Patient or thing that suffereth not according to the full force and vertue which it hath in it self For fire doth not equally prey upon stone and wood nor doth the Physitian give the same strong Physick to a weak body as he doth to a strong nor are Men informed of God after the manner of Angels who behold much more purely and cleerly the Nature of God But mans knowledge is generally taken from the Effects And so comparing those works of God and Acts of God which have some similitude with those of men For as all works of note do imply some care and pains to produce them by men So is God said to labour when he created all things in this world and to rest when he had finished and ended all because this is the manner of men And to be Angry when either just cause is offered by offending him in breaking of his holy Laws or the effects of wrath commonly seen when men are so affected appear by the severe punishments inflicted upon offenders And what is said of the inward affections ascribed unto God may be easily applied to those outward descriptions made of God in Scripture under the form of Man as of Hands Arms Head Heart Eyes and such like which the ancient Fathers against the Heresie of the Anthropomorphites who as Epicurus in Tully took God to be of the same fashion and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 often mentioned by St. Chrysostome Suidas form with Man do affirm to be by Condescension to Man which Condescension is thus described by one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Condescension is when God doth seem to be what he is not but so declares himself to be as he that is to conceive of him is best able to behold him proportioning the revelation of himself to the imbecillity of the contemplator CHAP. IV. Of the Vnity of the Divine Nature as to number and how the Trinity of Persons may consist with the Vnity and simplicity of the Deity Of the proper Notions pertaining to the Mystery of the Trinity viz. Essence Substance Nature Person The Distinction of the Persons in the Trinity Four Enquiries moved How far the Gentiles and Jews understood the Trinity The Proof of the Doctrine of the Trinity from the New Testament and the Explication of it BUT to the exception taken from the Mystery of the Holy Trininity greater regard ought to be had as well for the explication and confirmation of that Doctrine as for the satisfaction of humble enquirers into the same And for more clear and gradual proceeding herein it will be requisite first to explain such terms as this Doctrine much depends on as Essence Substance Nature Person and Trinity it self Essence is of somewhat larger extent than Substance because Substance signifies properly only that which is opposite to Accident or that which adheres or inheres to Substance but Essence signifies all kinds of Beings as well of Accidents as Substances Nature is the restraint of Essence and Substance both in their general Being to some more special kind of thing as there is the Nature of Man and the Nature of Beast the Nature of Accidents and the Nature of Substances the Nature of Colours and the Nature of Quantities so that Nature is not that whereby a thing simply and absolutely is but whereby it is what it is Hence we say also the Nature of God or the Creator and the Nature of the Creature Nature being that by which as is said a thing is what it is and distinct from others And as for the word Trinity it is true what hath been objected by some of old that it is not in terms t◠be found in Scripture for the word doth not import any one or more things absolutely but rather the manner of such things being the better to settle the mind in the apprehension of that great Mystery Now the Holy Scriptures doth very often only propound the Article of Faith to be believed by us but leaves the manner of expressing and conceiving the same to the holy prudence of Men whom he hath for the instruction of inferior persons ordained in his Church which have agreed so to term that three-fold personal Relation in the Deity A Person is defined to be an entire and absolute Being of reasonable nature Man in general is not a Person because he subsisteth not by himself A Beast in particular is not a Person because void of knowledge and reason The soul of Man though endowed with reason is not a Person because not of it self entire and perfect being part of another thing i e. Man But Peter and John are Persons because single Substances absolute in themselves and rational To collect therefore and conclude from what is thus briefly premised we say that these Notions of Essence Substance and Nature are sometimes taken more strictly and properly according to which we must alwayes hold it as a most fundamental Truth in Christian Religion as it is in the Religion of all civilized People that God is but one in Essence Substance or Nature i. e. the Being and Nature of God as God are but one But if we take the said Notions more largely for that which expresses the manner of Being as well as Being it self then may we speak of the nature of a Person as when we say that the nature of a Person is different from the nature of things simply taken And if Nature be taken as sometimes for the condition of a thing or Person we may truly say that in the Trinity the Three Persons as Persons are of a different nature though they differ not in the nature of the Deity For that they really and not imaginarily or by mans fancy and conception different from one another is a received Truth by all reputed true Believers but nothing can be distinct from another but by somewhat peculiar to it and whatever is peculiar to a thing and ingredient into its Being may be and is commonly called the nature of it in which sense we may say Three Persons are of a different nature because the Father is not the Son nor the Son the Father nor the Holy Ghost Father or Son for the nature of the Father as Father is to beget the nature of the Son as Son to be begotten the nature of the Holy Ghost as Holy Ghost to proceed But all this hindereth not in the Nature of God they should be one and the same and so but one distinct God and this makes the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity For were not the Persons distinct by somewhat real and not so notional as to be fictitious there could not be said to be a Triplicity or Trinity of Persons And again if in nature they were not the same there could be no Identity worthy of that Mystery For other Creatures differing one from another in subsisting distinctly agree in the unity of a general nature as three men agree in the common nature of man But 't is
Eucharist and especially going upon the grounds of Luther Calvin Perkins and some others of Great note that all Sacerdotal they may call them if they please Ministerial Acts done by him who is no true Minister are really null and void Fourthly we conclude that seeing all Ecclesiastical power as Ecclesiastical doth proceed from Christ and his Successors and that by Ordinary and visible means they who have not received the same by such Ordinary Methods are usurpers of the same whether Political or Mystical And that to deny this to the Church is to deny that which Christ hath given them and such a Principle of the Churches well Being without which it cannot subsist and it not subsisting neither can the Faith it self And to the reason above given we may add Prescription beyond all memory For from Christs time to this day a perpetual and peculiar power hath ever been in the Clergy which hath constantly likewise born the name of the Church to assemble define and dispose matters of Religion And why should not Prescription under Unchristian as well as Christian Governours for so many Ages together be as valid sacred and binding to acknowledgment in the Case of Religion as Civil Matters will ever remain a question in Conscience and common Equity even after irresistible Power hath forced a Resolution otherwise It is true such is the more natural and Ancient Right Civil Power hath over the outward Persons of men than that which Religion hath over the Inward man that it may claim a dominion and disposal of the Persons of even Christian subjects contrary to the soft and infirm Laws of the Church because as hath been said Men are Men before they are Christians and Nature goeth before Grace And Civil society is the Basis and support to Ecclesiastical Yet the grounds of Christianity being once received for good and divine and that Religion cannot subsist nor the Church consist without being a Society and no Society without a Right of counsel and consultation and no consultation without a Right to assemble together the Right of assembling must needs be in trinsique to the Church it self Now if no man that is a Christian can take away the essential ingredient to the Church how can any deny this of Assembling For the practise of it constantly and confidently by the Apostles and brethren contrary to the express will of the Lawful Powers of the Jews and Romans and the reason given in the Acts of the Apostles of obeying God rather then man do imply certainly a Law and Charter from God so to do and if this be granted as it must who can deny by the same Rule necessity of Cause and constant Prescription that they may as well provide for the safety of the Faith by securing the state of the Church as for the truth and stability of the Church by securing the true Faith by doctrine and determination The Great question hath ever been Whether the Church should suffer loss of power and priviledges upon the Supream Powers becomming Christian Or the Supream power it self loose that dominion which it had before it became of the Church For if Christianity subjected Kings necessarily to the Laws of others not deriving from them then were not Kings in so good a Condition after they were Christians as before when they had no such pretences or restraints upon them and so should Christs Law destroy or maim at least the Law of God by which Kings reign But there may be somewhatsaid weakning this absurdity For Granting this That there is a God and that he is to be worshipped and that as he appointeth all which we must by nature believe it seems no less natural to have these observed than the Laws of natural Dominion Now granting that at present which if we be true to our Religion we must not deny viz. That Christian Religion is the true Religion and that God will be worshipped in such sort as is therein contained For any Prince absolute to submit to the essentials of that Religion is not to loose any thing of his Pristine Rights which he had before being an Heathen for he never had any Right to go against the Law of God more then to go against the Law of Nature but it doth restrain his Acts and the exercise of his Power And if the Supream after he hath embraced Christianity shall proceed to exert the same Authority over the Church as before yet the Church hath no power to resist or restrain him Civilly any more than when he was an Alien to it Now it being apparent that Christian Faith and Churches had their Forms of believing and Communion before Soveraign powers were converted and that he who is truly converted to a Religion doth embrace it upon the terms which he there finds not such as he brings with him or devises therefore there lies an Obligation upon such powers to preserve the same as they found it inviolate And truly for any secular Power to become Christian with a condition of inverting the orders of the Church and deluting the Faith is to take away much more than ordinary accrues unto it by such a change It is true the distinction is considerable between the Power of a Christian and unchristian King exerted in this manner because taking the Church in the Largest sense in which all Christians in Communion are of it what Christian Kings act with the Church may in some sense bear the name of the Church as it doth in the State acting according to their secular capacity but much more improperly there than here because there are no inferiour Officers or Magistrates in such a Commonwealth which are not of his founding and institution whatsoever they do referr to him and whatsoever almost he doth is executed by them But Christ as we have shewed having ordained special Officers of his own which derive not their Spiritual Power at all from the Civil and to this end that his Church might be duly taught and governed what is done without the concurrence of these can in no proper sense bear the name of the Church But many say the King is a Mixt person consisting partly of Ecclesiastical and partly Civil Authority but this taken in the ordinary latitude is to begg the Question and more a great deal than at first was demanded For who knows how far this Mixture extends and that it comprehends not the Mystical Power of the Church as well as the Political And how have they proved one more than the other by such a title It were reasonable therefore first to declare his Rights in Ecclesiastical matters as well as Civil and thence conclude he is a Mixt Person and not to affirm barely he is a Mixt Person and from thence inferr they know not what Ecclesiastical power themselves And if he hath such power whether it is immediately of God annexed to his Natural Right or by consent of the Church is attributed unto him For by taking this course we
may clear our selves thus First by putting a difference between the Church so united as is here supposed to rightly denominate it the Catholick or Universal Church and the Church disunited and divided long before any Reformation came to be so much as called for in these western Parts with attempts to put such desires into practice The division or Schism between the Western and Eastern Churches happened about the years 860 and 870 under Nicholas the first of Constantinople and Adrian the Second Bishop of Rome Where the guilt was is of another subject But the Schism rested not here but infested the Greek Church also subdividing the Armenian from the Constantinopolitan Now in such Case as this which is as much different from that of the Donatists who divided from all these entirely united together as may be who can conclude a Division from the Church so divided long before a Schism ipso facto because a Division was made from one Part of it calling itself indeed the Catholick Church Had therefore Reformers so divided from the Catholick Church united as did the Donatists it were more than probable that their division might from thence be known to be Schism without any more ado but it is certain it was quite otherwise And therefore some other Conviction must be expected besides that Characteristick And what must that be The Infallibility of any one Eminent Church which like a City on a Mountain a Beacon on a Hill a Pharus or Lighttower to such as are like to shipwrack their Faith may certainly direct them to a safe Station and Haven And all this to be the Church or See of Rome But alas though this were as desirable as admirable yet we have nothing to induce us to receive it for such but certain prudent inferences that such there is because such there ought to be for the ascertaining dubious minds in the truth and therefore so say they actually it is and lest humane reason should seem too malapert to teach what divine Autority ought to do therefore must the Scripture be canvas'd and brought against the best Presidents in Antiquity to the Contrary to Patronize such necessary Dogms The matter then returns to what we at first propounded viz. the Judging of Schism from the Causes and of the Causes from the Scriptures and the more Genuine and ancient Traditions of Christs Church before such Schism distracted the same These two things therefore we leave to be made Good by Romanists in which they are very defective First that there is any One Notorious infallible Judge actually constituted whereby we may certainly discern the Schismaticalness or Hereticalness of any one Church varying from the truth and this because It were to be wish'd a Judg were somewhere extant Secondly that what ever Security or Safety of Communion is to be found in the Visible Church properly and inseparably belongs to the Roman Church because some of the Ancients tell the time when it did not actually err But if our proofs be much more strong and apparent which declare that actually it doth err and wherein it doth err what an empty and bootless presumption must it needs be to invite to its communion upon her immunity from Erring or to condemn men of Schism for this only That they communicate not with it which is the bold method of Roman Champions THE Second BOOK OF THE FIRST PART CHAP. I. Of the Formal Object of Christian Faith Christ An Entrance to the treating of the Objects of Faith in Particular AND Thus far have we treated of Religion in General and specially of Christian Religion or Faith in its Rule the Scriptures Its Causes its Effects its Contraries its Subject the Church in its several Capacities Now we are briefly to treat of the Particular Object Christian Faith That as God is the true and proper Author of Christian Faith he is also the principal Object is most certain and apparent and is therefore by the Schools called the Formal Object that is either that which it immediately and most properly treats of or for whose sake other things spoken of besides God and Christ are there treated of For other Religions as well as Christian treat of God and the works of God but none treat of God or his works as consider'd in Christ his Son but the Christian For the two Greatest Acts which have any knowledge of of God being Creation and Redemption both these are described unto us in Holy Writ to be wrought by God through Christ Jesus as the Book of Proverbs and of Wisdom intimate to us when they shew how God in Wisdom made the Worlds Christ being the true Wisdom of the Father And more expresly in the entrance into the Gospel of St. John Joh. 1. 2 â— the Word of God being Christ is said to be in the beginning with God and All things were made by him and without him was not any thing made that was made And St. Paul to the Ephesians affirmeth All things to be created by God Eph. 3. 9. Col. 1. 15 16. by Jesus Christ And to the Colossians speaking of Christ the Image of the Invisible God addeth For by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in the Earth Visible and Invisible c. This therefore discriminates the treating of things natural in Christian Theologie from all other Sciences and Theologies that all is spoken of in relation to Christ Jesus Therefore having in the beginning of this Tract spoken of God in General as supposed rather than to be proved in Divinity viz. of his absolute Being his Unity being but one His Infiniteness being all things in Perfection and Power we are here to resume that matter and continue it by a more particular enquiry into the Nature Attributes Acts and Works of God here supposing what before we have spoken of the First notion of Gods Being and those immediately joined with them His Unity and Infiniteness which Infiniteness necessarily inferreth all other Attributes proper to him as of Power Prefence in all places and all times and Omniscience and therefore here we shall speak only of the Nature or Being of God in the more peculiar sense to Christians that is being distinct in Persons as well as One in Nature CHAP. II. Of the special consideration of God as the object of Christian Faith in the Vnity of the Divine Nature and Trinity of Person FROM the Unity or singularity of Gods nature as to number doth flow an Unity and Simplicity of that one Individual Nature in it self For as the Nature of God cannot be found in several and separate Persons subsisting by themselves as may the nature of man so neither ought we to imagin that there is multiplicity of natures constituting the same God For as there are not many Gods differing Generically as there are Bodies Celestial and Podies Terrestial and again of Terrestial some Bodies Elemental and uncompounded naturally Other Mixt and compounded and such are Fish Foul
and Beasts neither can there many as different in kind as Man and Beast are distinct nor in number as men differ one from another so neither can there be One differing as it were from it self in Parts or other like composition of nature as man doth For seeing as Boetius hath observed God Boetius Consoâ—â—â— Lib. 3. â—â—os 10. is that which is most absolute and perfect and than which nothing more excellent can be conceived by the mind of man If more than one could be in nature or number there could not be one most absolute but One more absolute and simple might by the Understanding of Man be conceived which necessarily must be thought to be God rather than those diverse ones And if we should suppose the Nature Individual of God to be made up of several sorts of things and naturesas the Body of man then did we not pitch upon the true Notion of God which we must alwayes suppose to be most perfect But we have more than conjectural knowledge that some things in the world are not compounded at least as we are but of a more pure and simple substance such as we call Spirit And we maâ— well believe that all of that nature are not of equal perfection or if possibly they should that still there is a possibility of a more transcendent purity of subsisting than they are of until we come to the most absolute pure and perfect Being than which nothing can be or conceived to be more Pure and Perfect and that must of necessity be God Again such a composition would destroy the nature of God because such it must be that nothing either in act or Cogitation can possibly precede it but where there are distinct parts or humors concurring to make one Entire thing there a real priority at least of nature must needs be because it cannot be supposed but the Cause must in some manner go before the Effect and such supposed compositions have of the nature of a material Cause to such a thing as they so constitute Thirdly all things of a differing nature concurring to make One cannot move themselves nor of themselves meet with such concord as to make one thing without the power and wisdome of some third Superiour Agent bringing them so together So that to suppose such a God is to suppose one Above and before him who should Effect all this which is repugnant to the nature of God Lastly nothing can be so well set together but it may be supposed to be undone and dissolved again either by the nature of things themselves tending to separation or by the same power or if they will fortune as some have called it which brought them together This is yet further confirmed unto us from the Holy Scriptures which were best able to reveal the nature of God unto us so far as was expedient or perhaps for us in this life possible to understand where God most admirably describeth himself thus I am that I am which is his name for Exod. 3. 14 15. ever which no created thing can claim to it The like to which is that name Jehovah whereby he calls himself signifying an absolute essential Being For nothing besides God can define God Every thing but he is defined by another thing which differs in some manner from it but God is defined by himself because nothing can be Higher than he and nothing in him is really distinct from him as in other things And therefore truly may it be said of God The Lord thy God is one Lord i. e. One in number nature Deut. 6. 4. and Simplicity of Being And therefore such definitions of God as Joh. 4. 24. 1 Tim. 1. 25. Psal 90. 2. Jer. 23. 23. 34. Psal 130. v. 7. 1 Tim. 6. 16. this God is a Spirit or Substance Spiritual Uncreated Most Pure Eternal Infinite Incomprehensible Immutable Everliving c. Are rather to be understood Negatively than Positively that is that God is so a Spirit that he is infinitely above the nature of Corporeal Beings though he be not so a Spirit as to be of the Nature of Angels or such like Spirits but much more transcends them in excellency than they do the most gross and earthly Bodies And said to be Infinite because no limitation of his Being or Power or Presence can be supposed which is commonly called the Negative way of attaining knowledg of Gods nature viz by removing or excluding all imperfections of the Creature from God the Creatour And Positively ascribing all things to him which appear to humane understanding most Perfect and Excellent CHAP. III. Of the Vnity of the Divine Nature as to the Simplicity of it And how the Attributes of God are consistent with that Simplicity BUT against the fore said Simplicity seem to make several things ascribed unto God and believed of him as First Attributes of God as Most Holy Most Wise most Just Most Merciful and such like Secondly the descriptions made of God in Holy Scripture Thirdly The Existence of God in a triplicity of Persons Of the first we shall here speak most briefly as no difficulty For we are to understand them not as really distinct things from the Nature of God himself which is most simple but only Relatively and after the manner of mans conception who being able no otherwise than from sensible and natural occasions to understand God must of necessity frame to himself such affections and severally distinguish them for to exercise the several Acts of Service due to God For if Man consider'd God altogether under one manner of Being then could he not sometimes humble himself under his wrath and displeasure conceived for his sins Then could he not at other times rejoyce in his mercy and express his thankfulness for his grace and Goodness received Then could he not implore his aid against unjust dealings and injuries suffered in the world Then could he not Pray unto him to relieve him in his necessities and straits none could crave supply from his bounty and fulness in his wants These distinct conceptions therefore of God are requisite though God be absolutely the same And God having vouchsafed to express himself in such manner in his Word doth thereby give warrant for us to be affected alwayes provided that we proceed not to any gross imagination of him as really so affected and compounded but according to a Metaphorical or Metonymical sense familiarly used in all authors as well as in the Scriptures For it is to be noted the Scriptures do choose to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost Homil. 15. in Joann in compliance with mans capacity not according to the dignity of the subject of which it treats nor according to the Splendour and illuminated state of the Understandings receiving divine Revelations but according to the proportion of mens ordinary apprehensions to which they are directed as Philosophy hath observed that All Agents do work agreeable to the condition of the
otherwise in the sacred Mystery of the Persons and Nature of God for the Nature of God is numerically the same and yet is without inequality or division communicated totally and entirely to every Person Again other Persons are of a distinct subsistence that is subsist apart but the Vide Ruffinâ—â— Histor Eccles l. 1. c. 29. Persons in the Trinity subsist not distinctly because all equally have their subsistence in that Divine Nature but they may be said to exist distinctly or have a diversity of existence as they are so many Persons From the Point thus briefly opened and stated these four things are to be asserted and believed First That God is but one in Nature Secondly That there is a three-fold Personality in that Divine Nature Thirdly That these three are distinct and how Fourthly That they are the same in subsisting Of the first it hath in the beginning been sufficiently spoken and may well here be taken for granted The second is now to be explained and that in these following Enquiries First By the Grounds of Natural Reason Secondly The Grounds of the Old Testament for the same Thirdly The Opinion of the Church of the Jews concerning the Trinity Fourthly The Grounds of the Gospel founding this Doctrine The reason why the first is called in question is because God is generally affirmed both by the Histories of all Ages and People to be known to the Gentiles naturally i. e. by a connatural Instinct and that many of them did worship the true God according to that Law and State of Nature in which they lived But if God essentially and immutably consists of three Persons in one Nature Divine they that worshipped God otherwise than in the Holy Trinity worshipped him not as he is and they that worship him not as he is worship a false God and they that worship a false God worship an Idol And hence it is that divers learned men have said They who worship God out of the Trinity worship an Idol and not the true God which severe Argument concludes as well against the Jews as Gentiles if as some believe they understood not God in the Trinity but worshipped him in the simplicity of a Deity only according to the way of Nature But if this only men were taught by nature for that men were by a light of nature led to worship not only God but one God Reason and the Scriptures inform us that they should worship a God and him alone and did not intimate withal so much of the true Nature of God as was absolutely necessary to be known to the worshipping the true what benefit could it be to man to have such an imperfect knowledge of him whenas still he must worship an Idol God being the same under the Law of Nature as he is under the Gospel of Grace For as that man who acknowledgeth but one God should commit Idolatry who should strongly imagine and firmly perswade himself that God was of the fashion and foâ—m of Man and worship him as such a one sitting in a fair and glorious room in Heaven So no less in reason doth it seem that he should in like manner offend who doth believe no distinction of the Deity into the Trinity of Persons but acknowledges but one Person in the Divine Nature The reason of both is because he worships him neither way as he is and that not in relative Attributes in order to us but absolute essential manner of Being Now no man that thinks of another otherwise than he is in Essence thinks really of that but some other thing To vindicate then both Jew and Gentile from such gross error even in the Object of Worship and not only them but Nature it self from misinforming them it is said that the Gentile had some light apprehension of the Deity under this notion And that first from Tradition of the most ancient Patriarchs who undoubtedly were sufficiently instructed in that Deity And that this Tradition was so conveyed to the ears of some prime Philosophers or exposed to their view in the monuments of ancient dayes that they have committed the same to writing as divers of their Books still extant intimate unto us though obscurely Secondly The many footsteps of this great Mystery found in the course of Nature do according to many wise men suggest to an attentive mind the Nature of God as now received which others have at large pursued imitating herein St. Augustine in his Book of the Trinity wherein he endeavoureth to describe Lib. 10. 11. the manner of this Mystery from the internal senses of Understanding Will and Memory and external of Apprehension Imagination and common Sensation all which agree in one and proceed from one But in this method no sure footing can be found for more serious and solid certification of a man though we should yield some glimpses of that divine light to shine from thence for the Book of the Creature wherein God is to be read doth not deliver all things equally clear to us But first having plainly made known the thing it self leaves us to seek from what we know imperfectly of God to procure by due worship and Petition a farther insight into that mystery which being in some measure better instructed in from above things below may confirm us in the same Thirdly It seems to me that naturally not taking Nature strictly for a necessary and full assurance but tacit at least intimation there is implied somewhat of the Trinity of Persons from the too common error of acknowledging more Gods than one For as we have said it being a Doctrine of Nature no less apparent that God is one than that he is simply it could scarce become so general an error that men should contrary to such natural light worship a plurality or variety of Gods but that there was somewhat received together with that Principle which might incline and expose them to error and that was a general Notion whether by Tradition or Nature that the Divine Nature was diversified But how this could consist with the other Principle not being capable to understand they easily fell from their first and more sound Notion of the Unity of the Divine Nature and took up the opinion of many Gods distinct as well in Nature it self as Persons And do we wonder that they should forsake the truest notion of a Deity in this abstruseness when in those things that are confessedly clear to ordinary Reasons by nature they degenerated to a little less than brutish stupidity being as the Scriptures tell us of some things willingly ignorant 2 Pet. 3. 5. But it were much more absurd that the peculiar people of God the Jews should be ignorant of this so necessary a Point and yet we find that now-adaâ—s they declare against it expresly denying withal this to have been any branch of the Faith professed by their Progenitors But we need not be very anxious about their Authority now adayes it being most easie to
