England as it was constituted and confirmed by the best Authority which the Laws could give it when I began to set my self to this imployment and had brought it in â— manner to a full conclusion And though some alterations have since happened in the face of this Church and those so great as make no small matter of astonishment to the Christian world yet being there is no establishment of any other Doctrine Discipline or new forme of Government and that God knows how soon the prudence of this State may think it fitting if not necessary to revive the old I look upon it now as in the same condition and constitution in which it shined and flourished with the greatest beauty that any National Church in Christendome could justly boast of In all such points which come within the compasse of this discourse wherein the Church hath positively declared her judgement I keep my self to her determinations and decisions according to the literal sense and Grammatical meaning of the words as was required in the Declaration to the book of Articles not putting my own sense upon them nor drawing them aside to propagate and defend any foraine Doctrines by what great name soever proposed and countenanced But in such points as come before me in which I finde that the Church hath not publickly determined I shall conceive my self to be left at liberty to follow the dictamen of my own genius but so that I shall regulate that liberty by the Traditions of the Church and the unanimous consent of the Antient Fathers though in so doing I shall differ from many of the common and received opinions which are now on foot For why should I deny my self that liberty which the times allow me in which not only Libertas opinandi but Libertas prophetandi the liberty of Prophecying t is I mean hath found so many advocates and so much indulgence Common opinions many times are but common errors and we may truely say of them as Calderinas did in Ludovicus Vives when he went to Masse Eamus ergo quia sic placet in communes errores And as I shall make bold to use this liberty in representing to thy view my own opinions so I shall leave thee to the like liberty also of liking or rejecting such of my opinions as are here presented Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim and good reason too for my opinions as they are but opinions so they are but mine As opinions I am not bound to stand to them my self as mine I have no reason to obtrude them on another man I may perhaps delight my self in some of my own fancies and possibly may think my self not unfortunate in them but I shall never be so wedded to my own opinions but that a clearer Judgement shall at any time divorce me from them As for the book which is now before thee I must confesse that there was nothing lesse in my first intention then to write a Comment on the Creed my purpose being only to informe my self in that part thereof which concernes Christs sufferings especially his descending into hell a question at that time very hotly agitated For having gotten the late Kings leave to retire to Winchester about the beginning of May An. 1645. I met there with the learned and laborious work of B. Bilsons entituled A Survey of Christs suffering for mans redemption c. which finding very copious and intermixed with many things not pertinent to the present subject though otherwise of great use and judgement I was resolved to extract out of it all such proofs and arguments as concerned the locall descent of Christ into hell â—o reduce them to a clearer Method and to add to them such conceptions and considerations which my own reading with the help of some other books could supply me with Which having finished and finding many things interspersed in the Bishops book touching the sufferings of Christ I thought it not amisse to collect out of him whatsoever did concerne that argument in the same manner as before and then to add to it such considerations and discourses upon the crucifixion death and burial of our Saviour Christ as might make the story of his Passion from the beginning of his sufferings under Pontius Pilate to his victorious triumph over Hell and Satan compleate and perfect And then considering with my self that not that Article alone of Christs descending into hell but the authority of the whole Creed had been lately quarrelled the opinion that it was not written by the holy Apostles being more openly maintained and more indulgently approved of then I could imagine I thought it of as great importance to vindicate the whole Creed as assert one part and then and not till then did I first entertain the thoughts of bringing the whole worke to that forme and order in which now thou feest it For though I knew it was an Argument much vexed and that many Commentaries and Expositions had been writ upon it yet I conceived that I was able by interweaving some Polemical Disputes and Philological Discourses to give it somewhat more then a new dresse only and that what other censure soever might be laid upon it that of Nil dictum est quod non dictum fuit prius should finde no place here But I had scarce gone through with the general Preface when the surrounding of Winchester by the forces of the Lords and Commons made me leave that City and with that City the thoughts and opportunities of proceeding forwards save that I made some entry on the first Article at a private friends house in a Parish of Wiltshire where I found some few tooles to begin the work with The miserable condition of the King my most gracious Master the impendent ruine of the Church my most pretious Mother the unsetledness of my own affaires and the dangers which every way did seem to threaten me were a sufficient Supersedeas to all matter of study even in the University it self to which I was again returned not without some difficulties where the war began to look more terrible then it had done formerly And I might say of writing books as the world then went as the Poet once did of making verses Carmina proveniunt animo deducta sereno Me mare me tellus me fera jactat hyems Carminibus metus omnis abest ego perditus ensem Haesurum jugulo jam puto jamque meo That is to say Verses proceed from minds compos'd and free Sea earth and tempests joyn to ruine me Poets must write secure from fears not feel As I do at my throat the threatning steel Yet so intent I was upon my designe that as soon as I had waded through my Composition and fixed my self on a certain dwelling near the place of my birth which was about the middle of April in the year 1647. I resumed the worke and there by Gods assistance as the necessity of my affaires gave me time and leasure put an end
body CHAP. VII Of the crucifying death and burial of the Lord JESUS CHRIST with the diquisition of all particulars incident thereunto THe death of Christ prefigured both in that of Abel and of Abels lamb The definition of a Sacrifice how abused by Bellarmine and on what design The Sacrifices of the Law how accounted expiatory Several resemblances between the Sacrifices of Christ and the legal sacrifices A parallel beawixt Christ and Isaac and betwixt Christ and the Brazen Serpent Calvins interpretation and the practise of the Papists much alike unsound How Christ is said to be made a curse The cruel intention of the Iews to prolong Christs miseries under the false disguise of pity Several sorts of Dereliction and in what sort our Saviour Christ complained that he was forsaken Whether Christ spake those words in his own Person or in the person of his members the Schoolmen in this point very sound and solid Why vinegar was given to Christ at the time of his passion The meaning of those words Consummatum est That the death of Christ is rather to be counted voluntary then either violent or natural and upon what reasons The death of Christ upon the Cross a full Propitiation for the sins of man both in the judgement of Scriptures and the Antient Fathers That Christ suffered not the death of the soul as impiously is affirmed by some The Eucharist ordained for a Sacrifice by our Lord and Saviour The Sacrifice or Oblation of Bread and Wine used antiently by that very name in the Church of Christ why called Commemorative and why an Eucharistical sacrifice and why the Sacrament of the Altar The Sacrifice asserted by the Antient Writers corrupted by the Church of Rome and piously restored by the Church of England St. Cyprian wrested by the Papists to defend their Mass. A parallel between the Peace-offerings and the blessed Eucharist The renting of the Vail at our Saviours passion what it might portend The Earthquake and Eclipse then happening testified out of Heathen writers The reconciliation of St. Mark and St. Iohn about the time and hour of our Saviours suffering Various opinions in that point and which most improbable Vniversality of redemption defended by the Church of England Both Sacraments how said to issue from our Saviours side The breaking of our Saviours body in the holy Eucharist how it agreeth with the not breaking of his bones The true and proper meaning of the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Certain considerations on our Saviours buriall and of the weekly fasting dayes thereupon occasioned That Iudas hanged himself made good from the antient Fathers against the new devise of Daniel Heinsius The fearfull and calamitous ends of Pontius Pilate Annas Cajaphas and the whole nation of the Iews CHAP. VIII Of the locall descent of Christ into hell Hades and inferi what they signifie in the best Greek and Latine authors and in the text of holy Scripture an examination and confutation of the contrary opinions CHrists descent into hell the first degree of his Exaltation and so esteemed by many of the antient Fathers The drift and project of this Chapter Severall Etymologies of the Greek word HADES The Greek word HADES used most commonly by the old Greek writers to signifie hell the place of torments sometimes to signifie Pluto the King of hell the word so used also by the sacred Penmen of the new Testament The faultinesse of our last translators in rendring the Greek HADES by the English grave 1 Cor. 15.55 c. contrary to the exposition of the best interpreters By HADES in the Ecclesiasticall notion of it is meant only hell in the opinion of all Greek writers of the elder and middle times The Latine word inferi whence derived and what it signifyeth Inferi generally used by the Antient writers for the place of torments not for the receptacles or repositories of the righteous souls The Greek word Hades generally rendered in the new Testament by the Latine inferi The meaning of these words viz. He descended into hell Grammatically gathered from the Premises Arguments for the locall descent of Christ into hell from St. Pauls words Rom. 10.6 7. and Ephes. 4.8 9 c. with the explication of both places The leading of captivity captive Ephes. 4. and the spoiling of principalities and powers Col. 2.15 used by the antients as arguments for Christs descent into hell the like proved by St Peters argument Act. 2.27 c. the pains of death mentioned vers 2.24 in the latter editions of that book the very same with the pains of hell in some antient copies The Locall descent of Christ into hell proved by the constant and successive testimonies of the old Greek Fathers and by the general current of the Latine writers together with the reasons which induced him to it Considerations on this point viz. whether Christ by his descent into hell delivered thence the souls of such holy men as either dyed under or before the Law Bullengers moderation in it CHAP. IX The Doctrine of the Church of England touching Christs descent into Hell asserted from all contrary opinions which are here examined and disproved THe Doctrine of the Church of England touching the local descent of Christ into Hell delivered in the book of Articles in the book of Homilies and Catechismes publickly allowed The errour of Mr. Rogers in that point charged upon the Church The Doctrine of a locall descent defended by the most eminent writers in the Protestant Churches and of some of the Reformed also The first objection against the locall descent viz. that there was no such clause in the old Creed or Symbol of the Church of Rome The second objection that our Saviour went on the day of his passion with the Theef to Paradise The third objection that Christ at the instant of his death commended his soul into the hands of God the Father The pertinency and profitablenesse of the locall descent declared and stated and freed from all the Cavils which are made against it The false construction of this Article by our Masters in the Church of Rome Brentius and Calvin falsly charged by Bellarmine The Article of Christs descent by whom first made the same with his burial the inconvenience of that sense and the absurdities of Beza in indevoring to make it good The new devise which makes the descent into hell to be nothing else but a continuance for three days in the state of death proposed and answered A Theologicall Dictionary necessary for young Divines The Author and progresse of the new opinion touching the suffering of hell paines in our Saviours soul. A particular of the torments in hell that is to say remorse of conscience 2. rejection from the favour of God 3. despaire of Gods mercy 4. the fiery flames there being That none of all these could finde place in our Saviours soul. The blasphemy of some who teach that Christ descended into hell to suffer there the torments of
was said out of Austin formerly that whosoever contradicted that which was there delivered Aut haereticus aut a Christi fide alienus was either an Heretick or an Infidel If none of these particulars may be justly quarrelled it must be then that the Apostles thought not fit to commit it to writing but left it to depend on tradition only And yet St. Augustine saith the same Catholica fides in Symbolo nota fidelibus memoriaeque mandata c. The Catholick faith contained in the Creed saith he so well known to all faithful people and by them committed unto memory is comprehended in as narrow a compass as the nature of it will bear St. Hierome no great friend of Ruffines as I said before is more plain then he who tels us that the Symbolum of our faith and hope delivered by Tradition from the Apostles Non scribitur in charta atramento sed in tabulis cordis was not committed in those times to ink and paper but writ in the tables of mens hearts Irenaeus cals it in plain tearms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the Greek word for Tradition and Tertullian fetcheth it as high as from the first creating of the Gospel Hanc regulam ab initio Evangelii decurrisse as expressely he Compare these passages of Irenaeus and Tertullian whereof the first conversed with Polycarpus the Apostles Scholar with that which is told us by Ruffinus of Majores nostri that the relation which he makes came from the Tradition of their forefathers and we shall finde as strong as constant and as universal a Tradition for the antiquity and authority of the Creed in question as for the keeping of the Lords-Day or the baptizing of Infants and it may be also for the names and number of the Books of Canonical Scripture And yet behold two witnesses of more antiquity then Irenaeus and Tertullian The first Ignatius one of the Apostles scholars and successour unto St. Peter in the See of Antioch who summeth up those Articles which concern the knowledge of CHRIST IESVS in his incarnation birth and sufferings under Pontius Pilate his death and descending into Hell his rising on the third day c. as they stand in order in the Creed The second is Thaddeus whom St. Thomas the Apostle sent to Abgarus the King or Toparch of Edessa within few years after the death of our Redeemer who being to instruct that people in the Christian faith gives them the sum and abstract of it in the same words and method as concerning CHRIST in which we finde them in the Creed at this very day Nor shall I fear to fare the worse amongst knowing men for relying so far upon Traditions as if a gap were hereby opened for increase of Popery For there are many sorts of Traditions allowed of and received by the Protestant Doctors such as have laboured learnedly for the beating down of Popery and all Popish superstitions of what kinde soever Chemnitius that learned and laborious Canvasser of the Councel of Trent alloweth of six kindes of Tradition to be held in the Church with whom agreeth our learned Field in his fourth book of the Church and 20. chapter Of these he maketh the first kinde to be the Gospel it self delivered first by the Apostles viva voce by preaching conference and such ways of lively expressions Et postea literis consignata and after committed unto writing as they saw occasion The second is of such things as at first depend on the authority and approbation of the Church but after win credit of themselves and yeild sufficient satisfaction unto all men of their divine infallible truths contained in them and of this kinde is that Tradition which hath transmitted to us from time to time the names and number of the Books of Canonical Scripture The third is that which Irenaeus and Tertullian speak of and that saith he is the transmission of those Articles of the Christian faith quos Symbolum Apostolicum complectitur which are contained in the Apostles Creed or Symbol The fourth touching the Catholick sense and interpretation of the Word of God derived to us by the works and studies of the FATHERS by them received from the Apostles and recommended to posterity The fifth kinde is of such things as have been in continual practise whereof there is neither precept nor example in the holy Scripture though the grounds reasons and causes of such practise be therein contained of which sort is the Baptism of Infants and the keeping of the Lords-Day or first day of the week for which there is no manifest command in the Book of God but by way of probable deduction only The sixt and last sort is de quibusdam vetustis ritibus of many antient rites and customs which in regard of their Antiquity are usually referred unto the Apostles of which kind there were many in the Primitive times but alterable and dispensable according to the circumstances of times and persons And of this kinde are those Traditions spoken of in our Book of Articles where it is said that it is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one or utterly like in that at all times they have been divers and may be changed according to the diversity of countreys times and mens manners so that nothing be ordained against Gods Word So that the question between us and the Church of Rome is not in this as many ignorant men are made believe wheâ—her there be or not any such Traditions as justly can derive themselves from the Apostles or whether such Traditions be to be admitted in a Church well constituted I know no moderate understanding Protestant who makes doubt of either The question briefly stated is no more but this that is to say whether the Traditions which the Church of Rome doth pretend unto be Apostolical or not Now for the finding out of such Traditions as are truly and undoubtedly Apostolical there are but these two rules to be considered the first St. Austins and is this Quod universa tenet Ecclesia that whatsoever the Church holdeth and hath alwayes held from time to time not being decreed in any Councel may justly be believed to proceed from no other ground then Apostolical authority The second rule is this and that 's a late learned Protestants that whatsoever all or the most famous and renowned in all Ages or at the least in divers ages have constantly delivered as from them that went before them no man gainsaying or doubting of it without check or censure that also is to be believed to be an Apostolical Tradition By which two rules if we do measure the Traditions of the Church of Rome such as they did ordain in the Councel of Trent to be imbraced and entertained pari pietatis affectu with the like ardor of affection as the written Word What will become of prayer for the dead and Purgatory the Invocation of the Saints departed the worshipping of Images adoration
