abus'd corrupted and falsify'd to make a little sport Acute Sir when you have a mind to make merry hereafter take heed your self to sober and judicious persons who require and expect solidness and sincerity from you become not the best part of the scene however to Gigglers who examin nothing but laugh at Mares-nests found onely in your and their fancies you pass for a very comicall and witty blade But as I value the judgment of one serious examiner above a thousand of such light-headed things so it seems by your carriage through your whole Book you intended such onely for your Readers I hear they are your onely applauders and that wiser persons even those that perhaps set you on seeing your passionate behaviour throughout the whole will not hazard their own credits to commend your work before any man of prudence and moderation Your next exception is against my sayings that the best happens to the damned that could happen and that God himself had been worse had they been otherwise dealt with And this you confute very learnedly with loud exclamations as Pagan Fatality Prodigious and what not wheras indeed could you rightly open the opinion however told rawly 't is to a vulgar head subject to misapprehension you would have found it to be the greatest honour of God both in his own Attributes and in the Government of the world which mankind esteems of In his own Attributes because it takes God to be essentially wise even to the least circumstance and that he would be worse if he did any thing otherwise then according to the Rule of Wisdom and that Wisdom in all things is the Principle to his will Whence follows that if it be better to let the damned be damned than not he should not have done so wisely as he now does if they had not been damned and therefore had been less wise that is worse in himself In his Government because it declares that in that very operation in which Creatures seem to be worft handled even there they have the greatest goods which were possible to them This Answer of mine perhaps you may have seen given to another upon occasion of the same difficulty rais'd Now to oppose this Doctrin you must either say that God in the Government of the world does not behave himself most wisely that is does not what 's most wise to do or permits not what 's most wise to permit which if you do I fear any Christian ear that hears you will abhor your blasphemy or else you must say that to behave himself less wisely is not to be worse in himself which is nonsence If you grant both these you fall into my paganism as you call it For if God does what 's wisest and best and actually such or such a creature be damn'd it follows t is wisest and best to permit it therefore to do otherwise had been to do less wisely that is to do worse and so if nothing limited the goodness in that action but what was in himself to be worse This you should have reflected on and spoken to and not still think that to make a wide month over a point of Divinity is enough to confute it without ever weighing answering or so much as mentioning the reasons 't is built on SECOND DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section the twenty seventh to Section the thirtieth The Identification of the Soul's affections with her self The best corporeall pleasures most conducive to Beatitude In what sence the Soul is not the same in the Body and out of it Affections of Souls not retractable during their separation Mis-informations of that grief the Author puts in Purgatory rectify'd Our Saviour's sufferings not prejudic't by this Doctrin IN the twenty seventh Section you begin to speak like a man that aym'd at a meaning and proving and was not content with pure flashes of words as in your former Sections Therefore I must look to my self especially since you threaten me both with designes of your own and of abler Pens which will more largely confute my errours And I must confess you frighten me for I do not love to take pains But the best remedy I can think of is to hasten this petty answer to you which peradventure may prevent some mistakes in others into which you are fall'n and so shorten in part their and my labour your first onset is to ask how ridiculous a position it is to say the affections got in the body are not distinguish't from the Soul and your reason of doubting is because the soul was and can be without them I give you this answer 'T is as ridiculous as to say that Relation is not distinguisht from its subject That Intension and remission are not made by adding one degree to another or that Charity is increast by a greater radication in the subject That Vnion is not distinguisht from its Terms or Action from the Agent and term when it consists not in motion and twenty such other position which as I must not doubt but you have shew'd ridiculous in your Philosophy Papers so because I have not seen them I must judge to be probable opinions in the sentiment of your eminent learned men while so many maintain them in your Schools and yet all the Arguments you bring are commonly urged against all these opinions The masters whereof peradventure may be of the same Judgment with me that the Soul is a creature in its Essence immutable but mutable to a certain point And so that other things may be joyn'd to or sever'd from her whilest she remains perfectly the same and neither better nor worse if we respect precisely her Essence They who have a mind to know what I think in this point may find it at large discours'd in the Preface before the Latin Edition of Sir Kenelm Digby's Book de Immortalitate Animae Your next question is how I can say that sinfull acts are perfections since the Soul is more perfect when she is depriv'd of them Sir my unwariness in this was because I had heard that sin consists formally in a privation or want of something and that all the positive act is good and from God as far as positive and so must be perfective and in it self some perfection Now to your Arguments I reply that in create perfections many times a greater puts out the lesser as Science puts out Faith Comprehension Hope Innocence Repentance c. so doth the perfection of a vertuous act displace the imperfecter perfect on which is in a bad action Your third Scruple is that I say the life most full of corporall pleasure is the fittest to attain eternall Beatitude And I cannot deny but I say so and your self bring my reason because the Body being made for the Soul it cannot be regularly speaking but what is truly best for the Body is also best for the Soul Peradventure you can pray better when you are sick then in health and ease and the like is of
