G. D. My Noblest Lord and most honoured Friend MY unsteady abode in the town and frequent suddain excursions out of it of late have cast me so far behinde-hand with your Lordship not onely for what civility requireth of me but for what duty bindeth me unto as I was grown to a belief that I could make no other amends for my long silence but by coming on purpose to Sherburn to you to excuse it And therefore out of an ill bashfulness I forbore acknowledging my fault by Letter referring that till I was in state to repair it by mine own personal attendance But that being not likely to fall out so soon I being to go to morrow to my Mothers and thence to my own house for some weekes and I having lately received a picture from my Lord Russel with command to send it as soon as I could to your Lordship I durst not make that a prisoner till I got liberty my selfe to wait upon you By which means I am engaged without being able to defer it any longer to give you humble thanks for your letter of the second of November and to crave your pardon that I came thus late to doe it So sudden and distracted an houre as I have now to write in would deterre me from offering at any return to so obliging and judicious a Letter till I had a greater freedom both of time and thoughts But I can never be taken unprovided for the first part my sincere affection to your Lordship and sence of your favours ever outweighing any other humane object that may busie my mind for the second of answering your judicious objections I shall confide more for the solution of them in your owne calme and impartiall reflections upon them then in ought I shall be able to reply Therefore had I never so much time I would for this intent imploy it onely in reducing the matters into your remembrance and intreating you to commit the appearances on both sides fairly one against another into the balances and let your owne Reason hold the Scale which I must acknowledge with excesse of joy to be the strongest and most sincere that I know in any man I should begin the performance of this task with complaining to your Lordship in the Fathers behalfe and representing their grievances to your Lordship that you are so rigorous to them as to exclude them from being witnesses in matters of Religion Their humility as well of understanding as of manners will not let them be troubled when they are recused as Judges They never pronounce any thing out of their own breasts unto which they will confine other mens assents But when they tell you plainly what they were taught and what they sinde believed and practised generally throughout the whole Church have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected If you will examine their veracity by al those circumstances that are usually considered in taking mens depositions you will find them strong on their side They were right honest men not onely believed but known to be such by all the world They are acknowledged on all hands to be so judicious as would more blemish ones owne judgement then theirs but to cal it in question What they wrote of are matters belonging to their own Art and Trade in which surely they would have great care and attention not to mistake since their own and their posterities eternall salvation depended on it Since then there is will and ability to inform us of truth why should we suspect them What can appeare stronger to us in opposition of what they deliver as witnesses to make us doubt their evidence and consequently to brand them with the imputation of falshood and ignorance flattering our selves that new and clearer lights shine to us and that we know more then they Their private opinions for the establishing of which your Lordship saith you discover too prone a Bias in most of their evidence doe not interest our beliefs in such poynts we are as free as they Nor can I believe so ill of any of them as to make those to passe for currant they would stamp upon them the seale of being taught from hand to hand and of tradition from Christ and his Apostles and of the generall and uncontrouled beliefe and practise of the Church or if they did certainly their numerous adversaries would not have let such foul play scape their note It is true they were ever as your Lordship observes earnest and severe against them who were such as if they had been mild against their Heresies they would never have gained the name of Fathers and Pillars of the Church nor have been reverenced as Saints by succeeding Ages The faction and sectary-passion that your Lordship remarketh even neer the springs of verity belongeth onely to their adversaries their warmth is just and due zeale And for those three Fathers of whom your Lordship sayes that we as well as you may allow them an Expurgator I professe my slender reading never met to my best remembrance with any doctrine of faith in them that I doe not entirely assent unto In the next place my Lord I must cleare what I mean by the infallible Authority from whence the Fathers derived what they were taught which I distinguished against what of themselves they teach Of this later sort are the reflections that they make upon the Scriptures when in their Comments or Sermons they deliver to us what occurred to them in the interpretation of the Texts of it And when they are but barely such I conceive they are to have no more weight with those that have ability to examine them then the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them But the other points of Doctrine I take to have been taught by Christ to his Apostles and by them preached through the world and then again delivered to the ensuing age by them that had these points inculcated into their hearts by the Apostles and in this manner with care and every where handed over from age to age which upon particular occasions the Fathers used to sum up and produce against Innovators that would make breaches upon the ancient and generally received Faith of the Church Doctrines thus delivered I conceive to be derived from infallible Authority as well as the Scriptures and withall that it is so safely conveyed to us as we are as deeply obliged to beleeve it as what the Scriptures teach us and in governing the tenor of our Faith to give them much the precedency Because by such Tradition we are fully plainly and practically taught how to understand it and the business and errand of it is to deliver it so unto us whereas the causes of writing the particular Books of Scripture were for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of Faith And those Articles of it that they do deliver us are not so plainly expressed that every body can understand them So that if
some Texts of Scripture to fall into that error which so becommeth an error in Philosophy and in no wise concerning faith And that other of the Millenaries which is the last your Lordship urgeth appeareth plainly to have growne among some of the Fathers with whom the authority of Papias weighed much by literally interpreting a Text of the Apocalyps but never any of them urged the generally received opinion of the Church nor publick Tradition from Christ and the Apostles And besides the Church has never yet to this day condemned as an heresie that part of the Millenaries beliefe which some of the Fathers held which is of the Saints reigning with Christ a thousand yeares upon earth after their resurrection and enjoying onely spirituall delights but only other foule enormities which went under the name of the Millenaries heresies Now by what I have said to those instances in particular and bringing that spirit that I said before was required to the reading of the Fathers I conceive it will be no hard matter to determine which of them as your Lordship sayes we are to swallow as delivered to them and which to chaw and consider as onely delivered by them One thing more I shall adde in generall which