Laws of God and of the Kingdom protect them Surely this is too light for the Pulpit and is just such another piece of Drollery as that which was dedicated to Oliver Cromwell in the Book called Killing no Murder Where the Ingenuous Author offers Oliver many convincing and satisfying Reasons why he should kill himself and very fairly gives him his choice of Hanging Drowning or Pistolling himself shews him the absolute Necessity of it the Honour he would gain by it and in a word uses such Arguments as might have prevailed upon any body but an hardened Rebel Bating that Dedication I never met with any thing like this Passive Doctrine for wheedling a man out of his life Gregory says That Julian stole a Persecution upon the Christians under a shew of gentleness for he always disclaimed his being a Persecutor And we for ought I know may be exposed to the bloodiest Persecution that ever was under the meek pretences of Passive Obedience For as a worthy person has lately observed One single Arm unresisted may go a great way in Massacring a Nation But how many irresistable Arms will there be lifted up against us under a Popish Successor when every petty Popish Officer according to this Doctrine shall be an Absolute Emperour and have the Power of Life and Death It is a Doctrine fit to turn a Nation into a Shambles and enough to tempt and invite Tyranny and Cruelty into the World For let a Prince be either a Papist or an Atheist and his Subjects well fetter'd and mannacled with this slavish Principle and then what hinders but the one of them may destroy Millions for their Estates and Heresie together and the other as many to see what ugly faces and grimaces they will make The lives of the best men in the World shall be exposed to the fiery and ambitious Zeal of a Papist or the extravagant and unaccountable humours of a Wretch and hang at their Girdle as Souls do at the Pope's If the Doctor looks upon these as excepted Cases why did he not except them why did he not particularly except the Case of a Popish Successor the mischi of which it has been the care of several Parliaments to prevent and of which we have such a dismal prospect that it makes every honest mans heart to ake But I am afraid this Doctrine is calculated and fitted on purpose for the use of a Popish Successor and to make us an easier prey to the Bloody Papists For why else is there all that Wrath against every little Pamphlet which opposes that Interest How comes the History of the Succession to be an Impious and Treasonable Book and the Dialogue between Tutor and Pupil another Why the first is an Impious and Treasonable Book because it shews how the Succession has been alterable in all ages And this is so far from being an Impious or Treasonable Assertion that it was impious High Treason in Queen Elizabeth's Time to say the contrary and is still Impiety and forfeiture of Goods and Chattels at this day Which is so far from making the Monarchy Elective as the Doctor might easily have understood if he had read the Ancient Historians of England instead of Dissenters Sayings He would likewise have found it possible to write an History of the Succession without borrowing from Doleman and impossible to write it without having a great many passages which Doleman has got into his Book And the other is an Impious and Treasonable Book for saying That Parliaments should sit till they have done that for which they are called and sit and were originally intended But these men are not for a Popish Successor and so they and their Books and whatever they have said is to be blasted with the names of Impious and Treasonable He talks as if he were already arrived at that Age in which these Books will be sure to be called Treason and the Authors used accordingly unless they make haste and die out of the way as my Lord Hollis has done who is another of his Impious and Treasonable Authors However let the Design of preaching up Passive Obedience and the Example of the Thebaean Legion at this time especially be what it will if the Papists taking us to be all Passive and a fine glib and easie morsel shall try to swallow up innocent men quick it is my hearty desire that they may find themselves choak'd For where is it said in the Word of the Lord which these men cannot go beyond that the World was made only for Banditi or that we are to yield up our selves to Cut-throats and Assassinates which the Papists have ever been to poor Protestants and how many hundred thousands they have massacred I know not but this I know that they never did nor ever will massacre more or less than just as many as they can To leave a matter of this importance as clear as may be in such an occasional and accidental Discourse I shall reduce the strength and force of what has been said into these following Propositions 1. Christianity destroys no mans Natural or Civil Rights but confirms them 2. All men have both a Natural and Civil