Shadow follows the Body as it moves so when any person hath God propitious to him at the same time all the Angels and blessed Spirits are likewise his Friends In like manner Lactantius says that God hath his Ministers whom we call Angels verum hi neque Dii sunt neque Deos se vocari aut coli volunt quippe qui nihil praeter jussum ac voluntatem Dei fatiant i. e. but these are neither Gods nor would they be called Gods nor worshipped forasmuch as they only execute the Will and Command of God Add to this that the Papists make their Saints particular Presidents and Regents of Countries Cities Religious Orders of Beasts and of the Elements Fire Water c. and appoint to them distinctly and by name several Opitulations So Caecilius in Minutius Felix says of the Heathens that each particular Nation had its own Municipal Gods which they worshipped And Arnobius tells the Gentiles Lib. 2. adver Gentes that with them Dii certi certas habent tutelas licentias potestates neque eorum ab aliquo id quod ejus non sit potestatis ac licentiae postulant i. e. Certain Gods have certain Guardianships Licences and Powers neither do they ask from any of them that which is not in their power and gift Accordingly the Papists have distributed several Offices to several Saints whose assistance they implore for those particular things to which they are appointed as for example S. Apollonia for the Tooth-ach S. Otilia for Bleer-Eyes S. Rochus for the Pox S. Blasius for the Squinancy S. Petronella for Feavers S. Wendeline for Sheep and Oxen S. Anthony for Hogs S. Nicholas is the Patron of Mariners S. Clement of Bakers S. Luke of Painters and S. Afra and Magdalen of Whores For S. Austin says that Varro maintained C. D. l. 4. c. 22. it was profitable to know the power and working of every God in particular that men might be able to sue unto them according to their several Offices for every distinct or particular benefit lest otherwise they might ask water of Bacchus the God of Wine or Wine of the Nymphs the Goddesses of the Water And this is so plain and evident that it could not but extort this honest Confession from Ludovicus Vives one of their own In Com. C. D. l. 8. c. 27. Multi Christiani c. Many Christians err in a good matter in that they worship He and She-Saints after the same manner that they worship God nor can I see in many things what difference there is between their Opinion of the Saints and that which the Heathens thought of their Gods For what other account did the Pagans make or in what did they do honour to their inferiour Deities which Papists do not express to their Saints Did the Pagans consecrate Temples to their Demons so do the Papists to their Saints Do they appropriate several offices and imployments to their inferiour Gods the same do Papists to their Saints Have they Altars built to them so have the Saints Do the Heathens offer Sacrifice to their Deities so do Romanists to the Saints Had they Images erected to them so have the Saints Were the Demons invoked before their Images so are the Saints Did they make Vows to the Demons so do Papists to their Saints Do they make those Middle Powers Mediators and Intercessors between the Supreme God and them it is no more than what Papists ascribe to the Saints Now what these Mediae Potestates or Middle Powers were we learn from Apuleius that they are inter terricolas De Deo Socratis calicolasque Vectores hinc precum inde donorum qui ultro citroque portant hinc petitiones inde suppetias ceu quidam utrinque Interpretes Salutigeri i. e. a kind of Carriers between the Inhabitants of Heaven and Earth that travelling to and fro carry from hence Prayers and bring from thence Blessings from hence Requests and Petitions from thence supplies and aids or a certain kind of Interpreters or Messengers and Internuncii between both And 't is a great sign that the more understanding Papists were long ago sensible of this because in their Expurgatory Indices they take special care that such expressions as these should be blotted and razed out of those Authors that speak against their wicked Practices viz. that God alone is to be adored that the Saints are to be honoured but not Religiously worshipped that Angels are not to be honoured with Religious Worship And because when Protestants cite such notoriously blasphemous and idolatrous forms of prayer allowed in the Popish Church wherein they beg of their Saints and especially of the Virgin Mary no less Boons than remission of sins preservation from the assaults of the Devil a safe conduct through the hazards of the World to eternal life comfort and assistance at the hour of death and the possession of Eternal Glory in the life to come The Vulgar Papists amongst us are taught that these forms of prayer are no more than an Ora pro nobis and all one as to say Holy Apostle or Blessed Lady pray for us which yet is Idolatry it is certain that many of them are made in other expressions and likewise are direct Addresses to such and such Saints upon account of what is peculiar for them to help them in The prayer to S. Agnes is not Ora pro nobis but te exoro precibus I pray you to keep me in the right Faith or grant you that all may serve God in perfect charity And the prayer to S. Brigit is By your safe guidance bring us to the reward of everlasting life Can any man in his right senses say that this is no more then O Brigit pray for us The Belgick Expurgatory Index commands these words to be razed out of Fabricius which are not much unlike this subterfuge of our Jesuits O all ye Saints pray to God for me is all one as to say I wish all the Saints would pray to God for me adding this reason for in very deed we invoke the Saints not only wishing but requiring their prayers which cannot be excused from Idolatry The account which Chemnitius gives of the Introduction of this piece of Paganism into the Christian Church is to this purpose That in the Primitive Church until two hundred years after Christ Exam. Concil Trident. p. 3. this Doctrine and Practice was utterly unknown then about the year 370. it began to be spoken of in Publick Assemblies by Basil Nyssen and Nazianzen upon occasion of their Panegyrical Orations at the same time when by the same Persons Monkery was brought out of Egypt and Syria into Greece But notwithstanding this it was not generally and universally received in those times for about the year 400. S. Chrysostom interposed and laboured against it Afterwards he shews out of Nicephorus that Petrus Gnapheus condemned for Heresie in the fifth Universal Synod was the first Author among the Grecians of mixing
their souls act with the greatest ease and pleasure and constancy and delight he designed by the promulgation of the Gospel 2. In the first place the utter Extirpation and rooting Idolatry out of the World For this is a sin so heynous and so derogatory to the Perfections of the Divine Nature that however it may be subtilized and refined by the crafty Patrons of it yet it doth most certainly thwart and cross that glorious purpose of God in making men like to himself And the reason of it is because it sinks mens minds too much into Body and Matter and so instead of purging their Souls from the gross affections and allurements of the Flesh it depresses and debases their thoughts to the lowest degree of Sensuality Now that when the Evangelical Dispensation should take place upon Earth all Idolatry was to be extirpated and destroyed the Prophets of old have clearly testified Isai 2.17 18 20. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day and the Idols he shall utterly abolish In that day a man shall cast his Idols of Silver and his Idols of Gold which they made each one for himself to worship to the Moles and to the Bats That this Prophecy respects the times of the Messiah is acknowledged by the Jews themselves and may receive a further confirmation from the second and third Verses And it shall come to pass in the last days that the Mountain of the Lords House shall be established in the top of the Mountains and shall be exalted above the Hills and all Nations shall flow unto it For out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem i. e. That in the days of the Gospel which is frequently denoted in Scripture by the last times the worship of the true God shall take place and be established among all Nations and that this Evangelical Dispensation which should be carried and propagated over all the world should begin from Jerusalem where the Apostles of our Lord Jesus received their full and compleat Inauguration into this Office of preaching the Gospel by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them and then in that day all the false Gods and Images of the Heathens shall be utterly thrown asitle and men shall honour and worship the true God only and that in Spirit and in Truth And again Zephan 2.11 The Lord will be terrible unto them for he will famish all the Gods of the Earth and men shall worship him every one from his place even all the Isles of the Heathen i.e. God will abolish and destroy all the Idols and false Deities of the Heathen and all Nations shall be reduced to the worship of the true God the Creator of Heaven and Earth every one in his own Land so that men shall not need to go up to Jerusalem or be obliged to worship God here or there but as Christ speaks the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth And more plainly yet in Zech. 13.2 And it shall come to pass in that day saith the Lord of Hists that I will cut off the names of the Idols out of the Land and they shall no more be remembred and also I will cause the Prophets and the unclean Spirit to pass out of the Land And that this unclean Spirit which sollicited mankind to spiritual whoredome and fornication was chased out of all those parts of the world where the Gospel was preached by the Apostles and their immediate Successors is evident not only from Ecclesiastical story but from the complaints of