signifies in a former time and that a former time could not be unless God had created it Your other suppositions too of Gods creating and anihilating souls proceed from an unworthy apprehension of Almighty God as if he should make and destroy Spirits onely to shew tricks they having no more difficulty to be answer'd then the plain instance of one Souls separation before anothers and therefore is but the repetition of the same case But well what must be said to St. Peters Soul and the Soul of St. Teresa hath not St. Peters a greater duration then St. Teresa's To this I answer what is immediately loosed out of God Almighty's hand hath no respect to time but is created for eternity as the World and the Angels are But what God doth by the mediation of creatures takes a tang from them and so hath some savour of time from the very loose Therefore Souls when they go out of their bodies have a kind of individual difference from the causes and time by which they begin This is a kind of a difference when you compare one Soul to another nothing if you compare the same Soul to it self And out of this is taken that diversity of duration which is found in several Souls Your next Argument is from the time as the Divines call it of the way of Angels to bliss where you ask who hath made evident that it could be done in one instant to which I have nothing to say though there want not Divines who hold it but that St. Austin hath made it evident that neither position prejudices Christian Religion and therefore 't is lawful to hold either side and so let Divines dispute it for no Argument can be drawn from thence why succession should be necessary in the intrinsecal operations of Angels Your third Argument consists of some expressions cited out of Scripture to which I answer if you bring any Texts of the thoughts of Angels I shall yield but if they be onely of outward actions those are measur'd by time as by twenty dayes c. and so argue no special duration in the inward acts of Angels Those cryes of the Martyrs under the Altar are so plainly Allegorical that it were lost time to shew they signifie nothing of importance to our controversie In the 31 Section you say it is groundlesly assumed that the Identification of the body and soul is required for the Action of a bodily Agent upon the soul and I cannot deny you have said it But one that had spoken like a Philosopher would have brought the seeming grounds on which it is built and shew'd the vanity of them and not oppos'd his bare word against anothers reasons You ask who ever fancy'd such an Identity betwixt the Body and Soul I answer no body no more then they can fancy that parts are not actu in continuo But as Aristotle and St. Thomas have rais'd their speculations above fancy and understood this and taught it their Scholars so hath the Church done about this Identification of the Body and Soul if the notion of forma corporis be rightly comprehended Then you demand who ever believ'd our Souls in this life are truly and really our Bodies and our Bodies our Souls No body Sir that I know of is so grosly senseless and so I think you are at the end of your Arguments Now let us see your belief which is that the Soul and Body as two distinct parts concur to the building up of one man who is one not by simplicity nor Identification of the parts but by substantial Vnion or composition O how gay a thing it is to speak words and not understand them We say the same you do and nothing more if you would make your words good For if there be a substantial Union then there must be an Unum substantialiter or per se or properly one And if there be a truly one it is not truly many that is not many substances or things And if there be not truly many substances or things the parts of this truly one are not distinguish'd really into things which are actually but formally into things that may be made of this one thing which is to have its part in potentia Now if truly and really the thing be but one thing all that is spoken of that thing signifies nothing but that thing so that the man is body according to the signification of one word Another word will signifie him as he is Soul another as he hath the vertue of holding and so he will be a hand another as he hath the vertue of walking and that will speak of him by the name of foot and all this be but one thing which we call man Now Sir this is a Catholick verity defined by ancient Councils in the Unity of a Person that is an individual substance or thing against the Nestorians The same was done in latter times under the notion of our souls being truly the Form or giving the denomination of being a thing Now the difference betwixt us is that you examin the words by fancy and we by understanding and discourse You add further it can never be evidenc'd that so much as a substantial union is necessary for a Soul to suffer from the Body For who say you shall render it evident that in the state of separation by the omnipotent hand of God she may not be made passive by fire Sir I am so confident of your abilities that I believe you are able to shew that God by his omnipotent hand cannot turn a separated Soul into wood or straw or some other combustible matter by which she shall become passive by fire And therefore your Divines use to speak more warily when they say God elevates the Action of the fire not disposes the subject or soul But this also he that can prove Fire is but a body and his action either rarefaction or locall motion or some such other may to such as carry sence along with their words shew that seeing an action cannot be elevated unless it be that is