" Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis Pui-pureus, late qui splendeat, \mus et alter
Assuitiir pannus ;
Sed nunc non erat Ms locus." — [Hor. ad Pis. 15.]
Use of disputing has cast him, at the very entrance of his discourse, upon, as he supposeth, a particular controversy between Protestants and Rornan Catholics, quite besides his design and purpose; but, instead of obtaining any advantage by this transgression of his own rule, he is fallen upon a new misadventure, and that so much the greater, because it evidently discovers somewhat in him besides mis- take. I am sure I have heard as many of our ministers preach as he, and read as many of their books as he, yet I can testify that I never heard or read them opposing " the Christian doctrine of good works." Often I have heard and found them pressing a universal obedience to the whole law of God; teaching men to abound in good works; pressing the indispensable necessity of them from the commands of law and gospel; encouraging men unto them by the blessed promises of acceptance and reward in Christ; declaring them to be the way of
14 ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
men's coming to the kingdom of heaven ; ajSirming that all that be- lieve are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and for men to neglect, to despise them, is wilfully to neglect their own salvation. But " opposing the Christian doctrine of good works," and that with " sayings culled out of St Paul's Epistle to the Eomans," I never heard, I never read, any Protestant minister. There is but one ex- pression in that declaration of the doctrine of good works w-hich, he saith, Protestants 02:>pose, used by himself, that they do not own, and that is their " intrinsic acceptability;" which, I fear, he doth not very well understand. If he mean by it that there is in good works an intrinsical worth and value, fi'om their exact answerableness to the law and proportion to the reward, so as on rules of justice to deserve and merit it, he speaks daggers, and doth not himself believe what he says, it being contradictious; for he lays their acceptability on the account of the promise. If he intend that, God having gra- ciously promised to accept and receive them in Christ, they become thereupon acceptable and rewardable, — this, Protestant ministers teach daily. Against the former explication of their acceptability, in refer- ence to the justice of God, on tlieii' own account, and the justification of their persons that perform them, — for them, I have often heard them speaking, but never with any authority or force of argument comparable to that used by St Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, to the same purpose. But this tale of Protestants opposing the Chris- tian doctrine of good works hath been so often told by the Romanists, that I am persuaded some of them begin to believe it, however it be not only false, but, from all circumstances, very incredible. And finding our author hugely addicted to approve any thing that passeth for current in his party, I will not charge him with a studied fraud; in the finding it so advantageous to his cause, he took hold of a very remote occasion to work an early jjrejudice in the minds of his read- ers against them and their doctrine whom he designeth to oppose. When he writes next, I hope he Avill mind the account we have all to make of what we do write and say, and be better advised than to give countenance to such groundless slanders.
CHAPTER II.
Heathen pleas — General Principles.
We have done with his method or manner of proceedhig; our next view shall be of those general principles and suppositions which ani- mate the parenetical part of liis work, and whereon it is solely founded. And here I would entreat liim not to be offended ifj in the
ENTITLED FIAT LUX. 15
entrance of this discourse, I make bold to mind him that the most, if not all, of his pleas have been long since insisted on by a very learned man, in a case not much unlike this which we have in hand ; and Avere also long since answered by one as learned as he, or as any the world saw in the age wherein he lived, or it may be since to this day, though he died now fourteen hundred years ago. The person I in- tend is Celsus^ the philosopher, who objected the very same things, upon the same general grounds, and ordered his objections in the same manner against the Christians of old as our author doth against the Protestants. And the answer of Origen to his eight books will save any man the labour of answering this one, who knows how to make application of general rules and principles unto particular cases that may be regulated by them. Doth our author lay the cause of all the troubles, disorders, tumults, wars, wherewith the nations of Europe have been for some season, and are still, in some places, in- fested, on the Protestants? — so doth Celsus charge all the evils, com- motions, plagues, and famines, wherewith mankind in those days was much wasted, upon the Christians. Doth our author charge the Protestants that, by their breaking off from Rome with schisms and seditions, they made way for others, on the same principles, to break off seditiously from themselves? — so did Celsus charge the Jews and Christians ; telling the Jews that by their seditious departure from the common worship and religion of the world they made way for the Christians, a bi'anch of themselves, to cast off them and their worship in like manner, and to set up for themselves; and, following on his objection, he applies it to the Christians, that they, departing from the Jews, had broached principles for others to improve into a departure from them: which is the sum of most that is pleaded, with any fair pretence, by our author against Protestants. Doth he insist upon the divisions of the Protestants, and, to make it evident that he speaks knowingly, boast that he is acquainted with their persons, and hath read the books of all sorts amongst them? — so doth Celsus deal with the Christians, reproaching them with their divisions, dis- cords, mutual animosities, disputes about God and his worship, boast- ing that he had debated the matter with them, and read their books of all sorts. Hath he gathered a rhapsody of insignificant words, at least as by him put together, out of the books of the Quakers, to reproach Protestants with their divisions? — so did Celsus out of the books and waitings of the Gnostics, Ebionites, and Valentinians. Doth he bring in Protestants pleading against the sects that are fallen from them, and these pleading against them, justifying the