reason is given by Aquinas 2. part q. 97. Art 3. Because the Law of God proceedeth from the will of God and therefore may not be altered by Custome proceeding from the will of Man 7. In that regard very well doth S. Cyprian write lib. 2. Epist 3. ad Caecilium If only Christ is to be heard we ought not to regard what any before us hath thought fit to be done but what Christ who is before all hath first done For we must not follow the Custome of Man but the truth of God And in another place Custome without truth is nothing but Antiquity of Error Idem ad Pomp. cont Epist. Steph. Papae God alone is the Law-giver of his Church Nothing must be ordained concerning the Things which belong to Religion without the Word of God 1. THe Reason of that is because God alone is the Law-giver of his Church And the onely Author of the Doctrine Concerning Faith or Belief And Religious Worship That God is the onely Authour of the Doctrine concerning Faith or Belief we prove it by the following Arguments 1. THe 1. is taken from the Nature of Faith For all the Doctrines of Faith in regard of the matter which is to be believed must have a certain infallible and undoubted Truth Now it is the property of God alone to be infallibly true of his own nature Let God be true but every man a lyar saith S. Paul Rom. 3.4 And therefore God alone is the Author of the Doctrine of Faith 2. The 2. Argument is taken from the Quality of the Articles of Faith For the proper documents and Doctrines of Faith do exceed the capacity and apprehension of the Creature And therefore they could not be revealed but onely by the Creator Such is the Doctrine of the Trinity of the Persons in the unity of an Essence Such is the Doctrine of the Eternal Birth of the Son of God Such that of the Procession of the Holy Ghost And such that of the hypostaticall union of the two Natures of Christ Divine and Humane And such are all other Articles concerning Faith properly and strictly taken which in that they are above the naturall knowledge of the Creature cannot be known by us but by the supernaturall Revelation of the Creator Of all them this of Christ may be said Flesh and Bloud hath not revealed these things unto mankind but God the Father which is in Heaven Matth. 16.17 3. The 3. Argument is taken from the reward of Faith and the punishment propounded to unbelief and infidelity Which doe manifestly argue that it belongeth to God alone to frame and prescribe to Men Articles and dogmes concerning beliefe and Faith For the reward propounded to Faith is Eternall Life Iohn 3.36 And that is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. 6.23 And the punishment denounced against infidelity is Eternall Death Which punishment God alone is able to inflict Christ teacheth it Matt. 10.28 in these words Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul But rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell He teacheth it also John 3.36 when he sayes that he that believeth not the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him 2. That God is the onely Author of the Doctrine concerning Religious Worship We prove it by the following Arguments 1. THe 1. Argument is taken from the Relation which is between God And the Church God alone in the Spiritual Government of the Soul is Soveraign Monarch Is the Housholder Is the Husband In regard of his Church This Church in regard of her Relation to God Is Called The City of God The House of Cod The Spouse of God Now who should be so Impudent As to prescribe Laws to a Foreign City Concerning her Duties to her King Or to Another Mans Family Or to Another Mans Wife Concerning the Manner Of Obeying And Rendring Service To her Master Or to her Husband 2. The 2. Argument is taken From the Reward And Punishment Annexed to the Works of Divine Worship For the Works of Divine Worship Piously observed have from the Munificence of God a Promise of Eternal Reward But being Neglected or Contemned a Commination of Eternal Death From whence it may be Gathered That God Alone who is the Lord of Life and Death Hath the Power To Ordain such Works And to Injoin Them By the Empire of a Law-giver 3. The 3. Argument is drawn from the Prohibition of God For God himself by an Expresse Law hath attributed to Himself Alone The Authority to Ordain his Service Deut. 12.32 What thing soever I command you observe to do it Thou shalt not adde thereto nor diminish from it From whence also is that of our Saviour Matth. 