Gerhardi Vossii Commentarius in Epist Plinii edicta Caes R. Adversus Christianos Amsterd 1654. Christ Cortholtius de Persecutionibus Ecclesiae Primirivae sub Impp. Ethnicis deque veterum Christianorum Cruciatibus Jenae 1660. 8vo A Table of whose several sorts of Torments may also be seen in Fox's Martyrology SECT 13. We shall now proceed to confirm our Opinion by producing undeniable Testimonies from approved Ancient Authors such especially as writ Apologies for the Christians against the Gentiles Wherein they plead for those of former Ages as well as their own and in all places as well as where they lived though especially where their Enemies endeavoured to defame their Holy Profession 1. Minutius Felix who flourished as Dodwel thinks about the end of M. Antoninus's Reign but Bellarmine under Alex. Severus or about A. D. 206. And Baldwin yet later However Cecilius the Heathen Objects Cur occultare abscondere quicquid illud colunt magnopere nituntur Cum honesta semper publico gaudeant scelera secreta sint Cur nullas aras habent Templa nulla nulla nota simulachra Why the Christians greatly endeavour to keep secret and hide that they Worship Seeing honest Things may rejoice to be Publick but wicked Things would be kept secret Why they have no Altars no Temples nor known Images To which Octavius the Christian replies by way of Concession think ye that we hide that we Worship if we have no Temples or Altars What Image shall I make of God since Man is his Image What Temple shall I build for him seeing the whole World made by him cannot contain him Concluding it better He be set up in our Minds and Hallowed in our Hearts 2. Origen who flourished by Bellarmin's account about the Year 226. in his excellent Book against Celsus the Epicurean Philosopher Which he wrote at above sixty Years of Age as Euseb saith l. 6. c. 36. Therefore A. D. 245. having been born 185. Wherein Celsus Objects in the end of l. 7. That the Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could not indure to see the Temples Altars and Statues and l. 8. p. 389 390 and 391. of the Cambridge Edition objects the same To which Origen replies That the Christians had for Altars spiritual Minds and Prayers out of a pure Conscience for Incense For Statues the Image of God their Maker and Temples agreeable to these Holy Bodies and the most excellent Temple of all the Body of Christ John 2.19 22. 1 Pet. 2.5 Isa 54.11 12. Not regarding liveless and sensless Temples which sensless Men admire Because taught to shun those counterfeit Religions which make all those impious that depart from the Religion of Jesus Christ who is the Way the Truth and the Life By which some might think Origen thought it unlawful to Worship God in a Temple as when He saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We avoid to Build liveless and dead Temples to him that is the bestower of all Life But Origen hath no such meaning as the Series of his Discourse shews But that wheresoever Righteous Persons are found that offer up Vows and Prayers to God from a pure Mind and Conscience there God is worshipped after the best Manner whether within a Temple or without elsewhere And Lil. Giraldus in 's Hist Deorum Syntagm 1. Commends this as a most acute Discourse in Origen For whereas the Pagans thought they performed a great piece of Service and Worship to God by building Temples to him This Origen opposeth because a Temple is a sensless or a liveless Thing and Contributes nothing to the pleasing of God in his Worship Our Saviour and his Apostles having by Word and Prayers worshipped God as acceptably often in the open Air as in the Temple of Jerusalem So that hitherto the Christians had no Publick Places of Worship but only in Private may be rationally concluded 3. Arnobius who flourished by Bellarmin's account about A. D. 285. or as other later brings in the Gentiles objecting against the Christians as the greatest Crime that they had no Temples Altars nor Images and answers not by denial but granting what they said and for Temples In cujus rei necessitatem aut dicitis esse constructa aut esse â—ursus aedificanda censetis What Necessity think you doth urge Men to build them or after they are pulled down to repair and restore them See his Reasons for the Christians forbearing to build them Temples l. 6. He shews that Temples were not necessary though convenient for their Religion Therefore when they had Liberty they built them Oratories in the Third Century which were now demolished by Dioclesian For the Christians in all Times and Places of the Empire understood very well that it was in the Emperors Power to pull down whatsoever they Built whensoever they pleased And therefore if their Religion depended on Temples or Structures as the Religion of the Heathens did who as Lactant. saith l. 5. c. 19. found it all there and left it there they had been in an ill Case If they have but a Private House or Room as our Saviour when he instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood or the Disciples met in at Troas their Service is as acceptable to God as if performed in