A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

Let us now consider what you further reply unto that which was offered in the Animadversions unto the purpose now discoursed of. Your ensuing words are,

And here by the way we may take notice what a fierce English Protestant you are, who labour so stoutly to evacuate my argument for Episcopacy, and leave none of your own behind you, nor acquaint the world with any, though you know far better, but would make us believe notwith tanding those far better reasons, for Prelacy, that Christ himself, as he is the immediate Head ⟨p. 386⟩of invisible influence, so is he likewise the only and immediate Head of visible direction and government amongst us, without the interposition of any Person delegate in his stead to oversee and rule under him in his Church on earth, which is against the tenor both of sacred Gospel and St. Pauls Epistles, and all Antiquity, and the present Ecclesiastical Polity of England, and is the Doctrine not of any English Protestant, but of the Presbyterian, Independent and Quaker.

How little cause you have to attempt an impeachment of my Protestancy, I hope I have in some measure evidenced unto you, and shall yet farther make it manifest, as you give me occasion so to do. In the mean time as I told you before, that I would not plead the particular concernment of any party amongst Protestants, no more then you do that of any party among your selves, so I am sure enough that I have delivered nothing prejudicial unto any of them, because I have kept my self unto the defence of their Protestancy wherein they all agree. Nor have I given you an answer unto any Argument that tends in the least to the confirmation of such a Prelacy as by any sort of Protestants is admitted, but only showed the emptiness and pernicious Consequences of your Sophism, wherewith you plead in pretence for Prelacy, indeed for a Papal Supremacy, and that on such Principles as are absolutely destructive of that Protestant Prelacy which you would be thought to give countenance unto. And your ensuing Discourse wherein you labour to justify your reflection on me, is a pitiful piece of falsehood and Sophistry. For first, this double Head of the Catholic Church, one of influence, the other of direction and government, which you fancy some Protestants to admit of, is a thing that—they declare against as injurious to