Fire cannot burn violently unless it burn and that the Action of fire can have no place in a spirit which it cannot divide or burn neither may it be elevated to torment a separated soul Your 32 Section tells us it is a purely voluntary and false assertion that separated Souls know all things perpetually and together And as for the falsity we may guess by your Arguments But to say it is voluntary you have no reason since the proofs are set down in Institutiones Peripateticae which I suppose you read as all sober Adversaries do before you went about to confute Your Arguments are first Our Angel Guardians every day learn our Actions what they be as it were by seeing the outward effects of them You speak this so confidently that I may imagin you have talk'd with some of them and they have told you so and then who dares deny it Otherwise I must confess I
into Heaven though neither the Councils nor the Popes words make any exception I doubt then when it is said all pains are remitted in Baptism the Councils suppose that Baptism is receiv'd with that disposition which out of the property of the Sacrament is due to it Now because your question is none of the intended ones but onely by the by I need not give a more positive Answer to it but leave it to your consideration It being by this clear that your calumny of saying I deny Satisfaction is fictitious I may go to your nine and thirtieth Section where having translated a long discourse of mine you learnedly ask in what mood and figure it is imagining your Reader to have so little understanding as to think a Demonstrative discourse ought to be just one Syllogism How favourable or otherwise your translation is I examin not since your chief aym is onely to make a little sport which you seldom have the luck to do with the least degree of good manners The Gentleman that translated the Book you mention is a Person whom all that have the happiness of his acquaintance know to be compleatly civil and ingenious and one who wants but the name which you indeed have to be every way accounted Religious a name I confess very honourable and which carryes with it a presumption of vertue but I have seen some instances where I fear it went no farther then a bare presumption I did not say how faithfull but how favourable since every Scholar knows the difficulty of rendring into significant and unbarbarous English the terms of art used by the most abstemious School-men in their discourses both of Philosophy and Theology All whom your rashness cares not to wound so it be thorough my sides Yet this fair offer I make you translate but your Dictates into smooth Love-letter English and I will freely forgive you for my part all you have unhandsomly written in this whole Section LAST DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section fortieth to the End The Vindicators mistakes of what passes in the Soul at reunion The efficacy of his sleightly grounded Devotions examin'd on the by His impotent malice in objecting Paganism His many bogglings at Divinity-Explications like to fright him out of his Faith satisfy'd IN your fortieth Section you are troubled that after the griefs of Purgatory the sight of Christ should change the imperfect Affections which are in Souls while they remain in Purgatory So little do you understand the course of Nature that precedent motion is quite of a different nature from the following quiet which is the term of that motion And forgetting you had given leave to your publisher to say his Souls were purg'd in Purgatory now you will have it the faith of all Christians that there is no acting for Bliss at the Resurrection By which if you mean meriting 't is nothing to the purpose for 't is but your own fiction to put merit at the Resurrection But if you mean there is no change towards Beatitude you are not well instructed Neither is it a wonder that this is a pleasure seeing it is the very taking possession of Bliss after the pains of Purgatory or as Philosophers would term it the Purgatum esse which yet hinders not but what went before and was their purging or purgation in via was painful enough After this to make your Comedy compleat you will have a touch at Hell which God be thanked for my ease you will reserve to a new discovery Yet you very heartily beg to know why the damned Souls do not repent themselves at the day of Judgment and become Saints Which is a sign you understand not what you read though you are able to put it in English And that you conceive this putting in the body again makes the Soul not only fit to be perfected or totally fram'd to the proportion of her last end but that she is return'd again into the state of this World's mutability of forgetting working by abstract notions gaining new science c. which are the proprieties of her changeable condition in this World If you please to study to understand what you intend to oppose I shall be willing to contribute on my part what I can In the mean while having already answer'd the other things you touch at in this Section let me follow you in what you do understand In your 41 Section you accuse your Adversary of scoffing at hallowed Grains sanctify'd Beads c. Which it seems you will not permit to be held external devices whatsoever your meaning is Nor Vtensils of a thriving devotion which is a term of an indifferent signification and there must be somewhat in you to make you wince at it The next words of deluding priviledges I lookt for but could not find in this place yet afterwards reading them in the Post-script I conceive by their nearness to Quamcunque voluerit that they glance at the too much