prophesieth Isa 61. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me for that he hath annointed me to c. which Christ himself applied to himself Luk. 4. 18. Secondly The Attributes of the same Spirit infer a Deity as Omniscience 1 Cor. 2. The Spirit searcheth all things yea the deep things of God 1 Cor. 2. 10 11. And lest this should be understood of a search without success or full knowledge it followeth For what man knoweth the things of man save the spirit of a man which is in him Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God Creation The Spirit of God hath made me and the Job 33. 4. breath of the Almighty hath given me life saith holy Job And Christ casting out Devils by the Spirit of God and the Apostles miraculous acts demonstrating Mat. 12. 28. 1 Cor. 2. 4. the Spirit of God in them the preaching of St. Paul being in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power i. e. being so powerful in outward acts and miracles that it was sufficient conviction that he spake and wrought by the Spirit but miracles cannot be wrought by any thing less than a divine Power And by St. Peter it is called The Spirit of Glory 1 Pet. 4. 14. 1 Cor. 3. 16 17 and of God By St. Paul it is called God himself where he saith Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you If any man defile the Temple of God him shall God destroy for the Temple of God is holy which Temple are ye Here we plainly see how the Temple of God and the Temple of the holy Ghost are the same thing And thus we see confirm'd what St. John very plainly and positively 1 Joh. 5. 7. asserteth of this Mystery That there are three that bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And this may suffice to have spoken according to our purpose compendiously as well of the Unity as Trinity of these Persons in the God-head only adding without any long or curious enquiry the several Notions and Idioms whereby they are distinct in our Faith The Property of the first Person is to be the Fountain and after the manner of first Principle of the other to whom therefore some ascribe a dignity of order above the other two though not of time or duration being all co-eternal and the one not to be conceived anterior to the other Nor of Nature as if the divine Nature were unequally communicated to them but that they are coequal in Being and in Power or Acting externally Another Property of the first Person is to be a Father in respect of the Son the second Person and together with the Son to bear such a relation to the third the holy Spirit for which no proper name hath been yet found out and whether it be possible to express the same aptly in one word I much question It is commonly called Procession on the part of the holy Ghost and in general on the parts of the other two Persons Production which yet is â—imited to the excluding of such a Production as answers Generation and much more of Creation besides which natural Reason can comprehend no other But Christian Faith obliges us to contain our selves modestly in the general Notion of Proceeding Some have indeed presumed to distinguish the production of the Son by the Father from the production of the holy Ghost by the Father and the Son in that the Son proceeds from the Father Intellectually as a word is conceived in the mind but the holy Spirit as act of the joynt will of Father and Son by way of Love Of which explication I shall suspend all sentence leaving others to judge CHAP. V. Of the proper Acts of God Creation and Preservation or Providence What is Creation That God created all things and how Of the Ministers of Gods Providence towards inferior Creatures the Angels of God Their Nature and Office towards Man especially THAT God is the proper Object of Christian Faith or Divinity not only as principal but as all other things therein treated relate to him is before shewed Now therefore we proceed from the Creator to the Creature to which the two hands of God are more visibly and eminently extended or stretched out The first In the Creation it self The other In the Providence of God over the works of his hands as the Scriptures phrase is And first Of Creation we understanding it to be after the nature of an Act must find out the proper term or object of it which is contained in that received definition thereof Creation is the production of a thing out of nothing or more plainly a making something of nothing In which we are not so grosly to conceive of Gods Act as if he made the world so of nothing as a man makes a Statue of something but of nothing or out of nothing is as much as from nothing or nothing concurring by way of pre-existent matter to produce such an effect For if any thing had been which had not its first Being from the first Cause of all God that must have been God also or there could not be said to have been any God at all because there could be no order where was no first and second and where matter is supposed to have been eternal there no priority of time can be admitted So that either such thing must have been God as we have seen in the Relations in the Trinity or no God at all because that is not God to which an equal in any respect distinct in nature from him may be found for Gods Nature is to be above all Neither can any reason be possibly alledged whereby it should appear that if simple matter as some call it might have subsisted before it was made simply by God the Sun and Moon and other compound bodies in Nature might not have pre-existed and prevented Gods workmanship or why an imperfect Being should have the dignity denied to a more perfect but at the pleasure and will of the supream Agent disposing all things For that which was not at all produced by another must necessarily 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Athanasius dâ— Incarnat spring out of nothing or of it self And why might not a Man or Horse or any other thing do so as well as infamous Matter Furthermore Unless there were a productive Power in God of something out of nothing the Power of God would not answer the Nature of God The Nature of God is infinite so therefore must his Power be but the Power of God could not be known to be infinite if such an infinite effect were not producible by him Lastly This denial of Gods Power to produce even the first imaginable matter would also destroy his Power in creating any thing not consisting of such matter and so should the production of Spirits utterly be
which Seneca noted but could give no reason of No man saith he is of a good mind before he is of a bad one we are all prevented And in the same place he saith No body is with difficulty reduced to Nature but he that hath made a defection from it Now supposing that God made all things perfect and instituted the nature of man more inclinable to acts agreeable to that perfection than to the contrary whence can it come that contrariwise Man naturally inclineth to that which is base and unworthy and is hardly taken off that corrupt way of acting contrary to reason and vertue and reduced to a perfection becoming his Institution and End but that the very principle of his nature is hurt and the root corrupt And because nothing can be Author of its own Principles by which it subsists no man can be said by his own act to have corrupted them Indeed we say a Man is of corrupt Principles when he hath contracted some evil habits disposing to wickedness but that is accessorie and not innate to him And if it be farther urged That no man can be guilty by anothers fault nor corrupted by anothers principle it is answered as before so long as it is only that others and not his own in some degree For as Thomas hath distinguished There is a Principle of Nature and a Principle of a Person and a Sin of Nature and a Sin of a Person Adam had not only principles whereby he himself subsisted but also was the principle of all his Successours So that Original sin was as well the sin of the one as the other So that from the depraved will of Adam as the first principle of all came the corruption of the Will of all Whereupon speaking strictly as we have said this Original sin is not properly sin in the Infant but a want of Original Justice seizing him and exposing him to destruction as Thomas and Catharinus also have taught which two are the effects of the sin of Adam upon himself and children but the very formal Reason of sin in his Posterity For where as some say It is natural Concupiscence moving to Evil and others That it is the absence of Divine Justice and Grace they differ rather in the niceties of speech than in the matter it self For to me it seems that the loss of Divine Perfection and Grace superadded to the nature of Man whereby he was abundantly able to secure himself and glorifie God in that state of happiness most neerly expresses the nature of it as in the sons of Adam For in Adam himself it was actual disobedience but Concupiscence inordinate doth rather express the consequence of it For upon that desolation in the soul of Man quickly arose a disorder of the inferiour Affections which by a general name is called Concupiscence or Lust by the Apostle in his Seventh Chapter to the Romans And Natural it is called because as out of the cursed ground sprang up briers thorns weeds and thistles where more useful fruit of the earth was intended so upon this curse of mans soul Evil motions arose to the hurrying him to Actual sin being themselves really sinful Again it is observable for the true resolution of the Question That there is commonly an ambiguity in this tearm Concupiscence it being sometimes taken for the act and exercise of that vitious principle in man fallen and sometimes for the Pravitie and degenerate temper of the soul making it prone to actual sins This latter is that which is properly called Original Sin though more properly Original unholiness or want of that instituted Integrity with which man was at first endowed and in it three things are to be considered First the privation of Supernatural Good Secondly Proneness to unnatural Evil against God Thirdly Odiousness and Culpableness before God who must needs be offended at the sight of so much deformity in his Creature contrary to his first Institution of it and Intention though this evil habitude should never break out into actual Rebellion against him by the exercise or putting it in execution by actual Concupiscence against the Law of God St. James seemeth Jam. 1. 14. to justifie this distinction where he saith Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed This gives us the original Lust or Concupiscence which inclines and moves to sin and to this is it to be imputed that a man so easily is withdrawn from truth and righteousness and noble acts becoming his high nature He goeth on Then when Lust hath conceived it bringeth forth Sin c. that is when the Radical Concupiscence or Concupiscibleness in man becomes impregnated and matured by outward opportunities and occasions of sinning it bringeth forth into outward act sin and the event and consequence of this sin is death So that the innate Lust lurking in the Soul and not actuated by outward occasions either inwardly to effect and desire or outwardly to act sin is not properly sin but metonymically only either as it is the effect of Adams sin or the cause of our sins but it is properly odious to God and exposing us to his heavy wrath so far at least as is seen in the deprivation of that be atitude to which man was at first designed And this exactly agrees with the nature of that sin For as that which was in Adam was actual disobedience in his Posterity is only want of that perfection which was due to their nature So Adam not only incurred the loss of that bliss he was capable of and in the ready way to enjoy but likewise the punishment of Sense answerable to his Sin of Commission and his Posterity was made subject to the punishment and loss of Gods favour and that bliss they were in Adam once ordained unto But when their Sins become Actual they are subject to punishment of Pain and torment for the same And by this the way is well prepared to make answer to that common doubt concerning the effect of Baptism and the state of the Regenerate in reference to Original sin and Concupiscence viz. whether Concupiscence remaining after Baptism in the Regenerate be sin or not Scriptures are alledged with great colour on both sides It is observed by Bishop Davenant that St. Paul calls Original Concupiscence sin in fourteen Davenant Deâ—â—rm â— several places in his sixth seventh and eighth Chapter to the Romans which if so Original sin it self must needs be oftner mentioned in Scripture than will be granted by many For mine own particular I see none of those places so exprest in the description of it that the law of Sin the Body Lex Peccati est violentiâ— consuctudinis qua trabit tenetur etiam invitus animus â—â— merito quo in cam volens illabitur Aug. in Confess Lib 3 c. 5. of Sin the Law of the Members the Lust of the Mind and Flesh and some other expressions to the same effect may not be
as of the only begotten of the Father And when St. Paul saith that God sent Rom. 8. 3. his Son in the likeness of sinful Flesh and for sin condemned sin in the Flesh he implyeth that there were two tearms considered in Christ as in all other things sent First there is the Person by whom or from whom the Party is sent and that here was God Secondly there was the Party or tearm to whom and that was either to the World in general or to that individual substance of Flesh so assumed by him and which is here intended Now it cannot be that the Act of sending should be the same with making but first a Thing is before it is sent and the rearm to which must be distinct from that which is sent Therefore Christ according to the Phrase of holy Scriptures being sent to take Flesh must have of necessity a subsistence before which subsistence must be of a Divine Nature as is also witnessed in the Epistle to the Hebrews For as much then as children Hebr. 2. 14. are partakers of flesh and bloud he also himself took part of the same That is the person of Christ took part of the mass of humane Flesh and Nature when he was formed of the substance of his Mother in her womb And in that it follows Verily he took not on him the nature of Angels but the seed of Abraham v. 16. What can be more necessarily implyed than a Person prae-existing to whom according to the nature of the thing it was indifferent to have taken the nature of Angels or the Flesh of man and that it pleased God to send his Son to man and it also pleased his Son to elect humane nature to dwell in so that the manner of Christ thus consisting of two Natures is matter of difficulty rather than the thing it self i. e. how two Natures can be and how they were and are actually united in Christ Suidas observes ten sorts of unions to be found in the World of which Suidas in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. Qu. 2. 1. we cannot stay here to speak Thomas reduces all unto three One union is of things that are absolute and perfect in themselves as many stones make one heap Another is when things in nature perfect are so united that they cease thereby to be perfect of themselves as when the Elements concurr to make one perfect mixt body Thirdly when diverse things being in nature imperfect not absolutely but in that they are naturally capable of greater perfection and tend thereunto as the soul and body and the several members of the body constitute one man But after none of these exactly can Christ be said to consist of two natures united Not the first way because such things are rather relatively and denominatively one than really Not the second because it were to suppose that the Divine Nature could be alterable and mutable and because if such a composition were made both the Divine and Humane nature must loose their natural being and kind and so neither of both remain but a third thing Not the last because both Divine and humane nature are perfect of themselves in their kind So that in truth speaking strictly no precedent in Nature can be found answering this Union called Hypostatical or Persâ—nal because it is the union of two intire Natures into one Person and that the Second person of the Trinity God blessed for evermore But of the former the last representeth this Mystery most clearly and is often used by the ancient Fathers to express the same and especially by Athanasius in his Creed who thus declareth this mistery sufficiently to the sober and modest and not curious mind Christ is God of the substance of the Father begotten before the worlds and man of the substance of his mother born in the world Perfect God and perfect man of a reasonable soul and humane flesh subsisting Equal to God as touching his God-head and inferior to his Father as touching his Manhood Who although he be God and man yet he is not two but one Christ One not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh but by taking of the manhood into God One altogether not by confusion of substance but by unity of person For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man so God and Man is one Christ Now the ground of this great mistery is taken partly from the testimonies and descriptions of Christ the Mediator made in the Scripture where besides those already given diverse proper to God are ascribed to him and many which are proper to humane nature are attributed to him and because there can be nothing more absurd in nature or Christian Religion than to imagine that Christ is more than one Person one Son one Mediator therefore it follows necessarily that this one Person must consist of more than one nature and partly because the end of Christ being Incarnate seemed to require this most necessarily As First there was all reason that the nature which sinned and offended should suffer and satisfie but none but humane nature had so sinned Secondly that he should be a Prophet to instruct and teach his Church Thirdly that he should be a King to rule and direct his Church according to the Prophesies of old concerning him For Moses truly said unto the Fathers a Prophet shall Acts 3. 22. the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like unto me which must be of humane condition Now according to this union of the Divine and Humane nature in one Person may Christ in some sense be said to be a Mediator Essential being a Mean Person not simply God nor simply Man but this is not the proper Mediation of Christ between God and Man but this rather consisteth in Acts performed and Offices of Christ And these acts of Christ may be distinguished into two sorts Preparatory and Consummatory The former I call preparatory because they were ordained as useful expediencies not as essential to Reconciliation between the parties at distance And the first act of this nature was after the manner of Civil Arbitrements to take the Case into serious consideration and to deliberate with himself about the most proper means of attaining an amicable composure of differences on foot And as the Scripture Heb. 2. 14. saith forasmuch then as the children of God to be redeemed are partakers of flesh and blood he also himself likewise took part of the same that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death that is the Devil It appearing unto him that there was no such proper or convenient means to Arbitrate between God and Man as the taking upon him humane nature For by this means as Moses is said to be the Intercessour medius et sequester between God and the People of Israel and therefore the Law is said to have been given in the hand of a Mediatour Deut. 5. 5. Gal. 3. Hebr. 9. 15.
to the phrase of Scripture often ascribed unto God As where we read a Sleep from the Lord was fallen upon the servants of Saul that is a prosound or as it 1 Sam. 26. 12. is there said a deep sleep though I deny not but this might be literally verified And we read according to the original of Oaks of God and Hills of God which import no more than exceeding high and stately ones And I make no doubt but when it is said The sons of God saw the daughters of Genes 6. 2. men that they were fair c. Angels are not thereby intended and doubt whether as is commonly conjectur'd The children of God or holy Seed be there aimed at For no reason can be given why Gyants should be rather born of them than wicked men but rather that they were a race of Men of extraordinary stature called therefore the Sons of God because of their excessive greatness as all other mighty things are said to be of God in which sense egregious hardness is imputed unto God But to the main difficulty we must answer from the various manifestations of Gods love to Mankind And where can we better begin to judge hereof than from the first and second state of Man his Institution and Restauration It is here taken for granted That whole Mankind fell at once in Adam from its pristine perfection And it is no less apparent that God purposing to restore Man again and recover him treated as it were and concluded with the same person Adam and in the same capacity that he fell in He fell as is said equally to all men future without any discrimination of worse or better higher or lower and God treated and covenanted with him without any clause of distinction or exception of any one single person For in truth though all actions relate immediately to persons yet the substance of the Treaty concerned principally the nature in general of Man the promises of God being made with the Seed of the Woman and Man without any restriction or limitation as St. Paul teaches thus saying God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself by which 2 Cor. 5. 19. is signified a general and indistinct gift of God towards the lapsed mass of Mankind which gift likewise is expressed in the same latitude by St. John For God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever Joh. 3. 16. believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life But if there were in the first intention of God any disparity in exhibiting his son to the world of that nature that thereby certain persons should be excluded remedilesly from the number for whom Christ dyed then could it no more be said that Christ became incarnate for them then for the Devils whose nature Christ took not But surely there was a distinction made between reprobate Men and reprobate Spirits But this is not answered by the distinction in general of Sufficiencie and Efficiencie or efficacie of Christs death used by Perkins saying That Christs death was sufficient for all but became not effectual to all This is notoriously true and undenyable and that as he sayes it was sufficient for the redemption of many worlds if case required For so it might be said It was sufficient for the redemption of Devils too for ought we know And what of this But Perkins seems to make a little bolder and farther step where he grants a kind of efficacie too but somewhat of the harshest sense For distinguishing between Potential and Actual Efficacie he addeth Christ dyed potentially effectually for all men but not actually effectually But this potential efficacie rightly understood amounts to no more than a simple Sufficiencie in regard that this Vertue according to him was never intended by God to be actuated in the behalf of the unpredestinated to life and glory A second prejudice against that interpretation is That the Scripture speaking of the death of Christ and his Passion doth not speak of it as of a sufficient rate and price in general but a payment also actually made for all for such is the importance of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which signifie an actual payment in relation to an obligation of Debt or Bondage which places of Scripture we have before given Thirdly the Decree of exhibiting Christ actually and effectually in special manner to some elect persons who receive him by Faith being thereunto moved and enabled by Gods inspirations is altogether posteriour to the exhibition of Christ to Mankind in general and therefore can be no real cause of Gods distinct intention then or that God should at his first propounding put a difference in the manner of exhibiting Christs Persons For all this while we must allow two distinct Periods of Gods favourable Providence toward Man in restoring him the one in his general Ordination of his Son to redeem him the other in the special collation and application of that benefit to man God gave his Son and in him his Obedience both in life and death to All men But the effect and benefit of these redounded actually only to some select persons This latter is undenyable by all sides For who did ever say that all men were actually saved by Christ I know the former i. e. That Christ was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Payment made for all is rejected by Perkins and his Assertour and Apologist Twisse And true it is that in very tearms above-mentioned it is scarce to be found that Christ gave himself without a note of Restitution and Limitation such as Many or To them that receive him and believe in him But then as the Scripture saith not in express tearms that Christ was a Ransom or Payment made for all so neither doth it say Only for the Elect exclusively And when it saith Christ was the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World And that God John 1. 29. John 3. 16. 1 John 4. 14. so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son And elsewhere That the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the World We shall not need to shew how the Scripture doth frequently use the word World in opposition to true Believers as where St. John hath these words The World knew him John 1. John 17. 9. not And again I pray for them I pray not for the World c. and so in other places which do imply a Right the very Wicked and Reprobates have in Christ And whereas a principal argument is drawn from the words in St. John last cited to prove an inequality of interest in Christs death and mediation thus Christ only dyed for them he prayed for but Christ prayed not for the World i. e. the Wicked Therefore he dyed not for them If this were true that Christ never prayed for the wicked or for those that were not then given actually
A Course of Divinity OR AN INTRODUCTION To the Knowledge of the True Catholick Religion Especially as Professed by the CHURCH OF ENGLAND In two Parts The one containing The Doctrine of Faith The other The Form of Worship By MATTHEW SCRIVENER LONDON Printed by Tho. Roycroft for Robert Clavil in Little Brittain MDCLXXIV THE ENTRANCE FOR the better conceiving and judging of this ensuing Treatise I have held it necessary Christian Reader to premise and propound to thy consideration these two things principally viz. The Occasions me thereunto moving and the manner of proceeding in it One Occasion given me was the multitude and variety of the like Books set forth by other Churches whereby not only the persons under them were trained up in the Knowledge and Faith professed there but the minds of many of our Church were prepossessed and their manners swayed by such Doctrines which seemed to me as forreign in nature as place to those of our Church and the Ancient I could have here given the Reader the names of above fourty Tractates of this nature many of which have been translated into the English Tongue to the corrupting of weaker judgments And not so much as the Christians of New-England have been wanting to the Interest of their Religion so far as to â—mit so advantagious a Work but by John Norton Teacher as he calls himself of the Church at Ipswich in New-England have collected certain Principal Heads of Divinity into a Body called The Orthodox Evangelist And as the great number of forreign Books have incited me so the Paucity of the like in and from our Church hath no less emboldened me to undertake this I am prevented by Industrious Mr. Baxter in giving any account of such who have made attempts this way and what hath been done by them without bringing their design to desired issue Only that excellently Learned Person Mr. Thorndyck passed over by him in his declining years hath given greater demonstrations of his zeal and learning in behalf of the English Church than any extant before him in one continued Body purposing a Review in the Latin Tongue wherein he intended to have more clearly expressed his meaning in some things of which it might be said as of St. Pauls writings they were hard to be understood and he himself saw to be wrested to evil ends and senses but his declining body and years would not suffer him to accomplish so good a Work What Mr. Baxer himself hath performed in his late large Volume I shall not give my censure but how well he is qualified for such a Work I may presume to give the Reader in the words of Esâ— Baxterus câ—â—is desiinatis sententiâ—s minimè omnium hominun addictus ut qui non plus faveat Presbyteriants quam Independentibus nec est infensus Hierarchicis sed medius dubiusque partibus nisi in causa Dei sanctitatis vitae Ludovicus Molinaeus Patroni p. 12. a great admirer of him Baxter saith he is of all men least addicted to any resolute opinions being one that favoureth not more the Presbyterians than the Independents neither is he sharp against the Episcopal Party but between them and doubtful what side to take except in the cause of God and holiness of Life The greatest part of which Character is but too true being as much with me as if he had said He were of no Religion at all For however Beza and Cartwrights opinions of a certain and definite Discipline Essentially requisite to a Church as a Church is to Christian Religion be by Puritans laid aside for the present and like embers buried up in the Ash-heap till they shall rise again next day and kindle a new fire and now nothing but Get Christ Purity of Ordinances is notorious amongst them to the Vulgar yet when people are deceived by that they call Pure and Powerful Preaching of Christ into new Societies of their own Manufacture then presently doth most apparent Reason and inevitable Necessity constrain them to invent and impose new Covenants and Bonds to conserve them in their new Fraternities contrary altogether to that General Liberty before propounded and promised them No more than doth the charm of Christian Liberty sound in their ears No more of the free use of Indifferent things so contrary to the Decrees and Practise of a Church but then come into credit again such sayings as these There must be Order There must be Government There must be unity in the Church dealing herein with poor simple Christians as men do with their horse they would take up carrying in one hand provender which they show him and make a great noise with and behind them in the other hand a bridle to hold him fast to them and ride him as they please And if Mr. Baxter be of no regulated determinate Society or Church adheres to no particular Communion submits to no Government nor Governours in special but to all or any as it should seem be must bear it as well as he can when he bears himself not out of passion or envie at his new and singular device of going to heaven but justice and reason censur'd for a man of no Religion at all or if any of his own making which teaches him to persevere in that fond and haughty design he once had when he took upon him to top his Brethren of the Ministery in the Western Parts and to frame Grounds and Aphorisms for both Civil and Ecclesiastical Politie of his own with as little judgment and humility as safety to the Church and State as if he had aim'd at nothing so much as to be according to forreign Phrase and Presidents an Extraordinary Pastor without any Original or Rule but from himself but failing of this he now thinks it best to become an Extraordinary Sheep of all and no fold writing Books as uncertain and contrary as himself on all sides and for all Palates as if he had found out the Universal Character for Religions like to that of Languages in which all men doing as he wou'd have them shou'd agree in going to Heaven And now all that lately and most officious and serviceable method of mounting our selves and crushing and trampling on the necks of others and them our Governours by most unjust and cruel acts most false and bitter language must be laid aside and thrown overboard as the Turks did their Cemiters when they lost the day at the battle of Lepanto not because they liked them not but because they could do them no more service and least they should come into the Christians hands and be used against them So indeed Sectaries now-a-dayes call for modesty and moderation on all hands casting away that unchristian language which stood them in so much stead against them they resolved to destroy not without horrible Success And yet we see while they call so charitably for moderation and would have no revilings of them that differ in opinions only their churlish nature and