is That a large and great soule like yours expresseth it selfe more to its advantage in weighing in the powerfull scale of reason that it hath the main bulk of what it is to judge of rather than to dwell with too scrupulous a diligence upon little quillets and niceties which admit arguments on both sides and in the mean time let slide away unnoted that great deale which is uncontroulable and plaine as though one were but to declame in Schoole to exercise ones wit and therefore he maketh choyce of some ingenious Paradox against a known and received truth and to impugne it can bring but against the skirts of it arguments or rather cavils of wit without being able to grapple with the main body of it and seeks rather to puzzle and embroyle his adversary then weightily to establish the solid truth This is a subject that is deeply to be considered for use the importantest that we can have not argued upon for ostentation and that a wise man ought to seek a settlement in and not aim at the applause of being sharp-sighted by reducing all things to uncertainty Therefore good my Lord apply that great understanding you are so excellently endowed withall to build as well as to pull down and read not the Fathers with a fore-laid designe to enerve their authority but with an indifferency to yeeld your assent to what upon the whole matter you shall judge reasonable for you so to doe And since I know that your judgement must in all things that are controverted before it of this nature tend to a settlement one way or other for only sciolous wits float onely in uncertainty as delighting to make objections and raise a dust which afterward their weak eyes cannot looke through let me recommend to you not onely to examine whether the opinion you meet with in your reading repugnant to what you were formerly imbued with be concludingly demonstrated or no but likewise examine as strictly the reason you have for your own and where the scale weighes heaviest give your assent For since of contradictory propositions one must necessarily be true and the other false a man proceedeth upon safe grounds if he take for a firm truth what is opposite to an assertion that betrayes its own weaknesse whereas if you look onely upon the true you may happily at the instant not finde a full resolution to every objection that may be raised against it which proceedeth not from the weaknesse of the thing but from ours that cannot at the first sight look into the bottome of it You see my Lord how confident I am with you to tell you what upon the present in such shortness and distraction of time occurreth to me upon this subject which your goodnesse hath invited me unto and I begge the continuance of it first in pardoning me and next in imparting to me your reflections upon them which I professe sincerely I value beyond any mans and most of all in loving me as you have ever done which is the happiest condition that can give a blessing unto London Decem. 29. 1638. My Lord your Lordships most humble and most faithfull servant K. D. My deare Lord WHen I wrot my Letter I intended to review and copy it but it held me much longer time then I designed to it It should not have been with my dull head and hand an after-suppers work and after comming home from vain entertainment with some impertinent she-wits that most tyrannically had seized upon me They had tun'd my brains to so crosse a Key as afterward all serious Images came so lamely into my fancy as I may be ashamed to send you this rough draught of them and so slowly halting as I was in good faith three houres about those blotted and interlined sheets For it was an houre past midnight afore I had done which was not one to enter upon so tedious a task as to lick this abortive and mishapen Embrion into form And now this morning my company calls upon me to be gone so that I am in a strait to appeare before your Lordship either extreamly negligent if I deferre till my return to towne the answering of your Letter and the sending my Lord Russels Picture or extreamly indiscreet if I send you so rude and indigested reflections upon your so judicious and strong discourse wherein the instances though your Lordship be pleased to call them slight ones and such as flow easiest into a Letter from a bad memorie yet you must give me leave to believe them the strongest and sharpest that can be urged upon this subject and the flower and Quintessence of what Mr. Chillingworth and the best wits have produced against the tradition of the Church and the authority of the Fathers But I will choose rather to fall into your hands for the latter then under your censure for the first and so asking you a thousand pardons I send you this by which all I can hope is that you will at least discern in me a great willingnes to come out of your debt in this kinde for all other I know impossible though I am but a flow and imperfect paymaster and that you will in some measure guess at what I would say if I had time to digest and range it as it should be I shall here only by way of supplement adde this more concerning the Millenaries because I would not render my Letters more illegible by new interlining it that as I remember Justin Martyr himself saith it is an opinion not generally beleeved in the Church but that many of the Orthodox reject it howbeit he professeth to hold it for true and accordingly endeavoureth to prove it by authority of Scripture all which manifestly declareth that it was no
Authorities in this point it will be sufficient to put you in minde that divers of the more modern Fathers farr enough removed from the vicinity of Paganism after Christianity had taken possession of the world were as peremptory Iconoclasts as those two I pitcht upon And for the variance of practice upon variance of times your reason might hold had they condemned the Religious use of Images onely as inconvenient and not as in its own Nature unlawfull but what 's simply unlawfull at one time cannot be lawfull at another without a precept from God which you say in your first words upon this subject You did not beleeve to have been given herein To your first justification of this Practise I must needs say that for the strong Arguments for it to which I am yet a stranger I should be glad to be acquainted with them but for the Texts of Scripture so pregnant as you speak of truly I should be sorry to meet with them for although where I finde in holy Writt appearing repugnances and difficult intricacies I am as apt as any body having perhaps most reason for it of any to accuse my own ignorance and to preserve all veneration to what I finde there yet I confess it would trouble me much and be of dangerous temptation should I meet with a passage in the sacred volumne as palpably direct for the use of Images as I am sure the second Commandement is against it For your Second Allegation that these times are secure from the danger of Idolatry some proofs would be necessary since I am farr from understanding them to be so were that sinne committed then only when the outward or inward act of veneration accompanied with that belief and reliance which belongs to the Creator is exhibited to and terminated in the creature I should then be of your opinion and pronounce these times in little danger of Idolatry but withall my vote should also go to acquit all ages from the Crime as well as the present For I do not think that the fowlest Idolaters of the Heathen ever arrived to that height of stupidity as to take those low and materiall objects of their devotion for God Almighty Nay the more bestiall their Idolatry was as of the Aegyptians and Romans in worshiping the vilest creatures the lesse probability is there that they conceived the essence of the Deity to dwell under those contemptible forms that they adored as I think the Jewes little guilty of believing that the Calfe which they had made of