And then shall all pass through the burning River and the unextinguishable Flame all the just shall be saved but the wicked shall perish to all ages c. The Angels carrying them through the burning River shall bring them into Light c. He will give men the power to save themselves from the burning fire and eternal gnashings of Teeth c. And then shall God send from heaven the King and shall judge every man by blood and the splendour of Fire This Imagination considered by the most antient of the Fathers as taken out of a Book of divine Authority made so strong an Impression upon them that they took it for an infallible Lesson Hence Saint Irenaeus in the ninth Chapter of his Book having applied to the end of the world those words of Malachy The day of the Lord shall burn as an Oven adds John the Baptist tells us who that Lord is at whose coming there shall be such a day saying of Christ He shall baptise you with the holy Ghost and with Fire having his Fan in his hand to cleanse his Floor and he will put up the Corn into his Garner but shall burn the Chaff in unquenchable Fire He therefore who made the corn is no other then he who made the chaff but one and the same judging those things and separating them Origen in his third Homily upon the thirty sixth Psalm If in this life we slight the words of the Scripture admonishing us and will not be either healed or amended by the reprehensions thereof it is certain we must come to the Fire which is prepared for sinners even to that Fire 1 Cor. iii. 13. which shall try every mans work of what sort it is And as I conceive it is necessary that we all come to that fire though one be a Paul or a Peter he will nevertheless come to that fire But those who are such shall hear Though thou walkest through the Fire the Flame shall not kindle upon thee Isa xliii 2. But if any one be a sinner as my self he shall indeed come to that Fire as well as Peter and Paul And as the Hebrews came to the Red Sea so did also the Egyptians but the Isralites passed through the Red Sea and the Egyptians were overwhelmed therein In like manner we if we are Egyptians and follow Pharao who is the Devil obeying his commandments shall be overwhelmed in that fiery Lake or River when we shall be guilty of the sins which we are addicted to no doubt through the commandment of Pharao But if we are Israelites and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb without spot if we carry not about us the leaven of malice and wickedness we also must enter into the fiery River but as the Waters were to the Israelites a wall on the right hand and on the left so shall the Fire be as a Wall if we do as it is reported of them that is to say that they believed the Lord and his servant Moses that is to say his Law and Commandments and by that means follow the Pillar of Fire and the Pillar of the Cloud And in his fourteenth Homily upon Saint Luke I think that even after the Resurrection of the dead we shall stand in need of the Sacrament to cleanse and purge us for none will be able to rise again without Filth Lactantius in the twenty first Chapter of his seventh Book When he shall judge the just he shall also try them by Fire then shall those whose sins have prevailed either as to their weight or number be smitten by the Fire and burnt but those whom a fulness of Justice and maturity of Virtue shall have hardned shall not be sensible of that Fire Saint Hilary who in the second of his Canons upon Saint Matthew had observed in general that it lies even upon those who are baptised with the Holy Spirit to be consummated or accomplished by the Fire of the last Judgment in his third Sermon upon the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm according to the Greeks applies it particularly to the blessed Virgin to shew that in his judgment it cannot admit any exception saying Since we are to give an account Matthew xii 36. for every idle word do we desire to come to the day of Judgment wherein we are to pass through that indefatigable Fire wherein we are to suffer those grievous Torments which tend to the expiation of the soul from its sins If a sword did pierce through the soul of the Blessed Mary that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed if that Virgin who was capable of receiving God was to come to the severity of Judgment who will presume to desire to be judged of God Saint Gregory Nazianzene Orat. 26. The day of the revelation will declare manifestly whether it be through a sound Ratiocination that I please not as also the last Fire by which all our works shall be judged and purged And in the thirty ninth speaking of those who think themselves so pure that they think they have reason to bid their Brethren Stand at a distance from them It may be that there to wit at the end of the world they shall be baptized by Fire with the final Baptism which is the most grievous and most long which feeds on the matter as on grass and consumes the vanity of all wickedness And in the fourtieth where he bewails his own imperfection Who will secure me that I shall be saved at the end and that the judicial seat will not look upon me still as a debtour and one that stands in need of the Consâ—agration which shall be then Saint Basil upon the 4th of Esay Verse 4th where the Prophet treats of the cleansing of Jerusalem hath this consideration Are there not three Notions of Baptism The Purgation of the Filth the Regeneration by the Spirit and the Examination by the fire of Judgment And upon these words of the Tenth Howl for the day of the Lord is at hand by the day of the Lord he means that of the last Judgment Then adds If none be pure in respect of the works that are forbidden let every one fear that day for saith he to wit Saint Paul 1 Cor. iii. 15. If any man's work shall be burnt he shall suffer loss but he himself shall be saved yet so as by Fire And in the fifteenth Chapter of his Book Of the holy Ghost Saint John calleth Baptism of Fire the Trial which shall be made at the day of Judgment according to what the Apostle saith The Fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is And in the nine and twentieth speaking of Athenogenes a Man famous among the Antient Christians he says That he strove to arrive at the consummation or accomplishment which shall be made by Fire Saint Gregory of Nyssa Brother to St. Basil in his Oration upon the eight and twentieth Verse of the fifteenth Chapter of the first Epistle
either abolished or so altered that they contain not any thing of what was in them before of greatest consideration And thence it is come to pass that in those who go under the name of St. James St. Peter St. Basil and St. Gregory we meet not with as in the first Prayers to God for the Saints but Prayers to the Saints the fear of making them equal with Jesus Christ being by degrees vanished and experience forcing us to acknowledg that all the imaginations of men as well what are good as what bad pass away but that Jesus Christ alone is and shall be the same eternally as St. Paul to our comfort gives us to observe in the 8th Verse of the 13th Chapter to the Hebrews CHAP. XX. The Motive of Dionysius the pretended Areopagite taken into consideration HE who about the year 490. took upon him the name of St. Denys the Areopagite to gain the greater credit to his Books Of the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies grounds upon one onely consideration the Commemoration of the departed which was made in his time in the Publick Service and declares his sentiment with the ordinary ostentation in these Termes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The recitation of the sacred Rolls which is made after the kissing of the Pax declares the names of those who have lived holily and who are irreturnably gone to the perfection of virtuous life exhorting and leading us to the most blessed and Godlike condition by resemblance of them and pronouncing them as it were living and as Theology expresses it not dead but passed from death to a most divine life But withall observe that they are reposited by sacred Memorials in the Remembrance of the Deity and not according to the manner of men transmitted from the fancy to the memory but to speak suitably to God according to the venerable and irrecoverable knowledg of the God-like deceased which is in God For as the Oracles say he knows those who are his and The death of his Saints is precious in his sight the death of the Saints being named instead of their accomplishment in sanctity Think devoutly upon this viz. that the venerable Signs whereby Christ is signified and participated having been placed upon the divine Altar immediately after follows the Description of the Saints declaring thus much that they are inseparably conjoyned by the supercelestial and sacred union which is between them This Discourse which makes no mention of any thing but the recital of the Names of the Departed denoting the perpetuity of the blessed life they enjoy in consequence of their living conformably to the will of God might stand without the use of any Prayer made on their behalf by the living But in the seventh Chapter he not onely speaks very clearly but expresses his meaning of it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The divine Hierarch or President over things sacred advancing makes the holy Prayer for the Person departed and after the Prayer the same Hierarch kisseth him and afterwards all that are present do the like Now the prayer requires of that Goodness which divinely governs all things that whatsoever sin the departed hath through humane frailty committed might be forgiven him and that he might be placed in Light and in the Region of the Living in the Bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob whence trouble and sorrow and sighing shall flee away Thus does this learned but insincere Authour ground what he says on the sixty of St. Epiphanius's Motives as the most rational of all and hath perswaded thereto all the Modern Greeks And as St. Epiphanius's alledging of several other Considerations argues he writ before the pretended Areopagite ever thought of his Supposition so this latter's copying the words of the Constitutions attributed to St. Clement and above transcribed and not allowing of Prayer for the damned shews that his work is later and of as little authority CHAP. XXI The Motives of Tertullian examined TErtullian before any of these Authours alledged two Motives of praying for the Dead that is to say their refreshment and the hastening or advancement of their Resurrection For this Great man I know not how bewitched by the pretended Sibylline Writing supposed that before the last Judgment the Son of God being descended upon Earth to establish a new Kingdom in Jerusalem and to govern it himself should bring together all his Faithfull and should there fill them with all delights even corporeal for the space of a thousand years And whereas St. John had foretold in his Apocalyps that the Old Serpent being bound for a thousand years there should be a first Resurrection in favour of their Souls who were beheaded for the witness of Jesus he with Justin Martyr Papias St. Irenaeus and all those who have since gone under the name of Millenaries took that Praediction literally and wresting it to a contrary sence imagined that during the thousand years of Christ's Reign which he pretended should be in Jerusalem the most eminent for Sanctity among the Faithfull departed should rise again before the rest of mankind but successively and every one at this appointed time so as that if one took possession of his body in the first of the thousand years another should not have that privilege till a hundred two or three hundred years after and so to the end of that period of ten Ages and that those should have least advantage thereof whose Resurrection should be either delayed till near the end of the thousand years or put off till after it and referred to the last day assigned for the general Resurrection as well of the rest of the Just as the Wicked To induce us to embrace that Opinion St. Irenaeus in the thirty fourth Chapter of his fifth Book making a coherence between the words of St. John in the twentieth Chapter of the Apocalyps and those of the Son of God in the twelfth of St. Luke said Hoc est quod à Domino dictum est c. This is it which is said by our Saviour Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching Verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat and will still come forth and serve them and if he come in the Evening-Watch and finde them so doing they are blessed because he shall make them sit down and shall serve them nay though it be in the second or the third Watch they are blessed The same thing saith also John in the Apocalyps Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection For comparing the Faithfull departed to the Servants that wait for the return of their Lord he would have those that are raised the first those who next to them and those who after them designed by those who are visited at the first second and third watch And Tertullian having embraced the same Opinion presupposes that the Faithfull might either
according to them at such a point as immediately after their departure out of the Body to be at the self-same time exempted from the Pains of Restraint Obscurity or Grief through which it is affirmed they are to pass and deprived of the Rest which after the Pains they are to obtain so as that they are for the least space of time imaginable in a Neutral State which admits not the qualification of either Good or Bad of either Light or Darkness Rest or Torment and consequently of either Joy or Grief if not by accident And in Case that by the Place of Torment where it is feigned they fear being confined some may understand the Hell of the Damned is it possible they should ever be exposed thereto since it is presupposed they are of a middle Conditition and upon that very accompt as being chargeable onely with Venial Sins neither do nor can deserve Eternal damnation Be this therefore one unmaintainable and unimaginable Absurdity which must needs press hard upon our Forgers of Descriptions according to the Dictates of their own Fancies They make the deceased Priest further say Why O man dost thou trouble thy self thus unseasonably There is one onely hour and all passes away for in Hell there is no Repentance There is no Releasment in that place there is the Worm which never sleeps there is the darksom land and the obscure matter to which I am to be condemned c. Is this Discourse attributible to a Faithfull Person that had had here in this World the least taste of the Promise made by the Son of God assuring us that whoever believes in him is in such manner passed from death to life as that though he be dead yet shall he live through him that he shall not come into Condemnation and that there is not indeed any for those that are in him Are the Souls imagined to be in a middle Condition subject to the stingings of the Worm which never dies and liable to Damnation Which if it be supposed they neither are nor can why should they be feigned to say so and necessarily Lie in saying so This must then be a second Impertinence and a new Piece of Forgery committed by the Corrupters of the Ritual not onely against the Word of God but also against their Sentiment who in the same Ritual inserted this Confession which is both most true and Diametrically contrary to the Discourse before confuted Lament not all you who are departed in the Faith for as much as Christ hath suffered the Cross and was buried for us in the Flesh and hath made all those who call upon him children of Immortality For this once lay'd down does it signifie less then a total Eclipse of understanding and circumspection to make the children of Immortality for whom the Saviour of the World died and who consequently cannot perish say that they shall be Damned Nay the Prayers of the Living for their departed Brethren would be still chargeable with inconvenience even though they were taken literally For instance this O Lord as thou saidst unto Martha I am the Resurrection by the Effect accomplishing thy Word and calling Lazarus out of Hell so also mercifully raise this thy servant out of Hell For besides that it is a little too freely supposed that our Lord's Friend was confined in Hell from the moment of the Death of his Body to that of his Resurrection it is also false that our Saviour raises out of Hell whence the Ritual confesses that none is delivered any of his Servants Whoever once enters there never comes out again nor is there any raising up to be expected by him But these words may be maintained if they meet with a favourable Interpretation which might admit Hell to signifie not the place of the Damned in which sence it is ordinarily taken but the Grave whence our Saviour who called forth Lazarus will at the Last day raise up the Bodies of all his Servants With the help of the same favourable way of Interpreting it were possible to finde a sence conformable to the apprehension of Antiquity in those Prayers whereby the Greeks do at this day Beg the Remission of Sins for their Dead taking care to make them to relate to the Absolution which shall be solemnly pronounced by the Great Judg at the last day as may be deduced from this that most of them expresly mention it among others this Vouchsafe O Redeemer that when thou shalt come with ineffable glory in the Clouds after a dreadfull manner to Judge the whole World that thy Faithfull Servant whom thou hast taken from the Earth may joyfully meet thee which words are Grounded on 1 Thess Chap. iv Verse 17. In like manner this Vouchsafe O God to be mindfull of our Father who is now at rest and be pleased to deliver him from the corruption of sin at the day of Judgment through the good odour of thy goodness mercy and love towards men Again O Lord from whom the Spirits of those who serve thee do come and to whom they return we beseech thee to cause to rest in a place of light in the Region of the Just the Spirit of N. thy Servant now lying in his Grave and raise him up at thy second and dreadfull coming not to be condemned after the Resurrection but to be Absolved for no man living shall be justified in thy sight Again Let not thy Servant O Lord be confounded at thy coming When thou shalt discover all things that are hidden and shalt O Christ reprove our sins spare him whom thou hast taken hence being mindfull of his Preaching Again Forgive O Saviour the sins of him who hath been translated hence in Faith and vouchsafe to admit him to thy Kingdom there shall not any escape the dreadfull Tribunal of thy judgment Kings and Potentates and the Hireling all shall appear together and the dreadfull Voice of the Judge shall call the People that have sinned to the condemnation of Hell from which O Christ deliver thy servant Again Out of thy mercy O Christ exempt from the Fire of Hell and the dreadfull Sentence thy Servant whom thou hast now taken hence in Faith and let thy Domestick praise thee as God the mercifull Redeemer c. Brethren how dreadfull is the hour which sinners are to expect O what fear is there Then the Fire of Hell devours and the ravenous Serpent swallows wherefore mercifull Lord Christ deliver him from the day of dreadfull Gehenna O how great shall be the Joy of the Just which they shall be possessed of when the Judge comes for the Nuptial room is prepared and Paradise and the whole Kingdom of Christ into which O Christ receive thy Domesticks to rejoyce with thy Saints eternally Who O Christ shall bear the dreadfull threatning of thy coming Then shall Heaven be rolled up together as a Book after a dreadfull manner and the Stars will fall the whole