of Christ and his Members The Church of Christ taken specially for the Elect who shall infallibly be saved never visible But taken for true Professours of the Faith must alwayes be visible though not conspicuous in comparison of other Religions or Heresies Chap. XXVIII Of the outward and visible Form of Christs Church Christ ordained One particularly What that was in the Apostles dayes and immediately after The vanity of such places of Scripture as are pretended against the Paternal Government of the Church Chap. XXIX Of the necessity of holding visible communion with Christs Church Knowledge of that visible Church necessary to that communion Of the Notes to discern the true Church how far necessary Of the nature or condition of such Notes in general Chap. XXX Of the Notes of the true Church in particular Of Antiquity Succession Unity Universality Sanctity How far they are Notes of the true Church Chap. XXXI Of the Power and Acts of the Church Where they are properly posited Of the fountain of the Power derived to the Church Neither Prince nor People Author of the Churches Power But Christ the true Head of the Church The manner how Christs Church was founded Four Conclusions upon the Premisses 1. That there was alwayes distinction of persons in the Church of Christ 2. The Church was alwayes administer'd principally by the Clergy 3. The Rites generally received in the Church necessary to the conferring Clerical power and office 4. All are Usurpers of Ecclesiastical power who have not thus received it In what sense Kings may be said to be Heads of the Church Chap. XXXII Of the exercise of political power of the Church in Excommunication The Grounds and Reasons of Excommunication More things than what is of Faith matter sufficient of Excommunication Two Objections answered Obedience due to commands not concerning Faith immediately Lay-men though Princes cannot Excommunicate Mr. Selden refuted Chap. XXXIII Of the second branch of Ecclesiastical Power which is Mystical or Sacramental Hence of the Nature of Sacraments in general Of the vertue of the Sacraments Of the sign and thing signified That they are alwayes necessarily distinct Intention how necessary to a Sacrament Sacraments effectual to Grace Chap. XXXIV Of the distinction of Sacraments into Legal and Evangelical Of the Covenants necessary to Sacraments The true difference between the Old and New Covenant The Agreement between Christ and Moses The Agreements and Differences between the Law and the Gospel Chap. XXXV Considerations on the Sacraments of the Law of Moses Of Circumcision Of the Reason Nature and Ends of it Of the Passover the Reason why it was instituted It s use Chap. XXXVI Of the Evangelical Sacraments Of the various application of the name Sacrament Two Sacraments univocally so called under the Gospel only The others equivocally Five conditions of a Sacrament Of the reputed Sacraments of Orders Matrimony and Extream Unction in particular Chap. XXXVII Of Confirmation What it is The Reasons of it The proper Minister of it Of Unction threefold in Confirmation Of Sacramental Repentance and Penance The effects thereof Chap. XXXVIII Of the proper Affections of Repentance Compunction Attrition and Contrition Attrition is an Evangelical Grace as well as Contrition Of Confession its Nature Grounds and Uses How it is abused The Reasons against it answered Chap. XXXIX Of Satisfaction an act of Repentance Several kinds of Satisfaction How Satisfaction upon Repentance agrees with Christs Satisfaction for us How Satisfaction of injuries necessary Against Indulgences and Purgatory Chap. XL. Of Baptism The Authour Form Matter and Manner of Administration of it The general necessity of it The efficacie in five things Of Rebaptization that it is a prophanation but no evacuation of the former Of the Character in Baptism Chap. XLI Of the second principal Sacrament of the Gospel the Eucharist Its names Its parts Internal and External It s Matter Eread and Wine and the necessity of them Of Leavened and Unleavened Bread Of breaking the Bread in the Sacrament Chap. XLII Of the things signified in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the Body and Bloud of Christ How they are present in the Eucharist How they are received by Communicants Sacramentally present a vain invention All Presence either Corporal or Spiritual Of the real Presence of the signs and things signified The real Presence of the signs necessarily infer the Presence of the Substance of Bread and Wine Signs and things signified alwayes distinct Chap. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered Chap. XLIV Of the Sacrifice of the Altar What is a Sacrifice Conditions necessary to a Sacrament How and in what sense there is a Sacrifice in the Eucharist Chap. XLV Of the form of consecrating the Elements Wherein it consisteth Whether only Recitative or Supplicatory Chap. XLVI Of the participation of this Sacrament in both kinds The vanity of Papists allegations to the contrary No Sacramental receiving of Christ in one kind only How Antiquity is to be understood mentioning the receiving of one Element only The pretended inconveniences of partaking in both kinds insufficient Of adoration of the Eucharist Chap. XLVII The Conclusion of the Treatise of the subject of Christian Faith the Church by the treating of Schism contrary to the visible Church Departure from the Faith real Schism not formally as to the outward Form Of the state of Separation or Schism Of Separation of Persons Co-ordinate and Subordinate Of Formal and Virtual Schism All Heresie virtually Schism not formally Separation from an Heretical Society no Schism From Societies not heretical Schism Heretical Doctrine or Discipline justifie Separation How Separation from a true Church is Schism and how not In what sense we call the Roman Church a true Church Some Instances of heretical Errors in the Roman Church Of the guilt of Schism Of the notorious guilt of English Sectaries The folly of their vindications That th Case of them and us is altogether different from that of us and the Church of Rome Not lawful to separate from the Universal Church The Contents of the Second Book of the First Part. Chap. 1. OF the formal Object of Christian Faith Christ An Entrance to the treating of the Objects of Faith in particular Chap. II. Of the special consideration of God as the object of Christian Faith in the Unity of the Divine Nature and Trinity of Persons in that Chap. III. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature as to the simplicity of it And how the Attributes of God are consistent with that simplicity Chap. IV. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature as to number and how the Trinity of Persons may consist with the Unity and Simplicity of the Deity Of the proper notions pertaining to the Mystery of the Trinity viz. Essence Substance Nature Person The distinction of the Persons in the Trinity Four enquiries moved How far the Gentiles and Jews understood the Trinity The Proof of the Doctrine of the Trinity from the New Testament and the explication of
it Chap. V. Of the proper Acts of God Creation and Preservation or Providence What is Creation That God created all things And how Of the Ministers of Gods Providence towards Inferiour Creatures the Angels of God Their nature and office towards man especially Chap. VI. Of the Works of God in this visible World Of the Six dayes work of God All things are good which were made by God Chap. VII Of the Creation of man in particular according to the Image of God Of the Constitution of him and of the Original of his Soul contrary to Philosophers and the Errors of Origen concerning it The Image wherein it consists principally Chap. VIII Of the Second General Act of God towards the Creature especially Man his Providence Aristotles Opinion and Epicurus his rejected What is Providence Three things propounded of Providence And first the Ground of it the knowledge of God How God knoweth all things future as present Of Necessity and Contingencies how they may consist with Gods Omniscience Chap. IX The method of enquiring into the Nature and Attributes of God Vorstius his grounds of distinguishing the Attributes of God from his Nature examined Of the Decrees of God depending on his Understanding and Will Of knowledge of Intelligence Vision and the supposed Middle knowledge The Impertinency of this middle knowledge invented in God How free Agents can be known by God in their uncertain choice Indifferent actions in respect of Man not so in respect of God All vision in God supposes certainty in the thing known Chap. X. Four Doubts cleared concerning the Knowledge and Decrees of God and free Agents and contingent Effects How man that infallibly acts is responsable for his Actions The frivolous Evasion of the said difficulties by them of Dort Chap. XI Of the Execution of Gods Providence in the Predestination and Reprobation of Man How the Decrees and Providence of God are distinguished The Reason and Method of Gods Decrees Righteousness is the effect and not cause of Predestination to Life Predestination diversly taken in Scripture as also Election and Vocation God predestinates no man simply to Death without consideration of Evil foregoing as Calvin and some others would have it Chap. XII Of Gods Providence in the Reprobation and Damnation of Man Preterition is without any cause personal but the corruption of the Mass of Humane Nature Damnation alwayes supposes sin Chap. XIII The occasion of treating of sin here What sin is What Evil Monstrousness in things natural and Evil in moral things illustrate each other Sin no positive or real thing God the direct cause of no evil St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans makes nothing for the contra-Remonstrants literally and primarily taken Chap. XIV Of Sin more particularly And first of the fall of Adam Of Original Sin wherein it consisteth and how it is traduced from Father to Children The Proofs of it The nature and evils of it And that it is cured in Baptism That Natural Concupiscence hath not the nature of Sin after Baptism Chap. XV. Of the Restitution of Man after sin The Means and Motives thereunto In what manner Christs Mediation was necessary to the reconciling of Man to God Socinus his Opinion of Christs mediation refuted That Christ truely and properly satisfied by his Death and Passion for us Chap. XVI Of the Nature and Person of the Mediatour between God and Man In the beginning was the Word proved to be spoken of Christ and that he had a being before he was incarnate The Union of two Natures in Christ explained Christ a Mediatour by his Person and by his Office and this by his Sacrificing himself The Scriptures proving this Chap. XVII How Christ was Mediatour according to both Natures Calvins Opinion and others stated Of the effect of Christs Mediation and the extent thereof Of the Designation and Application of Christs death Of the sufficiencie and efficacie of Christs death How Christs death becomes effectual to all The necessity of Gods Grace to incline the will of man to embrace Christ Of the efficacie as well as sufficiencie of Gods Grace on the Will of Man Several Gradations observed in the Grace of God Chap. XVIII Of the effect and benefit of Christs Mediation in suffering and rising again seen in the Resurrection of Man The necessity of believing a Resurrection The Reasons and Scriptural Testimonies proving a Resurrection Objections against the same answered Chap. XIX Of the most perfect effect of Christs Mediation in the salvation of man Several senses of Salvation noted That Salvation is immediately after death to them that truly dye in Christ And that there is no grounds in Antiquity or Scripture for that middle State called Purgatory The Proofs answered Of the Consequent of Roman Purgatory Indulgences The novelty groundlesness and gross abuse of them The Conclusion of the first part of this Introduction The Contents of the Second Part c. Chap. I. OF the worship of God wherein the Second Part of Christian Religion consists Of the necessity of worshipping God It is natural to worship God Socinus holding the contrary confuted Of the name of Religion the Nature of Religious worship wherein it consisteth Chap. II. Of the two parts of Divine worship Inward and Outward The Proof of Outward worship as due to God and that it is both due and acceptable to God Several Reasons proving bodily worship of God agreeable to him Wherein this bodily worship chiefly consists Certain Directions for bodily worship Exceptions against it answered Chap. III. Of the second thing considerable in Divine worship viz. The state wherein we serve God What is a state The formal cause of a state Divine Vowes What is a Vow The proper matter of Vows Evangelical Councils That it is lawful and useful to make Vows under the Gospel contrary to Peter Martyr The nature of Vowes explained Chap. IV. Of the matter of Vows in particular And first of the Virginal state that it is both possible and landable And that it is lawful to vow Celibacie or Widowhood No Presidents in the Old Testament favouring Virginity The Virgin Mary vowed not Virginity no Votary before the Annunciation Chap. V. Of the second State of special serving God the Clerical State or Ministerial Of the necessity and liberty of singleness of Life in a Clergy-man The Opinion and custom of Antiquity concerning it That it is in the power of the Church at this day to restrain or permit the marriage of Priests The Conveniences and Inconveniences of wedded Life in Priests Chrysostom's Judgment of Marriage and Virginity recited Chap. VI. Of the third State of serving God a Life Monastical That it is not only lawful but may be profitable also The Exceptions of Mr. Perkins against it examined The abuses of Monastical Life touched That it is lawful to vow such a kind of Life duly regulated Chap. VII Of Religious worship the third thing considerable in it viz. The Exercise of it in the several kinds
infinite reasons First from the Object of their worship generally directed to a multitude of Gods and patching up a plenitude of power out of the shreds of innumerable Demi-gods or pieces of Gods whereof one should have power and vertue in one thing and another in another but this is to deny God in effect who if he be not absolute is not at all and indeed all the arguments before used to prove there can be but one God do prove that to be a false and foolish Religion which alloweth and worshippeth more than one Neither can it suffice to excuse them to say that the wiser of the Heathens acknowledged but one God because it availeth nothing at all but to add to their condemnation for any persons to have a right sense and meaning reserved to themselves and to proceed directly contrary to such found judgment in their practice and worship it self And therefore the most absurd and abominable manner of worshipping their pretended Deities is sufficient conviction of the Religion it self For whereas modesty sobriety temperance chastity truth justice and the like moral vertues were such as the Light of Nature did commend to all men and all consented to be excellent and laudable All these were contemned by the admirers of these Gods yea the very Religion it self tempted and incited many to offend against all these and that which is most intolerable from the examples of the pretended gods so chusing to be worshipped from whence must needs follow what St. Paul affirmeth of the Gentiles Religion and gods The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to Devils and not to God They were impure and wicked 1 Cor. 10. 20. spirits delighting in absurd and vitious practises And therefore upon this subject no more need be spoken at present The Neat pretender to true worship may be the Mahometan who worshipping the True God so far as may be discerned yet faileth egregiously in the manner of exhibiting the same the very grounds and end also being false and unreasonable For first that the Author and Coiner of that worship was an impostor and made pretences of Sanctity in the midst of impurities and infirmities he was subject unto is apparent out of Histories of those times and places where he by the assistance of a Fugitive Nestorian Monk laid the plot and whole design of his Religion and that among a people altogether rude ignorant barbarous easie to be deceived and cheated into a credulity of pretended Revelations Again the many absurdities and contradictions of their Law most sacred as misnaming of persons mistiming of Facts mistaking of Histories in the gross impossible prophane blasphemous opinions concerning the nature the will the Actions of God contrary to common philosophy and reason Ridiculous and foolish imaginations of Angels utterly false opinions of the nature of things and such like being duly and soberly weighed and examined do convince the whole Fabrick of that superstition of Idleness and foolish fictions And not to multiply more arguments here The way of propagating this Erroneous Fashion of serving God discovereth the Errour of the thing it self For it is a general and most rational Principle deserving admission and belief of all That Religion being the most excellent act of humane Creatures ought to have the most high and noble Faculty of the soul for its proper seat and fountain from whence it should proceed such as is the intellectual faculty of Man But this superstition is carried on by the ministery of the Senses chiefly And moreover It ought to have for its end the most sublime and divine of all But the Mahometan constituteth the low pleasures of the Senses as the sufficient and proper end of all their service making the beatitude of Heaven to consist in perpetual Licentiousness and fresh delights of senses And therefore no need of insisting on this subject here What is here spoken being for method sake rather then necessity or a formal confutation of those Errours CHAP. V. Of the Jewish Religion The Pretence of the Antiquity of it mulled Their several Erroneous grounds of the Jewish Religion discovered DUT the Religion of the Jew requireth more diligent examination as well because of a notable presumption from ancient Tradition and a certain preoccupation of divine truths and auctority of divine Constitution as because the consideration thereof is an introduction to Christian Religion and the disproof of that a proof of the Christian And if according to Christians own concessions and the eminentest Apostle St. Paul they were once the people and true Church of God To Rom. 3. 2. cap. 9. 4. them were committed the Oracles of God To them pertained the Adoption and the glorie and the Covenant and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises Why not alwayes a Church If once Gods people Why not alwayes so If once confessed to be pure and Faithfull When did they cease to be so When first entred corruptions into their Church Under what High Priest And who brought such errours first in This is the sum of what they can say either for themselves or against the Christians of whose Religion which undoubtedly they do and will call Heresie they can give the time and place when and where it sprang up and the person who first founded and advanced the same And if any Church or Society of men in the world can lay claim to the Promises of perpetuity and infallibility surely the Jewish will pretend much more from the Prerogatives peculiar to them as do witness every where the Law and the Prophets To all this a sufficient answer shall be comprehended in the prosecution of the contrary Grounds which here follows which I reduce to these two whereof One concerns their Errour about their Law and the Other about their Messias The first general Errour concerning their Law is first that they suppose that the word of God given to Moses for their proper use was equally to oblige all Nations saving where certain priviledges were pretended to Jews by birth which they suppose no people were worthy or capable of except the stock of Abraham But that all nations could not be included in that Covenant which was made with Abraham nor were all obliged to the Rites and Ceremonies thereof appears from the ordinary impossibility of being observed by all People For how could people of the remotest parts of the earth appear thrice a year at Jerusalem as was commanded the Israelites by God who dwelt in the Land of Canaan How Levit. 12. 6. could all Nations at any time bring their Sacrifices to the door of the House of the Lord to be there received and offered by the Priests Another Errour concerning their Law received by Moses is that they say It was it whereby men should be justified Which is false and that First because the most ancient holy and renowned Patriarchs of the Jewish Line were not so Justified They were not justified by the
Apostolical that which now is so reputed and that which any mans memory might assure him was so in very deed the Apostles Doctrine This controversie then seems to come to this issue First in Reason Whether Oral and Memorial Tradition can be so secure as Scriptural The resolution of which doubt almost every man may make sufficiently of himself and hath been competently treated of above The other Question is about matter of Fact Whether the Church of God did ever so unanimously agree in the necessity validity or Sacredness of any Traditions not contained in the written Word of God as to equal them with this This we absolutely deny And upon the account of Tradition it self There being no such Tradition to be found in all the Records of the Church that Tradition is so highly to be valued Again there appearing consent sufficient in the Church for many ages That as to the Material parts of Christian doctrine the Scriptures do sufficiently instruct us as a Rule and Law of believing For If the Law of Moses as a Law was sufficient before the Prophets added to it for the People of God under that Dispensation And the Law and the Prophets were still sufficient till John and Christ is to believed That the Law of Christians delivered by Christs appointment should fall short of the same ends now It is truly affirmed That what St. Paul writeth in commendation of Scripture was intended chiefly if not only of the books of the Old Testament viz. That they were able to make a man wise unto Salvation through Faith that is in Christ Jesus and All Scripture is given by Inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for correction for instruction in Righteousness That the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works Now if the Scriptures of the Old Testamant were sufficient to bring a man to the Faith of Christ and to instruct him to Salvation can any man reasonably doubt Whether the much clearer and fuller manifestation of the Doctrine of Christ and Salvation by the books of the New Testament are sufficient to the same end joyned to the obscurer of the Old I know there are that say expresly No and endeavour to make it good by several instances very material to Faith and yet not expressed in Scripture and yet again of force to be believed by all that would be good Christians As the Articles of the Trinity and of Christs Person consisting of humane and divine nature Of his being born of the blessed Virgin Some other are added hereunto but they are either such as are neither favoured by Scripture nor good Tradition as Invocation of Saints Purgatory c. or have only a general warrant from Scripture and Tradition and such are they which are of a mutable nature Rites and Ceremonies of the Church which ought not when confirmed by long consent and use in the Church lightly to be refused and cast off so when any Church having power over its own body shall think fit to alter is that Church to be refused as a true Church by others But to the first of these we stick not openly to profess That it suffices to believe so much only as is really contained in and soberly deducible from the Scriptures taking these articles of Faith separately from certain accessory obligations of all good Christians For instance It is not required to believe the doctrine now established in the Catholick Church concerning the Trinity in the forms at present received from the nature of the Articles themselves which may with safety sufficient be assented to as they are simply found in Scripture yet considering That Hereticks have stirred up most dangerous and sacrilegious doubts to the obviating them and securing the main stake which would be endangered if farther explications were not found out and imposed it is needful to receive them also or at least not to oppose and declare against them For 't is very well known there passed some ages before the Articles of the Trinity of Persons were so much stood on or so well setled as now they are and that Tradition was as much to seek as the written Word of God to bring things to that pass they now are in And for Christ's manner of birth I know no such Tradition either written or unwritten which required antiently any more than to believe barely That the eternal Son of God became man and was incarnate and born of a woman who was a pure Virgin but probable circumstances and reverence to the high Mystery of Christs Person obliged to the honorary part of that Article And the like answer may be made to another instance about Paedobaptism which some as occasion offers will say is required in Scripture and again it serving at other times their turn better to deny Bellarmin it will hold the contrary For Baptism of Infants as Infants is not indeed required by Scripture but as persons saveable it is the rule general in Scripture running thus Except a man be born of water and the Holy John 3. 5. Ghost he cannot be saved It is not said unless a man be born by water while he is an infant or Child but absolutely For had it been so expressed just doubt might have been made whether a man baptized at his full age were effectually baptized Neither is Baptism appointed signally and precisely for men in years though none but such at the first preaching of the Gospel who could profess their Faith could be capable of it but indefinitely is it spoken without any limitation and therefore sufficiently implied Other instances against the plenitude of Scripture as a Rule of Faith have either already been touched as that which tells us It is nowhere contained in Scripture that the Scriptures are the word of God neither can it be proved by it for no more can it be demonstrated by Tradition or may be easily brought to the same end To conclude this point having shewed what we mean by Tradition and what it serveth not to it were unreasonable to leave it slurr'd so and not to give it its due in shewing the great use thereof in the Church of Christ For however we make it not supream nor coequal with the written word of God it may without any offence or invasion of Divine Right or Autoritie claim the next place to it and as Joseph to Pharaoh be greater then all the the people besides but inferiour to Pharaoh in the Throne Of God it is said Thou satest in the Throne judging right God now judges by his Word Psalm 9. 4. written as by a Law and Rule of faith as is shewed Yet I see no reason for the injudicious zeal and reverence of such who think they cannot give enough unto the Scriptures unless in word and pretence for t is no more themselves constantly acting contrarie to their profession they ascribe all the Form of Judging unto the Scriptures and all things determinable to their
nor too narrow and rigorous The Reason hereof may be first taken from the name which imports such 〈◊〉 dictae Gâ—â—â—â— voce ex interpretatieâ—â— electionas quâ— quis sive ad instituendas suâ—cipiendas utitur c. Tertullianus Praescript cap. 6. Vide 〈◊〉 Hispalens Origin lib. â—3 a singularity of choice and addiction to an opinion which may as well be true as false good as evil Thus the ancient Heathens as well Roman as Grecian used the word and so did the Christians too for some hundred years after Christ And when it began to be restrain'd to the evil part a second thing made the notion of it no less difficult and obscure viz. the largeness of it for those errors which were not material or of any great consequence to the Christian Faith or Church as for to stigmatize them which were of note and moment in the same And a third thing obscuring the true nature is the manner of asserting and maintaining great as well as small Errours The word Heresie generally signifies any opinion either good or bad More especially it signifies an Errour in Religion Thus Ecclesiastical Writers take it Yet most properly it is an Errour in the Foundation of Christian Religion taught and defended with obstinacy Perkins on Galat. 5. v. 20. To understand this we must know how that a twofold Criminalness in Heresie according to the two more essential parts constituting it according to opinions generally received The one is called the formal part which relates to the manner of holding such opinions as are erroneous Inter Haereticâ—s non sunt deputandi qui aut ab Ecclesiasticis seducti sunt à parentibus in errorem lapsi nullà pertinaci animâ—sitate defendunt quaerunt autem 〈◊〉 solicitudine veritatem corrigi parati quum invenerint Augustin Epist 168. For lighter errours against the Doctrine of the Scriptures and peace of the Church being maintained with obstinacy and against due proposal of the truth do characterize and constitute an Heretick The other is the material part namely That about which men do err in Faith And this hath a peculiar difficulty in it arising from the undetermined points of Faith and I think a moral impossibility as they call it to define what are those so necessary points of Faith to be believed the denyal where of makes an Heretick This is thought generally to be sufficiently explained in the Creeds of the Church by some But others find many considerable points not therein comprehended unless by such a reduction whereby any thing almost may be compelled to come under anothers wing There are therefore that hold that the decrees and resolutions of Counsels fully and only can satisfie this scrupulousness and no question but all these conduce very much to the acquiring a settled Judgment in matters of Faith and espeially this latter against which notwithstanding there may be made these following exceptions First That all things defined by Councels and that with the affixing of Anathema's are confessedly not of Faith but of Rites and Order also Secondly That those Canons which are of Faith are so variously and miserably handled and distracted by Learned Interpreters that a sober well-meaning Christian may without any heretical pravity of mind fall involuntarily into a reputed Heresie Thirdly That contrary things have sometimes been determined in several ages From all which it is manifest That it is much more easie to define Heresie then an Heretick because there is an ingredient of personal aversion from or opposition to the Truth which can scarce be discovered but in the abstract Heresie may properly enough be defined to be not an opinion but a False Proposition contrary to the Catholick Faith And if it be thus uncertain and obscure what Heresie is through so many various kinds and degrees thereof answerable to the several branches therefore it cannot be easie to prove all Heresie in the common notion as opposite to Faith to be destructive to Faith That it destroyes that Part of Faith against which it is bent is undeniable but that any particular Errour should destroy the whole any farther than it is opposite to the whole Body of Faith is incredible Some Heresies pluck up the Tree of Life Faith by the roots some cut it down to the root some lop off the arms some lesser branches and some which have been reputed Heresies do only brush and beat off the leaves and ornaments An example of the former is given by St. Paul to the Corinthians some of whom it should seem denied the Resurrection in general and by necessary implication of Christ who was as dead as any mortal man else But if there be no resurrection 1 Cor. 15. 13 14. of the dead then is Christ not risen And if Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain It were to no purpose to believe any point in Christian Religion dis-believing that of the resurrection And in short to deny any thing expressed or necessarily and immediately included in the form of words used in Baptism is to root up all our Creed and render all our Faith vain in other Articles An instance of the second sort of Heresie may be to deny the Mediation of Christ by way of satisfaction for us restraining the intercession of him to that supposed one now in Heaven Of the third may be Errours about Free-will and affirming a positive necessity to commit sin against God Of the denyal of the efficacy of Good works done in Christ towards our salvation and the affirming a meritoriousness in them towards the same Of the last the affirming it unlawful to use any Ceremonies in Gods service but what are specially commanded in his word And from hence it seemeth necessary to distinguish Heresies and Hereticks into Formal or direct and Virtual and real A Formal Heresie is Propositio sapiens haeresim est ex cujus concessione co-assumpto aliquo quod non potest rationabiliter negari sequitur â—aeresis in fide vt siquis diceret quod beatus Gregorius non fuisset Papa Gerson de necessitate Salutis that which is expresly maintained and asserted in tearms but denied in the inference and consequence whichyet certainly and necessarily follows upon such positions as supposing a man should with the Monothelites of old affirm that Christ had but one Will. This is a formal and direct Heresie but if as it is possible the same person should deny the true consequence hereof viz. That he consisted but of one Nature He were not a formal Heretick in this latter because though this Errour doth certainly arise from the former yet all Heresies being erroneous apprehensions and affections of the mind this Errour being not received into his mind doth not so affect him as to denominate him formally an Heretick Yet must he answer for Heresie in his account before God because the movers and promoters of such shall no more escape then he shall from the punishment of
without blame before him in love And it hath been shewed before how that when in the New Testament we read of Gods Calling and choosing and electing we are not so much to understand the eternal purpose or decree of God but the execution thereof in Gods actual calling and electing certain persons to the profession and belief of the Faith of Christ which he effected by the fulfilling of the Prophesie made by Christ in St. Matthews Gospel relating to the Matth. 24. 31. destruction of the Jewish Polity and Church and erecting of the Christian instead thereof viz. And he shall send his Angels that is his Messengers and Ministers with a great sound of a trumpet i. e. the Gospel preached and published and they shall gather together his elect i. e. such as he shall make choice of from the four winds i. e. from all quarters of the world from one end of heaven to the other Now these persons by Gods word and good-will called from such vanities ignorances and vices are in the Scripture called Saints not so much because they were all so throughly or absolutely sanctified from their former natural or moral impieties contracted in their state of Nature and Gentilism as that they should retain no sin and none of them should fail of heaven hereafter But first either from the better part the whole was denominated actually holy which is not unusual in all speech Or because having made renunciation of the World and Flesh and Devil in Baptism they were called and consecrated to Holiness Or lastly because they made open and solemn profession thereof however some so called might be and did appear to be reprobates And names and appellations are given not from any inward affection or quality which sense cannot judge of but from such things as are visible and apparent And thus in the Old Testament as well as New it is used As in the Psalmes Gather my Saints Psalm 50. 5. together unto me those that have made a Covenant with me by Sacrifice which imply the whole body of the people of Israel as the words going immediately before do also declare And wherever in the Book of Psalms which is in divers places we find the Congregation of the Saints is meant the Israelites in general And in Daniel Chap. 7. v. 8. 21 22 25 27. is the word necessary taken Now it being most customary with the Penmen of the New Testament to borrow the phrase of the Old this tearm Saints was translated from the Jewish Synagogue to the Christian Church by St. Paul expresly to the Romans saying To all that be in Rome beloved of Rom. 1 7. God called Saints so the original better then the insertion of to be made in the translation As likewise in his first Epistle to the Corinthians To the Church of God which is at Corinth to them that are sanctified in Christ 1 Cor. 1. v. 2. Jesus called to be Saints withall that in every place call upon the name Jesus Christ their Lord and ours And the like salutation we shall find in most of St. Pauls Epistles as also most frequently in the body of them as may be obvious to any reader though I deny not but sometimes in the New Testament it is taken in a more restrained sense signifying especially the victorious and triumphant not Militant Saints From all which it doth sufficiently appear in what sense the Church may and ought to be described a Society or Collection of Saints And withal how miserably and mischievously they err who giving that title to a Party hold themselves bound to gather a certain select number out of Christians not accusable of any notorious errour from the Faith of Christ as the Apostles of Christ did out of Heathens and Jews and to constitute and call them Saints Another thing requisite to the constitution of a Church is That it be a Communion of Saints it sufficing not that persons elected or selected as above-said be many in number but holy by nature or institution as God ordained of old in the forming of the Jewish Church Deut. 7. 6. Thou art Deut. 7. 6. 26 19. 18 9. an holy people unto the Lord thy God The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all the people that are upon the face of Earth Which words are with advantage applyed unto the Christian Church by St. Peter Whence it is that the same St. Peter maketh it an 1 Pet. 2. 9 10. 2 Pet. 1. 4. end of calling this company together That they may be partakers of the Divine Nature or as it is otherwise more plainly render'd Of a Divine Nature Holiness drawing us near unto the Nature of God himself As the Wiseman also writeth The giving heed unto her Laws is the assurance Wisdom 6. 18 19. of Incorruption and Incorruption maketh us near unto God And not only must they be holy but to that end must of necessity hold a twofold communion The one Invisible with one Head Christ The other Visible and external with one another For the Apostle tells us speaking of Christians The head of every man is Christ And to the Ephesians The 1 Cor. 11. 3. Ephes 5. 23. husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church and and he is the Saviour of the world There can therefore no question be made but it is most essential as well to the Church in general as every particular Christian or Member of the same that Christ be the Head of his Church as St. Paul yet more clearly expresseth it to the Colossians excepting against such Professors of Christian Religion as held not the Head from which all the Body by joynts and bands having nourishment ministred and knit 2 Col. 2. 19. together encreaseth with the increase of God Therefore leaving that as on all hands granted we come to the external communion of the Church CHAP. XXIV A Preparation to the knowledge of Ecclesiastical Society or of the Church from the consideration of humane Societies What is Society What Order What Government Of the Original of Government Reasons against the Peoples being the Original of Power and their Right to frame Governments Power not Revocable by the People IN the outward Communion of the Church two things are to be enquired into First the Nature of it wherein it consisteth Secondly the Adjuncts or Affections thereof First we shall treat Civitas à conversatione multorum dicta est pro eo quod plurimorum in unum constituat contineat vitas Origin Homil. 5. in Genesim briefly of the Nature of this Communion To understand which clearly it will be expedient to begin with the definition of Communion in General or Society humane For Communion is nothing else but Humane Society And Humane Society is nothing else but a conversation of men out of natural reason inclining and moving them thereunto for the mutual supply of the