confidence of such a promise so large that were it true and Doctors say the value of Indulgences is to be taken as they sound I should reckon it a great temptation to neglect wholly both all venial sins and all satisfaction for mortall in this life The onely advantage that I know a priviledg'd Altar pretends if we may believe the words of the Priviledg it self is to deliver a soul out of Purgatory by saying Mass there This Mass we have daily experience may be procur'd to say truth at no unreasonable rate What need I then according to these Principles be much frighted at Purgatory and those dreadful pains they so often preach to me when all may be healed with a little wisely-bestow'd alms if these men be as good as their words But they say 't is advisable not to be too confident in one Mass but to get more and is there no suspicion incident to an advice so unnecessary if the priviledg speak true and however so convenient in all cases Pray you tell me in your next Discovery to how many Masses on our common Altars is one of your Priviledg'd Ones equivalent to ten then the Priviledg alone is equal to nine then which I think a greater blasphemy can scarce be spoken Perhaps you may reply I hold you too severely to your word and that by our promising a full Delivery we mean onely to contribute extraordinarily towards it but why do you give me your word if I must not take it as it signifies why do you not play fair and tell me that one Mass there is something better then half two elsewhere for at the end of the account that 's all your vast promises come to for ought I see Besides may not all the other Altars where the same great work is perform'd justly complain that you endeavour their impoverishment other questions there are as easie to make and as hard to answer but of this enough the Theam 's too plentiful and I am even weary with thinking on 't Next you
even till this age In your twentieth Section you pretend to examin the Councill of Florence once more against me Your first mistake is that it was the business of the Council in Florence to declare the faith of the Church concerning the state of Souls which depart this life I mean not to speak to your History for as much as was determin'd of Souls was agreed in Ferrara but to the word business for their business was onely to agree two points one about material fire the other about the Just Souls presently seeing God which was the business of Benedictus his Bull and some of the Greeks were of the same apprehension with John the 22. But you like an Astronomer considering the phoenomena's of the Definition frame the question out of that whereas all the rest was no business but the compleating of the doctrin by dilating it out of tenets agreed without and before any controversy Your next errour is that whereas you pretend to compare my doctrin with the councils you do it to the doctrin of the parts of the Council when it is a clear case the doctrin of one part is not the doctrin of the Council but that in which the whole Council agrees Your third Errour if it be not a willfull aequivocation is that you say the Latins believe material Fire in Purgatory which if you mean by belief Catholick faith is extremely absurd Since they joyn cōmunion with the Greeks who profess the contrary if you mean only they held it as a probable opinion you cosen your Auditory which expects you should speak of Faith and not of that from which I may dissent by authority of the Council Your fourth rather malice than mistakes is that you impose upon me that there is no purging of Souls before reunion for all who know that actio is prior termino will allow a purging before a being purged as going to London is before being there Besides your oft repeated fault of mischarging me to hold that the Soules irregular affections are the torments of purgatory Your fifth errour is that you put an opposition betwixt the Latins and me where we perfectly agree in all save onely that intruded word by this Fire which comes out of a former and spoils the whole tenet of the Latins from being a matter of Faith making it but a probable-opinion in whole though the other parts belong to faith You add the Latins must needs have thrust me out of communion not reflecting that they gave communion to the Greeks who dissented in all you have alledged truly against mee As to the Greeks First you say I hold against them that Souls are in no place And though I cannot affirm positively what the meaning of the Greeks was at the Council in this point yet knowing their Fathers use when they speak of spirits to call working in a place being in a place I am well assur'd they would not thrust me out of their Society for denying a true locality in spirits The second objection is answer'd by my answer to the Latins and the same is to be sayd to the third Of your last objection concerning the efficacy of the helps because you say you will evidence it I must expect the fulfilling your promise till then it is but a threatning likely to be of little effect You end with a great confidence that you have dispatch't this business and converted your adversary unless he will stand upon the Errability of the Council For you imagining your self inerrable in your rash and shallow interpretation of it cannot alas good Christian imagin any other possible way to maintain the conclusion I on the other side hope I have sayd somewhat that may help your imagination but dare entertain no great apprehension that I shall convert you knowing I have not spoken to the main foundation of your opinion which is setled in your will upon grounds beyond my removall Yet