Formalist perceiving nothing of pleasure and sweetness in Holiness and Vertue in himself if he observe others much devoted thereunto that he must judge them to make use of those things for some other more pleasant enjoiment as Praise and Applause or a future Reward and that they are not delighted with the things themselves Whenas certainly a true member of Christ and one really regenerate into his Image could no more cease from pleasing himself and enjoying himself in the sense and conscience of this Divine Life and the results thereof all holy and becoming actions then the Natural man can cease from the enjoiments of the Body though he knows ere long his Body shall afford him no more enjoiments And yet I must also add That it is the next door to an Impossibility that one that is become thus Divine should not have his Heart fully fraught with the most precious hopes of future Immortality and Glory He asked life of thee and thou gavest him even a long life for ever and ever 16. I have now finished my Parallelisme betwixt the Revilements cast upon our Saviour and those that his truest Members may be obnoxious to Which pains I think I have not at all misplaced they tending only to the stopping of the mouths of carnal Censurers and the animating sincere Christians that they may not be discouraged from following so excellent an Example by the affronts and reproaches of the World but that they may know their own Innocency Safety and Freedome while they keep in the true way that is in Christ the Son of God who making us free we become free indeed that is free from the deceits of our own lusts and free from the awe and terrour of imperious and superstitious men that would obtrude their own Errours upon us with as much earnestness and make them as indispensable as the infallible Oracles of God We having therefore spoken what things we thought most requisite concerning The Example of Christ we proceed now to his Passion which is the fifth Power of the Gospel CHAP. XV. 1. The Passion of Christ the fifth Gospel-Power the Virtue whereof is in a special manner noted by our Saviour himself 2. That the Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness was a prophetick Type of Christ and cured not by Art but by Divine Power 3. That Telesmatical Preparations are superstitious manifest out of their Collections that write of them 4. Particularly out of Gaffarel and Gregory 5. That the Effects of Telesmes are beyond the laws of Nature 6. That if there be any natural power in Telesmes it is from Similitude with a confutation of this ground also 7. A further confutation of that ground 8. In what sense the Brazen Serpent was a Telesme and that it must needs be a Typical Prophecie of Christ. 9. The accurate and punctual Prefiguration therein 10. The wicked Pride and Conceitedness of those that are not touched with this admirable contrivance of Divine Providence 11. The insufferable blasphemy of them that reproach the Son of God for crying out in his dreadfull Agony on the Cross wherein is discovered the Unloveliness of the Family of Love 1. AND truly this fifth Gospel-Power the Passion of Christ is of so great efficacy and concernment that our Saviour seems with more then ordinary delight to have ruminated on the wonderfull effects that it would have in the world John 12.32 And I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me signifying thereby what death he should die as the Text witnesses This shews what a powerful Engine our Saviour himself thought his Death would prove to draw all the World after him Which is a demonstration that the Mind of a Christian ought to dwell very much in the meditation of the Death and Passion of Christ. The use whereof appears in another intimation of our Saviour's though more Typical yet the Analogie is so plain that no man can miss it John 3. And as Moses lifted up the Serpent in the Wilderness so shall the Son of man be lifted up That whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have eternal life This is so perfect a Representation of our Saviours Passion that I cannot but blame my self for not entring it amongst other Prophecies that I alledged for the Messiah's suffering 2. And it will still appear more plainly that it was intended a Prefiguration or Typical Prophecie of Christ if we consider that Moses was not put upon it by any natural skill as if the Effigies of this Brazen Serpent did by any power of Art or Nature heal the Israelites of their bitings of the fiery flying Serpent But it was an immediate direction of God by whose supernatural power the cure was wrought As the Authour of the Book of Wisdome expresly has noted namely That he that turned towards that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he styles it the sign of Salvation was not saved by the thing that he saw