redemption of their friends out of Purgatory which I believe are those you speak of that hear not of this Doctrin without horrour Therefore Acute Sir you will or may see that your Argument is two edged and as the Auditours you speak of did not distinguish the degree of assent to this position from that they give to Faith so neither do they make any difference between it and the sleightest assent they have Thus may your Adversary by your Argument conclude any practise of the Church or common opinion of Preachers or generally receiv'd Ecclesiasticall storyes nay even the new holy dayes to be points of faith as well and as easily as you do this What difference of assent think you do the People make between these truths that there was a Saint Philip or Saint Jacob and that there was a Saint Bennet or Saint Augustin they hear of these far oftner then of those and seldom or never of the severall degrees wherein they are recommended to their assents Even the more prudent in many such points run currently on with an undistinguishing assent till something jog their thoughts and awaken them to look into the business then they begin to make it a question to examin and sift it and at last to settle it in its true box of Catholick or Theological or Historical faith or of some other inferiour assent You go on to perswade your Readers that those who accept of this Doctrin do it through comfortable apprehensions in lieu of great horrours before they were in and because it eases their consciences from the incumbent care of assisting their dead friends In the first you manifestly shew you understand not the Doctrin of your own Divines for we agree in the grievousness of the punishments or if we disagree in any thing it is that mine is the severer For the difference of our positions is not in what the punishments are which we both agree to be acts of the will Our difference is whether these acts of the will be caused by the force of nature in spirits as I say or by the force of material fire as your Divines maintain Which was the cause why when I explicated the nature of Hell in a Divinity lecture one of my Scholars told me I made Hell worse then it was For in truth the force of a material body is not to be compared to the strong activity of a subsistent spirit as any Divine will easily guess In your other point you seem to have fram'd your conceit out of conversation with Women and Children whose desires are violent at the instant but soon pass away and not out of the consideration of men whose counsels are govern'd by a far prospect and aym at perpetuity So you flatter poor Women with the hopes of relieving their friends the first morning or the first Saturday or in some speedy time and get present monies fit to make merry with for one day never reflecting that the ancient and manly charity for the dead was to establish Foundations and perpetual Anniversaries by which the memory of our friends and prayers for them was often renew'd and long continu'd whereas taking your Principles we need neither much fear the terrours of Purgatory nor seek new wayes to ease our Consciences from the incumbent care of assisting our departed friends since one Mass at a priviledg'd Altar will do the work alone and a very little sum of mony procure that Mass without going to the cost of Dirige's and such like chargable Offices And here I must ask my Readers my Adversary's leave to correct one suspition I had unawares entertain'd that Interest might have some influence upon the Defenders of this short stay in Purgatory I was deceiv'd and now I see they are no wayes accusable of that odious crime anciently great alms were given and those often repeated for the assistance of one Soul and so the Church and Church-men gain'd much and grew rich apace Now there is open'd a far cheaper way one piece alone and that of silver too dispatches the business Surely out fair and numerous and rich Monasteryes were not built and endow'd with such petty Contributions After this you proceed to the arraignment of me before my Bishop or a Nuncius Apostolicus But there want two things to make your arraignment good first that the people be inur'd to Tradition and to prefer the received Faith of the Church before all other Doctrins From the danger of which your Divines will secure me while they teach the People that the Church when it is sayd to be inerrable signifies the Pope alone that all the People may err that General Councils have no strength till they be seal'd by the Pope and so I shal have this help to appeal from them to the Pope let my Doctrin be as opposit as it will to all that hath been hitherto the belief of the Christian world The second thing that wants to the perfect arraignment is that you have not yet found out so weak a Bishop that will believe a Doctrin sprung from uncertain Visions foster'd by unlearned zeal and strengthen'd with an Exposition of a Council or of a Popes Bull against the rules of Grammar Logick and Divinity is the belief of the present Church In the mean while I give you great thanks both for your setting forth my plea against Luther and honouring it with so high an approbation that it thunders and lightens home For besides that the knowledge of that form of proceeding against Hereticks is very necessary it will give me a testimony that I am a good Christian and if I be not a very beast I have not committed an errour to fall under so gross and so well fore-seen a Censure To the charge it self from what I have already said you may gather my clear and full Ansver that the Doctrin I sustain is not by me pretended to be of faith but onely not against faith as also that the doctrin I oppose is not and Article of faith and supported by Fathers and Monuments of Antiquity and immemorable Custome but onely an Opinion not very ancient nor ratify'd by the consent of Fathers nor of so long a standing that it's beginning is not well enough known perhaps the later yet for its time as much prevailing doctrin of priviledg'd Altars may live to be as old as this is now and as common too will it therfore deserve to be put into our Creed or can it ever become an Article of faith which the whole Church professes is but an Opinion now And are not these differences betwixt Luthers case and mine whom you so charitably endevour to parallel sufficient to distinguish our dooms Examin them but once more and I will make you my Judg. Onely forget not these words which your self put down as part of my method to convince an heretick That the Authority of things which wee stand bound to beleeve descends handed down from CHRIST our B. SAVIOVR and no otherwise
prudently foyl'd you in every encounter in this Question that he hath left nothing for me but to discover your falshood in such by-questions as you thrust in to stuff out your Volume FOURTH DIVISION Containing an Answer to his seventeenth Section The Authours Doctrin of Councils explicated This new opinion of Purgatory in likelihood later than Saint Gregory IN your seventeenth Section you first put upon me that I am arm'd against the Authority of Popes and Councils and then you run headlong on with declamatory invectives upon that supposition But as the world is curious I conceive some will light on my defence as well as on your calumny to whom I thus explicate the true state of the question It is known to all Christians that Christ and his Apostles taught the world the Christian faith It is known to all Catholicks that this same faith has continued in the Catholick Church now fifteen ages It is known to the same that the means of continuing this faith hath been by Pastours and Fathers teaching their Children what themselves had learn'd by the same way It is likewise known that in divers ages there arose up divers Hereticks who endeavour'd to bring in Doctrins contrary to the received Faith and that Bishops sometimes in particular especially the Bishop of Rome sometimes in Collections or Councils with-stood and confounded such Hereticks confirming the old belief and rejecting all new inventions It is evident that to do this it fuffices to have veracity enough to attest what the old Doctrin was and power enough to suppress all such as stir against it Thus far all goes well Of late Ages among our curious School-men some have been so subtle that the Old faith would not serve them but they thought it necessary to bring in new points of Faith and because what was not of Faith could not become of Faith without a new revelation they look't about for a new revelation and finding the two supreme Courts of Christian discipline seated in General Councils and the Pope they quickly