period to this controversie I had condescended to mention to you Grounds of the truth of the Religion of PROTESTANTS which are not really competible to any false Religion however they may be pretended too It is hard to me to tell whether in your enumeration of them or in your ludicrous way of confutation you manifest more Childish weaknesse and folly And first in the enumeration of the grounds of Religion you number up five more indeed then ever I gave you For the first two namly the Intrinsick objective evidence of Religion and The conformity thereof to the word of GOD were never mentioned by me as two distinct grounds yea your self in your third Paper reckoned these as Synonima's and therefore you but play the child in reckoning them as distinct Neither is the fifth ground which you mention concerning The perspicuity of the Scriptures to be adequatly distinguished from these But your cheife prevarication is in that which you mention as the Third ground of the truth of our Religion namly that Religion being a complex of many divine truth cannot be all proven at once but by compating each of these truths with the word of GOD. I could not have expected that a man who was not in a perfect Delirinm could have bewrayed such stupidity for this was never laid down by me as a Ground of our Religion Nay a Child might have discerned by the very terms that this was onely brought as a reason why in such a short Paper I could not be tyed to give you the grounds of our Religion For it were to tye me as matters are now stated to writ a whole bodie of controversies What an impudent cheat then is this you would put upon your Reader to substitute that as a Ground of the truth of our Religion assigned by me which in very deed was brought by me as a reason why I was not tyed at this time to give you any grounds Henceforth therefore when you goe to impugne any thing in my Papers propose it in my own terms else I must say to you in the words of the Poet. Quem recitas meus est O Fidentine libellus Sed malè dum recitas incipit esse tuus You discover no lesse weaknesse in your trifling confutation of these grounds of Religion for all ye say to every one of them which five times you doe repeat is that a false Religion may alleage all these grounds But herein you play the silly Sophister Ab ignoratione elenchi for the question is not whether the PROTESTANT or true Religion hath grounds which a false Religion may not alleage or pretend but whether the PROTESTANT Religion hath grounds which cannot be verified of a false Religion I freely grant that a false Religion may lay claime to the grounds of the true Religion as the mad man of Athens laid claime to all the Ships that came into the Harbout as his own though none of them were his But the Grounds of the true Religion can never be verified of a false Religion It was not enough then for you to say that a false Religion may lay claime to those Grounds nay nor was it to the purpose unlesse you could also have shewed that the Ground of the PROTESTANT Religion namely Conformity with the Scripture might be verified of a false Religion This you ought to have showen if you had intended a real confutation of my grounds But this you will find as impossible for you as to remove the Earth from its Axis If you looke againe to my last Paper you will finde that in stead of these Five grounds of your mustering I gave only these Two grounds from which indeed the truth of the Religion of PROTESTANTS and the falshood of the present Romish Religion may be discovered The first was The perspicuity of the Scripture in all things necessarie to Salvation which I did confirme by luculent Authorities which you have not once dared to examine The other was From our Agreement in essentials with the faith of the purest and most Ancient primitive Church in the first three Centuries And with all from this I deduced a demonstration of the falshood of your now Romish Church and Religion from the discrepancy thereof in essentials from the faith of the Catholick Church in the first three Centuries which I confirmed from your Formula Fidei or Popish Creed contrived by Pope Pius the fourth which differs in its essentials from the faith of the Church in the first three Centuries Had you been willing that imparriall search should be made whether the truth stood on your side or on ours Had you not here matter enough to work upon both from Scripture and Antiquity But dissembling all my arguments from these principles you onely give this snifling Answere that they who have a false Religion may also pretend that their Religion is also contained in Scripture and is conforme to the Religion of the primitive Church To which I Reply first that these forementioned grounds doe not cease to be grounds for proving the True Religion because Hereticks pretend an interest in them Nay on the contrary Hereticks laying claime to them is a strong persumption that they are the induitable grounds of the true Religion as a Rogues pretending conformity with the Law is so farr from proving that the Law is no discriminating Test betwixt Honestie and Roguery that it is rather a vehement presumption of the con-ratie Secondly Had you resolved to goe to the borrome of the busines you should have proved that either these grounds assigned by me are not proper grounds for the discerning the True Religion from a false or that these grounds doeth really agree to a false Religion that is That a false Religion is perspicuously contained in Scripture and doth agree in its essentials with the Religion of the primitive Church in the first three Centuries or that these grounds doe not agree to the Religion of PROTESTANTS But none of these doe you once attempt to performe Nay over againe you are put to prove any of these which if you doe Tu Phillida solus habeto But thirdly I demonstrate on the contratie that these are sure grounds by which the truth of Religion may be discerned Thus if Scripture be not a sufficient ground and Test to distinguish a true Religion from a false then it must be either because it doth not containe All things necessary to Salvation or because it doth not hold out Perspicuously all these things for there is no other impediment imaginable unlesse with the Infidell you should question the Authority of Scriptures But when we say that the Scripture is the indubitable Test for discerning the True Religion from a false it is to be understood among Christians who acknowledge the divine Authoritie of Scriptures Consequently if the Scriptures be Perspicuous in all things necessary to Savlation as our Divines have often demonstrated and I cleared in my last by irrefragable testimonies both of Ancients and of
conformitie to the will of GOD revealed in the Scriptures and this conformitie hath a sufficient intrinseck objective evidence in it self to any who have a well disposed understanding to collate and compare these two together to observe the exact correspondence betwixt the one and the other This likewise may be illustrated by your own example of Honestie and Knaverie An Honest-man being one whose actions are squared according to the Law what ever a Knave may pretend yet when both are compared to the Law the honest-Mans conversation is found to be that which the Law enjoineth not so the Knaves So that this honestie which is the conformitie of his actions to the Law hath an intrinseck objective evidence to demonstrat it self to any discerning Person who can compare the mans actions with the Law So it is in the present case Yet besides this intrinseck objective evidence which is in true Religion I doe not deny but there are many externall and accessorie Grounds which stronglie perswade its credibilitie Having thus paved my way I come to examine your Syllogisme which runes thus That Religion cannot be a true Religion which hath no peculiar ground or principle to prove that it is a true Religion and conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. But the PROTESTANT Religion hath no peculiar ground or principle to prove that it is a true Religion and conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Ergo it cannot be a true Religion Answere 1. I might here first friendly advise you to take better heed hereafter to the forme of your Syllogismes For both your Premisses are Negative and ye know the Logick rule sayeth ex ntraque premissa negativa nihil sequitur But I shall endeavour to help this by improving your medium in a better forme and I hope also to better purpose against your self and your Romanists thus The true Religion hath a peculiar ground and principle to prove that it is a true Religion and conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. But the Popish religion hath no peculiar ground and principle to prove that it is a true religion and conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Ergo the Popish Religion is not the true Religion Hade ye intended to satisfie the conscience of any Persone you would have held forth these peculiar grounds and characters of a true Religion which is conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of God and ye would at least have endeavoured to demonstrate that thes did exactly quadrat with your Romish Religion and not at all with the Religion of PROTESTANTS But as to this there is nothing but deep silence in your paper Before you make good your retreat from this Argument as thus inverted against your self ye may perhaps find that ye are taken in the ginne which ye designed for others Ans 2 But Secondly I wold try you with another Retersion thus If the true Religion have grounds and principles to prove its conformitie to the true sense of the letter of the Word then no article of Faith and Religion can be founded upon an unwritten Tradition But the first is true Ergo c. The Minor is clear from the Major of your Syllogisme The consequence of my Major is no lesse clear For it is impossible that an article founded meerly upon an unwritten Tradition should prove its conformitie with the letter of the written word of God else it should be written and not written Nor can ye handsomely resile by saying you did thus only argue ad hominem against PROTESTANTS For this your Syllogisme you deduce from your foure premised propositions which ye suppose ought to be agreed to by all Parties Now what thankes you are to expect for this manner of arguing from your late Pamphleters who doe so highly magnifie your unwritten Traditions ye your self may judge Ans 3. But Thirdly leaving Retorsions I Answer directly denying the Assumption viz. that the PROTESTANT Religion hath no peculiar ground or principle to prove that it is a true Religion and conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Nay surely it hath that intrinseck objective evidence in its conformitie with the Scripturs to demonstrate it to be the true Religion of which I was speaking a little before which neither Poperie nor any other false Religion either hath or can have But now it lyes on you as the Opponent to prove your Assumption It seemed strange to me that this Proposition whereon the whole stresse of the Controversie didly was so nakedlie proposed by you without any proofe Onely it would appear because it is a Negative you would lay over upon me to prove the contrarie Are ye so soon wearie of the Opponents office who were so eager to have it Find you the burthen of impugning the Religion of Protestants so heavie that so soone ye shrink under it Are there no Negative Propositions proved in the Schools Doth not Philosophie teach us more Moods and Formes of Negative Syllogismes then of affirmatives Shall there be no way to oppugne an affirmative position but by turning the Respondent to an Opponent Yea let me put you in minde that though your assumption and conclusion be expressed Negativly yet upon the matter we doe rather mantaine the Negative and you the affirmative Which I thus make out If any consider our Religion and yours it will be found that in most of our Positives ye and we are agreed As that there is a GOD three Persons that Christ is both GOD and man c. But the difference is mostly in our Negatives As for instance Ye affirme the necessitie of a visible infallible judge of controversies we deny Ye affirme the necessitie of subjection to the Pope of Rome as head of the Catholick-Church we deny Ye affirme that there is a propper propitiatory sacrifice in the Masse we deny Ye affirme that the Apocrypha books are Canonick Scriptures we deny Ye affirme that Saincts are to be invocated that Crosses Images and your Sacramentall Hosty are to be adored we deny Ye affirme a Purgatorie we deny c. In all these and such as these we mantaine the Negative and ye the Affirmative yea and these are your Superadditions unto Scripture truths And consequently when it is demanded whether that which we or ye mantaine in these particulars be agreeable to the sense of the Scriptures The meaning is whether doth the Scripture hold these things out or not Ye affirme and we deny Therefore according to the saying that Affirmanti incumbit probatio It lyes upon you to find out the exact measures of the true Religion and the peculiar Grounds which doe evidence its conformitie to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD and also to demonstrate that these Grounds cannot agree to the Religion of PROTESTANTS Bellarmin Gretser Valentia and others of
be conforme to the true sense of such a text of Scripture you must first by some speciall ground or principle prove that your Clergie Men hath In Actu Primo such assistance and habilitie as is prerequired in men who should give the true sense of particular texts of Scripture since everie false Religion may pretend that they give the true sense though contrarie to the sense that you give To this you reply that it is a contradiction to say that before other particular proofs be proved to be conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of God it must first be proven that their Clergie hath such abilitie and assistance in actu primo as is requisite to give the true sense of Scripture Because say you this same that the Clergie should have in actu primo such assistance is one particular truth and so if it should be proved before every particular truth it should be proved before it self And it seems you have great compleasance and are fallen in love with this answere as with a prime and unswearable subtilitie backing it both with prose and meeter and likewise advertiseing me to consider it But I likewise advertise you to consider how that in this you fight only with your own shadow For first may not a proposition be in it self one and particular and yet have an object universall in the which though it be contained yet the thing affirmed of that object doe not agree to it otherwise ye would by this prove that David contradicted himself when he pronounced this proposition All men are liars for if all men be liars and David be a man then he was a liar in saying all men are liars Next what makes it to the purpose whether the necessitie of particular assistance in actu primo in Clergy men to give the true sense in other particular truths what imports I say that this is so of an generall object that it is in it self one particular truth distinct from the rest it being sufficient that it be such a particular truh of whom other truths depends and of the which the people must first be convinced before they can be perswaded that other particular points proponed to them are revealed in such texts of Scripture Wherefore take this Recocted dilemma againe either the Protestant Religion hath speciall grounds or principles whereby mens understanding can be convinced that their Clergie is qualified In actu primo with such assistance and habilitie as is requisite to perswade the people that they give the true serse of the letter of Scripture or they have no such grounds or principles If they have then let them be produced and examined If they have no such grounds and principles they cannot exact of people to beleeve their glosse as the word of GOD since without this particular and interior assistance they can onely guesse at the true sense of the text of Scripture As to that you desire againe that I signe my answere with my name and that you require this because you would know with whome you deal and because it hath been observed to be one of the Romanists practises when they have the worst in debates to alleadge it was no Scholer that sustained such debate but some obscure person But good Sir in what Register did you find such a practique or whether they may not with greater reason be turned over upon your selves and who will not smile to hear you compare your