the Heathen that since the Religion of Jesus prevailed their Oracles were silent and their Sacrifices were offer'd in vain to their phantastick Deities And that this was a main design of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus he himself assures us in his discourse with the Woman of Samaria Joh. 4.21 22 23 24. where when the Woman told our Saviour that the Samaritans worshipped in Mount Ephraim at Shiloh but that the Jews taught that God was to be worshipped only at Jerusalem v. 20. He replies Woman believe me the hour comes when ye shall neither in this Mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship for Salvation is of the Jews But the hour comes and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth for the Father seeks such to worship him God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth The most genuine Interpretation of which-seems to be given by that pious and learned Person Mr. Mede viz. that the Samaritans who worshipped in the Temple of Mount Gerizim though they worshipped the true God yet it was under the visible representation of a Dove and circumcised their Children in the name thereof therefore says Christ ye worship ye know not what i.e. ye worship the God of Israel indeed but 't is under a Corporeal Representation which is an argument you do not know him but God must be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth that is conceiving him as a Spirit and not under any visible shape Therefore Idolatry is a belying God and Idols are termed lyes Amos 2.4 Their lyes caused them to err And Jer. 16.19 Surely our Fathers have inherited lyes the Chaldee have worshipped a lye Our blessed Lord and Saviour coming into the world to correct what was amiss and to reform the manners of mankind and to introduce a more spiritual Religion than the Jewish was it is not to be thought but he would in the first place design the Eradication of Idolatry which so much debases the soul of man and dishonours the Supreme Deity by representing him in a gross and material way and likewise by giving his Incommunicable Excellencies and Perfections to a Creature Sure it is the Primitive Christians retained so clear and vigorous a sense of the heynousness of this sin and the perfect inconsistency of it with the spirituality of their Religion that they chose rather to endure all manner of torments and die a thousand deaths than in the least manner pollute their souls with so gross an immorality Pertinent hereunto is that observation which is made that in the first part of the Jewish Talmud which was made about 200 years after Christ there is no accusation or complaint brought against the Christians for this Idolatry of Image-worship but in the second part which was finished about the year 500. when the Church of Christ began to Paganize there and in all the Commentaries of the Rabbins published in the Tenth or Eleventh Age the Jews call the Christian Churches the Houses of Idolatry It being plain then that Christ Jesus came to eradicate Idolatry which both spoiled the nature of the soul by sinking it into matter and fearfully dishonoured the true and ever-living God I come now to shew wherein the Pagan Idolatry chiefly consisted which was in these two things
God and worshipped Ashtoreth the Goddess of the Zidonians Chemosh the God of the Meabites and Milcom the God of the Children of Ammon And therefore it is very childish and ridion lous to imagine that Jeruboram would introduce that very Idolatry at his first coming for the practice of which God had threatned to pull the Kingdom out of the hand of his Master These two Examples do sufficiently and fully instruct us in the sâ—ose and meaning of God in the second Commandment that he forbid all worship of himself by an Image and that the making of designing any such Image though for his honour is palpable and gross Idolatry 8. I might now likewise for a conclusion of this Argument bring another instance of the grossest Idolatry that ever was committed by men solemnly practised by the Romists Church and injoyned by their Council of Trent and that is their worshipping of the Bread in the Sacrament which they can the Adoration of the Host than which besides the Idolatry involved in it I cannot find any Rite or Custom so barbarous in the whole Pagan Superstition unless I should bring in the Cannibals or Man-Eaters And if the Doctrine of Transubstantiation prove false as there is nothing more certain then by the testimony of Costerus the Jesuit there never was the like piece of Idolatry practis'd in the World before Take his own words Enchirid. Contr. c. 12. For the errours of those saith he were more tolerable who worship some Golden or Silver Statue or some Image of any other Materials for their God as the Heathen worshipped their Gods or a Red Cloth hung upon the top of a Spear as is reported of the Laplanders or some live-Animal as of old the Egyptians did than of these that worship a bit of Bread as hitherto the