Lordship knows your own for out of your Mines I have digg'd the Mineral onely I have stampt it with my own image as you may perceive by the deformities which are in it But your great Name in letters will adde so much value to it as to make it obtain its pardon amongst all them that know how to value you and all your relatives and dependants by the proportion of relation For others I shall be incurious because the number of them that honour you is the same with them that honour Learning and Piety and they are the best Theatre and the best Judges amongst which the world must needs take notice of my ambition to be ascribed by my publick pretence to be what I am in all heartiness of devotion and for all the reason of the world My Honoured Lord Your Lordship 's most faithfull and most affectionate Servant JER TAYLOR ΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ ΕΚΛΕΚΤΙΚΗ Or A DISCOURSE OF THE Liberty of Prophesying With its just Limits and Temper THe infinite variety of Opinions in matters of Religion as they have troubled Christendome with Interests Factions and partialities so have they caused great divisions of the heart and variety of thoughts and designs amongst pious and prudent men For they all seeing the inconveniences which the Disunion of Perswasions and Opinions have produced directly or accidentally have thought themselves obliged to stop this inundation of mischiefs and have made attempts accordingly But it hath hapned to most of them as to a mistaken Physician who gives excellent physick but mis-applies it and so misses of his cure so have these men their attempts have therefore been ineffectual for they put their help to a wrong part or they have endeavoured to cure the symptoms and have let the disease alone till it seem'd incurable Some have endeavoured to re-unite these fractions by propounding such a Guide which they were all bound to follow hoping that the Unity of a Guide would have perswaded Unity of mindes but who this Guide should be at last became such a Question that it was made part of the fire that was to be quenched so far was it from extinguishing any part of the flame Others thought of a Rule and this must be the means of Union or nothing could doe it But supposing all the World had been agreed of this Rule yet the interpretation of it was so full of variety that this also became part of the disease for which the cure was pretended All men resolv'd upon this that though they yet had not hit upon the right yet some way must be thought upon to reconcile differences in Opinion thinking so long as this variety should last Christ's Kingdom was not advanced and the work of the Gospell went on but slowly Few men in the mean time considered that so long as men had such variety of principles such several constitutions educations tempers and distempers hopes interests and weaknesses degrees of light and degrees of understanding it was impossible all should be of one mind And what is impossible to be done is not necessary it should be done And therefore although variety of Opinions was impossible to be cured and they who attempted it did like him who claps his shoulder to the ground to stop an earth-quake yet the inconveniences arising from it might possibly be cured not by uniting their beliefs that was to be despair'd of but by curing that which caus'd these mischiefs and accidental inconveniences of their disagreeings For although these inconveniences which every man sees and feels were consequent to this diversity of Perswasions yet it was but accidentally and by chance inasmuch as we see that in many things and they of great concernment men allow to themselves and to each other a liberty of disagreeing and no hurt neither And certainly if diversity of Opinions were of itself the cause of mischiefs it would be so ever that is regularly and universally but that we see it is not For there are disputes in Christendome concerning matters of greater concernment then most of those Opinions that distinguish Sects and make Factions and yet because men are permitted to differ in those great matters such evils are not consequent to such differences as are to the uncharitable managing of smaller and more inconsiderable Questions It is of greater consequence to believe right in the Question of the validity or invalidity of a death-bed repentance then to believe aright in the Question of Purgatory and the consequences of the Doctrine of Predetermination are of deeper and more material consideration then the products of the belief of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of private Masses and yet these great concernments where a liberty of Prophesying in these Questions hath been permitted have made no distinct Communion no Sects of Christians and the others have and so have these too in those places where they have peremptorily been determined on either side Since then if men are quiet and charitable in some dis-agreeings that then and there the inconvenience ceases if they were so in all others where lawfully they might and they may in most Christendome should be no longer rent in pieces but would be redintegrated in a new Pentecost And although the Spirit of God did rest upon us in divided tongues yet so long as those tongues were of fire not to kindle strife but to warm our affections and inflame our charities we should find that this variety of Opinions in several persons would be lookt upon as an argument onely of diversity of Operations while the Spirit is the same and that another man believes not so well as I is onely an argument that I have a better and a clearer illumination then he that I have a better gift then he received a special grace and favour and excell him in this and am perhaps excelled by him in many more And if we all impartially endeavour to find a truth since this indeavour and search onely is in our power that we shall find it being ab extra a gift and an assistance extrinsecal I can see no reason why this pious endeavour to find out truth shall not be of more force to unite us in the bonds of charity then the misery in missing it shall be to dis-unite us So that since a union of perswasion is impossible to be attained if we would attempt the cure by such remedies as are apt to enkindle and encrease charity I am confident we might see a blessed peace would bee the reward and crown of such endeavours But men are now adays and indeed always have been since the expiration of the first blessed Ages of Christianity so in love with their own Fancies and Opinions as to think Faith and all Christendome is concern'd in their support and maintenance and whoever is not so fond and does not dandle them like themselves it grows up to a quarrel which because it is in materiâ theologiae is made a quarrel in Religion and God is entitled to it and then if you
very often destructive This was a little alteration or ease of the Covenant of Works but not enough 3 From this state of evil things we were freed by Christ The law was called the letter the ministration of death the ministration of condemnation the old Testament apt to amaze and confound a sinner but did not give him any hopes of remission no glimpse of heaven no ministry of pardon But the Gospel is called the Spirit or the ministration of the Spirit the law of faith the law of liberty it ministers repentance it enjoyns holiness it gives life and we all have hopes of being saved 4. This which is the state of things in which the whole world is represented in their several periods is by some made to be the state of every returning sinner and men are taught that they must pass through the terrors of the Law before they can receive the mercies of the Gospel The Law was a Schoolmaster to bring the Synagogue to Christ it was so to them who were under the Law but it cannot be so to us who are not under the Law but under grace For if they mean the law of Works or that interposition which was the first entercourse with man they lose their title to the mercies of the Gospel If they mean the law of Moses then they do not stand fast in the liberty by which Christ hath made them free But whatsoever the meaning be neither of them can concern Christians For God hath sent his Son to establish a better Covenant in his blood to preach repentance to offer pardon to condemn sin in the flesh to publish the righteousness of God to convince the world of sin by his holy Spirit to threaten damnation not to sinners absolutely but absolutely to the impenitent and to promise and give salvation to his Sons and Servants 5. I. The use that we Christians are to make of the Law is only to magnifie the mercies of God in Jesus Christ who hath freed us from so severe a Covenant who does not judge us by the measures of an Angel but by the span of a mans hand But we are not to subject our selves so much as by fiction of law or fancy to the curse and threatnings of the Covenant of Works or of Moses Law though it was of more instances and less severity by reason of the allowance of Sacrifices for expiation 6. II. Every Christian man sinning is to consider the horrible threatnings of the Gospel the severe intermination of eternal pains the goodness of God leading to repentance the severity of his Justice in exacting great punishments of criminals the reasonableness of this Justice punishing such persons intolerably who would not use so great a grace in so pleasing a service for the purchase of so glorious a reward The terrors of the Law did end in temporal death they could affright no further but in the Gospel Heaven and Hell were opened and laid before all mankind and therefore by these measures a sinner is to enter into the sorrows of contrition and the care of his amendment And it is so vain a thing to think every sinner must in his repentance pass under the terrors of the Law that this is a very destruction of that reason for which they are fallen upon the opinion The Law is not enough to affright sinners and the terrors of the Gospel are far more to persevering and impenitent sinners than the terrors of the Law were to the breakers of it The cause of the mistake is this The Law was more terrible than the Gospel is because it allowed no mercy to the sinner in great instances But the Gospel does But then if we compare the state of those men who fell under the evils of the Law with these who fall under the evils threatned in the Gospel we shall find these to be in a worse condition than those by far as much as hell is worse than being stoned to death or thrust through with a sword This we are taught by that excellent Author of the Divine Epistle to the Hebrews He that despised Moses law died without mercy under two or three witnesses Of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who hath troden under foot the Son of God and hath counted the blood of the Covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing and hath done despite to the Spirit of Grace So that under the Gospel he that sins and repents is in a far better condition than he that sinn'd under the Law and repented For repentance was not then allowed of the man was to die without mercy But he that sins and repents not is under the Gospel in a far worse condition than under the Law for under the Gospel he shall have a far sorer punishment than under the Law was threatned Therefore let no man mistake the mercies of the New Covenant or turn the grace of God into wantonness The mercies of the Gospel neither allow us to sin nor inflict an easier punishment but they oblige us to more holiness under a greater penalty In pursuance of which I add 7. III. The Covenant by which mankind must now be judged is a Covenant of more Mercy but also of more holiness and therefore let no man think that now he is disobliged from doing good works by being admitted to the Covenant of Faith For though the Covenants are oppos'd as Old and New as a worse and a better yet Faith and Works are not oppos'd We are in the Gospel tied to more and to more excellent works than ever the subjects of any Law were but if after a hearty endeavour we fall into infirmity and still strive against it we are pitied here but there we were not Under the first Covenant the Covenant of Works no endeavour was sufficient because there was no allowance made for infirmities no abatements for ignorance no deductions of exact measures no consideration of surprises passions folly and inadvertency but under the New Covenant our hearty endeavour is accepted but we are tied to endeavour higher and more excellent things than they But he that thinks this mercy gives him liberty to do what he please loses the mercy and mistakes the whole design and Oeconomy of Gods loving kindness 8. IV. To every Christian it is enjoyned that they be perfect that is according to the measure of every one Which perfection consists in doing our endeavour He that does not do that must never hope to be accepted because he refuses to serve God by something that is in his power But he that does that is sure that God will not refuse it because we cannot be dealt withal upon any other account but by the measures of what is in our power and for what is not we cannot take care 9. V. To do our endeavour or our best is not to be understood equally in all the periods of our life according to the work or effect it self nor according to
the manners of all men 1. The first great cause of an universal impiety is that at first God had made no promises of Heaven he had not propounded any glorious rewards to be as an argument to support the superior faculty against the inferior that is to make the will chuse the best and leave the worst and to be as a reward for suffering contradiction For if the inferior faculty be pleas'd with its object and that chance to be forbidden as it was in most instances there had need be something to make recompence for the suffering the displeasure of crossing that appetite I use the common manner of speaking and the distinction of superior and inferior faculties though indeed in nature there is no such thing and it is but the same faculty divided between differing objects of which I shall give an account in the Ninth Chapter Section 3. But here I take notice of it that it may not with prejudice be taken to the disadvantage of this whole Article For if there be no such difference of facultie◠founded in Nature then the rebellion of the inferior against the superior is no effect of Adams sin But the inclination to sensual objects being chastis'd by laws and prohibitions hath made that which we call the rebellion of the inferior that is the adherence to sensual objects which was the more certain to remain because they were not at first enabled by great promises of good things to contest against sensual temptations And because there was no such thing in that period of the world therefore almost all flesh corrupted themselves excepting Abel Seth Enos and Enoch we find not one good man from Adam to Noah and therefore the Apostle calls that world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the world of the ungodly It was not so much wonder that when Adam had no promises made to enable him to contest his natural concupiscence he should strive to make his condition better by the Devils promises If God had been pleased to have promis'd to him the glories he hath promised to us it is not to be suppos'd he had fallen so easily But he did not and so he fell and all the world followed his example and most upon this account till it pleas'd God after he had tried the world with temporal promises and found them also insufficient to finish the work of his graciousness and to cause us to be born anew by the revelations and promises of Jesus Christ. 69. II. A second cause of the universal iniquity of the world is because our Nature is so hard put to it in many instances not because Nature is originally corrupted but because Gods laws command such things which are a restraint to the indifferent and otherwise lawful inclinations of Nature I instance in the matters of Temperance Abstinence Patience Humility Self-denial and Mortification But more particularly thus A man is naturally inclined to desire the company of a woman whom he fancies This is naturally no sin for the natural desire was put into us by God and therefore could not be evil But then God as an instance and trial of our obedience put fetters upon the indefinite desire and determin'd us to one woman which provision was enough to satisfie our need but not all our possibility This therefore he left as a reserve that by obeying God in the so reasonable restraint of our natural desire we might give him something of our own * But then it is to be considered that our unwillingness to obey in this instance or in any of the other cannot be attributed to Original sin or natural disability deriv'd as a punishment from Adam because the particular instances were postnate a long time to the fall of man and it was for a long time lawful to do some things which now are unlawful But our unwillingness and averseness came by occasion of the law coming cross upon our nature not because our nature is contrary to God but because God was pleas'd to superinduce some Commandments contrary to our nature For if God had commanded us to eat the best meats and drink the richest wines as long as they could please us and were to be had I suppose it will not be thought that Original sin would hinder us from obedience But because we are forbidden to do some things which naturally we desire to do and love therefore our nature is hard put to it and this is the true state of the difficulty Citò nequitia subrepit virtus difficilis inventa est Wickedness came in speedily but vertue was hard and difficult 70. III. But then besides these there are many concurrent causes of evil which have influence upon communities of men such as are Evil Examples the similitude of Adams transgression vices of Princes wars impunity ignorance error false principles flattery interest fear partiality authority evil laws heresie schism spite and ambition natural inclination and other principiant causes which proceeding from the natural weakness of humane constitution are the fountain and proper causes of many consequent evils Quis dabit mundum ab immundo saith Job How can a clean thing come from an unclean We all naturally have great weaknesses and an imperfect constitution apt to be weary loving variety ignorantly making false measures of good and evil made up with two appetites that is with inclination to several objects serving to contrary interests a thing between Angel and Beast and the later in this life is the bigger ingredient Hominem à Naturâ noverca in lucem edi corpore nudo fragili atque infirmo animo anxio ad molestias humili ad timores debili ad labores proclivi ad libidines in quo Divinus ignis sit obrutus ingenium mores So Cicero as S. Austin quotes him Nature hath like a stepmother sent man into the world with a naked boy a frail and infirm mind vex'd with troubles dejected with fears weak for labours prone to lusts in whom the Divine fire and his wit and his manners are covered and overturn'd And when Plato had fiercely reprov'd the baseness of mens manners by saying that they are even naturally evil he reckons two causes of it which are the diseases of the Soul but contracted he knew not how Ignorance and Improbity which he supposes to have been the remains of that baseness they had before they entred into bodies whither they were sent as to a prison This is our natural uncleanness and imperfection and from such a principle we are to expect proper and proportion'd effects and therefore we may well say with Job What is man that he should be clean and he which is born of a woman that he should be righteous That is our imperfections are many and we are with unequal strengths call'd to labour for a supernatural purchase and when our spirit is very willing even then our flesh is very weak And yet it is worse if we compare our selves as Job does
it before a sinner can be tied to it For to have displeased God is a great evil but what is it to me if it will bring no evil to me It is a Metaphysical and a Moral evil but unless it be also naturally and sensibly so it is not the object of a natural and proper grief It follows therefore that the state of a repenting person must have in it some more causes of sorrow than are usually taught or else in vain can they be called upon to weep and mourn for their sins Well may they wring their faces and their hands and put on black those disguises of passion and curtains of joy those ceremonies and shadows of rich widows and richer heirs by which they decently hide their secret smiles well may they rend their garments but upon this account they can never rend their hearts 7. For the stating of this Article it is considerable that there are several parts or periods of sorrow which are effected by several principles In the beginning of our repentance sometimes we feel cause enough to grieve For God smites many into repentance either a sharp sickness does awaken us or a calamity upon our house or the death of our dearest relative and they that find sin so heavily incumbent and to press their persons or fortunes with feet of lead will feel cause enough and need not to be disputed into a penitential sorrow They feel Gods anger and the evil effects of sin and that it brings sorrow and then the sorrow is justly great because we have done that evil which brings so sad a judgment 8. And in the same proportion there is always a natural cause of sorrow where there is a real cause of fear and so it is ever in the beginning of repentance and for ought we know it is for ever so and albeit the causes of fear lessen as the repentance does proceed yet it will never go quite off till hope it self be gone and passed into charity or at least into a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into that fulness of confidence which is given to few as the reward of a lasting and conspicuous holiness And the reason is plain For though it be certain in religion that whoever repents shall be pardoned yet it is a long time before any man hath repented worthily and it is as uncertain in what manner and in what measures and in what time God will give us pardon It is as easie to tell the very day in which a man first comes to the use of reason as to tell the very time in which we are accepted to final pardon The progressions of one being as divisible as the other and less discernible For reason gives many fair indications of it self whereas God keeps the secrets of this mercy in his sanctuary and draws not the curtain till the day of death or judgment 9. Add to this that our very repentances have many allays and imperfections and so hath our pardon And every one that sins hath so displeased God that he is become the subject of the Divine anger Death is the wages what death God please and therefore what evil soever God will inflict or his mortality can suffer and he that knows this hath cause to fear and he that fears hath cause to be grieved that he is fallen from that state of divine favour in which he stood secured with the guards of Angels and covered with Heaven it self as with a shield in which he was beloved of God and heir of all his glories 10. But they that describe repentance in short and obscure characters and make repentance and pardon to be the children of a minute and born and grown up quickly as a fly or a mushrome with the dew of a night or the tears of a morning making the labours of the one and the want of the other to expire sooner than the pleasures of a transient sin are so insensible of the sting of sin that indeed upon their grounds it will be impossible to have a real godly sorrow For though they have done evil yet by this doctrine they feel none and there is nothing remains as a cause of grief unless they will be sorrowful for that they have been pleased formerly and are now secured nothing remains before them or behind but the pleasure that they had and the present confidence and impunity and that 's no good instrument of sorrow Securitas delicti etiam libido est ejus Sin takes occasion by the law it self if there be no penalty annexed 11. But the first in-let of a godly sorrow which is the beginning of repentance is upon the stock of their present danger and state of evil into which by their sin they are fallen viz. when their guilt is manifest they see that they are become sons of death expos'd to the wrath of a provoked Deity whose anger will express it self when and how it please and for ought the man knows it may be the greatest and it may be intolerable and though his danger is imminent and certain yet his pardon is a great way off it may be Yea it may be No it must be hop'd for but it may be missed for it is upon conditions and they are or will seem very hard Sed ut valeas multa dolenda feres So that in the summ of affairs however that the greatest sinner and the smallest penitent are very apt and are taught by strange doctrines to flatter themselves into confidence and presumption yet he will have reason to mourn and weep when he shall consider that he is in so sad a condition that because his life is uncertain it is also uncertain whether or no he shall not be condemned to an eternal prison of flames so that every sinner hath the same reason to be sorrowful as he hath who from a great state of blessings and confidence is fallen into great fears and great dangers and a certain guilt and liableness of losing all he hath and suffering all that is insufferable They who state repentance otherwise cannot make it reasonable that a penitent should shed a tear And therefore it is no wonder that we so easily observe a great dulness and indifferency so many dry eyes and merry hearts in persons that pretend repentance it cannot more reasonably be attributed to any cause than to those trifling and easie propositions of men that destroy the causes of sorrow by lessening and taking off the opinion of danger But now that they are observed and reproved I hope the evil will be lessened But to proceed 12. II. Having now stated the reasonableness and causes of penitential sorrow the next inquity is into the nature and constitution of that sorrow For it is to be observed that penitential sorrow is not seated in the affections directly but in the understanding and is rather Odium than Dolor it is hatred of sin and detestation of it a nolition a renouncing and disclaiming it whose expression is a resolution never
to signifie in an apt and a disposed nature what kind of apprehensions and trouble there is within For weeping upon the presence of secular troubles is more ready and easie because it is an effect symbolical and of the same nature with its proper cause But when there is a spiritual cause although its proper effect may be greater and more effective of better purposes yet unless by the intermixture of some material and natural cause it be more apportion'd to a material and natural product it is not to be charged with it or expected from it Sin is a spiritual evil and tears is the sign of a natural or physical sorrow Smart and sickness and labour are natural or physical evils and hatred and nolition is a spiritual or intellectual effect Now as every labour and every smart is not to be hated or rejected but sometimes chosen by the understanding when it is mingled with a good that pleases the understanding and is eligible upon the accounts of reason So neither can every sin which is the intellectual evil be productive of tears or sensitive sorrow unless it be mingled with something which the sense and affections that is which the lower man hates and which will properly afflict him such as are fear or pain or danger or disgrace or loss The sensitive sorrow therefore which is usually seen in new penitents is upon the account of those horrible apprehensions which are declared in holy Scriptures to be the consequent of sins but if we shall so preach Repentance as to warrant a freedom and a perfect escape instantly from all significations of the wrath of God and all dangers for the future upon the past and present account I know not upon what reckoning he that truly leaves his sin can be commanded to be sorrowful and if he were commanded how he can possibly obey 18. But when repentance hath had its growth and progression and is increased into a habit of piety sorrow and sensitive trouble may come in upon another account for great and permanent changes of the mind make great impressions upon the lower man When we love an object intensely our very body receives comfort in the presence of it and there are friendly Spirits which have a natural kindness and cognation to each other and refresh one another passing from eye to eye from friend to friend and the Prophet David felt it in the matter of Religion My flesh and my heart rejoyce in the living Lord. For if a grief of mind is a consumption of the flesh and a chearful spirit is a conservatory of health it is certain that every great impression that is made upon the mind and dwells there hath its effect upon the body and the lower affections And therefore all those excellent penitents who consider the baseness of sin * their own danger though now past in some degrees * the offence of God * the secret counsels of his Mercy * his various manners of dispensing them * the fearful judgments which God unexpectedly sends upon some men * the dangers of our own confidence * the weakness of our Repentance * the remains of our sin * the aptnesses and combustible nature of our Concupiscence * the presence of temptation and the perils of relapsing * the evil state of things which our former sins leave us in * our difficulty in obeying and our longings to return to Egypt * and the fearful anger of God which will with greater fierceness descend if we chance to fall back Those penitents I say who consider these things frequently and prudently will find their whole man so wrought upon that every faculty shall have an enmity against sin and therefore even the affections of the lower man must in their way contribute to its mortification and that is by a real and effective sorrow 19. But in this whole affair the whole matter of question will be in the manner of operation or signification of the dislike For the duty is done if the sin be accounted an enemy that is whether the dislike be only in the intellectual and rational appetite or also in the sensitive For although men use so to speak and distinguish superior from inferior appetites yet it will be hard in nature to find any real distinct faculties in which those passions are subjected and from which they have emanation The intellectual desire and the sensual desire are both founded in the same faculty they are not distinguished by their subjects but by their objects only they are but several motions of the will to or from several objects When a man desires that which is most reasonable and perfective or consonant to the understanding that we call an intellectual or rational appetite but if he desires a thing that will do him hurt in his soul or to his best interest and yet he desires it because it pleases him this is fit to be called a sensitive appetite because the object is sensitive and it is chosen for a sensual reason But it is rather appetitio than appetitus that is an act rather than a principle of action The case is plainer if we take two objects of several interests both of which are proportion'd to the understanding S. Anthony in the desart and S. Bernard in the Pulpit were tempted by the spirit of pride they resisted and overcame it because pride was unreasonable and foolish as to themselves and displeasing to God If they had listned to the whispers of that spirit it had been upon the accounts of pleasure because pride is that deliciousness of spirit which entertains a vain man making him to delight in his own images and reflexions and therefore is a work of the flesh but yet plainly founded in the understanding And therefore here it is plain that when the flesh and the spirit fight it is not a fight between two faculties of the soul but a contest in the soul concerning the election of two objects It is no otherwise in this than in every deliberation when arguments from several interests contest each other Every passion of the man is nothing else but a proper manner of being affected with an object and consequently a tendency to or an aversion from it that is a willing or a nilling of it which willing and nilling when they produce several permanent impressions upon the mind and body receive the names of divers passions The object it self first striking the fancy or lower apprehensions by its proper energy makes the first passion or tendency to the will that is the inclination or first concupiscence but when the will upon that impression is set on work and chuses the sensual object that makes the abiding passion the quality As if the object be displeasing and yet not present it effects fear or hatred if good and not present it is called desire but all these diversifications are meerly natural effects as to be warm is before the fire and cannot be in our choice directly and immediately That
Confessor are the great demonstration to all the world that Truth is as Dear to your MAJESTY as the Jewels of your Diadem and that your Conscience is tender as a pricked eye I shall pretend this only to alleviate the inconvenience of an unseasonable address that I present your MAJESTY with a humble persecuted truth of the same constitution with that condition whereby you are become most Dear to God as having upon you the characterism of the Sons of God bearing in your Sacred Person the marks of the Lord Jesus who is your Elder Brother the King of Sufferings and the Prince of the Catholick Church But I consider that Kings and their Great Councils and Rulers Ecclesiastical have a special obligation for the defence of Liturgies because they having the greatest Offices have the greatest needs of auxiliaries from Heaven which are best procured by the publick Spirit the Spirit of Government and Supplication And since the first the best and most solemn Liturgies and Set forms of Prayer were made by the best and greatest Princes by Moses by David and the Son of David Your MAJESTY may be pleased to observe such a proportion of circumstances in my laying this Apology for Liturgy at Your feet that possibly I may the easier obtain a pardon for my great boldness which if I shall hope for in all other contingencies I shall represent my self a person indifferent whether I live or die so I may by either serve God and Gods Church and Gods Vicegerent in the capacity of Great Sir Your Majesties most humble and most obedient Subject and Servant JER TAYLOR Hierocl in Pythag. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An APOLOGY for Authorized and Set Forms of LITVRGY I Have read over this Book which the Assembly of Divines is pleased to call The Directory for Prayer I confess I came to it with much expectation and was in some measure confident I should have found it an exact and unblameable model of Devotion free from all those Objections which men of their own perswasion had obtruded against the Publick Liturgie of the Church of England or at least it should have been composed with so much artifice and fineness that it might have been to all the world an argument of their learning and excellency of spirit if not of the goodness and integrity of their Religion and purposes I shall give no other character of the whole but that the publick disrelish which I find amongst Persons of great piety of all qualities not only of great but even of ordinary understandings is to me some argument that it lies so open to the objections even of common spirits that the Compilers of it did intend more to prevail by the success of their Armies than the strength of reason and the proper grounds of perswasion which yet most wise and good Men believe to be the more Christian way of the two But because the judgment I made of it from an argument so extrinsecal to the nature of the thing could not reasonably enable me to satisfie those many Persons who in their behalf desired me to consider it I resolv'd to look upon it nearer and to take its account from something that was ingredient to its Constitution that I might be able both to exhort and convince the Gainsayers who refuse to hold fast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that faithful word which they had been taught by their Mother the Church of England Sect. 2. I SHALL decline to speak of the efficient cause of this Directory and not quarrel at it that it was composed against the Laws both of England and all Christendom If the thing were good and pious and did not directly or accidentally invade the rights of a just Superiour I would learn to submit to the imposition and never quarrel at the incompetency of his authority that ingaged me to do pious and holy things And it may be when I am a little more used to it I shall not wonder at a Synod in which not one Bishop sits in the capacity of a Bishop though I am most certain this is the first example in England since it was first Christened But for the present it seems something hard to digest it because I know so well that all Assemblies of the Church have admitted Priests to consultation and dispute but never to authority and decision till the Pope enlarging the phylacteries of the Archimandrites and Abbots did sometime by way of priviledge and dispensation give to some of them decisive voices in publick Councils but this was one of the things in which he did innovate and invade against the publick resolutions of Christendom though he durst not do it often and yet when he did it it was in very small and inconsiderable numbers Sect. 3. I SAID I would not meddle with the Efficient and I cannot meddle with the Final cause nor guess at any other ends and purposes of theirs than at what they publickly profess which is the abolition and destruction of the Book of Common Prayer which great change because they are pleased to call Reformation I am content in charity to believe they think it so and that they have Zelum Dei but whether secundum scientiam according to knowledge or no must be judg'd by them who consider the matter and the form Sect. 4. BUT because the matter is of so great variety and minute Consideration every part whereof would require as much scrutiny as I purpose to bestow upon the whole I have for the present chosen to consider only the form of it concerning which I shall give my judgment without any sharpness or bitterness of spirit for I am resolved not to be angry with any men of another perswasion as knowing that I differ just as much from them as they do from me Sect. 5. THE Directory takes away that Form of Prayer which by the aâ—â—hority and consent of all the obliging power of the Kingdom hath been used and enjoyned ever since the Reformation But this was done by men of differing spirits and of disagreeing interests Some of them consented to it that they might take away all set forms of prayer and give way to every mans spirit the other that they might take away this Form and give way and countenance to their own The first is an enemy to all deliberation The Second to all authority They will have no man to deliberate These would have none but themselves The former are unwise and rash the latter are pleased with themselves and are full of opinion They must be considered apart for they have rent the Question in pieces and with the fragment in his hand every man hath run his own way question 1 Sect. 6. FIRST of them that deny all set forms though in the subject matter they were confessed innocent and blameless Sect. 7. AND here I consider that the true state of the Question is only this Whether it is better to pray to God with Consideration or without Whether is the wiser
