Martyrs with that Worship of love and society with which even in this life also holy men of God are worshipped whose heart we judge prepared to suffer the like Martyrdom for the truth of the Gospel But we worship them so much the more devoutly because more securely after they have overcome all the Incertainties of this world as also we praise them more confidently now reigning Conquerors in a more happy life than whilst they were sighting in this but with that Worship which in Greek is called Latria and cannot be expressed by one word in Latin for as much as it is a certain service properly due to the Divinity we neither worship them nor teach them to be worshipped but God alone Now whereas the offering of Sacrifice belongs to this Worship of Latria from whence they are called Idolaters who gave it also to Idols by no means do we suffer any such thing or command it to be offered to any Martyr or any holy soul or any Angel And whosoever declines into this Error we reprove him by sound Doctrine either that he may be corrected or avoided And a little after It is a much less sin for a man to be derided by the Martyrs for drunkenness then ever fasting to offer Sacrifice to them I say to sacrifice to Martyrs I say not to sacrifice to God in the memories or Churches of the Martyrs which we do most frequently by that rite alone by which in the manifestation of the New Testament he hath commanded Sacrifice to be offered to him which belongs to that Worship which is called Latria and is due only to God This was the Doctrine and practice of Christian people in St. Augustines time and that he himself held formal Invocations a part of the Worship due to Saints is evident from the prayer he made to St. Cyprian after his Martyrdom Adjuveritque nos Beatus Cyprianus orationibus suis c. Let Blessed Cyprian therefore help us who are still encompassed with this mortal flesh and labour as in a dark cloud with his prayer that by Gods grace we may as far as we are able imitate his good works Thus St. Austin where you see he directs his prayer to St. Cyprian which I take to be formal invocation and for a further confirmation of it we have the ingenuous Confession of Calvin himself Instit. li. 3. ch 20. n. 22. where speaking of the third Council of Carthage in which St. Austin was present he acknowledged it was the custom at that time to say Sancta Maria aut Sancte Petre Ora pro nobis Holy Mary or Holy Peter pray for us But now Madam what if after all this he himself shall deny that any of the opposite Tenets are Articles of his faith viz. That honour is not to be given to the Images of Christ and his Saints that what appears to be bread in the Eucharist is not the body of Christ That it is not lawful to invocate the Saints to pray for us Press him close and I believe you shall find him deny that he believes any one of these Negative points to be Divine truths and if so you will easily see his charge of Idolatry against us to be vain and groundless Having thus given a direct and punctual answer to his argument I must now expect as much charity from him as is consistent with Scripture and Reason How much that is you will see in his third Answer to the first Question But to proceed § 8. He brings a Miscellany of such opinions and practices as he calls them which are very apt to hinder a good life and therefore none who have a care of their salvation can venture their souls in the communion of such a Church which either enjoyns or publickly allows them He reckons up no less than ten 1. That we destroy the necessity of good life by makeing the Sacrament of Penance that is confession and absolution joyned with contrition sufficient for salvation And do not Protestants make contrition alone which is less sufficient for salvation But perhaps the joyning of confession and absolution with contrition makes it of a malignant nature If so certainly when the Book of Common Prayer in the visitation of the sick enjoyns the sick man if he find his conscience troubled with any weighty matter to make a special confession and receive absolution from the Priest in the same words the Catholick Church uses it prescribes him that as a means to prepare himself for a holy death which in the judgement of the Objector destroyes the necessity of good life 2. Catholicks he sayes take off the care of good life by supposing an expiation of sin by the prayer of the living after death But certainly the belief of temporal pains to be sustained after death if there be not a perfect expiation of sin in this life by works of penance is rather apt to make a man careful not to commit the least sin than to take off the care of a good life And though he be ascertained by faith that he may be holpen by the charitable suffrages of the faithful living yet this is no more encouragement to him to sin than it would be to a Spendthrift to run into debt and be cast into Prison because he knows he may be relieved by the charity of his Friends If he were sure there were no Prison for him that would be an encouragement indeed to play the Spend-thrift And this is the case of the Protestants in their denyal of Purgatory 3. The sincerity of Devotion he sayes is much obstructed by prayers in a language which many understand not If he speak of private prayers