that the end of Miracles was to beget beleef not universally in all men elect and reprobate but in the elect only that is to say in such as God had determined should become his Subjects For those miraculous plagues of Egypt had not for end the conversion of Pharaoh For God had told Moses before that he would harden the heart of Pharaoh that he should not let the people goe And when he let them goe at last not the Miracles perswaded him but the plagues forced him to it So also of our Saviour it is written Mat. 13. 58. that he wrought not many Miracles in his own countrey because of their unbeleef and in Marke 6. 5. in stead of he wrought not many it is he could work none It was not because he wanted power which to say were blasphemy against God nor that the end of Miracles was not to convert incredulous men to Christ for the end of all the Miracles of Moses of the Prophets of our Saviour and of his Apostles was to adde men to the Church but it was because the end of their Miracles was to adde to the Church not all men but such as should be saved that is to say such as God had elected Seeing therefore our Saviour was sent from his Father hee could not use his power in the conversion of those whom his Father had rejected They that expounding this place of St. Marke say that this word Hee could not is put for He would not do it without example in the Greek tongue where Would not is put sometimes for Could not in things inanimate that have no will but Could not for Would not never and thereby lay a stumbling block before weak Christians as if Christ could doe no Miracles but amongst the credulous From that which I have here set down of thenature and use of a Miracle we may define it thus A MIRACLE is a work of God besides his operation by the way of Nature ordained in the Creation done for the making manifest to his elect the mission of an extraordinary Minister for their salvation And from this definition we may inferre First that in all Miracles the work done is not the effect of any vertue in the Prophet because it is the effect of the immediate hand of God that is to say God hath done it without using the Prophet therein as a subordinate cause Secondly that no Devil Angel or other created Spirit can do a Miracle For it must either be by vertue of some naturall science or by Incantation that is vertue of words For if the Inchanters do it by their own power independent there is some power that proceedeth not from God which all men deny and if they doe it by power given them then is the work not from the immediate hand of God but naturall and consequently no Miracle There be some texts of Scripture that seem to attribute the power of working wonders equall to some of those immediate Miracles wrought by God himself to certain Arts of Magick and Incantation As for example when we read that after the Rod of Moses being east on the ground became a Serpent the Magicians of Egypt did the like by their Enchantments and that after Moses had turned the waters of the Egyptian Streams Rivers Ponds and Pooles of water into blood the Magicians of Egypt did so likewise with their Enchantments and that after Moses had by the power of God brought frogs upon the land the Magicians also did so with their Enchantments and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt will not a man be apt to attribute Miracles to Enchantments that is to say to the efficacy of the sound of Words and think the samâ—… very well proved out of this and other such places and yet there is no place of Scripture that telleth us what an Enchantment is If therefore Enchantment be not as many think it a working of strange effects by spells and words but Imposture and delusion wrought by ordinary means and so far from supernaturall as the Impostors need not the study so much as of naturall causes but the ordinary ignorance stupidity and superstition of mankind to doe them those texts that seem to countenance the power of Magick Witcheraft and Enchantment must needs have another sense than at first sight they seem to bear For it is evident enough that Words have no effect but on those that understand them and then they have no other but to signifie the intentions or passions of them that speak and thereby produce hope fear or other passions or conceptions in the hearer Therefore when a Rod seemeth a Serpent or the Waters Bloud or any other Miracle seemeth done by Enchantment if it be not to the edification of Gods people not the Rod nor the Water nor any other thing is enchanted that is to say wrought upon by the Words but the Spectator So that all the Miracle consisteth in this that the Enchanter has deceived a man which is no Miracle but a very easie matter to doe For such is the ignorance and aptitude to error generally of all men but especially of them that have not much knowledge of naturall causes and of the nature and interests of men as by innumerable and easie tricks to be abused What opinion of miraculous power before it was known there was a Science of the course of the Stars might a man have gained that should have told the people This hour or day the Sun should be darkned A Juggler by the handling of his goblets and other trinkets if it were not now ordinarily practised would be thought to do his wonders by the power at least of the Devil A man that hath practised to speak by drawing in of his breath which kind of men in antient time were called Ventriloqui and so make the weaknesse of his voice seem to proceed not from the weak impulsion of the organs of Speech but from distance of place is able to make very many men beleeve it is a voice from Heaven whatsoever he please to tell them And for a crafty man that hath enquired into the secrets and familiar confessions that one man ordinarily maketh to another of his actions and adventures past to tell them him again is no hard matter and yet there be many that by such means as that obtain the reputation of being Conjurers But it is too long a businesse to reckon up the severall sorts of those men which the Greeks called Thaumaturgi that is to say workers of things wonderfull and yet these do all they do by their own single dexterity But if we looke upon the Impostures wrought by Confederacy there is nothing how impossible soever to be done that is impossible to bee beleeved For two men conspiring one to seem lame the other to cure him with a charme will deceive many but many conspiring one to seem lame another so to cure him and all the rest to bear witnesse will
Vision or Dream Nor is there any thing in his Law Morall or Ceremoniall by which they were taught there was any such Enthusiasme or any Possession When God is sayd Numb 11. 25. to take from the Spirit that was in Moses and give to the 70. Elders the Spirit of God taking it for the substance of God is not divided The Scriptures by the Spirit of God in man mean a mans spirit enclined to Godlinesse And where it is said Exod. 28. 3. Whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdome to make garments for Aaron is not meant a spirit put into them that can make garments but the wisdome of their own spirits in that kind of work In the like sense the spirit of man when it produceth unclean actions is ordinarily called an unclean spirit and so other spirits though not alwayes yet as often as the vertue or vice so stiled is extraordinary and Eminent Neither did the other Prophets of the old Testament pretend Enthusiasme or that God spake in them but to them by Voyce Vision or Dream and the Burthen of the Lord was not Possession but Command How then could the Jewes fall into this opinion of possession I can imagine no reason but that which is common to all men namely the want of curiosity to search naturall causes and their placing Felicity in the acquisition of the grosse pleasures of the Senses and the things that most immediately conduce thereto For they that see any strange and unusuall ability or defect in a mans mind unlesse they see withall from what cause it may probably proceed can hardly think it naturall and if not naturall they must needs thinke it supernaturall and then what can it be but that either God or the Divell is in him And hence it came to passe when our Saviour Mark 3. 21. was compassed about with the multitude those of the house doubted he was mad and went out to hold him but the Scribes said he had Belzebub and that was it by which he cast out divels as if the greater mad-man had awed the lesser And that John 10. 20. some said He hath a Divell and is mad whereas others holding him for a Prophet sayd These are not the words of one that hath a Divell So in the old Testament he that came to anoynt Jehu 2 Kings 9. 11. was a Prophet but some of the company asked Jehu What came that mad-man for So that in summe it is manifest that whosoever behaved himselfe in extraordinory manner was thought by the Jewes to be possessed either with a good or evill spirit except by the Sadduces who erred so farre on the other hand as not to believe there were at all any spirits which is very neere to direct Atheisme and thereby perhaps the more provoked others to terme such men Daemoniacks rather than mad-men But why then does our Saviour proceed in the curing of them as if they were possest and not as if they were mad To which I can give no other kind of answer but that which is given to those that urge the Scripture in like manner against the opinion of the motion of the Earth The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdome of God and to prepare their mindes to become his obedient subjects leaving the world and the Philosophy thereof to the disputation of men for the exercising of their naturall Reason Whether the Earths or Suns motion make the day and night or whether the Exorbitant actions of men proceed from Passion or from the Divell so we worship him not it is all one as to our obedience and subjection to God Almighty which is the thing for which the Scripture was written As for that our Saviour speaketh to the disease as to a person it is the usuall phrase of all that cure by words onely as Christ did and Inchanters pretend to do whether they speak to a Divel or not For is not Christ also said Math. 8. 26. to have rebuked the winds Is not he said also Luk. 4. 39. to rebuke a Fever Yet this does not argue that a Fever is a Divel And whereas many of those Divels are said to confesse Christ it is not necessary to interpret those places otherwise than that those mad-men confessed him And whereas our Saviour Math. 12. 43. speaketh of an unclean Spirit that having gone out of a man wandreth through dry places seeking rest and finding none and returning into the same man with seven other spirits worse than himselfe It is manifestly a Parable alluding to a man that after a little endeavour to quit his lusts is vanquished by the strength of them and becomes seven times worse than he was So that I see nothing at all in the Scripture that requireth a beliefe that Daemoniacks were any other thing but Mad-men There is yet another fault in the Discourses of some men which may also be numbred amongst the sorts of Madnesse namely that abuse of words whereof I have spoken before in the fifth chapter by the Name of Absurdity And that is when men speak such words as put together have in them no signification at all but are fallen upon by some through misunderstanding of the words they have received and repeat by rote by others from intention to deceive by obscurity And this is incident to none but those that converse in questions of matters incomprehensible as the Schoole-men or in questions of abstruse Philosophy The common sort of men seldome speak Insignificantly and are therefore by those other Egregious persons counted Idiots But to be assured their words are without any thing correspondent to them in the mind there would need some Examples which if any man require let him take a Schooleman into his hands and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning any difficult point as the Trinity the Deity the nature of Christ Transubstantiation Free-will c. into any of the moderne tongues so as to make the same intelligible or into any tolerable Latine such as they were acquainted withall that lived when the Latine tongue was Vulgar What is the meaning of these words The first cause does not necessarily inflow any thing into the second by force of the Essentiall subordination of the second causes by Which it may help it to worke They are the Translation of the Title of the sixth chapter of Suarez first Booke Of the Concourse Motion and Help of God When men write whole volumes of such stuffe are they not Mad or intend to make others so And particularly in the question of Transubstantiation where after certain words spoken they that say the White nesse Round nesse Magnitude Quality Corruptibility all which are incorporeall c. go out of the Wafer into the Body of our blessed Saviour do they not make those Nessles Tudes and Ties to be so many spirits possessing his body For by Spirits they mean alwayes things that being incorporeall are neverthelesse moveable from one place to another So
