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Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries: the best state of that province.
" And have read also all the confutations of this detestable Gowlais: as those of Zanchius, Faventinus, Lelius Vincentius, Lagalla, Thomas Giaminus, and eight other admirable commentators " "You are very exact, sir: but " " And that, in short, I have read every book you can imagine," says the priest of Sesphra.
Our debates were very different from those of common debating societies, for they habitually consisted of the strongest arguments and most philosophic principles which either side was able to produce, thrown often into close and serré confutations of one another. The practice was necessarily very useful to us, and eminently so to me.
Oh, said Luther, how willingly would I that their confutations might appear to the world; then I would set upon that old torn and tattered skin, and in such sort would baste it, that the flitches thereof should fly about here and there; but they shun the light. This time twelvemonths no man would have given a farthing for the Protestants, so sure the ungodly Papists were of us. But what fell out?
It was subsequently condemned as heretical and impious by the Lower House of Convocation, which body felt itself bitterly aggrieved when the Upper House refused to confirm the sentence. These official censures were a reflex of the opinions expressed out of doors. Pulpits rang with denunciations and confutations of the new heretic, especially in his own country.
Whenever a question can be clouded and perplexed, the opponents of the ministry are always mistaken, confuted, and, in consequence of the confutations, defeated by the majority of votes.
Several councils were held, confutations were published, excommunications were pronounced, ambiguous explanations were by turns accepted and refused, treaties were concluded and violated, and at length Paul of Samosata was degraded from his episcopal character, by the sentence of seventy or eighty bishops, who assembled for that purpose at Antioch, and who, without consulting the rights of the clergy or people, appointed a successor by their own authority.
It is, however, certain, that as long as we deny the former, and affirm the latter, we must bewilder ourselves, whenever we would pierce into the adyta of causation; and all that laborious conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of fancy. From a hundred possible confutations let one suffice.
It calmly passes by all these charges by envenomed tongues as needing no reply, and as utterly irrelevant. Answered, they would have lived in the Gospels; unanswered, they are buried. Christ can afford to let many of His foes alone. Contradictions and confutations keep slanders and heresies above water, which the law of gravitation would dispose of if they were left alone.
This our Doctrine forthwith enlightened many excellent people, dispersed here and there in Princes' courts, among whom some of God were chosen to take hold on this our doctrine, like unto tinder, and afterwards kindled the same also in others. Our Apology and Confession with great honour came to light; the Papists' confutations are kept in darkness, and do stink.
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