men altogether unletter'd men called from mending nets to preach the Gospell If this were so That God according to his good pleasure without any consideration of study or height of parts chose simple unlearned unstudied men to be Prophets and Apostles and Teachers then why should any thinke he hath so confined or entailed his free Spirit or vocation of men upon great parts and studies that he may not if he please call the like unstudied simple men from the Plough or Fisher-boat or Stall or Shop-board to be Ministers of his Gospel and Teachers of his people now My Brethren you see I have not prevaricated or diminished ought of the strength of the Argument which is urged in favour of Lay-mens preaching In answer to which laying aside all partiality to my selfe and prejudice against them I shall with the same spirit of meekness and Candour with which Saint Paul here in this Text bespoke his Corinthians beseech you who heare me this day to observe and weigh and consider well this which I shall say for a Reply First Far far be it from me so to flatter the place of my Education or so to biass my beleef by any false ovevarluing of humane Industry or great parts that I should pinion as it were or put limits to the power of the Almighty Or should be so irreligiously bold as to gain-say that piece of his Gospell which compares his holy Spirit to the Wind which bloweth where it listeth If they who thus pretend to a private Inspiration doe meane that whatever God did in the times heretofore he is able to doe now I shall easily grant it And here in the presence of you all confesse my selfe to be of their opinion Nor shall I make any doubt or scruple at all to say that if we looke upon what God is able to doe by the same power by which he was able to raise up Children to Abraham out of stones or to speake yet more neerly to the Argument in hand by the same power that hee was able to make a Herd-man a Prophet or a Fisher-man an Apostle he is able in our times also if he please to make the meanest Tradesman one of the greatest Luminaries of his Church Since to an Omnipotent Agent whose gifts are meerly Arbitrary and depend wholly upon the pleasure of his owne will the greatest endowments of men and the least are alike easie But though he be able to doe this and in the ancient times of the Scripture have imparted his Gifts without respect of Persons yet whether he now will or whether in our times hee doth still thus extraordinarily raise up Teachers to himselfe is extreamly to be doubted For here with all the Christian gentleness and reason which may possibly conduce to the clearing of this doubt were I to argue this Controversie with one of those men who invade our function and from gathering of Sycamore fruit step up into the Pulpit I would onely aske him this question What Commission he hath thus to usurp upon our Office Or who signed him his patent Since the Apostle tells us in the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrewes at the fourth Verse A place well worth your marking my Brethren That no man taketh this honour of a Priest to himselfe But he who is called of God as was Aaron I know his common answer will bee that God hath called him to this Office by the secret Instinct and Motion of his Holy Spirit But then he must not take it ill if I yet farther aske him by what signes or markes or testimonies or tokens he can either maâ—… it reasonably appeare to himselfe or others that God hath dealt with him as he dealt with some of the Prophets or Apostles called him from his Trade by such a motion of his Spirit Elisha we know made Iron swim and knew mens Closet-discourses in a farre Countrey which was a sure and certaine signe that God had called him to be a Prophet The Apostles also we know wrought many of Christs miracles which was a most infallible signe that God had chosen them to be Apostles If any of these men who derive their warrant from the same sacred spring can make Iron swim or like Elisha remaining here in their owne Israel can tell us what the King of Syria saies in his Bed-chamber Or if like Saint Peter they can cure fevers and diseases by their bare shadowes passing over them Or if like the rest of the Apostles having never before knowne Letters they can of a sudden speake all Languages the Controversie is at an end It would bee a very great sinne against the Spirit of God to deny that hee is in them of a Truth But if all the proofe and signe they can give us that they have him be onely a strong perswasion of themselves Nay if by an infallible Illumination they could assure themselves that they have him yet as many as have not the like infallible Illumination to assure them so too will not be guilty of an unpardonable offence if they suspect they have him not For here I must once more repeat my former Question and aske by what effects or signes of the Spirit men shall know them to be called By what will some man say why Doe you not heare them preach expound Scripture unfold Prophecies interpret Parables nay plucke the veile and cloud from the Booke of Mysteries it selfe the very Revelation Can any of you great Schollers with all your study of Philosophers Fathers Councells Schoole-men Historians Oratours Poets either hold your Congregations longer or send them away more edified And will you yet ask Questions Or doubt of the certainty of their vocation I must not dissemble with you if I could meet with an unlearned Handicraft-man who without study can doe this to the same height and measure of Truth as those