signifies in a former time and that a former time could not be unless God had created it Your other suppositions too of Gods creating and anihilating souls proceed from an unworthy apprehension of Almighty God as if he should make and destroy Spirits onely to shew tricks they having no more difficulty to be answer'd then the plain instance of one Souls separation before anothers and therefore is but the repetition of the same case But well what must be said to St. Peters Soul and the Soul of St. Teresa hath not St. Peters a greater duration then St. Teresa's To this I answer what is immediately loosed out of God Almighty's hand hath no respect to time but is created for eternity as the World and the Angels are But what God doth by the mediation of creatures takes a tang from them and so hath some savour of time from the very loose Therefore Souls when they go out of their bodies have a kind of individual difference from the causes and time by which they begin This is a kind of a difference when you compare one Soul to another nothing if you compare the same Soul to it self And out of this is taken that diversity of duration which is found in several Souls Your next Argument is from the time as the Divines call it of the way of Angels to bliss where you ask who hath made evident that it could be done in one instant to which I have nothing to say though there want not Divines who hold it but that St. Austin hath made it evident that neither position prejudices Christian Religion and therefore 't is lawful to hold either side and so let Divines dispute it for no Argument can be drawn from thence why succession should be necessary in the intrinsecal operations of Angels Your third Argument consists of some expressions cited out of Scripture to which I answer if you bring any Texts of the thoughts of Angels I shall yield but if they be onely of outward actions those are measur'd by time as by twenty dayes c. and so argue no special duration in the inward acts of Angels Those cryes of the Martyrs under the Altar are so plainly Allegorical that it were lost time to shew they signifie nothing of importance to our controversie In the 31 Section you say it is groundlesly assumed that the Identification of the body and soul is required for the Action of a bodily Agent upon the soul and I cannot deny you have said it But one that had spoken like a Philosopher would have brought the seeming grounds on which it is built and shew'd the vanity of them and not oppos'd his bare word against anothers reasons You ask who ever fancy'd such an Identity betwixt the Body and Soul I answer no body no more then they can fancy that parts are not actu in continuo But as Aristotle and St. Thomas have rais'd their speculations above fancy and understood this and taught it their Scholars so hath the Church done about this Identification of the Body and Soul if the notion of forma corporis be rightly comprehended Then you demand who ever believ'd our Souls in this life are truly and really our Bodies and our Bodies our Souls No body Sir that I know of is so grosly senseless and so I think you are at the end of your Arguments Now let us see your belief which is that the Soul and Body as two distinct parts concur to the building up of one man who is one not by simplicity nor Identification of the parts but by substantial Vnion or composition O how gay a thing it is to speak words and not understand them We say the same you do and nothing more if you would make your words good For if there be a substantial Union then there must be an Unum substantialiter or per se or properly one And if there be a truly one it is not truly many that is not many substances or things And if there be not truly many substances or things the parts of this truly one are not distinguish'd really into things which are actually but formally into things that may be made of this one thing which is to have its part in potentia Now if truly and really the thing be but one thing all that is spoken of that thing signifies nothing but that thing so that the man is body according to the signification of one word Another word will signifie him as he is Soul another as he hath the vertue of holding and so he will be a hand another as he hath the vertue of walking and that will speak of him by the name of foot and all this be but one thing which we call man Now Sir this is a Catholick verity defined by ancient Councils in the Unity of a Person that is an individual substance or thing against the Nestorians The same was done in latter times under the notion of our souls being truly the Form or giving the denomination of being a thing Now the difference betwixt us is that you examin the words by fancy and we by understanding and discourse You add further it can never be evidenc'd that so much as a substantial union is necessary for a Soul to suffer from the Body For who say you shall render it evident that in the