order in the Church of God it is enough to make things lawful if they are not forbidden Let us now compare this saying with what he calls the Fundamental principle of Separation that nothing is lawful in the Worship of God but what he hath expresly commanded and can any thing be more contradictory to this than what Dr. St. layes down as a principle in that very page of his Irenicum that an express positive command is not necessary to make a thing lawful but a non-prohibition by a Law is sufficient for that Where then lay T. G.'s understanding or ingenuity when he mentions such a great change in the Dr. as to this principle when he owned the very same principle even in that Book and that very page he quotes to the contrary T. G. doth presume good Catholick Readers will take his word without looking farther and I scarce ever knew a Writer who stands more in need of the good opinion of his Reader in this kind than T. G. doth As I shall make it fully appear if you hold on this discourse with me for I have taken some pains to consider T. G.'s manner of dealing with his Adversary But this is too gross a way of imposing upon the credulity of Readers yet this is their common method of dealing with Dr. St. When they intend to write against him then have you Dr. St. 's Irenicum hoping to find matter there to expose him to the hatred of the Bishops and to represent him as unfit to defend the Church of England If this takes not then they pick sentences and half-sentences from the series of the discourse and laying these together cry Look ye here is this a man fit to defend your Church that so contradicts himself thus and thus when any common understanding by comparing the places will find them either falsely represented or easily reconciled In truth Sir I think you have shewed as little learning or skill or ingenuity in answering him as any one Adversary that ever appeared against your Church and especially when T. G. goes about to prove that he contradicts himself or the sense of the Church of England R. P. But I pray tell me if this charge of Idolatry were agreeable to the sense of the Church of England why the Articles of the Church do only reject the Romish Doctrine concerning worshipping and adoration of Images not as Idolatry but as a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture but rather repugnant to the word of God For I perceive this sticks much with T. G. and from hence he concludes Dr. St. to contradict the sense of it who is the Champion of the Church of England P. D. I perceive T. G. kept this for a parting blow after which he thought fit to breath a while having spent so many spirits in this encounter but methinks his arm grows feeble and although his fury be as great as ever yet his strength is decayed And in my mind it doth not become a man of his Chivalry so often to leave his Lance and to run with open mouth upon his Adversary and to bite till his Teeth meet For what mean the unhandsome reflections he makes on all occasions upon his being the Champion of the Church of England and the Church of Englands having cause to be ashamed of such a Champion and of his putting him in mind of his duty as the Champion of the Church not to betray the Church he pretends to defend Where doth he ever assume any such title to himself or ever entred the lists but on the account of obedience or upon great provocation The name of Champion savours too much of vanity and ostentation whereas he only shewed how easily the Cause could be defended when his superiours first commanded such a stripling as he then was to undertake the defence of it But I shall set aside these reflections and come to the point of our Articles and therein consider 1. What T. G. objects 2. What Dr. St. answered 3. Which way the sense of the Articles is to be interpreted T. G. looks upon it as a notable observation that the Compilers of the 39 Articles in which is contained the doctrine of the Church of England sufficiently insinuate that they could find no such command forbidding the Worship of Images when they rejected the adoration of Images not as Idolatry but only as a fond thing vainly invented nor as repugnant to the plain words of Scripture but as rather repugnant to the word of God which qualification of theirs gives us plainly to understand that they had done their endeavours to find such a command but could meet with none To which Dr. St. gives this answer that the force of all he saith lyes upon the words of the English translation whereas if he had looked on the Latin wherein they give account of their doctrine to foreign Churches this Criticism had been lost the words being immo verbo Dei contradicit whereby it appears that rather is not used as a term of diminution but of a more vehement affirmation And what saith T. G. I pray to this R. P. T. G. repeats his own words at large and then blames the compilers of the Articles for want of Grammar if they intend the word rather to affect the words that follow P. D. But what is all this to the Latin Articles which Dr. St. appealed to for explication of the English And for the Love of Grammar let T. G. tell us whether there be not a more vehement affirmation in those words immo verbo Dei contradicit Either T. G. should never have mentioned this more or have said something more to the purpose For doth he think our Bishops and Clergy were not careful that their true sense were set forth in the Latin Articles And their sense being so peremptory herein and contrary to T.G. is there not all the reason in the world to explain the English Articles by the Latin since we are sure they had not two meanings This is so plain I am ashamed to say a word more to it R. P. But T. G. is very pleasant in describing the arguments Dr. St. brings to prove the Articles to make the worship of Images Idolatry because it is called Adoration of Images and said to be the Romish Doctrine about adoration But after the Cat hath plaid with the Mouse as long as he thinks fit leaping and frisking with him in his claws at last he falls on him with his Teeth and hardly leaves a bone behind him After he hath muster'd his arguments and drawn them out in rank and file and made one charge upon another for the pleasure of the Reader he then gives him a plain and solid answer viz. by the words Romish doctrine concerning adoration of Images may be understood either the Doctrine taught in her Schools which being but the opinions of particular persons no man is bound to follow or
the doctrine taught in her Councils which all those of her communion are bound to submit to If the Doctrine which the Church of England chargeth be that which is taught by some of her School Divines which he takes to be her true meaning this is also denyed at least by those very Divines who teach it to be Idolatry If by the Romish Doctrine be meant the Doctrine of Councils owned by the Church of Rome concerning worshipping and adoration of Images then herein she is vindicated from Idolatry by Eminent Divines that have been esteemed true and genuine Sons of the Church of England P. D. And doth this mighty effort come to this at last What pity it is T. G. had no better a Cause he sets this off so prettily and dazels the eyes of his beholders with the dust he raises so that those who do not narrowly look into his feats of activity would imagine him still standing when he is only endeavouring to recover a fall For 1. By Adoration of Images our Church doth not mean that which their School Divines call adoration of Images as they distinguish it from Veneration of them but it means all that Religious Worship which by the allowed Doctrine and practice of the Roman Church is given to Images And this is just the case of the Council of Francford concerning which I hear T. G. saith not one word in his last Book and I commend him for it the Western Bishops condemn adoration of Images very true saith T. G. and his Brethren but all this was a bare mistake of the Nicene Council which never approved adoration of Images but only an inferiour Worship but Dr. St. hath shewed that the Francford Council knew of this distinction well enough and notwithstanding their denying it the Western Church did not judge that the worship which they gave to Images was really adoration whether they called it so or not Just so it is with the Church of England in reference to the Church of Rome this distinguishes adoration from inferiour Worship but our Church owns no such distinction and calls that Religious worship which they give to Images adoration and supposing it were really so Dr. St. saith their own Divines yield it to be Idolatry i. e. the Church of England calls their worship of Images adoration or giving Divine Worship to a Creature but their Divines do yield this is Idolatry and therefore the Church of England doth charge the Church of Rome with Idolatry But how subtilly had T. G. altered the whole force of the argument by taking adoration not in the sense of our Church but of their School-Divines and then telling us that even those School-Divines who teach adoration of Images deny it to be Idolatry And whoever expected they should confess themselves guilty But what is this to the sense of the Church of England where doth it allow such a distinction of Divine worship into that which is superiour and inferiour or that which is proper to God and that which is not 2. By Romish Doctrine the Church of England doth not mean the doctrine of the School-divines but the Doctrine received and allowed in that Church from whence the Worship of Images is required and practised Such kind of Worship I mean as is justified and defended in common among them without their School-distinctions such worship as was required here in the Recantation of the Lollards as Dr. St. observes I do swear to God and all his Seynts upon this Holy Gospel that fro this day forward I shall worship Images with praying and offering unto them in the Worship of the Seynts that they be made after such Worship as was required here by the Constitutions of Arundel A. D. 1408. with processions genuflections thurifications deosculations oblations burnings of Lights and Pilgrimages which are called Acts of Adoration and this Constitution was a part of the Canon Law of England which all persons were then bound to observe or else might be proceeded against as Lollards And this is that which Dr. St. insists upon was the thing condemned by the Articles of our Church viz. the Worship of Images which was required and practised here in England And what reason have we to run to School-Divines for the sense of matters of daily practice as the worship of Images was before the Reformation And so I conclude if this be all T. G. in so long time hath had to say about this matter viz. above four years since Dr. St.'s General Preface was Published he hath very unreasonably charged him with dissenting from the Church of England in this Charge of Idolatry F. C. I hope you have done for this time and if you catch me again losing so much time in hearing Fending and proving about the Church of England I will give you leave to call me Fanatick If you have any thing more of this kind talk it out your selves if you please I expected to have had some comfortable talk with my old Friend about Liberty of Conscience and how many precious hours have you lost about the Church of England This will never do our business If you please my good Friend you and I will meet in private at such a place to morrow P. D. Nay Sir let me not be excluded your company since I am so accidentally faln into it and have but patience to hear us talk out these matters since we have begun them For I hear your Friends Friend T. G. hath said some things wherein your Cause is concerned F. C. I do intend for the Auction again to morrow and if I can easily get the Books I look for I will bear you company otherwise go on with your Discourse and I will come to you when I have made my Adventures It is possible I may meet with some of them to night for I hear them at Rutherford and Gillespee and our Divinity follows just after the Scotch Which was well observed by the Catalogue-maker For the Covenant bound us to reform according to the pattern of the Church of Scotland R. P. You intend then to meet here again to morrow at three of Clock to pursue our Conferences about these matters I will not fail you and so adieu The end of the first Conference THE Second Conference About the consequences of the charge of Idolatry P. D. HOw long have you been at the Auction R. P. Above an hour for I had a great desire to see how the Books were sold at them P. D. And I pray what do you observe concerning the buying of Books here R. P. I find it a pretty humoursome thing and sometimes men give greater rates for Books than they may buy them for in the Shops and yet generally Books are sold dearer here than in any part of Europe P. D. What reason can you give for that R. P. One is that the Scholars of England allow themselves greater Liberty in Learning than they do in foreign parts where commonly only one kind of
Learning is in esteem in a place but here a man that intends a Library buys all sorts of Books and that makes your Traders in Books bring over from all parts and of all kinds and when they have them in their hands they make the buyers pay for their curiosity In Italy it is a rare thing to meet with a Greek Book in the Shops In Spain you see nothing almost besides Prayer-Books Novels and School-Divinity At Antwerp and Lions School-Divinity and Lives of the Saints are most sold. At Paris indeed there is greater variety But we observe it abroad that in the best Catholick Countreys Learning is in least esteem as in Spain and Italy And where Learning is more in vogue as in France you see how ready they are to quarrel with the Pope and to fall into Heats and Controversies about Religion And therefore to deal freely with you I am not at all pleased to see this eagerness of buying of Books among you For as long as Learning holds up we see little hopes of prevailing though we and the Fanaticks had Liberty of Conscience since upon long experience we find Ignorance and our Devotion to agree as well as Mother and Daughter P. D. I am glad of any symptom that we are like to hold in our Wits and I think your observation is true enough I have only one thing to add to it which is that it was not Luther or Zuinglius that contributed so much to the Reformation as Erasmus especially among us in England For Erasmus was the Man who awakened mens understandings and brought them from the Friers Divinity to a relish of general Learning he by his Wit laughed down the imperious Ignorance of the Monks and made them the scorn of Christendom and by his Learning he brought most of the Latine Fathers to light and published them with excellent Editions and useful Notes by which means men of parts set themselves to consider the ancient Church from the Writings of the Fathers themselves and not from the Canonists and School-men So that most learned and impartial men were prepared for the Doctrines of the Reformation before it brake forth For it is a foolish thing to imagine that a quarrel between two Monks at Wittemberg should make such an alteration in the state of Christendom But things had been tending that way a good while before by the gradual restoration of Learning in these Western parts The Greeks coming into Italy after the taking of Constantinople and bringing their Books with them laid the first foundation of it then some of the Princes of Italy advanced their own reputation by the encouragement they gave to it from thence it spread into Germany and there Reuchlin and his Companions joyned Hebrew with Greek from thence it came into France and England When men had by this means attained to some skill in Languages they thought it necessary to search the Old and New Testament in their Original Tongues which they had heard of but few had seen not above one Greek Testament being to be found in all Germany then Erasmus prints it with his Notes which infinitely took among all pious and learned men and as much enraged the Monks and Friers and all the fast Friends to their Dulness and Superstition When men had from reading the Scripture and Fathers formed in their minds a true notion of the Christian Religion and of the Government and practices of the ancient Church and compared that with what they saw in their own Age they wondred at the difference and were astonished to think how such an alteration should happen but then they reflected on the Barbarism of the foregoing Ages the gradual encroachments of the Bishop of Rome the suiting of Doctrines and practices to carry on a temporal Interest the complyance with the superstitious humours of people the vast numbers of Monks and Friers whose interest lay in the upholding these things and when they laid these things together they did not wonder at the degeneracy they saw in the Christian Church All the difficulty was how to recover the Church out of this state and this puzzled the wisest men among them some thought the ill humours were grown so natural to the Body that it would hazard the state of it to attempt a sudden purging them quite away and that a violent Reformation would do more mischief than good by popular tumults by Schism and Sacriledge and although such persons saw the corruptions and wished them reformed yet considering the hazard of a sudden change they thought it best for particular persons to inform the world better and so by degrees bring it about than to make any violent disturbance in the Church While these things were considered of by wiser men the Pope goes on to abuse the People with the trade of Indulgences and his Officers in Germany were so impudent in this Trade that a bold Monk at Wittenberg defies them and of a sudden lays open the Cheat and this discovery immediately spread like Wild-fire and so they went on from one thing to another till the People were enraged at being so long and so grosly abused and Tyrannized over But when Reformation begins below it is not to be expected that no disorders and heats should happen in the management of it which gave distastes to such persons as Erasmus was which made him like so ill the Wittenberg Reformation and whatever was carried on by popular Tumults Yet Rosinus saith that the Duke of Saxony before he would declare himself in favour of Luther asked Erasmus his opinion concerning him who gave him this answer that Luther touched upon two dangerous points the Monks bellies and the Popes Crown that his doctrine was true and certain but he did not approve the manner of his Writing But here in England the Reformation was begun by the consent of the King and the Bishops who yielded to the retrenchment of the Popes exorbitant power and the taking away some grosser abuses in Henry 8's time but in Edw. 6.'s time and Q. Elizabeths when it was settled on the principles it now stands there was no such regard had to Luther or Calvin as to Erasmus and Melancthon whose learning and moderation were in greater esteem here than the fiery spirits of the other From hence things were carryed with greater temper the Church settled with a succession of Bishops the Liturgie reformed according to the ancient Models some decent ceremonies retained without the sollies and superstitions which were before practised and to prevent the extravagancies of the people in the interpreting of Scripture the most excellent Paraphrase of Erasmus was translated into English and set up in Churches and to this day Erasmus is in far greater esteem among the Divines of our Church than either Luther or Calvin R. P. If this be true which you say methinks your Divines should have a care of broaching such things which do subvert the Foundation of all Ecclesiastical Authority among you as T.