15.9 But in vain they do worship me Teaching for Doctrines the Commandements of men 4. The 4. Argument is Because the Works of Worship depend from the Will of God who is to be Worshipped Therefore God is not Worshipped at all by those Works By which he did not declare whether he would be Worshipped or Not. But in This None can know the Will of God unlesse he doth reveal it and Injoines it For who hath known the Mind of the Lord Or who hath been his Counsellour That is Confirmed by This That all whosoever did think to Worship God with their own Invented Works Did provoke him to Anger rather than honour him Nay they are found To have worshipped the Devil Or the Idols of their own heart rather than God They went a whoring with their own Inventions Therefore was the wrath of God kindled against his People Psal 106.39 40. §. The onely Ground and Rule of Faith And Divine Worship Is the Holy Scripture 1. NO Mortal Creature can Teach Religion 2. Nor Carnal Man can attain true knowledge unlesse God Instructs Him And his Spirit lead Him to the Truth 3. The Phrophets Agree to the Truth of this Doctrine Esa 8.20 To the Law and to the Testimony 4. So doth Christ Joh. 5.39 Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal Life and they are they which testifie of me 5. And so do the Apostles calling the Scriptures a Rule As S. Paul doth Gal. 6.16 And as many as walk according to this Rule And Philip. 3.16 Let us walk by the same Rule 6. And so do the Ancient Fathers and Doctors Sequi Divinas Literas De fide ad Reginas c. To follow this Rule saith Cyrill is the Path unto Heaven And to be led by this Canon is the way to Salvation And S. Irene Non per alios Dispositionene Salutis cognovimus By the Scriptures we Learn to be saved §. Also The Holy Scripture ought to be among us the Supream Interpreter of Scriptures And the Judge of Controversies 1. FOr Confirmation of That this Language of the Reformed is to be noted and observed How better say They would it stand with
Baruch v. 11. So are the Papists Images with the fume of the incense they burn to them 5. The Heathen spake to their Idols as if they were able to understand them Baruch v. 41. So do the Papists to the wood of the Cross saying Ave lignum spes unica 6. The Heathenish Priests beards and heads were shaven Baruch v. 31. And so are our Popish Priests Crownes 7. The Heathens about the Calends of February visited all their Temples with Lights A like Ceremony the Papists use at Candlemasse 8. The Heathen commended every City and Village to the protection of some god or goddesse Juno was Lady Guardian of Carthage Venus of Cyprus Diana of Ephesus Pallas of Athens c. And have not our Papists likewise multiplyed their Saints according to the number of their Cities And do they not share the Patronages of them between them Doth not Venice fall to S. Marks Lot Paris to S. Genouiefs Spain to S. James France to S. Dennis Scotland to Andrews Ireland to S. Patricks England to S. Georges 9. The Heathen assigned several offices to several Gods Calling upon Ceres for Corn Upon Bacchus for Wine Upon Aesculapius for Health Upon Mercury for Wealth Upon Apollo for Wisdome c. In like manner the Papists address themselves to particular Saints upon particular and special occasions To St. Genovief for Rain To St. Marceau for fair weather To St. Michael in Battle To St. Nicholas in a Sea Tempest To St. Eustace in Hunting To St. Roch and Sebastian for remedies against the Plague To St. Raphael against Catarrhs To St. Apollonia against the Tooth-ache To St. Anthony against Inflammations To St. Margaret for safe Delivery in Child-birth And to other Saints upon other occasions as if God had granted a kind of monopolie to the several Commodities of this Life to several Saints 10. Will you have yet more Hercules hath left his Club to St. Christopher Janus hath resigned up his Keyes to St. Peter Lucina hath resigned her Office of Midwife to St. Margaret The Muses have resigned their instruments of Musick to Cecilia And Jupiter Hamun hath resigned his Horns to Moses Concerning worshipping of Saints departed thereupon the Church of Rome doth commit a great Idolatry 1. VEneration and honour of Saints departed the Protestant Churches do maintain and practice 1. We worthily esteem of their persons and recognize their excellency and glory 2. We give them honour by commemoration and by imitation of their faith and vertues 3. When they depart this life we afford their bodies a decent Burial Psalm 112. v. 6. Jos 1. v. 2. Prov. 10. v. 7. John 8. v. 39. James 5. v. 10. Acts 8. v. 2. 4. And some of our learned Adversaries seem to require no other Veneration of Saints but this Peres de Tradit p. 3. 