This, though it may seem to carry a profound respect for the revelation of God, yet it is plainly insufficient for the purpose for which it is brought. For, First, is any man obliged to know, or understand in the meaning which God intended, every thing that is revealed? Is any man obliged to have a distinct knowledge of every passage of the Scriptures, which unless he can attain to, he must necessarily be damned? Let him that thinks so set about the explication of the Apocalypse, or the old prophets, and try if he is capable himself of doing what he thinks is required of others under pain of damnation. Secondly, it is impossible not to believe what God has thought fit to reveal, supposing one knows that God has revealed it But surely a man that has sufficient ground to believe that God has declared his mind, yet may not have a clear and distinct understanding of everything contained in the Revelation. Suppose a man should not understand who, or what is meant by the White Horse in the Revelations, or what is the meaning of being baptised for the dead, or of many other such like difficult passages; yet whilst he owns that God is the author of these passages, and is ready to believe them in the best manner he can get an understanding of them, where can be his crime? Why is it not rational to conclude, that if God had designed upon pain of damnation that every one should have determinate and adequate ideas belonging to those sounds, he would have so expressed himself as that no one

should mistake his meaning? Therefore, Thirdly, if it is always criminal to err in the meaning of a passage of Scripture, the crime will not rest where we are apt to fix it, but will ascend to a place where we dare not think of guilt, even to God himself, who has delivered his will in terms that are so hard to be understood. Fourthly, the distinction here made use of between errors in things revealed, and errors in other matters, proves directly, that error as error is not criminal. For it is as much an error to believe heat in the fire, as to mistake any theological truth. But I proceed.

THIRDLY. If involuntary error be punishable by God; then it is the greatest cruelty, injustice, and tyranny imaginable in him, to make such creatures as cannot but err in many cases, and yet to punish them for erring. Our knowledge is but of very narrow extent, and confined to a very few things; the rest must be resolved into opinion; and as there are innumerable degrees of assent, from assurance and confidence, down to distrust and disbelief, there may be as many possibilities of errors. As this then is the make and frame of our constitutions, it would be cruel and unjust in God to punish us for what we cannot help; or to treat us as breakers of his laws, when we only want light, which the Father of Light alone can give.

FOURTHLY. If involuntary errors are punishable by God, it is not a few that are called or represented as heretics; nor a few dissenters in a nation, (though

it is only these more openly are struck at by the abettors of such unchristian tenets,) no, nor ten thousand times ten thousand, that must perish everlastingly; but the flames of hell will reach to almost, if not quite to all the christian world. Let us look into the several communities of Christians, and by an impartial view of their professed tenets, see how by the lump whole nations must be damned, if mere errors are damnable! The Greek church denies the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son; the Melchites do the same; so do the Georgians and Muscovites; the Nestorians maintain the heresy of Nestorius, averring two persons as well as two natures in our Saviour; the Christians of St Thomas do the same; the Jacobites are Eutychians; the Egyptians think it their duty to circumcise, and to give the sacrament of the Lord's supper to infants; the Abassines circumcise; the Armenians believe as the Greeks about the procession of the Holy Ghost, and receive infants to the communion; the Maronites do the same, and are Monothelites, or lately were so, till they reconciled themselves to the Romish church, which I doubt has but little lessened their errors; the Roman Catholics are almost as full of errors as they have practices; their idolatry and superstitions are as evident as their profession of transubstantiation. If we look upon protestantism, we cannot but own all the dissenters from the church of England to be erroneous. Those of Geneva, France, and Holland think episcopacy

unnecessary, and have varied from that form of government which Christ and his Apostles instituted; Scotland is in the same unhappy condition; the Lutherans consubstantiate; in a word, all are in error, but our happy church; thrice happy, if we can but keep in the same state we are in! Heaven will be replenished with us alone; and the compliment formerly paid by the Pope to our nation, that Angli are quasi Angeli, will be proper only when applied to the

members of our communion!

I need not speak a word about the heathens, or the Mahometans, which make up, if we believe Mr Breerwood's computation, twenty five parts of thirty of the world. Of the remaining five, all but our little dust upon the balance, our drop in the sea, are to go into everlasting punishment, into a place where the fire is not quenched, and the worm never dies! In short, heaven is made only for a part of England, and a much less part too than is perhaps imagined. For the men who would be in charity with all other Christians, who think they all have a right to judge for themselves, and that no man hath a dominion over the conscience of another; that all men have a right to toleration as much as they have to property, these (unhappy men, worthy of better fate!) these bad churchmen must go

them whither.

their enemies will tell

You will be ready to evade the force of this argument, by retorting it in some such manner as this;

that by parity of reason it may be said, that sin therefore is not damnable, because all mankind are sinners For where is the difference in these arguments? If damnation be the consequence of sin, it will follow, that all mankind being sinners, all mankind must be damned; and, damnation being put as the consequence of error, all mankind being under errors, all mankind must be damned. Where is the difference, you will perhaps ask, of these arguments, that the one is a good, the other is a bad one? But,

To this the answer is so easy, that I shall not insist on it farther than to observe, that all sin is voluntary, and unrepented of is damnable; but the error here spoken of is involuntary, and cannot be repented of, because taken to be truth. Therefore we see all the world dies in errors of some sort or other, never asking pardon of, or for them. But sin is always repented of by every sober, good Christian, whether he be a Grecian, Roman Catholic, or Protestant; which shews that all the world agrees in a great and material difference in the cases. But this makes

A FIFTH argument, why involuntary error cannot be punishable; because we cannot repent of such error, since we believe it to be true. I do not say a man cannot retract an error, when he discovers it to be such, which is some sort of repentance, if you think fit to call it so; but a man can have no sting of conscience, no remorse, no selfcondemning notions, for being under a mistake. Error being a mistake of the