question the truth of other times Of that kind is that which is attributed to the Sibyl of Moses hinting at and foretelling the Deluge Lib. 1. p. 9. as also what is found written in the same Book pag. 11. that the Sibyl her self with her husband her Father-in-law Mother-in-law her brethren-in-law and others was tâ—ss'd up and down by the waves in the time of the Deluge But it is evident rom pag. 30. that those very things which have come abroad under the name of Oracles were written fifteen hundred years after the Empire of the Greeks whereof whether we take the beginning from the reign of the Argives or Sicyonians or Athenians or whether it be taken from Moses from the reign of Solomon the Macedonian Empire or the four Monarchies those things which are called Predictions will be frivolous and after the things done They will be found also to be wanting as to truth if the government of the Greeks began since Moses for from the departure of Moses and Israel out of Aegypt to the destroying of the Administration or Commonwealth and Government of the Jews under Vespasian are reckoned one thousand four score and two years Further what can be said as to what we find in the fifth Book p. 49. where the Sibyl affirms that she had seen a second conflagration of the Temple of Vesta And that according to the testimony of Eusebius it happened under the Emperour Commodus in the year 199. for in that year the Temple of Vesta and the Palace and the greatest part of the City was burnt whereas the first conflagration happened in the 134. Olympiad Whence it is to be conceiv'd that the Prophetess if it may be lawfull to call her such prophesy'd not before the birth of Christ but long after and pretends not to any thing beyond Commodus since that in the eighth Book p. 57. she says that three Emperours shall reign after Adrian that is to say Antoninus the Debonnaire Antoninus the Philosopher and Commodus To this may be added that it is apparent from the first Book of Lactantius Firmianus Chap. 6. that each of the Sibyls writ her own Book and yet that now they seem to be all the Work of one because they all go under the name of the Sibyl and that we cannot distinguish them nor assign to any one her own unless it be to the Erythraean who put her name into her Poem and is called Erythraea now that was the Work of the Erythraean which takes up the third place among those Books The Author of the first Book feign'd himself to be daughter-in-law to Noë the second and the seventh seems to personate a most impudent strumpet pag. 56. though there want not some credible Authors who affirm that the true Sibyls were chast and inspir'd of God The sister of Isis challenges the fifth Book the rest were publish'd under the names of uncertain Authors By way of Annotation upon this granting what he sayes as to the supposititiousness of the pretended Sibyl as also that Moses is more ancient then any that have gone under that name I affirm In the first place That the writing which goes commonly under that title does not introduce Moses but Noah himself foretelling the Deluge which speaks yet a little more confidence 2. That from the departure out of Aegypt to the taking of Jerusalem by Titus there are 1600. years compleat 518. more then was thought 3. That the Author of the Sibylline Books does not affirm he saw the second conflragration of the Temple of Vesta but the last of Jerusalem The house sometime so much desir'd by thee says he to Rome when I saw that house pull'd down and set on fire the second time by an impure hand a house ever flourishing and having God in it which house he supposes that Christ himself descending from heaven will come and re-establish together with Jerusalem to reign there in his glory Which manifestly argues that though threatning Rome with finall destruction he writes The Virgins shall not always find the Divine fire yet he neither saw nor foresaw the conflagration that happened in the twelfth year of Commodus which was but the 191. of our Saviour but reflected on the Prediction of St. John expressing that Rome should be utterly burnt with fire and be found no more at all so that he thought it would be to no purpose to look there for Vesta's fire and other Monuments of her Paganisme 4. That if his intention had been to denote the conflagration happened under Commodus he could not truly have call'd it the second for that besides the first mentioned in Dionysius Halicarnassaeus and happening under the Consulate of Gracchus and Falto in the third year of the 135. Olympiad and the 516. of Rome there had been a second observ'd by Tacitus and other creditable Authors under the Consulship of Bassus and Crassus in the fourth year of the 210. Olympiad which was the 817. of Rome the 64. of our Saviour and 11. of Nero. 5. That he doth not onely not pretend to any thing beyond Commodus but makes an apparent stop at Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus which latter he presum'd must needs as being the younger by seven years out-live the other After him saith he whose name begins with a T. the note of the number three hundred that is to say Trajan another shall reign a person with a silver head that is one that was already arriv'd to grey hairs or shall be as he speaks in the eighth Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hoary and his name that is to say Adrian shall be deriv'd from the Sea Adriatick and he shall be good all manner of wayes and shall know all things and under thee O man absolutely good excellent all manner of wayes and hoary headed and under thy boughs that is to say thy adoptive sons the last dayes shall come to pass three shall reign that is to say Antoninus Marcus and Lucius but the last that is Lucius shall obtain the soveraignty of all things And in the eighth Book After him that is to say Adrian there shall reign three who shall see the last days filling the Name of the heavenly God whose kingdom is now and to all ages that is to say they shall be called Antonini or according to our manner of pronouncing Andonini from the name Adonai and Adonim that is Antoninus the Debonaire Antoninus the Philosopher and Lucius Verus Antoninus who he pretends ought as being the youngest to survive the other two succeed them and continue til the 948. year of Rome or the 195 of our Redemption in which he would have been 67. years of age never imagining that Lucius by his irregularities would prejudice his health so as to be cut off in the flower of his age in the midst of Winter between the years 169. and 170. 6. That though Lactantius carried away with the prejudice of his time conceiv'd that the Books called Sibylline
had no other Authours then the ancient Sibyls celebrated by Varro and that they had been chast and inspir'd of God yet hath he not escap'd a mistake as we shall make appear more at large hereafter 7. That the Author of the third Book neither was nor would be thought the Erythraean Sibyl but wife to one of the sons of Noah come from Babylon to Greece for those are her own words These things I tell thee far from the walls of Babylon c. The men of Greece will say I am of another Countrey born in Erythraea c. 8. That the first Book is as all the ensuing of the same vein 9. that the impudence and whoredom so much bewail'd in the second and seventh books were by the third acknowledg'd for the proper description of the pretended wife to Noah's son who cries Men will say I am of another Countrey and shameless In a word that all the eight books are the extravagant fictions of the same Impostor who under pretence of advancing the truth hath perfidiously dishonour'd it CHAP. V. The recommendation of the Writing pretended to be Sibylline attributed by Clemens Alexandrinus to St. Paul examined TO qualifie with more ease the reproach consequent to so unworthy an attempt and in some sort to save his reputation that was guilty of it there are many who as it were out of a certain emulation alledge that St. Paul himself recommended the reading of the Sibyls and to justifie their assertion bring in Clemens Alexandrinus speaking in these terms Besides the preaching of St. Peter the Apostle St. Paul will declare the same saying take also the Greek books acknoweledge the Sibyl how she discovers one onely God and the things that are to come and taking Hystaspes read and you will find the Son of God much more manifestly and openly described But I shall not stick to presume their pardon though I affirm they heap evil upon evil For if it be blame-worthy for a man as St. Justin did to subscribe a piece of forgery which he was not able to discover how odious must needs be the malice of that false witness who to deceive Clemens Alexandrinus and other Christians would needs maintain the supposititiousness of the Sibylline writings by a worse Imposture and feign that St. Paul himself had brought them into credit by his recommendation If souls perfectly vertuous cannot without difficulty endure that Encomiums of chastity should be bestow'd on common Prostitutes who among such as are truly Christian will be able to suffer comparisons to be made between the Prophets of God and persons in the depth of an extravagant melancholy between their celestiall Oracles and the disorder'd resueries of the other and that the Projector of so base a cheat should presume to give it the greater reputation produce the Apostle as a complice of his sacrilegious insolence And yet there are those who would that out of this vessel of election should come the words alledged by Clemens and whereas there cannot any such thing be found in his Epistles they imagine them spoken by him in his popular Sermons as if it were possible that he who sacrificed his life in a glorious martyrdom in the 65. year of our Lord should give his approbation to a piece full of errors and forg'd since the year 137. as it were out of a design by that recommendation to oppose the Authority as well of the old Testament and the Son of God himself as his own preaching and the most excellent of his Epistles For if among the Heathens the Sibyl and Hystaspes have not onely declared one God and manifested the things to come but also describ'd the Son of God after a manner more clear and convincing with what credit could David have written It is in Jury that God is known God sheweth his words unto Jacob his Statutes and his Judgements unto Israel He hath not dealt so with other nations and as for his judgements they have not known them Or how comes it that the Saviour of the World hath decided the case on the behalf of the Jews saying Salvation is of the Jews And upon what ground doth St. Paul make this precise Declaration to the Lycaonians God in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own wayes and speaking to the Athenians the most refin'd people of all the Europaeans call the times preceding the publication of the Gospel The times of ignorance and maintain in his Epistle to the Romans the advantage of the Jew to be much every way chiefly because that unto them were committed the Oracles of God Again that to the Israelites pertaineth the glory and the covenant and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the promises and put other nations in comparison of them into a qualification of such as are no people and a nation voyd of understanding Certainly if the Gentiles according to the pretended presupposition of St. Paul in Clemens Alexandrinus have been depositaries of the Oracles of God more clear and manifest then the Prophets they neither have nor ought to have granted that God hath not shewen them his Ordinances and Judgements and that on the Jews behalf over whom they were notoriously advantag'd the advantage was much every way For since before the Incarnation of the Messias they had in their hands the illuminating predications of the Sibyls which furnish'd them with historicall descriptions of what in the Propheticall Writings is but aenigmatically proposed their time was not a time of ignorance but of light and knowledge more distinct then that of the Jews and it must have been false that God was only known in Jury since that we do not esteem ignorant at least comparatively to another him who in the same matter of fact knowes as much if not more then the most knowing and that these propositions are formally contradictory the advantage is of the Jews and the advantage is not of the Jews Again the advantage of the Jews over the Gentiles consists having the Oracles of God committed to them and the Oracles of God committed to the Gentiles by the means of the Sibyls are more clear and manifest then those of the Jews From all which I must needs inferr that it being impossible a person sound in his intellectuals should at the same time hold both parts of the same contradiction and there being yet a greater impossibility that such as are inspir'd from God should be guilty of such a miscarriage St. Paul did not onely not say what is attributed to him in Clemens Alexandrinus but could not have said it And thereupon I shall desire the prudent Reader to take four things into his consideration 1. That he who hath presum'd to borrow his name to gain the greater credit to his fond imaginations does by the generall description he hath given us of what is contain'd in the pretended Sibylline predictions saying they declare one onely God discover things
neer Alexandria upon the Lake Maria Eusebius himself who had acknowledg'd as much in his eighth Book of Evangelicall preparation Chap. 11. does in his Ecclesiasticall History retract what he had deliver'd before and by his example hath so prepossess'd those that came after him that St. Epiphanius was perswaded that Philo spoke not of the Esseni whom he names in express terms but of the Tesseni of whom he said not any thing either good or evil supposing them to be some of the first Christians and to have derived their denomination either from Jesse the father of David whence St. Paul takes occasion after Isaiah to call out Saviour the root of Jesse or from Jesus himself But all without any ground for the description of Philo cannot any way be attributed to Christian Monks since he says of his contemplative Esseni 1. That they went away so as never to return again forsaking brethren children wives kindred c. directly contrary to the command of Saint Paul 1 Cor. 7. 12. c. 2. That they spent the whole day as well in reading the sacred books and the Commentaries of the Ancients to Allegorize upon them as in the composing of certain Hymnes which shews their conversation to have been onely with the Old Testament and their study therein wholly after the manner of the Jews 3. That they met together every seventh day that is to say every Saturday 4. That the most austere among them did not break their fast but onely on the sixth day consequently Friday contrary to the custom of the Christians 5. That they celebrated the Pentecost as their principall Feast and that in honour of the number of seven seven times reiterated a conceit not deriv'd from the Gospel but the Discipline of Pythagoras 6. That in their common Festivities the Males were seated on the right hand and the Females on the left a custom which never was of any account in the Church 7. That there was no flesh eaten among them but onely leavened bread salt and Hyssop 8. That they drunk nothing but Water Wine being accounted poyson with them an evident testimony that their entertaiment had nothing common either with the Eucharist where there is such a necessity the Chalice should be fill'd with Wine that those who endeavour'd to reduce it to Water have been branded as Heretiques under the name of Aquarii and Hydroparastati nor with the Love-feasts of the Primitive Christians who used Wine freely and in abundance and condemned the Tatianites and Encratites who abstain'd from it as what might not lawfully be drunk and call'd it in imitation of the Esseni The poyson of the Dragon 9. That having ended their Feast they spent the night in dancing and singing first in two Quires afterwards in one in imitation of Moses and his sister Miriam after the passage through the Red-Sea a ceremony which hath not onely never been observ'd in the Church but hath been expresly condemn'd by her in the Councel of Laodicea forbidding dancing even at the marriages of Christians 10. That seeing the day break turning towards the East they pray'd which done every one return'd to his Cell Which last ceremony is all that might seem contrary to the common practice of the Jews and to have some relation to that of the Christians who in their Prayers turn to the East whereas the Jews look'd towards Jerusalem in what part soever of the world they made their supplications But as to what he observes that this Sect of people were not serv'd by slaves as esteeming that the possession of servants was absolutely contrary to nature it speaks somewhat dissonant from the generall belief and practice as well of the Ancient Jews who permitted slavery as the Primitive Christians who disallow'd it not as appears by the words both of St. Paul 1 Cor. 7. 21. Philemon 16 and St. Peter 1 Epist Chap. 3. 18. but it was indeed common to all the Esseni of whom Philo said There is not so much as a slave among them but all are free yet mutually serving one another and they condemn Masters not onely as unjust defiling holiness but also as impious With the same design of making some advantage of Josephus hath some bold hand or other inserted into his Antiquities Lib. 18. cap. 4. certain words which are so much the less likely to come from him for that they contain an honourable testimony as well of the person of our Saviour as of the holiness and truth of Christian Religion from the profession whereof that Author ever stood at a great distance besides it is notoriously remarkable that they are hedg'd in so as not to have any coherence with the rest of his Discourse either going before or coming after and put into the place which they take up rather out of affection to some certain party then any reason there was to do it Of the same thread is also if I am not deceiv'd in my conjecture that Encomium of St. John inserted in the sixth Chapter for besides that he describes him as a very good person one whose advice it was to those Jews who exercised vertue and were observers of justice one towards another and piety towards God to become as it were one by Baptisme and that this Discourse can speak no less of him who made it then that he was a Disciple of St. John's the contexture of the whole Story formerly concludes and evidently shews that it was thrust in it may be out of some zeal but certainly with much want of sincerity Tiberius says Josephus being extremely incensed at the attempt of Aretas writes to T. Vitellius that he should declare war against him and if he took him alive to send him â—…und in chains to him if he were kill'd that he would send him his head Tiberius sent Orders to the Generall of his Army in Syria that he should do these things and Vitellius as it were for the war against Aretas prepar'd two Legions c. And it is to be noted that the defeat of Herod by Aretas happening seven years after the suffering of St. John seeing Vitellius being upon his way to take his revenge of that affront receiv'd four days before his arrivall at Jerusalem the news of Tiberius's death there is very little likelihood that the Jews who had delivered our Saviour to Pilate though they had follow'd and admir'd him after the martyrdom of St. John which had not wrought any alteration in them should have had for so long time so lively a remembrance both of the unworthiness of his death and the sanctity of his life It was also conceiv'd in the time of Origen that Josephus desirous to find out the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple had said that those things were happened to the Jews in revenge of James the Just who was the brother of Jesus called Christ since they had kill'd him though a just person and no
