Chapter 14
Pag. 27. You proceed to vindicate your unreasonable paragraph about reason, or rather against it. What reason we are to expect in a dispute against the use of reason in and about the things which are the highest and most proper object of it, is easy for any one to imagine. For by reason in religion we understand not merely the ratiocination of a man, upon and according to the inbred principles of his nature, but every acting of the understanding of a man about the things of God, proceeding from such principles, or guided by any such rule, as no way impeach its rationality. To vindicate your discourse in your Fiat upon this subject you make use of two mediums. (1.) You pretend that to be the whole subject of your discourse about reason, which is but a part of it: and (2.) you deny that to be the design and aim of your book which yourself know, and all other men acknowledge so to be.
On the first head you tell me that your discourse concerned reason to be excluded from the employment of framing articles of religion. It is true, you talk somewhat to that purpose; and you were told that Protestants were no way concerned in that discourse. And it is no less true, that you dispute against the use and exercise of reason in our choice of or adhering to any religion, or any way or practice in religion; that is the liberty of a man's rational judgement in determining what is right, and what is wrong, what true, what false, in the things that are proposed to him, as belonging to religion, guided, bounded, and determined by the only rule, measure and last umpire in and about such things. This you oppose and that directly; and that to this end, to show to Protestants that they can come to no certainty in religion by this exercise of their reason, in and about the things of God. That men should by the use of reason endeavour to find out and frame a religion, is fond to imagine. They who ever attempted any such thing, knew it was not religion but a pretence to some other end, that they were coining. To make the reason of a man proceeding and acting upon it its own light and inbred principles, the absolute and sovereign judge of the things that are proposed to be believed or practised in religion, so as that it should be free for him to receive or reject them according as they answer and are suited thereunto, is no less absurd and foolish; and whoever will assert it must build his assertion on this supposition, that a man is capable of comprehending fully and clearly, whatever God can reveal of himself; which is contrary to the prime dictates of reason in reference to the simplicity and infiniteness of God's being, and so would imply a contradiction in its first admission. It is no less untrue, that a man in the lapsed depraved condition of nature, can by the light thereof and the utmost improvement of his reason, come to a saving, sanctifying perception of the things themselves, that God has revealed concerning himself his will and worship, which is the peculiar effect of the Spirit and grace of Christ. But to say, that a man is not to use his reason in finding out the sense and meaning of the propositions wherein the truths of religion are represented to him, and in judging of their truth and falsehood by the rule of them, which is the Scripture, is to deny that indeed we are men, and to put a reproach upon our mortality, by intimating, that men do not, cannot, nor ought to do that which they not only know they do, but also that they cannot but do. For they do but vainly deceive themselves who suppose or rather dream that they make any determination of what is true or false in religion, without the use and exercise of their reason; it is to say they do it as beasts, and not as men; than which nothing can be spoken more to the dishonor of religion, nor more effectual to deter men from the entertainment of it. For our parts, we rejoice in this, that we dare avow the religion which we profess to be highly rational; and that the most mysterious articles of it are proposed to our belief on grounds of the most unquestionable reason, and such as cannot be rejected without a contradiction to the most sovereign dictates of that intellectual nature wherewith of God we are endued. And it is not a few trifling instances of some men's abuse of their reason in its prejudicate exercise about the things of God, that shall make us ungrateful to God that he has made us men, or to neglect the laying out of the best that he has entrusted us with by nature, in his service in the work of grace. And what course do you yourself proceed in? When any thing is proposed to you concerning religion, do you not think upon it? Does not your mind exercise about it those first acts of reason or understanding which prepare and dispose you to discourse and compute it with yourself? Do you not consider whether the thing itself be good or evil? And whether the propositions wherein it is made to you are true or false? Do you not call to mind the rule and measure whereby you are to make a judgement, whether they be so or no? We talk not now, what that rule is, but only whether you do not make a judgement of the propositions that are made to you by some rule or other, and whether with that judgement, your mind does not assent to them or dissent from them? Yes, is not your judgement which you so make, the assent or dissent of your mind? Or what course do you take? I wish you would inform us of your excellent expedient to teach a man to cry Credo without the use or exercise of his reason to bring him thereunto. But when you have done so, I know it is no other way but that by it you may teach a parrot or starling to say as much, or the crow that cried of old [illegible]. But you would evade all concernment in this discourse, by denying that your Fiat Lux was written to any such concernment against Protestants. I know not well what you mean by your, To any such concernment against Protestants. That the main design of your discourse, is to bring Protestants to an uncertainty in their profession by everting the principles which you apprehend them to build upon, and thereon to persuade them to Popery, I was in hope you would have no more denied. It has been evidenced to you with as needless a labor as ever any man was put to; but it is done because you would needs have it so, and shall not now be done again.
