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
Sights I long to see by what Differences or any thing else it can be made out That an erring Church can still plead Tradition and adhere to it Not but that for Pleading much may be there are such confident doings in the World. As certain as it is that the Religion in England now is not the same which it was before Henry the Eighth I think there is confidence enough in England to plead Tradition for it 'T is but finding some Expression in an ancient Writer not couch'd with Prophetical foresight enough to avoid being understood as some will desire it should and it will serve turn to pretend to Antiquity and bear the Name of Tradition So I suspect you take it your self when you say the Arians insisted on Tradition For sure you do not think in earnest that Doctrin contrary to Consubstantiality was taught by Christ and believ'd from Father to Son till the Council of Nice This or some such thing may perhaps have been pleaded but for adhering to Tradition Your Servant For pray did Christ teach any Error When a Father believ'd what Christ taught him and the Son what the Father believ'd did not the Son too believe what Christ taught Run it on to the last Son that shall be born in the World must not every one believe what Christ taught if every one believ'd what his Father believ'd And will you go about to persuade us that there actually is a company of Men in the World who adher'd to this Method all Sons believing always as their Fathers did whereof the First believ'd as Christ taught and who notwithstanding err'd in matters of Faith They would thank you for making this out who would be glad that Christ taught Error and were not God. But it is not plainer that Two and Three make Five than it is that this cannot be And yet you would top it upon us and bear us in hand it is not only true but apparent in the Greek Church and known to every body who knows any thing of it The comfort is there is nothing for all these Assertions but your Word in which where you stick not to pass it for an arrant Impossibility I for my part do not think there is Absolute Certainty 18. I see not what there remains more but to bear in mind where we are At the Conference instead of answering Mr. G's Argument you would needs make one of your own which was in short The Greek Church goes upon Tradition and errs therefore another Church may err which goes upon Tradition There was no need to trouble the Greek Church for the matter It had been altogether as methodical and as much to purpose to have instanc'd in the Latin Church it self and never gon further and shorter to have spar'd Instancing too and have said without more ado Mr. G 's Conclusion is not true For you do no more till you make it appear that the Church you pitch upon for an Instance do's indeed adhere to Tradition and err But because this had been too open and People would have sooner perceiv'd that it had been to say I know not how to answer Mr. G 's Argument but will notwithstanding stand to it that his Conclusion is false you thought the best way to divert the Reader 's attention from what 's before him was to travel into Greece and yet when you come there do no more than if you had stay'd at home For you barely say there is both Tradition and Error in the Greek Church and you might have said as much of the Latin or without mentioning either have said Tho' Mr. G. has prov'd a Traditionary Church cannot err I say it can and has All is but Saying till you come to Proving Only to make a formal shew with an Antecedent and a Conclusion you say it with the Ceremony of an Argument of which since Mr. G. deny'd the Antecedent he had no more to do till you prov'd it 19. So it stood at the Conference and so it stands still and for ought I see is like to stand For tho' you have writ two Letters since there appears no word of Proof in either or sign that you do so much as think on it You only say your Instance over again and would have the Face you set upon it and great Words you give it make it pass for plain and undeniable when all the while it is plainly impossible and actually deny'd Mr. G. I hope will bide by his Answer because it is a good one true in it self and direct to the Point For it denies just what you assum'd That the Greek Church stood upon Tradition and fell at the same time into Error And speaking as you do or should do of Error in matter of Faith Euclid never made any thing plainer than it is That where ever Error comes in Tradition goes out Of necessity therefore if the present Greek Church have adher'd to Tradition it has not err'd If it have err'd it has not adher'd to Tradition Which of the two is the Case neither concerns Mr. G. nor can he dispute it without following bad Example that is falling to Argue now it is his Part to Answer You would pass it upon us that the Greek Church has err'd without swerving from Tradition and you must either make it out or acknowledge you have made much ado about nothing For your Instance is no Instance till it appears to be true Till you do it there is no Work for Mr. G. 20 At the close p. 7. you desire Mr. G. to make good two things and tell us why you desire it and what will follow if he accept or decline your Motion I neither understand how your Proposals follow from your Reasons nor your Consequences from your Proposals But think it no more worth losing time upon them than you thought it worth boasting of the Victory The First is That we Protestants have no Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of our Faith viz. the Scripture altho' we have a larger and firmer Tradition for it viz. the Consent of all Christian Churches than you Catholics can have for the Points of Faith in difference between us 21. I can tell you a better Reason for this Proposal than any you give There was no avoiding to own Absolute Certainty to a Man who talk'd of quitting your Communion without it But you knew well enough that your Absolute Certainty would be thwittled into Sufficient Certainty and Sufficient Certainty into no Certainty at last and had your Wits about you when you thought of this Proposal For it is in effect to say This Certainty of Faith is a troublesom matter and not for my turn Let us go to something else leave Faith and pass to Scripture of which you Mr. G. shall prove we have no Absolute Certainty For if I should go about to prove we have I foresee that while I am seeking harbor in my larger and firmer Tradition I shall venture to split upon
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
to justifie themselves for not believing rashly or for fear of making them sure of their Salvation 4. I had alledg'd farther that till Protestants produce the Grounds which prove their Faith to be True it cannot with Reason be held Truth You put my Discourse first in my Words only leaving out those which did not please you and then disguise it in your own and laugh at it for being too plainly True For plain Truth it seems is a ridiculous thing with you and you are of opinion that the more plain it is that you ought to bring your Proofs the less you are oblig'd to bring them Thence you start aside to tell us that the vulgar Catholic has less certainty than the vulgar Protestant because the one has only the Word of his Priest the other has the Word of his Minister and the Word of God in Scripture besides Do you think Catholic Priests are at liberty to tell the vulgar what Faith they please as your Ministers may interpret Scripture as seems best to their Judgment of Discretion when you cannot but know they dare not teach them any Faith but what the Church holds nor does the Church hold any but upon Tradition Again You do well to say your People have it in Scripture or in a Book for they have it no where else And you know the vulgar Socinians and Presbyterians and all the rest have it as much there as your vulgar Protestants notwithstanding all you have said or can say and then I suppose you do not think they Truly have the Word of God on their side unless you think the Word of God says different things to different Hearers When you prove that you and your Ministers have any Certain means of making it out that the Sense which by their explaining and catechising they put upon the Written Characters is truly God's Meaning you will do something make many Converts and my self one among the rest Till then to possess your vulgar Protestants with a Conceit of having the Word of God is meerly to delude them Sure you wanted a Common-place to furnish out your Paragraph or else writ it in a Dream For to tell me that Truth can depend no more upon the Saying of a Romish Priest than of an English Minister when I tell you it depends not on any private man's Sayings is not a Reply of a man well awake In two words Bring you Proofs say I the Saying that is the No-proof of a Minister is as good as the No-proof of a Priest say you And the short and the long is No Proof I thank you 5. But two things say you follow from my Position which you fear I will not grant The First is That if we cannot with Reason hold a Truth till the Intrinsical Grounds of it be produc'd we cannot with reason hold any thing for a Truth namely because the Church of Rome hath determined it for her Determination is no Intrinsical Ground of the Truth but only an outward Testimony or Declaration of it and then what 's become either of her Infallibility or Authority to command our Faith As slips of honest Ignorance deserve compassion and instruction and I do not know this to be any more I will be so charitable as to set you right Authority amongst those who already admit it for True has Force to prove that to be Truth which depends on it and will conclude against those who allow its veracity if it be shewn to be engag'd against them But it has not this Effect upon Human Nature by its proper Power as 't is meer Authority but because Intrinsical Mediums justifie it to be worthy to be rely'd on Whence let that Authority come into dispute it will lose it's Credit unless it can be prov'd by such Mediums to deserve what it pretends to And hence you see we go about to demonstrate the Infallibility of the Church's Human Authority in deriving down Christian Faith. To clear this farther I advance this Fundamental Position viz. No Authority deserves any Assent farther than Reason gives it to deserve And therefore without abating any thing of our respect we may affirm that the Authority of the whole Catholick Church would be no greater than that of an old Woman or one of your sober Enquirers were there no more Reason to be given for believing the former than there is for believing the later And consonantly to this Doctrin we declare to you that When Dr. St. comes to argue either out of Authority of Writers or Instances depending on their Authority against Tradition he shall be prest to make out by Intrinsical Mediums they are Absolutely Certain or they shall deservedly be look'd upon and contemn'd as Inconclusive By this time I hope you see that All Truths are built on Intrinsical Mediums and that whereas you apprehended they would overthrow our Church's Testimony or Authority such Mediums in case we produce them are the best means to establish it and give it force upon our selves and others As also how it comes that the Church can oblige to Belief which is not by a dry commanding our Faith as you apprehend but by having its Human Authority so solidly grounded upon Reason that it self becomes a Motive able to beget according to the best Maxims of Rational Nature such an Assent in us to this matter of Fact that Christ and his Apostles taught such Doctrins But what a put off is this We say Truth is not therefore Truth because of mens bare Sayings or Authority and therefore demand your Proofs from Intrinsical Mediums for thither it must come e're it be known for Truth to make out what you pretend Your Answer in effect is You are afraid to do it lest you should destroy our Church's Infallibility and Authority How much is our Church in your Debt that the Care of Her makes you careless of those Souls in your own Church to whom you owe this satisfaction 6. The second thing you fear I will not grant is A Iudgment of Discretion to common People with which they may discern the Intrinsical Grounds of Truth You gave your self at first the Character of a scrupulous man and I see by this you have a mind to maintain it You know that those who write and print can have no design their Books should not be read and you know those that read will and must judge of what they do read and yet your scrupulosity can fear I will not allow the Common People to judge of the Intrinsical Grounds of Truth who take pains they may judge put it into their power to judge and out of my own and so cannot hinder them tho' I would Indeed I think it no great sign of a Judgment of Discretion to pretend to discern the Truth of Faith by Lights that do not shew it to be True and upon such a Judgment I wish and labour People should not venture their Souls But I disallow no other Iudgment of Discretion full
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
Faith about which we are chiefly discoursing But do not your self incline to admit as much as we can expect from a man that affects not too much candour that very thing you so laugh at here I affirm'd that Not one in a million thinks of relying on your Rule of Faith in order to make choice of their Faith c. This you answer with hems and hahs Tho' I fear yet I hope he is out in his Account I am apt to think they are more attentive Yet be it as he would have it c. Now since they must either have their Faith by Reliance on their Pastours and Preachers delivering it to them and educating them in it that is by some kind of Tradition or else by relying on Scripture and your self seems to doubt or rather in a manner grants it That they have it not the later way you must at least doubt that they have it by the Way of Tradition But your Fancy was so big with your empty Jest that you had forgot what you had allow'd but a little before 58. Thus Sir I have trac'd you punctually step by step not as is your constant use pickt out a few words scatter'd here and there which you thought you might most commodiously pervert wherefore I have reason to expect the same exact measure from you The Sum of your Answer is manifestly this Shuffles and wilful Mistakes without number Evasions endless Falsifications frequent Godly Talk frivolous Jests groundless and all these brought in still to stop Gaps when your Reason was Nonplust Be pleas'd to leave off your Affected Insincerities otherwise I must be forc't to Expose them yet farther than which there can be no Task more Ungrateful imposed upon Your Servant J. S. ERRATA Page 3. l. 28. Read both of uâ— p. 10. l. ult find it in p. 11. l. 11 notice there p. 21. l. 24. go forwards p. 22. l. 27. Secret. Again p. 23. l. 9. as I had not p. 32. l. 30. Is it a Way Ibid. l. 32. upon it p. 39. l. 7. Your Reason is because p. 44. l. 17. may hap p. 45. l. 5. Gift Ibid. l. 32. Prince of p. 46. l. 7. it Whether p. 48. l. 27. a most p. 53. l. 12. Adherers p. 57. l. 14. to be at a loss Ibid. l. ult discover'd it p. 60. l. 8. Speculaters p. 62. l. 9. Yet not so explicitly or p. 63. l. 28. formally and. p. 73. l. 13. other then THE THIRD Catholick Letter IN ANSVVER To the Arguing Part of Doctor Stillingfleet's SECOND LETTER To Mr. G. By I. S. Published with Allowance LONDON Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn 1687. THE THIRD Catholick Letter c. SIR 1. I Come now to take a view of your Second Letter with my Eye as in the former fixt only upon what I think you mean for Argument Whether you give us just your First Words at the Conference or second Thoughts since whether no troublesome Part of Mr. G's Discourse be left out in short whatever belongs to matter of Fact shall be out of my prospect which shall be bounded by what you think fit to open to it You acquaint us here Pag. 7. that you put two Questions 1. How does it appear that the Church of Rome is Infallible in the sense and meaning of Tradition 2. Is this Tradition a Rule of Faith distinct from Scripture And you complain of Mr. G. that his Copy makes you ask a very wise Question viz. How does it appear that the Church of Rome is Infallible in Tradition Why this Question should be ironically call'd a very wise one I cannot imagin I am sure it is very pertinent to the Intention of your Dispute and directly points at one of the Chief Subjects of the Conference But you shall have your Will tho' I beleive it will appear Mr. G's question made better Provision for your Credit in point of Wisdom than you have done for your self 2. For your Second was in truth a very needless Question because both your self and all your Auditours if they ever heard any thing of this kind of Controversy knew beforehand without needing to ask that the Tradition we lay claim to pretends to derive down the Intire Body of Christ's Doctrin and not only the Books of Scripture of which P. 9. you very learnedly seem to counterfeit your self ignorant And this is the first part of your distinguishing the plain Sense of this Word Tradition as held by Mr. G. By this Question you tell us p. 9. you intended to put a difference between the Tradition held by us Protestants and the Tradition disputed For the first meaning of the Word Tradition which you grant you put the Vniniversal Testimony of the Christian Church as to the Books of Scripture The second and deny'd meaning you contra distinguish from the former in these words But if by Tradition be understood either some necessary Articles of Faith not contain'd in Scripture or a Power in the Church to make unnecessary to become necessary this I deny'd c. Certainly Sir you have a Logick of your own so peculiarly fitted to your designes that no man living but your self ever us'd it I ever thought and apprehended I had all the World on my side for thinking so that all Differences or Distinctions were to be Opposites and to divide the Common Genus or the Notion that was to be distinguish't and therefore since the first sense of the Word Tradition was Tradition for Books of Scripture which is your Tenet I verily expected the opposit sense of it should have been Tradition for Doctrines which is Ours and that as the former was Tradition for Christ's Words so the latter should be Tradition for Christ's Sense But while I was vainly imagining the second sense of the Word would be Tradition for Faith instead of that I found nothing but such Articles and such a Power Did ever any mortal Man think or pretend that Tradition was an Article or a Power any more than that it was a Horse shoe Did your self when you granted the Latin and Greek Churches follow'd Tradition intend to signify that they follow'd Articles and Powers The summ then of your learned Distinction is in plain Terms this Tradition is two-fold One is a Tradition for Books the other is no Tradition at all but only Articles and Power Had it not been better then to have accepted of Mr. G's Civility and have answer'd to the purpose rather than out of a pique to his Copy and a desire to make it stand in need to be corrected thus to pervert common sense and out of a too zealous care not to forfeit your Wisdome to commit such an illogical Absurdity But Sense and Logick tho' they be plain and honest true Friends yet I must own that like the Queens Old Courtiers they may appear scandalous Companions to a man of your more polite and modish Education However I dare answer for you it was
not ignorance of their worth but an unlucky necessity which made you introduce in their room two New Questions to while away the time and escape the true one which you had no mind to meet close and grapple with Yet perhaps you may have better luck in your First Question let us see By your First Question then and your Explication of your Design of it immediately after 't is easy to discern that you again quite mistake the End and Use and consequently the Nature of Tradition which is a very inauspicious beginning and puts us out of hopes you should ever discourse pertinently of it since you go about to impugn you know not what For Tradition does not bring us down set Forms of Words onely as you imagin viz. as you instance P. 7. Christ was the Son of God under which you say well a Heretical Sense may ly But it derives down to us the very sense of those words and all the rest of Christ's Doctrine there being found in Tradition all the ways and means to signify and express the Determinate Meaning and Sense of Forefathers that can possibly be imagin'd For they not only deliver the Propositions of Faith in such or so many Words as you apprehend but they signify to their Children the very Tenets they have in their hearts in such expressions as best sutes with the occasion according as their different methods of explaining themselves may lead them You may upon reflexion observe it passes thus in your self when you instruct people in their Faith In which circumstance you do not ty your self up to rigorous Forms of Words made to your hands but take your liberty to deliver your self in any manner that you judge will make your meaning be best understood The same Method is taken by the Pastours of the Church and the Fathers of Families too according to their pitch and station They Catechize their Children they Preach upon the Texts proper to such Points they dilate themselves in their Discourse with a full design to make their Sense be perfectly comprehended they reply to the difficulties of those who are not yet perfectly instructed or well satisfied and accommodate themselves to all their Exigencies Lastly they lead their Christian Lives and breed up others to do the same by those Principles And Experience as well as Reason tells us that nothing gives the determinate sense of Words which express Tenets more distinctly than does perpetual Practice and Living conformably to what 's signified by those Words The want of which Requisits in the Letter of Scripture which can give no Answer to any difficulty nor vary any expression to make its Meaning more Intelligible nor live and by Example make the Reader live according to such a sense shews clearly that taking it alone and unassisted by the Churche's Tradition determining and ascertaining it's meaning in Dogmatical Points it cannot in any proper Speech be call'd a Rule of Faith. 3. If notwithstanding what has been said this Discourse should still seem to you more a Speculation than a Real Truth which yet I judge impossible pray reflect how your self would go about to instruct your own Children in your Faith and you will easily find by experience when 't is brought home to your own case how connatural this Way is to clear to them your sense in what you would have them Believe Do not your self use the same Method Do you only deliver to them certain Forms of Speech without endeavouring by all the possible means you can invent to imprint the true sense that I may use your own Instance of these Words Christ is the Son of GOD in their Souls and to make it still clearer to them as their budding capacities grow riper and riper Do you not experience they come by degrees to understand you too and that you have at length transfus'd into them the Sense of the Tenet you had in your own Breast Do not you practically instil into them that they ought to Pray to Christ and exercise their Faith Hope and Charity towards Him while they are Praying Do not you tell them they are to give Divine Reverence to Christ without stinting them or making them scruple lest they give too much or commit Idolatry by giving that to a Creature which is only due to the True GOD And does not this Practise beyond all possibility of mistake insinuate into them that he is equally to be Ador'd with God the Father or Coequal to him and so not a Creature but very God of very God I doubt not but you do all this at least I am sure if you do it not you do not your Duty Nor do I doubt but your Children come at length to understand you too and by understanding you become of the same Religion And can you imagine that Men were not Men in all Ages but in the blind times of Popery forsooth degenerated into Parrots and learn'd to prate set-Words without minding their Sense Or that Christians were not alwayes Christians and endeavour'd to imbue under-growing Posterity with the Meaning of the Tenets they profest and hop't to be Sav'd by their propagating them to those whom they were bound to see Instructed in Faith Or lastly can you conceive there can be any Means invented by Man's Wit to make known and propagate the Sense of Words that express Points of Faith which is not in the highest measure found in Tradition If you cannot as I am sure you cannot then you must withal either confess that Tradition brings down the Sense of Christ's Law and not the bare Words or Sounds only or you must advance this monstrous Paradox that there is no possible way in the whole World for Mankind to communicate their Thoughts and Meanings to one another in such Points the contrary to which you experience dayly in your self and others And were this so then to what end were Catechisms Sermons and Controversies about such subjects To what end all Instructions Conferences and Explications of them by the Pastours Again if you grant these as you must to be the best Expedients to transmit down the Sense of Christ's Words that is our Faith how can you hold Scripture's Letter the Rule of Faith which taken as counterdistinguish't to Tradition wants all those most effectual Means of discovering to us it's Meaning Certainly That must be the Rule of Faith that is best qualify'd to give us our Faith and that must be best qualify'd to give us our Faith which has the best Means to give us Christ's Sense and not that which wants all the best Means to produce such an Effect On the other side supposing Christ's Doctrine once settled in the Body of the Church how can you deny Tradition thus abundantly furnisht with the best Means imaginable to deliver down the first-taught Doctrine to be such a Rule seeing no more is requir'd to be a Rule of Faith but to be qualify'd with a Power to acquaint us who live at this
Pelagianism to conclude that Human Motives which are Preliminaries to Faith and on which the assuredness of Faith it self depends as to us are Truly Certain And Might you not with as much reason say the same if one should maintain the Absolute Certainty of our Senses which is one of those Preliminaries How strangely do you misrepresent every thing you are to meddle with How constantly do you make your voluntary mistake of every Point serve for a Confutation of it 'T is confest ever was That the Human Authority of the Church or Tradition begets only Human Faith as its immediate Effect but by bringing it up to Christ it leads us to what 's Divine yet not by its own force but by Vertue of the Supposition agreed upon That Christ's Doctrin is such Is it Pelagianism to say we must use our Reason to come to Faith or do you pretend all the World must be the worst of Phanaticks and use none Or does it trouble you we offer to justifie that the Reasons we bring to make good that Preliminary which in our way of Discoursing is to introduce Faith are not such as may deceive us And that we do not confess they are Fallible or may deceive us as you grant of your Interpretations of Scripture which ground your Belief No surely we shall not quit the Certainty we have because you have none For if it be not Certain such Doctrines are indeed Christ's who is our Law-giver we cannot be sure they are True their Truth depending on his Authority and would you have us for fear of Pelagianism confess all our Faith may perhaps be but a story But into what an unadvisedness does your Anger transport you to run the Weapon through your own Side to do us a Mischief You bore us in hand First Letter p. 7. that you had a larger and firmer Tradition for Scripture than we have for what we pretend to Yet this Tradition could cause no more but Human Faith for I do not think you will say you had Divine Faith before you were got to your Rule of Divine Faith. By your Discourse then your self are an Arrant Pelagian too Perhaps worse than we because you pretend to a larger and firmer Human Tradition than you say we have nay you pretend it to be Absolutely Certain too which is a dangerous Point indeed Pray have a care what you do for you are upon the very brink of Pelagianism The knowing you have the true Books of Scripture is a most necessary Preliminary to your Faith for without knowing that you cannot pretend to have any Faith at all and if it be Pelagianism in us to hold such Preliminaries absolutely Certain I fear the danger may come to reach you too Yet you have one Way and but one to escape that damnable Heresy which is that you do not go about to demonstrate the Absolute Certainty of Your Tradition as we do of Ours That that is the very Venom of Pelagianism But take comfort Sir my life for yours you will never fall so abominably into the mire as to demonstrate or conclude any thing For what Idaea soever you may frame of it we mean no more by Demonstrating but plain honest Concluding Your way of Discoursing does not look as if it intended to conclude or demonstrate 'T is so wholly pass for as great a Man as you will made up of mistakes misrepresentations petty cavils witty shifts untoward explications of your own Words constant prevarications and many more such neat dexterities that whatever fault it may through human frailty provok't by powerful Necessity be liable to I dare pawn my life it will never be guilty of that hainous Crime of demonstrating or concluding any thing no not the Absolute Certainty of your firmer Tradition And yet unless you can prove or conclude 't is thus Certain 't is a Riddle to us how can you either hold or say 't is such 13 Pray be not offended if on this occasion I ask You a plain downright Question Is it not equally blamable to Falsify your Adversaries Tenet perpetually as 't is to falsify his Words Nay is it not worse being less liable to discovery and so more certainly and more perniciously Injurious And can any thing excuse You from being thus faulty but Ignorance of our Tenet I fear that Plea will utterly sail you too and leave you expos'd to the Censure of every sincere Reader when I shew him to his Eye that You could not but know all this before For in Error Non-plust p. 121. Sect. 8. You must needs have read the quite contrary Doctrine and how those who maintain Tradition do resolve their Faith. There is no necessity then of proving this Infallibility viz. Of the Church meerly by Scripture interpreted by Virtue of this Infallibility Nor do the Faithful or the Church commit a Circle in believing that the Church is Infallible upon Tradition For they believe onely the supernatural Infallibility built on the Assistance of the Holy Ghost that is on the Church's Sanctity and this is prov'd by the Human Authority of the Church to have been held ever from the Beginning and the force of the Human Testimony of the Church is prov'd by Maxims of meer Reason The same is more at large deliver'd in the foregoing Section and in divers other places Now this Book was Writ against your self and so 't is as hardly Conceiveable you should never have read it as 't is Unconceiveable how you should ever answer it And if you did read it what was become of your sincerity when you counterfeited your Ignorance of our Tenet All is resolv'd say you here p. 9. into meer Human Faith which is the unavoidable consequence of the Doctrin of Oral Tradition How shrewdly positive you are in your Sayings how modest and meek in your Proofs Nothing can be more manifest from our constantly avow'd Doctrin and your own opposing it too than 't is that Tradition resolves all into Christ's and the Apostles Teaching And pray do you hold that Christ is a meer man or that the Believing Him is a meer human Faith or that the Doctrin taught by Him and Them is meerly Human If this be indeed your Tenet I am sorry I knew it not before for then I should have thought fit to begin with other Principles to confute you And I pray God by your impugning known Truths you may never need e'm I see I had reason to alledge in Faith Vindicated that the Grace of God was requisit to make men assent to a Natural Conclusion when it came very cross to their Interest For it appears too plain 't is exceedingly needful to assist you here in a meer Point of Common Morality which is to enable you not to speak and represent things directly contrary to your own knowledge And I am sorry I must tell you and too evidently prove it that the greatest part of your Writings against Catholicks when the Point is to be manag'd by Reason