nought else but the Port of Salvation which whether it were formerly in the heavens above an apud Inferos or in the places under the earth I determine not Yea I had rather be still ignorant of it then rashly to pronounce of that which I finde not expressed in the Scripture In these things as I will not be too curious so neither will I define any thing therein nor will I contend with any man about this matter It shall suffice me to understand and confess that the godly of the Old Testament were in a certain place of rest and not in torments before the Ascension of Christ although I know not what nor where it was So he with great both piety and Christian modesty and with him I shut up this dispute CHAP. IX The Doctrine of the Church of England touching Christs descent into Hell asserted from all contrary opinions which are here examined and disproved THus have we seen the doctrine of the Primitive Church touching the Article of Christs descent into hell so much disputed or indeed rather quarrelled in these later times Let us next look upon the Doctrine of of this Church of England which in this point as in all the rest which are in controversie doth tread exactly in the steps of most pure Antiquity And if we search into the publick monuments and records thereof we shall finde this doctrine of Christs local descent into hell to have been retained and established amongst many other Catholick verities ever since the first beginning of her Reformation For in the Synod of the year 1552. being the fourth year of King Edward the sixt it was declared and averred for the publick doctrine of this Church to be embraced by all the members of the same that the body of Christ until his Resurrection lay in the grave but that his soul being breathed out was with the spirits in prison or hell and preached to them as the place of Peter doth witness saying For Christ also hath once suffered for sins the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but quickned by the Spirit By which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison c. 1 Pet. 3.18 19. But being the Articles of that year were set out in Latine take them according as they stand in the Original Nam corpus usque ad Resurrectionem in sepulchro jacuit Spiritus ab illo emissus cum spiritibus qui in Carcere sive in Inferno detinebantur fuit illisque praedicavit ut testatur Petri locus c. So also in the year 1562. When Q. Elizabeth was somewhat setled in her state she caused her Clergy to be called together in a Synodical way to the intent they might agree upon a Body or Book of Articles for the avoiding of diversities of opinions and for the establishing of consent touching true Religion Who being met and having agreed upon the two first Articles touching Faith in the holy Trinity and the Word or Son of God which was made very man and having declared in this second that Christ who is very God and very man did truly suffer and was crucified dead and buryed to reconcile us to his Father addes for the title of the third of the going down of Christ into hell Which being an entire Article of it self runs thus in terminis viz. As Christ dyed for us and was buried so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell Which Article with the rest being publickly agreed upon and passed in the Convocations of both Provinces and confirmed under the broad Seal as the law required became the publick authorized Doctrine of this Church of England and afterwards received such countenance in the high Court of Parliament that there was a statute made unto this purpose that all who were to be admitted unto any Benefice with cure of souls or unto any holy Orders should publickly subscribe the same in the presence of the Bishop or Ordinary The like care was also taken after for subscribing to it by all such who were matriculated in either of the Universities or admitted into any Colledge or Hall or to any Academical degree whatsoever and so it stands unto this day confirmed and countenanced by as high and great authority aâ— the power of the Prince the Canons of the Church and the Sanctions of the Civil State can give it Nor stands it only on Record in the Book of Articles but is thus touched in the Book of Homilies specified and approved of for godly and wholesome Doctrine by those Articles and ratified and confirmed together with them Thus hath his Resurrection saith the Homilie wrought for us life and and righteousness He passed through death and hell to the intent to put us in good hope that by his strength we shall do the same He paid the ransome of sin that it should not be laid to our charge He destroyed the Devil and all his tyranny and openly triumphed over him and took away from him all his captives and hath raised and set them with himself among the heavenly Citizens above So far the Homily There was also published in the beginning of the said Queens Reign a Catechisme writ in Latine by Mr. Alexander Nowel Dean of Pauls and publickly authorized to be taught in all the Grammar Schooles of this kingdome though not by such a sacred and supreme authority as the books of Articles and Homilies had been before in which the doctrine of Christs descent into hell is thus delivered viz. That as Christs body was laid in the Bowels of the earth so his soul separated from his body descended ad inferos to hell and with all the force and efficacie of his death so pierced unto the dead atque inferos adeo ipsos and even to the spirits in hell that the souls of the unfaithful perceived the condemnation of their infidelity to be most sharp and just ipseque inferorum Princeps Satan and Satan himself the Prince of hell saw all the power of his tyranny and of darknesse to be weakned broken and destroyed and contrariwise the dead who whilest they lived believed in Christ understood the work of their Redemption to be performed and felt the fruit and force thereof with a most sweet and certain comfort So that the doctrine of Christs descent into hell being thus positively delivered in the Articles and Homilies and Catechisme publickly authorized to be taught in Schools and being thus solemnly confirmed and countenanced both by Laws and Canons and by the subscriptions of all the Clergie and other learned men of this Realm of England how great must we conceive the impudence to be of the Romish Gagger who charged this upon this Church that we denie the descent of Christ into hell Nor do I wonder lesse at the improvidence of those who were then in authority in licensing Mr. Rogers comment on this Book
in anima cruciatus damnati perditi hominis pertulerit and felt most sensibly in his soul those miserable torments of a man utterly forlorne and damned to the pit of hell that being thus forsaken and estranged from the sight of God he was so cast down as in the anguish of his spirit to cry out afflictively My God my God why hast thou forsaken me as finding in himself omnia irati punientis Dei signa all the sure tokens of an angrie and avenging God finally that the fear and sorrow which did overwhelme him in the Garden his fervent prayer his Agonie and bloudy sweat were nothing but the signes and evidences of those horrid and unspeakable torments those diros horribiles cruciatus as he cals them there which he then suffered in his soul. And what could all this be but the pains of hell This he resolves to be the meaning of the Article condemning all exceptions which are or may be made against it either as frivolous and ridiculous Sect. 10. or to proceed ex malitia magis quam imscitia rather from malice then from ignorance and all that hath been said unto the contrary to be nothing but meer slander and calumniations and being most extremely pleased to see how those who did oppose him knew not where to fasten but were compelled to flie from one thing to another This is the summe of his dispute the substance of that dangerous innovation in the Christian faith which was by him first published for a truth undoubted and after taken up upon his Authority without further questioning or debate Which as it generally prevailed in most places else so did it no where finde more fast friends and followers then in this unhappy Church of England where it became in fine to be accounted the sole Orthodox Doctrine vented in Pulpits and in Catechisms that the death of Christ upon the Cross and his bloud shed for the remission of our sins were the least cause and means of our Redemption but that he did and ought to suffer the death of the sâ—ul and those very pains which the damned souls in hell do suffer before we could be ransomed from the wrath of God and that this was that descent into hell which in our Creed we are taught to believe A doctrine so directly contrary unto that of the Church of England delivered in her Articles and Books of Homilies solemnly authorized and ratified as before was said that Dr. Bilson the Reverend and learned Bishop of Winton then being thought himself obliged as well to undeceive the people as to assert the antient doctrine of the Church And to that end delivered in a Sermon at St. Pauls Cross London what he conceived to be the tenet of the Scriptures in this particular according to the Exposition of the holy Fathers Which as it first occasioned some unsavory Pamphlets and afterwards some set discourses to be writ against him so it necessitated him in his own defence to set out that laborious work entituled The survey of Christs sufferings for mans Redemption and of his descent to Hades or Hell for our deliverance I must confess my self indebted for the most part of those helps which I have had in the true stating both of this and the former Article Thus having shewn who was the Author what the progress of this so much applauded Exposition of Christs descent into hell we next proceed to the examining and confutation of the same And first the Reader may take notice that all the out-works to this Citadel esteemed so invincible and inexpugnable have by us been taken in already in the two former chapters where we have proved that neither the extreme fear or sorrow which did seize upon him in the Garden of Gethsemane nor any of his fervent prayers either there or on the Cross it self no nor the Agony it self nor the bloudy sweat were any signs or arguments of those hellish pains which they have fancied to themselves in our Saviours soul. And we have also proved in the last chapter of all not only that our Saviour did not die the death of the soul as these men blasphemously pretend but that the work of our Redemption was compleated fully by that bodily and bloudy sacrifice which he made of himself upon the Cross. So that there now remains no more but to prove this point which is indeed the main of all namely that Christ neither did nor ought to suffer the pains belonging to the damned or endured so much as for a moment the torments of hell And for the proof of this it is fit we know both what those pains and torments are which the damned do suffer and of what nature are those fires which the Scriptures declare to be in hell what punishments belong to the soul alone and what unto the soul and body being joyned together And first of all the torments which the damned suffer in their souls only though infinite and unexpressible in themselves may be reduced to these three heads 1 remorse of conscience 2 a sense of their rejection from the favour of God and 3 a despair of ever being eased of that consuming misery which is fallen upon them Remorse of conscience that 's the first and one of the most heavy torments suffered by those wretched souls who in their life time wholly renounced the Lord their God to enjoy their pleasures by which they are kept in a continual remembrance of that madness and folly wherewith they rebelled against the Lord and of the contumacy wherewithall they refused his mercies God punishing the souls of such wicked men with the evidence and conscience of their own uncleanness and with the sight and most infallible assurance of their now everlasting wretchedness Whether or not this be the Worm our Saviour speaks of and of which he telleth us in his Gospel that it never dyeth we shall speak more at large hereafter In the mean time observe we what the Fathers say touching this particular Quae poena gravior quam interioris vulnus conscientiae what pain more grievous saith St. Ambrose then the wounds of a convicted conscience Magna poena impiorum est conscientia the conscience of the wicked saith St. Augustine is one of their greatest pains or punishments And more then so amongst all the afflictions of mans soul saith he there is none greater then the conscience of sin How thinkest thou saith St. Chrysostom shall our conscience be bitten alluding to the Worm spoken of before and is not this worse then any torment whatsoever With whom agreeth Eusebius also in his Apologie for Origen published under the name of Pamphilus saying tunc ipsa conscientia propriis stimulis agitatur that then the conscience of a wicked man shall be pricked and pierced with the stings of their own proper sins The second torment which the damned suffer in the soul alone is the sense of their rejection from the
dogmata many strange Doctrines broached by Luther and held forth by Calvin To which when Dr. Crackanthorp was commanded to make an Answer he thought it neither safe nor seasonable to deny the charge or plead not guilty to the bill and therefore though he called his book Defensio Ecclesiae Anglicanae yet he chose rather to defend those Dogmata which had been charged upon this Church in the Bishops Pamphlet then to assert this Church to her genuine Doctrines They that went otherwise to work were like to speed no better in it or otherwise requited for their honest zeal then to be presently exposed to the publick envie and made the common subject of reproach and danger So that I must needs look upon it as a bold attempt though a most necessary piece of service as the times then were in B. Montague of Norwich in his answer to the Popish Gagger and the two Appellants to lay the saddle on the right horse as the saying is I mean to sever or discriminate the opinions of particular men from the received and authorized Doctrines of the Church of England to leave the one to be maintained by their private fautors and only to defend and maintain the other And certainly had he not been a man of a mighty spirit and one that easily could contemne the cries and clamors which were raised against him for so doing he could not but have sunk remedilesly under the burden of disgrace and the feares of ruin which that performance drew upon him To such an absolute authority were the names and writings of some men advanced by their diligent followers that not to yeeld obedience to their Ipse dixits was a crime unpardonable It is true King Iames observed the inconvenience and prescribed a remedy sending instructions to the Universities bearing date Ian. 18. Ann. 1616. which was eight years or thereabout before the coming out of the Bishops Gag wherein it was directed amongst other things that young students in Divinity should be excited to study such books as were most agreable in doctrine and discipline too the Church of England and to bestow their time in the Fathers and Councels Schoolmen Histories and Controversies and not to insist to long upon Compendiums and Abbreviators making them the grounds of their study And I conceive that from that time forwards the names and reputations of some leading men of the forain Churches which till then carryed all before them did begin to lessen Divines growing every day more willing to free themselves from that servitude and Vassalage to which the authority of those names had inslaved their judgements But so that no man had the courage to make such a general assault against the late received opinions as the Bishop did though many when the ice was broken followed gladly after him About those times it was that I began my studies in Divinity and thought no course so proper and expedient for me as the way commended by King Iames and opened at the charges of B. Montague though not then a Bishop For though I had a good respect both to the memory of Luther and the name of Calvin as those whose writings had awakened all these parts of Europe out of the ignorance and superstition under which they suffered yet I alwayes took them to be men Men as obnoxious unto error as subject unto humane frailty and as indulgent too to their own opinions as any others whatsoever The little knowledge I had gained in the course of Stories had preacquainted me with the fiery spirit of the one and the busie humour of the other thought thereupon unfit by Archbishop Cranmer and others the chief agents in the reformation of this Church to be employed as instruments in that weighty businesse Nor was I ignorant how much they differed from us in their Doctrinals and formes of Government And I was apt enough to thinke that they were no fit guides to direct my judgement in order to the Discipline and Doctrine of the Church of England to the establishing whereof they were held unusefull and who both by their practises and positions had declared themselves to be friends to neither Yet give me leave to say withall that I was never master of so little manners as to speak reproachfully of either or to detract from those just honours which they had acquired though it hath pleased the namelesse Author of the reply to my Lord of Canterburies Book against Fisher the Iesuit to tax me for giving unto Calvin in a book licenced by authority the opprobrious name of schismaticall Heretick Had he told either the parties name by whom it was licenced or named the Book it self in which those ill words escaped me I must have been necessitated to disprove or confesse the action But being as it is a bare denyall is enough for a groundlesse slander And so I leave my namelesse Author a Scot as I have been informed with these words of Cicero Quid minus est non dico Oratoris sed hominis quam id objicere Adversario quod si ille verbo negabit longius progredi non possis Pardon me Reader I beseech thee for laying my naked soul before thee for taking this present opportunity to acquit my self from those imputations which the uncharitablenesse of some men had aspersed me with I have long suffered under the reproaches of the publick Pamphleters not only charged with Popery and Heterodoxies in the point of faith but also as thou seest with incivilities in point of manners and I was much disquieted and perplexed in minde till I had given the world in thee a verball satisfaction at the least to these verball Calumnies How far I am really free from these criminations I hope this following work will shew thee So will the Sermons on the Tears preached in a time when the inclinations unto Popery were thought but falsely thought to be most predominant both in Court and Clergy if ever I shall be perswaded to present them to the open view In the mean time take here such testimonies both of my Orthodoxie and Candour as this work affords thee In which I have willingly pretermitted no just occasion of vindicating the Antient and Apostolical Religion established and maintained in the Church of England against Opponents of all sorts without respect to private persons or particular Churches And as old Pacian used to say Christianus mihi nomen est Catholicus cognomen so I desire it may be also said of me that Christian is my name and Catholick my surname A Catholick in that sense I am and shall desire by Gods grace to be alwayes such a true English Catholick And English Catholick I am sure is as good in Grammar and far more proper in the right meaning of the word then that of Roman Catholick is or can be possibly in any of the Popish party And as an English Catholick I have kept my selfe unto the Doctrines Rites and formes of Government established in the Church of
unto it So wandring and uncertain hath the latter part of my Pilgrimage been that I began this work in Winchester the prime City of Hamshire continued it in a Parish of Wiltshire finished it at my house in Oxfordshire and am now come to publish it Quem das finem Rex magne laborum from Abington the chief Town of Barkshire For I had but finished it if that and not bestowed my last hand upon it when by the importunity of some speciall friends I was prevailed with to the writing of my large Cosmography Which being published and received with some approbation I began to fear I might goe lesse in the esteem which I had gotten If I should venture this piece to the publick view Jealous I was of being thought a better Geographer then Divine or that it should be said of me as it had been in some cases of some other men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say that I had spent more of my stock upon the Accessorie then upon the Principal more on Geography which was a thing ad extra to me then I had done upon Divinity my own proper element Considering therefore to whose hands I might commend the perusall of it I pitched at last on the right reverend Father in God and my very good Lord the Lord B. of Rochester of whose severity in judging without partiality and friendly counsell in advising without by-respects I was very confident And he accordingly having bestowed some time upon it returned me the incouragement and approbation of this following Letter which not without some hope of his Lordships pardon I shall here subjoyne as that which was the speciall motive to this publication SIR I Have as you desired read your soul on the Apostles Symbol and although I have not done it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet I have read it so as I dare say when you shall have reviewed it perfected the quotations and added the last hand thereto it shall not only redound to your deserved honour but much very much to the benefit of any candid and learned Reader And in this Approbation I have the concurrent judgement of a Scholar and sound Divine who read the book with me There remaines nothing more on my part then to receive your directions where and to whom the book shall be commended by Your reall friend and humble servant IOHN ROFFENS October 14. 1651. I am now drawing towards an end good Reader and shall only tell thee that I had entertained a Project of an higher nature such as hath not been ventured on for ought I can learne by any other whosoever which if God had pleased to continue me in those abilities of minde and body which he hath formerly vouchsafed me would more conduce to the advancement of good letters then any or all the rest of my undertakings But I have found of late God helpe me such great and sensible decay of sight that I may say too truely in the wisemans words Tenebrescunt videntes per foramina claudunt ostia in platea that is to say those that look out of the window be darkned and the doors are shut in the streets as our English reads it And for my part I never had the facultie as some men have of studying by another mans eyes or turning over my books by anothers hand but have been fain to work out my performances by my proper strength without the least help or co-operation to assist me in them If by thy prayers for good successe on such Physical means as I submit my self unto it shall please God to make my sight so usefull to me as to inable me to goe through with the undertakings I shall with joy and cheerfulnesse imploy the remainder of my time to compleat that work which I have digested in my thoughts but so that it lies still within me like an unpolished and unperfect Embryo in the Mothers womb the children being come to the birth but wanting strength to be delivered In the mean time I render all humble and hearty thankes to the Lord my God for giving me such a measure of his holy assistance as to bring this work to a conclusion which if it may redound to his glory the benefit of this Church and thy particular contentation it is all I aime at And that thou mayest receive herein the more full contentment I have drawn up the heads and summe of all the Chapters which I refer to thy perusall and gathered an Errata or Correction of the faults which I desire thee to amend accordingly as thou goest along Thou wilt by that means be somewhat better able to judge whether Geography be better then Divinity Remember the now well known scoffe which was put upon me And so I leave thee to Gods grace and the Churches blessing Lacies Court in Abingdon Iune 6. 1654. POSTSCRIPT READER I Am to give thee notice that in the seventh Chapter of the third Book there is a whole Section or Paragraph misplaced that being subjoyned to the end which should have found its proper place in the beginning of that Chapter And therefore I desire that after these words viz. that he made Israel to sin which thou shall finde fol. 464. lin 23. thou wouldest turne over to fol. 479. lin 17. beginning with these words viz. I know it doth much trouble c. which having read to the end of that Section thou mayest return to the place where thou wert before viz. Now to these positive texts c. and so proceed unto the end without interruption The rest of the Errata thou shalt finde summed up after the generall Contents which I desire thee to correct as before was intimated before thou settle to the work and so fare thee well SYLLABVS CAPITVM OR The Contents of the Chapters The PREFACE Of the Authority and Antiquity of the Creed commonly called the Apostles Creed with answer to the chief Objections which were made against it ALl things made One by God from the first beginning One Faith essential to the Church and upon what reasons What moved the Apostles to comprehend the chief heads of Faith in so short a Summary Whether the Creed of the Apostles were not that form of sound Doctrine which the Apostle recommends to Timothy Proofs for the Antiquity of the Creed from Irenaeus and Tertullian not the Creeds only but the authority of the Fathers disputed and disproved in these later times and by whom especially some reasons warranting the Creed to have been framed by the Apostles The story how the Creed was made at large related by Ruffinus The story of Ruffinus justified by the Antient Writers Traditions how far entertained in the Protestant Churches An Apostolical Tradition by what marks discerned and those marks found in the Tradition which transmits the Creed The reverend esteem held by the Antients of the Creed in Commenting upon the same and keeping it unaltered in the words and syllables The Creed to be first learned by