indifferent Rite there had been some reason for what T. G. saith But the force of what Dr. St. said lay not meerly in their having no Images in Churches in the Primitive times but in the Reasons given by the Primitive Christians against the Worship of them From whence he hath at large proved that the Primitive Christians did look on the Worship of Images as utterly unlawful by the Law of God although the Object represented did deserve Worship And this I take to be one of the most material Discourses in Dr. St.'s Book to the present Controversie and which he lays the greatest weight upon For he insists upon these several particulars 1. That they judged such a representation of God by Images to be unsuitable to his Nature for which he produceth the Testimonies of Clemens Alexandr Justin Martyr Athenagoras Origen S. Hierom S. Augustin and others 2. That they looked on the Worship of Images as repugnant to the Will of God as being contrary to the second Commandment which did oblige Christians 3. That to suppose that they looked on the worship of Images as a thing indifferent is to charge the Primitive Christians with great hypocrisie 4. That the Christian Church continued to have the same opinion about the worship of Images after the Pagan Idolatry was suppressed 5. That it was no just excuse in the sense of the Primitive Church that they worshipped a true object or gave only an inferiour worship to the Images for the sake of those represented by them 6. That Ignorance and Superstition first brought in the worship of Images which was still condemned by the best Divines of the Church 7. That the Worship of Images came to be established in the Church by very indirect means such as Treason calumnies lyes and burning and suppressing all Books against it 8. That when it was established by the second Council of Nice it was vehemently opposed by the Western Church at the Council of Francford and that this Council of Nice was never owned in the Western Church for a General Council till the Reformation began And now I pray was it possible for T. G. to overlook all these things or was it fair to pretend to answer Dr. St.'s Book wherein all these things are and yet to pass them over as if they had never been written If this be the way of making Just Discharges I am afraid T. G.'s credit cannot hold out long for this is not after the rate of five shillings in the pound and for all that I see Dr. St. may take out the Statute against him However I shall consider what he pretends to Discharge and if his payment be not good in that neither his Word will hardly be taken for any Just Discharge more I pray go on R. P. For the fifth Chapter Of the sense of the second Commandment T. G. saith if God hath there expresly prohibited the giving any Worship to himself by an Image as Dr. St. affirms there needed no more than to expose the Law as in a Table in Legislative Gothick as it is done by him p. 671. with the addition only of a Finger in the Margent to point to the Words for every one that runs to read them P. D. And must this pass for an Answer to Dr. St.'s Discourse about the sense of the second Commandment I am really ashamed of such trifling in a matter of so great importance I know not whether it were the Legislative Gothick or no or a Finger on the Wall but something or other about that Commandment hath so affrighted you in the Church of Rome that you dare not let it be seen in your Ordinary Books of Devotion As for the cavil about expresly I have answered it already R. P. For his last Chapter T. G. saith there needed no more than to say that the Church of England doth not allow any Worship to be given to the Altar P. D. Is it possible for T. G. to think to fob us off with such answers as these barely to tell his Adversary he might have spared this and the other Discourse R. P. But T. G. saith this is the most material thing in that Chapter P. D. Say you so Was the wise Council of Nice so immaterial a thing that it must now be quite abandoned and no kind of Discharge be so much as offered to be made for it Was there nothing material in what concerns the charge of Contradictions Paradoxes School-disputes c. And all the other Instances waved to come to this of Bowing to the Altar there must be some Mysterie in this and I think I have found it the Patronus bonae Fidei inveighs bitterly against this as worse than Egyptian Idolatry and reproaches Dr. St. upon account of his defending it and T. G. finds it much easier to reproach than to answer R. P. The truth is this Patronus bonae Fidei doth T. G. Knights service For when he hath no mind to appear himself he serves him for a Knight of the Post who runs blindfold upon any thing that may discredit the Church of England two or three such rare men would ease us of a great deal of trouble For T. G. takes between five and six pages together out of him in this place besides what he hath taken up at interest upon other occasions P. D. Is this the Just Discharge to borrow so much out of the Fanatick stock Setting then aside what is brought over of the old Account which had been reckoned for before and how very many material things are never entred which he was accountable for and how much he hath borrowed upon the Bona Fides of the Fanatick Historian all the rest will amount to a very pitiful Discharge But since no better payment can be had let us at least examine this For this Bona Fides is a kind of Republican Publick Faith which no body will trust twice not so much as for Bodkins and Thimbles F. C. Hold Sir You love alwayes to be rubbing upon old Sores have you forgot the Act of Oblivion You know we dare not speak what we think of those times now and is that fair to accuse when we dare not answer Mind your own business defend the Church of England if you can in that Idolatrous practice of bowing to the Altar I alwayes thought what it would come to when Dr. St. went about the charge of Idolatry upon the principles of the Church of England I knew he could never defend himself but upon good Orthodox Fanatick principles as you call them Now Sir you have him at an advantage joyn your force and T. G.'s with that of the Patronus bonae Fidei and if the Geese follow the Fox close you will keep him from ever stirring more P. D. I thank you for your good Will to the Cause and that is all I fear from you you only add to the number and help to preserve the Roman Capitol by
thought the greatest enemies to toleration in the world now plead most vehemently for it and are even angry with us for not acting sufficiently in this cause against the Church of England But because I take you for a friend by your enquiring after these Books I must tell you it is yet a disputable point among us how far we may joyn with Antichrist to promote the interest of Christ And some insist on that place to prove the unlawfulness of it Be ye not unequally yoked others again prove it lawful because it is said Yet not altogether with the Fornicators of this world or with Idolaters whence they observe that they may joyn with them in some things or for some ends but not altogether i. e. they must not joyn with them in their Idolatries but they may against the Church of England R. P. This is too publick a place to talk of these matters in but may we not withdraw into the next room for I have a great mind to set you right in this main point of present concernment And if the Papists should be found not to be Idolaters a great part of your difficulty is gone Do you think it is not fit for you to be better informed in this matter when a thing of so great consequence depends upon it as your deliverance from the persecution of the Church of England which you know we have all sighed and groaned for a long time It is in vain for any of you to expect favour from thence as long as she is able to stand For if the Bishops were never so much inclined to it how could they possibly give ease to you without destroying themselves And since the dissenting parties are so different among themselves in their light and attainments it is impossible to please any one party without displeasing all the rest Comprehension is a meer snare and temptation to the Brethren being a design to prefer some and to leave the rest in the lurch Let us all joyn our strengths together to pull down this Church of England and then though there be a King in Israel every one may do what seemeth good in his own eyes F. C. I doubt you are not well seen in Scripture for the Text is In those dayes there was no King in Israel and every one did what seemed good in his own eyes whence you may observe a special hint by the by that Toleration agrees best with a Common-wealth But this to your self and you might justly wonder at this freedom with you but that I remember you many years ago when you and I preached up the Fifth Monarchy together in the Army Those were glorious dayes Ah the Liberty we then enjoyed Did we then think the good old Cause would ever have ended thus Well! It is good to be silent in bad times But methinks you and I however may retire and talk over old stories and refresh our memories with former out-goings together For here is little at present for us to do R. P. Whereabouts are they now in the Catalogue F. C. Among the Fathers those Old-Testament Divines What lights have we seen since their dayes We need not trouble our selves about them But I observe the Church of England men buy them up at any rate What prices do they give for a Justin Martyr or Epiphanius or Philo who they say was a meer Jew How must they starve their people with the Divinity of these men How much of the good Divinity of the late times might they have for the money We cannot but pity their blindness But I see we cannot be here so private as we wished for yonder sits a Divine of the Church of England who I suppose is the person who bought so many Fathers at the last Auction as though he had a mind to write against the Papists R. P. Sit you by a while and we will talk of our matters another time I have been much abroad since you and I were first acquainted and have lately brought over a new Book from Paris You shall see how I will handle him and if you put in upon occasion you shall find by this experiment what success our united forces would have against the Church of England F. C. Do you begin and you shall see how I will second you when occasion offers it self R. P. Sir I perceive the Divines of the Church of England do buy up the Fathers very much at Auctions I wonder that any who read the Fathers can be for the Church of England Pr. Div. And I do more wonder at you for saying so For therefore we are for the Church of England because we read both Scripture and Fathers R. P. To what purpose is all this charge and pains if there be an infallible Church P. D. Therefore to good purpose because there is no one Church infallible R. P. Is there not a Catholick Church P. D. Do you think I have forgotten my Creed R. P. Which is that Catholick Church P. D. Which of all the parts is the whole Is that your wise question Do not you know the Christian Church hath been broken into different Communions ever since the four General Councils and continues so to this day What do you mean by the Catholick Church R. P. I mean the Church of Rome P. D. Then you ask me which is the Church of Rome but what need you ask that since you know it already R. P. But the Roman Church is the Catholick Church P. D. You may as well say London is England or England the World And why may not we call England the World because the rest of the world is divided from it as you the Roman Church the Catholick Church because the other Churches are separated in Communion from it R. P. I mean the Roman Church is the Head and Fountain of Catholick Doctrine and other Churches are pure and sound as they do agree with it P. D. Your proposition is not so self-evident that the bare knowing your meaning must make me assent I pray first prove what you say before I yield R.P. Was not the Church of Rome once a sound and Catholick Church P. D. What then so was the Church of Jerusalem of Antioch and Alexandria and so were the seven Churches of Asia Were all these Heads and Fountains too R. P. But S. Paul speaks of the Church of Rome P. D. He doth so but not much to her comfort for he supposes she may be broken off through unbelief as well as any other Church R. P. Doth not S. Paul say that the Roman faith was spoken of throughout the World P. D. What then I beseech you doth it follow that faith must alwayes continue the same any more than that the Church of Philadelphia must at this day be what it was when S. John wrote those great commendations of it These are such slender proofs that you had as good come to downright begging the Cause as pretend to maintain it after such a manner