resolv'd to attribute the power of encreasing Christian Faith to these two Springs of Christianity Now the first difference betwixt the two parties engag'd in the present controversy is whether the Faith deliver'd by the Apostles be sufficient to govern the Church by or there be necessary fresh Additions of such points as cannot be known without a new revelation In which they whom I follow hold the negative they whom I suppose you follow the affirmative Out of this question springs a second whether in the Councils and in the Pope is to be acknowledg'd a Prophetical kind of Spirit by which towards the ordinary government of the Church they have a gift to reveal some things not before revealed nor deducible out of things already revealed by the natural power of discourse which God has left to mankind to govern it self by In which point also I follow them that deny you and your eminent learned men stand up for the Affirmative I hope by this any ingenious Reader will perceive that if the Faith deliver'd by Jesus Christ joyn'd with the natural power of discoursing be sufficient to govern the Church of God then those who give power to Councils and Popes sufficient to govern by this way give them as much as is necessary for the Church But if new Articles be necessary to the government of the Church then and onely then they fall short So that no understanding person reading these lines can doubt but the true question is this whether the Faith deliver'd by Christ be sufficient for the government of the Church or that we must expect new additions to our Faith every age or when occasion presents it self Whence it will easily appear that all the great noyse you make and furious Rhetorick you use of my denying the Authority of Councils my being arm'd against them and such like angry stuff are but uncharitable uncivil and highly injurious clamours without any true cause or ground at all But we shall hear more of these hereafter Now any prudent Christian that shall with moderate attention have read but so far will judge the question already decided For who dare maintain Christ's Doctrin was imperfect And indeed all that have any little modesty on your side will not say new Articles of Faith are necessary but that whatsoever the Church defines was before revealed though when they come to declare themselves they demand really new Articles onely calling them Explications of the former or Deductions from them And if they would justify that they were but such Deductions as natural reason can deduce there would remain no controversy which in very deed the Churches practise shews to be the truth In the first Council it being recorded that there was Conquisitio magna and all Councils and Popes ever since proceeding in the same style But here I must remember you what you said in the beginning concerning Pargatory that the reason why you write against my opinion was because it was translated into English And so I now protest that you are the cause why I write of this subject in English My books generally are to debate what I think in the points I write of with learned men whose care it is to divulge truths to the people dispensing to every one the quantity he is capable of not to raise any new thoughts in ignorant heads Your crying out against me forces me to a necessary defence before the people wherefore if any disputings concerning this matter displease any person of Judgment let it light upon your head who are the provoker and compeller of me into this new task which both age and other thoughts make me slowly and unwillingly undertake But I must not be mine own chuser but follow God As to what you say against this Doctrin first you desire your Reader to consider that if these grounds to wit that the Pope and the Council can err without distinguishing in what either matter or manner of proceeding Christian Faith is a meer mockery I confess the proposition grave in words but in sence not worthy a School-boy For first I ask you whether you mean in necessary points or unnecessary ones If you say in both I doubt your whole School will desert you For who is there that hath an ounce of brains who will give authority to the Church to determin all the subtle quirks of the School But if you say onely necessary ones then before you went farther against me you should have prov'd that the verities come by inheritance from Jesus Christ are not all that are necessary which question you never think on and so brandish your Logick against the apparitions in the clouds Secondly I ask you whether without counsel or with it If you say without it again your School will desert you If you say with it I ask you how much counsell and to what period In all which you will be at a loss Must it hold till by reason they
see a necessary connexion with the deliver'd Faith if you say so you desert your vertue of prophesying and come over to our School which you so abominate as rational and faithless yet this experience teaches us is the way that Popes and Councils use to take If you say their consulting must not hold till they see it by reason then tell me what Oedipus or Geometrician can guess or fix the terminating line of counsell prerequisite These points a Scholar would have setled You distinguish nothing but jumble all your Bells together into a confused noise and deafen more then instruct your Hearers Now 't is to much purpose to talk of the force of the word Anathema whilest you have not settled a matter in which the Church hath a power to impose it What an inconsiderate manner of arguing is this You say Catholiks require no other assurance of their Faith then upon this firm foundation that our holy Mother the Church is their infallible directress The proposition is the very Tenet we mainly advance and stick to Go but consequently to this and we shall have no quarrell You add another ground that the Councils her mouth are the unerring deliverers of truth This also is very true and never deny'd by us But there rises a great question whether Councils be perpetually and in all cases the mouth of the Church look upon Cariolanus his abridgment of the Councils and read his division of General Councils into approbata and reprobata and ex parte approbata and ex parte improbata and see how ignorantly you go to work even in the grounds of your own eminent learned men who will oppose you peradventure more then I and yet you preach Christian Religion is a mockery if this be taken away I desire not to look into particulars unless you force me to it For I cannot discover even your Errours without discovering too the vanity of that School which you nickname the Church and confidently take upon you to be one of her Masters I doubt not if you attentively consider your eminent Scholars you will find many of them speak indeed gloriously of Councils but unless I be strangely deceiv'd they give them less of inward and reall Authority then I while they make them in effect but Cyphers to the Pope without whom they signify nothing though added perhaps to him they increase his signification yet surely not very much since in many of those Masters opinion he alone is infallible and I think in every ones opinion all together are not much more Whereas the Doctrin I follow gives them an absolute Inerrancy in testifying receiv'd truths which is clearly sufficient to conserve and propagate the Faith of the Church I beleeve you mistake the meaning of that grave and worthy Person whom without any ground at all for your conceit you call my Scholar since he seriously protests he never gave his mind that way nor ever read over any considerable part of my Books nor particularly this of the Middle State his true meaning I conceive is we may know when Councils and Consistory's apply themselves right by examining not Tradition it self for that's evident in the sence of the Faithfull but their proceedings by Tradition whether they be conformable to it Which is not onely a maintainable but excellent truth And by this method the Divines of those dayes examin'd the Doctrin of John 22. For Tradition is the Law of Christ planted in the hearts of all Christians not to be examin'd it being to be read fair written there by their externall words and conversations Now if a Pope or Council be supposed to delver Doctrin against this 't is past darkness and examining since all the Christian world cannot choose but resent it and know it to be against their Faith and Judgment So that you plainly misunderstand the meaning of Tradition which is no hidden thing but the publick and settled belief of the Christian world You will say 't is impossible a Pope or Council should proceed