in the 21 Section you are forced to retire from your fair hopes for your great words satisfy your adversary no more then your Capital letters His answer in substance is that you misconstrue the Pope and Council as it hath been declar'd by him and me before And that the purgation before the day of Judgment may be suppos'd but not defin'd And clearly enough such is both the Popes and the Council's meaning as is before more largely insisted on which being the onely knot of the controversy you do well to prepare loud clamours against it and tell us it is a pitifull evasion Let us then suppose it were judg'd by the Pope to be the more probable opinion amongst Divines that Souls were purg'd before the day of Judgment though he held the other was also probable which I think you will not say impossible for a Pope since divers have gone that way in other matters In this case was it fit the Pope should define what became of such Souls or no if you say he could and should define what is become of all your clamours against defining upon a supposition which afterwards may be found to be impossible For he that judges an opinion onely probable leaves a probability that it is impossible to be true since whoever sayes one side is but probable as far as concerns science sayes it may be false for any thing he knows Now things that have a settled course in nature are so dispos'd that impossibility is concomitant to falsity nor can it ever be prov'd to be false unless it be prov'd to be impossible So that the Pope in defining the coming to heaven of such Souls proceeds not consequently to his opinion if he doth not go upon a supposition that himself confesses may be impossible and yet in all prudence he must define it as being but an extension of this his main question whether Saints go immediatly to heaven If you say he could not or ought not to define such a conditionall case who will or can believe you that hath any prudence since for the position it self He both thought it the more probable and saw it concern'd the most ample part of his division of Saints going to heaven For all christians imagin more go to heaven through Purgatory then either by the vertue of baptism or by eminency of Purity and Sanctity acquir'd in this world So that I persuade my self you would easily allow the Pope not only could but ought in case he thought both sides probable to proceed as he did in his definition Now that this was the Pope's case is absolutely certain and more then probable since we cannot doubt but it was the case of the Latines in the Council of Florence in which the Greeks by their leaving our the expression of some being deliver'd sooner some later directly wav'd that position and by consequence refused to profess an Article of faith if this were one and yet without any repugnance or quarrelling about this circumstance were admitted to communion and a common decree made in
the words he speaks You will say you scorn these Grammatical Lectures and I believe you but such pride hath brought you to call the principall Fathers of the Church and her best Divines Imps of Hell for all these say the same I do in this point You must have some miscreants to accompany your Imps Therefore you would have a miscreant teach that a moderate affection to a Concubine is a less crime then an immoderate love to a Wife and because this latter is no breach of Gods Commandments as your Discourse imports therefore he must be a miscreant that should say it O what want had Solomon of such a Ghostly Father to tell him that to love his Wives immoderately was no breach of the Commandments And that to love them so as out of that love to fill Hierusalem with Idols and Idolatrous Worship was not far worse then a moderate or rather an ordinary for none is moderate none but is sinful enough love of a Concubine Surely you have quite forgotten that excellent sentence of our Saviour He that hates not his Wife can be none of his Disciple or as it is expres't in another place he that loveth his Wife more then him For I have heard say that by these words is signified as much as he that loves his Wife immoderately Surely he was no miscreant that preach't to men to loavo their Wives if they would not let theâ— serve God quietly After this in your 22 Sect. you arm up your Fathers and set St. Austin in front to make a great shew with his name For in his words nothing is to be found for your purpose And indeed it is an imprudence to cite him for your opinion who professes expresly ad Dulcit quaest. 1. the question had not yet been handled before his time but might hereafter but that he knew not whether side would prove true Yet you will give him a paper in his hand to hold forth though it contains nothing but the profession of your Adversary And â—ot to take notice of the doubtfulness of the two latter Books you cite there is nothing in them that your Adbersary will deny but has already explicated them But if you fail in Saint Austin you will help it out by Origen who sayes too much for you being known to speak heretically when he uses those phrases you cite out of him For his opinion was that Purgatory began after the day of Judgment and the sentence given by Christ according to which some were to be longer some shorter in torments but all to be freed at last And this he expresses by the words you cite and you should have brought some words by which it might appear he spake of Souls before the day of Judgment But you have a salve against this saying he wrote this before he was an Heretick By which it is clear you speak at randome for he fell not to be an Heretick by a set occasion as