held whence they could need no Proof to us and if they needed any to others it was certainly our proper Duty not theirs to produce them Many when they are hard put to it have wav'd the consideration of Shame but 't is a sad thing utterly to renounce Common Sence too Yet what is it you will not do What absurd pretences not lay hold of rather than be brought to this odious and dangerous thing call'd Proving You reflect out your Paragraph with the H. Scripture the good men who penn'd it with the Primitive Church and Primitive Creeds and the Council of Trent and this you call Reflecting on my Letter 16. Yet you set a good face on 't at pâ—râ—ing and tell us You decline no Proof that is incumbent on you as if it were not incumbent on you to prove what you say You add That we see by this time as if there were any thing to be seen in all your Reflections but that they decline all Proof and that with the most aukward shifts in the World as Because the Council of Trent had made a Declaration concerning Grace p. 3. Because a Minister is as good a man as a Priest p. 4. Because the Infallibility and Authority of the Church of Rome might run a risque p. 5. Because Catholicks and Protestants hit it not about Judgment of Discretion Ibid. Because Dr. Tillotson is an Excellent man p. 6. Because we will not dispense with the word Absolute which was Dr. St's but will needs take it in its natural sense and not admit of your no-sense of it Ibid. These and many other such weighty Reflections have been our chief entertainment and yet your scrupulous Modesty has the Confidence to say you decline no Proof that is incumbent on you when you have incumb'd all the while if that be the word on nothing but throwing out Baits to draw us from your incumbent Proof to other matters You talk indeed of Proof at last and that which you say of it is That you prove when you prove Moreover you blame me for desiring Proof of two things more whereof One is the very thing your selves have made the point to be prov'd and the other I never desir'd you to prove at all With this stuff you face it out that You prove Scripture to be the Word of God which if one should put you to it you cannot and every Article of your Faith by the Scripture common words which every Heretick may and does use when I have been all this while solliciting with all the earnestness I can to know which way you can prove any Article with Absolute Certainty by Scripture and you will not tell me and I am sure cannot Though you have the Confidence to say you do it yet every body may perceive you know you cannot For your very next words are Thus we prove we have sufficient Certainty of our whole Faith which is to say You decline Dr. St's Absolute Certainty nor know of any way to prove more than sufficient Certainty And this sufficient Certainty of yours may be no-Certainty For there goes no more to make a thing sufficient than to make a man content with it A Yard of Cloth will make a sufficient Garment for him who is content to go half naked and a Table without Meat is a sufficient Meal for him who is contented to fast And so as long as you can prevail with your Protestants to be content without Certainty you can prove they have Certainty abundantly Sufficient because no-Certainty will suffice Marry if they will insist upon having at least this Sufficient Certainty which you promise I know not how you will do without Weights and Scales to weigh out your Certainty according to several mens Exigencies and make down-weight Sufficient except they will take your word for you have no more to give them even for so much But for Absolute True Certainty the only Certainty of which Dr. Stillingfleet spake and I demanded Proof They must absolutely excuse you Poor Protestants to be thus us'd That Empty Words and solemn Outsides and Confident Noise should be offer'd to them for Truth and which is more deplorable pass upon them That they should not yet perceive they are but the Stratagems of those no-principled men who impose on them and secretly laugh at them for their Easiness and yet reflect not that they must answer one day with their souls for suffering themselves to be so impos'd upon 17. From your Proving Talent you pass to your Answering Talent and will try to answer a Discourse of mine in which there are but Five Propositions The First God has left us some way to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught This you grant to be a Certain Truth and so there is one step of our Journey made I think you grant the second too not that you positively say I or No for that is too precise dull a Method for a Man of your parts But as Plain Truth seems always ridiculous to you you laugh at it for a foolish Inference because 't is so visibly in the Antecedent You are not aware I perceive that your Raillery is Complement To be contain'd in the Antecedent which you make the Fault is the Praise of an Inference without which it would indeed be good for nothing or rather not be at all For which way can an Inference be drawn from an Antecedent in which it was not to be drawn Would you have us draw Wine out of an empty Cask or Beer out of a Jarr of Oyl Again the more we know the thing is where we would draw it the surer our Draught But you seem to be so little acquainted with Antecedents Inferences that 't is no wonder by making them your sport you make your self the sport of those who do understand them In the mean time your laughing is owning that the Inference is contain'd in the Antecedent and therefore Certain as you before own'd the Antecedent was And so we are another step onwards and might so forwards without stopping longer if you could have let my Proposition alone But you must needs be wording on 't your own way to shew that either you did not understand it or that you had a mind to inform us how neatly and dexterously you could change and pervert words as well as Answer My Words were Therefore this way must be such that they who take it shall arrive by it at the End it was intended for that is know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught Your Words which you pretend equivalent to mine are these If God has left us a Way to know then by that Way we may know Pray Sir do You take my sence or say what I do Is shall know and may know all one I say that they who take the Way left by God shall that is cannot chuse but know as he cannot chuse but draw a straight Line who draws it by a straight
thing than the Credit of those two or three First Witnesses goes 'T is the First Source of a Testimony which gives the succeeding ones all their weight to prove the Thing that is witnest to be True 'T is that from which the Largeness and Firmness of a Testimony brought to evince the Truth of any thing is to be measured or calculated Since then the stream of Tradition for Doctrin had for its Source innumerable Multitudes of those Christians in the First Age in many places of the World who heard the Apostles preach it and saw them settle the Practice of it in the respective Churches but the Original Testifiers that such a Book was writ by such or such an Apostle or Evangelist were very few in comparison sometimes perhaps not past two or three It cannot with any shew of Sense be pretended that the Tradition for the several Books of Scripture is in any degree comparable in either regard to the Tradition for Doctrin Your next Answer is that This Vniversal Tradition is no more but Human Testimony and that can be no ground for Infallibility which excludes all possibility of Errour Pray why not If things were so order'd as indeed they are that the Testifiers could neither be deceiv'd in the Doctrin being bred and brought up to it nor conspire to deceive us in telling the World in any Age that the new Doctrin they had invented was immediately delivered then it was not possible any Errour could come in under the notion of a Doctrin delivered from the beginning But is not your Tradition for Scripture Human Testimony too And if that can be erroneous may not all Christian Faith by your Principles be perhaps a company of Lying Stories You must be forc'd by your own words here to confess it but I dare say your Parishioners should you openly avow it would hate you for the Blasphemy You would tell them I doubt not as you do us that Moral Certainty is enough to stand on such a Foundation that is such a Certainty as may deceive you and by a necessary consequence may haste to overturn the whole Fabrick of Christian Faith. In the mean time let 's see how manifestly you contradict Dr. St. when you should defend him He avow'd Absolute Certainty for the Book of Scripture and this upon the Foundation of Tradition and you tell us here Tradition can ground but Moral Certainty Now all the World till you writ counter distinguisht Absolute and Moral Certainty which you jumble in one But distinct they ever were are and shall be for the Word Moral signifies a Diminution or Imperfection of Certainty and Absolute plainly expresses the Perfection of it whence 't is Evident that either you contradict Dr. St. perhaps not without his private Order or he himself We shall have all words shortly lose their signification for no other reason but to give you room to shift this way and that when you are too close prest with Reason 35. Now since Dr. St. had granted that Tradition is Absolutely Certain for Scripture and I had prov'd that Absolute Certainty was the same with Infallibility what should hinder me from inferring that unless some special difficulty be found in other things that light into the same channel it must bring them down infallibly too Your Gifts of Interpretation expounds these Words of mine thus These other things are things unwritten in that Holy Book I do assure you Sir you are mightily mistaken I never told you yet that all Faith was not contain'd in Scripture explicitly or implicitly What I meant was that the whole Body of Christs Doctrin and not only that such a Book was Scripture nay the self-same Doctrin of Faith that is contain'd in Scripture comes down by Tradition or the Churche's Testimony But with this Difference as to the Manner of it among others that the Church that testifies it having the sense of it in her Breast can explain her meaning so as to put it out of all Question to Learners Doubters and Enquirers which the Scripture cannot Whence we need not fish for our Faith in the channel of Tyber as your great Wit tells us St. Peter's Ship the Church that caught so many Fishes at first the Body of Primitive Christians who were the first deliverers of Christ's Doctrin hath stor'd up provision enough for the succession of Faith to the Worlds end There we find it to our Hands 'T is your sober Enquirers who Fish for it among dead unsensed Characters and in the Lake of Geneva from whence to save the labour of going thither you and your Friends are deriving a great Channel to run into Thames over-swell it's Banks and drown all the Churches Lacus Lemanus is your Tyber Geneva your Rome and Iohn Calvin the Prime of your new Apostles your St. Peter 36. All this is but prelude But now comes Mr. G's Argument and therefore we are to expect now however you but trifled hitherto more pertinent close Discourse The first Proposition was this All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day they did yesterday so up to the time of our B. Saviour This you seem to deny in regard they may perhaps be so call'd from their adhereing to a Tradition which reaches not so high as our Saviours time but only pretends to it whither we only pretend to it or no will be seen hereafter when the Fourth Proposition comes to be examin'd In the mean time pray jumble not two Questions which are distinct and ought to be kept so The whole Business here is about the use or Sense of the word Traditionary how we both take it in our present Controversy Now that we both agree in the Notion of Tradition whence Traditionary is deriv'd is evident by this that we lay claim to such a Tradition as reaches to Christ and go about to prove it you deny our Claim and endeavour to disprove it But 't is evident you deny the same thing to us which we lay Claim to otherwise we should not talk of the same Thing and so should not understand one another nor could discourse together wherefore 't is manifest we both agree in the Notion or Meaning of that Word however we disagree in the Application of it to the Persons Nor do we pretend in the least what you would put upon us here to inferr hence that this body of Christians that now adheres to it did always so but only contend that if they did not ever adhere to it they must have deserted it and taken up another Rule and so cease to be true Claimers of a Tradition from Christ or Traditionary Christians Moreover we judge we have right to lay Claim to it till we be driven out of it by a former and better Title since we were in possession of this Rule at the time of the Reformation or held all our Faith upon that tenure 37. The second Proposition is this If they follow this Rule they can
