the Church and because there were frequent Contentions and Disputes about them these words should not be used in any Dispute but against the Sabellians The same Historian has a notable passage to the same purpose in Jovian's Life who succeeded Julian and who by the way when he was chosen Emperor by the unanimous consent of the whole Army refused it saying he was a Christian and would not be the Emperor of Pagans The Army on the other hand begg'd of him not to decline the Government of them as a wicked Government for they were all Christians too upon which he accepted the Empire As soon as he came to be Emperor says the Historian Questions and Disputes about Doctrines of Faith were again moved by the Presidents of the Churches For while Julian reigned the whole of Christianity lying at stake they were quiet and supplicated God with one accord that he would be merciful to them upon which he makes this Remark Thus Men use to do when they are injured by strangers or a Common Enemy to be united amongst themselves but when they are freed from Foreign Evils then to fall into Disorder and disturb one another O that we had but this piece of common sense which it seems all the rest of Mankind have for nothing else but being united amongst our selves can prevent the Foreign Evils which are coming like a Torrent upon us All that I shall say further in reference to this Book is this That I have been as careful in the Citations as ever I was in telling Money and therefore can only say as they usually do in that case I hope it is all right and if it should chance in any one particular to prove otherwise am ready to make it good THE CONTENTS CHap. 1. A short Account of Julian's Life p. 1 Chap. 2. The sense of the Primitive Christians about his Succession p. 11 Chap. 3. Their behaviour towards him in words p. 20 Chap. 4. Their Actions p. 25 Chap. 5. Their Devotions and first of their Psalms p. 29 Chap. 6. Their Prayers and Tears p. 33 Chap. 7. Julian's Death p. 35 Chap. 8. How they used his Memory p. 39 Chap. 9. Reflections on the Behaviour of these Christians and therein of Passive Obedience p. 40 Chap. 10. A Comparison of Popery and Paganism as to their Polytheism p. 67 Chap. 11. Their Idolatry p. 92 Chap. 12. Their Cruelty p. 111 The Editions of those Authors which are cited by page BOnaventure Moguntiae 1609. Chrysostom Fronto Ducaei Catechism Rom. ex decret Con. Trid. c. Antwerpiae 1574. Fox Acts Mon 1632. Gregor Nazian Paris 1630. Homilies London 1623. Juliani Opera Paris 1630 Missale ad usum consuetudinem Sarum In Academia Paris 1527. Pontifical Roman Antwerp 1627. ERRATA PAge 14. Marg. r. vi Con. lib. 1. p. 18. l. 18. for according r. accordingly p. 23. l. 10. for derided r. deride p. 25. l. ult for that those r. those that p. 36. l. 16. for makings r. making p. 57. l. 29. dele so p. 107. l. 5. for heir r hair Julian the Apostate CHAP. 1. A short Account of Julian's Life COnstantine the Great famous for being the first Christian Emperor divided the whole Empire at his Death amongst his three Sons as a Father does his Estate amongst his Children That Part which came by his Ancestors the West he gave to the Eldest the East to the Second and that which lay betwixt these to the Yongest All which devolved at last upon the second Son Constantius by the death of his two Brothers In the mean time the Army used an extremity of Caution to secure them in the quiet 〈◊〉 of their respective Thrones for being jealous lest their Uncles and other Kindred might usurp they put them to the Sword In these outrages of the Souldiery Constantius and Anibalianus and Dalmatius Caesar were slain but Gallus and Julian the Sons of this last-named Constantius were wonderfully delivered and saved beyond all expectation The cause of their Deliverance is variously represented 〈◊〉 every where attributes it to Constantius the Emperor and so does Julian himself acknowledge it in his Panegyrick of him Others say That Gallus the elder Brother was very sick and the Souldiers concluded that his Disease would kill him and save them the labour and they did not think Julian dangerous being but about five Years of age However that be the Emperor Constantius afterward took great care of them and they were maintained and served like Princes in one of the Royal Palaces as being the remaining Branches of his Family reserved for the Empire They both made so good progress in Learning that they entred into Orders so as to read the Scriptures to the People thinking this no diminution to them but that Piety was the greatest Ornament The one of them was sincerely pious though hot and fierce in his Nature but the other redeeming the time hid his wicked Temper under a Masque of Gentleness Gallus after this was made Caesar and a great part of the World put into his Hands who being accused of Cruelty and aspiring to the Empire was rashly cut off by the Emperor Julian at the same time