PROGRESS AND DECLENSION OF RELIGION. 399
historians, which give sufficient testimony unto my observation, you will please to consult Chrysostom, Horn. iii. De Incomprehens. Dei Natur., Horn. xix. in Ac. 9, Horn. xv. in Heb. 8, and Augustin. Lil). de Fid. et Bon. Op. cap. xix., you will find that I had good gi-ound for what I said. And what if I had minded you of the words of Salvian, De Provid. lib. iii. : "Quemcunque invenies in ecclesia non aut ebriosum, aut adulterum, aut fornicatorem, aut raptorem, aut ganeo- nem, aut latronem, aut homicidam, et quod omnibus potius est, prope hgec cuncta sine fine?" — should I have escaped your censure of giv- ing you " a story false and defamatory, loaden with foul language against all nations, ages, and conditions, that none can like who bear any respect either to modesty, religion, or truth?" " Ne sasvi, magne sacerdos." What ground have you for this intemperate railing? What instance can you give of any thing of this nature? what expression giving countenance unto this severity ? If you will exer- cise yourself in WTiting " Fiats," you must of necessity arm your- self with a little j^atience to hear sometimes things that do not please you, and not presently cry out, " Defamation, false, wrath, foul language," etc. I suppose you know that not long after the times wherein I say religion, as to the power and purity of it, much decayed in the world, God brought an overflowing scourge and deluge of judgments upon most of the nations of Europe that made profession of Christianity. What, in sadness, do you think might be the cause of that dispensation of his providence ? Do you think that all things were well enough amongst them, and that in all things their ways pleased God ? Is such an apprehension suitable to the goodness, mercy, love, and faithfulness of God ? or must he lose the glory of all his properties in the administration of his righteous judgments, rather than you will acknowledge a demerit in them whom he took away as with a flood ? So, indeed, the Jews would have had it of old under their sufferings; but he pleaded and vindica.ted the equality and righteousness of his ways against their proud repinings. Pray, be as angiy with me as you please, but take heed of justifying any against God: the task will prove too hard for you. And yet to this purpose are your following contemptuous expressions; for unto my observation, that after these times the Goths and Vandals, with others, overflowed the Christian world, you subjoin, " Either to punish them, we may believe, or to teach them how to mend their manners." Sir, I know not what you believe, or do not believe, or whether you believe any thing of this kind or no : but I will tell you what I am persuaded all the world believes, who know the story of those times, and are not atheists ; and it is, that though the Goths and Vandals, Saxons, Huns, Franks, and Longobards, with the rest of the barbarous nations who divided the provinces of the western empire amongst
400 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
them, had, it may be, no more thought to punish the nations profess- ing Christianity for their sins, wickedness, and superstition (though one of their chief leaders proclaimed himself " the scourge of God" against them), than had the king of Babylon to punish Judah for her sins and idolatry in especial, yet that God ordered them no less than he did him in his providence, for those ends which you so scorn and de- spise,— that is, either to punish them for their sins, or to provoke them to leave them by repentance. Take heed of being a scoffer in these things, lest your bands be made strong. God is not unrighteous who exerciseth judgment. The Judge of all the world will do right. Nor doth he afflict any people, much less extirpate them from the face of the earth, without a cause. Many wicked, provoking, sinful, idola- trous nations, he spare th in his patience and forbearance, and will yet do so ; but he destroys none without a cause And all that I in- tended by the remembrance of the sins of those nations which were exposed unto devastation was but to show that their destruction was of themselves.
You leap unto another clause which you rend out of my discourse, "That these Pagans took at last unto Christianity;" and say, "Haply because it was a more loose and wicked life than their own Pagan profession." But are you not ashamed of this trifling ? Doth this disprove my assertion ? Is it not true ? Did they not do so ? Did not the above-mentioned nations, when they had settled themselves in the provinces of the empire, take upon them the profession of the Christian religion ? Did not the Saxons do so in Brittany, the Franks in Gaul, the Goths and Longobards in Italy, the Vandals in Africa, the Huns in Pannonia ? I cannot believe you are so ignorant in these things as your exceptions bespeak you. Nor do I well understand what you intend by them, they are so frivolous and use- less ; nor, surely, can any man in his right wits suppose them of any validity to impeach the evidence of the known stories which my dis- course relates unto.