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A30335
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A discourse concerning transubstantiation and idolatry being an answer to the Bishop of Oxford's plea relating to those two points.
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Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing B5775; ESTC R23015
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24,041
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38
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New Testament of which we have such a copious Evidence from their Writings it is plain that even inferiour degrees of Worship when offered up to Creatures tho Angels is Idolatry and tho the Heathens thought neither Iupiter nor Mercury the supreme Deities yet the Apostles did not for all that forbear to call them Idols Acts 14. 15. 13. Our Author pretends to bear a great respect to Antiquity and therefore I might in the next place send him to all that the Fathers have writ against the Greek and Roman Idolatry in which he will find that the Heathens had their Explainers as well as the Church of Rome has they denied they worshipped their Images but said they made use of them only to raise up their Minds by those visible Objects yet as St. Paul begun the Charge against the Athenians of Idolatry Acts 17. 29. for their Gods of Gold Silver Wood and Stone it was still kept up and often repeated by the Fathers tho the Philosophers might have thrown it back upon them with all that Pomp of dreadful Words which our Author makes use of against those that fasten the same Charge upon the Church of Rome The same might be said with relation to the Fathers accusing them of Polytheism in worshipping many Gods and of Idolatry in worshipping those that had been but Men like themselves for it is plain that at least all the Philosophers and wise Men believed that these were only deputed by the Great God to govern some Countries and Cities and that they were Mediators and Intercessors between God and Men but all this that appears so fully in Celsus Porphiry and many others did not make the Fathers give over the Charge Dr. Stillingfleet has given such full Proofs of this that nothing can be made plainer than the matter of Fact is We know likewise that when the Controversy arose concerning the God-head of Jesus Christ Athanasius and the other Fathers made use of the same Argument against the Arrians who worshipped him that they could not be excused from the Sin of Idolatry in worshipping and invocating him whom they believed only to be a Creature which shews that it was the Sense of the Christians of that Age that all Acts of Divine Worship and in particular all Prayers that were offered up to any that was not truly and by Nature God and the Eternal God were so many Acts of Idolatry So that upon the whole matter it is clear that the worshipping the true God under a Corporeal Representation and the worshipping or invocating of Creatures tho in an inferior degree was taxed by the Apostles and by the Primitive Church as idolatrous When they accuse them for those Corruptions of Divine Worship they did not consider the softning Excuses of more refined Men so much as the Acts that were done which to be sure do always carry the stupid vulgar to the grossest degrees of Idolatry and therefore every step towards it is so severely forbid by God since upon one step made in the publick Worship the People are sure to make a great many more in their Notions of things therefore if we should accuse the Church of Rome for all the Excesses of the past Ages or of the more ignorant Notions in the present Age such as Spain and Portugal even this might be in some degree well grounded because the publick and authoris'd Offices and Practices of that Church has given the rise to all those Disorders and even in this we should but copy after the Fathers who always represent the Pagan Idolatry not as Cicero or Plutarch had done it but according to the grossest Notions and Practices of the vulgar 14. All that our Author says concerning the Cherubims deserves not an Answer for what use soever might be made of this to excuse the Lutherans for the use of Images without worshipping them tho after all the doing such a thing upon a Divine Commandment and the doing it without a Command are two very different things yet it cannot belong to the Worship of Images since the Israelites paid no worship to the Cherubims They paid indeed a Divine Worship to the Cloud of Glory which was between them and which is often in the Old Testament called God himself in all those Expressions in which he is said to dwell between the Cherubims But this being a miraculous Symbol of the Divine Presence from which they had Answers in all extraordinary Cases it was God himself with any Image or Representation that was worshipped in it as we Christians pay our Adorations to the Human Nature of Christ by virtue of that more sublime and ineffable in-dwelling of the God-head in him in which case it is God only that we worship in the Man Christ even as the Respect that we pay to a Man terminates in his Mind tho the outward Expressions of it go to the Body to which the Mind is united so in that unconceivable Union between the Divine and Human Natures in Christ we adore the God-head only even when we worship the Man. 15. The general part of this Discourse being thus stated the Application of it to the Church of Rome will be no hard matter I will not insist much on the Article of Image-worship because it is not comprehended in the Test tho our Author dwells longest on it to let us see how carefully but to how little purpose he had read Dr. Spencer's learned Book But if one considers the Ceremonies and Prayers with which Images and particularly Crosses are to be dedicated by the Roman Pontifical and the formal Adoration of the Cross on Good-friday and the strange Virtues that are not only believed to be in some Images by the Rabble but that are authoriz'd not only by the Books of Devotion publickly allowed among them but even by Papal Bulls and Indulgences he will be forced to confess that the old Notions of the Teraphim are clearly revived among them This could be made out in an infinite Induction of Particulars of which the Reader will find a large account in the Learned Dr. Brevint's Treatise entituled Saul and Samuel at Endor But I come now to the two Branches mentioned in the Test. 16. One is the Sacrifice of the Mass in which if either our Senses that tell us it is now Bread and Wine or the New Testament in which it is called both Bread and the Fruit of the Vine even after the Consecration or if the Opinion of the first seven Centuries or if the true Principles of Philosophy concurring altogether are strong enough we are as certain as it is possible for us to be of any thing that they are still according to our Author 's own Phrase a sensless piece of matter when therefore this has Divine Adoration offered to it when it is called the good God carried about in solemn Processions and receives as publick and as humble a Veneration as could be offered up to the Deity it self if it appear'd visibly Here the highest
