Hobsons your Saltmarshes and your Barber-Scriblers I am heartily sorry you have forc'd me to be so plain with you had not such names and so many of them been embarqu'd with mine in that odious Insinuation I could have turn'd it into meer Divertisement for otherwise it could deserve no farther notice But as it is you may well allow me to question by what Spirit you thrust that Paragraph into your Book and to believe no protestation Contra Factum I must not wave the Character you there give your Readers of me and the Honest Barber c. viz. where you admonish them that such Writers in their learned net-work Treatises being wise or Orthodox overmuch entangled and confounded by incongruous notions of man's Invention are liker to entangle and confound c. What learned Net-work Treatises some of those names were ever guilty off or what fowl they caught by their Net-work but Widgeons c. I know not But let any man seriously peruse your own controversial writings in these points and 't is not improbable but as in Anselm's dream he will find all overspread with Nets so many Windings in and out off and on this way and that way such clouds of Novel Distinctions Preambles Limitations c. such wheelings and lines of Circumvallation at a modest distance about the Quaestion and faint uncertain Approaches to it that to my knowledge divers who wish you well have sadly complain'd of it and profest your fuller Explanations as you call them have but bewildred them more and sent them away with less satisfaction than they came unto them You will not I hope account me your Enemy for telling you the truth and yet so I may do you good pass what judgement of me you please it matters little And now Sir to your large PREFACE before your Disput of Original Sin all which you have frankly bestow'd on me but with such an unfortunate mistake we are neither of us the better for it I have no profit and you no credit by it For though you charitably intend something for my satisfaction 't is all lost in your speaking nothing to the Question You may remember Sr what stands visible to every eye that I charg'd you only with your new Original Sin underiv'd from Adam unknown unheard off before in the Christian World and which therefore I thought well deserv'd the Exclamation which so pains you O caecos aniè Theologos c. To this your Preface has not one word to the purpose nothing in all your quotations that I laid to your charge of which more anon But because you give us Preface upon Preface a medley of things that have no great cohaerence with your main design to smooth I suppose your way to some of your more Innocent but eredulous Readers I must attend your Motions P. 3. And first of all I cannot but approve your Note concerning Good Intentions that They will not Justify our Errours and that by our bold hasty Judgeings of those things We never well digested or understood we do but bring Our selves into a suspicion Our Vnderstandings are none of the largest size or plainly to that affect Only your Remarque in my Judgement had been more compleat with the Addition of that rational sentence in the Law Magna Negligentia est lata Culpa Our hast when Willfull and Excessive may justly bring Our Morals into quaestion too For willfull ignorance has ever been accounted somewhat more than a fault of the mind and Vnderstanding Now Sr can you endure a little plain dealing from a friendly Antagonist Do you think your good Admonition has no Aspect upon your selfe would God it look'd not so full upon you I appeal to your own Conscience as well as the Readers judgement whether of us two be deeper in the Guilt of bold and hasty Judgeing you that in your single leekie Brigandine dare set forth with so high a sail against wind and tide to brave all the Reformed Churches c. Or I who content my self to cast my Anchor by theirs upon the Faith and Doctrine which was once deliver'd to the Saints trembling at a thought of exalting my self above so many Worthies at whose feet it would more become you and me to sit with Reverence than to be thus Pelting at their Heads and dragging them by the hoary hairs as a spectacle and a By-word to all You know Sr at least give others leave to think they doe what Armies of what Strength and Quality appear in these Battails against you and that through such poor Names as mine you defy and wound them you may hear more anon I see therefore no cause as yet to repent me of calling as you say to the Academicall Youth to All indeed that as they love the knowledge of the Truth they take You not for an Oracle in your bold dividing singularities I bless God I can with a clear Conscience call upon them again and again to do so Next you fall upon that obvious popular Topick of each Parties bidding their Fellows beware of the other Papists Protestants Lutherans Calvinists p. 5. 