A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

For besides Sir, that you back your request with nothing but some overconfident asseverations, subscribed with teste meipso, I have many reasons taken from the practice and Doctrine of your Church, that strongly induce me to abide in my former persuasion. As 1. You know that in these and the neighbouring Nations, Papists have publicly burned the Scriptures, and destroyed more Copies of them then ever Antiochus Epiphanes did of the Jewish Law. And if you should go about to prove unto me that Protestants have no great regard to Sacred Images that ⟨p. 354⟩have been worshipped, because in these and the neighbouring Nations they brakes and burned a great number of them, I should not readily know what to answer you. Nor can I entertain any such confidence of your abilities, as to expect from you a satisfactory answer unto my instance of the very same nature, manifesting what respect Papists bear unto the Scriptures. 2. You know that they have imprisoned and burned sundry persons for keeping the Scripture in their houses, or some parts of them, and reading them for their instruction and comfort. Nor is this any great sign of respect unto them, no more then it is of mens respect to treason or murder, because they hang them up who are guilty of them. And 3. Your Church prohibiteth the reading of them unto Lay-men, unless in some special cases, some few of them be licensed by you so to do▪ and you study & sweat for arguments to prove the reading of them needless and dangerous, putting them as translated, into the Catalogue of Books prohibited. Now this is the very mark and stamp that your Church sets upon these books which she disapproves, and discountenanceth as pernicious to the faithful. 4. Your Council of Trent hath decreed that your unwritten Traditions are to be received with the same faith and veneration as the Scripture, constituting them to be one part of the Word of God, and the Scriptures another, then which nothing could be spoken more in contempt of it, or in reproach unto it. For I must assure you, Protestants think you cannot possibly contract a greater guilt by any contempt of the Scripture then you do, by reducing it into order with your unwritten Traditions. 5.

For besides Sir, that you back your request with nothing but some overconfident asseverations, subscribed with teste meipso, I have many reasons taken from the practice and Doctrine of your Church, that strongly induce me to abide in my former perswasion. As 1. You know that in these and the neighbouring Nations, Papists have publickly burned the Scriptures, and destroyed more Copies of them then ever Antiochus Epiphanes did of the Jewish Law. And if you should go about to prove unto me that Protestants have no great regard to Sacred Images that