from the Virgin Mary The only Son and the best beloved Son equivalent in holy Scripture Christ why entituled the first born of every creature The rights of Primogeniture what they were and how vested in him CHRIST so to be accounted the Son of God as to be also God the Son That the Messiah was to come in the form of man The testimony given by Christ to his own Divinity cleared from all exceptions The story of Theodosius the Iew in Suidas touching Christ our Saviour justified The testimony given to Christs Divinity by the Heathen Oracles The falling of the Egyptian Idols the Poet Virgil and the Roman Centurion The Heresies of Ebion Artemon and Samosatenus in making Christ our Saviour a meer natural man briefly recited and condemned The perplexed niceties of the School avoided purposely by the Author The name of LORD appropriated in the Old Testament unto God the Father but more peculiar since the time of the Gospel to God the Son The title of LORD disclaimed by the first Roman Emperours and upon what reasons CHRIST made our LORD not only in the right of purchase but also by the law of Arms. CHAP. III. Of Gods free mercy in the Redemption of man the WORD why fitted to effect it The Incarnation of the Word why attributed to the holy Ghost the Miracle thereof made credible both to Jews and Gentiles THe controversie between Mercy Peace Truth and Iustice on the fall of man made up and reconciled by the oblation of Christ then designed and promised That God could have saved mankinde by some other means then by the Incarnation and death of Christ had he been so minded The Oblation of Christ rather a voluntary act of his own meer goodness then necessitated by imposition or decree Some reasons why the work of the Incarnation was to be acted chiefly by the holy Ghost The manner of the Incarnation with a more genuine explication of the Virgins answer The miraculous obumbration of the holy Ghost made more intelligible by two parallel cases The impure fancies of some Romish Votaries touching this Obumbration and the blessed Virgin The large faculties of Frier Tekell Sleidan corrupted by the Papists The strange conceit of Estius in making Christ the principal if not only Agent in the Incarnation The miracle of the Incarnation made perceptible to the natural man to the Iews and Gentiles The Virgins Faith a great facilitating to the Incarnation The Antiquity of the feasts of Annuntiation Christ why not called the Son of the holy Ghost The body of Christ not formed all at once as some Popishs writers doe affirm and the reasons why CHAP. IV. Of the birth of CHRIST the Feast of his Nativity Why born of a Virgin The Prophesie of Esaiah the Parentage and priviledges of the blessed Virgin NO cause for the WORD to be made flesh but mans Redemption Our Saviour Christ not only born but made of the Virgin Mary and the manner how That several Heresies in the Primitive times touching this particular The time and place made happy by our Saviours birth That Christ was born upon the five and twentyeth day of December proved by the general consent of all Christian Churches The high opinion of that day in the Primitive times The miracle of Christ being born of a Virgin Mother made perceptible by some like cases in the Book of God A parallel between Eve and the Virgin Mary The promise made by God to Eve The clearest Prophesie in Scripture that Christ our Saviour should be born of a Virgin-Mother That so much celebrated Prophesie Behold a Virgin shall conceive c. not meant originally and literally of the birth of Christ. The genuine meaning of the Text and how it was fulfilled in our Saviours birth Whether Christ were the direct heir of the house of David The Genealogie of Christ why laid down in such different wayes by the two Evangelists The perpetual Virginity of Christs Mother asserted against the Hereticks of former times defended on wrong grounds by the Pontificians The Virgin freed from Original sin by some zealous Papists and of the controversie raised about it in the Church of Rome What may be warrantably thought touching that particular The extreme errours of Helvidius and the Antidicomaritani in giving too little and of the Collyridians and the Papists on the other side in giving too great honour to the blessed Virgin Some strange extraâ—vigancies of the learned and vulgar Papists The moderation in that kinde of the Church of England The body of Christ a real not an imaginary substance and subject to the passions and infirmities of a natural body CHAP. V. Of the sufferings of our Saviour under Pontius Pilate and first of those temptations which he suffered at the hands of the Devil ANnas and Caiaphas why said to be High Priests at the self same time Of Pontius Pilate his barbarous and rigid nature and of the slaughter which he made of the Galileans By what SPIRIT for what reasons and into what part of the Wilderness Christ was led to be tempted A parallel between Christ and the Scape-goat Reasons for our Redeemers fast why neither more nor less then just forty days Of the Ember weeks The institution and antiquity of the Lenten fast and why first ordained St. Luke and St. Matthew reconciled A short view of the three temptations with a removal of some difficulties which concern the same How Satan could shew Christ our Saviour from the top of a mountain and in so short a space of time the Kingdomes of the earth and the glories of them In what respects it is said of Christ that he was or could be tempted of the Devil CHAP. VI. Of the afflictions which our Saviour suffered both in his soul and body under Pontius Pilate in the great work of MANS REDEMPTION THe heaviness which fel on Christ not so great and terrible as to deprive him of his senses In what respect it is said of Christ in his holy Gospel that his soul was sorrowful to the death The Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what it signifieth in the holy Penmen The meaning of our Saviours words Ioh. 12.27 No contrariety in Christs Prayer to the will of God Why death appeared so terrible in our Saviours eye The judgement of the Antients on that Prayer of Christ. The doctrine of the Schools touching the natural fear of death Why Christ desired not to receive that Cup from the hands of the Iews Of the comfort which the Angel brought unto our Saviour in the time of his heaviness A passage of St. Paul expounded Heb. 57. The meaning of the word Agony in the best Greek Writers and in the usual style of Scripture Christs Agony and bloudy sweat rather to be imputed unto a fervency of zeal then an extremity of pain The sentence put upon our Saviour in the High Priests Hall and at the Iudgement Seat of Pilate A brief survey of Christs sufferings both in soul and
Viceroyes put upon him by the Papists and the Presbyterians THe title of King designed to Christ long before his birth given to him by the Souldiers and confirmed by Pilate The generall opinion of the Iews and of the Apostles and Disciples for a temporal Kingdome to be set up by their Messiah the like amongst the Gentiles also Christ called the head of the Church and upon what reasons The actuall possession of the Kingdome not conferred on Christ till his resurrection Severall texts of Scripture explained and applyed for the proof thereof Christ by his regall power defends his Church against all her enemies and what those enemies are against which he chiefly doth defend it Of the Legislative power of Christ of obedience to his lawes and the rewards and punishments appendent on them No Viceroy necessary on the earth to supply Christs absence The Monarchy of the Pope ill grounded under that pretence The many Viceroyes thrust upon the Church by the Presbyterians with the great prerogatives given unto them Bishops the Vicars of Christ in spirituall matters and Kings in the externall regiment of the holy Church That Kings are Deputies unto Christ not only unto God the Father proved both by Scriptures and by Fathers The Crosse why placed upon the top of the regall Crown How and in what respects Christs Kingdome is said to have an end Charity for what reasons greater then faith and hope The proper meaning of those words viz. Then shall he deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father disputed canvassed and determined CHAP. XV. Touching the coming of our Saviour to judgement both of quick and dead the souls of just men not in the highest state of blisse till the day of judgement and of the time and place and other circumstances of that action THe severall degrees of CHRISTS exaltation A day of judgement granted by the sober Gentiles Considerations to induce a natural man to that perswasion and to inforce a Christian to it That Christ should execute his judgement kept as a mysterie from the Gentiles Reasons for which the act of judging both the quick and the dead should be conferred by God on his Son CHRIST IESVS That the souls of righteous men attain not to the highest degree of happinesse till the day of judgement proved by authority of Scriptures by the Greek Fathers and the Latine by Calvin and some leading men of the reformation The alteration of this Doctrine in the Church of Rome and the reason of it The torments of the wicked aggravated in the day of judgement The terrors of that day described with the manner of it The errour of Lactantius in the last particular How CHRIST is said to be ignorant of the time and hour of the day of judgement The grosse absurdity of Estius in his solution of the doubt and his aime therein The audaciousnesse of some late adventurers in pointing out the year and day of the finall judgement The valley of Iehosophat designed to the place of the generall judgement The Easterne part of heaven most honoured with our Saviours presence The use of praying towards the East of how great antiquity That by the signe of the Son of man Mat. 24.30 we are to understand the signe of the crosse proved by the Western Fathers and the Southerne Churches The sounding of the trumpet in the day of judgement whether Literally or Metaphorically to be understood The severall offices of the Angels in the day of judgement The Saints how said to judge the world The Method used by Christ in the act of judging The consideration of that day of what use and efficacy in the wayes of life LIBER III. CHAP. I. Touching the holy Ghost his divine nature power and office The controversie of his Procession laid down historically Of receiving the holy Ghost and of the severall Ministrations in the Church appointed by him SEverall significations of these words the holy Ghost in the new Testament The meaning of the Article according to the Doctrine of the Church of England The derivation of the name and the meaning of it in Greek Latine and English The generall extent of the word Spirit more appositely fitted to the holy Ghost The divinity of the holy Ghost clearly asserted from the constant current of the book of God The grosse absurdity of Harding in making the divinity of the holy Ghost to depend meerly upon tradition and humane authority The many differences among the writers of all ages and between St. Augustine with himself touching the sin or blasphemy against the holy Ghost The stating of the controversie by the learned Knight Sir R. F. That the differences between the Greek and Latine Churches concerning the procession of the holy Ghost are rather verball then material and so affirmed to be by most moderate men amongst the Papists The judgement of antiquity in the present controversie The clause a Filioque first added to the antient Creeds by some Spanish Prelates and after countenanced and confirby the Popes of Rome The great uncharitablenesse of the Romanists against the Grecians for not admitting of that clause The graces of the holy Ghost distributed into Gratis data and Gratum facientia with the use of either Why Simon Magus did assert the title of the great power of God Sanctification the peculiar work of the holy Ghost and where most descernible Christ the chief Pastor of the Church discharged not the Prophetical office untill he had received the unction of the holy Spirit The Ministration of holy things conferred by Christ on his Apostles actuated and inlarged by the holy Ghost The feast of Pentecost an holy Anniversary in the Church and of what antiquity The name and function of a Bishop in St. Pauls distribution of Ecclesiasticall offices included under that of Pastor None to officiate in the Church but those that have both mission and commission too The meaning and effect of those solemne words viz. receive the holy Ghost used in Ordination The use thereof asserted against factious Novelty The holy Ghost the primary Author of the whole Canon of the Scripture The Canon of the Evangelical and Prophetical writings closed and concluded by St. Iohn The dignity and sufficiency of the written word asserted both against some Prelates in the Church of Rome and our great Innovators in the Church of England CHAP. II. Of the name and definition of the Church Of the title of Catholick The Church in what respects called holy Touching the head and members of it The government thereof Aristocraticall THe name Church no where to be found in the old Testament The derivation of the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and what it signifyeth in old Authors The Christian Church called not improperly by the name of a Congregation The officiation of that word in our old Translators and the unsound construction of it by the Church of Rome Whence the word CHVRCH in English hath its derivation The word promiscuously used in the elder times
to signifie the place of meeting and the people which did therein meet That by these words Ecclesia quae est domi ejus St. Paul meaneth not a private family but a Congregation Severall significations of the word in the Ecclesiasticall notion of it The Clergy sometimes called the Church The Church called Catholick in respect of time place and persons Catholick antiently used for sound and Orthodox appropriated to themselves by the Pontificians and unadvisedly yeelded to them by the common Protestants Those of Rome more delighted with the name of Papists then with that of Christian. The Church to be accounted holy notwithstanding the unholinesse of particular persons The errour of the old and new Novatians touching that particular confuted by the constant current of the book of God Neither the Schismatick nor the Heretick excluded from being Members of the Catholick Church The Catholick Church consists not only of Elect or Predestinate persons The Popes supremacy made by those of Rome the principall Article of their faith Of the strange powers ascribed unto the Pope by some flattering Sycophants as well in temporal mattters as in things Spiritual The Pope and Church made termes convertible in the Schools of Rome The contrary errour of the Presbyterians and Independents in making the Church to be all body St. Hieroms old complaint revived in these present times The old Acephory what they were and in whom revived The Apostles all of equall power amongst themselves and so the Bishops too in the Primitive times as successors to the Apostles in the publick government Literae Formulae what they were in the elder ages Of the supremacy in sacred matters exercised by the Kings of Iudah and of that given by Law and Canon to the Kings of England CHAP. III. Of the visibility and infallibility of the Church of Christ and of the Churches power in expounding Scripture determining controversies of the faith and ordaining ceremonies WHat we are bound to believe and practise touching the holy Catholick Church in the present Article The Church at all times visible and in what respects The Church of God not altogether or at all invisible in the time of Ahab and Elijah nor in that of Antiochus and the Maccabees Arianisme not so universal when at the greatest as to make the Church to be invisible The visibilitie of the Church in the greatest prevalency of the Popedom not to be looked for in the congregations of the Albigenses Husse or Wicliffes answer to the question Where our Church was before Luthers time the Church of Rome a true Church though both erroneous in Doctrine and corrupt in manners The Vniversal Church of Christ not subject unto errour in points of Faith The promises of Christ made good unto the Vniversal though not to all particular Churches The opposition made to Arianism in the Western Churches and in the Churches East and West to the Popes Supremacy to the forced Celibat of Priests to Transubstantiation to the half Communion to Purgatory Worshipping of Images and to Auricular confession General Councels why ordained how far they are priviledged from errour and of what authority The Article of the Church of ENGLAND touching General Councels abused and falsified The power of National and Provincial Councels in the points of faith not only manifested and asserted in the elder times but strenuously maintained by the Synod of Dort Four Offices of the Church about the Scripture The practises of the Iews and Arians to corrupt the Text. The Churches power to interpret Scripture asserted both by Antient and Modern Writers The Ordinances of the Church of how great authority and that authority made good by some later Writers The judgement and practice of the Augustane Bohemian and Helvetian Churches in the present point Two rules for the directing of the Churches power in ordaining Ceremonies How far the Ordinances of the Church do binde the Conscience CHAP. IV. Of the Communion which the Saints have with one another and with CHRIST their Head Communion of affections inferreth not a community of goods and fortunes Prayers to the Saints and adoration of their Images an ill result of this communion THe nature and meaning of the word Communio in the Ecclesiastical notions of it The word Saints variously taken in holy Scripture In what particulars the Communion of the Saints doth consist especially The Vnion or Communion which the Saints have with CHRIST their Head as Members of his Mystical body proved by the Scriptures and the Fathers The Communion which the Saints have with one another evidenced and expressed in the blessed Eucharist Of the Eulogia or Panes Benedicti sent from one Bishop to another in elder times to testifie their unity in the faith of Christ. The salutation of the holy kiss how long it lasted in the Church and for what cause abrogated The name of Brothers and Sisters why used promiscuously among the Christians of the Primitive times Of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Love Feasts in the elder ages The readiness of the Christians in those blessed times not only to venture but to lay down their lives for one another Pleas for the community of the Estates studied by the Anabaptists and refelled by the Orthodox The natural community of mankinde in the use of the creatures contrary unto Law and Reason and to the pretentions also of the Anabaptists themselves The Orthodoxie in this point of the Church of England A general view of the communion which is between the Saints departed and those here on earth The Offices performed by godly men upon the earth to the Saints in Heaven That the Saints above pray not alone for the Church in general but for the particular members of it The Invocation of the Saints how at first introduced Prayers to the Saints not warranted by the Word of God nor by the writings of the Fathers nor by any good reason Immediate address to Kings more difficult then it is to God The Saints above not made acquainted in any ordinary way with the wants of men Arguments to the contrary from the Old Testament answered and laid by An answer to the chief argument from the 15. chapter of St. Luke Several ways excogitated by the Schoolmen to make the Saints acquainted with the wants of men and how unuseful to the Papists in the present point The danger and doubtfulnesse of those ways opened and discovered by the best learned men amongst the Papists themselves Invocation of the Saints and worshipping of their Images a fruit of Gentilisme The vain distinctions of the Papists to salve the worshipping of Images in the Church of Rome Purgatory how ill grounded on the use of Prayers for the dead Prayers for the dead allowed of in the primitive times and upon what reason The antient Diptychs what they were The heresie of Aerius and the Doctrine of the Church of England concerning Prayer for the dead Purgatory not rejected only by the Church of England but by the whole Churches of
