A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

And I must acknowledge unto you, that I am ignorant of that Logic which teacheth men to suffer their Adversaries to proceed and insert upon absurdities and false suppositions, to oppose the Truth which they maintain. And yet I know well enough what Aristotle hath taught us concerning [Greek or Hebrew], in which part of his Logic, you seem to have been most conversant.

And I must acknowledge unto you, that I am ignorant of that Logick which teacheth men to suffer their Adversaries to proceed and insert upon absurdities and false suppositions, to oppose the Truth which they maintain. And yet I know well enough what Aristotle hath taught us concerning 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, in which part of his Logick, you seem to have been most conversant.

But let us once again consider your ratiocination as here you endeavour to reinforce it. Your supposition ⟨p. 318⟩you say includes these two Categories; First, that the Papists are become odious unto us: Secondly, That the Papists delivered us the first news of Christianity. Well, both these propositions I deny. Papists are not become odious unto us, though we love not their Popery: Papists did not bring us the first news of Christianity. This I have proved unto you already, and shall yet do it further. Will you now be angry and talk of Logic, because I grant not the consequent of these false pretensions to be true; as if every Syllogism must of necessity be true materially, which is so in form. But yet farther, to discover your mistake, I was so willing to hear you out unto the utmost of what you had to say, that in the Animadversions after the discovery of the falsity of the Assertions that it arose from, I suffered your supposition to pass, and showed you the weakness of your Inference upon it. And the reason of my so doing, was this; that because though the Papists brought not the Gospel first into England, yet I do not judge it impossible but that they may be the means of communicating it unto some other place or People; and I would be loth to grant, that they who receive it from them, must either always embrace their Popery, or renounce the Gospel. I confess a great entanglement would be put on the thoughts and minds of such Persons, by the Principle of the Infallibility of them that sent your Teachers, whereinto it may be also they would labour to resolve your belief. But yet if withal you shall communicate unto them the Gospel its self, as the great Repository of the Mysteries of that Religion wherein your instruct them, there is a sufficient foundation laid for their reception of Christianity, and the rejection of your Popery. For when once the Gospel