unjustly-cryed downe learned and well-studied men doe I should begin to alter my opinion And should reckon him as hee deserves in the number of the inspired But alas my Brethren as I am not come hither to disparage the guifts of the Holy Ghost in what person soever I finde them or to perswade that Scripture rightly expounded is not one and the same from the mouth of a Priest or an inspired Lay-man so this I must freely say to you That as many of those strange Teachers as I have heard have expounded Scripture indeed and have ventured upon some of the hardest places of the Prophets But then if all my studies of the Bible assisted with all those holy uncorrupted learned helps which might enable mee to understand it aright have not deceived me their expositions and Sermons how passionately delivered or how long soever are evident proofes to mee that they have not the Spirit If they had they would never certainely expound Scripture so directly contrary to his meaning Or make the writings of the Prophets or Apostles weare only that present shape not which the holy Ghost hath
was not a Dispute but a wild conflict where neither answered one another but with some mixture of ill language were both Opponents by turnes Next because the greatest part of the Auditory would have consisted of such a confluence of Townsmen and women as understood good Arguments and Replies as little as they do Latine and so the issue of this Disputation would probably have been the same with the former where M. Cheynell was thought to have the better by one Sex and M. Yerbury by the other Loath therefore to forfeit my discretion before such an Incompetent Assembly of witnesses with as much dispatch as one ingaged by promise could make I returned to his Letter this fuller Answer SIR Among the other praises which greater friends to the Muses then I perceive you are have bestowed upon Virgil he hath been called the Virgin Poet. Yet Ausonius ordering his Verses another way hath raised one of the most loose lascivious Poems from him that I think ever wore the name of a Marriage-song Me thinks Sir and I doubt not but all they who shal compare them together will be of my opinion you in your Letter have just dealt so with my Sermon it went from my hands forth a sober Virgin but falling into yours it returns to me so strumpeted so distorted in the sense and misapplied in the expressions that what I preach'd a Sermon you by translating whatever I have said of false Prophets to the Parliament have with the dexterity of a falsification transformed and â—…anged 〈◊〉 a Libell This I do not wonder at when I remember what the Physitian was who said that where the Recipient is distempered the most wholsome â—…od turns into his disease just as we see in those harmfull creatures whose whole essence and composition is made up of sting 〈◊〉 poyson the juice which they suck from flowers and roses concâ—…s into venome and becomes poyson too Having said this by way of Preface to my following Reply first Sir confining my self to your method how you spend your morning thoughts being impossible for me outright to know unless your thoughts were either visible or you transparent desire you wil not think me over-curious if I open a door upon you 〈◊〉 proceed by conjecture You say you use to spend them upon a better subject then a pot of dead drink that hath a little froth at top and dregs at bottome To what passage of my Letter this refers or why a language which I do not understand should possess the porch entrance to yours I am not Oedipus enough to unriddle But if I may guess what your morning thoughts were when as you confess you did let them loose by your pen to discharge themselves upon me in a shower of rude untheologicall flat downright detraction though they were not employ'd upon a frothy subject yet they shew that you were at that time in his distemper in the Gospel a piece of whose raging and distraction 't was to fome at mouth Next Sir had I been present at your Sermon as I am glad I was not for I desire not to be an Auditor where I must hear my self libelled from the pulpit I shal casily grant by the taste which you have given me in this short Conference with you of the perspicuity of your stile and the clearness of your matter that 't was possible enough for me not to understand it I doe therefore acknowledge it as a favour from you that you will let me no longer wander in uncertainties or write to you upon the mis-report of a fallible Intelligencer but will your selfe be my Clue to guide me to what you said Which favour you have much heightned by robbing your weightier employments of so much time to convey it in as might have been spent in providing your selfe to preach thrice a day and yet not doe it so hastily or with such a running negligence as to be thought to preach but once a week As for your Text and the Doctrine built upon it at whom soever it was shot I shall not quarrell with it But how your Corollary should concern any thing that I have said in my Sermon contrary to your Doctrine I cannot possibly imagine who do there onely speak of the vanity of some of our Modern Prophets who can see Idolatry in a Church-window And do onely strive to prove that for people to refrain the Church as you know who did because some though perhaps not of our age paid worship to the windowes was a fear as unreasonable as theirs was who refused to go to Sea because there was a Painter in the City who limn'd shipwracks Sir had you a minde to deal pertinently or ingenuously with me you would witness