admitted that the Certainty of Scripture is from Tradition there was no refusing to admit that Tradition causes Certainty and makes Faith as Certain as Scripture And then it would have prov'd something difficult to satisfie even a willing Man that the Faith is Certain which is opposit to a Faith come down by Tradition But it was seen whereto it would come and thought fit to break off in time and not let the Conference proceed too far In the mean time Absolute Certainty of Scripture was not the Point of the Conference nor is it the Point of Concern Besides that 't is agreed on all hands Men are Sav'd by Believing and Practising what Christ taught not barely by believing Scripture is Scripture And Salvation is the thing that imports us in these Disputes and 't were well that nothing else were minded by Disputers But it imported you it seems both to shift off Proving from your self and to stifle any further Talk of the Certainty of Protestant Faith and keep us from looking that way by fixing our Eyes on another Object And this is all you do but with so much Art that I verily think many a Reader is persuaded you are talking all the while to the purpose The truth is you have reason to carry it as you do for it is good to avoid undertaking what cannot be perform'd And you cannot and I believe know you cannot make out That Protestants are Absolutely Certain that they now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles as you affirm'd in your Answer to Mr. G's first Question And this I thought it imported to tell you plainly and publickly that it might be in your hands to pin the Controversie-basket and bring all Catholics to your Church where I will answer you will be sure to find us if you make us sure we shall find this Certainty there when we come 6. In the mean time why has not Mr. G. done already as much as should be done It is plain that where Churches differ in Faith Infallible Faith in one cannot stand with Certain Faith in the other Wherefore if Mr. G. have fix'd Infallibility in his own Church he has remov'd Certainty from all that differ from her Let us then take and sift Mr. G's Argument even as you put it who had not I suppose partiality enough for him to make it better than it was You put it thus p. 4 5. 7. All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day which they did yesterday and so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour and if they follow this Rule they can never err in Faith therefore are Infallible And you Mr. G. prov'd they could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it And now That there may be no mistake let us take each Proposition by it self 8. The First is All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day which they did yesterday and so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour You have nothing to say to this I hope For since Traditionary Christians are those who proceed upon Tradition and Tradition signifies Immediate Delivery it follows that unless they believe the same to day which they did yesterday and so upwards they cease to be Traditionary Christians by proceeding not upon an Immediate but an Interrupted Delivery or some other Principle And so there is no denying this Proposition but by affirming that Traditionary Christians are not Traditionary Christians 9. The second Proposition is this And if they follow this Rule they can never err in Faith. This is palpably self-evident For to follow this Rule is to believe still the same to day which they did yesterday And so if they did this from Christ's time and so forwards they must still continue to believe to the end of the World the self-same that Christ and his Apostles taught and therefore cannot err in Faith unless those Authors of our Faith did Which that they did not is not to be prov'd to Christians 10. There follows this Inference Therefore they are Infallible This is no less plainly self-evident For these words They can never err in Faith in the Antecedent and They are Infallible in the Consequent are most manifestly the self-same in sense and perfectly equivalent 11. The fourth and last which according to you aim'd to prove that they could not innovate is this They could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it And this is no less unexceptionable than its Fellows For if they knew not they alter'd Faith when they alter'd it they had forgot what they believ'd the day before If they alter'd it wittingly excuse them from Malice who can who believing as all who proceed upon Tradition do that Tradition is the certain Means to convey the Doctrin of Christ would notwithstanding alter the Doctrin convey'd to them by Tradition Pray what ails this Argument and what wants it save bare Application to conclude what was intended as fully and as rigorously as you can desire And pray what need was there to apply it to the Roman Church and say she follow'd Tradition to you who deny it not either of the Roman or Greek Church As every thing is true and every thing clear who now besides your self would have thought of an evasion from it And yet you venture at one such as it is 12. You tell us then p. 5. That you thought the best way to shew the vanity of this rare Demonstration was to produce an Instance of such as follow'd Tradition and yet Mr. G. could not deny to have err'd and that was of the Greek Church c. You had e'en as good have said what Mr. G. says is true but yet he does not say true for all that For to pitch upon nothing for false is in Disputes to own that every thing is true The best way say you I should have thought it every jot as good a way to have said nothing when one has nothing to say But yet the World is oblig'd to you for letting them know what Scholars knew before that Protestants think it the best way to answer Catholic Arguments to give them no Answer at all For you are not to be told that this Instance of yours is not an Answer to Mr. G-'s Argument but a new Argument against him of your own which undoubtedly you might have produc'd as well as my Lord Falkland if you had been as my Lord Falkland was arguing But it is your turn now to answer And must you be minded of what every Smatterer in Logic knows that an Answerer is confin'd to his Concedo his Nego and Distinguo as the Propositions which he is to speak to are True False or Ambiguous He may deny the Inference too if he find more or other Terms in the Conclusion than in the Premises But these are his Bounds and Answering turns
Iohn Biddle did against the Minister of his Parish and the whole Church of England to boot 'T is plain you ought to cherish and commend him for standing firm to his Rule But I am much afraid you would be out of humor with him and esteem your self affronted You may pretend what you please of high Expressions given by Antiquity of Scripture's incomparable Excellency and Sufficiency for the Ends it was intended for which we do not deny to it but I dare say even your self do's not think that either the Ancient Faithful or the Modern Reformers meant that any of the Ecclesia credens or Believing Church should have the liberty to Interpret Scripture against the Ecclesia docens or Teaching Church i. e. Pastors or Coyn a Faith out of it contrary to the present or former Congregation of which he was a Member 26. The sum is 'T is evident hence that Tradition of your Fathers and Teachers and not Scriptures Letter is indeed your Rule That by it you Interpret Scripture which then only is call'd your Rule and made use of as such when you are Disputing against us because having thus set it up to avoid and counterbalance the Authority of the former Church you left you make account your own private Interpretation of it may come to be thought Argumentative against the great Body of those Churches from whose Communion you departed and yet you judge no private Parishioner should claim the same Priviledge against you without affronting your great Learning and Pastoral Authority But I much wonder you should still venture to call Scripture's Letter a Rule of Faith having been beaten from that Tenet so pitifully in Error Nonplust from Pag. 59. to Pag. 72. where I believe you may observe divers Particulars requisit to be clear'd e're the Letter can be in all regards Absolutely Certain which the Consent of all Christian Churches will never reach to by their meer Authority unless you will allow the Sense of Christ's Doctrin descending by Tradition did preserve the Copy substantially right and intire 27. Your pretended Rule of Faith then being in reality the same that is challeng'd by all the Heretics in the World viz. Scripture's Letter Interpreted by your selves I will let you see in this following short Discourse how far it is from being Absolutely Certain I. God has left us some Way to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught II. Therefore this Way must be such that they who take it shall arrive by it at the End it was intended for that is know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught III. Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Iudgments is not that Way for we experience Presbyterians and Socinians for example both take that Way yet differ in such high Fundamentals as the Trinity and the Godhead of Christ. IV. Therefore Scripture's Letter Interpretable by Private Iudgments is not the Way left by God to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught or surely to arrive at right Faith. V. Therefore they who take only that Way cannot by it arrive surely at right Faith since 't is impossible to arrive at the End without the Means or Way that leads to it 28. I do not expect any Answer to this Discourse as short as it is and as plain and as nearly as it touches your Copyhold it may be serv'd as Mr. G's Argument is turn'd off so so with an Instance if there be one at hand or with what always is at hand an Irony or scornful Jest your readiest and in truth most useful Servants But you must be excus'd from finding any Proposition or Inference to deny or any thing save the Conclusion it self Which tho' it will not be fairly avoided I cannot hope should be fairly admitted unless I could hope that Men would be more in love with Truth than their Credit Till Truth be taken a little more to heart Catholic Arguments will and must always be faulty but they are the most unluckily and crosly faulty of any in the World faulty still in the wrong place When fault is found in other Arguments it is always found in the Premisses in these 't is found in the Conclusion In which notwithstanding all who know any thing of a Conclusion know there can be no fault if there be none in the Premisses Indeed they shew that to be true which Men cannot endure should be true and that is their great and unpardonable fault That you may not think I talk in the Air I declare openly that you cannot Answer this Discourse unless you will call some unconcerning Return an Answer and I engage my self to shew the Proposition true and the Inference good which you shall pitch upon to deny And the Distinction if you will make any not to purpose The truth is I engage for no great matter for I know beforehand you can no more Answer now than you could to Error Nonplust or can prove an Absolute Certainty in Protestant Faith. 29. To return now to Mr. G. the Second thing which you desire him to make good is That the Tradition from Father to Son is an infallible Conveyance of Matters of Faith notwithstanding the Greek Church is charged by him with Error which adher'd to Tradition That is you desire him to prove over again what you tell us your self he has prov'd once already For you tell us p. 5. he prov'd That they Traditionary Christians could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it Pray when it is prov'd that the Conveyance of Faith by Tradition excludes the possibility of Change in Faith save by forgetfulness or malice is it not prov'd That where there could be neither forgetfulness nor malice there could be no change in Faith You do not I suppose desire he should prove that Men had always Memories or that Christians were never malicious enough to damn themselves and Posterity wittingly and yet it can stick no where else If it can said Mr. G. assign where Now you know very well that a Conveyance which makes it impossible that Faith should ever be chang'd is an Infallible Conveyance and the very thing is prov'd which you desire should be prov'd What reason has Mr. G. to prove it a second time And what reason have you to desire it If Proof would content you you have it already but a second cannot hope to content you better than the first unless it be worse 30. Yes but you would have him prove Notwithstanding the Greek Church c. p. 7. Notwithstanding Why do you think it is with Arguments as with Writs where the want of a Non obstante spoils all When a Truth is once prov'd is it not prov'd notwithstanding all Objections And will any Notwithstanding unprove it again Will your Notwithstanding shew us there was a time in which Men were not Men nor acted like Men Will it shew us that a thing which cannot possibly be chang'd may yet
profess to hold the Yesterdays Faith when all the World must see and every man 's own Heart must tell him the contrary Which is the highest Impossibility Luther alter'd Calvin alter'd so did many others but none of them had the face to say they still adher'd to Tradition or the Faith deliver'd immediately before and that they had not alter'd 4. Men fall into Sins through Temptations and Temptations are various according to mens Tempers and Circumstances whence it happens that one falls into one sort of Sin others into another as things light But 't is impossible there should have been Causes laid in the World so Universal as to reach a whole Body of men consisting of so many Millions of different Countries Tempers and Circumstances so as to impel them effectually to fall into the same Individual sort of sin and this such a horrid and shameful one viz. The Altering the Faith they hop'd to be sav'd by and this so suddenly The Nature of the thing shows evidently 't is above Chance and the very Interest of the World would forbid such a Conspiracy were there neither Religion Conscience nor Common Humanity in it Their very Passions Disaffections and Enmity to one another would make them disagree in carrying on such a wicked Project Their Natural Tempers abstracting from their Common Propension to Truth and the care of preserving their Credits utterly lost by speaking such open and pernicious falshoods would render them apt out of a meer Antipathy of Humour to oppose one another and all this supposing there were no Goodness at all in the World to suppose which evacuates all Christian Motives and their Efficacy and makes our dear Saviour preach and dye in vain especially since there never wanted no not even in the worst times a fair Degree of Disciplin to apply those Motives Nay State-Interest or the Quarrels of Princes would make them glad to take hence an Advantage against their emulous Neighbours and to think it the best Policy to lay hold on such an occasion to fight in behalf of Faith and Common Honesty against a pack of shameless Lyars and Deserters both of Religion and Human Nature who car'd not what became of their own Salvation or that of others Lastly Thâ—se Causes thwarting the Universal Alteration of Faith while Christians proceeded on the former Rule of Tradition and full as much hindring the taking up a New Rule in opposition to the Testimony of the Universal Church as there could be no Cause to make men conspire to alter the Yesterdays Faith so Christian Motives which contain the greatest Hopes and Fears imaginable the Hopes of never-ending Bliss and Fears of Eternal and Intolerable Misery which were believ'd and apply'd to the generality of Christians could not on the contrary side but influence them most powerfully to preserve unchanged and inviolate both the Rule and the Faith. 'T is as Certain then that a very Great Body of Adherers to Tradition and consequently to the first deliver'd Faith would still remain on Foot in the World as that Effects could not be without Proper Causes or that Motives which are the Proper Causes to work upon Rational Nature will produce their Effect I mean such Motives as engage their very Nature Add That such a Change must needs have been publickly known and so have excited the Pens Tongues Interests perhaps Swords too of the Traditionary and Innovating Party one against another at the time of the Change as we see has happen'd in our late Alterations or Reformations Yet no such thing was ever mentioned in History or come to us by Tradition or any thing alledg'd but some differences amongst particular Spectators and their Adherents siding with them which amounts to nothing comparable to that Universal and most Memorable Concussion such a vast Change as this we speak of must needs have made in the whole Body of the Church 46. Summing up then this Discourse 't is manifest you have no way to answer our Argument but by supposing there was a time the Lord knows when in which there were no considerable Body of Men in the World either good Christians honest men or valuing their Credit but only a company of brutish Godless Lying Ruffians without the least Degree of Grace or Shame in them Unfortunate Confuter Aristotle lookt upon things as they were Plato on things as they should be but to make a show of an Answer to our Argument you would have your Readers look upon the Christian World as it neither is was should be or can be 47. But you object What if all Sons did not understand aright all that Fathers had Taught them Answer If All did not most of the Intelligent and Pastours who were of greater Authority than those some less-understanding Persons and ty'd by their Duty and Office to instruct their Ignorance would and could easily do it when the Doctrin open Practice and Disciplin of the Christian Church was settled and made it both so obligatory and so easie 2. What if some Sons were so negligent as to take no care either to remember or teach what they had been taught by their Fathers Answ. If only some were so then those who were diligent to do this would reprehend them and see to have things amended and those careless Persons especially if Pastours reduc'd to their Duty there being Orders on foot in the World to oblige them to it Besides 't is an unheard-of Negligence not to know or remember the next day the Faith they held the day before nor did it require that care you pretend to retain the remembrance of it four and twenty hours 3. What if some through Ambition Vain-Glory and Popularity set a broach New Doctrines and taught them for Apostolical Tradition Answ. If only some were so then those others who were good Men and free from those Vices would set themselves to oppose them make known their false pretences and lay open their Novelties Both Reason assuring us that Good men use not to be so stupidly careless in such Sacred Concerns and History informing us they were ever very zealously vigilant to oppose Hereticks when ever they began to vent their Pestilent Doctrins 4. What if others to save themselves from Persecution conceal'd part and corrupted more of the Doctrin of Christ by their own Traditions taken not from Christ but from their Forefathers Iews or Gentiles Then those who were out of Persecution or valu'd it not so much as they did their Conscience would oppose their Unchristian Proceedings Then the Fathers Doctors and Pastours of the Church would reveal what they had conceal'd restore what they had corrupted and manifest that their Pretences and Subterfuges were False and that the Doctrin they subintroduc'd had not descended by the open Channel of the Christian Church's Tradition 5. What if some through a blind Zeal ignorant Devotion Superstitious Rigour and vain Credulity added many things to the Doctrin of Christ which by degrees grew into more general esteem
not ignorance of their worth but an unlucky necessity which made you introduce in their room two New Questions to while away the time and escape the true one which you had no mind to meet close and grapple with Yet perhaps you may have better luck in your First Question let us see By your First Question then and your Explication of your Design of it immediately after 't is easy to discern that you again quite mistake the End and Use and consequently the Nature of Tradition which is a very inauspicious beginning and puts us out of hopes you should ever discourse pertinently of it since you go about to impugn you know not what For Tradition does not bring us down set Forms of Words onely as you imagin viz. as you instance P. 7. Christ was the Son of God under which you say well a Heretical Sense may ly But it derives down to us the very sense of those words and all the rest of Christ's Doctrine there being found in Tradition all the ways and means to signify and express the Determinate Meaning and Sense of Forefathers that can possibly be imagin'd For they not only deliver the Propositions of Faith in such or so many Words as you apprehend but they signify to their Children the very Tenets they have in their hearts in such expressions as best sutes with the occasion according as their different methods of explaining themselves may lead them You may upon reflexion observe it passes thus in your self when you instruct people in their Faith In which circumstance you do not ty your self up to rigorous Forms of Words made to your hands but take your liberty to deliver your self in any manner that you judge will make your meaning be best understood The same Method is taken by the Pastours of the Church and the Fathers of Families too according to their pitch and station They Catechize their Children they Preach upon the Texts proper to such Points they dilate themselves in their Discourse with a full design to make their Sense be perfectly comprehended they reply to the difficulties of those who are not yet perfectly instructed or well satisfied and accommodate themselves to all their Exigencies Lastly they lead their Christian Lives and breed up others to do the same by those Principles And Experience as well as Reason tells us that nothing gives the determinate sense of Words which express Tenets more distinctly than does perpetual Practice and Living conformably to what 's signified by those Words The want of which Requisits in the Letter of Scripture which can give no Answer to any difficulty nor vary any expression to make its Meaning more Intelligible nor live and by Example make the Reader live according to such a sense shews clearly that taking it alone and unassisted by the Churche's Tradition determining and ascertaining it's meaning in Dogmatical Points it cannot in any proper Speech be call'd a Rule of Faith. 3. If notwithstanding what has been said this Discourse should still seem to you more a Speculation than a Real Truth which yet I judge impossible pray reflect how your self would go about to instruct your own Children in your Faith and you will easily find by experience when 't is brought home to your own case how connatural this Way is to clear to them your sense in what you would have them Believe Do not your self use the same Method Do you only deliver to them certain Forms of Speech without endeavouring by all the possible means you can invent to imprint the true sense that I may use your own Instance of these Words Christ is the Son of GOD in their Souls and to make it still clearer to them as their budding capacities grow riper and riper Do you not experience they come by degrees to understand you too and that you have at length transfus'd into them the Sense of the Tenet you had in your own Breast Do not you practically instil into them that they ought to Pray to Christ and exercise their Faith Hope and Charity towards Him while they are Praying Do not you tell them they are to give Divine Reverence to Christ without stinting them or making them scruple lest they give too much or commit Idolatry by giving that to a Creature which is only due to the True GOD And does not this Practise beyond all possibility of mistake insinuate into them that he is equally to be Ador'd with God the Father or Coequal to him and so not a Creature but very God of very God I doubt not but you do all this at least I am sure if you do it not you do not your Duty Nor do I doubt but your Children come at length to understand you too and by understanding you become of the same Religion And can you imagine that Men were not Men in all Ages but in the blind times of Popery forsooth degenerated into Parrots and learn'd to prate set-Words without minding their Sense Or that Christians were not alwayes Christians and endeavour'd to imbue under-growing Posterity with the Meaning of the Tenets they profest and hop't to be Sav'd by their propagating them to those whom they were bound to see Instructed in Faith Or lastly can you conceive there can be any Means invented by Man's Wit to make known and propagate the Sense of Words that express Points of Faith which is not in the highest measure found in Tradition If you cannot as I am sure you cannot then you must withal either confess that Tradition brings down the Sense of Christ's Law and not the bare Words or Sounds only or you must advance this monstrous Paradox that there is no possible way in the whole World for Mankind to communicate their Thoughts and Meanings to one another in such Points the contrary to which you experience dayly in your self and others And were this so then to what end were Catechisms Sermons and Controversies about such subjects To what end all Instructions Conferences and Explications of them by the Pastours Again if you grant these as you must to be the best Expedients to transmit down the Sense of Christ's Words that is our Faith how can you hold Scripture's Letter the Rule of Faith which taken as counterdistinguish't to Tradition wants all those most effectual Means of discovering to us it's Meaning Certainly That must be the Rule of Faith that is best qualify'd to give us our Faith and that must be best qualify'd to give us our Faith which has the best Means to give us Christ's Sense and not that which wants all the best Means to produce such an Effect On the other side supposing Christ's Doctrine once settled in the Body of the Church how can you deny Tradition thus abundantly furnisht with the best Means imaginable to deliver down the first-taught Doctrine to be such a Rule seeing no more is requir'd to be a Rule of Faith but to be qualify'd with a Power to acquaint us who live at this
distance with the true Sense of what was deliver'd by the Founders of the Church in the beginning without danger of losing it by the way which cannot be imagin'd as long as Tradition is held to the same believ'd to day which was held yesterday or that the immediately succeeding Fathers still deliver'd the same Doctrin To do which there wanted no Power as has been lately shewn to the full nor Will to use that Power being oblig'd to it by the greatest Penalties GOD himself could inflict the Damning Themselves and their Posterity 4. But say you pag. 8. If the Church may explain the Sense and Meaning of Tradition so as to oblige men to believe that by Virtue of such Explication which they were not oblig'd to before then 't is impossible the Infallibility of Tradition should ly in a constant Tradition from Father to Son for they have no Power to oblige to any more than they received How Plausibly and smoothly this Discourse runs and how shrewdly it seems to conclude Would any well-meaning Reader imagin that it were perfect Non-sense all the while and wholly built on your own Liberality giving us another sort of Tradition which is no Tradition This malignant word Tradition must not be taken in its right sense that 's resolv'd for then it would grow too troublesom but take it in any other sense that is mistake it and then have at it For when you speak of explaining the sense and meaning of Tradition you do not take Tradition as you know well we do and as the word plainly imports for the Delivery of Doctrin but for Doctrins Delivered and so again we have once more lost the Question For what can these words mean If the Church may explain the sense and meaning of Tradition that is of the Method of conveying down Christs Doctrin The Method of Delivery is the very Signification of that Doctrin from Age to Age and how can one Explain the Sense and meaning of a signification of Christ's sense when it 's self is that very Explication of it This gives me occasion to reflect how oddly you have hamper'd our Tradition hitherto instead of handling it P. 9. You seem to doubt by your If no more were meant c. Whether it does not mean Tradition for the Books of Scripture and this you knew well enough before was none of our Tradition in dispute here which as may be seen by Mr. G's Demonstration put down by your self First Letter p. 4. and 5. is confest to be Tradition for matters of Faith or Doctrin Now in this new sense you give us there of Tradition you kindly grant it for 't is your own not that which we here mean by that word Next comes another If and makes it seem to signify Articles and Power And this is no Tradition at all neither ours nor yours nor any body's For neither those Articles nor that Power you speak of p. 10. are or can be the Delivery of Christ's Doctrin from day to day for that speaks such a Method of bringing down things not the things brought down And this you very gravely deny And so you may with my good leave either deny or expunge or condemn it to what doom you please for certainly it comes with a felonious Intention to draw the Reader out of his Road into a Labyrinth of Non-sense and then robb him of his Reason Again p. 7. you make it a Delivery of bare Words at best with a general impossible sense and perhaps a Heretical one too into the bargain whereas you cannot but know Tradition as We mean it is a Delivery of the sense of Christian Tenets and this a particular sense too and such a one as cannot possibly be Heretical while this Rule is adher'd to unless the First-Taught Faith were Heretical which is Blasphemy to imagin And here again p. 8. you make Tradition or Delivery to mean the Point delivered and would have us give you the signification and Explication of That which is it's self the signification and Explication of Christ's Faith and this too the very best that can be imagin'd Is it possible to deform Tradition more untowardly or wrest it into more misconstructions than has been done already After a serious manner certainly 't is impossible But Drollery is now to act its part And to cheer your spirits which droop't under the difficulty of answering the Argument for Tradition you put your self in masquerade and would make the Relation of perhaps two or three it may be partial Friends of yours concerning Mr. G's Discourse about You a perfect parallel to our Rule of Faith and that if they can mistake or misrepresent down goes Tradition Which amounts to this that sooner may all the Christian Fathers in any Age consisting of many millions and those disperst in far-distant Parts of the World be mistaken in their Faith which it imported them no less than their Salvation to know sooner may all of them conspire to deliver to their Children another Doctrin than that which they held the way to Heaven than that a very few of your own Party should to gratify you tell you a false Story or Aggravate tho' all of them were besides profest Adversaries to the Person against whom they witnest and indeed Witnesses in their Own Common Cause I beseech you Sir tho' you be never so much to seek for a solid Answer yet speak at least plausible things and do not thus expose your Credit while you affect to play the Wit. Poor Tradition what has it done to be thus misrepresented Did it deserve no better for bringing down the Book of Scripture but to be expos'd in so many aukward Vizards when it was to come upon the Stage and not once suffer'd to shew it's true face but still travestee'd into another Form and put in all shapes but its own This Carriage of yours is enough to make the Reader think you apprehend it to be some terrible Gorgons Head or some Basilisk and that the very sight of it unless it came thus muffled up would undo you At least he will suspect from such an untoward broken Scene that the Dramma is not like to be regular Indeed you shift too often and to catch and confute you I must travel thro' the whole Compass for no sooner can a man steer one way but your Discourse like the Wind whips straight into another quarter and about we must tack or we must not make forwards at all But I will insist no more at present on this dexterity of yours you will afford your Friends many fresh Instances of it through the whole course of this Letter hereafter Onely I must note your forgetfulness or what else may I call it For you took the Notion of Tradition very right First Letter p. 7. where you alledg'd you had a larger and firmer Tradition for Scripture than we had for us You did not there take Tradition of that Book for the Book delivered
intrinsick and full Meaning In which case the Preacher sticks not to assure his Auditory that what he has Preach't to them all the while is Gods Word and to press them to regard it as such as far as his small Authority over them can reach And had he more in case he did verily judge his Explication of that Text was genuin and consequently Christ's true Sense he would questionless esteem himself bound to make use of that Authority to his utmost to edify them with the Explicit Belief of each Particular contain'd in so Excellent a Truth This being so why should not the same Priviledge be granted to the Church and her Pastours to explicate upon due occasion the Sense of Christ's Faith in many particular Propositions involv'd in the main Tenet even tho' we should suppose them to be not heard of perhaps not distinctly thought of before which is allow'd to every private man and any ordinary Preacher And if those Governours of the Church be by their Office Conservers of Christs Law and see that these Propositions newly singled out are included in any Point of Faith receiv'd upon their Rule why ought they not out of their Duty and Zeal to preserve Christ's Faith Intire both define these Points and also use their Authority to oblige the Faithful to accept them as such or if they disaccept them and express themselves against them to exclude them from their Communion 7. But still say you these particular Points came not down by Tradition nor were deliver'd as held yesterday and so upwards till Christ's Time for they were not held at all before they were defin'd or declar'd I distinguish These Propositions were held ever and descended ever as they were involv'd in the Intire Point in the bowels of which the Sense of those others were found But as singled out in such and such particularizing manners of Expression they were perhaps not held ever I say not held ever formerly at least not universally Which is the true reason why some Private Writers nay possibly some Great Men might out of a dutiful fear not to add to Faith have doubted of them or disaccepted them perhaps oppos'd them till the Collective Church or some Great Body of them who are able to look more intelligently into those Points declar'd and unfolded the Sense of the main Article in which they were hitherto enwrapt For besides that it is their peculiar Office and as it were Trade to look deeper into the Sense of the several Points of Faith then others do 't is very Rational to conceive that those Tenets were found more particularly explicated in some parts of the Body of the Church than in others which makes it difficult to affirm any particular Point defin'd since Christ's time was not in many places of the Church held ever tho' it was not in All nor made as yet any great Noise being as yet neither oppos'd which alarum'd the Church to reflect heedfully upon it nor so powerfully recommended which oblig'd the Faithful more briskly and manifestly to own it What difficulty or disagreeableness to the connatural course of things there is in all this I cannot imagin Nor I am confident your self unless your thoughts startling at the unwelcom Conclusion should recoil back to your former mistake that only Words came down by Tradition or that Christ's Sense was never in the Breast of the Diffusive Church his Spouse and the Pillar and Ground of Truth and in the Understandings of her Pastours which takes all Faith out of the world and destroys the very Essence of a Church Or lastly that many particular or rather partial Propositions are not included in the Total Sense of every main Tenet and disclos'd by a full explication of it whence it comes to be discover'd to be a Part of It that is in part It. 8. I am sorry you will needs give me occasion to interrupt such Discourses as tend to the clearing some Truth to defend Tradition against your reproachful mistakes with which in defiance to all Sense I had almost said against your own Conscience too you have loaded it But these are some of your Extrinsecal Arguments which for want of better jealousy of your cause and reputation prevails with you still to make use of and so you will triumph mightily if they be past over unconfuted You attempt p. 8. to play your Politick Game and to conquer us by dividing us in our Rule of Faith tho' it cost your Credit very dear to effect it To this end running on in your former mistake of the plain word Tradition and that it means Points and Articles you tell us sadly that this denying to the Church of Rome Power to explain Tradition takes off from its Power Authority That it resolves all into meer Humane Faith meer Natural Reason That the utmost it can amount to is resolving Faith into a Logical Demonstration Then follows the Holy Cant. And is this the Faith Christians are to be sav'd by what Grace of God what Assistance of the Holy Spirit are necessary to such a Faith as this But for this I refer you to the Haeresis Blacloana You should have added where Dr. Tillotson and my self have the honour to be brought in for writing so Catholickly Truly Sir you have given us a very pretty Period in which many of your modish qualifications vy for the precedency and 't is hard to determin which has most Title to it Nay p. 13. you tell Mr. G. that our Grounds overthrow the Church's Authority in matters of Faith and proceed upon Pelagian Principles Your Charge Sir is very grievous and heavy and therefore unless the Evidence you bring to prove it be answerable you will manifest your self to proceed upon a new Christian in truth an old Unchristian Principle but which suits it seems with your humour and is requisite to your Cause Calumniare fortiter I need not tell you whose it was 9. To stop your mouth therefore once for all concerning Haeresis Blacloana know that that Book tho' Printed in a Catholick Country could not be licenc't but came out surreptitiously without any Printers name at it or any other then a fictitious name of the Author Know that it was sent to Rome and was compar'd there with the Doctrin of Tradition which it impugn'd And yet it was not found that this Doctrine either overthrew the Churches Authority in matters of Faith nor that there was any Pelagianism in it Otherwise those Books which were accus'd of it and defended Tradition to the height had not escap't their Censure This shews how shallow this Exception of yours is and to what mean shifts you are reduc't since you can quote a squabbling Book of one Roman-Catholick against another about Tradition in stead of answering the Argument for it An ill-natur'd man might you know very well name Authors of another Communion not too well thought and spoken of by Eminent Persons of their own side and written
had occasion to press still for satisfaction Again the Written Instrument or Means of putting this heaven-stampt coyn in our Souls is an Ignoble Instrument in comparison being in reality as to it 's Material part or taken as abstracted from the Sacred Sense which is signify'd by it nothing but Ink thus figur'd on Paper Whereas the material part of the other is the most Noble that can be found under Heaven it self viz. the Church which all Christians must acknowledge to be the Spouse of Christ the Pillar and Ground of Truth and consisting of the Living Temples of the Holy Ghost That for whose edification the Scripture was writ and so holds proportion with it as the Means does with the End which is in a manner Infinit Nay That for which all the Material World was created and the Oeconomy of it still carry'd on from the first beginning of Time to it's last Period Lastly That for whose sake God himself was made Man and dy'd a most cruel Death on a Cross. So that 't is unconceivable that it can enter into the thoughts of any intelligent man who believes this to be the due Character of the Church there should be any competition betwixt the Letter of Scripture and it or that it can possibly be doubted to which of them all things consider'd we ought to attribute most in looking after Faith. But to return to your similitude The sum of it is this That the Gold and Silver you speak of being the Doctrin of Faith not the Scripture but the Heads and Hearts of the Faithful that is of the Church does really and indeed contain it and consequently this onely can with any propriety be compar'd to a Purse That both Tradition and Scripture are to be liken'd to the several Ways of putting the Heavenly Treasure of Faith into this Purse or Faith into the Souls of the Faithful Lastly that taking them as containing them as signes do the things signify'd it is not their containing this Treasure does us any good but the delivering it out to us no more than a man is better for having a Trunk full of Money so circumstanc't that he could never come at it and that between these two ways of coming at this Treasure or their delivering it out to us there is no comparison whether we regard the Intelligibleness or Providential Establishment of those respective Instruments in order to such an End. So that your similitude how prettily soever it look't at first hath one misfortune very common to such fine useless toys that is to be good for nothing for it neither comes up to the Question nor sutes with your own Tenet 24. But ere we part from this Point it were not amiss to examin a little that cautious expression of yours all things necessary for salvation into which you change that bold assertion that you are absolutely certain you now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles I ask you then what do you mean by those words necessary for Salvation which mince the matter so warily Do you think Christ taught any unnecessary Points or did a needless action Sure you will not say it And yet my self will grant too and agree with you that fewer Means than the Knowledge of all Christ taught may suffice for the Salvation of some particular persons What follows then but that since they are all necessary for some body and yet not all necessary for every particular person more of them are necessary for one man than for another and all of them necessary for the body of the Church whose Pastours are to instruct their Children in them and apply the Efficacy of them to their Souls as their capacities admit and exigencies require For tho' some few may be saved without the knowledge of such such Points slender Motives being enough for their circumstances yet multitudes of others may require incomparably more effectual Means to buoy them up from the World and raise them to heaven and so they would certainly miscarry for want of them Particularly the points now mention'd are of such a high and general Influence that without these the Devotion of a very great portion of the Church would be enfeebled many of the Souls that want them be lost eternally and others be but dim Stars in the Glorious Firmament of Heaven in comparison of what they might have been had their Minds been cultivated with such elevating considerations And can the Church which God has entrusted with those Souls think that 't is agreeable to his Will his Flock should either dy or fall short of the full growth they might have had in the plentiful Pastorage he had provided for them It rests then for you either to shew those Points not necessary for the Generality and that your Grounds are sufficient to give men both as able and as willing for ought appears to understand Scripture right as your self is Absolute Certainty of Them which is to confute Experience and dispute against your own Knowledge or else to confess ingenuously you have no Absolute Certainty of even the highest Fundamentals and most necessary Points for the Salvation of Mankind 25. Thus much to shew that your Rule gives you no Absolute Certainty of all such matters as are necessary for your Salvation with reference to the Points of Faith to certify which Experience assures us it does not reach Now should we speak of the Assent of Faith the Short Discourse p. 30 31. of my former Letter demonstrates clearly you can have no Absolute Certainty of any one and so cannot with reason affirm your Faith is True since wanting Absolute Certainty that Christ taught it it may be False The same point has been prest upon you in Faith vindicated Reason against Raillery Errour non-plust and diverse other Books yet tho' it was the most important objection that is or can be imagin'd as plucking up by the roots all your Faith and destroying it from it's very Foundation no return could ever yet be obtain'd nor candid Reason produc't but onely a put-off with sufficient Certainty and such dow-bak't words without being able or even endeavouring to shew that Grounds less than Absolutely Certain can possibly be thus sufficient for the Nature the Ends and Vses of Faith. But 't is high time to return to our Disputants 26. Against this pretended Answer of yours you introduce Mr. M. suggesting several things First As to difference of Translations To which you reply Doth Mr. M. think our Faith is to be resolv'd into the Original Texts What he thinks you know better than you would seem to do He cannot but think if he may believe you that you resolve your Faith into the Letter of Scripture He cannot but think that by these words you mean the Right Letter for otherwise it would not be Scripture Nor can he think or you either it can be the Right Letter unless it have a Right Translation and this from a True
