effect " no cunning man, in disorder, warmed, nettled, " in a passion," tend to? but to show, that these fol lowing words of mine. p. 170, of rny Vindication, viz. " I require you to publish to the world those passages " which show my contempt of the epistles," are so full of heat and disorder, that they need no other answer: " But what need I, good sir, do this, when you have " done it yourself?" A reply I own, very soft; and whether I may not say, very silly, let the reader judge. The unmasker having accused me of contemning the epistles, my reply, in my Vindication, ibid, was thus: " Sir, when your angry fit is over, and the abatement " of your passion has given way to the return of your " sincerity, I shall beg you to read this passage in the " 154th page of my book: These holy writers (viz. the " penmen of the epistles) inspired from above, writ no- " thing but truth; and in most places very weighty " truths to us now; for the expounding, clearing and " confirming of the Christian doctrine, and establishing " those in it, who had embraced it." And again, p. 156, " The other parts [i. e. besides the gospels and the " Acts] of DIVINE REVELATION are objects of faith, " and are so to be received; they are truths, of which " none that is once known to be such, i. e. revealed, " may, or ought to be disbelieved. And if this does not " satisfy you, that I have as high a veneration for the " epistles as you, or any one can have, I require you to " publish to the world those PASSAGES which show my " contempt of them." After such direct words of mine, expressing my veneration for that part of divine revela tion, which is contained in the epistles, any one, but an unmasker, would blush to charge me with contempt of them; without alleging, when summoned to it, any word in my book to justify that charge.
If hardness of forehead were strength of brains, it were two to one of his side against any man I ever yet heard of. I require him to publish to the world, those passages, that show my contempt of the epistles; and he answers me, " He need not do it, for I have if done it myself." Whoever had common sense, would understand, that what I demanded was, that he &50 A Second Vindication of the should show the world where, amongst all I had pub lished, there were any passages that expressed con tempt of the epistles: for it was not expected he should quote passages of mine, that I had never published. And this acute un masker (to this) says, I had published them myself. So that the reason why he cannot find them, is, because I had published them myself. But, says he, " I appeal to the reader, whether (after your " tedious collection out of the four evangelists) your " passing by the epistles, and neglecting wholly what " the apostles say in them; " be not publishing to the " world your contempt of them? " I demand of him to publish to the world those passages, which show my contempt of the epistles: and he answers, " He need " not, I have done it myself." How does that appear? I have passed by the epistles, says he. My passing them by then, are passages published against the epis tles? For " publishing of passages" is what you said, you " need not do," and what " I had done." So that the passages I have published containing a contempt of the epistles, are extant in my saying nothing of them? Surely this same passing by has done some very shrewd displeasure to our poor unmasker, that he so starts when ever it is but named, and cannot think it contains less than exclusion, defiance, and contempt. Here there fore the proposition remaining to be proved by you, is, XIV. " That one cannot pass by any thing, without " contempt of it."
And when you have proved it, I shall then ask you, what will become of all those parts of scripture, all those chapters and verses, that you have passed by, in your collection of fundamental articles? Those that you have vouchsafed to set down, you tell us, " are in " the bible, on purpose to be believed." What must become of all the rest, which you have omitted? Are they there not to be believed? And must the reader un derstand your passing them by, to be a publishing to the world your contempt of them? If so, you have unmasked Reasonableness of Christianity, &$c. 251 yourself: If not, but you may pass by some parts of scripture, nay, whole epistles,, as you have those of St. James and St. Jude, without contempt; why may not I, without contempt, pass by others; but because you have a liberty to do what you will, and I must do but what you, in your good pleasure, will allow me? But if I ask you, whence you have this privilege above others; you will have nothing to say, except it be, according to your usual skill in divining, that you know my heart, and the thoughts that are in it, which you find not like yours, right orthodox, and good; but always evil and perverse, such as I dare not own? but hypocritically either say nothing of or declare against: but yet, with all my cunning, I cannot hide them from you; your all- knowing penetration always finds them out: you know them, or you guess at them, as is best for your turn, and that is as good: and then presently I am confounded. I doubt, whether the world has ever had any two-eyed man your equal, for penetration and a quick sight. The telling by the spectator's looks, what card he guesses, is nothing to what you can do. You take the height of an author's parts, by numbering the pages of his book; you can spy an heresy in him, by his saying not a sylla ble of it; distinguish him from the orthodox, by his understanding places of scripture, just as several of the orthodox do; you can repeat by heart whole leaves of what is in his mind to say, before he speaks a word of it; you can discover designs before they are hatched, and all the intrigues of carrying them on, by those who never thought of them. All this and more you can do, by the spirit of orthodoxy; or, which is as certain, by your own good spirit of invention informing you. Is not this to be an errant conjurer?
