it may be concluded that all Governours in this world Ecclesiastical and Civil all Princes and Magistrates all Patriarchs Archbishops Bishops Superintendents and Presidents are so many Idols and Ordinances dishonourable to God and his Son But judicious men will consider that the Governments on earth are not the patterns of the invisible world Here God ruleth in this manner not for his own sake but for ours we being mortal men and needing the aids of men like our selves whilst we sojourn in this body and for him to administer immediately to our outward infirmities in this world were for him to be always grosly incarnate This conceit of the invisible world as modelled like the visible hath brought forth that excuse of a voluntary humility in the Romish Suppliants who as if the Court of Heaven were like that on Earth dare not presume to come immediately to the King but apply themselves to him by the mediation of some of his Officers A King is but a man and cannot hear all complaints in person and redress all grievances Could he do it with the Power and Wisdom and Grace and easie operation of a Deity all might then have immediate access to him or to him by the Prince his Son supposed to be of a like nature and quality And who on earth when he is invited by the Monarch himself to apply himself to him immediately or to him by his Son addresseth himself to neither but to some meaner Favourite of whose interest for the dispatch of his Affair he hath no assurance given him Thirdly should we lay aside this consideration of that Presidentship and Patronage to which the Romanists entitle so many Saints yet the very frequency used in addresses to them though by mere request of their Praiers for us would not a little tend to the diminution of the honour of God and Christ. It is notorious to those who pass the Seas in the same Bottoms with Romish Mariners that those Seamen in a storm apply not themselves immediately to God but repeat the Hymn to the holy Virgin of Hail Star of the Sea To this purpose is that which Lipsius telleth of Thirteen men in peril by a Tempest in their passage to Antwerp Amongst them the Master conceiving no hope of saving the Vessel or the lives of the Passangers exhorted them to submit themselves wholly to God and so to pass to a better state after the loss of this But it seems one amongst them suggested Vows and Invocations to the Lady of Halla and his counsel is embraced Straightway says he a light shone on the Vessel and the Tempest ceased and the Vessel arrived at the Haven with loss of goods but not of the Passengers who repaired to Halla and profesled themselves to owe their life to the Virgin and paid with faithfulness the Vows they had made It had been more pious surely to have thanked God and the Virgin or rather God alone who it may be by other means or by himself was their deliverer But superstitious men judg of Causes by the concomitancie of the effects and not by the virtue which produceth them And this is not only the fruit of superstition in the rude and ignorant but in the politest of the Ecclesiastics The very Jesuites for so did Father Garnet at his execution afford God the less of their Application by being so busied at their last hour with their aforesaid Mary Mother of Grace Mother of Mercy defend us from the enemy and protect us in the hour of death which Versicles say the composers of the confession of Saxony we heard a Monk a Professor of Divinity inculcate very often to a dying man without any mention of Christ Jesus And it hath been commonly observed as a great blot in the Romish devotions That they use many Ave Maria's to one Pater Noster Which Collects by the way being repeated by them with such careless haste the jabbering of any thing in an indistinct heedless way is by us called patering Labbe a learned Jesuite though in his sickness he was not forgetful of Christ his Saviour yet he mentions the frequency of his addresses to the Virgin during the rage of his Feaver This a stander by not knowing his principles would have judged to have been the effect of his distemper Thus then this new Marian devotion much diminisheth and sometimes quite justleth out the ancient and unquestionable worship of Jesus as they say S. Ambrose is almost forgotten already at Milan through the newer veneration of S. Charles Borromee Two things now may be perhaps jointly pretended towards the disabling the foregoing Discourse and I will return a brief answer to them First It is taken for confessed That those to whom the Romanists pray as unto Patrons and Patronesses are real Saints in Heaven Secondly The Romanists pretend to prove that God hath declared himself to have conferred such honourable office place and power upon these Patrons by the miracles they have wrought for the behoof of their Clients For the first suggestion It is confessed that they worship none but such as have been thought professors of Christianity and such who are reputed to be exalted above either Hell or Purgatory Notwithstanding this I dare not avouch the eminent Saintship and glorified estate of all that are canonized They who read without partiality the History of S. Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury will be inclined to think him put into the Kalender by as much mistake as many other things are put into our vulgar Almanacks I see that even some of the Roman Communion do impute his saintship rather to the fervour of his zeal than to the ground of his Cause What can a man that reverenceth God think of the Saintship of St. Bernardin of Siena when he considereth of his Doctrine apt to give pain to the modesty of the Virgin almost in Heaven it self This Saint after a logn comparison betwixt God and Blessed Mary thus thus blasphemously concludeth If then we give to each their due in that which God hath done for man and which the Virgin hath done for God himself you see for your comfort that Mary hath done more for God than God for man whence God for the Virgins sake is much obliged to us Methinks by these words he is just such another Saint as the Author of the Conformities who writes the parallel of Christ and St. Francis and giveth to St. Francis the preheminence What can a peaceable Christian think of the Saintship of Pope Hildebrand or St. Gregory the seventh Was it not he who imbroiled the World who taught that Kings and Dukes had their original from those who not knowing God did by pride rapines perfidiousness murthers and by almost all manner of wickednesses through the instigation of the Devil the Prince of this world affect to domineer over their equals or other men with blind ambition and intolerable presumption who deposed Henry the fourth King of
