Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
earth_n	father_n	heaven_n	maker_n	3,071	5	10.1314	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A53750	A true and lively representation of popery shewing that popery is only new-modell'd paganism, and perfectly destructive of the great ends and purposes of God in the Gospel.	Owen, Thankfull, 1620-1681.	1679 (1679)	Wing O830; ESTC R18583	46,596	82

thrusting forth an Egg out of his mouth and by this Cneph Plutarch says De Iside they understood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unmade and Eternal Deity But it is most apparent from that sacred History which I touched upon before in Act. 17.29 Forasmuch then as we are his Off-spring we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto Gold or Silver or Stone graven by art or mans device In which words there are these things implyed 1. That the Athenians worshipped God in an Image or Statue for had they not done so it had been impertinent and beside the Apostles scope to have declaimed against Image-worship as here he does 2. That this God to whom they built an Altar and gave Religious worship was the true God For that that Jupiter whom Aratus invokes in his Phaenomena and from whence S. Paul cited that passage For we are his Off-spring was the Supreme God the Lord of Heaven and Earth we are informed from Theon the Scholiast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We must understand saith he here by Jupiter the Maker of the World And so S. Paul says that he of whom Aratus speaks We are his Off-spring and whom the Athenians ignorantly worshipped under the name of the unknown God he it is that is the Maker and Lord of Heaven and Earth and therefore it was a very non-sensical and ridiculous thing to endeavour to represent this Supreme Numen by an Image of Gold or Silver or any other material To this purpose there is a famous passage in Sophocles cited by divers of the Ancient Fathers where after having asserted one only God the Maker of Heaven and Earth he condemns all Image-worship and affirms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Those vain Mortals to be deceived and err in their hearts who graving Images of God out of Stone Wood Gold or Ivory offer Sacrifices and other Solemnities to them to the infinite damage of their Souls and suppose this to be true Religious worship And that the Heathens worshipped their minor Gods or inferiour Deities whether Daemons or Heroes in Images and Statues is so plain and obvious that it needs no farther proof Though here the cunning Sophisters of the Romish Church not being able to deny the thing it self have invented many shifts and elusions and they tell us that the Pagans worshipped the dead Images and Statues and accounted those inanimate and sensless Figures of Gold or Silver or Wood and Stone to be the very Gods to whom they paid their Religious worship But that this is utterly false and made use of by the Bigots of the Popish Church meerly that their conformity and agreement with the Idolatry of the Heathens might not appear I shall shew 1. In that it is such a piece of sottishness and contradictious non-sense as is not incident to Humane Nature that any persons who are endued with any measure and competency of Reason and Understanding should so far degenerate and fall from it as to take Gold or Silver or some other Material and frame it into an Image or Statue and then devoutly court it and pay the most solemn Devotion and Religious worship to it by invoking and imploring its assistance as hoping to receive great benefits thereby and yet at the same time think it to be nothing but a dead and sensless lump or piece of matter this I say is so opposite to the very Constitutive Principles and Intellectual Furniture of the Soul of Man that I cannot imagine any number of people to be guilty of such a perfect piece of stupidity But these Images of the Heathens which were designed for Religious worship were first consecrated with certain Prayers and Ceremonies by which they supposed some Invisible Power superiour to men was conveyed into them and was ready there to assist and help all Supplicants to them so that the Image was not worshipped for it self as if it were nothing but a dead and lifeless Trunk or Stock but with respect to the Demon or Invisible Power which they imagined after the performances of certain sacred Ceremonies was incorporated and dwelt in it And there is no doubt but that there were many wicked Spirits who industriously waited to minister to the sins of fond mankind and did to use the words of Minutius Felix sub Statuis Imaginibus consecratis delitescere lurk under the shades and covertures of those consecrated Statues to delude abused Mortals 2. The Heathens constantly disclaimed such a worship as this and tell us that they knew well enough the value and power of the Image before which they prostrate themselves that it is but a dead and lifeless thing in it self meer Gold or Silver or Wood or Stone but that they worship the Gods in these Images So the Pagans in Arnobius Thou art deceived and grosly mistaken for we the Heathen do not believe the substance of Brass L. 6. Adv. Gent. or Silver or Gold or any other thing of which these Statues are made to be in themselves Gods but we worship the Gods in these But if nothing will serve the turn but that the Heathens must be thought such stupid and blockish people as to invocate and adore the very Stocks and Stones as Gods yet have our Adversaries the Papists no such advantage if their own Polydore Virgil be of any credit with them To this height of madness is it come says he that this piece of Piety little differs from Impiety for there are a great many of the more rude and stupid sort of people who worship Images of Stone Wood Marble Brass or such as are with various colours painted on Walls not as Figures but as if those Images had some sense in them and place their trust and confidence in them more than in Christ or those Saints to whom they are dedicated Having removed this Objection let us now proceed to draw the Parallel which I shall do by considering the reasons and grounds the Pagans insisted upon and by which they maintained the worship of their Gods in Images and Statues which were these 1. They declared that in the Adoration of Images the worship was not terminated upon the Image as upon the ultimate Object but directed and referred to the God and his Attributes whom they adored in and by such an Image as in the place cited even now out of Arnobius 2. They affirmed concerning their Images that they were Symbolical Representations of the Gods they worshipped 3. They used Images in their Religious worship as sensible helps to excite and quicken their Devotion and fix their Imagination upon For these we have the testimony of Plutarch in his Book De Iside Vid. Orig. contr Celsum lib. 7. p. 362. where he reprehends the Grave Philosophers for adoring Images and using them as conspicuous Symbols to raise their Imaginations to the contemplation of the Intelligible Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. No inanimate thing ought to be esteemed for

