not many years after and gave notice to the Lesbians long before it happened that they should lose the soveraignty of the Sea and the Camaean Pausanias as hath been already seen numbers four Lamia otherwise called the Lybian Sibyl Herophila otherwise called the Delphick or Erythraean Demo the Cumaean and Sabba the Babylonian Aelian raised the number to ten that is the Erythraean the Samian the Aegyptian the Sardinian the Cumaean the Judaick and four others Clemens Alexandrinus though he cites not any thing of them but what 's in the singular number expresses himself in these terms whence it may be inferr'd he admitted divers Manto and a multitude of Sibyls the Samian the Colophonian the Cumaean the Erythraean Phyto Taraxandra the Macedonian the Thessalian the Threspotick Lactantius from Varro affirms their number to be ten and observes that the first was of the Persians of whom Nicanor who writes of the Acts of Alexander the Macedonian makes mention The second was the Lybian mentioned by Euripides in the Prologue to his Lamia The third the Delphick of whom Chrysippus speaks in a book he writ Of Divination The fourth the Cumaean or of Cumae in Italy named by Naevius in his books of the Punick War and by Piso in his Annals The fifth the Erythraean whom Apolodorus the Erythraean affirms to have been of the same City with him c. The sixth the Samian of whom Eratosthenes hath written consonantly to what he had found written before in the ancient Annals of the Samians The seventh the Cumaean under the name of Amalthaea who by others is also called Demophila or Herophila c. The eighth the Hellespontick born in the country neer Troy at the Town of Marpessus near the City Gergithum whom Heraclides of Pontus writes to have li'vd in the time of Solon and Cyrus The ninth the Phrygian who Prophesied at Ancyra The tenth the Tiburtine called Albunea who is serv'd as a Goddess at Tibur which stands not far from the River Anio in the bottome whereof it is reported that her Image was found holding a book in her hand Issidorus of Sevil follows Lactantius save that speaking of the Delphick he addes that she was begotten in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi That the fourth was the Cimmerian of Italy That the fifth that is to say the Erythraean called Erophila was Originally a Babylonian and that she was called the Erythraean because her Verses were found in that Issand and that the sixth namely the Samian was called Samonota from the Isle of Samos whence she took her sirname In a word Suidas who hath glean'd together all he could meet with in other Authors standing much upon the number of ten in imitation of Lactantius says that the Chaldaean or Persick whose proper name was Sambetha was descended from the most blessed man Noah That she spoke before of the things that are reported of Alexander the Macedonian that Nicanor who hath writ the History of the life of Alexander makes mention of her that she foretold ten thousand things concerning Christ our Lord and his coming that the rest agree with her and that moreover there is of hers four and twenty books treating of all nations and places Again that her fathers name was Berosus and her mothers Erymantha that the Delphick was born at Delphi that the Samian was called Phito the Cumaean Amalhaea or Herophila And whereas Lactantius and Isidorus have written that the Hellespontick had liv'd in the time of Solon and Cyrus he makes this referr to the Town of Marpessus and the little City Gergithum which sometime were in Troas in the time of Solon and Cyrus And elsewhere speaking of the Sibyl in generall he makes this Discourse The Sibyl was the daughter of Apollo and Lamia according to some of Aristocrates and Hydole and as others would have it of Crinagoras or as Hermippus affirms of Theodorus She is called Erythraea because she was begotten at a place of Erythrae called Batti and now that place encreased into a City is called Erythrae Some have thought her a Sicilian others a Sardian others a Gegithian others a Rhodian others a Lybian others a Lucanian others a Samian c. The Sibyl Helissa hath written in Verse certain Prophesies and Oracles The Colophonian Sibyl whose name was Lampusa the daughter of Calchas hath also written in Verse certain Oracles and Divinations and other things The Thessalian Sibyl whose name was Manto was the daughter of Tiresias The Sibyl by some called Sarbis by others Cassandra by others Tarraxandra hath also left Oracles Nor have the Cumaean and Threspotick Sibyls left us without their Oracles Thus then according to his account the two Sibyls of Martianus Capella four of those of Aelian that is the Erythraean the Samian the Aegyptian the Sardian three of those cited by Clemens Alexandrinus that is the Samian the Erythraean and Phyto five of those mentioned by Lactantius as also by Isidorus who hath follow'd him that is the Libyck the Erythraean the Samian the Hellespontick and the Phrygian all reduc'd to one Sibyl Pausanias who distinguishes the Libyck from the Erythraean makes another kind of reduction affirming that the Phrygian the Samian the Colophonian the Delphick and the Erythraean were all but one and the same person residing in severall places Martianus Capella gives us another after his dressing making the Cumaean and Erythraean one and the same Sibyl And Justin Martyr shoots his arrow much to the same mark when he takes for one Sibyl the Cumaean and the Babylonian as Isidorus after the Author of the book De mirabilibus auscultationibus in Aristotle confounds the Erythraean and Cumaean And as the same Isidorus is extremely mistaken when he reckons Erythrae which was in the Continent over against Chio among the Islands and makes his Samonota fly with the wind so Suidas maintaining after Justine Martyr that the Chaldaick Sibyl was the daughter of Berosus does in some sort agree with Pausanias who places her among the last but he palpably contradicts First what he had said of her being daughter to Noah and more ancient then Alexander and Secondly the sentiment of Varro who had in Lactantius adjudg'd to the Persick who was no other then the Chaldaick the prerogative of Antiquity Another contradiction of his is where he writes that the Erythraean was 483. years after the war of Troy in which assertion he comes neer the opinion of Eusebius who hath given her place in his Chronologie under the reign of Romulus who began it 431. years after the taking of Troy for in the next page he acknowledges she was before the taking of that place which confirms the sentiment as well of Dionysius Halicarnssaeus who relates that she was consulted by Aeneas as that of Lactantius who affirms from Apollodorus that she foretold the Grecians the issue of the siege they were to make to that famous place and that of Solinus who observes that she was some few
and favour of God ever faithful in his promises and whose Gifts are without Repentance that in this very regard that he continually conserves them he seems to make a new distribâ—…on thereof every moment and by the perpetual influence of his benediction on those whom he hath received into glory to assure them more and more of their possession thereof others I say out of such or the like Considerations were perswaded that there was no inconvenience in demanding for the departed what they already had their own reason telling them that the Authour of so good a gift ceases not to give it in continuing and conserving it to those whom he had once made partakers thereof For as those on whom he here below bestows abundance of temporal goods are not less obliged to beg of him every day their daily Bread then if as he sometime did to the Israelites in the Desert he dealt them onely one day's Provision at a time the plenty which they had so liberally received from his hand though such as might suffice for their whole life and that with so much certainty in appearance as nothing could reduce them to want no way hindring but that they should acknowledg their indigence and natural insufficiency and have a constant recourse to his Grace to desire as the most unworthy that he would give them their Bread for as much as though they have enough lying by them yet is it their evident concernment that he who hath given them should every day renew his Donation in conserving them and sanctifying them to their use So the Saints who in the other life are possessed of Celestial goods are by the necessity of the same reason obliged to make perpetual acknowledgments notwithstanding that the immutability of the Counsel according to which he bestows them for ever and the nature of those very goods not subject to perish and decay seems not any way to hinder but that they should every one for himself and the surviving upon Earth for them all desire the conservation and continuance of them though that be so much the more certain and infallible in as much as it is grounded on the unchangeable Decree of the Father of Lights with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning In this sense it might be thought that Jesus the Head and finisher of our Faith who was yesterday is to day and shall be the same for ever though he were confident of the issue of his combats and was so much the more certain that nothing could prevail against him that he sustained himself by his own Power yet forbore not to recommend himself to his Father and to desire of him the glory he was possessed of and had had with him before the World was and consequently that the antient Church neither made nor ought to have made any difficulty to pray for all the blessed whose State she knew to be unchangeable and whose Felicity unalterable and accordingly is it that as she does in general make a Commemoration of all those who sleep the Sleep of Peace so hath she particularly comprehended in her Prayers the Patriarchs Prophets Apostles Martyrs without any regard to the inconvenience which some have alledged since that to pray for a Martyr is to be injurious to him Nay the Church of Rome her self to shew that she could not recede from the Sentiment of Primitive Antiquity as we have above represented it hath not ceased nor does to this day cease to make this Prayer contained in her Missal Deus cui soli cognitus est numerus Electorum in superna felicitate locandus tribue quaesumus ut univer sorum quos Oratione commendatos suscepimus omnium fidelium vivorum atque mortuorum nomina beatae praedestinationis liber adscripta retineat per Dominum c. O God to whom alone is known the number of the Elect who are to be placed above in Felicity we beseech thee to grant that the Book of blessed Predestination may retain written the name of all those whom we have taken upon us to recommend in our Prayers as also those of all the Faithfull both dead and living through our Lord c. I seriously ask whether it be possible any thing should be blotted out of the Book of Life which is God himself whose Counsel shall stand eternally And since there is no danger should make us fear that God will deny himself and that the Book of his Predestination should not retain the Names which his Hand hath written in it to desire of him that it might retain them is it not to pray him to do what it is absolutely impossible but he should and after the Example of the Antient Christians to make a Prayer for the Blessed that they might be blessed not indeed as if they were to pass from misery to the possession of Bliss but in persisting as it must of necessity be in the enjoyment of the Bliss which hath been once for all communicated to them Lastly The Antients considering that the Felicity which the Faithfull enjoy from the instant of their departure is not that absolute Fulness of Glory wherewith they expect to be Crowned at the Resurrection of the Just and that they might justly desire of God the accomplishment of what is expected according to the Word of his Grace as well for themselves as for others since it is a signification of the coming of his Kingdom that we are all taught by the Lord himself earnestly to desire and hasten it as much as may be by our Wishes Secondly That the Motion of all the Creation groaning and travelling till such time as it is delivered from the bondage of Corruption into the glorious liberty of the Children of God is expressed to us by St. Paul as a great and violent desire inclining the Creatures to expect the manifestation of the Sons of God and incites us so much the more by how much we who have the first fruits of the Spirit are all together waiting for the Redemption of our Body Thirdly That in that Noble desire is shewn the principal Effect of the Sympathy which ought to be beween all the Saints Members of the same mystical Body and Members one of another for if the Holy Spirit to rejoyce the spirits of the Just in Glory and crying with a loud voyce that the Lord would judge and revenge their Blood on them that dwell on the Earth proposes to them as the principal Subject of their Joy the approaching accomplishment of their Fellow-servants and Brethren yet engaged against the Militia of Satan the world here below why should not these Champions who are still sweating and out of breath in the Field where they are all covered with Blood and Dust have their courage heigthned by reflecting on their advantages who had gone before them that as they aspire to those White Robes of Glory wherein their Brethren are for
question the truth of other times Of that kind is that which is attributed to the Sibyl of Moses hinting at and foretelling the Deluge Lib. 1. p. 9. as also what is found written in the same Book pag. 11. that the Sibyl her self with her husband her Father-in-law Mother-in-law her brethren-in-law and others was tâ—ss'd up and down by the waves in the time of the Deluge But it is evident rom pag. 30. that those very things which have come abroad under the name of Oracles were written fifteen hundred years after the Empire of the Greeks whereof whether we take the beginning from the reign of the Argives or Sicyonians or Athenians or whether it be taken from Moses from the reign of Solomon the Macedonian Empire or the four Monarchies those things which are called Predictions will be frivolous and after the things done They will be found also to be wanting as to truth if the government of the Greeks began since Moses for from the departure of Moses and Israel out of Aegypt to the destroying of the Administration or Commonwealth and Government of the Jews under Vespasian are reckoned one thousand four score and two years Further what can be said as to what we find in the fifth Book p. 49. where the Sibyl affirms that she had seen a second conflagration of the Temple of Vesta And that according to the testimony of Eusebius it happened under the Emperour Commodus in the year 199. for in that year the Temple of Vesta and the Palace and the greatest part of the City was burnt whereas the first conflagration happened in the 134. Olympiad Whence it is to be conceiv'd that the Prophetess if it may be lawfull to call her such prophesy'd not before the birth of Christ but long after and pretends not to any thing beyond Commodus since that in the eighth Book p. 57. she says that three Emperours shall reign after Adrian that is to say Antoninus the Debonnaire Antoninus the Philosopher and Commodus To this may be added that it is apparent from the first Book of Lactantius Firmianus Chap. 6. that each of the Sibyls writ her own Book and yet that now they seem to be all the Work of one because they all go under the name of the Sibyl and that we cannot distinguish them nor assign to any one her own unless it be to the Erythraean who put her name into her Poem and is called Erythraea now that was the Work of the Erythraean which takes up the third place among those Books The Author of the first Book feign'd himself to be daughter-in-law to Noë the second and the seventh seems to personate a most impudent strumpet pag. 56. though there want not some credible Authors who affirm that the true Sibyls were chast and inspir'd of God The sister of Isis challenges the fifth Book the rest were publish'd under the names of uncertain Authors By way of Annotation upon this granting what he sayes as to the supposititiousness of the pretended Sibyl as also that Moses is more ancient then any that have gone under that name I affirm In the first place That the writing which goes commonly under that title does not introduce Moses but Noah himself foretelling the Deluge which speaks yet a little more confidence 2. That from the departure out of Aegypt to the taking of Jerusalem by Titus there are 1600. years compleat 518. more then was thought 3. That the Author of the Sibylline Books does not affirm he saw the second conflragration of the Temple of Vesta but the last of Jerusalem The house sometime so much desir'd by thee says he to Rome when I saw that house pull'd down and set on fire the second time by an impure hand a house ever flourishing and having God in it which house he supposes that Christ himself descending from heaven will come and re-establish together with Jerusalem to reign there in his glory Which manifestly argues that though threatning Rome with finall destruction he writes The Virgins shall not always find the Divine fire yet he neither saw nor foresaw the conflagration that happened in the twelfth year of Commodus which was but the 191. of our Saviour but reflected on the Prediction of St. John expressing that Rome should be utterly burnt with fire and be found no more at all so that he thought it would be to no purpose to look there for Vesta's fire and other Monuments of her Paganisme 4. That if his intention had been to denote the conflagration happened under Commodus he could not truly have call'd it the second for that besides the first mentioned in Dionysius Halicarnassaeus and happening under the Consulate of Gracchus and Falto in the third year of the 135. Olympiad and the 516. of Rome there had been a second observ'd by Tacitus and other creditable Authors under the Consulship of Bassus and Crassus in the fourth year of the 210. Olympiad which was the 817. of Rome the 64. of our Saviour and 11. of Nero. 5. That he doth not onely not pretend to any thing beyond Commodus but makes an apparent stop at Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus which latter he presum'd must needs as being the younger by seven years out-live the other After him saith he whose name begins with a T. the note of the number three hundred that is to say Trajan another shall reign a person with a silver head that is one that was already arriv'd to grey hairs or shall be as he speaks in the eighth Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hoary and his name that is to say Adrian shall be deriv'd from the Sea Adriatick and he shall be good all manner of wayes and shall know all things and under thee O man absolutely good excellent all manner of wayes and hoary headed and under thy boughs that is to say thy adoptive sons the last dayes shall come to pass three shall reign that is to say Antoninus Marcus and Lucius but the last that is Lucius shall obtain the soveraignty of all things And in the eighth Book After him that is to say Adrian there shall reign three who shall see the last days filling the Name of the heavenly God whose kingdom is now and to all ages that is to say they shall be called Antonini or according to our manner of pronouncing Andonini from the name Adonai and Adonim that is Antoninus the Debonaire Antoninus the Philosopher and Lucius Verus Antoninus who he pretends ought as being the youngest to survive the other two succeed them and continue til the 948. year of Rome or the 195 of our Redemption in which he would have been 67. years of age never imagining that Lucius by his irregularities would prejudice his health so as to be cut off in the flower of his age in the midst of Winter between the years 169. and 170. 6. That though Lactantius carried away with the prejudice of his time conceiv'd that the Books called Sibylline
to come and the Son of God clearly shew that he alludeth to those very books which are now extant of them and consequently that his work was hatch'd after that entitled the Sibylline and must needs be later then the year of our Lord 137. 2. That with Justin and Clemens he acknowledges but one Sibyl who manifested one onely God which shews it were to little purpose to look for different Authors for the eight books that are come to our times 3. That the most clear and remarkable descriptions of the Son of God palpably relate to the designation as well of the four vowels and two consonants which make up the Greek name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the number precisely arising thence as also the Acrostick of the eighth book wherein we have consecutively the names of Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour and Cross with the Paraphrase on the greatest part of the history of the Gospel 4. That the more express and historicall these descriptions are the more apparent it is that they are supposititious and written after the event the Spirit of God having never thought it convenient to propose things to come otherwise then aenigmatically and under the veil of severall figures and there being no instance but onely of one person whose proper name it hath express'd in its Oracles that is to say Cyrus twice nam'd by Isaiah 175. years before he was possess'd of the Monarchy of the Universe Clemens might soon have observ'd this if to compass his design he had made it as much his business to exercise his judgement as exhaust his memory but having resolv'd to make use of Heathens and Hereticks against themselves so to undeceive them all without taking heed himself of being surpriz'd he as well as others is fallen into the snare and the cloud of witnesses he had to produce suffer'd him not to see the bad marks which some of them carried in their very faces Accordingly do we find That this vast Wit whom nothing escap'd and who thought to make his advantages of all and take away as sometimes Israel did all the treasures of Aegypt after he had with a miraculous ostentation laid down the Depositions of 250. Heathen Authors as well Philosophers as Historians and Poets and given quarter to the most execrable Heretiques such as Basilides Carpacrates Julius Cassianus Epiphanes Heracleon Hermogenes Isidorus Marcion Prodicus Tatian Valentin c. and opened his brest to Apocryphall pieces that is to say the Prophesies of Enoch Cham Abacuc Esdras Parchor and Sophony the book of the Assumption of Moses the Gospels of the Aegyptians and Hebrews the Sermons of St. Peter and St. Paul the Traditions of St. Matthias the Epistle of St. Barnabas the Pastor of Hermas Brother to Pope Pius the first a piece which dazled the eyes of St. Irenaeus and many others hath also given credit to the counterfeit Sibyll whose discourse he thought so much the more authentick the more directly it contributed to his design CHAP. VI. An accompt of severall instances of dis-circumspection in Clemens Alexandrinus SInce therefore it could not well be otherwise but that this great man drawing out of so many severall sources must needs out of divers of them bring up dirt rather then water we shall not fear being thought awanting as to the respect we owe his memory and the merit of his great abilities and knowledge if we presume to affirm that in what we have left of his Works we meet with many instances of dis-circumspection weakness and an excessive credulity To come to particulars what is it else when he says after a very uncouth manner of speaking that the Word is the minister of the paternall will and the second cause which comes nearest the Father That the Angels fell through fornication That it is not lawfull for a man to touch blood nor to swear That Philosophy hath been to the Gentiles a Paedagogue to bring them to Christ fo far that it hath justified them that thereby they have glorify'd God and that it hath been their Testament and the foundation of all Christian Philosophy That Numa who dyed in the second year of the 27. Olympiad 134. years before Pythagoras appear'd and 168. years before he came into Italy was a Pythagorean That Semiramis was Queen of Aegypt That the Devil may repent That it is in our power to be delivered from ignorance and bad choyce That the soul makes the difference in the election of God That man is saved through his own means That in the time of Debora Osius the son of Riezu was high-priest That Solomon was Son-in-law to Hiram That Rehoboam was father to Abiu and Abiu to Athaman and this last to Jehosaphat and that Joram was father to Ozias That Jonathan was son to Ozias that Amos the Prophet was father to Isaiah That Achaz was father to Osea and Osea to Hezechias That from the time of Samuel to that of Josias the Passover was never celebrated That the false Prophet Ananias was son to Josias That Nechao fought Josias neer the river Euphrates That Helchias the high-Priest was father to Jeremy and that he dy'd immediately after he had read the book of the Law That the ten Tribes carried away according to the express certificate of the Scripture in the sixth year of Hezechias were brought into captivity in the fifteenth year of Achas his father That the transportation of the Jews under Sedechias who was later then the birth of Moses by about 1073. years and the raising of David to the Throne by 517. years was after the former 1085. years six months ten dayes and after the latter 492. years six months ten days precisely That Zachary who began not to prophesie to the people till the second year of Darius which was the first of the 65. Olympiad is more ancient then Pythagoras who began to come into reputation in the fourth year of the 60. Olympiad That Moses before his adoption was called Joachim and that now he goes under the name of Melchi That he killed the Aegyptian by his word that he was cast into prison and afterwards got out by miracle That the King having heard the name of God pronounc'd fell dumb and was afterward miraculously restor'd That it was to Philip oâ—… â—…aviour said Let the dead bury their dead That the body is the Sepulchre of the soul That Saint Matthias is Zachaeus the Publican That the Sacerdotall Vestment was bordered with 360 bells That the Son of God and his Apostles did after their death preach in hell that many were there converted that there was so great a necessity of that predication that otherwise God had been unjust That our Saviour did not eat out of any need his body stood in of sustenance but out of a fear of raising any ill opinion of himself in those who saw him That he who is endu'd with knowledge is free from all animal passion and cupidity that he is not overcome