him an homage more agreeable to his Divine and to their own reasonable though humane nature They would then serve him with that pure Religion or sincere Christianity which is not adulterated either with Idolatry or Superstition Of these the notions being so commonly entangled that Hesychius expoundeth the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a superstitious person by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Idolater and the translators of the Psalms * render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the vain or empty that is the exceeding vanities of Idols by superstitious vanities I will in the first place offer to the Reader a distinct consideration of them Superstition if we have regard only to the bare derivations of its names in the Greek or Latin Tongues is no other than a single branch of Idolatry It is the worship of the Divi coelestes semper habiti as the Law of the twelve Tables speaketh that is of the Sempiternal Daemons and also of those Quos in coelum merita vocârunt as the same Law distinguisheth of such Hero's and superexisting Souls as were through their eminent and exemplary virtue translated from Earth to Heaven Yet in the notion of Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Superstition consisteth not so much in the bare worship of such invisible Powers as in that servility and horror of mind which possessed the worshippers and inclin'd them like those who flatter Tyrants to hate them and yet to fawn on them and to suppose them apt to be appeased by ceremonious and insignificant crouchings Use hath further extended the signification of the word insomuch that sometimes it comprehendeth not only all manner of Idolatry but also every false and offensive way which disguiseth it self under the colour of Religion Thus Socrates the Historian when he mentioneth the signs which Julian gave of his proneness to Superstition he meaneth by that word the whole Religion of the Gentiles But there is still behind its proper and especial notion and the Synod of Mechlin hath attempted to set down a true description of it The Council of Trent having commanded the abolishing of all Superstition the Fathers of this Synod go about to explain the meaning of that Precept and they do it after the following manner This Synod say they teacheth that all that use of things is superstitious which is performed without the warrant of the Word of God or the Doctrine of the Church by certain customary rites and observances of which no reasonable cause can be assigned And when trust is put in Them and an expectation is raised of an event following from such Rites and not hoped for without them from the intercession of the Saints Also when in the worship of Saints they are done rather out of rashness and lightness than out of Piety and Religion But this description is in many respects defective For many of the Usages which it decrieth do not relate to Religion and they deserve rather the names of follies impertinences and ludicrous inchantments unless a man would distinguish concerning the kinds of Superstition and call some the Superstitions of common life and others the Superstitions of worship The rites of the former kind become the more Superstitious if their event be expected from some presumed Saint for then an impertinent custom becomes an impiety or the usage of a Magical charm by which invisible powers are depended on for the production of visible effects If for instance sake a man shall fall into that conceit which hath possesled many even Origen himself that certain names signifie by nature and not by institution and that an event will follow from a certain ceremonious pronunciation or other use of them he meriteth the Title of a Trifling and Credulous Philosopher But if he maketh such use of words suppose of Adonai or Sabaoth which Origen believeth to lose their vertue if turn'd into any other language and hopeth thence for the event from God through the intercession of some Spirit he deserveth the reproof due to a superstitious man who by supposing a Divine attendance on his Trifles doth highly dishonour God and his Saints Neither doth the Synod of Mechlin absolve such Rites from the guilt of Superstition by adding to the intercession of Saints the prescription of the Church for that cannot alter the nature of things though it may render some Rites indifferent in their nature expedient not to say necessary in point of obedience for the preservation of Peace and Order If Riâ—…es of worship are exceeding numerous under Christianity if they are light and indecent if being in themselves indifferent or decent in their use they are imposed or observed as necessary duties the stamp of Authority does not much alter the property of them Wherefore others have in more accurate manner defined Superstition A worship relating to God proceeding from a certain inclination of mind which is commonly called a good intention and springing always from mans brain separately from the Authority of the Holy Scriptures But neither in this definition are we to rest For if the reason of mans brain answers the Piety of his intention the worship which he offereth though not commanded in Scripture if not forbidden by it may be grateful to God I should therefore chuse in this manner to describe Superstition It is a corruption of publick or private worship either in the substance or in the Rites of it whereby men actuated by servile motives perform or omit in their own persons or urge upon or forbid to others any thing as in its nature Religious or Sinful which God hath neither required nor disallowed either by the Principles of right Reason or by his revealed Will. It is the paying of our Religious Tribute to God or an Idol in Coin of our own mintage The positive part of it is the addition of our own numberless absurd or decent inventions to the prescriptions of God in the quality of Laws and Rites equal or superior to those by him enacted First An observance of a very great number of such Rites and Ceremonies in the worship of God as admit of excuse or praise in their single consideration is a part of this Superstition For it prejudiceth the substance of our duty by distracting our attention and is unagreeable to the Christianity which we profess because it is not as was the Mosaic a Typical Religion The Greek Church as well as a great part of the Latin aboundeth with Ceremonies and the Rituals are of so great a bulk that they look like Volumes too big for the very Temple much more for the Church Neither probably should such a number of Rites have ever been imposed on the Jews if their ritual temper their conversation with a people of like ritual disposition and the use of Types in shadowing out the Messiah had not mov'd the Wisdom of God to prescribe them The late pretender to the Latin Text and English Translation of the Order and Canon of the Mass