But to your reply. You say, " After my TEDIOUS t( collection out of the four evangelists, my passing by " the epistles, and neglecting wholly what the apostles " say," &c. I wondered at first why you mentioned not the Acts here, as well as the four evangelists: for I have not, as you have in other places observed, been sparing of collections out of the Acts too. But there was, it seems, a necessity here for your omitting it: for that 252 A Second Vindication of the would have stood too near what followed, in these words; and " neglecting wholly what the apostles say." For if it appeared to the reader, out of your own con fession, that I allowed and built upon the divine autho rity of what the apostles say in the Acts, he could not so easily be misled into an opinion, that I contemned what they say in their epistles. But this is but a slight touch of your leger-de-rnain.
And now I ask the reader, what he will think of a minister of the gospel, who cannot bear the texts of scripture I have produced, nor my quotations out of the four evangelists? This, which in his "Thoughts of the " causes of atheism," p. 114, was want of "vivacity " and elevation of mind," want of " a vein of sense " and reason, yea, and of elocution too;" is here, in his " Sociniariism unmasked," a " tedious collection " out of the four evangelists." Those places I have quoted lie heavy, it seems, upon his stomach, and are too many to be got off. But it was my business not to omit one of them, that the reader might have a full view of the whole tenour of the preaching of our Saviour and his apostles, to the unconverted jews and gentiles; and might therein see, what faith they were converted to, and upon their assent to which, they were pronounced believers, and admitted into the Christian church. But the unmasker complains, there are too many of them: he thinks the gospel, the good news of salvation, tedious from the mouth of our Saviour and his apostles: he is of opinion, that before the epistles were writ, and with out believing precisely what he thinks fit to cull out of them, there could be no Christians; and if we had no thing but the four evangelists, we could not be saved. And yet it is plain, that every single one of the four contains the gospel of Jesus Christ; and, at least, they altogether contain all that is necessary to salvation. If any one doubt of this, I refer him to Mr. Chillingworth for satisfaction, who hath abundantly proved it.
His following words (were he not the same unmasker all through) would be beyond parallel: " But let us hear " why the vindicator did not attempt to collect any " articles out of these writings; he assigns this as one Reasonableness of Christianity, 8$c. 253 " reason: " The epistles being writ to those who were " already believers, it could not be supposed that they " were writ to them, to teach them fundamentals," p. 167, Yindic. " Certainly no man would have con- " jectured, that he would have used such an evasion as " this. I will say that for him, he goes beyond all sur- " mises, he is above all conjectures, he hath a faculty " which no creature on earth can ever fathom." Thus far the unmasker, in his oratorical strain. In what fol lows, he comes to his closer reasoning, against what I have said. His words are, " do we not know, that the " four gospels were writ to, and for believers, as well " as unbelievers?'3 Answ. I grant it. Now let us see your inference; therefore what these holy historians recorded, that our Saviour and his apostles said and preached to unbelievers, was said and preached to be lievers. The discourse which our Saviour had with the woman of Samaria, and her townsmen, was addressed to believers; because St. John writ his gospel (wherein it is recorded as a part of our Saviour's history) for be lievers, as well as unbelievers. St. Peter's preaching to Cornelius, and St. Paul's preaching at Antioch, at Thes- salonica, at Corinth, &c. was not to unbelievers, for their conversion: because St. Luke dedicates his history of the Acts of the apostles to Theophilus, who was a Christian, as the unmasker strenuously proves in this paragraph. Just as if he should say, that the discourses, which Caesar records he had upon several occasions with the Gauls, were not addressed to the Gauls alone, but to the Romans also; because his commentaries were writ for the Romans, as well as others; or that the sayings of the ancient Greeks and Romans in Plutarch, were not spoken by them to their contemporaries only, because they are recorded by him for the benefit of posterity.
