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observations of the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come, by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves all, and when the smart of the rod is past smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and 'tice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to the task of melancholy. His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loath to use so deceitful an organ: and he is the best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath outlived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and like his first father, much worse in his breeches. He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse: the one imitates his pureness, the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another.

Microcos., Lond., 1811, p. 1-4.

The Sceptick in Religion

He

Is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opinions, whereof not one but stirs him and none sways him. A man guiltier of credulity than he is taken to be; for it is out of his belief of everything that he fully believes nothing. Each religion scares him from its contrary; none persuades him to itself. would be wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an atheist, and wholly an atheist, but that he is partly a Christian; and a perfect heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opinions, truth in none; indeed the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy him. He is at most a confused and wild Christian, not specialized by any form, but capable of all. He uses the land's religion, because it is next him, yet he sees not why he may not take the other; but he chooses this, not as better, but because there is not a pin to choose. He finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them,

and is always too hard for himself. His learning is too much for his brain, and his judgement is too little for his learning, and his over-opinion of both spoils all. Pity it was his mischance of being a scholar; for it does only distract and irregulate him, and the world by him. He hammers much in general upon our opinions, uncertainty and the possibility of erring makes him not venture on what is true. He is troubled at this naturalness of religion to countries, that Protestantism should be born so in England and Popery abroad, and that fortune and the stars should so much share in it. He likes not this connection of the common-weal and divinity, and fears it may be an arch-practice of state. In our differences with Rome he is strangely unfixed, and a new man every new day, as his last discourse-book's meditations transport him. He could like the grey hairs of popery, did not some dotages stagger him: he would come to us sooner, but our new name affrights him. He is taken with their miracles, but doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, but it seems too empty and naked. He cannot drive into his fancy the circumscription of truth to our corner, and is as hardly persuaded to think their old legends true. He approves well of our faith, and more of their works, and is sometimes much affected at the zeal of Amsterdam. His conscience interposes itself betwixt duellers, and whilst it would part both is by both wounded. He will sometimes propend much to us upon the reading a good writer, and at Bellarmine recals as far back again; and the Fathers jostle him from one side to another. Now Socinus and Vorstius afresh torture him, and he agrees with none worse than himself. He puts his foot into heresies tenderly as a cat in the water, and pulls it out again, and still something unanswered delays him; yet he bears away some parcel of each, and you may sooner pick all religions out of him than one. He cannot think so many wise men should be in error, nor so many honest men out of the way, and his wonder is double when he sees these oppose one another. He hates authority as the tyrant of reason, and you cannot anger him worse than with a Father's dixit, and yet that many are not persuaded with reason, shall authorise his doubt. In sum, his whole life is a question, and his salvation a greater, which death only concludes, and then he is resolved.

Microcos., XXXv., p. 104.

95. William Chillingworth, 1602-1644. (Handbook, par. 387.)

That it is easier to understand Scripture than the Councils of the Church.

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105. Again, when you say that unlearned and ignorant men cannot understand Scripture,' I would desire you to come out of the clouds, and tell us what you mean; whether that they cannot understand all Scripture, or that they cannot understand any Scripture; or that they cannot understand so much as is sufficient for their direction to heaven. If the first, I believe the learned are in the same case; if the second, every man's experience will confute you, for who is there that is not capable of a sufficient understanding of the story, the precepts, the promises, and the threats of the gospel? If the third, that they may understand something, but not enough for their salvation: I ask you, first, why then doth St. Paul say to Timothy, the Scriptures are able to make him wise unto salvation?' Why doth St. Austin say-those things which are plainly revealed in Holy Scriptures contain all things which relate to faith, and the way of living? Why does every one of the four evangelists entitle their book the Gospel, if any necessary and essential parts of the gospel were left out of it? Can we imagine that either they admitted something necessary, out of ignorance, not knowing it to be necessary ?-or, knowing it to be so, maliciously concealed it?—or, out of negligence, did the work they had undertaken by halves? If none of these things can, without blasphemy, be imputed to them, considering they were assisted by the Holy Ghost in this work, then certainly it most evidently follows, that every one of them writ the whole gospel of Christ,-I mean, all the essential and necessary parts of it. So that, if we had no other book of Scripture but one of them alone, we should not want anything necessary to salvation. And what one of them hath more than another, it is only profitable, and not necessary; necessary indeed to be believed, because revealed; but not, therefore revealed, because necessary to be believed.