for me that though I speak in defence of the Ornamentall use of Images yet I in no passage of my Sermon do defend any Image or pourtraicture made of the Deity Sir 't is not your saying That no picture can be made of God because there is nothing like him in Heaven or Earth or the following proofs of your letter which I conceive to be a piece of your Sermon at St. Maries which because I came not to it you in charity have sent home to me that perswades me that any such picture is unlawfull Nature as well as the numerous places of Scripture which you have quoted to prove that which I never yet denied have long since taught me that to make or draw any picture or Image of God is not onely a breach of the second Commandement which is built upon the invisibility of his Essence and Nature but that the Attempt would be much more vain then if a Painter should endeavour to limn a soul or minde which not affording any Idea or resemblance to his fancy to be taken by cannot possibly by him be exprest in Colours The Task therefore to make any Draught or Figure of God pray Sir being misled by your example do not think me superfluous in my pursuit of an Argument to which I was not bound to reply is besides the sinfulness of it much more impossible For First Sir if the School-men which I hear you once said you had long studied to little purpose may be Iudges He cannot be limn'd or drawn because he is a Spirit Therefore not capable to be represented by any gross materiall Thing Next because He is Infinite and therefore not capable to fall under Symmetry or be circumscribed within the finite lines which stream from a Painters pencill Thirdly because He is Simple that is as your Schoolmen say for you know Sir I am but an English poet All in All and All in every part Or in other Termes a Thing entirely uniform and indivisible within it self which admits not of any false representation of it self by limbs or parts Lastly Sir because I will not be tedious and go over all his other Attributes who shall paint his Omniscience who his Omnipotence who his Eternity who his Ubiquity Knowing this
your running negligence which should help to make your sophisticall criticisme perfect sense Truly Sir if it be so high a fault to picture God I may justly wonder that any picture of a Saint turned into an Idoll should be retained and pleaded for by any man that pretends to be a Protestant and if it be impossible to picture God it is also impossible to picture God-man And I beleeve that you will acknowledge our Mediatour to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4. That the Sun and Images cannot be put in the scales of a comparison in point of fitness to be preserved is a truth written with a Sun-beame Sir I never durst argue from the abuse of a thing against the use of it if the thing be necessary But the Sun is necessary and Images are not necessary ergo there is no parity of reason betweene the termes of your comparison 5. It appeares to me by your shifting fallacy that you make Copes as necessary as clean Linnen 6. You will never be able to prove that all that the prelates and their Faction have borrowed out of the Missall Ritualls Breviary Pontificall of Rome are to be found in any Lyturgie received by the Primitive Church And I would intreat you to consider whether they who doe profess a seperation from the Church of Rome can in reason receive and imbrace such trash and trumpery And yet though you would willingly be esteemed a Protestant I find you very unwilling to part with any thing which the Prelates have borrowed from the Court rather then Church of Rome 7. Your next Paragraph doth concerne Tradition I shall give you leave to preferre the constant and universall consent of the Church of Christ in all ages before the reason of any single man but Sir you doe very ill to call the testimony of the spirit speaking in the word to the Conscience of private men a private spirit I thinke you are more profane in the stating of this point then Bellarmine himselfe 8. You have not yet proved that any Prelate can challenge the Sole power of Ordination and Iurisdiction Iure divino 9. I should be glad to know for how many yeares you will justifie the purity of the Doctrine Discipline and Government in England I beleeve the Doctrine Discipline and Government of the Prelaticall faction whom you call the Church was not excellent if you reckon from 1630. to 1640. and that is time enough for men of our time for to examine I beleeve that you will acknowledge that the Prelates did lay an Ostracisme upon those who did oppose them who were in the right both in the point of Doctrine and Disciplâ—…ne we shall in due time dispute Though Prelacy it selfe be an usurpation yet there were many other encroachments which may justly be called Prelaticall usurpations and the Parliament hath sufficiently declared its judgement in this point they have clearly proved that Prelacy had taken such a deepe root in England and had such a destructive influence not only into the pernicious evills of the Church but Civill State that the Law of right reason even Salus populi quae suprema lex est did command and compell them to take away both roote and branch you may dispute that point with them Sir you cannot prove that Prelacy is an Order of the Church as ancient as the Christian Church it self and made venerable by the never interrupted reception of it in all Ages of the Church but ours 10. I am no Turkish Prophet I never preacht any piece of the Alchoran for good Doctrine much less did I ever