52 ANIMAX>VERSIONS ON A TEEATISE
and Ave will do as well as we can with ours in England : we will trouble you no more about yours ; nor, pray, do not you meddle with us or ours. Lee us pray for one another, wait on God for light and direction, it being told us, that ' if any one be otherwise minded ' (than according to the truth), ' God shall reveal that unto him/ Let us all strive to promote godliness, obedience to the commands of Christ, good works, and peace in the world ; but for this contending about opinions, or endeavouring to impose our several persuasions upon one another, let us give it quite over?" I fear he would scarcely close with us, and so wind up all our differences upon the bottom of his own proposals ; especially if this law should extend itself to all other nations equally concerned with England. He would quickly tell us that this is our mistake; he intended not Roman Catholics, and the differences we have Avith them, in this discoursa It is Protes- tants— Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Quakers — that he deals withal, and them only; and that upon this ground, that none of them have any title or pretence of reason to impose on one another, and so ought to be quiet, and let one another alone in matters of religion : but for the Roman Catholics, they are not concerned at all in this harangue, having a sufficient title to impose upon them all. Now, truly, if this be all, I know not what we have to thank you for, " Tantumne est otii tibi abs re tua, aliena ut cures, eaque quae ad te nihil attinent?" There are wise and learned men in England who are concerned in our differences, and do labour to compose them or suppress them. That this gentleman should come and justle them aside, and impose himself an umpire upon us, without our choice or desire, in matters that belong not unto him, how charitable it may seem to be I know not, but it is scarcely civil. Would he Avould be persuaded to go home and try his remedies upon the distempers of his own family, before he confidently vend them to us. I know he has no salves about him to heal diversities of opinions, that he can write " probatum est" upon, from his Roman church. If he have, he is the most uncharitable man in the Avorld, to leave them at home brawling and together by the ears, to seek out practice where he is neither desii-ed nor welcome, when he comes without invitation. I confess I was afraid, at the beginning of the section, that I should be forced to change the title before I came to the end, and write over it, " Desinit in piscem." The sum of this whole paragraph is, that all sorts of Protestants, and others here in England, do ridiculously contend about their several persuasions in religion, and put trouble on one another on that account, whereas it is the pope only that liath title and right to prescribe a religion unto us all; which is not, to me, unlike the fancy of the poor man in bedlam, who smiled with great contentment at their folly who imagined themselves either
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Queen Elizabeth or King James, seeing he himself was King Henry the Eighth. But seeing that is the business in hand, let us see what is this title that the pope hath, which Protestants can lay no claim unto. It is founded on that of the apostle to the Corinthians, " Did the word of God come forth from you, or came it unto you only?" This is pretended the only rule to determine with whom the pre- eminence in religion doth remain. " Now the word came not out originally from Protestants or Puritans, nor came it to them alone; so that they have no reason to be imposing their conceptions on one another, or on others that differ from them." But our author seems here to have fallen upon a great misadventure; there is not, as I know of, any one single text of Scripture that doth more fatally cut the throat of papal pretensions than this that he hath stumbled on. It is kno^vn that the pope and his adherents claim a pre-eminence in religion, to be the sole judges of all its concernments, and the miposers of it on all the world. What men receive from them, that is truth; what they are any otherwise instructed in, it is all false and naught. On this pretence it is that this gentleman pleads nullity of title amongst us as to all our contests; though we know that truth carries its title with it, in whose hands soever it be found. Give me leave, then, to make so bold (at least at this distance) as to ask the pope and his adherents, " An a vobis verbum Dei processit, an ad vos solos pervenit?" — " Did the gospel first come from you, or only unto you/' that you thus exalt yourselves above your brethren all the world over? Do we not know by whom it first came to you, and from whom? Did it not come to very many parts of the world before you? to the whole world as well as to you? Why do you then boast yourselves as though you had been the first revealers of the gospel, or that it had come unto you in a way or manner peculiar and distinct from that by which it came to other places? Would you make us believe that Christ preached at Rome, or suffered or rose from the dead there, or gave the Holy Ghost first to the apostles there, or first there founded his church, or gave order for the empal- ing it there when it was built? Would we never so fain, we cannot believe such prodigious fables. To what purpose, then, do you talk of title to impose your conceits in religion upon us? Did the gospel first come forth from you, or came it unto you only? Will not Rome, notwithstanding its seven hills, be laid in a level with the rest of the world, by virtue of this rule ? The truth is, as to the oral dispensa- tion of the gospel, it came forth from Jerusalem, by the personal ministry of the apostles ; and came equally to all the world. That spring being long since dried up, it now comes forth to all from the written word ; and unto them who receive it in its power and truth doth it come, and unto no other. What may farther be thought