Chapter 11

Your ensuing discourses are such as might well be passed by, as containing nothing serious or worth a review. An passim sequerer corvum? Ludicrous similitudes, with trifling exceptions to some words in the Animadversions, cut off from that coherence wherein they are placed, are the chief ingredients of it. With these you aim with your wonted success to make sport: —Venite in ignem Pleni ruris & insicetiarum Annales Volusi— I wish we had agreed before hand, Vt facerestu quod velles, nec non ego possem, Indulgere mihi. That I might have been freed from the consideration of such trifles: as the case stands I shall make my passage through them with what speed I can.

First, you except against the close of the consideration of your principles, namely that I would do so to my book also, if I had none to deal with, but ingenuous and judicious readers. And tell me, that it seems what follows is for readers neither judicious, nor ingenuous. But why so I pray? That which is written for the information of them who want either judgement or ingenuity, may be also written for their use who have both. Neither did I speak absolutely of them that were ingenuous and judicious, but added also, that they were such as had an acquaintance with the state of religion of old, and at this day in Europe, with the concernment of their own souls in these things. With such as these, I supposed then, and do still, that a discovery of the sophistry of your discourse, and the falseness of the principles you proceeded on, was sufficient to give them satisfaction as to the uselessness of the whole, without a particular ventilating of the flourishes that you made upon your sandy foundations. But because I know there were some, that might by the commendation of your friends light upon your discourse, that either being prepossessed by prejudices might want the ingenuity to examine particularly your assertions and inferences, or through unacquaintedness with the stories of some things, that you referred to, might be disenabled to make a right judgement of what you averred, I was willing to take some further pains also for your satisfaction. And what was herein done, or spoken amiss, as yet I cannot discern. But I am persuaded, that if you had not supposed that you had some of little judgement and less ingenuity to give satisfaction to, you would never have pleased yourself, with the writing of such empty trifles, in a business wherein you pretend so great a concernment.

Pag. 31. You observe that I say, the Schoolmen were the hammerers and forgers of Popery: And add, Alas Sir, I see that anger spoyls your memory; for in the twelfth and thirteenth Chapter you make Popery to be hammered and forged not a few hundreds of years before any Schoolmen were extant; And therefore tell me that I hate the Schoolmen as the Frenchmen do Talbot, for having been frightened with them formerly; Sed risu inepto res ineptior nulla est. I confess the language of your Schoolmen is so corrupt and barbarous, many of the things they sweat about, so vain, curious, unprofitable, their way of handling things, and expressing the notions of their minds, so perplexed, dark, obscure, and oftentimes unintelligible, divers of their assertions and suppositions so horrid and monstrous; the whole system of their pretended divinity, so alien and foreign to the mystery of the Gospel that I know no great reason that any man has much to delight in them. These things have made them the sport and scorn of the learnedest men that ever lived in the Communion of your own Church. What one said of old of others, may be well applied to them. Statum lacessunt omnipotentis Dei Calumniosis litibus. Fidem minutis dissecant ambagibus Vt quisque est linguar nequior. Solvunt ligantque quaestionum vincula Per Syllogismos plectiles. Indeed to see them come forth harnassed with syllogisms and sophisms, attended with Obs and Sols, speaking part the language of the Jews, and part the language of Ashdod, fighting and contending among themselves, as if they had sprung from the teeth of Cadmus Serpent, subjecting all the properties, decrees and actions of the holy God to your profane babblings, might perhaps beget some fear in the minds of men not much guilty of want of constancy, as the sight of the Harpies did of old to Aeneas and his companions, of whom they gave that account, Tristius hand illis monstrum nec saevior ulla Pestis, & ira Deum, Stygiis sese extulit undis. Viaimus, & subita gelidus formidine sanguis Diriguit, cecidêre animi. But the truth is, there is no real cause of fear of them: they are not like to do mischief to any, unless they are resolved aforehand to give up their faith in the things of God to the authority of this or that philosopher, and forego all solid rational consideration of things, to betake themselves to sophistical canting, and the winding up of subtlety into plain non-sense; which oftentimes befalls the best of them. From where Melchior Canus one of your selves says of some of your learned disputes, Puderet me dicere non intelligere, si ipsi intelligerent qui tractarunt. I should be ashamed to say I did not understand them, but that they understood not themselves. Others may be entangled by them, who if they cannot untie your knots, they may break your webs, especially when they find the conclusions, as oftentimes they are, directly contrary to Scripture, right reason, and natural sense itself. For they are the genuine off-spring of the old sophisters whom Lucian talks of in his Menippus, or [in non-Latin alphabet], and tells us that in hearing the disputations, [in non-Latin alphabet]. That, says he, which seemed the most absurd of all, was, that when they disputed of things absolutely contrary, they yet brought invincible and persuasive reasons to prove what they said: so that I durst not speak a word against him that affirmed hot and cold to be the same, although I knew well enough that the same thing could not be hot and cold at the same time. And therefore he tells us that in hearing of them, he did like a man half asleep, sometimes nod one way, and sometimes another, which is certainly the deportment of the generality of them who are conversant in the wrangles of your Schoolmen. But whatever I said of them, or your Church, is perfectly consistent with itself, and the truth. I grant that before the Schoolmen set forth in the world, many unsound opinions were broached in, and many superstitious practices admitted into your Church: and a great pretence raised to a superintendency over other Churches, which were parts of that mass out of which your Popery is formed. But before the Schoolmen took it in hand, it was rudis indigestaque moles, an heap, not an house. As Rabbi Juda Hakkadosh gathered the passant traditions of his own time among the Jews, into a body or system, which is called the Mishnah or Duplicate of their Law, wherein he composed a new religion for them, sufficiently distant from that which was professed by their fore-fathers; so have your Schoolmen done also. Out of the passant traditions of the days wherein they lived, blended with sophistical corrupted notions of their own, countenanced and gilded with the sayings of some ancient writers of the Church, for the most part wrested or misunderstood, they have hammered out that system of philosophical traditional divinity, which is now enstamped with the authority of the Tridentine Council, being as far distant from the divinity of the New Testament, as the farrago of traditions collected by Rabbi Juda, and improved in the Talmuds, is from that of the old.