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
had occasion to press still for satisfaction Again the Written Instrument or Means of putting this heaven-stampt coyn in our Souls is an Ignoble Instrument in comparison being in reality as to it 's Material part or taken as abstracted from the Sacred Sense which is signify'd by it nothing but Ink thus figur'd on Paper Whereas the material part of the other is the most Noble that can be found under Heaven it self viz. the Church which all Christians must acknowledge to be the Spouse of Christ the Pillar and Ground of Truth and consisting of the Living Temples of the Holy Ghost That for whose edification the Scripture was writ and so holds proportion with it as the Means does with the End which is in a manner Infinit Nay That for which all the Material World was created and the Oeconomy of it still carry'd on from the first beginning of Time to it's last Period Lastly That for whose sake God himself was made Man and dy'd a most cruel Death on a Cross. So that 't is unconceivable that it can enter into the thoughts of any intelligent man who believes this to be the due Character of the Church there should be any competition betwixt the Letter of Scripture and it or that it can possibly be doubted to which of them all things consider'd we ought to attribute most in looking after Faith. But to return to your similitude The sum of it is this That the Gold and Silver you speak of being the Doctrin of Faith not the Scripture but the Heads and Hearts of the Faithful that is of the Church does really and indeed contain it and consequently this onely can with any propriety be compar'd to a Purse That both Tradition and Scripture are to be liken'd to the several Ways of putting the Heavenly Treasure of Faith into this Purse or Faith into the Souls of the Faithful Lastly that taking them as containing them as signes do the things signify'd it is not their containing this Treasure does us any good but the delivering it out to us no more than a man is better for having a Trunk full of Money so circumstanc't that he could never come at it and that between these two ways of coming at this Treasure or their delivering it out to us there is no comparison whether we regard the Intelligibleness or Providential Establishment of those respective Instruments in order to such an End. So that your similitude how prettily soever it look't at first hath one misfortune very common to such fine useless toys that is to be good for nothing for it neither comes up to the Question nor sutes with your own Tenet 24. But ere we part from this Point it were not amiss to examin a little that cautious expression of yours all things necessary for salvation into which you change that bold assertion that you are absolutely certain you now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles I ask you then what do you mean by those words necessary for Salvation which mince the matter so warily Do you think Christ taught any unnecessary Points or did a needless action Sure you will not say it And yet my self will grant too and agree with you that fewer Means than the Knowledge of all Christ taught may suffice for the Salvation of some particular persons What follows then but that since they are all necessary for some body and yet not all necessary for every particular person more of them are necessary for one man than for another and all of them necessary for the body of the Church whose Pastours are to instruct their Children in them and apply the Efficacy of them to their Souls as their capacities admit and exigencies require For tho' some few may be saved without the knowledge of such such Points slender Motives being enough for their circumstances yet multitudes of others may require incomparably more effectual Means to buoy them up from the World and raise them to heaven and so they would certainly miscarry for want of them Particularly the points now mention'd are of such a high and general Influence that without these the Devotion of a very great portion of the Church would be enfeebled many of the Souls that want them be lost eternally and others be but dim Stars in the Glorious Firmament of Heaven in comparison of what they might have been had their Minds been cultivated with such elevating considerations And can the Church which God has entrusted with those Souls think that 't is agreeable to his Will his Flock should either dy or fall short of the full growth they might have had in the plentiful Pastorage he had provided for them It rests then for you either to shew those Points not necessary for the Generality and that your Grounds are sufficient to give men both as able and as willing for ought appears to understand Scripture right as your self is Absolute Certainty of Them which is to confute Experience and dispute against your own Knowledge or else to confess ingenuously you have no Absolute Certainty of even the highest Fundamentals and most necessary Points for the Salvation of Mankind 25. Thus much to shew that your Rule gives you no Absolute Certainty of all such matters as are necessary for your Salvation with reference to the Points of Faith to certify which Experience assures us it does not reach Now should we speak of the Assent of Faith the Short Discourse p. 30 31. of my former Letter demonstrates clearly you can have no Absolute Certainty of any one and so cannot with reason affirm your Faith is True since wanting Absolute Certainty that Christ taught it it may be False The same point has been prest upon you in Faith vindicated Reason against Raillery Errour non-plust and diverse other Books yet tho' it was the most important objection that is or can be imagin'd as plucking up by the roots all your Faith and destroying it from it's very Foundation no return could ever yet be obtain'd nor candid Reason produc't but onely a put-off with sufficient Certainty and such dow-bak't words without being able or even endeavouring to shew that Grounds less than Absolutely Certain can possibly be thus sufficient for the Nature the Ends and Vses of Faith. But 't is high time to return to our Disputants 26. Against this pretended Answer of yours you introduce Mr. M. suggesting several things First As to difference of Translations To which you reply Doth Mr. M. think our Faith is to be resolv'd into the Original Texts What he thinks you know better than you would seem to do He cannot but think if he may believe you that you resolve your Faith into the Letter of Scripture He cannot but think that by these words you mean the Right Letter for otherwise it would not be Scripture Nor can he think or you either it can be the Right Letter unless it have a Right Translation and this from a True
acknowledg'd it was rather a very commendable cautiousness in the Latin Greek Church too not to admit into such a sacred Roll Books that were not yet clearly prov'd to be authentickly such than a blameable Lapse or so hainous a Crime that for committing it she must needs lose all her Title to Christ's promis'd Assistance 31. This gives me occasion to ask you what becomes of Your Rule and consequently of Your Faith all that while If the Letter of the Canonical Books that is of the whole Canon of the New Testament be your Rule and those Books were part of this Canon they must necessarily be part of your Rule too whence it follows that your Rule was not Intire but deficient for some hundreds of years till the whole Canon was Collected and Acknowledg'd I see you do but complement with the Primitive Church of the first 300 years and that you onely cry it up to avoid the unkindness which the succeeding Ages shew to your Cause for by your Doctrine you cannot but hold that the Ages which follow'd it are to be prefer'd Since These had your intire Rule the Others wanted some parts of it and sometimes held but three parts of it half of it or less and so by your Principles were but three quarters or half Christians according as the several pieces came by degrees to be acknowledg'd and universally accepted I doubt Mr. M's Discourse about the Number of Books more perplexes you than your are willing to make shew of For pray how many of these Books go to make up your Rule of Faith If any one or some few then you should not have stood upon the Canon we have now that is all the Apostolical Books or Scripture in general If all the Canonical Writings be your Rule then perhaps the Primitive Christians had but half their Faith or less it may be none at all because wanting yet those other Books they wanted necessary places to compare those Texts with they already had which is a great part of your Method to find out your Faith in Scripture Pray satisfy us about this exact Number of Books and how many will just serve the turn and make something cohere for I cannot for my heart as yet find any thing that does You talk to us of a Purse and say it must be full but when we come to look at it more narrowly it appears to have been for some time but half a Purse and wanted one side of it at least had a great Hole in it so that you put us into an apprehension that many of the Gold and Silver Points might have dropt out of it in the time of the Primitive Church by which Church notwithstanding and no other in our disputes about Faith you seem heartily willing to be judg'd But let us examin a little the Consent of all your Christian Churches for Scripture you make such brags of In the first place marches and leads the Van your Christian Church of the Noble Arch-Heretick Marciou who blotted out of the Canon the Epistle to the Hebrews that to Titus and both those to Timothy who admitted onely St. Luke's Gospel to be Divine and rejected all the Epistles of St. Paul as an Apostate from the Law. In the next rank go abreast those three Famous Christian Churches of Ebion Valentinus and Cerinthus Of which the First admitted onely St. Matthews Gospel the second onely St. Iohn's and the third onely St. Mark 's After them come others mentioned by St. Hierom and Epiphanius who in a manner brought all into doubt especially if Faith depended in those days on the comparing of places for they held that diverse things both in the Old Testament and the New were not inspir'd by GOD but writ by a Human spirit I need not acquaint you that Luther Brentius Chemnitius did revive the old Doubts about the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse of later dayes Nor need it be recounted how many Orthodox Christian Churches did not accept diverse Books formerly And tho' afterwards as you say well they came by degrees to fix on the Certain Canon of the New Testament yet I am apt to judge that this was not perform'd by Immediate Testimony For the Witnesses were long ago dead and their Grand-Fathers too who could attest that such a Book was indeed to their knowledge written by such an Apostle or Evangelist It descended then by Oral Tradition in those respective Churches Whence as that Tradition was not so Practical so it was restrain'd to some few in each Church and was withal very narrow at first in comparison of our Tradition for Christ's Doctrin which was in a manner universally and publickly preach't and practis'd Now the strength of a Tradition and the largeness of it are to be taken from the largeness of the first Attestation and all that after-Ages can do when they attest such things is to witness that they received it from some others but so that the Tradition was still narrower as it came nearer the fountain which very much weakens it By what other Lights the Church guided her self in her accepting such and such Books for Canonical Scripture belongs to another place Your Tradition then was not Universal for Scripture in the first 300 years and its Original Attestation was weak in comparison of that which was for Doctrin 32. I have little to say to your Explicit or Implicit Points contain'd in Scripture For I see they are both equally to no purpose while but contain'd there till you bring us a Rule to interpret the Letter with Absolute Certainty If any ought to be explicitely there none can have so good a Title to it as those high and most Fundamental Articles spoken of so often yet we see there are no places producible for them but may have other senses given them and bear as experience shews us not yet ended and for ought we know endless Disputes among your sober Enquirers attending to your Rule Onely I a little wonder you should say 't is sufficient for your purpose that all Doctrin of Faith necessary to Salvation are contain'd in the Letter of Scripture either explicitly or implicitly If they be necessary to Salvation they must be necessary to be believ'd or known to be there for they must save men by believing them and acting according to that Belief or no way and if they be onely implicitly there they are as yet unknown or not believ'd So that according to you that is a Point necessary to Salvation which does not at all conduce to it But I wonder more at the happiness of your Sober Enquirer to whom you affirm and stand to it stoutly those Implicit Points will become Explicit without the help of the Church and yet you call it assuming in the Church of Rome to do the same or declare the Sense of such Articles Certainly this Sober Enquirer is your special Darling and Favourit He
tho' a private person can discover those Explicit Points and I suppose may declare them too to as many as he pleases for how can he in Charity do less But alas The silly insignificant Church can do nothing at all she must submit to the wondrous Gifts you have bestow'd upon the Rabble and her Governors and Pastors be accounted Tyrants if they shall dare to encroach upon their high Prerogatives or presume to share in their Priviledges of being able to unfold or know the Explicit Meaning of Scripture-Texts For in case they can know this and this Knowledge be good for the Faithful as it is being as you say necessary to Salvation 't is without question they may declare them or make them known to others nay and use their Authority too if you will vouchsafe to allow them any to edify the Faithful by making this Knowledge sink into them Nor can it prejudice their Reason that the Church obliges them to believe them for this is no more than obliging them to act according to Reason which tells them that since they must either trust themselves or their Pastours in such things and the Pastours must be incomparably better qualify'd than themselves are for the discovering of such mysterious Truths and withall appointed by God to teach them 't is far more Rational to submit to their Judgments in such things than to use their own But indeed you have reason to stand up for your Sober Enquirer for all Ring-leaders of any Heresy or Faction against the Church took this very Method in their proceedings The Spirit of Pride which possest them principled them with these Rational and Peaceable Maxims that they had Authority to judge their Judges teach their Teachers direct their Guides and that their own Wit excell'd that of all the World before them But when a Faction was form'd into a good lusty Body the Scripture-Rule was laid aside again so that 't is doubtful whether we have had ever a Sober Enquirer since as was shewn in my First Letter Sect. 25. 33. You desire to see this Power of the Church in Scripture in Express Terms and we tell you we need not let you see it in Scripture at all for Tradition even Common Sense tells us that the Church has Power to feed and instruct her Flock and enlighten them in what she knows and they are ignorant of If you demand how the Roman Church came by this knowledge of making Implicit Points Explicit I answer by Tradition giving her the Sense of Christ's whole Law and each Intire point of it and by the Light of Nature purify'd by supernatural knowledges antecedently as also by her Application when occasion required to reflect upon and penetrate deeply into that Sense which enables her to explicate her own thoughts or the Points of Faith more clearly now which she had indeed before but did not so distinctly look into them or set her self to explain them But pray what express Scripture has your Sober Enquirer for his Power to make the Implicit Points Explicit You reckon up diverse agreeablenesses p. 21. why this should be but not one word of express Scripture do you pretend to for it And if himself pretend to any such Power besides that it will look a little odd that God should take more care of private men than of his Church let him either shew us he has better means Natural or Supernatural to do this than the Church has or he discovers his Pride and Folly both to pretend to it You say p. 21. that the Church of Rome has no where declar'd in Council it has any such Power viz. to declare explicitly Points imply'd in Scripture But First you may please to know It has made such a declaration Sect. 4. where it defines that it belongs to the Church judicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum to judge of the true sense and Interpretation of Scripture Next It accordingly proceeds upon this Power as I shall manifest by three several Instances One Sess. 13. cap. 4. where it explains those Texts Luc. 22. Io. 6. and 2 Cor. 11. to be meant of being truly Christ's Body and declares thence that the Church was ever perswaded of the Doctrin of Transubstantiation Another Sess. 14. cap. 7. Where it declares the Text 1 Cor. 1. Let a man examin himself c. to be understood by the Custome or Practice of the Church of Sacramental Confession necessary to be us'd before receiving the Sacrament by all those who are conscious to themselves of mortal sin The Third Sess. 14. cap. 1. where it interprets that Text of S. Iames cap. 5. to be by Apostolical Tradition understood of the Sacrament of Extreme Vnction Which places you do not judge so much as implicitly to contain that Sense but hold that they contain another thing How the Churches declaring explicitly Points descending by Tradition makes no new Articles of Faith is discours't above Sect. 4 5 6 7. By which you may see that Mr. G. and Mr. M. whom pag. 22. you will needs set at variance are notwithstanding very good Friends For if the Church knew the the sense which is contain'd in that place before the Doctrin is Old tho' the declaring it to be signifi'd by that particular Text be perhaps New. I say perhaps for in some signal passages much in use in the Churches Preaching Catechisms and Practise I doubt not but that not only the particular Doctrin but also that 't is signifi'd by such a Text comes down by Tradition in the Ecclesia docens Notwithstanding the agreeableness of these two Positions you triumph mightily here p. 23. that Thus Mr. M. has answer'd Mr. G 's Demonstration As much as to say I know not for my life what to say to it my self and therefore would gladly shift it off upon any Body so I could handsomely rid my Hands of it Thus you make for you can make any thing by your Method of mistaking every thing the Council of Trent clash with the Church of Rome a hard Task one would think by pretending to interpret Scripture according to the unanimous sense of the Fathers which you judge contradicts the making known and obliging Men to believe that explicitly now which they were not oblig'd to by any precedent Sense or Explication What mean the words Men and They If they signify all men and intend to signify that no man knew those imply'd Points before but all might hap to contradict them you mistake our Tenet for we judge it absolutely impossible that none of the Fathers should reflect more attentively on the full sense of the Points deliver'd or look into their own thoughts as Faithful and therefore it was much more impossible they should unanimously contradict those Points And unless they did so the Council of Trent and the Church of Rome may by the Grace of God very well correspond in their Doctrin for all your mistake For the Intention of the Fathers in
that Decree Sess. 4. was to repress the insolency of Hereticks wresting the Scripture to their own private sentiments contrary to the Sense of the Church or the unanimous Consent of the Fathers And how this is directly contrary to this power of obliging to believe somthing as in Scripture explicitly now which was not so known before is unconceivable unless you will prove that that Explicit Sense is directly contrary to the unanimous Consent of the Fathers or the Church which you will never do But t is a trivial Exploit to make Mr. M. clash with Mr. G. or the Church of Rome with the Council of Trent you can make that very Church clash with her self Suis et ipsa Roma and that openly and professedly too Nay which is most wonderful fall out with her self about her own Prerogatives For you tell us p. 23. that tho' it has assum'd this Power now spoken of yet it still disown'd it Now to assume a Power is to challenge it and to disown it is to renounce it which hang together much alter the rate of all your Discourse hitherto This Church of Rome is a most monstrous kind of Creature It goes backwards and forwards blows and sups declares for and against and all at once but we must imagin her to be such onely as she stands pourtray'd in Dr. St's Fancy 34. Your main Stratagem to elude all this discourse remains yet to be more fully detected tho' it has been occasionally toucht at diverse times formerly T is this that you are now upon the General Ground of Faith and not the particular Acts of it or the particular Certainty as to this or that Doctrine And you seem to have reason for it too because the main point in Dispute was whether Protestants could shew any Ground of Absolute Certainty for their Faith. And this you think justifies you for hovering in the ayr and onely talking of your Scripture-Rule in common without lighting on or applying it to any one particular point contain'd in that Rule But this will avail you nothing For first Neither does our Discourse pinch upon any one particular Point but upon the Uncertainty of your Faith in general or on all your Points of Faith at once as built on your Ground So that 't is the pretended Ground of your Faith we are disputing against all the while and not any one particular Tenet We bring indeed Instances now and then of some particular Articles but 't is to shew that if your Ground has not power to ascertain absolutely those most Fundamental Points it has power to ascertain none and so is no Ground of Faith at all Secondly A pretended Ground cannot be known or acknowledg'd to be a real and firm Ground till we see it grounds somthing It 's Notion plainly imports a Relation to the Superstructure and you may as well prove a man a Father without proving he has a Child as prove any thing to be a Ground without proving such and such Points to be grounded on it and this in our case with Absolute Certainty Pray take that along with you still otherwise you turn your back to the Question and run away from it in the open Field T is tedious and mortifying beyond measure to hear you still talking and pretending you have an Absolutely Certain Ground for Faith and yet never see you so much as once endeavouring to shew how it 's Ascertaining Virtue affects the Articles you build upon it and that this particular Sense of Scripture in each respective Point has such a close and necessary Connexion with the Letter on which 't is built as to give Absolute Certainty of it to all that are competent Judges of the Sense of Words Which the Experience of all Ages since Christ confutes and our own Eyes Witness to be false in the Socinians and others Thirdly Your self confest once upon a time that you are absolutely Certain you now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles Now this candid expression would make any honest well-meaning man verily believe that you meant you had been absolutely Certain of every particular Christian Doctrin by vertue of your Ground or Rule But your incomparable dexterity quite and clean over-reach't us For when you came to explain your self there it amounted to no more but that your Faith was resolv'd into Scripture that is that you pretended to Scripture which contains all or as you told us p. 17. that you were absolutely certain you hold all because you hold all not in your Soul or Mind where Points of Faith are to be held but in a kind of Purse as it were as one is said when he holds a Book in his hand to hold all that is in it being possest of which tho' you cannot come at it's sense which is little better than if it were lock't up in a Trunk you are in possession of all Christian Faith notwithstanding and hold very firmly in that Sense all that was taught by Christ and his Apostles Fourthly Hence you have not perform'd what you undertook viz. to shew that Protestants had any Absolutely Certain Ground of their Faith. For 't is not enough to point out a Book and cry out aloud T is your Ground but you must shew that 't is indeed such a Ground Now a Ground or Rule bears in it's notion Evidence to those who are to use it and to know other things by it's Direction Nay more Clear Evidence For as all Certainty must have some kind of Evidence to create it in us so this Effect of Absolute Certainty can have no less than Clear Evidence for it's Cause But you may as easily prove Mankind has no Eyes to see with as go about to shew that the Letter of Scripture is thus clear in order to the discovery of right Faith even in the highest and most concerning Points of our Christian Belief Fifthly T is pleasant to observe what a rare Resolution of your Faith you give us p. 24. Our Faith say you is resolv'd into the Scripture as the Word of God and whatever is built on the Word of God is absolutely Certain You must indeed having deserted the Tradition of the Church either pretend to Scripture or nothing unless you will confess your selves to be pure Phanaticks or Pagans and it looks mighty plausibly to say that whatever is built on the Word of God is absolutely Certain for 't is a great Truth But the only Point is still Are you absolutely-certain by your Grounds that your Faith is indeed built on the Word of God You say indeed Scripture is your Ground you pretend to it as your Ground perhaps you think it so too and 't is not about your saying pretending or thinking it to be such that we dispute with you for we should not scruple to grant you all this without any Dispute at all But does your saying pretending or thinking Prove it to be so really and indeed All
already Ship-wrackt The Fourth By it we are to judge what we are bound to believe as Divine Revelations runs upon the same strain for you are to shew us how by it I am to judge my self bound to believe any thing at all as a Divine Revelation that is as taught by Christ with a Firm and Vnalterable Assent such as Faith is till I am Certain it is so by being ascertain'd he taught it This is the True This is the Main Point which you slide over still as smoothly as a non-plust Commentator does over hard Texts that puzzle him to explicate I say once more 't is the Main if not onely Point for till you have made out this you can never prove that Scripture taken alone is a Ground of Faith at all much less an Absolutely Certain Ground and least of all your Ground in particular And therefore you said very True when you lamented p. 28. you were in a hard case for tho' say you there is an Absolute Certainty and this Certainty lies in Vniversal Tradition and we can shew this Vniversal Tradition yet we cannot shew the Ground of our Certainty For you cannot shew Universal Tradition for every particular Text that concerns Faith without our Tradition Rule for Doctrin nor Absolute Certainty you have the true Sense tho' you had that Certainty for the Letter without which 't is not your Ground at all A Certainty there is but not by vertue of your Grounds and so 't is none of your Certainty nor your Ground neither Whereas then you confess here that if you cannot shew the true Ground of your Certainty you deserve to be either pity'd or begg'd you say very true for we do from our hearts pity you let who will take the tother part We pity you to see such excellent Wits who had they a good cause would be honourably victorious forc't by the Patronage of a bad one to employ their Talents in shifting about for by-paths to avoid meeting the Question in the face We pity you for your being necessitated to impose upon your well-meaning Readers with your specious pretences of Gods Word instead of shewing them with Absolute Certainty on your Grounds that you have the true Sense of it in any one passage relating to the controverted points without which you cannot with Honesty pretend it Gods Word as to those Points And if that kind of begging may do you any good we shall earnestly and heartily beg of God's Infinite Mercy to give you hearts to seek Truth and candidly acknowledge it when found 39. I had almost forgot your Id est which connects your Third and Last Proposition together must be the Rule of our Faith Id est say you by it we are to judge what we are bound to believe as Divine Revelations These Id est's which should be us'd to clear things are still so made use of that they are the main Engines to confound them Let your Id est then say what it please I must tell you plainly you quite mistake the meaning of the Word Rule It speaks Rectitude and that such an Evident one as preserves those who regulate themselves by it from obliquity or Deviation that is in our case from Errour You ought then to have said The Rule of our Faith Id est by which while we follow it we shall be absolutely secur'd from erring in Faith For the Primary Effect of a Rule is to give Faith that prerequisit Quality as elevates it to the Dignity of such a kind of Assent and raises it above that dwindling feeble alterable assent call'd Opinion But you will needs to avoid coming neer so dangerous a Rock take it for a kind of Quantitative Measure nor for a Qualifying Principle Whereas indeed 't is not the What or how much we are to believe which is now our Question but the That we ought to believe any thing at all or That you can by your Grounds have any Faith at all for want of this Absolute Certainty which you pretend to 'T is this I say which is the true Subject of our present Debate For tho' we both held the same Quantity or Number of Points to a tittle yet it might be Faith in one of us and but Opinion in the other nay perhaps Opinion in both if both of us wanted Certain Grounds to evince they were Christs Doctrin which is the Formal Motive of our Faith. It belongs then to a Rule to ascertain both the That we are to believe and the What but the former Office of it is Antecedent and Principal the later Collateral and Secondary Common Sense telling us that we ought first to determin whether there is any Faith at all e're we come to debate what Points are of Faith what not These Fast-and-Loose Doings make me when ever I meet with an Id est still expect it means aliud est and that like your other Explications of your self it is brought in to divert our Eyes to another Object instead of keeping them still fixt upon the same 40. Enough has been said I am sure too much ever to be Answer'd to prove that Scripture alone as interterpreted by any Private Mans Judgment wants the Chief Property of a Rule of Faith viz. such a Clearness as is able to give all sorts of People or the Generality of Christians be they never so Sober Enquirers Absolute Assurance of it's Sense even in the highest Mysteries of our Faith without needing the Church's Help Nor will You ever be able to produce the Consent of all Christian Churches affirming that it has this Property Wherefore when it is call'd a Rule by some of the Antients it must be taken as Mr. M. sayes with the Interpretation of the Church adjoyn'd which having the Living Sense of Christ's Law in her Heart can animate the Dead Letter and preserve it from Explications any way prejudicial to the Faith received And thus indeed it may be call'd a Rule of Faith because as 't is thus understood it cannot lead any into Errour but is of good use to abett Truth by it's Divine Authority In which sense Councils proceed upon it often and sometimes call it a Rule And I remember the Famous Launoy when we were Discoursing once about Tradition shew'd me a little Book of his in which he goes about to prove that Councils had frequently defin'd against Hereticks out of Scripture On which occasion I ask't him if he judg'd those Councils fram'd their Definitions by the sense they had of the Letter by their own human Skill or by the sense of the Church which they had by Tradition he answer'd undoubtedly by the later and that there would be no End of Disputing with Hereticks had they taken the former Way By which we may discern that still Tradition was in proper speech their Rule even when they alledg'd Scripture Other call Scripture sometimes a Rule because it contains Faith in which sense even some Catholicks call it a partial Rule