by any thing of voluptuousness that he hath no further need of patience temperance c. That he is impeâ—â—able That Saint Matthias was chosen because he had shewen himself worthy to be an Apostle That the Sun and the Stars were bestow'd on the Gentiles to be adored by them That by the worship of the Stars they should have looked up to God That it is lawfull to lye for the safety of another That God would have a faithfull man to be so far his own guide as not to need any other assistance That after Marcion whom he acknowledges to have liv'd under the Empire of Adrian and Antoninus Simon did for a short time hear Peter preaching c. He discovers also that he had not met with very skilfull Masters in the Hebrew when he writ that Hosanna interpreted in Greek signifies light glory and praise with supplication to the Lord Again that Abraham is by interpretation elected father of the sound and gave other such Etymologies of the Hebrew names CHAP. VII Reflections on severall supposititious pieces whereby many of the ancient Christians have been imposed upon and abused ARe we then to think it much after so many strange remarks that he who with an excessive easiness of belief could take things from all hands from Heathens from Hereticks from Judaicall Traditions from the Apocriphall Writings of Christians and upon the credit of the false Pastor of Hermas introduce our Saviour and his Apostles preaching in hell should be drawn in to admit the predication father'd on St. Paul the Apostle and swallow down the pretended Oracles of the Sibyl which deriv'd their recommendation from it And why should we make any difficulty to acknowledg what expeâ—â—ence proclaims as it were in the open streets In the second Age the first year whereof had been signaliz'd by the decease of St. John the Evangelist Satan not satisfy'd with the open war there was against the Church by the persecution of the Heathen would needs fasten on her skirts a numerous crue of Hereticks of all sorts execrable in their Opinions and deprav'd in their Manners and made it his business to pull all into disorder within by the uncontrolable licentiousness of forgers and Impostors who with a certain earnestness and in a manner at the same time have either to gratifie some particular Heresie or under the specious pretence of engaging against the Idolatry of the Heathen with greater advantage out of a pious fraud fill'd the world with adulterate and supposititious pieces In so much that it may be said there was not any season more fruitfull in those pernicious excrescencies and Apocriphall Writings then that Age nor haply at any time a greater disposition in mens minds to give them credit and entertainment the simplicity of some not permitting a perfect anatomy of the evil and the confidence of those who were either satisfy'd therewith or suspected it inclining them to this opinion that they might make some benefit thereof to the confusion of falshood and advantage of truth Nay those whom learning had a little more refin'd and a conversation with the Sciences made more capable of things as such as being well advanc'd in years had forsaken the banners of Paganisme were apt enough to bring into the Church some tincture of the Opinions they had been imbu'd with before and thinking by the correspondence they still held with the Philosophers to make them more susceptible of piety imagin'd themselves concern'd in point of honour to reconcile their own Maximes to Christianity which by that base allay lost much of its naturall lustre and beauty As therefore men were either totally hereticall or incendiaries and troublesome accordingly did they impose upon the credulity of the simple some broaching and advancing false Prophesies and Histories such as were those of Jaldabaoth of Seth of the sons of Seth of Enoch of Cham c. The Prayer of Joseph the Assumption of Abraham Moses Eldad and Modad The Testament of Moses Esdras Baruc Abacuc Ezekiel Parchor Zephany the lesser Genesis the Book attributed to Zacharias father to St. John the Repentance of Adam of James and Mambres the Book of the Giant Ogenes Jacobs Ladder the Testament of Job the greater and lesser Symphony the Prophesies of Marsiades and Marsian the Ascension of Isaiah c. Others vented counterfeit Gospels such as were those of Eve Peter Andrew James the less Philip Barnabas Matthias Thaddaeus of the Apostles of the Aegyptians of the Hebrews of Judas according to Basilides and Apelles that which the Gnosticks call'd the Gospel of Truth and Perfection whereto upon the declination of the third Age the Manichees added that of Thomas and some others later Impostors that of Nicodemus Others false Acts as those of Peter Andrew Paul and Tecla John Philip Thomas forg'd in some part by Nexocharides or Lucius Charinus and Manes after whom a new Impostor 300. years after puts upon the world the life of St. John under the name of Prochorus and a Rhapsodist who liv'd about 860. years since and took upon him the name of Abdias the Babylonian the lives of all the Apostles Others scatter'd abroad false Relations such were the Books entituled The infancy of our Saviour of the Questions of Mary of the extraction of Mary of the Assumption of Mary of the Nativity of our Saviour of the Lots of the Apostles of the commendation of the Apostles of the Ascension of Saint Paul of the Itinerary of Saint Peter of the preaching of Saint Peter of the doctrine of the Apostles of Apostolicall Constitutions of the Controversie between St. Peter and Appion of the Passion of St. Peter and St. Paul by Linus the Pastor of Hermas whereto about the beginning of the fourth Age Maximian the Emperor caus'd to be joyn'd the Acts of Pilate Others disperc'd counterfeit Epistles such as was that of Abgarus Prince of Edessa to our Saviour with our Saviours pretended answer thereto those that go under the name of St. Barnabas of the B. Virgin to St. Ignatius of St. Ignatius himself of St. Paul to the Laodiceans of the same a third Epistle to the Corinthians as also a third to the Thessalonians the second to the Corinthians wrongfully attributed to St. Clement Others started counterfeit Apocalypses such as were those of Adam Abraham Eliah Paul Thomas Stephen c. Others there were who looking with a jealous eye on what ever was remarkable among either Jews or Heathens would needs make it contribute to Christianity and appropriate all the glory of it to the Church Thus to rob the Grecian Jews of their golden-mouth'd Philo it must be feign'd he had had some conversation with St. Mark and to apply to Christian Monks who began not till the times of Paul and Anthony the Hermits whereof one dy'd the tenth of January in the year 343 and the other the seventeenth of January 358. what he had expresly written of the Esseni a Sect much given to contemplation seated
〈◊〉 which is equivocal he supposes the Chronicle of Eusebius and his History were written before his Work of Evangelical Demonstration and as less elaborate were of less Authority For whence does he inferr it Eusebius in the thirteenth Chapter of his sixth Book of his Evangelical Demonstration had used these worrds And if our own enquiry into things that concern our selves is of any account we have seen with our own eyes Sion which was of old so celebrious plowed up with Oxen and subjected to the Romanes And every one knows that Eusebius who lived not far from Sion and was a Native of the Countrey might discourse to that effect with the more certainty by reason of his having had the opportunity to go thousands of times to the Place nay what is more that at this day as in the Time of Adrian who re-edified Jerusalem under the Name of Aelia Sion which in our Saviour's Time was within its Walls and the Fortess thereof is wholly out of the Compass of it and in a manner uninhabited so that the ground thereof is and may be cultivated by the labour of Oxen. But Hentenius imagining that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could not signifie any thing but his Ecclesiastical History suffered to slip out of his Memory what the Place of the Authour he had in hand should have suggested to him to wit that that very word is there as frequently in other good Writers used to denote an enquiry a survey a visit as when Plutarch in his Book Of the Cessation of Oracles and Theodoret in the second Chapter of the first Book of his Ecclesiastical History make use of it and when Suidas explicates the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nay further though we were apt to understand it otherwise Eusebius himself would not permit it nor yet that we should suppose his Evangelical Demonstration was or was written after or of greater account or more elaborate and correct then his History since that in the third Chapter of the first Book of his History he cites the Demonstration saying Having disposed into Commentaries purposely designed for that end the Extracts of the Prophets concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ and in others demonstratively confirmed the things which have been declared of him and clearly proves that he had written it before and it follows not that if he had writ it afterwards it should be ever the more elaborate for as much as The Life of Constantine whereof contrary to what many at this day think he declares himself the Authour was written after the year 337. long after his Ecclesiastical History yet was never the more elaborate since that what it hath common with the History is alleged in express Terms in several places which shews that Eusebius had not any thing better to entertain us with nor could have expressed himself in better Terms then he had done in his History which he carried on but to the the year 325. The same may be said of his Chronicle which being cited as well in the Evangelical Praeparation as in his Ecclesiastical History must of necessity have been written first For it is so far upon that account from being less correct and elaborate that on the contrary we must necessarily by it correct several Passages which he hath without sufficient recollection thrust into his History which in that regard is the less elaborate Add to this the likelyhood there is that the Chronicle which at present makes mention not onely of the Death of Licinius of the Councel of Nice and the wretched end of Crispus killed in the year 326. was reviewed by him after the setting forth of his History and consequently more elaborate then any other of his Works which Consideration contributes as much or more then any thing hath been said to the conviction of Hentenius of mistake and to the making of his imagination of no account It is therefore manifest by the Testimonies of St. Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian Eusebius and St. Hiâ—rome in the places alleged as also by Severus Sulpitius in the second Book of his Sacred History by Paulus Orosius in the tenth Chapter of the seventh Book of his History by Primasius Bishop of Adrumetum in his Commentary upon the Apocalyps by Jornandes in his Book De Regn. success by Isidore of Sevil in his Chronicle and his Book of the Death of the Saints by the Authour of the Preface put before the Treatises of St. Augustine upon St. John by Maximus on Dionysius his tenth Epistle by the Counterfeit Abdias and Prochorus in the Life of St. John by Bede on the Apocalyps and Of the six Ages by Him who wrote Of the Martyrdom of St. Timothy by Ambrose Ansbert upon the Apocalyps by Paul the Deacon in Miscelia by Freculsius of Lizieux Tom. 2. Book 2. Chap. 7 and 8. by the Romane Martyrologies of Bede Usuard Ado Notker c. by Michael Syncellus in Encomio Dionysii by Regino by Arothas Arch-Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia by Simeon Metaphrastes by the Greek Fasti by the Arabian Prolegomena by Hermannus sirnamed Contractus by Lambert of Schaffnabourg by Marianus Scotus by Zonaras by Cedrenus by Nicephorus Callistus in the eleventh Chapter of his first Book and the fourty second Chapter of his second Book by Georgius Paechymerius on â—ionysius his Episiles and by almost all those that have written since the Time of St. John that that great Apostle received the Revelations from God under Domitian near the end of his Reign that he was recalled from Paâ—mos by Nerva and writ his Gospel after his return to Ephesus and ended this Life in the third year of Trajan so that whosoever will have the Obstinacy to maintain the contrary must needs before he pretend to have any credit given himself wholly take away that of all Antiquity Fourty two years after the re-establishment of Saint John at Ephesus and thirty eight years after his Death the Emperour Adrian troubled with a mortal Disease and without Issue did upon the five and twentieth of February in the year 138. adopt Antoninus sirnamed The Debonnaire conditionally that the Adoption should be extended to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus the Sons of his former adopted Son who died on the first of January in the year 137. and he himself coming to die the 12th of July following immediately thereupon came abroad the Poem attributed to the Sibyls wherein the Authour who towards the end of the 8th Book assigned the utter destruction of Rome to happen in the four hundred ninety eighth year after its Foundation coincident with the year 195. of our Saviour upon this very account that giving two several times a List of the Emperours he reckons after Adrian Antoninus and his two adopted Sons evidently shews that he lived and writ after their Adoption His own words make it manifest After him that is to say Trajan another one with a Silver Head that is to
the earth to the end that be might there communicate his presence to the Patriarchs and Prophets c. You have enough to put by those who insolently enough think not that the souls of the Faithfull justly go to hell by telling them they are Servants above their Master conceiving it not much it may be in the bosom of Abraham to reap the comfort of the resurrection which is to be expected c. Heaven is not opened to any one while the Earth is entire c. We have in our Book Of Paradise made it good that every soul is sequestred in hell till the day of the Lord. And in the fifty sixth Chapter Why do you not judge worthy hell those souls which are pure and innocent And in the fifty eighth Chapter All souls say you are whether you will or no in hell there you have already both the Punishments and the Refreshments there you have the poor man and the rich c. By that prison we mean hell which also the Gospel shews and the utmost farthing we interpret to be any light offence which is to be punished there by the delay of the resurrection And in his third Book Against Marcion and the twenty fourth Chapter Marcion having said that he expected after this life ended Refreshment in hell in the bosom of Abraham Tertullian inferrs thence against him that God is mercifull and makes this Exclamation Oh God! mercifull even in hell And in the thirty fourth Chapter of the fourth Book I say that Abraham's Bosom is a Region though not celestial yet higher then hell which in the interim shall afford refreshment to the souls of the Just till such time as all things being accomplished all receive the fulness of their reward at the general resurrection c. And in his Scorpiacum in the twelfth Chapter In the mean time the souls of the Martyrs rest quietly under the Altar c. Novatian that famous Priest of the Romane Church who in the year 250. was opposed to Pope Cornelius doth in the first Chapter of his Book Of the Trinity follow the Track of Tertullian saying That even those very things which lie under the earth are not void of certain powers being placed every one according to its rank and order for there is one place into which are brought the souls as well of the godly as the wicked feeling before-hand the sentence of the future Judgment Lastly Origen that famous Priest of Caesarea whom St. Hierome in his Preface before his Interpretation of Hebrew Names sometime acknowledged Master of the Churches after the Apostles and whom he observes to have departed this life in the year 254. or thereabouts expresses himself to the same effect saying in his fourth Book Of Principles Those who withdraw out of this world according to the death common to all are disposed of according to their acts and merits as they shall be judged worthy some to the place which is called Hell others into Abraham's Bosom into several Mansions Where it is to be noted that by Hell he means the lower parts of Hell and by Abraham's Bosom the place of sequestration where the dead in his judgment are detained before the final Judgment and not celestial glory which in his seventh Homily upon Leviticus he pretends that none of the Saints are admitted to since he formally excludes from the enjoyment thereof the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles saying that they have not yet received their joy that they expect ours and that they mourn for our sins It is therefore manifest from the unanimous consent of the precedent Testimonies that all the Authours we have left us of the second and as far as the middle of the third Age were all of the same Opinion as being imbued with the Doctrine contained in the Sibylline Books and proposed by each of them as the common sentiment of the whole Church Somewhat to the same purpose may analogically be said of those who followed them in the after-ages as for instance of the Authour of the Constitutions attributed to St. Clement in the fourty second Chapter of his eighth Book of the Authour of the Recognitions in his first Book of the Authour of the Liturgie which goes under the Name of St. James of Victorinus Bishop of Poictiers and Martyr upon the sixth Chapter of the Apocalyps of Lactantius in the twenty first Chapter of his seventh Book of St. Ambrose in the second Chapter of his second Book of Cain and Abel and the tenth Chapter of his Book De bono Mortis of Saint Chrysostome in his fourth Homily upon Genesis and the thirty ninth Homily upon the first Epistle to the Corinthians and the seventh and twenty eighth Homilies upon the Epistle to the Hebrews of Prudentius in his Hymn upon the Obsequies of the dead and of the eighteen Martyrs of Saragossa of St. Augustine upon the thirty sixth Psalm and the seventh Chapter of the eleventh Book De Genesi ad Literam and the thirty fifth Chapter of the twelfth Book and in the hundred and eighth Chapter of his Enchiridion and in the ninth Chapter of his twelfth Book Of the City of God and the fourteenth Chapter of the first Book of his Retractations of the Authour of the Questions attributed to Justin Martyr in the sixtieth and seventy sixth Question of Basil of Seleucia in his tenth Oration of Theodoret Theophylact and Oecumenius upon the eleventh Chapter to the Hebrews of Andrew and Aretas of Caesarea in Cappadocia upon the sixth Chapter of the Apocalyps of Euthymius upon the twenty third Chapter of Saint Luke of the Authour of the Imperfect Work upon Saint Matthew in the thirty fourth Homily of St. Bernard in his third and fourth Sermon upon the Feast of All-Saints and of Pope John the two and twentieth For though many of these later moderating after their manner the Opinion of those who preceeded the year 300. do either forbear making any specifical designation of the place where the Saints are entertained after their death contenting themselves to call it indefinitely with St. Augustine secret and hidden receptacles or with Primasius the secret of God as it were to insinuate that it is known to God only or are so confident as to affirm it to be out of Hell not precisely determining what other habitation it pleased God to assign them yet all agree in this that they often make use of those Expressions which seem to defer the Glory and Beatitude of their souls till the Day of the general Resurrection CHAP. X. The second capital Tenet of the Sibylline Writings THe second Point of Doctrine advanced by the Author of the Sibylline Writings concerning the State of the dead is that all without any exception shall pass through the last Conflagration of the Universe which shall purge the just and shall refine them in such as we say that Gold is melted or refined in the Crucible To this effect is what we read in the second Book page 17.