so grosly I wish there were no examples of it But the truth is if instead of a Pope consider'd onely personally you take him as presiding in his Church and Seat and joyn'd with it which is a kind of more then a Provinciall Council but much more if you take a General Council without extraordinary violence without or within both mainly visible this cannot happen and so they have infallibility in attesting the received Doctrins most absolutely sufficient to secure the Church against being mis-led by them By the same Errour you look to determin Faith by Inquest not knowing it cannot be unknown in a Catholick Country to them that live there See the story of Luther Were men doubtfull of their Faith before he and his fellows in iniquity set themselves to snarl at it Therefore Inquest may be made how to answer their Argumments but not to understand what the Church held before opposition rose How much mistaken is all your discourse about the proceeding to higher Tribunals after so great diligence of scrutiny There is no such thing as scrutiny necessary to find out Faith nor ever was the Church to seek her Faith Since she once receiv'd it from Jesus Christ she never lost it and so is to look into it not for it If any thing be to be look for it is not faith it may be some Theologicall Verity not faith Your discourse therefore is wholly out of the way No wonder then you find your self at a loss and cry out like a blind man for a hand to guide you since instead of Christs faith you look for a new faith One would have it an Article of our Christian faith that his Order is a true Religious Order Another that one hang'd for treason is a true Martyr others seek some private revelation that brings in profit to be canoniz'd for faith and other such fine questions to be put in the Creeds of the Church and if it be not yeelded there 's a power in the Church to impose such beliefs upon men presently the denying Doctrin is an Exterminating School and pulls up by the roots all the foundations of Christian Religion Nor will there want some to say that though these things be true they are not to be published but Catholicks are to be left in ignorance of such tender points But will not the mischief by degrees grow intolerable if once it should come to that height that the People by a preoccupated credence be apt to be stirr'd seditiously against their naturall and lawfull Governour by any surreptitious Rescript fetch't from beyond Sea freshly seal'd with the new stamp of faith and to believe all Christianity is rain'd if such a Rescript nay the Interpretation of the procurers be any way doubted of O strange unhappy times You press farther that according to me the Church hath de facto erred in the Bull and Council so long treated of What a strange boldness is this you bring an Interpretation
even till this age In your twentieth Section you pretend to examin the Councill of Florence once more against me Your first mistake is that it was the business of the Council in Florence to declare the faith of the Church concerning the state of Souls which depart this life I mean not to speak to your History for as much as was determin'd of Souls was agreed in Ferrara but to the word business for their business was onely to agree two points one about material fire the other about the Just Souls presently seeing God which was the business of Benedictus his Bull and some of the Greeks were of the same apprehension with John the 22. But you like an Astronomer considering the phoenomena's of the Definition frame the question out of that whereas all the rest was no business but the compleating of the doctrin by dilating it out of tenets agreed without and before any controversy Your next errour is that whereas you pretend to compare my doctrin with the councils you do it to the doctrin of the parts of the Council when it is a clear case the doctrin of one part is not the doctrin of the Council but that in which the whole Council agrees Your third Errour if it be not a willfull aequivocation is that you say the Latins believe material Fire in Purgatory which if you mean by belief Catholick faith is extremely absurd Since they joyn cōmunion with the Greeks who profess the contrary if you mean only they held it as a probable opinion you cosen your Auditory which expects you should speak of Faith and not of that from which I may dissent by authority of the Council Your fourth rather malice than mistakes is that you impose upon me that there is no purging of Souls before reunion for all who know that actio is prior termino will allow a purging before a being purged as going to London is before being there Besides your oft repeated fault of mischarging me to hold that the Soules irregular affections are the torments of purgatory Your fifth errour is that you put an opposition betwixt the Latins and me where we perfectly agree in all save onely that intruded word by this Fire which comes out of a former and spoils the whole tenet of the Latins from being a matter of Faith making it but a probable-opinion in whole though the other parts belong to faith You add the Latins must needs have thrust me out of communion not reflecting that they gave communion to the Greeks who dissented in all you have alledged truly against mee As to the Greeks First you say I hold against them that Souls are in no place And though I cannot affirm positively what the meaning of the Greeks was at the Council in this point yet knowing their Fathers use when they speak of spirits to call working in a place being in a place I am well assur'd they would not thrust me out of their Society for denying a true locality in spirits The second objection is answer'd by my answer to the Latins and the same is to be sayd to the third Of your last objection concerning the efficacy of the helps because you say you will evidence it I must expect the fulfilling your promise till then it is but a threatning likely to be of little effect You end with a great confidence that you have dispatch't this business and converted your adversary unless he will stand upon the Errability of the Council For you imagining your self inerrable in your rash and shallow interpretation of it cannot alas good Christian imagin any other possible way to maintain the conclusion I on the other side hope I have sayd somewhat that may help your imagination but dare entertain no great apprehension that I shall convert you knowing I have not spoken to the main foundation of your opinion which is setled in your will upon grounds beyond my removall Yet in the 21 Section you are forced to retire from your fair hopes for your great words satisfy your adversary no more then your Capital letters His answer in substance is that you misconstrue the Pope and Council as it hath been declar'd by him and me before And that the purgation before the day of Judgment may be suppos'd but not defin'd And clearly enough such is both the Popes and the Council's meaning as is before more largely insisted on which being the onely knot of the controversy you do well to prepare loud clamours against it and tell us it is a pitifull evasion Let us then suppose it were judg'd by the Pope to be the more probable opinion amongst Divines that Souls were purg'd before the day of Judgment though he held the other was also probable which I think you will not say impossible for a Pope since divers have gone that way in other matters In this case was it fit the Pope should define what became of such Souls or no if you say he could and should define what is become of all your clamours against defining upon a supposition which afterwards may be found to be impossible For he that judges an opinion onely probable leaves a probability that it is impossible to be true since whoever sayes one side is but probable as far as concerns science sayes it may be false for any thing he knows Now things that have a settled course in nature are so dispos'd that impossibility is concomitant to falsity nor can it ever be prov'd to be false unless it be prov'd to be impossible So that the Pope in defining the coming to heaven of such Souls proceeds not consequently to his opinion if he doth not go upon a supposition that himself confesses may be impossible and yet in all prudence he must define it as being but an extension of this his main question whether Saints go immediatly to heaven If you say he could not or ought not to define such a conditionall case who will or can believe you that hath any prudence since for the position it self He both thought it the more probable and saw it concern'd the most ample part of his division of Saints going to heaven For all christians imagin more go to heaven through Purgatory then either by the vertue of baptism or by eminency of Purity and Sanctity acquir'd in this world So that I persuade my self you would easily allow the Pope not only could but ought in case he thought both sides probable to proceed as he did in his definition Now that this was the Pope's case is absolutely certain and more then probable since we cannot doubt but it was the case of the Latines in the Council of Florence in which the Greeks by their leaving our the expression of some being deliver'd sooner some later directly wav'd that position and by consequence refused to profess an Article of faith if this were one and yet without any repugnance or quarrelling about this circumstance were admitted to communion and a common decree made in
