Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	catholic_n	church_n	communion_n	6,739	5	9.8919	5	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64364	Of idolatry a discourse, in which is endeavoured a declaration of, its distinction from superstition, its notion, cause, commencement, and progress, its practice charged on Gentiles, Jews, Mahometans, Gnosticks, Manichees Arians, Socinians, Romanists : as also, of the means which God hath vouchsafed towards the cure of it by the Shechinah of His Son / by Tho. Tenison ...	Tenison, Thomas, 1636-1715.	1678 (1678)	Wing T704; ESTC R8	332,600	446

principally the Sun though great men likewise when deified after their deaths obtained that Name as a Title of highest renown And from the many names of Canonized Heroes given to the Sun hath risen a great part of that uncertainty and confusion with which the Reader is perplexed in the Labyrinths of Heathen Mythologers This however is generally confessed that the Sun was the first Idol instead of which why Jarchi hath put men or herbs into the first place is hard to understand till he come and be his own Elias Maimonides begins with the Stars and he hath ground not only from natural Reason but from the Authority also of Job and Moses Job thus expresseth the Idolatry of those ancient times in which he lived If I beheld the sun when it shined or the Moon walking in brightness And my heart hath been secretly enticed or my mouth hath kissed my hand If with devotion of Soul or profession of outward Ceremony I have worshipped those heavenly bodies which by their heighth motion and lustre ravish the senses This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge for I should have denied the God that is above Moses giveth caution to the people of Israel who were coming out of that Idolatrous Land of Egypt and were journeying towards Idolatrous Canaan who were coming from temptation and going likewise towards it That when they lifted up their eyes to the Heavens they should arm their minds against that inchantment to which they were subject by the sensible glory of the Sun Moon and Stars Rabbi Levi Ben Gerson glossing upon this place in Moses Observeth that the Sun is first named because his vertues are most manifest The most ancient inhabitants of the World saith Diodorus Siculus meaning them that lived soon after the Flood and particularly the Egyptians contemplating the World above them and being astonished with high admiration at the nature of the Universe believed that there were eternal Gods and that the two principal of them were the Sun and the Moon Of which they called the first Osiris and the second Isis. And of late years when the Mariners Compass directed men to a new World in America peopled no doubt from several distant parts of the old many different Idols were found in peculiar places but for the Sun it was a Deity both in Mexico and Peru. Babylon was the Mother of this kind of Idolatry not Egypt as the Author de Dea Syria and some in Diodorus Siculus who make Sol the first King of it have erroneously conjectured For Egypt was not a Nation when the Sun began to be worshipped in Chaldea where Ur it may be in aftertimes with respect to the worship of that hot Luminary was a kind of lesser Babylon Babylon infected Egypt Assyria Phaenicia and they spread the contagion throughout the World To the worship of the Sun Moon and Stars and other appearances in Heaven or the Air such as Comets and Meteors for the worship of the former was apt to draw on that of the latter succeeded the false Religion towards Heroes confounded as I guess with original Demons or Angels And this came to pass in the days of Serug according to Eusebius Epiphanius and Syncellus The Sun was no sooner called Bel Baal or El that is Lord or Governour but the souls of men of renown were also flattered with like Appellations and became properly the Idols of the people Nimrod and Osiris were Baals and the King of Phaenicia was Bel and they had Religious veneration payed to them If other Demons were worshipped as no doubt they were being permitted to appear to them it is a question whether the Gentiles did not by them misunderstand the deified Souls of some of their Ancestors distinctly or confusedly remembred rather than natural Genii or Angels For such Beings owed much of their manifestation as such to the Tradition conveyed in the Loyn of Abraham and Moses The worship of Demons was followed by that of Pillars or Artless Monuments of remembrance Such a Monument was that Pillar anointed by Jacob. It was no Idol in the quality in which he made it but a Record of the Divine presence But it is commonly thought that others did take from it a pattern of their follies Statues or Images were of a like antient date as is plain from the History of the Teraphim though Artists were then rare The infancy of this new World being also the infancy both of Mechanical and Liberal Arts. Idolaters likewise chose for their Deities living Statues such as the Bull in Egypt for the heavenly Taurus according to Lucian or rather for the Deity of the Sun or of an Hero according to truth Pausanias in his Survey of Greece findeth Stones sharpened at the top to have been the earliest Symbols of their Gods They were it may be Cones relating to the Sun the parent of fire which as was before noted ascendeth a Pyramis and was thought to be an element of Triangular figure by the ancient Philosophers of Greece Scaliger in that learned Appendix of his to his Book of the Emendation of the accounts of