their ear-rings though seemingly deified by their veneration was the great God that hath wrought his wonders among them but since it is as formal idolatry to frame to ones selfe out of low limited corruptible formes resemblances of the incomprehensible Deity and to impart to them any kinde of divine honour whether you please to call them of adoration of service or of pious religion since to worship the true God after an unfitting manner involves men as well in this sin as the service of a false God since I say these practises as well as the other amount to Idolatry yea such as for my part I believe the Jews Pagans were rarely guilty of any greater amidst their highest abominations I must professe I think the world at present extreamly liable to the sin yea many of the Romish Church deeply plunged therein by the easie abuse if not by the single use of Images in their prayers and this not onely the simpler sort but even the learned Doctors themselves if one may believe them of themselves Thomas of Aquine sayes Summ. part 3. quaest 25. Art 3. and hath many followers in it That the same reverence is to be given to the Image of Christ that is to Christ himselfe and seeing Christ is adored with the adoration of Latria that his Image also is to be adored with the adoration of Latria so farre is that great Doctor and his Sectators transported whom I doe chuse much rather to brand with the imputation of Idolatry then many others of his own side as learned that impugne his doctrine with sacriledge there being as I conceive no medium between those two impieties where one denies adoration of the highest kinde to that unto which another payes it Thirdly for the great good which you say appeares in the use of Images I am perswaded it doth but appeare it is pretended they help the memory and excite devotion in the people If by aids of memory be understood onely in the generall that the lively representation of some holy Historie is likely to call better thoughts into our mindes then a prophaner I like it well by the same reason that the coursest picture of CHRIST crucified ought in a good Christians Cabinet to take the wall of a Venus of Titian the one being apt to mortifie us through the same sense whereby the other may inflame us but if by the help of memory any thing be meant of more particular assistance in the directing of our prayers I think Images doe just as much good in that point as the art of memory would doe to your excellent naturall one that is help to dizzy and distract it Or if by excitement to devotion be meant any particular stimulation and guidance to the rightest way of true devotion or furnishing us with a proper means of addressing it to the right and originall object I conceive them then so far from being of good use in this kinde that I hold their very stimulations to devotion dangerous they excite they warm the zeale of the ignorant 't is true but with those strange fires that caused such combustions in Israel whilst so many as Gul. Pariensis de Legibus cap. 23. confesses not distinguishing between the Image and the thing adore the picture in stead of what it represents wherein farre lesse sinful were a luke-warm piety rightly applied then the ardentest devotion misdirected by how much sins of omission are more pardonable then of act and to worship the true God lesse intensly then to serve a false one zealously Of this danger there cannot be a better witnesse for all his mincing of the matter then Gregory the great in his Epistle to Cirenus Bishop of Marcelles in which that passage is which you cite who there adviseth the Bishop to excuse to his flock the breaking down of Images in the Church by alledging that he was forc'd to that Act by the peoples abusing that to adoration which was erected onely for instruction of the ignorant and illiterate in matter of history The Bishop truly was beholding unto him for furnishing him with such an excuse which might serve to justifie all the fiercest Iconoclasts since all the good that imagination can present in the use of Images throughout the whole Universe cannot amount to recompence the mischiefe of one poore soules betraying to Idolatry For my part I doe conceive that good use might be made of holy pictures but hardly by the vulgar
the Father and the Son according to our conceptions were two but but one in Hypostasis St. Basil Ep. 64. p. 849. Tom. 2. excuses him saying that it was spoken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that being to perswade a Gentile he thought it not necessary to be exact in his expressions and that it may be convenient sometimes to indulge a little to the use and manner of those one would perswade that they may not fly back from what is more necessary and seasonable by which means Gregory saith he may have let slip many expressions that Hereticks perhaps will lay hold of for their advantage likewise where Dionysius Alexandrinus had stiled the Son the workmanship of the Father as the ship to the ship-wright and many other expressions that no Arian could mend Athanasius is ready with an Apologie for him p. 551.552 Tom. 1. de Sent. Dyonis They were saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and are not to be taken maliciously If that Thaumaturgus and that other great pillar of the Church Dionysius did license themselves so far as to let their expressions by which we are to judge of them not by what they reserved in their hearts swerve in so notorious a manner from the most eminent tradition of the Church in such a grand fundamental were it not irrational in us to expect from them and the rest a punctual transmission of the Churches traditions in all such petty points as most of ours scarce ever touch'd upon by them but in the way of those important disputes which you see warm'd them even to such great oversights If those two excellent and most zealous of the Fathers Athanasius and Basil were so forward in their excuse allowing them a liberty both for their policy and passion in dispute to dally with a main tradition were it not too unjust a rigour in us to brand them with the imputation of falsehood and ignorance because forsooth they deliver us not with an exact fidelity the tradition of the Church in our questions concerning which it is to be doubted whether there was any general tradition in the Church or no I profess I am as far from laying so heavy an imputation upon them either for their negligence herein or falsity as I am from expecting such a sincere punctuallity as you promise your self from them Furthermore besides the heats the artifice of Disputes and desire of victory which in contestations of great moment might easily through their humane frailty make them strain a Point by the by in some article less dangerous when from it they may draw conclusions of great advantage in the main And besides that as a great * Arch. Bishop of Canterb. Epist dedic Prelate lately made the Observation Men are apt to think that they can never run far enough from what they hate and so by a very naturall motion runne upon the other extreame as a Father that in detestation of Nestorius would confound that heresie by the receptions of the Church might easily overshoot himself so farr as to make the Church speak for Eutiches in aversion from Arianism make the Church speak for Sabellius and in profligation of the Maniches to shake hands with Pelagius and so much more because the danger could hardlier be foreseen they are likely to have tuned the voice of the Church either to the Romish or Protestant Key according as either was at the time most opposite to the Adversarie they combated Besides all these I am perswaded that many of the Fathers held it a pious fraud to gain the subversion of a great error by sowing a little one not foreseeing how process of time might improve that to as considerable a magnitude Yea further I beleeve and Saint