the Language of the Hebrews then spoken at Hierusalem which was Syriack which Theodoret and many other Learned Antiquaries say is an ancienter Language as well as more certain than your Hebrew Tongue and being as was said the Mother Tongue to the Apostles many Autographical Copies of some Books in the New Testament writ in Syriack were acknowledged for Holy Scripture before some of those sacred Books were indited at least before they were generally received into the Canon of Holy Writ namely the Second Epistle of St. Peter the Second and Third Epistles of St. John the Epistle of St. Jude and the Revelations of St. John The Sun's face when long wrap'd up in a cloud More beauteous shows having cast off that hood The English Genius mourning many a year In sniveling black now grows more debonair Rome as she thrive in Arms so thrive in Arts So England too since she got Loyal Hearts More brisk all Learning 's grown lately deform'd And must the Pulpit be the last reform'd In Parliament and Inns of Court Long Speeches Are reckon'd little worth but to wipe br He best does speak that speaks plain short sweet Is not right Eloquence for the Pulpit meet Great is Diana great long Sermons snivelling By which Craft Holder forth sneaks for a Living Be gone base canting Tribe with your New Lights That only teach men to be Hypocrites Long winded Preachments being now forlorn A Dress now out of fashion being worn Thread-bare by whining Pharisees alone Or 't is the Jews-trump of Religion And is it not deservedly in disgrace It ne'r yet had so much as a good face Or form of Godliness far from the Power The Primitive Sermons not one jot like your Christ and his Servants holy Writ records Converted thousands with a few plain words But still I fear little Priscian pursues me and perhaps will say I wonder what work you will cut out for the Ministers of the Church of England now you have clip'd away all but your own Sermon of six verses as well as Modern Orthodoxy Truly truly Generous Sir I have cut out more and better work for you and all Gospel Ministers than you are well aware of or can readily accomplish though all the shreds and parings as rubbish be thrown into Hell except what is included in these six verses and you shall do your work more profitably and honourably to your selves and the people if you keep your selves within the limits of those six verses do as much good as ever you did and have as much work too and yet neither do nor say any thing mischievously and impertinently For first your conversations at which the enemy is so scandalized as well as your selves will be unblameable by doing as you would be done unto you cannot then chouce poor Gentlemen of their moneys when they play pieces at an Ordinary this Principle will keep you from cheating tricks or being cheated will keep your hands from picking and stealing and defrauding and your tongues from evil speaking lying and slandering why because you would not willingly be so served by others but you must by this principle behave your selves soberly in reference to your own bodies in temperance righteously in reference to all other men by justice and godlily in reference to devotion towards God in duties of Religion and holy worship which is made up of five particulars namely Faith the Seals of Faith Prayers Praises and Ceremonies Unto which some adde Swearing but not well advised therein For though God Almighty says to his people Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God Deut. 6. 13. and serve him and shalt swear by his name yet the last clause is not exegetical of the former nor do men serve God by swearing nor is it any part of Heavenly Liturgy other than as when we serve truth and our generation being called at Courts of Judicature to attest truth calling God to witness and to judge us according to the truth of what we averr and if this be done cordially it assoils such a man of Atheism but not of irreligion if by Religion we mean religious worship which I say has but five parts as abovesaid and all included in my Sermon of six verses Now saith little Modern Orthodox are you there again with your Clypticks having neither accepted Sermon nor Lecture into your holy worship I hope Sermons that have had all the room in the Church when your Liturgy and your Sacraments and your Ceremonies were turn'd out of doors shall yet be taken in for one share part and portion of religious and holy worship of God No not a bit I admit no Sermons Lectures Preachments nor Harangues no not mine own dear Sermon of six verses to have any part or lot in this matter of religious worship I know they have turn'd all religious worship out of the house of God so that now Sermon is taken to be the All of Gods worship and so understood in common phrase Is there a Sermon this After-noon or to day is sermon done were you at sermon to day c. meaning were you at Church or serving God to day sermon sermon for all and if no sermon then there 's nothing at all that amongst silly men and women can sound like religious worship Whereas I come and say quite contrary namely that Ceremonies Sacraments c. are religious necessary and holy worship of God but Sermons Lectures and Harangues are not at all the religious and holy worship of God when they are never so good sermons but the usual sermons of Modern