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
compass and to set them in a good Light and shall first offer some general Presumptions to shew that it is not like that this was the Doctrine of the Primitive Times and then some positive proof of it 1. It is no slight Presumption against it that we do not find the Fathers take any pains to answer the Objections that do naturally arise out of the present Doctrine of the Church of Rome These Objections do not arise out of profound Study or great Learning but from the plain Dictates of common Sense which make it hard to say no more for us to believe That a Body can be in more places than one at once and that it can be in a place after the manner of a Spirit That Accidents can be without their Subject or that our Senses can deceive us in the plainest cases We find the Fathers explain some abstruse Difficulties that arise out of other Mysteries that were less known and were more speculative And while they are thought perhaps to over-do the one it is a little strange that they should never touch the other But on the contrary when they treat of Philosophical Matters they express themselves roundly in opposition to those Consequences of this Doctrine Whereas since this Doctrine has been received we see all the Speculations of Philosophy have been so managed as to keep a reserve for this Doctrine So that the uncautious way in which the Father 's handled them in proof of which Volumes of Quotatations can be made shews they had not then received that Doctrine which must of necessity give them occasion to write otherwise than they did 2. We find the Heathens studied to load the Christian Religion with all the heaviest Imputations that they could give it They objected to them the believing a God that was born and that died and the Resurrection of the Dead and many lesser matters which seemed absurd to them They had Malice enough to seek out every thing that could disgrace a Religion which grew too hard for them But they never once object this of making a God out of a piece of Bread and then eating him If this had been the Doctrine of those Ages the Heathens chiefly Celsus and Porphiry but above all Iulian could not have been ignorant of it Now it does not stand with common Sense to think that those who insist much upon inconsiderable things could have passed over this which is both so sensible and of such importance if it had been the received Belief of those Ages 3. It is also of weight that there were no Disputes nor Heresies upon this Point during the first Ages and that none of the Hereticks ever objected it to the Doctors of the Church We find they contended about all other Points Now this hath so many Difficulties in it that it should seem a little strange that all Mens Understandings should have been then so easie and consenting that this was the single Point of the whole Body of Divinity about which the Church had no dispute for the first seven Centuries It therefore inclines a Man rather to think that because there were no Disputes concerning it therefore it was not then broached Since we see plainly that ever since it was broached in the West it has occasioned lasting Disputes both with those who could not be brought to believe it and with one another concerning the several ways of explaining and maintaining it 4. It is also a strong Prejudice against the Antiquity of this Doctrine that there were none of those Rites in the first Ages which have crept in in the latter which were such natural Consequences of it that the belief of the one making way for the other we may conclude that where the one were not practised the other was not believed I will not mention all the Pomp which the latter Ages have invented to raise the lustre of this Doctrine with which the former Ages were unacquainted It is enough to observe that the Adoration of the Sacrament was such a necessary Consequence of this Doctrine that since the Primitive Times know nothing of it as the Greek Church does not to this day it is perhaps more than a Presumption that they believed it not V. But now I come to more positive and convincing Proofs And 1. The Language of the whole Church is only to be found in the Liturgies which are more severely composed than Rhetorical Discourses and of all the parts of the Office the Prayer of Consecration is that in which we must hope to find most certainly the Doctrine of the Church We find then in the fourth Century that in the Prayer of Consecration the Elements were said to be the Types of the Body and Blood of Christ as St. Basil informs us from the Greek Liturgies and the Figure of his Body and Blood as St. Ambrose informs us from the Latin Liturgies The Prayer of Consecration that is now in the Canon of the Mass is in a great part the same with that which is cited by St. Ambrose but with this important difference that instead of the words which is the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ that are in the former there is a Petition added in the latter that the Gifts may be to us the Body and Blood of Christ. If we had so many of the MSS. of the ancient Liturgies left as to be able to find out the time in which the Prayer of the Consecration was altered from what it was in St. Ambrose's days to what it is now this would be no small Article in the History of Transubstantiation But most of these are lost since then the antient Church could not believe otherwise of the Sacrament than as she expressed her self concerning it in the Prayer of Consecration it is plain that her first Doctrine concerning it was That the Bread and Wine were the Types and the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ. 