fell under the Emperor's suspicion but by the intercession of the Empress he had leave to go to Athens to study Philosophy How he spent his time there Theodoret informs us Julian after the death of Gallus grew presumptuous and had a great mind to the Royal Scepter For which cause he went up and down Greece to find out Fortune-tellers and Conjurers having a mind to know whether he should obtain his desire And he met with a Man that promised to fortel him these things who led him into an Idol Temple and there initiated him so that the desire of a Kingdom strip'd this thrice wretched Person of his Piety But according to Gregory he had none to lose at that time For before this in his Brother's Time Asia was Julian's School of Impiety for Astronomy and Nativities and the vanity of Prognosticating and that which follows these Magick and he wanted nothing but Power to add to his Wickedness And before that Gregory concludes that he was a concealed Pagan when he disputed hard with his Brother in favour of the Heathens and pretended that he only tried how he could hold the weaker side of a Question Which agrees with what himself writes to the Alexandrians when he was Emperor He advises them not to worship Jesus as God the Word whom neither they nor their Fathers ever saw but the great Sun which from Eternity all Mankind do see and behold and worship which is the living and animated and understanding and bountiful Image of the Intelligible Father if they would be ruled by him who had tried both Religions who had lived twenty Years in their Religion and was now onwards of twelve in this However the Fathers all agree that the occasion of his revolt
Years And in the same Paragraph we have a fuller description of the State of all Christendom before the Reformation So that Laity and Cleray Learned and Unlearned all Ages Seas and degrees of Men Women and Children of whole Christendom an 〈◊〉 and most 〈◊〉 thing to think have been at once 〈◊〉 in abominable Idolatry of all other 〈◊〉 most detested of God and most damnable to 〈◊〉 and that by the space of eight hundred Years and more And in another place after a description of their Men Saints which look'd like Princes of Persia Land and the Idols of their Women Saints which might have been taken for nice and well-trimmed 〈◊〉 you have these words And because the whole Pageant must be throughly plaid it is not enough thus to deck Idols but at the last come in the Priests themselves likewise decked with Gold and Pearl that they may be meet Servants for such Lords and Ladies and fit worshippers of such Gods and Goddesses And with a solemn pace they pass forth before these Golden Puppets and fall down to the Ground on their Marrow Bones before these honourable Idols c. And elsewhere you have a large Discourse shewing That their 〈◊〉 and Ceremonies in honouring and worshipping of the Images or Saints be all one with the 〈◊〉 which the 〈◊〉 Idolaters used in honouring their Idols In Pilgrimages to 〈◊〉 Images which had more Holiness and Vertue in them than others In their Candle-Religion turning Incense offering up Gold to Images hanging up Crouches Chains and Ships Legs Arms and whole Men and Women of War before Images as though by them or Saints as they say they were delivered from Lameness Sickenss Captvity or Shipwrack In spreading abroad after the Example of the Gentiles Idolaters lying and feigned Miracles of Images Such an Image was sent from Heaven like the Palladium or Diana of the Ephesians Such an Image was brought by Angels Such an one came it self far from the East to the West as Dame Fortune fled to Rome Some Images though they were hard and stony yet for tender-heart and pity 〈◊〉 Some spake more 〈◊〉 than ever did Balaam's Al 's who had Life and Breath in him Such a Criple came and saluted this Saint of Dke and by and by he was made whole and lie here hangeth his Crouch Such an one in a Tempest vowed to Saint Christopher and scaped and behold 〈◊〉 is his Ship of War Such an one by Saint Leonard's help brake out of Prison and see where his 〈◊〉 hang. And 〈◊〉 thousands more Miracles by like or more shameless Lies were reported And to conclude The Papists serve themselves of those very ercuses which the Devil heretofore put into the Mouths of the Gentiles to palsiate their Idolatry So that by making use of the same Pretences and Answers it is plain that they be all one with the Gentiles Idolaters These things hitherto are spoken in reference to the worshipping of Images and then as to their worshipping the Host the Rubrick after the Communion declares that it is Idolatry to be 〈◊〉 of all faithful Christians Which has been always the Doctrine of our Church notwithstanding the ignorant Cavils of some men as appears by the Homilies where this Doctrine was never discontinued The Papists ignorance of the Sacrament is affirmed to have been the cause of the ruine of God's Religion the cause of gross