that they would suffer themselves as Children of Peace Domesticks of the Prince of Peace to be won into thoughts of Compassion and love for the Salvation of those who perish and not be afraid after the Example of our Saviour who came from Heaven and descended into the lower parts of the Earth to seek for the Children of wrath to become as his Apostle all things to all men that by all means he might save some When such a noble desire shall once possess mens Spirits inclining them not to endeavour the Conquest of their own glory but to procure as far as lies in them the Victory and Triumph of Truth for the glory of God it will be impossible but that cruel and murthering animosities the ordinary but ever-fatall Consequences of Debates concerning Religion which is thereby ruined must vanish as so many infernal shades chaced away by the amiable raies of the Sun of Righteousness who brings life and healing in his Wings Nor ought we whatever some Earthly Souls may conceive of their own carnal and violent Counsels hopeless then that in the extraordinary confusion of the last times some change for the better may happen Heretofore the Church soon after the departure of the Apostles had the misfortune that Hermas Papias Justin Martyr Athenagoras Theophilus of Antioch St. Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian in a word all the most excellent Persons of whom we have ought left led away by the extravagances and fantastick Imaginations of the counterfeit Sibyll believed themselves and perswaded others that the Souls of all men were from the departure out of the Body detained in Hell till the Resurrection that the just rising again before the others should reign with Jesus Christ upon Earth and live a thousand years in Jerusalem made glorious and flowing with corporeal enjoyments or at least in the Terrestrial Paradise and that the Bodies of the greatest Saints should pass through the last conflagration of the World as through a Refiner's Furnace The Fathers of the following Ages happily shook off these unmaintainable conceits but finding Prayer for the Dead in the publick Service of the Church they extended it as well to the blessed as the damned The Church of Rome who approves not of praying for either of those two States hath at last brought into credit her Purgatory a thing not known before why may we not hope it from the goodness of God that he will dispel this last Imagination as he hath done the precedent and every where establish his Truth in its full lustre Let therefore those who at the present quarrel at the simplicity of the Protestants who neither maintain the Hypotheses of the Fathers which the Opinion of Purgatory hath discredited nor hold Purgatory which is made up of the rubbish of the precedent suppositions for their discharge consider that they have on the one side learnt from the instructions as well of Scripture as of the Fathers and all the antient Liturgies even that of the Church of Rome that her Purgatory hath no sound foundation and on the other that the Church of Rome her self hath by her example given them the boldness to recede from the practise of the Fathers which she first relinquished And as I have made it my business as much as lay in my power to give an accompt of their demeanour searching into the true causes of the differences that have appeared in the Perswasions and Customs of the Christians who have passed through so long a revolution of Ages and shewing those who now live how deeply it concerns them to build on the firm and unmoveable foundation of the Scriptures and avoid the quick-Sands of humane apprehensions so shall I be the first to censure my self if contrary to my intention I may have chanced to be mistaken and so far from being displeased with those who shall charitably advertise me thereof that I shall highly celebrate their good Offices and acknowledg upon all occasions that as we can all of us do nothing against the truth so I shall never as to my own particular presume to attempt any thing to its prejudice but hold with St. Cyprian that we must not erre always because we have sometimes erred and make it my chiefest address to the Father of Lights from whom every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down that he would lift up the light of his countenance upon all his Children give them the grace to understand their errours and cleanse them from those which are yet secret and make the words of their mouth and meditations of their hearts acceptable in his sight and advantageoâ—is to their own and their Neighbours salvation Amen A TABLE Of the Chapters BOOK I. CHAP. I. THat the most earnest Pursuers of Truth are as others subject to Mistakes Page 1 II. Instances of certain Misapprehensions of Justine Martyr 2 III. The Writings pretended to be Sibylline discovered in several particulars to be Spurious and Supposititious 4 IV. The Judgment of Antoninus Possevinus concerning the Writings pretended to be Sibylline taken into Examination 6 V. The Recommendation of the Sibylline Writings attributed by Clemens Alexandrinus to Saint Paul brought to the Test 9 VI. An accompt of several instances of Dis-circumspection in Clemens Alexandrinus 12 VII Reflections on several Suppositious Pieces whereby many of the antient Christians have been imposed upon and abused 14 VIII The different Opinions of the Antients concerning the Sibyls 19 IX The precautions of Rome while yet in Paganism to prevent the reading of the Books which she believed really Sibylline 23 X. The Motives which he might have gone upon who was the first Projector of the Eight Books which at this day go under the Name of the Sibylline 27 XI A Discovery of the mistakes of the Emperour Constantine the Great concerning the Sibyl and her Writings 29 XII The Sentiment of Cicero concerning the Acrostick attributed to the Sibyl further cleared up 32 XIII The Sentiment of Virgil in his fourth Eclogue examined and cleared up and that it hath no relation to the Writings pretendedly Sibylline which were composed a long time after made apparent 34 XIV Remarks on some less considerable mistakes of the Emperour Constantine in the Explication of Virgil's fourth Eclogue 40 XV. That it cannot be said that Virgil in his fourth Eclogue disguised his own Sentiment 45 XVI That Apollodorus had no knowledg of the Eight Books which go under the name of the Sibylline ibid. XVII That Pausanias hath not writ any thing which may give credit to the Book unjustly called the Sibylline 47 XVIII That the Prohibition made to read the Books called the Sibylline and that of Hystasphes adds no Authority thereto 48 XIX That the Letter written by L. Domitius Aurelianus to the Senate gives no credit to the Sibylline Writings 50 XX. Other Discoveries shewing the Supposititiousness of the Sibylline VVriting so called 51 XXI That it cannot with any likelihood of Truth
it hard in all the series of Time to meet with any one more remarkable then that of the mistake of Saint Justin a Person very recommendable if any may be admitted such First for his Antiquity since he dy'd but very little after the midst of the second Age of the Church Secondly for his knowledge as being one who before his reduction to the Christain Faith had by profession been a Philosopher Thirdly for his piety since he became so constant a maintainer of the true Religion as that he was at last honour'd with the Crown of Martyrdom All these advantages might have rais'd him above the ordinary rate of men yet have they not exempted him from being abus'd by certain advancers of foolish Stories who having perswaded him to take the Idol of Semo Sangus one of the false gods of the Sabini for the Statue of Simon Magus engag'd him I know not how to maintain his mistake in the presence even of some of the Heathens and that with so much confidence as clearly discover'd he said nothing but what he really believ'd He it was also who thought himself very much in the right when he boasted that he had seen at Pharos neer Alexandria the remainders of the LXXII Cells where the Interpreters of the Bible had been employ'd in that Work nay some others as Saint Irenaeus Saint Cyril and Saint Augustine have believ'd him and yet Saint Hierome who as well as the other had been upon the place and taken more particular notice thereof does not onely laugh at it but says I know not who by his glozing hath built them With the same security disputing against the Heathens who according to the observation of Origen by way of derision called the Christians Sibyllists he opposes thereto the Authority of Hystaspes a supposititious Author of whose Works there is at the present nothing extant as also the Oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl whom he pretends to have been the Daughter of Berosus who was later then Cyrus by 250 years and dyed in the 225 year of the foundation of Rome and the fourth of the reign of Tarquin to whom many hold that one call'd Amalthaea Sibylla sold at an excessive rate the books since known by the name of the Sibylline and preserv'd in Rome for the space of above 440 years till the civill wars of Sylla not minding it seems that according to the generall perswasion of the Romans the Cumaean Sibyl had entertain'd Aeneas who dyed 639 years before Cyrus possess'd himself of Babylon nor yet reflecting on what Pausanias an Author much about his own time observes from Hyperochus Cumanus and other Ancients 1. That the Sibyl who convers'd in that place was called Demo 2. That the Cumaeans had not any Oracle to shew of hers 3. That she had not been preceded by any but by Lamia the daughter of Neptune sirnamed by the Lybians Sibylla and Herophila the daughter of Jupiter and Lamia who had her residence sometimes at Ida in Phrygia sometimes at Mapessos sometimes at Samos sometimes at Claros of Colophon and sometimes at Delos and Delphi 4. That her Monument and her Epitaph grav'd upon a pillar was at Troas 5. That the Erythraeans would not onely have it that she was born among them of Theodorus a Shepherd and the Nymph Idaea but also that she gave Hecuba the interpretation of her dream and 6. That after the Cumaean Demo the Hebrews who live above Palestine set up Sabba the daughter of Berosus and Erimantha who went under the name of the Babylonian or Aegyptian Sibyl Nor lastly regarding that the very argument whereof he thought to make his greatest advantage in order to the conviction of Pagan Idolatry expresly maintains that she who compos'd it was wife to one of Noe's Sons and of neere kin to him who departed this life 1697. yeares before Antiochus Soter was established in Babylon and that Berosus whose Daughter they would have her to be meerely because her VVriting intimates her coming out of Babylon could have been allow'd the name of Father For these are her words O the great joy I have had since I have escap'd the destruction of the Deep having before undergone many misfortunes toss'd up and down by the waves with my husband my sisters-in-Law my Father and Mother-in-Law and those who were married together And elsewhere When the World was overwhelm'd with waters and that a certain man who had undergone the tryall was left alone exposed to the waters in a house cut out of the Forrest with the beasts and birds of the aire to the end that there might be a Restauration of the World to that man was I daughter-in-law engendred of his blood By which words she clearly destroyes what she had writ some lines before saying that the Greeks took her for the daughter of Circe and Gnostus or rather Ulysses whom she entitles known Father because of the reputation of his name never considering that 800. yeares and more were slipped away between the death of Noe and the arrivall of Ulysses at Cirâ—aeum She further affirmes that she came from Babylon in Assyria speaking so much the more improperly for that Babylon was neither built nor named till 153. yeares after the Deluge nor was it of Assyria properly so called but of another different Country that is to say of Sennaar and that it took not the name of Assyria till above 165. yeares afterwards Nay the impudence of the Imposture is so much the more palpable in that this pretended daughter-in-law of Noe describes her selfe as a notorious strumpet saying Ah wretch that I am what will become of me in that day for all the things I set my mind upon in my folly having no regard of either my Marriage or my reason And again What great evills have I heretofore committed wittingly and willingly and how many other things have I imprudently run after without the least remorse thereat I have taken my lustfull pleasure with ten thousand and have not had the least consideration of my marriage c. CHAP. III. The supposititiousnesse of the Writings pretended to be Sibylline exemplified in severall particulars IF St. Justin Martyr had been but pleased I will not say to look a little better about him but only to open his eyes and fasten them with ever so little recollection on what he read he had met with a thousand instances of imposture in those pleasant Oracles which he objected against the Heathens employing against them three Verses out of the first book as many out of the third and seven out of the fourth For he would upon the first sight have perceived that that ill-digested collection written in wretched Greek and coming from the hands of a person who discovers his ignorance of the Hebrew could not be attributed either to Noah's daughter-in-law who liv'd above 250. years before the confusion of Tongues and consequently before there was any Greek nor yet to the
disburthening of the Ark wherein she with a strange impudence affirm'd that she had been kept in one and fourty days a thing which never either came or could come into the imagination of Daphne The second is when after he had said That on a certain time the Sibyl fill'd with a divine inspiration utter'd the 33. Verses which make up the Acrostick of these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he adds It is manifest that Cicero having read this Poem translated it into the Language of the Romans and inserted it into his Works and that he was kill'd while Anthony had the supreme power of the Empire in his hands and that Augustus who reign'd 56. years came after Anthony and that Tiberius succeeded Augustus in whose time was the coming of the Saviour into the World and the mysterie of the most holy Religion came into reputation For not to take much notice that the Acrostick of the pretended Sibyl such as we find it in the eighth Book of her Writings consists of four and thirty Verses among which Constantine hath left out this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the ninth and according to the translation of the ancient Interpreter in Saint Augustine and Prosper rendered thus Exuret terras ignis pontumque polumque whence it follows that the spurious Sibyl had writen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as hath been notoriously discovered by the Author of the Traduction copied by Saint Augustine wherein the Latine Acrostick runs in this order of the Letters Jesues Qreistos c. Nay further to pass by as what 's generally acknowledg'd that Anthony was the contriver of Cicero's death that Augustus reign'd 56. years afterward or thereabouts and that Tiberius succeeded him and not to urge that though the most remarkable accidents of the reign of Tiberius were the Baptisme and Passion of our Saviour yet his coming into the World cannot be properly attributed to that time since he took flesh of the blessed Virgin in the fourty second year of Augustus's government and consequently that he was going out of the fifteenth year of his age when the same Augustus departed this life Now I say to make any advantage of all this I answer that it is not onely not manifest either from the reading or the version nor yet from the record pretended to be made thereof by Cicero that any such thing was but that what is directly contrary it is evident from the very ground whence it might be imagin'd that Constantine deriv'd his opinion that is to say from the second Book of Divination written by Cicero between the fifteenth of March in the year of Rome 710. wherein Julius Caesar was murther'd in the Senate and the seventh of December in the year 711. in which he was himself put to death by the command of Anthony that he neither did nor could have done what is pretended The first reason is for that he maintains in generall terms that there is no Divination by inspiration such as it is supposed was that of the Sibyls What authority saith he is there in that fury which you call Divine which is such as that a person distracted seeth what a wise man sees not and that he who is at a loss of humane abilities should have acquir'd divine Secondly for that he particularly observes that the Author of the Verses which were kept at Rome under the title of the Sibylline was so far from doing what he did by vertue of any inspiration that it was the effect of a jugling and crafty invention out of a design to cheat We take notice saith he of these Verses of the Sibyl which it is reported fell from her in a fury out of which it was thought not long since that is to say in the year 710 that the Interpreter Cotta would tell the Senate things that were not true according to the common report of men to wit that if we would be safe from the Parthians we must call him King who in effect was our King If this he in the Books what man what time does it particularly design For finally he who hath composed these things hath so done his work as that whatsoever should happen it might seem to be foretold the determinate observation of men and times being taken away He hath also put on a vayl of obscurity that the same Verses might seem applyable one while to one thing another to another But that the Poem is not the work of a person in fury on the one side the Poem it self declares it for it is rather the effect of Art and diligence then of transportation and extasie and on the other the Acrostick as they call it when there may some connexion be made of the first Letters of the Verse as in some of Ennius's Poems this certainly is the work rather of an attentive mind then of a distracted Thirdly in as much as he concludes that that the Poëms committed in Rome to the custody of the Quindecimviri tended rather to impiety then the establishment of Religion Wherefore saith he Let the Sibyl be still secret and sequestred from us that as it hath been ordered by our Ancestors the books be not read without the permission of the Senate as contributing more to the putting off religious worships then submission thereto Let us treat with the Priests that they would draw any thing out of them rather then a King which neither gods nor men will ever hereafter suffer in Rome This he spoke in relation to the design of Cotta and his Colleagues to have Caesar proclaim'd King the poor man not in the least imagining that he was himself upon the threshold of his greatest misfortune for having through an almost fatall inconsiderateness contributed to the translation of the Royall power which Caesar had been possess'd of into the hands as well of a remote descendant Augustus of that Prince as of Anthony his most inexorable enemy And thence it may be deduc'd 1. That he had not though Augur read the Sibylline books in as much as he expresses himself in these terms If that be in the books and with greater reason that he had not been the Interpreter of them nor inserted into his Works any pieces thereof 2. That though they had been absolutely at his disposal yet would he not have taken the trouble upon him either to transcribe ought out of them or give any interpretation thereof since he did not acknowledge there was any thing Divine in them but onely artifice mixt with imposture and impiety 3. That it is not possible he should account the Sibyl whatever she might be a Prophetess in as much as he deny'd there either were or could be any Prophets it being not imaginable in an understanding man and a Philosopher that after he had laid down this universall negative Proposition No person was ever seiz'd by Divine fury he would betray so much forgetfulness as to maintain the
contradictory affirmative Some person to wit the Sibyl hath been seiz'd by a Divine fury 3. That what he observes of the Acrostick and the Poëm which was full of ambiguity and artifice signifies that it was in his judgement an attempt of subtil knavery and not the effect of any Divine inspiration CHAP. XII The sentiment of Cicero concerning the Acrostick attributed to the Sibyl further clear'd up BUt I proceed further and say That though it were granted that Cicero could have been perswaded that the Pieces kept at Rome in the custody of the Quindecimviri were Divine yet would he never have made that judgement either of the eight Books now extant among us nor yet of the thirty three Verses taken by Constantine out of the eighth He would not have made it of the whole body of the eight books for all the Sibylline Oracles were as being not much unlike the Centuries of Nostradamus little fragments of Poetry writ down one after another but distinguish'd as well in regard of the form as subject and disposed by way of Acrosticks Whence it is that Dionysius Halicarnassaeus writing under Augustus and some few years after the death of Cicero sayes that The Verses attributed to the Sibyl are discover'd by the Acrosticks And Cicero himself who had spoken of an Acrostick in the singular number shews that the artifice of it was common to all the Poëms that went under the name of the Sibylline In the Sibylline books saith he of the first verse of every sentence is made the beginning of the contexture of all the Poëm by the first Letters of that sentence this is the work of a person that writes not of one in a fury of a man that does things with circumspection not of one that is extravagant So that it might be saïd of these Pieces that there was in them not a simple but a double artifice as wherein the first verse was written as it were in the frontispeece and down along sideways making the begining of the Poem and containing in order the first letters of every of the following verses Of that kind was that forc'd Preface which Athelme Bishop of Sarisbery writ about the year 705. and put at the begining of this Poem Of the praise of Virgins the first verse which was Metrica tyrones nunc promant carmina castos contains an Acrostick of all the rest of the work so that as the first Letter that is M begins the whole body of the Preface the second E is the first Letter of the second verse the third which is T of the third and so of the rest And hence it is apparent that though the Acrostick of thirty three or thirty four verses copied by Constantine as also by St. Augustine had been truly Sibylline the rest of the eight books according to the presupposition of Cicero and Dionysius Halicarnassaeus could not be the like since that there is not any Tract of an Acrostick elsewhere But that those thirty three verses whereof the Capitall letters make up the name of our Saviour neither have been nor could be such as the ancient Christians believ'd them is further apparent from this that the first verse contains not the Acrostick of all that follows and does not any way express the artifice of the Sibylline verses observ'd by Cicero Whence it must necessarily follow First that the person who was the Author as well of this part of the eighth book as of all the rest of both that and the other books which many upon such triviall grounds would have us entertain for Divine Oracles had onely heard so much of the Acrostick mention'd by Cicero as that he never understood it Secondly that it may with much more reason be believ'd that he never had any sight or knowledge of the Sibylline books celebrated by the ancient Heathens Thirdly that Constantine the Great and those Fathers who were later then Justine Martyr as Tertullian and Optatus dazled with the false lustre of an imposture which carried some appearance of piety were deceiv'd not onely when they receive'd with open arms for Divine and Propheticall what was not such but also when critically endeavouring to find something of mystery in it and striving to go beyond the Acrostick which they so much though without any just cause admir'd they shuffled together the capitall Letters of these five Greek words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to raise out of them the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Fish and to gather thence that our Saviour is the onely Fish of Salvation and that the Christians are Pisciculi the little fishes whom he nourishes and enlivens in the Fish-pond of his Baptisme For though it be most certain that Baptisme is the washing of regeneration and that our Lord and Saviour who was the Author and consecrator thereof is the Fountain of our spirituall life yet was the ground whence they thought to derive this truth most false Nor do I make this remark out of any design to cast a blemish on those holy persons who made their advantage of it for who is not subject to be surpized but out of compassion to see their plain dealing and want of caution so unworthily play'd upon and their piety so insolently abused by a sort of persons who without any shame or conscience have presum'd to lodge their own fantasticall imaginations in the most honourable places of Gods Sanctuary one while as Propheticall Oracles pronounc'd immediately after the Deluge another as Apostolicall Predications added some 2400. years after to confirm and raise them into greater veneration CHAP. XIII The sentiment of Virgil in his fourth Eclogue examin'd and clear'd up and that it hath no relation to the Writing pretendedly Sibylline which was composed a long time after made apparent HAving made the best advange he could of this Certificate of Cicero's on the behalf of the Sibyl the Emperor Constantine produces that of Virgil to the same purpose the gravity of which second Witness deserves a more particular examination of what is alledged by him I take no notice of the conceit which the Prince who produces his testistimony had when he thought that this verse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereby he would express the Latine Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto is out of some other place of the Bucolicks then that which begins Sicelides musae for though it be indeed out of that very Eclogue and clearly discovers that Constantine either had not read it exactly or had it onely upon the report of some other I shall not I say make any advantage of this mistake of little consequence but intreat the Reader to remember that whether he be pleased to reflect on the occasion of the Poem or on the whole contexture of it he shall not find any thing in it which does not favour of Paganisme and accordingly is so much the further from Divine or may shew that the Author had his thoughts fixt