Man of the two he who thinks and deliberates what to say or he that utters his mind as fast as it comes whether is the better man he who out of reverence to God is most careful and curious that he offend not in his tongue and therefore he himself deliberates and takes the best guides he can or he who out of the confidence of his own abilities or other exterior assistances 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 speaks what ever comes uppermost Sect. 8. AND here I wave the advice and counsel of a very wise man no less than Solomon Be not rash with thy mouth and let not thy heart be hasty to utter any thing before God for God is in Heaven and thou upon Earth therefore let thy words be few The consideration of the vast distance between God and us Heaven and Earth should create such apprehensions in us that the very best and choicest of our offertories are not acceptable but by Gods gracious vouchsafing and condescension and therefore since we are so much indebted to God for accepting our best it is not safe ventured to present him with a dough-baked sacrifice and put him off with that which in nature and humane consideration is absolutely the worst for such is all the crude and imperfect utterance of our more imperfect conceptions Hoc non probo in philosopho cujus oratio sicut vita debet esse composita said Seneca A wise mans speech should be like his life and actions composed studied and considered And if ever inconsideration be the cause of sin and vanity it is in our words and therefore is with greatest care to be avoided in our prayers we being most of all concerned that God may have no quarrel against them for folly or impiety Sect. 9. BUT abstracting from the reason let us consider who keeps the precept best He that deliberates or he that considers not when he speaks What man in the world is hasty to offer any thing unto God if he be not who prays ex tempore And then add to it but the weight of Solomons reason and let any man answer me if he thinks it can well stand with that reverence we owe to the immense the infinite and to the eternal God the God of wisdom to offer him a sacrifice which we durst not present to a Prince or a prudent Governour in re â—eriâ such as our prayers ought to be Sect. 10. AND that this may not be dasht with a pretence it is carnal reasoning I desire it may be remembred that it is the argument God himself uses against lame maimed and imperfect sacrifices Go and offer this to thy Prince see if he will accept it implying that the best person is to have the best present and what the Prince will slight as truly unworthy of him much more is it unfit for God For God accepts not of any thing we give or do as if he were bettered by it for therefore its estimate is not taken by its relation or natural complacency to him for in it self it is to him as nothing but God accepts it by its proportion and commensuration to us That which we call our best and is truly so in humane estimate that pleases God for it declares that if we had better we would give it him But to reserve the best says too plainly that we think any thing is good enough for him As therefore God in the Law would not be served by that which was imperfect in genere naturae so neither now nor ever will that please him which is imperfect in genere morum or materiâ intellectuali when we can give a better Sect. 11. AND therefore the wisest Nations and the most sober Persons prepared their Verses and Prayers in set forms with as much religion as they dressed their sacrifices and observ'd the rites of Festivals and Burials Amongst the Romans it belong'd to the care of the Priests to worship in prescrib'd and determin'd words In omni precatione qui vota effundit Sacerdos Vestam Janum aliosque Deos praescriptis verbis composito carmine advocare solet The Greeks did so too receiving their prayers by dictate word for word Itaque sua carmina suaeque praecationes singulis diis institutae sunt quas plerunque nequid praeposterè dicatur aliquis ex praescripto praeire ad verbum referre solebat Their hymns and prayers were ordained peculiar to every God which lest any thing should be said preposterously were usually pronounced word for word after the Priest and out of written Copies and the Magi among the Persians were as considerate in their devotions Magos Persas primo semper diluculo canere Diis hymnos laudes meditato solenni precationis carmine The Persians sang hymns to their Gods by the morning twilight in a premeditate solemn and metrical form of prayer saith the same Author For since in all the actions and discourses of men that which is the least considered is likely to be the worst and is certainly of the greatest disreputation it were a strange cheapness of opinion towards God and Religion to be the most incurious of what we say to him and in our religious offices It is strange that every thing should be considered but our Prayers It is spoken by Eâ—â—apius to the honour of Proaeresâ—us's Scholars that when the Proconsul asked their judgments in a question of Philosophy they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they with much consideration and care gave in answer those words of Aristides that they were not of the number of those that used to vomit out answers but of those that considered every word they were to speak Nihil enim ordinatum est quod praecipitatur properat said Seneca Nothing can be regular and orderly that is hasty and precipitate and therefore unless Religion be the most imprudent trifling and inconsiderable thing and that the Work of the Lord is done well enough when it is done negligently or that the sanctuary hath the greatest beauty when it hath the least order it will concern us highly to think our prayers and religious offices are actions fit for wise men and therefore to be done as the actions of wise men use to be that is deliberately prudently and with greatest consideration Sect. 12. WELL then in the nature of the thing ex tempore forms have much the worse of it But it is pretended that there is such a thing as the gift of prayer a praying with the spirit Et nescit tardâ— molimina Spiritus sancti gratia Gods Spirit if he pleases can do his work as well in an instant as in long premeditation And to this purpose are pretended those places of Scripture which speak of assistance of Gods spirit in our prayers Zech. 12.10 And I will pour upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Hierusalem the spirit of grace and supplication But especially Rom. 8.26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth
concurrence of Jurisdiction this must be considered distinctly 1. Then In the first founding of Churches the Apostles did appoint Presbyters and inferiour Ministers with a power of baptizing preaching consecrating and reconciling in privato foro but did not in every Church at the first founding it constitute a Bishop This is evident in Crete in Ephesus in Corinth at Rome at Antioch 2. Where no Bishops were constituted there the Apostles kept the jurisdiction in their own hands There comes upon me saith S. Paul daily the care or supravision of all the Churches Not all absolutely for not all of the Circumcision but all of his charge with which he was once charged and of which he had not exonerated himself by constituting Bishops there for of these there is the same reason And again If any man obey not our word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie him to me by an Epistle so he charges the Thessalonians and therefore of this Church S. Paul as yet clearly kept the power in his own hands So that the Church was ever in all the parts of it governed by Episcopal or Apostolical authority 3. For ought appears in Scripture the Apostles never gave any external or coercitive jurisdiction in publick and criminal causes nor yet power to ordain Rites or Ceremonies or to inflict censures to a Colledge of meer Presbyters * The contrary may be greedily swallowed and I know not with how great confidence and prescribing prejudice but there is not in all Scripture any commission from Christ any ordinance or warrant from the Apostles to any Presbyter or Colledge of Presbyters without a Bishop or express delegation of Apostolical authority tanquam vicario suo as to his substitute in absence of the Bishop or Apostle to inflict any censures or take cognizance of persons and causes criminal Presbyters might be surrogati in locum Episcopi absentis but never had any ordinary jurisdiction given them by vertue of their ordination or any commission from Christ or his Apostles This we may best consider by induction of particulars 1. There was a Presbytery at Jerusalem but they had a Bishop always and the Colledge of the Apostles sometimes therefore whatsoever act they did it was in conjunction with and subordination to the Bishop and Apostles Now it cannot be denied both that the Apostles were superiour to all the Presbyters in Jerusalem and also had power alone to govern the Church I say they had power to govern alone for they had the government of the Church alone before they ordain'd the first Presbyters that is before there were any of capacity to joyn with them they must do it themselves and then also they must retain the same power for they could not lose it by giving Orders Now if they had a power of sole jurisdiction then the Presbyters being in some publick acts in conjunction with the Apostles cannot challenge a right of governing as affixed to their Order they only assisting in subordination and by dependency This only by the way In Jerusalem the Presbyters were something more than ordinary and were not meer Presbyters in the present and limited sence of the word For Barnabas and Judas and Silas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Luke calls them were of that Presbytery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They were Rulers and Prophets Chief men amongst the Brethren and yet called Elders or Presbyters though of Apostolical power and authority 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Oecumenius For truth is that divers of them were ordained Apostles with an Vnlimited jurisdiction not fixed upon any See that they also might together with the twelve exire in totum mundum * So that in this Presbytery either they were more than meer Presbyters as Barnabas and Judas and Silas men of Apostolical power and they might well be in conjunction with the twelve and with the Bishop they were of equal power not by vertue of their Presbyterate but by their Apostolate or if they were but meer Presbyters yet because it is certain and proved and confessed that the Apostles had power to govern the Church alone this their taking meer Presbyteros in partem regiminis was a voluntary act and from this example was derived to other Churches and then it is most true that Presbyteros in communi Ecclesiam regere was rather consuetudine Ecclesiae dominicae dispositionis veritate to use S. Hierom's own expression for this is more evident than that Bishops do eminere caeteris by custom rather than Divine institution For if the Apostles might rule the Church alone then that the Presbyters were taken into the Number was a voluntary act of the Apostles and although fitting to be retained where the same reasons do remain and circumstances concur yet not necessary because not affixed to their Order not Dominicae dispositionis veritate and not laudable when those reasons cease and there is an emergency of contrary causes 2. The next Presbytery we read of is at Antioch but there we find no acts either of concurrent or single jurisdiction but of ordination indeed we do and that performed by such men as S. Paul was and Barnabas for they were two of the Prophets reckoned in the Church of Antioch but I do not remember them to be called Presbyters in that place to be sure they were not meer Presbyters as we now Understand the word as I proved formerly 3. But in the Church of Ephesus there was a Colledge of Presbyters and they were by the Spirit of God called Bishops and were appointed by him to be Pastors of the Church of God This must do it or nothing In quo spiritus S. posuit vos Episcopos In whom the holy Ghost hath made you Bishops There must lye the exigence of the argument and if we can find who is meant by vos we shall I hope gain the truth * S. Paul sent for the Presbyters or Elders to come from Ephesus to Miletus and to them he spoke ** It 's true but that 's not all the vos For there were present at that Sermon Sopater and Aristarchus and Secundus and Gaius and Timothy and Tychicus and Trophimus And although he sent to Ephesus as to the Metropolis and there many Elders were either accidentally or by ordinary residence yet those were not all Elders of that Church but of all Asia in the Scripture sence the lesser Asia For so in the Preface of his Sermon S. Paul intimates Ye know that from the first day I came into Asia after what manner I have been with you at all seasons His whole conversation in Asia was not confined to Ephesus and yet those Elders who were present were witnesses of it all and therefore were of dispersed habitation and so it is more clearly inferred from verse 25. And now behold I know that ye all among whom I have gone preaching the Kingdom of God c. It was a travel to preach to all that were present and therefore
mislikes for all such things are wicked and in enmity with God * But it seems Saint Ignatius was mightily in love with this precept for he gives it to almost all the Churches he writes to We have already reckoned the Trallians and the Magnesians But the same he gives to the Priests of Tarsus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ye Presbyters be subject to your Bishop The same to the Philadelphians Sine Episcopo nihil facite Do nothing without your Bishop But this is better explicated in his Epistle to the Church of Smyrna Sine Episcopo nemo quicquam faciat eorum quae ad Ecclesiam spectant No man may do any thing without the Bishop viz. of those things which belong to the Church So that this saying expounds all the rest for this universal obedience is to be understood according to the sence of the Church viz. to be in all things of Ecclesiastical cognizance all Church-affairs And therefore he gives a charge to S. Polycarp their Bishop that he also look to it that nothing be done without hiâ— leave Nihil sine tuo Arbitrio agatur nec item tu quicquam praeter Dei facies voluntatem As thou must do nothing against Gods will so let nothing in the Church be done without thine By the way observe he says not that as the Presbytery must do nothing without the Bishop so the Bishop nothing without them But so the Bishop nothing without God But so it is Nothing must be done without the Bishop And therefore although he incourages them that can to remain in Virginity yet this if it be either done with pride or without the Bishop it is spoiled For Si gloriatus fuerit periit si id ipsum statuatur sine Episcopo corruptum est His last dictate in this Epistle to S. Polycarp is with an Episcopo attendite sicut Deus vobis The way to have God to take care of us is to observe our Bishop Hinc vos decet accedere Sententiae Episcopi qui secundum Deum vos pascit quemadmodum facitis edocti à spiritu You must therefore câ—â—form to the sentence of the Bishop as indeed ye do already being taught so to do by Gods holy Spirit There needs no more to be said in this cause if the authority of so great a man will bear so great a burden What the man was I said before what these Epistles are and of what authority let it rest upon Vedelius a man who is no ways to be suspected as a party for Episcopacy or rather upon the credit of Eusebius S. Hierome and Ruffinus who reckon the first seven out of which I have taken these excerpta for natural and genuine And now I will make this use of it Those men that call for reduction of Episcopacy to the Primitive state should do well to stand close to their principles and count that the best Episcopacy which is first and then consider but what S. Ignatius hath told us for direction in this affair and see what is gotten in the bargain For my part since they that call for such a reduction hope to gain by it and then would most certainly have abidden by it I think it not reasonable to abate any thing of Ignatius his height but expect such subordination and conformity to the Bishop as he then knew to be a law of Christianity But let this be remembred all along in the specification of the parts of their Jurisdiction But as yet I am in the general demonstration of obedience The Council of Laodicea having specified some particular instances of subordination and dependance to the Bishop summs them up thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So likewise the Presbyters let them do nothing without the precept and counsel of the Bishop so is the translation of Isidore ad verbum This Council is ancient enough for it was before the first Nicene So also was that of Arles commanding the same thing exactly * Vt Presbyteri sine conscientiâ Episcoporum nihil faciant Sed nec Presbyteris civitatis sine Episcopi praecepto amplius aliquid imperare vel sine authoritate literarum ejus in unaquaque parochiâ aliquid agere says the thirteenth Canon of the Ancyran Council according to the Latin of Isidore The same thing is in the first Council of Toledo the very same words for which I cited the first Council of Arles viz. That Presbyters do nothing without the knowledge or permission of the Bishop Esto subjectus Pontifici tuo quasi animae parentem suscipe It is the counsel of S. Hierome Be subject to thy Bishop and receive him as the Father of thy soul. I shall not need to derive hither any more particular instances of the duty and obedience owing from the Laity to the Bishop For this account will certainly be admitted by all considering men God hath intrusted the souls of the Laity to the care of the Ecclesiastical orders they therefore are to submit to the government of the Clergie in matters Spiritual with which they are intrusted For either there is no Government at all or the Laity must govern the Church or else the Clergie must To say there is no Government is to leave the Church in worse condition than a tyranny To say that the Laity should govern the Church when all Ecclesiastical Ministeries are committed to the Clergy is to say Scripture means not what it says for it is to say that the Clergy must be Praepositi and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Praelati and yet the prelation and presidency and rule is in them who are not ever by Gods spirit called Presidents or Prelates and that it is not in them who are so called * In the mean time if the Laity in matters Spiritual are inferiour to the Clergy and must in things pertaining to the Soul be ruled by them with whom their Souls are intrusted then also much rather they must obey those of the Clergy to whom all the other Clergy themselves are bound to be obedient Now since by the frequent precept of so many Councils and Fathers the Deacons and Presbyters must submit in all things to the Bishop much more must the Laity and since the Bishop must rule in chief and the Presbyters at the most can but rule in conjunction and assistance but ever in subordination to the Bishop the Laity must obey de integro For that is to keep them in that state in which God hath placed them But for the main S. Clement in his Epistle to S. James translated by Ruffinus saith it was the doctrine of Peter according to the institution of Christ That Presbyters should be obedient to their Bishop in all things and in his third Epistle That Presbyters and Deacons and others of the Clergie must take heed that they do nothing without the license of the Bishop * And to make this business up compleat all these authorites of
to go forth of the Cancelli in his Church at Milaine shews that then the powers were so distinct that they made no intrenchment upon each other * It was no greater power but a more considerable act and higher exercise the forbidding the communion to Theodosius till he had by repentance washed out the blood that stuck upon him ever since the Massacre at Thessalonica It was a wonderful concurrence of piety in the Emperor and resolution and authority in the Bishop But he was not the first that did it For Philip the Emperor was also guided by the Pastoral rod and the severity of the Bishop De hoc traditum est nobis quòd Christianus fuerit in die Paschae i. e. in ipsis vigiliis cùm interesse voluerit communicare mysteriis ab Episcopo loci non priùs esse permissum nisi confiteretur peccata inter poenitentes staret nec ullo modo sibi copiam mysteriorum futuram nisi priùs per poenitentiam culpas quae de eo ferebantur plurimae deluisset The Bishop of the place would not let him communicate till he had wash'd away his sins by repentance And the Emperor did so Ferunt igitur libenter eum quod à Sacerdote imperatum fuerat suscepisse He did it willingly undertaking the impositions laid upon him by the Bishop I doubt not but all the world believes the dispensation of the Sacraments intirely to belong to Ecclesiastical Ministery It was S. Chrysostomes command to his Presbyters to reject all wicked persons from the holy Communion If he be a Captain a Consul or a Crowned King that cometh unworthily forbid him and keep him off thy power is greater than his If thou darest not remove him tell it me I will not suffer it c. And had there never been more error in the managing Church-censures than in the foregoing instances the Church might have exercised censures and all the parts of power that Christ gave her without either scandal or danger to her self or her penitents But when in the very censure of excommunication there is a new ingredient put a great proportion of secular inconveniences and humane interest when excommunications as in the Apostles times they were deliverings over to Satan so now shall be deliverings over to a foreign enemy or the peoples rage as then to be buffeted so now to be deposed or disinteress'd in the allegiance of subjects in these cases excommunication being nothing like that which Christ authorized and no way cooperating toward the end of its institution but to an end of private designs and rebellious interest Bishops have no power of such censures nor is it lawful to inflict them things remaining in that consistence and capacity And thus is that famous saying to be understood reported by S. Thomas to be S. Austin's but is indeed found in the Ordinary Gloss upon Matth. 13. Princeps multitudo non est excommunicanda A Prince or a Commonwealth are not to be excommunicate Thus I have given a short account of the Persons and causes of which Bishops according to Catholick practice did and might take cognizance This use only I make of it Although Christ hath given great authority to his Church in order to the regiment of souls such a power Quae nullis poterit comparationibus adaequari yet it hath its limits and a proper cognizance viz. things spiritual and the emergencies and consequents from those things which Christianity hath introduced de novo and superadded as things totally disparate from the precise interest of the Commonwealth And this I the rather noted to shew how those men would mend themselves that cry down the tyranny as they list to call it of Episcopacy and yet call for the Presbytery *** For the Presbytery does challenge cognizance of all causes whatsoever which are either sins directly or by reduction All crimes which by the Law of God deserve death There they bring in Murders Treasons Witchcrafts Felonies Then the Minor faults they bring in under the title of Scandalous and offensive Nay Quodvis peccatum saith Snecanus to which if we add this consideration that they believe every action of any man to have in it the malignity of a damnable sin there is nothing in the world good or bad vitious or suspicious scandalous or criminal true or imaginary real actions or personal in all which and in all contestations and complaints one party is delinquent either by false accusation or real injury but they comprehend in their vast gripe and then they have power to nullifie all Courts and judicatories besides their own and being for this their cognizance they pretend Divine institution there shall be no causes imperfect in their Consistory no appeal from them but they shall hear and determine with final resolution and it will be sin and therefore punishable to complain of injustice and illegality * If this be confronted but with the pretences of Episcopacy and the modesty of their several demands and the reasonableness and divinity of each vindication examined I suppose were there nothing but Prudential motives to be put into the balance to weigh down this Question the cause would soon be determined and the little finger of Presbytery not only in its exemplary and tried practices but in its dogmatical pretensions is heavier than the loyns nay than the whole body of Episcopacy but it seldom happens otherwise but that they who usurp a power prove tyrants in the execution whereas the issues of a lawful power are fair and moderate SECT XXXVII Forbidding Presbyters to officiate without Episcopal license BUT I must proceed to the more particular instances of Episcopal Jurisdiction The whole power of Ministration both of the Word and Sacraments was in the Bishop by prime authority and in the Presbyters by commission and delegation insomuch that they might not exercise any ordinary ministration without license from the Bishop They had power and capacity by their order to Preach to Minister to Offer to Reconcile and to Baptize They were indeed acts of order but that they might not by the law of the Church exercise any of these acts without license from the Bishop that is an act or issue of jurisdiction and shews the superiority of the Bishop over his Presbyters by the practice of Christendom S. Ignatius hath done very good offices in all the parts of this Question and here also he brings in succour 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is not lawful without the Bishop viz. without his leave either to baptize or to offer Sacrifice or to make oblation or to keep feasts of charity and a little before speaking of the B. Eucharist and its ministration and having premised a general interdict for doing any thing without the Bishops consent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But let that Eucharist saith he be held valid which is celebrated under the Bishop or under him to whom the Bishop shall permit *** * I do not here dispute
several offices the Canon extends its prohibition to all ministrations without the Bishops authority But it was more clearly and evidently law and practice in the Roman Church we have good witness for it S. Leo the Bishop of that Church is my Author Sed neque coram Episcopo licet Presbyteris in baptisterium introire nec praesente Antistite infantem tingere aut signare nec poenitentem sine praeceptione Episcopi sui reconciliare nec eo praesente nisi illo jubente Sacramentum corporis Sanguinis Christi conficere nec eo corà m posito populum docere vel benedicere c. It is not lawful for the Presbyters to enter into the baptistery nor to baptize any Catechumens nor to consecrate the Sacrament of Christs body and blood in the presence of the Bishop without his command From this place of S. Leo if it be set in conjunction with the precedent we have fair evidence of this whole particular It is not lawful to do any offices without the Bishops leave So S. Ignatius so the Canons of the Apostles so Tertullian so the Councils of Antioch and Chalcedon It is not lawful to do any offices in the Bishops presence without leave so S. Leo. The Council of Carthage joyns them both together neither in his presence nor without his leave in any place Now against this practice of the Church if any man should discourse as S. Hierome is pretended to do by Gratian Qui non vult Presbyteros facere quae jubentur à Deo dicat quis major est Christo. He that will not let Presbyters do what they are commanded to do by God let him tell us if any man be greater than Christ viz. whose command it is that Presbyters should preach Why then did the Church require the Bishop's leave might not Presbyters do their duty without a license This is it which the practice of the Church is abundantly sufficient to answer * For to the Bishop is committed the care of the whole Diocess he it is that must give the highest account for the whole charge he it is who is appointed by peculiar designation to feed the flock so the Canon of the 1 Apostles so 2 Ignatius to the Council of 3 Antioch so every where The Presbyters are admitted in partem solicitudinis but still the jurisdiction of the whole Diocess is in the Bishop and without the Bishops admission to a part of it per traditionem subditorum although the Presbyter by his ordination have a capacity of preaching and administring Sacraments yet he cannot exercise this without designation of a particular charge either temporary or fixt And therefore it is that a Presbyter may not do these acts without the Bishops leave because they are actions of relation and suppose a congregation to whom they must be administred or some particular person for a Priest must not preach to the stones as some say Venerable Bede did nor communicate alone the word is destructive of the thing nor baptize unless he have a Chrysome Child or a Catechumen So that all of the Diocess being the Bishops charge the Bishop must either authorize the Priest or the Priest must not meddle lest he be what S. Peter blamed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Bishop in anothers Diocess Not that the Bishop did license the acts precisely of baptizing of consecrating c. For these he had by his ordination but that in giving license he did give him a subject to whom he might apply these relative actions and did quoad hoc take him in partem solicitudinis and concredit some part of his Diocess to his administration cum cura animarum But then on the other side because the whole cure of the Diocess is in the Bishop he cannot exonerate himself of it for it is a burden of Christs imposing or it is not imposed at all therefore this taking of Presbyters into part of the regiment and care does not divest him of his own power or any part of it nor yet ease him of his care but that as he must still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 visit and see to his Diocess so he hath authority still in all parts of his Diocess and this appears in these places now quoted insomuch as when the Bishop came to any place there the Vicaria of the Presbyters did cease In praesentiâ Majoris cessat potestas minoris And though because the Bishop could not do all the Minor and daily offices of the Priesthood in every congregation of his Diocess therefore he appointed Priests severally to officiate himself looking to the Metropolis and the daughter Churches by a general supravision yet when the Bishop came into any place of his Diocess there he being present might do any office because it was in his own charge which he might concredit to another but not exonerate himself of it And therefore praesente Episcopo saith the Council of Carthage and S. Leo if the Bishop be present the Presbyter without leave might not officiate For he had no subjects of his own but by trust and delegation and this delegation was given him to supply the Bishops absence who could not simul omnibus interesse but then where he was present the cause of delegation ceasing the jurisdiction also ceased or was at least absorpt in the greater and so without leave might not be exercised like the stars which in the noon-day have their own natural light as much as in the night but appear not shine not in the presence of the Sun This perhaps will seem uncouth in those Presbyters who as the Council of Carthage's expression is are contrarii honori Episcopali but yet if we keep our selves in our own form where God hath placed us and where we were in the Primitive Church we shall find all this to be sooth and full of order For Consider The elder the prohibition was the more absolute and indefinite it runs Without the Bishop it is not lawful to baptize to consecrate c. So Ignatius The prohibition is without limit But in descent of the Church it runs praesente Episcopo the Bishop being present they must not without leave The thing is all one and a derivation from the same original to wit the Vniversality of the Bishops Jurisdiction but the reason of the difference of expression is this At first Presbyters were in Cities with the Bishop and no parishes at all concredited to them The Bishops lived in Cities the Presbyters preached and offered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from house to house according as the Bishop directed them Here they had no ordinary charge and therefore the first prohibitions run indefinitely they must not do any Clerical offices sine Episcopo unless the Bishop sends them But then afterwards when the Parishes were distinct and the Presbyters fixt upon ordinary charges then it was only praesente Episcopo if the Bishop was present they might not officiate without leave For in his absence they might do