all Catholicks are taught to say them in their Mother Tongue If of the publick prayers of the Church I understand not why it may not be done with as much sincerity of devotion the people joyning their intention and particular prayers with the Priest as their Embassador to God as if they understood him I am sure the effects of a sincere devotion for nine hundred years together which this manner of Worship produced in this Nation were much different from those we have seen since the readucing of the publick Lyturgie into English as is manifest from those Monuments which yet remain of Churches Colledges Religious Houses c. with their endowments and in the conversion of many Nations from Heathenism to Christianity effected by the labours and zeal of English Missionaries in those times c. But this is a matter of Discipline and so not to be regulated by the fancies of private men but the judgement of the Church and so universal hath this practice been both in the Primitive Greek and Latine Churches and is still by the confession of the Protestant Authors themselves of the Bible of many Languages Printed at London Anno 1655. in most of the Sects of Christians to have not only the Scriptures but also the Liturgies and Rituals in a Tongue unknown but to
and him only shalt thou serve and that we are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are Gods on which account saith he we worship God alone and give cheerful service in all other things to you Theophilus Bishop of Antioch who lived in the second Century after Christ as well as Iustin giving an account why the Christians refused giving adoration to the Emperours which was then used not that adoration which was proper to the Supream God for none can be so senseless to imagine they required that but such kind of religious worship as they gave to the Images of their Gods saith That as the King or Emperour suffers none under him to be called by his name and that it is not lawful to give it to any but himself so neither is it to worship any but God alone and elsewhere saith that the Divine Law doth not only forbid the worship of Idols but of the Elements the Sun and Moon and Stars or any thing else in Heaven in Earth in Sea or Fountains or Rivers but we ought only to worship the true God and Maker of all things in the holiness of our hearts and integrity of our minds To the same purpose speak Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian Cyprian Origen Athenagoras Lactantius Arnobius who all agree that religious worship is proper to the true God and that no created thing is capable of it on that very account because it is created it were easie to produce their testimonies if it were requisite in so evident a matter as this is If it be said That all these testimonies are only against that Idolatry which was then practised by the Heathens I answer 1. Their reasons equally extend to the giving divine worship to any created being whatsoever so that either they argued weakly and unskilfully or else it is as unlawful to give divine worship now to Saints as it was then to any creature 2. I would willingly understand why it should be more unlawful to worship God for his admirable Wisdom and Power and Goodness in the works of Creation than in supposed Saints i. e. why I may not as well honour God by giving worship to the Sun as to Ignatius Loyola or St. Francis or any other late Canonized Saint I am sure the Sun is a certain monument of Gods Goodness Wisdom and Power and I cannot be mistaken therein but I can never be certain of the Holiness of those persons I am to give divine worship to For all that I can know Ignatius Loyola was a great hypocrite but I am sure that the Sun is none but that he shines and communicates perpetual influences to the huge advantage of the world However I know the best of men have their corruptions and to what degree it is impossible for others to understand but I am certain the spots in the Sun are no Moral impurities nor displeasing to God And Philip Nerius could not be mistaken in the shining of the Sun although he might be in the shining of Ignatius his face which yet is thought so considerable a thing that it is read in the Lessons appointed for Ignatius in the Roman Breviary 3. On what account should the Christians refuse giving all external signs of Religious worship to the Heathen Emperours if they thought it lawful to be given to any sort of men Why might not they worship the Statues of Kings and Princes as well as others do those of Rebels and Traytors I mean why might not the Image of King Henry the second have the same reverence shewn to it that the Shrine of Thomas Becket had unless it be more meritorious to disobey a Prince than to give him reverence Might not the Primitive Christians have much easier defended themselves in giving those outward signs of worship to the Images of Emperours than others can do in the worship they give to Saints For they might have pleaded that external signs are to be interpreted by the intention of the person who uses them that they intended no more by it but the highest degree of Civil honour on the account of the authority they possessed or if this would not serve might not they have said that Kings and Princes were Gods Vicegerents and represented him