Right and Property in their Lives till they have forfeited them by the Laws of their Country 3. When the Laws of God and of our Country interfere and it is made Death by the Law of the Land to be a good Christian then we are to lay down our Lives for Christ's sake This is the only Case wherein the Gospel requires Passive Obedience namely when the Laws are against a man And this was the Case of the first Christians 4. That the killing of a man contrary to Law is Murder 5. That every man is bound to prevent Murder as far as the Law allows and ought not to submit to be murdered if he can help it And now I shall desire those men who of late have thundered in all publick places with the Thebaean Legion to keep that compleat and admirable Example for which thanks be to God we have no occasion till they have gotten another Maximian and till that Maximian has gotten authority to cut such an unconscionable number of Throats as 6666 at one time I have many more Exceptions against their Artillery of Prayers and Tears than I can now stay to insist upon First There are only Tears mentioned where they quote Prayers too 2dly The passage has nothing at all of that sense which they put upon it speaking of the grievous things Julian designed against the Christians but says Gregory he was hindred by the Goodness of God and the Tears of Christians which were shed in great plenty by many who had this only Remedy against the Persecutor They had no other way to help themselves What then Does not Gregory complain in another place that they were stripp'd of all humane aid they had no other Wall nor Weapon nor Defence left them but their hope in God For besides
too late for them to help themselves this was enough to raise not only all their Zeal but all their Indignation too Whereas the poor Primitive Christians of all were born to Persecution they neither knew better nor expected it They professed their new Religion as in some places the propounded new Laws with an Haltar about their Necks The Laws of the Empire were always in force against them though not always put in execution and the edge of the Ax stood always towards them though it were not at all times stained with their Blood In a word they perpetually lay at the Mercy of their Enemies their Religion at the best was in the VVorld but upon sufferance as Abraham was in the Land of Canaan where he had none Inheritance no not so much as to set his foot on But as his afflicted Posterity were afterwards Lords of that Country so after another Egyptian Bondage Christianity was advanced to be the established Religion of the Empire It is worth the while to read Eusebius only to see in what a transport of joy the Christians were upon that happy Revolution The Christian World at that time was the very Picture of Heaven Such joy there will be again amongst good Men when they have cross'd the tempestuous Sea of this VVorld and are safely landed in the Regions of Light and Immortality For what Gregory says of Constantius was true of many others Never any Man in this VVorld set his Heart so much upon any other thing as he did to see the Christians flourish and to have all the advantages of Glory and Power And neither conquered Nations nor a well-govern'd Empire nor great Treasures nor excess of Glory nor being King of Kings nor being stiled so nor all other things which make up other Men's Notion of happiness did delight him so much as to have the honour of bringing Honour to the Christians and of leaving them establish'd for ever in the possession of Power and Authority And Men that valued the establishment of their Religion at this Rate would not easily part with it Now for Julian who by his Baptism first and by 〈◊〉 into Orders after and by his going to Church after that sufficiently engaged himself to maintain Christianity to endeavour on the other hand to dispossess them of their Free-hold was an insupportable injury Is there no difference I appeal to all the VVorld between being turn'd out as Sheep among VVolves which was the deplorable but unavoidable case of the first Christians and being worried by one of their own Flock Has a Man no more Right nor Priviledg after he is naturalized than when he was a Stranger or Alien or accounted an Enemy Do not the same Laws which forbid Men to invade other Men's Rights enable them notwithstanding to maintain and defend their own These are the plain and palpable differences between the State of the first Christians and of those under Julian To sum up all in one word The first Christians suffered according to the Laws of their Country whereas these under Julian were persecuted contrary to Law For it is manifest that Julian oppressed them in a very illegal way He did not fairly enact Sanguinary Laws against them for their Religion but he put them to Death upon Shams and pretended Crimes of Treason and Sacriledg He dressed up an Accusation of Treason against Juventinus and Maximus