6. c. Of which the natural Inference must be this Ergo my Admonition or any other man 's of the like nature concerning Your self is not to be heeded Might not the false Teachers in the Church's Infancy have us'd the same Plea for themselves to the many Caveats put in against them by the Apostles Or were those Caveats to be blasted as Phantasms or Melancholies in your own Courteous p. 51. Phrase Or were the faithfull Admonitors to withdraw their good Counsels upon Fear that such a roving Topick should be brought against Them nay does any man practice what you here condemn more than Your self As particularly You have lately treated me in your foremention'd Catholique Theology where you expresly dissuade your Readers to be instructed by Me or Saltmarsh c. lest they be led into Errour Truly Sr I wonder what opinion you have of the Age you live in for Vetera praeter ierunt to think such little wiggles and Evasions will pass for rational Discourse nay that even your frequent Self-oppositions though in the open view and light of the Sun shall slink away unobserv'd You say well p. 5. that it is not the part of a good man to set Churches together by the Ears and to make People believe they differ where they do not If this be design'd as no doubt it is for the Teachers of Justification by Faith without works I pray what Churches are by this Doctrine set by the Ears together not the Reformed sure for as I have show'd you elsewhere they are of one lip and doubtless of one Heart too in the Point with both against your own make-bate Novelties What other Societies of men you can take in except Papists Socinians or of late the Quakers I understand not And would you have us yield up the great Truths of the Gospel for fear of offending such Churchshipps as
Who knowes not that the wall is one thing and the whiteness of it another and so must have their Definitions apart but good Sr is the Definition of a white wall another thing from a white wall then it is no good Definition and our Plea now is not about false Definitions but what are suppos'd at least to be True about Definitions indefinitely for there lies your Novell Instruction Justice Sr is one thing and the Imputation of it another but Imputed Justice cannot differ from it's true Definition unless you will have it to differ really from it's selfe Here then we have a transparent Fallacy You go on and ask me if in good earnest I am desirous to know whom you meane and there you stop Your question is imperfect and speakes out no sense Mine is plainly this whom you meane by that p. 45. ONE Rare Person whose single Judgement is upon Difference to be prefer'd in the Point of Justification and to whom Quem quibus in Doctrina Justificationis anteponat You need not doubt but that I am in earnest here for I am ambitious of his Acquaintance Now let 's attend your Answer and I earnestly desire the Reader to observe it throughout Why first Pagnine Buxtorf c. are very good Hebraicians Dr. Pocock is good for the Arabique He is so to a great Eminence in that and many Languages with store of other good learning besides to say nothing of his rare Christian vertues the Crown of all Dr. Wallis for a Geometrician and so he is in many singular endowments and abilities besides Dr. Willis in Physick and so on These and such like Excellent men are to be prefer'd in their way before such as never studyed those sciences a slender commendation for so eminent and worthy Persons A whole Page and a halfe consum'd in this ramble But now at last you will fall to the point and tell me their names who are better Definers of Justification Faith and Imputation and have deliver'd us far more judicious and digested thoughts of P. 47. these things then my self Indeed your servant was that ever any Question of mine And is this all you have to say in the matter and in the audience of the world too not one syllable more To save you farther labour I yield to all the worthy persons you have nam'd excepting only your own Disciples I am not worthy to be compar'd with them I desire no man young or old to preferr me before my Betters least of all when I am singular and walke alone But Sr with your favour this will not do your work we must have some other account of quem quibus then what you have given us yet I shall take leave to present our indifferent Readers with a more ingenuous and truer state of the Question farr more suitable both to my plain meaning and the clear purport of your own direction Let the case be this There is ONE who of late has raisd much dust amongst us about the grand article of Justification whether it be by Faith without works or by Faith and WORKS too All our old renowned Divines on this side and beyond the seas are unanimously agreed that Justification is by Faith alone i. e. without Works This ONE Person has often published his Judgement to the contrary The matter is of very great concern by the confession of both So that a poor Academical Doctor may very rationally enquire of you who in this case is to be preferr'd That ONE or those Many If that ONE then I am all most brought to the Person I sought for and why should he be so bashful to be willingly conceald nay why so injurious to the Publique 'T is true it would be some small reflexion upon those innumerable