differenced from both Romanists and other Hereticks and Sectaries viz. Scripture plainly delivering a Sense own'd and declar'd by the Primitive Church of Christ in the Three Creeds Four First General Councils and Harmony of the Fathers After which you add This I hope is plain dealing and no wriggling and here we take up our stand let him endeavour to draw us whither he can Never fear it Sir you are out of danger of being drawn any whither Ten thousand Cart-Ropes will not go round you and we must be at least Twenty Years in fastening them But let 's examin this your particular Rule 1. I ask whether since Differences use to be Essential these words own'd and declar'd by the Primitive Church c. which are found in the Difference of your Rule from that of others be at all Essential or not If not Essential since if you be Orthodox you ought to have a Rule essentially distinct from that of Hereticks and Sectaries what is this Essentially-different Rule of yours for 't is this we are enquiring after If you say 't is Essential then Scripture had not all the due power to regulate you as to your Faith without their additional Light And by consequence Scripture is not your Only and Intire Rule as you ever pretended hitherto since these are Part of it 2 When you say your Rule is Scripture plainly delivering a Sense c. I suppose you must mean such a particular Sense as is of Faith with you and can any more be requir'd to your particular Rule than Scripture plainly delivering your particular Faith Certainly you will not say it For there is the Divine Authority in the Scripture which is the Formal Motive of Divine Faith. There is Plainness which gives it a Directive Vertue and qualifies it for a Rule and the Clear Light of this plain Rule must shine bright upon the particular Tenets you hold for 't is to shine there and no where else Which once put what can all the other esteem'd by you but Human Authorities serve for Can they add weight to the Divine Authority or clear that to us which is already so plain by Scripture 3. Pray be candid and tell us After a thing is plain in Scripture are you to value a straw what either Primitive Church Creeds or Fathers say I dare say you will grant you are not Wherefore all these are utterly useless unless they be pretended to give you some light to interpret Scripture But this cannot be neither both because you tell us here plain Scripture is your Rule and it would not be plain but obscure if it needed an Explainer Besides you put this as a constitutive difference of your Rule and yet deny'd that any Interpretation of Scripture is such but Extrinsical to it 'T is then a great Mystery still how these Human Authorities affect your General Rule or influence your Faith already had by plain Scripture or to what end they serve but for a Show only 4. The Lutherans proceed upon all these as much as you and yet hold a Reall Presence of Christ's very Body in the Sacrament as much as we do So that this does not difference you in your Grounds or Rule from all other Sects for sure you will not deny that to be a Sect that holds an Errour which Dr. St. has taken such pains to prove is Idolatry My last question shall be Whether your sober Enquirers are not to come to their particular Faith by this their particular Rule of Faith And since 't is Evident they must we would know next how many of them are to arrive at any Faith at all For it will take up many Years to examin and compare all the Fathers and be sure of their Harmony with one another and with the Scripture too Nay the Duration of the World will be too short to compass that Satisfaction if we may believe the Bishop of Downs who assures us That out of the Fathers succeeding the Primitive Times both sides eternally and inconfutably shall bring Sayings for themselves respectively Can any man living make Sense of such stuff or ever come at his Faith by such a Rule 57. For this last Reason chiefly I affirm'd That not one Protestant in a million follow'd Dr. St's Rule but honestly follow'd the Tradition of their own Church Pastours or Fathers that is believ'd as they had been educated To the first part of this Assertion you say little but that if there be any Fault 't is the Fault of the People only But if this peculiar Rule of yours which takes in the seeing your Sense of Scripture own'd and declar'd by the Primitive Church Four first General Councils and the Harmony of the Fathers be to be followed e're you can come at your Faith I doubt the Fault will prove to be in the Rule For very few Persons have Learning fewer Leisure enough and none of them security of having any Faith by this Method unless you could ensure their Salvation by inspiring those who are ignorant with competent Learning to understand all the Fathers and their Harmony and withal by letting them good long Leases of their Lives which I am of opinion you cannot The second part that they follow'd the Method of Tradition puts you in a marvelvellous jocund humour and as if you had forgot your way a thing not unusual with you you ask all amaz'd Where are we now In the Church of Rome e're we are aware of it We are all good Roman-Catholicks on a sudden we are become an Infallible Church c. and away you run with the Jest laughing and giggling as if you had found a Mare 's Nest. Surcease your fears good Sir you are not a jot the nearer being Catholicks for following your own Tradition It reaches no farther than Iohn Calvin Martin Luther or some such Reforming Heroe and there it ends and stops in a flat Novelty Whereas Catholicks abhor a Tradition that has any known Beginning or takes a Name from any Particular Author or has any Original but Christ his Apostles and the Church in the very first Age who were the Original Deliverers of it to the next and so to the succeeding ones Pray Sir what 's become of your Jest All I said was that You followed the Way of Tradition however misplac'd I prov'd it by Reasons and Instances you hint some omit others and pervert the rest You tell us 't is all Scriptural Tradition But we will trust our Eyes and Experience before your bare Word We see some taught before they can read we see them Catechiz'd in Churches and they repeat and believe what 's there told them tho' Scripture be not quoted for the distinct Passages We see them read the Scripture afterwards but we see withal not One in Thousands trusts his own Judgment of Discretion for the sense of it but without reluctancy or jealousie accepts that which his Pastours assign to it especially in Spiritual Points or Mysteries of
against too by others Yet I shall not be so like some I know to turn a Dispute into a Wrangle but shall apply my self to shew how far the Doctrine of Tradition is from deserving to be charg'd with such injurious reflexions 10. But before I go farther I must take notice of your quoting F. Warner here p. 8. and your appealing to him where you put Haeresis Blacloana in the Margent By which you seem to hint that he is the Author of that Book and an Adversary to the Doctrin of Tradition even so far as to judg it not sound in Faith for no less aversion could make you very much question whether F. W. would absolve any man who professed to embrace Catholick Faith on Mr. G's Grounds But as that very Reverend Person declares he never saw that Book till some of them were presented him bound so himself has forestal'd your little policies aiming to set us at variance in our Tenets in his Anti-Haman p. 203. We Catholicks have Faith because we believe firmly those Truths that God has reveal'd because he reveal'd them to the Church Which as a faithful Witness gives hitherto and will give to the end of the World Testimony to that Revelation And we cannot be Hereticks because we never take the liberty to chuse our selves or admit what others chuse but we take bona fide what is deliver'd us reveal'd by the greatest Authority imaginable on Earth which is that of the Catholick Church He proceeds Here then is the Tenure of our Faith. The Father sent his only begotten Son consubstantial to himself into the world and what he heard of his Father he made known to us Io. 15.11 The Father and Son sent the H. Ghost and hee did not speak of himself but what he heard that he spoke Io. 16.13 The Holy Ghost sent the Apostles and they declared unto us what they had seen and heard 1 Io. 1.3 The Apostles sent the Highest and Lowest Prelates in the Church and the Rule by which they fram'd their Decrees was Let nothing be alter'd in the Depositum Let no Innovation be admitted in what 's deliver'd Quod Traditum est non innovetur But he more expresly yet declares himself no Adversary to this way ibid. p. 267. Your Friend Mr. G. B. had call'd this way of proving Doctrines that They had them from their Fathers they from theirs a New method of proving Popish Doctrines and receives for Answer these words You discover your Ignorance in saying that Method was New or that Arnaud invented it Mr. Thomas White had it before Arnaud Mr. Fisher a Iesuite before T. W. Bellarmin before him St. Austin St. Stephen Pope Tertullian before them all Where you see he both allows this very Method we take as practis'd by Modern Controvertists of note nay by some of his own Order too whom he is far from disapproving and by Antient Fathers also whom he highly venerates Your petty Project thus defeated I shall endeavour to open your Eyes if they be not which God grant they be not wilfully shut 11. The Asserters of Tradition observing that the Adversaries they had to deal with admitted Christ's Doctrin to be Divine held it the most compendious way to put a speedier End to all Controversies which Experience taught them were otherwise liable to be spun out into a voluminous length and the most efficacious Method to conclude all the Heterodox of what denomination soever to prove That the Doctrin held now by the Catholick Church was Christ's or the self-same that was taught at first by Himself and his Apostles It was bootless for them to attempt to prove this by Texts of Scripture manag'd by their Private Wits For the Truth of our Faith depending on Christ's Teaching it if it were not Absolutely Certain Christ taught it it could not be evinc't with Absolute Certainty to be True. Now the same Experience inform'd them that no Interpretation of Scripture made by Private Judgments of themselves or others could arrive to such a pitch of Certainty and consequently would leave Faith under the scandalous ignominy of being possibly and perhaps actually false It was to as little purpose to alledge against such Adversaries the Divine Assistance to the Church or Christs Promise of Infallibility to it as you very weakly object to Mr. G. p. 16. as not once asserted by him For tho' this was believ'd by the Faithful yet it was disown'd by all those Heterodox and being it self a point of Faith it seem'd improper to be produc't for a Rule of Faith. Besides how should they prove this Divine Assistance If by Scripture interpreted by their Private Judgments these not being Absolutely Certain it would have weaken'd the Establishment of that Grand Article which to the Faithful was a kind of Principle to all the rest in regard that upon the Certainty of it the Security they had of all the other Articles was to depend If by the Divine Authority of the Church it self it was not so easie to defend that method not to run round in a Circle whereas all Regular Discourse ought to proceed straight forwards These Considerations oblig'd them to set themselves to make out by Natural Mediums that the Human Authority of such a Great Body as was that of the Church was Absolutely Certain or Infallible in conveying down many visible and notorious Matters of Fact and among the rest or rather far above the rest the Subject being Practical and of infinite Concern that such and such a Doctrin was first taught to the Age contiguous to the Apostles and continued ever since By this means they resolv'd the Doctrin of the present Church into that of Christ and his Authority and consequently these being suppos'd by both Parties to be Divine into the Divine Authority granted by all to be the Formal Motive of Divine Faith. 12. This is the true state of that Affair And now I beseech you Learned Sir Where 's the Polagianism Where is the least Ground or shadow of Ground for all these bugbear words and false accusations which to make them sink deeper into the Reader 's Belief and create a more perfect abhorrence of our Tenet come mask't here under an affected shew of Godliness All hold their Faith relies on the Divine or Christs Authority into which they finally resolve it and all Catholicks hold Grace necessary to believe the Mysteries of Divine Faith tho' all perhaps do not judge Grace needful to believe upon Human Authority this Matter of Fact viz. That Christ taught it Yet my self in Faith vindicated seeing that the admitting this Truth would oblige the Heterodox to relinquish their ill-chosen Tenets and return to the Church against which they had a strong aversion did there declare my particular Sentiment That God's Grace and some Assistance of the Holy Ghost was requir'd to make them willing to see the force even of this Natural Demonstration so much against their Humour and Interest Is it
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