hand to the Sun and then smote his breast with very vehement force The English aptly interpreting this sign as an acknowledgment of the Deity of the Sun and an Oath by that Idol of fidelity and peace used the same sign themselves gaining thereby Friendship and Traffick with a few Salvage People at the expence of the most valuable thing the Honour of God Of this external Honour he is jealous and he reserved it to himself amongst the Jews whom he had espoused by express command saying Lo tischtachaveh Thou shalt not before an Image or Idol put thy Body into such a figure as is a sign of worship In the same sence ought to be interpreted the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Seventy Thou shalt not bow down the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not denoting there a meer act of the mind but of the body either by bowing of its whole frame or its head or knee or which the notation of the word particularly importeth by the kissing of the hand a common ceremony among the Gentile Idolaters and ancient as the times of Job Three ways of exhibiting such external reverence are suggested by the Psalmist where he calls upon the people to worship with prostration to bow to kneel before God their Creator For the sake of external worship solemn Days and publick Assemblies have in great part been appointed By it our Light which retained in the heart only is as a Lamp burning in a Sepulchre doth so conspicuously shine before men that it induceth them to an happy consent in glorifying God with us By it is maintain'd the visible Society of Gods Church whose outward communion is preserved by the external signs of words gestures and actions relating to the Christian Religion and making up the profession of it This Communion he in effect renounceth who pretending to the heart of a Christian hath the tongue of a Blasphemer or the gesture of an Idolater who whatsoever secret thoughts he entertaineth concerning God saith openly of him that he is not Supreme or what inward hatred soever he conceiveth against Idols sitteth in their Temples and eateth of their Sacrifice External Ceremonies as is said by the Fathers of the Synod of Rhemes are therefore appointed that by them a declaration may be made of our affection towards God And common Reason teacheth that by giving away the outward signs of worship we are prodigal of the internal Honour of God which cannot be preserved or advanced amongst Societies of men meerly by a secret and invisible Intention Hitherto I have pursued the notion of Idolatry in a positive way according to the proper nature of Worship in which the Act passeth towards the Object But it may not be amiss to take a little notice of a kind of negative impiety which precedeth this positive false-worship and to which some it may be would give the name of negative Idolatry I mean by this that denial of any thing in the Idea of God which is proper to it succeeded by a Worship of Him according to that maimed and unagreeable Idea For the Idea of God being so intire that by any diminution it becometh the Idea of something else he that first removes part of the Idea and then adores the remainder adores as God that which is not like him He for instance sake who denies the constancy of Gods knowledg of human affairs yet worships him at certain times in which he owneth him to have that knowledg after the manner of those foolish Gentiles who worshipped the Sun by day and revelled by night when they thought he saw not such a one by breaking of such a necessary part of Gods Idea as renders it not his Image and yet adoring it as such first makes an Idol and then doth it homage So the god of the Muggletonians rob'd of his Spirituality immensity subsistences what is he but their Idol The Premisses being considered it will thence follow That in giving the Honour of God supreme or subordinate to any other thing be it internal Idea or personal Principle or outward Object with respect to any supposed inherent Divine Power original or derived or to any external Relation by internal worship and by the external signs of it or by either of them consisteth the Notion of Idolatry the thing designed in this Chapter CHAP. III. Of the Causes and Occasions of Idolatry in the World IT hath appeared in the foregoing Chapter what kind of evil Idolatry is and how it hath spread it self into numberless branches In this Chapter my purpose is to proceed further and to inquire into the Root of it and to consider from what Causes and Occasions it hath sprung and on what rotten and irrational grounds it is bottom'd The general Cause of Idolatry is the degenerate estate of the Soul exerting it self in the headiness of the Will which hurrieth men to folly under the wild conduct of Imagination and Sense The Scripture calleth this distemper The vanity of the mind and to it it ascribeth the Worship of Idols Of such Worshippers St. Paul observeth That when they knew God or had means of knowing him by the reasoning of their minds excited by the beauty order and excellence of his Works of Creation and Providence they glorified him not as God neither were thankful but became vain in their imagination and their foolish heart was darkened In this estate of moral darkness they mistook and confounded the Objects they met with and honoured the Creature instead of God It is difficult if not impossible at this distance from persons and things to tell the causes and occasions of all their mistakes Neither could it have been done fully by the wisest of those times For the love of Idols in some like that of Persons in others was an unaccountable passion That therefore which I here undertake is not a full certain and manifest but a competent and probable account Those who worshipped Universal nature as an entire Object or the several visible parts of it distinctly were led to such adoration by one more general Cause and by divers which were more special The more general cause of the worship of material nature either in its own form or in the shapes put upon it by Art is the natural inclination of the mind in this body to help it self by sensible Objects The substance of God Almighty is not an Object which our mind can comprehend much less is our acutest sight able to reach it This Principle many own'd amongst the Heathens Such were they mention'd by Porphyrie who that they might signify the invisibility of Gods Essence painted his Statues with black Such were the Egyptians remembred by Plutarch who did therefore make the Crocodile an emblem of God because that creature by the help of a pellucid membrane descending from his forehead was able as they vulgarly conceited to see with closed eyes without being seen Now man living as it were in the confines of