2. A second Proof is from the Controversy that was began by the Apollinarists and carried on by the Eutichians Whether Christ's Humanity was swallowed up of his Divinity or not The Eutychians made use of the general Expressions by which the change in the Sacrament seemed to be carried so far that the Bread and Wine were swallowed up by it and from this they inferred that in like manner the Human Nature of Christ was swallowed up by his Divinity But in opposition to all this we find Chrysostome the Patriarch of Constantinople Ephrem the Patriarch of Antioch Gelasius the Pope Theodoret a Bishop in Asia the less and Facundus in Africk all within the compass of little more than an Age agree almost in the same words in refuting all this asserting That as the Human Nature in Christ remained still the same that it was before notwithstanding its Union with the Divine Nature even so the Bread and Wine retained still their former Nature Substance and Form and that they are only sanctified not by the change of their
repealing the Test has at the same time shewed so merciful an Inclination towards the Ro. Catholicks that of all the Reproaches in the World one that intended to plead for that Religion ought to have avoided the mentioning of Blood or Cruelty with the greatest care 3. It 's true we cannot help believing that Idolatry is a damnable Sin that shuts Men out of the Kingdom of Heaven and if every Sin in which a Man dies without Repentance does it much more this which is one of the greatest of all Sins But yet after all there is Mercy for Sins of Ignorance upon Mens general Repentance and therefore since God alone knows the degrees of Mens Knowledg and of their Ignorance and how far it is either affected on the one hand and invincible on the other we do not take upon us to enter into God's Secrets or to judg of the Salvation or Damnation of particular Persons nor must we be byassed in our Enquiry into the nature of any Sin either by a fond regard to the state of our Ancestors or by the due respect that we owe to those who are over us in Civil Matters In this case things are what God has declared them to be we can neither make them better nor worse than he has made them and we are only to judg of things leaving Persons to the merciful as well as the just and dreadful Judgment of God. 4. All the stir that our Author keeps with the examining of the Idolatry committed by the Iews under the Old Testament supposing it were all true will serve no more for acquitting the Church of Rome than a Plea would avail a Criminal who were arraigned of High Treason for coyning Mony or for counterfeiting the King's Seal in which one should set forth that High Treason was the murdering the King or the levying War against him and that therefore the Criminal who was guilty of neither of these two ought to be acquitted Idolatry as well as Treason is a comprehensive Notion and has many different Branches so that tho the worshipping the Host of Heaven or the worshipping an Image as a Resemblance of the Divinity may be acknowledged to be the highest degrees of Idolatry yet many other Corruptions in the Worship of God are justly reducible to it and may be termed not only idolatrous but Idolatry it self 5. Our Saviour in his Sermon on the Mount has shewed us how many Sins are reducible to the second Table of the Law besides those of Murder Adultery c. that are expresly named in it and tho the Jews in that time having delivered themselves entirely from the Sin of Idolatry to which their Fathers were so prone gave him no occasion of commenting on the first and second Commandment yet by the parity of things we may conclude that many Sins are reducible to them besides those that are expresly named and tho we have not so compleat a History of the Idolatry of the Neighbouring Nations to Iudea before the Captivity yet we do certainly know what was the Idolatry of which the Greeks and Romans were guilty when the New Testament was writ and the greatest part of the New Testament is written chiefly with relation to the Jews whose freedom from Idolatry gave no occasion to treat of it yet in those few Passages which relate to the Heathen Idolatry then on foot the holy