1 22 ANDIADVERSIOXS ON A TREATISE
their sense and meaning. I shall therefore only desire the reader that thinks himself concerned in this report to consult the place in Calvin pointed unto; and if he finds any such taunts as our author mentions, or any thing delivered concerning our Lord Christ but what may be confirmed by the judgment of all the ancient fathers and many learned Romanists, I will be content to lose my reputation with him for any skill in judging at the meaning of an author. But what thoughts he will think meet to retain for this informer, I leave to himself. What Catholic divines Calvin studied, I know not; but I am sure, if some of those whom his adviser accounts so had not studied him, they had never stole so much out of his comments on the Scripture as they have done. The next primitive Protestants that are brought in to make good this charge are Servetus, Gribaldus, Lismaninvis, and some other antitrinitarian heretics; in opposition to whose errors, both in their first rise and after progress, under the management of Faustus Socinus and his followers, Protestants, all Europe over, have laboured far more abundantly, and with far greater success, than all his Roman Catholics. It seems they must now all pass for primitive Protestants, because the interest of the Catholic cause requires it should be so. This is a communicable branch of papal omnipotency, to make things and persons to be what they never were. From tliem a return is made again to Luther, Brentius, Calvin, Zuinglius, who are said to nibble at Arianism, and shoot secret darts at the Trinity; though all impartial men must needs confess that they have asserted and proved the doctrine of it far more solidly than all the schoolmen in the world were able to do. But the main weight of the discourse of this paragTaph lies upon the pretty tale in the close of it, about a Protestant bishop and a Catholic boy ; which he must be a very Cato that can read without smiling. It is a little too long to transcribe, and I cannot tell it over again without spoiling of it, having never had that faculty in gilding of little stories wherein our author excel! eth. The sum is, that the boy, being reproved by the bishop for saying a prayer to her, boggled at the repetition of her name when he came to repeat his creed, and cried, " My lord, here she is again; what shall I do with her now?" To whom the bishop replied, " You may let her pass in your creed, but not in your prayers;" whereupon our author subjoins, " As thougii wo might have faith, but neither hope nor charity for her." Certainly, I suppose, my countrymen cannot but take it ill that any man should suppose them such stupid blockheads as to be imposed on with sophistry that they may feel through a pair of mittens. " Tam vacui capitis populum Ph^aca putavit ?" [Juv. xv. 23.] For my part, I can scarce think it worth the while to relieve men that will stoop to so naked a lure. But, that I may pass on, I will cast away one word,
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wliich notliiiig but gross stupidity can countenance, from heedlessness. The blessed Virgin is mentioned in the creed as the person of whom our Saviour was born, and we have therefore faith for her, — that is, we believe that Christ was born of her; but do we therefore believe in her ? Certainly no more than we do in Pontius Pilate, concern- ing whom we believe that Christ was crucified under him. A bare mention in the creed, with reference to somewhat else believed in, is a thing in itself indifferent ; and, we see, occasionally befell the best of women, and one of the worst of men: and what hope and charity should we thence conclude that we ought to have for her ? We are past charitable hopes that she is for ever blessed in heaven, having full assurance of it. But if by hope for her, he means the placing of our hope, trust, and confidence in her, so as to pray unto her, as his meaning must be, how well this follows from the place she hath in the creed, he is not a man who is not able to judge.
CHAPTER XVI.
Images.
Sect. xxiv. The next excellency of the Roman church, which so exceedingly delighted our author in his travels, is their images. It was well for him that he travelled not in the days of the apostles, nor for four or five hundred years after their decease. Had he done so, and, in his choice of a religion, would have been influenced by images and pictures, he had undoubtedly turned Pagan, or else a Gnostic (for those pretended Christians, indeed wretches worse than Pagans, as Epiphanius informs us, had got images of Christ, which, they said, were made in the days of Pontius Pilate, if not by him); their temples being richly furnished and adorned with them, whilst Chris- tian oratories were utterly destitute of them. To forward also his inclination, he would have found them, not the representations of ordinary men, but of famous heroes, renowned throughout the whole world for their noble achievements and inventions of things necessary to human life; and those portrayed to the life, in the performance of those actions which were so useful to mankind, and by which they had stirred up just admiration of their virtue in all men. Moreover, he would have found their learned men, profound philosophers, de- vout priests and virgins, contemning the Christians for want of those helps to devotion towards God which in those images they enjoyed, and objecting to them their rashness, fury, and ignorance in demolish-