ENTITLED FIAT LUX. 1 71
Do Protestants teach, " There are no such things as good Avorks pleasing to God?" or, that " those that beheve are not obliged to good works?" In which of their confessions do they so say? in what public writing of any of their churches? What one individual Pro- testant was ever guilty of thinking or venting this folly ? If our author had told this story in Rome or Italy, he had wronged him- self only in point of morality ; but telling it in England, if I mistake not, he is utterly gone also as to reputation. But yet you will say, that if there be good works, yet it is not in our power to perform them. No more will Papists neither, that know what they say, or are in their right wits, that it is so without the help of the grace of God; and the Protestant never lived, that I know of, that denied them, by that help and assistance, to be in our power. " But they say, they are 'all as filthy rags,' etc." I am glad he will acknow- ledge Isaiah to be a Protestant, whose words they are, concerning all our righteousness, that he traduceth. We shall have him some time or other denying some of the prophets or apostles to be Pro- testants; and yet it is known that they all agreed in their doctrine and faith. Those other Protestants, whom he labours principally to asperse, will tell him, that although God do indispensably require good works of them that do believe ; and they, by the assistance of his grace, do perform constantly those good works which, both for the matter and the manner of their performance, are acceptable to him in Jesus Christ, according to the tenor of the covenant of grace ; and which, as the effect of his grace in us, shall be eternally re- warded : yet, that such is the infinite purity and holiness of the gi'eat God with whom we have to do, in whose sight the heavens are not pure, and who charges his angels with folly, that if he should deal with the best of our works accordinof to the exigence and rigour of his justice, they would appear wanting, defective, yea, filthy in his sight; so that our works have need of acceptation in Christ no less than our persons. And they add this to their faith in this matter, that they believe that those who deny this know little of God or themselves.
My pen is dull, and the book that was lent me for a few days is called for. " Ex hoc uno," by this instance, we may take a measure of all the rest, wherein the same ingenuity and conscientious care of offending is observed as in this; that is, neither the one nor other is so. The residue of his discourse is but a commendation of his rehgion and the professors of it, whereof, I must confess, I begin to grow weaiy; having had so much of it, and so often repeated, and that from one of themselves, and that on princi])les which will not endure the trial and examination. Of this sort is the sufferino^ for theh religion, which he extols in them. Not what God calls them
1 72 ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE ENTITLED FIAT LUX.
unto, or others impose upon them in any part of the world, — wherein they are not to be compared Avith Protestants, nor have suffered from all the world for their papal religion the hundredth part of what Pro- testants have suffered from themselves alone for their refusal of it, — doth he intend, but what of their own accord they undergo; not considering, that as outward affliction and persecution from the world have been always the constant lot of the true worshippers of Christ in all ages, so voluntary self-macerations have attended the ways of false worship, among all sorts of men, from the foundation of the world.
A VINDICATION
THE ANIMADVEESIOXS ON "FIAT LUX;"
WHEKEIN TIIE PRINCIPLES OF THE ROMAN CHURCH AS TO MODERATION, UNITY, AND
TRUTH, ARE EXAMINED; AND SUNDRY IMPORTANT CONTROVERSIES,
CONCERNINa THE RULE OF FAITH, PAPAL SUPREMACY,
THE MASS, IMAGES, ETC., DISCUSSED.
Im]primatur,
Tho. Greig, E. in Christ. P. D. Hunifr. Episc. Deceinb. 9, Lond. a Sac. dome-
1663. sticis.
PREFATOEY NOTE.
The previous work of Owen did not pass without a reply from Cane, whose "Fiat Lux" it so smartly refutes. The latter published a letter to the author of the " Animadver- sions," in which he betrayed liis own sense of discomfitiu'e by wandering from the subject to assail his antagonist and direct public antipathy against him for his conduct during the time of the Commonwealth. In 166-4 Dr Owen published the following work, — his chief contribution to the Popish controversy ; in which, while he incidentally disposes of the political insinuations of Cane, he enters with greater fulness of detail on the leading points of the controversy, and completes the argument, Avhich he had not time to develop in the previous treatise. The chief defect in this able work arises from the plan which Owen was constrained to adopt. It was necessary for him to review in succession the topics which his opponent had discussed in "Fiat Lux." A wish may now be felt, that, since that work has passed into merited oblivion, this masterly disser- tation on the leading errors of Romanism by our author had appeared in a shape less connected with a passing dispute, and more fitted to be of general and standing value in the controversy. The exigency, however, which di'ew from him the iJublication, could not have been met, had it appeared in such a form. We would have missed the humour with which the treatise abounds, and by which Dr Owen gives buoyancy to his argument; although embarrassed sometimes by the extent and variety of his lore, he reminds us in his humour of the cumbrous gambols of the whale. All the more impor- tant subjects, too, in the controversy with Rome, are considered in the work, and some of them handled with peculiar success. Indeed, on some points, if the facts and argu- ments in both treatises be taken together, a more successful refutation of the claims of the Church of Rome could not be desiderated. In one respect, moreover, the author kept in view the desirableness of securing for his work a general value among Protest- ants, by arguing always on ground common to all Protestants, and refusing, in spite of the wily snares of his adversary, to be drawn from this ground.