Copy nor that any Copy can be True unless conformable to the True Original And if there can be any failure in any of these nay if you have not Absolute Certainty of all these you cannot have by your Grounds any Absolute Certainty of your Faith For if the Letter be wrong all is wrong that is built on it and it may be wrong for ought you know notwithstanding the Testimony of all Christian Churches relying on this Way of attesting the Truth of the Letter For you can never shew that all those Churches consented to apply their utmost diligence to examine and attest all the several Translations made in their respective languages or witnest that they came from the true Original or took the most exquisit care that was possible to see that the Translaters and the Copiers did their duty Which had they held the Letter to be their onely Rule of Faith and consequently that All Faith that is the very Being of the present and future Church and their own Salvation too depended on the Scripture they were obliged in conscience and under the highest Sin above all things in the World to have done and this with the exactest care imaginable Your Grounds then notwithstanding all you have said or alledged hitherto to ensure the Letter make no Provision for the Absolute Certainty of the Written-Rule nor consequently of your Faith. 27. But what becomes then say you of the Vulgar Latin Translation I answer in our Grounds no harm at all For the Canon of the Books comes down by the Testimony of all Christian Churches that are truly Christian and the Doctrin of Christ transfus'd into the hearts of the succeeding Faithful ever since the beginning both taught them how and oblig'd them to correct the Copy in those particular Texts that concern'd Faith if any Errour through the carelesness unattentiveness or malice of the Translaters or Transcribers at any time had crept in By the same Means as you can now adays correct the Copy in those Texts that ought to express some Point of Morality in case it were corrupted and deviated from Christian Manners viz. by vertue of the Sense of that Practical Tenet you were imbu'd with formerly this even tho' you had no other Copy or Text to amend it by Insomuch that how good an opinion so ever you had of the Copy Translater Printer or Correcter of the Press yet for all that you would conclude they had err'd and the Letter was faulty rather than forgo the Doctrin so firmly rivetted in your heart by the constant Teaching and Practice of the Christian world As for other particular Texts of an Inferiour Concern they could be best corrected by multitudes of other ancient Copies the Churches Care still going along in which too the greatest care that was possible to rectify it's Errours was taken by the Council of Trent that so it might be as exact as Human Diligence could well render it A thing as far as my memory reaches never order'd or very much regarded by any Council formerly 28. But I foresee your method of confuting which is to muster up Extrinsecall objections not at all to the purpose will naturally lead you to discredit this way of correcting Scripture's Letter in passages belonging to Faith as singular or New This being the same your Friend G. B. objected to the Way of Tradition it self as may be seen above Sect. 10. Such piddling Exceptions drest up prettily in gay language go a great way and make a fine shew in your Controversies and which is a benefit of most advantage to you excuse you from bringing any Intrinsecal Arguments tho' these onely are such as conclude any thing and tho' you are bound by your precise Duty to produce such Wherefore to ward this blow I shall alledge the Judgment of that Learned and Excellent Personage Sir Thomas More our first Modern English Controvertist who writing not against you in defence of our Grounds but to another Catholick Divine expresses candidly his Sentiment in these words Ego certe hoc persuadeo mihi idque ut opinor vere quicquid ad fidem astruendam faciat non esse a quovis melius versum quam ab ipsis Apostolis perscriptum Ideoque fit ut quoties in Latinis codicibus occurrat quidquam quod aut contra Fidem aut mores facere videatur Scripturarum interpretes aut ex aliis alibi verbis quid illud sibi velit dubium expiscentur aut ad vivum Evangelium Fidei quod per universam Ecclesiam in corda Fidelium infusum est quod etiam priusquam scriberetur a quoquam Apostolis a Christo ab Apostolis Vniverso Mundo praedicatum est dubios ejusmodi sermones applicent atque ad inflexibilem veritatis Regulam examinent ad quam si non satis adaptare queant aut sese non intelligere aut mendosum esse codicem non dubitent This is my Iudgment and as I conceive a True one that whatever Text is useful to build Faith on was not better translated by any than it was writ by the Apostles themselves And therefore as oft as any thing occurs in the Latin-Books that seems to make against Faith or Good Manners the Interpreters of Scripture either gather from other Words in other places what that doubt should mean or they compare those doubtful sayings to the living Gospel of Faith which was infus'd into the Hearts of the Faithful throughout the Vniversal Church which before any man writ it was Preach't by Christ to the Apostles and by the Apostles to the whole World examine them by the inflexible Rule of Faith with which if they cannot make it square they conclude that either they do not understand it or the Book is faulty where he passes by the former way with a sleight word expiscentur fish out the sense but insists on the latter way of preserving the Copy sincere as Certain and Proper 29. I must not pretermit your Objection p. 19. that the Ancient Christian Church never knew any thing concerning this Method of resolving Faith into meer Oral Tradition I would desire you to add Practical to Oral at least to conceive it to be understood all the way that being our True and constantly-avow'd Tenet But did the Antient Church in reality never know any thing of this way T is wonderful you should not understand they meant the same as we do unless they speak the self-same Words and make the same Discourses we do now Did not they all hold that who taught any thing contrary to the Doctrin delivered down by the Church was a Heretick Did any of them say that the Churche's Tradition of a Doctrin as Christs was liable to Errour Did any of them hold that it was lawful for your Sober Enquirer to rely on his Private Interpretation of the Scripture and relinquish the sense of the Church which is the true Point Not one 'T is one thing to say they oft quoted Scripture
acknowledg'd it was rather a very commendable cautiousness in the Latin Greek Church too not to admit into such a sacred Roll Books that were not yet clearly prov'd to be authentickly such than a blameable Lapse or so hainous a Crime that for committing it she must needs lose all her Title to Christ's promis'd Assistance 31. This gives me occasion to ask you what becomes of Your Rule and consequently of Your Faith all that while If the Letter of the Canonical Books that is of the whole Canon of the New Testament be your Rule and those Books were part of this Canon they must necessarily be part of your Rule too whence it follows that your Rule was not Intire but deficient for some hundreds of years till the whole Canon was Collected and Acknowledg'd I see you do but complement with the Primitive Church of the first 300 years and that you onely cry it up to avoid the unkindness which the succeeding Ages shew to your Cause for by your Doctrine you cannot but hold that the Ages which follow'd it are to be prefer'd Since These had your intire Rule the Others wanted some parts of it and sometimes held but three parts of it half of it or less and so by your Principles were but three quarters or half Christians according as the several pieces came by degrees to be acknowledg'd and universally accepted I doubt Mr. M's Discourse about the Number of Books more perplexes you than your are willing to make shew of For pray how many of these Books go to make up your Rule of Faith If any one or some few then you should not have stood upon the Canon we have now that is all the Apostolical Books or Scripture in general If all the Canonical Writings be your Rule then perhaps the Primitive Christians had but half their Faith or less it may be none at all because wanting yet those other Books they wanted necessary places to compare those Texts with they already had which is a great part of your Method to find out your Faith in Scripture Pray satisfy us about this exact Number of Books and how many will just serve the turn and make something cohere for I cannot for my heart as yet find any thing that does You talk to us of a Purse and say it must be full but when we come to look at it more narrowly it appears to have been for some time but half a Purse and wanted one side of it at least had a great Hole in it so that you put us into an apprehension that many of the Gold and Silver Points might have dropt out of it in the time of the Primitive Church by which Church notwithstanding and no other in our disputes about Faith you seem heartily willing to be judg'd But let us examin a little the Consent of all your Christian Churches for Scripture you make such brags of In the first place marches and leads the Van your Christian Church of the Noble Arch-Heretick Marciou who blotted out of the Canon the Epistle to the Hebrews that to Titus and both those to Timothy who admitted onely St. Luke's Gospel to be Divine and rejected all the Epistles of St. Paul as an Apostate from the Law. In the next rank go abreast those three Famous Christian Churches of Ebion Valentinus and Cerinthus Of which the First admitted onely St. Matthews Gospel the second onely St. Iohn's and the third onely St. Mark 's After them come others mentioned by St. Hierom and Epiphanius who in a manner brought all into doubt especially if Faith depended in those days on the comparing of places for they held that diverse things both in the Old Testament and the New were not inspir'd by GOD but writ by a Human spirit I need not acquaint you that Luther Brentius Chemnitius did revive the old Doubts about the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse of later dayes Nor need it be recounted how many Orthodox Christian Churches did not accept diverse Books formerly And tho' afterwards as you say well they came by degrees to fix on the Certain Canon of the New Testament yet I am apt to judge that this was not perform'd by Immediate Testimony For the Witnesses were long ago dead and their Grand-Fathers too who could attest that such a Book was indeed to their knowledge written by such an Apostle or Evangelist It descended then by Oral Tradition in those respective Churches Whence as that Tradition was not so Practical so it was restrain'd to some few in each Church and was withal very narrow at first in comparison of our Tradition for Christ's Doctrin which was in a manner universally and publickly preach't and practis'd Now the strength of a Tradition and the largeness of it are to be taken from the largeness of the first Attestation and all that after-Ages can do when they attest such things is to witness that they received it from some others but so that the Tradition was still narrower as it came nearer the fountain which very much weakens it By what other Lights the Church guided her self in her accepting such and such Books for Canonical Scripture belongs to another place Your Tradition then was not Universal for Scripture in the first 300 years and its Original Attestation was weak in comparison of that which was for Doctrin 32. I have little to say to your Explicit or Implicit Points contain'd in Scripture For I see they are both equally to no purpose while but contain'd there till you bring us a Rule to interpret the Letter with Absolute Certainty If any ought to be explicitely there none can have so good a Title to it as those high and most Fundamental Articles spoken of so often yet we see there are no places producible for them but may have other senses given them and bear as experience shews us not yet ended and for ought we know endless Disputes among your sober Enquirers attending to your Rule Onely I a little wonder you should say 't is sufficient for your purpose that all Doctrin of Faith necessary to Salvation are contain'd in the Letter of Scripture either explicitly or implicitly If they be necessary to Salvation they must be necessary to be believ'd or known to be there for they must save men by believing them and acting according to that Belief or no way and if they be onely implicitly there they are as yet unknown or not believ'd So that according to you that is a Point necessary to Salvation which does not at all conduce to it But I wonder more at the happiness of your Sober Enquirer to whom you affirm and stand to it stoutly those Implicit Points will become Explicit without the help of the Church and yet you call it assuming in the Church of Rome to do the same or declare the Sense of such Articles Certainly this Sober Enquirer is your special Darling and Favourit He
tho' a private person can discover those Explicit Points and I suppose may declare them too to as many as he pleases for how can he in Charity do less But alas The silly insignificant Church can do nothing at all she must submit to the wondrous Gifts you have bestow'd upon the Rabble and her Governors and Pastors be accounted Tyrants if they shall dare to encroach upon their high Prerogatives or presume to share in their Priviledges of being able to unfold or know the Explicit Meaning of Scripture-Texts For in case they can know this and this Knowledge be good for the Faithful as it is being as you say necessary to Salvation 't is without question they may declare them or make them known to others nay and use their Authority too if you will vouchsafe to allow them any to edify the Faithful by making this Knowledge sink into them Nor can it prejudice their Reason that the Church obliges them to believe them for this is no more than obliging them to act according to Reason which tells them that since they must either trust themselves or their Pastours in such things and the Pastours must be incomparably better qualify'd than themselves are for the discovering of such mysterious Truths and withall appointed by God to teach them 't is far more Rational to submit to their Judgments in such things than to use their own But indeed you have reason to stand up for your Sober Enquirer for all Ring-leaders of any Heresy or Faction against the Church took this very Method in their proceedings The Spirit of Pride which possest them principled them with these Rational and Peaceable Maxims that they had Authority to judge their Judges teach their Teachers direct their Guides and that their own Wit excell'd that of all the World before them But when a Faction was form'd into a good lusty Body the Scripture-Rule was laid aside again so that 't is doubtful whether we have had ever a Sober Enquirer since as was shewn in my First Letter Sect. 25. 33. You desire to see this Power of the Church in Scripture in Express Terms and we tell you we need not let you see it in Scripture at all for Tradition even Common Sense tells us that the Church has Power to feed and instruct her Flock and enlighten them in what she knows and they are ignorant of If you demand how the Roman Church came by this knowledge of making Implicit Points Explicit I answer by Tradition giving her the Sense of Christ's whole Law and each Intire point of it and by the Light of Nature purify'd by supernatural knowledges antecedently as also by her Application when occasion required to reflect upon and penetrate deeply into that Sense which enables her to explicate her own thoughts or the Points of Faith more clearly now which she had indeed before but did not so distinctly look into them or set her self to explain them But pray what express Scripture has your Sober Enquirer for his Power to make the Implicit Points Explicit You reckon up diverse agreeablenesses p. 21. why this should be but not one word of express Scripture do you pretend to for it And if himself pretend to any such Power besides that it will look a little odd that God should take more care of private men than of his Church let him either shew us he has better means Natural or Supernatural to do this than the Church has or he discovers his Pride and Folly both to pretend to it You say p. 21. that the Church of Rome has no where declar'd in Council it has any such Power viz. to declare explicitly Points imply'd in Scripture But First you may please to know It has made such a declaration Sect. 4. where it defines that it belongs to the Church judicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum to judge of the true sense and Interpretation of Scripture Next It accordingly proceeds upon this Power as I shall manifest by three several Instances One Sess. 13. cap. 4. where it explains those Texts Luc. 22. Io. 6. and 2 Cor. 11. to be meant of being truly Christ's Body and declares thence that the Church was ever perswaded of the Doctrin of Transubstantiation Another Sess. 14. cap. 7. Where it declares the Text 1 Cor. 1. Let a man examin himself c. to be understood by the Custome or Practice of the Church of Sacramental Confession necessary to be us'd before receiving the Sacrament by all those who are conscious to themselves of mortal sin The Third Sess. 14. cap. 1. where it interprets that Text of S. Iames cap. 5. to be by Apostolical Tradition understood of the Sacrament of Extreme Vnction Which places you do not judge so much as implicitly to contain that Sense but hold that they contain another thing How the Churches declaring explicitly Points descending by Tradition makes no new Articles of Faith is discours't above Sect. 4 5 6 7. By which you may see that Mr. G. and Mr. M. whom pag. 22. you will needs set at variance are notwithstanding very good Friends For if the Church knew the the sense which is contain'd in that place before the Doctrin is Old tho' the declaring it to be signifi'd by that particular Text be perhaps New. I say perhaps for in some signal passages much in use in the Churches Preaching Catechisms and Practise I doubt not but that not only the particular Doctrin but also that 't is signifi'd by such a Text comes down by Tradition in the Ecclesia docens Notwithstanding the agreeableness of these two Positions you triumph mightily here p. 23. that Thus Mr. M. has answer'd Mr. G 's Demonstration As much as to say I know not for my life what to say to it my self and therefore would gladly shift it off upon any Body so I could handsomely rid my Hands of it Thus you make for you can make any thing by your Method of mistaking every thing the Council of Trent clash with the Church of Rome a hard Task one would think by pretending to interpret Scripture according to the unanimous sense of the Fathers which you judge contradicts the making known and obliging Men to believe that explicitly now which they were not oblig'd to by any precedent Sense or Explication What mean the words Men and They If they signify all men and intend to signify that no man knew those imply'd Points before but all might hap to contradict them you mistake our Tenet for we judge it absolutely impossible that none of the Fathers should reflect more attentively on the full sense of the Points deliver'd or look into their own thoughts as Faithful and therefore it was much more impossible they should unanimously contradict those Points And unless they did so the Council of Trent and the Church of Rome may by the Grace of God very well correspond in their Doctrin for all your mistake For the Intention of the Fathers in
because Part of Christ's Doctrin is contain'd in it the other part descending by Tradition which acceptation of the Word Rule is yet less Proper because as has been prov'd it may be contain'd there and yet we be never the neerer knowing our Faith meerly by virtue of Scripture's containing it But no Catholick ever said that every sober Enquirer may find out all necessary Points of Faith in Scripture without the Churches Help A Doctrin which You declare p. 21. You are far from being asham'd of And yet let me tell You Sir You will never find this Position of yours as it lies without the Churches Help in the Universal Tradition of all Christian Churches and unless You find this You will never prove they held it a Rule in the genuin and proper signification in which we take that Word and tho' they shou'd call it a Rule in either of the former Senses lately mention'd they impugn not us at all who grant the same 41. You will needs run out of the way p. 30. to talk of a Iudge of Controversies but the best is You acknowledge you do go thus astray by acknowledging 't is another distinct Controversy and yet tho' you acknowledge this You still run on with it that is You still wander from the Point You triumph mightily p. 31. that it is impossible for us to bring such an unanimous Consent of all Christian Churches for our Infallible Iudge or our Infallibility as Protestants bring for their Rule As for the later where were your thoughts Sir while you thus bad adieu to the plainest Rules of Discourse Cannot we go about to demonstrate the Infallibility of a Human Testimony by Natural Mediums but instead of Answering it you must object against our Conclusion and bid us bring the Consent of all Churches to abett that which neither depends nor is pretended to depend on Authority but on meer Reason Cannot one say two and three make five but he must be presently bobb'd in the mouth that he cannot shew the Consent of all Christian Churches for it and that unless he does this let it be never so evident 't is not True T is very pleasant to reflect how brisk you are still with this Consent of all Churches I suppose because 't is a Topick very seldom heard of in your Controversies tho' as has been shewn over and over 't is not a jot to your purpose nor avails any thing to the evincing you have an Absolutely-Certain Ground of your Faith. And if we have an Infallible Rule or such a Rule as permits not those to be deceiv'd that follow it can there be any thing more Rational than to hold by consequence that there is an Infallible Iudge or that our Church can judge unerringly in matters belonging to Faith the word Iudge onely signifying that that Person or Persons are in Authority or are Authoritative Deciders to preserve the Integrity of Faith and the Peace of the Church So that supposing Church-Governours or Bishops and that those Sacred Concerns are to be provided for plain Reason demonstrates to us this too as well as the other without needing the Consent of all Christian Churches tho' you need not to be told this does not want neither unless you think that all the General Councils that defin'd against Hereticks imagin'd they might perhaps be in an Errour all the while and the Heretick whom they condemn'd in the right Your Appeal to all the Churches of the Christian World for your Rule has a plausible appearance but vanishes into air when one comes to grasp it How often must it be repeated that you have as yet produc't no Rule at all for your Faith For you have neither prov'd that Scripture's Letter as to every substantial word that concerns Faith is absolutely-Certain nor that it has in it the nature of a Rule nor that 't is your Rule more than 't is to all the Hereticks in the world nor that your Assent to any Point upon that Rule as made use of by you for want of Connexion between the Points to be believ'd and the Rule on which they are believ'd can have the nature of true Faith in it If talking big would do the deed you would indeed do wonders but let your Reasons be proportionable otherwise strong words and faint blows are but very ill-matcht Now I must declare plainly I cannot see the least semblance of so much as one solid Proof in this whole Treatise of yours If there be confute me by shewing it and maintaining it to be such You explain you own Tenet over and over till one is weary of readding it and half asham'd so often to answer it You talk much of God's Word that we are bound to believe it that it contains God's Will and all things necessary to Salvation and twenty such fine things which bear a Godly Sound and would do well in a Sermon where all goes down glib there being none to contradict you but are very dull and flat in Controversy On the contrary not one Argument have you even offer'd at to prove you have Absolute Certainty of the Rule or Ground of your Faith but have faln short in every one of those Considerations both as to the Notions of Certainty Ground Rule Faith and that 't is your Ground your Rule and your Faith. 42. A Rule to any thing if we take that word in a proper sense as we do in our modern Controversies is the Immediate Light to direct us in order to our knowing that thing For in case it be not Immediate but some other thing intervenes that is needful to direct us and by whose Rectitude we frame our thoughts as to that affair and that it renders the other capable to direct us that other becomes presently the Thing Ruled and not the Rule in regard it wanted the Rectitude of another thing to direct it that so it might be fit to direct us Wherefore the Interpretation of Scripture being more Immediate to the knowing the Sense of it's Words that is to the knowing our Faith than is the Letter for it is manifest that all who have the Letter have not right Faith unless they make a right Interpretation of it hence Mr. M. had reason to object that The Christian Church did not agree that every man is to interpret Scripture for himself or to build his Faith upon his own private Interpretation of it Nor ought you to be offended at his position in regard you told us before p. 7. 8. a Heretical Sense may ly under these General Words Christ is the Son of God and different Senses may be couch't under these Christ is really in the Eucharist and so even according to your self 't is the Interpretation or the assigning the Sense to those words which makes True Faith or Heresy Wherefore 't is plain that your own Interpretation of Scripture is in true speech your Rule for That is a more Immediate Direction to give you the Sense of
immediately sink deep into the Conceptions of the Generality But it was otherwise when in tract of time that Doctrin was farther spread more often inculcated and more clearly explain'd and well-instructed Pastours constituted to Teach it more expressly and put them forwards to practise it He mistake◠then and misrepresents the whole nature of Our Tradition and by antedating it sights against it before it could have a Being And as this Errour runs through all his Discourses and weak Inferences out of Scripture so the laying it open once for all is a full confutation of them all at once Add that he never consider'd whether when those several Churches Err'd or were in hazard to Err they did so by following even that particular Tradition or Preaching of such or such an Apostle or whether they came to err by deserting it If the Later the Tradition was not faulty but They who Deserted it Yet how different soever these two Points are the one making for that particular Tradition the other against it he never thinks of distinguishing them or letting the Reader know when the Tradition was in fault and when the Persons but runs on in common words as if he had no Design or determinate prospect whither he was going I am sure it is not at all towards the true Question nor against Us. § 10. But tho' all his Reflexions from the several pieces of Scripture are quite besides the purpose yet his Candid and Solid way of managing his own Mistakes and how he wire-draws every thing to make it seem fit deserves our particular observation He tells us speaking of the Church of Corinth that They which signifies the whole Church had like to have lost All their Faith whereas the Text only sayes Some among you And is it such a wonder that some among many should hap to be imperfectly instructed fantastical or refractory to their Teachers But his Partiality is most remarkable When he was forc't to be beholding to the Churches Testimony of Doctrine which is our Tradition to abet the Scripture he could tell us then This is very different from the Case of particular Persons in some Churches who might mistake or forget what was taught but sayes he the Churches themselves could not agree to approve on Errour in the Gospel contrary to the Faith deliver'd to them So that there it was a very different Case but here it seems the Case is not different at all but the very same For Some among You are enlarg'd to signify that Church it self and whereas the only Point those Some deny'd was The Resurrection of the Dead to let you see how utterly insignificant a thing Tradition is that can do no good at all he extends it to signify All their Faith hoping I suppose any thing would pass upon you so 't were spoke out of a Pulpit 'T is told you there All 's Gods Word and he presumes you will be so Civil to God Almighty and so Kind to himself as to accept it for Such and swallow it for Pure Truth § 11. I am oblig'd to him for allowing That the Testimony of every Christian Church did shew the Concurrence of all the Apostles as to the Doctrine contain'd in the several Gospels For then I hope they may be able to shew to the next Age and so forwards the concurrent Doctrine of the First which establishes the Original of our Tradition to be Absolutely Certain He discourses well p. 11. and he ends better That the Memory of the Apostles Doctrin was so fresh in their Minds that it was in effect the Consent of all the Apostles who had taught them And yet better That the concurrent Testimony of all the Apostolical Churches could not let them agree to approve an Errour in the Gospels contrary to the Faith deliver'd to them This is very extraordinary kind and no less solid For 1. these Words could not agree to approve a contrary Doctrine makes their Testimony Infallible 2. This discourse makes the acceptation of the Truth of the Gospels that is of their Sense depend on Vnwritten Tradition 3. We cannot doubt but that Doctrine was Full as fresh in their Memories when they were grown Older and were to transmit it to the next Age after the Apostles decease as it was before unless they lost the Memory of it by discoursing of it more while they taught it to others by Practising it longer themselves 4. As little can it be doubted but the Doctrine and Practise of the First Age was as Fresh in the minds of the Second Age since they Led their Christian Lives by it for it was Equally Intelligible and of Equal Concern still to them to Learn and Teach it as it was to the First Lastly That this being so the Testimony of that Body even now adays that adheres to Tradition is in effect the Consent of all the Apostles that taught it at First Observe Gentlemen that this is the only time Dr. St. has so much as touch 't upon Our Tradition and that he is so far from impugning or confuting it that he in some part directly in others by necessary Consequence acknowledges it's force and strongly abets it But it was not out of good will he was intent in that place upon making good the Truth of the Gospels and assoon as he has made use of it to serve a present turn he immediately discards it as good for little or nothing or nothing to the particular purpose he had lately allow'd the Testifying Christs Doctrine § 12. For the very next page he reckons up three things for which The common Tradition of the Apostolical Churches were useful after the Decease of the Apostles But not a word of their Vsefulness to Testify to others what they had learnt from those Masters of Christianity No sooner were the Apostles dead and that first Age had by their concurrent Testimony of the Doctrine they had receiv'd from them given credit to the Truth of the Written Gospels but immediately the whole Christian World had lost their Memory of that Doctrine on a sudden and the Grace to preserve and propagate it One would think by this wild Discourse of his that both Common Natural parts and all degrees of Ordinary Honesty had been preserv'd to them miraculously thitherto meerly to recommend the Truth of the Gospels and that assoon as that was done and the Apostles were dead the Author of Nature and Grace suspended or rather subtracted for ever all his Influence left them a Tabula rasa without either Memory or Goodness to learn their Faith a new out of Scripture § 13. And hence it is that he rallies upon Universal Testimony or Tradition as if it were some sleight story of a few Tatling Gossips or of those who heard what some say that others told them who had it from such c. Whereas had he said as he ought to have said What the whole First Age of Christians witnest
She is to Edify Her Children and in contests with Hereticks as to all those Points contain'd there and I think the only difficulty in that particular is By what means She came to be Absolutely-Certain of it's Sense Let him add then but one word more and say that by the Letter of Scripture She so judg'd of Faith that She could not be in an Errour or mistaken all the while and then Christian Faith is Absolutely-Certain and my greatest care is over And if he does not That what is the future Church after the Apostles Deaths the better for Scripture's being an Infallible Rule if She and Her Children partake not the Benefit of that Infallibility some way or other by being perfectly secur'd from Erring in Faith Is it not all one as to the intent of knowing assuredly we have the Faith taught by Christ whether we have an Infallible Rule or no if when we have done our best we may still stray from Her Faith Or why is not a Rule that is not Absolutely-Certain so I have Absolute Certainty I am directed by it as good for that purpose as an Absolutely-Certain Rule with no Absolute Certainty that I do indeed go according to it To speak to his proposition Whether the Church and the Faithful in Contests with Hereticks avail'd Her self of Scripture's Letter to gain Absolute-Certainty of it's Sense in those main Tenets or brought the Sense which She had another way along with her shall be decided if he pleases by St. Austin whom he cites here p. 16. § 18. He will prove Scripture a Rule from the general Reason of it's Writing and prove this general Reason from a Testimony of Irenaeus which speaks of the Gospel as abstracted from being Preach't and Written and who doubts but as such it is infallibly true He seems to build much upon the Words That it might be a Foundation and Pillar of our Faith. Be it what it will in it self the Point is How does it Build Faith in us By it 's meer Letter descanted upon by private Iudgments or interpreted by the Church The Later he denies the Former all our most earnest Pressing and Intreating could never bring him nor his Reflecter to go about to make out and he wayes it totally through this whole Sermon Let him then but shew that he has Absolute-Certainty of Scripture's Sense in those Tenets of Christian-Faith by any Method his Principles will allow him and his Sermon should have past for me without Controul That 's the main Point whereas all here is quite besides it As for those Words from S. Irenaeus he could have quoted the very same words in a manner from a better Author even the Holy Scripture calling the Church the Pillar and Ground of Truth but that he lik't not the Application of them to the Church It seems he can neglect his Rule and make no more reckoning of it than he did of the Oral Tradition or Preaching of the Apostles when it stands in his way of comes cross to his purpose § 19. It has been manifested above that his Discourses from the writing of the Gospels and Epistles are all guilty of the same Fault and Antedate our Tradition and his Inferences thence as levell'd against our Tenet are weaker than Water He makes Tradition any thing what he pleases and will have it do every thing tho' it was never intended for it nor ever pretended by us it was able to do it One while it must bring down the Decrees of Councils Another while it must convey long Disputes about divers Points and the resolution of them and this Totidem Verbis otherwise the Apostles Sense might have been lost It must secure people from being remov'd from Christ's Gospel to another whereas no man ever held that the Galatians were remov'd from Christ's Gospel by following even the particular Tradition or Preaching of that Apostle nor that any particular Men nay Churches might not be remov'd from it even into Heathenism or Iudaism if they deserted it He expects too it should secure men from danger of being Deceiv'd whereas supposing them once well-Instructed in Faith and 't is suppos'd to our Tradition the Church was so 't is self-evident they can never be deceiv'd while they hold to that Certain Rule because that is to hold the same they were instructed in at first But if all were not well instructed at first as 't is impossible they should then they might be deceiv'd either by deserting Tradition or even by holding to such a Tradition if for want of perfect Instruction in that raw and unsettled state of Christianity that which they held at first was not perfectly Christ's Doctrine Nay he would have it keep even Hereticks from Defection Hypocrisie Lying and Deceiving which were a rare Tradition indeed to do such Kindnesses and work such good Effects upon those who had deserted it and would not make use of it at least he would have it keep People from Weakness and Folly which the Common Assistances of Nature and Grace will do after the Generality is well settled in that Doctrine For when all the Question is What the Apostles preach't 't is a Madness and Folly both to believe some few men before the Universal Testimony of the Christian Church But he will have Tradition still do all the Mischiefs imaginable and Writing do all the Good forgetting I suppose that there are some things in St. Paul's Writings which the Vnlearned and Vnstable wrest as they do also the other Scriptures to their own destruction All this while What is this to the Tradition we assert which begun afterwards § 20. From these impertinent Premises he infers as impertinent a Conclusion viz. That what was deliver'd in Scripture contains a compleat Rule of the true and genuin Faith as it was at first deliver'd to the Church Now that what 's signify'd by Scripture is the same the Apostles signify'd by their Preaching is plain Sense and never deny'd and so he needed not have made all this clutter to prove it But plain sense will do him no service whose best play 't is to blunder and confound every thing let us see then what it is that will. His first words What they have therein delivered can mean nothing but the Sense of Scripture for that is the thing signify'd or deliver'd by the Letter and both sides confess that the Sense of Scripture is Christ's Faith. If then we spell his Words together they plainly amount to this That Christ's Faith contains a compleat Rule of the true and genuin Faith as it was deliver'd at first to the Church that is Faith it self contains a compleat Rule to it's self Make sence of this who can The best I can make of it is That the Conclusion keeps decorum with the Premises and that he has mighty well imploy'd his Labour to keep such a huge Pother to infer such a worthy Point § 21. I have nothing