the charge of the High-priesthood of the Divinatory Writings as well Greek as Latine he burnt above two thousand books brought together from all parts and divulg'd either without Authors or under the names of Authors not much to be credited and reserv'd onely the Sibylline and that after tryall made thereof he lock'd them up in two golden Drawers under the basis of Apollo Palatinus To which relates also that saying of Horace Lib. 1. Epist 3. Et tangere vitet Scripta Palatinus quaetunque recepit Apollo So that it was then in vain to look for them any more in the Capitol or for any to pretend a more familiar acquaintance with them then before Under the Consulship of Silanus and Norbanus in the year of Rome 771. which was the ninteenth after the Incarnation according to our accompt now and the fifth of Tiberius a certain Oracle which agreed not with the time of the City put the people into no small disturbances for it said that three times three hundred years being come and gone an intestine sedition and a kind of Sibaritick madness would prove the destruction of the Romans But Tiberius found much falt with that Verse as guilty of imposture caused a review to be made of all the books which contain'd any prediction rejected some as being of no worth or credit and retain'd others And in the eighteenth year of his Empire which was the 785. of Rome and the two and thirtieth of our Lord under the Consulship of Domitius and Camillus it was propounded in the Senate by Quintilianus Tribune of the people concerning the Sibyls book which Caninius Gallus one of the Quindecimviri had requested might be receiv'd among other books of the same Prophetess and demanded it might be so established by Decree of the Senate Which being uanimously granted Caesar sent Letters somewhat reprehending the Tribune as ignorant of the old custom by reason of his youth and upbraided Gallus that having grown old in knowledge and the Ceremonies he had nevertheless demanded the opinion of the Senators it being uncertain who was the Author thereof and before the Colledge had yielded their judgement neither as the custom was the Verses having been read and taken into consideration by the Masters He further represented what abundance of vain things were published under so celebrious a name that Augustus had under a certain penalty set down a day within which such books should be brought to the Praetor of the City and that it was not lawfull for any to have them in their private possession That the same thing had been decreed by their Ancestors that after the burning of the Capitol during the time of the civil war their Verses were sought at Samos Ilium and Erythrae through Africk also Sicily and the Colonies of Italy whether there were one Sibyl or many and a charge was given to the Priests to distinguish the true Prophesies from the false as near as might be by the judgement of man so the book was referr'd to the examination of the Quindecimviri To be short two and thirty years after viz. in the year of Rome 817. which was the 64. of our Lord and the tenth of Nero under the Consulship of Bassus and Crassus the City having been set on fire on the ninteenth of July the fire could not be stopped till it had devour'd the Palace and Nero's house and all about it And though as Tacitus observes recourse was then made to the books of the Sibyl yet the whole Quarter where they had been disposed by Augustus being destroy'd by the fire it is very probable they were in no less hazard then they had been six and fourty years before when the Capitol was burnt as it was again afterwards in the year of Rome 822. in the month of December CHAP. X. The Motives which he might have gone upon who was the first Projector of the eight books which at this day go under the name of the Sibylline AFter so many irreconcileable differences making it undeniably apparent that the ancient Heathens never had any thing which might be rely'd on as certain concerning their Sibyls after the conflagration of the books sold by one of them to Tarquin and the severall accidents which since the time of Sylla happened to that confused collection which the superstition of the Romans had glean'd together from all quarters of the world after the Senate had in the first place interposed their judgement on all that had been sent to them and that Augustus had 65. years after smothered to the number of two thousand books such as were thought either supposititious or of little consequence and exercised his censure on the rest after that Tiberius had two severall times taken into a re-examination the sentence of Augustus to cull out as superfluous what he had any quarrell at and the fire if not devour'd or prejudic'd at least come very near what had after so many disquisitions and retrivals been preserv'd who I say all these things considered can think it strange that Posterity should from time to time have been guilty of a presumption of furnishing the Romans with some new piece of that kind though it were done meerly by reason of their being the more inquisitive after Writings of that nature by how much they both were and were oblig'd by their own provisions and orders to that purpose to be ignorant of what they contain'd and consequently that they should deferr the publishing thereof till after the death of Adrian at which time supposititious pieces of that kind had free toleration even among the Pagans 74. years after the conflagration of Mount Palatine under Nero and 69. after the desolation of the Capitol under Vitellius and Vespasian And to give a check to the Authority of the Heathenish Prophetesses and confirm this common principle of both the Jews and the Fathers that the most ancient monuments of Idolatry were later then the Writings of Moses and to raise a greater reverence thereof in the Christians who were not acquainted with any thing at so great a distance from their own times they brought upon the stage Noah's daughter-in-law who liv'd eight Ages before and much about the same time that the Gnosticks who called his wife Noria made it their brag among the Christians that they had some of her Writings out of a design to corrupt the simplicity of the Church by a supposititious piece pretending to so great Antiquity the Millenaries and some counterfeit Christians scatter'd up and down certain spurious Oracles and Predictions under the name of one of his sons wives especially among the Gentiles imagining not without some likelihood that the curiosity of those blinded wretches would open a gap for the cheat and dazle their understandings into admiration and that the Christians overjoy'd to find therein the condemnation of idolatry the preaching of one only God the prediction of the Incarnation of the Word the redemption of mankind by the blood of
the Birth of men so they shew'd that Pollio's Wife who had been very much indisposed during her Pregnancy should after her Delivery make her self known to her childe by her joy that that Joy was as it were the Earnest of the child's Blessing as it were a signification of Misfortune to him if his Parents were not joyfull at his Birth But the Emperour transforming the Discourse of Virgil according to his own way makes him say Begin laughing and lifting up thy sight to know thy Mother who should be dear to thee for she hath carried thee in her womb many years thy Parents have not smiled on thee at all thou hast not been put in a Couch nor had splendid Banquet Whereupon he adds by way of Comment upon it How have not the Parents smiled on this childe Certainly it was because he who begot him is a certain Power that hath no Qualities nor can be figured by the delineation of other things nor hath a humane body Now who knows not that being a holy Spirit it can have no experience of Coitions And what inclination and desire can be imagined in the disposition of that good with a greediness whereof all things are inflamed Or what compliance is there between Wisdom and Pleasure But let these things be said onely by those who introduce I know not what humane generation of God and endeavour not to cleanse their minds of every bad Word and Work What a small matter needs there to divert men from the Truth since the pure Imagination of a Mystery where there is not any is able to do it Certain it is that as God the Father hath neither Qualities nor Figure nor Body nor Passions nor Desires so the eternal Generation of his Word hath nothing common with that of men But nothing of all this coming to the knowledg of Virgil and his words neither expressing nor capable of expressing it since the Greek properly speaking is a corruption of the Latine which tended to no other end then to promise Happiness to Pollio's young Son to what purpose have some thought to Philosophize as they have done For there had been no occasion given had they not altered the Sense by supposing as many have done that Pollio's little childe had laughed assoon as he was born and that upon that extraordinary Laughter the whole Prediction of his Happiness had been grounded and imagining that Virgil had said of the child's Laughter what he meant of the Mother's as also that she had born him several years and that he was not descended of Parents subject to either any inclination to Laughter or the natural necessity of Sleep and Rest For should that Great man have returned to Earth again he might with reason have said to Constantine what St. Augustine said since to Julian the Pelagian Restore me my Words and thy dreaming Imaginations will vanish CHAP. XV. That it cannot be said That Virgil in his Fourth Eclogue disguised his own Sentiment THe same thing may also be said of the same Emperour 's supposing that the Poet spake Figuratively and disguised the Truth out of a fear that any of the Potentates of the Royal City should charge him with writing against the Laws of his Country and dcrogating from what had sometime been the sentiment of his Ancestours concerning the Gods and that he wished the prolongation of his own life to see the coming of our Saviour For as it happened about three hundred years since that the Poet Dante mov'd by an Admiration of that incomparable Wit would needs deliver him out of his Hell in like manner the good opinion Constantine had conceived of him hath made him read in his Poem what indeed is not in it out of such an Imagination as those have who looking up to the Clouds think they see such and such Figures therein And thence comes it that he hath spoken so much to his advantage though without any ground either in Truth it self or indeed in the very outward Dress of his Work which was not done according to the certain Pattern of any antient Oracle of the Sibyls nor yet to the eight Books now extant among us and which were writ above one hundred fourscore and six years after the Consulship of Pollio but was design'd onely to express the desire which Virgil had to comply with Augustus and Pollio and to insinuate more and more into their Favour Whereupon I conclude That the antient Paganism what Opinion soever Constantine and others may have had to the contrary hath not given any Testimony either in favour of these pretended Sibylline Oracles which openly oppose Idolatry or yet to confirm the perswasion which the Fathers have had thereof CHAP. XVI That Apollodorus had no knowledg of the Eight Books called the Sibylline FOr to think with the generality of modern Christians that Apollodorus the Erythraean had seen the Third Book because as Lactantius observes from Varro he had affirmed of the Erythraean Sibyl That she was of his City and that she had Prophecied to the Greeks going to Ilium that Troy should be destroyed and that Homer should write Lies is a manifest abuse The Words we read to this purpose are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Troy I compassionate thy Miseries A fair Erinnys shall from Sparta rise Which Europe and the Asian Realms will vex But thee 'bove all with many Woes perplex Her self much crown'd with Fame that never dies An Aged Man Authour of many Lies Shall flourish next of unknown Country blind His Eyes but of a clear quick-sighted Mind He his conceptions into Verse shall frame And what he writes stile with a double Name Profess himself a Chian and declare Th' Affairs of Ilium not as they were Yet clear both in my Words and Verse for he The first that looks into my Works shall be This I say is a manifest Mistake For First It is no hard matter to imagine that the Impostour who composed the Eight Books of the Sibyls and had impudently taken upon him the name of Wife to Noah ' s Son two hundred years after the Death of Varro who died according to Eusebius in the seven hundred twenty and sixth year of Rome might at his ease and long enough before have read what he had alledged out of Apollodorus who was more antient whether in his Latine or in the Greek Text of Apollodorus and that he could do no less for his own Reputation then produce as a probable Argument of his pretended Antiquity what he had found in him Secondly For that Apollodorus who attests of the Erythraean Sibyl that she was born in his City and acknowledged a Native thereof whether by common Report or upon the Credit of her Writings could not have said any such thing of our Counterfeit Sibyl who says she came from Babylon and was Noah's Daughter-in-law and formally denyes that she was by Country an Erythraean and charges the Greeks with Imposture for
presuming to derive her thence A manifest Argument that Apollodorus could not ground his pretension on her contradictory Testimony but that the Counterfeit Sibyl having seen as being later by many Ages what he had written took occasion to oppose it as incompatible with his Fiction Thirdly For that she quarrels with the Greeks for having said of her things which not any one in particular could be convinced to have affirmed to wit That she was the Daughter of Circe and by Father of Gnostus for all those among the Antients who have left any thing behind them have made the Erythraean Sibyl the Daughter of Jupiter or of Apollo and Lamia or of Aristocrates and Hydole or of Crinagoras or in fine of the Shepherd Theodorus and the Nymph Idea and not any one of Circe besides that indeed they could not have done it without Absurdity For how could it have come into their minds to make her born at Erythrae a City of Asia if they had thought her the Daughter of Circe by Nation an Italian born and dwelling near Rome upon the Mount called to this day by her name Monte Circello I pass by as of less Consequence the Stupidity of that pretended Prophetess who to put a slur on the reputation of Homer betrayed her own Ignorance saying That Homer should write not truly but clearly of Ilium because he should see her Works For who will say they are things incompatible To say the Truth and To speak clearly Are they who speak Truth necessarily obliged to conceal themselves and Liers to discover themselves Or can it be said that the Consequence is good He hath my Verses therefore He shall not speak the Truth unless it be presupposed that those Verses are full of Untruths and teach him that hath them to Lie But the Books pretended to be writ by the Sibyls though they have for these fourteen hundred years and still do dazle the eyes of many swarm with such Impertinences CHAP. XVII That Pausanias hath not written any thing which may give credit to the Books mis-named the Sibylline NOr is there any more reason we should take the Discourse of Pausanias who says The Isle of the Rhodians hath been much shaken so that the Oracle of the Sibyl which had been given concerning Rhodes is come to pass for any confirmation of what the pretended Sibyl had writ in two several places The greatest unhappiness that may be shall happen to the Rhodians For he speaks of the Earth-quake which happened in that Isle almost two Ages before under Augustus soon after which Tiberius had in a manner raised it again through his continual Residence therein from the year of Rome 748. to the year 755. upon which account it is that the Epigram of Antiphilus calls him its Restorer and the pretended Sibyl threatens it with a Ruin to come at the end of the World when Rome having accomplished its Period nine hundred fourty and eight years shall be so destroyed by Nero returned from Persia that it shall become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a street Delos shall be no more and Samos be turned into an Heap of Sand. Which may serve to justifie the mistake of Tertullian who thrusting into his Book De Pallio these last words dis-joynted from the Precedent and Consequent applies them to that Desolation of those Isles which reached to his Time saying Of the Isles Delos no longer is Samos is become Sand and the Sibyl is no Lier whereas he should necessarily have concluded That she had lyed in referring to the end of the World and of Rome what had happened long before as also that all the eight Books in three whereof the Mis-fortune of that Isle was recapitulated in the same Terms were contrary to the Opinion since embraced by Lactantius the Draught of one and the same hand CHAP. XVIII That the Prohibition made to read the Books called the Sibylline and that of Hystaspes adds no Authority thereto THere is yet less ground to rely on the Words of Justine Martyr writing to the Emperours Through the working of Evil Spirits is it come that it is forbidden upon pain of Death to read the Books of Hystaspes â—…he Sibyl or the Prophets that so those who read them might by fear be diverted from taking cognizance of good things for we not onely read them without any fear but also as you see we recommend them to your inspection knowing they would be acceptable to you all Yet if we perswade but a little we gain much for that as good Labourers we shall receive a reward from the Master For though we may with some likelyhood conjecture that the Antient Prohibition to read the Prophetical Books was much more strictly observed after the discovery of the forged Pieces of Hystaspes and the Sibyl among the Heathens and that they had a particular aversion for those who gave credit thereto Yet is there not found in their Books any Law to that purpose nor does it appear that they made it much their business to prevent the reading of those Writings which they justly esteemed Supposititious and such as had never been among their Archivi nor yet that they decreed any Punishment to be inflicted on the Readers and Admirers of the Prophets of Israel since the exercise of the Jewish Religion had been always tolerated in the Empire and the Synagogues were continued every where And if the liberty of such as were inclined to Judaism was less after the tumult of Barchochebas and the whole Nation more hated yet did not that Hatred occasion the interdiction of the Prophetical Books but onely the Banishment of the natural Jews out of Palestine and some addition to their Taxes And as Justine neither says nor could have said That the Prohibition made to read the Fatidick Books in the Empire was more particularly levelled against the Christians then others since it was so general that it comprehended all Nations under the Romane Jurisdiction without distinction or exception and that it is manifest it was done upon occasion of the Books laid up first in the Capitol and afterwards under the Base of Apollo Palatinus So was there not any ground to imagine that it proceeded from the suggestion of Devils rather then from a deep Political Prudence which very rationally apprehended that these Oracles for which the Common People though they knew them not had so great an esteem upon this very account that they introduced Novelties into the antient Superstition and if I may so express it clad it in a new Dress notoriously derogated from the Customes derived from Father to Son were likely to fill mens minds with fruitless Curiosities and as Cicero says Valebant ad deponendas Religiones As for the Supposititious Pieces of Hystaspes and the Sibyl which under pretence of teaching the Worship of one God and recommending unto men the Mysteries of Christian Religion filled it with false Opinions and raised upon some sound
