Chapter 5

You proceed to the fourth Assertion gathered out of your Fiat, which you thus lay down. It is, say you, frequently pleaded by our Author that all things, as to Religion, were ever quiet and in [illegible], before the Protestants Relinquishment of the Roman Sea. That ever is your own addition, but let it pass; what say you hereunto? This Principle you pretind is drawn out of Fiat Lux, not because it is there, but only to open a door to your self to exspatiate into some wide generall discourse, about the many wars, distractions, alterations, that have been aforetime up and down in the world in some severall Ages of Christianity. And you therefore say, it is frequently pleaded by me, because indeed, I never spake one word of it, and it is in truth a false and fond Assertion. Though neither you nor I can deny that such as keep unity of faith with the Church, can never, so long as they hold it, fall out upon that account. Sir, I take you to be the Author of Fiat Lux; and if you are so, I cannot but think you were a sleep when you talk'd at this rate. The Assertion is false and fond, you speak not one word of it. Pray Sir, take a little advice of your Son, Fiat, not to talk on this manner; and you will wonder your self, how you came to swallow so much confidence as in the face of the world to vent such things as these. He tells us from you, p. 234, 235, 236. Chap 4. Ed. 2. that, After the conversion of this Land by the Children of blessed Saint Benet, notwithstanding the interposition of the Norman Conquest, that all men lived peaceably together without any the least disturbance upon the account of Religion, untill the end of King Henry the eighth's raign, about five hundred years after the Conquest. See also what in generall you discourse of all places to this purpose, p. 221, 222, And p. 227. you do in express terms lay down the position which here you so exclaim against as false and fond; but you may make as bold with it as you please, for it is your own. Never had this Land, say you, for so many hundred years as it was Catholick upon the account of Religion any disturbance at all; whereas after the exile of the Catholick belief in our Land from the period of King Henry the seventh's Raign to these dayes, we have been in actuall disquiet or at least in fears. Estne haec tunica filii tui? Are not these your words? Does not your Son Fiat wear this livery? And do you not speak to this purpose in twenty other places? Is it not one of the main suppositions you proceed upon in your whole discourse? You do well now indeed to acknowledg that what you spake was fond and false, and you might do as much for the most that you have written in that whole discourse; but now openly to deny what you have asserted, and that in so many places, that is not so well done of you. There are Sir, many wayes to free your self from that dammage you feel or fear from the Animadversions. When any thing is charged on you, or proved against you which you are not able to defend; you may ingenuously acknowledg your mistake, and that without any dishonour to you at all: Good men have done so; so may you, or I, when we have just occasion. It is none of your Tenents, that you are all of you Infallible, or that your personall mistakes or miscarriages will prejudice your Cause. Or you might pass it by, in silence, as you have done with the things of the most importance in the Animadversions, and so keep up your reputation that you could Reply to them if you would, or were free from flyes. And we know [in non-Latin alphabet], as Menander speaks. Silence is with many the best Answer. Or, you might attempt to disprove or answer, as the case requires. But this, that you have fixed upon, of denying your own words, is the very worst course that you could have chosen, upon the account either of Conscience or Reputation. However thus much we have obtained; One of the chief pretences of your Fiat is by your own confession, false and fond. It is indeed no wonder that it should be so, it was fully proved to be so, in the Animadversions; but that you should acknowledg it to be so, is somewhat strange; and it would have been very welcome news, had you plainly owned your conviction of it, and not renounced your own off-spring. But I see you have a mind to the benefit you aymed at by it, though you are ashamed of the way you used for the obtaining of it; and therefore adde; That neither you, nor I, can deny that such as keep the unity of faith with that Church, can never, so long as they hold it, fall out on that account. But this, on the first consideration, seems to mee no very singular Priviledge; me-thinks a Turk, a few, an Arian, may say the same of their Societies: It being no more but this. So long as you agree with us, you shall be sure to agree with us. They must be very unfriendly minded towards you, that will call these [in non-Latin alphabet] into question. Yet there remains still one Scruple on my mind, in reference to what you assert. I am not satisfied that there is in your Church, any such unity of faith, as can keep men from falling out, or differing in and about the Doctrines and Opinions they profess. If there be, the children of your Church are marvellous morose, that they have not all this while learned to be quiet; but are at this very day writing volumes against one another, and procuring the Books of one another to be prohibited and condemned, which the writings of one of the learnedest of you in this Nation, have lately not escaped. I know you will say sometimes, that though you differ, yet you differ not in things belonging to the unity of faith. But I fear, this is but a Blind, an Apron of Fig-leaves. What you cannot agree in, be it of never so great importance, you will agree to say, that it belongs not to the unity of faith; when things no way to be compared in weight and use with them, so you agree about them, shall be asserted so to do. And in what you differ, while the scales of Interest on the part of the combatants hang eeven, all your differences are but in School and disputable points. But if one party prevail in Interest and Reputation, and render their Antagonists inconsiderable as to any outward trouble, those very Points that before were disputable, shall be made necessary, and to belong to the Unity of Faith; as it lately happened in the Case of the Jansenists. And here you are safe again; The Unity of the Faith is that which you agree in; and that which you cannot agree about belongs not to it, as you tell us, though you talk at another rate among your selves. But wee must think, that the Unity of Faith is bounded by the confines of your wranglements; and your agreement is the Rule of it. This, it may be, you think suits your turn: but whether it be so well suited to the Interest of the Gospell and of Truth, you must give men leave to enquire, or they will do it ingrati, whether you will or no. But if by the Unity of Faith you intend the substantiall Doctrines of the Gospell, proposed in the Scripture to be believed on necessity to Salvation; it is unquestionably among all the Churches in the world, and might possibly be brought forth into some tolerable communion in Profession and Practice, did not your Schismaticall Interest and Principles interpose themselves to the contrary.

