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,…

CHAP. III.

What remains of our Author's Preface is spent in the pursuit of an easy task in all the branches of it. To condemn the late Miscarriages in these Nations, to decry Divisions in Religion, with their pernicious consequences, to commend my Lord Chancellor's Speech; are things that have little difficulty in them, to exercise the skill of a man pretending so highly as our Author doth. He may secure himself, that he will find no opposition about these things from any man in his right wits. No other man certainly can be so forsaken of Religion and Humanity, as not to deplore the woeful undertakings and more woeful issues of sundry things, whereunto the concernments of Religion have been pleaded to give countenance. The rancour also of men, ⟨p. 111⟩and wrath against one another on the same accounts, with the fruits which they bring forth all the world over, are doubtless a burden to the minds of all that love Truth and Peace. To prevent a returnal to the former, and remove or at least allay the latter, how excellently the speech of that great Counsellor, and the things proposed in it, are suited; all sober and ingenious men must needs acknowledge. Had this then been the whole design of this Preface, I had given his Book many an Amen, before I had come to the end. But our Author having wholly another mark in his eye, another business in hand, I should have thought it a little uncivil in him, to make my Lord Chancellor's Speech seemingly subservient to that which he never intended, never aimed at, which no word or expression in it leads unto; but that I find him afterwards so dealing with the words of God himself. His real work in this compass of words, is to set up a blind, or give a false alarm, to arrest and stay his unwary Reader, whilst he prepares him for an entertainment which he thought not of, The pretence he flourisheth