Animadversions on a treatise entitled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…Animadversions on a treatise intituled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…

The difficulty, as is evident, lay in this, That the Authority and Judgment of the whole Church of the Hebrews, lay against Christ and the Gospel. That Church when Christ conversed on earth, was a true Church of God, the only Church on earth, and had been so for 2000 years without interruption in its self, without competition from any other. It had its High Priest confessedly instituted by God himself in an orderly succession to those days. The interpretation of Scripture, it pretended, was trusted with it alone; and traditions they had good store, whose original they pleaded from Moses himself, directing them in that interpretation; Christ and his Apostles, whom they looked upon as poor ignorant contemptible persons, came and preached a doctrine, which that Church determined utterly contrary to the Scripture and their Traditions: what shall now be answered to their Authority which was unquestionably all that ever was, or shall be, entrusted with any Church on the ⟨p. 204⟩earth. Our Author tells us, that this great argument of the Jews could not be any way warded or put by, but by recourse unto the Churches infallibility, pag. 146. Which, sit verbo venia, is so ridiculous a pretence, as I wonder how any block in his way could cause him to stumble upon it. What Church, I pray? the Church of Christians? When that argument was first used by the Jews against Christ himself, it was not yet founded; and if an absolute infallibility be supposed in the Church, without respect to her adherence to the rule of infallibility, I dare boldly pronounce that argument indissoluble; and that all Christian Religion must be therein discarded. If the Jewish-Church which had at that day, as great Church-power, and prerogative, as any Church hath or can have, were infallible in her Judgment, that she made of Christ and his Doctrine; there remains nothing but that we renounce both him and it, and turn either Jews or Pagans, as we were of old. Here then, by our Authors confession, lies a plain Judgment, and Definition of the only Church of God in the world, against ⟨p. 205⟩Christ and his Doctrine; and it is certainly incumbent on us to see how it may be wa•ed. And this, I suppose, we cannot better be instructed in, then by considering, what was answered unto it by Christ himself, his Apostles, and those that succeeded them in the profession of the faith of the Gospel. (1) For Christ himself;