self and your Divines with Catholick Authors Since it is known that the most part of the doctrine that you vent either in Pulpits or Schools is copied out of them The thing then desired of you is that you answere to the reasons proponed not careing by whom they be proponed Mr. IOHN MENZEIS his Answere to the Iesuits third Paper An Answere to a third Paper from a traffiquing Papist commonly supposed to be Mr. Francis Dempster alias Rinne or Logan IS it not Ominous that this your third Paper beginneth with a notorious falshood in its very Inscription as if I in my second Paper had undertaken to prove the truth of the Religion of PROTESTANTS Whereas it is manifest that in both my former papers I only sustained the part of a Defendant And this I did of purpose that it might be seen how you would discharge the Office of an Opponent under which you now appear clearly succumbing by your nauseating repetitions If the acrimonie of my Style in my last offend you ye may blame partly your own tedious repetitions and trifling in a matter of such importance and partly some scurrilous expressions which yoused and opprobrious accusations of tergiversation and diffidence where with ye loaded me in your second paper Because forsooth I would not gratifie you so farr as to take the Opponents worke off your hand So that what of this kind hath been owes its rise to you I admire nothing in you but your confidence That ye are not ashamed to offer to me a Paper bearing the inscription of a Reply when ye seeme as affrayed to touch the chief points in my Paper as you would be to handle a Serpent Did I not charge you with grievous Omissions in my last Why doe you not clear your self of that Fallacie in the third proposition of your first Paper Why doe you not answere to the Retorsions of your argument against your self Why doe you not either prove your Assumption or else refell the arguments by which I shew that ye were tyed to prove it Did I not demonstrate the pertinencie of all these particulars and withall conjured you to speake to them as you would not incurre the heaviest characters of Ignominie What construction after all this can your deep silence bear but that you are not able to acquit your self in these points Hath there been one article of controversie in any of your Papers which I have not examined whether therefore you or I be guilty of tergiversation or diffidence the unbyassed Reader may judge I am so wearied with your Tautologies that I should not have deignied this paper with an answere but that I know the clamorous impudence of many of your Party to be such that if no answere had been returned how insignificant soever your paper be they would have insulted and sung Victoria But let me ask you seriously doth the frequent repetition of this poor naked Syllogisme either help the forme or strengthen the matter thereof of both of which have been justly questioned Are battologies so savourie and delicious to your Popish palat will the ingemination of your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 extort an assent from these who have the use of their reason How oft will ye constraine me to tell you that I deny your Assumption and consequently the second branch of your ragged Dilemma which is wholy coincident therewith and that I have long desiderated the probation of both But seeing ye have some fancie for Dilemma's I will repone this one to you Either you
adde Doctor Strang de interpretatione perfectione Scripturae lib. 1. cap. 8. Where you might have found a full account of the right means of interpreting Scripture and of the right way of useing these means and consequently of the difference betwixt them that used them rightly and others who doe not use them duely Fourthly I resolved a Querie of yours whether without the preaching of the Word the means of interpretation may be used and the true sense of Scripture attained But of all these things in your reply like a perfect Fuge bellum you take no more notice then to asperse them as long Digressions about the rules of interpreting seripture A rare and compendious confutation I confesse But if I did extravague in these discourses was it not in following such a vagrant guide as you Doe you not play the Devil first to temp me to thse D. gressions and then to accuse me for them Yea doe you not show your self a silly fool to wound your self through my sides For if it be an impertinent Digression for me to answere your Queries must you not be an impertinent fool to propound them But perhaps you thought it your wisdome rather to come off with this reflexion of folly then to adventure to graple with these things which would prove too hard for you After you had waved all these particulars lest you should seeme to say nothing at all to that Section you fall upon a word which I spake in answere to another of your judicious Queries Viz. Whether these of a false Religion might duely use al the means of interpretatioÌ„ To which I answered De jure they ought to use them though De facto and in sensu composito they did not use them which I confirmed by some Scripturs To confute this my answere What say you if they of a false Religion say as much of as And who questions but they may say it Our lips are our own say the worst of men And who is Lord over us Psal 12 verse 4. Have we not sufficient experience of the licentious tongues of your Romanists doth it therefore follow that you doe duely use the means of interpretation and not we Si accusare sufficiat quis innocens We doe not desire any man to receive our expositions because we affirme them to be true nor are we so brutish as to suffer your Romish interpretations to be obtruded upoÌ„ us on your bare affirmatioÌ„ If you would come downe out of the clouds and not insist stil on generals you should find it is upon convinceing grounds from the series of the context other Scripturs the Analogie of faith c. That we reject your Romish senses and embrace these which are approved by PROTESTANTS As for Example there is a great Controversie betwixt you and us touching the sense of these words of Christ Hoc est Corpus meum This is my Body You will have them to be understood in A proper and lueral sense and by the Priests pronounceing or rather whispering them in Latine the Body of Christ to be substituted under the Accidents of bread We on the contratie affirme the sense of these words as is usual in Sacramental speaches to be Figurative the Bread being called the Body of Christ because it is a Sacramental figne and exhibitive Symbol of his Body You will find Armies of arguments brought by our Divines particularly By Whitaker Chamier Morton Nethenus c. To justifie our sense and to confute yours I shall at the time give you but a hint of this one According to your received Romisn glosse these words of Christ should be inexplicable false and imply a manifest contradiction therefore you Romish glosse must surely be false The Sequel is clear The Antecedent I prove And first I say these words of Christ should be inexplicable Straine your wit and squeeze your Authors to tell me what Hoc or the pronowne This can signifie Surely it can neither signify bread nor the Accidents of bread else the Proposition were not proper For al know that one Disparat cannot be properly predicated of another Nor can it signify The Body of Christ For according to you Christs Body is not there until al the Words be finished But the pronowne This doth clearly demonstrat something then present when it was spoken What therefore remains but that with other your Authors you betake your self to the desperat refuge of your IndividunÌ„ vagum Eus in confuso Contentum sub speciebus and what is that but something you know not what Was Christs understanding clouded with such confusion that he knew not what he meant when he said This But besides when ever any thing is truely predicated of an Individuum vagum though it be disjunctivly enunciated of many things yet it is determinatly verified of some one thing and therefor suppose the pronown Hoc or This were taken as an Individuuâ—â— vagum yet it must signifie something then present identificated with The Body of Jesus But that is impossible according to you seeing Christs Body is not present untill all the words be uttered More of the Vertigo of your authors touching this particular may be seen in the forementiond writers But I not onely said that this Proposition of Christ according to your Romish glosse would be Inexplicable but also False and Imply a contradiction For it implyes a manifest contradiction that a true affirmative proposition De praesenti should produce its object But this proposition which must be true as being Christs and which all see to be affirmative De praesenti according to your Romish glosse doth produce its object For according to you it substitutes the Body of Christ under the accidents of bread either by Adduction or Reproduction Ergo this proposition according to your Romish glosse implyes a manifest Contradiction The Major is clear because if a true proposition De praesenti should produce its object then in the Iustant of nature wherein the proposition is conceived before its object as the cause before its effect the proposition should be true and not true True ex hypothesi for it is supposed to be a true proposition Not true because not conforme to its object For it affirmes its object to be De praesenti yet in that Instant of nature the object is not for it is the instant of Priority before the object And consequently if this proposition This is my Body doe substitute Christs Body under the accidents of bread His Body should be under these accidents before it be under them For it should be under them in the first Instant of nature wherein this proposition is conceived else the proposition should be false And yet it should not be under them because the proposition as the productive cause of the presence of Christ must be presupposed for One instant of nature before its effect But what speake I of Instants of nature Is it not at least requited to the truth of an Affirmative proposition de
it or that the sense that is given to such a text of scripture were the true sense or the sense intended by the holy Ghost when he dyted such words Since then that all must agree in this conditionall proposition all the controversie must be reduced to this what partie purifies this conditionall that is to say what part hath more solide and stronger reasons that they have the assistance of the holy Ghost to give the true sense of the letter of the word of God 4. As it is impossible for one to prove himself an honest man except he can shew some distinction betwixt him and a knave and that there can be verified of him something which is not applicable nor can agree to a knave so it is as impossible for a religion to prove it self to be a true religion except it can assigne some distinction betwixt it and a false religion and that there can be verified something of it which cannot be verified nor applyed to a false religion Out of these premisses is deduced this one Syllogisme That Religion cannot be a true religion which hath no peculiar principle or ground to prove that it is a true religion and conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of God But the Protestant religion hath no peculiar ground or principle to prove that it is a true religion and conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of God Ergo it cannot be a true religion May it please the answerer of this syllogisme to remember that the ground or principle which he shall produce to prove the truth of his religion or that it is conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of God must have this proprietie that it cannot serve nor cannot be assumed to prove a false religion to be a true religion or to be conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of God as the ground and principle that one produces to prove that he is an honest man must have this proprietie that it cannot serve nor be assumed to prove a knave to be an honest man or if he alleadge that the ground or principle whereof he serves himself is only misapplyed by a false religion then he is obliedged to assigne some good reason whereby he showes that it is well applyed by him and misapplyed by the other Likewise he is intreated to answere shortly to the point and lay aside all long homilies and excursions least by multiplying many words he incurre suspition that he seeks onely to obscure the matter that the weaker sort may not penetrat nor see through his weakness 20 Apryll 1666. Mr. IOHN MENZEIS his Reply to the Jesuits first paper An answere to a paper from an anonymous person of the Popish profession commonly supposed to be Master Francis Dempster alias Logan IT had been sufficient for me upon the first reading of your paper instantlie to have returned this or ely answere NIGO MINORIM I deny your minor For I found but a poor naked Syllogisme the assumption whereof is splendidlie false and ye have not so much as added the shaddow of a proofe to confirme it Neither can ye be exempted from being tyed to prove it because it is a Negative as shall afterwards appear Yet for the clearing of truth and also if it may please GOD for your conviction I have added these following animadversions 1. And first Ye lay down foure previous Propositions as so many oracles which might extort an assent from any Reader But you must give me leave to tell you how specious soever they seeme to you they want not their own flawes Take one instance from your third proposition wherein there is an egregious fallacie committed in your explication of that conditionall wherein ye suppose all parties to agree For it is one thing to know that the sense given to such a text of Scripture is the true sense intended by the holy Ghost when he dyted such words which is the condition at first mentioned by you and it is a quite other thing to know that he who gives the sense hath the assistance of the holy Ghost to give that true sense which ye hold out as the explication of the former This latter savors rankly of that erroneous Popish tenet concerning the necessitie of an infallible visible judge of controversies Now is it handsome under pretence of explayning a proposition wherein all agree to foyst in one of the maine points of difference as if that also were agreed upon could there be a greater cheat put upon a simple Reader 2. But secondly It had been of more use then all these your propositions to have laid down the Thesis which ye were to oppugne and to have explained the terms thereof Since therefore ye have omitted it it will be necessary for me to doe something to it least we seeme to fight Andabatarum more as Persons blindfolded The Thesis then which we defend and you oppugne is this The Protestants Religion is the True Religion Take these few hints of explication of the terms By True Religion We understand the true doctrine of salvation concerning God and the right way of serving and worshipping him By the Religion of Protestants we mean the Christian Religion contained in the holy Scripturs By Protestants these Christians who protest against and doe reject Popish-Errors and additions to Scripture truths So that Christianitie is our Religion and our Protestancie is not our Religion but our rejection of your Popish corruptions If then ye consider the importance of the Thesis which ye impugne ye will find that ye undertake a hard work nay an Infidells cause Namely that the Christian-Religion revealed in the holy Scriptures and held by these who are called PROTESTANTS because of their rejection of Popish-Errors is not the true Religion 3. Thirdly Because ye so oft make mention of some peculiar Grounds and Principles which the true Religion must have to prove it self to be the true Religion and which cannot be verified of a false Religion which ye illustrat by the similitude of an Honest-man and a Knave I desire that these two things may be noted in reference to this which may perhaps give some light to the whole matter And first these Grounds and Principles must be understood ex parte objecti on the part of the object not of the subject That is to say that the true Religion hath sufficient Grounds in it self to manifest it self to be the true Religion if it meet with a well disposed intellect For to use your own similitude an Honest-man may have Ground enough to shew a distinction betwixt him and a Knave albeit a fool cannot discerne it So the true Religion may have Ground enough to prove it self true which the false religion hath not though an Infidell or Heritick whose foolish minde is darkened Rom. 1.21 cannot take it up Secondly The prime peculiar difference of the true Religion from a false stands in its