2. But the Jesuits maintain the adoration of Saints departed with sacred and Religious worship 1. Erecting Altars 2. Building Temples 3. Placing their Images in Churches to be adored 4. Inclosing their relicks in Caskets and proposing them to be worshipped 5. Offering up Masses in the honour of them 6. And worshipping them by Church service and by Canonical hours 3. And they teach that the adoration belonging to them is after a sort divine approaching so near to divine worship as that it is exercised by the same materials and sacred rites 4. We acknowledge then on both parts that Saints are to be honoured We differ in the manner To wit whether they be to be honoured with adoration or such a kind of worship as is in a manner divine or with sacred rites appertaining to Gods religion and above rehearsed 5. St. Hierom is so far from the practise hereof that he affirmeth we do not worship and adore the relicks of Saints nor the Sun Moon Archangels or any other name spoken of in this World or in the next but we honour the relicks of Martyrs and adore him whose Martyrs they be And against Vigilantius who at any time adored Martyrs 6. And with him consent the faithful Christians of the Primitive Church who being traduced of superstition for adoring Martyrs deceased affirm that they adored Christ Jesus onely and exhibited no more to martyrs but the honour of love Euseb Histor Eccles lib. 4. cap. 15. 7. Some of our Adversaries would patronise the Popish superstition of worshipping of Saints departed with the sentence of Hierom saying That he honoureth Paula deceased Cultoris tui that is to say that worshippeth thee But to them we answer That every honour and worship is not such as Papists require and therefore to reason from honour in general to a certain kind thereof is to mock the Readers Fraud This is a great Fraud and Imposture of the Church of Rome that the members of it do not onely worship Saints against the word of God but besides worship Imaginary Saints which never were in the World AS one St. Longis who pierced as it is said our Saviours side As one St. Martial St. Peters Cozen who as it is said did serve at the Table when Jesus Christ did administer the holy Sacrament And also that he had in the time of the Gotes driven Paganism out of the Gaules when there were no Gotes in the Gauls As likewise one Saint Vrsula which is said to have been daughter of a King of England Captain of an Army of twelve thousand Virgins when there was no King in England Item one St. Katherine which is said to have been the daughter of Castor King of Alexandria And in the time of the Emperour Maxentius to have converted the Queen Faustina and fifty Philosophers All the above-said Saints were here indeed in the World as easie it may be proved and whose life by Baronius confession in his Martyrologie is full of Fables Not one good ancient Author that hath lived five hundred years after the time in which these imaginary Saints are set up doth speak of these Saints and yet prayers are made unto them It is the same of St. Margarite of which it is said that the Devil did swallow her who also bursted by that which is a kind of Child-birth from whence is the custome to read her Legend to the women that are delivered The adoration of the Virgin Mary is unlawful Thereupon the Church of Rome doth commit a great Idolatry 1. WE say with Epiphanius Let Mary have honour and let the Lord our God be adored 2. But the Papists instead of honour exhibite errour to the blessed Virgin as the same Father speaketh and their manner of worshipping her according to the said Father is Heresie and dotage 3. For some part of that worship which Papists give to the Virgin Mary are the actions of Divine adoration Namely Invocation Rom. 10. v. 14. Vows Psalm 50. v. 14. Oaths Deut. 6. v. 13. And yet Tursellin the Jesuit commendeth Paul an Hermit and saith He adored God and his mother 4. Epiphanius had another Belief for by many of his Speeches he condemneth
his sinnes punishment and death everlasting and cannot avoid the same if God will render to his works the reward that of due belongeth unto them 3. And therefore casting away all trust in his works will ask pardon and mercy not claim any debt or due reward of the Lord. 4. So though in their life time many of such Doctors be obstinately bent and have in their mouth nothing so much as good works Merits Reward Due Debt Recompence for their well doing Yet the time drawing neer when they must hold up their Hands at the Bar of the Lords Judgment Seat and there must make answer for themselves and their works must be tried by the Law of God They give over their former confidence They have no joy in themselves yea they distrust their own works They tremble and quake inwardly They are in fearful heavinesse and perplexity of mind They know not whither to turn themselves 5. And if God give such grace unto them that they see and forsake their Error of deserving Heaven then they confesse they are sinners and therefore guilty of Death 6. And then learn that Lesson in their end which afore in their life time they would not understand The Burden of Ceremonies which are now laid upon the Members of the Roman Church Is an Intolerable Burden 1. 1. SOme of the Fathers after the 300 years that they might more easily draw the Gentiles to Christianism did Tolerate and Admit with an alteration of the end and manner some Ceremonies of the Gentiles in Chiristian Religion 2. Wherein no doubt their intention was godly to wit 1. To use their Christian libertie in matters Adiaphorous and not Morallie evil according to the Apostles rule Tit. 1. v. 15. Vnto the pure all things are pure Rom. 14. v. 14. There is nothing unclean of it self but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean to him it is so 2. And to amove a present offence and occasion which hindred Gentiles from receiving the Christian faith to wit the difference of outward Ceremonies and Customes 2. But in succeeding Ages when the Gentiles were converted and when the Church needed not further to accommodate it self to the weakness of the Heathen And that things at first admitted by way of toleration should rather have now been removed and worn out Superstitious persons contrary to this make daily addition and increase borrowing more and more from the superstition of Jews and of Gentiles until at length they overwhelmed Christianity with an intolerable burthen of ceremonies 3. 1. Making the easie yoak of Christs Gospel heavier then the state of Jews and of Gentiles 2. And by this means they obscured Gods truth and only made people ceremonious whereas they should have been made pious Of the false Worship of the Church of Rome 1. IN the Church of Rome there is a Religious worship and the devotion of many members of the same doth eat up their time and their estates too 2. But the Divine worship of the Church of Rome is not a true but a false worship 3. For the Papists devotion is not emploied and exercised in the true worship of God according to his word but according to mans will and invention 4. That is to say in praying to Saints In worshipping Images In suffrages for the dead In seeing Masses And adoring the Hoste And telling out a set number of Pater Nosters and of Ave Maries upon hallowed Beads In making superstitious Vows And going to Pilgrimage And abstaining from certain Meats And wearing Hair-cloth And whipping themselves And creeping on all four to a Crucifix and the like 5. Of all which we demand as God doth of the Jews by the Prophet Esay chap. 1. v. 12. Who required these things The Church of Rome is guilty of abominable Idolatry And in what it doth consist 1. VVHatsoever Church attributeth Divine honour to a creature is guilty of abominable Idolatry But the Church of Rome attributeth Divine honour to divers creatures as appeareth in the instances following 1. Do they not devote themselves dedicate Temples consecrate Altars appoint Offices make daily Prayers vow Pilgrimages and present Offerings to the blessed Virgin and do all such outward Acts us properly appertain to Latria Is not this to equalize her with her Son The same is also true in regard of the other Saints 2. Do they not make an Idol of the Cross of Christ when they profess that they worship it Cultu Latriae Gretser the Jesuit in his Book of the Cross saith we affirm according to the more common and received opinion in the Schools That the Cross of Christ is to be worshipped with Latry that is Divine worship 3. Do they not make an Idol of the Sacramental bread or the Host as they call it to which they pray and confess before which they fall down when it is carried in solemn Procession on Corpus Christi day 4. Lastly do they not make Idols of their Images and of the Relicks of Saints before which they burn Incense and bow down when they pray directing their prayers towards them and fastening their eyes on them 2. This Conclusion then justly and Rightly follows That the Church of Rome is guilty of Abominable Idolatry The Church of Rome is guilty of Idolatry IN six things the Church of Rome doth commit Idolatry 1. In worshipping the Host which the Priest holds and calling God that which is not God 2. In attributing to Saints the honour which belongeth onely to God 1. Praying to them 2. Calling them Mediators 3. Asking salvation of God by their merits 4. Believing that they know the hearts and thoughts of men 3. Particularly in calling the Virgin Mary Inventrix of Grace The Queen of Heaven The Lady of the World For Kingdome and Empire over all creatures belongeth onely to God 4. In the adoration and worship of Images 5. In the adoration of the Cross 6. In the adoration and worship of Bones of Rags and other