aim at an extraordinary perfection and purity propose to themselves long pilgrimages terrible austerities continual prayer and a thousand other ridiculous actions which their deluded fancy suggests to be meritorious They employ their thoughts in the perpetual meditation of these imaginary perfections and in their extasies and raptures are amused with them and form pleasing Ideas of them arising from the apprehension of any exceeding merit or veneration to be obtained by the practice of them In this religious phrensy they imagine to have received the Divine approbation of them mistaking a foolish satisfaction of a deluded judgment for the suffrage and voice of the Holy Spirit acting in them and at last proceed so far as to fancy the reception of a Divine Command for the commission of these extravagancies No wonder then if after such a false perswasion they proceed to act all the whimsies and follies which a disturbed brain and violent imagination can suggest if they put off all sense of shame and modesty and setting no bounds to their extravagance deliver themselves up to the conduct and direction of an irrational fancy which inciteth them to commit such follies and trifles as are beneath the dignity of a rational Being and contrary to the dictates of common sense such ridiculous fopperies and elaborate extravagance as may justly provoke the laughter of sober Heathens and indignation of wiser Christians Such ridiculous Fanaticism is the utmost degeneracy of Christian Religion than which nothing can be more contrary to its Genius and destructive of its Principles Christianity was intended to exalt and perfect the Reason of mankind to create true notions of the nature of all moral and religious Actions and introduce the practice of a manly and rational Piety Whereas this Enthusiasm debaseth the Reason and Understanding of mankind introduceth false Ideas of Religion and Piety and exposeth both to the scorn and derision of the more judicious and intelligent World as if none but Fools and Ideots could be perfect Christians and the highest degree of madness were the most certain mark of piety Such absurd Opinions cannot but scandalize all considering Persons and cause them to conclude that either these absurdities are gross corruptions and deviations from Christianity or else Christianity it self is a grand Imposture unworthy the belief and veneration or even attention of mankind The former is not easily discernible by those who have no other notions of Christianity than what they receive from the general practice and currant opinions of their Countrey and are from their infancy prepossest that there is no true Christian Society besides their own where if such Fanaticism be publickly practised or countenanced it cannot but create in them a detestation of all Christianity But as for those who are convinced of the truth of Christianity in general and enquire after the true Doctrines of it among so many divided Communions of the Christian World they may rationally and infallibly conclude that particular Church which favours or promotes this Superstitious Enthusiasm to be infinitely corrupted and degenerate from the true Spirit and Principles of Christianity If we view the several Churches and Communions of the Christian World we shall find no Society of Christians more free from Fanaticism than the Church of England or more guilty of it than the Church of Rome It hath been the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to create a right sense of Religion and Piety in all her Communicants and secure to them the practice of a rational Devotion She makes no pretensions to private Inspirations and extraordinary Illuminations of the Holy Ghost and all her Children are more apt to deride than admire the follies and extasies of Enthusiasts If any of her Members have at any time through ambition or ignorance embraced Fanaticism they have at the same time departed from the Communion of the Church and becoming Schismaticks proclaimed themselves her Enemies Yet so far hath the sober and judicious practice and example of the Church of England influenced even their conduct that the most extravagant among them have been less Fanatical than the most admired Saints of the Church of Rome and whensoever the sense of their Duty and Providence of God shall induce them to return to the bosome of the Church which we heartily wish they can do it no otherwise than by deserting even all Reliques of Fanaticism Not so the Church of Rome which in all her Offices and publick Ceremonies promotes and foments it hath on many occasions given publick applause and approbation to it and oweth the greatest part of her peculiar Doctrines and present prosperity to the Enthusiasm of her Followers If we consult the publick Offices of that Church we shall find nothing intelligible directly proposed to the common People but the Prayers performed in an unknown Tongue and their Senses in the mean while amused with antick Gestures Images Processions and pompous Representations The first enforceth the minds of ignorant Persons to betake themselves to the entertainment of their own thoughts and direct their Devotion according to their own crude and indigested Ideas and then the latter inspires them with childish and absurd notions of Religion and Divine Matters and both together cause them to form wild and Enthusiastick Apprehensions of Religious Actions and direct their Conduct according to those Apprehensions If we examine the peculiar Doctrines of the Church of Rome we shall find many of them to derive their original from Enthusiastick Visions and Revelations I will instance only in Purgatory and Transubstantiation whereof the former however at this day defended was at first set a foot upon the sole Authority of these Fanatick Visions which imaginary Visions of this kind were so frequent among the Enthusiastick Monks of the sixth seventh eighth and tenth Ages that large Volumes might be compiled of them as indeed I have seen several voluminous Collections of them in Manuscript composed before the Reformation in proof of Purgatory As for Transubstantiation as it was first forged in the Cell of a Visionary Monk so it chiefly gained credit and belief in the World from the pretended Visions of supposed Saints for whose sake God divested the Sacramental Elements of their usual Accidents and offered them to their sight under the very Species of an Humane Body Scarce a Monkish Saint of any eminence after the ninth Age can be found in whose life such a Vision is not related Lastly if we view the Religious Orders of the Church of Rome where Religion and Piety is supposed to flourish in its utmost perfection and which are esteemed the grand Patterns of refined Christianity we shall find them to be so many Societies of Fanatical Enthusiasts who if we except vicious and irreligious Persons among them wholly busie themselves in wild Imaginations and ridiculous Ceremonies If any religious Persons among them escape this contagion and surmount this imperfection it is owing to the excellency of their Genius and advantage of their
Rome imagine might reasonably recommend him not only to the Mercy but even the Favour of God. Yet notwithstanding all these Advantages he fell into a most horrible Despair which Bouhours thus describeth Soon after his penitential Austerities performed at Manreze he began to be afflicted with Scruples and want his former interior Consolations and he finds himself precipitated into a state of desolation and darkness His Scruples and Despair increase He doubteth whether he had confessed all his Sins and with all their circumstances altho his Confession had lasted three whole days To dissipate these Doubts he hath recourse to Prayer but the more he prays the more his Doubts and Fears increase upon him Every step he made he thought he stumbled and offended God imagining there to be sin where there was not the least shadow of it and always disputing with himself about the state of his Conscience not being able to decide what is sin and what not In these conflicts of mind he groans he sighs he crieth out he throws himself upon the ground like a man tormented with pain but for the most part keeps a mournful silence Being wont to communicate every Sunday it now happened to him more than once that being ready to communicate his troubles of mind so redoubled upon him that he retired from the Holy Table full of confusion and desolation After many unprofitable debates wherein his Understanding was lost it entred into his thoughts That obedience only could cure him and that his pains would cease if his Confessor should command him entirely to forget all things past He doth so but his Scruples continue He redoubleth his Exercises of Piety but finding no relief either from Earth or Heaven he believeth that God had forsaken him and that his Damnation was most certain The Dominicans out of pity take him into their House but can give him no comfort He falls into a dark melancholly and being one day in his Cell he had the thought of throwing himself out of the Window to end his misery But Heaven by force restrained him against his will. Then remembring the precedent of an old Hermit he set himself to fasting and resolved to eat nothing till God should hear him Accordingly he fasted seven whole days without eating or drinking but without success His Confessor at last commanded him to break his fast He doth so and is on the sudden for ever freed from all his Scruples Certainly if all irregular conducts of the Will be Sins and an irrational Despair the greatest of all Sins this of Ignatius was such a complicated Sin as few examples can equal But it seems Heresie alters the nature of Vertue and Vice. Such a Despair in a Protestant would have deserved damnation whereas in a Romish Saint it was so far meritorious that if we may believe Bouhours God in reward of it bestowed upon him the gift of curing Scrupulous Consciences Upon occasion of this ready obedience paid by Ignatius to the Commands of his Confessor I will take farther notice of the same blind submission observed by him through the whole course of his Life Whether the Principles of the Church of Rome do not naturally lead to such a blind obedience to the dictates of every private Confessor and thereby resolve the Faith of all particular Christians into the private opinion of an ignorant and perhaps Heretical Priest I will not now enquire but certainly Ignatius practised this blind submission in the utmost extravagance insomuch as if he had adhered to his own Principles or we may judge from his other Actions he must have renounced Christianity and even natural Religion if his Confessor had so commanded him His notion of a perfect obedience which we before mentioned sheweth this and his Actions put it beyond all doubt He declared upon all occasions his resolution blindly to obey his Ecclesiastical Judge and when he preached at Venice he proposed this as a first principle to all That true Christians ought to submit themselves to the decision of the Church with the simplicity of an Infant Being tried before the Inquisitors for no less than a capital Crime he refused to answer till his Ecclesiastical Superiors should command him Apollonius in a like case had refused to move his Tongue after a Vow of five years silence when he was falsly accused of an horrid Crime and in great danger of being executed However if it be a venial Sin for a Man to sacrifice his Life to his Folly it is no less than a mortal one deliberately to commit an action which he is perswaded in his own Conscience to be unlawful Ignatius in his Voyage to Ierusalem thought it utterly unlawful and contrary to Evangelical Poverty to carry any Provisions along with him Yet being resolved by his Confessor to the contrary he boldly did that out of obedience which he durst not do of himself and made provision for his Voyage This Folly at last proceeded so far that renouncing the liberty of his Will and use of his Reason he would not venture upon any indifferent Action without consulting his Confessor as if with St. Francis he wanted a Guardian who might in all things direct his Actions and command his Will. When an unskilful Physician in his sickness administred to him hurtful remedies and proceeded contrary to the nature of his Distemper and Ignatius fully knew all this he would not once open his mouth against it because he esteemed it meritorious and a point of Religion to obey in all things When he was unanimously elected General of his Order by a method of Election which himself prescribed he refused to accept the Office unless he should be commanded by his Confessor So the Iew refused to go on Shipboard on the Sabbath-day till he was beaten thither by the Janizary whom he had hired to do it If then an irrational despair of the Mercy of God and an intire Renunciation of the use of Reason may be accounted Sins we have abundantly demonstrated the Pope to have been widely mistaken in celebrating the Sanctity of Ignatius If we should carry our Enquiries yet farther we might perhaps discover other no less Infirmities which would ruin the supposed Sanctity of Ignatius and the Truth of the Papal Assertion of it at the same time We might suspect him to have been guilty of many other Vices after his Conversion For before it all Writers allowed him to have been abandoned to the utmost degree of Debauchery and Immorality His mean and unworthy thoughts of the Nature and Excellency of God appear from many Actions before related and may be farther manifested from his frequent imagining to see God and the Holy Trinity before his Eyes in a corporeal Representation from his endeavouring to bribe him in favour of his Order by offering up to him three thousand Masses and from his seeking to acquire the favour of God by the practice of foolish Superstitions We cannot but
set it on foot was a little Spanish Visionary Lastly his Book of Exercises was accused of Heresie in Spain by the Learned Melchior Canus who asserted it to be the work of a Brain-sick Enthusiast From this universal contempt of Ignatius in his life-time and frequent suspicions of Heresie Enthusiasm and Sedition entertained of him by the Governours of the Church it may be farther evinced that all the Reports of his Miracles are absolutely false and either not yet invented or generally disbelieved at that time For it is not credible that such contempt should attend him or such suspicions be entertained of him if he had indeed performed so many and so great Miracles It remains that we examine the truth of these Miracles more particularly by some general Observations which may be framed of them It might indeed be sufficient to oppose to them what Eusebius doth to the Miracles of Apollonius that we are not inclined to believe them but because our Adversaries are not ashamed to produce them as undoubted arguments of the truth of their Cause I will oppose some few Considerations to them And first it may be enquired To what purpose should God work so many Miracles in the midst of Christian Countries many Ages after the Faith had been fully setled in them Were those Countries devoid of true Religion This is not pretended Was the Church of Rome at that time grieviously corrupted with Errors and Superstition This our Adversaries will by no means allow Or lastly Did the Evangelical Counsels of Poverty Abstinence Humility and renunciation of the World which were the grand Topicks of Ignatius want the