their fellowes who have travelled long in this work have been able to effectuat nothing by all their vast Volumes And have ye the confidence to doe the bussinesse by this one naked Syllogisme But that I may shut up these lines remember ye cannot now call upon me to shew a peculiar ground or evidence which the Religion of PROTESTANTS hath to prove it self to be the True Religion and that it is conforme to the True sense of the Scriptures For Religion is not one individuall truth but a complex of many truths which cannot all be proven at once or with one breath though there be none of them but through the mercie of GOD we are able to demonstrate against any Adversarie But now it lyes upon you as the Opponent to prove your Assumption Instance therefore if ye can one Ground Necessarlie requisit for evidenceing and proving the True Religion and its conformitie to the True sense of the Scriptures which is wanting in the Religion of PROTESTANTS which I hope I may confidently say neither you nor any of your fraternitie shall ever be able to doe Aprill 24. 1666. Iohn Menzeis POSTCRIPT August lib. De unitate Ecclesia contra Epist Petiliani cap. 3. Sunt certe libri Dominici quorum authoritati utriqueue consentimus utrique credimus utrique servimus Ibi quxramus Eccesiam ibi discutiamus cansam nostram Idem Patrlo infra Ergoin Scripturis sanctis Canonitis Ecclesiam requiramus It is desired that any Answere which shall be returned be subscrived as the Author would have it taken notice of Apryll 28 1666. The Jesuits second paper A Reply to an Answere made be Mr. IOHN MENZIES to a discourse of a Romane-Catholick shewing that the PROTESTANT Religion cannot be a true Religion or a Religion wherein men can save their Souls I Have perused your paper and find that in writting â—â— are like to your self in conference by mouth because in both much that you may seeme to the simple sort to say something The controversies that we have in hands about the means to know a True Religion and to distinguish it from a false Religion is not of small concernment neither hath it so narrow dimensions as within the compasse of them it 〈◊〉 not able to detaine for a little while all the pith or force of 〈…〉 or be leaping out be the sides to mix it with other digressions about traditions visible judge of controversies untimely retortions of Arguments c. Which maketh nothing to the present difficultie which may be fullie â—nded without mentioning any such things Laying them closs aside and purposely â—â—ske nuing all your excursions as out of the line and swelling only of tergiversations and diffidence to answere directly I lay againe to your doore this point viz. It is impossible that the Protestant Religion can be proven to be a True Religion or the Religion to which GOD hath tyed the promise of eternal life and consequently that whosoever aimeth at eternall happiness after this life or intendeth to save his Soule is oblidged to quite it and to make search to find out the True Religion Prescinding for now where this True Religion is to be found since the present difficulty is only to shew that Protestant Religion cannot be it This point I proved by this one Syllogisme That Religion cannot be a True Religion which hath no peculiar ground or principle to prove that it is a True Religion and conforme to the True sense of the letter of the Word of GOD. But the Protestant Religion hath no peculias ground or principle to prove that it is a True Religion or conforme to the True sense of the letter of the Word of GOD. Ergo it cannot be a True Religion To this Argument you answere first carping it that is not in forme as having two Premisses Negatives but in this you are farr mistaken for the Negation in one of the Premisses is not taken Neganter but Infinitanter and doth not affect or light upon the Copula but is a part of the subject of the Proposition Next you answere as you say directly admitting the Major and denying the Subsumption to wit that the Protestant Religion hath no speciall ground or principle to prove that it is conforme to the True sense of the letter of the Word of GOD and so denying that it hath no speciall ground or principle you consequently must affirme that it hath some speciall ground or principle whereby it can prove it self to be destinguished from a false Religion and to be conforme to the True sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Now lay all these things together first that under your own hand writ ye have undertaken to mantain the Protestant Religion to be a True Religion Next that you grant a Religion cannot be True except it have some peculiar ground or principle whereby it can prove it self to be Ture or conforme to the True sence of the letter of the word of God Thirdly that you deny that the Protestant Religion hath not thir speciall grounds and principles whereby she may prove herself to be True and conforme to the True sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Now let any be judge whether to weind your self out of this labyrinth and without manifestly deserting of your cause ye be not oblidged to produce these peculiar grounds or principles whereby you say that Protestant Religion is furnished to prove it self to be True and conforme to the True sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Which likewise may be extorted by this Dilemma Either the Protestant Religion is furnished with sufficient grounds or principles to prove it self to be True and conforme to the True sense of the letter of the word of GOD or it hath no such principles if it have no sufficient principles then confess ingenuously it is a groundles Religion if it have them then let them be produced and examined And why doe you reserve keep them up since the producing of them is necessarie to mantaine and defend the truth of the Protestant Religion are they perhaps invisible or are you ashamed to bring them to light only remember that the grounds or principles that you produce to this effect to prove your Religion to be True must be speciall and have this propriety that they so prove the Protestant Religion to be True or conforme to the True sense of the letter of the word of God that they cannot be affirmed to prove a false Religion and which you your self holdeth for a false Religion to be a True Religion or conforme to the True sense of the letter of the word of GOD. As the ground or principle which is produced to prove Honesty or one to be an honest man must have this propriety that it cannot serve to prove a knave to be an honest-man Lastly in your paper you insinuat two superficial and fleeing shifts and evasions which doth nothing help you The first is that the Protestant
have Were you so dull as not to take up this or if you did why did you not either acknowledge it or at least goe about to disprove it I find you indeed a little after objecting thus What false Religion is there that may not say with as good reasone that they have the like conformity with the Scriptures But did I not pre-occupie this cavil in my first paper and by your own example of Honesty and Knavery illustrate the whole matter know therefore againe that it is not pretended but reall conformitie with the Scriptures which demonstrats a True Religion A Knave may pretend but not with good reason conformity with the Law which he hath not And the only way to discover him is to compare his actions with the Law whereby the dissonancie thereof will appear A man may be so absurd though contrary to reason as to affirme a crooked lyne to be straight But when his lyne comes to be applyed to the rule the obliquity thereof is clearly discovered Just so Popery and other false Religions may prerend albeit with as little good reason a conformitie to the word of GOD. But learned Divines by applying the rules of Scriptures to them have demonstrated their obliquity and dissonancy as with a Sun beam Hath not this been the way how our Lord Christ his Apostles the aneient Fathers and the faithfull witnesses of Truth confuted Heresies and false Religions in all ages But secondly In your next section you prevaticat yet more grosly For whereas I had said that the True Religion hath sufficient grounds ex parte objecti to prove it self to be a True Religion Ye offer thus to make Scors of my words That the PROTESTANT Religion hath intrinsecall and objective truths and conformity to the sense of the letter of the word of GOD but that it is destitute of all speciall grounds to prove it self to have such objective truths and conformity to the Scriptures I beleeve rarely hath such contradictory Nonsense been heard You might aswell if I had asserted Snow to be white have concluded that I mantained it to be black Did I not make plaine Scots of my assertion in my own paper explaining it thus That is to say That the True Religion hath sufficient grounds in it self to manifest it self to be the True Religion if it meet with a well disposed intellect Or if ye would have it yet clearer take it thus The True Religion hath such grounds to manifest its truth That if it be not taken up and assented to it is not through any defect in the Religion but through the defect and indisposition of the subject which it meets with You doe acknowledge that I affirme the PROTESTANT Religion to have Objective evidence If it have objective evidence how can it want grounds to manifest it self to be the True Religion what else I pray you can be meant by Objective evidence but grounds Exparte objecti to manifest it self Let this be a Caution to you that you doe not henceforth substitute your Non-sense as an explication of my assertions Thirdly In your penult section ye involve your self in a palpable contradiction saying That before any particular truth of Religion be proven to be conforme to the true sinse of Scripture it must first be proved that the Clergie hath such habilities and assistance in actu primo as is requisit for giving out the truesense of Scripture If you mean infallible assistance ye not only take for granted what ye know all PROTESTANTS doe deny but also ye declare that no sense of Scripture can be taken off your hand or such Traffiquers as you Seeing according to your Romish principles none below the Pope or generall Councill are the subjects of this pretended infallibilitie Yes not only are your own men divided in this whether this infallible assistance be entailed to the Pope or Councill but also some of your greatest Rabbies have concluded that both Pope and Councill may erre And if so who then according to your Arguing should give the true sense of Scripture But leaving this to let you see how your own words entangle you I shall desire you to consider this Enthymeme Before any particular truth of Religion be proven to be conforme to the true sense of the Scriptures this must first be proven that the Clergie hath such requisite habilities and assistance In Actuprimo for giving the true sense Ergo this truth concerning the Clergies habilities and assistance must be proven before it be proven which implyes a manifest contradiction The Antecedent is your assertion The Sequel is clear Because that the Clergie should have such assistance according to you is one truth of Religion If therefore it must be proven before every truth it must be proven before it self Is not this not only to contradict the truth but your own self Who would not pitie a Person smitten with such a Vertigo Conveniet nulli qui secum dissidet ipse Go not henceforth to cavill that it is either through diffidence or tergiversation that I decline to prove the contradictorie of your Assumption The Grounds on which I have done it are these First because that I resolve to keep with you exactly the rules of disputing And therefore seeing you have taken upon you the office of an Opponent you must eitâ—â—er doe his worke or else acknowledge that the PROTESTANTS Religion is such aâ— you cannot impugne Secondly because to prove the PROTESTANTS Religion to be a True Religion is to prove the severall Articles of our Religion to be conforme to the Scriptures which as I said cannot be done with one breath But if you desiderat to see it done I shall remit you to Chamieri Panstratia Catholica not to mention the workes of other Champions for the Truth In the mean while remember I have appealed you and yet againe doe to instance any One Ground necessarly requisit to prove the True Religion which is wanting in the Religion of PROTESTANTS In the close of all you offend that I should have desired you to signe your papers And your language concerning this savours of a Dunghill But I shall ingenuously tell you why I did desire it That I might know with whome I deal For this hath been observed as one of your Romanists practises when ye have been worsted in debates then to alleadge it was no Scholler that sustained such a debate but some obscure Person Againe therefore it is required of you that you would signe your papers as you would have them regarded I once intended with this paper by way of retaliation to have sent you some demonstrations that Popery cannot be the True Religion But as yet I have spared because I confesse it is lâ—kesome to me to grapple further with you untill ye discover some more stuffe Iohn Menzeis POSTSCRIPT Augustinus de doctrine Christiana lib. 2. cap. 9. In iis Qua aperte posita in Scriptura sunt inveniuntur illa omnia qua continent fidem moresqueue vivends After
the writing of this a new Edition of this your second paper was transmitted to me correcting somewhat the dresse of it but nothing the matter which therefore I judged not worthy of any further recognition Reader know That the Corrections in the second Edition of the Iesuits second paper were only of some trespasses of Orthography which are now much better corrected by the PRINTER The Jesuits third paper An Answere to a Reply of Mr. IOHN MENZEIS wherein he labours to justifie that the grounds which he produced to prove the truth of the PROTESTANT Religion were not meere shifts and evasions May 5. 1666. YOUR reply is stuffed with words wherewith ye undervalue all things that are brought against you calling them none-sense raw and indigested that you have a faint disputant that the matter is Recocta crambe c. But doe you not know that such tenor of words are called Sagittae parvulorum Since every one who hath a tongue and penne may say or writ what he pleases or why may not all thir things be reponed with as good reason to your self calling you a faint disputant and that your discourses are raw and indigested and so a matter of so great importance as to discerne a True Religion from a false shall be resolved in a flyting whereof you have this advantage to have the first word Laying then purposely aside all things that are out of the way I propone to you againe this point that the Protestant Religion cannot be a True Religion nor the Religion to the which God hath annexed the promise of eternall life and consequently whosoever aimes at eternall happines after this life or intends to save his soule is obliged in conscience to quite it and to search for the True Religion prescinding or abstracting for now where this True Religion is to be found and insisting for the present in this only point that the PROTESTANT Religion cannot be it and assure your self that this point will be a Crambe cocta et recocta and alwise set before you till by sufficient heat you disgest and make good substance of it This point we proved by this one Syllogisme which againe is repeated to you That Religion cannot be a True Religion which hath no peculiar ground nor principle to prove that it is a True Religion or conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. But the Protestant Religion hath no peculiar ground or principle to prove it self to be a True Religion or a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Therefore the Protestant Religion cannot be a True Religion Here you deny the Subsumption that is you deny that the Protestant Religion hath no peculiar ground or principle to prove it self conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD and consequently you affirmed that it hath peculiar grounds or principles whereby it can prove it self to be a Religion grounded upon the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD and being pressed to produce your grounds to prove the truth of your Religion in stead of solide grounds you produce these two sleeing shifts and evasions The first is That the Protestant Religion hath intrinsecall grounds Ex parte objecti though it have not alwise Ex parte subjecti that is if they doe not alwise prove the defect is not in the Religion