1 Owen most probably alludes to a weak enthusiast of the name of John Baptist Vanini. He was born at Taurosano, in the kingdom of Naples, in 1585. He publislied at Lyons, in 1615, a work entitled " Amphitheatrum reternte Pi'ovidentite," etc.; and in the following year another, entitled "De Admirandis Naturae, Eeginae Deteque mortalium Arcanis." He was accused of atheism, and his book was burnt by a decree of the Sor- boime. To judge from the title of the last woi'k, and the common accounts of his views, he seems to have deified the powers of nature. He was prosecuted on a charge of atheism at Toulouse, and burnt in 1019, under circumstances of gross brutality, though there is some dispute whether the charge of atheism was well founded. At his trial, he picked up a straw and declared it to be sufficient evidence to him that God existed. He was at one time in England, and held disputations in support of popish tenets; for which oiience he sutfered imprisonment for forty-nine days. After the publication of his second work, he offered his services to the papal nuncio at Paris, to write in defence of the Council of Trent. Hence the edge of Owen's sarcasm, — " That good Catholic." — Ed.
76 ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
stoutly cast down before. It is this, " That we must take the words from Christ and his gospel; but the proper sense, which the words of themselves cannot cany with them, our own reason must make out." If it be the doctrine of Protestants which he intendeth in these words, it is most disadvantageously and uncandidly represented; which becomes not an ingenious and learned person. This is that which Protestants affirm : — religion is revealed in the Scripture ; that revelation is dehvered and contained in propositions of truth. Of the sense of those words that carry their sense with them, reason judgeth, and must do so, or we are brutes; and that every one's reason, so far as his concernment lies in what is proposed to him.
Neither doth this at all exclude the ministry or authority of the church, both which are intrusted with it by Christ, to propose the rides contained in his word unto rational creatures, that they may understand, believe, love, and obey them. To cast out this use of reason, with pretence of an ancient sense of the words, which yet we know they have not about them, is as vain as any thing in this sec- tion, and that is vain enough. If any such ancient sense can be made out or produced, — that is, a meaning of any text that was known to be so from their explication who gave that text, — it is by reason to be acquiesced in ; neither is this to make a man a bishop, much less a chief bishop, to himself. I never heard that it was the office of a bishop to know, believe, or understand for any man but for himself. It is his office, indeed, to instruct and teach men ; but they are to learn and understand for themselves, and so to use their reason in their learning. Nor doth the variableness of men's thoughts and reasonings infer any variableness in religion to follow; whose stability and sameness depends on its first revelation, not our manner of re- ception. Nor doth any thing asserted by Protestants, about the use of reason in the business of religion interfere with the rule of the apostle about " captivating our understandings to the obedience of faith," much less to his assertion that Christians "walk by faith, and not by sight," seeing that without it we can do neither the one nor the other : for I can neither submit to the truth of things to be believed, nor live upon them or according unto them, unless I understand the propositions wherein they are expressed ; which is tic; work we assign to reason. For those who would resolve their faith into reason, we confess that they overthrow not only faith but reason itself; there being nothing more irrational than that belief should be the product of reason, being properly an assent resolved into authority ; which, if not divine, is so also. I shall, then, desire no more of our author nor his readers as to this section but only this, that they would believe that no Protestant is at all concerned in it; and so I shall not far- ther interpose as to any contentment they may find in its review or perusaL
ENTITLED FIAT LUX. 77
CHAPTER VIII.
Jews' objections.
The title of this third chapter is, that " No religion, or sect, or Avay, hath any advantage over another, nor all of them over Popery." To this we excepted before, in general, that that way which hath the truth with it, hath, in that wherein it hath the truth, the advantage against all others. Truth turns the scales in this business, wherever and with whomsoever it be found ; and if it lie in any way distant from Popery, it gives all the advantage against it that need be desired. And with this only inquiry, " With whom the truth abides?" is this disquisition, " What ways in religion have advantage against others?" to be resolved. But this course and procedure, for some reasons which he knows, and we may easily guess at, our author liked not ; and it is now too late for us to walk in any path but what he has trodden before us, though it seem rather a maze than a way for tra- vellers to walk in that would all pass on in their journey.