us And first Antiquity taught us it was simply necessary even to the being and constitution of a Church That runs high but we must follow our leaders S. Ignatius is express in this question Qui intra altare est mundus est quare obtemperat Episcopo sacerdotibus Qui vero foris est hic is est qui sine Episcopo Sacerdote Diacono quicquam agit ejusmodi inquinatam habet conscientiam infideli deterior est He that is within the Altar that is within the communion of the Church he is pure for he obeys the Bishop and the Priests But he that is without that is does any thing without his Bishop and the Clergy he hath a filthy conscience and is worse than an infidel Necesse itaque est quicquid facitis ut sine Episcopo nihil faciatis It is necessary that what ever ye doe ye be sure to do nothing without the Bishop Quid enim aliud est episcopus c. For what else is a Bishop but he that is greater than all power So that the obeying the Bishop is the necessary condition of a Christian and Catholick communion he that does not is worse than an Infidel The same also he affirms again Quotquot enim Christi sunt partium Episcopi qui vero ab illo declinant cum maledictis communionem amplectuntur hi cum illis excidentur All they that are on Christs side are on the Bishops side but they that communicate with accursed Schismaticks shall be cut off with them If then we will be Christs servants we must be obedient and subordinate to the Bishop It is the condition of Christianity We are not Christians else So is the intimation of S. Ignatius As full and pertinent is the peremptory resolution of S. Cyprian in that admirable epistle of his ad Lapsos where after he had spoken how Christ instituted the honour of Episcopacy in concrediting the Keys to S. Peter and the other Apostles Inde saith he per temporum successionum vices Episcoporum ordinatio Ecclesiae ratio decurrit ut Ecclesia super Episcopos constituatur omnis actus Ecclesiae per eosdem Praepositos gubernetur Hence is it that by several successions of Bishops the Church is continued so that the Church hath its being or constitution by Bishops and every act of Ecclesiastical regiment is to be disposed by them Cum hoc itaque divinâ lege fundatum sit miror c. Since therefore this is so established by the Law of God I wonder any man should question it c. And therefore as in all buildings the foundation being gone the fabrick falls so if ye take away Bishops the Church must ask a writing of divorce from God for it can no longer be called a Church This account we have from S. Cyprian and he reenforces again upon the same charge in his Epistle ad Florentium Pupianum where he makes a Bishop to be ingredient into the definition of a Church Ecclesia est plebs sacerdoti adunata pastori suo Grex adhaerens The Church is a flock adhering to its Pastor and a people united to their Bishop for that so he means by Sacerdos appears in the words subjoyned Vnde scire debes Episcopum in Ecclesia esse Ecclesiam in Episcopo si qui Cum Episcopo non sit in Ecclesia non esse frustra sibi blandiri eos qui pacem cum Sacerdotibus Dei non habentes obrepunt latenter apud quosdam communicare se credunt c. As a Bishop is in the Church so the Church is in the Bishop and he that does not communicate with the Bishop is not in the Church and therefore they vainly flatter themselves that think their case fair and good if they communicate in conventicles and forsake their Bishop And for this cause the holy Primitives were so confident and zealous for a Bishop that they would rather expose themselves and all their tribes to a persecution than to the greater misery the want of Bishops Fulgentius tells an excellent story to this purpose When Frasamund King of Byzac in Africa had made an edict that no more Bishops should be consecrate to this purpose that the Catholick faith might expire so he was sure it would if this device were perfected ut arescentibus truncis absque palmitibus omnes Ecclesiae desolarentur the good Bishops of the province met together in a Council and having considered of the command of the Tyrant Sacra turba Pontificum qui remanserant communicato inter se consilio definierunt adversus praeceptum Regis in omnibus locis celebrare ordinationes Pontificum cogitantes aut regis iracundiam si qua forsan existeret mitigandam quo facilius ordinati in suis plebibus viverent aut si persecutionis violentia nasceretur coronandos etiam fidei confessione quos dignos inveniebant promotione It was full of bravery and Christian sprite The Bishops resolved for all the edict against new ordination of Bishops to obey God rather than man and to consecrate Bishops in all places hoping the King would be appeased or if not yet those whom they thought worthy of a Mitre were in a fair disposition to receive a Crown of Martyrdome They did so Fit repente communis assumptio and they all strived who should be first and thought a blessing would outstrip the hindmost They were sure they might go to heaven though persecuted under the conduct of a Bishop they knew without him the ordinary passage was obstructed Pius the first Bishop of Rome and Martyr speaking of them that calumniate and disgrace their Bishops endeavouring to make them infamous they add saith he evil to evil and grow worse non intelligentes quod Ecclesia Dei in Sacerdotibus consistit crescit in templum Dei Not considering that the Church of God doth consist or is establisht in Bishops and grows up to a holy Temple To him I am most willing to add S. Hierome because he is often obtruded in defiance of the cause Ecclesiae salus in summi Sacerdotis dignitate pendet The safety of the Church depends upon the Bishops dignity SECT XLVI For they are schismaticks that separate from their Bishop THE Reason which S. Hierome gives presses this business to a further particular For if an eminent dignity and an unmatchable power be not given to him tot efficicientur schismata quot Sacerdotes So that he makes Bishops therefore necessary because without them the Unity of a Church cannot be preserved and we know that unity and being are of equal extent and if the unity of the Church depends upon the Bishop then where there is no Bishop no pretence to a Church and therefore to separate from the Bishop makes a man at least a Schismatick For unity which the Fathers press so often they make to be dependant on the Bishop Nihil sit in vobis quod possit vos
Ep. 7. Si manifestissimae certaeque rationi velut Scripturarum Sanctarum objicitur authoritas non intelligit qui hoc facit non Scripturarum illarum sensum ad quem penetrare non potuit sed suum potiùs objicit veritati nec quod in eis sed quod in seipso velut pro eis invenit opponit He that opposes the authority of the holy Scriptures against manifest and certain reason does neither understand himself nor the Scripture Indeed when God hath plainly declared the particular the more it seems against my reasons the greater is my obedience in submitting but that is because my reasons are but Sophismes since truth it self hath declared plainly against them but if God hath not plainly declared against that which I call reason my reason must not be contested by a pretence of Faith but upon some other account Ratio cum ratione concertet 3. Secondly But this is such a fine device that it can if it be admitted warrant any literal interpretation against all the pretences of the world For when Christ said If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out Here are the plain words of Christ And Some make themselves Eunuches for the kingdom of Heaven Nothing plainer in the Grammatical sence and why do we not do it because it is an unnatural thing to mangle our body for a Spiritual cause which may be supplied by other more gentle instruments Yea but reason is not to be heard against the plain words of Christ and the greater our reason is against it the greater excellency in our obedience that as Abraham against hope believed in hope so we against reason may believe in the greatest reason the Divine revelation and what can be spoken against this 4. Thirdly Stapleton confuting Luthers opinion of Consubstantiation pretends against it many absurdities drawn from reason and yet it would have been ill taken if it should have been answered that the doctrine ought the rather to be believed because it is so unreasonable which answer is something like our new Preachers who pretend that therefore they are Spiritual men because they have no learning they are to confound the wise because they are the weak things of the world and that they are to be heard the rather because there is the less reason they should so crying stinking fish that men may buy it the more greedily But I will proceed to the particulars of reason in this Article being contented with this that if the adverse party shall refuse this way of arguing they may be reproved by saying they refuse to hear reason and it will not be easie for them in despite of reason to pretend faith for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unreasonable men and they that have not faith are equivalent in S. Pauls expression 5. First I shall lay this prejudice in the Article as relating to the discourses of reason that in the words of institution there is nothing that can be pretended to prove the conversion of the substance of bread into the body of Christ but the same will infer the conversion of the whole into the whole and therefore of the accidents of the bread into the accidents of the body And in those little pretences of Philosophy which these men sometimes make to cousen fools into a belief of the possibility they pretend to no instance but to such conversions in which if the substance is changed so also are the accidents sometimes the accident is chang'd in the same remaining substance but if the substance be changed the accidents never remain the same individually or in kind unless they be symbolical that is are common to both as in the change of elements of air into fire of water into earth Thus when Christ changed water into wine the substances being chang'd the accidents also were alter'd and the wine did not retain the colour and taste of water for then though it had been the stranger miracle that wine should be wine and yet look and taste like water yet it would have obtained but little advantage to his doctrine and person if he should have offer'd to prove his mission by such a miracle For if Christ had said to the guests To prove that I am come from God I will change this water into wine well might this prove his mission but if while the guests were wondring at this he should proceed and say wonder ye not at this for I will do a stranger thing than it for this water shall be changed into wine and yet I will so order it that it shall look like water and taste like it so that you shall not know one from the other Certainly this would have made the whole matter very ridiculous and indeed it is a strange device of these men to suppose God to work so many prodigious miracles as must be in Transubstantiation if it were at all and yet that none of these should be seen for to what purpose is a miracle that cannot be perceived It can prove nothing nor do any thing when it self is not known whether it be or no. When bread is turned into flesh and wine into blood in the nourishment of our bodies which I have seen urg'd for the credibility of Transubstantiation The bread as it changes his nature changes his accidents too and is flesh in colour and shape and dimensions and weight and operation as well as it is in substance Now let them rub their foreheads hard and tell us it is so in the holy Sacrament For if it be not so then no instance of the change of Natural substances from one form to another can be pertinent For 1. Though it be no more than is done in every operation of a body yet it is always with change of their proper accidents and then 2. It can with no force of the words of the institution be pretended that one ought to be or can be without the other For he that says this is the body of a man says that it hath the substance of a humane body and all his consequents that is the accidents and he that says this is the body of Alexander says besides the substance that it hath all the individuating conditions which are the particular accidents and therefore Christ affirming this to be his body did as much affirm the change of accidents as the change of substance because that change is naturally and essentially consequent to this Now if they say they therefore do not believe the accidents of bread to be changed because they see them remain I might reply Why will they believe their sense against faith since there may be evidence but here is certainty and it cannot be deceived though our eyes can and it is certain that Christ affirmed it without distinction of one part from another of substance from his usual accidents This is my body Hoc Hîc Nunc and Sic. Now if they think their eyes may be credited for
expiation of them they fancy and consequently give what allowance they list to those whom they please to mislead For in innumerable Cases of Conscience it is oftner inquired whether a thing be Venial or Mortal than whether it be lawful or not lawful and as Purgatory is to Hell so Venial is to Sin a thing which men fear not because the main stake they think to be secured for if they may have Heaven at last they care not what comes between And as many men of the Roman perswasion will rather chuse Purgatory than suffer here an inconsiderable penance or do those little services which themselves think will prevent it so they chuse venial sins and hug the pleasures of trifles warming themselves at phantastick fires and dancing in the light of the Glo-worms and they love them so well that rather than quit those little things they will suffer the intolerable pains of a temporary Hell for so they believe which is the testimony of a great evil and a mighty danger for it gives testimony that little sins can be beloved passionately and therefore can minister such a delight as is thought a price great enough to pay for the sufferance of temporal evils and Purgatory it self 3. But the evil is worse yet when it is reduc'd to practice For in the decision of very many questions the answer is It is a venial sin that is though it be a sin yet there is in it no danger of losing the favour of God by that but you may do it and you may do it again a thousand thousand times and all the venial sins of the world put together can never do what one mortal sin can that is make God to be your enemy So Bellarmine expresly affirms But because there are many Doctors who write Cases of Conscience and there is no measure to limit the parts of this distinction for that which is not at all cannot be measured the Doctors differ infinitely in their sentences some calling that Mortal which others call Venial as you may see in the little Summaries of Navar and Emanuel Sà the poor souls of the Laity and the vulgar Clergy who believe what is told them by the Authors or Confessors they chuse to follow must needs be in infinite danger and the whole body of Practical Divinity in which the life of Religion and of all our hopes depends shall be rendred dangerous and uncertain and their confidence shall betray them unto death 4. To bring relief to this state of evil and to establish aright the proper grounds and measures of Repentance I shall first account concerning the difference of sins and by what measures they are so differenc'd 2. That all sins are of their own nature punishable as God please even with the highest expressions of his anger 3. By what Repentance they are cur'd and pardon'd respectively SECT II. Of the difference of sins and their measures 5. I. SINS are not equal but greater or less in their principle as well as in their event It was one of the errors of Jovinian which he learned from the Schools of the Stoicks that all sins are alike grievous Nam dicunt esse pares res Furta latrociniis magnis parva minantur Falce recisuros simili se si sibi regnum Permittant homines For they supposed an absolute irresistible Fate to be the cause of all things and therefore what was equally necessary was equally culpable that is not at all and where men have no power of choice or which is all one that it be necessary that they chuse what they do there can be no such thing as Laws or sins against them To which they adding that all evils are indifferent and the event of things be it good or bad had no influence upon the felicity or infelicity of man they could neither be differenc'd by their cause nor by their effect the first being necessary and the latter indifferent * Against this I shall not need to oppose many Arguments for though this follows most certainly from their doctrine who teach an irresistible Decree of God to be the cause of all things and actions yet they that own the doctrine disavow the consequent and in that are good Christians but ill Logicians But the Article is sufficiently cleared by the words of our B. Lord in the case of Judas whose sin as Christ told to Pilate was the greater because he had not power over him but by special concession in the case of the servant that knows his Masters will and does it not in the several condemnations of the degrees and expressions of anger in the instances of Racha and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thou vain man or Thou fool by this comparing some sins to gnats and some to Camels and in proportion to these there are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in S. Luke many stripes a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in S. James a greater condemnation * Thus to rob a Church is a greater sin than to rob a Thief To strike a Father is a higher impiety than to resist a Tutor To oppress a Widow is clamorous and calls aloud for vengeance when a less repentance will vote down the whispering murmurs of a trifling injury done to a fortune that is not sensible of smaller diminutions Nec vincit ratio tantundem ut peccet idémque Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti Vt qui nocturnus Divûm sacra legerit He is a greater criminal that steals the Chalice from a Church than he that takes a few Coleworts or robs a garden of Cucumers But this distinction and difference is by something that is extrinsecal to the action the greatness of the mischief or the dignity of the person according to that Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se Crimen habet quanto major qui peccat habetur 6. II. But this when it is reduc'd to its proper cause is because such greater sins are complicated they are commonly two or three sins wrapt together as the unchastity of a Priest is uncleanness and scandal too Adultery is worse than Fornication because it is unchastity and injustice and by the fearful consequents of it is mischievous and uncharitable Et quas Euphrates quas mihi misit Orontes Me capiant Nolo furta pudica thori So Sacriledge is theft and impiety And Apicius killing himself when he suppos'd his estate would not maintain his luxury was not only a self-murtherer but a gluttonous person in his death Nil est Apici tibi gulosius factum So that the greatness of sins is in most instances by extension and accumulation that as he is a greater sinner who sins often in the same instance than he that sins seldom so is he who sins such sins as are complicated and intangled like the twinings of combining Serpents And this appears to be so because if we take single sins as uncleanness and theft no man can tell which is the greater sin neither
permitted him is not excused by that supposition For if it be said that he is therefore supposed to love God because he only does those little sins which he thinks are not against the love of God and if he did not think so he would not do them This excuses him not but aggravates the sin for it is turning the grace of God into wantonness For since that such little things are the easier pardon'd is wholly owing to Gods grace and his singular goodness he that abuses this goodness to licentiousness makes his sin to abound because Gods grace abounds because God is good he takes leave to do evil that is to be most contrary to God For it is certain that every man in this case hath affections for sin as formerly indeed he entertains it not in the ruder instances because he dares not but he does all that he dares do for when he is taught that some certain sins are not damnable there he will not abstain which is a demonstration that though he does something for fear yet he does nothing for love 26. IV. From this it follows that every sin though in the smallest instance is a turning from God and a conversion to the creature Suidas defines 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sin to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a declension from good and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to shoot besides the mark to conduct our actions by an indirect line to a wrong object from God to the Creature Peccare est tanquam lineâ—â— transilire so Cicero a sinner goes out of those limits and marks which are appointed him by God Than this no greater evil can be spoken of any thing and of this all sin partakes more or less Some few sins are direct aversions from God so Atheism Blasphemy Apostasie Resolution never to repent and some few more but many other very great sins are turnings from God not directly but by interpretation He that commits fornication may yet by a direct act of understanding and a full consent believe God to be the chiefest Good and some very vicious persons have given their lives for a good cause and to preserve their innocence in some great instance where the scene of their proper and natural temptation does not lie Some others there are who out of a sincere but an abused Conscience persecute a good cause these men are zealous for God and yet fight against him But because these are real enemies and but supposed friends therefore by interpretation and in effect they turn from God and turn to the Creature Delictum quasi derelictum said S. Austin because in every sin God is forsaken They have left me the living Fountain and digged to themselves cisterns that hold no water So God complains by the Prophet He that prefers pleasure or profit before his duty rejects God but loves money and pays his devotion to interest or ease or sensuality And just so does the smallest sin For since every action hath something propounded to it as its last end it is certain he that sins does not do it for God or in order to him He that tells a lie to promote Religion or to save the life of a man or to convert his soul does not tell that lie for God but tells the lie to make way for something else which is in order to God he breaks his legs that he may the better walk in the path of the Divine Commandments A sin cannot be for God or in order to him no not so much as habitually For whatsoever can never be referred to God actually cannot at any time be referred habitually Since therefore the smallest sins cannot be for God that which is not with him is against him if it be no way for God it is either directly or by interpretation for pleasure or ease or profit or pride for something that is against him 27. And it is not to be neglected that the smaller the sin is the less it is excusable if it be done when it is observed For if it be small is it not the sooner obeyed and the more reasonably exacted and the more bountifully repaid when Heaven is given as the price of so small a service He that pursues his crime for a mighty purchase to get a Kingdom or a vast estate or an exquisite beauty or something that is bigger than the ordinary vertues of easie and common men hath something not to warrant and legitimate but to extenuate the offence by greatning the temptation But to lose the friendship of God for a Nut-shell to save six pence to lose Heaven with peevishness to despise the Divine Laws for a non-sence insignificant vapour and a testy pride hath no excuse but it loads the sinner with the disreputation of a mighty folly What excuse can be made for him that will not so much as hold his peace to please God What can he do less for him How should it be expected he should mortifie his lusts deny his ambition part with his goods lose an eye cut off a hand give his life for God when he will not for God lose the no pleasure of talking vainly and proudly and ridiculously If he will not chastise his wanton thoughts to please God how shall he throw out his whole body of lust If he will not resist the trifling temptations of a drinking friend to preserve his temperance how shall he chuse to be banished or murther'd by the rage of a drunken Prince rather than keep the circle in their giddy and vertiginous method The less the instance be the direct aversation from God is also most commonly the less but in many cases the aversation is by interpretation greater more unreasonable and therefore less excusable as when the small instance is chosen by a perfect and distinct act of election as it is in those who out of fear of Hell quit the acting of their clamorous sins and yet keep the affections to them and consequently entertain them in thoughts and little reflexions in remembrances and phantastick images 28. V. But if we reduce this Question a little nearer to practice and cloath it with circumstances we shall find this account to be sadder than is usually suppos'd But before I instance in the particulars I shall premise this distinction of venial sins which is necessary not only for the conducting of this Question but our Consciences also in this whole Article The Roman Schools say that sins are Venial either by the imperfection of the agent as when a thing is done ignorantly or by surprize or inadvertency or 2. A sin is Venial by the smalness of the matter as if a man steals a farthing or eats a little too greedily at his meal or lies in bed half an hour longer than would become him or 3. A sin say they is Venial in its whole kind that is such which God cannot by the nature of the thing punish with the
repent timely and effectually dies for none The wages of sin is death of sin indefinitely and therefore of all sin and all death for there is no more distinction of sin than death only when death is threatned indefinitely that death is to be understood which is properly and specifically threatned in that Covenant where the death is named as death temporal in the Law death eternal under the Gospel 34. And thus it appears in a very material instance relating to this question for when our blessed Saviour had threatned the degrees of anger he did it by apportioning several pains hereafter of one sort to the several degrees of the same sin here which he expresses by the several inflictions passed upon Criminals by the Houses of Judgment among the Jews Now it is observable that to the least of these sins Christ assigns a punishment just proportionable to that which the gloss of the Pharisees and the Law it self did to them that committed Murther which was capital He shall be guilty of judgment so we read it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it is in the Greek He shall be guilty in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is in the Court of Judgment the Assembly of the twenty three Elders and there his punishment was death but the gentlest manner of it the decapitation or smiting him through with the sword and therefore the least punishment hereafter answering to death here can mean no less than death hereafter * And so also was the second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that calls Racha shall be guilty that is shall be used as one that stands guilty in the Sanhedrim or Council meaning that he is to die too but with a severer execution by stoning to death this was the greatest punishment by the houses of judgment for Crucifixion was the Roman manner These two already signifie Hell in a less degree but as certainly and evidently as the third For though we read Hell-fire in the third sentence only yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no otherwise signifies Hell than the other two by analogy and proportionable representment The cause of the mistake is this When Christ was pleased to add yet a further degree of punishment in hell to a further degree of anger and reproach the Jews having no greater than that of stoning by the judgment of the Sanhedrim or Council he would borrow his expression from that which they and their Fathers too well understood a barbarous custome of the Phoenicians of burning children alive in the valley of Hinnom which in succession of time the Hellenists called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not much unlike the Hebrew word and because by our blessed Lord it was used to signifie or represent the greatest pains of hell that were spoken of in that gradation the Christians took the word and made it to be its appellative and to signifie the state or place of the damned just as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the garden of Eden is called Paradise But it was no more intended that this should signifie Hell than that any of the other two should The word it self never did so before but that and the other two were taken as being the most fearful things amongst them here to represent the degrees of the most intolerable state hereafter just as damnation is called death the second death that because we fear the first as the worst of present evils we may be affrighted with the apprehensions of the latter From this authority it follows that as in the Law no sins were venial but by repentance and sacrifice so neither in the Gospel are they not in their own nature not by the more holy Covenant of the Gospel but by repentance and mortification For the Gospel hath with greater severity laid restraint upon these minutes and little particles of action and passion and therefore if in the law every transgression was exacted we cannot reasonably think that the least parts of duty which the Gospel superadded with a new and severer caution as great and greater than that by which the law exacted the greatest Commandments can be broken with indemnity or without the highest danger The law exacted all its smallest minutes and therefore so does the Gospel as being a Covenant of greater holiness But as in the law for the smaller transgressions there was an assignment of expiatory rites so is there in the Gospel of a ready repentance and a prepared mercy 37. VII Lastly those sins which men in health are bound to avoid those sins for which Christ did shed his most precious blood those sins which a dying man is bound to ask pardon for though he hopes not or desires not to escape temporal death certain it is that those sins are in their nature and in the Oeconomy or dispensation of the Divine threatnings damnable For what can the dying man fear but death eternal and if he be bound to repent and ask pardon even for the smallest sins which he can remember in order to what pardon can that repentance be but of the eternal pain to which every sin by its own demerit naturally descends If he must repent and ask pardon when he hopes not or desires not the temporal it is certain he must repent only that he may obtain the eternal And they that will think otherwise will also find themselves deceiv'd in this * For if the damned souls in hell are punish'd for all their sins then the unpardon'd venial sins are there also smarted for But so it is and so we are taught in the doctrine of our great Master If we agreee not while we are in the way we shall be cast into the eternal prison and shall not depart thence till we have paid the uttermost farthing that is ever for our smallest sins if they be unremitted men shall pay in hell their horrible Symbol of damnation And this is confessed on all hands that they who fall into hell pay their sorrows there even for all But it is pretended that this is only by accident not by the first intention of the Divine justice because it happens that they are subjected in such persons who for other sins not for these go to hell Well! yet let it be considered whether or no do not the smallest unremitted sins increase the torments of hell in their proportion If they do not then they are not at all punished in hell for if without them the perishing soul is equally punished then for them there is no punishment at all But if they do increase the pains as it is certain they do then to them properly and for their own malignity and demerit a portion of eternal pains is assigned Now if God punishes them in hell then they deserv'd hell if they be damnable in their event then they were so in their merit for God never punishes any sin more than it deserves though he often does less But to say that this is
advices with the saying of Josephus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is as damnable to indulge leave to our selves to sin little sins as great ones A man may be choaked with a raisin as well as with great morsels of flesh and a small leak in a ship if it be neglected will as certainly sink her as if she sprung a plank Death is the wages of all and damnation is the portion of the impenitent whatever was the instance of their sin Though there are degrees of punishment yet there is no difference of state as to this particular and therefore we are tied to repent of all and to dash the little Babylonians against the stones against the Rock that was smitten for us For by the blood of Jesus and the tears of Repentance and the watchfulness of a diligent careful person many of them shall be prevented and all shall be pardoned A Psalm to be frequently used in our Repentance for our daily Sins BOW down thine ear O Lord hear me for I am poor and needy Rejoyce the soul of thy servant for unto thee O Lord do I lift up my soul. For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee Teach me thy way O Lord I will walk in thy truth unite my heart to fear thy Name Shall mortal man be more just than God shall a man be more pure than his Maker Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly How much less on them that dwell in houses of clay whose foundation is in the dust which are crushed before the moth Doth not their excellency which is in them go away They die even without wisdom The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple Moreover by them is thy servant warned and in keeping of them there is great reward Who can understand his errors Cleanse thou me from my secret faults keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins let them not have dominion over me then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression O ye sons of men how long will ye turn my glory into shame how long will ye love vanity and seek after leasing But know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself The Lord will hear when I call unto him Out of the deep have I called unto thee O Lord Lord hear my voice O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint If thou Lord wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss O Lord who may abide it But there is mercy with thee therefore shalt thou be feared Set a watch O Lord before my mouth and keep the door of my lips Take from me the way of lying and cause thou me to make much of thy law The Lord is full of compassion and mercy long-suffering and of great goodness He will not alway be chiding neither keepeth he his anger for ever Yea like as a Father pitieth his own children even so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear him For he knoweth whereof we are made he remembreth that we are but dust Praise the Lord O my soul and forget not all his benefits which forgiveth all thy sin and healeth all thine infirmities Glory be to the Father c. The PRAYER O Eternal God whose perfections are infinite whose mercies are glorious whose justice is severe whose eyes are pure whose judgments are wise be pleased to look upon the infirmities of thy servant and consider my weakness My spirit is willing but my flesh is weak I desire to please thee but in my endeavours I fail so often so foolishly so unreasonably that I extreamly displease my self and I have too great reason to fear that thou also art displeased with thy servant O my God I know my duty I resolve to do it I know my dangers I stand upon my guard against them but when they come near I begin to be pleased and delighted in the little images of death and am seised upon by folly even when with greatest severity I decree against it Blessed Jesus pity me and have mercy upon my infirmities II. O Dear God I humbly beg to be relieved by a mighty grace for I bear a body of sin and death about me sin creeps upon me in every thing that I do or suffer When I do well I am apt to be proud when I do amiss I am sometimes too confident sometimes affrighted If I see others do amiss I either neglect them or grow too angry and in the very mortification of my anger I grow angry and peevish My duties are imperfect my repentances little my passions great my fancy trifling The sins of my tongue are infinite and my omissions are infinite and my evil thoughts cannot be numbred and I cannot give an account concerning innumerable portions of my time which were once in my power but were let slip and were partly spent in sin partly thrown away upon trifles and vanity and even of the hasest sins of which in accounts of men I am most innocent I am guilty before thee entertaining those sins in little instances thoughts desires and imaginations which I durst not produce into action and open significations Blessed Jesus pity me and have mercy upon my infirmities III. TEACH me O Lord to walk before thee in righteousness perfecting holiness in the fear of God Give me an obedient will a loving spirit a humble understanding watchfulness over my thoughts deliberation in all my words and actions well tempered passions and a great prudence and a great zeal and a great charity that I may do my duty wisely diligently holily O let me be humbled in my infirmities but let me be also safe from my enemies let me never fall by their violence nor by my own weakness let me never be overcome by them nor yet give my self up to folly and weak principles to idleness and secure careless walking but give me the strengths of thy Spirit that I may grow strong upon the ruines of the flesh growing from grace to grace till I become a perfect man in Christ Jesus O let thy strength be seen in my weakness and let thy mercy triumph over my infirmities pitying the condition of my nature the infancy of grace the imperfection of my knowledge the transportations of my passion Let me never consent to sin but for ever strive against it and every day prevail till it be quite dead in me that thy servant living the life of grace may at last be admitted to that state of glory where all my infirmities shall be done away and all tears be dried up and sin and death shall be no more Grant this O most gracious God and Father for Jesus Christ his sake Amen Our Father c. CHAP. IV. Of Actual single Sins and what Repentance is proper to them SECT I. 1. THE
