PREFACE.

How should they know any better? They seldom or never study anything. Instead, they spend what little time they have left—after chasing after church appointments original: "benefices," which are church offices that provided a living or income and fawning over those who can grant them—reading or talking about politics, visiting others or plotting, learning the fashions of dress or the language of the theater, and making up for their lack of theological skill with "a-theological" zeal. Nevertheless, their pretense of defending the CHURCH, even when nobody is attacking it, is usually just a manufactured passion (if I may put it that way). It is politically faked to trick the common people original: "the vulgar", to please troublesome politicians and clergymen, or to serve as a cover for their own envious and disparaging character.

19 A Letter to EUSEBIA in answer to the LETTERS TO SERENA, printed for Mr. GOODWIN at the Queen's Head, across from St. DUNSTAN'S Church in Fleet Street.

IV. It is true that Mr. Wotton William Wotton (1666–1727), an English theologian and scholar., like some others I might mention, is not directly involved in the responses made to NAZARENUS Toland's controversial work Nazarenus: or, Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity (1718).. However, even though the 19 piece he previously wrote against me did not require a reply—in my own opinion and that of better judges—the few passages I have cited from it now are only intended as relevant examples of the point I was making where I quoted them. That point is: some people will not allow a man to be praised for anything if he disagrees with them on specific details. If they oppose him on one thing, they feel obligated to oppose him on everything else. There is nothing, no matter how improbable or false, that they will not say without shame or regret in order to diminish or blacken their opponent's reputation.

In this way, they go to great lengths to make themselves look ridiculous and provide their opponents with an easy victory. In addressing what Dr. Brett Thomas Brett (1667–1744), a clergyman who argued for the necessity of tradition in the Church.—a person of distinguished talent and great composure—has argued against NAZARENUS in the preface to his treatise, Tradition Necessary to Explain and Interpret the Holy Scriptures, my intention was more than just defending myself. I also wanted to defend the first and best Protestants against certain half-professed or fully disguised "Papists" A derogatory term for Roman Catholics or those suspected of Catholic sympathies.. These people want to restore the priesthood, sacrifice, and altars that were rightly removed from the Church during the Reformation. They also want to bring back extreme ideas about spiritual ministers, holy oil, chrism consecrated oil used in baptism and other religious rites, and the practice of mixing water into the sacramental wine.