Idea of him in their mind answerable to his nature For as a man that is born blind hearing men talk of warming themselves by the fire and being brought to warm himself by the same may easily conceive and assure himselfe there is somewhat there which men call Fire and is the cause of the heat he feeles but cannot imagine what it is like nor have an Idea of it in his mind such as they have that see it so also by the visible things of this world and their admirable order a man may conceive there is a cause of them which men call God and yet not have an Idea or Image of him in his mind And they that make little or no enquiry into the naturall causes of things yet from the feare that proceeds from the ignorance it selfe of what it is that hath the power to do them much good or harm are enclined to suppose and feign unto themselves severall kinds of Powers Invisible and to stand in awe of their own imaginations and in time of distresse to invoke them as also in the time of an expected good successe to give them thanks making the creatures of their own fancy their Gods By which means it hath come to passe that from the innumerable variety of Fancy men have created in the world innumerable sorts of Gods And this Feare of things invisible is the naturall Seed of that which every one in himself calleth Religion and in them that worship or feare that Power otherwise than they do Superstition And this seed of Religion having been observed by many some of those that have observed it have been enclined thereby to nourish dresse and forme it into Lawes and to adde to it of their own invention any opinion of the causes of future events by which they thought they should best be able to govern others and make unto themselves the greatest use of their Powers CHAP. XII OF RELIGION SEeing there are no signes nor fruit of Religion but in Man onely there is no cause to doubt but that the seed of Religion is also onely in Man and consisteth in some peculiar quality or at least in some eminent degree therof not to be found in other Living creatures And first it is peculiar to the nature of Man to be inquisitive into the Causes of the Events they see some more some lesse but all men so much as to be curious in the search of the causes of their own good and evill fortune Secondly upon the sight of any thing that hath a Beginning to think also it had a cause which determined the same to begin then when it did rather than sooner or later Thirdly whereas there is no other Felicity of Beasts but the enjoying of their quotidian Food Ease and Lusts as having little or no foresight of the time to come for want of observation and memory of the order consequence and dependance of the things they see Man observeth how one Event hath been produced by another and remembreth in them Antecedence and Consequence And when he cannot assure himselfe of the true causes of things for the causes of good and evill fortune for the most part are invisible he supposes causes of them either such as his own fancy suggesteth or trusteth to the Authority of other men such as he thinks to be his friends and wiser than himselfe The two first make Anxiety For being assured that there be causes of all things that have arrived hitherto or shall arrive hereafter it is impossible for a man who continually endeavoureth to secure himselfe against the evill he feares and procure the good he desireth not to be in a perpetuall solicitude of the time to come So that every man especially those that are over provident are in an estate like to that of Prometheus For as Prometheus which interpreted is The prudent man was bound to the hill Caucasus a place of large prospect where an Eagle feeding on his liver devoured in the day as much as was repayred in the night So that man which looks too far before him in the care of future time hath his heart all the day long gnawed on by feare of death poverty or other calamity and has no repose nor pause of his anxiety but in sleep This perpetuall feare alwayes accompanying mankind in the ignorance of causes as it were in the Dark must needs have for object something And therefore when there is nothing to be seen there is nothing to accuse either of their good or evill fortune but some Power or Agent Invisible In which sense perhaps it was that some of the old Poets said that the Gods were at first created by humane Feare which spoken of the Gods that is to say of the many Gods of the Gentiles is very true But the acknowledging of one God Eternall Infinite and Omnipotent may more easily be derived from the desire men have to know the causes of naturall bodies and their severall vertues and operations than from the feare of what was to be fall them in time to come For he that from any effect hee seeth come to passe should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof and from thence to the cause of that cause and plonge himselfe profoundly in the pursuit of causes shall at last come to this that there must be as even the Heathen Philosophers confessed one First Mover that is a First and an Eternall cause of all things which is that which men mean by the name of God And all this without thought of their fortune the solicitude whereof both enclines to fear and hinders them from the search of the causes of other things and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many Gods as there be men that feigne them And for the matter or substance of the Invisible Agents so fancyed they could not by naturall cogitation fall upon any other conceipt but that it was the same with that of the Soule of man and that the Soule of man was of the same substance with that which appeareth in a Dream to one that sleepeth or in a Looking-glasse to one that is awake which men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the Fancy think to be reall and externall Substances and therefore call them Ghosts as the Latines called them Imagines and Umbrae and thought them Spirits that is thin aëreall bodies and those Invisible Agents which they feared to bee like them save that they appear and vanish when they please But the opinion that such Spirits were Incorporeall or Immateriall could never enter into the mind of any man by nature because though men may put together words of contradictory signification as Spirit and Incorporeall yet they can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them And therefore men that by their own meditation arrive to the acknowledgement of one Infinite Omnipotent and Eternall God choose rather to confesse he is Incomprehensible and
them For it is a thing that dependeth not on Nature but on the scope of the Writer and is subservient to every mans proper method In the Institutions of Justinian we find seven sorts of Civill Lawes 1. The Edicts Constitutions and Epistles of the Prince that is of the Emperour because the whole power of the people was in him Like these are the Proclamations of the Kings of England 2. The Decrees of the whole people of Rome comprehending the Senate when they were put to the Question by the Senate These were Lawes at first by the vertue of the Soveraign Power residing in the people and such of them as by the Emperours were not abrogated remained Lawes by the Authority Imperiall For all Lawes that bind are understood to be Lawes by his authority that has power to repeale them Somewhat like to these Lawes are the Acts of Parliament in England 3. The Decrees of the Common people excluding the Senate when they were put to the question by the Tribune of the people For such of them as were not abrogated by the Emperours remained Lawes by the Authority Imperiall Like to these were the Orders of the House of Commons in England 4. Senatûs consulta the Orders of the Senate because when the people of Rome grew so numerous as it was inconvenient to assemble them it was thought fit by the Emperour that men should Consult the Senate in stead of the people And these have some resemblance with the Acts of Counsell 5. The Edicts of Praetors and in some Cases of the Aediles such as are the Chiefe Justices in the Courts of England 6. Responsa Prudentum which were the Sentences and Opinions of those Lawyers to whom the Emperour gave Authority to interpret the Law and to give answer to such as in matter of Law demanded their advice which Answers the Judges in giving Judgement were obliged by the Constitutions of the Emperour to observe And should be like the Reports of Cases Judged if other Judges be by the Law of England bound to observe them For the Judges of the Common Law of England are not properly Judges but Juris Consulti of whom the Judges who are either the Lords or Twelve men of the Country are in point of Law to ask advice 7. Also Unwritten Customes which in their own nature are an imitation of Law by the tacite consent of the Emperour in case they be not contrary to the Law of Nature are very Lawes Another division of Lawes is into Naturall and Positive Naturâ—…ll are those which have been Lawes from all Eternity and are called not onely Naturall but also Morall Lawes consisting in the Morall Vertues as Justice Equity and all habits of the mind that conduce to Peace and Charity of which I have already spoken in the fourteenth and fifteenth Chapters Positive are those which have not been from Eternity but have been made Lawes by the Will of those that have had the Soveraign Power over others and are either written or made known to men by some other argument of the Will of their Legislator Again of Positive Lawes some are Humane some Divine And of Humane positive lawes some are Distributive some Penal Distributive are those that determine the Rights of the Subjects declaring to every man what it is by which he acquireth and holdeth a propriety in lands or goods and a right or liberty of action and these speak to all the Subjects Penal are those which declare what Penalty shall be inflicted on those that violate the Law and speak to the Ministers and Officers ordained for execution For though every one ought to be informed of the Punishments ordained before-hand for their transgression neverthelesse the Command is