the Birth of men so they shew'd that Pollio's Wife who had been very much indisposed during her Pregnancy should after her Delivery make her self known to her childe by her joy that that Joy was as it were the Earnest of the child's Blessing as it were a signification of Misfortune to him if his Parents were not joyfull at his Birth But the Emperour transforming the Discourse of Virgil according to his own way makes him say Begin laughing and lifting up thy sight to know thy Mother who should be dear to thee for she hath carried thee in her womb many years thy Parents have not smiled on thee at all thou hast not been put in a Couch nor had splendid Banquet Whereupon he adds by way of Comment upon it How have not the Parents smiled on this childe Certainly it was because he who begot him is a certain Power that hath no Qualities nor can be figured by the delineation of other things nor hath a humane body Now who knows not that being a holy Spirit it can have no experience of Coitions And what inclination and desire can be imagined in the disposition of that good with a greediness whereof all things are inflamed Or what compliance is there between Wisdom and Pleasure But let these things be said onely by those who introduce I know not what humane generation of God and endeavour not to cleanse their minds of every bad Word and Work What a small matter needs there to divert men from the Truth since the pure Imagination of a Mystery where there is not any is able to do it Certain it is that as God the Father hath neither Qualities nor Figure nor Body nor Passions nor Desires so the eternal Generation of his Word hath nothing common with that of men But nothing of all this coming to the knowledg of Virgil and his words neither expressing nor capable of expressing it since the Greek properly speaking is a corruption of the Latine which tended to no other end then to promise Happiness to Pollio's young Son to what purpose have some thought to Philosophize as they have done For there had been no occasion given had they not altered the Sense by supposing as many have done that Pollio's little childe had laughed assoon as he was born and that upon that extraordinary Laughter the whole Prediction of his Happiness had been grounded and imagining that Virgil had said of the child's Laughter what he meant of the Mother's as also that she had born him several years and that he was not descended of Parents subject to either any inclination to Laughter or the natural necessity of Sleep and Rest For should that Great man have returned to Earth again he might with reason have said to Constantine what St. Augustine said since to Julian the Pelagian Restore me my Words and thy dreaming Imaginations will vanish CHAP. XV. That it cannot be said That Virgil in his Fourth Eclogue disguised his own Sentiment THe same thing may also be said of the same Emperour 's supposing that the Poet spake Figuratively and disguised the Truth out of a fear that any of the Potentates of the Royal City should charge him with writing against the Laws of his Country and dcrogating from what had sometime been the sentiment of his Ancestours concerning the Gods and that he wished the prolongation of his own life to see the coming of our Saviour For as it happened about three hundred years since that the Poet Dante mov'd by an Admiration of that incomparable Wit would needs deliver him out of his Hell in like manner the good opinion Constantine had conceived of him hath made him read in his Poem what indeed is not in it out of such an Imagination as those have who looking up to the Clouds think they see such and such Figures therein And thence comes it that he hath spoken so much to his advantage though without any ground either in Truth it self or indeed in the very outward Dress of his Work which was not done according to the certain Pattern of any antient Oracle of the Sibyls nor yet to the eight Books now extant among us and which were writ above one hundred fourscore and six years after the Consulship of Pollio but was design'd onely to express the desire which Virgil had to comply with Augustus and Pollio and to insinuate more and more into their Favour Whereupon I conclude That the antient Paganism what Opinion soever Constantine and others may have had to the contrary hath not given any Testimony either in favour of these pretended Sibylline Oracles which openly oppose Idolatry or yet to confirm the perswasion which the Fathers have had thereof CHAP. XVI That Apollodorus had no knowledg of the Eight Books called the Sibylline FOr to think with the generality of modern Christians that Apollodorus the Erythraean had seen the Third Book because as Lactantius observes from Varro he had affirmed of the Erythraean Sibyl That she was of his City and that she had Prophecied to the Greeks going to Ilium that Troy should be destroyed and that Homer should write Lies is a manifest abuse The Words we read to this purpose are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Troy I compassionate thy Miseries A fair Erinnys shall from Sparta rise Which Europe and the Asian Realms will vex But thee 'bove all with many Woes perplex Her self much crown'd with Fame that never dies An Aged Man Authour of many Lies Shall flourish next of unknown Country blind His Eyes but of a clear quick-sighted Mind He his conceptions into Verse shall frame And what he writes stile with a double Name Profess himself a Chian and declare Th' Affairs of Ilium not as they were Yet clear both in my Words and Verse for he The first that looks into my Works shall be This I say is a manifest Mistake For First It is no hard matter to imagine that the Impostour who composed the Eight Books of the Sibyls and had impudently taken upon him the name of Wife to Noah ' s Son two hundred years after the Death of Varro who died according to Eusebius in the seven hundred twenty and sixth year of Rome might at his ease and long enough before have read what he had alledged out of Apollodorus who was more antient whether in his Latine or in the Greek Text of Apollodorus and that he could do no less for his own Reputation then produce as a probable Argument of his pretended Antiquity what he had found in him Secondly For that Apollodorus who attests of the Erythraean Sibyl that she was born in his City and acknowledged a Native thereof whether by common Report or upon the Credit of her Writings could not have said any such thing of our Counterfeit Sibyl who says she came from Babylon and was Noah's Daughter-in-law and formally denyes that she was by Country an Erythraean and charges the Greeks with Imposture for
presuming to derive her thence A manifest Argument that Apollodorus could not ground his pretension on her contradictory Testimony but that the Counterfeit Sibyl having seen as being later by many Ages what he had written took occasion to oppose it as incompatible with his Fiction Thirdly For that she quarrels with the Greeks for having said of her things which not any one in particular could be convinced to have affirmed to wit That she was the Daughter of Circe and by Father of Gnostus for all those among the Antients who have left any thing behind them have made the Erythraean Sibyl the Daughter of Jupiter or of Apollo and Lamia or of Aristocrates and Hydole or of Crinagoras or in fine of the Shepherd Theodorus and the Nymph Idea and not any one of Circe besides that indeed they could not have done it without Absurdity For how could it have come into their minds to make her born at Erythrae a City of Asia if they had thought her the Daughter of Circe by Nation an Italian born and dwelling near Rome upon the Mount called to this day by her name Monte Circello I pass by as of less Consequence the Stupidity of that pretended Prophetess who to put a slur on the reputation of Homer betrayed her own Ignorance saying That Homer should write not truly but clearly of Ilium because he should see her Works For who will say they are things incompatible To say the Truth and To speak clearly Are they who speak Truth necessarily obliged to conceal themselves and Liers to discover themselves Or can it be said that the Consequence is good He hath my Verses therefore He shall not speak the Truth unless it be presupposed that those Verses are full of Untruths and teach him that hath them to Lie But the Books pretended to be writ by the Sibyls though they have for these fourteen hundred years and still do dazle the eyes of many swarm with such Impertinences CHAP. XVII That Pausanias hath not written any thing which may give credit to the Books mis-named the Sibylline NOr is there any more reason we should take the Discourse of Pausanias who says The Isle of the Rhodians hath been much shaken so that the Oracle of the Sibyl which had been given concerning Rhodes is come to pass for any confirmation of what the pretended Sibyl had writ in two several places The greatest unhappiness that may be shall happen to the Rhodians For he speaks of the Earth-quake which happened in that Isle almost two Ages before under Augustus soon after which Tiberius had in a manner raised it again through his continual Residence therein from the year of Rome 748. to the year 755. upon which account it is that the Epigram of Antiphilus calls him its Restorer and the pretended Sibyl threatens it with a Ruin to come at the end of the World when Rome having accomplished its Period nine hundred fourty and eight years shall be so destroyed by Nero returned from Persia that it shall become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a street Delos shall be no more and Samos be turned into an Heap of Sand. Which may serve to justifie the mistake of Tertullian who thrusting into his Book De Pallio these last words dis-joynted from the Precedent and Consequent applies them to that Desolation of those Isles which reached to his Time saying Of the Isles Delos no longer is Samos is become Sand and the Sibyl is no Lier whereas he should necessarily have concluded That she had lyed in referring to the end of the World and of Rome what had happened long before as also that all the eight Books in three whereof the Mis-fortune of that Isle was recapitulated in the same Terms were contrary to the Opinion since embraced by Lactantius the Draught of one and the same hand CHAP. XVIII That the Prohibition made to read the Books called the Sibylline and that of Hystaspes adds no Authority thereto THere is yet less ground to rely on the Words of Justine Martyr writing to the Emperours Through the working of Evil Spirits is it come that it is forbidden upon pain of Death to read the Books of Hystaspes â—…he Sibyl or the Prophets that so those who read them might by fear be diverted from taking cognizance of good things for we not onely read them without any fear but also as you see we recommend them to your inspection knowing they would be acceptable to you all Yet if we perswade but a little we gain much for that as good Labourers we shall receive a reward from the Master For though we may with some likelyhood conjecture that the Antient Prohibition to read the Prophetical Books was much more strictly observed after the discovery of the forged Pieces of Hystaspes and the Sibyl among the Heathens and that they had a particular aversion for those who gave credit thereto Yet is there not found in their Books any Law to that purpose nor does it appear that they made it much their business to prevent the reading of those Writings which they justly esteemed Supposititious and such as had never been among their Archivi nor yet that they decreed any Punishment to be inflicted on the Readers and Admirers of the Prophets of Israel since the exercise of the Jewish Religion had been always tolerated in the Empire and the Synagogues were continued every where And if the liberty of such as were inclined to Judaism was less after the tumult of Barchochebas and the whole Nation more hated yet did not that Hatred occasion the interdiction of the Prophetical Books but onely the Banishment of the natural Jews out of Palestine and some addition to their Taxes And as Justine neither says nor could have said That the Prohibition made to read the Fatidick Books in the Empire was more particularly levelled against the Christians then others since it was so general that it comprehended all Nations under the Romane Jurisdiction without distinction or exception and that it is manifest it was done upon occasion of the Books laid up first in the Capitol and afterwards under the Base of Apollo Palatinus So was there not any ground to imagine that it proceeded from the suggestion of Devils rather then from a deep Political Prudence which very rationally apprehended that these Oracles for which the Common People though they knew them not had so great an esteem upon this very account that they introduced Novelties into the antient Superstition and if I may so express it clad it in a new Dress notoriously derogated from the Customes derived from Father to Son were likely to fill mens minds with fruitless Curiosities and as Cicero says Valebant ad deponendas Religiones As for the Supposititious Pieces of Hystaspes and the Sibyl which under pretence of teaching the Worship of one God and recommending unto men the Mysteries of Christian Religion filled it with false Opinions and raised upon some sound
Foundations a mud-wall of Chimeras the Heathens justly laughed at them Every one whatever Justine Martyr and many others imitating him might think was obliged to believe it an Artifice of the Devil suggesting it into the minds of some besotted Zealots to lie that the Truth might be believed and according to the Observation of Saint Paul do evil that good might come of it And a compliance with so unworthy an Imposture and the confidence to produce it as Justine and others out of simplicity did should not have satisfied any that would have advised ever so little with Reason For St. Justine himself minding things more calmly might easily have perceived First That he mistook as well the Prohibition made by the Romanes to read the Fatidick Books as the Motive of it Secondly That he was as much to blame in applying it to the Oracles lately forged Thirdly That the Heathens never had them in their possession nor knew of them Which makes me wonder how it hath been or can be possible for any Christian to entertain a perswasion that the sight of such adulterate Pieces should contribute to the advancement of true Piety when the account of their Extraction is as flat and impudent as if some Jew having lately forged VVritings full of criminal Accusations against the Saviour of the World should maintain to the very faces of the Christians That he found them in the New Testament That the Apostles were the Authors thereof and That the Church having always had them in her custody hath concealed them out of very shame for the Imposture of him whom she adores But as to prevail any thing with the Jews the way were not to press them with Apocryphal Revelations of unknown Prophets feigned to have been of their Nation for that such an Imposture would be so far from convincing them that it would exasperate them against the Authours of it And again as for the pulling down of Mahumetism it were no Prudence to bring in as from Mahomet a new Alcoran directly opposite to his Cheat So was there not any probable reason for any to promise themselves from the supposititiousness of the Books of Hystaspes and the Sibyl any other of the Heathens then a more inveterate detestation of Christianity some Professours thereof being engaged in so wicked a Design and that with so strange and incredible confidence against them Accordingly was it not God's pleasure that any good should be the effect of such an Imposture for it filled men not provided against such Surprises with erroneous Prejudications and brought into repute among the first Christians the extravagant Imagination of the Millenaries and filled their minds with vain and sottish Conceptions of the World to come CHAP. XIX That the Letter written by L. Domitius Aurelianus to the Senate gives no Credit to the Sibylline Writings NOr can we lastly derive any recommendation of the eight Books of these false Oracles which have been preserved even to our Times from the Letter which the Emperour Aurelian engaged in the Marcomannick War writ to the Senate in the year of Christ two hundred and seventy one saying I cannot but wonder Holy Fathers you have been so long time in doubt whether the Books of the Sibyls should be opened as if you were to treat in some Christian Church and not in the Temple of all the gods For though Cardinal Baronius who writes Valerian for Aurelian infers thence That it was not safe for the Christians to read and search into the Sibylline Books as if that Prohibition which had been made five hundred and fourscore years before our Saviour had concerned them more then others and that the Church had ever had an inclination to look into such Ordures Yet is it most certain that Aurelian meant not the eight Books we now have against Idolatry but those which the Quindecem-viri had in their Custody under the Base of Apollo Palatinus in favour of Idolatry and that there is a thousand times more reason to conclude from his Letter what M. Petavius the Jesuit hath very well observed to wit That the Christians had an horrour for the reading of such prophane Books in their Churches where they permitted not the reading even of the Apocryphal Books excluded out of the Canon of the Bible as the Councel of Laodicea hath since expresly decreed The Emperour says then That the Delay of the Senate had been excusable in an Assembly of Christians who could not have touched Books that taught Idolatry but with an extreme remorse and would have thought it an intolerable pollution of the Purity of the Church to introduce those execrable Monuments into it but that there should no such scruple arise in the minds of an Assembly consisting of persons wholly devoted to the Worship of the gods and met together in their common Temple Accordingly Cardinal Baronius as it were came to himself and to perswade us that no good could be expected from the Sibylline Oracles acknowledges That the Heathenish Priests being greater Enemies then all others under a feigned pretence of Religion bad out of them taken occasion to raise the Persecution against the Christians Which they could not have done had they expresly taught matters of Piety And certainly this is remarkable let there be as much search as may be made in what Histories relate of the Consultations which Rome from time to time held about them it will be found that she never had any recourse thereto but the Consequence was some new Abomination For if the Dispute was of Sacrificing after some extraordinary manner to the Infernal gods and instituting Solemn Games to them if about sending for the Mother of the gods from Pessinus in Phrygia and Aesculapius from Epidaurus which is now Ragusa or about Sacrificing a Gaul of either Sex to appease the Devils under the Names of Jupiter Juno Cybele Saturn Apollo Venus Ceres Bacchus c. the Orders for it were taken out of them See Varro De Lingua Latina lib. 5. De Re Rustica lib. 1. cap. 1. Cicero Epist Famil lib. 1. 7. Verrina ult Livy Decad. 1. lib. 3 4 7 10. Decad. 3. lib. 1 2 5 9. Decad. 4. lib. 1 5 7 10. Decad. 5. lib. 1 2 3 5. the Epitome of Florus Decad. 3. lib. 2 9. Decad. 4. lib. 1. Decad. 6. lib. 9. Dionysius Halicarnassaeus lib. 1 3 10. Tacitus Annal. 15. Solinus cap. 7. Valerius Maximus lib. 1. cap. 1 9. Plutarch in Poplicola Fabio Maximo Mario c. and his Book entituled De iis qui tardè à Numine corripiuntur Pausanias Phocaic lib. 10. Capitolinus in Gordiano Juniore Trebellius Pollio in Gallienis Vopiscus in Aureliano Floriano Sextus Aurelius Victor in Claudio Ammianus Marcellinus lib. 22 23. Macrobius Saturnal lib. 1. cap. 17. Servius upon Aeneid 6. Zosimus lib. 2. Procopius Gotthic lib. 1. CHAP. XX. Other Remarks of Forgery tending to shew the Supposititiousness of the Sibyilline Writing so called SOme of the
Fathers as Clemens Alexandrinus who in the first of his Books entituled Stromata transcribes these three Verses of an Idolatrous Sibyl 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ye Delphians who Apollo's Servants are To you great Jove's mind I 'me come to declare Being with my Brother Phoebus much incens'd And Lactantius who acknowledges that after consultation with the Sibylline Oracles the Romanes beset themselves to appease Ceres sending Ambassadours to Enna and had made search in Asia for the Mother of the Gods and St. Augustine who takes notice of the Transportation of Aesculapius might well had they lai'd Prejudice aside have concluded That the Poems out of which they drew Proofs against Idolatry though for no other reason then that they were directly opposite to the Oracles consulted by the Romanes could not be of the same Vein with those antient Sibyls which had been for so many Ages the Admiration of the Heathen and the proper ground of their Superstition For how should it come to pass that the same Mouth should at the same time breath Life and Death They had also another very clear Proof to wit That not any thing of all that is related by the Heathen as from the Sibyls is either as to the Substance or in express Terms in the eight Books of the pretended Daughter-in-law of Noah For where shall we finde in all that simple Rhapsody the least Track of what Cicero and Dionysius Halicarnassaeus and e Livy and Suetonius and Solinus and Plutarch and Pausanias and Dion and Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus and Procopius and if you will Lucian and Eustathius upon the Description of the Universe written by Dionysius the African cite for Sibylline And Saint Augustine who had observed in his Book Of Grammar that there were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three mischievous K. designed in the Sibylline Books where could he have found them in these Nay they should have thought it a violent presumption of their Supposititiousness that not one of the Heathens ever cited I will not say one Verse or one Hemistick but the least conceit taken out of these Books For if as is presupposed the Romanes had had them in their Custody with the rest could they have always forborn to make some Mention or give some Account of them But to make it appear that the Christians had not any knowledge of the Pieces which were in the Custody of the Quindecem-viri and that the Heathens had never admitted any thing of what the Christians opposed thereto as taken out of their Bosoms excepting onely those three Verses which we just now Transcribed out of Clemens Alexandrinus Strom. 1. the three ensuing cited by Theophilus Arch-Bishop of Antioch against the Generation of the Gods according to the Heathen If they should engender and continue immortal there would be more Gods generated then men and there would be no place left for Mortals where they might subsist these two others of the same Vein copied by Lactantius There will be Fire and Darkness when he shall come in the midst of the black Night and Hear me ye Mortà ls the eternal King reigns and this Exclamation in Prose attributed to the Erythraean Sibyl by Constantine the Great Why Lord dost thou impose on me a necessity of Prophecying and dost not reserve me rather raised up on high from the Earth till thy blessed coming I say besides these four Shreds there is not a Verse produced by the antient Christians since Martyr's Time which may not be read either word for word or in Terms equivalent in the body of those Eight Books attributed to the Daughter-in-law of Noah which being mangled and imperfect in many places nothing hinders but that the Allegations of Theophilus and Lactantius might be drawn out of them Now what the Fathers have not derived but from this source clearly proves they knew not any other and that it was not opened to them by the Heathen who not onely drew not any thing out of it but cryed out against it assoon as ever it appeared by their Charges of Forgery put in against it as is apparent by the Words of Celsus saying to the Christians You have with good reason proposed the Sibyl but it is now in your own power to thrust in at randome among the Pieces which are hers many things that are reproachfull for this Discourse was an earnest Charge against the Christians concerning the Suppositiousness of the Eight Books as also by Constantine's own Observation writing upon occasion of the pretended Acrostick of the Erythraean Sibyl There are many who believe not that the Sibyl foretold things of our Saviour and acknowledging that the Erythraean Sibyl was a Prophetess have a jealousie that some one of our Religion not unfurnished with a Poetick Vein is the Authour of those Poems that they are adulterate but nevertheless called the Oracles of the Sibyl Whereto Origen's Answer gives no great satisfaction He affirms says he of Celsus that we have thrust in among the Writings of the Sibyl many things and such as are reproachfull and does shew neither what we have thrust in which he might have done if he could have shew'd Copies more antient and uncorrupt and such as had not what he conceives to have been foisted in nor yet that those things are injurious and reproachfull For it was not Celsus's intention to acknowledg that the eight Books out of which the Fathers had made Extracts were legitimate and to quarrel onely at the insertion of some things that were false but to reproach the Christians that they had shuffled together as much as lay in their power those eight Books Pieces notoriously spurious among the Writings of the Sibyl which were pretended to be legitimate Secondly Origen's Reply that to prove the spuriousness of the things produced by the Christians it was necessary to shew Copies that were more antient more correct and such as wherein those things were not was no way to the purpose For first The complaint of Celsus no less concerned the body of the eight Books then the Sentences extracted out of them by the Christians Secondly His Negative was not These eight Books are not perfect but They are not Legitimate and taking them for Supposititious and shuffled in among the Legitimate Works not long before he thought not himself obliged to seek out what could never have been found â—…ntient Copies of an Imposture newly advanced Thiâ—…y To require a Pagan to produce antient Copies of the true Sibylline Writings was to make a ridiculous and uncivil request to him since first There could not have been through the whole Romane Empire besides the Original preserved under the Base of Apollo Palatinus but that onely Copy which had been Transcribed by the High Priests in the Time of Augustus Secondly For that it was not in any case permitted that any private Person should