Orthodox that justled true and holy worship out of the Church did not so much as tend to holy worship consisting in Ceremonies the Liturgy Sacraments c. those men being so far from preaching up those parts of holy worship that they preach'd them down and consequently the more sermons and the more eloquent sermons of that nature were the most devillish works of darkness and Hell and the more men heard and believed those sermons the more they were children of wrath and darkness if so be that those five particulars aforesaid contain all the parts and portions of holy worship and that sermons the most admired Preachments be not allowed therein any not so much as the least share sermons at best being only in order to Gods worship as they plainly and honestly comment upon and exhort unto Ceremonies Faith Seals of Faith Prayers and Praises this ought to be the height of the Ambition that sermons can lay claim unto only to be subservient and serviceable to these high and mighty Devotions Faith the seals of Faith Prayers Praises and Ceremonies which three last you have most Evangelically in our Holy Liturgy And all sermons that tend not to the preaching up of these how worthy cares soever Father Grey-beards do esteem them are whimsical and extravagant at best in relation to instructing people in Holy and Gospel worship but if those sermons cry down these or any of these five
himself a French coat a French wit a French head a French wigg French legs French cringes French Tongue and all other members about him in apish and mimick imitation of the French frenchefyed thereby to be taken for a Gentleman whence the Proverb Jack would be a Gentleman if he could speak French At which so probably related by the old Gentleman most of the company laughed heartily and concluded that this new Author designing in his whole book to promote again the good old Cause which he calls modern Orthodoxy and sometimes the cause too good resolving right or wrong to plead the Cause of the Non-Conformists which since he has espous'd he is not asham'd of and therefore confesses p. 282. that if he can do the Non-Conformists no good he is resolv'd to do them no harm and we will believe him without swearing To carry on this goodly design he bespatters the present Government with unparallel'd malice endeavours to stain and blemish the late Kings whole Reign as deform'd rails at Bishops and evil Councellors dead and alive justifies Schisme as shall shortly appear cries up Indulgence and liberty Breda Breda Reformation Reformation and with bitter sarcasmes and invective taunts prosecutes the present Parliament Rallery being the most biting and insufferable Railing and all this with as little fear as wit Rather than not have a fling at the Parliament and pinch it till it recant all especially the Act for Uniformity or any Act against the good old Cause and Non-Conformists to twit it home as wittily and effectually as he can he p. 110. confounds nature to create a Joque turns the Parliament-men into a Parliament of women on purpose to break a jeast upon them which had otherwise missed them viz. Superfoetation of Acts. And new-mints a word Trinkle trinkle the members rather than his beggarly wit should have nothing currant It would make a man sick to see this little Tantalus catch and gape for a jeast and a little Rhetorick And alas it will not come And at other times to see him make a Lyons face and grunt and groan to send forth a little wit but it is right Presbyterian it will not come for the man is as costive as one of the old Assembly of Divines or Smec or Tom Dumby-low who dy'd because he was so And all this pother is for an old Cause that stinks above ground in the nostrils of every honest heart both here and all the world over Yet commend me to the men for one thing they are as restless and indefatigable in their endeavours to promote it though so often baffled by God and man that they still cease not to move every stone bribe and flatter threaten and frown fight and rayl cant and recant pray and lye preach and slander snivel and whine exhort and blaspheme in publique in private in City and Countrey in Churches in Conventicles with License and without License by your leave and in spight of your teeth As if old Knox himself was again metempsuchos'd in every one of them To this purpose in this Authour they assault the Church and State with the old weapons new furbish'd and to make you believe their old cause was good they make the old Kings cause bad and this bold man dares in this juncture of affairs with implacable inveteracy prey upon the dead not permitting to rest in the bed of Honour our gracious and blessed King Englands Martyr That sacrific'd his own life rather than to live in infamy by betraying his people the laws and his own just rights And though we can scarce believe our own eyes when we see the matchless Impudence of this Authour thus to traduce him and his whole Reign and the present Parliament with Taunts as bitter as bold yet to make all this seem but a jeast when he casts firebrands arrows and death like mad he seems to say Am not I in sport In an affected but taking and fashionable Drolling way insinuating into every mans humour to carry on the work Cajoling the Rabble with liberty Indulgence Breda Breda Cajoling the Yeomen and