our interest but none that understand and value our Church will endure such a pernicious discrimination among the Sons of the same Mother as though some few were fatally determined to be the Sons of our Church whatever their Works and Merits were and others absolutely cast off notwithstanding the greatest service I should not mention this but that I see T. G. insinuating all along such a distinction as this and crying up some persons on purpose as the only genuine Sons of the Church of England that he might cast reproach upon others and thereby foment animosities among Brethren But whose Children those are who do so I leave T. G. to consider R. P. Whatever T. G.'s intention was yet you cannot deny that he hath proved two parts in three to be incompetent Witnesses according to his own Measures P. D. Not deny it I never saw any thing more weakly attempted to be proved as Dr. St. hath shewed at large in his Preface Bishop White being rejected as a Puritan because condemned by that party Bishop Jewel because K. Charles said he was not infallible Bishop Bilson because of his errours about Civil Government though a stout defender of the Church of England Bishop Davenant because he was none of the Fathers Bishop Vsher because his Adversary gives an ill character of him By this you may judge what powerful exceptions T. G. made against two parts in three of the Witnesses R. P. T. G. saith That Dr. St. rather waved the exceptions by pretty facetious artifices of Wit than repelled them by a downright denial out of the affection Catharinus hopes he bears still to the Cause which had been honoured by such learned and godly Bishops as Jewel Downham Usher the two Abbots and Davenant which are recorded among the Puritans by the Patronus bonae Fidei P. D. You might as well have quoted Surius Cochlaeus for your Church as this Patronus bonae Fidei for ours For he is an Historian much of their size and credit But of him we shall have occasion to speak hereafter T. G. filling page after page out of him Let the Reader judge whether Dr. St. did not shew T. G.'s exceptions to be vain and srivolous and consequently these remain substantial and competent Witnesses And as to the cause of the Church of England which these learned and pious Prelates defended and honoured Dr. St. will rejoyce to be joyned with them though it be in suffering reproach for the sake of it R. P. Let us pass over these single Testimonies and come to the most material proofs which Dr. St. used and T. G. declares he is not yet convinced by them that the charge of Idolatry was the sense of the Church of England P. D. With all my heart The First was from the Book of Homilies not barely allowed but subscribed to as containing godly and wholsome doctrine very necessary for these times which owns this charge of Idolatry not in any doubtful or single passage but in an elaborate Discourse intended for the Teachers as well as the People To which he added that the Doctrine of the Homilies is allowed in the thirty nine Articles which were approved by the Queen confirmed by the subscription of both Houses of Convocation A. D. 1571. And therefore he desires T. G. to resolve him whether men of any common understanding would have subscribed to the Book of Homilies in this manner if they had believed the main doctrine and design of one of them had been false and pernicious If saith he any of the Bishops had at that time thought the charge of Idolatry unjust and that it had subverted the foundation of Ecclesiastical Authority would they have inserted this into the Articles when it was in their power to have left it out and that the Homilies contained a wholesome and godly Doctrine which in their consciences they believed to be false and pernicious He might as well think he saith that the Council of Trent would have allowed Calvins Institutions as containing a wholesome and godly Doctrine as that men so perswaded would have allowed the Homily against the peril of Idolatry And how is it possible to understand the sense of our Church better than by such publick and authentick Acts of it which all persons who are in any place of trust in the Church must subscribe and declare their approbation of This Homily hath still continued the same the Article the very same and if so they must acknowledge this hath been and is to this day the sense of our Church And to what T. G. saith that this doth not evince every particular doctrine contained in the Homilies to be godly and wholesome because the whole Book is subscribed to as containing such doctrine he answers that there is a great deal of difference to be made between some particular passages and expressions in these Homilies and the main doctrine and design of a whole Homily and between subscribing to a whole Book as containing godly and wholsome doctrine though men be not so certain of the Truth of every passage in it and if they are convinced that any doctrine contained in it is false and pernicious Now those who deny the Church of Rome to be guilty of Idolatry do not only look on the charge as false but as of dangerous consequence and therefore such a subscription would be shuffling and dishonest From these things laid together in my mind Dr. St. hath not only clearly proved that the charge of Idolatry was not only owned by the composers of the Homilies but by all who have honestly subscribed to the Articles from that time to our own And I would be glad to hear what answer T. G. gives to all this R. P. He answers first by repeating what he said before and then by shewing that subscription is no good argument considering what had been done and undone in that kind in the Reigns of K. Henry 8. Edw. 6. Q. Mary and Q. Elizabeth not to speak of latter times P. D. What is this but in plain terms to say the subscribers of our Articles were men of no honesty or conscience but would say or unsay subscribe one thing or another as it served their turn If this be his way of defending our Church we shall desire him to defend his own But yet this doth not reach home to the Doctors argument which proceeded not meerly on their honesty but their having common understanding For here was no force or violence offered them they had the full power to consider the Articles and to compose the Homilies and would men of common sense put in things against their own minds and make and approve and recommend Homilies which they did not believe themselves This evidently proves the composers of the Homilies and Convocation at that time did approve the doctrine of these Homilies for it was in their power not to have passed them Thus far it is plain that was the doctrine of the Church then
born of the Virgin by a new and extravagant supposition of the Sacrament being the medium of uniting two real bodies of Christ viz. of his flesh and of his Church and therefore that must be a real body of Christ too which is so remote from justifying Paschasius his doctrine that Cellotius himself is ashamed of him This same doctrine of Rabanus and Ratramnus is expresly owned by the Saxon Homilies which deny the Sacrament to be a meer commemoration according to the opinion of Joh. Erigena but say that after consecration the bread becomes the Body of Christ after a spiritual and mystical manner and in the Saxon Code of Canons it is expresly determined not to be that Body of Christ which suffered on the Cross. And this I assert to be the very same doctrine which the Church of England embraced upon the Reformation as most consonant to Scripture and the Fathers which although it doth declare against the natural Body of Christ being in more places than one even that Body of Christ which is in heaven yet in the Articles it declares that the body of Christ is given taken and eaten so that to the faithful receivers the Bread consecrated and broken becomes the Communion of the Body of Christ and the cup of blessing the communion of the Blood of Christ. And so in the Catechism it is said that the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken of the faithful in the Lords Supper i. e. that after consecration such a divine power and efficacy doth accompany the Holy Sacrament as makes the elements to become the Spiritual and mystical Body of Christ as the Church is really but mystically the Body of Christ because of his Spirit dwelling in them So the Apology of our Church saith that in the Lords Supper there is truly exhibited the Body and Blood of Christ because that is the proper food of our souls as Bread and Wine tends to the nourishment of our Bodiess And if the time would permit I could not only more largely prove this to be the sense of our Church but that it is the true and genuine sense of the Fathers both of the Greek and Latine Church And thus I hope I have done that which T. G. thought so impossible a thing viz. to explain this Rubrick so as not to undermine the doctrine of the real presence asserted by the Church of England nor to leave nothing but pure Zuinglianism in the place of it R. P. I was afraid of a Paradox and it appears not without Reason for I never met with any one yet who explained the doctrine of Bertram and the Church of England after this manner and all that attempted it talked so in the clouds that transubstantiation it self did not seem more hard to understand but I remember Pet. de Marca hath proved that the Book of Bertram was the same which was written by Joh. Scotus and therefore your hypothesis is utterly overthrown P. D. I have read and considered that faint attempt of that Great Man which seemed to be designed for no other end but to make us believe that Bertrams Book was burned for heretical at the Synod of Vercelles but if any one will impartially consider the Book of Bertram and compare it with the account given of the opinion of Joh. Scotus by the Writers against Berengarius they will find De Marca's opinion without the least colour of probability R. P. But Card. Perron Mauguin Cellotius and Arnaud all say that Bertram in the First part disputes against the Stercoranists who were a sort of Hereticks who held that the Body of Christ in the Eucharist was passible corruptible and digestible and in all things just as the bread appeared to our senses and asserted that all the accidents of the Bread were founded hypostatically in the Body of Christ and not to have any proper subsistence of their own P. D. These were a notable sort of Hereticks if they could be found but it appears by the enemies of Berengarius that this opprobrious name was fixed by them on all those who asserted the substance of the Bread to remain after consecration and it would be very strange if Bertram should confute that which himself asserts for he saith the Sacramental Elements do pass into the nourishment of our Bodies But if any were lyable to this accusation it must be Paschasius if Pet. de Marca's observation of him be true that he held both substance and quantity of the Bread and Wine to be turned into the Body of Christ from whence it follows that must be the subject of all those accidents which were in the Bread before which is the very sink of Stercoranism Nay I am very much deceived if Pope Nicholas 2. in the recantation prescribed to Berengarius did not fall into the filth of it far more than Rabanus or Heribaldus for he asserts therein that the Body of Christ is truly and sensibly handled and broken by the hands of Priests and ground by the teeth of Believers But what place could be fitter for this Heresie than the Sedes Stercoraria And Guitmundus striving to help Pope Nicholas and his Council out falls into the same Heresie himself for he shews that Christs Body may be handled and chewed in the Sacrament if so it must be the subject of the Accidents of the Bread and Wine Which according to Perron and his followers is plain Stercorâ—nism R. P. But do not you fall into another Heresie viz. of Impanation P. D. A man had need look to his words when Heresies are so common and buz so about a mans ears And some think they confute a man with a vengeance if they can find out some Heresie with a hard name to fasten upon him But if you did know wherein the heresie of Impanation lay you would never charge this doctrine of our Church with it For I find two distinct wayes of Impanation and this doctrine is lyable to neither of them 1. By union of the Bread to the Body of Christ and by that to the Divinity which was the way of Joh. Parisiensis 2. By an immediate conjunction of the Divine Nature to the Bread not meerly by divine efficacy and power but by an Hypostatical Vnion which is the opinion not without ground attributed to Rupertus Tuitiensis and is lyable to this great absurdity that all that befals the Bread may be attributed to the person of Christ which Bellarmine saith it is blasphemy to imagine And then it might be said that the bread is God that the Word is made Bread and that God is both bread and wine But all which the doctrine of our Church implyes is only a real presence of Christs invisible power and Grace so in and with the Elements as by the faithful receiving of them to convey spiritual and real effects to the souls of men As the Bodies assumed by Angels might be called their Bodies while they assumed them or rather as the
Christian trust his soul with that Church which teaches that which must needs be Idolatry in all that understand not the Figure 13. There is neither Scripture nor Tradition for worshipping the Cross the Images and Reliques of Saints Therefore it evidences the same carnal hope that God will abate of his Gospel for such bribes Which is the Will-worship of Masses Pilgrimages and Indulgences to that purpose 14. Neither Scripture nor Tradition is there for the removing any soul out of Purgatory unto the Beatifical Vision before the day of Judgement Therefore the same carnal hope is seen in the Will-worship of Masses Indulgences Pilgrimages and the like for that purpose and that destructive to the salvation of all that believe that the guilt of their sins is taken away by submitting to the Keys before they be contrite and the temporal penalty remaining in Purgatory paid by these Will-worships 15. Both Scripture and Tradition condemn the deposing of Princes and acquitting their subjects of their Allegiance and enjoyning them to take Arms for them whom the Pope substitutes And this doctrine is not only false but in my opinion properly Heresie yet practised by so many Popes The Church may be divided that salvation may be had on both sides Instances The Schisms of the Popes The Schism of Acacius The Schism between the Greeks and the Latins I hold the Schism for the Reformation to be of this kind But I do not allow Salvation to any that shall change having these reasons before him though I allow the Reformation not to be perfect in some points of less moment as prayer for the dead and others Remember alwayes that the Popish Church of England can never be Canonically governed being immediately under the Pope 16. There is both Scripture and Tradition for the Scriptures and Service in a known Tongue and for the Eucharist in both Kinds How then can any Christian trust his soul with that Church which hath the Conscience to bar him of such helps provided by God These are all his own words without addition or alteration And what think you now of Mr. Thorndike was this man a secret Friend to the Church of Rome do you think who saith so plainly that a man cannot embrace the Communion of that Church without hazard of his salvation R. P. I did little think by the Use T. G. on all occasions makes of him that he had been a man of such principles But I think T. G. had as good have let him alone as have given occasion for producing such Testimonies of the thoughts which a man of his Learning and Fame had concerning the Church of Rome However you see he holds the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist and can you reconcile this to what you asserted to be the Doctrine of the Church of England P. D. Yes very well If you compare what he saith here with what he declares more at large in his Book wherein you may read these remarkable words to this purpose If it can any way be shewed that the Church did ever pray that the Flesh and Blood might be substituted instead of the Elements under the accidents of them then I am content that this be accounted henceforth the Sacramental presence of them in the Eucharist But if the Church only pray that the Spirit of God coming down upon the Elements may make them the Body and Blood of Christ so that they which receive them may be filled with the Grace of his Spirit then is it not the sense of the Catholick Church that can oblige any man to believe the abolishing of the Elements in their bodily substance because supposing that they remain they may nevertheless come to be the instrument of Gods Spirit to convey the operation thereof to them that are disposed to receive it no otherwise than his flesh and blood conveyed the efficacy thereof upon