Reverend Sir; SInce I am altogether a stranger to that Honourable Person, to whom
your Letter is dedicated, I would not presume to write my Vindication
to his Lordship, but thought it more proper for me to address
this to your self.
What I put down in a Postscript in relation to your Sermon at Chester,
hath, I perceive, given you no little disturbance. I do not wonder at it,
since few men are content or able to bear the justest censure that can be
past upon them.
But tho' I do not wonder at your displeasure, yet I do very much at
your attempt to vindicate your self in a matter that is not capable of any
defence, as I shall quickly shew you.
I intend this Letter for a Vindication of my self to the world, as well
as to you, and therefore will take leave to repeat what you said in that
Sermon, and what it was that I animadverted upon in my Postscript to the
Answer to the Nubes Testium.
In the second page of your Sermon you have these words; If I presume
not to present them, yours and your Auditours Prayers without taking along
the joynt Intercession of the Mother of God, I follow therein the Advice of
St. Augustin, which I address to you in his words; Let us by the most tender
Application of our whole heart, recommend our selves to the most Blessed Virgin's
Intercession; let us all, with the greatest eagerness, strive to obtain her
Protection; that whilst with Assiduity we pay her our Devotions on Earth, she
may intreat for us in Heaven by her earnest Prayers; for undoubtedly she who
brought forth the Price of Redemption, hath the greatest Right to intercede for
those who are redeemed.
This was the passage that I reflected upon there, since with a very little
pains I found that that Sermon out of which you quoted these expressions,
was not St. Austins, and therefore I said in that Postscript that I could not
but conclude you guilty either of great Ignorance, or of notorious disingenuity, who
would ascribe to the venerable St. Austin this Notorious Forgery.
These Expressions of my Postscript I do still own notwithstanding your
Vindication, and intend this Letter for a Defence of them, and a full Confutation
of what you have so weakly and so unwarily offered towards
the clearing of your self.
You have prefaced your Letter to that Honourable Lord with some

A 2"

hard words against the Church of England about her Reformation by meer
Lay-Authority, about her want of Succession, Mission, and about her undermining
one third part of the Apostles Creed. I am so very desirous to come
to the Controversie betwixt us, that I will only tell you here, that every
word of what you have said there against the Church of England is very
false, and very absurd.
You next make two or three Reflections upon my Answer to the Compiler
of the Nubes Testium; I will pass over these at present also, since I am
not at leisure here to defend that Book, and which is more, I need not against
what you have said there.
You next come to the Dividing of my Accusation against you, and tell
the World, I accuse you first of Ignorance in saying, you followed the Advice
of St. Austin, when you recommended your self to the Most Blessed Virgins
Intercession.
In Answer to which I must tell you, Sir, that you abuse my words in dividing
them into the charge of Ignorance about Using the Intercession of
the Blessed Virgin, and Disingenuity about quoting the Sermon as St. Austins.
Your design I easily foresee, which is to draw me into a Controversy
about Invocation of Saints, that so the heavy charge laid against
you may be either dropt, or buried in a multitude of words about other
things.
But to be plain with you, Sir, now you have drawn me into the field,
I am resolved not to be diverted with the throwing in of other matter
about Invocation, which I have sufficiently answered once already in my
Answer to the Compiler of the Nubes Testium: I am resolved to finish this
dispute about the Sermon of St. Austin, before I begin any other with
you; When you have either cleared your self, or owned your obstinate
Mistake, then I shall be at your service either in the DEFENCE of my
Book, or of my Mother the Apostolical Church of England.
You must not be angry therefore if I throw aside as nothing to the
purpose of the present Controversy what you have set down out of the Nubes
from your third to your sixth page, where I was glad to find that you
did recollect with your self that our dispute was about those words as taken
out of the thirty fifth Sermon de Sanctis: Which I said could not be
St. Austins, but you are now resolved to defend that it may.
As for my Arguments; you tell his Lordship that I borrow some Proofs,
of this Confident Assertion I suppose you mean of the Sermons not being
St. Austins of Alexandre Natalis, and add one of my own contrivance.
Since I am not acquainted with that Honourable Lord, I am afraid you
will not do me the favour to tell that Lord from me, that what you say
here is very false. I designed and drew up that Postscript, and had it
Printed in half a day; I had not lookt into Natalis Alexandre of five
weeks before, and which is more, neither looked for, or ever saw one
syllable in him about that, or any other Sermon attributed to St. Austin
that I remember. I must own that I have been acquainted with Natalis
Alexandre, but it was meerly to find out the stealings of your Pious and
Learned Author of the Nubes Testium, who as I have shewn in my Answer,
did not only steal his whole Book, excepting a small passage or two out
of that French Historian, but stands excommunicated by this present Pope
for his pains,
After your false account whence I had my Proofs, you come next to
examine them singly.