I perused the preachings of our Saviour and his apos tles to the unconverted world, to see what they taught and required to be believed, to make men Christians: and all these I set down, and leave the world to judge what they contained. The epistles, which were all written to those who had embraced the faith and were all Christians already, I thought would not so distinctly Q5 4 A Second Vindication of the show, what were those doctrines which were absolutely necessary to make men Christians; they being not writ to convert unbelievers, but to build up those who were already believers, in their most holy faith. This is plainly expressed in the epistle to the Hebrews, chap. v. 11, &c. " Of whom (i. e. Christ) we have many things " to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are all dull " of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be " teachers, ye have need that one teach you again., which " be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are " become such as have need of milk, and not of strong " meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in " the word of righteousness; for he is a babe: but " strong meat belongeth to him that is full of age, even " those who by reason of use have their senses exercised, " to discern both good and bad. Therefore leaving " the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on " unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of " repentance from dead works, and of faith towards " God, and of the doctrine of baptism, and of laying on " of hands, and of the resurrection of the dead, and of " eternal judgment." Here the apostle shows, what was his design in writing this epistle, not to teach them the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion, but to lead them on to more perfection; that is, to greater degrees of knowledge, of the wise design, and wonderful contrivance, and carrying on of the gospel, and the evi dence of it; which he makes out in this epistle, by showing its correspondence with the Old Testament, and particularly with the oeconomy of the mosaical constitution. Here I might ask the unmasker, Whe ther those many things which St. Paul tells the Hebrews, he had to say of Christ, (hard to be uttered to them, be cause they were dull of hearing,) had not an " imme- " diate respect to the occasion, author, way, means, or " issue of their redemption and salvation?" And there fore, " whether they were such things, without the " knowledge of which they could not be saved? " as the unmasker says of such things, p. 23. And the like I might ask him, concerning those things which the apos tle tells the Corinthians, 1 epist. chap. iii. 2, that they Reasonableness of Christianity, 8$c. S55 " were not able to bear." For much to the same pur pose he speaks to the Corinthians, epist. 1. chap. iii. as in the above-cited places he did to the Hebrews: " That " he, as a wise master-builder, had laid the foundation: " and that foundation he himself tells us, is, " Jesus the " Messiah; " and that there is no other foundation to be laid. And that in this he laid the foundation of Christianity at Corinth, St. Luke records, Acts xviii. 4, in these words, " Paul, at Corinth, reasoned in the sy-> " nagogue every sabbath-day, and testified to the jews, " that Jesus was the Messiah." Upon which founda tion, he tells them, there might be a superstructure. But that, what is built on the foundation, is not the foundation, I think I need not prove. He further tells them, that he had desired to build upon this foundation; but withal says, he had fed them until then " with milk, " and not with meat; because they were babes, and had " not been able to bear it, neither were they yet able/' And therefore this epistle, we see, is almost wholly spent in reproofs of their miscarriages, and in exhortations and instructions relating to practice; and very little said in it, for the explaining any part of the great mystery of salvation, contained in the gospel.
By these passages we may see (were it not evident to common sense itself, from the nature of things) that the design of these epistles was not to lay the foundations, or teach the principles of the Christian religion; they being writ to those who received them, and were Christians already. The same holds in all the other epistles; and therefore the epistles seemed not to me the properest parts of scripture to give us that foundation, distinct from all the superstructures built on it; because in the epistles, the latter was the thing proposed, rather than the former. For the main intention of the apostles, in writing their epistles, could not be to do what was done already; to lay down barely the foundations of Christi anity, to those who were Christians already: but to build upon it some farther explication of it, which either their particular circumstances, or a general evidencing of the truth, wisdom, excellencies, and privileges, &c. of the 256 A Second Vindication of the gospel required. This was the reason that persuaded me to take the articles of faith, absolutely necessary to be received to make a man a Christian, only from the preach ings of our Saviour and his apostles to the unconverted world, as laid down in the historical part of the New Testament: and I thought it a good reason, it being past doubt, that they in their preachings proposed to the un converted, all that was necessary to be believed, to make them Christians; and also, that that faith, upon a pro fession whereof any one was admitted into the church, as a believer, had all that was necessary in it to make him a Christian; because, if it wanted any thing ne cessary, he had necessarily not been admitted: unless we can suppose, that any one was admitted into the Christian church by our Saviour and his apostles, who was not yet a Christian; or pronounced a believer, who yet wanted something necessary to make him a believer, i. e. was a believer and not a believer, at the same time. But what those articles were which had been preached to those, to whom the epistles were writ, and upon the belief whereof they had been admitted into the Christian church, and became as they are called " believers, " saints, faithful, elect," &c. could not be collected out of the epistles. This, though it were my reason, and must be a reason to every one, who would make this in quiry; and the unmasker quotes the place where I told him it was my reason; yet he, according to his never- erring illumination, flatly tells me, p. 38, that it was not; and adds, " Here then is want of sincerity/' &c. I must desire him, therefore, to prove what he says, p. 38, viz, XV. That, " by the same argument, that I would " persuade, that the fundamentals are not to be " sought for in the epistles, he can prove that they " are not to be sought for in the gospels and in " the Acts; because even these were writ to those " that believed."
And next I desire him to prove, what he also says in the same page, viz.
Reasonableness of Christianity, $c. 257 XVI. That " the epistles being- writ to those that " believed, was not an argument that I did make " use of."
He tells us, p. 38, that it is the argument whereby I would persuade: and in the very same page, a few lines lower, says, " That it is not the argument I did make " use of." Who, but an errant unmasker, would con tradict himself so flatly in the same breath? And yet, upon that, he raises a complaint of my " want of sin- " cerity."