read or interpret it and that the Quindecem-viri themselves whose particular Privilege it was durst not attempt any such thing without the express Order of the Senate Whence it follows that the Heathens had good reason to Charge with Imposture the Pieces produced by the Fathers upon this account particularly That they saw them in their hands and by them published nor could the Christians justly press them to produce what none of them could come at and was to continue locked up under the Key of a perpetual secret But all this notwithstanding Origen's Answer was not necessary Celsus does not demonstrate that the things which he conceives shuffled into the Works of the Sibyl are reproachfull or detractive therefore they are not such For though the imputation of Heathenish Superstitions be not properly detraction but a most true and most just reproach of their Impiety yet was it a Detraction according to their Opinion and to bring the Charge by a Sibyl that is the Person the most unfit to act such a part was to exercise a kind of Detraction against her Memory and to bear a false Testimony under her Name very well deserving to be taken off by the general complaint of all the Unbelievers Wherefore the Defence of Origen against the Objection of Celsus who as Contemporary with Justine Martyr and Lucian who dedicated his Pseudo-mantis to him had seen the breaking forth of the Imposture being but an Elusion and no more Saint Augustine hath had a thousand times more reason to leave it to the Adversaries of the Church to acknowledge or disclaim at their own choice the eight Books pretended to be Sibylline saying Therefore though they should not believe our Scriptures their own which they read with blindness are fulfilled upon them unless it happen that some may say The Sibyl ' s Prophecies are but the Fictions of the Christians And again But what other Prophecies soever there pass concerning Christ some may imagine forged by the Christians and therefore there is no way so sure to convince such as are Strangers in this matter and to confirm those of our own Profession as by citing the Prophecies contained in the Jews Books I would to God the Church's children had continued in these Terms and so have cleared their hearts of the evil Ambition of having been the Authours of some Pious Frauds and conceive an holy shame at their being employed in those which Imposture had endeavoured to introduce into the House of God For though they had not thought it fit to make any reflection on the Arguments I have brought against the spuriousness of the Sibylline Writings they needed no more then to have called to account those that produced them whence they had had them taking them up sharply with the ensuing Demands or the like How could these Sacred Privileges of the Empire and Religion come â—…o your hands By what Artifices could you you who call your selves The Faithfull possess your selves of the Treasure committed to the Custody of the Quindecem-viri the sworn Enemies of your Faith How comes our Age to be so happy as to have the advantage to discover and make publike the Predictions which had been concealed above six hundred and twelve years Especially seeing the lateness of their Discovery made after the Death of Adrian the confident Publication of the highest secret of Paganism and the contrariety of the Consequences arising from its Publication to all that Antiquity had heard of it for six Ages before might have given them more then a presumption of the Imposture particularly to Justine Martyr who writ his Apologie five years or ten at most after the Advancement of it And here I can do no less by the way then advertise the Reader that he who after the year four hundred and six took upon him under the name of that Holy Doctour to answer the Questions of the Greeks seems to be mistaken when having writ That the end of this World is the Judgment of the Wicked by Fire according to what is said in the Writings of the Prophets and Apostles he adds As also of those of the Sibyl according to what is said by the blessed Saint Clement in the first Epistle to the Corinthians For first The Epistle of Saint Clement which hath in some manner received a second life fifteen years since when England restored it to the Church of God says nothing of the Sibyl and though there be a Leaf wanting at the end yet is there not any likelyhood that in that later part which contained the Conclusion of all the precedent Discourse woven up of Scriptures the Holy Martyr should have recourse to the Authority of a strange Testimony and draw out of a prophane Source 2. The Allegation of the Sibyl's Words concerning the Judgment by Fire is in the Sixth Chapter of the fifth Book of the pretended Apostolical Constitutions where the fourteen last Verses of the fourth Book of the Counterfeit Sibyl have been inserted after the Texts of the Prophets and Apostles as of Genesis Chap. ii 7. and Chap. iii. 14. Isaiah Chap. xxvi 19. Ezekiel Chap. xxxvii 13. Daniel Chap. xii 2. St. Matthew Chap. iv 23. St. Luke Chap. xxi 18. and St. John Chap. v. 28. and xi 43. so that it is evident that the Authour of the Answers to the Questions of the Greeks was extremely mistaken negligently confounding the Constitutions unjustly attributed to St. Clement with his Epistle to the Corinthians 3. If the recourse to the Testimony of the Sibyl really be in the said Epistle it would be an Argument of the corruption of that precious Jewel of Christian Antiquity rather then a legitimate Confirmation of the Authority of the Books pretended to be Sibylline which we have demonstrated to have been forged after the Death of Adrian that is to say thirty eight years after the Martyrdom of St. Clement and sixty after his Banishment to Chersonesus CHAP. XXI That it cannot with any likelihood of Truth be maintained That the Books called the Sibylline were written by Divine Inspiration HAving according as the necessity of Reason and Truth required presupposed that the eight Books pretended to be Sibylline are the Fiction of some bold and busie Christian who would needs have his own fantastick Imaginations pass for Oracles This Question Whether they were writ by Divine Inspiration falls of it self to the ground For it would argue a total Eclipse of sense and understanding to think that God who is the source of Truth would be the adviser of an Imposture and to say he were Authour of it no less then stark madness since there is no communion between the light of Wisdom and the darkness of Lying Whereof the Result is That the Sibyls from whose Oracles the Idolatrous Romanes always derived Encouragements of Impiety to heighten their Superstition neither were nor could be in that regard the communications of the Spirit of God to whose Glory and Worship those Divinations were directly
opposite So that I cannot conceive any thing but an over-earnestness of Dispute should force St. Hierome to make such ostentation of the Sibyls and maintain against Jovinian That They had for their Livery Virginity and that Divination had been the reward of their Virginity for it is an horrid Reward to be made the Instrument of the Devil to publish his Lies and to contribute to his Deceits Nor can I see how the greatest of Ills can be ranked among Goods nor at hazard to say something to the advantage of the Sibyls that any Advantage can be made of this improbable shift that they made any other Predictions then these which induced the Pagans into Errour and that upon the account of them and their Virginity they have been thought worthy recommendation Not that I would deny but it had been as possible for God to declare by those women the Secrets to come as to make Balaam's Ass to speak or move Balaam himself to Prophecy the coming of the Messias one thousand four hundred ninety and two years before it happened especially seeing St. Augustine expounding these words of Saint Paul Whom he had before promised by his Prophets took from the Prejudice he had conceived thereof occasion to write That there have been Prophets who were not of him in whom also we finde some things which they have sang as having heard them of Christ as it is said of the Sibyl But I hope he and the other Fathers will pardon me if I presume to answer That they have grounded their Opinion on a broken Reed to wit the Authority of the eight Books of the pretended Daughter-in-law of Noah For First They have taken for very antient a Piece that was very new and adulterate Secondly Though it were as antient as they thought yet could it not be Divine for this very reason that it contains as hath been already observed abundance of Errours which no man unless lost to his Senses will ever impute to Celestial Revelation Thirdly Though it were granted that those Pieces are as free from Errours as they are full of them and that their Original is to be taken much higher then the Birth of our Saviour yet would Hilary the Deacon deny that it necessarily followed thence that they came from God The spirit of the world saith he is that which possesses persons subject to Enthusiasms who are without God for it is the chiefest among the worldly Spirits Whence it comes that he is wont by conjecture to fore-tell the things which are of this World and it is he who is called Python or the Prophecying Spirit it is he who is deceived and deceives by things that have a probability of Truth it is he who spoke by the Sibyl imitating ours and desirous to be numbred among the Celestial For my part I freely confess it were a very hard matter to maintain that the eight Books of the Sibyls which copy out the best part of the History of the Gospel had been written before our Saviour's coming into the Flesh and â—…at they were the Productions of some Python or Prophecying Spirit but it is evident that Hilary reflecting on the fond Imaginations wherewith they are pestered chose rather to think them the Work a Fanatick then a Divine Person and in that though contrary to the Opinion of many of the Fathers he is much in the right For though we should lay the Spunge on all the marks of their Supposititiousness before alleged yet could we not any way wipe out that Character which the said Rhapsody hath with its own hands imprinted so deep in its forehead that it is remarkable in the chiefest of those great men who would acknowledg its authority and oppose it to the Heathens CHAP. XXII The Sentiment of Aristotle concerning Enthusiasts taken into Consideration ARistotle had been of Opinion That the heat of Melancholy being near the place of Intelligence many were taken with Frantick and Enthusiastical Diseases That thence came all the Sibyls Bacchides and inspired Persons that is when they became such not through disease but the temperament of nature and thereupon alleges that Maracus of Syracuse was a better Poet when he was besides himself discovering thereby That according to his Sentiment to say of a woman that she was a Sibyl was to put her into the qualification of Hypochondriacks and such as are subject to black Choler But the common Opinion of the Heathens was that the Sibyls were seized by a supernatural power and not warmed by a simple Ebullition of black Choler and that their being so seised made while it lasted so strong an impression upon their minds that it deprived them of all Intelligence and Memory Thus Heraclitus in Plutarch affirms that the Sibyl had with her frantick mouth said things which are neither ridiculous nor gaudy nor adulterate Virgil introduces Helenus speaking to Aeneas of the Cumaean Sibyl Thou the enraged Prophetess shalt see And elswhere making a Description of her Transports he uses these express terms This said her colour straight did change her face And flowing Tresses lost their former grace A growing passion swels her troubled breast And fury her distracted soul possest And a little after When she not able to endure the load Of such a pow'r strives to shake off the God The more she chaf'd the more he curbs her in Tames her wilde breast and calms her swelling spleen And again Then Phoebus slakes His curbing reins and from her bosom takes His cruel Spurs granting a little rest Soon as her Fit and high Distraction ceas'd Lucan's Description is much to the same purpose and Claudian in imitation of them calls the Place of the Cumaean Sibyl The Porch of the enraged Sibyl But this Description which naturally expresses the violent possession of an evil Spirit tormenting the person it seises in stead of raising an horrour in the Writer of the eight Books attributed to the Sibyls enflames him with an emulation insomuch that that impertinent person hath not been ashamed to attribute to the God of glory extravagant sallies like those of the Devils and to say of himself what the prophane Poets had writ of their Prophetesses Corpore tota stupens trahor huc ignara quid ipsa Eloquar ipse sed haec mandat Deus omnia fari And elswhere Sed quid cor iterùm quatitur mihi ménsque flagello Icta forà s vocem prorumpere cogitur omnes Ut moneam And again Ut mihi divino requieta à carmine mens est Orabam magnum genitorem vis ut abesset Sed mihi suggessit vocem sub pectora rursum Pérque omnes terras praecepit vaticinari And that she came from Babylon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 furious or fanatick All which affords us a manifest Argument that the unhappy Impostour who took upon him to play the Sibyl was besotted with such an extravagant conceit that he would upon any terms be taken
God or when God speaks by him disclaim his own sentiment being overshadowed by the power of God concerning which there is a Dispute between us and the Psychici And indeed Saint Hierome expresly numbers among the Books written by him against the Church six Volumes Of Ecstasie and a seventh Against Apollonius wherein he endeavours to maintain whatever the other quarrels at his Design being to vindicate Montanus who had written thus Behold man is like a Viol and I am the Bow man lies him down to rest and I watch Behold the Lord who takes mens Hearts out of them and who also bestows Hearts on them and Maximilla who held this strange Discourse The Lord hath sent me c. forced me I being both willing and unwilling to learn the knowledg of God The Church therefore formally condemning the Opinion of those who believed that God made Ecstatick and transported such as he inspired and that he exercised violence on their spirits expressed her self By Claudius Apollinaris Bishop of Hierapolis to this effect Montanus through an insatiable covetousness of Primacy giving access in his Soul to the Adversary being of a sudden transported in mind and out of himself was inspired and began to speak and to pronounce strange words and his Prophetesses were filled with an adulterate spirit so as that they spoke with a transportation of their understanding unseasonably and after a strange manner and Theodotus his Complice was besides himself and delivered up to the spirit of Errour By Miltiades Disputing against the same Montanus b That false Prophet being in a Transport of spirit which is attended by Confidence and want of Fear began by a voluntary Ignorance which turned into an involuntary Madness of the Soul in which manner they cannot shew that any Prophet either of the Old or New Testament hath been transported By St. Irenaeus who set forth in the same colours one of the Prophetesses of the Marcosians Being foolishly swollen and puffed up by the said words and having her Soul warmed by the expectation of what she should Prophecy and her Heart beating more then it should she presumed to utter things Fantastick and whatever occurred to her thoughts vainly and audaciously in regard she is set on by a vain spirit according to what a better then we hath said of such People to wit that a Soul enflamed by vain air is a presumptuous and shameless thing By Clemens Alexandrinus giving the Impostours of his Time this Touch They Prophecied in Ecstasie as the servants of an Apostate By Origen who esteemed that kind of Emotion unworthy the Holy men of God The Prophets were not as some imagine alienated in spirit and spoke not through any violence of the spirit If any thing saith the Apostle be revealed to another that sitteth by let the first hold his peace Whence he shews that he who speaks is at liberty to speak when he will and to hold his peace when he will By St. Basil who presses the same Doctrine in these Terms There are some who say that the Saints Prophecied being out of or besides themselves the humane understanding being shadowed by the Spirit but this is contrary to what the Divine presence doth promise that it should alienate in spirit him who is seised of God and that when he is full of Divine Instructions he should himself be deprived of Ratiocination and while he contributes to the advantage of others should reap no benefit from his own Discourses In a word How does it stand with Reason that through the Wisdom of the Spirit a man should become as one besides himself And that the spirit of Knowledg should deliver what is incohaerent For neither is light the Authour of Blindness but stirs up the Visual Faculty implanted by Nature nor does the spirit cause obscurity in mens minds but raises the Understanding to the contemplation of things intelligible cleansing it from the stains of sin Nor is it improbable that through the Design of the evil Spirit who lays his Ambushes to ensnare humane Nature the mind is confounded but to say that the same is effected by the presence of the Holy Spirit is impious By St. Epiphanius who strongly seconding him says When there hath been any necessity the Holy men of God have foretold all things with the true spirit of the Prophets and a strong Ratiocination and an understanding reaching the sence of what was said Again The Prophet spoke with a clear ratiocination and consequently saying all things with a certain vigour as Moses the servant of God who was faithfull in all his House The Prophet in the Old Testament is called the Seer The Vision of Isaiah the Son of Amos which he saw c. I saw the Lord c. And after he had heard what the Lord said unto him coming towards the people he saith The Lord saith these things Do you not see that this is the Discourse of one who comprehends and not of one who is besides himself and that he expressed not himself as one that was transported in his understanding In like manner Ezechiâ—l the Prophet hearing the Lord speak thus to him Take thou also unto thee Wheat and Barley and Beans c. and bake it with dung that cometh out of man answers Ah! Lord God behold my Soul hath not been polluted for from my youth up have I not eaten of that which dieth of it self or is torn in pieces neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth For knowing that the Oracle had come to him from the Lord to serve for a Threat he was so far from being distracted in his understanding that he delayed to do it but that he was of that Opinion is to be attributed to the settledness of his thoughts which may be argued from his expostulation Ah! Lord God c. This indeed being proper to the true Prophets to have their reason fortified by the Holy Spirit by Instruction and Discourse Daniel also had not he knowledg and skill in all Learning and Wisdom and comprehended his own imaginationsâ— He who resolved the Riddles of Nebuchadnezzar and explicated in such manner what the other had seen in his Dreams that he presently gave him the Interpretation thereof with a settled spirit and out of a superabundance of the gift of God having an intelligence of things above all men through the riches of the spirit truly instructing the Prophet and those who by the means of the Prophet were honoured with the Precepts of Truth But what these promise to Prophecy they declare being not well in their wits nor comprehending the meaning thereof for their words are elusive ambiguous and such as are uncapable of a right sence By St. Chrysostome who writes Hence we learn also another thing to wit That the Prophets were not as those who foretell things to come for there when the Devil breaks in upon
contrary made no account of what the Heathen esteemed and confining themselves to the Rhapsody of the eight Books which go under the Title of the Sibylline Oracles were deceived thinking them to be the antient Sibyls and consequently the Testimony of neither Heathens nor Christians is not strong enough to authenticate them in as much as the former have charged them with Forgery and the later who made account of them were circumvented and their Design to bring them into credit proves ineffectual upon this account that according to the Civil Maxim The consent of him who is mistaken is null Secondly St. Paul neither was nor could be the Authour of the Recommendation attributed to him but some Apocryphal Writer who impiously-bold took his Name upon him to deceive the World with more ease Thirdly Eusebius does not so much as name the Sibyls in the fifth Book of his History Fourthly The Name of Stratonicus was never heard of among the Fathers of the Church Cumae is not found to have produced any Ecclesiastical Writers and Possevin himself grants as much for that he does not allow his Stratonicus any place in his Apparatus Sacer. Fifthly It was no hard matter for Galarza to finde a Conformity between the Prophets and the Writings of the Counterfeit Sibyl since she was whatever she may seem to the contrary a Christian by Prosession and that she writ them one hundred thirty and eight years after the Birth of our Saviour onely it is to be remembred that this Conformity is not such as is imagined and that the pretended Prophetess to whom it is attributed was full of Errours and a corrupt Divine If therefore we must with Possevin blame Opsopoeus the Printer of Basil it should be for having inserted this confused Medley into the Body of Orthodox Writers and added thereto the Oracles of the false Gods when nothing of it is Orthodox or ought to finde place in the Christian Library And as to what is added by Possevin That It had been more expedient to set apart some few things of many and particularly what might be taken as most certain out of the Writings of the Fathers with Notes or a Paraphrase thereupon such as Constantine the Great hath put before the Cumaean Sibyl cited by Virgil or Lactantius before Firmianus or Augustine before the Acrostick produced by Cicero it is an Errour infinitely beyond what he was guilty of before For it will never be expedient to propose to Christians as a Direction the Stumbling-Blocks against which the Fathers fell much less to raise them into an admiration of Supposititious Pieces Besides it is inconsiderately done by some to alledg either the Paraphrase of Constantine who hath put Virgil and his Poem so unmercifully to the Rack or the Acrostick of the eighth Book of the Sibylline Oracles which Cicero no more thought on then he did on the Story of Apuleius's Ass The End of the First Book OF THE SIBYLS The Second Book Of the CONSEQUENCES arising upon the Supposititiousness of the Writing pretended to be Sibylline ADVERTISEMENT TO revenge the antient Injury done to the Church in whose Bosom it is now above fifteen hundred years that some have been willing to fasten the Supposititious Work of the Sibylline Writing and to Truth which hath been miserably disguised thereby and lastly to the Fathers who have been surprised by the unheard-of Impudence of the Impostour who presenting them with a counterfeit Jewel instead of a right Diamond made them take Coals out of Hell-fire for a Divine Treasure I have been forced to search into the very Roots of so deep an Imposture as such as whereto many of our Time even among the Protestants are still inclined to give Credit And in what I have done out of this Design I have cherished a certain Hope that those who shall be any way offended at the seeming Novelty of my Sentiment will vouchsafe to consider it without Prejudice that upon their acknowledgment of the solidity of its Grounds they may acquiesce therein or if they think otherwise of it with Reason correct it In the Interim presupposing it as well and sufficiently proved I shall intreat the Reader 's Attention to consider the Consequences of the Doctrine unjustly attributed to the Counterfeit Sibyl and to proceed therein with some Order Observe First In what Year precisely the Apocalyps whereof the false Prophetess attempts to wrest the true Sence was written by the Apostle Saint John Secondly About what time the extravagant Imaginations of the pretended Sibylline Writings came first abroad Thirdly By how strong a Prejudice they were possessed who were out of an excessive Easiness of Belief induced to admit them A TREATISE OF THE SIBYLS BOOK II. CHAP. I. An Enquiry thout the Time wherein Saint John wrote his REVELATION AS we have on the one side the Consent of Antiquity assigning the Life of Saint John to have ended on Sunday the 27th of December in the third year of Trajan coincident with the hundredth year after the Birth of our Saviour according to the Computation now used so have we on the other Saint Irenaeus who suffered Martyrdom in the one hundred ninety and eighth year of Christ affirming in the thirtieth Chapter of his fifth Book cited by Eusebius both in the eighth Chapter of the third Book and the eighth Chapter of the fifth Book of his History that the Apocalyps was written about the end of Domitian ' s Reign which is confirmed by Clemens Alexandrinus about the year 200. writing at the place Copied out by Eusebius that St. John returned from Patmos after the Tyrant ' s Death that is to say after the eighteenth of September in the year ninety six on which Domitian was Assassinated Eusebius seems the more absolutely to acquiess in their Sentiment in that having further published and observed in the seventeenth Chapter of his third Book that Domitian towards the end of his Reign became the Successour of Nero in his enmity and War against God he certifies in the nineteenth Chapter that Domitilla was Banished for the Profession of Christianity in the fifteenth and last year of that Prince's Reign which falls in with the ninety sixth of our Saviour Further that the Tradition of the Antients affirmed that St. John was called back from Patmos by Nerva and in his Chronicle upon the fourteenth year of Domitian which he makes coincident with the second of the two hundred and eighteenth Olympiad that Domitian was the second after Nero who persecuted the Christians and that in his Reign the Apostle St. John then banished to Patmos had seen the Apocalyps as Irenaeus declares Which words manifestly relate to the place of that holy Prelate which he had Transcribed twice in his History and which yet St. Hierome as well in his Version of Eusebius's Chronicle as in his Catalogue wrests to another sence turning it Which Irenaeus interprets as if Euschius had written not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