because Part of Christ's Doctrin is contain'd in it the other part descending by Tradition which acceptation of the Word Rule is yet less Proper because as has been prov'd it may be contain'd there and yet we be never the neerer knowing our Faith meerly by virtue of Scripture's containing it But no Catholick ever said that every sober Enquirer may find out all necessary Points of Faith in Scripture without the Churches Help A Doctrin which You declare p. 21. You are far from being asham'd of And yet let me tell You Sir You will never find this Position of yours as it lies without the Churches Help in the Universal Tradition of all Christian Churches and unless You find this You will never prove they held it a Rule in the genuin and proper signification in which we take that Word and tho' they shou'd call it a Rule in either of the former Senses lately mention'd they impugn not us at all who grant the same 41. You will needs run out of the way p. 30. to talk of a Iudge of Controversies but the best is You acknowledge you do go thus astray by acknowledging 't is another distinct Controversy and yet tho' you acknowledge this You still run on with it that is You still wander from the Point You triumph mightily p. 31. that it is impossible for us to bring such an unanimous Consent of all Christian Churches for our Infallible Iudge or our Infallibility as Protestants bring for their Rule As for the later where were your thoughts Sir while you thus bad adieu to the plainest Rules of Discourse Cannot we go about to demonstrate the Infallibility of a Human Testimony by Natural Mediums but instead of Answering it you must object against our Conclusion and bid us bring the Consent of all Churches to abett that which neither depends nor is pretended to depend on Authority but on meer Reason Cannot one say two and three make five but he must be presently bobb'd in the mouth that he cannot shew the Consent of all Christian Churches for it and that unless he does this let it be never so evident 't is not True T is very pleasant to reflect how brisk you are still with this Consent of all Churches I suppose because 't is a Topick very seldom heard of in your Controversies tho' as has been shewn over and over 't is not a jot to your purpose nor avails any thing to the evincing you have an Absolutely-Certain Ground of your Faith. And if we have an Infallible Rule or such a Rule as permits not those to be deceiv'd that follow it can there be any thing more Rational than to hold by consequence that there is an Infallible Iudge or that our Church can judge unerringly in matters belonging to Faith the word Iudge onely signifying that that Person or Persons are in Authority or are Authoritative Deciders to preserve the Integrity of Faith and the Peace of the Church So that supposing Church-Governours or Bishops and that those Sacred Concerns are to be provided for plain Reason demonstrates to us this too as well as the other without needing the Consent of all Christian Churches tho' you need not to be told this does not want neither unless you think that all the General Councils that defin'd against Hereticks imagin'd they might perhaps be in an Errour all the while and the Heretick whom they condemn'd in the right Your Appeal to all the Churches of the Christian World for your Rule has a plausible appearance but vanishes into air when one comes to grasp it How often must it be repeated that you have as yet produc't no Rule at all for your Faith For you have neither prov'd that Scripture's Letter as to every substantial word that concerns Faith is absolutely-Certain nor that it has in it the nature of a Rule nor that 't is your Rule more than 't is to all the Hereticks in the world nor that your Assent to any Point upon that Rule as made use of by you for want of Connexion between the Points to be believ'd and the Rule on which they are believ'd can have the nature of true Faith in it If talking big would do the deed you would indeed do wonders but let your Reasons be proportionable otherwise strong words and faint blows are but very ill-matcht Now I must declare plainly I cannot see the least semblance of so much as one solid Proof in this whole Treatise of yours If there be confute me by shewing it and maintaining it to be such You explain you own Tenet over and over till one is weary of readding it and half asham'd so often to answer it You talk much of God's Word that we are bound to believe it that it contains God's Will and all things necessary to Salvation and twenty such fine things which bear a Godly Sound and would do well in a Sermon where all goes down glib there being none to contradict you but are very dull and flat in Controversy On the contrary not one Argument have you even offer'd at to prove you have Absolute Certainty of the Rule or Ground of your Faith but have faln short in every one of those Considerations both as to the Notions of Certainty Ground Rule Faith and that 't is your Ground your Rule and your Faith. 42. A Rule to any thing if we take that word in a proper sense as we do in our modern Controversies is the Immediate Light to direct us in order to our knowing that thing For in case it be not Immediate but some other thing intervenes that is needful to direct us and by whose Rectitude we frame our thoughts as to that affair and that it renders the other capable to direct us that other becomes presently the Thing Ruled and not the Rule in regard it wanted the Rectitude of another thing to direct it that so it might be fit to direct us Wherefore the Interpretation of Scripture being more Immediate to the knowing the Sense of it's Words that is to the knowing our Faith than is the Letter for it is manifest that all who have the Letter have not right Faith unless they make a right Interpretation of it hence Mr. M. had reason to object that The Christian Church did not agree that every man is to interpret Scripture for himself or to build his Faith upon his own private Interpretation of it Nor ought you to be offended at his position in regard you told us before p. 7. 8. a Heretical Sense may ly under these General Words Christ is the Son of God and different Senses may be couch't under these Christ is really in the Eucharist and so even according to your self 't is the Interpretation or the assigning the Sense to those words which makes True Faith or Heresy Wherefore 't is plain that your own Interpretation of Scripture is in true speech your Rule for That is a more Immediate Direction to give you the Sense of
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
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
be the Letter of Scripture he would have had recourse to some exacter Copy correcting their faulty one and so have born up still to that Rule But 't is evident he does not thus He makes then the Sense of the Church or Tradition the Rule both to know our Faith and also to correct the faultiness of the Letter Whether this sutes better with the Drs. Principles or ours is left to your selves or any man of reason to judg and determine § 30. Thus comes off this famous Sermon which makes such a noise for a Confutation of the Traditionary Doctrin The Sum of it is 1. The Dr. takes no notice of the main Question betwixt us which is about the Absolute-Certainty that our Faith is Truly Christian or taught by Christ nor attempts to shew his is thus Certain but Preaches to you Stedfastness and a well-setled Resolution to continue in it yet avoids the giving you any Grounds to make you Stedfast and Well-setled in that resolution 2. He conceals every Advantage Christian Tradition has or is pretended to have that is he would perswade you to Hate it before you See it and to compare it to Scripture before you know what kind of thing it is which is yet worse he shews you another thing for It and through all his Discourse pretends 'tis It which is nothing at all to It but utterly unlike It viz. Particular Traditions both before and after that Vniversal Tradition only which we defend was setled 3. He fixes a false date upon the beginning of the Tradition we speak of that the vast source of it which with the Circumstances annext was able to continue the Current strong and the Derivation of Christ's Doctrin both Certain and Perpetual might not be reflected on To deform it the more he makes it meerly Verbal as if it were nothing but the telling some dry story by surpressing it's Practicalness in which consists it's chiefest Vertue 4. He hides from your consideration all the most Incomparable and most Powerful Motives which enforce its Continuance and oblige the Church never to forsake the first deliver'd Doctrin 5. He never regards even in those Particular Traditions whether they fail'd the Persons or the Persons fail'd Them but supposes still the Tradition was in all the fault without attempting to shew it 6. He would have you imagin the Church in the first Age consisting of Pastors and People lost all their Memory and Grace too assoon as ever the Apostles were dead lest it should be held Able and Willing to testify Christ's Doctrine to the Next Age which by Parity would Establish it a Rule for all succeeding Ages to the End of the World. 7. He mingles known Opinions and which he holds himself not to have been Universally deliver'd at first with Points which we All hold to have been first deliver'd Then as to the Matter of Object of Tradition which and only which we pretend it is to bring down with absolute Certainty and deliver Clearly viz. the Dogmatical or Controverted Articles of Christian Faith which are Practical he never mentions it at all with any distinction but tumbles and confounds it with all things imaginable for which it was never pretended and puts upon Tradition a hundred abus'd tasks as never thought of by us so improper oft times impossible in themselves As the deriving down the Ten Commandments Creeds Decrees of Councils set Forms of Words an Infinity of particular passages not at all Practical nay whole Epistles and Gospels Schemes of Doctrin taught by Heathen Philosophers Messages which use to be sent by long Letters Historical Narrations or Actions and in a word every thing he could invent but the right one viz. Those Controverted Points of Faith tho' it lay just before him the very nature of Controversy which we are about determining our Discourses to those Points and nothing else This is his General view of Scripture and Tradition as to the way of conveying down matters of Faith. He means a General view which misrepresents and blinds your sight of it in every Particular In a Word there is much of Reading Conduct and Wit in his Sermon but wholly misemploy'd to speak as handsomely as he could to no purpose and to miss the whole Point in Question with a great deal of Plausibility In which amongst his other Great Abilities justly acknowledg'd to be Excellent consists his most considerable Talent and Dexterity § 31. So he ends his Sermon with good Advice to you to follow Christ's Heavenly Doctrin in your Lives and Conversations Which as he worthily presses upon you so I shall heartily pray that God would vouchsafe you his Grace to follow it I am far from blaming His or any one's Preaching the wholsome Moral Doctrines of Christianity and laying it home to men's Consciences But I ought not if concern'd to suffer that when he pretends to speak to your Understandings and establish you in Faith he should bubble his Auditory with forty impertinent pretences Injurious to his candid Adversaries and to Truth as well as to your selves please and delude your Fancies with a great shew of his Reading and little conjectural Reflexions tack't prettily together and in the mean time send you away empty of knowing any Ground which may render you or any Absolutely Certain that what you hold is indeed Christ's Doctrin that is any Ground of perfect security that is cannot but be indeed his Doctrin without being which it ought not be held True. Whereas yet 't is only this Certainty which can give His or any other Sermon it 's full force and Energy Your Servant in Christ J. S. Advertisement The 2 d. 3 d. Catholick Letters are to be Sold by M. Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn THE FIFTH Catholick Letter IN REPLY TO Dr. Stillingfleet's Pretended ANSWER To About the Fortieth Part of I. S's Catholick Letters Addrest to all Impartial Readers By Iohn Sergeant Published with Allowance London Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holborn 1688. THE PREFACE Addrest to the most Partial of Dr. Stillingfleet's Friends Gentlemen WHen a Person is incomparably qualify'd above all others in any Particular men use to look upon him as a Pattern in that Kind I will not say Dr St. has manifested himself to be such an Exemplar in every respect that can be an Ingredient of an Ill Controvertist This is yet to be shewn and Pretence without Proof signifies nothing Only I may justly fear that while you are reading my Reply to his Answer as he calls it to my Catholick Letters you may be apt to judge that I am rather framing an Idea of what Human Weakness maintaining an insupportably-ill Cause may be obnoxious to than giving a Iust Character of his Performances and that 't is Absolutely Impossible that a Man of his Parts should be Guilty of such and so many Incredible Failings I acknowledge with all due Respect to him his Great Endowments and am heartily glad in
Truth 's behalf I am engag'd with an Adversary to whom no Personal Insufficiency can be objected Nothing could make the Victory come more Clear to the Cause I am defending and the more Dr St. is rais'd above the Common Levell of Writers the more Evidently it will appear that nothing but the pure force of Truth could drive a man of his Abilities to such unparallel'd Shifts and Subterfuges to palliate that Errour the Patronage of which he had so unfortunately espous'd Nor is it to be wonder'd at that even the best Wit in the World should be baffled while it maintains such a Cause For were it some Errour of an ordinary size that he defended or were the Truth which he opposes of a trivial Importance Rhetorick and misus'd Wit might perhaps bear it down and gain a seeming Victory over it but when the sole Point is whether even what we all hold to have been the Faith taught by Christ may for ought any man living knows be perhaps none of his and so a Falshood and a Lying Story 't is not to be imagin'd that any Tricks of Human Skill can prevail against a Point of that Sacred Concern It belongs to the Wisdom of our Good God to settle those things most firmly which are of the greatest Weight and therefore the Certainty we are to have that Christ was indeed the Author of the Faith we profess being such an Incomparable Good and the Basis of all our Spiritual Building must be by far more unremovably establisht and more surely plac't above a tottering Contingency than the strongest Pillars of this Material World whence all Attempts to undermine and weaken this Certainty which as shall be seen is the Chief Endeavour of Dr St. must be proportionably Weak and Ruinous To give you a Map of his main Performances taken from his Book in short and prov'd upon him in this Reply First Whereas 't is the Principal Duty of a Controvertist especially writing about the Grounds of Faith to justify that is to prove Faith to be True the Dr is so far from doing or allowing this good Office to be done to Faith that he maintains the direct contrary Nay he will not grant so much honour to any Particular Point of Faith and our Whole Faith is made up of such Particulars as to let it enjoy even his own kind of Absolute Certainty tho' that falls short of proving any thing to be above possibility of Falshood or which is the same True but says over and over in perfectly equivalent terms that the Sense which himself or any man or Church either has of Scripture in particular Points may not be the True Sense of it that is may not be Christ's Doctrin which if it be not it may not be True And is it possible that what may not be True can at the same time be True that is Is it possible that Truth may not be its self Secondly We are writing Controversy and consequently treating of Faith precisely according to a particular consideration belonging to it which is by what way 't is with Absolute Certainty derivable from Christ. This has been repeated and Eccho'd to him over and over even to Surfeit This was the Scope and Occasion of the Conference This is exprest in my Short Discourse against his way of having Certainty of Christ's Doctrin and clearly aim'd at in Mr G's Demonstration Nay this has been told him fifteen years ago in Errour Non-plust p. 44. Where I in these plainest words thus Stated the Question It being then agreed amongst us all that what Christ and his Apostles taught is God's Word or his Will and the Means to Salvation all that is to be done by us as to matters of Faith is to know with Absolute Certainty what was the first-taught Doctrin or Christ's Sense and whatever can thus assure us of That is deservedly call'd The Rule of Faith. Yet tho' we should trumpet this into his Ears every moment he is still Deaf and never takes notice of it or regards it in his whole Reply Nay he diverts from it with all the hast he can make when our express words force him to it To do this with the greater Formality and Solemnity he Entitles his Book A Discourse concerning the Nature and Grounds of the Certainty of Faith. Which Expression is so Large that it leaves it Indifferent for him under that Head either to treat of Faith as 't is in its self viz. as 't is Divine or of Faith as 't is Controverted between us that is of our Faith as 't is Ascertainable to us to be Christ's true Doctrin And that we may see this was done by Design when he comes to determine the Sense of those Equivocal Words he pitches upon that Meaning of them which is quite beside our purpose and nothing at all to our Question viz. upon Christ's Faith as 't is Divine which is not disputed but agreed to be such and this whether the Faith comes to our knowledge by Tradition attesting it or by an Absolutely Certain Interpretation of Scripture and the sole Question is whether the Tradition of the Church or the Letter of Scripture interpreted by any Way his Principles afford us be the more Certain and more Clear Way to give us Christ's Sense or which is the same our Faith. How untoward a Procedure is it then to stand quoting our School-Divines against me whenas the Objects of Controversy and of School-Divinity are so vastly different the one treating of Faith as made known to the World at first by Divine-Revelation the other of the Way to know now what was at first Divinely reveal'd by Human Motives inducing men to the Acceptation of it of for the same Doctrin Hence also when he was to bring Arguments which should evince by his Principles that the Faith held now is the same that was reveal'd at first to avoid that impossible task he falls unseasonably to alledge God's Grace and Invisible Moral Qualifications Which tho' absolutely requisit in many regards to Faith as 't is formally Divine yet are they most improper to be alledg'd in Controversy against an Adversary for a Proof that what he holds is the first-taught Doctrine since only God himself can know whether the Alledger or any man else has those Supernatural Means or no. To put a stop once for all to this impertinent Topick and to shew how he trifles while he quotes our School-Divines I alledge First that the plain state of the Question lately given which runs through our whole Controversy has forestall'd all he can object from them unless he can shew that they stated the Question and treated of Faith under the same Consideration as we do in our Controversy which I am Certain he cannot instance in so much as any one of them And in case they do not state it after the same manner we do in our Controversy with what sense can it be pretended that I contradict Them or They Me whenas we do not
with his own hand and Seal'd with his Archiepiscopall Seal in these words Infrascripti testamur c. Wee underwritten do attest that we have read thorough diligently and accurately and that with both Profit and Pleasure three Books writ in the English Dialect Publish'd by that Learned Person Mr. Iohn Sergeant whose Titles and Arguments are these Surefooting in Christianity Faith vindicated and Reason against Raillery In which I have not only found nothing against the Integrity of the True Faith and of good manners but moreover Clear and Solid Principles which admirably conspire to the Estabishing and confirming the Catholick Doctrin For both by Reasons and Authorities they excellently impugn the Protestants affirming the Holy Scripture is the only Rule of Faith and vigorously maintain that the genuin Doctrin of Christ and his Apostles has descended by the force of Tradition from Century to Century nay from year to year incorruptedly to our time and still remains inviolably in the Orthodox Church In Testimony whereof we have Subscrib'd and have caus'd our portatil Seal to be assixt this 15 th of March 1674. at Armagh Oliversus Armachanus totius Hiberniae Primas Can any man imagin that this Grave and Learned Personage who had for twelve years profest Divinity in the Sacra Congregatio at Rome and had been advanc'd by them to this high Dignity would have hazarded his Credit there in approving so highly the Writings of one who was a Stranger to him and no ways capable to oblige him had he not been perfectly assur'd there was nothing Censurable in them Yet this tho' known to our ingenuous Dr. is nothing with him He crys still Lominus for my money let him be what he will and assures the Reader upon his Morall Honesty he is Infallibly Certain my Doctrin in my Letters is not Catholik 18. The next in Dignity is that Illustrious and Right Reverend Personage Mr. Peter Talbot Arch Bishop of Dublin who dy'd a Confessor of the Catholik Faith in Dublin Castle in the time of that truly Hellish tho' not Popish Plot. This Eminent Person more than once has approv'd and highly commended my Doctrin The Author of Surefooting says he has with great zeal writ divers Treatises of this matter viz. the force of Tradition and has overwhelm'd those who defend only Morall Certainty in Faith with so great Confusion that they can no way clear themselves from the blemish of Atheism to which their Principles and meer Probability of Faith lead of which crime the foresaid Author proves them Guilty beyond all possibility of Reply And a little after he acknowledges that the Rule of Faith viz. in our Controversies is the Humane Authority of the Church and that it must be an Infallible Directress otherwise it might lead us out of the way Unfortunate Dr. St. to quote an Authority against me which so highly approves my Doctrine and condemns his as leading to Atheism The Reader may hence discern how likely 't is the Archbishop of Dublin should be the Author of Lominus his Book where he and Dr. Tillotson are praised for Writing so Catholickly against mee whereas that Right Reverend Prelate so highly extolls my Books as writing so unanswerably against Them. Lastly in his Appendix to that Book of his cited above he has this solid Discourse Altho' Tradition does not demonstrate or conclude evidently the Divinity of Christ nor consequently can demonstrate or conclude evidently that the Revelation of our Faith was Divine yet 't is a Conclusive Argument ad hominem against Protestants and all those who acknowledge the Divinity of Christ that God reveal'd all the Articles which the Roman Catholick Church professes in regard they acknowledge Christ to be God. And thus the Author of Sure-footing Faith Vindicated c. argues invincibly against his Adversaries for the Conclusive Evidence by the force of Tradition that God reveal'd all the Articles of the Roman Catholick Faith out of the Supposition that Christ is God. Note that this Appendix was write purposely to clear me after the Conference in Abbot Montague's Chamber where tho' I would not then answer to propositions taken out of books when no Books were there to clear them by the Context Yet after I had the Objections in writing I did answer them and this to the Satisfaction of the Arch-Bishop himself and of Dr. Gough who was present and prejudic'd formerly against my Writings 19. I had compriz'd the Sum of my Doctrine into a short Treatise Entituled A Method to arrive at Satisfaction in Religion which when I was at Paris I translated into Latin and shew'd it to that Excellent Prelate the Bishop of Condom my singular Friend and Patron desiring his Judgment of it He read it and at my request made his Exceptions which being clear'd by me he askt me why I did not Print it I reply'd I would so his Grandeur would please to give me leave to Dedicate it to himself Which obtain'd it was propos'd to the Sorbon for their Approbation of it the former of them Monsieur Pirot testifying it contain'd nothing against Faith or good manners the later of them Dr Gage added that the most certain Rule of Faith was in that Treatise exactly settled and invincibly defended But still obscure Lominus is worth twenty Sorbons in Dr. St's Learned Judgment Tho' 't is here to be observed that the Bishop of Condoms Approbation was antecedent to theirs not only as allowing and owning the Book but as inviting me to Print it 20. I alledge in the Fourth place the Testimony of my Superiour here in England Mr. Humphry Ellice an Ancient Dr. and Professor of Divinity and late Dean of our Catholick Chapter whose Sanctity of Life and solid Judgment gave him a high Esteem with all that knew him This Grave and Venerable Person besides the Ordinary and Customary Approbation of my Books added that They do clearly demonstrate out of the very nature of Ecclesiastical Tradition that the Doctrin delivered by Christ and his Apostles was inviolably eonserv'd in the Roman-Catholick and Apostolick Church even to this Age in which we now live and by Irrefragable force of Reason did evidently convince the Grounds of the Hereticks meaning Dr. St. and Dr. Till against whom I had writ to be meer Tricks and vain Fallacies But still Lominus that is the Lord knows who is Dr. St's only Saint and Infallible Oracle 21. It were not amiss to add next the Testimony or rather Judgment of that deservedly Esteemed and Learned man Mr. R. H. Author of The Guide of Controversy This Excellent Writer though he inclines rather to the School-opinion of the sufficiency of Moral Certainty yet like a truly ingenuous and Charitable man preferring the Common Good of Christianity before his own private Sentiment after having discourst according to his own Grounds he in allusion to my way of proceeding subjoyns these words But then if any after all this can make good any farther
from erring in Faith while they rely on it which his Rule does not He puts Questions and gives Answers here very kindly for his own behoof and from such sleight Grounds concludes he may have True Faith and be sav'd without finding out this Certain Authority The later I leave to God's Mercy which may I hope give him the Grace to repent his impugning known Truths which with him I fear is too frequent but he makes himself too Liberall a promise of True Faith without it However he expresses it modestly and only says he may have it that is he may hap to hold right in Some points of Faith by his private Interpretation of Scripture without Tradition of the Church and he may hap to hold Twenty Heresies His fifth Head is ridiculous for 't is a pure Folly to talk of believing the Scripture without knowing certainly what the Scripture says Let him secure this and none will refuse to yield a perfect and stedfast belief to what Christ has taught us by it Our knowing the Sense of it in passages containing dogmatical Tenets of Faith is the only Point between us In assigning some Certain Means to do this he is dull and flat or else perfectly Silent but mighty brisk in what 's nothing to our purpose His Sixth is frivolous and answer'd with a bare denying that we hold that Tradition is only to lead us into the Certain Sense of Scripture And this he knew before as he did five hundred things he pretends here unknown to him And this was but fitting For had he own'd he knew them and the reason brought for them he had stood engag'd to Answer them But by seeming still not to know them he puts us to say our Tenets and bring our Proofs over and over again in the mean he reaps the advantage of gaining time and coming off dextrously at present His Seventh is the same with the Second and spoken to already His citing Scripture Texts has the same fault with better half this whole Book viz. Something is said in common never apply'd to the point in hand or brought close to it but left in that Raw Condition to make the Reader think there is Something in it tho' he knows not well what Our point is that our Judgment of Discretion is not to be Employ'd about scanning the Mysteries of Faith by our Natural Reason after we have found a Certain Authority proving them to be Christ's Doctrin or interpreting such Texts of Scripture by our Private Judgments to gain Assurance what is to be held of Faith. The first Text I speak as to Wise Men judge ye what I say may for any thing he has shown relate to Manners or to the avoiding Idolatry spoken of the verse before which is known by the Light of Nature or to something relating to or consequent from a Point of Faith already known as is intimated in the following verses Of all these they may judge but None of these comes near our business as appears by the State of the Question The Second Text is Prove all Things And does he think this can mean they should consult their natural Reason how it lik't the Misteries or rather in case that Text had indeed related to them does it not signify that they should consider well of the Grounds why they Embrac't them The Third is Try the Spirits whether they are of God. And this is spoken in order to the Antient Hereticks whose Spirits they were to Try by examining whether they deviated from the Doctrin preacht by the Apostles or by looking what Grounds or Motives they produc't to prove their new Doctrin to be Christ's The Judgment of Discretion in this Last case we allow and the two Former are both of them wide of our business unless the Second were meant of examining things by the Grounds for them It were good to dive into the Drs thoughts and get light what it is he would here be at The Apostles says he allow'd them to make use of their Understandings tho' themselves the Proposers were Infallible What mean these dry Common words Does he mean they were to Vnderstand what it was the Apostles taught This is the Duty of every Hearer Catholick and Protestant and the very End of all Teaching and Preaching and so it does not reach the peculiarity of his Iudgment of Discretion Does he mean they were to examin whether the Apostles were Divinely-inspir'd or not This was very laudable in them for this is to use their Reason e're they allow their Authority and is the very Judgment of Discretion we recommend but he is here impugning our Judgment of Discretion and so cannot mean thus He is then contending for a Judgment of Discretion which shall scan the Verity of the Points of Faith themselves or the Matters propos'd even by a Certain Authority by his Naturall Reason I am loath to fix a censure upon Common words but I must tell him that if he means so and that tho' we receive the Tenets of a Trinity and Christ's Godhead for example upon a Certain Authority we are still to suspend our Assent till our Great Judgment of Discretion shall consider well of the Matters propos'd and reject them if such uncouth Articles seem disagreable to Natural Reason his usefull Servant not yet discarded If this be his Tenet as it seems to be then I must tell him his Principles are perfectly Socinian Whether he follows those Principles in his particular Tenets I am not to judge but such Edging and Leaning towards those Principles do I conceive oblige him to satisfy the World he is not that way Affected 55. But what if men differ about this Certain Authority wherein it lies and how far it extends I answer the Authority our Question proceeds on is the Humane Authority of the Church deriving down Christ's Faith Nor do I know any Catholick who ever impugned that but one unknown Nameless Author Lominus whom here out of his constant love to sincerity he is pleas'd to call Others But in case any should differ about it it being a thing Previous to Faith and therefore subject to our Natural Reason all I can say is the better reason must carry it He knows well how many most Eminent Catholick Writers have approv'd and follow'd in their Writings the same way of Controversy I take But he is not now in such good circumstances as candidly to acknowledge any thing He is put to his shifts and counterfeit Ignorance does him as much service as any of the rest But how proves he that when we have found a Certain Authority we must not follow it and rely on it Plain sense tells us we may and ought Why he says 't is putting out our Eyes throwing our selves headlong from a Precipice and there 's an End of Controversies Is not this mighty Learned Another man would think that a Certain Authority were the only way to preserve us from all these Inconveniences and