time doth mention Rude Stones as the original Statues in Phenicia What the first Symbols amongst the Romans were is not distinctly understood One would guess by Numa's Temple they were Symbols of the Universe But for particular Images we have it upon the good authority of a most learned Roman That an Hundred and Seventy years were passed ere they came in amongst them Under Christianity the vanity and veneration of Images succeeded the Symbol of the Cross. At this day the Barbarians on the Coasts of Africa reverence Stones like our greater Land-marks as Fetiches or Divine Statues believing them to be as ancient as the World it self It appeareth by this short account of the Original of Idols that they may plead antiquity But still their age is nothing if we compare it to his who is God everlasting CHAP. V. Of those who are charged with Idolatry and of the conformity or inconformity of their worship to the Nature of Idolatry Of Gentiles Jews Mahometans Christians Amongst them who have professed Christianity of the Gnosticks Manichees Arrians Socinians roman-Roman-Catholicks the real Catholicks of the Communion of the Church of England And first of the Idolatry charged on the Gentiles PART 1. How far the Gentiles were Ignorant of one Supreme God I Have insisted hitherto on the Nature Occasions and Commencement of Idolatry The next consideration shall extend to the persons charged with it and in the first place to them who have first and most generally transgressed that is to say the Gentiles Concerning their worship it is here proper for me to attempt the resolution of three Questions First Whether the Gentiles acknowledged one Supreme God Secondly Whether they made Religious Application to him Thirdly Whether upon the concession of such acknowledgment and Application they may be and really are chargeable with

That it is a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture but rather repugnant to the Word of God Now what can we judg of that Worship which hath for its object something else besides God and is contrary to the Scripture We cannot but think it not a mere impertinence but a wicked act an act which by contradicting his Authority diminisheth his honour and being an act of Worship nothing less than one degree of Idolatry Again in its twenty-eighth Article it teacheth concerning the consecrated Elements That they were not by Christs institution or ordinance reserved carried about lifted up and worshipped By which words it noteth the Adoration of the Host in the Church of Rome not as an innocent circumstance added by the discretion of that Church but as an unlawful worship though it doth not expresly brand it with the name of Idolatry In the Rubrick after the Communion the Adoration of the consecrated Elements is upon this reason forbidden Because the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances And it is there added That they so remaining the Adoration of them would be Idolatry to be abhorred by all faithful Christians This Rubrick doth in effect charge the Church of Rome with gross Idolatry for it supposeth the Object which they materially worship to be in its natural substance still a creature and a creature disjoined from Personal union with Christ and not according to the words of their St. Thomas inserted into their Missal a Deity latent under the accidents of Bread and Wine And it concludeth that the worship of such a substance is such Idolatry as Christian Religion abhorreth It doth not indeed affirm in terms that the worship of such a substance by a Romanist who verily thinks it to be not bread but a Divine body is Idolatry but it saith that whence such a conclusion may be inferred It saith that the bread is still bread in its substance and if it be really such whilst it is worshipped the mistake of the worshipper cannot alter the nature of the thing though according to the degrees of unavoidableness in the causes of his ignorance it may extenuate the crime Upon supposition that still 't is very bread in its substance Costerus and it may be Bellarmine himself would have condemned the Latria of it as the Idolatrous worship of a Creature even in Paul the simple of whom stories say that he was extreamly devout but withal that he knew not which were first the Apostles or the Prophets And here it ought to be well noted that there is a wide distance betwixt this saying That Idolatry is a damnable sin and this assertion That Idolatry in any degree of it and in a person under any kind of circumstances actually damneth I would here also commend it to the observation of the Reader that the Church of England speaketh this of the worship of the corporal substance of the Elements present in the Eucharist after consecration and not of the real and essential presence of Christ. And for this reason it left out the terms of Real and Essential used in the Book of King Edward the sixth as subject to misconstruction Real it is if it be present in its real effects and they are the essence of it so far as a Communicant doth receive it for he receiveth it not so much in the nature of a thing as in the nature of a priviledg But I comprehend not the whole of this Mystery and therefore I leave it to the explication of others who have better skill in untying of knots In the Commination used by the Church of England 'till God be pleased to restore the Discipline of Penance a curse is denounced against all those who make any carved or molten Image to worship it And it is the curse which is in the first place denounced on Ash-Wednesday It is true that it is taken out of the Book of Deuteronomy and it is the sense of a verse in that Book used at large in the former Common-Prayer-Book in these words Cursed is the man that maketh any carved or molten Image an abomination to the Lord the work of the hands of the craftsman and putteth it in a secret place to worship it That is though it be done without scandal to men and in such private manner as to avoid the punishment which the Law inflicteth on known and publick offenders But the Church of England repeating this Law in its Commination doth thereby own it to be still of validity and to oblige Christian men The Homilies which are an Appendage to our Church do expresly arraign the roman-Roman-Catholicks as Idolaters in the learned Discourses of the peril of Idolatry Also English Princes and Bishops have declared themselves to be of the same perswasion King Edward the sixth in his Injunctions reckoneth Pictures and Paintings in the Churches of England as adorned by the Romanists amongst the Monuments of Idolatry Of the Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth this is the Thirty-fifth That no persons keep in their houses any abused Images Tables Pictures Paintings or other Monuments of feigned Miracles Pilgrimages Idolatry and Superstition Of the Articles of Inquiry in the first year of her Reign this is one and pertinent to our present Discourse Whether you know any that keep in their Houses any undefaced Images Tables Pictures Paintings or other Monuments of feigned and false Miracles Pilgrimages Idolatry and Superstition and do adore them especially such as have been set up in Churches Chappels and Oratories This likewise is one of the Articles of Visitation set forth by Cranmer Arch-bishop of Canterbury in the second year of Edward the sixth Whether Parsons c. have not removed and taken away and utterly extincted and destroyed in their Churches Chappels and Houses all Images all Shrines Pictures Paintings and all other Monuments of Idolatry and Superstition Bishop Jewel's opinion is so well known that his words may be spared And that Confession of Faith which he penned and which maketh a part of his Apology for the Church of England and in which he calleth the Invocation of Saints in the Church of Rome a practice vile and plainly Heathenish is put into the collection of the Confessions of the Reformed under the Title of the English Confession But the Churches Confession it cannot be called with respect to her Authority which did not frame it whatsoever it be in its substance and in its conformity to her Articles For others of the Church of England a very Learned person the Hannibal and Terrour of Modern Rome hath named enough T. G. hath indeed excepted against many of the Jury but whether he hath not illegally challenged so many of them remaineth a Question or rather it is with the Judicious out of dispute The sentences of private men spoken on this occasion both here and beyond the Seas either broadly or indirectly are scarce to be

numbered Amongst them beyond the Seas I will name only Danaeus and Hottinger Daneus in his Appendix to the Catalogue of Heresies written by St. Austin recounteth the Hereticks who had offended as he thought in particular manner against the several precepts of the Decalogue And under the second Commandment he placeth the Simonians the Armenians the Papists and some others as notorious violaters of it Hottinger distributeth the false worship of the Papists into six kinds of Idolatry under the Greek names of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Bread-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Marian-worship to wit that of the Blessed Virgin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Saint-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Angel-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Relick-worship and lastly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the worship of Images PART 2. Of the mitigation of the charge of Idolatry against the Papists THE learned Hugo Grotius especially in his Annotations on the consultation of Cassander in his Animadversions on the Animadversions of Rivet and in his Votum pro Pace The learned Mr. Thorndike in his Epilogue and in his Just Weights and Measures Curcellaeus in his Epistle to Adrian Patius These three together with some others have pronounced a milder sentence in this cause though they approved not of such Invocation of Saints and worship of Images as is practised in the Church of Rome But it is not my design to decide the controversie by the greater number of modern Authorities but rather to look into the merits of the cause And this I purpose to do so far only as Angels or rather Saints and Images are the Objects of this Disquisition Of Relicks and the Sacramental bread I forbear to say more than that little which follows For the first that which will be said concerning the worship of Images will help us sufficiently in judging of the worship of Relicks If they be made Objects of Religious adoration if they be honoured as pledges of Divine protection if they be trusted in as Shrines of Divine virtue at adventure and in all ages they become as the Manna which was laid up for any other than the Sabbath-day useless to the preservers offensive to God and unsavory to men of sagacious Noses Concerning that substance which after Sacramental consecration appeareth as Bread that excellent Church in whose safe communion I have always lived doth still call it Bread For the Priest