PRINCIPLES OF PAPISTS ON THE UNITY OF FAITIT. 283
them. An implicit credulity given up to such dictates is the height of fanaticism. Have we not reason, then, to call you and your co- partners in this design to an account how you prove that which you so strenuously assert and suppose, and to examine the principles of that authority whereunto you resolve all your faith and religion? If, upon mature consideration, these prove solid, and the inferences you make from them cogent, it is good reason that you should be attended unto. If they prove otherwise, if the first be false and the latter sophistical, you cannot justly take it ill of him that shall advise you to take heed that, whilst you are gloriously displaying your colours, the ground that you stand upon do not sink under your feet. And here you are forced to go many a step backward to fix your first foot- ing (until you leave your pope quite out of sight), from whence you advance towards him by several degrees, and so arrive at his supre- macy and infallibility; and so we shall have " reditum Diomedis ab interitu Meleagri."^
I. Your first principle to this pui-pose is, " That Peter was the prince of the apostles, and that in him the Lord Jesus founded a monarchy in his chui'ch." So, p. 360, you call him " The head and prince of the whole congregation." Now, this we think no meet principle for any one to begin withal, in asserting the foundation of faith and religion; nor do we think that if it were meet so to be used, that it is any way subservient unto your design and purpose.
1. A -principle, ftindaviental, or first entrance into any way of settlement in faith or religion, it cannot p)Ossihly he, because it pre- supposeth the knowledge of, and assent unto, many other gTeat fun- damental articles of Christian religion, yea, upon the matter, all that are so : for before you can rationally talk with a man about Peter's principality, and the monarchical state of the church hereon depend- ing, you must suppose that he believes the Scy^ipture to be the word of God, and all things that are taught therein concerning Jesus Christ, his person, nature, offices, work, and gospel, to be certainly and infallibly true ; for they are all supposed in your assertion, which without the knowledge of them is uncouth, horrid, insignificant, and foreign to all notions that a man can rationally entertain of God or religion; nay, no attempt of proof or confirmation can be given unto it but by and from Scrijoture, whereby you fall directly into the principle which you seek so carefully to avoid, — namely, that the Scripture is the only way and means of settling us in the truth, since you cannot settle any man in the very first proposition which you make to lead him into another way but by the Scripture. So powerful is truth, that those who will not follow it willingly, it will lead them captive in triumph, whether they will or no.
2. It is unmeet for any purpose, because it is not true. No one
' Hor. ad Pisones, 146.
2Si A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
word fz'om the Scripture can you produce in its confirmation ; where yet if it be not revealed, it must pass as a very uncertain and frivolous conjecture. You can produce no suffrage of the ancient church unto yovu- purpose ; which yet if you could, would not presently render any assertion so confirmed infallibly certain, much less fundamental. Some, indeed, of the fourth century call Peter " Principem aposto- lorum;" but explain themselves to intend thereby rhv Tpuirov, " the first," or leader, not rhv cip^ovra, " the prince," or ruler. And when the ambiguity of that word began to be abused unto pretensions of pre-eminence, the council of Carthage expressly condemned it, allow- ing none to be termed " Princeps sacerdotum." Many in those days thought Peter to be among the apostles like the " PrincejDS senatus," or " Princeps civitatis," the chief in their assemblies, or principal in dignity, how truly I know not : but that he should be amongst them and over them a prince in office, a monarch as to rule and power, is a thing that they never ouce dreamed of; and the asseveration of it is an open untruth. The apostles were equal in their call, office, place, dignity, employments : all the difference between them Avas in their labours, sufferings, and success, wherein Paul seems to have had the pre-eminence ; who, as Peter and all the rest of the apostles, every one singly and for himself, had the care of all the churches committed unto him, though it may be, for the better discharge of their duty ordinarily they divided their work, as they found it necessary for them to apply themselves unto it in particular. See 2 Cor. xi. And this equality between the apostles is more than once insinuated by Paul, and that with special reference unto Peter, 1 Cor. i. ; Gal. i. 18, 19, ii. 9. And is it not wonderful, that if this assertion should not only be true, but such a truth as on wliich the whole faith of the church was to be built, that the Scripture should be utterly silent of it, that it should give us no rules about it, no directions to use and improve it, afford us no one instance of the exercise of the power and authority intimated, no, not one ; but that, on the contrary, it should lay down principles exclusive of it ? Matt. xx. 25, 26 ; Luke xxii. 25, 26; and when it comes to make an enumeration of all the offices appointed by Christ in his church, Eph. iv. 11, should pass over the prince and his office in silence, on which all the rest were to dc;:end? Yovi see what a foundation you begin to build upon, — a mere imagination and groundless presumption, which hath not the least countenance givert unto it by Scripture or antiquity. What a perplexed condition must you needs cast men into, if they shall attend unto your persuasions to rest on the pope's unerring guidance for all their certainty in re- ligion, when the first motive you propose unto them, to gain their assent, is a proposition so far destitute of any cogent evidence of its truth or innate credibility, that it is apparently false, and easily manifested so to be !