A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

So that though I confess that you deny this Principle, yet I cannot see but that you do so, not only upon the hazard of your own souls, and the souls of them that attend unto you, seeing, that if the blind lead the blind, both must fall into the ditch; but also, that you do it to the great prejudice of Christian Religion in the very foundations of it. For what can a man rationally conclude, that shall see you driving all Persons, and that on no small penalties, excepting your selves who are concerned in the conspiracy, and some few others whom you suppose sufficiently initiated in your Mysteries, from the reading and study of those Books, wherein the world knows, and your selves confess, that the Arcana of Christian Religion are contained; but that there are some things in them like the hidden Sacra of the old Pagan Hierophants, which may not be disclosed, because however countenanced by a remote veneration, yet are indeed turpia or ridicula, things to be ashamed of, or scorned? And the Truth is, some of your Doctors have spoken very suspiciously this way; whilst they justify your practise in driving the people from the study of the Scripture, by intimations of things and expressions, not so pure and chaste as to be fit for the knowledge of the promiscuous multitude; when ⟨p. 157⟩in the mean time Themselves or their Associates do publish unto all the world, in their rules and directions for Confession, such abominable filth and ribaldry, as I think was never by any other means vented amongst mankind.

So that though I confess that you deny this Principle, yet I cannot see but that you do so, not only upon the hazard of your own souls, and the souls of them that attend unto you, seeing, that if the blind lead the blind, both must fall into the ditch; but also, that you do it to the great prejudice of Christian Religion in the very foundations of it. For what can a man rationally conclude, that shall see you driving all Persons, and that on no small penalties, excepting your selves who are concerned in the conspiracy, and some few others whom you suppose sufficiently initiated in your Mysteries, from the reading and study of those Books, wherein the world knows, and your selves confess, that the Arcana of Christian Religion are contained; but that there are some things in them like the hidden Sacra of the old Pagan Hierophants, which may not be disclosed, because however countenanced by a remote veneration, yet are indeed turpia or ridicula, things to be ashamed of, or scorned? And the Truth is, some of your Doctors have spoken very suspiciously this way; whilest they justifie your practise in driving the people from the study of the Scripture, by intimations of things and expressions, not so pure and chast as to be fit for the knowledge of the promiscuous multitude; when