Chapter 12
pp. 41–438 passages
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
CHAP. XII.
Detect. 3. IF you enter into Dispute with any Papist, enquire first what he will take for sufficient Proof, and what common Principles you are agreed on by which the rest must be decided. For men that agree in nothing at all, are not capable of a dispute. For the Principles in which they are agreed, are those that the rest must be reduced to. And when you have made this enquiry, you shall find that the Popish way of Disputing is to forbid you to Dispute, unless you will first yield the cause to them as beyond dispute: and that they are not agreed with the rest of the world in any common principles to which the differences may be reduced for trial, and so that there is no sort of Proof that they will admit of as sufficient: For if there be any ground of Proof at all, it must be 1. From the senses. 2. Or from Reason. 3. Or from Scripture. 4. Or from the Church; but they will stand to none of all these.
Detect. 3. IF you enter into Dispute with any Papist, enquire first what he will take for sufficient Proof, and what common Principles you are agreed on by which the rest must be decided. For men that agree in nothing at all, are not capable of a dispute. For the Principles in which they are agreed, are those that the rest must be reduced to. And when you have made this enquiry, you shall find that the Popish way of Disputing is to forbid you to Dispute, unless you will first yield the cause to them as beyond dispute: and that they are not agreed with the rest of the world in any common principles to which the differences may be reduced for tryal, and so that there is no sort of Proof that they will admit of as sufficient: For if there be any ground of Proof at all, it must be 1. From the senses. 2. Or from Reason. 3. Or from Scripture. 4. Or from the Church; but they will stand to none of all these.
1. Begin at the bottom of all, and know of them whether they will take that for a Valid Proof, which is fetched from sense, even from the soundest senses of all men in the world, supposing a convenient object and Medium? If they will not take this for Proof, how can you dispute with them? Or what Proof can be admitted, if this be not admitted? We have this advantage in dealing even with those Heathen that have blotted out much of the Law of nature it self, that yet they will yield to an Argument from sense.