of the Christian faith drawn up as briefly and as plainly but yet withall as fully as might stand with brevity a constant rule or standard Regula fidei as Tertullian cals it which both the people were to learn and the Priests or Ministers to teach And to this purpose it is said by Austin of the Creed or Symbolum that it was simplex breve plenum plain short and perfect simplicitas ut consulat rusticitati audientium brevitas memoriae plenitudo doctrinae that so the plainnesse of it might comply with the capacities of the hearers the shortnesse with their want of memory the perfection or the fulnesse of it with their edification Had any one of these been wanting had it been plain enough to be understood but too long and copious to be born in memory or short enough to be remembred but obscure and difficult above the reach of ordinary apprehensions or plain and short enough but imperfect maimed and wanting in some points of principal moment it had been no fit rule for the Church of CHRIST produced no benefit at all at least not worthy the divine Apostolical spirit for the use of Christians I know the age we live in hath produced some men and those of special eminence in the wayes of learning who seem to bid defiance unto all antiquity and will have neither Creeds nor Fathers no nor antient Councels to bear a stroke in any thing which concerns Religion It is not long since that the Apostles Creed hath been out of credit as neither theirs nor antiently received by the Christian Church in that forme we have it but none have taken more unhappy pains in this fruitlesse quarrel then one Downe of Devonshire Vossius hath lately writ a book De Tribus Symbolis wherein he hath not only derogated from this of the Apostles which others had quarrelled to his hand but very unfortunately endevours to prove that that ascribed to Athanasius and so long taken to be his by the chief lights for piety and learning in the Church of Christ was not writ by him Nor is he pleased with that form set forth and recommended to the Churches by the Councell of Nice for fear there should be any obligation laid upon mens consciences to believe otherwise then they list And whereas it was thought till these subtiller times that the most certain way to interpret Scripture was by the Catholick consent and commentaries of the antient Fathers so much renowned both in their own times and all ages since they are now made so inconsiderable such poor-spirited men that truth will shortly fare the worse because they delivered it Our Downe and after him one Dalie a French-man had not else beat their brains and consumed their time and stretched their wits unto the utmost to make them of no use or credit either in points of faith or controversie as they both have done The next thing that we have to do is to cry down the Canon of the Scripture also and as we have vilifyed the Creeds Councels and Fathers to make the fairer room for our own right reason which is both Fathers Creeds and Councels to our now great wits so to reject the Scriptures also as some do already to make the clearer way for new revelations which is the Paraclet or the holy Ghost of our present Montanists To meet with this strange pride and predominant humour I have most principally applyed my self at this time of leasure wherein God help it is not lawfull for me to attend that charge in which God had placed me to restore this antient and Apostolick Creed to its former credit and to expound the same as it stands in terminis according to the sense and meaning of those Orthodox and Catholick writers which have successively flowrished in the Christian world and were the greatest ornaments of the age they lived in For being free from prejudice and prepossessions which do too often blind the eyes of the wisest men and no way interessed in the quarrels which are now on foot to the great disturbance of the Church and peace of Christendome what men more fit then they to decide those Controversies which have been raised about the meaning of those Articles of the Christian faith which are comprised in it or deduced from it So doing I shall satisfie my self though I please not others and have good cause to thanke this retreat from businesse for giving me such opportunities to consult Antiquity and thereby to informe my own understanding For my part I have always been one of those qui docendo discunt who never more benefit my self then by teaching others And therefore though these Papers never see the light or perhaps they may not I shall not think I could have spent my time more profitably then in this employment So God speed me in it To goe back therefore where we left exceeding necessary it was as before was said for some short summarie or compendium of the Christian faith to be agreed on and drawn up for the use of Gods people and that for these 3. reasons chiefly First to consult the wants and weaknesses of poor ignorant persons such as were Novices in the faith and but Babes in CHRIST ut incipientibus et lactantibus quid credendum sit constitueretur as St. Augustine hath it Secondly that there might be some standing rule by which an Orthodox Teacher might be known from a wicked heretick a Christian from an unbeliever and to this end the Creed or Symbolum served exceeding fitly Of which St. Austin gives this note His qui contradicit aut a CRISTI fide alienus est aut est haereticus that whosoever contradicts it is either an Heretick or an Infidel Thirdly that people of all nations finding so punctual and exact an harmonie in points of doctrine to be delivered by the Apostles wheresoeoer they came might be the sooner won to embrace that faith in which they found so universal and divine a consonancie and be united with and amongst themselves in the bonds of peace which is not to be found but where there is the spirit of unity And who were able think you to prescribe a rule so universally to be received over all the world so suddenly to be obeyed by all Christian people but the Lords Apostles Who else but they were of authority to impose a form on the Church of CHRIST to be so uniformly held so consonantly taught in all tongues and languages as we finde this was by Irenaeus to be esteemed so unalterable and unmoveable as this was counted by Tertullian to be illustrated by the notes and Commentaries of the most glorious lights of the Christian firmament St. Cyril Chrysostom Austin and indeed who not â—and finally to continue for so long a time as for 1600. years together not only without such opposition as other Creeds have met with in particular Churches but without any sensible alteration in the words and syllables Assuredly such respects and honour had not
of Nature Speusippus that God was that natural and animal power by which all things are governed Democritus though the first inventor of that absurd opinion that the World was made of several Atoms joyned by chance together yet for the most part he puts Nature in the place of GOD as also did Straton and the Epicureans And Aristotle though inconstant and of many mindes yet other whiles he makes him be that Soul or understanding which presides over the World Heraclides Ponticus will have him also to be a Divine soul or understanding and thereunto inclined Theophrastus Cleanthes Zeno and Chrysippus save that they sometimes call him by the name of Fate Xenophon the Disciple of Socrates was of opinion that the form of the true GOD could not be seen by any man and therefore was not to be sought or inquired into Aristo Chius that he was not to be comprehended both of them guessing at the Majesty of Almighty God by a despair of understanding what indeed he was And Plato finally not only doth affirm of God that he is the Parent of the World the Maker of all Celestial and Terrestrial creatures but by reason of his eminent and incredible power it was a difficult thing to finde what he was and having found it an impossible matter to express it rightly And of all these Minutius noteth that they are Eadem fere quae nostra the same almost with that which was affirmed of GOD in the schools of CHRIST Insomuch saith he that one might very justly think that the modern Christians were Philosophers or that the old Philosophers had indeed been Christians Lactantius also doth affirm that they did vail the same truth under divers notions and that whether they called him Nature Reason Vnderstanding Fatal necessity the Divine Law or in what phrase soever they did use to speak him idem est quod anobis Deus dicitur it was the same with that which we the followers of CHRIST call GOD. His nature being thus declared as far as could be seen by the Eye of Reason proceed we next unto those Epithets or Adjuncts whereby that nature is set forth in the best of their Writers Philolaus a scholar of Pythagoras hath told us of him that he is singularis immobilis sui similis that there is but one God the chief Lord of all and that he is immovable always like himself the Divine Plato that God is good and the Idea of all goodness the Author of whatsoever is good or beautiful and the fountain of truth that he is also living and everlasting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as I have somewhere found him cited Aristotle sometimes also doth come home to this in whom the attributes of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immortal and eternal do eft-soones occur By Orpheus it is said that he is invisible that he hath his dwelling in the heavens that he sits there in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a Golden Throne and from thence doth dart his thunders upon wicked men Phocylides hath given us as much of him as one verse can hold 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is one God saith he most wise most powerful and most happy One of the Sibyls heaps upon him the most glorious attributes of being of great Majesty begotten by none invisible yet beholding all things and Apollo one of the Heathen Gods comes not short of her saying of God that he was begotten of himself and taught of none immoveable and of a name not to be expressed These two last passages we before cited out of Lactantius but then it was to prove that there was a GOD. And to these adde that verse of the same Apollo which is elsewhere cited by Lactantius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in which he calleth him the immortal and eternal GOD the unspeakable Father Lay all which hath been said together and we may gather out of all this description of him for to define him rightly is a thing impossible that GOD is an immortal and eternal Spirit existing of himself without any beginning invisible incomprehensible omnipotent without change or passion by whose Almighty power all things were created and by whose divine goodness they are still preserved What more then this is said by the Church of England the purest and most Orthodox of the daughters of Sion which in her book of Articles thus declares her self that is to say There is but one living and true God everlasting without body parts or passions of infinite power wisdom and goodness the Maker and preserver of all things both visible and invisible What more hath been delivered by the Antient Fathers who had the light of Scripture to direct them in it then that which hath been said by these learned Gentiles upon no other ground then the light of Reason Which manifestly proveth that both the Beeing and the Nature of God were points so naturally graffed in the souls of men that neither the ignorance of letters nor the pride of wealth nor the continual fruition of sensual pleasures have hitherto been able to efface the Characters and impressions of it as before I said And if a GOD and but one only he must be such as is described or no GOD at all But of the Attributes and Acts of Almighty God we shall speak more at large in the two next chapters In the mean time by this Theologie of the learned and more sober Gentiles we may see sufficiently that many of those who are counted Christians do fall most infinitely short of them in the things of GOD. Of this kinde were the Anthropomorphitae a sort of Hereticks proceeding from one Andaeus by birth a Syrian but living for the most part in Egypt who miserably mistaking many Texts of holy Scripture conceived and taught Deum humana esse forma eundemq corporalia membra habere that God was made of humane shape and had the same members as men have Which though it was so gross a folly as would have been hissed out of all the schools of Philosophie yet found it such a plausible welcome with the Monkes of Egypt that Theophilus the learned Patriarch of Alexandria was in danger to be torn in pieces because he had opposed them in their peevish courses And of this sort also were the Manichees who for fear they should make God the Author of any thing which was not pleasing to them as darkness winter and whatsoever else did seem evil to them would needs obtrude upon the world two contrary principles or two Supreme Powers from one of which all that was good from the other all that was evil or so seemed to them did proceed originally The first Author of this Heresie amongst the Christians was one Manes who lived about the times of Aurelianus Anno 213. by birth a Persian to whom this errour was first propagated out of the Schools of Zoroaster that great Eastern Rabbin who seeing but with half an eye into sacred matter had fancied to
himself two Gods both of equal power one good the other bad the one called Oromases and the other Arimanius the one the Author of good things and the other of evil Other impieties he maintained which made him execrable in the eyes both of God and man but I take notice of no other at this present time as being not within the compass of the work in hand And even in this we need not spend more time to confute his fellows then to send him and his to school to the old Philosophers most of the which acknowledged but one principium or common principle from whom all creatures in the world took their first beginning Or if they did allow of many principia as many times they did unto several things which seemed to be of contrary nature unto one another yet they referred all in the last resort to one only principle or principium in which all others met as their common center And this they called Principium omnia principia supereminens the Principle or principium which excelled all others and finally resolved ab hoc uno principio omnia principia that from this one principle or principium all the rest descended Had it been otherwise what a continual conflict had there been since the world began betwixt God and the Devil betwixt the good principle and the bad betwixt the giver of blessings and inflicter of punishments For being of contrary affections Fieri posse ut aliquid diversum velit it might well be or rather it could not otherwise be that they should differently declare themselves in some one particular which must needs draw them into such remediless quarrels as Homer fableth to have been amongst the Gods of Gentiles whiles some declared themselves for Troy and the rest against it Mulciber in Trojam pro Troja stabat Apollo said the Latine Poet. Which what a confusion and distraction it would bring on the course of Nature I leave to any man to judge which hath common sense But Manes as it seems beeing a neer neighbour to the Curdi who dwelt close by Persia had entertained also their Religion of whom it might be said and that not unfitly as Lactantius doth of some of the Greek Numens se alios deos colere ut prosint alios ne noceant that they did worship some Gods for fear and others for love some out of hope to receive benefits and blessings from them others lest else they should be troubled and afflicted by them But Manes was his name and madness was his nature so the name doth signifie And little less then mad are they who for fear they should be thought to savour of the Manicheans have run themselves upon the contrary extreme in making God not the prime Author only of the evil of punishment but also of the evil of sin Nor can it but seeme strange to a knowing man who looks with an indifferent eye upon the antient Gentiles and some present Christians that either those in times of such an Epidemical and general darkness should have so much of the Christian in them or that they which live under the light of Christs glorious Gospel should have so much in them of the Heathen The learned Gentiles though they did acknowledg but one Supreme power whom they called Deum naturalem or the God of Nature yet they allowed of many National and Topical Gods as before I told you out of Varro And finde we not that though the Pontificians publickly profess but one Soveraign God yet the poor Christians every where in the Church of Rome are taught to place their confidence in more local Saints then ever Heathen-Rome did muster of its Topical Gods Which whether it grew upon that Church by the inundation of barbarous Nations or that the late converted Paynims before their hearts were throughly cleansed from their former leaven did share the dignities and honours of the Heathen Gods amongst such Saints and Martyrs as they most affected I will not take upon me to determine here Certain I am that a in very little time Rome-Christian came to have more tutelarie Saints and Patrons and those of each Sex too as their fancies led them then ever Heathen Rome could shew Gods and Goddesses whose Offices they have so divided amongst the Saints that changing but the name and perhaps the dress the superstition is as gross now as amongst the Gentiles And this I speak I am sure on as good authority as any can be had in the Church of England even from the very words of the book of Homilies which doth state it thus What I pray you be such Saints with us to whom we attribute the defence of certain Countries spoyling GOD of his honour herein but the Dii Tutelares of the Gentile Idolaters such as were Belus to the Babylonians Osiris and Isis to the Egyptians Vulcan to the Lemnians What are the Saints to whom the safeguard of certain Cities is appointed but the Dii Praesides of the Gentiles such as were Apollo at Delphos Minerva at Athens Iuno at Carthage and the like What be such Saints to whom contrary to the use of the Primitive Church Temples and Churches be erected and Altars builded but the Dii Patroni such as were Iupiter in the CAPITOL and Diana in the Temple of Ephesus And where one Saint hath Images in divers places and same Saint must have divers names as had the Gods and Goddesses amongst the Gentiles So that when you hear of our Lady of Ipswich our Lady of Walsingham our Lady of Wilsdon and such others what can we think but that it is in imitation of the Heathen Idolaters who had their Venus Cypria their Venus Paphia and their Venus Gnida Dianae Agrotera Diana Coryphea and Diana Ephesia Nor have they only spoyled the true living God of his due honour in Temples Cities Countries and Lands by such inventions and devices as the Gentiles had done before them but the Sea and waters have as well special Saints with them as they had Gods with the Heathen in whose places are come St. Christopher St. Clement and our Lady specially to whom the Ship-men sing Ave Maris stella Neither hath the fire escaped their Idolatrous inventions for in stead of Vulcan and Vesta they have placed St. Agatha and make letters on her day to quench fire withall Every Profession and Artificer hath his special Saint as a peculiar God as for example Scholars have St. Nicolas Painters St. Luke neither lack Souldiers their Mars or Lovers their Venus among Christians Nay all diseases also have their special Saints as Gods to cure them the Pockes St. Roche the Falling-evill Cornelius the Tooth-ach St. Apollin c. Neither do beasts and cattel lack their Gods with us for St. Loy is the Horse-leech St. Anthony the Swine-heard sic de cateris Nor is this any studyed calumny but so clear a truth that it was never yet gainsaid by their greatest Advocates So much hath
till the coming of CHRIST and after a more explicit faith in Christ when he had redeemed it then had been pressed before on the house of Iacob CHRIST hath redeemed us saith St. Paul from the curse of the Law that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles thorough IESVS CHRIST that is to say that as Abraham did believe in God and that was imputed unto him for righteousness even so the Gentiles thorow faith in IESVS CHRIST might be justifyed also And yet faith doth not justifie conceive not so out of any property that is natural or essential to it or any dignity or work inherent in it above other Theological vertues but out of somewhat that is adventitious and extrinsecal meerly that is to say the will good-pleasure or appointment of Almighty God This is the will of him that sent me saith our Saviour that every Man that seeth the Son and believeth in him should have life everlasting Where clearly he suspends the justifying property or power of faith not upon any quality or vertue that it hath in it self but only on the will and free grace of God which had it fallen in conjunction or cooperation with any other of Gods graces either hope or patience or any other whatsoever that act of grace or the act rather of that grace so by God appointed would have conduced as fully to our justification as now the act of faith or believing doth But now to trouble our selves with these speculations suffice it that as God was pleased to make choice of faith so he made choice not of the habit or the object but the act of faith to be imputed to us for our justification Abraham believed God saith the holy Scripture and it was counted unto him for righteousness Nor is it thus with Abraham only but with all the faithful who if they do believe on him that justifyeth the ungodly that faith of theirs shall be accounted unto them for righteousness also T is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Credere the very act of faith it self which God requireth of us for our justification in stead of all the workes of the Law and if we do believe as we ought to do that every act of our believing without the help of any of the workes of the Law shall be imputed to us for righteousness Seven times at least in the fourth Chapter of the Romans hath the Apostle used this phrase to account or impute faith for righteousness unto the believer We finde the same phrase also used in the 3. Chapter to the Galatians vers 5. and in the 2. of St. Iames vers 23. Scarce such another consonancy of expression in the holy Scripture Which certainly the holy Ghost had not stood upon not bound himself precisely to the words and syllables of if he had not meant to give this honour unto faith it self but rather to some other thing which faith layeth hold of and applyeth for our endlesse comfort And this as it is most agreeable to the Text and Context where faith is put in opposition unto workes that faith alone might have the honour of our justification so hath it been the constant Doctrine of the antient Writers who do ascribe the same to faith and to faith properly so called not as the word is taken tropically or metonymically for the object thereof For thus saith Iustin Martyr first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Abraham saith he had not from God the testimony or commendation of righteousness because of his circumcision but because of his faith Tertullian next How saith he are we made the children of faith or of whose faith if not of Abrahams For if Abraham believed God and that was imputed unto him for righteousness and he deserved thereby to be made the Father of many nations Not autem credendo Deo magis pro inde justificamur sicut Abraham we by believing God more as having more things to believe then Abraham had for that I take it is his meaning are therefore also justifyed as Abraham was Next to him that of Origen which we had before Cum multae fides Abraham praecesserint c. Whereas many faiths or many acts of Abrahams faith had gone before now all his faith was recollected and summed up together and so imputed unto him for his justification St. Ambrose in fewer words saith as much as any Sic decretum dicit a Deo ut cessante lege solam fidem gratia Dei posceret ad salutem God saith he hath so decreed that the Law ceasing the grace of God should require only faith of man towards his salvation Why was this writ saith St. Chrysostome of our father Abraham 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but that we may learn that we are also justifyed as Abraham was because we have believed the same God And in another place What was Abraham the worse for not being under the Law To which he answereth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was nothing the worse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for his faith was sufficient for his justification What saith St. Augustine of himself In eum credo qui justificat impium ut deputetur fides mea ad justitiam that is to say I do believe in him that justifyeth the ungodly that my faith may be imputed to me for righteousnesse What doth the same Father say of Abraham in another place if at the least the work be his Ecce sine opere justificatur ex fide et quicquid illi legali observatione potest conferri totum credulitas sua donavit Behold saith he Abraham is justifyed without works by faith and whatsoever could have been conferred upon him by the observation of the Law that his believing only hath wholly given him Primasius somewhat after him in the course of time Tam magna fuit dono dei fides Abrahami ut et pristina peccata ei donarentur et sola prae omni justitia doceretur accepta i. e. So great was Abrahams faith by the gift of God that both his former sins were pardoned and this his faith alone was preferred in acceptation before all righteousness And finally thus Haimo B. of Halberstad an Author of the 9. Century to descend no lower Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousnesse that is saith he unto remission of sinnes quia per ipsam fidem qua credidit justus effectus est because by that faith wherewith he believed he was made righteous By all which testimonies of the antients it is plain and evident that faith is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 credere or the very act of believing is that which is imputed to us for our justification and that this is no new interpretation excogitated by Arminius in these latter days as some please to tell us Nor is this contrary to the Church of England delivered in her book of Homilies though at the first appearance it may so be thought When we