or in the grounds considered in themselves but in the indisposition of the subject to the which they are applyed But it was told you that it was a meer shift and that your obscure termes being resolved in good Scots signifies onely that your Religion hath objective and intrinsecall truth or conformity with the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD but so that it is destuute of all speciall ground or principle whereby it can prove it self to be grounded upon the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. And that your answere can have no other sense but this is proven because all thir foure propositions are Synonima to wit A Religion to be a True Religion A Religion to be conforme to the will of GOD revealed in Scripture A Religion to have objective and intrinsecall truth and evidence A Religion that is able to convince if it meet with a well disposed intellect or capacity These foure propositions being all Synonims and signifying the same thing and so all equally in controversie you cannot prove one by another but you must prove them be some extrinsecall and distinct Medium otherwise you must grant that your answere is a meer shift and which in good Scots signifyes only this That your Religion is true in it self but hath no peculiar ground whereby it can be proven to be true and so we must beleeve it to be true only because you say that it is And with this I set againe before you this Recocted Dilemma Either the Protestant Religion hath speciall grounds to prove that it is a True Religion that it is a Religion conforme to the will of GOD revealed in Scripture that it is a Religion that hath objective or intrinsecall truth and evidence that it is a Religion able to convince any intellect that is well disposed or else it hath no speciall ground or principles whereby all thir can be verified of it If it have speciall grounds let them be produced and examined if it have none let an ingenuous confession have place that it is groundless and destitute of all principles whereby it can prove these foure Synonime propositions to agree to it Which is confirmed because any Religion even that which is acknowledged be themselves to be false may affirme with as good reason and pretend that all these foure fore-named Synonime propositions may be verified of their Religion To wit that their Religion is a True Religion that their Religion is conforme to the will of GOD revealed in Scripture that their Religion is true Ex parte objecti and hath objective and intrinsecall grounds that their Religion is evident and true if it meet with an intellect well disposed All the answere and disparity you give is that they are fools and ye wise men that they are blind and so no wonder that they cannot see the clear beams of the truth of your Religion But may not they apply all this to you with as good reasons as you doe to them The other shift that in stead of a solide ground you brought was this that you were not obliged to give a particular ground or principle to prove in generall your Religion to be true because Religion say you is not an individuall truth but a complex of many truths whereof one must be proven after another But this answere is a meer shift whereby you would decline the onely and maine difficultie by bringing in a whole body of controversies which likewise can no wayes help you Because before you can prove any one of these particular truths to
flesh to compound a soveraigne Triacle I am sorrie that as your Paper began with a falshood in matter of fact you must excuse my plainnesse so it should be shut up with another Sic respondent Ultima Primis You may not expect that I will trifle away more time in answering your frivolous unsubscrived Tautologies Either therefore leave your repetitions and doe the worke of an Opponent seriously or else you will constraine me to give a publick account to the World of your trifling and tergiversation Turpe est difficiles habere nugas Aberdene May 9. 1666. John Menzeis The Iesuits fourth Paper Answere to a third Paper of Mr. JOHN MENZEIS whereby he labours of new to perswade that the Grounds which he produces for the truth of the Protestant Religion were not meere shifts and evasions 28. of May 1666. This Paper was not delivered to Mr. IOHN MENZEIS till Iune 2. YOVR third Paper bearing the date of the ninth of May Did not come to my hands before the twenty seventh of May. Neither know I wherefore it hath been so long keept up Since as I am informed you did first dyt it to your Scholers who out of zeal to the reputation of their Master did use all diligence to disperse many copies of it and although it be not authentick and subscrived with your hand with the solemuities used in your former paper yet for the ordinarie straine of digressions not making to the purpose I doe acknowledge it for yours And it is pleasant that you say that you marvell that I passe over in silence and does not answere But how can you marvell at this since I have alwayes protested to you and protest to you againe that I would closse misken and take no notice of any thing that is out of the way and which does not concern the decision of the present controversie to wit Whether the Protestant Religion can be shown to be a True Religion by any ground or principle which may not serve with as great Reason to prove any false Religion to be a True Religion And so soone as you who hath bragingly undertaken to prove the truth of your Religion shall produce any such ground whereby it may appear that you put your self at least in the way either to give some satisfactory answere or at least to confesse ingenuously that you have no such ground for your Religion I oblige my self and shall finde you Surtie that I shall answere at length to all your Digressions to all your Retorsions and likewise shall disput with you at great leasure about the rules of Logick and shew how groslie you are mistaken in confounding Objective negations with formall negations as if a formall affirmation might not fall upon objective negations united be an objective affirming Copula As for your injurious and undervaluing words both in Greek and Latine wherewith your paper is stuffed calling all things brought against you Tantologies Battologies Insipid and Childish things and Non-sense c. I told you before that any man that hath a tongue may heap up and utter injurious words even against GOD himself And this way of proceeding would be thought by the judicious to be a clear testimony of a deserted cause and that since by sufficient reason you cannot propt the tottering truth of your Religion at least by Digressions Injurious words and other practises you will shoulder and hold up your reputation before simple people who adjudges the Victorie to him who rails most As if the means to try a True Religion from a false were not of such high concernment it self alone as did deserve to confine both your thoughts and penne within the gyre of it So that without wrouging the weightines of the matter ye cannot decline to squable about other things before it be fully ended Laying then aside as before all other things as out of the rod this is laid againe before you that the Protestant Religion cannot be the true Religion nor the Religion to which GOD hath tyed the promise of eternall life and consequently whosoever armes at eternall happinesse after this life or intends to save his Soul is obliged in conscience to quit it and betake himself to a diligent search for the True Religion prescinding for now where it is to be found and insisting for the present is this that the Protestant Religion cannot be it This point is proven at before by this Syllogisme That Religion cannot be a true Religion which hath no speciall Ground or Principle whereby it can prove it self to be a true Religion or conforme to the true sense of the Letter of the Word of God But the Protestant Religion hath no speciall Ground or Principle whereby it can prove it self to be a true Religion or to be a Religion conforme to the true sense of the Letter of the Word of God Ergo the Protestant Religion cannot be a true Religion Though you leave off to call this Syllogisme a Crambe recocta being conscious to your self not to be able to produce sufficient heat to dissolve and digest it yet you call it a poor and naked Syllogisme which if it be as you say it beggs this favour of you that you will cloath and cover the nakednesse of it with some fitting answere Only be pleased to remember that since you deny the subsumption and so puts your self in obligation to produce grounds for the proofe of your Religion that the grounds you produce must have this propertie that they cannot serve with as great reason to prove a false Religion to be a True Religion As the grounds which serves to prove one to be an honest man must have this propertie that they cannot serve to prove a knave to be an honest man Neither doe you satisfie in saying that Honestie consists in a conformity of actions with the Law as Knaverie in a deformity of actions to the Law this I say does not help you because this is onely to explicat the terms and to draw the lineaments not filling up the fields and vacuities For the present controversie is not wherein consists objective Honestie or objective Knaverie nor wherein consists objective truth of Religion or objective falshood of Religion but suppoining the one to consist in a conformity or difformity of actions to the Law and the other to consist in a conformity or difformity with the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD it remains to shew by some speciall ground wherefore of one man is verified this objective Honestie and not of the other and wherefore of one Religion is affirmed this obiective truth and not of the other To this you answere that this is easily known be applying and comparing onely the actions of both with the Law and the tenets of both with the word of GOD as the obliquity and crookednesse of a rule is presently known by applying it to a straight and even rule and with this popular discourse you think to have cleared and exhausted
all the difficulty But good Sir give me leave to discover the shallownesse and superficialnesse of this answere You say objective Honestie is proven to agree to such a man because his actions are conforme to the Law But I ask you what if the letter of the Law with the which you compare the actions be capable of divers yea contrarie senses and the knave pretend that the actions of his Knaverie are conforme to the Law taking the letter of the Law in the sense that he give it In this case can one be proven to be an Honest man unlesse there be produced some speciall ground to show that his actions are conforme to the true sense of the letter of the Law and which cannot favour the Knave nor his actions Likewise since the letter of Scripture is capable of divers yea contrarie senses and there is no Religion so false but pretends that the tenets of it are conforme to the letter of Scripture taken up in the sense that they give it there rests no remedie to prove a Religion to be true or to be distinct from a false but by producing some speciall ground which is not applicable to a false Religion And hereby the way appears how easily simple people are gulled and at how easie a rate their favour and suffrages are obtained be a discourse smoothly and plausibly proponed and attempered to their capacity though in the mean time it be dest-tute-of all truth and soliditie Out of this you may see that since you have undertaken to prove the truth of your Religion and grants that the truth of a Religion cannot subsist without some speciall ground denying the subsumption that affirms the want of all grounds there results out of all these a necessity and obligation upon your part to produce some speciall grounds for the truth of your Religion whereby you may make appear that the objective truth or the objective grounds of a true Religion doth agree to your Religion and which cannot serve to prove that the objective truth or objective grounds of a true Religion agreeth to a false Religion Neither doth it exempt you from satisfying this obligation the pretext that you are the Defender and I the Impugner because to me as the Impugner belongs onely to presse you either to grant that you have no grounds or to produce them to be impugned Now let us come to the shifts and evasions which ye have produced in place of solid grounds The first was that your Religion hath objective truths or objective grounds of evidence though they be not alwise convincent by reason of the indisposition of the subject to whome they are proponed But it hath been told you that all thir are Synonims A Religion to be a true Religion A Religion to have objective grounds of truth and evidence A Religion to be conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD A Religion that is convincent if it encounter with an intellect well disposed And so thir being all Synonims and all equally in controversie one cannot be ground to prove one another but they must all be proven by some other thing And this was told you and is now repeated againe Neither doth it help you the answere that you insinuat in this paper that although they be all Synonims yet one of them may serve to prove another as it is lawfull to argue A Definitione ad Definitum though there be an objective identitie betwixt them as likewise betwixt objective premisses and the conclusion But in this as before you discover your shallownesse in touching onely the screofe not going deeper Because this way of arguing doth not hold when both the Definition and Definitum are in controversie whether they doe agree in such a thing for then they must be proven by some other ground Moreover may not all this with as great reason be assumed of a false Religion and which you your self acknowledge for a false Religion and why may they not say that their Religion hath objective grounds of truth and evidence and prove this be this other Synonime that their Religion is conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD Now all the answere that you alwayes give is that those that sees not the truth of your Religion have an intellect ill disposed and tempered are Fools Blinded and now you adde that they are to be esteemed for Hypochondriack persons But all this is as easily turned over upon your self since men that denyes and professes that they can see no truth in your Religion are in all other things as discursive and as sharp sighted as your self The other shift that you bring when you are pressed to produce some speciall ground whereby may be made manifest the truth of your Religion is That Relgion is not an individuall truth but a complex of many truths which cannot be proven altogether but successively one after another But who sees not this to be a meer shift in place of a difficulty to substitute a whole body of particular controversies which though they may now be begun yet requires years to bring them to an end And doth not Aristotle teah us that we should alwise begin Ab universalioribus before we descend to particulars least doing otherwise we be forced to repeat often the same things Likewise remember that the same shift with as great reason may be alleaged by any false Religion to decline the necessity that they have to give grounds to prove the truth of their Religion As for that in which you enlarge your self to shew an Contradiction in my discourse whereby I told you that before you can induce the people to beleeve that you propone the true sense of particular texts of Scripture you must first produce solid grounds that you are qualified with such assistance and such directions In actu primo to give out this true sense In this I told you before that you are fighting with your own shadow and putting up a faigned adversary to your self that afterward you may have a faigned pleasure in puting of him down For what contradiction can it be to say that the actuall operation or Actus secundus doth necessarly suppone Actum primum and if In actu secundo you give the true sense of the letter of Scripture then necessarly you must be furnished In actu primo with sufficient ability to give this true sense Or how can any exerce operations of Seeing Hearing Speakeing In actu secundo except he be supported to have In actu primo sufficient ability to doe thir operations And you must have great dominion over your intellect if you can perswade your self that this discourse involves a contradiction Now I request you to cloath this ragged Dilemma as you call it Either you can produce some speciall grounds whereby can be made manifest that your Clergie men are qualified In actu primo with sufficient ability and assistance to give the true sense of particular
