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 twenty second Paragraph concerning the blessed Virgin, is absolutely the weakest and most disingenuous in his whole discourse. The work he hath in hand• is to take off offence from the Roman Doctrine and Practice, in reference unto her. Finding that this could not be handsomely gilded over, being so rotten and corrupt, as not to bear a new varnish, he turns his pen to the bespattering of Protestants, for contempt of her, without the least respect to truth or common honesty. Of them it is, that he says, That they vilify and blaspheme her, and cast Gibes upon her, which he sets off with a pretty tale of a Protestant Bishop, and a Catholic boy; and lest this should not ⟨p. 305⟩suffice to render them odious, he would have some of them thought to taunt at Christ himself; one of them, for ignorance, passion, and too much haste for his breakfast. Boldly to calumniate, that something may cleave, is a Principle that too many have observed in their dealings with others in the world. But, as it contains a renunciation of the Religion of Jesus Christ, so it hath not always well succeeded. The horrid and incredible reproaches that were cast by the Pagans on the primitive Christians, occasioned sundry ingenious persons to search more into their way, then otherwise they would have done; and thereby, their conversion. And I am persuaded, this rude charge on Protestants, as remote from truth, as any thing that was cast on the first Christians by their adversaries, would have the same effects on Roman-Catholics, might they meet with the same ingenuity and candour. That any Protestant should be moved or shaken in his Principles, by such Calumnies, is impossible. Every one that is so, knows, that as the Protestants believe every thing that is spoken of the blessed Virgin, in the