reconciled to man as Peace had desired And so that was fulfilled which the Psalmist speaks of Mercy and truth are met together righteousness or justice and peace have kissed each other Arminius followeth this conceit a little further and addes that when the different parties had pursued their interesses Wisdome was called on to advise what was best to be done to give satisfaction to them all whose advise was that the punishment due to the sin of man should be changed into an Expiatory sacrifice by the voluntary oblation of the which justice might be appeased and place made for mercy But then began a new debate where they should finde a Priest fit for such a sacrifice Angel it could not be because it was not reasonable that an Angel should suffer for the sin of Man And Man it could not be because being terrifyed with the guilt of his own transgressions he had not confidence enough to draw near to God nor had he any thing of his own which was held worthy to be offered to so high a Deity Wisdome was therefore called again by whom it was finally resolved that there must be some man begotten who being made in all things like unto his Brethren might be the more sensible of their infirmities but so that he should be free from sin and not obnoxious to the power and criminations of Satan Holy he was to be or rather holiness and therefore to be conceived only by the holy Ghost by whose great power the ordinary course of nature was to be supplyed and in this flesh the Word it self to be incarnate who offering up that flesh in sacrifice for the sins of the world might so performe the work of poor mans redemption But leaving these conceits though indeed very ingenious there is no question to be made but God had other means to save us then by the incarnating the word and humbling his only begotten Son unto the death even the death of the Crosse if he had so pleased But a better and more convenient way to demonstrate his love and mercy towards us to manifest his Power and wisdome and yet withall to shew his justice against sin and Satan the Scriptures have not laid before us The Fathers have resolved it thus Et â—ine hoc holocausto poterat Deus tantum condonasse peccatum sed facilitas veniae peccatis laxaret habenas effraenatis quae etiam Christi vix cohibent passiones God saith St. Cyprian was able to have pardoned this great sin without this sacrifice but the sacrifice of the pardon would have loosned the reines to unbridled sins which even the sufferings of Christ are scarce able to represse The like saith Nazianzen It was possible for God saith he to save man by his only will without taking of our flesh upon him as he did and doth work all things without help of a body Damascene to the same effect He was not otherwise unable that can do all things by his Almighty power and strength to take man from the tyrant that possessed him The like occurreth in St. Ambrose St. Augustine and Pope Gregory also In the darke ages of the Chrurch the same truth was held For thus St. Bernard in those times Was not the Creator able to restore his work without this difficulty Able he was but he chose rather to wrong himself then the most lewd and hateful vice of unthankfulnesse should finde any colourable place in man And it holds also since the times of the reformation Calvin affirmes it in plain terms Poterat nos Dominus verbo aut nutu redimere nisi aliter nostra causa visual esset the Lord saith he might have redeemed us with a word or beck but that for our sakes he thought good to do otherwise Zanchius comes very close to Calvin What saith he could not mankind be delivered by any other means then the death of Christ No doubt but that he might have done it solo nutu et jussu et voluntate divina by the only beck commandement and will of God Conforme to which expression of the antient and modern writers the Church of England hath declared in the book of Homilies that it was the surest pledge of Gods love to man to give us his own Son from Heaven For otherwise he might have given us if he would an Angel or some other Creature and yet in that his love had been far above our deserts They who conceive that God was not able otherwise to effect this work or had no other meanes to bring it to passe then that which he made choise of to effect the same do wilfully intrench upon his Omnipotence which is larger then either his will or his works For though his works be alwayes measured by his will yet must his Power be limited unto neither of them because God is able to do many things which he never did nor will do as hath been shewn before in the first Article And in his works to bind him unto any necessity to do as he did and not to leave him at his own liberty to do what he pleaseth and in a way which seemeth most agreeable to his heavenly wisdome were to revive the accursed errour of the Manichees Against whom St. Augustine thus resolveth it Nullam ergo necessitatem patitur Deus neque necessitate facit quae facit sed summa et ineffabili voluntate ao potestate God saith the Father is not bound by any necessity nor is he necessitated to do those things which he doth but doth them by his supreme and unspeakable power As then there was not any necessity on the part of God the Father Almighty to send his only begotten Son into the world to take our humane nature on him and suffer an accursed death for the sins of the world so neither was there any necessity on the part of the word by which he was enjoyned or compelled to take upon him the office of a Mediator and be incarnate in our flesh That it was agreeable to the work in hand that the word should be made flesh and in that flesh accomplish the whole mystery of our redemption there are many reasons to perswade For who was fitter to be cast out into the Sea to stay the tempest of Gods anger against sinful man then the Ionas for whose sake it rose Almighty God was first displeased for the wrong offered to the word in that man desired to be like unto God and to know all things in such sort as is proper to the only begotten Son of the Father The sin was caro verbum then vile flesh aspired to be made like unto the word therefore the remedy now must be verbum caro the word so farforth humbling it self as to be made flesh Verbum caro factum Who fitter to become the son of man then he that was by nature the Son of God Patrem habuit in coelis Matrem quaesivit in
till she had brought forth her first born son A first born son say they doth imply a second and his not knowing her till then doth tacitly import that he knew her afterwards And this they fortifie with that in the 6. of Mark where not only Iames and Iuda and Ioses and Simon are called his Brethren but his sisters also are affirmed to be then alive But the answer unto these Objections was made long ago St. Hierome in his tractate against Helvidius having fully canvassed them For first the first begotten or first born doth imply no second that being first not which hath other things coming after it but which hath nothing going before it Et primus ante quem nullus as the Father hath it And this appears most evidently by the law of Moses by which the first born of every creature was to be offered unto God The first born not in reference unto those that are to come after for then the owner of a flock or herd of cattel might have put off the sacrifice or oblation of the first born of his sheep or kine til he were sure to have a new increase in the place thereof which the Law by no means would permit And thus we say in common speech that Queen Iane Seymour dyed of her first childe and that King Edward the fift was murdered in the first year of his reign where past all doubt neither Iane Seymour had more children nor King Edward reigned more years then the first alone And for the argument from the word until or donec peperit in the Latine it implyes no such matter as is thence collected the word not having always such an influence as to imply a thing done after because not before When Christ promised his Disciples to be with them alwayes till the end of the world think we his meaning was to forsake them then that they should neither be with him nor he with them I trow no man of wit will say it And when the Lord said unto his CHRIST Sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy foot-stool may we conclude that when death the last enemy shall be overcome that he shall sit no longer at the Lords right hand I hope none dare think it More instances of this kind might be easily had to shew the weaknesse of this inference were not these sufficient And for the Brothers and Sisters mentioned by St. Marke either they were Iosephs children by a former wife as Irenaeus and likewise all the Greek Fathers downwards St. Hilarie and St. Ambrose amongst the Latines are of opinion or else his nearest kinsmen as St. Hierome thinks which in the Idiom of the Iews were accounted Brethren But on the other side our great Masters in the Church of Rome will not only have her to continue a Virgin post partum after the birth as to the purity of her minde but also in partu in the birth as to the integrity of her body Durand one of their chief Schoolmen will needs have it so not thinking it a sufficient honour to her to be still a Virgin non solum carentia experientiae delectationis Venereae not only by an inexperience of all fleshly pleasure sed etiam membri corporalis integritate but in the clausure of her womb the dotres whereof as they conceive were not opened by it And unto this most of the great Rabbins of that Church do full wel agree Assuredly these men with a little help might in time come to be of the Turkes opinion who out of a Reverent esteem which they have of Christ will not conceive him to be born or begotten according to the course of nature but that the Virgin did conceive him by the smell of a Rose and after bare him at her brests But herein they run crosse to the antient Writers who though they constantly maintained the perpetual Virginity of the Mother of Christ yet such a corporal integrity in the act of Child-birth as these men idly dream of did they never hold Tertullian very aptly noteth that she was Virgo a viro non virgo a partu a Virgin in respect that she knew not man and yet no Virgin in regard of her bearing a child which though it were conceived in a wonderful manner yet ipse patefacti corporis lege he came into the world by the open way Pamelius in his notes accounts this and some other passages to this purpose amongst the Paradoxes of Tertullian So doth Rhenanus too a more modern censurer and yet confesseth that St. Ambrose was of this opinion so was St. Hierome too in his second Book against the Pelagians who holds that Christ first opened those secret passages though he after shut them up again According to the judgment of which antient writers for those which followed them in time varyed somewhat from them it is the common resolution of the Protestant Schooles that though Christ when he was born of his Virgin Mother opened the passages of her womb as all children do yet she continued still a Virgin because her mind was free from the thoughts of lust and that she had conceived of the holy Ghost nay that he may more properly be said to have opened the womb of Mary his mother then any other first born do because he found it shut at the time of his birth which the first born of the sons of men do not And being it is confessed by the greatest Schoolmen that there may be an opening of the womb without the losse of Virginity as in the cure of some diseases or on such an accident of which St. Augustine speakes in his first book De Civit. dei c. 18. I should much wonder at the stiffenesse of the Papists in it but that I know they lay it for a ground work of their doctrine of transubstantiation and the local being of his body in more places at a time then one by taking from it all the properties of a naturall body But to say truth they well may free Christs body from the bands of nature when they have freed his mother from the bands of sin not from the sins only of an higher nature but even from slight and veniall sins as they use to call them nor yet from actual sins only but original also To what this great exemption tends we shall see anon In the mean time we may take notice that this exemption from the guilt of original sin is but a new opinion taken up of late and not yet generally agreed on amongst them there having been great conflicts about this priviledge between Scotus and the Franciscans on the one side Aquinas and the Dominicans on the other But in the end the devotions of the common people being strongly bent unto the service of our Lady the Franciscans carryed it Sixtus the 4. who had been formerly of that Order not only ratifying by his Buls their doctrine of her
Civil State Not if the State were popular for there were then no popular States when that rule was made the Government of the Church should be also popular but that within such principal Cities as were assigned for the residence of the Civil Magistrate the Prelates of the Church should be also planted This I am sure no learned Romanist can deny And granting this I would have any of them shew when any Monarch having divers Kingdomes under his command did ever yet appoint one General Viceroy to command them all Certain I am that the Assyrian Monarchs had in their several Provinces several Governours as is apparent out of the Book of Daniel So had the Parsians too in the Book of Hester and so the Romans too in St. Lukes Gospel Not to say any thing of the Monarchs of the present times all using the same Arts of Empire And then what reason can there be considering that the Church is bound to follow the external Government of the Civil State that one Lieutenant General should be thought so necessary to govern all Churches in the World seeing one General Vice-roy was not thought sufficient to govern but a few particular Kingdomes Or were it fit and necessary that it should be so yet those of Rome can shew no more Commission from our Lord and Saviour for the appropriating of this Office to St. Peters Chair then a bare Tradition For Bellarmine although he laboured no man more in the search hereof could finde no Text in all the Gospel which would serve his turn and thereupon concludes at last that howsoever some Supremacy in sacred matters might seeme allotted to St. Peter tamen Pontificem Romanum Petro succedere expresse non haberi in Scriptura yet that the Pope succeeded Peter is not found in Scripture What then shall we conceive of the Popish Parasites who give their Pope the title of Vice-deus as Paulo V. Vice-deo the Numeral letters of the which make up 666 as one well observeth but that they are instruments to bring in the Antichrist What of that horrid blasphemie of Petrus Bertrandus who boldly taxeth Christ of great indiscretion in case he had not left behinde him such a Vicar General Visus esset Deus ut cum reverentia ejus loquar indiscretus fuisse nisi unum post se talem Vicarium reliquisset as his own words are and such they are as never any Christian durst pronounce but he If then it be so disagreeable to the Kingdome of Christ to have one General Vice-roy to direct the whole let us next see whether they have not somewhat better provided for him who would impose upon the Church as many petite Popes as there be Parishes if not three for one For by their Plat-form every Parish must be furnisht with a distinct Presbyterie and that Presbyterie to be absolute within it self having authority to censure excommunicate and what not else that appertaineth to Ecclesiastical jurisdiction By means whereof they make Christs Body far more monstrous then the monster Hydra not to have seven heads only but seven hundred thousand Yet this device both new and monstrous though it be must needs be reckoned a chief part of our Saviours Kingdome For as their Champions gave it out in their publick Writings their Controversie was not onely about Caps and Surplices as the world imagined but whether IESVS CHRIST should be King or not Their Discipline they honoured with the Title of Christs holy yoke his Scepter and their endevours as they said aimed at this end only to build up first the wals of Hierusalem and then to set Christs Throne in the midst thereof For why say they the planting of Presbyteries is the full placing of Christ in his Kingdome which whosoever shall reject I use their own words still no others refuse to have Christ reign amongst them and do deny him in effect to be their King Thus went the cry of old for the Presbyterians and now the Independents use the self same words appropriating Christs Kingdome and his Throne and Scepter unto their separate Congregations and Conventicular meetings And questionless it were an excellent representation of Christs glorious Kingdome to have a company of shop-keepers and inferiour handicrafts sitting upon the bench with their zealous Pastour as if they were the twenty four Elders in the Revelation pronouncing some sad judgement on the Tribes of Israel and after hasten to their Trades as Quintius the Dictator did unto his plough ut ad opus relictum festinasse videatur as my Author hath it And yet so highly do they magnifie this new Kingdome of theirs which they have raised up for themselves in our Saviours Name that Kings and Princes must be suffered to rule no longer then they submit themselves and their Supreme power to the divine authority of their new Presbyteries For Beza quarrelleth with Erastus and thinks him guilty of high Treason against God Almighty quod Principes Reges a Divina ista Dominatione exemerit because he doth not think it fit that Kings and Princes should submit unto this fine yoak the Iudgement seat of Christ as he idlely cals it And some amongst our selves have not spared to say that a true government of the Church there can never be till Kings and Queens submit themselves unto the Church subject their Scepters and lay down their Crowns before this Throne yea lick up the very dust of the Churches feet and willingly endure such Censures be they what they will as the Divine Presbyterie shall impose upon them Huic Disciplinae omnes Reges Principes fasces suos submittere necesse est as Travers once did state it in his Book of Discipline And could they bring it once to that as they much endevour it it were Regale Presbyterium a Royal Presbyterie to the purpose though not unto the purpose the Apostle speaks of To joyn these Foxes the Genevian and Roman both together which though they look two several ways as if they were to run quite contrary to one another do yet carry fire-brands in their Tayles as once Sampsons did and like them are combined to destroy our harvest I would commend unto them that Vice-roy or Vicar General for I perceive they will have one which once Tertullian did commend to the Primitive Church even the holy Ghost For in his Treatise de Virgin veland he calleth him in plain tearms Vicarium illum Domini Spiritum sanctum and doth assign this Office to him dirigere ordinare ad perfectum perducere Disciplinam to direct order and dispose of us in such a manner as may make us perfect at the last in all Christian piety But if they will have nothing to do with the holy Ghost as I think they will not in this business we shall then finde them lawful Vice-roys made of flesh and bloud and those too of Christs own appointment not of mans devising That he doth