Corporations with Interest and Trade and propriety invaded with fears of Sibthorpianisme Ceremonies Arminianisme and Manwaring Cajoling the Gentlemen and noble men with the dangers that again threaten their Reputation and Honour and make them feel for their Cutto's and draw upon poor Cassock and Lawn-sleeves for fear it should come again to the Proverb of his own making Jack-Gentleman But I being suddenly call'd away was no longer happy with the further discourse of this Cabal of wits only I took notice before I parted that the Virtuoso's all this while made not one Repartee or if they did it was but one little one answering mostly with a countenance compos'd and made up of magisterialness and high conceit mixt with some pity but more scorn and a little smile now and then proceeding from both But with such a paltry and surly grace that I could scarce contain my self and I had much ado to forbear kicking the Coxcombs And they had certainly felt the Print of my toes but that I was not so angry as to hold from laughing right out at such affected gravity they look'd so scurvily With Head toss'd up but bridling in the chin As if with half cheek-bit and Curb reyn'd in Mumbling a little sometimes to themselves as the poor ass does when feeding upon Thistles the sharp pricks gawl his Chaps Whether like right-bred Cocks of the Game they kept their best strength for the Reserve and last Close or that they were good Husbands of their wits and would not spend it but in better company some Cabal of their own or thought that the Moderators place was their own by Patent and just right determining all at the last or did not at that time carry their wit about them as loth to wear it out or like old true hunted Hounds would not open but when the scent was certain or whether they had some peculiar endearances for the Authour I cannot decide But I was so netled with what I had heard of this new Author above all admiring the stupendious contradictions and double-Tongue of the man that though I had read in Diodorus Siculus of an Island in Arabia where the Inhabitants have two tongues in a head but loth to go so far to see them yet since I might see the Marvel at home more prodigious than the child at the Swan by Charing-Cross with two heads I was resolv'd though it cost me a shilling to see what I could find in this marvellous Book and readily finding one at the next Stationers the Bugg almost startled me at first it had such a Portenâ—…ous Title The Rehearsal Transpros'd The Rehearsal Transpros'd Some of the Common Herd of mankind that ne're paid six pence yet at a Club of the Virtuoso's nor so much as once got the word for that night would quietly if not frighted with the Goblin pass by this Title-Page when starch'd up with the
because no body can believe that the same tongue does in good earnest in one breath speak contraries and blow hot and cold together at the same time Indeed the man that blew his Pottage to make them cold and blew his fingers to make them hot came something near in likeness to your mouth but the Story says it was at several times and he made two blasts on 't and two Periods But you in one sentence and breath without stop or comma talk of a whole Reign deform'd by the best Prince that ever wielded the English Scepter and the like of the Arch-Bishop you outdo all that ever I heard of And worse than the cruel Panther that allures and entices his Prey to come near him by sending forth a sweet scent and savour from his mouth 'till the silly brutes thus trepan'd come within his grasp and the reach of his bloody paw Your breath is not so intirely perfum'd but has two savours I wonder any body that have their senses intire should be in love with you and but that you are incomparable in your own conceit I wonder you are so much in love with your self And nothing do I admire more excepting always your own unparallel'd confidence than that any body should admire you for such a tall fellow and tough Champion for Modern Orthodoxy which you so often by your self-contradictictions betray as well as therein your own weakness and infirmities Indeed you manage a Cause that is plausible enough God knows in these days when you strike at the Bishops who have not at present too many friends and they themselves scorning to be grave with a Buffoon it is his own phrase and having not many that I see to take up the Gantlet in their defence so readily as my self though I confess with great disadvantage to my own fame The Argument I undertake being not so plausible and taking in defending them now a days as your jolly opposition and affront in which particular alone you have the advantage of me mine is the better though your's be the more acceptable Cause and this alone makes you to be cry'd up for a Sampson because you smite the Church and Clergy Hip and Thigh though it be be not angry with the Jaw-bone of an Ass. Is it not possible there should be true honour and vertue under a Cassock or Lawn sleeve Has Holland shirts Perrywig and light Drugget got the Monopoly of true Nobility As the Noblemen and Gentlemen would be affronted if the Clergy should despise them with your Proverb Jack Gentleman so why should not the Reverend Bishops and others be as much offended when such a Pick-thank in a whole discourse seems to cry Jack Clergy-man The