there are liars in the world; but shall none, therefore, be believed? There is history which is false; but is none, therefore, true? Is there not a certainty in that history which tells us of the Norman conquest of this land; and of the series of kings which have been since them; and of the statutes which they and their parliaments have made: yea, of a battle, and other transactions, before the incarnation of Jesus Christ? Doth the falsehood of historians make it uncertain whether ever there was a pope at Rome, or a king in France, or an inquisition in Spain, &c.

But I have proved that it is more than the bare credit of any tradition or historians in the world, which assure us of the truth, both of fact and doctrine, in the christian faith.

Object. II. Are not the legends written with as great confidence as the Scriptures; and greater multitudes of miracles there mentioned and believed by the subjects of the pope? and yet they are denied and derided by the protestants !

Answ. Credible history reporteth many miracles done in the first ages of the christian church, and some since, in several ages and places; and the truth of these was the cloak for the legend's multiplied falsities, which were not written by men that wrought miracles themselves to attest them, or that proved the verity of their writings as the apostles did; or were they ever generally received by the christian churches, but were written awhile ago, by a few ignorant, superstitious friars, in an age of darkness, and in the manner, exposing the stories to laughter and contempt, and are lamented by many of the most learned papists themselves, and not believed by the multitude of the people. And shall no chronicles, no records, no certain history be believed, as long as there are any foolish, superstitious liars left upon the earth? Then, liars will effectually serve. the devil indeed, if they can procure men to believe neither human testimony nor divine.

Object. III. Many friars and fanatics, quakers, and other enthusiasts, have, by the power of conceit, been transported into such strains of speech, as in the apostles were accounted fruits of the Spirit; yea, to a pretence of prophecy and miracles: and how know we that it was not so with the apostles ?

Answ. I. It is the devil's way of opposing Christ, to do it by apish imitation: so would the Egyptian magicians have discredited the miracles of Moses and Christianity consisteth not of any words which another may not speak, or any actions of

:

devotion, or gesture, or formality, which no man else can do. There are no words which seem to signify a rapture, (which are not miraculous,) but they may be counterfeited; but, yet, as a statuary or painter may be known from a creator, and a statue from a man, so may the devil's imitations and fictions, from the evidences of Christianity which he would imitate. Look through the four parts of the testimony of the Spirit, and you may see this to be so: 1. What antecedent prophecies have foretold us these men's actions? 2. What frame of holy doctrine do they deliver, bearing the image of God, besides so much of Christ's own doctrine as they acknowledge? 3. And what miracles are, with any probability, pretended to be done by any of them, unless you mean any preacher of Christianity in confirmation of that common, christian faith. There are no quakers, or other fanatics, among us, that I can hear of, who pretend to miracles. In their first arising, two or three of them were raised to a confidence that they had the apostolical gift of the Spirit, and could speak with unlearned languages, and heal the sick, and raise the dead, but they failed in the performance, and made themselves the common scorn, by the vanity of their attempts. Not one of them, that ever spake a word of any language but what he had learned; not one that cured any disease by miracle. One of them, at Worcester, half famished, and then, as is most probable, drowned himself; and a woman, that was their leader, undertook to raise him from the dead: but she spake to him as the priests of Baal spoke to their god, that could not hear; and made but matter of laughter and pity to those that heard of it. There hath not been in England, in our days, that ever I could hear of, either by Jesuit, friar, quaker, or other fanatic, so much as a handsome cheat, resembling a miracle, which the people might not easily see to be a transparent foolery. But many wonders I have known done at the earnest prayers of humble Christians. So that he who shall compare the friars and fanatics with the apostles and other disciples of Christ, whose miracles were such as before described, will see that the devil's apish design, though it may cheat forsaken souls into infidelity, is such as may confirm the faith of sober men. 4. And what spirit of sanctification doth accompany any of their peculiar doctrines? If any

9 How like are the stories of Eunapius, of Jamblichus, Ædesius, Sosipatra the wife of Eustathius, and others' raptures, prophecies, visions, miracles, to those of the Roman legends, and the quakers.

of them do any good in the world, it is only by the doctrine of Christ; but, for their own doctrines, what do they but cheat men, and draw the simple into sin? A friar, by his own doctrine, may draw men to some foppery, or ridiculous ceremony, or subjection to that clergy, whose holy diligence consisteth in striving who shall be greatest; and lord it over the inheritance of Christ, and rule them by constraint, and not willingly. A quaker, by his own doctrine, may teach men to cast away their bands, and cuffs, and points, and hat-bands, and to say, 'thou,' instead of 'you,' and to put off their hats to no men, and to be the public and private revilers of the most holy and most able preachers of the Gospel, and the best of the people, and, with truculent countenances, to rail at God's servants, in a horrid abuse of Scripture terms. If this image and work of the devil were indeed the image and work of God, it were some testimony of the verity of their doctrine and yet, even these sects do but, like a flash of lightning, appear for a moment, and are suddenly extinct, and some other sect or fraternity succeedeth them. The quakers already recant most of those rigidities, on which, at first, they laid out their chief zeal. If a flash of such lightning, or a squib, or glow-worm, be argument sufficient to prove that there is no other sun, then friars and fanatics, as often as they are mad, may warrant you to believe that all men are so too, even Christ and his apostles.