say their meaning is by a figure only to desire them to procure their requests of God how dare any Christian trust his soul with that Church which teacheth that which must needs be Idolatry in all that understand not that figure They who believe not that these are his words are sure unacquainted with the writings of the Author and the great Integrity of the Reporter It is certain that among our selves in our more ordinary conversation such forms of speech are used towards men which in their extent are applicable to God We say that such Students had their Grace in the Senate-house or that there they have been created Doctors a phrase it seems too crude for the digestion of some nice stomacks When the weak are pursued by a savage Beast or by a man cruel as such a creature they run into the arms of kinder persons and desire them to save them and deliver them And because these Forms are used to men by those who own nothing but what is humane in them and because the matter of their request is apparently such too and in the power of man these equivocal phrases are by general acknowledgment determined to one sense But were civil Forms more liable to mistake a Church sure should exercise a more tender care in those of Religion and chuse such as might be apter to edifie than mislead the meanest in her Communion Now in such Forms of common speech as I have mentioned though there is not any proper worship of men yet there is more desired of them than that they would pray to God for us When Esau beseeched his Father to bless him he did not merely request him to pray for a blessing but to pronounce over him that sentence of Benediction which he as the Father of that Family had commission from God to pronounce with authority and to effect And when an importunate widow does by her repeated crys for vengeance or publick justice for deliverance and safeguard render the very ears of an unjust Judg attentive she intreats more of him than that he would speak for her to the King She supposeth him in commission and indued with power to help her though she knows him in this very point of his assistance to be subordinate to his Prince There is more in the Forms of the Roman Church than the bare indiscretion of them And though the incommunicable honour of God be not by their measure the rule of Faith devolved on the creature for a Papist so interpreting those Forms should by that Church be condemned as an Heretick and a violater of the fundamental Article of one God in Trinity yet still to me it seemeth that the honour which God hath not actually communicated is by them misplaced on Angels at least on Saints I do not in saying this ground my perswasion barely on the common Argument of that Ubiquity which many conclude to be ascribed to Saints and Angels in the Invocation of them The foundation of that Argument is laid on a matter which is disputed For they who contend that the Angels hear or know what is done on Earth do expresly deny Ubiquity to them Though some private Romanists have mentioned appearances of the person of the Virgin in distant places at the same time and others have represented her or some other Saint as dwelling in a particular statue And to such it is proper to put the question of Arnobius Let us suppose said he that there are ten thousand Statues of Vulcan in all the world can that one Deity be in so many thousand habitations at one time But others infer this knowledg in the Saints and Angels partly from the perfection of their spiritual nature by which saith Dr. Holden they know all the natures motions and actions of Corporeal things partly from their personal presence as Guardians of men and as Gods Retinue in Religious Assemblies and partly from the Revelation of God and from what they call the Glass of the Trinity a mirrour of which I profess my self very ignorant and which my curiosity desires not to look into and which the inventers might in reverence have spared rather than to have exposed the essence of God as a substance reflecting all visible Ideas They gather this also in part from the Intelligence given by some Angels unto the rest who are of the same community This they say plausibly concerning Angels for of Saints they have much less ground thus to speak Only this may be allowed them concerning both that being spirits we know not whether such distance as that of this world does hinder communication For if it be not done by motion they may possibly as well understand at the distance of an hundred miles as at that of a furlong This only I observe by the way as an Objection That the Ancients who are said to Platonize held neither Angels nor Souls departed to be uncloathed Spirits but united to Bodies of AEther or AEr Wherefore it seemeth that their knowledg of external material objects must depend on Physical motion which by distance is scattered or diverted from the streightness of its lines and consequently from the exact truth of its intelligence It is most probable that Angels are often absent from grown men especially whilst they remain in ordinary circumstances And the Scripture speaks of the Angels as being on this or the other occasion sent to men and then removed from them This is manifest in the known cases of Abraham Daniel S. Peter S. John and the blessed Virgin her self More probable still it is that the same Angel hath not intelligence not only of all the affairs of the world but of all the prayers that are addressed to him For many such Addresses being very improper and sometimes immoral we must not think that God or other good Angels are concerned in telling him the news of them unless it be in order to punishment And for the Saints whom God hath not that we know of made ministring spirits who are not before the Resurrection and final Judgment in complete glory of whose appearing after death the Scripture hath given us in the Old Testament but one instance and that a very doubtful one it not being certain whether it was the Apparition of Samuel or of the Devil or the Imposture of the Witch of Endor speaking inwardly And in the New but that one as I remember of Moses and Elias when Christ was transfigured It is not so much as by probable arguments yet evinced that they know our particular estate though it is evident that they wish well to the world of mankind and especially to the body of the Christian Church For sure they lose not their affection in Heaven where whilst some other Graces cease Charity is eternal and in perfection Wherefore though the praying to Saints and Angels may not necessarily infer their Ubiquity and for that reason be called Idolatrous yet if they hear us not it may