our Actions the doing any thing which imports or is understood to import it is likewise Idolatry tho of a lower degree of Guilt so likewise the imagining that the true God is no other than as an Idol represents him to be is the highest degree of the other species of Idolatry but the conceiving him as having a Body in which his Eternal Mind dwells or fancying that any strange Virtue from him dwells in any Body to such a degree as to make that Body the proper Object of Worship unless he has assured us that he is really united to that Body and dwells in it which was the case of the Cloud of Glory under the Old Testament and much more of the humane Nature of Christ under the New this is likewise Idolatry for in all these it is plain that the true Ideas of God and the Principles of Religion are corrupted 8. There are two Principles in the Nature of Man that make him very apt to fall into Idolatry either inward or outward The first is the weakness of most Peoples Minds which are so sunk into gross Phantasms and sensible Objects that they are scarce capable to raise their Thoughts to pure and spiritual Ideas and therefore they are apt either to forget Religion quite or to entertain it by Objects that are visible and sensible the other is that Mens Appetites and Passions being for the most part too strong for them and these not being reconcileable to the true Ideas of a pure and spiritual Essence they are easily dispos'd to embrace such notions of God as may live more peaceably with their Vices and so they hope by a Profusion of Expence and Honour or of Fury and Rage which they employ in the Worship of an imaginary Deity to purchase their Pardons and to compensate for their other Crimes if not to authorise them These two Principles that are so rooted in our frail and corrupt Natures being wrought on by the Craft and Authority of ambitious and covetous Men who are never wanting in all Ages and Nations have brought forth all that Idolatry that has appear'd in so many different Shapes up and down the World and has been diversified according to the various Tempers Accidents and Constitutions of the several Nations and Ages of the World. 9. I now come to examine the Beginnings of Idolatry as they are represented to us in the Scripture in which it will appear that our Author's account of it shews him guilty either of great Ignorance or of that which is worse he pretends that the first plain Intimation that we have of it in Palestine is when Iacob after his Conversation with the Schechemites commanded his Family to put away their strange Gods whereas we have an earlier and more particular account of those strange Gods in the same Book of Genesis Chap. 31. where when Iacob fled away from Laban it is said ver 19. that Rachel stole her Father's Images or Teraphim and these are afterwards call'd by Laban his Gods ver 30. and these very Images are called by Ioshua 24. v. 2. Strange Gods so that the strange Gods from which Iacob cleansed his Family Gen. 35. 2. were no other than the Teraphim so that in the Teraphim we are to seek for the true Original of Idolatry and for the sense of the Phrase of other Gods or strange Gods which is indeed the true Key to this whole matter These were little Statues such as the Dii laris or Penates were afterwards among the Romans or the Pagods now in the East in which it was believed that there was such a Divine Virtue shut up that the Idolaters expected Protection from them and as all People in all times are apt to trust to Charms so those who pretended to chain down the Divine Influences to those Images had here a great occasion given them to deceive the World of this sort was the Palladium of Troy and the Ancille of Rome and this gave the rise to all the Cheats of Tolesmes and Talismans that came afterwards these were of different Figures and since our Author confesses p. 124. that Cherubim and Teraphim are sometimes used promiscuously for one another it is probable that the Figure of both was the same and since it is plain from Ezekiel that the Cherubim resembled a Calf compare Ezek. 1. 10. with chap. 10. 14. where what is called in the first the Face of an Ox is called in the other the Face of a Cherub from hence it is probable that the Teraphim or at least some of them were of the same Figure In these it was also believed that there were different degrees of Charms Some were believed stronger than others so that probably Pharaoh thought that Moses and Aaron had a Teraphim of greater Virtue than his Magicians had which is the clearest account that I know of his hardening his Heart against so many Miracles and this also seems to be the first occasion of the Phrase of the Gods of the several Nations and of some being stronger than other that is the Teraphim of the one were believed to have a higher degree of Enchantment in them than the others had This then leads us to the right Notion of Aaron's Golden Calf and of the terms of graved and carved Images in the second Commandment and even of the other Gods in the first Commandment for we have seen that both in the stile of Moses and Ioshua the Images were those Teraphim which they also called strange Gods when the Israelites thought that Moses had forsaken them they came to Aaron desiring him to make them God's that is Teraphims yet they prescribed no form to him but left that wholly to him and so the Dream of their Fondness of the Egyptian Idolatry vanishes for it was Aaron's choice that made it a Calf perhaps he had seen the Divine Glory as a Cloud between the Cherubims when he went up into the Mountain Exod. 24. 9 10. for a Pattern being shewed to Moses of the Tabernacle that he was to make it is probable Aaron saw that likewise and this might dispose him to give them a Seraphim in that figure this is also the most probable account both of the Calves of Dan and Bethel set up by Ieroboam and also of the Israelites worshipping the Ephod that Gideon made Iud. 8. 27. of the Idolatry of Micah and the Danites who robbed him Iud. 17. 18. and of the Israelites offering Incense to the Brazen Serpent 2 Kings 18. 4. which seemed to have all the Solemnities of a Teraphim in it so that it is plain the greatest part of the Idolatry under the Old Testament was the Worship of the Teraphim 10. But to compleat this Argument with relation to the present Point it is no less plain that the true Jehovah was worshipped in those Teraphim To begin with the first it is clear that Laban in the Covenant he made with Iacob appeals not only to the God of Abraham Gen. 31. 53. but likewise