earth and that I suppose is reason enough to call it the Body and Blood of Christ Sacramentally that is to say as in the Sacrament of the Eucharist And in two or three places more he speaks to the same purpose R. P. Hold Sir I beseech you you have said enough you will fall back again to transubstantiation in spite of my heart P. D. What when I only answer a Question you asked me R. P. Enough of Mr. Thorndike unless he were more our Friend than I find he was I pray what say you to Archbishop Whitgift P. D. Hath T. G. perswaded you that he is turned Puritan above seventy years after his death who never was suspected for it while he was living nor since till the transforming dayes of T. G. R. P. You may jeer as you please but T. G. tells a notable story of the Lambeth Articles and how Q. Elizabeths black Husband was like to have been divorced from her upon them and how K. James would not receive them into the Articles of the Church And all this as well as many other good things he hath out of one Pet. Heylin Is the man alive I pray that we may give him our due thanks for the service he hath done us upon many occasions For we have written whole Books against the Reformation out of his History of it and I find T. G. relyes as much upon him as other good Catholicks do on Cochlaeus and Surius or as he doth at other times on the Patronus bonae Fidei P. D. Dr. Heylin was a man of very good parts and Learning and who did write History pleasantly enough but in some things he was too much a party to be an Historian and being deeply concerned in some quarrels himself all his Historical writings about our Church do plainly discover which side he espoused which to me doth not seem to agree with the impartiality of an Historian And if he could but throw dirt on that which he accounted the Puritan party from the Beginning of the Reformation he mattered not though the whole Reformation suffered by it But for all this he was far from being a Friend either to the Church or Court of Rome and next to Puritanism I believe he hated Popery most so that if he had been alive and you had gone to thank him for the service he had done you in all probability you had provoked him to have written as sharply against you as ever he wrote against the Puritans But what is all this to Archbishop Whitgifts being suspected for a Puritan Dares Pet. Heylin suggest any such thing no he knew him too well and saith that by his contrivance the Puritan Faction was so muzled that they were not able to bark in a long time after Had he then any suspicion of his being Puritanically inclined And as to the Lambeth Articles they only prove that he held those opinions contained in them and recommended them to the Vniversity to suppress the disputes which had been there raised concerning them And what then doth this render him
suspected for a Puritan at that time when many of the greatest Anti-Puritans were zealous defenders of those opinions In all Q. Elizabeth's time and after the name of Puritans signified the opposers of our Government and the Service and Orders of our Church and some have undertaken to name the Person who first applyed this name to the asserters of these doctrinal points towards the latter end of K. James This is certain which is most material to our purpose that when K. Charles I. published his Declaration to prevent unnecessary Disputations about these points he saith that they did all agree in the true usual literal meaning of the said Articles of our Church and that even in those curious points in which the present differences lye men of all sorts take the Articles of the Church of England to be for them which is an argument again none of them intend any desertion of the Articles established And which is a certain argument that even at that time no man was charged with disaffection to the Church of England meerly on the account of these doctrinal points R. P. But what was it which Archbishop Whitgift saith for T. G. saith even that will involve him more in the suspicion of Puritanism P. D. His words are these I do as much mislike the distinction of the Papists and the intent of it as any man doth neither do I go about to excuse them from wicked and without repentance and Gods singular mercy damnable Idolatry This is enough to Dr. St.'s purpose and afterwards he saith he placeth the Papists among wicked and damnable Idolaters Is not this home do you think R. P. But doth not he say that one kind of Idolatry is when the true God is worshipped by other means and wayes than he hath prescribed or would be Worshipped and according to Dr. St. this is the Fundamental principle of those who separate from the Church of England that nothing is lawful in the Worship of God but what he hath expresly commanded therefore according to Dr. St. himself Archbishop Whitgift was a Puritan P. D. It is notably argued I confess and thence it follows if Archbishop Whitgift had understood the force of his own principle he must have separated from the Church of England But is it not plain to the common sense of any man that Archbishop Whitgift writing on behalf of our Ceremonies and against this very principle in T. G. his words could not bear that meaning and therefore Dr. St. had great reason to say that his meaning in those words was against his express command as appears by the application of them So that either you must make Archbishop Whitgift so weak a man as to overthrow the design of his whole Book or this must be his meaning which Dr. St. assigns R. P. But Dr. St. himself makes the charging Papists to be Idolaters a distinctive sign of Puritanism P. D. Are you in earnest I pray when and where For then I am sure he contradicts himself for his design is to prove just the contrary Name me the page I beseech you that I may judge of it R. P. Why doth he not say that it is the Fundamental principle of Puritanism that nothing is lawful in the Worship of God but what he hath expresly commanded P. D. And what then R. P. Then Hold a little then it will not do P. D. I think not truly If this be the Fundamental principle of Puritans that nothing is lawful in the Worship of God but what is commanded then to charge the Church of Rome with Idolatry is a distinctive sign of Puritanism How many Cords are necessary to tye these two together 1. Can no one charge the Papists with Idolatry but by vertue of this principle I do hold whatever God hath not forbidden to be lawful in his Worship but may not I at the same time hold some kind of prohibited Worship to be Idolatry I can hardly imagine a man of T. G.'s subtilty could write thus But that you have the Book by you and tell me so I could not have believed it 2. Those who do hold this principle do not presently make every thing unlawful to be an Idol by vertue of it For they do not deduce this unlawfulness from the prohibition of Idolatry but from the perfection and sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of Worship and they say we must not add thereto and therefore no humane invention must be used in the Worship of God Now judge you whether according to this principle there can be nothing unlawful but it must be an Idol R. P. This was an oversight I suppose in him Let it pass But what makes D. St. vary so much from his old principle in his Irenicum wherein he asserted that nothing is lawful in the immediate Worship of God but what is commanded this must come either from a greater light of the Spirit or from the weighty considerations mentioned by the Patronus bonae Fidei when he saith quicquid Cl. Stilling-fleet delinitus occaecatus opimitate obesitate suorum sacerdotiorum c. P. D. For the malicious suggestions of so wretched a calumniator as the Patronus bonae Fidei appears to be throughout that Book they are not worth taking notice of by any one that doth not search for dunghils It is Dr. St.'s honour to be reproached by a man who hath made it his business to reproach the best Church in Christendome and to undermine all Churches above thirty years and yet the ungrateful creature hath in some measure lived upon the Revenues of that Church himself which he hath so shamefully reviled being in great part supported by the Bounty of a very worthy and learned Church-man who is nearly related to him But as to the contradiction charged on Dr. St. I begin to suspect T. G. more than ever I did For doth not Dr. St. in that place distinguish between immediate Acts and parts of Worship and circumstances belonging to those Acts even in the very words alledged by T. G. And doth not he say expresly that he doth not speak of these but of the former And is not the very same distinction used by Bishop Andrews Bishop Sanderson and the most zealous defenders of the Rites of our Church Why then must he be supposed to have changed his mind as to this principle when he said no more at that time than what the most genuine Sons of our Church have asserted among whom I do not question Bishop Andrews and Bishop Sanderson will be allowed to pass And they distinguish after the same manner between the necessary parts of Worship for which they suppose a command necessary as well as Dr. St. and the accidental and mutable circumstances attending the same for order comeliness and edifications sake which are lawful if not contrary to Gods command And doth not Dr. St. say the very same thing viz. that in matters of meer decency and
as the travellers did to Polus in Erasmus or that it is clear or manifest of it self and that it is not so he saith appears by the pains and wayes he takes to find it out P. D. This is yet a degree lower By clearly and expresly Dr. St. means that which is so to an unprejudiced mind For there is nothing so plain but men may cavil at it Not the Being of God not the certainty of our senses not the differences of Good and Evil not the coming of the Messias not the Truth of the Scriptures But will T. G. say that none of these are clear because men are put to pains and several wayes to prove them If therefore Dr. St. hath shewed that all the evasions of the force of the second Commandment are meer cavils and would take off as well the force of any other Commandment if men thought themselves as much concerned to do it I think he hath proved the sense of the Commandment to be clear and express against the Worship of God by an Image And for his Friend Polus you know it doth not look well in conversation for a man to repeat his own Jests But you named a third passage T. G. repeats out of his former Book What is that I pray R. P. That concerns Dr. St.'s first way of finding out the sense of the Law For he saith the Law doth only expresly forbid bowing down to the Images themselves as the Heathens did but speaks not one word of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of worshipping God himself by them and upon this he upbraids Dr. St. that spending above a hundred pages about the sense of the second Commandment he neither endeavours to remove the contradictions nor to answer the arguments of T. G. P. D. Then truly he deserved pity and to have his Friends come in to help him they are such wonderful contradictions and mighty arguments But Dr. St. hath at large proved 1. That the Heathens did not take the Images themselves for Gods in a large discourse to that purpose and consequently this command was not express against the Heathen Idolatry in T. G.'s sense of it 2. That the Fathers did understand this Commandment to be expresly against the Worship of God by an Image in another large discourse which he concludes with those words of S. Ambrose Non vult se Deus in lapidibus coli God will not be worshipped in Stones And is this nothing to the answering T. G.'s arguments 3. That the Worship of God before the Ark and the Cherubims the only argument of T. G. doth not reach to the Worship of God by Images and this in another set discourse 4. That God did afterwards explain his own Law by condemning the Worship of himself by Images in the case of the Golden Calf and the Calves of Dan and Bethel and he punctually answers T. G.'s objections And after all this Is it not great tenderness and modesty in T. G. to say that Dr. St. only Criticizeth upon T. G. 's exceptions and doth neither remove the contradictions nor answer the Arguments of T. G. I never yet saw plainer evidence of a forlorn Cause than these things give By this taste I begin to fear when we come to the charge of Idolatry we shall find very little new or material However being thus far engaged I am resolved God willing to attend you quite through his late Dialogues and if you please at our next meeting we will enter upon the charge of Idolatry and I will undertake to make good the charge and I shall expect from you T. G.'s answers R. P. I will not fail and I pray Brother Fanatick let us have your company for I have a terrible charge against the Church of England for bowing to the Altar F. C. I shall be glad to hear that with all my heart THE Third Conference About the Nature of Idolatry P. D. WE are now entring upon a weighty business and therefore without any preface to it I begin Dr. St. in his late Defence hath undertaken to clear the Nature of Idolatry by considering two things 1. Whether it were consistent with the acknowledgement of one supreme God 2. Wherein the Nature of that Divine Worship lyes which being given to a Creature makes it Idolatry 1. To clear the former he considered who those are which by common consent are charged with Idolatry and from thence he supposed the best resolution of the question might be gathered and those were 1. the Ancient Heathens 2. Modern Heathens 3. the Arrians And concerning these he proved that they did all acknowledge one supreme God and consequently the Notion of Idolatry could not consist in the Worship of many independent Deities 1. As to the Ancient Heathens 1. From the Testimony of Scripture 2. From their own Writers in the Roman Church of whom he names twelve considerable ones 3. From the Fathers and there he shews from a multitude of plain Testimonies that the state of the Controversie about Idolatry between the Fathers and Heathens was not about a supreme God which was acknowledged on both sides but whether Divine Worship were to be given to any Creatures on the account of any supposed excellency in themselves or relation to God And so he draws the History of this controversie through the several Ages of Justin Martyr Athenagoras Clemens of Alexandria Origen Cyril S. Augustin c. In short through all those who did with greatest reputation to Christianity manage this Cause against the Heathen Idolaters 2. As to modern Heathens two wayes 1. From the Testimony of your own Writers concerning the Brachmans Chineses Tartars Americans Africans Goths and Laplanders 2. From the Testimony of the Congregation of Cardinals in a remarkable case about Idolatry in China wherein their resolution was desired 3. As to the Arrians he proves from Athanasius Gr. Nazianzen Nyssen Basil Epiphanius Cyril Theodoret S. Chrysostom S. Ambrose S. Augustin that the Arrians were unanimously charged with Idolatry although they did acknowledge but one God and supposed the greatest created excellencies to be in Christ and believed the Worship of Christ tended to the honour of the Father 2. As to the Nature of Divine Worship He proceeds in this method 1. To shew what Worship is which he distinguishes from honour the one relating to bare excellency the other to Superiority and Power which distinction he proves from the most eminent School Divines 2. What Divine Worship is viz. such a subjection of our selves to God as shews his peculiar Soveraignty over us from whence he proceeds to manifest That there are some peculiar external Acts of Divine Worship which he proves 1. From the Nature and design of Religious Worship and here he enquires into the distinction of Civil and Religious Worship which he saith as other moral actions is to be taken from the circumstances of them and from hence came the institution of solemn rites for Religious Worship And the best