My first was that the Title, a Sermon on not in as you translate the
words the Feast of the Assumption does not at all agree to any thing that is
near St. Austins time.
You answer that there is no consequence can be drawn from the Title,
since the Title as I suppose your meaning is might have been afterwards
added. But why, Sir, can there be no consequence drawn hence;
my design was not only from there being no Feast of Assumption then
which you grant and therefore no Sermon could be Preached on that
Solemnity, but from there being no belief of such an Assumption then,
and therefore a Sermon on that subject, which this evidently is, cannot
be either St. Austins, or near his time, since there was then and long after
not only no Feast, but no belief of any such thing as the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin. But you endeavour to illustrate this shadow, or rather
phantome of an Answer by an Instance. You tell his Lordship St. Austins
fourteenth Sermon de Sanctis is allowed by all to be his genuine work, the Title
whereof, is in the Feast of all Saints; yet that the Institution of that Feast
was much later than that Sermon, which was made for, and preach'd in the
Solemnity of a Virgin and Martyr.
Surely Sir, you thought your putting your name and your society to your
Letter would fright the nameless Author, from daring to give one word
of Answer to that Letter, and therefore that you might take the Liberty
to say what you pleased in it. Without such a supposition, I am not able
to rescue you from a more odious Character, than I am willing to mention:
For this is one of the falsest passages I have met with in so few
words. You say St. Austins 14th Sermon de Sanctis is allowed by all to be his
genuine work: This is give me leave to speak out very false: For the
Benedictines of Paris not to mention our Authors, whom I will not insist
on to prove against your ALL, have thrown this Sermon into their
Appendix as Spurious, and shew that it is a meer Cento, made up of
pieces of Sermons, borrowed here and there. You tell his Lordship next,
that the Title of the Sermon, is in the Feast of all Saints. This is as false
as the other; for not onely in the Louvain, but in the Benedictine, as well
as in Erasmus's Edition, the Title of this fourteenth Sermon, is in Festo Conversionis
Sancti Pauli, a Sermon on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. I
must confess Sir, that I was wholly astonished at your asserting these things
with so much assurance to a Peer, and to a Peer also of the Church of England,
and without any truth: I lookt again and again at it, and lest it
might be an errour of the Press, I lookt into the fourth, into the twenty
fourth, into the thirty fourth, into the forty first; I lookt also into the
two next Sermons before and after this fourteenth Sermon de Sanctis, but
no news could I find of your Title in any one of those Sermons, and therefore
must lay this mistake to your own charge.
You lastly tell his Lordship, that this fourteenth Sermon was made for,
and preach'd in the solemnity of a Virgin and Martyr; which is as false as either
of the other, since it certainly was made for, and preach't upon St.
Pauls Conversion.
You next tell his Lordship of a far greater mistake in this my Objection,
much to be wondered at in so great a pretender to reading, as if say you Feast,
or day of Assumption in the Writings of Antients, did almost ever signify any
thing else but the Day of a Saints Death.
But pray, Sir, what is that to this Sermon, if the day of Assumption do not ever
signify the day of a Saints Death, why may not this be the exception? but
to pass that; you know very well that that cannot be the meaning here,
since this Sermon speaks of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin; and that it
was the Churches Custom to believe that the Virgin Mary was on the day of
that solemnity assumed into Heaven.
But all this is but to raise a dust about nothing, for were the Argument
from the Title as weak as you could desire, yet what follows in my
Postscript, is more than strong enough to convince all reasonable men
that that Sermon could not be St. Austins.
I next urged against this Sermon, that the Benedictines of Paris in their
late Edition of St. Austin had cast it into their Appendix as spurious, and
that they told us that in their MSS. it wanted the name of any Author; but
that the Divines of Louvain told us that in several Manuscripts, which they used
in their Edition of St. Austin, this Sermon de Sanctis was intituled to Fulbertus
Carnotensis.
