A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

You may for ought I know have a good faculty at some other things; but you very unhappily please your self in drawing of Consequences; which for the most part are very infirm and naught, as in particular I have abundantly manifested that to be, which you now speak of. But you conclude; I tell you plainly and without tergiversation before God and all his holy Angels what I should think if I descended unto any Conclusion in this affair. And it is this, Either the Papist who holds at this day all these Articles of faith which were delivered at the first Conversion of this land by St. Austin, is unjustly become odious amongst us, or else my honest Parsons, threw of your Cassocks, and resign your benefices and […] into the hands of your neighbours whose they were […] My Consequence is irrefragable. And I […] you plainly that I greatly pity you for your di court, and that on many accounts. First, That in the same breath wherein you so solemnly protest before God and his holy Angels, you should so openly prevaricate, as to intimate that you descend unto no conclusions in this affair, wherein notwithstanding your pretences you ⟨p. 336⟩really dogmatize and that with as much confidence as it is possible I think for any man to do. And 2. That you cast before God and his holy Angels the light froth of your scoffing expressions, my honest Parsons, &c. a sign with what conscience you are conversant in these things. And 3. That undertaking to write and declare your mind in things of the nature and importance that these are of, you should have no more judgement in them or about them, then so solemnly to entitle such a trifling Sophism by the name of irrefragable Consequence. As also 4. That in the Solemnity of your Protestation you for got to express your mind in sober sense; for aiming to make a disjunctive conclusion you make the parts of it not at all disparate, but coincident as to your intention, the one of them bring the direct consequent of the other. 5. That you so much make naked your desires after Benefices and glebe lands, as though they were the great matter in contest amongst us, which reflects no small shame and stain on Christian Religion and all the Professors of it. 6. Your Irrefragable Consequence is a most pitiful piece of Sophistry, built upon I know not how many false suppositions, as 1.

You may for ought I know have a good faculty at some other things; but you very unhappily please your self in drawing of Consequences; which for the most part are very infirm and naught, as in particular I have abundantly manifested that to be, which you now speak of. But you conclude; I tell you plainly and without tergiversation before God and all his holy Angels what I should think if I descended unto any Conclusion in this affair. And it is this, Either the Papist who holds at this day all these Articles of faith which were delivered at the first Conversion of this land by St. Austin, is unjustly become odieus amongst us, or else my honest Parsons, threw of your Cassocks, and resign your benefices and into the hands of your neighbours whose they were My Consequence is irrefragable. And I you plily that I greatly pitty you for your di courte, and that on many accounts. First, That in the same breath wherein you so solemnly protest before God and his holy Angels, you should so openly prevaricate, as to intimate that you descend unto no conclusions in this affair, wherein notwithstanding your pretences you