to imagine any such thing of the Proconsul of Asia nor to presuppose that to comply with that Extravagance he had driven St. John who was not within his Jurisdiction from any place when at the same time that the Jews were forced to depart Rome St. Paul Priscilla Aquila and Apollos who were no less of Jewish Extraction then John sojourned at Ephesus without disturbance their Brethren according to the Flesh enjoyed there as much liberty as ever nay even when Demetrius had with those of his Profession made an Insurrection in the City against Saint Paul they thought themselves sufficiently Authorised to pacifie the Tumult thrusting out Alexander their Brother out of the Multitude and charging him to speak to the enraged People for if it were to no purpose that they attempted it it was at least without apprehension of any danger either to themselves or him Whence it follows that not onely without any necessity but also without any ground it is imagined that St. John who was not yet come to Ephesus when the Edict of Claudius came forth against the Jews was driven thence by Virtue of that Edict which no way concerned him and that if there never could be any excuse to introduce Novelties into the Business of Religion we should be much further from advancing ruinous Hypotheses to maintain the more ruinous Design of opposing common Sentiments So that no man should think it strange if through the just Judgment of God those who take a pleasure in contradicting things that are most evident unadvisedly engage themselves in inconsistent Opinions to the prejudice of their Reputation and such as are more apt to raise Compassion for their Weakness then Jealousie upon account of the great Esteem due to them CHAP. IV. A Refutation of the Sentiment of Johannes Hentenius of Maechlin concerning the Time of the Apocalyps HAving demonstrated the Improbability of the Sentiment as well of St. Epiphanius as of him who would needs make it his ground to build upon not considering he should do himself a thousand times more injury by following it contrary to the Truth then he could have done by contradicting it to promote the Truth he made it his Design to establish I conceive it lies upon me to discover the absurdity of another fond Conceit which to bring with less inconvenience the Tradition of the Church into Dispute about the year 1545. hath referred the writing of the Apocalyps to the Time of Nero ten years and more later then according to the Computation of Saint Epiphanius Johannes Hentenius an Hieronymite born at Maechlin who is the Authour of it would needs in his Preface upon the Commentary of Arethas entertain us with the following Discourse It seems to me that John the Apostle and Evangelist who is also called the Divine was Banished to Patmos by Nero at the very same time that he put to death at Rome the blessed Apostles of Christ Peter and Paul Tertullian who lived near the Times of the Apostles affirms as much in two several places Eusebius also treats of the same thing in his Book of Evangelical Preparation though in his Chronicle and Ecclesiastical History he saith it happened under Domitian which St. Hierome and divers others follow But to these last mentioned Books as such as were written some years before there is not so much Authority attributed as to that of Evangelical Preparation which was an after Work on which more care and exactness was bestowed Thus are we furnished by this man with a third Opinion inconsistent as well with the two precedent as the Truth it self which declares onely for the first confirmed by St. Irenaeus and others of the Antients and what should make this new Production the more contemptible is that it will be found grounded onely upon Chimaerical Suppositions and taking it at the best advantage speaks nothing positively Affirmative For whereas it is confidently affirmed that Tertullian assures us in two several places that Saint John was Banished at the time of the Martyrdom of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul it is absolutely false that Father who makes mention of the Sufferings of the Saints Peter Paul and John jointly all together in one onely place to wit in the thirty sixth of his Praescriptions expressing it onely in these Terms That Church to wit that of Rome is very happy for which the Apostles spent their Doctrine and spilled their Blood where Peter was equalled to the Passion of his Lord that is to say Crucified where Paul was crowned with the same way of Departure as John that is to say Beheaded as St. John Baptist was where the Apostle John after he had been cast into the seething Oil yet suffered nothing was Banished into the Isle Whence it is evident that his Design was to shew that St. John was persecuted not at the same Time but at the same Place where St. Peter and St. Paul were so that his Discourse which proves nothing of what is in Question abates nought of its Truth though it be believed that Saint John's Banishment happened under Domitian and that eight and twenty years after the Martyrdom of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul under Nero. Besides the place before cited there is in all the Works of Tertullian no more mention of the Writing of St. John then there is of the Discovery of the West-Indies so that Hentenius who brags that he had read what he says in them must needs read it in his Sleep Nor is there less Imposture in what he attributes to Eâ—sebius who in his third Book of Evangelical Preparation and the seventh Chapter having spoken of the Imprisonment of all the Apostles by the High-Priests of Jerusalem and afterwards of their Scourging of the Stoning of St. Stephen of the Decollation of St. James the Son of Zebedaeus of the Restraint of St. Peter and the Stoning of St. James the Brother of our Lord adds Peter was crucified at Rome with his Head downwards Paul had his Head cut off and John was Banished into an Isle For it is manifest that this Discourse designing neither the Place nor the Time of the Sufferings of these Holy men cannot oblige any Body to believe that they were persecuted by the same Tyrant and at the same Time and that nothing hinders but that according to Eusebius himself as well in his Chronicle as History the two former were put to Death by the command of Nero and the last Banished eight and twenty years after by Virtue of a Decree of Domitian's So that for a man to imagine the contrary from Eusebius cannot be without wresting his Words and to think to deduce it from the same words by the force of Ratiocination will amount to as much as a discovery of want of Reason and argue that the Person who attempts it dreams waking The said Authour thinks to give us a third Proof for confirmation of his Opinion when relying on a wrong Interpretation of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
say Grey-haired shall reign who shall derive his Name Adrian from the Adriatick Sea There shall be another Person absolutely good who shall know all things that is to say Antoninus the Affable and under thee O most Excellent and best of men who art Brown-haired and under thy Branches to wit Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus will come the time of the accomplishment of all things Three shall reign and the third shall have the government after all the rest And elsewhere speaking to Rome he says After that three times five Kings that is to say Julius Augustus Tiberius Caligula Claudius Nero Galba Piso Otho Vitellius Vespasian Titus Domitian Nerva and Trajan shall have reigned in Thee and subdued the World from East to West there shall be a King with an Hoary head taking his Name to wit Adrian from the Sea Adriatick c. Besides him there shall reign to wit Antoninus Marcus Aurelius and Verus under whom shall be the last of Times and by the Name they all shall have of Antoninus fill the Name of the celestical God to wit Adonai whose Power is now and will be for ever CHAP. V. A Refutation of Possevinus concerning the Time when the Sibylline Writing came first abroad IT must therefore of necessity follow that the Impostour who to draw up Catalogues of the Emperours had borrowed the Name of the Sibyl put that Cheat upon the World since the year 138. let us now see how long after Possevin in his Apparatus Sacer upon an imagination that he speaks of the second Conflagration of the Temple of Vesta makes him live after that Accident and thereupon is mistaken in four several respects For First he makes an ill concurrence between the year 199. with the Empire of Commodus Assassinated the 31th of December 192. Secondly he no less unjustly assigns the Conflagration of Vesta's Temple in the year 199. since that according to Dion in his seventy second Book Herodian in his first Book and Orosius in the sixteenth Chapter of his seventh Book it happened toward the end of Commodus's Reign who left this world seven years before To which may be added that Eusebius whose Authority he notoriously abuses determines the time of that ruinous Accident affirming it to have happened in the third year of the 242. Olympiad and the twelfth of Commodus which concurr onely with the 191. year of our Saviour Thirdly When he designs the three Successours of Adrian omitting Verus taken into Partnership of the Empire by Marcus Aurelius he reckons in his stead Commodus on whom the pretended Sibyl neither thought nor could have thought since she writ her Poem above fifteen years before the Birth of that Prince which was on the thirty first of August 161. and above thirty years before his association in the Empire happening on the twenty seventh of November 176. Fourthly Though the Authour of that Romance might have spoken somewhat of the Conflagration of Vesta's Temple since that upon the very account of his having supposed that Rome should be burned in the year after its Foundation 948. concurrent with the year 195. of Christ and the third of Severus he would insinuate that all the Temples of that City that of Vesta among the rest should be consumed by Fire and could not as being dead before either see the Conflagration of it or according to his own Hypotheses say that he had seen it yet how after he had measured the duration of Rome by the Lives of Antoninus and his two Adopted Sons Marcus Aurelius and Verus shewing thereby he writ in their Times and consequently before the year of Christ 160. could he have been in a capacity to speak of commodus who was born the last of August 161. five Moneths and twenty four days after the Death of Antoninus and affirm he had seen the second Conflagration of Vesta's Temple which came not to pass till the year 191. and the twelfth year after the Death of Marcus with whom he seemed to imagine that Rome and the whole World should perish For instance in the third Book page 27. he had written that Rome should become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a Village which he had done in imitation of the Apocalyps Chap. xvii Verse 16. and Chap. xviii Verse 8. and Chap. xix Verse 3. openly threatening it with a final destruction by Fire saying in the second Book page 14. Rome's seven-hill'd People God shall shake And Fire of much Wealth shall destruction make Snatch'd up by Vulcan's ravenous Flames And page 20. By a sad Fate There shall be three will lay Rome desolate All men shall in their Houses be destroy'd By Cataracts of Fire from Heav'n And in the fifth Book page 40. Surrounded with a burning Fire go dwell In the dreadfull aboad of lowest Hell And in the eighth Book page 58. To Naphta thou Bitumen Sulphur Fire reduc'd shalt be But Ashes to be burnt t'eternity Nay that there should not be the least difficulty as to what concerns the Time of that Catastrophe he had declared himself in these Terms page 59. Thou shalt compleat Three times three hundred years and fourty eight Of thy Name then the Number being past Thy wretched Fate shall Thee surprize in haste That is to say the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereof the Letters produce the Number 948. thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 100. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 800. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 40. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 8. But could he without being ridiculous and passing for a Fool brag that he had survived those under whom Rome and the World should come to its Period but also that he had been Spectatour of an Accident which but four years preceeded the day he had assigned for that utter desolation Or could he with any countenance have acknowledged that he had out-lived the Time which he had assigned for the determination of the Empire and the Universe But he hath not shewed himself so much a Fool as a confident Impostour and his words which Possevin thought might be applied to the second Conflagration of Vesta's Temple relate onely to the final Destruction of that of Jerusalem which he calls the Amiable House the Guardian-Temple of the Divinity an Elogie which could not be given the Temple of Vesta by him who undertook to dispute against the Idolatry of the Heathen for the worship of one God Besides the Remark which Possevin makes of the Authour of the second Conflagration of that Temple which the Counterfeit Sibyl meant saying That he had with an impious hand attempted clearly discovers that he reflected on the Hand of that Infidel Souldier who had fired the Temple of Jerusalem and was declared impious by the Judgment of Titus General of the Romane Army For the Counterfeit Prophetess might well brag of the sight of that horrid Accident since it had happened in the year of our Lord 76. sixty eight years full before the reign of the Antonini under whom she writ though
it was no less then the height of impertinence in her to call her self as she did Noah's Daughter-in-law and to boast that she had seen a ruin 2068. later then the death of Noah and 2427. years after the Deluge as if according to the Fable advanced by Ovid in the thirteenth Book of his Metamorphoses that pretended Prophetess having obtained the Privilege of living as many years as there were Grains in the heap of Sand shewed by the Cumaean Sibyl to Apollo she had at the time of her Writing already passed not 700. years as that Prophetess of Ovid but above 2400. and expected to continue till the end of the World whereas the Cumaean Sibyl as is reported of her thought she was to become at the end of a thousand so wasted as not to have any Body at all having after the dissolution of her precedent Form onely her voice left her to foretell what was to come Her words taken out of the fifth Book page 49. are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Nor longer shall in Thee the Virgin quire The Fuel finde of their perpetual Fire The Amiable House long since by thee Hath been destroy'd The second I did see The guardian-Temple o' th' Divinity That ever flourishing house in 'ts Ashes lie Fir'd by an impious hand c. Which Discourse cannot clearly relate to any thing but the Conflagration of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romane Army as a Punishment for which act the Authour of the Sibylline Oracles pretends that Rome should be lai'd desolate in such manner as that the Vestals should not any longer keep in the Fire which they called Sacred and Divine CHAP. VI. Of the Time when the Sibylline Books were written FRom what hath been said is manifest that the Opinion of Possevin concerning the Time wherein the Person who counterfeited the Sibyl lived is ill grounded and our Method now calls upon us to make enquiry how many years we must ascend assuredly to finde it out That he Writ under Antoninus his own words were sufficient to convince any man that should well consider them but his credit sequestered from the things which may otherwise keep it up being with good reason of no account his sincerity is greatly to be suspected and his discourse requiring much caution it is necessary we finde other helps to confirm what is advanced and preferr the Testimonies of those whom his Imposture hath circumvented before any thing he could have represented of himself Theophilus of Antioch who died on the thirteenth of October in the year 180. in regard he hath inserted into his Books To Autolycus divers things taken out of the Sibylline Writings does irrefragably prove that they were before him in Time and that contrary to the conjecture of Possevin the Authour who first writ them reached not the Reign of Commodus who when Theophilus died onely began the eighth Moneth of his Reign Athenagoras who in his Embassy to the Emperours Marcus Aurelius and Verus on the behalf of the Christians copied six Verses out of the second Book shews that this counterfeit Prophecy was in Vogue some time before the year 170. in which Verus died Hermas whom Tertullian affirms to have been Brother to Pope Pius the First who took the Chair on Sunday the seventh of March 146. under the Consulship of Clarus and Severus and died on the eleventh of July 150. under the Consulship of Gallicanus and Vetus discovers that he had a particular knowledg of the said Writings since that in his Work entituled The Pastour he hath not onely shuffled many fantastick Imaginations suitable to those of the pretended Sibyl but designed the Authour by the very Name he would go under For as much as in the second Vision of the first Book having imagined that an Aged Woman had while he was in Ecstasie given him a little Book to transcribe containing Exhortations to Penance he expressed what he seemed to believe of it in these Terms Brethren it hath been revealed to me in my Sleep by a Young man of a goodly appearance and saying to me Who do you think this Aged Woman is of whom you received the Book and I said The Sibyl Whence it follows That before the year 150. this Opinion had gained Footing at Rome among the Christians That a Sibyl much unlike that of the Heathens gave Sinners wholesom Instructions in order to the Exercises of Penance and true Piety And whereas Pope Pius in his second Epistle to Justus of Vienna makes mention of the Death of his Brother saying The Priest called The Pastour hath founded a Title and is worthily departed in the Lord it justifies that between the year 146. and 150. Hermas had maintained the Suppostion of the Sibyl and that the Authour of the Books attributed to her must be yet more antient St. Justin a Christian Philosopher a Native of Neapolis in Palaestina sometime called Sichem and who afterwards suffered Martyrdom at Rome on the first of June 163. does in his First Apologie presented to the Emperour Antoninus his Adopted Sons and the People before Marcus Aurelius had been received into Partnership of the Empire and consequently about the year 141 or 142. complain of the Prohibition had been made that none upon pain of Death should read the Books of Hystaspes and the Sibyl which he presented to the Princes and Senate as things deserving to be highly esteemed and it is not to be doubted but that Holy Person spoke of those which are come to our hands since that in his Exhortation to the Greeks he copied three Verses out of his Preface three out of the third Book and Seaven out of the Fourth a manifest Argument that they were already published since they had passed through his Hands and that he objected them as Pieces generally known to the Heathen themselves whose Errours he opposed CHAP. VII A Conjecture concerning the Authour of the Sibylline Writings IT were at this Day impossible for any man to be so happy in the discovery of the Authour of that Imposture as that he might without any fear of Mistake make his Name publike to be covered with the shame and enormity of his sacrilegious attempt against the sincerity of the Church But methinks there is some ground to charge if not as the principal advancer of the Cheat at least as a complice of his crime Hermas who as hath been observed spoke of the Sibyl in the year 148 or 149. and who was grown infamous for another kind of Supposititious dealing whereby he presumed to feign Apparitions of Women and Angels disguised like Shepherds who furnished him with Instructions of Penance pestered with fantastick Imaginations which he hath expressed in as wretched Greek as that of the Sibylline Writings and such as equally with the other deserves perpetual dishonour Though he were a Native of Aquileia yet was his residence with his Brother Pope Pius at Rome that is in the Heart of that place which for the space of
John vi 31. concerning the Bread of heaven and Apocal. ii 17. concerning the Hidden Manna tells us in his Preface copied out by Theophilus of Antioch and Lactantius that Those who honour God inherit the true and eternal Life that is to say the time of Eternity having their abode in Paradise the flourishing Garden and eating the delicious Bread of heaven which at the end of the seventh Book page 56. he means of Manna saying All together eat of the bedewing Manna with their white Teeth This Doctrine was so much the more acceptable to the Fathers the more they thought themselves obliged to conceive an aversion for the extravagant Imagination of the Gnosticks who transformed Paradise into an Archangel and assigned for its station the fourth Heaven Thus Theophilus who gave Paradise the qualification of perpetual and hanging in the midst between heaven and the world grounded the perswasion he would give of it to Autolycus on the Authority of the pretended Sibyl and after his Example Lactantius in the twelfth Chapter of his second Book St. Irenaeus having in the thirty sixth Chapter of his fifth Book alledged these words of Esay out of the two and twentieth Verse of the sixty sixth Chapter As the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me assigns to each of them its Inhabitants saying Then shall those who are worthy the conversation of heaven pass thither others shall enjoy the pleasures of Paradise and others shall possess the Holy earth and the splendour of the City that is to say Jerusalem Tertullian in the fourty seventh Chapter of his Apologetick We know Paradise to be a place of Divine pleasure destined for the reception of the spirits of the Saints and separated from the knowledg of the common world by a certain inclosure of that fiery Zone And in the eighth Chapter of his Poem of the Last Judgment There is a place in the Eastern Parts wherein the Lord takes great deligâ—… where there is a clear Light c. it is a Region most rich in Fields c. thither comes every godly man But in the fifty fifth Chapter of his Book Of the Soul this Great man dazled by the delusions of the Montanists moderates the Opinion he had taken out of the Books of the Counterfeit Sibyl and reserving Paradise for the entertainment of the Martyrs onely excludes out of it all the rest of the Faithfull saying You say that our Sleep that is to say the place of our Repose is in Paradise whither the Patriarchs and Prophets upon the Resurrection of our Lord being Appendages thereof passed from Hell but how comes it that that Region of Paradise which is under the Altar revealed to St. John discovered no Souls but those of the Martyrs How came Perpetua that most couragious Martyr in the Revelation which was made to her of Paradise not long before her Suffering to see there onely her companions in Martyrdom but that the Sword which keeps the Entrance of Paradise suffers none to get in but those who are departed in Christ not in Adam Saint Cyprian after the Example of his Master Tertullian speaking of our Lord to Demetrian Proconsul of Africk a passionate Enemy of Christianity hath this expression He opens to us the way of Life he is the Authour of our return into Paradise And in his Book Of Mortality towards the end We account Paradise saith he to be our Country we have already begun to have for our Fathers the Patriarchs And in the Chapter of Exhortation to Martyrdom If it be glorious for the Souldiers engaged in common Wars after the Conquest of their Enemies to return Triumphant into their Country how much a nobler and greater Glory is it to return Triumphant to Paradise after we have overcome the Devil and to carry away victorious Trophies after we have subdued him who had foiled us before to the place whence the Sinner Adam had been thrust out Lactantius in the place above cited God having pronounced his Sentence against Sinners that every one should work out his own livelihood cast man out of Paradise and encompassed Paradise round about with Fire that man might not approach it till he had exercised sovereign Judgment upon Earth and recalled to the same place those Just men that worshipped him Death being taken away Saint Athanasius in his Treatise upon these Words Matth. xii 27. All things are given to me c. Death prevailed from Adam to Christ the Earth was cursed and Hell opened and Paradise shut c. But assoon as all things were given to him and that he was made man all was amended and accomplished The Earth in stead of the Curse it lay under before was blessed and Paradise opened and Hell daunted And in his Exposition of Faith Christ shewed the entrance into Paradise whence Adam had been thrust out and into which he is again entred by the Thief according to what our Saviour said This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise whither Paul also is entred Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in his Mystagogical Instruction The Paradise of God which he had planted towards the East is open to thee whence our first Parent was banished because of his Transgression And this is signified by thy turning from the West to the East the place of Light Saint Basil in his Treatise Of Paradise How shall I be able to bring thee into sight of thy Country to the end thou mayst recall thy self from banishment c. If thou art carnal thou hast the description of him that is corporal And in the seven and twentieth Chapter of his Book Of the Holy Ghost We all in our Prayers look towards the East but there are few of us that know we thereby seek our antient Country that is to say the Paradise which God planted in Eden Saint Gregory of Nyssa in his Oration of the fourty Martyrs That then which is demanded is Whether Paradise because of the Turning Sword is also inaccessible to the Saints and If the Champions of Christ are excluded Paradise what Promise there remains upon which they should undertake Combats for Piety and whether they should obtain less then the Thief to whom the Lord said This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise though the Thief came not voluntarily to the Cross but when he was come near Salvation that Eagle-sighted and generous Thief saw the Treasure and finding an opportunity stole Life honourably and happily abusing the nature of Theft and saying Lord have me in remembrance when thou comest into thy Kingdom He was honoured with Paradise and does the Flaming Sword keep the entrance of Paradise against the Saints But the Question resolves it self For thence it is that the Word hath not represented the Sword always placed against those that enter but Turning that it might be opposite to the unworthy and be behinde the worthy opening unto them the not-forbidden entrance of Life into which those that is to say