This Argument you were affraid to take together and therefore without
saying a word to the Benedictine Manuscripts, which name no Author
for that Sermon, you think you answer the Louvain MSS. about its
being intituled to Fulbertus, by saying St. Ambrose and Chrysologus's Sermons
have appeared in MSS. under other Authors names. But pray, Sir,
what would you prove from hence, because such a thing hath happened
to St. Ambrose, therefore this Sermon must be St. Augustins, because printed
among his works, tho' it bears not his name either in the MSS. used
by the Louvain Divines, or by the Benedictines. How is it that we know
one man's Sermon's from another's, is it not either from his style, or from
its being attributed to such a person by the most and best Manuscripts?
from one of these ways it is that St. Ambrose's or any other Father's Sermons
are vindicated to their true Authors. But both these Arguments are
directly against this Sermon's being St. Austins; the style is dull and heavy,
hath not any thing like or near the briskness, wit, and great sense of St. Austin;
and further the MSS. used by them, give it against you, they
either intitle it to no Author, or to Fulbertus Carnotensis.
Tho' my Arguments were not very weighty, yet what I next urged I
thought would fully satisfy any ones scruples; I mean the instance of Isidores
being quoted in it, by which I said it was certain that this Sermon must
be written after his time who lived in the beginning of the Seventh Century.
What I say is certain here you tell his Lordship is unprobable. You give
this as one reason, because the Author of that Sermon says no Author among
the Latins could be found, who treating of our blessed Ladies Death had been
positive and express; whereas Gregory of Tours in the Sixth Age hath a
most full account of our blessed Ladies Assumption, and therefore the Author
of this Sermon must have lived before Gregory, and consequently long before
Fulbertus, or Isidore of Sevil. But I do not see this Consequence, it is no
errour to suppose the Author of that Sermon had never seen Gregory of
Tours Book, and therefore might have that expression concerning no Latin
Author treating of the Virgin Maryes Assumption: Or we may very well
suppose that if he had, he reckons his story among those Apocryphal ones
which were then writ, but rejected by the Church of God: And I cannot
see how it should be a fault in Fulbertus to reject Gregory of Tours if
he knew of him as an Apocryphal Author, and not in St. Bernard, who so
very long after either doubted or disbelieved as you own in the page before
this the Story of the Assumption, notwithstanding the most full account
of it in Gregory; whom with the Author of this Sermon he either did not
know, or did not regard.
Your Answer about St. Isidore is very strange, since tho' there were
never so many Isidores before St. Austin, yet can you, or dare you offer
to shew that any of them were Writers? But to drive you from this weak
hold, we are certain that the Isidore quoted here is he that lived in the seventh
Century. If you did look into the Louvain Edition when you wrote
your Letter, you could not have mist seeing what book of his the passage is taken
from.
But I am affraid, Sir, I have to do with one, who is resolved to carry
things by his own wild guesses more than by examining things fairly. The
passage in the Sermon is in Isidor's Book de Vita & Morte Sanctorum. So
that all your dreams are vanished; and this one passage enough to have
answered your whole Letter. I shall therefore be shorter with the rest, and
tell you that your sleighting the Judgment of the Louvain Divines, and
the present Learned Benedictines at Paris, especially when invincibly
strengthened by this passage from Isidore, and your believing this Sermon to
be St. Austins, because Thomas Aquinas believed it to be his, discovers
pardon the expression a very unbecoming obstinacy; You cannot but
have heard how little a Critick Monsieur Launoy hath shewn Aquinas was,
what forged Authorities he used and urged as from S. Cyril of Alexandria;
whereas there was no such things in his works. This instance, which you
make use of for your defence, is an evidence as well against him as you, however
far more excusable in him than in you, since he lived in such times of
Ignorance, and you in times so learned; I am very confident that had he
seen how much is now said against this Sermon, he would have been far
from acting like you, or have been obstinate in the defence of such a noted
forgery.
I have but room left to tell you that the Louvain Divines are of no Authority
with me except where their reasons are apparently good; and therefore
should they have asserted the 18th Sermon de Sanctis to have been
St. Austins as you say they do I should not upon good reasons assent unto
them; but that what you say here is false, is evident from that note set
by them before this Sermon, that some attribute this Sermon to Fulgentius: and
the Benedictines of Paris are so far from your words, that they say the Louvain
Divines leave it as DUBIOUS: And they for their parts have cast it
into the Appendix as Spurious, and give this reason for it among others,
that it is the work of some ignorant botcher, who hath patched it up out of
stolen Sentences: So that your quotation for Invocation thence ought to be
sleighted by that honourable Lord as much as your other in the Sermon before
the Court at Chester,
Thus, Sir, I have given you the trouble of a Letter; if you intend a
further Vindication of your self, pray oblige me so far as to hasten it out,
that so I may stay no longer for it, than you have done for this. One thing
you may oblige me in further, and that is not onely to quote, but to look
into those Authors you make use of. This will prevent the multiplying of
the Controversy; tho' you be resolved to continue this any longer against
Reverend Sir your Friend in all Christian Offices.

FINIS.