Analogy I mean such Objects as bear some Metaphorical proportion to some excellencies of God though they be not the proper Images Statues or Pictures of them Such an Image was that of Jupiters remembred by Vignola in his Discourse of the five Orders in Building He mentioneth there a Capital in which were the Images of four Eagles instead of Stalks and instead of Fruits and Flowers four Jupiters faces with Thunderbolts under them A Representation this may be judged of the power piercing eye quick execution of will in their own Jove in the four Quarters of the World Such an Analogical Image of the true God do some Papists esteem the Statue or Picture of an aged man whose years and experience are apt to signifie the Eternity and Wisdom of God and that of a Dove to signifie his purity and simplicity in a manner suitable to our conception In both these Instances I think they are mistaken Daniel as shall be shewed in the last Chapter did not mean the Godhead or the Father by the Ancient of Days Neither ought his transient Vision which had something humane mixt with it be made a standing-pattern in Religion Such Visions being impressed on the fancy could not be there represented without some earthly Imagery which the enlightned reason of the Prophet could separate from the Diviner part which is the thing principally intended Now to bring the whole scene with its glory and its imperfection before the eyes of the people in Gods standing-worship is to confound in their Imaginations things sacred and secular and to adulterate their Devotion Then for the Image of a Dove the Text in the Gospels proveth no more than that the Spirit imitated the gentle hovering of that Bird And the learned think it did so in the appearance of a bright cloud hovering with gentle motion over the waters and the Person of our Lord baptized in them It is plain by the words of St. Austine that he thought it Idolatrous to contemplate God in our mind according to the extent of those expressions which we use in speaking of him And the like certainly he judged of contemplating God according to Dreams and Visions which are partly humane and partly divine Thus then that great Light of Africa discourseth We believe that Christ sitteth at the right hand of the Father Yet thence are we not to think that the Father is circumscribed with humane form so as to occur to our mind contemplating of him as one that has a right and a left hand or as one sitting with bended knees left we fall into that sacriledg for which the Apostle condemneth those who turned the glory of the Incorruptible God into the similitude of corruptible man Such a Statue is not without impiety erected to God in a Christian Temple much more in the heart where the Temple of God is truly situate if it be purged from earthly concupiscence and error St. Austin then as Spalatensis reflecteth on these words would have advised that the Visions of Daniel and other of that nature produced by Bellarmine should be contemplated with the mind and not be pictured especially in Churches that they should be resolved into their true signification and not impressed upon the brain lest through the Picture of an Old man or Dove the defects of Age wings and bill possess the imagination There is danger in using any Images of Animals as Statues or Pictures of God for they will be made not Images only of Analogy but of representation by the ignorant whilst shape and life are personally set forth But there is not so great danger in the Images of things without life especially if they be flat Pictures not Protuberant Statues nor Pictures which the Artist hath expressed with roundness The worse and the more flat the work is the less danger there is of its abuse Titian hath painted the Virgin and the Child Jesus so very roundly that as Sir Henry Wotton a very good judg both of the pictures and dispositions of men saith of it a man knows not whether to call it a piece of Sculpture of Picture In some kinds of Pictures if there be found analogy and that analogy be discreetly expressed as by the name Jehovah or according to the Jewish modesty Adonai incircled with clouds and rays of glorious Light I know no sin in the making of it or contemplating in it in a Metaphorical way some of the Perfections of the infinite God in such manner expressed A devout man would not put a Paper with such an impression to vile uses He would think it fitter for his Closet than for his Chamber of Grimaces though he would not think it the representation of God or give it Divine honour by inward estimation or outward signs By Images of memory I mean such Objects as contain in them no analogy to the Divine Perfections nor any pretended representation of them but yet are apt to put us in mind of God being erected as Pillars or Monuments in places where he has done some great and excellent work Such was the Pillar of Jacob and in the making of such there is no unlawfulness nor in exhibiting before them such signs of honour as are proper to be shewed before a monument of Divine Wisdom Power or Goodness unless in times and places where other such Statues are erected to false gods and the erection and honour of them is by common construction the mark of their Worshippers Such Images of memory are often exhibited by God himself Such was the pillar of Salt into which the body of Lots Wife was converted a pillar of Remembrance of Gods justice and of admonition to them who look back towards the pollutions which they have escaped Such was the adust earth which Solinus speaks of in those places where the inhabitants of Sodom were destroyed by Sulphureous flames from Heaven though it was no pillar yet was it a monument of Divine power and severity towards their unnatural lusts And he that carves engraves or paints these holy Histories may be an useful Artist By Images of Representation I mean Statues or Pictures made by art with intent to exhibit the likeness of the person The making and worshipping such Images of him God himself condemneth appealing to the world whether there be any thing in nature to which he can be resembled Such a Representation is undue though made according to the best pattern in the visible world and much more if it be made in viler and as the Heathen were wont to do in the Images of Priapus and Attis in immoral figures And the Worshipper who gives to it veneration as to an Image of God does highly dishonour him by changing his essential glory into such similitudes And it is not so ignominious for Caesar to be painted in the similitude of an Ass or of the worst Monster in the Sculptures of Licetus as for God to be represented in the pretended likeness of his Deity by