relicks of the dead 1. The Papists do commit many things which the Heathen Idolaters did do and so are like unto them in those regards 2. In particular they put the Saints in the place of the Gods and Goddesses of the Pagans THough we forbear to fasten the name of Heathenish Idolaters upon Papists yet surely they do the same things as they did 1. The Heathen carried their Gods of Gold and Silver upon their shoulders Baruch 6.4 So do the Papists bear out their images and relicks inclosed in chasses of gold and silver in their solemn Processions on high dayes 2. The Heathen decked their images as if they were men and women with apparel and who knoweth not that Papists put costly apparel on their images Almost every Saint among them hath his Holy-day and his Working-day suit 3. The Heathen lighted Candles before their images though the image seeth not one of them And do not the Papists set Tapers before theirs 4. The faces of the Heathen Idols were blacked with smoak
in general all Religious Adorations of the Virgin Mary Epiphan Haeref 72. in fine v. 79. Although saith he she is glorious holy and honourable yet she is not appointed to be Adored Again the Lord in the Gospel speaketh to the Virgin his Mother What have I to do with thee woman In which Speech to the end that none should think her over excellent he calleth her woman Prophesying as it were aforehand of the Heresies which should arise And premonishing that none in admiration of her Sanctity should fall into this Heresie of Adoration 5. Of which doting Heresie of Adoration of the Virgin the Papists are guilty in a high degree For in the Countries subject to the See of Rome all men and women wheresoever they are in the City or in the Field thrice a day when the Ave Mary Bell rings send up their united devotious to her and where one professeth himself a devote to our Saviour whole Towns devote themselves to her where one prayeth at a Crucifix ten pray at her Image where one fasteth on Friday which they account our Lords day Many fast on Saturday which they count our Ladaies day To conclude they conclude all their prayers with an Ave Maria As we do with our Lords Prayer and most of their Treatises with Laus Deiparae Virgini Praise be to the Virgin Mother of God And in the Psalter called Bonaventures they have Intituled all the 150. Psalms of David to her and where he saith Lord they put Lady Touching Adoration of Relicks It is Idolatry the Church of Rome is very much guilty thereof What office is to be rendred to the Bodies of those that are deceased by those that are alive It is not to worship them but to bury them 1. THis the Protestants reproves concerning Relicks of Saints 1. Such Adoration of Relicks as S. Hierome himself and S. Augustine condemned 2. The attributing of Supernatural Effects to Monuments and Relicks which they have not by any ordinance of God 3. To place confidence and merit in these things without any divine authority and to cause people to gad and wander to this or that place that they may receive benefit by them 4. We most of all condemn the Impostures and covetousnesse of the Romanists who in stead of true Reliks brought in counterfeits The Lance is found wherewith Christs side was pierced A Brazen Serpent made of the same Brass which Moses his Serpent was at Milan in S. Ambrose his Church Tunica Inconsutilis Domini nostri c. 5. And consequently for filthy lucre bartered and made Portsale of these Relicks abusing herein the Ignorance and Superstition of fond people 2. And on the side the said Protestants declare That the office which is to be rendred to the Bodies of Saints Deceased by those that are alive is not to Worship them but to bury them In that regard Eusebius writeth thus concerning Polycarp After we had gathered his Bones being more precious than Pearls and Gold we buried them where it was fit Of Miracles wrought by Dead Bones and Carcasses of Saints 1. WHen it pleaseth the Lord to shew his Power and to work Miracles in any place or by any means as seemeth Good unto himself we admire his power and praise his goodness 2. And we are not Ignorant how God hath used dead bones as an Instrument of Life 2 King 13. v. 21. 