me that such supposed power ought not to be translated from that subject to which God had annexed it to that which the people liketh better man here in mending Gods ordinance Therefore surely there being found a necessity of having power otherwise posited than in the people and it being an egregious absurdity of altering that God had ordained it must follow to reconcile these things That there never was any such power in the people at all but what they have is unto them derived from another Power originally And this is further confirmed from the Impossibility as well as impiety of making any such translation of power from its natural subject the People because it cannot ever fairly or justly be brought about seeing that the People cannot unanimously much less ever did concur to the Election of any one Government or Governour They cannot all give in their Votes to such an end alwayes some were dissenting and if they did not enter their Protest against the proceedings of their fellows it must be because they were deterred curbed and oppressed by a more prevalent faction obliging them and constraining them most unjustly to comply with their Opinions and Decrees For there appears no sound reason why a more numerous and powerful faction may not as well take away my Estate because they are stronger than I as take away my birth-right which Liberty is here asserted to be So that the very first step to Liberty must be founded in injustice in taking away that from me which I might no less in natural reason spoil them of and in servitude too in bringing me whom they acknowledge to be naturally free into unwilling subjection Neither is the difficulty solved in saying That Reason and Nature also require that for order sake and regulating humane Society the Minor part must yield to the Major For upon this supposition indeed that power is so absurdly and inconveniently posited there doth presently appear such a necessity But my Argument is taken from the absurdity of any such necessity of natures creating that the supposition is very false And if it were true yet were not that Maxime true which is here brought to controul and correct the same For Nature doth not teach us much less necessitate us in any case to follow the most numerous but rather reason and experience and the judgment of diligent and wise discussers of this Point inform us That the multitude are more inconsiderate undiscerning and injudicious then the fewer in number many times the world being generally thicker set with fools than wise men and fools being commonly more apt to be led by fools than with deeper and sounder reasons of the Wise Now as to the right of Revocation resting still in the People even after the supposed investiture of Power made to a Prince or other Magistrates I must confess upon supposition of a native right in them it to be very reasonable yea though the contract be very binding upon them to the securing of the persons so inaugurated in that State And that from the grounds already laid down which prove that no alteration ought to be made contrary to Divine or Natural Institutions and consequently the People being by natures Law Proprietaries in that Power all alienations attempted must needs be void any farther then they judge fit yea and farther too because they themselves are bound to keep themselves to such innate Rights and observe them duly And besides Civil and artificial Law as I may well call Humane can never extinguish Natural absolutely and justly And therefore what they gave the People they may require back again because they received that entailed upon them and their Posterity which they ought not nor can cut off And this I say not being ignorant what others have said to the contrary who are said to yield supream Power in the body of the People which they may dispose of to another but not revoke again any more than a man may recover back his Estate once lawfully made over to another But the disparity of the cases makes the answer very easie which is That no man being so naturally invested with a temporal estate as is here supposed the People to be with this Right of Dominion that may without any violation of a superiour Law be parted with and not this For supposing equally that God who hath given only a general right to man to possess the earth and not assigned any particular Lands to particular persons to be holden of Divine Right had done this latter it would have followed That he ought not to sell them and that such sale made were void before God As doth plainly appear in the distribution of the Land of Canaan unto several Tribes by no means to be confounded and of entailing of Lands unto particular Families by no means so to be alienated but they might return at a time prefixed to the same House But the Right of Rule in the People is lookt upon as by Nature and Divine ordinance belonging to them and therefore cannot de Jure be transferred or if attempted must needs by the same Right be revokable But I look not upon that Argument much used as concluding against the pretended power of the People which stands thus No man hath power of life and death over himself Therefore he cannot communicate this power essential to the Supream to any other For is it not possible a man who hath no such power over himself as in truth no man hath may yet have over another and this give unto another from a concurrence wherein One may receive a general dominion over many But if no man could give the power of Life and Death to another who cannot dispose of his own Life How could Kings themselves grant that power to inferiour Magistrates whenas themselves have no power to take away their own lives neither can they give power to another to take them away The last thing to be censured in the doctrine of the Peoples power is the perniciousness of it to all Empires and States where it is infused into the minds of the Commonalty and improved to actions naturally flowing from thence as experience hath sufficiently proved as well as reason informed of which latter omitting here the odious instances Histories and our own senses have ministred unto us we shall give these three only First That if it were true that such Power were radically and revocably in the people the people never being able to judge with general consent aright of the same thing nor soberly and quietly to concur to the same conclusion through the infinite variety and dâ—scord found in several free minds such licence of constituting and repealing their own Acts must of necessity produce great divisions and confusions amongst them without any insinuations or instigations of subtiller and more turbulent heads which do constantly watch and improve such occasions to bring ruin to a Nation upon some remote contemplation of a possible advantage arising out of
Tim. 2. 1 2. prayers and intercessions and giving thanks for all men For Kings and all that are in authority c. which hath been so understood by some as if he had intended here to distinguish and establish a co-ordination of Governours over the same people but there is no necessity at all of such a consequence and St. Peter expresly distinguisheth their relations 1 Pet. 2. 13 14. not to be co-ordinate but subordinate saying Submit your selves to every ordinance of man that is not as some weakly and presumptuously would interpret the Apostle as if Kings and Princes were mens creatures and by them constituted but humane Creature which is the word in the Original doth signifie such Persons as have authority over men as men and not as Christians such as were then Civil Governours amongst the Gentiles which the phrase of the Jews commonly called Creatures barely and Humane as having no such Divine Graces conferred on them as had the Jews for the Lords sake whether it be unto Kings as Supream or unto Governours as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and for the praise of them that do well Here Governours are said to be of two sorts not co-ordinate and subordinate but Supream and Subordinate such as have authority immediately and absolutely in themselves without dependence upon others and such as are of an Inferiour order and under the said Supream rule and execute Justice So that nothing can be more absurdly and sediciously taught than to make such as are constituted by another to have any authority at all over their Founder and Lord the author of their power I know infinite instances may be brought of Common-wealths which have admitted and been governed by such a Co-ordination or at least a power reserved in store in the hands of certain persons whose proper office and care it should be to regulate and reduce to a safe mean the extreams which single and absolute Monarchs may easily fall into But all these varying so exceedingly from the natural form of Government sway not much with me For that which is natural and of Divine Ordinance and Institution cannot possibly be uncertain and mutable so that no man shall be able to know where to place his duty of Obedience which God requires to be paid to such as are in Authority And obedience being due only to the Supream himself immediately or to those that derive authority from him how is it possible to understand but by the sad effects of power pressing and afflicting a man where he is to yield his obedience Therefore surely God can have no hand in such modellings of States which shall perplex a man in rendring his subjection For it is not a great empty and ridiculous Title which maketh a Supream but entire power and absolute freedom at least from subjection to others especially of his own Dominion All Titles without this are honourable Mockeries but the real Supremacy is actual I say not how justly or injuriously in those Tutours of Princes and Keepers of the Liberties of the people as is commonly given out and in this case supposing that Right and Power are not separated not these Proveditors or Senatours who thus chastise Princes are rebellious but they who bearing the name of Kings and Princes being in truth but meer subjects refuse to submit to the decrees of their Superiours But if possession giveth not Right which is the most Christian as well as rational opinion it may be doubted how a just title can be acquired by any Persons in co-ordination to the Supream power when as we have shown the People never had any such themselves and therefore can transferr none nor such select persons had any of themselves who assume this nor is it to be conceived how any natural Right should descend upon many persons as the Paternal power doth upon one from whence Monarchical Power and Right may flow And If Senatours as they call them or suck like States-men cannot regularly found their title in nature or Divine Writ or revelation It was no act of Rebellion that greatest act of Hostility in Julius Caesar to reduce the Roman Common-wealth to Monarchy For there are two things to be considered in Civil Authority The Government it self in its form and kind and the Governour invested with this The Person Governing may doubtless offend notoriously though I dare not say forfeit to any other his Authority but the Government it self being abused cannot be in fault or for any miscarriages of the Person lapse to other The Government is religiously to be observed and secured from adulterations and corruptions even when the Monarch is irreligiously discarded and dethroned So that the Tyranny of a single person invading the Government administred by States and arrogating the Supremacy to himself alone must needs be less criminal than for many conspiring into a Common-wealth to change both Person and Government from the Natural to the Artificial and meerly of Humane invention and pleasure Now that Possession doth not alwayes include a Title nor Might Right in Civil Affairs is both most reasonable and Christian to believe Reasonable from several heads First from the notoriousness of the mischiefs which croud in upon all Societies of Men where this Tenet is received For what a powerful motive will it be to all discontented persons to invade others and dispossess them when there lies no other difficulty before them but the means to attach successfully whom they intend to destroy but having overcome that by whatever villanies they shall be reputed as legal owners of what they are become Masters as the most innocent and just person of all But can ever any peace or security be expected by that Society wherein it shall be lawful for any man to intrude himself into Power No say some Power acquired and possessed doth give Right to hold but not justifie the Act of inordinate acquiring the same But if it be true in Logick That the Conclusion doth alwayes partake of the weakness of the Premisses and in Nature That an evil cause be it but of the nature of a Circumstance corrupteth the whole effect is it not altogether as rational that such an hainous act in the acquiring such Power here should quite marr the effect Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean not one saith holy Job 14. 4. Recte factum est ut id quod male caeptum est Autoritate publica destrucretur Damasus Epist Acholio Eurydico c. apud Holstennii Collectionem pa. 40. Part. 1. Job So not one can by an unrighteous Act produce a righteous effect Neither can the inveterateness of an Evil any wayes mitigate the same nor tract of time wipe away that Guilt which was at first acquired For prescription in such cases never gives just Title but where other Titles are extinguished which is by accident Then indeed Possession it self giveth not a good Title but hath less evil and inconvenience
Gods Word already confirming this duty and to leave others to every ingenuous Christians diligent use of it to avoid prolixity And for the objections which may be made and are commonly found against what is above delivered for the same reason I pass them over as likewise because I intend not here Controversie but Positive Institutions CHAP. XXVII An Application of the former Discourse of Civil Government to Ecclesiastical How Christs Church is alwayes visible and how invisible Of the Communion of Christ and his Members The Church of Christ taken specially for the Elect who shall infallibly be saved never visible But taken for true Professours of the Faith must alwayes be visible though not Conspicuous in comparison of other Religions or Heresies THE Reasons moving me to insist a while upon Civil Government before I entred upon Ecclesiastical are First because I find Authors of the grounds of Christian Religion to treat of the same generally Secondly because where breaches have been made often in the Faith and Discipline of the Church there necessary provision ought to be made to secure them for the future but for want of due understanding of this Doctrine licencious zeal blinded with presumption hath transported very many into unchristian practises Thirdly because it is a necessary introduction to the more clear and compendious pursuing of our subject of the Spiritual Society of the Church of Christ and particularly its Form The Form of Christs Church may be distinguished according to the vulgar Notion into invisible and visible or inward and outward Invisible we here call that which doth not at all offer it self to our outward sense of seeing cannot be beholden with our eye Or that which may in some manner appear to our sight but not as a Church of Christ though in truth it so may be According to the first acceptation of invisible we understand the Body Mystical of Christ consisting of himself the only proper Head the Holy Spirit animating and influencing the same and the particular members of the holy most happy invisible Spirits in heaven and Saints on earth spiritually united to them by Christ in the divine band of holiness And hitherto do the words of the Apostle to the Ephesians seem to be applyed saying Having made known the mystery of his will That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather Ephes 1. 9 10. together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are in earth even in him signifying hereby the mystical conjunction of Men and Angels in Christ Jesus although there are who not improbably and more literally do understand these words only of the collection and uniting of Jews who in respect of their peculiar exaltation to Gods service and favour are stiled in Scripture heavenly compared with the Gentiles and Gentiles into one Faith and Church of Christ which therefore divers times is called a Mystery as Romans the 16. 25 26. Ephes 3. v. 3 4 5. Col. 1. 26 27. 1 Tim. 3. 16. because as is there expressed it was an hidden and incredible thing to the Jews that the Gentiles should be taken into the like priviledges and rights of serving God as were once esteemed incommunicable to any so fully as to the Jews But whether the Scripture according to its most genuine and literal sense intendeth at any time to comprehend into one Society Angelical Peings and Humane as the Church of Christ as I do not find though the Ancients as well as Modern have held such an opinion so do I not oppose the Mystery of which we now speak being sufficiently verified in the preternatural and invisible conjunction of Christ and his Church in the indissoluble bands of his Spirit guiding the members thereof into all sufficiencie of Grace here and immortal absolute glory hereafter in heaven To understand this co-union or conjunction of Christ and his Members the better we are to call to mind a threefold union intimated in holy Writ unto us First a conjunction of Nature when more are of the same individual nature as the three Persons in the Holy Trinity are united in the same Divine Nature though in themselves distinct which is so proper to that mystery of the Trinity that it is not to be found elsewhere no not in that intimate communion we now speak of between Christ and his Members their natures continuing distinct Again another conjunction proper to Christian Religion is the union of two natures into one Person as in the Mystery of Christs incarnation when the humane and divine Nature become one so far as to constitute but one Person Christ Jesus So do not Christ and his Church But by a third way are Christ and his Church united into one aggregate Spiritual Body or Society which is effected by his Spirit which yet do not make properly a Part of that Body but by its manifold divine Graces do produce and conserve the same Christ thereby and his Church being as St. Paul saith One Spirit He that is joyned unto the Lord is one Spirit And 1 Cor. 6. 17. St. John likewise saith Hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of his Spirit This truly and only in a proper sense is invisible and that alwayes and hath two Parts the triumphant in Heaven which is a most perfect pure holy and blessed Society which have through the bloud of the Lamb and the power of his Spirit overcome the three grand Enemies Sin Death and the Devil and reaped the fruits of their sufferings and labours all tears being wiped from their eyes all sorrows being fled away all temptations for ever conquered and ceasing to molest them Now this part of Christ's Church remains alwayes invosible unto us here below And as for the other Part which is called Militant and are described to be A number of faithful and elect people living under the Cross and aspiring towards the perfection of Grace and Glory hereafter supposing at present what may hereafter be farther discussed viz. That such a peculiar number of holy persons there are within the visible Church of Christ which shall infallibly attain to everlasting bliss in heaven yet neither are these as such at any time visible or discernable to our common senses It being scarce if at all possible to judge infallibly who shall be saved and who shall not be saved it being much more difficult for any man to be assured of another mans salvation than of his own seeing that as is said hereunto an inward testimony of Gods Spirit is required which is the ground of that sound hope which is commonly called Assurance but the Promises of God in holy Scripture do not extend in like manner to the assuring of any man that another shall be saved as that he himself shall or that anothers faith shall not fail as that his own shall not but thus far only probably a truer and more certain sentence may
to be for certain reasons they draw at their pleasure out of Scripture and the necessity of our knowledge of it which is as solid a way of proceeding as if I finding my self by natural sense cold another should attempt to demonstrate the contrary because it is Midsommer But this use we may yet make of Universality to jude of Catholickness of Faith taking it for the most constant for time place and persons according as all humane account requires to ascribe that to the more numerous and eminent which is strictly proper only to the whole entire Body as a Councel or Senate is said to decree a thing when the chiefest do so some dissenting surely this is a very probable argument of the Catholickness of that Faith and consequently that Church so believing But what we before observed must not be forgotten here viz. That in all such enquiries as these the Estimate must be taken from the whole Church passed as well as Present and that there is as well an Eminency of Ages as Persons to preponderate in this Case Lastly the advantage Negative from Universality is very considerable to discern the true Faith and Church from false because it is most certain if any Doctrine or Discipline shall be obtruded on the Church which cannot be made evident to have been actually received in the Church and not by colourable and probable conjectures and new senses of Scripture invented to that purpose in some former Age that is Heretical and Schismatical and in no good sense Catholick The last Note which we shall mention is Sanctity which we hold very proper to this end taken abstractedly from all Persons as considered in Doctrine and Principles For if any Church doth teach contrary to the Law of nature of moral vertues of Justice or the like we may well conclude that to be a false Church though it keeps it self never so strictly to the Rule of Scriptures in many or most other things For it is in the power of mans wit and may be in the power of his hands to devise certain Religious Acts and impose them on others which shall carry a greater shew of severity and sanctity than there is any grounds for in Scripture or Presidents in the best approved Churches and yet this is not true Holiness of Believers For to this is principally required that it be regulated and warranted by Gods holy Word Yet neither so directly and expresly as if it were unlawful to act any thing in order to Holiness without special precept from thence For I see no cause at all to reject the ancient distinction found frequently with the Fathers of the Church of duties of Precept and duties of Councel For there ever was and ought to be in Christs Church several ranks of Professours of Christs Religion whereof for instance some live more contemplative some more active lives But if all commendable and profitable States were under Precept then should all sin that do not observe the same but God hath taken a mean course in not commanding some things of singular use to the promoting of Piety in true Believers but commending the same unto us Such are Virginal chastity Monastick life Travelling painfully not only towards the salvatian of a mans own soul but of others likewise and certain degrees uncommanded of Duties commanded as of charity towards our Christian neighbours Watchings unto Prayer and spiritual Devotion which being prescribed no man can determine to what degree they are by God required of us precisely some therefore are left to the Freewill-offerings of devouter persons who thereby endeavour either to assure themselves more fully of their salvation or increase of the glory afterward to be received For as Christ tells us in the Gospel Much was forgiven to Mary because she loved much so shall much be given upon the same reason They therefore that teach contrary to such wholesome and useful means of Holiness as these or the like under perhaps vain suspicion of too great opinion may be had of their worthiness incur at least with me the censure of being enemies to the holiness of Christs Church and render their Churches more suspected for the opposing of them than others for approving or practising them The Holiness then of the Church commending it to the eye and admiration of the World doth consist in the divineness and spiritualness of its Doctrine and Ecclesiastical discipline in use in it exceeding moral civility For it may be that such a severe hand of civil Justice may be held over a people that they may live more orderly and inoffensively to the world than some true Christian Churches but if this be done as often it is out of civil Prudence natural Gravity or a disposition inclined rather to get an estate than riotously and vainly to spend on which brings such scandal to Religion then is not this a sign of a true Church or Christian because it proceedeth not from principles proper to Christian Religion but secular interest how specious soever it may appear to the World CHAP. XXXI Of the Power and Acts of the Church Where they are properly posited Of the Fountain of the Power denyed to the Church Neither Prince nor People Authour of the Churches Power But Christ the true Head of the Church The manner how Christs Church was founded Four Conclusions upon the Premisses 1. That there was alwayes distinction of Persons in the Church of Christ 2. The Church was alwayes administred principally by the Clergy 3. The Rites generally received in the Church necessary to the conferring Clerical Power and Office 4. All are Vsurpers of Ecclesiastical Power who have not thus received it In what sense Kings may be said to be Heads of the Church AFter the Church found and founded as abovesaid the special Acts thereof claim due consideration and the Power or Right of so acting And this Power we make two-fold in General Political and Mystical or Sacramental Of both which we must first enquire after the proper Subject before we treat of the proper Acts thereof That all Power which is given by Christ doth reside in the Church as its subject no man can or doth question But because the Church it self being as is said a Society united in one Faith and administred outwardly by Christian Discipline according to Christs mind admitteth of several senses and acceptations therefore it must be first understood which and in what sense is according to Christs intention the proper seat of this power And before we come to Scriptural grounds we take no small help in this Enquiry from the common state of all Government which we have already shown to be such as is not ascending but descending It cometh not originally nor can from the multitude or people who are the object of this power i. e. the Persons properly to be governed and not governing all the Examples of former Ages confirming not only the unnaturalness and unreasonableness but impossibility of the People governing
injustice and Tyranny be denied the exercise of that which pertains to him Now the Key of Knowledge and the Key of Jurisdiction of which the Power of the Keys delivered by Christ consists and into which it is commonly divided are very different For the first doth but open the door to the others and prepares and qualifies a person for the other but doth no more actually give power or autority than the great skill and experience of a Souldier makes him a Captain to command others or knowledge in the law makes a man a judge actually It is therefore the Key of Jurisdiction or a Right given by Christ to administer the Church and every member thereof that is principally to be acknowledged in this Case And which not being found to descend orderly from Christ no effect of that affected power can be acknowledged But as is said doth not descend naturally or by birth but Judicially from others In which manner who ever receives it not sacrilegiously murps what belongs not to him But they who would wring this power out of the hands of the Church Selden de Synedriis Lib 1. Cap. 9. do give us certain Presidents as well from the Jewish Church wherein there was it should seem a custom that one Person might excommunicate another when he pleased But the same Antiquaries tell us also that it was in use amongst them for a man to excommunicate himself And this I take to imply an answer to the former For it is in the power of any man to separate himself from the Church or any other Society materially and Really but Judicially and Formally he cannot neither can he separate another otherwise than by absenting himself from the Communion of the Church he may indeed as formally pronounce such a censure against himself or an other as the most Canonical Judge in the world but intrinsique power being wanting the outward Act turns to smoak as to others but as to himself has no other effect then he that is in a boat hath upon the earth against which he sets his oar and thrusts hard but puts himself off not the earth as our neighbouring Ministers did when with intollerable and incredible presumption they took upon them to Excommunicate their own Bishops and some of the transmarine Churches of the same Platform were so wise as to allow their Fact And to the Instances of some Princes whom Histories affirm to have Excommunicated Id. ibid. certain persons the Answer is That the word Excommunication hath deceived the reporters and appliers thereof to this Case For according to signification of that word both in the Latin and Greek language Excommunication or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the declaration by Publick Herauld Suidas in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Item 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of any guilty Person to be excluded or banished the Princes Court or Company or perhaps Dominions Thus many have been Excommunicated by Soveraign Princes But can any instances be given of such as without any further Act of the Church have been thereupon denied Communion with the Church And what we say of Excommunicating holds good likewise in the Power of Absolution which the same Persons allow to meer secular Powers and would prove from an Act of Constantine the Great his absolving Eusebius Bishop of Nicomedia Constantine we all know had but little knowledge in the Rites of the Church at that time and might attempt he knew not what as soon as any other man whose affection to Christianity far exceeded his Judgement But what is affirmed of Constantines Act That he Restored that Excommunicated person to the Communion of the Church which only is properly Absolution No surely but he might restore him to his See and that is all Or if more were done he might be said to do it who caused by the interposition of his Power some Bishop of the Church to free him from those Eonds But questionless that is none of the least corruptions which the Church of Rome stands guilty of and which our Church hath but too much connived at that the Power of Excommunication should be in the hands of Lay men To mend this a little they of the Roman Law distinguish that which by no means should be separated curing one absurdity by another Anastafius Germbnius de Sacrorum Immunitat For they distinguish Episcopal Order from Episcopal Jurisdiction and say a man that hath not Episcopal Order but Episcopal Jurisdiction may Excommunicate a vile and corrupt imagination brought in on purpose to serve the turns of ambitious secular and sacrilegious Drones who would drive two trades of secular advantage and Ecclesiastical Profits For there is nothing so Essential unto Episcopacy as Jurisdiction I mean an Habitude and Right to Preside and Rule and there can be no Episcopal power without that nor that without Episcopal Charactar Officers indeed there may be under him void of that Charactar or any Priestly because though the Court be properly Ecclesiastical yet all things are not so which are acted therein Judicial Acts and Acts of Notaries and of Executions are competible to unordain'd persons because Gifts of nature and Learning may capacitate a man to them but that of Jurisdiction properly so called is the intrinsique Right of the Pastour of the Church and this of Excommunication annext thereunto or rather a part of it And therefore he is not a Bishop that hath it not and he that hath it is a Bishop It is not indeed necessary that this should be denounced by a Bishop but that this power which is likewise inherent in a Priest as a Priest be committed to him after the decree made by the Bishop For the Priest having a Jurisdiction within himself by vertue of his place and office but restrained by the Superiour Power to him the Jurisdiction and Autority of the Bishop is seen sufficiently in this that it enables a Priest to do that which of himself he ought not to do and this is rather exciting an old power in the Priest then infusing a new giving right to it to exert it self which before it had not But Lay-men having no Ecclesiastical Charactar inherent in them cannot by any such general commission given them from the Bishop act effectually to that end for want of the due Principle this Licence of the Bishop being nothing else but removing of that Obstacle which hinders it to work where it was For to deliberate debate and Judge of causes and persons subject to Excommunication may possibly be better performed by such who have attained to that science without any order in the Clergy but the fact it self is quite of another nature CHAP. XXXIII Of the second branch of Ecclesiastical Power which is Mystical or Sacramental Hence of the Nature of Sacraments in General Of the Vertue of the Sacraments Of the sign and thing signified That they are alwayes necessarily distinct Intention how necessarie to a Sacrament Sacraments Effectual to Grace HAving