after having consecrated the Elements and received the Communion himself in both kinds is required by the Rubrick of that Office to administer to others and when he delivereth the Bread to any one to use this Form The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee preserve thy Body and Soul to Everlasting life Now a Discourse concerning the worship of that Substance which appeareth as Bread will in effect be a Discourse about the Corporal presence of Christ under the shews of that creature and run the Disputant into another Question which hath been industriously sifted by Thousands Neither are the printed Volumes touching this subject few or small There is a great heap of them written by the learned Messieurs Arnaud and Claud and Monsieur Aubertin hath obliged the World with a very large and laborious work about Transubstantiation in which may be seen the sense of the Ancients Forbearing then any further Discourse about the Worship of Relicks or the Sacramental bread I proceed to the Worship of Saints Angels and Images inquiring how far the Church of Rome doth by her Veneration render them Idols At the entrance of this Inquiry the trueness of her Faith in one God and three Persons is to be acknowledged and observed The Creed which is formed by order of the Council of Trent beginneth with the Articles of that of Nice though it endeth not without Additions And Dr. Rivet in his Reflections on those excellent Notes with which the acute Grotius adorned the consultation of Cassander doth in this point own the Orthodoxy of the Roman Faith In the Article of the Divine Trin-unity there is nothing saith he controverted betwixt Papists and Protestants And thus much is true if spoken of the generality of them for they herein adhere to Catholick Doctrine Thus do the Protestants of the Church of England but all do not so either here or beyond the Seas who commonly pass under the name of Protestants Curcellaeus for instance sake is called a Protestant yet may seem no other than a Tritheite as may appear by the first of those four Disputations which he wrote against his sharp Adversary Maresius The Romanists then professing the true Catholick Faith in the Article of the blessed Trinity and owning the second Synod of Nice which though it favoured Images so very highly yet it ascribed Latria to God only they seem injurious to them who do not only charge them with Idolatry but also aggravate that Idolatry as equal to the false Worship of the most barbarous Gentiles They seem unjust I say in so doing unless this be their meaning that the least degree of that crime under the light of Christianity be equal to the greatest under the disadvantages of Heathenism It is certain that the Romanists who worship the true God do not worship Universal Nature or the Sun or the Soul of the World in place of the Supreme Deity as did millions of Pagans Also for the Angels which they worship they justifie only the adoration of those Spirits who persisted in their first estate of unspotted Holiness and they renounce in Baptism the Devil and his Angels after the manner of the Catholick Church And when an Heathen is by them baptized the Priest after having signed him first on the Forehead and then on the Breast with the sign of the Cross does exhort him in this Form Abhor Idols Reject their Images But the Gentiles sacrificed to Devils and to such who by the light of nature might be known to be evil Daemons because they accepted of such Sacrifices as were unagreeable to the justice and charity and piety of mankind Sacrifices vile and bloody such whose smoke might be discerned by a common nostril to smell of the stench of the bottomless pit Yet some of the Heathens expresly denied the practice of such worship and made to the Christians this following profession We worship not evil Daemons Those Spirits which you call Angels those we also worship the Powers of the Great God and the Ministeries of the Great God For Hero's they worship those only whom they believe to have professed Christian Religion and to have been visible Members of the Catholick Church For into that whatsoever particular communion it was which afterwards they visibly owned they were at first Baptized Whereas the Gentiles worshipped many who had been worshippers of false gods Such worshippers were Castor Pollux Quirinus among the Romans These first worshipped false Deities and were afterwards worshipped themselves with the like undue honour

the bread of common Tables and not the natural body of Christ Also before the Administration of it which is done in a form of Prayer which requireth our Reverence the people are generally on their knees in devotion to God If any begin then to kneel their kneeling is by the Church declared to be at the Sacrament not to the Elements of it as they of Rome do towards which she alloweth not so much as a Prosopopeia in her Prayers and which are neither the Statues nor the Pictures of Christs Person though they be apt memorials of his Passion and are more safely received in their ordinary form than with such Figures as the Roman Church impresseth upon them of which great variety is to be seen in the Electa of Novarinus Further The Church of England to avoid all pretence of cavil and exception hath besides her Article against the Corporal Presence given to the world an express declaration of her design in the injunction of Kneeling She declareth that this is done in reverence and humility to Christ and not to the shews or substance of the Elements or to the natural body