〈◊〉 which is equivocal he supposes the Chronicle of Eusebius and his History were written before his Work of Evangelical Demonstration and as less elaborate were of less Authority For whence does he inferr it Eusebius in the thirteenth Chapter of his sixth Book of his Evangelical Demonstration had used these worrds And if our own enquiry into things that concern our selves is of any account we have seen with our own eyes Sion which was of old so celebrious plowed up with Oxen and subjected to the Romanes And every one knows that Eusebius who lived not far from Sion and was a Native of the Countrey might discourse to that effect with the more certainty by reason of his having had the opportunity to go thousands of times to the Place nay what is more that at this day as in the Time of Adrian who re-edified Jerusalem under the Name of Aelia Sion which in our Saviour's Time was within its Walls and the Fortess thereof is wholly out of the Compass of it and in a manner uninhabited so that the ground thereof is and may be cultivated by the labour of Oxen. But Hentenius imagining that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could not signifie any thing but his Ecclesiastical History suffered to slip out of his Memory what the Place of the Authour he had in hand should have suggested to him to wit that that very word is there as frequently in other good Writers used to denote an enquiry a survey a visit as when Plutarch in his Book Of the Cessation of Oracles and Theodoret in the second Chapter of the first Book of his Ecclesiastical History make use of it and when Suidas explicates the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nay further though we were apt to understand it otherwise Eusebius himself would not permit it nor yet that we should suppose his Evangelical Demonstration was or was written after or of greater account or more elaborate and correct then his History since that in the third Chapter of the first Book of his History he cites the Demonstration saying Having disposed into Commentaries purposely designed for that end the Extracts of the Prophets concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ and in others demonstratively confirmed the things which have been declared of him and clearly proves that he had written it before and it follows not that if he had writ it afterwards it should be ever the more elaborate for as much as The Life of Constantine whereof contrary to what many at this day think he declares himself the Authour was written after the year 337. long after his Ecclesiastical History yet was never the more elaborate since that what it hath common with the History is alleged in express Terms in several places which shews that Eusebius had not any thing better to entertain us with nor could have expressed himself in better Terms then he had done in his History which he carried on but to the the year 325. The same may be said of his Chronicle which being cited as well in the Evangelical Praeparation as in his Ecclesiastical History must of necessity have been written first For it is so far upon that account from being less correct and elaborate that on the contrary we must necessarily by it correct several Passages which he hath without sufficient recollection thrust into his History which in that regard is the less elaborate Add to this the likelyhood there is that the Chronicle which at present makes mention not onely of the Death of Licinius of the Councel of Nice and the wretched end of Crispus killed in the year 326. was reviewed by him after the setting forth of his History and consequently more elaborate then any other of his Works which Consideration contributes as much or more then any thing hath been said to the conviction of Hentenius of mistake and to the making of his imagination of no account It is therefore manifest by the Testimonies of St. Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian Eusebius and St. Hiâ—rome in the places alleged as also by Severus Sulpitius in the second Book of his Sacred History by Paulus Orosius in the tenth Chapter of the seventh Book of his History by Primasius Bishop of Adrumetum in his Commentary upon the Apocalyps by Jornandes in his Book De Regn. success by Isidore of Sevil in his Chronicle and his Book of the Death of the Saints by the Authour of the Preface put before the Treatises of St. Augustine upon St. John by Maximus on Dionysius his tenth Epistle by the Counterfeit Abdias and Prochorus in the Life of St. John by Bede on the Apocalyps and Of the six Ages by Him who wrote Of the Martyrdom of St. Timothy by Ambrose Ansbert upon the Apocalyps by Paul the Deacon in Miscelia by Freculsius of Lizieux Tom. 2. Book 2. Chap. 7 and 8. by the Romane Martyrologies of Bede Usuard Ado Notker c. by Michael Syncellus in Encomio Dionysii by Regino by Arothas Arch-Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia by Simeon Metaphrastes by the Greek Fasti by the Arabian Prolegomena by Hermannus sirnamed Contractus by Lambert of Schaffnabourg by Marianus Scotus by Zonaras by Cedrenus by Nicephorus Callistus in the eleventh Chapter of his first Book and the fourty second Chapter of his second Book by Georgius Paechymerius on â—ionysius his Episiles and by almost all those that have written since the Time of St. John that that great Apostle received the Revelations from God under Domitian near the end of his Reign that he was recalled from Paâ—mos by Nerva and writ his Gospel after his return to Ephesus and ended this Life in the third year of Trajan so that whosoever will have the Obstinacy to maintain the contrary must needs before he pretend to have any credit given himself wholly take away that of all Antiquity Fourty two years after the re-establishment of Saint John at Ephesus and thirty eight years after his Death the Emperour Adrian troubled with a mortal Disease and without Issue did upon the five and twentieth of February in the year 138. adopt Antoninus sirnamed The Debonnaire conditionally that the Adoption should be extended to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus the Sons of his former adopted Son who died on the first of January in the year 137. and he himself coming to die the 12th of July following immediately thereupon came abroad the Poem attributed to the Sibyls wherein the Authour who towards the end of the 8th Book assigned the utter destruction of Rome to happen in the four hundred ninety eighth year after its Foundation coincident with the year 195. of our Saviour upon this very account that giving two several times a List of the Emperours he reckons after Adrian Antoninus and his two adopted Sons evidently shews that he lived and writ after their Adoption His own words make it manifest After him that is to say Trajan another one with a Silver Head that is to
seven hundred and tweny years had pretended to the custody of the Sibylline and Prophetical Books dictated by the Spirit of Impiety and Lying to the Heathens in the same City and at the same time that Justin Martyr as Eusebius hath observed made his Exercises so that he was present at the first production of the abortive Issue of the Counterfeit Sibyl and had been one of the most ready to take care of it But when I consider on the one side that the Adulterous Father of the Poem pretendedly Sibylline insinuating that he was a Phrygian by extraction represents Phrygia as the first of the habitable parts of the Earth after the Deluge calls it upon that occasion Life-bringing and Antient introduces in the first Book of his pretended Oracles page 9. Noah making this Discourse Above the Floods T' appear thou Phrygia first shalt strive That so a second Race thou mayst derive Of men and be the common Nurse of all and adds presently after In Phrygia's Confines a black Mountain is Call'd Ararat high reaching to the Skies Translating Ararat out of Armenia into Phrygia it may be because he found there between the Mountain Taurus and the Maeander the City of Apamaea sirnamed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cibotos scituated at the foot of the Mountain Signias in the midst of the Rivers of Marsyas Obrima and Orga all falling into the neighbouring Maeander and imagined that it was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies an Ark in memory of Noah's Ark which he supposed to have rested on the Mountain Signias never considering that that Mountain is not of such height and extent as to bear the Epithets he gives it nor that Josephus whose Writings he might have read and whose person he might have seen affirms from Berosus Hierome of Egypt Mnaseas and Nicholas of Damascus that Noah's Ark rested in Armenia upon the Mountain Baris in the Countrey of the Cordueni above Minyas that the Ruins of it were there preserved and that the Inhabitants were wont to scrape off bitumen to use as a Preservative which is also confirmed by Eusebius from Abydenus and on the other that just at the time that the Counterfeit Sibyl came first abroad Claudius Apollinaris Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia and Apollonius the Romane Senatour and Martyr affirmed as hath been already observed that Montanus a Phrygian and their Contemporary took upon him to act the Prophet I finde so much the more likelyhood to lay this Bastard to him the more free I find it as the Pastour of Hermas from containing any Passage that might displease the Montanists but I determine nothing and am very willing to resign to any one that shall take the trouble upon him the task of teaching us better things CHAP. VIII Divers Extravagances remarkable in the Sibylline Writing IN the beginning of this Treatise I gave several Instances of the fond Imaginations observable in that Work most part whereof are either without order and coherence or no way prejudiced the Truth I might further reduce to this Head an affectation of the Authour sufficiently importunate and no way suitable to the end he seemed to propose to himself namely that of shuffling into his Discourse most of those terms which the Heathens in their Mythologie had used for the Description of Hell and Infernal places as if he had made it his Business to bring it into reputation Such are for instance that of â—rinnys used by him lib 3. page 38. Styx lib. 3. pag. 22. that of Tartarus lib. 1. pag. 7 8. lib. 2. pag. 18. lib. 5. pag. 44. lib. 8. pag. 61. that of Frebus lib. 1. pag. 7. lib. 3. pag. 33. that of Acheron lib. 1. page 11. lib. 2. page 18. lib. 5. page 51. that of Flysium lib. 2. page 18. lib. 3. page 32 34. his licentiousness of expression not well suiting with Christianity taken in good part by the Fathers hath been constantly dissembled by them in like manner as were the Fables of the Titans Saturn and others which were of no small account in the pretended Sibylline Poem but there are some other Passages scattered up and down in it of a much greater concern and such as have occasioned Consequences of far greater importance I shall not insist on the Authour 's having thrust into his eighth Book an Acrostick made up of these five words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereof the initial Letters put together made up the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Fish from which supposition Tertullian in his Book De Baptismo Zeno de Verone Serm. 5. ad Neophytos Optatus Milevitanus lib. 3. St. Augustine De Civit. Dei lib. 18. cap. 23 and others have derived so great prejudice that they have with a certain emulation made a noise about it calling the Lord Jesus Piscem nostrum that is to say our Fish the Christians regenerated by Holy Baptism pisciculos little fishes the Baptismal Font piscinam the fish-pond or place where the Fishes are kept in consequence whereof a pleasant Humour took them of Allegorizing upon the Piscina or Pool mentioned in the Latine Version of the fifth Chapter of Saint John's Gospel CHAP. IX The first Principal Tenet of the Sibylline Writing THe same Authour having fondly derived from Adam which is originally Hebrew that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hades which is purely Greek and signifies in the New Testament either Hell as in Matth. xvi 18. Luke x. 15. and xvi 23. or the Sepulchre and State of the departed in respect of their Bodies as Acts ii 27 31. 1 Cor. xv 55. Apocal. i. 18. and vi 8. and xx 13 14. lays it down as a thing manifest that all men from Adam are after their death confined in Hell till the time of their resurrection saying in the first Book pag. 7. All men who have been Inhabitants of the earth are commanded or said to go to the habitations of Hell and page 11. where he speaks of the three Sons of Noah whom he feigns never to have been sick or troubled with the inconveniences of Old-age They by a certain sleep o'recome shall die And gone to Ach'ron there in honour be For happy they were of the blessed Race In whom God Sabaoth did his Wisdom place His will to these he ever did declare To these who though in Hell yet happy are He lays it down I say as a thing manifest That all men from Adam descend into hell and there expect their Resurrection a Supposition refuted by the History of Eliah whom Elizeus saw ascending into Heaven in a Whirl-winde and by the Gospel which assures us that the Thief converted upon the Cross was the same day that he died with the LORD in Paradise and by St. Paul who teaches that as being in the body we are absent from the Lord so being absent from the body we are present with the Lord and protests that his desire is to depart and to be with
to the Corinthians All the wickedness which as so much false Alloy is mixed among the things that are being taken away by the melting of the Purgative Fire whatsoever drew its Original from God shall become such as it was at the beginning before it had received the tincture of that wickedness Saint Ambrose in his Sermon upon the thirty sixth Psalm according to the Greeks By Fire therefore shall the Sons of Levi be purged by Fire Ezechiel by Fire Daniel but though they are tried by Fire yet shall they say We have passed through the Fire and through the Water others shall remain in the Fire upon these the Fire shall fall down like dew as upon the Hebrew children c. We shall be saved by Faith yet shall we be saved so as by Fire though we shall not be absolutely burnt up yet shall we burn and the Holy Scripture teacheth us how some continue in the Fire others pass through it to wit as the Egyptians were overwhelmed in the Red Sea through which the children of Israel had passed before them c. And on the twentieth Section of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm according to the Greeks It is necessary that all those who desire to return to Paradise be tried by Fire for it is not without reason written that Adam and Eve being thrust out of the seat of Paradise God placed at the entrance of Paradise a flaming Sword which turned every way All therefore must pass through the Flames whether it be Saint John the Evangelist whom the Lord loved so dearly that he said of him to Peter If I would have him to stay what is that to thee Follow thou me some have doubted of his death of his passage through the Fire we cannot doubt or whether he be Peter who was entrusted with the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven he must say We have passed through the Fire c. One onely who is the Justice of God was not subject to the sense of that Fire to wit Christ who hath committed no sin for the Fire found not in him what it might have burned And in his Book Of Widows God requires not of thee the price of a glittering Metal but the Gold which the Fire cannot burn at the day of Judgment Saint Hierome towards the end of the sixty sixth Chapter of Esay disputing against those who denied the perpetuity of Torments suffered by the Damned proposes his sentiment in these Terms which suppose a general examination by Fire at the last day As we believe the Torments of the Devil and of all such as deny God and of wicked men who have said in their heart There is no God to be eternal so do we believe moderated and capable of compassion the Sentence of the Judg concerning those who though sinners and wicked are yet Christians whose Works are to be tried and purged by Fire Saint Augustine in the four and twentieth Chapter of his sixteenth Book Of the City of God where he speaks of the Vision of Abraham mentioned in the fifteenth Chapter of Genesis By that Fire which Abraham saw is signified The Day of Judgment distinguishing between those who are to be saved by the Fire and those who are to be condemned to the Fire And in the five and twentieth Chapter of the twentieth Book where he explicates the second and third Verses of the third Chapter of Malachy By the things which have been said it seems to be very manifest that in that Judgment that is the Last some are to undergo Purgatory pains c. We are to take the Sons of Levi Juda and Jerusalem