state of separation by the omnipotent hand of God she may not be made passive by fire Sir I am so confident of your abilities that I believe you are able to shew that God by his omnipotent hand cannot turn a separated Soul into wood or straw or some other combustible matter by which she shall become passive by fire And therefore your Divines use to speak more warily when they say God elevates the Action of the fire not disposes the subject or soul But this also he that can prove Fire is but a body and his action either rarefaction or locall motion or some such other may to such as carry sence along with their words shew that seeing an action cannot be elevated unless it be that is Fire cannot burn violently unless it burn and that the Action of fire can have no place in a spirit which it cannot divide or burn neither may it be elevated to torment a separated soul Your 32 Section tells us it is a purely voluntary and false assertion that separated Souls know all things perpetually and together And as for the falsity we may guess by your Arguments But to say it is voluntary you have no reason since the proofs are set down in Institutiones Peripateticae which I suppose you read as all sober Adversaries do before you went about to confute Your Arguments are first Our Angel Guardians every day learn our Actions what they be as it were by seeing the outward effects of them You speak this so confidently that I may imagin you have talk'd with some of them and they have told you so and then who dares deny it Otherwise I must confess I
damnation which is in the poena damni then any other But this you knew nothing of nor care to consider diverted by reflecting upon an admirable non-sence of mine And truly I do not wonder that you who cannot understand that a thing may be changed in relation or that water powr'd out of a square vessel into a round one can change its figure without taking away one company of little Jacks of the Box and adding as many more should conceive how a thing can be substantially chang'd and yet remain the same thing Neither do I intend to perswade you onely I presume to open how the one case is consequent to the other Which consists in this that if a substance be divisible in the formal ingredients which make it a substance then also is it mutable according to its substance Now the Ingredients of substance in this pitiful way of Philosophizing which Aristotle and St. Thomas have taught me are called Matter and Form and Existence Whereof Matter and Form constitute the essence of the individuum and if either be chang'd the Individuum is chang'd But it is not so of Existence For some of your great Divines will tell you that Christ's Humanity were the same individual Humanity whether it had a proper human Existence or the Divine Now that which we speak of the soul is somewhat less then this For we put the soul to continue the same existence but to have it sometimes joyntly with the body sometimes in her sole self and because Existence belongs to her substance we say she is substantially chang'd and yet remains the same But to answer your difficulty formally I pray remember that the notion of ens or a thing is habens Existentiam or that which hath being Now habens Existentiam may be understood two wayes for one that hath actually Being or for one that hath an aptitude to Being Now if you take it in this latter sense the soul is still the same for in the body it is capable to have its existence without the body and out of the body 't is capable to have it with the body But in the former sence in the body it hath it commonly with the body when the Whole not She is that which hath Being whereas out of the Body She not the Whole is that which hath being and so in this sence she is another thing out of the body then she was in it There is your distinction sweet Sir with which I must intreat you to be content since you will easily see your arguments or inconvenients drawn from your mistake of the opinion have no force against it for we speak not of higher and lower degrees of Ens or Anima ut sic but onely of composition in the individual degree In your 29 Section you fall upon a kind of rational question whether an understanding creature can wish what 's impossible and you handle it as if you had never seen a man do against reason Let my first question be whether in all the explications you have heard of the fall of Angels you find any but of some impossible object some say they desir'd to be God some the sight of God without due means some a supreme Government of this World some an hypostatical Union none any thing but what depended of God without whose pleasure they affected it Therefore all put an absolute impossibility in the object which made in the Angel a damned will Are you better acquainted with human affairs Did you never hear of Niggards that hang'd themselves because of some great loss they had receiv'd Never of an ambitious Courtier that took a grief and dy'd upon a disgrace offer'd him from his Prince Did you never hear of a Lover that made himself away because he could not compass the enjoying of his Mistress Our life is so full of such instances that 't is a wonder you could not reflect on them Are not all these griefs for what men cannot help And doth not a grief include a desire of the contrary But you reply these are phrenetick men our disputation goes of soul's perfect in knowledg whose understandings represent unto them the lowness vileness baseness unworthiness c. of these objects and above all the impossibility which as you say at one blow cuts off all the will's pursuit Thus you but give me leave to tell you all vitious desires are a kind of Phrensy's there is no difference but of degrees in them one hinders reason the other masters it and besides