be invisible and the Son to be visible are exceedingly different from those of the Arians For the Arians degrading the Son to the condition of a Creature another a lesser a second God as Eusebius of Caesarea is bold to call him They suppose him to consist of a visible substance So Maximinus the Arian remembred by St. Austin makes the Son invisible only as the Angels by non-appearance and the Father invisible by reason of his superior and immutable essence In the mean time this was the Creed of the Catholicks that the whole Trinity was invisible in one Divine substance It was also their belief that the Son appeared and not the Father not from any difference of nature but of order only the Father being as it were the root or head of the Trinity and therefore not so fitly appearing as his Substitute the second Person And they could perceive no more mutability in the Logos when he appeared than in the Father when he not in shape but by voice did own him as his only begotten Son And by this reason Saint Austin might have answered the Arians without asserting as he does that in the Old Testament the whole Trinity appeared For the manner in which this Appearance of the Son of God was effected I conceive it to have been done by the Assumption of some principal Angel upon the greatest and most solemn occasions without any vital or personal union and by the ministry of some other holy spirits together with an extraordinary motion sometimes in the air and thence in the brain and sometimes in the brain only And in this opinion I have been the more confirmed since I found the concurrence of the very learned and judicious Mr. Thorndike in great measure If I were now to guess what Angel was assumed I would fasten my conjecture on Michael the Arch-angel whom the Hebrews call the Prince of Faces or the Prince of the Presence By the Son the Father made the World and what if I say he governed it also as by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Word For in God we do not distinctly apprehend his way of working but conceive of it under the more general notion of his will and command If I declare that the Son always acted in the Father's name I make but the same Profession which Tertullian did many ages ago and avoid the Anathema which Marcus Arethusius or rather which others in the Council of Sirmium denounced against all who confess not that the Son ministred to the Father in the Creation of all things and who maintain that when God said Let us make man the Father said it not to the Son but to himself Accordingly where God is said in the Old Testament to have appeared they seem to mistake who ascribe it to an Angel Personating God and not to the second Person as the Shechinah or as Tertullian calleth him the Representator of the Father To this purpose it hath been often noted by others and ought by me in this argument to be again brought to remembrance how often there is mention in the ancient Paraphrases of the Jews of the Word of God Neither doth it enervate the force of this observation that what we translate the Word does often signifie I Thou or He. Both because several of the places will not admit of that other sense and because the Jews themselves so commonly own this and so often mention the Logos or Word of the Father Philo is very frequent in speaking of the Divine Logos as the Substitute and Image of the invisible God both in his Book of Dreams and of the Confusion of Tongues It is said Philo in that latter Book a thing well becoming those who so join together fellowship and science to desire to see God If that cannot be they must content themselves with his sacred Image his Word A saying which Eusebius esteemed worthy of an Asterick and accordingly transcribed it into his Book of Evangelical Preparation The same Jew giveth to the Logos the title of the shadow or Portraict of God adding that God Almighty used him as his instrument in framing the World It is true that by the Logos Philo doth often understand the World which by the greatness order and beauty of it declareth naturally the Power Wisdom and goodness of God and pleadeth with him in the quality of the Workmanship laid before the feet of the Workman But it is as true and manifest that he speaketh also of the Logos of this inferior Logos as the maker and governour of it In his Book de Mundi Opificio he calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Word or the Word of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Image of God And he says further of it that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a super-coelestial Star the fountain of all the sensible or visible Luminaries And he had said in the former Page That the World was the Image of the Image or Archetypal Exemplar of the Logos of God PART 3. Of the Shechinah of God from Adam to Noah THis Substitute and Shechinah of God made Adam and he that gave him his Being gave him most probably the Law of it For so the Fathers interpret that in St. John The Word was God That or He was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world And in this sense we are to expound St. Justin the Martyr where he speaketh of the Knowledg of God in Socrates by the Word He meaneth not that he was naturally a Christian but that so far as he was indued with such principles of Religious reason as Christianity owneth he had derived it from the Logos or Word of God who made the World and in it man a reasonable Creature To him he appeared as well as to others who sprang from him helping the mind as soon as it was seated in this thicker region of bodily fantasms And to Adam the Logos appeared I know not whether I should say in the shape of man or in the way of a bright cloud moving in Paradise when the wind began to rise and asking with a voice of Majesty after his rebellious subject And that this was the Son of God is insinuated by the Targum of Onkelos in the eighth verse of the third of Genesis The Text of Moses is thus translated And when they our first Parents heard the voice of the Lord God But this is the sense of the words of Onkelos And they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God And amongst Christian Writers I may alledg Tertullian and St. Hilary of Poictiers who aboundeth in this Argument as also Theophilus Antiochenus whose words are so pertinent that I cannot forbear the enlarging of my discourse with the translation of them You will object said Theophilus that I teach that God cannot be circumscribed and yet that I say