that as they sinned together or served God together so they may share together of reward or punishment But because many times the soul sins without the body and many times without it doth some works of piety which God is pleased to accept of therefore as requisite it is that the soul separated from the body should either suffer torment or enjoy felicity according as it hath deserved in the sight of God whilest yet the body sleepeth in the grave of death And on these grounds next to the dictates and authority of the book of God the doctrine of the general judgement hath been built so strongly that only some few Atheists amongst the Gentiles and none but the wicked Sect of Manichees amongst the Christians had ever the impudence to denie it That which concernes us most as Christians and doth especially relate to the present Article is that this judgement shall be executed by our Saviour Christ sitting with power at the right hand of God the Father but in the nature and capacity of the Son of man Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the power of God and coming in the clouds of the Aire Mat. 26.64 See the same also Mark 14.62 and Luk. 22.69 The like we have also in St. Iohns Gospell The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Son Chap. 5 22. What to the Son according to his eternal generation as the Word of God Not so but to the Son of man For so it followeth in that Chapter viz. And hath given him power also to judge because he is the Son of man V. 27. And this we have directly from the Lords one mouth The Apostles also say the same St. Peter first God raised him up the third day and shewed him openly And he commanded us to preach unto the people and to testifie that it is he which is ordained of God to be judge both of quick and dead St. Paul next Henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of righteousnesse which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day and not to me only but to all those that love his appearing So for St. Iude Behold the Lord shall come with thousands of his Saints to give judgment against all men and to rebuke all that are ungodly amongst them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed and of all the cruel speakings which ungodly sinners have spoken against him And this he citeth out of the Prophecies of Enoch the seventh from Adam which sheweth that even the Patriarchs before the flood were thoroughly possessed with this sacred truth and therefore not concealed from the holy Prophets which have been since the world began That it was manifested also to the antient Gentiles I have no reason to believe For though they might collect upon grounds of reason that there should be a day of judgement in the world to come yet that this judgement should be executed by the man CHRIST IESVS could not in possibility be discovered to them by the light of reason nor indeed by any other sight then by his alone who was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles as well as to be the glory of his people Israel And therefore in my minde Lactantius might have spared that part of his censure upon the judgment of Hydaspes before remembred in which he approves of his opinion concerning the last day or the day of doom but addeth that his not ascribing this great work to the Son of God was omitted non sine daemonum fraude by the fraud and suggestion of the Devill If Hermes or Mercurius surnamed Trismegistus understood so much quod tamen non dissimulavit Hermes as it followeth after and that the verses by him cited from the antient Sibyls were by them spoken and intended as he saith they were of CHRIST our Saviour and of his coming unto judgement in that dreadfull day we must needs say they had a clearer Revelation of it then any of the Prophets of the most high God which for my part I have not confidence enough to say For in which of all the Prophets finde we such a description of Christs coming to judgement as this which he ascribeth to one of the Sibyls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say Rolling up heaven earths depths I shall disclose Then raise the dead the bonds of fate unloose And deaths sharpe sting and next to judgment call Both quick and dead judging the lives of all Letting this therfore passe as a thing improbable that any of the Heathen Prophetesses should know more of Christs coming to judgement then was revealed to any of the holy Prophets or else deliver it in more clear expressions then do occurre in any of the Prophetical writers we shall proceed unto the execution of this judgement by our Lord and Saviour according to the scope of this present Article For which although no reason was or could be given by those antient sages as those which lived before the coming of CHRIST and consequently were not made acquainted with his life and actions yet there is reason to induce a Christian unto this belief were we not biassed to it by the text of Scripture For what could be more just in Almighty God then to advance his Son to the seat of judgment to the end that having been dishonoured publickly both in life and death scorned and contemned and brought unto a shamefull end in the eye of men he might have opportunity to shew his great power and majesty in the sight of all but specially of his barbarous and ungodly enemies And unto this the Prophet Zachariah alludeth saying They shall look on me whom they have pierced Which words although St. Iohn applyeth in his holy Gospel unto the piercing of Christs side Chap. 19.37 yet in the Revelation he applyeth it to his sitting in judgement Behold saith he he cometh in the clouds and all eyes shall see him and they also that pierced him Chap. 1.17 And from these words it is conceived I think not improbably that the wounds in our Saviours body shall then be visible to the eyes of all spectatours to the great comfort of the faithfull who do acknowledge their redemption to the bloud of the Lamb and to the astonishment and confusion of all his enemies but most especially of them qui vulnera ista inflixerunt by whose ungodly hands he was so tormented Here then we have good grounds to proceed upon both in the way of faith and reason for the asserting of the day of general judgement And yet somewhat further must be said to remove a difficultie which may else disturbe us in our way before we look into the particulars of it For possibly it may be said that there will be but little use of a general judgement except it be
first of the Evangelical Scriptures was the Epistle Decretory which we finde in the fifteenth of the Acts and that was countenanced by a visum est spiritui sancto i. e. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost And when St. Paul writ his Epistle unto those of Corinth for fear he might be thought by that factious people to injoyn any thing upon them without very good warrant he vouched the Spirit of God for his Author in it They preached the Gospel first to others as Christ did to them by word of mouth that being the more speedy way to promote the Work But being they could not live to the end of the world and that the purest waters will corrupt at last by passing through muddy or polluted Chanels they thought it best to leave so much thereof in writing as might serve in all succeeding Ages for the Rule of Faith Postea vero per voluntatem Dei in Scripturis nobis Evangelium tradiderunt firmamentum columnam fidei nostrae futuram as in Irenaeus A man might marvel why St. Iohn should give that testimony to the Gospel which was writ by him that it was written to the end That men might believe that JESUS is the CHRIST the Son of God and that believing they might have Faith through his Name considering that none of the rest of the Evangelists say the like of theirs or why he thundred at the end of his Revelation that most fearful curse against all those who should presume to adde anything to the words of that Book or take any thing from it being a course that none of all the sacred Pen-men had took but he But when I call to minde the Spirit by which Iohn was guided and the time in which those Books of his were first put in writing methinks the marvel is took off without more ado For seeing that his Gospel was writ after all the rest as is generally affirmed by all the Antients those words relate not as I guess to his own Book onely but to the whole Body of the Evangelical History now perfectly composed and finished for otherwise how impertinent had it been for him to say That IESVS did many other signs in the presence of his Disciples which were not written in that Book if he had spoken those words of his own Book onely Considering that he had neither written of the signs done in the way to Emaus mentioned by St. Luke or his appearing to the eleven in a Mountain of Galilee which St. Matthew speaks of or his Ascension into Heaven which St. Mark relateth which every vulgar Reader could not chuse but know The like I do conceive of those words of his in the Revelation viz. That they relate not to that Book alone but to the whole body of the Bible St. Iohn being the Survivor of that glorious company on whom the Holy Ghost descended in the Feast of Pentecost and the Apocalypse the last of those Sacred Volumes which were dictated by the Spirit of God for the use of his Church and now make up the Body of the holy Scriptures God had now said as much by the mouths and pens of the Prophets Evangelists and Apostles as he conceived sufficient for our salvation and so closed up the Canon of the Scriptures as St. Augustine telleth Deus quantum satis esse judicavit locutus Scripturam condidit as his own words are which certainly God had not done nor the Evangelist declared nor St. Augustine said had not the Scripture been a sufficient rule able to make us wise unto salvation and thoroughly furnished unto all good works Which being so it cannot but be a great dishonor to the Scripture and consequently to the Spirit of God who is Author of it to have it called as many of the Papists do Atramentariam Scripturam Plumbeam Regulam Literam Mortuam that is to say An Ink-horn Text a Leaden Rule and a Dead Letter Pighius for one as I remember gives it all these Titles or to affirm That it hath no authority in the Church of Christ but what it borroweth from the Pope without whose approbation it were scarce more estimable than the Fables of Aesop which was one of the blasphemous speeches of Wolf Hermannus or that is not a sufficient means to gain Souls to Christ or to instruct the Church in all duties necessary to salvation without the adding of Traditional Doctrines neither in terminis extant in the Book of God nor yet derived from thence by good Logical inference which is the general Tenet of the Church of Rome or that to make the Canon of the Scripture compleat and absolute the Church as it hath added to it already the Apocryphal Writings so may it adde and authorize for the Word of God the Decretals of the Antient Popes and their own Canon Law as some of the Professors of it have not sticked to say So strongly are they byassed with their private interess and a desire of carrying on their faction in the Church of Christ as to place the holy Spirit where he doth not move in their Traditions in Apochryphal and meer Humane writings and not to see and honor him where indeed he is in the holy Scriptures Of the Authority Sufficiency and Perspicuity of which holy Scriptures I do not purpose at the present any debate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a work more fit for another place and such as of it self would require a Volume onely I say that if the written Word be no rule at all but as it hath authority from the Church which it is to direct and then not an entire but a partial rule like a Noune Adjective in Grammar which cannot stand by it self but requireth somewhat else to be joyned with it in Construction and that too so obscure and difficult that men of ordinary wits cannot profit by it and therefore must not be permitted to consult the same the Holy Ghost might very well have spared his pains of speaking by the Prophets in the time of the Law or guiding the pens of the Apostles in the time of the Gospel and the great Body of the Scripture had been the most impertinent and imperfect peece the most unable to attain to the end it aims at that was ever writ in any Science since the world began Which what an horrid blasphemy it must needs be thought against the majesty and wisdom of the holy Spirit let any sober Christian judge And yet as horrid as those blasphemies may be thought to be some of the most profest enemies of the Church of Rome and such as think that the further they depart from Rome they are the nearer to Christ have faln upon the like if not worse extravagancies For to say nothing of the Anabaptists and that new brood of Sectaries which now swarms amongst us whom I look on onely as a company of Fanatical Spirits did not Cartwright and the rest of our new
Reformers in Queen Elizabeths time say as much as this The Scriptures say the Papists in their Council of Trent for I regard not the unsavory Speeches of particular men Is not sufficient to Salvation without Traditions that is to say without such unwritten Doctrinals as have from hand to hand been delivered to us Said not the Puritans the same when they affirmed That Preaching onely viva voce which is verbum traditum is able to convert the sinner That the Word sermonized not written is alone the food which nourisheth to life eternal that reading of the Word of God is of no greater power to bring men to Heaven than studying of the Book of Nature that the Word written was written to no other end but to afford some Texts and Topicks for the Preachers descant If so as so they say it is then is the written word no better than an Ink-horn Scripture a Dead Letter or a Leaden Rule and whatsoever else the Papists in the height of scorn have been pleased to call it Nay of the two these last have more detracted from the perfection and sufficiency of the holy Scripture than the others did They onely did decree in the Council of Trent That Traditions were to be received Paripietatis affectu with equal Reverence and Affection to the written Word and proceed no further These magnifie their verbum traditum so much above it that in comparison thereof the Scripture is Gods Word in name but not in efficacy They onely adde Traditions in the way of Supplement where they conceive the Scriptures to be defective These make the Scriptures every where deficient to the work intended unless the Preacher do inspire them with a better Spirit than that which they received from the Holy Ghost Good God that the same breath should blow so hot upon the Papists and yet so cold upon the Scriptures that the same men who so much blame the Church of Rome for derogating from the dignity and perfection of the Holy Scriptures should yet prefer their own indigested crudities in the way of Salvation before the most divine dictates of the Word of God But such are men when they leave off the conduct of the Holy Ghost to follow the delusions of a private Spirit Articuli IX Pars Secunda 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam i. e. The Holy Catholick Church CHAP. II. Of the name and definition of the Church Of the Title of Catholick The Church in what respects called Holy Touching the Head and Members of it The Government thereof Aristocratical IN the same Article in which we testifie our Faith in the Holy Ghost do we acknowledge That there is a Body or Society of faithful people which being animated by the power of that Blessed Spirit hath gained unto it self the name of the Church and with that name the attribute or title of Catholick in regard of the extent thereof over all the World of Holy in relation to that piety of life and manners which is or ought to be in each several Member And not unfitly are they joyned together in the self same Article the Holy Ghost being given to the Apostles for the use of the Church and the Church nothing but a dead and lifeless carcass without the powerful influence of the Holy Ghost As is the Soul in the Body of Man so is the Holy Ghost in the Church of Christ that which first gives it life that it may have a Being and afterward preserves it from the danger of putrefaction into which it would otherwise fall in small tract of time Having therefore spoken in the former Chapter of the Nature Property and Office of the Holy Ghost and therein also of the Volume of the Book of God dictated by that Blessed Spirit for that constant Rule by which the Church was to be guided both in Life and Doctrine We now proceed in order to the Church it self so guided and directed by it And first for the Quid nominis to begin with that it is a name not found in all the writings of the Old Testament in which the body of Gods people the Spiritual body is represented to us after a figurative manner of Speech in the names of Sion and Ierusalem as Pray for the peace of Jerusalem Psal. 121. And the Lord loveth the gates of Sion Psal. 87. The name of Church occurreth not till the time of the Gospel and then it was imposed by him who had power to call it what he pleased and to entitle it by a name which was fittest for it The Disciples gave themselves the name of Christians the name of Church was given them by our Saviour Christ. No sooner had St. Peter made this confession for himself and the rest of the Apostles Thou art Christ the Son of the living God but presently our Saviour added Upon this Rock that is to say The Rock of this Confession as most of the Antients and some Writers also of the darker times do expound the same will I build my Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Greek The word used by our Lord and Saviour is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whence the Latines borrowed their Ecclesia the French their Eglise and signifieth Coetum evocatum a chosen or selected company a company chosen out of others derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is as much as evocare to call out or segregate In that sense as the word is used to signifie a company of men called by the special Grace to the Faith in Christ and to the hopes of life eternal by his death and passion is the word Ecclesia taken in the writings of the holy Apostles and in most Christian Authors since the times they lived in though with some difference or variety rather in the application to their purposes But antiently it was of a larger extent by far and signified any Publick meeting of Citizens for the dispatch of business and affairs of State For so Thucidides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. That the Assembly being formed the different parties fell upon their disputes and so doth Aristophanes use it in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. That the people should now give the Thracians a Publick meeting in their Guild-hal or Common forum of the City St. Luke who understood the true propriety as well as the best Critick of them all gives it in this sense also Acts 19.32 where speaking of the tumult which was raised at Ephesus he telleth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Assembly was confused And in the 26. Psal. Ecclesia malignantium is used for the Congregation of ungodly men APPLICATION BUt after Christ had given this name unto the Body of the Faithful which confessed his Name and the Apostles in their writings had applied it so as to make it a word of Ecclesiastical use and notion the Fathers in the following Ages did so appropriate the same to the state of
30. And in his Regulae Compend Respons 310. St. Ierom in 1 Cor. St. Chrysostom also on the place Theodoret Theophylact and Oecumenius on the same Text also Nor is the word so used onely in the best Christian Writers but did admit also of the same signification amongst the best learned and most critical of the Heathen Greeks Of whom take Lucian for a taste who speaking of the adorning of the Court or Senate-house expresseth the place it self by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which cannot possibly be meant of the men that met but of the place of the Assembly A thing which here I had not noted because not pertinent to the sense of the present Article but onely to encounter with the peevish humor of our Modern Sectaries who will by no means yet yeeld the name of Churches to those sacred places but call them Steeple-houses in the way of scorn But to proceed the word Ecclesia or Church in the Genuine sense as it denotes the Body Collective of Gods Servants since the coming of Christ is variously taken in the Book of God and also in the Writings of the purest times For first it signifieth a particular Congregation of men assembled together in some certain and determinate place for Gods publick service In this sense it is taken in those several Texts where St. Paul speaketh of the Church in the house of Nymphas Col. 4.15 To the Church in the house of Philemon Vers. 5. The Church which was in the house of Aquila and Priscilla Rom. 16. and 1 Cor. 16.19 I know that this is commonly expounded of their private Families as if the house and family of each Faithful Christian were in St. Pauls esteem reputed for a Church of Christ. But herein I prefer Mr. Medes opinion before all men else who understands those words of the Congregation of Saints which were wont to assemble at such houses for the performance of Divine Duties it being not unusual with some principal Christians in those early days to dedicate or set apart some private place within their own houses for the residue of the Church to assemble in And this he proveth first from the singularity of the expression which must needs include somewhat more than ordinary somewhat which was not common to the rest of the Saints whom St. Paul salutes in his Epistles For in so large a Bedrol as is made in the last to the Romans it is very probable that many if not most of them were Masters of Families and then must all their Families be Churches too as well as that of Aquila and Priscilla or else we must finde some other meaning of the words than that which hath hitherto been delivered Secondly Had St. Paul intended by those words The Church which is in their house nothing but the Family of Nymphas Philemon and the rest we should have found it put in the same expression which he doth elswhere use on the same occasion as viz. The houshold of Aristobulus the houshold of Narcissus Rom. 16.10 11. The houshold of Onesiphorus 2 Tim. 4.19 Patrobas Hermes and the Brethren which are with them Rom. 16.14 Nereus and Olympas and all the Saints which are with them Vers. 15. The difference of expressions makes a different case of it and plainly doth conclude in my apprehension That by the Church in such an house the Apostle meaneth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Church assembled at such houses as he there expounds it And though he cite no antient Author to confirm him in this opinion but Oecumenius and he none of the antientest neither Yet in a matter of this nature I may say of him as Maldonat doth of Euthymius in a greater point whose single judgement he preferreth before all the rest of the Fathers viz. Quem minorem licet solum autorem verisimilia tamen dicentem quam plures majoresque illos sequi malo But to proceed unto the other acceptions of the word Ecclesia it is also used to signifie in holy Scripture The Church of some City with the Region or Country round about it a National or Provincial Church under the Government of one or many Bishops and subordinate Ministers as the Churches of the Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Thessalonians Romans and the rest mentioned in the Acts and St. Pauls Epistles Thirdly It is also used to signifie not the Church it self or the whole Body of the people of a City or Province agreeing in the Faith of Christ but for the principal Officers and Rulers of it such as possess the place of Iudicature in the Court or Consistory In this sense it is used in the 18 of Matthew where the party wronged and able to get no remedy otherwise is willed by Christ to tell the Church that is to say to make his complaint to them who having the chief place and power in Spiritual matters are able to compel the wrong-doer to make satisfaction by menacing and inflicting the Churches Censures Tell the Church That is saith Chrysostom the Prelates and Pastors of the Church who have the power of binding and loosing such offenders which is mentioned in the verse next following And in this sense the name of Church became appropriated to the Clergy in the latter times and hath been used to signifie the State Ecclesiastick Ecclesiae nomen ad Clerum solere restringi as Gerson noted in his time not without regret as being men most versed in the Church affairs And lastly it is used for the Body Collective or Diffusive of the people of God made up of several Congregations States and Nations consisting both of Priests and People of men as well under as in Authority In this respect Christ is said to be the head of the Church Eph. 5.23 The husband of the Church V. 32. To love his Church and to give himself for his Church V. 25. That is to say not onely of a National or Provincial Church and much less of a Congregational onely but of the Universal Church which consists of all dispersed and distressed over all the World And this we do define to be the whole Congregation of Christian people called by the grace and goodness of Almighty God to a participation of his Word and Sacraments and other outward means of eternal life This Universal Church being thus found out is represented to us in the present Article by two marks or characters by which she is to be discerned from such Publick meetings which otherwise might claim that title Of which the one denotes the generality of extent and latitude and is that of Catholick by which it is distinguished from the Iewish Synagogue being shut up in the bounds of that Country onely and from the private Conventicles of Schismatical persons The other doth express the quality of the whole compositum by the piety and integrity of its several members and is that of Holy by which it is distinguished from the Assemblies of ungodly men from the