to do with his Objecting some of our Writers but shall come to his Second Reason drawn from the notorious Vncertainty of meer Tradition and that never was any trial made of it but it fail'd even when it had the greatest Advantages Expect Gentlemen by those high and mighty Words he will bring most Convincing Arguments to prove that the Universal Testimony of the Church in delivering down those high Points of Faith is notoriously Vncertain and fail'd in every Age nay the very First for then it had the Greatest Advantages the Christians having then fresh Memories and being then Infallible since they could not agree to approve false Doctrin as himself told us p. 11 12. For my part I am of his mind and never knew any other Tradition have Advantages comparable to what Christian Tradition had for transmitting the Doctrine of Faith and if he lets you know what those Advantages of Christian Tradition were and shews them unable to oblige the Church to convey Christ's Doctrin down he will gain his Point But if he prevaricates from this necessary Duty he abuses you with fine Luke-warm Words to no purpose I do assure you before hand tho' he talks here of Advantages he has not in his whole Sermon mention'd much less ingenuously inform'd you of any one Advantage Christian Tradition has but industriously conceal'd every particular that gives it force Yet who sees not that without doing this 't is impossible to impugn it or deal fairly with his Auditory for how should you judge of the Comparison without a clear sight of the things Compar'd § 22. He did very prudently not to insist on the falling of Tradition in the Law of Nature For 1. He must have shewn It fail'd them and not They fail'd It by deserting it which could only be done by proving that had they continu'd to follow it they could have stray'd into Polytheism which he can never do it being evidently Impossible 2. That to make good the Parallel he must have prov'd it had as Ample an Original which gives a vast force to Testifying Authority as Christian Tradition had which is equally impossible for it had for its Source but one single man Adam 3. That there were not more powerful Motives nor greater Assistances of Grace to continue the Christian Doctrine under the Law of Grace than there were under that most imperfect Law of Nature nor more exact Discipline in the Church of Christ than there was in that loose State which had been hard Points and altogether impossible even to attempt with any shew of Reason He did very wisely too to Wave the Opinion of the Millenaries the time of Easter and the Communicating of Infants For he both knows that every Apostolical Tradition had this last been suppos'd such is not necessarily an Article of Faith as also that none of these nor yet their contrary was a Point of Christian Doctrine Preach't and Settled unanimously over the World by the Apostles He made account he had a better game to play by shewing how Tradition fail'd in delivering down the Apostles Creed But he might had he pleas'd as well have left out That as the Others for none of the Explainers of Tradition ever held or said it was to bring down Set Form of Words which requir'd application of Memory and Repetition of them in Order but only the Sense of the First Age which was Christ's true Faith instill'd after a connatural way by Education and apt to be exprest in different Words according to different Circumces § 23. Were it granted him That things Written supposing the Letter could be prov'd to be still continu'd Absolutely Certain had the Advantage as to the Certainty of Conveyance above things meerly committed to Memory and Tradition yet he is where he was The Point between us still sticks that is Whether meer Words expressing in short such sublime spiritual Tenets as are most of the chief Articles of Christian Religion are so Clear to private Judgments nay to All even the Vulgar that are looking for Faith that they can have that perfect Assurance of their true Sense as to build that Never-to-be-Alter'd Assent call'd Faith upon their understanding them This is the summ of our difficulty this is what we most insist upon and are perpetually pressing him to shew the security of the Method he takes to give us this Certainty I do not mean the Certainty of the Letter about which he keeps such ado but of the sense of it in such Points if he thinks any one of them so necessary that the Generality cannot be sav'd without the knowledge of it This is it which most imports you to know if you value the having such Grounds for your Faith as ought in true reason to perswade you 't is true that it was Taught by Christ or that you are not perhaps dociend and in an Errour all this while But not one word of this in the whole Sermon He argues from God's making choice of Writing when he deliver'd the Ten Commandments What means he or how can he apply this to our Question Are the Ten Commandments which are plain honest Nature of as Deep and Mysterious a Sense as the high Points we speak of Are they so hard to be understood that Writing is not a clear Conveyer of God's Sense in such Matters Does he hear a great part of the World at variance about the Meaning of the Ten Commandments as multitudes of Hereticks have been Wrangling with the Church ever since Christ's time about the Sense of Scripture in those Dogmatical Points Were the Texts which contain those Points as plain to all Mankind as the Ten Commandments are or as are generally the Historical and Moral parts of Scripture I should frankly declare that Scripture might in that Supposition be a Rule of Faith as to the Points contained in it and that there would be no need of the Church for our simply believing but only to confirm our Faith explain it more throughly when any part of it imply'd in some main Point is deny'd apply it to our Consciences by her Preaching and keep us up to the Doctrin it delivers by her Government and Discipline So that our Controversy-Preacher who has never hit the Point hitherto doubly misses it here in his representing Tradition as held by us needful to supply the defect of Clearness in Moral passages that are plain enough of themselves and that 't is to bring down Set-Forms of Words which is not its business whatever it be those Words express And this shews his Mistake in his Second Proof viz. the restoring the Knowledge of the Law Written by a Written Book which was a Way most Proper for that End. Whence for the same Reason if there were any deviation from the Christian Doctrin which as contradistinguish't to that other was writ in the Living Tables of the Hearts of the Faithful the best Way of preserving or restoring That was by
the Sence writ in the Heart of the Church at first by the Preaching of the Apostles and continu'd ever since in the manner we have describ'd and prov'd § 24. But The Dr. is got into a Track of mistaking and he cannot get out of it He brings for his Third Argument our B. Saviour's advice to the Iews to search the Scriptures The business was to know whether he was the true Messias and the Prophecies relating to the Messias were Matters of Fact or else Moral and therefore proportion'd to the Understanding of the Searchers and plain enough so they apply'd but Industry Diligence to find them out Are your Mysteries of Christian Faith such Or Must weak unelevated Understandings therefore presume to penetrate the Meaning of the Scripture in Texts of so deep a Sense as those Mysteries are because the Jews were exhorted to do it in a matter within the Sphere of their Capacity Again The Tradition of the Iews was very strong that a Messias should come but that This was the Person there was no Tradition at all This was therefore either to be made known by his Miracles done to attest it or to be found out by the applying of diverse particulars to Him and by seeing they all concurr'd in him And did ever any of us pretend that Tradition was to bring down such particulars If he says we did he must shew where If he confesses we did not he must confess withal his Text and Discourse here is nothing to the purpose He turns it off from the Admonition of searching the Scriptures to know the true Messias to the knowing whether he were a Temporal Prince whereas the Tradition of his Kingdom 's being purely Spiritual was neither Vniversally held taught nor deliver'd at first by the First Founders of that Law nor settled in the hearts of the Synagogue or the Universality of the Jews in the beginning as Christ's Doctrin was by the unanimous Preaching of the Apostles in the hearts of such a numerous Multitude as was the Christian Church of the First Age. Which being evidently so What reason was there our Saviour should refer them to such a slight or rather no-no-Tradition and not to the Written Prophecies in which he was foretold Or What consequence can be drawn hence to the prejudice of Christian Tradition which and which only we defend and which as was fitting is so strongly supported that it is impossible to find a Parallel to equal or come nigh it And unless this be done all his Arguments against it stand thus A Lesser Force cannot do an Effect therefore a Greater cannot An odd piece of Logick but suitable to all the rest § 25. His Fourth Reason represents Tradition to be meerly Verbal and not Practical That it alone is to bring down particular Matters of Fact or Historical passages nay the Speculative Whimsies of the old Heathen Phylosophers None of which was ever pretended and so all his Discourse runs upon his old and oft-repeated Errour in the true meaning of Tradition § 26. The Reasons he gives for the Certainty of the Books of Scripture we allow to a Tittle and we add to them One over and above which is better than them all viz. the Obligation and Care of the Church which as She ever held the Scriptures to contain the same Doctrin which was preach't to Her at first by Christ's Order and that it was a most incomparable Instrument for the Edification of her Children the Abetment of Faith the Salvation of Mankind nay an Instruction to Her Self too in thousands of most excellent most useful and most enlightning passages so She could not but look upon Her Self as most highly oblig'd to preserve the Letter from any material Alteration and yet more particularly in case any Hereticks went about to corrupt it in any Texts nay Coma's or Pointings that concerned the main Articles of Christianity which they sometimes attempted the Doctrin of Christ in her Breast could easily direct them to set the Text right again and that with Absolute Certainty Nor does any say or so much as suppose any Book of Scripture is indeed lost as he hints p. 29. only upon his saying That the Scripture we have now contains all the Divine Revelations I us'd the right of a Disputant and put him to make good what he says and to prove he has the Absolute Certainty he pretended to that no Book was lost without which he could have no such Certainty those pieces of Scripture we have now did contain All the Divine Revelations which by his Grounds denying any Certainty but what might admit of Deceit I was sure he was not able to perform § 27. Nor do I at all doubt of the Influence of Divine Grace or of the Internal Satisfaction which good Souls who are already Faithful or as St. Thomas of Aquin cited by him expresses himself Have the Habit of Faith by which they have a right Iudgment of those things which are agreeable to that vertue receive concerning Scripture and Christ's Doctrin or that they confirm men more than Demonstration does Arguments have the Nature of Preliminaries to Faith or Searches after it but the Inward Satisfaction that that Heavenly Doctrin rectifies and purifies the Soul and levels it directly towards the Attainment of it's last Blissful End has the nature of a kind of Experience and as it were Possession and Enjoyment of what Humane Arguments previous to Faith had been looking after and contending for I suppose Gentlemen the Dr. brought in this Discourse to prepare your Minds by a shew of Piety to rest appay'd with any slight Reason that falls short of concluding and breed in you a prejudice against the necessity of his producing any such Arguments as place Christian Faith above Possibility of Falshood But he is as much out of the Way here as he was in all the rest For notwithstanding God's Grace and this Internal Satisfaction which is Proper to good Souls who are Believers already the Church and her Pastours must be furnish'd with solid and unanswerable Reasons to satisfie perfectly those both of the lowest and most acute capacity who are looking after Faith that the Doctrin She professes was taught by Christ and to evince and defend its Truth in that particular against the most subtile Adversaries which cannot be done unless the Reasons which we as Controvertists bring set it above possibility of Falshood that Christ taught it We cannot put God's Grace and our Internal Satisfaction into Syllogisms when we are disputing Nor does God intend by His Grace to prejudice the true Nature Himself has given us which is Reason but to perfect and elevate it 'T is against Reason that in Preliminaries to Faith which are the Objects of Natural Reason those who are capable to penetrate the force of reasons should assent beyond the Motive for as far as it is beyond the Motive 't is without any Motive that is without any Reason and
be the Letter of Scripture he would have had recourse to some exacter Copy correcting their faulty one and so have born up still to that Rule But 't is evident he does not thus He makes then the Sense of the Church or Tradition the Rule both to know our Faith and also to correct the faultiness of the Letter Whether this sutes better with the Drs. Principles or ours is left to your selves or any man of reason to judg and determine § 30. Thus comes off this famous Sermon which makes such a noise for a Confutation of the Traditionary Doctrin The Sum of it is 1. The Dr. takes no notice of the main Question betwixt us which is about the Absolute-Certainty that our Faith is Truly Christian or taught by Christ nor attempts to shew his is thus Certain but Preaches to you Stedfastness and a well-setled Resolution to continue in it yet avoids the giving you any Grounds to make you Stedfast and Well-setled in that resolution 2. He conceals every Advantage Christian Tradition has or is pretended to have that is he would perswade you to Hate it before you See it and to compare it to Scripture before you know what kind of thing it is which is yet worse he shews you another thing for It and through all his Discourse pretends 'tis It which is nothing at all to It but utterly unlike It viz. Particular Traditions both before and after that Vniversal Tradition only which we defend was setled 3. He fixes a false date upon the beginning of the Tradition we speak of that the vast source of it which with the Circumstances annext was able to continue the Current strong and the Derivation of Christ's Doctrin both Certain and Perpetual might not be reflected on To deform it the more he makes it meerly Verbal as if it were nothing but the telling some dry story by surpressing it's Practicalness in which consists it's chiefest Vertue 4. He hides from your consideration all the most Incomparable and most Powerful Motives which enforce its Continuance and oblige the Church never to forsake the first deliver'd Doctrin 5. He never regards even in those Particular Traditions whether they fail'd the Persons or the Persons fail'd Them but supposes still the Tradition was in all the fault without attempting to shew it 6. He would have you imagin the Church in the first Age consisting of Pastors and People lost all their Memory and Grace too assoon as ever the Apostles were dead lest it should be held Able and Willing to testify Christ's Doctrine to the Next Age which by Parity would Establish it a Rule for all succeeding Ages to the End of the World. 7. He mingles known Opinions and which he holds himself not to have been Universally deliver'd at first with Points which we All hold to have been first deliver'd Then as to the Matter of Object of Tradition which and only which we pretend it is to bring down with absolute Certainty and deliver Clearly viz. the Dogmatical or Controverted Articles of Christian Faith which are Practical he never mentions it at all with any distinction but tumbles and confounds it with all things imaginable for which it was never pretended and puts upon Tradition a hundred abus'd tasks as never thought of by us so improper oft times impossible in themselves As the deriving down the Ten Commandments Creeds Decrees of Councils set Forms of Words an Infinity of particular passages not at all Practical nay whole Epistles and Gospels Schemes of Doctrin taught by Heathen Philosophers Messages which use to be sent by long Letters Historical Narrations or Actions and in a word every thing he could invent but the right one viz. Those Controverted Points of Faith tho' it lay just before him the very nature of Controversy which we are about determining our Discourses to those Points and nothing else This is his General view of Scripture and Tradition as to the way of conveying down matters of Faith. He means a General view which misrepresents and blinds your sight of it in every Particular In a Word there is much of Reading Conduct and Wit in his Sermon but wholly misemploy'd to speak as handsomely as he could to no purpose and to miss the whole Point in Question with a great deal of Plausibility In which amongst his other Great Abilities justly acknowledg'd to be Excellent consists his most considerable Talent and Dexterity § 31. So he ends his Sermon with good Advice to you to follow Christ's Heavenly Doctrin in your Lives and Conversations Which as he worthily presses upon you so I shall heartily pray that God would vouchsafe you his Grace to follow it I am far from blaming His or any one's Preaching the wholsome Moral Doctrines of Christianity and laying it home to men's Consciences But I ought not if concern'd to suffer that when he pretends to speak to your Understandings and establish you in Faith he should bubble his Auditory with forty impertinent pretences Injurious to his candid Adversaries and to Truth as well as to your selves please and delude your Fancies with a great shew of his Reading and little conjectural Reflexions tack't prettily together and in the mean time send you away empty of knowing any Ground which may render you or any Absolutely Certain that what you hold is indeed Christ's Doctrin that is any Ground of perfect security that is cannot but be indeed his Doctrin without being which it ought not be held True. Whereas yet 't is only this Certainty which can give His or any other Sermon it 's full force and Energy Your Servant in Christ J. S. Advertisement The 2 d. 3 d. Catholick Letters are to be Sold by M. Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn THE FIFTH Catholick Letter IN REPLY TO Dr. Stillingfleet's Pretended ANSWER To About the Fortieth Part of I. S's Catholick Letters Addrest to all Impartial Readers By Iohn Sergeant Published with Allowance London Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holborn 1688. THE PREFACE Addrest to the most Partial of Dr. Stillingfleet's Friends Gentlemen WHen a Person is incomparably qualify'd above all others in any Particular men use to look upon him as a Pattern in that Kind I will not say Dr St. has manifested himself to be such an Exemplar in every respect that can be an Ingredient of an Ill Controvertist This is yet to be shewn and Pretence without Proof signifies nothing Only I may justly fear that while you are reading my Reply to his Answer as he calls it to my Catholick Letters you may be apt to judge that I am rather framing an Idea of what Human Weakness maintaining an insupportably-ill Cause may be obnoxious to than giving a Iust Character of his Performances and that 't is Absolutely Impossible that a Man of his Parts should be Guilty of such and so many Incredible Failings I acknowledge with all due Respect to him his Great Endowments and am heartily glad in
Faith be Immediate even from day to day And thus Dr St. has begun to answer Mr G's Demonstration by keeping such a huge pother about a Proposition Evident by its own Light and pretending more faults in it than even a wise man could have shown in the Arrantest Falshood But he has not done with it yet the most Essentiall part of it remains yet behind And so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour Now the Proposition speaks of Believing the same all that while and he confutes it with talking of Claiming and Pretending to follow it Whence since to believe the same that was deliver'd is Actually following Tradition his distinguishing Talent has afforded us two sorts of following Tradition One which is really and indeed following it the other is only pretending to follow it and not doing so that is there is one sort of believing the same or of following Tradition which is not-following of it which is still of the same Learned Strain 74. The Second Proposition is And if they follow this Rule they can never Err in Faith what says he to this If they follow this Rule that is believe the same from Christ's time that was taught at first do not they believe the same Christ Taught One would verily think that this is as Evident as 't is that to believe the same is to believe the same True 't is so and therefore 't is with him Self-Evidently a meer Fallacy Certainly never was any Mortall Man such an Enemy to Common Sense But 't is his constant humour to talk big when he 's at a perfect Nonplus Well but how proves he 't is a meer Fallacy Why 1. He grants that those who believe Christ's Doctrin cannot Err. And is not this a rare Answer We both grant that Christ's Doctrine is True and consequently that who hold it cannot Err All this is Presuppos'd to our Question and so is no part of it But our Point is how we shall know assuredly what is Christs Doctrin Or by what Means shall we come at it 2. He says They might mistake in this Rule It has been shown him Third Cath. Letter p. 6 7.8.9 and in many other places upon occasion that they could not mistake in this Rule he never takes notice of it in his whole Answer and yet has the Confidence to object it afresh 3. He says They might follow another Rule This too has been prov'd against him nay 't is here prov'd in the Fourth Proposition of this very Argument for by proving they could not innovate in Faith 't is prov'd they that is the Body or Vniversality could not desert Tradition But what a shift is the Dr put to Do we contend here they could follow no other All the Proposition pretends to is that If they follow this Rule they cannot err in Faith. What says he to this Can they or can they not If they cannot then the Rule is a good Rule which is all we labour to prove here the rest is prov'd in the Fourth Proposition And if they can err tho' following it then since to follow it is still to believe the same the Dr must say that the same Faith tho' still convey'd down the same is not the same it self was at first which is a direct Contradiction Not one single word of Answer then to the Proposition has he given us only he affirms stoutly 't is Fallacious a very Cheap Answer to any Argument that is too crabbed and difficult but he cannot for his heart tell where the Fallacy lies The Conclusion is naught that he 's resolv'd on but he has nothing that is pertinent to say to the Premisses or Proof Yet something he must say for a shew and so he will shew some other ways that Errours might come in And perhaps I can shew him twenty more but still what 's this to the Point Can Errours in Faith come in while men follow this Rule of Tradition that is while they continue to believe the same that was still taught immediately before and this ever since Christs time This is our only business 75. Since I must now run out of the way after our Straggling Disputant I desire first the Reader would remark that the Proposition he is now answering is this If they follow this Rule viz. Tradition they can never err in Faith as also that by Tradition is meant the Publick Testimony of the Church of what was deliver'd as Christs Doctrine His first particular way of introducing Errours is by the Authority of False Teachers But was Tradition follow'd while they follow'd their Authority If it was then the Christian Church was a False Teacher and her Publick Testimony attested false Doctrin to be Christs which if he holds let him speak out and see how all Christians will detest him If Tradition was not follow'd but deserted when men were led by False Teachers what 's this to us or whom does it oppose For 't is plainly to abet Tradition to say that none could follow False Teachers but they must at the same time desert It. 'T is hard to conjecture then what he meant by alledging de Molinos unless it were to make his Friend Dr Burnets Book concerning Molinos sell. 'T is no news that False Teachers may introduce Errours and that that man pretended the Publick Testimony of the Church or that his whimsies were Christ's Doctrin deliver'd down from the beginning is both unheard of and Incredible His Second way of introducing Errours is by Enthusiasm Very well Did the Testimony of the Christian Church tell them that Enthusiasm was Christ's Doctrin If he says it did he makes the whole Christian Church in some Age to have been a pack of hare-brain'd Enthusiasts If it did not then 't is an honour to Tradition that they deserted it when they fell into that Spiritual Madness His Third way is by a pretence to a more secret Tradition But was this pretence to a Secret Tradition a pretending to follow the Publick Tradition of the Church If it was not it opposes not our Tradition but credits it And if he says it was then he makes what 's Secret to be Publick which is a Contradiction and the very alledging this makes him in some manner Guilty of that old Failing of his His Fourth is Differences among Church-Guides about the Sense of Scripture and Tradition I have already shewn him that it was impossible the Generality especially of Pastours should not know the Sense of Tradition and as for some Church Guides differing about the Sense of Scripture it was equally impossible they should Err in Faith as long as they interpreted Scripture by the Rule of the Church's Tradition and when they once left that Rule instead of being any longer Church-Guides they became generally if they were any thing Eminent Ringleaders of Heretical Sects which gives a high repute to our Tradition even by their erring when they deserted it His Fifth
way how Errour might come in is too great a Veneration to some particular Teachers which made their Disciples despise Tradition in comparison of their Notions And were those men Followers of Tradition who despis'd it His 6th is By Compliance with some Gentil Superstitions c. But did Tradition or the Church's Testimony deliver down to them these Heathenish Superstitions for Christs Doctrin Or rather would it not have preserv'd men from them had nothing else been attended to but that Rule His 7th and last is by Implicit Faith that is that when a man had found a Faithfull Guide to direct him he should submit himself to be Guided by him in things in which he could not guide himself A very dangerous case indeed But the Antidote to this malicious suggestion is that the same Church that they believ'd condemn'd all New Revelations and adher'd only to what was deliver'd He could have added an Eighth way how Errours in Faith come in had he pleas'd and That too such a one as had done a thousand times greater mischief than all the rest put together viz. Private Interpretations of Scripture which every man knows has been the source of all the Heresies since Christ's time But this being the sole Ground of his Faith it was not his Interest to let his Readers know it had been the Ground of all Heresy 76. But what 's all this to the Point Or how is the Demonstration lost if many men err'd upon divers other accounts so none err'd while they follow'd Tradition Unless he proves this he establishes our Demonstrations by his shewing how multitudes err'd who were led by other Motives and by his not being able to produce so much as one Instance of any that err'd by adhering to It. What Noise and Triumph should we have had could he have alledg'd so many Hereticks sprung up by grounding their opinions on mistaken Tradition as 't is known have arisen by grounding their wicked Tenets on misunderstood Scripture But alas tho' that were exceedingly to his purpose not one such Instance could he bring He talks a little faintly of the Arians Pelagians Nestorians c. not disowning Tradition But does he hope to perswade any man of Sense those Upstarts durst ever go about to put out the eyes of the World by pretending their Heresies were deliver'd down as Christs Doctrin by the Publick Testimony of the Church in their days or out-face the present Church that she her self had taught them what she knew themselves had newly invented Or would she have condemn'd them had they spoke her thoughts or follow'd her Doctrin With what Sense can any of this be imagin'd The Tradition then which they went upon was Citations of some former Authors which they misunderstood the very Method Dr St. and his fellow-Quoters take now a-days or else the Judgment of a few Foregoers of whom some might speak ambiguously others perhaps hanker'd after their Heresy 'T is very hard to guess what Dr St. would be at in alledging so many ways how Errour might be introduc't That it might come in and by Various ways no man doubts That it came in meerly by following Tradition or the Churches Testimony he says not That particular Multitudes might be seduc't by deserting Tradition is equally granted and needs no Proof And that it came in tho' Men Adher'd to Tradition which was the true Point he goes not about to prove nor seems so much as to think of Besides most of the Ways he assigns if not all are so many Desertions of Tradition which highly conduces to Strengthen our Argument while he impugns it Yet surely that could not be his Intention neither I cannot imagin then what all these seven Formall Heads are brought for but to make a Show of none knows what Sometimes I incline to think he is combating the Fourth Proposition proving the Body of Traditionary Christians could not innovate in Faith but either through forgetfulness or Malice And yet I cannot fix upon this neither both because he names not these two defects before he shows us his other ways of Erring as also because we are not come as yet to the Fourth Proposition where all the Stress lay but have spent all our time in confuting the First and Second which were Self-Evident But if that be his meaning as he intimates p. 112. to escape replying to the Fourth Proposition then let him know that whatever his unsound Principles say whoever deserts the Testimony of God's Church whether by the Authority or rather No-Authority of False Teachers or by Enthusiasm the root of which is Spirituall Pride or by following Secret Traditions against the Publick Authority of the Church or by adhering to a Sense of Scripture contrary to what Tradition allows or by too great a Veneration to some particular Teachers or by Compliance with Heathenish Superstitions or by whatever other Motive is Guilty before God of a Heinous Sin and it must spring from some degree of Malicious or Bad disposition in his heart For he cannot but See that himself or his Leader breaks the Order of the World by disobeying rising against and preferring himself before those whom God had set over him to feed direct instruct and Govern him Of which Order and of the Goods coming by it and the Mischiefs which attend the Violating it none of Common Sense whom some by-affection has not blinded can possibly be Ignorant 77. He concludes with these words If then Errours might come into the Church all these Ways What a vain thing it is to pretend that Orall Tradition will keep from any possibility of Errour Ah Dr. Dr Where 's your Love of Moral Honesty Where 's your Sincerity Where your Conscience Did ever any man pretend that Tradition will keep men from any Possibility of Errour whether they follow it or no Were not our most express words put down by your self p. 108. l. 27.28 If they follow this Rule they can never Err in Faith. And must those most important words be still Omitted and no notice taken of them but only in an absurd Distinction making Adhering to Tradition or Following it to be Not-Following it Is this Solid Answering or plain Prevaricating Again what Nonsense does he make us speak by omitting these words Is it not a Madness to say a Rule will direct them Right that do not Follow it That a Means will bring a man to his End who does not use it That a Way will keep a man from Straying in his Journey who does not walk in it Yet all these Contradictions we must be Guilty of by his leaving out the words If follow'd 'T is pretty too upon review of his words to reflect on his Craft 'T is vain to pretend that Orall Tradition will keep whom was it pretended to keep from any Possibility of Errour He should have added the followers of it but because he had Slipt this all along he leaves the Sense Imperfect and the word keep
must want the Accusative Case after it due to its Transitive Sense by the Laws of Grammar meerly to avoid his putting the Right one because it would have been unsutable to all his foregoing Discourses which never toucht it But since he speaks still what Causes of Errour he has shown tho' I have already manifested that all those Causes were accompany'd with Malice in the First Deserters of Tradition yet to enforce our Demonstration the more I discourse thus If Tradition could be deserted or Innovation in Faith made by the Generality of Christians for none ever said or doubted but Many Particulars might do so it must either proceed from some Defect in their Vnderstandings or in their Wills. A defect in the Will is call'd Badness or Malice whence if they willfully Innovated it must spring from some degree of Malice If in their Understanding then it must either be in that Power as Apprehending or Knowing Christ's Doctrin or as Retaining it It could not be in the Former for none doubts but the body of the Church particularly the Teachers who were to instruct the Rest did very well Comprehend Christ's Doctrin in the Beginning and the many Clear ways Tradition comprizes to deliver it down renders Faith Intelligible still to each succeeding Age. Wherefore since the Defect cannot be in their Understanding or their having Christ's Doctrin in their Hearts it must be if any where in that knowing Power as 't is Retentive that is in their Memory But it was absolutely impossible the Generality of the Church should be so weak as to forget in any little determinate part of Time by which Immediate steps Tradition proceeds what was Taught and Practis'd a little before or Considering the Motives to keep them firm to it so Wicked as to conspire to Alter it purposely Therefore whatever Contingency there must be in some Particulars it could not be that the Generality of the Church should have alter'd it or consequently Err'd in Faith. Wherefore this Conclusion stands yet Firm the Premisses remaining yet Untoucht Since he neither shows nor can show more Faculties in Mankind engag'd in the Perpetuating the Former Faith than these Two. Add that he does not even Attempt to show that the Causes he produces can have the Power to prevail or carry it against the force of Tradition and unless he does this all he alledges signifies nothing But his Especiall Reason why he gives no other Answer he should have said none at all to our Fourth Proposition is because he intends to shew in a particular Discourse how the Errours and Corruptions he Charges on the Church of Rome did come into it That is we cannot have an Answer to Two lines but by perusing a Large Book I would desire him to resume the Force of all his little Testimonies and Conjecturall Descants upon them with which that book abounds and to be sure they Conclude the Point which he shall never do And unless he does this he only shows he has taken a great deal of pains to no kind of purpose since he leaves a presum'd Demonstration in its full force without bringing so much as a pretended Conclusive Proof against it Indeed it is a great shame for him to pretend it for 't is to profess publickly to the world that he can produce Better Arguments against the Papists then he can for his own Faith and that he cannot Answer the Argument or say any thing to the Premisses yet he will revenge himself upon the naughty Conclusion when he catches it alone and unback't with any Proof for it 78. Next he will prove that our way of resolving Faith into Christ's and his Apostles Teaching by the Infallibility of the Church's Human Authority or Tradition is Pelagianism But never was such a Malicious and Silly Charge so impotently defended We were told says he that Divine Faith must have Infallible Grounds and when we come to examin them we find nothing but what is Naturall Here again our whole Controversy is lost and a new State of the Question is obtruded Faith as 't is formally Divine has for its Grounds the Divine Authority But are we in our Controversy Examining it as 't is Formally Divine Do either of us alledge Miracles or any Arguments that Proves it to be such Is it not Confest and Suppos'd by both Parties that the Faith Taught at first was Divine and are we to Examin what 's Confest and Granted Or that Supposition being agreed to have we any more to do but to prove what was the Doctrin taught at first by Assigning a Certain Method of Conveying it down to us He proceeds And now to avoid the Charge of Pelagianism this Divine Faith is declar'd to be meer Human Faith. Alas for him Does not Divine Faith stand yet on it's own bottom the Divine Authority because Human Authority gives those who yet know it not Assurance of its Derivation to us The Immediate effect then of our Tradition is Human Faith the Remote effect is to give us knowledge of a Doctrin of Faith which is Divine not prov'd to be such by Tradition but acknowledg'd to be so by our Mutuall Concession But how shamelesly insincere the Dr is to object that I Chang'd this purposely to avoid the Charge of Pelagianism whenas he knows I had told himself the same in Errour Nonplust some years before any Contest arose about my Writings Does he not cite my words here that this Human Faith had by Tradition leads us to what 's Divine Human Faith is the Way or Means to know Divine Faith And cannot we obtain the favour of him to intermit a while his constant Nonsence and allow the Means to be distinguisht from the End He goes on And so Human Faith must have Infallible Grounds but Divine Faith must shift for it Self Can any thing be more Trifling What Shifts is Faith put to for Grounds taken as 't is formally Divine in a Controversy which supposes it such in which case no Proof nor Grounds for it need be produc't Do those that holds the Infallibility of the Churches Humane Authority deriving it down to us deny but the Verity of the Mysteries thus deriv'd as in themselves depend on Divine Revelation as on their Formall Motives Do not these two consist well together May not Faith depend on the Divine Authority in it self and as it was made known at first and yet not be known to us who live now but by Humane Authority Can he be Certain of Christian Faith by his own Grounds but by the Book of Scripture and yet does not himself say that the Certainty he has of that Book depends on Tradition or Humane Authority and consequently that Humane Faith is the way to know Divine Faith What Quacking then and Mountebanking is this to make me a Pelagian for doing the same himself does and publickly avows omitting in the mean time my Answers which at large clear'd before-hand all that he has here so
Lastly why is not an Extrinsicall Ground or Testimony prov'd to be such by Intrinsicall Reasons sufficient in our case This should have been shewn but for this very reason 't is not so much as taken notice of either by him or his Master In a word he uses some of our words taken asunder from the Context of our intire Sense then blends them confusedly together on any fashion without any kind of order or respect to the true Question he gives us Relative words without telling us what they relate to he puts upon us Tenets we never advanc't or held but the direct Contrary And the witty Gentleman would still persuade his Reader he is Repeating his Lesson I have Taught him when as all the while he deserves more then a Ferula for his rehearsing it wrong or rather saying it Backwards Then follows his Grand Conclusion as the Flower of all the foregoing ones which we may be sure hits the Point Exactly And therefore says he either your Position overthrows your Churche's Authority or It your Position Most Excellent My Position is about Tradition which is the Self-same thing with the Churche's Authority and this precious Scribbler will needs have the same thing to destroy it self A fit Upshot for a Discourse without sence 89. We see by this one Instance there is scarce one Line nor many Significant Words in this half-page of his but runs upon Enormous Mistakes And does he think I have nothing else to do but to stand Rectifying still what he all along takes such Care and Pains to put into Disorder Especially since those few things that are pertinent are abundantly spoke to in my Third Catholick Letter and this present Reply I must intreat the Dr to excuse me if I have no mind to break his Young Controvertists and teach them how to Manage Mr G. did him I hope no disparagement in making me his Substitute but 't is not so gentile in him to set such a Fresh Man upon my back I 'le have nothing to do with his little Iourney-Men or Apprentices till the World be satisfy'd that their Master himself is a better Artist And if it shall appear that even the Learned Dr St. is able to make nothing of so bad a Cause 't is neither Discreditable to me nor any Disadvantage to the Truth I am defending if I neglect such a Sixth-rate Writer who confesses himself unworthy to carry his Books after him 90. The Omissions in answering my Second Catholick Letter are as many as that Letter it self contains since his untoward Method renders all his Talk Twitching and Girding at little sayings of mine utterly insignificant Whence that whole Treatise as 't is in it self stands yet Intire unless the Dr can shew by his new Logick that to mince half a Book into Fragments is to Answer the Whole 91. Thus the Dr has trickt off the answering my Second Cath. Letter But his Omissions in Answering the Third are both numerous and most highly Important and he is to render an Account of all this long Roll of his Neglects Why did he not clear himself of his altering there the Notion of Tradition into Articles and Powers of doing this or that shewn at large p. 4.5 Why answers he not the several Reasons proving against him that Tradition brings down the Sense of Christ's Doctrin and not only Common Words in the Clear Delivery of which Sense consists one of the main Properties of a Rule viz. its Plainness to People of all sorts who are to be regulated by it And why instead of performing this necessary Duty does he p. 43. after having vapour'd that 'T is bravely said if it could be made out does he not so much as mention the Reasons by which it was made out but ramble into such Nonsense p. 43. that He and his Party who are Deserters of Tradition cannot mistake it that Tradition or the Church'es Human Testimony being the Rule of Faith is a part of Christ's Doctrin c. Why no Excuse for his deforming the meaning of that plain word Tradition into many unsutable Significations and putting it in all shapes but its own Why no Defence of his most ridiculous Drollery in paralleling Tradition or the Testimony of God's Church to the Relation of two or three partial Witnesses of his own side in favour of their fellows Or for his Inconsonancy to himself his Insincerity in thus perverting it still when he was to impugn it whenas he took it very right when it made for himself Why not a word to my Clearest Demonstration that 't is impossible but Tradition must bring down a Determinate Sense of the Tenets it delivers which he answers not at all but only brings against Conclusion an Instance of the Corinthians and Arlemonites p. 45.46 which as far as it pretends they pleaded Tradition for their Heresy taking Tradition as we do for the Immediate Testimony of the Church is both False and Senseless Why no Answer at all to that most Concerning Point prov'd against him that the Church has Power to declare diverse Propositions to be of Faith not held distinctly before without any prejudice at all to Tradition And why no notice taken of my most Evident Proof that we make Christian Faith as 't is Formally Divine rely on the Divine Authority notwithstanding our Tenet that the Church'es Humane Authority is the Means to bring us to the knowledge of Christ's Doctrin and that the asserting this Later is not to overthrow the Church'es Authority in matters of Faith as he objected As also that the Venerable F. W. was not an Adversary to our way and that Lominus his Book the Dr rely'd on was no Argument that my Doctrin was faulty even in the opinion of my Judges Why gave he no reply to any of these but still run on with his former Calumnies as if nothing had been produc't to shew his manifest and Wilfull Mistakes Why no Answer to my Reasons proving at large the impotency of his malice in charging Pelagianism more than to repeat a few of words for a shew that this Humane Authority leads us to what 's Divine and there stopping whereas the very next words Yet not by its own force but by vertue of the Supposition agreed upon that Christ's Doctrin is such had spoil'd all his pretence Why no notice taken of my Citation out of Errour Nonplust writ against himself fifteen years ago which forestall'd all his rambling Mistakes and by consequence shew'd him strangely Insincere in dissembling his knowledge of my Tenet so expressly declar'd 92. Why no Plea alledg'd to justify his shuffle from the Grounds of his Protestant Faith in particular to the Grounds of Christian Faith in Common nor to excuse his next Shuffle and Nonsense to boot in making Faith by vertue of an id est to signify the Grounds for his Ground of Faith and turning Certainty of Scripture into a long ramble viz.