Object. IV. But the power of cheaters, and credulity of the vulgar, is almost incredible. The great number of papists who believe their holy cheats; and the great number of Mahometans, who believe in a most sottish, ignorant deceiver, do tell us what a folly it is to believe for company.

Answ. This is sufficiently answered already. No doubt but cheaters may do much with the ignorant and credulous multitude; but doth it follow, thence, that there is nothing certain in the world? None of these were ever so successful in deceiving, as to make men of sound understanding and senses believe that they saw the lame, and blind, and deaf, and sick, and lunatic healed, and the dead raised, and that they themselves performed the like; and that they saw and were instructed by one risen from the dead, when there was no such thing; or that abundance of men did speak in many unlearned tongues, and heal the lame, and blind, and sick, and raise the dead; and this for many years together, in many countries, before many congregations; and that they procured the same spirit to

those that believe them to do the like, and that by this means they planted churches of such believers through the world. Who is it that hath been such a successful deceiver?

As for the Mahometans, they do but believe, by education and human authority, that Mahomet was a great prophet, whose sword, and not his miracles, hath made his sect so strong that they dare not speak against it. Those few miracles which he pretended to are ridiculous, unproved dreams: and if there be found a people in the world that, by a tyrant's power, may be 50 barbarously educated as to believe any foppery, how foolish and vain soever be the report, it doth not follow that full and unquestionable evidence is not to be believed.

Object. But what can be imagined by the wit of man more certain than sense, when it is sound sense, and all the senses, and all men's senses, upon an object suitable and near, and with convenient media? &c. And yet, in the point of transubstantiation, it is not a few fools, but princes, popes, prelates, pastors, doctors, and the most profound and subtle schoolmen, with whole kingdoms of people of all sorts, who believe that all these senses are deceived, both other men's and their own. What, therefore, may not be believed in the world?r

Answ. And yet a nihil scitur vel certum est, is an inhuman, foolish consequence of all this; nor hath it any force against the certainty of the Scripture miracles. For, 1. All this is not a believing that positively they see, and feel, and taste, and hear that which indeed they do not; but it is a believing that they do not see, and hear, and feel, and taste, that which indeed they do. They are made believe that there is no bread and wine when indeed there is. But this is no delusion of the senses, but of the understanding, denying credit to the sense. If you had proved that all these princes, lords, prelates, and people, had verily thought that they had seen, and tasted, and felt bread and wine, when it was not so, then you might have carried the cause of unbelief; but upon no other terms, which is to be remarked, than by proving that nothing in all the world is certain or credible for all the certainty of the intellect is so far founded in the certainty of sense, and resolved into it, in this life, that it cannot possibly go beyond it. If you suppose

r Sensus nostros, non parens, non nutrix, non magister, non poeta, non scena depravat; non multitudinis consensus abducità vero: animis omnes tenduntur insidiæ, vel ab iis quos modo enumeravi vel ab ea quæ penitus in omni sensu implicata insidet imitatrix boni voluptas, malorum autem mater omnium.-Cic. de Leg. 1. p. 226.

not all men's sound, consenting senses to have as much infallibility as man is capable of in this life, for the ordinary conduct of his judgment, you must grant that there is no further infallibility to be had by any natural way: for he that is not certain of the infallibility of such consenting senses is not certain that ever there was a Bible, a pope, a priest, a man, a council, a church, a world, or any thing.

2. And, for my part, I do not believe that all these that you mention do really believe that their senses are deceived, though, if they did, it is nothing to our case. Most of them are frightened, for carnal preservation, into a silencing of their belief; others know not what transubstantiation meaneth. Many are cheated by the priests changing the question; and when they are about to consider whether all our senses be certain that this is bread and wine, they are made believe that the question is whether our senses are certain of the negative, that here is not the real body and blood of Christ: and they are taught to believe that sense is not deceived about the accidents, which they call the species, but about the substance only; when most of the simple people by the species do understand the bread and wine itself, which they think is to the invisible body of Christ, like, as our bodies, or the body of a plant, is to the soul. So that, although this instance be one of the greatest in the world, of infatuation by human authority and words, it is nothing against the christian verity.

Object. V. You are not yet agreed among yourselves what Christianity is, as to the matter of rule. The papists say it is all the decrees, de fine, at least, in all general councils, together with the Scriptures canonical and apocryphal. The protestants take up with the canonical Scriptures alone, and have not near so much in their faith or religion as the papists have.

S

Answ. What it is to be a Christian, all the world may easily perceive, in that solemn sacrament, covenant, or vow, in which they are solemnly entered into the church and profession of Christianity, and made Christians: and the ancient creed doth tell the world what hath always been the faith which was pro

s of the canon of the Scripture, read Dr. Reynolds, (De Lib. Apocr.,) and Bishop Cosins's full Collections on that subject. Vide etiam Carm. Jambic, Amphilochii in Auct. Bib. Pat. To. 1. p. 624. Many papists confess, that the holy Scriptures contain all things necessary to the salvation of all. Quemadmodum enim siquis vellet sapientiam hujus seculi exercere, non aliter hoc consequi poterit, nisi dogmata philosophorum legat; sic quicunque volumus pietatem in Deum exercere, non aliunde discemus quàm ex Scripturis divinis. -Spiritus Hippolit. Homil, Auctuar. Bibl. Pat. To. 1. p. 622.