us Much more then being now justified by his blood we shall be saved from wrath through him * But now the sinner is more busie in his recovery more fearful of relapse than before his fall Sicut ferae decipulam erumpentes cautiores facti saith Lactantius like wild beasts breaking from their toils they walk more cautiously for ever after Thus it is impossible that sin should be exalted above grace or that the Devils malice can be superiour to the rare arts of the Divine mercy for by his conduct poison it self shall become medicinal and sin like the Persian apple Pomis quae Barbara Persis Miserat ut fama est patriis armata venenis At nunc expositi parvo discrimine lethi Ambrosios praebent succos oblita nocendi transplanted from its native soil to the Athenian gardens loses its natural venome and becomes pleasant as the rinds of Citrons and aromatick as the Eastern spices 6. II. Although sins in the state of penitence can by Gods grace procure an accidental advantage yet that difficulty of overcoming and fierceness of contention which is necessary to them who had contracted evil habits is not by that difficulty an augmentation of the reward As he that willingly breaks his leggs is not more commended for creeping with pain than if he went with pleasure and ease and the taking away our own possibility being a destroying the grace of God a contradiction to the arts of the Divine mercy whatsoever proper effect that infers as it is impious in its cause and miserable in the event so it does nothing of advantage to the vertue but causes great diminution of it * For it is a high mistake crudely to affirm that every repugnancy to an act of vertue and every temptation to a sin if it be overcome increases the reward Indeed if the temptation be wholly from without unsought for prayed against inferr'd infallibly superinduc'd by God then the reward is greater by how much it was the more difficult to obey Thus for Jephthah to pay his daughter which he had vowed and for Abraham to slay his son were greater acts of obedience because they were in despite of great temptations to the contrary and there was nothing evil from within that did lessen the choice or retard the vertue * But when our nature is spoil'd and our strengths diminished when the grace of God by which we stood is despised and cancelled when we have made it natural for us to sin then this remaining inclination to sin and unwillingness to obey is so far from increasing the reward that it is not only a state of danger but it is an unwillingness to doe good an abatement of the choice a state which is still to be mortified and the strengths to be restored and the affections made obedient and the will determined by other objects 7. But if the unwillingness to obey even after the beginnings of repentance were as it is pretended by the Roman Doctors an increase of the merit or reward then 1. It were not fit that we should go about to lessen these inclinations to sin or to exterminate the remains of the old man because if they go off the difficulty being removed the reward must be no more than ordinary II. It would also follow from hence that the less men did delight in Gods service the more pleasing they should be to him For if the reluctancy increases then the perfect choice would lessen the reward And then III. A habit of vertue were not so good as single actions with the remains of a habit of vice upon the same account and a state of imperfection were better than a state of perfection and to grow in grace were great imprudence IV. It were not good to pray against entring into temptation nay it were good we did tempt our selves so we did not yield to provoke our enemy so he did not conquer us to enter into danger so we did not sink under it because these increase the difficulty and this increases the reward All which being such strange and horrid consequences it follows undeniably that the remanent portion of a vicious habit after the mans conversion is not the occasion of a greater reward is not good formally is not good materially but is a fomes a nest of concupiscence a bed of vipers and the spawn of toads 8. Now although this is not a sin if it be considered in its natural capacity as it is the physical unavoidable consequent of actions for an inherent quality may be considered without its appendant evil that is though a Philosopher may think and discourse of it as of a natural production and so without sin yet it does not follow from hence that such a habit or inherent quality is without its proper sin or that its nature is innocent But this is nothing else but to say that a natural Philosopher does not consider things in their moral capacity But just thus every sin is innocent and an act of adultery or the begetting a child in fornication is good a natural Philosopher looks on it as a natural action applying proper actives to their proportion'd passives and operating regularly and by the way of nature Thus we say God concurs to every sin that is to the action in its natural capacity but that is therefore innocent so far that is if you consider it without any relation to manners and laws it is not unlawful But then if you consider the whole action in its intire constitution it is a sin And so is a sinful habit it is vicious and criminal in its whole nature and when the Question is whether any thing be in its own capacity distinctly good or bad the answer must not be made by separating the thing from all considerations of good and bad However it will suffice that a habit of vice in its natural capacity is no otherwise innocent than an act of adultery or drunkenness 2. Of the moral capacity of sinful Habits But then if we consider sinful Habits in their moral capacity we shall find them to be a Lerna malorum and we shall open Pandora's box a swarm of evils will issue thence In the enumerating of which I shall make a great progress to the demonstration of the main Question 9. I. A vicious habit adds many degrees of aversation from God by inclining us to that which God hates It makes us to love and to delight in sin and easily to choose it now by how much the more we approach to sin by so much we are the further remov'd from God And therefore this habitual iniquity the prophet describing calls it magnitudinem iniquitatis and the punishment design'd for it is called thy lot the portion of thy measures that is Plenitudo poenae ad plenitudinem peccatorum a great judgment to an habitual sin a final judgment an exterminating Angel when the sin is confirm'd and of a perfect habit 10. For till habits supervene we are of a middle
habit virtually and transcendently An act of this charity will not do this but the habit will For he that does a single act of charity may also doe a single act of malice and he that denies this knows not what he says nor ever had experience of himself or any man else For if he that does an act of charity that is he who by a good motion from Gods Spirit does any thing because God hath commanded to say that this man will do every thing which is so commanded is to say that a good man can never fall into a great sin which is evidently untrue But if he that does one act in obedience to God or in love to him for obedience is love will also do more then every man that does one act to please his senses may as well be supposed that he will do more and then no mans life should have in it any variety but be all of a piece intirely good or intirely evil I see no difference in the instances neither can there be so long as a man in both states hath a power to chuse But then it will follow that a single act of contrition or of charity cannot put a man into the state of the Divine favour it must be the grace or habit of charity and that is a magazine of habits by equivalency and is formally the state of grace And upon these accounts if old men will repent and do what they can do and are enabled in that state they have no cause to be afflicted with too great fears concerning the instances of their habits or the sins of their youth Concerning persons that are seis'd upon by a lingring sickness I have nothing peculiar to say save this only That their case is in something better than that of old men in some things worse It is better because they have in many periods of their sickness more hopes of returning to health and long life than old men have of returning to strength and youth and a protracted age and therefore their repentance if it be hearty hath in it also more degrees of being voluntary and relative to a good life But in this their case is worse An old man that is healthful is better seated in the station of penitents and because he can chuse contraries is the more acceptable if he chuses well But the sick man though living long in that disadvantage cannot be indifferent in so many instances as the other may and in this case it is remarkable what S. Austin said Si autem vis agere poenitentiam quando jam peccare non potes peccata te dimiserunt non tu illa To abstain from sin when a man cannot sin is to be forsaken by sin not to forsake it At the best it is bad enough But I doubt not but if they do what they can do there is mercy for them which they shall find in the day of recompences 67. Obj. 7. But how shall any man know whether he have perform'd his repentance as he ought For if it be necessary that he get the habits of vertue and extirpate the habits of vice that is if by habits God do and we are to make judgments of our repentance who can be certain that his sins are pardon'd and himself reconcil'd to God and that he shall be sav'd The reasons of his doubts and fears are these 1. Because it is a long time before a habit can be lost and the contrary obtain'd 2. Because while one habit lessens another may undiscernibly increase and it may be a degree of covetousness may expel a degree of prodigality 3. Because a habit may be lurking secretly and for want of opportunity of acting in that instance not betray it self or be discover'd or attempted to be cur'd For he that was not tempted in that kind where he sinn'd formerly may for ought he knows say that he hath not sinn'd only because he was not tempted but if that be all the habit may be resident and kill him secretly These things must be accounted for 70. I. But to him that inquires whether it be light or darkness in what regions his inheritance is design'd and whether his Repentance is sufficient I must give rather a reproof than an answer or at least such an answer as will tell there is no need of an answer For indeed it is not good inquiring into measures and little portions of grace * Love God with all thy heart and all thy strength do it heartily and do it always If the thing be brought to pass clearly and discernibly the pardon is certain and notorious But if it be in a middle state between ebbe and floud so is our pardon too and if in that undiscerned state it be in the thing certain that thou art on the winning and prevailing side if really thou dost belong unto God he will take care both of thy intermedial comfort and final interest * But when people are too inquisitive after comfort it is a sign their duty is imperfect In the same proportion also it is not well when we enquire after a sign for our state of grace and holiness If the habit be compleat and intire it is as discernible as light and we may as well enquire for a sign to know when we are hungry and thirsty when you can walk or play on the lute The thing it self is its best indication 71. II. But if men will quarrel at any truth because it supposes some men to be in such a case that they do not know certainly what will become of them in the event of things I know not how it can be help'd I am sure they that complain here that is the Roman Doctors are very fierce Preachers of the certainty of salvation or of our knowledge of it But be they who they will since all this uncertainty proceeds not from the doctrine but from the evil state of things into which habitual sinners have put themselves there will be the less care taken for an answer But certainly it seems strange that men who have liv'd basely and viciously all their days who are respited from an eternal Hell by the miracles of mercy concerning whom it is a wonderful thing that they had not really perished long before that these men returning at the last should complain of hard usage because it cannot be told to them as confidently as to new baptized Innocents that they are certain of their salvation as S. Peter and S. Paul * But however both they and better men than they must be content with those glorious measures of the Divine mercy which are described and upon any terms be glad to be pardon'd and to hope and fear to mourn and to be afflicted to be humbled and to tremble and then to work out their salvation with fear and trembling 72. III. But then to advance one step further there may be a certainty where is no evidence that is the thing may be certain in it self though
production and that in their case they cannot be the beginnings of a succeeding duty and piety because for want of time it never can succeed * That there are some conditions and states of life which God hath determined never to pardon * That there is a sin unto death for which because we have no incouragement to pray it is certain there is no hope for it is impossible but it must be very fit to pray for all them to whom the hope of pardon is not precluded * That there is in Scripture mention made of an ineffective repentance and of a repentance to be repented of and that the repentance of no state is so likely to be it as this * That what is begun and produc'd wholly by affrighâ—ment is not esteem'd matter of choice nor a pleasing sacrifice to God * That they who sow to the flesh shall reap in the flesh and the final judgment shall be made of every man according to his works * That the full and perfect descriptions of repentance in Scripture are heaps and conjugations of duties which have in them difficulty and require time and ask labour * That those insinuations of duty in Scripture of the need of patience and diligence and watchfulness and the express precepts of perseverance do imply that the office and duty of a Christian is of a long time and business and a race * That repentance being the renewing of a holy life it should seem that on our death-bed the day for repentance is past since no man can renew his life when his life is done no man can live well when he cannot live at all * and therefore to place our hopes upon a death-bed repentance only is such a religion as satisfies all our appetites and contradicts none and yet promises heaven at last * These things I say are all either notorious and evident or expresly affirmed in Scripture and therefore that in the ordinary way of things in the common expectation of events such persons are in a very sad condition 26. So that it remains that in this sad condition there must be some extraordinary way found out or else this whole inquiry is at an end Concerning which all that I can say is this 1. God hath an Almighty power and his mercy is as great as his power He can doe miracles of mercy as well as miracles of mightiness And this S. Austin brings in open pretence against desperation O homo quicunque illam multitudinem peccatorum attendis cur omnipotentiam coelestis medici non attendis Thy sins are great but Gods mercies are greater But this does represent the mans condition at the best to be such that God may if he will have mercy upon him but whether he will or no there is as yet no other certainty or probability but that he can if he please which proposition to an amazed timorous person that fears a hell the next hour is so dry a story so hopeless a proposition that all that can be said of this is that it is very fit that no man should ever put it to the venture For upon this argument we may as well comfort our selves upon him that died without repenting at all But the inquiry must be further 27. II. All mankind all the Doctors of the Church for very many ages at least some few of the most Ancient and of the Modern excepted have been apt to give hopes to such persons and no man bids them absolutely despair Let such persons make use of this easiness of men thereby to retain so much hope as to make them call upon God and not to neglect what can then be done Spem retine spes una hominem nec morte relinquit As long as there is life there is hope and when a man dies let him not despair for there is a life after this and a hope proper to that and amidst all the evils that the Ancients did fabulously report to be in Pandora's box they wittily plac'd Hope on the utmost lip of it and extremity Vivere spe vidi qui moriturus erat And S. Cyprian exhorts old Demetrianus to turn Christian in his old age and promises him salvation in the name of Christ and though his case and that of a Christian who entred into promises and Covenants of obedience be very different yet ad immortalitatem sub ipsâ morte transitur a passing from such a repentance to immortality although it cannot be hoped for upon the just accounts of express promise yet it is not too great to hope from Gods mercy and untill that which is infinite hath a limit a repenting mans hopes in this world cannot be wholly at an end 28. III. We find that in the battels which were fought by the Maccabees some persons who fought on the Lords side and were slain in the fight were found having on their breasts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pendants consecrate to the idols of the Jamnenses and yet the good people of their party made oblation for them hoping that they might be partakers of a blessed resurrection They that repent heartily but one hour are in a better condition than the other that died in their sin though with the advantage of fighting in a good cause and if good people will not leave hoping for such persons it is not fit that themselves should 29. IV. He that considers Gods great love to Mankind * the infinite love that God hath to his holy Son Jesus and yet that he sent him to die for every man * and that the holy Jesus does now and hath for very many ages prayed for the pardon of our sins that he knows how horrible those pains are which are provided for perishing souls and therefore that he is exceeding pitiful and desirous that we should escape them * and that God did give one extraordinary example of saving a dying penitent the Thief upon the Cross and though that had something in it extraordinary and miraculous yet that is it which is now expected a favour extraordinary a miraculous mercy * And that Christ was pleased to speak a parable of comfort and the Master of the Vineyard did pay salary to him that began to work at the eleventh hour and though that was some portion of his life the twelfth part of it and the man was not call'd sooner yet there may be something in it of comfort to the dying penitent since it looks something like it it certainly relates to old men and can do them comfort and possibly the merciful intention of it is yet larger * and that since God is so well pleased with repentance it may be he will abate the circumstance of time Nec ad rem pertinet ubi inciperet quod placuerat ut fieret and he will not consider when that begins which he loves should be done * And that he is our Father and paulum supplicii satis est Patri a Father will chastise but will not kill his son * And
born to rule over all other creatures and begins his life with punishments for no fault but that he was born In short The body is a region of diseases of sorrow and nastiness and weakness and temptation Here is cause enough of being humbled 83. Neither is it better in the soul of man where ignorance dwells and passion rules 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After death came in there entred also a swarm of passions And the will obeys every thing but God Our judgment is often abused in matters of sense and one faculty guesses at truth by confuting another and the error of the eye is corrected by something of reason or a former experience Our fancy is often abus'd and yet creates things of it self by tying disparate things together that can cohere no more than Musick and a Cable than Meat and Syllogisms and yet this alone does many times make credibilities in the understandings Our Memories are so frail that they need instruments of recollection and laborious artifices to help them and in the use of these artifices sometimes we forget the meaning of those instruments and of those millions of sins which we have committed we scarce remember so many as to make us sorrowful or ashamed Our judgments are baffled with every Sophism and we change our opinion with a wind and are confident against truth but in love with error We use to reprove one error by another and lose truth while we contend too earnestly for it Infinite opinions there are in matters of Religion and most men are confident and most are deceiv'd in many things and all in some and those few that are not confident have only reason enough to suspect their own reason We do not know our own bodies not what is within us nor what ails us when we are sick nor whereof we are made nay we oftentimes cannot tell what we think or believe or love We desire and hate the same thing speak against and run after it We resolve and then consider we bind our selves and then find causes why we ought not to be bound and want not some pretences to make our selves believe we were not bound Prejudice and Interest are our two great motives of believing we weigh deeper what is extrinsical to a question than what is in its nature and oftner regard who speaks than what is said The diseases of our soul are infinite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Dionysius of Athens Mankind of old fell from those good things which God gave him and now is fallen into a life of passion and a state of death In summ it follows the temper or distemper of the body and sailing by such a Compass and being carried in so rotten a vessel especially being empty or filled with lightness and ignorance and mistakes it must needs be exposed to the dangers and miseries of every storm which I choose to represent in the words of Cicero Ex humanae vitae erroribus aerumnis fit ut verum sit illud quod est apud Aristotelem sic nostros animos cum corporibus copulatos ut vivos cum mortuis esse conjunctos The soul joyned with the body is like the conjunction of the living and the dead the dead are not quickned by it but the living are afflicted and die But then if we consider what our spirit is we have reason to lie down flat upon our faces and confess Gods glory and our own shame When it is at the best it is but willing but can do nothing without the miracle of Grace Our spirit is hindred by the body and cannot rise up whither it properly tends with those great weights upon it It is foolish and improvident large in desires and narrow in abilities naturally curious in trifles and inquisitive after vanities but neither understands deeply nor affectionately relishes the things of God pleas'd with forms cousen'd with pretences satisfied with shadows incurious of substances and realities It is quick enough to find doubts and when the doubts are satisfied it raises scruples that is it is restless after it is put to sleep and will be troubled in despite of all arguments of peace It is incredibly negligent of matters of Religion and most solicitous and troubled in the things of the world We love our selves and despise others judging most unjust sentences and by peevish and cross measures Covetousness and Ambition Gain and Empire are the proportions by which we take account of things We hate to be govern'd by others even when we cannot dress our selves and to be forbidden to do or have a thing is the best art in the world to make us greedy of it The flesh and the spirit perpetually are at strife the spirit pretending that his ought to be the dominion and the flesh alleaging that this is her state and her day We hate our present condition and know not how to better our selves our changes being but like the tumblings and tossings in a Feaver from trouble to trouble that 's all the variety We are extreamly inconstant and always hate our own choice we despair sometimes of Gods mercies and are confident in our own follies as we order things we cannot avoid little sins and do not avoid great ones We love the present world though it be good for nothing and undervalue infinite treasures if they be not to be had till the day of recompences We are peevish if a servant does but break a glass and patient when we have thrown an ill cast for eternity throwing away the hopes of a glorious Crown for wine and dirty silver We know that our prayers if well done are great advantages to our state and yet we are hardly brought to them and love not to stay at them and wander while we are saying them and say them without minding and are glad when they are done or when we have a reasonable excuse to omit them A passion does quite overturn all our purposes and all our principles and there are certain times of weakness in which any temptation may prevail if it comes in that unlucky minute 84. This is a little representment of the state of man whereof a great part is a natural impotency and the other is brought in by our own folly Concerning the first when we discourse it is as if one describes the condition of a Mole or a Bat an Oyster or a Mushrome concerning whose imperfections no other cause is to be inquired of but the will of God who gives his gifts as he please and is unjust to no man by giving or not giving any certain proportion of good things And supposing this loss was brought first upon Adam and so descended upon us yet we have no cause to complain for we lost nothing that was ours Praeposterum est said Paulus the Lawyer antè nos locupletes dici quà m acquisterimus We cannot be said to lose what we never had and our fathers goods were not to descend upon us
concerning doing good or bad For it is not only true that the unregenerate oftentimes feel the fight and never see the triumph but it is also true that sometimes the regenerate do not feel this contention They did once with great violence and trouble but when they have gotten a clear victory they have also great measures of peace But this is but seldom to few persons and in them but in rare instances in carnal sins and temptations for in spiritual they will never have an intire rest till they come into their Country It is Angelical perfection to have no flesh at all but it is the perfection of a Christian to have the flesh obedient to the spirit always and in all things But if this contention be not a sign of regeneration but is common to good and bad that which can only distinguish them is victory and perseverance and those sins which are committed at the end of such contentions are not sins of a pitiable and excusable infirmity but the issues of death and direct emanations from an unregenerate estate Therefore 44. VII Lastly The regenerate not only hath received the Spirit of God but is wholly led by him he attends his motions he obeys his counsels he delights in his Commandments and accepts his testimony and consents to his truth and rejoyces in his comforts and is nourish'd by his hopes up to a perfect man in Christ Jesus This is the only condition of being the sons of God and being sav'd For as many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God None else And therefore if ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if through the Spirit ye do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live This is your characteristick note Our obedience to the Spirit our walking by his light and by his conduct This is the Spirit that witnesseth to our spirit that we are the sons of God That is if the Spirit be obeyed if it reigns in us if we live in it if we walk after it if it dwells in us then we are sure that we are the sons of God There is no other testimony to be expected but the doing of our duty All things else unless an extraregular light spring from Heaven and tells us of it are but fancies and deceptions or uncertainties at the best SECT VII What are properly and truly sins of Infirmity and how far they can consist with the Regenerate Estate 45. WE usually reckon our selves too soon to be in Gods favour While the War lasts it is hard telling who shall be the Prince When one part hath fought prosperously there is hopes of his side and yet if the adversary hath reserves of a vigorous force or can raise new and not only pretends his title but makes great inrodes into the Country and forrages and does mischief and fights often and prevails sometimes the inheritance is still doubtful as the success But if the Usurper be beaten and driven out and his forces quite broken and the lawful Prince is proclaim'd and rules and gives laws though the other rails in prison or should by a sudden fury kill a single person or plot an ineffective treason no man then doubt concerning the present possession 46. But men usually think their case is good so long as they are fighting so long as they are not quite conquered and every step towards grace they call â—t pardon and salvation presently As soon as ever a man begins heartily to mortifie his â—â—n his hopes begin and if he proceeds they are certain But if in this sight he bâ— overcome he is not to ask Whether that ill day and that deadly blow can consist with the state of life He that fights and conquers not but sins frequently and â—o yield or be killed is the end of the long contentions this man is not yet alive But when he prevails regularly and daily over his sin then he is in a state of regeneration but let him take heed for every voluntary or chosen sin is a mortal wound 47. But because no man in this world hath so conquer'd but he may be smitten and is sometimes struck at and most good men have cause to complain of their calamity that in their understandings there are doubtings and strange mistakes which because after a great confidence they are sometimes discovered there is cause to suspect there are some there still which are not discovered that there are in the will evil inclinations to forbidden instances that in the appetite there are carnal desires that in their natural actions there are sometimes too sensual applications that in their good actions there are mighty imperfections it will be of use that we separate the certain from the uncertain security from danger the apology from the accusation and the excuse from the crime by describing what are and what are not sins of Infirmity 48. For most men are pleased to call their debaucheries sins of infirmity if they be done against their reason and the actual murmur of their consciences and against their trifling resolutions and ineffective purposes to the contrary Now although all sins are the effects of infirmity Natural or Moral yet because I am to cure a popular mistake I am also to understand the word as men do commonly and by sins of Infirmity to mean 49. Such sins which in the whole and upon the matter are unavoidable and therefore excusable Such which can consist with the state of grace that is such which have so much irregularity in them as to be sins and yet so much excuse and pity as that by the Covenant and Mercies of the Gospel they shall not be exacted in the worst of punishments or punished with eternal pains because they cannot with the greatest moral diligence wholly be avoided Concerning these so described we are to take accounts by the following measures 50. I. Natural imperfections and evil inclinations when they are not consented to or delighted in either are no sins at all or if they be they are but sins of infirmity That in some things our nature is cross to the Divine Commandment is not always imputable to us because our natures were before the Commandment and God hath therefore commanded us to do violence to our nature that by such preternatural contentions we should offer to God a service that costs us something But that in some things we are inclin'd otherwise than we are suffered to act is so far from offending God that it is that opportunity of serving him by which we can most endear him To be inclined to that whither nature bends is of it self indifferent but to love to entertain to act our inclinations when the Commandment is put between that is the sin and therefore if we resist them and master them that is our obedience For it is equally certain no man can be esteemed spiritual for his good wishes and desires of holiness but for his actual and
it would improve thy diligence then what thou wouldest do in case thou didst know do that now thou dost not know and whatever thy notice or perswasion be the thing in it self will be more secure and thou shalt find it in the end But if any mad is curious of the event and would fain know of the event of his soul let him reveal the state of his soul to a godly and a prudent Spiritual Guide and he when he hath search'd diligently and observ'd him curiously can tell him all that is to be told and give him all the assurance that is to be given and warrant him as much as himself hath receiv'd a warrant to do it Unless God be pleased to draw the Curtains of his Sanctuary and open the secrets of his eternal Counsel there is no other certainty of an actual pardon but what the Church does minister and what can be prudently derived from our selves For to every such curious person this only is to be said Do you believe the promises That if we confess our sins and forsake them if we believe and obey we shall be pardoned and saved If so then enquire whether or no thou dost perform the conditions of thy pardon How shall I know Examine thy self try thy own spirit and use the help of a holy and a wise guide He will teach thee to know thy self If after all this thou answerest that thou canst not tell whether thy heart be right and thy duty acceptable then sit down and hope the best and work in as much light and hope as thou hast but never enquire after the secret of God when thou dost not so much as know thy self and how canst thou hope to espy the most private Counsels of Heaven when thou canst not certainly perceive what is in thy own hand and heart But if thou canst know thy self you need not enquire any further If thy duty be performed you may be secure of all that is on Gods part 70. V. When ever repentance begins know that from thence-forward the sinner begins to live but then never let that repentance die Do not at any time say I have repented of such a sin and am at peace for that for a man ought never to be at peace with sin nor think that any thing we can do is too much Our repentance for sin is never to be at an end till faith it self shall be no more for Faith and Repentance are but the same Covenant and so long as the just does live by faith in the Son of God so long he lives by repentance for by that faith in him our sins are pardoned that is by becoming his Disciples we enter into the Covenant of Repentance And he undervalues his sin and overvalues his sorrow who at any time fears he shall do too much or make his pardon too secure and therefore sets him down and says Now I have repented 71. VI. Let no man ever say he hath committed the sin against the Holy Ghost or the unpardonable sin for there are but few that do that and he can best confute himself if he can but tell that he is sorrowful for it and begs for pardon and hopes for it and desires to make amends this man hath already obtained some degrees of pardon and S. Paul's argument in this case also is a demonstration If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life That is if God to enemies gives the first grace much more will he give the second if they make use of the first For from none to a little is an infinite distance but from a little to a great deal is not so much And therefore since God hath given us means of pardon and the grace of Repentance we may certainly expect the fruit of pardon for it is a greater thing to give repentance to a sinner than to give pardon to the penitent Whoever repents hath not committed the great sin the Unpardonable For it is long of the man not of the sin that any sin is unpardonable 72. VII Let every man be careful of entring into any great states of sin lest he be unawares guilty of the great offence Every resisting of a holy motion calling us from sin every act against a clear reason or revelation every confident progression in sin every resolution to commit a sin in despite of conscience is an access towards the great sin or state of evil Therefore concerning such a man let others fear since he will not and save him with fear plucking him out of the fire but when he begins to return that great fear is over in many degrees for even in Moses's law there were expiations appointed not only for error but for presumptuous sins The PRAYER I. O Eternal God gracious and merciful I adore the immensity and deepest abysse of thy Mercy and Wisdom that thou dost pity our infirmities instruct our ignorances pass by thousands of our follies invitest us to repentance and dost offer pardon because we are miserable and because we need it and because thou art good and delightest in shewing mercy Blessed be thy holy Name and blessed be that infinite Mercy which issues forth from the fountains of our Saviour to refresh our weariness and to water our stony hearts and to cleanse our polluted souls O cause that these thy mercies may not run in vain but may redeem my lost soul and recover thy own inheritance and sanctifie thy portion the heart of thy servant and all my faculties II. BLessed Jesus thou becamest a little lower than the Angels but thou didst make us greater doing that for us which thou didst not do for them Thou didst not pay for them one drop of blood nor endure one stripe to recover the fallen stars nor give one groan to snatch the accursed spirits from their fearful prisons but thou didst empty all thy veins for me and gavest thy heart to redeem me from innumerable sins and an intolerable calamity O my God let all this heap of excellencies and glorious mercies be effective upon thy servant and work in me a sorrow for my sins and a perfect hatred of them a watchfulness against temptations severe and holy resolutions active and effective of my duty O let me never fall from sin to sin nor persevere in any nor love any thing which thou hatest but give me thy holy Spirit to conduct and rule me for ever and make me obedient to thy good Spirit never to grieve him never to resist him never to quench him Keep me O Lord with thy mighty power from falling into presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over me so shall I be innocent from the great offence Let me never despair of thy mercies by reason of my sins nor neglect my repentance by reason of thy infinite loving kindness but let thy goodness bring me and all sinners to repentance and thy