into Certainty of the Grounds on which we believe Scripture to contain the word of God. Why not a word of Reply to my Discourses there and in many other places shewing that Scripture's Containing Faith is nothing at all to our purpose but the Getting out from Scripture it 's true Meaning or Sense this only being our Faith and that his Faith is still Vncertain unless there be Certainty that such and such Articles Are Contain'd there Which Point tho' it be of the Highest Consequence yet he never sets himself to Solve our Arguments against it in his whole pretended Answer but he runs on still in the same Errour as if nothing had been alledg'd to shew his Discourses insignificant and frivolous Why no Answer to my Discourse proving that a Rule or Ground is none if it carry not thorough to the particular Points especially to those which are most Fundamentall unless granting it in effect p. 36. and allowing no Absolute Certainty to any particular Point of Faith may be called an Answer Why no Excuse for his Skewing Comment upon his own Answer which spoke of Absolute Certainty of all Christ's Doctrin which consists of such and such particular Tenets to the Writings of the Apostles whereas there was not a word of Writing in Mr. G's Question or in his own Answer either Nor any notice taken of my Argument manifesting that a Resolution of Faith speaks Connexion of the Motives that are to prove it Christ's Doctrin to the Points of Faith laid home to him in a Close Discourse demonstrating the Necessity it should be such Why no Account of his distinguishing between Christ's Doctrin and that of the Apostles that so he might mis-represent Tradition and alter the Question from a Publick to a Private Delivery Why no Reason given of his not Resolving his Faith into the Apostles Preaching but only into their Writing I mean no Answer to my Reasons why he ought to have resolv'd it into the former at least Equally Why no Answer to my Reasons shewing from his ill-laid Principles that Perfect Contradictories Points of Faith and wicked Heresies opposit to them are both Equally Certain Why no Excuse for his Shuffling from the New Testament's Containing all the Divine Revelations to the Church'es making men fix by degrees upon the Certain Canon of it which is there shewn and indeed appears of it self to be a quite disparate business Why not the least Excuse for his most abominable four-fold Prevarication in answering to one single Question expos'd there at large and why no Defence or particular Explication of his beloved Sufficient Certainty nor any Application of it to the Nature Ends and Uses of a firm Faith that any Point is Christ's true Doctrin shewing that his feeble Motives are sufficient for those particular purposes Why to make his odd Similitude of Scripture's being a Purse apposit does he not shew us some Certain Way how the Gold and Silver Points of Faith as he calls them may be got out of it without danger of extracting thence the impure Dross of Errour and Heresy instead of True Faith Again to make it square why does he not rather make the Heads and Hearts of the First Faithfull the Purses since as was shewn him Faith is more properly Contain'd there than in a Book Or if he will needs make use of an Improper Container of Faith too why does not he put two Purses viz. the Souls of the Faithfull and the Scripture And why not a word of Reply to my Plain Reasons why he ought to have done both these Why no Answer to my Reasons proving that All the Points of Faith are Necessary for the Salvation of Mankind and for the Church otherwise than by rambling to Transubstantiation p. 84. and that he sees no Necessity of it Which makes his often-alledg'd Distinction of Necessary Unnecessary Points brought to avoid the Question perfectly frivolous and why runs he still on with the same Distinction in this pretended Answer without taking off the Exceptions against it by only crying Alas for him when I askt him If Christ taught any unnecessary Articles and by saying they are not equally Necessary p. 33. Why nothing to justify that his Assent of Faith may not be False and so no Faith Why no Reply to my Reasons that notwithstanding his pretended Grounds He has no Absolute Certainty that even the Letter of Scripture is Right whereas if it be not he can have no Certainty but all is Wrong that is grounded upon it since in that case he may embrace a Grand Heresy for True Faith Why no Answer to my plainest Argument shewing how Christ's Doctrin continu'd all along in the Breast of the Church is the best Means to correct the Letter in Texts that contain Faith Why no Reply to my many Reasons shewing that the Ancient Church allow'd our way of Tradition and disallow'd his of Scripture privately Interpreted Why does he not confute my Discourses manifesting that he can have no Absolute Certainty by his Principles of the Number of Books or of each Chapter Verse and Material Word in each Verse that concerns any Point of Faith without doing which he cannot pretend to have Certainty of the Letter nor consequently of any one of those Points Why no Reply to that Important Objection that if Scripture were the Rule of Faith the Primitive Church had for some time but half or three-quarters of their Faith or less and so by his Principles were but three-quarters or half Christians according as the several pieces came by degrees to be spread accepted or universally acknowledg'd nay perhaps no Faith at all as was there shewn and why did he instead of replying turn it off to the single Epistle to the Hebrews and to an Insignificant If Why when it was objected that divers of his Christian Churches doubted of divers Books of Scripture and some late Brethren of his of some others does he again turn it off as to the former to the Canon of Scripture made afterwards and to the later says nothing Why not a word to my Clearest Proof that our Tradition or Testimony for Doctrin is incomparably more large in its source which gives it its chief force than his is for Scripture's Letter Why does he not clear himself of his preferring his Sober Enquirer before the Church the unreasonableness of which was urg'd home against him nor justify his weak discourses in some sleigter passages laid open p. 64.65 Why not a syllable of Answer to that most highly-concerning Discourse and which if it stands in its full force overthrows all the whole Fabrick of his Doctrin viz. that a Rule or Ground are Relative Words and therefore Scriptures Letter cannot be an Absolute Certain Rule or Ground unless its Ascertaining virtue affects the Articles known by it This Point has been prest upon him so vigorously
Babbling when they are exceeded Must you be minded that the Business must be stopt before it come to the Conclusion and that otherwise there is no speaking against it For you know that if the Premisses be right and the Inference good the Conclusion must be as necessarily True as it is that the same thing cannot be and not be at once that is must be more certain than that England for Example shall not crumble into Atoms or be swallow'd up in the Sea to morrow For this and a thousand such things may happen to all material Nature that a Contradiction should prove True cannot And 't is perfect Contradiction that Terms which cohere in the Premises by being the same with a Third should not cohere with one another in the Conclusion Must you be minded that an Arguer is to prove his Conclusion and an Answerer to shew he does not by assigning where and how he fails Do you do any such matter Do you so much as go about it And would you have what you say pass for an Answer Pray consider the Case The Church of Rome is Infallible says Mr. G. She is not say you He brings his Argument and you your Instance against it What are People the wiser now and which shall they be for the Argument or the Instance They have reason to think well of the Argument because you have no fault to find with it and they may think as they please of the Instance You would not I suppose have them believe you both and think the Church of Rome for your sake Fallible and for his Infallible at once Pray what assistance do you afford them to determin either way And what do you more than e'en leave them to draw Cuts and venture their Souls as handy-dandy shall decide for you or Mr. G. 'T is true when Zeno would needs be paradoxing against the possibility of Motion his Vanity was not ill ridicul'd by the walking of Diogenes before him For 't was palpably and ridiculously vain to talk against Motion with a Tongue that must needs move to talk against it And there may be vanity too in our Case for ought I know But where shall it be lodg'd Why more with Mr. G's Argument than your Instance Why is it more vain to pretend to prove Infallibility upon which depend the Hopes which Millions and Millions have of a blessed Eternity and which is prov'd by Arguments to which you think it your best way not to attempt to Answer than it is to except against a Conclusion against the Premises whereof there lies no Exception That is to find fault with a Sum Total and find none in the particulars or the casting up For a Conclusion is a kind of Sum Total of the Premises But it is infinitely more vain to talk against one Infallibility unless you will set up another For if there be no Means by which Men may be secur'd that the ways they take to arrive at their greatest and only Good will not deceive them it cannot be expected they will take all the pains that are necessary to compass that Good which for ought they can tell they may not compass with all their pains 'T is a pleasant thing in you to talk of the vanity of Mr. G's Demonstration when by seeking to take Infallibility out of the World you are making the whole Creation vain For all Material Nature was made for Rational Nature and Rational Nature requires Rational Satisfaction in all its proceedings and most of all in the pursuit of Happiness And what Rational Satisfaction can there be if there may be Deceit in whatever can be propos'd for Satisfaction In short the Result of your Instance whatever was the Aim it is to amuse and confound People and hinder them perhaps from seeing what otherwise would be clear but it shews them nothing nor can for that Argument of yours is not at all of a shewing Nature 13. 'T is at best but an Argument as they call it ad hominem which you know are of the worst sort of Arguments They serve for nothing but to stop an Adversaries mouth or shame him if he cannot answer without contradicting himself but are of no use towards the Discovery of Truth For a thing is not the more or less True because such a Man's Tongue is ty'd up for speaking against it But is it so much as an Argument ad hominem As all the little force of the Topic consists in the Obligation which a Man may have to grant or deny what it supposes he does it affords no Argument at all against the Man who has no such Obligation And pray where does it appear that Mr. G. is oblig'd not to deny that the Greek Church has err'd in matters of Faith And how can you of all Men suppose he is You who in your Rational Account p. 32. quote these words from Peter Lombard The Difference between the Greeks and Latins is in Words and not in Sense Name Thomas à Iesu and Azorius and tell us of other Roman Catholic Authors of the same judgment whom I suppose you could name Pray how comes Mr. G. to lye under an Obligation from which Men of Reputation in his own Communion are exempt And what a wise Argument ad hominem have you made against him whom your self have furnish'd with an Argument ad hominem to confute it when he pleases In fine he goes to work like a Scholar puts his Premises and infers his Conclusion which you know cannot but be True if there be no Fault in his Premises And 't is for you to find one when you can You put nothing to shew how the Inference you make should be True but barely assume without proof that he cannot deny it p. 5. As if Truth depended on his Denying or Affirming and that what People say or think made things True or False And even for so much you are at his Courtesie If he be not the better Natur'd and will crossly affirm or deny in the wrong place you and your Argument are left in the lurch In a word one may see he aim'd at Truth who takes at least the way to it what you aim'd at you best know but no body shall ever discover what is or is not True by your Method 14. But that you may not complain your Cock is not suffer'd to fight let us see what your Instance will do You put it thus p. 5. The Greek Church went upon Tradition from Father to Son as much as ever the Roman did And I desir'd to know of Mr. G. whether the Greek Church notwithstanding did not err in matters of Faith And if it did then a Church holding to Tradition was not Infallible How If it did Why then it is apparent if it did not your Argument holds not And will you assume that the Greek Church errs who believe she does not Will you take a Premise to infer a Conclusion upon which the Salvation of People depends
which Premise your self in your own heart think is not true Can you deal thus with their Souls who pin them upon you perswade them of what you are not perswaded your self and offer them a Securiy for their Eternity in which your own judgment tells you there is a flaw For you have declar'd your self upon this Matter in your Rational Account and taken great pains to clear the Greek Church at least upon the Article of the Holy Ghost in which consists their main difference with the Latins and to which the other two you mention were added I suppose for fashion sake I know you there propose to free that Church from the charge of Heresie But pray what difference betwixt Heresie and Error in matter of Faith unless you will trifle about Obstinacy and such collateral considerations which neither concern us here nor were any part of your Defence there I see too that you word it here conditionally and with reference to Mr. G's Answer As if his Answer made or marr'd and the Greek Church did or did not err as he says I or No. Whatever Mr. G. may say or you have said unless the Greek Church actually does Err your Instance is no Instance of a Church that goes upon Tradition and Errs and your Inference that then a Church holding to Tradition was not Infallible is wondrous pertinently inferr'd from the Example of a Church that errs not Pray take it well that I intreat you by all the care you have of your own Soul and should have of others to manage Disputes about Faith a little otherwise and not propose Arguments in which you must needs think your self there is no force For there is plainly none in this if the Greek Church does not err and you at least think she does not I am sure 't is what I would not do my self for all the World. 15. But to proceed to Mr. G's Answer p. 5. It was say you that the Greek Church follow'd Tradition till the Arians left that Rule and took up a new one c. And why has he not answer'd well You assum'd that the Greek Church err'd while it went upon Tradition If you did not you said nothing for that a Church may follow Tradition at one time and leave it at another is no news 'T is the case of all erring Churches which ever follow'd Tradition at all Mr. G's Reply then that Tradition was follow'd till another Rule was taken up denies that Tradition and Error were found together as you contended in the Greek Church And pray what more direct or more full Answer can there be to an Argument than to deny the Premises As slightly as you would seem to think of him he understood disputing better than to start aside into an Exception against your Conclusion but answers fair and home by denying the Assumption from which you infer it which now he has done you know it rests with you to prove it and yet you never think on 't as far as I see but as if you had no more to do fall a complaining against Mr. G. for speaking of the Arians and not of the present Greek Church and against his Copy for leaving out the Inference which you drew In doing which if he did so he did you no small kindness there being no Premises to draw the Inference from as has been shewn above or if any such as put you to contradict your own Doctrin ere any thing could follow from them 16. As for the omission of the Inference I know not how it happen'd nor mean to meddle with matter of Fact. But I see they had reason who observ'd before me that 't is a thing of no manner of Consequence I verily think in your own Judgment Unless you think the Age we live in so dull that without much hammering it into their Heads it cannot be perceiv'd that if a Church has err'd which held to Tradition a Church may err which holds to Tradition Or unless you think it of mighty Consequence to have an Inference stand in the Relation which fell with the Premises at the Conference Mr. G. took them away by his denial and you must begin again and bring something from whence you may draw an Inference if you will needs have an Inference for an Inference cannot be drawn from nothing Pray divert us not perpetually from minding what we are about but remember the Question now is Whether the Greek Church held to Tradition and err'd at once and bethink your self if you please of a Medium which will infer that Point for you for Mr. G. you see denies it 17. From his mentioning the Arians you take occasi-to speak big and bear us in hand he was hard put to it and sought an occasion and affirm p. 6. you could get no Answer at all to the Case of the present Greek Church As if his Answer pincht on the Arians and were not as full to the present as past Greek Church It goes on this That those who err in Faith let them be who they will and the Error what it will and in what Time and Place you will all leave Tradition Whether the Case of the present Greek Church be the same with the Arians is matter of Fact with which Mr. G. did well not to meddle it is for you to make it out if you will make good your Argument Modern or Ancient Heresie is all one to his Answer which is applicable to all Heresie And you complain of the want of an Answer when you have one Pray if a Man should put an Objection to you about an Animal for Example and you answer it of all Animals would you think it just in him to quarrel with you for not mentioning the Rational or Irrational in particular And yet this is your Quarrel to Mr. G. All your magnificent Talk p. 6. of undeniably true granted by Mr. G. known to every one c. as apt as I see it is to make a Reader believe your Instance is notoriously true and against which Mr. G. has nothing to say cannot make me or any Man of Reason who examins the Point believe he has any Reason to say more till you do He has answer'd directly and positively deny'd that Error and Tradition can be found together in the Greek Church or any other modern or ancient There it sticks and you may drive it on farther it being your own Argument if you please Only when you tell us p. 6. that the present Greek Church in all its Differences with the Roman still pleaded Tradition and adher'd to it I wish you had told us whether you speak of Differences in matter of Faith or no. For Differences may be occasion'd by matters of Faith which are not Differences in Faith. If you do not you support your Instance very strongly and prove the consistence of Tradition with Error in Faith very Learnedly from Differences which belong not to Faith. If you do as Nature itches after strange
Sights I long to see by what Differences or any thing else it can be made out That an erring Church can still plead Tradition and adhere to it Not but that for Pleading much may be there are such confident doings in the World. As certain as it is that the Religion in England now is not the same which it was before Henry the Eighth I think there is confidence enough in England to plead Tradition for it 'T is but finding some Expression in an ancient Writer not couch'd with Prophetical foresight enough to avoid being understood as some will desire it should and it will serve turn to pretend to Antiquity and bear the Name of Tradition So I suspect you take it your self when you say the Arians insisted on Tradition For sure you do not think in earnest that Doctrin contrary to Consubstantiality was taught by Christ and believ'd from Father to Son till the Council of Nice This or some such thing may perhaps have been pleaded but for adhering to Tradition Your Servant For pray did Christ teach any Error When a Father believ'd what Christ taught him and the Son what the Father believ'd did not the Son too believe what Christ taught Run it on to the last Son that shall be born in the World must not every one believe what Christ taught if every one believ'd what his Father believ'd And will you go about to persuade us that there actually is a company of Men in the World who adher'd to this Method all Sons believing always as their Fathers did whereof the First believ'd as Christ taught and who notwithstanding err'd in matters of Faith They would thank you for making this out who would be glad that Christ taught Error and were not God. But it is not plainer that Two and Three make Five than it is that this cannot be And yet you would top it upon us and bear us in hand it is not only true but apparent in the Greek Church and known to every body who knows any thing of it The comfort is there is nothing for all these Assertions but your Word in which where you stick not to pass it for an arrant Impossibility I for my part do not think there is Absolute Certainty 18. I see not what there remains more but to bear in mind where we are At the Conference instead of answering Mr. G's Argument you would needs make one of your own which was in short The Greek Church goes upon Tradition and errs therefore another Church may err which goes upon Tradition There was no need to trouble the Greek Church for the matter It had been altogether as methodical and as much to purpose to have instanc'd in the Latin Church it self and never gon further and shorter to have spar'd Instancing too and have said without more ado Mr. G 's Conclusion is not true For you do no more till you make it appear that the Church you pitch upon for an Instance do's indeed adhere to Tradition and err But because this had been too open and People would have sooner perceiv'd that it had been to say I know not how to answer Mr. G 's Argument but will notwithstanding stand to it that his Conclusion is false you thought the best way to divert the Reader 's attention from what 's before him was to travel into Greece and yet when you come there do no more than if you had stay'd at home For you barely say there is both Tradition and Error in the Greek Church and you might have said as much of the Latin or without mentioning either have said Tho' Mr. G. has prov'd a Traditionary Church cannot err I say it can and has All is but Saying till you come to Proving Only to make a formal shew with an Antecedent and a Conclusion you say it with the Ceremony of an Argument of which since Mr. G. deny'd the Antecedent he had no more to do till you prov'd it 19. So it stood at the Conference and so it stands still and for ought I see is like to stand For tho' you have writ two Letters since there appears no word of Proof in either or sign that you do so much as think on it You only say your Instance over again and would have the Face you set upon it and great Words you give it make it pass for plain and undeniable when all the while it is plainly impossible and actually deny'd Mr. G. I hope will bide by his Answer because it is a good one true in it self and direct to the Point For it denies just what you assum'd That the Greek Church stood upon Tradition and fell at the same time into Error And speaking as you do or should do of Error in matter of Faith Euclid never made any thing plainer than it is That where ever Error comes in Tradition goes out Of necessity therefore if the present Greek Church have adher'd to Tradition it has not err'd If it have err'd it has not adher'd to Tradition Which of the two is the Case neither concerns Mr. G. nor can he dispute it without following bad Example that is falling to Argue now it is his Part to Answer You would pass it upon us that the Greek Church has err'd without swerving from Tradition and you must either make it out or acknowledge you have made much ado about nothing For your Instance is no Instance till it appears to be true Till you do it there is no Work for Mr. G. 20 At the close p. 7. you desire Mr. G. to make good two things and tell us why you desire it and what will follow if he accept or decline your Motion I neither understand how your Proposals follow from your Reasons nor your Consequences from your Proposals But think it no more worth losing time upon them than you thought it worth boasting of the Victory The First is That we Protestants have no Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of our Faith viz. the Scripture altho' we have a larger and firmer Tradition for it viz. the Consent of all Christian Churches than you Catholics can have for the Points of Faith in difference between us 21. I can tell you a better Reason for this Proposal than any you give There was no avoiding to own Absolute Certainty to a Man who talk'd of quitting your Communion without it But you knew well enough that your Absolute Certainty would be thwittled into Sufficient Certainty and Sufficient Certainty into no Certainty at last and had your Wits about you when you thought of this Proposal For it is in effect to say This Certainty of Faith is a troublesom matter and not for my turn Let us go to something else leave Faith and pass to Scripture of which you Mr. G. shall prove we have no Absolute Certainty For if I should go about to prove we have I foresee that while I am seeking harbor in my larger and firmer Tradition I shall venture to split upon
possibly remain not the same Will it shew us that a Cause can be without its Effect or an Effect without its Cause Will it shew us that a thing can be and not be at once Unless it can do such Feats as these you may keep your Notwithstanding to your self for any Service it will do you here For all the Notwithstandings in the world cannot hinder a thing which is true from being true nor the Proof which proves it to be true from being a Proof Mr. G 's Proof shews that Tradition from Father to Son is an Infallible Conveyance of Faith as plainly as that Men are Men And would you persuade us with the Rhetorick of your Notwithstanding that we do not see what we see Tho' you had brought twenty of them instead of one we could see nothing by them but that you had a good Fancy for they shew us nothing of the Object nor offer at it You shew us not how the Operations of Human Nature should be suspended in our present Case nor any thing which should or could suspend them but would have us believe Men were prodigiously forgetful or malicious purely for the sake of an Imagination of yours I pray rub up afresh your old Logical Notions and reflect whether it were ever heard of in University Disputes that when an Argument is advanc'd the Defendant is allow'd to make Objections against it and instead of Answering bid the Arguer prove his Conclusions to be true Notwithstanding all his Objections Consider how perfectly this confounds the Offices of the Disputant and Defendent and makes all Regular Discourse impossible Consider how this new Method of yours destroys the very possibility of ever concluding any thing that is the very Faculty of Reasoning For Objections being generally multipliable without end if all of them must be Solv'd e're any Argument concludes nothing will be concluded nor any Conclusion admitted And so a long so Farewel to Rational Nature Consider that Truth is built on its own Intrinsecal Grounds and not on the Solving Objections For your own Credits sake then with Learned Men and Logicians do not seek to evade with Notwithstandings but Answer fairly and squarely to the Argument as it lies Consider that who has found the Cause has found the Effect Mr. G. has found us a Cause of Infallible Conveyance and therefore has shew'd us an Infallible Conveyance You pretend that tho' there was the Cause there was not the Effect and this 't is known beforehand cannot be and you knew it as well as any body But you knew likewise there was no saving your Stakes without playing a new Game and therefore give you your due did all that could be done in trying to divert our sight from a Matter plain before us and amuse us us with a Matter of Fact which you are sure will be obscure enough by that time it is handled long enough The Terms you put viz. Tradition Error and the Greek Church must needs bring into Dispute whether such and so many Quotations or some one or two Men disclaiming their Tenet to be a Novelty be a Proof of Tradition from Father to Son whether the Error be any Error and whether and for how much an Error in Faith and how much of it belongs to Divinity whether the Greek Church be ingag'd by a Citation from a Greek Author of two that be cited one against another which shall be preferr'd and thought to speak the sense of his Church and which is a Latiniz'd which a frank Grecian And who shall see through the Mists which these Disputes will raise More too will fall in in process of time There will be wrangling about the sense of Words the propriety of Phrases the preference of Readings and twenty such important quarrels which will tire out every body and satisfie no body In short you saw that if you could perswade People not to think the Church of Rome Infallible till all be said which will occur to be said of the Greek Church you are safe enough For Doomsday will come before that day Till then you may carry it with a shew of Erudition because there must be abundance of Greek cited And this is all which can come of your Instance and I wish it were not all you had in your Eye 31. In the mean time you have not answer'd Mr. G. because you have found no fault in any Proposition or in the Inference of his Argument and therefore it rests with you to answer it He has answer'd you because he has found this fault with your Instance which you make your Antecedent that it is not true and that the Greek Church did not at once err in Faith and adhere to Tradition and therefore it rests again with you to prove it and yet while you are Debtor both ways you call upon him to pay Ere we part Take this along with you that the Debt which you are precisely bound to satisfie first is to answer his Argument and till you do this you can claim no right to Object or Argue I am SIR Your humble Servant The Second Catholick Letter OR REFLECTIONS ON THE Reflecters Defence OF Dr. Stillingfleet's First Letter to Mr. G. Against the ANSWER To the Arguing Part of it Published with Allowance LONDON Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn 1687. TO THE READER PErhaps it has scarce been seen hitherto that all our Polemical Contests were reduc'd within so narrow a compass My First Letter insisted chiefly on Two short Discourses Whereof the one undertook to shew the Nullity of the Rule of Faith claim'd by Dr. St. and his Protestants The other the Absolute Certainty of the Catholic Rule and the whole Controversie was in short about the Certainty or Uncertainty of Christian Faith. Both of those Discourses were presum'd by us to be Conclusive and so we offer'd a fair Advantage to our Adversary if he could shew clearly any of our Propositions was false or their Connexion slack Hence I had good hopes that Reply of mine would have brought our Controversie very near an end had Dr. St's Return been suitable to our Attempts Especially it had brought the Business to a Crisis had he been pleas'd to shew the Absolute Certainty of his Rule or of his Faith as grounded on that Rule which was justly expected But Error Nonplust has already convinc'd the World That the bringing any Dispute to Principles or Grounds agrees not with their Constitution who have none While our Expectations were thus rais'd no News could we hear of Dr. St. An Answer comes out from another hand not very obliging to him in my opinion whether he were or were not preacquainted with it For if he were and 't is hard to imagine that a Piece writ in his Defence had not both his Direction Inspection and Approbation People will suspect he foresaw what would come of it and was glad the Shame should fall on another and that he has but little
to justifie themselves for not believing rashly or for fear of making them sure of their Salvation 4. I had alledg'd farther that till Protestants produce the Grounds which prove their Faith to be True it cannot with Reason be held Truth You put my Discourse first in my Words only leaving out those which did not please you and then disguise it in your own and laugh at it for being too plainly True For plain Truth it seems is a ridiculous thing with you and you are of opinion that the more plain it is that you ought to bring your Proofs the less you are oblig'd to bring them Thence you start aside to tell us that the vulgar Catholic has less certainty than the vulgar Protestant because the one has only the Word of his Priest the other has the Word of his Minister and the Word of God in Scripture besides Do you think Catholic Priests are at liberty to tell the vulgar what Faith they please as your Ministers may interpret Scripture as seems best to their Judgment of Discretion when you cannot but know they dare not teach them any Faith but what the Church holds nor does the Church hold any but upon Tradition Again You do well to say your People have it in Scripture or in a Book for they have it no where else And you know the vulgar Socinians and Presbyterians and all the rest have it as much there as your vulgar Protestants notwithstanding all you have said or can say and then I suppose you do not think they Truly have the Word of God on their side unless you think the Word of God says different things to different Hearers When you prove that you and your Ministers have any Certain means of making it out that the Sense which by their explaining and catechising they put upon the Written Characters is truly God's Meaning you will do something make many Converts and my self one among the rest Till then to possess your vulgar Protestants with a Conceit of having the Word of God is meerly to delude them Sure you wanted a Common-place to furnish out your Paragraph or else writ it in a Dream For to tell me that Truth can depend no more upon the Saying of a Romish Priest than of an English Minister when I tell you it depends not on any private man's Sayings is not a Reply of a man well awake In two words Bring you Proofs say I the Saying that is the No-proof of a Minister is as good as the No-proof of a Priest say you And the short and the long is No Proof I thank you 5. But two things say you follow from my Position which you fear I will not grant The First is That if we cannot with Reason hold a Truth till the Intrinsical Grounds of it be produc'd we cannot with reason hold any thing for a Truth namely because the Church of Rome hath determined it for her Determination is no Intrinsical Ground of the Truth but only an outward Testimony or Declaration of it and then what 's become either of her Infallibility or Authority to command our Faith As slips of honest Ignorance deserve compassion and instruction and I do not know this to be any more I will be so charitable as to set you right Authority amongst those who already admit it for True has Force to prove that to be Truth which depends on it and will conclude against those who allow its veracity if it be shewn to be engag'd against them But it has not this Effect upon Human Nature by its proper Power as 't is meer Authority but because Intrinsical Mediums justifie it to be worthy to be rely'd on Whence let that Authority come into dispute it will lose it's Credit unless it can be prov'd by such Mediums to deserve what it pretends to And hence you see we go about to demonstrate the Infallibility of the Church's Human Authority in deriving down Christian Faith. To clear this farther I advance this Fundamental Position viz. No Authority deserves any Assent farther than Reason gives it to deserve And therefore without abating any thing of our respect we may affirm that the Authority of the whole Catholick Church would be no greater than that of an old Woman or one of your sober Enquirers were there no more Reason to be given for believing the former than there is for believing the later And consonantly to this Doctrin we declare to you that When Dr. St. comes to argue either out of Authority of Writers or Instances depending on their Authority against Tradition he shall be prest to make out by Intrinsical Mediums they are Absolutely Certain or they shall deservedly be look'd upon and contemn'd as Inconclusive By this time I hope you see that All Truths are built on Intrinsical Mediums and that whereas you apprehended they would overthrow our Church's Testimony or Authority such Mediums in case we produce them are the best means to establish it and give it force upon our selves and others As also how it comes that the Church can oblige to Belief which is not by a dry commanding our Faith as you apprehend but by having its Human Authority so solidly grounded upon Reason that it self becomes a Motive able to beget according to the best Maxims of Rational Nature such an Assent in us to this matter of Fact that Christ and his Apostles taught such Doctrins But what a put off is this We say Truth is not therefore Truth because of mens bare Sayings or Authority and therefore demand your Proofs from Intrinsical Mediums for thither it must come e're it be known for Truth to make out what you pretend Your Answer in effect is You are afraid to do it lest you should destroy our Church's Infallibility and Authority How much is our Church in your Debt that the Care of Her makes you careless of those Souls in your own Church to whom you owe this satisfaction 6. The second thing you fear I will not grant is A Iudgment of Discretion to common People with which they may discern the Intrinsical Grounds of Truth You gave your self at first the Character of a scrupulous man and I see by this you have a mind to maintain it You know that those who write and print can have no design their Books should not be read and you know those that read will and must judge of what they do read and yet your scrupulosity can fear I will not allow the Common People to judge of the Intrinsical Grounds of Truth who take pains they may judge put it into their power to judge and out of my own and so cannot hinder them tho' I would Indeed I think it no great sign of a Judgment of Discretion to pretend to discern the Truth of Faith by Lights that do not shew it to be True and upon such a Judgment I wish and labour People should not venture their Souls But I disallow no other Iudgment of Discretion full
well knowing that the more Judgment a man has and the more he uses it the sooner and better he will discern that the Doctrin of Christ cannot be securely learnt from those of Your and Dr. St's Principles But Why all this Or How come I to stand in your way Do I hinder you from shewing Protestants that They are Certain of their Faith They allow a Judgment of Discretion if it stick there whether I do or no. But you cannot gratifie Catholics with Proof it seems because they are against Judgment of Discretion nor Protestants because they are for it that is in plain terms you will not prove the Certainty of your Faith at all You conclude very conformably that I have set us all on even Ground Yes most Mathematically even For I set Absolute Certainty on the one side and Vncertainty on the other and this in your Language is even Ground 7. Your next Paragraph says I fall upon the Certainty of Protestant Faith which I hope easily to overthrow The Reader cannot but apprehend now that I am making Arguments against it of which you know very well I did not think Where do I fall upon this Matter Why I said Suppose Mr. G. could not prove Protestants are certain are they therefore certain The meaning of which words is clearly this that the Certainty of Protestant Faith must depend on their own Proofs for it not on any Man 's being able or not able to prove the contrary which is what Dr. St. would have put upon us So that to avoid proving which was demanded you put upon me the direct contrary to what I affirm'd viz. That the Certainty of Protestant Faith does depend upon our not proving they have none whereas I contend it does not depend upon it What shifts are you put to that you may escape this dangerous business of proving your Faith Certain Well but did I say true or no You trouble not your Head with such impertinent thoughts but fall to prophesie what I imagin'd This say you he first imagins that all the certainty of our Faith is this That Papists cannot prove it to be uncertain and that then I make sport with my own Imagination Better and better Not to take notice of your shuffling in that Papists cannot prove Protestants are not Certain which I am very far from imagining because I said our not-proving the contrary is no Certainty to Protestants he will have me imagin it is their Certainty nay All their Certainty when he knows I am aware and confess they pretend to Scripture for it and p. 26. urg'd them to make out they had Absolute Certainty by It. The rest is to tell me I play and you will be serious And your way of being serious when you have chosen to fall upon this Question whether Protestants become Certain by our not proving them Uncertain is without saying a word to it to skip to another Paragraph of mine 8. Where I had said that Any man may find it confest to his hand by Protestants that they have no Absolute Certainty of their Faith For which I cited Dr. Tillotson And you tell me first that Dr. Tillotson is an excellent man and so he is for he excells even your self which requires a great Talent in your way of handling Controversie in all your Arts. Next to take your turn in imagining you imagin single Dr. Tillotson too many for all the Traditionary Catholicks to answer his Rule of Faith. And I imagin that Dr. Tillotson knows the contrary For I have been inform'd Dr. Tillotson had the offer of an Answer from a Traditionary Catholic long ago upon condition he would contribute his Credit to get it printed which he thought not sit to do Since I perceive you do not know an Answer when you see it unless the word Answer be in the Title-page I will not tell you it is answer'd already tho' I believe I can make it good But I will venture a fair Wager with you it will be answer'd in his own Formal way every jot as soon as Reason against Railery Lastly You deny that this Confession That Protestants have no Certainty no Absolute Certainty if it please you of their Faith is to be found in the pages cited or any other part of Dr. Tillotson's Book If you do not understand English I cannot help it but any one that does may find in the last of the pages cited As far as silence gives consent it is own'd by Dr. Tillotson himself For it was laid before him by Reason against Railery and with him it has lain these fifteen Years and yet you would perswade us you see it not nor I neither if I may be believ'd against my self 9. Your Rhetorick Sir is very great if it will do you this piece of Service but let us hear it however I had said to Dr. St. p. 23. You seem to grant you are thus Absolutely-Certain or Infallible by vertue of Tradition Upon which Theme you thus declame How confess we have no Certainty no Absolute Certainty I beseech you again and yet seem to grant we are Infallible and that too by Vertue of Tradition Some people had need of good Memories As if it were so strange a thing for Protestants to contradict one another or the same man himself or that there needed Memory to observe what passes every day By the favour of your Exclamations Dr. St. did say at the Conference that They are Absolutely Certain that they now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles by the Divine Revelations contained in the Writings of the New Testament and of those Revelations by the Vniversal Testimony of the Christian Church And in his First Letter he did desire Mr. G. to prove that they have no Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of their Faith altho' they have a larger and firmer Tradition for it than we can have for the points of Faith in difference And Dr. Tillotson did say in his Rule of Faith p. 118. We are not infallibly certain that any Book speaking of Scripture is so ancient as it pretends to be or that it was written by him whose Name it bears or that this is the sence of such and such passages in it It is possible all this may be otherwise Now if one of those Writers do not seem to grant that they are Absolutely Certain or Infallible and that too by vertue of Tradition and the Other confess that they have no Absolute Certainty of their Faith English is no intelligible Language in England If you think this a Contradiction you may talk with your excellent men about it and let me alone till you can shew I talk against my self by relating barely what others say Must my Memory be blam'd when their Judgments are in fault For a Contradiction it is if Absolutely Certain and Infallible be the same which I both prov'd formerly and it will come