worthies who have gone before him such as our Jewel Rainolds Abbot White Field Whitaker Perkins Andrews Davenant c. But Truth is Truth still and men must not be over modest in it's cause and why may not ONE Lynceus that can see through a stone wall discover more then a thousand that cannot But now * See Mr Baxters Direct 〈◊〉 if I am not to goe along with him then I am left still to herd it with the illiterate Rulers and Majority and if this be my duty why should not that ONE encourage me by his Example nay suppose he is upon all occasions as openly as he yet thinks fit perswading me that they are more worthy to be directed by him then he by them To some such case as this Sr I expected your Answer and not a needless insignificant scorn of my poor indeavours in the cause of so great a Truth There remaines yet one small sub-question and then I am quit at present from the tediousest taske I ever yet undertooke You desire me to tell you whether I differ from you in the rule of counsel which you there gave your ignorant people or no. Sr our young men in the Vniversity call this a Fallacy of several questions in one Your direction is built of various materialls and several appartiments some of which I like well enough others not I am only concern'd as the blind may see about your matters of high and difficult speculation in the close of your direction wherein you would have that ONE man to be prefer'd before all the rest Amongst those in the Application of your rule you place the Definition of Justification i. e. undenyably for all your mincing the Thing it selfe Now Sr without any rovings wheelings or evasions I give you this plain Categorical answer that I exceedingly differ from you and that upon these two Accounts 1. Because I neither hold the Doctrine of Justification to be properly of speculative concern but wholly practical nor 2. Do I think it to be so full of difficulty as your very discouraging suggestion to your ignorant People imparts No matter of Speculation For though in all Practical knowledge there be some antecedent contemplation of the nature and properties of the End or Object yet 't is the End and scope alone which gives the distinct and proper denomination In Ethicks our schollars are taught the natures of moral acts vertues and felicity it's selfe yet we instruct them also that moral Philosophy is a practical not a speculative science and that all they know of these matters is to be refer'd and applyed unto the great practical End how they may be morally happy as the Philosopher tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and if he did not all that have but the ordinary use of reason cannot chuse but know Hence it followes that Justification being at least the first step in order to Eternal Happiness the knowledge of this is no more of speculative concern then for a man to know his way home especially when there is but One way and if that be mistaken he is in extreamest danger of perishing in the way wherein he goes Indeed to know the certain number of the steps
are to be expected your selfe have taught us in remarkeaable words I like them so well that I hope the Reader will not think them unworthy my transcribing If say you you have a Friend that errs whose recovery you desire be sure you write not a Confutation Disput 5. of Right to sacraments p. 481. 482. of his Errours for ordinarily that 's the way to fasten them in him and to make him worse Some will think this is a hard Censure to pass upon learned Godly Men. But there 's no reasoning against Common unquestionable Experience Of all the Cartloads of Controversial writings that swarm in the world how many can you name that convinc'd the Antagonist and brought him to a Recantation And anon Assoon as you speak to men in the hearing of the World they presently apprehend their Reputation to be so engaged that they are excited to defend it with all their might and instead of an impartial Consideration of your Arguments and a ready Entertainment of the Truth they bend their Wits to study how to make good what once they deliver'd THAT THE WORLD MAY NOT THINKE THEM SO WEAKE AS TO HAVE MISTAKEN Nay they who doe PROFESS TO LOVE THE TRUTH as Truth yet this SELFE is so near them and so potent with them c. Words full of truth with the sad experience of all Ages to confirm them and you that have given us the Adviso have a particular obligation to observe them punctually for your selfe upon all occasions But Sr to deal plainly and Christianly with you 'T is not only my own fear but of divers knowing persons who pretend at least to be your very Friends and to have a fair Respect for your Parts and sincerity that you fall too near the reach of the description you here give of others I have a particular reason to fear it A great Outcry you have made of Me as chargeing you with things you have retracted which if true I hope is no inexcusable crime on my part for I 'm sure it will amount to no more than a fault of unwillfull Ignorance I knew not it was my duty to read all the books your fruitfull