A thing may be said in its self efficacious though it doth not attain the proper end of its working it misses of its effect because the conditions required are not kept For fire it self as active and operative an Element as it is doth not work effectually upon any thing but its proper matter nor upon that at too great a distance So may it be with the Sacraments which though indeed they are the power of God and not of nature unto salvation yet through some defect in the object or indisposition may fail of their proper and wonted Effect but not from any insufficiency in themselves or indignity of the Minister of them For if in this sense that old barbarous Rule be taken viz. That Sacraments have their virtue Ex Opere Operato viz. From the work done i. e. that they are Efficacious means of Grace in themselves and their vertue doth not depend upon the Ministers unworthines or worthiness provided he doth work according to Christs institution and intention it is true For what St. Paul speaks of the Ministers of the Gospel is true of the Ministers of the Sacraments Not that we are sufficient of our selves to think 2 Cor. 3. 5. any thing as of our selves but our sufficiency is of God The Officers of God in the delivering of these means of salvation not swerving from the Rule and Prescription given by God these Instruments themselves have their due and proper effect As when a King of his Free Grace sendeth by a leud and vain fellow a Grant of some great Favour to any of his subjects whom he pleaseth to raise out of a poor and base estate to riches and honour 't is not the unworthiness or wickedness of the bearer so long as he is true in his Office that can void the Grant so neither can the evil manners of the Ministers of the word and Sacraments null the power and promises of God made in them But though evil manners and vitiousness of the person do not corrupt or destroy the nature and end of the Sacrament yet it is believed that the actual aversation of the mind of him who consecrates and administers not only not intending actually to Consecrate but actually intending not to consecrate may evacuate the whole Action But this is shown by the former example to be very false because still God hath inserted his will and annexed his promises to the thing it self and not to the Persons disposition or indisposition either of understanding or manners It is true some of the Antients have said that Intention is necessary to a Sacrament and this hath given occasion to that gross Error in the Church of Rome which hath mistaken the intention of such Fathers as have spoken of Intention For Intention is twofold The Intention of Christ or God and the Intention of Man or the Minister They may say that Intention is necessary to a Sacrament taking their Intention for the will and mind of God which if it be not observed in all necessary thing at least the Sacrament is not perfect or valid but if it be whatever mans intention be it hinders not the Sacrament is the same And whereas they would sosâ—en this harsh and moderate this erroneous doctrine by distinguishing of Intention in the Priest into Actual Habitual and Vertual First we may well except against this distinction it self because they are forced in the explication of it to make Habitual and Vertual Intention the same in all material things only they cause them to differ in that Habitual is only a general intention without any actual consideration at the time of Consecration of what they are about Vertual that there is at the entrance upon that Action an actual purpose to do what Christ and the Church intended should be done at that time but this passeth a way suddenly and all the remaining Action is performed by vertue of that first good thought But this cannot serve the turn For the form of the Sacrament consisting chiefly in the words of Consecration according to their own doctrine if such an Intention be wanting at that time there can be no consecration and if no consecration no Sacrament So that there are two notorious inconveniences following upon this Error the one that the most sacred and Comfortable Instruments of Gods Grace and our Salvation are left to the lusts of malitious and vain man to be bafled at his pleasure and the Communicant defeated of the blessings God hath consigned to him thereby Another that upon supposition that the Sacraments were duly administred and so by consequence effectual to their proper ends yet this being not certainly known to the Partaker thereof his mind must be in perpetual disturbance and conflict fearing that the Priest had an inward intention contrary to the outward appearance But they say there is at least a Moral certainty And what is a Moral certainty Can they tell They have not yet And all I suppose they can say is no more then to make it a good degree of Probability which will not serve this Case But in truth many Cases fall out so that there is that they call a Moral Certainty on the contrary when spite and malice boll high in the breasts of men and their happiness consists in doing all the mischief they can to them they malign which we know by several Instances is not seldom found in those Countryes where this doctrine flourishes most And to what they are wont here chiefly to oppose That there can be no probability of an effect where the cause is not real but jocular ludicrous and Histrionical as it must be where there is no intention but only a fiction of doing a thing as if one in mockery upon the Stage should baptize one in derision of the Faith and Church of Christ We answer That if this Ludicrous Action be so fictitious and false that the thing only seems to be done but is not done and one seems to be baptized but is not It matters not what his intention may be For we now suppose the thing to be done as Christ and the Church intends For if this be wanting surely nothing is really performed But the question is whether when the thing is really done saving the due intention this defect voids all the rest For let an Officer of a King mock what he pleases and act what he pleases in scorn and derision of the thing he hath in Charge to deliver and declare it is contrary to his resolution to deliver it yet if he really doth deliver it his contrary purposes and actions cannot hinder the effect nor the benefit accruing from thence For as St. Paul saith Neither he that 1 Cor. 3. 7. planteth is any thing nor he that watereth is any thing but God who giveth the encrease We see this in marriage more apparently than in other Sacraments if we may call this a sacrament of which by and by that let the Minister intend what he pleases
nay the Parties Jest with that Sacred Rite never so lightly if there be a performance of such things as are outwardly required to that solemnity it holds good to all intents and purposes even against the resolutions of the persons principally concerned therein Yet must we acknowledge a vast difference between those two most properly called Sacraments Baptism and the supper of the Lord. For undoubtedly where in either of these there is a repugnancy of the will to them their effect is nothing upon the person receiving them because this is the principal obstacle of all to the efficacy yet is the Sacrament never the less valid and truly performed as to the Nature of it And concerning the Efficacy of the Sacraments it is worth our enquiry especially for their sakes who ascribing very injudiciously and injuriously the Grace of Sanctification and Justification absolutely to a special Faith thought of but lately amongst Christians or to the unsearchable Decree of Almighty God to justifie and save such persons as are ordained to Life and Salvation affirm this Decree and good purpose of God to effect all things necessary to salvation and that the Sacraments are received only as so many pledges and seals of the good will of God in our Justification and Salvation long before concluded immutably towards us but are of no efficacy or vertue to bring them about This though Calvin Cartwright Perkins plainly and directly asserted by some eminent Reformers is no better than a pestilent Errour contrary to all Antiquity of Ecclesiastical and Scriptural Writers Of which latter it suffices to instance in those obvious places which directly inferra necessity of them and ascribe a vertue to them of effecting and not only signifying Grace or sealing it unto us For Matthew the 3. v. 11. St. John distinguishing his Baptism Mat. 3. 11. from the Baptism of Christ assureth that Christ should Baptize with the Holy Ghost and not only with Water Now if water alone signifies or seals for there is no such great difference between these as commonly is supposed and therefore the Baptism that Christ used having more in it than so it follows that it must be the efficacy and grace of the Holy Spirit And they who take notice of this argument to answer that the difference between Johns Baptism and that of Christ here prophesied of consists in this That Johns was an outward washing Christs an inward doth confirm what I said For surely this inward being invisible can be no outward sign or seal whose natures are to be visible and apparent And therefore it must be that Baptism of Grace wrought in the inward man And doth Christ when he saith Mark 16. 16. He that believeth and is Baptized Mark 16. 16. shall be saved doth he mean no more than It is a sign he shall be saved Or he hath his salvation which came onely by believing sealed unto him Or are they not rather equally conjoyned to the same effect Salvation So that no more can a man expect to be saved by believing without being Baptized than he can by being Baptized without believing And this is manifest from the Baptism of Infants which puts tham into a state of salvation even before actual faith in them Again Being born of Water and the Holy Ghost of which Christ John 3. 5. speaks in St. John meaning thereby Baptism must needs be more than certain indications and signs of life Christ sayes there expresly we are born by Water and not that we are known to be born by Water only And where as Calvin with diverse followers of the Reformation presume to interpret this Water as elswhere Fire of the Holy Ghost and not of the proper Element Water I make no scruple to accuse them of extreme insolence for so doing as well because they needlesly and more immodestly oppose the unanimous consent of the Ancient Interpreters expounding it of Water-Baptism than I do contradict them whom I alwayes set in a lower form to them as also because the thing it self declares the contrary sense to be more agreeable to the mind of the Holy Ghost For Water and the Holy Ghost are put here not exegetically as they speak but distinctly as two several things concurring to the same end For though John in St. Matthew addeth to the Holy Ghost Fire as Water is in S. John Acts 2. 3. seeing there is found a real and proper verification of this baptism of fire which was at the day of Pentecost when the Apostles and Disciples were visited with fiery Tongues from above there is no necessity of fleeing to a meer metaphor and if there be none here there is none in that place where water is joyned with the Holy Ghost And reading no where that even the Holy Ghost appeared in the likeness of water we are constrained to take this properly of external water Furthermore when an effect is ascribed to a thing why should we make doubt to ascribe an efficacie or agencie to that reputed Cause But to Baptism is ascribed remission of sins as Acts 2. 38. Repent ye saith St. Peter Acts 2. 3â— and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins c. And elsewhere in the Acts God commandeth St. Paul Arise Acts 22. 16. and be baptized and wash away thy sins Can any thing but a fond partiality to the new glosses of Modern Divines incline any man to think otherwise of Baptism here than of force to take away sins Here they demand with a Passion What Ex Opere Operato From the work of Baptism done I answer The work done of it self is not thus efficacious as is said but the Co-operation of the Holy Spirit which God hath set over that work and its influence effecteth thus much Lastly The Introducers and Defenders of this opinion of the ineffectualness of the Sacraments allowing an efficacie to excite and nourish Faith which with them does all things why should they be so nice and timorous in granting another effect of the same nature For to encrease and confirm Faith being a spiritual effect is as much in nature as washing away sins or communicating new Graces I see no difference worth the noting besides that from themselves and an illaudable pronity to vary from Tradition expounding holy Writ where wit and wantonness of Judgment can find the least footing to stand out against Antiquity But whereas some argue for the efficaciousness of Baptism and the other Sacraments out of Reason and some out of Reason argue against it it is hard to see how either side can attain their ends seeing whatever efficacy the Sacraments have they derive from the Institution of God which Institution can be no otherwise known to us then from his word and therefore as Divine reason proceeding upon Scripture grounds may inform us we may conclude and no otherwise Wherefore they argue very prophanely and according to Scripture grounds ridiculously
saved but he that believeth not shall be damned This Covenant was typified by the Sacrament of Circumcision made between God and Abraham with his seed thus This is my Covenant Gen. 17. 10. which ye shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee Every Man-child among you shall be circumcised c. And this was yet more cleerly prophesied of by Ezekiel saying Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and Ezek. 36. 35 ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your Idols will I cleanse you And as with men that is no sure Covenant which doth not consist of proper matter mutually passed from one Party to another and of due form of words thereunto required So neither is that proper Baptism which makes no express or implicite stipulation between God and man and that with that form of words and Action by Christ enjoyned And the Matter of this Sacrament is expressed already to be water by many places of Scripture as Mat. 3. 6 11. Joh. 1. 26. Joh. 3. 23. Act. 8. 36 c. And having none other mentioned by Christ we are not so much to argue presumptuously of insufficiency of that Element to effect so great matters upon the soul and thence conclude That it is unlikely God should be so rigorous to exact indispensably a little water or cause the party to perish in his sins for 1. This way of reasoning holds no less against Gods severe imposition of Circumcision which was the cutting off of a small pitifull piece of Flesh and yet that omitted God threatneth positively to cut off the soul of the child from his people Exod. 17. 14. 2. This takes away the Liberty and power of God to dispose of his Graces upon what terms he pleases for the manner of conveying whereof he may choose what means he pleases though never so improbable to sense to attain such ends that it may appear the vertue is not in the thing so much as God 3. God in such Cases doth not so much tye himself as tie us He doth indeed oblige himself to those means himself hath ordained but not confine so himself to them that he cannot or may not work the same effect without them Yet as he so restrains that he threatens wrath and makes no promise at all but upon our dutiful observation of such his Prescriptions But as when a man not by any wilful neglect or disesteem of the usefulness of this Sacrament shall by invincible necessity be detained from it with a fervent desire to be partakers of it God by his abundant Grace may supply the want of it In like manner where there is no proper natural water to be had rather then the solemnity should wholly be omitted and denied to one earnestly craving the same Use may be made of that which comes nearest to it so of a nature cleansing But this needs farther determination to put out of doubt than any private Doctour can give For we read in Scripture of no other element though in Ecclesiastical History we do than water And there appears no greater inconvenience Pallad Lausic Historiâ or ill consequence for men to be brought to that extremity for want of natural water than to want the general means of Christianity itself or Children to die unbaptized But the manner of applying this water to the party baptized by Immersion or dipping into the water or by Aspersion or Sprinkling and that thrice or once only is not much to be insisted upon For though 't is undeniable that it was a general Ablution by sinking the Baptized into the water as St. Paul intimateth when he speaketh of being buried with Christ in Rom. 6. 4. Col. 2. 12. Math. 3. 16. Act. 8. 38. Baptism that as Christ was laid under the earth after his death so Christians under the water and were buried unto sin And other phrases of Scripture which speak of ascending out of the waters and descending into the waters Yet that any washing by aspersion or sprinkling sufficed appears from the Analogy between the Sacramental Purgations of the Old Law and the New For as infinite places certifie us the blood of the Sacrifices and waters of Purification were to be sprinkled on the Persons therein concerned And so the end of the Sacrament of Baptism is to signify and conferr Grace on the baptized by such outward Elements to Exod. 29. 2. Levit. 14. 7. which the vertue of the Sacrament not consisting in the nature of the thing but in the Institution of God greater quantity can conduce no more then less provided so small quantity be not taken which should hide and hinder the significancy of the Elements And besides Gods rule being I will have mercy and not Sacrifice and never intending to save the Soul by such means as in common probability may destroy the Body the condition of some persons being so frail and weak and of some Climates so hard and hurtful he is pleased to accept the most safe way the substance of the duty being entirely observed And such persons are not only Infants but the Sick and very Aged too who were baptized with water and that upon a necessity of entring into the Kingdome For could scarce any thing betray Calvine with his Followers such as Perkins and Cartwright more to suspicion of insolence and singularity than his seeking to elude the plain precept of Christ concerning Elemental not Spiritual water Job 3. 5. 6. and washing only contrary to the universal consent of all Catholicks and Hereticks before him as if he had taken the rise of his Fancy from these two famous Anabaptists Balthazar and Satelare in Germany who Cassand Praefar ad Anabaptist Mat. 19. 13. 14. reading in the Scripture one Ground of Paedobaptism to be Christs saying Suffer little Children to come unto me for of them is the Kingdom of heaven interpreted the same of Children in Spirit and not in Age with the like probability both And of the subject of Baptism or the persons to be baptized and capable of that Sacrament this in sum may be said out of the Scripture as the foundation of all as even now out of St. John Unless a man be born Tit. 3. 5. of water and the Holy Ghost he shall not enter into the Kingdom of God And St. Paul to Titus saith that According to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost And to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 12. 13 Cap. 12. For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body c. And the like is comprehended in that General Law of Christ given to his Disciples to be Executed Matthew 28. 29. Now from these general Rules laid down by Christ in his word a just and particular inference may be made to the entitling Children to a Right in this Sacrament it being a Rule which holds no less in Divine than Humane Laws That where the Law
accepted if done by her more soberly and seriously as it ought by all whether Minister or otherwise And that this Act of Zipporah was not so exorbitant in the manner of doing as vulgarly supposed more learned Men have shewed at large And secondly That is was not so extraordinary doth appear from the practice of the Jews who as P. Fagius hath observed upon Deuteronomy Fagius in Deuteron C. 10. 16. Cap 10. v. 16. do believe if a Man be wanting to whom it belongs one Uncircumcised as a Servant a Woman so not an Heathen or Infidel a Youth may circumcise an Infant Neither was Circumcision to be repeated made by what man soever though an Heathen or Infidel And in brief We find no person excluded by the Catholick Church from doing this office for one desiring it or capable otherwise of it but a Mans self And yet we are told by searchers into the ancient practice of the Jews that a man might circumcise himself And thus much of the First Proper and Generally necessary Sacrament to Salvation Baptism adding only one thing more for a conclusion and that is about the Repetition of Baptism or Anabaptism Of which prophanation of that solemn Sacrament I find many really guilty but not so much nor upon those grounds they are Generally charged For I have not met with any that directly affirm it to be requisite or lawful to reiterate Baptism though in fact they do so For the Novatians the Donatists the Arrians and they of Late years who are called from the Renewing of their Baptism Anabaptists have none of them that we find declared it reasonable that Baptism once truly performed should be acted over again but all these suppose it not done and therefore they do it It was always the opinion of the Catholick as well as Heretical and Schismatical Churches That all outward words or washings sufficed not to the due effect of baptism There were three several incapacities which render'd pretended baptism void so far that the Person so baptized was held obliged to be again baptized The incapacity of the Minister or Baptizer The incapacity of the Person or subject to be baptized Thirdly the incapacity of the Form used in Baptism If the Minister had any time fallen from or denied the Christian Faith or was of impure and Scandalous manners he was reputed by the Novatians and Donatists uncapable of such a sacred Office and consequently in that though a Priest did not effectually administer that Holy Sacrament imagining that he who was so defiled himself could not by his Ministration cleanse another and therefore he was baptized not as repeating former baptism but as not being baptized at all The Arrians being enemies to the second Person in the Trinity and judging the Catholicks to be so too in ascribing too much unto Christs divine nature looked on the form of baptizing as corrupt and insufficient to such an end and therefore thought another necessary And our modern Anabaptists as they are called not thinking Infants capable of that Sacrament for want of Faith and Repentance which they hold absolutely necessary to Salvation and that in the properest sense deny any effect to follow upon those Actions used So that we see there are no proper Anabaptists such I mean who hold it so much as needful to baptize any persons above once Though in Fact they stand guilty of this prophanation upon the grounds of others not hard to be made Good against them as we have against these last shewing the Capacity children are in of receiving Baptism as also that the unworthiness of the Person ministring Sacraments doth not impede the effect of those Sacraments while he hath a proper subject to work upon and observes the proper form required Now this form according as the Arrians excepted against at doth depend upon the disputation of the Divine Nature of Christ proper to another place It may here be doubted whether the zeal of some of the Ancients but of most of the Schoolmen hath not too far transported them who damn all such as repeat Baptism once rightly administer'd it being impossible in their opinion that Baptism should be twice acted but the Former must be renounced and truly if Baptism once truly performed be renounced that which follows is also renounced being in it self good For there is but One Baptism as St. Paul saith But this can never be proved as necessarily Ephes 4. and perpetually true They indeed of whom now we have spoken who were so engaged in heretical opinions and societies as to believe the imperfection and insufficiency of that Baptism they received could not admit of another but they must reject the first But then whether absolutely they rejected true Catholick Baptism may be a doubt For he only renounces his Baptism properly who rejecteth the Form it self and the Faith therein implied And this is the One Baptism of which St. Paul is certainly to be understood that is necessarily One in nature but that it should be also so One in number as multiplied both should be made void no reason is given And surely St. Paul intended no such thing though he may be said much less to have intended the multiplication of it The more probable opinion therefore of the two is That the Second Baptism is void rather than the first As if two married persons being joyned together in Lawful Matrimony once should presume a Second time to go through the same Ceremony it may be only to confirm them in that state this were to baffle and prophane such Ordinances but it were not to make the former Vows and Rites void And for the reasons given against Iteration of Baptism though I yield the Conclusion that it ought not so to be I do not hold them convincing used to this purpose Not that taken from the indelibleness of that Character supposed to be imprinted in the soul by that Sacrament 'T is true Circumcision had a visible character made in the body which could scarce be altered or removed But that therefore to answer this there must be a proportionable impresâ—â—on the soul which is invisible follows not St. Paul calls Circumcision a sign and a seal and it is Baptism in a Metaphorical sense And the Fathers who many times mention such things intended nothing more than an immutable Obligation on our part to God and an infallible communication of Gods grace to them who duly are partakers of his Sacraments It is also true a Man can be born but once spiritually as naturally and therefore supersluous and prophane are all attempts to a Regeneration a second time the principles of spiritual life being preserved intire in themselves though in a way to be extinguished upon pertinacy in sin and dying in impenitency And for those places of Scipture where St. Paul tells us we are sealed by Gods spirit alledged 2 Cor. 1. 21 22. Eph. 1. 13 14. Eph. 4. 30. to prove that we have a Character made in Baptism
fit the Case For when the Scripture saith Christ is a Door or Christ is a Vine or a Lamb it is not the same formally as to say that a Lamb is Christ or a Door or a Vine is Christ Yet if that rigour must be observed in Scripture Propositions to have them true that without a Trope or Figure they must be understood otherwise we must be reproached to deny Scripture the foresaid speeches must as necessarily inferr a Transubstantiation of Christ into the Nature of a Door or Vine or Lamb as his bare words at the Celebration do inferr a Transubstantiation of the Elements into his Nature And no apparence of disparity can be here shown if so be Christs Literal meaning must be here urged as they do Now That the Signs which were before are Really Present in the Sacrament after Consecration doth appear from the most-Essential thing to a Sacrament A Sacrament we have defined to be a Visible Sign with Austin and infinite others I say a Visible and Real Sign and not Visibly Apparently or Seemingly a Sign or a Sign of a Sign as the deluding Specieses remaining after supposed Transubstantiation are said to be And it is an Impossible thing as is before shewed in the general treating of Sacraments that the Sign should be the thing signified For if some Sign could be the thing signified then something signified should be a Sign and so both wayes the Relate and Cor-relate should be the same too and two should be one and one should be two and if this may be what may not be or at least said to be For as to the instances given That in some Cases a thing may be a Sign and the thing signified it hath been showed how defective they are in that they are a Sign of the same nature perhaps or rather some qualification of it and not of the same thing numerically as the individual Sign in the Lords Supper is believed to be of that it is Therefore from hence they are put to their choice Whether of the two they will suffer the loss of the Sacrament or the absence of Christs Body in their sense For not only the nature of the thing now expressed require Sacramental Signs as well as the thing signified but the manifold Autorities of the Ancientest of the Greek and Latin Fathers have for this reason called the Sacramental Elements Signs Figures Representations Types Antitypes of Christs Body and Blood as might at large be shewed our Adversaries not denying it But what answer do they make to them The Modern Greeks as Cardinal Bessario who is herein followed by some more modern than himself Latinizing answer confessing that the Fathers Bessario Do Eucharist Sacramento often so speak but say they they speak only of the Bread and Wine before Consecration and not after Here is some wit in this shuffle and evasion but no truth at all For before Dedication and Consecration they are not Signs or Figures or Antitypes at all They have no more relation to the Body and Blood of Christ than the like Elements at our Common tables and therefore they must be understood to speak of them after Consecration But the Answer of the Scholastical managers of this controversy in the Latin Church shows less modesty and no more truth For Aūg. in Psal 3. they say St. Austin who calls the consecrated Elements a Figure of Christs Body spake not of every empty Figure but of a Figure of a thing really present All this we grant willingly viz that the Signs Sacramental are not Signs of things future or Absent This is nothing at all to the purpose And the Second answer is notoriously and boldly false saying That St. Austin might there speak as Manichee who denied the Real Body Contra Adamant C. 12. of Christ For it was in confutation of Manicheans And of Tertullians words who likewise calls the consecrate Elements Signs they make non-sense joyning head and tail together that they may really signifie nothing least they should signify that for which we alleadg them Tertullian saies Hoc est Corpus meum Id est Figura Corporis mei Figura Corporis mei saies one after his greater Doctors is referred not unto Corpus meum as an Fisher Jes explication thereof but unto Hoc in this manner Hoc id est Figura Corporis mei est Corpus meum i. e. This that is the Figure of my Body is my Body If it be not sufficient conviction of their Errour and confusion that they are driven to such unnatural tossing of mens words against common sense and Grammar and having so done to affect nothing but what is directly false or unintelligible as this Scholie is making the Figure and the Body the very same thing I confess I have nothing to say For this is the subject we have at present in hand That the Sign and thing signified must by eternal necessity be distinct but this opinion of Transubstantiation destroys this and destroying this destroys the Sacrament For whereas they say That the remaining Species supply the place of the Substance abolished and are Signs This cannot consist with the impossibility of such Accidents without a subject in that contrary to their definition they should stick and not stick to a thing in that they are Accidents their nature requires that they should have a subject and the nature of this mutation requires they should have none And where as they argue That what any Creature can do the Creatour can much more do and therefore if the Creature can sustain Accidents the Creatour God Almighty can I answer If the Creature could sustain Accidents without a subject then doubtless could God the Creatour but doth it follow that because the Creature can be a subject to them therefore the Creatour can also All that a Creature can Do the Creatour can do but all that the Creature can Suffer I trow the Creatour cannot But to be the subject to Accidents is a Passion and imperfection and no Action and therefore nothing can be concluded from hence Therefore they proceed one strain higher not doubting to say That what the Creature can do by its Passive Capacity the Creatour can do by his Active which if it did not imply a contradiction in nature itself I should easily grant but this it doth For first it is to make an Accident a Substance For t is the nature of a Substance to subsist of it self without the aid or support of any other thing distinct from it Not that the Secondary being can subsist without the First God himself but without any thing Created And therefore seeing that Substance it self cannot continue in its Being without Gods omnipotent hand supporting it this doth equalize the nature of Accidents to that of Substance in that it supposeth that Accidents by a divine power may subsist of themselves as well as Substance For substance cannot subsist at all without a Divine power and thus Accidents by a