of Errour for the pure Gold of Truth and Soul-poysoning Heresies for means of Salvation Had I a mind to set up a similitude-mender and that you will needs have it a Purse I should beg your leave to put it thus Suppose that Purse's Mouth were tyed up with a knot of such a mysterious contrivance that none could open it I mean still as to the understanding the Mysteries of our Faith but those who knew the Mind of the Bequeather and that the Church to which it was left as a Legacy had knowledge of his Mind and so could open it while others tortur'd their Wits with little tricks and inventions turning and winding the ambiguous folds of it some one way some another and yet entangled their own thoughts more and more while they went about to unty the Knots that so perplex't them 22. This is the true case You make account containing does all the business whereas 't is nothing at all to our purpose which is in the final Intention of it about the Absolute Certainty of your Faith unless we have equal assurance that you can get out thence what 's contain'd there as you pretend to have that 't is contain'd Now it cannot be deny'd but the Primitive Church was imbu'd with Christ's sense by the Preaching of the Apostles and their immediate Successours and so had a sure and proper Way to interpret Scripture and while this sense was still deliver'd down they could not fail of an absolutely Certain Rule to understand it right But there steps up now one Heretick then another opposing himself to the sense of the Church and relying on the dextery of his own wit will needs find out contrivances how to open the Scripture's Meaning by wayes of his private Skill But falls into multitudes of Errours finding no way to unfold the deeply-mysterious Book having refus'd to make use of the right means viz. Christ's sense descending in the Church by Tradition Whence notwithstanding all his little Arts and boasting presumption like the Fox in the Fable Vas lambit Pultem non attingit 23. Mistake me not I do not mean Scriptures Letter is not clear in such passages as concern Common Morality or the Ten Commandments with the Sense of which every one is imbu'd by the Light of Nature Nor in matters of Fact such as were most of those Marks or Signs to know the Messias by foretold us by the Prophets our Saviour's doing such and such Miracles his going beyond Iordan c. Nor in Parables explain'd by himself and such like But in Dogmatical Points or Tenets which are Spiritual and oftentimes profound Mysteries and of these by the way I desire still to be understood when I speak of the Certainty of the Letter or Sense of Scripture for with other Passages I meddle not as the Tenet of a Trinity Christ's God-head the Real Presence of his Body in the Sacrament and such like which have a vast Influence upon Christian Life either immediately or else in a higher Nature being as it were Principles to many other Articles of Faith which depend on their Truth One would verily think I say that such as these should be some of your Golden Points or else there were none at all contain'd in your Purse Yet we experience That even in such as these your Rule is not intelligible enough to keep the Followers of it from erring So that let your Purse have never so Golden and Silver a lining you are never the richer unless you can come at it or can certainly distinguish the pure Gold of Truth from the impure Dross of Errour Your Similitude then comes not home to your purpose nor shews that you have therefore all your Faith or all Divine Revelations because you have a Book which you judge contains them Let 's see now if it does not make against you You put the Doctrin or Points of Faith to be the Gold and Silver contain'd in the Purse and consequently that must be the Purse into which that Doctrin of Faith was put by Christ our Saviour and this was evidently the Heads and Hearts of the Faithful For the Points of Faith being so many Divine Truths are onely contain'd in Men's Minds properly and Words being by their very Definition but Signes of what is in our Minds Truths are no more really in a Book than Wine is really in a Bush which signifies it Since then those Truths were onely in the Breast of Christ Originally and after him in that of the Apostles and their Thoughts could not be communicated nor consequently the Gold and Silver deliver'd to the Legatees otherwise than by signifying it which can onely be done by one of these ways by Living Voice and Practice or by Writing that is by Tradition or Scripture neither of these can with any Sense be liken'd to the Purse it self into which the money is to be put or answer comparatively to It but they are both of them Wayes Means or Methods of putting these heavenly Riches into it's Proper Purse the Souls of the Faithful Of these two Ways our Saviour chose the First which was Teaching his Doctrin orally for he writ nothing and by doing thus told us it was the better For it had been against his Infinit Wisdom to chuse the worser way for Himself to make use of and leave the better to his Servants Nor did his servants the Apostles affect the Way of Writing so as to use it onely but on the contrary they made use of this Oral Way of Preaching constantly and that of Writing for the most part at least if not altogether occasionally They converted the present Church by their Preaching they comforted the future Church by leaving many most edifying Words and Actions of our Blessed Saviour Written which being Particulars and not breaking out openly into Christian Practice might otherwise in likelihood at least to a great degree have been lost to succeeding generations besides the abetment their Writings give to Faith it self when certainly interpreted and rightly understood So that according to this discourse of yours we should either have never a Purse to put Points of Faith in for you take no notice of the Souls of the Faithful into which they are properly put and in which onely they are in reality contain'd Or if you will needs call that a Purse which contains them meerly as a Sign does the thing signify'd or as that which may signify to us our Faith you must put two Purses Tradition and Scripture And then the onely Question is out of which Purse we can with more Certainty get it That is whether a Living Container which can give us perfect light of it's Sense by all the best ways imaginable or the Dead Letter which as Experience demonstrates can neither clear it's Sense to Private Understandings nor if we doubt of it's Meaning and had a mind to ask it could either hear or reply much less pertinently and appositely speak to the Asker as oft as he
She is to Edify Her Children and in contests with Hereticks as to all those Points contain'd there and I think the only difficulty in that particular is By what means She came to be Absolutely-Certain of it's Sense Let him add then but one word more and say that by the Letter of Scripture She so judg'd of Faith that She could not be in an Errour or mistaken all the while and then Christian Faith is Absolutely-Certain and my greatest care is over And if he does not That what is the future Church after the Apostles Deaths the better for Scripture's being an Infallible Rule if She and Her Children partake not the Benefit of that Infallibility some way or other by being perfectly secur'd from Erring in Faith Is it not all one as to the intent of knowing assuredly we have the Faith taught by Christ whether we have an Infallible Rule or no if when we have done our best we may still stray from Her Faith Or why is not a Rule that is not Absolutely-Certain so I have Absolute Certainty I am directed by it as good for that purpose as an Absolutely-Certain Rule with no Absolute Certainty that I do indeed go according to it To speak to his proposition Whether the Church and the Faithful in Contests with Hereticks avail'd Her self of Scripture's Letter to gain Absolute-Certainty of it's Sense in those main Tenets or brought the Sense which She had another way along with her shall be decided if he pleases by St. Austin whom he cites here p. 16. § 18. He will prove Scripture a Rule from the general Reason of it's Writing and prove this general Reason from a Testimony of Irenaeus which speaks of the Gospel as abstracted from being Preach't and Written and who doubts but as such it is infallibly true He seems to build much upon the Words That it might be a Foundation and Pillar of our Faith. Be it what it will in it self the Point is How does it Build Faith in us By it 's meer Letter descanted upon by private Iudgments or interpreted by the Church The Later he denies the Former all our most earnest Pressing and Intreating could never bring him nor his Reflecter to go about to make out and he wayes it totally through this whole Sermon Let him then but shew that he has Absolute-Certainty of Scripture's Sense in those Tenets of Christian-Faith by any Method his Principles will allow him and his Sermon should have past for me without Controul That 's the main Point whereas all here is quite besides it As for those Words from S. Irenaeus he could have quoted the very same words in a manner from a better Author even the Holy Scripture calling the Church the Pillar and Ground of Truth but that he lik't not the Application of them to the Church It seems he can neglect his Rule and make no more reckoning of it than he did of the Oral Tradition or Preaching of the Apostles when it stands in his way of comes cross to his purpose § 19. It has been manifested above that his Discourses from the writing of the Gospels and Epistles are all guilty of the same Fault and Antedate our Tradition and his Inferences thence as levell'd against our Tenet are weaker than Water He makes Tradition any thing what he pleases and will have it do every thing tho' it was never intended for it nor ever pretended by us it was able to do it One while it must bring down the Decrees of Councils Another while it must convey long Disputes about divers Points and the resolution of them and this Totidem Verbis otherwise the Apostles Sense might have been lost It must secure people from being remov'd from Christ's Gospel to another whereas no man ever held that the Galatians were remov'd from Christ's Gospel by following even the particular Tradition or Preaching of that Apostle nor that any particular Men nay Churches might not be remov'd from it even into Heathenism or Iudaism if they deserted it He expects too it should secure men from danger of being Deceiv'd whereas supposing them once well-Instructed in Faith and 't is suppos'd to our Tradition the Church was so 't is self-evident they can never be deceiv'd while they hold to that Certain Rule because that is to hold the same they were instructed in at first But if all were not well instructed at first as 't is impossible they should then they might be deceiv'd either by deserting Tradition or even by holding to such a Tradition if for want of perfect Instruction in that raw and unsettled state of Christianity that which they held at first was not perfectly Christ's Doctrine Nay he would have it keep even Hereticks from Defection Hypocrisie Lying and Deceiving which were a rare Tradition indeed to do such Kindnesses and work such good Effects upon those who had deserted it and would not make use of it at least he would have it keep People from Weakness and Folly which the Common Assistances of Nature and Grace will do after the Generality is well settled in that Doctrine For when all the Question is What the Apostles preach't 't is a Madness and Folly both to believe some few men before the Universal Testimony of the Christian Church But he will have Tradition still do all the Mischiefs imaginable and Writing do all the Good forgetting I suppose that there are some things in St. Paul's Writings which the Vnlearned and Vnstable wrest as they do also the other Scriptures to their own destruction All this while What is this to the Tradition we assert which begun afterwards § 20. From these impertinent Premises he infers as impertinent a Conclusion viz. That what was deliver'd in Scripture contains a compleat Rule of the true and genuin Faith as it was at first deliver'd to the Church Now that what 's signify'd by Scripture is the same the Apostles signify'd by their Preaching is plain Sense and never deny'd and so he needed not have made all this clutter to prove it But plain sense will do him no service whose best play 't is to blunder and confound every thing let us see then what it is that will. His first words What they have therein delivered can mean nothing but the Sense of Scripture for that is the thing signify'd or deliver'd by the Letter and both sides confess that the Sense of Scripture is Christ's Faith. If then we spell his Words together they plainly amount to this That Christ's Faith contains a compleat Rule of the true and genuin Faith as it was deliver'd at first to the Church that is Faith it self contains a compleat Rule to it's self Make sence of this who can The best I can make of it is That the Conclusion keeps decorum with the Premises and that he has mighty well imploy'd his Labour to keep such a huge Pother to infer such a worthy Point § 21. I have nothing
the highest Mysteries of our Faith be necessary for Salvation But must we still be put off with that frigid Evasion that such sublime Points are as intelligible now at this distance from the time of the Apostles tho' only couch't in a few words in a Book as they were when spoke by those Living Teachers who doubtless not only deliver'd their Sense in a few set words but such Points needing it explain'd it and dilated upon it to settle it better and sink an express conceit of it deeper into the minds of their Auditors Can it be imagin'd but that many of the People and the Pastours especially put their doubts and askt them Questions concerning the Points of Faith they had Preacht and receiv'd pertinent Answers none of which a Book could do How ridiculous a pretence then is this Yet this is his best shift For unless the Book have This or an Equivalent Virtue to make Clear its Sense it cannot have the Plainness or Clearness requisit to a Rule of Faith. He contends that if those Points be necessary to Salvation they must be so Plain that we may be Certain of our Duty to believe them Which retorts his Discourse upon himself for if those two sublime Articles there spoken of be Necessary for the Salvation of the Generality which cannot be deny'd without accusing the Primitive Church of Tyranny for casting those out of the Church who deny'd them then they must be Certain one way or other that 't is their Duty to believe them and since he does not think fit to say this Duty can be Certainly shewn them by the Letter of Scripture it follows that this Duty to believe them must be made Certain by the Testimony of the Church delivering them 'T is easy to be seen the whole force of his Discourse here is built on his begging the Question that Scriptures Letter as understood by Private Judgments is the Rule of Faith and that it is plain in all Necessary Points Which he ought not to do without shewing us first which Points are Necessary at least those of the Trinity and Godhead of Christ if he think them so and then proving his Rule is Plain in all such Points and not still to suppose presume upon and occurr to that which is yet under Dispute Vngranted and Unprov'd Let me then mind him of one piece of Logick which tho' it be not Admirable yet 't is Solid and never regarded by him 'T is this that no Argument has any force upon another but either by its being so Evident that he must forfeit his Reason to deny it or Granted by his Adversary so that he must either Argue from something Clear of it self or made Clear by Proof or else argue Ex concessis from the Party 's own Concession By which Rule if all the Reasons