It is indeed St. Thomas his opinion and a pure Scholastical one nor Universally receiv'd Yet if this notion of supernaturality be lost your faith is gone Good Sir take faster hold on it and let not your faith slip away so easily from you Again you believe the mystery of the Trinity but if it depends as to its deducibleness on what is Essential in God you doubt it is not your faith though all Divines will tell you all that is in God is Essential If St. Thomas explicate the Unity and Plurality in God by the Unity of Action and Passion in motion your faith is lost But chiefly if any miscreant or Imp of Hell as your Love-letter Complement is should say the names of Father and Son were derived to God from what we observe in natural Generation of living Creatures which being a materiall thing can be no otherwise in God then by Metaphor then your faith is different from those who explicate it so that is all the Divines I have either read or heard of who universally agree in transferring Aristotles Definition of Generation to the blessed Trinity You go on and tell us you have hitherto believ'd that God most freely and of his own goodness built this Vniverse and that he is not necessarily ty'd to the order and course of Nature All this is well but now you are taught that God must contradict himself if he act any thing against nature And what signifies this but what is consequent to that for if God be the builder of nature He hath setled this order which we call nature most freely but yet he hath done it and if he hath done it he cannot undo it again without undoing what he hath done which in English is called contradicting himself For one to contradict himself is to change his mind or will which it seems is your faith that God can do Another Article of your faith seems to be that out of the very series of nature Judas might have escaped being damn'd whereas all Catholicks agree that out of the pure series of Nature St. Peter could not have scap'd being damn'd At last your faith descends to flyes and wheras peradventure if you had thought should God have had the mind he had not formerly to make another fly his resolution that is his Essence had not been the same it is now your faith might have been the same with mine But by falling immediately upon the fly you have quite lost your faith And your conclusion comes to be the same with this that if God ties himself to any thing and so remains ty'd he is become a pagan Jupiter I confess this is not my faith You march forward telling us if God neither command nor forbid any thing all morality is lost All this would be well if you told us what you meant by Command if no more then Commonwealths do when they appoint rewards for them who do well and punishments for malefactors upon which morality consists your faith may be the same that mine is For so I profess God commands not onely by setting rewards and punishments but by denouncing them But if you have a special notion of commands importing a meer will or humour to command without designing any benefit to the obeyer then I cannot help your faith though we agree in these words God forbids to steal commands to honour him c. Then you begin to prognosticate how you will discover out of my works a morality that Escobar never thought on And truly I hope you will if you take pains to understand them But if you only use words and never look what they signifie you will do good neither to your self nor others To give an Essay of my Morality you bring this position of mine that Another man is no otherwise to me then a peece of Cloth or Wood which I cut and shape after my will Even though I do him harm or seek to ruin him I do him no wrong And you ask how this agrees with that Principle of Nature that we ought to do to others as we would have them do to us I can onely say if it doth not agree I was mistaken for I brought it to shew the ground the second Principle had in nature and my deduction is this Reason teaches me to use Cloth like Cloth and Wood like Wood and consequently a man like a man that is to think that fitting for him I think to be fitting for my self seeing a man is of the same nature with the Considerer Lastly you are afraid if faith yield to evidence our notions must be chang'd and in that you are not much amiss For I also conceive the notions of one who understands what he sayes are different from the notions of him who doth not and upon this subject I will propose you a place of St. Austin which seems to me very home to the purpose 'T is too long to copy out therefore I pray read the 26 27 and 28 Chapters of the 12th Book of his Confessions and specially reflect upon the divers sences or understandings which divers Christians have of the same places of Scripture and I may say of the same delivery of Faith The example in the end of the 27th and the beginning of the 28th is in a manner our very case There are two understandings of the Creation of the World one weak the other strong both necessary for divers sorts of people If the weak man when he hears the more intelligent explicate his faith should cry him down for a Pagan as taking away faith it were no wonder For so we read of a good Monk that had been an Anthropomorphite who when he was taught that God was a Spirit that is had no hands feet face c. as he before had fancy'd him cry'd out he had lost his God and perhaps was likely enough to call him a Pagan too that deny'd God such a shape and explicated to him according to the nature of a Spirit and like a Scholar those places of Scripture which begot and so suted to that fancy of his But no Scholar would judg him a great Divine for doing so If you read these latter Books of St. Austins Confessions you shall find that by natural knowledg he directed his understanding of Scripture and Faith and consequently was as very a Pagan as my self And so did all the Fathers by reason convince Hereticks follyes when they could and this is the duty of a Scholar which Saint Peter preaches to us and Saint Paul told us he practised among the Perfect giving to weaker stomacks Milk and not strong Meat By this Sir you easily perceive my principal aym to wit what I have learned by Faith and Tradition the same to understand and defend by the help of Sciences which I think I cannot do unless I first understand the Sciences themselves and not frame the Sciences to Faith before we understand what Faith it self teaches us How ridiculous is it that what apprehensions we made of our Creed when we were Children the same we should retain when we are men Or what Conceptions clowns frame to themselves in Religion Philosophers and Divines should be oblig'd not to transcend under pain of being esteem'd Supplanters of Christ and his Doctrin Evacuaters of Faith Miscreants and I know not how many other such ill-favoured names as you give me too often up and down your Book Think but how contrary 't is to mans Nature and the profession of the Church to forbid Learning to hinder men from searching the true Meaning of Gods word from endeavouring to come to Demonstration as near as we can to cut off all hopes of Certainty and confound all Sciences into a Chaos of probability Good Sir since God hath created us to Science and set our Bliss in the knowledg of himself since he hath given us a strong inclination to it do not seek to plunge us into a despair of it and confine us to the eternal darkness of knowing nothing If your self be discourag'd hinder not others to endeavour Should six persons find out but six conclusions there 's so far advanc'd those six may each of them produce six more and so go on with an unbounded improvement whose multiplying fruitfulness as we cannot conjecture so surely we ought not either to envy or obstruct IN your Postscript where you promise to make all such things good as depend on