3. And concerning these things Bishop Jewel hath written in this manner Reply Art 1. p. 39. Almighty God for the Testimony of his Doctrine and Truth hath oftentimes wrought great Miracles even by the dead carkasses of his Saints In witness that they had been his Messengers and the Instruments of his Will But as they were godly Inducements at the first to lead people unto the Truth So afterwards they became snares to lead the same People into Errors We Protestants must not frequent Exercises of Popish Worship nor assist to the Mass 1. WE cannot be present there but either we must give great offence or commit a Greater 2. Give great offence if we do not as the Papists do and joyn not with them in Censing Images bowing before them offering unto them and kissing In calling upon Saints and praying for the releasing of Souls out of Purgatory 3. Or commit a greater if we joyn with them in their superstitious Rites and Idolatries In so doing we give greater offence to the Church of God And not onely receive a mark from the Beast but a grievous Wound 4. Constantine the Emperour thought himself defiled if he had but seen an Heathenish Altar Ambros Epist. 31. David if he had but made mention of an Idol Psal 16. v. 4. Their Offerings of Blood I will not offer nor take their names into my mouth 5. The Corinthians might not be partakers of such meats as were offered to Idols May we be partakers of such Prayers as are offered unto them It was unlawful for them to sit at the same Table with Idolaters when they kept their Solemn Feasts Can it be lawful for us to stand at the same Altar with them 6. Let us think again and again upon those fearful menaces Apoc. 14. v. 9. If any man worship the Beast and his Image and receive the mark in his forehead or in his hand the same shall drink of the Wine of the Wrath of God and he shall be tormented in fire and brimstone before the holy Angels and before the Lamb And the smoake of their torments shall ascend for ever And they shall have no rest day nor night which worship the Beast and his Image and whosoever receiveth the Print of his Name 7. We have not received any print of the Beast we are free from the least suspition of Familiarity with the Whore of Babylon we have kept our selves unspotted of Popery Therefore as we tender not onely our Honour and Reputation but chiefly the salvation of our Bodies and Souls let us keep our selves still from Idols Let us be zealous for Gods honour and he will be zealous for our safety Let us abstain from all appearance of that evil which the Spirit of God ranketh with Sorcery and Witchcraft As the Church of Rome became corrupted by Degrees in Regard of the Doctrine of Faith since the Apostles Times So did she in regard of Manners 1. This is True in regard of the Pope her Head 1. THe Common Opinion which Men did conceive of the Time in which Gregory the Great lived was that Gregory the Great was the last good and the first ill Bishop of Rome 2. He was no better then should be 3. And all the other Bishops that succeeded him were stark nought Every one striving to goe beyond his Predecessor in all leudnesse 4. So that now a Sink of all wickednesse hath hath violently burst into the Church 2. This is true in respect of the Popish Clergy and in respect of other Members of the said Roman Church 1. A Sink of all wickednesse doth now
Greeks had as many Gods as they had Fancies 4. The Aegyptians had as many Gods as they Sowed or planted Fruites or as the Earth brought forth Fruites of it self 5. To be short the Romans in conquering the World did conquer all those Vanities and they wanted not wit to devise others of their own brain Let us learne by this what the Gods of the Pagans and Gentiles were 1. 1. IT is written of Ewhemere of Tegea That the cause why he was called an Atheist was for that he wrote the true History and Genealogie of the heathen Gods 2. Shewing that they were Kings Princes and great Personages 3. Whose Images being kept for a Remembrance of them were turned into Idols 4. Their High and worthy Doings into yearly Gaming 's 5. And their Honourings into Worshippings 2. 1. ANd Seneca writes in his Book of Superstition that the Gods as he saith which were called inviolable and immortall were dumb and senceless Images disguised in the shapes of Men of Beasts and of Fishes and some in ugly and ill favoured Monsters 2. That the Daemones which were the Devils which possessed those Images did require worse things for their service then the horriblest Tyrants that ever were 3. As that men should Gash themselves Maime and Lame themselves Geld themselves and offer to them in Sacrifice Men Women and Children Seeing the Romans brought into Rome the Gods of all the Nations whom they had conquered It is demanded how it happened that the God of the Ancient Jewes which was the true and the onely God and none other did find no place there 1. CIcero in his Oration for Flaccus answereth That that beseemed not the Majestie of the Empire 2. But in his conscience did Bacchus Anubis Pryapus and their shameful Nightwakes and Mysteries celebrated in the Dark yeild Renown to the State of the Empire 3. Nay if he will say the Truth they know that the God of Israel and none other was the true God 4. And