pen has brought into the world much less to look for Retractations where I had no Encouragement to Expect nor any Inscription of your numerous Treatises hinted the least promise of so noble a self-denial and let me assure you I have not been negligent in my Enquiries of those that might know better than my self what you have retracted All I have met with profess to be as ignorant as my self of this Your very late Preface to the Discourse of the two Covenants shews us little of Retractation And to come closer to you if I have wrong'd you in this matter as you allwaies charge me what 's the reason you have not hitherto directed us to the particulars of your Recantation what when where but throw a general roving Accusation against me without offer of proof You direct me indeed to a small Book above twenty years ago as you say retracted Preface to the two disput of Orig. Sin p. 44. I suppose you mean your Aphorisms the most scholar-like and elaborate though erroneous Book in Controversy you ever compos'd excepting it's numerous Oracular Dictates and thence Appeal especially to your Disputations about Justification and some others But truly Sr I cannot trudge up and down to every place you would send me my legs at present are too weak Had you a mind to satisfy your Reader what would it have cost you to save him a labour with one point of your finger to the particular places All I can pick up of any seeming Retractation where I have happen'd to be is that you some where say after your wary deliberate manner that works are necessary AT LEAST to the Continuation of Our justification But Sr AT LEAST sounds no alteration of Judgement but an Haesitation or suspension at most nor have you me for your Antagonist in that sano sensu in the known Reformed notion Our Question Sr with your good leave disguise and darken it as you please is not what is necessary to the justified Person or to the continuance of his Justification but what to the primary Justification it's self in which if you disclaim your Works the Controversy will shrink into a narrow point and then you may in time be oblig'd to unravell all your entangled Threds of Justification again come to the Penance of speaking as your Neighbours doe Only you cannot blame me if I wish you would goe about your farther explanations to some better purpose than hitherto you have done that you would not raise clamours of being grosly misreported by me for I doubt all the gross Misreports will come to some other door at last that you would make good your smooth suffestion that such Teachers as oppose you think that Agreeing Men in P. 7. these points are not agreed In short that in a few plain undisguis'd words you would let us know where We are agreed and where not and deliver your Reader from the Jealousy you have rais'd that there is no such Agreement So that if the fear be just and true He may not be surpriz'd if false he may give it over Si verus Ne opprimar sin falsus ut tandem aliquando timere desinam Cic. in Catil I have done with your first Attacque and proceed to the next in your CATHOLIQUE THEOLOGY fol. 255. There it seems you are pleas'd again not only to arraign and condemn me for my Doctrine but to put me also in the Cubb with divers mean and contemptible Malefactours such as wild Saltmarsh P. Hobson and the Marrow of modern Divinity whose Author out of great kindness no doubt to some body you industriously tell us in the margin is reported to have been an honest Barber a note which many think you might have spar'd as well as any that ever traded so busily in Controversies of Religion Thus you think fit to mark out my poor name to Posterity But good Sr one word with you before we goe off from this suggestion so full of Truth and Civility Had you no other names in your memory had you not many scores of greatest Eminence and repute in the Christian World of the same Judgement with me that you could find no better Fellowes for me then such as these Know you not I speak the same thing with all the Reformed Churches where they have occasion and generally with all the Old Reformed Writers This sure would be too gross an Imputation of Ignorance to a Person of your Parts Fame Industry and Reading Do you know it Then you have made me Reparation enough by joining me in that very scandalous Reflexion with such numerous Worthies as those For shame let it be no longer Dr. Tully Saltmarsh c. But the Church of England with all the rest of the Reformed and their severall old renown'd Writers these be your
