assent The infinite desires of our Will and visible imperfections of our Understanding sufficiently convinceth mankind of the necessity of such Revelations The desire of happiness is natural to all and impossibility of attaining it in this life is no less evident The nature and immateriality of our Soul demonstrates that we were created for greater and more noble ends than the mean and inconsiderable enjoyments of this life that we cannot but exist for ever and are capable of Eternal Happiness and then our Will naturally prompts us to desire that this future Happiness may be commensurate to the infinite duration of our existence and not inferior to the capacity of our Nature Yet these ardent desires and possibility of obtaining them would but enhance our misery and augment our wishes unless the means of attaining them were assured to us This Divine Revelation alone can do since God alone can confer that happiness upon mankind and that he will do it can no otherwise appear than by some external Revelation The sense and evidence of these undoubted Truths have excited mankind in all Ages to enquire after such Revelation and obliged them to found all their hopes of future Happiness upon it Their Hopes and Desires induced them to attend to the proposal of it and then their Reason commanded them to acquiesce in it The assurance of the Divine Infallibility excluded all doubts and scruples and the sense of their Interest engaged in it banished even all desire of doubting Thus Divine Revelations easily gained belief and obedience in the World and if at any time they were rejected or disbelieved by men it was because their Judgment and Assent was prepossessed with some either real or feigned Revelation But then it could not be avoided but this natural reverence for Divine Revelations and proneness of believing them would produce some ill effects prejudicial to the Reason and Interest of mankind A fatal credulity would creep into the World and possess the minds of more ignorant Persons and induce them blindly to believe every bold Pretender to Revelation After a laborious and fruitless search of future Happiness men were apt to embrace any System of Religion presented to them if it flattered their hopes of future felicity they were loth to discover the error and illusion of any pleasing Revelation they wished it might be true and what at first they wished they at last believed But not only did the desires and hopes of mankind create this credulity the natural reverence of God and all divine Oracles when not rationally directed advanc'd and increas'd it Many feared they should be injurious to the Divine Majesty and incur the guilt of Atheism if they should scrupulously examine what pretended to carry the stamp of his Authority and to have been revealed by him To entertain scruples in this case was thought no less than Sacrilege and every doubt was esteemed an affront to God. To which may be added that most imagined they should contract no small merit and even lay an obligation upon God if they immediately resigned up their judgment to his supposed Revelation and blindly received it without any doubt or hesitation This in all Ages opened a wide gate and prepared the way for Error and Superstition while the whimsies of every foolish Enthusiast and fables of every bold Impostor were proposed under the venerable name of Divine Oracles and securely believed by the credulous multitude Hence all the follies and absurdities of Pagan Religion found belief and entertainment in the World and the most extravagant Impostors never wanted Proselytes Hence the most pernicious Errors of Hereticks found admission into the Church and the pretence of new Revelations in every Age seduced some part of the Christian World. All the present corruptions of the Faith are owing to it on which side soever any Errors at this day are entertained a scrupulous examination would discover them to be entertained chiefly for the precedent reasons and all modern additions to genuine Christianity will be found either to flatter the hopes or raise the admiration of the common People To this fatal credulity and danger of illusion arising from it God and Nature have assigned an excellent remedy the use of our Reason which may examine the grounds and testimonies of all pretended Revelations inquire into their truth and after a scrupulous trial pass sentence on them This the interest of Truth and the honour of our Nature requires us to perform that we may neither prostitute the former nor depreciate the latter by submitting our Understandings to the Pretensions of every bold Impostor Without this precedent enquiry our belief would be irrational and far from being meritorious would become unlawful For to violate the rules of conduct prescribed to our understanding were to overthrow all the Laws of Nature to debase the dignity of mankind and efface the Image of God imprinted in us These Rules assure us that God cannot reveal any thing foolish or ridiculous much less contrary to the testimony of our Senses or repugnant to the first principles of Reason No greater injury can be offered to the Deity than to believe him the Author of any Religion which prescribes or encourageth foolish and superstitious Practices or opposeth Sense and Reason All such Revelations would imply repugnant Attributes to be in God which if it did not destroy his existence would at least oblige us to form dishonourable Ideas of him And therefore Seneca truly saith Superstition is a most senseless Error which affronts that Object it pretends to worship For what doth it matter whether you deny or dishonour God Justly also doth Plutarch wonder why Atheism should be rather accused of Impiety than Superstition since few of are moved by any defect in the Order or Government of the World to call in question the Existence of God but the Tricks and Cheats of superstitious Persons their Enthusiastick Motions Ridiculous Actions Exorcisms Lustrations and such like give them occasion to believe it better and more rational there should be no God than such a God as the Author of such a Superstitious Religion must necessarily be So that wise Heathen If Christianity in the first and purer Ages of it had laboured with these difficulties or been obnoxious to these Objections it could never have convinced the World of its Truth or surmounted the resistance of Heathen Philosophy It would have been highly irrational and unworthy the learning of those Ages to have deserted one Superstition to embrace another so much more absurd than the former by how much the one was repugnant to Reason alone the other both to Sense and Reason It is the unhappiness of latter Ages to lye open to the force of this Objection which after so many Superstitious Practices and Opinions introduced into a great part of the Christian Church is thereby become unanswerable For whosoever considers the Fictions of Transubstantiation Purgatory and Infallibility the Impertinence of Prayers in an unknown Tongue the
farther I will observe that these indiscreet Actions and Childish Irregularities were the products of latter and degenerate Ages in the Ancient Church unknown to the first four Ages when Christianity flourished in its greatest purity In the three first Ages not the least footstep or shadow of them can be found and in the fourth Age they were very rarely practised and wholly confined to the Desarts of Egypt or Palestine As for the Follies related of St. Antony in his Life ascribed to St. Athanasius and those of other Saints in the Vitae Patrum said to have been writ by St. Hierom all Learned Men are now agreed that the former Work is miserably corrupted the latter wholly spurious After the fourth Age many Childish Impertinencies and trifling Superstitions began to be practised by the Monks and Hermits whose Follies are celebrated and magnified by injudicious Writers of the same Order and time such as Palladius Heraclitus Sulpicius Severus Cassian and Moschus but augmented with a large addition of Fables and absurdity by the latter Legendary Writers of the Church of Rome In the next place it deserveth farther to be considered that in the Ancient Church none but obscure and inconsiderable Persons confined to a Mountain or a Desart who obtained neither authority nor reputation in the Church were guilty of such foul mistakes and irregularities The great and famous Doctors and Fathers of the Church who drew the eyes of the whole World upon their Actions and acquired to themselves an universal veneration cannot be accused of such fatal miscarriages which were so far unworthy of them On the contrary they sharply opposed the misguided Zeal of these ignorant Devotoes censured their imprudent Actions slighted their external shews of apparent Piety and deplored the evil consequences of their irregular Practices What the wisest of the Ancients disowned deserve not to be excused and defended by us And indeed the trifling Devotions and wild Impertinencies of the Monastick Order were the greatest blemish to those latter Ages of Antiquity and laid the foundation of all Corruptions whether of Faith or Manners which infected succeeding Ages Towards the beginning of the fifth Age Eunapius the Heathen Historian could find no more plausible or rational objection against Christianity than the sordid Actions and ridiculous Conduct of the Monks certainly no objection was then more visible or less capable of a refutation But then the Actors of these Follies never obtained that respect and admiration from the publick suffrage of the Ancient Church which Enthusiastick Saints have received from the Church of Rome The former commemorated none in her publick Offices but Martyrs Confessors and famous Persons who had been eminently instrumental in the service of the Church and filled not her Diptychs with Monks and Anchorets The latter hath scarce canonized any other than such as were chiefly eminent for Enthusiasm Lastly to say no more Even the highest Extravagances of these Ancient Bigots come far beneath the Enthusiasm of Ignatius and other admired Saints of the Church of Rome They might perhaps commit many gross absurdities and indecent actions and entertain Childish notions of Religion but never proceeded so far as to pretend to extraordinary Illuminations reception of the Faith by supernatural Revelation and continual Impulse of the Divine Spirit nor took upon them to publish their own Whimsies by preaching to the People without any commission from the Governours of the Church which are the genuine and most essential Characters of Fanaticism If the Miracles related of them be sometimes found to lye open to the same Objections which are opposed by me to those of Ignatius the honour of the Ancient Church suffers no prejudice thereby which far from building her Authority and Reputation on them hath frequently disowned and rejected them as appears among other Arguments from that Passage of the Learned Author of the Opus Imperfectum which I have produced in the following Discourse None will be concerned in the truth of these ancient Monkish Miracles but that Church only which hath proposed them to the People in her publick Offices and Ecclesiastical Legends In representing the Actions of Ignatius I have chiefly made use of the Authority of F. Dominick Bouhours a French Iesuit altho one of the latest Writers of his Life because in publishing the Life of Ignatius of late among us that Author was thought fit to be preferred before all others and his Relation of him translated into our Language However in whatsoever he proposeth he wants not the attestation of more ancient and authentick Writers For he seems to have taken his whole Relation from Orlandinus his History of the Society of Jesus printed at Colen in the Year 1615. with the approbation of Claudius Aquaviva the General I have seldom produced any other Writers of Ignatius his Life but when the first is either wholly silent or giveth a different Relation If I have sometimes inserted Observations from the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus that tendeth as well to illustrate the nature of Enthusiasm in general as to do justice to the common Cause of Christianity against the pretences of an Impostor whom the latter Heathens set up in opposition to our Blessed Saviour To conclude I hope our Adversaries will not pretend that I have misrepresented or falsified the Actions of Ignatius since I have all along to every particular Action so carefully annexed in the Margent the Author who relates it and the place where it may be found The pretence of misrepresentation is the last refuge of a baffled Cause and therefore made use of by our Adversaries as the only remaining expedient upon all occasions particularly by the Author of the Monomachia who not being able to answer the Objections brought by a Friend of mine against the Authorities of his Speculum Ecclesiasticum pretended to overrule the concurrent Testimonies of Labbé Oudin Du Pin and other Romish Criticks because the particular places of their Books to which those Passages related were not adjoined and insinuated a suspicion of some insincerity as if that omission had proceeded from a fear lest the truth of those Citations should be examined What the ignorance or artifice of this Author will not permit him to do at least all judicious Persons will allow that it were both unuseful and impertinent to stuff the Margents with particular mention of the places of such Critical Writers who in giving their Censures upon Ancient Authors proceed either Alphabetically or in order of time and may consequently be immediately recurred to without any difficulty But a lame excuse must serve the turn when the badness of the Cause will admit no better THE ENTHUSIASM OF THE CHURCH of ROME c. SO great and venerable an Idea of God is by nature imprinted in the minds of men so visible and convictive are the Arguments of his Omniscience and Veracity that all Divine Revelations are no sooner proposed than admitted and esteemed to command no less than to deserve our
And this however it deserves the scorn and contempt of judicious Persons tendeth not a little to raise the Reputation of the Enthusiast among ignorant men who ever admire what they cannot penetrate and suppose the obscurity of his Discourse to proceed from the Divine Mysteriousness of it If we consult the Writings of Ignatius we shall find them full of this foolish Canting His Book of Spiritual Exercises talks much of the love of Christ in a most unintelligible manner and his Letter to a Religious Person of Barcelona concerning the two manners whereby God teacheth us is most remarkable upon this account While he was yet a Novice in Philosophy he professed the knowledge of Mystical Divinity and indeed never knew any other In prescribing the duty of the General of his Order he saith that all Learning is necessary for him yet the Science of the Saints is that which is far most necessary for him to discern the divers interior Spirits of men This Science of the Saints is commonly too mysterious for Learned men and therefore Barth Torrez writing in defence of Ignatius's Book of Spiritual Exercises accused of Heresie in Spain by the Learned Melchior Canus saith there is a great difference between the Sciences learnt in Schools and the Sciences of the Saints His Followers pretend his Constitutions to be filled with the Spiritual Vnction of Grace and himself to have drank largely of the Wine of Heaven which is too strong and heady for the Vessels of the Earth Thus St. Francis is said to have been wholly absorpt in God in time of prayer and all swallowed up in the flame of the Divine Love as it were a burning coal And indeed it may be affirmed in general of all the Romish Saints that their Writings are wholly unintelligible and nothing else but a rhapsody of sublime Nonsense The grossest and most impertinent of our English Fanaticks come far beneath them and were never able to equal their Mysterious Follies We may indeed hear them talk of being Christed with Christ and Godded with God but the Science of the Saints was never among theâ—â—â—â—vanced to that perfection which it obtaineth it 〈◊〉 Church of Rome There remains nothing to compleat the Enthusiâ—â—â— but to fancy himself commissionated by God to puâ—â—lish his Imaginary Revelations to the World and thereupon without any respect to the Rules of Ecclesiastical Discipline instituted by Christ to invade the Office of preaching This is indeed the last and highest degree of Fanaticism not to contain the whimsies of their disturbed Fancy within their own Breasts but imagining them to be necessary Truths for all Christians to propagate them with a blind and unwearied zeal to believe that Christ hath not openly and plainly delivered to the Church in the rule of Faith all necessary Articles of Religion or that sufficient means were not provided for the propagation of them unless they intruded themselves into the Holy Office against all the Rules of Decency and Ecclesiastical Policy The Author of the Lawful Prejudices against the Calvinists affirms the guilt of this disorder alone to be a sufficient argument why all their Pleas should be rejected without any farther consideration Whether and how far the Calvinists are guilty of this irregularity I will not enquire but affirm that the most Illustrious Saints of the Church of Rome have been inexcusably guilty of it Particularly the supposed Merits of St. Francis and Ignatius are chiefly founded upon this apparent zeal for Souls and preaching their wild notions to the People without any ordinary mission from Christ or delegation from the Church St. Francis immediately after his Conversion while he was yet an ignorant Layman fell to preach repentance to the People in the Streets and Markets and being asked by some Robbers setting upon him in the Road who he was as if he were another Iohn Baptist he answered I am the Preacher and Messenger of the Great King. As soon as he had got together seven Disciples he sends them forth to preach the Gospel in these words Go ye and declare peace unto men preaching repentance for the remission of sins Then taking one Companion to himself he proceeds to one part of the World sending the other six by couples into the other three parts of the World. This was a phrenzy beyond the power of Hellebore and which exceeds even the Follies of our English Fifth-Monarchists Surely whatsoever Bonaventure may pretend the Holy Ghost had no share in this Undertaking and therefore no wonder it met with no better success St. Francis himself prepares to preach the Gospel to the Sarazens in Syria but by contrary Winds is driven upon the Coast of Sclavonia and forced to return back The Spirit still moving him he disposeth himself to convert the Moors and Miramolins of Africk but detained in his Journey by sickness loseth his Courage and quits the Design At last he resolves firmly to convert the Soldan of Babylon Away he goeth to Syria ragged and barefooted and yielding himself Prisoner to the Soldan's Guards boldly demands to be brought to his presence The Soldiers after they had soundly beaten him bring him to their Emperor He asketh him who he is Francis answers That he is sent by God to preach Salvation to him and his People and for proof of the Christian Faith undertakes to enter into the fire The Soldan laughs at him and having made sufficient sport with him dismisseth him for a Fool. Ignatius at his very first conversion proposed to himself to preach the Gospel in the Holy Land. Accordingly in the Year 1523. he enters upon the Journey guided by that inward motion which had first prompted him at his conversion Coming thither the Guardian of the Franciscans whom he had acquainted with his Resolution disapproved such irregular usurpation of the Holy Office and commands him to be gone upon pain of Excommunication The poor Saint is forced to return without success however he quits not his Design Studying at Barcelona he began to preach conversion to his Neighbours Removing to Alcala he falls to reform the dissolute Manners of Scholars Clergy-men and others and to Catechize Youth But being suspected of Sorcery he is clapt into the Inquisition To free himself from Prison he professeth himself willing blindly to obey his Ecclesiastical Judge At last the Inquisitors dismiss him but withall forbid him to explain to the People the Mysteries of Religion upon pain of Excommunication and Banishment Ignatius notwithstanding his promise of blind obedience would not readily submit to this Command doubting whether it were a lawful Command and fearing that in not preaching he should be wanting to his Call and Vocation To get rid of this difficulty he removes to Salamanca and there preacheth openly to the People in the Streets and Fields altho many good men were scandalized at it saying it was never heard that a simple Layman should instruct the People and perform
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