the East the Donatist in the South and the Novatians in the West who made one Faction onely though of several names were antiently of this opinion and set up Churches of their own of the New Edition For flattering themselves with a conceit of their own dear sanctity they thought themselves too pure and pious to joyn in any act of worship with more sober Christians and presently confined the Church which before was Catholick to their own private Conventicles and to them alone or intra partem Donati as they pleased to phrase it Who have succeeded them of late both in their factions and their follies too we all know full well The present ruptures in this State do declare most evidently that here is Pars Donati now as before in Africa A frenzy which gave great offence to the Antient Fathers who labored both by Speech and Pen to correct their insolencies and of such scandal to the Churches of the Reformation that Calvin though a ridged man and one inclinable enough unto new opinions did confute their dotages and publickly expose them to contempt and scorn The Antients and the Moderns both have agreed on this That though the Church of Christ be imperfect always and may be sometimes faulty also yet are not men to separate themselves so rashly from her Communion or make a rupture for poor trifles in the Body Mystical It argueth little Faith and less Charity saith renowned Cyprian if when we see some Errors in the Church of God De ecclesia ipsi recedamus we presently withdraw our selves and forsake her fellowship And here we might bring in St. Augustine and almost all the Fathers to confirm this point but that they are of no authority with the captious Schismatick and now of late disclaimed by our neater wits Therefore for further satisfaction of the stubborn Donatist we will behold the Constitution of the Church in the Book of God and take a view of the chief Types and Fortunes of it to see if we can finde there such a spotless Church as they vainly dream of In Adams family which was the first both Type and Seminary of the Church of God there was a Cain a murderer that slew his brother Amongst the Sons of God in the time of Noah how many that betook themselves to the daughters of men and in Noahs Ark the next and perhaps the greatest a Cham which wretchedly betrayed the nakedness of his aged father In Abraham's house there was an Ishmael that mocked at Isaac though the heir and the heir of promise in Isaac's a prophane Esau that made his belly his God and sold Heaven for a break-fast in Iacob's there were Simeon and Levi Brethren in evil besides a Reuben who defiled his old Fathers Bed And in the Church of Israel when more large and populous how many were mad upon the worship of the Golden Calf more mad in offering up their sons to the Idol Moloch Thousands which bowed the knee to Baal Ten thousands which did sacrifice in the Groves and prohibited places yet all this while a Church a true Visible Church with which the Saints and Prophets joyned in Gods publick worship Let us next look upon the Gospel and we shall finde that when the bounds thereof were so strait and narrow that there were few more visible Members of it than the Twelve Apostles yet amongst them there was a Iudas that betrayed his Master When it began to spread and enlarge it self to the number of One hundred and twenty there were among them some half Christians such as Nicodemus who durst not openly profess the Gospel but came unto the Lord by night and some false Christians such as Demas who out of an affection to the present world forsook both the Apostle and the Gospel too She then increased to such a multitude that they were fain to choose seven subordinate Ministers the better to advance the work and one of them will be that Nicholas the founder of the Nicolaitan Hereticks whom the Lord abhorred Follow it out of Iewry into Samaria and there we finde a Simon Magus as formal a Professor as the best amongst them and yet so full of the gall of bitterness within that Ignatius in plain terms calleth him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first-born of the Devil Trace it in all the progress of it thorow Greece and Asia and we shall see the factiousness of the Corinthians the foolishness of the Galatians and six of the seven Asian Churches taxed with deadly sin Good God into what corner of the Earth will the Donatist run to finde a Church without corruption free from sin and error It must be sure into the old Utopias or the new Atlantis or some Fools Paradise of their own in terra incognita unless as Constantine once said unto Acesius a Novatian Bishop b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they can erect a Ladder of their own devising and so climb up into the Heavens Whilest they are here upon the Earth they have no such hopes and do but fool themselves in the expectation The chief occasion of these Errors which the two opposite Factions in the Church of Christ have thus faln into is a mistake of the right constitution of the members of it For those of Rome condemning all the Protestant party for Hereticks and the Eastern Churches for Schismatical and then excluding Hereticks and Schismaticks from being any members of the Church at all not onely appropriate to themselves the name of Catholick but consequently confine the Church within their Communion And on the other side the Donatist and their Modern followers out of the dear affection which they bear themselves first make the Church to consist of none but the Elect and none to be Elect but those who joyn fellowship with them and so by the same necessary consequence have confined the Church within the Walls or Curtains of their private Conventicles Both faulty and both grounding their unsound Conclusions upon as false and faulty principles For taking it for granted first which will never be yeilded by us nor made good by them that both the Christians of the East are Schismaticks and the Protestants of the North are no better then Hereticks yet are they not presently to be cut off from being any Members of the Church at all as Bellarmine and others of the Church of Rome have been pleased to say A Schismatick in the true meaning of the word is he Who holding an entire profession of the truth of God and joyning with the Church in all points of doctrine do break the peace thereof and disturb the order by refusing to submit themselves to their lawful Pastors and yeild obedience to her power in external matters If he stay there and withal fall not into manifest Heresie and set on foot some new Opinion as most Schismaticks have used to do the better to justifie themselves in their separation so
the world is that blessed company of holy ones that houshold of faith that Spouse of Christ and Church of the living God which is the pillar and ground of truth that so we may imbrace her communion follow her directions and rest in her judgment Very good counsel I confess and such as is to be pursued by all sober Christians But being this counsel doth suppose as a matter granted that the true Church is very easie to be found if it be carefully sought after which doth imply the constant and perpetual visibility of it however controverted and denied by some later Writers I shall first labor to make good that which he supposeth and prove that which he takes for granted that so we may proceed the better on our following search and rest the surer on the judgment of the Church being once found out And here I shall not need to look back on those who making none to be of the Church but the elect children of God do thereby make it altogether invisible to a mortal eye We have spoke enough of that in the former Chapter and therefore shall adde nothing now but that it may seem strange unto men of reason that when Paul and Barnabas came to Ierusalem they were received of the Church as is said Acts 15.4 and yet could not see the Church which did receive them or that Paul went unto Caesarea and saluted the Church as is said of him Acts 18.22 in case he had not seen the Church which he did salute We grant indeed the Church to be invisible in its more noble parts that is to say the Saints triumphant in the Heavens the Elect on Earth and that it is invisible in the whole latitude and extent thereof for who can see so great a body diffused in all places of the world at one time or in all the times of his life supposing him to be the greatest traveller that was ever known And yet this doth not make the Church to be more invisible than any particular man may be said to be invisible also because we do not see his Brain his Heart and his Liver the three principal parts which convey Life and Blood and motion to the rest of the Body nor because we cannot see at once both his back and his belly and every other member in his full proportion The visibility of the Church is proved sufficiently by the visibility of those several and respective Congregations or Assemblies of men which are convened together under lawful Ministers for the Administration of the Word and Sacraments to which men may repair as they see occasion for their spiritual comfort and instruction in the things of God with whom they may joyn themselves in his publick worship with reference to that soul and power of Government which animates and directs the whole And such a Visibility of the Church there hath always been from Adam down to Noah from Noah to Abraham from him to Moses and the Prophets from thence to Christ and from Christs time unto the present It is true the light hereof hath been sometimes dangerously ecclipsed but never extinguished no more than is the Sun when got under a Cloud Desicere videtur Sol non defiâ—it as the Father hath it Since God first had a Church it hath still been visible though more or less according unto times and seasons more in some places than in others although not always in such whole and sound condition as it ought to be They who are otherwise perswaded conceive that they have found some intervals or space of time in which there was no Visible Church on the face of the Earth of which times there are two remarkable under the Law and two as notable as those since the birth of the Gospel Under the Law they instance in the reign of Ahab of which Elijah makes complaint That they had laid waste the Church and slain the Prophets and that he onely was left to serve the Lord and in the persecution raised by Antiâ—chus King of Syrius of which it is reported in the Book of Maccabees that the Sanctuary was defiled the publick Sacrifices interdicted Circumcision and the Sabbath abrogated and more than so the Idols of the Syrians publickly advanced for the people to fall down and worship insomuch as all those who sought after righteousness and justice were fain to flie unto the wilderness there to save themselves But the answer unto this is easie For though those instances do prove that the Church at those times was in ill-condition in regard to her external peace yet prove they not that there was such a general defection from the worship of God as to make the Church to be invisible For first The complaint of Elijah was not universal in reference to the whole Church of God but in relation onely unto that of Israel where King Ahab reigned a Schismatical Church that when it was at the best and sometimes an Idolatrous one also The Church of Iudah stood entire in the service of God according to the prescript of his holy Law under the Rule and Government of the good King Iehosaphat a Prince who with a perfect heart served the God of his Fathers and who preserved the people under his command in the true Religion The Sun shined comfortably on Iudah though an Egyptian darkness had over-spread the whole Realm of Israel And if Elijah fled for safety to the woods and deserts and did not flie for succor to the Land of Iudah it was not out of an opinion that the two Tribes had Apostated from their God as well as the ten but out of a wise and seasonable fear of being delivered by those of Iudah into the hands of his enemies Iehosaphat being at that time in good terms with Ahab by whom Elijah stood accused for troubling of the State of Israel As for the other instance under King Antiochus the Text indeed describes it for a great persecution greater than which that Nation never suffered under but it declares withal expresly that there was no such general defection from the Law of God as was projected by the Tyrant For the common people stood couragiously to their old Religion and neither would obey the Kings Commandment in offering to the Syrian Idols or eating meats which were prohibited by the Law of Moses And as for those which fled unto the Woods and Wilderness they fled not thither onely for their personal safety in hope to finde an hiding place in those impenetrable desarts but as unto a place of strength or a fortified City from whence they might sally as they did against their enemies and in the which they might enjoy that freedom in the exercise of their own Religion which could not be hoped for in Ierusalem and other places under the command of Antiochus A persecuted Church we finde both before and here but the persecution neither held so long nor was so general as to make the Church to
this plea as a sorry shift which onely seemed to be excogitated for the present pinch If any ask me Where the Church was before Luthers time I answer generally First That if the Church had failed in these North-west parts of the world as indeed it did not yet were there many Christian Churches in the East and South the Greeks Nestorians Melchites Abassins with divers others with whom the first Reformers might have held communion though differing from them in some points of inferior moment And secondly I answer more particularly that our Church was before Luther where it hath been since in Germany France England Italy yea and Rome it self A sick Church then but since by Gods grace brought to more perfect health a corrupt Church then but since reformed of those particular abuses both in life and doctrine which seemed most offensive That the Church of Rome is a true Church though not the true Church no sober Protestant will deny Iunius grants it in his Book De Ecclesia cap. 19. and so doth Dr. Whitakers also Cont. 2. Qu. 3. cap. 2. as great an enemy as any of the Romish factions The like doth Dr. Raynolds in his fifth Thesis though he deny it as he might to be either the Catholick Church it self as they vainly boast or any found member of the same Nay even the very Separatists do not grutch them that as Francis Iohnson in his Treatise called A Christian Plea Printed 1627. pag. 123 c. A true Church in the verity of essence as the Church is a company of men which profess the Faith of Christ and are baptized into his Name but neither Orthodox in all points of doctrine nor sound or justifiable in all points of practise And a true Church in reference to the Fundamentals of the Christian Faith which they maintain as constantly and defend as strongly against the several Hereticks and Sectaries of this present age as any Doctor of the Protestant or Reformed Churches though in the Superstructures they are faln aside from the received opinions of the Catholick Church A true Church too in which Salvation may be had for why should we deny the possibility of their salvation who have been the chief instruments of ours saith judicious Hooker by those especially who ignorantly follow their blinde guides and do not pertinaciously embrace any Popish error either against their Science or against their Conscience Of whom as of the greatest numbers in the Church of Christ we may very safely say with Augustine Coeteram turbam non intelligendi vivacitas sed credendi simplicitas tutissimam facit i. e. That amongst ordinary men it is not the vivacity of understanding but the simplicity of believing which makes them safe Of this Church were the Protestants Members before they did withdraw themselves from the errors of it before by this their separating from the errors of it they were schismatically expelled and thrust out of the communion of the Church of Rome by those which had the conduct of the affairs thereof in the beginning of that breach And from this Church do we of the Church of England derive immediately our interess in Christ by the door of Baptism the Body of the holy Scriptures the Hierarchy or Publick Government our Liturgy and Solemn Forms of Administration not as originally theirs but as derived to them from the Primitive times and by them transmitted unto us This Bristo doth acknowledge in his Book of Motives and this we think it no reproach unto our Religion to acknowledge also That Aphorism of King Iames of most famous memory deserving to be writ in Letters of Gold viz. That no Church under colour of Reformation for of that he speaketh ought further to separate it self from the Church of Rome either in Doctrine or Ceremony than she had departed from her self when she was in her flourishing and best estate and from Iesus Christ our Lord and Head And yet I know not how it hath come to pass but so it is that instead of reforming of an old Church which is all we did the building of a new Church will we nill we is by some Zelots of boâ—h sides obtruded on us Whereas the case if rightly stated is but like that of a sick and wounded man that had long lien weltering in his own blood or languishing under a tedious burden of diseases and afterwards by Gods great mercy and the skilful dâ—ligence of honest Chirurgions and Physitians is at the last restored to his former health No new man in this case created that is Gods sole privilege but the old man cured No new Church founded in the other that belongs to Christ but the old Reformed When Hezekiah purged the Temple and other godly Kings and Princes of the Land of Iudah did reform Religion as we know they did Neither did the one erect a new Temple or the others frame a new Religion but onely rectified in both what they found amiss And so it was also in the Reformation of the Church of Rome further than which we need not go to look where our Church was before Luthers time or to finde out that constant and perpetual visibility of the Church of Christ which hath been hitherto the subject of this Disquisition But put the case the worst that may be and let it be supposed this once That the Church of Rome had so apostated from the Faith of Christ that it ceased to be a Church at all both in name and nature yet were there many Christian Churches in the East and South all of them visible no doubt as they still continue which constantly maintained all those several Truths that had been banished and exploded in the Church of Rome For that the Vniversal Church should so fall away as to teach any doctrine contrary to the Faith and Gospel is plainly to the promise made by Christ our Saviour It is true indeed Christ hath not bound himself nor annexed his spirit so inseparably to a National or Provincial Church but that it may fall at last unto such desperate and dangerous Errors as finally may cut it off as an unsound Member from the residue of the Body Mystical The Candlestick may be removed as well out of any Church as from that of Ephesus if wilfully they put out the light which shined amongst them and so it is determined by the Church of England As the Church of Jerusalem Alexandria and Antioch hath erred so also the Church of Rome hath erred not onely in their living and manner of Ceremonies but also in matters of Faith saith the Nineteenth Article But so it is not with the Universal the Body Collective of Gods people the Church essential nor can it be colourably inferred though it be the best Argument of Dr. Raynolds to evince his Thesis that because many of those who are outwardly called and some of the Elect themselves many of the Flock and some of the Pastors and that not