he brings here were examin'd it will manifestly appear he has not spoken one word of True Reason against me in his whole Answer I do here Challenge him to shew me so much as any One Argument of his that has either of these Qualifications and to encourage him to such a performance if he can shew me any One such I promise him to pass all the rest for valid and good I end with desiring the considering Reader to reflect on the Drs Discourse here p 82. and upon an exact review of it to determine whether Principles are not deeply laid here to make the Socinians and many other known Hereticks Members of his Church and to free them from Church Censurers For if they find not in Scripture that the Apostles Preacht the Trinity and Godhead of Christ in clear and Express terms and with this Connotate as necessary to Salvation they cannot be Certain of their Duty to believe them the Consequences of which I need not dilate on His own Church is more concern'd to look to his Tenets than I am 63. He triumphs much that I grant Some may be sav'd without the Knowledge of all Christ Taught He means those Spiritual Points so often mention'd But if he knew how little advantage he gains by it he would not think it worth his taking notice of What may be done in an abstracted case is one thing what if they live in a Church and hold Heresies contrary to Christ's and the Church's Doctrin is Another Some Catholick Divines treating of Faith do mantain that to hold There is a God and that He is a Rewarder and Punisher is Simply enough for Salvation if they live up to those Tenets whence they conceive hopes that Nebuchadnezzar was sav'd tho' he was no Iew. But what 's this to our case Christ has left us a Body of Doctrin and since he did nothing Unnecessary for the Salvation of Mankind this being the End of his Coming and Preaching each Point conduced to that End either immediately or by Consequence whence by the way 't is a Folly to expect the Apostles Taught such Points as necessary to Salvation others as not necessary since no Point was Vnnecessary for the Salvation of Mankind except when they said for Distinction Dico ego non Christus or us'd some Equivalent expression But to return God has also settled a Church to conserve that Doctrin of Christ Intire Whence if any falls into Heresies contrary to that Doctrin by Misunderstanding Scripture's Letter in such passages 't is her Duty to cast them out of the Church and deliver them over to Satan for their contumacious Pride in preferring their own Private Judgments before the Judgment of their Pastours and the Church whom God appointed to Teach Them. Whence I do assure him I do not hold that any one such Privative Unbeliever will ever be sav'd tho' he holds some Points which of their own Nature might suffice for Salvation For such a man believes nothing at all but upon his own Self conceit and the very Ground of his Faith let him prate of Scripture as much as he will is Spiritual Pride which Vice alone is enough to damn him even tho' he held all those Points of Christ's Faith to a Tittle Hence follows that either the Primitive Church as hinted above was very uncharitable in Excommunicating those who dissented from those High Articles Or else the Rule of Faith must be so Plain and Clear that it must preserve those from Heresy who follow it and render them Inexcusable who by deserting it do fall into the opposit Heresies And therefore that we may bring our Discourse back to the Question he must either prove his Rule of Faith thus Qualify'd or 'T is no Rule What follows to p. 85. is meer Drollery which gives all the seeming Strength to his Weak reasoning Only he has a fling at Transubstantiation which is a Topick of course in his Controversy He thinks 't is Unnecessary to the Church but the Church it seems thought it necessary to define it in her Circumstances and I humbly conceive the necessary occasion of defining it was because such as He
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
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
Iohn Biddle did against the Minister of his Parish and the whole Church of England to boot 'T is plain you ought to cherish and commend him for standing firm to his Rule But I am much afraid you would be out of humor with him and esteem your self affronted You may pretend what you please of high Expressions given by Antiquity of Scripture's incomparable Excellency and Sufficiency for the Ends it was intended for which we do not deny to it but I dare say even your self do's not think that either the Ancient Faithful or the Modern Reformers meant that any of the Ecclesia credens or Believing Church should have the liberty to Interpret Scripture against the Ecclesia docens or Teaching Church i. e. Pastors or Coyn a Faith out of it contrary to the present or former Congregation of which he was a Member 26. The sum is 'T is evident hence that Tradition of your Fathers and Teachers and not Scriptures Letter is indeed your Rule That by it you Interpret Scripture which then only is call'd your Rule and made use of as such when you are Disputing against us because having thus set it up to avoid and counterbalance the Authority of the former Church you left you make account your own private Interpretation of it may come to be thought Argumentative against the great Body of those Churches from whose Communion you departed and yet you judge no private Parishioner should claim the same Priviledge against you without affronting your great Learning and Pastoral Authority But I much wonder you should still venture to call Scripture's Letter a Rule of Faith having been beaten from that Tenet so pitifully in Error Nonplust from Pag. 59. to Pag. 72. where I believe you may observe divers Particulars requisit to be clear'd e're the Letter can be in all regards Absolutely Certain which the Consent of all Christian Churches will never reach to by their meer Authority unless you will allow the Sense of Christ's Doctrin descending by Tradition did preserve the Copy substantially right and intire 27. Your pretended Rule of Faith then being in reality the same that is challeng'd by all the Heretics in the World viz. Scripture's Letter Interpreted by your selves I will let you see in this following short Discourse how far it is from being Absolutely Certain I. God has left us some Way to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught II. Therefore this Way must be such that they who take it shall arrive by it at the End it was intended for that is know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught III. Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Iudgments is not that Way for we experience Presbyterians and Socinians for example both take that Way yet differ in such high Fundamentals as the Trinity and the Godhead of Christ. IV. Therefore Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Iudgments is not the Way left by God to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught or surely to arrive at right Faith. V. Therefore they who take only that Way cannot by it arrive surely at right Faith since 't is impossible to arrive at the End without the Means or Way that leads to it 28. I do not expect any Answer to this Discourse as short as it is and as plain and as nearly as it touches your Copyhold it may be serv'd as Mr. G's Argument is turn'd off so so with an Instance if there be one at hand or with what always is at hand an Irony or scornful Jest your readiest and in truth most useful Servants But you must be excus'd from finding any Proposition or Inference to deny or any thing save the Conclusion it self Which tho' it will not be fairly avoided I cannot hope should be fairly admitted unless I could hope that Men would be more in love with Truth than their Credit Till Truth be taken a little more to heart Catholic Arguments will and must always be faulty but they are the most unluckily and crosly faulty of any in the World faulty still in the wrong place When fault is found in other Arguments it is always found in the Premisses in these 't is found in the Conclusion In which notwithstanding all who know any thing of a Conclusion know there can be no fault if there be none in the Premisses Indeed they shew that to be true which Men cannot endure should be true and that is their great and unpardonable fault That you may not think I talk in the Air I declare openly that you cannot Answer this Discourse unless you will call some unconcerning Return an Answer and I engage my self to shew the Proposition true and the Inference good which you shall pitch upon to deny And the Distinction if you will make any not to purpose The truth is I engage for no great matter for I know beforehand you can no more Answer now than you could to Error Nonplust or can prove an Absolute Certainty in Protestant Faith. 29. To return now to Mr. G. the Second thing which you desire him to make good is That the Tradition from Father to Son is an infallible Conveyance of Matters of Faith notwithstanding the Greek Church is charged by him with Error which adher'd to Tradition That is you desire him to prove over again what you tell us your self he has prov'd once already For you tell us p. 5. he prov'd That they Traditionary Christians could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it Pray when it is prov'd that the Conveyance of Faith by Tradition excludes the possibility of Change in Faith save by forgetfulness or malice is it not prov'd That where there could be neither forgetfulness nor malice there could be no change in Faith You do not I suppose desire he should prove that Men had always Memories or that Christians were never malicious enough to damn themselves and Posterity wittingly and yet it can stick no where else If it can said Mr. G. assign where Now you know very well that a Conveyance which makes it impossible that Faith should ever be chang'd is an Infallible Conveyance and the very thing is prov'd which you desire should be prov'd What reason has Mr. G. to prove it a second time And what reason have you to desire it If Proof would content you you have it already but a second cannot hope to content you better than the first unless it be worse 30. Yes but you would have him prove Notwithstanding the Greek Church c. p. 7. Notwithstanding Why do you think it is with Arguments as with Writs where the want of a Non obstante spoils all When a Truth is once prov'd is it not prov'd notwithstanding all Objections And will any Notwithstanding unprove it again Will your Notwithstanding shew us there was a time in which Men were not Men nor acted like Men Will it shew us that a thing which cannot possibly be chang'd may yet
it leads any more than the man who goes down the Strand of coming to Charing-Cross and when men have no more to do with a Way but to travel in it and so cannot be wanting to themselves in that respect if they do Of the same batch is your misunderstanding and not keeping the Way As if they who interpret by their private Judgments did not keep the way of interpreting by private Judgments And tho' their Understandings be none of the best when they take that for the sure Way to understand by yet that very misunderstanding is their understanding it to be the Way and so they even in your opinion misunderstand not the Way however they misunderstand by it In fine you amuse us with a company of VVords which have a Sound but either no sense at all or none to purpose And it remains that because a Way must bring every one that takes it to the End of that Way and private Interpretation does not bring Socinians to the sure Knowledge of Christs Doctrine which is the End that therefore Private Interpretation of Scripture is not a way to know that Doctrine surely 25. And yet you can bear us in hand that this follows no more than it follows that because we see men misinterpret and break good Laws daily therefore those Laws are Vnintelligible or cannot be kept and must be thought insufficient to shew them what the Law-giver expects from them What breaking and keeping the Laws is brought in for you best know that bring them in Our Discourse is only about knowing the Doctrin of Faith and not at all about Living up to it and so has nothing to do with those who know but will not keep the Laws as is the case of most Malefactors But you end your Discourse well I must needs say and very sutably to all the rest with an Instance directly against your self You see that Laws left to Private Interpretation are by all Mankind judg'd insufficient and publick Interpreters therefore set up every where and from the Parity with them which are Insufficient you conclude the Letter of Scripture is not Insufficient Any body but your self would have made another Use of this Instance As God can write much plainer than Men when he thinks fit and has more care of their Salvation than they of their Temporal Concerns another man would have concluded that God did not intend their Salvation should depend on the privately-interpretable Letter of the Divine Law which he left less plain than Men made the Letter of Humane Laws But you it seems had a mind to make your Discourse all of a piece The best is 't is now ended we are free to pass on to the fourth Proposition To which because the force of Exceptions against an Inference before it be inferr'd appears not so well I reserve what you say against it while I put it only to be prov'd 26. It is this Therefore Scriptures Letter interpretable by private Iudgments is not the way left by God to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught or surely to arrive at right Faith. And now I must look to my self for you pour out here your distinguishing Talent upon me If say you by Scripture's Letter he means unsensed Characters then I confess Scriptures Letter cannot be the Rule or Way There is one branch of your Distinction and so the other unless you will talk non-sense must needs be Scripture's Letter meaning sensed Characters can be or is the Rule Your words are Yet if he can think it reasonable to allow as much to the