Iudgments and ask if the Letter be a Way to Them and you reply it is not a way to the Incompetent And so you who good squeamish Gentleman fall into a Scruple at the very name of Cards can play at Cross-purposes all along very freely even when Souls are at Stake I desire you to remember that I speak of a Way which they who take shall and that surely arrive at Christ's Faith. You talk of a way by which men so and so qualify'd may arrive at it As if may be were any thing to shall and must be or the qualifications of Travellers any thing to the way I foretold I should have nothing but an unconcerning Return for an Answer And you have made me tho' against my will prophesie not bating so much of my Prediction as the scornful Iest. For there is the Mountain and the Mouse and Reading a Lecture in Logick to verifie it 30. You conclude with an Argument against my Conclusion You I say who are Answering and have nothing to do with Arguing But what would we have Men who are uneasie will alwaies be shifting places All our earnest Sollicitations could not wring one Argument out of you when it was your turn to prove and now 't is your turn to Answer you thrust your Arguments upon us unbidden Nor is there any keeping you from falling into the same Fault with your Suppositions that Dr. St. did with his Instance You suppose then 1. That the Scripture is God's Word And so do I too provided you mean the true Sense of it For a false Sense whatever you think is in my Judgment not God's Word 2. That it was written to be understood Undoubtedly but not by every one barely by means of the Letter All Books are written to be understood Grammar for Children to understand Construction Mathematical Books for those who will understand Mathematicks and yet those Books without Masters will make but few Grammarians or Mathematicians 3. That it is written for the Instruction of Private Men. Yes but not for the only or sufficient means of their Instruction barely by the Letter 4. That they are concern'd to understand it Yes again and as much concern'd not to misunderstand it 5. That they may believe and live as it directs They not onely may but ought But pray remember that It directs no believing or living according to a false sense 6. That they have means left them of God for the Vnderstanding of it so far as it is of necessary concernment to them Yes and that Absolutely Certain Means the publick Interpretation of the Church or Tradition 7. And that using those Means as they ought they may understand it Never mince it with may they shall and certainly shall understand it who use those means From all you conclude at last And thus it is to them the way to know surely what Christ and his Apostles taught as necessary to their salvation How The way to those who use those Means Why this is just as I say But what becomes of those who use not those Means 'T was ill forgot when your Hand was in at supposing not to suppose in amongst the rest that Private Interpretation is the Means lest by God for understanding Scripture For if publick Interpretation be those Means as it needs must since I have prov'd that Private is not the Scripture plainly is no Way to those who only rely on the Private Means to understand it And your Protestants are much beholding to your Argument which shews that Scripture interpreted as they interpret it by private Iudgment is no Way to them And I were very unreasonable if I should take offence at your Challenge which bids me shew when I can that your suppositions are Vnreasonable or False Not I believe me For I should be very cross-natur'd to fall out with a man who takes my part 31. Thus you have try'd as you call it to answer my Argument and have succeeded even in your own Judgment I guess very sorrily For had you been Confident of your performance against it as it is you would never have thought of changing it as you do here p. 17. Men who have put by a Thrust are not sollicitous to instruct their Adversary how he should have Thrust And yet you will needs be teaching me how I should have done to have made sure work that is to have been sure to hit your Buckler I mean not to lose time on your Argument It were ridiculous for me to amuse my self with what never was nor will be said by any but your self No body else would have left out the principal Consideration using the Rule and so coming to Right Faith by using it As if a Rule would make a Line of it self tho' no body draw by it And a Way bring to the Journeys End even those who travel not in it In a word your Argument has all the faults of your Answer in short and onely shews you can speak from the purpose more solemnly and methodically by way of Syllogism 32. After you had thus nobly acquitted your self in answering my short Discourse you proceed in the same Method to answer Mr. G's Argument for the Infallibility of the Catholick Church Which e're I come to examin I must first say something to your Preliminaries 33. You doubt whether I think it needs any Proof that the Church of Rome is Infallible To those who reflect on the force of a vast Human Testimony attesting notorious matter of Fact and what Assent it claims from Human Nature in parallel occasions I do indeed judge it does not so much need Proof as Reflection But why should I think it needs no Proof against You who we see plainly have interpreted your selves out of your Natural Sentiments Your reason Sir because I say 'T is in vain to talk against one Infallibility without setting up another Now it has been demonstrated to you and never yet answered That Infallibility and Certainty are the same and Nature tells us that All Discourse supposes something Certain otherwise it may run on endlesly and so nothing can ever come to be concluded How is it possible then to discourse against Infallibility or any thing else without setting up and proceeding upon something that is Certain or Infallibly true By your constant jesting whenever Infallibility comes in the way you discover your anger against it because you know you can produce nothing that is truly Certain to ground your Faith. Notwithstanding the vulgar use to say commonly I am infallibly Certain of such a thing yet none laughs at them or thinks them extravagant And must we be afraid to use the same Language in our Controversie because your Ears are so tender or rather your Grounds so soft they cannot bear it If you will needs declare against Infallible Certainty be but so candid as to say still you are Fallibly Certain and see how your Readers will smile at your Folly And yet you ought
thing than the Credit of those two or three First Witnesses goes 'T is the First Source of a Testimony which gives the succeeding ones all their weight to prove the Thing that is witnest to be True 'T is that from which the Largeness and Firmness of a Testimony brought to evince the Truth of any thing is to be measured or calculated Since then the stream of Tradition for Doctrin had for its Source innumerable Multitudes of those Christians in the First Age in many places of the World who heard the Apostles preach it and saw them settle the Practice of it in the respective Churches but the Original Testifiers that such a Book was writ by such or such an Apostle or Evangelist were very few in comparison sometimes perhaps not past two or three It cannot with any shew of Sense be pretended that the Tradition for the several Books of Scripture is in any degree comparable in either regard to the Tradition for Doctrin Your next Answer is that This Vniversal Tradition is no more but Human Testimony and that can be no ground for Infallibility which excludes all possibility of Errour Pray why not If things were so order'd as indeed they are that the Testifiers could neither be deceiv'd in the Doctrin being bred and brought up to it nor conspire to deceive us in telling the World in any Age that the new Doctrin they had invented was immediately delivered then it was not possible any Errour could come in under the notion of a Doctrin delivered from the beginning But is not your Tradition for Scripture Human Testimony too And if that can be erroneous may not all Christian Faith by your Principles be perhaps a company of Lying Stories You must be forc'd by your own words here to confess it but I dare say your Parishioners should you openly avow it would hate you for the Blasphemy You would tell them I doubt not as you do us that Moral Certainty is enough to stand on such a Foundation that is such a Certainty as may deceive you and by a necessary consequence may haste to overturn the whole Fabrick of Christian Faith. In the mean time let 's see how manifestly you contradict Dr. St. when you should defend him He avow'd Absolute Certainty for the Book of Scripture and this upon the Foundation of Tradition and you tell us here Tradition can ground but Moral Certainty Now all the World till you writ counter distinguisht Absolute and Moral Certainty which you jumble in one But distinct they ever were are and shall be for the Word Moral signifies a Diminution or Imperfection of Certainty and Absolute plainly expresses the Perfection of it whence 't is Evident that either you contradict Dr. St. perhaps not without his private Order or he himself We shall have all words shortly lose their signification for no other reason but to give you room to shift this way and that when you are too close prest with Reason 35. Now since Dr. St. had granted that Tradition is Absolutely Certain for Scripture and I had prov'd that Absolute Certainty was the same with Infallibility what should hinder me from inferring that unless some special difficulty be found in other things that light into the same channel it must bring them down infallibly too Your Gifts of Interpretation expounds these Words of mine thus These other things are things unwritten in that Holy Book I do assure you Sir you are mightily mistaken I never told you yet that all Faith was not contain'd in Scripture explicitly or implicitly What I meant was that the whole Body of Christs Doctrin and not only that such a Book was Scripture nay the self-same Doctrin of Faith that is contain'd in Scripture comes down by Tradition or the Churche's Testimony But with this Difference as to the Manner of it among others that the Church that testifies it having the sense of it in her Breast can explain her meaning so as to put it out of all Question to Learners Doubters and Enquirers which the Scripture cannot Whence we need not fish for our Faith in the channel of Tyber as your great Wit tells us St. Peter's Ship the Church that caught so many Fishes at first the Body of Primitive Christians who were the first deliverers of Christ's Doctrin hath stor'd up provision enough for the succession of Faith to the Worlds end There we find it to our Hands 'T is your sober Enquirers who Fish for it among dead unsensed Characters and in the Lake of Geneva from whence to save the labour of going thither you and your Friends are deriving a great Channel to run into Thames over-swell it's Banks and drown all the Churches Lacus Lemanus is your Tyber Geneva your Rome and Iohn Calvin the Prime of your new Apostles your St. Peter 36. All this is but prelude But now comes Mr. G's Argument and therefore we are to expect now however you but trifled hitherto more pertinent close Discourse The first Proposition was this All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day they did yesterday so up to the time of our B. Saviour This you seem to deny in regard they may perhaps be so call'd from their adhereing to a Tradition which reaches not so high as our Saviours time but only pretends to it whither we only pretend to it or no will be seen hereafter when the Fourth Proposition comes to be examin'd In the mean time pray jumble not two Questions which are distinct and ought to be kept so The whole Business here is about the use or Sense of the word Traditionary how we both take it in our present Controversy Now that we both agree in the Notion of Tradition whence Traditionary is deriv'd is evident by this that we lay claim to such a Tradition as reaches to Christ and go about to prove it you deny our Claim and endeavour to disprove it But 't is evident you deny the same thing to us which we lay Claim to otherwise we should not talk of the same Thing and so should not understand one another nor could discourse together wherefore 't is manifest we both agree in the Notion or Meaning of that Word however we disagree in the Application of it to the Persons Nor do we pretend in the least what you would put upon us here to inferr hence that this body of Christians that now adheres to it did always so but only contend that if they did not ever adhere to it they must have deserted it and taken up another Rule and so cease to be true Claimers of a Tradition from Christ or Traditionary Christians Moreover we judge we have right to lay Claim to it till we be driven out of it by a former and better Title since we were in possession of this Rule at the time of the Reformation or held all our Faith upon that tenure 37. The second Proposition is this If they follow this Rule they can
never err in Faith. Whence follows the Third And therefore they are Infallible Your Answer Sir to this Can they adhere still to what was deliver'd and yet err in Faith if what was still deliver'd was Christ's Doctrin Your Answer is His Friend tells us this is palpably self-evident And does not his Adversary confess it too Do not your self acknowledge it in your 21 st and 22 d. Pages and say you must lay by your Reason turn Romanist and renounce your Private Iudgment if you did not grant it And can the Reader so well acquainted with your shuffles judge it less than palpably self-evident which your humour so restiff to grant any thing tho' never so clearly prov'd is forc't to yield to Lastly does his Friend only tell you 't is self-evident Does not he prove it to be as Evident as 't is that the same is the same with it self And is not such a thing Evident by its own light or out of the very Terms that is self-evident Pray Sir when I prove any thing let the Reader know I did so and do not thus constantly pretend still that I only said so or told you so A pretty Stratagem to avoid speaking to my Proofs but how honest let the Reader judge 38. But say you unless this Tradition be longer than it is yet prov'd to be they may follow it and err all along in following it No doubt of it if it fall short of reaching up to Christs we may follow it and Err by following it as all Hereticks do in following their novel Traditions That yet is a very pretty Word for it puts the Reader into a conceit that we have produc't nothing from the beginning of the World to the very time of your Writing to prove our Tradition reaches to our Saviours dayes and yet if we challenge you that we have prov'd it in the very next words of our Argument you can make your escape by saying that you are not yet come to speak to that point and that you meant no more Who would think there should be such Vertue in a petty Monosyllable as at once to disgrace us and save you harmless The second Answer to this Point is Let it the Tradition spoken of be never so long yet if they follow it not they may err Very good The Arguers Words are If they follow this Rule they cannot err in Faith which implies that if they do not they may err and you say the self-same over again with an ayr of Opposition and there 's an Answer for us now As if to conform to your Adversaries Words were to confute him any thing will serve rather than say nothing 39. The fourth Proposition brought to prove that this Tradition we lay Claim to does indeed reach to Christ and his Apostles is this They could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it And here lies the main Stress of the Controversy between us for you have granted here Page 21.22 that were this Rule follow'd they must still enjoy the same Faith Christ and his Apostles taught and this Discourse is brought to shew they did follow it We are to expect then that your choicest Engines must be set on work to baffle a Proof which if it holds brings such dangerous consequences after it and indeed concludes the whole Controversy Your first Attempt is in plain terms most Evident a most Unconscionable Falsification After you had P. 21. recited this fourth Proposition you immediately add Our Author undertakes to make this out more clearly therefore we will hear what he saith for our better Information P. 18. He asks did Christ teach any Errours and so you go on reciting that whole Argument which proves that if the first Fathers believ'd what Christ taught and the succeeding Sons all along believ'd what their Fathers did the last-born Son in the World believ'd the same that Christ taught Pray Sir play fair above-board You have directly falsify'd that whole Discourse by pretending here that the words you cite were to make out that Fourth Proposition clearly viz. That we could not innovate in Faith c. whereas the truth of that Fourth Proposition was made out by me nine pages before viz. p. 9. and the Discourse you mention here as intended to make it out is found p. 18 19. and levell'd at a quite different business viz. that a Church could not adhere to Tradition and at the same time erre as you pretended we must grant of the Greek Church Clear your Credit when you can I charge it upon you as a voluntary Insincerity but you shall never clear it unless by putting out your Reader 's eyes or perswading him not to use them So that it seems let us bring what Arguments we will you need do no more when they are too hard to answer but apply them to a wrong Point they were never mean't to prove and then 't is easy to shew manifestly they are frivolous and good for nothing In the mean time who sees not that your Cause as well as your Credit is run a ground and like to split when you are put to such shifts I wonder how this gross Fault could escape Dr. St's acute sight if he perus'd and review'd your Reflexions 40. Your Second Answer or rather Cavill is that you could make as fine sport with the word Notwithstanding as I did but that it seems it spoils your Gravity Yet you can dispence with that Formal humour very easily as oft as a hard Point presses you especially when you are put to Proving nor are we now to learn that you can laugh at a feather when you have nothing of more weight to say But where lies the Jest I never excepted against the Word but the misapplying it by Dr. St. Who when he was at a loss to give an Answer to Mr. G's Demonstration very learnedly and advisedly thought it best to deny the Conclusion Object an Argument of his own against it and then bid the Opponent prove his Thesis which he had prov'd already notwithstanding his Argument When you find me thus untowardly making use of That or any other Word you are at liberty to except against me In the mean time put this in the number of your Reflections that when a man pretends to make sport when there is no occasion he but discovers his own Folly. But the Point is Can you make good his Logick in this irregular Proceeding This is what we expected from a writer that undertakes to defend him But the Task is so insuperable that neither your wonderful Learning nor Dr. St. himself nor all the World to help him can ever be able to do it unless he can make the Schools renounce all Rules of Art and Mankind their Reason But what were my words that were so mirthful Why I deny'd that a Body of men could adhere to Tradition and notwithstanding erre Is here any occasion of
fine sport Or cannot I use a plain word in the Context of my Discourse falling in naturally because he had misus'd it unskillfully and inartificially I see by this sliding over it so gentilely this is all the Answer I am to expect to my 10 11 12 13 33 d. and 34 th pages where such Errours against all Methods of Dispute are charg'd upon the Dr. as would banckrupt any mans Credit who had not a large stock of it laid in beforehand And all the favour his best Friends can do him to excuse his Person is to refund it upon his Cause 41. But tho' it was granted that Discourse of mine cited by you pag. 21. was so evident that it was both Vnreasonable and absurd to deny it yet it must not scape without some animadversion A Fault there must be in it that 's decree'd and what should that Fault be but that good one of being too Evident And this as was shewn formerly is one of the new tricks taken up to evade Answering When our Arguments are too clear to be baffled by any even plausible Reason being next to self-evident or easily reducible to it to save us the labour you reduce it thither your self but first vilely deform'd that it may become a fit Subject for your Jesting way of Confuting We will grant him say you it is impossible to prove that men have err'd notwithstanding they never err'd Very excellent But do you not grant much more viz. that It is impossible they should adhere to our Rule and yet erre You do and in doing so you grant the whole substance of my Discourse And so let them laugh that win I am sure you have lost by this forc't Confession that Tradiction is a certain Rule and that I have prov'd it evidently Which no man will grant of your Rule that is in his wits nor can the wit of all the men in the World ever prove it to be such as you have yielded ours to be 42. The same disingenuity often repeated gives all the force to your next Sect. For 1. You pretend we but suppose it hitherto that these Traditionary Christians adhere undecliningly to a Tradition descending really and invariably from Christ and his Apostles c. How only suppos'd hitherto Was it not prov'd and not barely suppos'd in the Fourth Proposition and made good by me p. 9. If you will not come up to it but stand hovering fencing jesting falsifying and capering about by the way must we be blam'd as barely supposing it hitherto 2. You falsify our words For who ever said a Supposition is Self-evident which every one sees while 't is barely a Supposition is not Evident at all Why quote you not the page where we say this Because you would not be caught 3. You falsify again without care of credit or regard to your Reader in affirming that from this self-evident Supposition I necessarily conclude thus suppose Traditionary Christians neither did nor could erre it is certain they neither did nor could erre But why again no place quoted Because you had again falsify'd it and durst not hazard discovery 43. I perceive your play here p. 22. is to disjoint our Discourse and jumble all the pieces of it confusedly together and so it must be my Work to rectify what you had so industriously unravell'd Since then Mr. G. had made use of these words Traditionary Christians their Sense was first to be explain'd and therefore I declar'd that the meaning of them was such Christians as proceeded upon an Immediate Delivery not only at present or since the Council of Trent or some hundreds of years before as you put upon us p. 20. but upwards till Christ's time and all the advantage I gain'd thence was that in case they did not adhere to it all along it would follow that the pretended Traditionary Christians our selves were not really such and so the Subject of our Dispute would be lost and we should receive a perfect foil Could any thing be clearer or more candid Yet how many shuffles and baffling Jests you have been pleas'd to bestow on us instead of admitting so clear a Proposition to how many wrong ends you have apply'd it never thought on by us we have already seen For the Truth is you are so horribly afraid of any connected Discourse that you dare not so much as suffer it to peep out but it alarums your Jealousie no not the very signification of the single words to be distinctly known or the most Evident Proposition tho' it be Indifferent to either Cause to be admitted Now let 's see what you say to it you make it amount to this Suppose Traditionary Christians neither did nor could err it is Certain they neither did nor could err Which you call my necessary Conclusion from my self-evident Supposition You improve mightily Sir in your Talent of Insincerity Our entire Discourse runs thus if we must needs put it into Form for you Those who adhere to Tradition all along from the beginning neither did nor could err in Faith otherwise they would not be Adherents to Tradition or Traditionary Christians But this Body of Christians call'd The Roman Catholick Church does now and did from time to time adhere to Tradition Therefore this Body of Christians call'd The Roman Catholick Church neither did or could err in Faith. This is Mr. G's Argument The Major is granted by your self The Proof of the Minor is contain'd in Mr. G's Fourth Proposition which I have shown to be valid in my First Letter p. 9. and the Discussion of it is now under hand The Conclusion is in greatest danger lest you should according to the new True-Protestant Logick deny it again and bring some Instance against it otherwise since it follows evidently it will shift well enough for it self This I say is our intire Discourse all the rest is your flashy Drollery your ever faithful Friend when you are perplext how to Answer 44. The Argument then for the Perpetuity of our Tradition from Christ's time runs thus They could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it To enforce this Argument I discours'd thus You do not I suppose desire we should prove that men had alwaies Memories or that Christians were never malicious enough to damn themselves and their Posterities wittingly and yet it can stick no where else Yet you are such a bold Undertaker that you will needs prove they may be both thus Forgetful and thus Malicious A hard Task one would think especially since the Argument proceeds upon Forgetting and Altering what they Remembred and Held Yesterday Your First Reason to prove they might be thus Forgetful is because Otherwise it is hard to say why the Pen-men of the Scripture should have been at the needless pains to write it Let 's apply this to the Argument and your Discourse is this 'T is hard to say that Christians
could have remembred their Yesterday's Faith had not Scripture been writ Now pray Sir be serious and tell us Do you think there is any danger or even possibility of this among the very Protestants in England tho' they had never a Bible to read to morrow How many of them read not so much as a Chapter in three or four days how many not in a much longer time nay how few of them read all their Faith there in a Year or even in their whole Life and yet they retain the memory not only of their Yesterdays but last Years Faith What a weakness is this to suppose Miracles must be done for no other end but that you may answer our Argument The Reasons why Scripture was writ you might have read in St. Paul to Timothy where there is no such thing as to make men remember their Yesterdays Faith nor that Scripture is of Necessity at all but only that 't is Profitable for many Uses there enumerated Your Second Argument to confute our Demonstration is a Text 2 Pet. 1.15 by which you will convince us Mens memories are not alwaies so faithful You must mean to remember their Yesterdays Faith for this Degree of Memory only the Argument insists on But what says that B. Apostle I will endeavour that you may be able after my Decease to have these things alwaies in remembrance Now there is not so much as one Word in the whole Chapter concerning the remembring or forgetting their Faith much less the Faith they held Yesterday or leaving their Faith in Writing for that purpose but only Faith suppos'd of remembring his particular Exhortations to Good Life and by thus inculcating them to stir them up as 't is said v. 13. to Christian Virtue and leaving such things in Writing to that end Now such Spiritual and Moral Instructions are both easily Intelligible especially since he had taught the same to them formerly and Man 's Natural Corruption making even good men apt to slide back from the high degree of Perfection in which they had been educated no doubt a Letter left by that Holy Apostle now near his death as he there tells them would strike them more feelingly and excite them more effectually to pursue that Course of Holy Life in which he had instructed them What miserable Stuff is this Would not Faith have an excellent Basis did it depend on Scripture interpreted by your Private Judgments When this one Instance manifests you have the boldness to quote Scripture for any thing tho' never so disparate and unconcerning and then blasphemously nick-name it God's Word when 't is nothing at all to the purpose But I beseech you Sir let 's have the Return of one Scholar to another If our Argument lye too open or the Connexion in it be too slack speak to it as you ought but think not your Private Interpretations a competent Solution to Demonstrations If such wretched Answers may serve the turn the Schools and Universities may shut up Shop and Reasoning bid adieu to the World Every Fop will find a Text he can hook in nor will he fail of interpreting it blindly to his own purpose when he is gravell'd with an Argument and of calling it God's Word when he has done Who will not see you are sinking when you catch at such Straws and weak Twigs to keep you above Water 45. By this time the Reader will be satisfy'd that Notwithstanding all you have answer'd Men had Memory enough not to forget their Yesterdays Faith Next you go about to prove Christians may be malicious enough to alter it May not Christians say you p. 23. through malice and wickedness be as careless of preserving the Faith as in maintaining Holiness in themselves or their Posterity when they know that Sin is as damnable as Errour Be Judge your self Do not many of your Congregation and the like may be said of all Sects sin often and yet few or none of them desert their Faith once The reasons why the Parallel holds not are these 1. Sins are generally private at least Men do for the most part endeavour and hope to conceal their Faults for fear of shame and discredit But the Change of Faith must be profest and open otherwise it alters not the case and Posterity will still believe on according as things appear outwardly 2. Sinners are seldome Malicious to that degree as to resolve firmly to persist so to the end of their Lives but generally fall out of frailty and intend and hope to repent And so this very thing will oblige them still to hold to their former Faith which as Experience tells them furnishes Sinners with means of Repentance 3. Man's Nature being inclin'd to Truth scarce one man tells a Lye but hopes to cloak it But here when they deliver another Faith for the same that was held Yesterday every man must know his Neighbour to be an abominable shameless Lyar and the Concern being so Sacred must hold himself and all his fellow-Alterers the wickedst men living Unless it be said they went conscientiously upon some other ground than Tradition for to pretend to be sav'd by Tenets held upon no ground at all is absolutely impossible to consist with Rational Nature But 't is impossible they should take up another Ground Because if they could not innovate in Faith they could not innovate in that upon which they held all their Faith. Nor could they be certain but all their former Faith might be renounc'd if a new Rule of Faith were taken up To hear of which could not consist with the temper of Christians to bear a loss for all their Faith. Besides Men are more tenacious of their Principles especially if they have gain'd a vast Credit by their long Continuance than they are to relinquish all they have receiv'd upon those Principles Again Tradition is the Authority of the whole Ecclesia Docens the Chiefest part of I might say the Ecclesia Credens too witnessing the deliver'd Faith which is so vast a Body that it could never were there nothing but its own Interest permit it self to be thought to have attested a Lye hitherto Add That none could be competent Judges what was fit to be a Rule of Faith but They who were so concern'd both in Duty and Interest Tradition should not be set aside Which considerations clearly evince an Universal Change in the Rule of Faith and this over the whole Body of Believers is absolutely impracticable Lastly There must be some great time between their discarding Tradition and espousing a New Rule during which time we must imagin the whole Church except perhaps some few that discourse it first would be made up of Seekers some hovering one way some another in which case they would as yet have no Faith and consequently there could be no Church 'T is left then that if they could innovate in Faith they must pretend to Tradition still when they had evidently deserted it that is they must
till at last they were own'd and impos'd as necessary to be believ'd and practised Answ. If they belong'd to Faith they could not come in while the Rule of Tradition was adher'd to as has been prov'd and granted Tho' perhaps some Points involv'd in the main Body of Faith yet so particularly or universally known might on emergent occasions be singled out defin'd and more specially recommended than formerly without any Detriment to the Faith received but rather to the Advantage and farther Explication of it And as for unwarrantable Practices as they belong not to Faith so they do not concern our present business 6. What if Errour any of these Ways brought forth grew multiply'd spread obtain'd most power and drove out all that held the naked Truth out of all those Countries where it came Of which all Histories furnish us with Instances Answ. But does any History tell you this Errour spread over the whole Church without your supposing the Question that such or such a Tenet is an Errour which you pretend such which is above the Skill of Historians to decide and is only to be determin'd by examining First who have who have not a Certain Rule of Faith. Besides Errour in Faith never yet appeared even though abetted by Great men in the Church but it was oppos'd and Truth grew clearer by the Opposition made to it and tho' for a while it grew under the shadow of some Particular State yet no History ever recorded that all the States of Christendom ever joyn'd to protect it 48. Well but what are all these rambling Questions to our Argument which insists on the impossibility of Altering the yesterdays Faith but either out of want of Memory or out of Malice Apply them to this and they lose all their force how plausibly soever a witty man that talks at rovers supposes all to be Errour which the Revolting Party Held and never considers the Nature of Christian Mankind and their Circumstances may descant upon it For what Paradox is there tho' never so ridiculous that Wit discoursing thus wildly and at randome cannot make plausible Our General Objection then against your whole Paragraph is this that you never apply your several What ifs to our Argument Besides that you pretend in the beginning of it that you will shew other Reasons of such an Alteration which are neither Forgetfulness nor Malice and yet most of those you here assign are Defects of Goodness which implies some degree of Malice and some of them the highest Malice that can be 49. But say you we must seek out a new Medium to prove our Church Infallible for this already brought proves only she does not err so long as she holds to Tradition but still she may err if she leaves it wherefore we must prove she cannot leave Tradition or else She is not Infallible and so we are but where we were And do not you see this is already prov'd to your Hand For not to repeat the many Reasons produc't for this Point Sect. 45. Innovation and Tradition being formerly and diametrically opposite what proves she could not Innovate proves also that she could not leave Tradition for this were to Innovate And this our Argument you see has already prov'd nor is the force of that Proof weaken'd by any thing you have hitherto said I wonder you should dissemble a thing so obvious and run forwards upon that affected Inadvertence of yours as if it were a business unthought of by us before and requir'd a new Medium whereas it is the very thing our Argument chiefly aims at and for which we had of our own accord without any one's bidding made provision for before hand 50. Your next Sect. P. 25. would perswade us rather to prove our Church free from Errour which say you is a much easier task if she be so than to prove Her Self Infallible Very Good Your wise advice amounts to this that you would have us prove our Conclusion without beginning with our Premises or Principles If this be Yours and Dr. St's Logick 't is a very preposterous one and can only be made good by a Figure call'd Hysteron Proteron or Cart before Horse Though I must confess it keeps decorum and is perfectly of the same hue with all your Logick hitherto Please then to know that all our Faith may be Errour if the Testimony of the Church our Rule may be Erroneous and if it cannot nothing we hold of Faith can be so Again what mean you by our proving her free from Errour Your meaning is we should only prove she Embraces no Errour now but what Provision would this make for Her not falling perhaps into Errour to morrow We ought then to prove and so ought you too of your Rule that if we adhere to it it can at no time permit us to Err which could not be if at any time it might be deceiv'd it self or leave us deceiv'd while we follow it Besides if it were granted Fallible or Liable to Errour by what more evident Light or greater and clearer Testimony could we guide our selves to know when it did actually Err when not in deriving down Christs Doctrine Or by what more certain Way could we be directed to arrive at Christ's sence If there were any such It and not Tradition ought to be our Rule We return you then your Counsel back with many Thanks for it neither suits in any degree with Logick Common Sense our own or any other Principles But however it suites better with your convenience than these crabbed Demonstrations For you tell us One single Instance of her erring is enough to Answer all the Arguments can be brought for her Infallibility Sure you have a mind to convince all Schollars that read your Books you never heard of Logick in your Life Or else you would endeavour to baffle the whole Art of Discoursing because you foresee 't is like to baffle you An Instance may perhaps make an Objection against the Conclusion taking it single for a meer proposition and not as standing under Proof but Arguments are answer'd by finding defects in the Premises or the Consequence You might have seen to use your own words better Logick read to the D. of P. in my Pag. 10 and 11. Where 't is shewn you that if the Premises be right and the Inference good the Conclusion must be as necessarily True as that the same Thing cannot be and not be at once Yet you take no notice of it but still run on obstinately to confute all the Schools and Universities that ever Writ or Taught Logick from the beginning of the World to the Time of His and Your Writing The Truth is you are sick of the Argument and would shift it off on any Fashion Bring what Instances you please But first you are to Answer our Argument and next to see the Authority that qualifies your Instance for an Argument be above Morally Certain otherwise it will be
beyond the power of any Logick to make it conclude For the force of that Maxim on which the Conclusiveness of any Argument is built is far beyond any Moral Certainty Nor let Dr. St. think to stand arguing still ad hominem but let him be sure his Instance infers the Truth of his Conclusion when it comes to be put to the Test of a Syllogism This we will expect from him since it is the Right of the Respondent to deny any thing that is not driven up to Evidence and by that Test we will judge of your Instance and other Arguments if you have any that you will vouch to be Demonstrative that is Conclusive 51. You seem so kind as not to undertake to prove that an erring Church adheres to Tradition if it be True Apostolical Tradition and that it adheres to it wholly and solely I a little wonder at this for if you mean not by Tradition such a one as is built on Living voice and Practice you ran quite away from the Point If such a one you quit your own Rule by requiring men should adhere to the other wholly and Solely and admit that a Church adhering to such a Tradition is not an Erring Church I inferr Therefore till you answer our Argument which proves that our Tradition could not be interrupted by any Innovation you cannot with reason deny but ours is such You think Infallibility a kind of barr against our mutual Agreement as if there were any hopes or even possibility men's Minds should center unless it be in something that is Absolutely Certain or Evident Shew us something else endu'd with such an Evidence as is able to oblige Human Nature to an Universal Acceptation and Conviction and then blame us for maintaining Infallibility Till then pray excuse us for making such Provision for Faith as sets it beyond Possibility of Falsehood You drop some insignificant Exceptions after the Shower of your shrewd invisible Reasons As that our Argument must prove that no man that hath been taught the Faith can ever err from it and yet still withall confess that a Church following Tradition now may leave it afterwards This were an Incoherence with a witness But how do you shew our Argument must prove this absurd position Onely with saying it here over and over again without the least attempt to shew from our words or Doctrine this pretended necessity that we must both contradict our selves so grossely and besides go against our daily experience I do assure the Reader we have no where either such words or sense and that 't is meerly a false sham or some weak deduction of yours for want of some better thing to say Our Tenet is that tho' not one single man can erre while he adheres to our Rule yet even some particular Churches may leave off adhering to Tradition and so err in Faith. Onely we say that the main Body of the Church consisting of all particular Churches that compound Christianity being supported by Motives of adhering to the former Faith so Prevalent and Universal and apply'd to a very vast multitude of them cannot conspire to relinquish this Rule go against and disgrace their own Testimony nor consequently err in Faith. The word All indeed and They in each Proposition are distributive and appliable to each single man but do you find the least word in any of them that sayes that single men or great multitudes may not out of malice alter Faith Where find you that Or that they cannot desert the Rule and by Consequence their Faith. Pray be not so liberal of our Concessions without shewing somthing under our hands for it 52. But you sum up your Solution of our Demonstration with an admirable grace or rather you give us the very Quintessence of your Answer to it in these few words The Church of Rome says all have broke the Rule of Tradition but she onely and proves it by saying that she holds the same to day she did yesterday and so up to our B. Saviours time You proceed We call again for a Proof of this She tells us If she follow'd this Rule she could never err in Faith. But did she follow this Rule She says she did and if you will not believe her there 's an end How smart and victorious this looks But the best is 't is wholly built on some few of your own wilfull Falsifications Pray where did we ever bring these Words If she followed this Rule c. For a Proof that she holds the same to day which she did yesterday Or where did we prove we follow'd this Rule only with iffs But why are you so shy to quote the Pages or Paragraphs where we bring these absurd Proofs because you would be at Liberty to say any thing and yet not expose your Credit And 't is worth noting that you point out the Page in other occasions very diligently but when you have a mind to falsify 't is still supprest 'T is observable too that this insincerity of yours here is of such advantage to you that it gains the whole Cause For if we prove this main Point no better but with Iffs that our Argument has no force but by standing to your Kindness in Believing what Our Church says then there 's an End indeed for nothing can be more Evident than 't is that in that Supposition we are utterly routed our whole Cause quite defeated Now I would entreat the Reader for You are resolv'd neither to use your Eyes nor Honesty lest they should too openly accuse you that he will once more review our Argument as 't is put down by Dr. St. himself First Letter p. 4. and 5. and made good by me p. 8. and 9. and he will see clearly the first half of it was to prove that If they follow'd this Rule viz. of believing the same to day they did yesterday they could never err in Faith or were Infallible And the other part And they could not innovate in Faith unless they did forget what they held the day before or out of malice alter it was brought to prove they did ever follow that Rule For since nothing but Innovation can break the Chain of Tradition whoever proves they could not innovate proves directly they could not recede from Tradition Nay 't was confest by Dr. St. himself when he was as yet in better circumstances First Letter p. 5. l. 4. that we prov'd our Church could not innovate by the Medium now mention'd Yet you have the Confidence to tell the Reader she only says she follows this Rule and if you will not believe her there 's an end Whereas you ought in candour to have said They prov'd she follow'd and could not but follow this Rule but I cannot answer their Argument and there 's an End. See what you have brought upon your self and how fatal it is to your pretended Answer that as you began your Reply to this 4th Proposition with a