these In the mean time Sr You may do well to Consider who began the Fray and how much easier 't is to begin one than to end it Next you proceed to some grave Advice commended to our Acceptation from the Test of much and so much Experience of your own and that in effect is not to conclude difference in Doctrine from different Terms Orders or Methods of Expression digesting of Conceptions c. and withall give us timely notice you are resolved to the utmost of your skill and opportunity to 〈◊〉 them that think a different name or method is a different Doctrine And 't is a very Charitable undertakeing where ever such sad creatures can be found who know not the Some Thing may be express'd in Different Names or Languages But I pray Sr let 's fall a little closer to our Business speak in good sadness would you not have your friends with the Glib swallow conclude upon this Admonition that all the Difference betwixt you and me or others of the same judgement in the point of Justification is meerly Verbal nothing but a strife about Words and Forms of Expression and that in the Maine we are agreed 'T is clear enough I think you would But not so fast Sr my weak legs cannot hear your company at this rate What Perfect Contradictionâ— no more than a Difference in words Faith alone and no Faith alone Faith with and without works one and the same thing Excuse our dulness here I see it is not for nothing that to an Objection against your Doctrine as Popist you return this Heroique Answer FRIGHTEN NOT ME WITH THE NAME OF PAPIST when I speak the Truth It seems you would be taken for a stout Protestant and so you are All no doubt in the Point before Us is a meer Logomachy with which no Man of Mettle ought now to be frighted though Our White-liver'd Progenitors in the Reformed Churches durst not take the note so high Sr you have taught me to guess What Answer you would return to This which very likely would be to this effect What would you have me frighted from owning a Truth because a Papist owns it too Then I must not believe there is a God or a Jesus c. and so on for two or three pages together * Pref. p. 52. Is this Doctrine fit for an Academical Doctor and a Master of a literate society And having run on a while so pertinently and withall so modestly then wo to some Sr most if not all the Differences betwixt Us and the Romish Church were ever held with your good leave by as wise and learned Protestants as ever you or I are like to be for more than Triflings of words and above all in the Article of Justification which you seem to place amongst your Logomachies or Logicall notions Let any discerning Reader compare the 48. Sect. of this Preface with the words in p. 5. of your Appeal to the Light and 't is likely he will concurr with me let him be never so Aiery in that Melancholy Phantasm or Fear For 't is worth the noting how in that dark Appeal where you distinguish of Popish points i. e. some where the Difference is irreconcileable others in effect but in words We have no direction upon which Rank we must bestow Justification nothing of it at all from you Name or Thing But why next to the allseeing God you should know best your self Sr pile one Distinction or Evasion upon another as long as you please as many severall Faiths and works and Justifications as you can name all this will never make the two Poles meet your Doctrine I mean of Justification with that of the Reformed Churches But seeing you are so busie in turning Our greatest Controversies with the Papists c. into a childish Contest of words to undeceive some of your Readers who dream of no harm from such a Name as yours but in the simplicity of their hearts go along wherever you lead them we must give it a little farther Examination And a little will serve the turn Words Sr as they are enfranchis'd into Language are but the Agents and Factors of Things for which they continually negotiate with our minds conveighing errands upon all occasions from one soul to another Whence it follows that their Vse and signification is unalterable but by the stamp of the like publick Vsage and Imposition from whence at first they receiv'd their being and therefore if I may here accommodate the holy phrase of no private Interpretation What all others call a Tree you must not call a Stone and pretend the difference is but in a name or Words For although the same thing may be sufficiently represented by different words 't is only when they are synonymous and agreeing in sense It cannot be otherwise no more than a Stone can be represented to the eye by the Image of a Tree Now as keeping close to tâ—is common Usage of words is necessary in all affairs of humane life 't is so especially in the concerns of Faith and Religion 'T is not sure for nothing that Paul advis'd Timothy to hold fast the FORME of sound words non solùm quoad substantiam sed 2. Tim. 1. 