to sin and a pursuance of that resolution by abstaining from the occasions by praying for the Divine aid by using the proper remedies for its mortification This is essential to repentance and must be in every man in the highest kind For he that does not hate sin so as rather to chuse to suffer any evil than to do any loves himself more than he loves God because he fears to displease himself rather than to displease him and therefore is not a true penitent 13. But although this be not grief or sorrow properly but hatred yet in hatred there is ever a sorrow if we have done or suffered what we hate and whether it be sorrow or no is but a speculation of Philosophy but no ingredient of duty It is that which will destroy sin and bring us to God and that is the purpose of repentance 14. For it is remarkable that sorrow is indeed an excellent instrument of repentance apt to set forward many of its ministeries and without which men ordinarily will not leave their sins but if the thing be done though wholly upon the discourses of reason upon intuition of the danger upon contemplation of the unworthiness of sin or only upon the principle of hope or fear it matters not which is the beginning of repentance For we find fear reckoned to be the beginning of wisdom that is of repentance of wise and sober counsels by Solomon We find sorrow to be reckoned as the beginning of repentance by S. Paul Godly sorrow worketh repentance not to be repented of So many ways as there are by which God works repentance in those whom he will bring unto salvation to all the kinds of these there are proper apportion'd passions and as in all good things there is pleasure so in all evil there is pain some way or other and therefore to love and hatred or which is all one to â—leasure and displeasure all passions are reducible as all colours are to black and white So that though in all repentances there is not in every person felt that sharpness of sensitive compunction and sorrow that is usual in sad accidents of the world yet if the sorrow be upon the intellectual account though it be not much perceived by inward sharpnesses but chiefly by dereliction and leaving of the sin it is that sorrow which is possible and in our power and that which is necessary to repentance 15. For in all inquiries concerning penitential sorrow if we will avoid scruple and vexatious fancies we must be careful not to account of our sorrow by the measures of sense but of religion David grieved more for the sickness of his child and the rebellion of his son so far as appears in the story and the Prophet Jeremy in behalf of the Jews for the death of their glorious Prince Josiah and S. Paula Romana at the death of her children were more passionate and sensibly afflicted than for their sins against God that is they felt more sensitive trouble in that than this and yet their repentances were not to be reproved because our penitential sorrow is from another cause and seated in other faculties and fixed upon differing objects and works in other manners and hath a divers signification and is fitted to other purposes and therefore is wholly of another nature It is a displeasure against sin which must be expressed by praying against it and fighting against it but all other expressions are extrinsecal to it and accidental and are no parts of it because they cannot be under a command as all the parts and necessary actions of repentance are most certainly 16. Indeed some persons can command their tears so Gellia in the Epigram Si quis adest jussae prosiliunt lachrymae She could cry when company was there to observe her weeping for her Father and so can some Orators and many Hypocrites and there are some that can suppress their tears by art and resolution so Vlysses did when he saw his wife weep he pitied her but Intra palpebras ceu cornu immota tenebat Lumina vel ferrum lachrymas astúque premebat he kept his tears within his eye-lids as if they had been in a phial which he could pour forth or keep shut at his pleasure But although some can do this at pleasure yet all cannot And therefore S. John Climacus speaks of certain penitents 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who because they could not weep expressed their Repentance by beating their breasts and yet if all men could weep when they list yet they may weep and not be sorrowful and though they can command tears yet sorrow is no more to be commanded than hunger and therefore is not a part or necessary duty of Repentance when sorrow is taken for a sensitive trouble 17. But yet there is something of this also to be added to our duty If our constitution be such as to be apt to weep and sensitively troubled upon other intellectual apprehensions of differing objects unless also they find the same effect in their Repentances there will be some cause to suspect that their hatred of sin and value of obedience and its rewards are not so great as they ought to be The Masters of spiritual life give this rule Sciat se culpabiliter durum qui deflet damna temporis vel mortem amici dolorem verò pro peccatis lachrymis non ostendit He that weeps for temporal losses and does not in the same manner express his sorrow for his sins is culpably obdurate which proposition though piously intended is not true For tears are emanations of a sensitive trouble or motion of the heart and not properly subject to the understanding and therefore a man may innocently weep for the death of his friend and yet shed no tears when he hath told a lie and still be in that state of sorrow and displeasure that he had rather die himself than chuse to tell another lie Therefore the rule only hath some proportions of probability in the effect of several intellectual apprehensions As he that is apt to weep when he hath done an unhansome action to his friend who yet will never punish him and is not apt to express his sorrow in the same manner when he hath offended God I say he may suspect his sorrow not to be so great or so real but yet abstractedly from this circumstance to weep or not to weep is nothing to the duty of Repentance save only that it is that ordinary sign by which some men express some sort of sorrow And therefore I understand not the meaning of that prayer of S. Austin Domine dagratiam lachrymarum Lord give me the grace of tears for tears are no duty and the greatest sorrow oftentimes is the driest and excepting that there is some sweetness and ease in shedding tears and that they accompany a soft and a contemplative person an easie and a good nature and such as is apt for religious impressions I know no use of them but
which Heaven is opened and that is the word and baptism at the first and ever after the holy Sacrament of the Supper of the Lord and all the parts of the Bishops and Priests advocation and intercession in holy prayers and offices 59. But as for the declarative absolution although it is rather an act of wisdom than of power it being true as S. Hierome said that as the Priests of the Law could only discern and neither cause nor remove leprosies so the Ministers of the Gospel when they retain or remit sins do but in the one judge how long we continue guilty and in the other declare when we are clear and free yet this very declaration is of great use and in many cases of great effect For as God did in the case of David give to the Prophet Nathan a particular special and extraordinary commission so to the Ministers of the Gospel he gives one that is ordinary and perpetual He had a prophetical evidence but these have a certainty of faith as to one of the propositions and as to the other some parts of humane experience to assure them 1. of Gods gracious pardon to the penitent and 2. of the sincerity of their repentance and therefore can with great effect minister to the comfort of sad and afflicted penitents This does declare the pardon upon observation of the just grounds and dispositions but the dispensation of Ecclesiastical Sacraments does really minister to it not only by consigning it but as instruments of the Divine appointment to convey proper mercies to worthily disposed persons 60. II. But the other great thing which I was to say in this Article is this That the judicial absolution of the Priest does effect no material event or change in the penitent as to the giving the pardon and therefore cannot be it which Christ intended in the giving those excellent powers of remitting and retaining sins Now upon this will the whole issue depend Does the Priest absolve him whom God condemns God is the supreme Judge and though we may minister to his judgment yet we cannot contradict it or can the Priest condemn him whom God absolves That also is impossible He is near that justifieth me who will contend with me and if God be with us who can be against us Or will not God pardon unless the Priest absolves us That may become a sad story For he may be malicious or ignorant or interested or covetous and desirous to serve his own ends upon the ruine of my soul and therefore God dispenses his mercies by more regular just and equal measures than the accidental sentences of unknowing or imprudent men If then the Priest ministers only to repentance by saying I absolve thee what is it that he effects For since Gods pardon does not go by his measures his must go by Gods measures and the effect of that will be this God works his own work in us and when his Minister observes the effects of the Divine grace he can and ought to publish and declare to all the purposes of comfort and institution that the person is absolved that is he is in the state of grace and Divine favour in which if he perseveres he shall be saved But all this while the work is supposed to be done before and if it be the Priest hath nothing left for him to do but to approve to warrant and to publish And the case in short is this 61. Either the sinner hath repented worthily or he hath not If he hath then God hath pardoned him already by vertue of all the promises Evangelical If he hath not repented worthily the Priest cannot ought not to absolve him and therefore can by this absolution effect no new thing The work is done before the Priestly absolution and therefore cannot depend upon it Against this no Sect of men opposes any thing that I know of excepting only the Roman Doctors who yet confess the argument of value if the penitent be contrite But they add this that there is an imperfect Contrition which by a distinct word they call Attrition which is a natural grief or a grief proceeding wholly from fear or smart and hath in it nothing of love and this they say does not justifie the man nor pardon the sin of it self But if this man come to the Priest and confess and be absolv'd that absolution makes this attrition to become contrition or which is all one it pardons the mans sins and though this imperfect penitent cannot hope for pardon upon the confidence of that indisposition yet by the Sacrament of Penance or Priestly absolution he may hope it and shall not be deceived 62. Indeed if this were true it were a great advantage to some persons who need it mightily But they are the worst sort of penitents and such which though they have been very bad yet now resolve not to be very good if they can any other way escape it and by this means the Priests power is highly advanc'd and to submit to it would be highly necessary to most men and safest to all But if this be not true then to hope it is a false confidence and of danger to the event of souls it is a nurse of carelesness and gives boldness to imperfect penitents and makes them to slacken their own piety because they look for security upon confidence of that which will be had without trouble or mortification even the Priests absolution This therefore I am to examine as being of very great concernment in the whole article of Repentance and promised to be considered in the beginning of this Paragraph SECT V. Attrition or the imperfect Repentance though with Absolution is not sufficient 63. BY Attrition they mean the most imperfect Repentance that is a sorrow proceeding from fear of Hell a sorrow not mingled with the love of God This sorrow newly begun they say is sufficient for pardon if the sins be confest and the party absolved by the Priest This indeed is a short process and very easie but if it be not effectual and valid the persons that rely upon it are miserably undone Here therefore I consider 64. I. Attrition being a word of the Schools not of the Scripture or of antiquity means what they please to have it and although they differ in assigning its definition yet it being the least and the worst part of repentance every action of any man that can in any sence be said to repent upon consideration of any the most affrighting threatnings in the Gospel cannot be denied to have attrition Now such a person who being scar'd comes to confess his sin may still retain his affections to it for nothing but love to God can take away his love from evil and if there be love in it it is Contrition not Attrition From these premises it follows that if the Priest can absolve him that is attrite he may pardon him who hath affections to sin still remaining that is one who
a life of piety and holiness SECT VIII 100. XIV IN the making Confession of our sins let us be most careful to do it so as may most glorifie God and advance the reputation of his wisdom his justice and his mercy For if we consider it in all Judicatories of the world and in all the arts and violences of men which have been used to extort confessions their purposes have been that justice should be done that the publick wisdom and authority should not be dishonoured that publick criminals should not be defended or assisted by publick pity or the voice of the people sharpned against the publick rods and axes by supposing they have smitten the innocent Confession of the crime prevents all these evils and does well serve all these good ends Gnossius haec Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna Castigátque audÃtque dolos subigÃtque fateri So the Heathens did suppose was done in the lower regions The Judge did examine and hear their crimes and crafts and even there compell'd them to confess that the eternal Justice may be publickly acknowledg'd for all the honour that we can do to the Divine attributes is publickly to confess them and make others so to do for so God is pleased to receive honour from us Therefore repentance being a return to God a ceasing to dishonour him any more and a restoring him so far as we can to the honour we depriv'd him of it ought to be done with as much humility and sorrow with as clear glorifications of God and condemnations of our selves as we can To which purpose 101. XV. He that confesseth his sins must do it with all sincerity and simplicity of spirit not to serve ends or to make Religion the minister of design but to destroy our sin to shame and punish our selves to obtain pardon and institution always telling our sad story just as it was in its acting excepting where the manner of it and its nature or circumstances require a veil and then the sin must not be concealed nor yet so represented as to keep the first immodesty alive in him that acted it or to become a new temptation in him that hears it But this last caution is only of use in our confessions to the Minister of holy things for our confession to God as it is to other purposes so must be in other manners but I have already given accounts of this I only add that 102. XVI All our confessions must be accusations of our selves and not of others For if we confess to God then to accuse another may spoil our own duty but it can serve no end for God already knows all that we can say to lessen or to aggravate the sin if we confess to men then to name another or by any way to signifie or reveal him is a direct defamation and unless the naming of the sin do of it self declare the assisting party it is at no hand to be done or to be inquired into But if a man hath committed incest and there is but one person in the world with whom he could commit it in this case the confessing his sin does accuse another but then such a Guide of souls is to be chosen to whom that person is not known but if by this or some other expedient the fame of others be not secured it is best to confess that thing to God only and so much of the sin as may aggravate it to an equal height with its own kind in special may be communicated to him of whom we ask comfort and counsel and institution If to confess to a Priest were a Divine Commandment this caution would have in it some difficulty and much variety but since the practice is recommended to us wholly upon the stock of prudence and great charity the doing it ought not in any sence to be uncharitable to others 103. XVII He that hath injur'd his neighbour must confess to him and he that hath sinn'd against the Church must make amends and confess to the Church when she declares her self to be offended For when a fact is done which cannot naturally be undone the only duty that can remain is to rescind it morally and make it not to be any longer or any more For as our conservation is a continual creation so is the perpetuating of a sin a continuation of its being and actings and therefore to cease from it is the death of the sin for the present and sor the future but to confess it â—o hate it to wish it had never been done is all the possibility that is left to annihilate the act which naturally can never be undone and therefore to all persons that are injur'd to confess the sin must needs be a duty because it is the first part of amends and sometimes all that is left but it is that which God and man requires before they are willing to pardon the offender For until the erring man confesses it does not appear who is innocent and who is guilty or whether the offended person have any thing to forgive And this is the meaning of these preceptive words of S. James Confess your sins one to another that is to the Church who are scandalized and who can forgive and pray for the repenting sinner and confess to him that is injur'd that you may do him right that so you may cease to do wrong that you may make your way for pardon and offer amends This only and all of this is the meaning of the precept 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 say the Greek Commentaries upon Acts 19.18 Every faithful man must declare or confess his sins and must stand in separation that he may be reproved and that he may promise he will not do the same again according to that which is said Do thou first declare thy sins that thou mayest be justified nad again A just man in the beginning of his speech is an accuser of himself No man is a true penitent if he refuses or neglects to confess his sins to God in all cases or to his brother if he have injur'd him or to the Church if she be offended or where she requires it for wheresoever a man is bound to repent there he is bound to Confession which is an acknowledgement of the injury and the first instance and publication of repentance In other cases Confession may be of great advantage in these it is a duty 104. XVIII Let no man think it a shame to confess his sin or if he does yet let not that shame deterr him from it There is indeed a shame in confession because nakedness is discovered but there is also a glory in it because there is a cure too there is repentance and amendment This advice is like that which is given to persons giving their lives in a good cause requiring thâ—â— not to be afraid that is not to suffer such a fear as to be hindred from dying For if they suffer a great natural fear and yet in
despite of that fear die constantly and patiently that fear as it increases their suffering may also accidentally increase their glory provided that the fear be not criminal it its cause nor effective of any unworthy comportment So is the shame in confession a great mortification of the man and highly punitive of the sin and such that unless it hinders the duty is not to be directly reproved but it must be taken care of that it be a shame only for the sin which by how much greater it is by so much the more earnestly the man ought to fly to all the means of remedy and instruments of expiation and then the greater the shame is which the sinneâ— suffers the more excellent is the repentance which suffers so much for the extinction of his sin But at no hand let the shame affright the duty but let it be remembred that this confession is but the memory of the shame which began when the sin was acted and abode but as a handmaid of the guilt and goes away with it Confession of sins opens them to man but draws a veil before them that God will the less behold them And it is a material consideration that if a man be impatient of the shame here when it is revealed but to one man who is also by all the ties of Religion and by common Honesty oblig'd to conceal them or if he account it intolerable that a sin publick in the scandal and the infamy should be made publick by solemnity to punish and to extinguish it the man will be no gainer by refusing to confess when he shall remember that sins unconfessed are most commonly unpardon'd and unpardon'd sins will be made publick before all Angels and all the wise and good men of the world when their shame shall have nothing to make it tolerable 105. XIX When a penitent confesses his sin the holy man that ministers to his Repentance and hears his Confession must not without great cause lessen the shame of the repenting man he must directly encourage the duty but not add confidence to the sinner For whatsoever directly lessens the shame lessens also the hatred of sin and his future caution and the reward of his repentance and takes off that which was an excellent defensative against the sin But with the shame the Minister of Religion is to do as he is to do with the mans sorrow so long as it is a good instrument of repentance so long it is to be permitted and assisted but when it becomes irregular or dispos'd to evil events it is to be taken off And so must the shame of the penitent man when there is danger lest the man be swallowed up by too much sorrow and shame or when it is perceiv'd that the shame alone is a hinderance to the duty In these cases if the penitent man can be perswaded directly and by choice for ends of piety and religion to suffer the shame then let his spirit be supported by other means but if he cannot let there be such a confidence wrought in him which is deriv'd from the circumstances of the person or the universal calamity and iniquity of man or the example of great sinners like himself that have willingly undergone the yoke of the Lord or from consideration of the Divine mercies or from the easiness and advantages of the duty but let nothing be offer'd to lessen the hatred or the greatness of the sin lest a temptation to sin hereafter be sowed in the furrows of the present Repentance 106. XX. He that confesseth his sins to the Minister of Religion must be sure to express all the great lines of his folly and calamity that is all that by which he may make a competent judgment of the state of his soul. Now if the man be of a good life and yet in his tendency to perfection is willing to pass under the method and discipline of greater sinners there is no advice to be given to him but that he do not curiously tell those lesser irregularities which vex his peace rather than discompose his conscience but what is most remarkable in his infirmities or the whole state and the greatest marks and instances and returns of them he ought to signifie for else he can serve no prudent end in his confession 107. But secondly if the man have committed a great sin it is a high prudence and an excellent instance of his repentance that he confess it declaring the kind of it if it be of that nature that the spiritual man may conceal it But if upon any other account he be bound to reveal every notice of the fact let him transact that affair wholly between God and his own soul. And this of declaring a single action as it is of great use in the repentance of every man so it puts on some degrees of necessity if the man be of a sad amazed and an afflicted conscience For there are some unfortunate persons who have committed some secret facts of shame and horror at the remembrance of which they are amazed of the pardon of which they have no sign for the expiation of which they use no instrument and they walk up and down like distracted persons to whom reason is useless and company is unpleasant and their sorrow is not holy but very great and they know not what to do because they will not ask I have observed some such and the only remedy that was fit to be prescribed to such persons was to reveal their sin to a spiritual man and by him to be put into such a state of remedy and comfort as is proper for their condition It is certain that many persons have perished for want of counsel and comfort which were ready for them if they would have confessed their sin for he that concealeth his sin non dirigetur saith Solomon he shall not be counselled or directed 108. And it is a very great fault amongst a very great part of Christians that in their inquiries of Religion even the best of them ordinarily ask but these two questions Is it lawful Is it necessary If they find it lawful they will do it without scruple or restraint and then they suffer imperfection or receive the reward of folly For it may be lawful and yet not fit to be done It may be it is not expedient And he that will do all that he can do lawfully would if he durst do something that is not lawful And as great an error is on the other hand in the other question He that too strictly inquires of an action whether it be necessary or no would do well to ask also whether it be good whether it be of advantage to the interest of his soul For if a Christian man or woman that is a redeemed blessed obliged person a great beneficiary endeared to God beyond all the comprehensions of a mans imagination one that is less than the least of all Gods mercies and yet hath received many
because they could not put to death Sejanus's daughters as being Virgins defloured them after sentence that by that barbarity they might be capable of the utmost Cruelty it makes God to be all that for which any other thing or person is or can be hated for it makes him neither to be good nor just nor reasonable but a mighty enemy to the biggest part of mankind it makes him to hate what himself hath made and to punish that in another which in himself he decreed should not be avoided it charges the wisdom of God with solly as having no means to glorifie his justice but by doing unjustly by bringing in that which himself hates that he might do what himself loves doing as Tiberius did to Brutus and Nero the Sons of Germanicus Variâ fraude induxit ut concitarentur ad convitia concitati perderentur provoking them to rail that he might punish their reproachings This opinion reproaches the words of the Spirit of Scripture it charges God with Hypocrisie and want of Mercy making him a Father of Cruelties not of Mercy and is a perfect overthrow of all Religion and all Laws and all Government it destroys the very being and nature of all Election thrusting a man down to the lowest form of Beasts and Birdâ— to whom a Spontaneity of doing certain actions is given by God but it is in them so natural that it is unavoidable Now concerning this hoâ—rid opinion I for my part shall say nothing but this That he that says there was no such man as Alexander would tell a horrible lie and be injurious to all story and to the memory and same of that great Prince but he that should say It is true there was such a man as Alexander but he was a Tyrant and a Blood-sucker cruel and injurious false and dissembling an enemy of mankind and for all the reasons of the world to be hated and reproached would certainly dishonour Alexander more and be his greatest enemy So I think in this That the Atheists who deny there is a God do not so impiously against God as they that charge him with foul appellatives or maintain such sentences which if they were true God could not be true But these men Madam have nothing to do in the Question of Original Sin save only that they say that God did decree that Adam should fall and all the sins that he sinned and all the world after him are no effects of choice but of predestination that is they were the actions of God rather than man But because these men even to their brethren seem to speak evil things of God therefore the more wary and temperate of the Calvinists bring down the order of reprobation lower affirming that God looked upon all mankind in Adam as fallen into his displeasure hated by God truly guilty of his sin liable to Eternal damnation and they being all equally condemned he was pleased to separate some the smaller number far and irresistibly bring them to Heaven but the far greater number he passed over leaving them to be damned for the sin of Adam and so they think they salve Gods Justice and this was the design and device of the Synod of Dort Now to bring this to pass they teach concerning Original Sin 1. That by this sin our first Parents fell from their Original righteousness and communion with God and so became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body 2. That whatsoever death was due to our first Parents for this sin they being the root of all mankind and the guilt of this sin being imputed the same is conveyed to all their posterity by ordinary generation 3. That by this Original corruption we are utterly indisposed disabled and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil and that from hence proceed all actual transgressions 4. This corruption of nature remains in the regenerate and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified yet both it self and all the motions thereof are truly and properly sin 5. Original sin being a transgression of the righteous Law of God and contrary thereunto doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the Law and so made subject to death with all miseries spiritual temporal and eternal These are the sayings of the late Assembly at Westminster Against this heap of errors and dangerous propositions I have made my former discoursings and statings of the Question of Original sin These are the Doctrines of the Presbyterian whose face is towards us but it is over-against us in this and many other questions of great concernment Nemo tam propè proculque nobis He is nearest to us and furthest from us but because I have as great a love to their persons as I have a dislike to some of their Doctrines I shall endeavour to serve truth and them by reproving those propositions which make truth and them to stand at distance Now I shall first speak to the thing in general and its designs then I shall make some observations upon the particulars 1. This device of our Presbyterians and of the Synod of Dort is but an artifice to save their proposition harmless and to stop the out-cries of Scripture and reason and of all the World against them But this way of stating the Article of reprobation is as horrid in the effect as the other For 1. Is it by a natural consequent that we are guilty of Adams sin or is it by the decree of God Naturally it cannot be for then the sins of all our forefathers who are to their posterity the same that Adam was to his must be ours and not only Adams first sin but his others are ours upon the same account But if it be by the Decree of God by his choice and constitution that it should be so as Mr. Calvin and Dr. Twisse that I may name no more for that side do expresly teach it follows that God is the Author of our Sin So that I may use Mr. Calvins words How is it that so many Nations with their Children should be involved in the fall without remedy but because God would have it so And if that be the matter then to God as to the cause must that sin and that damnation be accounted And let it then be considered whether this be not as bad as the worst For the Supralapsarians say God did decree that the greatest part of mankind should perish only because he would The Sublapsarians say that God made it by his decree necessary that all we who were born of Adam should be born guilty of Original Sin and he it was who decreed to damn whom he pleased for that sin in which he decreed they should be born and both these he did for no other consideration but because he would Is it not therefore evident that he absolutely decreed Damnation to these Persons
here also they are not to be confuted and as for the particular Scriptures unless we have the advantage of essential reason taken from the Divine Attributes they will oppose Scripture to Scripture and have as much advantage to expound the opposite places as the Jews have in their Questions of the Messias anâ— therefore si meos ipse corymbos necterem if I might make mine own arguments in their Society and with their leave I would upon that very account suspect the usual discourses of the effects and Oeconomy of Original sin 8. For where will they reckon the beginning of Predestination will they reckon it in Adam after the Fall or in Christ immediately promised If in Adam then they return to the Presbyterian way and run upon all the rocks before reckoned enough to break all the world in pieces If in Christ they reckon it and so they do then thus I argue If we are all reckoned in Christ before we were born then how can we be reckoned in Adam when we are born I speak as to the matter of Predestination to salvation or damnation For as for the intermedial temporal evils and dangers spiritual and sad infirmities they are our nature and might with Justice have been all the portion God had given to Adam and therefore may be so to us and consequently not at all to be reckoned in this enquiry But certainly as to the main 9. If God looks upon us all in Christ then by him we are rescued from Adam so much is done for us before we were born For if this is not to be reckoned till after we were born then Adams sin prevailed really in some periods and to some effects for which God in Christ had provided no remedy for it gave no remedy to children till after they were born but irremediably they were born children of wrath but if a remedy were given to Children before they were born then they are born in Christ not in Adam but if this remedy was not given to Children before they were born then it follows that we were not at first looked upon in Christ but in Adam and consequently he was caput praedestinationis the head of predestination or else there were two the one before we were born the other after So that haereâ—leâ—hâ—lis arundo The arrow sticks fast and it cannot be pulled out unless by other instruments than are commonly in fashion However it be yet methinks this a very good probable Argument As Adam sinned before any child was born so was Christ promised before and that our Redeemer shall not have more force upon children that they should be born beloved and quitted from wrath than Adam our Progenitor shall have to cause that we be born hated and in a damnable condition wants so many degrees of probability that it seems to dishonour the mercy of God and the reputation of his goodness and the power of his redemption For this serves as an Antidote and Antinomy of their great objection pretended by these learned persons for whereas they say they the rather affirm this because it is an honour to the redemption which our Saviour wrought for us that it rescued us from the sentence of damnation which we had incurred To this I say that the honour of our blessed Saviour does no way depend upon our imaginations and weak propositions and neither can the reputation and honour of the Divine goodness borrow aids and artificial supports from the dishonour of his Justice and it is no reputation to a Physician to say he hath cured us of an evil which we never had and shall we accuse the Father of mercies to have wounded us for no other reason but that the Son may have the Honour to have cured us I understand not that He that makes a necessity that he may find a remedy is like the Roman whom Cato found fault withall he would commit a fault that he might beg a pardon he had rather write bad Greek that he might make an apology than write good Latin and need none But however Christ hath done enough for us even all that we did need and since it is all the reason in the world we should pay him all honour we may remember that it is a greater favour to us that by the benefit of our blessed Saviour who was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world we were reckoned in Christ and born in the accounts of the Divine favour I say it is a greater favour that we were born under the redemption of Christ than under the sentence and damnation of Adam and to prevent an evil is a greater favour than to cure it so that if to do honour to Gods goodness and to the graces of our Redeemer we will suppose a need we may do him more honour to suppose that the promised seed of the woman did do us as early a good as the sin of Adam could do us mischief and therefore that in Christ we are born quitted from any such supposed sentence and not that we bring it upon our shoulders into the world with us But this thing relies only upon their suppositions For if we will speak of what is really true and plainly revealed From all the sins of all mankind Christ came to redeem us He came to give us a supernatural birth to tell us all his Fathers will to reveal to us those glorious promises upon the expectation of which we might be enabled to do every thing that is required He came to bring us grace and life and spirit to strengthen us against all the powers of Hell and Earth to sanctifie our afflictions which from Adam by Natural generation descended on us to take out the sting of death to make it an entrance to immortal life to assure us of resurrection to intercede for us and to be an advocate for us when we by infirmity commit sin to pardon us when we repent Nothing of which could be derived to us from Adam by our natural generation Mankind now taken in his whole constitution and design is like the Birds of Paradise which travellers tell us of in the Molucco Islands born without legs but by a celestial power they have a recompence made to them for that defect and they always hover in the air and feed on the dew of Heaven so are we birds of Paradise but cast out from thence and born without legs without strength to walk in the Laws of God or to go to Heaven but by a power from above we are adopted in our new birth to a celestial conversation we feed on the dew of Heaven The just does live by faith and breaths in this new life by the spirit of God For from the first Adam nothing descended to us but an infirm body and a naked soul evil example and a body of death ignorance and passion hard labour and a cursed field a captive soul and an imprisoned body that is a soul naturally apt to comply with the