not addressed to the Delinquent who cannot be supposed will faithfully punish himselfe but to publique Ministers appointed to see the Penalty executed And these Penal Lawes are for the most part written together with the Lawes Distributive and are sometimes called Judgements For all Lawes are generall Judgements or Sentences of the Legislator as also every particular Judgement is a Law to him whose case is Judged Divine Positive Lawes for Naturall Lawes being Eternall and Universall are all Divine are those which being the Commandements of God not from all Eternity nor universally addressed to all men but onely to a certain people or to certain persons are declared for such by those whom God hath authorised to declare them But this Authority of man to declare what be these Positive Lawes of God how can it be known God may command a man by a supernaturall way to deliver Lawes to other men But because it is of the essence of Law that he who is to be obliged be assured of the Authority of him that declareth it which we cannot naturally take notice to be from God How can a man without supernaturall Revelation be assured of the Revelation received by the declarer and how can he be bound to obey them For the first question how a man can be assured of the Revelation of another without a Revelation particularly to himselfe it is evidently impossible For though a man may be induced to believe such Revelation from the Miracles they see him doe or from seeing the Extraordinary sanctity of his life or from seeing the Extraordinary wisedome or Extraordinary felicity of his Actions all which are marks of God extraordinary favour yet they are not assured evidences of speciall Revelation Miracles are Marvellous workes but that which is marvellous to one may not be so to another Sanctity may be feigned and the visible felicities of this world are most often the work of God by Naturall and ordinary causes And therefore no man can infallibly know by naturall reason that another has had a supernaturall revelation of Gods will but only a beliefe every one as the signs thereof shall appear greater or lesser a firmer or a weaker belief But for the second how he can be bound to obey them it is not so hard For if the Law declared be not against the Law of Nature which is undoubtedly Gods Law and he undertake to obey it he is bound by his own act bound I say to obey it but not bound to believe it for mens beliefe and interiour cogitations are not subject to the commands but only to the operation of God ordinary or extraordinary Faith of Supernaturall Law is not a fulfilling but only an assenting to the same and not a duty that we exhibite to God but a gift which God freely giveth to whom he pleaseth as also Unbelief is not a breach of any of his Lawes but a rejection of them all except the Laws Naturall But this that I say will be made yet cleerer by the Examples and Testimonies concerning this point in holy Scripture The Covenant God made with Abraham in a Supernaturall manner was thus This is the Covenant which thou shalt observe between Me and Thee and thy Seed after thee Abrahams Seed had
fault that Jonathan had committed in eating a honey-comb contrary to the oath taken by the people And Iosh. 18. 10. God divided the land of Canaan amongst the Israelite by the lots that Ioshua did cast before the Lord in Shiloh In the same manner it seemeth to be that God discovered Ioshua 7. 16 c. the crime of Achan And these are the wayes whereby God declared his Will in the Old Testament All which ways he used also in the New Testament To the Virgin Mary by a Vision of an Angel To Ioseph in a Dream again to Paul in the way to Damascus in a Vision of our Saviour and to Peter in the Vision of a sheet let down from heaven with divers sorts of flesh of clean and unclean beasts and in prison by Vision of an Angel And to all the Apostles and Writers of the New Testament by the graces of his Spirit and to the Apostles again at the choosing of Matthias in the place of Judas Iscariot by lot Seeing then all Prophecy supposeth Vision or Dream which two when they be naturall are the same or some especiall gift of God so rarely observed in mankind as to be admired where observed And seeing as well such gifts as the most extraordinary Dreams and Visions may proceed from God not onely by his supernaturall and immediate but also by his naturall operation and by mediation of second causes there is need of Reason and Judgment to discern between naturall and supernaturall Gifts and between naturall and supernaturall Visions or Dreams And consequently men had need to be very circumspect aud wary in obeying the voice of man that pretending himself to be a Prophet requires us to obey God in that way which he in Gods name telleth us to be the way to happinesse For he that pretends to teach men the way of so great felicity pretends to govern them that is to say to rule and reign over them which is a thing that all men naturally desire and is therefore worthy to be suspected of Ambition and Imposture and consequently ought to be examined and tryed by every man before hee yeeld them obedience unlesse he have yeelded it them already in the institution of a Common-wealth as when the Prophet is the Civill Soveraign or by the Civil Soveraign Authorized And if this examination of Prophets and Spirits were not allowed to every one of the people it had been to no purpose to set out the marks by which every man might be able to distinguish between those whom they ought and those whom they ought not to follow Seeing therefore such marks are set out Deut. 13. 1 c. to know a Prophet by and 1 Iohn 4. 1. c. to know a Spirit by and seeing there is so much Prophecying in the Old Testament and so much Preaching in the New Testament against Prophets and so much greater a number ordinarily of false Prophets then of true every one is to beware of obeying their directions at their own perill And first that there were many more false then true Prophets appears by this that when Ahab 1 Kings 12. consulted four hundred Prophets they were all false Impostors but onely one Michaiah And a little before the time of the Captivity the Prophets were generally lyars The Prophets saith the Lord by Ieremy cha 14. verse 14. prophecy Lies in my name I sent them not neither have I commanded them nor spake unto them they prophecy to you a false Vision a thing of naught and the deceit of their heart In so much as God commanded the People by the mouth of the Prophet Iâ—…remiah chap. 23. 16. not to obey them Thus saith the Lord of Hosts hearken not unto the words of the Prophets that prophecy to you They make you vain they speak a Vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord. Seeing then there was in the time of the Old Testament such quarrells amongst the Visionary Prophets one contesting with another and asking When departed the Spirit from me to go to thee as between Michaiah and the rest of the four hundred and such giving of the Lye to one another as in Ierem. 14. 14. and such controversies in the New Testament at this day amongst the Spirituall Prophets Every man then was and now is bound to make use of his Naturall Reason to apply to all Prophecy those Rules which God hath given us to discern the true from the false Of which Rules in the Old Testament one was conformable doctrine to that which Moses the Soveraign Prophet had taught them and the other the miraculous power of foretelling what God would bring to passe as I have already shewn out of Deut. 13. 1. c. And in the New Testament there was but one onely mark and that was the preaching of this Doctrine That Iesus is the Christ that is the King of the Jews promised in the Old Testament Whosoever denyed that Article he was a false Prophet whatsoever miracles he might seem to work and he that taught it was a true Prophet For St. Iohn 1 Epist. 4. 2 c. speaking expressely of the means to examine Spirits whether they be of God or not after he had told them that there would arise false Prophets saith thus Hereby know ye the Spirit of God Every Spirit that confesseth that Iesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God that is is approved and allowed as a Prophet of God not that he is a godly man or one of the Elect for this that he confesseth professeth or preacheth Jesus to be the Christ but for that he is a Prophet avowed For God sometimes speaketh by Prophets whose persons he hath not accepted as he did by Baalam and as he foretold Saul of his death by the Witch of Endor Again in the next verse Every Spirit that confesseth not that Iesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of Christ. And this is the Spirit of Antichrist So that the Rule is perfect on both sides that he is a true Prophet which preacheth the Messiah already come in the person of Jesus and he a false one that denyeth him come and looketh for him in some future Impostor that shall take upon him that honour falsely whom the Apostle there properly calleth Antichrist Every man therefore ought to consider who is the Soveraign Prophet that is to say who it is that is Gods Vicegerent on Earth and hath next under God the Authority of Governing Christian men and to observe for a Rule that Doctrine which in the name of God hee hath commanded to bee taught and thereby to examine and try out the truth of those Doctrines which pretended Prophets with miracle or without shall at any time advance and if they find it contrary to that Rule to doe as they did that came to Moses and complained that there were some that Propecyed in the Campe whose Authority so to doe they doubted of and leave to the
be the work of the Schooles but they rather nourish such doctrine For not knowing what Imagination or the Senses are what they receive they reach some saying that Imaginations rise of themselves and have no cause Others that they rise most commonly from the Will and that Good thoughts are blown inspired into a man by God and Evill thoughts by the Divell or that Good thoughts are powred infused into a man by God and Evill ones by the Divell Some say the Senses receive the Species of things and deliver them to the Common-sense and the Common Sense delivers them over to the Fancy and the Fancy to the Memory and the Memory to the Judgement like handing of things from one to another with many words making nothing understood The Imagination that is raysed in man or any other creature indued with the faculty of imagining by words or other voluntary signes is that we generally call Understanding and is common to Man and Beast For a dogge by custome will understand the call or the rating of his Master and so will many other Beasts That Understanding which is peculiar to man is the Understanding not onely his will but his conceptions and thoughts by the sequell and contexture of the names of things into Affirmations Negations and other formes of Speech And of this kinde of Understanding I shall speak hereafter CHAP. III. Of the Consequence or TRAYNE of Imaginations BY Consequence or TRAYNE of Thoughts I understand that succession of one Thought to another which is called to distinguiâ—…h it from Discourse in words Mentall Discourse When a man thinketh on any thing whatsoever His next Thought after is not altogether so casuall as it seems to be Not every Thought to every Thought succeeds indifferently But as wee have no Imagination whereof we have not formerly had Sense in whole or in parts so we have no Transition from one Imagination to another whereof we never had the like before in our Senses The reason whereof is this All Fancies are Motions within us reliques of those