A collection of several discourses against popery By William Wake, preacher to the honourable society of Grays-Inn.

The Conclusion.

AND thus by the Blessing of God, and the Ad∣vantage of a good Cause, have I very briefly passed through this Author's Reflections, and I am perswaded sufficiently shewn the weakness and falsity of the most of them. If any one shall think that I ought to have insisted more largely upon some Points, he may please to know, that since by the importunate Provocations of those of the other Communion, we have been forced too often to interrupt those Duties of our Ministry, in which we could rather have wish'd to have employ'd our Time, for these kind of Contro∣versies which serve so very little to any purposes, either of true Piety, or true Charity among us: We have resolved thus far at least to gratify both our selves and others, as to make our Disputes as short as is possible; and loose no more time in them, than the necessary Defence of our selves and the Truth do require.

I have indeed pass'd by much of our Author's Dis∣courses, because they are almost intirely made up of te∣dious and endless Repetitions of the same things, and ve∣ry often in the same words. But for any thing that is Ar∣gumentative, or otherwise material to the main Cause, I do not know that I have either let the Observation of it slip, or dissembled at all the Force of it.

It was once in my thoughts to have made some Re∣flections in the Close upon the Changes of their Ritu∣als, in requital for our Author's Observations on the Alterations of our Liturgie; but I have insisted longer

than I designed already, and shall therefore content my my self to have given the Hint of what might have been done, and shall still be done, if our Author, or any in his behalf desire it of me.

In the mean time I cannot but observe the unreaso∣nableness of that Method which is here taken; from the Expressions of some of our Divines, and the Concessions of others, whose profess'd Business it was to reconcile, if possible, all Parties, and therefore were forced some∣times to condescend more than was fit for the doing it; and even these too miserably mangled and misrepresen∣ted, to pretend to prove the Doctrine of our Church contrary to the express Declarations of the Publick Acts and Records of it. This has been the endeavour of se∣veral of our late Writers, but of this Discourser above any. Had those worthy Persons, whose Memory they thus abuse, been yet living, they might have had an ample Confutation from their own Pens; as, in the very Instance before us, has been given them for the like ill use made by some among them, of the pi∣ous Meditations of a most Excellent and Learned Fa∣ther of our Church; and who might otherwise in the next Age have been improved into a new Witness a∣gainst us. I do not think that Bp Taylour ever thought he should have been set up as a favourer of Popery, who had written so expresly and warmly against it. Yet I cannot but observe a kind of Prophetick Expres∣sion in his Book of the Real Presence, which being so often quoted by these Men, I somewhat wonder it should have slipp'd their Remark: Where speaking of their Shifts to make any One they please of their side, he has these words;

And—I know no rea∣son, * 1.1 says he, but it may be possible, but a WITTY MAN may pretend, when I am dead, that in this

Discourse I have pleaded for the Doctrine of the Ro∣man Church.

We have now lived to see some of those WITTY MEN that have done but little less than this; tho how Honest they are in the mean time, I will not de∣termine. But I hope this Design too shall be from henceforth in good measure frustrated: And therefore, since neither their New Religion, nor their New Advo∣cates will do their Business; since it is in vain that they either misrepresent their own Doctrine, or our Authors in favour of it; may they once please either honestly to avow and defend their Faith, or honestly to confess that they cannot do it. Such shuffling as this, do's but more convince us of the weakness of their Cause; and instead of defending their Religion by these Practices, they only encrease in us our ill Opinion of that, and les∣sen that good'One which we willingly would, but shall not always be able to conserve of those, who by such indirect means as these, endeavour to support it.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Real Pre∣sence, §. xii. n. 28. pag. 261.