that while the good man lived were never thought of for his daughters were Virgins and his Sons lived in holy coelibate all their lives and himself lived in chast Wedlock and yet his memory had rotted in perpetual infamy had not God in whose sight the memory of the Saints is precious preserved it by the testimony of Clemens Alexandrinus and from him of Eusebius and Nicephorus But in the Catalogue of Hereticks made by Philastrius he stands mark'd with a black character as guilty of many heresies By which one testimony we may guess what trust is to be given to those Catalogues Well This good man had ill luck to fall into unskilful hands at first but Irenaeus Justin Martyr Lactantius to name no more had better fortune for it being still extant in their writings that they were of the Millenary opinion Papius before and Nepos after were censured hardly and the opinion put into the catalogue of heresies and yet these men never suspected as guilty but like the children of the Captivity walkt in the midst of the flame and not so much as the smell of fire passed on them But the uncertainty of these things is very memorable in the story of Eustathius Bishop of Antioch contesting with Eusebius Pamphilus Eustathius accused Eusebius for going about to corrupt the Nicene Creed of which slander he then acquitted himself saith Socrates and yet he is not cleared by posterity for still he is suspected and his fame not clear However Eusebius then scaped well but to be quit with his Adversary he recriminates and accuses him to be a favourer of Sabellius rather than of the Nicene Canons an imperfect accusation God knows when the crime was a suspicion proveable only by actions capable of divers constructions and at the most made but some degrees of probability and the fact it self did not consist in indivisibili and therefore was to stand or fall to be improved or lessened according to the will of the Judges whom in this cause Eustathius by his ill fortune and a potent Adversary found harsh towards him in so much that he was for heresy deposed in the Synod of Antioch and though this was laid open in the eye of the world as being most ready at hand with the greatest ease charged upon every man and with greatest difficulty acquitted by any man yet there were other suspicions raised upon him privately or at least talkt of ex post facto and pretended as causes of his deprivation lest the sentence should seem too hard for the first offence And yet what they were no man could tell saith the story But it is observable what Socrates saith as in excuse of such proceedings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is the manner among the Bishops when they accuse them that are deposed they call them wicked but they publish not the actions of their impiety It might possibly be that the Bishops did it in tenderness of their reputation but yet hardly for to punish a person publickly and highly is a certain declaring the person punished guilty of a high crime and then to conceal the fault upon pretence to preserve his reputation leaves every man at liberty to conjecture what he pleaseth who possibly will believe it worse than it is in as much as they think his judges so charitable as therefore to conceal the fault lest the publishing of it should be his greatest punishment and the scandal greater than his deprivation However this course if it were just in any was unsafe in all for it might undoe more than it could preserve and therefore is of more danger than it can be of charity It is therefore too probable that the matter was not very fair for in publick sentences the acts ought to be publick but that they rather pretend heresy to bring their ends about shews how easie it is to impute that crime and how forward they were to doe it And that they might and did then as easily call Heretick as afterward when Vigilius was condemned of heresie for saying there were Antipodes or as the Fryars of late did who suspected Greek and Hebrew of heresie and called their Professors Hereticks and had like to have put Terence and Demosthenes into the Index Expurgatorius sure enough they rail'd at them pro concione therefore because they understood them not and had reason to believe they would accidentally be enemies to their reputation among the people 18. By this instance which was a while after the Nicene Council where the acts of the Church were regular judicial and orderly we may guess at the sentences passed upon heresy at such times and in such cases when their process was more private and their acts more tumultuary their information less certain and therefore their mistakes more easie and frequent And it is remarkable in the case of the heresy of Montanus the scene of whose heresie lay within the first three hundred years though it was represented in the Catalogues afterwards and possibly the mistake concerning it is to be put upon the score of Epiphanius by whom Montanus and his Followers were put into the Catalogue of Hereticks for commanding abstinence from meats as if they were unclean and of themselves unlawful Now the truth was Montanus said no such thing but commanded frequent abstinence enjoyned dry diet and an ascetick Table not for conscience sake but for Discipline and yet because he did this with too much rigour and strictness of mandate the Primitive Church misliked it in him as being too near their errour who by a Judaical superstition abstained from meats as from uncleanness This by the way will much concern them who place too much sanctity in such Rites and Acts of Discipline for it is an eternal Rule and of never failing truth that such abstinencies if they be obtruded as Acts of original immediate duty and sanctity are unlawfull and superstitious if they be for Discipline they may be good but of no very great profit it is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which S. Paul says profiteth but little and just in the same degree the Primitive Church esteemed them for they therefore reprehended Montanus for urging such abstinences with too much earnestness though but in the way of Discipline for that it was no more Tertullian who was himself a Montanist and knew best the opinions of his own Sect testifies and yet Epiphanius reporting the errours of Montanus commends that which Montanus truly and really taught and which the Primitive Church condemned in him and therefore represents that heresie to another sence and affixes that to Montanus which Epiphanius believed a heresie and yet which Montanus did not teach And this also among many other things lessens my opinion very much of the integrity or discretion of the old Catalogues of Hereticks and much abates my confidence towards them 19. And now that I have mentioned them casually in passing by I shall give a short account of them for
good For the great one of una fides unum baptisma did not conclude it to their understandings who were of the other opinion and men famous in their generations for it was no Argument that they who had been baptized by Johns Baptism should not be baptized in the name of Jesus because unus Deus unum baptisma and as it is still one Faith which a man confesseth several times and one Sacrament of the Eucharist though a man often communicates so it might be one baptism though often ministred And the unity of baptism might not be derived from the unity of the ministration but from the unity of the Religion into which they are baptized though baptized a thousand times yet because it was still in the name of the holy Trinity still into the death of Christ it might be unum baptisme Whether Saint Cyprian Firmilian and their Collegues had this discourse or no I know not I am sure they might have had much better to have evacuated the force of that Argument although I believe they had the wrong cause in hand But this is it that I say that when a Question is so undetermined in Scripture that the Arguments rely only upon such mystical places whence the best fancies can draw the greatest variety and such which perhaps were never intended by the holy Ghost it were good the Rivers did not swell higer than the Fountain and the confidence higher than the Argument and evidence for in this case there could not any thing be so certainly proved as that the disagreeing party should deserve to be condemned by a sentence of Excommunication for disbelieving it and yet they were which I wonder at so much the more because they who as it was since judg'd had the right cause had not any sufficient Argument from Scripture not so much as such mystical Arguments but did fly to the Tradition of the Church in which also I shall afterward shew they had nothing that was absolutely certain 3. I consider that there are divers places of Scripture containing in them mysteries and Questions of great concernment and yet the fabrick and constitution is such that there is no certain mark to determine whether the sence of them should be literal or figurative I speak not here concerning extrinsecal means of determination as traditive interpretations Councils Fathers Popes and the like I shall consider them afterward in their several places But here the subject matter being concerning Scripture in its own capacity I say there is nothing in the nature of the thing to determine the sence and meaning but it must be gotten out as it can and that therefore it is unreasonable that what of it self is ambiguous should be understood in its own prime sence and intention under the pain of either a sin or an Anathema I instance in that famous place from whence hath sprung that Question of Transubstantiation Hoc est corpus meum The words are plain and clear apt to be understood in the literal sence and yet this sence is so hard as it does violence to reason and therefore it is the Question whether or no it be not a figurative speech But here what shall we have to determine it What mean soever we take and to what sence you will expound it you shall be put to give an account why you expound other places of Scripture in the same case to quite contrary sences For if you expound it literally then besides that it seems to intrench upon the words of our blessed Saviour The words that I speak they are Spirit and they are life that is to be spiritually understood and it is a miserable thing to see what wretched shifts are used to reconcile the literal sence to these words and yet to distinguish it from the Capernaitical phancy but besides this why are not those other sayings of Christ expounded literally I am a Vine I am the Door I am a Rock Why do we fly to a figure in those parallel words This is the Covenant which I make between me and you and yet that Covenant was but the sign of the Covenant and why do we fly to a figure in a precept as well as in mystery and a proposition If thy right hand offend thee cut it off and yet we have figures enough to save a limb If it be said because reason tells us these are not to be expounded according to the letter This will be no plea for them who retain the literal exposition of the other instance against all reason against all Philosophy against all sense and against two or three sciences But if you expound these words figuratively besides that you are to contest against a world of prejudices you give your self the liberty which if others will use when either they have a reason or a necessity so to do they may perhaps turn all into Allegory and so may evacuate any precept and elude any Argument Well so it is that very wise men have expounded things Allegorically when they should have expounded them literally So did the famous Origen who as St. Hierom reports of him turned Paradise into an Allegory that he took away quite the truth of the Story and not only Adam was turned out of the Garden but the Garden it self out of Paradise Others expound things literally when they should understand them in Allegory so did the Ancient Papias understand Apocal. 20. Christs Millenary raign upon earth and so depressed the hopes of Christianity and their desires to the longing and expectation of temporal pleasures and satisfactions and he was followed by Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian Lactantius and indeed the whole Church generally till S. Austin and S. Hierom's time who first of any whose works are extant did reprove the errour If such great spirits be deceived in finding out what kind of sences be to be given to Scriptures it may well be endured that we who sit at their feet may also tread in the steps of them whose feet could not always tread aright 7. Fourthly I consider that there are some places of Scripture that have the selfe same expressions the same preceptive words the same reason and account in all appearance and yet either must be expounded to quite different sences or else we must renounce the Communion and the charities of a great part of Christendom And yet there is absolutely nothing in the thing or in its circumstances or in its adjuncts that can determine it to different purposes I instance in those great exclusive negatives for the necessity of both Sacraments Nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aquâ c. Nisi manducaveritis carnem filii hominis c. a non introibit in regnum coelorum for both these Now then the first is urged for the absolute indispensable necessity of baptism even in Infants insomuch that Infants go to part of Hell if inculpably both on their own and their Parents part they miss of baptism for that is the
left to our liberty to judge that way that makes best demonstration of our piety and of our love to God and truth not that way that is always the best argument of an excellent understanding for this may be a blessing but the other onely is a duty 6. And now that we are pitch'd upon that way which is most natural and reasonable in determination of ourselves rather then of questions which are often indeterminable since right Reason proceeding upon the best grounds it can viz. of Divine revelation and humane Authority and probability is our Guide stando in humanis and supposing the assistance of God's Spirit which he never denies them that fail not of their duty in all such things in which he requires truth and certainty it remains that we consider how it comes to pass that men are so much deceived in the use of their Reason and choice of their Religion and that in this account we distinguish those accidents which make errour innocent from those which make it become a Heresie SECT XI Of some causes of Errour in the exercise of Reason which are inculpate in themselves 1. THen I consider that there are a great many inculpable causes of Errour which are arguments of humane imperfections not convictions of a sin And First The variety of humane understandings is so great that what is plain and apparent to one is difficult and obscure to another one will observe a consequent from a common Principle and another from thence will conclude the quite contrary When S. Peter saw the Vision of the sheet let down with all sorts of beasts in it and a voice saying Surge Petre macta manduca if he had not by a particular assistance been directed to the meaning of the Holy Ghost possibly he might have had other apprehensions of the meaning of that Vision for to myself it seems naturally to speak nothing but the abolition of the Mosaicall Rites and the restitution of us to that part of Christian liberty which consists in the promiscuous eating of meats and yet besides this there want not some understandings in the world to whom these words seem to give S. Peter a power to kill Hereticall Princes Methinks it is a strange understanding that makes such extractions but Bozius and Baronius did so But men may understand what they please especially when they are to expound Oracles It was an argument of some wit but of singularity of understanding that happened in the great contestation between the Missals of S. Ambrose and S. Gregory The lot was thrown and God made to be Judge so as he was tempted to a Miracle to answer a question which themselves might have ended without much trouble The two Missals were laid upon the Altar and the Church-door shut and sealed By the morrow-Mattins they found Saint Gregorie's Missal torn in pieces saith the story and thrown about the Church but S. Ambrose's opened and laid upon the Altar in a posture of being read If I had been to judge of the meaning of this Miracle I should have made no scruple to have said it had been the will of God that the Missal of Saint Ambrose which had been anciently used and publickly tried and approved of should still be read in the Church and that of Gregory let alone it being torn by an Angelicall hand as an Argument of its imperfection or of the inconvenience of innovation But yet they judg'd it otherwise for by the tearing and scattering about they thought it was meant it should be used over all the world and that of S. Ambrose read onely in the Church of Milain I am more satisfied that the former was the true meaning then I am of the truth of the story But we must suppose that And now there might have been eternall disputings about the meaning of the Miracle and nothing left to determine when two fancies are the litigants and the contestations about probabilities hinc indé And I doubt not this was one cause of so great variety of Opinions in the Primitive Church when they proved their several Opinions which were mysterious Questions of Christian Theologie by testimonies out of the obscurer Prophets out of the Psalms and Canticles as who please to observe their arguments of discourse and actions of Council shall perceive they very much used to doe Now although mens understandings be not equal and that it is fit the best understandings should prevail yet that will not satisfie the weaker understandings because all men will not think that another understanding is better then his own at least not in such a particular in which with fancy he hath pleased himself But commonly they that are least able are most bold and the more ignorant is the more confident therefore it is but reason if he would have another bear with him he also should bear with another and if he will not be prescribed to neither let him prescribe to others And there is the more reason in this because such modesty is commonly to be desired of the more imperfect for wise men know the ground of their perswasion and have their confidence proportionable to their evidence others have not but over-act their trifles And therefore I said it is but a reasonable demand that they that have the least reason should not be most imperious and for others it being reasonable enough for all their great advantages upon other men they will be soon perswaded to it For although wise men might be bolder in respect of the persons of others less discerning yet they know there are but few things so certain as to create much boldness and confidence of assertion If they do not they are not the men I take them for 2. Secondly When an action or Opinion is commenc'd with zeal and piety against a known vice o◠a vicious person commonly all the mistakes of its proceeding are made sacred by the holiness of the principle and so abuses the perswasions of good people that they make it as a Characteristick note to distinguish good persons from bad and then whatever errour is consecrated by this means is therefore made the more lasting because it is accounted holy and the persons are not easily accounted Hereticks because they erred upon a pious principle There is a memorable instance in one of the greatest Questions of Christendome viz. concerning Images For when Philippicus had espied the Images of the six first Synods upon the front of a Church he caused them to be pulled down now he did it in hatred of the sixth Synod for he being a Monothelite stood condemned by that Synod The Catholicks that were zealous for the sixth Synod caused the Images and representments to be put up again and then sprung the Question concerning the lawfulness of Images in Churches Philippicus and his party strived by suppressing Images to doe disparagement to the sixth Synod the Catholicks to preserve the honour of the sixth Synod would uphold Images And then the
of Prophecy had not attested the Divinity both of his Person and his Office we should have wanted many degrees of confidence which now we have upon the truth of Christian Religion But now since we are foretold by this surer word of prophecy that is the prediction of Jesus Christ that Antichâ—ist should come in all wonders and signs and lying miracles and that the Church saw much of that already verified in Simon Magus Apollonius Tyaneus and Manetho and divers Hereticks it is now come to that pass that the Argument in its best advantage proves nothing so much as that the Doctrine which it pretends to prove is to be suspected because it was foretold that false doctrine should be obtruded under such pretences But then when not onely true Miracles are an insufficient argument to prove a Truth since the establishment of Christianity but that the Miracles themselves are false and spurious it makes that Doctrine in whose defence they come justly to be suspected because they are a demonstration that the interessed persons use all means leave nothing unattempted to prove their propositions but since they so fail as to bring nothing from God but something from the Devil for its justification it 's a great sign that the Doctrine is false because we know the Devil unless it be against his will does nothing to prove a true proposition that makes against him And now then those persons who will endure no man of another Opinion might doe well to remember how by their Exorcisms their Devils tricks at Lowdon and the other side pretending to cure mad folks and persons bewitched and the many discoveries of their juggling they have given so much reason to their adversaries to suspect their Doctrine that either they must not be ready to condemn their persons who are made suspicious by their indirect proceeding in attestation of that which they value so high as to call their Religion or else they must condemn themselves for making the scandal active and effectual 6. As for false Legends it will be of the same consideration because they are false Testimonies of Miracles that were never done which differs onely from the other as a lie in words from a lie in action but of this we have witness enough in that Decree of Pope Leo X. Session the eleventh of the last Lateran Council where he excommunicates all the forgers and inventers of Visions and false Miracles which is a testimony that it was then a practice so publick as to need a Law for its suppression And if any man shall doubt whether it were so or not let him see the Centum gravamina of the Princes of Germany where it is highly complain'd of But the extreme stupidity and sottishness of the inventers of lying stories is so great as to give occasion to some persons to suspect the truth of all Church-story witness the Legend of Lombardy of the Authour of which the Bishop of the Canaries gives this Testimony In illo enim libro miraculorum monstra saepius quà m vera miracula legas Hanc homo scripsit ferrei oris plumbei cordis animi certè parùm severi prudentis But I need not descend so low for S. Gregory and Ven. Bede themselves reported Miracles for the authority of which they onely had the report of the common people and it is not certain that S. Hierome had so much in his stories of S. Paul and S. Anthony and the Fauns and the Satyrs which appeared to them and desired their prayers But I shall onely by way of eminency note what Sir Thomas More says in his Epistle to Ruthal the King's Secretary before the Dialogue of Lucian Philopseudes that therefore he undertook the translation of that Dialogue to free the world from a Superstition that crept in under the face and title of Religion For such lies says he are transmitted to us with such authority that a certain Impostor had perswaded S. Austin that the very Fable which Lucian scoffs and makes sport withall in that Dialogue was a real story and acted in his own days The Epistle is worth the reading to this purpose but he says this abuse grew to such a height that scarce any life of any Saint or Martyr is truly related but is full of lies and lying wonders and some persons thought they served God if they did honour to God's Saints by inventing some prodigious story or Miracle for their reputation So that now it is no wonder if the most pious men are apt to believe and the greatest Historians are easie enough to report such Stories which serving to a good end are also consigned by the report of persons otherwise pious and prudent enough I will not instance in Vincentius his Speculum Turonensis Thomas Cantipratanus John Herolt Vitae Patrum nor the Revelations of Saint Brigit though confirmed by two Popes Martin V. and Boniface IX Even the best and most deliberate amongst them Lippoman Surius Lipsius Bzovius and Baronius are so full of Fables that they cause great disreputation to the other Monuments and Records of Antiquity and yet doe no advantage to the cause under which they serve and take pay They doe no good and much hurt but yet accidentally they may procure this advantage to Charity since they doe none to Faith that since they have so abused the credit of Story that our confidences want much of that support we should receive from her records of Antiquity yet the men that dissent and are scandalized by such proceedings should be excused if they should chance to be afraid of truth that hath put on garments of imposture and since much violence is done to the truth and certainty of their judging let none be done to their liberty of judging since they cannot meet a right Guide let them have a charitable Judge And since it is one very great argument against Simon Magus and against Mahomet that we can prove their Miracles to be Impostures it is much to be pitied if timorous and suspicious persons shall invincibly and honestly less apprehend a Truth which they see conveyed by such a testimony which we all use as an argument to reprove the Mahometan Superstition 7. Sixthly Here also comes in all the weaknesses and trifling prejudices which operate not by their own strength but by advantage taken from the weakness of some understandings Some men by a Proverb or a common saying are determined to the belief of a Proposition for which they have no argument better then such a proverbial sentence And when divers of the common people in Jerusalem were ready to yield their understandings to the belief of the Messias they were turned clearly from their apprehensions by that Proverb Look and see does any good thing come from Galilee and this When Christ comes no man knows from whence he is but this man was known of what parents of what City And thus the weakness of their understanding was abused and that
made the argument too hard for them And the whole seventh Chapter of S. John's Gospel is a perpetuall instance of the efficacy of such trifling prejudices and the vanity and weakness of popular understandings Some whole Ages have been abused by a Definition which being once received as most commonly they are upon slight grounds they are taken for certainties in any Science respectively and for Principles and upon their reputation men use to frame Conclusions which must be false or uncertain according as the Definitions are And he that hath observed any thing of the weaknesses of men and the successions of groundless Doctrines from Age to Age and how seldome Definitions which are put into Systems or that derive from the Fathers or are approved among School-men are examined by persons of the same interests will bear me witness how many and great inconveniences press hard upon the perswasions of men who are abused and yet never consider who hurt them Others and they very many are led by authority or examples of Princes and great personages Numquis credit ex Principibus Some by the reputation of one learned man are carried into any perswasion whatsoever And in the middle and latter Ages of the Church this was the more considerable because the infinite ignorance of the Clerks and the men of the Long robe gave them over to be led by those few Guides which were marked to them by an eminency much more then their Ordinary which also did the more amuse them because most commonly they were fit for nothing but to admire what they understood not Their learning then was some skill in the Master of the Sentences in Aquinas or Scotus whom they admired next to the most intelligent order of Angels hence came Opinions that made Sects and division of names Thomists Scotists Albertists Nominals Reals and I know not what monsters of Names and whole families of the same Opinion the whole institute of an Order being engaged to believe according to the Opinion of some leading man of the same Order as if such an Opinion were imposed upon them in virtute sanctae obedientiae But this inconvenience is greater when the principle of the mistake runs higher when the Opinion is derived from a Primitive man and a Saint for then it often happens that what at first was but a plain innocent seduction comes to be made sacred by the veneration which is consequent to the person for having lived long agone and then because the person is also since canonized the errour is almost made eternall and the cure desperate These and the like prejudices which are as various as the miseries of humanity or the variety of humane understandings are not absolute excuses unless to some persons but truly if they be to any they are exemptions to all from being pressed with too peremptory a sentence against them especially if we consider what leave is given to all men by the Church of Rome to follow any one probable Doctor in an Opinion which is contested against by many more And as for the Doctors of the other side they being destitute of any pretences to an infallible medium to determine Questions must of necessity allow the same liberty to the people to be as prudent as they can in the choice of a fallible Guide and when they have chosen if they do follow him into errour the matter is not so inexpiable for being deceived in using the best Guides we had which Guides because themselves were abused did also against their wills deceive me So that this prejudice may the easier abuse us because it is almost like a duty to follow the dictates of a probable Doctor or if it be overacted or accidentally pass into an inconvenience it is therefore to be excused because the Principle was not ill unless we judge by our event not by the antecedent probability Of such men as these it was said by Saint Austin Caeteram turbam non intelligendi vivacitas sed credendi simplicitas tutissimam facit And Gregory Nazianzen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The common sort of people are safe in their not enquiring by their own industry and in the simplicity of their understanding relying upon the best Guides they can get 8. But this is of such a nature in which as we may inculpably be deceived so we may turn it into a vice or a design and then the consequent errours will alter the property and become Heresies There are some men that have mens persons in admiration because of advantage and some that have itching ears and heap up Teachers to themselves In these and the like cases the authority of a person and the prejudices of a great reputation is not the excuse but the fault and a Sin is so far from excusing an Errour that Errour becomes a Sin by reason of its relation to that Sin as to its parent and principle SECT XII Of the Innocency of Errour in Opinion in a pious person 1. AND therefore as there are so many innocent causes of Errour as there are weaknesses within and harmless and unavoidable prejudices from without so if ever errour be procured by a vice it hath no excuse but becomes such a crime of so much malignity as to have influence upon the effect and consequent and by communication makes it become criminal The Apostles noted two such causes Covetousness and Ambition the former in them of the Circumcision and the latter in Diotrephes and Simon Magus and there were some that were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were of the Long robe too but they were the she-Disciples upon whose Consciences some false Apostles had influence by advantage of their wantonness and thus the three principles of all sin become also the principles of Heresie the lust of the flesh the lust of the eye and the pride of life And in pursuance of these arts the Devil hath not wanted fuell to set a-work Incendiaries in all Ages of the Church The Bishops were always honourable and most commonly had great Revenues and a Bishoprick would satisfie the two designs of Covetousness and Ambition and this hath been the golden apple very often contended for and very often the cause of great fires in the Church Thebulis quia rejectus ab Episcopatu Hierosolymitano turbare coepit Ecclesiam said Egesippus in Eusebius Tertullian turned Montanist in discontent for missing the Bishoprick of Carthage after Agrippinus and so did Montanus himself for the same discontent saith Nicephorus Novatus would have been Bishop of Rome Donatus of Carthage Arius of Alexandria Aërius of Sebastia but they all missed and therefore all of them vexed Christendom And this was so common a thing that oftentimes the threatning the Church with a Schism or a Heresie was a design to get a Bishoprick And Socrates reports of Asterius that he did frequent the Conventicles of the Arians Nam Episcopatum aliquem ambiebat And setting aside the infirmities of men and their innocent
for all that law of killing such false Prophets were permitted with impunity in the Synagogue as appears beyond exception in the great divisions and disputes between the Pharisees and the Sadducees I deny not but certain and known Idolatry or any other sort of practicall impiety with its principiant Doctrine may be punished corporally because it is no other but matter of fact but no matter of mere Opinion no errours that of themselves are not sins are to be persecuted or punished by death or corporal inflictions This is now to be proved 3. Secondly All the former Discourse is sufficient argument how easie it is for us in such matters to be deceived So long as Christian Religion was a simple profession of the Articles of Belief and a hearty prosecution of the rules of good life the fewness of the Articles and the clearness of the Rule was cause of the seldome prevarication But when Divinity is swelled up to so great a body when the several Questions which the peevishness and wantonness of sixteen Ages have commenced are concentred into one and from all these Questions something is drawn into the body of Theologie till it hath ascended up to the greatnesse of a mountain and the summe of Divinity collected by Aquinas makes a volume as great as was that of Livy mocked at in the Epigram Quem mea vix totum bibliotheca capit it is impossible for any industry to consider so many particulars in the infinite numbers of Questions as are necessary to be considered before we can with certainty determine any And after all the considerations which we can have in a whole Age we are not sure not to be deceived The obscurity of some Questions the nicity of some Articles the intricacy of some Revelations the variety of humane understandings the windings of Logick the tricks of adversaries the subtilty of Sophisters the ingagement of educations personal affections the portentous number of writers the infinity of Authorities the vastness of some arguments as consisting in enumeration of many particulars the uncertainty of others the several degrees of probability the difficulties of Scripture the invalidity of probation of Tradition the opposition of all exteriour arguments to each other and their open contestation the publick violence done to Authors and records the private arts and supplantings the falsifyings the indefatigable industry of some men to abuse all understandings and all perswasions into their own Opinions these and thousands more even all the difficulty of things and all the weaknesses of man and all the arts of the Devil have made it impossible for any man in so great variety of matter not to be deceived No man pretends to it but the Pope and no man is more deceived then he is in that very particular 4. Thirdly From hence proceeds a danger which is consequent to this proceeding for if we who are so apt to be deceived and so insecure in our resolution of Questions disputable should persecute a disagreeing person we are not sure we do not fight against God For if his Proposition be true and persecuted then because all Truth derives from God this proceeding is against God and therefore this is not to be done upon Gamaliel's ground lest peradventure we be found to fight against God of which because we can have no security at least in this case we have all the guilt of a doubtfull or an uncertain Conscience For if there be no security in the thing as I have largely proved the Conscience in such cases is as uncertain as the Question is and if it be not doubtfull where it is uncertain it is because the man is not wise but as confident as ignorant the first without reason and the second without excuse And it is very disproportionable for a man to persecute another certainly for a Proposition that if he were wise he would know is not certain at least the other person may innocently be uncertain of it If he be killed he is certainly killed but if he be called Heretick it is not so certain that he is an Heretick It were good therefore that proceedings were according to evidence and the rivers not swell over the banks nor a certain definitive sentence of Death passed upon such perswasions which cannot certainly be defined And this argument is of so much the more force because we see that the greatest persecutions that ever have been were against Truth even against Christianity itself and it was a prediction of our Blessed Saviour that persecution should be the lot of true believers And if we compute the experience of suffering Christendom and the prediction that Truth should suffer with those few instances of suffering Hereticks it is odds but persecution is on the wrong side and that it is errour and Heresie that is cruel and tyrannical especially since the Truth of Jesus Christ and of his Religion are so meek so charitable and so merciful And we may in this case exactly use the words of S. Paul But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit even so it is now and so it ever will be till Christ's second coming 5. Fourthly Whoever persecutes a disagreeing person arms all the world against himself and all pious people of his own perswasion when the scales of Authority return to his adversary and attest his contradictory and then what can he urge for mercy for himself or his party that sheweth none to others If he says that he is to be spared because he believes true but the other was justly persecuted because he was in errour he is ridiculous For he is as confidently believed to be an Heretick as he believes his adversary such and whetheâ— he be or no being the thing in question of this he is not to be his own judge but he that hath Authority on his side will be sure to judge against him So that what either side can indifferently make use of it is good that neither would because neither side can with reason sufficiently doe it in prejudice of the other If a man will say that every man must take his adventure and if it happens Authority to be with him he will persecute his adversaries and if it turns against him he will bear it as well as he can and hope for a reward of Martyrdom and innocent suffering besides that this is so equal to be said of all sides and besides that this is a way to make an eternall disunion of hearts and charities and that it will make Christendom nothing but a shambles and a perpetuall butchery and as fast as mens wits grow wanton or confident or proud or abused so often there will be new executions and massacres besides all this it is most unreasonable and unjust as being contrariant to those Laws of Justice and Charity whereby we are bound with greater zeal to spare and preserve an innocent then to condemn a guilty person and there