Faith be Immediate even from day to day And thus Dr St. has begun to answer Mr G's Demonstration by keeping such a huge pother about a Proposition Evident by its own Light and pretending more faults in it than even a wise man could have shown in the Arrantest Falshood But he has not done with it yet the most Essentiall part of it remains yet behind And so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour Now the Proposition speaks of Believing the same all that while and he confutes it with talking of Claiming and Pretending to follow it Whence since to believe the same that was deliver'd is Actually following Tradition his distinguishing Talent has afforded us two sorts of following Tradition One which is really and indeed following it the other is only pretending to follow it and not doing so that is there is one sort of believing the same or of following Tradition which is not-following of it which is still of the same Learned Strain 74. The Second Proposition is And if they follow this Rule they can never Err in Faith what says he to this If they follow this Rule that is believe the same from Christ's time that was taught at first do not they believe the same Christ Taught One would verily think that this is as Evident as 't is that to believe the same is to believe the same True 't is so and therefore 't is with him Self-Evidently a meer Fallacy Certainly never was any Mortall Man such an Enemy to Common Sense But 't is his constant humour to talk big when he 's at a perfect Nonplus Well but how proves he 't is a meer Fallacy Why 1. He grants that those who believe Christ's Doctrin cannot Err. And is not this a rare Answer We both grant that Christ's Doctrine is True and consequently that who hold it cannot Err All this is Presuppos'd to our Question and so is no part of it But our Point is how we shall know assuredly what is Christs Doctrin Or by what Means shall we come at it 2. He says They might mistake in this Rule It has been shown him Third Cath. Letter p. 6 7.8.9 and in many other places upon occasion that they could not mistake in this Rule he never takes notice of it in his whole Answer and yet has the Confidence to object it afresh 3. He says They might follow another Rule This too has been prov'd against him nay 't is here prov'd in the Fourth Proposition of this very Argument for by proving they could not innovate in Faith 't is prov'd they that is the Body or Vniversality could not desert Tradition But what a shift is the Dr put to Do we contend here they could follow no other All the Proposition pretends to is that If they follow this Rule they cannot err in Faith. What says he to this Can they or can they not If they cannot then the Rule is a good Rule which is all we labour to prove here the rest is prov'd in the Fourth Proposition And if they can err tho' following it then since to follow it is still to believe the same the Dr must say that the same Faith tho' still convey'd down the same is not the same it self was at first which is a direct Contradiction Not one single word of Answer then to the Proposition has he given us only he affirms stoutly 't is Fallacious a very Cheap Answer to any Argument that is too crabbed and difficult but he cannot for his heart tell where the Fallacy lies The Conclusion is naught that he 's resolv'd on but he has nothing that is pertinent to say to the Premisses or Proof Yet something he must say for a shew and so he will shew some other ways that Errours might come in And perhaps I can shew him twenty more but still what 's this to the Point Can Errours in Faith come in while men follow this Rule of Tradition that is while they continue to believe the same that was still taught immediately before and this ever since Christs time This is our only business 75. Since I must now run out of the way after our Straggling Disputant I desire first the Reader would remark that the Proposition he is now answering is this If they follow this Rule viz. Tradition they can never err in Faith as also that by Tradition is meant the Publick Testimony of the Church of what was deliver'd as Christs Doctrine His first particular way of introducing Errours is by the Authority of False Teachers But was Tradition follow'd while they follow'd their Authority If it was then the Christian Church was a False Teacher and her Publick Testimony attested false Doctrin to be Christs which if he holds let him speak out and see how all Christians will detest him If Tradition was not follow'd but deserted when men were led by False Teachers what 's this to us or whom does it oppose For 't is plainly to abet Tradition to say that none could follow False Teachers but they must at the same time desert It. 'T is hard to conjecture then what he meant by alledging de Molinos unless it were to make his Friend Dr Burnets Book concerning Molinos sell. 'T is no news that False Teachers may introduce Errours and that that man pretended the Publick Testimony of the Church or that his whimsies were Christ's Doctrin deliver'd down from the beginning is both unheard of and Incredible His Second way of introducing Errours is by Enthusiasm Very well Did the Testimony of the Christian Church tell them that Enthusiasm was Christ's Doctrin If he says it did he makes the whole Christian Church in some Age to have been a pack of hare-brain'd Enthusiasts If it did not then 't is an honour to Tradition that they deserted it when they fell into that Spiritual Madness His Third way is by a pretence to a more secret Tradition But was this pretence to a Secret Tradition a pretending to follow the Publick Tradition of the Church If it was not it opposes not our Tradition but credits it And if he says it was then he makes what 's Secret to be Publick which is a Contradiction and the very alledging this makes him in some manner Guilty of that old Failing of his His Fourth is Differences among Church-Guides about the Sense of Scripture and Tradition I have already shewn him that it was impossible the Generality especially of Pastours should not know the Sense of Tradition and as for some Church Guides differing about the Sense of Scripture it was equally impossible they should Err in Faith as long as they interpreted Scripture by the Rule of the Church's Tradition and when they once left that Rule instead of being any longer Church-Guides they became generally if they were any thing Eminent Ringleaders of Heretical Sects which gives a high repute to our Tradition even by their erring when they deserted it His Fifth
admitted that the Certainty of Scripture is from Tradition there was no refusing to admit that Tradition causes Certainty and makes Faith as Certain as Scripture And then it would have prov'd something difficult to satisfie even a willing Man that the Faith is Certain which is opposit to a Faith come down by Tradition But it was seen whereto it would come and thought fit to break off in time and not let the Conference proceed too far In the mean time Absolute Certainty of Scripture was not the Point of the Conference nor is it the Point of Concern Besides that 't is agreed on all hands Men are Sav'd by Believing and Practising what Christ taught not barely by believing Scripture is Scripture And Salvation is the thing that imports us in these Disputes and 't were well that nothing else were minded by Disputers But it imported you it seems both to shift off Proving from your self and to stifle any further Talk of the Certainty of Protestant Faith and keep us from looking that way by fixing our Eyes on another Object And this is all you do but with so much Art that I verily think many a Reader is persuaded you are talking all the while to the purpose The truth is you have reason to carry it as you do for it is good to avoid undertaking what cannot be perform'd And you cannot and I believe know you cannot make out That Protestants are Absolutely Certain that they now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles as you affirm'd in your Answer to Mr. G's first Question And this I thought it imported to tell you plainly and publickly that it might be in your hands to pin the Controversie-basket and bring all Catholics to your Church where I will answer you will be sure to find us if you make us sure we shall find this Certainty there when we come 6. In the mean time why has not Mr. G. done already as much as should be done It is plain that where Churches differ in Faith Infallible Faith in one cannot stand with Certain Faith in the other Wherefore if Mr. G. have fix'd Infallibility in his own Church he has remov'd Certainty from all that differ from her Let us then take and sift Mr. G's Argument even as you put it who had not I suppose partiality enough for him to make it better than it was You put it thus p. 4 5. 7. All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day which they did yesterday and so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour and if they follow this Rule they can never err in Faith therefore are Infallible And you Mr. G. prov'd they could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it And now That there may be no mistake let us take each Proposition by it self 8. The First is All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day which they did yesterday and so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour You have nothing to say to this I hope For since Traditionary Christians are those who proceed upon Tradition and Tradition signifies Immediate Delivery it follows that unless they believe the same to day which they did yesterday and so upwards they cease to be Traditionary Christians by proceeding not upon an Immediate but an Interrupted Delivery or some other Principle And so there is no denying this Proposition but by affirming that Traditionary Christians are not Traditionary Christians 9. The second Proposition is this And if they follow this Rule they can never err in Faith. This is palpably self-evident For to follow this Rule is to believe still the same to day which they did yesterday And so if they did this from Christ's time and so forwards they must still continue to believe to the end of the World the self-same that Christ and his Apostles taught and therefore cannot err in Faith unless those Authors of our Faith did Which that they did not is not to be prov'd to Christians 10. There follows this Inference Therefore they are Infallible This is no less plainly self-evident For these words They can never err in Faith in the Antecedent and They are Infallible in the Consequent are most manifestly the self-same in sense and perfectly equivalent 11. The fourth and last which according to you aim'd to prove that they could not innovate is this They could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it And this is no less unexceptionable than its Fellows For if they knew not they alter'd Faith when they alter'd it they had forgot what they believ'd the day before If they alter'd it wittingly excuse them from Malice who can who believing as all who proceed upon Tradition do that Tradition is the certain Means to convey the Doctrin of Christ would notwithstanding alter the Doctrin convey'd to them by Tradition Pray what ails this Argument and what wants it save bare Application to conclude what was intended as fully and as rigorously as you can desire And pray what need was there to apply it to the Roman Church and say she follow'd Tradition to you who deny it not either of the Roman or Greek Church As every thing is true and every thing clear who now besides your self would have thought of an evasion from it And yet you venture at one such as it is 12. You tell us then p. 5. That you thought the best way to shew the vanity of this rare Demonstration was to produce an Instance of such as follow'd Tradition and yet Mr. G. could not deny to have err'd and that was of the Greek Church c. You had e'en as good have said what Mr. G. says is true but yet he does not say true for all that For to pitch upon nothing for false is in Disputes to own that every thing is true The best way say you I should have thought it every jot as good a way to have said nothing when one has nothing to say But yet the World is oblig'd to you for letting them know what Scholars knew before that Protestants think it the best way to answer Catholic Arguments to give them no Answer at all For you are not to be told that this Instance of yours is not an Answer to Mr. G-'s Argument but a new Argument against him of your own which undoubtedly you might have produc'd as well as my Lord Falkland if you had been as my Lord Falkland was arguing But it is your turn now to answer And must you be minded of what every Smatterer in Logic knows that an Answerer is confin'd to his Concedo his Nego and Distinguo as the Propositions which he is to speak to are True False or Ambiguous He may deny the Inference too if he find more or other Terms in the Conclusion than in the Premises But these are his Bounds and Answering turns
your Infallibility to contradict my 15 th Principle for the Faith of Protestants and full at unawares into the Snares laid for me in Error Nonplust from p. 90 to p. 96 which I have no mind to come near But whatever Reasons you had to make this Proposal I see none that Mr. G. has to accept it Do you prove if you please that you have Absolute Certainty you who bear those in hand who consult you that you have and Absolute Certainty too of that of which you profess'd your self absolutely Certain viz. That you now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles which by your own confession there is the true Point For you know very well one is not certain of his Faith by being certain of Scripture Your self take all who dissent from yours to have not only an Vncertain but a Wrong Faith else why do you dissent from them And yet they have all as much Certainty of Scripture as you The truth is if you were prest to make out your Absolute Certainty even of Scripture in your way you would perhaps find a hard Task of it for all your Appeal to Tradition But it was not the Point for which the Conference was nor ought it be the Point here neither ought Mr. G. to meddle with it and you trust much to his good Nature to propose it For besides that all the thanks he would have for his pains would be to have the Arguments against your Certainty turn'd against the Certainty of Scripture one day as if he did not believe Scripture Certain You would have him undertake a matter in which he has no concern to save you from an Undertaking in which you are deeply concern'd but with which you know not how to go thorow which is a very reasonable Request In a word it is for you either to make manifest now what you should have made manifest at the Conference viz. That Protestants have Absolute Certainty not only of the Scripture which they call their Rule but of the Faith which they pretend to have from that Rule or else to suffer another thing to be manifest viz. That I said true when I said you cannot do it and thither I am sure it will come 22. However I am glad to hear any Talk from you of Absolute Certainty even tho' it be but Talk 'T is a great Stranger as coming from your Quarters and has a friendly and an accommodating look and therefore for both regards deserves a hearty welcome For this very Profession makes a fair approach towards the Doctrin of Infallibility or rather 't is the self-same with it it being against Common Sense to say you judge your self Absolutely Certain of any thing if at the same time you judge you may be deceiv'd in thus judging But I accept the Omen that you seem to grant you are thus Absolutely Certain or Infallible by virtue of Tradition for this makes Tradition to be an Infallible Ascertainer in some things at least and so unless some special difficulty be found in other things that light into the same Channel it must needs bring them down infallibly too Now I cannot for my heart discern what great difficulty there can be 'to remember all along the yesterdays Faith or to be willing to be guided and instructed by their yesterdays Fathers Teachers and Pastors especially the sense of the Points to omit many other means being determin'd by open and daily Practice Yet I a little fear all this your seeming kindness for Tradition is only for your own Interest and that because you were necessitated to make use of it to abet Scripture's Letter you allow it in that regard these high Complements but in other things particularly in conveying down a Body of Christian Faith which is incomparably more easie it will presently become useless and good for nothing In the former exigency you esteem it A worthy Rule but in the later duty A Rule worthy 23. Now to let the Reader plainly see that it was meer Force and not Inclination which oblig'd you to grant an Absolute Certainty in Tradition conveying down Scriptures Letter we will examin what you allow'd it when you laid your Principles and so spoke your own free thoughts unconstrain'd by any Adversary Your fifteenth Principle is put down p. 90. in Error Nonplust and that part of it that concerns this present Point is thus reflected upon by your Adversary p. 92 93. Again tho all this were true and that the Scriptures were own'd as containing in them the whole Will of God so plainly reveal'd that no sober Enquirer can miss of what 's necessary to Salvation and that therefore there needed no Church to explain them Yet 't is a strange Consequence that therefore there can be no necessity of any Infallible Society of Men to Attest them or to witness that the Letter of Scripture is right This is so far from following out of the former part of Dr. St's Discourse that the contrary ought to follow or from prejudicing his own pretence that it conduces exceedingly to it For certainly his Sober Enquirer would less be in doubt to miss of what 's necessary to Salvation in case the Letter on which all depends be well attested than if it be not and most certainly an Infallible Society of Men can better attest that Letter than a Fallible one and those Writings can with better shew of Reason be own'd to contain in them the Will of God if their Letter be attested beyond possibility of being wrong than if left in a possibility of being such for if the Letter be wrong All is wrong in this case As manifest then as 't is that to be Absolutely Certain of any thing is not to be Fallibly Certain of it that is as manifest as 't is that to be Absolutely Certain of a thing is to be Infallibly Certain of it so manifest it is that you there contradict your self here and that however you may endeavour to come off you allow not heartily nor without some regret and reluctancy an Absolute Certainty to Tradition even in Attesting Scripture's Letter 24. In these words of yours p. 7 As to the Rule of our Faith give me leave to reflect on the word OVR and thence to ask you who are YOV A Question which I ask not of your Name or Sirname but of your Judgment as you call it of Discretion Are you a Socinian an Arian a Sabellian an Eutychian c. or what are you Are you a whole or a half or a Quarter-nine-and-thirty-Article Man Do you take them for Snares or Fences and when for the one and when for the other and wherefore These words The Rule of OVR Faith make you all these at once for all these profess unanimously Scripture's Letter is their Rule of Faith. Mr. G. when he came to your House imagin'd he was to treat with a Protestant or something like it and to have learn'd from you what
Absolute Certainty you would assign for your that is Protestant Faith and you give him only a Generical Latitudinarian Rule common to all the Heresies in the World. The Project of the Comprehension-Bill was a trifle to this It brings into one Fold all the most enormous Straglers that have been since Christ's time nay Wolves and Sheep and all It blends into one Mass the most heterogeneous and hitherto irreconcilable Sects Nay it miraculously makes Light and Darkness very consistent and Christ and Belial very good Friends For your own Credit sake then distinguish your kind of Protestants if you be indeed one of that Church from that infamous Rabble of stigmatiz'd Hereticks and let us know what is the Proper Difference that restrains that Notion of a Common Rule to your particular as such a kind of Protestant and shew us that specifical Rule to be Absolutely Certain I say such a kind for even the word Protestant too is a Subaltern Genus and has divers Species and 't is doubted by many who are no Papists under which Species you are to be rankt But why should I vex you with putting you upon manifest Impossibilities For the Letter being the common Rule to them all and as daily experience shews us variously explicable that which particularizes it to belong specially to this or that Sect as its proper Rule can be only this According as my self and those of my Iudgment understand or interpret it The Difference then constituting your Protestant Rule as distinguisht from that of those most abominable Heresies can only be as my own Iudgment or others of my side thus or thus interpret Scripture's Letter and wriggle which way you please there it will and must end at last Go to work then distinguish your self by your Ground of Faith and then make out this your proper Rule to be Absolutely Certain or Infallible and then who will not laugh at you for attempting it and assuming that to your self which you deny to God's Church and preferring your self as to the Gift of Understanding Scripture right before the whole body of those many and Learned Churches in Communion with Rome Nay and before the Socinians too without so much as pretending to make out to the World that you have better Means either Natural or Supernatural to interpret those Sacred Oracles than had the others 25. My last Exception is that you pretend the Letter of Scripture is a Rule of Faith for your People which not one in a Million even of your own Protestants relies on or ever thinks of relying on in order to make choice of their Faith or determining what to hold This pretence of yours looks so like a meer Jest that I cannot perswade my self you are in earnest when you advance such a Paradox For 't is manifest that while your Protestants are under Age and not yet at years of Discretion to judge they simply believe their Fathers and Teachers that is they follow the way of Tradition however misplac'd And when they come to Maturity pray tell us truly how many of your Sober Enquirers have you met with in your life who endeavour to abstract from all the prejudices they have imbib'd in their Minority and reducing their inclin'd thoughts to an equal Balance of Indifferency do with a wise Jealousie lest this Popish way of believing immediate Fathers and Pastors should delude them as it has done the whole World formerly resolve to examin the Book of Scripture it self read it attentively pray daily and fervently that God's Spirit would discover to them whether what they have learn'd hither to be true or no and what is and in a word use all the Fallible means for you allow them no other which your Sober Enquirers are to make use of to find out their Faith I doubt if you would please to answer sincerely you would seriously confess you scarce ever met with such a one in your life that is never met with any one who rely'd upon Scripture's Letter practically for his Rule of Faith whatever you may have taught them to talk by rote Can any Man of Reason imagin that all the Reformed in Denmark or Sueden to omit others did light to be so unanimously of one Religion meerly by means of reading your Letter-Rule and your Sober Enquiry Or can any be so blind as not to see that 't is the following the natural way of Tradition or Childrens believing Fathers that is indeed of Education that such multitudes in several places continue still of the same perswasion and that you consequently owe to this way which you so decry in Catholics that any considerable number of you do voluntarily hang together at all And that those Principles of yours which you take up for a shew when you write against Catholics would if put in practice in a short time crumble to Atoms all the Churches in the World Perhaps indeed when your Protestants come at Age they may receive some Confirmation from their Fathers and Preachers quoting Scripture-places against what Catholics hold or what they shall please to say they hold and by the same means come to believe a Trinity the Godhead of Christ Christ's Body being absent in the Sacrament and such like but do the Hearers and Learners make it their business to use all careful disquisition for a slubbering superficial diligence will not serve the turn in matters of such high Concern whether the Catholics and those great Scripturists who deny those other Points do not give more congruous explications of those places than their own Preachers do unless they do this or something equivalent 't is manifest the Letter of Scripture is not their Rule but honest Tradition And that they do no such thing is hence very apparent that they rest easily satisfi'd and well appaid with their Parson's interpretation of Scripture they presently accept it for right and good and readily swallow that sense which some Learned Men of their own Judgment assign it without thinking themselves oblig'd to observe your Method of Sober Enquiry You may rail against the Council of Trent as you will for forbidding any to interpret Scripture against the Sense which the Church holds but 't is no more than what your Hearers perpetually practise and the Preachers too for all their fair words expect from them And I much doubt even your self tho' your Principles are the most pernicious for taking matters out of the Churche's and putting them into private Hands of any Protestant I ever yet read would not take it very well if some Parishioner of yours presuming upon his Prayers for Direction c. should tell you that you err'd in Interpreting Scripture and that the Sense he gave it was sound and right Faith yours wrong and Heretical and I would be glad to know what you would say to him according to your Principles if he should hap to stand out against you that he understands Scripture to be plainly against a Trinity and Christ's Divinity as
