the Pope's Legates who presided and the Vicars of the Oriental Patriarchal Sees who assisted in it O my God! is it come to this that an Inferiour Rector of one Pâ—rochial Church whose name is scarce known but in the Bills of Mortality and was never heard of in the List of any General Council shall dare to condemn as foolish the Sentence of the most August and Venerable Tribunal upon Earth Was he not afraid of that dreadful Sentence of our Lord He that shall say to his Brother how much more to so many Fathers of the Church Fool shall be guilty of Hell-fire What Order and Discipline can be observ'd in the Church if it shall be lawful for any private person upon presumption of his own wit to contemn and deride the Decrees of those whom he is bound under pain of being accounted as a Heathen and Publican to hear Will he plead for his excuse that he follows the Judgment of another Synod held not long before in Constantinople in which boâ—h the making and honouring of sacred Images was condemned Let him shew that to have been a lawful Council and not a Conventicle as in reality it was being called by the Secular Power and wanting both the consent and presence of the Patriarchs of the East and chiefly of the Bishop of Rome by himself or Legates whom the Fathers of the fourth General Council of Chalcedon acknowledge to have presided over them as the Head over the Members and without whose Authority according to the Canon of the Church no Decrees could be valid None of which defects were in the Council of Nice Besides that divers of the Bishops who had voted in and subscribed to the false Synod of Constantinople came and abjur'd its Doctrine in the Council of Nice and among them Gregorius Bishop of Neocaesarea the Ringleader of the Faction Yet Dr. St. takes up and abets the Arguments of that Pseudo-Synod as if they had never been retracted and anathematized as impious by the chief Author of it and scoffs at the Answers of the Synod to them as insufficient I pray God he may one day imitate him in his Repentance as he hath done hitherto in his Passion against the Images of Christ and his Saints Examples we know move much and possibly it may be neither unprofitable to Him nor ungrateful to the Reader to set down the form and manner of that Bishops Recantation and his Reception into the Church § 2. Being brought into the Council by a Person of honour sent from the Emperour Tarasius Patriarch of Constantinople ask'd him If hitherto he had not known the Truth or knowingly had contemn'd it His answer was that he hop'd it was out of ignorance but desir'd to learn And when Tarasius bad him declare what he desir'd to learn he answered Forasmuch as this whole Assembly doth say and think the same thing I know and most certainly believe that the Point now agitated and preached by this Synod is the Truth and therefore I beg pardon for my former evils and desire with all these to be instructed and inlightned For my Errours and Crimes are great beyond measure and as God shall please to move the hearts of this Holy Synod to Compunction towards me so be it Here Tarasius expressing some doubt he had least his submission might not be sincere but that he might speak one thing with his mouth and have another in his heart Gregorius cry'd out God forbid I confess the Truth and lie not neither will I ever go back from my word Whereupon Tarasius told him that he ought long ago to have given ear to what the Holy Apostle St. Paul teaches saying Hold fast the Traditions which ye have received either by our word or by our Epistle And again to Timothy and Titus Avoid profane Novelties of words For what can be a greater Novelty in Christianity and more profane than to say that Christians are Idolaters To this Gregorius return'd that what he and his Partizans had done was evil and we confess saith he that it was evil So it was and so we did by which words it seems he made a particular confession of what evil they had done and therefore we beg pardon of our faults I confess most Holy Father before you and this Holy Synod that we have sinned that we have transgressed that we have done evil and ask pardon for it Upon this it was ordered that he should bring in his Confession the next Session of the Synod which he did of the same tenour with that of Basilius Bishop of Ancyra and others in the first Session viz. that he did receive and salute or give Veneration to the Holy and Venerable Images of Christ and his Saints and anathematize such as were not of the same mind as he expressed himself in the vote he gave after he had by the Sentence of the Popes Legates and the consent of the Synod been restored to his Seat upon his repentance This is recorded of Gregorius Bishop of Neocaesarea in the Acts of the Council of Nice to his immortal Glory May it be imitated with no less Glory by the Rector of St. Andrews May he take to himself what St. Ambrose said to Theodosius Secutus es errantem sequere poenitentem This I heartily pray for and to this end shall take the pains to shew with what little Reason he abets the Arguments of that false Synod and derides the Answers of the Nicen Fathers If in doing this I make his vanity appear here as elsewhere I have done it is but what St. Austin tells us we ought so much the more to endeavour towards those who oppugn the Church by how much the more we desire their salvation And I know not how possibly himself could have laid it more open than in the Ironical Title of That Wise Synod he gives that very Council to which his Leader in the Charge of Idolatry the afore mentioned Gregorius submitted himself as to a most lawful Council confessing that what those Fathers so unanimously taught was the Truth and the Tradition of the Catholick Church Now what they taught was this that the Images of Christ and his Saints were to be placed and retained in Churches that by seeing them the Memory and Affections of the Beholders might be excited towards those who were represented by them as also to salute and give an honourary adoration or respect to the said Images like as is given to the figure of the Holy Cross to Chalices to the Books of the H. Gospels and such like sacred Utensils but not Latria which as true Faith teacheth is due onely to God What he could find in this definition for which the Fathers deserved from him the title of Fools I cannot imagin unless he will have it to be Idolatry to reverence the Books of the Holy Gospels or the sacred Utensils of the Altar But in this the Council is vindicated by Eminent Divines of
being engaged in it yet 't is certain they reclaimed against their proceedings and if the Fathers at Francford persisted in their mistake what wonder if the Historians of that time who favour'd them took no notice of it Or if the English Historians ran into the same Errour as it is manifest they did by what Hoveden reports that the English Bishops believed the Doctrine of the Council of Nice to be that Adoration was to be given to Images which the Church of Christ abhors That the Author of the Caroline Book and Agobardus after him did not content themselves with what the Council of Francford had condemned viz. That Worship was not to be given to Images as to the Holy Trinity but denied any veneration at all to be due to them as the Doctor will have it hinders not but that the Council of Francford condemned that of Nice upon a misunderstanding of its Doctrine as I have evidently shewed § 3. Secondly But now supposing there had been no mistake but that the Fathers at Francford as my Adversary would have it had really condemned the Doctrine of the Council of Nice yet I affirm it had been no advantage to his Cause because as himself p. 84. saith The Popes of Rome sided with the Worshippers of Images that is confirmed the Doctrine of the Council of Nice whereas they opposed and rejected the condemnation of it by the Fathers of Francford That the Popes Legates contradicted it in the Synod is confessed by the Magdeburgenses and that the Pope himself oppos'd it is manifest from the Confutation he wrote of the Caroline Book and that no Decrees of any Council could be valid without the Popes consent was so undoubted a thing among all Christians that the Author himself of that Book durst not deny it but on the contrary affirms it to have been the sense even of the Fathers of Francford as acknowledging and professing the last Judgment of Controversies to belong to the Bishop of Rome and upon this account they affirmed the Council of Nice was to be rejected viz. for that it had not been confirmed as they pretended though falsely by the Pope And if the Fathers of Francford look'd upon it then as an advantage to their Cause that the Pope as they pretended had not sided with the Worshippers of Images that is with the Nicen Fathers how comes the Doctor to look upon it now as so apparent an advantage to the same Cause that the Pope as he confesseth sided with them What I can discover here is nothing but a great improvement of confidence to alledge that for an Advantage which in Church-Affairs is the greatest prejudice upon Earth But if the Popes confirming the Council of Nice were no advantage to his Cause as little is it that the Council at Francford denied it to be Occumenical because the Greeks onely were there present and none of the other Provinces were called for what weight soever the Doctor may conceive that Exception to have carried at that time yet 't is certain now it hath no force at all since the Council it self hath for many hundreds of years been accepted as a true and lawful General Council and its Doctrine as Catholick by all the Provinces of Christendom and the contrary to it condemned for Heresie And this is no other 〈◊〉 what Mr. Thorndike answers to two Objections urged from St. Epiphanius and the Council of Elvira that granting they held all Images in Churches dangerous for Idolatry of which saith he there is appearance it is manifest they were afterwards admitted all over From whence it follows that what Dr. St. argues from the Synod of Paris under Ludovicus Pius which was indeed but a Conference of some Learned Men condemning Pope Adrian for a superstitious adoration of Images From the Doctrine also of the Author of the Caroline Book and that of Agobardus which Baluzius saith he confesseth to be no more than the whole Gallican Church believed in that Age is no advantage at all to his Cause because in supposition that they then did look upon the very true Doctrine of the Council of Nice as dangerous and impugn it as such by reason of a very evil superstition the same Baluzius saith had possessed the minds of some persons in that Age viz. that the same Worship was to be given to Images as to the Blessed Trinity yet afterwards the Doctrine of the said Nicene Council prevailed all over and was received as an Apostolical Tradition by the Gallican Church it self like as the Doctrine of Non-rebaptization of Hereticks wâ—s received in the African Church although it had been condemned there before in a Council by St. Cyprian But upon a diligent survey of Baluzius his Discourse in that place I do not perceive his meaning to be what the Doctor would have it viz. that what Agobardus wrote was the belief of the whole Gallican Church in that Age but that it was the Judgment and Design of the French Bishops at that time to extirpate by all means the above-mentioned Superstition which then reigned although in doing it they might seem to run into the other extream of denying any Worship at all to be due to Images all the whole business of the use of Images being as the Author of the Account very well observes p. 18. but a matter of Discipline and Government For had he meant that what Agobardus wrote was no more than the whole Gallican Church believed in that Age how could the same Baluzius tell us that the French Bishops at that time although they seemed to remove all Worship from Images yet allowed them to be kept that the Faithful by seeing them might be excited to imitate those Holy Persons they represented Whereas Agobardus went so far as to affirm that they were kept for Ornament to delight the eyes but not for the instruction of the people nay that they were not to be painted upon the Church-Walls Was this the Belief of the Gallican Church in that Age when Jonas Aurelianensis waâ— commanded by Ludovicus Pius â—o 〈◊〉 against Claudius â—aurinensis for casting them out of the Church Surely the little care there was taken to preserve the Canon of the Council of Eranâ—ford against Image-Worship or â—ather the unanimous concurrence to suppress it if there were ever any such Canon for it lay in obscurity for above seven hundred years together till it was published as my Adversary says about the middle of the last â—entury by Du Tillet as also the prevalency of the contrary Belief in the Gallican Church as it is at this day without any noise or opposition are no great Presumptions to men who have any insight into the Affairs of Religion that the said Church in that Age believed as Dr. St. would have us believe from the Confession of Baluzius that no Veneration was to be given to Holy Images It is upon the contrary supposition that Baluzius endeavours to excuse Agobardus
the Church of England For Mr. Thorndike freely 〈◊〉 that he must maintain as unquestionable that the Council of Nice enjoyns no Idolatry And Dr. Field affirms that the Nicene Fathers mean nothing else by adoration of Images but embracing kissing and reverently using of them like to the honour we saith he do the Books of Holy Scripture Whereupon Bishop Montague saith Let Doctrine and Practice go together and we agree Dr. St. perhaps will rank them for this in the same Predicament of with the Nicen Fathers But herein his vanity and presumption will appear though less than in condemning a whole General Council A farther discovery of it he makes in deriding the answers given to the Objections of his Constantinopolitan Fathers Let us see what they are and with what reason he does it § 3. First saith he When the Fathers of the Synod at Constantinople had said that Christ came to deliver us from all Idolatry and to teach the Worship of God in Spirit and in Truth they bravely answer that then it is impossible for Christians meaning I suppose particular Christian to fall into Idolatry because he should have added as the Council doth the Prophets had foretold that all Idolatry should be extirpated by the preaching of Christ his Apostles and his Kingdom was always to continue and the gifts and graces of God are without repentance Which would as well hold saith the Doctor against the prevalency of the Turk as Idolatry among them And is not this bravely answered by the Doctor Doth he think that there are as great Promises in the Scripture for the Turks not over-running Christendom as there are for the Gates of Hell not prevailing against the Church Or that the Church which is Christs Kingdom could apostatize so far as to enjoyn and allow the belief and practise of Idolatry and the Gates of Hell not prevail against it If he will not maintain these impieties to be true nor deny what God hath said by the Prophet Zachary Behold the days come and I will destroy the names of Idols from off the earth and the memory of them shall be no more and this not for four or five hundred years but to the end of the World for the Kingdom of Christ is to continue always and his graces are without Repentance let him give Glory to God and acknowledge his charge of Idolatry to be false and that Christ hath done what he came to do that is as his Constantinopolitan Fathers confess to deliver us from all Idolatry § 4. The second thing he makes the Fathers of the false Synod at Constantinople to urge is That the Devil not being able to reduce the World to the former Idolatry endeavours underhand to introduce it under a pretence of Christianity bringing them again to the Worship of the Creature and making a God of a thing that is made when they have called it by the Name of Christ The words here cited were taken out of St. Gregory Nissen in the Oration he made upon his Brother St. Basil and Epiphanius in the Name of the Council of Nice charges them to have adulterated both the meaning and words of the Saint by putting the name of Christ instead of that of the Son For whereas St. Gregory's Discourse there was against the Arrians proving them to be Idolaters because they acknowledged Christ to be a Creature and yet adored and served and put their trust in him they wickedly pervert his words against the Images of Christ which although Christians retain in memory and reverence out of love to him that is represented by them yet they neither call them Gods nor serve them as Gods nor at any time put their hope of salvation in them as the Arrians did in the Son although they believed him to be a Creature The Dr. thought it not to his purpose to take notice of this Juggle of his Constantinopolitan Fathers in putting the name Christ for Son No it might put us in mind of his own dexterous managing the words and sense of Authors cited by himself as I have shewed in the foregoing Chapter Only when Epiphanius makes the difference between the Arrians and Catholicks to consist in this that the Arrians trusted in Christ and gave properly divine honour to him but Catholicks did not so to the Images of Christ but only worshiped them for the sake of the Object represented by them He comes in p. 79. with a But Aquinas and his followers have at large proved that where any thing is worshipped meerly for the sake of another it must have the same kind of worship given it which they give to the thing represented by it For as Aquinas observes the motion of the Soul towards an Image as it is an Image is the same with that which is towards the thing represented by it Therefore Epiphanius and the Nicen Fathers are in the same case with the Arrians whom they acknowledge to be Idolaters § 5. I remember the Dr. in his Preface tells his Reader that his design is to argue closely How much he hath failed in the performance of his design if ever he had any such I have shown in almost every argument he brings And for the present argument there are so many failings in it that a Junior Sophister in the Schools would have given it the name not of one but of many Fallacies For to make the consequence good he ought first to have prov'd that the Nicen Fathers were of the same opinion with Aquinas and his followers or that their Argument was so evident a Dâ—monstration that they could not but be guilty of culpable ignorance if they did not see it 2dly That Aquinas and his followers did conclude themselves in virtue of so evident a proof to be Idolaters or at least they ought to have done so for giving the same Worship or Reverence to Christ and his Image to Him absolutely for himself to his Image relatively or meerly for his sake as they explicate themselves 3dly That the Arrians were Idolaters upon this very account that they gave onely relative Worship to the Son and not properly Divine Worship which St. Gregory Nissen saith they did because though they acknowledged him to be a Creature yet they ador'd and serv'd and put their trust in him as God These things he ought to have prov'd to make his own consequence good viz. Therefore the Nicen Fathers are in the same case with the Arrians whom they acknowledge to be Idolaters But to tell us that because Epiphanius and the Nicen Fathers said they onely worshipped the Images of Christ for his sake who was represented by them and because not They but Aquinas and his followers have at large proved that when Christ is worshipped by his Image the same Worship or Reverence is given to him and his Image Therefore Epiphanius and the Nicen Fathers were in the same case with the Arrians that is Idolaters is such a piece of Logick if good
Divines whether any of the three Points instanced by the Doctor viz. Veneration of Images Adoration of the B. Sacrament and Invocation of Saints be Idolatry or no and those who side least with that Party which are called Non-conformists are for the Negative Viz. that it is not Idolatry whereas if it had been the sense of the Church of England in those Articles that it were Idolatry to do any of those things they had by maintaining the contrary as erroneous incurr'd Excommunication ips facto as appears by the Canons Printed before the 39 Articles set forth by Mr. Rogers Here therefore the Doctor to maintain his charge of Idolatry to be as he calls it the receiv'd Doctrin and practice of the Church of England is forc'd to have recourse to the Book of Homilies and to the Sentiments of Particular Persons of which he cites no less than Seventeen the greatest part of whom I shall show to be incompetent Witnesses in the case and the rest to speak nothing to his Purpose First then for the Book of Homilies which he saith is not barely allow'd but subscribed to as containing godly and wholsome Doctrine and necessary for these times I answer this doth not Evince that every particular Doctrin contained in it is such And therefore Mr. Thorndike speaking of the very Homily against peril of Idolatry here urged by Dr. St. saith that in this particular he must have leave to think it fails as it evidently doth in others And Bish Mountague saith The Book of Homilies contains a general Godly doctrin yet it is not in every part the publick dogmatical doctrin of the Church And Dr. Heylin in his necessary Introduction to Cyprianus Anglicus p. 14. tells us that the vehemence used in those Homilies was not against Images as Intolerable in themselves but as they might be made in those broken and unsetled times an occasion of falling But that People being well instructed in the right use of them Images may be still kept for good uses in Churches and for stirring up of devotion in which respect they were called saith he by Pope Gregory and not unfitly the Lay-men's Books As for the particular Doctors he cites I except against little less than two parts of three of them as Incompetent Witnesses in the Case And in Order to this I shall take the same measure the Doctor himself puts into my hand when to show the Testimony of Arch bishop Whitgift to be valid in his cause he premises that none could be less suspected to be Puritanically inclined than He that is I shall cast out of the List all those who shall be found to have been Puritans or Puritanically inclin'd And first for his two Arch-bishops Whitgift and Abbot the Former though otherwise a stiff Asserter of the Disciplin of the Church of England is known to have consented to the frameing of the Lambeth Articles and to have proposed them to the Divines of Cambridge and the latter was so great a Favourer and Abettor of the Puritan Party that to stop them in their full Carreer Dr. Heylin saith it was found necessary to suspend Him from his Metropolitical Jurisdiction of Dr. White the same Heylin reports p. 135. that for Licensing Bishop Mountague's Appello Caesarem it was said that White was turned Black Jewel Bilson and Davenant were all excepted against by our late Soveraign K. Charles I. in his 3d. Paper to Hinderson Dr. Fulk also in Matth. 28. 46. is noted for abetting Calvin in his blasphemous Opinion that our Saviour Christ suffered in his Soul the very pains of a damned Person upon the Cross Reynolds and Whitaker are notorious for their siding with the Puritans the latter being a great stickler for the Lambeth Articles and the Former appearing publickly the Fore-man or Champion of that Party at the Conference at Hampton-Court against the Church of England Bishop Usher and Bishop Downam cannot be excused The story of the first is to be seen in Cyprianus Anglicus p. 271. where after many Calvinistical Opinions of which the said Primate was the Contriver in Ireland Dr. Heylin saith he refused to receive the whole Body of the Canons made in the year 1603 because he was afraid of bowing at the name of Jesus and some other Reverences which he neither practised nor approved and p. 216. that his Book called Gottescalchus had run the same Fate of being called in with that of Bishop Downam 's about Perseverance but that it seem'd not fit to put a publick disgrace upon the Primate of a Nation By all which it appears that of Seventeen Authors He cites to maintain his unjust charge of Idolatry upon the Church of Rome to be the sense of the Church of England no less than Eleven are shown to have been downright Puritans or Puritanically affected For the Six which remain viz. Dr. Jackson Dr. Field Isaac Casaubon Bishop Andrews Arch bishop Laud and King James whoever compares what the Doctor cites out of them with what they write in other places nay whoever attentively considers but the very places cited by my Adversary shall find that they do not impugn the Doctrin it self of the Church of Rome or the practice conformable to that Doctrin but such things as they conceived to be great abuses in the Practice of it For Dr. Jackson as cited by the Doctor doth not say that to give a honourary Veneration to Images is Idolatry but to give divine honour to them which he saith the Papists do and the Papists themselves deny Bishop Andrews in like manner giveth for the reason of his charge that the Papists do not meerly pray to the Saints to pray for them but to give what they pray for themselves and the Papists profess they do no such things Dr. Field doth not charge the Invocation of Saints with Idolatry and Superstition but speaks only of the Idolatry and Superstition whâ—ch he thought but not truly was committed in it Arch-bishop Laud also as his own words declare speaks of the practice of Adoration of Images in the Modern Church of Rome which he erroneously affirmeth to be too like to Paganism And so K. James in the place cited by the Doctor had He not so soon forgot his promise of reporting faithfully saith expresly that what He condemns is Adoring of Images viz. with Divine Worship praying to them and imagining a kind of sanctity to be in them all which are detested by Catholicks And all that he cites out of Isaac Casaubon when He was employed by the King to deliver His Opinion to Cardinal Perron in the Invocation of Saints was that the Church of England did affirm that some Particular Practices were joyned with great impiety So that it is not the Doctrin of the Church of Rome if rightly practic'd which these Authors condemn of Idolatry but the abuses they conceiv'd to be committed in the practice of it as to give the Worship due to God to an Image to pray to