matter of fact before any Person of Honour I understand not well your meaning by this word matter of fact But if false citations go under that name I pray clear your self of this imputation I charge you with that you say I put the pains of Purgatory to be the irregular affections to worldly things A proposition you have so often rvepeated and urged that you cannot deny it to be deliberately and examinedly done So false and injurious that you cannot refuse to acquit your self if you be indeed Innocent And for a Close give me leave against your next Vindication to offer you this note not as a Rule for who made me your Superiour that I should flatter my self with thinking you would perhaps obey me but as a friendly intreaty that since we have experience enough of your power in Rhetorick you would wholy apply your self to solid and usefull reason This if you deny at least let me prevail with you to put at the beginning and end of those periods where you intend to be bitter some visible mark that I may save the labour of reading stuff so unsuitable both to you and me as also that some other of your Readers whose ears delight in such janglings may directly pick out the parts that most agree with them and not be diverted by your other less impertinent discourses whereas in your last work all is so jumbled together and closely woven quite through the whole piece that for my part I can scarce distinguish the strong sence from the blustring Satyr If you intend to write like a Man and like a Scholar take some Treatise or Book of mine end wayes then show either the Principles weak or the Consequences slack else every one knows that in Discourses single Paragraphs subsist by their fellows and so to impugn such taken apart signifies nothing FINIS
RELIGION AND REASON Mutually corresponding and assisting each other FIRST ESSAY A Reply to the vindicative Answer lately publisht against a Letter in which the sence of a Bull and Council concerning the duration of Purgatory was discust By Thomas White Gent. Vinc. Lir. cap. 27. Intelligatur te exponente illustriùs quod anteà obscuriùs credebatur Per te Posteritas intellectum gratuletur quod ante Vetustas non intellectum venerabatur Eadem tamen quae didicisti ita doce ut cum dicas novè non dicas nova PARIS MMLX THE AUTHOR TO THE JUDICIOUS READER I Suppose you have perus'd the Book I here pretend to Answer And how do you like it has he done his work I dare not say demonstrated for sure he will not offer at what he thinks impossible but has he prov'd which is a modest word and he must not be offended at it has he solidly prov'd That the position he sustains is a Truth traditionarily deliver'd from the Apostles to us as a point of Catholick Faith Or secondly That It is Defin'd either in the Bull or Council if he had done this I should heartily rejoyce in his Victory though over my self But if as to the first branch he have onely prov'd it the common perswasion of later Ages and that without clearing in what quality it is held whether as Faith or Opinion even by the Moderns If instead of the Consent of Fathers he bring but One above Exception and out of that One the first and chief testimony is indifferent both to him and me and the onely difficulty of the rest objected and answer'd by my self and unreply'd to by him If of the three passages he cites out of the publick Liturgyes one onely bear any shew of difficulty the other two being either plainly neutral or grosly abus'd And if in the second branch he have onely prov'd that it was suppos'd or as their Title-page warily calls it Contain'd in the Bull and Council and not Determin'd I cannot see my case so desperate as he imagins Scripture it self oftentimes proceeding upon Suppositions conformable to the fore-entertain'd apprehensions of those it speaks to without engaging that every such supposition is a reveal'd Truth But on the other side if I have plentifully alledg'd both Scriptures and Fathers and Liturgyes and Reasons too of which me thinks a little does well even among Divines and to none of these has he given the least satisfactory answer I cannot see but my case is hopefull and when you have read this little Treatise I cannot doubt but you will see it so too But all this engages onely a particular Controversy the next is of a far more high and universal importance of a far different strain from other single and ordinary Questions For in this we agree that what the Church sayes is the truth we agree in the words wherein the Church delivers us that truth our onely dispute is about the sence of those words or rather what ought to be the means to come to the knowledge of that sence We find by dayly experience the same Creed recited in the mouths of children of men and of the learned We cannot doubt but the apprehensions of children and men are different and that our young thoughts are to be corrected by Age but whether the Learned and the Prudential make the same apprehensions is the great Controversy between us My Antagonist seeing the largest part of the Church consist of this degree of Prudential men perswades himself that not only their Belief but their very apprehensions are uncontrollable and unamendable I conceive God has given that priviledg to Learning to make us understand the truth of our Faith better then by vulgar and popular conceptions On my side stand the endeavours of the whole Schools whose direct Profession it is to explicate and declare the true sence of Scripture and the words in which Faith is left us On his side stands the multitude of the common People whose fancyes are not elevated nor their judgments improv'd by Study this Multitude he loudly calls the Church All Christianity and such brave names but be not astonisht at his great words for he distinguishes not between the Church and the weaker part of it which he follows nor offended at me that I observe not a grave and regular Progresse where I am set to catch a bird that hops up and down from twig to twig chirps upon this a little and then flyes immediately to another but rather pity the condition of an old clumsy man too slow and heavy for so wild a Chace Wherein yet by the help of God I am resolv'd to follow him as fast as I can As the whole Book in a manner is made up of little else but boutades and flashes so you are onely to expect from me short hints of what might be said more dilatedly which I hope may suffice to counterblast those sudden gusts If any other as is threatend come out with stronger Ordnance I shall endeavour to oppose stronger Bulwarks I hope he will write hereafter more closely and with less distemper especially since now as I understand he intends to read my Books I would he had done so before he had written against them for then I might have hop'd a few hours would have suffic'd to make my Answer which now has cost me all my spare time of a whole fortnight Tho. White INDEX A EVery Act even a sinfull one has some perfection as to what 's positive in it pag. 132. That Affections got here are not distinct from the Soul no singular Opinion p. 131 132. Antiquity not favouring ante-judiciary Delivery shown from the miscarriage of his best Testimonies thence p. 105 106 107. Arraignment of the Author feebly attempted p. 90 91 92. C. CEnsuring of Doctrins and who may lawfully do it p. 6 7 8. Controversy in what manner to be handled p. 5 6. Corporeall Affections remain after separation p. 137 138 141 142 143. Best Corporeall pleasures most conducive to Beatitude from p. 133. to p. 137. The Council of Florence examin'd p. 49. It and the Bull wrongly descanted on by his eminently learned Divine p. 53. not holding ante-judiciary Delivery a materiall point nor of Faith p. 58 59 60 61. Councils how held by the Author how by some other Divines p. 64 65 66. Infallible in things necessary and proceeding advisedly p. 68 69. Their Errability speaking in common and abstractedly from all matters and manners of proceeding held by all p. 121 122 123. Fewer easier and less deceivable requisites to their Infallibility in the Authors Doctrin than in others p. 71. 121. 123. The Council of Trents Doctrin concerning Remission and Satisfaction exactly observ'd by the Author p. 177 178 179. D. DEfinitions may proceed upon Suppositions onely probable p. 96. 97. Delivery so speedily expected by Priviledg'd Altars diminishing the care of assisting our dead Friends p. 88 89. and our amendment here p. 184 185. The opinion of