Scripture as he expects we should allow to this Letter of his that it contains good sence exprest in words significant and intelligible we deny his Assumption that Scripture's Letter is not this way As you have this Art among the rest to talk unintelligibly when you have a mind to 't in very plain English I wish some Body would tell me for you whether you take scripture's Letter in this period for unsensed or sensed Characters for truly I cannot tell my self By the terms you put intelligible and significant one would guess you mean unsensed Characters for intelligible imports what may be understood but is not yet and significant what may be perceived by the sign whether it be or no. And then you have made a fair hand of it with your fair dealing who distinguish the word Letter into Characters unsensed and Characters unsensed and grant it to be a Rule in one of the two same meanings and deny it in the other But you shall talk sense for me and mean Characters sensed and then le ts see how much you have mended the matter A Character sensed signifies a Character with the sense joined to it The sense of the Characters of Scripture is the sense of God and the sense of God is that which we are to believe And so Scripture-Characters sensed signify Faith it self in conjunction with those Characters Now Faith is the End to which we are looking for a Way to carry us To tell us then that scripture's Letters taken for sensed Characters is this way is to tell us that the end is the way to it self that the means to get Faith is to have it first that when we know it we know it that when we are at our Journeys End we are in the direct Road to it and such fine things which would tempt a man not very fond of disputing to leave it off and betake himself to some other business For how can you or any think fit to vex poor controversy all your life when your very sense proves Non-sense And yet it is not that you have not serv'd a Prentiship long enough in the Mystery But the best Shoemaker in the world cannot make a good shoe of Bad Leather 27. Yet as you are not a man to be discourag'd with ill success you are at your Distinctions again and tell us that if by these words interpretable by private Judgments I mean the Scripture any way interpretable as any private man may possibly wrest the words to make them comply with his own sentiments or through Ignorance and Laziness and Neglect of such Helps and Means as are fit to be us'd may misunderstand them I must have a very bad Conscience c. As if the Question were about my Conscience But you would say I suppose that Scripture so meant is not the Way and I say it is not too Pray what Conscience is yours if mine be bad when I say as you do But if my meaning be that Scripture as it may be understood by a Private Man of a competent Iudgment using such Helps as are proper is not the Way you again deny my Assumption Because it would render the Discourse unintelligibly confus'd to repeat so many lines at every turn I shall with your good leave say in short Good and Bad Judgments understanding by the Bad all the qualifications of the First Branch
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
pretended We are absolutely Certain such and such particular Points are contain'd there otherwise your General Ground comes not up to the Question nor does your Faith any service at all since it leaves it still Vncertain of which more hereafter Especially since you pretended or rather declar'd openly p. 14. that you now held all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles Which Profession reaches to all the Points of Faith and not onely to your Ground of Faith. I must confess you render'd that Profession insignificant and cancell'd the obligation as soon as you had made it in the Explication of those words immediately following which makes those hearty expressions Absolutely Certain of all the same Doctrin amount to no more but that you resolve your Faith into Scripture We must I see deal with you as those who have a pretence in Court do with Great Courtiers who lose their repute with them as ill-bred and unmannerly if they will needs take them at their word and do not distinguish between what 's spoken and what 's meant Your Answer was very honest and direct We are absolutely Certain we now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles The Comment is this I fram'd my Answer on purpose to shew that our Faith is not to be resolv'd into what Christ taught any otherwise than as it is convey'd to us by the Writings of the Apostles Evangelists Whereas if there be so much as one word of Writing or Evangelists even hinted in your Answer it self unless the Word Taught meant Writ which cannot be because we never read that Christ writ any Books or the least Semblance of reason for making this Skewing Explication but to shuffle off your too large Concession I will confess my self too shallow to fathom the profound depth of your inscrutable sense Resolve then your Faith in God's Name into what you will so you but shew us an Absolutely Certain Connexion between the Points resolved and the Rule into which you profess to resolve it Otherwise 't is no Resolution of Faith if the continued Chain of Motives winding it up to the First Truth or God's infinite veracity hangs slack Such Incoherence serves not for Faith which must be indissolubly connected to the Formal Motive of all our Faith else the Resolution of it may be shatter'd and broke to pieces by the way ere we come there Which if it may then the Resolution is no Resolution for that speaks Connexion of the Motives and Faith thus resolv'd may perhaps all be False and so is no Faith. 'T is your work then to shew in particular when you come to it and at present in general that your Rule gives you Absolute Certainty of the Points of Faith more than it does the Socinian who have the same Rule and profess to follow it as much as you do for your heart and yet erre enormously Nay in effect they take the same Method too to interpret Scripture which you do for tho' you give good words to the consent of former ages yet your Grounds do not allow it Absolute Certainty in bringing down Doctrin or interpreting Scripture and less than such a Certainty and in such things signifies nothing in our case And 't is either by your Rule and Method you can arrive thus certainly at the Sense of Scripture or by nothing If you could once with Absolute Certainty convince the Socinians of Obstinacy against a Clear Truth by your Rule or Method or both together I mean if you could make it clear to them that your Rule of Faith cannot possibly bear any other Sense so that the indifferent part of the world judg'd them wilful adherers to a false Interpretation or that you could silence them and put them to open shame for adhering to it you would do somthing Otherwise your starting aside still from the Absolute Certainty of the Points even tho' p. 14. you pretended to be Absolutely Certain you hold them All and talking to us of nothing but a General Ground is meer shuffling and shews plainly you meant not really in that Answer of yours to Mr. G's first Question where you spoke of all the Doctrin which includes every Particular Point so that by All it seems you meant None 'T is very paradoxical to see you distinguish here p. 14 between the Doctrin taught by Christ and that which was taught by the Apostles The reason why you do it is to insinuate into our Readers that we derive the source of our Tradition from Christ's Teaching orally as the Iews affirm of Moses delivering an unwritten Law else to what purpose this Distinction The Tradition we lay claim to has no such obscure Original it takes it's â—ife from the whole Body of Primitive Christians in the Apostles days dispers't in Great multitudes over the World and settled in the Knowledge of his Faith by means of their Preaching So that Tradition starts into motion from a most Publick and notorious matter of Fact viz. That the Apostles taught the First Christians such a Faith. To what imaginable purpose then was this frivolous distinction brought in You knew this was our Tenet and we knew well your Rule was Scripture What needed then this shuffling Paraphrase By Tradition you know we mean a Testimony for Doctrin receiv'd If the source be weak or that the Body of the Witnessers of it's Delivery at first and successively afterwards was smal the Tradition is consequently weak in proportion if Great it was stronger still according as the multitude of the Attesters was more numerous and their Credibleness more unexceptionable Well but admit your Faith be not resolv'd into what Christ taught by his own mouth but what the Apostles taught us from him why must you necessarily resolve your Faith into their Writings only Did the Apostles when they went to convert the world go with Books in their hands or Words in their Mouths Or were those Words a jot less Sacred when it came from their Mouths than when they put them in a Book Or lastly does any Command from Christ appear to write the Book of Scripture or any Revelation before hand that it was to be a Rule of Faith to the future Church No such matter and the Accidental occasions of it's writing at first and it's Acceptation afterwards bar any such Pretences On the other side their Grand Commission was not Scribite but only Predicate Evangelium Yet you can slubber this over without taking notice of it and carry it as if the Apostles Teaching mean't Writing only and that they taught the World no more than they writ Sure you do not mean the Apostles took Texts out of their own Books and preacht Sermons upon then as you do now Why must it be quite forgotten then and buried in silence that they taught any thing by word of mouth or preacht the Gospel publickly Allow that to be equally Sacred as what is writ and to be embrac't if well
Copy nor that any Copy can be True unless conformable to the True Original And if there can be any failure in any of these nay if you have not Absolute Certainty of all these you cannot have by your Grounds any Absolute Certainty of your Faith For if the Letter be wrong all is wrong that is built on it and it may be wrong for ought you know notwithstanding the Testimony of all Christian Churches relying on this Way of attesting the Truth of the Letter For you can never shew that all those Churches consented to apply their utmost diligence to examine and attest all the several Translations made in their respective languages or witnest that they came from the true Original or took the most exquisit care that was possible to see that the Translaters and the Copiers did their duty Which had they held the Letter to be their onely Rule of Faith and consequently that All Faith that is the very Being of the present and future Church and their own Salvation too depended on the Scripture they were obliged in conscience and under the highest Sin above all things in the World to have done and this with the exactest care imaginable Your Grounds then notwithstanding all you have said or alledged hitherto to ensure the Letter make no Provision for the Absolute Certainty of the Written-Rule nor consequently of your Faith. 27. But what becomes then say you of the Vulgar Latin Translation I answer in our Grounds no harm at all For the Canon of the Books comes down by the Testimony of all Christian Churches that are truly Christian and the Doctrin of Christ transfus'd into the hearts of the succeeding Faithful ever since the beginning both taught them how and oblig'd them to correct the Copy in those particular Texts that concern'd Faith if any Errour through the carelesness unattentiveness or malice of the Translaters or Transcribers at any time had crept in By the same Means as you can now adays correct the Copy in those Texts that ought to express some Point of Morality in case it were corrupted and deviated from Christian Manners viz. by vertue of the Sense of that Practical Tenet you were imbu'd with formerly this even tho' you had no other Copy or Text to amend it by Insomuch that how good an opinion so ever you had of the Copy Translater Printer or Correcter of the Press yet for all that you would conclude they had err'd and the Letter was faulty rather than forgo the Doctrin so firmly rivetted in your heart by the constant Teaching and Practice of the Christian world As for other particular Texts of an Inferiour Concern they could be best corrected by multitudes of other ancient Copies the Churches Care still going along in which too the greatest care that was possible to rectify it's Errours was taken by the Council of Trent that so it might be as exact as Human Diligence could well render it A thing as far as my memory reaches never order'd or very much regarded by any Council formerly 28. But I foresee your method of confuting which is to muster up Extrinsecall objections not at all to the purpose will naturally lead you to discredit this way of correcting Scripture's Letter in passages belonging to Faith as singular or New This being the same your Friend G. B. objected to the Way of Tradition it self as may be seen above Sect. 10. Such piddling Exceptions drest up prettily in gay language go a great way and make a fine shew in your Controversies and which is a benefit of most advantage to you excuse you from bringing any Intrinsecal Arguments tho' these onely are such as conclude any thing and tho' you are bound by your precise Duty to produce such Wherefore to ward this blow I shall alledge the Judgment of that Learned and Excellent Personage Sir Thomas More our first Modern English Controvertist who writing not against you in defence of our Grounds but to another Catholick Divine expresses candidly his Sentiment in these words Ego certe hoc persuadeo mihi idque ut opinor vere quicquid ad fidem astruendam faciat non esse a quovis melius versum quam ab ipsis Apostolis perscriptum Ideoque fit ut quoties in Latinis codicibus occurrat quidquam quod aut contra Fidem aut mores facere videatur Scripturarum interpretes aut ex aliis alibi verbis quid illud sibi velit