and though they died for their generous Zeal and hearty Concernment for Christianity he gave out and commanded it to be noised abroad That they were punish'd for Treasonable words The other sham of Sacriledg St. Chrysostom acquaints us with in these words If any one in former Times when Godly Kings had the Government had either broken their Altars thrown down their Temples taken away their Oblations or done any such thing he was presently hurried away to the Tribunal and sometimes the Innocent were executed when they were only accused The truth of which Julian himself confirms in his own Writings where he says Let no Man distrust the Gods when he hears how some have done despite to Images and Temples For have not many slain good Men such as Socrates and Dion and the great Empedotimus which I am well assured were much more the Care of the Gods than their Images are But they have afterward punish'd their Murderers and this likewise has manifestly happened in our Time to those that were Robbers of Temples And besides all this by his connivance and encouragement he let loose the rage and fury of the Heathens upon them as I shewed before And therefore Gregory all over his Invectives charges him with Tyranny and often calls him Tyrant So that the same Men who would quietly have submitted to the Laws under a Nero or a Dioclesian do nevertheless pursue Julian as if he were a Mid-night Thief or a High-way Robber As for us who blessed be God have our Religion settled by such Laws as cannot be altered without our own consent we cannot better express our thankfulness for so great a Blessing than by living up to this Holy Religion and resolving to keep it For surely it is not of the Essence of the Gospel to be a Suffering Religion that is an evil Circumstance which attends it only in bad Times it is a Reigning Religion amongst us and I hope will never be otherwise while the World stands And therefore I much wonder at those Men who trouble the Nation at this time of the day with the unseasonable prescriptions of Prayers and Tears and the Passive Obedience of the Thobaean Legion and such-like last Remedies which are proper only at such a Time as the Laws of our Country are armed against our Religion What have we to do with the Thebaean Legion Blessed be God who has made the difference but I ask again VVhat have we to do with their Example Are we to Sacrifice or go to Mass to Morrow or else to have our Throats cut Are we under the Sentence of Death according to the Laws of our Country if we do not presently renounce our Religion Poor Men they were and though they died as glorious Martyrs in respect of their Religion yet they died as Criminals and Malefactors in the Eye of the Law I hope many good Protestants would make a shift to die for their Religion though it may be not with the gallantry that these Souldiers did if they were in the like sad Circumstances and had the Laws against them but till then they throw away their Lives and are certainly weary of them if they practise any such Passive Obedience And the truth is we justly deserve to be so used as the Thebaean Legion was and moreover to be loaded with the Curses of all Posterity if we suffer our selves to be brought into that condition For that can never happen but by our own Treachery to our Religion in parting with those good Laws which protect it and in agreeing to such as
Magistrate not to spare either Brother or Sister Son or Daughter Wife or Friend be he never so nigh if he seek to seduce the People of God from his true Worship c. But the late Queen of Scots hath not only sought and wrought by all means she can to seduce the people of God in this Realm from true Religion but is the only hope of all the Adversaries of God throughout all Europe and the instrument whereby they trust to overthrow the Gospel of Christ in all Countries And therefore if she have not that punishment which God in this place aforementioned appointeth it is of all Christian Hearts to be fear'd that God's just Plague will light both upon the Magistrates and Subjects but that by our slackness and remiss Justice we give occasion of the overthrow of God's Glory and Truth in his Church mercifully restored unto us in these latter days Constantinus Magnus caused Licinius to be put to Death being not his Subject but his Fellow-Emperor for that the said Licinius laboured to subvert Christian Religion And the same Constantinus is for the same in all Histories highly commended Much more shall it be lawful for the Queen's Majesty to execute this Woman who besides the subversion of Religion c. A Prince ought in Conscience before God by all the means he can to see to the Quietness Safety and good Estate of that people over which God hath appointed him Governour Therefore as the Queen's Majesty indeed is mereiful so we most humbly desire her that she will open her Mercy towards God's people and her good Subjects in dispatching those