Vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat Lux, Chapter 14
CHAP. 14.
Of Reason. Jews objections against Christ.
PAg. 27. You proceed to vindicate your unreasonable Paragraph about Reason, or rather against it. What reason we are to expect in a dispute against the use of Reason in and about the things which are the highest and most proper object of it, is easie for any one to imagine. For by Reason in Religion we understand not meerly the Ra…ocination of a man, upon and according to the inbred Principles of his nature, but every acting of the understanding of a man about the things of God, proceeding from such Principles, or guided by any such rule, as no way impeach its rationality. To vindicate your discourse in your Fiat upon this subject you make use of two mediums. (1.) You pretend that to be the whole subject of your Discourse about Reason, which is but a part of it: and (2.) You deny that to be the Design and aime of your Book which your self know, and all other men acknowledge so to be.
On the first head you tell me that your Discourse concerned Reason to be excluded from the employment of framing Articles of Religion. It is true, you talk somewhat to that purpose; and you were told that Protestants were no way concerned in that Discourse. And it is no less true, that you dispute against the use and exercise of Reason in our choise of or adhering unto any Religion, or any way or practice in Religion; that is the Liberty of a mans rational judgement in determining what is right, and what is wrong, what true, what false, in the things that are proposed unto him, as belonging unto Religion, guided, bounded, and determined by the only Rule measure and last umpire in and about such things; This you oppose and that directly; and that to this end, to shew unto Protestants that they can come unto no certainty in Religion by this exercise of their Reason, in and about the things of God. That men should by the use of Reason endeavour to find out and frame a Religion, is fond to imagine. They who ever attempted any such thing, knew it was not Religion but a pretence to some other end, that they were coyning. To make the reason of a man proceeding and acting upon it its own light and inbred Principles, the absolute and Soveraign judge of the things that are proposed to be believed or practised in Religion, so as that it should be free for him to receive or reject them according as they answer and are suited thereunto, is no less absurd and foolish; and who ever will assert it must build his Assertion on this supposition, that a man is capable of comprehending fully and clearly, whatsoever God can reveal of himself; which is contrary to the prime Dictates of Reason in reference unto the simplicity and infiniteness of Gods being, and so would imply a contradiction in its first admission. It is no less untrue, that a man in the lapsed depraved condition of nature, can by the light thereof and the utmost improvement of his reason, come to a saving, sanctifying perception of the things themselves, that God hath revealed concerning himself his will and worship, which is the peculiar effect of the spirit and grace of Christ. But to say, that a man is not to use his reason in finding out the sense and meaning of the propositions wherein the Truths of Religion are represented unto him, and in judging of their truth and falshood by the Rule of them, which is the Scripture, is to deny that indeed we are men, and to put a reproach upon our mortality, by intimating, that men do not, cannot, nor ought to do that which they not only know they do, but also that they cannot but do. For they do but vainly deceive themselves who suppose or rather dream that they make any determination of what is true or false in Religion, without the use and exercise of their Reason; it is to say they do it as beasts, and not as men; then which nothing can be spoken more to the dishonour of Religion, nor more effectual to deter men from the entertainment of it. For our parts, we rejoyce in this, that we dare avow the Religion which we profess to be highly rational; and that the most mysterious Articles of it are proposed unto our belief on grounds of the most unquestionable reason, and such as cannot be rejected without a Contradiction to the most Soveraign dictates of that Intellectual nature wherewith of God we are endued. And it is not a few trifling instances of some mens abuse of their Reason in its prejudicate exercise about the things of God, that shall make us ingrateful to God that he hath made us men, or to neglect the laying out of the best that he hath intrusted us with by nature, in his service in the work of Grace. And what course do you your self proceed in? When any thing is proposed unto you concerning Religion, do you not think upon it? doth not your mind exercise about it those first acts of Reason or Understanding which prepare and dispose you to discourse and compute it with your self? do you not consider whither the thing it self be good or evil? and whither the propositions wherein it is made unto you are true or false? do you not call to mind the Rule and measure whereby you are to make a judgement, whither they be so or no? we talk not now, what that Rule is, but only whither you do not make a judgement of the Propositions that are made unto you by some Rule or other, and whither with that judgement, your mind do not assent unto them or dissent from them? Yea is not your judgement which you so make, the assent or dissent of your mind? or what course do you take? I wish you would inform us of your excellent expedient to teach a man to cry Credo without the use or exercise of his Reason to bring him thereunto. But when you have done so, I know it is no other way but that by it you may teach a Parrat or Starling to say as much, or the Crow that cryed of old foreign. But you would evade all concernment in this Discourse, by denying that your Fiat Lux, was written unto any such concernment against Protestants. I know not well what you mean by your, VntoUnto any such concernment against Protestants. That the main design of your Discourse, is to bring Protestants unto an uncertainty in their profession by everting the Principles which you apprehend them to build upon, and thereon to perswade them unto Popery, I was in hope you would have no more denyed. It hath been evidenced unto you with as needless a labour as ever any man was put unto; but it is done because you would needs have it so, and shall not now be done again.