Divine power should be of the nature of Substance but such confusion and havock in nature to bring in an unnatural Dogm is no ways to be admitted not out of any defect in the Divine Power but an incapacity of the Creature to be so order'd against its nature And as this Condition of Species subsisting or existing separately of themselves is contrary to their nature So the significativeness of these Species is contrary to Christs Intention and Institution which were to make a representation of his death and passion by Bread and Wine and not by the Similitudes of Bread and Wine And this is to be noted That when the Ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin do affirm that Christs Body or Blood are present under the Species and Forms of Bread and Wine they do not mean such Species as the Schools of Aristotle have introduced for I find not that they took any notice of them distinct from the subject to which they relate but they took them in a more plain sense for the thing it self so affected and formed and Under the Species signified with them as much as Under the Kinds of Bread and Wine Christs Body was present And they never destroyed the Sacrament it self to give an extraordinary Being to the Body of Christ therein CHAP. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered AND If this be once made good That there is a Proper Sacrament remaining after Consecration it will be much less difficulty to agree upon the manner of Christs presence in the Sacrament For the doubt will not be so much about the Concomitance and co-existence of it with the Sacramental Signs as Whether that which we See with our eys and touch and taste be properly and not denominatively and Figuratively only the Body of Christ And in effect Whether it be the very Sacrament it self or whether only in the Sacrament The Doctrine of the Church of Rome determines not only that There it is but directly and expresly This it is and this we deny as that which indeed must include such a Transubstantiation as is by them affirmed and the chiefest grounds whereof we are now to examine And First from Scripture they are wont to argue and that from the Old Bellarm Lib. 1. Cap. 3. De Sacram. Eucharist Testament where are recorded many Types and Figures of Christ and particularly his Passion which were no less if not much more clear than the representations in the Eucharist if Christ himself be not there otherwise than Figuratively For the Paschal Lamb slain seems to represent Christs Passion more Lively and expresly than the Sacramental Elements Therefore if that the Sacraments of the Gospel might exceed them of the Law it is necessary that what was done there Figuratively only should be properly and really performed in our Sacraments Answ But first supposing Transubstantiation is Christ more clearly in the Sacrament than if there were no such thing Or can the Sacrament of the Gospel be said to be more clear for this when in truth it is more Mystical and abstrufe But though it be not more clear to the sense or Reason yet it is in it self more really present For otherwise the Legal Sacrament must have been only a Figure of this Figure of Christs Body and not of the Bertramus Body it self But the answer of Bertram to this about eight hundred years ago is sufficient to this purpose that both the Paschal Lamb and the Sacramental Elements both Figured and represented Christs body The former Christs Body future and its Passion and the other Instant as at the Institution or Part and compleated So that in truth a great preheminence there is in the Sacraments of the New Testament above them of the Old which is the thing contended for But Christ was really received in both The next Argument taken from Christs words in the sixth of John where he saith amongst many other things I am the Bread of Life And again Verily Joh. 6. 48. 53. 54. Verily Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood ye have no life in you For my Flesh is meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed Is answer'd two ways First from a consent on both sides by some of the Learnedest That Christ spake not of a Sacramental Eating and Drinking of him but Ordinary in receiving him by Faith preached But because as many on both sides affirm that he pointed at the Eucharist in these words therefore I think it most reasonable and equal to take in both senses and that Christ intended the receiving of him by Faith in the word preached and in the Eucharist too And though Christs Flesh be meat indeed and his Blood drink indeed it doth not follow at all that it is properly so For things Metaphorically such are really though not Properly And Christ doth not say Caro mea est verus cibus or Sanguis meus verus est potus i. e. My Flesh is true meat or Proper My Blood is true Drink but My Flesh is Meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed that is verily and really And besides the difference before intimated between these expressions and that at the Celebration of the Eucharist when he calls the Bread his Body is very great especially with the precise stickers to the Letter For according to these Christ Transubstantiated Bread into his Body but here according to the same Rule of interpretation he should convert his Body into Bread the words being alike operative But if Christ did at no time make a Transubstantiation of his Flesh or body into bread though he affirmed his Body to be bread What reason is there we should believe upon no better grounds than he affirming bread to be his Body should thereby change it into his proper Body A Third principal Argument is taken from the words of Christ at the Celebration viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And upon the proper acceptation of these words they make no doubt to put to silence all seeming oppositions and contradictions and impossibilities in nature For be it say they how it will Christ saying it who is truth it self no doubt is to be made of it For as they teach the vulgar to speak If Christ should say that this stone were his Body we ought to believe it All which is granted But we must distinguish as all sober men do between Loquela and Sermo He that rehearses a certain number of Articulate words doth Loqui or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but he only who doth deliver the word conceived in his mind which is his meaning at his mouth doth Sermocinari or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now if it can be proved by any certain Circumstance that Christ meant these words in a proper sense and not improper in which he delivered no small part of his doctrine in the Gospel we have done the Controversy is at an end we are to lay our hands on our mouths and
us but nothing could suffice to lay aside the proper cerimonies used at the Institution or form of it but such an opinion as that of Transubstantiation â—ellarmin It now sufficing according to moderner Judgments that the several Wafers now in use were all one when they came first from mill and are broken by the Teeth in actually receiving them whereas Christ represented the unity of his mystical Members and Fraction of his Natural Body by the Forms set before his Disciples the better to affect our hearts and quicken our devotion To the same end in Ancienter though not first dayes of Christianity there was an Elevation of the Mysteries made by the Priest to shew only how Christ was Lifted up on the Cross for our sins but upon the doctrine and perswasion of transubstantiation this was corrupted and perverted to the drawing people to a direct Adoration terminated in the Visible objects and not as was anciently used from that Action to take an occasion of worshipping Christ himself with a seqestration of their mind from their senses To this likewise pertains the Grosser devotion for many hundred years impractised and unknown to Christians that not only Adoration to God and Christ should be made by all who approched as Communicants to these Holy Mysteries but that the Host should be on purpose publickly exposed to the view of all enterers into the Church where it is with an injunction to exhibit all devout and divine worship to it which invention the Fathers and all Christian Churches were holy ignorant of for many hundred years and never was there so much as a Feast of Corpus Cristi till Urbane the Fourth instituted one about the year 1263. And the Adoration of the Host as Christ himself much later But if such an opinion had been of any tolerable Antiquity in the Church how could it be avoided but such direct and open Adoraâ—ion should have been given much more early it being a most ancient Principle of Christian Faith that Christ was God and of common humane reason that God is to be worshipped And yet no mention made of such Adorations as are of late introduced and required which is an argument they never believed as now the Romanists do for had they they must have necessarily done as they do But a stop must be put to this luxuriant Subject to keep our selves in the Limits presribed to our selves and here let it be Only having hitherto spoken of the Preparatories to Christian Faith the nature Kinds Acts effects and Lastly subject which is the Church and of this again in its Political and Mystical Capacity and Power which consists in the due Administration of the Sacraments as well Properly as Improperly and Equivocally so called It remains now to conclude and Crown the present doctrine of the Church with that which is most contrary of all things to the Nature of a Visible Church and that is Schism For by this unnatural state the true Nature of the Church is more illustrated and the Unitie of it by the explication of this Separation and Dis-union called Schism CHAP. XLVII The Conclusion of the Treatise of the subject of Christian Faith the Church by the treating of Schism contrary to the Visible Church Departure from the Faith real Schism not formal as to the outward form Of the state of Separation or Schism Of separation of Persons Coordinate and Subordinate Of Formal and Vertual Schism All Heresie vertually Schism not formally Separation from an Heretical Society no Schism From Societies not Heretical Schism Heretical Doctrine or Discipline justifie â—eparation How separation from a true Church is Schism and how not In what sense we call the Roman Church a true Church Some instances of Heretical Errours in the Roman Church Of the Guilt of Schism Of the notorious guilt of English Sectaries The folly of their Vindications That the Case of them and us is altogether different from that of us and the Church of Rome Not lawful to separate from the Vniversal Church VVHile we treat of the Church it must be alwaies remembred that we intend not to speak of the Invisible Church as it is taken for a select number supposed to belong intimately and inseparably to Christs invisible Body of which no knowledg or account can be had but by sensible outward things but we altogether enquire of the Visible Church which though it be not alwaies Actually seen or discerned from other Societies especially pretending to be Churches of Christ yet must alwaies be Visible though not conspicious And it would be a gross mistake in any so to judge of the Church Visible and Invisible as of distinct Churches or necessarily distinct parts of the same Church because the same persons may at the same time be of the Visible and Invisible Church This distinction then is to be allowed no farther than as it insinuates to us the Several States of the Members of the same Church the Church in nature being but One according to several testimonies of Holy-Writt and the very nature of all Communities and much more of the Church which is to be an Aggregate Body consisting of many parts by no natural Bond or influence united together but by divine Falsae Professionis Imagine utimur si cujus nomine gloriamur ejus instituta non sequimur Leo. Mag. Serm. 5. de Jejun 7. Mensis and Spiritual Which is manifested by certain outward Acts which renders and denominates such a society of Men Visible as a Church of Christ These Acts are principally two The profession and declaration in word or writing of the true Faith and the Exercise of those Graces and workes which that Faith requires in Religious worship and Obedience That and in what degree of necessitie this Church must be One as well as Visible is before declared and here only repeated to give light to the nature of Schisme now to be explained For to omit the Criticismes and various acceptations of the word Schism as not necessarie we shall proceed by degrees to shew these two things concerning it The Nature and Guilt of it For the Nature of Schism it doth appear from the Unitie and conjunction of Christs Body of the Church consisting in two things Communion with Christ the Head and mutual Communion of the members one with another the contrary to this must needs be Discommunion and Separation But there being two parts in Communion a Material or the things in which men communicate as faith it selfe and the substantial Part of Christian worship And a Formal the Actual outward exercise of this The First of these though it be really yet is not formally Schism as may appear more fully by and by because all Schism doth suppose some agreement with and Relation to that One Body the Church but where the foundation of such Relation is destroyed there the whole perishes And therefore a division from the Faith of Christs bodie the Church being either Total and that again either Negatively when
that communion which may detain any man of Christian modesty and Charity from pronouncing such an one to be infallibly damn'd or out of possibility to salvation And if it be hereupon demanded What difference we put between Infidels and such corrupt Christians seeing diverse have undertaken to assert a Possibility of salvation to them also living exactly to the Light and Rule of Nature in them I answer not absolutely at present dashing the argument a-pieces by denying the supposition and their colourable proofs thereof but demonstrating a vast discrimination between the one and other condition For commonly where Heresies which are so properly called and not Gentilism as they are which destroy the first Principles of Christianity are taught and maintained there are to be found all truths necessarie to salvation in a Christian sense For the Holy Scriptures we suppose are there received and submitted unto which are able to make a 2 Tim 3. 16 17. man wise unto salvation and thorowly to furnish him unto all good works And the Records of the Church and ancienter practise good guides against the rocks way-laying a man in his course to Heaven And the want of actual communion with a Church doth then only expose our souls to Perdition when it is wilfully and causelesly slighted and contemned And then only doth Separation visible 〈◊〉 less Visible alienation of mind and affection put on the nature of Schism And there are two general defects in a Church which justify Separation according to those two things we have shewed do constitute a Church Doctrine of Faith and Divine Regiment called commonly Discipline If a Church errs notoriously in the former no Separation can be called Schism oâ— if defective not in Government absolutely for without some Government it could not be so much as a Society but in the Government oâ—dained for it because then it should not be a Christian Society For the faith of Christians held do not make a Christian Society but the Christian Regiment Christian Regiment also I call that not whereby Christians are Governed for Civil Governments are common to Heathens and Christians but that which is Proper to Christians as Christians and was instituted by Christ for Christians and not invented out of mens wise brains and accommodated to the Church and perhaps called Divine to give it greater credit and place amongst Christians Of which we have alreadie spoken It being a common rule amongst the Ancients Clemens Alexand Stromal immutable with me There can be no true Flock without true Pastours And there can be no true Pastours where they are not set over the Flock according to Christs known and received will but some presumed tacit and extraordinary Vocation as they term it when there is an entrance by the Window and not by the Door From hence it doth appear how uncertain and confused their notion and position is who without any more adoe conclude all those to be Schismaticks and that upon their own Principles and Concessions who separate from a Christian Societie which they acknowledge to be a true Church For very great is the ambiguity both of Separation and True Church First Separation is as we have before noted either of Subordinates or Co-ordinates And of Subordinates either simply or with Restriction Simply subordinate I call them not comparitively with Christs Imperial Power but with all External power who by divine Right of Providence owe direct obedience to their Pastours in all things not inhibited by the Law of God to which all Spiritual Pastours are to be no â—ess subject than the sheep themselves And thus every Bishop is true Head and Governor of that Flock which under Christ is committed to his Care and Custodie But in like manner is not that Bishop subject to the Metropolitane and much less that Metropolitane to his Patriarch For these are but Ecclesiastical Constitutions and of no distinct Order though Degree According to which obligations of obeying the refusing to obey and dis-uniting ones self from the Governours of the Church doth aggravate or extenuate the Division and the guilt thereof And without all peradventure may one Church divide from another upon less grounds then the Members of one Church separate from the more immediate Head of the same How thick do instances stand in Ecclesiastical History of Churches who by vertue of their Respective Governours have been divided and yet both remain true Churches Again a True Church is said so to be more than one way viz. As to Being absolutely and Being perfectly We know that every Errour in Doctrine though great nay though heretical doth not presently destroy the nature of a Church absolutely though it takes away from the perfection of a Church How that opinion was delivered by the Fathers viz. That Heresie destroyes the Church we have Cyprianus Epistola 52. â— gat Novatianos eâ—â—e Christianosâ— shewed in part speaking of Heresie and now may add farther that the the same persons of old or their Co-equals denied an Heretique to be a Christian also and therefore they are to be understood of the such foul and unchristian Heresies which rased the foundation of faith it self as did the Valentinians the Gnosticks the Marcionites and such like For t is now agreed to That unless a man be a Christian he cannot be an Heretique Or if at any time they spake of more tolerable Heresies not wholly inconsistent with Christianity it self then they laid the burden of Damnation upon that accessorie but separable Aggravation Uncharitableness which alone and especially conjoined with such errours exposed to damnation But as it is with the Natural Man it is with the Spiritual There are some parts Essential and Vital which cannot be wanting or corrupted but the Whole must loose its nature and denomination and there are others not absolutely Essential which are called Integral without which the Body may possible subsist but not be perfect in its material Parts And so it is with the Body of Faith consisting of so many Articles or members as Parts some Vital and essential some necessarie to its perfections but not its Being absolutely And a Church may be called a true Church which is defective or Excessive in these though not in them And yet we need not betake our selves to that explication by some used of a True-man and a Thief to express how a Church may be a True Church and an erroneous one at the same time For the nature of this truth we ascribe unto the Church consisting only in Morality If the Church failes in that the Nature of it failes as it doth not in a man when he is corrupted with falsness and vice But this we say That although all Truths are equally true as to the nature of Truth it self they are not of equal importance and use to us or to a Church Therefore such a Latitude being in the notion of a True Church how can any man so confidently say that No Church can separate from the Church
a good event in general if not particular we are now to satisfie our selves What that we call Evil and Sin is And what relation God hath to it First then we are to note that Evil and Sin differ only as Genus and Species so that all Sin is Evil but all Evil is not Sin Evil is that which is contrary to nature or natural Good Sin is that which is contrary to grace and moral good And that which is contrary to the order rule and form of Nature is called Monstrous that which is contrary to the Rule of Justice and Holiness is called Sin And as monstrosity in nature is divided into defects and excesses So Sin in morality is divided into Omissions and Commissions And of neither of these can God be said to be the Authour or Nature under him For if Nature according to Philosophers which is but Gods Instrument doth not intend monstrous effects much less may God be said so to do whose acts are alwayes more constant and steady the higher they are and nearer to himself For to give an instance when we see a want of a limb in a monstrous birth it may so far be imputed to Divine Providence that it could not so happen without the knowledge and consent of the Supream Cause in whose power it was to have disposed outward and second causes to the effecting of a regular and perfect work yet directly and with a positive purpose to have assisted in the production of such a Monster we cannot safely nor wisely say seeing the denyal of that ordinary and more necessary concurrence to such an end is altogether sufficient to it and such defects arise not from Gods positive Will to have them so but from his not willing to have them otherwise There may seem somewhat more difficulty in Monsters in excess when any Creatures have more parts than are naturally proper to them as four hands or three leggs and the like But this proves not any direct intention to this but only an intention not to keep things in their proper limits and to their Rule A Master or Father when he holds not a severe hand over his child or servant cannot but by inference and consequence be said to be the cause of the exorbitant carriages of them because though he wills not to prevent such mischiefs he doth not will they should be God in like manner willeth redundance of matter as a thing real and positive but that it should meet together as to constitute such an unnatural effect is rather the suspence and with-holding his Providence then the exercising of the same This I premise as leading to the due apprehension of Moral Evil which to hold as such to have a positive Existence in the world is inevitably to become Manichean and to make God the Authour of sin as St. Austin in these words declareth Here we are to be careful that we fall not into the Herisee of the Manichees who said there was a certain Nature of Evil and a certain people of darkness with their Princes And afterward So they erre so they are blinded so they make themselves the people Gentem Tenebrarum of darkness by believing that which is false against him who created them for every Creature is good but it is corrupted by the depraved will of Man Thus he and were it so that Evil had a positive being from whom could it proceed but from God And it is repugnant to the Nature of the good God to be the Author of any thing simply Evil so far the Manicheans were in the right therefore they that hold this must with the Manichees invent and introduce another God I know the modern defenders of the positive nature of sin alledge several Schoolmen and some Fathers for the same but I know there are more express testimonies of the Ancient against it and the Modern of any account had either another sense than we now state the doubt in or must be rejected with their Relater It is not a place here to examine and encounter all nor to alledge the Reasons or Authorities to the contrary which might easily be done Only that Argument taken from the distinction of Sins of Omission and Commission deserves to be considered For say they if Sins of Omission consist only in defect of duty and are thereby distinguished from of Commission which are such as not only fall short of what is due but act the quite contrary as when a man instead of praying and praising God contumeliously abuses his Name and Worship this hath more in it than a meer negation or privation of good Thus indeed it seems but thus it is not For both these are evil upon the account of privation and the absence of good the difference only is in this that in sins of Omission the privativeness or negation is immediately seated in the Subject owing such an Act and in such a manner and here in no Action at all but the absence of it which renders a man and denominates him immediately evil or defective But in sins of Commission the case is far otherwise for here privation or defect relateth not immediately to the Subject as the Man himself but to the Action it self and by that is the Man made guilty and evil because though the act be in its nature positive yet is defective as to its circumstances according to which it ought to be performed For when God hath appointed and Justice and Reason directeth that a man should observe in his action such a time and season and such a place and have respect to such a person such a manner and measure and he neglecteth all or any of these doth he not plainly offend in the negative though the act it self be in nature positive But in the case we are about the Nature as we said of things is not to be valued but the Morality and the Morality may be evil when the Nature is good and the Morality may be privative when the Act is positive Hatred of God is an act of Man than which none can be instanced in to contain more evil or malice Therefore as this is an act Natural and Vital it is good and hath God for its direct and first cause but as this act is directed to God and so relates to a wrong object so it is evil and hath neither countenance nor concurrence from him For as is above-touched we are to distinguish Omne bonum viva substantia est vita est Vita autem Christus Omne autem malum sine substantia est nihil est tamen perdere protest Opus Imperf in Matth. Hom. 41. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost Homil 2. in Act. Apost Anselmus de Casu Diaboli Tom. 3. the Act of Sin from the Sin of the Act and that upon the received Maxime amongst the Philosophers That all Evil is in somewhat that is Good for having no subsistence of it self it must rest upon some other thing that hath a
real being as a ruinous and crased house resteth upon a sound foundation And it is distinguished from it as the matter from the form for though evil hath no such proper matter as other real Beings have for if it had it should it self also be real in nature and of it self yet hath it somewhat proportionable and answerable thereunto in that it affecteth such a Person immediately as sins of omission or such an act as proceedeth from him whereupon Aristotle saith well in a certain place Privation is a certain habit though taken properly nothing is more contrary to habit than Privation whose nature it is to be the absence and want of Habit and nothing by that Philosopher opposed more to habit than Privation I might here set down the opinions and testimonies of diverse Philosophers and Fathers expresly declaring against the positive nature of sin but I shall rather compose the disputation by giving Anselmes judgment of the case than whom none have disputed the matter more acutely of his Age. In his eleventh Chapter of his Dialogue concerning the fall of the Devil he asks How Nothing and Evil should signifie any thing whereas Evil is altogether Privative and there he answers Although Evil and Nihil signifieth something yet that which is signified is not Evil or Nothing but some other manner whereby they signifie something And that which is signified is somewhat but yet not really somewhat but as it were somewhat Many things are spoken after a certain form which are not in very deed And to fear according to the form of the word doth signifie somewhat Active when as it is Passive according to the thing it self And so Blindness c. And afterward in the 26th Chapter of that Treatise he speaketh thus Evil which is called unrighteousness is alwayes Nothing But Evil which is Incommodiousness sometimes without doubt is Nothing as Blindness Aliquando est aliquid Sometimes is something as Sadness and Pain And Chapter the 27th He gives the general reason why Evil cannot be Any thing viz. Because if it were any thing it must be of God Thus he who we see distinguisheth Evil first into that of sin and that of punishment or Incommoditas as he calls it And that of punishment he again distinguishes into meerly Privative as blindness and Positive which is in suffering Pâ—â—na Damni and paena Sensus pains which is the same with the common distinction of Punishment of dammage or loss and punishment of sense so well known in the Schools And we may easily yield that all Evil of Punishment is positive though it be not and yet retain our opinion which runs only upon the Evil of Sin I know Augustine than whom it is well known no man speaks more expresly for the privative nature of all Sin and Thomas and Cajetane and others are alledged to have asserted a real Being of Concupiscence in man which undoubtedly is Sin But they may be interpreted according to our former ground where we allowed all sins to have a subject in which they are and when this subject is somewhat active and positive as such acts of Original Concupiscence are and of our other Passions and Affections then is the Evil of them taking its denominations from its matter to which it relates said to be positive for distinction sake from those sins we call Sins of Omission From these grounds laid we may now adventure farther into the causality God may be said to have in reference to the Evil of Sin for as to that of Punishment the difficulty is not great There are two Parties in the Roman Church which go contrary wayes making two several Propositions which joyned together do make God directly the Authour of Sin So that a man may with better Reason make it a reason against communion with the Roman Church than Companion against the Reformed one of whose ten Reasons against the Reformed that they made God the Authour of sin For this by the confession of some of the Romanists must follow For the Dominicans do directly profess That God doth concurr to the act of Evil and with the Will not only determined by it self but determining it self to an evil On the contrary The Jesuits affirm that God awaiting and expecting the inclination and self-determination of the will doth not concurr to the very act of sin but follows that motion which is evil adding and professing as in particular doth Suarez That if God should first according Suarez in Thom. 22dâ—â— Disputat 6. Tract 4. to nature move and apply the will to an act which is sin before it had determined it self He should then in very deed be the Authour of sin This we make the major Proposition The Assumption is made by the Dominicans who constantly affirm That God doth concurr to a sinful act as doth Medina Medina in Thom. Quaest 79. Art 2. Therefore by these two joyned together God should be the Author of Sin Nay Medina goes farther and of himself will do the work before he is aware He denies I grant that God is the Authour of Sin and so will Calvine and Beza and Zuinglius and such others who are so warmly charged by their Enemies with that pernicious Errour But he by consequence and they do no more doth thus plainly inferr so much in the place cited saying When God is the cause of any act he is also the Cause of the Privation which naturally follows upon that Act. But yet saith he concurreth not to the deformity of sin Here is a mystery if any man could find it out The deformity of Sin consisteth only in the privation of the act or which is the very same want of conformity to the Rule of Actions and the will of God And yet it is here said That God may be the Author of the Act and the Author of the Privation that is found in that act which Privation is nothing else but a want of due conformity and yet not the Author of the deformity of that Act. This is a contradiction The true and simple account then of this matter may be this That God is never any direct cause of Privations or Deformity of any Act though he be the true Cause of the Act it self And his not willing to prevent by his effectual concurse such an Evil in the Act is all can be imputed unto him and that is far from being the Cause of sin unless it could be proved that there lay an obligation any time upon God as many times there does upon man That he should exert his Divine power to the utmost for the preventing all the mischiefs he can and hindring sin And here if querulous man as 't is often seen doth repiningly reply upon God for hard dealing towards him in that he punishes him for that sin which he foresees cannot be avoided by him Gods grace withdrawing it self from him St. Paul commands him silence whether he understands the reason Rom. 9. 20 21.