Wilfulness is as great or greater phrenzy then Passion So that though Passion be not in souls Wilfulness is And as Passion hinders all those fine considerations which you mention of the baseness and foulness c. so much more doth Wilfulness You reply again that according to my Doctrin the affections remain in the soul in the same proportion which they have in the body out of which your adversary will gather that as they in the body conquer all good considerations so they will in wicked souls out of the body But you subsume that in this World they make no vast or considerable griefs instancing that the most gluttonous or luxurious man when he is satiated desires no more the same pleasure till his Body be fit again I wonder to hear one that lives as the French call it an grand mond in all companies talk so unexperiencedly of human affairs Look upon Lovers look upon those that seek after monies see whether their whole employments be not to think on their Mistresses and gathering of Wealth Remember how many have held envy and malice a greater torture then Artificers could invent How doth Tully seem to compassionat himself for the torment of ambition How pitiful a man was he when Clodius prevail'd against him But the great melancholies and disastrous ends I spake of make all this too plain to need many words You conceit that in this Doctrin he that goes out of the World in a great thirst shall be tormented with the desire of drinking No Sir but he that is never well but when his nose is at the tap shall have that torment For he loves drink and makes it his last end The other desires it out of need not out of love and so the need being past desires it no longer At last you take notice of the sordidness of Souls in separation if they be troubled with such desires I confess it Sir I do conceive damned Souls in the next world and vitious ones in this to be baser far then beasts I confess all you say of the contempt of drunkenness and carnality which you seem to take for the onely corporall pleasures to be perfectly true save onely your opinion of Avicena who kill'd himself by the excess of lust Then you go on and teach me what I should have settled for the griefs of Purgatory And to shew how apt a Scholar I am and how ready to follow your admonitions I present you with two short
nothing more to your intent then what is formally in the Bull it self and so already discuss'd onely I may note that this worthy Author in that he sayes the opinion of the Saints not seeing God was not altogether reprov'd or condemn'd in John the two and twentieths dayes is mistaken with divers others of your eminent Scholars as may appear by the Universal out-cry of the Church against him and the Arts and violences he was fain to use to get Doctours to side with him as the History of those times doth manifest I may conclude that notwithstanding your strong confidence that your Adversary never dreamt of these subtill Mysteries you think you have discovered he saw the truth more cleerly then you with all your great intelligence and so may return your exhortation upon your self to beware of heat of youth to beware of the secret snare of Interest which many times lurk undiscovered in the hearts of men of greater age In the fourteenth Section you come to the other question of what is the Subject of this Bull which your Adversary sayes to consist in this whether perfect Charity brings immediatly to Heaven And you very complementally beseech him to tell you how his cleer-sighted friends could perswade him to impose so grosly upon you as to settle the state of the question in that whose name is not recorded in the whole decree I confess I hold him bound to yeild you satisfaction And because you have imposed by your first Section the burthen upon me to answer for him in return of your civility my request is to know how a man of your worth and parts could perswade your self to descend so low as to ask a question grounded on so triviall an errour that every School-boy must see it I imagin if two words have in a Dictionary the same signification and a School boy should deny that his Latin had the sence in English which his Master asserted because one of the two words was not in it I fear his Master would think him negligent enough to deserve the rod So if the word Justus signify one that is in charity and you who take upon you so high an Authority of censuring will flatly and challengingly deny the thing to be there because the very word is not there you seem to me most extremely unreasonable What if instead of an Angel of gold I give you half a Piece is it not all one or which perhaps you will think more like our case instead of the term defin'd suppose the definition You object therefore more strongly that he requires the Popes positive is or is not And if you do not shew that and yet will obstinately persist to draw from this Definition that Souls are delivered before the day of Judgment you hazard to contradict both Bull and Council The rest of the Argument though plainly and strongly urg'd you omit at the present what you will do hereafter we shall see This last point that you hazard to contradict the Council and Pope you stumble at But why I pray if you know not their minds about that point do you not hazard to choose the wrong for the right I understand no otherwise But you insist upon his admission that the Pope was of that mind First that admission comes after this speech of his Secondly it is but a permission not a certification for out of it you are never the securer that indeed it was so and so still remain in hazard As for his requiring an is or is not I wonder you should except against it this being the very substance of the question in hand I pray reflect as any ingenious Reader I suppose will that the Pope