Pag. 33, 34, 35. Having nothing else to say, you fall again upon my pretended mistake, of considering that as spoken absolutely by you, which you spake only upon supposition; and talk of Metaphysical Speculations in your Fiat, which you conceive me very unmeet to deal withal; and direct me to Bellarmines Catechism, as better suiting my inclination and capacity. But Sir, we are not wont here in England to account cloudy dark Sophistical declamations to be Metaphysical Speculations; nor every feigned supposition to be a Philosophical abstraction. I wish you would be perswaded that there is not the least tincture of any solid Metaphysicks in your whole Discourse. It may be indeed you would be angry with them that should undeceive you; and cry out, —Pol me occidistis amici, Non Servâstis, As he did, Cui demptus per vim mentis gratissimus Error. You may perhaps please your self with conceits of your Metaphysical atchievements; but your friends cannot but pitty you to see your vanity. The least youth in our Vniversities will tell you, that to make a general Supposition true or false, and to flourish upon it with words of a seeming probability, without any cogency or proof, belongs to Rhetorick, and not at all to Metaphysicks. And this is the very nature of your Discourse. Nor do I mistake your aim in it, as you pretend: I grant in the place you would be thought to reply to, though you speak not one word to the purpose, that your enquiry is after a means of setling men in the Truth, upon supposition that they are not yet attained thereunto; and you labor to shew the difficulty that there is in that attainment, upon the account of the insufficiency of many mediums that may be pretended to be used for that end. In answer to your enquiry, I tell you directly, that the only means of setling men in the Truth of Religion, is Divine Revelation; and that this Revelation is entirely and perfectly contained in the Scripture, which therefore is a sufficient means of setling all men in the Truth. Suppose them rasae tabulae, suppose them utterly ignorant of Truth; suppose them prejudiced against it; suppose them divided among themselves about it; the only safe, rational, secure way of bringing them all to settlement is their belief of the Revelation of God contained in the Scripture. This I manifested to you in the Animadversions, whereunto you reply by a commendation of your own Metaphysical Abilities with the excellencies of your Discourse: without taking the least notice of my answer; or the reasons given you against that Fanatical groundless credo, which you would now again impose upon us.