A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

Your ensuing Discourses are such as might well be passed by, as containing nothing serious or worth a review. An passim sequerer corvum? Ludicrous Similitudes, with trifling exceptions to some words in the Animadversions, cut off from that coherence wherein they are placed, are the chief ingredients of it. With these you aim with your wonted success to make sport: —Venite in ignem Pleni ruris & insicetiarum Annals Volusi— I wish we had agreed before hand, Ut facerestu quod velles, nec non ego possem, Indulgere mihi. That I might have been freed from the Consideration of such trifles: As the Case stands I shall make my passage through them with what speed I can.

YOur ensuing Discourses are such as might well be passed by, as containing nothing serious or worth a review. An passim sequerer corvum? Ludicrous Similitudes, with trisling exceptions to some words in the Animadversions, cut off from that coherence wherein they are placed, are the chief ingredients of it. With these you aim with your wonted success to make sport: —Venite in ignem Pleni ruris & insicetiarum Annales Volusi— I wish we had agreed before hand, Vt facerestu quod velles, nec non ego possem, Indulgere mihi. That I might have been freed from the Consideration of such trifles: As the Case stands I shall make my passage through them with what speed I can.

First, You except against the Close of the consideration of your Principles, namely that I would do so to my Book also, if I had none to deal with, but ingenuous and judicious Readers. And tell me, that it seems what follows is for Readers neither judicious, nor ingenuous. But why so I pray? That which is written for the information of them who want either ⟨p. 309⟩judgement or ingenuity, may be also written for their use who have both. Neither did I speak absolutely of them that were ingenuous and judicious, but added also, that they were such as had an acquaintance with the state of Religion of old, and at this day in Europe, with the concernment of their own souls in these things. With such as these, I supposed then, and do still, that a discovery of the Sophistry of your Discourse, and the falseness of the Principles you proceeded on, was sufficient to give them satisfaction as to the uselessness of the whole, without a particular ventilating of the flourishes that you made upon your sandy foundations. But because I know there were some, that might by the commendation of your friends light upon your Discourse, that either being prepossessed by prejudices might want the ingenuity to examine particularly your Assertions and Inferences, or through unacquaintedness with the Stories of some things, that you referred unto, might be disenabled to make a right judgement of what you averred, I was willing to take some further pains also for your satisfaction. And what was herein done, or spoken amiss, as yet I cannot discern. But I am persuaded, that if you had not supposed that you had some of little judgement and less ingenuity to give satisfaction unto, you would never have pleased your self, with the writing of such empty Trifles, in a business wherein you pretend so great a concernment.