made in the Sense And those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense continue also together after Sense In so much as the former comming again to take place and be praedominant the later followeth by coherence of the matter moved in such manner as water upon a plain Table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger But because in sense to one and the same thing perceived sometimes one thing sometimes another succeedeth it comes to passe in â—…ime that in the Imagining of any thing there is no certainty what we shall Imagine next Onely this is certain it shall be something that succeeded the same before at one time or another This Trayne of Thoughts or Mentall Discourse is of two sorts The first is Vnguided without Designe and inconstant Wherein there is no Passionate Thought to govern and direct those that follow to it self as the end and scope of some desire or other passion In which case the thoughts are said to wander and seem impertinent one to another as in a Dream Such are Commonly the thonghts of men that are not onely without company but also without care of any thing though even then their Thoughts are as busie as at other times but without harmony as the sound which a Lute out of tune would yeeld to any man or in tune to one that could not play And yet in this wild ranging of the mind a man may oft-times perceive the way of it and the dependance of one thought upon another For in a Discourse of our present civill warre what could seem more impertinent than to ask as one did what was the value of a Roman Penny Yet the Cohaerence to me was manifest enough For the Thought of the warre introduced the Thought of the delivering up the King to his Enemies The Thought of that brought in the Thought of the delivering up of Christ and that again the Thought of the 30 pence which was the price of that treason and thence easily followed that malicious question and all this in a moment of time for Thought is quick The second is more constant as being regulated by some desire and designe For the impression made by such things as wee desire or feare is strong and permanent or if it cease for a time of quick return so strong it is sometimes as to hinder and break our sleep From Desire ariseth the Thought of some means we have seen produce the like of that which we ayme at and from the thought of that the thought of means to that mean and so continually till we come to some beginning within our own power And because the End by the greatnesse of the impression comes often to mind in case our thoughts begin to wander they are quickly again reduced into the way which observed by one of the seven wise men made him give men this praecept which is now worne out Respice finem that is to say in all your actions look often upon what you would have as the thing that directs all your thoughts in the way to attain it The Trayn of regulated Thoughts is of two kinds One when of an effect imagined wee seek the causes or means that produce it and this is common to Man and Beast The other is when imagining any thing whatsoever wee seek all the possible effects that can by it be produced that is to say we imagine what we can do with it when wee have it Of which I have not at any time seen any signe but in man onely for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other Passion but sensuall such as are hunger thirst lust and anger In summe the Disconrse of the Mind when it is governed by designe is nothing but Seeking or the faculty of Invention which the Latines call Sagacitas and Solertia a hunting out of the causes of some effect present or past or of the effects of some present or past cause Sometimes a man seeks what he hath lost and from that place and time wherein hee misses it his mind runs back from place to place and time to time to find where and when he had it that is to say to find some certain and limited time and place in which to begin a method of seeking Again from thence his thoughts run over the same places and times to find what action or other occasion might make him lose it This we call Remembrance or Calling to mind the Latines call it Reminiscentia as it were a Re-conning of our former actions Sometimes a man knows a place determinate within the compasse whereof he is to seek and then his thoughts run over all the parts thereof in the same manner as one would sweep a room to find a jewell or as a Spaniel ranges the field till he find a sent or as a man should run
WORTHINESSE is a thing different from the worth or value of a man and also from his merit or desert and consisteth in a particular power or ability for that whereof he is said to be worthy which particular ability is usually named FITNESSE or Aptitude For he is Worthiest to be a Commander to be a Judge or to have any other charge that is best fitted with the qualities required to the well discharging of it and Worthiest of Riches that has the qualities most requisite for the well using of them any of which qualities being absent one may neverthelesse be a Worthy man and valuable for some thing else Again a man may be Worthy of Riches Office and Employment that neverthelesse can plead no right to have it before another and therefore cannot be said to merit or deserve it For Merit praesupposeth a right and that the thing deserved is due by promise Of which I shall say more hereafter when I shall speak of Contracts CHAP. XI Of the difference of MANNERS BY MANNERS I mean not here Decency of behaviour as how one man should salute another or how a man should wash his mouth or pick his teeth before company and such other points of the Small Moralls But those qualities of man-kind that concern their living together in Peace and Unity To which end we are to consider that the Felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied For there is no such Finis ultimus utmost ayme nor Summum Bonum greatest Good as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers Nor can a man any more live whose Desires are at an end than he whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire from one object to another the attaining of the former being still but the way to the later The cause whereof is That the Object of mans desire is not to enjoy once onely and for one instant of time but to assure for ever the way of his future desire And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not onely to the procuring but also to the assuring of a contented life and differ onely in the way which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in divers men and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired So that in the first place I put for a generall inclination of all mankind a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power that ceaseth onely in Death And the cause of this is not alwayes that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present without the acquisition of more And from hence it is that Kings whose power is greatest turn their endeavours to the assuring it at home by Lawes or abroad by Wars and when that is done there succeedeth a new desire in some of Fame from new Conquest in others of ease and sensuall pleasure in others of admiration or being flattered for excellence in some art or other ability of the mind Competition of Riches Honour Command or other power enclineth to Contention Enmity and War Because the way of one Competitor to the attaining of his desire is to kill subdue supplant or repell the other Particularly competition of praise enclineth to a reverence of Antiquity For men contend with the living not with the dead to these ascribing more than due that they may obscure the glory of the other Desire of Ease and sensuall Delight disposeth men to obey a common Power Because by such Desires a man doth abandon the protection might be hoped for from his own Industry and labour Fear of Death and Wounds disposeth to the same and for the same reason On the contrary needy men and hardy not contented with their present condition as also all men that are ambitious of Military command are enclined to continue the causes of warre and to stirre up trouble and sedition for there is no honour Military but by warre nor any such hope to mend an ill game as by causing a new shuffle Desire of Knowledge and Arts of Peace enclineth men to obey a common Power For such Desire containeth a desire of leasure and consequently protection from some other Power than their own Desire of Praise disposeth to laudable actions such as please them whose judgement they value for of those men whom we contemn we contemn also the Praises Desire of Fame after death does the same And though after death there be no sense of the praise given us on Earth as being joyes that are either swallowed up in the unspeakable joyes of Heaven or extinguished in the extreme torments of Hell yet is not such Fame vain because men have a present delâ—…ght therein from the foresight of it and of the benefit that may redoâ—…nd thereby to their posterity which though they now see not yet they imagine and any thing that is pleasure in the sense the same also is pleasure in the imagination To have received from one to whom we think our selves equall greater benefits than there is hope to Requite disposeth to counterfeit love but really secret hatred and puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor that in declining the sight of his creditor tacitely wishes him there where he might never see him more For benefits oblige and obligation is thraldome and unrequitable obligation perpetuall thraldome which is to ones equall hatefull But to have received benefits from one whom we acknowledge for superiour enclines to love because the obligation is no new depression and cheerfull acceptation which men call Gratitude is such an honour done to the obliger as is taken generally for retribution Also to receive benefits though from an equall or inferiour as long as there is hope of requitall disposeth to love for in the intention of the receiver the obligation is of ayd and service mutuall from whence proceedeth an Emulation of who shall exceed in benefiting the most noble and profitable contention possible wherein the victor is pleased with his victory and the other revenged by confessing it To have done more hurt to a man than he can or is willing to expiate enclineth the doer to hate the sufferer For he must expect revenge or forgivenesse both which are hatefull Feare of oppression disposeth a man to anticipate or to seek ayd by society for there is no other way by which a man can secure his life and liberty Men that distrust their own subtilty are in tumult and sedition better disposed for victory than they that suppose themselves wife or crafty For these love to consult the other fearing to be circumvented to strike first And in sedition men being alwayes in