meer shifts and evasions June 13. 1666. THIS your fourth Paper carying the date of the ninth of June came to my hands the twelth of June and in it you make a more ample muster of your ordinar digressions contumelies and misapplyed Eruditions though you know that the better sort esteems this weak-mens weapons and clear testimonies of a deserted cause but it seems all one to you if by this means you can uphold your reputation with the Vulgar sort who seeing you blot so much Paper remains in conceit that you retaine still your post If I had the qualities to render me worthie of your friendship I would in a homelie and friendly manner suggest to you a compendious way to spare Paper observing onely thir three omissions First that you omit all exeursions out of the way that is to say that you omit all these things without naming of the which the present controversie may be fully deeyded Secondly that you omit all contumelies and undervalueing words as more besetting a scolding Wife then a Scholer Thirdly that you omit all these things which cannot favour your Religion but with this inconvenient that in the same degree in the which it favours you it must favour and shelter a false Religion and which is holden by your selves for a false Religion And I hope that you will grant thir things to be very rationallie demanded of you since it is known that there is a great difference to be put betwixt the handling of a controversie in a Pulpit where one railes at randome having none to contradict him and the handling of it in a School way where you must foot your bowle and hold you within the score under the paine to be exploded Now if you will be pleased to observe thir three things which are so rationally demanded I oblige my self to make it good that you will not be able to put ten lines in Paper which shall be judged to make to the purpose in the present controversie And for proofe hereof you may be pleased to take all your foure Papers misaplyed as they are squeeze them and see if you expresse out of them thir ten lines taking first away thir three things to wit Digressions about other matters Contumelies and base flyting words and things that cannot favour your cause without favouring in the like degree a false Religion And since it is to be presumed that none can expresse more substance out of your own Papers nor your self it is expected of you that after you have taken the pains to blow away all this chaffe you will show that there remains greater quantity of solid corne upon the floore then can be contained in ten lines of Paper That it may appeare how farr you wander out of the way you must be content to have patience that the maine point be laid alway againe and againe before you which is the Protestant Religion cannot be the True Religion or the Religion to the which GOD hath tyed the promise of eternall life and consequently whosoever aimeâ— at eternall happinesse after this life or intends to save his soul is obliged to quit it and to betake himselfe to a diligent search for the true Religion prescinding for now where it is to be found and insisting only for the present that the Protestant Religion is it not This is both a substantiall point and proponed in so clear terms that none can but understand it And it is proven by this one Syllogisme That Religion cannot be a True Religion which hath no speciall grounds or principles to prove it self to be a True Religion or a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. But the Protestant Religion hath no speciall grounds or principles whereby it can prove it self to be a True Religion or to be a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Ergo the Protestant Religion cannot be a True Religion To this Syllogisme you answered first cavilling the forme of it as componed of two premisses negatives and so concluding nothing But in this you discover grosse ignorance confounding and calling negative propositions affirmative premisses of objective negations Next you come to deny the subsumption that is you deny that the Protestant Religion hath no speciall grounds to prove it self to be a True Religion or to be a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. And you adde that since the subsumption is denyed by you it is my part who is the Opponent to prove it Let it be so But hath it not been sufficiently proven first Because if it have any good grounds they are produceable but they are not produceable or else produce them Next hath it not been often inculcat and is now of new inculcat that the Protestant Religion hath no speciall grounds or principles to prove it self to be conforme to the true sense of the letter of Scripture but such that with as great reason may serve to prove a false Religion to be conforme to the true sense of the letter of Scripture Ergo it hath no true principles or grounds because a true principle is not of an indifferent nature but is so determinat to truth that it cannot protect nor shelter any error Now that it may appear that all the principles or grounds which you bring to prove the truth of your Religion are indifferent and consequently cannot be true principles we shall runne them over and lay them open to the view of all The first ground you produced is that your Religion hath objective truth and objective ground or evidence and can sufficiently show and prove it self to have this truth upon condition that it encounter with a well disposed intellect But all this may be assumed and is assumed by a false Religion or assigne some reason wherefore you have right to assume it and they not The second is that your Religion is easily known to be a true Religion by applying and confronting the tenets of it with the Word of God as a man is easily known to be an honest man be confronting his actions with the Law as likewise a line is easily known to be straight and not crooked by the conformity it is seen to have with a right rule But what false Religion is there that doth not apply all this to themselves with as great reason as you doe And though the letter of Scripture is of it self capable onely of one genuine sense to wit which was intended by the holy Ghost which is all the shift which you adde now in this last Paper But what makes this for you since you bring no reason whereby may appeare that the sense which you give to the letter of Scripture is that one genuine sense intended be the holy Ghost or that the sense which you give is that right rule by the which all crookednesse is to be known You think it is enough to say thir things without
your own Doctors then it must be a sufficient ground and Test to discerne a True Religion from a false Your cavill concerning the ambiguity of Scriptures is frivolous For if Scripture had not sufficient objective grounds means of interpretation being duely used to clear its own genuine sense in all things necessarie to Salvation then were it not Perspicuous which is against the Hyphothesis laid down against which you have not adventured to move one Objection So that still it holds that if Scripture be perspicuous in all things necessarie to Salvation it must be a sufficient ground and test to discerne a True Reilgion from a false What therefore remains but that either you show the Scriptures not to be clear in all things necessary to Salvation or else that both the Religion of PROTESTANTS and Papists be brought to this Test and examined which of them are really conforme thereunto But next as to the other ground I argue thus Either the faith of the Catholick Church in the first Three Centuries was the True Christian Religion or not If not then there was no true Christian Religion at all Absit blasphemia If it was then what accords with it in its essentials must be the True Christian Religion and on the contrary what differs from it in essentials cannot be the true Christian Religion and therefore here againe I appeal you either to show an essential difference betwixt the ancient True Christian Religion in these ages and ours or that there is an agreement in essentials betwixt the ancient Religion in these ages your Romish Religion as it is expressed in that Formula fidei of Pope Pius the fourth or else to acknowledge that the Religion of PROTESTANTS is the True Religion and that your Romish Religion is but a Farrago of falshoods and Innovations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In your penult section you whisle like a child concerning the Clergies assistance In actu primo to give the true sense of Scripture and you call upon me to prove that our Clergie hath such an assistance As if it were a point of our faith that the knowledge of the Clergies infallible assistance for of that onely you must be understood were a necessary prerequisite before the true sense of Scripture can be known But have I not often told you that this is denyed by us and also often appealed you if you could to prove it else I would hold it for confessed that you could not doe it But to call you to your duety is Surdo canere Yea from this your assertion concerning the knowledge of the Clergies assistance I have showed you to be encircled in an inextricable Contradiction from which you have never attempted to expede your self Onely in your last Paper you flinched from your own principle as if you had onely affirmed that the Actus secundus presupposes Actum primum which none denyes Know therefore againe that a Doctor may give the true sense of Scripture and we may have ground enough To beleeve that it is the true sense which he gives though neither he nor we have an anteceden knowledge of his Infallible assistance in actu primo as a civill Judge may give the true sense of a municipall Law and I may have sufficient ground to beleeve that he hath sensed it aright though neiâ—â—er he nor I have antecedent knowledge that he hath Infallible assistance in act primo Though in all these things you have bewrayed shamefull weakenesse and as a Thersires declyned to examine what was reponed to you in all my Papers yet now like a vaiue glorious Thrasâ— in the conclusion you sing a Triumph but without a Victorie Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici What means this insulting that you cry out of the poor posture out Religion is brought too Have you said ary thing that would have reduced the weakest Tyro in our Schools to a strait Have I slipped one Punctillo in any of your Papers which I have not confuted Hath not all you have writen been sitted Ad furfures Can you say the like of my Papers Yet you are bold to compare the Religion of PROTESTANTS to a Knâ—ve pretending Honestie and not able to prove it but Mutato nomine narratur fabula de iâ— He that would compare your Romish superstition with the Religion of PROTESTANTS might aswell compare Catiline with Cato the Rogue Ziba with Honest Mephibosheth or the strumper Thais with chast Lucretia But I shall propose a true Emblem of the stare of our Religion and yours from the state of the present debate betwixt you and me leaving the application to your own self Suppose that Titius and Sempronius stood at the barre and that Titius acclaimed the monopolie of Honesty to himself And withall accused his Neighbour Sempronius as a verie Knave because as Titius alleaged he could produce no grounds to prove his Harestie On the other hand Sempronius modestly shew how easie it were to recriminat and retote all these accusations upon Titius Yet though he might have desired Titius as the Accuser to prove his indytment or else to suffer Secundum Legem talionis and to be esteemed as an arrand Knave yet he would condescend so far as to give Grounds by which his Honesty might be proven But with this Proviso that both he and his Accuser Titius might be brought to the Test that the World might see who was the Rogue and who the Honest-Man The first Ground to which Sempronius appeales is the Law protesting that both he and his Accuser Titius may be judged by that Rule The other Test to which Sempronius referres himself for tryall Is the practise and example of men of untainted Honestie such as Aristides Fabricius Cato c. Protesting likewise that he be stigmatized as the Rogue whose conversation shall be found discrepant from theirs Tïtius though at first a bold Accuser yet not able to endure so accurate a tryall studies all the subterfuges his poor wit could invent And first he declines the Law alleaging it could not be the Ground of tryall because it is ambiguous and admits of diverse and contrarie senses nor can any give the sense of the Law except he be Iufallible Which gift of Infallibility Titius would have all men to beleeve though he cannot prove it to be peculiar to himself alone so as no sense of the Law may be admitted but that which he homologates And for the example of Aristides Fabricius and Cato c. They are too strict Paterns for Titius yet not dareing openly to condemne them he makes this evasion What Knave sayes he is there that may not pretend conformitie both with these and also with the Law But Sempronius gravely answers that however Knaves might pretend conformity both to the Law and Practises of Good-Men yet they had it not And againe he solemnly protests that the matter might be put to exact tryall whether the Accusers or his conversation were agreeable to the Law and these untainted
Paterns of Honesty and withall added that it was an intolerable reproach thrown both upon the Law and the Lawgivers that a Law was given to people to walk by which no man except Titius with his pretended infallibilitie could understand Is it not strange said Sempronius that my Accuser Titius can speake his accusation so intelligibly that a Child can understand the sense thereof and yet that our Lawgivers had not so much wit as to expresse the Laws which they would have to be the Rule of our lives in intelligible language What prudent Senators would suffer themselves and Lawgivers thou to be reflected upon by Titius and would not for his pleading after this manner condemne him as a petulant Rogue The application af this Embleme is left to you and to the judicious Reader I have made so many experiments upon you that if there had been any Mercurie in you in all probabilitie before this time it had been extracted but the longer I deal with you the greater Dounce doe you appear I am both wearied and ashamed to graple further with one who multiplies such Childish impertinencies and notorious falshoods Least therefore I should seeme Cum Cretensi Cretizare I discharge any further exchange of Papers with you except you change your straine Yet because I know the Genius of many of your Party to be such that if you transmitted to me a Rapsody of perfect Non-sense to which no answere were returned you would glory as if you had approven your self as a Doctor Irrefragabilis Therefore to put a check to this insolencie and withall to satisfie the judicious I adde two things And first you are required though an Adversarie to doe me so much Iustice as when you communicate to others any of your Papers that you doe likewise communicate my Answere and then I shall decline no rationall Person either of your or of our profession who is not either Ignorant or Blinded with prejudice tosiâ— as Umpyre or Arbiter betwixt you and me If you doe otherwise after so solemne admonition it will be an evidence that you are conscious that your Papers are naught and not able to abide the Test But next if you find an abler Person then your self that can manage this debate to better purpose then you have done he shall not GOD-willing lake an answere so far as the interest of truth doeth require it In the mean time I say to you as Cyprian did to Demetrian Oblatrantem te are Sacrilego verbis impiis obstrepentâ—â— frequenter Demetriane contempseram melius existimans errantis imperitiam silentio spernere quam loquende dementis insaniam provecare Nec hoc sine â—agisterii divini Numinis authoritate faciebam quum scriptum sit noli respondere imprudenti ad imprudentiam ejus ne similis flas illi Cyp. lib. ad Demet. Aberdene 28. of June 1666. Iohn Menzeis POSTSCRIPT This Paper was written on Iune 18. but I being called to the Countrey on Iune 19. and not returning untill June 26 it could not be transcribed untill this 28. of June 1666. The Iesuits sixth Paper Answere to a fifth Paper of Mr. JOHN MENZEIS wherein he brings a new Shift and Evasion for a Ground of the truth of the PROTESTANT Religion disowneing all thinges for to be grounds which he hath brought hitherto July 6. 