A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

IN your exceptions to the first Chapter of the Animadversions pag. 20. I wish I could find any thing agreeable unto Truth, according unto your own Principles. It was ever granted, that [Greek or Hebrew]; but always to fail, and feign at pleasure, was never allowed so much as to Poets. Men may oftentimes utter many things untrue, wherein yet some principles which they are persuaded to be agreeable unto Truth, or some more general mistakes from whence their particular assertions proceed, may countenance their consciences from a sense of guilt, and some way shield their reputation from the sharpness of censure: But willingly and often for a man practically to offend in this kind, when his mind and understanding is not imposed upon by any previous mistakes, is a miscarriage, which I do not yet perceive that the subtlest of your Casuists have found ⟨p. 28⟩out an excuse for. Two Exceptions you lay against this Chapter, in the first whereof, by not speaking the whole Truth, you render the whole untruth; and in the latter you plainly affirm that which your eyes told you to be otherwise, First you say, I proposed a dilemma unto you for saying you had concealed your method; when what I spake unto you was upon your saying, first that you had used no method, and afterwards that you had concealed your method; as you also in your next words here confess. Now both these being impossible, and severally spoken by you, only to serve a present turn, your sorry merriment about the Scholar and his eggs, will not free your self from being very ridiculous. Certainly this using no method, and yet at the same time concealing your method, is part of that civil Logic you have learned no man knows where: You had far better hide your weaknesses under an universal silence, as you do to the most of them, than expose them afresh unto public contempt, trimmed up with froth and trifles. But this is but one of the least of your escapes; you proceed to downright work in your following words; Going on you deny (say you) that Protestants ever opposed the merit of Good works; which at first I wondered at, seeing the sound of it hath rung so often in my own ears, and so many hundred Books written in this last Age so apparently witness it in all places, till I found afterwards in my through perusal of your Book, that you neither heed what you say, nor how much you deny;