may either think that some Souls are purg'd before the day of Judgment and yet neither intend to say it nor in fact say it He may again both think so and intend to say it and yet not say it lastly he may do all three Let us then for Argument sake suppose that he did all three and that this would make an Article of Faith of what was not so before for some of your eminent Schollars hold that Doth any of them say his pure thought has that power or his Will if it budds not into words None that ever I heard of The most demand publication and affixion ad Valvas Sancti Petri and in acie Campi Florae and such like formalities far more visible than an ambiguous elocution or supposition which you without being able to shew any express word will needs fix upon us for a yoak to submit all understandings unto Do not reprove so fiercely unless you can give a better account of your Doctrin and actions It becomes you not THIRD DIVISION Containing an Answer to his fifteenth and sixteenth Sections The true Question establisht and the sence of the Bull and Canon defended against the mistakes of his learned Divine Some Notes evidencing that nothing about the Duration of Purgatory was defin'd in the Council of Florence SO much concerning your reply ad hominem Now let us say a word to your question it self By the precedent discourse 't is apparent there was but one formall question disputed in those times though the predicate belong'd to diverse subjects as all universall Predicates do Of which kind viz. universall Predicates 't is impossible to see one if the Questions must be counted as many as the subjects to which they are applyable Now then in our present case I averr the Question to be Vtrum justus nihil habens purgandum immediate potiatur visione Dei Nor do I see how possibly you can deny either the Question to be One or to be this Since the Pope himself both expresly calls it one and puts it to be this Which being agreed on let us see what signifies the Subject Justus nihil habens purgandum Just men or Souls in which there remaines nothing to be purg'd To Divines a Just man or Soul signifies one that is indu'd with charity and to have nothing to be purg'd signifies to have not so much as a veniall Sin left to be purg'd in them that is according to S. Thomas his Doctrin to have his Charity totally fervent perfect Now John the 22th deny'd that such Souls went to heaven before the day of Judgment His opposits the main Body of the Church affirm'd it If then this explication be on all parts evident what can be answerd why this according to your Adversary's tenet was not the onely-handled and debated Question unles you will return to that triviall excuse as to cry the word is not there but onely the sence and meaning And where I pray does your Adversary pretend that his very words are in the Bull that you challenge him so vaporingly to shew you the Question in termes I find him indeed say that 't was the Designe aym drift intention of the Definers but I do not see him undertake that perfect Charity brings an immediate Heaven were precisely
Councils if they proceed duly in their discussion And must all this be conceald and onely three generall words which declare neither particular manner nor matter be barely alleadg'd as a ground of all your spitefull Rhetorick How strange a proceeding is this for a Christian My third note is that in case Christ be a perfect Law-giver and that the Faith he left be sufficient and no more necessary for the Church that is if a Council have nothing to do in making new Articles of Faith then I onely deny Infallibility to Councils in things unnecessary for the Church and unconcerning their duty as Definers of Faith and give them an absolute Inerrancy in all points necessary for the Church that is in all that can truly concern their main purpose that is defining Faith And more than this I beleeve you will find an hundred Catholick Doctors to one deny them as well as I. My fourth note shall be that you would make the denying Infallibility of Councils abstracting both from all matters and manners of proceeding or acceptation of the Church for so you treat it my singular opinion whereas thus spoken of we have for their Errability amongst the Franciscans Castillo and the learned Author of Systema Fidei who cites him for the Dominicans Sotus who tells us that if God by his secret judgment suffers a Council to err he will not permit it long to be conceald from the Church but will take order that it be corrected by another following Council before it be receiv'd in the Church For the Jesuits Bacon telling us it was the opinion of Saint Austin and of all the writers of that Age that the resolution of Faith was compleated in the reception of the whole Christian world For the Fathers Saint Austin himself whose known words are that Plenary Councils have been corrected by following ones where he seems also to speak even of matters of Faith Of Cardinalls Cusanus that it may be observ'd by all experience that an universall Council may fail For your own Doctors worthy Dean Cressy in whom you may find most of these Authors cited Exomol c. 33. where he acknowledges the placing the Infallibility of Councils ultimately in the acceptation of the Church an opinion at least allowable and according to his eminent learning and charity puts down the conveniences he observ'd in that Doctrin to the reducing the Heterodox party Nor onely these but indeed who is there of any note that will say a Council is Infallilible unless it proceed Conciliariter and that it may not proceed conciliarly or after the regular way of a Council I beleeve you are not unacquainted if you be let Pope Martin the fifth teach it you who in the last Session of the Council of Constance declares himself to hold and observe