Believers And the Reason I gave why I had not gone through the Writings in the Epistles to Collect the Fundamental Articles of Faith as I had through the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles was Because those Fundamental Articles were in those Epistles promiscuously and without distinction mixed with other Truths And therefore we shall find and discern those great and necessary Points best in the Preachings of our Saviour and the Apostles to those who were yet ignorant of the Faith and unconverted This as far as I know my own thoughts was the reason why I did as Mr. Edwards complains p. 109. not proceed to the Epistles and not give an Account of them as I had done of the Gospels and Acts. This I imagined I had in the close of my Book so fully and clearly expressed particularly p. 125. that I supposed no body how willing soever could have mistaken me But this Gentleman is so much better acquainted with me than I am with my self sees so deeply into my Heart and knows so perfectly every thing that passes there that he with assurance tells the World p. 109. That I purposely omitted the Epistolary Writings of the Apostles because they are fraught with other Fundamental Doctrines beside that one which I mention And then he goes on to enumerate those Fundamental Articles p. 110 111. viz. The Corruption and Degeneracy of Humane Nature with the true Original of it the Defection of our first Parents the Propagation of Sin and Mortality our Restoration and Reconciliation by Christ's Blood the Eminency and Excellency of his Priesthood the Efficacy of his Death the full Satisfaction made thereby to Divine Iustice and his being made an All sufficient Sacrifice for Sin Christ's Righteousness our Iustification by it Election Adoption Sanctification Saving Faith The Nature of the Gospel The New Covenant The Riches of God's Mercy in the way of Salvation by Iesus Christ The certainty of the Resurrection of Humane Bodies and of the future Glory Give me leave now to ask you seriously whether these which you have here set down under the Title of Fundamental Doctrines are such when reduced to Propositions that every one of them is required to be believed to make a Man a Christian and such as without the actual belief thereof he cannot be saved If they are not so every one of them you may call them Fundamental Doctrines as much as you please they are not of those Doctrines of Faith I was speaking of which are only such as are required to be actually believed to make a Man a Christian. If you say some of them are such necessary Points of Faith and others not you by this specious List of well-sounding but unexplained terms arbitrarily collected only make good what I have said viz. That the necessary Articles of Faith are in the Epistles promiscuously delivered with other Truths and therefore they cannot be distinguished but by some other mark than being barely found in the Epistles If you say that they are all of them necessary Articles of Faith I shall then desire you to reduce them to so many plain Doctrines and then prove them to be every one of them required to be believed by every Christian Man to make him a Member of the Christian Church For to begin with the first 't is not enough to tell us as you do that the Corruption and Degeneracy of Humane Nature with the true Original of it the Defection of our first Parents the Propagation of Sin and Mortality is one of the great Heads of Christian Divinity But you are to tell us what are the Propositions we are required to believe concerning this matter For nothing can be an Article of Faith but some Proposition and then it will remain to be proved that these Articles are necessary to be believed to Salvation The Apostles Creed was taken in the first Ages of the Church to contain all things necessary to Salvation I mean necessary to be believed But you have now better thought on it and are pleased to enlarge it and we no doubt are bound to submit to your Orthodoxy The List of Materials for his Creed for the Articles are not yet formed Mr. Ed's closes p. 111. with these words These are the Matters of Faith contained in the Epistles and they are Essential and Integral parts of the Gospel it self What just these Neither more nor less If you are sure of it pray let us have them speedily for the Reconciling of Differences in the Christian Church which has been so cruelly torn about the Articles of the Christian Faith to the great Reproach of Christian Charity and Scandal of our true Religion Mr. Ed's having thus with two learned Terms of Essential and Integral Parts sufficiently proved the Matter in Question viz. That all those he has set down are Articles of Faith necessary to be believed to make a Man a Christian he grows warm at my omission of them This I cannot complain of as unnatural The Spirit of Creed-making always arising from an heat of Zeal for our own Opinions and warm Endeavours by all ways possible to decry and bear down those who differ in a tittle from us What then could I expect more gentle and candid than what Mr. Ed's has subjoyned in these words And therefore it is no wonder that our Author being sensible of this viz. That the Points he has named were Essential and Integral parts of the Gospel would not vouchsafe to give us an Abstract of those inspired Writings the Epistles but passes them by with some Contempt Sir when your Angry