An answer, to a little book call'd Protestancy to be embrac'd or, A new and infallible method to reduce Romanists from popery to Protestancy

SECT. II. Protestants are in a worse condition than those who never heard of CHRIST.

OUr Antagonist advances an other proof to show that a Protestant can be Sav'd, God, sayes He, illuminates all Men that come into this World, Iohn 1. v 8. then he adds, are not Protestants Men?

Answer. They are Men, and illuminated by God, but if they resist this Light which is given them, and equivalently tell God, as those wicked Men of whom Iob spoke, Iob. 21. v. 14. Scien∣tiam viarum tuarum nolumus, We will not have the knowledge of thy Wayes. They will be found more remote from Heaven, then, if they had not receiv'd it.

He urges we R. Catholicks grant that Infidels who have never heard of CHRIST may be Sav'd and inconsequently deny that hope of happiness to Protestants.

Answer. There's no ill consequence here to deny a capacity of Salvation to him who puts a hinde∣rance to it, and to grant it to him, who puts none. The Infidel who hath never heard of CHRIST, doing what lyes in him by living according to the Light of Nature, make's way to Grace. But the Protestant, who rejects Faith offered to him by God and his Church, willingly shuts up the avenue to a further Grace, and untill he remove this obstacle

by an humble submission of his Judgment to Faith, he continues in an impossibility to please GOD.

O! but you are uncharitable, sayes He, to per∣swade the simple People, that a Protestant can't be Sav'd.

I ask him, can a R. Catholick be Sav'd? If he saies, no, where is his Charity for us? If he affirms, we may, then they who according to Protestants are Idolaters may be Sav'd. If so, whom will you exclude from Heaven?

But to return to his Objection, since he denies Charity to us, and we only Faith to him, Charity being a greater Vertue then Faith according to St. Paul, is not he in this more Uncharitable to us, then we to him?

He goes on, do not Protestants believe all Fun∣damentals contained in the three Creeds and Scrip∣ture?

I Answer. First, since that there are Funda∣mentals as condistinguished from Intigrals, or not Fundamentals, is a Fundamental point with him; I ask, in what CREED, or Book and Chap. of Scripture is this Fundamental contained? If he can't find this; then that hereafter he speaking with Catholicks may distinguish a Fundamental from an Integral, as he calls it. Let him take this notion of a Fundamental from us, to wit, that all things contained in Holy Scripture are Fundamentals in this sense, that we are bound to believe them un∣der pain of Damnation, when they are sufficiently propos'd to us by the Church, as reveal'd by God in the Scripture.

For to disbelieve God revealing that Christ me••t a blind man on the way of Iericho destroyes as much his veracity, as to distrust him revealing that his Son became man. By this notion of Funda∣mentals

we perfectly distinguish the Faithful foul from a Infidel or Sectarian. And therefore it is not given without ground or reason.

Again when Christ commanded the Gospell to be preached to Men, did he command the things only which you call fundamentals, to be Preach'd, or the whole Gospel. if things only you call Fundamentals, why were the Apostles so exact to give us the whole Gospel, that it's thought Damnable not only to add, but to pair from it? If he commanded the whole Gospel to be Preached, and consequently to be believ'd, how can he be sav'd, who refuses to believe the least Integral of it when it's sufficiently proposd to him as re∣uealed by God.