recommendation of Divine Miracles This Ignatius himself would not approve For he was wont to say that if Miracles were to be desired of God they were much rather to be desired in confirmation of the Precepts than of the Counsels of the Gospel It remains therefore that God should perform all these Miracles meerly in testimony of the extraordinary Sanctity of Ignatius to manifest his favour to him and procure to him honour and esteem among all Christians a Design so unworthy of God and contrary to the excellence of his and imperfection of our Nature that the very pretence of it is an unpardonable boldness and a manifest argument of Imposture and immoderate Ambition and that even altho we should allow Ignatius to have been indeed as great a Saint as the Writers of his Life do represent him And therefore the Author of the Opus Imperfectum upon St. Matthew argueth excellently that there is no way now left to find out the true Church or the true Faith but only the Scripture that at the first Institution of the Gospel it was known indeed by Miracles who were true and who false Christians since the latter could either perform no Miracles or none such as the former did For the Miracles of true Christians were perfect and tended rather to the use and Interest of the Church than to procure the admiration of the World whereas the Miracles of false Christians were imperfect and of no use and tended wholly to raise admiration By this means true Christians might formerly be discerned from false But now all working of Miracles is ceased and is found only among false Christians among whom Miracles are yet feigned to be wrought as St. Peter cited by St. Clement assureth us even the Power of working true Miracles shall be given to Antichrist This Passage is so offensive to our Adversaries that it is ordered to be expunged in the Indices Expurgatorii and was accordingly left out in all subsequent Editions till it was restored by Fronto Ducoeus If yet the Church of Rome will pretend her Miracles to be true and real we are content provided she assumeth the title affixed by St. Peter and this Author to the Workers of true Miracles in latter Ages If She refuseth the Title She renounceth her claim to Miracles But the Temptation of lying and feigning Miracles for the Reputation of an Order is in that Church far more perswasive than the evidence of Reason A Catalogue of Miracles is as necessary to a Romish Saint as a list of wonderful Cures is to a Mountebank no Canonization can be obtained without them When Ignatius therefore was to be promoted to the dignity of a Saint his Disciples set their Inventions on the rack to raise a Fund of Miracles every flying Report was taken up and every Old womans Tale advanced into a Miracle and the most Illustrious wonders of his Life then first feigned without any ground This the Honour of the Order required to which all considerations of Truth and Honesty were betrayed that so the Founders of it might be rendred no less Illustrious than those of other more Ancient Orders by an equal number of Miracles and Prodigies Vitelleschi produceth a Catalogue of 140 Miracles wrought by Ignatius in divers parts of the World drawn from the Registers and Process of his Canonization He cured Twenty five Persons of divers Mortal Diseases Ten of Diseases apparently incurable Thirteen of Blindness Nineteen of Collick Head-ach Tooth-ach and Belly-ach Four of the Stone One of the Plurisie c. That the far greatest part of these Miracles were feigned many years after his Death we have just reason to suspect for when Ribadeneira who was his familiar Companion first published his Life in the Year 1572. he made a long Apology in it in defence of Ignatius maintaining that it was no way derogatory to his Sanctity that he had performed no Miracles Afterwards in the Year 1610 publishing a second Edition of his Life he was so far enlightned in this matter that he giveth to us a long Catalogue of the Miracles of Ignatius but withal confesseth That the Reason why he had not inserted them in the first Edition was because they were not then sufficiently certain and uncontested Now it cannot be imagined how the Miracles of Ignatius who died in the Year 1556 should be unknown or at least uncertain Sixteen years after when the Memory of them was yet fresh if any such indeed there were and after Fifty four Years when the greatest part of the Witnesses must be supposed to have been dead should be advanced to undoubted Certainty In like manner Maffeius writing the Life of Ignatius in the Year 1605 when his Canonization was not yet thought on relates very few Miracles performed by him and concludes in these words Beside these many other wonderful actions are related of Ignatius which because they are not sufficiently certain I thought not fit to insert especially since the holiness of famous men consists not so much in Signs and Miracles as in the Love of God and Innocence of Life And after all Bussieres confesseth That many wonderful things related of Ignatius in his Life written by Nierembergius are by no means testified with incontestable Proofs and that we may justly doubt of the Truth of them But