Your ensuing Discourse wherein you attempt to say something unto the ninth Chapter of the Animadversions is not unlike the preceding; and therefore I shall cast them under one head. Your business in it, is to cast a fresh dishonour upon Christian Religion by questioning the defensibility of its Principles against Jewish Objections, any otherwise then by an irrational Credo. Let us hear you speak in your own language; Your vaunting florishes, You say, about Scripture which you love to talk on, will not without the help of your Credo and humble resignation solve the Argument, which that you may the easilier be quit of, you never examine, but only run on in your usual florishes about the use and excellency of Gods Word. I told you in Fiat Lux, what the Jew will reply to all such reasonings: but you have the pregnant wit not to heed any thing that may hinder your florishes; but if you were kept up in a Chamber with a learned Jew without bread, water and fire, till you had satisfied him in that objection, I am still well enough assured, for all your veryvaunts, that if you do not make use of your Credo, which here you contemn, you might there stay till hunger and cold have made an end of you. The meaning of this Discourse is, that the Jews pretence of rejecting Christ upon the Authority and Tradition of their Church, was not, nor is to be satisfied by Testimonies given in the Scripture unto the Person, Doctrine and Work of the Messias. The sum of the Objection said down in your Fiat Lux is that which I have now mentioned; It was the Plea of the Jews against Christ and his Doctrine, managed from the Authority and Tradition of their Church; That Christ and his Apostles gave the Answer unto this objection, which I have now intimated, namely the Testimony of God himself in the Scripture to the Truth of that which they objected against, which was to be preferred unto the Authority and Testimony of their Church, I have undeniably proved unto you in the Animadversions; and it is manifest to every one that hath but read the New Testament with any Consideration or understanding. The same way was persisted in by the Antient Fathers, as all their writings against the Jews do testifie. And I must now tell you that your calling the validity of this Answer into Question, is highly injurious unto the honour of Christianity, and blasphemous against Christ himself. The best interpretation that I can give unto your words, is, that you are a person wholly ignorant of the Controversies that are between the Jews and Christians, and the way that is to be taken for their satisfaction or confutation. You tell us indeed in your Fiat, that the Jews will reply to these Testimonies of Scripture which are alledged as giving witness to our Lord Jesus Christ and his Doctrine, and contend about the interpretation of them; and this you tell me, I have the wit to take no notice of; which by the way is unduly averred by you, and contrary to your own Science and Conscience, seeing you profess that you have read over my Animadversions; and probably the very place wherein I do take notice of what you said to that purpose and replyed unto it, was not far from your eye when you wrote the contrary. And as I shewed you what was the opinion of the Antients of that reply of the Jews which you mention, so I shall now add, that nothing but gross ignorance in these things can give countenance to an imagination that there is any thing but folly and madness in the Rabbinical evasions of the Testimonies of the old Testament given unto our Lord Christ and his Gospel. And your substitution of a naked fananical Credo, not resolved into the Testimony of the Holy Writ in the room of that express Witness which is given in Holy Scripture unto the Person and Doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ, to oppose therewith the Judaical Plea from their Church, State, Power and Authority, is an Engine fit to undermine the very root of Christianity, and to render the whole Gospel highly Questionable. Besides it is so absurd as to the Conviction of the Jews, such a mere petitio principii or begging of what is in Controversie between Christians and them, that I challenge you to produce any one learned man that hath made use of it to that purpose. To think that your Credo built on principles which he despiseth, which you cannot prove unto him, will convince another man of the Truth of what you believe, can have no other ground but a magical fancy, that the fixing of your imagination shall affect his, and conform it unto your apprehension of things. Such is your course in telling the Jews of the Authority of your Church, and your Credo thereupon, which cannot be supposed to have any existence in rerum natura, unless it be first supposed that their Church was failed, which supposal that it was not, is the sole foundation of their objection. What end you can propose herein, but to expose your self and your profession unto their scorn and contempt, I know not. Sir, the Lord Christ confirmed himself to be the Son of God, and Saviour of the world by the Miracles which he wrought; and the Doctrine which he taught was testified to be Divine by signs and express words from Heaven. He proved it also by the Testimonies out of the Law and Prophets, all which was confirmed by his Resurrection from the dead. This coming of the promised Messiah, the work that he was to perform, and the characteristical foreign of him, in application unto the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Apostles and Evangelists proved out of the Scripture, to the conviction and conversion of thousands of the Jews, and the confusion of the rest. And if you know not that the Antients Fathers and learned men of succeeding Ages, have undenyably proved against the Jews out the Scripture of the Old Testament, and by the Testimony thereof, that the promised Messiah was to be God and man in one Person, that he was to come at the time of the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, that the work which he was to perform was the very same and no other then what was wrought and accomplished by him, with all the other important concernments of his Person and office, so that they have nothing left to countenance them in their obstinacy, but meer senseless trifles, you are exceedingly unmeet to make use of their objections, or the condition of the controversie between them and Christians. For what you add in reference unto my self, I shall need only to mind you that the Question is not about any Personal ability of mine to satisfie a Jew, which whatever it be, when I have a mind to encrease it, for somewhat that I know of, and which I have learned out of their writings, I will not come unto you for assistance; but concerning the sufficiency of that Principle for the confronting of Judaical objections, taken from the Authority of their Church, which I have formerly proved unto you, that our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles made use of unto that purpose. And I will not say that it was from the pregnancy of your wit, that whatever heed you took unto the stating of the Case between you and Protestants in the Animadversions parallel unto that between the Jews and the Apostles, (seeing a very little wit will suffice to direct a man to let that alone which he finds too heavy for him to remove out of his way) that you speak not one word unto it, yet I will say, that it is a thing of that kind whereof there are frequent instances in your whole Discourse, and for what reason, is not very difficult for any man to conjecture.