A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

For what you have said of the Pope, I desire the Reader to consult your Paragraph so entitled: and if he find not that you have said ten times more in the commendation of him then I intimated in the words laid down for your Principle, I am content to be esteemed to have done you wrong. You have indeed not only set him out as a good man, but have made him much more then a man, and have ascribed that unto him, which is not lawful to be ascribed unto any man whatever. Some of your Expressions I have again reminded you of; and many others of the same nature might be instanced in: and what you can say more of him then you have done, unless you would exalt him above all that is called God, and worshipped; unless you should set him in the Temple of God, and show him that he is God, I know not. Let the Reader if he please, consult your expressions, where you have placed them; I shall stain Paper with them no more. And you do but trifle with us, when you tell us that you know not the Pope, nor have any such acquaintance with him, as to know whether he be a good men or no?. As though your personal acquaintance with this or that Pope, belonged at all to our question. Although I must needs say, that it seems very strange unto me, that you should hang the weight of Religion, and the salvation of your own soul, upon one of whom you know not so much as whither he be a good man, or no. For my part I am persuaded there is no such hardship in Christian Religion, as that we should be bound to believe, that all the safety of our Faith and Salvation depends ⟨p. 303⟩on a man, and he such an one as concerning wh•m we know not whither he be a good man or no. The Apostle lays the foundation of our hope in better ground, Heb. 1. 1, 2, 3. And yet what ever opinion you may have of your present Pope, you are forced to be at this indifferency about his honesty, because you are not able to deny but that very many of his Predecessors, on whose shoulders the weight of all your Religion lay, no less then you suppose it doth on his who now sways the Papal Sceptre, were very brutes, so far from being good men, as that they may be reckoned amongst the worst in the world. Protestants as I said, are persuaded that their faith is laid up in better hands. With the latter part of my words, as by you set down, you play sophistically, that you might say something to them: