ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

AND RELIGIOUS LADY,

THE LADY CHRISTIAN,

COUNTESS DOWAGER OF

DEVONSHIRE.

my

ᎷᎪᎠᎪᎷ,

WHEN I reflect upon the infinite disputes, which have troubled the public meetings of Christendom concerning original sin, and how impatient and vexed some men lately have been, when I offered to them endeavours and conjectures concerning that question, with purposes very differing from what were seen in the face of other men's designs, and had handled it so, that God might be glorified in the article, and men might be instructed and edified in order to good life; I could not but think that wise heathen said rarely well in his little adagy, relating to the present subject; Εἰς παραδοξίαν ἔφυμεν. • Mankind was born to be a riddle,' and our nativity is in the dark; for men have taken the liberty to think what they please, and to say what they think; and they affirm many things, and can prove but few things; and take the sayings of men for the oracles of God, and

bold affirmatives for convincing arguments; and St. Paul's text must be understood by St. Austin's commentary, and St. Austin shall be heard in all, because he spake against such men who in some things were not to be heard; and after all, because his doctrine was taken for granted by ignorant ages, and being received so long, was incorporated into the resolved doctrine of the church, with so great a firmness; it became almost a shame to examine what the world believed so unsuspectingly; and he that shall first attempt it, must resolve to give up a great portion of his reputation to be torn in pieces by the ignorant and by the zealous, by some of the learned, and by all the envious; and they who love to teach in quiet, being at rest in their chairs and pulpits, will be froward when they are awakened; and rather than they will be suspected to have taught amiss, will justify an error by the reproaching of him that tells them truth, which they are pleased to call new.

If any man differs from me in opinion, I am not troubled at it, but tell him that truth is in the understanding, and charity is in the will, and is or ought to be there, before either his or my opinion in these controversies can enter, and therefore that we ought to love alike, though we do not understand alike; but when I find that men are angry at my ingenuity and openness of discourse, and endeavour to hinder the event of my labours in the ministry of souls, and are impatient of contradiction or variety of explication, and understanding of questions, I think myself

concerned to defend the truth which I have published, to acquit it from the suspicion of evil appendages, to demonstrate not only the truth but the piety of it, and the necessity, and those great advantages which by this doctrine so understood may be reaped, if men will be quiet and patient, void of prejudice, and not void of charity.

This, Madam, is reason sufficient why I offer so many justifications of my doctrine, before any man appears in public against it; but because there are many who do enter into the houses of the rich and the honourable, and whisper secret oppositions and accusations rather than arguments against my doctrine; the good women that are zealous for religion, and make up in the passions of one faculty what is not so visible in the actions and operations of another, are sure to be affrighted before they be instructed, and men enter caveats in that court before they try the cause: but that is not all; for I have found, that some men, to whom I gave and designed my labours, and for whose sake I was willing to suffer the persecution of a suspected truth, have been so unjust to me, and so unserviceable to yourself, Madam, and to some other excellent and rare personages, as to tell stories, and give names to my proposition, and by secret murmurs hinder you from receiving that good which your wisdom and your piety would have discerned there, if they had not affrighted you with telling, that a snake lay under the plantain, and that this doctrine, which is as whole

some as the fruits of Paradise, was enwrapped with the infoldings of a serpent, subtile and fallacious.

Madam, I know the arts of these men; and they often put me in mind of what was told me by Mr. Sackville, the late Earl of Dorset's uncle; that the cunning sects of the world (he named the Jesuits and the Presbyterians) did more prevail by whispering to ladies, than all the church of England and the more sober Protestants could do by fine force and strength of argument. For they, by prejudice or fears, terrible things and zealous nothings, confident sayings and little stories, governing the ladies' consciences, who can persuade their lords, their lords will convert their tenants, and so the world is all their own. I should wish them all good of their profits and purchases, if the case were otherwise than it is but because they are questions of souls, of their interest and advantages; I cannot wish they may prevail with the more religious and zealous personages and therefore, Madam, I have taken the boldness to write this tedious letter to you, that I may give you a right understanding and an easy explication of this great question; as conceiving myself the more bound to do it to your satisfaction, not only because you are zealous for the religion of this church, and are a person as well of reason as of religion, but also because you have passed divers obligations upon me, for which all my services are too little a

return.

A

VINDICATION

OF THE

GLORY OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES,

IN THE QUESTION OF

ORIGINAL SIN.

1. In order to which, I will plainly describe the great lines of difference and danger, which are in the errors and mistakes about this question.

2. I will prove the truth and necessity of my own, together with the usefulness and reasonableness of it.

3. I will answer those little murmurs, by which (so far as I can yet learn) these men seek to invade the understandings of those, who have not leisure or will to examine the thing itself, in my own words and arguments.

4. And if any thing else falls in by and by, in which I can give satisfaction to a person of your great worthiness, I will not omit it, as being desirous to have this doctrine stand as fair in your eyes, as it is in all its own colours and proportions.

But first, Madam, be pleased to remember, that the question is not, whether there be any such thing as original sin; for it is certain, and confessed on all hands almost. For my part, I cannot but confess that to be, which I feel, and groan under, and by which all the world is miserable.

Adam turned his back upon the sun, and dwelt in the dark and the shadow; he sinned, and fell into God's displeasure, and was made naked of all his supernatural endowments, and was ashamed, and sentenced to death, and deprived of the means of long life, and of the sacrament and instrument of immortality, I mean the tree of life; he then fell under the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate, ignorant, uninstructed soul; his sin made him sickly, his sickness made him