to the world and that in giving divine worship to them they gave it to God and that their absolute ultimate and terminative worship was upon God and only a relative inferior and transient worship was given to them and all this might be better justified by St. Basils rule That the honour of the Image passes to the Prototype for he there pleads for the worship of Christ because he is one with the Father being his Image as the Image of a King is called the King and hath the same honour given to it for the honour of the Image passeth to the thing represented And as Christ hath the advantage above all by being Gods natural Image so Princes above Saints in that they represent God to the world which the other do not But notwithstanding all these Pleas the Primitive Christians were so punctual in observing that Command of worshipping God alone that they rather chose to lose their lives and suffer Martyrdom than be in the least guilty of giving any divine worship to a creature 4. They absolutely deny any religious worship to be given to the most excellent created Beings and therefore did not only condemn the Idolatry then in use but that which hath obtained in the Roman Church supposing all the persons worshipped therein to have been real Saints For that we are to consider that all the Heathens were not such great Fools as some men make them to excuse themselves if the wiser men were contented to let the people worship the Poetical Gods having their minds possessed with those Idea's of them which they had taken up by their education yet they understood them only as Allegories as some make the Image of St. Christopher and St. George in the Church of Rome to be no other and they had Temples erected to the greatest Vertues to Piety Faith Concord Iustice Chastity Clemency c. and others to the greatest Benefactors to mankind which was the only ground they pleaded for giving worship to them but still they acknowledged one Supream God not Iupiter of Creet but the Father of Gods and men only they said this Supream God being of so high a nature and there being other intermediate beings between him and men whose Office they conceived it was to carry the prayers of men to God and to bring down help from him to them they thought it very fitting to address their solemn supplications to them Here now was the very same case in debate altering only the names of things which is between us and the Church of Rome and if ever they speak home to our case they must do upon this point And so they do but very little to their comfort § 10.
Pope to express her love to him that neither tribulation nor distress nor persecution nor famine nor nakednesâ— nor sword nor death nor life nor principalities c. should be able to separate her from the love of St. Peter in Christ Iesus our Lord whom she meant by St. Peter is very easie to understand according to the constant dialect of this Pope whose Bulls and Anathema's against Princes ran in St. Peters name But we leave Baronius admiring the Providence of God that when Princes and Bishops forsook the Church of Rome he raised up Agnes the Emperours Mother against her own Son and Beatrix and Matilda of near kindred to the Emperour to support the Pope against him and not long after we find him acknowledging that Rodolphus was confirmed by the Pâ—pe and Henry again excommunicated by him in the form of which excommunication extant in Baronius he desires all the World to take notice that it is in the Popes power to take away Empires Kingdomes Principalities Dutchies Marquisates Earldomes and the possessions of all men from them and give them to whom he shall think fit But doth Baronius in the least go about to explain or mitigate this no but instead of it he complains of the prosperity of the wicked because Henry obtained after this a signal victory over Rodolphus in his fourth Battel wherein he was wounded in his right hand and say the German Historians acknowledged therein the just judgement of God being near his death that being the hand wherewith he had sworn fidelity to the Emperour and then told his friends whatever the Pope did swear by St. Peter and St. Paul that the Popes command made him break his Oath and take that honour upon him which did not belong to him and he wished they who had put him upon it would consider how they led men to their eternal damnation by such courses which having said with great grief of mind saith Helmoldus he dyed And the Pope himself did not escape much better for the Emperour marches into Italy with a great Army takes in all the Towns which opposed him deposes Hildebrand by the Bishops of his party as the cause of all the Warr and Bloodshed and sets up Gibert of Ravenna under the name of Clement 3. besieges Rome and the Pope not trusting the Citizens who soon left him secures himself in a Castle from whence escaping to Salerno he not long after there dyes The only good thing we read of him is that which Sigebert and Florentius Wigorniensis and Matthew Paris report of him from the testimony of the Bishop of Mentz that he called when he was dying one of his Friends to him and confessed that it was through the instigation of the Devil that he had made so great a disturbance in the Christian world Whether they who applaud and admire him in the