differenced from both Romanists and other Hereticks and Sectaries viz. Scripture plainly delivering a Sense own'd and declar'd by the Primitive Church of Christ in the Three Creeds Four First General Councils and Harmony of the Fathers After which you add This I hope is plain dealing and no wriggling and here we take up our stand let him endeavour to draw us whither he can Never fear it Sir you are out of danger of being drawn any whither Ten thousand Cart-Ropes will not go round you and we must be at least Twenty Years in fastening them But let 's examin this your particular Rule 1. I ask whether since Differences use to be Essential these words own'd and declar'd by the Primitive Church c. which are found in the Difference of your Rule from that of others be at all Essential or not If not Essential since if you be Orthodox you ought to have a Rule essentially distinct from that of Hereticks and Sectaries what is this Essentially-different Rule of yours for 't is this we are enquiring after If you say 't is Essential then Scripture had not all the due power to regulate you as to your Faith without their additional Light And by consequence Scripture is not your Only and Intire Rule as you ever pretended hitherto since these are Part of it 2 When you say your Rule is Scripture plainly delivering a Sense c. I suppose you must mean such a particular Sense as is of Faith with you and can any more be requir'd to your particular Rule than Scripture plainly delivering your particular Faith Certainly you will not say it For there is the Divine Authority in the Scripture which is the Formal Motive of Divine Faith. There is Plainness which gives it a Directive Vertue and qualifies it for a Rule and the Clear Light of this plain Rule must shine bright upon the particular Tenets you hold for 't is to shine there and no where else Which once put what can all the other esteem'd by you but Human Authorities serve for Can they add weight to the Divine Authority or clear that to us which is already so plain by Scripture 3. Pray be candid and tell us After a thing is plain in Scripture are you to value a straw what either Primitive Church Creeds or Fathers say I dare say you will grant you are not Wherefore all these are utterly useless unless they be pretended to give you some light to interpret Scripture But this cannot be neither both because you tell us here plain Scripture is your Rule and it would not be plain but obscure if it needed an Explainer Besides you put this as a constitutive difference of your Rule and yet deny'd that any Interpretation of Scripture is such but Extrinsical to it 'T is then a great Mystery still how these Human Authorities affect your General Rule or influence your Faith already had by plain Scripture or to what end they serve but for a Show only 4. The Lutherans proceed upon all these as much as you and yet hold a Reall Presence of Christ's very Body in the Sacrament as much as we do So that this does not difference you in your Grounds or Rule from all other Sects for sure you will not deny that to be a Sect that holds an Errour which Dr. St. has taken such pains to prove is Idolatry My last question shall be Whether your sober Enquirers are not to come to their particular Faith by this their particular Rule of Faith And since 't is Evident they must we would know next how many of them are to arrive at any Faith at all For it will take up many Years to examin and compare all the Fathers and be sure of their Harmony with one another and with the Scripture too Nay the Duration of the World will be too short to compass that Satisfaction if we may believe the Bishop of Downs who assures us That out of the Fathers succeeding the Primitive Times both sides eternally and inconfutably shall bring Sayings for themselves respectively Can any man living make Sense of such stuff or ever come at his Faith by such a Rule 57. For this last Reason chiefly I affirm'd That not one Protestant in a million follow'd Dr. St's Rule but honestly follow'd the Tradition of their own Church Pastours or Fathers that is believ'd as they had been educated To the first part of this Assertion you say little but that if there be any Fault 't is the Fault of the People only But if this peculiar Rule of yours which takes in the seeing your Sense of Scripture own'd and declar'd by the Primitive Church Four first General Councils and the Harmony of the Fathers be to be followed e're you can come at your Faith I doubt the Fault will prove to be in the Rule For very few Persons have Learning fewer Leisure enough and none of them security of having any Faith by this Method unless you could ensure their Salvation by inspiring those who are ignorant with competent Learning to understand all the Fathers and their Harmony and withal by letting them good long Leases of their Lives which I am of opinion you cannot The second part that they follow'd the Method of Tradition puts you in a marvelvellous jocund humour and as if you had forgot your way a thing not unusual with you you ask all amaz'd Where are we now In the Church of Rome e're we are aware of it We are all good Roman-Catholicks on a sudden we are become an Infallible Church c. and away you run with the Jest laughing and giggling as if you had found a Mare 's Nest. Surcease your fears good Sir you are not a jot the nearer being Catholicks for following your own Tradition It reaches no farther than Iohn Calvin Martin Luther or some such Reforming Heroe and there it ends and stops in a flat Novelty Whereas Catholicks abhor a Tradition that has any known Beginning or takes a Name from any Particular Author or has any Original but Christ his Apostles and the Church in the very first Age who were the Original Deliverers of it to the next and so to the succeeding ones Pray Sir what 's become of your Jest All I said was that You followed the Way of Tradition however misplac'd I prov'd it by Reasons and Instances you hint some omit others and pervert the rest You tell us 't is all Scriptural Tradition But we will trust our Eyes and Experience before your bare Word We see some taught before they can read we see them Catechiz'd in Churches and they repeat and believe what 's there told them tho' Scripture be not quoted for the distinct Passages We see them read the Scripture afterwards but we see withal not One in Thousands trusts his own Judgment of Discretion for the sense of it but without reluctancy or jealousie accepts that which his Pastours assign to it especially in Spiritual Points or Mysteries of
Faith about which we are chiefly discoursing But do not your self incline to admit as much as we can expect from a man that affects not too much candour that very thing you so laugh at here I affirm'd that Not one in a million thinks of relying on your Rule of Faith in order to make choice of their Faith c. This you answer with hems and hahs Tho' I fear yet I hope he is out in his Account I am apt to think they are more attentive Yet be it as he would have it c. Now since they must either have their Faith by Reliance on their Pastours and Preachers delivering it to them and educating them in it that is by some kind of Tradition or else by relying on Scripture and your self seems to doubt or rather in a manner grants it That they have it not the later way you must at least doubt that they have it by the Way of Tradition But your Fancy was so big with your empty Jest that you had forgot what you had allow'd but a little before 58. Thus Sir I have trac'd you punctually step by step not as is your constant use pickt out a few words scatter'd here and there which you thought you might most commodiously pervert wherefore I have reason to expect the same exact measure from you The Sum of your Answer is manifestly this Shuffles and wilful Mistakes without number Evasions endless Falsifications frequent Godly Talk frivolous Jests groundless and all these brought in still to stop Gaps when your Reason was Nonplust Be pleas'd to leave off your Affected Insincerities otherwise I must be forc't to Expose them yet farther than which there can be no Task more Ungrateful imposed upon Your Servant J. S. ERRATA Page 3. l. 28. Read both of uâ— p. 10. l. ult find it in p. 11. l. 11 notice there p. 21. l. 24. go forwards p. 22. l. 27. Secret. Again p. 23. l. 9. as I had not p. 32. l. 30. Is it a Way Ibid. l. 32. upon it p. 39. l. 7. Your Reason is because p. 44. l. 17. may hap p. 45. l. 5. Gift Ibid. l. 32. Prince of p. 46. l. 7. it Whether p. 48. l. 27. a most p. 53. l. 12. Adherers p. 57. l. 14. to be at a loss Ibid. l. ult discover'd it p. 60. l. 8. Speculaters p. 62. l. 9. Yet not so explicitly or p. 63. l. 28. formally and. p. 73. l. 13. other then THE THIRD Catholick Letter IN ANSVVER To the Arguing Part of Doctor Stillingfleet's SECOND LETTER To Mr. G. By I. S. Published with Allowance LONDON Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn 1687. THE THIRD Catholick Letter c. SIR 1. I Come now to take a view of your Second Letter with my Eye as in the former fixt only upon what I think you mean for Argument Whether you give us just your First Words at the Conference or second Thoughts since whether no troublesome Part of Mr. G's Discourse be left out in short whatever belongs to matter of Fact shall be out of my prospect which shall be bounded by what you think fit to open to it You acquaint us here Pag. 7. that you put two Questions 1. How does it appear that the Church of Rome is Infallible in the sense and meaning of Tradition 2. Is this Tradition a Rule of Faith distinct from Scripture And you complain of Mr. G. that his Copy makes you ask a very wise Question viz. How does it appear that the Church of Rome is Infallible in Tradition Why this Question should be ironically call'd a very wise one I cannot imagin I am sure it is very pertinent to the Intention of your Dispute and directly points at one of the Chief Subjects of the Conference But you shall have your Will tho' I beleive it will appear Mr. G's question made better Provision for your Credit in point of Wisdom than you have done for your self 2. For your Second was in truth a very needless Question because both your self and all your Auditours if they ever heard any thing of this kind of Controversy knew beforehand without needing to ask that the Tradition we lay claim to pretends to derive down the Intire Body of Christ's Doctrin and not only the Books of Scripture of which P. 9. you very learnedly seem to counterfeit your self ignorant And this is the first part of your distinguishing the plain Sense of this Word Tradition as held by Mr. G. By this Question you tell us p. 9. you intended to put a difference between the Tradition held by us Protestants and the Tradition disputed For the first meaning of the Word Tradition which you grant you put the Vniniversal Testimony of the Christian Church as to the Books of Scripture The second and deny'd meaning you contra distinguish from the former in these words But if by Tradition be understood either some necessary Articles of Faith not contain'd in Scripture or a Power in the Church to make unnecessary to become necessary this I deny'd c. Certainly Sir you have a Logick of your own so peculiarly fitted to your designes that no man living but your self ever us'd it I ever thought and apprehended I had all the World on my side for thinking so that all Differences or Distinctions were to be Opposites and to divide the Common Genus or the Notion that was to be distinguish't and therefore since the first sense of the Word Tradition was Tradition for Books of Scripture which is your Tenet I verily expected the opposit sense of it should have been Tradition for Doctrines which is Ours and that as the former was Tradition for Christ's Words so the latter should be Tradition for Christ's Sense But while I was vainly imagining the second sense of the Word would be Tradition for Faith instead of that I found nothing but such Articles and such a Power Did ever any mortal Man think or pretend that Tradition was an Article or a Power any more than that it was a Horse shoe Did your self when you granted the Latin and Greek Churches follow'd Tradition intend to signify that they follow'd Articles and Powers The summ then of your learned Distinction is in plain Terms this Tradition is two-fold One is a Tradition for Books the other is no Tradition at all but only Articles and Power Had it not been better then to have accepted of Mr. G's Civility and have answer'd to the purpose rather than out of a pique to his Copy and a desire to make it stand in need to be corrected thus to pervert common sense and out of a too zealous care not to forfeit your Wisdome to commit such an illogical Absurdity But Sense and Logick tho' they be plain and honest true Friends yet I must own that like the Queens Old Courtiers they may appear scandalous Companions to a man of your more polite and modish Education However I dare answer for you it was
for then that Book had been the Delivery of its self and yet that Book had as good Title to be it's own Tradition as you had to make the Points delivered by our Tradition to be the Tradition or Delivery of those Points You granted too in the same place that the Latin and Greek Churches proceeded upon it and by granting this confest there were as many Attesters went to make it up as there were Men at least Intelligent men in the compass of the many vast Nations which those two Churches included How come you then so much to forget your self as to parallel it here to the pittiful Attestation of three or four possibly prejudic't Relaters But the reason of this self-contradicting and extravagant representation of Tradition is clear it was your Interest to take it right there and the same reason prevail'd with you to take it wrong here 5. But I am weary of fencing with Shadows when I can take any occasion that leads me to treat of what 's Substantial Mistake me not 't is not your Discourse that obliges me to it it had been a sufficient Answer to That to let the Reader see you purposely mistook the Nature of Tradition to divert and perplex his Thoughts and there let it rest Yet Because your taking Tradition wrong for the Doctrines deliver'd good use may be drawn from it I shall for the benefit of the Reader not decline speaking to what you object You make account p. 7. 8. the Tradition of the Church deliver'd the Point of the ` Reall Presence of Christ's being the Son of God in General Words onely Which waving what has been alledg'd in my 2 d. and 3 d. Sect. I judg for divers other Reasons to be Impossible For besides that if the Forefathers deliver'd onely the Words they taught their Children against the supposition no Faith in these Points for Faith has sense in it and is not Faith if it have none being in that case no true Iudgment or Truth who knows not that Words were instituted and intended by Mankind to signify something and therefore 't is inconsistent with the nature of the same Mankind when at Age especially the Wiser sort not to hold some Sense or other to be signify'd by those Words and with the nature of Christians not to instruct those whom they are to educate in Faith with that Sense as also with the nature of those who are to be Instructed not to desire to know the Sense of the Tenets they are to believe But that Sense cannot be a General one that is Common to all the several Tenets now sound among us for it will not be General if it exclude any one it must therefore abstract from all particulars and be applicable to every one Now there is no such Generical Notion or Sense which can be abstracted from Christ's Body which is Living and a piece of Bread unless this that they are both Quantitative or Mixt Bodies to believe which would make a very extravagant Point of Faith much less can such an Abstraction be made from Christ's Reall Living Body and some supernatural Gifts or Qualities either in the Bread or wrought in our Souls by Means of our receiving the Eucharist For a Substance and a Quality differ toto genere as the Logicians express it that is belong to different Commonest Heads which have no Genus above them or that can abstract from them Least of all can any such Common Notion be abstracted from the Natural or True Son of God and a meer Man no more than there can from God and a Creature Whence follows most evidently that since the Faithful must necessarily have always had some Meaning of those words in their hearts and a general Sense of them is impossible they must have ever had Particular Notions of those Words determining their Sense to the one signification or the other that is either to mean Christ's Real Body or not his Real Body a True and Essential Godhead or a meer Creature My second Reason is because Faith is Ordain'd to work through Charity or to stir up devour Affections in us whence as the distance is Infinite in both cases between one of those Senses and the other there being God on one side on the other a Creature so the Affections of the Soul wrought in us by our Faith must either oblige us to pay an Infinite Veneration to a Creature if Christ's Real Body and consequently God be not there or if Christ be not God which is the greatest deviation from true Religion that is possible or else to be highly Irreverent and to want the most efficacious Motive that can be imagin'd to excite and elevate our Devotion if he be there or Christ be indeed God. Nor can any middle disposition be invented that can make the Acts of the Soul hover between it's tendency towards an Infinite and Finite Being or between an Infinite and Finite Reverence I dare confidently conclude then and dare avow it to be Demonstrable out of the Nature of Mankind that either the one or the other Determinate Sense of those Words must have been held in all Ages ever since the Apostles time by the Generality of the foregoing Faithful more or less expresly as those respective Points broke out more or less into Christian Action which their Duty could not but prompt and oblige them to deliver to their Children as occasion served and consequently that that Particular sense and not onely as you fancy the General Words must have descended by Tradition 6. Next my Position is that taking the word Tradition for Points descending by Tradition as you will needs have it the Church has Power and Authority to explain the Sense and Meaning of them and to oblige others to believe Her and yet that this hinders not the Infallibility of Tradition from consisting in holding the same to day that was deliver'd yesterday c. This is the difficulty I conceive that so much troubles you To clear which you may please to reflect on what you know already by experience that let any man advance a single Tenet and afterwards upon occasion set himself to Explicate at large the Sense of that Proposition 't is plain there will be found in that large Explication many particular Propositions not adequately the same but in part different from that which he went about thus elaborately and distinctly to explain of which perhaps even himself was not aware while he did not reflect not being yet invited to make it clearer or dilate on it And yet he held even at first the Sense and not only the Words nay the whole Sense of that main Tenet or Sentence tho' he saw not distinctly every single Proposition contain'd in it till he became oblig'd to Scan and Study his own undistinguisht but true thoughts concerning it The same may be said of every Sermon and it's Text supposing it be rigorously held to and no more be attended to but to explain it's
Pelagianism to conclude that Human Motives which are Preliminaries to Faith and on which the assuredness of Faith it self depends as to us are Truly Certain And Might you not with as much reason say the same if one should maintain the Absolute Certainty of our Senses which is one of those Preliminaries How strangely do you misrepresent every thing you are to meddle with How constantly do you make your voluntary mistake of every Point serve for a Confutation of it 'T is confest ever was That the Human Authority of the Church or Tradition begets only Human Faith as its immediate Effect but by bringing it up to Christ it leads us to what 's Divine yet not by its own force but by Vertue of the Supposition agreed upon That Christ's Doctrin is such Is it Pelagianism to say we must use our Reason to come to Faith or do you pretend all the World must be the worst of Phanaticks and use none Or does it trouble you we offer to justifie that the Reasons we bring to make good that Preliminary which in our way of Discoursing is to introduce Faith are not such as may deceive us And that we do not confess they are Fallible or may deceive us as you grant of your Interpretations of Scripture which ground your Belief No surely we shall not quit the Certainty we have because you have none For if it be not Certain such Doctrines are indeed Christ's who is our Law-giver we cannot be sure they are True their Truth depending on his Authority and would you have us for fear of Pelagianism confess all our Faith may perhaps be but a story But into what an unadvisedness does your Anger transport you to run the Weapon through your own Side to do us a Mischief You bore us in hand First Letter p. 7. that you had a larger and firmer Tradition for Scripture than we have for what we pretend to Yet this Tradition could cause no more but Human Faith for I do not think you will say you had Divine Faith before you were got to your Rule of Divine Faith. By your Discourse then your self are an Arrant Pelagian too Perhaps worse than we because you pretend to a larger and firmer Human Tradition than you say we have nay you pretend it to be Absolutely Certain too which is a dangerous Point indeed Pray have a care what you do for you are upon the very brink of Pelagianism The knowing you have the true Books of Scripture is a most necessary Preliminary to your Faith for without knowing that you cannot pretend to have any Faith at all and if it be Pelagianism in us to hold such Preliminaries absolutely Certain I fear the danger may come to reach you too Yet you have one Way and but one to escape that damnable Heresy which is that you do not go about to demonstrate the Absolute Certainty of Your Tradition as we do of Ours That that is the very Venom of Pelagianism But take comfort Sir my life for yours you will never fall so abominably into the mire as to demonstrate or conclude any thing For what Idaea soever you may frame of it we mean no more by Demonstrating but plain honest Concluding Your way of Discoursing does not look as if it intended to conclude or demonstrate 'T is so wholly pass for as great a Man as you will made up of mistakes misrepresentations petty cavils witty shifts untoward explications of your own Words constant prevarications and many more such neat dexterities that whatever fault it may through human frailty provok't by powerful Necessity be liable to I dare pawn my life it will never be guilty of that hainous Crime of demonstrating or concluding any thing no not the Absolute Certainty of your firmer Tradition And yet unless you can prove or conclude 't is thus Certain 't is a Riddle to us how can you either hold or say 't is such 13 Pray be not offended if on this occasion I ask You a plain downright Question Is it not equally blamable to Falsify your Adversaries Tenet perpetually as 't is to falsify his Words Nay is it not worse being less liable to discovery and so more certainly and more perniciously Injurious And can any thing excuse You from being thus faulty but Ignorance of our Tenet I fear that Plea will utterly sail you too and leave you expos'd to the Censure of every sincere Reader when I shew him to his Eye that You could not but know all this before For in Error Non-plust p. 121. Sect. 8. You must needs have read the quite contrary Doctrine and how those who maintain Tradition do resolve their Faith. There is no necessity then of proving this Infallibility viz. Of the Church meerly by Scripture interpreted by Virtue of this Infallibility Nor do the Faithful or the Church commit a Circle in believing that the Church is Infallible upon Tradition For they believe onely the supernatural Infallibility built on the Assistance of the Holy Ghost that is on the Church's Sanctity and this is prov'd by the Human Authority of the Church to have been held ever from the Beginning and the force of the Human Testimony of the Church is prov'd by Maxims of meer Reason The same is more at large deliver'd in the foregoing Section and in divers other places Now this Book was Writ against your self and so 't is as hardly Conceiveable you should never have read it as 't is Unconceiveable how you should ever answer it And if you did read it what was become of your sincerity when you counterfeited your Ignorance of our Tenet All is resolv'd say you here p. 9. into meer Human Faith which is the unavoidable consequence of the Doctrin of Oral Tradition How shrewdly positive you are in your Sayings how modest and meek in your Proofs Nothing can be more manifest from our constantly avow'd Doctrin and your own opposing it too than 't is that Tradition resolves all into Christ's and the Apostles Teaching And pray do you hold that Christ is a meer man or that the Believing Him is a meer human Faith or that the Doctrin taught by Him and Them is meerly Human If this be indeed your Tenet I am sorry I knew it not before for then I should have thought fit to begin with other Principles to confute you And I pray God by your impugning known Truths you may never need e'm I see I had reason to alledge in Faith Vindicated that the Grace of God was requisit to make men assent to a Natural Conclusion when it came very cross to their Interest For it appears too plain 't is exceedingly needful to assist you here in a meer Point of Common Morality which is to enable you not to speak and represent things directly contrary to your own knowledge And I am sorry I must tell you and too evidently prove it that the greatest part of your Writings against Catholicks when the Point is to be manag'd by Reason
pretended We are absolutely Certain such and such particular Points are contain'd there otherwise your General Ground comes not up to the Question nor does your Faith any service at all since it leaves it still Vncertain of which more hereafter Especially since you pretended or rather declar'd openly p. 14. that you now held all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles Which Profession reaches to all the Points of Faith and not onely to your Ground of Faith. I must confess you render'd that Profession insignificant and cancell'd the obligation as soon as you had made it in the Explication of those words immediately following which makes those hearty expressions Absolutely Certain of all the same Doctrin amount to no more but that you resolve your Faith into Scripture We must I see deal with you as those who have a pretence in Court do with Great Courtiers who lose their repute with them as ill-bred and unmannerly if they will needs take them at their word and do not distinguish between what 's spoken and what 's meant Your Answer was very honest and direct We are absolutely Certain we now hold all the same Doctrin that was taught by Christ and his Apostles The Comment is this I fram'd my Answer on purpose to shew that our Faith is not to be resolv'd into what Christ taught any otherwise than as it is convey'd to us by the Writings of the Apostles Evangelists Whereas if there be so much as one word of Writing or Evangelists even hinted in your Answer it self unless the Word Taught meant Writ which cannot be because we never read that Christ writ any Books or the least Semblance of reason for making this Skewing Explication but to shuffle off your too large Concession I will confess my self too shallow to fathom the profound depth of your inscrutable sense Resolve then your Faith in God's Name into what you will so you but shew us an Absolutely Certain Connexion between the Points resolved and the Rule into which you profess to resolve it Otherwise 't is no Resolution of Faith if the continued Chain of Motives winding it up to the First Truth or God's infinite veracity hangs slack Such Incoherence serves not for Faith which must be indissolubly connected to the Formal Motive of all our Faith else the Resolution of it may be shatter'd and broke to pieces by the way ere we come there Which if it may then the Resolution is no Resolution for that speaks Connexion of the Motives and Faith thus resolv'd may perhaps all be False and so is no Faith. 'T is your work then to shew in particular when you come to it and at present in general that your Rule gives you Absolute Certainty of the Points of Faith more than it does the Socinian who have the same Rule and profess to follow it as much as you do for your heart and yet erre enormously Nay in effect they take the same Method too to interpret Scripture which you do for tho' you give good words to the consent of former ages yet your Grounds do not allow it Absolute Certainty in bringing down Doctrin or interpreting Scripture and less than such a Certainty and in such things signifies nothing in our case And 't is either by your Rule and Method you can arrive thus certainly at the Sense of Scripture or by nothing If you could once with Absolute Certainty convince the Socinians of Obstinacy against a Clear Truth by your Rule or Method or both together I mean if you could make it clear to them that your Rule of Faith cannot possibly bear any other Sense so that the indifferent part of the world judg'd them wilful adherers to a false Interpretation or that you could silence them and put them to open shame for adhering to it you would do somthing Otherwise your starting aside still from the Absolute Certainty of the Points even tho' p. 14. you pretended to be Absolutely Certain you hold them All and talking to us of nothing but a General Ground is meer shuffling and shews plainly you meant not really in that Answer of yours to Mr. G's first Question where you spoke of all the Doctrin which includes every Particular Point so that by All it seems you meant None 'T is very paradoxical to see you distinguish here p. 14 between the Doctrin taught by Christ and that which was taught by the Apostles The reason why you do it is to insinuate into our Readers that we derive the source of our Tradition from Christ's Teaching orally as the Iews affirm of Moses delivering an unwritten Law else to what purpose this Distinction The Tradition we lay claim to has no such obscure Original it takes it's â—ife from the whole Body of Primitive Christians in the Apostles days dispers't in Great multitudes over the World and settled in the Knowledge of his Faith by means of their Preaching So that Tradition starts into motion from a most Publick and notorious matter of Fact viz. That the Apostles taught the First Christians such a Faith. To what imaginable purpose then was this frivolous distinction brought in You knew this was our Tenet and we knew well your Rule was Scripture What needed then this shuffling Paraphrase By Tradition you know we mean a Testimony for Doctrin receiv'd If the source be weak or that the Body of the Witnessers of it's Delivery at first and successively afterwards was smal the Tradition is consequently weak in proportion if Great it was stronger still according as the multitude of the Attesters was more numerous and their Credibleness more unexceptionable Well but admit your Faith be not resolv'd into what Christ taught by his own mouth but what the Apostles taught us from him why must you necessarily resolve your Faith into their Writings only Did the Apostles when they went to convert the world go with Books in their hands or Words in their Mouths Or were those Words a jot less Sacred when it came from their Mouths than when they put them in a Book Or lastly does any Command from Christ appear to write the Book of Scripture or any Revelation before hand that it was to be a Rule of Faith to the future Church No such matter and the Accidental occasions of it's writing at first and it's Acceptation afterwards bar any such Pretences On the other side their Grand Commission was not Scribite but only Predicate Evangelium Yet you can slubber this over without taking notice of it and carry it as if the Apostles Teaching mean't Writing only and that they taught the World no more than they writ Sure you do not mean the Apostles took Texts out of their own Books and preacht Sermons upon then as you do now Why must it be quite forgotten then and buried in silence that they taught any thing by word of mouth or preacht the Gospel publickly Allow that to be equally Sacred as what is writ and to be embrac't if well
of Errour for the pure Gold of Truth and Soul-poysoning Heresies for means of Salvation Had I a mind to set up a similitude-mender and that you will needs have it a Purse I should beg your leave to put it thus Suppose that Purse's Mouth were tyed up with a knot of such a mysterious contrivance that none could open it I mean still as to the understanding the Mysteries of our Faith but those who knew the Mind of the Bequeather and that the Church to which it was left as a Legacy had knowledge of his Mind and so could open it while others tortur'd their Wits with little tricks and inventions turning and winding the ambiguous folds of it some one way some another and yet entangled their own thoughts more and more while they went about to unty the Knots that so perplex't them 22. This is the true case You make account containing does all the business whereas 't is nothing at all to our purpose which is in the final Intention of it about the Absolute Certainty of your Faith unless we have equal assurance that you can get out thence what 's contain'd there as you pretend to have that 't is contain'd Now it cannot be deny'd but the Primitive Church was imbu'd with Christ's sense by the Preaching of the Apostles and their immediate Successours and so had a sure and proper Way to interpret Scripture and while this sense was still deliver'd down they could not fail of an absolutely Certain Rule to understand it right But there steps up now one Heretick then another opposing himself to the sense of the Church and relying on the dextery of his own wit will needs find out contrivances how to open the Scripture's Meaning by wayes of his private Skill But falls into multitudes of Errours finding no way to unfold the deeply-mysterious Book having refus'd to make use of the right means viz. Christ's sense descending in the Church by Tradition Whence notwithstanding all his little Arts and boasting presumption like the Fox in the Fable Vas lambit Pultem non attingit 23. Mistake me not I do not mean Scriptures Letter is not clear in such passages as concern Common Morality or the Ten Commandments with the Sense of which every one is imbu'd by the Light of Nature Nor in matters of Fact such as were most of those Marks or Signs to know the Messias by foretold us by the Prophets our Saviour's doing such and such Miracles his going beyond Iordan c. Nor in Parables explain'd by himself and such like But in Dogmatical Points or Tenets which are Spiritual and oftentimes profound Mysteries and of these by the way I desire still to be understood when I speak of the Certainty of the Letter or Sense of Scripture for with other Passages I meddle not as the Tenet of a Trinity Christ's God-head the Real Presence of his Body in the Sacrament and such like which have a vast Influence upon Christian Life either immediately or else in a higher Nature being as it were Principles to many other Articles of Faith which depend on their Truth One would verily think I say that such as these should be some of your Golden Points or else there were none at all contain'd in your Purse Yet we experience That even in such as these your Rule is not intelligible enough to keep the Followers of it from erring So that let your Purse have never so Golden and Silver a lining you are never the richer unless you can come at it or can certainly distinguish the pure Gold of Truth from the impure Dross of Errour Your Similitude then comes not home to your purpose nor shews that you have therefore all your Faith or all Divine Revelations because you have a Book which you judge contains them Let 's see now if it does not make against you You put the Doctrin or Points of Faith to be the Gold and Silver contain'd in the Purse and consequently that must be the Purse into which that Doctrin of Faith was put by Christ our Saviour and this was evidently the Heads and Hearts of the Faithful For the Points of Faith being so many Divine Truths are onely contain'd in Men's Minds properly and Words being by their very Definition but Signes of what is in our Minds Truths are no more really in a Book than Wine is really in a Bush which signifies it Since then those Truths were onely in the Breast of Christ Originally and after him in that of the Apostles and their Thoughts could not be communicated nor consequently the Gold and Silver deliver'd to the Legatees otherwise than by signifying it which can onely be done by one of these ways by Living Voice and Practice or by Writing that is by Tradition or Scripture neither of these can with any Sense be liken'd to the Purse it self into which the money is to be put or answer comparatively to It but they are both of them Wayes Means or Methods of putting these heavenly Riches into it's Proper Purse the Souls of the Faithful Of these two Ways our Saviour chose the First which was Teaching his Doctrin orally for he writ nothing and by doing thus told us it was the better For it had been against his Infinit Wisdom to chuse the worser way for Himself to make use of and leave the better to his Servants Nor did his servants the Apostles affect the Way of Writing so as to use it onely but on the contrary they made use of this Oral Way of Preaching constantly and that of Writing for the most part at least if not altogether occasionally They converted the present Church by their Preaching they comforted the future Church by leaving many most edifying Words and Actions of our Blessed Saviour Written which being Particulars and not breaking out openly into Christian Practice might otherwise in likelihood at least to a great degree have been lost to succeeding generations besides the abetment their Writings give to Faith it self when certainly interpreted and rightly understood So that according to this discourse of yours we should either have never a Purse to put Points of Faith in for you take no notice of the Souls of the Faithful into which they are properly put and in which onely they are in reality contain'd Or if you will needs call that a Purse which contains them meerly as a Sign does the thing signify'd or as that which may signify to us our Faith you must put two Purses Tradition and Scripture And then the onely Question is out of which Purse we can with more Certainty get it That is whether a Living Container which can give us perfect light of it's Sense by all the best ways imaginable or the Dead Letter which as Experience demonstrates can neither clear it's Sense to Private Understandings nor if we doubt of it's Meaning and had a mind to ask it could either hear or reply much less pertinently and appositely speak to the Asker as oft as he
already Ship-wrackt The Fourth By it we are to judge what we are bound to believe as Divine Revelations runs upon the same strain for you are to shew us how by it I am to judge my self bound to believe any thing at all as a Divine Revelation that is as taught by Christ with a Firm and Vnalterable Assent such as Faith is till I am Certain it is so by being ascertain'd he taught it This is the True This is the Main Point which you slide over still as smoothly as a non-plust Commentator does over hard Texts that puzzle him to explicate I say once more 't is the Main if not onely Point for till you have made out this you can never prove that Scripture taken alone is a Ground of Faith at all much less an Absolutely Certain Ground and least of all your Ground in particular And therefore you said very True when you lamented p. 28. you were in a hard case for tho' say you there is an Absolute Certainty and this Certainty lies in Vniversal Tradition and we can shew this Vniversal Tradition yet we cannot shew the Ground of our Certainty For you cannot shew Universal Tradition for every particular Text that concerns Faith without our Tradition Rule for Doctrin nor Absolute Certainty you have the true Sense tho' you had that Certainty for the Letter without which 't is not your Ground at all A Certainty there is but not by vertue of your Grounds and so 't is none of your Certainty nor your Ground neither Whereas then you confess here that if you cannot shew the true Ground of your Certainty you deserve to be either pity'd or begg'd you say very true for we do from our hearts pity you let who will take the tother part We pity you to see such excellent Wits who had they a good cause would be honourably victorious forc't by the Patronage of a bad one to employ their Talents in shifting about for by-paths to avoid meeting the Question in the face We pity you for your being necessitated to impose upon your well-meaning Readers with your specious pretences of Gods Word instead of shewing them with Absolute Certainty on your Grounds that you have the true Sense of it in any one passage relating to the controverted points without which you cannot with Honesty pretend it Gods Word as to those Points And if that kind of begging may do you any good we shall earnestly and heartily beg of God's Infinite Mercy to give you hearts to seek Truth and candidly acknowledge it when found 39. I had almost forgot your Id est which connects your Third and Last Proposition together must be the Rule of our Faith Id est say you by it we are to judge what we are bound to believe as Divine Revelations These Id est's which should be us'd to clear things are still so made use of that they are the main Engines to confound them Let your Id est then say what it please I must tell you plainly you quite mistake the meaning of the Word Rule It speaks Rectitude and that such an Evident one as preserves those who regulate themselves by it from obliquity or Deviation that is in our case from Errour You ought then to have said The Rule of our Faith Id est by which while we follow it we shall be absolutely secur'd from erring in Faith For the Primary Effect of a Rule is to give Faith that prerequisit Quality as elevates it to the Dignity of such a kind of Assent and raises it above that dwindling feeble alterable assent call'd Opinion But you will needs to avoid coming neer so dangerous a Rock take it for a kind of Quantitative Measure nor for a Qualifying Principle Whereas indeed 't is not the What or how much we are to believe which is now our Question but the That we ought to believe any thing at all or That you can by your Grounds have any Faith at all for want of this Absolute Certainty which you pretend to 'T is this I say which is the true Subject of our present Debate For tho' we both held the same Quantity or Number of Points to a tittle yet it might be Faith in one of us and but Opinion in the other nay perhaps Opinion in both if both of us wanted Certain Grounds to evince they were Christs Doctrin which is the Formal Motive of our Faith. It belongs then to a Rule to ascertain both the That we are to believe and the What but the former Office of it is Antecedent and Principal the later Collateral and Secondary Common Sense telling us that we ought first to determin whether there is any Faith at all e're we come to debate what Points are of Faith what not These Fast-and-Loose Doings make me when ever I meet with an Id est still expect it means aliud est and that like your other Explications of your self it is brought in to divert our Eyes to another Object instead of keeping them still fixt upon the same 40. Enough has been said I am sure too much ever to be Answer'd to prove that Scripture alone as interterpreted by any Private Mans Judgment wants the Chief Property of a Rule of Faith viz. such a Clearness as is able to give all sorts of People or the Generality of Christians be they never so Sober Enquirers Absolute Assurance of it's Sense even in the highest Mysteries of our Faith without needing the Church's Help Nor will You ever be able to produce the Consent of all Christian Churches affirming that it has this Property Wherefore when it is call'd a Rule by some of the Antients it must be taken as Mr. M. sayes with the Interpretation of the Church adjoyn'd which having the Living Sense of Christ's Law in her Heart can animate the Dead Letter and preserve it from Explications any way prejudicial to the Faith received And thus indeed it may be call'd a Rule of Faith because as 't is thus understood it cannot lead any into Errour but is of good use to abett Truth by it's Divine Authority In which sense Councils proceed upon it often and sometimes call it a Rule And I remember the Famous Launoy when we were Discoursing once about Tradition shew'd me a little Book of his in which he goes about to prove that Councils had frequently defin'd against Hereticks out of Scripture On which occasion I ask't him if he judg'd those Councils fram'd their Definitions by the sense they had of the Letter by their own human Skill or by the sense of the Church which they had by Tradition he answer'd undoubtedly by the later and that there would be no End of Disputing with Hereticks had they taken the former Way By which we may discern that still Tradition was in proper speech their Rule even when they alledg'd Scripture Other call Scripture sometimes a Rule because it contains Faith in which sense even some Catholicks call it a partial Rule
