This is another of those two-edged arguments which Baxter and Jeremy
Taylor imported from Grotius, and which have since become the universal
fashion among Protestants. I fear, however, that it will do us more hurt
by exposing a weak part to the learned Infidels than service in our
combat with the Romanists. I venture to assert most unequivocally that
the New Testament contains not the least proof of the 'linguipotence' of
the Apostles, but the clearest proofs of the contrary: and I doubt
whether we have even as decisive a victory over the Romanists in our
Middletonian, Farmerian, and Douglasian dispute concerning the miracles
of the first two centuries and their assumed contrast 'in genere' with
those of the Apostles and the Apostolic age, as we have in most other of
our Protestant controversies.
N.B. These opinions of Middleton and his more cautious followers are no
part of our real Church doctrine. This passion for law Court evidence
began with Grotius.
Ib. p. 246.
We conceived there needs no more to be said for justifying the
imposition of the ceremonies by law established than what is contained
in the beginning--of this Section.... Inasmuch as lawful authority
hath already determined the ceremonies in question to be decent and
orderly, and to serve to edification: and consequently to be agreeable
to the general rules of the Word.
To a self-convinced and disinterested lover of the Church of England, it
gives an indescribable horror to observe the frequency, with which the
Prelatic party after the Restoration appeal to the laws as of equal
authority with the express words of Scripture;--as if the laws, by them
appealed to, were other than the vindictive determinations of their own
furious partizans;--as if the same appeals might not have been made by
Bonner and Gardiner under Philip and Mary! Why should I speak of the
inhuman sophism that, because it is silly in my neighbour to break his
egg at the broad end when the Squire and the Vicar have declared their
predilection for the narrow end, therefore it is right for the Squire
and the Vicar to hang and quarter him for his silliness:--for it comes
to that.
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