the fourty Martyrs are entred in the assurance of their Combats having without suffering passed through the Flame which we also having undaunted passed through may be received into Paradise And thence it comes that in his Funeral Orations upon Pulcheria and Flacilla her Mother he says of the former The Plant hath been removed hence but it hath been replanted in Paradise and of the later By that that is by Faith was she carried hence into the Bosom of the Father of Faith Abraham near the Fountain of Paradise Saint Ambrose upon the twentieth Section of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm according to the Greeks lays it down as hath been already shewed for certain that it is necessary those who desire to return into the Paradise out of which Adam had been driven should pass through the Fire of Judgment Paulinus having forsaken the World to lead a Religious Life afterwards Bishop of Nola in his second Fpistle to Severus his intimate Friend This is acceptable and well-pleasing in the sight of God that our good should be voluntarily that we might receive the things which are ours that is to say the house of Paradise and eternal Life wherein we were created and which if we purged from the possession of this earth whereinto we came through condemnation regain then may we as truly recalled from Banishment into our Country or returned after a long Pilgrimage into the house we were born in say God is our Portion in the land of the living c. Prudentius in the tenth of his Hymns While thou O God recallest and reformest thy body subject to dissolution in what Region wilt thou command the pure Soul to rest it self Hidden in the bosom of the Blessed Old man it shall lodge there where Eleazar is whom the rich man burning sees from afar off encompassed with flowers all about O Redeemer we follow thy Sayings whereby Triumphing over black Death Thou commandest the Thief who was Companion of thy Cross to come after thee Behold already the lightsom way of spacious Paradise opened to the Faithfull and it is lawfull to go into that Grove of which man had been deprived by the Serpent The Authour of the Homily upon the Thief unjustly attributed to Eusebius Emissenus This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise as in thy hereditary and paternal seat which at thy entrance shall be opened though upon the expulsion thence of Adam nay of two to wit Adam and Eve it had been shut up to innumerable people Enter thou therefore the first of all but with a happier entrance then the first into Paradise it being not required thou shouldest with Adam see hell Fear not thou shalt there meet with any mortal Viand any Law any Tree I will be to thee both Food and Life And that thou mayst not have the least apprehension that there may haply be some enemy in that blessed Grove and that the antient Thief may lay Ambushes for thee I will bring thee into it and confirm the possession thereof to thee The Authour of the Questions attributed to Justin Martyr in the seventy fifth Question The souls of the Just are carried into Paradise where they have the conversation and sight of the Angels and Archangels and the Vision of Christ our Saviour And in the seventy sixth Question It was profitable for the Thief at his entrance into Paradise to learn by the effects the advantage of Faith by which he had the honour to be admitted into the Assembly of the Saints where he is kept till the day of the Resurrection and retribution Now he hath that Sentiment of Paradise which is called Cogitative according to which the Souls see themselves the things that are below them and moreover the Angels and Daemons It were no hard matter to add to this number those Authours who have followed the same prejudicate Opinion as the Monk Caesarius in his third Dialogue St. Hierome in his hundred twenty ninth Epistle c. But the fourteen before cited are sufficient to shew that till after the year 450 their Opinion which had its first rise from the pretended Sibylline Books was so common in the Church that it met not with any Contradiction CHAP. XII The fourth Capital Tenet proposed by the Sibylline Writing THe fourth Supposition advanced by the Authour of that Counterfeit Piece concerning the State of the departed is That Jerusasalem rebuilt and made more glorious then ever the Son of God being descended from heaven shall establish a reign of a thousand years full of sensible enjoyments and a miraculous fertlity and abundance of corporal goods He spreads his Fiction before us in these Terms in the second Book page 14. The fruitfull earth shall again bring forth several Fruits And page 18. The Angels raising the Good out of the midst of the burning River shall convey them into light and bring them to a life free from care There is the immortal way of the great God and three Fountains of Wine Honey and Milk the earth also common to all and being divided by neither walls nor hedges shall then of it self bring forth several Fruits And in the third Book page 32. Then shall God give uno men a very great joy For the earth the Trees and the innumerable flocks of Sheep shall furnish men with the true fruit of Wine sweet Honey white Milk and the best Corn that ever mortals had And page 35. The Wolves upon the Mountains shall eat grass with the Lambs the spotted Lynxes shall feed with the Goats the Bears with the Calves and all Mortals the flesh-devouring Lion shall eat straw in the Manger c. And the Dragons shall rest themselves with the motherless little ones And in the six and fourtieth page of the fifth Book The Land of the Hebrews shall be holy and bring forth all things viz. the River of the Rock that distills Honey and the immortal Milk shall fall down upon the tongues of all the Just And in the fourtieth page All those who live a godly life shall live again upon the earth And in page the nine and fourtieth God hath made the City he delighted in more bright then the Stars the Sun and the Moon So that it is without all question it was the design of this Impostour who in imitation of the second Book of Esdras in the 19th Verse of the second Chapter and the 35th Verse of the fourteenth Chapter would needs entertain us with such extravagant Narrations to abuse the words of Esay and Saint John who in the twentieth and one and twentieth Chapters of his Apocalyps mystically represents the Church under the Name of the holy City the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of Heaven built of Gold and precious Stones having no need of Sun or Moon and in the midst of it and of either side of the River was there the Tree of Life which bare twelve manner of Fruits yielding its fruit every Moneth and the leaves of
that God would grant them an early Resurrection as a recompense for their short Life his meaning was not to require that they should rise before the Last Day but in the same moment with others but as to order in the most worthy and first in excellence viz. that of the Patriarchs and Apostles and that because those Princes were descended of a Christian Father because they had from their Mother's Breasts been imbued with Piety and had never no more then the Patriarchs and Apostles been defiled with the Superstition of the Heathen out of which most of the Christians of their time had been delivered CHAP. XXIII The Time when Praying for the Dead was first introduced into the Service of the Church HAving given an accompt of the Motives which the Antients had to Pray for the Dead it may haply be questioned by some When this kind of Office which is not grounded upon any Precept or Example of either Old or New Testament came to be used in the Church In answer to which I make no difficulty to affirm That it might be practised some time before the year 200. in as much as Tertullian the most Antient of all those that say any thing of it numbred it even then among the Customs received in his Time writing in the year 199. Oblationes pro Defunctis pro Natalitiis annua die facimus c. Upon a certain Anniversary-day we make Oblations for the Dead and for Birth-days meaning by those Birth-days the days of the Passions of the Martyrs on which putting a Period to their Lives and Combats they entred as it were by a second-Birth into the enjoyment of their true Life and their Glory And in another place treating of the Duties of the Surviving Husband towards his deceased Wife Pro anima ejus orat refrigerium interim adpostulat ei in prima Resurrectione consortium offert annuis diebus dormitionis ejus c. He prays for her Soul and in the mean time begs she may finde refreshment and that he might enjoy her Society at the first Resurrection and offers upon the Anniversary-days of her falling-asleep that is to say of her departure Again Jam repete apud Deum pro cujus Spiritu postules pro qua Oblationes annuas reddas Stabis ergò ad Deum cum tot uxoribus quot illas oratione commemoras offeres pro duabus commemoras alias duas per Sacerdotem de Monogamia ob pristinum de virginitate sancitum circumdatum virginibus univiris c. Consider now well for whose Spirit thou makest thy Addresses to God for whom thou dost return annual Oblations Wilt thou therefore stand before God with as many Wives as thou dost in thy Prayers commemorate and wilt thou offer for two and dost thou make Commemoration of those two by the Priest who after his once marrying because of the precedent Ordinance concerning Virginity is encompassed with Virgins and Women that have had but one Husband From the things which this Great Person the most Antient and most Learned of all the Latines that we have remaining does advance as to matter of fact concerning the Oblations which were publickly made and the employment of Priests the onely Ministers of the Publick service as a thing ordinary and grown into Custom it is manifest that Praying for the Dead was in his Time used not onely by particular Persons but also in the Body of the Church and that the Liturgies thereof were full of it So that if we admit as equally if not more antient then Tertullian the Formularies of his Service such as we have them now we should not upon that accompt have any Inconvenience to fear But seeing that Tertullian who the first of all the Authours we have remaining gives us occasion to observe what the Practice of the Christians of his Time was relyed as well for the Prayers as the Offerings upon no other Hypotheses then those proposed by the Authour of the pretended Sibylline Writing and that he had reverenced it as a Piece not to be charged with any insincerity alledging it with this Elogie in the year 208. Et Sibylla non mendax that is And the Sibyl no Lyar I finde my self forced to believe that from that Sink over-easily taken by Antiquity for a pure and sacred Source was from the midst of the second Age derived the Custom which had already gained strength when Tertullian writ the Books we have cited I think also that who will but consider that there are threescore years aâ—d above between the year 138. wherein the Romance of the Counterfeit Sibyl seems to have come first abroad and the year 199. in which Tertullian writ his Book De Corona and that the Books De exhortatione Castitatis and De Monogamia are yet later will easily judge that space of Time more then sufficient to give Birth unto spread and confirm as well by solemn Formularies as by constant Practice the Custom which though with great alterations hath continued even to this day Add to this that as none of the Antients who in the second Age made mention of the State of the Dead either writ before the year 138. or made any difficulty to go upon the Hypotheses of the Counterfeit Prophetess who hath described it according to her Fancy or thought it much sometimes to have recourse to her Authority so all those who after Tertullian and the use confirmed in his Time spoke of Prayers for the Dead have built upon the same Foundations some as Lactantius have alledged her pretended Oracles and not any one would presume to derogate from the Reputation which she had but too too easily acquired I could wish for their sakes who after they had disclaimed the first causes for which Tertullian St. Epiphanius and others of the Antients thought it necessary to Pray for the Dead are yet resolved to retain the Custom of Praying for them that it were in their power to discover a beter ground whence their Observation might derive its Origine I should entertain with joy and respect what they might have to acquaint me with in recommendation thereof and would freely subscribe what satisfactory Testimony can be produced but I hope they will bear with me if taking the liberty to discover my Thoughts I say they have not any thing of greater weight then the Custom alledged by Tertullian and introduced by those who for the space of threescore years together had been deceived by the Writing unjustly called the Sibylline I am not ignorant how that St. Chrysostom two hundred years after Tertullian spoke advantageously of this Custom writing in the twenty first Homily upon the Acts of the Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. It is not in vain that the Deacon crys for those who rest in Christ and those who make Commemorations for them c. the Spirit hath ordained all these things c. it is not the Deacon which utters that voice but
the Spirit And in the fourty first Homily upon the first Epistle to the Corinthians where he speaks of Prayers Offerings and Alms for the Dead and says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All these things are done by the direction of the Spirit For what other Judgment could he have made of a Custom which he approved and admired the more he saw it confirmed by the Practice of those who had preceded him and for whom he had an high esteem as Persons truly taught of God With the same confidence did he alledge the Authority of the Apostles writing in the third Homily upon the Epistle to the Philippians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is not in vain that the Apostles have made Laws concerning these things For though he found not so much as one Iota in their Writings that might invite him to that perswasion yet according to the prejudgment of St. Hierome in his Epistle to Licinius Unaquaeque Provincia abundet in suo sensu praecepta Majorum Leges Apostolicas arbitretur c. Let every Province abound in its own sense and account the Precepts of our Ancestours as Apostolical Laws he presumed that what â—ad been practised by men that had lived near the Apostles Times and were famous for their Piety came from the Apostles themselves and indeed it were impossible to conceive any thing more plausible then to attribute to the Apostles the Custom which men reputed Apostolical had introduced For who would have thought upon the first Start that Papias that Antient Bishop of Hierapolis whom St. Irenaeus in the thirty third Chapter of his fifth Book Eusebius in the nine and thirtieth Chapter of the third Book St. Hierome in his Catalogue and the Martyrologies upon the two and twentieth of February have with an excess of sincerity qualified Auditour of St. John and Companion of Saint Polycarp and whom St. Hierome assures us to have given out the Apostles for Authours of his Relations was such as Eusebius qualifies him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man of little understanding apt to circumvent and to scatter abroad under venerable Names as of our Saviour or his Disciples or of Aristion and John their Auditours all the feigned Stories he had either dream'd or heard of And who could have imagined that Saint Irenaeus of whom St. Basil in his Book Of the Holy Ghost in the nine and twentieth Chapter says that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A neighbour of the Apostles and St Epiphanius in his twenty fourth Haeresie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Successour of the Apostles and Tertullian in the fifth chapter of his Book Against the Valentinians Omnium doctrinarum curiosissimus explorator c. The most diligent Inquisitour of all Doctrines and St. Hierome in his twenty ninth Epistle Vir Apostolicorum temporum c. A man of the Apostolical Times and upon the sixty fourth Chapter of Esay Vir Apostolicus c An Apostolical man who writ with great diligence and St. Augustine in his first Book Against Julian Antiquus homo Dei c. The antient man of God who I say could have imagined that this Great man should suffer himself to be so far surprized by the fond Conceits of Papias as to have as we have already made appear by what is above alledged out of the thirty fifth Chapter of his fifth Book embraced them and given occasion to St. Hierome to write that he was Papiae discipulus c. the Disciple of Papias c. from whose hands he received the Principal Hypotheses of the Sibylline Writing concerning the State of the departed Yet hath he done it with all those who were his Contemporaries of whom we have any thing left and though they might all or most of them in some respect have attributed to them the Name of Apostolicks Lights of the Church and Martyrs of God yet have they cast Shadows and furnished Posterity with examples of Infirmity which oblige it and all Christians religiously to practise the advice of St. Paul Prove all things hold fast to that which is good and to conclude with the Prophet It is better to trust in the Lord then to put confidence in man But since St. Chrysostomâ—â—th â—th thought fit to deduce the Original of Praying for the dead from I know not what Law and Ordinance of the Apostles whereof there is no Track to be found in their Writings since that of this kinde of Office which he pretended prescribed by such a Law no Christian Authour of whom we have ought truly Authentick remaining hath made any mention before Tertullian who first spoke of it in the year 199. and continued till about the year 212. And lastly since that there are at this day some Persons who will needs ascend much higher and derive as to this particular the Christian Liturgie from the Custom they are pleased to attribute to the Jews as if the shame they conceive it to acknowledg as they are obliged to do Tertullian a Montanist a Millenary and Admirer of the pretended Sibyl to have been the first certifier of one of their Principal Observations had reduced them to a necessity of appealing to the Synagogue and taking up its Authority for a Buckler against the Protestants who do not think themselves any way obliged to the admission of any Worship proceeding from the Will of man without the Word of God we come now to see what probability there may be in their Opinion CHAP. XXIV Whether the Prayers made by Christians for the Dead are indeed grounded on the Second of the Maccabees and the Examples of the Jews THey affirm then that there was no necessity of making any Regulations in the Church concerning the Offices of the living towards the dead in as much as the Faithfull being at first called from among the Jews had learned the necessity thereof even in the Synagogue before they were admitted into the Society of the Christians They further hold that it is manifest from the Sentiment of the Jews under the Old Testament by the Example of Judas their General who as we finde it in the twelfth Chapter of the second Book of Maccabees caused Sacrifices to be offered and Prayers to be made for those of his Army who had been killed in the fight against Gorgias In answer to which not to insist on the Considerations which might be made as well on the difference there is between the States of the Synagogue and the Church as the remarkable diversity of the Legal Administration and Evangelical Grace which is enoug to hinder a man from concluding necessarily This was practised under the Old Testament Therefore it ought to be under the New I make in the first place this Observation That those who have recoursee to this kinde of Defence make a formal disacknowledgment of St. Chrysostome who grounding his Hypothesis onely upon the Law of the Apostles under the New Testament hath even in that discovered how vain and frivolous he thought their undertaking
who would prove their Custom out of the Old in the same manner as these later disclaim all the advantage which St. Chrysostom had promised himself in the allegation of the Apostolical Law Secondly That it argues want of circumspection to suppose as acknowledged what is in Question viz. That the Synagogue under the Old Testament made any Prayers for the dead and that their Practice can be justified by Writings either precedent or immediately subsequent to the Birth of Christianity For since the Hierosolymitane Talmud was not by the Confession even of the Jews themselves began till one hundred sixty two years after the Destruction of both Jerusalem and its Temple and consequently fifteen years at least after the Death of Tertullian which happened as S. Hierome would have it under Caracalla Assassinated on the eighth of April in the year 217. seventy nine years after the first littering of the pretended Sibylline Writings that the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud began not till the 476. year after the final Destruction of the Temple that is to say in the year of our Lord 546. that it took up an hundred years to finish it that these two Collections were made by the implacable enemies of the Gospel and its Truth such as have thrust together without either sincerity or judgment all the Extravagancies that ever troubled the Brains of their Ancestours delivered over as themselves into a reprobate sence and that their Opinions concerning the State of the dead hold correspondence neither with the Sentiment of the Fathers nor with that of the Greeks nor lastly with that which the Church of Rome holds at present there cannot with reason any certa in relyance be made thereon Thirdly That to no purpose is alledged the seventeenth Verse of the fourth Chapter of Tobit which runs thus Pour out thy Bread the old Latine Version made according to the Chaldee adds and thy Wine on the Burial of the Just but give nothing to the wicked because First it is not manifest that there ever was really such a man as Tobit and that the Relation of his Adventures smell as much as may be of a Romance Secondly That the Jews as well Antient as Modern have not attributed any authority thereto Thirdly That all the Greek Fathers unanimously and many of the Latine have held it to be Apocryphal Fourthly That though of all the Canonical Books it were the most Canonical yet neither ought the words alledged out of it to be taken literally since they are notoriously figurative nor could they have any relation to the Custom either of praying or making Offerings for the Dead but according to the use of Funeral Entertainments or Banquets ordained not to procure ease to the Departed but to relieve the kindred he had left to induce them to an oblivion of their mourning and to comfort them For as the Prophet Jeremy threatning the Jews with the Judgment of God which was likely to deprive them of all means of comforting one another said Neither shall men break Bread for them in mourning to comfort them for the Dead neither shall men give them the Cup of consolation to drink for their Father or for their Mother so Tobit exhorting his Son to the Offices of Charity towards his afflicted Brethren orders him to Pour out his Bread and his Wine on the Burial of the dead and by a kind of speaking to fill it by kindly treating those that were in mourning upon their accompt and raising them out of their Heaviness which does not inferr either Prayer or Offering for the dead but onely a charitable care and tenderness towards the living Fourthly That the words of the Son of Sirach in the thirty third Verse of the seventh Chapter of his Ecclesiasticus A gift hath grace in the sight of every man Living and for the Dead detain it not make nothing to the Business of Offerings and Prayers for the Dead to which some would have them relate in as much as that Authour who made his Collection of Sentences in the year 247. before the Birth of our Saviour is so far from saying that the gift which was to be given upon the accompt of the dead was to be exercised towards the departed Person himself that he expresly declares it was so done upon the accompt of the dead that it referred as to its proper object to the surviving adding in the next verse Fail not to be with them that weep and mourn with them that mourn as if he said That that kindness which he desired should not be detained for the dead consists not in praying for the dead but in having a sympathy for their affliction who bewail him and endeavouring to comfort them Besides it is to be noted by the way that the Book of Ecclesiasticus though very antient since it was written 247. years before the Birth of our Saviour and very full of good Doctrine upon which accompt it hath been cited by the Fathers was never enrolled among the Canonical Books neither by the Jews nor by any of the Greek Fathers nor by most of the Latines Fifthly That there cannot be a clearer Evidence to convince those of Errour who suppose that the Custom of Praying for the Dead was antiently among the Jews then to urge that there is not the least track of it in those who were Contemporary with the Apostles viz. Philo who had made himself Master of all prophane Wisdom and the Philosophy of Plato and who was in Caligula's Time reputed the Glory of his Nation and Josephus who was one of the chief Commanders of the Jewish War under Nero and the most diligent searcher into the Antiquities of his Nation under Domitian So that the later Jews must needs have borrowed the Custom they still continue either from some piece of Heathenish superstition or from the Opinions crept into Christianity through their means who were admirers of the pretended Sibylline Writing Sixthly That the second Book of the Maccabees was neither known nor of any accompt among the Jews For as it is manifest that it hath no coherence with the first neither in respect of the observations of time nor in respect of events and their circumstances so we both may and ought to hold it for certain that Josephus who very strictly followed the first either had not any knowledg of it or if he had made no accompt of it since that even when it was his business to represent some History whereof there was also a relation in that Book he hath not onely related it according to his own way but hath often laid it down in circumstances as to the matter of fact incompatible with what was reported thereof in the said Book Whereto may be added the strange obscurity of it which is such that it is not known neither who they were nor about what Time flourished either Jason the Cyrenian the first Authour or the Abbreviator who reduced into a small Epitome the five Books of