a Favour But let us see what is to be meant by an Infallible Iudge for you do not particularize your acception of those words nor let your Reader see what Judge how or for what reason we hold him Infallible 45. If you mean by Iudge an Authoritative Decider of Controversies about Faith as was said above and that which is what we hold his verdict is Infallible by proceeding upon an Infallible Rule you must either pretend the Christian Church never permitted Church-Governours to exercise their Authority in deciding matters of Faith or else that it never held they had an Infallible Rule to go by And I believe your utmost attempts will fall so far short of producing any such Consent of Universal Tradition for either that it will be directly against you in both and you must have a strange opinion of the Decrees of General Councils in such cases if you apprehend they held either of those self-condemning Tenets And yet I cannot tell but I have made my self too large a Promise concerning this Universal Consent of all Christian Churches being for us or not against us in this particular For I remember now that when you were to state the Notion of Tradition you took in the Consent of all former Hereticks to make your Tradition for Scripture larger and firmer than ours is against you and to make your Argument stronger by their concurrent Testimony and I see a glimmering light already which will grow very clear ere long you take in the same infamous Gang to bear witness against our Infallibility And what a case is the Catholick Church in then We can never expect those obstinate Revolters from that Church or those Churches which were then in Communion with Rome will ever acknowledge the Governours had a just Authority to declare against them as Hereticks for they were all of them to a man true-blew Sober Enquirers or that those Governours proceeded upon an Infallible Rule for this were to cut their own throats and acknowledge themselves Hereticks a mortification not to be submitted to by much contumacious spirits Now all these by your Principles are to be accounted Christian Churches and are call'd so very currently and very frequently by you p. 24. 25. 26. and in many other places without any distinction at all And so we are reduc'd to a very pretty condition according to the admirable mould in which you have new-cast the Church For unless all those Hereticks of old any Lutherans Calvinists and all the inferiour Subdivisions of Faith Reformers vouchsafe to give their concurrent Testimony to the Infallibility of the Roman Catholick Church which condemn'd them all and as appears by the Council of Trent throughout by the same Rule of Tradition she is to have no Infallibility at all allow'd her her old Rule too is condemn'd by them for a False Light because it condemn'd them and their New-Light nor consequently can she be an Infallible Iudge in Faith-Controversies This is a very hard Law Yet your severe Discourses allow us no better quarter You alledge that the Eastern Churches utterly deny the Roman Churche's Infalliblely tho' they be of very different denominations You mean I suppose amongst the rest the Nestorians Eutychians and such kind of good folks And can you without blushing avail your self of such concurrent Testimonies against the Body communicating with the Roman and her Infallible Rule whose Ancestors were condemn'd by that very Body to which the present Roman-Catholick Church uninterruptedly succeeds and were cast out of the Church for receding from the Christian Doctrine held even then upon that very Rule 46. But what have we to do with any of your pretended Christian Churches whether Eastern or not-Eastern Modern or Antient many or few Or what have you to do with them either if you would as becomes a Controvertist speak home to us You know already we place the Infallibility of our Church in delivering defining and Iudging of Faith-Controversies in the Absolutely Certain Rule of Tradition All therefore that have adher'd to Tradition as their Rule must allow to Her this Inerrableness while she adheres to it else they must condemn themselves And those pretended Churches which have deserted Tradition can never for many reasons be of any competent Authority against the Roman-Catholick For having no Certain Rule they can have no sure Ground of what they believe or alledge against her And besides being her Enemies and condemn'd by her and that by vertue of this very Rule they carp at common Equity tells every man 't is not a pin matter what such men say of that Rule or that Church either whether those men live East West North or South I perceive by your far-stretcht words here p. 31. All the Churches of the Christian World All the Eastern Churches tho' of very different denominations that you imagin the force of an Authority depends meerly on the Number of the Witnesses whereas we make account it depends much more on their Weight that is on their Knowledge and on their Sincerity or Indifferency of their Wills as to the Person or Affair concerning which they are to witness And Fallible Congregations which are both Out-casts and Enemies have for each of those regards no weight at all 47. You have another Fetch yet left to prejudice the Reader against our Tenet For you often make mention of our Infallibility the Roman or the Roman Churches Infallibility and as appears p. 15. and 16 of the Infallibility of the Particular Church of Rome whereas the Question and our true Tenet is of those many particular Churches communicating with the Roman so that you seem desirous to convince us you are resolv'd never to speak to any point sincerely or represent it ingenuously For this sleight tho' it seems trivial insinuates into your Readers that we hold the very Spot of Rome is the precise and adequate mold in which Infallibility is cast Please then to remember and pray let it be the last time we tell you of it that it is her following the self-evidently certain Rule of Tradition in which as a Controvertist I do in this Dispute place her Infallibility That being thus absolutely Certain of her Faith we can prove she is qualify'd to be an Infallible Iudge of Faith. That every Bishop is a Iudge of Faith-Controversies in proportion to his Sphere and the Highest Bishop above them all but still the last resort or Test of their final obliging to Belief for any one may oblige his Diocesans to Silence for Peace's sake is with reference to the Body of the Church and the Infallibility of the Church is refunded into the Certainty of her Rule and there it rests Hence conscious to your selves of the want of such an Infallible Rule you dare pretend to no Infallible Iudge but are forc't to leave every particular man to his private Iudgment of Discretion tho' you experience it shatters your Church no better principled into thousands of Sects In a word
Rule of Tradition is an absolutely or infallibly-Certain Conveyer of Christ's Faith down to Our Dayes Whence I deny that he can with the least grain of Discretion refuse to communicate with those who proceed on such an evidently Certain Rule and are found in Possession of their Faith upon that secure Tenure and adhere to those others who declare against any Infallible Rule that is who confess the means they have to know any one particular Point of Faith or which is all one any Faith at all is Fallible that their Guides may perhaps all mislead them and their Rule permit the Followers of it to Err. You see now how we allow them the Use of their Reason and Judgment of Discretion till it brings them to find a Certain Authority and when they have once found That the same Iudgment of Discretion which shew'd them that Authority was Absolutely Certain obliges them to trust it when it tells them what is Christ's Faith without using their private Judgment any longer about the particular Points themselves thus ascertain'd to them but submitting to It. In doing which yet they do not at all relinquish their Reason but follow and exercise it For nothing is more Rational than to submit to an Authority which my Reason has told me is Absolutely Certain in things which the same Reason assures me can no other wayes be known certainly but by that Authority 49. Now let us consider the Iudgment of Discretion as understood by you of which your sober Enquirer makes use to find out his Faith. 'T is onely employ'd about searching out the sense of Scripture's Letter by Fallible means which he can never hope will preserve him Certainly from Errour let him do his very best since he is told even by your selves that Great Bodies of very Learned Men and acute Scripturists do follow the same Rule and yet erre in the highest Articles of our Belief nay he sees himself by daily experience how many Sects follow that for their Rule yet vastly differ Whence instead of judging discreetly he commits the most absurd Indiscretion in the world to hazard his salvation upon his own Interpretation of Scripture when at the same time he is told by those very Men who propose to him this Rule that there is no Absolute security neither by his own Industry nor his Churche's veracity from erring in that Interpretation And not onely this but he sees or may see if he will soberly enquire what Certain Grounds are propos'd by others and yet suffers his Reason and the Truth to be run down with the noisy hubbubs against Popery and either out of a blameable Weakness or perhaps out of an inexcusable obstinacy rejects those Grounds or disregards the looking into them I say again Inexcusable For the very Nature of Faith tells him that 't is an Vnalterable Assent and that it cannot possibly be a Ly whence common sense will tell him 't is not to be hoped for amongst those who confess that all the Knowledge they have of each particular Point of Faith that is of any Faith is Fallible and onely likely to be had amongst those who own and maintain their Grounds cannot deceive them so that such a man if he ever came to a due Reflexion upon what most concerns him sins against the Light of Reason in many regards and what you call Iudgment of Discretion is convinc't to be the most Vnjudicious Indiscretion imaginable And your sober Enquirer who builds all his hopes of salvation upon such a Iudgment proves himself the weight of the Concern being duly consider'd to be the most rash and hair-brain'd Opiniastre and the most credulously blind that ever submitted and prostituted his Rational Faculty with which God has endow'd him and will require a strict account of him how he has us'd it to a most Groundless and Improbable Conjecture Disregarding all Authority out of his presumption on his own Skill or that he is more in GOD's Favour than the whole Church and I much fear out of a spiritual Pride and self-conceit that he can find out all necessary Faith well enough of himself without being beholding to any Church at all or as you instruct him here p. 21. and declare openly and avowedly you are not asham'd of it without the Churches Help Which is the very First Principle nay the Quintessence of all Heresy Fanaticism in the Egg perfect Enthusiasm when hatch't and downright Atheism when fledge FINIS THE FOURTH Catholick Letter IN ANSWER TO Dr. Stillingfleet's SERMON Preach't at GUILD-HALL November 27 th 1687. Entituled Scripture Tradition Compared Addrest to His AUDITORY By Iohn Sergeant Published with Allowance London Printed and sold by Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Holbourn 1688. TO THE READER PErhaps the smart Expressions and plausible Methods that Dr. St. so affects in his late Discourse concerning the Nature and Grounds of the Certainty of Faith in which he pretends to Answer the Catholick Letters may have rais'd Expectation in many indifferent men and Triumph in some of his Partial Admirers wherefore to stay the Appetites of the former and give some check to the over-weening of the later I thought it fitting to say somthing here by way of Preface to give our Readers a short Account of his main Performances in that Discourse till I come to publish a Compleat Answer to the whole What I affirm of it and undertake to make good is 1. That he so strangely prevaricates from the whole business we are about that he even forgets we are Writing Controversy and would turn the Polemical Contest in which we are engag'd into a Dispute of School-Divinity bearing the Reader in hand That we are Treating of Faith as formally Divine and of all the Intrinsical Requisites to it as it is such tho' none of them be Controverted between us and some of them are perhaps onely Knowable by GOD himself The meanest Reflecter may discern how impossible 't is for the Dr My self or any man living to put such Particulars as these into our Proofs or Arguments and how unpardonable an Absurdity 't is to alledge them in our Circumstances The very nature I say of Controversy obliges and restrains us both to speak of Faith precisely according to what is Controverted between the Contending Parties and the nature of our present Contest which is about an Absolutely-Certain Rule to know this matter of Fact that Christ and his Apostles did Teach the Doctrines we Profess determines us both to speak of Divine Faith precisely as it stands under such a Rule recommending our Faith to us as deliver'd by Christ and proving it to be his genuin Doctrin 2. That whatever the Big Letters in his Title pretend he neither shews from the Nature of Faith as it lies under our Consideration that it does not need the Perfect Certainty we require nor that the Certainty he assignes to make us adhere to it as True is not Perfect Uncertainty since he does not bottom it on the
so Wicked as to decline from it voluntarily or neglect to educate the others in it however it was to be expected there would be now and then a failure in some Particulars deserting the former Doctrin and drawing Proselytes after them 3 dly That the same reason holds for the Continuate Delivery of the same Doctrin by the Second Age to the Third and so still forwards the most powerful Motives God himself could propose being laid to oblige Christians not to deviate from it in the least or be careless to recommend it And those Motives too a thousand times more lively imprinted and apprehended by the heaven-instructed Faithful than they were by any in the former Ages of the World before Christ. 4thly That by Tradition then is meant The Testimony of the whole foregoing Age of Christians to the next Age of what had been deliver'd and explain'd to them by their Living Voice and Practice Or taking Tradition as it ought to be for Oral and Practical both 'T is A Continu'd Education of undergrowing Posterity in the Principles and Practice of their Immediate Predecessours 5 thly That hence 't is Evident beyond needing Proof that this Rule cannot on it's part deceive us For putting that it was still follow'd or that Posterity still believ d and practis'd as their Immediate Fore-Fathers did who at first believ'd and practis'd as the Apostles had instructed them 't is manifest the Last Age of the World must have the same Faith that the First Age of Christianity had Whence follows evidently that no Errour could possibly come in at any time unless this Rule of Tradition had been deserted 6 thly That Tradition thus understood and we never understood it otherwise being the Living Voice and Practice of the Church in the immediate Age before is applicable to all even of the lowest Capacity as we experience to some degree in the instructions by Pastours even now adays And since it delivers it's Sense which in those that have follow'd that Rule has been even now shewn to be Christ's Doctrin by Preaching Catechizing Explaining daily Practising and all the ways imaginable to make it understood 't is also an Absolutely-Clear Conveyer of Christ's Doctrin downwards Add that should it's sense be at any time misapprehended the Church and her Pastours can explain their own meaning pertinently to the Askers Doubter's or Mistaker's Exigencies which a Letter in a Book cannot 7 thly That the Chief Care of the Church was to inculcate to the Faithful and preserve inviolate the Chief Points of the Christian Faith and therefore that Tradition did most particularly exert it's self in Teaching and Transmitting Those 8 thly 'T is not to be deny'd but Scriptural Tradition went along with this other we have explain'd For the Church having the same sense in her breast which the First Writers had were consequently the best Interpreters of it which was one Reason why the Fathers and Councils often made use of it to confute Hereticks and comfort the Faithful by it's concurrence But when they were to convert any to Faith it was never heard they took such a Method as to put the Bible in his hand and bid him look for his Faith there telling him 't was Plain even in the highest points that were dubious or Controverted to every capacity 9 thly That hence Scripture without the Churches help was never held by them Anciently nor can with reason be held by us now to be the Rule of Faith in the sense we use that word that is to be a Means or Way for All who are coming to Faith to arrive unerringly at it Lastly we hold that the Sense of Scripture's Letter in those sublime Points surpasses the apprehensions of private men coming to Faith and so the Letter alone cannot be an assured Ground to build the Truth of Christian Faith upon whence follows that Tradition which is Plain and Easy and only It can be in Proper Speech the Rule of Faith. § 6. This then is the true State of the Question between us This is our true Tenet both concerning Scripture and Tradition and what are the Points to be ascertain'd by them Now let us see how the Sermon represents us and whether your admired Preacher does so much as touch any one of these particulars § 7. In the first place you may please to take notice that he never lets you know or so much as suspect that the main Contest between him and me is about the Absolute Certainty or Uncertainty of Christian Faith His wicked Doctrin in that Point oblig'd me to write a whole Treatise formerly in Vindication of Christianity from such an Intolerable Scandal which I apply'd in the cloze of it against himself and Dr. Tillotson Had he let you know this he prudently foresaw your Zeal for Christianity your best Concern would have given you a just prejudice against his Sermon and the Preacher too and the very Conceit all Christians have of the Truth of their Faith would have made you abhor a Discourse out of a Pulpit maintaining it might possibly be a Ly. As for particulars § 8. First he talks of a Stedfastness and a firm and well-settled resolution to adhere to that Faith which Christ himself deliver'd But ought you not to be assur'd first that he did indeed deliver it Or are you to adhere to it as his whether you are certain 't is his or no Or is a resolution to hold stedfastly to what you judge is the Faith of Christ well-settled if that Faith of yours the Basis of your Spiritual Building and Ground of that Resolution be not well-settled it self but may sink into False-hood This is the true Point you are to look after and till you have perfect satisfaction from him in this wisely to consider that Pious Talk without Solid Grounds to support their Truth is but painting the out-side of a Sepulcher The tinkling cymball of a little Rhetorick and shews of much Reading may go far with persons whom such flourishes can prevail upon to forgo their Reason but he had but a very small respect for you if he hop't you were so easy to be play'd upon with the wind of a little articulate ayr § 9. It was very possible he says for them to have mistaken or misremember'd what was at first deliver'd Whom does he mean by Them What by First Delivery Does he mean the Vniversality of Christians in the First Age or any succeeding one Or that those Great Bodies settled in their Faith form'd into Church-Government and kept up to their Christian Duties by Disciplin could thus mistake or misremember the former Teaching and Practice which was a plain matter of Fact This is the only Tradition we ever spoke of or went about to defend None doubts but that when some single Apostle was Preaching in some places at first the Thoughts of the Hearers were as yet raw and the things that were told them were so strange that they did not
to the next Age that They had heard seen and practic 't and the whole next Age to the Third and so forwards with an Obligation still to transmit it Equal to that the First Age had to believe it there had been no place left for his ridiculous Raillery But his constant Method is this he endeavours to put you out of conceit with Tradition by concealing every thing that might give you a true Conceit what Tradition is and what we mean by it § 14. The Argument or Instance he brings to prove that the Authority of Tradition was mightily sunk in the Second Century is if possible ten thousand times worse One would verily think from those big words he would prove that All the Christians of the First Age had conspir'd to tell a Ly to the Second concerning Christ's Doctrin But this mountainous Expectation came off with a poor little mouse the relation of one single man Papias of what an Apostle had told him which he being a good honest Soul gain'd credit with diverse Tho' as for his wit Dr. St's Author Eusebius tells us he was a man of a mean capacity and scarce understood the meaning of what was spoken I wonder the Dr. blush't not to put such a Slur upon his Auditory as to compare the Publick Authority of the whole Christian World and the Universal Testimony of God's Church to the private story of one weak man or to pretend hence that if he were mistaken the Authority of Tradition mightily sinks and fails whereas 't is only his own Credit that falls into that disaster by making such a senseless Argument Yet this is the best and as far as I can find the only one he has brought to prove directly the First Age of Christians had bely'd Christ's Doctrin to the Second and that because one man of a mean Capacity mistook we may stand in doubt of our Assurance whether all the Learneder Faithfull nay all the Pastours and Bishops in the Church had Capacity enough to know an open matter of Fact viz. what had been taught and practis'd publickly every day by a World of Fore-fathers or the Integrity not to deceive us § 15. Of the same stamp is his alledging that St. Luke's reason why he writ his Gospel was to give Theophilus Certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed The Subject of our Enquiry is about the High Points of Christian Belief Does the Dr. think then that Theophilus was not a Christian or had no Certain Knowledg of his Faith ere St. Luke writ Or that the Apostles did not instruct people in those Main Articles Or that St. Luke's Writing those Points in short for those Points we speak of take up a very inconsiderable part of his Gospel could make him know it better and with more Certainty than their Preaching it at large With what Sense can any of this be pretended The Apostles did Miracles to attest their Doctrin Did St. Luke do any to attest the True Sense of all he writ in those Points Again what did his Gospel contain Only those Dogmatical Points controverted from time to time between the Sons of the Church and her Deserters of which and none but which we speak Alas these are the least part of his Gospel and make but a small appearance in it He relates our Saviour's Genealogy Temptation Fasting Miracles Parables his sending his Apostles and Disciples his Exhortations to Repentance and good Life the Manner of his Entring into Ierusalem his Instituting the Last Supper the particulars of his being apprehended accus'd condemn'd and Crucify'd Lastly his Burial Resurrection Apparitions and Ascension These are laid out in that Gospel at large together with many excellent sayings of our Blessed Saviour related verbatim And These as they were never pretended by us to be the Object of Tradition so tho' spoken of frequently and perhaps variously amongst Christians were Impossible ever to be perfectly remember'd by the Generality unless put in a Book and therefore St. Luke gives Theophilus and others the Certain and particular knowledge of all these Passages by Writing And Dr. St. confesses the same p. 17. and that his aym and Intention was to give an Account of the Life and Actions of Christ but not a word that his Writing was to give Theophilus Certainty or a Clearer Knowledge of those Main Articles to ascertain which Tradition is pretended by us to be the most proper Means § 16. Now let 's see how many notorious prevarications and faults he has fallen into in this one Instance 1. Our whole Controversy is about the Certainty of those sublime Points of Christian Faith which he conceals and confounds them with a multitude of particular Passages 2. He intimates our Tradition is to ascertain all that 's contain'd in St. Luke's Gospel Whereas he knows well we rely upon no Tradition but what 's in some degree Practical which those Particulars are not unless it be those of which we keep Anniversary Solemnities 3. He is so angry at Tradition that he pretends the very Oral Tradition or Preaching of the Gospel by the Apostles needed something to strengthen and confirm it Lastly he makes our Tradition to begin with the first Preaching of the Apostles whereas it dates it 's Original from the first Age of Christianity already perfectly instructed by them during all their Lives and settled into Ecclesiastical Order and Discipline at their Decease § 17. He seems at length to come neerer the Point and affirms That the Writings of the Apostles when Matters of Doctrin came to be contested were the Infallible Rule whereby they were to judge which was the true and genuin Doctrin of Christ and which is yet better that They were intended by the Holy Ghost to be a standing Rule whereby the Church was to judge which was the true and genuin Doctrine of Christ. I am glad with all my heart to hear him speak of the Church being a Judge of Controversies or that he allows Her any hand in ascertaining and proposing Faith. I ever understood him hitherto That every sober Enquirer was to judge of the sense of Scripture for himself That it was plain to him even in the highest Points and that if in any contested or dubious Articles the Letter of Scripture did not declare it explicitly his sober Enquirer could by parity of Reason render any Implicit Point Explicit without the Church's Help tho' this was the most difficult Task as to the penetrating the Sense of Scripture that is possible and far beyond the understanding what 's there Explicitly He told us too in his second Letter p. 31 32. that because there is no Infallible Iudge every man is to Iudge for himself and this by Scripture his Rule But here the case is alter'd and the Church is to judge of Christ's Doctrin by Scripture I can allow honest Retractions without upbraiding them and am contented that the Church should judge by Scripture both when
speak of the same Point and a Contradiction must be ad idem Secondly Our Divines bring Motives of Credibility to prove Christian Faith to be Divine and True such as are Miracles the Conversion of the World the Sufferings of the Martyrs c. Very good would Dr St. reply these might prove the Faith profest in those times to be True but you have alter'd that Faith since and therefore you are to prove that the Faith you profess now is the same which was of old So that out of the very nature of our circumstances This is the Only Point between us and the main business of our Controversy about the Rule of Faith or the Ground that can justify its Invariable Conveyance downwards for this being made out by us all the rest is admitted Thirdly Hence both the Protestants and We agree that That is to be called the Rule of Faith by which the knowledge of Christ's Doctrin is convey'd certainly down to us at the distance of so many Ages from the time of its first Delivery Does any of our School-Divines take the Words Rule of Faith in this Sense Not one They content themselves with what serves for their purpose and call that a Rule of Faith which barely contains Faith. Fourthly Our only Point being to know assuredly the former Faith by a Certain Conveyer how must this be made out to those who are enquiring what is Christ's True Doctrin Must we bid them rely on their Private Interpretations of Scripture No surely for this is the way Proper to all Hereticks Must we bring them the Publick Interpretation of it by the Church This might do the deed so we could manifest this by some Knowledges those Candidates are already possess'd of and did admit Must we then at the first dash alledge the Publick Interpretation of the Church Divinely assisted What effect can this have upon those who do not yet hold that Tenet and consequently how can this be a Proper Argument to convince them It remains then that we can only begin with their unelevated Reason by alledging the Church's Human-Authority or Tradition the most vast and best-qualify'd Testimony to convey down a notorious matter of Fact of Infinite Concern that ever was since the World was Created for a Certain Conveyer of Faith from the time that those Motives of Credibility proving the then Faith to be Divine were on foot And if so why not with the same labour and for the same Reasons to bring it down from the very Beginning of the Church And if we must alledge it are we not oblig'd as Disputants to bring such Arguments to prove that Authority Certain as do conclude that Point If they do not what are they good for in a Controversy or what signifies a Proof that Concludes nothing This is the Sum of my Procedure and my Reasons for it in short which are abundantly sufficient to shew to any man of Sense that while the Doctor objects our School-Divines to one in my Circumstances his hand is all the while in the wrong Box as will more at large be shewn hereafter He might have seen cited by me in my Clypeus Septemplex two Writers of great Eminency viz. Father Fisher the most Learned Controvertist of his Age here in England and a Modern Author Dominicus de Sancta Trinitate whose Book was Printed at Rome it self and appprov'd by the Magister Sacri Palatii who to omit divers others do abet each particular Branch of my Doctrin which renders insignificant all his pretence of my Singularity and my Opposition to the Catholick Controvertists But to leave off this necessary Digression and proceed As our Doctor has shuffled off the whole Question by taking the word Faith as treated of by us in a wrong Sense so he behaves himself as ill in every particular of the rest of his Title viz. in his discoursing of his pretended Certainty of Faith and of the Nature and the Grounds of it He cannot be won to give us any Account how his Grounds Influence the Points of Faith with the Absolute Certainty he pretended And as for the Certainty it self the only word of his Title that is left he never shews how any one Article even though it be most Fundamentall is absolutely secur'd from being False or Heretical by any Rule Ground or Way he assigns us Nor can I imagin any thing could tempt him to so strange Extravagances but the streight he was in being put to shew his Faith Absolutely Certain and his Despondency ever to perform an Vndertaking which he foresaw was by his shallow Principles impossible to be atchiev'd And hence he was necessitated to all these crafty Shifts and Wiles and all those Vnsound Methods which like so many complicated Diseases affect his languishing Discourse and dying Cause as shall be laid open in the Progress of this Discourse and particularly in the Concluding Section I shall only instance at present in two or three Material ones which like the Grain in wood run through his whole Work. For Example When any Question is propounded which grows too troublesome he never pursues that Game but flushes up another and flies at that 'till the true Point be out of sight Tell him our Point is whether the High Mysteries and other Spiritual Articles of Faith be Clear in Scripture he will never answer directly but runs to Points necessary to Salvation Ask him if the Tenet of Christ's Godhead be necessary to Salvation no direct Answer can we get to that neither tho' it be the very Point we instanc't in Press him that there are no Unnecessary Points and therefore that All are Necessary for the Generality of the Church he cries Alas for me but answers nothing Ask him what Points he accounts Necessary He is perfectly mute 'Till at length he shuffles about so that the true Question which is about a Rule of Faith comes to be chang'd into a Rule of Manners and those High Spiritual Points which are most properly Christian and could only be known to the World by Divine Revelation are thrown aside and Moral ones put in their place which were known to many even of the Heathen Writers And this is the best Sense I can pick out of a man who affects to wrap up those Tenets of his and their Consequences which he thinks would not be for his Credit to discover in Mysterious Reserves The like Shuffling he uses in the Notion of Certainty or any other that is of Concern in our present Dispute for he is a very Impartial man and treats them All alike Ask him then If Faith be Absolutely Certain by his Grounds He will not say it but more than once hints the contrary Are the Grounds of it at least Absolutely Certain tho' he makes them such ill-natur'd things that contrary to all other Grounds in the world they keep their Absolute Certainty to themselves and will let Faith have none of it Yes he 'll tell you they are provided
with his own hand and Seal'd with his Archiepiscopall Seal in these words Infrascripti testamur c. Wee underwritten do attest that we have read thorough diligently and accurately and that with both Profit and Pleasure three Books writ in the English Dialect Publish'd by that Learned Person Mr. Iohn Sergeant whose Titles and Arguments are these Surefooting in Christianity Faith vindicated and Reason against Raillery In which I have not only found nothing against the Integrity of the True Faith and of good manners but moreover Clear and Solid Principles which admirably conspire to the Estabishing and confirming the Catholick Doctrin For both by Reasons and Authorities they excellently impugn the Protestants affirming the Holy Scripture is the only Rule of Faith and vigorously maintain that the genuin Doctrin of Christ and his Apostles has descended by the force of Tradition from Century to Century nay from year to year incorruptedly to our time and still remains inviolably in the Orthodox Church In Testimony whereof we have Subscrib'd and have caus'd our portatil Seal to be assixt this 15 th of March 1674. at Armagh Oliversus Armachanus totius Hiberniae Primas Can any man imagin that this Grave and Learned Personage who had for twelve years profest Divinity in the Sacra Congregatio at Rome and had been advanc'd by them to this high Dignity would have hazarded his Credit there in approving so highly the Writings of one who was a Stranger to him and no ways capable to oblige him had he not been perfectly assur'd there was nothing Censurable in them Yet this tho' known to our ingenuous Dr. is nothing with him He crys still Lominus for my money let him be what he will and assures the Reader upon his Morall Honesty he is Infallibly Certain my Doctrin in my Letters is not Catholik 18. The next in Dignity is that Illustrious and Right Reverend Personage Mr. Peter Talbot Arch Bishop of Dublin who dy'd a Confessor of the Catholik Faith in Dublin Castle in the time of that truly Hellish tho' not Popish Plot. This Eminent Person more than once has approv'd and highly commended my Doctrin The Author of Surefooting says he has with great zeal writ divers Treatises of this matter viz. the force of Tradition and has overwhelm'd those who defend only Morall Certainty in Faith with so great Confusion that they can no way clear themselves from the blemish of Atheism to which their Principles and meer Probability of Faith lead of which crime the foresaid Author proves them Guilty beyond all possibility of Reply And a little after he acknowledges that the Rule of Faith viz. in our Controversies is the Humane Authority of the Church and that it must be an Infallible Directress otherwise it might lead us out of the way Unfortunate Dr. St. to quote an Authority against me which so highly approves my Doctrine and condemns his as leading to Atheism The Reader may hence discern how likely 't is the Archbishop of Dublin should be the Author of Lominus his Book where he and Dr. Tillotson are praised for Writing so Catholickly against mee whereas that Right Reverend Prelate so highly extolls my Books as writing so unanswerably against Them. Lastly in his Appendix to that Book of his cited above he has this solid Discourse Altho' Tradition does not demonstrate or conclude evidently the Divinity of Christ nor consequently can demonstrate or conclude evidently that the Revelation of our Faith was Divine yet 't is a Conclusive Argument ad hominem against Protestants and all those who acknowledge the Divinity of Christ that God reveal'd all the Articles which the Roman Catholick Church professes in regard they acknowledge Christ to be God. And thus the Author of Sure-footing Faith Vindicated c. argues invincibly against his Adversaries for the Conclusive Evidence by the force of Tradition that God reveal'd all the Articles of the Roman Catholick Faith out of the Supposition that Christ is God. Note that this Appendix was write purposely to clear me after the Conference in Abbot Montague's Chamber where tho' I would not then answer to propositions taken out of books when no Books were there to clear them by the Context Yet after I had the Objections in writing I did answer them and this to the Satisfaction of the Arch-Bishop himself and of Dr. Gough who was present and prejudic'd formerly against my Writings 19. I had compriz'd the Sum of my Doctrine into a short Treatise Entituled A Method to arrive at Satisfaction in Religion which when I was at Paris I translated into Latin and shew'd it to that Excellent Prelate the Bishop of Condom my singular Friend and Patron desiring his Judgment of it He read it and at my request made his Exceptions which being clear'd by me he askt me why I did not Print it I reply'd I would so his Grandeur would please to give me leave to Dedicate it to himself Which obtain'd it was propos'd to the Sorbon for their Approbation of it the former of them Monsieur Pirot testifying it contain'd nothing against Faith or good manners the later of them Dr Gage added that the most certain Rule of Faith was in that Treatise exactly settled and invincibly defended But still obscure Lominus is worth twenty Sorbons in Dr. St's Learned Judgment Tho' 't is here to be observed that the Bishop of Condoms Approbation was antecedent to theirs not only as allowing and owning the Book but as inviting me to Print it 20. I alledge in the Fourth place the Testimony of my Superiour here in England Mr. Humphry Ellice an Ancient Dr. and Professor of Divinity and late Dean of our Catholick Chapter whose Sanctity of Life and solid Judgment gave him a high Esteem with all that knew him This Grave and Venerable Person besides the Ordinary and Customary Approbation of my Books added that They do clearly demonstrate out of the very nature of Ecclesiastical Tradition that the Doctrin delivered by Christ and his Apostles was inviolably eonserv'd in the Roman-Catholick and Apostolick Church even to this Age in which we now live and by Irrefragable force of Reason did evidently convince the Grounds of the Hereticks meaning Dr. St. and Dr. Till against whom I had writ to be meer Tricks and vain Fallacies But still Lominus that is the Lord knows who is Dr. St's only Saint and Infallible Oracle 21. It were not amiss to add next the Testimony or rather Judgment of that deservedly Esteemed and Learned man Mr. R. H. Author of The Guide of Controversy This Excellent Writer though he inclines rather to the School-opinion of the sufficiency of Moral Certainty yet like a truly ingenuous and Charitable man preferring the Common Good of Christianity before his own private Sentiment after having discourst according to his own Grounds he in allusion to my way of proceeding subjoyns these words But then if any after all this can make good any farther
Mankind but by Immediate Divine Assistance Yet he had the boldness or Forgetfulness to say p. 5. that If this be not Catholick Doctrin then I am Infallibly Certain I. S's Letters are far from being Catholick in their Sense It seems than either some men are Infallible for seriously I take Dr St. to be a Man or he fancies himself to be something above the Herd of Mankind or else sticks not at the Blasphemy to entitle the Blessed Spirit of Peace to have inspir'd him with such a quarrelsome Falshood 45. He discourses against Tradition as 't is Practical but has he said any thing against it as 't is Oral the force of which to clear Christ's Sense delivered down in the Church consists in Catechizing Preaching dilating upon the Points and explicating themselves at large replying to difficulties and accommodating their Discourse to all the Learners Exigences All which is found in the Living Voice of the Church and her Pastours as I shew'd him at large and none of it in the Letter in a Book What answers he to common Sense and to his own Experience too when he instructs others why he puts us off still with this frigid Cuckoo Answer that he is of another Opinion that writing is as plain as speaking and that words written have as much he ought to have said as Clear Sense in them as words spoken Which apply'd to our case is most palpable Nonsense and makes all Explications frivolous and all Catechizers and Commentators upon Scripture ridiculous The force I put in the Practicalness of Tradition is that supervening to the Oral delivery or being consonant to it it confirms it and makes it more Visible But he Combats the Practicalness of it consider'd alone and so impugns his own willfull Mistake But what says he to my discourse He alledg'd that Tradition might come down in Common Equivocal Words and so deliver no determinate Sense I reply'd that 't is inconsistent with the Nature of Mankind to mean nothing by the words they use especially in Tenets they were to be sav'd by therefore the Body of the Church had some Meaning or other of those Words Christ is the Son of God and Christ's Body is really in the Sacrament But this Meaning or Notion could not be a Common or General one in regard no Notion can be common to God a Creature to the Substance of Christs Body to the Substance of Bread much less to that Sacred Substance and some Accidents or Qualities Therefore there could not come down any such Common Notion by means of those Words wherefore there must have descended some particular Notion of each Point determining the signification of the Words to one sense or the other This was the true force of my Discourse I do still pretend it Demonstrable and let him answer it when he can for did he know the Consequences it will draw after it he would think it worth his while He 's at his old Logick again which is to bring an Instance against the Conclusion and is very brisk that it overthrows my Demonstration And what says his Instance It says the Corinthians and Artemonites understood by those words that Christ was only an Adoptive Son that is a Creature which is as much as to say they understood them in a Particular Sense which is all I there pretended And so his Instance is as he says truly Unlucky but 't is to himself not to mee for it makes good my words and instead of overthrowing confirms my Discourse that Men must have understood some Particular Sense by those words and our Learned Dr is so weak as to think that when what he brings for an Answer is so evidently for me it makes against me As for their pleading Tradition for their Sense surely he means a private Tradition from some former Hereticks and not the Publick Tradition of the Christian Church or that their Heretical Tenets were immediately deliver'd by that United Body of Christians for the manifest Falshood of this would have been confuted by Experience and have sham'd the Alledgers Nor could the Church in that case have condemn'd them since they spoke her sense But the good Dr mistook the Pretence of two or three quibbling Hereticks for the Vniversal Tradition of the Church as wicked an Error as it was possibly to stumble upon then triumphs how rarely his Instance has answer'd my Demonstration And thus ends his Reply to my short Discourse which having done he assures the Reader he has fully answer'd my main Argument against his Rule of Faith. Whereas he has not so much as touch't any single Proposition in it trifled or done worse even in the ridiculous odd way he has taken to answer it Which confirms me more then ever 't is past his skill to hurt it and even beyond his Courage to grapple with it 46. His contradicting himself is still urg'd upon him unless he can shew that true or Absolute Certainty does not secure those who have it in any thing from being deceived in that thing Again in his 15th Principle he said there needed no Infallible Society of men either to attest or explain the Scripture I reply'd that if it be Fallible we cannot by it be more than Fallibly Certain and we can have no Absolute Certainty from a Fallible Testimony This seems very plain for how should a man be absolutely or perfectly Certain of a thing by that very Testimony which not being perfectly Certain may perhaps deceive him in that very Thing His first Answer is that he understands no such thing as Infallibility in Mankind but by immediate Divine Assistance He understands Is that an Answer Does he understand how to answer our many Arguments to prove it By his not taking notice of them we are to understand and conclude he does Not. Again he declares that in that Principle of his he meant there needed no Infallibility by Divine Assistance and he utterly denies Natural Infallibility whence 't is manifest he allows no Certainty at all but Fallibility His Faith is in a fine case in the mean time He must shew I say that Fallibility in the Testimony can ground Absolute Certainty of the thing attested and this tho' a man sees that the Testimony and himself who relies on it may be in an Error before he can make either the Letter or the Book of Scripture Absolutely Certain by Tradition or Human Testimony which he maintains here is Fallible Can a man think or say interiourly I am Absolutely or perfectly Certain of a thing peradventure When that very Peradventure hinders his Certainty from being Absolute or Perfect What answers he to this plain Evidence Or how shews he that a seen Fallibility is able to beget Absolute Certainty Why First he says If by Fallible Certainty I mean this and that c. I mean Why I mean nothing by it but that 't is a wicked Contradiction I mean the same by
