m by, and not to touch upon so harsh a string as this subject
would afford. Beside, the undertaking may be very hazardous; for they
are a sort of men generally very hot and passionate; and should I
provoke them, I doubt not would set upon me with a full cry, and force
me with shame to recant, which if I stubbornly refuse to do, they will
presently brand me for a heretic, and thunder out an excommunication,
which is their spiritual weapon to wound such as lift up a hand against
them. It is true, no men own a less dependence on me, yet have they
reason to confess themselves indebted for no small obligations. For it
is by one of my properties, self-love, that they fancy themselves, with
their elder brother Paul, caught up into the third heaven, from whence,
like shepherds indeed, they look down upon their flock, the laity,
grazing as it were, in the vales of the world below. They fence
themselves in with so many surrounders of magisterial definitions,
conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit and implicit, that
there is no falling in with them; or if they do chance to be urged to a
seeming non-plus, yet they find out so many evasions, that all the art
of man can never bind them so fast, but that an easy distinction shall
give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of being baffled. They
will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease as Alexander
did the gordian knot; they will thunder out so many rattling terms
as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They are exquisitely
dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries; they will tell
you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of Omnipotence in the
creation of the universe; they will explain the precise manner of
original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you
in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time, our Saviour was
conceived in the Virgin's womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer
how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay, these are accounted
trivial, easy questions; they have yet far greater difficulties behind,
which notwithstanding they solve with as much expedition as the former;
as namely, whether supernatural generation requires any instant of time
for its acting? whether Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically
distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? whether
this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity
hated the second? whether G