further than he defended the truth of the christian faith; for which reason, says he, I have wholly omitted all the personal reflections cast upon him, and the contradictions which Thomas Ellwood pretends to find in his former books, while he was a Quaker of their communion, to the doctrine he now sets up in opposition to them. And so gave the go-by to whatever pinched him; which was the design, as Thomas Ellwood observes, to help George Keith off at a dead lift, from his manifold and manifest self-contradictions, which it was im= possible for him to reconcile or defend; and because it had been as absurd for him to have undertaken a reply to Thomas Ellwood's answer, and not have attempted to acquit himself of those contradictions charged upon him therein, as it would have been impossible for him to have cleared himself of them. Therefore, this contrivance was found out, that another, or perhaps he in a mask, under the disguise of another; for Satan, though disrobed from his disguise of light, has many black robes and dark disguises to put on, should undertake the task of replying, (for a task it seems it was) upon such a foot, and under such circumstances, as might give him some colourable pretence to wave the contradictions, and wholly to omit them, and with them whatsoever else he found too hard to meddle with. 1697. So that any one might plainly see this was a contrivance, as our friend Thomas Ellwood observes, to help George Keith out 1 at a dead lift. To which book of the Snake's, Thomas Ellwood wrote an answer, though he did not quite finish it, or publish it. Of which, and that controversy, he gives the following account. This controversy, begun by George Keith, upon a pick he took against the people called Quakers, because they could not answer his ambitious desire of rule, nor receive some wild and fantastical notions of his, has been earried on by him, in his own name, till he could go no further. The doctrines he condemns us for as erroneous and heretical, have been either so clearly cast off by us as slanders, or so rivetted on himself by undeniable instances and proofs taken out of his own books, that having foreclosed his way to a retractation of them, as shall be shewed anon, he had no way left, but as his last resource, to put the cause into another's hand; to carry it on under the disguise of another person; which brought to my mind the fable of Achelous, who being too weak for his antagonist in fair force, was fain to shift from one shape to another; first to that of a snake, then to that of a bull, and is thereupon brought in by the poet; saying, Inferior virtute meas divertor ad artes, Elaborque viro longum formatus in anguem, &c. In strength too weak, I to my wiles betake, Somewhat a like crafty course has George Keith taken; who finding himself over pressed the last year with books, which he knew not how to answer, got, as was supposed, an adjutant of his to publish a book against us under disguise, without a name to it, and with the very title of the Snake in the Grass; thereby to have diverted us from pursuing the controversy, then and still in hand with him. But when he found that would not do, (for the design was seen) he roared against us like a bull, at Turner's-hall, in the month called June, 1696, and afterwards in his narrative thereof. The answer to that, which soon followed, has it seems, involved him in such difficulties, that he hath not thought fit to appear against it in his own shape; but either assuming another person, or turning over his broken forces, with the united forces of the whole party, to the hissing author of the Snake, they have amongst them, lately thrust forth another book, as a reply to that answer of mine to George Keith's Narrative; this, without a name too, and said to be written by the author of the Snake in the Grass, is called Satan Disrobed from his Disguise of Light. But the observant reader will find cause enough, I think, to conclude, that whoever wrote it, was fully enrobed in Satan's over-guise and proper dress of darkness; from the many bitter and scornful invectives therein used against the light. And for the controversy itself he remarks; 1. That the matters therein charged upon us, are generally the same that have been charged on us heretofore, by Faldo, Hicks, and other adversaries, and always refuted over and over, both formerly and of late. 2. That the things they charge on us, as errors and heresy, are not pretended to be proved by any plain express positions or assertions of ours; but from our adversaries' own perverse meanings, and wrested constructions of our words; always denied and rejected by us. 3. That the words and passages brought by our adversaries for proof of their charges against us, are not taken out of our doctrinal treatises, or declarations of faith and principles; but, for the most part, out of controversial books; wherein, oft times, the scope and aim of the author is, not so much to assert or express his own principles or doc. trines, as to impugn and expose his adversaries; by shewing the contradictions, absurdities, and ill consequences of his adversaries' opinions; from whence, positively to conclude the author's own judgment, is neither safe nor fair. 4. That however any of our former adversaries might have been misled in their judgments concerning us, George Keith, who hath now moved this controversy against us, knows full well, that we do not hold those things either generally as a people, or as particular persons, which he has charged on us as errors. As a people he has clearly acquitted us from them, in his preface to his Narrative, p. 6, where he says, I charge them not, either upon the generality, far less upon the universality of all them called Quakers. For particular persons, hear what he says of George Whitehead, one of the principal butts he shoots at, Narrative, p. 16, where having charged him with denying that Christ in heaven has any bodily existence without us, being conscious that George Whitehead did not so hold, but that he had therein abused him, he immediately adds, if he, George Whitehead, has said otherwise in any of his late printed books, I am glad of it. And a line lower, there is a George Whitehead orthodox, and a George Whitehead not orthodox. He is, in this and some other things, orthodox and not orthodox; and a little further, I own it, that I have cited divers passages out of his later books, that are ortho. dox, to prove him sound. What can be made of all this, but that George Whitehead was orthodox and sound in his own both intentions and expressions; not orthodox in George Keith's perverse and false constructions? And whereas he harps upon the word later books, thereby to insinuate as if George Whitehead had of late altered his judgment. He has cut off that also in his Narrative, p. 38, where he gives an account, that in the year 1678, which was eighteen years ago, some, whom he would not name, questioning him about some prin. ciples in a book of his, both George White Gg |