The fifth supposition in your Fiat, observed in the Animadversions, is, That the first Reformers were most of them contemptible persons, their means indirect, and their ends sinister: To which you reply, Where is it Sir, where is it, that I meddle with any men's persons, or say they are contemptible? What and how many are those persons, and where did they live? But this you add of your own is in a vast universal notion, to the end you may bring in the Apostles and Prophets, and some Kings into the list of persons by measure named contemptible; and liken my speech who never spoke any such thing, to the Sarcasms of Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, Julian, and other Pagans. So you begin; but ne savi, magne Sacerdos! Have a little patience and I will direct you to the places where you display in many words that which in a few I represented. They are in your Fiat, Chap. 4. §. 18. 2. edit. from pag. 239, to §. 20. p. 251. Had you lost your Fiat, that you make such an outcry after that which in a moment he could have supplied you withal? Calvin, and a tailor's widow, Luther and Catherine Bore, pleased with a naked Unicorn, swarms of Reformers as thick as grasshoppers, fallen priests and votaries, ambitious heads, emulating one another, if not the worst, yet none of the best that ever were, so eagerly quarreling among themselves, that a sober man would not have patience to hear their sermons, or read their books; with much more to the same purpose you will find in the places, which I have now directed you to. But I see you love to say what you please, but not to hear of it again. But he that can in no more words more truly express the full and genuine sense of your eighteenth and nineteenth chapter than I have done, in the assertion you so cry out against, shall have my thanks for his pains; only I must mind you that you have perverted it, in placing the last words, as if they referred to the Reformers you talk of, that they did their work for sinister ends, when I only said, that their doctrine according to their insinuations was received for sinister ends, wherein I comprized your foul reflections upon King Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth his daughter, not placing them as you now feign among the number of them, whom I affirmed to be reported by you as a company of contemptible persons. But now upon a confidence that you have shifted your hands of a necessity to re-inforce this assertion, which you find, it may be, in yourself an incompetency for, you reflect back upon some former passages in the Animadversions, wherein the general objections that you lay against Protestancy, are observed to be the same for substance that long ago were by Celsus objected to Christianity: And say; So likewise in the very beginning of this your second chapter you spend four leaves, in a parallel between me and the Pagan Celsus, where of there is not any member of it true. Does Fiat Lux say, you lay the cause of all the troubles, disorders, tumults, wars within the nations of Europe upon Protestants? Does he charge the Protestants that by their schisms and seditions, they make a way for other revolts? Does he gather a rhapsody of insignificant words? Does he insist upon their divisions? Does he manage the arguments of the Jews against Christ, &c? So does Celsus who is confuted by Origen. Where does Fiat Lux, where does, does he, does he, any such thing? Are you not ashamed to talk at this rate. I give a hint indeed of the divisions that be among us, and the frequent argumentations that are made to embroil and puzzle one another; with our much evil and little appearance of any good in order to unity and peace, which is the end of my discourse. But must I therefore be Celsus? Did Celsus any such thing to such an end? It is the end that moralizes and specifies the action. To diminish Christianity by upbraiding our frailties is paganish: to exhort to unity, by representing the inconvenience of faction, is a Christian and pious work. When honest Protestants in the pulpit speak ten times more full and vehemently against the divisions, wars, and contentions that be among us, than ever came into my thoughts, must they therefore every one of them be a Celsus, a Pagan Celsus? What stuff is this? But it is not only my defamation you aim at; your own glory comes in the rear. If I be Celsus, the Pagan Celsus; you then, forsooth, must be Origen that wrote against him, honest Origen; that is the thing. Pray Sir, it is but a word, let me advise you by the way, that you do not forget yourself in your heat, and give your wife occasion to fall out with you. However you may, yet will not your wife like it perhaps so well, that her husband should be Origen. Such trash as this, must he consider, who is forced to have to do with you. These, it seems, are the meditations