a Temple as glorious as Solomons And this is the meaning of Arnobius when he saith Neque aedes sacras ad venerationis Officia extruamus They did not build Temples to perform Offâ—ces of Worship For that God is equally served honoured and worshipped as well without Temples as in them Which Clemens Alexandrinus Eusebius Athanasius c. have often asserted and proved 4. Lactantius Arnobius's Schollar Condemns the Gentiles for their Temples Altars and Images Quid sibi Templa quid arae volunt Quid denique ipsa simulachra What means your Temples Altars and Images In his Instit l. 6. c. 25. Non Templa illi congestis in altitudinem saxis extruenda sunt In suo cuique consecrandus est pectore Temples are not to be built to God of Stones raised on heighth every one ought to Consecrate him in his own Breâ—st So again Si Deus non videtur ergo his rebus coli debet quae non videntur If God be Invisible He is to be Worshipped with such Things as cannot be seen From these Ancients it appears the Primitive Christians held it as a Thing indifferent as to the acceptableness of their Worship to God whether they performed it in Temples or without And that Gods Worship being meerly of a spiritual Nature the Place though never so magnificent and glorious contributed nothing thereto Which was directly opposite to the Opinion the Heathen had of Temples And Secondly The Gentiles Objections against Christians shews that they had no Temples in the Days of Minutius Felix and Origen For we deny not that there were Churches or Houses of Divine Worship in Arnobius or Lactantius's Time who lived in the end of the Third or beginning of the Fourth Century For they
comfortable calm Aurelian's Edict made for Persecution being never signed by him God having terrified him with Lightning as Eutropius and Vopiscus affirm and so stopt his wicked Tyranny But alas instead of being better'd they extreamly degenerated So that Eusebius saith God sent that direful storm of Persecution on them under Dioclesian for the corruptness of their lives and manners Maximè vero Ecclesiasticorum in quorum vultu simulationem in corde dolum verbis fallaciam cernere licuit livore superbia inimicitiis inter se certantes tyrannidem potius quam sacerdotium sapere videbantur Christianae pietatis omnino obliti divina mysteria profanabant potius quam celebrabant Which I forbear to English Those that please may read more in Fox's Martyrology in the 9th Primitive Persecution tho he misreckon it there having been no general Persecution in Aurelian's Reign who as he himself saith rather intended than moved Persecution But for their wickedness followed the 10th When their Churches were demolished their Bibles burnt their Persons punished with all kinds of cruelty neither Courtiers nor Friends not the Empress Prisca nor Daughter Valeria spared his Decree was aut Deos Gentilium aut mortem eligerent That the Christians should choose either the Heathen Gods or Death Of this Tenth and greatest Persecution Eusebius in his 8th Book of History Lactantius de mortibus Persecutorum from 7 to 49 Chap. with the Notes in Latin of 1693 which are 10 times larger than the Text. And Fox in his first book of Martyrology from Eusebius and several others have written largely which I shall not transcribe but dismiss with this short remark That of all the 10 general Persecutions this last which was the forest and continued above Ten Years only reached England wherein Albanus first and very many after sealed their Faith in Christ with their blood so that Christianity was almost with the Scriptures and Churches destroyed throughout the whole Kingdom tho shortly after revived by the blessed Constantine Having now examined all our Adversaries Witnesses we leave the Impartial Reader to judge of their validity and whether they prove the Christians to have had any publick appropriate places for Worship in the two first Centuries Which tho undoubtedly most sit and convenient always yet in times of Persecution men must do as they may and meet as secretly as they can and be constrained often to change their meeting places and when private Houses will not serve for secresie to seek out Vaults under ground where they may worship God And yet not even in the most secret and retired places without fear of their enemies and danger of their lives which shews our happiness in this regard above theirs who were much better than we There is but one scruple that I can imagine remaining and that is tho these places were private yet they might be as Mede terms them appropriate To which I answer that his first Argument for his Opinion which immediatly follows from their worshipping towards the East implies that he takes them for Publick and purposely built accordingly for that end And 2 who ever diligently peruses his Treatise will see that he founds their appropriation as also their holiness of which in the next Dissertation on their Consecration or as he sometimes calls it Dedication Now if we consider when this begun Platina in vitis Pontif. tells us That Telesphorus having suffer'd Martyrdom in the first year of Antomus Pius