King alone is the Fountain of Honour and are those streams of honour that flow from him more pudled in a Clergy than a Lay-Channel Does not the man forget his own Father I hate the folly as much as the pride of such Upstarts that because in their Pride Jollity and Atheism they would cast contempt on the Clergy in their folly they think they may and should cast contempt on the Clergy Who in the opinion of Greg. himself are the fittest to make the best Politicians in the World if they keep to their Bibles Which none probably does or can better understand nor any in like probability better observe 't is true they are men and subject to frailties but all men as much and in all likelihood more than they And now I am upon 't I will but make tryal what virtue there is in Perriwig Father Gray-beard above all others to make a Politician of For he often ope's and gapes at Politick Lectures like an Oyster against the coming in of the Tide it is his very element and he is either there good or no where worth the opening I can scarce forbear smiling to my self to see how prettily he sets his face and makes up his mouth with such caution and gravity before he begins to read to Princes his Politick would-bees First blaming the Ecclesiastical Politician he must not be forgotten for offering at that which was none of his Province p. 61. Instructing Princes like Sancho how to govern his Island And p. 206. He had put all Princes upon the Rack to stretch them to his dimension And in another place I am asham'd Mr. Bays that you put me on talking thus impertinently for Policy in us is so Now think I we cannot be far off this Politick Lecture it is either in front or reer before or behind it is hereabouts look for Greg. his whole book then and there most condemns what he is forthwith about to practise as formerly is instanced in the case of railing To make the King and Parliament secure he would lull them asleep with saying p. 252. That men are all so weary that he would be knock'd on the head that should raise the first disturbance of the same nature A new war must have like a book that would sell a new Title In the front of his Book you have a strange and unheard of New Title here he gives you the reason of it he resolv'd there should be something in his Boook to make it sell. And what if a man that had a mind to raise a disturbance should give the Good Old Cause a new Title and call it the Cause too good or Modern Orthodoxy are not those Titles as new and as ready made to a mans hand as the the new Title to his book and by the same hand too this man cannot for his life but he must confound himself But he that should raise the first disturbance of the same nature would he knock'd on the head would he so I do not believe any man likes it so well as to be willing to be knock'd on the head except those knocks be fine gentle knocks not Scotch Knox nor Modern Orthodox knocks they did knock so gingerly that not any man I know would be so knock'd with his good will however I suppose by would be knock'd on the head he means he ought or should be knock'd in the head and that is somewhat deeper than on the head it is as much as a mans life is worth to be knock'd in the head but to be knock'd on the head may be but a Tailors blow a knock with a Thimble a Prick-Louse Rap. But not to play further with his words the thing means as plain as it can speak that the first Rebel that should make disturbance must needs be knock'd i' th' head Therefore disband your Red and Blue-Coats you need not fence where there is no fear the Modern Orthodox that use to be so busie and indefatigable are now 't is very strange and news you tell us weary As soon as ever I read this news thought I to my self and whispered this is all Leasing the Factions and Modern Orthodox weary 't is impossible As they are the Modern Orthodox so they are the never-to-be-tired modern
holiness Hakkadosh but in the Chaldee Tongue and as spurious and adulterate rejected by our Saviour Which do you think is the most Authentick apographical Copy of the Septuagint the Vatican or Alexandrian Much alike yet the Alexandrian is usually preferred we call it the King's Manuscript because it was sent to our King from Constantinople by Cyril Lucaris Patriarch there and brought with him as a famous monument from Alexandria where he was Patriarch till advanc'd to the higher dignity the Patriarchat of Constantinople from whence our Leiger Ambassadour there Sir Thomas Roe sent it to our King The Greek Church heard of no other Bible but this Septuagint 400 years after Christ when St. Hierom first divulg'd commonly the Hebrew Text at which the African Bishops St. Augustine especially was so offended that he interdicted that Hebrew Bible as did also the Greek Bishops which forc'd St. Hierom l. 2. cont Ruffinum in Praf ad 2 Chron. to beg their pardon saying he had no design by that Promulgation to confront the sacred Septuagint And for my part I think if you will not be angry that the Vulgar Latin is a more certain Interpreter and as old I believe as since the times of the Apostles being writ by them or some of their Disciples for the use of the Church of Rome to whom St. Paul writ an Epistle and even Beza as well as Grotius acknowledges it so much the more credibly authentick for that old as well as odd Latine