Enemies that seek the Confusion of God's Cause amongst us and of this noble Realm Object But haply it may be that some do discredit these Reasons by the Persons when they cannot by the Matter and will put in her Majesty's mind that we in persuading her respect our own danger fear of Peril coming to us and not right and true Judgment Yea and that it may appear very unseemly and worthy sharp reproof in a Bishop to excite a Prince to Cruelty and Blood contrary to her merciful Inclination Resp. As touching the first Branch surely we see not any great continuance of danger likely to come unto us more than to all good Subjects while this State standeth and the State cannot lightly alter without the certain Peril both of our Prince and Country Now if our Danger be joyned with the Danger of our Gracious Sovereign and Natural Country we see not how we can be accounted Godly Bishops or Faithful Subjects if in common Peril we should not cry and give warning Or on the other side how they can be thought to have true Hearts towards God and towards their Prince and Country that will mislike us for so doing and seek thereby to discredit us As touching the second Branch God forbid that we should be Instruments to incense a merciful Prince to Cruelty and Bloodiness neither can we think well of them or judge that they have true meaning Hearts that in the Minister of God and Officer do term Justice and right Punishment by the name of Bloodiness and Cruelty God I trust in time shall open her Majesty's Eyes to see and espy their cruel Puposes under the Cloak of extolling Mercy c. Here you see how urgent they are with the Queen contrary to her inclination to put Queen Mary to death who did not suffer till thirteen years after and how they mak thedangerousness of her Religion and the hopes which the Papists had conceived of ruining the Protestant Religion by her means not only sufficient but necessary Reasons for so doing A Bill of Exclusion is perfect Courtship to these Reasons Let those therefore that run down three successive Houses of Commons for that Bill turn their Fury and Reproaches with more justice upon these old 〈◊〉 and we have done And let them likewise give us but one Reason to provs a Bill of Exclusion to be unlawful which they will own to be a Reason a week after and not be ashamed of it and I do solemnly promise to joyn with them in renouncing these Old Reformers and will hereafter readily follow their new Guides and new Light In the mean time because I see hearty Protestants abused to their Ruin with shameful Sophistry I think it the part of every honest man to detect it And the most popular Argument is this You are preingaged and cannot consent to a Bill of Exclusion for if you do you are forsworn because you have long since sworn Allegiance to the King and to his lawful Heirs and Successors Now though the Lawyers tell them an hundred times over No man can have an Heir while he is alive yet this will not overcome that deceitful Prejudice which is occasioned by our common Speech where a man and his Heirs are contempory and familiarly live at once in the same House and eat and drink together every day Where likewise Heir Apparent sounds as a greater addition to Heir and Heir Presumptive sounds as somewhat a less addition and few are capable of considering them as terms of Diminution No more than on the other hand a Papist can be persuaded that Images are Idols because there common speech has made a distinction where really there is none as the Homily well observes Whereas here it has confounded an actual Heir with one that is only in possibility What is to be done then Shall we shew them that the Duty of Excise for instance is granted to the King his Heirs and Successors in which it is plain that Heirsand Successors have not any title to a Penny while his Majesty lives which God grant may be long to keep them a great while from it Why still it may be replied that Heirs and Successors may have this Law sense in an Act of Parliament but an Oath of Allegiance ought to be conceived in plain words and to be taken in the common sense of those words without any Jesuitical Equivocation Well if it be so then let them be sure to keep it in that sense in which they have taken it or should have taken it by sixteen Years of Age in the Court-Leet in these words This hear you the Steward and the Court that I shall swear That I will be true Liege-man and true Faith and Troth bear to our Soveraign Lord the King that now is and to his Highness Heirs and lawful Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm of England and other his Dominions depending on the same c. Whereby it is plain to every body that no one certain or known Person in the World has any interest at present in the Oath of Allegiance besides his Majesty that now is for who shall be King or Queen of this Realm of England hereafter none but God himself knows Another Argument I have heard which is fetch'd from the Common-Prayer That no Church of England-man can with a good Conscience be for