which was about the year of our Lord 142. Hyginus an Athenian succeeded him Who ordained these two things First the use of those Witnesses we commonly call Godfathers and Godmothers in the Administration of the Sacrament of Baptism Which was then I confess more necessary by reason the generallity of those amongst whom the Christians lived were Heathens And therefore in case the Parents on whom it is incumbent to see thei Children educated in the Christian Religion came to die they that were Sponsors might take care to see them brought up therein Which Institution as likewise Confirmation is now degenerated into a meer Formality few regarding their solemn Engagements made for that end And 2. he ordained also Templorum consecrationes the Consecration of Temples that or Churches being the usual Names given to all places for Gods Worship in after Ages So that Consecration being but introduced in the second Century if Mede takes it in the usual sense his Opinion that There were appropriate Places for Christian Worship both in the Apostles days and ever since falls to the Ground except it can be proved that some of them at least lived so long But if he takes it for a private House or some room therein where the Church met together as he seems in the beginning and by the expressions of the Church in their House then whensoever any Owners thereof gave leave for the Christians to assemble therein their permission was a Consecration thereof whereby they appropriated the same to the Churches use and so according to his Tenets employed them no more for their own Civil use being appropriate to a Sacred Or else some pious Christians gave their Houses as he thinks and dedicated them to the Church for a Meeting Place by which Dedication it was appropriated But neither of these can be reasonably imagined Considering 1. That we read of several that sold their Possessions for the Maintenance of the Poor but we read of none that gave their Houses to the Church for meeting in 2. The multitude of Christians increasing many Houses were requisite to contain them as we have formerly observed 3. How often in those bloody Persecutious they were forced to shift their Meeting-Places to shun the loss of their Estates Liberties and Lives we may easily conclude And lastly Had any either granted or given any House or certain place for such an use as therein constantly to assemble they had thereby without all doubt been quickly discovered certainly dispersed and often times most severely punish'd So that tho we are not to question the readiness of many that were able nor their pious liberality so we must also consider their Prudence the times wherein they lived and what was most conducible to their preservation that they might not run themselves on the rocks of destruction SECT 9. Our Opponents besides the Authorities mentioned produce several Arguments for their Opinion whereof 3 are made use of by Mede which we shall now consider First It 's certain saith he That in their Sacred Assemblies Christians used then to Worship and Pray towards the East Which how it could be done with any order and conveniency is not easie to be conceived unless we suppose the places wherein they worshipped to have been situated and accommodated accordingly that is chosen and appointed to that end This he had touched on before from Tertullian in the beginning of the 3d Century for which no authority is vouched but that only of the forged Apstolical Constitutions falsly ascribed to Clemens Here
inkling of such an Epistle surely they would have mentioned it tho they could not meet with it And how doth Mede prove any such Officers in the Primitive Churches that which he alledges for this from the Apostolical Constitutions falsly father'd on Clemens is yet stranger For besides others my Learned Countriman Cook in 's censura Scriptorum hath detected so much vanity and many Lyes therein whereof he reckons Eight besides the censures of Athanasius the 6 Synod in Trullo Binius Baronius Bovius and Bellarmine that I wonder Mr. Mede who knew all this should once offer to produce them I know Mr. Cook and many Learned Divines reject all Ignatius's Epistles altho others considering the Testimonies of the Ancients acknowledge 7 for genuine specified by Eusebius Hierom and others tho robbed of some passages mentioned by the Fathers and also have a number of beggarly patches added to his Purple as A. B. Vsher saith Of which 7 this ad Antiochenos is none and therefore not genuine for more were not found nor acknowledged by Polycarp who composed them together Euseb Hierome Sophronius and Ruffinus What Mede observes besides is the Argument of Baronius An. 109. numb 19. and Gretser against Whitaker de S. Script l. 4. c. 7. Which I shall not need to answer it being done already so fully by Vedelius on Ignatius's Epistles whom Mede more especially undertakes in this Treatise in 's pref c 3. wherein he refutes Martialis Mastraeus Baronius and Pellarmine and his Exercitation on this Epistle that I need not mention Cook Scultâ—tus Rivet Gerhard Erockman c. Mede's next Testimony is from