Idolatry and of mummish 〈◊〉 Their worshipping and falling down before every cross piece of Timber which is but an Image of our Saviour's Cross must needs be rank Idolatry when in St. Ambrose judgement to have worshipped the Cross to self which was 〈◊〉 with our Saviour Christ s own precious Blood had been an hearthentsh Error and 〈◊〉 of the Worked In a word 〈◊〉 is so interwoven with their Religion that the Homily very justly brands them with the Name of the Idolatrous Church So much for the Doct of the Church of England which I hope will not seem strange or new to the meanest Reader for I am sure all the people of England ought to have been instructed and perfect in it any time this hundred Years and better 2. And now I shall undertake to prove the Papists to be as blockish Idolaters as ever were in the World by irrefragable and uncontroulable authorities such as they must either own or renounce their Popery and they are their own Mass-book the Roman Catechism set out by the Decree of the Council of Trent and the Roman Pontifical And 1. I shall set down all the sorts of Idolatry which are enumerated by the Roman Catechism And then 2. prove them to be guilty of 〈◊〉 very things which they themselves acknowledge to be both Idolatry and old Heathen Idolatry In their Explication of the Second Commandment they have these words It is manifest that two ways especially as to this Precept the Majesty of God is very much injured The first is If Idols and Images are worshipped as God or if any Divinity or Vertue be believed to be in them for the sake of which they are to be worshipped or that any thing is to be desired of them or that any trust is to be put in them as was done heretofore by the Gentiles who placed their hope in Idols which the Scripture every where reproves The other is If any one endeavour to represent the form of the Divinity in any kind of Work as if it could be seen with bodily Eyes or expressed by Colours or Figures To begin with the first instance of Idolatry to worship Idols or Images as God by which if they mean worshipping an Image with a persuasion that it is God truly that is a very low dispensation which very few if any of the Heathens were under And such an imputation as this they always look'd upon as an horrid slander upon their Religion If any Papist had charged the Heathens with it in Julian's time he would have returned him this answer O thou Block-head How can we chuse but account them Stocks and Stones which the hands of men have fashioned Dost thou think that the accursed Devils lead all other men by the Nose as they do thee so as to esteem them to be Gods which are their own Workmanship Or if they mean by those words the worshipping of Images with the same honour and devotion as God himself even this the Heathens renounced Julian gives this account of the respect which they paid to Images whereby you may perceive a wide difference betwixt that and the honour which they gave to their Gods Says he Whosoever is a lover of his King or Child or Father is delighted with their several Pictures and pleased in looking upon them by the same reason he that is a lover of God is pleased and delighted in looking upon the Images of the Gods at the same time worshipping and dreading the Gods who see him but are not
Son of God and laid all the fault upon his Followers because they had done it of their own Heads but likewise he repeats and inculcates it all over his Alcoran that there is but one God only and no more And in one place I remember he gives this reason for it There is but one God and no more and he has no Son for he never had a Wife But now there 's an end of that Turkish Argument And now likewise the Secret is out For I confess it has often amazed me to see the extravagant Blasphemies which are used in their prayers to the Virgin Mary as when they call her the Fountain of Mercy which is the brightest and loveliest apprehension of God that can possess the minds of Creatures when they call her Empress of Heaven who upheld the Cherubim and Seraphim from falling there I thought them mad whom all the Angels worship that methought was but reasonable supposing the former whom the Sun Moon and Stars and the whole Creation are called upon to praise and magnify as if she had been the Maker of them all and who threw Pharaoh and his Host into the Red Sea there thought I they make old Time go back a thousand years for this piece of Flattery Whereas this unthought of Relation entitles her to every thing that is was or can be in the Universal World Methinks such rank Blasphemy as this should poyson the Air into which it is breathed forth and blast the whole Creation round about I am sure it will make the Ears of all Christians to tingle and raise their Blood against such an horrid Religion And thus I have proved the Papists out of their own blasphemous mouths to be Polytheists in setting up Saints and Angels for Gods