make it a piece of the Gospell all that I say is this that Christians incorporated in a Civill State may make use of Civill and naturall means for their outward safety And that the Parliament hath a Legall power more then sufficient to prevent and restrain Tyranny Finally the Parliament hath power to defend that Civill right which we have to exercise the true Protestant Religion this last point is sure of highest consequence because it concernes Gods immediate honour and the Peoples temporall and eternall good Pray Sir shew me if you can why he who saith the Protestants in Ireland may defend their Civill right for the free exercise of their Religion against the furious assaults of the bloudie Rebells doth by that assertion proclaime himself a Turke and Denison the Alchoran you talke of the Papists Religion Sir their faith is faction their Religion is Rebellion they think they are obliged in conscience to put Heretiques to the sword this Religion is destructive to every Civill State into which true Protestants are incorporated therefore I cannot but wonder at your extravagancy in this point Sir Who was it that would have imposed a Popish Service Book upon Scotland by force of Armes You presume that I conceive the King had an intent to extirpate the Protestant Religion Sir I am sure that they who did seduce or over-awe the King had such a designe I doe not beleeve that the Queene and her Agents the Papists in England who were certainly confederate with the Irish Rebells had any intent to settle the true Protestant Religion you cannot but beleeve that their intent was to extirpate the Protestant Religion by the sword and to plant Popery in its stead I know Christ doth make 〈◊〉 and breake the spirituall power of Antichrist by his word and spirit for Antichrist is cast out of the hearts and consciences of men by the spirit of the Lord Iesus but Christ is King of Nations as well as King of Saints and will breake the temporall power of Antichrist by Civill and naturall meanes If Papists and Delinquents are in readiness to resist or assault the Parliament by Armes how can the Parliament be defended or Delinquents punished but by force of Armes I know men must be converted by a spirituall perswasion but they may be terrified by force of Armes from persecution All that I say is the Parliament may repell force with force and if men were afraid to profess the truth because of the Queenes Army and are now as fearfull to maintaine errours for feare of the Parliament the scales are even and we may by study conference disputation and prayer for a blessing upon all be convinced and converted by the undenyable demonstrations of the Spirit Sir this is my perswasion and therefore I am sure far from that Mahumetan perswasion of which I am unjustly accused 11. I am glad that you speake out and give light to your darke roome I did not accuse you of Conventiâ—…les I beleeve you hate those Christian meetings which Tertullian Minutius Pliny and others speake of we had lights and witnesses good store at our meetings And as for your conceit that I deserve to be in Bedlam because of the predominancy of my pride and passion and the irregularity of my will Sir I confess that I deserve to be in Hell a worse place then Bedlam and if you scoffe at
guilty of the breach of the Text you quote against Surfeiting and Drunkenness Luk. 21. 34. That part of your Paragraph therefore which ends in exhortation is a piece of Homily which returnes to you to be made use of towards some other on the next last Wednesday of the month where Fasting and Sobriety will be seasonable Theams I grant Sir that Reprobation is a Mystery to be trembled at Yet Sir all they who maintaining it to be absolute doe revive the fiction of the three destinies where one holds the Distaffe on which the Thred of every mans Fate is spun and doe preach a piece of Zeno's Philosophy for a piece of Saint Paul's Epistles can have no reason to accuse me of a jest because I apply'd a spindle to the Distaffe on which mens fates are rolled Sir in plainer termes as absolute Reprobation is a piece of Stoicisme which was never held to be Christian till it crept forth into the Church from the same fancy which was the wombe in which the Presbyterian Government was formed so me thinks Lucian Sir how cheaply soever you think of him or me for having closed my last letter to you with a piece of his Nigrinus in his confutation of this Heathenish Errour which hath made so many hang themselves urgeth Arguments which would become one of the Fathers of the Church I know not whether you have read his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But if you have he there tells you that if there be such a thing as the fatall Decree you speak of 1. That all they who lye under the Inflexibility of it being tyed by an unalterable necessity to do what they do can in no reason be rewarded if they do well nor with any Justice be punisht if they do ill Next that the Sinnes which they commit if they cannot but commit them are not to be called their Sinnes but the Sinnes of that Decree which laid this necessity upon them And therefore Thirdly that a murtherer thus predestined if he should be arraigned may say to any Iudge thus stoically perswaded Why doe you accuse me Pray call my Destiny to the Bar and do not sentence me but my fate to the Racke and Wheel I was but an oversway'd Instrument in this Murther and was but such an Engine to my Destiny as my Sword was to me Though this were spoken by a Heathen only in disproof of Fate