for the Church of God assembled not onely among the Hebrews but also among other Nations not such as it is at the present where if we say We have no sin we deceive our selves and the Truth is not in us but such as it it shall be then cleansed by the last Judgment as a floor that is swept those to whom such a cleansing is necessary having been also cleansed by the fire The Authour of the third Homily upon the Epiphany unjustly attributed to Eusebius Emissenus since it seems to have been written either by Eucherius of Lyons or by Faustus of Rhegium There that is at the last Day Conflagrations changing their nature the Just shall pass through horrid Gulfs Their Bodies which are to derive Glory from their pains because they are not burthened by sins shall not be touched by the Fires for the cruel Burnings shall prevail nothing on those whom the Flames of sinfull lusts had not overcome before and the rational heat shall not be able to injure those on whom Purity hath conferred reverence Otherwise avoiding wrath it shall make way for the vapours and will of its own accord obey because it shall not finde any thing on which it may be necessary it should exercise Judgment Diadochus Bishop of Photica in the Antient Epirus in the last Chapter of his Book Of Spiritual perfection Those who at their death shall express ever so little fear shall be left in the multitude of all other men as undergoing the Judgment to the end that being examined by the Fire of Judgment they may receive from the All-good God and the King Jesus Christ the reward due unto them according to their Works From the joynt Testimony of these twelve Witnesses now produced it is apparent that the second head of the Opinions proposed by the Sibylline Writing was equally with the former constantly maintained by the most eminent Prelates of both the Greek and Latine Churches till after the year 459. wherein Diadochus subscribed with the Councel of the Antient Epirus the Letter written to the Emperour Leo the First concerning the proceeding of Timothy surnamed Aelurus Usurper of the Chair of Alexandria against Proterius whom he had Assassinated Nay it further appears from the Epitaph of Vilithutâ— a Parisian Lady writ in the year 560. by Venantius Fortunatus afterwards Bishop of Poictiers that the Church of that Time was not free from that Opinion which he expresses in these Terms Digni lumen habent damnati incendia deflent Illos splendor alit hos vapor igne coquit Res est una quidem duplici sed finditur actu Nam cremat indignos quo probat igne pios The Blest have Light the Damn'd their Fires bewail Those are in Bliss o're these the Flames prevail The same thing doth t' a double Act divide The Bad i' th Fire are Burn'd the Just are Try'd CHAP. XI The Third main Tenet proposed by the Sibylline Writing THe third Head of Doctrine proposed by the Sibylline Writing concerning the State of the Dead is that The Saints after their Resurrection are to be reconducted to live in that Paradise of the possession whereof Adam and Eve were for their disobedience deprived For the Authour of that Romance having taken literally and understood carnally what he had read Luke xxiii 43. 2 Cor. xii 4. Apoc. ii 7. concerning Paradise and
John vi 31. concerning the Bread of heaven and Apocal. ii 17. concerning the Hidden Manna tells us in his Preface copied out by Theophilus of Antioch and Lactantius that Those who honour God inherit the true and eternal Life that is to say the time of Eternity having their abode in Paradise the flourishing Garden and eating the delicious Bread of heaven which at the end of the seventh Book page 56. he means of Manna saying All together eat of the bedewing Manna with their white Teeth This Doctrine was so much the more acceptable to the Fathers the more they thought themselves obliged to conceive an aversion for the extravagant Imagination of the Gnosticks who transformed Paradise into an Archangel and assigned for its station the fourth Heaven Thus Theophilus who gave Paradise the qualification of perpetual and hanging in the midst between heaven and the world grounded the perswasion he would give of it to Autolycus on the Authority of the pretended Sibyl and after his Example Lactantius in the twelfth Chapter of his second Book St. Irenaeus having in the thirty sixth Chapter of his fifth Book alledged these words of Esay out of the two and twentieth Verse of the sixty sixth Chapter As the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me assigns to each of them its Inhabitants saying Then shall those who are worthy the conversation of heaven pass thither others shall enjoy the pleasures of Paradise and others shall possess the Holy earth and the splendour of the City that is to say Jerusalem Tertullian in the fourty seventh Chapter of his Apologetick We know Paradise to be a place of Divine pleasure destined for the reception of the spirits of the Saints and separated from the knowledg of the common world by a certain inclosure of that fiery Zone And in the eighth Chapter of his Poem of the Last Judgment There is a place in the Eastern Parts wherein the Lord takes great deligâ—… where there is a clear Light c. it is a Region most rich in Fields c. thither comes every godly man But in the fifty fifth Chapter of his Book Of the Soul this Great man dazled by the delusions of the Montanists moderates the Opinion he had taken out of the Books of the Counterfeit Sibyl and reserving Paradise for the entertainment of the Martyrs onely excludes out of it all the rest of the Faithfull saying You say that our Sleep that is to say the place of our Repose is in Paradise whither the Patriarchs and Prophets upon the Resurrection of our Lord being Appendages thereof passed from Hell but how comes it that that Region of Paradise which is under the Altar revealed to St. John discovered no Souls but those of the Martyrs How came Perpetua that most couragious Martyr in the Revelation which was made to her of Paradise not long before her Suffering to see there onely her companions in Martyrdom but that the Sword which keeps the Entrance of Paradise suffers none to get in but those who are departed in Christ not in Adam Saint Cyprian after the Example of his Master Tertullian speaking of our Lord to Demetrian Proconsul of Africk a passionate Enemy of Christianity hath this expression He opens to us the way of Life he is the Authour of our return into Paradise And in his Book Of Mortality towards the end We account Paradise saith he to be our Country we have already begun to have for our Fathers the Patriarchs And in the Chapter of Exhortation to Martyrdom If it be glorious for the Souldiers engaged in common Wars after the Conquest of their Enemies to return Triumphant into their Country how much a nobler and greater Glory is it to return Triumphant to Paradise after we have overcome the Devil and to carry away victorious Trophies after we have subdued him who had foiled us before to the place whence the Sinner Adam had been thrust out Lactantius in the place above cited God having pronounced his Sentence against Sinners that every one should work out his own livelihood cast man out of Paradise and encompassed Paradise round about with Fire that man might not approach it till he had exercised sovereign Judgment upon Earth and recalled to the same place those Just men that worshipped him Death being taken away Saint Athanasius in his Treatise upon these Words Matth. xii 27. All things are given to me c. Death prevailed from Adam to Christ the Earth was cursed and Hell opened and Paradise shut c. But assoon as all things were given to him and that he was made man all was amended and accomplished The Earth in stead of the Curse it lay under before was blessed and Paradise opened and Hell daunted And in his Exposition of Faith Christ shewed the entrance into Paradise whence Adam had been thrust out and into which he is again entred by the Thief according to what our Saviour said This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise whither Paul also is entred Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in his Mystagogical Instruction The Paradise of God which he had planted towards the East is open to thee whence our first Parent was banished because of his Transgression And this is signified by thy turning from the West to the East the place of Light Saint Basil in his Treatise Of Paradise How shall I be able to bring thee into sight of thy Country to the end thou mayst recall thy self from banishment c. If thou art carnal thou hast the description of him that is corporal And in the seven and twentieth Chapter of his Book Of the Holy Ghost We all in our Prayers look towards the East but there are few of us that know we thereby seek our antient Country that is to say the Paradise which God planted in Eden Saint Gregory of Nyssa in his Oration of the fourty Martyrs That then which is demanded is Whether Paradise because of the Turning Sword is also inaccessible to the Saints and If the Champions of Christ are excluded Paradise what Promise there remains upon which they should undertake Combats for Piety and whether they should obtain less then the Thief to whom the Lord said This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise though the Thief came not voluntarily to the Cross but when he was come near Salvation that Eagle-sighted and generous Thief saw the Treasure and finding an opportunity stole Life honourably and happily abusing the nature of Theft and saying Lord have me in remembrance when thou comest into thy Kingdom He was honoured with Paradise and does the Flaming Sword keep the entrance of Paradise against the Saints But the Question resolves it self For thence it is that the Word hath not represented the Sword always placed against those that enter but Turning that it might be opposite to the unworthy and be behinde the worthy opening unto them the not-forbidden entrance of Life into which those that is to say
the fourty Martyrs are entred in the assurance of their Combats having without suffering passed through the Flame which we also having undaunted passed through may be received into Paradise And thence it comes that in his Funeral Orations upon Pulcheria and Flacilla her Mother he says of the former The Plant hath been removed hence but it hath been replanted in Paradise and of the later By that that is by Faith was she carried hence into the Bosom of the Father of Faith Abraham near the Fountain of Paradise Saint Ambrose upon the twentieth Section of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm according to the Greeks lays it down as hath been already shewed for certain that it is necessary those who desire to return into the Paradise out of which Adam had been driven should pass through the Fire of Judgment Paulinus having forsaken the World to lead a Religious Life afterwards Bishop of Nola in his second Fpistle to Severus his intimate Friend This is acceptable and well-pleasing in the sight of God that our good should be voluntarily that we might receive the things which are ours that is to say the house of Paradise and eternal Life wherein we were created and which if we purged from the possession of this earth whereinto we came through condemnation regain then may we as truly recalled from Banishment into our Country or returned after a long Pilgrimage into the house we were born in say God is our Portion in the land of the living c. Prudentius in the tenth of his Hymns While thou O God recallest and reformest thy body subject to dissolution in what Region wilt thou command the pure Soul to rest it self Hidden in the bosom of the Blessed Old man it shall lodge there where Eleazar is whom the rich man burning sees from afar off encompassed with flowers all about O Redeemer we follow thy Sayings whereby Triumphing over black Death Thou commandest the Thief who was Companion of thy Cross to come after thee Behold already the lightsom way of spacious Paradise opened to the Faithfull and it is lawfull to go into that Grove of which man had been deprived by the Serpent The Authour of the Homily upon the Thief unjustly attributed to Eusebius Emissenus This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise as in thy hereditary and paternal seat which at thy entrance shall be opened though upon the expulsion thence of Adam nay of two to wit Adam and Eve it had been shut up to innumerable people Enter thou therefore the first of all but with a happier entrance then the first into Paradise it being not required thou shouldest with Adam see hell Fear not thou shalt there meet with any mortal Viand any Law any Tree I will be to thee both Food and Life And that thou mayst not have the least apprehension that there may haply be some enemy in that blessed Grove and that the antient Thief may lay Ambushes for thee I will bring thee into it and confirm the possession thereof to thee The Authour of the Questions attributed to Justin Martyr in the seventy fifth Question The souls of the Just are carried into Paradise where they have the conversation and sight of the Angels and Archangels and the Vision of Christ our Saviour And in the seventy sixth Question It was profitable for the Thief at his entrance into Paradise to learn by the effects the advantage of Faith by which he had the honour to be admitted into the Assembly of the Saints where he is kept till the day of the Resurrection and retribution Now he hath that Sentiment of Paradise which is called Cogitative according to which the Souls see themselves the things that are below them and moreover the Angels and Daemons It were no hard matter to add to this number those Authours who have followed the same prejudicate Opinion as the Monk Caesarius in his third Dialogue St. Hierome in his hundred twenty ninth Epistle c. But the fourteen before cited are sufficient to shew that till after the year 450 their Opinion which had its first rise from the pretended Sibylline Books was so common in the Church that it met not with any Contradiction CHAP. XII The fourth Capital Tenet proposed by the Sibylline Writing THe fourth Supposition advanced by the Authour of that Counterfeit Piece concerning the State of the departed is That Jerusasalem rebuilt and made more glorious then ever the Son of God being descended from heaven shall establish a reign of a thousand years full of sensible enjoyments and a miraculous fertlity and abundance of corporal goods He spreads his Fiction before us in these Terms in the second Book page 14. The fruitfull earth shall again bring forth several Fruits And page 18. The Angels raising the Good out of the midst of the burning River shall convey them into light and bring them to a life free from care There is the immortal way of the great God and three Fountains of Wine Honey and Milk the earth also common to all and being divided by neither walls nor hedges shall then of it self bring forth several Fruits And in the third Book page 32. Then shall God give uno men a very great joy For the earth the Trees and the innumerable flocks of Sheep shall furnish men with the true fruit of Wine sweet Honey white Milk and the best Corn that ever mortals had And page 35. The Wolves upon the Mountains shall eat grass with the Lambs the spotted Lynxes shall feed with the Goats the Bears with the Calves and all Mortals the flesh-devouring Lion shall eat straw in the Manger c. And the Dragons shall rest themselves with the motherless little ones And in the six and fourtieth page of the fifth Book The Land of the Hebrews shall be holy and bring forth all things viz. the River of the Rock that distills Honey and the immortal Milk shall fall down upon the tongues of all the Just And in the fourtieth page All those who live a godly life shall live again upon the earth And in page the nine and fourtieth God hath made the City he delighted in more bright then the Stars the Sun and the Moon So that it is without all question it was the design of this Impostour who in imitation of the second Book of Esdras in the 19th Verse of the second Chapter and the 35th Verse of the fourteenth Chapter would needs entertain us with such extravagant Narrations to abuse the words of Esay and Saint John who in the twentieth and one and twentieth Chapters of his Apocalyps mystically represents the Church under the Name of the holy City the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of Heaven built of Gold and precious Stones having no need of Sun or Moon and in the midst of it and of either side of the River was there the Tree of Life which bare twelve manner of Fruits yielding its fruit every Moneth and the leaves of
