with his Graces Paper and this I belive to unprejudiced or undesigning Persons will not appear either difficult or impossible to be proved First therefore It is ill Divinity unless my Lords new Scheme of the Possibility of being saved by the conduct of Humane Reason in any Religion which acknowledges a God and teaches Morality be granted for a Truth And if it should I cannot see any manner of necessity of Faith or Christian Religion nor according to this Divinity was the Incarnation of the Son of God so great a kindness to the World as all Pious Men believe if Men might go to Heaven before this Stupendious Mercy was known to them or may so still by the help of that Instinct which his Grace tells us is so near a-kin to God and we must now after almost 1700 Years come to question the truth of Canonical Scripture which assures us there is no other Name under Heaven by which Salvation is to be obtained but the glorious and the blessed
it as an Essay for his own diversion and therefore hath not attended the Consequences which will necessarily and inevitably follow from his Conceptions to the great disadvantage not only of Religion which he would support but even the Politick Frame and Constitution and Government of the World I was onee acquainted with an airy Gentleman who would discourse mighty agreeably and loved to maintain divers odd Opinions and if at any time he was run a-ground by Consequences drawn from his Positions he would cry a Pox upon Consequences I hate these Consequences But I have more Honour for his Grace than to believe him to be of that Gentleman's humor I do not design to read an Anatomical Lecture upon his Grace's Paper or curiously to defect each Nerve and Muscle I hate hashing of Books and serving them up with Limon and Anchovies and shall content my self without distorting his Sense or weighing every Period and scanning every Line to deliver my thoughts of it in the Lump and shall for the sake of method offer these things as being the main matters wherein I take the Liberty to differ from his Grace's Sentiments First I presume to say That his Grace has taken a very improper Method in the whole to confute the witty Atheist or to establish Religion Secondly That his Maxime concerning Antichristianism and the Nature of Persecution for differences in Opinion is built upon an evident mistake of the Nature Reason Intention and Necessity of those humane Laws which punish Dissenters and which they and his Grace call Persecution And Thirdly That the Toleration of several Opinions which in his three Queries he seems to press as necessary both upon a Religious and Civil account is utterly inconsistent with both those ends For the first in which the whole body of the Book consists that I may answer concisely after my Lords method of writing The Position upon which his Grace goes of proving a Deity and every man carving out the measure of his own Worship is too short in matter of Argument and too long in point of Allowance The changeableness of the World falls as much short of disproving its Eternity as the several mutations of his Grace's Body from his Infancy to this Age does of proving that he is not the same George Duke of Bucks that he was fourty years ago nor if he takes notice of the whole System of the Universe of which this Sublunary Body wherein we are is but an inconsiderable point he will find no such great Alterations but that a witty Atheist may say with St. Peters scoffers All things continue as they were and it may as well have been always so and continue always so as we see it does notwithstanding that changeableness Now if I were to discourse an Atheist about the Worlds Eternity I would urge him with this Argument If the World be Eternal then it must of necessity be the Supreme and Ultimate Being and Cause of its own Existence for if we suppose another Being before it it is not Eternal Now if it be the Supreme Being it must not onely have all the Attributes which necessarily fall in with the Conception and Natural Idea of such a Noble and Glorious Essence but many more than we can imagine or conceive and not onely so but every part of it must have all these perfections in the highest measure and even beyond the furthest flights of Reason Fancy and Imagination such as are Invisibility Impassibility Justice Power Mercy and Goodness and a thousand others which no Atheist can be so lost to Sense as to believe the World either in the whole or in part can be possessed of Can the Sun the Moon the Stars the Earth or any of them reward or punish Are they not all separately and conjunctly Insensible and Inanimate Nor will the little Story of the Anima Mundi come in at a dead life to help the grosser matter And he who supposes such a Being separate and distinct from the Heavy Matter grants what he denies and supposes a Superiour Being to the World which Acts Regulates and Governs it in all its Actions and then the difficulty will return of the two Eternals which shall have the upper hand Whether they Act freely or necessarily If necessarily they must have still some Superiour to impose that necessity and then all is lost if voluntarily in co-ordinate Powers one may refuse to Act and then what becomes of the other They must both of necessity cease to be And a thousand other inextricable difficulties and impossibilities will follow too long to be here trifled upon So that to me the plain want of that absolute perfection which must be in the Supreme Being and which is plainly visible is not in the World is a certain Argument that it is not the Supreme Being and if it must have a Superiour it must fall short of that Superiour Being in the essential point of Perfection Eternity For the mind of Man can by no Art be perswaded to believe the foolish imagination of an infinite Series of Causes one hangging like Links in a Chain upon another but must at last come to a point That there must be one Ultimate Supreme and Absolutely Perfect Cause of all Things which since neither the World nor the Anima Mundi are capable of or really possessed of those perfections it must be somewhat Superiour to them in all Things and in this of Priority of Existence which the whole World with an Universal consent hath owned to be the Divinity But his Grace having I hope to the great disappointment of our witty Atheists found out a GOD by his way of Reasoning which I do not intend to disturb but to improve I can by no means be induced to be of his Opinion in his Deductions concerning the Adoration and Worship of this Blessed Being For in truth if his Argumentation be allowed solid and concluding here is as fair a Plea for the Alchoran as the New Testament for Pythagoras his Golden Verses to be as good Divinity as Saint Paul's Epistles For if I be not mistaken in what his Grace calls that part of us which is nearest a kin to the Nature of God and the Instinct of a Diety which is to be our Guide and Director in choosing the best way for our Religious Worship of God which immediately after he tells us highly concerns every man to examine seriously which is the best way of Worshipping and Serving of God that is which is the best Religion This must be Humane Reason and not Humane Reason as regulated by any Publick and Political Reason of a Community but according as every private persons Reason shall dictate to him and then his consequence is That it is one of the greatest Crimes a man can be guilty of to force us to Act or Sin against that Instinct of Religion and something a kin to the Sin against the Holy Ghost Now did I not believe that his Grace is out of his