of no personal concurrence to such deformity Yet not so neither but that it justly is denominated Sin from the very nature and effects of it For seeing whatever is in the Will must be good or evil and if the Will be found crooked perverse or averse to that it ought to incline to this is contrary to Gods institution and Law and whence ever this proceeds from an immediate act of our own or by traduction from others seeing it is found in the Will it must needs be contrary and consequently odious to God and in conclusion sinful Again as the fountain poisons and corrupts all streams flowing from thence so the Will being thus corrupt and naturally thus ill inclined all the other defects even in his body as well as soul contracted by this fall are as so many deformities in man which render him deservedly hated of God seeing such disparity and unlikeness to the worse to that which he first fram'd Thirdly Original sin in Man hath this more of disorder in it that it not only is a corruption of the will and thereby a deformity and vitiosity in the inferiour parts and faculties but it is of ill consequence For if this depravation went no farther than that evil born with us if it stand there and wrought no more evil the nature of it had been less sinful and more tolerable but being of an active nature and having taken up the chiefest room in the soul of Man it disposeth and impelleth to more mischief in actual transgressions As a Garrison held by a Rebel doth not only offend Sacred Majesty by standing out against him it self but when it finds it self strong enough and hath opportunity sallies out and makes invasion upon its proper Soveraign and offers actual and active violence against him So by this Original Evil first possessing the Soul doth Concupiscence stir and act by outward practises contrary to the Law and Will of God And therefore when St. Austin saith alledged by the corrupters of this Doctrine of Original Corruption They are born not properly but originally evil he no wayes contradicts his own Doctrine whereby he most of all farther explained and maintained this Original sin being the first that gave the name Original to that Pravity in man For true it is that that only is called properly Original Sin which Adam and Eve in person committed and were not subject to by nature as their Posterity are because it was the first in respect of mankind as well in order of time as nature and causality Again though this be traduced unto us his Off-spring and be the cause and fountain of all other sins actually committed afterward and for the same causes may rightly be called Original yet considering that this Evil thus vitiating our nature had no consent of our personal will we neither understood it nor any wayes affected it it cannot be so properly called sin as others which we act knowingly and willingly our selves For nothing is in strict way a sin which we do not consent unto in some manner either immediately or in its remoter causes And this doth yet farther appear because no man is bound to repent properly of Original sin Proper Repentance being an Act contrarying and reversing so far as in us lyes some evil by us done and not suffered involuntarily But Original sin is rather suffered than acted by the children of Adam Yet though in the severst sense we cannot be said to repent of Original sin we are bound to exercise some Act of Repentance for the same As grief and sorrow of mind and heart for the evil we lye under Confession and Recognition of our sad state before God Imploration of his mercie and favour to remove the same from us and restore us to our pristine innocencie and integrity For this those many places of Scripture describing this Evil do seem to require at our hand And no where doth the Scripture more fully declare this unto us than in the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans which because Socinus and such as plough with his Heifer and are tickled with his pretty phansies in eluding the Apostles meaning and the constant interpretation of the most Ancient and Modern Expositours we shall more particularly consider It is undeniable that St. Paul Rom. 5. amplifying the grace of God and benefits unto mankind even the Gentiles by Christ Jesus doth there make a comparision from the Twelfth verse to the end of the Chapter of the first and second Adam and of the Evil we sustained by the first Man Adam and the benefits we receive by the second Man Christ To this he supposes the ground of his Comparison which is this that By one v. 12. man Sin entred into the world and death by Sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned This is made no more of than that Adam being the first Man in the world and sinning Sin must needs enter first into the world by him if he sinned first and that death followed upon that sin of Adam But if this be all how come the effects to exceed the cause and death to extend farther than sin For it is not only said that death entred into the world in seizing upon that single Malefactour Adam but So death passed upon all men for that all have sinned where two things are to be noted First the note of dependance and consequence So. For if St. Paul had meant that Adam by himself and only for himself introduced death wherefore serves the tearm So which is a certain indication of the manner how death came into the world upon all persons and as much as if it had been said Adam first sinning and bringing death into the world so it was that this death fell upon all men for that all have sinned Now it is certain that all that dye have not sinned personally and therefore Secondly the Note So must also ralate to the Cause of that death which was sin and is as much as Adam sinning his Posterity also sinned and became obnoxious to death For to say as some eminently learned and useful otherwise in their Doctrine of Repentance Death passed upon all i. e. say they Upon all the whole world who were drowned in the floud of Divine vengeance and who did sin after the similitude of Adam is as much as if another Scholiaâ—t like him had said That is upon all Senacheribs Armies before Jerusalem in the dayes of Hezekiah or Upon all the Romans in the battle of Canna with Hannibal For it is certain that all men dye and it is no less certain that all men without exception died not in the floud And therefore what is added upon these words In as much as all have sinned that by them is meant All have sinned upon their own account we have already shown that it is not absolutely true and therefore cannot be St. Pauls meaning For all that dye have not as did Adam or following Adams
Apostle speaks of the state of Evil or Condemnation in the next of the state of Restitution and Justification For as all persons were included in the Condemnation of Adam so were all included in the Justification of Christ But as of all them only some many were through his disobedience made Sinners that is became such sinners as not to return to actual Righteousness and Salvation so by the obedience of Christ not all who were called and chosen came to Life and Holiness but many only were made Righteous actually and not all Or if we take the word Sin as he of whom we speak doth not so much for the real inward vitiousness of the soul but for any outward defect and which is yet more for the Punishment of Sin in which sense the Sacrifice for sin was called Sin in the Old Law and Christ in the New Testament is said to be made Sin for us that is a Sacrifice for Sin so that to be made sinners should import as much as to be made lyable to the punishment of sin the matter is the same But because this Authour not only inclines to the Opinion of Pelagius and of Socinus after him making the corruption of nature nothing and therefore exempting Infants from any such natural infection as we here suppose but uses the same evasion of Imitation of Adams sin and not propagation as the original of all Evil to us therefore let us hear what St. Austins argument was against that Opinion If saies he the Apostle spake Aug. Epist 87. of Sin by imitation and not propagation entring into the world he could not have said that by one Man Sin entred into the world but rather by the Devil for he sinned before man and as the Wiseman saith Through envie Wisd 2. 24. of the Devil came death into the world And Christ tells us how aptly the Devil may be said to propagate sin by imitation as well as Adam thus reprehending the Jews Ye are of your Father the Devil and the Lusts of John 8. 44. your Father ye will do he was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him when he speaketh a lye he speaketh it of his own for he is a lyar and the Father of it And when St. Paul saith We were by nature the children of wrath as well Ephes 2. 3. Psalm 51. 5. as others And the Psalmist Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in Sin did my mother conceive me that these places must be accounted hyperbolical and not to have a proper sense is the special evasion of Modern Wits not comparable to Ancienter Judgments more simply understanding them I know a more colourable interpretation is made by others who interpret Conceiving in sin as relating to the Parents and not to the Children But this is less probable than the ordinary and obvious sense applying it to David For though it may be probable enough that Parents may offend in acts of Procreation and so the child may be said to be conceived by them in sin yet David being at the speaking of these words in deepest repentance for his own sins cannot be said to leave off that subject and to confess the sins of others and charge his parents with that which concerned him not Again when he says He was shapen in iniquity nothing could he say more intimately to signifie his proper state at the time of his first conception But the Scriptures do not only barely say we are originally thus infected and sinful but by the effects and certain other indications declare the same The first and chiefest of which may be Death and punishments sticking close to infants at their birth and even before they come into the world Now the Law of God being unalterable that punishment should follow and not go before sin it must be that somewhat of the nature of sin must prepare the way for such sufferings Secondly That all men come to years of discretion are effected with Actual sin few of the opposers of Original sin deny But according to Reason and Scripture both the fountain being so infected and corrupted whatever flows from it must of necessity partake of the same evil For Job 14. 4. Jam. 3 11 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Anâ—ae Gazaei Thâ—â—â—hrastus Biblioth P P. pag. 392. To. 8. Non eniâ— es ex â—â—lis qui modo nova quaedam gannire câ—perunt dicentes nullum reatum esse ex Adam tractum qui per baptisâ—um in infante sâ—lvatur Aug. Epist 28. Hieronymo Ad neminem ante bona mens â—enit quam mala Omnes prâ—â—ccupati sumus Sen. Ep. 50. Nemo difficulter ad naturam reducitur nisi qui ab â—a defecit ibid. who saith Job can bring a clean thing out of an unclean not one And St. James Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter Can a fig-tree my brethren bear olive-berries either a vine figs so can no fountain yield both salt water and fresh From whence it follows by way of just Analogy That the Fountain being corrupt there must be derived to the Rivolets the like unsoundness And thirdly we see this by experience that both bodily and mental infirmities and disorders are traduced from Father to Son in actual Evils as the Gout Stone and Leprosie are transinitted to posterity from the Father and Anger and other passions in like manner It may as well be said That the Son hath the Gout and halts by imitation and not by propagation as that such other affections which are common to Father and Son so proceed Fourthly The Argument which St. Augustine could never by the Pelagians be answered taken from Baptism For this they could not deny but the Church universally practised Paeda-baptism that is held an opinion manifested in practise that Children were capable of that Sacrament and received the benefit of it however some particular persons deferred the same and held it of use unto them for the entring into the Kingdom of Heaven Therefore surely there must be some impediment and that impediment could be nothing but what hath the nature of sin in it therefore they bring sin with them into the World Pelagius had a good mind indeed as Austin observed to have denyed the use of Baptism but as bold as he and his great second Julian of Capua was the general Judgment of the Church declared in the practise of it put a stop to his inclinations but Socinus bolder than any Heretick before him sticks at no such thing but flatly denyes the use of it to all but such as are converted newly to the Christian Faith as in the times of the Apostles This was freely and roundly invented and uttered and which suffices alone to convince us of the former errour denying Original Sin which was alwayes held a principal cause of Baptism Lastly Thus much may be observed by natural Reason to the confirmation of Original Sin
that as the case now stands as they speak in Acts 4. 12. sensu composito God having determined that no other name under heaven be given whereby men must be saved that there is no salvation in any other but in Christ Jesus But secluding that Decree it doth not appear why God out of the Abyss of his Counsels and Immensness of his Wisdome and absoluteness of his Free Grace might not have compassed Mans salvation some other way My Reason besides those I find used by others is that now intimated If God could entertain such favourable thoughts towards Man as to decree his Salvation without intuition of Christ surely he might have effected it without Christ For 't is neither just nor reasonable to imagine that God could decree any thing absolutely and not absolutely bring it to pass for we cannot so judge of Gods Counsels as we do of Mans who alwayes determines with supposition of means and ability to bring to pass what he determined but all causes out of himself being without exception subject to his will nay his will needing no outward means to attain its purpose or resolution it is sufficient argument that such a thing may be that God without consideration of any means decrees it and at his liberty chooses those means he pleases Neither upon this supposition is the advantage such as the Socinian Heretick expects to his cause It is one of his pernicious heresies That Christ satisfied not by his Passion he expiated not the offense of Man thereby but left him many a good lesson to direct and instruct him in the way to heaven set him an excellent and fair example to follow Makes now at last being in heaven not before intercession and mediates for man but his death was no satisfaction for the wrath of God conceived against the sinner And to make way to this opinion he says that God might without any satisfaction have freely remitted mans offence and therefore it was not absolutely and indispensably requisite that Christ should dye If we should yield all this which is here taken for granted which yet if it be not granted is not so easie to be demonstrated there appears no great advantage to their cause For if it be assured unto us out of holy Writ that God hath determined that no salvation should be attained no recovery had without the mediation of Christ and his satisfaction what availeth it them that possibly it might have been otherwise I confess the advantage to the other side would have been much greater if it could be proved that Gods justice of absolute necessity must have been satisfied by fulfilling the penal part of the Law but however there remains evidence enough from the conditional will of God which according to Scriptures admits of no other way now For so saith St. Paul to the Colossians It pleased the Father that in Col. 1. 19 20. him should all fulness dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Cross by him to reconcile all things unto himself by him I say whether they be things in heaven or things on earth And Christ himself in St. Luke saith Luke 24 46. Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day And that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his Name among all Nations beginning at Jerusalem And St. Peter 2 Pet. 2. 24. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead unto sin should live unto righteousness by whose stripes we were healed And what can be more plain than that of the Epistle to the Hebrews Without Heb. 9. 22 23. shedding of bloud is no remission And lest some may presume to restrain the Apostles words to the state of the Old Law it is added It was therefore necessary that the paterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these but the heavenly things themselves with better Sacrifices than these And what doth the Apostle mean by the better Sacrifices but the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross St. John declares so much exprefly where he saith If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another 1 John 1. 7. and the bloud of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin And in the fore-cited place of the Hebrews more fully and expresly making a comparison Hebr. 9. 14. between the expiations of the Law and Gospel sayes thus For if the bloud of Bulls and Goats and the ashes of an Heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh how much more shall the bloud of Christ who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God If therefore God under the Mosaical Law might have passed over the errours and uncleanness of his people Israel but never would remit them without expiations and sacrifices to that end ordained how can it be imagined that the moral errours and impurities of the soul of Man by sin should be expiated or passed over without that Sacrifice and shedding of the bloud of Christ appointed to that purpose Surely therefore a sense there is wherein it is impossible God should remit sins without due punishment for the same inflicted and the least and lowest is that which we call conditional supposing that God hath so decreed that no sin should be expiated but that way A way which besides the excellent agreement it hath with the Justice of God and Mercy also is full of pregnant advices and instructions to the Offender partly informing of the foul and mortal nature of sin which cannot otherwise be pardoned than by such satisfaction of bloud partly by humbling him and moving him to cry God mercy bitterly and heartily and lastly by possesing his mind with a dread and terrour of the nature of sin so as to avoid the same for the time future CHAP. XVI Of the Nature and Person of the Mediatour between God and Man In the beginning was the Word proved to be spoken of Christ and that he had a Being before he was Incarnate The Vnion of two Natures in Christ explained Christ a Mediatour by his Person and by his Office and this by his Sacrificing himself The Scriptures proving this THUS far of the necessity and use of Mediation between God and Man for the reconciling them at this great distance Now it remains to speak more particularly of the Person or Mediatour himself whom Christian Faith acknowledges to be Christ Jesus who as the Scripture tells us came unto the world to save sinners and to save them by his Mediation 1 Tim. 1. 15. And that this is a faithful saying that is a truth to be embraced by true Faith without which there is no Salvation But of the Condition of this Mediatour we find no small differences amongst such who are called Christians
They are of three sorts Some profess him to be God but deny him to be true and real Man Others believe him to be Man but deny him to be God But the Faith truly Christian professes both viz. That Christ was God and Man We shall remit for brevities sake the Reader to what hath been said before proving the mystery of the Trinity out of the Scriptures and that Christ the second Person in the Trinity is the Son of God by natural Generation supernatural to us And to prove the second out of the word now there is scarce one such Heretick who denyes it may seem superfluous That which is to be demonstrated is That there was time of union of that second Person in the Trinity with Man and that this union was such that it constituted not two Persons but one as St. Paul plainly writeth to Timothy There is one God and one Mediatour between God and man the Man Christ 1 Tim. 2. 5. Jesus And therefore whatever doctrine so speaks of this Mystery as to divide the Natures into two Persons as if there were two Mediatours two Saviours two Christs between God and Man destroyeth the Faith of a Christian no less than that doth which denyes these two Natures to concur in one Person the Eternal and Divine Nature and Person assuming in the fulness of time humane Nature inconfusedly into the Divine To the proving this we take that as a sure ground and founadtion which St. John hath laid to build his Gospel on That there was an Eternal Divine Nature in and from the beginning and that this Divine Nature was diversified by three distinct Persons that one of these Persons is called the Word For he saith In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with John 1. 1. God and the Word was God Ridiculous are the violences offered to these words by Hereticks who first take here Beginning not for that highest and higher than the Creatures comprehension can mount to of all durations which none is afore and none come properly after but for a tearm of time properly fixt and for want of more remarkable do pitch upon the first publication of the Gospel as that beginning answerable forsooth unto that speech of Moses In the beginning God created the heaven and the Gen. 1. 1. earth but the agreement is too little to make such interpretation because it is plain that heaven and earth not only had a beginning but gave beginning to time it self measured and observed by them And it is plain that the Gospel did not begin so soon by almost thirty years as Christ began according to his humane nature And if it be taken of the Person of Christ What can be more absurd than to say In the beginning was the Word that is Christ began when he began Therefore the word here can neither be taken for the Gospel or Word preacht but it must be meant of a word superiour and anteriour to both as doth yet more plainly appear from the phrase used The Word was with God and the Word was God For the heavens and earth which are said in Genesis to be made in the beginning cannot be said either to have been with God or to have been God nor can the humane nature of Christ not extant till some thousands of years after the first Creation be said to have been in the beginning with God and much less to have been God And the like may be said of the Word spoken by Christ and his Apostles which the Scriptures do not reckon to have begun at Christs birth nor many years after For thus saith St. Peter in his Sermon to Cornelius That Word ye know which was published throughout all Acts 10. 37. Judea and began from Galilee after the Baptism which John preached The Word therefore according to this account was not at the beginning but after Johns Baptism But this is not all this is nothing in comparison of what is added The Word was God The humane nature of Christ precisely taken was not God therefore another Word must be allowed to be God And that must be the Word Eternal and Personal And if this be doubted of I thus argue from the words following In that sense that Christ is said to be Light is he said to be the Word but Christ is said to be Light and the Light is said to be Christ and St. John Baptist disavows that Light John 1. 7 8 9 10. and ascribes it to Christ And therefore as the Person of Christ is signified by the Light so is it by Word And how can we possibly make sense of Christs words in St. John if Christ prae-existed not before he came into the World in the flesh And now glorifie thou me O Father with that glory which I had with thee before John 18. 5. the foundation of the World It may be said that before the foundation of the World such decree of glory might be given to one future but thus it cannot be said of him who is described to be actually possessed of it before the foundation of the World and that a man is said to be possessed of which he is said to have had as here And how could Christ say truly Before Abraham was I am when he was not Fifty years old according John 8. 57 58. to the Jews account And that he puts a distinction between his comming from the Father and his seeing the Father otherwise than any before him or of his time proves a prae-existence and presence singular with God Not any man hath seen the Father save he which is of God he hath seen the John 6. 46 62. Father And to this adde what follows What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before Doth not this plainly imply that as Christ did really ascend after his Resurrection and sate at the right hand of God in his humane nature so he was there before some way or other and no way can be thought of but his Divine nature as St. Paul intimated to the Ephesians He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above Ephes 4. 10. all heavens Now if any will be so captious as to except against this because the Divine Nature cannot properly be said to descend because it filleth all things it is true in rigour of speech what they say but not according to the form of speech frequent in Scripture which then affirmeth God to descend when as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrha he appeareth Gen. 18. 21. and revealeth himself more sensibly as Christ did taking humane nature on him And this prae-existent Nature of Christ to his humane being proved that these were so united together must be also shown And to this the single express testimony of St. John may suffice an equal mind The Word John 1. 14. was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us And we beheld his glory the glory
of the World And elsewhere to this effect CHAP. XVII How Christ was Mediatour according to both Natures Calvin's Opinion and others stated Of the effect of Christs Mediation and the extent thereof Of the Designation and Application of Christs death Of the Sufficiencie and Efficacie of Christs death How Christs death becomes effectual to all The Necessity of Gods Grace to incline the will of man to embrace Christ Of the Efficacie as well as Sufficiencie of Gods Grace on the Will of Man Several Gradations observed in the Grace of God BUT from the Evidence of the evidence of the Fact that so it was that Christ suffered to satisfie for our sins let us pass to the Manner how it was and the Effects and Extent for whom he so suffered and satisfied because no small stir and contention hath been touching both but briefly For there seems not to me to be such great cause as is apprehended for such differences For first surely Christs mediation was an Act of his Person and not of his Natures either of them separately considered So that there seems the same reason for this as for all other Acts and Attributes given to him some whereof are naturally proper to the Divine Nature and some to the Humane and yet both these predicable of Christ personally considered by that received rule amongst Divines which maintaineth a communication of Idioms or the ascribing the property of one nature to the entire Person and so denominatively to the other In which sense Christ is said to dye to suffer to hunger to thirst to be weary and Christ is said to be Omniscient Omnipotent Omnipresent yet not according to both Natures but as they are united into one Person So that all Acts and Offices of Christ as Mediatour have a twofold consideration Formal and Real or Vertual and Interpretative as they speak Some Acts are so formally Divine in him that they pertain to the Humane Nature only Vertually and some Acts are so formally and properly Humane that they pertain to the Divine Nature only by way of imputation or interpretation and not immediately or properly So that the Word Incarnate Christ is the immediate cause of his Mediation and our Reconciliation but all the Acts in particular tending tending to Christs mediation as his preaching and travelling and Passion did not proceed equally or alike from both Natures For two things are to be distinguished in the Actions or Passion of Christ mediating for mankind The Act it self and the value and vertue of that Action in order to the reconciling of man to God That the Acts conducing hereunto are only proper to the Humane Nature is true according to Stancarus his opinion See Melancthon Epist ad Mathesium though called Heretick for the same and opposed by Calvine and many of his Equals who held that Christ was Mediatour according to his Divine and Humane Nature And that Calvine and his Company must needs erre is proved because they reject Lombard and those that follow him who are the Romanists Lombards Opinion was That Christ was Mediatour as the Word Incarnate but not according to both Natures For they distinguish Principium Quod and Principium Quo That Principle or Cause of mediation from that Whereby he mediated The first they confess to be the Person of Christ consisting of Divine and Humane Nature The second they make the Humane Nature alone And that Calvine and the rest meant any more it is past the power of their Adversaries to make good however according to their wont they strain all they can and more than honestly they can to make their Opinions foul and odious For in substance they speak the same thing with Lombard though not altogether after the same manner but the Deformer suspected him as justly for restraining Christs mediation and the value thereof to his Humanity as the Romanists do them for comprehending the Divinity in it And rightly do they distinguish between the Thing and the Efficacie of the thing and that according to Lombard himself whom they dislike because he restrained to their apprehension the whole business of mediation to the Humane Nature whereas though the Divine Nature did not formally act or suffer to that end yet it was by vertue of the Hypostatical Union with the Divine Nature that the Humane Nature was in a capacity to mediate and merit for man as St. Austin hath taught us in these words It was requisite that the Mediatour between Mediator autem inter Deum homines oportebat ut haberet Aug. Confes 10. c. 42. Nec tamen ob hoc Mediator est quia Verbum maxime quippe immortate Id. Civitat Dei lib. 9. cap. 15. 1 Tim 2. God and Man should have somewhat like unto God and somewhat like unto Men lest being like God in all things he should be too far from men or being like unto Man in all things he should be too far from God And yet indeed in another place he doth determine the mediation more properly to the Humanity of Christ than to the Word thus speaking Yet he is not for this a Mediatour because he is the Word and that especially because he is immortal and the most blessed Word is far from miserable Mortals But he is Mediatour in that he is Man showing thereby that we ought not to seek any other Mediatours to that not only blessed but beatifical Good by whom we should have access c. And to this agrees that of St. Paul to Timothy There is one God and one Mediatour between God and Man the Man Christ Jesus And this is the chiefest place founding this Opinion yet not simply seeing it is an easie matter by a distinction to avoid the same if one would be contentious but if Charity nay if Justice were done to each side the ground of contention might fairly be removed in this But with much more difficulty do we meet in the effect and extent of the mediation of Christ by his Death and Passion viz. Whether it concerns all Mankind in general or Whether all those who are called to the knowledge faith and profession of Christ and Christian Religion or lastly Whether it was properly and specially so designed and intended for such as were to be infallibly saved that others were capable of no benefit of the same but rather were determined to hardness and impenitencie and persistance in unbelief Concerning the last and harshest part of this doubt we have heretofore answered that though the Holy Scriptures which cannot be denyed do ascribe Exod. 4 21. 14. 17. Rom. 9. 18. Isa 6. 10. Deut. 2. 30. Isa 63. 17. unto God in positive tearms hardening of some yet the meaning can be no more than that from certain persons he so withdraws his mollifying and maturing Grace to Repentance and Faith that an effect of Obduration doth thereupon in such manner follow as if God himself were the proper and direct Author of it For all egregious things are according
