that the bare belief of a Messiah is all that is required of a Christian ?" As if there were no difference between believing a Messiah, and believing Jesus to be the Messiah; no difference between "required of a Christian," and required to make a man a Christian. As if you should say, renouncing his former idolatry, and being circumcised and baptized into Moses, was all that was required to make a man an Israelite; therefore it was all that was required of an Israelite. For these two falsehoods has he, in this one short sentence, thought fit slily to father upon me, the " humble imitator of the Jesuits," as he is pleased to call me. And, therefore, I must desire him to show,

"

XIII. Where the "world is told, in the treatise that I published, That the bare belief of a Messiah is all that is required of a Christian ?"

The six next pages, i. e. from the twenty-eighth to the end of his second chapter, being taken up with nothing but pulpit oratory, out of its place; and without any reply, applied, or applicable to any thing I have said in my Vindication; I shall pass by, until he shows any thing in them that is so.

In page 36, this giant in argument falls on me, and mauls me unmercifully about the epistles. He begins thus: "The gentleman is not without his evasions, and he sees it is high time to make use of them. This puts him in some disorder. For, when he comes to speak of my mentioning his ill treatment of the epistles,you may observe that he begins to grow warmer than before. Now this meek man is nettled, and one may perceive he is sensible of the scandal that he hath given to good people, by his slighting the epistolary writings of the holy apostles; yet he is so cunning as to disguise his passion as well as he can."

Let all

this impertinent and inconsistent stuff be so. I am angry and cannot disguise it, I am cunning and would disguise it, but yet the quick-sighted unmasker has found me out, that I am nettled. What does all this notable prologue of hictius doctius, of a cunning man, and in

effect "no cunning man, in disorder, warmed, nettled, in a passion," tend to? but to show that these following words of mine, p. 170 of my 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 nothing 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 revelation 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 done it myself." Whoever had common sense, would understand, that what I demanded was, that he should

show the world where, amongst all I had published, there were any passages that expressed contempt of the epistles for it was not expected he should quote passages of mine that I had never published. And this acute unmasker (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 epistles? 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 whenever it is but named, and cannot think it contains less than exclusion, defiance, and contempt. Here therefore 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 understand your passing them by to be a publishing to the world your contempt of them? If so, you have unmasked

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 syllable 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 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

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 confession, that I allowed and built upon the divine authority 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 legerdemain.

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 Socinianism 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 without believing precisely what he thinks fit to cull out of them, there could be no Christians; and if we had nothing 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 rea