but by him that is the Saviour of all For beside that the whole mystery of Telesmes is but a superstitious foolery much-a-kin to and dependent of that groundless Pretence of such wonderfull influences as the ancient Pagan Ignorance attributed to the Stars the very matter of this Serpent was inconvenient and improper for this Effect as Interpreters on the place have observed To which I might add that there is not any example of any Telesmes that were ever known to cure the diseasement after this sort that is by only looking thereunto And that those that have been made against Scorpions or other hurtfull Creatures they have chaced them out of the place or killed them upon the Spot but if any one were stung by these venomous Serpents there was a tactual application of the Remedy to him that was hurt 3. And yet I will not so much stand upon this as that the whole business of Telesmatical Preparations is superstitious and that they have no Effect by any natural Virtue or Influence This methinks I plainly discover out of their Collections that seem most pleased in the representing of these Curiosities to the eye of the world in their Writings Gaffarel especially who does with plenty of words but no reason at all endeavour to make us believe that the power of Telesmes is natural but I never knew any cause managed with more slight more loose and more frivolous arguments in my daies But out of his own mouth I shall be able to condemn him and upon these two accounts First in that according to his own Conjectures and Relations the erecting and preparing of these Telesmes is as we contend superstitious or paganically Religious and then secondly That the effects of them where they have any are plainly beyond the power of any natural cause 4. As for the first himself does profess that he is of opinion that the first Gods of the Latines which they called Averrunci or Dii Tutelares were no other then these Telesmatical Images And his reason is
and more full Interpretation of the whole Transaction 11. Some brief touches upon the Prophesies of Christ. 117 CHAP. IX 1. The Miracles of Apollonius compared with those of Christ. 2. His entertainment at a Magical banquet by Iarchas and the rest of the Brachmans 3. His cure of a Dropsy and of one bitten by a mad dog 4. His freeing of the City of Ephesus from the plague 5. His casting a Devil out of a laughing Daemoniack and chasing away a whining Spectre on Mount Caucasus in a Moon-shine night 6. His freeing Menippus from his espoused Lamia 120 CHAP. X. 1. Apollonius his raising from death a young married Bride at Rome 2. His Divinations and particularly by Dreams 3. His Divinations from some external accidents in Nature 4. His Prediction of Stephanus killing Domitian from an Halo that encircled the Sun Astrology and Meteorology covers to Pagan Superstition and converse with Devils 5. A discovery thereof from this prediction of his from the Halo compared with his phrantick Ecstasies at Ephesus 6. A general Conclusion from the whole parallel of the Acts of Christ and Apollonius 122 CHAP. XI 1. A Comparison of the Temper or Spirit in Apollonius with that in Christ. 2. That Apollonius his Spirit was at the height of the Animal life but no higher 3. That Pride was the strongest chain of darkness that Apollonius was held in with a rehersal of certain Specimens thereof 4. That his whole Life was nothing else but an exercise of Pride and Vain-glory boldly swaggering himself into respect with the greatest whereever he went 5. His reception with Phraotes King of India and Iarchas head of the Brachmans 6. His intermedling with the affairs of the Roman Empire his converse with the Babylonian Magi and Aegyptian Gymnosophists and of his plausible Language and Eloquence 7. That by the sense of Honour and Respect he was hook'd in to be so active an Instrument for the Kingdome of Darkness 8. That though the Brachmans pronounced Apollonius a God yet he was no higher then the better sort of Beasts 124 CHAP. XII 1. The Contrariety of the Spirit of Christ to that of Apollonius 2. That the History of Apollonius be it true or false argues the exquisite Perfection of the life of Christ and the Transcendency of that Divine Spirit in him that no Pagan could reach by either Imagination or Action 3. The Spirit of Christ how contemptible to the mere Natural man and how deare and precious in the eyes of God 4. How the several Humiliations of Christ were compensated by God with both sutable and miraculous Priviledges and Exaltations 5. His deepest Humiliation namely his Suffering the death of the Cross compensated with the highest Exaltation 127 CHAP. XIII 1. The ineffable power of the Passion of Christ and other indearing applications of him for winning the World off from the Prince of Darkness 2. Of his preceding Sufferings and