Jerome implies little less Ep. 50. ad Pamach Com. 2. p. 136. that in the general the Fathers when they were in the Lists held it no matter of conscience either to affirm for the Churches receptions some things that they did not think to be so yea contrary to their knowledge and to reject others that at another time they would have admitted so it were conducible to their victory And although this be a greater as being a more wilfull unfaithfulness then any other that I have remark'd in them yet neither for this nor the rest dare I brand them with those heavy imputations which you seem Jealouss that I tend to But since I finde that those reverend and holy men do not stick to set the seal of tradition to conceits of their own and other uncurrent doctrines I do not fall presently as you implie one must do of consequence to lay to their charge impiety and profanation of the divinest Averments But rather since they make so bold with that seal to believe that they did not repute it so sacred as you imagine but farr inferior to proofs out of Scripture and to be used freely as a Topick Argument only when they wanted demonstrations from thence and indeed throughout my slender reading I have observed that when they can produce the written word for their opinion they do rarely insist upon prescription as pleading Lawyers fly then to presidents chiefly when they want a text for their cause But whereas you say the foule play would not have scaped their numerous adversaries note had they set the sacred Character to counterfeit Coine I think so too But what are we the wiser if their notes scape ours as needs they must since of the numerous writings of their numerous adversaries this age I think hath scarce a number The Governours of the Church in all times have made it one of their chief cares to smother their impious Libells dictated as Saint Jerome saies by the spirit of the devill And however some do alledge that such suppressions make a cause suspected for my part I think it if not abused both a wise and Religious course since the scandall and weakning of the weakers faith which are so many is much more to be considered and regarded then the satisfying of the curiosity of the learned which are so few it fares with Sabellius with Manicheus with Porphirie and the rest of the Heretiques or enemies of Christ that live only in the works of their Antagonists as with Celsus in Origen and with Arius in Athanasius and others whose confutations we are to thank for all we know of their Arguments our Libraries are just as well furnished with them as you may imagine some good Fraters closet in Spain that hath the Inquisitor for his neighbour is with the workes of Calvin or Luther or as the world is likely to be provided of those passages in the Fathers that make for them some ages hence when time shall have worn out all Editions that are not according to the Index expurgatoricis of which those I mentioned in my former Letter Eusebius Epiphanius and Saint Austin have not mist their gentle wipe though you say you have not met in either of them with any Article of
of man which I doubt much whether it can truly be affirmed of all the Christians of the world I am sure it cannot of the poor number of Doctors and Governors in any one age among them But to let this supposition pass supposing that the present Church understands what is meant by All they of the preceding though I do not and that all the present receives she receives as delivered to her by all those of the preceding age let us examine a little that which you inferr upon it to wit That this being so no false proposition of faith nay as you say afterwards no false doctrine whatsoever can be admitted into the Church in any age unless they of that age do unanimously conspire to deceive their children and youngers in telling them they were taught by their Fathers what indeed they were not That this is not impossible since only the Doctors Pastors of the Church are to be understood by All they hath been already shown But is there no other way say you but this for falshood to creep into the Church Truely me-thinks on the contrary it is with error and necessary truths in the body Ecclesiastick as with life and death in the body natural And as there is onely one way for life to enter at but a thousand gates for death so for necessary truths there is but one ordinary avenne to the Church namely by Scripture read or taught but for error to get in at a thousand passages without supposing such a general conspiracie For though many times when an error hath had a long Current we cannot point directly at the spring yet are we ne're a whit less certain that it had an entrance because we know not at which doore Nilus hath a head though Geographers cannot say directly where it is And lines many times that at first appear parallels to the eie by that time they have been lengthned a great while prove apparently uneven though no man can assigne the point whereat the deflexion began The doctrine of the Chiliasts a doctrine which if any other surely that may well be said to have been a generally received tenent of the Church universal for some ages since in the whole Church for above 250. years after Christ there appears not in that point one dissenting vote till Dionysius of Alexandria oppos'd it An error 't is true and yet I hope you will not be so uncharitable as to accuse all the ancient Fathers of the second Centenary that they complotted to deceive posterity by teaching them a falshood for Apostolique tradition you are more favorable to them then so in the last part of the Letter where you your self discover a way how without conspiracy this error and so another may have overspread the Church by the Authority of one man delivering it for a whisper of the Apostles And truly Cousin what ever else may be said more probable in the particular I am confident 't is most true in the general that the worke is easie from one man of credits Asseveration to possess vast Multitudes with firme perswasions of a falshood and more in matters of Religion then in civil things since in those this pium credere prevailes much and most will rather take upon trust what many affirm and they discern no ill in then put themselves to the oft-times endless troubles of examining Credulity being so easie and natural Disproving so difficult I warrant you the Common Faith of Romulus Ascent into Heaven would have had upon your grounds as rational assertours in the State of Rome as any tradition by us questioned at this day in the sea of Rome See in that politique invention of Julius Proclus what power the imagined pietie of one man hath to make a fiction pass for an Epidemicall veritie which as Tertullian sayes Apol. cap. 8. Ab uno aliquando principe exorta exinde in traduces linguarum aurium serpat ita modici seminis vitium caetera rumoris obscurat ut nemo recogitet num primum illud os mendatium seminaverit The Jewes a much more numerous multitude heretofore and still I think equal in number to any Christian Church of one denomination were the most Religious the most scrupulous conservators of unwritten truths in their Cabala And yet what an error posfesses the whole Nation and did so long before the curse fell upon them concerning their Messias whose coming long before Christ and since they all expected and do expect in a temporal kingdome of which they did derive and do continue to posteritie the hopes by Universal tradition or if you will say that they build the doctrine not upon tradition but Scripture yet I am sure you cannot denie but that they continue the interpretation of Scripture that way by tradition which comes all to one Did you grant the possibility of a Multitudes Conspiracie I am sure you would denie it in this which is confestly the point upon which all of them agree that their supreme felicitie depended It would pass for a