his Memory Their Behaviour in his Life-time will fall under these three Heads of their Words and Actions and Devotions I shall begin with the first of these where Julian began with them And they sufficiently requited him for calling them Galileans for they named him Idolianus instead of Julianus and Pisaeus and Adonaeus from his worshipping of Jupiter and Adonis and Bull-burner from the great number of them which he sacrificed The Antiochians exceeded in this kind of despiteful usage and chafed him into the revengeful humour of writing a Book against them which has preserved the memory of those Indignities which they put upon him They derided the shape of his Body his Gate his Goat's Beard every thing that belonged to him as you may see in the very beginning of that Book And afterwards he tells them they were very happy Men who had renounced all service either of the Gods or Laws or him who was keeper of the Laws and that the Gods as well as he had suffered dishonour from that City It was a saying among them that Chi and Cappa had never done any injury to their City by which Letters they meant Christ and Constantius Yes says he let me tell you freely Constantius did you one single Injury that when he had made me Caesar he did not kill me Two or three times in that little Book he mentions their Anapests and Lampooning his poor sorry Beard He complains that whereas the French loved him for the likeness of his Humour and took up Arms for him and gave him Mony and applauded him the Antiochians did the quite contrary they said That he turned the World up-side down and that his Beard was fit to make Ropes of and that he made War against Chi and they wish'd for Cappa again And after Julian had written this Book they were smart upon him again and tho he was inwardly enrag'd he was forc'd to dissemble it at the present These things indeed were not said to his Face but they were the common talk of the Christians just under his Nose while he lay with his Army about seven Months in that City to be in a readiness for the following Campaign And he was so enraged at them that at his departure when some wish'd him a happy Expedition and a glorious Return he very roughly said That he would never see them more their Nick-names and 〈◊〉 stuck so in his Stomach But who commends them for this Even that does no less a Man than Theodoret who lived under two of the four first General Councils and was himself present and a great part of the last of them He puts it all upon the score of their Zeal and Love for their Religion His words are these That the Antiochians who had received their Christianity from the greatest pair of Apostles Peter and Paul and had a warm Affection for the Lord and Saviour of all did always abominate Julian who ought never to be remembred you have his own word for it For for this Reason he writ a Book against them and called them the Beard-haters 2. They did not only thus scoff at him and derided him behind his back but they took the freedom to reproach him and his Religion to his Face of which I shall give these two Instances The first of a Noble Man of Beraea the story is very remarkable upon several accounts which Theodoret gives us in this manner Julian before his Expedition against the Persians sent to consult the Oracles who promised him certain Victory And after his Victory he designed the ruin of the Christians and threatned to set up the Idol of Venus in the Christian Churches Marching on with these Threatnings he was overcome by one single Man in Beraea This Man was indeed in other respects an eminent Person for he was Governour there but his Zeal made him more eminent For seeing his Son warping towards the false Religion which then prevailed he turned him out of Doors and publickly disinherited him But he coming to the Emperor who was but one Stage from the City declared to him both his own Perswasion and how his Father had disinherited him Julian bid the young Man set his Heart at rest promising that he would reconcile his Father to him So when he came to Beraea he invited the Magistrates and chief Men to a feast and amongst these was this young Man's Father and him with his Son he ordered to sit next himself And about the middle of Dinner Julian says to the Father In my mind it is not just to force a Man's Judgment which is otherwise inclined and to reduce it against his Will to the other side Therefore do not you force your Son against his mind to follow your Opinion For neither do I force you to follow mine although I can very easily compel you But the Father sharpnening his Discourse with a Divine Faith answered O King do you speak of this Villain who is hated by God and has preferr'd a Lie before the true Religion But says Julian putting on again a Vizard of Meekness Friend leave Railing and turning his Face to the young Man he said I will take care of you my self since I have not prevailed with your Father to do it I have not told this Story in vain says Theodoret but was willing to shew not only the admirable freedom of this Divine Person but also that there were very many who despised Julian's Power and Authority And that did Maris Bishop of Chalcedon with a witness long before Being led by the hand for he was blind and in Years he came to Court to the Emperor when he was publickly sacrificing to Fortune and reproached him much calling him Impious Apostate and Atheist And he reproached him again with his Blindness and saying Your Galilaean God will not cure you But Maris replied to the Emperor with more Boldness than before says he I thank God for striking me with Blindness that I may not see thy Face who art thus fallen into Impiety The Emperor said nothing to this but he persecuted him grievously afterwards And the aged Bishop I suppose had more wit than to expect any other It would be endless to reckon up the Sayings of Juventinus and Maximus whose Anniversary Sermon St. Chrysostom in his Time preach'd at Antioch of those Souldiers that were trapan'd into Sacrificing by one of Julian's Stratagems and of many others who did not spare him in the least And therefore in these Matters the Reader must be satisfied with a tast only CHAP. IV. Their Actions HAving shewed you the manner at least how they treated him in Words I proceed now to some of their Actions which make manifest their hatred to him and how they held him in the very lowest degree of Contempt I shall give but two Instances and the first is the Story of Valentinian which Theodoret ushers in with this Preface And others that were
that Julian had gotten all the strength of the Empire into his Hands there seems to have been a general Revolt from Christianity almost like that in Queen Mary's time which makes St. Asterius say Quantus ab Ecclesiâ ad altaria factus est concursus Quam multi per honorum escam illecebras und cum ipso transgressionis hamum devorarunt What then would they have a few defenceless Christians do when they had lost all their Strength and so many of their Numbers Have they never heard a West-Countreyman say Chud eat Cheese an chad it 3dly It is very odd they should quote this scrap out of Gregory's Invectives Believe me they must look out very sharp who could find out such a Daisy as this in a whole Field of Nettles For never were two such Thunderbolts in this World sent after a Persecutor as those two Speeches are 4. Whether they did not make use of some few other ingredients besides Tears and Prayers too in their Composition against a Persecutor I refer my self to the matter of Fact related in the former part of this Book And Lastly I do earnestly desire them to take heed how they recommend Gregory's Prayers and Tears to the World for I declare they are no better than Treason by our Law They were such as did imagine and compass Julian's Death If they would have these prayers and Tears believed to be in favour of Julian they deceive the World and if they recommend them such as they are to people's use I do again as a Friend give them fair warning The Protestants in Queen Mary's Days found their short disjunctive prayer made High Treason ex post Facto though they prayed in the first place That God would turn her Heart from Idolatry and in case that were not done then to take her out of the way Whereas I do notfind that there is one single wish among the Ancients for Julian's Conversion but all for his down right destruction The preamble of that Act in Queen Mary's Time has some remarkable passages in it which for the Reader 's ease I shall here set down and so conclude this whole matter Philip and Mary FDrasmuch as now of late divers naughty seditious malicious and heretical persons not having the fear of God before their eyes but in a devilish sort contrary to the duty of their Allegiance have congregated themselves together in Conbenticles in divers and sundry profane places within this City of London esteeming themselves to be in the true Faith where indeed they are in Errors and Herelies and out of the true Trade of Christ's Catholick Religion and in the same places at several times using their phantastical and Schismatical Services lately taken away and abolished by Authority of Parliament have of their most malicious and cantered Stomacks prayed against the Dueen's Majesty That God would turn her Heart from Idolatry to the true Faith or else to shorten her days or take her quickly out of the way Which Prayer was never heard or read to have been used by any good Christian man against any Prince though he were a Pagan and an Infidel and much less against any Christian Prince and especially so vertuous a Princess as our Soveraign Lady that now is is known to be whose Faith is and always hath been most true and Catholick and Consonant and agreeing with Christ's Catholick