Jason nor yet in what Language Jason had first writ them nor whether he was more antient then Josephus who finished his Work Of the Antiquities in the year of our Lord 94. concurrent with the thirteenth of Domitian and the fourty fourth before the Forgeries of the counterfeit Sibyl appeared nor lastly whether that Abridgment came betimes into the hands of the Christians it appearing not that any of them had seen it before the year of our Loâ—d 200. Seventhly That it is absolutely impossible that any of the Christians of the second third and fourth Ages should in their Prayers for the dead have proposed to themselves for a Pattern the Example of Judas Maccabaeus and the Judgment which either Jason the Cyrenian or his Abridger made of it And that for these reasons First Because it was not cited by any of the Fathers till 280. years after the first coming abroad of the pretended Sibylline Writing For St. Augustine having first cited it in the year 416. Prosper Africanus followed him about the year 450. It was afterwards cited by Bacchiarius in his Epistle to Januarius about the year 460. and Julian of Toledo about the year 680. in the one and twentieth Chapter of the first Book of his Prognosticks and Damascene about the year 760. in his Oration De dâ—…nctis and Peter sirnamed the Venerable Abbot of Clugny about the year 1150. in the second Epistle of his first Book and Ecbert a Priest of Bonne near Cullen about the year 1160. Adversus Cathar serm and Guy of Perpignan first General of the Order of the Carmelites afterwards Bishop of Majorca about the year 1318. De Haeresibus Secondly Because we do not finde that any of the Fathers have cited or so much as made the least discovery that they had seen the second Book of the Maccabees before Clemens Alexandrinus and Origene among the Greeks about the year 200 and 240. the former in the fifth of his Stromata and the later in the first Chapter of the second Book De Principiis and his third Homily upon Solomon's Song and his eighteenth Tome upon St. John and upon the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romanes and St. Cyprian among the Latines in the year 252. in his four hundred and fifty sixth Epistle De exhortatione Martyrii the eleventh Chapter and Zeno of Verona about the year 360. Sermone de Resurrectione De Sancto Arcadio Thirdly In regard that as not any one of the Greek Fathers either in Councel or in any particular Writing held the second Book of the Maccabees for Canonical so many of the Latines for instance Tertullian in his fourth Book Adversùs Marcionem carmine scripto cap. 7. St. Hilary in his Prologue upon the Psalms Philastrius Bishop of Brescia in the Chapter de Apocryphis St. Hierome in his seventh Epistle and the one hundred and third and his Prologue upon the Book of Kings and Solomon Ruffinus upon the Crede the Priests of Hilary's Epistle to St. Augustine Primasius Bishop of Adrumetum in Apocal. lib. 1. cap. 4. Junilius another African Prelate in the seventh Chapter of his first Book De partitione Divinae Legis St. Gregory in the seventeenth Chapter of the nineteenth Book of his Morals upon Job the Authour of the Book De mirabilibus Sanctae Scripturae lib. 2. cap. 33. Beda De sex aetatibus In Reg. lib. 4. In Apocal cap. 4. Ambrose Ansbert In Apoc. lib. 3. cap. 4. Alcuinus Adversùs Elipand lib. 1. Charle-Maigne in his Capitulary of the year 789. cap. 10. and the Commentaries attributed to St. Victorinus Bishop of Poictiers those to St. Ambrose Bishop of Millain and those to St. Augustine upon the fourth Chapter of the Apocalyps have all in imitation of the Greeks especially of the Councel of Laodicea put this Book out of the Canon that is out of the List of the Writings inspired by God to be received as a Rule of Faith And this Remark seems to be the more necessary in as much as it contributes to the reconciling with the Greek Fathers and with the Latines that have been of the same Opinion those others of the Latine Church who have comprehended within the Canon of the Holy Scriptures as well the Maccabees as the other Books accounted Apocryphal by the Jews and several of the Christians For if the Councel met at Carthage on the twenty fifth of August 397. during the Popedom of Siricius and since adapted by I know not what Rhapsodist under the Name of the Sixth Councel of Carthage to the twenty fifth of May 419. under the Papacy of Boniface the First if St. Augustine in the eighth Chapter of his Second Book Of Christian Doctrine writ immediately after the Councel of the year 397. if Innocent in his Epistle written to Exuperus Bishop of Tolosa on the twentieth of February 405. if the Councel assembled at Rome in the year 494. under Pope Gelasius and if Isidore Arch-Bishop of Sevil in the sixth Chapter of his first Book of his Etymologies sent to Braulio Bishop of Saragossa after the year 626. inserting the Books of the Maccabees into the Canon of the Scriptures had taken the words Canon and Holy Scriptures in the same sence as the Jews the Greeks and the Latines adhering to their Sentiment concerning the List of the Books bestowed on the Church for a Rule of Faith since they have esteemed Canonical the Books which the rest of the Fathers formally excluded out of the Canon and that holding in appearance one the affirmative the other the negative of the same Proposition they seem to be formally contradictory it were absolutely impossible to reconcile them all and there would be a necessity of charging with prevarication contrary to the judgment of the Romane Church declared by Innocent the First and the Councel assembled under Gelasius Gregory the Great who expresly qualified not-canonical the Maccabees received into the Canon of the Holy Scriptures by Innocent and numbred by the Councel under Gelasius among the Prophetical Scriptures Histories of the old Testament Nay it would be contrary also to that of the African Church declared by the Councel of Carthage and by St. Augustine Primasius and Junilius Africans who formally confined themselves to the Canon of the Jews nay it were hard to avoid making St. Augustine contradict himself in as much as after he had affirmed that the Maccabees were held by the Church to be Canonical he presently adds That they are not among the Holy Scriptures called Canonical saying Supputatio Temporum non in Scripturis sanctis quae Canonicae appellantur sed in aliis invenitur in quibus sunt Maccabaeorum libri quos non Judaei sed Ecclesia fro Canonicis habet c. The computation of Times is not found in the Holy Scriptures which are called Canonical but in the others among which are also the Books of the Maccabees which are held to be Canonical by the Church but not by the Jews
the Apocalyps which he confessed to be above his understanding and conceived to have been the work of some other Authour then the Apostle St. John should be understood in a more spiritual way then Cerinthus the pretended Sibyl and the Millenaries had conceived In so much that in the year 380. or thereabouts Philastrius Bishop of Brescia put into the Catalogue of Heresies the Sentiment of Caius saying Sunt Haeretici qui Evangelium Joannis Apocalypsim non accipiunt non intelligunt virtutem Scripturae c. Audent dicere Apocalypsim non Beati Joannis Evangelistae Apostoli sed Cerinthi Haeretici qui tunc ab Apostolis Beatis Haereticus manifestatus abjectus est ab Ecclesia c. There are certain Hereticks who receive not the Gospel of St. John and his Revelation and understand not the efficacy of Scripture c. They presumptuously affirm that the Apocalyps is not the Work of the Blessed John the Evangelist and Apostle but of the Heretick Cerinthus who having been then discovered to be an Heretick by the Blessed Apostles was cast out of the Church And yet some sixteen years before the Councel of Laodicea and that in the Time of Philastrius Gregory Nazianzene and Amphilochius of Iconia and most of the Greeks though they were not so unreasonable as to follow the Sentiment of Caius in making Cerinthus Authour of the Apocalyps did nevertheless incline so far to his side that they denied the said Book the Title of Canonical not vouchsafing to afford it any place among the Divine Writings Which obliged St. Hierome to write to Dardanus That as the Custom of the Latines admitted not the Epistle to the Hebrews among the Scriptures so the Greek Churches with the same liberty admitted not the Apocalyps of St. John Upon which may be noted that none of them who expressed so much distaste towards those two Sacred Books for ought we know at this day discovered any aversion against the Impostures of the pretended Sibyl which shews that as the Spirit of man is of it self inclined to love and admire its own Inventions let me not say Recreations in the things that are most serious and sacred so is it naturally backward as to the obedience of Faith in respect of the Divine which would not make any Impression upon him if God himself pressing them internally did not efficaciously insinuate the Truth thereof To be short the Errour of the Millenaries opposed from the beginning of the third Age being to be weeded out of the Sentiments of Christians those who first refuted it to compass their design engaged against not the Writing pretended to be Sibylline which formally contained what was most obviously reprovable therein but the Apocalyps which well considered had ever been free from all suspicion of affording it any countenance and it was the good pleasure of God that divers Great Men should rise up who to pull down that erroneous Opinion should knock against one of the most remarkable parts of that Rule which condemns them all and be so unfortunate as to spare a Fabulous Piece no way deserving their support while they deprived one of the most Divine of the honour and acknowledgement due thereto CHAP. XXVII That the third Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called is at this day abandoned by all Christians THe third Hypothesis before extracted out of the Sibylline Writing so called and relating to the conservation of the Terrestrial Paradise and the establishment of the Saints after their Resurrection in that blessed habitation out of which the First-man had been driven was so far from having given Antiquity any trouble that though it supposed what was false it found favour and countenance from Age to Age the Paradise mentioned in the New Testament neither being to be understood carnally nor having any thing common with the other whereof the keeping and culture had been at first committed to Adam And as to this particular I conceive that without any injury done to the Holy Fathers who as it were with a certain emulation presupposed the Introduction of the Blessed into that Paradise towards the East where after the fall of Adam the Cherubims were placed to keep the way of the Tree of Life it may be confidently said of the Christians of all Nations that they have at the present as it were with an unanimous consent embraced a belief more conformable to the Truth then their Ancestours had since that there is not at this day that I know of any Church in the Universe which proposes to the Hope and Faith of Believers any other Paradise then the Celestial and which makes mention of that planted by the hand of God in the Garden of Eden out of any other Design then to recommend it to their consideration as a Type representing the Spiritual Paradise with the same imperfection according to which the first Adam who had been driven out of the Paradise of Eden was the Figure of the second who was to come to open unto us the entrance into the Holy places by his precious blood and the sword of the Cherubim a representation of the curse of the Law remains in respect of the Sinner onely the ministration of Death However it be the Supposition of the Counterfeit Sibyl is as to this respect insensibly vanished so as that it is quite discarded CHAP. XXVIII That the second Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called made way for the new Opinion of Purgatory THe second Hypothesis which taught that the fire of the general Conflagration of the Universe should at the last day purge the Bodies of the Saints had not been long e're it opened a Gap to imaginations yet more Fantastick and irrational among others that of the cessation of all Infernal pains an Opinion taken out of the Schole of Plato into the Bosom of the Church by Origen and his Party to which not to mention the multitude that had followed it from the year 250. to the year 399. stuck the most eminent among the Fathers as Saint Gregory Nyssenus Didymus and in his Youth St. Hierome But the Councels of Alexandria Cyprus and Rome having almost at the same time issued out their Decrees against that inveterate corruption of Christian Doctrine and the fifth General Councel having solemnly fulminated it in the year 553. it by little and little vanished to make way for an Opinion before unknown to all Antiquity and which drew its origine First from the prejudication which the Christians of the sixth Age conceived of the necessity of their proper satisfactions to appease the wrath of God Secondly From the design which many among them had to reform the Custom of their Predecessours praying even for those whom they presupposed Damned as we have seen before Thirdly From the New Philosophy which some Melancholy Spirits apt upon any occasion to conceive Horrours began to advance in the West about the time of St. Gregory For
Devils what pretence can there be to continue the Prayers which infinuate such a perswasion And if the Ground-work of such Prayers be taken away what reason can be alledged sufficient to authorise the continuance of them Can it be said It is lawful and consistent with the Piety of the Church to put up to God Requests that are erroneous according to her own Sentiment and impossible according to the perswasion she hath of the merciful disposal of her Saviour in respect of his Elect whom he hath taken away from the Evil to come to sleep in a sleep of Peace and to rest from their Labours And supposing these things grounded upon the express Text of the Scripture and the Canon of the Mass whâ—ch makes commemoration to God onely of those who sleeping a sleep of Peace are accordingly in Peace should not men think themselves obliged either to discard those Prayers which contain a formal expression of what is contrary to Peace in respect of those for whom they are made and prove so much the more fruitless and inconvenient by how much the Foundations thereof are undermined by rejecting the Hypotheses as well of the pretended Sibyllmâ— Writing as of Justine Martyr or by retaining them to run into the Inconvenience of a Contradiction and that so much the more inevitable the more unadvisedly they engage themselves upon the maintaining of both the Terms of it at the same time affirming on the one side that those who are to be delivered out of the Bonds of a dreadful death and from the Gates of Hell a place of Trouble and as the Text of the Prayer bears it of Pains are neither in Death nor in Bonds nor in Hell that those far from whom must be driven away the Princes of Darkness are not onely not engaged in any War against them but are in a condition to sleep the sleep of Peace to be in possession of Peace to rest in the enjoyment of that Peace from their Labours And on the other side that those who are taken away from the evil to come so as they sleep in Peace and rest from their Labours are in the most dreadful Abyss of Miseries in the horrour of the most irrevocable War and the extremity of Troubles And what does this amount to less then to affirm that they are and are not either in Peace and Rest or in Trouble and War and consequently that they both can and cannot be delivered out of them Time was when those who followed the Party of the Millenaries imagining that during the term of a thousand years which they assigned for the Earthly Kingdom of our Saviour in Jerusalem there should be a Resurrection preceding the general one of the Last-day and upon that accompt be called the First thought they had just ground to beg that their deceased Friends might have their part in that first Resurrection But as soon as their Imagination lost to all credit came of it self to be absolutely laid aside the use of that kind of Prayers came upon this very score that every one thought them ill-grounded 〈◊〉 to be so far abolished that there is no Track of them in any of the Formularies that are come to us but onely in the â—â—othick Which if who sees not there is the same Obligation to â—brâ—gâ—te the Praâ—ers which are as hath been clearly demonstrated formally contradicted by the Canon of the Mass whereby the Church of Rome is wholly directed at the present CHAP. XXXI That the Passage in the twelfth Chapter of the second Book of the Maccabees hath no relation to the Opinion of Purgatory nor to the Service of the Churches THe Doctours of the Romane Communion pretend that the Christians of the second Age grounded their Prayers for the Dead upon the Authority of the second Book of the Maccabees unknown as we have observed to the Jews who were contemporary with the Apostles or at least slighted by them and looked upon with so much indignation by the Christians that not any one of them before St. Augustine cited it with any respect to the Offices rendred by the surviving Faithfull to their departed Brethren Nay indeed none among them could without destroying his own presuppositions concerning the State of the Dead make any advantage of that Testimony which notoriously wrests the action and intention of Judas Maccabaeus to a wrong sence and applies it to the false Hypothesis which the Jews of the last times did and do still maintain so much the more obstinately the more they are perswaded that it may be derived from the words of the first Psalm in the fifth Verse saying that the wicked shall not stand or as the Greek Version and the antient Latine hath it shall not rise up in Judgment Since therefore they were of this extravagant Opinion that the Resurrection of the Last-day should be onely for the Just and that those who had concluded a criminal Life in the Wrath of God should not participate thereof it must needs be that having perswaded thereto either Jason the Cyrenaean or his Abridger the said Jason or other man had conceived it necessary that Judas should make a Prayer for a sort of unhappy wretches whom he acknowledged destroyed in their Sacrilege to the end that being freed from their sin they might be made capable of the Resurrection which according to their prejudicated judgment was to be peculiar onely to those who had continued and concluded their lives in piety This Imagination could not relate to any of the Opinions of the antient Christians assured by St. Paul that every one should appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ to receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad and unanimously presupposing that Judgment should be given of all good and bad according to their works and consequently believing that there would be a double Resurrection that is to say that of the righteous to eternal life and glory and that of the wicked to death and shame and everlasting contempt But let us put the Case that the Sentiment whether of the Authour of the Second Book of the Maccabees or of his Abridger was absolutely conformable to so manifest and so known a Truth and that he alledged this onely end of the Prayer attributed by him to Judas that the Dead for whom onely he pretends that he made it being freed from their sins were thereupon conveyed to the enjoyment of Beatitude which shall have its full accomplishment in the Resurrection which the Fathers call the proper Faith of Christians and the consummation of the glory which they expect Nay let us put the Case that the Latine Church had from the beginning a great esteem for the Testimony of that Person if as is supposed she drew up her Service according to the President of Judas Maccabaeus whence comes it that in the Canon of the Mass she hath made no mention of the Resurrection
be maintained that the Books called the Sibylline were written by Divine inspiration 55 XXII The Sentiment of Aristotle concerning Enthusiasts taken into consideration 57 XXIII That it was unadvisedly done by the Authour of the Sibylline VVriting to put himself into the number of Enthusiasts 59 XXIV That the Fathers who were surprized by the pretended Sibylline VVritings supposed the Authour to have been an Enthusiast 60 XXV The common Sentiment of the Fathers concerning Enthusiasts 62 XXVI Consequences following upon the common Sentiment of the Fathers concerning Enthusiasm 70 XXVII Certain Dis-circumspections of the Fathers concerning the VVriting unjustly named the Sibylline considered 72 XXVIII That the conjecture of Cardinal Baronius concerning the correspondence between Virgil and Herod is not maintainable 73 XXIX That the Opinion of Antonius Possevinus concerning the Sibyls and their pretended VVritings is not more rational then that of Cardinal Baronius 75 BOOK II. CHAP. I. AN Enquiry about the time when St. John writ his Revelation 79 II. The Sentiment of St. Epiphanius concerning the time of the Apocalyps refuted 82 III. The Sentiment of the late Grotius concerning the time of the Apocalyps refuted 87 IV. A refutation of the Sentiment of Johannes Hentenius of Macchlin concerning the time of the Apocalyps 89 V. A refutation of Possevinus concerning the time when the Sibylline Writing came first abroad 93 VI. Of the time when the Sibylline Books were written 96 VII A Conjecture concerning the Authour of the Sibylline Writings 97 VIII Divers Extravagances remarkable in the Sibylline Writings 98 IX The first principal Tenet of the Sibylline Writing concerning the pretended Descent into and detention of all Mens Souls in Hell till the time of the Resurrection of their Bodies 99 X. The second Capital Tenet of the Sibylline VVriting so called concerning the Conflagration of the World at the last Day which the Authour of it pretends is to serve for a Purgatory to the Souls and Bodies of the Saints 104 XI The third main Tenet proposed by the Sibylline VVriting concerning the re-attainment of a Terrestrial Paradise which he imagines should be the place of retirement for some of the Saints after their Resurrection 108 XII The fourth Capital Tenet proposed by the Sibylline VVriting concerning the Temporal Reign which the Authour thereof supposes must be established by our Saviour in Jerusalem during the space of a thousand years before the last Judgment 111 XIII Inducements to pray for the Dead arising from the Hypotheses proposed in the pretended Sibylline Writing 115 XIV The Motives proposed by Justin Martyr disallowed and those which St. Epiphanius had to pray for the Dead taken into consideration 117 XV. Of the Prayers made and the Alms given heretofore by the Christians for the damned even those whom they acknowledged to be in that state 118 XVI The third and fourth Motives of St. Epiphanius taken into consideration 122 XVII St. Epiphanius's fifth Motive considered 123 XVIII The sixth Motive of the same Epiphanius considered 124 XIX The seventh Motive of the same Epiphanius considered 126 XX. The Motive upon which Dionysius the pretended Areopagite prayed for the Dead taken into consideration 128 XXI The Motives which Tertullian had to pray for the Dead considered 129 XXII An enquiry made into the Sentiment of Saint Ambrose 130 XXIII The time when Prayers for the Dead were first introduced into the Service of the Church 132 XXIV Whether the Prayers made by Christians for the Dead be really grounded on the place in the second Book of the Maccabees and the Examples of the Jews alledged to that purpose 136 XXV Whether it may be with any reason affirmed that the Prayers made by Christians for the Dead are justly grounded on the second Book of the Maccabees 144 XXVI That divers of the Fathers have expressed more respect to the Book attributed to the Sibyll then to the Apocalyps 148 XXVII That the third Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called is at this day abandoned by all Christians 150 XXVIII That the second Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called made way for the late Opinion of Purgatory 151 XXIX Proofs of the novelty of the precedent Opinion of Purgatory 155 XXX That the first Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called concerning the detention of Souls in Hell till the Resurrection is generally disclaimed by all Christians 158 XXXI That the passage of the twelfth Chapter of the second Book of the Maccabees hath no relation either to the Opinion of Purgatory or Service of the Churches 161 XXXII That the Primitive sence of the Prayers whereby the remission of sins was desired for the Dead is not embraced by any 163 XXXIII The Censures pronounced by the Doctours of the Church of Rome against the Fathers taken into examination 165 XXXIV The Uniformity of the Sentiment of the Fathers and that of the Protestants concerning the State of the faithfull departed in the Lord. 168 XXXV The Sentiment of the Protestants further proved by the description which the Fathers have made of Abraham's bosom 170 XXXVI The same Sentiment further confirmed by the Pomp and Solemnities of antient Enterments 171 XXXVII A particular confideration of the Sentiment of St. Augustine and his Prayers for his Mother 174 XXXVIII The Sentiment of the Protestants further confirmed by the Eloges antiently bestowed on the faithful departed 184 XXXIX The same Sentiment further confirmed from Sepulchral Inscriptions 189 XL. The same deduced from larger Epitaphs 196 XLI Of the Prayers contained in the Epitaphs of the faithfull whom the surviving presupposed already received into glory 212 XLII Of the true Motives which the Antients had to pray for those whom they believed to be in bliss 222 XLIII The Obscurity and uncertainty of the Opinion of Purgatory 229 XLIV That the proofs produced by Cardinal Bellarmine for Purgatory are weak and defective 233 XLV That the Testimonies produced by Jodocus Coccius for the opinion of Purgatory are also defective 234 XLVI Of the Reasons which might have moved the Antients to inter their departed friends in the Churches consecrated to the memory of the Saints 237 XLVII The Sentiment of St. Ambrose and Paulinus concerning the buriall of the faithful in Churches examined 241 XLVIII Enquiry made into the Sentiment of St. Augustine concerning the Burial of the faithful departed in Churches 244 XLIX Enquiry made into the Sentiment of Maximus Tyrius concerning the Burial of the faithful in Churches 245 L. A reflection on certain followers of the Sentiment of the said Maximus 146 LI. Of the Lessons of holy Scripture contained in the Missal and Breviary as to what relates to the Office of the Dead 249 LII Of the Prayers contained in the Missal and Breviary used by the Church of Rome and that Purgatory cannot be necessarily inferred from any one of them 255 LIII An accompt of the Sentiment of the Modern Greeks concerning the State of the Dead 268 LIV. The conclusion of the whole Treatise 290 FINIS Adver Valentin