it had not altered the case as to this question for either the persons upon the condemnation of their errour should have been persecuted or not If not why shall they now against the instance and precedent of those Ages who were confessedly wise and pious and whose practices are often made to us arguments to follow If yea and that they had been persecuted it is a thing which this Argument condemns and the loss of the Church had been invaluable in the losing or the provocation and temptation of such rare personages and the example and the rule of so ill consequence that all persons might upon the same ground have suffered and though some had escaped yet no man could have any more security from punishment then from errour 9. Sixthly Either the disagreeing person is in errour or not but a true believer in either of the cases to persecute him is extremely imprudent For if he be a true believer then it is a clear case that we doe open violence to God and his servants and his Truth If he be in errour what greater folly and stupidity then to give to errour the glory of Martyrdom and the advantages which are accidentally consequent to a persecution For as it was true of the Martyrs Quoties morimur toties nascimur and the increase of their trouble was the increase of their confidence and the establishment of their perswasions so it is in all false Opinions for that an Opinion is true or false is extrinsecall or accidental to the consequents and advantages it gets by being afflicted And there is a popular pity that follows all persons in misery and that compassion breeds likeness of affections and that very often produces likeness of perswasion and so much the rather because there arises a jealousie and pregnant suspicion that they who persecute an Opinion are destitute of sufficient Arguments to confute it and that the Hangman is the best disputant For if those Arguments which they have for their own Doctrine were a sufficient ground of confidence and perswasion men would be more willing to use those means and Arguments which are better compliances with humane understanding which more naturally do satisfie it which are more humane and Christian then that way is which satisfies none which destroys many which provokes more and which makes all men jealous To which adde that those who die for their Opinion leave in all men great arguments of the heartiness of their belief of the confidence of their perswasion of the piety and innocencie of their persons of the purity of their intention and simplicity of purposes that they are persons totally disinteressed and separate from design For no interest can be so great as to be put in balance against a man's life and his Soul and he does very imprudently serve his ends who seeingly and foreknowingly loses his life in the prosecution of them Just as if Titius should offer to die for Sempronius upon condition he might receive twenty talents when he had done his work It is certainly an argument of a great love and a great confidence and a great sincerity and a great hope when a man lays down his life in attestation of a Proposition Greater love then this hath no man then to lay down his life saith our Blessed Saviour And although laying of a wager is an argument of confidence more then truth yet laying such a wager staking of a man's Soul and pawning his life gives a hearty testimony that the person is honest confident resigned charitable and noble And I know not whether Truth can doe a person or a cause more advantages then these can doe to an errour And therefore besides the impiety there is great imprudence in Canonizing a Heretick and consecrating an errour by such means which were better preserved as incouragements of Truth and comforts to real and true Martyrs And it is not amiss to observe that this very advantage was taken by Hereticks who were ready to shew and boast their Catalogues of Martyrs in particular the Circumcellians did so and the Donatists and yet the first were Hereticks the second Schismaticks And it was remarkable in the Scholars of Priscillian who as they had their Master in the reputation of a Saint while he was living so when he was dead they had him in veneration as a Martyr they with reverence and devotion carried his and the bodies of his slain companions to an honourable sepulture and counted it Religion to swear by the name of Priscillian So that the extinguishing of the person gives life and credit to his Doctrine and when he is dead he yet speaks more effectually 10. Seventhly It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing Opinions Unnatural for Understanding being a thing wholly spiritual cannot be restrained and therefore neither punished by corporal afflictions It is in aliena republica a matter of another world You may as well cure the Colick by brushing a man's cloaths or fill a man's belly with a Syllogism These things do not communicate in matter and therefore neither in action nor passion And since all punishments in a prudent Government punish the offender to prevent a future crime and so it proves more medicinal then vindictive the punitive act being in order to the cure and prevention and since no punishment of the body can cure a disease in the Soul it is disproportionable in nature and in all civil Government to punish where the punishment can doe no good It may be an act of tyranny but never of justice For is an Opinion ever the more true or false for being persecuted Some men have believed it the more as being provoked into a confidence and vexed into a resolution but the thing itself is not the truer and though the Hangman may confute a man with an inexplicable Dilemma yet not convince his understanding for such Premisses can infer no Conclusion but that of a man's life and a Wolf may as well give laws to the understanding as he whose Dictates are onely propounded in violence and writ in bloud and a Dog is as capable of a law as a man if there be no choice in his obedience nor discourse in his choice nor reason to satisfie his discourse And as it is unnatural so it is unreasonable that Sempronius should force Caius to be of his opinion because Sempronius is Consul this year and commands the Lictors As if he that can kill a man cannot but be infallible and if he be not why should I doe violence to my Conscience because he can doe violence to my person 11. Eighthly Force in matters of Opinion can doe no good but is very apt to doe hurt for no man can change his Opinion when he will or be satisfied in his Reason that his Opinion is false because discountenanced If a man could change his Opinion when he lists he might cure many inconveniences of his life all his fears and his sorrows would soon disband if he would
there be cause for it they must be cassated or if there be no sufficient cause the complyings must be so as may best preserve the particulars in conjunction with the publick end which because it is primarily intended is of greatest consideration But the particulars whether of case or person are to be considered occasionally and emergently by the Judges but cannot antecedently and regularly be determined by a Law 9. But this sort of men is of so general pretence that all Laws and all Judges may easily be abused by them Those Sects which are signified by a Name which have a system of Articles a body of profession may be more clearly determined in their Question concerning the lawfulness of permitting their professions and assemblies I shall instance in two which are most troublesome and most disliked and by an account made of these we may make judgement what may be done towards others whose errours are not apprehended of so great malignity The men I mean are the Anabaptists and the Papists SECT XVIII A particular consideration of the Opinions of the Anabaptists 1. IN the Anabaptists I consider onely their two capital Opinions the one against the Baptism of Infants the other against Magistracy and because they produce different judgements and various effects all their other fancies which vary as the Moon does may stand or fall in their proportion and likeness to these 2. And first I consider their denying Baptism to Infants Although it be a Doctrine justly condemned by the most sorts of Christians upon great grounds of reason yet possibly their defence may be so great as to take off much and rebate the edge of their adversaries assault It will be neither unpleasant nor unprofitable to draw a short scheme of plea for each party the result of which possibly may be that though they be deceived yet they have so great excuse on their side that their errour is not impudent or vincible The Baptism of Infants rests principally and usually upon this discourse 3. When God made a Covenant with Abraham for himself and his posterity into which the Gentiles were reckoned by spiritual adoption he did for the present consign that Covenant with the Sacrament of Circumcision The extent of which Rite was to all his family from the Major domo to the Proselytus domicilio and to infants of eight days old Now the very nature of this Covenant being a covenant of Faith for its formality and with all faithfull people for the object and Circumcision being a seal of this Covenant if ever any Rite do supervene to consign the same Covenant that Rite must acknowledge Circumcision for its type and precedent And this the Apostle tells us in express doctrine Now the nature of a Type is to give some proportions to its successour the Antitype and they both being seals of the same righteousness of faith it will not easily be found where these two seals have any such distinction in their nature or purposes as to appertain to persons of differing capacity and not equally concern all And this argument was thought of so much force by some of those excellent men which were Bishops in the Primitive Church that a good Bishop writ an Epistle to Saint Cyprian to know of him whether or no it were lawfull to baptize Infants before the eighth day because the type of Baptism was ministred in that Circumcision he in his discourse supposing that the first Rite was a direction to the second which prevailed with him so far as to believe it to limit every circumstance 4. And not onely this type but the acts of Christ which were previous to the institution of Baptism did prepare our understanding by such impresses as were sufficient to produce such perswasion in us that Christ intended this ministery for the actual advantage of Infants as well as of persons of understanding For Christ commanded that children should be brought unto him he took them in his arms he imposed hands on them and blessed them and without question did by such acts of favour consign his love to them and them to a capacity of an eternal participation of it And possibly the invitation which Christ made to all to come to him all them that are heavie laden did in its proportion concern Infants as much as others if they be guilty of Original sin and if that sin be a burthen and presses them to any spiritual danger or inconvenience And if they be not yet Christ who was as Tertullian's phrase is nullius poenitentiae debitor guilty of no sin obliged to no repentance needing no purification and no pardon was baptized by S. John's baptism which was the baptism of repentance And it is all the reason in the world that since the grace of Christ is as large as the prevarication of Adam all they who are made guilty by the first Adam should be cleansed by the second But as they are guilty by another man's act so they should be brought to the Font to be purified by others there being the same proportion of reason that by others acts they should be relieved who were in danger of perishing by the act of others And therefore S. Austin argues excellently to this purpose Accommodat illis mater Ecclesia aliorum pedes ut veniant aliorum cor ut credant aliorum linguam ut fateantur ut quoniam quòd aegri sunt alio peccante praegravantur sic cùm sani fiant alio confitente salventur And Justin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 5. But whether they have original sin or no yet take them in puris naturalibus they cannot goe to God or attain to eternity to which they were intended in their first being and creation and therefore much less since their naturals are impaired by the curse on humane nature procured by Adam's prevarication And if a natural agent cannot in puris naturalibus attain to heaven which is a supernatural end much less when it is loaden with accidental and grievous impediments Now then since the onely way revealed to us of acquiring Heaven is by Jesus Christ and the first inlet into Christianity and access to him is by Baptism as appears by the perpetual Analogie of the New Testament either Infants are not persons capable of that end which is the perfection of humane nature and to which the Soul of man in its being made immortal was essentially designed and so are miserable and deficient from the very end of humanity if they die before the use of Reason or else they must be brought to Christ by the Church doors that is by the Font and waters of Baptism 6. And in reason it seems more pregnant and plausible that Infants rather then men of understanding should be baptized For since the efficacy of the Sacraments depends upon Divine Institution and immediate benediction and that they produce their effects independently upon man in them that do not hinder their operation since Infants cannot by any
act of which by nature they have the faculty so if it did yet Baptism is not the means of conveying the Holy Ghost For that which Peter says Be baptized and ye shall receive the holy Ghost signifies no more then this First be baptized and then by imposition of the Apostles hands which was another mysterie and rite ye shall receive the Promise of the Father And this is nothing but an insinuation of the rite of Confirmation as is to this sense expounded by divers ancient Authours and in ordinary ministery the effect of it is not bestowed upon any unbaptized persons for it is in order next after Baptism and upon this ground Peter's Argument in the case of Cornelius was concluding enough à majori ad minus thus the Holy Ghost was bestowed upon him and his family which gift by ordinary ministery was consequent to Baptism not as the effect is to the cause or to the proper instrument but as a consequent is to an antecedent in a chain of causes accidentally and by positive institution depending upon each other God by that miracle did give testimony that the persons of the men were in great dispositions towards Heaven and therefore were to be admitted to those Rites which are the ordinary inlets into the Kingdome of Heaven But then from hence to argue that wherever there is a capacity of receiving the same grace there also the same sign is to be ministred and from hence to infer Paedo baptism is an Argument very fallacious upon several grounds First because Baptism is not the sign of the Holy Ghost but by another mystery it was conveyed ordinarily and extraordinarily it was conveyed independently from any mystery and so the Argument goes upon a wrong supposition Secondly if the supposition were true the proposition built upon it is false for they that are capable of the same grace are not always capable of the same sign for women under the Law of Moses although they were capable of the righteousness of Faith yet they were not capable of the sign of Circumcision For God does not always convey his graces in the same manner but to some mediately to others immediately and there is no better instance in the world of it then the gift of the Holy Ghost which is the thing now instanced in this contestation for it is certain in Scripture that it was ordinarily given by imposition of hands and that after Baptism and when this came into an ordinary ministry it was called by the ancient Church Chrism or Confirmation but yet it was given sometimes without imposition of hands as at Pentecost and to the family of Cornelius sometimes before Baptism sometimes after sometimes in conjunction with it 22. And after all this lest these Arguments should not ascertain their Cause they fall on complaining against God and will not be content with God unless they may baptize their children but take exceptions that God did more for the children of the Jews But why so Because God made a Covenant with their children actually as Infants and consigned it by Circumcision Well so he did with our children too in their proportion He made a Covenant of spiritual Promises on his part and spiritual and real services on ours and this pertains to children when they are capable but made with them as soon as they are alive and yet not so with the Jews babes for as their Rite consigned them actually so it was a national and temporal blessing and Covenant as a separation of them from the portion of the Nations a marking them for a peculiar people and therefore while they were in the wilderness and separate from the commixture of all people they were not at all circumcised but as that Rite did seal the righteousness of Faith so by virtue of its adherencie and remanency in their flesh it did that work when the children came to age But in Christian Infants the case is otherwise for the new Covenant being established upon better Promises is not onely to better purposes but also in distinct manner to be understood when their spirits are as receptive of a spiritual act or impress as the bodies of Jewish children were of the sign of Circumcision then it is to be consigned But this business is quickly at an end by saying that God hath done no less for ours then for their children for he will doe the mercies of a Father and Creatour to them and he did no more to the other But he hath done more to ours for he hath made a Covenant with them and built it upon Promises of the greatest concernment he did not so to them But then for the other part which is the main of the Argument that unless this mercy be consigned by Baptism as good not at all in respect of us because we want the comfort of it this is the greatest vanity in the world For when God hath made a Promise pertaining also to our children for so our Adversaries contend and we also acknowledge in its true sense shall not this promise this word of God be of sufficient truth certainty and efficacy to cause comfort unless we tempt God and require a sign of him May not Christ say to these men as sometime to the Jews A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign but no sign shall be given unto it But the truth on 't is this Argument is nothing but a direct quarrelling with God Almighty 23. Now since there is no strength in the Doctrinal part the practice and precedents Apostolical and Ecclesiastical will be of less concernment if they were true as is pretended because actions Apostolical are not always Rules for ever it might be fit for them to doe it pro loco tempore as divers others of their Institutions but yet no engagement past thence upon following Ages for it might be convenient at that time in the new spring of Christianity and till they had engaged a considerable party by that means to make them parties against the Gentiles Superstition and by way of pre-occupation to ascertain them to their own Sect when they came to be men or for some other reason not transmitted to us because the Question of fact itself is not sufficiently determined For the insinuation of that precept of baptizing all Nations of which Children certainly are a part does as little advantage as any of the rest because other parallel expressions of Scripture do determine and expound themselves to a sense that includes not all persons absolutely but of a capable condition as Adorate eum omnes gentes psallite Deo omnes nationes terrae and divers more 24. As for the conjecture concerning the family of Stephanus at the best it is but a conjecture and besides that it is not proved that there were children in the family yet if that were granted it follows not that they were baptized because by whole families in Scripture is meant all persons of reason and age within the
Testament they dishonour and make a pageantry of the Sacrament they ineffectually represent a sepulture into the death of Christ and please themselves in a sign without effect making Baptism like the fig-tree in the Gospel full of leaves but no fruit and they invocate the Holy Ghost in vain doing as if one should call upon him to illuminate a stone or a tree 24. Thus far the Anabaptists may argue and men have disputed against them with so much weakness and confidence that we may say of them as S. Gregory Nazianzen observes of the case of the Church in his time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. They have been encouraged in their errour more by the accidental advantages we have given them by our weak arguings then by any excellency of their wit and much less any advantage of their cause It concerned not the present design of this Book to enquire whether these men speak true or no for if they speak probably or so as may deceive them that are no fools it is argument sufficient to perswade us to pity the erring man that is deceived without design and that is all that I intended But because all men will not understand my purpose or think my meaning innocent unless I answer the Arguments which I have made or gathered for mine and their adversaries although I say it be nothing to the purpose of my Book which was onely to represent that even in a wrong cause there may be invincible causes of deception to innocent and unfortunate persons and of this truth the Anabaptists in their question of Paedo baptism is a very great instance yet I will rather chuse to offend the rules of Art then not to fulfill all the requisites of charity I have chosen therefore to adde some animadversions upon the Anabaptists plea upon all that is material and which can have any considerable effect in the Question For though I have used this art and stratagem of peace justly by representing the Enemie's strength to bring the other party to thoughts of charity and kind comportments yet I could not intend to discourage the right side or to make either a mutiny or defection in the Armies of Israel I do not as the Spies from Canaan say that these men are Anakims and the city-walls reach up to Heaven and there are giants in the Land I know they are not insuperable but they are like the blind and the lame set before a wall that a weak man can leap over and a single troup armed with wisedome and truth can beat all their guards But yet I think that he said well and wisely to Charles the fighting Duke of Burgundy that told him that the Switzers strength was not so to be despised but that an honourable peace and a Christian usage of them were better then a cruel and a bloudy war The event of that battel told all the world that no Enemy is to be despised and rendred desperate at the same time and that there are but few causes in the world but they do sometimes meet with witty Advocates in themselves put on such semblances of truth as will if not make the victory uncertain yet make peace more safe prudent mutual charity to be the best defence And First I do not pretend to say that every Argument brought by good men and wise in a righâ— cause must needs be demonstrative The Divinity of the eternal Son of God is a Truth of as great concernment and as great certainty as any thing that ever was disputed in the Christian Church and yet he that reads the writings of the Fathers and the Acts of Councils convened about that great Question will find that all the armour is not proof which is used in a holy War For that seems to one which is not so to another and when a man hath one sufficient reason to secure him and make him confident every thing seems to him to speak the same sense though to an adversary it does not for the one observes the similitude and pleaseth himself the other watches onely the dissonancies and gets advantage because one line of likeness will please a believing willing man but one will not do the work and where many dissimilitudes can be observed but one similitude it were better to let the shadow alone then hazard the substance And it is to be observed that Hereticks and misbelievers do apply themselves rather to disable truth then directly to establish their errour and every Argument they wrest from the hand of their adversaries is to them a double purchase it takes from the other and makes him less and makes himself greater the way to spoil a strong man is to take from him the armour in which he trusted and when this adversary hath espied a weak part in any discourse he presently concludes that the cause is no stronger and reckons his victories by the colours that he takes though they signified nothing to the strength of the cause And this is the main way of proceeding in this Question for they rather endeavour to shew that we cannot demonstrate our part of the Question then that they can prove theirs And as it is indeed easier to destroy then to build so it is more agreeable to the nature and to the design of Heresie and therefore it were well that in this and in other Qâ—stions where there are watchfull adversaries we should fight as Gideon did with three hundred hardy brave fellows that would stand against all violence rather then to make a noise with rams Horns and broken pitchers like the men at the siege of Jericho And though it is not to be expected that all Arguments should be demonstrative in a true cause yet it were well if the Generals of the Church which the Scripture affirms is terrible as an army with banners should not by sending out weak parties which are easily beaten weaken their own army and give confidence to the Enemy Secondly Although it is hard to prove a negative and it is not in many cases to be imposed upon a Litigant yet when the affirmative is received and practised whoever will disturb the actual perswasion must give his reason and offer proof for his own Doctrine or let me alone with mine For the reason why negatives are hard to prove is because they have no positive cause but as they have no being so they have no reason but then also they are first and before affirmatives that is such which are therefore to prevail because nothing can be said against them Darkness is before light and things are not before they are and though to prove that things are something must be said yet to prove they are not nothing is to be alledged but that they are not and no man can prove they are But when an affirmative hath entred and prevailed because no effect can be without some positive cause therefore this which came in upon some cause or other must not be
a friend that will die for him And this is the meaning of Laelius Vertue may be despised so may Learning and Nobility At una est amicitia in rebus humanis de cujus utilitate omnes consentiunt only Friendship is that thing which because all know to be useful and profitable no man can despise that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 goodness or beneficence makes friendships For if he be a good man he will love where he is beloved and that 's the first tie of friendship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That was the commendation of the bravest friendship in Theocritus They lov'd each other with a love That did in all things equal prove 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The world was under Saturn's reign When he that lov'd was lov'd again For it is impossible this nearness of friendship can be where there is not mutual love but this is secured if I chuse a good man for he that is apt enough to begin alone will never be behind in the relation and correspondency and therefore I like the Gentiles Litany well 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let God give friends to me for my reward Who shall my love with equal love regard Happy are they who when they give their heart Find such as in exchange their own impart But there is more in it than this felicity amounts to For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the good man is a profitable useful person and that 's the band of an effective friendship For I do not think that Friendships are Metaphysical nothings created for contemplation or that men or women should stare upon each others faces and make dialogues of news and prettinesses and look babies in one anothers eyes Friendship is the allay of our sorrows the ease of our passions the discharge of our oppressions the Sanctuary to our calamities the counsellor of our doubts the clarity of our minds the emission of our thoughts the exercise and improvement of what we meditate And although I love my friend because he is worthy yet he is not worthy if he can do no good I do not speak of accidental hindrances and misfortunes by which the bravest man may become unable to help his Child but of the natural and artificial capacities of the man He only is fit to be chosen for a friend who can do those offices for which friendship is excellent For mistake not no man can be loved for himself our perfections in this world cannot reach so high it is well if we would love God at that rate and I very much fear that if God did us no good we might admire his Beauties but we should have but a small proportion of love towards him and therefore it is that God to endear the obedience that is the love of his servants signifies what benefits he gives us what great good things he does for us I am the Lord God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt and does Job serve God for nought and he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder all his other greatnesses are objects of fear and wonder it is his goodness that makes him lovely and so it is in friendships He only is fit to be chosen for a friend who can give counsel or defend my cause or guide me right or relieve my need or can and will when I need it do me good only this I add into the heaps of doing good I will reckon loving me for it is a pleasure to be beloved But when his love signifies nothing but kissing my cheek or talking kindly and can go no further it is a prostitution of the bravery of friendship to spend it upon impertinent people who are it may be loads to their families but can never ease my loads but my friend is a worthy person when he can become to me instead of God a guide or a support an eye or a hand a staff or a rule There must be in friendship something to distinguish it from a Companion and a Country-man from a School-fellow or a Gossip from a Sweet-heart or a Fellow-traveller Friendship may look in at any one of these doors but it stays not any where till it come to be the best thing in the world And when we consider that one man is not better than another neither towards God nor towards Man but by doing better and braver things we shall also see that that which is most beneficent is also most excellent therefore those friendships must needs be most perfect where the friends can be most useful For men cannot be useful but by worthinesses in the several instances a fool cannot be relied upon for counsel nor a vicious person for the advantages of vertue nor a begger for relief nor a stranger for conduct nor a tatler to keep a secret nor a pitiless person trusted with my complaint nor a covetous man with my childes fortune nor a false person without a witness nor a suspicious person with a private design nor him that I fear with the treasures of my love But he that is wise and vertuous rich and at hand close and merciful free of his money and tenacious of a secret open and ingenuous true and honest is of himself an excellent man and therefore fit to be loved and he can do good to me in all capacities where I can need him and therefore is fit to be a friend I confess we are forced in our friendships to abate some of these ingredients but full measures of friendship would have full measures of worthiness and according as any defect is in the foundation in the relation also there may be imperfection and indeed I shall not blame the friendship so it be worthy though it be not perfect not only because friendship is charity which cannot be perfect here but because there is not in the world a perfect cause of perfect friendship If you can suspect that this discourse can suppose friendship to be mercenary and to be defective in the greatest worthiness of it which is to love our friend for our friends sake I shall easily be able to defend my self because I speak of the election and reasons of chusing friends after he is chosen do as nobly as you talk and love as purely as you dream and let your conversation be as metaphysical as your discourse and proceed in this method till you be confuted by experience yet till then the case is otherwise when we speak of chusing one to be my friend He is not my friend till I have chosen him or loved him and if any man enquires whom he shall chuse or whom he should love I suppose it ought not to be answered that we should love him who hath least amability that we should chuse him who hath least reason to be chosen But if it be answered he is to be chosen to be my friend who is