into play again e're long However I only said they seem'd to grant c. For the Tenet of Faiths Vncertainty if I may speak what I think is hearty in them it 's Absolute Certainty is but seeming and surely 't is lawful to say he seems to hold it who in print avows it whether he do indeed hold it or no. 10. From hence you pass to a company of Traditionary Gentlemen with whom if you have business I have none and think yours cannot be very great since you take this time to dispatch it You may dispatch with me if you please first and say what you will to them afterwards Dr. Tillotson you say in his Rule of Faith p. 120. c. said great matters of them and if I find them wrong'd I have the liberty to vindicate them I know you would invent twenty impertinent Tasks for me so I would but forget the point in hand and excuse you from proving But how careless are you of what you say One of those Authors was occasionally vindicated in the Letter of Thanks and the notorious Abuse of him made good against that Dr's Excuse in Reason against Railery p. 227. to p. 234. And were it seasonable perhaps we should find the others abus'd too or wilfully misunderstood But What is this to our present business At last you conclude with a seasonable Warning as you call it That if any Protestant shall begin to plead Infallibility by Vertue of Tradition it will behove Catholicks in time to seek cut a new one Why so I beseech you This is as much as to say that as soon as Protestants take a fancy to any thing that belongs to Catholicks it is their own and Catholicks must presently yield it up Your reason is because When both Parties pretend alike to Infallibility and Tradition neither of these can be any longer a fit Medium to prove which is in the Right What will be when both pretend alike we shall see when the Time comes But Why must they or how can they pretend alike Can Tradition infallibly deliver contrary things Why should Tradition be a Medium less fit to determine between Catholick and Protestant which of them has right to Infallibility when both pretend to it by Tradition than a Deed to determine between Peter and Paul which has right to the Estate which both claim by the same Deed Do their contrary Pretences hinder it from being seen whether the Deed be for Peter or Paul or Tradition for Catholicks or Protestants Or do you think a Protestant to get Tradition on his side has no more to do but to pretend to it At this rate Scripture cannot be a fit Medium for you because all Hereticks pretend to it and alike too But it seems that with you when two pretend One with Right the Other without it they both pretend alike or with equal Title Of which it was indeed seasonable to warn us for neither we nor any man well in his wits would have hit on it of our selves Thus much in return to your present Excursion But what 's become of your Proof all this while Instead of bringing that you tell me I fall upon Protestant Certainty of which there was not the least shew that I speak against my self that Dr. Tillotson is an Excellent man that he did not confess c. Out of which rambling Talk we are to conclude That your Protestant Proof needs not appear but to make us amends for this constant Neglect you will needs give us a seasonable Warning and that 's worth all the Proof in the World. 11. Yet we shall have this Proof I hope in the next Paragraph For you give me notice then When your Certainty Absolute Certainty I pray you again for Dr. Stillingfleet's sake is once prov'd no more is needful to confute our Infallibility and that you are not afraid to undertake making it good even All that I here call upon you to prove And you do not raise our Expectations sure only to defeat them Yet it bodes ill that you would have the word Absolutely left out a while A motion which would make a jealous man suspect you had a design to palm a Certainty upon us which will prove no-Certainty But you are Absolute Master of your own Proofs and may put in and put out what you please I for my part cannot consent to leave that word out because it is not fair to alter a word of Dr. St's nor possible tho' it were fair For you and I cannot make him not have said what he has said and tho' we should agree to suppress that Word amongst our selves it will still be found in his Two Letters do what we can But now we are thus far onward 't is pity to break for a single Word and to give you your due you begin to deal here very fair with us We manifest say you Very well Now the Business is on the Hinges again and here is not only Proof but Manifest Proof coming But what is it which you manifest Why the Certainty you have of Scripture and that after the same manner as we do our Rule or Scripture I know not which you mean. But I see you need a good Memory too as well as your Neighbours For you do not remember that Absolute Certainty of Scripture is not the Point to be prov'd tho' I told you so in the very page you cite I wav'd that point not to be more severe than needs and put Protestants upon a Task which I told them withal They would find a hard one but from which while we both agree that Scripture is Certain I was willing to excuse them Again You forget that just before you wonder'd at me for saying You seem to grant you are thus Absolutely Certain or Infallible by vertue of Tradition and now you say you manifest your Certainty in the same manner as we do and sure you do not forget that Our manner of manifesting is by Tradition But to lose no more time about that which is not the point pray How do you prove that which is 12. Why you think you do sufficiently prove the Certainty of every Article of your Faith when you shew it to be solidly grounded on God's Word and this being shewn wonderful things will follow In the mean time you speak Oracle and have all the reason in the world to think that you prove sufficiently when you solidly shew Neither did you need to mince it with sufficiently for 't is very Absolutely Certain you do prove when you solidly shew or prove and this you might have said with less Ceremony if you had been pleas'd For we can see well enough that when there is Proof there is Proof tho' our Expectation had not been screw'd up with your professions of Courage to undertake or Shews to perform This is just to invite your Company say Grace to them tell them you think you treat them sufficiently when you
Rule and he cannot chuse but come to London who goes on the Right Way thither If either could miss provided they draw by the Rule and travel on in the Road the Rule of the One is not straight nor the Way of the other Right And so I make account that the Way to know the Faith of Christ is not a Right Way if those who take it can fail to know their Faith and therefore not the Way left by God. You barely say we may know with which it consists we may not know and so you make us a Way in which they who travel may be always out of the Way which is well enough for a Way of your making but it is certainly no Way of God's making for it is plainly no Way But leaving this little tryal of your skill that which you say to my Proposition unfalsifyed if you say any thing is that 't is indeed a little too visibly but yet true and so we may go on 18. You Preface to the Third Proposition with asking who I dispute against and why if I would be thought to dispute against you I do not use such and such Terms Two very pleasant Questions Your own and my Title Page tell as many as see them that I am disputing against D. of Paul's and yet you stand enquiring after the secret again to ask why I do not use Terms to your mind is to ask why the Defendant does not go to the Plaintiff to draw his Answer You shall excuse me from being beholding to you if you please till you have a better knack at making Arguments for your self you shall make none for me by my consent But where lyes the Quarrel You do not sure expect I should write to your liking and if you think I speak not against you and your party you need not trouble your self with what I say What does not touch you cannot hurt you so you may say concedo totum and rest secure by being unconcern'd Yet you speak at last and not till then to purpose when you bear the Reader in hand I pack the Cards and you will play fair 't is that must carry the Cause or nothing To get the Readers Affection on his side much imports him who has nothing but such little Rhetorical tricks to trust to 19. But as if I had not the gift of Prophesy to foresee with what a kind of Man I should have to do I happen'd to propose first what I intended to prove before I went about to prove it which I thought was the clearest way You at a venture take what comes first and tho' you saw it was my Conclusion which I inferr'd from the following Proposition will needs speak to it before you speak to the Premises This has so blunder'd all things that the Reader will not easily perceive what we are doing I shall thefore as you should have done mind only the Proof here and reserve the Inference till we come to the place where I made it I put then to be prov'd that Scripture's Letter interpretable by private Iudgements is not that Way viz. the Way left by God and for my proof that we experience Presbyterians and Socinians for example both take that Way of private Interpretation viz. and yet differ in such high Fundamentals as the Trinity and Godhead of Christ. 20. You before you answer would have it thought you might ridicule me in my own Language Never spare me good Sir nor balk your mirth for me if I give a just Occasion But where lies the Jest Why I quarrell'd with Dr. St. for bringing an instance and now bring one my self If this be all I shall be tempted to be merry in my turn I told Dr. St. he might undoubtedly have produc't his Instance if he had been arguing but minded him that his turn was then to Answer and that his Instance was not an Answer but a new Argument And yet this is not plain enough for you to see that I faulted not the Instance but the unseasonable Argument as I should any other in such circumstances and you would have it ridiculous in me who am arguing to do what I only excepted against because he was not arguing and freely acknowledg'd he might do if he had been to argue Sure you were in a pleasant humour when you thought of turning me into ridicule because your self understood not where the stress lay tho' it were never so plainly told you But to let this pass as you say with your causelesly gleeking Reflections upon Scripture and Tradition what say you to the Proof I bring 21. Why the force of my Argument say you is this If any men can be found who wrest or misinterpret Scripture then can it not be the Way to know what Christ and his Apostles taught One thing after another if it please you Talk of the force of my Argument as much as you will but e're you leave the Proposition before you of the Presbyterians and Socinians 't is but fair to grant or deny it I must intreat you too to leave translating my Arguments They are New yet and need no mending when they do I will be better satisfied of your Skill in the Trade before I become your Customer By your next words rallying against the Validity of the Consequence I guess you grant the Antecedent and so that care being over we have nothing but the Consequence to mind The Dispute would fall in more properly under the next Proposition which infers the Consequent but now I am here I will hear what you say before I pass farther You say then That indeed this Argument proves nothing but that I have no good opinion of the Scripture Will this venomous Cant never be left I think the Scripture too good and too sacred to be abus'd by wrong Interpretations and labour to preserve it from them You labour to keep it expos'd to that Abuse Pray which of us two have a better Opinion and more Reverence for the Scripture You proceed Must a Rule be no good Rule because some who use it misunderstand it and abuse it What may you mean by this I take my Ruler and draw a Line by it Does the Straightness or Crookedness of this Line depend upon my Vnderstanding What is 't then you call Misunderstanding a Rule If you make the Letter of Scripture the Rule and so private Interpreting the Vsing it or drawing the Line and the Sense the Line drawn unriddle to us if you can how the Sense drawn from the Letter can any more fail to be True than the Line drawn by the Rule to be straight and which way that Sense can be misunderstood and how the Rule can be a good Rule if it be us'd and the Sense to which it is a Rule be misunderstood Or do you mean perhaps that 't is with the Scripture as with a Grammar-Rule where he who understands not what 't is for a Nominative Case and a Verb to agree
to own one or the other if you be Certain at all for there can be no Third or Middle sort of Certainty which is neither Fallible or Infallible Pray speak to this Point and let 's have a little Reason from you at least and not perpetual Rambling and Shuffling How can you justifie your selves that you are not Deserters of Human Nature by affirming or at least supposing there is no Infallibility that is True Certainty to be found amongst Men Betrayers of Christian Faith while you leave it all capable to be a Lye nay maintain the full Sense of that wicked Position All Christian Faith is possible to be False in Discourses directly fram'd for that set-purpose Blasphemers of God's Providence in declaring and asserting that he has left less Certain Grounds for Faith and consequently for the Salvation of Mankind for which the World was created and God himself dy'd than he has for other things of a trifling importance Will it expiate for those Crimes to talk cantingly here of an Infallible and Living God and his giving us His Word by Men endu'd with an Infallible Spirit Sayings fit to take the good Women that are much pleas'd with Godly Talk in a Sermon but frivolous in our Controversie Who ever question'd that God was Living or Infallible or that he has left us an Infallible Word The only question is whether you can settle for others or have your self any Absolutely-Certain way to know the sence of that Word which this Infallible God has left us You tell us indeed 't is plainly written but that 's the Question still and the Point we deny and for which we are continually demanding your Proof and such a one as may confute our daily Experience assuring us that 't is not plain to Private Iudgments Yet this only important Point you only name then slide over it and retreat to your old refuge that weak insignificant pretence of Sufficient Certainty by which I suppose you mean a Certainty that is neither Infallible nor Fallible and tell your People if they will take your word against their own experience the Plainness of it for 't is that must give them this Security secures them from being dangerously deceiv'd then as 't is but fitting follow again of course in things necessary to Salvation and using the Proper helps which as we shall see anon will cost one's life to peruse and this you tell us encourages them to take pains to be well assur'd of the Truth Fine words I must confess if they had any Sense Is it such a rare Encouragement to take pains to be well assur'd their Faith is True when you tell them that after all their pains they can never be satisfied but it may be False that is they can never be satisfy'd that it is True But when all 's done and the Certainty of your Grounds fail you your last refuge is that the same Infallible God who has given the Means has assur'd his Blessing to them that diligently use them But this begs the Question For if the Rule you follow be not the Means ordain'd by God to arrive at Faith you have neither the right Means nor can you be assur'd of any Blessing by using them unless you can prove God has promis'd his Assistance to those that use not the Means he appointed or will certainly direct those to the right Place who take the wrong Way to it Next you fall into a Wonderment to hear me talk of mens being discourag'd for want of an Infallible Guide And I wonder you should hear me talk what I never spoke Not one Syllable was there of a Guide All my Discourse was about an Infallible Rule But the Truth is you are sick of any Discourse that sifts the Uncertainty of your Rule and therefore car'd not what new pretence you started nor whether it were a False or True one so you could but get the Dispute transferr'd to another subject Yet upon this false pretence you run on with your Raillery to the end of the Section 34. But at last you have found Infallibility in Tradition after you have been sent from place to place to seek it Pray Sir who sent you We with whom you are discoursing never directed you to any other but to that of Tradition and you know well and every Reader sees we are treating of no Infallibility but only that Yet you triumph mightily you have found a thing which was proffer'd to you unsought and found it at last which was both propos'd to you and urg'd upon you at first What an everlasting Trifler are you to confess to your Reader you have been running after Butterflies all this while and could not once turn your Eye to the Question which was just before you nay prest upon you Well but what are my words The Certainty of Scripture is from Tradition Do you deny this No you positively assert it First Letter p. 7. Let 's proceed Therefore there is no refusing to admit that Tradition causes Certainty Do you deny this How can you without destroying the Certainty of your own Rule Scripture which depends upon it and withal contradicting your self I added And makes Faith as Certain as Scripture Can you deny this That is will you affirm the same Virtue does not work the same Effect if the matter be capable Let 's see now how you answer Yet it may be this Certainty comes not up to Infallibility Yes it does for the Certainty here spoken of was Absolute Certainty as was twice insisted on immediately before from your own words p. 6. and I prov'd it was the same with Infallibility which you have never disprov'd and so unless you give a better Answer your own Acknowledgment that Tradition causes Absolute Certainty forces you to grant we are Infallibly Certain of our Faith. But say you The Tradition for Scripture was more Vniversal Suppose it so was not Tradition for Doctrin large enough to cause Absolute Certainty Or are not ten millions of Attesters as able to cause Absolute Certainty as Twenty Pray consider a little the Vertue of Witnessing Authority and the force it has upon Human Nature When the Number comes to that pitch that it is seen to be impossible they should all be deceiv'd in the thing they unanimously attest or conspire to deceive us their Testimony has its full Effect upon us and begets in us that firm and unalterable Assent we call Absolute Certainty and the Addition of myriads more adds nothing to the substance of that Assent since it was wrought without it But the main is you quite misunderstand the nature of a long Successive Testimony Let ten thousand men witness what two or three who were the Original Attestors of a thing said at first and twenty thousand more witness in the next Age what those ten thousand told them and so forwards yet taking them precisely as Witnesses they amount to no more in order to prove the Truth of that
distance with the true Sense of what was deliver'd by the Founders of the Church in the beginning without danger of losing it by the way which cannot be imagin'd as long as Tradition is held to the same believ'd to day which was held yesterday or that the immediately succeeding Fathers still deliver'd the same Doctrin To do which there wanted no Power as has been lately shewn to the full nor Will to use that Power being oblig'd to it by the greatest Penalties GOD himself could inflict the Damning Themselves and their Posterity 4. But say you pag. 8. If the Church may explain the Sense and Meaning of Tradition so as to oblige men to believe that by Virtue of such Explication which they were not oblig'd to before then 't is impossible the Infallibility of Tradition should ly in a constant Tradition from Father to Son for they have no Power to oblige to any more than they received How Plausibly and smoothly this Discourse runs and how shrewdly it seems to conclude Would any well-meaning Reader imagin that it were perfect Non-sense all the while and wholly built on your own Liberality giving us another sort of Tradition which is no Tradition This malignant word Tradition must not be taken in its right sense that 's resolv'd for then it would grow too troublesom but take it in any other sense that is mistake it and then have at it For when you speak of explaining the sense and meaning of Tradition you do not take Tradition as you know well we do and as the word plainly imports for the Delivery of Doctrin but for Doctrins Delivered and so again we have once more lost the Question For what can these words mean If the Church may explain the sense and meaning of Tradition that is of the Method of conveying down Christs Doctrin The Method of Delivery is the very Signification of that Doctrin from Age to Age and how can one Explain the Sense and meaning of a signification of Christ's sense when it 's self is that very Explication of it This gives me occasion to reflect how oddly you have hamper'd our Tradition hitherto instead of handling it P. 9. You seem to doubt by your If no more were meant c. Whether it does not mean Tradition for the Books of Scripture and this you knew well enough before was none of our Tradition in dispute here which as may be seen by Mr. G's Demonstration put down by your self First Letter p. 4. and 5. is confest to be Tradition for matters of Faith or Doctrin Now in this new sense you give us there of Tradition you kindly grant it for 't is your own not that which we here mean by that word Next comes another If and makes it seem to signify Articles and Power And this is no Tradition at all neither ours nor yours nor any body's For neither those Articles nor that Power you speak of p. 10. are or can be the Delivery of Christ's Doctrin from day to day for that speaks such a Method of bringing down things not the things brought down And this you very gravely deny And so you may with my good leave either deny or expunge or condemn it to what doom you please for certainly it comes with a felonious Intention to draw the Reader out of his Road into a Labyrinth of Non-sense and then robb him of his Reason Again p. 7. you make it a Delivery of bare Words at best with a general impossible sense and perhaps a Heretical one too into the bargain whereas you cannot but know Tradition as We mean it is a Delivery of the sense of Christian Tenets and this a particular sense too and such a one as cannot possibly be Heretical while this Rule is adher'd to unless the First-Taught Faith were Heretical which is Blasphemy to imagin And here again p. 8. you make Tradition or Delivery to mean the Point delivered and would have us give you the signification and Explication of That which is it's self the signification and Explication of Christ's Faith and this too the very best that can be imagin'd Is it possible to deform Tradition more untowardly or wrest it into more misconstructions than has been done already After a serious manner certainly 't is impossible But Drollery is now to act its part And to cheer your spirits which droop't under the difficulty of answering the Argument for Tradition you put your self in masquerade and would make the Relation of perhaps two or three it may be partial Friends of yours concerning Mr. G's Discourse about You a perfect parallel to our Rule of Faith and that if they can mistake or misrepresent down goes Tradition Which amounts to this that sooner may all the Christian Fathers in any Age consisting of many millions and those disperst in far-distant Parts of the World be mistaken in their Faith which it imported them no less than their Salvation to know sooner may all of them conspire to deliver to their Children another Doctrin than that which they held the way to Heaven than that a very few of your own Party should to gratify you tell you a false Story or Aggravate tho' all of them were besides profest Adversaries to the Person against whom they witnest and indeed Witnesses in their Own Common Cause I beseech you Sir tho' you be never so much to seek for a solid Answer yet speak at least plausible things and do not thus expose your Credit while you affect to play the Wit. Poor Tradition what has it done to be thus misrepresented Did it deserve no better for bringing down the Book of Scripture but to be expos'd in so many aukward Vizards when it was to come upon the Stage and not once suffer'd to shew it's true face but still travestee'd into another Form and put in all shapes but its own This Carriage of yours is enough to make the Reader think you apprehend it to be some terrible Gorgons Head or some Basilisk and that the very sight of it unless it came thus muffled up would undo you At least he will suspect from such an untoward broken Scene that the Dramma is not like to be regular Indeed you shift too often and to catch and confute you I must travel thro' the whole Compass for no sooner can a man steer one way but your Discourse like the Wind whips straight into another quarter and about we must tack or we must not make forwards at all But I will insist no more at present on this dexterity of yours you will afford your Friends many fresh Instances of it through the whole course of this Letter hereafter Onely I must note your forgetfulness or what else may I call it For you took the Notion of Tradition very right First Letter p. 7. where you alledg'd you had a larger and firmer Tradition for Scripture than we had for us You did not there take Tradition of that Book for the Book delivered
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
Letter of the Scripture as you see we endeavour to demonstrate the Absolute Cettainty of our Tradition for Doctrin There cannot be a worthier Point to exert your self in nor a greater service done to your Rule nor a better way to clear your self to the incredulous part of the World than to perform this for one knows not whence meer Words and outward Professions may proceed but solid and convincing Reasons can come onely from a Heart possest wiih the Truth of what is Profest Go to work then and bless us with the sight of this truly Learned and Iudicious Performance And while your hand is in please to shew us too that the Absolute Certainty of this Universal Testimony reaches to prove your Rule Intire that is reaches to prove no part of the Written Word was lost nay that it reaches to the particular Verses and the most substantial Words in those Verses as well as to the main Books and lastly to Translations also and Transcriptions as you ought to do in case they be as indeed they are of equal Concern in our circumstances as the Books themselves Or if you deny they are equally important and maintain that this Absolute Certainty may be had of your Rule without the same Certainty for these then please to give us your Reasons for it and shew how Faith can be Absolutely Certain tho' the Letter on which it depends may perhaps have been maim'd or corrupted by any of these miscarriages Or if you think fit to say you have Absolute Certainty of your Faith tho' you have not Absolute Certainty for it's Rule then confess candidly and ingenuously your Faith is Absolutely-speaking Vncertain and to make good that rare Christian Tenet fall to work and confute utterly that Positive Book Faith Vindicated which undertakes to produce a multitude of Demonstrations to prove that Faith cannot possibly be false and withal please to inform us to what end you maintain your Rule of Faith to be Absolutely Certain if it do not make your Faith thus Certain too or what that Certainty serves for Any thing would content us so you would once leave fluttering and hovering in common Words Either tell us plainly all Faith is Uncertain or come at length to some firm bottom on which we may with Absolute Certainty ground the Truth of it and raise it above some plausible Likelihood But we remonstrate against your putting us off with the Old Sham Sufficient Certainty unless you particularize to us what kind of Certainty you hold and make out 't is sufficient for the Nature the Ends and Vses of Faith and the Obligations issuing from it and incumbent on the Prosessours of it If you refuse to condescend to these fair Proposals all the World must think you onely temporiz'd with Mr. T. and the occasion and that you have not that Zeal for your Rule of Faith whose grand Interest 't is these things should be made out as you pretend Once more I tell you that if all this will not move you to this every way necessary undertaking I must then plainly challenge you that it is your necessary and precise Duty in this very circumstance as you are a Controvertist and as I am concern'd with you under that notion I must demand it of you 36. I know not well whether it be worth the while to justify Mr. M. for calling your Answer to Mr. G's 5 th Question Trifling or whether it be necessary after so ample a Discovery that all the rest of them taking them in the sense you explicated them deserv'd no better Character You were ask't onely the meaning of your Words Christian Church but you had a mind to be liberal and give more than was ask't the meaning of Vniversal Testimony too and to tell us that by Vniversal Testimony you mean Vniversal Consent That is to say by Vniversal Testimony you mean Vniversal Testimony For all agree or consent in the Testimony if it be Vniversal Then to the precise Question you Answer that by the Christian Church you mean all Christian Churches which is to say that by the Christian Church you mean the Christian Church for All the Parts make the Whole so that instead of an Explication you give us the same thing over again and almost in the same Words And pray who 's the wiser for such an Answer Yet tho' it be impertinent and nothing to the purpose 't is at least True and Evident by its self without needing to make it a Question If you would please to afford us such Evidences when 't is to purpose you would highly oblige us Certainly a Considering Reader cannot but think you are very unhappy in explicating your self for either your Explications run quite away from your Answer which you are to explicate and are a mile wide of them or they come too close to them and are the self-same said over again and almost in the same Words But can any one think so excellent a Wit as Yours is justly reputed should expose himself so manifestly without some latent Design T is incredible Let us take a view then of Mr. G's 5 th Question Being the Words Christian Church may be taken in several Latitudes by Persons of different Religions I desire to know what that Christian Church is c. Here we see plainly that the main of the Question was what Churches were accounted by You Christian or how that Word Christian was to be explicated and You give him for explication the self-same word again and in effect tell him that by Christian is meant Christian and that 's all he can get from You. And You did prudently for had You come to distinguish which Congregation was Christian which not You must have secluded all Hereticks which your Principles could not do for your Ground of Faith here is most manifestly Common to all of them and so You would have lain open to the Disrepute of having and professing a Brotherhead with all those Excrementitious Out-casts and your pretended Rule notwithstanding it s other many Divine Excellencies had appear'd to be utterly unqualifi'd with Clearness and Firmness enough to be call'd a Rule or Ground To avoid this and in Consonancy to your Principles You take all their Testimonies in for Scripture and pretend it strengthens it So it may perhaps as to the Books But You know how the Church complain'd of the Hereticks for corrupting the Letter of Scripture to make it Favourable for them and therefore for any thing You know they cry'd up the Books because they had fitted them for their own purpose Whence tho' the Testimony for the Books should be stronger by their concurrence yet the Credit of the Letter in the respective places that oppose those Hereticks is weaker for their allowing them because they admitted them as consistent with their Tenets otherwise they would have rejected them as they did others upon that score And what advantage can you gain by the former towards the proving your Ground of Faith
