Aut si quid liac re tritius, videbatur,
Idem inficeto est inficetior rure,
Simul poemata attigit ; neque idem unquam
^que est beatus, ac poema cum scribit:
Tam gaudet iu se, tamque se ipse miratur." Catull. xxii. 12-17.
You may, for aught I know, have a good faculty at some other things; but you very unhappily please yourself in drawing of conse- quences, Avhich, for the most part, are veiy infirm and naught, as, in particular, I have abundantly manifested that to be which you now speak of. But you conclude : " I tell you plainly, and without ter- giversation, before God and all his holy angels, what I should think if I descended imto any conclusion in this affair. And it is this, — either the Papist, who holds at this day all these articles of faith which were delivered at the first conversion of this land by St Austin, is unjustly become odious amongst us; or else, my honest parsons, throw off your cassocks, and resign your benefices and glebe-lands into the hands of your neighbours, whose they were aforetime. My consequence is irrefragable." And I tell you plainly that I greatly pity you for your discourse, and that on many accounts: — 1. That, in the same breath wherein you so solemnly protest before God and
8-iO A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX,
his holy angels, you should so openly prevaricate as to intimate that you descend unto no conclusions in this affair, wherein, notwithstand- ing your pretences, you really dogmatize, and that with as much confidence as it is possible, I think, for any man to do. And, 2. That you cast "before God and his holy angels" the light froth of your scoffing expressions, " My honest parsons," etc., — a sign with what conscience you are conversant in these things. And, 8. That, under- taking to write and declare your mind in things of the nature and impoi-tance that these are of, you should have no more judgment in them or about them than so solemnly to entitle such a trifling sophism by the name of " Irrefragable consequence." As also, 4. That, in the solemnity of your protestation, you forgot to express your mind in sober sense ; for, aiming to make a disjunctive conclusion, you make the parts of it not at all disparate, but coincident as to your inten- tion, the one of them being the direct consequent of the other. 5. That you so much make naked your desires after benefices and glebe-lands, as though they were the great matter in contest amongst us; which reflects no small shame and stain on Christian religion and all the professors of it. 6. Your " irrefragable consequence" is a most pitiful piece of sophistry, built upon I know not how many false suppositions; as, — (1.) "That Papists are become odious unto us;" whereas we only reject your Popery, love your persons, and ap- prove of your Christianity. (2.) " That Papists brought us the first tidings of the gospel;" which hath been sufficiently before disproved. (3.) " That Papists hold all things in religion that they did, and as they did, who first brought us the news of Christianity;" which we have also manifested to be otherwise, in the signal instance of the opi- nion of Pope Gregory about your papal power and titles. (4.) " That we have no occasion of exception against Papists but only their hold- ino- the things that those did who first preached the gospel here;" when that is no cause at all of our exceptions, but their multitude of pretended articles of faith, and idolatrous superstitious practices in worship, superadded by them since that time, are the things they stand charged withal. Now, your consequent being built on all these suppositions, fit to hold a principal place in Lucian's " Vera Historia," must needs be irrefragable.
What you add farther on this sulject is but a repetition in other words of what you had said before, with an application of your false and groundless supposition unto our present difterences ; but yet, lest you should flatter yourself, or your disciples deceive themselves with thoughts that there is any thing of weight or moment in it, it shall also be considered. You add, then, " That if any part, much more if any parts, great substantial parts, of religion brought into the land with the first news of Christianity, be once rejected (as they are now
WHENCE THE GOSPEL CAME TO ENGLAND. Sil
amongst ns) as Romish or Romanical, and that rejection or reforma- tion be permitted, then may other parts, and all parts, if the gap be not stopped, be looked upon at length as points of no better a condi- tion."
I have given you sundry instances already, undeniably evincing that some opinions of them who first bring the news of Christian re- ligion unto any may be afterwai"d rejected, without the least impeach- ment of the truth of the whole or of our faith therein ; yea, men may be necessitated so to reject them, to keep entire the truth of the whole. But the rejection supposed is of mens opinions that bring Christian religion, and not of any parts of Christian religion itself; for the mistakes of any men whatever, whether in speculation or practice about religion, are no parts of religion, much less substantial parts of it. Such was the opinion of the necessity of the observation of Mosaical rites, taught, with a suitable practice, by many believers of the Circumcision, who first preached the gospel in sundry places in the world; and such were the rites and opinions brought into Eng- land by Austin that are rejected by Protestants, — if any such there were, which as yet you have not made to appear. There is no such affinity between truth and error, however any men may endeavour to blend them together, but that others may separate between them, and reject the one without any prejudice unto the other: "Male sarta Gratia nequicquam coit," Hor. Ep. i. 3,31. Yea, the truth and light of the gos- pel is of that nature, as that, if it be once sincerely received in the mind and embraced, it will work out all those false notions which by any means together with it may be instilled, as " rectum " is " index sui et obliqui." Whilst, then, we know and are persuaded that in any system of religion which is proposed unto us it is only error Avhich we reject, having an infallible rule for the guidance of our judgment therein, there is no danger of weakening our assent unto the truth which we retain. Truth and falsehood can never stand upon the same bottom, nor have the same evidence, though they may be pro- posed at the same tim.e unto us, and by the same persons; so that there is no difficulty in apprehending how the one may be received and the other rejected. Nor may it be granted (though your con- cernment lie not therein at all), that if a man reject or disbelieve any point of truth that is delivered unto him in an entire system of truths, that he is thereby made inclinable to reject the rest also, or disen- abled to give a firm assent unto them ; unless he reject or disbelieve it upon a notion that is common to them all. For instance, he that rejects any truth revealed in the Scripture on this ground, that the Scripture is not an infallible revelation of divine and supernatural truth, cannot but, in the pursuit of that apprehension of his, reject also all other tniths therein revealed, at least so far as they are know-