ENTITLED FIAT LUX. 169
whether the council should be the pope's council, or the pope should be the council's pope ; and how the pope carried it at last, by having more archbishoprics and bishoprics in his disposal than the coun- cils had. And so much for the pope's councils.
Our author adds, that " he hath been more than humanly happy in reconciling Christian princes;" but yet I will venture a wager with him that I will give more instances of his setting princes to- gether by the ears than he shall of reconciling them ; and I will manifest that he hath got more by the first work than the latter. Let him begin the vie when he pleaseth ; if I live, and God will, I Avill try this matter with him before any competent judges. " Tu die mecum, quo pignore?" [Virg. Eel. iii. 86.] How else to end this matter, [ know not.
I see not, then, any ground my countrymen have to alter their thoughts concerning the pope, for any thing here tendered unto them by this author; yea, I know they have great reason to be confirmed in their former apprehensions concerning him: for all that truly honour the Lord Jesus Christ have reason to be moved when they hear another, if not preferred before him, nor set up in competition with him, yet openly invested with many of his privileges and pre- rogatives, especially considering that not only the person of Christ, ])ut his word also, is debased to make way to his exaltation and ad- vancement. Thence it is that it is openly averred, that were it not for his " infallibility, we should all this time have been at a loss for truth and unity." Of so small esteem with some men is the wisdom of Christ, who left his word with his church for these ends, and his word itself ! All is nothing without the pope. If I mistake not, in the light and temper of my countrymen, this is not the way to gain their good opinion of him. Had our author kept himself to the general terms of a good prince, a universal pastoi', a careful guide, and to general stories of his wisdom, care, and circumspection for public good, — which discourse makes up what remains of this para- graph,— he might joerhaps have got some ground on their affection and esteem who know nothing concerning him to the contrary, which in England are very few. But these notes above Ela,^ these transcen- dent encomiums, have quite marred his market. And if there be no medium, but men must believe the pope to be either Christ or anti- christ, it is evident which way the general vogue in England will go, and that at least until fire and fagot come ; — which, blessed be God ! we are secured from whilst our present sovereign sways the sceptre of this land; and hope our posterity may be so under his offspring for many generations.
' Ela is an old term for the highest note in the scale of music. See Bailey's Diet. —Ed.
1 70 ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE
CHAPTER XXII.
Popery.
Sect. XXX. Our author hopes, it seems, that by this time he hath brought his disciples to Poj)ery. Tliat is the title of the last paragraph to his business, not of his book ; for that which follows, being a parcel of the excellent speech of my lord chancellor, is about a matter wherein his concernment lies not : this is his close and farewell. They say there is one who, when he goes out of any place, leaves a worse savour at his departure than he gave all the time of his abode; and he seems here to be imitated. The disingenuity of this paragraph, the want of care, of truth, and of common honesty, that appears in it, sends forth a worse savour than most of those, if not than any or all of them, that went before. The design of it is to give us a parallel of some popish and protestant doctrines, that the beauty of the one may the better be set off by the deformity of the other. To this end he hath made no conscience of mangling, defacing, and defiling of the latter. The doctrines he mentions, he calls " the more plausible parts of Popery," — such as he hath laboured in his whole discourse to gild and trick up with his rhetoric; nor shall I quarrel with him for his doting on them, only I cannot but wish it might suffice him to enjoy and proclaim the beauty of his church without open slandering and defaming of ours. This is not handsome, civil, mannerly, nor conscientious. A few instances will manifest whether he hath failed in this kind or no.
The first " plausible piece of Popery," as he calls it, that he pre- sents us in his antithesis, is " the obligation which all have who believe in Christ to attend unto good works, and the merit and benefit of so doing : " in opposition whereunto he says Protestants "teach that there be no such things as good works pleasing unto God, but all be as menstruous rags, filthy, odious, and damnable in the sight of heaven ; that if it were otherwise, yet they are not in our power to perform." Let other men do what they please, or are able : for my part, if this be a good work, to believe that a man conscientiously handles the things of religion, with a reverence of God and a regard to the account he is to make at the last day, who can. thus openly calum- niate and equivocate, I must confess I do not find it in my power to perform it. It may be he thinks it no great sin to calumniate and falsely accuse heretics; or, if it be, but a venial one, — such a one as hath no respect to heaven or hell, but only purgatory, which hath no great influence on the minds of men to keep them from vice or pro- voke them to virtue.