your noise R. P. You shall not escape thus what say you to bowing to the Altar is not that as great Idolatry as worship of Images P. D. Do you not remember the answer Dr. St. hath already given to this objection R. P. I tell you I read none of his Books and know not what he hath written but as I find it in T. G. P. D. What is that R. P. Have I not told you already that the Church of England doth not allow any worship to be given to the Altar P. D. And is not that to the purpose For dare any of you say so of the Church of Rome in respect of Images R. P. But T. G. saith this is not the meaning of the Canon which Dr. St. produces for he saith the Canon only implyes that they give no Religious worship to it but they do not deny any kind of worship to be given to it and Dr. St. himself grants that there is a Reverence due to Sacred Places P. D. Now your bolt is shot I hope I may have leave to say something both in behalf of the Canon and Dr. St. 1. For the Canon I say as Dr. St. did that it denyes any worship to be given to the Altar for it makes the adoration to be immediately made to the Divine Majesty without respect to the Altar either as the Object or Means of Worship which I prove 1. From the Introduction For can any words be more express than those in the Introduction For as much as the Church is the House of God dedicated to his holy Worship not to that of the Altar and therefore ought to mind us both of the Greatness and Goodness of his Divine Majesty not of the sacredness of the Altar certain it is that the acknowledgement thereof not only inwardly in our hearts but also outwardly with our Bodies must needs be pious in it self profitable unto us and edifying unto others If the intention of the Canon had been to have given any worship to the Altar the Introduction must have related to that and not to the Divine Majesty 2. From the Recommendation we therefore think it meet and behooveful and heartily commend it to all good and well-affected People members of this Church that they be ready to tender unto the Lord not to the Altar the said due acknowledgement by doing Reverence and Obeysance both at their coming in and going out of the said Churches c. according to the most ancient Custom of the Primitive Church in Purest times and of this Church also for many years of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth 3. From the express disowning the giving any Religious worship to the Communion Table Which is not meant of an individuum vagum but of this Act of Adoration which is the Religious worship here spoken of and thereby no kind of worship is intended to the Altar but only to God And which is more plain yet by what follows that it is not done out of an opinion of the Corporal Presence of Christs Body on the Table or in the Mystical Elements but only mark that for the advancement of Gods Majesty and to give him Alone not the Altar together with him that honour and glory which is due unto him and no otherwise Can any words be plainer than these They want only Legislative Gothick and a Finger in the Margent for T. G. to understand them 4. Archbishop Laud who certainly understood the meaning of this Canon pleads only for the worship to be given immediately to God himself God forbid saith he that we should worship any thing but God himself and he adds if there were no Table standing he would worship God when he came into his House And he calls it still Doing Reverence to Almighty God but only towards his Altar and he saith the People did understand this fully and apply the worship to God and to none but God 5. When the introducing this was made one of the Articles of his Charge by the Commons his Answer was That his bowing was only to worship God not the Altar and I hope it is no offence or treason to worship God in the Kings own Chapel or to induce others to do the like 6. I do not find any of our Divines who pleaded most for it do contend for any more than worshipping God towards the Altar and not giving any worship to the Altar the arguments they used were for determining the local circumstance of worship and not for making the Altar the object of it And the difference between these two Dr. St. hath at large cleared R. P. But cannot we say that we only worship God before an Image and do not give any Religious worship to the Image and then the case is parallel P. D. You may say so and you sometimes do to deceive ignorant people but you cannot say it truly For 1. Your Councils have determined that Religious worship is to be given to Images our Canon saith it is not to be given to the Altar therefore the case is far from being parallel And Dr. St. hath fully proved that the Nicene Council did require Religious worship to be given to Images and Anathematizes all who do it not And utterly rejects those that say they are to be had only for memory and out of some kind of Honour or Reverence for nothing but Religious worship would satisfie them And the Acts of that worship are expressed to be not only bowing but prostration kissing oblation of Incense and Lights and Dr. St. hath elsewhere shewed that all the Acts of worship which the Heathens did perform to their Images in old Rome are given to Images in modern Rome 2. Those in the Church of Rome who have only contended for the worship of God before the Image have been condemned by others as savouring of Heresie who say it is a matter of Faith in the Roman Church that Images are to be worshipped truly and properly and that the contrary opinion is dangerous rash and sovouring of Heresie which is likewise proved at large by Dr. St. R. P. But doth not Dr. St. himself allow a Reverence due to Sacred places P. D. He doth so But do you observe the difference he puts between that and Worship I will endeavour to make his distinct notion of these things plain to you First He distinguishes between Honour and Worship 1. Honour he makes to be the Esteem of Excellency Either Inward only in the mind Either Outward in acts suitable to that estimation And this Excellency may be twofold 1. Personal 2. Relative 1. Personal and that threefold 1. Civil in regard of humane Society as that of Abraham to the Children of Heth. 2. Moral on account of moral Excellencies either Natural or Acquired 3. Spiritual in regard of supernatural Graces And that may be given two wayes 1. To the Persons as present which is Religious Respect as that of Nebuchadnezzar to Daniel Dan. 2.46 Of Abraham
Image or by the Sun I say by an Image For 1. T. G. confesses that Images are unlawful objects of Worship which are conceived to be proper likenesses of the Divinity now I appeal to your self whether men are not more apt to take the Image of a man for a likeness of the Divinity than any of Gods Creatures Besides 2. Images do not represent any thing that deserves our worship but only lineaments and figures the work of Painters and Carvers but the Creatures represent to our minds infinite power wisdom and goodness which are the greatest Motives of Divine Worship For as Dr. St. hath said the least work of Nature infinitely exceeds the greatest of Art in curiosity beauty strength proportion and every thing that can discover Wisdom and Power 3. The presence of God in an Image is only by a fiction of the mind a man fancying the true Object of Worship to be really present but in the Creatures there is a real Divine Presence And where there is greater reason for worship there is surely the less danger 4. If the greater excellency of the Creature make the danger greater then as Dr. St. argued where there is less excellency there is less danger and consequently there must be less danger in worshipping the Inanimate Creatures than Animate and Bruits than Men and mere Moral Men than Saints because the danger must increase as the excellency doth and consequently the Egyptians were more excuseable in their worship than you And by this reason there was less danger in worshipping the Tail of the Asse our Saviour rode upon than St. Peter or his pretended Successor 5. There is less danger of Worship where the representation is more divine and spiritual than where it is more gross and corporeal but the representation of God is much more divine and spiritual by his Creatures than by Images And therefore Cardinal Lugo said if a Wooden Image may be worshipped for the sake of the exemplar much more such a lively Image of God as man is And thus upon this principle of Relative Worship all the several sorts of Idolatry which were used among the Heathens may be revived and set up with as fair pretences at least as Image-worship R. P. T. G. saith If Dr. St. can discern God so easily in his Creatures as a mans mind is carried from the Image to the Prototype he believes he is one of the most admirable Persons in the Meletetiques in the whole World P. D. What is this but trifling in weighty matters I would allow T. G. as much scope for his wit as he would desire provided it become the gravity of the subject What is there in these Meletetiques but what is the duty of every good man to see God in his works which all persons do who are not Atheists And is this a thing to be exposed to scorn and derision R. P. But T. G. takes it for that part of Mystical Theology which inessences the soul with God P. D. Alas for his ignorance that he cannot distinguish between natural and mystical Theology I always took the seeing the great evidences of Gods Power Wisdom and Goodness in his Creatures to be Natural Theology and is it not possible to discover God in his works without inessencing the Soul with God This is too mean and low for T. G. surely you father this upon him For I can hardly believe this and many other passages you mention to be written by him or else T. G. hath helped me to another piece of Meletetiques for I discover him much better in his Works than I did before but with no great advantage either as to his Wisdom or Goodness R. P. You may satisfie your self if you please that I do not wrong him for here 's the Book and in the next page he compares Dr. St. with one who said Christ might be better represented by a Cow than a Crucifix and another who said he detested the Image of Christ Crucified P. D. For what good end was Dr. St. joyned with these supposing the stories true which I hardly believe hath he ever said any such thing or that tended that way It is the worship he writes against and not the bare representation of Christ Crucified T. G. was not to seek for Dr. St.'s mind in this matter for these are his words I do not say there is as great incongruity in representing the humane nature of Christ as there was in representing the infinite nature of God but I say there is as great incongruity still in supposing an Image of whatsoever it be can be the proper object of Divine Worship For the humanity of Christ is only capable of receiving adoration from us as it is hypostatically united to the Divine Nature and if the humane nature of Christ be not what then is the Image of it What union is there between the Divine Nature and a Crucifix All that can be said is that imagination supplyes the Union and Christ is supposed to be present by representation But 1. this overthrows all measures and bounds of Worship and makes it lawful to worship any creature with respect to God 2. It contradicts the argument of S. Paul for then God may be worshipped with the work of mens hands 3. 'T is contrary to the sense and practice of the Primitive Church which interpreted the second Commandment to hold against all Images set up for woâ—ship as well those proper to Christians as others among Jews or Gentiles Why did not T. G. rather answer these arguments than make odious comparisons of him with Viret and Beza But there is a reason for all things if a man can hit on it R. P. But T. G. wonders Dr. St. should discover God so easily in his Creatures while he saith elsewhere the Creatures can give no greater than Moral Certainty of the Being of God himself P. D. It was well thought upon and deserves an answer because T. G. is not the only person who hath cavilled at this If Dr. St. by Moral Certainty doth mean only a bare probability there were some colour for the objection but in the very place to which T. G. referrs he asserts the highest degree of actual certainty and that which he calls Moral Certainty he saith is a firm rational and undoubted certainty Why then may not Dr. St. discover God in his Creatures since he asserts so great an assurance of Gods being their Creatour R. P. But why then doth he call it Moral Certainty P. D. It is meer cavilling when a mans mind is understood to be quarrelling at his terms especially if they be such as others have used before him and seem most agreeable to the nature of the Evidence For we may conceive these several sorts of Certainty 1. A Certainty of Principles which is that I suppose they call Metaphysical Certainty For that was the proper Office of Metaphysicks to establish certain general principles which might be of Vse to all