the procincts of battell to hold together and use all advantages of force is a better stratagem than any that can proceed from subtilty of Wit Vain-glorious men such as without being conscious to themselves of great sufficiency delight in supposing themselves gallant men are enclined onely to ostentation but not to attempt Because when danger or difficulty appears they look for nothing but to have their insufficiency discovered Vain-glorious men such as estimate their sufficiency by the flattery of other men or the fortune of some precedent action without assured ground of hope from the true knowledge of themselves are enclined to rash engaging and in the approach of danger or difficulty to retire if they can because not seeing the way of safety they will rather hazard their honour which may be salved with an excuse than their lives for which no salve is sufficient Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdome in matter of government are disposed to Ambition Because without publique Employment in counsell or magistracy the honour of their wisdome is lost And therefore Eloquent speakers are enclined to Ambition for Eloquence seemeth wisedome both to themselves and others Pusillanimity disposeth men to Irresolution and consequently to lose the occasions and fittest opportunities of action For after men have been in deliberation till the time of action approach if it be not then manifest what is best to be done 't is a signe the difference of Motives the one way and the other are not great Therefore not to resolve then is to lose the occasion by weighing of trifles which is Pusillanimity Frugality though in poor men a Vertue maketh a man unapt to atchieve such actions as require the strength of many men at once For it weakeneth their Endeavour which is to be nourished and kept in vigor by Reward Eloquence with flattery disposeth men to confide in them that have it because the former is seeming Wisdome the later seeming Kindnesse Adde to them Military reputation and it disposeth men to adhaere and subject themselves to those men that have them The two former having given them caution against danger from him the later gives them caution against danger from others Want of Science that is Ignorance of causes disposeth or rather constraineth a man to rely on the advise and authority of others For all men whom the truth concernes if they rely not on their own must rely on the opinion of some other whom they think wiser than themselves and see not why he should deceive them Ignorance of the signification of words which is want of understanding disposeth men to take on trust not onely the truth they know not but also the errors and which is more the non-sense of them they trust For neither Error nor non-sense can without a perfect understanding of words be detected From the same it proceedeth that men give different names to one and the same thing from the difference of their own passions As they that approve a private opinion call it Opinion but they that mislike it Haeresie and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion but has onely a greater tincture of choler From the same also it proceedeth that men cannot distinguish without study and great understanding between one action of many men and many actions of one multitude as for example between the one action of all the Senators of Rome in killing Catiline and the many actions of a number of Senators in killing Caesar and therefore are disposed to take for the action of the people that which is a multitude of actions done by a multitude of men led perhaps by the perswasion of one Ignorance of the causes and originall constitution of Right Equity Law and Justice disposeth a man to make Custome and Example the rule of his actions in such manner as to think that Unjust which it hath been the custome to punish and that Just of the impunity and approbation whereof they can produce an Example or as the Lawyers which onely use this false measure of Justice barbarously call it a Precedent like little children that have no other rule of good and evill manners but the correction they receive from their Parents and Masters save that children are constant to their rule whereas men are not so because grown strong and stubborn they appeale from custome to reason and from reason to custome as it serves their turn receding from custome when their interest requires it and setting themselves against reason as oft as reason is against them Which is the cause that the doctrine of Right and Wrong is perpetually disputed both by the Pen and the Sword Whereas the doctrine of Lines and Figures is not so because men care not in that subject what be truth as a thing that crosses no mans ambition profit or lust For I doubt not but if it had been a thing contrary to any mans right of dominion or to the interest of men that have dominion That the three Angles of a Triangle should be equall to two Angles of a Square that doctrine should have been if not disputed yet by the burning of all books of Geometry suppressed as farre as he whom it concerned was able Ignorance of remote causes disposeth men to attribute all events to the causes immediate and Instrumentall For these are all the causes they perceive And hence it comes to passe that in all places men that are grieved with payments to the Publique discharge their anger upon the Publicans that is to say Farmers Collectors and other Officers of the publique Revenue and adhaere to such as find fault with the publike Government and thereby when they have engaged themselves beyond hope of justification fall also upon the Supreme Authority for feare of punishment or shame of receiving pardon Ignorance of naturall causes disposeth a man to Credulity so as to believe many times impossibilities For such know nothing to the contrary but that they may be true being unable to detect the Impossibility And Credulity because men love to be hearkened unto in company disposeth them to lying so that Ignorance it selfe without Malice is able to make a man both to believe lyes and tell them and sometimes also to invent them Anxiety for the future time disposeth men to enquire into the causes of things because the knowledge of them maketh men the better able to order the present to their best advantage Curiosity or love of the knowledge of causes draws a man from consideration of the effect to seek the cause and again the cause of that cause till of necessity he must come to this thought at last that there is some cause whereof there is no former cause but is eternall which is it men call God So that it is impossible to make any profound enquiry into naturall causes without being enclined thereby to believe there is one God Eternall though they cannot have any
above their understanding than to define his Nature by Spirit Incorporeall and then confesse their definition to be unintelligible or if they give him such a title it is not Dogmatically with intention to make the Divine Nature understood but Piously to honour him with attributes of significations as remote as they can from the grossenesse of Bodies Visible Then for the way by which they think these Invisible Agents wrought their effects that is to say what immediate causes they used in bringing things to passe men that know not what it is that we call causing that is almost all men have no other rule to guesse by but by observing and remembring what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time or times before without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent Event any dependance or connexion at all And therefore from the like things past they expect the like things to come and hope for good or evill luck superstitiously from things that have no part at all in the causing of it As the Athenians did for their war at Lepanto demand another Phormio The Pompeian faction for their warre in Afrique another Scipio and others have done in divers other occasions since In like manner they attribute their fortune to a stander by to a lucky or unlucky place to words spoken especially if the name of God be amongst them as Charming and Conjuring the Leiturgy of Witches insomuch as to believe they have power to turn a stone into bread bread into a man or any thing into any thing Thirdly for the worship which naturally men exhibite to Powers invisible it can be no other but such expressions of their reverence as they would use towards men Gifts Petitions Thanks Submission of Body Considerate Addresses sober Behaviour premeditated Words Swearing that is assuring one another of their promises by invoking them Beyond that reason suggesteth nothing but leaves them either to rest there or for further ceremonies to rely on those they believe to be wiser than themselves Lastly concerning how these Invisible Powers declare to men the things which shall hereafter come to passe especially concerning their good or evill fortune in generall or good or ill successe in any particular undertaking men are naturally at a stand save that using to conjecture of the time to come by the time past they are very apt not onely to take casuall things after one or two encounters for Prognostiques of the like encounter ever after but also to believe the like Prognostiques from other men of whom they have once conceived a good opinion And in these foure things Opinion of Ghosts Ignorance of second causes Devotion towards what men fear and Taking of things Casuall for Prognostiques consisteth the Naturall seed of Religion which by reason of the different Fancies Judgements and Passions of severall men hath grown up into ceremonies so different that those which are used by one man are for the most part ridiculous to another For these seeds have received culture from two sorts of men One sort have been they that have nourished and ordered them according to their own invention The other have done it by Gods commandement and direction but both sorts have done it with a purpose to make those men that relyed on them the more apt to Obedience Lawes Peace Charity and civill Society So that the Religion of the former sort is a part of humane Politiques and teacheth part of the duty which Earthly Kings require of their Subjects And the Religion of the later sort is Divine Politiques and containeth Precepts to those that have yeelded themselves subjects in the Kingdome of God Of the former sort were all the founders of Common-wealths and the Law-givers of the Gentiles Of the later sort were Abraham Moses and our Blessed Saviour by whom have been derived unto us the Lawes of the Kingdome of God And for that part of Religion which consisteth in opinions concerning the nature of Powers Invisible there is almost nothing that has a name that has not been esteemed amongst the Gentiles in one place or another a God or Divell or by their Poets feigned to be inanimated inhabited or possessed by some Spirit or other The unformed matter of the World was a God by the name of Chaos The Heaven the Ocean the Planets the Fire the Earth the Winds were so many Gods Men Women a Bird a Crocodile a Calf a Dogge a Snake an Onion a Leeke Deâ—…fied Besides that they filled almost all places with spirits called Daemons the plains with Pan and Panises or Satyres the Woods with Fawnes and Nymphs the Sea with Tritons and other Nymphs every River and Fountayn with a Ghost of his name and with Nymphs every house with its Lares or Familiars every man with his Genius Hell with Ghosts and spirituall Officers as Charon Cerberus and the Furies and in the night time all places with Larvae Lemures Ghosts of men deceased and a whole kingdome of Fayries and Bugbears They have also ascribed Divinity and built Temples to meer Accidenâ—…s and Qualities such as are Time Night Day Peace Concord Love Contention Vertue Honour Health Rust Fever and the like which when they prayed for or against they prayed to as if there were Ghosts of those names hanging over their heads and letting fall or withholding that Good or Evill for or against which they prayed They invoked also their own Wit by the name of Muses their own Ignorance by the name of Fortune their own Lust by the name of Cupid their own Rage by the name Furies their own privy members by the name of Priapus and attributed their pollutions to â—…ncubi and Succubae insomuch as there was nothing which a Poet could introduce as a person in his Poem which they did not make either a God or a Divel The same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles observing the second ground for Religion which is mens Ignorance of causes and thereby their aptnesse to attribute their fortune to causes on which there was no dependance at all apparent took occasion to obtrude on their ignorance in stead of second causes a kind of second and ministeriall Gods ascribing the cause of Foecundity to Venus the cause of Arts to Apolla of Subtilty and Craft to Mercury of Tempests and stormes to Aeolus and of other effects to other Gods insomuch as there was amongst the Heathen almost as great variety of Gods as of businesse And to the Worship which naturally men conceived fit to bee used towards their Gods namely Oblations Prayers Thanks and the rest formerly named the same Legislators of the Gentiles have added their Images both in Picture and Sculpture that the more ignorant sort that is to say the most part or generality of the people thinking the Gods for whose representation they were made were really included and as it were housed within them might so much the more stand in feare of them And endowed them