of his Crucifixion 3. How necessary it was that Christ should be so passive and sensible of pain in his suffering on the Cross against the blasphemy â—f certain bold Enthasiasts 4. Their ignorance in the Divine life and how it alone was to triumph in the Person of Christ unassisted by the advantages of the Animal or Natural 5. That if Christ had died boldly and with little sense of pâ—in both the Solemnity and Usefulness of his Passion had been lost 6. That the strange Accidents that attended his Crucifixion were Prefigurations of the future Effects of his Passion upon the Spirits of men in the World 7. Which yet hinders not but that they may have other significations 8. The third and last reason of the Tragical unsupportableness of the Passion of Christ in that he bore the sins of the whole World 9. The Legâ—â—leious cavils of some conceited Sophists that pretend That it is unjust with God to punish the Innocent in stead of the Guilty 10. The false Ground of all their frivolous subtilties 129 CHAP. XIV 1. That Sacrifices in all Religions were held Appeasements of the Wrath of their Gods 2. And that therefore the Sacrifice of Christ is rather to be interpreted to such a Religious sense then by that of Secular laws 3. The disservice some corrosive Wits do to Christian Religion and what defacements their Subtilties bring upon the winning comeliness thereof 4. The great advantage the Passion of Christ has compared with the bloudy Tyranny of Satan 132 CHAP. XV. 1. An Objection concerning the miraculous Eclipse of the Sun at our Saviour's Passion from it s not being recorded in other Hâ—storians 2. Answer That this wonderfull Accident might as well be omitted by several Historians as those of like wonderfulness as for example the darkness of the Sun about Julius Caesar's death 3. Farther That there are far greater Reasons that Historians should omit the darkness of the Sun at Christ's Passion then that at the death of Julius Caesar. 4. That Grotius ventures to affirme this Eclipse recorded in Pagan writers and that Tertullian appeal'd to their Records 5. That the Text does not imply that it was an universal Eclipse whereby the History becomes free from all their Cavils 6. Apollonius his Arraignment before Domitian with the ridiculousness of his grave Exhortations to Damis and Demetrius to suffer for Philosophy 134 BOOK V. CHAP. I. OF the Resurrection of Christ and how much his eye was fixed upon that Event 2. The chief Importance of Christ's Resurrection 3. The World excited by the Miracles of Christ the more narrowly to consider the Divine quality of his Person whom the more they looked upon the more they disliked 4. Whence they misinterpreted and eluded all the force and conviction of all his Miracles 5. God's upbraiding of the World with their gross Ignorance by the raising him from the dead whom they thus vilified and contemned 6. Christ's Resurrection an assurance of man's Immortality 137 CHAP. II. 1. The last End of Christ's Resurrection the Confirmation of his whole Ministry 2. How it could be that those chief Priests and Rulers that hired the Souldiers to give out that the Disciples of Christ stole his body away were not rather converted to believe he was the Messias 3. How it can be evinced that Christ did really rise from the dead and that it was not the delusion of some deceitfull Daemons 4. The first and second Answer 5. The third Answer 6. The fourth Answer 7. The fifth Answer 8. The sixth and last Answer 9. That his appearing and disappearing at pleasure after his Resurrection is no argument but that he was risen with the same Body that was laid in the grave 139 CHAP. III. 1. The Ascension of Christ and what a sure pledge it is of the Soul's activity in a thinner Vehicle 2. That the Soul's activity in this Earthly Body is no just measure of what she can do out of it 3. That the Life of the Soul here is as a Dream in comparison of that life she is awakened unto in her
the true knowledge of God CHAP. IX 1. The Miracles of Apollonius compared with those of Christ. 2. His entertainment at a Magical banquet by Iarchas and the rest of the Brachmans 3. His cure of a Dropsy and of one bitten by a mad dog 4. His freeing of the City of Ephesus from the plague 5. His casting a Devil out of a laughing Daemoniack and chasing away a whining Spectre on Mount Caucasus in a Moon-shine night 6. His freeing Menippus from his espoused Lamia 1. WE have now done with the Actions of Christ such as were more extraordinary and miraculuos we will proceed to his Passion after we have made a short comparison of the most famous exploits of Apollonius with these of our Saviour according to those Heads we have already insisted upon His miraculous feeding of the People His curing diseases His casting out Devils His raising of the dead and His predictions of things to come 2. As for the First I do not remember any example of it in Apollonius his life only Philostratus writes that Apollonius himself was entertained by the Brachmans at such a banquet as was provided in a miraculous manner together with the King of Media where three-sooted tables were brought in and plac'd in the midst without the help of any mans hand as also the floor spread with odoriferous herbs and flowers and bread wine fruits and sweet-meats on plates conveighed through the air and set upon those tables without any servitours to carry them Which story being so very like the junketings of Witches and the behaviour of Iarchas and his brother Brachmans being so full of scorn and insolency towards the King and the very chief of his retinue his brother I mean and his sons may fully confirm any man that they were no better then Magicians nor their great Favourite and disciple Apollonius any other then a Wizzard and a Necromancer as his conjuring up of the Ghost of Achilles does further prove 3. As for his Cures I do remember but Three the First of which seems to have more of the power of Nature and Morality then of a Miracle he curing a young man of a Dropsie by precepts of Temperance in the Temple of Aesculapius The other was of one bitten by a mad Dog who was so distempered therewith that he would bark goe on all four and couch on the ground like a Dog But it looks so like a piece of Witchery and Apollonius was so punctual in discovering what the Inhabitants of the place which was Tarsus could not inform him of as of the colour shaggedness and other qualities of the Dog as also where he was that it is a suspicion that he that cured the disease did inflict it himself or rather his Familiars for him and so it is likely that the dog as well as the man was bewitched For he came along from the river-side where he was shivering as if he had an ague so soon as Damis had whispered in his Ear that Apollonius would speak with him who told the people also while he was cherishing him and stroaking him that the Soul of Telephus the Mysian was entred into him which is a further confirmation of our conjecture But indeed all the circumstances of the Story are either ludicrous and ridiculous or else impious As his making the Dog cure the man by licking of him and then himself curing the Dog by praying to the River Cydnus and slinging the Dog into the stream 4. But the most famous cure of all is that when he freed the City of Ephesus from the plague But it being discovered already what a kind of man this Apollonius was viz. a mere Magician I cannot but suspect that the case is the same with that former and that the whole City suffered so direfull a disease as the devouring pestilence by the hand of the Devil to get the greater renown to Apollonius that stout Hyperaspistes of Paganisme who for the advancing of his own credit was to free them from this raging evil Of which opinion of ours there are two grand Arguments The one his assembling the people in the Theatre and there incouraging them to stone an old ragged Begger which he perswaded them was the plague but it seems it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a destroying Daemon as it appeared by his eyes as he was a stoning and by that delusion of a shagged Dog as big as a Lion found under the heap of stones when the people had thought to have seen him there in his former shape of a patch'd Begger The other Argument is the Ephesians erecting the Image of Hercules Apotropaeus in the place where this old Mendicant was stoned which is a sign that Pagan Idolatry was the upshot of the plot Wherefore I look upon these two last Cures as done out of suspicable Principles and upon extravagant Objects 5. As for his casting out Devils I do not remember any example thereof saving one and that was of a young man of Corcyra who was a laughing Daemoniack out of whom at Athens by a many repeated menaces and imperious railings he at last ejected the Evil Spirit who for a sign of his departure made a great Image tumble down from the royal Porch in the City with a great noise and clatter To this Head we may refer also though by an improper reduction his conjuring of a Phantasme that appeared to him and his fellow-travellers as they were journying on Mount Caucasus in a bright Moon-shine night Which Phantasme went before them sometime in one shape and sometime in another but by many vehement chidings by many railings reproaches and execrations was made to disappear at last and to depart crying and whining at the discourteous usage 6. We may add to these the story of Menippus and the Lamia Who in the form of a beautifull young woman made love to Menippus and at last perswaded him to marry her But Apollonius being at the Nuptials discovered the illusion and by reproaching the Bride made I think the whole Edifice which was supposed to be plac'd near Corinth I am sure the furniture and riches thereof all the moveables the Tapestry the gold and silver vessels nay the pages servants and officers of this fair Lady to vanish at once and her self only left was compelled to confess her self a foul carnivorous Fiend So either frivolous or exorbitant are all the miraculous exploits of this deified Impostor But all the Objects of our Saviour's Miracles were as I at first noted more obvious and familiar which is the greater assurance as well of the Innocency and Sincerity of his Person as of the Truth of his History CHAP. X. 1. Apollonius his raising from death a young married Bride at Rome 2. His Divinations and particularly by Dreams 3. His Divinations from some external accidents in Nature 4. His Prediction of Stephanus killing Domitian from an Halo that encircled the sun Astrology and Meteorology covers to Pagan Superstition and converse with Devils 5. A
Bloud as common and unholy as that of the malefactors that were crucified with him the Wrath of God being not all atoned as they say by his suffering because it is unjust that an Innocent man should be punished for those that are guilty But what Unjustice is done to him that takes upon him the debt or fault of another man willingly if he pay the debt or bear the punishment provided that he that may exact or remit either will be thus satisfied 10. But such trivial and captious intermedlers in matters of Religion that take a great deal of pains to obscure that which is plain and easie deserve more to be flighted and neglected then vouchsafed any answer For all their frivolous Subtilties and fruitless intricacies arise from this one false ground That the Soveraign Goodness of God and his kind condescensions and applications to the affections of man are to be measured by Iuridical niceties and narrow and petty Laws such as concern ordinary transactions between man and man But let these brangling Wits enjoy the fruits of their own elaborate ignorance while we considering the easie air and sense of Sacrifices in all Religions shall by this means be the better assured of the natural meaning of it in our own CHAP. XIV 1. That Sacrifices in all Religions were held Appeasments of the Wrath of their Gods 2. And that therefore the Sacrifice of Christ is rather to be interpreted to such a Religious sense then by that of Secular laws 3. The great disservice some corrosive Wits doe to Christian Religion and what defacements their Subtilties bring upon the winning comeliness thereof 4. The great advantage the Passion of Christ has compared with the bloudy Tyranny of Satan 1. HOW General the Custome of Sacrificing was in all Nations of the World is a thing so well known that I need not insist upon it and That their Sacrifices were accounted an Appeasment of the Wrath of the Gods and Expiation for their faults is also a Truth so conspicuous that it cannot be denied Hence these Sacrifices we speak of were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Latine Placamina Februa Piamina Much of this nature you may read in Grotius De Satisfactione Christi cap. 10. where he does not only make good by many Expressions and Examples That the Sacrifices of the ancient Heathen pacified the Anger of the Gods but also which is nearer to our purpose That the Punishment of those that were thus reconciled and purged was transferred upon the Beast that was sacrificed for the clearing whereof he alledges many citations and these two amongst the rest One out of Cato Cum sis ipse nocens moritur cur victima pro te Since thou thy self art guilty why Does then thy Sacrifice for thee die The other out of Plautus Men ' piaculum oportet fieri propter stultitiam tuam Ut meum tergum stultitia tuae subdas succedaneum that is to say Is it fit that I should be made a piacular Sacrifice for your foolishness that my back should bear the stripes that your folly has demerited 2. Wherefore this being the sense of the Sacrifices we speak of in all the Religions in the World it is more fit to interpret the Death of Christ who gave himself an Expiation for the sins of the World according to that sense which is usual in the mysteries of Religion then according to the entangling niceties and intricacies of secular laws 3. But as for those busie and Pragmatical spirits that by the acrimonie of their wit eat off the comely and lovely gloss of Christianity as aqua Fortis or rather aqua Stygia laid on polish'd metal what thanks shall they receive of him whom yet they pretend to be so zealous for the most winning and endearing circumstances of his exhibiting himself to the World being so soiled and blasted by their rude and foul breath that as many as they can infect with the contagion of their own Errour Christianity