Scripture than is the Letter which is Antecedent and presuppos'd to the Interpretation as it 's Matter or Object Nor had you your Faith tho' you had the Letter till you had interpreted it And besides the proper and Immediate Effect of Interpretation is to give the Sense of Words and 't is the Sense of Scripture which is your Faith and so your own Private Interpretation is unavoidably your Rule If then you will vouch as you do all over that the Universal Consent of all Christian Churches gave you your Rule it must attest your way of interpreting Scripture too by private judgments Nay it must moreover attest that way to be absolutely Certain otherwise you can never shew how your kind of Protestant Faith no better grounded can be absolutely Certain and this as to all the Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles for both which you very unadvisedly undertook when you were at a pinch hoping I suppose to shift it off again with one of your transferring Expedients or some squinting Id est To what purpose is it then to tell us here p. 31. how a man one of your Sober Enquirers I suppose is to behave himself where the Texts or places are doubtful For unless the Consent of all Christian Churches bring us down by their Universal Testimony that those methods are to be taken and that they are absolutely Certain Means for all that use them to interpret Scripture right or come at the true Sense of it you are still as incapable as ever of shewing us absolute Certainty for your Faith or that you have any Faith at all by those Means Nay I much mistake you if your Principles will allow these Means no not even the Testimony which brings down to us the Sense of the Primitive Church upon which you here pass a complement to be more than Fallible If you do you admit our Rule If you do not I would advise you to prepare your Reasons to convince the World how a Fallible Authority can prove that what is built on it is absolutely Certain However you set the best Colour upon these Fallible Means you can telling us your Sober Enquirer is to make use of the best helps the best and most reasonable means c. tho' they are such that in likelihood it will take up his whole life time ere he can use and peruse them all so as to compass sincerely this satisfaction nay 't is ten to one he will dy a Seeker and then he will have enquir'd very soberly to go to the next world to ask the way to heaven I wonder how many of the Church of England or even of Geneva made use of all these Means ere they finally pitch't upon their Faith I much doubt Vel duo vel nemo Few or none And we would know of you whether any of those means or all together are absolutely Certain If none you are still where you were If you say any or all you will fight against Experience for many who use all these Means do notwithstanding differ You would insinuate by the words doubtful places that the Points your Sober Enquirers doubt of are but unnecessary sleight or disputable but alas they are the highest Mysteries of our Christian Faith and if they must take such pains as to compare Scripture and Expositors and the Sense of the Primitive Church which will require perusing attentively a pretty Library ere they can accept these for Points of Faith what satisfaction is to be expected in all that Christ and his Apostles taught by your Rule which asks such laborious study to understand it's Sense in these or by your method which is both Endless when all is done Vncertain 43. Of how different a Judgment the Primitive Church was let a Chief Pillar of it St. Athanasius inform us Lib. de Synodis Arimini Seleuciae where he blames some Clergy-men of his time for going about enquiring what they were to believe in these words Si credidissent nunquam quasi Fidem non haberent de Fide quaesivissent Sese Infideles esse declaraverunt cum id quaerant quod non habent If they had believ'd they had never enquir'd as if they did want Faith. They have declar'd themselves to be Vnbelievers by their enquiring after what they have not So that it seems all your Sober Enquirers are according to this Fathers Judgment Infidels or Vnbelievers Observe here the vast distance between your Principles and those of this Holy Father and most learned Controvertist Nothing but seeking and enquiry with the Epithet of sober to grace it a little will serve your turn but he tells us on the quite contrary that if Wee seek or enquire we have no Faith at all Which in plain English signifies thus much you judge that to be the onely way to Faith which he judges a plain Argument of having none You are all for seeking for your Faith in Scripture He for taking what is already found to our hand some other Way w ch must be by Tradition One thing I should much wonder at did not I know your private-spirited Principles 't is this why amongst other means you assign for your sober Enquirer to make use of you do not put the Iudgment of the Present Church let it be your own if you please for one I should think the Faith of the Church had more weight in it than all the rest put together if you do indeed hold it a True Church and 't is far more easy to know its sense where it has thought fit to explicate it's self clearly The finding the sense of Commentatours and the Places compar'd and of Primitive Antiquity costs infinit trouble whereas there is no difficulty to know the sense of the Present Church speaking to you by Living Voice and consonant Practise I should think too 't is most agreeable to the Order of the World the Unity of the Church and the Maxims of Government if you will allow any such to a Church that People should follow the Doctrin of their Teachers be led by their Pastours and obey their Superiours rather than be left to their own private Fancies in matters of such Concern that if they clash with them in their Judgment it hazards to break all those sacred Orders by which the World subsists Let me ask you one thing ere we leave this Point Is your sober Enquirer Bound to use these means for his satisfaction in doubtful Points or not You say expresly here that he is bound to do this and so I suppose you will be disatisfi'd with him if he falls short of this Duty I ask next did Mr. T. use all these means in a doubtful Point to compass a rational satisfaction How should he when he was satisfi'd and confirm'd and resolv'd in so little time Yet for all your contrary Doctrin here you are well satisfi'd with him nay you undertake p. 13. to satisfy the World that Mr. T. had sufficient Grounds for what
in the way of our Controversy all Discourse ought to begin Originally and end Finally in an absolutely Certain Rule of Faith that is in such a Rule as influences our Tenets with the same Certainty We are sure we have such a Rule and so we are sure we have true Faith and we are sure you can have no Certainty that You have true Faith because true Faith requires Absolute Certainty and therefore an Infallible Rule which you renounce This is the main Point between us on which depends all the rest whether it relates to an Infallible Church or Infallible Iudge Look it then in the face spare it not but level your whole quiver of Reasons at this mark Unless you do this you do but trifle you beat the bush and scatter leaves but spring nothing While this Infallible Rule remains unconfuted you must confess there may and ought to be an Infallible Iudge and your Iudgment of Discretion is convinced to be a meer Libertinage forcibly granted to all for want of Principles in your selves to Ground them certainly in their Faith keep them steady in it and reduce them to it when they deviate 48. To come closer and take a more distinct view of this Iudgment of Discretion I will acquaint you how far and in what I allow it how far and in what I reject it I grant that every man is to judge for his own salvation and to endeavour by his Reason to find the Way to right Faith. I grant with you that all Mankind agrees in it and therefore wonder at your self-contradiction to make us disagree to it who certainly are some part of Mankind I grant that otherwise 't is to no purpose to go about to make Converts I add nor for you and me to write Controversies I grant that every man is to judge of the best way to Salvation and of all the Controversies between us and you and especially of the true Grounds of Faith and to be well satisfy'd who proceeds on a Certain Rule who not and that the contrary Tenet is as ridiculous as what 's most unless your putting upon us against your daily experience such a sottishness as to hold it I add that since every man is to judge of his Grounds therefore the Rule of Faith must be such as needs not much Learning and Reading but must ly level to every man's Natural Light of Understanding as the nature of Testifying Authority and it's Certainty does I will grant you moreover that to deprive Mankind of this Priviledge of judging thus is to debarr him of the Light and Use of his Reason when 't is most needful for him that is when it should direct him how to find out the way to his Eternal Happiness and avoid the paths that lead him to Eternal Misery But I utterly deny that therefore he ought to think it Discretion to hammer out his Faith by the dints of his private and unelevated Reason from Words that are of so deep and mysterious a sense and this after he has experienced that multitudes of other men as wise or wiser than himself and for ought he can discern very sincere too do their best to understand them right and yet as appears by their contradicting one another in matters of highest importance one of those Great and Learned Parties does erre most dangerously I deny that his Discretion can lead him to judge that God's Providence has left no absolutely Certain Way to Faith it being of so vast a Concern and highest necessity Or that it can command him to Assent firmly and unalterably to any Tenet as a Truth nay profess it to be such even with the laying down his Life to attest it and yet that notwithstanding it may be a Lye for any thing can be known by the Grounds he goes upon And therefore I deny that in case Faith depends on some Authority bringing it from Christ without Certainty of which none can be Certain 't is True at all that Authority should be Fallible in that affair and perhaps deceive him while he trusts it or relies on it Or in case it depends on some other Means viz. Scripture's Letter and his own Interpretation of it that Means should not certainly bring him to the End if he makes use of it to the best of his power I deny it to be Discretion to think himself capable to judge he has Absolute Certainty of the Intire Books of Scripture even to such particular Words or Verses he builds on but by our Tradition for Doctrine as likewise of their Translations and Transcriptions all along and of the Copies being taken at first from the true Original whence I deny he can with true reason judge his Faith True since a fault in any of these may make it False I deny that he can with any Discretion judge that the ways you prescribe p. 31. for your Sober Enquirer to understand the Letter of Scripture right and so come at true Faith viz. comparing Scripture and Expositours upon it help of spiritual Guides who confess they may all be deceiv d and so may mislead him and knowing the sense of the Primitive Church c. are the means left by God for Men to arrive at Faith and Salvation since to do this he sees so many volumns must be read over compar'd and well-weigh'd that in all likelihood a hundred parts of Mankind for one I may say a thousand would Dy e're they could make a certain choyce which side to take in dubious points and to add to his discomfort those Points which of all other are of highest concern as are the Trinity Christ's Godhead the Real Presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament the Efficacy of God's Grace and such like are the most dubious as being most controverted by the Pretenders to the Scripture-Rule I deny he can with any Discretion when he comes to receive satisfaction of the Absolute Certainty of his Faith suffer himself to be fobb'd off with telling him there is Absolute Certainty of such a Book which contains it when common Sense tells him he is as far as ever from having such a Certainty of his Faith unless he has the same Certainty he interprets that Book right and does not err perniciously by misunderstanding the sense of it in those important Articles Especially since your selves tho' it be against your own Interest are forc't to confess other Great and Learned Bodies had most grievously misunderstood its meaning who had both the same Letter and the same Means to look into it that he has all that your Grounds afford him I deny he can with the least Discretion Judge it possible that all Christian Fathers could forget to day what they held yesterday or that they should if they remember'd it knowingly resolve to damn themselves and Posterity by teaching them a wrong Faith or that they could conspire to do so if they would and consequently that he ought not if he acts discreetly judge that this
Rule of Tradition is an absolutely or infallibly-Certain Conveyer of Christ's Faith down to Our Dayes Whence I deny that he can with the least grain of Discretion refuse to communicate with those who proceed on such an evidently Certain Rule and are found in Possession of their Faith upon that secure Tenure and adhere to those others who declare against any Infallible Rule that is who confess the means they have to know any one particular Point of Faith or which is all one any Faith at all is Fallible that their Guides may perhaps all mislead them and their Rule permit the Followers of it to Err. You see now how we allow them the Use of their Reason and Judgment of Discretion till it brings them to find a Certain Authority and when they have once found That the same Iudgment of Discretion which shew'd them that Authority was Absolutely Certain obliges them to trust it when it tells them what is Christ's Faith without using their private Judgment any longer about the particular Points themselves thus ascertain'd to them but submitting to It. In doing which yet they do not at all relinquish their Reason but follow and exercise it For nothing is more Rational than to submit to an Authority which my Reason has told me is Absolutely Certain in things which the same Reason assures me can no other wayes be known certainly but by that Authority 49. Now let us consider the Iudgment of Discretion as understood by you of which your sober Enquirer makes use to find out his Faith. 'T is onely employ'd about searching out the sense of Scripture's Letter by Fallible means which he can never hope will preserve him Certainly from Errour let him do his very best since he is told even by your selves that Great Bodies of very Learned Men and acute Scripturists do follow the same Rule and yet erre in the highest Articles of our Belief nay he sees himself by daily experience how many Sects follow that for their Rule yet vastly differ Whence instead of judging discreetly he commits the most absurd Indiscretion in the world to hazard his salvation upon his own Interpretation of Scripture when at the same time he is told by those very Men who propose to him this Rule that there is no Absolute security neither by his own Industry nor his Churche's veracity from erring in that Interpretation And not onely this but he sees or may see if he will soberly enquire what Certain Grounds are propos'd by others and yet suffers his Reason and the Truth to be run down with the noisy hubbubs against Popery and either out of a blameable Weakness or perhaps out of an inexcusable obstinacy rejects those Grounds or disregards the looking into them I say again Inexcusable For the very Nature of Faith tells him that 't is an Vnalterable Assent and that it cannot possibly be a Ly whence common sense will tell him 't is not to be hoped for amongst those who confess that all the Knowledge they have of each particular Point of Faith that is of any Faith is Fallible and onely likely to be had amongst those who own and maintain their Grounds cannot deceive them so that such a man if he ever came to a due Reflexion upon what most concerns him sins against the Light of Reason in many regards and what you call Iudgment of Discretion is convinc't to be the most Vnjudicious Indiscretion imaginable And your sober Enquirer who builds all his hopes of salvation upon such a Iudgment proves himself the weight of the Concern being duly consider'd to be the most rash and hair-brain'd Opiniastre and the most credulously blind that ever submitted and prostituted his Rational Faculty with which God has endow'd him and will require a strict account of him how he has us'd it to a most Groundless and Improbable Conjecture Disregarding all Authority out of his presumption on his own Skill or that he is more in GOD's Favour than the whole Church and I much fear out of a spiritual Pride and self-conceit that he can find out all necessary Faith well enough of himself without being beholding to any Church at all or as you instruct him here p. 21. and declare openly and avowedly you are not asham'd of it without the Churches Help Which is the very First Principle nay the Quintessence of all Heresy Fanaticism in the Egg perfect Enthusiasm when hatch't and downright Atheism when fledge FINIS THE FOURTH Catholick Letter IN ANSWER TO Dr. Stillingfleet's SERMON Preach't at GUILD-HALL November 27 th 1687. Entituled Scripture Tradition Compared Addrest to His AUDITORY By Iohn Sergeant Published with Allowance London Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn 1688. TO THE READER PErhaps the smart Expressions and plausible Methods that Dr. St. so affects in his late Discourse concerning the Nature and Grounds of the Certainty of Faith in which he pretends to Answer the Catholick Letters may have rais'd Expectation in many indifferent men and Triumph in some of his Partial Admirers wherefore to stay the Appetites of the former and give some check to the over-weening of the later I thought it fitting to say somthing here by way of Preface to give our Readers a short Account of his main Performances in that Discourse till I come to publish a Compleat Answer to the whole What I affirm of it and undertake to make good is 1. That he so strangely prevaricates from the whole business we are about that he even forgets we are Writing Controversy and would turn the Polemical Contest in which we are engag'd into a Dispute of School-Divinity bearing the Reader in hand That we are Treating of Faith as formally Divine and of all the Intrinsical Requisites to it as it is such tho' none of them be Controverted between us and some of them are perhaps onely Knowable by GOD himself The meanest Reflecter may discern how impossible 't is for the Dr My self or any man living to put such Particulars as these into our Proofs or Arguments and how unpardonable an Absurdity 't is to alledge them in our Circumstances The very nature I say of Controversy obliges and restrains us both to speak of Faith precisely according to what is Controverted between the Contending Parties and the nature of our present Contest which is about an Absolutely-Certain Rule to know this matter of Fact that Christ and his Apostles did Teach the Doctrines we Profess determines us both to speak of Divine Faith precisely as it stands under such a Rule recommending our Faith to us as deliver'd by Christ and proving it to be his genuin Doctrin 2. That whatever the Big Letters in his Title pretend he neither shews from the Nature of Faith as it lies under our Consideration that it does not need the Perfect Certainty we require nor that the Certainty he assignes to make us adhere to it as True is not Perfect Uncertainty since he does not bottom it on the
so Wicked as to decline from it voluntarily or neglect to educate the others in it however it was to be expected there would be now and then a failure in some Particulars deserting the former Doctrin and drawing Proselytes after them 3 dly That the same reason holds for the Continuate Delivery of the same Doctrin by the Second Age to the Third and so still forwards the most powerful Motives God himself could propose being laid to oblige Christians not to deviate from it in the least or be careless to recommend it And those Motives too a thousand times more lively imprinted and apprehended by the heaven-instructed Faithful than they were by any in the former Ages of the World before Christ. 4thly That by Tradition then is meant The Testimony of the whole foregoing Age of Christians to the next Age of what had been deliver'd and explain'd to them by their Living Voice and Practice Or taking Tradition as it ought to be for Oral and Practical both 'T is A Continu'd Education of undergrowing Posterity in the Principles and Practice of their Immediate Predecessours 5 thly That hence 't is Evident beyond needing Proof that this Rule cannot on it's part deceive us For putting that it was still follow'd or that Posterity still believ d and practis'd as their Immediate Fore-Fathers did who at first believ'd and practis'd as the Apostles had instructed them 't is manifest the Last Age of the World must have the same Faith that the First Age of Christianity had Whence follows evidently that no Errour could possibly come in at any time unless this Rule of Tradition had been deserted 6 thly That Tradition thus understood and we never understood it otherwise being the Living Voice and Practice of the Church in the immediate Age before is applicable to all even of the lowest Capacity as we experience to some degree in the instructions by Pastours even now adays And since it delivers it's Sense which in those that have follow'd that Rule has been even now shewn to be Christ's Doctrin by Preaching Catechizing Explaining daily Practising and all the ways imaginable to make it understood 't is also an Absolutely-Clear Conveyer of Christ's Doctrin downwards Add that should it's sense be at any time misapprehended the Church and her Pastours can explain their own meaning pertinently to the Askers Doubter's or Mistaker's Exigencies which a Letter in a Book cannot 7 thly That the Chief Care of the Church was to inculcate to the Faithful and preserve inviolate the Chief Points of the Christian Faith and therefore that Tradition did most particularly exert it's self in Teaching and Transmitting Those 8 thly 'T is not to be deny'd but Scriptural Tradition went along with this other we have explain'd For the Church having the same sense in her breast which the First Writers had were consequently the best Interpreters of it which was one Reason why the Fathers and Councils often made use of it to confute Hereticks and comfort the Faithful by it's concurrence But when they were to convert any to Faith it was never heard they took such a Method as to put the Bible in his hand and bid him look for his Faith there telling him 't was Plain even in the highest points that were dubious or Controverted to every capacity 9 thly That hence Scripture without the Churches help was never held by them Anciently nor can with reason be held by us now to be the Rule of Faith in the sense we use that word that is to be a Means or Way for All who are coming to Faith to arrive unerringly at it Lastly we hold that the Sense of Scripture's Letter in those sublime Points surpasses the apprehensions of private men coming to Faith and so the Letter alone cannot be an assured Ground to build the Truth of Christian Faith upon whence follows that Tradition which is Plain and Easy and only It can be in Proper Speech the Rule of Faith. § 6. This then is the true State of the Question between us This is our true Tenet both concerning Scripture and Tradition and what are the Points to be ascertain'd by them Now let us see how the Sermon represents us and whether your admired Preacher does so much as touch any one of these particulars § 7. In the first place you may please to take notice that he never lets you know or so much as suspect that the main Contest between him and me is about the Absolute Certainty or Uncertainty of Christian Faith His wicked Doctrin in that Point oblig'd me to write a whole Treatise formerly in Vindication of Christianity from such an Intolerable Scandal which I apply'd in the cloze of it against himself and Dr. Tillotson Had he let you know this he prudently foresaw your Zeal for Christianity your best Concern would have given you a just prejudice against his Sermon and the Preacher too and the very Conceit all Christians have of the Truth of their Faith would have made you abhor a Discourse out of a Pulpit maintaining it might possibly be a Ly. As for particulars § 8. First he talks of a Stedfastness and a firm and well-settled resolution to adhere to that Faith which Christ himself deliver'd But ought you not to be assur'd first that he did indeed deliver it Or are you to adhere to it as his whether you are certain 't is his or no Or is a resolution to hold stedfastly to what you judge is the Faith of Christ well-settled if that Faith of yours the Basis of your Spiritual Building and Ground of that Resolution be not well-settled it self but may sink into False-hood This is the true Point you are to look after and till you have perfect satisfaction from him in this wisely to consider that Pious Talk without Solid Grounds to support their Truth is but painting the out-side of a Sepulcher The tinkling cymball of a little Rhetorick and shews of much Reading may go far with persons whom such flourishes can prevail upon to forgo their Reason but he had but a very small respect for you if he hop't you were so easy to be play'd upon with the wind of a little articulate ayr § 9. It was very possible he says for them to have mistaken or misremember'd what was at first deliver'd Whom does he mean by Them What by First Delivery Does he mean the Vniversality of Christians in the First Age or any succeeding one Or that those Great Bodies settled in their Faith form'd into Church-Government and kept up to their Christian Duties by Disciplin could thus mistake or misremember the former Teaching and Practice which was a plain matter of Fact This is the only Tradition we ever spoke of or went about to defend None doubts but that when some single Apostle was Preaching in some places at first the Thoughts of the Hearers were as yet raw and the things that were told them were so strange that they did not
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
therefore whatever often happens through the Imperfection of Creatures such an Irrational Assent could never have been intended by God. Whence as it belongs to Infinite Goodness to give those who sincerely seek for Truth the Grace to embrace it so it belongs to infinite Wisdom to lay such means to arrive at Truth that is in our case such a Rule of Faith as both evince it 's Truth to those who are capable according to the most exact Methods of True Reason and withal perfectly secure those from Errour who follow that Rule let them be as Weak as they will. If then we are bound to embrace Christian Faith as a Truth and profess it to be so it must be indeed such and therefore the Grounds left us by God must be of that nature as to prove or conclude it to be such and if Dr. St. have no such Grounds that what he holds is really Christ's Doctrin he ought not to handle or preach Controversie since he must necessarily disgrace and weaken Christian Faith when he is to credit and establish it Nay he ought not to pretend he has that most firm and most strongly-supported Assent call'd Faith which depends necessarily on the Certainty that it was taught by Christ but candidly yield he has Opinion only in that Point not an Vnalterable Belief it is True but only a good Conceit or Hope that it is so or may be so Too weak a Prop to sustain it's Truth as it leans on Christ or his Apostles having taught it or to settle the Basis of all our Spiritual Life § 28. And now let 's apply this Discourse to his Ground or Rule by means of which he is to be thus assur'd or able to assure You of the Truth of those Controverted Points which you hear so warmly disputed in the world and which it so much imports you to be satisfy'd in 'T is Scripture's Letter in Texts that are thought to relate to those Points as understood or interpreted by Himself or any other Private Judgment What he has then to do is to make out with Absolute Certainty that this Method of arriving at the Knowledge of Christ's True Doctrin as to those Points cannot be Deceitful and Erroneous Otherwise 't is unavoidable his Faith and all Christian Faith no better grounded may be False and by consequence is not True. He will tell you Twenty fine Stories and give you many pretty words of it's being Sufficiently Certain Morally Certain that it has such Assurance as men accept for other matters c. But ask him smartly and closely if any of these Certainties or Assurances are Impossible to be False and he must not nor will deny it for should he say it he must pretend he could not be deceiv'd in his understanding those Texts right which he could not do without professing Infallibility in that particular Observe I beseech you where the stress of the whole Question lyes 'T is in this Whether this Ground or Method of his to be assur'd of Faith is able to prove it to have been truly and indeed taught by Christ so as it was not possible it should be otherwise By this Test if you examin the very good-Grounds for the Certainty of his Protestant Faith which he promises you here in his Preface you will find evidently he only gives you very good Words instead of very good Grounds and that whatever he produces whether he quotes or argues he will never vouch them to be so Certain but Deceit and Errour may possibly consist with them He will complain that 't is an unreasonable expectation because the nature of the things will not bear it And what 's this but to tell you in other terms that there neither is any Absolute Certainty of Faith nor can be any which bids fair for Atheism unless Interest satisfies the Will and by it the Reason By his speaking there of the main Points in Controversie between us I perceive he is running from the whole business in hand and seeking to shelter himself and hide his Head in a Wilderness But he shall not shift the Question thus and fall to ramble into endless Disputes Himself confest Second Letter p. 20. our Question was about the General Grounds of our Faith and not the particular Certainty as to this or that Doctrin and I joyn'd issue with him upon the same To run to particular points while That 's a settling is to put the Conclusions before the Premises and to go about to ascertain things depending intirely on a Method or Rule without ascertaining that Method or Rule first is to begin at the wrong end and make the Cart draw the Horse § 29. I owe him yet an Answer to St. Austin He alledges that Father p. 16. whose Testimony says only That the Gospels are to be look't upon as Christ's own Hand-writing and that he directed the order and manner of the Evangelist's Writing which only signifies they were divinely inspir'd in both which none denies nor has This any Influence upon the Point in hand He could have quoted you other places out of Him if he had pleas'd which come up to it fully and I shall supply his backwardness with doing it my self Quaerendi dubitatio c. says that Learned and Holy Father The Doubt of Enquiry ought not to exceed the Bounds of Catholick Faith. And because many Hereticks use to draw the Exposition of the Divine Scriptures to their own Opinion which is against the Faith of the Catholick Disciplin therefore Ante tractationem hujus Libri Catholica Fides explicanda est Before the handling this Book the Catholick Faith is to be explained Where Dr. St's Sober Enquirer is curb'd and restrain'd in his licentious Search of his Faith in Scripture by the Catholick Faith had it seems some other way for were his Faith to be had meerly by searching Scripture for it with what sense ought he to be restrain'd while he was in the Way to Faith To restrain one who is in the right Way is to hinder him from going right or perhaps to put him out of his Way Again Tho' those Heretical Opinions were both against the true Sense of Scripture and against Tradition too yet had he held Scripture the Rule he should rather have said they were against the true signification of Scripture's Letter than against the Faith of the Catholick Discipline Besides if Catholick Faith was to be explain'd before they came to handle Scripture how was Scripture the Rule for all to come to Faith when as Faith was to be had nay well understood by the Explanation of it antecedently lest they might otherwise fall into Heresie And in another place speaking of a false Pointing of the Letter made by the Arians to abet their Heresie he confutes them thus Sed hoc But this is to be refuted by the Rule of Faith by which we are instructed before-hand in the Equality of the Trinity Had this Rule of Faith been held by him to
