Chapter 18

Some of your following leaves are such as admit of no useful consideration. Wilful mistakes, diversions from the Cause under debate, with vain flourishes make up both pages in them. I shall pass through them briefly, and give you some account from them of your self, and your prevarication in the Cause whose defence you have undertaken. Pag. 75. you undertake the thirteenth chapter of the Animadversions, which discusseth the Story of the Reformation of Religion, which you took up on common fame. Fama malum quo non aliud velocius ullum. And that you may be able to say somewhat to the discourse before you, or to make a pretence of doing so, you wholly pass by every thing that is contained in it, and impose upon me that which is not in it at all, which you strenuously exagitate. For whereas a little to take off your edge in reflecting on the Persons whom you supposed instrumental in the Reformation, especially King Henry the eighth, I minded you how easie a thing it was to deprive you of your pretended advantage, by giving you an account of the wicked lives, with the brutish and diabolical practices of many of your Popes whom you account the Heads of your Church, and the very center wherein all the lines of your profession meet, you feign as though I had imposed all the crimes I intimated them to be guilty of, and many more whose names you heap together, upon Popery, or the religion that you profess; yes, that I should say that it is nothing else but only an heap of the wickednesses by you enumerated. Now this I did not do, but you feign it of your own heads, that you may have somewhat to speak against, and a pretence of intimating in the close of your discourse, that you have considered the Chapter about Reformation, whereas in truth you have not spoken one word to it, nor to any thing contained in it. And yet when you have done, as if you had been talking about any thing wherein I am in the least measure concerned, you come in, in the close with your grave advice, That I should take heed of blaspheming that innocent Catholic flock, which the Angels of God watch over to protect them. As though a man could not remember the wicked crimes of your nocent Popes, but he must be thought to blaspheme the innocent flock of Christ, which never had greater enemies in this world, than some of them have been. If this be to blaspheme, then some of your own Councils, all your historians, many of the most learned men of your Church are notorious blasphemers. But you wilfully mistake, and beg that their schismatical papal faction may be esteemed the innocent Catholic Church of Christ, without a concession whereof, your inferences and persuasions are very weak and feeble.

Of the like nature to this, is your ensuing discourse about the contradictions which you fancied in your Fiat Lux to be imposed on Papists, pag. 77. Two things you insist upon, waving those that you had formerly mentioned, as finding them in their examination unable to yield you the advantage you thought to make of them; you feign a new contradiction, which you say is imposed on Papists. For say you, while our Kings reign in peace, then the Papist religion is persecuted as contrary to Monarchy; when we have destroyed that Government, then is the Papist harrassed, spoiled, pillaged, murdered, because their religion is wholly addicted to Monarchy, and Papists are all for Kings; these are contradictions; is there not somewhat of the power of darkness in this? But you again mistake, and that I fear because you will do so; there was no persecution of Papists in this Land at any time, but what was in pursuit of some Laws that were made against them. Now not one of those Laws intimate any such thing, as that they were opposite to Monarchy, but rather their design to promote a double Monarchy on different accounts in this Nation, the one of the Pope, and the other of him to whom the Kingdom was given by the Pope, and who for many years in vain attempted to possess himself of it. And on that account were you charged with an opposition to our Monarchs, but not to Monarchy itself. And yet I must say, that if what has been before discoursed of your faith and persuasion concerning the papal sovereignty be well considered, it will be found that if not your religion, yet the principles of some of the chief professors of it, do carry in their womb a great impeachment of imperial power. Nor can I gather, that in the times of our confusion you suffered as Papists for your friendship and love to Monarchy, whatever some individual persons among you might do: seeing some of you would have been contented with its everlasting seclusion, so that your interest in the land might have been secured. And whether your Popes themselves be not of that mind, I leave to all men to judge, who know how much they are wont to prefer their own interest before the rights of other men. In the mean time you may take notice, that while men are owned to pursue one certain end, they may at several times fix on mediums for the compassing of it, opposite and contrary one to another. Haec non successit, alia aggrediamur via; when one way fails, another quite contrary to it may be fixed on. And while it is supposed that their end is the promotion of the papal interest, it is not improbable but that at several times you may make use of several ways and means opposite and contrary one to another; and that this may be imputed to you, without the charge of contradictions upon you. But you may if you please omit discourses of this nature. I am none of those that would charge any thing upon you to your disadvantage in this world. Neither do I desire your trouble any more than mine own. My aim is only to defend the truth which you oppose.

Your next attempt is to vindicate your self from any such intention in your application of ejice ancillam cum puero suo, as I apprehended. Whether what you say to this purpose will satisfie your reader or no, I greatly question. For my part, as I shall speak nothing but what I believe to be according to truth, so if I am, or have been at any time mistaken in my apprehension of your sense and mind, I am resolved not to defend any thing because I have spoken it. Homo sum, and therefore subject to mistakes; though I am not in the least convinced that I was actually mistaken in my conceptions of your sense and meaning in your Fiat. But that we may not needlessly contend about words, yours or mine, I shall put you into a way whereby you may immediately determine this difference, and manifest that I mistook your intention, if I did so indeed. And it is this, Do but renounce those principles, which if you maintain, you constantly affirm all that in those words I supposed you to intimate, and this strife will be at an end. And they are but these two; 1. That all those who refuse to believe and worship God according to the propositions and determinations of your Church, are heretics. 2. That obstinate heretics are to be accursed, persecuted, destroyed and consumed out of the world. Do but renounce these principles, and I shall readily acknowledge my self mistaken in the intention of the words you mention. If you will not so do, to what purpose is it to contend with you about one single expression, ambiguously as you pretend used by you, when in your avowed principles you maintain whatever is suggested to be intimated in it! Thus easily might you have saved your longsome discourse in this matter. And as for the emblem which you close it with, of the Rod of Moses, which as you say, taken in the right end was a walking staff, in the wrong a serpent, it is such a childish figment, as you have no cause to thank them that imposed it upon your credulity.