ALLEGED UNITY OF THE CHUKCH OF ROME. 239
upon the account either of conscience or reputation. However, thus much we have obtained, — one of the chief pretences of your " Fiat" is, by your own confession, " false and fond." It is indeed no wonder that it should be so; it was fully proved to be so in the " Animad- versions: but that you should acknowledge it to be so is somewhat strange; and it would have been very welcome news had you plainly owned your conviction of it, and not renounced your own offspring. But I see you have a mind to the benefit you aimed at by it, though you are ashamed of the way you used for the obtaining of it; and therefore add, " That neither you nor I can deny that such as keep the unity of faith with that church can never, so long as they hold it, fall out on that account." But this, on the first consideration, seems to me no very singular privilege; methinks a Turk, a Jew, an Arian, ma}^ say the same of their societies: it being no more but this, — " So long as you agree with us, you shall be sure to agree with us!" They must be very unfriendly minded towards you that will call these xvplag doi^ag into question. Yet there remains still one scruple on my mind in reference unto what you assert. I am not satisfied that there is in your church any such unity of faith as can keep men from falling out or differing in and about the doctrines and opinions they profess. If there be, the children of your church are marvellous morose, that they have not all this while learned to be quiet, but are at this very day writing volumes against one an- other,^ and procuring the books of one another to be prohibited and condemned ; which the writings of one of the most learned of you in this nation have lately not escaped. I know you will say sometimes, til at though you differ, yet you differ not in things belonging unto the uniti/ of faith. But I fear this is but a blind, an apron of fig- leaves. What you cannot agree in, be it of never so great import- ance, you will agi'ee to say that it belongs not unto the unity of faith; when things no way to be compared in weight and use with them, so you agree about them, shall be asserted so to do. And in what you differ, whilst the scales of interest on the part of the com- batants hang even, all your difierences are but in school and disput- able points; — but if one party prevail in interest and reputation, and render their antagonists inconsiderable as to any outward trouble, those very points that before were disputable shall be made necessary, and to belong to the unity of faith ; as it lately happened in the case of the Jansenists. And here you are safe again: the unity of the faith is that which you agree in ; and that which you cannot agree about belongs not unto it, as you tell us, though you talk at another rate among yourselves. But we must think that the unity of faith
' The allusion must be to the disputes at this time prevailing bet-ween the Jansenists and Jesuits. — Ed.
2-10 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
is bounded by the confines of your wranglements, and your agree- ment is the rule of it. This, it may be, you think suits your turn: but whether it be so well suited unto the interest of the gospel and of truth, you must give men leave to iaquire, or they will do it " in- gratiis," whether you will or no. But if by the imity of faith you intend the substantial doctrines of the gospel proposed in the Scrip- ture to be believed on necessity unto salvation, it is unquestionably among all the churches in the world, and might possibly be brought forth into some tolerable communion in profession and practice, did not your schismatical interest and principles interpose themselves to the contrary.
The fifth supposition in your " Fiat," observed in the " Animadver- sions," is, " That the first reformers were most of them contemptible persons, their means indirect, and their ends sinister;" to which you reply, " Where is it, sir, where is it, that I meddle with any men's persons, or say they are contemptible ? What and how many are those persons? and where did they live? But this you add of your own is in a vast universal notion, to the end you may bring in the apostles and prophets, and some kings, into the list of persons by me surnamed ' contemptible," and liken my speech, who never spake any such thing, to the sarcasms of Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, Julian, and other Pagans." So you begin; but " ne sa3vi, magne Sacerdos!" Have a little patience, and I will direct you to the places where you display in many words that which in a few I represented. They are in your " Fiat," chap, iv., sect. 18, second edition, from p. 239, unto sect. 20, p. 251. Had you lost your " Fiat," that you make such an outcry after that which in a moment he could have supplied you withal? " Calvin, and a tailor's widow, — Luther and Catharine Bore, — pleased with a naked unicorn, — swarms of reformers as thick as grasshoppers, — fallen priests and votaries, — ambitious heads, emulat- ing one another, — if not the worst, yet none of the best that ever were, — so eagerly quarrelling among themselves, that a sober man would not have patience to hear their sermons or read their books;" with much more to the same purpose, you will find in the places which I have now directed you unto. But I see you love to say what you please, but not to hear of it again. But he that can, in no more words, more truly express the full and genuine sense of your 18th and 19th chapters than I have done, in the assertion you so cry out against, shall have my thanks for his pains; only, I must mind you that you have perverted it, in placing the last words as if they referred unto the reformers you talk of, that they did their work for " sinister ends," when I only said that " their doctrine, ac- cording to your insinuations, was received for sinister ends;" wherein I comprised your foul reflections upon King Henry VIII., and