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The best apology that can be made for either must be 13 taken from the Roman satirist's charity, Opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum. Calvin and Aquinas were homines Toλuypapo, that is, somewhat more than authors of long works; authors of many various works in respect of the several subjects or arguments: which is the best apology that Jansenius could make for St. Jerom's contradicting of himself in several works, as Espenseus doth the like for St. Austin.

6. But of that pardon which learned men that wrote much and handled many much different matters may justly challenge, such as stand to be their followers (though afar off) are no way capable; men, I mean, who having other ordinary works or vocations to follow, do busy their brains and abuse their auditors or readers with idle and frivolous apologies for those slips or errors of worthy writers which stand more in need of ingenuous censure, of mild interpretation or correction, than a justifiable defence. More there have not been, as I hope, nor more peccant in this kind in any of reformed churches, than in this church of England, though not of it. Some treatises I have read and heard for justifying the escapes or ill expressions of Calvin and Beza, by improving their words into a worse and more dangerous sense than they themselves meant them in, or their followers in the churches wherein they lived did interpret them. Had these unscholastic apologizers been called to a strict account or examination of their doctrine by the rules of art, this haply would have bred a new question in our schools; Whether to attribute such acts or decrees unto God as they do, and yet withal to deny that they concludently make him the Author of sin, doth not argue as great a measure of artificial foppery, or (which is more to be feared in some) of supernatural infatuation, as it

would do of impiety, to resolve dogmatically in terminis terminantibus, that God is the author of sin?'

CHAP. VI.

The usual Distinction between the Act and Obliquity of the Act can have no Place in the first oblique Act of our first Parents.

tration of

mentioned

distinction

upon such

1. THE former question or problem might justly be The illus allowed in any academical act or commencement, albeit the forethe answerer or defendant were furnished with no other grounds or occasions of his theses besides that retorted usually avouched distinction between the act and as use it. obliquity of the act, specially if the distinction were applied unto the first sin of our first parents. In that sin, whether we refer it to our father Adam or to our mother Eve, the act and the obliquity are altogether as unseparably annexed, as rotundity or roundness is with a sphere or moulded bullet. And to imagine there should be one cause of the act, and another of the obliquity or sinfulness of the act, would be as gross a solecism, as to assign or seek after any other cause of the rotundity or roundness of a sphere or bullet, besides him that frames the one or moulds the other; or as it would be to inquire any other cause of the equality between two bodies before unequal, besides him that makes the quantity to be of one and the same size or scantling; or of the similitude between the fleece of a black sheep, and of a white sheep perfectly dyed black, besides the dyer. Now the similitude betwixt that which is perfectly dyed black and that which is black by nature, doth inevitably result from the dyer, without the intervention of any other cause imaginable. Easy it were to produce a volume of like instances in the

14 them; all of them concludently enforcing the resolution of the former problem to be allowable in schools, by most perfect and absolute induction, if arts or sciences were once so happy as to have none but true and accurate artists to be their judges. As indeed they are the sole competent judges in like cases, and judges they are within these precincts, as competent as the reverend judges of this or any other land are in causes civil, municipal, or criminal.

2. Admit then a man were found guilty of murder by a jury of his honest neighbours upon the authentic testimonies of two or three witnesses, which had seen him run his neighbour through the body in some vital part, or to cleave his head in two, and a philosopher or physician should undertake to arrest the judgment or make remonstrance to the judge, that the delinquent arraigned and convicted by the jury was not the true or immediate cause of the other's death, upon these or the like allegations out of his own faculty: That death properly consists in the dissolution of natural heat and moisture, whereas the party arraigned did never intend to make any such dissolution, or to terminate his action to the point of death, but only to thrust his sword through him, or to knock him in the head, which actions can have no direct term, besides the ubi or term of local motion.' Can we imagine that any judge could be so mild as not to censure such an apologizer for a saucy artificial fool, or a crackedbrained sophister? And yet this apology is not, cannot be in vulgar judgments so censurable of artificial folly as the former apology for salving the escapes, errors, or ill expressions of some learned and pious men, by nice distinctions betwixt the act and the sinfulness of it in our first parents' case, was. For there is not so immediate or so absolute or necessary con

nexion between death and the deadliest wound that can be given to any man, as there is between acts peremptorily forbidden by the law of God and the obliquity or sinfulness of them. For there is not, neither is it possible there should be, any minute of time, or, which is less than the least part of a minute, any moment of time, betwixt such acts and the obliquity resulting from them. Both of them come together, both in respect of order of time and of nature, by absolute indispensable necessity: whereas between death and wounds given meritorious of capital punishment, there usually is a distance of time, and oftentimes no absolute or unpreventable necessity that the one should follow within a year and a day of the other.

3. But the best method to convince such as invented or used the former distinction, of gross error, and somewhat more than so, will be to retort their own illustrations or justifications of it upon themselves, as I have learned by successful experience upon some learned ingenuous students which have revoked their own opinions, and reclaimed others, upon the reading of my meditations upon this argument in another dialect. One of the most usual illustrations or intended corroborations of the former distinction is borrowed from a man that rides a lame or halting horse. Such a rider, say they, (especially if he ride with switch and spur,) is the cause why the horse goes or runs as fast as he can, but not the cause of his lameness or of his halting. Of his lameness-suppose he was lamed before-the rider, I confess, is no cause; yet of his actual halting downright, or of the increase of the lameness which will follow upon the unseasonable riding or over-riding, he is the only cause. For if the poor beast might have rested his bones when he was enforced to trot or gallop,

he have been so grievously lame as by such unseasonable usage he is. But this instance or illustration, 15 suppose it were not much amiss in respect of men now living, can no way suit or fit the question concerning the sin of our first parents. For Adam at his creation was no way lame or defective either in soul or body, before he tasted of the forbidden fruit. Now if the Almighty Creator had been the cause of this act, he had been as true a cause of the first sin, or of Adam's halting in his service, as he that bestrides a sound and lusty horse, and runs him upon the spur in a rugged and stony ground, or in a deep way, is of the lameness, of the death, or any disease which ensues such desperate riding.

Many commit more

try with

their own fancies, than the

with their

idols.

4. To imagine that God should deal so hardly with gross idola- the first Adam, as to give him a law which he intended to make him break, and yet to punish him with death for the breach of it; or that the second Adam, the heathen did Wisdom of God, should send wise men and prophets to Jerusalem, to the intent or end that she should stone or put them to death; or for this purpose, that their blood should in later days be required of her, (as some in our times have publicly taught,) is an imagination in itself much worse and more dangerous than the erection of images (though Romanwise) in reformed churches; a greater abomination than any idol of the heathens. For images or idols are but the external objects of or enticements unto gross idolatry. Nor was it the carpenter or statuary that did make the heathen gods or idols. Who then? Qui colit, ille facit; he or they alone turn images or pictures into idols or false gods, which worship or adore them. But the former opinion or imagination, whether in respect of

g Qui fingit sacros, auro vel marmore, vultus,
Non facit ille deos; qui colit, ille facit.

Martial.

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