second Council of Nice and is justified by the modern Divines of the Church of Rome from the general practice of their Church 2. In giving the Worship of Latria to Images which was condemned by the Council of Nice and notwithstanding is defended by multitudes of Divines in the Roman Church from the allowed practice in the Worship of the Cross both before and after the Council of Trent After which he enquires at large into the publick Offices and commended Devotions of that Church in respect to Images and from thence he proves that 1. As to Consecration of Images for worship 2. As to the Rites of Supplication to them 3. As to pompous procession with them the modern Church of Rome doth not fall short of the practice of Pagan Rome And do you think all this is not applying the notion of Idolatry home to the Roman Church When 1. He shews by the principles of the second Council of Nice the modern practices of the Church of Rome are chargeable with Idolatry 2. That the practices agreeable with that Council were charged with Idolatry by the Western Church in the Council of Francford not from any mistake of their meaning but because they looked on the Worship then decreed to be proper adoration R. P. But T. G. saith If the Worship defined by the Council of Nice were inferiour Worship and not Latria as Dr. St. confesseth then nothing can be clearer than that it was not the Worship due to God and consequently the Church of Rome cannot be chargeable with Idolatry from any thing contained in that decree P. D. Will T. G. never understand the difference between the intention of the person and the Nature of the Act They might declare it to be only inferiour Worship but the Council of Francford took it to be proper adoration which was due only to God And if that Councils Judgement must stand all those in the Church of Rome who give Latria to the Cross must be guilty of Idolatry R. P. Doth not the Church of England allow bowing to the Altar which if the Altar had any sense would think were done to it as T. G. saith he was certainly informed of a Countrey fellow who being got near the Altar in his Majesties Chapel thought all the Congies had been made to him and so returned Congy for Congy And if bowing may be used out of Religious respect to the Altar why not kneeling or prostration or fixing our eyes in time of Prayer or burning Incense or Lights before the Images of Christ and his Saints but how can Dr. St. purge the Church of England from Idolatry in that practice when he saith that any Image being made so far the object of Divine Worship that men do bow down before it and he supposes the same will hold for any other creature it doth thereby become an Idol and on that account is forbidden in the second Commandment P. D. What would T. G. have done had it not been for this practice of bowing towards the Altar when yet he cannot but know that the practice of it is not enjoyned by our Church for the Canon leaves it at liberty If the Church of Rome did the same about the Worship of Images the parallel would hold somewhat better But the Church of Rome declares Religious Worship is to be given to Images and our Church declares that none is to be given to the Altar and doth not this make an apparent difference If the Countrey fellow standing without the rails fancied the Congies made to himself what would he have done if he had stood within an Image of our Lady and seen all the Courtship that had been used towards her by some of her devoted servants and slaves when he beheld the bare knees bleeding the tears trickling the breast knocking the eyes scarce lifted up to shew the greater reverence and humility towards the Image what could he have thought but that he was shut up within the bowels of the Goddess they worshipped Whereas if the Countrey fellow had gone up into the Court and seen the ancient servants make their Reverences after dinner in the Presence chamber he would soon have been better informed if some of the old Courtiers had told him it was the ancient Custome of the Court to make their Reverences in all Chambers of Presence and from thence when they went into his Majesties Chapel they used the same custome out of Reverence to God Almighty whose Presence-chamber they accounted the Chapel to be What is all this to giving Religious Worship to the Altar wherein the force of all T. G. saith must lye R. P. But you do bow before the Altar as we do before Images P. D. I utterly deny that For your Church declares bowing before Images without an intention to worship the Images is next to Heresie if we are to take the sense of your Councils from their own words and the explication of Divines You explode their Doctrine who say that we are only to worship God before them And is there no difference between the Acts of these two men as to Images themselves The one declares that he looks on no Religious worship as due to an Image but it serves him only to put him in mind of him who is the proper object of Worship and he never intends by any Act of his to worship the Image it self another saith the Church requires Images to be worshipped and for my part I think my self bound to do what the Church requires and therefore it is my intention to give Worship not barely to the object represented but to the very Image it self although it be on the account of its representation And the latter Dr. St. hath shewed to be the only allowed sense in the Church of Rome and the other rejected either as heretical or next to it Which T. G. never so much as once takes notice of But however this doth not reach our case for we believe the second Commandment to be still in force which is express and positive against all worship of Images and bowing down to them but that which was lawful among the Jews notwithstanding that precept viz. to Worship God towards the Mercy Seat is still lawful among Christians viz. to Worship God alone but towards the Altar And thus I hope T. G. will at last be brought a little better to understand the sense of our Church in this practice and how far it is from being a parallel with your Worship of Images R. P. T. G. finds great fault with Dr. St. 's citation out of Card. Lugo about submission to Images because he left out aliquis and potest dici and I tell you he makes a huge outcry about it and fills up several pages with it P. D. Doth he truly It was a great sign he wanted matter to fill up his book But I pray on what occasion was this passage brought in It may be that will give us some light
it is applied to outward acts and all necessary discrimination between the Worship we give to God and to his Creatures And if this be for the honour of his Soveraignty and Dominion over us let the world judge R. P. After all this T. G. saith that Dr. St. agrees with Cardinal Lugo in the thing although he quarrels with him about the words P. D. That is news indeed How doth T. G. make that out R. P. Because he saith from Aquinas that although no irrational or inanimate being be capable of that real excellency to deserve any honour from us for its own sake yet on the account of a relation to divine things they may deserve a different regard and usage from other things P. D. This is true but he immediately distinguishes from St. Augustin between the peculiarity of use belonging to the sacred utensils and the worship given to Images R. P. That is no matter how he distinguishes as long as the consequence holds from one to the other For if a Religious respect be due to sacred places and things on the account of their Relation to God and an inward intention of the mind to express it towards them by an outward token of submission as bowing to the Altar it comes to the same thing which Cardinal Lugo pleads for to an Image so that if one be Idolatry the other must be so too So that T. G. concludes very triumphantly that by these edge-tools viz. School-distinctions Dr. St. hath cut the throat of his own Cause And then he brings in the Patronus bonae Fidei again P. D. Methinks another writing of the same worthy Author had been much more proper called Jugulum Causae But is it possible for T. G. not to apprehend the difference of these things I will once more endeavour to make it plain to you The reverence to sacred places and things differs from the relative worship of Images in these things 1. In the Acts belonging to them For this I need only to repeat Dr. St.'s words Is there no difference between a Religious respect if I may so call it to sacred places and things and all the most solemn Acts of Adoration which were ever given to Images by the most sottish Idolaters Such as kneelings before them prostrations praying with their eyes fixed upon them as though they were speaking to them burning incense and lights before them which are as great testimonies of worship as ever were used by the greatest and most sottish Idolaters And here Cardinal Lugo allows all external acts of submission to Images whereas in the other case discrimination is all that is contended for out of Reverence to them As for bowing towards the Altar it hath been so often answered before that I shall not repeat 2. In the Reason of Worship For if the Reason assigned for the Worship of Images be peculiar to them then it cannot hold for all sacred things and places Now the Reason of the Worship of Images is representation of the Prototype as present to the fancy of him that worships but this cannot hold for the sacred Vtensils and places which have their honour for the sake of the use they are dedicated to Thus if Images in Churches were appointed only for use without any worship to be given to them it would come much nearer to a parallel than they can do now when they are consecrated and set up on purpose for adoration as they are continually in the Roman Church 3. In the distinction the Law of God makes between them For when it most severely prohibits the worship of Images it not only allows but commands the reverencing Gods Sanctuary and the consecrating Sacred Vessels for the use of the Temple So that where the Law distinguisheth we have reason to do it too and so the Christian Church did when it looked on the worship of Images as unlawful yet they did shew respect and honour to sacred things and places and honour is all they are capable of as St. Augustine saith but no worship doth belong to them So that these Edge-Tools do no execution at all but upon T. G.'s Images which could never have been framed without them and yet are destroyed by them R. P. You think to escape about the Doctor 's unfaithful reporting the sense of Authors with this one Testimony of Cardinal Lugo but you are deceived I have another ready for you of Gregory Nyssen P. D. Another I expected hundreds upon T. G.'s outcries When he saith the Citations are many and long and out of Authors of all Nations and all Ages and all Religions What! but another R. P. You would have T. G. write an Answer as big as Foxes Acts and Monuments but you are deceived he is wiser than so For he hath a particular aversion to a great Book upon one subject If he can discover four or five citations faulty that will take away the reputation of all the rest P. D. A very short way I confess Methinks one or two may serve and save Candle and Firing and Waste-paper Nay one single Testimony may do it with an end of an old Latine verse tacked to it Crimine ab uno especially such a one as this of Cardinal Lugo But however let us hear that of Gregory Nyssen R. P. It is about the Arians being charged with Idolatry which is brought in with a great deal of Pomp among other Testimonies to shew that the Arians were charged with Idolatry for the worship they gave to Christ whom they acknowledged to be a Creature from thence to parallel their worship with that of the Church of Rome to the Saints P. D. I am glad to hear but one of those Testimonies challenged for if that be given up there are enough remaining to prove his design which you mightily mistake if you think it was only to parallel your worship of Saints with the Arians Idolatry For this is never so much as mentioned by Dr. St. but he names several considerable advantages which are gained by it in this subject of Idolatry 1. That there may be Idolatry where the true God is owned and worshipped as he was no doubt among the Arians from whence it follows that the Nature of Idolatry doth not consist in giving Soveraign Worship to a Creature without respect to the Creator Which will be of use to us in the debate about the Pagan Idolatry 2. That Relative Latria being given to a Creature is Idolatry for notwithstanding they looked on Christ as the express Image of God yet because they gave divine worship to him supposing him to be a Creature they were charged with Idolatry 3. That making God the Fountain and Original of those excellencies for which any Creature is worshipped doth not excuse from Idolatry For the Arians were guilty who supposed all the excellencies of Christ to be derived from God 4. That no distinction of Doulia and Latria doth excuse from Idolatry For the Fathers make the
make the inferiour and relative worship of a Creature to be Idolatry notwithstanding Greg. Nyssens Oration upon Theodore R. P. I am like T. G. who hates a great Book upon one subject so do I a long discourse upon one argument methinks Greg. Nyssen hath taken up a great deal of our time and I have something more yet to say to you before we part P. D. I pray let me hear it and I suppose it will admit of a quicker dispatch R. P. It is upon the same head of the Doctors fidelity in quoting Authors and it concerns the passage in Arnobius in which T. G. charged him with cogging in the word Divinity in the singular number instead of adorable Deities in the Plural and Dr. St. answers with a protestation that he translated these words nihil numinis inesse simulachris which he saith are but two lines above the words T. G. charges him with P. D. And how I pray doth T. G. clear himself for in my mind he is most concerned to vindicate himself R. P. He doth it very well for he denyes not those words to be there which Dr. St. translated but he saith he ought not to have translated the words of Arnobius to the Heathens but the words of the Heathens to Arnobius since his design was to prove the Heathens did not worship the Images themselves for Gods P. D. A pitiful shift T. G. charged Dr. St. with cogging in the word Divinity in the singular number Dr. St. shews it was so used but two lines before those words which T. G. cites and those were the words he translated Now saith T. G. those were the words of Arnobius to the Heathen what then doth he not confute them in something which they held if he proves nihil numinis inesse simulachris must not they hold aliquid numinis c. so that it comes all to one But to put this out of all doubt if T. G. had looked a little farther he might have found these very words of the Heathens Illud etiam dicere simulachrorum assertores solent surely these are the Heathens non ignorasse antiquos nihil habere numinis signa What doth T. G. think now Had he not better look more about him before he makes such rude and impertinent clamours about Dr. St.'s insincerity in quoting Authors Of which you may judge by this one Instance where himself is so notoriously faulty and yet from hence he concludes what a sad account of Citations we are like to have from him R. P. What say you to Dr. St.'s obsâ—rvations of the Council of Trent about the Worship of Images P. D. Have you ever been a hunting of Squirrels R. P. Why do you ask me such an impertinent question P. D. Not so impertinent as you think for the Squirrels leaping