1666. YOV was disired to give a proofe of your abilitie to put onely ten lines in Paper which could be judged to make to the purpose in the present controversie observing three things first to â—â—it all exâ—â—sions out of the way that is to say to omit all things without naming of the which the present controversie may be fully decyded Secondly to omit all hase undervalucing words as more besetting an flyting Wife then an Scholler Thirdly to omit all things which cannot serve to prove the truth of your Religion but with this inconvenient that it equally serves to prove an false Religion to be true But in this Paper deboarding mor then ever you give cleir testimony that all your strength consists in thir things So that the confyning of you within thir limits wer to disarme you altogether and to bind up all the fecundity which you have to blot Paper and multiply words for hyding your weakenesse Laying asid then all things of whatsoewer sort that ar out of the line I lay befor you againe the maine point to wit the Protestant Religion cannot be the true religion nor the Religion to the which GOD hath tyed the promise of eternall life and consequently whoseever aims at eternal happinesse after this life or intends to save his soul is oblidged in conscience to quit it and to betake himself to a diligent search for the truth prescinding for now whair it is to be found insisting for the present in this only that the Protestant Religion cannot be it This cannot be called a nonsense since its both an most substantial point and likewise proponed to you in such cleir terms It is proven by this one Sylogisme That Religion cannot be a true Religion which hath no speciall grounds whereby it can prove it self to be a true Religion or to be a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. But the Protestant Religion hath no speciall grounds whereby it can prove it self to be the true Religion or to be a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Ergo the Protestant Religion cannot be the true Religion To this Syllogisme yow answered first carping the forme of it as if it wer of tuo premisses negatives and though it was showen yow yowr gross ignorance in this calling affirmative propositions negations becaus they ar of objective negations yet now yow add with alse gryt ignorance that the conclusion is negative Is it possible that an Rabbi in Israel is so ignorant that there most be made to him a lesson of Summules to make him capable to discerne betwixt affirmative and negative propositions Here indeed would come in season a way for sham and such hissing and histrionicall expressions as yow use now and then in yowr Papers Next yow say that though hithertoo yow have onlie denyed the subsumption yet yow have acquired by the benefit of so long a time a new light which discovers a defect also in the Major But this argues that the Sylogisme is not of so obvious a nakednes as yow stylled it since a man of yowr capacity hath need of so long tyme to acquire light for the discoverte of the defects of it But giving and not granting that there wer defects in the Major yet since yow have ingaged yowr self in denying the subsumption long agoe and so incurred an obligation to produce grounds for the truth of yowr Religion yow must first end this before yow begin the other either confessing that yow have no grounds or else producing them that they may be examined whether they subsist or not And here I cannot
of the nature of supernaturall faith for the assent one gives to the law exponed by a Judge is not a supreame assent and so does not require in him that beleeves a knowledge of any infallible assistance and yet according to the degree of the firmnes of this assent he must have a knowledge of a correspondent ability in the Judge for otherwise he might beleive with as great firmnes another man giving the sense of that law though he knew that he hade little or no skill of law In the end of your Paper yow take the Person of a puffed up Goliah complaining of the weakenesse of yowr adversarie as an that brings nothing but childish nonsense against yow and protests that yow will altogether leaze this stage except there be substitute againes yow some 〈◊〉 qualified Antagonist that yow may with some reputation wrestle with him But this your braging will be reputed not so much an effect of pride as of sillinesse and pusillanimitie that seeing how you cannot longer subsist having voyded all your Magazin and spent all your powder you would use braging words as a meane to save your reputation in this retreat But though by this way you provided so and so for your own reputation how doe you provide for the reputation of your Religion that you leave with this blot and aspersion that there can be showen no difference betwixt it and a false Religion and so leaves it in the same condition with a man whose honestie being called in question and much pleaded for did at last obtaine a favourable sentence whereby he was judictallie declared to be such an honest man that there was no difference betwixt him and a knave July 6. 1666. Mr. IOHN MENZEIS his Reply to the Jesuits sixth Paper which was not delivered to him till July 9. An Answere to the Jesuits sixth Lying and Railing Paper I Have oft heard but now I find that Fides Jesuitice est fides Punica Who but a Devil or a Jesuit would have had the Impudencie to say that I had Disowned and recanted all the Grounds which hitherto I had brought for the truth of the Religion of PROTESTANTS as you have been bold to affirme both in the Tiole and afterwards in the body of this your sixth Paper When I read this I remembred that word of Austin lib. 1. Contra Iulianum cap. 5. Mirum est si in facie hominis tantum intervallum sit inter frontem et linguam ut frons non comprimat linguam It is strange said he that there should be such a distance betwixt the front of a man and his mouth that the shame of his forehead should not represse the impudencie of his tongue But there is a truth in that saying of Seneca Contra Sycophantarum morsum non est remedium Produce if you can my own words wherein I have resiled from one ground that ever I brought let be from all Would ye not have done this to verfie such an ignominious challenge had ye not been conscious to your self of Impudent lying I remember indeed that in my last Paper I did discover your Roguery in representing some grounds as distinct which are not distinct to make your Readers imagine I had made such a foollish muster of grounds as you draw up But never did I passe from any of them I know likewise that I did convict you of a base prevarication in substituting that as a third ground assigned by me which was never given by me as a ground of our Religion at all but as a reason as is obvious to any of the weakest capacity why I was not tyed at this time to have given you any grounds albeit Ex superabundanti I had condescended to give you some Yet in stead of clearing your self of that prevarication or deprecating pardon for it you adde a grosser saying that I had recanted all the grounds which I had formerly given Doe you not by such dealing stigmatize your self to be as Aegesippus said of Pilat lib. 2. De exeidio Hieros cap. 5. Viruns nequam parvs facientem mendacium Henceforth therefore you are required when you goe about to examine any thing in my Papers to propose it in my own termes else I must desire the Reader to looke upon it as the forgery of a Sycephant This your horrid prevarication will I beleeve derogat faith from the rest of your reproaches But I confesse you have all the advantages of an effronted Calumniator since like a man of prostitute reputation you neither concerne your self in proving the accusations which you bring against your Adversary nor in answering these recriminations which are retorted upon you Yet seeing the lines which I have sent to you may bid a defyance to you or any Momus or Zoilus I shall make no other Reply to these virulent and groundlesse reproaches wherewith this your last Paper is stuffed but what Michael the Arch-Angel did to the Devill Jud. verse 9. Increpet te Dominus You must againe be remembred for I find you wilfully forgetfull of your duety that neither as yet in this sixth Paper have you attempted either to clear your self of the fallacies and prevarications whereof I had in former Papers convicted you or to expede your self from the contradictions wherein I have demonstrated you to be inextricably involved or to supplie your beastlie omissions and tergiversations so often charged upon you So noble a Champion are you for this desperate cause which you have undertaken You repeat now againe the sixth time acording to your Cacoethes the old threed bare Paralogisme and you have the modestie to accuse me of ignorance because I cannot so far brutifie my reason as to acknowledge your three Negatives to be three Affirmatives albeit you have not been able either by all your Summulistick Art or Iesuitick sophistrie to show how you could expresse them more negatively in our language had you intended to make them formall Negations But who needs wonder that Romanists have the confidence to obtrude on Readers negations for affirmations seeing they would impose upon the World contrarie to faith sense and luculent reason the adoring of a vafer cake for the reall living and glorious Bodie of our Saviour In my last because I intended not to have exchanged any more Papers with you I thought good to give you a more Speâ—isick character of your ludicrous Syllogisme which you have been hithertoo licking as the Beare doth her deformed whelp but have not as yet been able to reduce it to any forme I shew therefore that every proposition in it both Major Minor and Conclusion might justly be questioned But this you are pleased to wave accoring to your customarie tergiversing humor thinking it enough to jeer this animadversion as a New Light There is no such Mysterie I confesse in your Syllogisme that it required much studie to discover the trespasses of it Onely your importunity tempted me to lay open more of the nakednesse of this your Idol then
the scop of your first Paper and Syllogisme was to hold out That the true Religion hath grounds to prove it self to be conformâ— to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. But this were impossible if all Religion and consequently what ever is necessarie to Salvation were not contained in the writen Word of God And therefor in my answere to your First Paper I concluded from that Syllogisme that you had overturned your Vnwriten traditions So that now you are not in Bonâ fide to object against the Perfection of Scriptures as containing all things necessary to Salvation without contradicting your self But this hath been a fatalitie which hath attended you throughout all this debate Secondly this your demand Of drawing up a Lift and Catalogue of necessaries is an old cavill of your Romanists which our Divines have often canvased and therefore â—s I told you that you would be served when you renewed old Refuâ—ed Cavills Itemit you to see what hath been said to this purpose By Master Chillingwerth in his Defence of Petter part 1. capp 3.4 And by Stilling-sleet In his Vindication of the Bishop of Canterbury against T. C. part 1. cap. 4. And Crakantliorp in his ' Defens Ecclesia Anglicana cap. 47. Thirdly you falslie affirme that the Scripture doth pur no distinction betwixt divine truthes of absolute necessitie to Salvation and others the beleef whereof is not so indispensably necessarie Sayeth not the Scriptore Heb. 11.6 He that cometh unto GOD must beleeve 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him Is the like Character of necessitie put upon everie truth Is there I pray as great necssiâ—tie to beleeve that Paul left a Clok at Treat 2. Tim. 4.13 As to beleeve there is a GOD Know you not that of Austin lib. 1. Contra Iulianum cap. 6. Alia sunt in quibus inter se aliquande etiam doctissimi atê™ optimi regulae Catholicae defensores salva fidei compage non consonant alius alio de una re melius aliquid dicit verius hoc autens unde nunc agimus ad ipsa pertinet sidei fundamenta Where the Father acknowledges there are some Foundation truths in Christianitie absolutly necessarie and others not so You may see this larglie proven by Master Baxter in his Key for Catholiks part 1. cap. 16. And Crakanthorp loco citato no to mention others Fourthly I absolutlie denie that it was incumbent to me at this time to draw up a Lift of truths simply necessarie to Salvation and it was a tergiversing Shift in you to demand it that so you might keep off the eximination of that which is mainlie in controversie betwixt us For though I with reformed Divines doe affirme that all things necessarie to Salvation are contained in Scripture Yet neither they nor I affirme that it is necessary to Salvation to have a precise Catalogue of things necessarie containing neither more not lesse Did I pray you Chryfostome draw up a Catalogue of necessaries when he said Hom. 3. In epist 2. Ad Thess That all things necessarie are clear and manifest in the Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Augustin when he said Lib. 2. De doct Christ cap. 9. that In â—is quae aperte posita sunt in these things which are plainly laid down in the Scripturs Inveniuntur amnia are found all which belong to faith or maners Or Tertullian when he said Scripturae plenitudinem adero Cannot this generall be proven that all things necessarie are contained in the Scriptures unlesse a precise Catalogue be drawne Is there no way to prove an Universall conclusion but by an induction and enumeration of all particulars Cannot I conclude that all the dead shall rise at the last day unlesse I can draw up a list of all the race of Mankind Or that all the Reprobat shall be eternally shut up in hell unlesse I can give you a catalogue and definit number of that generation of GODS wrath Can I not conclude that all Jesuits are devoted Slaves to the Pope unlesse I can give a catalogue and a definit number of these locusts Is not the generall which we affirme abundantly proven by these Scriptures in which the sufficiencie of the Scripture to bring men to Salvation is held forth As 2. Tim. 3.15.16.17 John 20.31 Gal. 1.8.9 c. In so much that Tertullian was bold to say Contra Hermogenens cap. 22. Doceat Hermogenes Scriptures esse si non est Scriptum timeat illud vae adjicientibus ant detrahentibus destinatum Yea what if it should be added that the explicite beleef of more truths may be necessarie to the Salvation of one then of another Said nor the Lord Christ Luke 12.48 Unto whome much is given much shall be required Whereupon a great Divine spared not to say That to call for a precise catalogue of necessarie truths is as unreasonable as if one should desire us to make a coat to fit the Moon in all her Changes or a garment to fit all statures or a dyall to serve all Meridians or to designe particularly what provision may serve aâ— Army for a year whereas there may be an Arâ—â—ie of a thousand and an Army of an hundreth thousand whose provision therefore cannot be alike But what ever be of this let it suffice to have given you this generall character of necessarie truths that no truth of Religion is further to be accounted necessary then Scripture puts a character of necessity upon it And here by the way I might let you see what a fool you wer in medling with my example Of trying pieces of gold severally by the Tonchstone For in the present case it can import no more but that before any truth be concluded necessarie it must first be found that the Scriptures hath put a character of necessity upon it and consequently all necessarie truths must be contained in Scripture Quod erat demonstrandum You would therefore not medle with my weapons lest they cut your hands But Fifthly and lastly I adde that you Romanists are as much concerned to draw up a list and catalogue of necessaries as we and I am sure in so doing you shall find greater difficulty especially if with your late Champions you say that all that and onely that is necessarie which your Church hath defined For first can ye agree among your selves to tell me what you mean by the Church Or secondly can you enumerat a precise catalogue of all that the Church hath defined Or how can you ascertaine any of the true sense of these Definitions Or Thirdly can you show me who hath impowered the Church since the dayes of the Apostles to put a Character of necessity to Salvation upon a truth which had it not before And Fourthly did not I from this demonstrate your Religion to be a false Religion because it differs in its essentials and in these things which to you are necessary to