against Grammar against Logick and against Divinity and if this be not accepted of you cry the Church has err'd Your Interpretation is against Grammar by your own confession complaining of your Adversary for demanding an Is or Is not which is a plain acknowledgment that your sence is not formally in the words It is against Logick because you put the subject to be part of the predicate Against Divinity because you would make the grace of God and heavenly benefits be bought like Salads in the market by him that has most mony Besides other inconveniences whereof I have explicated some in my Book of the Middle State and may have occasion to say more hereafter And yet forsooth if this sweet Interpretation be not gratis admitted of the Church has err'd the Church has err'd and all 's undone well a day well a day You go farther and press that my rule of faith failes me in this very point And first you appeal to the consciences of all illiterate Persons whether this be not their present faith Yau have found out a Tribunal very fit to gain your cause in But I wonder you are so little skill'd in spirituall direction that you do not know most illiterate men never reflect upon their inward acts or farther then what belongs to the fancy not one amongst ten thousand And you deceive me if you hold faith to be an act of the fancy Yet I dare not be too bold for I have heard of one that wore a plush cloak and could neither read nor write Wherefore it is enough for me to deny it whether it be your opinion or no Besides do you not know that even literate Persons unless Divines are not to mince the doctrin taught them by their Pastours so far as to distinguish what is deliver'd for faith what as necessary to the explication of it or to the Practise of Christian life Further you may know that many even of your own eminent Divines differ not only in what points are of faith what not but in what makes them to be of faith what not Though I think they all agree that an explication against Grammar and Logick does not rayse a position into an Article of faith though the explication be of a Popes Bull Next you tell your adversary that Master White him self says Saint Gregory the great was the first founder of that faith I know well you accompt Master White a kind of a mad man that dares advance such propositions as he cannot but foresee what strong opposition they were like to stir up against him But I did not think he was so mad as holding no doctrin to belong to faith which began since the Apostles daies who are the last revealers of publik faith that he knows of and besides professing this doctrin so far from faith that it is not true yet should tell you that Saint Gregory founded this faith As far as I remember what I sayd was that Saint Gregory reported this novelty first broke out in his dayes by the means of certain revelations And this I sayd upon the authority of Venerable Bede who attributes the book of Dialogues to Saint Gregory But now I must tell you that upon fuller consideration I rather believe Venerable Bede's information was defective then to attribute so unworthy a book to so grave and learned a Pope nothing like such winter tales as are told in that book being found in his most worthy and learned works And I will make your self whom I know a great admirer of that learned and pious Doctour Judg of the controversy Do you think there is in the next world Excommunications and restorings to communion as is exprest in one of those Revelations Do you think that one who dy'd obstinate in schism was sent to Purgatory because he did many Alms as is reported in another Revelation do you think it is not the fancy of an Idle brain to imagin Souls are sent to bathes to scrub and rub men there to be acquitted of their sins Other things there are in the same book worth the noting but these are enough to shew it unworthy of St. Gregory as indeed it is for so great a Doctour and Prelate to spend his time in gathering together private storyes of obscure and petty Relaters This will set this Doctrin an hundred years later and into an age one of the least cultivated since the beginning of the Church of God Nor is it true that this carries after it a practise testified by Foundations Prayers Masses Almes c. For all these were in the Church before this Doctrin as may appear in Antiquity The Church of Afrik made a Canon to force the laity to contribute to Prayers for the dead about Saint Austins time who yet testifies that the question whether Souls were deliver'd out of Purgatory before the day of Judgment had not yet been moved Now Foundations contradict this Doctrin rather then promote it For he that makes a Foundation intends it without limit of time and so must imagin the Soul needs the assistance of that charity so long which would much cool the devotion you pretend and we see practis'd before our eyes to get Masses enow in a morning to send a Soul to Heaven to dinner Shew me but one ancient Instance where two or three thousand Masses have been by Legacy procur'd to be said the very next morning after the Testator's departure and little or nothing after that morning and I will ingenuously confess it the best argument you have produc'd in the whole managing of your cause After the Author of the Dialogue there was no more news of this opinion till Odilo a Monk of Cluny's time who being a kind of a Generall of many Monasteries dilated this Doctrin in them upon a goodly ground to build a matter of Faith on to wit the report of a French Pilgrim who sayd he had met with an Hermite I think a French man who perswaded himself he had Visions of Souls being deliver'd out of Purgatory by the Prayers of the Monks of Cluny Upon this ground the good Saint recommended the devotion for the dead warmly to his subjects and they to the people who frequented their Monasteries and hence this Doctrin came to be common where his order was in esteem And so being a pious credulity stay'd about one hundred years till the School began Which finding it very common easily favour'd it with such reasons and explications as they thought fit though not universally for some are found to have contradicted it and so it was exalted to a probable opinion In which state the Council of Florence found it and practis'd it giving communion 'to the Greeks who as is before declar'd left it out of their confession after the Latins had put it in theirs And in this quality it persever'd till my book de medio statu was turn'd into English Then it began first to be a matter of faith by the power of the great letters
you put in the Edition of the Bull of Benedictus and the Council of Florence For before that even the consorts of your Tenet held it no otherwise then for the common opinion of Divines LAST DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section the eighteenth to Section the two and twentieth The Catholick Rule of Faith defended The Vindicators weakness in making the unlearned Judges of Controversy His frequently mis-representing my Doctrin and manifold failings in his new attempts from the Bull and Council YOur eighteenth Section you begin with saying my Doctrin which is a close adhering to Tradition is the way to make fools stray You follow still the same truantly humour of using words without looking into the sence For if Tradition signify the delivery of the Doctrin preach't and taught by our forefathers your proposition signifies that to follow what we are taught by our forefathers is the way to make fools go astray Neither do I deny but that you speak consequently if first you make the Popes veracity the veracity of the whole Church and that all the Church but he can err and consequently he may correct the Doctrin which was believ'd by the Church in the age immediatly going before him then 't is true that to prefer the Belief of the former age before the Popes word will lead fools astray But for my part I desire to be one of those fools and to go so astray You run on in a full careere and tell us of the Authority of the Church and Councils in common and that things settled by them must not be brought in question not seeing because you will not that what the Church believ'd in the last Age is more the Church's decree then what she speaks either by Pope or Council unless she speaks the same that she believed the last Age and so you continue your discoursing with words not taking their meaning along with you In your nineteenth Section you come so home as to judge and condemn me by mine own Doctrin a great shame to me I confess if you make it good You argue therefore what have we seen but Masses Dirges Almes c. so far is almost true but why did you not put in by which in express terms we pray'd for the welfare of the Souls at the day of the General Judgment but you had reason to leave that out for it would have set a shrewd