from bough to bough forwards and backwards is just like T. G.'s answer to Dr. St.'s Book For he makes nothing of leaping a hundred or two hundred pages forwards and backwards as the humour takes him However let us hear what he hath to say to those observations For I remember very well what the design of them was viz. that though the worship of Latria was owned before it by many Divines to be given to Images and that were against the decree of the Council of Nice yet the Council of Trent allows all external acts of adoration of Images gives no intimation against this kind of Worship and since it many of the most eminent Divines of your Church have justified the giving Latria to Images and that from the words of this Council R. P. But T. G. saith those very Divines do not mean by Latria proper Divine Worship which is due to God and terminated upon him but that the Act being in their opinion one in substance to the Prototype and the Images it is terminated absolutely upon the Person of Christ for himself and falls upon the Image after an inferiour manner as a thing only relating to him and purely for his sake for which reason some call it relative Latria others secundary others improper others Analogical others per accidens and the dispute in effect is rather de modo loquendi than of the thing it self P. D. To clear this matter we must consider 1. That the Council of Nice doth deny Latria to be given to an Image 2. That the Divines of the Roman Church do say that the practice of the Church cannot be defended in the Worship of the Cross without giving Latria to it 3. That the Council of Trent when just occasion was given declares nothing against this for although it referrs to the Council of Nice yet when it gives the reason of worship it doth it in such terms that many of your Divines say must infer the worship of Latria to be given to them R. P. What if it doth saith T. G. since it is only a dispute about words and all agree that the worship proper to God signified primarily by the word Latria is not to be given to Images P. D. That must be a little better considered For do you think it is possible to give the worship proper to God to an Image or not If it be not why did the Council of Nice declare against it if it be tell me in what Acts that Worship of Latria doth consist R. P. It is when men give proper divine honour to an Image P. D. What is this proper divine honour for you are not one step forwarder by this answer I see I must come to particulars Were the Gnosticks and ancient Hereticks to blame in their Worship of Images or not R. P. No doubt they were for they stand condemned by the Church for that worship they gave to Images P. D. Wherein did their fault lye R. P. In giving Divine Honour and Worship to the Image P. D. Did not they worship the Image of Christ R. P. And what then P. D. Then their fault lay in giving divine Worship to the Image of Christ R. P. Yes proper divine Worship P. D. What was that proper divine worship was it absolute or relative R. P. Absolute P. D. Then it was giving divine worship to an Image of Christ without respect to Christ which is either non-sense or a contradiction Is it possible to give divine worship to an Image of a person without respect to the person Men may worship a piece of Wood or a Stone without respect to a person but to worship that which represents and on that account because it represents without any respect to what it represents is a contradiction therefore the worship of an Image as such is a relative worship and proper Latria as given to an Image is relative Latria R. P. But men may give absolute divine worship to an Image for may not a man joyn in his mind the Image and person represented as one object of Worship and so give proper divine worship to both considered as one P. D. I thank you
taken for the supreme God because in Lystra a City of Lycaonia S. Paul and Barnabas refused the worship the people would have given to them as to Jupiter and Mercury Among the Grecian Colonies what wonder is it if the Grecian Jupiter was worshipped and who ever said that he was not a false God But after all this suppose they did mean the great and original Jupiter the maker of the world had not S. Paul and Barnabas reason to turn them from the vanities of their worship when they found them so ready to give divine honours to two men whom they fancied to appear in the likeness of their Gods by doing a sudden and unexpected miracle And if it were lawful by the light of nature to give divine worship of an inferiour degree to mankind what made the Apostles so concerned to run in among them and to rent their clothes and to cry out We are men of like passions with you Therefore all that strain of T. G.'s Rhetorick whereby he endeavours to return Dr. St.'s arguments upon himself from this place hath no manner of strength or pungency in it But what saith T. G. to Dr. St.'s other argument from Scripture viz. that S. Paul to the Romans doth say that which is known of God was manifest among the Heathens that his Eternal Power and Godhead were so far discovered that they were left without excuse in their gross Idolatry How could this be if their supreme God whom they worshipped were only an Arch-devil Or doth T. G. suppose that they did own one true God but gave all their worship to the Devil And since the name of Jupiter was used to express alwayes the chief God whom they did own and by such characters as could only agree to the true God is it any wayes likely they should never intend to worship him under that name When Dr. St. hath shewed from Dio Chrysostom that by Jupiter they meant the first and greatest God the supreme Governour of the World and King over all rational beings R. P. I do not find T. G. takes any notice of the other argument from Scripture but he applyes himself to the Fathers P. D. But what saith he to the Testimonies Dr. St. produced of the Writers of his own Church a full Jury of them who frankly acknowledge that the Heathens did own and Worship one supreme God R. P. I suppose he thought none of the rest worth answering but he finds great fault with the testimony out of Aquinas P. D. This is a rare way of answering Dr. St. produced twelve several Authors of good reputation T. G. takes no notice of eleven of them and because he makes some cavils at the twelfth he would have this pass for an answer to them all R. P. But the Dr. loseth his credit so much in that that we need not to examine the rest P. D. Why so It is possible a man through haste or inadvertency or as T. G. expresseth it through a casual undulation of the visual rays may for once mistake but doth it follow that he must do it for twelve times together But I have not yet found any cause for these clamours and I suppose there may be as little as to this Testimony I pray tell me where lyes it R. P. T. G. makes a great many words about it but the short of the charge is this that what Aquinas spoke of some of the Philosophers viz. the Platonicks who acknowledged one supreme God from whom they said all those others whom they called Gods did receive their being Dr. St. interprets as spoken of the Generality of the Heathens who are there said to acknowledge a multitude of Gods properly so called P. D. I know not whether to express greater shame or indignation at this disingenuous dealing There needs no other answer but to set down Aquinas his words and to leave the Reader to construe them Hac autem veritate repelluntur Gentiles Deorum multitudinem confitentes quamvis plures eorum unum Deum summum esse dicerent à quo omnes alios quos Deos nominabant creatos esse asserebant c. Can any thing be plainer from these words than that those Gentiles are refuted who held a multitude of independent Deities although the greater number of them of whom is it not of the Heathens he spake of before and where is there one word of Platonists or Philosophers in the whole sentence do acknowledge one supreme God of whom all others whom they called Gods did receive their being What can be more evident from these words than that although some among the Heathens might hold a multitude of independent Deities yet the greater number did not The single question here is whether plures Gentilium doth signifie the greater number of Gentiles or the small number of Platonists who are not once mentioned But besides this Dr. St. produces another Testimony out of the same Book of Aquinas where he makes three several schemes of the Heathen Worship viz. 1. Of those who held one First principle but thought Divine Worship might be given to inferiour Beings 2. Of those who supposed God to be the soul of the world 3. Of those who worshipped animated Images If the other had been the general opinion of the Heathen he would have ranked it in the first place viz. of those who gave Divine Worship to many independent Deities but he doth not so much as mention it where it had been very proper to do it And it is plain from this Testimony of Aquinas that it is Idolatry to give Divine Worship to any Creatures although of never so great excellency R. P. Let us come to the Fathers I beseech you for my fingers itch to be at them for I see T. G. hath taken more than ordinary pains to prove that the Fathers make the Heathens supreme God to be an Arch-devil but it is necessary in the first place to state the question aright P. D. I think so too R. P. T. G. hath taken some pains to do it to prevent misunderstanding For he takes notice of four several questions which may relate to this matter 1. Whether the Heathens did not acknowledge one Supreme God which he yields and produces several Testimonies of the Fathers to that purpose 2. Whether the Heathens did not pretend that they understood this Supreme God by Jupiter and accordingly gave him the titles due to the Supreme God This T. G. denies not to be fully proved by Dr. St. but he saith all these Testimonies are impertinent 3. Whether the Fathers do not acknowledge that this was pretended by the Heathens This T. G. accounts impertinent too For saith he they might cite some sayings of the Heathen to that purpose and yet be of a contrary judgement themselves But the point in debate between the Dr. and T. G. is this 4. Whether it were the Fathers own sense that Jupiter was the Supreme God P. D.
and wicked men are averse both from God and Heaven though they walk barefoot and make the richest presents to the true God But how doth this prove they did not intend to worship the true God there Although withal their worship even in the Capitol was Idolatrous worship both as to the Image of Jupiter and the conjunction of other Gods with him therefore whatever their intention was as to the worship of Jupiter O. M. their supplications might well be displeasing to the true God and on that account they might be said to be averse from God and Heaven R. P. I have another testimony of Tertullian still good which if I mistake not will put you hard to it It is in his Apologetick We are esteemed not to be Romans but injurious to them because we do not worship the God of the Romans 'T is well he is the God of all whether we will or no. But among you it is lawful to worship any thing but the true God as if he were not the great God of all whose no are all What could be said more express to remove that abominable pretence of the Doctors that the God of the Romans was the true God P. D. I see no reason in the world for your accounting the Doctors pretence abominable unless he justified the way of worship then used which he confesseth to be abominable both in the old Romans and others who too much imitate their Idolatries Observe that Tertullian speaks of their worship which being Idolatrous the Christians had just reason to refuse joyning with the Romans in it From hence they were accused for worshipping another God from him whom the Romans worshipped and Tertullian before mentions the several suspicions which they had concerning the God of the Christians some said it was the head of an Ass some the Cross some the Sun and some set forth a ridiculous picture with the ears of an Ass a Book and a Gown and called this the God of the Christians Tertullian upon this declares that the Christians worshipped the God that made the world and none else or as he said to Scapula the God whom all men know by Nature And in that very Chapter from whence those words are cited he saith it was the common opinion among the Romans that there was one God higher and more powerful than all the rest of perfect Wisdom and Majesty for the greatest part saith he did make this scheme of Divinity that the chief Power lay in one God to whom the rest were only ministerial and subservient I am afraid T. G. will allow my sense of these words no more than he is wont to do Dr. St.'s I will therefore give you Tertullians own words Nam sic plerique disponunt Divinitatem ut imperium summae Dominationis esse penes unum officia ejus penes multos velint Which words are of mighty weight and consequence in this matter towards the right understanding Tertullians meaning Here we see from whence Aquinas had his plures eorum and in what sense it must be understood From hence it appears that the Generality of the Heathens did not assert a multitude of independent gods nor were charged with Idolatry on that account And to let us see whom they meant by this supreme God he produces in the next words the place of Plato mentioned by Athenagoras of the great Jupiter in Heaven with his Army of Gods and Demons R. P. But Tertullian saith the Christians did not worship the God of the Romans and the Romans would not suffer them to worship the true God how could this be if they did own and worship the true God P. D. I will tell you The God of the Romans was he who was worshipped after an Idolatrous manner in the Capitol and elsewhere the Christians chose rather to to dye than to worship God after this manner the Romans would permit no other kind of Worship than their own and when the Christians refused to joyn in their worship they could not believe let them say what they would that they worshipped that God whom all men know by the light Nature The God of the Romans is the God worshipped after the Roman manner as the God of the Jews of the Turks and of the Christians is the God worshipped according to those several Laws although he be the same God in himself the Maker and Governour of the World This place then doth imply no more than that the Roman Religion as it stood at that time and the Christian were inconsistent but it doth not follow from hence that the Romans did not intend to worship the Supreme God under the title of Jupiter O. M. R. P. Before we leave Tertullian I have something more to say to you concerning him it is about a passage of his Book ad Scapulam cited by Dr. St. where he endeavours to prove that the Heathens Jupiter was the Supreme God by a miracle wrought upon the Heathens supplications to him under the name of Jove P. D. Are you sure that Dr. St. ever meant any such thing R. P. T. G. quotes his words God saith he shewed himself to be the powerful God by what he did upon their supplications to him under the name of Jove P. D. But doth not Dr. St. expresly say that it was upon the prayers of Christians that miracle was wrought R. P. Yes T. G. takes notice of that and from thence proves that he wilfully corrupted Tertullians text and makes a very Tragical business of it Methinks I see the great Dionysius with his Birchen Scepter walking round him telling him of his faults and then one or two lashes but lest his pain should be too soon at an end he takes off his hand and walks the other turn with a stern and Magisterial Countenance bidding others beware and telling them what an example he will make of him he laies on again with such a spring in his arm and so many repeated strokes that I even pity the poor Doctor and I could not think Dionysius himself could have expressed more severity on such an occasion but I consider it is against an Heretick and it is necessary sometimes to let you see how sharp we can be P. D. You need not to tell us that but we had need to keep out of your lash as long as we can for we expect no great kindness from you if ever we fall under it But why should T. G. think that Dr. St. designed to corrupt Tertullians sense in that place when himself had before owned that the miracle was wrought by the prayers of the Christians He would never have done this if he intended the other I do confess the words as they lye are capable of that construction T. G. puts upon them but in common ingenuity they ought to be understood according to his own former sense of them unless the force of the argument lay in the other sense which I do not perceive it