very fallacious reasoning to drive up this belief to the Patriarkes and so conclude it infallible because the present age received it for a tradition from the preceding and that from the Antepenultime and so forward Or because the instant where the error was admitted amongst them cannot Digito monstrari dicere hic est For truly Cousin partly through a natural desire in all men that others should think as they do or do what they think convenient from whence there springs an aptness in the teachers to applie to their opinions the strongest Authorities they can devise whether they do justly belong unto them or no and partly through an aptness of the ignorant which are the greatest part of Auditours to swallow more and retain better the words and the outward literal part of what is taught them then either to examine or hold fast the precise and inward sense It may well happen that multitudes may mumble the shell when a few have the kernell and looking superficially only upon the outward stamp toss up and down for currant among them counterfeit oft-times and Adulterate Coine The mistake is ordinary and the propagation of the error easie for instance sake in the doctrine of praying for the dead many of the Doctors of the Church who believed that all the souls of the departed were kept in certain receptacles untill the general resurrection conceiving that prayer for the beatitude of the dead came all to one with praying for the hastening of Christs Kingdome might teach it others thinking it no prophanation of prayer to imploy that holy Act even where we know it cannot availe since Christ himself prayed to have the bitter Cup of his passion removed and all the Doctours generally holding such prayers a convenient testimony of charity in the living whether they were Commemorative Eucharisticall or supplicatorie easily might the practice pass into a common doctrine Now the word Necessarie being often used for
time Hebrew to the Jew pure Greek to the Athenian and Latin to the Roman Lastly if the Fathers Testimonie may not prevaile they being of an uncertain Authority nor Scripture swey as being of an uncertain sence let common reason be heard in the cause which for as much as I can judge of it is as strong for the sufficiencie of Scripture that is its containing all points necessarie to salvation as any prudent man need require for warrant of his belief It is agreed upon by all sides that Man being ordained to a supernatural end nature is not sufficient to lead him thither but that he must have some meanes above it and proportionate to the end such as may either shew him the way if he can discern or lead him in it if he be blind or which is happiest and surest of all both instruct and conduct him in it This last kinde of guidance it were presumption for man to claim however Gods grace may afford it unto some The second it were stupidity for all to expect however some have little hopes without it And therefore it is the first that belongs to man in generall that is a directory to all those pathes and windings without the knowledge of which he cannot arrive to his primary end And by the knowledge of which he may and is responsible himself if he do not follow the direction which if God should withhold from us although I could not venture with some to apply to his Justice that of Pharaoh's requiring brick where he gives no straw nor to pronounce it a stain to his goodnesse should he condemn us for missing the way when he gave us no Map of the Countrey since to a life actually forfeited as all mans was in Adam the least reprieve is a grace a grace to be let row in the Gallies to him that the Gallowes expected A grace to take out of the ditch a man that put out his own eyes though you leave him to grope out the rest of his journey with perpetuall hazards of falling in againe I say though I dare not in this case pronounce the with-holding a directory from us inconsistent with his justice wisdome or goodnesse yet truly I think you will yeeld the man hath not so fitting a belief of Gods mercy wisdom as he ought who conceives that he would suffer those to perish for want of such a necessary directory for whose sake he gave up his own Son to death Now to suppose such a directory from God and to think it defective is again to fall into undue thoughts either of his mercy or of his power nay it is to destroy what you do suppose since the omission of any thing absolutely necessary in a direction makes the direction none This conclusion then I may safely draw and I doubt not but with your consent that the Supernatural Directorie and rule whereby we are through Gods grace and mercy to be instructed in the way to our supernatural end must needs be compleat and sufficient in all parts absolutely necessary to that end It only remains then to shew which is that rule and directory sufficient and compleat in all necessary parts Now as in a journey directions of the way how sufficient how exact soever will little advance you unless you beleeve them or the knowledge of the way unless you have legs to go or somewhat else to carry you so in our Souls progress to beatitude it must have reliance and its instruments of gradation too which is Faith the strongest vehiculum of Humanity to Divinity Now as I said before that the means must be proportionate to the end so it is certain that the way the Organs by which we move in it must be proportionate one to another or we shall never arrive at our end As that let all other things be never so well fitted yet if our way must be thorow the Air or the Sea good legs or directions will little avail us The Organ then of our motion to Heaven being Faith and that Faith the strongest assent of our souls the ground upon which it must march ought to be no less folid then infallibility since the strongest Assent cannot be given but upon the strongest inducement Forasmuch then as particular Tradition that is the unanimous testimony of any Church of what numerous parts soever hath been already concluded fallible and universal Tradition is as it were coincident with Scripture being only as Clemens sayes Strom. lib. 6. p. 679. as it were an unwritten Transcript of that in mens hearts and gives attestation to no materiall Object of Faith but what is deducible thence It follows That Scripture is the ground proportioned by unquestionable infallibity to Faith as correspondent likewise in all things else both to the goodnes of God that gives the directory to our necessities that are to follow it The sufficiency and perfection of Scripture having been shewed and likewise the defectibility of that kinde of Tradition for whose Authority you labour The preferring of this latter before the first in governing the Tenure of our Faith is of consequence such an error as I am sorry should be countenanced by your continuing in it But because the precedency which you give to the Churches Tradition before Scripture is pretended due upon another ground also which I have yet spoke little unto give me leave to say somewhat to that You lay Obscurity to the charge of Scripture That Articles of Faith are not there so plainly exprest that every body can understand them If it were so truely the Laytie of the Church of Rome is much obliged to it for easing them of the trouble of reading what is unintelligible unto them but little beholding unto S. John for passing for a precept of Christ's Search the Scriptures But how shall they take it now forasmuch as the contrary to your Assertion is a manifest Corollary to the proof of Scriptures sufficiencie and perfection the compleatness of a Rule or Directory consisting as well in its Evidence as its Fulness and must need Interpretation as little as Addition Yet let us grant your supposition a while Scripture is obscure you say What follows Tradition is to be preferred Tradition then is easier Tradition is clear say you to the Vulgar I should rather think Tradition impossible to be learn'd since Man can speak but with a few and millions must make up that unless you bring all lines that can be drawn from the Circumference into a Centrical point the Pope But you are too much a friend to the Doctors of the Sorbon to do that Besides if you do so the difficulty will still remain For here the Rule in Geometry will not hold The lines drawn back from the Centre to the Circumference are not equal Men are not all at an equal distance from him all cannot hear him How shall the Vulgar understand him By their Ghostly Fathers You will not attribute to private men a clearer fuller
