is to be observed that Christ now seeing all was finished which God required at his hands to the satisfaction of his justice for the sins of man and having fulfilled all those things which were spoken of him by the Prophets did voluntarily of his own accord deliver up his soul into the hands of his Father He had before told us of himself that he was the good Shepheard which giveth his life for the sheep Ioh. 10.11 that no man had power to take it from him Si nemo utique nec mors and if none then not death as we read in Chrysostom but that he laid it down of himself vers 18. and that he gave his life as a ransome for many Matth. 20.28 And the event shewed that he was no braggard or had said more then he was able to perform For the Evangelists declare that he had sense and speech and voluntary motion to the last gasp of his breath all which do evidently fail in the sons of men before the soul parteth from the body Which breathing out of his soul so presently upon so strong a cry and so lowd a prayer seemed so miraculous to the Centurion who observed the same that without expecting any further Miracle he acknowledged presently that truly this was the Son of God And this St. Hierom noted rightly The Centurion hearing Christ say to his Father Into thy hands I commend my Spirit statim sponte dimisisse spiritum and presently of his own accord to give up the ghost moved with the greatness of the wonder said Truly this man was the Son of God The Fathers generally do affirm the same ascribing this last act of our Saviours Tragedy not to extremity of pain or loss of bloud to any outward violence or decay of spirits but as his own voluntary deed and that though God the Father had decreed he should die yet he did give him leave and power to lay down his life of his own accord that his obedience to the will and pleasure of his heavenly Father might appear more evidently and the oblation of himself be the more acceptable And to this purpose saith St. Ambrose Quasi arbiter exuendi suscipiendique corporis emisit spiritum non amisit i. e. he did not lose his soul though he breathed it forth as one that had it in his own power both to assume his body and to put it off Eusebius to the same purpose also When no man had power over Christs soul he himself of his own accord laid it down for man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so being free at his own disposing and not over-ruled by outward force he himself of himself made his departure from the body The judgement of the rest of the Fathers touching this particular he that list to see let him consult St. Augustine lib. 4 de Trinit c. 13. Victor Antiochen in Marc. c. 15. Leo de Passione Dom. serm 16. Fulgentius lib. 3. ad Thrasimundum Sedulius in Opere Paschali lib. 5. c. 17. Beda in Matth. c. 27. Bernard in Feria 4. Hebdom poenosae And for the Greeks Athanasius Orat. 4. contra Arianos Origen in Ioh. Hom. 19. Gregorie Nyssen in Orat. 1. de Christi Resurrectione Nazianzen in his Tragedy called Christus patiens Chrysostom in Matth. 27. Homil. 89. Theophylact on the 27. of Matth. and the 23. of Mark. and the 23. of Luke And for late Writers Erasmus on Luk. 23. and Mark 15. Musculus on the 27. of Matthew and Gualter Hom. 169. on Iohn all which attest most punctually to the truth of this that the death of Christ was not meerly natural proceeding either from any outward or inward causes but only from his own great power and his holy will And to what purpose note they this but first to shew the conquest which he had of death whom he thus swallowed up in victory as the Apostle doth express it and secondly to shew that whereas natural death was the wages of sin which could not be inflicted on him in whom no sin was he therefore did breath out his soul in another manner then is incident to the sons of men to make himself a free-will offering to the Lord his God and make himself a sacrifice for the sins of mankinde by yeelding willingly to that death which their sins deserved And to this death this voluntary but bodily death of the Lord CHRIST IESVS and to that alone the Scriptures do ascribe that great work of the worlds redemption For thus St. Paul unto the Romans When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son Rom. 5.11 to the Hebrews thus For this cause he is the Mediator of the New Testament that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions which were under the first Testament they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance Heb. 9.15 if by Christs death it must be by his bodily death by effusion of his bloud and by no other death or kinde of death of what sort soever And to this truth the Scriptures witness very frequently For thus St. Paul we have redemption through his bloud Ephes. 1.7 By his own bloud hath he entred into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption for us Heb. 9.12 St. Peter thus Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as with silver and gold but with the precious bloud of Christ as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot 1 Pet. 1.18 19. Finally thus the Elders say unto the Lamb in the Revelation Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy bloud Apocal. 5 9. Which being so it is most certain that Christ abolished sin and Satan by suffering his body to be slain his bloud to be shed unto the death or the sins of the world and not by any other way or means co-ordinate with it as some lately fable Yet so it is that some men not content with that way of Redemption which is delivered in the Scriptures have fancyed to themselves another and more likely means for perfecting that great work of the death of Christ and teach us that the shedding of his bloud to the death of his body had not been sufficient for the remission of our sins if he had not also suffered the death of the soul and thereby wholly ransomed us from the wrath of God Calvin first led the dance in this affirming very desperately that I say no worse Nihil actum esse si corporea tantum morte defunctus fuisset that Christ had done nothing to the purpose if he had dyed no other then a bodâ—ly death He must then die the death of the soul seeing that his bodily death would not serve the turn and they who pretermit this part of our Redemption never known before and do insist so much externo carnis supplicio in the outward sacrifice of his flesh are insulsi nimis but silly fellows
for all that to call God his own It was still Deus meus Deus meus to the very last gasp And he that hath the confidence as to say my God to appropriate God unto himself as his own God is far enough off from being in despair there 's no question of it Nothing can then be left but the fires of hell and they could work no further then upon his body or the outside only of his soul if I may so call it the inward man being senseless of the heats thereof since it was neither subject to rejection or remorse at all though to say truth he suffered not the fires of hell neither in body nor in soul nor in both united Not in his Person in this life nor his soul singly by it self whilest he lived amongst us For hell fire is not to be found but in hell it self and neither soul nor body were in hell when he was alive Not in his body after his death and burial for that lay quiet in the Grave neither touched nor troubled Nor in his soul neither when he went to hell for none do suffer hell torments in the place of torments but they which are sentenced to DAMNATION and I have so much confidence of their Christianity as to believe they dare not say and as yet they do not that Christ was damned No Christian could endure such an horrid blasphemy especially if it were delivered in tearms express Yet I must tell you by the way that some come very neer it to a tantamont whose doctrine it is and 't is a doctrine built upon Calvins principles that Christ did locally descend to the place of torments ibi quoque poenas nostris peccatis debitas luisse and did there suffer the very pains which are due to us for our sins For otherwise say they which is Calvins reason non plena fuisset ipsius pro nobis satisfactio his satisfaction for our sins had not been sufficient Which were it true as Beza very well observeth Ne corpori quidem parcendum erat he was not to have spared his body but was to have descended into hell both in body and soul in regard that death eternal is the wages of sin and that not of the soul only but the body also Such horrible absurdities doe men fall into if once they stray aside from the paths of truth If then he neither suffered remorse in conscience nor rejection from the fight and favour of God nor had any reason to despair of Gods love to him which are properly the punishments or torments which do belong unto the damned if he suffered not so much as for a moment the very fire of hell in the place of torments assuredly he tasted no more of hell pains in his soul then his body in the grave did of grief and sorrow But then they say that he did struggle hard with the powers of darkness and trembled at the horrour of Gods dreadful judgements This we acknowledge to be true but this is short I trow of the pains of hell He struggled hard no doubt with the Prince of darkness both in his Temptation in the Wilderness and all those conflicts which he had with the powers of hell both in the Garden and on the Cross. He trembled also it is probable upon the apprehension of Gods anger against sinful man whose person he had taken on him and on the fight and knowledge of those dreadful punishments even eternal death which God in his just judgement did denounce against wilful and impenitent sinners If Calvin mean no more then this by his Oportuit eum cum inferorum copiis aeternaeque mortis horrore quasi consertis manibus luctari we assent unto him But who knows not that hath but common sense and reason how much the greatest conflict with the powers of Satan the greatest apprehension that a man can have of Gods wrath and anger against sin the greatest trembling that can possibly invade him on that apprehension fals short of all the least of those infinite torments which are prepared in hell for the damned souls But then the question will be asked whether Christ did not suffer all those punishments for the redemption of man which man himself must needs have suffered had not Christ come to redeem him if yea he must then suffer also the pains of hell which can be understood in no other sense then in that they take it if not there wanted somewhat to make up the scale for satisfaction of Gods justice To this I answer first in the way of negation in plain tearms he did not for he neither was nor could be damned and what else but damnation is the final punishment belonging to impenitent sinners I answer secondly with a limitation that he did suffer all those things which either were beseeming him or behooful for us all kinde of punishments whatsoever which did neitherâ— prejudice that plenitude of sanctity or science which was vested in him For further clearing of which point we must distinguish with the Schoolmen of three sorts of punishments whereof the first is called culpa which is plainly sin as when God punisheth one sin with another as the proud with envy the covetous man sometimes with miserable parsimony sometimes with ambition the second is ex culpa ad culpam something proceeding from sin and inducing to it as natural concupiscence an inclination to do evill a contrariety in the faculties of the soul c. The third is ex culpa sed nec culpa nec ad culpam as they phrase it that is to say that which proceeds from sin but neither is sin in it self nor doth incline him unto sin in whom it is As hunger thirst weakness and death it self which are the consequents of sin since the sin of Adam Of this sort only are the punishments which our Saviour suffered and they are likewise of two sorts for they are either suffered for sin imputed or for sin inherent a man being sometimes punished for his own offences and sometimes for anothers fault imputed to him He that is punished for his own faults hath remorse of conscience condemning himself of drawing such guilt upon his soul and with that guilt such miseries both on soul and body but he that suffereth for the fault of another man of which he is no cause at all either by perswasion help consent or example hath no such remorse Now our Redeemer suffered for the sins of other men and not for any of his own and consequently was not touched with remorse of conscience though it be generally found in all men at one time or another and be neither sin nor inducement to sin Lastly these punishments which are punishments only and not sin such as are common to the whole nature of man and suffered for the faults of another man are of two sorts also either the punishments of sin eternally remaining in stain or guilt or ceasing at the least broken off
Roman Emperours who though they ruled the people by the advice of the Senate yet ruled the Senate as they pleased and made the intimation of their own will and pleasure to pass as currant as Law Quod Principi placuerit Legis habet valorem saith the book of Institutes And such almost is the conclusion of those Royal Edicts which daily is set out by the French Kings which generally ends with these formal words Car tel est nostre plaisir for such is our pleasure But this in these and other Princes of the like authority is rather a character of power then a Rule of justice the Rule of justice being to be straight and even and always constant to it self not alterable on occasions or turned aside by passions and humane affections The will of God is subject to no such vicissitudes to such turns and changes as the wils of men but an unalterable and most constant rule without variation such as the rule of equal and impartial justice is of right to be And by this rule it is that the Lord proceedeth in executing justice over all the World Which justice either doth consist in the performance of his promises for even a just and righteous man is as good as his word and then it may be called veracitas and is a species or kinde of Commutative justice or else in punishing or rewarding the sons of men according to the exigence of their several works and then it hath the name of distributiva or distributive justice That part thereof which doth consist in the performance of his promises and is called Veracitas may be defined to be a constant and unalterable purpose in Almighty God of bringing every thing to pass which he hath either promised to the sons of men or spoke concerning them by his holy Prophets which have been since the World began In the first sense it is said so often of him in the holy Scipture that he remembred the Covenant made with Abraham Isaac and Iacob performing to their seed and their children after them whatsoever he was pleased to promise more generally by the Royal Psalmist Custodit veritatem in seculum that he keepeth his promise for ever Psal. 146.6 And in the other sense it was said unto the Virgin Mary by her Cousin Elizabeth that there should be a performance of all those things which had been told her by the Lord Luk. 1.45 by the Apostle that all the Promises of God in Christ Jesus are yea and Amen 2 Cor. 1.20 by CHRIST himself that Heaven and earth should pass away but that there was not one Iod or title in the Word of God which in due time should not be accomplished If it consist in punishing the impenitent sinner or chastising his own dear children for their wilful follies we then call it punitive and so it comes within the compass of Gods heavenly anger which as St. Augustine doth define it non aliud est quam voluntas puniendi is nothing but the will of God to punish such as do offend against his Commandements If in rewarding those who conform themselves as far as humane frailty will permit to his laws and precepts it is called Remunerative and hath a great admixture in it both of love and mercy in passing by our faults to reward our faith that saying of St. Bernard being always true Semper invenies Deum benigniorem quam te culpabilem Nay even his anger or his punitive justice is so mixt with goodness that in the midst of judgement he remembreth mercy and dealeth not so extremely with us as we have deserved it being as true which I finde noted by Nicephorus Deum vindictae gladium oleo misericordiae semper acuere that God doth always scour the sword of his vengeance with the oyl of his mercy The World had been reduced by this time to its former nothing had not he sweetned the severity of his judgements by the balm of his mercies and grown into a Wilderness or vast confusion had he not held in by his Iustice the exorbitant power of those who make their lusts and their wils a Law And certainly if we consult the Monuments and Records of former times we shall finde no Age nor State of men or Nations which do not give us evident and plain examples of Gods proccedings in this kinde when the necessities of his Church or the sins of men do require it of him The subtle tyrannie of the Egyptians had not only taught them to oppress Gods people for the present but to extinguish the whole race of them for the time to come and therefore a command was given to the Midwives of Egypt to murder all the Male Children which were born to Israel Did not God scourge them with their own rod and pay them in their own coin as we use to say when he slew all the first-born in the land of Egypt And possibly the piety compassion of the Midwives of Egypt in sparing many of the Male children whom they might have murdered occasioned God to lay the fury of his vengeance on the first-born Male not on any of the Females throughout the Countrey When David surfeiting on plenty and the sweets of power not only had defiled the wife but destroyed the husband how fitly did God square the punishment unto the offence For presently a violent mixture of rape and incest is committed by one of his own sons on his daughter Tamar that rape revenged not long after in the death of the Ravisher the Murderer getting in short time such a potent party as to drive his Father out of Hierusalem and to defile his Wives and Concubines in the fight of the people When David was restored to his Crown again and growing vain in conceit of his own great power must needs command a general muster to be made of all his subjects that all the World might see of what strength he was and stand in fear of his displeasure how justly did God punish him and take down his pride in cutting off so many thousands of his people in whose strength he trusted and bringing him to this confession that all his strength and power was from God alone The loss of so many of his subjects was a loss to David the glory of a King consisting in the multitude of his subjects as the Wise-man tels us And though David interceded for them and took all the fault upon himself saying in the affliction of a troubled soul At oves istae quid fecerunt what had those sheep done yet was there none at all of that seventy thousand who had not many ways offended against Gods Commandements and therefore had deserved death as the wages of sin How patiently did God bear with the house of Iudah in their Idolatries and apostasie from his Laws and Precepts how frequently did he command them to rely on him in all times of danger By consequence how justly did
hath it that if he would he might continue in Gods grace and favour and attain all the blessedness which he could desire or otherwise might fall from both and so deprive himself of that sweet contentment which is not any where to be found but in God alone A greater liberty then this he had not given unto the Angels a more glorious creature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Iustin Martyr And he as some of them before abused this liberty so given to his own destruction For being placed by God in the garden of Eden in Paradiso voluptatis as the vulgar reades it he had free power to eat of every tree but one in that glorious place and that tree only interdicted that God might have some tryall of his free obedience the interdiction being seconded with this commination that whensoever he did eat of it he should surely die What lesse could God have laid upon him unlesse he had discharged him of all obedience to his will and pleasure and left him independent of his supreme Power Father said the wise servant unto Naaman if the Prophet had commanded thee a great thing wouldst thou not have done it how much more then when all he saith unto thee is no more then this that thou shouldest wash and be clean Had God commanded Adam some impossible matter he might have been excused from the undertaking because it was a matter of impossibility Or had God bound him to the fruit of one tree alone and debarred him from the tast of all the rest he might have had some more excusable pretence for his flying out and giving satisfaction to a straitned appetite But the commandement being small makes his fault the greater the easiness of the one much aggravating the offence of the other For so it was that either out of unbelief as if God did not mean to sue him for so small a trespasse or that he had a proud ambition to be like to God or yeelded to the lusts of intemperate appetite or that he was not willing to offend his wife by whom he was invited to that deadly banquet he took the forbidden fruit into his mouth and greedily devoured his own destruction and so destroyed himself and his race for ever Not himselfe only but his race even his whole posterity For being the root and stock of mankinde in general which is descended from the loynes of this wretched man what he received of God in his first creation he received both for himself and them who descended from him and what he lost he lost like an unthrifty Father for the childe unborn And as the Scriptures say of Levi that he payed tithes in Abraham to Melchisedech because he was in the loynes of his father Abraham when Melchisedech met him so may we say of the posterity of this prodigal father that they were all undone by his great unthriftiness because they were all of them in his loynes when he lost Gods favour when he drew sin upon them all and consequently death the just wages of it And so saith Gregory Nazianzen surnamed the Divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. We were so made saith he that we might be happy and such we were being made when first placed in Paradise in which we might have had the fruition of all kinds of happiness but forfeited the same by our own transgression If any aske St. Augustine makes the question and the answer too what death God threatned unto man on his disobedience whether the death of the body or of the soul or of the wholeman which is called the second death we must answer All For if saith he we understand that death only by which the soul is forsaken of God surely in that all other kinde of deaths were meant which without question were to follow For in that a disobedient motion rose in the flesh for which they covered their privy parts one death was perceived in which God did forsake the soul. And when the soul forsook the body now corrupted with time and wasted by the decaies of age another death was found by experience to ensue upon it that by these two deaths that first death of the whole man might be accomplished which the second death at last doth follow except Man be delivered by the grace of God And by the grace of God was poor man delivered from this body of death For as there is no deep valley but near so me high hill so near this vale of misery this valley of the shadow of death as the Psalmist calleth it was an hill of mercy a remedy proposed in the promised seed to Adam and the sons of Adam if with unfained faith they lay hold upon it God looketh upon them all at once in that wofull plight and when he saw them in their bloud had compassion on them and out of his meer love and mercy without other motives offered them all deliverance in a Mediator in the man CHRIST IESVS and that too on conditions far more easie then that of workes the condition and reward being this in brief that whosoever did believe in him should not perish but have life everlasting And this I take to be the method of Election unto life eternal through CHRIST IESVS our Lord. For although there be neither Prius or Posterius in the will of God who sees all things at once together and willeth at the first sight without more delay yet to apply his acts unto our capacities as were the acts of God in their right production so were they primitively in his intention But Creation without peradventure did foregoe the fall and the disease or death which ensued upon it was of necessity to be before there could a course be taken to prescribe the cure and the prescribing of the cure must first be finished before it could be fitted to particular persons And for the Fall which was the medium as it were between life and death the great occasion of mans misery and Gods infinite mercy God neither did decree it as a meanes or method of which he might make use to set forth his power in the immortal misery of a mortal creature nor did he so much as permit it in the strict sense of the word in which it differeth little from a plain command Quam longe quaeso est a jubente permittens How little differeth permitting from commanding saith devout Salvian considering he that which doth permit having power to hinder is guilty of the evill which doth follow on it God did not then permit the fall of unwary man as Moses did permit the Israelites a bill of divorce which manner of permission carryeth an allowance with it or a toleration at the least but so permit it only as the father in our Saviours parable permitted his younger Son to see strange Countries and having furnished him with a stock on which to traffick suffered him to depart and make up his fortunes whether good
immaculate conception Ann. 1476. But for the further glory of it confirming a new festival on the 8 of December which in honour of her said conception the Canons of the Church of Lions had of late begun After when as the doctrine of original sin was agitated and debated in the Councell of Trent this Controversie was as hotly followed as if the Pope had never determined it Nor would the Councell bring it unto any conclusion for fear of giving offence to the side condemned and therefore very warily did so state the point as neither to exempt the Virgin from original sin nor include her under the obnoxiousness and guilt thereof Declarat Synodus non sibi esse propositum decreto hoc they mean the Canons which they made touching that particular B. Virginem comprehendere For my part I am loth to rob this most happy instrument of our Redemption of any priviledge or exemption whatsoever it be which may consist with the analogy of faith and the texts of Scripture But when I finde in holy Scripture that CHRIST came into the world to save sinners and that the Virgin did rejoyce in God her Saviour either I must conclude that she was a sinner if guilty only of original sin it shall serve my turn or else that she needed not a Saviour And when I read it in Nicephorus that she dyed in the 59. year of her age and was attended to her grave by all the Apostles met together not by chance but miracle I cannot but conclude her under the Law of sin or else she had not been subject to the stroke of death which is the wages of sin as St. Paul hath told us No Saviour if no sinner if no sin no death It must be either both or none there 's no question of it But it is easie to discern what this tends unto I mean the great care taken by the Church of Rome to free this blessed woman from all manner of sin and humane infirmitie Their meaning is to seat her in the throne of heaven and place her in the Mediatorship between God and man whereof she were not capable if she were a sinner By what degrees they came at last unto this height is not hard to shew They went it seemes on that old Philosophicall maxime that the way to make straight a crooked stick was to bend it quite the other way This way was followed first on mistaken zeal and afterwards pursued upon worldly prudence Helvidius and those other Hereticks before remembred would not allow her just attribute the Virgin Mary affirming with an high hand of impudence eam post Christum natum viro suo fuisse commixtam that after our Redeemers birth she was known by Ioseph This was encountred presently with another extreme the writers of the following times not only making her a Virgin in all mentall purity but in corporal integrity also contrary to the judgment of Tertullian Ambrose Hierom before remembred and generally of the Greek Fathers hardly one excepted the Schoolmen thereupon devising this trim distinction to reconcile those antients to their new opinion that Christ was brought into the world non fractione aliqua membrorum sed dilatatione meatuum The Antidicomaritani an old brood of Hereticks devested her as their name imports of all manner of righteousness making her not more holy then another woman And on the other side the Collyridians in dislike of this peevish humour placed her above the reach of nature afforded her divine honours a dressing up a foure square Chariot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as my Authour cals it did thereon sacrifice unto her as an heavenly Deity The Schoolmen treading in the steps of these Collyridians and having little else to do then to broach new fancies first freed her from all mortal then from venial sins from actual first and after from original also And this the Champions of that Church have more hotly followed because the Magdeburgians and some other of the Protestant Doctors have made a muster of many crimes infirmities they might have called them had they been so pleased with which they do as hotly charge her Nestorius once Patriarch of Constantinople though he allowed her the title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Mother of Christ would not allowe her to be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Mother of God and t is an expression I confesse which at the first hearing doth not sound so handsomely In opposition unto whom Cyrill of Alexandria and the rest of the Prelates at that time having condemned his doctrine of the two natures in Christ in the third General Councel did heap upon her all those Attributes which might manifest their dislike of him and his cause together Insomuch as Cyril doth not stick to call her in these early dayes pretiosum totius orbis thesaurum i. e. the most precious treasure of the world a lampe which cannot be put out the crown of Chastity the very scepter of true doctrine sceptrum verae doctrinae and not the scepter of the Catholick faith as our Rhemists read it And so far there was no harm done as long as those of Rome would contain themselves within the bounds prescribed by the antient Fathers whose pious flourishes devout meditations and Rhetoricall Apostrophe's aimed at nothing else then the commemoration of her faith and piety But let us look on the extravagancies of the writers of succeeding times and we shall finde that Anselm giveth this reason why Christ when ascended left his Mother here Ne curiae coelesti veniret in dubium c. lest else the Court of heaven should have been distracted whom they should first goe out to meet their Lord or their Lady That Bernardin Senensis doth not stick to say Mariam plura fecisse Deo quam fecit Deus toti generi humano that she did more to Christ in being his Mother then Christ to all mankinde in being their Saviour That Gabriel Biel a Schoolman of good name and credit hath shared the government of the world betwixt God and her God keeping Iustice to himself Misericordia Virgini concessa and left to her the free dispensing of his Mercies That Petrus Damianus tels us that when she mediates with her Son for any of her special votaries Non rogat ut Ancilla sed imperat ut Domina she begs not of him as a handmaid but commands as a Mistresse that Bonaventure in composing our Ladies Psalter hath applyed to her whatever was intended by the holy Ghost to the advancement of the honour of her Lord and Saviour that she is called frequently in their publick Rituals Mater misericordiae Mater gratiae Regina coeli with other the like glorious title which she dares not own that in the vulgar translation made Authentick by the Councell of Trent in stead of He shall break thy head which relates to Christ they read it Ipsa
conteret caput tuam she shall break thy head which many of their Commentators do refer to her that Bellarmine maketh at all no difference betwixt the Veneration which is due to her and that which doth belong unto Christ as man and finally that the vulgar sort in point of practise for needes such practise must ensue on such desperate doctrines do use to say so many Ave Maries for one single Pater noster hear day by day so many masses of our Ladies and not one of Christs adorn her images with all cost and cunning which mans wit can reach whilest his poor Statues stand neglected as not worth the looking after Wonder it is they have not practised on the Creed aud told us how the Apostles had mistook the matter when they drew it up and that it was not Jesus Christ but the Virgin Mary that suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucifyed dead and buryed for the sins of man Such are and such have been the most known repugnancies which have found entertainment in the Christian world touching the Priviledges and Prierogatives of this blessed woman Between these two extremes is the vertue placed which I perswade my self hath been most happily preserved in the Church of England retaining still two annual feasts instituted in the best times to her name and memory We gladly give her all the honour which is due unto her account her for the most blessed of all women a choice and most selected Temple of the holy Ghost and happiest instrument of mans good which hath descended simply from the loynes of Adam but dare not give her divine honour by erecting Altars to her service going in pilgrimage to her shrines or powring forth our prayers unto her Finally we resolve with Epiphanius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Let the blessed Virgin be had in reverence but God only worshipped let her possesse principal place in our good opinions so she have none in our devotions But it is time to leave the Mother and return again unto the Son Now that which in this Article is expressed by the present words Natus ex Virgine Maria that is to say born of the Virgin Mary in that of Nice is thus delivered and was made man Some Hereticks had formerly called this truth in question affirming that our Saviours body was not true and real but only an ayery and imaginary body as did the Marcionites others that he received not his humane being of the Virgin Mary but brought his body from the heavens and only passed thorow her womb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as thorow a Conduit pipe as Valentinian as if our blessed Lord and Saviour had only borrowed for a time the shape of man therâ—in to act his woful tragedy on the publick Theatre of the world and made the Virgins womb his trying house And some again there were who did conceive his body to be free from passion maintaining that it was impassibilis and that he was not subject to those natural frailties and infirmities which are incident to the Sons of men by the ordinary course of nature To meet with these and other Hereticks of this kind the Fathers in the Nicene Councel expressed our Saviours being born of the Virgin Mary which every Heretick had wrested to his proper sense in words which might more fully signifie the truth and reality of his taking of our flesh upon him in words which were not capable of so many evasions declaring thus that being incarnate by the holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary factus est homo he was made man and consequently was made subject unto those infirmities which are inseparably annexed to our humane nature This that which positively is affirmed by the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews where it is said that we have not such an high Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin The high Priest which God gave us in the time of the Gospel was to be such as those he gave unto his people in the time of the Law one who could have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way for that he himself is compassed also with infirmities The difference only stood in this that our Saviours passions and infirmities were free from sin and neither did proceed from sin or incline him to it as do the passions and infirmities of men meerly natural which is the meaning of St. Paul in the place aforesaid where he affirmeth of our high Priest that he was tempted that is to say afflicted tryed and proved in all things like as we are save only that it was without sin or sinful motions And to this truth the Catholick Doctors of the Church do attest unanimously St. Ambrose thus CHRIST saith he took upon him not the shew but the truth and reality of the flesh what then Debuit ergo et dolorem suscipere ut vinceret tristitiam non excluderet he therefore was to have a sense of humane sorrowes that he might overcome them not exclude them only Fulgentius goes to work more plainly Nunc oftendendum est saith he c. Now must we shew that the passions of grief sorrow fear c. do properly pertain unto the soul and that our Saviour did endure them all in his humane soul ut veram totamâ— in se cum suis infirmitatibus hominis demonstraret suscepti substantiam that he might shew in himself the true and whole substance of man accompanied with its infirmities The fathers of the Greek Church do affirme the same When thon hearest saith Cyril that Christ wept feared and sorrowed acknowledge him to be a true man and ascribe these things to the nature of man for Christ took a mortal body subject to all the passions of nature sin alwayes excepted Which when he had affirmed in thesi he doth thus infer Et ita singulas passiones carnis c. Thus shalt thou finde all the passions or affections of the flesh to be stirred in Christ but without sin that being so stirred up they might be repressed and our nature reformed to the better But none of all the Antients state the point more clearly then Iohn Damascene in his 3. book De fide orthodoxa where he tels us this We confesse saith he that Christ did take unto him all natural and blamelesse passions for he assumed the whole man and all that pertained to man save sin Natural and blamelesse passions are those which are not properly in our power and whatsoever entred into mans life through the occasion of Adams sin as hunger thirst weaknesse labour weeping shunning of death fear agony whence came sweat with drops of bloud These things are in all men by nature and therefore Christ took all these to him that he might sanctifie them all With this agreeth the distinction of the latter Schoolmen who divide the
to have a speciall place in this short compendium this abstract of the Christian faith of our whole religion and that it had not been enough to have expressed his being crucifyed dead and buryed unlesse his sufferings under Pontius Pilate had been mentioned also Of which three points viz. his crucifying death and burial being the consummation of his sufferings and the last acts of his humiliation for the accomplishing of mans Redemption we are next to speak ARTICVLI 5. Pars 2da 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Crucifixus mortuus sepultus i. e. Was crucified dead and buryed CHAP. VII Of the Crucifying death and burial of the Lord JESUS CHRIST with Disquisition of all particulars incident thereunto HItherto have we spoken of those afflictions which our Redeemer suffered under Pontius Pilate in his soul and body precedent to his Crucifixion We are now come to speak of those which he suffered on the Cross it self together with his death and burial being the last acts of his Humiliation for being dead and buryed once he could fall no lower But being his death upon the Cross was that only all-sufficient Sacrifice made for the satisfaction of Gods justice and the redemption of all mankinde from the powers of darkness typified in so many acts and figures of the Old Testament whereof some relate unto his death and others to the manner of it I shall first speak a word or two of those rites and sacrifices and other figures which might or did relate in Gods secret purpose to the coming of the promised Seed and all the benefits redounding to the world by his death and passion First for those types which might fore-signifie and represent the Messiahs death they did consist especially in those legal sacrifices which God himself had instituted in the Iewish Church for the expiation of the sins of that people and their reconciliation to their God yet so that even before the law there wanted not a type and figure of it every way as proportionable to the substance signified as any of the Legal and commanded sacrifices No sooner had God raised up seed to Adam thereby to give him hopes of the accomplishment of his deliverance and redemption by the seed of the woman but he was taught to represent the same in a solemn sacrifice assoon at least as his sons were come to age to assist him in it And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruits of the ground an offering to the Lord and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flocks and the fat thereof An offering from the hands of Cain to shew that even the wicked owe an homage to the Lord God Almighty from whose hands they receive all their temporal blessings and therefore were to pay back something in the way of a quit-rent or acknowledgment Donis suis honorandus est ipse qui dedit as Rupertus hath it A Sacrifice from the hands of Abel of righteous Abel as our Saviour did vouchsafe to call him who not long after was made a Sacrifice himself by his wicked brother As if the Lord intended in this double sacrifice to represent the death and passion of his Son Christ Iesus in that of Abel by his brother the bloudy and most barbarous fact of the wretched Iews upon their countryman their brother of the house of Iacob in that of Abels lamb the sacrifice of the Lamb of God slain from the beginning of the world as the Apostle in the Revelation Now for the Legal sacrifices prescribed the Iews and those which had been offered by Gods faithful servants before the giving of the Law they do so far agree in one as to be comprised in the same general definition For generally a sacrifice may be defined to be the offering of a creature to Almighty God by the hands of a lawful Minister to be spent or consumed in his service Which definition I desire the Reader to take notice of because we shall relate unto it when we come to speak of the Christian sacrifice or the Commemoration of this sacrifice in the Church of Christ. Bellarmine in more words saith no more then this His words be these Sacrificium est externa oblatio soli deo facta qua per Legitimum ministrum creatura aliqua sensibilis permaneâ—s ad agnitionem Divinae Majestatis infirmitatis humanae ritu mystico consecratur transmutatur Only the last word transmutatur was put in of purpose to countenance the change or transubstantiation of the outward Elements into the natural body and bloud of Câ—rist which notwithstanding he is fain after to expound by the word destruitur i. e. consumed or destroyed to make his Mass as true as proper and as real a Sacrifice of Christ our Saviour on the Altar as that which he himself once offered on the accursed Cross. But all the Sacrifices of Gods people before the Law were principally if not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as were offered unto God by way of thankefulness and due acknowledgement for all his benefits conferred on their souls and bodies Of which kinde also were the peace-offerings Levit. 3. v. 1. the sacrifice of thanksgiving Levit. 7.12 and the free-wil offering vers 16. in use amongst the Iews when the Law was given in celebrating which they were left at liberty to offer either male or female as they would themselves God giving his increase of their flocks and herds by both the sexes male and female and pouring on both sexes man and woman both temporal and spiritual blessings Under the law the case was otherwise For then besides the Eucharistical sacrifices before remembred which for the substance and intent were before in use amongst their Ancestors the holy Patriarchs though not accompanied with so many ceremonies they had sacrifices of another kindâ— which they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say expiatory or propitiatory for the taking away of their sins In which as they did signifie by the death of the beast the wages due to their iniquities for the wages of sin is death saith the great Apostle so by the shedding of his bloud did God please to intimate that they should have the pardon and forgiveness of their sins and acceptation of their service by the bloud of Christ. These then and only these were Typi venturae victimae the types and shadows of that great and perfect Sacrifice which Christ our Saviour was to offer for the sins of mankinde and were called expiatorie and propitiatorie non proprie sed relative not properly and in themselves as if there were in them any power or vertue either to expiate our offences or be a Propitiation for our sins for the bloud of Buls and Goats cannot take away sins saith the same Apostle but relatively in relation to the Ordinance of Almighty God by whom they had been instituted to that end and purpose as Baptism after was in the Church
of them in their severall Commentaries on the text saying the same thing though in divers words And finally it is so interpreted by St. Augustine also Nec frustra fortasse non satis fuit ut diceret mors aut infernus sed utrumque dictum est c. that is to say Nor happily without cause did he not think it enough to say that death or hell divisively had cast up their dead but he nameth both death for the just who might only suffer death and not also hell hell for the wicked and unrighteous who were there to be punished Thus have we looked over all those places where the word Hades doth occurre in the new Testament except that one which is in question whereof more anon and finde it constantly both englished and interpreted by that of hell according as we commonly understand the word for the place of torments T is true the word admits of other notions amongst some Greek Authors But that makes nothing to us Christians who are to use it in that sense in which it is presented to us in the book of God interpreted and expounded by the Antient Fathers and the tradition of the Church For though the sacred Penmen of the new Testament writing in Greek were of necessity to use such words as they found ready to their hands yet they restrained them many times to some certain and particular meaning which they retain unto this day as words of Ecclesiastical use and signification Of this kinde are Ecclesia Evangelium Episcopus Presbyter Diaconus Martyr and the like which being words of a more general signification in their first original are now restrained to such particular notions as the first Preachers of the Gospel thought most fit to reserve them for Of this kind also is Diabolus which properly and originally did signifie no more then an Accuser but is now used by all writers both in Greek and Latine to denote the Devil And of this kind is Hades also which whatsoever it might signifie in some old Greek writers more then the Place or Region of hell or the Prince thereof is now restrained in general speech to signifie only hell it self or the house of torments the habitation of the Devill and his Angels But this we shall the better see by taking a short view of the use and signification of the word amongst the best and most approved of the old Greek Ecclesiastical writers And first Iosephus though no Christian yet one that very well understood the difference between heaven and hell telleth us of those whose souls were cleansed and favoured of God that they inhabit in the holiest places of heaven but that they whose hands wax mad against themselves or who laid hands upon themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their soules were to be received in the dark vaults of hell or Hades Theophilus the sixt B. of Antioch about 170. years after Christ citeth this verse out of the works of the Sibyls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they sacrificed to the Devils in hell or Hades In the same times lived Iustin Martyr who doth thus informe us After the soul saith he is departed from the body straightwayes there is a separation of the unjust from the just both being carryed by the Angels into places meet for them that is to say the souls of the just into Paradise where is the fellowship and sight of Angels and Arch-angels with a kind of beholding of Christ our Saviour 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the souls of the unjust to places in hell or Hades of which it was said in Scripture unto Nebuchadnezzar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Hades below was stirred to meet him Isa. 14. And to this purpose he both citeth and alloweth those words of Plato where he affirmes that when death draweth near to any man then tales are told 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the things in Hades how he that here doth deal unjustly shall there be punished c. Next him Eusebius speaks thus in the person of Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. I see my descent to hell or Hades approach and the rebellion against me of the contrary powers which are enemies to God And that we may be sure to know what he means by Hades he tels us out of Plato in another place that the souls of wicked men departing hence immediately after death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 endured the punishments of hell or Hades of their doings here After man was fallen saith Athanasius and by his fall death had prevailed from Adam to Christ the earth was accursed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hell or Hades opened Paradise shut up and heaven offended but after all things were delivered by Christ the earth received a blessing Paradise was opened 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hades or hell did shrink for fear and heaven set open to all believers And in another place he speaketh of two severall mansions provided by Almighty God for the wicked man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the grave and Hades whereof one is to receive his body and the other his soul. St. Basil thus Death is not altogether evill except you speak of the death of a sinner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. because that their departure hence is the beginning of their punishments in hell or Hades and besides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the evils which are in hell or Hades have not God for their cause but our selves c. And after shewing that Dathan and Abiram were swallowed up of the earth he addes that they were never a whit the better for this kind of punishment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for how could they be so that went down to Hades or hell but they made the rest wiser by their example Infinite more might be alleaged from the Fathers of the Eastern Church to shew that when they spake of Hades they meant nothing but hell and should be here produced were not these sufficient Only I shall make bold to add the evidence of two or three of the most eminent of the latter writers to shew that in all times and ages the word retained that notion only which had been given it in the Scriptures and the old Greek Fathers Thus then Cydonius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that there is in Hades hell vengeance for all sinnes committed not only the consent of all wise men but the equity of the divine justice doth most fully prove Aeneas Gazaeus he comes next and he tels us this that he who in a private life committeth smal sins and laments them escapeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the punishments that are in Hades And finally Gregentius thus Christ took a rod out of the earth viz. his precious Crosse and stretching forth his hand struck all his enemies therewith and conquered them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that is to say Hades or hell death sin and that subtile serpent So
resurrection of our Lord and Saviour there came a signall benefit unto all the world which else had been fast bound for ever in the bonds of death without any hope of rising to a better life For being risen in our nature then our nature is riâ—en and if our nature be then our persons may be especially considering that he and we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Paul hath told us so graffed into one another that he is part of us and we part of him And therefore very well said Bernard Resurrexit solus sed non totus Though he be only risen by his own proper power yet as yet he is not risen wholly nor will be untill we be raised together with him He is but risen in part by this resurrection and that he may rise all of him he must raise t is also In this respect our Saviour is entituled Primogenitus omnis Creaturae the first born or first begotten of every creature viz. first in the order of time he being the first that was ever raised from death unto life immortall and first also in the order of causality all others which have been or shall be raised or begotten to immortall life being so raised and begotten by vertue of his resurrection And in the same respect he is called Primitiae dormientium or the first fruits of them that sleep because his rising is not only the pledge and earnest of our rising also but that we shall be raised to the same state of happinesse and eternall glory which he hath attained since his rising The offering of the first fruits drew a blessing upon all the rest For if the first fruits be holy the lumpe saith the Apostle is also holy If then the first fruits of the dead be offered to Almighty God in Christ our Saviour no question but the after-fruits or the whole increase will be very acceptable and laid up in the barn of that heavenly husbandman according to the scope of our Saviours Parable And yet perhaps St. Paul might have a further aime in calling our Saviour the first-fruits of them that sleep then hath yet been spoke of it hapning so by the sweet disposition of Gods special providence that the day of his glorious resurrection did fall that year upon the second day of the feast of unleavened bread or the morrow after the Sabbath of that great solemnity upon which day the first-fruits were to be offered unto God by his own appointment Of which see Levit. 23.10 11. Here then we have the principall effect and fruit of Christs resurrection the resurrection of our own bodies from the power of death the resurrection both of soul and body to eternall life And yet there are some other intermediate benefits which redound to us some other motives and inducements which relate to him For his part first had he not risen from the dead he had still lain under the guilt of that imposture wherewith the Priests and Elders charged him when he was interred And who would then have preached his Gospel or embraced his doctrine or yeelded belief to any thing he had said before For if Christ be not risen from the dead again as St. Paul reasoneth very strongly then were our faith in vain and their preaching vain Had he not risen from the dead and manifested it by such signes and wonders he never had attained to the reputation of being generally accounted and believed in for the Son of God or such a God at best who doth die like men and fall like others of the Princes some earthly Magistrate at the most and no great one neither Nor was it necessary to his glory only but to our justification For how could we assure our selves of salvation by him or of redemption in his bloud had he been swallowed up in death and not appeared alive again for our consolation Manens in morte peccata non expiasset mortem non vicisset as the Father hath it and then how could we hope to be saved by him qui se ipsum servare non potuit who was not of ability to save himself How could we Christians of all men most miserable be possibly assured of this saving truth that Christ was delivered for our sins if he had not risen again for our justification that is to say if by his rising from the dead he had not setled and confirmed us in that assurance The reason is because the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour was as it were his actual absolution from those sins of ours for the which he dyed and his deliverance from that death which as the wages of sin we had all deserved Calvin hath very Orthodoxly resolved it so Resuscitatio Christi a mortuis ejus est actualis absolutio a peccatis nostris pro quibus mortuus est as he there determineth And he determineth it according unto that of the great Apostle saying if Christ be not risen your faith is vain yee are yet in your sins that is to say still under the command and the guilt of sin from which you have no other assurance to be absolved and quitted in the day of judgment then only by the vertue of his resurrection How wretched then is the condition of the Iews and those other Hereticks who either utterly denie the resurrection as did Simon Magus and the Maniches or post it off as not yet past till some further time which was one of the heresies of Cerinthus or make it but an allegory no true reall action as do the Family of love Assuredly the least we can affirme of them and the like vile miscreans is that they have no inheritance in the house of Iesse nor any portion at all in the son of David that they who wilfully deny his resurrection shall never finde other resurrection but to shame and torment But on the contrary the Orthodox Professors in the Chrrstian Church not only have believed this Article and stood up in defence thereof to the last drop of their bloud as often as the Princes of the earth have conspired together against the Lord and his anointed but for the better imprinting of it in the souls of simple and unlearned people and for perpetuall commemoration of so great a mercy did institute the feast of Easter A festival of all others the most antient in the Christian Church ordained and celebrated in the purest ages of the same while some of the Apostles were yet living A feast received with so unanimous affection throughout the world that though some difference happened about the time when it should be celebrated yet there was never any question made of the feast it self All of them kept an Easter though not all at a time some of the Eastern Churches in compliance with the Iews amongst whom they lived keeping it on the 14. day of the Moon as the Iews did the Passeover â—ll other
not then be cheated by this new distinction that Kings are Gods Vice-roys but not Iesus Christs though the distinction be much hugged by our great Novators Who intend nothing else thereby but to throw down Crowns and lay them at the foot of their Presbyteries and to set up instead of the Regal power their own dear Tribunal a Soveraignty in all causes Ecclesiastical to over-rule it first and extirpe it afterwards as the right learned Bishop of Kell-Alla very well observeth In these ways and by these several means and subordinate Ministers doth Christ administer the Kingdome committed to him And this he doth continually sitting at the right hand of God the Father and there to sit untill his enemies be made his footstool This David did fore-see by the spirit of Prophecy The Lord saith he said unto my Lord i. e. the Lord God almighty said to my Lord CHRIST IESVS Sit thou on my right hand untill thy enemies be made thy footstool This the Apostle also verifieth and affirms of Christ. But this man after he had offered one Sacrifice for sins is set down for ever on the right hand of God from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool And this he also telleth us in another place saying of Christ that he must reign till he shall have put all his enemies under his feet Till then his Kingdome is to last and till that time he is to sit at the right hand of God in all power and Majesty If it be asked when that will be that all his enemies shall be subdued and subject to him we answer at the end of this present world when there is no enemie left to be destroyed Now the last enemie which is to be destroyed is death saith the same Apostle And thereupon we may inferre that while death reigneth in opposition to the Lord of life and sin in a defiance to the Lord of righteousness that hitherto we have not seen all things put under him and therefore must expect yet a little longer before he shall deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father But then indeed when Death is utterly destroyed and all the Saints admitted to the glories of eternal life when all things are subdued unto him then also shall the Son himself be made subject to him that did put all things under him that is God the Father Then when he hath put down all rule and all authority and power then cometh the end and then he shall deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father that God may be all in all This is the summe of St. Pauls argument in that point In which there being many things not easie to be understood I shall not think my time ill spent to make a short Paraphrase and discourse upon it that so we may perceive more fully the Apostles meaning And first he saith that CHRIST must reign till he hath put all things under his feet that being one of the especial parts of the Kingly function as before was shewn to save and defend his Church from the hands of her enemies and for the enemies themselves to crush them with a Scepter of iron and break them in pieces like a Potters vessel When this is done when he hath trodden under foot all his mortal enemies the persecutors of his Church false Prophets false Apostles and the great Antichrist himself which labour to seduce even the very Elect when he hath subjugated the powers of Hell and that sin hath no more dominion over us yet we shall still lie under the power of death untill the last and general Resurrection Death therefore is the last enemie to be destroyed that being delivered from his thraldome raised from the grave which is his prison and all those bonds and fetters broken by which we were held captive under his command we may be made partakers of eternal life and reign with Christ for ever in his heavenly glories When that time cometh when there are neither enemies from which to protect his Church nor any Church to be instructed in the wayes of godliness according to the Nomothetical part of the Regal Office then cometh the end the end of all things in this world which shall be no more the end of Christs Kingdome as the Mediator between God and man man having by the power of his mediation attained the end of his desires the guerdon and reward of his faith and piety This being done the rule of Satan and the authority of sin and the power of death being all broken and subdued he shall first raise our mortal bodies in despight of death pronounce the joyful sentence of absolution on them in despight of sin and finally advance them to that height of glory from which Satan fell to the confusion of the Devil and all his Angels And having so discharged the Office of a Mediator for executing which he sate at the right hand of God he shall deliver up unto God the Father the right and interest which he had in the Kingdome of Grace consisting in the building up of his Elect in faith hope and charity that they with him and he with them may reign forevermore in the Kingdome of glory Where there shall be no use of Faith for they shall see God face to face and faith is the existence of things not seen and less of hope for hope is the expectancy of things desired which being once obtained puts an end to hope Charity onely shall remain for that never ceaseth and therefore said to be the greatest of the three Theological vertues of which the Apostle there discourseth 1 Cor. 13.13 And so Primasius hath resolved it In this present life saith he there are three in the life to come onely the love of God and his Augels and of all the Saints That therefore is the greater which is alwayes necessary then that which once shall have an end The like St. Austin before him The greatest of all is charity because when every one shall come to eternal life the other two failing charity shall continue with increase and with greater certainty And finally before both thus St. Chrysostome and these three witnesses enough The greatest of these is Charity because they passe away but that continueth I must confess there is hardly a more difficult Text in all the Scripture then this of Christs delivering up the Kingdome unto God the Father nor which requires more care in the Exposition for fear of doing injurie unto God or Christ conceive me still of Christ in his humane nature For neither must we so understand the place as if God reigned not now at the present time nor was to reign at all untill this surrendry of the Kingdome by Christ our Saviour That were injurious to the power and Majesty of Almighty God by whom all things were made and by whom all made subject unto Christs command for he it is who did put all things
this blessed Spirit on the particular Members of his Congregation that is to say the joyning of the Saints together in an holy Communion the free remission of our sins in this present life resurrection of the body after death and the uniting again of Soul and Body unto life eternal This is the sum and method of the following Articles and these we shall pursue in their order beginning first with that of the Holy Ghost Whose gracious assistance I implore to guide me in the waies of Truth that so the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart may be alwayes acceptable in the sight of God the Lord my strength and my Redeemer But because the word or notion of the Holy Ghost is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word of various signification in the Book of God we will first look upon it in those significations and then conclude on that which is chiefly pertinent to the intent and purpose of the present Article For certainly the Orators Rule is both good and useful viz. Prius dividenda antequam definienda sit oratio That we must first distinguish of the Termes in all Propositions before we come unto a positive definition of them According to which Rule if we search the Scripture we shall there find that the Holy Ghost is first taken personaliter or essentialiter for the third person in the Oeconomie of the glorious Trinity We find him in this sense in the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour as the principal Agent in that Work The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee Luk. 1.35 And in his Baptism descending on him like a Dove to fit him and prepare him for the Prophetical Office he was then to exercise And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a Dove upon him Luk. 3.22 From which descent St. Peter telleth us that he was anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power and that from thenceforth he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed with the Devil In the next place the Holy Ghost is used in Scripture to signifie the Gifts and Graces of the holy Spirit as in Act. 2. where it is said of the Apostles that they were all filled with the holy Ghost ver 4. not with his essence or his person but with the impressions of the Spirit the Gifts and Graces of the Holy Ghost such as the Gift of Tongues mentioned in the following words The Gift of the Holy Ghost as it is called expresly Ver. 38. Thus read we also that the holy Ghost was given by the hands of Peter Act. 8.17 18. And by the hands of Paul Act. 19.6 In which we read that when Paul had laid his hands upon them the Holy Ghost came on them and they spoke with tongues and Prophesied which last words are a commentary upon those before and shew that by the holy Ghost which did come upon them is meant the Gift of Tongues and the power of Prophecying both which the holy Ghost then conferred upon them And lastly it is taken not onely for the ability of doing Miracles as speaking with strange Tongues Prophecying curing of Diseases and the like to these but for the Authority and Power which in the Church is given to some certain men to be Ministers of holy things to the rest of the people As when Christ breathed on his Apostles and said unto them Receive the holy Ghost that is to say Receive ye an holy and spiritual power over the soules of men a part whereof consisteth in the remitting and retaining of sins mentioned in the words next following and serving as a Comment to explaine the former In which respect the Holy Ghost said unto certain of the Elders in the Church of Antioch Segregate mihi Barnabam Saulum Separate unto me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them Act. 13.2 It is the Holy Ghost which cals it is his work to which they were called and therefore separate mihi separate to me may not unfitly be expounded to my Work and Ministery and consequently to the authority and power which belongs unto it Which being premised the meaning of the Article will in briefe be this That we beleeve not onely that there is such a person as the Holy Ghost in the Oeconomy of the blessed Trinity though that be principally intended but that he doth so distribute and dispose of his Gifts and Graces as most conduceth to the edification of the Church of Christ. But this I cannot couch in a clearer way as to the sense and doctrine of the Church of England than in the words of Bishop Iewel who doth thus expresse it Credimus spiritum sanctum qui est tertia persona in sacra Triadi illum verum esse Deum c. i. e. we beleeve that the Holy Ghost who is the Third Person in the holy Trinity is very God not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding both from the Father and the Son by an unspeakable means and unknowne to man and that it is his property to mollifie and soften mans heart when he is once received thereinto either by the wholesome Preaching of the Gospel or by any other way that he doth give men light and guide them to the knowledge of God to the wayes of truth to newnesse of life and to everlasting hope of salvation This being the sum of that which is to be beleeved of the Holy Ghost both for his Person and his Office we will first look upon his Person on his Property or Office afterwards And yet before we come unto his Person I mean his Nature and his Essence We will first look a little on the quid Nominis the name by which he is expressed in the Book of God In the Original he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with a double Article as Luk. 3.22 in Latine Spiritus sanctus or the Holy Spirit but generally in our English Idiom the Holy Ghost The Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comes from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth to breath and is the same with the Latine Spiro from whence comes Spiritus or the Spirit a name not given as I suppose because he doth proceed from the Father or the Son or both in the way of breathing though Christ be said to breath upon his Apostles when he said receive the Holy Ghost but because the breath being in it selfe an incorporeal substance and that which is the great preservative of all living creatures it got the name first of Spiritus vitae we read it in our English the breath of life Gen. 11.7 and afterwards came to be the name of all unbodyed incorporeal essences For thus is God said to be a Spirit God is a Spirit Ioh. 4.24 The Angels are called Ministring Spirits Heb. 1.14 the Soule of man is called his Spirit let us cleanse our selves saith the Apostle from all filthiness both of flesh and Spirit that is of the body and
by them retained are all the holy days and fasts observed in the Church of England kneeling at the Communion the Cross in Baptism a distinct kinde of habit for the Ministration and divers others which by retaining they declare to be free from sin but those men to be guilty both of sin and scandal who wilfully refuse to conform unto them The Bohemians in their Confession go as high as this Humanos ritus consuetudines quae nihil pietati adversantur in publicis conventibus servanda esse i. e. That all Rites and Customs of Humane or Ecclesiastical Institution which are not contrary unto Faith and Piety are still to be observed in the publick meetings of the Church And still say they we do retain many antient Ceremonies as prescribed Fasts Morning and Evening Prayer on all days of the week the Festivals of the Virgin Mary and the holy Apostles The Churches of the Zuinglian and Calvinian way as they have stript the Church of her antient Patrimony so have they utterly deprived her of her antient Customs not thinking their Religion plain enough till they left it naked nor themselves far enough from the pride of Rome till they had run away from all Primitive decency And yet the Switzers or Helvetian Churches which adhere to Zuinglius observe the Festivals of the Nativity Circumcision Passion Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord and Saviour as also of the coming of the Holy Ghost And those of the Genevian platform though they have utterly exploded all the antient Ceremonies under the colour of removing Popish Superstitions yet they like well enough of others of their own devising and therefore do reserve a power as appears by Calvin of setling orders in their Churches to which the people shall be bound for he calls them by the name of vincula quaedam to conform accordingly By which we see that there hath been a fault on both sides in the point of Ceremonies the Church of Rome enjoyning some and indeed too many Quae pietati adversantur which were repugnant to the rules of Faith and Piety and therefore not to be retained without manifest sin as the Augustane and Bohemian Confessions do expresly say and the Genevians either having none at all or such as altogether differ from the antient Forms Against these two extreams I shall set two Rules whereof the one is given in terminis by the Church of England the other by an eminent and renowned Member of it The Church declares her self in the point of Ceremonies but addes withal That it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to the Word of God That makes directly against those of the Church of Rome who have obtruded many Ceremonies on the Church of Christ plainly repugnant to the Word and therefore not to be observed without deadly sin The other Rule is given by our Learned Andrews and that relates to those of the opposite faction Every Church saith he hath power to begin a custom and that custom power to binde her own children to it Provided that is the Rule that her private customs do not affront the general received by others the general Rites and Ceremonies of the Catholick Church which binding all may not be set light by any And this he doth infer from a Rule in the Mathematicks that Totum est majus sua parte that the whole is more considerable than any part and from another Rule in the Morals also that it is Turpis pars omnis toti non congrua an ugly and deformed part which agrees not with the whole So than according to the judgment of this Learned Prelate the customs of particular Churches have a power of binding so they run not cross against the general First Binding in regard of the outward man who if he wilfully refuse to conform unto them must though unwillingly submit to such pains and penalties as by the same power are ordained for those who contemn her Ordinances And they are binding too in regard of Conscience not that it is simply and absolutely sinful not to yeeld obedience or that the Makers of those Laws and Ordinances can command the Conscience Non ex sola legislatoris voluntate sed ex ipsa legum utilitate as it is well resolved by Stapleton but because the things which they command are of such a nature that not to yeeld obedience to them may be contrary unto Justice Charity and the desire we ought to have of procuring the common good of all men amongst whom we live of which our Conscience would accuse us in the sight of God who hath commanded us to obey the Magistrates or Governors whom he hath set over us in things not plainly contrary to his written Word To bring this business to an end in points of Faith and Moral Duties in Doctrines publickly proposed as necessary in the way of Salvation we say as did St. Ierom in another case Non credimus quia non legimus We dare not give admittance to it or make it any part of our Creed because we see no warrant for it in the Book of God In matters of exterior Order in the Worship of God we say as did the Fathers in the Nicene Council 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let antient customs be of force and prevail amongst us though we have no ground for it in the Scripture but this general warrant That all things be done decently and in order as St. Paul advised They that offend on either hand and either bring into the Church new Doctrines or cast out of the Church her antient and approved Ceremonies do violate that Communion of Saints which they ought to cherish and neither correspond with those in the Church Triumphant nor such as are alive in the Churches Militant Of which Communion of the Saints I am next to speak according to the course and method of the present Creed ARTICLE X. Of the Tenth Article OF THE CREED Ascribed to St. SIMON ZELOTES 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Sanctorum Communionem Remissionem peccatorum i. e. The Communion of Saints The forgiveness of Sins CHAP. IV. Of the Communion which the Saints have with one another and with Christ their Head Communion of Affections inferreth not a community of Goods and Fortunes Prayers to the Saints and Adoration of their Images an ill result of this Communion NExt to the clause touching the nature and authority of the Catholick Church followeth in order a recital of the principal benefits which are conferred upon the Members of that Mystical Body Two in this life and two in that which is to come Those in this life are first that most delightful Fellowship and Communion which the Saints have with one another and with Christ their Head and secondly That forgiveness and remission of all their sins as well actual as original which Christ hath purchased for them by his death and passion and by the Ministery
us and his ear still open to our prayers which he hath both the will and the power to grant so far forth as he seeth it fitting and expedient for us He suffered for our sins as he is our Priest forgives them as he is our God and mediates as our Head with his Heavenly Father for the remission of those sins which he suffered for The medicine for our sins was tempered in his precious blood and therein we behold him in his Priestly Office the application of this medicine was committed to the sons of men whom he by his Prophetical Office authorized unto it The dispensation of the mercy thereof still remains in God as an inseparable flower of the Regal Diadem for who can forgive sins but God alone said the Pharisees truly And this forgiveness of our sins as it is the greatest blessing God ca◠give us in this present life because it openeth us a door to eternal glory so is it placed here as the first in order of those signal benefits which do descend upon the Church from her Head Christ Iesus For we may hopefully conclude that since Christ was not onely pleased to die for our sins but doth intercede also with his Heavenly Father that we may have the benefit of his death and passion those prayers of his will make that death and passion efficacious to us in the forgiveness of those sins under which we languish With the like hope we may conclude from the self-same Topick That if we have our part in the first Resurrection that namely from the death of sin to the life of righteousness we shall be made partakers of the second also that namely from the death of nature to the life of glory For Chrysostom hath truly noted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That where the Head is will the members be If therefore Christ our Head be risen from the grave of death the members shall be sure of a Resurrection If Christ our Head be glorified in his Fathers Kingdom the members in due time shall be glorified also So that as well the Article of the Forgiveness of sins as those of the Resurrection of the body and The life everlasting depend upon Christs being Head of this Mystical Body and that too in the method which is here proposed The forgiveness of sins being given us as a pledge or assurance that we shall have a joyful Resurrection in the day of judgment as that is but a way or passage to eternal life First then we are to speak of the Forgiveness of sins and therein we will first behold the whole body of sin in its own foul nature that so we may the better estimate the great mercies of God in the forgiveness of the same And for beholding the whole body of sin in its own foul nature we must first take notice That it pleased God in the beginning to exhibite to the world then but newly made a lively copy of himself a Creature fashioned ad similitudinem suam after his own Image saith the Text. In the creating of the which as he collected all the excellencies of inferior Creatures so did he also crown him with those heavenly graces with which he had before endued the most holy Angels that is to say a rectitude or clearness in his understanding whereby he was enabled to distinguish betwixt truth and error and with a freedom in his will in the choice of his own ways and counsels Ut suae faber esse possit fortunae That if he should forsake that station wherein God had placed him he might impute it unto none but his wretched-self It is true God said unto him in the way of Caution That in what day soever he did eat of the fruit forbidden he should die the death But he had neither undertaken to preserve him that he should not eat and so by consequence not sin much less had he ordained him to that end and purpose that he should eat thereof and so die for ever And true it is that God fore-knew from before all eternity unto what end this Liberty of man would come and therefore had provided a most excellent remedy for the restoring of lapsed man to his grace and favor Yet was not this foreknowledge in Almighty God that so it would be either a cause or a necessity or so much as an occasion that so it should be And it is therefore a good rule of Iustin Martyr seconded by Origen and divers others of the Fathers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The Prescience of God say they is not cause or reason why things come to pass but because these and these things shall so come to pass therefore God fore-knows them So that God dealt no otherwise in this case with our Father Adam than did the Father in the Parable with his younger son gave him that portion of his goods which fell to his share and after left him to himself And as the Prodigal childe being an ill husband on the stock which his Father gave him did quickly waste the same by his riotous living suffered the extremities of cold and hunger and was fain to cast himself again on his Fathers goodness so man not using well that stock which the Lord had given him gave himself over to the Epicurism of his eye and appetite By means whereof he lost those excellent endowments of his first Creation was shamefully thrust out of Paradise without hope of return and in conclusion fain to cast himself on the mercies of God as well for his subsistence here as his salvation hereafter The story of mans fall makes this plain enough and wholly frees Almighty God from having any hand or counsel in so sad a ruine For there we finde how God created him after his own Image placed him in Paradise commanded him not to meddle with the Tree of good and evil threatned that in case he did eat thereof he should surely die and lastly with what grievous punishments he did chastise him for violating that Commandment All which had been too like a Pageant if God had laid upon him a necessity of sin and death and made him to no other end as some teach us now but by his fall to set the greater estimate on his own rich mercies So excellently true is that of Ecclesiasticus though the Author of it be Apocryphal That God made man in the begining and left him in the hands of his own counsels And this is the unanimous doctrine of the New Testament also where it is said That by man came death and that not onely of the body but of the soul 1 Cor. 15.21 That by one man sin entred into the world and death by sin Rom. 5.12 That by one mans disobedience many were made sinners Vers. 19. That all die in Adam Vers. 22. And in a word That no man ought to say when he is tempted that he is tempred of God for God tempteth no man but every
the sin against the Holy Ghost or utterly past hope of pardon Nor is the case much better if we read it wilfully though better with some sort of men than it is with others For miserable were the state of us mortal men if every sin that is committed wilfully which too often hapneth either against the truth of science or the light of conscience should make a man uncapable of the mercy of God as one that blasphemed or sinned take which word you will against the power and vertue of the Holy Ghost A doctrine never countenanced in the Primitive times the Church extending her indulgence to the worst of Hereticks and opening both her arms and bosom unto those Apostataes which with true sorrow for their sins did return unto her condemning the Novatians for too rigid and severe in their bitter Tenet touching the non-admittance of them unto publick penance and after that unto the Sacraments of the Church again Which being premised the meaning of the Text will appear to be onely this That they who willingly offend after they have received the knowledge of the truth and Gospel must not expect another Christ to die for them or that he who died once for their sins should again die for them St. Ambrose and St. Chrysostom do expound it so Out of whom Clictoveus in his Continuation of St. Cyrils Commentaries upon the Gospel of St. Iohn informs us That the Apostle doth not hereby take away the second or third remission of sins for he is not such an enemy to our Salvation but saith onely that Christ our Sacrifice shall not be offered any more upon the Cross for the man so sinning And this is further proved to be the very meaning of the Apostle in the place disputed out of the scope and purpose of his discourse which was to shew unto the Iews that it was not with them now as it was under the Law For under the Law they had daily Sacrifices for their sins but under the Gospel they had but one Sacrifice once for all Every Priest saith he doth stand daily ministring and offering often times the same sacrifice but this man JESUS after he had offered one sacrifice sate down for ever at the right-hand of God than which there cannot be a clearer explanation of the Text in question Though Sacrifices were often reiterated in the times of the Law Hic vero nec baptismus repetitur neque Christus bis nisi cum ludibrio mori pro peccato yet neither is Baptism to be reiterated in the times of the Gospel nor can Christ be exposed for sin to a second death without a great deal of scorn as Heinsius hath observed from Chrysostom Some light doth also rise to this Exposition from the words immmediately succeeding where the Apostle speaks of a certain expectation of a fearful judgment Which joyned unto the former verse have this sense between them That he which doth not put his whole trust and confidence in the sufficiency of the Sacrifice already offered but for every sin expects a new Sacrifice also must look for nothing in the end but a fearful judgment which most undoubtedly first or last shall fall upon him The third and last place which is commonly alleged for proof that there are some sins irremissible in their own nature is that of St. Iohn If any man saith he see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death he shall ask and God shall give life for them that sin not unto death There is a sin unto death I do not say he shall pray for it In which words we finde two sorts of sins a sin to death and a sin that is not to death a sin which is not unto death for the remission of the which a man is bound to pray in behalf of his Brother a sin to death concerning which it seems unlawful for one man to pray for another And yet it doth but seem so neither For the Apostles words I do not say he shall pray for it amount not to a Negative that he shall not pray for it as the fautors of the contrary opinion would full gladly have it 〈◊〉 â—ather to a toleration that they might pray if they would the business being of 〈◊〉 a nature that the Apostle had no minde to encourage them in it because he could not promise them the success desired but leaving every man to himself to pray or not to pray as his affections to the party or Christian pity of the case might induce him to That by peccatum ad mortem somewhat more is meant than ordinary mortal sins is a thing past question but what it is is not so easie to discover St. Augustine will have the sin which is here called a sin unto death to be that sin wherein a mam continueth until his death without repentance but addes withal That in as much as the name of the sin is not expressed many and different things may be thought to be it Pacianus an old Catholick writer interprets it of peccata manentia Such sins as men continue in till the hour of death St. Ierom reckoneth such men to commit this sin Qui in sceliribus permanent who abide in their wickedness and express no sense nor sorrow of their lost estate The Protestant writers do expound it generally of the sin against the Holy Ghost For which say they no man ought to pray because our Saviour hath testified it to be irremissible And to this end they do allege a place from Ierom affirming Stultum esse pro eo orare qui peccaverit ad mortem That it is a foolish thing to pray for him which sins unto death because the man that is marked out to some visible ruine nullis precibus erui potest cannot possibly be reprieved by prayer But herein Ierom is not consonant to himself elswhere for in another place he telleth us with more probability that nothing else is here meant but that a prayer for such a sin whatsoever it be is very difficulty heard And this I take to be the truer or at least the more probable meaning of the Apostle who saith immediately before This is the confidence which we have in him that if we ask any thing according to his will he heareth us 1 Iohn 5.14 And therefore lest we should conceive that this holds true in all Petitions whatsoever which we make for others he addes That if it be a great sin such as is not ordinarily forgiven but punished with death I dare not say that you can either pray with confidence or that I can give you any great hopes of prevailing in it According as God said to the Prophet Ieremy Pray not for this people for I will not hear thee And though St. Augustine sometimes thought this sin to be final impenitency or a continuance in sin till death without repentance yet in his Book of Retractations he resolves the contrary affirming That
we must despair of no body no not of the wickedest as long as he lives and that we may safely pray for him of whom we do not despair So that for ought we see by these Texts of Scripture there is no sin which properly may be said to be irremissible And therefore I resolve with Maldnonate though he were a Iesuite Tenendam esse regulam fidei quae nullum peccatum esse docet quod à Deo remitti non possit That it is to be imbraced as a rule of Faith that there is no sin so great whatsoever it be which God cannot pardon for which if heartily bewailed and repented of there is no mercy and forgiveness to be found from God I shut up all with that of the Christian Poet Spem capio sore quicquid ago veniabile apud te Quamlibet indignum venia faciamve loquarve In English thus My words O Christ and deeds I hope with thee Though they deserve no pardon venial be CHAP. VI. Of the Remission of sins by the Blood of Christ and of the Abolition of the body of sin by Baptism and Repentance Of confession made unto the Priest and the Authority Sacerdotal THus have we in the former Chapter discoursed at large of the Introduction and Propagation of Sin and of the several species or kindes thereof and also proved by way of ground-work and foundation that albeit sin in its own nature be so odious in the sight of God as to draw upon the sinner everlasting damnation yet that there is no sin so mortal so deserving death which is not capable of pardon or forgiveness by the mercy of God We next descend unto those means whereby the pardon and remission of our sins is conveyed unto us the means by which so great a benefit is estated on us The principal agent in this work is Almighty God of whom the Scripture saith expresly That it is one God which shall justifie the circumcision by Faith and the uncircumcision through Faith that it is God which justifieth the Elect and that the Scriptures did foresee That God would justifie the Heathen In all which Texts to justifie the Elect the Iews the Gentiles doth import no more than freely to forgive them all the sins which they had committed against the Law and to acquit them absolutely from all blame and punishment due by the Law to such offences Which appears plainly by that passage of the same Apostle where speaking of Almighty God as of him that justifieth the ungodly Rom. 4.5 he sheweth immediately by way of gloss or exposition in what that justifying doth consist saying out of David Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin And this God doth not out of any superadded or acquired principle which is not naturally in him but out of that authority and supream power which is natural and essential to him In which respect no Creature can be said to forgive sins no not our Saviour Christ himself in his meer humane nature but must refer that work unto God alone For who can so forgive sins but God onely said the Pharisees truly And as God is the onely natural and efficient cause of this justification the principal Agent in this great work of the remission of sins so is the onely moral and internal impulsive cause which inclines him to it to be found onely in himself that is to say his infinite mercy love and graciousness toward his poor creature Man whom he looks on as the miserable object of grace and pitty languishing under the guilt and condemnation of sin Upon which Motives and no other he gave his onely begotten Son to die for our sins to be a ransom and propitiation for the sins of the world That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but through forgiveness in his Blood have life everlasting But for the external impulsive efficient cause of this act of Gods the meritorious cause thereof that indeed is no other than our Lord JESUS CHRIST the death and sufferings of our most blessed Lord and Saviour For God beholding Christ as such and so great a sufferer for the sins of men is thereby moved and induced to deliver those that believe in him both from the burden of their sins and that condemnation which legally and justly is due unto them This testified most clearly by that holy Scripture Be ye kinde saith the Apostle unto one another forgiving one another even as God for Christs sake hath forgiven you Where plainly the impulsive cause inclining God to pardon us our sins and trespasses is the respect he hath unto the sufferings of our Saviour Christ. Thus the Apostle tells us in another place That we are freely justified by the grace of God through the Redemption which is in CHRIST IESUS Justified freely by Gods grace as by the internal impulsive cause of our Iustification by which he is first moved to forgive us our sins through the Redemption procured for us by the death and sufferings of CHRIST IESUS as the external moving or impulsive cause of so great a mercy In this respect the pardon and forgiveness of the sins of men is frequently ascribed in Scripture to the Blood of Christ as in the Institution of the Sacrament by the Lord himself This is my Blood of the New Testament which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins Thus the Apostle to the Romans Whom JESUS CHRIST did God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his Blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God And thus to the Ephesians also In whom we have redemption through his Blood the remission of sins according to the riches of his grace To this effect St. Peter also For ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as with silver and gold but with the precious Blood of Christ as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot And so St. Iohn The Blood of Iesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin and he hath washed us from our sins in his own Blood in another place Infinite other places might be here produced in which the forgiveness of our sins is positively and expresly ascribed to the Blood of Christ or to his death and sufferings for us which comes all to one But these will serve sufficiently to confirm this truth that the main end for which Christ suffered such a shameful ignominious death accompanied with so many scorns and torments was thereby to attone or reconcile us to his Heavenly Father to make us capable of the remission of our sins through the mercy of God and to assure us by that means of the favor of God and our adoption to the glories of eternal life By that one offering of himself hath he for ever perfected
praeterpluperfect tense of the passive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth to be perswaded to be taught to be induced to give assent unto such propositions as are made unto us Thus is the word used by the great Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For I am perswaded that neither life nor death c. shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Iesus our Lord. And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Being confident of this very thing Persuasum habens hoc ipsum as Beza very properly doth translate the word That he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it till the day of Iesus Christ. So that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render faith being hence derived may not unfitly be construed a perswasion or a firm assent persuasionem seu firmam assensionem as the learned Valla hath observed and then the verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being brought from thence will signifie in the true and proper notion of it I am perswaded verily of the truth of that which so many godly and religious men have related to me and give as full and firm an assent unto it as if I had been present when the deed was done Thus also for the Latine word Fides the Etymologie thereof is drawn from fio from the doing or performance of those things which are said or promised Fides enim dicitur saith Cicero eo quod fiat quod dictum est And therefore faith or fides call it which you will as it relates unto the promises of God is defined by Zanchius to be firma certa persuasio de promissionibus dei a strong and confident perswasion that God will graciously fulfil those promises which he hath pleased to make unto us And therefore I shall fix upon that definition of the thing it self which I finde amongst the Antient Schoolmen affirming it to be a firm assent to supernatural truths revealed Which definition lest it should fare the worse for the Authors sake is backed and seconded by so many learned men both of the Protestant and Reformed Churches as may well serve to set it free from all further cavils For thus Melanchthon for the Protestant or Lutheran Churches Fides est assensus omni verbo Dei nobis tradito Faith saith he is an assent to the veracity or â—ruth of the whole Word of God delivered to us And so saith Vrsin for the Doctors of the French or Calvinian party defining it almost in the self same words to be Vera persuasio qua assentimur omni verbo Dei nobis traditâ—o With these agree Chemnitius in Evan. Concil Trident. cap. de Iustificatione Pet. Martyr ad Rom. 3. v. 12. Polanus Partit Theolog. lib. 2. pag. 368. besides divers others Which being the true and proper definition of belief or faith according to the natural meaning of the word both in Greek and Latine I may conclude from hence without further trouble that to believe according as the word here stands in the front of the Creed is only to be verily perswaded of the truth of all those points and articles which are delivered in the same and to give a firm assent unto them agreeable unto the measure of our understanding Faith thus defined differeth not only from experience knowledge and opinion all which do come within the compass of Assents in general but from all other things whatsoever which come within the compass of our belief When we assent unto the truth of such things or matters as are discernible by sense we may call it perception or experience as when a man assents to this proposition that ice is cold or that fire is hot because he feels it to be so by his outward senses If our assent be weak unsetled or grounded only upon probabilities we then call it opinion in matters of which nature men are for the most part left at liberty their understandings being neither convinced by the power of a superior truth nor setled and confirmed by demonstrative proofs This though it be an assent is no firm assent and therefore nothing less then Faith If our assent be grounded on demonstrative proofs and built upon the knowledge of natural causes it is then tearmed Science or knowledge properly so called for Scire est per causas scire said the great Philosopher But he that gives assent unto any truth only because of the authority of the man that speaks it neither examining his proofs nor searching into the probabilty or possibility of the thing related that man in true propriety of speech is said to believe and to believe we know is the act of faith Thus it is said of the Samaritans that many of them believed on him for the saying of the woman which testified thus of him viz. He told me all that ever I did but more believed because of his own words when they had heard him speak and observed his doctrine And yet not every truth believed on the speakers credit is the proper object of belief or faith according as we use the word in the Schools of Christ but only supernatural truths such truths as our depraved nature could not reach unto without revelation from above by consequence not the authority of every speaker but only of such holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the holy Ghost is the foundation of this faith which we here define I give belief unto the Histories of Xenophon Thucydides Polybius and Corn. Tacitus because I hold a good opinion of the men that writ them And I believe that Edward the Black Prince wonne the battel of Crecie being then but 18 years of age and that King Henry the fifth subdued the greatest part of France within five or six years because I finde it so related without contradiction both by our English Chroniclers and the French Historians But I rely on no humane authority how great soever it be for a rule of Faith which as it hath truths only supernatural for the object of it so have those truths or the revelation rather of those truths no other Author then the Spirit of God So then faith is a firm assent which makes it differ from opinion which may be called an assent also but weak and wavering It is a firm assent to truths for to believe in lyes is not faith but folly A brand or character set on those by Almighty God who seeing they would not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved have been and are given over unto strong delusions and to believe in lyes that they should be damned 'T is an assent to truths revealed not grounded on demonstrative proofs or the disquisition of natural causes or the experiment of sense but only on the authority of him who reveals it to us which differenceth it most clearly both from experience and from knowledge which have surer grounds
Synagogue to be the holy Son of God IESVS the Son of God in another place What benefit do they expect from this Confession what recompence for that Belief so professed and published â— but an assurance that they have no part in David nor any inheritance at all in the Son of Iesse How so Because they knew full well no mere Creature better that CHRIST took not on him the nature of Angels but that he took on him the seed of Abraham And if he took not on him the nature of Angels as they knew he did not he could not be a Mediator between them and God and if no Mediator between them and God they have no interest in his merits nor can claim any profit by his death and passion but must continue in that state wherein God hath plunged them for their sins without hope of remedy The Devils then believe but withall they tremble and good reason for it that belief making them assured that their case is desperate and that there is no mercy for them in Gods heavenly Treasury Besides admit the Devil did believe all those sacred truths which are affirmed of CHRIST in the Book of God what will this avail them For must they not then believe this truth amongst the rest that without true repentance there can be no entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven and if they do believe that truth must they not conclude that there can be no place for them in the heavenly glories because the dore of repentance is shut against them and that the Baptism of Repentance is a way to Heaven whereof their nature is not capable Small comfort doubtless in this faith but of anguish plenty So far I had proceeded in this discourse when I incountred with a Treatise of Doctor Iacksons the late Dean of Peterburgh containing the Original of Vnbelief misbelief c. In which I finde so strong a confirmation of my opinion herein that I have thought it not unnecessary to lay down his words for the clear evidence thereof Thus then saith he To believe in God hath gone currant so long for so much as to put trust or confidence in him that now to make it go for less will perhaps be an usurpation of authority more then critical and much greater then befits us Notwithstanding if on Gods behalf we may plead what Lawyers do in cases of the Crown Nullum tempus occurrit Regi that the Antient of days may not be prejudiced by antiquity of custom or prescription especially whose Orignal is erroneous the case is clear That to believe in God in their intention who first composed this Creed is no more then to believe there is a God or to give credence to his Word For justifying this Assertion I must appeal from the English Dialect in which the manner of speech is proper and natural if it were consonant unto the meaning of the Original as also from the Latine in which the phrase being forain and uncouth is to be valued by the Greek whose stamp and character it heareth Now the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as also the Hebrew phrase whereunto by sacred Writers it was framed is no more then hath been said To believe there is a God Otherwise we must believe not only in God the Father in Christ the Son and in the holy Ghost but in the Catholick Church in the Communion of Saints in the forgiveness of sins and in the resurrection of the body and in life everlasting seeing the Greek particle usually expressed by the Latine In is annexed after the same manner to all these objects of our belief as is apparent in the Antient Greek Creeds And he that diligently readeth the Translation of the Septuagint shall finde the Greek phrase which is verbatim rendred by the Latine in Deum credere to believe in God promiseâ—ously used for the other credere Deo i. e. to believe God Or if besides the evident Records of the antient Copies personal witnesses be required amongst the Antients I know few amongst Modern Writers none more competent then those that are expresly for us as Beza Mercer Drusius unto whom we may adde Ribera Lorinus also Now as to use the benefit of a truth known and testified is always lawful so to us in this case it is most expedient almost necessary For either I did not rightly apprehend whilest I read it or at least now remember not how the Schoolman removes the stumbling block which he had placed in the very entry to this Creed If to believe in God be as much as to put trust or confidence in him by exacting a profession of this Creed at all mens mouths we shall inforce a great many to profess a ly For of such as not only out of ordinary charity but upon particular probabilities we may safely acquit from actual Atheism or contradicting infidelity a great number do not put their trust or confidence in God this being the mark at which the belief of Novices must aim not the first step they are to make in this progress And not long after he makes answer unto this Objection touching the belief of Devils or of wicked Angels of whom we cannot say say some that they do believe in God though they believe his being more firmly then we can do and know his Word as clearly For as he handsomely illustrates If the Kings Majesty should proclaim a general pardon to a number of known Rebels and vow execution of judgement without mercy upon some principal offenders which had maliciously and cunningly seduced their simplicity I suppose his will and pleasure equally manifested unto both and so believed would as much dishearten the one as incourage the other to relye upon his clemency Such notwithstanding altogether is the case between men and wicked angels The one believes CHRIST took the Womans seed and therefore cannot without such wilful mistrust of the promise of life as was in his first Parents to Gods threats of death despair of Redemption by the eternal Sacrifice The other as firmly believe or rather evidently know that CHRIST in no wise took the Angelical nature and without this ground the better they believe his Incarnation the less are their hopes of their own Redemption As for the third and last Objection touching the overthrow of the distinction of Faith into Historical Temporary saving or justifying faith and the faith of Miracles so generally received and countenanced in the Protestant Schools it works no effect at all in me who am resolved not to hazard the loss of a truth to save the credit of a distinction Nor are the membra dividentia as Logicians call them so well choyced and stated as either to require such care of their preservation or not to bring them into question For all faith is Historical there 's no doubt of that and the other members of the distinction either are coincident or but degrees only of the same one faith Vrsinus the
of great goodness saith the Prophet David O Hierusalem Heirusalem saith the son of David how often would I have gathered thee together as a Hen doth her Chickens but ye would not But is the patience of a Father so implanted in him that it can never be worn out and converted to anger Not so we know it is a proverb that patientia laesa fit furor the greatest patience if abused may possibly be turned to the greatest fury or anger at the least in the highest degree How angry was old Iacob with his two sons the Brethren in evil when he desired his soul might not come into their secret and prayed to God to scatter them in Jacob and divide them in Israel And cannot God be angry think we with his stubborn and rebellious children when they do wilfully transgress his holy laws and with an high hand violate all his sacred precepts Why then doth he so often punish those that do amiss for Ira Dei non est aliud quam voluntas puniendi as St. Augustine hath it the anger of God is only his just will to chastise the sinner Why then did he repent of his making man or rain down fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah as it is said he did Why then do we beseech him with such shame and sorrow to correct us in his judgement and not in his fury that we may not be consumed and brought to nothing He that bids us be angrie and sin not intended not the extirpation but the moderation of anger And thereupon Lactantius very well inferreth Qui ergo irasâ—i nos jubet ipse utique irascitur he that bids us be angry so we do not sin can without doubt be angrie too when he seeth occasion The like may be affirmed also of those other affections which are in Parents towards those whom they have begotten Remove the imperfections from them and the affections of themselves after separation may without any danger and as some Schoolmen think without any Metaphor be ascribed to GOD. Now out of those affections which before we specified ariseth the chief care of our natural parents which is to see us trained up in some lawful trades or in the knowledge of good letters that being put into a course of good education we may subsist with credit and escape those miseries which poverty and necessity may else bring upon us And out of that authority which they have by nature to dispose of us as they see most sutable unto our deserts ariseth the chief power of our natural parents either to make us heirs of their goods and fortunes or to leave us out First for the care of education it seemed so necessary to the Grecians in the former times that one of their Wisemen did use to say Praestat non nasci that it was better not to be born then not well instructed And by the laws of Rome which they had from Greece when as the father now grown old and out of work did sue his son for Alimonie as we use to call it it was a good plea in the son against his Father that he had never taken care of his education or trained him in the knowledge of any Art either ingenuous or mechanick Filius arte carens Patris incuria eidem necessaria vitae subsidia ne praestato was one of the laws of the twelve Tables How much more necessary must we think that part of our education which the wise Grecian never knew nor ever was prescribed by the laws of Rome that part I mean by which young children are instructed in the fear of GOD and taught betimes to run the pathes of the Lords commandements But if the Father do his office if that no care be wanting on his part to instruct his children if he admonish and advice them when they do amiss and they continue still to afflict his heart either by neglecting that imployment in which he hath placed them or wasting his estate in riotous and licentious courses is the poor Father left without further remedy then what may be had upon complaint from the Civil Magistrate No by no means The Father at the first by the law of Nations had potestatem vitae necis the power of life and death over all their children But after the receiving of the Christian faith the law was altered in that case by the following Emperours And now as the Civilians tell us Parentibus solummodo relinquitur honesta emendatio maximis ex causis exhaeredatio i. e. The fathers power consisteth most especially in these points to punish and chastise them for their smaller faults and disinherit them in time if they prove incorrigible Which power as it was used by Iacob on his eldest son Reuben because he had defiled his old fathers bed so hath it since been ordinary in the practise of all times and ages though perhaps more to be commended where it may not then where it may possibly be spared Such also is the care and consequently such the power of our Heavenly Father For who but he taught Abel how to order Sheep and Cain to till the ground or to be an husbandman Iubal to play on instruments and Tubal-cain to work in iron who but he called forth Ioshua to fight his battels and Aaron and his sons to serve at the holy Altar And for the bringing of them up in the fear of GOD he hath revealed himself so far to the Turks and Pagans and in the former times to the antient Gentiles which are his children only by the right of Creation that by the things which he hath made they may perceive both his eternal power and Godhead Though he permitted them for a while to walk in their own ways and so fulfil their several lusts yet left he not himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or without a witness in that he shewed his works unto them and filled their hearts with food and gladness Nay that which may be known of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Paul calleth it is manifest in them for the invisible things of God saith the same Apostle from the creation of the world are clearly seen that is as Augustine doth expound it per visibilia Creaturae pervenisse eos ad intelligent am invisiblis Creatoris by studying on the Book of Nature they came to understand the nature of GOD. For further proof whereof if more proof be necessary we need but have recourse to the former Chapter where we did prove this point that there was a God and that he is eternal and incomprehensible of infinite both power and wisdome Nor did GOD leave them so in this general knowledge but he revealed so much of his will unto them as is included or expressed in the law of Nature The Gentiles saith St. Paul which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law which
sheweth the work of the law written in their hearts their conscience also bearing witness aud their thoughts excusing or accusing one another By means whereof such of them as were careful to conform their lives unto that law and put not out that light which did shine within them attained unto an eminent height in all moral virtues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is in Naziazen Which moral piety of theirs if not directed to the glory of GOD as it ought to be but either to advance their projects or else to gain opinion and be seen of men may perhaps mitigate their torments but not advance them to the glories of eternal life Nec vitae aeiernae veros acquirere fructus De falsa virtute potest as Prosper hath it Not that those actions in themselves were not good and commendable and might deserve some more then ordinary blessings at the hands of GOD but that those men being so far instructed and illuminated they desisted there holding the truth as St. Paul telleth us in unrighteousness and so became without excuse But of this more hereafter in another place And if the Lord hath been so gracious to the antient Gentiles and still is to the Turks and Pagans of the present ages which are his children only by the right of Creation no question but he doth instruct whom he hath adopted after a more peculiar manner He shewed his word unto Jacob his statutes and his Ordinances unto Israel saith the Prophet David of the Iews And as for us which have the happiness to live under the Gospel the Lord himself hath said by the Prophet Ieremie that he would write his law in their hearts and put it in our inward parts and by another of his Prophets that our sons and daughters should prophecy and that we should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or taught of God If after so much care on the part of God if after all this done by our Heavenly Father we still continue ignorant of his will or shut our eyes against that light which doth shine upon us and stop our ears against the voyce of the Charmer charm he never so sweetly no wonder if he draw his sword and either cut us off by a temporal death or publickly expose us unto shame and misery For sure it cannot be denyed but that the Lord our heavenly Father hath potestatem vitae necis the power of life and death over all his children The Lord hath power of life and death as the wise man hath it he leadeth to the gates of Hell and brings back again Wisd. 16.13 But this a severity which God reserves unto the last as the utmost remedy inflicting in the mean time moderate chastisements on his wilful children in hope by that means to reclaim them Which if they do not take effect he then proceeds unto the woful sentence of disinheritance expungeth them out of the Catalogue of his Elect razeth their names out of the sacred Book of life and leaves them no inheritance in the house of Jesse or any portion at all in the son of David So excellently true is that of Lactantius Deus ut erga bonos indulgentissimus Pater ita adversus improbos justissimus Iudex God saith he as he is a loving and indulgent Father towards his good and godly children so towards those who are past hope of reformation he will become as terrible and severe a Iudge so he Institut tut l. 1. cap. 1. And certainly it doth concern us in an high degree to keep the love and good opinion of our heavenly Father who is not only able to chastise us with such light corrections as are inflicted on us by our earthly Parents but to arm all the hosts of Heaven and all the creatures of the Earth against us as once he did against Pharaoh and the land of Egypt GOD is not here represented to us by the name of a Father only but by the name of a Father Almighty The title of Omnipotent makes a different case and may be our Remembrancer upon all occasions to keep us from incurring his just displeasure and drawing down his vengeance on our guilty heads This is that infinitie or infiniteness of power which before I spake of and is so proper unto God that it is not to be communicated unto any creature no not unto the man CHRIST IESVS The Roman Emperours indeed in the times of their greatest flourish did take unto themselves the style of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereby they gave the world to understand that they were absolute and independent not tyed to the observance of any laws or bound by the Decrees of Senate but that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Omnipotent was never challenged by the proudest nor given unto them by the grossest of their many Parasites Now GOD is said to be Almighty because that he is able to do and doth upon occasion also whatsoever pleaseth him both in Heaven and Earth as the Psalmist hath it For with God nothing is impossible saith the holy Angel And though some things may seeme impossible in the eyes of men yet apud Deum omnia sunt possibilia all things are possible to God saith CHRIST our Saviour yet still observe the words of David before mentioned which is the Rule or Standard if I may so call it by which not only possibility and impossibility but even Omnipotencie it self is to be measured and David saith not of the Lord that he can do all things but whatsoever pleaseth him be it what it will For therefore God the Father is said to be Almighty or Omnipotent not that he can do every thing whatsoever it be and will do all things that he can but because he can do all things that he plaaseth all that can be done Because he can doe all things whatsoever he pleaseth For as S. Augustine well observeth nec ob aliud vocatur Omnipotens nisi quia quicquid vult potest Because he can do all things which can be done For some things are not denyed to be impossible even to God himself as namely such as do imply a contradiction and so the dictate of Aquinas is exceeding true Deus omnia potest quae contradictionem non implicant Nor can he do such things as may argue him to be capable of any defect as namely to be unjust to lie to be confined to place or to change his beeing according to another rule of the same Aquinas i. e. Omnipotentia excludit defectus omnes qui sunt impotentia ceu posse mentiri mori peccare c. The reasons are first because those things in themselves would make him lyable to impotency wants and weakness and utterly deprive him of the title of a Father Almighty Nam si haec ei acciderent non esset Omnipotens as most excellently it is said by Augustine Secondly actions of that nature are in themselves so contrary
properly the fundamental act and radical qualification of the faith of Adam But after he had fallen from his first integrity and that the Lord out of meer pity to his frail perishing creature was pleased to promise him some measure of reparation in the womans seed then did the bruising of the Serpents head by the seed of the woman become a partial object of the faith of Adam and of all those who afterwards descended of him in the line of Grace And yet this was but in a general apprehension of the mercies of God and of his constancy and veracity in fulfilling his word no distinct Revelation being made till the time of Abraham so much as from what branch of the root of Adam this promised blessing was to come A pregnant argument whereof I think is offered to us in the errour of our Grandam Eve who on the birth of Cain her first-born but most wicked son conceived that he should be the man in whom the promise made by God was to be fulfilled and therefore said I have gotten a man from the Lord as our English reads it but rather possedi virum ipsum IEHOVAH I have gotten a man even the Lord IEHOVAH as Paulus Phagius a very learned Hebritian doth correct that reading And as for Abraham himself though it pleased God to tell him more particularly then before was intimated that in his seed should all the families of the Earth be blessed yet so unsatisfied was he as concerning Sarah or that this general blessing was to come of a son by her that when GOD promised such a son from that barren womb by whom she was to be a Mother of Kings and Nations instead of giving thanks to God he returned this answer O that Ishmael might live before thee And though upon the duplicate of this gracious promise that in Isaac should his seed be called he was sufficiently instructed and believed accordingly that the great mercy which God promised to our Father Adam was to descend in time from the loyns of Isaac yet that he should be born of an imaculate Virgin that he should suffer such and so many indignities and at the last a bitter and most shameful death by the hands of those who seemed to boast so much in nothing as that they were the children of this faithful Abraham as it was never that we read of revealed unto him so have we no reason to believe that it was any part or object of his faith at all The like may be affirmed in general of the house of Israel till God was pleased to speak more plainly and significantly to them by the mouth of his Prophets then he had done unto their Fathers in dreams and visions For having nothing further revealed unto them touching Christ to come then what was intimated first in generals to our Father Adam and more particularly specified to their Father Abraham the primary and principal Object of their faith was God alone conceive me still of God the Father Almighty in whom they looked for the performance of those gracious promises which he had made unto their Fathers though of the time when the manner how and other the material points which the Creed contains they were utterly ignorant and consequently could not ground any faith upon them In after times as GOD imparted clearer light to the house of Iacob for the neerer we are to the Sun-rising the more day appeareth so were they bound to give belief to such Revelations or supernatural truths revealed call them which you will which he vouchsafed to make unto them by his holy Prophets Which howsoever they contained in them a sufficient light to guide them to the knowledge of many particular points and circumstances which were to be accomplished in the time and place of Christs Nativity his course of life and sufferings and most shameful death which every one could see when they came to pass that whatsoever had been done by or concerning him did come to pass according as had been sore-signified in the holy Scriptures yet this great light of prophesie which did shine amongst them was but like a Candle in a dark Lanthorn or hid under a bushel and rather served to convince them of incredulity when he was ascended then to prepare them to receive him when he came unto them He came unto his own and his own received him not saith St. Iohn expressely And for the Prophets themselves 't is true that they have in them many positive and plain predictions of the Incarnation Nativity and Circumcision of Christ of his Passion Resurrection and Ascension as also of the most remarkable passages and occurrences in the whole course of his life And yet a question hath been made amongst learned men whether they did always distinctly foresee or explicitely believe whatsoever they did fore-tell or fore-signifie concerning Christ. Nor can I finde but that this question is resolved to this effect that though they had a right apprehension of the truths by them delivered and a foresight of all those future events of which they prophesied according to the accomplishment and sense thereof by themselves intended yet that this foresight of theirs extended not to all branches of divine truth contained in their writings or to that use and application which was after made of them by CHRIST himself and his Evangelists and Apostles with this mark of reference that such and such things came to pass that the sayings of the Prophets might be fulfilled For many things are extant in the Prophetical writings either by way of Typical prefigurations or positive and plain predictions applyable to the life and actions of our Lord and Saviour and the success and fortunes of his holy Church which in all probability was never so intended by those sacred Pen-men For who can reasonably conceive that Moses in the story of the commanded offering up of Isaac the only son of his Father intended to typifie or fore-shadow the real offering up of CHRIST the only begotten Son of God neer the self same place or that this Ceremony in the ordering of the Paschal Lamb ye shall not break a bone thereof did look so far in the first institution of it as to the not breaking of our Saviours legs in the time of his passion or that the setting up of the Brazen Serpent was by him meant to signifie and foreshew the lifting up of the Son of God upon the Cross to the end that whosoever believed in him should not perish but have eternal life as himself applyes it in St. Iohn The like may be affirmed of David to whom the Lord had promised that of the fruit of his body there should one sit upon his Throne for evermore Psal. 132. that God would set his King upon his holy hill of Sion Psal. 2. with many other predictions to the same effect And yet it may be questioned upon very good reason whether he understood
look to finde it in any writings or records of the antient Gentiles So that we may affirme of the knowledge of CHRIST as Lactantiuss did in generall of the ttue Religion Nondum fas esse alienigenis hominibus Religionem Dei veri justitiamque cognoscere the time was not yet come in which the Gentiles should be made acquainted with those heavenly mysteries which did concern the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour T is true the Sibylline Oracles cited by Lactantius and others of great eminence in the Primitive times speak very clearly in some things concerning the life and death of CHRIST in so much that they seem rather written in the way of History then in that of Prophesie And though the learned Casaubon and others of our great Philologers conceive them to be pious fraudes composed of purpose by some Christians of the elder ages and added as a supplement to the true Originals the better to win credit to the faith of CHRIST yet dare I not so far disparage those good Catholick writers as to believe they would support so strong an edifice with so weak a prop or borrow help from falshood to evict the truth Or if they durst have been so venturous how easie had it been for their learned Adversaries Porphyrie Iulian and the rest of more eminent note to have detected the Imposture and silenced the Christian Advocates with reproach enough Letting this therefore go for granted as I think I may that the Sibylline Oracles are truly cited by the Fathers and that they do contain most things which hapned to our Saviour in his life and death yet could this give but little light to the Heathen people touching CHRIST to come because they were not suffered to be extant publickly and consequently came not to the knowledge of the learned Gentiles till by the care and diligence of the Christian Writers they were after published For so exceeding coy were the antient Romans of suffering the Sibyls or their works to go abroad having got into their hands the best copies of them that those times afforded that they commanded them to be kept closely in the Capitol under the care and charge of particular Officers whom from the number of fifteen for so many they were they called Quindecemviri and to whom only it was lawful to consult their papers Nec eos ab ullo nisi a Quindecemviris fâ—s est inspici as Lactantius notes it very truly And it is also very true that many of the antient and most learned Grecians had a confused notice of a second Deity whom they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Word making him aiding and subservient to Almighty God in the Creation of the world and therefore giving him the attribute of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the worlds Creator The several testimonies to this purpose he that lists to see may finde them mustered up together in that laborious work of the Lord du Plessis entituled De veritate Religionis Christianae cap. 6. So frequently occurs this notion in the old Philosophers especially in those of the School of Plato that Porphyrie an Apostate Christian and a Platonick in the course of his sect and studies blasphemously averred that St. Iohn had stollen the first words of his Gospel viz. In the beginning was the Word c. from his Master Plato And though the affirmation of that vile Apostata intended only the disgrace of the holy Evangelist and of the Gospel by him written for the use of the Church yet had it been a truth as indeed it was not it could have been no greater a disparagement to St. Iohn to borrow an expression from a Greek Philosopher then to St. Paul to use the very words of three Grecian Poets But the truth is that both St. Iohn and the Platonicks together with the rest of those old Heroes borrowed the notion from the Doctors of the Iewish Nation as Maldonate hath proved at large in his Comment on that Text of the blessed Evangelist who withal gives it for the reason why S. Iohn made choyce rather of this notion then of any other in the front or entrance of his Gospel because it was so known and acceptable both to Iew and Gentile Philosophos non dubium est ab antiquis Hebraeis hausisse sententiam vocabulum accepisse Proinde voluit Johannes accommodate ad usum loqui saith the learned Iesuite But then withall we must observe that though we finde such frequent mention of the Word or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the writings of the antient Gentiles yet finde we almost nothing of him but the name or notion nothing that doth relate to the salvation of man the taking of our nature upon him or being made a propitiation for the sins of mankinde That as before I noted was a secret mysterie not to be manifested to the sons of the Gentiles till CHRIST himself was come to make one of both and call them to the knowledge of his grace and faith in him Being so called they were no longer to be differenced by the name of Gentiles but fellow-heirs and of the same body whereof CHRIST is Head and as the members of that body to joyn in the Confession of the self same faith not only as to God the Father in the acknowledgement of which Article all the Nations meet but as unto his only Son IESVS CHRIST our Lord from whence the faith hath properly the name of Christian. Now that which we believe touching CHRIST our Saviour and is to be the argument of this present Book is thus delivered by the pen of our Reverend Iewell in the name and for the use and edification of the Church of England Credimus Jesum Christum filium unicum aeterni patris c. i. e. We believe that IESVS CHRIST the only Son of the eternal Father as it had been determined before all beginnings when the fulness of time was come did take of that blessed and pure Virgin both flesh and all the nature of man that he might declare unto the world the secret and hidden will of his Father and that he might fulfil in his humane body the Mysterie of our Redemption and might fasten our sins unto the Cross and blot out that hand-writing which was against us We believe that for our sakes he dyed and was buryed descended into Hell and the third day by the power of his God-head rose again to life and that the fortieth day after his Resurrection whiâ—est his Disciples looked on he ascended into Heaven to fulfil all things and did place in Majesty and glory the self same body wherewith he was born in which he lived upon the earth in which he was scornfully derided and suffered most painful torments and a cruel death and finally in which he rose again from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father above all principalities and powers and might and dominion that there he
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the word used of Christ in the present Article in the 11. Chap. to the Hebrewes vers 17. And yet we know that Abraham had another son a son whom he had circumcised by Gods own command of whom twelve Princes were to come and whom God promised to make a puissant Nation And therefore Isaac must be called his only son because preferred before the other in the love of his Father Filius tuus unigenitus i e. filius quem diligis Isaac thine only son that is to say the son whom thou only lovest as there the text without the help of commentator doth expound it self And if the name of unigenitus or Gods only Son may warrantably be applyed to Christ in his humane nature there is not much question to be made but that in the very same capacity he may be called filius proprius or Gods own Son He spared not his own Son by which name he occurreth in St. Paul to the Romans Lesse question is there to be made or indeed no question but that according to the same humane nature and in relation to his being begotten in the fulness of time he is entituled in the Scriptures the first born of every Creature the first born from the dead and the heir of all things though there be something in those titles which doth require a further consideration For first his being called the first born of every Creature gives no incouragement at all to the Arian factions to make the Son of God a created essence no more then Kings may be called creatures of the peoples making because called an ordinance of man humana creatura in the Vulgar latine in the holy Scripture The reason why our Saviour is there called by the Apostle Primogenitus omnis Creaturae or the first born of every Creature is neither to give him the precedency of all Creatures else or to rank his whole Person in the list of created substances but either to entitle him to the rights of Primogeniture which were great amongst the sons of men or to denote that he supplyed the place of the first begotten and was the general ransome or redemption for them Concerning which we may take notice that by the Law of Moses the first that opened the matrix of all living Creatures were holy and cousecrated to the Lord if of clean beasts then to be offered up in kind to the Lord their God but if of men or unclean Creatures then either to be redeemed for a piece of money or some clean beast was to be brought unto the Lord in exchange for it as in the case of the first male child a pair of Turtle doves or two small Pigeons The reason was because the Lord having slain the first born of Egypt both of man and beast had spared all the first born of the house of Israel and therefore he required the first male of every Creature to be offered to him in sacrifice that so the whole off-spring might be sanctifyed and made useful to them But being the offering of a dumb Creature was really and of it self no sufficient price for the redemption of the first male child which opened the Matrix nor able to sanctifie both male and female in every family to the Lord their God for he that sanctifyeth and they that are sanctifyed must be all of one as the Apostle doth infer therefore did CHRIST take upon himself the place of stead of the first born that being offered unto God the clean for the unclean he might sanctifie all things unto God and make them acceptable in the sight of their Lord and maker which were of a nature capable of such sanctification and acceptance as the Lord requireth in his creature Now as the ransome of the first born was discharged by him so was it just that all the rites of Primogeniture should belong unto him which were the Principality the Priest-hood and the double portion Those Reuben having forfeited by his great offence were so distributed amongst his Brethren that the Priesthood was bestowed on Levi the Principality on Iudah the double portion upon Ioseph who thereupon was branched into the two tribes of Ephraim and Manasses But they were all again united in the person of CHRIST that being thus made the first born of every Creature he might in all things have the preheminence The Principality he had for the Lord gave unto him the throne of his Father David the Priesthood for he was a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech the double portion for all power was given unto him both in heaven and earth In all respects the first borne of every Creature but how the first born from the dead which is another of the titles given by the Apostle considering we finde many examples of men that had been raised from the dead before his resurrection both in the old Testament and in the new The answer to this doubt is easie For though those mentioned in both Testaments were for a time raised from death to life yet were they raised to die again as in fine they did But to be primogenitus ex mortuis the first born or first begotten from the powers of death includes an everlasting freedome from the jaws thereof in which regard the Scripture saith of Christ and of Christ alone that being risen from the dead he now dyeth not death hath no more power or dominion over him But of this Priviledge we shall speak more at large hereafter in its proper place That which remaines is that he was heir of all things Heb. 1.2 to the intent that he might prove himself for the Son of Abraham the promised seed in whom all the nations of the world are blessed The promise which was made to Abraham that he should be heir of the world was never verifyed in his person nor in any of his posterity neither till the coming of CHRIST Who being begotten by the power of Almighty God on a daughter of the seed of Abraham and having the nations given him for his inheritance as had been prophecied before by his Father David might properly be entituled the heire of all things according to the rights of his humane nature which nature he derived from David the son of Abraham Thus have we shewn how CHRIST is properly and truly the Son of God his natural and only begotten Son according to his generation in the fulnesse of time without relating to his generation before all time was But yet we must not give off here For by this generation in the fulnesse of time he was not only the Son of God but so the Son of God after such a manner as that he was also the son of man But by his generation before all times he was not only the Son of God but so the Son of God after such a manner that he was also God himself God for ever blessed
how to comfort them with the joyfull news of his recovery Sorrow and grief and anguish and disconsolation our Saviour did begin to feel there 's no doubt of that though not in such a high degree as to make him fall into those extremities of passion as neither to know what he did nor for what he prayed He that could come to his Disciples in the middest of his anguish and reprove them for their sloth and sleepiness had neither lost the use of his speech nor senses And if his prayers were full of faith as no doubt they were for the Scriptures say that he was heard in that he prayed for which could not be without a perfect measure of faith assuredly however he was heavily oppressed under the burden of afflictions he knew full well both what he prayed for and to whom But this was only the beginning of his sorrowes as before was said It followeth in the text both in Matthew and Marke My soul is exceeding sorrowfull even unto the death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my soul is compassed round with sorrowes such as doe seem to threaten me with no lesse then death and yet no way to scape them as in both Evangelists And certainly it stood with reason that it should be so For as an eminent Prelate of our own doth observe right well The whole work and weight of our Redemption was now before Christs eyes and apprehension in a more exact and lively manner he now appearing before the judgment seat of God then we in this body can discern For as all things needfull shall be present and patent to us when we are brought to Gods tribunall so Christ presenting himself before the judgement of God to the end that man might be redeemed by the ransome which he was to pay for him and Satan ejected from prevailing against his members by his mediation did fully and perfectly behold the detestation which God had conceived against our sins and the power of his wrath provoked by our defection and rebellion as also the dreadfull vengeance prepared and ordained for sin and our dull and carelesse contempt of our own misery together with the watchfulnesse and eagernesse of the common adversary the brunt and burden of all which he was to bear and to avert them from us by by that satis â—action which the justice of God should then require at his hands as a just price and full recompence for the sins of men The due consideration and intuition whereof being in Christ more clear then we can conceive might worthily make the manhood of Christ both to fear and tremble and in his prayers to God to stir and inflame all the powers and parts both of soul and body as far as mans nature and spirit were able with all submission and deprecation possible to powre forth themselves before his God Here was full cause undoubtedly to make him sorrowful and sorrowful unto the death How could it otherwise be conceived when the just and full reward of our iniquities was thus presented to his sight when he beheld the greatnesse and the justnesse of Gods wrath against it and therewithall considered within himself how dear the price must be and how sharpe the pain which should free us of it And on the other side considered how precious his own person was how infinite his obedience how pure his life and yet how that most precious life must be taken from him that by one death and that death only of the body he might deliver us from the death both of body and soul. So then his soul was â—ull of sorrow there was good cause for it but not oppressed with any pains much lesse tormented and inflanted with the pains of hell as some would fain gather from the text for neither tristitia in Latine nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greek either amongst divine or humane writers signifie any such impression of pain and torment but an affection only which afflicts the minde rising upon the apprehension of some evill either past or instant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greek amongst the choycest humanitians is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Cicero translates opinio recens mali praesentis a fresh opinion of present or impendent evill And Austin telleth us for the Latines that grief and anguish when it is in the soul is called tristitia that is sorrow but when 't is in the body then 't is molestia pain or trouble Thus is the word taken also in the holy Scripture where St. Paul saith I would not come again unto you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in sorrow or heaviness for fear he should have sorrow of them of whom he did expect to be received with joy and where it is affirmed of the rest of the servants when they perceived how cruelly their fellow-servant which was pardoned so great a sum dealt with one of his debters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were very sorry And certainly they might be very sorry on so sad an accident out of a fellow-feeling of their Brothers miserie we have no reason to conceive them to be full of pain Hitherto we have met with such griefs and sorrows in our Saviour as never man endured before but yet they prove not to be such as either did confound all the powers of his soul or astonish all the senses of his body or brought him into such amazement that he considered neither what he said or did Some have endevoured to infer this as before was noted out of the texts and words foregoing but with ill successe and therefore they are fallen at last on an other Scripture which they think makes for them How is my soul troubled saith our Saviour and what shall I say Father save me from this hour but for this cause came I unto this houre Here they observe a contrariety or contradiction in our Saviours words which could not possibly proceed but from a soul distracted and a minde confounded and what could work so strange and sensible a confusion in him but the pains of hell which were within him But whatsoever they observe the most eminent men for parts and learning in the times before them could see no such matter Erasmus in his Paraphrases gives this glosse upon them which Bullinger a learned Protestant writer doth extol most highly and calleth an excellent explication I finde my soul troubled for the day of my death approaching and what shall I say For the love of mine own life shall I neglect the life of the world By no means I will apply my self to the will of my Father Mans weaknesse troubled with the fear of death may say unto him Father if it be possible save me from this hour from this danger of death which is now so near me But love desirous of mans salvation shall presently add Nay rather if it be expedient let death which is desired come for as much as wittingly and willingly by the
it were together to behold the combate And then what marvail can it be saith our learned Prelate if the glory of Gods judgement and the power of his wrath the number of our sins and neglect of our own state the sharp and eager malice of Satan whom he had to do with made Christ with all possible fear of the great might and Majesty of the Judge all passionate sorrow for the crimes and contempts of the Prisoners all earnest and zealous intention of prayer against the impugner and impediment of mans deliverance to agonize himself into a bloudy sweat But if this sweat of our Redeemer proceeded not from natural causes but was rather supernatural and miraculous as Hilarie Rupertus Beda and others do conceive it was neither the fear of Hell pains nor the sense of sorrow could be the cause thereof as some think it was for being supernatural and miraculous it could not have a natural and proper cause Rather it might be wrought by Gods mighty power as a preparative to that Priesthood which he was to execute and to that all-sufficient Sacrifice which he was to make For in the oblations of the law which prefigured the death of Christ it was ordained that not only the sacrifice was to be slain by the shedding of bloud but that the person of the Priest was sanctified as well as the sinner presented by the Priest to God with earnest and humble prayer to make atonement for the trespass And since the Truth must have some resemblance with the Figure CHRIST in the Garden might perform some points required to the Priesthood as the sanctifying of himself with his own bloud and the presenting of himself to be the redemption and remission of our sins with instant and intensive prayer for the Transgressors Either of these may be admitted as agreeable to the rules of piety though for my part I incline rather to the former as having such a firm foundation in the Text it self Thus have we taken a full view of those templations and afflictions which our Saviour suffered in his soul without any participation which the body had in them under Pontius Pilate In which though there were nothing like to the pains of Hell which shall be specified hereafter in a place more proper yet there was in him such an accumulation of fears and sorrows and disconsolations as might entitle him most properly to be Vir dolorum a man compounded as it were of nothing but griefs and sorrows Next let us take a brief survey of those afflictions which he indured in his body and suffered nor in soul at all but by the means and apprehension of the outward senses as it participates with the body in all weal and woe And first no sooner had he ended his devotions and gathered together his Disciples but behold a great multitude armâ—d with swords and staves came to apprehend him and carry him before the high Priests and Elders amongst whom he was sure to find no mercy and but little justice Iudas Iscariot one of the twelve had sold his Master to them for a piece of money a most contemptible piece of money too no more then thirty pieces of silver which in our money reckoning each 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or piece of silver at 2 s. 6 d comes but to 3 l. 15 s. And though they had obtained their purpose at so cheap a rate yet they resolved that now they had him in their hands nothing should save him but a miracle To this end they suborned false witnesses to come in against him and if he did but offer to defend himself and refell their calumnies they have their servants in a readiness to smite him on the face and deride him saying Answerest thou the high Priest so Whether he speak or hold his peace it comes all to one his silence being counted a contempt and his speech a scandall If he passe only for a man how durst he say that he was able to destroy the Temple and in three days to build it again If he declare himself for the Son of God he is presently condemned of Blasphemie and contrary to the Laws both of God and man which would have no man punished more then once for the same offence he is first made a scorn and laughing stock to the standers by and after hurryed to the Iudge to receive his sentence No sooner had the Priests and Elders who had bargained for him pronounced him to be guilty of death but presently they cause him to be blind-folded that he might not see the insolencies which they meant to practise next with a joynt consent they spit on his most sacred face and buffet him and smite him with the palmes of their hands and then say to him in derision that if he were the Christ of God he should prophecie unto them who is was that stroke him Having thus pleased themselves with their own wickedness they blinde him like a common Malefactor and lead him away bound unto Pontius Pilate to have him formally condemned and executed The land of Iewry at that time was a province of the Roman Empire and none had power of life and death but the Roman Presidents or such to whom they delegated part of their authority for the ease of the subject This made them say it was not lawfull for them to put any man to death as indeed it was not not that they did forbear it or do it in regard of the Passeover or that it was unlawfull only in respect of the time Assuredly that bloudy people who made no scruple of transgressing the whole morall law in such an execrable murther would very easily have dispensed with the ceremonial had that stood only in the way to their main designe But there was in it a divine providence which had so disposed it to make him every way conform to those antient types which were given of him by the Lord in the Law and Prophets Had they proceeded with him by their own old Laws as questionâ—esse they would have done had it been in their power they must have stoned him to death that being the punishment ordained for blasphemers by the Law of Moses But he had signified before what kind of death he should die in the alluding of himself to the brazen Serpent which was not in the power of any to inflict upon him but those who did proceed upon him according the Laws of the Roman Empire Well then to Pilate he is carryed and that too early in the morning by the break of day So swift their feet were to shed innocent bloud that the Governour must be wakened before his hour to hearken to their clamorous accusations and more then so he must be won with fair words if not bought with money to come forth unto them for fear good souls lest if they came themselves into the judgment-hall they should be defiled and consequently debarred for that
Sacraments of Baptism and the Lords Supper commanded and ordained by him De latere pendentis in Cruce Lancen percusso Sacramenta Ecclesiae profluxerunt as his words are briefly and hereunto the Fathers and most writers since have inclined generally This was the last remakable thing remembred in our Saviours passion the draining of his bloud to the last drop as it were which though it could not yet add to his former sufferings being dead before yet served it as a confirmation of his death in the eyes of those who otherwise might have called the realty thereof in question and was a certain note to discern him by after he was risen again from death to life as in the story of St. Thomas No further difficulty that I know of doth occur in this the pleading of this Text by the Canonists of the Church of Rome in maintenance of their mingling water with the wine in the blessed Sacrament being so silly a device that it deserves not to be honoured with a confutation But in the other passage which the Gospel mentioneth touching the not breaking of his bones perhaps a question may be made by some captious men how it can possibly agree with another text of holy Scripture where it is said This is my body which is broken for you and to what use the breaking of the bread doth serve in the holy Eucharist it not to signifie the breaking of our Saviours body But the answer unto this is easie For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the word used by St. Paul in the Original doth not only signifie to break in peeces though Rob. Stephanus in his Thesaurus expound the verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by no other word then the Latine Frango Sometimes it signifieth to strain as in that of Aristotle going up an hill 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the knees are bent or strained backwards and in that also of Hippocrates where he observeth that sometimes in holding the hand forth out-right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the bowing of the joynt or elbow is strained Sometimes it signifieth to cut Hesychius an old Grammarian expounding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is cut and Theophrastus calling the cuttings of vines 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with whom Suidas Phavorinus and the Scholiast on Aristophanes do agree also And in this sense the bread is broken in the Sacrament although cut with knives there being mention of a sacred knife in St. Chrysostoms Liturgie which was employed unto no other use then that of the holy Sacrament And last of all it signifieth sometimes the tearing or bruising of the fleshy parts when the bones are neither broken nor so much as touched which is most clearly witnessed by Hippocrates the Father of all learned Physick giving this for a Rule of Art that the breaking of any of the bones is less dangerous then where the bones are not broken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the veins and sinews adjoining are on every side bruised So that although the bones of our Saviour were not broken that he might in all things be agreeable to the Paschal lamb yet were his joints strained to the utmost when he was stretched upon the Cross his flesh most cruelly cut and torn with scourges his veins and sinews miserably bruised and broken with those outward torments All which as they are signified by this one word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render broken so doth it very well agree with that meaning of the word broken in our Engish Idiom As when we say a man hath got a broken skin or broken head when the flesh is only bruised and the skin but rased And hereto Beza doth agree in his Annotations on that Text By the word broken in St. Paul is designed saith he the very manner of Christs death his body being torn bruised and even broken with most cruel torments though his legs were not broken as the theeves were so that the word hath a marvellous express signification making the figure to agree so fully with the thing it self the breaking of the bread representing to us the very death and passion of our Saviour Christ. Now go we on Pilates leave being thus obtained and the certainty of Christs death assured by this second murder they hasten all they could unto his funeral to which was used small preparation but less pomp by far It was the day of preparation to the following festival as two of the Evangelists do affirm expressely the Friday or good Friday as we call it now in which it was not lawful for the Iews to do any work A garden there was hard at hand and in the garden a new sepulchre in which never man was laid before a Virgin-sepulchre for the son of a Virgin-mother a Garden to receive that great pledge of death which first found entrance by a Garden So that the labour was not much to take down his body and carry it to the next spot of ground and there intomb it No further cost bestowed upon his funerals who spared not his most pretious bloud to procure our happiness but a mixture made of Myrrhe and Aloes and had not Nicodemus been more valiant now then when he used to come unto his Saviour as it were by stealth he had wanted that And this was done after the custom of the Iews whose manner it was to bestow that charge upon their dead in sign of their belief of the Resurrection unto life eternal not out of any thought they had of his so speedy a Resurrection at the three days end though he had often told them that he would so do So far were they from looking to behold him again on the first day of the week then following that they did all they could to lay him up fast enough till the day of judgement and to that end not only wrapped him up in sear-cloaths for such the linnen clothes were which they wrapped him in Ioh. 19.40 but rolled a great stone to the dore of the sepulchre to make sure work with him God certainly had so disposed it in his infinite wisdome to make the miracle of his Resurrection the more considerable and convincing both with Iews and Gentiles This is the sum of those particulars that concern Christs burial Which though it seem of no more moment then as a confirmation of an unfaigned death and a preparative to his Resurrection and consequently may be thought unnecessary to be here added in the Creed yet upon further search into it we shall finde it otherwise Our Saviour had not overcome death if he had not dyed nor got the victory of the grave had he not been buryed His being restored unto life within three days of his death was a very great and signal miracle but not so great as that which had been acted before on Lazarus who had lain four days in the earth and began to putrefie His lying in the grave was the way
most secret seats of Tartarus or the dungeons of Hell Then comes the Renowned Athanasius There are saith he no other places but the grave and Hell out of which man was perfectly freed by Christ. And this appeareth not only in us but in the death of Christ also the body going to the grave 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. and the soul descending unto Hell being places severed with a very great distance the grave receiving his body for there it was present and Hell or Hades his soul. Else how did Christ present his own soul to the souls in bands 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he might break in sunder the bands or chains of the souls detained in Hell St. Basil next When David said God will deliver my soul from the power of Hell he doth plainly prophesie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the descent of the Lord to Hell or Hades to redeem the Prophets souls with others that they should not be detained there So Nazianzen Christ dyed but he restored to life and by his death abolished death he was buryed but he rose again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He descended into Hell but he brought back souls and ascended into Heaven Macarius to the same purpose also When thou hearest that Christ delivered souls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of hell and darkness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that the Lord descended to Hell and performed an admirable work think that these things are not far from thine own soul. St. Chrysostom then being one of the Presbyters of the Church of Antioch composed two Homilies upon the Creed in one of which after he had spoken of the death and burial of our Saviour he addes this descendit ad infernum that he descended unto Hell that this also might not want a wonder Epiphanius though in other points his Enemie doth agree with him in this particular touching the descent of Christ into Hell though he differ both from him and others in making the Deity of Christ to be united with his soul in the performance of that action to the end that Hades so he calls the Devil the chief Ruler thereof thinking to lay hands on a man and not knowing that his Deity was united to his sacred soul Hades himself might be surprized and death dissolved and that fulfilled which was spoken Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell To this agrees St. Cyril of Alexandria thus The soul which was coupled and united to the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 descended into hell or Hades and using the power and the force of the Godhead shewed it self to the spirits there For we must not say that the Godhead of the only begotten which is a nature uncapable of death and no way conquerable by it was brought back from the dark caverns of the earth To the same also saith Iohn Damascene 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. i. e. The deified soul of Christ descended to Hades that as to those upon the earth the Sun of righteousness was risen so to those who sate under the earth and in shades and darkness light might also shine Next look we on the Fathers of the Western Church and we shall finde as general consent amongst them for proof of Christs descent into hell as before we had amongst the Fathers of the Eastern And first beginning with Tertullian the most antient of the Latine Writers he doth not onely tell us in plain tearms Christum inferos adiisse that Christ went into hell but addes this reason of it also ne nos adiremus that we might not go thither St. Cyprians judgment in the point we have seen before where he declareth that Hell had been broken open in the presence of Christ when he led captivity captive c. Spolians inferos captivos praemittens ad superos first spoyling hell and then sending the captives before towards Heaven Arnobius thus Postea vidit inferos c. in Abyssi profunda descendens After his Passion he visited hell and not only became far off from heaven but even from the earth it self descending into the depth of the bottomeless pit Lactantius if the verse be his shewing how the darkness of hell vanished at the brightness of Christ then addes Hinc tumulum repetens post Tartara carne resumpta c. that after his being in hell he returned to his grave and resuming his body went to heaven like a noble Conquerer St. Hilarie of Poictiers next The powers of heaven saith he do incessantly glorifie the Name of God for conquering death and breaking the gates of hell for in hell he conquered death Christ saith St. Hierom destroyed and brake open the inclosed places of hell and put the Devil which had power over death out of his Kingdom and Dominion And in another place more plainly Hell saith he is the place of punishments and torments ad quem descendit Dominus ut vinctos de carcere dimitteret to which the Lord descneded to release those from prison who were therein bound St. Ambrose to the same effect Expers peccati Christus cum ad Tartari ima descenderet c. Christ saith he being void of sin when he descended to the lowest pit of hell destroying the Dominion of death recalled out of the Devils jaws to eternal life the souls of those who there lay bounden for their sins St. Austin living in those times though he assert as much as any the descent into hell yet gives a more unquestionable reason for it Quaeri solet si non nisi poenalia intelligantur inferna c. It is demanded if Infernus Hell be taken for no other then the place of punishment how we may safely believe that the Soul of our Lord Christ descended thither But it is answered ideo descendisse ut quibus oportuit subveniret that he descended into hell to succour those that were to be succoured And in another place more clearly as unto the reason There is saith he a lower hell whither the deceased use to go from whence God would deliver our souls by sending his Son thither Ideo enim ille usque ad infernum pervenit ne nos in inferno maneremus for therfore went Christ even unto hell that we should not remain in hell Vigilius shewing how our Saviour could be both in Hell and in the grave doth resolve it thus Dicimus ergo Dominum jacuisse in sepulchro sed in solo corpore descendisse ad infernum sed in sola anima viz. that the Lord lay in the grave as to his body alone but descended down to Hell in his soul only Ruffinus commenting on this Article of the Creed gives it briefly thus Quod in Infernum descendit audenter pronunciatur in Psalmis that Christs descent into hell is evidently foretold in the Psalmes and then eo usque ille miserando descendit usque quo tu
nought else but the Port of Salvation which whether it were formerly in the heavens above an apud Inferos or in the places under the earth I determine not Yea I had rather be still ignorant of it then rashly to pronounce of that which I finde not expressed in the Scripture In these things as I will not be too curious so neither will I define any thing therein nor will I contend with any man about this matter It shall suffice me to understand and confess that the godly of the Old Testament were in a certain place of rest and not in torments before the Ascension of Christ although I know not what nor where it was So he with great both piety and Christian modesty and with him I shut up this dispute CHAP. IX The Doctrine of the Church of England touching Christs descent into Hell asserted from all contrary opinions which are here examined and disproved THus have we seen the doctrine of the Primitive Church touching the Article of Christs descent into hell so much disputed or indeed rather quarrelled in these later times Let us next look upon the Doctrine of of this Church of England which in this point as in all the rest which are in controversie doth tread exactly in the steps of most pure Antiquity And if we search into the publick monuments and records thereof we shall finde this doctrine of Christs local descent into hell to have been retained and established amongst many other Catholick verities ever since the first beginning of her Reformation For in the Synod of the year 1552. being the fourth year of King Edward the sixt it was declared and averred for the publick doctrine of this Church to be embraced by all the members of the same that the body of Christ until his Resurrection lay in the grave but that his soul being breathed out was with the spirits in prison or hell and preached to them as the place of Peter doth witness saying For Christ also hath once suffered for sins the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but quickned by the Spirit By which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison c. 1 Pet. 3.18 19. But being the Articles of that year were set out in Latine take them according as they stand in the Original Nam corpus usque ad Resurrectionem in sepulchro jacuit Spiritus ab illo emissus cum spiritibus qui in Carcere sive in Inferno detinebantur fuit illisque praedicavit ut testatur Petri locus c. So also in the year 1562. When Q. Elizabeth was somewhat setled in her state she caused her Clergy to be called together in a Synodical way to the intent they might agree upon a Body or Book of Articles for the avoiding of diversities of opinions and for the establishing of consent touching true Religion Who being met and having agreed upon the two first Articles touching Faith in the holy Trinity and the Word or Son of God which was made very man and having declared in this second that Christ who is very God and very man did truly suffer and was crucified dead and buryed to reconcile us to his Father addes for the title of the third of the going down of Christ into hell Which being an entire Article of it self runs thus in terminis viz. As Christ dyed for us and was buried so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell Which Article with the rest being publickly agreed upon and passed in the Convocations of both Provinces and confirmed under the broad Seal as the law required became the publick authorized Doctrine of this Church of England and afterwards received such countenance in the high Court of Parliament that there was a statute made unto this purpose that all who were to be admitted unto any Benefice with cure of souls or unto any holy Orders should publickly subscribe the same in the presence of the Bishop or Ordinary The like care was also taken after for subscribing to it by all such who were matriculated in either of the Universities or admitted into any Colledge or Hall or to any Academical degree whatsoever and so it stands unto this day confirmed and countenanced by as high and great authority aâ— the power of the Prince the Canons of the Church and the Sanctions of the Civil State can give it Nor stands it only on Record in the Book of Articles but is thus touched in the Book of Homilies specified and approved of for godly and wholesome Doctrine by those Articles and ratified and confirmed together with them Thus hath his Resurrection saith the Homilie wrought for us life and and righteousness He passed through death and hell to the intent to put us in good hope that by his strength we shall do the same He paid the ransome of sin that it should not be laid to our charge He destroyed the Devil and all his tyranny and openly triumphed over him and took away from him all his captives and hath raised and set them with himself among the heavenly Citizens above So far the Homily There was also published in the beginning of the said Queens Reign a Catechisme writ in Latine by Mr. Alexander Nowel Dean of Pauls and publickly authorized to be taught in all the Grammar Schooles of this kingdome though not by such a sacred and supreme authority as the books of Articles and Homilies had been before in which the doctrine of Christs descent into hell is thus delivered viz. That as Christs body was laid in the Bowels of the earth so his soul separated from his body descended ad inferos to hell and with all the force and efficacie of his death so pierced unto the dead atque inferos adeo ipsos and even to the spirits in hell that the souls of the unfaithful perceived the condemnation of their infidelity to be most sharp and just ipseque inferorum Princeps Satan and Satan himself the Prince of hell saw all the power of his tyranny and of darknesse to be weakned broken and destroyed and contrariwise the dead who whilest they lived believed in Christ understood the work of their Redemption to be performed and felt the fruit and force thereof with a most sweet and certain comfort So that the doctrine of Christs descent into hell being thus positively delivered in the Articles and Homilies and Catechisme publickly authorized to be taught in Schools and being thus solemnly confirmed and countenanced both by Laws and Canons and by the subscriptions of all the Clergie and other learned men of this Realm of England how great must we conceive the impudence to be of the Romish Gagger who charged this upon this Church that we denie the descent of Christ into hell Nor do I wonder lesse at the improvidence of those who were then in authority in licensing Mr. Rogers comment on this Book
dark as St. Iohn hath it or very early in the morning at the breaking or dawning of the day as St. Matthew tels us but that they came not to the Sepulchre till the Sun was risen Or else we may resolve it thus and perhaps with greater satisfaction to the text and truth that Mary Magdalen whose love was most impatient of a long delay went first alone for St. Iohn speaks of her alone when it was yet dark but having signified to Peter what she had discovered she went to make the other women acquainted with it and then came all together as the Sun was rising to behold the issue of the business As for the seeming contradiction in St. Matthews words we shall best see the way to discharge him of it if passing by the Vulgar Latine from whence the contradiction took its first Original we have recourse unto the Greek In the Vulgar Latine it is Vespere Sabbati in the Evening of the Sabbath and that according to the Iewish computation must be on Friday about six of the clock for with them the Evening did begin the day as we saw before But in the Greek it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we English in the end of the Sabbath and then it is the same with St. Marks expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when the Sabbath was past And this construction comes more neer to the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which points unto a thing which is long since past as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hour being now a good while spent and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you lost your opportunity by your tardy coming And so the word is here interpreted by Gregory Nyssen by birth a Grecian and therefore doubtlesse one that well understood the Idiotisme of his own language in whom the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Matthew is made to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very hour and moment of the resurrection Which ground so laid let us subjoyne these words in St. Matthews Gospel Chap. 18. to the last words of St. Lukes Gospel Chap. 23. and then this seeming contradiction will be brought to nothing St. Luke informes us of the women who had attended on our Saviour at his death and burial that having bought spices to imbalme his body they rested on the Sabbath day according to the Scripture v. 56. And then comes in St. Matthew to make up the story as all the four Evangelists do make but one ful history of our Saviours actions which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that when the Sabbath was now past and that the first day of the week did begin to dawn they went unto the Sepulchre as they first intended We have not done yet with the time of his resurrection although the difficulties which concern that time have been debated and passed over We finde it generally agreed on by all four Evangelists that the resurrection was accomplished 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon the first day of the week and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 about the dawning of the day as St. Matthew hath it or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 about the rising of the Sun as St. Marke informes About the dawning of the day for certainly it was not fit that the Sun of Heaven should shine upon the earth before the heavenly Sun of righteousnesse Nay therefore did our Saviour prevent the sun by his early rising to teach us that the whole world is enlightned only by the beams of his most sacred Gospell and that he only is the light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of his people Israel And there was very good reason also why he should choose the first day of the week to be the day of the resurrection more then any other that as God the Father on that day did begin the creation of the world in which we live the life of nature so God the Son should on the same day also begin the creation of a new heaven and a new earth in the souls of men by which they live the life of grace here and are thereby prepared for the life of glory in the world to come The sixt day in which our father Adam did begin to live was the same day in which the second Adam did begin to die And the seventh day on which God rested from his labours in the great work of our Creation was also rested by our Saviour in the far greater businesse of our Redemption Rested I say by him not sanctifyed For Christ did therefore pretermit and sleep out as it were the Iewish Sabbath that from thenceforth the observation of that day should be laid aside and that in that neglect of his there should no further care be taken of the legal Ceremonies And as God sanctifyed that day in which he rested from the work of the worlds Creation so the Apostles first as it was conceived and afterwards the Church of Christ by their example did sanctifie and set apart that day for religious offices in which our Saviour cancelled the bonds of death and finished the great work of our Redemption The Israelites were commanded by the Lord their God immediately on their escape from the hands of Pharaoh to change the beginning of the year in a perpetuall memory of that deliverance With very good reason therefore did the Church determine to celebrate the Christian Sabbath if I may so call it upon a day not used before but changed in due remembrance of so great a miracle as that of our Saviours resurrection from the power of the grave and our deliverance thereby from the Prince of darknesse The Parallel of the worlds Creation and the Redemption on all mankind by Christ our Saviour with the change which followed thereupon in the day of worship is very happily expressed by Gregory Nyssen in his first Sermon upon Easter or the Resurrection where speaking of Gods rest of the Sabbath day he thus proceedeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. By that first Sabbath saith the father thou mayest conjecture at the nature of this this day of rest which God hath blessed above all dayes For on this the only begotten Son of God or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as his own words are who out of a divine purpose of restoring mankind did give his body rest in the house of death and afterwards revived again by his resurrection became the resurrection and the life the day-spring from on high the light to them that sit in darknesse and the shadow of death Finally to insist upon this point no longer three days our Saviour set apart for the performance of this work and wonder of the resurrection and answerably thereunto the Church did antiently set apart three days for the commemoration of that work and wonder which was then performed In which respect the feast of Easter is entituled by the said Gregory Nyssen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the three days festivall The next considerable circumstance of the
resurrection is that he pleased to work that miracle upon himself in a terrible and fearfull earthquake an earthquake so extreme and so truely terrible that the graves did vomit up their dead whose ghastly apparitions wandered up and down Hierusalem and were seen by many of their friends and old acquaintance Which as it was an extraordinary dispensation and far above the Common law and course of nature so was it done by him for a speciall end and did not only verifie the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour ut Dominum ostenderent resurgentem as St. Hierome hath it but also served to assure Gods faithfull servants of the resurrection of their bodies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we read in Chrysostome So that the Earthquake of it self being great and terrible and made more terrible by the rising of so many dead men from the bonds of death no marvell if the Souldiers of the guard were amazed and terrifyed and in that fright betook themselves unto their heels and forsook their charge At first indeed the affright and astonishment was so great upon them that they seemed even as dead men as the text informes us But the first terrors being over we finde them presently in the City with the chief Priests and Elders declaring the sad news of their ill successe and publishing the glorious wonder of the resurrection So wonderfull was the providence of Almighty God that those means which were projected for an hinderance of the resurrection should add unto the fame and glory of so great a miracle and that those very Souldiers which were hired to guard the Sepulchre should be the first Evangelists if I may so call them by whom that miracle was signifyed to that stubborn nation And yet God had a further end then this in the great hast made by the affrighted Souldiers to the Priests and Elders which was by their departure from the holy Sepulchre to give the safer opportunity to his Disciples who were to be the witnesses of his resurrection both to Iew and Gentile to satisfie themselves in the truth thereof For though the women might presume on the Souldiers gentlenesse who commonly are faire conditioned to that sex yet for the Apostles to adventure thither till the Souldiers of the guard were removed from thence had been to run themselves in the mouth of danger and make themselves obnoxious to the accusation of the Priests and Pharisees And this was a remote cause of the honour which befell that sex in being first acquainted with the news of the resurrection and is another of the circumstances which attends the action God certainly had so disposed it in his heavenly wisdome that as a woman was first made the Devils instrument to perswade man to sin and consequently unto death so the same sex also should become the instruments of publishing this glad news that the Lord was risen and the assurance thereby given of a resurrection to all mankinde from the hands of death Withall observe the power of Almighty God never so clearly manifested in the sight of men as in the weaknesse of his iustruments and that although it was a work sufficient for the ablest Prophet to foretell the resurrection of the Messiah yet was it so easie when accomplished that ignorant and silly women and more then so that women laden with sins should be the first that did proclaime it And there was somewhat in that too that Christ first shewed himself unto Mary Magdalen a woman so infamous for her former life that she is branded in Scripture by the name of Peccatrix as one who had deserved to be so intituled and first of all men unto Simon Peter as great a sinner in his kinde as Mary Magdalen For this he did no doubt to let mankind know that there is no sinner so great whosoever he be to whom if he repent him of his former sinnes the fruit and benefit of Christs resurrection ought not to be extended and applyed though some restraine the same to some certain Quidams men more of their election then Almighty Gods Whereas the Scriptures plainly tell us that as in Adam all dyed so by Christ all men shall be restored to life who being risen from the dead is become the first fruits of all them that slept But here perhaps it will be said How can our Saviour Christ be called the first fruits of them that sleep considering how many severall persons had been raised from the dead before both in the old Testament and in the new The answer unto this is easie and the difference great between them and Christ their being raised from the dead and his resurrection For first our Saviour rose again from the dead virtute propria by his ownproper power and virtue but they were raised again to life virtute aliena by the power and ministry of some other In which regard we read notin the story of his resurrection that he was raised from the dead as if he had been wholly passive in the businesse and did contribute no more to it then did the Shunamites child or the daughter of Iairus but resurrexit he was risen or had raised himself which sheweth him to have been the principall Agent Nor let it stumble any one that in some places of the holy Scripture the Father is said to raise him as in Act. 11. Both will stand well enough together For by the same power that the Father is said to have done it by the same was it done also by the Son I and my Father are one but one power of both and therefore whether it were done by both or by either of them it comes all to one Secondly Christ our Saviour did so rise from the dead as to die no more to have an everlasting freedome from the power of death whereas others have been raised from death to life but to die again Christ being raised from the dead saith the great Apostle dyeth no more death hath no more dominion over him He is not only free from death or the act of dying but from the pains perils and the fears of death and all those sicknesses and sorrows which make way unto it But so it was not with the son of the widow of Sarepta or of the widow of Naim no nor with Lazarus his most dear friend neither who though they were restored again to this mortal life yet it was still a mortal life when it was at best and that mortality was to them as the Prisoners chain by which he is pulled back again though he chance to scape He only did so rise again as by his rising to destroy death and to cloath himself with immortality Thirdly though some were raised before under both Testaments yet that was but a private benefit to themselves alone or perhaps unto their Parents or some few of their friends yet the fruit and benefit thereof did extend no further But by the
power of God as our Saviour calleth it Luke 22.69 And as the right hand is applyed to God as the hand of power by which he ruleth all things both in heaven and earth so is it sometimes also ascribed unto him and not to him alone but to Christ nor Saviour as the hand of love by which he cherisheth and protecteth his faithful servants For what else is the reason why the sheep in the day of Judgement shall be placed at the right hand of the King of Heaven but to shew that they are his beloved ones his Benjamins the children of his right hand as that name doth signifie And for what reason is it said that he doth imbrace the Church his Spouse with his right hand but to shew that ardour and sincerity of affection wherewith he doth cherish and protect her Cant. 2.6 8.3 Be it the power of God or his fidelity and love it 's the right hand stâ—ll There is another word to be looked on yet before we shall finde out the full meaning of this branch of the Article which is the word Sâ—det which we render sitting In which we must not understand as I think some Protestant Writers do any constant posture of the Body of Christ at the right hand of God For he who in the Creed and in divers places of the Old and New Testament is said to sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty is by St. Stephen who saw him with a glorified eye affirmed to stand Behold saith he I see heaven opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand Sitting and standing then for both words are used denote not to us any certain posture of our Saviours body but serve to signifie that rest and quiet which he hath found in Heaven after all his labours For what was our most blessed Saviour in the whole course and passages of his life and death but a man of troubles transported from one Countrey to another in his very infancy and from one City to another when he preached the Gospel compelled to convey himself away from the sight of men to save his life exposed to scoffs and scorns at the hour of his death Noahs Dove and he were both alike No rest for either to be found on the face of the earth no ease till they were taken into the Ark again out of which they were sent And this St. Paul doth intimate where he tels us of him that for the joy which was set before him he endured the Cross and despised the shame and is set down at the right hand of the Throne of God And unto this construction of the word Sedere St. Ambrose very well agrees saying Secundum consuetudinem nostram illi consessus offertur qui aliquo opere perfecto victor adveniens honoris gratia promeretur ut sedeat It is saith he our usual custome to offer a chair or seat to him who having perfected the work which he had in hand doth deserve to sit And on this ground the man CHRIST IESVS having by his death and passion overcome the Devil and by his Resurrection broken open the gates of Hell having accomplished his work and returning unto Heaven a Conquerour was placed by God the Father at his own right hand Thus far and to this purpose he The like may be affirmed of standing or of standing still which doubtless is a great refreshment to a wearied Traveller a breathing bait as commonly we use to call it and many times is used in Scripture for a posture of ease as Quid statis toto die otiosi Why stand you here all the day idle But to proceed a little further in this disquisition there may be more found in the words then so For standing is the posture of a General or man of action ready to fall on upon the Enemy Oportet Imperatorem stantem mori said the Roman Emperour And it is also the posture which the Iews used in prayer as appears Matth. 6.5 Luk. 18.10.13 From whence they took that usual saying Sine stationibus non subsisteret mundus that were it not for such standings the world would not stand And sitting is we know the posture of a Judge or Magistrate in the act of Iudicature of Princes keeping state in the Throne Imperial And this appears as plainly by our Saviours words to his Apostles saying that they which followed him in the Regeneration should when the Son of man did sit in the Throne of his glory sit upon twelve Thrones judging the twelve Tribes of Israel And so the word is also used in Heathen Authors as Consedere duces consâ—ssique ora tenebant in the Poet Ovid when the great cause was to be tryed for Achilles armour When therefore St. Stephen beheld our Saviour Christ and saw him standing at the right hand of God the Father he found him either ready as a Chief or General to lead on against the enemies of his persecuted and afflicted Church or as an Advocate Habemus enim Advocatum for we have an Advocate with the Father IESVS CHRIST the righteous pleading before Gods Throne in behalf thereof or offering up his prayers for the sins of his people And when St. Paul and other texts of holy Scripture do describe him sitting they look upon him in the nature of a Iudge or Magistrate the Supreme Governour of the Church and then sedere is as much as regnare as St. Hierome hath it to reign or rule And to this last St. Paul doth seem to give some countenance if we compare his words with those of the Royal Pâ—almist Sit thou at my right hand saith the Psalmist till I have made thy enemies thy footstool Psal. 110.1 Oportet eum regnare saith the Apostle For he must reign or it behoveth him to reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet 1 Cor. 15.25 Of this minde also was Sedulius an old Christian Poet Aethereas evectus abit sublimis in auras Et dextram subit ipse Patris mundumque gubernat Ascending into Heaven at Gods right hand He sits and all the World doth there command This said we will descend to those Expositions which have been made by several men on this branch of the Article and after pitch on that which we think most likely Some think this sitting at the right hand of God to signifie the fame with that which was said before of his ascending into Heaven which opinion Vrsin doth both recite and reject And he rejects it as I conceive upon very good reason it being very absurd as lie truly noteth in tam brevi Symbolo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 committi that a tautologie should be used in so short a summary It had been very absurd indeed and yet more absurd if they should intimate the same thing in a figurative and metaphorical form of speech which they had formerly expressed in so plain a way as was familiar