Genuin Effect of some kind of Evidence and therefore Absolute or Perfect Certainty ought to be the Effect of Perfect Evidence nor is any Evidence a Perfect one unless it Concludes Now he does not like Conclusive Evidence and so he ought to renounce Absolute Certainty 'T is as difficult to guess what he means here by those words in point of Reason True Reason knows no Methods but this to Assent if the Thing be Clear and to Suspend if it be Not and to conclude or argue being the proper Act of Reason straining after Truth what 's not concluded is not Clear and therefore not to be accepted for an Absolute Truth or Assented to as such The summ then to come close to our present Question is that Absolute Certainty of such a Doctrine's having been taught by Christ must either be built on True Evidence of the Grounds for it and then it cannot consist with Deception and so is Infallible Or it is not and then indeed it may sometimes come to Iustify a great Propension Hope or Deeming that 't is so Or if I conceive it to be of small concern an unexamining letting it pass for such but it can never Iustify an Absolute Assent See more of this Subject and a perfect Confutation of this wild Assertion in Errour-Nonplust and Reason against Raillery After many rambling sayings of his own he falls to speak of putting an End to Controversies especially about Certainty and Fatality What we have to do with Fatality I know not but I believe he heartily wishes an end of This Fatall Controversy concerning Certainty for he is in a miserable ross about it being driven now to declare whether he will deny First Principles or renounce his Vnprincipled Doctrin The best way I can invent to end all Controversies is this that since Controvertists are Disputants and are to produce their Arguments which are good for nothing nor can ever End Controversies unless they Conclude those who renounce Conclusive Evidence and instead of it bring Invisible Motives Qualifications may be expos'd and turn'd out of the Lists as being even by their own Confession Insignificant Talkers and Endless Brabblers His wrangle about Light and Darkness Christ and Belial is spoke to in my Second Catholique Letter Let him shew that his Rule Scripture interpreted by Private Judgments does not Patronize Heresy as well as Faith which he will never do and we will be content to acquit him from that horrid Blasphemy of making Light and Darkness very consistent and Christ the Author of our Holy Faith and Belial the Father of Heresy and Lies very good Friends of which wicked Doctrin 'till he does this he stands Indicted 49. I alledg'd that Scripture being the Common Rule to him and all Hereticks the particular or distinguishing Rule must be their own Private Iudgments interpreting Scripture Does he deny this or shew my Discourse faulty by assigning any other that particularizes or distinguishes them No neither What does he then Why he sends me to the old Philosophers to learn Logick And I tell him with many thanks I know none except Aristotle a competent Master for Me. Next he makes Sense to be a Rule of Iudging that is an Intellectual Rule which I deny For the Rule to any thing is the Immediate Light to judge of any thing and multitudes of intervening Knowledges are requisit to inform us when the advertisements of our Senses are right as is evident in the fallaciousness of Sense in a Stick seeming crooked in water the bigness of things seen at distance and innumerable other particulars But I ought to distinguish between the Rule of Iudgment and the Iudgment made according to that Rule And so I do if that be all For the Rule is the Informer my Iudgment the thing inform'd But yet if my Judgment follow the Information and still go wrong my Informer was no good Informer The Evidence of this and the propension of uncorrupted Nature to believe Pastours Fathers and Teachers and those who were wiser than themselves in things they were Ignorant of did I told him make the Generality of those out of the Church follow the Way of Tradition of their own Church and not regulate themselves in the choice of their Tenets by their private Judgment of Discretion working upon Scripture's Letter as is evident in whole Nations as Denmark meeting in one particular Belief and whole Sects agreeing in the very Judgment of their respective Leaders whence the Sense they make of Scripture as themselves understand it is not their Rule First he quotes a Decree of the Church of England that nothing is to be requir'd of any man to be believ'd as Faith but what 's read in Scripture or may be prov'd by it But this makes against himself unless he thinks the Generality that is the Layity of that Church esteem themselves more able to judge of the Sense of what 's read in Scripture or to prove all the highest Points of Faith by it than their Pastours and Church-Governours are for otherwise Nature will and ought to incline them to believe their Judgment rather than their own in that affair which is to follow the Way of Tradition Indeed I must confess that by the Doctor 's Principles every one of his Sober Enquirers ought to preferr his own Judgment of Discretion above the Church'es but what He says is one thing what the Dictates of honest Nature teaches Mankind is another 'T is confest the Layity of each Congregation judges the Sentiments of their Leaders to be agreeable to Scripture but I affirm withall that not one in ten thousand when he comes at age lays aside Prejudice and setts himself to consider anew by his scanning the Letter whether his Leaders told him right or presumes of the competency of his own knowledge to judge or determin whether They understood Scripture in the right Sense or no. He talks to us indeed of Helps and how they call in the old Interpreters of the Church and desire them to use their own Reason c. But every man sees that Few or None stand Indifferent 'till they have us'd all these Helps but undoubtingly accept that very Faith in which they were educated And so they continue 'till the discoursing or reading those of a contrary Opinion unsettles them and put them into Doubts Besides if those Helps he talks of are not secure from erring themselves as to what they help others in they may help them to Misunderstand the Sense of Scripture in the Highest Points of Faith and so help them to be Hereticks And yet these are all the best Helps his Principles can Help them to For he assures us and maintains stoutly by affirming them all to be Fallible in what they are to help us that all his Helps may be deceiv'd in that very thing in which they are to help others They may indeed according to him give a strong guess at what is Christ's Doctrin
for New Questions to avoid the danger in keeping to the True one For he knew the Infallibility of the Church we are here defending is that of Tradition in delivering down the Doctrin of Christ and he does not sure judge it a Point of Christ's Doctrin that the Epistle to the Hebrews was writ by S. Paul. Add that when the Church of Rome did Decree any thing at all in that matter it was for the Reception of that Epistle in doing which he will not I hope say she Err'd So that our great Dr is out in every particular in which he shows such Confidence or rather he is to talk very Confidently whenever he is out that he may not seem not to be out 69. He puts my Objection against his Universall Consent of the Testimonies of Marcion Ebion Valentinus and Cerinthus who as he makes me say rejected the Canon of the New Testament and then asks Could any man but J. S. make such an Objection as this And I may I hope ask another Question Could any Man but Dr St. put such a Gull upon his Adversary and the Reader too Now if I us'd such words as who rejected the Canon of the New Testament I spoke Nonsense for those Hereticks were dead long before that Canon was settled But if I did not then he has abus'd me and our Readers too and done no great right to himself Let Eye-sight decide it In my Third Catholick Letter p. 59. the place he cites line 11.12 my express words are The Consent of all your Christian Churches for Scripture and he instead of Scripture puts down as my words The Canon of the New Testament I can compassionate Humane Oversight for it may hap possibly tho' it can never knowingly to be my own Case and not too severely impute a mistake in altering my Words and by them my Sense Yet I must needs say that to put those wrong words in the Italick Letter to breed a more perfect Conceit they were mine and quote the very page in the Margent where no such words were found to make me speak Nonsense looks a little Scurvily especially because when men have their Eyes upon the very Page as he had they have an easy and obvious direction to the words too But why do I make such a Spitefull Reflexion on him as to call them His Christian Churches Because he would needs allow other Sects as perfectly Hereticall as they were to be Christian Churches tho' he was put upon it to give them a distinct Character and here again he grants them to be parts of the Christian Church tho' they be cut off by Lawfull Authority from the body of Christianity Next that I may speak my conscience because I fear by many passages in his Books by his ill-laid Principles and the very grain of his Doctrin and discourses he judges all to be good Christians who profess to ground their Faith on Scripture let them hold as many Heresies as they will. And lastly for his fierce anger here against me for calling those Hereticks viz. The Arians Nestorians c. which have been Condemn'd by Generall Councils for I concern not my self with his Greeks or Abyssins or any others Excrementitious Outcasts and that I sling such dirt in the face of so many Christian Churches And is not this to cry Hail fellow well met But my Cause he says is desperate because I call such men Knights of the Post. Yet he knows the Fathers oft complain of Hereticks for corrupting the Scripture and the Testimony of the Churches Truly Christian was Absolutely Certain without calling in so needlessly Blasted Witnesses Moreover I told him that the Universall Testimony he produc't did attest the Books but it must attest the Chapter and Uerse too to be Right nay each Significant Word in the Verse otherwise the Scripture could not assure him Absolutely of his Faith. Can he deny this If the Chapter or Verse he cites be not True Scripture or if any materiall Word in the Verse be alter'd can he securely build his Faith on it What says he to this Does he deny it or show that His Grounds reach home to prove these particular Texts or Words to be right by Universall Testimony or any other Medium Neither of them is his Concern What does he then Why he complains how hardly we are satisfy'd about the Certainty of Scripture and that we are Incurable Scepticks Sure he dreams We are Satisfy'd well enough but his Vexation is that we are not satisfy'd of it by his Principles and how should we if when it was his Cue to satisfy us he will never be brought to go seriously about it And why must we be Scepticks when as we both hold the Rectitude of the Letter our selves in Texts relating to Faith and Assign a way to secure it Absolutely which he cannot Must all Men necessarily be Scepticks who allow not his No-way of doing this tho' they propose and Maintain a certain way that can do it This is a strange way of Confuting He says There are different Copies in all Parts to examin and Compare 'T is these very Copies that are in Question whether they give Absolute Certainty of every Verse or materiall Word in the Letter of Scripture and we expected he should have shown how they did so and not barely name them and say there are such things But the main Point is Must those who are looking for Faith run to all parts of the World and examin and Compare all the Copies e're they embrace any Faith This looks like a Jest Yet 't is a sad tho' a mad Truth by his Principles For without knowing this Scripture cannot be their Rule and hee 'll allow no way to come to Faith but by Scripture So that for any Assurance he can give them even of his Necessary Points they must e'n be content to stay at home and live and dye without any Faith at all He ends And Thus I have answer'd all the Objections I have Met with in J. S. against our Rule of Faith. Here are two Emphaticall words Thus and Met of which the word Thus has such a pregnant Signification and teems with so many indirect wiles and Stratagems that it would be an ingratefull task to recount them and the word Met is as Significant as the other For how should he Meet those that lay in the way while he perpetually runs out of the Way SECT IV. How solidly Dr. St. Answers our Arguments for the Infallibility of Tradition 70. BUt now he exerts his Reasoning Faculty which he does seldom will answer Mr G's Argument for the Infallibility of Oral and Practical Tradition With what success we shall see anon But first he will clear his bad Logick for letting the Argument stand yet in its full force and falling very manfully to Combat the Conclusion and tho' Common Sense tells every man this is not to Answer but to Argue yet he will have Arguing to
be Answering for all that 'T is his Interest to do it solidly for he has all the World who in their Disputes follow the contrary Method to confute His main reason to prove that Arguing is a good way to Answer is because the Argument attempts to prove a thing Impossible and that 't is contrary to Sense and Experience to say the Latin and Greek Churches do not differ in what they receive upon Tradition and so the same Answer that Diogenes gave to Zeno's Argument against Motion by Walking will serve the turn Let 's examin this parallel in which consists the substance of his Defence of his bad Logick Does all the World see that the Generality of the Greek Church proceed upon Tradition in what they differ from the Latin as certainly and evidently as they see there is Motion Have not I produc't in my First Catholick Letter p. 35. reasons enow to shew him how disputable this point is none of which he so much as mentions Did not I there p. 13. quote him out of his own book Peter Lombard saying that the Difference between the Greeks and Latins is in Words and not in Sense Nay Thomas a Iesu Azorius c. who were of the same Judgment And could not these Learned men see a thing manifest to Sense and Experience Our point then is nothing like that of denying Motion nor is it contrary to Sense and Experience but such as bears a Dispute amongst intelligent Men and Great Schollars and therefore even by the Drs own Discourse an Argument or Instance brought against the Conclusion was no Answer to the Premises of the Argument brought by Mr. G. and so all the Division he runs upon it here is perfectly frivolous Nor was Mr G. oblig'd either to grant or deny the Greek Church had Err'd but was to insist on an Answer to his Argument because the Dr had playd foul play in attacking his Conclusion when he was to answer his Proof which if admitted no Discourse could possibly proceed For let us suppose Dr. St. had been to argue and had brought this Instance of the Greek Church would he have thought it fair that Mr G. when he was to answer it should have brought the Argument he made use of in the Conference and have bid him prove that two Churches following Tradition differ'd in Faith notwithstanding his Demonstration that they could not Or would it be held a competent Answer to his late Book against the Council of Trent to bid him prove it had not follow'd Tradition notwithstanding all that a multitude of Learned Catholick Authors had writ to the contrary I took heart then indeed as he says seeing the Dr so Nonplust but 't is his own fiction that I resolv'd to grapple with his Instance it being impertinent to do it in those circumstances and so he may thank himself if he were disappointed I was ty'd to the known Laws of Dispute and not bound to dance after his Pipe when he strays from all the Clearest Methods of Reasoning I objected that himself had defended the Greek Church from Erring in his Rational Account which spoils his own Instance of a Church going upon Tradition and Erring He calls this Trifling and says the Dispute was about Mr G 's Argument Yes but these words were not brought to abet his Agreement but expressly to shew the Drs Inconsonancy to himself and his Unconscienciousness in arguing from the Greek Churches Erring whereas it was his Opinion it did not Err. And tho' Mr G's Answer may be pretended not to be so pat to the particular Demand yet it was apposit to the main Point that no Church did at once adhere to Tradition and Err at the same time For which I gave my reason because if each Successive Generation follow'd their Fathers Tradition from the beginning the last Son must believe as the first did This was too hot to handle and so 't is answer'd with Good Night to the Greek Church which is Learned beyond expression Lastly upon my saying He might as well have instanc't in the Latin Church it self without running so far as Greece he takes hence an occasion to accept of the Challenge tho' it did not look like one being only spoke occasionally and threatens us not with a bare instance but a whole Book against us He may use his pleasure tho' I must tell him it looks but cowardly to threaten when he 's running away from his business undertaken and not yet perform'd and leaving the Absolute Certainty of his poor destitute Faith in the suds One would think it had been the more Compendious Way to overthrow our Cause to answer five or six lines if he could have done it But he had a mind to be at another Work more suitable to his Quoting Genius and hop'd to draw us after him from a Conclusive and short way of Discoursing to an Endless one of answering every frivolous misunderstood or misapply'd Citation 71. But now he will shew us how 't is Possible to adhere to Tradition yet err A hard Task if apply'd to our business For since to adhere to Tradition is still to believe what was deliver'd to shew that those who adhere to Tradition do err is to shew that they who still believ'd the same Christ taught did not believe the same Christ taught A Point so Evident that his Reflecter could not but grant it Yet let the Dr alone I dare hold a good wager on his side that he can by his confuting Method his Logick prove direct Contradictions to be True without any difficulty or as he calls it here with an Easy Distinction He begins with two Senses of Adhering to Tradition One of adhering to it as the Rule and Means of conveying matters of Faith. The other for adhering to the very Doctrin taught at first and truely convey'd down since by Tradition That is there are two sorts of Tradition or Delivery One is Tradition the Other is not Tradition or Delivery but the Points deliver'd Parallel to this is his Distinction of Traditionary Christians To what purpose is it to talk Sense to a man who is resolv'd to run still so wildly into Nonsense Do but see good Reader with what care I had forestall'd this very Absurd Distinction in my Third Catholick Letter p. 4.5.9.12 and shew'd how he had deform'd Tradition into all the untoward Senses man's wit could invent by making it now signify Articles now Power now Points deliver'd yet to convince the World that he cannot or rather must not speak Sense he 's at the same work again as briskly as ever And good reason Contradictions are better Friends to him than Principles for nothing more confounds the Reader which is all he looks after and to confound him with a shew of Distinguishing which Nature intended for a way to clear things does it with a better grace The same work he makes with the word Traditionary and tho' he were told what
we meant by it First Letter p. 8. and Second Letter p. 52. yet 't is never acknowledg'd but he still runs his Division upon it as if it were some Ambiguous or Mysterious Word till he has put the whole Tenour of the Discourse into Confusion Once more I tell him and desire the Reader to witness it that he already knows what we distinctly mean by those words and if he will not acknowledge it and speak to the Sense we give it upon our assurance that we never took them nor ever will take them otherwise he speaks not to me nor gives a word of Answer but as baffled men use runs for shelter to meer Brabbles and Impertinencies 72. And Now that is after he had laid Contradictions for his Principles he comes to give a Clear and distinct Answer to our Demonstration of the Infallibility of Tradition And no doubt by Virtue of such Grounds he will do wonders Mr. G's discourse was distinguish't by me in my First Letter p. 8.9 into four parts or Propositions of which the First is that All Traditionary Christians believe the same to day which they did Yesterday and so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour Now he knows that by Tradition we mean an Immediate Delivery and this from day to day for it would not be Immediate if it were at all Interrupted and by Traditionary those who follow'd this Rule of Immediate Delivery and do Actually believe the say to day which they did yesterday and that if they do not this they desert this Tradition by Interrupting Immediate Delivery and so cease to be Traditionary Christians All this he already knows for it has been told him over and over Whence he cannot but know tho' he thinks not fit to Acknowledge it that the Proposition is Self-Evident and plainly amounts to this that They who believe still the same do still believe the Same and the word Traditionary was only made use of to express those Persons in one word because it had been tedious still to use so Many Could any man but this Gentleman undertake to combat a Proposition so formally which is in Sense Identicall and Self-Evident I took him to be one who would own his Humane Nature which obliges every man to assent to such Clearest Truths and so vainly hop't he had nothing to say to it But as he says very true I was mistaken for he has many things to say to lay open the Notorious Fallacy of it in every Clause How Every Clause Why there 's but one Clause in the Whole for the adjoyn'd words and so up to the time of our Blessed Saviour are the most Essentiall part of it and distinguish Christian Tradition from that of Hereticall Traditions begun since Christ's time So that the Dr makes account that One signifies Many This is but an ill Beginning and I do assure the Reader all the rest is not a jot Wiser But now come the Notorious Fallacies Why did I not say that All Christians are Traditionary Or that All Christians have gone upon this Principle Because many are call'd Christians especially by him who have deserted this Principle and so have no Title to be call'd Traditionary But principally because if we speak of True Christians that was the thing to be Concluded for those men are not such who Disacknowledge a Way of knowing Christ's Doctrin which is prov'd to give them Absolute Certainty of it So that it is a Notorious Fallacy according to Dr St's new Logick not to make the Conclusion the very First Proposition of an Argument and the Fallacy lies in judging that the Last thing should not be the First Hitherto then this most Learned Logician has not taken one step without stumbling into a manifest Contradiction One Single Clause is Many Clauses Self-Evident Propositions are Notoriously Fallacious Words whose meaning have been particularly explain'd to him over and over and so can have but one Sense as we speak of them may have Many Senses Adhering to and following Tradition is not adhering to it and not following it and the Conclusion or End of an Argument is to be the Beginning of it or the Proof is to be the Thing Proved Nor is this any wonder for 't is but fit that Self-Evident Truths should only be oppos'd by Self-Evident Contradictions 73. After these Noble Performances he falls into his old track of Dividing and Subdividing he talks of Evidence from the Word of God from the Guides of the Church he runs to Infallibly holding to Tradition not spoke of Yet but following in the Argument he tells us they may go upon another Rule c. Anticipating thus all the following discourse and complaining all is not prov'd at once when as we are as yet but at the very first words of the Proof There is no End of the Faults and Failings of these Sinfull self-Evident Truths Falshoods and Contradictions are Saints to 'em It supposes falsly he says that the Change in Faith must be so sudden and Remarkable whereas it was Graduall and so to pitch upon such a Precise and Narrow Compass of time is very Unreasonable Lastly to Illustrate and compleat his Answer with an Instance he tells us that by the same Method one may demonstrate it to be Impossible that any Language should be Chang'd By which we may gather that Dr St's Incomparable Skill in Philosophy and deep Inspection into the Natures of Things makes account that Truths are of the same Nature with Quantitative Things or Bodies All Corporeall Motions amongst the rest Sounds or Speaking have a Thousand Indeterminate Degrees between any two determinate Points Does he think 't is so with Truths and Falshoods Or does he imagin the Thoughts of the Christian World could take a Walk of two or three Hundred years between Is and Is not Did he never hear that Truths consist in an Indivisible that he thus compares them to Quantitative or Divisible Natures and judges the Comparison so apposit Putting then once the true Notion of the Points in the Head and Heart of the Christian Church and if they were never there the Apostles lost their labour the least Change in it must change the Point Did he never reflect why a Tenet is Metaphorically call'd a Point And that 't is because a Point is Indivisible The putting in the Proposition to day and Yesterday is to express the Immediateness of Tradition Others amongst the rest the Council of Trent and many of the Fathers particularly St. Athanasius call it Delivering down by Hands and the hands of the Children must be Immediate to the hands of their Fathers else the one could not receive what the other Delivers Nor do I or any man living know how if the whole Church should be in an Errour but one day by deserting the Rule of Faith they should ever retrieve True Faith again having forsaken the only way to it Of such consequence it is that the Means of conveying down Christ's
Heresies in the world do as much as this comes to and yet are no less Heresies than if they did none of this T is your Proving it to be your Ground and that an Absolutely Certain one too which we would be at but we justly complain you flinch from the onely thing in Dispute and perpetually balk us We tell you once more and we cannot repeat it too often there is a necessary Connexion between the Ground and the Building for 't is not a Building if it have no Ground nor the Ground of a Building if nothing be built on it You are then to shew us Absolute Certainty of this necessary Connexion between the Scripture and your Faith or you do nothing but talk at random But alas You have not the Confidence to make out this or produce your Reasons to conelude this Ground and this Building have such a necessary Relation and I must tell you plainly you can never do it For pray tell me May not the Socinians and indeed all Hereticks that ever arose in the Church say pretend and perhaps think the same that you do Nay do not they all alledge the same Do not they all profess to resolve theit Faith I mean their abominable Errours into the written Word Do not they pretend it for their Ground and that they build their prophane Tenets on it lastly avow as stoutly as you do for your heart that whatever is built on Gods Word is absolutely Certain Will you allow these Pleas Argumentative for them or that their wicked Errours are therefore true Faith and Absolutely Certain because they alledge all this And can you be so unreasonable as to expect we should pass that for a good Argument or a conclusive Reason to prove you have Absolute Certainty for your Faith which your self disallows when 't is alledg'd for them nay which you must disallow and declare against unless you will patronize all their Heresies Pray lay your hand on your Heart and consider I am sure 't is more your own Good than mine you should into what a Lamentable or rather Chimerical Condition God's Church is reduc't by your Resolution of your Faith here and the Account you give of it The Pillar and Ground of Truth is reduc't by you into a confused Chaos of incoherent Errours Christ's immaculate Spouse is associated with all the Adulterate Synagogues of Sathan lastly Faith as to it's Certainty is in no better a Condition than Heresy and Heresy is upon even Ground with Faith. I have a better opinion of the Church of England than to believe Her most learned and genuin Members will own such a Resolution of her Faith as will make the Socinians and all other Hereticks in the World their fellow-Christians and Brothers as they must be forced to do if they own no other Resolution of it than all those pestilent Sects unanimously profess I see Mr. G had good reason to ask you in his 5 th Question What Churches you accounted Christian Churches For I much fear by your Discourse and Principles you exclude None Nor ought you so they heartily hold the same Gound of Faith with you for then all their Vnchristian Tenets are to pass for Material Errours not Formal Heresies They hold all true Faith in the Purse still tho' they mistake the coyn and mettal and that 's enough in all conscience for such a Church as that you are about rearing or dawbing up You pass a complement indeed upon the four first General Councils and that you reject all such Doctrins as were condemn'd by them which use to be words of course in your Controversies as your humble servant and such like are in our common Conversation but when you are once got out of the circumstance of pretending to hold to some Antiquity that so you may set a better face on it when you oppose the Papists when that job is over they are but Fallible Congregations and so perhaps were deceiv'd in all they defin'd against the Arians Eutychians c. Especially if one of your sober Enquirers comes to fancy otherwise and no doubt there were many such even in those dayes And then comes the 21 st Article of Q. Elizabeth's Symbol and knocks them down all at once with a Declaration that their Decrees have neither Strength nor Authority unless it may be declar'd that they be taken out of Holy Scripture and so all is with a turn of ones hand brought back to the same Point again and farewell Councils Your self and any one of your sober Enquirers are at full liberty still to judge of them by your Scripture-Rule and the Resolution of your Faith is establish't by that Article at least as you make use of it to be the same with that which is made and profest by all the vile Hereticks in the world For as Dr. Burnet sayes very candidly in his Answer to the Method of oonverting Protestants p. 83. and no doubt upon your Principles If any man after his strictest Enquiries is still perswaded that a Council has decreed against the true meaning of the Scriptures in a point necessary to Salvation then he must prefer God to Man and follow the Sounder tho' it should prove to be the lesser party And if any Company or Synod of Protestants have decree'd any thing contrary to this in so far they have departed from the Protestant Principles Where we see he gives every sober Enquirer leave to judge of Councils even tho' General ones for he excepts None and himself shews them the way by Judging Censuring the Councils of his own Church 35. Another scruple yet remains incumbent on you to clear which is that by your putting it upon Mr. G. to prove you have not Absolute Certainty as to the Rule of your Faith and by your innate Antipathy against Infallibility 't is very dubious whether your self do indeed hold the Tradition of all Christian Churches Absolutely Certain even for the Scripture however to save your Credit you then pretended it fearing your denying it might disedify Mr. T. Since then you ly under a shrewd suspicion that you do not deal really with him and the rest of your Readers in this forc't Profession it would become you in your Reply both to shew why you allow that Testimony to be Absolutely Certain and yet are such an Enemy to Infallibility since common sense tells us no man can judge himself Absolutely Certain of a thing if he judges he may at the same time be deceiv'd in it and withal that you may give more satisfaction to your Readers herein than an empty and scarce credible acknowledgment of it when you were in untoward Circumstances pray go to work like a Schollar and demonstrate to us by way of solid Reason working upon the Nature of the Thing for no Argument meerly probable will suffice to prove a Testimony Absolutely Certain how and by what vertue this Tradition of all Christian Churches comes to be thus Absolutely Certain for the
Letter of the Scripture as you see we endeavour to demonstrate the Absolute Cettainty of our Tradition for Doctrin There cannot be a worthier Point to exert your self in nor a greater service done to your Rule nor a better way to clear your self to the incredulous part of the World than to perform this for one knows not whence meer Words and outward Professions may proceed but solid and convincing Reasons can come onely from a Heart possest wiih the Truth of what is Profest Go to work then and bless us with the sight of this truly Learned and Iudicious Performance And while your hand is in please to shew us too that the Absolute Certainty of this Universal Testimony reaches to prove your Rule Intire that is reaches to prove no part of the Written Word was lost nay that it reaches to the particular Verses and the most substantial Words in those Verses as well as to the main Books and lastly to Translations also and Transcriptions as you ought to do in case they be as indeed they are of equal Concern in our circumstances as the Books themselves Or if you deny they are equally important and maintain that this Absolute Certainty may be had of your Rule without the same Certainty for these then please to give us your Reasons for it and shew how Faith can be Absolutely Certain tho' the Letter on which it depends may perhaps have been maim'd or corrupted by any of these miscarriages Or if you think fit to say you have Absolute Certainty of your Faith tho' you have not Absolute Certainty for it's Rule then confess candidly and ingenuously your Faith is Absolutely-speaking Vncertain and to make good that rare Christian Tenet fall to work and confute utterly that Positive Book Faith Vindicated which undertakes to produce a multitude of Demonstrations to prove that Faith cannot possibly be false and withal please to inform us to what end you maintain your Rule of Faith to be Absolutely Certain if it do not make your Faith thus Certain too or what that Certainty serves for Any thing would content us so you would once leave fluttering and hovering in common Words Either tell us plainly all Faith is Uncertain or come at length to some firm bottom on which we may with Absolute Certainty ground the Truth of it and raise it above some plausible Likelihood But we remonstrate against your putting us off with the Old Sham Sufficient Certainty unless you particularize to us what kind of Certainty you hold and make out 't is sufficient for the Nature the Ends and Vses of Faith and the Obligations issuing from it and incumbent on the Prosessours of it If you refuse to condescend to these fair Proposals all the World must think you onely temporiz'd with Mr. T. and the occasion and that you have not that Zeal for your Rule of Faith whose grand Interest 't is these things should be made out as you pretend Once more I tell you that if all this will not move you to this every way necessary undertaking I must then plainly challenge you that it is your necessary and precise Duty in this very circumstance as you are a Controvertist and as I am concern'd with you under that notion I must demand it of you 36. I know not well whether it be worth the while to justify Mr. M. for calling your Answer to Mr. G's 5 th Question Trifling or whether it be necessary after so ample a Discovery that all the rest of them taking them in the sense you explicated them deserv'd no better Character You were ask't onely the meaning of your Words Christian Church but you had a mind to be liberal and give more than was ask't the meaning of Vniversal Testimony too and to tell us that by Vniversal Testimony you mean Vniversal Consent That is to say by Vniversal Testimony you mean Vniversal Testimony For all agree or consent in the Testimony if it be Vniversal Then to the precise Question you Answer that by the Christian Church you mean all Christian Churches which is to say that by the Christian Church you mean the Christian Church for All the Parts make the Whole so that instead of an Explication you give us the same thing over again and almost in the same Words And pray who 's the wiser for such an Answer Yet tho' it be impertinent and nothing to the purpose 't is at least True and Evident by its self without needing to make it a Question If you would please to afford us such Evidences when 't is to purpose you would highly oblige us Certainly a Considering Reader cannot but think you are very unhappy in explicating your self for either your Explications run quite away from your Answer which you are to explicate and are a mile wide of them or they come too close to them and are the self-same said over again and almost in the same Words But can any one think so excellent a Wit as Yours is justly reputed should expose himself so manifestly without some latent Design T is incredible Let us take a view then of Mr. G's 5 th Question Being the Words Christian Church may be taken in several Latitudes by Persons of different Religions I desire to know what that Christian Church is c. Here we see plainly that the main of the Question was what Churches were accounted by You Christian or how that Word Christian was to be explicated and You give him for explication the self-same word again and in effect tell him that by Christian is meant Christian and that 's all he can get from You. And You did prudently for had You come to distinguish which Congregation was Christian which not You must have secluded all Hereticks which your Principles could not do for your Ground of Faith here is most manifestly Common to all of them and so You would have lain open to the Disrepute of having and professing a Brotherhead with all those Excrementitious Out-casts and your pretended Rule notwithstanding it s other many Divine Excellencies had appear'd to be utterly unqualifi'd with Clearness and Firmness enough to be call'd a Rule or Ground To avoid this and in Consonancy to your Principles You take all their Testimonies in for Scripture and pretend it strengthens it So it may perhaps as to the Books But You know how the Church complain'd of the Hereticks for corrupting the Letter of Scripture to make it Favourable for them and therefore for any thing You know they cry'd up the Books because they had fitted them for their own purpose Whence tho' the Testimony for the Books should be stronger by their concurrence yet the Credit of the Letter in the respective places that oppose those Hereticks is weaker for their allowing them because they admitted them as consistent with their Tenets otherwise they would have rejected them as they did others upon that score And what advantage can you gain by the former towards the proving your Ground of Faith
Letter or Right Sense of Scripture or that no Book is lost c. and so there 's an End of his Problematical Faith. I must confess that to prove First Principles False is something difficult but I have reduc't the business to as narrow a compass as I can that he may make short work of it He recurrs at present for want of some Clear Proof to Gods Providence concern'd in preserving Books written by Divine Inspiration Of which none doubts But why should not God's Providence be as much concern'd in preserving his Church from Erring in Faith that so both all those Books their Letters and Sense might be kept right as far as was Necessary Or why was God's Providence the Less for making the Churches Care and Help the Means to preserve both the Books and Letter of Scripture from suffering detriment Lastly why must his Providence be confin'd to only Translaters and Transcribers 68. Dr St. in his second Letter to Mr. G. p. 32. made the Canon of the New Testament the Rule of his Faith. To show the Inconsistency of his Tenets and utterly overthrow his Pretence of that Rule I alledg'd that If the whole Canon be his Rule then his Rule was deficient for some hundreds of years till the whole Canon was Collected and Acknowledg'd I prest farther that since it must take up some time e're those severall Books were Spread and accepted sometimes the Primitive Church had according to his Principles but Three quarters of their Faith Half of their Faith or less and so were but Three-quarters or Half-Christians according as the several pieces came by degrees to be Vniversally accepted For no man of Sense can doubt but that it cost some time e're the Churches so diffus'd heard of all those Books and much more e're they could be perfectly satisfy'd of the Universal Testimony of the Church Ascertaining them to have been writ by men Divinely inspir'd in regard it was of most Dangerous Consequence to accept that for Gods Word which was not beyond all doubt such So that we may with reason imagin that some Churches had at first but Two or Three Books of Scripture others but Four or Five that were well attested or could be rely'd on in such a High Concern Add that there were divers false Gospells and Spacious Books given out under the names of having the Apostles or Apostolical Men for their Authors which must have redoubled their care and made them backward to receive any that were not Authentick which would take up still more time to examin thoroughly To press my Argument still more home I urg'd that perhaps according to him they had no Faith at all during that long Interval because wanting other Books or sufficient warrant to rely on them they by consequence wanted a Multitude of other Texts with which they might Compare those they already had which is one part of his Method to find true Faith in Scripture To show more the Inconsonancy of his Doctrine I noted that notwithstanding all this he declar'd that he lookt upon the Primitive Church tho' so ill furnish't with his Rule as on the Best Arbitrator between us in all our Controversies about the Sense of the doubtfull that is Controverted places of Scripture Now one would verily think this pressing Discourse following the Point in Question so Close and pursuing it so Home were exceedingly worth his while to Answer if he could since it toucht his Rule and his Cause to the quick Now le ts see what he says in their Defence The Substance of his Answer for all the rest is impertinent is a most doughty and most weighty word If If God says he hath so Abundantly provided for his Church that there may be a full Revelation of all Points of Faith in the rest then the disputing the Authority of such an Epistle meaning that to the Hebrews doth not derogate from the Compleatness of the Rule of Faith. What 's become of his Sincerity and Morall Honesty which he so profest to Love Did I speak of the Epistle to the Hebrews Did not I not only speak of but most Expressly discourse all along of those many or most Books of Scripture not Universally known and accepted at the very first but by degrees spreading and gaining in Process of Time the Credit of being Authentick Does not my Discourse that by his Principles The Primitive Church had but Three quarters of her Faith half her Faith or less barr this Shamming Pretence that I speak only of that Epistle Or does he think I meant that that single Epistle was half or three quarters of the Canon of Scripture And now Reader I beg thy leave to insist here upon this Prevarication as an instance of one great Part of his Method in Confuting He picks out a word or two which may best serve him to slip away from the Point and turn it to quite another business but leaves the whole Stress and full import of the Argument Unanswer'd It were tedious still to reflect how oft he has done thus in this pretended Reply to my Catholique Letters But whoever compares his severall Answers to the respective places he pretends to speak to will see how dull and insignificant they are tho' if he be read alone especially with an Implicit Belief of his dealing fairly they look very jolly and brisk However to divert the Readers Eye he is even with me in another Point I said the accepting or not accepting Books whether in the Latin or Greek Churches was an Act of Prudence Antecedent to the Iudgment or Determination of any Church and so could not make or marr the Latin Churche's Infallibility in her Iudgment or Decrees He falls into a gross mistake of the word Antecedent and erects a Trophy of Victory upon his own Errour To clear which 't is to be observed that our Divines admit Prudentiall Considerations in any Church even tho' held Infallible Previous to her Decrees yet do not hold that Church is Infallible in those Acts of Prudence which are thus Antecedent Now tho' the whole Series of my Discourse there shows clearly that I spoke of an Antecedency in the Course of Humane Actions or of a Prudentiall Deliberation Antecedent to an Absolute Decision he turns it to an Antecedency in Chronology or of more Antient Writers and when he has apply'd that word to a wrong matter he has the Vanity to insult But he says I say not a Syllable to his proving hence the Roman Church was not then believ'd Infallible Surely he never consider'd what he pretends to Answer for by saying it was not only an Act of Prudence Antecedent to any Degree I show there was no occasion to show what was then believ'd of her Infallibility or not believ'd Again since the Certainty of that Epistles being writ by St. Paul depended on Testimony other Churches might perhaps know that better for some time than She. But the worst is he was preparing