the Tree were for the healing of the Nations The same Imagination so gained upon the holy Fathers that lived after the middle of the second Age that those good Souls prepossessed by the Opinion they had conceived of the pretended Sibylline Writing took literally and apprehended after the Jewish sence whatever they met with in Esay and Saint John concerning the First Raesurrection of those who died for the Testimony of Jesus their reign of a thousand years and all the glory of the celestial Jerusalem Thus Justin Martyr in his Dialogue against Trypho answering that Jew who page 306 had asked him Whether he acknowledged that Jerusalem should be rebuilt and the Christians assemble there and rejoyce with Christ in the company of the Patriarchs Prophets c. not onely confesses it but maintains further that he had already averred it reflecting no doubt on those words of page 271. where he saith that Christ being raised should come again inâ—â— Jerusalem and then drink anew and eat with his Disciples And secondly that he had signified unto him that Many among those who were not of the pure and religious sentiment of the Christians acknowledged it not whereupon he adds I and as many others as are of the right and truly Christian sentiment in all things know that there must be a Resurrection of the Flesh and the Prophets Ezechiel Esay and others confess that after Jerusalem shall be built adorned and amplified a thousand years shall be spent there alledging to that purpose the sixty fifth Chapter of Esay and the twentieth of the Apocalyps And reinculcating it page 340. where he says He viz. Jesus is the eternal Light which is to shine in Jerusalem and page 369. where he writes of the Christians that they know with whom Christ they shall be in that Land viz. Judaea which he had called the Land of all the Saints and that they shall inherit eternal and incorruptible goods Eusebius in the nine and thirtieth Chapter of the third Book of his Ecclefiastical History attributing the same opinion to Papias Bishop of Hierapolis who had been a follower of the Disciples of Saint John hath this Discourse He affirms also many other things that are more fabulous among which he saith that there are a certain thousand of years to pass after the Resurrection and that Christ shall reign corporally in the same Land Things which I think he hath onely imagined upon a misapprehension of the Apostolical Expositions Saint Irenaeus in the thirty fifth Chapter of his fifth Book does not onely agree with Papias but relyes upon his authority citing out of his fourth Book these words which Papias attributed to Saint John The daies shall come wherein there shall grow up Vines having each of them ten thousand Branches and upon every Branch ten thousand Boughs and on every Bough ten thousand Buds and on every Bud ten thousand Bunches and on every Bunch ten thousand Grapes and every Grape pressed shall yield twenty five Measures of Wine And when any one of the Saints shall take one of the Grapes another shall cry I am a better Grape take me and bless God by me In like manner one Corn of Wheat shall bring forth ten thousand Ears and every Ear shall have ten thousand Crains and every Grain shall give ten Pounds of clear and fine Flower and all other Fruits Seeds and Herbs proportionably Was ever the Synagogue cut off from the Covenant of God delivered of an Extravagance more deserving contempt then this which feigns Bunches of Grapes speaking and Vines yielding infinitely beyond all imaginable force of Nature millions of millions of measures of Wine And yet the Holy Martyr Saint Irenaeus out of an excess of respect by no means excusable in him preferring the authority of Papias deceived by the counterfeit Sibyl before all reason blindly swallowed it and in his two and thirtieth Chapter inferred from it that The Just shall reign here below before the day of Judgment that on the day of the Sabbath of the Just they shall have a Table furnished from God who shall replenish them with all manner of Viands That The Wolves shall feed with the Lambs and the Lyon shall live on Straw and in the thirty fifth Chapter that The Just shall reign on earth in the thirty sixth that proportionably to the fruit they have brought forth an hundred sixty or thirty for one they shall be placed either in Heaven or in Paradise or in Jerusalem and that In that regard it was that the Son of God said In my Father's House are many Mansions Tertullian who lived near the same time to shew us that he was carryed away with the same Prejudice cryes out in the twenty fourth Chapter of his third Book Against Marcion We confess that the Kingdom is promised us upon Earth for a thousand years after the Resurrection in the City of Divine workmanship Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven There is some ground to think that Meliton Bishop of Sardes Contemporary with Justin Martyr was of the same Opinion with him concerning the temporal Reign of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem in asmuch as to maintain it he writ upon the Revelation of Saint John the words whereof have been extreamly wrested by the Patrones of that Imagination but in regard I am nothing pressed and have onely Conjecture to inferr it from I shall forbear to urge it I come to Nepos the Aegyptian Bishop reverenced by Dionysius of Alexandria for his Faith and great Learning in the attainment whereof he had spent himself to the Last Of this Prelate Eusebius saies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Teaching that the Promises made to the Saints in the Holy Scriptures were to be accomplished after the manner conceived by the Jews supposing that there were to pass a certain thousand of Years in the pursuit of corporal Enjoyments upon Earth and being of opinion he might confirm his Supposition by the Revelation of John He writ concerning the said Revelation a certain Discourse entituled A Reprehension of the Allegorists as not able to endure that men should take otherwise then Literally the Promises proposed by the Holy Spirit for the comfort of the Church nor that they should be understood mystically About fifty years after appeared our Victorinus Bishop of Poictiers who suffered Martyrdom on the second day of November in the year 303. after he had composed divers Treatises great indeed in respect of the sense and slight in respect of the contexture of the Words according to the observation of Saint Hierome which cannot be contradicted since there is nothing left of them and that the Commentary upon the Apocalyps which goeth under his name contains at this day nothing of what the Antients had read in it But Saint Hierome assuring us that he was of the number of those who expected to come from Heaven a Jerusalem adorned with precious Stones and Gold we need not fear upon his Affirmation to
cannot without some trouble reflect that a Person so great as Saint Epiphanius should be through I know not what forgetfulness reduced to alledg for a reason to his Adversary the very thing he put in question and which had most need of proof so I think my self obliged to make this Observation That the Christians at that time used their hope concerning the communication of their Suffrages to the Dead with so much indulgence that they extended it even to those whom they thought dead in mortal sin and out of the communion of the Church CHAP. XV. Of the Prayers made and Alms given heretofore by the Christians for the damned NOt to bring upon the Stage the vain imaginations of Origen and his Party who conceived no other Punishments to be inflicted on either men or Devils then such as were Purgatory and for a time nor yet much to urge that some very Great Person as St. Gregory Nyssen in his great Catechistical Oration in his Treatise Of the Soul and in that which he made upon the eight and twentieth Verse of the fifteenth Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians and St. Hierome in the eighteenth Book upon Isaiah Chap. lxvi 24. seem to have some time countenanced it I shall insist on this that some others no less eminent were of Opinion that there might be obtained some diminution of the Torments of the Damned and that they might be relieved by Prayers and Alms. Hence St. Chrysostome in his third Homily upon the Epistle to the Philippians speaking of those who thought it much to dispose of their wealth to Good Uses cryes out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Let us bewail them let us assist them according to our power let us finde out some little relief for them little indeed yet let us help them that little And how shall we do it By praying our selves and exhorting others to pray for them giving frequently for their sakes to the poor That brings some comfort The same St. Chrysostome affirming that the Catechumens have no part in the publick Prayers made for the Faithfull departed adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The Catechumens are not honoured with that consolation but are deprived of all assistance of that nature one onely excepted What is that It is in your power to give to the poor for them and that gives them some refreshment And in the sixty second Homily upon the Gospel of St. John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. If he who is dead were a sinner and had many ways offended God it is requisite we weep for that would be of no advantage to him but do that which may procure him some consolation viz. give Alms and Offerings This also we are to rejoyce at that he is deprived the opportunities of commiting wickedness Prudentius in the fifth of his Hymns upon a Supposition that the Night between Easter-Eve and Easter-Day the Souls of the Damned receive some ease and remission of their pains saith Sunt spiritibus saepe nocentibus Poenarum celebres sub Styge Feriae Illâ nocte sacer quâ rediit Deus Stagnis ad Superos ex Acheronticis c. Marcent suppliciis Tartara mitibus Exultátque sui carceris otio Umbrarum populus liber ab ignibus Nec fervent solito flumina sulphure c. That is Th' Infernal Spirits sometimes gain An intermission of their pain That Night when God from Acheron Ascended to his heav'nly Throne c. A milder torture reigns in Hell The Ghosts in Flames no longer dwell Proud that their bonds were eas'd awhile The streams of Sulphur cease to boil c The same Prudentius at the end of his Hamartigenia numbring himself among the Damned hath this Discourse Esto cavernoso quia sic pro labe necesse est Corporeâ tristis me sorbeat ignis Averno Saltem mitificos incendia lenta vapores Exhalent aestúque calor languente tepescat Lux immensa alios Tempora vincta coronis Glorificent me poena levis clementer adurat c. If since our Stains corporeal so require I shall be swallom'd by Avernal Fire Yet may at least those Flames a gentler heat Exhale and Vapours less intense beget Whilest others glorious Crowns of Light obtain Let me but have a gentler heat and pain And in the Hymn of St. Fructuosus Bishop of Tarragone Fo rs dignabitur meis medelam tormentis dare prosperante Christo c. It may be also he will give ease to my Torments Christ granting the good success For referring the giving of that ease to the Destruction of the World he shews it was not his meaning to speak of Purgatory such as the Church of Rome conceives it at this day but of the final condition of Souls at the last Judgment Paulinus Bishop of Nola applying to himself the Parable of the sixteenth of Luke and imagining himself in the place of the wicked rich man whom the Gospel represents as damned says to Nicetas Bishop of Dacia beyond Danubius which we now call Transsylvania Nos locis quantum meritis dirempti Eminus celsis humiles patronis Te procul sacris socium catervis Suspiciemus Quis die nobis dabit hoc in illa Ut tui stemus lateris sub umbra Et tuae nobis requietis aura Temperet ignem Tunc precor nostri nimium memento Et patris sancti gremio recumbens Roscido nobis digito furentem Discute flammam We who in place from thee as far As in our merits distant are From our Abyss to thee on high Direct our cry Who is 't when that day comes will yield Thy shade may serve us for a shield And some cool air from thy blest seat May fan our heat Ah! then preserve us in thy mind And on thy Father's Breast reclin'd But one drop from thy finger shake Our thirst to slake Saint Augustine in the four and twentieth Chapter of his one and twentieth Book Of the City of God professes that he does not oppose such as applied to the damned those words of the seventy seventh Psalm according to the Greeks Hath God forgotten to be gracious saying Quibus placet istam sententiam usque ad illa impiorum tormenta protendere c. I would have those who are pleased to extend that Sentence even to the Torments of the damned understand it at least in this manner that the Wrath of God which was pronounced against them for their eternal punishment still remaining upon them God shuts not up in anger his tender mercies and causes them not to be tormented with so much rigour as they deserve not so as they should never undergo those pains or that a time should come when they should be determined but to the end they should suffer them more remissly then their deserts might require For by that means both the Wrath of God shall remain and he shall not withhold his compassions even in his wrath which I confirm not though I do
who would prove their Custom out of the Old in the same manner as these later disclaim all the advantage which St. Chrysostom had promised himself in the allegation of the Apostolical Law Secondly That it argues want of circumspection to suppose as acknowledged what is in Question viz. That the Synagogue under the Old Testament made any Prayers for the dead and that their Practice can be justified by Writings either precedent or immediately subsequent to the Birth of Christianity For since the Hierosolymitane Talmud was not by the Confession even of the Jews themselves began till one hundred sixty two years after the Destruction of both Jerusalem and its Temple and consequently fifteen years at least after the Death of Tertullian which happened as S. Hierome would have it under Caracalla Assassinated on the eighth of April in the year 217. seventy nine years after the first littering of the pretended Sibylline Writings that the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud began not till the 476. year after the final Destruction of the Temple that is to say in the year of our Lord 546. that it took up an hundred years to finish it that these two Collections were made by the implacable enemies of the Gospel and its Truth such as have thrust together without either sincerity or judgment all the Extravagancies that ever troubled the Brains of their Ancestours delivered over as themselves into a reprobate sence and that their Opinions concerning the State of the dead hold correspondence neither with the Sentiment of the Fathers nor with that of the Greeks nor lastly with that which the Church of Rome holds at present there cannot with reason any certa in relyance be made thereon Thirdly That to no purpose is alledged the seventeenth Verse of the fourth Chapter of Tobit which runs thus Pour out thy Bread the old Latine Version made according to the Chaldee adds and thy Wine on the Burial of the Just but give nothing to the wicked because First it is not manifest that there ever was really such a man as Tobit and that the Relation of his Adventures smell as much as may be of a Romance Secondly That the Jews as well Antient as Modern have not attributed any authority thereto Thirdly That all the Greek Fathers unanimously and many of the Latine have held it to be Apocryphal Fourthly That though of all the Canonical Books it were the most Canonical yet neither ought the words alledged out of it to be taken literally since they are notoriously figurative nor could they have any relation to the Custom either of praying or making Offerings for the Dead but according to the use of Funeral Entertainments or Banquets ordained not to procure ease to the Departed but to relieve the kindred he had left to induce them to an oblivion of their mourning and to comfort them For as the Prophet Jeremy threatning the Jews with the Judgment of God which was likely to deprive them of all means of comforting one another said Neither shall men break Bread for them in mourning to comfort them for the Dead neither shall men give them the Cup of consolation to drink for their Father or for their Mother so Tobit exhorting his Son to the Offices of Charity towards his afflicted Brethren orders him to Pour out his Bread and his Wine on the Burial of the dead and by a kind of speaking to fill it by kindly treating those that were in mourning upon their accompt and raising them out of their Heaviness which does not inferr either Prayer or Offering for the dead but onely a charitable care and tenderness towards the living Fourthly That the words of the Son of Sirach in the thirty third Verse of the seventh Chapter of his Ecclesiasticus A gift hath grace in the sight of every man Living and for the Dead detain it not make nothing to the Business of Offerings and Prayers for the Dead to which some would have them relate in as much as that Authour who made his Collection of Sentences in the year 247. before the Birth of our Saviour is so far from saying that the gift which was to be given upon the accompt of the dead was to be exercised towards the departed Person himself that he expresly declares it was so done upon the accompt of the dead that it referred as to its proper object to the surviving adding in the next verse Fail not to be with them that weep and mourn with them that mourn as if he said That that kindness which he desired should not be detained for the dead consists not in praying for the dead but in having a sympathy for their affliction who bewail him and endeavouring to comfort them Besides it is to be noted by the way that the Book of Ecclesiasticus though very antient since it was written 247. years before the Birth of our Saviour and very full of good Doctrine upon which accompt it hath been cited by the Fathers was never enrolled among the Canonical Books neither by the Jews nor by any of the Greek Fathers nor by most of the Latines Fifthly That there cannot be a clearer Evidence to convince those of Errour who suppose that the Custom of Praying for the Dead was antiently among the Jews then to urge that there is not the least track of it in those who were Contemporary with the Apostles viz. Philo who had made himself Master of all prophane Wisdom and the Philosophy of Plato and who was in Caligula's Time reputed the Glory of his Nation and Josephus who was one of the chief Commanders of the Jewish War under Nero and the most diligent searcher into the Antiquities of his Nation under Domitian So that the later Jews must needs have borrowed the Custom they still continue either from some piece of Heathenish superstition or from the Opinions crept into Christianity through their means who were admirers of the pretended Sibylline Writing Sixthly That the second Book of the Maccabees was neither known nor of any accompt among the Jews For as it is manifest that it hath no coherence with the first neither in respect of the observations of time nor in respect of events and their circumstances so we both may and ought to hold it for certain that Josephus who very strictly followed the first either had not any knowledg of it or if he had made no accompt of it since that even when it was his business to represent some History whereof there was also a relation in that Book he hath not onely related it according to his own way but hath often laid it down in circumstances as to the matter of fact incompatible with what was reported thereof in the said Book Whereto may be added the strange obscurity of it which is such that it is not known neither who they were nor about what Time flourished either Jason the Cyrenian the first Authour or the Abbreviator who reduced into a small Epitome the five Books of