of the Pagan Theology First that there is one Self-originated Deity who was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Maker of the whole VVorld Secondly That there are besides him other Gods also to be religiously worshipped that is Intellectual Beings superiour to Men which were notwithstanding all made or created by that one To the Supreme God they gave the highest worship but to those subordinate Deities they gave a lesser or inferiour kind of religious worship that is they adored and worshipped the Supreme God as the first Cause and Original of all things but their inferiour Deities as Mediators and Intercessors for them with the Supreme Numen And where I pray lies the difference now between the Papist and the Pagan save that the Dii Medioxumi of the Heathens are changed into Saints and Angels by the Papists And if it be said that the Pagans substituted these Subordinate Gods in the room of the Supreme God and worshipped them above or more than him I shall readily grant it and do likewise affirm the same of the Papists who by giving religious worship to Saints and Angels do really substitute them in the place of the true God and worship them above or more than him for so Sir Edwin Sands tells us that for one Prayer put up to God Europ spec there are ten offered to the Virgin Mary So that the Church of Rome are not so much the worshippers of the Man Christ Jesus as of the VVoman his Mother But that the Pagans did so worship their inferiour Deities as wholly to pass by and neglect the Supreme I utterly deny To the second I say That it is true the Saints and Martyrs are worthy of some regard and veneration but not of religious worship which to give them is down-right Idolatry but the honour and reverence which we pay to the Saints departed consists 1. In making an honourable mention of their Names as being great and glorious Lights in their times 2. in setting before our Eyes their Virtues and praying to God to give us Grace to follow their good Examples that with them we may be partakers of his Heavenly Kingdom And whereas 't is said that it was ridiculous in the Heathen to worship the Stars that have neither sense nor reason I find them utterly disclaiming this latter part forasmuch as they looked upon all the World and the several parts thereof to be animated at least with one great Soul and they that worshipped the Sun did not do it as supposing the Sun to be nothing but a dead and lifeless thing but as animated with some Intellectual Being For to deny the Worlds Animation and to be an Atheist or to deny a God was looked upon by them as one and the same thing because all the Pagans who asserted Providence held the World also to be animated and Epicurus denyed the Worlds Animation upon no other Reason but because he Atheistically endeavoured to exclude a Providence And though the Poets have introduced many absurd and impure Fables into their Religion concerning Jupiter yet certain it is that by Jupiter the Heathens understood the Supreme God the true Etymon of Jupiter being not Juvans Pater a helping Father as Cicero would have it but Jovis Pater Jove the Father of Gods and Men which Jovis is the very Hebrew Tetragrammaton only altered by a Latin Termination And Jupiter Pluto See Dr. Cudworth Intellect Syst l. 1. c. 4. p. 451. Neptune Juno Minerva c. in the Pagan Theology are nothing but the Polyonymy of one and the same Supreme Being in the various actings and manifestations of himself in the several things and parts of the world But if Jupiter were an impious King and the Heathens worshipped him after his death I do not doubt but to find many such Saints in the Roman Calendar Lastly for the Demons worshipped by the Pagans it is evident they looked upon them under another notion and did not conceive them to be haters of God and Virtue but Mediators and Intercessors and such who did negotiate Affairs between Mortals and the Supreme God So that this Argument like the former proceeding upon a false supposition leaves no other difference but what arises from the change of names between Papist and Pagan but the Popish Saints are exactly like the Demons of the Heathen To the third which extenuates the errour of Papists in their Invocation of Saints because they ascribe the Omniscience of the Saints whereby they hear their Suppliants throughout all the World to God as his gift I reply that the same may be said of the subordinate Gods of the Heathens who were altogether as Omniscient as the Romish Saints Nor did the Pagans ever look upon their Middle Gods as so many particular independent and self-originated Beings but were acknowledged to be the Creatures of the Supreme God and made by him what they were fancied to be by their Devotionists and all the honour conferred upon these subordinate Deities was judged by the Pagans to redound to the Supreme 7. Having now dispatched the first part wherein I affirmed the Pagan Polytheism and Idolatry to consist namely in worshipping many inferiour created Deities together with the Supreme God and drawn the Parallel fully and exactly between this Heathenish worship and that now practised in the Church of Rome I shall with the same clearness and evidence demonstrate the second Part viz. that Papists do egregiously Paganize in worshipping both the Supreme God and their other Inferiour Deities in Images and Statues And let not any man be mistaken and think that because Papists do not call Angels and the Souls of men departed Gods or Inferiour Deities but Saints that therefore the case is quite different between them and the Pagans for by giving Religious worship to them they do for that very reason make them Gods whether they call them so or not for neither did the Heathens believe their inferiour Deities to be so many self-existent and independent but created Beings made by the Supreme God but by performing Religious worship to them they made them Gods so far as any Creature can be made a God and upon this account they are called Gods in Scripture so that I cannot free the Romish Church from Polytheism and Idolatry any more than the Pagan VVorld who by all Christian VVriters has been justly branded with that heynous Impiety That the Pagans worshipped the Supreme God and likewise their subordinate Deities in Images and Statues I think is so evident as not to be denied however I shall offer something towards the proof of it And first that the Heathens worshipped the true God the Creator of Heaven and Earth in an Image appears from the story of the Inhabitants of Thebais who worshipped the Maker of VVorld under the name of Cneph in an Image or Statue of humane form and a blackish sky-coloured complexion holding in his hand a Girdle and a Scepter and wearing upon his head a Princely Plume and