13. quoad ipsam orationis figuram saith Calvin For as the wise and learned Melanchton has minded Praefat. in Luth. Op. Tom. â— us well Amissâ verborum proprietate quae rerum notae sunt alias confingi res necesse est That is when once we lay aside the propriety of words which are the notes or Symbols of things We pass undoubtedly to the minting of new Things themselves The old Primitive Doctors and Churches were sufficiently aware of this and therefore would not dispense with the Intrusion of one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 much less of one novel word in any Article or head of Faith where Custome and the Vsage of the Church had authoriz'd another And this they did upon the great and cogent reason Melanchton gave us but now vz. because they were not to learn that such as thought with the Church would be content to speak as she did and that the Contrary Practice never boded good to the Vnity Peace and Doctrine betrusted to her care Of which I think we of this Age have had Instances enough amongst our selves to our cost so that to return your kindness It is not the part of a Good man to set â— 7. Churches by the Ears together and to make Our silly Credulous Admirers believe that the Vast gulph which was ever fix'd between Us and the severall branded Corrupters of the Truth is now so neer upon the close that if a man do but goe back a little to take his feeze he may easily jump over it Nor is it the part of a wise Teacher to think himself that Men are agreed where every eye may see them dealing blowes and Deaths about As for the Difference of Method Ordering Digesting and expressing our Conceptions of
which you seem to make little account in Comparison I know not yet how far you may stretch your Order and Method of conceptions whether you speak of that order which is no more than a beauty or Circumstance or would draw it out to All indefinitely and so leave nothing but deformity and Confusion A child may be born with all the parts and limbs of a perfect man yet if not plac'd in their rank and Order may be a prodigious Monster and a Book may want ne'r a letter of the Alphabet and all repeated many thousand times over yet not contain a word either of sense or Language for want of Order Thus Papists and Protestants are agreed about the necessity of good works yet the difference is much wider than you seem to make it because both do not rank that necessity alike the one stretching it to the first Justification the other not but confining it to it 's proper Rank and Province of Inhaerent holiness where it ought to keep So that upon so crude and generall an Admonition about different Names Words Orders and wayes of Expression your weaker Readers had need beware that instead of instructing you do not entangle and confound them Next Sr you are pleas'd to turn something out of your way to a pleasant Discourse about Melancholy and it's ill effects perhaps to drive the pernicious humour from all your Readers by your odd introduction of it there with it's handsome Attendants as Heraclitus was cur'd of his pro tempore by a not extreamely differing Rencontre I have now done with that part of your Preface which you have wasted upon your Secondary Orig. Sin But you have one word with me more and I 'm glad it is but one for such sad work as this might afflict a more Athletique constitution then mine and in earnest I somewhat wonder how you held out with it your selfe it must needs make any man sick at the heart And now the heavens are on a sudden all cover'd with black a storm is coming to which the former was but a brisk musical gale Le ts looke to our tackling In my Justif Paulina I had made two civil requests to you the one Probè te excutias that you would well examine and sift your selfe before Cap. 11. God and your own conscience whom you especially design by that ONE Person who alone upon supposal of difference is to be followed before all Dissenters in the matter of Justification according to your 42. Direct for the Cure of Church Divisions My other suit is in these words Diligentiùs apud se perpenderet c. That you would diligently consider the great Affinity your Justification has contracted with the Popish Now let the Reader well observe how you manage this part of the Battail and thence take his measures of your skill and dexterity in Controversal Engagements Let him take notice first where and how you begin with a meer catch at the word Diligence to let us know what a hard Student you have been in your time p. 44. Your Call for Diligence say you tells me you know me not who have little spar'd for labour these 37. years and I am now unfit for increased diligence and this is all we have to that Concern I pray Sr did I ever tax you directly or indirectly with sloath in your Studies and yet do not you suggest unto your Reader I do And shall we call this Sincerity my desire was you would take your Ballance and weigh more diligently that so you might see the very small odds betwixt your Justification and the Councel of Trents for to me neither of them turns the scale upon the other I spake of no pains or labour but only a more diligent Consideration For give me leave Sr by the by to mind you that much reading and tumbling of Books contains not all the necessary ingredients of an usefull Schollar no more than the thrusting down of meat in abundance to the Stomach makes a strong or healthfull Body If we will have good bloud and nutriment strong Nerves and bones for action after the best choyce of our meat we must allow nature her due periods of Concoction otherwise all will be but unperfect or hurtfull chyle 'T is Meditation Sr which is the Stomach of the mind weighing sifting and reflecting upon what we reade in which if there happen to be an