the rest returnes upon your own Pate But Thirdly had PROTESTANTS devysed new Means of interpretation which had not been made use of by the Church in all times you might have had some pretext for this demand But we doe cordially subscrive to that of the Apostle 2. Peter 1.20 No prophesie of Soripture is of any privat interpretation I shall therefor remit you to Whitaker controver de Scriptur Qu. 5. cap. 9.10.11 12. Chamier Tom. 1. Panstratiâ— Lib. 16. A. cap. 4. ad finem Zauchius Tom. 8. tract de script â—u 2. Gerard the Lutheran In Uberiori exegesi loci de scriptura cap. 25. Where you will find the means of interpretation acknowledged by PROTESTANTS and the way how they are to be used luculently set down and vinditated from the cavilâ— of Stapletâ—n and others Or if your prejudice will not permit you to take them from our Authors you may take them from Austin in his Foure bookes de Doct. Christ Where it is verie remarkeable that though he be verie copious in assigning rules for the right understanding of the Scriptures yet he never once makes mention of that Infallible assistance of the Bishop of Roâ—e which is an undoubted evidence that Austin was not of your now Romish faith By this we understand what an impudent calumny that is of Bellarmin lib. 3. De verbo Dei cap. 1. who when he is stateing this question of the perspicuity of the Scriptures charges reformed Divines as mantaining Scripturam esse tam apertam in se ut sine explicatione sufficiat ad controversias sidei terminandas As if we mantained that there were no need of interpretation of Scripture which none of our Divines doe affirme And therefore to cut off that cavill I purpofly added that caution of Using the means of interpretation albeit on the other hand you would abuse this concession to derogat from the Scriptures perspicuty but with equal ingenuity with your Cardinal Fourthly Whereas you ask Whether the people without preaching can duely use the means of interpretation and come to the knowledge of things necessary to Salvation A ludibrious question as proponed by you implying as would seeme a clear Contradiction in it self For preaching is one of these means of interpretation and therefore it is all one as if you had asked whether people may at once use all the means and yet not use some of them Is it not a manifest Contradiction to use them all and not to use them all at once But to take of all mistakes we say that attendance on publick preaching is one meane to which people are tyed Necessitate praecepti when they may have it which is clearly confirmed by these Scriptures 1. Thess 5.20 Despise not Prophesieing Luke 10.16 He that despyseth you despyseth me Rom. 10.17 Faith cometh by hearing Yet doe we not affirme that the Publick preaching of the Word is a meane so indispenlably necessary that the true meaning of the word can in no case be had by the use of Other means such as reading Private instruction c. When the publict preaching is providentially denyed To this purpose you may see Ruffin lib. 1. Hist Eccles cap. 9. 10. But Fifthly there yet temaines one of your judicious queries namely Whether a false Religion may duely use the means of interpretation I think you would have asked whether people professing a false Religion may use duely the means for it is a verie incongruous speach to say That Religion useth means But passing that incongruicy I answere breifly that people professing a false Religion are bound De jure to use the means duely though De facto they doe not use them duely so long as they adheare to A false Religion For as I said from the beginning of this debate there is such an Objective evidence in Scripture truths that if they be not perceived when sufficiently proposed it is still through some defect on the part of the subject As doth luculentlie appeare from 2. Cor. 3.4 If our Gospel be hid it is to them in whome the God of this world hath blinded their minds And Joh. 7.17 If any man doe the will of GOD he shall know the Doctrine whether it be of GOD. This far have I condescended to satisfie your Extravagant Queriet and I hope have sufficiently vindicated from all your cavills this First ground of the true Religion taken from The Perspicuity and Perfection of the Scriptures But doe not expect hereaftere to meet with the like indulgence as if I would take notice of your ' Digressive questions when you neither observe rules of disputing nor keep close to the maine hing of the controversie I cannot here but put you in minde againe of another ground which I proposed in my last two Papers from which the truth of our Religion may be demonstrated namely The conformity thereof in all its essentials with the faith of the most Ancient Church in the first three Centuries This you still dissemble as if you were deafe on that eare Onely in the close of one of your observations concerning the perspicuitie of the Scripture to confuse these two grounds together that so you might escape in the darke and that your tergiversation and not speaking to this ground distinctly might be the lesse observable you doe impertinently throw in this word That the claims to antiquity is common to other sexts I beleeve you would have said Sects But besides what hath been said in my former Papers to redargue such a trifling Reply now I adde that the falshood of the claime of the other Sects may be evicted by holding out the discrepancy betwixt the faith of the ancient Church and false Religions As I proved the falshood of your Romish Religion from the dissonancy betwixt your now Romish faith or Formula fidei of Pope Pius the fourth and the faith of the ancient Church in these ages which as yet you have not once endeavoured to answere though now it be the third time put to you If you had intended to say any thing to purpose against us PROTESTANTS to this particular you should have instanced Some essentials of the Christian ReligioÌ„ wherin the ancient Church did differ from us But I find that the chief facultio of your Romish Champions lyes in braging and false accusing How often have they accused PROTESTANTS as Innovatours And who are such pretenders to antiquity as they But it is a true character which Scaliger gave long agoe of our and your writers Non sumus nos novatores sed vos estis veteratores And therefore to vindicate the truth which we mantaine from all their reproaches I have offered to dispute the cause of Religion betwixt us and you both from Scripture and Antiquity But you doe shift the tryall from both these grounds as much as a Theif would shift to be examined by a Iurie You are therefore againe required to answere my argument From the diserepancy betwixt your now Romish Creed and the faith of the
to save his Soul is obliged in conscience to quit it and to betake himself to a diligent search where the True Religion is to be found prescinding for now where it is to be found and insisting meerlie in this that the Protestant Religion cannot be it This is proven by this one Syllogisme That Religion cannot be the True Religion which hath no special ground or principle whereby it can be proven to be a True Religion or to be a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. But the Protestant Religion hath no special ground or principle whereby it can be proven to be a True Religion or a Religion conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. Ergo the Protestant Religion cannot be a True Religion You denying here the Subsumption were advertised of this one thing that a true principle or ground is not an indifferent nature but is essentially determined to prove and infer onely truth and so not to produce any thing for a principle or ground to prove the truth of the Protestant Religion which may serve with as great reason to prove a false Religion to be true After much fluctuation and many shifting toes and froes at lentgh you have pitched on two things which you say you will mantaine as solid grounds to prove the Protestant Religion to be true and to be distinguished from all false Religions The first is The perspcuity of Scripture in all points necessary to Salvation But it was showne you the great jugling that lyes under this answere For first by Scriptur of which is affirmed that it contains perspicuously all things necessary to Salvation must be understood the true letter and the true sense of the true letter of Scripture Ergo it cannot serve for a ground to prove the Protestant Religion to be a true Religion except it be first proven that the Protestants hath both the true letter and Translation and likewise the true sense of the letter To this in which the maine point consists you give no answere nor brings no proofe but onely remits me to read your Protestant Authors whome you call Champions and who as you say have made all thir things clear as the Sun But wherefore doe you not produce the reasons of these your Champions that they may be examined and impugued Secondly It was asked how you could so boldly affirme that all things necessar to Salvation or rather that all the tenets which the Protestant Religion holds as necessary to Salvation were contained clearly in Scripture except first Drawing op a catalogue of all things that the Protestant Religion holds as points necessary to Salvation and as contradistinguished from all other things not necessary To this you answere now that a Proposition in generall may be beleeved though the beleever cannot make an induction of all particulars contained in it So we beleeve that all the dead shall rise though we cannot give a particular account of their persons But it seems this answere hath escaped your penne when you were thinking on other things For though I beleeve a proposition in generall when that proposition is revealed in generall But where is it revealed that all the tenets that the Protestant Religion holds for points nocessar to Salvation are clearly in Scripture For giving and not granting that this generall proposition All things necessar to Salvation are clearly set down in Scripture were revealed by Scripture it self attesting it yet it doeth not follow that this other generall proposition is revealled All the tenets that the Protestant Religion holds as necessar to Salvation are clearly contained in Scripture or that they may be clearly deduced out of things clearly set down in Scripture Ergo it cannot be an object of divine faith but by deduceing it by Induction of particulars And to this serves your own example of a purse full of an hundred pieces of Gold for though I may beleeve in general that all the gold contained in that purse is upright gold if this were revealed in general by a sufficient authority yet prescinding from all authority affirmeing this I cannot assent that they are all and none excepted upright gold except taking them all one by one and putting them to the tryall because if only one of them were not upright the whole assent would be false Thirdly Though you say all things necessar to Salvation to be clearly set down in Scripture yet you require the due use of certaine middes to attaine to the true knowledge of thir things and being demanded to specifie thir middes and what you meane by the due use of them And for answere to this you bring now onely a long Digression about rules to interpret Scripture slightin the maine print which is to show in this a difference betwixt you and these of a false Religion and whether these of a false Religion may not use as duely these middes as you can doe for attaining to the true sense of Scripture To this you onely answere that De facto they doe not use duely these middes and That the God of this world hath blinded their minds c. But what if they apply this to your self The second ground that you have pitched upon to prove the Protestant Religion to be a true Religion and to be distinguished from all false Religion Is the conformity it hath with the doctrine of the first three Centuries But this cannot be a ground distinct from the conformity which you say your Religion hath with the true sense of the letter of Scripture Because giving and not granting that your doctrine had this conformity you cannot by this prove that it is a true doctrine since by you All these were fallible and might have erred And conformity with doctrine that may be error cannot serve to prove a doctrine to be true And if you reply that though they were fallible and might erre yet they did not erre because the doctrine they gave is conforme to the true sense of the letter of Scripture Ergo the conformity with them is not a ground distinct from the conformity with the true sense of the letter of Scripture Or else you might prove the conformity with the Acts of Parliament in matters of Religion to be a ground to prove the truth of your Religion and a distinct ground from the conformity which these Acts hath with the true sense of the letter of Scripture Ergo to make good that the conformity of your Religion with the doctrine of the Church in the first three centuries is a distinct ground from the conformity with the true sense of the letter of Scripture you must give some Authoritie to the Fathers who were then whereby they were preserved from error though of themselves they were fallible And this must consist either in some intrinsecal quality inherent in them or in some special extrinsecal assistance founded on Christs promite And here you have likewise to prove that this
touch of their contrary opinions in your Cardinal De Lugo tract De fide Disp 5 Sect. 1.2.3 But at this time also I have purposly waved the absurdities which our Divines have deduced from your Romish Doctrine concerning these Motives of credibility Because I would keepe you closse to the point And therefore I shall demand no more of you but that you demonstrate the Infallibility of your Propounders from these Motives of credibility which till you doe you remaine shut up within the lines of that objected Contradiction I Now proceed to the other difficulty objected to you in expeding your self from which you are as unhappie For evidenceing whereof there needs no more be said but to propose the Aenigma which you pretended to enervat for you craftily wrap it up in silence The Argument did runne thus If our faith must be built upon the Precognition of the Infallible assistance of your Propounders the either this their pretended Infallibility can be proven or not If not then the whole Romish Faith is built upon a Fancy which cannot be proven If it can then First you were required to produce your Arguments for proving it And Secondly you were persued by this Dilemma If the Infallibility of your Propounders can be proven then either by a Writen or Unwriten Word Not by a Writen Word seeing the sense of it cannot be known according to you untill first the Infallibility of the Propounder and Interpreter be known but now that is supposed to be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very point in controversie Not can it be proven by an Unwriten Word Both because you had asserted before That a point of Religion to be True and to be conforme to the writen word are Synomma's And because there is as much need of an Infallible Propounder that we may be assured of the truth and true meaning of an Unwriten word as of that which is writen If therefore we cannot know the sense of the Writen word till first we be assured of the Propounders infallibility neither can the truth or the true sense of the Vnwriten word be known till first we be assured of the Propounders infallibility and consequently when the thing to be proven is his Infallibility it cannot be proven at all either by a writen or an unwriten word This Argument you dared not to propound and make a formal answere thereunto But all you say to this Suppressed Argument is that when you affirmed That a point of Religion to be true and to be conforme to the writen word of GOD were Synonima's you spake it onely Ad Hominem This is all your Reply and suppose it were true let any who hath sense judge whether you have evacuated the Argument For you touch but one part of the confirmation of one branch of the Dilemma which is abundantly proveÌ„ by another reason which might suffice suppose that which you touch were wholly laid aside You are far from the gallant resolution of Alexander who said Nola furari Victoriam Nay you are so base that when you cannot solve an Argument you wrape it up from the knowledge of the Reader and having given a touch of that without which the Argument abydes in its entire force you have the confidence to give out that you have confuted the whole Argument This is not the first experience I have of your Iesuitical ingenuitie But I must adde that even that which you have said cannot be admitted as if the Equipollencie of the two forementioned Propositions had onely been asserted by you Ad Hominem And the rather because what you