you are conversant with in your retirements. What little regard you have in them to truth or honesty, shall quickly be discovered to you. 1. Do I compare you with Celsus, or do I make you to be Celsus? I had certainly been very much mistaken, if I had done so, [in non-Latin alphabet], to compare a person of so small abilities in literature, as you discover yourself so to be, with so learned a philosopher, had been a great mistake. And I wish you give me not occasion to think you as much inferior to him in morals, as I know you are in your intellectuals. But, Sir, I nowhere compare you to him; but only show a co-incidence of your objections against Protestancy, with some of his against Christianity, which the likeness of your cause and interest cast you upon. 2. I did not say, you had the same end with him: I expressed my thoughts to the contrary; nor did compare your act and his, in point of morality; but only showed, as I said before, a co-incidence in your reasonings. This you saw and read, and now in an open defiance of truth and ingenuity express the contrary. Celsus would not have done so. But I must tell you Sir, you are mistaken, if you suppose that the end does so absolutely moralize an action, that it of its self, should render it good or evil. Evil it may, but good of its self it cannot. For, Bonum oritur ex integris causis, malum ex quolibet defectu. Rectifying the intention will not secure your morality. And yet also, on second thoughts, that I see not much difference between the ends that Celsus proposed to himself upon his general principle, and those that you propose to yourself upon your own; as well as the way whereby you proceed is the same. But yet upon the accounts before mentioned, I shall free you from your fears of being thought like him. 3. When Protestants preach against our divisions, they charge them upon the persons of them that are guilty; whereas you do it, on the principles of the religion that they profess; so that although you may deal like Celsus, they do not. 4. The scurrilous sarcasm wherewith you close your discourse, is not meet for any thing but the entertainment of a friar and his concubine, such as in some places formerly men have by public edicts forced you to maintain, as the only expedient to preserve their families from being defiled by you. 5. Let us now pass through the instances that you have culled out of many, charged upon you, to be the same with those of Celsus, concerning which you make such a trebled outcry, does he, does he, does he. The first is, Does Fiat Lux lay the cause of all tumults and disorders on Protestants: clames licet & mare coelo confundas, Fiat Lux does so, chap. 4. §. 17. p. 237. §. 18. p. 242, 243. §. 20. p. 255. and in sundry other places. You add; Does he charge Protestants that by their schisms and seditions they make way for other revolts? He does so, and that frequently, chap. 3. §. 14. p. 187, &c. Does he, you add, gather a rhapsody of insignificant words, as did Celsus. I say he does, in the pretended plea that he insists on for Quakers and for Presbyterians also, chap. 3. §. 13. p. 172, 173, &c. Again; Does he manage the arguments of the Jews against Christianity as was done by Celsus? He does, directly, expressly, and at large, chap. 3. §. 12. p. 158. &c. I confess, because it may be you know it not, you might have questioned the truth of my parallel on the side that concerned Celsus, which yet I am ready at any time if you shall so do, to give you satisfaction in; but, that you would question it on your own part, when your whole discourse and the most of the passages in it, make it so evident, I could not foresee. But your whole defence is nothing but a noise or an outcry, to deter men from coming nigh you to see how the case stands with you. It will not serve your turn, [in non-Latin alphabet], you must abide by what you have done, or fairly retract it. In the mean time, I am glad to find you ashamed of that which elsewhere you so much boast and glory in.

With the sixth and seventh Principles mentioned by me, you deal in like manner. You deny them to be yours; which is plainly to deny yourself to be the Author of Fiat Lux. And surely every man that has once looked seriously into that Discourse of yours, will be amazed to hear you saying that you never asserted, Our Departure from Rome to be the Cause of the Evils among Protestants; or that, There is no Remedy for them, but by a Returnal there again, which are the things that now you deny to be spoken or intended by you. For my part, I am now so used to this kind of Confidence, that nothing you say, or deny, seems strange to me. And whereas to your Denial you adde not any thing that may give occasion to any useful Discourse, I shall pass it by, and proceed to that which will afford us some better advantage to that purpose.