with lands and houses and officers and revenues set apart from all other humane uses that is consecrated and made holy to those their Idols as Caverns Groves Woods Mountains and whole Ilands and have attributed to them not onely the shapes some of Men some of Beasts some of Monsters but also the Faculties and Passions of men and beasts as Sense Speech Sex Lust Generation and this not onely by mixing one with another to propagate the kind of Gods but also by mixing with men and women to beget mongrill Gods and but inmates of Heaven as Bacchus Hercules and others besides Anger Revenge and other passions of living creatures and the actions proceeding from them as Fraud Theft Adultery Sodomie and any vice that may be taken for an effect of Power or a cause of Pleasure and all such Vices as amongst men are taken to be against Law rather than against Honour Lastly to the Prognostiques of time to come which are naturally but Conjectures upon the Experience of time past and supernaturally divine Revelation the same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles partly upon pretended Experience partly upon pretended Revelation have added innumerable other superstitious wayes of Divination and made men believe they should find their fortunes sometimes in the ambiguous or senslesse answers of the Priests at Delphi Delos Ammon and other famous Oracles which answers were made ambiguous by designe to own the event both wayes or absurd by the intoxicating vapour of the place which is very frequent in sulphurous Cavernes Sometimes in the leaves of the Sibills of whose Prophecyes like those perhaps of Nostradamus for the fragments now extant seem to be the invention of later times there were some books in reputation in the time of the Roman Republiques Sometimes in the insignificant Speeches of Mad-men supposed to be possessed with a divine Spirit which Possession they called Enthusiasme and these kinds of foretelling events were accounted Theomancy or Prophecy Sometimes in the aspect of the Starres at their Nativity which was called Horoscopy and esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology Sometimes in their own hopes and feares called Thumomancy or Presage Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches that pretended conference with the dead which is called Necromancy Conjuring and Witchcraft and is but juggling and confederate knavery Sometimes in the Casuall flight or feeding of birds called Augury Sometimes in the Entrayles of a sacrificed beast which was Aruspicina Sometimes in Dreams Sometimes in Croaking of Ravens or chattering of Birds Sometimes in the Lineaments of the face which was called Metoposcopy or by Palmistry in the lines of the hand in casuall words called Omina Sometimes in Monsters or unusuall accidents as Ecclipses Comets rare Meteors Earthquakes Inundations uncouth Births and the like which they called Portenta and Ostenta because they thought them to portend or foreshew some great Calamity to come Somtimes in meer Lottery as Crosse and Pile counting holes in a sive dipping of Verses in Homer and Virgil and innumerable other such vaine conceipts So easie are men to be drawn to believe any thing from such men as have gotten credit with them and can with gentlenesse and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance And therefore the first Founders and Legislators of Common-wealths amongst the Gentiles whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience and peace have in all places taken care First to imprint in their minds a beliefe that those precepts which they gave concerning Religion might not be thought to proceed from their own device but from the dictates of some God or other Spirit or else that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere mortalls that their Lawes might the more easily be received So Numa Pompilius pretended to receive the Ceremonies he instituted amongst the Romans from the Nymph Egeria and the first King and founder of the Kingdome of Peru pretended himselfe and his wife to be the children of the Sunne and Mahomet to set up his new Religion pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost in forme of a Dove Secondly they have had a care to make it believed that the same things were displeasing to the Gods which were forbidden by the Lawes Thirdly to prescribe Ceremonies Supplications Sacrifices and Festivalls by which they were to believe the anger of the Gods might be appeased and that ill success in War great contagions of Sicknesse Earthquakes and each mans private Misery came from the Anger of the Gods and their Anger from the Neglect of their Worship or the forgetting or mistaking some point of the Ceremonies required And though amongst the antient Romans men were not forbidden to deny that which in the Poets is written of the paines and pleasures after this life which divers of great authority and gravity in that state have in their Harangues openly derided yet that beliefe was alwaies more cherished than the contrary And by these and such other Institutions they obtayned in order to their end which was the peace of the Commonwealth that the common people in their misfortunes laying the fault on neglect or errour in their Ceremonies or on their own disobedience to the lawes were the lesse apt to mutâ—…ny against their Governors And being entertained with the pomp and pastime of Festivalls and publike Games made in honour of the Gods needed nothing else but bread to keep them from discontent murmuring and commotion against the State And therefore the Romans that had conquered the greatest part of the then known World made no scruple of tollerating any Religion whatsoeuer in the City of Rome it selfe unlesse it had somthing in it that could not consist with their Civill Government nor do we read that any Religion was there forbidden but that of the Jewes who being the peculiar Kingdome of God thought it unlawfull to acknowledge subjection to any mortall King or State whatsoever And thus you see how the Religion of the Gentiles was a part of their Policy But where God himselfe by supernaturall Revelation planted Religion there he also made to himselfe a peculiar Kingdome and gave Lawes not only of behaviour towards himselfe but also towards one another and thereby in the Kingdome of God the Policy and lawes Civill are a part of Religion and therefore the distinction of Temporall and Spirituall Domination hath there no place It is true that God is King of all the Earth Yet may he be King of a peculiar and chosen Nation For there is no more incongruity therein than that he that hath the generall command of the whole Army should have withall a peculiar Regiment or Company of his own God is King of all the Earth by his Power but of his chosen people he is King by Covenant But to speake more largly of the Kingdome of God both by Nature and Covenant I have in the following discourse assigned an other place From the propagation of Religion it is not hard to understand the causes
a man should say an Incorporeall Body But in the sense of cōmon people not all the Universe is called Body but only such parts thereof as they can discern by the sense of Feeling to resist their force or by the sense of their Eyes to hinder them from a farther prospect Therefore in the common language of men Aire and aeriall substances use not to be taken for Bodies but as often as men are sensible of their effects are called Wind or Breath or because the same are called in the Latine Spiritus Spirits as when they call that aeriall substance which in the body of any living creature gives it life and motion Vitall and Animall spirits But for those Idols of the brain which represent Bodies to us where they are not as in a Looking-glasse in a Dream or to a Distempered brain waking they are as the Apostle saith generally of all Idols nothing Nothing at all I say there where they seem to be◅ and in the brain it self nothing but tumult proceeding either from the action of the objects or from the disorderly agitation of the Organs of our Sense And men that are otherwise imployed then to search into their causes know not of themselves what to call them and may therefore easily be perswaded by those whose knowledge they much reverence some to call them Bodies and think them made of aire compacted by a power supernaturall because the sight judges them corporeall and some to call them Spirits because the sense of Touch discerneth nothing in the place where they appear to resist their fingers So that the proper signification of Spirit in common speech is either a subtile fluid and invisible Body or a Ghost or other Idol or Phantasme of the Imagination But for metaphoricall significations there be many for sometimes it is taken for Disposition or Inclination of the mind as when for the disposition to controwl the sayings of other men we say a spirit of contradiction For a disposition to uncleannesse an unclean spirit for perversenesse a froward spirit for sullennesse a dumb spirit and for inclination to godlinesse and Gods service the Spirit of God sometimes for any eminent ability or extraordinary passion or disease of the mind as when great wisdome is called the spirit of wisdome and mad men are said to be possessed with a spirit Other signification of Spirit I find no where any and where none of these can satisfie the sense of that word in Scripture the place falleth not under humane Understanding and our Faith therein consisteth not in our Opinion but in our Submission as in all places where God is said to be a Spirit or where by the Spirit of God is meant God himselfe For the nature of God is incomprehensible that is to say we understand nothing of what he is but only that he is and therefore the Attributes we give him are not to tell one another what he is nor to signifie our opinion of his Nature but our desire to honor him with such names as we conceiv◅ most honorable amongst our selves Gen. 1. 2. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Waters Here if by the Spirit of God be meant God himself then is Motion attributed to God and consequently Place which are intelligible only of Bodies and not of substances incorporeall and so the place is above our understanding that can conceive nothing moved that changes not place or that has not dimension and whatsoever has dimension is Body But the meaning of those words is best understood by the like place Gen. 8. 