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A61578
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Of the nature of superstition a sermon preached at St Dunstans West, March 31, MDCLXXXII / by Edward Stillingfleet ...
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Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing S5614; ESTC R18667
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23,089
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50
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besides all the Judaizing Christians were not followers of Cerinthus there being different Sects among them as appears by Irenaeus Epiphanius and others and Baronius himself grants that the Pharisaical Jews of that and following Ages did Worship Angels as the Host of Heaven And the Essens had their Angels of Prayer and made their prayers to the rising Sun whom they looked on as on the rest of the Stars as animated and intelligent Beings And why the Judaizing Christians should not retain their former Superstitions as well as their other Traditions and Observations I do not understand Especially since Theodoret so expresly affirms that those who then pleaded for the keeping of the Law brought in the Worship of Angels which custom he saith continued a long time in Phrygia and Pisidia and at last the Council of Laodicea made a Canon against praying to Angels Those of the Church of Rome are so sensible of the force of this Testimony of Theodoret against their practice that they are driven to desperate shifts to avoid it Bellarmine saith that he speaks against the Gnosticks whereas Theodoret mentions only those who were for keeping the Law Baronius saith in plain terms Theodoret was mistaken and that there were no such Hereticks then but this is so gross that Bellarmin and others contradict him in it Others therefore say that the Worship of Angels here spoken against is the Worshipping of them as Makers of the World But that is more than St. Paul saith for he speaks againstthat Worship which arises from Humility and nothing so proper for that as the Worshipping them as Mediators between God and us Some think it is when Angels are preferred before Christ which is likewise more than the Apostle saith and they who chuse other Mediators by whom God is more accessible by us do prefer them in Use though not in Dignity Others as the Jansenists in their New Testament say it is When Angels are set up as Mediators in opposition to Christ but that cannot be the Apostles meaning for then his great business would have been to have proved Christ to be the true Mediator and not Angels and if any Religious Worship of Angels had been agreeable with the Christian Doctrine the Apostle would never have thus in general condemned it but with such restrictions and limitations as made it to be evil Therefore to avoid these difficulties some conclude that by the Worship of Angels is understood such a Worship as was introduced by a pretended Revelation of Angels but against this we have the concurrent testimony of St. Chrysostome St. Hierome St. Ambrose Oecumenius Theophylact who all agree that it is to be understood of the Worship given to Angels So impossible it is for those who either give themselves or justifie and allow the giving by others any Religious Worship to Angels to escape falling under the Apostles censure of being Seducers and corrupting the Gospel of Christ. 2. About stricter Abstinence and greater Severity of Life For these Seducers gave out that the Christian Churches were yet very defective in this matter And that there were several Societies of Men both among the Jews and Heathens which went very far beyond them as the Essens the Pythagoreans the Gymnosophists and others who far outstript the Christians in Watchings and Fastings in the hard usage of their Bodies and a total abstinence from Wine and Flesh and other lawful Pleasures of Life On which account these false Teachers represented the Christianity as yet received in these Churches as too soft and gentle an Institution and not answering the Character that was given of it but if they had a mind to set it off with advantage it would be necessary for them to take in some of the strictest Precepts of those Societies especially relating to Meats and Marriage Touch not taste not handle not which they magnified as the greatest Instances of true Religion Self-denyal Humility Mortification without which they despised the Christian Institution as a mean and ordinary thing requiring only the belief of some great things done and suffered by Jesus Christ in Judea and the adhering thereto till Death and doing those Offices of Humanity and Kindness to each other and those Duties of Religion to God which all Mankind thought fit and reasonable to be done But these pretended refiners of Christianity were not contented with such common things they must set up for something singular and extraordinary so Epiphanius observes of the Gnosticks in the beginning that they condemned Marriage and abstained from Flesh that under these pretences they might draw others into their snares And likewise of the Ebionites one of the Sects of Judaizing Christians that they carefully abstained from all Flesh and were every day Baptised and celebrated the Eucharist only in Water for fear of being defiled with the taste of Wine wherein they were followed by the Encratitae Aquarij and several others who affected something out of the way as a badge of more than ordinary Sanctity And there are scarce any of those who are mentioned as the Authors of great Mischief to the Church but were remarkable for something of this Nature as appears by Marcion Montanus Manichaeus Severus and others And which is observable this sort of singularity prevailed no where more than in these parts of Phrygia where the Encratitae very much encreased and continued so to do in the days of Epiphanius So very little effect had this wise and timely caution given by the Apostle in this place upon those who were willing to be deceived in that or following Generations Cajetan confesses himself to seek what sort of Men those were the Apostle discourses against but it seems most probable to me that they were a sort of Judaizing Christians who endeavoured to introduce the Customs of the Jewish Essens into the Christian Church For when St. Paul speaks of the Jewish Customs he mentions no other but such as were in esteem among them he takes no notice of Sacrifices which were disesteemed among them But let no man judge you in Meat which among them was only Bread and Salt or in Drink which was only Water or in respect of a Holyday or New Moon or the Sabbath Days which as Philo relates they were great observers of And when he speaks of the Customs they would bring among the Christians they were no other than such as were strictly observed among them viz. great abstinence hard usage of their Bodies and some Religious Rites with respect to Angels Concerning which the Apostle delivers his Judgment two ways 1. He grants that these things have a shew of Wisdom in them i. e. that they make so good an appearance to men as is apt to raise an esteem of those persons in whom it is First Because they seem to flow from a forwardness in Religion so I render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we call Will-worship but that being a thing of an ill