eyes of his people did he establish him in the office of the high Priest saying Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech That so it was in his advancement to the throne of his father David shall be made evident in the course of these present Commentaries when we shall look upon him as invested with the regal power And that it was so in his establishment in the Sacerdotal shall be made evident by the testimony of the great Apostle whose words here presently ensue Christ saith he glorifyed not himself to be made the high Priest but he that said unto him Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee did confer it on him As he saith also in another place Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech that is to say that from the day and moment of the resurrection at what time the fiâ—st of the two Prophecies were fulfilled which God delivered by the mouth of the Psalmist saying Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee was our Redeemer to begin the execution of the high Priests office after the order of Meschisedech And this appeares to be the meaning of the Apostle in the present place by the words ensuing For presently on the recitall of the words before recited viz. Thou art a Priest after the order of Melchisedech he addes of Christ that in the dayes of his flesh he offered up prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death if he had so pleased But finding his Fathers resolution to the contrary he learned obedience though a Son by that which he suffered and finally that being perfect or rather consecrated for so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth import most properly he was made the Authour of eternall salvation unto all those that obey him and was called or publickly declared 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of God an high Priest after the order of Melchisedech And to say truth had not the Scriptures been so clear in the proof hereof yet necessary consequence grounded upon comparing of one text with another and that applied according to the principles of natural reason would evince it for us The Priesthood of Melchiseâ—ech as the Scripture telleth us was an everlasting or eternall Priesthood Thou art a Priest for ever for no shorter term and therefore of necessity to be exercised and enjoyed by one who must be as eternal as the office is and yet a man and taken from amongst the Sons of men to offer gilts and sacrifices for the sins of the people But such our Saviour was not take him as a man though otherwise more qualifyed and prepared then any for so high an office untill he had so crushed and broken all the powers of death that death had now no longer title to him or dominion over him which doubtlesse was performed at the resurrection And therefore then and not before when all the ceremonies of his consecration were fulfilled in order did he begin to exercise the function of an endlesse everlasting Priesthood after the order of Melchisedech The order of Melchisedech that comes after next And touching that we will examine these three things 1. Who Melchisedech was 2. Wherein his high Priesthood did consist 3. In what the Parallel doth stand between Christ and him Concerning the first point who and what he was hath been a great dispute amongst learned men some thinking that he could not be a mortal man and therefore must needs be either the holy Ghost or else the Son of God then appearing to Abraham in the likenesse and similitude of an earthly Prince The last is most eagerly defended by P. Cunaeus a very learned man and a great Philosopher in his book de Republ. Hebraeorum The reason of this difficulty and his errour are those words of St. Paul where he describeth Melchisedech to be without father without mother without descent having neither beginning of dayes nor end of life And this thought he can be no other then the Son of God Others with greater probability both of proof and reason declare him to be Sem the third son of Noah out of whose loins our father Abraham was descended and this opinion hath found most acceptance generally amongst the learned though some of very eminent parts do opine the contrary But whether he were Sem or not or rather some petty King of the Land of Canaan who went forth to congratulate Abraham upon his returne they are much troubled to apply the negative character which St. Paul hath given us to any upon whom they desire to fasten The best and clearest resolution of the doubt which I yet have met with is that Meschisedech whosoever he was is said to be without father and mother in the same sense as he is after said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which our Translators render without descent of which his being without father or mother is one branch or member And he is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. without genealogy and not without descent as our English reads because he hath no predecessour either father or mother amongst the rest of the Patriarks whose Genealogies are recorded in the book of God And in this sense as he is said to have no beginning of dayes because the time of his birth is no were remembred so is he also said to have no end of his life because neither the time of his death nor the succession of any after him in his two great offices is specifyed upon the Registers of sacred writ And yet if the Catena Arabica be of any credit we have heard more news of late touching this great man then hath been till of late made known in these Western parts For in their Marginal notes on the 10. of Genesis they say of Phaleg of whom we finde mention vers 25. And this Phaleg was the Father of Heraclim the Father of Melchisedech But in the Chapter going before his Generation is set down in this formal pedegree viz. Melchisedech was the son of Heraclim the son of Phaleg the son of Eber And his Mothers name was Salathiel the daughter of Gomer the son of Japhet the son of Noah And Heraclim the son of Eber maried his wife Salathiel and she was with child and brought forth a son and called his name Melchisedech that is the King of righteousnesse called also the King of Peace By this account Melchisedech was the sixth from Sem and Cousen german unto Serug who was Abrahams Grandfather and being of the linage and house of Sem might well confer that blessing on his Cousen Abraham which had been given to Sem by their father Noah And then one of the greatest arguments to prove Melâ—hisedech to be Sem that namely which is borrowed from the forme and manner of the blessing which he gave to Abraham will be answered easily And were this true as I can hardly reckon it
after this description without father c. that he was likened unto the Son of God and continueth a high Priest for ever it may be said that he did purposely devest himself of all natural relations putting off all references unto Father and Mother wife and children which necessarily do represent both a beginning and end of days that being thus transformed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Apostle and turned out of his own proper and natural shape he might be made more like to the Son of God who being told that his Father and Mother sought him weeping seemed not to note their tears or regard their sorrows but put them off with this short answer Wist ye not that I must goe about my Fathers businesse But take it in the former sense because most received and then Melchisedech is a perfect type or embleme of our Saviour Christ who as he had no beginning of dayes â—or in the beginning was the word before time it self So shall he have no end of life the man CHRIST IESVS being freed from the powers of death and made by God a Priest for ever till time be no more after the order of Melchisedech In the performance of the office which is the next part of the parallel our Saviour did all that Melchisedech did and consequently may pretend to all which Melchisedech claimed Melchisedech blessed Abraham so the text informes us and questionlesse that blessing was accompanied with prayers to God that he would ratifie the blessing then pronounced upon him Blessed saith he be Abram of the most high God possessour of heaven and earth And blessed be the most high God which hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand In which we finde Melchisedech the high Priest of God not only blessing Abraham in the name of God but offering prayers and praises unto God for so great a victory in behalf of Abram which are two principall parts of the Priestly function And these our Saviour did performe as soone as he was consecrated and established in his holy and eternall Priesthood For after his glorious resurrection from whence his Priesthood doth commence as before was proved and before he did withdraw his bodily presence from his Disciples it is said that he lift up his hands and blessed them And questionlesse his blessing was accompanied with prayers to God that he would furnish them abundantly with all gifts and graces which were necessary for the Ministery he had called them to he having told them formerly and it proved accordingly that he would pray unto his Father to send down the Comforter by whom they should be guided in the wayes of truth Nor did he so accumulate his blessings upon them alone that he hath none left in store for us St. Peter hath resolved it otherwise saying to the Iewes that God had raised up his Son Jesus and had sent him to blesse them in turning away every one of them from his iniquities And yet this blessing came not to the Iewes alone but upon the Gentiles and for that we have St. Paul to witnesse CHRIST saith he hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law being made a curse for us that the blessing of Abraham might come unto the Gentiles The difference only is in this that Christ is more authentick and authoritative in his blessings then Melchisedech was Melchisedech indeed blessed Abraham but he blessed him only in the name of the most high God and not as having power to confer the blessing But Christ doth blesse us of himself by his own authority and hath withall a power to make good the blessing All power saith he is given me both in heaven and earth and therefore power to give the blessings of the earth and the blessings of Heaven the blessings of this life and the life to come Nor are we only blessed by him in the sense aforesaid but we are also blessed for him we are blessed through him and all unto this end and purpose to be everlastingly blessed in him For him it is that we are blessed and therefore dare not aske any good thing at the hands of God but it is propter merita Iesu Christi for the merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ which either explicitly or implicitely is in all those prayers which we do or ought to make to the Lord our God Through him it is that we are blessed he being as it were the Conduit or Channell through which the blessings of the Lord are conveied unto us in which regard the Church concludeth most of her formes of prayer with this solemne clause per Dominum nostrum I. C. through Jesus Christ our Lord. And finally we shall at last be blessed in him when we are made partakers of that endless happiness which formerly consisteth in our union with him when we are so united to him that we seem to be incorporated in him and all make up together but one glorious body whereof CHRIST IESVS is the head The next part of the Priestly function consisted in offering up the peoples prayers to Almighty God or offering up his own prayers for the weal of the people Melchisedech did both in the case of Abraham for first he prayed unto God for a blessing on him and then he praised God in his Name for his blessings to him And so doth Christ our Saviour also St. Iohn who had presented him unto our view in the first Chapter of the Revelation clothed in Priestly garments as before was said doth in the eight present him in the execution of his Priestly Office For there he telleth us of an Angel standing before the Altar having in his hands a golden Censer to whom much Incense was given that he should offer it with the prayers of all Saints those upon the earth upon the golden Altar which was upon the Throne vers 3. This Angel was our Lord Christ Iesus as St. Augustine telleth us the Mediator of the New Covenant as the Scriptures call him who offereth up the prayers of his faithful servants to the Throne of God and addes much also of his own incense which was given unto him to offer it together with the prayers of the Saints that so they might be made more acceptable in the sight of God This that he doth and doth it by the vertue of the Priestly function is more cleerly evidenced by St. Paul This man saith he discoursing of our blessed Saviour because he continueth for ever hath an unchangeable Priesthood and therefore he is also able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them And for performance of this Office his sitting at the right hand of God doth so fitly serve as if he were advanced to it for this purpose only We touched upon this string before and now to make the Harmony more compleat and perfect I shall adde that also of St. Paul in another
themselves an hodie aeternitatis something which may be called this day before all eternity Which exposition of the words as it is very justly disliked by Calvin so is he very unjustly quarrelled for by some latter writers who look no further on the words then the words of David and not upon the application which St. Paul makes of them Clearly St. Paul who spake by the same Spirit that David did and therefore could not erre in expounding the words of David intends them neither to CHRISTS natural birth as the son of the blessed Virgin Mary nor his eternall generation as the Son of God but to his birth day or begetting to the Crown of the heavenly Canaan the day of their advancement to the regal throne being esteemed as their birth day by most Kings and Princes For who so ignorant in the affaires of the world so little conversant in the monuments of former times as not to know that it is usuall in most States and Kingdomes not only to celebrate with great feasts and triumphs the naturall birth-day of their Kings which they call Diem natalem imperatoris but the inauguration day the day wherein he was exalted to the Crown imperial which they call Diem natalem imperii Certain I am that the day whereon Augustus did assume the imperial power was solemnized in Rome every tenth year with a great deal of joy and that Caligula did decree that the day whereon he began his Empire Dies quo cepisset imperium as my Authour hath it should be called Palilia and celebrated as that was by the antient Romans in memory that their City was on that day founded And thus it hath continued in most States of Christendome but most unprosperously of late as if it were an Omen of the present troubles laid aside in ours And this interpretation of the Psalmists words receiveth good countenance from another place of the same Apostle in which those words of David are again recited The place is this Christ saith he glorifyed not himself to be made high Priest but he that said unto him thou art my Son to day have I begotten thee as he saith also in another place Thou art a Priert for ever after the order of Melchisedech The meaning of this passage we have shewn before and is this in brief that Christ being called by God to the two great offices those of the Priesthood and the Kingdome was not exalted unto either though designed to both till God had glorifyed him in the sight of the people by his resurrection And to my seeming Davids words had not St. Paul conducted us to this exposition could have no other meaning then is here made of them For if we marke the composition of the same and the place in which these words are ranked we shall finde that God had first advanced his King and set him on his holy hill of Sion on the royall throne before and but immediately before these words Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee But what need one Apostle be called to witnesse in this point when we have all that glorious company the Apostolical College and the rest of their company apply the whole Psalme to the person of Christ of Christ anointed to the Kingdome by the hands of God but not till Herod Pontius Pilate the Gentiles and the people of Israel had conspired against him to do whatsoever the hand and counsell of God had before determined Having thus brought our Saviour to the Regall throne and set him on the right hand of God in the heavenly places let us next look upon him in his forme of Government according to the arts of Empire These by the Stalists are reduced unto two heads the one consisting in protecting and defending the people committed to them which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the other in prescribing laws and executing justice on the transgressours which they terme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Both these most perfectly discharged by our Prince and Saviour And first the Enemies against which he protects his people are these three the Devil sin and persecution The two first he discomfited in that painfull combat in which he paid the price of our redemption and made his passage open to the new Hierusalem Since that time there is nothing left in Satan but a powerlesse malice and though he roare against the Church he shall never devour it The gates of hell shall not prevail against it said the glorious Conqueror Sin at the same time lost his strength which was the curse of the Law and not his strength only but his Empire too And though he may sojourn for a time in our mortal bodies yet shall he never reigne over us and have us in subjection as before he had unlesse we willingly betray our selves and captivate our souls to those conquered powers which God hath given us grace to master Nor deales otherwise with the Persecutors of his Church and people then he hath done with sin and Satan whom he doth crush at last with a rod of iron and break them into pieces like a potters vessell as David telleth of him in the second Psalme And though sometimes to manifest his own glory in his peoples sufferings and to make tryall of their faith and Christian patience he doth permit their enemies to prevail against them yet was he never wanting in his own due time to make their deliverance more remarkable then all their afflictions Witnesse the persecutions of the primitive times in which the Princes of the earth and the powers of hell banded themselves against the Lord and against his anointed times in the which it were a difficulty to determine whether the gallantry of the Martyrs or the tyranny of the persecutors gave juster cause of admiration to the sad spectators With such a chearfull countenance did they beare their sufferings that they even wearied their tormenters and did not lose their lives but give them With what a noble confidence did they mount the scaffold on which they were to suffer the most cruel death which the wit of man and malice of the Devil could inflict upon them so bravely and without amazement as if they had been mounted rather to behold a triumph then to be brought to execution Never was tragedy of death more bravely acted nor actor honoured with a richer and more glorious crown And for his enemies and theirs the vengeance of the Lord found them out at last and laid them in the dust with disgrace and ignominy For which was there of all the persecutors who made themselves drunk with the bloud of the Saints and Prophets or that have raged against the Church since those furious times to whom he gave not bloud to drinke whom either in their gray haires or in the pride and flourish of all their glories he brought not to the grave with reproach and sorrow or left their dead bodies to be meat to
under him saith the Apostle Nor must we understand it so as it Christ delivering up the Kingdome had no more to doe but was reduced to the condition of a private Saint that were injurious to the dignity of our Lord CHRIST IESVS Nec sic arbitremur eum traâ—iturum Deo Patri ut adimat sibi as St. Austin hath it we must not think saith he that he will so deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father as to devest himself of all Power Majesty Not so His meaning is but this at most taking the word Kingdome in the usual and accustomed sense that the form of governing this Kingdome shall then be altered Sâ—n Hell and Death being all subdued as in himself before so in all his Members and Heaven replenished with those Saints for whose sakes principally he received the Kingdome And though this Exposition be both safe and general yet I conceive it may admit another sense and such as do most happily avoid those difficulties which otherwise it may seem to be subject to What then if we should say that by Regnum here we are so understand only filios Regni if by the word Kingdome in this place St. Paul meaneth those who are called the Children of the Kingdome in another place and that by the delivering up of the Kingdome unto God the Father we are to understand no more then the presenting of his children Behold I and the children whom thou hast given me to the fight of God to be received into his glories and crowned by him with immortality Assuredly if I should both say it and stand to it too I should not think the Exposition either forced nor new Not forced for Metonymies of this kinde in the Book of God and in all Classick Authors too are exceeding obvious For Classick Authors first to name two or three we have in Tacitus Matrimonium Principale pessimum principalis Matrimonii instrumentum for the Princes wife And in the Poet Coelum Heaven for Coelites the heavenly Citizens as Coelo gratissimus amnis a River very acceptable unto those in heaven O Coelo dilecta domus an house beloved of the Gods in another Poet. Thus also in the holy Scripture Regale Presbyterium a Royal Priesthood 1 Pet. 2. vers 8. is put for a society of Royal Priests Regnum which is the word here used is in our English rendred Kings Fecit nos Regnum sacerdotes saith the Vulgar Latine He hath made us Kings and Priests saith our Translation Apoc. 1. vers 6. And more then so in the 13. of St. Matthewes Gospel the word Regnum is directly used by Christ our Saviour pro filiis Regni the Kingdome for the sons of the Kingdome The Kingdome of Heaven saith he is like a Merchant man i. e. the children of the Kingdome of Heaven are like to Merchant men seeking godly pearls vers 24. Use but the word so here as in that of St. Matthew and the delivery of the Kingdome unto God the Father will signifie no more then the presenting of the Saints as before I said or tendring Gods adopted Sonnes which are the children of the great King and the Kingdome too to their heavenly Father This shews the Exposition is not forced we are sure of that And we have hopes to prove that it is not new being I think as old as St. Augustines time For asking this question of himself What is the meaning of this Text Then shall he deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father He makes this answer Quia justos omnes in quibus nunc regnat c. The meaning is that he shall bring the righteous persons in whom he reigns as Mediator between God and man unto the blessed Vision of Almighty God that they may see him face to face And in another place to the same effect It is as much as if he should have said in other words Cum perduxerit credentes ad contemplationem Dei Patris Then shall he bring the faithfull to behold the face of God the Father Which Faithfull or the body of his holy ones he cals plainly in another place by the name of Regnum the word here used by the Apostle affirming of the Saints of God eos ita esse in Regno ejus ut ipsi etiam sint Regnum ejus They are saith he estated in the Kingdome of God but so as to be his Kingdome also But this discourse is out of season though not out of the way For though our Saviour shall deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father in what sense soever we understand it yet shall not this be done till after the day of general Judgement till he hath judged the quick and dead and given to every one according to his works Which is the last act of his Regal Office and the subject of the following Article ARTICLE VIII Of the Eighth ARTICLE OF THE CREED Ascribed unto St. MATTHEW 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Inde venturus judicare vivos mortous i. e. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead CHAP. XV. Touching the coming of our Saviour to Iudgement both of quick and dead The souls of just men not in the highest state of blisse till the day of judgment and of the time and place and other circumstances of that action WE are now come unto the last and greatest act of the Regal Office the supreme power of Iudicature and to the best part also of the Royall power potestas vitae mortis the power of life and death as the Lawyers call it All other acts of the Kingly function he executeth sitting at the right hand of God in the Heavenly places But when he cometh to judge both the quick and the dead his Judgement-seat shall be erected in some visible place though still at the right hand of Almighty God where both the wicked shall behold him to their finall confusion and his obedient Servants finde accesse unto him to their endlesse comforts And this is also the last and highest degree of his exaltation the last in order but the highest in esteem and honour The first step or degree of his exaltation was his descent into hell to beat the Devill at his own home in his strongest fortresse and take possession of that part of his Kingdome Devils as well as Men and Angels things under the earth as well as on the earth and above the heavens being to bow the knee before him and be subject to him This was done only in the fight of the Devils and the infernal fiends of hell but in the next which was his resurrection he had both men and Angels to bear witnesse to it and some raised purposely from the dead to attend him in it The third degree or step for he still went higher was his ascending into heaven performed openly in the sight of the people and so performed that it excelled all the triumphs which were gone
that as they sinned together or served God together so they may share together of reward or punishment But because many times the soul sins without the body and many times without it doth some works of piety which God is pleased to accept of therefore as requisite it is that the soul separated from the body should either suffer torment or enjoy felicity according as it hath deserved in the sight of God whilest yet the body sleepeth in the grave of death And on these grounds next to the dictates and authority of the book of God the doctrine of the general judgement hath been built so strongly that only some few Atheists amongst the Gentiles and none but the wicked Sect of Manichees amongst the Christians had ever the impudence to denie it That which concernes us most as Christians and doth especially relate to the present Article is that this judgement shall be executed by our Saviour Christ sitting with power at the right hand of God the Father but in the nature and capacity of the Son of man Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the power of God and coming in the clouds of the Aire Mat. 26.64 See the same also Mark 14.62 and Luk. 22.69 The like we have also in St. Iohns Gospell The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Son Chap. 5 22. What to the Son according to his eternal generation as the Word of God Not so but to the Son of man For so it followeth in that Chapter viz. And hath given him power also to judge because he is the Son of man V. 27. And this we have directly from the Lords one mouth The Apostles also say the same St. Peter first God raised him up the third day and shewed him openly And he commanded us to preach unto the people and to testifie that it is he which is ordained of God to be judge both of quick and dead St. Paul next Henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of righteousnesse which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day and not to me only but to all those that love his appearing So for St. Iude Behold the Lord shall come with thousands of his Saints to give judgment against all men and to rebuke all that are ungodly amongst them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed and of all the cruel speakings which ungodly sinners have spoken against him And this he citeth out of the Prophecies of Enoch the seventh from Adam which sheweth that even the Patriarchs before the flood were thoroughly possessed with this sacred truth and therefore not concealed from the holy Prophets which have been since the world began That it was manifested also to the antient Gentiles I have no reason to believe For though they might collect upon grounds of reason that there should be a day of judgement in the world to come yet that this judgement should be executed by the man CHRIST IESVS could not in possibility be discovered to them by the light of reason nor indeed by any other sight then by his alone who was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles as well as to be the glory of his people Israel And therefore in my minde Lactantius might have spared that part of his censure upon the judgment of Hydaspes before remembred in which he approves of his opinion concerning the last day or the day of doom but addeth that his not ascribing this great work to the Son of God was omitted non sine daemonum fraude by the fraud and suggestion of the Devill If Hermes or Mercurius surnamed Trismegistus understood so much quod tamen non dissimulavit Hermes as it followeth after and that the verses by him cited from the antient Sibyls were by them spoken and intended as he saith they were of CHRIST our Saviour and of his coming unto judgement in that dreadfull day we must needs say they had a clearer Revelation of it then any of the Prophets of the most high God which for my part I have not confidence enough to say For in which of all the Prophets finde we such a description of Christs coming to judgement as this which he ascribeth to one of the Sibyls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say Rolling up heaven earths depths I shall disclose Then raise the dead the bonds of fate unloose And deaths sharpe sting and next to judgment call Both quick and dead judging the lives of all Letting this therfore passe as a thing improbable that any of the Heathen Prophetesses should know more of Christs coming to judgement then was revealed to any of the holy Prophets or else deliver it in more clear expressions then do occurre in any of the Prophetical writers we shall proceed unto the execution of this judgement by our Lord and Saviour according to the scope of this present Article For which although no reason was or could be given by those antient sages as those which lived before the coming of CHRIST and consequently were not made acquainted with his life and actions yet there is reason to induce a Christian unto this belief were we not biassed to it by the text of Scripture For what could be more just in Almighty God then to advance his Son to the seat of judgment to the end that having been dishonoured publickly both in life and death scorned and contemned and brought unto a shamefull end in the eye of men he might have opportunity to shew his great power and majesty in the sight of all but specially of his barbarous and ungodly enemies And unto this the Prophet Zachariah alludeth saying They shall look on me whom they have pierced Which words although St. Iohn applyeth in his holy Gospel unto the piercing of Christs side Chap. 19.37 yet in the Revelation he applyeth it to his sitting in judgement Behold saith he he cometh in the clouds and all eyes shall see him and they also that pierced him Chap. 1.17 And from these words it is conceived I think not improbably that the wounds in our Saviours body shall then be visible to the eyes of all spectatours to the great comfort of the faithfull who do acknowledge their redemption to the bloud of the Lamb and to the astonishment and confusion of all his enemies but most especially of them qui vulnera ista inflixerunt by whose ungodly hands he was so tormented Here then we have good grounds to proceed upon both in the way of faith and reason for the asserting of the day of general judgement And yet somewhat further must be said to remove a difficultie which may else disturbe us in our way before we look into the particulars of it For possibly it may be said that there will be but little use of a general judgement except it be
for ostentation of our Savious power in regard that every man receives his judgement either life or death as soon as he is freed from his earthly tabernacle For which there is sufficient proof in the book of God This day said Christ our Saviour to the penitent theef shalt thou be with me in paradise As plain is that of the Apostle It is appointed unto men once to die and after death the judgement The same we finde exemplifyed in the rich man and Lazarus the soul of the one as soon as dead being carried into Abrahams bosome the other being plunged in unquenchable flames If so as so it is most certain what use can be conceived of a general judgement when all particular persons have already received their sentence what further punishments or glory can be added to them then Paradise to Gods Saints and servants and the unquenchable flames of hell for impenitent sinners Which difficulty though removed in some part before as to the vindicating of the justice of Almighty God and the participation of the body in that blisse or misery which the soul presently is adjudged to on the separation and finally the manifesting of Christs power and glory in the sight of his enemies shall now be also cleared as to that part thereof which seems to place the soul in the height of happinesse as soon as separate from the body or in the depth of anguish and disconsolation And first that the souls of just and righteous persons are in the hands of God in Paradise in Abrahams bosome yea in the very heavens themselves I shall easily grant But that they are in the same place or in the same estate and degree of glory to which they shall be preferred by Christ in the day of judgement I neither have seen text nor reason which could yet perswade me Certain I am the Scripture seems to me to be quite against it the current of antiquity and not a few Moderns of good note and eminencie to incline very strongly to the other side For Scriptures first St. Paul doth speak indeed of a Crown of righteousnesse to be given to him and to all those that love the appearing of Christ but not to be given them till that day i. e. the day of his appearing St. Peter next informeth of an incorruptible inheritance reserved for us in the heavens and more then so prepared already but not to be shewed till the last time In the last place we have St. Iohn acquainting us with the condition of the Saints as in matter of fact where he telleth us that the souls of the Martyrs under the Altar where they were willed to rest themselves till the number of their fellow servants was accomplished And though we grant the souls of righteous men departed are in heaven it self yet doth it not follow by any good consequence that therefore they are in the highest Heaven where God himselfe refideth in most perfect majesty The name of Heaven is variously used in holy Scriptures First for the Aire as where we finde mention of the birds of heaven Mat. 26. and the cloudes of heaven Mark 14. Next for the Firmament above in which the Lord hath placed those most glorious lights which frequently are called the Stars of heaven as Gen. 20. Then for that place which St. Paul calleth in one text by the name of the third heaven 2 Cor. 12.2 and in another place shortly after by the name of Paradise vers 4. which is conceived to be the habitations of the Angels their proper habitation as St. Iude calleth it vers 6. Into this place the soul of Lazarus was carried as to Abrahams bosom to this our Saviour promised to bring the soul of the penitent theef Hitherto Enoch and Eliah were translated by God and St. Paul taken up in an heavenly rapture And to this place or to some one or many of those heavenly mansion for in my Fathers house there are many mansions said our Lord and Saviour the souls of righteous men are carryed on the wings of Angels there to abide till they are called upon to meet their bodies in day of day of judgement And last of all it â—ignifyeth the highest heaven to which Christ our Saviour is ascended and sitteth at the right hand of God in most perfect glory Of which St. Paul telleth us that he was made higher then the heavens Heb. 7. and that he did ascend above all the heavens Ephes. 4. This is the seate or Palace of Almighty God called as by way of excellency the heaven of heavens where his divine glory and majesty is most plainly manifested and therefore called by the Prophet the habitation of his holinesse and of his glory So then the souls of righteous men deceased may be in Paradise in the third heaven in Abrahams bosome and yet not be admitted to the highest heaven wherein God reigns in perfect glory till Christ shall come again to judgment and take them for ever to himself into possession and participation of his heavenly Kingdome That in this sense the Fathers understand the Scriptures which mention the estate of the Saints departed will best be seen by looking over their own words according as they lived in the severall Churches First for the Eastern Cherches Iustin Marter telleth us that the the souls of the righteous are carryed to Paradise where they enjoy the company of Angels Archangels and the vision of Christ our Saviour and are kept in places fit for them till the day of the resurrection and compensation Next Origen The Saints saith he departing hence do not presently obtain the full reward of their labours but they expect us though staying and slacking For they have not perfect joy so long as they grieve at our Errours and lament our sins Then Chrysostome more then once or twice Though the soul were a thousand times immortall as it is yet shall she not enjoy those admirable good things without the body And if the body rise not again the soul remaineth uncrowned without heavenly blisse Theodoret lived in the same times and was of the same opinion also saying The Saints have not yet received their Crowns for the God of all expecteth the conflict of others that the race being ended he may at once pronounce all that overcome to be Conquerers and reward them together Finally not to look so low as Oecumenius and Theophylact who say almost as much as Theoderet did we have at once the judgement of many of the Fathers delivered by Andreas Caesariensis in a very few words It is saith he the judgement of many godly Fathers that every good man after this life hath a place fit for him by which he may conjecture at the glory which is prepared Look we now on the Western Churches and first we have Irenaeus B. of Lyons in France affirming positively thus Manifestum est c. It is manifest that the souls
Fathers as do touch upon it as may appear by that of Hilarie and Ambrose before delivered By which the other passages of holy writ as Iude v. 6. Mat. 8.29 and Rom. 2.5 it is plain and manifest that the torments of the damned and the Devils too which are inflicted on them for the present time are far lesse then the vengeance of eternal and external fire reserved untill the day of judgement and then augmented upon all the reprobate both men and Angels For grant the most which had been said by any of the Antients as to this particular and we shall finde that it amounteth to no more then this that the souls of wicked men departed are presently made to understand by the righteous judge the sentence due unto their sins and what they are to look for at the day of doome Postquam anima de corpore est egressa subito judicium Christi de salute cognoscit as St. Augustine hath it Which being once made known to the sinfull soul standing before the throne of Christ in the sight of heaven she is forthwith hurried by the evill angels to the mansions of hell where she is kept as in a Prison under chaines and darknesse untill the judgement of the great and terrible day Iude v. 6. And so we are to understand those words of St. Cyril saying Anima damnata continuo invaditur a daemonibus qui eam crudelissime rapiunt ad infernum deducunt unlesse we rather choose to refer the same unto the executing of the sentence of their condemnation at the day of doome as perhaps some may But howsoever they be hurryed by the Devils into the darknesse of hell as to the place wherein they are to be secured till the day of judgement yet that they feel that misery and extremity of torments which after the last day shall be laid upon them neither they nor any of the Antients have delivered to us For of that day it is not the day of their death of which Scriptures doe report such terrible things saying that the heavens shall vanish away and be rolled up like a scroule that all the mountaines and the hils shall be moved out of their places and that the Kings of the earth and the mighty men c. that is to say the wicked of what sort soever shall say unto the hils and rocks Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath is come and who is able to endure it And certainly the terrors of that day must needs be great incomprehensible not only to the guilty conscience but even unto the righteous souls who joyfully expect the coming of their Lord and Saviour For in that day the Sun shall be darkened and the Moon shall not give her light the Stars shall fall from heaven and all the powers thereof shall be shaken And the signe of the Son of man shall appear in heaven and then shall all the kindred of the earth mourne and they shall see the son of man coming in the cloudes of heaven with great power and glory And he shall send his Angels with the great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together the Elect from the four windes from one end of the heaven to the other So far we have described the fashion of that dreadfull day from the Lords one mouth St. Luke unto these former terrors doth add the roaring of the Sea and the waters also St. Peter that the elements shall melt with fervent heat and that the earth also and the works thereof shall be utterly burned In this confusion of the world and general dissolution of the works of nature the Lord himself shall descend from heaven in a shout and in the voice of an Archangel and the sound of a trumpe and the dead in Christ shall rise first Then we which live and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds for though we shall not all die we shall all be changed 1 Cor. 15.51 and all together shall meet the Lord Jesus in the Aire The meaning is that at the sounding of this last trump the very same bodies which the Elect had before though mangled by tyrants devoured by wild beasts or burnt to ashes shall be raised again and being united to their souls shall be made alive and rise out of the bed of sleep like so many Iosephs out of prison or Daniels from the den of the roaring Lyons But as for such of the Elect who at that sudden coming of our Lord shall be found alive the fire which burneth up the corruptions of the world and the works thereof shall in a moment in the twinkling of an eye as St. Paul telleth us overtake them as it findeth them at their several businesses and burning up the drosse and corruption of their natural bodies of mortall shall make them to be immortall which change shall be to them in the stead of death In this sort shall they meet the Lord coming in the cloudes of the Aire where the Tribunall or judgement-seat of Christ shall be erected that the ungodly man the impenitent sinner who is not capable of coming into heaven for so much as a moment for no unclean thing or any one that worketh abomination shal finde entrance there Apocal. 21.27 may stand before his throne to receive his sentence So witnesseth St. Iohn in the Revelation And I saw a great white throne and him that sate on it from whose face fled away both the earth and the heaven And I saw the dead both small and great stand before God and the books were opened and another book was opened which is the book of life and the dead were judged of those things which were written in the books according to their deeds And the Sea gave up the dead which were in her and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them and they were judged every man according to his works And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire To the same purpose and effect doth Christ himself describe this day and the manner of his coming unto judgement in St. Matthews Gospell that which St. Iohn calleth the white throne being by Christ our Saviour called the throne of his majestie Mat. 25.31 At which time all the nations of the world being gathered together before him the good being separated from the bad and a brief repetition of their works being made unto them the righteous shall be called into the Kingdome prepared for them from the foundations of the world the wicked man be doomed to fire everlasting prepared for the Devil and his Angels For though Lactantius seem to think that the wicked shall not rise in the day of judgement and doth it as he sayeth himself literis sacris contestantibus
the Royal Prophet which shaketh the Wilderness even the great Wilderness of Cades The best way to resolve this doubt is to look unto the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai which was delivered in the hands of an Angel and much after the same manner as the day of Iudgement is described in the holy Gospel And it came to pass saith Moses on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick clowd upon the Mount and the voyce of the Trumpet exceeding loud so that all the people that was in the Camp trembled And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noyse of the Trumpet and the Mountain smoaking and when the people saw it they removed and stood a far off Whatsoever noyse that was which is by Moses said to be made with the sound of the Trumpet when the Law was given the same do I conceive it will also be when all the world is called to given an account of all their doings whether conform unto that Law or against the same The Trumpet was sounded with great terrour when the Law was given that the whole world might hear the noise of the Eccho of it and thereby brought into a fear of violating any part of that sacred Rule For though the Law seemeth to be given only to the house of Israel and to none but them as indeed it was given to none but them by the hand of Moses in which respect it is not binding to the Gentiles as the Schoolmen very well observe yet being it was naturally imprinted in the hearts of men as the perpetual moral Law of the most high God although the tract and footsteps of it were almost defaced the Gentiles at their peril were obliged to keep it and to take notice of the publication of it whensoever and by what means soever it should arrive unto their Ears So that the trumpet spoken of in the books of Moses is like that of Triton in the Poet as shrill as that and without all peradventure to be heard as far Of which Ovid thus buccinaâ—umitur â—umitur illi Tortilis in medium quae turbine crescit ab imo Buccina quae medio concepit ubi aera Ponto Littora voce replet sub utraque jacentia Phoebo Thus Englished by George Sandys He his wreath'd trumpet takes as given in charge That from the turning bottom grows more large To which when he gives breath 't is heard by all From far up-rising Phoebus to his fall Such also shall the voyce of the Trumpet be in the day of Judgement when all the Nations of the world shall be called together and called to account for their actions past which ought to have been squared by the rule of the Law of which they have such ample notice and such deep impressions although they did not stand at the foot of the Mount when it was published by the Iews The Gentiles saith St. Paul which have not the law that is to say which have it not in writing as the Iews had do by nature the things câ—ntained in the Law and having not the Law so given are a law unto themselves which shew the work of the Law written in their hearts their consciences also bearing witness and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another So that all Nations of the world not the Iews alone having such deep characters of the Law of God imprinted in them are thereby made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or without excuse if they keep it not And being bound to keep the law shall be judged according to the law and therefore shall be called together to receive their sentence by that or the like noyse of a Trumpet in which the law was published by the Lord Almighty The next thing here to be considered is the attendance of the Angels which doubtless are not taken in to fill up the train to make the manner of his coming the more brave and glorious but for some other special and more weighty use Therefore our Saviour having told us that the Son of man shall come in glory and all the holy Angels with him addes also in the following words and before him shall al the Nations of the world be gathered Gathered together but by whom by those very Angels Then saith he shall he send his Angels with the sound of the Trumpet and shall gather together the Elect from the four windes c. What the Elect and none but they Not so For they shall also gather out of his Kingdome all things that offend and them that do iniquity But having gathered them together is their work then done Not yet for they must also separate the wicked from the righteous man the goats from the sheep the tares from the good seed the good fish from the bad that being so disposed in their ranks and files they may together hear their senâ—ence whether life or death But when the sentence is pronounced is there any thing more behinde for these ministring Spirits Much more assuredly The greatest part of their imployment is yet to come Gather ye together first the Tares and binde them in bundles to burn them but gather the Wheat into my barn After the gathering and the sentence then comes in the binding And binding is a tearm derived from the Courts of Iustice according to the course whereof the Prisoner is led bound to his Execution so to prevent all hope and possibility of their escape and make them yeild unto their censure with the less resistance I lictor liga manus verberato infoelici arbori suspendito Here Lictor binde the prisoner scourge him or hang him on the Tree as the sentence varied but whether verberato or suspendito there was still liga manus the binding of the prisoner as a part of his punishment God doth so deal with wicked and ungodly men as the great Tyrant Nebuchadnezzar did with the three Hebrew children in the Book of Daniel command them to be first bound and after cast into the midst of the fiery furnace The like we finde in Virgil also Vinxerat post Terga manus quos mitteret umbris the Poet speaking there of those wretched men whom Aeneas was about to sacrifice to the powers below Well being thus bound and ready for the Execution what comes after next Alligate ad comburendum saith our Saviours Parable binde them to burn them saith the Text. And here the case is somewhat altered as it relates unto the Ministers though still the same in reference to the Malefactors Before it was Colligite and Alligate i. e. gather them together and binde them fast here not comburite but ad comburendum The holy Angels were the Ministers to attach the sinner to bring him before Gods Tribunal and after sentence is pronounced to lay hands upon him and make him ready for the punishment which he is to
and Martyrs approving and applauding as before I said that most righteous judgement which CHRIST shall then pronounce against all the wicked saying Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels This dreadful sentence thus pronounced and the condemned persons being delivered over by the Angels of God to the Devil and his according to the sentence of that righteous Iudge CHRIST shall arise from his Tribunal and together with his elect Angels and most blessed Saints shall in an orderly and triumphant manner ascend into the Heaven of Heavens where unto every one of his glorious Saints he shall bestow the immarcessible Crown of glory and make them Kings and Priests unto God the Father When all the Princes of the Earth have laid down their Scepters at the feet of CHRIST God shall be still a King of Kings a King indeed of none but Kings Rex Regum Dominus Dominantium always but most amply them For then shall CHRIST deliver up the Kingdom unto God the Father which how it must be understood we have shewn before And the Saints laying down their Crowns at the feet of Christ shall worship and fall down before him saying Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever For thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy bloud out of every kindred and tongue and people and Nation and hast made us Kings and Priests to God to reign with thee in thy Kingdome for evermore Thus have I made a brief but a plain discovery so far forth as the light of Scripture could direct me in it both of the manner of our Saviours coming unto Judgement and of the Method he shall use in the act of judging That which comes after Iudgement whether life or death whether it be the joys of Heaven or the pains of Hell will fall more properly under the consideration of the last Article of the Creed that of Life Everlasting and there we mean to handle all those particulars which I think pertinent thereunto In the mean time a due and serious consideration of this day of Iudgement will be exceeding necessary to all sorts of people and be the strongest bridle to restrain them from the acts of sin that ever was put into the mouths of ungodly men For what a bridle think we must it be unto them to keep them from unlawful lusts nay from sinful purposes when they consider with themselves that in that day the hearts of all men shall be opened their desires made known and that no secrets shall be hid but all laid open as it were to the publick view What a strong bridle must it be to curb them and to hold them in when they are in the full careere and race of wickedness when they consider with themselves that there will be no way nor means to escape this Judgement Though they procure the Rocks to fall upon them and the Hils to hide them yet will Gods Angels finde them out and gather them from every corner of the World be they where they will Though they have flattered their poor souls and said Tush God will not see it or have disguised themselves with fig-leaves out of a silly hope to conceal their nakedness or wiped their lips so cunningly with the harlot in the Book of Proverbs that no man can discern a stollen kiss upon them yet all this will not serve the turn God will for all this bring them unto judgement and apprehend them by his Angels when they go a gathering There shall not one of them escape the hands of these diligent Sergeants Ne unus quidem no not one And finally what a bridle must it be unto them to hold them from exorbitant wickedness as either the crucifying again of the Lord of glory the persecuting of the Saints their mischievous plots against the Church in her peace and Patrimony when they consider with themselves that he whom thus they crucifie is to be their Iudge and that those poor souls whom they now contemn shall give a vote or suffrage on their condemnation and that the poor afflicted Church which they made truly militant by their foul oppressions malgre their tyranny and confederacies shall become Triumphant And on the other side what a great comfort must it be to the righteous man to think that Christ who all this while hath been his Mediator with Almighty God shall one day come to be his Iudge What a great consolation must it be unto him in the time of trouble to think that all his groans are registred his tears kept in a bottle and his sighs recorded and that there is a Iudge above who will wipe all the tears from his eyes and give him mirth in stead of mourning What an incouragement must it be unto him in the way of godliness when he considereth with himself that there is laid up for him a Crown of glory which the Lord the righteous Judge will give him at that day and give it him in the fight both of men and Angels Finally what strength and animation must it put into them to make them stand couragiously in the cause of Christ and to contemn what ever misery can be laid upon them in the defence of Christs and the Churches cause when they consider with themselves that there is no man who hath lost Father or Mother or wife or children or lands and possessions for the sake of Christ but shall receive much more in this present world and in the world to come life everlasting For behold he cometh quickly as himself hath told us and his reward is with him to give to every man according as his work shall be Even so Lord Jesus So be it Amen THE SUM Of Christian Theologie Positive Philological and Polemical Contained in the APOSTLES CREED or Reducible to it THE THIRD PART By Peter Heylyn 1 Cor. 12.13 For by one Spirit are we all Baptized into one Body whether we be Iews or Gentiles whether we be bond or free and have been all made to drink into one Spirit LONDON Printed for Henry Seyle 1654. ARTICLE IX Of the Ninth ARTICLE OF THE CREED Ascribed to St. IAMES the Son of ALPHEVS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Credo in Spiritum sanctum sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam i. e. I beleeve in the Holy Ghost the holy Catholick Church CHAP. I. Touching the Holy Ghost his divine Nature Power and Office the Controversie of his Procession laid down Historically Of Receiving the Holy Ghost and of the severall ministrations in the Church appointed by him WE are now come unto the third and last part of this Discourse containing in the first place the Article of the Holy Ghost and of the holy Catholick Church gathered together and preserved by the power thereof And in the rest those several Gifts and special Benefits which Christ conferreth by the operation of
Reformers in Queen Elizabeths time say as much as this The Scriptures say the Papists in their Council of Trent for I regard not the unsavory Speeches of particular men Is not sufficient to Salvation without Traditions that is to say without such unwritten Doctrinals as have from hand to hand been delivered to us Said not the Puritans the same when they affirmed That Preaching onely viva voce which is verbum traditum is able to convert the sinner That the Word sermonized not written is alone the food which nourisheth to life eternal that reading of the Word of God is of no greater power to bring men to Heaven than studying of the Book of Nature that the Word written was written to no other end but to afford some Texts and Topicks for the Preachers descant If so as so they say it is then is the written word no better than an Ink-horn Scripture a Dead Letter or a Leaden Rule and whatsoever else the Papists in the height of scorn have been pleased to call it Nay of the two these last have more detracted from the perfection and sufficiency of the holy Scripture than the others did They onely did decree in the Council of Trent That Traditions were to be received Paripietatis affectu with equal Reverence and Affection to the written Word and proceed no further These magnifie their verbum traditum so much above it that in comparison thereof the Scripture is Gods Word in name but not in efficacy They onely adde Traditions in the way of Supplement where they conceive the Scriptures to be defective These make the Scriptures every where deficient to the work intended unless the Preacher do inspire them with a better Spirit than that which they received from the Holy Ghost Good God that the same breath should blow so hot upon the Papists and yet so cold upon the Scriptures that the same men who so much blame the Church of Rome for derogating from the dignity and perfection of the Holy Scriptures should yet prefer their own indigested crudities in the way of Salvation before the most divine dictates of the Word of God But such are men when they leave off the conduct of the Holy Ghost to follow the delusions of a private Spirit Articuli IX Pars Secunda 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam i. e. The Holy Catholick Church CHAP. II. Of the name and definition of the Church Of the Title of Catholick The Church in what respects called Holy Touching the Head and Members of it The Government thereof Aristocratical IN the same Article in which we testifie our Faith in the Holy Ghost do we acknowledge That there is a Body or Society of faithful people which being animated by the power of that Blessed Spirit hath gained unto it self the name of the Church and with that name the attribute or title of Catholick in regard of the extent thereof over all the World of Holy in relation to that piety of life and manners which is or ought to be in each several Member And not unfitly are they joyned together in the self same Article the Holy Ghost being given to the Apostles for the use of the Church and the Church nothing but a dead and lifeless carcass without the powerful influence of the Holy Ghost As is the Soul in the Body of Man so is the Holy Ghost in the Church of Christ that which first gives it life that it may have a Being and afterward preserves it from the danger of putrefaction into which it would otherwise fall in small tract of time Having therefore spoken in the former Chapter of the Nature Property and Office of the Holy Ghost and therein also of the Volume of the Book of God dictated by that Blessed Spirit for that constant Rule by which the Church was to be guided both in Life and Doctrine We now proceed in order to the Church it self so guided and directed by it And first for the Quid nominis to begin with that it is a name not found in all the writings of the Old Testament in which the body of Gods people the Spiritual body is represented to us after a figurative manner of Speech in the names of Sion and Ierusalem as Pray for the peace of Jerusalem Psal. 121. And the Lord loveth the gates of Sion Psal. 87. The name of Church occurreth not till the time of the Gospel and then it was imposed by him who had power to call it what he pleased and to entitle it by a name which was fittest for it The Disciples gave themselves the name of Christians the name of Church was given them by our Saviour Christ. No sooner had St. Peter made this confession for himself and the rest of the Apostles Thou art Christ the Son of the living God but presently our Saviour added Upon this Rock that is to say The Rock of this Confession as most of the Antients and some Writers also of the darker times do expound the same will I build my Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Greek The word used by our Lord and Saviour is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whence the Latines borrowed their Ecclesia the French their Eglise and signifieth Coetum evocatum a chosen or selected company a company chosen out of others derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is as much as evocare to call out or segregate In that sense as the word is used to signifie a company of men called by the special Grace to the Faith in Christ and to the hopes of life eternal by his death and passion is the word Ecclesia taken in the writings of the holy Apostles and in most Christian Authors since the times they lived in though with some difference or variety rather in the application to their purposes But antiently it was of a larger extent by far and signified any Publick meeting of Citizens for the dispatch of business and affairs of State For so Thucidides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. That the Assembly being formed the different parties fell upon their disputes and so doth Aristophanes use it in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. That the people should now give the Thracians a Publick meeting in their Guild-hal or Common forum of the City St. Luke who understood the true propriety as well as the best Critick of them all gives it in this sense also Acts 19.32 where speaking of the tumult which was raised at Ephesus he telleth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Assembly was confused And in the 26. Psal. Ecclesia malignantium is used for the Congregation of ungodly men APPLICATION BUt after Christ had given this name unto the Body of the Faithful which confessed his Name and the Apostles in their writings had applied it so as to make it a word of Ecclesiastical use and notion the Fathers in the following Ages did so appropriate the same to the state of
entituled actual The nature of which Birth-sin or Original sin is by the Church of England in her publick Articles defined to be the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is ingendred of the Of-spring of Adam whereby man is very far gon from Original righteousness and inclined to evill In which description we may find the whole nature of it as first that it is a corruption of our nature and of the nature of every man descended from the Loyns of Adam Secondly That it is a departure from and even a loss or forfieture of that stock of Original Iustice wherewith the Lord enriched our first Father Adam and our selves in him And thirdly That it is an inclination unto evil to the works of wickedness by means whereof as afterwards the Article explains it self the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and both together do incur the indignation of God So that if we speak of Original sin formally it is the privation of those excellent gifts of divine Grace inabling us to know love serve honor and trust in God and to do the things that God delights in which Adam once had but did shortly lose If materially it is that habitual inclination which is found in men most averse from God carrying them to the inordinate love and desire of finite things of the creature more than the Creator which is so properly a sin that it makes guilty of condemnation the person whosoever it be in whom it is found And this habitual inclination to the inordinate love of the creature is named Concupiscence which being two-fold as Alensis notes it out of Hugo that is to say Concupiscentia spiritus a concupiscience of the spirit or superior and concupiscentia carnis a concupiscence of the flesh or inferior faculties the first of these is onely sin but the latter is both sin and punishment For what can be more consonant to the Rules of Iustice than that the Will refusing to be ordered by God and desiring what he would not have it should finde the inferior faculties rebellious against it self and inclinable to desire those things in a violent way which the Will would have to be declined Now that all of us from the womb are tainted with this original corruption and depravation of nature is manifest unto us by the Scriptures and by some Arguments derived from the practise of the Catholick Church countenanced and confirmed by the antient Doctors In Scripture first we find how passionately David makes complaint that he was shapen in wickedness and conceived in sin Where we may note in the Greek and Vulgar Latine it is in sins and wickednesses in the plural number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greek in peccatis in iniquitatibus as the Latine hath it And that to shew us as Becanus hath right well observed Quod unum illud peccatum quasi fons sit aliorum that this one sin is as it were the Spring and Fountain from whence all others are derived Next St. Paul tels us in plain words that by the offence of one of this one man Adam Iudgement came upon all men to condemnation and Judgement could not come upon all or any were it not in regard of sin Not that all men in whom Original sin is found without the addition of Actual and Personal guiltiness are actually made subject unto condemnation and can expect no mercy at the hands of God but that they are all guilty of it should God deal extreamly and take the forfeiture of the Bond which we all entred into in our Father Adam Thus finde we in the same Apostle that we are by nature the children of wrath polluted and unclean from the very womb our very nature being so inclinable to the works of wickedness that it disposeth us to evil from the first conception and makes us subject to the wrath and displeasure of God Last of all we are told by the same Apostle for we will clog this point with no further evidence That the wages of sin is death that sin entred into the world and death by sin and that death passed upon all men for that all have sinned And thereupon we may conclude That wheresoever we behold a spectacle of death there was a receptacle of some sin Now we all know that death doth spare no more the Infant than the Elder man and that sometimes our children are deprived of life assoon almost as they enjoy it sometimes born dead and sometimes dead assoon as born Prima quae vitam dedit hora carpsit in the Poets language A wages no way due to Infants for their actual sins for actually as yet they have not offended and therefore there must needs be in them some original guilt some Birth-sin as the Article calls it which brings so quick a death upon them And this is further verified from the constant and continual practise of the Church of Christ which hath provided That the Sacrament of Baptism be conferred on Infants before they come unto the use of Speech or Reason yea and at some times and on some occasions as namely in cases of extremity and the danger of death to Christen them assoon as born For by so doing she did charitably and not unwarrantably conceive that they are received into the number of Gods children and in a state of good assurance which could not be so hopefully determined of them should they depart without the same And with this that of Origen doth agree exactly Si nihil esset in parvulis quod ad remissionem deberet indulgentiam pertinere gratia Baptismi superflua videretur Were there not something in an Infant which required forgiveness the Sacrament of Baptism were superfluously administred to him Upon which grounds the Church of England hath maintained the necessity of Baptism against the Sectaries of this age allowing it to be administred in private houses as oft as any danger or necessity doth require it of her A second thing we finde in the Churches practise and in the practise of particular persons of most note and evidence which serves exceeding fitly to confirm this point and that is That neither the Church in general doth celebrate the birth-day of the Saints departed but the day onely of their deaths nor any of the Saints themselves did solemnize the day of their own Nativity with Feasts and Triumphs First for the practise of the Church we may take this general rule once for all Non nativitatem sed mortem sanctorum ecclesia pretiosam judicat beatam That the Church reckoneth not the day of their birth but the death-day if I may so call it of the Saints to be blest and precious According unto that of the Royal Psalmist Right precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints Upon which grounds the word Natalis hath been used in the Martyrologies and other publick
Peters Sermon so that they asked him What they were to do that they might be saved He presently chalked them out a way by Baptism and Repentance to obtain the remission of sins even of that bloody sin it self of crucifying by their wicked hands the Lord of glory If any had more reason to despair than they it must be none but such of the Scribes and Pharisees who saying that our Saviour Christ had cast out Devils by Beelzebub the Prince of Devils may properly be said to have blasphemed against the Holy Ghost and consequently to have committed such a sin as in the judgment of our Saviour is pronounced unpardonable He that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him as St. Luke expresly And yet St. Ambrose is so charitable as to think that some of them were pardoned it being probable that some of those very Scribes and Pharisees were present at St. Peters Sermon and so within the compass of repentance and forgiveness of sins And then withal we may observe that though it be expresly said That the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven yet it may well be understood with a qualification impossibility being sometimes used in holy Scripture to denote a difficulty As where it is affirmed as positively and expresly to be impossible for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Where certainly it was not the intent of Christ utterly to exclude all rich men from the hopes of Heaven but onely to declare how hard and difficult it was for those who trusted in their riches and wallowed in the pride and pleasures of a prosperous fortune to set their mindes upon the blessings of eternal life And so it is also in the present case in St. Chrysostoms judgment Ideo dici nunquam remitti quia difficilius remittitur Of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost saith he it is therefore said that it shall never be forgiven because it is more hardly pardoned and with greater difficulty than any other sin whatever And that this qualification or the like is to be admitted appears yet further by the words which are next before it and to which these in question must needs have relation where it is said That all sins and all blasphemies shall be forgiven unto men In which he did not could not mean that all sins and at all times should be pardoned to all sorts of men for then no sin were damnable but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which is most untrue Therefore the sense must be in both That all sins ordinarily 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall be forgiven unto men upon true repentance but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not so ordinarily be forgiven or shall more hardly be forgiven than any other Not that it cannot be forgiven at all Non utique quod remitti non possit as most truly Maldonat But because they who do blaspheme against the Holy Ghost Nullam peccati sui excusationem habent have seldom any thing to allege in excuse thereof and so were more unpardonable than other men As for those passages pretended from the holy Scripture in maintenance of the irremissibility of some kinde of sin and in particular of this against the power of the Holy Ghost they neither prove the point which they are produced for nor were intended by the Sacred Penmen of the Word of God of that sin or blasphemy In the first place it is alleged from St. Paul to the Hebrews To be impossible for those who were once enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost if they shall fall away to renew them again to repentance seeing they crucifie to themselves the Son of God afresh But this the Fathers understand not of a difficulty or impossibility of admitting such men unto repentance but that they could not be admitted to a second Baptism and thereby to be renovated and illuminated to die be buried and rise a second time in Christ in so facile and compleat a washing of sin as the Sacrament of Regeneration did afford at first Chrysostom is express for this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He doth not take away repentance but a second Baptism St. Ambrose also saith the same and sheweth that the meaning of this Text is and must be De non iterando baptismate not of repelling sinners from the thought of repentance and the remission of their sins by the Churches Ministry as the Novatians falsly taught but of the not admitting them to a second Baptism which some began to introduce upon that occasion And that the Apostle speaks of a second Baptism is evident by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or illuminatos which was used antiently to signifie those that were baptised as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or illumination for Baptism the very Sacrament it self Secondly by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or renovare which intimates or implies our renovation by that holy Sacrament Per lavachrum enim renovamur per quod renascimur as St. Ambrose notes it We are renewed by the laver of regeneration by which we are new-born to the life of righteousness And thirdly from the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of crucifying again the Lord of life our Baptism being as the figure of his death or crucifixion in which our old man is crucified with him as St. Paul hath told us That the body of sin might be destroyed and buried in his grave by Baptism And thereupon if followeth by St. Pauls illation Non magis quenquam bis baptizari quam Christum bis crucifigi posse saith the learned Knight Sir Daniel Heinsius That the impiety is as great for a man to be baptized again as if Christ should again be crucified The like may be affirmed of a second Text alleged from the same Apostle where it is said That if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin Which Text as that before is applied by Calvin to such as fall away from the Faith and Gospel whom he excludes utterly from all hope of pardon as men that sin against the holy Spirit of God but very wrongfully in all For first although we read it wilfully in our last Translation yet is it onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek originals which Beza rendreth uliro the Vulgar Latin voluntario our old Translation willingly as the Rhemists do And to say truth the word doth signifie no more though to comply with Calvins Comment on the Text our last Translators who inclined too much unto his opinions do now read it wilfully And if it be but willingly as indeed it is not I would know in what a desperate estate we Christians were if every sin which is committed willingly after truth embraced shall either be reputed in the sight of God for
resurget qui inter impiorum manus occubuit that is to say with a sure Faith I do beleeve it was it seems a part of his Creed and with as great freedom I profess he both beleeved in his heart and confessed with his mouth that I shal rise again at the last day for as much as my Redeemer shall assuredly rise who is to be done to death by ungodly men And this is further to be noted in this Text of Scripture that we no sooner hear of a Creator in Moses than of a Redeemer in Iob no sooner of the death of mankind in Adam but of their restoring to life in Christ. And more than so that though Moses who wrot this was a Iew yet Iob who spake it was a Gentile not of the seed of Iacob though perhaps of Abrahams to shew that both the Iews and Gentiles as well the Gentiles as the Iews were to have their share in the resurrection of Christ Iesus and therefore in due time to expect their own I know that the Socinians Anabaptists and some other Sectaries who are no very good friends to the resurrection do otherwise interpret these words of Iob and will not have them meant of his resurrection but of his restitution to his former glories But for my part I must profess that if the Greek Catena and the authority of the Latine Fathers and the consent of all the Orthodox and learned Writers of these times were to be laid aside as incompetent Iudges I am not able to discern any thing from the Text or Context that the Holy Ghost intended them any other waies than to set forth Iobs constant faith in the resurrection the knowledge that he had of his Redemption from the jaws of death From Moses pass we to the Prophets to the Psalmist first Thou turnest man unto destruction and sayest Return ye children of men or come again ye children of men as the old Translation Thou turnest men unto destruction there we have their death he calls them to return again there is there resurrection And this appears yet further by the following words Thou carriest them away as with a flood they are as a sleep and if they be but as a sleep they shall be wakened in due time at the sounding of the last Trump without all peradventure I know indeed this Psalm doth bear the Title of the Prayer of Moses but whether made by him or by David or some other in his name is not yet resolved It is sufficient to this purpose that it passeth amongst Davids Psalms as a distinct and separate body from the works of Moses On forwards to Isaiah the Evangelical Prophet who seems to look on Christ as if gone before him Thy dead men saith he shall live together with my dead body shall they arise Awake and sing yee that dwel in dust for thy dew is as the dew of herbs and the earth shall cast out the dead And parallel to this in another place When yee be old your heart shall rejoyce and your bones shall flourish like herbs and then the hand of the Lord shall be known towards his Servants and his indignation towards his Enemies In both these Texts we find a Resurrection of the dead effected by the raising of the body of Christ and in some part with it a resurrection like to that of men which do wake from sleep like that of herbs which though they creep into the earth in the time of Winter shall again re-flourish in the Spring And in the last we have not onely a pure evidence for a resurrection but for the Day of Iudgement which shall follow on it wherein the righteous Judge shall distribute his rewards and punishments his hand of mercy towards his Servants but wrath and indignation upon all his Enemies St. Hierom so interpreteth the Prophets meaning and parallels this last place with another of the Prophet Daniel in which it is affirmed expresly that they which sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt Thereupon he doth thus infer Omnes igitur Martyres sancti viri qui pro Christo fuderunt sanguinem quorum tota vita fuit Martyrium resurgent evigilabunt atque laudabunt Deum Creatorem suum qui nunc habitant in pulvere de quibus in Daniele scriptum est c. Add to this rank of Proofs those several passages in which God calls himself the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob and the illation made from thence by our Lord and Saviour to prove the very point which we have in hand Concerning the resurrection of the dead have you not read saith he that which was spoken to you of God saying I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living Here is authority enough we need seek no further Authority enough to perswade us this that the Patriarchs before the coming of our Saviour were certain of their resurrection to eternal life that they were well assured of this that God would recompence their faith and reward their piety by making death the way onely to a greater happiness And this we finde to be a truth so generally received amongst the Iews even in the most declining time of their Church and State that none but the Sadduces who also did deny the being of Angels and of Spirits also did make question of it who for this cause are branded every where in the Gospel with this mark upon them that they said there is no resurrection as Mat. 22.23 Mark 12.19 Luk. 20 27. Act. 23.8 just as it followeth on the mention of Ieroboham the son of Nebat that he made Israel to sin Now to these Positive Texts of Scripture and such as have their being and foundation onely in the Old Testament we will adde such as are presented in the New and those not barely positive and peremptory as the rest before but such as seem to have a great measure of rationality in them and to be logically inferred upon very sound premises And of this kind we meet with divers in St. Pauls Epistle to the Corinthians amongst whom many doubtful souls had called in question the resurrection of the body To satisfie their doubts and remove their scruples the Apostle grounds himself on this that CHRIST was risen If CHRIST be risen from the dead how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead for if there be no resurrection of the dead then is CHRIST not risen Considering therefore we have proved that CHRIST is risen and that by the testimony of no fewer than five hundred brethren at one time besides the other arguments which have been and may be further alleged to confirm that truth it followeth by the reason of the Apostle that there is a
of those imperfections it may be said that then they are not raised in the self-same bodies To this we have the resolution of St. Augustine also affirming That in that glorious day the substance of their bodies shall continue as before it was but the deformities and imperfections shall be taken away Corporibus ergo istis naturae servabitur vitia autem detrahentur as the Father hath it A resolution which St. Paul doth seem to favor saying That the body shall be raised in glory though it be sown in dishonor as do his following words the former viz. Though it be sown in weakness in the weakness of old age or infancy shall be raised in power For neither is it likely that infancy being imperfection and old age corruption can stand with the estate of a glorified body or that our Lord which made the blinde to see and the lame to go which came to seek his grace on Earth will not much rather heal them of their imperfections whom he vouchsafeth to admit to the glories of Heaven A glorious place is fit for none but glorified bodies And so far glorified shall the bodies of Gods servants be as to be raised in power whereby they shall be freed from all wants and weaknesses in incorruption which shall make them free both from death and sickness in glory which shall make them shine with a greater splendor than any of the Stars of Heaven as did the face of Moses in the Book of Exodus and that of Stephen the Proto-martyr in the Book of the Acts and lastly in agility by which they shall be like the Angels mounting as on the wings of an Eagle to meet the Lord JESUS at his coming In reference unto these spiritual qualities St. Paul affirms That it was sown a natural body but shall be raised a spiritual body Natural for the substance still spiritual for the qualities and endowments of it Spiritualia post Resurrectionem erunt corpora non quia corpora esse desistunt sed quia spiritu vivificante subsistunt as St. Augustine hath it Another Quere yet remaineth which had been moved it seems in St. Augustines time by some whose curiosity did exceed their judgments The Question was Whether the woman should be raised to eternal glory in her own sex or the more noble sex of man Alas poor Souls what monstrous crime had they committed that they should be excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven Of what strange errors and mistakes must guilty-nature be accused when she framed that sex or rather God when he created it at first out of Adams side by which it is supposed uncapable of immortality Yes certainly say they for it seemeth to us that Christ hath so adjudged it saying That in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage And if no marriage then no woman the woman being therefore made that she might be married Vain men why do they talk so idly in the things of God! Nuptias negavit dominus in resurrectione futuras non foeminas as St. Augustine noteth The Lord hath not excluded women from the Resurrection onely in answer to a captious Question which the Saduces made he returned them this That in that day there should be neither care nor notice taken of those worldly matters This is the sum and substance of our Saviours Answer and this is nothing to the prejudice of the Sex or Persons Nor need we doubt but as that Sex have done most acceptable service to the Lord their God either in keeping constantly the faith of wedlock or in preserving carefully an unspotted chastity or suffering resolutely for the testimony of the Faith and Gospel so shall they also in those bodies receive the crown reserved for so great obedience But what need more be said of this needless Quere which Christ our Saviour hath prevented and resolved already Who therefore first appeared to those of the Female Sex that making them the publishers of his Resurrection he might assure them of their own Qui ergo utrumque sexum instituit utrumque restituet God saith St. Augustine as he made both Sexes will restore both Sexes and raise up both in their own proper and original being unto Life eternal Other particulars of the manner of this Resurrection as the dreadful terror of the day the sounding of the Trump the conflagration of the world and the like to these have either been already handled or else will fall within the compass of the following Article That which remains to be considered at the present will be matters practical first in relation to our friends and then in reference to our selves and our own affairs First in relation to our Friends That we bemoan not their departure with too great extremity or sorrow for them without hope as if lost for ever Were it indeed so irrecoverable a losâ— that either their bodies were for ever banished from their souls or that their souls did die and perish with their bodies it were a misery to which no sorrow could be equal But being so assured of a Resurrection it is not to be supposed of them which die in the Lord that they are either lost to themselves or us They onely have withdrawn themselves for a certain season from the vanity and troubles of this present world and shall return at last unto life again both to our comfort and their glory In this respect it was the antient custom of the Church of Greece and is not yet worn out of use 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To set boyled Corn before the Singers of the holy Hymns which are accustomed to be sung at the commemoration of the dead who sleep in Christ. And this they do to manifest their hopes in the Resurrection of which the Corn is so significant an embleme as before was shewn And to say truth Death if considered rightly is the gate of life and of a life not to be shaken with adversities or subject unto change of fortune Hanc Deus fidei praestat gratiam ut mors quam vitae constat esse contrariam instrumentum foret per quod in vitam transiretur it is St. Augustines note But what need Augustine be alleged when we may hear the same of the antient Druides of whom the Poet tells us that they held this Paradox Longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est That death was but the middle way to a longer life If then our Ancestors in those dark times of ignorance when they knew not Christ conceived no otherwise of death and the terrors of it than as the way unto a life of more excellent nature then certainly a nobler and moâ—e chearful constancy must â—eeds be looked for at our hands who are not onely more assured of the immortality of the soul which they blindly guessed at but of the Resurrection of the Body also which they never heard of The next consideration doth concern
our selves and lessoneth us not to set so high a price upon our lives but that we may be willing to lay them down as often as the preservation of Religion the safety of our Country or the necessary service of the State do require it of us A duty which we should not doubt to discharge most gladly did we consider as we ought that loss of life on such occasions is but like the putting off of our garments over night to be worn again upon the morrow For certainly those men acquit themselves with the bravest spirit who least regard the terrible approach of death Nor can there be a stronger Motive to induce us to it than that the Bodies so abandoned to the Sword of the Enemies or to the Persecutors of the Church of God shall be revived and reunited to the Soul again It is reported of the Druides whom before I spoke of that they taught amongst these Northern Nations not onely an immortality of the Soul but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or transmigration of it into other bodies And it was thought an happy error to be so perswaded for being throughly possessed with this opinion they never feared to run upon the greatest dangers to brave them with undanted courage and to encounter with the violentest and most terrible engigns which were then invented So poor a matter was it thought to be coy and sparing of those lives which they were sure to finde again in another body Felices errore suo quos ille timorum Maximus haud urget lethi metus inde ruendi In ferrum mens prona viris animaeque capaces Mortis ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae Which may thus be Englished Thrice happy they whom the extreamest fear Of death afflicts not who upon the spear Dare boldly run and in their hearts disdain To spare that life which shall return again How brave a courage then ought we to carry with us in our Christian Warfare who have such excellent advantages above those Antients To us it is ascertained by the Word of God not that our souls shall be transmitted into other bodies but be conveyed immediately to a place of rest there to expect a Resurrection of those bodies which before they lived in To us it is ascertained by the Word of God that each several Atom of the body shall be recollected and married to the soul for ever that the bones which were broken may rejoyce and that the body and soul being thus united shall pass immediately into the glories of eternal life prepared for them before the beginnings of the world A brave encouragement to gallant and heroical resolutions Preciumque causa laboris in the Poets language The cause and recompence of all our labors But some I know have otherwise provided for themselves than so and found out a Terrestrial Paradise wherein they shall enjoy for a thousand years all the pleasures of Earth before they be admitted to the joys of Heaven A fancy if I may so call it of no mean antiquity defended by some principal men of the first times of the Church who took it upon trust without more enquiry and having made it better than at first they found it commended it unto the Church for good Catholick doctrine For some there were even in the infancy of the Gospel who being too much in love with this present world conceited to themselves such a sensual and voluptuous kinde of life after the Resurrection from the dust of the Earth wherein they should have use of women and wallow in all carnal and libidinous pleasures which the most Epicurean soul could affect or covet A fancy meerly Iewish in its first original afterwards entertained by some Heretical Iudaizing Christians and finally rather rectified than refelled by many of the Fathers in the Primitive times And first beginning with the Iews we shewed in our discourse of the Kingdom of Christ how much they were besotted with the expectation of a Temporal Monarchy looking for such a Messiah as should come with power restore again the Crown of Iudah to the house of David and make that Commonwealth more formidable to the Neighboring Princes than ever it had been in the times before And to befool themselves the more in this fond conceit there was no promise nor no prophecy in the Old Testament intended to the building up of the Spiritual Temple or to the raising of Christs Kingdom in the souls of men which they applied not to the founding of a Temporal Monarchy the repairing of Ierusalem the new erecting of the Temple and to the re-establishment of Circumcision and other of the Rites and Ceremonies of the Law of Moses Concerning which consult St. Ierom in his Comment on Isai. 31. and on Ezek. 36. and on Micah 4. Tertullian in his third Book against Marcion cap. ult and divers others of the Antients not to say any thing in this place of the Iewish Rabbins who run all that way In which it will appear that they both did and do expect a restitution of their temporal power and all the pleasures of a rich and flourishing Empire which are most correspondent to a carnal minde Which fancy being taken up and so strongly fixed that there was no removing of it out the hearts of the Iews was forthwith entertained by some nominal Christians who out of a compliance with that obstinate people embraced not onely many of their Rites and Ceremonies but of their dreams and fancies also Whom therefore Ierom calleth Christianos Iudaizantes Iudaizing Christians in many places of his works in which Iudaei Christiani Iudaizantes or Iudaei eorum erroris haeredes the Iews and those that do inherit their Superstitions march along together Of these the first was that Arch-heretick Cerinthus who did not onely set on foot in the Church of Christ the Festivals and Sacrifices of the Law of Moses but also taught Regnum Christi post Resurrectionem terrenum fuisse carnem nostram Hierosolymis cupiscentiis voluptatibus carni servituram That after the Resurrection Christ should have an Earthly Kingdom in which his followers should enjoy in their New Ierusalem all the delights and pleasures of the flesh of what kinde soever And this not onely to endure for a little while the ordinary life a man or so but for a thousand years compleat as Nicephorus addeth Marcus another leading Heretick was of this opinion and so was Nepos also an Egyptian Bishop who teaching first That all the promises made by God in holy Scripture Iudaico more reddendas esse were to be understood according to the Iewish Glosses did thereon build this following Tenet That the Saints should for a thousand years injoy all manner of corporal delights and pleasures in the Kingdom of Christ which after the resurrection should be founded here upon this earth Against this Nepos and his doctrine in this particular Dionysius that great and learned Bishop of Alexandria wrote
in the Pharisees For Christ who knew their hearts found their cunning also And therefore did so shape his answer as by declaring the true nature of the Resurrection against the Pharisees to justifie the Immortality of the Soul against the Sadduces 1. Then he tells them how much they were mistaken in the nature of the Resurrection for want of a right understanding of the holy Scriptures Erratis nescientes Scripturas as the Vulgar reads it The Scriptures which do speak of a Resurrection not being to be understood in such an Animal and Carnal sense as the Pharisees did understand them Those bodies which were sown in corruption were to be raised again incorruptible and therefore not to live by the food which perisheth Those bodies which were sown in their mortality by reuniting with the Soul should become immortal and therefore not to stand in need of any Seminal or Carnal way of Propagation For in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage neither can they die any more but are as the Angels of God in Heaven in the condition of their being as to those particulars This said and so much of their doubt resolved as concerned the error of the Pharisees he lets them see the weakness of their own opinion touching the annihilation or extinguishment of the Immortal soul of man And that too from the works of Moses which themselves embraced without consulting any other of the holy Pen-men For when God said to Moses in the present tence I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob it must needs be that Abraham Isaac and Iacob must be accounted of as living at that present time and living otherwise they were not at that present time but as their blessed Souls did live in the sight of God their Bodies being long before consumed and perished though even those bodies by the infinity of comprehension which is in God might be looked upon as living also in reference to that eternal life which was prepared for them in the day of the Resurrection And this I take to be the meaning of St. Luke who doth not onely say in the present tence That the dead are raised but addes these following words to the other Evangelist viz. For all live in him that is to say All men though buried in their dust are living in the sight of Almighty God who sees at once all things that have been are and shall be unto all eternity as if present with him and consequently beholds the Souls of his righteous servants Abraham and Isaac and the rest in the bliss of Paradise as if apparrelled with those bodies which before they had So then the Immortality of the Soul being so fully proved by our Saviours Argument The Resurrection of the dead being the thing which seemed to be scrupled by the Sadduces was concluded also and yet not such a Resurrection the Pharisees dreamed of in which there should be marrying and giving in marriage that is to say In which things should be ordered by the rules of this present life but such a one wherein the Saints of God should be like the Angels discharged from all relations incident to flesh and blood exempt from all humane affections of what sort soever For certainly had not the Argument concluded strongly and convincingly to the point proposed neither the Scribes men better studied in the Scriptures than any of the rest of the Iewish Nation had given this testimony to it Magister dixisti benè as we see they did nor had the mouths of such curious and captious Sophisters been muzzled as we see they were from asking him the like Questions for the time to come both which the story tells us in the close of all But I have staid too long on this Text of Scripture it is now time I should proceed to the rest that follows ARTICLE XII Of the Twelfth Article OF THE CREED Ascribed to St. MATTHIAS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Et Vitam Aeternam Amen i. e. And the Life Everlasting Amen CHAP. VIII Of the Immortality of the Soul and the glories of Eternal Life prepared for it As also of the place and torment of Hell Hell-fire not metaphorical but real The conclusion of all MOrs non extinguit hominem sed ad praemium virtutis admittit Death saith Lactantius doth not put an end to the life of man but rather openeth him a way to receive the recompence of his wel deservings For though the body be returned unto the earth out of which it was taken and that there were no Resurrection to be looked for for it yet in the better part the soul he is incorruptible and immortal not subject to the stroke of death nor to be made a prey unto worms and rotâ—enness In this respect it is to be disposed of in some suitable place and to be punished or rewarded in a suitable manner none but an Everlasting Life or eternal punishments being the doom thereof in the world to come according to the good or evil which in this world it hath projected or accomplished Now that the Soul of man is not onely a spiritual essence which actuates the body in the which it is but an immortal essence too which shall over-live it we have good proof in holy Scripture and that both from the Old Testament and from the New The souls of the righteous saith the wise man are in the hands of the Lord And though the Body go down into the Earth yet the Soul returneth unto him that gave it saith a wiser than he But behold a greater than Solomon or the wisdom of Solomon even CHRIST the wisdom of the Father hath affirmed the same not onely commending his own Soul to Almighty God but teaching St. Stephen and all the rest of the Saints in him how to do the like This day saith he to the good Theef thou shalt be with me in Paradise And more than so he doth convincingly conclude the immortality of the Soul from those words in Exod. I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob which sufficiently doth prove that point This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise Not in their bodies either of them for the body of the one was on the cross and the other in the Grave till the resurrection It must be therefore in their Souls which neither the Cross could crucifie nor the Grave bury St. Iohn affirmeth the same as a matter of fact which in the former Texts except that of Exodus we finde but in hope or promise For speaking of the estate of the Saints departed which he beheld as clearly in an heavenly Rapture as if it had been a thing done before his eyes he telleth us that he saw under the Altar the soules of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they had And they cryed with
and beams of our Heavenly Father who hath bestowed our souls upon us indued with such a perfect measure of understanding and who not onely doth direct our mindes in the ways of godliness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but in due time also will save our Bodies The Divine Plato and his followers borrowed a great deal of their light from this Zoroaster and the like Dictates of the rest of the Chaldean Sages which grounded him in his opinion of the Souls immortality and the account it was to give to the dreadful Iudge in the world to come whereof he speaketh in his second Epistle and eleventh Book De Legibus Pythagoras though sometimes he held the transmigration of the soul into other Bodies yet in his better thoughts he disposed it otherwise and placed the souls of vertuous men in the Heavens above where they should be immortal and like the gods saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say Leaving the Body they to Heaven shall flie Where they shall be immortal never die And to this purpose also that of Epicharmus may be here alleged assuring us That if we live a life conform to the rules of vertue death shall not be able to do us hurt because our souls shall live in a blessed life in the highest Heavens Upon these grounds but specially upon the reading of some Books of Plato Cleombrotus is said to have been so ravished with the contemplation of the glories of that other life that for the more speedy attaining of them he cast himself down from the top of a Mountain with greater zeal by far than wisdom And therefore much more commendable was the death and dying speech of one Chalcedius another of those old Platonicks Revertar in patriam ubi meliores Progenitores Parentes I am saith he returning into my own Country where I shall finde the bettet sort of my Progenitors and deceased Parents Nor was this such a point of divine knowledge as was attainable onely by the wise men of Greece the sober men amongst the Romans had attained it also For Cicero affirms expresly Certum esse ac definitum in coelo locum ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur That there is a certain and determinate place in Heaven where the blessed souls of those who deserve well of the publick shall injoy everlasting rest and happiness And Seneca speaks thus of death intermittit vitam non eripit that it onely interrupteth the course of life but destroyeth it not because there will come a day at last qui nos iterum in lucem reponat which will restore us again to the light of Heaven Finally Not to add more testimonies in so clear a case Homer makes Hercules a companion of the gods above with whom he lives in endless solace 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Ennius saith the like of Romulus Romulus in Coelo longum cum diis agit aevum If we would know what their opinion was of the place it self in which eternal life was to be enjoyed we have a glimpse or shadow of it in the fiction of the Elysian fields so memorized and chanted by the antient Poets Locos laetos amoena vireta Fortunatorum nemorum sedesque beatas A place conceived to be replenished with all variety of pleasures and divine contentments which possibly the soul of man could aspire unto the ground continually covered with the choycest Tapistry of Nature the Trees perpetually furnished with the richest fruits excellent both for taste and colour the Rivers running Nectar and most heavenly Wines fit for the Palat of the gods And which did add to all these beauties 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sweets thereof not blasted by untimely dewes or interrupted by the inclemency of a bitter winter A place by them designed for the soules of those who had been careful of Religion or lost their lives in the defence and preservation of their natural Country or otherwise deserved nobly of the publick Nay even the rude Americans and savage Indians whom we may justly call jumenta rationalia a kind of reasonable beasts retain amongst them a Tradition thar beyond some certain hils but they know not where there is a glorious place reserved for the soules of those who had lived vertuously and justly in this present life or sacrificed their lives to defend their Country or were the Authors of any notable and signal benefit which tended to the good of mankind If then not onely the Philosophers and learned Gentiles but even the Barbarians and rude Americans have spooken so divinely of the place and state of good men departed there is no question to be made but that the Patriarchs Prophets and other holy men of God were very well assured of the truth hereof although they lived before or under the Law as well assured as we that have the happiness to live under the Gospel For St. Paul telleth us of the Fathers which were under the cloud that they all passed thorow the red Sea and did all eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual Rock which followed them and that Rock was Christ Not that they had the same Sacraments in specie which we Cristians have but others which conduced to the same effect and did produce the same fruits both of Faith and Piety The Mysteries of salvation the hopes and promises of eternal life are frequently expressed in the Old Testament quamvis obscuriores longè though more obscure by far than in the forms of speech in which they are presented to us in the New Testament as Peter Martyr well observes And he notes too that many were the temporal promises or the promises concerning temporal blessings but so as to conduct and train them up in the hopes of happines eternal The temporal blessings which they had were but the types and figures of those endless comforts which were reserved for them in the Heavens above the land of Promise but a shadow of that promised land of which they were to be heirs in the Kingdom of God Hierusalem but a Map of that glorious City whose Author and founder is the Lord. Enoch had neither been translated before the Law nor Elias under it had not both of them stedfastly beleeved this truth that they should see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the living And yet some men there were and I doubt still are who teach that the holy men of God which lived before Christ our Saviours time did fix their hopes only upon temporal blessings and not at all upon spiritual or if upon spiritual as the peace of conscience yet not upon eternal happiness which is the crown and glory of that peace The Anabaptists and the Familists were of this opinion against whom the Church of England hath declared her self in the Seventh Article of her Confession saying That they are not to be
of the Church is confirmed unto them Those in the world to come are the fruits of these that is to say A Resurrection of the Body held by the chains of sin in the shades of death and a more full Communion with the Saints departed than in this life can be enjoyed that Fellowship which we have with them being here but inchoate and imperfect there compleat and absolute Of these the first is the Communion which the Saints have with one another and with Christ their Head whereof before I shall discourse as it lieth before me I shall first take the words asunder and shew what is the true meaning of the word communio then who they be that are presented to us by the name of Saints First for the word communio it signifieth that sacred action in which the faithful do communicate of the Body and Blood of Christ in the holy Eucharist Thus Hugo Cardinalis hath it Post hoc dicatur communio quae appellatur ut omnes communicemus i. e. After this let the communion be said so called because all should communicate or let it be so said That all my communicate Micrologus before him to the same effect Non potest propriè dici communio c. It cannot properly be called a Communion unless many do receive together Cassiodorus before either in his Tripartite History Stant rei velut in lamentationibus constituti cum sacra celebratio fuerit adimpleta communionem non recipiant i. e. They which lay under the Churches censures stood a far off full of great heaviness and lamentation and when the service was concluded received not the Communion but when they had fulfilled the course of their penance Cum populo communionem participant they were then suffered to communicate with the rest of the people More antient than them all is that Dionysius whether the Areopagite or not I dispute not here who wrote the Books De Hierarchia Caelesti Ecclesiastica in whom we do not onely finde the name but the reason of it Dignissimum hoc Sacramentum c Most worthy saith he is this Sacrament and far to be preferred before any other and for that cause it is deservedly and alone Meritò singulariter saith the Latine Copies called the Communion For although every Sacrament aims at this especially to unite those that are divided to the Lord their God Attamen huic Sacramento Communionis vocabulum praecipuè peculiariter contingit yet to this Sacrament the name of the Communion doth chiefly and properly belong as that which doth more nearly joyn us unto Christ our Saviour and entirely unite us unto one another And so his meaning is expressed by Pachymeres an old Greek Writer who hath paraphrased on the whole works of this Dionysius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Therefore saith he did Dionysius call it the Communion because all which were worthy did communicate of the holy Mysteries From which Communion of the Faithful in those holy Mysteries not onely the profession of the Christian Faith but that sweet Fellowship and Conjunction of heart and soul which was amongst them got the same name also and was generally called Communio from that sacred Action which was most solemnly used amongst them at their publick meetings In this sense it is used by St. Augustine saying Mulier illa est communionis nostrae That the woman which he there speaketh of was of their Communion And in another place to the same effect Donatus non nisi in sua communione baptismum esse credit That Donatus thought that Baptism was onely to be had in the Churches of his Profession In the same sense it is used by Ierome speaking of his relations to the same St. Augustine It is not meet saith he that I who have been trained up in a little Monastery from my youth till now Aliquid contra Episcopum Communionis meae scribere audeam should presume to write against a Bishop of the same Communion or Profession with me and such a Bishop whom I began to love before I knew him The like he writes also to Pope Damasus where saying that he followed no chief but Christ he yet acknowledgeth Beatitudini tuae i. e. Cathedrae Petri communione consâ—cior That he was joyned in communion or in love and fellowship or consent of Doctrine and Religion with his Holiness or Chair of Peter In both acceptions of the word that is to say In the communion or communication of the holy Mysteries and in that union of affections which usually is held by those of the same Profession There is a Communion of the Saints whether they be Activè or Passivè Sancti whether triumphant in the Heavens or finishing their natural course upon the Earth For the word Sancti also hath its various notions and must be looked upon in each or the chief at lest before we can proceed to a certain issue And first the word Sancti hath been used for those who onely have the outward calling called to be Saints as they are stiled by the Apostle Rom. 1.7 and 1 Cor. 1.2 Though neither Saints by the infusion of inherent holiness nor by the piety and sanctimony of their lives and actions In this sense all the Romans and Corinthians to whom St. Paul wrote his Epistles were Saints by calling or called to this end and purpose that they might be Saints though there were many profane and carnal persons amongst them Next it is used for those who are Sancti renovati Saints by the renovation of the holy Spirit by which co-operating in the Laver of Regeneration they are washed and sanctified And such were also some of you But ye are washed but ye are sanctified saith the same Apostle that is to say By the washing of Regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he hath shed abundantly in us as himself expounds it These are Passivâ— Sancti as before I called them because both in the outward calling and the effusion of the inward graces of the Holy Ghost we are simply passive But if we do obey that calling and manifest the grace which is given unto us by our lives and actions If from our hearts we do obey that form of doctrine which hath been delivered and yeeld our members as servants of righteousness to holiness then are we not passivè but activè sancti right Saints indeed walking in all the Commandments and Ordinances of the Lord without reproof And if the fruit be unto holiness there is no question but the end thereof will be life everlasting when we shall stand before the Throne of the Lord our God and serve him day and night in his holy Temple advanced to those felicities of eternal glory which is designed by White Robes and the Palms of victory in the Revelation Never so fully Saints as then though we must first be Saints in the Militant Church before we can