errour either in point of diligence or judgement as too often there does no after-concoction will make amends All will be Cruditie and Contagion still But now if you please to our business of Justification for you know well enough my words refer only to that you say you will not summon me before God or Conscience but what will the world thinke of my dealing to bait and that by gross MISREPORTS a small Booke above twenty years RETRACTED Sr I gave you no Summons but a Friendly Admonition as all the world may see and I here do it again I have MISREPORTED you in nothing much less GROSSLY let your friends themselves be Judges I know of no RETRACTATION you have made to this day notwithstanding all my diligent enquiries of Persons that are well acquainted with you no one Booke under that title which yet would have been no disgrace to so good a worke no talke of RETRACTATIONS till I had printed my Booke and that only from your Selfe no direction from you either what you have retracted or where we may find it since which is yet the more amazing because in your first complaint of this matter p. 4. you tell us of about SIXTY Books of Retractations in part at least you have writ and blame me for passing them All by without observation I envy not the readiness and faecundity of your Pen but you seem a Pretender to Cryptography in writing what few Eyes if any besides your own can reade Well when we see these fam'd Retractations we shall take our measures accordingly But Sr for your Own your Readers and the Truths sake I beseech you take care we have no Retractation of those yet invisible Retractations and that you no where contradict your selfe Sr the world will expect some clearer and more ingenuous satisfaction from you at this time of the day then to be wheadl'd with bare Talke and complaints of gross MISREPORTS where none at all appears And truly Sr I give you this Admonition as a Friend for otherwise I needed not Next you surprise me with a pretty Quaestion why I turn a Logical case of Defining into a Theological de Re and we heare of this new quirke p. 45. of Defining from you more then once and 't is All your own fruitfull Invention Justitia Christi Imputata is one thing say you and the Definition of Justice or imputation is another Of Justice or Imputation I take OR Sir to be a Disjunctive not a Copulative and so 't is a plain Fallacy of Division which any young Logick-Smatterer would tell you
without which every book we publish is little better then a libel against our Reader and even when we court him we do but entitle him to all the impertinencies and follies of our pens But above all this can never be minded enough that if of every idle word much more slanderous and reviling ones account shall be given in the day of Judgement Had you minded this as you ought you could not have vented those very vain words I will say no worse you have done against me up and down this preface as also in the rest of your books where you mention my name You have yet a piece of another question and then it will be high time for us to make an end and to thinke our readers may have some business besides 'T is this what mean you to bring in the intimation Pref. p. 50. that thus the great Truths of God will depend on humane suffrages even whether God shall be God Sr if you have not disus'd your Acquaintance with the latin Tongue and so mistaken you might have english'd the words I quote out of Tertullian in the like case with more sincerity For any one may quickly see I make not the Divine Existence as you would have me an instance of the great Truths of God though I hope no harme if I did so but as a consequential dependent whether it shall be so or no upon the subjection of the word of God to the will of man especially of ONE man in opposition to all others Then you would have me to consider whether I do well to number Artificial Logical Definitions controverted by the greatest Divines with the great Truths of God To which I answer 1. That I am asham'd you should thus over and over expose your selfe with your most illogical evasion of logical and artificial definitions as if supposing them true they were not the same Re with the definitum as I have told you already Good Sr talke what you please in private to such as understand not what you say and let them give you a Grande 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for your pains but you may do well to use more civility to the reason of a schollar though he hath not yet worn out his freshmans gown 2. I absolutely deny what you so rashly avow that the definition of justification is controverted by the greatest Divines This is one of your liberal Dictates The Reform'd Divines are all I thinke before your selfe agreed about the nature of justification its causes c. and consequently cannot differ about the Definition Prove the contrary when you can and let these poore Fig-leaves alone at least bestow them somwhere else The close of your Preface is a cover fit for such a Dish You tremble not in the audience of God and man