that great Wit to rail at Opinions without offering reasons for his contrary judgment and here he offereth two The First he taketh from those first words of the Epistle to the Hebrews God who at divers times and in divers manners spake to our forefathers by the Prophets hath in these last times spoken to us by his Son The Second he taketh from the second and third verses of the second Chapter in which the Holy Author preferreth the Gospel before the Law because the Law was given by Angels that is saith he by the Angel sustaining the person of God and for that reason mentioned by St. Steven in the singular number and by many more such spirits making up that glorious train but the Gospel by the Lord Jesus the Son of God Upon the seeming force of such Reasons I find Curcellaeus and others agreeing in the sentence of Grotius Now for the first Objection I may remove it out of the way by saying no more than that God spake formerly by his Son as his Logos or Minister and in the latter times by him as his Son Incarnate or as begotten by the Holy Ghost of the substance of the Blessed Virgin The same Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saith of the Throne of Christ as Gods Logos that it was from everlasting and yet we well know that his Kingdom as Messiah Mediator Incarnate or the Word made flesh was but then at hand when his Harbinger John took upon him the Office of Baptist And Justin Martyr thought not himself in an error when he said That the Logos both spake by the Prophets things to come and also by himself being made subject to like infirmities with us The Word was Gods Minister before and under the Law but not in the same quality as under the Gospel In those times he spake not himself immediately for how can a Divine Subsistence be meerly of it self corporally vocal But he spake I conceive by some principal Angel assumed as hath been said without personal union assisted by him in a miraculous motion of the air or brain Under the Gospel he spake with his own mouth as having assumed human nature into unity of Person This word Person if I may make a digression of two or three lines deserveth not the clamour with which Socinians hoot at it especially when we consider it as now we do with relation to Christ as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Face or personating Shechinah of God They then that rightly distinguish betwixt Christ as Gods Word and Shechinah under the former Covenants and as Mediator and Gods Son incarnate under the Gospel will not much be perplexed with such places of Scripture as speak sometimes of Christs Praeexistence and oftner of his coming into the world in the fulness of time And thus much Monsieur le Blanc himself taketh notice of in his Theological Theses He there favoureth the opinion of Christs praeexistence He owneth him as the Minister of God of old but not properly as Mediator which he saith including Christs Priestly Office did of necessity require not only a mission of one Divine Person by another but a Divine Person incarnate Now from that which I have suggested in this answer to the first Objection of Grotius it will be a matter of small difficulty to infer a Reply unto his second For an assumed Angel being us'd by the Divine Logos as the immediate Minister of himself to the people and Christ speaking with his own mouth under the Gospel as God-man and the great mystery of the Gospel consisting in the manifestation of God in the flesh the Apostle had sufficient reason to prefer the Gospel before the Law We have before us a matter of lesser astonishment when we think of Divinity speaking by an Angel to which it is not vitally united than when we contemplate it as manifesting it self in the quality of God-man in unity of Person with human nature Such were the thoughts of St. Hilary of Poictiers who in our present Argument thus discourseth Then God only was seen in the shew of man He was not born Now he who was seen is also born For Athanasius he contendeth that Christ was call'd the Son long before he was incarnate and that Moses himself knew of the future Incarnation as well as he saw the present Appearance of the unincarnate Logos I conclude then notwithstanding these Objections That there is almost as good warrant for reading the Preface to the Decalogue in this manner Christ spake all these words and said as the ancient Saxon Prefacer had thus to read as he does that part of the fourth Commandment For in six days Christ made the Heaven and the Earth God who by his Logos gave all Physical Laws to Nature did also by the same Word give the Moral Law to Israel In the beginning of that Law saith St. Austin God prohibited the worship of any Image besides one the same with himself that is to say the Logos his Son whom Moses saw it being promised to him that God should apparently converse with him and that he should behold the similitude or Image or as the Seventy render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Glory or glorious Shechinah of God Whether at the giving of the Law Moses saw the Shechinah in human figure his Text does not inform us yet it doth not necessarily follow that Moses or Aaron saw no figure because the people did not For there was much more danger in them who had had the education of slaves and who labour'd under gross and sensitive apprehensions than there was in Moses a Learned and Prudent person of abusing such similitude in the framing of Idols and one would think that at the receiving of the Tables he saw something in human figure for he is said to have seen the back-parts of God or his Shechinah or the shew of a man inverted or rather a less degree of luster in the Shechinah neither he nor any man living being able to behold the face or full luster of it which perhaps might then appear to the attending-Angels So that the desire of Moses was in effect like that of Eudoxus who desir'd to see the Sun just by him If it should have been granted he must have pay'd down his life as the expence of his curiosity And indeed the seeing of the Face of God in that sense was at that season the less necessary because God had just then made a promise of his Shechinah or presence in the Tabernacle to go along with him and to support him against the incredulity of the people to whose eyes such a Shechinah as they could bear was in wisdom to be accommodated Whilst Moses was beholding this Pattern in the Moant and receiving Laws from the Presence of God the people seeing neither as at his departure they had done the Glory of God in Clouds and Flame nor as in the