that worthily and gravely and not all Rites introduced ordinarily and orderly into the Church by good Councels and autority as many vainly have imagined and drawn his words with wonted ignorance or spite against the use of Ceremonies But what we were saying is this that all Reverence and gravity and decency are wholly such by humane agreement and opinion and that of the Region wherein they are used For if any posture or gesture or Habit were naturally good or Evil decent or indecent it would be so to all countries and people the contrary to which is most certain viz. That what one people judgeth grave and decent another esteemeth ridiculous and uncomely To bare the Head in the Western parts of the world is a token and Act of Reverence to whom it is done but absurd and grievous to the Eastern Parts Again in the Western Parts for Men to move their hats and to bend the Knee to one is Reverence but for women to do so is foolish and ungrateful to any Black clothes and habit in the European Parts and amongst Christians are generally looked on as comely grave and decent for persons of the soberest rank but odious to the Turks and so might instances be given in many things of like nature Which are not for any intrinsick worth in them or natural received into the service of God but for that they are partly by consent of men where we live acknowledged for proper notes of Reverence or else are by express constitution declared to be such which are designed by the Church to signifie and express veneration and esteem of what we do and upon that become such For neither do words themselves naturally signifie what we mean by them nor do letters naturally give such a sound to a word compounded of them but altogether by human agreement and appointment no more do these signs and ceremonies of themselves but by consent and institution imply reverence and devotion Where then do these frivolous and quarrelsome fellows appear who resolving to undo something done before them and do somewhat that better suits with their own humours and unchristian tempers devise monstrous things in such rites malitiously apply them zealous enforce the contrary upon such absurd errours And will take no denial when they are pleased to utter such slanders as these That we urge them as of absolute necessity We prefer them before the more material service of God We make them conditions of Communion with us The first and second of which are directly false and never can be made good The Third is indirectly true For by consequence indeed they become conditions of Communion in all Churches and their mouths are opened directly and expresly according to their manner only against our Church yet all are no less concerned than ours yea their own Conventicles are in as much danger of this argument as our Churches For I appeal unto themselves whether they would not thrust out from among them such as should dare against their Orders to do what they list amongst them Would they suffer one amongst that should constantly take the Communion kneeling while the rest sat or stood Would they not severely censure and being obstinate eject such an one as should bow at the name of Jesus against their will and perhaps him that should own he makes a conscience of being covered in the house of God Must they not here interpret themselves better in their famous modern Maxime Of making outward Rites conditions of Communion and so that their adversaries shall come off as well as they Or they suffer as much mischief by their own weapon as any else But what they will say we regard not no more than what they have said in that Rule it self frivolous and fallacious That which we say to it is the quite contrary That we do not make such Orders or customes conditions of our communion so much as they make them causes of non-communion and Separation Let the matter then be brought fairly before all equal Judges who are to be blamed they who have no autority either to appoint or put down any Ceremonie and yet upon that which they can never prove to be forbidden or unlawful but as it likes them not by which they argue us out of all but their own inventions refuse communion with that Church to which they have all general obligations to joyn themselves Or they who being over them in the Lord whether they will or not do form outwardly by such Ceremonies and Rites the more intrinsick parts of Gods Worship requiring under the sin of disobedience and pain of Ecclesiastical censures following thereupon submission unto them In fine We accuse them and believe we are much better able as we are always ready to prove it of making innocent I do not say inoffensive for where shall we find that thing that offends not some body rites and orders the only ground of Schism rather than we make them conditions of Communion And so what they will get by this justification of themselves they may and hope will at length put in their eyes and cause tears of repentance to fall from them for their many groundless prevarications and slanders of both Powers God had set over them CHAP. III. Of the Second thing considerable in Divine Worship viz. The state wherein we serve God What is a State The formal cause of a State Divine Vows What is a Vow The proper matter of Vows Evangelical Councils That it is lawful and useful to make Vows under the Gospel contrary to Peter Martyr The nature of Vows explained THE Second thing wherein religious worship doth consist in general is the special state which a true Believer chooseth to serve God in The state of any thing doth import in it Inde est quod etiam in actionibus humanis dicitur negotium habere aliquem statum Secundum ordinem propriae dispositionis cum quadam immobilitate seu quiete Thomas 2 dae Qu. 183. c. 1. constancie and subtilty as Thomas hath not amiss described it in general saying In humane actions a matter is said to have a state according to its particular constitution with a certain immutability and rest Whatever therefore is by nature uncertain and mutable and becomes determined and fixed may be said to be in such a state in which it is so fixed And though by the vanity and natural wantonness of Mans will he is too often unresolved and fickle in his due Obligations towards God yet by Reason and much more Religion every man is bound to God and his liberty is to serve God in the common state of Religion which restrains his irregular motions and confines him to the will of God And under this due subjection is every man especially brought by being baptized and therein vowing faith and Christian obedience unto God But as Religion in general is the stating and establishing a man towards God and as Christian Religion is yet an higher stricter and holyer obligation
it may be noted that we make publick prayer of two sorts Publick in respect of manner and publick in respect of place The former when there is an unanimous and orderly concurrence of many members of Christs Body in one common service The other when one single person appears before God in his House and offers his bounden service and devotion alone Both these we hold to be better than domestick or private worship of the same nature and thus prove from reasons not easily to be distinguished but making for both generally First because the precepts of the Scripture much more often inculcate and more earnestly press this and more highly magnifie this office than the other O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness saith the Psalmist This beauty Psalm 96. 9. Psalm 27. 4. of holiness was undoubtedly the Temple And again One thing have I desired of the Lord that will I seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in his Temple And to what end was the Temple of God built and dedicated so solemnly but to receive the prayers of devout persons as well as sacrifices and the singers in order Is there any thing more frequently repeated in Solomons Oration than the use of prayer there especially And that they who 1 Kings 5. 8. could not enter into the Temple it self should direct and send their prayers thither The Jews it is well known turn'd to their Temple generally when they pray'd as Daniel Hezekiah when he was sick is said to turn his face Isaiah 38. 2. to the wall because his house standing with the Temple he thereby turned his face that way And I suppose upon this ground which will be censur'd I know as superstitious that they held opinion their prayers did not immediately ascend unto God but by entring first into the Temple which I gather from the prayer of Jonah who being in the belly of the Whale and the bottom of the Deep cryed unto the Lord thus I am cast out of thy sight Jonah 2. 4 7. yet I will look again towards thy holy Temple Again When my soul fainted within me I remembred the Lord and my prayer came unto thee into thy holy Temple So that wherever or in what condition soever they were they held themselves obliged to offer their prayers up there first as the properest place and means to have them ascend unto God and that Secondly because there were greater promises of audience of prayers made there than in any other place as it is well known from the prayer of Solomon and the promises of God thereupon in the Book of the Kings 1 Kings 8. Thirdly where there is a greater approbation and consent in the worship of God there is a greater confirmation of our Faith and Confidence that there we may offer up our prayers to God But in publick worship rather than private this is found Fourthly in publick Worship a greater increase of devotion towards God is ordinarily occasion'd at the consideration of the special place of Gods worship and the special presence God hath promised in that place in the hearing the prayer observing the postures and behaviours of all such as appear before him and in the dispensation of his graces there As likewise the eye and example of Men are of very great use and effect to the checking of light and vain actions which may fall from us and inviting us to a due veneration of God there and a decencie to prevent the just censure and offence of others which was the drift and force of St. Pauls argument to the Corinthians and the case of publick Assemblies of Christians and their behaviour there saying For this cause ought the woman to have 1 Cor. 11. 10. power over her head because of the Angels whether we understand it as doth Origen upon Luke Because the Angels are present in the Church which deserves Origâ—â— Hom 23. in Luc. so much to wit that only which is of Christ Therefore it is required that women should be covered because the Angels are there present assisting Photius Epist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. the Saints and rejoycing in the Church Or as Photius understands it That women have power over their head that is saith he have such who have power over them and that for the Angels they ought to be covered who are beholders and witnesses of the production of women out of man and proceeding from him Or lastly if we understand the words as some others who take the Angels here to be no other than the Bishop of the Church or President of the Assembly of such Christians for whose sake women ought to cover themselves because according to the most ancient form and custom of such Assemblies the Bishop having a higher seat than the rest of the Congregation might easily over-look the actions and gestures of all the rest And 't is no strange thing for the President or Bishop to be tearmed an Angel as what ever Origen playing many times with the Scripture rather than interpreting it might phansie in the Revelation and in other places of Scripture Rev. 2. 1. Lastly The glory of God which as hath been said is principally relative is much more declared and celebrated by the publick than by private worship even in the single act of one when occasion is not offered for more in the publick place of Worship But to conclude this I shall hear give the reasonings of St. Chrysostome to this our purpose upon the occasion of the effect of the joynt prayers of the Faithful in the delivery of St. Paul from death mentioned in his Epistle to 2 Cor. 1. 10. Chrys Serm. 64. p. 662. 663 Tom. 6. the Corinthians If St. Paul saith he being in danger was delivered by the prayer of the multitude why should not we also expect great benefit from such assistance For seeing when we pray singly by our selves we are weak but when we are gathered together we become strong we more prevail with God by multitude and auxiliaries For so a King who often gives one over to death and yields not to one when he intreats for one condemned but yields to the importunity of an whole City pleading for him and upon the importunity of a multitude respites him that is lead to the Dungeon from condemnation and brings him forth to Life Such is the force of the supplication of a multitude For this reason we are here gathered together all of us that we might more powerfully draw God to commiseration For seeing as is said when we pray by our selves we are weak by conjunction of Charity we prevail with God to give us those things we crave But I speak not these things for mine own sake but that ye may daily hasten to the Assemblies that ye say not What is there that I cannot pray for at
Thanksgiving to God do For first it seems to be so far natural to man as Religion it self is All people that worship a God having generally their vicissitudes of Feasting and Fasting according to occasions justly offered or the prudence of the first Founders and Administratours of that Religion Again By the Precepts and Precedents contained in the Scriptures is Fasting required so that no instances are needful to confirm the same And the true reason why the Precepts positive in the Old Testament are but few is because it was agreeable to the Law of Nature that it was not so needful to add multitude of positive Injunctions to confirm the same The most express if not only Law given concerning this in the Scriptures is that of Leviticus the 16th vers 29. where God ordains that on the Seventh Moneth they should afflict their souls for ever by a perpetual statute but in what manner is not expressed whether by abstaining from all meat or their ordinary dyet is not mentioned but the Tradition and Custom of the Jewish Church interpret it to be total Abstinence until the Evening that is the Sun going down And the reason why no express Precept is given in the Gospel to Fast where many Directions and Rules are given to Fast is because To Fast was a setled practise of old in the Church of God and needed nothing more then the accommodation thereof to the future state of the Gospel which was done partly by the said Advices and Instructions how to Fast and partly by the power and prudence of the Governours of the Church extending to such ends But they say against this That Fasting must be voluntary and not of constraint and necessity and therefore must not Authority impose such duties upon Christians but they must take them up freely or omit them according to their Christian Liberty But this miserable and contentious exception they are forced to recal again though they would not be seen in it to save themselves who being in Power however acquired propose and impose both Fasts and Feasts at their pleasures so that they plainly mean That such Fasts are only to be enjoyned by themselves who cannot as all others commanding contrary to them possibly injure Christians in their Liberty For so saith Thomas Cartwright mocking St. Paul We cannot do any thing against the truth but for the truth But farther we say Not only all Fastings but Prayer and Hearing of the Word of God yea all Moral Vertues as Justice and Temperance ought to be freely taken up of every good Christian but doth it therefore follow they may not be enjoyned Or lastly doth it follow that what is commanded and conditionally necessary may not be freely chosen if not according to the utmost extent of liberty of will according to Philosophy yet according to the Divine and Scriptural sense in which whatsoever is done readily chearfully and willingly in the Service of God is accepted of God who loveth a chearful giver as the 2 Cor. 9. 7. Scripture affirms not taking notice whether there be any incumbent necessity or not upon the person And may not what St. Peter advises and exhorts the Elders and Governours of the Church to viz. To feed the Flock of Christ among them taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly concern the governed equally May not there be a 1 Pet. 5. 2. constraint upon these as well as on them in their Ranks consisting with a laudable willingness Nay more than so and quite contrary to the Divinity of factious Pastours and Flocks should the laudableness of the thing it self fortified and enforced with the Commands of Superiours make men that have any just pretences to Christianity more willing and chearful in the performance of those duties This was ever wont to be so until pestilent tongues had corrupted the minds and hearts of simpler Christians to make them suspect hate and oppose whatever their Governours ordained and then to argue They can by no mean do so because they do not like it and this dislikes their Consciences St. Paul saith Do all things without murmuring or disputings these modern Doctours say Phil. 2. 14. Do nothing without murmurings and disputings Let therefore this be one motive and qualification to Fasting that it be done willingly and the rather because it is required A second reason is to excite to humiliation and to quicken our Devotions in Prayers and Repentance while we judge our selves unworthy of Gods common benefits otherwise appointed But not to excurr here on this subject as I might Let it suffice to relate here both the Description and Grounds of Fasting as we find them in our Churches Homilies Homilies Church of England 2. Part. p. 85. 78. Fasting is a witholding of meat and drink and all natural food from the body for the determinate time of Fasting Again There are three ends of Fasting 1. Chastizing the Flesh 2. Fervencie of Spirit 3. Sign of Humiliation But idle and ignorant persons give the same definition to Fasting as they do to Repentance For to abstain from sin is both Fasting and Repentance not considering as we have before shewed how that things when the end and effect of them is highly commended and magnified are vulgarly described by them yet remain in nature altogether distinct as in that remarkable place of Syracides He that keepeth the Law bringeth Eccles 35 1 2 offerings enough he that taketh heed to the commandment offereth a Peace-offering He that requiteth a good turn offereth fine flour and he that giveth alms sacrificeth praise Were not he think we an excellent Interpreter that should take these expressions in the strictest sense they are delivered And is not he the very same that shall define either Repentance or Fasting by abstinence from sin in a proper sense as all definition Hom. 84. To. 5. Tom. 1. Hom. 8. ought to be framed in St. Chrysostome who in a certain Sermon speaks as much as any in behalf of abstinence from sin as a Fast truly acceptable to God was never so mad or silly as to exclude thereupon outward and bodily Fasting but in very many Sermons of his upon Genesis which were delivered in the time of Lent as were St. Basils also upon the Six days work of God nothing occurs more frequently then that literal and outward Fasting commended to his hearers Infinite might be the citations to prove the Judgment of the holy Fathers and Martyrs and Monks in this particular but it is confessed by dissenters who know any thing above the Divinity of Ursin and Calvin and such like unhappy masters of Errours in this point And what are the other principal reasons against such Fastings as our Church by vertue of Canonical obedience injoyns Why A superstitious discrimination of Meats as if some were cleaner than other under the Gospel This they would needs bring it to because they can do nothing without this which is just nothing For they
give offense to the people contrary to the use of that Church And why so It it not because their doctrine and practise are quite contrary to it Is it not because the native sense of those words is so manifest and obvious that they would certainly understand them aright could they be suffered to come to the true knowledge of them And this is the scandal and offence would be given them And in the Reign of Henry the Eighth of England who opened the Hatches a little whereby men were kept in hold from discerning the clear light above and about them when they could no longer conceal the Second Commandment from the people but it must appear in its own entireness in the English tongue Gardiner and other Romanists would have added for safety sake their own gloss to the Word of God viz. to Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image nor the likeness Antiquit. Brittan 1 ag 338. of any thing c. with that intent to give to them Divine Worship Which sufficiently betrayes the guilt to which they are conscious in their false dealing with this Precept and the common people about it But neither of these being likely to take effect a more effectual and bold coarse is invented and defended That this Commandment was Ceremonial and Judicial and Temporary only ordained to prevent the Jews from falling into Idolatry to which they were so prone 'T is true they were so prone then to Idolatry and however they are now-a-dayes more than enough averse from it yet would they at this day be as prone as ever were but the liberty given of the use of Images in the sense of the Roman Church This they have found by experience of their Forefathers and others of succeeding Generations and therefore hold it safest and best to set a less Superstition to keep at a distance a far greater and to make a scruple of all use of images which can scarce amount to the nature of sin at all though it may of folly to secure themselves from the contagion of the other extream in the superstitious use of them It is controverted between the ancient Hebrew Doctours of which you Petavius Theolog. Dogmati To. 4. l. 15. cap. 6. Grotius Exposst Decal may read Petavius and Grotius whether Gods intent it was here wholly to deny the Jews the use of Images as Philo and Josephus suppose or the use only in a Divine manner as others this later Opinion is chosen by Petavius and the Adversaries to the Iconoclasts or Image-breakers But my opinion is First That all Jews concur in this and all Christians not led by the nose by the Pope of Rome that to make the Image of God at all under what pretence soever is absolutely forbidden And therefore I wonder more at Gerson than at them who lived with and after him that he should endeavour to excuse the Latin Church thus Before the Incarnation when the Law was given there appeared no Image of the Incorporeal God either in wood Gerson To. 2. De 10 Praecept in Praec 1. or stone because the Image of a Spirit cannot be made And therefore all Images were then to be rejected but because that may be now done since the Incarnation of the Son of God therefore from that time it is allowed to be done by him who might dispense Thus he And how weakly who may not see First Why could not the Image of God be made as well before the Incarnation as after And why might not the Image of the Son of God be made before he was Incarnate therebeing some knowledge of the same as we may well suppose amongst the Jews before the Incarnation and some Umbrages and Representations of it in Apparitions made to the ancient Patriarchs without the view of his Colour Stature and Lineaments as well as after when we have certainly lost the truest form of Christ and go by guess and uncertain tradition Again could not there be drawn the Image of a Spirit before Christ and can there now I would fain see how where or by whom What Because Christ who is a Spirit who is God may be drawn according to his Humane nature may be also according to his Divine The Divine Person may indeed but the Divine Nature can no more now than before be resembled and that Deity only by concomitance and implication and not in form at all When the Image of a Man is made the Image of him is made who hath a spiritual and divine Soul but the Image of his Soul is not at all made and much less is the Image of God made unless metonymically as Man is said to be the Image of God when Christ is figured unto us But could this be which neither can nor ought to be what warrant at all can it be to make the Image of God in contradiction to Christ as is pleaded for and usual among Roman Catholicks when they upon a vile fansie occasioned from a vision in Daniel make God the Father like a decâ—epit old man well clothed indeed and most like to the Picture of Winter we have seen but that he wants a pan of coals by him to warm his old and cold fingers over and as it were his Grandchild standing by him Could not all this foul daubing of the Deity have been made before Chrusts Incarnation Or ought it in any sober mans judgment to be made now Lastly because they speak of some special Dispensation to do this now which was never allowed formerly let them be so ingenuous and courâ—eous to show us if not the Original lest they should be cousened of it the Copy or but one word of it and it will satisfie us otherwise we think they have said much more already than they needed For we should have been as well satisfied altogether if they had said only It ought to be so as to give such a Reason which is as incredible as the thing it self viz. that It is dispensed with now under the Gospel Nay in that they say it is dispensed with under the Gospel they impty it was more than Mosaical and Ceremonial under the Law because Rites and Ceremonies are not so much dispensed with as directly abolished and destroyed Secondly I hold it absolutely forbidden the Jews by the same Law to make use of any Images in the worship of God though not to that degree as to worship them but only By them and that for fear of Idolatry and if not in passing by or neglecting God himself and directing and fixing the mind and heart on the visible Object yet by help of that For that contradicts the mind of God as may appear by the whole Body of Gods worship and every part thereof instituted by himself without the least insinuation of such manner of worship Nay it is very strange what Erasmus hath observed That though indeed in practice it hath been connived at yea Nam ut Imagines sint in Templis â—ulla
Hist Nat. l. 2. c. 5. Gâ—eek Philosopher wrote a Book with this Title Of not killing any living thing And Pliny writes of the Amycle whose chief City was Anxur in Italy that being Pythagoreans they suffered themselves to be consumed by Serpents because they would not kill them Yet methinks the Manichaean Hereticks should not have fallen into so great superstition having the use of the Scripture where God giveth Man free liberty to convert the Beasts Exod. 9. 3. of the field to his food as well as the Hearb of the field But perhaps the Latin word occides being general may have deceived them as St. Augustine Aug. Civ Dei l. 1. c. 20. intimateth where he tells us that the Manichees grounded their opinion Of not killing any living thing upon this Commandment Thou shalt not kill which St. Augustine there refuteth from their own opinion and practise For they held also an opinion that Plants had life too and yet they destroyed them in eating Hearbs And there wanted not some conscientious and learned Christians who held it against Christian perfection and purity to kill any man though in just defense as did Ambrose who doth not absolutely deny it to be lawful yet looks upon it as a blemish to Christian Religion to shed blood So that he holds it scarce lawful in such a case as shipwrack for one man to save his own life by thrusting another man of a planck which might have carried him to land and so to return Ne dum salutem defendat Pietatem contaminet Ambr. 31 Off. cap. blows back to him again that as a Robber on the High-way shall assail him least in defending his life he corrupts or stains his Religion To this we can only say That the Church hath been so tender and pure in her Profession that though she hath not any where condemned that we call natural and lawful Resistance to the securing of a mans Fortunes and especially Life yet hath she in her Canons of Irregularities set such a value and reverence upon the bloud of man that even involuntary and much more voluntary killing any man doth by her Decrees render one in Priestly Orders uncapable of doing his Office because as St. Ambrose his words imply though the guilt before God should not be great yet the blemish and scandal before men would be so and all suspicion and appearance of evil ought to be avoided And this way of arguing which is yet the only of any colour is of much less force to make wars unlawful being denounced by just Authority as late Fanaticks would pretend at least to hold to gain esteem of men of singular consciences which yet gross experience hath certified us extends no farther than opportunity and advantage have enabled and encouraged them to violate For a man hath not power absolute over his own person but is under the command of his Superiours who are to judge of the reasonableness of the endangering his own life and destroying the life of another For if we should so far affront the Law of Nature as to grant a man might not use any Self-defence to the apparent loss of the life of another it would not from thence follow at all that he might not receive power and authority and such a command which to deny were sinful to bereave another of his life How many examples in the Old Testament justifie this In the New Testament having no instance of such Christians as had any Soveraign Political Power do we wonder that we have neither Example nor Precept directly commending this to Christian practise But by implication we have when St. Paul exhorteth thus Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he is called 1 Cor. 7. 〈◊〉 Now it was well known to the Apostle that there were continual wars in the Roman Empire and that many Christians were Souldiers and that that was their Calling wherein they were called For Cornelius was a Souldier And when the Souldiers came to St. John Baptist enquiring What shall we do He did not say Lay down your Commission Serve no longer Luke 3. 14. But Do violence to no man neither accuse any falsly and be content with your wages which is as much as Use your imployment soberly and justly neither prey upon any man upon your private account And whereas the words of Christ in his Sermon on the Mount seem to Matth. 5. 22 38 39 40 41. be pretended to the contrary Christ there exhorting patiently to bear affronts and injuries without revenging a mans self they are to be understood of violence repayed without lawful Authority either expressed or implyed but this is alwayes implyed in just defences And again these are rather Counsels than Commands peremptorily forbidding so to do but advising to forbear that out of a Spirit of meekness and patience which is not utterly unlawful to do but to the disadvantage of the Gospel in general and the diminution of that reward annexed to the humble and patient suffering of wrongs for Gods sake But though this is to be preferred before the other it follows not that the other is unlawful or that it is so much as lawful to forbear executing justice on such offenders when commanded by good Authority And so do the Jews interpret those words of Leviticus Thou shalt not stand against the bloud of thy neighbour thus as Fagius hath noted on the place Whoever See Paulus Fagius on Lev. 19. 16. is able to deliver his neighbour in any of his Members and doth it not he is in the same guilt as if he shedded blood and becomes guilty of death And it is impossible a man should be guilty of blood in doing that which he shall be in that he doth it not It being thus explained what is not meant by this Command what is by it intended may more briefly be declared and that as in other Precepts is of two sorts Negative Not to murder against which foul and crying sin so much and so plainly is denounced in holy Writ that to recount them here in this short Comment were unseasonable and superfluous It may be defined A wilful and unjust taking away the life of a Man And there are two principle Causes of this unjustness First No good or warrantable ground or demerits Secondly No good Authority so to do Now Authority is twofold Express and Implicite There is no express Law commanding the destruction of another that seeks mine but Implicite there is and so it may be just Express is that which exerciseth it self against convicted Malefactours And of both these is he destitute who executeth himself I cannot say that it is unlawful for a man required by just Authority to kill himself but of himself to do this is certainly a murderous act though he were guilty of Death For as St. Austin hath observed Aug. Civ Deâ— l. 1. c. 17. He that killeth himself doth certainly kill a man and it is not said Thou