In the close of our author's discourse he complains of the per- secutions of Catholics; which, whatever they are or have been, for my part I neither approve nor justify; and do heartily wish they liad never shov/ed the world those ways of dealing with them who dissented from them in things concerning religion whereof themselves now complain, how justly I know not. But if it be for the mass that any of them have felt or do fear suffering (which I pray God avert from them), I hope they will at length come to understand how re- mote it is from having any affinity with the devotion of the apostoli-
120 ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
cal churches, and so free themselves, if not from suffering, yet at least from suffering for that which, being not accepted with God, will yield them no solid gospel consolation in what they may endure or underQ-o.
CHAPTER XV.
Blessed Virgin.
Sect, xxiii. p. 267. The 22d paragraph, concerning the blessed Virgin, is absolutely the weakest and most disingenuous in his whole discourse. The work he hath in hand is to take off offence from the Roman doctrine and practice in reference unto her. Find- ing that this could not be handsomely gilded over, being so rotten and corrupt as not to bear a new varnish, he turns his pen to the bespattermg of Protestants for contempt of her, without the least respect to truth or common honesty. Of them it is that he says, " That they vilify and blaspheme her, and cast gibes upon her ;" which he sets oft' with a pretty tale of " a Protestant bishop and a Catholic boy:" and lest this should not suffice to render them odious, he would have some of them thought to "taunt at Christ himself;" one of them " for ignorance, passion, and too much haste for his breakfast." Boldly to calumniate, that something may cleave, is a principle that too many have observed in their dealings with others in the world; but as it contains a renunciation of the religion of Jesus Christ, so it hath not always well succeeded. The horrid and incredible reproaches that w^ere cast by the Pagans on the primitive Christians occasioned sundry ingenuous persons to search more into their way than otherwise they would have done; and thereby their conversion. And I am persuaded this rude charge on Protestants, as remote from truth as any thing that was cast on the first Christians by their adversaries, would have the same effects on Roman Catholics, might they meet with the same ingenuity and candour. That any Protestant should be moved or shaken in his principles by such calumnies is impossible. Every one that is so knows, that as the Protestants believe every thing that is spoken of the blessed Virgin in the Scripture or creed, or whatever may be lawfully deduced from what is so spoken, so they have all that honour and respect for her which God will allow to be given to any creature. Surely a confident accusation of incivility and blasphemy for not doing that which they know they do, and profess to all the world they do, is more like to move men in their patience towards their accusers than to prevail with tliem to join in the same charge against others, whom
ENTITLED FIAT LUX. 121
they know to be innocent as themselves. Neither will it relieve our author, in point of ingenuity and truth, that it may be he hath heard it reported of one or two brain-sick or frantic persons in Eng- land, that they have oast out blasphemous reproaches against the bless- ed " Mother of God." It is credibly testified that pope Leo should, before witnesses, profess his rejoicing at the advantages they had at Rome by the " fable of Christ." Were it handsome now in a Protest- ant to charge this blasphemy upon all Papists, though uttered by their head and guide ; and to dispute against them from the confes- sion of the Jews, who acknowledge the story of his death and sufter- ing to be true, and of the Turks, who have a great honour and vene- ration for him unto this day ? Well may men be counted Catholics who walk in such paths, but I see no ground or reason why we should esteem them Christians. Had our author spoken to the purpose, he should have proved the lawfulness, or, if he had spoken to his own purpose with any candour of mind or consistency of purpose in the pursuit of his design, have gilded over the practice, of giving divine honour to the holy Virgin, or worshipping her with adoration, as Pro- testants say, due to God alone ; of asci-ibing all the titles of Chiist unto her, turning Lord in the Psalms in most places into Lady ; praying to her, not only to entreat, yea, to command her Son to help and save them, but to save them herself, as she to whom her Son hath committed the administration of mercy, keeping that of justice to himself; with many other the like horrid blasphemies, which he shall hear more of if he desire it. But instead of this difficult task, he takes up one which, it seems, he looked on as far easier, — falsely to accuse Protest- ants of blaspheming her. We usually smile in England at a short answer that one is said to have given Bellarmine's works; I hope I may say without offence, that, if it were not uncivil, it might suffice for an answer to this paragraph. But though most men will suppose that our author hath overshot himself, and gone too far in his charge, he himself thinks he hath not gone lar enough ; as well knowing there are some bounds, which when men have passed, their only course is to set a good face upon the matter, and to dare on still. Wherefore, to convince us of the truth of what he had delivered concerning Pro- testants reviling and blaspheming the blessed Virgin, he tells us that it is no wonder, seeing some of them, in foreign parts, have uttered words against the very honour of Jesus Christ himself. To make this good, Calvin is placed in the van, who is said " to taunt at his ignorance and passion, and too much haste for his breakfast, when he cursed the fig-tree ; who, if, as is pretended, he had studied Catholic divines, they would have taught him a more modest and pious inter- pretation." It is quite beside my purpose and nature of the present discourse to recite the words of private men, and to contend about