yet since Saint Chrysostome in more then three Sermons had said the same things in disproofe of absolute Reprobation I hope Sir neither Calvin nor Piscator have so mistaught you to understand Saint Paul as from any Epistler of his to conclude peremptorily that anywithout their desert are given up to a Reprobate minde and finally struck necessitated to a remediless impenitence The 9. Chap. of the Romans I have long since consider'd and studyed it by the most serâ—… impartiall lights which might uncloud the great Mysterie to me which lyes so obscurely there wrap'd up And to deale freely with you the best Commentator I ever yet met with to lead me through the darkness of it was another place of Scripture or two set in presence and scale with this both which joyned me thought made perfectly the Cloud which guided the Iewes through the Wilderness which was a Cloud to the Aegyptians but a pillar of fire to the Israelites Sir I know that neither Saint Paul hath written Contradictions nor any other of the Apostles written that which is Contradictory to Saint Paul Sir I presume also that Aristotles Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath not so forsaken your memory but you know that an Universall Affirmative and a particular Negative are a perfect Contradiction and cannot both be true Here then stands the case You building your Opinion upon the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or great depth of the ninth Chapter to the Romans inferre from thence that God gives Repentance only to some few whose peremptory will 't is that they only shall be saved Saint Paul in his first Epistle to Timothy Chapter 2. vers 4. gives us a line and plummet to sound this Depth and sayes expresly That 't is the will of God that all men should be saved Between these propositions 't is his will that all shall and 't is his will that only a few shall be saved there is no Medium in which they may be reconciled but one of them must necessarily be true the other false This then being so I have alwayes held it safer to build my Faith upon those cleare places of the Scripture which have no vaile before their face then those which are mysterious and lead me to a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 over which I stand amazed but cannot from thence infer I doe farther profess to you that I am not so wedded to this or any other Speculative Opinion but that if you will shew more convincing Scripture for the contrary I shall most readily renounce my owne thoughts and espouse my self to yours Your premonition or forewarning of me that we at Christ-church would e're long taste of a visitation hath since come to pass and in part approved it self to be true Prophecy Whether inspired by you or no I know not but there have been two with us who have taken away as many Copes and guilt candlesticks as if they had been superstitious Sir 't is no wonder to me that in our times silver should be Popery Or that Church utensills if they be Gold should be called superstition But certainly Sir 't was a great misinformation to send them to search for Copes or things of value to my poor Protestant Chamber where there never was a Cope though perhaps they might have found a long-disused Surplice there And as for Idolls of price if they had searcht my purse I beleeve that all the popery which in these impoverishing Times they could have found in it cast into the fire like the Iewish Earerings would neither have come forth a Silver Crucifix much less so wealthy an Idoll as a Golden Calse Sir since at length I understand you that by agreeing upon the true state of the questions before we dispute them you mean that we should agree upon the termes in which they are to be held I am very ready to comply with you in that reasonable particular But to accept of any either of your eleven English or your three Latine questions in the terms in which you have formed them I can by no meanes consent First Sir Because I find a piece of Artifice in the Web and contrivance of them which hath something of a Trap and Snare and Engine in it Which is that by making them as Popish questions as you can especially one of them where you insert the words Missall Breviary and Pontificall words odious to the people and part of the dismall spell which for six yeares hath raised the spirit of discord to walk among us if I should hold it affirmatively under these termes of hatred 't is
possible it may beget an opinion in the minds of those that know me not that though I have more then once profest my selfe ready to fall a sacrifice in the defence of the Protestant Religion yet that this was but a disguise which concealed my hypocrisie 'till provoked I were put to defend the superstitions of the Church of Rome Sir I know upon what lesser grounds then this some in our credulous times have been unjustly called Papists Next Sir if I should hold them affirmatively with their faces thus looking towards Popery and should bring them thus clothed in your termes of superstition into the Divinity Schoole I doubt very much whethet the publickness of the Defence may not draw an aspersion not onely upon me and the Moderator if he will vouchsafe to sit in the Chaire whilst we quarrell but upon the whole already too much defamed University which such as you have from numerous Pulpits called long since Popishly affected But if it should allow of such a Dispute 't would lend fuell to your calumnies and be endangered to be no longer thought Popish but out-right a Papist Thirdly Sir your first and last