their Decrees made conciliariter non aliter nec alio modo and this too expresly in matters of Faith which caution of his shows he held a possibility of their proceeding illegally Now what they call Conciliariter I call in definitions of Faith attending to Tradition which put I hold and maintain them absolutely Infallible whereas I believe all except me if you examin the matter well and report it candidly put more numerous and more difficult conditions to their Infallibility and far more liable to contingency than what I require which is both extremely hard to fail and when it does must needs be most notorious to the whole world and so beyond my power to pretend or excuse it as you would wisely perswade the Reader by saying this Doctrin brings all into my hands So that we have eminently learned men of all the chief orders in Gods Church Cardinalls and Fathers to omit many or rather all others directly of my opinion in holding a Non est impossibile speaking in generall or rather I of theirs and yet I onely must be raild at as if none in the world held it or broacht it but I. Turn now I beseech you valiant Sir the mouth of your pot-gun against all these renowned Authors and discharge your intemperate spleen against them as abandoning the Catholick Church denying the Authority of Councils and such like which make up a great part of your worthy work and see how feeble an attempt you will make and whether you will not deserve as great an hiss as you have made a noise to no purpose but to breath out some of your swelling passion At least excuse your self to charitable Christians why omitting to mention all others Authority who held the same Doctrin with mine leaping over the backs of all distinctions both of matter and manner without which your discourse signify's nothing and lastly why leaving out words of mine within the same comma which should clear me you rawly took out three onely which were generall ones apply'd them to what particular sence you pleas'd nay extended them to that which was invidious and which I never held and by these arts abus'd the veneration which the vulgar justly have of Councils to stir up in them an undeserved ill opinion against me I pass by in my Book many such like carriages of yours this because you so often and so maliciously glance at I could not leave totally unreflected on If it would not spoil your sport I would crave leave to right the reader in the conceit you would imprint in him of my Romancicall Hell as you are pleas'd to term it the ridiculousness of which lies in your expressions not mine One would think by your putting Dancers Bowlers Fencers c. in other Letters they were my words but he would be mistaken One would think that the words attempting now in Hell in all their severall postures which signify'd as if they were playing tricks there were my words or sence but would be mistaken again One would have thought you might have had the candor not to omit the word quasi which would have spoild the exactness of the postures you fancy and so have much qualify'd your jeft Lastly one that had not known you might have imagin'd you would have transcrib'd to the full point and not still take two or three words single and then you should have seen the mixture of desperation fear and grief marring the perfect molds your Imagination had fram'd and made me say no more but that the shapes of the damned were frightfull and distracted But to omit other little advantages by which you strive in the translating 3 lines to render my sence ridiculous I would gladly know where you find these words spoken of damned Souls as you would here perswade us I would gladly know where you find the word now which you put as mine attempting now in Hell wheras the whole Chapter is intitled declares it self in each Paragraph to speak of their Bodyes onely not Souls and this not now but expresly at the day of Judgment or rather if it could be after it Were ever three lines singled out from their fellows so
far modester than you and profest as he did dislike my opinions so he dissented no otherwise than as one Divine does from another and had never descended to censure any of them Perhaps of this point you may have heard the contrary but I have it under his own hand The second mistake is that he admonish't me of this point for he never descended to any particular and this you might understand as partly the other out of my Dedicatory of my Ratio villicationis written to him and presented in his lifetime The third that I had fore-prepar'd my Book of the Middle State and presently sent it him For the reason of my composing it was the many popular noises rais'd against me by persons some ignorant some malicious as if I were an Heretick which forc't me to write the Treatise in mine own defence and I dedicated it to my Lord though I knew no particular Exception of his against this point but judged he might have some because the greatest cry was against it The Translation as far as came to my knowledge was not made by any design upon earth though by the event I perceive it was out of speciall Providence in Heaven How things passed on your side and what were the true motâ—ves of your publishing the Bull and that Testimony of the Council I can onely collect from the phaenomena of all concurrent circumstances of which you may perhaps hereafter hear more You say the Publishers of the Bull had no respect to the Letter of Vindication I think you aym at one I wrote in Latin to a Person of Honour which was presented Him and by him shew'd to some Jesuits that frequented his House and they can be witnesses of the Truth between us This afterwards as I hear was translated into English and printed If this be the Letter you speak of I would gladly understand why you imagin the Author conceits