Fit is over and the abatement of your Passion has given way to the return of your Sincerity I shall beg you to read this passage in 297 pag. of my Book These Holy Writers viz. the Pen-men of the Scriptures INSPIRED from above writ nothing but Truth and in most places very weighty Truths to us now for the expounding clearing and confirming of the Christian Doctrine and establishing those in it who had embraced it And again pag. 299. The other parts of DIVINE REVELATION are Objects of Faith and are so to be received They are Truths of which none that is once known to be such i. e. revealed may or ought to be disbelieved And if this does not satisfie you that I have as high a Veneration for the Epistles as you or any one can have I require you to publish to the World those passages which shew my Contempt of them In the mean time I shall desire my Reader to examine what I have writ concerning the Epistles which is all contained between p. 290 and 301 of my Book And then to Judge whether I have made bold with the Epistles in what I have said of them or this Gentleman made bold with Truth in what he has writ of me Humane Frailty will not I see easily quit its hold What it loses in one part it will be ready to regain in another and not be hindred from
of all the rest He pretends it is this That all Men ought to understand their Religion This I confess is a Reasoning I did not think of nor would it hardly I fear have been used but by one who had first took up his Opinion from the Recommendation of Fashion or Interest and then sought Topicks to make it good Perhaps the deference due to your Character excused you from the trouble of quoting the Page where I pretend as you say and it is so little like my way of Reasoning that I shall not look for it in a Book where I remember nothing of it and where without your Direction I fear the Reader will scarce find it Though I have not that vivacity of Thought that elevation of Mind which Mr. Ed's demands yet common sense would have kept me from contending that there is but one Article because all Men ought to understand their Religion Numbers of Propositions may be harder to be remembred but 't is the abstruseness of the Notions or obscurity inconsistency or doubtfulness of the Terms or Expressions that makes them hard to be understood And one single Proposition may more perplex the Understanding than twenty other But where did you find I contended for one single Article so as to exclude all the rest You might have remembred that I say p. 44. That the Article of the One only true God was also necessary to be believed This might have satisfied you that I did not so contend for one Article of Faith as to be at defiance with more than one However you insist on the word one with great vigour from p. 108. to 121. And you did well you had else lost all the force of that killing stroke reserved for the Close in that sharp Jest of Vnitarians and a clinch or two more of great moment Having found by a careful perusal of the Preachings of our Saviour and his Apostles that the Religion they proposed consisted in that short plain easie and intelligible Summary which I set down p. 301. in these words Believing Jesus to be the Saviour promised and taking him now raised from the Dead and constituted the Lord and Judge of Men to be their King and Ruler I could not forbear magnifying the Wisdom and Goodness of God which infinitely exceeds the thoughts of ignorant vain and narrow-minded Man in these following words The All-Merciful God seems herein to have consulted the Poor of this World and the Bulk of Mankind THESE ARE ARTICLES that the Labouring and Illiterate Man may comprehend Having thus plainly mentioned more than one Article I might have taken it amiss that Mr. Ed's should be at so much pains as he is to blame me for contending for one Article because I thought more than one could not be understood had he not had many fine things to say in his declamation upon one Article which affords him so much Matter that less than seven pages could not hold it Only here and there as Men of Oratory often do he mistakes the business as p. 115. where he says I urge that there must be nothing in Christianity that is not plain and exactly levelled to all mens Mother Wit I desire to know where I said so or that the very manner of every thing in Christianity must be clear and intelligible every thing must be presently comprehended by the weakest Noddle or else it 's no part of Religion especially of Christianity As he has it p. 119. I am sure it is not in pag. 255. 289. 292. of my Book These therefore to convince him that I am of another Opinion I shall desire some body to read to Mr. Edwards For he himself reads my Book with such Spectacles as make him find Meanings and Words in it neither of which I put there He should have remembred that I speak not of all the Doctrines of Christianity nor all that is published to the World in it but of those Truths only which are absolutely required to be believed to make any one a Christian. And these I find are so plain and easie that I see no Reason why every body with me should not Magnifie the Goodness and Condescension of the Almighty who having out of his free Grace proposed a new Law of Faith to sinful and lost Man hath by that Law required no harder terms nothing as absolutely necessary to be believed but what is suited to Vulgar Capacities