because Friendship is that by which the world is most blessed and receives most good it ought to be chosen amongst the worthiest persons that is amongst those that can do greatest benefit to each other and though in equal worthiness I may chuse by my eye or ear that is into the consideration of the essential I may take in also the accidental and extrinsick worthinesses yet I ought to give every one their just value when the internal beauties are equal these shall help to weigh down the scale and I will love a worthy friend that can delight me as well as profit me rather than him who cannot delight me at all and profit me no more but yet I will not weigh the gayest flowers or the wings of Butterflies against Wheat but when I am to chuse Wheat I may take that which looks the brightest I had rather see Thyme and Roses Marjoram and July-flowers that are fair and sweet and medicinal than the prettiest Tulips that are good for nothing And my Sheep and Kine are better servants than Race-horses and Greyhounds And I shall rather furnish my Study with Plutarch and Cicero with Livy and Polybius than with Cassandra and Ibrahim Bassa and if I do give an hour to these for divertisement or pleasure yet I will dwell with them that can instruct me and make me wise and eloquent severe and useful to my self and others I end this with the saying of Laelius in Cicero Amicitiaâ—non debet consequi utilitatem sed amicitiam utilitas When I chuse my friend I will not stay till I have received a kindness but I will chuse such an one that can do me many if I need them But I mean such kindnesses which make me wiser and which make me better that is I will when I chuse my friend chuse him that is the bravest the worthiest and the most excellent person and then your first Question is soon answered To love such a person and to contract such friendships is just so authorized by the principles of Christianity as it is warranted to love wisdom and vertue goodness and beneficence and all the impresses of God upon the spirits of brave men 2. The next inquiry is How far it may extend that is by what expressions it may be signified I find that David and Jonathan loved at a strange rate they were both good men though it happened that Jonathan was on the obliging side but here the expressions were Jonathan watched for David's good told him of his danger and helped him to escape took part with David's innocence against his Father's malice and injustice and beyond all this did it to his own prejudice and they two stood like two feet supporting one body though Jonathan knew that David would prove like the foot of a Wrestler and would supplant him not by any unworthy or unfriendly action but it was from God and he gave him his hand to set him upon his own throne We find his parallels in the Gentile stories young Athenodorus having divided the estate with his Brother Xenon divided it again when Xenon had spent his own share and Lucullus would not take the Consulship till his younger brother had first enjoyed it for a year but Pollux divided with Castor his immortality and you know who offer'd himself to death being pledge for his friend and his friend by performing his word rescued him as bravely And when we find in Scripture that for a good man some will even dare to die and that Aquila and Priscilla laid their necks down for S. Paul and the Galatians would have given him their very eyes that is every thing that was most dear to them and some others were near unto death for his sake and that it is a Precept of Christian charity to lay down our lives for our brethren that is those who were combined in a cause of Religion who were united with the same hopes and imparted to each other ready assistances and grew dear by common sufferings we need enquire no further for the expressions of friendships Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends and this we are oblig'd to do in some Cases for all Christians and therefore we may do it for those who are to us in this present and imperfect state of things that which all the good men and women in the world shall be in Heaven that is in the state of perfect friendships This is the biggest but then it includes and can suppose all the rest and if this may be done for all and in some cases must for any one of the multitude we need not scruple whether we may do it for those who are better than a multitude But as for the thing it self it is not easily and lightly to be done and a man must not die for humour nor expend so great a Jewel for a trifle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Philo we will hardly die when it is for nothing when no good no worthy end is served and become a Sacrifice to redeem a foot-boy But we may not give our life to redeem another unless 1. The party for whom we die be a worthy and an useful person better for the publick or better for Religion and more useful to others than my self Thus Ribischius the German died bravely when he became a Sacrifice for his Master Maurice Duke of Saxony Covering his Masters body with his own that he might escape the fury of the Turkish Souldiers Succurram perituro sed ut ipse non peream nisi si futurus ero magni hominis aut magnae rei merces said Seneca I will help a dying person if I can but I will not die my self for him unless by my death I save a brave man or become the price of a great thing that is I will die for a Prince for the Republick or to save an Army as David expos'd himself to combat with the Philistin for the redemption of the host of Israel and in this sence that is true Praestat ut pereat unus quà m Vnitas better that one perish than a multitude 2. A man dies bravely when he gives his temporal life to save the soul of any single person in the Christian world It is a worthy exchange and the glorification of that love by which Christ gave his life for every Soul Thus he that reproves an erring Prince wisely and necessarily he that affirms a fundamental truth or stands up for the glory of the Divine Attributes though he die for it becomes a worthy sacrifice 3. These are duty but it may be Heroick and full of Christian bravery to give my life to rescue a noble and a brave friend though I my self be as worthy a man as he because the preference of him is an act of humility in me and of friendship towards him Humility and Charity making a pious difference where Art and Nature have made all equal Some have fancied other measures of
treating our friends One sort of men say that we are to expect that our friends should value us as we value our selves which if it were to be admitted will require that we make no friendships with a proud man and so far indeed were well but then this proportion does exclude some humble men who are most to be valued and the rather because they undervalue themselves Others say that a friend is to value his friend as much as his friend values him but neither is this well or safe wise or sufficient for it makes friendship a mere bargain and is something like the Country weddings in some places where I have been where the bridegroom and the bride must meet in the half way and if they fail a step they retire and break the match It is not good to make a reckoning in friendship that 's merchandise or it may be gratitude but not noble friendship in which each part strives to out-do the other in significations of an excellent love And amongst true friends there is no fear of losing any thing But that which amongst the old Philosophers comes nearest to the right is that we love our friends as we love our selves If they had meant it as our Blessed Saviour did of that general friendship by which we are to love all mankind it had been perfect and well or if they had meant it of the inward affection or of outward justice but because they meant it of the most excellent friendships and of the outward significations of it it cannot be sufficient for a friend may and must sometimes do more for his friend than he would do for himself Some men will perish before they will beg or petition for themselves to some certain persons but they account it noble to do it for their friend and they will want rather than their friend shall want and they will be more earnest in praise or dispraise respectively for their friend than for themselves And indeed I account that one of the greatest demonstrations of real friendship is that a friend can really endeavour to have his friend advanced in honour in reputation in the opinion of wit or learning before himself Aurum opes rura frequens donabit amicus Qui velit ingenio cedere rarus erit Sed tibi tantus inest veteris respectus amici Carior ut mea sit quà m tua famatibi Lands gold and trifles many give or lend But he that stoops in fame is a rare friend In friendships Orb thou art the brightest Star Before thy fame mine thou preferrest far But then be pleased to think that therefore I so highly value this signification of friendship because I so highly value humility Humility and Charity are the two greatest graces in the world and these are the greatest ingredients which constitute friendship and express it But there needs no other measures of friendship but that it may be as great as you can express it beyond death it cannot go to death it may when the cause is reasonable and just charitable and religious and yet if there be any thing greater than to suffer death and pain and shame to some are more insufferable a true and noble friendship shrinks not at the greatest trials And yet there is a limit even to friendship It must be as great as our friend fairly needs in all things where we are not tied up by a former duty to God to our selves or some pre-obliging relative When Pollux heard some body whisper a reproach against his Brother Castor he killed the slanderer with his fist that was a zeal which his friendship could not warrant Nulla est excusatio si amici causâ peccaveris said Cicero No friendship can excuse a sin And this the braver Romans instanced in the matter of duty to their Country It is not lawful to fight on our friends part against our Prince or Country and therefore when Caius Blosius of Cuma in the sedition of Gracchus appeared against his Country when he was taken he answered That he loved Tiberius Gracchus so dearly that he thought fit to follow him whithersoever he led and begg'd pardon upon that account They who were his Judges were so noble that though they knew it no fair excuse yet for the honour of friendship they did not directly reject his motion but put him to death because he did not follow but led on Gracchus and brought his friend into the snare For so they preserved the honours of friendship on either hand by neither suffering it to be sullied by a soul excuse nor yet rejected in any fair pretence A man may not be perjured for his friend I remember to have read in the History of the Low-Countries that Grimston and Redhead when Bergenapzoom was besieged by the Duke of Parma acted for the interest of the Queen of England's forces a notable design but being suspected and put for their acquittance to take the Sacrament of the Altar they dissembled their persons and their interest their design and their religion and did for the Queens service as one wittily wrote to her give not only their bodies but their souls and so deserved a reward greater than she could pay them I cannot say this is a thing greater than a friendship can require for it is not great at all but a great villany which hath no name and no order in worthy entercourses and no obligation to a friend can reach as high as our duty to God And he that does a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thred that ties their hearts together it is a conspiracy but no longer friendship And when Cato lent his wife to Hortensius and Socrates lent his to a merry Greek they could not amongst wise persons obtain so much as the fame of being worthy friends neither could those great Names legitimate an unworthy action under the most plausible title It is certain that amongst friends their estates are common that is by whatsoever I can rescue my friend from calamity I am to serve him or not to call him friend there is a great latitude in this and it is to be restrained by no prudence but when there is on the other side a great necessity neither vicious nor avoidable A man may chuse whether he will or no and he does not sin in not doing it unless he have bound himself to it But certainly friendship is the greatest band in the world and if he have professed a great friendship he hath a very great obligation to do that and more and he can no ways be disobliged but by the care of his Natural relations I said Friendship is the greatest band in the world and I had reason for it for it is all the bands that this world hath and there is no society and there is no relation that is worthy but it is made so by the communications of friendship and by partaking some of its excellencies For Friendship is a transcendent
his posterity 870 874. That mankind by the fall of Adam did not lose the liberty of will 874. The sin of Adam is not in us properly and formally a sin 876. His sin to his posterity is not damnable 877. Of the Covenant God made with Adam 914. The Law of works onely imposed on him 587 n. 1. What evil we really had from Adam's fall 748 n. 14. The following of Adam cannot be original sin 764 n. 28. The fall of Adam lost us not heaven 748 n. 3 4. Whether if Adam had not sinned Christ had been incarnate 748 n. 4. Adam was made mortal 779 n. 4. Those evils that were the effects of Adam's fall are not in us sins properly inherent 750 n. 8. His sin made us not heirs of damnation 714 n. 22. nor makes us necessarily vicious 717 n. 39. Adam's sin did not corrupt our nature by a physical efficiency 717 n. 40. nor because we were in his loins 717 n. 41. nor because of the decree of God 717 n. 42. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What it signifieth 617 n. 21. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The meaning and use of the word 635 n. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What latitude of signification it hath 809 n. 39. Aelfrick Who lived in England about A. D. 996. determines against Transubstantiation 266 n. 12. Aerius How he could be an heretick being his errour was not against any fundamental article 150 ss 48. He was never condemned by any general Council 150 ss 48. The heresie of the Acephali what it was 151 ss 48. Aggravate No circumstance aggravates sin so much as that of the injured person 614 n. 11. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The use of that word in the Scripture 639 n. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The meaning and use of the word 638 n. 14. Alms. Are a part of repentance 848 n. 81. How they operate in order to pardon ibid. It is one of the best penances 860 n. 114. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What the word signifieth 617 n. 21. and 619 n. 26. S. Ambrose He was both Bishop and Prefect of Milane at one time 160 ss 49. His testimony against transubstantiation 259 260 261 § 12. and 300. His authority for confirmation by Presbyters considered 19 b. 20 b. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The notion of the word 809 n. 38. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The importance of the word 617 n. 122. Angels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Cor. 11.10 explained 58. § 9. Of worshipping them 467. Antiquity The reverence that is due to it 882. Apostle Whence that name was taken 48 § 4. Bishops were successours of the Apostles ibid. In what sense they were so 47 § 3. Saint James called an Apostle because he was a Bishop 48 § 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Ep. to Philip. 2.25 does not signifie Messenger but Apostle 49 § 4. That Bishops were successours in their office to the Apostles was the judgement of antiquity 59 § 10. St. James Bishop of Jerusalem was not one of the twelve Apostles 48 § 4. Apostles in Scripture called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 85 § 23. That the Canons of the Apostles so called are authentick 89 § 24. Of the Canons that go under their names 981 n. 9. The Apostles were by Christ invested with an equal authority 308. S. Peter did not act as having any superiority over the other Apostles 310 § 10. c. l. 1. Arius His preaching his errours was the cause why in Africk Presbyters were not by Law permitted to preach 128 § 37. How the Orthodox complied with the Arians about the Council of Ariminum 441. How his heresie began 958 n. 26. The opinion of Constantine the Great concerning the heresie of Arius 959 n. 26. How the opposition against his heresie was managed 958 959 960 n. 26 ad 36. Art How much it changes nature 652 n. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The signification of the word 665 n. 18. and 637 n. 8. Athanasius The questions and answers to Antiochus under his name are spurious 544. He intended not his Creed to be imposed on others 963. Concerning his Creed ibid. n. 36. His Creed was first written in Latine then translated into Greek 963 n. 36. Attrition What it is 842 n. 63. and 828 n. 25. The difference between it and contrition ibid. Attrition joyned with absolution by the Priest that it is not sufficient demonstrated by many arguments 830 n. 33. Attrition joyned with confession to a Priest and his absolution is not equal to contrition 842 n. 62 64. S. Augustine He was employed in secular affairs at Hippo as well as Ecclesiastical 161 § 49. His authority against Transubstantiation 261 262 § 12. Of his rule to try traditions Apostolical 432. Gratian quotes that out of him that certainly never was in his writings 451. He prayed for his dead mother when he believed her to be in heaven 501 502. The doctrine of the Roman Purgatory was no article of faith in his time 506. The Purgatory that Augustine sometimes mentions is not the Roman Purgatory 507 508. His authority in the matter of Transubstantiation 525 His zeal against the Pelagians was the occasion of his mistake in interpreting Rom. VII 15 775 n. 18. His inconstancy in the question whether concupiscence be a sin 913. Austerity Of the acts of austerity in Religion of what use they are 955 n. 18. Authority That is most effectual which is seated in the Conscience 160 § 49. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What the Apostle means by it Tit. III. 11 780 n. 30. and 951 n. 11. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What it signifieth 689 n. 5. B. Baptism THE doctrine of Infant-Baptism relieth not upon tradition onely but Scripture too 425 426. S. Ambrose S. Hierome and S. Augustine though born of Christian parents were not baptized till they were at full age 425. The reason why the Church baptizeth Infants 426. An answer to that saying of Perron's That there is no place of Scripture whereby we can certainly convince the Anabaptists 426. The validity of the baptism of hereticks is not to be proved by tradition without Scripture 426 427. Of the salvation of unbaptized Infants that are born of Christian parents 471. Of the Scripture Liturgy in an unknown tongue 471. The promise of quorum remiseritis is by some understood of Baptism 486. Of the pardon of sins after baptism 802 n. 7. Saint Cyprian and S. Chrysostome's testimony for Infant-baptism 760 n. 21 22. The principle on which the necessity of Infants baptism is grounded 426 and 718 n. 42. Sins committed after it may be pardoned by repentance 802 n. 8 9. It admits us into the Covenant of repentance 803 n. 10. If we labour not under the guilt of original sin why in our infancy are we baptized That objection answered 884. The state of unbaptized Infants 897. The difference between this Chrism and that of Confirmation 20 b. The difference between Baptism and Confirmation as to the use 26 b. Of the change
calling himself Universal Bishop 310. Saint Peter did not act as having any superiority over the Apostles 310 c. 1. § 10. There is nothing in Scripture to prove that the Bishop of Rome succeeds Saint Peter in that power he had more then any other 310. Pope Victor and Pope Stephen were opposed by other Bishops 310. The Council of Chalcedon did by decree give to the Bishop of Constantinople equal priviledges with Rome 310. A Pope accused in the Lateran Council for not being in Orders 325 c. 2. § 7. It is held ominous for a Pope to canonize a Saint 333 c. 2. § 9. The Romanists teach the Pope hath power to dispense with all the Laws of God 342. He hath power as the Romanists teach to dispose of the temporal things of all Christians 344. He is to be obeyed according to their doctrine though he command Sin or forbid Vertue 345. He takes upon him to depose Princes that are not heretical 345. The greatness of the Pope's power 345. Sixtus Quintus did in an Oration in the Conclave solemnly commend the Monk that kill'd Henry III. of France 346 c. 3. § 3. Of the Pope's confirming a General Council 395. A General Council in many cases cannot have the Pope's Confirmation 396. Whether the Pope be above a Council 396. When Pope Stephen decreed against Saint Cyprian in the point of rebaptizing Hereticks Saint Cyprian regarded it not nor changed his opinion 399. Sixtus V. and some other Popes were Simoniacal 401. A Simoniacal Pope is no Pope ibid. An Heretical Pope is no Pope ibid. What Popes have been heretical 401 402. What Popes have been guilty of those crimes that disannul their authority 400 401 402. The Pope hath not power to make Articles of Faith 446 447. Of his Infallibility 995 § 7. per tot He the Romanists teach can make new Articles of Faith and new Scripture 450. The Roman Writers reckon the Decretal Epistles of Popes among the Holy Scriptures 451. Bellarmine confesseth that for 1500 years the Pope's judgment was not esteemed infallible 453. A strange unintelligible Indulgence given by two Popes about the beginning of the Council of Trent 498. An instance of a Pope's skill in the Bible 505. Lindwood in the Council of Basil made an appeal in behalf of the King of England against the Pope 511. The same Pope that decreed Transubstantiation made Rebellion lawful 520. When the Pope excommunicated Saint Cyprian all Catholicks absolved him 957 n. 22. Some Papists hold that the Popedome is separable from the Bishoprick of Rome how then can he get any thing by the title of Succession 999. Divers ancient Bishops lived separate from the Communion of the Roman Pope 1002. The Bishops of Liguria and Istria renounced subjection to the Patriarchate of Rome and set up one of their own at Aquileia ibid. Divers Popes were Hereticks 1003. Possible Two senses of it 580 n. 34. Prayer The practice of the Heathens in their prayers and hymns to their gods 3 n. 11. Against them that deny all Set forms of Prayer 2 n. 6. seq Against those that allow any Set forms of prayer but those that are enjoyned by Authority 13 n. 51. Prescribed forms in publick are more for the edification of the Church then the other kind 14 n. 56. ad 65. The Lord's Prayer was given to be a Directory not onely for the matter of prayer but the manner or form too 19 n. 75. The Church hath the gift of Prayer and can exercise it in none but prescribed Forms 18 n. 69 70. Our Lord gave his Prayer to be not onely a Copy but a prescribed Form 19 n. 78. The practice of the Primitive Church in this matter 21 n. 86. Whether the Primitive Church did well in using publick prescribed Forms of Prayer and upon what grounds 25 n. 97. An answer to that Objection That Set forms limit the Spirit 30 n. 116. That Objection that Ministers may be allowed a liberty in their Prayers as well as their Sermons answered 32 n. 129. What in the sense of Scripture is praying with the Spirit 9 n. 37. and 47. The Romanists teach that neither attention nor devotion are required in our prayers 327 c. 2. § 8. Of the Scripture and Liturgy in an unknown tongue 471. A Pope gave leave to the Moravians to have Mass in the Sclavonian tongue 534. Of Prayer as a fruit or act of Repentance 848 n. 80. It is one of the best penances 860 n. 114. Those testimonies of the Fathers that prove Prayer for the dead do not prove Purgatory 295. The opinion and practice of the ancient Church in the language of publick Prayers 303 304. The Papists corrupted the Imperial law of Justinian in the matter of Prayers in an unknown tongue 304 c. 1. § 7. The authority of a Pope and General Council against publick Prayers in an unknown tongue 304. The difference between the Church of England and Rome in the use of publick Prayer 328 c. 2. § 8. Prayer for the dead The Primitive Fathers that practised it did not think of Purgatory 501. Saint Augustine prayed for his dead Mother when he believed her to be a Saint in Heaven 501 502. The Fathers made prayers for those who by the confession of all sides were not then in Purgatory 502 503. Communicantes offerentes pro sanctis proved to mean prayer and not thanksgiving onely 502. Instances out of the Latin Missal where prayers are made for those that were dead and yet not in Purgatory 505. The Roman doctrine of Purgatory is directly contrary to the doctrine of the ancient Fathers 512. Preach Presbyters in Africk by Law were not allowed to preach upon occasion of Arius preaching his errours 128 § 37. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Presbyter Tit. 1.15 it signifies Bishop and not mere Presbyter 71 § 15. Presbyters in Jerusalem were something more then Presbyters in other Churches 97 § 21. Those Presbyters mentioned Act. 20.28 in these words in quo Spir. Sanctus vos posuit Episcopos were Bishops and not mere Presbyters 80 § 21. Neither the Church nor the Presbyters in it had power to excommunicate before they had a Bishop set over them 82 § 21. Mere Presbyters had not in the Church any jurisdiction in causes criminal otherwise then by delegation 82 § 21. In what sense it is true that Bishops are not greater then Presbyters 83 § 21. Bishops in Scripture are styled Presbyters 85 § 23. Apostles in Scripture styled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 85 § 23. Mere Presbyters in Scripture are never called Bishops 86 § 23. A Presbyter did once assist at the ordaining a Bishop 98 § 31. Presbyters could not ordain 102 § 32. The Council of Sardis would not own them as Presbyters who were ordained by none but Presbyters 103 § 32. A Bishop may ordain without the concurrence of a Presbyter 105 § 32. Photius was â—he first that gave the power of Confirmation to Presbyters 109 § 33. The Bishop alone could
much exact in requiring the capacity of the person as the Number of the Ordainers But let them answer it For my part I believe that the imposition of hands by Andreas was no more in that case than if a lay-man had done it it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and though the ordination was absolutely Uncanonical yet it being in the exigence of Necessity and being done by two Bishops according to the Apostolical Canon it was valid in naturâ rei though not in forma Canonis and the addition of the Priest was but to cheat the Canon and cozen himself into an impertinent belief of a Canonical ordination 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Council of Sardis Bishops must ordain Bishops It was never heard that Priests did or de jure might These premises do most certainly infer a real difference between Episcopacy and the Presbyterate But whether or no they infer a difference of order or only of degree or whether degree and order be all one or no is of great consideration in the present and in relation to many other Questions 1. Then it is evident that in Antiquity Ordo and Gradus were used promiscuously 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was the Greek word and for it the Latins used Ordo as is evident in the instances above mentioned to which add that Anacletus says that Christ did instituere duos Ordines Episcoporum Sacerdotum And S. Leo affirâ—â— Primum ordinem esse Episcopalem secundum Presbyteralem tertium Leviticum And these among the Greeks are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 three degrees So the order of Deaconship in S. Paul is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a good degree and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. is a censure used alike in the censures of Bishops Priests and Deacons They are all of the same Name and the same consideration for order distance and degree amongst the Fathers Gradus and Ordo are equally affirmed of them all and the word Gradus is used sometimes for that which is called Ordo most frequently So Felix writing to S. Austin Non tantum ego possum contra tuam virtutem quia mira virtus est Gradus Episcopalis and S. Cyprian of Cornelius Ad Sacerdotii sublime fastigium cunctis religionis Gradibus ascendit Degree and Order are used in common for he that speaks most properly will call that an Order in persons which corresponds to a degree in qualities and neither of the words are wronged by a mutual substitution 2. The promotion of a Bishop ad Munus Episcopale was at first called ordinatio Episcopi Stir up the Grace that is in thee juxta ordinationem tuam in Episcopatum saith Sedulius And S. Hierom prophetiae gratiam habebat cum Ordinatione Episcopatus Neque enim fas erat aut licebat ut inferior Ordinaret majorem saith S. Ambrose proving that Presbyters might not impose hands on a Bishop * Romanorum Ecclesia Clementem à Petro Ordinatum edit saith Tertulliâ—n and S. Hierome affirms that S. James was Ordained Bishop of Jerusalem immediately after the Passion of our Lord. Ordinatus was the the word at first and afterwards Consecratus came in conjunction with it when Moses the Monk was to be ordained to wit a Bishop for that 's the title of the story in Theodoret and spyed that Lucius was there ready to impose hands on him absit says he ut manus tua me Consecret 3. In all orders there is the impress of a distinct Character that is the person is qualified with a new capacity to do certain offices which before his ordination he had no power to do A Deacon hath an order or power Quo pocula vitae Misceat latices cum Sanguine porrigat agni as Arator himself a Deacon expresses it A Presbyter hath an higher order or degree in the office or ministery of the Church whereby he is enabled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Council of Ancyra does intimate But a Bishop hath a higher yet for besides all the offices communicated to Priests and Deacons he can give orders which very one thing makes Episcopacy to be a distinct order For Ordo is designed by the Schools to be traditio potestatis spiritualis Collatio gratiae ad obeunda Ministeria Ecclesiastica a giving a spiritual power and a conferring grace for the performance of Ecclesiastical Ministrations Since then Episcopacy hath a new ordination and a distinct power as I shall shew in the descent it must needs be a distinct order both according to the Name given it by antiquity and according to the nature of the thing in the definitions of the School There is nothing said against this but a fancy of some of the Church of Rome obtruded indeed upon no grounds for they would define order to be a special power in relation to the Holy Sacrament which they call corpus Christi naturale and Episcopacy indeed to be a distinct power in relation ad corpus Christi Mysticum or the regiment of the Church and ordaining labourers for the harvest and therefore not to be a distinct order But this to them that consider things sadly is true or false according as any man list For if these men are resolved they will call nothing an order but what is a power in order to the consecration of the Eucharist who can help it Then indeed in that sence Episcopacy is not a distinct order that is a Bishop hath no new power in the consecration of the Venerable Eucharist more than a Presbyter hath But then why these men should only call this power an order no man can give a reason For 1. in Antiquity the distinct power of a Bishop was ever called an Order and I think before Hugo de S. Victore and the Master of the Sentences no man ever denied it to be an order 2. According to this rate I would fain know the office of a Sub-deacon and of an Ostiary and of an Acolouthite and of a Reader come to be distinct Orders for surely the Bishop hath as much power in order to consecration de Novo as they have de integro And if I mistake not that the Bishop hath a new power to ordain Presbyters who shall have a power of consecrating the Eucharist is more a new power in order to consecration than all those inferior officers put together have in all and yet they call them Orders and therefore why not Episcopacy also I cannot imagine unless because they will not *** But however in the mean time the denying the office and degree of Episcopacy to be a new and a distinct order is an innovation of the production of some in the Church of Rome without all reason and against all Antiquity This only by the way The enemies of Episcopacy call in aid from all places for support of their ruinous cause and therefore take their main hopes from the Church of Rome by advantage of the former discourse
For since say they that consecration of the Sacrament is the Greatest work of the most secret mystery greatest power and highest dignity that is competent to man and this a Presbyter hath as well as a Bishop is it likely that a Bishop should by Divine institution be so much superiour to a Presbyter who by the confession of all sides communicates with a Bishop in that which is his highest power And shall issues of a lesser dignity distinguish the Orders and make a Bishop higher to a Presbyter and not rather the Greater raise up a Presbyter to the Counterpoise of a Bishop Upon this surmise the men of the Church of Rome would infer an identity of order though a disparity of degree but the Men of the other world would infer a parity both of order and degree too The first are already answered in the premises The second must now be served 1. Then whether power be greater of Ordaining Priests or Consecrating the Sacrament is an impertinent Question possibly it may be of some danger because in comparing Gods ordinances there must certainly be a depression of one and whether that lights upon the right side or no yet peradventure it will not stand with the consequence of our gratitude to God to do that which in Gods estimate may tantamount to a direct undervaluing but however it is unprofitable of no use in case of conscience either in order to faith or manners and besides cannot fix it self upon any basis there being no way of proving either to be more excellent than the other 2. The Sacraments and mysteries of Christianity if compared among themselves are greater and lesser in several respects For since they are all in order to several ends that is productive of several effects and they all are excellent every rite and sacrament in respect of its own effect is more excellent than the other not ordained to that effect For example Matrimony is ordained for a means to preserve Chastity and to represent the mystical union of Christ and his Church and therefore in these respects is greater than baptism which does neither But * Baptism is for remission of sins and in that is more excellent than Matrimony the same may be said for ordination and consecration the one being in order to Christs natural body as the Schools speak the other in order to his mystical body and so have their several excellencies respectively but for an absolute preheminence of one above the other I said there was no basis to fix that upon and I believe all men will find it so that please to try But in a relative or respective excellency they go both before and after one another Thus Wool and a Jewel are better than each other for wool is better for warmth and a jewel for ornament A frogg hath more sense in it than the Sun and yet the Sun shines brighter 3. Suppose consecration of the Eucharist were greater than ordaining Priests yet that cannot hinder but that the power of ordaining may make a higher and distinct order because the power of ordaining hath in it the power of consecrating and something more it is all that which makes the Priest and it is something more besides which makes the Bishop Indeed if the Bishop had it not and the Priest had it then supposing consecration to be greater than ordination the Priest would not only equal but excel the Bishop but because the Bishop hath that and ordination besides therefore he is higher both in Order and Dignity 4. Suppose that Consecration were the greatest Clerical power in the world and that the Bishop and the Priest were equal in the greatest power yet a lesser power than it superadded to the Bishops may make a distinct order and superiority Thus it was said of the son of Man Constituit eum paulò minorem Angelis he was made a little lower than the Angels It was but a little lower and yet so much as to distinguish their Natures for he took not upon him the Nature of Angels but the seed of Abraham So it is in proportion between Bishop and Priest for though a Priest communicating in the greatest power of the Church viz. consecration of the venerable Eucharist yet differing in a less is paulò minor Angelis a little lower than the Bishop the Angel of the Church yet this little lower makes a distinct order and enough for a subordination * An Angel and a man communicate in those great excellencies of spiritual essence they both discourse they have both election and freedom of choice they have will and understanding and memory impresses of the Divine image and loco-motion and immortality And these excellencies are being precisely considered of more real and eternal worth than the Angelical manner of moving so in an instant and those other forms and modalities of their knowledge and volition and yet for these superadded parts of excellency the difference is no less than specifical If we compare a Bishop and a Priest thus what we call difference in nature there will be a difference in order here and of the same consideration 5. Lastly it is considerable that these men that make this objection do not make it because they think it true but because it will serve a present turn For all the world sees that to them that deny the real presence this can be no objection and most certainly the Anti-episcopal men do so in all sences and then what excellency is there in the power of consecration more than in ordination Nay is there any such thing as consecration at all This also would be considered from their principles But I proceed One thing only more is objected against the main Question If Episcopacy be a distinct order why may not a man be a Bishop that never was a Priest as abstracting from the Laws of the Church a man may be a Presbyter that never was a Deacon for if it be the impress of a distinct character it may be imprinted per saltum and independently as it is in the order of a Presbyter To this I answer It is true if the powers and characters themselves were independent as it is in all those offices of humane constitution which are called the inferior orders For the office of an Acolouthite of an Exorcist of an Ostiary are no way dependent on the office of a Deacon and therefore a man may be Deacon that never was in any of those and perhaps a Presbyter too that never was a Deacon as it was in the first example of the Presbyterate in the 72. Disciples But a Bishop though he have a distinct character yet it is not disparate from that of a Presbyter but supposes it ex vi ordinis For since the power of ordination if any thing be is the distinct capacity of a Bishop this power supposes a power of consecrating the Eucharist to be in the Bishop for how else can he ordain a Presbyter with a power that