say in this is agreeable to the grounds which you lay downe in your First Paper which there Interminis you affirme should be agreeed unto by all Now the chief scope of the First Paper and Syllogisme is to hold out that the True Religion hath grounds to prove it self to be conforme to the true sense of the letter of the word of GOD. And therfore both in my answere to your First Paper and in my Answere to your Third wherein you had asserted the Equipollencie of these Propositions â— drew an Argument against your Romish unwriten Traditions to which then you durst make no Reply albeit now as if what you had then writen had been forgoten you would flinsh from what you had formerly said upon this pretext as if it had been spoken Ad Hominem If you had said that you had spoken that onely Pro tempore from your Iesuitical principle of equivecation when you meaned nothing so I could indeed have beleeved you Though you have bewrayed as much basenes as I beleeve ever man did in so much writing yet you have the boldnesse to traduce some of our Divines not telling whome as citeing the Objections of your Authors for their Assertions But Turpe est Doctori cum Culpa redarguit ipsum Hath not the strength of your Romish Writers lyen in misrepresenting both the lives and writings of Reformed Divines Yea. your baseness in this hath stretched it self beyond them How grosly have you corrupted and falsifyed the writings both of Ancient and Moderne Authors as hath been demonstrated by Doctor Iames In his Treatise of the corruptions of Scriptures Councils and Fathers by the Pastors Prelats and Pillars of the Church of Româ— and by Cocus in his Censura veterum Scriptorum Beside many others You close all with a Tale of an Old wife And I confesse all you have said may well be reckoned Inter Aniles fabulas Yet you have the boldnesse againe to accuse me of Ignorance because I cannot homologat your absurd assertion That before we beleeve a Divine truth there must preceed a knowledge that God speakes by the Propounders Had you so often charged another with Ignorance you might perhaps have heard from him or now Sus Minervam I doubt truely if ever your dsperat Romish cause met with a more Blocksh Advecat then your self If I know that GOD speakes by such â— man must I not Simul semel beleeve it to be truth which he speakes How then were you so stupide as to affirme that the knowledge that GOD speakes by a man must preceed the beâ—â—â—f of the truth spoken Were you not more cautions before â—hen you onely required the previous knowledge of the Propounders assistance In actu primo But now your words would seeme to require the previous knowledge of GODS assistance In actu secundo For in propriety of speach GOD speakes not by a man but when he assists him In actu secundo Is this the nature of mans intellect to assent to a proposition which hath no evidence in it self without any reason Why then demand you an assent from me to your proposition concerning this Infallible assistance which I am sure is not Per se nota when neither can a reason be extorted from you to prove it not can you solve the objections brought against it Is there no ground upon which a Hearer may be convinced that this
is the genuine sense of Scripture but onely the authority of the speaker Surely then nothing spoken by you or your fellow Jesuits and Friers can be received as a Divine truth for you pretend no Infallibility Nay your fallacies are become so notorious to the World that it hath past into a proverb A Fryar a liar But perhaps you meane your Popes or Councils by your Propounders Yet besides that your people doe not hear them immediatly and their sentences may be vitiated in the conveyances by the hands of fallible persons besides this I say must not your Popes and Councils have a reason that moved them to own rather this sense of Scripture then the opposite Or else they must be perfect Enthusiasts If they have a reasone why may not the same reasone that moved them move the people also when it is sufficiently proposed to them Let the indifferent Reader now observe to what fluctuating uncertaintes you expose your hearers wheÌ„ you say that their faith must be resolved upon the authority of the Speaker whether you meane Pope or Council or both for I suppose you cannot determinatly tell which of the three Now how many things are here to be cleared before the faith of the poor people can be at a stand As First that these whome you call Popes are true Popes and successours to Peter and your Councils true and legitimat General Councils Secondly that these Popes and Councils have an Infallible authority Thirdly That this which you give out is the true and genuine sense of the Popes or Councils All which while the World stands you will never be able solidly to prove And I doe appeale you if you can to doe it But I must here reveal another prodigious Mysterie of your Romanists Namely that what ever is proposed not onely by your Popes and Councils but also by your inferiour Clergie-Men though by your own Confession Fallible yet the poor People who cannot examine by themselves the truth or falshood of what is proposed ought not onely to beleeve upon the authority of the said Fallible Clergie-Men but also Doe merit by beleeving though the thing beleeved be Erronious and Heretical Hear this from your Great Casuist Cardinal Talet Lib. 4. De Instruct. Saterd cap. 3. Si rusticus sayeth he circa articulos credat suo Episcopo proponenti aliquod dogma haereticum meretur in credendo lieet sit error quia tenetur credere donce si constet esse contra Ecclesiam I will english it If a country man sayeth he beleeve his Bishop propounding some heretical doctrine about the articles he meriteth by beleeving though it be an error because he is bound to beleeve until it manifestly appeare that it is against the Church What a damnable Religion must this be according to which men merit Heaven by beleeving lies If this doctrine of Cardinal Tolet be true that people are bound to beleeve your Fallible Clergie-Men even speaking lies and may Merit thereby How dare you conclude that our Faith to unquestionable Divine truths is no Supernatural faith because our Preachers doe not arrogat an Infallibility to themselves Is it better for a Romanist to beleeve a lie then for a PROTESTANT to beleeve a Divine truth Think you still to abuse the World with such prodigious impostures As for your ludicrous Example of an Old Wife We bless God there are old Wiwes young Boyes and Girles amongst us who could instruct all old deceiver like you in the true grounds of ReligioÌ„ Did not Priscilla a poor Wife instruct Apolles in the mysteries of Christianity of whose Infallibility Apollos had no previous assurance Yet from the Scripture she convinced him Act. 18.26 So that from this your Example though brought in by you only as a foolish jeer all that you have said may be redargued If there may be a ground to assent to divine truths proposed by a Poor Wife such as Priscilla of whose Infallibility there is no previous assurance then it is a falshood which you affirme that the Faith of divine truths must only be founded upoÌ„ the Authority of the Speaker But the first appears to be true from the Case of Priscilla and Apolles A poor Priscilla may hold forth convincing and luculent grounds of what she asserts from the Scripture when a Priest A Iesuit a Cardinal a Pope an Annas or Cajaphas may obtrude on the consciences of others erronioâ—s and groundles fancyes To this purpose I might produce many testimonies from your own most famous Writers as of Gerson Panermitan c. But I shall at the time content my self with one from Ioannes Picus Mirandulanus De Ordine credendi Theor 16. Which though I have at the second hand the author not being by me yet have I it from so many good Writers that I doubt not of the truth of it Quin imo sayeth he simplici potius rustice infanti anicula quam Pontifiti Maxime mille Episcopis credenduÌ„ si contra Evangetium isti illi pro Erangelio verba facereut I Have been more copious in this Reply then your Scurvy Paper did deserve yet if in this I have superogated it is without the least tincture of Poperie You but play the fool in upbraiding me with boasting or gloriation upon the account of the frequent losses which you are left at For I reckon it no point of honour either to deale with or to vanquish such an insignificant persons as hitherto you have discovered your self by your Papers I have rather so far endeavoured to deny my self as to be at the paines to give a check to an arrogant but an emptie Caviller against the truth But because Cepious Answers doe oppresse your dry and steril braine therefore I have subjoined a Succinct answere confuting all your Seven Papers in two words And if you find not your self comperent to answere this Long Paper in all the particulars thereof without your usual Tergiversations you may deale with this Succinct One. In the meane time let this suffice Aberdene October 31. 1666. Iohn Menzeis POSTSCRIPT A Short Answere in two words to all Master Dempster the Iesuit alias Rind or Logan his seven Papers Nego Minorem Or Nego Conclusionem Aberdene October 31. 1666. Iohn Menzeis The Reason why the returne of this Paper hath been so long delayed it because how soone I read your Seventh Paper I found that it ranne upon the old trifling straine and therefore I threw it by me for sundry weeks For it was likesome to me to be still examining your Titivilitia and scurvie Tautologies Now therefore either come to the point and answere Categeries without your tergiversations or else get you gone for ever The Jesuits eight Paper Reply to a seventh Paper of Mr. IOHN MENZEIS wherein is showen that the pretended conformity of Protestant Religion with Scripture is a meer imaginary and groundles conformitie 6. November 1666. This Paper was not delivered to Master IOHN MENZEIS untill November 9. 1666. YOUR Seventh Paper
for that purpose Iansenius Gandavensis in Concord Evang. cap. 55 is of the same judgement as also Aegidius Coninck tom 2. de sacram disp 19. dub 1. num 3. so likewise Suarez Cornelius a Lapide Carleton c. As for the other place your great Cardinal Cajetan is as expresse in denying that any solid ground for your Sacrament of Extreme Vnction can be drawn from the words of the Apostle Iames. Hear himself on the chap. 5. of Iames Nec ex verbis sayeth he nec ex effectu verba hac loquuntur de Sacramentali Vnctione sed magis de Vnctione quam instituit Dominus in Evangelio à Discipulis exercendam in agros And thereafter the Cardinal brings diverse Arguments to prove this his Assertion If it be true as certaine it is which Bellarmine and many other Romish Doctors have affirmed that the Vnction spoken of by Marke is not a proper Sacrament then neither is the Vnction spoken of by Iames a proper Sacrament For both are one as not only our Divines have proven by comparing the places and answering the Arguments brought by Bellarmine to diversifie them but also the same is acknowledged both by Beda Theophylact O Ecumenius as testifyeth your Iesuit Becan part 4. theol scholast tract de sacram cap. 27. quast 1. num 2. likewise by many Romish Doctors cited by a Lapide CoÌ„menton Marke 6.13 I shall only mention your famous Iesuit Maldonat on that same place who falls very sharplie upon them who would understand them of different Vnctions I adde fifthly that learned PROTESTANTS have demonstrated that the Vnction spoken of by Marke and Iames were in order to a miraculous healing of diseased persons On this account learned Chamier lib. 4. de sacram cap. 18. § 8. spared not to call it miraculosum extraordinarium Sacramentum A kinde of miraculous and extraordinarie Sacrament And Calvine comment in Iacob cap. 5. calls it Symbolum temporable a temporarie Symbole which was made use of in the Primitive Church so long as these gifts of healing continued But these having long agoe ceased by the confession of all Recedente gratia recedit disciplina The grace departing there is no more use of the ceremony I know your Romanists have some cavills by which they labour at least to pervert that place of James in favour of your pretended Sacrament of Extreme Vnction Should I now insist in examining them this Paper would swell to a nimious bigness and I confesse it hath already grown beyond my expectation Let it therefore suffice to advertise you that all these your Cavills are abundantly confuted to my hand by Chamier lib. 4. de sacram N. T. capp 18.19 By Doctor Fulk in his confutation of the Rhemists notes on James 5.14 and by other PROTESTANT Authours So that if in your Reply you repeat to me these old cavils and doe not confute the answeres given to them by our Authors you will discover your self to be a superficiary Theologue and unable to dive to the bottome of the Controversy To summe up all therefore this your greasy Vnction as now it is gone about in your Church hath no Scriptural foundation but it seemes to have too great resemblance to the practise of the Heracleonita a kind of Hereticks sprung from the Valentinians of whome Austine writes in his Booke ad Quod vult Deum cap. 16. Something also not unlike to this Irenaus testifies concerning the Valentinians themselves lib. 1. con hares cap. 18. And so much of your Extreme Unction Now it remaines that I take some notice Lastly of your pretended Sacrament of Ordination Know therefore that we PROTESTANTS doe cordially acknowledge that Ordination ought to be observed in the Church Yea learned Calvin lib. 4. Instit cap. 14. § 20. admits that in a large sense it may be termed a Sacrament So likewise have other our Divines as did Austin of old lib. 2. contra Epist Parmeniani cap. 13. and other Ancients Yet Calvin in the place quoted justly denyes as doe other reformed Divines that it ought to be reckoned among ordinarie and properly so called Sacraments Inter ordinaria sacramenta sayeth Calvin nou numero I shall desire you but to take notice of the ensuing Considerations And First how piteously are your Authours broken among themselves concerning the matter or visible signe of this pretended Sacrament You may take an account of this from your Jesuit Becan part 4. the dischol tract de sacram cap. 26. quaest 4. Where first he brings in Dominicus à Soto and Valentia affirming that the porrection of the instruments as of a Plater with Bread and Cup with Wine in the ordination of a Presbyter to be the only essential matter of ordination Then Petrus à Soto Ledesma Bellarmine Henriquez asserting both the Porrection of instruments and also Imposition of hands to be the essential parts of ordination But lastly Becan himself affirmes only Imposition of hands to be the essential matter of this pretended Sacrament and that the Porrection of the instruments is accidental thereto This is another specimen of your Papal Unity Doe you not perceive this fatâ—lity attending you that where you divide from us there you also divide among your selves Secondly therefore I would ask what you really make the visible signe in this Sacrament Is it only the Porrection of the instruments of which alone your Pope Eugenius the fourth speakes in that pretended Decree of the Council of Florence Or is it only the Imposition of hands or both Not the first for there can be no evidence of a divine institution thereof nor doth Scripture make mention of any such Porrection of instruments as is well observed by your own Jesuit Becan Nor the second for Imposition of hands is a ritâ— and action of the ordainer but no substantiall Element such as is requisite to the nature of a Sacrament And besides according to your Authours it is commone to other Sacraments such as Corfirmation and Extreme Unction How then can it be the sole and peculiar signe in this Sacrament Neither the third for the arguments which prove that the matter of this pretended Sacrament can be neither of these separately prove also that it cannot consist in both conjunctly The porrection of the instruments cannot be the matter of this Sacrament either in part or whole as not being of a divine institution neither Imposition of hands as being no substantial Element Thirdly that which your Pope Eugenius the fourth gives out as the forme of this Sacrament or words to be pronounced were never of divine institution The words he speakes of at the ordaining of Presbyters are these Accipite potestatem offerendi Sacrificium in Ecclesia pro Vivis Mortuis Where have you a divine institution for these words Nay they are manifestly repugnant to the Scriptures of GOD for they suppose Ministers to be Sacrificers of a proper propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of Living and Dead The absurdity whereof and repugnancy