and the Comprehension of Illiterate Men. You are a little out again p. 118. where you Ironically say as if it were my sense Let us have but one Article though it be with defiance to all the rest Jesting apart Sir This is a serious Truth That what our Saviour and his Apostles preached and admitted Men into the Church for believing is all that is absolutely required to make a Man a Christian. But this is without any Defiance of all the rest taught in the Word of God This excludes not the belief of any one of those many other Truths contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments which it is the Duty of every Christian to study and thereby build himself up on our most Holy Faith receiving with stedfast Belief and ready Obedience all those things which the Spirit of Truth hath therein revealed But that all the rest of the inspired Writings or if you please Articles are of equal necessity to be believed to make a Man a Christian with what was preached by our Saviour and his Apostles that I deny A Man as I have shewn may be a Christian and a Believer without actually believing them Because those whom our Saviour and his Apostles by their Preaching and Discourses converted to the Faith were made Christians and Believers barely upon the receiving what they preached to them I hope it is no derogation to the Christian Religion to say that the Fundamentals of it i. e. all that is necessary to be believed in it by all Men is easie to be understood by all Men. This I thought my self authorized to say by the very easie and very intelligible Articles insisted on by our Saviour and his Apostles which contain nothing but what could be understood by the bulk of Mankind a Term which I know not why Mr. Ed's p. 117. is offended at and thereupon is after his fashion sharp upon me about Captain Tom and his Myrmidons for whom he tells me I am going to make a Religion The making of Religions and Creeds I leave to others I only set down the Christian Religion as I find our Saviour and his Apostles preached it and preached it to and left it for the Ignorant and unlearned Multitude For I hope you do not think how contemptibly soever you speak of the Venerable Mob as you are pleased to dignifie them p. 117. that the Bulk of Mankind or in your Phrase the Rabble are not concerned in Religion or ought not to understand it in order to their Salvation Nor are you I hope acquainted with any
who are of that Muscovite Divine's Mind who to one that was talking to him about Religion and the other World replyed That for the Czar indeed and Bojars they might be permitted to raise their hopes to Heaven But that for such Poor Wretches as he they were not to think of Salvation I remember the Pharisees treated the Common People with Contempt and said Have any of the Rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him But this People who knoweth not the Law are cursed But yet these who in the Censure of the Pharisees were cursed were some of the Poor or if you please to have it so the Mobb to whom the Gospel was preached by our Saviour as he tells Iohn's Disciples Matth. XI 5. Pardon me Sir that I have here laid these Examples and Considerations before you a little to prevail with you not to let loose such a Torrent of Wit and Eloquence against the Bulk of Mankind another time and that for a meer Fancy of your own For I do not see how they here came in your way but that you were resolved to set up something to have a fling at and shew your Parts in what you call your Different strain though besides the purpose I know no body was going to ask the Mob what you must believe And as for me I suppose you will take my word for it that I think no Mob no not your Venerable Mob is to be asked what I am to believe Nor that Articles of Faith are to be received by the Vote of Club-men or any other sort of Men you will name instead of them In the following words pag. 115. you ask Whether a Man may not understand those Articles of Faith which you mentioned out of the Gospels and Epistles if they be explained to him as well as that one I speak of 'T is as the Articles are and as they are explained There are Articles that have been some Hundreds of Years explaining Which there are many and those not of the most illiterate who profess they do not yet understand And to instance in no other but He descended into Hell the learned are not yet agreed in the sense of it the great pains has been taken to explain it Next I ask who are to explain your Articles The Papists will explain some of them one way and the Reformed another The Remonstrants and Anti-Remonstrants give them different senses And probably the Trinitarians and Vnitarians will profess that they understand not each others explications And at last I think it may be doubted whether any Articles which need mens Explications can be so clearly and certainly understood as one which is made so very plain by the Scripture it self as not to need any Explication at all Such is this That Jesus is the Messiah For though you learnedly tell us that Messiah is a Hebrew word and no better understood by the Vulgar than Arabick Yet I guess it is so fully explained in the New Testament and in those places I have quoted out of it that no body who can understand any ordinary Sentence in the Scripture can be at a loss about it And 't is plain it needs no other Explication than what our