7i ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
All the world of Protestants profess that they receive their religion wholly by revelation from God, and no otherwise. Nor is it about ascribing a sovereignty to reason to judge of the particulars of re- lio-ion so revealed, to accept or refuse them, according as that shall judge them suitable or not to its principles and liking. This is the sovereign dictate of reason, — that whatever God reveals to be believed is true, and as such must be embraced, though the bottom of it can- not be sounded by reason's line; and that because the reason of a man is not absolutely reason, but, being the reason of a man, is variously limited, bounded, and made defective in its ratiocinations. An objective truth our reason supposes: all that it hath to do is but to judge of what is proposed to it, according to the best principles that it hath ; which is all that God in that kind requires of us, unless in that work wherein he intends to make us more than men, that is Christians, he would have us make ourselves less than men, even as brutes. That in our whole obedience to God we are to use our reason, Protestants say indeed, and, moreover, that what is not done reason- ably is not obedience. The Scripture is the rule of all our obedience, grace the principle enabling us to perform it ; but the manner of its performance must be rational, or it is not the supposition of rule or principle that will render any act of a man obedience. Religion, say Protestants, is revealed in the Scripture, proposed to the minds and wills of men for its entertainment by the ministry of the church; grace to believe and obey is supematurally from God. But as to the proposals of religion from Scripture, they aver that men ought to admit and receive them as men ; that is, judge of the sense and mean- ing of them, discover their truth, and, finding them revealed, acquiesce in the authority of him by whom they are first revealed. So far as men, in any things of their concernments that have a moral good or evil in them, do refuse, in the choice or refusal of them, to exercise that judging and discerning which is the proper work of reason, they unman themselves, and invert the order of nature ; dethroninsr the TO riyi'ioviKov of the soul, and causing it to follow the faculties that have no light but what they receive by and from it. It is true, all our carnal reasonings against Scripture mysteries are to be captivated to the obedience of faith ; and this is highly reasonable, making only the less, particular, defective collections of reason give place to the more noble, general, and universal principles of it. Nor is the deny- ing of our reason anywhere required as to the sense and meaning of the words of the Scripture, but as to the things and matter signi- fied by them. The former, reason must judge of, if we are men ; the latter, if, in conjunction with unbelief and carnal lusts, it tumultuate against, it is to be subdued to the obedience of faith. All that Pro- testants, in the business of religion, ascribe unto men is but this, that in the business of religion they are, and ought to be, men ; that is,
ENTITLED FIAT LUX. 75
judge of the sense and truth of what is spoken to them, according to that rule which they have received for the measure and guide of their understandings in these things. If this may not be allowed, you may make a herd of them, but a church never.
Let us now consider what is offered in this section about reason, wherein the concernment of any Protestants may lie. As the matter is stated about any " one's setting up himself to be a new and extra- ordinary director unto men in religion, upon the account of the irre- futable reason he brings along with him, which is the spring and source of that religion which he tenders unto them," I very much question whether any instance can be given of any such thing from the foundation of the world. Men have so set up, indeed, sometimes, as that good Catholic Vanini^ did, not long since, in France, to draw men from all religions; but to give a new religion unto men, that this pretension was ever solely made use of, I much question. As true religion came by inspiration from God, so all authors of that which is false have pretended to revelation. Such were the pretensions of Minos, Lycurgus, and Numa of old, of Mohammed of late, and gene- rally of the first founders of religious orders in the Roman church; all in imitation of real divine revelation, and in answer to indelible impressions on the minds of all men, that religion must come from God. To what purpose, then, the first part of his discourse, about the " coining of religion from reason," or the framing of religion by reason, is, I know not; unless it be to cast a blind before his unwary reader, whilst he steals away from him his treasure, — that is, his reason, as to its use in its proper place. Though, therefore, there be many things spoken unduly, and, because it must be said, untruly also, in this first part of his discourse, until toward the end of p. 131, which deserve to be animadverted on ; yet, because they are such as no sort of Pro- testants hath any concernment in, I shall pass them over. That wherein he seems to reflect any thing upon our principles, is in a supposed reply to what he had before delivered ; whereunto, indeed, it hath no resj^ect or relation, being the assertion of a principle utterly distant from that imaginary one, which he had timely set uj), and