will be made to them but a dry withered branch whenas in it self it is an aromatick Paradise where the Senses and Affections of men are so transported with the Agreeableness of Objects that they are even enravished into Love and Obedience to him that entertains them there And nothing can entertain the Soul of man with so sweet a Sorrow and Joy as this Consideration That the Son of God should bear so dear a regard to the World as to lay down his life for them and to bear so reproachfull and painfull a Death to expiate their sins and reconcile them to his Father 4. But this is not all the Advantage he had to win the Government of the World unto himself For not only his exceeding Love to Mankind was hereby demonstrated but the cruel and execrable nature of that old Tyrant the more clearly detected For whereas the Devil who by unjust usurpation had got the Government of the World into his own hands tyrannizing with the greatest cruelty and scorn that can be imagined over Mankind thirsted after humane bloud and in most parts of the World as I have already shewn required the sacrificing of men which could not arise from any thing else but a salvage Pride and Despight against us This new gracious Prince of God's own appointing Christ Iesus was so far from requiring any such villainous Homage that himself became a Sacrifice for us making himself at once one Grand and All-sufficient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Piamen to expiate the Sins of all Mankind and so to reconcile the World to God CHAP. XV. 1. An Objection concerning the miraculous Eclipse of the Sun at our Saviour's Passion from it s not being recorded in other Historians 2. Answer That this wonderfull Accident might as well be omitted be several Historians as those of like wonderfulness as for example the darkness of the Sun about Julius Caesar's death 3. Further That there are far greater Reasons that Historians should omit the darkness of the Sun at Christ's Passion then that at the death of Julius Caesar. 4. That Grotius ventures to affirm this Eclipse recorded in Pagan writers and that Tertullian appeal'd to their Records 5. That the Text does not implie that it was an universal Eclipse whereby the History becomes free from all their Cavils 6. Apollonius his Arraignment before Domitian with the ridiculousness of his grave Exhortations to Damis and Demetrius to suffer for Philosophy 1. WE have seen how Reasonable the History of Christ's Passion is neither do I know any thing that may lessen the Credibility of it unless it be the miraculous Eclipse of the Sun Not that the Eclipse it self is so incredible but that it may seem incredible that so wonderfull so generally-conspicuous an Accident of Nature should be recorded by none but by the Evangelists themselves Learning and Civility in those times so universally flourishing and there being no want of Historians to recount such things This Objection makes a great shew at first but
has raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved Which places seem to imply that a mere belief that Christ has done or suffered this or that is our Justification and Salvation I might adde Galat. 2. ver 16. But I shall defer it till its proper place 4. We come now to the second sort of Testimonies of Scripture which seem to impute the righteousness of Christ to us and to teach us that it is that by which we become righteous 1 Cor. 1.30 But of him are ye in Christ Iesus who of God is made unto us Wisedom and Righteousnesse and Sanctification and Redemption And Rom. 5. Therefore as by the offence of one judgement came upon all men to condemnation even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to justification of life For as by one mans disobedience many were made sinners so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous From these and such like places young and unskilful Christians are prone to infer that they may be righteous by the obedience or righteousness of Christ applied or imputed to them though they have no real righteousness in their own Souls nor care to act righteously And this is the first cause of their proclivity to this unwholsome Errour But there is another behinde without the concurrence of which this former would be ineffectuall For all the passages in holy Scripture are certainly both sound and true but it is the unsoundness and corruptness of our own mindes that draws poison out of these Herbs and Flowers of Paradise 5. I say therefore in the second place That the main cause of the propension of Christian Childehood to this gross Errour is in the very condition it self of those that are but Children in Christianity For this childish state I conceive to be this When a man makes indeed a free open Profession of Christianity and with all possible expressions of thanks to God