two Epistles of Pius the First Bishop of Rome relating in the former how Euprepria titulum domus suae pauperibus resignavit ubt nune cum pauperibus nostris commorantes missas agimus resigned the Title of her house to the Poor where now saith Pius we residing with our poor say Mass And in the latter of a Presbyter that erected a Titulus or Church To this which Baronius alledged before to the same purpose an 57. numb 98 99 100. and Vedelius answered We further say 1. These Epistles are forged as Causabon's Exercit 16. shews For if Mass was so early how came it saith he that no footsteps thereof is extant in approved Authors for above 300 Years And Bishop Morton in 's Book of the Mass l. ◠§ 1. not before St. Ambrose time about A. D. 373. who uses it in another Notion than Papists do since And Morney of the Mass l. 1. c. 1. saith it was unknown for 400 years Not to mention the many Authors who have handled this Argument of the Mass against Bellarmine and other Papists largely I shall only name du Moulin on the Mass in French and more largely in Latine c. 1. for the Pedigree of the Mass 2. We answer This was most likely some room in the House seeing they dwelt therein where they said Mass and were it the whole House yet was it but a private one which scarce any wise man would call a Temple And for the name of Title that was given at pleasure So that were these spurious Epistles authentick they neither prove our adversaries Opinion nor disprove ours Mr. Mede produceth next Theophilus Antiochenus l. 2. ad Antolycum who saith God hath given Synagogues which we call holy Churches c. Which yet is confest by him to be doubtful For saith he if it were probable Synagogue was here taken as usually in the New Testament for a place then Church likewise for a place To which we say that if Church in a hundred places of the New Testament be taken for a Congregation then 't is most probable it 's so taken here And the sense of the words makes this evident for Theophilus compares Heresies to rocky Islands and the wholesome Doctrine of Truth and Holiness to good and habitable Islands and not the places of Truth and Heresies The last Author in this 2d Century alledged is Clemens Alexandrinus who useth the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Church for the Place and not the Congregation only Stromat l. 7. And so again in the story of the young man who had left the Church and betook himself to a Mountain with Robbers That Christians had places of meetings is beyond all doubt but we say in private Houses and Places for 200 years and upwards Nor doth Clemens or any other prove they had publick Oratories And Vedelius p. 74. upon this passage of Clemens shews they did not think this appellation so proper and convenient Therefore Salvian 200 years after l. 3. de gub Dei Itaque Ecclesias vel potius Templa c. correcting the impropriety in using Churches for the places of assembling and preferring the word Temples And for the opposition of Church and Mountain in the story of the young man that became Captain to a Band of Robbers The sense is plain that he left the company of Christians rather than the place of their Assembly to associate with Robbers on the Mountains Thus for the two first Centuries we have heard the noise of our Adversaries Artillery which was nothing but Powder and vanished into Smoak without any Shot that might in the least wound our cause SECT 8. Mr. Mede goes on with the 3d Century wherein we shall follow him at the Heels tho not obliged thereto by our Assertion For I know no Protestant that in this Century denies Christian Oratories but only in the two first And therefore 't is not fair to feign Adversaries and represent us as denying that we willingly grant We know well the Church being considerably increased Oratories were built and the fate that followed them namely to be demolished For Eusebius relates how before Dioclesian's days there was both an enlargement of Churches formerly built and an addition of new more large and stately than the former which were also destroyed in his Reign and towards the end of this 3d Age the Christians not only questioned for affording their private Houses to meet in but moreover tortur'd for it Add hereunto that Mede still goes on to pervert the state of the Question as if private Houses and secret places in sore Persecutions which none denies were publick Oratories Churches or Temples The first Author cited by him is Tertullian in three places whereof the first hath reference to the Assembly and if to the place yet only to the time of Worship for which an upper room served as Hospinian de orig Templ c. 3. explains him and the second citation implies as much where 't is said their House was in editis apertis in high and open places as their coenacula or upper rooms were seeing in Temples tho never so large people are upon the Ground I shall not meddle with what is added of Churches anciently looking Eastward for which Bellarmine gives â—ive reasons c. 3. de cultu sanct further than by referring to such Antiquaries as have treated thereof Walfridus Strabo Hospinian