that for the harbouring of him it behoved them to drive away all the rest 5. And they had for so long a time fed the people in Idolatrie that they were afraid as many Princes also to be cast and driven away by their Subjects in receiving their rightful Lord. They were Devils who were worshipped by the Pagans under the Name of their false Gods 1. THe Gods of the Pagans were men 2. Under the Names of those men the Devils made themselves to be worshipped 3. The Devils to get credit and to authorize themselves did borrow the Name of men and very often the Names of most wicked men 4. And in their Oracles when they were asked what they were they said that they were those men 5. As for Example he that was worshipped at Delphos said he was the Son of Latona Esculapius said he was the Son of Apollo and Mercury said he was the Son of Jupiter and of Maja as we read in their Oracles rehearsed by Porphyrius 6. Now what honest man doth not make difficultie for never so great gain to make use of the Name of a wicked man Nay who doth not abhor the Name and the very remembrance of such an one 7. And who then will not conclude that those Devils were worse then those wicked men who would win credit clothed of the skins of such wicked men 1. The Sybils speak but of one onely God 2. And do cry also against the false Gods 1. IT is disputed among the Learned by what Spirit the Sybils did speak because it is not unconvenient that God should compel the very Devils to set forth his Praises 2. Howsoever it be they speak but of one onely God saying There is but onely one true God right great and everlasting Almighty and Invincible which seeth every thing but cannot be seen himself of any fleshly man Lactantius lib. 1. cap. 6. 3. Also they cry out against the false Gods and exhort men to beat down their Altars accounting them happy who shall dedicate themselves to the glorifying of onely one God Among the divers Religions of Pagans there were some manifestly impious and wicked 1. SOme worshipping the Creatures in Heaven yea and on Earth as the Aegyptians did in old time and as the Tartarians do at this day 2. Some offering up Men in Sacrifices as the Carthaginians did in old time and as the Western Isles do yet at this day 3. And other-some permitting things not onely contrary to all Laws but also even horrible and lothsome to nature 4. If all this was good I pray you what good doth remain or what evil is there in the World Of the False Worship of the Idolatrous Heathen 1. THe Idolatrous Heathen did render a Religious Worship 2. And were not content onely to offer Beasts to their Gods as the Jewes did to the true God but also they did offer men 3. For in some places they Sacrifice their Children as among the Moabites In others their Fathers as among the Triballi Elsewhere their Princes or Priests as among the Indians And in some Countries Themselves as among the Americans 4. Yet for all this their throwing themselves into or causing others to passe through the fire to their Moloch or Saturn or Abaddon they are not to be accounted true worshippers and such worship is not true but false 5. Because what they doe in this kind is not done by Gods Commandement nor intended to the honour of the true God but it is in obedience and to the honour of an Idol or Devil whom they worship instead of the true God Of the Falshood of the Modern Jews Religion in particular 1. THey serve and honour onely one God but they soyle with many Fables the Doctrine of the nature of God and of the Providence which they acknowledge as it clearly appears by the Fables which are related by Buxtorfius 2. The Modern Jewes seek the means of their reconciliation in some outward Ceremonies in Washings and Purifications and such other like things whose Conscience being awaked they are forced to acknowledge that by such things the Remorse of the Conscience and the Sting of Sin cannot be plucked out from the sinful Man 3. 1. The Modorn Jews although it seems that they keep the Bark of the Law yet they denie the Truth thereof 3. Besides they give false Interpretations to the said Law as it is to be seen in divers places of the New Testament 4. Moreover they forge and invent many absurd things concerning the Messias and the Kingdom thereof As also concerning Eternal Life all contrarie to the Doctrine of the Old Testament Of the Religion of the Modern Jews In what respects now the Judaical Religion is opposite to Christ 1. THe Jews Religion is opposite to Christ in two respects principally First In retaining the old Ceremonies of Moses Law which were shadows of things to come Rom. 10.4 Heb. 10.1 and had their accomplishment in Christ For that which S. Paul saith concerning Circumcision is to be