Church throughout the World dispersed Be it enacted That every such Person and Persons which since the beginning of this Parliament have prayed required or desired as aforesaid shall be adjudged high Traytors c. as also their Procurers and Abbetors therein I shall only observe from hence that these blind Papists were as much out in thinking these prayers unprecedented and of the first Impression as they afterwards found they were in Queen Mary's Reckoning And from the rest the Reader may please to make his own Observations A COMPARISON OF Popery and Paganism The Introduction WEll what is all this to us may some men say Here is a great deal of adoe about a Pagan Successor but Papists are Christians and a true Church of Christ only corrupt O that Bishop Ridly were alive to hear them if it be lawful to wish a good man out of Heaven to come and do good upon a degenerate age He would tell them what Christians the Papists are Wolves Thieves Church-robbers Enemies of Christ the brood of Antichrist such Christians with him they are And it is a Church The Babylonical Beast and Whore a devlish Drab a stinking Strumpet spiritually Egypt and Sodom the Seat of Satan such a Church it is And these he tells the Lords of Parliament are not angry and railing Expressions of a man desperate and in anguish but the words of a dying man and the very truth of the matter And therefore who can doubt but revolting from the Protestant which as Dr. Hicks tells us is but another Name for the Primitive Christian Religion and herding with these enemies of Christianity does entitle a man to the name of an Apostate as well as it did Julian That brave Bishop and Martyr we spoke of was clearly of that mind as you may see by this passage in his Letter to Mr. West sometimes his Chaplain which I wish every body would lay to heart I like very well your plain speaking wherein you say that I must agree or die I say unto you in the Word of the Lord That if you do not confess and maintain to your power and knowledge that which is grounded upon God's Word but will either for fear or gain of the World shrink and play the Apostata indeed you shall die the Death you know what I mean And his Apostasy agreed so ill with him that this Martyr who lay under the Sentence of Death out lived him But we may very well let him and all the other Glorious Martyrs rest in peace for we have store of living authorities The whole Clergy of England who have subscribed with Hand and Heart to the Homilies as containing a godly wholesome and necessary Doctrine for these times and by name to those against the peril of Idolatry have consequently declared it as their Judgment which I hope they are still ready to maintain That the Church of Rome as it is presently and hath bin for the space of nine hundred Dears and odd is so far wide from the nature of the true Church that nothing can be more That it is an Idolatrous Church not only an Darlot as the Scripture calls her but also a foul Filthy old withered Darlot and the 〈◊〉 her of 〈◊〉 guilty of the same 〈◊〉 and wozle then was among Ethnicks and Gentiles abundantly more to the same purpose which I shall hereafter have occasion to quote And to name no more we have the honourable Testimony of my Lord Chief Justice Pemberton that Popery is a Religion ten times worse than all the Heathenish
Years And in the same Paragraph we have a fuller description of the State of all Christendom before the Reformation So that Laity and Cleray Learned and Unlearned all Ages Seas and degrees of Men Women and Children of whole Christendom an 〈◊〉 and most 〈◊〉 thing to think have been at once 〈◊〉 in abominable Idolatry of all other 〈◊〉 most detested of God and most damnable to 〈◊〉 and that by the space of eight hundred Years and more And in another place after a description of their Men Saints which look'd like Princes of Persia Land and the Idols of their Women Saints which might have been taken for nice and well-trimmed 〈◊〉 you have these words And because the whole Pageant must be throughly plaid it is not enough thus to deck Idols but at the last come in the Priests themselves likewise decked with Gold and Pearl that they may be meet Servants for such Lords and Ladies and fit worshippers of such Gods and Goddesses And with a solemn pace they pass forth before these Golden Puppets and fall down to the Ground on their Marrow Bones before these honourable Idols c. And elsewhere you have a large Discourse shewing That their 〈◊〉 and Ceremonies in honouring and worshipping of the Images or Saints be all one with the 〈◊〉 which the 〈◊〉 Idolaters used in honouring their Idols In Pilgrimages to 〈◊〉 Images which had more Holiness and Vertue in them than others In their Candle-Religion turning Incense offering up Gold to Images hanging up Crouches Chains and Ships Legs Arms and whole Men and Women of War before Images as though by them or Saints as they say they were delivered from Lameness Sickenss Captvity or Shipwrack In spreading abroad after the Example of the Gentiles Idolaters lying and feigned Miracles of Images Such an Image was sent from Heaven like the Palladium or Diana of the Ephesians Such an Image was brought by Angels Such an one came it self far from the East to the West as Dame Fortune fled to Rome Some Images though they were hard and stony yet for tender-heart and pity 〈◊〉 Some spake more 〈◊〉 than ever did Balaam's Al 's who had Life and Breath in him Such a Criple came and saluted this Saint of Dke and by and by he was made whole and lie here hangeth his Crouch Such an one in a Tempest vowed to Saint Christopher and scaped and behold 〈◊〉 is his Ship of War Such an one by Saint Leonard's help brake out of Prison and see where his 〈◊〉 hang. And 〈◊〉 thousands more Miracles by like or more shameless Lies were reported And to conclude The Papists serve themselves of those very ercuses which the Devil heretofore put into the Mouths of the Gentiles to palsiate their Idolatry So that by making use of the same Pretences and Answers it is plain that they be all one with the Gentiles Idolaters These things hitherto are spoken in reference to the worshipping of Images and then as to their worshipping the Host the Rubrick after the Communion declares that it is Idolatry to be 〈◊〉 of all faithful Christians Which has been always the Doctrine of our Church notwithstanding the ignorant Cavils of some men as appears by the Homilies where this Doctrine was never discontinued The Papists ignorance of the Sacrament is affirmed to have been the cause of the ruine of God's Religion the cause of gross Idolatry and of mummish 〈◊〉 Their worshipping and falling down before every cross piece of Timber which is but an Image of our Saviour's Cross must needs be rank Idolatry when in St. Ambrose judgement to have worshipped the Cross to self which was 〈◊〉 with our Saviour Christ s own precious Blood had been an hearthentsh Error and 〈◊〉 of the Worked In a word 〈◊〉 is so interwoven with their Religion that the Homily very justly brands them with the Name of the Idolatrous Church So much for the Doct of the Church of England which I hope will not seem strange or new to the meanest Reader for I am sure all the people of England ought to have been instructed and perfect in it any time this hundred Years and better 2. And now I shall undertake to prove the Papists to be as blockish Idolaters as ever were in the World by irrefragable and uncontroulable authorities such as they must either own or renounce their Popery and they are their own Mass-book the Roman Catechism set out by the Decree of the Council of Trent and the Roman Pontifical And 1. I shall set down all the sorts of Idolatry which are enumerated by the Roman Catechism And then 2. prove them to be guilty of 〈◊〉 very things which they themselves acknowledge to be both Idolatry and old Heathen Idolatry In their Explication of the Second Commandment they have these words It is manifest that two ways especially as to this Precept the Majesty of God is very much injured The first is If Idols and Images are worshipped as God or if any Divinity or Vertue be believed to be in them for the sake of which they are to be worshipped or that any thing is to be desired of them or that any trust is to be put in them as was done heretofore by the Gentiles who placed their hope in Idols which the Scripture every where reproves The other is If any one endeavour to represent the form of the Divinity in any kind of Work as if it could be seen with bodily Eyes or expressed by Colours or Figures To begin with the first instance of Idolatry to worship Idols or Images as God by which if they mean worshipping an Image with a persuasion that it is God truly that is a very low dispensation which very few if any of the Heathens were under And such an imputation as this they always look'd upon as an horrid slander upon their Religion If any Papist had charged the Heathens with it in Julian's time he would have returned him this answer O thou Block-head How can we chuse but account them Stocks and Stones which the hands of men have fashioned Dost thou think that the accursed Devils lead all other men by the Nose as they do thee so as to esteem them to be Gods which are their own Workmanship Or if they mean by those words the worshipping of Images with the same honour and devotion as God himself even this the Heathens renounced Julian gives this account of the respect which they paid to Images whereby you may perceive a wide difference betwixt that and the honour which they gave to their Gods Says he Whosoever is a lover of his King or Child or Father is delighted with their several Pictures and pleased in looking upon them by the same reason he that is a lover of God is pleased and delighted in looking upon the Images of the Gods at the same time worshipping and dreading the Gods who see him but are not