Question if they were purged of their odious termes cannot publiquely be maintained without some affront to the Parliament who by one Ordinance have put down the Common-prayer-book by another Episcopacy If therefore under your termes I should publiquely stand up in defence of them you had need procure a third Ordinance which when I have done may keep me safe Yet Sir to assure you that this is no evasion in me to decline a dispute because my Sermon was the occasion of your challenge of me in the Pulpit and of this private conference betweene us since Since also you allow me the liberty of alteration and to adde my stroke to the Anvill on which the questions to be disputed on between us are to receive the last form and shape in which with least offence and scandall they may walk into the publique Lastly since the three Latine Questions you sent me are three passages of my Sermon but so corrupted from themselves as shew them to have been once purely Protestant but passing through your hands have degenerated and clothed themselves with a to-be-suspected robe of Popery the nearest way I know for us to agree upon their true state is to deale with them as the Bishops at the Reformation dealt with the Religion of the Church of Rome that is purge them from their corruptions and restore them to the Primitive rule from whence they have digrest Which Rule being my Sermon if you read it with open eyes presents you with your three questions in this more genuine forme An Liturgia Anglicana ideò â—…liminanda sit quia nonnullas partes ab Ecclesiâ Romanâ mutuata est Neg. Christi Sanctorumque imagines in Reformator Ecclesiis lâ—…ite retineri possint Aff. Regimen Ecclesiae Anglicanae per Episcepos sit Antichristianum ex eo quòd Ecclesia Romana quaÌ„ nonnulli sedem Antichristi statuunt sic gubernatur Neg. Vpon these three Questions which are but three periods of my Sermon cast into a problematicall forâ—…e if you approve of them and like a generous Adversary will promise me that neither for sending of them to you now nor for defending them hereafter I shall be question'd for this I require no other security but your word I will not faile God assisting me to meet you in the Divinity Schoole at University weapons when ever you shall think fit to call upon me and to bring with you those Arguments which you say you reserve for that place and in your two letters have not vouchsafed to afford me who doe daily pray for I begin to be weary of fighting with shades that this unnecessary conflict may at length end in a Christian peace between you the opponent and me the defender of The Sermon against False Prophets J. MAYNE From my Chamber this Afternoone Feb. 4. 1646. In the evening to the afternoone in which this Letter was sent M. Cheynell returned an Answer not so large I confess as I expected but composed of Language so complying with my desires that I unfainedly felt a new strife within my self how having hitherto tolerably borne his rougher assaults I should preserve my self from being conquer'd by his civilities Which I confess have such a forcible charme upon my nature softend and tutor'â—… to it by Religion that the World cannot afford an Enemy who shall raise such a tempest of persecution against me but that I shall be ready to afford him my Imbraces and Armes if he will be content to be received there in a calme I do farther confess that M. Cheynell by undertaking to secure me against the danger which might have followed a publique dispute hath not onely verified my expression and shewne himselfe a generous adversary but by that engagement of himself hath made me see what reason I have to complaine of my hard fortune which hath left me onely the will and not the power to be in the like kind as generous to Him back again His Letter was to a syllable this SIR You may be confident that the Messenger was not sent by me because he return'd without you and without his fees I never writ up one Letter to London that did in the least measure reflect upon you if your Sermon had not been printed I had not spoke one word against it I desire to deale with you in a rationall way and therefore I doe accept of your Academicall proposition or challenge so often sent me and because I find my prayers in some measure answered and you more civill then heretofore I shall deale freely with you I doe here under my owne hand assure you that if you be questioned for defending these Propositions in a Scholasticall way you know reproaches are not Scholasticke in the publique Schools I will answer for you the Parliament will not question you for any learned rationall debate about Prelates or the Common-Prayer-Booke for the satisfaction of your self and others I will meet you if you please at the Doctor of the Chaire his lodgings to morrow about two of the clock in the afternoon I doubt not but by his advice we shall agree upon termes fit to express the points in Controversie if you like the proposall be pleased to send your approbation of it in two lines by this bearer to Your friend to serve you FRAN CHEYNELL Mert. Coll. Feb. 4. 1646. To this Letter which was the last I received from him by the same Messenger that brought it I return'd this Answer which was the last he received from me SIR I shall God willing meet you to morrow at your houre at the Doctor of the Chaire's Lodging Where if you be as willing to submit to the termes which he shall think fit to put the Questions in which we are to dispute upon as I shall be there will be no variance between us there nor shall we I