358 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
are made unto you by some rule or other; and whether, with that judgment, your mind do not assent unto them or dissent from them. Yea, is not your judgment, which you so make, the assent or dissent of your mind? or what course do you take? I wish you would in- form us of your excellent expedient to teach a man to cry " Credo," without the use or exercise of his reason to bring him thereunto. But when you have done so, I know it is no other way but that by which you may teach a parrot or starling to say as much, or the crow that cried of old, "Ecra/ -ffavra, naXuc,. But you would evade all con- cernment in this discourse, by denying that your " Fiat Lux" '•' was written unto any such concernment against Protestants." I know not well what you mean by your " Unto any such concernment against Protestants." That the main design of your discourse is to bring Protestants unto an uncertainty in their profession, by everting the principles which you apprehend them to build upon, and thereon to persuade them unto Popery, I was in hope you would have no more denied. It hath been evidenced imto you, with as needless a labour as ever any man was put unto; but it is done because you would needs have it so, and shall not now be done again.
Your ensuing discourse, wherein you attempt to say something unto the ninth chapter of the " Animadversions," is not unlike the preceding; and therefore I shall cast them under one head. Your business in it is to cast a fresh dishonovir upon Christian religion, by questioning the defensihility of its principles against Jewish objec- tions any otherwise than by an irrational " credo." Let us hear you speak in your own language. " Your vaunting flourishes," you say, "about Scripture, which you love to talk on, will not, without the help of your 'credo' and humble resignation, solve the argument; which, that you may the easilier be quit of, you never examine, but only run on in your usual flourishes about the use and excellency of God's word. I told you in 'Fiat Lux' what the Jew will reply to all such reasonings ; but you have the pregnant wit not to heed any thing that may hinder your flourishes. But if you were kept up in a chamber with a learned Jew, without bread, water, and fire, till you had satisfied him in that objection, I am still well enough assured, for all your vaunts, that if you do not make use of your ' credo,' which here you contemn, you might there stay till hunger and cold have made an end of you." The meaning of this discourse is, that the Jews' pretence of rejecting Christ upon the authority and tradition of their church, was not, nor is to be, satisfied by testimonies given in the Scripture unto the person, doctrine, and work of the Messiah. The sum of the objection laid down in your " Fiat Lux" is that which I have now mentioned. It was the plea of the Jews against Christ and his doctrine, managed from the authority and tradition of their
OF REASON, AND THE OBJECTIONS OF JEWS TO CHRIST. 359
• church. That Christ and his apostles gave the answer unto tliis oh- jection which I have now intimated, — namely, the testimony of God himself in the Scrip tm-e to the truth of that which they objected against, which was to be preferred unto the authority and testimony of their church, — I have undeniably proved unto you in the " Anim- adversions;" and it is manifest to every one that hath but read the New Testament with any consideration or understanding. The same Avay was persisted in by the ancient fathers; as all their writings against the Jews do testify. And I must now tell you, that your calling the validity of this answer into question is highly injurious unto the honour of Christianity, and blasphemous against Christ himself. The best interpretation that I can give unto your words is, that you are a person wholly ignorant of the controversies that are between the Jews and Christians, and the way that is to l)e taken for their satisfaction or confutation. You tell us, indeed, in your " Fiat," that the Jews will reply to those testimonies of Scripture which are alleged as giving witness to our Lord Jesus Christ and his doctrine, and contend about the interpretation of tliem ; and this you tell me " I have the wit to take no notice of;" — vv^hich, by the way, is unduly averred by you, and contrary to your own science and con- science,,seemg you profess that you have read over my "Animad- versions;" and probably the very place v/herein I do take notice of Avhat you said to that purpose, and replied unto it, was not far from your eye when you wrote the contrary. And as I showed you what was the opinion of the ancients of that reply of the Jews which you mention, so I shall now add that nothing but gross ignorance in these things can give countenance to an imagination that there is any thing but folly and madness in the rabbinical evasions of the testimonies of the Old Testament given unto our Lord Christ and his gospel. And your substitution of a naked fanatical " credo," not resolved into the testimony of the holy writ, in the room of that ex- press witness which is given in holy Scripture unto the person and doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ, to oppose therewith the Judaical plea from their church, state, power, and authority, is an engine fit to undermine the very root of Christianity, and to render the whole gospel highly questionable. Besides, it is so absurd as to the convic- tion of the Jews, such a mere " jDetitio principii," or begging of what is in controversy between Christians and them, that I challenge you to produce any one learned man that hath made use of it to that purpose. To think that your " credo," built on principles which he despiseth, which you cannot prove unto him, will convince another man of the truth of what you believe, can have no other ground but a magical fancy that the fixing of your imagination shall affect his, and conform it unto your apprehension of things. Such is your