A Treatise of Justifying Righteousness, Letter · Section 2
§. II. pag. 4, 5, &c. You invite me to, [a full entire retractation of my Doctrine of Justification (you add, By Works) and the secondary Original Sin].
1. Will you take it well if I retract that which you profess now to hold, and know none that denyeth, then there is no pleasing you: If I must be thought to wrong you for seeming to differ from you, and yet must retract all: What, yours and all Mens?
2. Do you mean the words or the sense of Justification (as you call it) by Works? For the words, I take you f…r a subscriber to the 39 Articles; and therefore that you reject not the Epistle of St. James: And for the s…nse, I confess it is a motion suitable to the Interest of your Treatise, (though not of the Truth): He that cannot confute the Truth, would more easily do his Work, if he could perswade the Defencers of it to an Entire Retractation. Hereupon, pag. 5. you recite my words, of the difficulty of bringing some Militant Divines to yield: Your Admonition for Self-Application of them is useful, and I thank you for it: But is it not a streight that such as I am in, between two contrary sorts of Accusers? When Mr. Danvers, and Multitudes on that side, Reproach me daily for Retractations, and you for want of them? How natural is it now to Mankind, to desire to be the Oracles of the World, and that all should be Silenced, or Retracted, which is against their Minds? How many call on me for Retractation? Mr. Tombes, and Mr. Danvers, for what I have Written for Infants-Baptism: The Papists for what I have Written against them: And how many more? And as to what I have Retracted, One reproached me for it, and another either knoweth not of it, or perswadeth others that it is not done.
You say, pag. 6. [A great out-cry you have made of me, as charging you with things you have Retracted—And pag. 7. What's the reason you have not hitherto directed us to the particulars of your Recantation, what, when, where?—You direct one indeed, to a small Book, above Twenty years a-go retracted.—All I can pick up of any seeming Retractation, is that you say, that Works are necessary at least to the continuation of our Justification.
Answ. Either this is Written by a Wilful, or a Heedless mistaking of my words. The first I will not suspect; it must therefore be the second, (for I must not judg you Ʋnable to understand plain English). And is it any wonder if you have many such Mistakes in your disputes of Justification, when you are so heedless about a matter of Fact? Where did I ever say, that I had Recanted? Or that I Retracted any of the Doctrine of justification, which I had laid down? Cannot you distinguish between Suspending, or Revoking, or Retracting a particular Book, for the sake of several Crude and Incongruous Expressions, and Retracting or Recanting that Doctrine of Justification? Or can you not understand words, that plainly thus Distinguish? Why talk you of what, and when, and where, and conjecture at the words, as if you would make the Reader believe, that indeed it is some confessed Errors of mine, which you Confuted? and that I take it for an Injury, because I Retracted them? And so you think you salve your Confutation, whatever you do by your Candour and Justice: But you have not so much as Figleaves for either. It was the Aphorisms, or Book, that I said was above Twenty years a go Revoked: When in my Treatise of Infant-Baptism, I had craved Animadversions on it, and promised a better Edition, if I Published it any more; I forbad the Reprinting it, till I had time to Correct it; and when many called for it, I still deny'd them. And when the Cambridg Printer Printed it a second time, he did it by Stealth, pretending it was done beyond Sea. In my Confession Twenty years ago, I gave the Reasons, Preface, pag. 35. [I find that there are some Incautelous Passages in my Aphorisms, not fitted to their Reading▪ that come to suck Poyson, and seek for a Word to be Matter of Accusation and Good for their Censuring opinionative Zeal.—And pag. 42. If any Brother understand not any word in my Aphorisms which is here Interpreted, or mistake my sense about the Matter of that Book, which is here more fully opened; I must expect, that they interpret that by this. And if any one have so little to do as to write against that Book (which is not unlikely) if he take the Sense contrary to what I have here and else-where since then Published, I shall but neglect him as a Contentious, Vain Wrangler, if not a Calumniator]. I Wrote this sharply, to forwarn the Contentious, not knowing then that above Twenty years after, Dr. Tully would be the Man. Pag. 43. [If any will needs take any thing in this Book to be rather a Retractation, than an Explication, of what I have before said, thougb I should best know my own Meaning; yet do such commend me, while they seem to blame me: I never look to write that which shall have no need of Correction.