T. H.—[vi. All things take their beginning from an antecedent and extrinsecal IF I pretended to compose a complete treatise upon this subject, I should not refuse those large recruits of reasons and authorities, which offer themselves to serve in this cause, for God and man, religion and policy, Church and commonwealth, against the blasphemous, desperate, and destructive opinion of fatal destiny. But as mine aim, in the first discourse, was only to press home those things in writing which had been agitated between us by word of mouth (a course much to be preferred before verbal conferences, as being freer from passions and tergiversations, less subject to mistakes and misrelations, wherein paralogisms are more quickly detected, impertinencies discovered, and confusion avoided), so my present intention is only to vindicate that discourse, and together with it, those lights of the Schools, who were never slighted but where they were not understood. How far I have performed it, I leave to the judicious and unpartial reader, resting for mine own part well contented with this, that I have satisfied myself. Your Lordship's most obliged to love and serve you, J. D. BRAMHALL. C |