Jason nor yet in what Language Jason had first writ them nor whether he was more antient then Josephus who finished his Work Of the Antiquities in the year of our Lord 94. concurrent with the thirteenth of Domitian and the fourty fourth before the Forgeries of the counterfeit Sibyl appeared nor lastly whether that Abridgment came betimes into the hands of the Christians it appearing not that any of them had seen it before the year of our Loâ—d 200. Seventhly That it is absolutely impossible that any of the Christians of the second third and fourth Ages should in their Prayers for the dead have proposed to themselves for a Pattern the Example of Judas Maccabaeus and the Judgment which either Jason the Cyrenian or his Abridger made of it And that for these reasons First Because it was not cited by any of the Fathers till 280. years after the first coming abroad of the pretended Sibylline Writing For St. Augustine having first cited it in the year 416. Prosper Africanus followed him about the year 450. It was afterwards cited by Bacchiarius in his Epistle to Januarius about the year 460. and Julian of Toledo about the year 680. in the one and twentieth Chapter of the first Book of his Prognosticks and Damascene about the year 760. in his Oration De dâ—…nctis and Peter sirnamed the Venerable Abbot of Clugny about the year 1150. in the second Epistle of his first Book and Ecbert a Priest of Bonne near Cullen about the year 1160. Adversus Cathar serm and Guy of Perpignan first General of the Order of the Carmelites afterwards Bishop of Majorca about the year 1318. De Haeresibus Secondly Because we do not finde that any of the Fathers have cited or so much as made the least discovery that they had seen the second Book of the Maccabees before Clemens Alexandrinus and Origene among the Greeks about the year 200 and 240. the former in the fifth of his Stromata and the later in the first Chapter of the second Book De Principiis and his third Homily upon Solomon's Song and his eighteenth Tome upon St. John and upon the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romanes and St. Cyprian among the Latines in the year 252. in his four hundred and fifty sixth Epistle De exhortatione Martyrii the eleventh Chapter and Zeno of Verona about the year 360. Sermone de Resurrectione De Sancto Arcadio Thirdly In regard that as not any one of the Greek Fathers either in Councel or in any particular Writing held the second Book of the Maccabees for Canonical so many of the Latines for instance Tertullian in his fourth Book Adversùs Marcionem carmine scripto cap. 7. St. Hilary in his Prologue upon the Psalms Philastrius Bishop of Brescia in the Chapter de Apocryphis St. Hierome in his seventh Epistle and the one hundred and third and his Prologue upon the Book of Kings and Solomon Ruffinus upon the Crede the Priests of Hilary's Epistle to St. Augustine Primasius Bishop of Adrumetum in Apocal. lib. 1. cap. 4. Junilius another African Prelate in the seventh Chapter of his first Book De partitione Divinae Legis St. Gregory in the seventeenth Chapter of the nineteenth Book of his Morals upon Job the Authour of the Book De mirabilibus Sanctae Scripturae lib. 2. cap. 33. Beda De sex aetatibus In Reg. lib. 4. In Apocal cap. 4. Ambrose Ansbert In Apoc. lib. 3. cap. 4. Alcuinus Adversùs Elipand lib. 1. Charle-Maigne in his Capitulary of the year 789. cap. 10. and the Commentaries attributed to St. Victorinus Bishop of Poictiers those to St. Ambrose Bishop of Millain and those to St. Augustine upon the fourth Chapter of the Apocalyps have all in imitation of the Greeks especially of the Councel of Laodicea put this Book out of the Canon that is out of the List of the Writings inspired by God to be received as a Rule of Faith And this Remark seems to be the more necessary in as much as it contributes to the reconciling with the Greek Fathers and with the Latines that have been of the same Opinion those others of the Latine Church who have comprehended within the Canon of the Holy Scriptures as well the Maccabees as the other Books accounted Apocryphal by the Jews and several of the Christians For if the Councel met at Carthage on the twenty fifth of August 397. during the Popedom of Siricius and since adapted by I know not what Rhapsodist under the Name of the Sixth Councel of Carthage to the twenty fifth of May 419. under the Papacy of Boniface the First if St. Augustine in the eighth Chapter of his Second Book Of Christian Doctrine writ immediately after the Councel of the year 397. if Innocent in his Epistle written to Exuperus Bishop of Tolosa on the twentieth of February 405. if the Councel assembled at Rome in the year 494. under Pope Gelasius and if Isidore Arch-Bishop of Sevil in the sixth Chapter of his first Book of his Etymologies sent to Braulio Bishop of Saragossa after the year 626. inserting the Books of the Maccabees into the Canon of the Scriptures had taken the words Canon and Holy Scriptures in the same sence as the Jews the Greeks and the Latines adhering to their Sentiment concerning the List of the Books bestowed on the Church for a Rule of Faith since they have esteemed Canonical the Books which the rest of the Fathers formally excluded out of the Canon and that holding in appearance one the affirmative the other the negative of the same Proposition they seem to be formally contradictory it were absolutely impossible to reconcile them all and there would be a necessity of charging with prevarication contrary to the judgment of the Romane Church declared by Innocent the First and the Councel assembled under Gelasius Gregory the Great who expresly qualified not-canonical the Maccabees received into the Canon of the Holy Scriptures by Innocent and numbred by the Councel under Gelasius among the Prophetical Scriptures Histories of the old Testament Nay it would be contrary also to that of the African Church declared by the Councel of Carthage and by St. Augustine Primasius and Junilius Africans who formally confined themselves to the Canon of the Jews nay it were hard to avoid making St. Augustine contradict himself in as much as after he had affirmed that the Maccabees were held by the Church to be Canonical he presently adds That they are not among the Holy Scriptures called Canonical saying Supputatio Temporum non in Scripturis sanctis quae Canonicae appellantur sed in aliis invenitur in quibus sunt Maccabaeorum libri quos non Judaei sed Ecclesia fro Canonicis habet c. The computation of Times is not found in the Holy Scriptures which are called Canonical but in the others among which are also the Books of the Maccabees which are held to be Canonical by the Church but not by the Jews
Whereby it clearly appears that he and no doubt with him the Councels of Rome and Carthage and Pope Innocent admitted two Canons or Catalogues of the Holy Scriptures one more strict viz. that of the Jews whereto all the Greeks and some of the Latines confined themselves and to which he thought himself obliged particularly to submit holding for a Rule of Faith and Canonical the Books contained therein and another larger proposed as well by him and Pope Innocent as by the Councels of Carthage and Rome as comprehending the Books which in some certain respect viz. the publick reading thereof in the Church and the common Edification arising from them though they were not esteemed to appertain to the Rule of Faith were called Canonical Sacred and Ecclesiastical by the Latines And indeed to make his meaning more obvious to the meaner Capacities he saies that the Church holds the Books of the Maccabees to be Canonical not as absolutely and properly as those comprehended in the Canon of the Jews and Greeks which contained the Rule of Faith but improperly and taking the word Canonical in a larger signification which the better to insinuate he saies They are held to be Canonical propter quorundam Martyrum passiones vehementes atque mirabiles c because of the grievous and miraculous Sufferings of some Martyrs and in the three and twentieth Chapter of his second Book Against Gaudentius that the writing of the Maccabees recepta est ab Ecclesia non inutiliter si sobriè legatur vel audiatur c. is received by the Church not without profit if it be read or heard soberly as if he had said in terminis that she accounted it among the Canonical in a certain respect onely not through an obedience of Faith but out of a desire of Edification and upon that accompt was it to to be read and understood soberly without which caution the admission of it into the Canon or Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Books would not have been profitable Consonantly to this sence Ruffinus after he had proposed Secundùm Traditionem Majorum c. according to the Tradition of our Ancestours the Catalogue of the Books truly and properly Divine and Canonical concludes it in these Terms Haec sunt quae Patres inter Canonem concluserunt ex quibus Fidei nostrae assertiones constare voluerunt These are the Books which the Fathers have comprehended in the Canon out of which they would have the Assertions of our Faith to be made manifest To which he immediately adds Sciendum tamen est quòd alii Libri sunt qui non Canonici sed Ecclesiastici à Majoribus appellati sunt c. quae omnia Legi quidem in Ecclesiis voluerunt non tamen proferri ad authoritatem ex his Fidei confirmandam c. Yet is it to be known that there are also other Books which were called by our Ancestours not Canonical but Ecclesiastical c. all which they were willing should be read in the Churches but not cited to confirm the authority of Faith Upon which it may be noted that this Sentiment being revived by Cardinal Cajetan was so stiffly maintained in the Councel of Trent that from the two and twentieth of February 1546. to the ninth of March the Assembly continued divided into three Opinions some desiring that the Scriptures might be distinguished into three Classes of different Authority others that they should be disposed into two and the third Party which prevailed on the fifteenth of March requiring that a Catalogue should be drawn up without any Distinction apparent in the Decree By which Decree the Councel intending to thunder-strike at least in appearance the Sentiment of the Protestants though they saw it strongly maintained by many of their own Body declared that they comprehended in the Index of Sacred Books those which the Protestants in imitation of the Greeks and most of the Latine Fathers admitted not into the Canon which might be understood in the sence proposed by Ruffinus and without any derogation from those which the Church ever held properly and absolutely Canonical In the next place the Councel anathematized those who would not receive them for Sacred and Canonical which might also very well be observing the Distinction of Ruffinus and Cajetan which makes nothing against the Protestants And at last they declare their Anathema is discharged to let the World know what Testimonies and Arguments principally they should make use of to confirm Tenents and regulate Morality in the Church insinuating further in favour of the Partizans of Cardinal Cajetan who as to the main Ground agreed with the Protestants the distinction which they had made after Ruffinus of the Books properly Canonical subservient as well to the Confirmation of Faith as restauration of Manners and the improperly and in a certain respect Canonical appointed onely for the restauration of Manners This presupposed it clearly appears that the Fathers who had any knowledg of the second Book of the Maccabees upon this very accompt that they either absolutely denied it or onely half-granted it and upon great Qualifications the Title of Canonical could not any way ground upon the report of it the right which the Church of Rome pretends to at this day for Praying for the dead and that that Report could not be urged any further then to an Attestation that it had really been in use from the Time of the Maccabees And indeed St. Augustine the first who cited it to that purpose and at the very place where he alledged it pretended not to go any further for his Discouse cited by Julian of Toledo runs thus In Maccabeorum libris legimus oblatum pro mortuis sacrificium Sed etsi nusquam in Scripturis veteribus omnino legeretur non parva est universae Ecclesiae quae in hâc consuetudine claret authoritas c. We read in the Book of Maccabees that Sacrifice was offered for the dead but though there should be no such thing any where in the antient Scriptures yet is the authority of the universal Church which shines in that Custom not of little weight Fourthly Besides the precedent Reasons which demonstrate the impossibility of deriving the Original of Oblations and Prayers for departed Christians from the pretended Example of Judas Maccabaeus and the Application which the Abridger of Jason the Cyrenian conceived he ought to make of it this no less considerable then the rest is to be added viz. that the first who undertook the Patronage of such a Custom built very much upon the not-written Tradition onely and by that means acknowledged and professed that neither they nor in their Judgment their Predecessours had any ground to recurr to the Authority of any Scripture either properly or improperly said to be Canonical and consequently that their imagination is absolutely Erroneous who believe that the Antients grounded their Custom on the fourth of Tobit or on the seventh of Ecclesiasticus or lastly on the twelfth of the second of
refreshing and of the restitution of all things on the contrary I say the Person so wishing considered his Frienâ— as aspiring to the plenary enjoyment of that happy State whereof he expected the absolute accomplishment on the day of the general Resurrection at the end of the World though he were already by way of advance possessed of the Earnest thereof according to the Saying of the Authour of the Book of Wisdom who affirms that Though the righteous be prevented with death yet shall he be in rest where the Latine Version hath it in refrigerio c. in a place of refreshment Which shews that the Interpreter had found in his Copy not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Text hath it but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so that in the Discourses of the Antients the begging of refreshments for their departed Friends could not signifie any other thing then what is expressed in the Liturgy attributed to Saint James in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Do thou cause them to rest there in the Land of the living in thy Kingdom in the Delights of Paradise in the Bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob our Holy Fathers where trouble and sorrow and Lamentation have no place Which indeed is no more then is required in the Liturgy which goes under the name of Saint Mark and more at large in that which is attributed to Saint Clement and those of Saint Basil and Saint Chrysostome all which concur in the demand of the Celestial Beatitude which they design by the several Expressions used in the Scripture to represent it and suppose that God hath communicated it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 even there where the departed Person whose Memory is celebrated hath been already placed And in this sence is it confirmed by Tertullian the most antient of the Latines who speaking of Prayer for the dead does in the fourth Chapter De testimonio animae call eternal Beatitude a refreshment and saith Affirmamus expectare diem judicii proque meritis aut cruciaâ—ui destinari aut refrigerio utrique sempiterno c. We affirm that the Soul expects the day of Judgement and that according to her Works she is destined either to Torment or to Refreshment both which are eternal Which had made so deep an Impression upon some mens spirits that about the year 960. Hildegarius Bishop of Limoges Founder of the Abbey of St. Peter protested that the Motive of his Founding it was Ut pius clementissimus Deus in Die Judicii refrigerium praestare dignetur c. That God out of his compassion and clemency would be pleased to give to his own Soul and those of his Friends refreshment at the day of Judgment Some conceive that the Epitaphs which run thus In pace c. Quiescit in pace c. Depositus in pace c. Dormit in pace c. do not signifie that the Departed Person is in absolute possession of that sovereign Peace which is that of God but simply that he departed in the Peace of the Church For my part I am willing to believe that those who gave order for such Inscriptions intended thereby to comprehend the Peace of the Church remembring that as to be grafted into the Body of the visible Church is naturally an external mark of the Believer's admission into the society of the Saints whose Names are written in Heaven so the participation of her Peace is many times a Pledge of the Peace of God But it is impossible it should be the intention of the Authours of those anâ—ient Epitaphs to speak of the Peace of the Church and to insinuate that the Faithfull departed were not when God called them out of this world excommunicated And that for these reasons First These very Forms are indifferently used upon the Tombs of Martyrs little Children and Persons newly-baptized who every one knows could not have deserved the Censures of the Church but were without dispute passed from the troubles of this life into the rest of Heaven which onely may be denoted by the name of Peace inscribed upon their Monuments Secondly It may be said that neither being possessed of the Peace of the Church is an infallible assurance of the participation of that of God out of which are excluded Hypocrites whom the Church must of necessity entertain in her Communion as not knowing their interiour nor does the privation of the Church's peace necessarily infer the denyal of that of God it being possible that many good people through Errour in matter of Fact may be treated in the society of the Faithfull otherwise then they should as for Example a Meletius whom the Church of Rome never honoured with her Communion though now she acknowledges by the Celebration she annually makes of his Memory that he was most worthy of it and a Person precious in the sight of God Whence it follows that the Faithfull departed should not carry hence with them a truly perswasive Testimony of the Piety in which they ended their dayes if the surviving saying onely They died in Peace thought it enough to attribute to them an advantage many times common to those who have through their own fault been deprived of the Grace of God to their Dying-day Thirdly Because the Antients have by several Forms expressed their Sentiment and declared that when they assigned Peace to their deceased Brethren they specifically limited themselves to the peace of God which onely is able to make them happy Thus not to mention the Inscription of the Tombs of Severus of Badajox and the Inhabitant of Elvas which hath expresly Pacem Domini The peace of the Lord the Epitaph of Junius Bassus cited by Cardinal Baronius says that Neophytus îit ad Deum VIII Calend. Septemb. Eusebio Hypatio Coss c. Being newly-converted to the Faith he went to God on the eighth of the Calends of September Eusebius and Hypatius being Consuls that is to say August the twenty fifth 359. That of Eusebia Copied by Father Sirmond in his Notes upon Sidonius runs thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Here lieth Eusebia who is in peace c. under the eighth Consulship of Honorius and the first of Constantine in the year 409. That of Gaudentia thus Gabina Gaudentia c. perpetuâ quiescit in pace c. Gabina Gaudentia resteth in perpetual peace That of Timothea thus Timothea in pace D. Kal. Nov. Cons D. N. Aviti c. Timothea hath been deposited in the peace of the Lord Nov. 1. Avitus our Lord being Consul in the year 456. That of Marius thus Satis vixit dum vitam pro Christo cum signo consumpsit in pace tandem quievit c. He hath lived long enough since he hath spent his life for Christ with the Sign of Faith and is at length deposed in peace That of Placidus thus Tandem in Caelo quiescit He is at length rested in