reason to reflect on the Dean when he speaks of Church Authority takes away with one hand what he gives with the other That the Authority of meerly proposing matters of Faith and directing men in Religion is no Authority at all nay that they rather imply a Power in those to whom they are propos'd at Discretion to reject them and that it makes the Church'es Authority precarious and lays her open to all manner of Hereticks This is what I ever judg'd lay at the bottom of his heart that in things belonging to Faith he sets the judgement of every one of his Sober Enquirers above the Church'es Which made me reflect so severely upon it in my Errour Nonplust and in divers other places of my Third Catholick Letter But of late the juncture as he hopes being more favourable he is gone beyond his former self for in his Second Letter to Mr. G. he confidently affirms that every Sober Enquirer may without the Church'es Heâ—p find out all necessary Points of Faith in Scripture Now Proposing and Directing are some kind of Help but here they are both deny'd it seems and all Help from the Church as to the matter of saving Faith is deny'd This then seems to be the Antecedent Belief the Dr. sets up and thence inferrs That a man may be in a State of Salvation in his single and private Capacity apart and out of all Church Society and Ecclesiastical Communion tho' he live where it is to be had which says the Answerer utterly overthrows all Church Government This ought to give every honest man who loves Order and Government of what Judgment soever he be such grounded Jealousies that he is setting up a Babel of No-Church-men against Christ's Church that no satisfaction competent unless the several Propositions be extracted out of his Books and either formally and expressly retracted or else that he shew that as they ly in his Books they bear not that wicked Sense they seem to do neither of which has been done Nay lest he should deal slipperily by Common and palliating words at which he is very expert it will be farther requisit that he be oblig'd to write against those ill Tenets himself and offer convincing reasons to prove them False that so men may see it comes from his heart And this done and the Interest of Truth once in demnify'd he is one of the worst Christians who refuses to honour him far more than if he had never lapst Si non errasset fecerat ille minus 27. What concerns Me particularly is to note hence the prodigious Imprudence of Dr. St. in objecting against me Self contradictions which have long ago been clear'd and the Dissatisfaction of two or three Roman-Catholicks for I know of no more who became well satisfy'd when they had read my Books and compar'd them with my Explication and when as He knew my self after a severe Trial was clear'd by my Judges which he will never be and during the time of it when it was most dangerous for any to stand up for me my Books and Doctrin were most authentickly approv'd nay highly commended by most Eminent Authority What a madness was it for him to object falsly and against evident matter of Fact that I retracted Whenas all the while he knew himself had had the misfortune to have writ such unsound Doctrin that his Vindicator is forc't to confess it as his best Plea that He has retracted it and yet tho' as 't is said he has done it on his fashion he is still apprehended to be so hollow that he cannot yet gain the Belief to have done any more than palliate his gross Errours to be inconsistent with himself and to take away from the Church with one hand what he gives it with the other Of these things he never yet clear'd himself nor can but is still accus'd of harbouring the same Errours in his breast nay to grow still worse and worse Which I was so far from desiring to lay open that I civilly insinuated it afar off in my Third Catholick Letter p. 20. without so much as naming his Person that I might keep him from such Impertinent and Extrinsical Topicks which the Reader may observe do for want of better make up three quarters of his Controversial Writings SECT II. How Dr. St. settles the true State of the Controversy 28. I Have been longer about this First Section than seem'd needfull But the Influence it has upon our future Dispute will recompence my trouble and excuse my Prolixity The Second thing his Method leads him to for hitherto it has led him quite out of the way is to state the Controversy And to this end he acquaints us with the Occasion of the Conference which was that Mr. G. affirm'd in some company that no Protestant could shew any Ground of Absolute Certainty for their Faith and that Mr. T. had promis'd him that if Dr. St. were not able to manifest the contrary he would forsake his Communion Will the Dr hold to these words 'T is plain here that Mr G. demanded he should shew Grounds to ascertain his Faith absolutely Mr. T. expected he should manifest they had such Grounds as did ascertain their Faith and if he could not was to leave his Communion Lastly that Dr. St. by accepting the Challenge became engag'd to satisfy Mr T 's expectation and to manifest the contrary to what Mr G. had asserted that is to manifest he had Grounds of Absolute Certainty for his Faith or which comes to the same for Christian Faith upon his Grounds being taught by Christ. And how did the Dr. acquit himself and perform this Why he assign'd Scripture for the Ground or Rule of his Faith and Universal Tradition for the Proof of the Books of Scripture All the company knew this before For both sides knew held and granted already that the Book of Scripture was prov'd by Universal Tradition and every one knew too that Dr St. would assign It for the Ground or Rule of his Faith. Wherefore unless all the company were out of their Wits surely something more was expected and what could that be but that he should manifest his Faith was absolutely Certain by relying on that Rule or that the Rule he assign'd gave him and his Absolute Certainty of their Faith or of those Tenets which they held upon it For it being agreed on both sides that the Sense of the Scripture was in it self True Faith Gods Word and as such to be embrac't the only Question was of the sense of Scripture as to us or as to our knowledge of it And of This the Dr was to shew and manifest he had Absolute Certainty by any way his Grounds afforded him otherwise he might fall short or be wrong in the knowing Scriptures Sense that is in his Faith tho' the Letter were never so Certain Again by his counterposing to those words of his than you can have for the points in difference
between us 't is manifest the contest was whether he had Absolute Certainty of those Points he held upon his Rule What says the Dr now to this plain state of the Controversy 29. First he changes the Ground of Absolute Certainty for his Faith into proving the Absolute Certainty of the Ground or Rule of his Faith which transposes the Terms of the Question and alters the whole business For Absolute Certainty for Faith engages him to shew the Doctrin or Tenets of Faith to be thus Certain whereas Absolute Certainty of the Rule of our Faith makes Absolute Certainty affect the Rule but leaves all Faith Uncertain unless the pretended Rule proves a good one and renders the Doctrin of Christian Faith consisting of many particular Points thus Absolutely Certain which himself will tell us afterwards he will not stand to Next he Equivocates in the word Scripture which may either mean the Letter or the Sense of it Now the Sense of it being Faith 't is That only could be meant by Mr. G. and of which it was affirmed he could not shew Grounds absolutely ascertaining it The Sense I say of Scripture could only be question'd since the Letter was agreed to Wherefore to alledge Tradition for his Proof of what his Grounds will not allow to it viz. to bring down the Sense of Scripture or Faith and turn it off to the shewing Certainty of the Letter which was out of Question is a most palpable prevarication 3. He quite forgets to shew that any Point of his Faith or all of it speaking of the Controverted or Dogmatical Points as we do may not be False notwithstanding his Proof for the Certainty of its Letter which if it be 't is not Faith unless he will say the Points of his Faith may be so many Untruths 4. It has been prest upon him over and over in my Catholick Letters to shew how his Rule influences his Assent of Faith with Absolute Certainty It has been inculcated to him how both Rule and Ground are Relative words and therefore that he could not pretend they were to him Absolutely Certain Grounds for his Faith unless he shew'd how they made him Absolutely Certain of that Faith of his which was the Correlate Which tho' the most material Point and most strongly prest upon him he takes no notice of in his whole Reply and it shall be seen that when he comes to touch upon that Point after his fashion hereafter he is forc't to confess they are no Absolutely Certain Ground or Rule to him at all Lastly that when Faith being Truth the Question was whether he had any such Ground as could conclude it True that Christ had taught his Faith and consequently whether he has any Faith at all he slips over That and rambles into a Discourse about more or less Faith in Scripture instead of shewing he had any Other shifts he has but these are his master-pieces So that his whole performance as to the Conference amounted to no more than to take up the Bible in his hand and cry aloud Look ye Gentlemen here is my Ground or Rule of Faith and your selves must confess 't is Absolutely Certain and therefore you cannot deny but I have shewn you the Ground of Absolute Certainty for my Faith. But if it should be reply'd Sr an Arian or Socinian might do the same and yet no by-stander be the wiser for it or more able to discern which of you has Christs true Faith which not in regard that must be decided by shewing who has an Absolutely Certain Means to know the true Sense of the Letter the Drs insignificant Principles carry no farther but as we shall see anon to confess plainly neither of them have any such Means of Absolute Certainty at all And that he cannot manifest what was expected of him and he stood engag'd to manifest 30. The case then between us being such plain sense what says the Learned Dr to it Why besides his rare evasions lately mention'd he tells the Reader vapouringly his way of reasoning was too hot for Mr. G. which I have shewn to be frigid Nonsense He complains that our obliging him to prove or shew clearly what belong'd to him for no body held him to Mood and Figure is like the Trammelling a Horse That we insinuate Mr. G. is Non suited which is far from True. He is peevishly angry at the Metaphor of Playing at Cards and persecutes it without Mercy which is a scurvy sign that however he pretended to a Purse full of Gold and Silver he is a Loser and that he will be put to borrow some Citations out of Authors to combat the Council of Trent hoping to recover by that means some of the Credit he has lost by the Nonplusage of his Reason He pretends he gives us good security that is for the Letter of Scripture which was not the End of the Conference nor is our Question but not the least security for its Sense or Faith which was He talks of Declamations and the Schools in the Savoy and glances at my pretending to Intrinsical Grounds which is to maintain that Humane Authority which is the only thing I was to prove is to be believed blindly whether a man sees any Reason why he ought to believe it or no. He talks too of the Cardinals in the Inquisition who tho' my Just Judges were my very good Friends He says my Grounds had sav'd the Martyrs Lives and he makes a rare Plea for them out of my Principles Forgetting good man that we are writing Controversy to satisfy men who are in their way to Faith whereas those Blessed Martyrs were not only already Faithfull but moreover liv'd up to Christ's Doctrin and so had Inward Experience in their Consciences of it's Sanctity and Truth He imagins the Iews who saw our Saviour's Miracles had no Intrinsick Grounds Whereas True Miracles being evidently above Nature are known to be such by comparing them with the Course of Natural Causes known by a kind of Practical Evidence or Experience And must I be forc't to render him so Weak as to instruct his Ignorance that the Knowledge of things in Nature is an Intrinsick Ground and not Extrinsical as Testimony is He sticks close to his Friend Lominus right or wrong in despite of all the Evident and Authentick Testimonies to the contrary whom before for want of others to second him he split into Two and now multiplies into the Lord knows how many To gratifie his Friend Dr. Tillotson and excuse his and his own silence he says I have retracted the main Principles in Faith Vindicated and Reason against Raillery which in plain terms is an Vnexcusable Falshood To explicate two or three words and shew by Prefaces States of the Question and many Signal passages they were Misunderstood and apply'd to wrong Subjects as I did to the satisfaction of my Judges and even of prejudic't persons signifies plainly not-to
retract them Nor shall he name any one Learned and Orthodox man of our Church who says my Explication is not Genuin and Sincere whereas I have nam'd him many Eminent in both those Qualities who have attested under their hands they are such He ends with bidding the Reader judge what I. S. has gotten by the Confession of Parties As much as in Modesty he could have wisht as appears by the Approbations of his Books and Success in his Suit. What Dr. St. has got by the Confession of his Party may be seen by an Eminent man not writing in hugger-mugger and Disguise but owning his Name viz. that he is accus'd of having Mountebankt and Quackt for full five and twenty years And these wretched shifts he has thought fit to use here to avoid the Point le ts us see he has not left it yet Nor am I to expect he should easily quit such an Inveterate Habit grown into a kind of Nature by a five and twenty years Custom and Practice 31. Now comes the State of the Question as his Second Letter has craftily put it tho' I conceive it was best Stated by shewing the Occasion and sole End of the Conference to which I will hold nor will I be beat off from it by any Excursions either then or since There was a Question then put to Dr. St. in these words Whether you are absolutely Certain that you hold now the same Tenets in Faith and all that our Saviour taught his Apostles I thought I did well in putting him to answer directly that He was He says by my favour he us'd other words And what were those Why instead of the same Tenets in Faith and all that our Saviour taught to his Apostles he answer'd All the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles There 's a Cloud in this carriage of his it being against the Clear way of honest Nature Was the Position as it lay in the terms of the Proposer true and so to be granted Why did he not grant it then Was it False why did he not deny it Was it Ambiguous why did he not the Proposer being present desire him to explain it No neither None of these plain and common Methods would please him What then He would needs change the words of the Question in his Answer And by what Rule Was his Answer the same in Sense with the Question If not his Answer was no Answer to that Question but the saying another thing on his own head If it was the same Sense why did he not speak to it directly in the Proposers words The reason he gives is because he 's afraid of Orall Tradition lest it should vary the Sense Whose Sense The Proposer's His Sense was fixt in determinate words and if it were not known the Doctor might have known it if he had pleas'd He means then his own Sense What must he put what Sense he thinks fit to the Question This is a quaint way of Answering And why should not the Proposer fear as himself did here lest by changing his words as he did enormously he should change his Sense too But this Orall Tradition like a Spright so haunts his Fancy that all along as shall be seen he either starts perpetually into Excursions and counterfeit Mirth or stumbles into downright Nonsense And this I believe verily is the General reason of all his failings But we are now to seek out his particular reason of changing the words here The last words that differ in the Question and Answer can break no squares for Christ and his Apostles agreed well enough and that Heavenly Master of theirs taught them All Faith either by Himself or the Holy Ghost sent in his name The danger then must be in these words the same Tenets in Faith which he changes for his security into the same Doctrin Because the word Doctrin signifies all in the lump as he expresses it to shew which he hop't it might be sufficient to shew the Book of Scripture whereas the Plural word Tenets might come to oblige him to shew how he has Absolute Certainty of each or any Point in particular to which he has a great Antipathy And accordingly when he came to perform this he chang'd again the Absolute Certainty of Faith into Absolute Certainty of Scripture I answer'd They held more to be of Faith than that the Book so call'd is Scripture He first trifles that we mean more than is contain'd in Scripture contrary to our express words where there 's not a Syllable of containing or not-containing all Faith. However if I mean his assent to Points of Faith contain'd in Scripture he promises a full Answer afterwards which we impatiently long to see Only we intreat him because 't is a far off he would not lose Absolute Certainty by the way nor fool our expectations when we come at it by letting the full Answer promist us vanish away into a flat denial he has any such Certainty of those Points at all 32. I argu'd ad hominem that since he confesses Tradition causes Certainty it makes Faith as Certain as Scripture He seems to confess it but denies we have such an Universal Tradition for our Tridentin Faith. As if the Faith come down by Tradition were not the same before and since that Council or that the Tradition we build on did not consist of such a vast Body of Attesters as were able to evince the truth of a plain matter of Fact unless those who had renounc't Tradition did club to it's Certainty But is it not pretty to observe that he pretends not to hold Faith to be Certain by our Tradition because 't is not Universal and yet at the same time disputes against Tradition's being a Certain Deriver of Christ's Faith even tho' it were Universal For his Principles allow no more hand in our Faith to Universal Tradition but only to bring down the Book of Scripture and then make that Book the only Ascertainer of our Faith. He threatens to shew the Tridentin Council had not Universal Tradition for it's Decrees and to give us a taste before-hand of that Treatise he adds Let the matter of Tradition it self as a Rule of Faith be one of those Points Well shot Doctor The Points he speaks of here are exprest to be Points of Faith and the Tradition we defend in our Controversy at present is the Human Authority of the Church which we make to be the Rule to those coming to Faith and so it is Antecedent to Faith and the Object of pure Natural Reason And does he in his Great Learning think This is a Point of Faith Or is it not possible to keep this roving Pen of his to any thing But he designs to prove this mighty Advantage of his Cause and that no Catholick Tradition can be produc't against his Church in any one Point of the Additional Creed of Pius IV. Suppose it could not has he therefore
Mankind but by Immediate Divine Assistance Yet he had the boldness or Forgetfulness to say p. 5. that If this be not Catholick Doctrin then I am Infallibly Certain I. S's Letters are far from being Catholick in their Sense It seems than either some men are Infallible for seriously I take Dr St. to be a Man or he fancies himself to be something above the Herd of Mankind or else sticks not at the Blasphemy to entitle the Blessed Spirit of Peace to have inspir'd him with such a quarrelsome Falshood 45. He discourses against Tradition as 't is Practical but has he said any thing against it as 't is Oral the force of which to clear Christ's Sense delivered down in the Church consists in Catechizing Preaching dilating upon the Points and explicating themselves at large replying to difficulties and accommodating their Discourse to all the Learners Exigences All which is found in the Living Voice of the Church and her Pastours as I shew'd him at large and none of it in the Letter in a Book What answers he to common Sense and to his own Experience too when he instructs others why he puts us off still with this frigid Cuckoo Answer that he is of another Opinion that writing is as plain as speaking and that words written have as much he ought to have said as Clear Sense in them as words spoken Which apply'd to our case is most palpable Nonsense and makes all Explications frivolous and all Catechizers and Commentators upon Scripture ridiculous The force I put in the Practicalness of Tradition is that supervening to the Oral delivery or being consonant to it it confirms it and makes it more Visible But he Combats the Practicalness of it consider'd alone and so impugns his own willfull Mistake But what says he to my discourse He alledg'd that Tradition might come down in Common Equivocal Words and so deliver no determinate Sense I reply'd that 't is inconsistent with the Nature of Mankind to mean nothing by the words they use especially in Tenets they were to be sav'd by therefore the Body of the Church had some Meaning or other of those Words Christ is the Son of God and Christ's Body is really in the Sacrament But this Meaning or Notion could not be a Common or General one in regard no Notion can be common to God a Creature to the Substance of Christs Body to the Substance of Bread much less to that Sacred Substance and some Accidents or Qualities Therefore there could not come down any such Common Notion by means of those Words wherefore there must have descended some particular Notion of each Point determining the signification of the Words to one sense or the other This was the true force of my Discourse I do still pretend it Demonstrable and let him answer it when he can for did he know the Consequences it will draw after it he would think it worth his while He 's at his old Logick again which is to bring an Instance against the Conclusion and is very brisk that it overthrows my Demonstration And what says his Instance It says the Corinthians and Artemonites understood by those words that Christ was only an Adoptive Son that is a Creature which is as much as to say they understood them in a Particular Sense which is all I there pretended And so his Instance is as he says truly Unlucky but 't is to himself not to mee for it makes good my words and instead of overthrowing confirms my Discourse that Men must have understood some Particular Sense by those words and our Learned Dr is so weak as to think that when what he brings for an Answer is so evidently for me it makes against me As for their pleading Tradition for their Sense surely he means a private Tradition from some former Hereticks and not the Publick Tradition of the Christian Church or that their Heretical Tenets were immediately deliver'd by that United Body of Christians for the manifest Falshood of this would have been confuted by Experience and have sham'd the Alledgers Nor could the Church in that case have condemn'd them since they spoke her sense But the good Dr mistook the Pretence of two or three quibbling Hereticks for the Vniversal Tradition of the Church as wicked an Error as it was possibly to stumble upon then triumphs how rarely his Instance has answer'd my Demonstration And thus ends his Reply to my short Discourse which having done he assures the Reader he has fully answer'd my main Argument against his Rule of Faith. Whereas he has not so much as touch't any single Proposition in it trifled or done worse even in the ridiculous odd way he has taken to answer it Which confirms me more then ever 't is past his skill to hurt it and even beyond his Courage to grapple with it 46. His contradicting himself is still urg'd upon him unless he can shew that true or Absolute Certainty does not secure those who have it in any thing from being deceived in that thing Again in his 15th Principle he said there needed no Infallible Society of men either to attest or explain the Scripture I reply'd that if it be Fallible we cannot by it be more than Fallibly Certain and we can have no Absolute Certainty from a Fallible Testimony This seems very plain for how should a man be absolutely or perfectly Certain of a thing by that very Testimony which not being perfectly Certain may perhaps deceive him in that very Thing His first Answer is that he understands no such thing as Infallibility in Mankind but by immediate Divine Assistance He understands Is that an Answer Does he understand how to answer our many Arguments to prove it By his not taking notice of them we are to understand and conclude he does Not. Again he declares that in that Principle of his he meant there needed no Infallibility by Divine Assistance and he utterly denies Natural Infallibility whence 't is manifest he allows no Certainty at all but Fallibility His Faith is in a fine case in the mean time He must shew I say that Fallibility in the Testimony can ground Absolute Certainty of the thing attested and this tho' a man sees that the Testimony and himself who relies on it may be in an Error before he can make either the Letter or the Book of Scripture Absolutely Certain by Tradition or Human Testimony which he maintains here is Fallible Can a man think or say interiourly I am Absolutely or perfectly Certain of a thing peradventure When that very Peradventure hinders his Certainty from being Absolute or Perfect What answers he to this plain Evidence Or how shews he that a seen Fallibility is able to beget Absolute Certainty Why First he says If by Fallible Certainty I mean this and that c. I mean Why I mean nothing by it but that 't is a wicked Contradiction I mean the same by
Genuin Effect of some kind of Evidence and therefore Absolute or Perfect Certainty ought to be the Effect of Perfect Evidence nor is any Evidence a Perfect one unless it Concludes Now he does not like Conclusive Evidence and so he ought to renounce Absolute Certainty 'T is as difficult to guess what he means here by those words in point of Reason True Reason knows no Methods but this to Assent if the Thing be Clear and to Suspend if it be Not and to conclude or argue being the proper Act of Reason straining after Truth what 's not concluded is not Clear and therefore not to be accepted for an Absolute Truth or Assented to as such The summ then to come close to our present Question is that Absolute Certainty of such a Doctrine's having been taught by Christ must either be built on True Evidence of the Grounds for it and then it cannot consist with Deception and so is Infallible Or it is not and then indeed it may sometimes come to Iustify a great Propension Hope or Deeming that 't is so Or if I conceive it to be of small concern an unexamining letting it pass for such but it can never Iustify an Absolute Assent See more of this Subject and a perfect Confutation of this wild Assertion in Errour-Nonplust and Reason against Raillery After many rambling sayings of his own he falls to speak of putting an End to Controversies especially about Certainty and Fatality What we have to do with Fatality I know not but I believe he heartily wishes an end of This Fatall Controversy concerning Certainty for he is in a miserable ross about it being driven now to declare whether he will deny First Principles or renounce his Vnprincipled Doctrin The best way I can invent to end all Controversies is this that since Controvertists are Disputants and are to produce their Arguments which are good for nothing nor can ever End Controversies unless they Conclude those who renounce Conclusive Evidence and instead of it bring Invisible Motives Qualifications may be expos'd and turn'd out of the Lists as being even by their own Confession Insignificant Talkers and Endless Brabblers His wrangle about Light and Darkness Christ and Belial is spoke to in my Second Catholique Letter Let him shew that his Rule Scripture interpreted by Private Judgments does not Patronize Heresy as well as Faith which he will never do and we will be content to acquit him from that horrid Blasphemy of making Light and Darkness very consistent and Christ the Author of our Holy Faith and Belial the Father of Heresy and Lies very good Friends of which wicked Doctrin 'till he does this he stands Indicted 49. I alledg'd that Scripture being the Common Rule to him and all Hereticks the particular or distinguishing Rule must be their own Private Iudgments interpreting Scripture Does he deny this or shew my Discourse faulty by assigning any other that particularizes or distinguishes them No neither What does he then Why he sends me to the old Philosophers to learn Logick And I tell him with many thanks I know none except Aristotle a competent Master for Me. Next he makes Sense to be a Rule of Iudging that is an Intellectual Rule which I deny For the Rule to any thing is the Immediate Light to judge of any thing and multitudes of intervening Knowledges are requisit to inform us when the advertisements of our Senses are right as is evident in the fallaciousness of Sense in a Stick seeming crooked in water the bigness of things seen at distance and innumerable other particulars But I ought to distinguish between the Rule of Iudgment and the Iudgment made according to that Rule And so I do if that be all For the Rule is the Informer my Iudgment the thing inform'd But yet if my Judgment follow the Information and still go wrong my Informer was no good Informer The Evidence of this and the propension of uncorrupted Nature to believe Pastours Fathers and Teachers and those who were wiser than themselves in things they were Ignorant of did I told him make the Generality of those out of the Church follow the Way of Tradition of their own Church and not regulate themselves in the choice of their Tenets by their private Judgment of Discretion working upon Scripture's Letter as is evident in whole Nations as Denmark meeting in one particular Belief and whole Sects agreeing in the very Judgment of their respective Leaders whence the Sense they make of Scripture as themselves understand it is not their Rule First he quotes a Decree of the Church of England that nothing is to be requir'd of any man to be believ'd as Faith but what 's read in Scripture or may be prov'd by it But this makes against himself unless he thinks the Generality that is the Layity of that Church esteem themselves more able to judge of the Sense of what 's read in Scripture or to prove all the highest Points of Faith by it than their Pastours and Church-Governours are for otherwise Nature will and ought to incline them to believe their Judgment rather than their own in that affair which is to follow the Way of Tradition Indeed I must confess that by the Doctor 's Principles every one of his Sober Enquirers ought to preferr his own Judgment of Discretion above the Church'es but what He says is one thing what the Dictates of honest Nature teaches Mankind is another 'T is confest the Layity of each Congregation judges the Sentiments of their Leaders to be agreeable to Scripture but I affirm withall that not one in ten thousand when he comes at age lays aside Prejudice and setts himself to consider anew by his scanning the Letter whether his Leaders told him right or presumes of the competency of his own knowledge to judge or determin whether They understood Scripture in the right Sense or no. He talks to us indeed of Helps and how they call in the old Interpreters of the Church and desire them to use their own Reason c. But every man sees that Few or None stand Indifferent 'till they have us'd all these Helps but undoubtingly accept that very Faith in which they were educated And so they continue 'till the discoursing or reading those of a contrary Opinion unsettles them and put them into Doubts Besides if those Helps he talks of are not secure from erring themselves as to what they help others in they may help them to Misunderstand the Sense of Scripture in the Highest Points of Faith and so help them to be Hereticks And yet these are all the best Helps his Principles can Help them to For he assures us and maintains stoutly by affirming them all to be Fallible in what they are to help us that all his Helps may be deceiv'd in that very thing in which they are to help others They may indeed according to him give a strong guess at what is Christ's Doctrin