—And Cap. 1. pag. 2. [Lest I should prove a further Offence to my Brethren, and a Wrong to the Church, I desired those who thought it worth their Labour, to vouchsafe me their Animadversions, which I have spent much of these Three last years in considering, that I might Correct what-ever was discovered to be Erroneous, and give them an account of my Reasons of the rest. I have not only since SƲPPRESSED that Book which did offend them, but also laid by th…se Papers of Ʋniversal Redemption, which I had written, lest I should be further offensive, &c.] In my Apologie else-where I have such like Passages, ever telling Men that [It was the first Book I wrote in my Ʋnexperienced Youth; that I take the Doctrines of it to be sound and needful, save that in divers places they are unskilfully and incautelously worded. (As the Word [Covenant] is oft put for [Law,] &c.) And that I wrote my Confession, and Disputes of Justification, as an Exposition of it; and that I Retracted, or Suspended, or Revoked, not the Doctrine, but the Book, till I had Corrected it, and did disown it as too unmeet an Expression of my Mind, which I had more fully exprest in other Books.
And is not this plain English? Doth this warrant a Wise and Righteous Man, to intimate that I accuse him of writing against that Doctrine of Justification which I Recanted, and to call for the What, and Where, and When? Yea, and tell me, that I [refer you to a small Book] when instead of referring you to it, I only blame you for referring to that alone, when I had said as before?
When many Divines have published the first Edition of their Works imperfectly, and greatly corrected and enlarged them in a Second (as Beza his Annotations, Polanus his Syntagma, and many such) all Men take it for an Injury for a Neighbour twenty years after, to select the first Edition to confute as the Author's Judgment: Much more might I, when I published to the World, that I Suspended the whole Book, and have …h…se twenty four years hindred the Printing of it; professing that I have in many larger Books, more intelligibly and fully opened the same things.
Yea, you fear not pag. 23. to say, That I tell you of about 60 Books of Retractations, in part at least which I have Written]; when never such a word fell from me. If I say, Th… one that hath published his Suspension of a small Book written in Youth, not for the Doctrine of it, but some unfit Expressions, and hath since in al-most thirty Years time, written about sixty Books, in many or most of which is somewhat of the same Subject, and in some of them he fullier openeth his Mind; should be dealt with by an Adversary, according to some of his later and larger Explications, and not according to the Mode and Wording of that one Suspended Book alone: Shall such a Man as you say, that I [tel you of about sixty Books of Retractations]? Or will it not abate Mens reverence of your disputing Accurateness, to find you so untrusty in the Recitation of a Man's words? The truth is, it is this great Defect of Heed and Accurateness, by hasty Temerity, which also spoileth your Disputations.
But, pag. 7. the Aphorisms must be, [The most Schollar-like, and Elaborate (though Erroneous) Book in Controversie, you ever Composed]. Answ. 1. Your Memory is faulty: Why say you in the next, that I appeal to my Disputation of Justification and some others; but you cannot Trudg up and down, to every place I would send you, your Legs are too weak? Either you had read all the sixty Books which you mention (the Controversal at least) or not: If not, How can you tell that the Aphorisms is the most Elaborate? If yea, Why do you excuse your Trudging, and why would you select a Suspended Book, and touch none that were Written at large on the same Subject? 2. By this (I su… pose to make your Nibble to seem a Triumph) you tell your Reader again, how to value your Judgment. Is it like that any Dunce that is diligent, should Write no more Schollar-like at Sixty years of Age than at Thirty? And do you think you know better what of mine is Elaborate, than I do? Sure that Word might bave been spared; When I know that one printed Leaf of Paper hath cost me more Labour than all that Book, and perhaps one Scheme of the Distinctions of Justification, which you deride. If indeed you are a competent Judg of your own Writings, Experience assureth me, that you are not so of mine. And pag. 25. you say, You desire not to be preferred before your Betters, least of all when you are singular; as here I think you are.