temporibus antecesserunt sapientia quoque antecesserunt quae si omnibus aequaliter datur occupari ab antecedentibus non potest sed hoc eos fallit quod majorum nomine posito non putant fieri posse aut ipsi plus sapiant quia minores vocantur aut illi dissipuerint quia majores nominantur Lactan. Divin Institut lib. 1. cap. 8. And now noble Cousin that I have examined your Opinions and discussed your Arguments let me have your patience or your pardon a little further while I give you an account concerning those Directions wherewith you favour me in your Letter and in what state I am to follow some and to excuse my self in others To the first namely The use which you conceive we are to make of reading of the Fathers I willingly conform my self in one part that is in letting pass those things which they write as Divines and Scholars onely allowing them no more weight with me then the reasons wherewith they are accompanied do give them I am likewise very willing to let pass for the most part what they write as Commentors upon the Scripture their interpretations in that kinde being many times if I may so say very Chymerical Although I must tell you that were I perswaded of any third Authority by whose seal the Fathers could transmit unto us in all things of Religion such certain and unquestionable resolutions as you imagine I should not expect their aid more earnestly nor take the omission more unkindly of them in any thing then in point of giving us the right and well-handed interpretation of Scriptures I further obey you in laying hold and relying on what they teach us as Pastors of the Church relying I say upon that chiefly to wit in the great Fundamentals of Christianity but not generally that is not in those Questions which we disagree on wherein they were neither willing nor able to be exact and least of all when they inveigh against Hereticks their passions and transportments being at such times greatest As for such Opinions as they deliver Dogmatically without alleadging texts of Scripture or learned Arguments to maintain them although they appear delivered with never so earnest an intent that they should be taken as matters of Faith you must pardon me if they sink no deeper into my belief then they are driven by such Arguments as my own or others discourse can finde for them either in Reason Scripture or Universal Tradition Your second advice is that I should apply my care to collect thorowout the sence of the Fathers and by what they say to frame to my self a Model of the Practice Government and Belief of the Church in their times and then to tell you whether it be like to yours or ours The Care and Attention you wisht me I brought at first to the studie of the Fathers but I cannot brag of the Model I have framed out of them finding that truely a work hard enough for the best Antiquary And to me 't is an improvement of the difficulty to an impossibility to be put to tell you which of the present Churches hath most resemblance to that of their times I could as easily resolve you which of two men that stood before me were likest to an hundred differing faces For I do not think there is a greater variety of countenances at a Publike Assembly then there are differences in the several Ages wherein the Fathers lived touching those three parts of Religion especially these two of Practice and Government of which Tertullian having summ'd up all the chief particulars of the Creed pronounces Hac lege fidei manente caetera jam disciplinae conversationis admittunt novitatem correctionis Tert. de Virg. Velan cap. 1. For matters of Practice 't is a clear case what libertie was taken to varie them according to several evasions and ends since some of the Apostles themselves you know did not stick to practise Circumcision nor do the several ages appear to me ere a whit the more exquisite in the imitation of their fore-fathers then you will say the Church of Rome is at this day of the Apostles in that and of those that followed after in administring the Eucharist to children and yet 't is she that pretends to be the Pantomime of antiquitie for matters of Government how Camelion-like that hath been how various is as visible as green and he that would reduce the Church now to the form of Government in the most primitive times should not take in my opinion the best nor wisest course I am sure not the safest for he would be found pecking toward the Presbytery of Scotland which for my part I beleeve in point of Government hath a greater resemblance then either yours or ours to the first age of Christs Church and yet is nere a whit the better for it since it was a form not chosen for the best but imposed by adversitie and oppression which in the beginning forc'd the Church from what it wisht to what it might not suffering that dignitie and state Ecclesiasticall which rightly belong'd unto it to manifest it self to the world and which soon afterwards upon the least lucida intervalla shone forth so gloriously in the happier as well as more Monarchicall condition of Episcopacy of which way of Government I am so well perswaded that I think it pittie 't was not made betimes an article of the Scotish Catechism that Bishops are jure divino But as it is a true maxime in nature Corruptio optimi pessima so it holds likewise in Government both civill and Ecclesiasticall The best of all Monarchy festers oft-times and swels into the worst of all Tyrannie To which after the first 500. years Policy having or'etopt Pietie the Church made a hastie progress and of the following ages in this particular I grant the present Church of Rome to be a copy farr exceeding the originall verifying now of the Roman the imputation that Aristides layd by way of reproach on all other Empires 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For matters of belief the salvation of Christians depending chiefly upon them 't is true in the primary and fundamental articles they have been more constant unanimous and exact and in those comparing the Church of their times with yours and ours I think I may pronounce them all three alike to one another but in points less material such as I esteem those wherein we two differ I should contradict my self to undertake the framing out of the Fathers a certain judgement which of the two present Churches were most correspondent to that of their times Notwithstanding if you command me to say for which side in my guess the Fathers do make most I will tell you truely and freely what I think holding then the ballance as even as I can I conceive the Fathers in some few poynts do lean somewhat more to you as in that of Christs descent into hell and also in that of free-wil those excepted that wrote