puzzell in your Argument We have heard constantly say you that Souls are deliver'd out of Purgatory by these powerfull helps before the day of Judgment In this part you have mended your former fault for there you sayd too little to serve your purpose if you had prov'd all you said and here you say more then can be prov'd to serve your purpose do you mean that your way was preach't constantly that is as a certain and establisht Doctrin of faith or that for a long time they preacht it as a probable truth or without engaging at all into the degree of its assuredness but perhaps you proceed more nicely since you onely said you heard it constantly not that it was preach'd constantly For to say a thing constantly imports that the speaker teaches it to be certain and it is not enough if for a long time he tells you it is likely to be so Now so far as concerns the delivery of Souls from Purgatory by the potent means you speak of was ever constantly taught but that the delivery should be made before the day of Judgment was taught but as a pious opinion if the Preacher understood the sence of the Doctours of the Schools themselves who add no such qualification because their principles being either Authority or Reason they find in Authority neither Fathers nor Councils nor Popes express in the point and Reasons much less favourable and to say the truth though they are apt enough to dispute whether there be a God a Trinity an Incarnation c. Yet I do not remember to have heard of any one who hath treated of his proposition so directly as to dispute it pro and con Which being so what certainty can we expect a Preacher should fix upon this Doctrin But to declare what I think those whom you appeal to will answer I beleeve it is that they never reflected to make any difference of the things the Preachers deliver'd them and much less upon the degrees of assent they gave to this or that point and as far as they can tell they gave the same assent to any place of Scripture the Preacher explicated as they did to this point unless some particular occasion put them in mind to qualify one and not the other But as they found by experience in other things that if any rub came to make them doubt of any thing a Preacher sayd then first they began to consider on what grounds they were bound to believe the point proposed so they have done in this and of those who have spent any competent time in examining both sides many have discover'd your grounds unsafe to build any certainty on and some confest them too weak to sustain even so much as a probability What the Gentleman whose letter you cite and with some imprudent circumstances will say why he was carryed away with your Arguments I know not but had he read my Books as much as I esteem his learning and vertue he would surely have met with full answers to your very objections which they who read yours cannot do nor so much as hear of the Arguments I use to maintain my opinion you on set purpose concealing them and proposing in their stead as my whole grounds a discourse made to a meer Philosopher or Heathen where the method of a regular writer oblig'd me to abstract from Revelation But that this answer I set down is for the greatest part of those that follow this opinion a true one is not onely manifest to all that reflect upon what passeth within them on the like occasions but experience hath taught me it in every country where I have conversed since the publishing this Doctrin In all which I have found divers who upon hearing of it acknowledg'd that before they had in their hearts a certain dislike of your opinion but they knew not why it having a kind of an uncouth semblance yet they could not pitch upon any thing to say solidly against it One passage I will intreat your patience to let me tell you Before I printed it I communicated this point to one of the greatest Divines of Christendome and confest to be so He presently reply'd it was against the Council of Florence and went immediately to his Chamber and fetcht down the Council when we had a little debated the text and he saw it did not reach home he shut up the Book with these words Look to it you will draw all the Regulars upon your back meaning all such of them as found great profit by perswading the people they should procure a sudden
the words he speaks You will say you scorn these Grammatical Lectures and I believe you but such pride hath brought you to call the principall Fathers of the Church and her best Divines Imps of Hell for all these say the same I do in this point You must have some miscreants to accompany your Imps Therefore you would have a miscreant teach that a moderate affection to a Concubine is a less crime then an immoderate love to a Wife and because this latter is no breach of Gods Commandments as your Discourse imports therefore he must be a miscreant that should say it O what want had Solomon of such a Ghostly Father to tell him that to love his Wives immoderately was no breach of the Commandments And that to love them so as out of that love to fill Hierusalem with Idols and Idolatrous Worship was not far worse then a moderate or rather an ordinary for none is moderate none but is sinful enough love of a Concubine Surely you have quite forgotten that excellent sentence of our Saviour He that hates not his Wife can be none of his Disciple or as it is expres't in another place he that loveth his Wife more then him For I have heard say that by these words is signified as much as he that loves his Wife immoderately Surely he was no miscreant that preach't to men to loavo their Wives if they would not let theâ— serve God quietly After this in your 22 Sect. you arm up your Fathers and set St. Austin in front to make a great shew with his name For in his words nothing is to be found for your purpose And indeed it is an imprudence to cite him for your opinion who professes expresly ad Dulcit quaest. 1. the question had not yet been handled before his time but might hereafter but that he knew not whether side would prove true Yet you will give him a paper in his hand to hold forth though it contains nothing but the profession of your Adversary And â—ot to take notice of the doubtfulness of the two latter Books you cite there is nothing in them that your Adbersary will deny but has already explicated them But if you fail in Saint Austin you will help it out by Origen who sayes too much for you being known to speak heretically when he uses those phrases you cite out of him For his opinion was that Purgatory began after the day of Judgment and the sentence given by Christ according to which some were to be longer some shorter in torments but all to be freed at last And this he expresses by the words you cite and you should have brought some words by which it might appear he spake of Souls before the day of Judgment But you have a salve against this saying he wrote this before he was an Heretick By which it is clear you speak at randome for he fell not to be an Heretick by a set occasion as some others did but as long as he liv'd was accounted a great Doctor of the Church and his Heresies not discover'd untill after his death and even then defended to be none of his but to have been foysted in by Hereticks Your next Author is St. Gregory of Nyssa a man of very great worth and auâ—hority of whom Petavius that famous Jesuit sayes that some in his time more piously then either truly or wisely striv'd to explicate some places of his which did savour of Origenism But Germanus Bishop of Constantinople ancienter then Photius defends this great man yet not without admitting the Origenists had mingled some sentences of their own here and there in his works Now this Germanus his Book is not extant and therefore such places as use the Origenists phrases are suspected ones Specially the Book you cite is excepted against Possevinus rejects it absolutely others object against it that 't is corrupted by the Origenists in divers other points so that it is neither certain the book you cite is his nor if it be that it can carry authority where the phrase is Origenical as this word Ignis Purgatorius is and avoided much by Greek Fathers because it is so notorious in Origen I have not the Book and so I cannot speak expresly to the words In conclusion you make the Judgment of the Ages before those strange Revelations which Gregorius Dialogus as the Greeks call him and say him to be the Pope whose successour was Zacharias who lived about the midst of the eighth Age hath left us or rather Odilo who lived about six hundred years agoe out of three Fathers whereof one sayes nothing special for your Doctrin