some others did but as long as he liv'd was accounted a great Doctor of the Church and his Heresies not discover'd untill after his death and even then defended to be none of his but to have been foysted in by Hereticks Your next Author is St. Gregory of Nyssa a man of very great worth and auâ—hority of whom Petavius that famous Jesuit sayes that some in his time more piously then either truly or wisely striv'd to explicate some places of his which did savour of Origenism But Germanus Bishop of Constantinople ancienter then Photius defends this great man yet not without admitting the Origenists had mingled some sentences of their own here and there in his works Now this Germanus his Book is not extant and therefore such places as use the Origenists phrases are suspected ones Specially the Book you cite is excepted against Possevinus rejects it absolutely others object against it that 't is corrupted by the Origenists in divers other points so that it is neither certain the book you cite is his nor if it be that it can carry authority where the phrase is Origenical as this word Ignis Purgatorius is and avoided much by Greek Fathers because it is so notorious in Origen I have not the Book and so I cannot speak expresly to the words In conclusion you make the Judgment of the Ages before those strange Revelations which Gregorius Dialogus as the Greeks call him and say him to be the Pope whose successour was Zacharias who lived about the midst of the eighth Age hath left us or rather Odilo who lived about six hundred years agoe out of three Fathers whereof one sayes nothing special for your Doctrin and is certainly against it The second was notoriously an Heretick and the words you cite pertinent to the explication of his Heresy The third's words are certainly corrupted by the followers of the second and the Book out of which you cite the place rejected by learned Catholicks yet this you call the consent of Fathers and the apprehension of those ages to which I appeal But now comes such an impiety as should make a Christian sink for shame to wit that I say Virgils Purgatory is more rational then yours But what would you have me do I did not know that all the light of Christianity consisted in certain private Revelations quarum nox conscia sola est Now that you have told me so I will mend as soon as I shall believe you mean while till then I may conceive a man of wit may conjecture or feign likelier thing then we find in such visions as go generally accompany'd with some circumstance against the nature of Christian life Nor do I fear your exposition of the Councils will stand canonised in Christian Creeds however you assume the confidence to nickname such shallow conceits of your own Catholick Faith all over your Book You follow the same matter by citing places out of the publick Liturgies of which all but one are purely indifferent to both parties even in the very out side of the words and that one easily explicable in a sence consistent with mine You brave me to find out a new construction of Ante diem rationis and I tell you I have found one of which I never heard before and 't is in your book and in this very place pag. 83. wherein striving to apply that excellent Hymn to your purpose you mistake it I think as much as 't is possible First you make the Priest speak in the person of the dead whereas the whole style of the Hymn runs clearly in the person of him that prayes and in the singular Quid sum miser tunc dicturus c. supplicanti parce Deus Contremisco mei finis With which person suit these words best that of the dead or of the Priest Secondly your Argument must suppose him to pray for delivery from Purgatory let 's see how you hit it in this Ne perenni cremer igne can these words agree with Purgatory Thirdly you bring this
study My imperfection is such I cannot And if eating my meat with a good stomach gives me health and strength to study and pray I think I do well to put vineger or some other sauce to my meat which may make me eat what is fitting to perform those Actions strongly and perfectly Neither do I understand that this is either against Saint Paul or the Doctrin of Mortification prescrib'd according to Saint Paul who tells us he chastis'd his body and kept in slavery in order to attaining Heaven lest saith he I become a reprobate to which end all that use mortification discreetly employ it I confess this Doctrin is against them who think God is pleas'd with a kind of sacrificing their bodies to his honour without any commensuration to their own salvation but meerly because they apprehend they make God beholding to them for the great honour they did him as heathen Priests were anciently and are yet us'd to do in some Countries You say this Doctrine befits only Epicurus his School and the life of Hogs For Epicurus the Eloquent Gassendus hath taken a great deal of pains to perswade the World you are in an Errour And for the life of Hogs unless you be better acquainted with it then a chast religious man should I think you no fit Judg of the Comparison But whatever way you go I le tell you mine which is to think we feel or as I may so speak see no acts of our own immediately but corporeal ones therefore those sensible pleasures heats violences of charity which we read of in many Saints lives are corporeal ones as appears by the very narrations telling us of bones broken those that were neer them warm'd those that they preach'd to materially set on fire and the like Now I say there being such variety of corporeal pleasures the understanding man chuses amongst them what are fittest to breed in him those thoughts