occasions did almost universally obtain before the Christian Religion prevailed in the World But again other Deities were presumed to be so nice and squeamish that nothing was to be offered them but Milk and Wine and Honey and some Fruits of the Earth It were infinite to relate the Rites and Customs of their Sacrifices and all the ways they used to please their Gods and to find out whether they were pleased or not by the posture the tongue the entrails of their Beasts by the flying of Birds the feeding of Chickens the falling of a staff the holes of a sieve c. and innumerable ways of Divination by which they flatter'd themselves that they understood the good Will and Pleasure of their Gods which did not so much satisfy their curiosity as fill them with perpetual fears and oppress them with the horrible Bondage of Superstition which exalted almost every thing to the honour of a Deity and made themselves miserable by seeking to please them But although this were the deplorable state of Mankind forsaken of God and left to their own inventions yet such is the weakness and folly of Men that when God himself had given a Law to the Israelites to regulate their Worship with as much condescension to their weakness as the Wisdom of his Laws would permit yet so great was the Witchcraft of Superstition that they were always almost hankering after the Dotage of their neighbour Nations And although they often smarted severely for it yet the rod was no sooner off but they were ready to return to their former Superstitious vanities and were so obstinately bent upon them that nothing could move them not their former experience not the unreasonableness of the thing not the terrible denunciations of Gods heavy judgments against them till at last when there was no remedy the whole People were carried into Captivity from whence the greatest part never returned and their very memory is lost by a mixture with other Nations Those who returned have been so wise ever since as to abhor that provoking sin of Idolatry which their Ancestors suffered so much for but by degrees they fell into other kinds of Superstitions For it was thought a mean thing among them to keep to the Law but the Traditions of their Elders were looked upon as precious things and happy was the Man that was strictest in the observance of them Their frequent Washings their additional Fastings and Prayers their Garments their Postures their very Looks had such an appearance of Sanctity above other Mens that a man who kept only to the Law was of no regard or esteem for Piety and Devotion This was the state of Religion among the Jews when Christ appeared who laid open the foppery and hypocrisie of these great pretenders to extraordinary Sanctity He directed men to the love of God and their Neighbours as the main substantial parts of true Religion And next to his making a propitiation for the sins of Mankind by the Sacrifice of himself his great end was to restore true Religion to the World which had been so long buried under the heap of Superstitions And there needed so great an Authority as his was to assure Mankind that nothing was so pleasing and acceptable to God as unaffected Piety and universal Goodness which comprehends under it all the Duties of Temperance Righteousness and Charity And it is one great Argument of the Providence of God watching over his Church that he hath caused the Discourses of our Blessed Saviour to be preserved by the Writings of the Evangelists without which in all likelihood the Christian Religion had been long since lost in the World For the Jewish Christians who corrupted Christianity had represented St. Peter as so favourable to them and so misrepresented St. Paul that unless Christs Doctrine had been preserved in his own words and that by the concurrent Testimony of different Writers the Christian Religion had preserved little more than its name in the World And yet with all this advantage such was still the fondness of Mankind for their own Inventions that even under the Apostles eyes most of the Churches began to be tainted with these corruptions partly by the Judaizing Christians and partly by the followers of Simon and Menander But they all agreed in something new and mysterious and more pleasing to God than the dull and common way of Faith and Obedience After the Apostles decease the corruptions still multiplied and any new pretence to Revelations and Mysteries especially being joined with greater Abstinence and severity of Life took wonderfully among weak and injudicious Christians and made them apt to despise the Churches Devotions as too cold and flat and not having that Life and Spirit that Strictness and Austerity which appeared among the new pretenders What disturbance on this account did the Spirit of Montanus give to the Churches of Phrygia Galatia and Cappadocia The meer pretence to Revelation had never done it had it not been for the stricter Laws of Fasting and Mortification and greater Severity of Discipline than was used in the Catholick Church It was this which made Tertullian swallow the bait he had despised before and the force of all his Arguments against the Church is we are stricter than you But notwithstanding all these pretences the Christian Church still kept it self within its bounds making nothing necessary to Salvation but what Christ and his Apostles had made so yet recommending the Practice of Fasting as there were just Occasions especially before the great solemnity of Easter wherein both the Sacraments were administred with more than ordinary Devotion and the Penitents reconciled to the Communion of the Church If we look at this day into the state of the Christian World how great a part of it is relapsed into almost Heathen Superstitions in the Worship of Images and Saints and Angels as Mediators and no great difference in the outward Solemnities and Processions save that their Sacrifices are turned into a Consecrated Wafer which is carried in Procession as the Heathen Gods were wont to be It is true there are great pretences to Will-worship and Humility and neglecting the Body in several Orders of Men and those are looked on as ways of greater perfection than living in the World and doing good in it Which we have no reason to think agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ or our Apostle here But where there is not only Sanctity and Merit placed in such observations but Supererogation too they flatly contradict S t Paul for if that be true these things have far more than the shew of Wisdom for what wiser thing can any man do than not only to provide for his own Salvation but for others too In the Eastern Churches the best part I fear of their remaining Christianity lies in the strict observing the Fasts and Feasts of the Church They mightily despise the Fasting practised in the Roman Church as not deserving the name of Fasting because they end it at noon