and afford them our assistance to deliver them out of the pretended Purgatory And yet these are in a mâ—â—ner all the materials which have been shuffled into the composure of all that piece of Worship which goes under the name of The Office of the Dead though they have not any relation to their state and do no more induce a necessity of praying for them or believing a Purgatory that should purifie them as is pretended then they do that of making boast of our own praises a vanity even though we were tempted thereto Christian moderation would not suffer us to be guilty of Nor can it be said with any more reason that the words of the Psalms which are recited in the said Office are to be considered as Prosopopoeias whereby the Faithfull deceased are represented speaking of their condition after death I. In as much as the whole Contexture of every Psalm requires that the words of it be applyed to those who live in the flesh so as that it were a manifest abuse to wrest them to any other sence II. For that it was never allowed any one to cast into the divine Worship Fictions whereby men of quick Imaginations might presume to become the mouths of their Brethren departed not having to that end either order from them or calling from God And lastly for that though it were left to any man's discretion to make after his own fancy representations of those whom God hath called to himself yet should not any one take the liberty to do it e're he were well informed and satisfied whether they might pass for true and certain especially seeing that when they should be urged out of a design to infer thence the necessity of praying for them they would prove so much the more unmaintainable for as much as in the same Office where it is pretended they are employed to that end there are those Texts alledged which absolutely destroy the use thereof For instance that of the 14th Chapter of the Apocalyps Verse 13. where the holy Spirit declares Blessed are those that die in the Lord for what rational inducement is there either to desire bliss absolutely for those who are already possessed thereof or the cessation of torments for those who do not onely not suffer any but are not subject to suffer any in as much as from henceforth they are blessed and in rest That of the sixth Chapter of St. John and the thirty seventh Verse where the Son of God attests that he will in no wise cast out him that cometh to him and that of the eleventh Chapter and the five and twentieth and six and twentieth Verses where calling himself the Resurrection and the Life he promises life and exemption from eternal death to whosoever believes in him For if he does not cast out any of the Faithfull if on the contrary he saves them all from death and puts them into possession of life the surviving believers who to express their belief of his words insert them into their publick Form of Service do thereby confess that they are obliged to give him thanks for them and not to make Requests which presuppose that they enjoy not the effect of his promise Thus is there not any Lesson in the Service of the Church of Rome which effectually induces or hath so much as the appearance of inducing any thing of what those of her Communion at this day pretend to CHAP. LII Of the Prayers contained in the Missal and Breviary used by the Church of Rome and that Purgatory cannot be necessarily inferred from any one of them FOr as much as in the Book intituled Ordo Romanus there is not any mention made of the Dead that in the Canon of the Mass which is inserted into it the Memento is not to be found and that in the other Ritual Books of the Latines there is not any Lesson obliging to the belief of Purgatory screwed up since the year 1439. by the Councels of Florence and Trent into an Article of Faith the Church of Rome who hath at this day in favour of Prayer for the Dead but one onely Lesson to wit that of the second of Maccabees a Book held by her self to be Apocryphal till after the year 590. the Church of Rome I say is forced to confess that it must have been inserted so much the later into her Missals and Breviaries though upon no other accompt then this that the Greeks use it not in their Office even to this day and that from her whole service it necessarily results that she met not in the holy Scriptures with any foundation of the opinion either of Purgatory which she maintains or of the custom which she practises in praying for the Dead upon Motives unknown to Primitive Antiquity It remains therefore that we see what can be gathered of any consequence from the Prayers which we read in the publick Forms of Service of her prescription We have in the first place such as desire of God that the sins of the deceased Person may be pardoned as for instance this Fidelium Deus omnium conditor Redemptor animabus famulorum famularúmque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum ut indulgentiam quam semper optaverunt piis supplicationibus consequantur c. O God Creatour and Redeemer of all the Faithfull grant unto the Souls of thy Servants of the one and the other Sex the remission of all their sins that by pious Supplications they may obtain the indulgence they have ever desired And this We beseech thee O Lord that this Supplication of ours may be beneficial to the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes intreating thee that thou wouldest cleanse them of all their sins and make them partakers of thy Redemption And this We beseech thee O Almighty God that the Soul of thy Servant purged by these Sacrifices may obtain admission to indulgence and eternal remedy And this Vouchsafe O Lord we beseech thee that the Soul of thy Servant and the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes the Anniversarie-day of whose Interment we now commemorate being purged by these Sacrifices may be received as well into indulgence as eternal rest And this O God who hast commanded that we should honour our Father and Mother be pleased out of thy mercy to have compassion on the Souls of my Father and Mother and pardon their sins and make me to live with them in the joy of eternal light And this We beseech thee O Lord be mercifull unto the Soul of thy Servant and being freed from the contagion of Mortality restore her to the portion of eternal salvation And this We beseech thee O Lord that by these Sacrifices without which no man is guiltless the Soul of thy Servant may be cleansed from all sins that by these offices of pious placation she may obtain eternal mercy And this O God in whose mercy the Souls of the faithfull are at rest be graciously pleased to pardon the sins of thy Servants
made on their behalf at Ferrara on Saturday june xiv One Thousand Four Hundred Thirty Eight is as to what concerns them still in force and though they prayed even at that time for their Dead and presupposing as the Church of Rome would have it that some sins were venial and some Souls in the midst between Virtue and Vice made it a question whether God granting them the remission of their sins after this life makes use of any punishment or out of his Clemency gives absolution to men as inclined to mercy by the Prayers of the Church and whether in case he does make use of punishment it consists in Purgation by Fire and not rather in restraint obscurity and grief yet did they sufficiently determine themselves in these words We say that it stands more with the goodness of God not to despise a small good then to account worthy punishment a small sin leaving it to be inferred that he freely pardoned it Immediately after Mark of Ephesus in his Manifesto addressed To all Christians as well of the Continent as the Islands having made his complaint that some endeavours had been used to reduce his Countrey-men into a base Captivity and to bring them down to the Babylon of the Customs and Opinions of the Latines proposes their Sentiment concerning the Dead in these Terms We affirm that neither the Saints obtain the Kingdom prepared for them and the ineffable good things neither do Sinners fall into Hell but both expect their own Lot and that belongs to the time to come after the Resurrection and last Judgment But Gregorius Proto-Syncellus who was for the Concordate charges the said Mark with contradicting in that not onely the Fathers as St. Chrysostome St. Gregory Nazianzene Gregory of Rome Damascene and Maximus but even himself for as much as in one of his Sermons in honour of Elias the Prophet he had maintained that he enjoyed the clear Vision of God and was in the presence of his Majesty in the Heavens with the Angels and Saints who have put off the garment of the body And indeed it is possible that Mark either to discover the greater alienation from the Opinions of the Latines or to shew himself to be of their number among those of his Nation who as is expressed in the Acts of Florence hold that the Saints departed are in and enjoy bliss in their proper place expecting the perfect Crown which hath been promised them may have said it and that the more common Opinion of the Greeks may have been from that time such as the same Acts represent it saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The Greeks conceive that there may be a fire and partial punishment of Souls and that the Souls of Sinners go to an obscure place a place of grief and that they are afflicted and punished in part being deprived of Divine Light and that by Prayers and the Services of the Priests and Alms they are purged or rather delivered out of that dark Place and Tribulation and that they are freed And the Greeks contrary to the Italians confess that they are purged not by fire or the action of fire but that onely Prayer and Supplication and Alms have that effect Accordingly the Greeks living in Venice in the year 1560. declared their Sentiment in Terms much to that purpose when they made answer to the Tenth of the Cardinal of Guise's Questions as hath been already observed And it is likely enough that whoever as they did imagines to himself Souls which are neither good nor bad runs into a necessity of feigning some such thing concerning the Treatment they are to receive after their departure out of the Body But there is not any thing can give us a more certain accompt of their Opinion then the Forms of Service daily used by them at the Enterment of their Dead for we have in them as in those of the Latines Lessons out of the Scripture as for instance the first Verse of the fifty first Psalm all the ninety first the first part of the hundred and nineteenth the twelfth seventy second and seventy third Verses to the hundred thirty third and the hundred seventy fifth and hundred seventy sixth the fourty second of the twenty third Chapter of St. Luke out of the fifth of St. Matthew from the third Verse to the tenth inclusively out of the fourth of the first to the Thessalonians from the thirteenth Verse to the seventeenth inclusively the twenty fourth and thirtieth Verses of the fifth of S. John the sixth Verse of the hundred and twenty sixth Psalm the seventh of the hundred and sixteenth the fifteenth of the hundred and third the whole twenty third Psalm the fifth Verse of the sixty fifth the twelfth and seventeenth Verses of the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romanes the seventeenth of the fifth of St. John the first of the twenty fourth Psalm out of the fifteenth of the first Epistle to the Corinthians from the beginning to the eleventh Verse the thirty fifth of the sixth of S. John the first Verse of Psalm the eighty fourth the thirteenth of the twenty fifth the seventh Verse of the sixth to the Romanes the thirty ninth of the sixth of St. John the sixth of the fourteenth to the Romanes which contain either Lessons of Piety and Humility for the Living as the places of the hundred and third and hundred and nineteenth Psalms and of the fifth of St. Matthew or Descriptions of the Goodness of God towards those that fear Him as the twenty third and ninety first Psalm or Implorations of His Mercy for the last Day as the forty second of the twenty fourth of St. Luke and the first Verse of the fifty first Psalm or Assurances of the Beatitude Immortality and Glorious Resurrection of the Faithful as all the other places among which there is nothing alledged out of the second Book of Maccabees which the Church of Rome takes at this day for one of its principal Grounds nor yet out of any other of the Apocryphal Books Whence it evidently results that those who compiled the Office of the Greeks and put into it those Texts of Scripture had not in that any apprehension contrary to the Sentiment of the Protestants There are also in the said Forms abundance of Prayers stuffed with Invocations to the Blessed Virgin and to Martyrs all which are irrefragable marks of the alteration of the antient Service and insoluble Arguments of the adulteration of belief among the Greeks whose first Liturgies contained Prayers for all the Saints without any exception and the Fathers held as a Principle of Religion that God alone was to be invocated that the worship of Persons departed is not to be accounted by us for Religion for as much as if they lived piously they are not for that to be so looked on as if they sought such Honours but will that he should be served by us by whom we being illuminated they rejoyce
Creation shall be shaken with fear and then shall the light be changed O Word spare him who is translated hence Again I beseech you all who were of my acquaintance and who love me be mindful of me at the Day of Judgment that I may finde mercy before the Dreadful Tribunal Again Let us cry to the Immortal King when thou shalt come to make inquisition into the secret things of men spare thy Servant whom thou hast taken to thy self O Mankind-loving God Again I am dead after that I have passed away my life with security and I lye without voice in the Grave and now I expect the last Trumpet to awake me cries he who is dead but my Friends pray unto Christ that he would number me among the Sheep on his right hand c. I have consumed my life in great negligence and being translated from it I expect the dreadfull Tribunal before which O Jesu preserve me free from condemnation cries thy Servant Again O Lord who art the onely King entertain into the Celestial Kingdom thy Faithfull Servant whom thou hast now transferred hence and we beseech thee preserve him free from condemnation at the hour when all mortal men being to be judged shall make their appearance before the Judge c. Disacknowledged by my Brethren and sequestred from my Friends I cry in spirit from the noisomness of the Grave Examine not my failings at the day of Judgment despise not my Tears thou who art the joy of Angels but grant me rest O Lord even me whom out of thy great mercy thou hast taken to thy self c. Stuck fast in the Myriness of sin and devested of good actions I who am a prey to Worms cry to thee in Spirit cast me not behind thee wretch that I am place me not at thy left hand thou who hast framed me with thy Hands but out of thy great mercy grant him rest whom thou hast taken to thy self by thy Ordinance Having now quitted my Kinred and Countrey I am come into a strange way and am as stinking rottenness in the Grave Alass none shall afford me any assistance in that hour but O Lord because of thy great mercy grant him rest whom thou hast taken to thy self by thy Ordinance Again O what an inquisition and judgment are we to expect what fear and trembling in which Brethren the Elements themselves shall be moved and the creation shake come now and let us cast our selves at the feet of Christ that he may save the Soul he hath transferred An intolerable sire and external obscurity and the Worm which never dies is prepared for us sinners in the day of inevitable necessity then spare thy Servant whom thou hast transferred For as much then as the Prayers for the remission of sins made by the Greeks under the names as well of the Surviving praying for the Dead as of the Dead putting up their Requests for themselves are for the most part restrained to the day of Judgement we are so far from having any thing that might oblige us to take them in such a sence as that they should insinuate that the Faithfull between the moment of their death and that of the Last Judgment were reduced to the suffering of any pains that the Hypotheses of Antiquity seem clearly to exact the contrary And the result thence is that the Modern Greeks though great opposers of the Purgatory maintained by the Church of Rome have not kept within the Terms prescribed them by their Fore-fathers but have changed their Sentiments by the Introduction of Novelties which none of them would ever have imagined It will be demanded whence they derived the perswasion that there were Souls of a middle condition which being properly neither good nor bad could not after their separation from the Body enter into the possession of Paradise without having for a certain time lain drooping in I know not what place of Sequestration where they were to endure grief terrour and the incommodity of darkness which as is pretended covered them when nothing of all this either hath or could have any ground in Scripture which does every where make as immediate an opposition between Paradise and Hell the good and the bad the Faithfull and the Reprobate the Children of God redeemed and consecrated for ever by one onely Oblation and that once made with the blood of the Covenant and the children of the Devil who have held as prophane that precious blood as between life and death light and darkness the right hand and the left of the great Judge teaching us expresly that all the faithfull dying in the Lord are blessed rest from thenceforth come not into condemnation are passed from death to life are at their departure out of the body with the Lord and that all the rest without any exception dying in Adam and having not believed are already condemned 2. That Antiquity having happily shaken of the strange imagination which the Fathers of the Second Age had swallowed out of the pretended Sibylline Writing insinuating to them that the Spirits of all men as well good as bad necessarily descended into Hell and were to be there detained under the power of Devils till the Resurrection of the Bodies they had animated it thereupon formally maintained that immediately upon the Death of the Faithfull are the Nuptials of the Spouse that it remains onely for the surviving to give thanks to God that he hath crowned him who is departed from them and having delivered him out of all fear receives him to himself that to all the good Death is an assured Port a deliverance from the combat and bonds a Transporation to better things and that as soon as it happens the Cabinets are sealed and the time accomplished and the combat at an end and the race run and the Crowns bestowed and all is manifestly brought to perfection 3. That the Ritual it self as it were endeavouring to bring into discredit as well the distinction of the middle-conditioned Souls as their pretended banishment for a time into a dark place indifferently affirms of all those who die in the Faith of Christ men and women Ecclesiasticks those of Religious Professions and Laicks that they are gone to the Lord that they rest that Hell detains them not that they exchange Death for the divine life and are made the Children of immortality absolutely denying all that the vulgar Opinion temerariously and without any reason shewn affirms of some and wholly destroying it by so formal a contradiction But we are not to imagine our selves reduced to a necessity of being over-Critical in discovering the Origine of this errour since the falsificatour as well of the Ritual as of the Sentiment of those of his Nation hath done it so palpably to our hands that he hath not made any scruple to publish his own ignorance even in things evident and such as the word of God the best