For " want of sincerity " in one of us, we need not go far for an instance. The next paragraph, p. 38 — 40, affords us a gross one of it: wherein the unmasker ar gues strongly, not against any thing I had said, but against an untruth of his own setting up. Towards the latter end of the paragraph, p. 40, he has these words: " It is manifest, that the apostles in their epistles, taught " fundamentals: which is contrary to what this gentle- " man says, that such a thing could not be supposed." And therefore the unmasker has taken a great deal of pains to show, that there are fundamental doctrines to be found in the epistles; as if I had denied it. And to lead the reader into an opinion that I had said so, he set down these words, " could not be supposed; " as if they were my words. And so they are, but not to that pur pose. And therefore he did well not to quote the page, lest the reader, by barely turning to the place, should have a clear sight of falsehood, instead of that sincerity, which he would make the reader believe is wanting in me. My words, p. 153, of " The reasonableness of " Christianity," are, NOR CAN IT BE SUPPOSED, that " the sending of such fundamentals was the reason of " the apostles writing to any of them." And a little lower: " The epistles therefore being all written to those " that were already believers and Christians, the occa- " sion and end of writing them could not be, to in- " struct them in that which was necessary to make " them Christians." The thing then, that I denied, was not, that there were any fundamentals in the epis tles. For in the next page I have these express words; 8 258 A Second Vindication of the " I do not deny, but the great doctrines of the Christian " faith are dropt here and there, and scattered up and " down in most of them." And therefore he might have spared his endeavours, in the next paragraph, to prove, that there may be fundamentals found in the epistles, until he finds somebody that denies it. And here again, I must repeat my usual question, that with this sincere writer is so often necessary, viz.
XVII. Where it is that I say, " That it cannot be " supposed, that there are fundamental articles in " the epistles?"
If he hopes to shift it off by the word Taught, which seems fallaciously put in; as if he meant, that there were some fundamental articles taught, necessary to be believed to make them Christians, in the epistles, which those whom they were writ to, knew not before: in this sense I do deny it: and then this will be the XVIIIth proposition remaining upon him to prove, viz.
" That there are fundamental articles necessary to be " believed to make a man a Christian taught in the " epistles, which those, whom they were writ to, " knew not before."
The former part of his next paragraph, p. 40, runs thus: " Hear another feigned ground of his omitting " the epistles, viz. because the fundamental articles are " here promiscuously, and without distinction, mixed " with other truths," p. 41. " But who sees not, that " this is a mere elusion? For on the same account he " might have forborn to search for fundamental articles " in the gospels; for they do not lie there together, but " are dispersed up and down. The doctrinal and histo- " rical parts are mixed with one another, but he pre- " tends to sever them. Why then did he not make a " separation between the doctrines in the epistles, and " those other matters that are treated of there? He has Reasonableness of Christianity, <fyc. 259 " nothing to reply to this, and therefore we must again " look upon what he has suggested, as a cast of his shuf- " fling faculty."
The argument contained in these words is this: A man cannot well distinguish fundamental from non- fundamental doctrines in the epistles, where they are promiscuously mixed with non-fundamental doctrines: therefore he cannot well distinguish fundamental doc trines from others in the gospels, and the Acts, where they are mixed with matters of fact. As if he should say, one cannot well distinguish a bachelor of divinity from other divines, where several of them stand toge ther promiscuously in the same habit; therefore one cannot distinguish a bachelor of divinity from a Bil lingsgate orator, where they stand together in their dis tinct habits: or that it is as easy to distinguish fine gold from that of a little lower alloy, where several pieces of each are mixed together; as it is to distinguish pieces of fine gold from pieces of silver, which they are mixed amongst.
But it seems, the un masker thinks it as easy to distin guish between fundamental and not fundamental doc trines, in a writing of the same author, where they are promiscuously mixt together, as it is to distinguish be tween a fundamental doctrine of faith, and a relation of a matter of fact, where they are intermixedly reported in the same history. When he has proved this, the un- masker will have more reason to tax me with elusion, shuffling, and feigning, in the reason I gave for not col lecting fundamentals out of the epistles. Until then, all that noise must stand amongst those ridiculous airs of triumph and victory which he so often gives himself, without the least advantage to his cause, or edification of his reader, though he should a thousand times say, " That I have nothing to reply."
In the latter part of his paragraph, he says, " That " necessary truths, fundamental principles, may be dis- " tinguished from those that are not such, in the epis- " tolary writings, by the nature and importance of " them, foy their immediate respect to the author and '•' the means of our salvation." Answ. If this be so, I £60 A Second Vindication of the desire him to give me a definitive collection of funda mentals out of the Epistles, as I have given one out of the Gospels and the Acts. If he cannot do that, it is plain, he hath here given a distinguishing mark of funda mentals, hy which lie himself cannot distinguish them. But yet I am the shuffler.
The argument in the next paragraph, p. 41, is this: