by tearing off ten of its Skirts But to return As I have been forc'd to prove that before our Saviour the Scepter was not departed and therefore this Prophecy of Jacob is not applicable to any before him So I shall now shew it is not applicable to any since by demonstrating the Scepter to have departed at that time by such Effects of its departure as are acknowledged for such by the Jew himself and pointed to as such by his own Scriptures and invelop that Nation in a Darkness that may be felt and far exceeds the blackest Darkness which befel that State in its greatest Eclipses The Sanctuary half Shekel paid to the Capitol It is Doctor Lightfoot's Observation out of Xiphilinus apud Dionem in the Place fore-cited that in acknowledgment of their Subjection to the Emperour the Jews were enjoyn'd by Vespasian to pay to the Capitol that Didrachma or Half-shekel that they usually paid to the Temple for their Lives A ransom for their souls unto the Lord Exodus 30. 12 13. The mony of the soul's estimation of every one that passeth the account 2 Reg. 12. 4. for I take both these places to speak of one and the same Shekel though Master Weems makes them two calling this latter Argentum transeuntis that is the Half-shekel which they paid to the Lord when they were numbred by head making a distinction where there is no difference for in that Text which he quotes for the first Ex. 30. 12. there is mention made that that was to be payed when they were numbred three times in two verses When thou takest the sum of the Children of Israel after their number then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord when thou numbrest them ver 12. and ver 13. this they shall give every one that passeth among them that are numbred Xiphilinus indeed does not expresly say it was that Half-shekel that was paid to the Temple that Vespasian appointed every Jew to pay to the Capitol but Josephus speaks home Bel. Judaic 7. 26. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The Emperour Vespasian laid this Tribute upon the Jews wheresoever they lived that they should pay to the Capitol that Didrachma which thitherto they had paid to the Temple 1. That this was the Half-shekel which they paid to the Lord for their Lives as his Tribute is manifest from both those fore-quoted Texts for Moses Exod. 30. orders the high Priest to imploy it in the service of the Tabernacle and Jehoash appoints the Priests to repair the Temple with it 2. Reg. 12. as also from another passage in Josephus Antiqu. Judaic 14. 12. where he calls it sacred mony because every Jew yearly paid it for his Life to God and sent it to the Temple from all parts of the World where they were dispersed from whose numerousness he saith it came to pass that Crassus found such vast summs in the Treasury of the Temple when he plunder'd it and that Mithridates surprized eight hundred Talents at Cons which the Jews of the lesser Asia had deposited there during those Wars not daring to send them to Jerusalem lest they might be snap'd up in the passage 2. And that this Shekel was never by any Conqueror before Vespasian required as Tribute is manifest from Josephus affirming that till then it had been used to be paid to the Temple from Pompeius reputing it so sacred as he durst not lay hands on it when he enter'd into the Temple from men's imputing Crassus his overthrow to God's avenging himself upon him for robbing the sacred Treasury where these Half-shekels were deposited that it was paid to the Temple in Caligula's Reign is manifest from that place of Josephus Ant. 18. 12 16. where he writes that the Jews of the Province of Babylon made choice of Neerda because of the strength and inaccessibleness of that place for their sacred Treasury where they deposited the sacred Didrachma till at certain Seasons they could send it to Jerusalem which they used to do with a Convoy of many thousands both for the greatness of the charge and danger of being robb'd by the way by the Parthians But this is most clearly evinc'd from the sacred Gospels informing us that the Tribute-money St. Mat. 22. 18. 19. St. Mar. 12. imposed upon the Jews by the precedent Emperours had Caesar's Image and Superscription upon it and was a Roman Coin hence stiled both in St. Matthew and St. Mark 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a Latine name and the Tribute it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 census in all printed Copies and Manuscripts that I have seen or heard of save that old Greek and Latine M S. which Beza sent to the University of Cambridge where it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pole-mony a word coin'd at the fingers end of the Scribe for the Tribute laid upon them by Augustus or Pompey and taken off by Agrippa was not paid by the head but by the house as Josephus expresly affirmeth Josoph Jud. Ant. 19. 5. Remisso ei tributo quod soliti erant in singulas aedes solvere 2. And upon this very account our Saviour determin'd it to be Caesar's due in which determination he proceeded according to their own Concessions as Lightfoot observes Harmony Sect. 77. quoting the Jerusalem Talmud bringing in David and Abigail talking thus Abigail said What evil have I or my Children done David answereth Thy Husband vilified the Kingdom of David She saith Art thou a King then He saith to her Did not Samuel anoint me King She saith to him The Coin of our Lord Saul is yet current And again in Sanhedr A King whose Coin is current in those Countreys the men of the Countrey do thereby evidence that they acknowledge him for their Lord but if his Coin be not current he is a Robber And that with as much advantage as could be desired in order to his convincing them that the Tribute of that Denarium was due to Caesar but the Tribute of the Didrachma due to God that bearing Caesar's Picture with this Inscription say Antiquaries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Caesar August such a year after the taking of Judea Hammond ann c. in Mat. 22. But this if it were the Kings or common Shekel being stamped on one side with a Tower standing betwixt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the whole Inscription with that which was written beneath amounting to this Motto Jerusalem the holy City the rundle being fill'd with this David King and his Son Solomon King or if it were the Sanctuary-shekel having on one side the Pot of Mannah or Aaron's Censer with this Inscription The Shekel of Israel on the Reverse side Aaron's Rod budding with this Motto in the Rundle Jerusalem the Holy City that is Jerusalem the Royal City of the great King Goodwin antiq lib. 6. cap. 10. Beza on Mat. 17. 24. makes the same Description of that Shekel which was given
pieces At the lowest rate it demonstrates to what an height those curious cursed arts were then grown to Can we think that St. Paul would have singled out that place where Satan was inthron'd to have wrought miracles in for the confirmation of the Divinity of the Gospel had they not been special miracles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Luke stiles them Act. 19. 11 12. Would he have given experiments of the healing vertue conveyed from his body to aprons and handkerchiefs where counter-charming amulets were of that common use as the proverb of Ephesia Alexipharmaca speaks them to have been What would it have profited to have invocated the name of the Lord Jesus over the sick there where were extant such a number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of books teaching how to unravel the Conjurers work had the Apostle not been assured that the vertue of that name and of his own body through that name was both as to cause and effect above every name above any word they could find in their books of curious Arts that name of Judahs Gods imposing having infinitely more power than the word of Ida's Tactyls invention though it came not with that boysterous harshness as did their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as Clemens reckons them in the place above quoted Sect. 2. This Image of Diana this counterfeit of the Divine Magia descending from faln Jupiter was not only worship'd at Ephesus and in all Asia but throughout the Roman Empire In whose Metropolis the Sect of those black Philosophers was grown so numerous under Tiberius as his decree to banish them the City had taken effect if the multitude of Families which that hook threatned to extirpate and their promise to give over the practice of those curious arts had not made the Emperour relent Sueton. Tiberius 36. By this connivance Magical operations attain'd to that perfection in Nero's Reign as men could not promise themselves to find their grounds on that side of the hedge next morning where they left them over-night For Pliny lib. 28. reports that at that time an Olive-yard belonging to Vectius Marcellus was by Magick removed one night unto the other side of the high-way A thing so strange as I should hardly give credit to Livies report but that I find Apuleius make mention of it in his Apologie as a thing so usual and ancient as the Laws of the twelve Tables made provision against it by making it capital The naming of Apuleius his Apology brings to mind the occasion of it which was to purge himself of the crime of Magick wherewith he was charged before Claudius Maximus Lievtenant of Africa as Apollonius Thyaneus was of the same crime before Domitian A pair of the fiercest Pagan adversaries to our Religion August de Civitat 8. 19. The Jews indeed had a sharper edge against us and as strange a back as Hell could forge coming not one whit behind the Gentile in his proficiency in the black Art being grown more Samaritan than the Samaritan himself 1. Not only in their charmings by the explication of the Tetragrammaton Jehovah in twelve and in forty two letters to which they imputed that force as they affirm'd with no less blasphemy to their own than our Religion that Moses wrought all his miracles by means of Shemhamphorash the twelve-letter'd explication of the name Jehovah ingraven on the rod of God And that our Jesus by vertue of the same sowed within his skin effected those great works which he performed And that Rabbi Chanina by vertue of the two and forty letter'd name of God did whatsoever he would The Jews father'd this Art upon Solomon who they say left forms of conjurations of the efficacy whereof one Eleazar gave proof before Vespasian and his Sons and their whole Army Josephus being present as himself reports Antiquit. lib. 8. cap. 2. Yea that whosoever knew these explications being modest humble of a middle age not given to anger or drunkenness and wore them about him would be belov'd above and below in heaven and in earth rever'd and fear'd of men and heir of this and the world to come Buxtorf lexic. voce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. But in their Wisemens reading certain verses over wounds laying Phylacteries upon sick persons charming away serpents and an evil eye of which practices the Jerusalem Talmudists amongst whom our Saviour converst make frequent mention In particular they tella story in Sotah of R. Meirs being too hard for an Inchantress and in Sanhedrim R. Joshuah out-vying a Samaritane conjurer of Tyberias quoted by Dr. Light foot in his Harmony It were endless to trace Josephus through all those passages where he describes Judaea in our Saviours time to have been over-run with Magical Juglers Under Felix saith he Judaea was again full of Magical Impostors and Seducers of the unskilful vulgar who by their inchantments drew companies into the wilderness promis4ng they would shew them from heaven manifest signs and prodigies at the same time a certain Jew out of Aegypt came to Jerusalem professing himself a Prophet who perswaded the multitude to follow him unto Mount Olivet promising that from thence they should see the walls of Jerusalem fall so flat as through their ruines there should be a way opened into the City Joseph Ant. Jud. 20. 6. Which Aegyptian in another place he styles Magician Jos. 〈◊〉 Jud. 2. 12. Nay he scarce mentions a sticker in the Jewish wars upon whom he sets not this brand that he was a jugling conjurer Such was John the son of Levias c. Josep 〈◊〉 J. 4. 4. Sect. 3. The Primitive Church was so beset with these snares of Hell as she thought good to caution her Catechumens of the danger of falling into them â—not only by informing them that in their renouncing the Devil and all his worship at Baptism they renounc'd Auguries Divinations Amulets Magical Inscriptions on Leaves Witchcraft Incantation and calling up of Ghosts Id. Catech. illuminat 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But by inserting into the Greek Liturgies this form of abrenuntiation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I renounce Conjurations Charmes Amulets and Phylacteries St. â—yril Catech. Mystag 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem Cat. c. But what need we any other Witness of the infamy of that Age for the then general spreading of this Diabolical Art than the Satyrical reflections which their own Poets made upon it Juvenal in his sixth Satyr Horace in his Epode against Canidia and Virgil in his Pharmaceutria do in the chain of their Golden Verses hale that Cerberus out of his Kennel into so clear a Sun-shine so manifestly discover those depths of Satan and bring to light those hidden things of darkness as the reading of their Poems is enough to initiate their over-curious Readers in those mysteries of iniquity which were then working and the translation of them might lay a temptation before the ductile vulgar to essay the efficacy of their
for help to every God they could think of in the Consulship of A. Cornelius Cossus and T. Quintius Pennus there was strict charge given to the Ediles ut animadverterent nè qui nisi Romani Dii nen quo alio more quà m patrio colerentur Liv. lib. 4. 30. That they should take care that no other Gods but Roman nor they after any other rites than Roman should be worship'd Esteeming the innovation of Religion a greater plague than the Pestilence and scorning to be beholding for their deliverance from that deadly malady to the help of any but their own Gods 'T is true the Romans received most of the Gods and Religions of those Countries which they conquer'd but this was done upon supposition that they were turned Roman For as the Egyptians of old had an Art to make Gods as Trismegistus not without admiration observes so the Romans had a way to make the Gods of other Nations their own to make them forget their own Country and Fathers house to forsake their own Altars and Rites for the Roman hinted by the Poet Discessêre omnes adytis arisque relictis Dii quibus imperium hoc steterit Eneid 2. And more fully exprest by Vives in Aug. de Civit. 2. 22. When the Romans besieged any City which they intended to demolish that they might not seem to wage war with its tutelar Gods and turn them out of doors against their will by pulling down their Temples about their ears the General by certain charms obtained of them to forsake the tutelage of the City destin'd to ruine and betake themselves to the stronger side to the conquering party Thus Camillus decoy'd the Veijan Gods Scipio the Carthaginian and Numantian Mummius the Corinthian And lest others might serve their Guardian God with the same sauce they concealed as divers Authors have thought mention'd by Servius in his Epist. vir Illustriss the true and proper Name of their City for publishing of which secret Valerius Soranus was severely punisht Goodwins Antiquit. A strange oversight in so wise a State to trust their Cities fortune to the custody of that unruly member the tongue The Tyrians would have taught them a surer way who to secure their Patron Hercules or Apollo for Diodorus Siculus in telling the story how the Tyrians besieged by Alexander the Great and being warn'd by a Vision that Apollo threatned to forsake the tuition of their City bound the Image with a chain indifferently calls their Idol sometimes Apollo sometimes Hercules a good argument that the Tyrian Hercules was Apollo and Apollo the Sun which performs his twelve labours in passing the twelve Signs of the Zodiack Diodor. Sic. Biblioth lib. 18. pag. 548. whether soever of them was their Patron to secure his residence among them in spite of Charms bound him fast to the pillar of his Temple with a Golden chain It was upon the same score that Numa caused Mamurius to make eleven shields so like the Ancile of their Patron Mars wherein they conceived the happiness of their City to lie as Thebes her good fortune in Nisus his golden lock and Meleagers life in the fagot-slick as it was impossible to discern one from another Plutarch Numa This in imitation of Dardanus of whom Dionys. Halicarnas lib. 1. cap. 7. out of Callistratus Satyrus and Aratinus reports That Dardanus drew a counterfeit Palladium like that which Minerva bestowed upon him with a promise that Troy should stand while it kept that Palladium and that it was the counterfeit which the Grecians stole Aencas bringing the true to Lavinium The form of this evocation of Tutelar Gods and infranchizing foreign Deities and naturalizing them into Roman Macrobius Saturn 3. 9. sets down as he found it in Sammonicus Serenus his 5. Book Of hidden Secrets If it be a God if it be a Goddess that hath the People and City of Carthage in protection and thou especially whosoever thou art the Patron of this City and People I pray and beseech and with your leave require you to abandon the City and People of Carthage to forsake the places Temples Ceremonies and inclosures of their City to go away from them and to strike fear terrour and astonishment into that people and City and having left it to come to Rome to me and mine and that our Temples Places Ceremonies and Cities be more acceptable and better liked of you that you would take the charge of me of the People of Rome and of my Soldiers so as we may know and understand it If you do so I vow to build you Temples and to appoint for you Solemn Games No peny no Pater Noster no room in Rome for any God that will not turn Roman and wear the City badge Upon this custome Tertullian Apol. 24. grounds this Note Tot sacrilegia Romanorum quot trophaea tot de Diis quot de gentibus triumphi tot manubia quot manent adhuc simulachra captivorum Deorum i. e. Look how many Trophees the Romans have erected over conquer'd Cities and Countries so many Sacrileges have they committed upon the Gods of those places they have had as many Triumphs over the Gods as over Countries the many Images of captive Gods remaining to this day in that City are but so many spoils taken in war § 3. So exceeding wide of the mark of truth is that fools bolt of the vulgar opinion that Rome was conquer'd by the Gods of the Nations whom she conquer'd for in very deed she gave the Gods no other quarter than she did the men capitulating with them upon no better terms than those which Jacobs Sons tender'd to Sechem We cannot do this thing to give Divine Honour to a God that is not Italianized but in this we will consent unto you if you will be as we are It would not stand with the Polity of that stately Lady to marry a strange God to be baptized in his Name till by a strange Art of Palingenesie he had baptized himself into the Roman Name in the blood of his deserted Father and Mother the people and place of his first birth Jupiter must become Capitoline Mars Quirinal before those Hills will afford room for their Temples The Egyptian Serapis must turn the Indian Bacchus Italick before they can be worshipt at Rome Serapide jam Romano aras Baccho jam Italico furias c. Tertull. Apolog. 6. Aesculapius his â—mp his Serpent must come away with his Idol before he can have reception in that City The Mother of the Gods in their repute must shew her readiness to forsake the patronage of her antient pupils and to embrace the Office of Protecting S. P. Q. R. by following the slender twine of the Vestal Nuns garter before she can arrive on Tibers shore Male and Female Deities must veil the bonnet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Goddess Rome so termed in the Inscriptions of antient Roman Coyns set down by Goltzius in Thesauro before she will bend the knee to them To
the Goddess Rome the people of Smyrna built a Temple and therefore were prefer'd by the Senate before the rest of the twelve Cities who stood in competition with her in that contest that was moved by those Cities in the Senate which of them should have the priviledge granted to build a Temple to Augustus Tacit. Hist. 3. Annal. 4. p. 110. taxed by our Propertius colitur nam sanguine ipsa More Deae noménque lâ—ci ceu numen adorant The very City of Rome it self is worshipped as a Goddess by Sacrifices and they adore the name of the place as a Deity Thus hath Antichristian Rome both Pagan and Papal exalted her self above all that in the most extensive sence is called God or worshipped What hopes then could the Apostles have had they been supported by no other but an arm of flesh to obtrude upon that Empire that unknown that strange God whom they preacht A thing First so ill resented by that State in Constantine the Great as Licinius in his Speech to his Soldiers mentioned by Eusebius in the Life of Constantine lib. 2. cap. 5. whets their courage and animates them to the fight by this argument alone That the Army they were to ingage against had imbrac'd a strange God and intended to fight under his colours Secondly Of so harsh a sound in the ears of some Christian Theologues as not knowing how to put a good sence upon that phrase when they met with it in Daniel Dan. 11. 39. they have mangled the coherence making a meer hotch-potch of that prophecie and perverted its sence forcing it to point at the marks of Antichrist from its plain intendment to describe the conquest of Christ and his subduing the Empire to an abrenunciation of the Gods of its Ancestors and the acceptance of himself that foreign God to them Mede in locum that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unknown God Act. 17. that only Potentate God blessed for ever that should set his conquering Banners upon the Walls of that proud City that had set hers upon the Temples of all other strange Gods and gather that Eagle as a Chicken under his that had made the Gods of all Nations creep under her wings the full experiment whereof he gave in the Reign of Constantine And that 's the clear importance of Daniels prophecie and of Licinius his Argument The first perverter of Daniels words to a sinister sence was the Patriarch of those hackney Commentators that think it a strange thing that the Empires embracing a strange God should be taken in a good sence and import the Christning of it into the name of our Jesus But if the Name of a foreign God startle some of our Divines it is less to be wonder'd that Thirdly it should grate so harshly upon Pagan-Roman ears as that State could never be charmed into the imbracing of any strange God upon his own terms before or beside the blessed Jesus nisi homini placuerit Deus Deus non erit homo jam Deo propitius esse debebit Tert. Ap. contr Gent. 5. all others before their reception were capitulated with and forc'd to lay their Crowns of Divine Honour at the Senates feet before they were permitted in that City to wear them on their own heads they must undeifie themselves and become no Gods of other Cities before they are allowed to be Gods in that From which custom Eusebius Hist. 2. 2. ascribes it to a signal providence that our Jesus was not received by the Senate for God upon Tiberius his motion Which no doubt saith he was done to this end that the wholesome Doctrine of the Divine Preaching might not need the approbation of men the commendation of such men i. e. That Christ might not seem to enter at the common door in a precarious way with cap in hand till the Senate was pleased to bid him be cover'd that his Divinity might not like that of other Gods as Tertullian speaks ubi prius de humano arbitratu pensitari pass for no more than it weighed in the unequal scales of humane arbitrement but settle it self among them by its own weight and over them upon his own terms § 4. There is but one instance in all History that bears any semblance of opposition to this last assertion That our Jesus was the first foreign God whom the Romans received without capitulations and that is of Simon Magus who seems to have prevented our Saviour in the honour of being proclaimed a God there Which knot some attempt to untie or rather rashly to cut asunder by a back-blow against the truth of those current Stories which Eusebius out of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus reports of Simon 's Deification the sword with which they wound the credit of this History comes out of the forge of Peter Ciaconius who suspects this to have been Justin's mistake because about the place where he reports Simons Image to have been erected there was Anno Christi 1574. the basis of a Marble Statue digged up with this inscription SIMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO But to this answer it may be replyed That though it be very certain that there were Pillars or Statues in Rome and Reatina bearing such like inscriptions SEMONI SANCO FIDIO DEO SANCTO SANCO SEMONI DEO FIDIO SANCO FIDIO SEMO PATRI Ovid. Fast. 6. Quaerebam Nonas Sancto Fidióne referrem An tibi Semo pater tunc mihi Sanctus ait Cuicunque ex istis dederis ego munus habebo Nomina terna fero sic valuêre Cures whom Vossius rationally concludeth to have been Hercules from the testimony of Varro lib. 4. de L. L. and of Festus Herculi aut Sanco qui scilicet idem est Deus Vossius de Idololatria lib. 1. cap. 12. pag. 46 47. Etiam inter indigites Deos Romanis fuit Semo Sanctus qui Fidius quia per eum jurando fieret fides Inscriptio Romana SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO SACRUM alia SANCTO SANCO SEMONI DEO FIDIO SACRUM Yet the place assigned by Ovid agrees not to that which Justin Martyr assignes to Simon Magus Hunc igitur veteres donârunt aede Sabini Inque Quirinali constituêre Jugo In whose Temple Tanquill or Caia Caecilia resided with her whorle and distaff as out of Varro Pliny reports lib. 8. cap. 48. Now though Justin might easily mistake Semoni for Simoni yet sure he must have had a beam in 's eye if he took a Temple on the Quirinal Hill for a Statue on Tibers Bridge And that Tertullian should follow him in that mistake being so great an Antiquary and which is more by Profession a Lawyer and therefore skill'd in the Roman Fasts and lect dayes is still a greater wonder And therefore notwithstanding Vossius his Arguments to the contrary I still think those great Lights of the Primitive Church did not ground their story of Simon Magus upon such palpable mistakes And as to Ciaconius his reason from the so late invention of that Statue dug up in or
gave were as little to the credit of the Gods as Suidas reports them to have been appears from that low esteem which in his old Age he had of both exprest by his condemning to the flames when he was great Pontiff two thousand Oracles Sueton. Octav. 31. though at his entrance into that Office he was so devout an Adorer of the old Religion consisting in a great part of those Oracles as he preferr'd his Augurate above his Empire fastning his name at his reforming of the Calender rather on that month when he commenc'd Augur than on that wherein he began his Reign and protesting that if any of his Nieces had been old enough he would have preferr'd her to the place of a Vestal fallen void by the death of one of those Nuns with that protestation upbraiding the Senators irreligiousness exprest in their making means that their Daughters might not be called to that lot Touching Apollo himself and the rest of the twelve great Deities what his thoughts were grown to by that time he was grown old he more than intimated in his erecting of that strange Order of Table-Knights Sueton. Octav. 70. instituted as not only Antonius but the common Libels objected against him in contempt of Apollo whom Augustus as Master of the Order personated and the other eleven he and she Deities whom the rest of the Knights represented in that his supper of the twelve Gods Impia dum Caesar Phoebi mendacia ludit c. This was the burthen of the City Song descanting upon his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his twelve Gods discovering that degree of sacrilegious impiety to speak in the then modern Roman dialect towards the Gods of the greater Nations and especially to Apollo as so devout a person as Augustus was could not have arrived to by any other wind but what blew from that coast which Suidas points out He durst not without the leave of these Gods have been thus familiar with them § 6. This may suffice to vindicate Suidas and prove the truth of this position That the Polity of Rome was so averse to the entertainment of a foreign God as our Jesus was the first strange God that that Empire embrac'd either by Publick Edict of the Senate or the private Conscience of the Emperours as Tertullian Apol. cont gentes cap. 21. distinguisheth Ipse pro sua conscientia Christianus He as to his own private perswasion being already a Christian. Senatus respuit Caesar in sententia mansit Id. ibid. cap. 5. The Senate rejected Tiberius his motion for the Canonization of Christ but Tiberius persisted in the Opinion of Christs being God Sed Caesares ipsi credidissent super Christo si aut Caesares non essent seculo necessarii aut si Christiani potuissent esse Caesares Id. ibid. cap. 21. Yea even the Emperours themselves would have become Christians if they had not been hamper'd with secular interest or if that Christians could have been Caesars Upon which passages because they give both light and strength to the preceding discourse though not without hazard of spilling my Readers patience I shall venture to make these reflections 1. To clear that clause aut si Christiani potuissent esse Caesares from the Anabaptistical gloss this Note will be sufficient That Constantine and his Successors reconciled this inconsistency of Christianity and Empire and therefore it was not absolute but only occasional and temporary nor of all Empire or Civil command but particularly respected the Roman Empire For there were Christian Magistrates and that under the Emperour very early in the Primitive Times both Martial as Cornelius and Civil as Sergius Paulus as Judicious Grotius observes Ob temporum circumstantias quae vix ferebant exerceri sine actibus quibusdam cum Christiana lege pugnantibus Grotius de Jur. bel pacis l. 2. 9. 3. The circumstances of those Times were such as did scarcely permit the Office of the Emperour to be exercised without certain Acts contrary to the Christian Law 2. It will be therefore worth the while to enquire what that Secular Interest was in which the Emperours were so involv'd in that juncture as it was a Remora to their casting their assistance on Christ and a bar to him that was a Christian to become Emperour Let him that tied untie this knot let Tertullian himself Apol. 5. determine who infers the story of Tiberius above-mentioned with an ergo from that old Decree quoted by him in the preceding clause Vetus erat decretum nè qui Deus ab Imperatore consecraretur nisi à Senatu probatus There was an old Decree that none should be Canonized for a God by the Emperour Euseb. interpr Tertul. ab Imperatore by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hist. Eccles. 2. 2. whereby this seems to have been an ancient Constitution made under their Kings who were also Generals in War and were hereby prohibited to adopt new Gods either at home or abroad without the Vote of the Senate and renewed with this alteration of Name when the Senate held the Soveraignty at home and the Emperour or General abroad without limitation of their Power while their Commission lasted saving in this particular that they should not at their conquest of Nations or Cities make any foreign God Free of the Roman State till he had first been approved of by the Senate In which Decree Reason bids that we should take Emperour not in the then new but in its old sence as it signifies a General as the next words ut M. Aemilius de deo suo Alburno import for Aemilius was in no other sence an Emperour but as he was the Roman General whose Office it was to evocate the Gods of conquer'd Cities as we have heard before and offer them fair quarter Now lest the General might dubb upon the place any such God this Decree was added by way of caution to that former which Crinitus Tri◠de honest discipl lib. 10. cap. 3. vide Junii notas in Tertul. Apol. cap. 5. out of the Books of the Pontiffs delivers in these terms Separatim nemo siet habens deos novos sive advenas nisi publicè adscitos privatim nè colunto which Law Cicero thus translates Separatim nemo habessit deos neve novos sed nè advenas nisi publicè adscitos privatim colunto Cic. de legib l. 2. p. 318. Let no man have any new or strange Gods Let not any be worshipt in private that are not publickly infranchised that is till those signs they gave of their renouncing their former Cities and People and their coming over to the Roman had been canvast in the Senate and approved of Upon which Eusebius hath this Note Hist. Eccl. 2. 2. out of Tertullian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If God do not please man he shall not be God well exprest in the following clause 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 With you humane judgement confers divinity By this we see where the Senates and Emperours shooe pinches
enacting of a Law that whatever Jew should thence-forward touch upon their Coast should presently be put to Death This made Trajan jealous of the Jews of Mesopotamia lest they should joyn Forces with their Brethren as they of Aegypt had done in defence of their home-spun King for the Prevention of which he sent Lucius Quincius to banish them the Province These things saith Eusehius Eccles. hist. 4. 2. were recorded by Heathen Historiographers then living Now what but the Importance of the Case as that wherein the Emperial Crown lay at Stake could have made Trajan thus jealous being a Prince naturally averse to that Passion of which he gave sufficient Proof in his Carriage to Sura who though he was vehemently accused to him of Treason yet inviting the Emperour to Supper he not only came but came without Guard and committed his Throat to Sura's Barber Dionis Nerva Trajan § 4. In the eighteenth Year of his Successor Adrian the Eastern Prophecy ripens the Jews into another Rebellion under the Conduct of another Changling Messiah Barchochebas that Son of the Star as his Name imports who gave out himself to be that Star of Jacob who was come from Heaven as a Light to shine comfortably upon the Jews and conduct them out of the Roman Bondage It is not unworthy of Observation that this Antichrist was as virulent an Enemy to the Christians as Romans and that upon the same Quarrel viz. their affirming that the Oriental Prophecy had already received its Accomplishment For in that general Point they agreed against the Jew to the utter vacating of Barchochebas his Claim though they vastly dissented in their applying of it the one to our Jesus the other to the Roman Emperour Spartian Adrian The occasion of this Rebellion saith Spartianus was Adrian's prohibiting them Circumcision fearing be like that Nation would never suffer the Romans quietly to enjoy the Possession of the Universal Monarchy as long as the Seal of the Covenant of the Messiah remained with them as long as they were permitted to bear that mark in their Flesh which was instituted as a Sign that the King of Nations was to come from Abraham's Loins For why else should he forbid it to them and not other Nations but because other Nations used it only as a Religious Mundifying Rite but the Jews over and beside that as a Political Badg to distinguish them from all others as that Nation which God had singled out to this peculiar Privilege that he who was to reduce the whole World to his Obedience was to come out of that Stock Oriundus esset ex Judaea From hope of which that he might force them to an absolute Despondency he erected a Temple to Jupiter affronting the Ruines of that which had been the Temple of the God of Abraham upbraiding them with the Imbecillity of that God whereon they depended as not able to preserve his own Sacrifices from becoming a Prey to the Roman Eagle This Insurrection saith Dion caused a Concussion in the whole World indeed as the contending Parties stated the Case the whole World was concern'd in it the Question being whether Barchochab or the Roman Emperour was the Person specified in the Eastern Tradition which Question though it was in the Effect and Issue of that War determin'd against the Jew who was not only routed in that Fight but had five Hundred of his most eminent strong Holds dismantled nine Hundred eighty and five of his most Populous and Famous Towns sack'd and burn'd down to the Ground and fifty Thousand of men of Arms slain and a very great Multitude consum'd with Famine Fire and raging Maladies insomuch as almost all Judea was turn'd into a Forrest a Desolation answerable to the Presages of it Solomon's Sepulchre fell flat to the Ground without hands Wolves and Hyenas were heard howling up and down their Cities c. Yet for all this Adrian thought not himself sufficiently secured against his Fears of a new King arising in Judea that might dispossess him of his Empire till he had buried the Memorial of their Metropolis in its own Ruines and out of them built a new City hard by the place where that had stood calling it after his own name Aelia and wiped the whole Land of its Natives as a Man wipeth a Dish making it capital for any of them so much as to look back upon their Native Soyl no not afar off from the Tops of Hills as if he had been jealous that their Eye might glance and inject the Spawn of Rebellion into that King-teeming Soil except it were pitch'd with the foot of Strangers Nerva was the only Emperour from Julius to Trajan whom Pagan History paints not looking asquint on Judea the reason of that may be either the shortness of his Reign wherein he had scarce room to look about him and learn the Concerns of the Empire or the Fearless Habit of his Soul and his Contempt of the most formidable Pretensions having that Confidence in his own Integrity as to assume Virginius Rufus to be his Colleague in the Consulship whom the Roman Legions had proclaimed Emperour to cause Crassus Calphurnius with the rest of his Fellow-Conspirators to sit down by him on the Stage and put Swords into their Hands bidding them try whether they were sharp enough signifying saith my Author he had not much cared if they had slain him upon the Place And as to offer his naked Throat to the drawn Sword of Aelianus Casperius accused to him of Treason Dion Cos. Nerva How be it there is one Passage in his Story may confirm us in this Opinion that it was a Maxim of Roman Policy to keep a Jealous Eye over Judea to wit Dion's reporting his prohibiting any of the Jewish Sect to be medled with as the chief ground of Fronto's Speech that it was of evil Consequence to the Commonwealth to have him to Reign under whom nothing is indulged to any but of far worse to live under him under whom all men were winked at in which Sarcasm Fronto reckons his Connivance at the Jews as an unpolitick Act and the Effect of his Natural Oscitancy aggravated with dull Old Age. The Consul is the Eye of the Republick his Eye we see is upon Judea though the Emperour's be not We have seen the Emperours for almost two Hundred Years handing down to their Successors this Principle of State Every Motion in Judea is narrowly to be observed for from thence the East does with the highest Confidence expect the arising of one that shall Lord it over all States during which Time the Gospel was dayly brought under Examination before the Roman Tribunals where the Church asserts the Synagogue denies Jesus of Nazareth to be that King Is it possible then that in discussing that Question and those Contingencies in Judea which the Church alleadged in Proof of her Assertion Interest of State should not sollicit the Agents of the Empire to the Exercise of so much more Diligence in
Courtship but Conjurations Magical Spells When the whole World of Antiquaries know that St. Cyprian before his Conversion was not a Conjurer at Antioch where the Legend brings them upon the Stage with his Wench Justina but a Professor of Oratory at Carthage Pontius Diaconus de Passion Cypriani and converted thereby Caecilius far enough from Antioch Such Tares were so early sowen in the Church as there is nothing in the Writings of the Fathers we had need be more cautious of taking up upon their Word than Stories of this Nature than tristia quaepiam superstitiosa mendacia certain over-serious and too Religious Lyes which oftimes are told with that Confidence and Authority saith a Zealous and Learned Romanist Sir Thomas Moor Epist. Thomae Ruthalo praefix Luciani Cynico as some old Crafty Knave perswaded the blessed Father St. Austin that most grave Man and bitter Enemy to lying to report for a Truth that Fable of the two Curinas the one returning to Life the other departing as a thing falling out in his time which Lucian in his Philopseudes the Names only changed so long before St. Austin was born derides It was Demilus the Smith and Cleodemus in Lucian Curina the Common-council-man and Curina the Smith in St. August tom 4. de cura pro mortuis cap. 12. and this Curina the Common-council-man who was restored to life upon the Instant of Curina the Smith's Death was afterwards baptized by St. Austin to whom a while after he told this strange Story attestantibus honestis civibus suis some honest Citizens avouching the Truth of it I make no great doubt but many a Godly Lye of the like Tendency has been told by the Independent Catechills when they gave an Account of the manner of their Conversion But to return to Moor's Discourse It is saith he less to be wondered at if those Men affect the Minds of the gross Vulgar with their Figments who think they have done God an eminent piece of Service and obliged Christ eternally to themselves if they have but devised such a Tale of some Saint or such a Tragedy concerning Hell as will make an old doting woman cry or tremble at the Report of it Hence they have not suffer'd the Life scarce of one Martyr or Virgin to pass without the Intermixture of such like Lyes Pious Lyes As if forsooth there were otherwise danger that Truth could not support it self and stand on her own Legs except she were underprop'd with Lyes neither have they been affraid to contaminate that Religion with Figments which Truth it self instituted and intended should consist of naked Truth nor did they see that such Fables are so far from promoting it as nothing can more prejudice Religion for as St. Austin testifies as soon as Men smell-out the intermingled Lye they suspect the Truth it self whereupon I often grow jealous that the greatest part of such Tales was devised by some Paultry Fellows and Hereticks who had a Design to make Sport with the incautions Credulity of simple rather than prudent Men and to take away Credit from true Christian Histories by interweaving them with feigned Fables wherefore saith this ingenious Authour undoubted Credit must be given to those Histories which the Divinely-inspired Scripture commends unto us but for others let us having with Judgment applied them to the Doctrine of Christ as unto Critolaus his Rule receive or reject them if we would be free from vain Credulity and superstitious Fear How soon would there be an end put to most of the Controversies betwixt us and the Modern Church of Rome were all of that Communion of the truly Catholick Judgment of this Gentleman in this Particular For I cannot call to mind any considerable Point 〈◊〉 betwixt us where their Opinion hath no better or other ground 〈◊〉 Forgeries The declared Intent of the Latin Church Legend is to perswade People to a devout Worshipping and Invocation of those Saints of whom those Tales are forged the Collector of them concluding almost every Story with this Exhortation Let us pray unto him that by his Merits and Intercession we may obtain Salvation What a Monstrous Story without either Head or Foot does Marcellinus Comes tell of the finding of the Baptists Head Cronic Indict 6. Vincomalo Opilione Coss. The Ghost of the Baptist appeared to two Pilgrim Monks commanding them to take up his Head where it was buried in Herod ' s Palace they take it up and carry it away with them in their Scrip till they giving the Scrip to be carried to a Potter of Emissa who had cast himself into their Company He advised by St. John in a Dream steals away from them with the sacred Relick back again to Emissa where at his death he commits it seal'd up in a Box to the Custody of his Sister she not knowing what it was left it to her Successor at last it comes into the Clutches of Eustochius an Arrian Presbiter who by means thereof works strange Cures pretending he did them by his own Holiness but his Knavery being found out he is banished the City and leaves the Baptists Head behind him In the place where it was reposited some Monks happen'd to build their Cells to whose Abbot Marcellus in process of time St. John discovers where his Head was buried and he finds it the twenty fourth Day of February in the sixth Indiction Vin. Op. Coss. This Tale is well made in that Treatise De revelatione Capitis Baptistae wrong father'd upon Cyprian as Erasmus hath well concluded from that Story-writer's mentioning Pipin King of Aquitane long before whose Reign St. Cyprians head lay under a clod This Marcellus saith this Author was commanded by the Baptist to carry his Head to Jurannus Bishop of Alexandria that it might be there interr'd where the rest of his Body rested But there it rests not long for within a while his Ghost appears to one Foelix a Monk and commands him to go to Alexandria and take his Head thence and conveigh it to Aquitane and there deposite it as I shall direct thee Had I been in this Monks place I should have concluded this had been the Ghost of Herod again separating the Baptists Head from his Body The Monk with seven Companions gets away with the Baptists Head to Sea where in token that they should escape a Storm they were in the Baptist's Ghost in the same Form that the Holy-Ghost appeared in when Christ came up out of the Water appears in the shape of a Dove and sits upon the Poop till they safely arrived in Aquitane where by the Grace of this Relick King Pipin totally routs the Vandales then invading his Countrey with the loss only of twenty of his own Men who by applying the Baptists Head to their Corps were all restored to Life and which is the greatest Wonder of all St. Cyprian writes all this many Scores of Years after himself was Martyred Of the same Stuff and upon the same Foundation are
with non-sence may put into a fright The same Platonick introduceth Apollo giving Responds against the hair 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To spare the labour of particularizing the Thessalian Hag in Lucian lib. 6. boasts that she could charm what Gods she pleased to whatsoever involuntary acts she pleased 1. Not only the bad Spirits from doing the ill they are inclin'd to or to do the good they are averse to with power the Saviour of Mankind must be invested in or those malicious Spirits of whom the Platonicks make frequent mention would prove too hard for him And therefore sacred Records inform us That God bound up the lying and forc'd a true Prophetick Spirit upon Baalam contrary to the grain of his covetous inclination from which he could not extricate himself by all the sacrifices he could offer or shifting of place supposing belike the Daemon that bound him might possibly be some God of the Vallies or if of the Hills his Territories might not reach to all those upon which he sought for inchantments And that our Saviours substitutes his Ministers sent forth for the good of his people Gabriel and Michael dan. 10. 13 20 21. vide Bullingerum in locum in decadibus though for some while impeded by the Princes of the Kingdom of Persia and other Nations that is those Caco-demons to whose lot by their own choice and Divine Justice saying Amen to their choice they were fallen yet at last cast off those bonds and break through the thickest files of their united force to bring relief to Immanuel's people 2. Nor the good spirits to exert their salvifick Powers as Moses detain'd the Angel of Gods presence and Jacob the Angel that wrastled with him 3. But the very best fairest and most beneficial of their Gods from granting the just desires of their most religious Worshippers and to gratifie the most impious requests of malicious Conjurers A clear confession that the best and greatest of those reputed God-saviours were so far from being able to purge Souls as themselves stood in need of being purged from the pest of fear St Austin ingeniously Mirum est autem quòd benignus ille Chaldaeus qui Theurgicis sacris animam purgare cupiebat non invenit aliquem superiorem Deum qui vel plus terreret atque ad benefaciendum cogeret territos Deos vel ab eis terrentem compesceret ut liberè benefacerent sic tamen Theurgo bono sacra defuerunt quibus ipsos Deos quos invocabat animae purgatores prius ab illa timoris peste purgaret de Civitate 10. 10. It is strange that that Chaldean did not find out some superiour God who could either by greater terror force the terrified Gods to do good or to drive from them him that terrified them and yet so far was that good conjurer destitute of sacred Rites by which he might purge those soul-purging Gods themselves of the Plague of their own fear A passion which he who undertakes the rescue of men's Souls if he be not absolutely exempted from he is render'd utterly incapable to perform the office of Redemption § 2. Upon these Considerations Porphyry de sacrificiis grounds this Assertion That as these reputed God-presidents had no power of releiving but within their own respective Jurisdictions so the purgation of the humane Soul was wholly out of their reach The spiritual part of the Soul saith he which takes in the Images of Corporeal things from the Fantasie inform'd by the common Sense may by the cooperations of those Daemons with certain Magical Consecrations be made capable to receive the Images of those Spirits and to see those kinds of Gods But the Intellectual Soul wherein is received the Verity of intelligible things that have no resemblances of Bodies cannot receive by such Consecrations any such Purgation as renders it fit to see its proper God or those things that are true Yet Porphyry in the same place takes down the efficacy of these Saviours one Pegg lower and leaves them nothing to put forth their salvifick power upon but Temporal Concerns and the goods of the Body or Fortune and therefore counts it madness in Plilosophers to make any application to them though perhaps and but perhaps it be necessary for Cities to procure their favour and make them by material Sacrifices propitious to them for the sake of that external and corporeal good they may confer upon those who place their well-being in the affluence of such things The fairies may drop a Teaster into the good huswise's shoe and that 's the summ of their rewards And yet these Saviours cannot save to themselves this poor pittance of power denied to them notonly by St. Austin who in his five first Books de Civitate not only proves but proves out of Pagan Records that those Saviours can neither do good nor hurt But by the most sage Philosophers and Philosophizing Poets there quoted by him to which quotation I refer my Reader and procede to another Argument for the proof of the agreement of the Platonicks with us Christians in this Point That none of those by the Vulgar reputed blessed Spirits who became incarnate to redeem Mankind were qualified for that Work which was therefore to be laid upon one more mighty than them all able to grapple with all opposite Infernal Powers an undauntable Lion who would not faint nor be discouraged by Lions in the way a Passion to which all their known God-saviours were subject and thereby rendred incapable to accomplish the end of their supposed Incarnation § 3. Porphyry in his first de regressu animae professeth himself of this Opinion That God was not so deficient in his care of Man as not to provide as general a way of Purgation as the Infection was and make the Plaister as broad as the Sore which universal way of Redemption he confesses had not been communicated to the World as far as he could learn either by the Customs of the Indians the Disciplines of the Chaldeans or the Philosophical Schools there being something of what in common Reason was required in order to the effecting of the Cure wanting in all those ways of Soul-purgation to which the most inquisitive Persons had applied themselves Upon which that great Light of Africa St. Austin de civitate 22. 27. hath this Note Had Plato and Porphyry compared Notes they would have turn'd Christian that is had Plato dared to have spoken as freely as his Scholar did for an Universal Saviour and had not Porphyry forsaken his Master in that point of Truth which he asserted touching the Incarnation and sufferings of the Saviour they would have joyned hands with the Christian and have subscribed to his Hypothesis This very Notion was the ground of their erecting Altars and preferring Prayers to the unknown God Hence the Mariners call every man upon his God and lest they might all mistake the true God-saviour they awaken Jonah to call upon his God for
not many Examples of this inhumane Piety but because I would not let this part of my Discourse pass without the honourable mention of his Name who hath taken such Herculean pains upon this Subject to whose Labours I refer my Reader for fuller satisfaction if he require any after he hath heard Tertullian's Judgment Apolog. 8. à vobis ostendam fieri partim in aperto partim in occulto per quod forsitan de nobis credidistis to wit That the commonness of humane Sacrifices through the Pagan World induc'd them to believe that Calumny raised against the Christians That in their Coventicles they sacrificed a Ghild whose blood they mingled with crums of Bread and so did eat it A Calumny raised upon their mistake of the Christians Commemorative Sacrifice the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. A thing so abhorrent to Nature as no man could deem it possible for another man to grow so inhumane except he who was himself grown so inhumane And therefore saith he of all things our sacrificing Children should not be objected to us as a crime by the Heathens who themselves did immolate Infants to Saturn openly and without controul till Tiberius being Proconsul of Africk nail'd the Priests themselves to those Crosses upon which they used to crucifie Children and now secretly notwithstanding the Imperial Edicts against it Yea in the most religious City inhabited by the Off-spring of pious Aeneas there is a certain Jove whom they appease with the shedding of humane Blood even at this day and that in the most publick place and greatest concourse the Theater In your painting the Christian God as delighting in humane Blood you shape him after the Prototype which you have conceived in your mind of your own Jupiter whom you fancy to be the true Son of his Father Saturn because he resembles him in Severity and will not be appeased but with the Blood of that Nature which gave the offence O Jovem Christianum solum patris filium de crudeliaate And therefore you have no reason to accuse Christians as the only men that represent God as not appeasable but by Christ's making an Oblation of his own Blood for the sins of the World a Sacrifice far more like to be acepted as a Propitiation than those Victims you offer of men condemned to the Beasts and therefore polluted with their own guilt or of innocent Babes who are merely passive and offered against their own Will or of decrepit Persons though willing for since old Age pusheth them forward what merit can their be in chusing to go out at this door where in their passage to their Grave they shall not meet with those Incumbrances of extreme old Age which singly are worse than an hundred deaths or of those who in the prime and flower of their Age do offer themselves Victimes for the benefit of Man-kind since a few more years will put them beyond their choice and bring them under a necessity of dying whereas that Blood which we affirm to have been shed for the sins of the World was the Blood of a spotless Lamb offer'd by Christ himself he was Priest as well as Sacrifice and laid down his Life for no man could take it from him against his will c. § 3. Touching the second branch of this argument That this custom of propitiating the Deity with the oblation of Human blood was not in imitation of Abraham but the corruption of the old Tradition c. though I find great names muster'd against this Assertion yet when I consider that they march under the conduct of the Jewish Rabbins who are ambitious of having the whole World in debt to them this Army of Lions grows less formidable as being led on and headed by such sheepish Captains as R. Salomon Jarchi who upon Jeremy 7. 31. bringeth in God speaking concerning Molech after this manner When I spake to Abraham to sacrifice his Son it entred not into my heart that he should sacrifice him but to make known his righteousness having first fancied that the Heathen in defence of their practice objected the Example of Abraham A thing which no more enter'd into the Pagan's heart than it did into God's to have Isaac sacrificed nor was ever objected to the Jews of which this I conceive is proof sufficient That neither Philo Judaeus nor Josephus nor his Adversary Appion make the least mention of the Heathens imitating Abraham or pleading their imitation of him in their own defence A Calumny from which those great Patrons of Judaism would certainly have quitted their Religion had it then been objected when they wrote of that Oblation Josephus Jud. antiq lib. 1. cap. 14. most copiously and Philo de profugis allegorically neither can it stand with reason that Appion who scraped up whatsoever he could find in Books or invent of his own Brain against the Jewish Religion should omit so material and plausible a Plea if the World had then thought of it The first clear intimation of Abraham's offering his Son that is met with in Pagan Writers is in Porphyry as he is quoted by Eusebius praeparat Evangel 1. 7. where speaking of Saturn he saith the Phaenicians called him Israel and that he had an only Son called Irud which in the Phoenician Language signifies an only Son of the Nimph Anobret whom his father being in some great calamity sacrificed upon an Altar purposely made If I may call that clear which the two eyes of Learning Grotius in dent 18. 10. and Vosstus de idol 1. 18. cannot see how at all it concerns Abraham but that the transscriber of Eusebius meeting with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the name of Saturn among the Phoenicians as appears by St. Jerom. Phoenicibus Il. qui Hoebraeis El. Jerom. Epist 136. ad Marcellum and by Sanchoniathon himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sanchoniathon apud Eusebium prep Evang. 1. 7. El. which self same they call Saturn This note Vossius had from Grotius atque ad hanc conjecturam quam certissimam arbitror in familiari sermone mihi praeire memini divinum virum Hugonem Grotium Vossius Ibid and withal this conjecture that the Immolations mentioned by Sanchoniathon was by Saturn's Wives procuration The Transcriber I say of Eusebius ignorant of this Phoenician use of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 supposed it to be a contraction of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But to take it in its full strength according to the ordinary reading and the common application of that Name to Abraham of whom came Israel I cannot see how it implies the Heathens deriving their sacrificing of children from Abraham For 1. This was not pleaded by Porphyry against the Jew but Christian nor against the Christian till he had cryed shame of the Heathen World for its barbarous Immolations of innocents for the palliation of the filthiness whereof that indefatigable enemy of the Christian name brings in this story 2. Porphyry's Author Sanchoniathon from whom he hath
same Utensils were in that he built as were in that he pull'd down but because he did not quite pull down the Second Vossii Chron. Sacra for Josephus Antiq. 15. 14. tells us that the Tower of the Maccabees by name was only repair'd and built higher and so doubtless were other parts of the Temple that were strong enough to bear his Superstructures and did not stand in his way to straiten the Circuit I humbly conceive that Josephus his saying that Herod pull'd down the Foundations of the old Temple is commonly stretch'd too far beyond his meaning which is no more than this the Out-side being corroded by the Teeth of Time especially in the upper part of the Wall that being most weather-bearen he did not only lay new Stones in the room of the decayed ones upon those that were found as the repairers of Bow-steeple did after the Fire But pull'd down the out side of the Wall with the very Foundation and at that end where he lengthen'd it the whole Wall and its Foundation was demolish'd But to pull down the Inside that was as good as hands could make it except where it hindred his enlargement of the Length as it would have been a fruitless expence so I question whether the Jews would have permitted it and more how we shall maintain that House into which the Desire of all Nations came to have been the Second House if we have no better Foundations to build upon than those of Scaliger's laying Joseph an t 15. 14. So notwithstanding all these costly Repairs which God in his gracious Providence put Herod upon he thereby making out that Propriety he here challengeth in Silver and Gold the silver is mine and the gold is mine and providing for the more august entertainment of the Messias therein This second never grew up to the state of the first for beside that 20 Cubits of the height by the yielding of the Foundation fell by that time Herod had finish'd his Repairs the first was inlaid with Gold thence stiled Gold How is the gold become dim the most fine gold changed Lament The stones of the sanctuary are powred out by melting as if they had been all Gold the second had only golden Doors which set Titus his Souldiers Teeth a watering after the plunder of the Temple supposing it had been within all of one piece but they found it only cover'd with Silver Joseph B. J. 7. 9. Much less did it equal the first in internal Endowments and spiritual Privileges as the Rabbies say the First being filled with a Cloud at its Dedication having its Altar-fire kindled from Heaven the Ark of the Covenant with all its appurtenances the holy Oyl the Vrim and Thummim c. as the Jews themselves say From their Concessions therefore we assume that these Glories of the First were not in the Second till Christ in whom the Godhead dwells bodily in whom are hid all the Treasures of Wisdom that precious Corner-stone anointed with the Oyl of gladness above his fellows presented in his own Person the Substance of all those in that Temple in respect of which his coming into it and honouring it with his blessed presence it exceeded the former House in Glory the coming in of this King of Glory hath lift up the Gates of the Second Temple in Glory above the first Rex gloriae id est Arca quia super eam habitabat Dominus gloriae inter Cherubim When the Ark removed Moses said Arise O Lord and when it stood still he said Return O Lord R. David in Psal. 24. Aben Ezra observes that by that Repetition is intimated the coming of the Ark into the First and restoring the Ark the true Ark of God's presence unto the Second Temple by the coming of the Messias who is therefore called in the later answer the Lord of Hosts without the addition of mighty in battail because in the Reign of Christ men are to learn War no more Is. 2. § 6. But where is now this Second House that the Prophet points at and even toucheth with his Finger in this Prophecy is it not long since laid in the dust and made so desolate that Travellers by can discern no sign that ever there was any such Fabrick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jos. Bel. Jud. 7. 18. Titus levelling the Temple and whole City to the ground except three Towers Phaselus Hippicus and Mariamne and that part of the Wall that encompassed the City on the West side this last to be a defence for the Garrison he left there the Towers that they might indicate to Posterity how well fortified a City the Roman Prowess had subdued And Turnus Rufus the same day Twelvemonth ploughing up the place where the Temple stood to make good that Prophecy Sion shall be ploughed as a field as appears by the constant and copious Testimony of the Jews themselves quoted by Dr. Lightfoot fuit Illium ingens Gloria Teucrorum Jam seges ubi Troja Jerusalem's best days are past now that her sacred Temples Area is become a Corn-field If she has not already she never will attain this Glory If one knew where to find her rubbish he may write in the dust thereof Icabod Glory is departed It hath had all the Glory it is like to have It is absolutely impossible it should be fill'd with Glory now that 't is emptied of its self of its very Being and Existence I know the Jews expect the rising of this Phaenix out of its ashes and dream of a Third House wherein this Prophecy shall receive its accomplishment in domo tertiâ stabunt ad honorem Dei in aeternum Aben Ezra in Psal. 24. But 1. The Comparison here in point of Glory is betwixt Solomon's Temple called the First House and this of the return'd Captives building called the Later House 2. That Temple in the Air they build to themselves is to be raised up as they conceive by their expected Messiah But that Temple he was to fill with Glory was to be in being before he comes he is not to build it but finds it built to his hand and comes into it 3. Say a Temple should again be erected in the place of this it would not be this the Prophet speaks of any more than this was that which Solomon erected but another a Third House essentially differing from this Second for as this was called the Second House because that of Solomon's was utterly destroyed and brought to annihilation by the Babilonians and this built anew from the lowest Foundation The hands of Zorobabel have laid the foundation of this house this word saith Isidore Peleusiota of laying the foundation demonstrates that the Babylonians had razed the Foundation of the former Epist. lib. 4. epist. 17. So it being as manifest that the Romans have not left one stone upon another in this House whatever House shall be built upon the Premisses will be a new House and specifically different from it the Second being never
utter'd to Constantine in his Panegyrick Quod Ceres mater frugum quod Jupiter moderator aurarum quicquid illi parciùs dederunt nobis amen ex beneficio tuo natum est whose contexture speaks no more but this that Constantine's remitting to the Flavians the Customes due to the Imperial Crown had made them amends for what they suffer'd either through unseasonableness of the weather or barrenness of the ground But to enlarge here would carry me too far from my intended Scope which was to shew how by inches the Gospel gain'd upon the Roman Emperours To proceed therefore in that discourse §3 Christianity so far gain'd upon Valens though an Arrian as he would not aid the Gothes but upon condition of their embracing the Christian Faith which they did so cordially as when by the Treason of Stillico they were set upon in their march toward Gallia where the Emperour had allotted them quarters by some Companies of Jews on the Lord's day they scrupled to make resistance though in their own defence because they would not shed blood on that day which was dedicated to the honour of our Lord till the Jews abusing this their over-religious Opinion in observing no mean in slaughtering them taught them man by man to betake themselves to those arms which altogether they had resolv'd rather to die than use upon that day Vives de Getis praef ad August de civitate dei Yet Valens neither received Christ for God nor restrain'd his own Subjects by any penal Law from the publick Worshipping of Idols any more than Valentinian the Elder of whom Marcellinus lib. 30. cap. 12. Hoc moderamine principatus inclaruit quòd inter religionum diversitates medius stetit nec quenquam inquietavit neque ut hoc coleretur imperavit neque illud nec interdictis minacibus subjectorum cervicem ad id quod ipse coluit inclinabat sed intemeratas has partes reliquit ut reperit He was famous for this moderation of Government that he standing Neuter among the diversities of Religions neither disquieted any man nor commanded that any one Religion should be observ'd rather than another nor did he by threatning interdicts bend the necks of his subjects to that Religion which he himself profest but left as he found all those parties inviolated It prevail'd so far upon Gratian as he refused the Pontifical Stole when it was tender'd him by the College of Pagan Priests saying it was unlawful for a Christian to be installed in or to manage the Office of Great Pontiffs But I do not read that he prohibited the College to officiate or the inferior Priests to sacrifice for I find Heliadius the sometimes Master of Socrates Scolasticus to have officiated as a Priest of Jupiter and Ammonius as a Priest of Apis at Alexandria in the Reign of Theodosius the Elder and the Temples of Idols every where standing and frequented if I may call that frequenting when notwithstanding that there had not yet been made any penal Laws against Gentilisme the assemblies there were so thin'd and the number of Pagans faln to that ebb as Julian the Apostate to gain the Empire and the good will of the Provinces was fain to counterfeit himself a Christian Ammian Mar. Julianus And Jovinian obtaining the better of him threatned his Army when they elected him Emperour with a refusal to accept of that Office except they would renounce Julian's and accept of the Christian Religion Socrat. l. 5. which had been a strange piece of Fool-hardiness had not the Christian Party of the Roman Legions been then more numerous for all that so many Christians had parted with the military Belt rather than continue in those Commands which they could not injoy under that Tyrant Julian except they would forsake the Ensign of the 〈◊〉 Nay when the Imperial Laws were against the Faith it so prevail'd as the Idol-Temples under Trajan were in a manner dis-frequented as Pliny informs him lib. 10. Epist. This I here insert that my Reader may know it was not by force nor might of the Secular Arm that the new Jerusalem was forwarded in its building Marrie that the Idol-Temples should go down without hands that the Earth should open her mouth and swallow them up quick or that God should beat them down with Thunderbolts would have been a most groundless and presumptuous expectation And therefore this Emperour Gratian served Christ in putting his hand to that work by demolishing the Altar in the Capitol where the Senators till then had been Sworn and confiscating the revenues of it which gave a colour of Equity to the Petition of those that begg'd of Valentinian that it might be rebuilt and the service thereof maintain'd out of the Treasury a colour which St. Ambrose handsomly wipes off quod enim vel fisco vel arcae est vendicatum de tuo magis conferre videbere quà m de suo reddere l. 5. ep 30. by telling the Emperour that that would be a restoring of the Pagan service at his own proper charges and not a restoring of what belonged to that Altar as its Revenues for being confiscate they were now become the Revenues of the Imperial Crown but that Gratian did subvert any but that Altar or set any mulct upon Idolaters is more then I can find in any good Authors Theodosius the Elder was the first Emperour that universally prohibited the publick practice of Gentilisme through the Empire commanding their Temples and Altars every where to be thrown down and their Statues to be melted into Pans and Kettles for poor people The execution of this Decree at Alexandria was committed to the care of Theophilus the Bishop of that See who in ransacking those depths of Satan those Cages of unclean Birds brings to open light those shameful Mysteries and Obscenities as the Revelation of them drives the Pagans to that rage as they furiously make head against the Christians and slaughter such numbers of them as the Governour with his Military Bands was fain to come into their rescue and to aid the Bishop by whose help he utterly abolished the Idols Temples and all their Statues but one which he erected in the open Market to be a witness to future of the folly of former Ages in adoring such mis-shapen Monsters at which Helladius was more vext than at his destroying all the rest Socrates lib. 5. cap. 16. This Emperour pull'd down the Crows Nests but restrain'd not the Boyes from climbing the tree nor hindred the Birds from building Nests in private corners For the Gentiles were still permitted their secret Chappels and Conventicles even in the Imperial Cities and Courts Some of whom were in that favour with the Emperours as that they were admitted to places of highest honour emolument and trust Macrobius a Grecian by Birth and a zealous Gentile by Religion was Prefect of the sacred Bedchamber to Theodosius and had so much interest in his Masters Affection as for his sake he made that Decree That they who bore
that office should in point of honour be equall to the chief Military and urbane Magistrates among whom Macrobius to have the precedency Isaac Pontan in notis ad Macrobium pag. 1. ex Scaligero Optatus a Pagan had the Military Government of Constantinople committed to his charge under Theodosius and his Son Arcadius Socrates hist. eccl 7. 16. with as much impunity was Gentilism practised in the Metropolis of the Western Empire under his Brother Honorius at the beginning of whose Reign when the Gothes under Alaricus took Rome there were very many Heathens not only in the City but Senate by whose order it was determined that the Pagan Worship should be restored and celebrated in those Temples which had by Theodosius been converted to the use of the Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sozomen 9. 7. for I see no necessity of collecting from this passage that any other Temples were then standing but what were transferr'd to a Christian use to which that passage of Orosius l. 7. cap. 38. adds strength where he writes that Attalus the Governour then of the City and a Pagan for he was Christned by a Gothish Bishop after he was joyn'd with Alaricus sending for the Thuscian Magi who promised by Thunder and Lightning to drive away the Barbarians enter'd presently into consultation with the Senate about restoring to their Idol-Gods their Sacred Places and celebrating their Rites So I render his continuò de repetendis sacris celebrandis tractatur Sacris comprehending Places as well as Ceremonies and repetendis implying the recovering of sacred things out of the hands of those who then had the possession of them and therefore not applicable to the Gentile Sacrifices which the Christians never touched but their Temples which were converted from the service of Idols to that of the true God as that Magnificent one of Serapis of Alexandria was at the same time and by the same Decree of Theodosius So numerous were the Pagans then in Rome as Dr. Hammond thinks and not but upon good grounds that it is Pagan Rome is threatned in that Prophecy Rev. 17. 14. and according to that Prophecy punished by Alariâ—us the Christian Party being some departed with Honorius their Emperour some with Innocentius their Bishop unto Vienna Come out of her my people Rev. 18. 4. as Lot out of Sodom saith Orosius l. 7. c. 39. and the rest overpowered by the Gentile Faction animated by the hopes they had of Attalus that he would professedly favour and set up Gentilism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and restore the Anâ—â—ent Temples and Feasts and Sacrifices Sozom. l. 9. § 4. Hitherto then we see the Dragon the old Serpent the Devil still abroad and at work even in the Imperial City at his old Trade of seducing the Nations to Gentilism and which is more prevailing with them to endeavour the restauration of the Pagan Religion after it was prohibited by penal law by Theodosius for Eugenius and Arbogestes with a mighty Army attempted to restore Ethnicism which Theodosius had utterly abolisht saith Mr. Meed vol. 2. Book 3. chap. 10. after whose subduing of those two Tyrants Ethnicism never made head more in the Roman Empire saith the same learned Author Indeed the whole current of History makes it evident that Ethnicism never after that appeared in the field against Christianity yet we find it after that conspiring in the Senate to subdue the Faith by the help of the Gothish Arms invited thither by the Heathens and therefore so dreaded by the Christian Party as multitudes of them upon the irruption of the Barbarians either conceal'd or dissembled their Religion to save themselves from the rage of the enemy till contrary to their expectation they perceiv'd that God had turn'd the sword of the Goths against the Pagans St. Jerom. ep 6. ad prin ep 8. and that Alaricus had given order to his Soldiers they should neither touch persons nor goods which they found in the Christian Temples And we find it after that practised in private Chappels tilâ— Honorius made it capital for any to worship Idols either in publick or private Quis enim nostrum quis vestrum non laâ—dat Leges ab Imperatoribus datas adversus sacrificia Idolorum at certè longè ibi paena severior constituta est illius quippe impietatis capitale supplicium est saith St. Austin to the Patron of the Donatists epist. 48. which of ours which of yours do not commend those Imperial Laws against the Sacrifices of the Pagans though the pain inflicted by those Laws be far more severe than that which the Law inflicts upon the Novatians for those make it death for any to commit those Gentile Abominations At which period of time if I would be positive I would fix the beginning of the thousand years which we have in this long discourse been pricking to its seat For it is most natural to interpret the Chain wherein Satan was bound to have been those Imperial Laws and the Key of the bottomless Pit that Supream Authority and power of Life or Death invested by Gods Ordinance in them that bear the Sword and actually exerted in those Laws by opening the mouth of the Pit and making it gape upon such as should persist in those impious and inhumane Idolatries by the Ghastly look of that terriblest of terribles the Pagan was frighted from that Diabolical Worship and by that fear of his shut up Satan and deprived him of power any longer to deceive Insomuch as immediately after the promulgation of those Laws though all did not embrace Christianity yet the whole Empire renounc'd Politheism all strife thereabout being supprest and so eradicated even out of the most talkâ—ive Schools of the Grecians as if any Sect of Error then rose up against the Church and the Faith it durst not step upon the Stage to contend with the Christian but cover'd with the Christian name so that the Platonicks themselves â—â—d it not been for some plausible Placits they could adhere to without fear of incurring the penalties of the Imperial laws must of necessity have generally submitted their pious necks to the yoak of the only invincible King Christ and have acknowledged that Word of God made Flesh who spake and that was believed which the boldest of them were afraid to reveal to the world August dios ep 56. But I dare not be peremptory in determining the precise Moment All that I assert in this is That if the Thousand years of Satan's binding â—e begun at all the beginning of them cannot be dated lower than the promulgation of those Imperial Edicts neither do any place them lower who are of opinion that the Millenium is not yet to begin From whence I inferr this irrefragable Conclusion If the Millenium be precisely the term of 1000 years Satan at the utmost was let loose in the year of Grace 1400 that then the Christian World has outlived Grace 270 years according to the least compute of that Hypothesis And
the Daughter of Eleazar a wealthy Matron and of a noble Family who flying to Jerusalem moving counter to Christs direction was there among the many thousands that upon the occasion of the Passover were at that time in the City when the Romans lay siege to it cooped up and being by the rude Souldiers plunder'd of her goods and at last of all provision for the Belly she takes her child and saying to him poor Child thou must be meat for me a Fury to fright those sedicious Zealots who have brought us to this extremity and a Fable to all posterity sacrificeth him to the asswaging of her hunger and at one meal devours one half of him reserving the remainder till the strong man that breaks stone walls should return again so arm'd as to force her to break the bonds of Nature and Female delicacy once more but she was prevented of the second Course of that Thiestean Banquet by Souldiers that had got the scent of it breaking in upon her and threatning her with death if she did not bring forth and present to their eye that roast-meat which they had the smell of in their Noses The wretched woman sets before them the reliques of her Babe bids them fall too if they had an appetite but if they were more nice than a Matron more pittiful then a Mother they might be wellcome to leave it for her to sustain her loathed life with Of which and the like Immanities Titus being inform'd made a solemn appeal to the Gods that they whom his Clemency could not induce to accept of Peace and an Act of Oblivion by him offer'd were worthy to feed on such cates protesting he would bury this abominable fact in the ruines of the Country where it was committed and not leave that City standing for the Sun to behold where Mothers fed on so detestable food 5. Of that degree and measure of the Wrath that was then to be poured out upon that Place and People of Gods Curse according to the Predictions of Christ that it should be levell'd with the ground not have one stone left upon another be an utter and perpetual desolation if I would give a punctual Account I must transcribe all Josephus his Books of the Jewish Wars whose Theme that is and a great part of Tacitus his fifth Book of Histories I therefore referr my Reader to those Authors whose Relations if he compare with Christs Predictions he will find them accomplish'd in every Circumstance And as to that Cities never being able to this day to obtain a Resurrection from those Ruines wherein Titus buried it Infidelity it self need no other proof than ocular Demonstration nor can require a better reason why it has not so much as been attempted for above this thousand years than the frustration of Julians purpose to rebuild it meerly to affront Christs Predictions of which Ammianus Marcellinus an Heathen Historian gives this account lib. 23. initio Ambitiosum quondam apud Hierosolymam Templum quod post multa interneciva certamina obsidente Vespasiano posteáque Tito aegre est expugnatum instaurare sumptibus cogitabat immodicis negotiúmque maturandum Alypio dederat Antiochensi qui olim Britannias curà verat pro prefectis Qúum itaque rei idem fortiter instaret Alypius juvarétque provinciae rector metuendiglobi flammarum propè fundamentum crebris assultibus erumpentes fecere locum exustis aliquoties operantibus inaccessum hócque modo elemento destinatiùs repellente cessavit incaeptum Julian had purposed to be at excessive charge in the Restauration of that sometimes stately Temple at Jerusalem which after many and mortal skirmishings being besieged first by Vespasian and then by Titus had been with much difficulty demolished The care of managing this work is committed by Julian to Alypius of Antioch who had formerly been the Deputy-governour of Britain Alypius therefore setting amain upon the rebuilding of this Temple and the Governour of the Province assisting him dreadful Balls of fire breaking out and squibbing about the foundation and many times burning the labourers made the place inaccessible and the Element thus obstinately resisting the place it self peremptorily rejecting the stones which were laid upon it as refusing to bear such a structure the enterprise was given over And no man ever since hath been so fool hardy as to put his hands to that work which burnt the fingers of Julian's Labourers § 5. Oh Jerusalem Jerusalem How art thou faln from Heaven God was thy wall of Fire once to burn up them that besieged thee but he sent now Balls of Fire to consnme those that would have rebuilt thee Who would have believed that this would have befaln thee and thy children when thy rejected Christ dropt his Tears and with them those Predictions upon thee which we now see fulfill'd What Sign was there in Reason or Nature or Politicks of this thy fatal Catastrophe didst thou ever lift thy cloud threatning head higher above or cast a more supercilious look upon Mount Olivet than when Christ from thence facing the sumptuousness of thy building and the Ornaments of thy goodly stones pronounc'd this fatal Sentence against thee Thou wast then adorn'd with Donatives sent thee from Caesar's houshold honour'd with dayly Sacrifices offer'd at Caesars cost and by his appointment on thy Altar to the most high God who dwelt between thy Cherubims Philo Jud. legat ad Caium tells how high the Jews were in Augustus his favour in particular a great part of the trans-Tiberine City was possest by Jews who were allowed their proseucha's there and permitted to send their first fruits and offerings to Jerusalem whither most of Caesars family sent gifts which remain saith Philo to this day where Augustus commanded Sacrifices to be offered at his own charges to the most high God for the Emperours health which custom saith he continueth to this day and will for ever continue as a Monument of his Royal virtues he proved a false prophet in this but in what follows he is a true Historian He appointed the Jews at Rome to have their share of the monthly largesses of corn and mony and if the day of distribution happen'd on the Sabbath he order'd the Jews should have their shares the day following These privileges were continued to them during the reign of Tiberius notwithstanding the spight of Sejanus against the Jews Thy Children were indulged thy Sabbaths reverenc'd by Augustus and Tiberius whose ears were always open to their Complaints against their own Deputies whose greatest friends at Court could not procure their continuance if thy peoples Legates made motion for their removal out of Office If Caligula's Sacrilegious Pride would prophane thee by affronting the divine presence with his own Image it was no greater an indignity than he put upon the Temples of his own Gods and what they wanted thou found an Agrippa to intercede for thee and a Petronius to suspend the execution of the Imperial Decree against thee Claudius banish'd thy
hasts to the City to buy an Altar orders his men to dig a place where he might erect it they digging twenty foot deep find there an old Altar with this Inscription To Dis and Proserpina The Father returning from the City sacrificeth upon that Altar to those Infernal Deities and three nights together answering the number of his late sick but now recovered Children makes Funeral Banquets to the Gods with Songs and Dances With what strange obscenities those Games were celebrated is more obvious than that it needs be related It is sufficient to evince the Diabolicalness of those seeming Miracles and therefore only seeming that they manifestly tended towards the erecting of the Worship of infernal Fiends to the robbing the one Supreme God of that honour that 's his peculiar due and to the introducing of most barbarous Immoralities into the VVorld And therefore being Seals set to a Law directly thwarting that Law of God writ on the hearts of all men if they had more exactly counterfeited the Scal of Heaven than they did may easily be deprehended to be nothing else but feigned Miracles § 3. This should have at least awaken'd the VVorld to a more scrupulous inspection and prying into them and to have weighed them with those Selâ—s which were set to the contrary Doctrine In comparison with which they would have been found if not lighter than vanity yet at least wanting many grains weight of real Miracles that is productions by the God of Nature above the power of Nature and beside its ordinary Course I insert this last clause into the description of a Miracle to distinguish it from the Effects of ordinary Providence which though they proceed from infinite Power yet are not Miracles but issue from the natural order of Conversion Mutation and Mutability of Bodies The water saith St. Austin de Trinit lib. 3. is poured ordinarily upon the earth but when at the Prayer of Elias after so long a serenity when there was no appearance of a cloud it was made to fall this was the immediate effusion of Divine Power God ordinarily makes the voyce of his Thunder to be heard and sends out the Lightning from the bright Cloud but when on Mount Sinai after an unusual manner those thundering voyces were sent forth which did not make a confused din but articulately sounded forth the VVill of God this was miraculous who draws moisture by the root of the Vine to the Clusters and by degrees ripens the Grapes but God who giveth the increase while Man Plants and VVaters But when at our Lord's beck VVater was turn'd into VVine by an unusual celerity he must be a fool with a witness who denies that to be a witness of a divine Power in him who commanded and it was done Earth is the common Matter for the bringing forth and nourishing of all Plants and of all Bodies of Animals and who produceth these things from the Earth but he that said to the earth bring forth But when of a suddain he turn'd the same Matter out of Moses his Rod into a Serpent and back again out of that Serpent into a Rod immediately and in an instant he wrought a Miracle the things indeed were changable but this change of them was unusual Who but God cloaths the Shrubbs with Leaves and Blossoms But when the Rod of Aaron blossom'd the divinity did after a sort discourse with doubting Humanity Who is he that giveth life to every living thing that 's born but he that gave life to that Serpent of Aaron for an hour Who restored to Bodies when they were dead their Souls but he that animates flesh in the Mothers Womb which is born to die of the same common Matter which subsists in the Elements God produceth in time or ex tempore a Ram or a Dove who are of the same fleshy vigour at their coming in and going out of the World whether they were made in an instant or by degrees they are not of different constitutions only that which was produced ex tempore appeared after an unusual manner but when those Creatures are brought forth by a kind of continued Flux of sliding and remaining things passing out of secret into open light and out of light into obscurity in the usual road they are called natural which same Creatures when they are thrust in upon us for our admonition by an unusual mutability are called Wonders 2. And yet it is not every unusual Conflux of those primordial seminal Causes towards the production of a thing into being that makes a Miracle for as St. Austin observes upon the story of the Aegyptian Magicians Ex. 7. de Trin. 3. cap. 8. there are certain seminal Causes hid in corporeal things through all the Elements of the World which Daemons may pick out more easily than the cunningest Gold-finer can single parings of Gold out of heaps of Sand into one Mass and make up into strange Effects and of them produce new Species of things in a trice Omnis spiritus ales est momento ubique sunt volocitas divinitus creditus quia substantia ignoratur Terapol 22. But it is farther requisite as I have exprest in the first Clause of the Description that it be a production beside the Order of whole created Nature such as cannot be educ'd out of the active Powers implanted in the Elements nor their natural passive Powers whereby they are made receptible of any form by natural Motion Aquinas sum 1. quest 115. 2. Praeter virtutes activas naturales potentias passivas quae ordinantur ad hujusmodi virtutes activas But out of a bare obediential Possibility or Non-resistency of the Creature whereby it throws it self at Gods feet and becomes pliable in the hand of Omnipotencie to embrace any shape he is pleas'd to mould it into by an act of Power equivalent to that of creating and educing forms out of the first Abyss of inform Matter Alensis sum 2. quest 42. art 5. memb 5. ad opera miraculosa possibilitas tantùm secundùm obedientiam creaturae de quo Deus potest facere quod vult est possibilitas passiva Briefly and plainly proper Miracles exceed Nature in a threefold degree 1. As to the Substance of the Fact such are the Glorification of the Body the Retrogradation of the Sun c. 2. As to the Subject wherein it is wrought such are the restoring Life to the Dead giving Sight to the blind c. Nature can cause Life but not in a dead Body can give Sight but not to one that 's blind for there cannot be a natural recess from a total Privation to an Habit. 3. As to the Manner and Order of working such is the restoring of Lame the healing of Sick the multiplying of Bread Oyl c in an unusual course on a suddain without applying natural Causes c. To the first of these Degrees the Pagan VVorld never so much as pretended To the second none ever attain'd who pretended to act in