and in giving Divine Honour to them I have employed no other Argument at present to prove this than only their prayers to them whereas I might have used very many others as he that will read the Homily against Peril of Idolatry may easily see Against certain truth I know there cannot possibly be any material Objection but I would answer all trifling ones if I could foresee them It may be the Papists will say They do not make the Angels and Saints Gods because they make them in many respects inferior to God Were the Heathen Gods no Gods because Jupiter was King of them Was Vulcan no God because he was only armed with an Hammer and not with the Soveraign Thunderbolt What difference the heathens made betwixt Jupiter and the other Gods you may in part see by this following passage taken out of Maximin's Edict upon a Pillar in Tyrus The highest and greatest Jupiter who presides over your famous City and delivers the Gods of your Country your Wives and Children and Houses from all destructive Calamity c. These poor helpless Gods were so far from being Omnipotent that they needed the protection of Jupiter as much as the meanest of their Votaries Or it may be they will say They reserve peculiar Worship and Services to God which they do not communicate to Saints For they tell us They celebrate the Mass indeed in memory and honour of the Saints but the Priest never uses to say I offer Sacrifice to thee Peter or Paul namely this Sacrifice of the Mass. For that they offer all other Sacrifices if it please God to give me Life and Health I shall hereafter fully prove and then they shall hear more of this deceitful Juggle too and of the Tricks they have played with St. Austin's words We grant they do not offer the Sacrifice of the Mass to the Saints but to the Trinity So that they offer the Son of God to himself and according to the usual decorum which they constantly observe in that awkerd Religion which is made to spite the Reason of Mankind As our Saviour once heretofore sat at the Table discoursing and lay sowering in twelve several mens Stomachs at the same time so now he is every day in person both the Sacrifice it self upon Earth and the God in Heaven to whom it is offered None but such a Fool as I am would stand arguing and disputing with these men whom all the Reason upon Earth can never distress by reducing them to Impossibilities or Absurdities when they own and profess these Absurdities and Contradictions of their own accord it would certainly be more wisdom to go and preach as Venerable Beds once did to a heap of stones But to proceed nevertheless are not we to take it for a great favour that they do not offer the Great God of Heaven in Sacrifice to Thomas of 〈◊〉 The Gentiles Idolaters were so far from offering Jupiter in Sacrifice to any petty God that I never yet read that they offered him in Sacrifice to himself There is no consequence at all in this reasoning The Papists do not offer the Sacrifice of the Mass to Saints and Angels but only to the Trinity therefore they do not make Saints and Angels Gods For had not the Heathens proper Sacrifices for Jupiter which were sacred only to him and yet this did not destroy the Divinity of the other Deiries It makes no more difference amongst the Gods nor affects their God-head any more to have this or that particular Sacrifice offered or not offered to them than it did for 〈◊〉 to have a great Beard and his Father Apollo to have none at all Lastly The Papists may possibly say That there is great difference betwixt the Gods of the Pagans and the Saints which they honour and worship the former having been lewd men and sometimes feigned persons the latter being such as we Hereticks pay some respect to though not enough I shall not now enter into the merits of that Cause but refer them to a great Prelate of our Church who has told them That they Worship Saints in Heaven and Saints in Hell and Saints that are in neither place nor ever were in being Though by the way I cannot find any such great difference betwixt Romulus and Ignatius Loyola the one having been in his time the Governour of a Den of Thieves and the other the Captain General of the Modern Banditi and it is all one to me whether they worship the Nine Muses or the Seven sleepers for still the Polytheism remains the same they have indeed chang'd their Gods but not their Religion CHAP. XI Their Idolatry ACcording to my former Method I shall 1. shew that the Church of England has all along charged the Papists with Idolatry And 2. I shall make good that Charge upon them out of their own Mouths 1. The Church of England has all along charged the Papists with Idolatry The Homilies I am sure charge them with it above an hundred times over out of which I shall make choice of some few Instances Speaking of the Ages of Popery It is evident that Images Superstition and worshipping of Images and Idolatry have continued many hundred