one partie is sure and firm setled when ever the other falls as certainly as in natural generation the decay of one thing is infallibly the parent of another And therefore in point of wrong and unfitting superstructures such as most of the Romish Tenents are which we lay battery to it may suffice to pull down those being demolisht what 's rightly built will stand fast of it self since both suppose a foundation Now for the second part of your direction namely that I should strictly examin the reason of my own belief I have obeyed you to the full And that you may be able to judg whether they be well weighed or no take here a sum of my belief I believe the unity and Omnipotence of God and an inexplicable Trinity in that unity I beleeve the incarnation of the second person of that Trinity that 's Gods assumption of perfect humanity from the womb of a Virgin And that he humbled himself not onely to manhood but also to mortallity that after he had set our practice an exact pattern by his life and by his words imbued our Theory with all necessary documents he might purge our staines with his blood redeem our forfeitures by the price of his passion and present a plenary satisfaction to his Fathers Justice for all our misdeeds I beleeve further that to make us capable of the effects of his merits Beatitude he illuminates our understanding by the gift of the holy Ghost by whom is created in us that divine faith by which these misteries are to be apprehended I beleeve also that our blessed Saviour gave his Apostles commission to preach to all the world his saving Doctrine who did accordingly and have left to posterity both written records and living ones in successions of the faithfull that shall preserve even to the end of the world these and all other articles necessary to salvation I likewise beleeve that the Apostles established Pastors in several Churches whom we are to hearken unto with reverence and to receive of them the Sacraments of regeneration to Christ and of Communion with him both which by Gods grace have a divine and supernatural effect in the cleansing us from sin I beleeve that heaven shall be the reward of the good and hell of the wicked and lastly in a word to supply whatsoever may have been omitted I firmly beleeve whatsoever is evidently contained in the Creed or Scripture or clearly deduceable from either I am perswaded that you will yeild that the reasons upon which these are built will abide the strictest examination None of these assertions I hope betrayeth its own weakness And yet these are the only opinions which I have been imbued with these are the parts of faith that integrate my Religion in these are comprised al points that I think necessary to be believed And he that believes any thing more if he have but his share of good works is safe in my opinion for he hath faith of supererrogation my firm and resolute settlement in these verities defends me from being at all concerned in those severall imputations which towards the close of your letter you do most judiciously and justly lay upon Sciolous and Sapticall witts that floating in uncertainty would fain reduce every thing to that pass seeking rather to puzle and imbroil an adversary then weightily to establish a solid truth 'T is that solid truth and such as bears no dispute that I wish we might all stick to and let pass those quillets and niceties imposed by the Church of Rome for Articles of importance and which her adherents dwell upon with too scrupulous a diligence such as admit arguments on both sides and are fitter for a declamation then a Catechism in which whilst men vainly busie themselves they let slide away many times unnoted as you say that great deal which is uncontroulable and plain points which can be thought at best but at the skirts none belonging to the main body of religion doctrines for the most part at the least in my judgement so little material that I applaud the Fathers for spending so little time or labour on them such as I am so far from delighting to make objections in that where ever I have touch'd upon particulars it hath been a Contrecoeur and onely to disperse such dust as others raise for I swear there is no man living hath a stronger aversion then my self from all cavils in Religion it being justly to be feared as our great Prelate Arch-Bishop of Cant. in his Epistle to his Majestie sayes that Atheism and irreligion gathers strength while the truth is thus weakned by an unworthy way of contending for it and I am perswaded that moâ—â— men while their thoughts are so busied in chicanes of controverted points grow negligent of those more weighty ones that neerlyer import salvation and so runne out of the most essentiall good of their soules as impertinently as many a peevish freeholder that wasts a solid estate in endless law suits for a trifle as I think these points little important for use so I concur with you in esteeming both these and all other matters of Religion very unfit to be argued on for ostentation or applause which I am sure I am as farr from aiming at in this subject as I shall be farr from attaining it 'T is true the condition of the knowing ignorant is usually quite contrary to the Lords servants in the Gospel there he that had least wrapt up his single talent in a Napkin but amongst men now a-daies that pretend whoever hath least it is he longs most to shew how much he hath and so publishes how little yet thus far they oftentimes both agree that neither improve their store and thus by my ignorance unless you be charitable I confess my self liable to be suspected guilty of the vain appetite of oftentation that usually accompanies it but as my Ignorance exposes me to the suspition so my consciousness of it the sole knowledge that I can brag of frees me from the Ambition suspected and layes upon me a necessity of concluding with a huge Apologie for presuming to give you so much trouble and I fear so little satisfaction I confess I ought to have been restrained from venturing at all upon this Debate the Subject it self being so farr above the pitch of my literature And the Person with whom I presume to argue the difference of Opinion confestly my superiour in all advantages both of Nature and Acquisition beyond all hopes of comparison Considerations either of them able to deterr a much considenter man then my self But Friendship which always findes or makes men equall hath long since licenc't me from the latter and hardened me to impart my conceptions how low so ever as freely to you as I could doe to any inferiour Wit of mine own levell And for the first I have neglected it upon this perswasion that I shall be better able to answer to the Divines a young a Lay and ignorant mans adventuring to treat of their Business then to you and to my self so womanish a wrong as not subscription to the Dictamens of your strong and powerfull Soul without yeelding my reasons for the variance which how light soever they may be found when pondered by your excellent judgment yet being really such as are most convincing to mine they will serve to excuse me to you to justifie me to my self and I hope to make my Errours even pardonable with God who when by St. Peter he bids us be able to give a Reason of the hope that is in us I am confident he expects it no better then proportionable to the capacities that his goodness hath endowed us with Answerable to them is this Discourse weak I confess disjoynted and without Nerves and yet I doubt not but it may be so evictuated by Truth and the goodness of my Cause that I shall not be ashamed to have encountred a GOLIAH with a Sling A Straw kept in a right Line might batter a tower from which right line of truth and reason I may safely protest I have not so much as once voluntary swarved in this Treatise through any partaking passion or forelaid designe neither have I suffered my self herein to be so far wrought upon by civility as to forbear a free and round expression of my sense where ever it differed from yours and truly there was no cause why I should since in our disputes the strongest opposition that I or the best wit for me can possibly make to your opinions will derogate no more from your unquestionable exellency of judgement then it would conclude either of us ill-sighted should you affirm such a Garment to be red and I that it were green the object being a changeable Taffaty and we seated in contrary lights or looking through mediums diversly tincted a like affect upon the soul to these upon the sense hath diversity of education and discrepance of those principles wherewith men are at the first imbued and whereon all our after reasonings are founded Conformity and uniteness of minde as rarely flowing from contrary Educations as the same River from opposite springs sweet happy and I think sole is the self-sameness which arises from pure principles of nature never sophisticated by the artifices of our breeding but little derivation from those Fountaines hath this or that Sect of Religion so no marvel if we agree not therin to be one as we do in the other most true prime Emanation of nature Friendship which on your part to me I am confident must needs spring from thence since my small merit affords no other motive and for mine to you I am sure it is impossible without an intire concurrence of all the forces of Sympathy for any man to reverence admire and love another with that Ardour as I do you dearest Cousin and which you cannot but own in SHERBORN March 30. 1639. Your most faithful and most Affectionate Servant G. D. FINIS