himself inspir'd with the Genius of Mont-alt whose spirit I confess I take to be very solid and pious and generously adhering to persecuted Truth Nor do I find it unlawfull that any should wish to be inspir'd with it but truly conceive my self far below the hope of such Excellences What you heard well observ'd that all the Protestant Divines of England would subscribe to the same Protestation which is in that Letter I beleeve purely upon your report But tell me first may a Catholick protest nothing that a Protestant will subscribe to or can a Protestant profess nothing but what he will perform Again will any Protestant profess to renounce any Doctrin found to contradict any Authority constantly acknowledg'd for Infallible in the Catholick Church meaning the same by Catholick Church as my writings declare me to do that is all those who adhere to Tradition Will any Protestant be content to have lost his cause if any decree of a Pope be expresly repugnant to him which I there also profess How maliciously blind then was the observer you follow who could not see such distinctive expressions How uncharitable your self who catch at and magnifie every rash cavill out of a tooth to disgrace and abuse him that never did you injury Your calumny of my denying Decrees of Popes and Councils shall be answer'd in its due place You say the Publishers intended not to enter into the lists of Disputation which I easily beleeve and that they were perswaded the very reciting the Bull and Canon would have knockt down the Book which you say was the occasion of their setting them forth beyond all Reply How weak a conceit was this for men that saw both Bull and Canon cited and explicated in that very book and could not be ignorant that in many private Conferences the same Authorities had been debated You thought your Capitall Letters would have dazled the understanding of the adverse party so that none would have dar'd to look further into the meaning of those Authorities But God provided that al should not be so light of belief nor his Church led into Error by such a misgrounded Interpretation of its Decrees You complain much in your tenth Section that this pious intention of the Dispensers was wrong'd As though you did not know that Intentions are secret and must expect their reward from him that sees the heart Men judge of Actions and your self confess the effect was that pious that is credulous persons received satisfaction that is were seduced into Errour by that cuning practice and yet you think it not occasion enough for an understanding man to discover so prejudiciall an Interpretation forc't on the Church and would needs have it a wrong to you that one unknown not intended to be hurt by you should take this pains as if every honest and ableman were not interessed in the Churches quarrell of so high a nature as to set up an Opinion that may prove when examin'd erroneous for an Article of Faith In your eleventh Section you begin to produce your Arguments whereof the first is that all Orthodox writers who have treated this Subject of the State of separated Souls since the promulgation of the Bull a foresaid suppose it as a certain Truth But how many such do you cite Surely of five hundred which have written since those dayes your Readers might civilly expect at least half a score that positively assert it as an assur'd doctrin of the Church But such is the irregular way of discoursing your eminent Scholars use that when they have audaciously advanc't a proposition whereof they know nothing certain if it be deny'd against all Rules of Discourse and Logick they put the Defendant to prove the contrary which peradventure concerns not him a pin whether it be true or no As in the present what concerns it my Faith whether many or few interpret the Bull and Councill as you or I say To make a new Article of Faith the definition must be so clear that none can doubt of it And ipso facto that it needs Interpretation 't is evidently insufficient to make a new obligation of Faith Again suppose your Antecedent be true does any number of Interpreters lock up the understandings of those that follow that they may not see more than their Fore-goers If you say yes shew us some seal of Infallibility in their foreheads by which we may know so much or else your Faith will be but probable but a peradventure I peradventure no and Interest or Passion must supply the rest And such I beleeve is your Faith of this your new-born Article though somewhat an older Opinion In your twelfth Section you enquire into the state of the Question and when you have recited it out of the Bul you presently cry Victory without ever looking into the words and sence that one may note in you the wonted disposition of your great Masters to read the words but seldom take pains to understand them The Bull then sayes that in the dayes of the Popes Predecessor there rose a Question
among Divines concerning the vision of the Souls of Just men after their death in which nothing was to be purg'd when they departed out of this world or if there were it was now totally purg'd whether they see the Divine Essence before the re-assumption of their bodies and the Generall Judgment and also concerning other matters c. I pray you now in vertue of your Logick shew us here what is the subject of the Question what the Predicate To my apprehension the Subject is divided into two parts one is of Just men in whom at their death nothing is to be purg'd the other of them who at their death had somewhat to be purg'd but now are totally purg'd The Predicate is the seeing of God's Essence before the day of Judgment If this be so then resolve me whether the Subject of the Proposition be affirm'd by the Proposition or be that of which the Predicate is affirm'd We whose