A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

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 ⟨p. 387⟩the Lord Christ, and that which would render the Church biceps monstrum horrid and deformed. It is Christ himself, who as by his Spirit he exercises the office of an head by invisible influence, so by his Word that of visible direction and rule; He is I say the only Head of visible direction to his Church, though he be not a visible Head to that purpose, which that he should be, is to no purpose at all. 2. If by the interposition of any person under Christ, delegate in his stead, you understand any one single Person delegated in his stead to oversee and rule the whole Catholic Church, such an one as you now plead for in your Epistle, it is intolerable arrogancy to intimate that he is designed either in the Gospel or St. Pauls Epistles, or Antiquity; whereas you are not able to assign any place, or text, or word in them, directly or by fair Consequence to justify what you assert.

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 shewed 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 justifie your reflection on me, is a pittiful piece of falsehood and Sophistry. For first, this double Head of the Catholick 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