in which it gloried before St. Hierom's time For he indeed pretended to amend and correct it by putting forth another Latine Translation concordant as to the Old Testament with his Hebrew Text encouraged thereunto by Pope Damasus and both his Latine Version and the old Vulgar Latine were confirmed by Gregory the Great But because they made a distraction in the Church they were by the Authority as well as pains of Clement 8. concorporated and now are known by the old name given before St. Hierom was born The Vulgar Latine To which Learned men I 'le assure you give a great deal of Credit and Reverence therein consenting with Baronius Bonfrerius Serrarius c. though they differ in other matters But I speak of my Hebrew Tongue now that it is mended by the University at Tiberias the Masoreth What say you to that I say nothing to it I told you before I love no Tongues when the goodness is quite dry'd out of them I value them no more than a chip though for want of better accommodation they usually serve some vain People to make a show with thinking they are better than nothing if you will believe a grave and learned Authour called Hudibras For Hebrew Roots although th' are found To flourish most in barren Ground c. Be not offended Sir I do not think you Sir nor a thousand more such Hebrew bablers as your self are at all concern'd in the Sarcasme you carry Hebrew only a little at the tip and Tongues end they are no small fools I can tell you that can produce the Roots of that Tongue What Language spoke our Saviour Only one the Syriack or Babylonish his Mother Tongue according to the flesh though as God he understood all Languages and things but he never travell'd during his Incarnation out of the Nation and Language wherein he was born that we read of When our Saviour and the Apostles quoted Scripture out of the Old Testament did they not follow the Hebrew Text No certainly but the Septuagint as 't is evident Nor was the Old Testament compos'd into a Canon as we have it until Esdras first did it after the Captivity And the Samaritans own no Scripture to this day nor in our Saviours time but the Pentateuch the minor Prophets as we have them not till Esdras his time compos'd as now and some of the Holy Scripture is yet quite lost to us namely the Prophecies of the Prophets Iddo Nathan Shemajah c. Besides most part of the Prophecie of Daniel was writ in Chaldee so also Ezra chap. 4. and some other Parts of Holy Scripture that I list not here to recite And St. Augustine l. 18. c. 13. de civit Dei tells us the Grecian Christians knew not in his time whether there were any other sacred Original but the Septuagint Happily made more intelligible if not more legible by the concurrent Testimonies of sacred Apographical Versions and Copies Syriack Armenian Indian Vulgar Latine Aethiopick and the Mungrel Tongue Coptick partly Greek partly Old Aegyptian as to some Books of the Bible Persian Chaldee Paraphrase by the Providence of Almighty God and the indefatigable pains of Learned men preserved and collected namely St. Hierom Cyril Eusebius and Pamphilus Mercer Buxtorf Sixtus Senensis Pradus Nobilius Flaminius Abbas Apollinarius Stephanus Vilalpandus Azorius Simon de Muis Lindanus Kircher Casaubon Bochartus Usherus Fullerus Erasmus Grotius Beza Morinus Breerwood Vatablus Munster Hutter Junius Fabritius Boderianus Masius above all Cardinal Ximenius the Toletan Primate for the first great Polyglot Bible enlarged by Arias Montanus at the charge of Philip King of Spain commonly called the King of Spain's Bible but augmented since by the Parisian Bible at the cost and care of Michael de Jay and now all of them outvied by the Late Polyglot Bible Printed at London with as incomparable profit as pains But do we not find the old Hebrew Tongue in those Bibles Yes Yes But that which is rather construed by comparing with other Languages more certain and better known especially since the old Hebrew that had anciently but three Letters that stood for Vowels we may now make a nose of wax of an old Hebrew word now that we have got a Baker's dozen of Vowels besides Dipthongs added to the former And indeed all those vowels notes and points are not only uncertain but of less standing in the University than Greek accents and aspirations a new invention too of the Grammarians yet both of them are of much longer standing than the distinction of the Holy Books inter Chapters and Verses which yet are useful if they be not always too much insisted upon of all the new Hebrew additions Dagesch pleads the greatest seniority being as old some say as the Letter N. But most old Hebrew Copies neglect him and leave him out In what Language was the New Testament first indited In Greek all of them Autographically as the most universal Language and also in other Languages Autographically as Latine Syriack without controversie and one or two Books thereof some say in the Hebrew Tongue indeed the Apostles could speak all useful Languages but although some ancient MS. say that Matthew's Gospel was writ in the Hebrew Tongue for the Jews at Hierusalem cited by the Learned Doctour Hammond in his Annotations upon Matt. 1. 1. yet because it is certain the Jews then at Hierusalem understood Hebrew at that time no more than you and I by the Hebrew Tongue there must be understood