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,…

From the Worship of the Parties compared, he comes to their Preaching, and finds them as differing as their devotion. The Preaching of Protestants of all sorts, is sorry pitiful stuff. Inconsequent words, senseless notions, or, at least, Rhetorical flourishes, make it up; the Catholics, grave and pithy. Still all this, belongs to persons, not things. Protestants preach as well as they can, and, if they cannot preach so well as his wiser Romanists, it is their unhappiness, not their fault. But yet I have a little ⟨p. 290⟩reason, to think, that our Author is not altogether of the mind that here he pretends to be of, but that he more hates, and fears, then despises, the Preaching of Protestants. He knows well enough, what mischief it hath wrought his Party, though prejudice will not suffer him to see what good it hath done the world; and therefore doubting, as I suppose, lest he should not be able to prevail with his Readers to believe him in that, which he would fain, it may be, but cannot believe himself, about the excellency of the Preaching of his Catholics above that of Protestants, he decries the whole work, as of little or no use or concernment in Christian Religion. This it had been fair for him to have openly pleaded, and not to have made a flourish with that which he knew, he could make no better work of. Nor is the preaching of the Protestants, as is pretended, unlike that of the Ancients. The best and most famous Preacher of the ancient Church, whose Sermons are preserved, was Chrysostom. We know, the way of his proceeding in that work, was to open the words and meaning of ⟨p. 291⟩his Text; to declare the Truth contained and taught in it, to vindicate it from Objections, to confirm it by other Testimonies of Scripture, and to apply all unto practise in the close. And as far as I can observe, this, in general, is that method used by Protestants, being that indeed, which the very nature of the work dictates unto them; wherefore mistrusting lest he should not be able to bring men out of love with the Preaching of Protestants, in comparison of the endeavours of his Party in the same kind, he turns himself another way and labours to persuade us, as I said, that preaching its self is of little or no use in Christian Religion;

From the Worship of the Parties compared, he comes to their Preaching, and finds them as differing as their devotion. The Preaching of Protestants of all sorts, is sorry pittiful stuffe. Inconsequent words, senseless notions, or, at least, Rhetorical flourishes, make it up; the Catholicks, grave and pithy. Still all this, belongs to persons, not things. Protestants preach as well as they can, and, if they cannot preach so well as his wiser Romanists, it is their unhappiness, not their fault. But yet I have a little