Roman Church as particularly Baronius who recommended him as a pattern to Paul 5. and rejoyced to see a man of his spirit to succeed him will believe this or no we matter not since there is so apparent evidence for the truth of the thing But we not only see the whole Empire put into a flame under pretence of this authority of the Pope and Italy laid wast by it to so great a degree saith Sigonius that Mothers devoured their Children for meer hunger but we may find him as busie though not with equal success with other Princes of Christendome He threatens the King of France to deprive him if he did not submit to him and that his Subjects should certainly revolt from him unless they would renounce their Christianity which are the words of his Bull in Baronius but finding no amendment the next year he sends another wherein he tells him that if according to his hard and impenitent heart he did treasure up the wrath of God and St. Peter by the help of God he would excommunicate him and all that should obey him the same year he excommunicates in Italy Robert Duke of Apulia Prince of the Normans and Gilulphus Prince of Saierno and sends an army against them He threatens Alphmsus King of Spain with the Sword of St. Peter he excommunicates Nicephorus Emperour of Constantinople he not only deprived Boleslaus King of Poland of his Kingdom but puts the whole Kingdom under an interdict and forbids the Bishops anointing any for King but whom he should appoint Of all the Princes of Christendome I find none so much in his favour as our William the first of the Norman Race for he coming into a Kingdom where he found no interest but what his Sword made him keeps a fair correspondency with the Pope receives his Decrees refuses to enter into an alliance against him which so pleased him whom all other Princes hated that he sends to him in his distress to come to his assistance to divert the Emperour and calls him the Iewel of Princes and saith that he ought to be the rule of obedience to all other Princes but yet William himself could not escape his threatnings when he forbad the Bishops of his Kingdom to go to Rome and utterly denyed taking any oath of fidelity to the Pope which he pressed upon him by his Legat although Baronius make him to submit to the Pope upon the receipt of his letter whereas the letters of Lanfranc and the King produced by himself expresly contradict it This we are sure of that William all his time practised that right of investiture of Bishop by a staff and a ring which had been the first cause of the quarrel between the Emperour and the Pope and which he had 〈◊〉 severely forbidden in several Councils a Rome thereby to maintain his own authority by taking off the Bishops of several Kingdoms from any aknowledgement of dependence on their own Soveraign Princes which was the truest cause of all the quarrels of Christendome raised and somented by this Hell-brand as the Centuriatours according to their Dialect call him And although Onuphrius in his life confess that this Popes designs if they had taken effect would have quite overthrown the Majesty of the Empire and that he was the first Pope who ever attempted such things yet he having now started so fair a game though he dyed in the pursuit of it his successours retrieved it and followed it with all their might and skill thence we read that Vrban being made Pope by Hildebrands faction in opposition to the Emperour renews the sentence of excommunication against him and in the Council at Piacenza not content barely to excommunicate him in the presence of Agnes or Adelais the Emperours wife he uttered saith Vrspergensis very reproachful speeches against him but he had been no fit successour for Hildebrand who could content himself with bare words especially having declared his resolution to follow the steps of so worthy a predecessour and so he did to
only suppose him to be really present under the form of bread but because we know and believe this upon the same grounds and Motives upon which we believe and those Motives stronger than any Protestant hath if he have no other than the Catholick to believe that Christ is God and consequently to be adored And therefore that you may the better see the inefficaciousness of the Argument suppose it dropt from the Pen of an Arrian against the adoration of Christ as God and it will be of as much force to evince that to be Idolatry as it is from the Objection to prove the adoration of him in the Eucharist to be so see there how an Arrian might argue in the same form The same Argument which would make the grossest Heathen Idolatry lawful cannot excuse any act from Idolatry but the same Argument whereby the Protestants make the Worship of Christ a pure man sayes the Arrian not to be Idolatry would make the grossest Heathen Idolatry not to be so For if it be not therefore Idolatry because they suppose Christ to be God then the Worship of the Sun was not Idolatry by them who supposed the Sun to be God c. Now the same answer which solves the Arrians argument against the adoration of Christ as God serves no less to solve the Objectors Argument against the adoration of him in the Eucharist since we have a like Divine Revelation for his real presence under the Sacramental Signs as we have for his being true God and Man But what if Catholicks should be mistaken in their belief would it then follow that they were Idolaters Dr. Taylor an Eminent and leading man amongst the Protestants denyes the consequence His words are these in the Liberty of Prophecying Sect. 20. Numb 26. Idolatry sayes he is a forsaking the true God and giving Divine Worship to a creature or to an Idol that is to an Imaginary God who hath no foundation in Essence or Existence And this is that kind of superstition which by Divines is called the superstition of an undue object Now it is evident that the object of their that is the Catholicks adoration that which is represented to them in their minds their thoughts and purposes and by which God principally if not solely takes estimate of humane actions in the blessed Sacrament is the only true and eternal God hypostatically joyned with his holy humanity which humanity they believe actually present under the Veil of the Sacramental Signs and if they thought him not present they are so far from worshipping the bread in this case that themselves profess it Idolatry to do so which is a demonstration mark that that their soul hath nothing in it that is Idolatrical If their confidence and fanciful opinion so he terms the faith of Catholicks hath engaged them upon so great a mistake as without doubt he sayes it hath yet the will hath nothing in it but what is a great enemy to Idolatry Et nihil ardet in inferno nisi propria voluntas that is Nothing burns in Hell but proper Will Thus Dr. Taylor and I think it will be a task worthy the Objectors pains to solve his Argument if he will not absolve us from being Idolaters § 7. He proceeds to prove that Catholicks are guilty of Idolatry by their Invocation of Saints And his Argument is this If the supposition of a middle excellency between God and us be a sufficient ground for formal Invocation then the Heathens Worship of their inferiour Deities could be no Idolatry for the Heathens still pretended that they did not give to them the Worship proper to the Supream God which is as much as is pretended by the devoutest Papists in justification of the Invocation of Saints To answer this Argument I shall need little more than to explicate the hard words in it which thus I do By persons of a middle excellency we understand persons endowed with supernatural gifts of Grace in this life and Glory in Heaven whose prayers by consequence are acceptable and available with God what he means by formal Invocation I understand not well but what we understand by it is desiring or praying those just persons to pray for us The Supream Deity of the Heathens is known to be Jupiter and their inferiour Deities venus Mars Bacchus Vulcan and the like rabble of Devils as the Scripture calls them The gods of the Heathens are Devils The terms thus explicated 't is easie to see the inconsequence of the Argument that because the Heathens were Idolaters in worshipping Mars and Venus their inferiour Deities or rather Devils though they pretended not to give them the Worship proper to Jupiter their Supream God Therefore the Catholicks must be guilty of Idolatry in desiring the servants of the true God to pray for them to him upon this account we must not desire the prayer of a just man even in this life because this formal Invocation will be to make him an inferiour Deity But if some Sect of Heathens as the Platonists did attain to the knowledge of the true God yet St. Paul says they did not glorifie him as God but changed his glory into an Image made like to corruptible man adoring and offering Sacrifice due to God alone to the Statues themselves or the inferiour Deities they supposed to dwell or assist in them Which inferiour Deities St. Austin upon the ninety sixth Psalm proves to be Devils or evil Angels because they required Sacrifice to be offered to them and would be worshipped as Gods Now what comparison there is between this worship of the Heathens inferiour Deities and Christians worship of Saints and Angels let the same St. Austin declare in his twentieth Book against Faustus the Manichaean chap. 21. Faustus there calumniates the Catholicks the word is St. Austins because they honoured the Memories or Shrines of Martyrs charging them to have turned the Idols into Martyrs whom they worship said he with like Vows The Objection you see is not new that Catholicks make inferiour Deities of their Saints Faustus long ago made it and St. Austins answer will serve as well now as then Christian people sayes he do with religious solemnity celebrate the memory of Martyrs both to excite to the imitation of them and to become partakers of their Merits and be holpen by their prayers but to that we erect Altars not to any of the Martyrs but to the God of Martyrs although in memory of the said Martyrs For what Bishop officiating at the Altar in the places where their holy bodies are deposited does say at any time we offer to thee Peter or Paul or Cyprian but what is offered to God who crown'd the Martyrs at the memories or Shrines of those whom he crowned that being put in mind by the very places a greater affection may be raised in us to quicken our love both to those whom we may imitate and towards him by whose assistance we can do it We worship therefore the