glory vastly differing from and surmounting any Image all Images of things visible or invisible in in this Creation So 't is fitly expressed saith he in Heb. 7. 29. He was made higher than the Heavens He was heightned to a splendour enlarged to a capacity and a compass above the brightest beyond the widest Heavens From this Heavenly Throne Christ will come at the day of Judgment in a Shechinah of Clouds and flaming-fire the mention of which fire sometimes in the Scripture and in the Commentaries of the ancient Fathers without express addition of that great day has as I conjecture accidentally led part of the Christian World into its mistakes about Purgatory in relation to which place I must yet confess my self to be one of the Nullibists This Shechinah in milder but most inexpressible luster I suppose to be that which the Schools call the Beatifick Vision and which the Scripture intendeth in the promise of seeing God face to face PART 7. Of the Usefulness of this Argument of Gods Shechinah THis Argument of Gods Shechinah may be many ways useful if Intelligent persons draw such inferences from it as it offereth to their judgment I will hint at some of them for to insist on any unless it be those which concern the worship of Angels or Images is beyond my scope And first of all by due attention to the premisses an Anthropomorphite may blush at his rude conceit about the humane figure of the Divine substance whose spiritual and immense amplitude is incapable of any natural figure or colour though God by his Logos using the ministry of inferiour creatures hath condescended to a visible Shechinah Hence secondly those people who run into the other extream the Spiritualists and abstractive Familists may be induced to own the distinct substance of God and the visible person of Christ and not to subtilize the Deity and its Persons and all its appearances into a meer notion or into some quality act or habit of mans spirit or to bow down to God no otherwise then as he is the pretended light or love in their own breasts Thirdly If this consideration had entered with sobriety into the minds of those German Anabaptists who with zeal contended that the very essence or substance of the Father was seen in the Son and the very substance of the Spirit in the Dove their disputations would have been brought to a speedy issue or rather they would never have been begun They would have known how to have distinguished betwixt the invisible God and the visible face or Shechinah not as the very shape but as the emblem and significative Presence of the Divinity Fourthly For want of some such notion as this many other men of fanatick heads such as were most of the Hereticks who introduced novelty and tumult into the Church about the Persons of the Trinity and nature of Christ have plunged themselves into unintelligible conceits Of this number were the Basilidians who call'd the body of the Dove the Deacon and the Valentinians who stil'd it the spirit of cogitation which descended on the flesh of the Logos thereby darkning the understanding with phrases If they had apprehended the Logos in his Praeexistence or Incarnation as the Shechinah of God and would have expressed that notion without phantastical or amusing terms they might have instructed others and seen the truth also better themselves when they had clothed it in fit and becoming words Fifthly This notion may not be unuseful for the unfolding the Scriptures which speak of the Praeexistence of Christ before he was God-man and explain them naturally and not with such force and torture as they are exposed to in the Soâ—…inian Comments He that saith Abraham saw the Shechinah of the Praeexisting Logos and thence inferreth that Christ was before that Patriarck speaketh plain sense But he that says Christ was not till more than 2000 years after Abrahams death yet that he was before him because he was before Abraham was Abraham or before all Nations were blessed in his seed the Gentiles not being yet called such a one speaks like a Sophist not an honest Interpreter and forgets that Christs answer before Abraham was I am follows upon this Interrogatory of the Jews Thou art not yet fifty years old and hast thou seen Abraham Sixthly This notion may further shew the error of those Semi-Socinians such as Vorstius and his Disciples who confound the Immensity of the God-head and the visible Glory of the Shechinah which God hath pleased as it were to circumscribe They will allow this King of the world no further room for his Immense substance than that which his especial Presence irradiates in his particular Palace Which conceit though in part it be accommodable to the Shechinah yet is it a presumptuous limitation of the great God when it is applied to his substance which Heaven and Earth together cannot contain Furthermore it is from hence in part that we see and pity the blindness of some of the modern Jews who notwithstanding they are the professed enemies of Divine Statues and Images and have reason enough to believe that the Ark of God hath dwelt among us in a body of flesh and now shineth in the Heavens do yet hope some say for an especial presence of God by furnishing with a Chest and Roll of their Law the places of their Religious Assemblies Again by considering with St. Chrysostome the Temple of Solomon as a Type not only of the sensible but also of the invisible world and by considering further the Shechinah and Ark of God more especially in the Holiest of all than in the Sanctuary and more exterior Courts and spaces we may illustrate that very useful and most probable notion of the degrees of Glory and of the several Mansions prepared for several Estates in the Kingdom of Glory where notwithstanding every part will be so far though inequally filled with luster that all may be said with open face to behold the Glory of God and not those only next the Coelestial Ark or Throne in the most holy place But these things as I said are beyond my scope though appertinencies to my Argument and therefore I will no further pursue them but proceed to those uses of the notion which lye more directly in the way of my design The first of them concerneth the worship of Angels the second of Images PART 8. Of the Usefulness of this Argument of Gods Shechinah with relation to the Worship of Angels and Images FIrst The Worshippers of Angels plead for their practice from those places in the Old Testament which seem to speak of high Veneration used towards them T. G. argueth from the Prayer which indeed is rather the wish of Jacob where he saith The Angel who delivered me from all evils bless these Children The Manual called the Abridgment of Christian Doctrine would prove the Worship of Dulia to belong to Angels from the falling of