avowed tradition of the Church from Christ it is true Papias seemeth to intimate as though it were in some obscure manner derived from Christ but not as a thing commanded to be preached and taught He telleth it as a mysterie or secret whispered by him to some of the Apostles whom he would oblige more then their fellowes by imparting some thing to them for their knowledge that the rest should be ignorant of But no such by-rivolet though it should come from the true fountain can ever fall into the main and avowed Channell of Ecclesiastical tradition Indeed it is likely that Cerinthus the Heretick to justifie his new device in that particular fathered it on Saint John as whispered to him by Christ in confidence and from him Papias that was an easie and simple man taking it passed by his name and vouched only the Apostles which some believed as a private truth and others denied as is apparent December 26 1638. Your Lordships most humble and faithfull Servant K. D. My Noblest Cousin and best friend I Beg your pardon for making you so slow a return of my humble thanks for your excellent Letter of the 26 of December and I should have needed your pardon much more if your favours in it had been lesser The excesse of them in such variety of obligations justifies me in the leasure I take to taste and enjoy each endearing circumstance apart weighing and comparing with one another the severall delights I ow you whilst every where I finde my self either courted by him I love most or applauded by him I emulate most or instructed by the person whose abilities I admire most and all this by you dear Cousin the prime object of my noblest affections My heart is so much affected with these favours that were this Letter or rather Volumne whose bulk may well affright you with the trouble it threatens filled with nothing but acknowledgments it would fall as short of satisfaction to my self in the thankfull part aâ— I fear it will of giving it you in the rest that it treats of But as in the first it is impossible for me to utter the hundredth part of my thoughts so in the other could I express all and more then ever I can think of I should yet despair of efficacy to convince you by any thing that can flow from a Pen animated with such dull reflections as mine which here notwithstanding I venture to set down chiefly in obedience to your commands in the close of your Letter and partly through fear that I might else in some kinde incurr the tax either of Hypocrisy if I should by silence confess an assent in matters of Religion where I am not convinced or of perversness should I d ssent without shewing cause for it which I shall here endeavour to manifest but still with this protestation that could I admit of such a doctrin that in the affaire of our faith I ought to be swayed by any humane authority either of one or many I should at this instant publish a valediction to my opinions what great wits soever may sustain them as willingly as I do here grant you the preheminence above the highest that I have known And here in the first place I do most heartily wish I could concurr with you in all the rest as I do in the Introduction of your discourse that so I might be united to you in opinion as I am most intirely in affection I joyne with you in full admiration of the Piety Learning and Integrity of those reverend Fathers of the Church whose Lives whose Zeales whose Deaths abundantly merited that title with everlasting celebrations of their memories theit veracity I attribute infinitely unto from a due consideration of all those happy circumstances wherewith your eloquence authorizes it You cannot aggravate their impieties enough who would offer to exclude such sages from being witnesses in the most important matters of Religion If any former slip of my pen can be but wrested to such an injustice let me purge my self by a solemn Recantation But I hope my words imported not any such sense I am sure my sense intended not any such words those of my Letter were as I remember that I could not admit them for witnesses Authentick enough whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion Wherein by two restrictions I am safely protected from any just imputation of so unjust a negative since the one by the very exception of many cases attributes to their testimony a validity in many the other allows it an inducing power in the very denying it a convincing one and tends no way to an exclusion but only to a qualification of their evidence Many indeed are the cases wherein I hold their Testimonials most sacred and unquestionable such are the grand Fundamentals of Christianity the doctrine of believing in one God of the incarnation the Passion the Resurrection and some other the constitutive Articles of Christian Faith These to use your own terms were matters indeed that concern'd their Art and Trade matters indeed whereon their own and their posterities Salvation undoubtedly depended matters indeed that challenged their whole care and attention both to receive them rightly and transferr them faithfully In these when they tell us as they often do plainly and unanimously what they were taught and what they found believed generally through the whole Church Let their affirmation be as definitive as Pythagoras's to his Disciples in these it is too mild a word to say have they not reason to take it unkindly to be rejected Be it sacrilege but to question their veracity but on the other side many cases too there are wherein I can in no wise venter to give sentence upon their evidence Such are most if not all the now controverted poynts between the Romish Church and ours and as in my former Letter levelling at these I could not admit the Fathers for witnesses authentical enough whereon to pass a Verdict in many cases of Religion so likewise I must again profess in this that I am as farr as ever from allowing them in these such a determining or convincing Authority witnesses of such an over ruling testimony though they bear the name of witnesses are judges in effect and they do give the Law though another pronounce it Now to be Judges I could cite you many passages wherein they themselves do utterly renounce the pretension and you say your self that their modesty will not let them be troubled when they are recused for such Neither will I wrong that vertue of theirs so much as to embrace their testimonies with any closer adherence then it self desires For be they what they will in point of interpreting to us the Doctrins of Church and Scripture I am sure they are the best declarers and limiters of their own both for their proper sense and the degrees of our receiving them Now that I have explained the sense of my former Letter let me tell you the