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A SUPPLEMENT

ΤΟ

THE CASE

OF

ARIAN SUBSCRIPTION

CONSIDERED:

IN ANSWER TÒ A LATE PAMPHLET,

ENTITLED

THE CASE OF SUBSCRIPTION TO THE XXXIX ARTICLES

CONSIDERED.

A SUPPLEMENT ·

то

THE CASE

OF

ARIAN SUBSCRIPTION

CONSIDERED.

WHEN I drew up the Case of Arian Subscription, &c. I was apprehensive that so plain a charge, and so home pressed, might exasperate the persons concerned; though I took care to treat them with all the mildness and tenderness that the subject would bear; confining myself to the reasoning part, naming no particular men but such as I was obliged to quote, and candidly exempting the principal man of them, that the charge might be as general and inoffensive as possible; falling rather upon the thing itself, than upon this or that particular person. If the argument be provoking, I cannot help it: the same objection lies against the detecting or reproving any vice or immorality whatever. It is the proper business of a divine to state cases of conscience, and to remonstrate against any growing corruptions in practice, and especially in principles. If Arian subscription be really fraudulent and immoral, (which no considering man can doubt of,) it may concern those gentlemen rather to testify their sincere repentance, than to acquaint the world with their causeless resentments. I shall here say nothing to the abusive flirts of the nameless author, who has been pleased

still to persist in the defence of Arian subscription; except it be to remind him, that those assuming strains very ill become either so weak a cause, or such a guilty practice. I was once inclinable to take no notice of so mean a pamphlet; concluding that I had said enough, when I had said enough for men of sense and common ingenuity; and it is often not advisable to press things to the utmost. But since this is a cause of very great moment, wherein the very foundations of moral honesty, as well as of Christian sincerity, are deeply concerned; I think it incumbent upon me to proceed somewhat farther in it and if those gentlemen resolve to go on in maintaining an open fraud as long as it is possible to amuse or deceive, though only the weakest and most ignorant readers; I also must resolve (by God's assistance, and for God's glory) to go on in the defence of sincerity and probity, till the very meanest readers may sufficiently understand it. To come to the business.

:

The pamphlet lately published, is entitled, The Case of Subscription to the XXXIX Articles considered; occasioned by Dr. Waterland's Case of Arian Subscription. The author is but just, as well as modest, in not calling it an answer to mine: for indeed he has left the most material points untouched, without so much as attempting any thing like an answer. If you will take his bare word for it, the Articles of our Church, so far as concerns the Trinity, are general, indefinite, undeterminate; not particular, special, or determinate. He takes this for granted, and reasons all the way upon that supposition; which is very unaccountable: unless it were because I had demonstrated the contrary, beyond all reasonable reply; and so there was no other way left but to stifle the evidence, to protest against fact, and to bear the reader down with a false presumption. Such a management as this is, in effect, little else but a more untoward way of giving up the cause; where a man does the thing, but loses all the grace and credit of it by his manner of doing it. But let us see how he goes on to give some colour,

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