to suggest again that hard-fronted Calumny P 52. how can any man call it less vz that I prefer a majority of ignorants before a learned man in his own profession and thereupon sound your trumpet to this tune Is this fit Doctrine for a Doctor and a Master of a Literate society you know not what the event of all this may be for suppose now being dragg'd in my scarlet a habit more suitable for him that triumphs at the wheel of your chariot in the view of all men I should happen to be degraded and turnd out of my literate society would it not trouble you no doubt but then it might happen to be too late In the meane time Sr without any disparagement to your own degree the name and quality of a DOCTOR and Master of a Literate society might have been treated more civilly by you And so let that goe along with it's fellowes For the pleasant speech to my hearers and schollars you put into my mouth at parting I leave it as divertisement to any that has a mind to be merry upon so sad an occasion yet one Asteisme in it must not be omitted which fronts it thus Hearers and schollars this and that is the true definition of Faith and Justification even of the various sorts of Faith and Justification c. But Sr I fear your hast has betrayed your memory and made you forget that I commend your own definition of faith logical or artificial with some needful explanations and therefore you might at least for my farther encouragement have spar'd me there As for the bringing all sorts of faith into one definition I confess my disability to do it but shall leave it to such as are skill'd in makeing Definitions and their definitums two several things with whom it will be an easy worke So for your various definitions of Justification constitutive sentential P. 50. executive in Foro Dei in Foro conscientiae c. one would expect some more then ordinary sense a comming by the train and rumble of words which attend it when indeed all looks like a meer artifice to set people a gazing upon some other matters while you are conveighing your selfe with the question out of the way If it be not so what need of this heap of distinctions here when you know the question betwixt us is of no other Justification but the constitutive in Foro Dei that which makes us righteous in the court of heaven I have nothing to do with you yet in any else as your own conscience will tell you when you please If you have not more justice and civility for your intelligent Readers I wish you would show more compassion to your ignorant homagers and not thus abuse them with your palpable evasions And now Sr if your pen can spare you a few minutes I thinke you may do well to reflect a little upon what you have done allready You have here and in other places indeavour'd what you could to expose a person who had never been uncivil to you but rather had a fair respect for you and indeed once tooke you for a quite other man then I have found you now You have perverted the plain sence of questions between us hid your selfe from the ignorant in mists and clouds and impertinencies of words And are such WORKS as these the rounds of Jacobs ladders are these your steps and stages to heaven especially when upon all occasions and even in this Preface you tell us you are going to the great and dreadful tribunal will you goe out of the world thus I heartily pray you may not and hope you will not I cannot end without begging the Readers pardon for this trouble I have given him though in my just and necessary defence I know it must needs be tedious to him which has been so in such a measure to my selfe One word more to you Sr and I have done First if any words have escap'd me of greater plainness and liberty then I would otherwise have us'd I desire you would lay your hand upon your breast and consider what indeed unsufferable provocations you have given me by your odious representations of me to the world in all the material part of your Preface such as if they were true I were fit enough to be begg'd for a fool Your vain triumphs and insultings over me from nothing but idle fancies of your own Let the equal reader judge between us Next that being now so well acquainted with you I intend no farther reply to any thing your shall thinke fit to publish against me hereafter nor indeed to any other upon these controversies contenting my selfe to have deliver'd my Judgement thus far wherein if you or any man remain unsatisfied you may for me enjoy your opinions in peace resolving to contend withno man for the small vulgar triumph of the last or loudest word yet not despairing but God in his time will infuse courage into men of far more abilities then my selfe to defend his cause So wishing you all the happiness Temporal and Eternal I do to my selfe I bid you FAREWELL From my Country-Habitation Jun. 18. Prov. 9. 8. 9. Rebuke a wise man and he will love thee Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser FINIS Errata Pag. 12. lin 10. read effect pag. 14. lin 6. read wriggles pag 29. lin 17. read schollars pag. 27. lin ult read imports