106. Neither did they write only for the learned, but for all men; this being one special means of the preaching of the gospel, which was commanded to be preached, not only to learned men, but to all men; and, therefore, unless we will imagine the Holy

e., His Roman Catholic opponents.

Ghost and them to have been wilfully wanting to their own desire and purpose, we must conceive that they intended to speak plain, even to the capacity of the simplest ;-at least, touching all things necessary to be published by them and believed by us. 107. And whereas you pretend it is so easy and obvious, both for the learned and the ignorant, both to know which is the Church, and what are the decrees of the Church, and what is the sense of the decrees,' I say, this is a vain pretence.

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108. For, first, How shall an unlearned man, whom you have supposed now ignorant of Scripture,-how shall he know which of all the societies of Christians is indeed the Church? You will say, perhaps, He must examine them by the notes of the Church, which are, perpetual visibility, succession, conformity with the ancient Church,' etc. But how shall he know, first, that these are the notes of the Church, urless by Scripture, which, you say, he understands not? You may say, perhaps, he may be told so. But seeing men may deceive, and be deceived, and their words are no demonstrations, how shall he be assured that what they say is true? So that, at the first, he meets with an impregnable difficulty, and cannot know the Church but by such notes, which, whether they be the notes of the Church, he cannot possibly know. But let us suppose this isthmus digged through, and that he is assured these are the notes of the true Church, how can he possibly be a competent judge which society of Christians hath title to these notes, and which hath not?-seeing this trial, of necessity, requires a great sufficiency of knowledge of the monuments of Christian antiquity, which no unlearned man can have, because he that hath it cannot be unlearned. As, for example, how shall he possibly be able to know whether the Church of Rome hath had a perpetual succession of visible professors, which held always the same doctrine which they now hold, without holding anything to the contrary, unless he hath first examined what was the doctrine of the Church in the first age, what in the second, and so forth? And whether this be not a more difficult work than to stay at the first age, and to examine the Church by the conformity of her doctrine with the doctrine of the first age, every man of ordinary understanding may judge.

Let us imagine him which is the Church.

advanced a step further, and to know How shall he know what the Church

hath decreed, seeing the Church hath not been so careful in keeping her decrees, but that many are lost, and many corrupted? Besides, when even the learned among you are not agreed concerning divers things, whether they be matters of faith or not, how shall the unlearned do? Then, for the sense of the decrees, how can he be more capable of the understanding of them than of plain texts of Scripture, which you will not suffer him to understand?-especially seeing the decrees of divers popes and councils are conceived so obscurely that the learned cannot agree about the sense of them; and then they are written all in such languages which the ignorant understand not; and therefore must, of necessity, rely herein upon the uncertain and fallible authority of some particular men, who inform them that there is such a decree. And if the decrees were translated into the vulgar languages, why the translators should not be as fallible as you say the translators of Scripture are, who can possibly imagine?

109. Lastly, How shall an unlearned man, or indeed any man, be assured of the certainty of that decree, the certainty whereon depends upon suppositions which are impossible to be known whether they be true or no? For it is not the decree of a council unless it be confirmed by a true pope. Now, the pope cannot be a true pope if he came in by simony; which, whether he did or no, who can answer me? He cannot be a true pope unless he were baptized; and baptized he was not, unless the minister had due intention. So, likewise, he cannot be a true pope unless he were a rightly ordained priest; and that, again, depends upon the ordainer's secret intention, and also upon his having the episcopal character. All which things, as I have formerly proved, depend upon so many uncertain suppositions, that no human judgment can possibly be resolved in them. I conclude, therefore, that not the most learned man among you all,—no, not the pope himself,-can, according to the grounds you go upon, have any certainty that any decree of any council is good and valid, and, consequently, not any assurance that it is indeed the decree of a council.

Religion of Protestants, chap ii. Works, 1727, pp. 67, 68

The Religion of Protestants.

56. When I say the religion of Protestants is, in prudence, to

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