Discourse of Mental Errors, Appendix 1 · Reply – Part
Manifesting the badness of his Cause, in the feebleness and impertinency of his Defence. And adding farther light and strength to the Arguments formerly produced in defence of God's gracious Covenant with Abraham, Gen. 17. and the right of Believers Infants to Baptism, grounded thereupon.
SIR,
NEXT to the not deserving a Reproof, is the due reception and improvement of it. You deserve a sharper reprehension for your timerity and obstinacy, than I am willing to give you from the Press. Yet in love to the Truth, and your own Soul, reprove you I must, and I hope God will enable me to be both mild in the manner, and convincingly clear in the matter and cause thereof. 'Tis better to lose the Smiles, than the Souls of men. I dare not neglect the duty of a Friend, for fear of incurring the suspicion of an Enemy. Several Learned and Eminent Divines who have seen what hath publickly passed betwixt you and me, have returned me their thanks, and think you ought to thank me too for the pains I have taken to set you right, hoping you will evidence your self-denial and repentance by an ingenuous retractation of your Errors.
But how will you deceive their Expectations, and unbecome the Character given you by your Friends, when they shall find the true measure both of your ability and humility drawn by your own Pen in the following Rejoinder?
I have throughly considered your Reply in the Manuscript you sent me, which I hear is now in the Press; and in the following Sheets have given a full, and (I think) a final Answer to whatsoever is material therein. And it so falling out, that my Discourse of Errors was just going under the Press, whilst your Rejoinder was there also, I thought it not convenient to delay my Reply any longer, but to have my Antidote in as great readiness as might be to meet it.
One Inconvenience I easily foresee, that the Pages of your Manuscript, which I follow, may not throughout exactly answer to the Print: But every intelligent Reader will easily discern and rectify That, if my Bookseller save him not that trouble, as I have desired him to do.
As to the Controversy about the Right of Believers Infant-seed to Baptism, you have altogether adventured it the second time with the consent of your Partizans, upon the three Hypotheses, which (if I mistake not) I have fully confuted and baffled in my first Answer. But if my brevity occasioned any obscurity in that, I hope you shall find it sufficiently done here. Mean time you have given, and I accordingly take it for granted, that our Arguments for Infants Baptism stand in their full strength against you, 'till you can better discharge and free your dangerous Assertions from the Errors and Absurdities in which they are now more involved and intricated than before.
The weaker any thing is, the more querulous it is. If Scripture-Argument, and clear Reason, will not support the Cause I undertake, I am resolved never to call in passionate Invectives and weak Evasions for my Auxiliaries, as you have here done. The Lord give us all clearer Light, tenderer Consciences, exemplary Humility and Ingenuity.
Vindiciarum Vindex: OR, A REFUTATION OF THE Weak and Impertinent Rejoinder OF Mr. PHILIP CARY:
Wherein he vainly attempts the defence of his Absurd Thesis, to the great abuse and injury of the Laws and Covenants of God.
AND must I be dipt once more in the Water-Controversy? 'tis time for me to think of undressing my self, and making ready for my approaching Rest, and employ those few moments I have to spend, in more Practical and Beneficial Studies, for my own, and the Churches greater advantage. And 'tis time for Mr. C. to reflect upon his past Follies, which have consumed too much of his own, and others time, without any advantage; yea, to the apparent loss and injury of the Cause he undertakes to defend.
When I received these Sheets from him, in vindication of his Solemn Call, I was at a stand in my own Resolutions, whether to let it pass (without any Animadversions upon it) as a passionate Clamor for a desperate Cause; or give a short and full Answer to his confused and impertinent Rejoinder. But considering that I had under hand at the same time the foregoing Treatise of the Causes and Cures of Mental Errors; and that though my honest Neighbour discovers much weakness in his way of Argumentation, yet it was like to meet with some interested Readers, to whom, for that reason, it would be the more suitable; and how apt such Persons are to glory in the last word; but especially considering that a little time and pains would suffice (as the Case stands) to end the unseasonable Controversy betwixt… us, and both clear and confirm many great and weighty Points of Religion: I was upon these Considerations prevailed with, against my own Inclination, to cast in these few Sheets as a Mantissa to the former seasonable and necessary Discourse of Errors, resolving to fill them with what should be worth the Reader's time and pains.
As for the rude Insults, uncomely Reflections, and passionate Expressions of my discontented Friend, I shall not throw back the dirt upon him, when I wipe it off from my self: I can easily forgive and forget them too. The best men have their Passions, Iam. 5. 17. even Sweet-briers and Holy-Thistles have their offensive Prickles. I consider my honest Neighbour under the strength of a Temptation. It disquiets him to see the Labours of many years, and the raised Expectations of so great a conquest and triumph over men of Renown, all frustrated by his Friend and Neighbour, who had done his utmost to prevent it; and often foretold him of the folly and vanity of his Attempt. Every thing will live as long as it can, and natura vexat a prodit seipsam. But certainly it had been more for Truth's honour, and Mr. C's comfort, to have confessed his Follies humbly to God, and have laid his hand upon his mouth.
The things in controversy betwixt us, are great and weighty, viz. The true nature of the Sinai Laws, in their complex body; the quality of God's Covenant with Abraham; and the dispensation of the New Covenant we are now under. These are things of great weight in themselves; and their due Resolutions are at this time somewhat the more weighty, because my Antagonist hath adventured the whole Controversy of Infants Baptism upon them.
I have in my Vindiciae Legis, &c. stated the several Questions clearly and distinctly. Shewn Mr. C. what is no part of the Controversy, and what is the very hinge upon which it turns; desired him, if he made any Reply, to keep close to the just and necessary Rules of Disputation, by distinguishing, limiting, or denying any of my Propositions; that the matters in Controversy might be put to a fair and speedy issue. But instead of that, I meet with a flood of words rolling sometimes to this part, and then to another part of my Answer, and so back again, without the steddy direction of Art or Reason. There may, for ought I know, be some things of weight in Mr. Cary's Reply, if a man could fee them for words: but without scoff or vanity I must say of the rational part of it, as the Poet said of the overdressed Woman,—Pars minima est ipsa Puella sui, 'tis the least part of it. To follow him in his irregular and extravagant way of writing, were to make my self guilty of the same folly I blame him for. I am therefore necessitated to perstringe them, and reduce all I have to say, under three general Heads.
I. I shall clearly evince to the World, That Mr. Cary hath not been able to discharge and free his own Theses from the horrid Consequents, and gross Absurdities which I laid to their charge in my first Reply; but instead thereof, in this feeble and unsuccessful attempt to free the former, he hath entangled himself in more and greater ones.
II. That he hath left my Arguments standing in their full strength against him.
III. And then I shall confirm and strengthen my three Positions, which destroy the Cause he manages, by some further Additions of Scripture, Reason and Authorities, which I hope will fully end this matter betwixt us.
But before I touch the Particulars, two things must be premised for the Reader's due information.
1. That the Controversie about the true nature of the Sinai Laws, both Moral and Ceremonial, complexly considered, is not that very Hinge upon which the Right of Believers Infants to Baptism depends: that stands as it did before, be the Sinai Laws what they will. We do not derive the Right of Infants from any other Law or Covenant, but that gracious Covenant which God made with Abraham, which was in being 430 years before Moses his Law;Gal. 3. 17. and was no way injured, much less disannulled, by the addition of it. If Abraham's Covenant be the same Covenant of Grace we are now under, the Right of Believers Infants to Baptism, is secured, whatever the Sinai Convenant prove to be. Which I speak not out of the least jealousie that Mr. Cary hath, or ever shall be able to prove it to be a pure Adam's Covenant of Works; but to prevent Mistakes in the Reader.
2. It must be heedfully observed also, that how free, gracious and absolute soever the New Covenant be, (for God forbid that I should go about to eclipse the glory of Free-grace on which my Soul depends for Salvation) yet that will never prove Abraham's Covenant to be an abolished Adam's Covenant of Works, unless two things more be proved, which I never expect to see, viz.
First, That Abraham, and his believing Posterity, were bound by the very nature and act of Circumcision to keep the whole Law in their own persons in order to their Justification and Salvation, as perfectly and perpetually, and under the same penalty for the least failure, as Adam was to keep the Law in Paradise.
Secondly, It must be further proved, That Abraham, and all his believing Offspring, who stood with him under that Covenant, whereof Circumcision was the initiating Sign, were all saved in a different way from that in which Believers are now saved under the Gospel: for so it must be, if the addition of Circumcision made it unto them an Adam's Covenant of Works. But this would be a direct contradiction to the words of the Apostle, speaking of them who were under the Covenant of Circumcision, Acts 15. 11. But we believe, that through the grace of our Lord Iesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they. If he say, they stood indeed under that Covenant, as a pure Covenant of Works, but were saved by another Covenant; and so for many Ages the Church of God stood absolutely under the Covenant of Works, and at the same time under the pure Covenant of Grace; the one altogether absolute and free, the other wholly conditional: and though these two be in their own natures inconsistent and destructive of each other, yet so it was, that all the Saints for many Ages were absolutely under the one, and yet purely under the other: shall I be then censured for saying he speaks pure contradiction?
Possibly my Reader will be tempted to think I abuse him, and that no man of common sense can be guilty of such an horrid Absurdity. I must, whatever respect I have for Mr. C. once more tell him before the World, that this is not only his own Doctrine, but that very Doctrine upon which he hath adventured the whole Cause and Controversie of Infants Baptism, which I therefore say is hereby become a desperate Cause.
And this brings me to my first general Head, viz.
I. First, That Mr. Cary hath not been able to free his Thesis from this borrid absurdity; but by strugling to do it, hath (according to the nature of Errors) entangled himself in more and greater ones.
Mr. Cary, in p. 174, 175. of his Solemn Call, was by me reduced to this Absurdity, which he there owns in express words, That Moses, and the whole body of the People of Israel, were absolutely under (without the exception of any) the severest penalties of a dreadful Curse; and that the Sinai Covenant could be no other than a Covenant of Works, a ministration of death and condemnation; and yet at the same time, both Moses, and all the Elect, were under a pure Covenant of Gospel-grace: And if these were two contrary Covenants in themselves, and just opposite the one to the other, as indeed they were, we have nothing to say, but with the Apostle, O the depth, &c.
This, Reader, is the Position which must be made good by Mr. Cary, or his Cause is lost. Deformed Issues do not look as if they had beautiful Truth for their Mother. No false or absurd Conclusion can regularly follow from true Premisses: But hence naturally and necessarily follows this