dubium expiscentur aut ad vivum Evangelium Fidei quod per universam Ecclesiam in corda Fidelium infusum est quod etiam priusquam scriberetur a quoquam Apostolis a Christo ab Apostolis Vniverso Mundo praedicatum est dubios ejusmodi sermones applicent atque ad inflexibilem veritatis Regulam examinent ad quam si non satis adaptare queant aut sese non intelligere aut mendosum esse codicem non dubitent This is my Iudgment and as I conceive a True one that whatever Text is useful to build Faith on was not better translated by any than it was writ by the Apostles themselves And therefore as oft as any thing occurs in the Latin-Books that seems to make against Faith or Good Manners the Interpreters of Scripture either gather from other Words in other places what that doubt should mean or they compare those doubtful sayings to the living Gospel of Faith which was infus'd into the Hearts of the Faithful throughout the Vniversal Church which before any man writ it was Preach't by Christ to the Apostles and by the Apostles to the whole World examine them by the inflexible Rule of Faith with which if they cannot make it square they conclude that either they do not understand it or the Book is faulty where he passes by the former way with a sleight word expiscentur fish out the sense but insists on the latter way of preserving the Copy sincere as Certain and Proper 29. I must not pretermit your Objection p. 19. that the Ancient Christian Church never knew any thing concerning this Method of resolving Faith into meer Oral Tradition I would desire you to add Practical to Oral at least to conceive it to be understood all the way that being our True and constantly-avow'd Tenet But did the Antient Church in reality never know any thing of this way T is wonderful you should not understand they meant the same as we do unless they speak the self-same Words and make the same Discourses we do now Did not they all hold that who taught any thing contrary to the Doctrin delivered down by the Church was a Heretick Did any of them say that the Churche's Tradition of a Doctrin as Christs was liable to Errour Did any of them hold that it was lawful for your Sober Enquirer to rely on his Private Interpretation of the Scripture and relinquish the sense of the Church which is the true Point Not one 'T is one thing to say they oft quoted Scripture
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
immediately sink deep into the Conceptions of the Generality But it was otherwise when in tract of time that Doctrin was farther spread more often inculcated and more clearly explain'd and well-instructed Pastours constituted to Teach it more expressly and put them forwards to practise it He mistake◠then and misrepresents the whole nature of Our Tradition and by antedating it sights against it before it could have a Being And as this Errour runs through all his Discourses and weak Inferences out of Scripture so the laying it open once for all is a full confutation of them all at once Add that he never consider'd whether when those several Churches Err'd or were in hazard to Err they did so by following even that particular Tradition or Preaching of such or such an Apostle or whether they came to err by deserting it If the Later the Tradition was not faulty but They who Deserted it Yet how different soever these two Points are the one making for that particular Tradition the other against it he never thinks of distinguishing them or letting the Reader know when the Tradition was in fault and when the Persons but runs on in common words as if he had no Design or determinate prospect whither he was going I am sure it is not at all towards the true Question nor against Us. § 10. But tho' all his Reflexions from the several pieces of Scripture are quite besides the purpose yet his Candid and Solid way of managing his own Mistakes and how he wire-draws every thing to make it seem fit deserves our particular observation He tells us speaking of the Church of Corinth that They which signifies the whole Church had like to have lost All their Faith whereas the Text only sayes Some among you And is it such a wonder that some among many should hap to be imperfectly instructed fantastical or refractory to their Teachers But his Partiality is most remarkable When he was forc't to be beholding to the Churches Testimony of Doctrine which is our Tradition to abet the Scripture he could tell us then This is very different from the Case of particular Persons in some Churches who might mistake or forget what was taught but sayes he the Churches themselves could not agree to approve on Errour in the Gospel contrary to the Faith deliver'd to them So that there it was a very different Case but here it seems the Case is not different at all but the very same For Some among You are enlarg'd to signify that Church it self and whereas the only Point those Some deny'd was The Resurrection of the Dead to let you see how utterly insignificant a thing Tradition is that can do no good at all he extends it to signify All their Faith hoping I suppose any thing would pass upon you so 't were spoke out of a Pulpit 'T is told you there All 's Gods Word and he presumes you will be so Civil to God Almighty and so Kind to himself as to accept it for Such and swallow it for Pure Truth § 11. I am oblig'd to him for allowing That the Testimony of every Christian Church did shew the Concurrence of all the Apostles as to the Doctrine contain'd in the several Gospels For then I hope they may be able to shew to the next Age and so forwards the concurrent Doctrine of the First which establishes the Original of our Tradition to be Absolutely Certain He discourses well p. 11. and he ends better That the Memory of the Apostles Doctrin was so fresh in their Minds that it was in effect the Consent of all the Apostles who had taught them And yet better That the concurrent Testimony of all the Apostolical Churches could not let them agree to approve an Errour in the Gospels contrary to the Faith deliver'd to them This is very extraordinary kind and no less solid For 1. these Words could not agree to approve a contrary Doctrine makes their Testimony Infallible 2. This discourse makes the acceptation of the Truth of the Gospels that is of their Sense depend on Vnwritten Tradition 3. We cannot doubt but that Doctrine was Full as fresh in their Memories when they were grown Older and were to transmit it to the next Age after the Apostles decease as it was before unless they lost the Memory of it by discoursing of it more while they taught it to others by Practising it longer themselves 4. As little can it be doubted but the Doctrine and Practise of the First Age was as Fresh in the minds of the Second Age since they Led their Christian Lives by it for it was Equally Intelligible and of Equal Concern still to them to Learn and Teach it as it was to the First Lastly That this being so the Testimony of that Body even now adays that adheres to Tradition is in effect the Consent of all the Apostles that taught it at First Observe Gentlemen that this is the only time Dr. St. has so much as touch 't upon Our Tradition and that he is so far from impugning or confuting it that he in some part directly in others by necessary Consequence acknowledges it's force and strongly abets it But it was not out of good will he was intent in that place upon making good the Truth of the Gospels and assoon as he has made use of it to serve a present turn he immediately discards it as good for little or nothing or nothing to the particular purpose he had lately allow'd the Testifying Christs Doctrine § 12. For the very next page he reckons up three things for which The common Tradition of the Apostolical Churches were useful after the Decease of the Apostles But not a word of their Vsefulness to Testify to others what they had learnt from those Masters of Christianity No sooner were the Apostles dead and that first Age had by their concurrent Testimony of the Doctrine they had receiv'd from them given credit to the Truth of the Written Gospels but immediately the whole Christian World had lost their Memory of that Doctrine on a sudden and the Grace to preserve and propagate it One would think by this wild Discourse of his that both Common Natural parts and all degrees of Ordinary Honesty had been preserv'd to them miraculously thitherto meerly to recommend the Truth of the Gospels and that assoon as that was done and the Apostles were dead the Author of Nature and Grace suspended or rather subtracted for ever all his Influence left them a Tabula rasa without either Memory or Goodness to learn their Faith a new out of Scripture § 13. And hence it is that he rallies upon Universal Testimony or Tradition as if it were some sleight story of a few Tatling Gossips or of those who heard what some say that others told them who had it from such c. Whereas had he said as he ought to have said What the whole First Age of Christians witnest
the Sence writ in the Heart of the Church at first by the Preaching of the Apostles and continu'd ever since in the manner we have describ'd and prov'd § 24. But The Dr. is got into a Track of mistaking and he cannot get out of it He brings for his Third Argument our B. Saviour's advice to the Iews to search the Scriptures The business was to know whether he was the true Messias and the Prophecies relating to the Messias were Matters of Fact or else Moral and therefore proportion'd to the Understanding of the Searchers and plain enough so they apply'd but Industry Diligence to find them out Are your Mysteries of Christian Faith such Or Must weak unelevated Understandings therefore presume to penetrate the Meaning of the Scripture in Texts of so deep a Sense as those Mysteries are because the Jews were exhorted to do it in a matter within the Sphere of their Capacity Again The Tradition of the Iews was very strong that a Messias should come but that This was the Person there was no Tradition at all This was therefore either to be made known by his Miracles done to attest it or to be found out by the applying of diverse particulars to Him and by seeing they all concurr'd in him And did ever any of us pretend that Tradition was to bring down such particulars If he says we did he must shew where If he confesses we did not he must confess withal his Text and Discourse here is nothing to the purpose He turns it off from the Admonition of searching the Scriptures to know the true Messias to the knowing whether he were a Temporal Prince whereas the Tradition of his Kingdom 's being purely Spiritual was neither Vniversally held taught nor deliver'd at first by the First Founders of that Law nor settled in the hearts of the Synagogue or the Universality of the Jews in the beginning as Christ's Doctrin was by the unanimous Preaching of the Apostles in the hearts of such a numerous Multitude as was the Christian Church of the First Age. Which being evidently so What reason was there our Saviour should refer them to such a slight or rather no-Tradition and not to the Written Prophecies in which he was foretold Or What consequence can be drawn hence to the prejudice of Christian Tradition which and which only we defend and which as was fitting is so strongly supported that it is impossible to find a Parallel to equal or come nigh it And unless this be done all his Arguments against it stand thus A Lesser Force cannot do an Effect therefore a Greater cannot An odd piece of Logick but suitable to all the rest § 25. His Fourth Reason represents Tradition to be meerly Verbal and not Practical That it alone is to bring down particular Matters of Fact or Historical passages nay the Speculative Whimsies of the old Heathen Phylosophers None of which was ever pretended and so all his Discourse runs upon his old and oft-repeated Errour in the true meaning of Tradition § 26. The Reasons he gives for the Certainty of the Books of Scripture we allow to a Tittle and we add to them One over and above which is better than them all viz. the Obligation and Care of the Church which as She ever held the Scriptures to contain the same Doctrin which was preach't to Her at first by Christ's Order and that it was a most incomparable Instrument for the Edification of her Children the Abetment of Faith the Salvation of Mankind nay an Instruction to Her Self too in thousands of most excellent most useful and most enlightning passages so She could not but look upon Her Self as most highly oblig'd to preserve the Letter from any material Alteration and yet more particularly in case any Hereticks went about to corrupt it in any Texts nay Coma's or Pointings that concerned the main Articles of Christianity which they sometimes attempted the Doctrin of Christ in her Breast could easily direct them to set the Text right again and that with Absolute Certainty Nor does any say or so much as suppose any Book of Scripture is indeed lost as he hints p. 29. only upon his saying That the Scripture we have now contains all the Divine Revelations I us'd the right of a Disputant and put him to make good what he says and to prove he has the Absolute Certainty he pretended to that no Book was lost without which he could have no such Certainty those pieces of Scripture we have now did contain All the Divine Revelations which by his Grounds denying any Certainty but what might admit of Deceit I was sure he was not able to perform § 27. Nor do I at all doubt of the Influence of Divine Grace or of the Internal Satisfaction which good Souls who are already Faithful or as St. Thomas of Aquin cited by him expresses himself Have the Habit of Faith by which they have a right Iudgment of those things which are agreeable to that vertue receive concerning Scripture and Christ's Doctrin or that they confirm men more than Demonstration does Arguments have the Nature of Preliminaries to Faith or Searches after it but the Inward Satisfaction that that Heavenly Doctrin rectifies and purifies the Soul and levels it directly towards the Attainment of it's last Blissful End has the nature of a kind of Experience and as it were Possession and Enjoyment of what Humane Arguments previous to Faith had been looking after and contending for I suppose Gentlemen the Dr. brought in this Discourse to prepare your Minds by a shew of Piety to rest appay'd with any slight Reason that falls short of concluding and breed in you a prejudice against the necessity of his producing any such Arguments as place Christian Faith above Possibility of Falshood But he is as much out of the Way here as he was in all the rest For notwithstanding God's Grace and this Internal Satisfaction which is Proper to good Souls who are Believers already the Church and her Pastours must be furnish'd with solid and unanswerable Reasons to satisfie perfectly those both of the lowest and most acute capacity who are looking after Faith that the Doctrin She professes was taught by Christ and to evince and defend its Truth in that particular against the most subtile Adversaries which cannot be done unless the Reasons which we as Controvertists bring set it above possibility of Falshood that Christ taught it We cannot put God's Grace and our Internal Satisfaction into Syllogisms when we are disputing Nor does God intend by His Grace to prejudice the true Nature Himself has given us which is Reason but to perfect and elevate it 'T is against Reason that in Preliminaries to Faith which are the Objects of Natural Reason those who are capable to penetrate the force of reasons should assent beyond the Motive for as far as it is beyond the Motive 't is without any Motive that is without any Reason and