and is certainly against it The second was notoriously an Heretick and the words you cite pertinent to the explication of his Heresy The third's words are certainly corrupted by the followers of the second and the Book out of which you cite the place rejected by learned Catholicks yet this you call the consent of Fathers and the apprehension of those ages to which I appeal But now comes such an impiety as should make a Christian sink for shame to wit that I say Virgils Purgatory is more rational then yours But what would you have me do I did not know that all the light of Christianity consisted in certain private Revelations quarum nox conscia sola est Now that you have told me so I will mend as soon as I shall believe you mean while till then I may conceive a man of wit may conjecture or feign likelier thing then we find in such visions as go generally accompany'd with some circumstance against the nature of Christian life Nor do I fear your exposition of the Councils will stand canonised in Christian Creeds however you assume the confidence to nickname such shallow conceits of your own Catholick Faith all over your Book You follow the same matter by citing places out of the publick Liturgies of which all but one are purely indifferent to both parties even in the very out side of the words and that one easily explicable in a sence consistent with mine You brave me to find out a new construction of Ante diem rationis and I tell you I have found one of which I never heard before and 't is in your book and in this very place pag. 83. wherein striving to apply that excellent Hymn to your purpose you mistake it I think as much as 't is possible First you make the Priest speak in the person of the dead whereas the whole style of the Hymn runs clearly in the person of him that prayes and in the singular Quid sum miser tunc dicturus c. supplicanti parce Deus Contremisco mei finis With which person suit these words best that of the dead or of the Priest Secondly your Argument must suppose him to pray for delivery from Purgatory let 's see how you hit it in this Ne perenni cremer igne can these words agree with Purgatory Thirdly you bring this
accuse your Adversary that he sayes you think such things promote souls in Holy desires though for my part I think it is a great reason of the use of them to make people be devout when otherwise they would not And for souls going to Heaven by them if they take away the pains of Purgatory with what face can you deny it I remember a Doctor of Divinity who having obtain'd a Scapular from the Carmes and a priviledg from the Jesuits to be admitted a Jesuit at the hour of his death was as confident to go directly to Heaven as if he had had a Patent for it under Jesus Christs own Hand Why then are you so touchy as if there could not be abuses in these things why cannot you be patient in this case as well as the Church is content to admit some abuses to have crept even into the administration of the Sacraments Your last note I believe is quite mistaken for I do not conceive your Adversary intended to make any comparisons both because he does not specifie any particular man to whom he should be suppos'd to compare me and because there is no occasion for it But peradventure he would not have the good life of any man be an Argument to bear down a contrary Doctrin For my self I profess no exemplarity If my life be such as may not unbeseem my Calling I have as much as I desire from men neither do I see any reason why any one should engage for me supra id quod videt in me I pray let not opinion-quarrels break into Personal dissentions Si invicem mordetis invicem consumemini To the same uncharitable end I fear tends your often repetition of diminishing words to those persons who think well of me or my Doctrin insisting especially on their small number but I pray you tell me how many you think have impartially and attentively read these few Books I have made I believe in proportion to them it is not a small number who profess to have met in many points with great satisfaction nor do I expect they should in all I may sometimes be mistaken my self and there I desire none to follow me others may sometimes be mistaken in me and there I am so far from being followed that my obscurity which I confess a defect will not let me be found Nor do I see so much cause to be troubled at the fewness as to bless God for the qualities of those who profess to have found good in my writings being Persons both ingenuous and vertuous and of such frank and unbyassed Principles as well by their own inclination as the influence my way may have had upon them that I am confident they desire nothing more then to see my Doctrin thorowly examin'd and speedily brought to a fair impartial Tryal by the sharpest Arguments that a pertinent opposer can make and indeed they themselves have been the strongest though not the fiercest Objectors I have met with One reason possibly of this little number may be that my Books have not as yet been long enough in the World to be fully perus'd by many what time may produce God onely knowes to whom I submit it But to return to my self and speak to what you dislike in me you absolve me from being an Heretick to make me a Pagan Nor will I refuse to be what you shall please when you have explicated your self But this not marking nor understanding your own words makes all the misintelligence You make me a Pagan but such an one as acknowledges Christ and every word and tittle either of the Scripture or any other Law of his Such a Pagan such a Naturalist was never heard of before Will you have me give you an Instance take this Bull and Canons which you cite and put them to my self or your Adversary and see whether we will either refuse to subscribe or even swear to them Then our Paganisus lyes in this that we do not think you have the right sence And this is my Paganism thorough all things belonging to Christian Faith You say I agree onely in words with the Church but saying so you say I agree in words and by consequence the whole disagreement is about the sence of the words In which controversy because I proceed out of Philosophy and reason and you out of what Masters Dictatts I know not you leave a great prejudice that my explication is the more reasonable Wherein consists then my Paganism Because I pretend to demonstrate what you think is not to be known but by Faith Then if I do not pretend to demonstrate but onely profess that they are demonstrable and exhort men to seek out the Demonstrations which is the true case and what you add is out of the fulness of your heart why do I not hold all the Articles by Faith and where is my Paganism But suppose some great Scholar possibly or impossibly as the Schools speak should have the demonstration of the Articles of Faith would he therefore be a Pagan sure you never thought what a Pagan signify'd when you spake so cholerick a word That peradventure might make him more then a man or more then a Christian as a Comprehensour is if it reach'd to Gods Essence less it could not make him Faith is not desirable for its Obscurity but for its Certainty We govern our lives by knowing the objects not by the defect in the knowledge Let a man see his way by the clear Sun and sure he will be as able to walk in it as by the dimmer light of a Star But you complain I reduce the mysteries of our faith to our narrow brains Sir you are mistaken It is the quite contrary you should rather accuse me of endeavouring to dilate our brains to the capacity of the mysteries by the help of Faith Why God cannot elevate our brains to understand what he hath deliver'd us to be understood You have not yet declar'd to my capacity You say when you are told Souls are not purg'd in the state of separation but at the reuâ—ion though the word remains your Faith is gone I easily believe you speak from your mind and that truly you apprehend the explication you frame to your self is your Faith and so that as many Christians as fancy divers explications of the same Article have so many faiths but by this way I see very few in the whole Church would be of the same faith 'pray consider a little that reflexion Nothing is more clear then your next Example You say you believe that Faith Hope and Charity are infused by the Holy Ghost into our Souls in Baptism A Pope and a generall Council too declar'd that of two opinions of Divines this was the probabler and by saying so said this was not the faith of the Church and yet if this be not true your faith is gone Your next Example is to the same purpose that supernatural qualities are of a different series then nature