Sir,
I Hop’d you had known me better, than to doubt in good earnest, how I relish’d the Discourse your Learned Friend entertain’d us with yester-night. And I am the more troubled at your Question, because your way of inquiring, how much your Friends Discourse obtain’d of my Approbation, gives me cause to fear, that you vouchsafe it more of yours then I could wish it. But before I can safely offer you my sense of the Discourses, about which you desire to know it, I must put you in mind, that they were not all upon one Subject, nor of the same Nature: And I am enough his Servant to acknowledge, without the least reluctancy, that he is wont to shew a great deal of wit, when he speaks like a Naturalist, onely of things purely Physical; and when he is in the right, seldom wrongs a good cause by his way of managing it. But as for those passages, wherein he gave himself the liberty of disparaging the learned Dr. N. onely because that Doctor cultivates Theological as well as Physical Studies and does both oftentimes read Books of Devotion· and sometimes write them; I am not so much a Courtier, as to pretend that I liked them. ‘Tis true, he did not deny the Doctor to be a learned and a witty Man, as indeed the wise providence of God has so ordered it, That to stop the bold mouthes of some, who would be easily tempted to imagine, and more easily to give out, that none are Philosophers, but such as, like themselves, desire to be nothing else. Our Nation is happy in several men, who are as eminent for Humane, as studious of Divine Learning; and as great a veneration as they pay to Moses and St. Paul, are as well vers’d in the Doctrine of Aristotle, and of Euclid; nay, of Epicurus and Des Cartes too, as those that care not to study any thing else. But though for this reason Mr. N. had not the confidence to despise the Doctor, and some of his Resemblers, whom he took occasion to mention; yet he too plainly disclos’d himself to be one of those, who though they will not deny, but that some, who own a value for Theology, are men of parts; yet they talk, as if such persons were so, in spight of their being Religiously given; That being, in their opinion, such a blemish, that a man must have very great Abilities otherwise, to make amends for the disadvantage of valuing Sacred Studies, and surmount the disparagement it procures him. Wherefore since this disdainful humour begins to spread much more than I could wish it did among differing sorts of men, among whom I should be glad not to find any Naturalists; and since the Question you ask’d me, and the esteem you have for your Friend, makes me fear you may look on it with very favourable eyes: I shall not decline the Opportunity you put into my hands of giving you, together with a profession of my dislike of this practice, some of my Reasons for that dislike; and the rather, because I may do it without too much exceeding the limits of an Epistle, or those which the haste, wherewith I must write this, does prescribe to me. For your Friend does not oppose, but onely undervalue Theology; and professing to believe the Scriptures (which I so far credit, as to think he believes himself when he says so) we agree upon the principles: So that I am not to dispute with him as against an Atheist, that denies the Authour of Nature, but onely against a Naturalist, that over-values the study of it. And the Truths of Theology are things, which I need not bring Arguments for, but am allowed to draw Arguments from them.
But though, as I just now intimated, I design brevity; yet for fear the fruitfulness and importance of my Subject should suggest things enough to me to make some little method, requisite to keep them from appearing confused; I shall divide the following Epistle into two distinct parts. In the former of which I shall offer you the chief positive Considerations, by which I would represent to you the study of Divinity, as preferable to that of Physicks: And in the second part I shall consider the Allegations, that I foresee your Friend may interpose: in favour of Natural Philosophy. From which distribution you will easily gather, that the Motives on the one hand, and the Objections on the other will challenge to themselves distinct Sections in the respective parts whereto they belong. So that of the Order of the particulars you will meet with, I shall not need to trouble you with any further Account.