Your next attempt is to vindicate yourself from any such inten- tion in your application of " Ejice ancillam cum puero suo," as I ap- prehended. Whether what you say to this purpose will satisfy yoiu* reader or no I greatly question. For my part, as I shall speak no-
i^IASS AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 41 1
thing but what I believe to be according unto truth, so if I am, or have been at any time, mistaken in my apprehension of your sense and mind, I am resolved not to defend any thing because I have spoken it. " Homo sum," and therefore subject to mistakes; though I am not in the least convinced that I was actually mistaken in my concej^tions of your sense and meaning in your " Fiat." But that we may not needlessly contend about words, yours or mine, I shall put you into a way whereby you may immediately determine this difference, and manifest that I mistook your intention, if I did so indeed. And it is this, Do but renounce those principles, — which if you maintain, you constantly affirm all that in those words I sup- posed you to intimate, — and this strife will be at an end. And they are but these two: — 1. That all those who refuse to believe and wor- ship God according to the propositions and determinations of your church are heretics. 2. That obstinate heretics are to be accursed, jjei-secuted, destroyed, and consumed out of the world. Do but re- nounce these principles, and I shall readily acknowledge myself mis- taken in the intention of the words you mention. If you will not so do, to what purpose is it to contend with you about one single expression, ambiguously, as you pretend, used by you, when in your avowed principles you maintain whatever is suggested to be inti- mated in it? Thus easily might you have saved your longsome dis- course on this matter. And as for the emblem which you close it with, of the " rod of Moses," — which, as you say, " taken in the right end was a walking-staff, in the wrong a serpent," — it is such a child- ish figment, as you have no cause to thank them that imposed it upon your credulity.
CHAPTER XIX.
Of preaching — The mass, and the sacrifice of it — Transubstantiation — Service of
the church.
We are arrived at length unto the consideration of those particulars in your Roman faith which in your " Fiat" you chose out either to adorn and set off the way in religion which you invite your country- men to embrace, or so to gild it as that they may not take any pre- judice from them against the whole of what you profess. The first of these is that which you entitled " Messach," which you now in- form us to be a Saxon word, the same with " Mass." But why you make use of such an obsolete word to amuse your readers withal, you give us no account. Will you give me leave to guess? for, if I mis-
412 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
take not, I am not far from yom* fancy. Plain, downright "Mass" is a tiling that hath gotten a very ill name amongst your country- men, especially since so many of their forefathers were burned to death for refusing to resort unto it. Hence, it may be, you thought meet to waive that name, which both the thing knoAvn to be signified by it in its own nature, and your procedure about it, had rendered obnoxious to suspicion. So you call it by a new old name, or an old oiew name, that men might not at first know what you intended, upon your invitation, to entertain them withal ; and yet, it may be, that they would like it under a new dress, which the old name might have startled them from the consideration of. But " Mass," or " Mes- sach," let it be as you please, we shall now consider what it is that you offer afresh concerning it, and hear you speak out your own words. Thus you say, p. 81 : —
" Having laughed at my admiration of Catholic service, you carp at me for saying that the first Christians were never called together to hear a sermon; and to convince me you bring some places out of St Paul's epistles and the Acts, which commend the ministry of the word. This, indeed, is your usual way of refuting my speeches. You flourish copiously in that which is not at all against me, and never apply it to my words, lest it should appear, as it is, impertinent. 1 deny not that converts were farther instructed, or that the preaching of God's word is good and useful; but that which I say is, that the primitive Christians were never called together for that end as the great work of their Christianity. This I have clearly proved."
Well, sir, without retortion, which just indignation against this unhandsome management of a desperate cause is ready to suggest, be pleased to take a little view of your own words once more. Page 279, you tell us that "the apostles and apostolical Christians placed their religion not in hearing or making sermons, /or they had none, but in attending to their Christian liturgy; and the sermons men- tioned in the Acts were made to the Jews and Pagans for their con- version, not to any Christians at all." Could I now take any other course to confute these false and impious assertions than what I did in the " Animadversions?" I proved unto you that sermons were made unto Christians by the apostles for their edification; that order is given by them for the instant preaching of the word, in and unto the churches, unto the end of the world ; and that those are by them signally commended who laboured in that work : and what can be spoken more directly to the confutation of your assertion? You would now shroud yourself under the ambiguity of that expression, " The great work of their Christianity," which yet you make no use of in your " Fiat." The words there from which you would get countenance unto your present evasion are these : " Nowhere was