Writers retain the same Phrase and Style that were used in the Old Testament which gives us just reason to believe that the Idolatry was upon the matter and in its main stroak the same under both and if so then we have a Door opened to us to discover all our Author 's false reasonings and upon this discovery we shall find that all the inspired Writers charged the Heathen Worship with Idolatry not so much with relation to the Glosses that Philosophers and other Political Men might put on their Rites but with relation to the Practice in it self 6. But since Idolatry is a Sin against a moral and unchangeable Law let us state the true Notion of the right Worship of God and by consequence of Idolatry tho this is done with that exactness by the worthy Master of the Temple that it should make a Man afraid to come after him Our Ideas of God and the Homage of Worship and Service that we offer up pursuant to these are not only to be considered as they are just thoughts of God and Acts suitable to those thoughts but as they are Ideas that tend both to elevate and purifie our own Natures for the Thoughts of God are the Seeds of all Truth and Vertue in us which being deeply rooted in us makes us become conformable to the Divine Nature So that the Sin of Idolatry consists in this that our Ideas of God being corrupted he is either defrauded of that Honour which tho due to him is transferred to another or is dishonoured by a Worship unsutable to his Nature and we also by forming wrong Ideas of the Object of our Worship become corrupted by them Nothing raises the Soul of Man more than sublime Thoughts of God's Greatness and Glory and nothing perfects it more than just notions of his Wisdom and Goodness On the contrary nothing debases our Natures more than the offering our Worship and Service to a Being that is low and unworthy of it or the depressing the Supreme Being in our Thoughts or Worship to somewhat that is like our selves or perhaps worse therefore the design of true Religion being the forming in us such notions as may exalt and sanctify our Natures as well as the raising a Tribute to the Author of our Being that is in some sort unworthy of him the Sin of Idolatry is upon this account chiefly forbidden in Scripture because it corrupts our Ideas of God and by a natural tendency this must likewise corrupt our Natures when we either raise up an Idol so far in our Thoughts as to fancy it a God or depress God so far as to make him an Idol for these two species of Idolatry have both the same effect on us and as a Wound in a Man's Vitals is much more destructive than any how deep and dangerous soever that is in his Limbs since it is possible for him to recover of the one but not of the other so Idolatry corrupts Religion in its source Thus Idolatry in its moral and unchangeable Nature is the honouring any Creature as a God or the imagining that God is such a Being as the other Creatures are and this had been a Sin tho no Law against it had ever been given to Mankind but the Light and Law of Nature 7. But after all this there are different degrees in this Sin for the true notion of God being this that he comprehends all Perfections in his Essence the ascribing all these to a Creature is the highest degree of Idolatry but the ascribing any one of these infinite Perfections or which is all one with relation to
to Iehovah ver 49. for though that Name was not then known yet Moses by using it on that occasion shews us plainly that Laban was a Worshipper of the true God Aaron shews the same by intimating that Feast which he appointed to Iehovah Exod. 32. 5. which our Author thought not fit to mention the People also by calling these ver 4. the Gods that brought them out of Egypt shew that they had no Thoughts of the Egyptian Idolatry but they believed that Moses had carried away the Teraphim in the Virtue of which it seems they fancied that he had wrought his Miracles and that Aaron who they believed knew the Secret had made them new ones and this is the most probable account of their Joy in celebrating that Feast And as for Ieroboam the case seems to be plainly the same he made the People believe that the Teraphim which he gave them in Dan and Bethel were as good as those that were at Ierusalem for as his design was no other than to hinder their going thither 1 Kings 12. 27. so it is not likely that either he would or durst venture upon a total Change of their Religion or that it could have passed so easily with the People whereas the other had nothing extraordinary in it It is also plain that as Ieroboam called the Calves the Gods that brought them out of Egypt v. 28. so he still acknowledged the true Iehovah for the Prophets both true and false in his Time prophesied in the Name of Iehovah 1 King. 13. 2 18 26. and when his Son was sick he sent his Wife to the Prophet of Iehovah ch 14. The Story of the new Idolatry that Achab set up of the Baalim shews also plainly that the old Worshippers of the Calves adhered to the true Iehovah for Elijah states the matter as if the Nation had been divided between Iehovah and Baal 1 King. 18. 21 39. And the whole Story of Iehu confirms this 2 Kings 9. 6 12 36. he was anointed King in the Name of Iehovah and assoon as the Captains that were with him knew this they acknowledged him their King he likewise speaking of the Fact of the Men of Samaria cites the Authority of Iehovah 2 Kings 10. 10 16 29. which shews that the People acknowledged it still and he called his Zeal against the Worship of Baal his Zeal for Iehovah and yet both he and his Party worshipped the Calves It is no less clear that Micah who called his Teraphim his Gods Judg. 18. 24. was a Worshipper of the true Iehovah Judg. 17. 13. and there is little reason to doubt that this was the case of Gideon's Ephod and of the Brazen Serpent It were needless to go about the proving that all these corrupt Ways of Worship were Idolatrous the Calf is expresly called an Idol by St. Stephen Acts 7. 41. and the thing is so plain that it is denied by none that I know of so here we have a Species of Idolatry plainly set forth in Scripture in which the true God was worshipped in an Image and I fancy it is scarce necessary to insorm the Reader that wherever he finds LORD in Capitals in the English Bible it is for Iehovah in the Hebrew 11. It is very true that the great and prevailing Idolatry of all the East grew to be the Worship of the Host of Heaven which seems to have risen very naturally out of the other Idolatry of the Teraphim which probably was the ancienter of the two for when Men came to think that Divine Influences were tied to such Images it was very natural for them to fancy that a more soveraign degree of Influence was in the Sun and by consequence that he deserved Divine Adoration much more than their poor little Teraphim But it is also clear that this Adoration which they offered to the Sun was not with relation to the matter of that shining Body but to the Divinity which they believed was lodged in it This appears not only from the Greek Writers Zenophon and Plutarch but from the greatest Antiquity that is now in the World the bas Reliefs that are in the Ruins of the Temple of Persepolis which are described with so much Cost and Care by that worthy and learned Gentleman Sir Iohn Chardin and which the World expects so greedily from him he favoured me with a fight of them and in these it appears that in their Triumphs of which a whole Series remains intire they carried not only the Fire which was the Emblem of the Body of the Sun but after that the Emblem of the Divinity that it seems they thought was in it under the Representation of a Head environed with Clouds which is the most natural Emblem that we can fancy of an Intelligent and Incomprehensible Being It 's true as Idolatry grows still grosser and grosser the Intelligent Being was at last forgot tho it seems it was remembred by their Philosophers since the Greeks came to know it and all their Worship was paid to the Sun or to his Emblem the Fire so that even this Idolatry was most probably the Worship of the true God at first under a visible Representation and that this was an effect of the former Idolatry is confirmed from what was said by Moses Deut. 4. 14 to 19. where he plainly intimates the Progress that Idolatry would have if they once came to worship Graven or Molten Images or make any sort of similitude for the great God this would carry them to lift up their Eyes to Heaven and worship and serve the Host of Heaven 12. The next shape that Idolatry took was the worshipping some subordinate Spirits their Genies which were in effect Angels or departed Men and Women and this filled both Greece and Rome and was the prevailing Idolatry when the New Testament was writ But that all these Nations believed still one Supreme God and that they considered these just as the Roman Church does now Angels and Saints mutatis mutandis has been made out so invincibly by the Learned Dr. Stillingfleet that one would rather think that he had over-charged his Argument with too much Proof than that it is any way defective and yet this Worship of those Secondary Deities is charged with Idolatry both in the Acts and in the Epistles so often that it is plain the inspired Writers believed that the giving any degrees of Divine Worship to a Creature tho in a subordinate form was Idolatry and St. Paul gives us a comprehensive Notion of Idolatry that it was the giving Divine Service the word is Dulia to those that by Nature were not Gods Gal. 4. 8. and he throws off all Lords as well as all the Gods of the Heathen as Idols and in opposition to these reduces the Worship of the Christians to the Object of one God the Father and of one Lord Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 8. 5 6. So that the Greek and Roman Idolatry being strictly that which is condemned in the