of Christ under the shews of Bread They who are acquainted with the writings of Monsieur Daille have no more reason to think him a Romanist than they have to take Bellarmine for a zealot amongst the Reformed Now this is the acknowledgment of that grave and learned person in his Apology for the Reformed Churches Whilst the Church of England declareth as it doth against the adoration of the external Elements their kneeling at the Communion cannot be taken for the worshipping of the Bread nor be thought any thing else but the worship of Christ himself reigning in the Heavens In this external Adoration of Christ the Church of England followeth the ancient Church which though it often adored by bowing and not kneeling yet sometimes it used that gesture and was never wanting in some sign of Reverence Such Adoration is mentioned by St. Chrysostom and particularly the gesture of kneeling or prostration in some places though Monsieur Larrogne hath not pleased when he had just occasion so to do to take notice of it That eminent Father in his third Homily on the Epistle to the Ephesians thus upbraideth the irreverent and indevout Communicant The Royal Table is prepared the King himself is present and standest thou gaping about Thy Garments are unclean and art not thou at all concerned at it But they are pure that is the Royal Table and the King of that Marriage-Feast wherefore fall down and communicate For the third Ceremony the bowing at the name of Jesus it is also enjoined not as duty in its nature necessary to salvation but as a decent sign of our inward esteem of that inestimable benefit which that name brings to our mind Of that just esteem and not meerly of the outward Ceremony I hope that zealous Gentleman spake who is reported to have wished that every knee might rot which would not bow at the Name of Jesus By bowing at this Name we advance not the Son above the Father but adore the whole Trinity whilst by the cue or sign of this name we are reminded of the greatest mercy that ever God vouchsafed the Name of Jesus displaying the wisdom and mercy of God beyond those of El Jah Adonai or Jehovah And for us to bow when-ever we hear that Name solemnly pronounced is no more to commit Idolatry than is our crying out at the reading of the Gospels Glory be to thee O Lord or O the depth of the riches of Gods mercy in Christ. For these words and that gesture are but external signs of the same inward acknowledgment and adoration And they who think we worship the very name when we bow at it are as grosly mistaken as the ignorant people in Athenaeus for some there mentioned when they heard others cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God save you or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God grant you life at the sneezing of any conceited that they adored either the very sternutation or the brain of man which then discharged it self of the fumes which oppressed it The Church of England doth not enjoin men to bow to the Name of Jesus as to an Object but only at it as at a signal by which they are admonished of the time of paying Reverence to God Neither is there any such form used in our Church as in the Church of Rome which to the Priests travelling into England prescribeth this out of the Missal of Sarum O God who hast made the most glorious name of our Lord Jesus Christ thy only begotten Son amiable to the faithful with the highest affection of suavity and terrible and dreadful to evil spirits mercifully grant that all they who devoutly worship this name on earth may perceive in this present life the sweetness of holy consolation and obtain in the life to come the joy of exultation and endless Jubilee by the same Lord. It is my opinion that the Judicious of that Church mean by that Name our Saviour himself as Redeemer of the World but the Church expresseth it self in such manner that to the people the Name of Jesus soundeth like some distinct adorable object For it speaketh of worshipping that Name it hath the Mass of the Name of Jesus the Litany of the Name of Jesus and such-like Forms which are apt to entangle common Hearers St. Ludgard would have such honour done not only to Christs Name but to that of the Virgin and he adviseth that when these words in the Tc Deum are repeated When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man thou didst not abhor the Virgins womb that then we bow down to the very ground And it is said d of St. Gerard Bishop of Canadium that is of Chonad in Hungary that by his zeal for the honour of the holy Virgin he brought it at length so to pass in that Country that when they heard the Name of our Lady pronounced they straightway fell on their knees and bowed their heads towards the earth And indeed nothing stoopeth lower than Superstition But in the Church of England the bowing is neither that of Superstition nor Idolatry but of Religious Reverence at the hint of a word which setteth forth to us all the dimensions or rather the infinity of the Divine Wisdom and Love Lee not then the ignorance or malice of men who make Court to nothing but their own Diana accuse that excellent Church of Idolatry which hath so carefully purged her self of Idols though not of all manner of Rites That had been to have swept away the convenient Ornaments of Gods house together with the durt of it the name which the Jews give to an Idol Of some in England who have rent themselves from the safe Communion of that Church there may be juster reason for such complaint What can judicious men think of the true