manag'd by Maxims of pure Reason 37. This Point then settled let us trace our Prevaricatour in his wandrings He tells us very gravely God is not wanting by his Grace to make necessary Points known to men of honest and sincere Minds What we demand of him is some Natural Medium or Argument within our ken concluding that what 's held by him now is Christ's Doctrin He confesses he has none for he mocks at Conclusive Evidence but pretends God's Grace will do it for him We tell him that without such Conclusive Reasons to prove our present Faith to have been taught by Christ we cannot maintain or make out that our Faith is True. And he tells us God is not wanting by his Grace to make necessary Points known to Men of honest and sincere minds And what man living has the Courage to assault an Adversary that comes Arm'd with such a Supernatural Logick Now all this were it levell'd right as 't is not is meer Petitio Principii and begging the Question for it supposes Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Judgments is the Rule which he was here to prove and to shew us how it preserves those who rely on it from Errour For otherwise if it be not the Rule did God ever promise his Grace to those who leave a Clear and Conclusive way to follow an Obscure and Inconclusive one Did God's Grace ever make a Conclusion follow which did not follow or make the Terms cohere which were Incoherent Or keep those from Errour who took a Way that for any thing he has prov'd to the contrary facilitated men to fall into it Certainly never was God's Grace so abus'd to a wrong end or call'd in at a dead lift like some Deus ◠machind to save his Credit for bringing never an Argument that is worth a Rush. Yet 't is pleasant to see what a clutter he keeps about the Donum Intellectûs and Lumen Fidei both which presuppose Faith and the Way to it whereas all his work was to prove the Certainty of this Later In this lamentable condition he has left his Rule recurring to Invisible Gifts the true blew Fanatick Method instead of producing open Arguments to prove it has any power to regulate men in their way to Faith. Proceeding upon this gross and wilfull shuffle he makes a fine flourish of our School-Divines who have not one single word of the way and Means by which the knowledge of Christ's Doctrin is convey'd down to us which is our present Point as his Friend Dr. T. has told him And then he concludes like a Triumphant Heroe that I am a Stranger to the Doctrin of our own Church or an obstinate Opposer of it Alas for him He obstinately opposes while he cites them the known State of the Question and is such a Stranger to School-Divinity that he cannot distinguish betwixt That and Controversy and when he is taken tardy thus miserably he thinks to salve all with Swaggering and Vapouring 38. At length he sums up his Performances with impertinent distinctions of all the things he is Certain of As 1. That he is Absolutely Certain that whatever God reveals is True. Who denies it or what 's the Certainty of God's revealing to the Certainty of his believing right unless he be absolutely Certain that the particular Points he holds were indeed reveal'd by God or to speak more pertinently to our purpose were taught by Christ and his Apostles 2. He is Absolutely Certain of his Rule and it 's containing all necessary Points And what 's he the better for Certainty of This if still he remains uncertain of all the particular Articles he is to believe by it 3. That God's Grace is requisit to Faith formally Divine which is granted but what 's this to the proving it by a Natural Medium to have come from Christ as he must do to those who are in the Way to Faith Conclusive Evidence must be produc't for this or the Proof must fall short of concluding whether we have Grace or no and so leave it Unprov'd and Uncertain 4. He says Particular Points of Faith are more or less Certain according to the Evidence of their Deduction from Scripture as the Rule of Faith. This only seems to touch the Point in hand and it touches it very gingerly Let him speak out and tell us whether he is Absolutely Certain of all particulars of his Faith nay even of a Trinity and Christ's Godhead by his Rule or whether any man living is absolutely Certain of them by his Principles If not then all Faith may be a Lying Story for any thing he or any man else can tell And that this is his true Tenet is evident by his omitting here when he comes to speak of Particular Points the words Absolutely Certain which he put to the two first parts of his Division Nor do I like his expression of more or less Certain for since any Quality is more or less such by having less or more of the Opposit Quality mixt with it it follows that this his more or less Certain must mean less or more Uncertain strange Language for a Christian to use when he is speaking of All the Particular Articles of his Faith and what Certainty is to be allow'd for them And yet he calls this the setting this Controversy about the Certainty of Faith in it's true light A pleasanter Jest than which was never spoke were not the thing in it self so pernicious SECT III. How Dr. St. Answers Our Reasons produc't against his Grounds of Certainty for his Faith. 39. HE proceeds next to answer my short Discourse demonstrating that He and those of His Principles could not be Sure they had right Faith. I presum'd he could not do it he says he has Let 's see which of us is disappointed It consists of five plain Propositions 1. God has left us some Way to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught 2. Therefore this Way must be such that they who take it shall arrive by it at the End it was intended for that is know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught 3. Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Iudgments is not that Way for we experience Presbyterians and Socinians for example both take that Way yet differ in such high Fundamentals as the Trinity Godhead of Christ. 4. Therefore Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Iudgments is not the Way left by God to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught or surely to arrive at right Faith. 5. Therefore they who take only That Way cannot by it arrive surely at right Faith since 't is impossible to arrive at the End without the Means or Way that leads to it The Reader may know that this very Discourse in substance was propos'd to him many years ago by a Worthy Lady of whose sincerity I believe himself does not doubt He made a rambling Discourse of his own against it unappliable to any Proposition
irregularly he hinders any Conclusion from following False because no two men can differ in a Sum unless they wrong or abuse the Rules of Computation Irregular because instead of the words who take that Way found in his Second Proposition and in our Discourse he coggs in the words make use of that way which are not so express in sence as the word Take is which imports following whither it leads or making a right use of it And it would have been too palpably absurd to say a man takes a way who leaves it as an Ill-reckoner must needs leave the true Rules of Arithmetick But those who both Take and Follow all along the Letter of Scripture interpreted by their private selves and this to their power and are skilfull in Languages in comparing places do yet go wrong therefore his Way is no Way and his Rule is no Rule Then follows the Triumph over my Inconsiderateness in not distinguishing between the Rule and its Application and I tell him the taking it following it or holding to it is the Applying it and all the Application it can need Nor shall all his starting holes and tricks ever be able to evade the force of this Argument 43. His Discourse of Moral Qualifications requisit to the Certainty of Faith as to know the Sense of the New Testament if apply'd to our present Question amounts to this that no man can see the force of a Natural Medium leading to Faith without Humility of Mind Purity of Heart Prayer to God sincere Endeavours to do God's Will c. So that for want of a good Argument he has left off Disputing and falls to Preaching tho' he has had but ill Success in his Guildhall Sermon 'T is granted all these are excellent means to purge the Will from By-affections and by doing so to leave the Understanding free to see the force of the Proof and thence inferr the Truth of what 's prov'd or shewn to our Reason But where 's this Proof where 's this Truth all the while Must we produce such invisible things for open Proofs If all these Moral Qualifications be requisit as he says to make men Certain of Christ's Doctrin he must prove that Himself and all his Sober Enquirers which are the Members of his private-Spirited Church have all these Qualifications e're we or any man living can be certain they have true Faith. Again how will he satisfy Doubters and convince acute Opposers and Adversaries what is the true Doctrin of Christ Will the alledging Invisible Qualifications do the work Moreover he is Certain of his Faith by his Rule and yet his Rule of Scripture ascertains none by his Doctrin but by vertue of these Moral Qualifications These then are either his Rule or the best part of it At least he maintains here they are requisit and that otherwise Scripture is no Rule He must then prove He has these Qualifications or he cannot shew he has any Rule or any Faith. In a word we are disputing as Controvertists and demand open intelligible Proofs and he sends us to Invisible holes which only God the searcher of Hearts can find out and is not this mighty Learned I wonder how he can pretend to Convert any man to Christ's true Doctrin by these Principles All he can do is to alledge and compare Texts to prove it certainly Christ's Doctrin I but Sir says the other how shall I be satisfy'd you have Humility of Mind Purity of Heart c. without which your self confess you cannot be certain of the true Sense of Scripture at all What Art the Doctor has to satisfy him in this hard Point I know not But setting the Doctor 's Faith aside what Provision has he made for the standing Visible Body of the Church to defend and maintain she has Christ's true Faith None in the world by his Principles unless she can prove she has all these Moral Qualifications So that all is left to each private man's breast and if he has but this good Conceit of himself that he is endow'd with all those excellent Virtues and fancies that he prays better than all his Neighbours let them be Socinians Quakers or what you will he is certain of his Faith meerly by vertue of this Self-conceit that he is such a Saint since by Dr. St's Principles without firm assurance that he is thus requisitly qualify'd he can never have any assurance at all of his Faith. Might he not as well have told us in one word that Himself and all his Friends are pure Saints and know themselves to be so and therefore they are Certain they have these rare Qualifications and by them Assurance of the Sense of Scripture or Christ's Doctrin but that all who do not think as they do want those Qualifications are of the Wicked and Children of Darkness and so can never have any Light to know whether they have Christ's true Doctrin or not This then is the rare Resolution of Dr. St's Faith. I expected he should produce clear Arguments as became a Controvertist and he alledges the most hidden Means in the world as becomes an Enthusiast 44. Yet the force of Truth is so great that it obliges him to confess that The Right Way will certainly bring men to their Iourneys End if they continue in it I subsume But the Letter of Scripture Interpretable by Private Judgments does not bring the Socinians to their End that is to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught tho' they continue in it whence I conclude that Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Judgments is not the Right Way to know surely what Christ his Apostles taught To escape this most evident Conclusion which utterly overthrows his whole Cause he starts aside with one If to the remote End Salvation whereas the End I spoke of in my Discourse which he is now answering was expressly to know assuredly Christ's Doctrin Then after a second If he tells us Scripture was not design'd as an Infallible Way to know the Truth on Falshood of particular Opinions by What have we to do with Opinions We speak of Points of Faith and instanc't expressly in the Blessed Trinity and the Godhead of Christ. Are these with him but Opinions Indeed I have reason to doubt that all Points of Faith are but Opinions with him nay he ought to doubt they are or may be worse than Opinions viz. Heretical Falshoods unless he thinks himself absolutely Certain of his Moral Qualifications for 't is those it seems must do the deed when all Arguments fail As for Infallibility there was no such word in my Discourse and he ought to answer my Argument in the words I put it and not to start into such Evasions and Logomachies Tho' the allowing of Natural Infallibility has been prov'd against him by Reason and Authority of those even of his own Church he never answers it but barely says over again there is no such thing as Infallibility in