Logick tends to Demonstration agree that the Subject is not affirm'd but is that of which the Predicate is affirm'd What your eminent Schollars that square Philosophy and consequently Logick to their not understood Faith will say to this I expect you to teach us who are a great Professour I doubt not in their way In the mean while give me leave to think and tell you that the Question whether any Souls be purg'd before the re-assumption of their bodies is no part of the Popes Answer and neither part of the Predicate nor of the Copula and this so evidently that no ingenuous person can reply upon it which I may very well ghess to be the reason why you would not scan the Popes words Nor need I make other answer to Cherubinus he as your self say agreeing with the Pope This is the main prop of your whole cause and yet how weak it proves when seriously and indifferently examin'd though I freely confess it might easily be mistaken by an unwary Reader fully possess 't of the contrary perswasion You see now Sir the way a Scholar that understands Logick would have taken here is since every Question is of whether something be or be not that is of some Proposition that is whether some Predicate be identify'd to the Subject to show that the Predicate of the proposition you would evince is the Predicate here your Subject the Subject By this method you might have hop't to arrive to some strength of sence But instead of doing this you onely cry aloud the words are most plain and express for you that they most clearly and evidently condemn us and then to prove it you are very high against your Adversary's over sight his prepossession his boldness his confidence Sometimes he is blam'd for an absurdity almost impossible in over-looking it Anon you say to do him right as if you would confess you did him wrong before he did see it and cite it Strange challenge of over-sight which consists with a grant of both seeing and citing So that all you bring in your own behalf and this in the main support of your cause is contradiction to your self calumny of your Adversary many bold sayings and not one Schollar-like attempt of proof Sweet Sir will this serve think you to prove your Adversary a Puny and your self a great Clerk or rather will not the Reader judge that the differences of your performance will transpose those appellations In your thirteenth Section you reprehend your Adversary that he pretends there was but one Question onely disputed and defin'd at that time and affirm stoutly that it is not possible for him to perswade aâ— Intelligent Reader thereof though both the Pope and Cherubinus by your confession call it a Question and not Questions 'T is an hard case that the Pope's own word cannot protect him but we must be put to prove the Pope spake what he thought But let us see your Arguments You say the Pope makes two Questions and that Cherubinus does the same their words being equivalent I see not why I should make two disputings of the same case the first of Souls in which nothing remain'd to be purg'd the other of Souls in which something is to be purg'd But since by your own confession and by the words cited by your self they say these two made but one Question a man would have expected you should bring somewhat to prove what you say and not upon your bare word force us to beleeve they contradict themselves in the same period But to speak sence as well as words who knows not that the word Question may have two meanings one to signify what may be ask't another what is or may be doubted An asking may be fram'd of any proposition we are ignorant of a doubting onely of those against which we have some kind of apparent reason Now you are pleas'd to look no farther than for what may be ask't but your Adversary goes on to what may be doubted of and therefore finding no speciall doubt of one part of the persons you divide which was not in the other he was so clear-sighted as to find that the Pope and Cherubinus exprest themselves properly and dogmatically whereas you make them break the common Laws both of Sence and Grammar and when they would speak of many Questions to use the singular number You add a confirmation out of the Title of the Bull in which in the plurall number Articles are sayd to be defin'd not distinguishing betwixt Articles and Questions whereas an Article must be fore-debated to be call'd a Question So that if there had been but one Article doubted of and debated there was but one Question decided though many Articles defin'd Nor do you well appeal to the 2d Scholion of Cherubinus where you onely find that ten Heresies are condemned by this Bull for it is a far different thing to condemn a known falsity and to determin a doubted question So that your clear-sight fail'd you also in this point As for Eymericus I easily confess of his worth all that Pegna writes But as all that doth not except him from being a man so neither from having had his imperfections and this in particular that he was too censorious which is pardonable in him few Saints arriving to a perfect exinanition of proper interest till towards the End of their dayes Wherefore as all Judges for the most part are subject to draw causes to their own Courts so this Inquisitour was willing to make many heads upon which Delinquents might fall within the compass of the Inquisition by which means he set great quarrels betwixt his own Order and that of Saint Francis condemning Raymundus Lullus whom the Franciscans maintain to be a Saint of Heresy for attempting to demonstrate the Trinity In which controversy our modern Divines side much with the Franciscans Hence I infer you can ground little upon this Author as to increasing Articles of Faith Your citation out of Spondanus is less to the purpose for his relation reports