but that 's all for he allows none to be Absolutely Certain of the Sense of Scripture but only of the Letter He proceeds after a strange rate and talks of Opinions doubtfull and Obscure places but avoids still to come up to those High Points of Faith particularly those of a Trinity and Christ's Godhead in which he knows I instanc't Then he blames my Logick for not distinguishing between the Rule of Faith and the Help to understand it And my Logick remembers its respects to his no Logick and sends him back word that since an Intellectual Rule to such a thing is an Immediate Light or Means to know that thing as his Friend Dr. T. has told him Rule of Faith p. 40. and is purposely fram'd to give us that Knowledge nay Essentially Ordain'd to that End 't is a Contradiction to say it needs another thing to lend it Clearness in order to give us Christ's Sense for then this other thing would be clearer than It as to that particular Effect and so This not the Other would be the true Rule of Faith. Yet he will needs prove this Contradiction True and that it may be a Rule and yet not have Power to regulate without the help of another And by what Argument will he prove it Oh he can prove things by better means than Arguments He has an Instance still at hand either when he is prest too close with anothers Arguments or wants one of his own These Instances are good Serviceable drudges and are ever ready to do all his Jobbs and yet I doubt his Instance brought to prove a Contradiction must it self be of the same Chimericall Family Let 's see 't is this that a Nurse teaches Children to Spell and read the New Testament so by degrees to understand Christ's Doctrin and yet the Faith of those persons is not resolv'd into this Help of the Nurse's Teaching but into the New Testament it self as the Ground of their Faith. I must confess I extreamly admire at this Drs Confidence and no less at his Imprudence that he does not rather not write at all then perpetually put such shams as these upon his Reader Are we speaking of all remote helps whatsoever or are we speaking only of a Help for the Rule to do its Proper Effect which is to give us Christ's Sense or our Faith God and Nature has helpt us with a Rational Being Eyes and Brains Conversation or Masters have helpt us with skill in the Language in which the Letter of Scripture is deliver'd and Tradition has helpt us with the Right Books and Copy of Scripture Do any of these concern our present enquiry Are not these all presuppos'd to his Rule The only Question is what help is necessary to give his Rule the rest being all presuppos'd the Power to regulate us in knowing the Sense of that Book or our Faith as to those Spiritual and most Important Articles To do this being the Proper Effect of his Rule and a Thing not being what it should be or is pretended to be unless it have a power in its self to do its Proper Effect since it 's Essence was ordain'd for it hence I affirm it must need no help to do this but must have it of it self and therefore if Scripture's Letters have not of it self Clearness enough to give those who are coming to Faith the requisite Certainty or knowledge of what 's its true Sense in those Dogmaticall Points 't is no Rule of Faith. This is the only Point and therefore must only be omitted what 's this to a Nurse's Teaching to read Or what 's her Teaching to the Immediate and Certain Light to know Christs Sense in those Main Articles His Friend Dr. T. goes by chance a little more consonantly and confesses the substance of this discourse of mine by allowing that the Letter of Scripture must be Sufficiently Plain even in those High Points I mention Rule of Faith p. 86.87 But it seems that upon second thoughts fearing to be pinch't hard upon that point they have since that time chang'd their measures 50. Put case then one of Dr. St's Flock should say to him Doctor this very Rule you bid me follow to my best Iudgment tells me you have err'd in holding the true Godhead of Christ nay suppose he should say the same to the whole Church of England what could He or that Church either say to such a man according to his Principles They can only propose and direct and that 's the utmost they ought to do and if he likes not their Proposal Direction they ought to let him alone nay commend him for sticking so close to his Rule as he understands it without fearing the face of Man. For 't is the greatest Injustice and Tyranny in the world to punish a man Temporally or which is worse by Ecclesiastical Censures for following sincerely this Rule of Faith. Besides who can tell but this man is better stock't with Dr. St's Morall Qualifications and Inward Light than his Judges and Pastours are And then to vex such a Saint is to fight against God And therefore the Scabb'd Sheep must be let alone to run astray or infect the Flock let the Church her Government go where they will. Now who sees not that these Principles must shatter the Church in pieces fill her with a multitude of Bedlam Sects and utterly overthrow Church-Government But what would I. S. do with such a man Why first I would endeavour to dispossess him of that Luciferian Spirit of Pride which such wicked Principles have tainted him with and win him to a rational Humility by representing how all Mankind in their several affairs seek out one more skill'd than themselves and use their best reason in pitching upon him and then trusting him in things themselves are Ignorant in I would shew him how the Order of the World the Commands of God and his known Duty do all oblige him to believe the Church in such matters rather than his own Private Interpretations I would endeavour to shew him that the Preservation of these necessary Orders engages God's Providence to assist his Church and keep her from Erring in Faith rather then private Men. I would show him that since the only thing he doubts of is to know what Christ taught that God has left some Way to make us sure of his true Doctrin he must first find out such a Way that if men follow'd it would secure them from Errour in that particular Nor would it be hard to demonstrate to him that Tradition is such a way and that Scripture's Letter interpretable by private Judgment is not that way I would shew him how impossible 't is the Body of the Church should have unanimously deserted that Way And amongst other things I would inform him how weakly Dr St. had defended his Own Rule and impugn'd ours and lastly how he and others who follow'd another way have been forc't to grant
Equivocated in the Tenet of the Reall Presence and according to the Drs late Distinction making Not-Regulating to be one sort of Regulating would needs have the word Reall to mean Not-Reall whence it was judg'd expedient to put it past quibble by such a rigorously-express Definition And I much fear this vexes the Drs Sacramentarian Spirit far more then Transubstantiation it self I omit that he has forgot here the Common distinction of what Points are necessary Necessitate Medij and what Necessitate Praecepti I suppose because this Later did not sute with his Levelling Principles which set the Church and his Rabble on even Ground as to Matters of Faith. 64. I alledg'd that those Articles of the Trinity and Christ's Godhead were Fundamentall Points and therefore if his Rule could not Absolutely Ascertain People of all sorts coming to Faith of those Articles it could assure them of None and so is no Rule of Faith. He runs quite away from the Points and thinks he has done enough to say It is Absolutely Certain that God has reveal'd the Fundamentalls of our Faith. But the Question sticks still Are you Absolutely Certain by your Rule that the Trinity and Christ's Godhead are Christ's Doctrin or signify'd with Absolute Certainty by Scripture's Letter To this he says nothing but shifts it off most Shamelessly to another thing Let him set himself to do this which is his Task and we will undertake to examin the Nature of his Medium and show it Inconclusive I alledg'd that there is Experience by the Socinians taking the same way that his Medium or way to be Certain of this is not Certain He again turns off Experience that the way he takes is not Certain to Experience of his Inward Certainty or his Inward Persuasion And asks briskly whether he or I know best A pleasant Gentleman Why does he not confute all my Book by that Method Does he think 't is enough to show he is Absolutely Certain of the Sense of Scripture as to those Points with barely saying he knows he is thus Certain of it better than I What wretched Shifts are these In pursuance of this new Method of Proving and Confuting He asks again How comes Mr. S. to know we are not Certain when we say we are Because when you are most highly Concern'd and stood Engag'd by promise to show this Absolute Certainty and are Prest to it Vehemently and upon the brink of losing your Credit for not doing it you still decline the showing you have any such Certainty for the Sense of Scripture as to those Points Still he asks Are not we Certain because some that is the Socinians are not Certain No Sir not barely for that reason but because the Socinians proceeding upon the Same Rule are so far from being Certain of the Sense of Scripture as to those Points that they esteem themselves Certain by the same Scripture of Hereticall Tenets Point-blank Opposit to those Points Common Reason assures us no End can be compass'd without a Means and therefore you can never show us You are Certain till you show us you follow a better Way rely on a firmer Ground and Guide your selves by a Clearer Light to make you Certain of Scriptures Sense in those passages than They do which you can never show and as appears by your wriggling from that Point by the most untoward Shifts imaginable dare not Attempt But some are uncertain of Orall Tradition nay Censure it I do not know one man but holds and reverences it It lies upon his Credit to name those who Censure it For Lominus is a Chimaerical name and signifies no body that he knows But suppose Some did yet it being an object of Naturall Reason they and I in that case could not proceed on the Same Grounds or Reasons as his Protestants and the Socinians do upon the Same Rule of Faith. 65. I alledg'd that by his Principles he could be no more Certain of his Rule then he is of the Truth of the Letter of Scripture in regard the Truth of the Sense of Scripture depends on the Trueness of the Letter Does he deny this Or does he show that without the Care of the Church preserving the Letter Right all along he can have any Such Certainty of the Letter He not so much as Attempts either I alledg'd farther that he cannot be thus Certain of the Right Letter without having the same Certainty of the Right Translation or the True Copy nor that any Copy is True unless it be taken from the First Originall Does he deny this Or does he show that all these may not fail if the Churches's Care be set aside No neither What Shift has he then Why he says 1. That some of us are Concern'd to Answer this as well as He. Not at all for those who say that Part of Faith is Contain'd in Scripture do not for all that say that their Faith is built on Scripture's Letter interpreted by any but the Church nor do they say but the Church without Scripture could have ascertain'd them of their Faith. 2. He says This strikes at the Authentickness of the Vulgar Translation Not at all For we have other Grounds to go upon which they have Not. 3. He skips after bringing some words of mine for what they were never intended from the Translation to the Canon of Scripture which are a Mile wide from one another that so he may however he speeds in all the rest at least talk plausibly of the Concurrent Testimony for the Canon In order to which he stands up a Patron for those Christian Churches of his who thus concurr'd and will not condemn them as not truly Christian till their Cause be better heard and examin'd Yet 't is Evident from his Second Letter to Mr. G. p. 25. that some of those Churches were Arians Nestorians and Eutychians condemn'd for Hereticks by most Antient General Councils which he blames it seems for declaring so rashly against them and reprieves his Friends from their Censures till a fairer Hearing It had been happy for them had Dr. St. presided in those Councils for he would doubtless have dealt with them very kindly and have clapt them head and tail together with good Catholicks into one Latitudinarian Bill of Comprehension 5. I alledg'd that the same Sense in the heart of the Church enabled and oblig'd Her to correct the Copy when faulty in Texts containing Points of Faith which instead of shewing it Incompetent or Disagreeable to the Nature of things he confutes most Learnedly by pretending that Atheists and Unbelievers would be scandaliz'd at it Whereas they would be much more scandaliz'd to see no Certain Means assign'd to preserve the Letter right from the beginning the very first Originals being lost and all left the Churches Care set apart to so many contingences of Translating and Transcribing 6. We must prove it first to be impossible for the Sense of the Church to vary in any two
way how Errour might come in is too great a Veneration to some particular Teachers which made their Disciples despise Tradition in comparison of their Notions And were those men Followers of Tradition who despis'd it His 6th is By Compliance with some Gentil Superstitions c. But did Tradition or the Church's Testimony deliver down to them these Heathenish Superstitions for Christs Doctrin Or rather would it not have preserv'd men from them had nothing else been attended to but that Rule His 7th and last is by Implicit Faith that is that when a man had found a Faithfull Guide to direct him he should submit himself to be Guided by him in things in which he could not guide himself A very dangerous case indeed But the Antidote to this malicious suggestion is that the same Church that they believ'd condemn'd all New Revelations and adher'd only to what was deliver'd He could have added an Eighth way how Errours in Faith come in had he pleas'd and That too such a one as had done a thousand times greater mischief than all the rest put together viz. Private Interpretations of Scripture which every man knows has been the source of all the Heresies since Christ's time But this being the sole Ground of his Faith it was not his Interest to let his Readers know it had been the Ground of all Heresy 76. But what 's all this to the Point Or how is the Demonstration lost if many men err'd upon divers other accounts so none err'd while they follow'd Tradition Unless he proves this he establishes our Demonstrations by his shewing how multitudes err'd who were led by other Motives and by his not being able to produce so much as one Instance of any that err'd by adhering to It. What Noise and Triumph should we have had could he have alledg'd so many Hereticks sprung up by grounding their opinions on mistaken Tradition as 't is known have arisen by grounding their wicked Tenets on misunderstood Scripture But alas tho' that were exceedingly to his purpose not one such Instance could he bring He talks a little faintly of the Arians Pelagians Nestorians c. not disowning Tradition But does he hope to perswade any man of Sense those Upstarts durst ever go about to put out the eyes of the World by pretending their Heresies were deliver'd down as Christs Doctrin by the Publick Testimony of the Church in their days or out-face the present Church that she her self had taught them what she knew themselves had newly invented Or would she have condemn'd them had they spoke her thoughts or follow'd her Doctrin With what Sense can any of this be imagin'd The Tradition then which they went upon was Citations of some former Authors which they misunderstood the very Method Dr St. and his fellow-Quoters take now a-days or else the Judgment of a few Foregoers of whom some might speak ambiguously others perhaps hanker'd after their Heresy 'T is very hard to guess what Dr St. would be at in alledging so many ways how Errour might be introduc't That it might come in and by Various ways no man doubts That it came in meerly by following Tradition or the Churches Testimony he says not That particular Multitudes might be seduc't by deserting Tradition is equally granted and needs no Proof And that it came in tho' Men Adher'd to Tradition which was the true Point he goes not about to prove nor seems so much as to think of Besides most of the Ways he assigns if not all are so many Desertions of Tradition which highly conduces to Strengthen our Argument while he impugns it Yet surely that could not be his Intention neither I cannot imagin then what all these seven Formall Heads are brought for but to make a Show of none knows what Sometimes I incline to think he is combating the Fourth Proposition proving the Body of Traditionary Christians could not innovate in Faith but either through forgetfulness or Malice And yet I cannot fix upon this neither both because he names not these two defects before he shows us his other ways of Erring as also because we are not come as yet to the Fourth Proposition where all the Stress lay but have spent all our time in confuting the First and Second which were Self-Evident But if that be his meaning as he intimates p. 112. to escape replying to the Fourth Proposition then let him know that whatever his unsound Principles say whoever deserts the Testimony of God's Church whether by the Authority or rather No-Authority of False Teachers or by Enthusiasm the root of which is Spirituall Pride or by following Secret Traditions against the Publick Authority of the Church or by adhering to a Sense of Scripture contrary to what Tradition allows or by too great a Veneration to some particular Teachers or by Compliance with Heathenish Superstitions or by whatever other Motive is Guilty before God of a Heinous Sin and it must spring from some degree of Malicious or Bad disposition in his heart For he cannot but See that himself or his Leader breaks the Order of the World by disobeying rising against and preferring himself before those whom God had set over him to feed direct instruct and Govern him Of which Order and of the Goods coming by it and the Mischiefs which attend the Violating it none of Common Sense whom some by-affection has not blinded can possibly be Ignorant 77. He concludes with these words If then Errours might come into the Church all these Ways What a vain thing it is to pretend that Orall Tradition will keep from any possibility of Errour Ah Dr. Dr Where 's your Love of Moral Honesty Where 's your Sincerity Where your Conscience Did ever any man pretend that Tradition will keep men from any Possibility of Errour whether they follow it or no Were not our most express words put down by your self p. 108. l. 27.28 If they follow this Rule they can never Err in Faith. And must those most important words be still Omitted and no notice taken of them but only in an absurd Distinction making Adhering to Tradition or Following it to be Not-Following it Is this Solid Answering or plain Prevaricating Again what Nonsense does he make us speak by omitting these words Is it not a Madness to say a Rule will direct them Right that do not Follow it That a Means will bring a man to his End who does not use it That a Way will keep a man from Straying in his Journey who does not walk in it Yet all these Contradictions we must be Guilty of by his leaving out the words If follow'd 'T is pretty too upon review of his words to reflect on his Craft 'T is vain to pretend that Orall Tradition will keep whom was it pretended to keep from any Possibility of Errour He should have added the followers of it but because he had Slipt this all along he leaves the Sense Imperfect and the word keep
must want the Accusative Case after it due to its Transitive Sense by the Laws of Grammar meerly to avoid his putting the Right one because it would have been unsutable to all his foregoing Discourses which never toucht it But since he speaks still what Causes of Errour he has shown tho' I have already manifested that all those Causes were accompany'd with Malice in the First Deserters of Tradition yet to enforce our Demonstration the more I discourse thus If Tradition could be deserted or Innovation in Faith made by the Generality of Christians for none ever said or doubted but Many Particulars might do so it must either proceed from some Defect in their Vnderstandings or in their Wills. A defect in the Will is call'd Badness or Malice whence if they willfully Innovated it must spring from some degree of Malice If in their Understanding then it must either be in that Power as Apprehending or Knowing Christ's Doctrin or as Retaining it It could not be in the Former for none doubts but the body of the Church particularly the Teachers who were to instruct the Rest did very well Comprehend Christ's Doctrin in the Beginning and the many Clear ways Tradition comprizes to deliver it down renders Faith Intelligible still to each succeeding Age. Wherefore since the Defect cannot be in their Understanding or their having Christ's Doctrin in their Hearts it must be if any where in that knowing Power as 't is Retentive that is in their Memory But it was absolutely impossible the Generality of the Church should be so weak as to forget in any little determinate part of Time by which Immediate steps Tradition proceeds what was Taught and Practis'd a little before or Considering the Motives to keep them firm to it so Wicked as to conspire to Alter it purposely Therefore whatever Contingency there must be in some Particulars it could not be that the Generality of the Church should have alter'd it or consequently Err'd in Faith. Wherefore this Conclusion stands yet Firm the Premisses remaining yet Untoucht Since he neither shows nor can show more Faculties in Mankind engag'd in the Perpetuating the Former Faith than these Two. Add that he does not even Attempt to show that the Causes he produces can have the Power to prevail or carry it against the force of Tradition and unless he does this all he alledges signifies nothing But his Especiall Reason why he gives no other Answer he should have said none at all to our Fourth Proposition is because he intends to shew in a particular Discourse how the Errours and Corruptions he Charges on the Church of Rome did come into it That is we cannot have an Answer to Two lines but by perusing a Large Book I would desire him to resume the Force of all his little Testimonies and Conjecturall Descants upon them with which that book abounds and to be sure they Conclude the Point which he shall never do And unless he does this he only shows he has taken a great deal of pains to no kind of purpose since he leaves a presum'd Demonstration in its full force without bringing so much as a pretended Conclusive Proof against it Indeed it is a great shame for him to pretend it for 't is to profess publickly to the world that he can produce Better Arguments against the Papists then he can for his own Faith and that he cannot Answer the Argument or say any thing to the Premisses yet he will revenge himself upon the naughty Conclusion when he catches it alone and unback't with any Proof for it 78. Next he will prove that our way of resolving Faith into Christ's and his Apostles Teaching by the Infallibility of the Church's Human Authority or Tradition is Pelagianism But never was such a Malicious and Silly Charge so impotently defended We were told says he that Divine Faith must have Infallible Grounds and when we come to examin them we find nothing but what is Naturall Here again our whole Controversy is lost and a new State of the Question is obtruded Faith as 't is formally Divine has for its Grounds the Divine Authority But are we in our Controversy Examining it as 't is Formally Divine Do either of us alledge Miracles or any Arguments that Proves it to be such Is it not Confest and Suppos'd by both Parties that the Faith Taught at first was Divine and are we to Examin what 's Confest and Granted Or that Supposition being agreed to have we any more to do but to prove what was the Doctrin taught at first by Assigning a Certain Method of Conveying it down to us He proceeds And now to avoid the Charge of Pelagianism this Divine Faith is declar'd to be meer Human Faith. Alas for him Does not Divine Faith stand yet on it's own bottom the Divine Authority because Human Authority gives those who yet know it not Assurance of its Derivation to us The Immediate effect then of our Tradition is Human Faith the Remote effect is to give us knowledge of a Doctrin of Faith which is Divine not prov'd to be such by Tradition but acknowledg'd to be so by our Mutuall Concession But how shamelesly insincere the Dr is to object that I Chang'd this purposely to avoid the Charge of Pelagianism whenas he knows I had told himself the same in Errour Nonplust some years before any Contest arose about my Writings Does he not cite my words here that this Human Faith had by Tradition leads us to what 's Divine Human Faith is the Way or Means to know Divine Faith And cannot we obtain the favour of him to intermit a while his constant Nonsence and allow the Means to be distinguisht from the End He goes on And so Human Faith must have Infallible Grounds but Divine Faith must shift for it Self Can any thing be more Trifling What Shifts is Faith put to for Grounds taken as 't is formally Divine in a Controversy which supposes it such in which case no Proof nor Grounds for it need be produc't Do those that holds the Infallibility of the Churches Humane Authority deriving it down to us deny but the Verity of the Mysteries thus deriv'd as in themselves depend on Divine Revelation as on their Formall Motives Do not these two consist well together May not Faith depend on the Divine Authority in it self and as it was made known at first and yet not be known to us who live now but by Humane Authority Can he be Certain of Christian Faith by his own Grounds but by the Book of Scripture and yet does not himself say that the Certainty he has of that Book depends on Tradition or Humane Authority and consequently that Humane Faith is the way to know Divine Faith What Quacking then and Mountebanking is this to make me a Pelagian for doing the same himself does and publickly avows omitting in the mean time my Answers which at large clear'd before-hand all that he has here so
into Certainty of the Grounds on which we believe Scripture to contain the word of God. Why not a word of Reply to my Discourses there and in many other places shewing that Scripture's Containing Faith is nothing at all to our purpose but the Getting out from Scripture it 's true Meaning or Sense this only being our Faith and that his Faith is still Vncertain unless there be Certainty that such and such Articles Are Contain'd there Which Point tho' it be of the Highest Consequence yet he never sets himself to Solve our Arguments against it in his whole pretended Answer but he runs on still in the same Errour as if nothing had been alledg'd to shew his Discourses insignificant and frivolous Why no Answer to my Discourse proving that a Rule or Ground is none if it carry not thorough to the particular Points especially to those which are most Fundamentall unless granting it in effect p. 36. and allowing no Absolute Certainty to any particular Point of Faith may be called an Answer Why no Excuse for his Skewing Comment upon his own Answer which spoke of Absolute Certainty of all Christ's Doctrin which consists of such and such particular Tenets to the Writings of the Apostles whereas there was not a word of Writing in Mr. G's Question or in his own Answer either Nor any notice taken of my Argument manifesting that a Resolution of Faith speaks Connexion of the Motives that are to prove it Christ's Doctrin to the Points of Faith laid home to him in a Close Discourse demonstrating the Necessity it should be such Why no Account of his distinguishing between Christ's Doctrin and that of the Apostles that so he might mis-represent Tradition and alter the Question from a Publick to a Private Delivery Why no Reason given of his not Resolving his Faith into the Apostles Preaching but only into their Writing I mean no Answer to my Reasons why he ought to have resolv'd it into the former at least Equally Why no Answer to my Reasons shewing from his ill-laid Principles that Perfect Contradictories Points of Faith and wicked Heresies opposit to them are both Equally Certain Why no Excuse for his Shuffling from the New Testament's Containing all the Divine Revelations to the Church'es making men fix by degrees upon the Certain Canon of it which is there shewn and indeed appears of it self to be a quite disparate business Why not the least Excuse for his most abominable four-fold Prevarication in answering to one single Question expos'd there at large and why no Defence or particular Explication of his beloved Sufficient Certainty nor any Application of it to the Nature Ends and Uses of a firm Faith that any Point is Christ's true Doctrin shewing that his feeble Motives are sufficient for those particular purposes Why to make his odd Similitude of Scripture's being a Purse apposit does he not shew us some Certain Way how the Gold and Silver Points of Faith as he calls them may be got out of it without danger of extracting thence the impure Dross of Errour and Heresy instead of True Faith Again to make it square why does he not rather make the Heads and Hearts of the First Faithfull the Purses since as was shewn him Faith is more properly Contain'd there than in a Book Or if he will needs make use of an Improper Container of Faith too why does not he put two Purses viz. the Souls of the Faithfull and the Scripture And why not a word of Reply to my Plain Reasons why he ought to have done both these Why no Answer to my Reasons proving that All the Points of Faith are Necessary for the Salvation of Mankind and for the Church otherwise than by rambling to Transubstantiation p. 84. and that he sees no Necessity of it Which makes his often-alledg'd Distinction of Necessary Unnecessary Points brought to avoid the Question perfectly frivolous and why runs he still on with the same Distinction in this pretended Answer without taking off the Exceptions against it by only crying Alas for him when I askt him If Christ taught any unnecessary Articles and by saying they are not equally Necessary p. 33. Why nothing to justify that his Assent of Faith may not be False and so no Faith Why no Reply to my Reasons that notwithstanding his pretended Grounds He has no Absolute Certainty that even the Letter of Scripture is Right whereas if it be not he can have no Certainty but all is Wrong that is grounded upon it since in that case he may embrace a Grand Heresy for True Faith Why no Answer to my plainest Argument shewing how Christ's Doctrin continu'd all along in the Breast of the Church is the best Means to correct the Letter in Texts that contain Faith Why no Reply to my many Reasons shewing that the Ancient Church allow'd our way of Tradition and disallow'd his of Scripture privately Interpreted Why does he not confute my Discourses manifesting that he can have no Absolute Certainty by his Principles of the Number of Books or of each Chapter Verse and Material Word in each Verse that concerns any Point of Faith without doing which he cannot pretend to have Certainty of the Letter nor consequently of any one of those Points Why no Reply to that Important Objection that if Scripture were the Rule of Faith the Primitive Church had for some time but half or three-quarters of their Faith or less and so by his Principles were but three-quarters or half Christians according as the several pieces came by degrees to be spread accepted or universally acknowledg'd nay perhaps no Faith at all as was there shewn and why did he instead of replying turn it off to the single Epistle to the Hebrews and to an Insignificant If Why when it was objected that divers of his Christian Churches doubted of divers Books of Scripture and some late Brethren of his of some others does he again turn it off as to the former to the Canon of Scripture made afterwards and to the later says nothing Why not a word to my Clearest Proof that our Tradition or Testimony for Doctrin is incomparably more large in its source which gives it its chief force than his is for Scripture's Letter Why does he not clear himself of his preferring his Sober Enquirer before the Church the unreasonableness of which was urg'd home against him nor justify his weak discourses in some sleigter passages laid open p. 64.65 Why not a syllable of Answer to that most highly-concerning Discourse and which if it stands in its full force overthrows all the whole Fabrick of his Doctrin viz. that a Rule or Ground are Relative Words and therefore Scriptures Letter cannot be an Absolute Certain Rule or Ground unless its Ascertaining virtue affects the Articles known by it This Point has been prest upon him so vigorously