then calls it an easy Answer and if it be an answer at all I must confess 't is an easy one for any man may with ease answer a thousand Objections in a trice at that rate nothing is easier than to omit all that is objected But I dare undertake that whoever reads my Third Catholick Letter p. 37.38.39.40 where four several prevarications were charg'd upon him in giving one single Answer to Mr. G's Question will judge it so far from easy that 't is Impossible for him to answer even with any degree of plausibility But with this sleightness he slips over most of my Objections in my Letters and supplies the defect with confident Talk or a Scornfull Iest. But because his main shuffle is his altering those words of the Question All the Divine Revelations of Christ and his Apostles into All matters necessary to Salvation and this is his constant evasion we will examin it more particularly in order to the sole End of the Conference to which all the particular Questions were to be directed viz. his showing Grounds of Asbolute Certainty for his Faith. 1. I ask with the good leave of his Jest Does he think Christ and his Apostles taught any unnecessary Points If not why did he use such cautious diminishing expressions and instead of All their Doctrin put All matters necessary to our Salvation 2. Christians are wrought up to the Love of Heaven the Immediate Disposition to it by Motives and Some may need more than Others nay the variety of Peoples Tempers and Circumstances is so Infinite that scarce two persons will precisely need the same He is to acquaint us then how he knows or how he can make out that every man shall by reading the Scripture be sure to find his own Quota of Motives adjusted and serving for his particular Exigencies 3. Is he Sure they cannot err as to what 's necessary to their Salvation If provided they do their best they cannot then every man is so far Infallible which the Doctor has deny'd hitherto to all Mankind but to himself If they can err in matters necessary to Salvation then doubtless many will err and how can errour Save them 4. Tho' all cannot err in all Moral Points yet can he shew us any thing securing them from Erring in all those Articles of Faith held by the Church and renounc't by her Heretical Dissenters ever since Christ's time If he cannot and he declines shewing us they can nay he by his Doctrin confesses they may then they may be Sav'd tho' holding all the Heresies that ever were in which case I doubt he will scarce find them competent Assurance of their Salvation Again how knows he but the mixture of many of those gross Errours may not as much deprave their Souls as their understanding plainer places will edify them especially if the Church interposes and Excommunicates them for Hereticks For his Grounds forbid them to meddle with those high Points but leave the whole Scripture to their scanning and his approved Friend Dr. T. says they are Plain and so are subject to their profound Judgment of Discretion 5. He must tell us how must Church-Disciplin be exerciz'd upon such a Miscellany of Heterogeneous Members of which many obstinately deny what others pertinaciously affirm 6. Is the holding the Godhead of Christ and that God dy'd to save and redeem Mankind a Matter Necessary to Salvation Or is it enough to hold it was only a Man to whom they owe that highest Obligation to Love him Let him speak to this at least For I am not to expect but his aiery wordish Divinity makes him look upon the Mystery of the most Blessed Trinity as on a kind of dry Speculation Tho' were it seasonable to dilate on that Article I could shew him that besides it's exceeding Usefulness to the sublime Contemplatives the most Sacred and most Influential Points of Christian Faith and the main Body of Christian Language and the Truth of it depend on it's Verity Lastly Who told him that all sorts of People who are yet Unbelievers and looking after Christ's true Doctrin shall by reading Scripture come to all-saving Faith Has he it by Divine Revelation or by Reason Or will he recurr to Divine Assistances to keep Particular Persons from Errour and yet deny them to the Church If so how proves he This at least I wish he would speak out fairly and candidly to these Points and make something cohere For I profess with all sincerity I cannot for my heart make any Idea or Sense of this Motly Church which his Principles would patch up The several Members of it hang more loosely together than if they were ty'd to one another with Points Nay they agree worse than Fire and Water and all the several Contrarieties in in Nature for they are distanced by direct Contradiction of one to the other Whence they are utterly incapable of any kind of Coalition there being no imaginable means left to refract the irreconcileably-opposit Qualities of his Affirmative and Negative Faithfull or reduce so many Independent private-spirited Members into one Compound He is to shew us then how the parts of this Rope of Sand as it may more fitly be called must hang together I much fear it will be Invisibly by vertue of their being of the Elect and at the same rate as the Terms coher'd in the Invisible Proofs he alledg'd to shew us he and his Followers had Christ's true Doctrin 59. We shall never have done with this Purse of his He is so fond of the pretty Similitude that he puts it here over again at large and spends incomparably more time and pains in defending it than he does in making out the Absolute Certainty of his Faith tho' he both stood engag'd to do it and any good Christian too would think it were far more worth his while Had he done this the rest might have been more fairly compounded and his Purse have remain'd unransack't However he thinks it sutes well with the Conceit he had of Scripture but I am sure it sutes not at all with our purpose his shewing the Absolute Certainty of his Faith. Hence I told him that Scripture's containing Faith was impertinent to the whole drift of the Conference That the only business was how to get the Gold and Silver of Faith out thence with Absolute Certainty and how to secure those that aim'd to enrich themselves by it that instead of extracting the Pure Gold of Truth by understanding right those high and most Inestimable Articles the ransackers of it did not draw out thence the Impure Dross of Errour and Heresy Lastly that he ought to have put two Purses One the Heads and Hearts of the Faithfull into which the Apostles put this Heavenly Treasure of Faith by their Preaching the Other the Book of Scripture into which they put it by Writing and that Faith was properly in the Former only in regard Truth is no where Formally but in the
yet for all his flourishes about Criterions he has said nothing to those Reasons only he has made a sleight Discourse of his own p. 53.54 but never shew'd any particular Means securing his Party from Erring more than the vilest Hereticks us'd Why little or no regard to my Reasons shewing that Scripture Interpretable by their private Judgment of Discretion is not the Rule which the Generality of Protestants rely on which if true utterly overthrows his whole Pretence to That for his Rule He blunders indeed about it in clear words and tells his own Tale very prettily but he has not answer'd my Reasons as the Reader may discern who is pleas'd to compare them with his Reply Lastly why no Answer to each particular Proposition of my Short Discourse or shewn it inconnected demonstrating that none who follow'd his Rule can have Assurance that what they believe is Christ's Doctrin But instead of this Duty bringing pretended False Suppositions against the Whole which suppos'd nothing but that we could have no more Reason to judge the Socinians Insincere or Careless or less Skilfull in the Sense of words than we have to think He is 86. These are his Omissions in Answering my First Catholick Letter As for my Second since his Title pretends an Answer to them All in Generall and he referrs us to another able to speak for himself meaning his Reflecter we are to imagin he makes account he has Answer'd them All by Himself or by his Proxy But good God! what an Answer has that weak man given us His Discourse is a Chain of Sand. 'T is a mess of Controversy dish't up in Sippets a meer Hash of Repartees or reason torn into Raggs A Discourse as every man knows has it's true Force by the Constant Tenour of it and this Tenour is shatter'd all to pieces by a new invented Method of short Dialogues where he makes me at his pleasure say as little at a time as he lists and he plays upon it as much as he pleases I must break-off just where he thinks fitting and he Enlarge against an imperfect Discourse unassisted by it's Comparts as long as he Judges convenient Now he 's at the beginning of my Book and immediately at the Middle or End of it gathering thrums-ends of little Sentences which he patches together so aukwardly that they have no Connexion at all but what his unskillfull or Partiall hand bestows upon them If we expect Reason from him he tells us he never undertook to Prove but to Reflect A very pretty come off I wonder what Answer is proper to a man who proves nothing nay not so much as Vndertook it Thus much for his Method But the Tricks and Shifts in managing it are Innumerable 'T is almost as easy to determin how many words may be made of the four and Twenty Letters as to trace all the Anagrams he makes of my Sense by weaving it in his loom to sute his own Fancy or Interest When our Question is only about a Certain Rule of Faith he alters it when he lists to a Certain Rule of Life p. 33. as if we pretended Scripture not Clear in Morall Points by which means he turns the whole Question to a quite different Subject His Contradictions are frequent for he never speaks of the Nature of any thing that concerns our Dispute but he constantly falls into that irrecoverable lapse As he turn'd the precise Duty of proving into the Needless Impertinency of Reflecting so tell him of Falsifications he tells you p. 52. he meant them for Ironies And indeed his whole Reflexionary if I may call it so is nothing but a continu'd Irony it being very hard to know when he 's in Jest when in Earnest Only he garnishes his Scorn with demure pretences of Charity and Civility that so he may affront his Adversary with a more plausible Garb of Affected Gravity and Godliness 87. As for the strength of his Reasons since one Instance is held by Dr St. and him a Competent Answer to a pretended Demonstration I hope one pregnant Instance how he quite misses the whole matter in hand may be allow'd sufficient to render insignificant his Hopping and Skipping Dialogues by shewing plainly that his ill-levell'd Reflexions hit not me but Squint aside to other Subjects E're I come to my Instance I desire the Reader to bear in Remembrance for I cannot repeat it too often because my Adversary is resolv'd never to take notice of it that Our Controversy Supposes as agreed to by both Parties that Christ's Doctrin is Divine and that our Whole Question is about the Means to bring down to us those Sublime Spiritual Articles of Christian Faith with such a Certainty and Clearness as may oblige us to assent firmly and unalterably that what we hold concerning them now at present is the self-same that was taught by him and his Apostles and consequently is Divine and True. Next we affirm that the Letter of Scripture not being Clear to people of all sorts looking after Christ's True Doctrin in those Texts which relate to such High Points the best way to satisfy such men that those Articles came down invariably from Christ is the Humane Authority of the Christian Church And Lastly that the Credibleness of this Authority is prov'd by Intrinsical Mediums taken from the Natures of Things lying levell to our Reason which contribute to support it from being liable to be deceiv'd or to deceive us in that affair viz. from the Nature of Man who being a Rational Creature cannot possibly act without a Motive or a Reason and is withall endow'd with such and such Faculties belonging to such a Nature As also from the Practical Nature Highest Import of the Doctrin to be deliver'd and the Nature of those most powerfull Motives obliging the Generality to whom they are apply'd to transmit down faithfully a Doctrin held Divine and Lastly from the Nature of divers Circumstances of the Universe All which are laid out in my Second Cath. Letter p. 57.58.59.60 To which nothing but a very sleight return with many Omissions has been given us by Him and nothing at all by Dr St. tho' these as the Reader may see if he pleases to review them be the most forcible part of that Treatise to prove the uninterrupted Perpetuity of Tradition hitherto on which the Resolution of our Grand Question mainly depends 'T is enough it seems for such a trifling Reflecter at the end of his Pamphlet to call the passages he has omitted amongst which are the Natures of those things Hedges and Puddles and close Reasons drawn from them frisking Fancies and that 's all can justly be expected from one who seems to be a sworn Schollar to the Great Professor of Learned Jests and Ingenious Prevarications 88. These particulars concerning our Tenet known to all that have read our Controversy being reflected on let 's see how this Gentleman represents it and how profoundly he discourses against us In