1. Where when the earth was covered with Waters as in the beginning God intending to abate them and again to discover the dry land useth the like words I will bring my Spirit upon the Earth and the waters shall be diminished in which place by Spirit is understood a Wind that is an Aire or Spirit moved which might be called as in the former place the Spirit of God because it was Gods work Gen. 41. 38. Pharaoh calleth the Wisdome of Joseph the Spirit of God For Joseph having advised him to look out a wise and discreet man and to set him over the land of Egypt he saith thus Can we find such a man as this is in whom is the Spirit of God And Exod. 28. 3. Thou shalt speak saith God to all that are wise hearted whom I have filled with the Spirit of VVisdome to make Aaron Garments to consecrate him Where extraordinary Understanding though but in making Garments as being the Gift of God is called the Spirit of God The same is found again Exod. 31. 3 4 5 6. and 35. 31. And Isaiah 11. 2 3. where the Prophet speaking of the Messiah saith The Spirit of the Lord shall abide upon him the Spirit of wisdome and understanding the Spirit of counsell and fortitude and the Spirit of the fear of the Lord. Where manifestly is meant not so many Ghosts but so many eminent graces that God would give him In the Book of Judges an extraordinary Zeal and Courage in the the defence of Gods people is called the Spirit of God as when it excited Othoniel Gideon Jephtha and Samson to deliver them from servitude Judg. 3. 10. 6. 34. 11. 29. 13. 25. 14. 6 19. And of Saul upon the newes of the insolence of the Ammonites towards the men of Jabesh Gilead it is said 1 Sam. 11. 6. that The Spirit of God came upon Saul and his Anger or as it is in the Latine his Fury was kindled greatly Where it is not probable was meant a Ghost but an extraordinary Zeal to punish the cruelty of the Ammonites In like manner by the Spirit of God that came upon Saul when hee was amongst the Prophets that praised God in Songs and Musick 1 Sam. 19. 20. is to be understood not a Ghost but an unexpected and sudden Zeal to join with them in their devotion The false Prophet Zedekiah saith to Micaiah 1 Kings 22. 24. Which way went the Spirit of the Lord from me to speak to thee Which cannot be understood of a Ghost for Micaiah declared before the Kings of Israel and Judah the event of the battle as from a Vision and not as from a Spirit speaking in him In the same manner it appeareth in the Books of the Prophets that though they spake by the Spirit of God that is to say by a speciall grace of Prediction yet their knowledge of the future was not by a Ghost within them but by some supernaturall Dream or Vision Gen. 2. 7. It is said God made man of the dust of the Earth and breathed into his nostrills spiraculum vitae the breath of life and man was made a living soul. There the breath of life inspired by God signifies no more but that God gave him life And Job 27. 3. as long as the Spirit of God is in my nostrils is no more then to say as long as I live So
should not violate our Faith that is a commandement to obey our Civill Soveraigns which wee constituted over us by mutuall pact one with another And this Law of God that commandeth Obedience to the Law Civill commandeth by consequence Obedience to all the Precepts of the Bible which as I have proved in the precedent Chapter is there onely Law where the Civill Soveraign hath made it so and in other places but Counsell which a man at his own perill may without injustice refuse to obey Knowing now what is the Obedience Necessary to Salvation and to whom it is due we are to consider next concerning Faith whom and why we beleeve and what are the Articles or Points necessarily to be beleeved by them that shall be saved And first for the Person whom we beleeve because it is impossible to beleeve any Person before we know what he saith it is necessary he be one that wee have heard speak The Person therefore whom Abraham Isaac Jacob Moses and the Prophets beleeved was God himself that spake unto them supernaturally And the Person whom the Apostles and Disciples that conversed with Christ beleeved was our Saviour himself But of them to whom neither God the Father nor our Saviour ever spake it cannot be said that the Person whom they beleeved was God They beleeved the Apostles and after them the Pastors and Doctors of the Church that recommended to their faith the History of the Old and New Testament so that the Faith of Christians ever since our Saviours time hath had for foundation first the reputation of their Pastors and afterward the authority of those that made the Old and New Testament to be received for the Rule of Faith which none could do but Christian Soveraignes who are therefore the Supreme Pastors and the onely Persons whom Christians now hear speak from God except such as God speaketh to in these days supernaturally But because there be many false Prophets gone out into the world other men are to examine such Spirits as St. Iohn adviseth us 1 Epistle Chap. 4. ver 1. whether they be of God or not And therefore seeing the Examination of Doctrines belongeth to the Supreme Pastor the Person which all they that have no speciall revelation are to beleeve is in every Common-wealth the Supreme Pastor that is to say the Civill Soveraigne The causes why men beleeve any Christian Doctrine are various For Faith is the gift of God and he worketh it in each severall man by such wayes as it seemeth good unto himself The most ordinary immediate cause of our beleef concerning any point of Christian Faith is that wee beleeve the Bible to be the Word of God But why wee beleeve the Bible to be the Word of God is much disputed as all questions must needs bee that are not well stated For they make not the question to be Why we Beleeve it but How wee Know it as if Beleeving and Knowing were all one And thence while one side ground their Knowledge upon the Infallibility of the Church and the other side on the Testimony of the Private Spirit neither side concludeth what it pretends For how shall a man know the Infallibility of the Church but by knowing first the Infallibility of the Scripture Or how shall a man know his own Private spirit to be other than a beleef grounded upon the Authority and Arguments of his Teachers or upon a Presumption of his own Gifts Besides there is nothing in the Scripture from which can be inferred the Infallibility of the Church much lesse of any particular Church and least of all the Infallibility of any particular man It is manifest therefore that Christian men doe not know but onely beleeve the Scripture to be the Word of God and that the means of making them beleeve which God is pleased to afford men ordinarily is according to the way of Nature that is to say from their Teachers It is the Doctrine of St. Paul concerning Christian Faith in generall Rom. 10. 17. Faith cometh by Hearing that is by Hearing our lawfull Pastors He saith also ver 14 15. of the same Chapter How shall they beleeve in him of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a Preacher and how shall they Preach except they be sent Whereby it is evident that the ordinary cause of beleeving that the Scriptures are the Word of God is the same with the cause of the beleeving of all other Articles of our Faith namely the Hearing of those that are by the Law allowed and appointed to Teach us as our Parents in their Houses and our Pastors in the Churches Which also is made more manifest by experience For what other cause can there bee assigned why in Christian Common-wealths all men either beleeve or at least professe the Scripture to bee the Word of God and in other Common-wealths scarce any but that in Christian Common-wealths they are taught it from their infancy and in other places they are taught otherwise But if Teaching be the cause of Faith why doe not all beleeve It is certain therefore that Faith is the gift of God and hee giveth it to whom he will Neverthelesse because to them to whom he giveth it he giveth it by the means of Teachers the immediate cause of Faith is Hearing In a School where many are taught and some profit others profit not the cause of learning in them that profit is the Master yet it cannot be thence inferred that learning is not the gift of God All good things proceed from God yet cannot all that have them say they are Inspired for that implies a gift supernaturall and the immediate hand of God which he that pretends to pretends to be a Prophet and is subject to the examination of the Church But whether men Know or Beleeve or Grant the Scriptures to be the Word of God if out of such places of them as are without obscurity I shall shew what Articles of Faith are necessary and onely necessary for Salvation those men must needs Know Beleeve or Grant the same The Vnum Necessarium Onely Article of Faith which the Scripture maketh simply Necessary to Salvation is this that JESUS IS THE CHRIST By the name of Christ is understood the King which God had before promised by the Prophets of the Old Testament to send into the world to reign over the Jews and over such of other nations as should beleeve in him under himself eternally and to give them that eternall life which was lost by the sin of Adam Which when I have proved out of Scripture I will further shew when and in what sense some other Articles may bee also called Necessary For Proof that the Beleef of this Article Iesus is the Christ is all the Faith required to Salvation my first Argument shall bee from the Scope of the Evangelists which was by the description of the life of our Saviour to establish that one
end to bee able to produce as far as matter and humane force permit such Effects as â—…umane life requireth So the Geometrician from the Construction of Figures findeth out many Properties thereof and from the Properties new Ways of their Construction by Reasoning to the end to be able to measure Land and Water and for infinite other uses So the Astronomer from the Rising Setting and Moving of the Sun and Starres in divers parts of the Heavens findeth out the Causes of Day and Night and of the different Seasons of the Year whereby he keepeth an account of Time And the like of other Sciences By which Definition it is evident that we are not to account as any part thereof that originall knowledge called Experience in which consisteth Prudence Because it is not attained by Reasoning but found as well in Brute Beasts as in Man and is but a Memory of successions of events in times past wherein the omission of every little circumstance altering the effect frustrateth the expectation of the most Prudent whereas nothing is produced by Reasoning aright but generall eternall and immutable Truth Nor are we therefore to give that name to any false Conclusions For he that Reasoneth aright in words he understandeth can never conclude an Error Nor to that which any man knows by supernaturall Revelation because it is not acquired by Reasoning Nor that which is gotten by Reasoning from the Authority of Books because it is not by Reasoning from the Cause to the Effect nor from the Effect to the Cause and is not Knowledg but Faith The faculty of Reasoning being consequent to the use of Speech it was not possible but that there should have been some generall Truthes found out by Reasoning as ancient almost as Language it selfe The Savages of America are not without some good Morall Sentences also they have a little Arithmetick to adde and divide in Numbers not too great but they are not therefore Philosophers For as there were Plants of Corn and Wine in small quantity dispersed in the Fields