338 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
hatli he left unto liis church unto the end of the world. But you yet proceed: " Why may we not §,t length reject all the rest for love of something else, when this love of Christ, which is now crept into the very outside of our lips, is, slipped off from thence? Do you think men cannot find a cavil against him as well as his law delivered unto us with the first news of him, and as easily dig up the root as cut up the branches?" You are the pleasantest man at a disputation that ever I met withal ; " hand ulli veterum virtute secundus," you outgo your masters in palpable sophistry. If we may and ought, for the love of Christ, reject errors and untruths taught by fallible men, then we may reject him also for the love of other things! Who doubts it but men may if they wih, if they have a mind to do so? They may do so physically, but may they do so morally ? may they do so upon the same or as good grounds and reasons as they reject errors and false worship for the sake of Christ? With such kind of arguing is the Eoman cause supported. Again, you suppose the laiv of Christ to be rejected, and therefore say that his person may be so also ; but this contains an application of the general thesis unto your particular case, and thereupon the begging of the thing in ques- tion. Our inquiry was general, whether things at first delivered by any persons that preach the gospel may not be rejected, without any impeachment of the authority of the gospel itself ? Here, that you may insinuate that to be the case between you and us, you suppose the things rejected to be the law of Christ, when, indeed, they are things rejected because they are contrary to the law of Christ, and so affirmed in the assertion which you seek to oppose ; for nothing may be rejected by the commission of Christ but what is contrary to his law. The truth is, he that rejects the law of Christ, as it is his, needs no other inducement to reject his person; for he hath done it already in the rejection of his law. But yet it may not be granted, though it belong not unto our present discourse, that every one that rejects any part of the law of Christ must therefore be in a propensity to reject Christ himself, provided that he do it only because he doth not believe it to be any part of his law; for whilst a man abides firm and constant in his faith in Christ and love unto him, with a resolution to submit himself to his whole word, law, and institutions, his misap- prehensions of this or that particular in them is no impeachment of his faith or love. Of the same importance is that which you add, — namely, " Did not the Jews, by pretence of their love to the immortal God, whom their forefathers served, reject the wliole gospel at once ? and why may we not possibly by piecemeal?" You do only cavil at the expression I used, of doing the thing mentioned " for the love of Christ : " but I used it not alone, as knowing how easy a thing it was to pretend it, and how unwarrantable a ground of any actings in
WHENCE THE GOSPEL CAME TO ENGLAND. S39
religion such a pretence would prove; wherefore I added unto it his " commission," — that is, his word. And so I desire to know of you whether the Jews, out of love to God, and by the direction of his word, did reject the gospel or no. This you must assert if you intend by this instance to oppose my assertion. Besides, indeed, the Jews did scarce pretend to reject the gospel out of love to God, but to their old church-state and traditions; on which very account yourselves at this day reject many important truths of it. But it is one thing vainly to pretend the love of God ; another so to love him indeed as to keep his commandments, and in so doing to cleave unto the truth, and to reject that which is contrary thereunto. You add, as the issue of these inquiries: "Let us leave cavils; grant my supposition, which you cannot deny; then speak to my consequence, which I deem most strong and good, to infer a conclusion which neither you nor I can grant." Ans. I wish you had thought before of leaving cavils, that we might have been eased of the consideration of the foregoing queries, which are nothing else, and those very trivial. Your supposition, — which is, " That Papists first brought the gospel into England," — you say I cannot deny; but, sir, I do deny it, and challenge you or any man in the world to make it good, or to give any colour of truth unto it. Then your consequence you say you "deem strong and good." I doubt not but you do so : so did Suffenus of his poems ; but another Avas not of the same mind, who says of him, —
" Qui modo scurra,