Christians have done all over the world for so many hundred years if the Doctrine of Transubstantion be not true From this Testimony then we are informed that if Transubstantiation be a Fiction then the Church of Rome is guilty of Idolatry and so gross a piece of Idolatry as a man can find no instance in Paganism to liken it to And that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is a ridiculous Figment a thing without Sense or Reason imposed upon the World I refer to those learned Authors who have on purpose discovered the falsity of it 9. I have shown that Almighty God by sending his Son our Saviour Christ Jesus into the World designed the replantation of his own blessed Nature and Image in mens Souls And that this might be the more fully and effectually accomplished he determined likewise to root out and extirpate all Idolatry which both debased the Majesty of the Great God and rendred mens Minds low contemptible and abject and having in the general discovered some of those Doctrines averred and maintained in the Church of Rome which directly overthrow this great Purpose of making men Partakers of a Divine and Godlike Spirit I shall now produce some other instances and shew how the practice of the Romish Church destroys those other two branches of the Divine Life that is Purity or Holiness and Love and Charity And for the first of these that is Purity and Holiness it is wholly evacuated by such Doctrines and Practices as minister to the Vices of men and reconcile Heaven and Salvation with the most licentious courses of sin and wickedness such as enervate all the Arguments used in the Gospel to promote a strict and holy Conversation and are apt to give allowance and incouragement to a wicked life 1. To this end and purpose the Doctrine of Purgatory is hugely subservient which besides that it is a Politick Device to squeeze and drain mens Money from them and so inrich the Clergy though with the Damnation of the Laity it is likewise fitted for the cherishing and pampering mens carnal lusts and affections and gives them hope of Salvation upon no difficult terms though they have not been so careful in providing for it in this life-time as Christ in his holy Gospel has commanded and injoyned them to be For since the worst of men amongst Christians if they take any care and use any competent circumspection may be dismissed from these Earthly Regions with fair hopes and assurances if not of going directly to Heaven yet at least of an entrance into Purgatory where-ever it be whether in a Torrid or Frozen Zone it must needs be a wonderful gratification to their Animal Faculties and Sensitive Lives to indulge and please them to the full and yet escape the torments of Hell at the last We have seen that if a wicked man live and die without the practice of Christian Virtues and with the habits of many damnable sins unmortified yet if at the last moment and conclusion of his life he have but an act of Attrition and confess to his Ghostly Father who is bound upon this to absolve him he shall certainly be saved which is incouragement enough to vicious persons to go on in sin and venture the odds of a surprize or sudden death upon such easie terms But if a man be so careless and wretchedly stupid as not to mind the making satisfaction for mortal sins in this life so long as he is assured by an Infallible Priesthood it may be done in the next the worst that can happen to him between Death and Judgment is only the state of Purgatory that is he must undergo some strange torment God knows where in Fire or Hail or Snow or Ice And this truly is a sad uncomfortable condition but still there is some hope left the redemption from this Dismal Prison prevents all despair of lying for ever under this severe Restraint Therefore this good natur'd Church of Rome bids them take heart and tells them that there is an Expiation of Sin after Death by the Prayers of the living It is the Doctrine of the Council of Trent That the Souls in Purgatory are delivered thence fidelium suffragiis potissimum vero acceptal ili Altaris saorificio Sess 25. i. e. by the Suffrages of the faithful but especially by the acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar And giving Directions to Bishops the Council says Let Bishops take care that the Suffrages of the faithful now living i. e. the Sacrifices of Masses Prayers Alms-deeds and other Works of Piety which according to the Constitution of the Church ought to be performed for the faithful deceased that they be done piously and devoutly c. And they Anathematize every one that shall say The Sacrifice of the Mass is a waked Commemoration of that Sacrifice on the Cross and not Propitiatory or that it only profits him that receives it and ought not to be offered for the Living and the Dead Sess 22. Can. 3. for Sins Punishments Satisfactions and other Necessities There is no great danger then that a Man should lye long in Purgatory if he have either Mony or Friends for either of