Saviour and the Apostles gave it in their Preaching for as they preached it men received it and that sufficed to make them Believers To conclude when I heard that this Learned Gentleman who had a Name for his study of the Scriptures and Writings on them had done me the Honour to consider my Treatise I promised my self that his Degree Calling and Fame in the World would have secured to me something of weight in his Remarques which might have convinced me of my Mistakes and if he had found any in it justified my quitting of them But having examined what in his concerns my Book I to my wonder find that he has only taken pains to give it an ill Name without so much as attempting to refute any one Position in it how much soever he is pleased to make a noise against several Propositions which he might be free with because they are his own And I have no reason to take it amiss if he has shewn his Zeal and Skill against them He has been so favourable to what is mine as not to use any one Argument against any Passage in my Book This which I take for a Publick Testimony of his Approbation I shall return him my Thanks for when I know whether I owe it to his Mistake Conviction or Kindness But if he writ only for his Bookseller's sake he alone ought to thank him AFter the foregoing Papers were sent to the Press The Witnesses to Christianity of the Reverend and Learned Dr. Patrick now Lord Bishop of Ely fell into my hands I regretted the not having seen it before I writ my Treatise of the Reasonableness of Christianity c. I should then possibly by the Light given me by so good a Guide and so great a Man with more confidence directly have fallen into the knowledge of Christianity which in the way I sought it in its source required the comparing of Texts with Texts and the more than once reading over the Evangelists and Acts besides other parts of Scripture But I had the ill luck not to see that Treatise till so few hours since that I have had time only to read as far as the end of the Introduction or first Chapter And there Mr. Ed's may find that this Pious Bishop whose Writings shew he Studies as well as his Life that he believes the Scriptures owns what Mr. Ed's is pleased to call a plausible Conceit which he says I give over and over again in these formal words viz. That nothing is required to be believed by any Christian Man but this That Iesus is the Messiah The Liberty Mr. Ed's takes in other places deserves not it should be taken upon his word that these formal words are to be found over and over again in my Book unless he had quoted the Pages But I will set him down the formal words which are to be found in this Reverend Prelate's Book p. 14. To be the Son of God and to be Christ being but different expressions of the same thing And p. 10. It is the very same thing to believe that Iesus is the Christ and to believe that Iesus is the Son of God Express it how you please This ALONE is the Faith which can regenerate a Man and put a Divine Spirit into him that is makes him a Conquerour over the World as Iesus was I have quoted only these few words but Mr. Ed's if he pleases or any body else may in this first Chapter satisfie himself more fully that the Design of it is to shew that in our Saviour's time Son of God was a known and received Name or Appellation of the Messiah and so used in the Holy Writers And that the Faith that was to make Men Christians was only the believing that Iesus is the Messiah
'T is to the truth of this Proposition that he examines his Witnesses as he speaks pag. 21. And this if I mistake not in his Epist. Dedicatory he calls Christianity Fol. A. 3. where he calls them Witnesses to Christianity But these two Propositions viz. That SON of God in the Gospel stands for Messiah And that the Faith which alone makes Men Christians is the believing Iesus to be the Messiah displeases Mr. Ed's so much in my Book that he thinks himself Authorized from them to charge me with Socinianism and want of Sincerity How he will be pleased to treat this Reverend Prelate whilest he is alive for the Dead may with good Manners be made bold with must be left to his decisive Authority This I am sure which way soever he determine he must for the future either afford me more good Company or fairer Quarter FINIS Books lately Printed for and Sold by A. J. Churchill at the Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row A View of Universal History from the Creation to the Year of Christ 1695. wherein the most memorable Persons and Things in the known Kingdoms and Countries of the World are set down in several Columns by way of Synchronism according to their proper Centuries and Years By Francis Tallents sometime Fellow of Magdalen-College Cambridge The whole graven in 16 Copper-Plates each 15 Inches deep and 22 broad bound up into Books the Sheets lined A Work of great Exactness and Curiosity Price 16 s. Camden's Britannia newly Translated into English with large Additions and Improvements By Edmund Gibson of Queens-College in Oxford The General History of the Air. By Robert Boyle Esq Quarto A Compleat Journal of the Votes Speeches and Debates both of the House of Lords and House of Commons throughout the whole Reign of Queen Elizabeth Collected by Sir Simonds Dewes Baronet and Published by Paul Bowes of the Middle-Temple Esq The 2d Edition Fol. 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