and Woods before men knew their vertue or made use of them for their nourishment or planted them apart in Fields and Vineyards in which time they fed on Akorns and drank Water so also there have been divers true generall and profitable Speculations from the beginning as being the naturall plants of humane Reason But they were at first but few in number men lived upon grosse Experience there was no Method that is to say no Sowing nor Planting of Knowledge by it self apart from the Weeds and common Plants of Errour and Conjecture And the cause of it being the want of leasure from procuring the necessities of life and defending themselves against their neighbors it was impossible till the erecting of great Common-wealths it should be otherwise Leasure is the mother of Philosophy and Common-wealth the mother of Peace and Leasure Where first were great and flourishing Cities there was first the study of Philosophy The Gymnosophists of India the Magi of Persia and the Priests of Chaldaea and Egypt are counted the most ancient Philosophers and those Countreys were the most ancient of Kingdomes Philosophy was not risen to the Graecians and other people of the West whose Common-wealths no greater perhaps then Lucca or Geneva had never Peace but when their fears of one another were equall nor the Leasure to observe any thing but one another At length when Warre had united many of these Graecian lesser Cities into fewer and greater then began Seven men of severall parts of Greece to get the reputation of being Wise some of them for Morall and Politique Sentences and others for the learning of the Chaldaeans and Egyptians which was Astronomy and Geometry But we hear not yet of any Schools of Philosophy After the Athenians by the overthrow of the Persian Armies had gotten the Dominion of the Sea and thereby of all the Islands and Maritime Cities of the Archipelago as well of Asia as Europe and were grown wealthy they that had no employment neither at home nor abroad had little else to employ themselves in but either as St. Luke says Acts 17. 21. in telling and hearing news or in discoursing of Philosophy publiquely to the youth of the City Every Master took some place for that purpose Plato in certain publique Walks called Academia from one Acâ—…demus Aristotle in the Walk of the Temple of Pan called Lycaeum others in the Stoa or covered Walk wherein the Merchants Goods were brought to land others in other places where they spent the time of their Leasure in teaching or in disputing of their Opinions and some in any place where they could get the youth of the City together to hear them talk And this was it which Carneades also did at Rome when he was Ambassadour which caused Cato to advise the Senate to dispatch him quickly for feare of corrupting the manners of the young men that delighted to hear him speak as they thought fine things From this it was that the place where any of them taught and disputed was called Schola which in their Tongue signifieth Leasure and their Disputations Diatribae that is to say Passing of the time Also the Philosophers themselves had the name of their Sects some of them from these their Schools For they that followed 〈◊〉 Doctrine were called Academiques The followers of Aristotle Peripatetiques from the Walk hee taught in and those that Zeno taught Stoiques from the Stoa as if we should denominate men from More-fields from Pauls-Church and from the Exchange because they meet there often to prate and loyter Neverthelesse men were so much taken with this custome that in time it spread it selfe over all Europe and the best part of Afrique so as there were Schools publiquely erected and maintained for Lectures and Disputations almost in every Common-wealth There were also Schools anciently both before and after the time of our Saviour amongst the Iews but they were Schools of their Law For though they were called Synagogues that is to say Congregations of the People yet in as much as the Law was every Sabbath day read expounded and disputed in them they differed not in nature but in name onely from Publique Schools and were not onely in Jerusalem but in every City of the Gentiles where the Jews inhabited There was such a Schoole at Damascus whereinto Paul entred to persecute There were others at Antioch Iconium and Thessalonica whereinto he entred to dispute And such was the Synagogue of the Libertines Cyrenâ—…ans Alexandrians Cilicians and those of Asia that is to say the Schoole of Libertines and of Iewes that were strangers in Ierusalem And of this Schoole they were that disputed Act. 6. 9. with Saint Steven But what has been the Utility of those Schools what Science is there at this day acquired by their Readings and Disputings That wee have of Geometry which is the Mother of all Naturall Science wee are not indebted for
of the resolution of the same into its first seeds or principles which are only an opinion of a Deity and Powers invisible and supernaturall that can never be so abolished out of humane nature but that new Religions may againe be made to spring out of them by the culture of such men as for such purpose are in reputation For seeing all formed Religion is founded at first upon the faith which a multitude hath in some one person whom they believe not only to be a wise man and to labouâ—… to procure their happiness but also to be a holy man to whom God himselfe vouchsafeth to declare his will supernaturally It followeth necessarily when they that have the Government of Religion shall come to have either the wisedome of those men their sincerity or their love suspected or that they shall be unable to shew any probable token of Divine Revelation that the Religion which they desire to uphold must be suspected likewise and without the feare of the Civill Sword contradicted and rejected That which taketh away the reputation of Wisedome in him that formeth a Religion or addeth to it when it is allready formed is the enjoyning of a beliefe of contradictories For both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true and therefore to enjoyne the beleife of them is an argument of ignorance which detects the Author in that and discredits him in all things else he shall propound as from revelation supernaturall which revelation a man may indeed have of many things above but of nothing against naturall reason That which taketh away the reputation of Sincerity is the doing or saying of such things as appeare to be signes that what they require other men to believe is not believed by themselves all which doings or sayings are therefore called Scandalous because they be stumbling blocks that make men to fall in the way of Religion as Injustice Cruelty Prophanesse Avarice and Luxury For who can believe that he that doth ordinarily such actions as proceed from any of these rootes believeth there is any such Invisible Power to be feared as he affrighteth other men withall for lesser faults That which taketh away the reputation of Love is the being detected of private ends as when the beliefe they require of others conduceth or seemeth to conduce to the acquiring of Dominion Riches Dignity or secure Pleasure to themselves onely or specially For that which men reap benefit by to themselves they are thought to do for their own sakes and not for love of others Lastly the testimony that men can render of divine Calling can be no other than the operation of Miracles or true Prophecy which also is a Miracle or extraordinary Felicity And therefore to those points of Religion which have been received from them that did such Miracles those that are added by such as approve not their Calling by some Miracle obtain no greater beliefe than what the Custome and Lawes of the places in which they be educated have wrought into them For as in naturall things men of judgement require naturall signes and arguments so in supernaturall things they require signes supernaturall which are Miracles before they consent inwardly and from their hearts All which causes of the weakening of mens faith do manifestly appear in the Examples following First we have the Example of the children of Israel who when Moses that had approved his Calling to them by Miracles and by the happy conduct of them out of Egypt was absent but 40. dayes revolted from the worship of the true God recommended to them by him and setting up a Golden Calfe for their God relapsed into the Idolatry of the Egyptians from whom they had been so lately delivered And again after Moses Aaron Joshua and that generation which had seen the great works of God in Israel were dead another generation arose and served Baal So that Miracles fayling Faith also failed Again when the sons of Samuel being constituted by their father Judges in Bersabee received bribes and judged unjustly the people of Israel refused any more to have God to be their King in other manner than he was King of other people and therefore cryed out to Samuel to choose them a King after the manner of the Nations So that Justice fayling Faith also fayled Insomuch as they deposed their God from reigning over them And whereas in the planting of Christian Religion the Oracles ceased in all parts of the Roman Empire and the number of Christians encreased wonderfully every day and in every place by the preaching of the Apostles and Evangelists a great part of that successe may reasonably be attributed to the contempt into which the Priests of the Gentiles of that time had brought themselves by their uncleannesse avarice and jugling between Princes Also the Religion of the Church of Rome was partly for the same cause abolished in England and many other parts of Christendome insomuch as the fayling of Vertue in the Pastors maketh Faith faile in the People and partly from bringing of the Philosophy and doctrine of Aristotle into Religion by the Schoole-men from whence there arose so many contradictions and absurdities as brought the Clergy into a reputation both of Ignorance and of Fraudulent intention and enclined people to revolt from them either against the will of their own Princes as in France and Holland or with their will as in England Lastly amongst the points by the Church of Rome declared necessary for Salvation there be so many manifestly to the advantage of the Pope and of his spirituall subjects residing in the territories of other Christian Princes that were it not for the mutuall emulation of those Princes they might without warre or trouble exclude all forraign Authority as easily as it has been excluded in England For who is there that does not see to whose benefit it conduceth to have it believed that a King hath not his Authority from Christ unlesse a Bishop crown him That a King if he be a Priest cannot Marry That whether a Prince be born in lawfull Marriage or not must be judged by Authority from Rome That Subjects may be freed from their Alleageance if by the Court of Rome the King be judged an Heretique That a King as Chilperique of France may be deposed by a Pope as Pope Zachary for no cause and his Kingdome given to one of his Subjects That the Clergy and Regulars in what Country soever shall be exempt from the Jurisdiction of their King in cases criminall Or who does not see to whose profit redound the Fees of private Masses and Vales of Purgatory with other signes of private interest enough to mortifie the most lively Faith if as I sayd the civill Magistrate and Custome did not more sustain it than any opinion they have of the Sanctity Wisdome or Probity of their Teachers So that I may attribute all the changes of Religion in the world to one and the same cause and