Ceremonies and authority in Controversies of Faith And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to the Word of God neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another Wherefore although the Church be a witness and a keeper of holy Writ yet as it ought not to decree any thing against the same so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed as necessary to salvation So stands the Article in the very Acts and Records of the Convocation An. 1562. where by the way the Book of Articles being Re-printed in Latine An. 1571. when the Puritan Faction did begin to shew it self in its colours the first clause touching the authority of the Church in Controversies of Faith and in Decreeing Rites and Ceremonies was clean omitted and stands so maimed in the Book called The Harmony of Confessions for the Protestant and Reformed Churches According to which false and corrupted Copies I know not by what indirect means or by whose procurement it was so Printed too at Oxon An. 1636. when the Grandees of that Faction did begin to put forth again But to proceed The Church or Body Collective of the people of God having devolved this Power on her Representatives doth thereby binde her self to stand to such Conclusions as by them are made till on the sight of any inconvenience which doth thence arise or upon notice of some irregularity in the form and manner of proceeding she do again assemble in a new Convention review the Acts agreed on in the former Meeting and rectifie what was amiss by the Word of God And this is that which St. Augustine averreth against the Donatists men apt enough to flie in the Churches face if any thing were concluded or agreed upon against their Tenets Concilia quae per singulas provincias fiunt plenariorum Conciliorum autoritati cedere ipsaque plenaria saepe priora à posterioribus emendari cum aliquo experimento aperitur quod clausum erat cognoscitur quod latebat Provincial Councils saith the Father ought to submit unto the General And of the Generals themselves the former are oftentimes corrected by some that follow when any thing is opened which before was shut or any truth made known which before was hidden For otherwise it was not lawful nor allowable to particular men to hold off from conformity to the publick Order which had been setled in the Church nor to make publick opposition unto her conclusions which as the late most Reverend Father in God the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury very well resolves it Are with all submission to be observed by every Christian that is as he expounds himself in another place to have external obedience yeelded to it at least where Scripture or evident demonstration do not come against it And this hath been the judgment of the purest times and the practise of the best men for the times they lived in For thus said Constantine the Emperor to the point in hand Quicquid in sanctis Episcoporum Conciliis decernitur c Whatsoever is decreed in the holy Councils of Bishops ought wholly to be attributed to the Will of God More plainly Martianus Caesar Injuriam eos facere Reverendissimae Synodi judicio qui semel judicata in dubium vocent That they commit a great affront against the dignity and judgment of the most Reverend Council who shall presume to call in question what is there determined Which words of his are well enough allowed by Doctor Whitakers if understood of those things onely as they ought to be which are determined according to the Word of God St. Augustine to this purpose also Insolentissimae est insaniae c It is saith he an insolent madness for any man to dispute whether that be to be done or not which is determined to be done and therefore usually is done by the whole Catholick Church of Christ. St. Bernard also thus for the darker times Quae major superbia c What greater pride than that one man should prefer his own private judgment before the judgment of the Church Tanquam ipse solus Spiritum Dei habeat as if he onely were possessed of the Spirit of God And this holds also good in National and Provincial Councils which being the full Representative of the Church of that State or Nation hath power sufficient to compose such controversies as do arise amongst themselves and to require obedience of the Represented according to the limitations laid down before in the case of Oecumenical or General Councils The practise of all times and Nations make this plain enough in which many several Heresies have been concluded against as in that of Milevis wherein the Pelagians were condemned Anno 416. Matters of Faith have been resolved on as in the third of Toledo Anno 589. wherein many Anathemaes were thundred out against the Arians and finally Constitutions made for regulating the whole Body of Christian people in the worship of God as in the General Code of the African Councils Or were there no Record thereof in the times fore-going yet may we finde this power asserted in these later days and that by some of the most eminent Doctors of the Reformed Churches For the Divines of the Classis of Delph assembled amongst others in the Synod of Dort do declare expresly Ordinem nullum nullam pacem in Ecclesia Dei esse posse c That there would be no peace nor order in the Church of God if every man were suffered to Preach what he listed without being bound to render an accompt of his doctrine and submitting himself unto the judgment and determination of Synodical meetings Why so For if Paul and Barnabas say they being endued with the same Spirit as the rest of the Apostles were endued withal were content to go unto Ierusalem to know the judgment of the rest in the point then questioned Quanto aequius est ut Pastores alii qui Apostoli non sunt hujusmodi Synodicis Conventibus se subjiciant How much more fitting must it be for other Ministers which are no Apostles to captivate their own judgments unto that of a publick Synod Nor was the Synod it self less careful to provide for her own authority than the Delphenses were to promote the same And thereupon decreed in the close of all Abdicandos esse omnes ab officiis suis c That every man should be deprived as well of Ecclesiastical as Scholastical Offices who did not punctually submit to the Acts of the Synod and that no man should be admitted to the Ministery for the time to come who refused to subscribe unto the doctrine which was there declared and Preach according to the same And in pursuance of this final determination no fewer than Two hundred of the opposite party who did refuse to yeeld conformity to the Acts thereof were forthwith banished the
all them that are sanctified Blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances which was against us and nailed it to his cross for ever to the end that being mindful of the price wherewith we were bought and of the enemies from whom we were delivered by him We might glorifie God both in our bodies and our souls and serve the Lord in righteousness and holiness all the days of our lives For if the blood of Bulls and of Goats and the ashes of an Heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctified to the purifying of the flesh in the time of the Mosaical Ordinances How much more shall the Blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God in the time of the Gospel This is the constant tenor of the Word of God touching remission of our sins by the Blood of Christ. And unto this we might here adde the consonant suffrages and consent of the antient Fathers If the addition of their Testimonies where the authority of the Scripture is so clear and evident might not be thought a thing unnecessary Suffice it that all of them from the first to the last ascribe the forgiveness of our sins to the death of Christ as to the meritorious cause thereof though unto God the Father as the principal Agent who challengeth to himself the power of forgiving sins as his own peculiar and prerogative Isai. 43.25 Peculiar to himself as his own prerogative in direct power essential and connatural to him but yet communicated by him to his Son CHRIST IESUS whilest he was conversant here on Earth who took upon himself the power of forgiving sins as part of that power which was given him both in Heaven and Earth Which as he exercised himself when he lived amongst us so at his going hence he left it as a standing Treasury to his holy Church to be distributed and dispensed by the Ministers of it according to the exigencies and necessities of particular persons For this we finde done by him as a matter of fact and after challenged by the Apostles as a matter of right belonging to them and to their successors in the Ministration First For the matter of fact it is plain and evident not onely by giving to St. Peter for himself and them the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven annexing thereunto this promise That whatsoever he did binde on Earth should be bound in Heaven and whatsoever he did loose on Earth should be loosed in Heaven But saying to them all expresly Receive the Holy Ghost Whose sins soever ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained And as it was thus given them in the way of fact so was it after challenged by them in the way of right St. Paul affirming in plain terms That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself by not imputing their trespasses unto them but that the Ministery of this reconciliation was committed unto him and others whom Christ had honored with the title of his Ambassadors and Legates here upon the Earth Now as the state of man is twofold in regard of sin so is the Ministery of reconciliation twofold also in regard of man As he is tainted with the guilt of original sinfulness the Sacrament of Baptism is to be applied the Laver of Regeneration by which a man is born again of water and the Holy Ghost Iohn 3.5 As he lies under the burden of his actual sins the Preaching of the Word is the proper Physick to work him to repentance and newness of life that on confession of his sins he may receive the benefit of absolution Be it known unto you saith St. Paul that through this man CHRIST IESUS is preached unto you remission of sins and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses And first for Baptism It is not onely a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christian men are discerned from others which be not Christned as some Anabaptists falsly taught but it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth whereby as by an instrument they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church the promises of the forgiveness of sin and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost are visibly signed and sealed Faith is confirmed and Grace increased by vertue of Prayer unto God This is the publick Doctrine of the Church of England delivered in the authorised Book of Articles Anno 1562. In which lest any should object as Dr. Harding did against Bishop Iewel That we make Baptism to be nothing but a sign of regeneration and that we dare not say as the Catholick Church teacheth according to the holy Scriptures That in and by Baptism sins are fully and truly remitted and put away We will reply with the said most Reverend and Learned Prelate a man who very well understood the Churches meaning That we confess and have ever taught that in the Sacrament of Baptism by the death and Blood of Christ is given remission of all manner of sins and that not in half or in part or by way of imagination and fancy but full whole and perfect of all together and that if any man affirm that Baptism giveth not full remission of sins it is no part nor portion of our Doctrine To the same effect also saith judicious Hooker Baptism is a Sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church to the end That they which receive the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ and so through his most precious merit obtain as well that saving grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness and also that infused divine vertue of the Holy Ghost which giveth to the powers of the soul the first dispositions towards future newness of life But because these were private men neither of which for ought appears had any hand in the first setting out of the Book of Articles which was in the reign of King Edward the Sixth though Bishop Iewel had in the second Edition when they were reviewed and published in Queen Elizabeths time let us consult the Book of Homilies made and set out by those who composed the Articles And there we finde that by Gods mercy and the vertue of that Sacrifice which our High Priest and Saviour CHRIST IESUS the Son of God once offered for us upon the Cross we do obtain Gods grace and remission as well of our original sin in Baptism as of all actual sin committed by us after Baptism if we truly repent and turn unfeignedly unto him again Which doctrine of the Church of England as it is consonant to the Word of God in holy Scripture so is it also most agreeable to the common and received judgment of pure Antiquity For in the Scripture it is said
Ancient Fathers The Rule is this That Custom is the best interpreter of a doubtful Law and we are lessoned thereupon to cast our eyes in all such questionable matters unto the practise of the State in the self-same case Si de Interpretione legis quaeritur imprimis inspiciendum est quo â—ure Civitas retro in hujusmodi casibus usa fuit Consuetudo enim optima interpretatio Legis est Where we have both the Rule and the Reason too Which Rule as it holds good in all Legal Controvesies so there is a practical Maxim of as much validitie in matters of Ecclesiastical nature delivered by the ancient Writers This Maxim we will take from St. Augustines mouth and after shew how consonant it is unto the mind of the rest of the Fathers Quod universa tenet Ecclesia nec in Conciliis institutum sed semper retentum est non nisi Apostolica autoritate traditum rectissimè creditur i. e. Whatsoever the whole Church maintaineth which hath not been ordained by authority of Councils but been alwaies holden most rightly may be thought to have been delivered by Apostolical authority To this agreeth St. Hierom also saying Etiamsi Scripturae autoritas non subesset totius Orbis in hanc partem consensus instar praecepti obtineret That were there no authority of the Scripture for it yet the unanimous consent of all the world were as good as a precept So doth St. Irenaeus also who telleth us that in doubtful cases Oportet in antiquissimas recâ—rrere Ecclesias in quibus Apostoli conversati sunt ab iis de praesenti quaestione sumere quod certum re liquidum est we are to have recourse to the Eldest Churches in which some of the Apostles lived and learn of them what is to be determined in the present question And to this Maxim thus confirmed not onely the Romanists do submit but even Calvin too who telleth us he would make no scruple to admit Traditions Si modo Ecclesiae traditionem ex certo perpetuo sanctorum Orthodoxorum consensu confirmaret If Pighius could demonstrate to him that such Traditions were derived from the certain and continual consent of Orthodox and godly men If then according to this Maxim it be made apparent that Infant-baptism hath been generally used in the Church of Christ not being ordained in any Council but practised in those elder Churches in which some of the Apostles lived and since continued in the constant and perpetual usage of all godly men we may conclude that certainly it is of Apostolical Institution though there occur no positive Precept for it in the Book of God Which ground so laid we will proceed unto our proofs for this general practise taking our rise from Augustines time without looking lower because his Authority is conceived to have carryed the Baptism of Infants almost without controul in the following ages First then for Augustine he is positive and express herein Infantes reos esse Originalis peccati ideo baptizandos esse That Infants being guilty of Original sin are to be Baptised and this he cals antiquam fidei regulam the old Rule of Faith and saith expresly Hoc Ecclesia semper habuit semper tenuit à majorum fide recepit That the Church alwaies held and used it deriving in from the authority and credit of their Predecessors St. Chrysostom a Presbyter of the church of Antioch where St. Peter sometimes sate as Bishop somewhat before S. Augustins time speaks of Infant-Baptism as a thing generally received in the Christian Church Hoc praedicat Ecclesia Catholica ubique diffusa The Catholick Church saith he over all the world doth approve of this Some what before him lived St. Hierom a Presbyter of the Church of Rome which questionless was one of the Apostolick Sees founded both by St. Peter and St. Paul the two great Apostles of Iew and Gentile as the Antients say And he is clear for Infant-Baptism Qui parvulus est Parentis in Baptismo vinculo solvitur c. Children saith he are freed in Baptism from the sin of Adam in the guilt whereof they were involved but men of riper years from their own and his And in conclusion he resolves Infantes etiam in peccatorum remissionem baptizandos c. That Infants are to be baptized for the remission of sins and not as the Pelagians taught into hopes of Heaven as if they had been guilty of no sin at all A little before him flourished St. Ambrose successor to Barnabas the Apostle in the See of Millain who speaking of the Pelagian Heresies who published amongst other things that the hurt which Adam did unto his posterity was exemplo non transitu rather by giving them such a bad example of disobedience than by driving on them any natural sinfulness doth thereupon infer that if this were true Evacuatio Baptismatis parvulorum The Baptism of Infants were no longer necessary And in the same age but before flourished Gregory Nazianzen who calling Baptism Signaculum vitae cursum ineuntibus a Seal imprinted upon those who begin to live requires That children should be brought unto holy Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lest they should wart the common grace of the Church And though he afterwards advise that the Baptism of Children should be deferred till they be three years old that so they might be able to make answer to some Catechetical questions yet in a case of danger he doth press it home it being better as he grants that they be sanctified insensibly they not perceiving it by reason of their tender years than that they should depart hence without that signature Ascend we from the fourth to the third age of the Church and there we finde St. Cyprian the Great Bishop of Carthage as great a stickler for the Baptism of Infants as any one whosoever in the times succeeding He in an Epistle to one Fidus doth thus plead the case Porro si etiam gravissimis delictoribus c If saith he remission of sins be given to the greatest offenders none of which if they afterwards believe in God are excluded from the grace of Baptism Quanto magis prohiberi non debet infans qui recens natus nihil peccavit c. How much rather should an Infant be admitted to it who being new-born have not sinned at all save that they have contracted from Adam that original guilt which followeth every man by nature and therefore are more capable of the forgiveness of sins than others are Quod illis remittuntur non propria sed aliena peccata Because it is not their own but anothers sin Nor was this the opinion of St. Cyprian onely but the unanimous consent of Sixty and six African Bishops convened in Council by whom it was declared as he there relateth That Baptism was to be ministred as well to Infants as unto men of riper yeers Before him flourished
did eat drink and sit down together at the self-same Table And therefore unto these and such Texts as these which speak of eating and drinking or sitting down with Abraham Isaac and Iacob in the Kingdom of Heaven there cannot be given a better answer than that which Christ returned to the captious Saduces viz. That in the Kingdom of Heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the Angels of God And if they are as the Angels of God there shall be neither eating nor drinking then we are sure of that Nor is it like that glorified and immortal Bodies alimoniis terrenis sustentanda sint can be sustained with corruptible and earthly food For as Ierom very well inferreth Vbi cibus sequuntur morbi c. Where there is meat there will be sickness where there is sickness death will follow and after that another Resurrection is to be expected and then another thousand years to be added to that Et sic de coeteris As for those passages alleged from the Revelation if they be literally understood they seem to be expresly for the Millenarians but then withal it draweth after it such inconsequences as plainly overthrow their whole foundation For I hope they will provide themselves of a better Supper Than to eat the flesh of Kings and the flesh of Captains and the flesh of Mighty-men and the flesh of Horses and of them that sit on them and the flesh of all men both bond and free and small and great Such chear and such an earthly paradise as they seem to dream of will agree but ill I must desire to be excused for calling it a Dream of an earthly paradise for I am verily perswaded that it is no other It hangs upon such doubtful proofs and is so differently reported by the Patrons of it that never sick-mans dream was more incoherent Which that we may the better see and see withal how every one added somewhat of his own unto it according as the strength or weakness of his fancy led him I shall put down a memorable passage of Gennadius which most fully speaks it In divinis repromissionibus nihil terrenum vel transitorium expectamus sicut Melitani sperant Non nuptiarum copulam sicut Cerinthus Marcus delirant Non quod ad cibum vel ad potum pertinet sicut Papiae Autori Irenaeus Tertullianus Lactantius acquiescunt Neque per mille Annos Resurrectionem regnum Christi in terra futurum Sanctos cum illo in deliciis regnaturos speramus sicut Nepos docuit qui primam justorum Resurrectionem secundam impiorum confinxit By which we see that Melito did fancy onely a transitory and earthly Kingdom Cerinthus and Marcus introduced the use of the marriage-bed Papias seemed to be content with eating and drinking and Nepos found out the distinction to make all compleat between the first and second Resurrection making the first to be onely of the just and righteous the second of the wicked and impenitent sinner after the end or expiration of the thousand years This is the Genealogie or Pedigree of this Opinion which hath of late begun to revive among us and findes not onely many followers but some Champions also Whom I desire more seriously to consider in their better thoughts whether this their supposed Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour commended to the world by some Antient Writers gave not the first hint unto Mahomets Paradise In which he promiseth to those who observe his Law most delicious dwellings adorned with flowery Fields watered with Chrystalline Rivers and beautified with Trees of Gold under whose comfortable shade they shall spend their time with amorous Virgins and be possessed of all voluptuous delights which to a sensual minded-man are the greatest happiness I know that some of late times and of eminent note have given us this opinion in a better dress delivering upon probable grounds That before the end of the world there shall be a time in which the Church of Christ shall flourish for a thousand years in greater purity and power both for faith and manners and in more outward lustre and external glory than hitherto it hath done in all former ages Coelius Secundus Curio in his Book De Amplitudine Regni Dei P. Cunaeus in that De Repub. Iudaeorum Du Moulin in his Christian Combat Piscator in his Comment on the Revelation Alstedius in a Tract of his called Diatribe de mille Annis Apocalypticis and divers others not inferior unto them for parts and learning have declared for it And for my part I see no danger in assenting to it If this will satisfie the Millenarians they shall take me with them but if they stand too stifly to their former tendries and look not for this flourishing time of the Gospel till the Resurrection of the just be first accomplished and then expect to have their part and portion in the pleasures of it I must then leave them to themselves The method of my Creed doth perswade me otherwise which from the Resurrection of the Body leads me on immediately unto the joys and glories of eternal everlasting life to which now I hasten I know it doth much trouble many pious and sober men to finde the force and efficacy of our Saviours Argument in the place foregoing which seems more plainly to assert the Immortality of the Soul than the Resurrection of the Body the bodies of Abraham Isaac and Iacob being dissolved into dust in the time of Moses though their souls were living with their God Concerning which we are to know 1. That the Sadduces by whom this Question was propounded did not alone deny the Resurrection of the dead but so as to affirm withal Animas cum corporibus extingui That the Soul it self did also perish with the body as Iosephus tells us They said that there was neither Angel nor Spirit as St. Luke says of them 2. That though the Pharisees who were their opposite faction in the latter end of the Iewish state did grant a Resurrection or Reviviscency from the dead yet was it after such an Animal and Carnal sense in eating drinking and conversing with women In qua cibo potu opus esset conjugia rursum jungerentur c. saith my Author of them as the Mahometans now dream of in their sensual paradise And against this absurd opinion as indeed it was the Sadduces had found out that Argument about a woman which had or might have had seven Husbands by the Law of Moses whose writings onely they received as Canonical Scripture desiring to be satisfied in their curiosity to which of the seven she should be wife at the Resurrection Which when the Pharisees could not answer as keeping to those principles indeed they could not they thought to put our Saviour to it at the self-same weapon But they found there another manner of Spirit than what had spoken to them by and