and desires which are the most efficacious dispositions of the Soul to Heaven And these I hold the best and noblest and which make a mans life the pleasantest Of these speaking in abstract are generally those that follow or accompany Charity and Science but in practise those which be the Instruments to increase solid Charity proportion'd to the pitch of the Soul to be govern'd which possibly is not capable as yet of so great acts as the Saints we spoke of But there is none so low but if diligence and industry be not wanting hath higher and greater pleasures then the Hogs which were your instructers to know what corporea pleasure is And I cannot but marvell much on what your thoughts were wandring that whereas you cannot but have read in the lives of Saints and eminent Contemplators of the excessive and ravishing delight which they felt that is which was even in their body too and affected it so as they have judg'd it to be inexpressible and above all contents and delights this world could afford yet forgetting all these your thoughts could onely pitch on those which Hogs feel as the perfectest Do you think a virtuous man has not a more solid lasting and true corporeal pleasure in the calmness of his fancy and the undisturb'd temper of his passions than a vitious man who for a dram of delight which his mad phrenzy of passion gave him and scarce left him understanding enough to know he had it has whole pounds of bitterest gall of discontent attending it both in the perpetuall fight of his fancy and appetite against reason and the distemperature of other naturall parts which vice must needs disorder Nay why should we not think the Saints who liv'd mortify'd lives felt not as much corporeal pleasure taking the whole extent of their lives as those enormous livers who cloy'd their senses with the surfet of them We experience so high a difference in our pleasure taken in meat when we are heartily hungry in a warm fire when we are extremely pincht with cold that we have good ground to think their deprivement of the degrees of the thing is recompenc't by the degrees of the perfect sence they have of what they admit of which is by the rarity of it commended and receiv'd with as great a welcome as a necessity both naturall and rationall that is those powers uncheck't in that action could give it All which amounts but to this that a virtuous life is in all respects the pleasantest to the whole man If this satisfy you not what think you of Health and Sickness Is not the former full of corporeall pleasure the other of corporeal displeasure or pain Can any thing be so agreeable to the Body as that more disagreeable or unpleasant than this Yet I beleeve neither your self nor any understanding Christian had a scruple he was in health but gave God thanks for it as a great benefit This being so laid out what have you to except why the pleasantest life is not the fittest to attain Heaven You add you have a Scruple to translate this Doctrin and you justly may to do it so raw and imperfectly as to make a quite wrong apprehension in your Auditory of its being from what it is But as you have a confidence of your Readers vertue to abhor the Doctrin as you set it down so have I that any hath heard of me will give no credit to your shameless calumny You begin your twenty eighth Section with my frivolous concluding that corporall affections remain in the Soul after Separation And you seem to bring two Arguments to shew it First that all these desires rise from the body which being taken away they remain no longer in the Soul you may as wisely perswade a man not to seal his Letter because the impression coming from the seal as soon as he puts that in his pocket there would remain no more print in the Wax No sweet Sir Our foul hath certain Prints of efficacious judgements which though they begin from the flesh yet sink into her and become as it were Limbs of her For as beasts work by Legs and Arms and Teeth so our soul by her Judgments Your second Argument presses that as it will not concern the soul to see or hear so neither to have corporeal pleasures when she hath all fulness of knowledge so that you would make the unpurg'd souls follow reason and desire nothing but what is fit for them that is to be totally purged and by consequence go immediately to Heaven and all to be Saints and that their works follow them not At least you think a Schollar could endure no punishment who had no other irregular desires but of knowledge Qui est hic laudabimus eum but putting the case how impossible soever in the judgment of Christians who hold grace necessary we must remember he that hath much science hath a better knowledge of his last end how great it is and seeing himself deprived of that hath a larger share in the high part of
