G2 ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
be universally tnie, I dare say there is not one word tme in the Scripture. How often doth God complain in the Old Testament that his people " forsook him for that which was not God ! " and how many do the apostles show us in the New to have "forsaken the truth ! " It is true, that under the notion of God [as] the chiefest good, and of truth [as] the proper object and rest of the understand mg, none can willingly and by choice depart; but that the minds of men might be so cornipted and pei-verted by their OAvn lusts and temptations of Satan, as willingly and by choice to forsake the one or the other, to embrace that which in their stead presents itself unto them, is no less true than that twice two make four. And it is mere weakness, and ignorance of the condition of mankind since the entrance of sin, to conclude that because men may forsake the truth which they have professed, therefore there is no evidence in that truth which they so forsake; as though truth and its evidence were to be mea- sured and judged by the carriage and deportment of corrupt and imstable men towards it. Though the sun continue to shine in the firmament, yet there be a thousand ways whereby men may become blind, and so rendered unable to see it ; and there are no fewer ways whereby men either wilfully themselves darken the eyes of their understanding, or suffer them to be put out by others. Shall the truth be thence calumniated, as though it sent forth no beams whereby it may be clearly discerned? Are they not rather justly to be supposed blind themselves who can entertain such thoughts of it? We dwell too much on these remote attempts towards the special end aimed at. The rhetoric of this discourse is wound up, pp. 76-79, in a persuasive unto Popery; the substance whereof is, that the Papacy being rejected, there is a necessity that all men must become atheists; — which requires a little farther consideration. He ss^js, then, " That these dissensions of ours" (he means of Protestants, one of whom he most indecently personates) " about the faith, in its branches, so hot, so various, so extravagant, are apt to infer a suspi- cion in its very root. Are not a hundred in our own country become atheists already upon that very notion? and these men, supposing substantial change once made in religion, and deliberately admitted, are rather to be commended for their wit than blamed; for they do but that suddenly which all the land will come to by degrees." This in general ; in which entrance into his farther application of what he had largely, and indeed loosely, before discoursed to his present purpose, I wish I could find any thing sound. If dissensions about the laith, however extravagantly managed, are apt to infer a suspicion in its very root, it is most certain that since the first preach- ing of it, or within a few years after its first revelation, causes of sus- picion have been given, and will be given, and it is the mind of God
ENTITLED FIAT LUX. . 63
should be given, who said, " There must be heresies, that the approved may be tried/' And this very argument did Celsus press against Christianity ahnost fifteen hundred years ago : which is worthily an- SAvered by Origen; nor is there need of adding any thing to what that excellent man replied unto one of the first coiners of this objec- tion. The truth is, our dissensions are evils, — our evils, — the evils of men that are engaged in them ; and yet, it may be, not all out so evil in themselves as is pretended : they are far enough from merit- ing the title of, " Lo, here is Christ," and, " Lo, there is Christ." Pro- testants are all of them well enough agreed who is Christ, and where alone he is to be found. If they jump not wholly into the same conceptions about some few things of less importance in the way and manner of the worship of Christ, it is no more but what hath been the lot of the best of men, ever since Christ was preached on the earth, that were not infallibly inspired. Such contests ever were; and he that knows what men are, will have little cause given him to suspect the truth of the foundation of that about which they con- tend. Nor is any ground of such suspicion administered by these differences: men of corrupt minds may take occasion from them to vent the enmity which is in their hearts against the faith; ground of suspicion none is given unto them. Nay rather, it is a strong evidence of the certainty of the faith in general, that all those who contend about the branches of it do every one of them charge one another with the failure; and all agree that the faith itself about which they contend is certain, sure, and stable. And I hope the gentleman is mistaken in the calculation of the numbers that are become atheists in our country: or if he have brought them to the poll, I do not believe that he hath taken a particular account of the occasions and reasons that cast them on that commendable piece of "wit," as he styles it; and so knows not but that they may have been made witty by some of those ways whereby, if a learned friar may be believed, there were no less than sixty thousand become atheists, and that not of Protestants, but good Catholics, in one city in our neighbouring nation. But this falls out, saith he, by a " supposal of a substantial change made in religion, and deliberately admitted." This indeed were something; but who ever supposed so? The religion of Jesus Christ is the same "once delivered unto the saints." This is still one and the same, " yesterday, to-da}^, and for ever," — unalterable as Christ himself. Men, indeed, who are liars, are changeable worms ; and many, as to their profession in religion, alter, change, turn, apos- tatize, with or without deliberation; but he that shall thence con- clude that his best course is speedily to be an atheist, will not deserve much commendation for his wit, less for his wisdom, and for his gxace none at all. That the land will come to atheism by degrees is the