Your ensuing discourse wherein you attempt to say something to the ninth chapter of the Animadversions is not unlike the preceding; and therefore I shall cast them under one head. Your business in it, is to cast a fresh dishonor upon Christian religion by questioning the defensibility of its principles against Jewish objections, any otherwise than by an irrational Credo. Let us hear you speak in your own language; your vaunting flourishes, you say, about Scripture which you love to talk on, will not without the help of your Credo and humble resignation solve the argument, which that you may the more easily be quit of, you never examine, but only run on in your usual flourishes about the use and excellency of God's Word. I told you in Fiat Lux, what the Jew will reply to all such reasonings: but you have the pregnant wit not to heed any thing that may hinder your flourishes; but if you were kept up in a chamber with a learned Jew without bread, water and fire, till you had satisfied him in that objection, I am still well enough assured, for all your very vaunts, that if you do not make use of your Credo, which here you contemn, you might there stay till hunger and cold have made an end of you. The meaning of this discourse is, that the Jews' pretence of rejecting Christ upon the authority and tradition of their Church, was not, nor is to be satisfied by testimonies given in the Scripture to the person, doctrine and work of the Messiah. The sum of the objection laid down in your Fiat Lux is that which I have now mentioned; it was the plea of the Jews against Christ and his doctrine, managed from the authority and tradition of their Church; that Christ and his Apostles gave the answer to this objection, which I have now intimated, namely the testimony of God himself in the Scripture to the truth of that which they objected against, which was to be preferred to the authority and testimony of their Church, I have undeniably proved to you in the Animadversions; and it is manifest to every one that has but read the New Testament with any consideration or understanding. The same way was persisted in by the ancient Fathers, as all their writings against the Jews do testify. And I must now tell you that your calling the validity of this answer into question, is highly injurious to the honor of Christianity, and blasphemous against Christ himself. The best interpretation that I can give to your words, is, that you are a person wholly ignorant of the controversies that are between the Jews and Christians, and the way that is to be taken for their satisfaction or confutation. You tell us indeed in your Fiat, that the Jews will reply to these testimonies of Scripture which are alleged as giving witness to our Lord Jesus Christ and his doctrine, and contend about the interpretation of them; and this you tell me, I have the wit to take no notice of; which by the way is unduly averred by you, and contrary to your own science and conscience, seeing you profess that you have read over my Animadversions; and probably the very place wherein I do take notice of what you said to that purpose and replied to it, was not far from your eye when you wrote the contrary. And as I showed you what was the opinion of the ancients of that reply of the Jews which you mention, so I shall now add, that nothing but gross ignorance in these things can give countenance to an imagination that there is any thing but folly and madness in the Rabbinical evasions of the testimonies of the Old Testament given to our Lord Christ and his Gospel. And your substitution of a naked fanatical Credo, not resolved into the testimony of the Holy Writ in the room of that express witness which is given in Holy Scripture to the person and doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ, to oppose therewith the Judaical plea from their Church, state, power and authority, is an engine fit to undermine the very root of Christianity, and to render the whole Gospel highly questionable. Besides it is so absurd as to the conviction of the Jews, such a mere petitio principii or begging of what is in controversy between Christians and them, that I challenge you to produce any one learned man that has made use of it to that purpose. To think that your Credo built on principles which he despises, which you cannot prove to him, will convince another man of the truth of what you believe, can have no other ground but a magical fancy, that the fixing of your imagination shall affect his, and conform it to your apprehension of things. Such is your course in telling the Jews of the authority of your Church, and your Credo thereupon, which cannot be supposed to have any existence in rerum natura, unless it be first supposed that their Church was failed, which supposal that it was not, is the sole foundation of their objection. What end you can propose herein, but to expose yourself and your profession to their scorn and contempt, I know not. Sir, the Lord Christ confirmed himself to be the Son of God, and Savior of the world by the miracles which he wrought; and the doctrine which he taught was testified to be divine by signs and express words from Heaven. He proved it also by the testimonies out of the Law and Prophets, all which was confirmed by his resurrection from the dead. This coming of the promised Messiah, the work that he was to perform, and the characteristical [illegible] of him, in application to the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Apostles and Evangelists proved out of the Scripture, to the conviction and conversion of thousands of the Jews, and the confusion of the rest. And if you know not that the ancient Fathers and learned men of succeeding ages, have undeniably proved against the Jews out of the Scripture of the Old Testament, and by the testimony thereof, that the promised Messiah was to be God and man in one person, that he was to come at the time of the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, that the work which he was to perform was the very same and no other than what was wrought and accomplished by him, with all the other important concernments of his person and office, so that they have nothing left to countenance them in their obstinacy, but mere senseless trifles, you are exceedingly unmeet to make use of their objections, or the condition of the controversy between them and Christians. For what you add in reference to myself, I shall need only to mind you that the question is not about any personal ability of mine to satisfy a Jew, which whatever it be, when I have a mind to increase it, for somewhat that I know of, and which I have learned out of their writings, I will not come to you for assistance; but concerning the sufficiency of that principle for the confronting of Judaical objections, taken from the authority of their Church, which I have formerly proved to you, that our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles made use of to that purpose. And I will not say that it was from the pregnancy of your wit, that whatever heed you took to the stating of the case between you and Protestants in the Animadversions parallel to that between the Jews and the Apostles, (seeing a very little wit will suffice to direct a man to let that alone which he finds too heavy for him to remove out of his way) that you speak not one word to it, yet I will say, that it is a thing of that kind whereof there are frequent instances in your whole discourse, and for what reason, is not very difficult for any man to conjecture.