accuse your Adversary that he sayes you think such things promote souls in Holy desires though for my part I think it is a great reason of the use of them to make people be devout when otherwise they would not And for souls going to Heaven by them if they take away the pains of Purgatory with what face can you deny it I remember a Doctor of Divinity who having obtain'd a Scapular from the Carmes and a priviledg from the Jesuits to be admitted a Jesuit at the hour of his death was as confident to go directly to Heaven as if he had had a Patent for it under Jesus Christs own Hand Why then are you so touchy as if there could not be abuses in these things why cannot you be patient in this case as well as the Church is content to admit some abuses to have crept even into the administration of the Sacraments Your last note I believe is quite mistaken for I do not conceive your Adversary intended to make any comparisons both because he does not specifie any particular man to whom he should be suppos'd to compare me and because there is no occasion for it But peradventure he would not have the good life of any man be an Argument to bear down a contrary Doctrin For my self I profess no exemplarity If my life be such as may not unbeseem my Calling I have as much as I desire from men neither do I see any reason why any one should engage for me supra id quod videt in me I pray let not opinion-quarrels break into Personal dissentions Si invicem mordetis invicem consumemini To the same uncharitable end I fear tends your often repetition of diminishing words to those persons who think well of me or my Doctrin insisting especially on their small number but I pray you tell me how many you think have impartially and attentively read these few Books I have made I believe in proportion to them it is not a small number who profess to have met in many points with great satisfaction nor do I expect they should in all I may sometimes be mistaken my self and there I desire none to follow me others may sometimes be mistaken in me and there I am so far from being followed that my obscurity which I confess a defect will not let me be found Nor do I see so much cause to be troubled at the fewness as to bless God for the qualities of those who profess to have found good in my writings being Persons both ingenuous and vertuous and of such frank and unbyassed Principles as well by their own inclination as the influence my way may have had upon them that I am confident they desire nothing more then to see my Doctrin thorowly examin'd and speedily brought to a fair impartial Tryal by the sharpest Arguments that a pertinent opposer can make and indeed they themselves have been the strongest though not the fiercest Objectors I have met with One reason possibly of this little number may be that my Books have not as yet been long enough in the World to be fully perus'd by many what time may produce God onely knowes to whom I submit it But to return to my self and speak to what you dislike in me you absolve me from being an Heretick to make me a Pagan Nor will I refuse to be what you shall please when you have explicated your self But this not marking nor understanding your own words makes all the misintelligence You make me a Pagan but such an one as acknowledges Christ and every word and tittle either of the Scripture or any other Law of his Such a Pagan such a Naturalist was never heard of before Will you have me give you an Instance take this Bull and Canons which you cite and put them to my self or your Adversary and see whether we will either refuse to subscribe or even swear to them Then our Paganisus lyes in this that we do not think you have the right sence And this is my Paganism thorough all things belonging to Christian Faith You say I agree onely in words with the Church but saying so you say I agree in words and by consequence the whole disagreement is about the sence of the words In which controversy because I proceed out of Philosophy and reason and you out of what Masters Dictatts I know not you leave a great prejudice that my explication is the more reasonable Wherein consists then my Paganism Because I pretend to demonstrate what you think is not to be known but by Faith Then if I do not pretend to demonstrate but onely profess that they are demonstrable and exhort men to seek out the Demonstrations which is the true case and what you add is out of the fulness of your heart why do I not hold all the Articles by Faith and where is my Paganism But suppose some great Scholar possibly or impossibly as the Schools speak should have the demonstration of the Articles of Faith would he therefore be a Pagan sure you never thought what a Pagan signify'd when you spake so cholerick a word That peradventure might make him more then a man or more then a Christian as a Comprehensour is if it reach'd to Gods Essence less it could not make him Faith is not desirable for its Obscurity but for its Certainty We govern our lives by knowing the objects not by the defect in the knowledge Let a man see his way by the clear Sun and sure he will be as able to walk in it as by the dimmer light of a Star But you complain I reduce the mysteries of our faith to our narrow brains Sir you are mistaken It is the quite contrary you should rather accuse me of endeavouring to dilate our brains to the capacity of the mysteries by the help of Faith Why God cannot elevate our brains to understand what he hath deliver'd us to be understood You have not yet declar'd to my capacity You say when you are told Souls are not purg'd in the state of separation but at the reuâ—ion though the word remains your Faith is gone I easily believe you speak from your mind and that truly you apprehend the explication you frame to your self is your Faith and so that as many Christians as fancy divers explications of the same Article have so many faiths but by this way I see very few in the whole Church would be of the same faith 'pray consider a little that reflexion Nothing is more clear then your next Example You say you believe that Faith Hope and Charity are infused by the Holy Ghost into our Souls in Baptism A Pope and a generall Council too declar'd that of two opinions of Divines this was the probabler and by saying so said this was not the faith of the Church and yet if this be not true your faith is gone Your next Example is to the same purpose that supernatural qualities are of a different series then nature