The Religion of Protestants (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1799. Excerpt: ... ANSWER TO THE SIXTH CHAPTER: That protestants are not heretics. Ad 1. He that will accuse any one man, much more any great multitude of men, of any great and horrible crime, should in all reason and justice take care, that the greatness of his evidence do equal, if not exceed, the quality of the crime. And such an accusation you would here make show of, by pretending first, " to lay such grounds of it, as are either already proved, or else yielded on all sides;" and after to raise a firm and stable structure of convincing arguments upon them. But both these I find to be mere and vain pretences, and having considered this chapter also without prejudice or passion, as I did the former, I am enforced, by the light of truth, to pronounce your whole discourse a painted and ruinous building, upon a weak and sandy foundation. 2. Ad 2, 3. First for your grounds: a great part of them is falsely said to be either proved or granted. It is true indeed, that " man by his natural wit or industry could never have attained to the knowledge of God's will to give him a supernatural and eternal happiness," nor of the means, by which his pleasure was to bestow this happiness upon him. And therefore your first ground is good, " that it was requisite his VOL. n. 2 P understanding should be enabled to apprehend that end and means, by a knowledge supernatural." I say this is good, if you mean by knowledge an apprehension or belief. But if you take the word properly and exactly, it is both false; for faith is not knowledge, no more than three is four, but eminently contained in it, so thathe thatknows, believes, and something more, but he that believes, many times does not know, nay, if he doth barely and mer.ely believe, he doth never know; and besides, it is retracte...