TROTESTANT DOCTRINE ON UNITY OF FAITH. 2G7
knowledge the principles on which Protestants build their faith and profession, or by denying them you open a door unto atheisro, at least to the extirpation of Christian religion out of the world. I con- fess you pretend a relief against the present instance, in the autho- rity of your church, sufficient, as you say, to give a credibility unto the Scripture, though its own self-evidencing power and efficacy, with the confirmation of it by Catholic tradition, exclusive to your i^resent suffrage, be rejected. Now, I suppose you will grant that the prop you supply men withal, upon your casting down the founda- tions ou which they have laid the weight of their eternal salvation, had need be firm and immovable. And remember that you have to do with them who, though they may be otherwise inclinable unto you,
" Non tamen ignorant quid distent xra, lupinis," Hor. Ep. i. 7, 23; and must use their own judgment in the consideration of what you tender unto them. And they ask you, — 1. What will you do if it be as you say with them who absolutely reject the authority of your chin-ch ; which is the condition of more than a moiety of the inhabi- tants of the world, to speak sufficiently within compass? And, — 2. What will you advise us to say to innumerable other persons that are pious and rational, who, upon the mere consideration of the lives of many, of the most, of the guides of your church, your bloody, inhu- man practices, your pursuit of worldly, carnal designs, your visible, secular interest, wlierein you are combined and united, cannot per- suade themselves that the testimony of your church, in and about things that are invisible, spiritual, heavenly, and eternal, is at all valuable, much less that it is sufficient to bear the weight you would lay upon it? 3. Was not this the way and method of Vaninus for the introduction of his atheism, — first, to question, slight, and sophis- tically except against the old approved arg-uments and evidences ma- nifesting the being and existence of a divine, self-subsisting power; substituting in their room, for the confirmation of it, his own sophisms, which himself knew might be easily discussed and disproved? Do you deal any better with us, in decrying the Scripture's self-evidenc- ing efficacy, with the testimony given unto it by God himself, substi- tuting nothing in the room thereof l)ut the authority of your church? A man, certainly, can take up nothing upon the sole authority of your church, until, contrary to the pretensions, reasons, and arguments of far a greater number of Christians than yourselves, he acknowledge you to be a true church at least, if not the only church in the world. Now, hoAV, I pray, will you bring him into that state and condition that he may rationally make any such judgment? How will you prove unto him that there is any such thing as a church in the world ; that a church hath awj authority; that its testimony can make any thing credible, or meet to be believed? You must prove these things
268 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
to him, or whatever assent he gives unto what you say is from fana- tical creduhty. To suppose that he should believe you upon your word, because you are the church, is to suppose that he believes that which you are yet but attempting to induce him to believe. If you persist to press him, without other proof, not only to believe what you first said unto him, but also even this, that whatever you shall say to him hereafter, that he must believe it because you say it, will not any rational man nauseate at your unreasonable importunity, and tell you that men who have a mind to be befooled may meet with such alchymistical pretenders all the world over ? Will you persuade him that you are the church, and that the church is fur- nished with the authority mentioned, by rational arguments? I wish you would inform me of any one that you can make use of that doth not include a supposition of something unproved by you, and which can never be proved but by your own authority, which is the thing in question; or the immediate authority of God, which you reject. A number, indeed, of pretences, or, it may be, probabilities, you may heap together; which yet upon examination will not be found so much neither, unless a man will swallow amongst them that which is destitute of all probability but what is included in the evidence given unto it by divine revelation, which is not yet pleaded unto him. It may be, then, you will work miracles to confirm your assertions. Let us see them ; for although very many things are requisite to manifest any works of wonder that may be wrought in the world to be real miracles, and good caution be required to judge umo what end miracles are wrought, yet, if we may have any tolerable evidence of your working miracles in confirmation of this assertion, that you are the true and only church of God, with the other inferences depending thereon, which we are in the consideration of, you will find us very easy to be treated withal. But herein also you fail. You have, then, no way to deal with such a man as we first supposed, but as you do with us, and producing testimonies of Scripture to prove and confirm the authority of your church; and then you will quickly find where you are, and what snares you have cast yourselves into. Will not a man who hears you proving the authority of your church by the Scripture ask you, "And whence hath this Scripture its autho7'ity?" yea, that is supposed to be the thing in question, which, denying unto it an auTO'TridTia, you yet produce to confirm the authority of that by whose authority alone itself is evidenced to have any autho- rity at all. Rest in the authority of God, manifesting itself in the Scripture, witnessed unto by the catholic tradition of all ages, you will not. But you will prove the Scripture to be the word of God by the testimony of your church; and you will prove your church to be enabled sufficiently to testify the Scriptures to be of God, by the