the most noted Philosophers he hath this remarkable expression Exposui opiniones omnium fere Philosophorum quibus illustrior gloria est Deum unum multis licet designasse nominibus I have set down the opinions of almost all the famous Philosophers who all set forth one God though under many names And lest any should fall into T. G.'s extravagant imagination that this was not a consent in the same Being but as to a meer Vnity of Power though lodged in the Devil himself he adds these words Vt quivis arbitretur aut nunc Christianos philosophos esse aut philosophos fuisse jam tunc Christianos Let T. G. construe this to his sense if he can for his heart Would any man in the World who believed the Heathens supreme God to be the Devil have said either that the Christians now were Philosophers or the Philosophers then were Christians i. e. that those who asserted that God and those who said the Devil were supreme Governour of the world were of the same opinion Which is so foolish so ridiculous an assertion that I wonder to find T. G. resolve to maintain it And I now desire you or any man to judge whether the half dozen Fathers T. G. hath produced before Origen can amount to a Covie of One. I have exercised great patience in examining these testimonies and not after T. G.'s way turned off all the rest because one was defective and if you have any more that speak to the point I am content to give you all the satisfaction you can desire provided they prove more than that in general the Gentiles sacrificed to Devils which was never denied R. P. T. G. produces the Testimonies of Eusebius Athanasius S. Cyprian S. Chrysostom S. Hierom and others P. D. To what purpose R. P. To prove that they were wicked spirits who delighted in their worship and Sacrifices P. D. Who ever denyed this Will T. G. quote the Fathers from one end to the other to prove that all men are sinners Name me those who seem to speak to the poinâ— and I will answer them R. P. You cannot deny that Arnobius Lactantius and S. Augustin do speak to the point about Jove being worshipped as the supreme God will you hear them P. D. Yes what have you to say more about them R. P. Arnobius saith that Jupiter O. M. to whom the Capitol was Dedicated was not the true omnipotent God and Lactantius makes Jupiter the King of those Celestial Gods which the evil spirits feigned P. D. Are not these the two persons whom Dr. St. goes about to excuse for applying the Poetical Fables to Jupiter O. M. R. P. That is a fine way of defending the Fathers to take the parts of the Heathens against them as Dr. St. doth P. D. He never doth it as to the main of the cause as to any of them which were to take the part of Idolatry against Christianity which in my opinion others are far more lyable to the guilt of than he nor doth he charge any of them with wholly mistaking the state of the Question but he instanceth in two Rhetoricians who must be excused in many other things as it were easie to shew and he saith of them that they could not forbear giving a cast of their former imployment in this matter And when Dr. St. saith we ought not to charge the Heathens with more than they were guilty of doth T. G. think we ought but I am of another opinion though we should grant their supreme God to be a Devil for we ought to give the Devil his due R. P. But what say you to S. Augustin whom Dr. St. represents as the most baffled by the Heathens in this point Is not this kind of procedure more suitable to the design of Julian than of the Reformation P. D. Cannot a man write against your Idolatry but he must be another Julian i. e. a man cannot write like a Christian but he must be an Apostate Are you the only Christians in the world and your peculiar doctrines the only Christianity If it be it is a Christianity which the Christian Church never knew in its best Ages a Christianity never taught by Christ nor his Apostles but for S. Augustin I do not find that Dr. St. thinks him in the least baffled in this matter but being a learned and ingenuous man he saith that he quitted the argument from the Poetical Fables concerning Jupiter and reduced the controversie to its true point about the Idolatry committed in the worship of inferiour Deities But what an itch of calumniating had seized T. G. when he could not hold from paralleling Dr. St. with Julian meerly for giving an account of the state of the Controversie about Idolatry as it was managed by S. Augustin R. P. This leads us into another weighty subject viz. on what account the Fathers charged the Heathens with Idolatry P. D. I grant it is so and tends very much to the right understanding the nature of it And what account doth T. G. give of it R. P. I assure you T. G. shews himself to be a man very well versed in the Fathers and seems to have them at his Fingers ends nay he hath such great plenty of them that they serve him not only for freight but for ballast too filling his Margent as well as his Book with them and had he not studied brevity he might have outdone the Dr. himself in being Voluminous P. D. No doubt of it if he had a mind to produce all that the Fathers say on the subject of Heathen Idolatry but let us pare off all impertinencies which tend only to amuse and confound a Reader and keep close to our subject Tell me on what account T. G. saith the Fathers did charge the Heathens with Idolatry R. P. I suppose it may be reduced to these following 1. In worshipping their Images for Gods 2. In worshipping a multitude of false Gods 3. In worshipping the Creatures and not the Creator And as to every one of these he shews how false Dr. St.'s parallel is of the Heathen Idolatry and the worship practised and allowed in our Church P. D. I pray begin with the first of these and let us hear what account T. G. gives of the Heathen Idolatry in the Worship of Images R. P. The Images he saith were erected to the memory of dead men whom the people out of flattery or affection had placed in Heaven but evil Spirits as it were incorporated themselves in those Images and by working strange things about those who worshipt them they gained the reputation of Gods and consequently the Images were held to be Gods and worshipped as such P. D. I am far from being satisfied with this account of the Heathen Idolatry in the Worship of Images For when a man pretends to give an account of a thing there are three things he ought to regard First that it be full Secondly that it be
England and in her separation from Rome p. 168 A passage in the Irenicum cleared p. 170 How far Idolatry consistent with owning the fundamental Articles of Faith p. 175 T. G.'s shuffling about the sense of the second Commandment p. 186 Third Conference About the Nature of Idolatry p. 195 AN abstract of the Design of Dr. St.'s general Discourse of the Nature of Idolatry p. 196 Of the manner of T. G.'s answering it p. 200 The postulata granted by him p. 203 Many material omissions in T. G.'s Answer p. 205 Of the Patronus Bonae Fidei and the service he doth the Papists p. 208 The disparity between bowing towards the Altar and the Worship of Images at large cleared p. 211 Of the difference between Reverence to sacred Places and Worship of Images p. 215 The arguments of the Patronus Bonae Fidei against bowing towards the Altar answered p. 222 The supposition of Transubstantiation doth not make it more reasonable p. 227 Of Idolatry in the nature of the thing p. 233 Of the Sinfulness of Idolatry antecedently to a positive Law p. 235 T. G.'s principles justifie the Worship of God in any Creature p. 242 Relative Worship condemned by the Primitive Church p. 248 As great danger in the worship of Images as of Gods Creatures p. 252 T. G.'s trifling about Meletetiques and Mystical Theology p. 255 The incongruity of Worshipping Christ by a Crucifix p. 257 Of the Nature and Kinds of Certainty p. 258 Why the certainty of Religion called Moral p. 265 Several sorts of Certainty of the Christian Faith p. 266 Of the impossibility of falshood in it p. 268 Dr. St.'s charge of Idolatry reaches to definitions of Councils and practises generally allowed p. 270 The parallel about bowing towards the Altar farther answered p. 273 His Fidelity in citations justified against T. G.'s cavils p. 276 The citation of Lugo defended p. 277 The parallel between Reverence to sacred places and things and the Worship of Images fully disproved p. 284 The Citation of Greg. Nyssen entred upon p. 286 The parallel between the Arian and Romish Idolatry defended p. 288 T. G.'s exceptions against it answered p. 293 Greg. Nyssen's Testimony cleared p. 303 The difference of the practice of Invocation of Saints in the Church of Rome from the addresses in the fourth Century shewed in several particulars p. 306 T. G.'s answer to the Council of Laodicea examined p. 314 The testimony of Arnobius rightly cited by Dr. St. p. 325 Of relative Latria being given to Images p. 327 Of inferiour Worship as distinct from Latria and neither of them shewed to clear the Church of Rome from Idolatry p. 337 Fourth Conference About the Parallel between the Heathen and Romish Idolatry p. 349 T. G.'s notion of Heathen Idolatry p. 350 How far Jupiter's being the Supreme God relates to the main Controversie p. 351 In what sense Jupiter might be called an Unknown God p. 354 S. Augustin makes the true God to be truly worshipped by the Athenians p. 357 T. G.'s exceptions answered p. 359 The distinction between Jupiter of Greet and the supreme Jupiter p. 365 The place of Rom. 1.19 20. not answered by T. G. p. 369 Aquinas his Testimony cleared p. 371 The state of the Controversie about the Fathers p. 373 Justin Martyr no friend to T. G.'s hypothesis p. 377 Athenagoras at large cleared p. 379 A threefold Jupiter among the Fathers p. 380 Theophilus Antiochenus not to T. G.'s purpose p. 387 Tertullian vindicated p. 388 Clemens Alexandrinus p. 400 Minucius Felix p. 405 Other Testimonies rejected as impertinent p. 415 T. G.'s Accounts of Heathen Idolatry examined p. 419 First In taking their Images for Gods at large disproved p. 420 2. In worshipping many false Gods that likewise disproved p. 429 T. G.'s arguments answered p. 431 The absurd consequences of this notion of Heathen Idolatry p. 440 T. G.'s pittiful evasions as to the modern Idolaters p. 443 3. In worshipping the Creatures instead of God the Nature of that Idolatry enquired into p. 457 Worshipping the Creatures with respect to God as Soul of the world justifiable on the the same grounds with adoration of the Host. p. 461 Why it is Idolatry to give all external worship to the Creatures p. 467 A twofold hypothesis of Heathen Idolatry p. 470 The parallel as to the Church of Rome defended p. 473 Of Appropriate Acts of Divine Worship p. 478 What errour of judgement the act of Idolatry implyes p. 491 Lugo's Testimony cleared p. 495 Whether the Church hath power to discriminate Acts of Worship p. 499 How far circumstances discriminate Acts of Civil and Religious Worship p. 501 Whether the Church of Rome doth appropriate any Act of external adoration to God p. 522 That the very Sacrifice of the Mass is offered in honour of Gods Creatures and consequently is not appropriated to the honour of God p. 526 Dr. St. doth not differ from the Divines of the Church of England about the Sacrifice of the Mass. p. 540 How far the Sacrifice of the Mass may be said to be the Act of the People p. 542 ERRATA PAge 108. Line 11. dele not p. 161. l. 21. dele not p. 215. l. 7. r. savouring p. 232. l. 13. r. declares p. 234. l. 4. r. as so Sacred p. 246. l. 15. for no r. do p. 261. l. 4. for not so r. so p. 308. l. 17. for Fallo r. Fullo p. 319. l. 1. for Idolatry r. Idolaters p. 334. l. 7. for I not r. I do not p. 511. l. 5 6. for matters r. matter First Conference Concerning the sense of the Church of England about the Idolatry of the Church of Rome Rom. P. YOU are well met at this Auction of Books I have been present at many of them beyond Sea but I never was at one in England before How go the prices of Books here Fan. Ch. Very dear methinks by the Books I have bought but I find they are so catched up by our Brethren that if we will have them we must pay dear for them R. P. May I know what they are Sir F. C. Only some few choice pieces which I have picked out of this great Catalogue such as Nepthali or the Groanings of the Church of Scotland Cooks Monarchy no Creature of Gods making but the things I most value are the Pamphlets such as Sermons before the Long Parliament in several volumes And a rare Collection of Authors about Liberty of Conscience R. P. Are there so many Books to be had about Liberty of Conscience F. C. Yes a great many have written for and against it R. P. Who are they who have written for it F. C. To tell you the truth some of the same who wrote against it heretofore but they are now more enlightned as those who wrote against Separation when time was are now the greatest advocates for it For there are some providential Truths which vary according to circumstances Do not we see the Papists who were