for his rich mercy in the bloud of Christ for the remission of sins laies fast hold as he thinks on this grace by faith having also some more weak inchoations of the life of Righteousness But the old man is still very strong the body of Sin very little subdued or impaired so that whensoever they are encountred the toyl is very heavy and a world of work still behinde and such ungrateful work and painful that it is no Metaphor nor Hyperbole to say it is a perpetual death a continued crucifixion This being then the condition of one that is but a little young childe in Christianity I appeal to any one if there can chuse but be a very considerable proneness in such persons to be delivered from this toil and torture of Mortification whereby they are to enter into higher degrees of Righteousness and life And now we being very easily drawn to believe those things which make for our own interest and the accomplishment of our desires it must needs be that if any thing sound towards that sense we shall easily make it up with a lusty belief that it is so indeed and it may be thank God to boot for this amabilis insania for these dear mistakes and dreams of ours Wherefore at length to assume The Scripture therefore seeming at first sight something to favour this opinion of being righteous without any reall Righteousness in our selves but by that which is at a wide distance removed from us and placed in another to save the pains of the great anguish and agony that the aspiring to inward real Righteousness will cost in this weak estate of Christian childehood it cannot be but that he that has arrived to no higher condition should very easily close with this so welcome a notion and having once embraced it be angry at the very heart at any one that would rouze him from this so pleasing repose or dissettle him from this false ease and joy The weak and fainting heart of this tender age chusing rather for present avoiding of smart an hasty palliation then a sound cure But that I may not rather confirm then bring off these Younglings from this dangerous Errour by noting their most pregnant places and saying nothing to them I shall endeavour to make it plain that if they please they may understand those places otherwise then they do and then because that their gloss is not so consonant to Reason nor the rest of the Scripture that they ought to relinquish this unwarrantable sense which they have harboured in favour to their own vices and wickednesses 6. And for our better preparation for this designe we will first settle the notion of the terms that so frequently occurre in the Epistles of S. Paul and which so nearly concern our present matter Such as are Faith Righteousness Iustification Imputation and the like And first of Faith which is so highly commended by the Apostle I say it signifies nothing else but this in general viz. An high sense of and confidence in the Power Iustice and Goodness of God and a firm belief that he will assuredly bring to pass whatsoever he has promised seem it never so unlikely and difficult to flesh and bloud And this is that which was so commended in Abraham as it is plain in the fourth to the Romans who against hope believed in hope that he might become the Father of many Nations And being not weak in faith he considered not his own body now dead when he was about an hundred years old nor yet the deadness of Sara's womb being fully perswaded that what God had promised he was able to perform And therefore saies the Apostle it was imputed to him for righteousness That is to say God approved of him for a good and pious man who not consulting with the natural improbability of the thing but giving firm credence to the Promise of God did that which was due to the Goodness and Power of God and becoming a good and righteous man So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is nothing else but to be approved as a good man or a doer of what is righteous and good and that because he does that which is good and righteous As this act of the Soul exerting her self above the low and sluggish tenour of Nature and winging her self by lively sense of divine Power and Goodness to the assenting to and resting in such things as the present state of Nature can never bring about certainly is and is esteemed and approved of God as a very righteous and good Act and to proceed from a good and holy temper which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies any vertue or goodness in a man whatsoever So that act of Phinehas when he so zealously did vengeance on Zimri and Cosbi it is said in the 106 Psalm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it was looked upon by all succeeding generations as a very noble and eminent act of Righteousness i. e. it was reputed according to its own nature But the meaning is not that