its notorious vices That which takes place of a minor hath two Propositions in it The Jews in this occasion were damnable Vnbeleivers and what they denied was a fleshly eating of his real Body as Papists do beleive it Where we see two distinct Propositions the second abruptly intruded without any connexion or affinity with the medium placed in the major And thence you pass to your third or rather fourth Proposition bearing by Ergo or therefore the mark of a Conclusion but no more For a Conclusion indeed ought to be a verity contained in the Premises in neither of your Premises is your Conclusion contained nor in both What only seemeth to have some affinity with the Conclusion is that second part of your Minor That what the Jews deny'd was a Fleshly eating of his real Body as the Papists do believe but tho this be so it s far from fetching in the Conclusion That Christ did sufficiently propose unto them a fleshly eating of his real Body as Papists do believe it For tho they deny'd a fleshly eating it was not that only what they denied They denied also a Spiritual eating they denied a Fleshly eating but impertinently to the proposal of Christ They denied what was not demanded of them by a mistake of his meaning which our Saviour corrected immediately by saying Joh. VI. 63. The words he spoke to them were Spirit and Life You alledg that I acknowledged the Jews to have understood Christ of a Corporal and Fleshly eating as Papists do But you conceal fraudulently how I said and proved that they misunderstood him and Christ did tax them with a mis-understanding as now mention'd Where is now in all this any even probable ground for your Conclusion which you pretend to have found out clearly in the foresaid place of St. John that Christ in that occasion did sufficiently propose to them a Fleshly eating of his real Body as Papists do believe it that only in denying such eating they were damnable Unbelievers You affirm decretorially without giving any reason for it that the words of our Saviour The Flesh profiteth nothing it s the Spirit that quickeneth c. was not a check to the Jews for understanding him of a Fleshly eating but to us for judging of this Mystery by the senses of the Flesh and by natural reason Sir we are ready by the help of divine Grace to captivate our seases and reason to the Obedience of Faith in God wheresoever we find him declare his Will to us without any further examen But such captivity of our understanding we do upon good grounds deny to your Decrees as undue to them In what the Church of England believes touching the holy Eucharist there is a large compass for divine Faith to be exercised It s no work of nature by sense or reason to understand or believe so strange an Union tho Spiritual as the Gospel tells us and we believe 'twixt Christ and the faithful Receiver of this Sacrament such streams of divine Grace such feeding of Souls to life everlasting To this we willingly pay a captivity of our understanding because we find it clearly declared in the Word of God tho never surpassing so much the reach of our natural Understanding From niceties touching the mode we do religiously abstain being God was not pleased to declare it according to that grave and religious expression of King James Quod legit Ecclesia Anglicana pie credit quod non legit pari pietate non inquirit What the Church of England reads that it doth piously believe what it doth not read with equal Piety omits to pry into CHAP. XIX Several Answers to my Arguments against Transubstantiation refuted TO all my Reasons touching the absurdity of the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the repugnance of it with all humane reason Mr. I. S. gives an easie Answer that in matters of Faith we must renounce Reason He should first prove that this is a point of Faith a doctrine contained in the Word of God His endeavors for it we have seen and declared to be vain in the precedent Chapter then it being an Article of their making he may not expect from us more subjection of our Intellects then his reâ—son will gain and he confessing Reason do's not assist him I take it for a confession that he is cast in the suit I urged that there was no necessity of forcing men to believe so hard a doctrine neither for the effect of the Sacrament nor for the verification of our Saviours words in the Institution of it Mr. I. S. confesses the first but denies the second upon a very trivial and no less weak Argument which I will shew rather proves against him then for him He saies that allowing the word Body is equivocal and indifferent to be taken for a real or figurative Body yet put in a Proposition it s determined to signifie that of which only the Predicate can be verified but only of Christ's real Body can it be verified that it was given for us therefore this Proposition This is my Body which is given for you is to be understood of Christ's real Body Here we have one Proposition made of two and the Predicate of the former made the Subject of the latter to frame a designed fallacy The former Proposition which is the proper Subject of our debate is this Hoc est Corpus meum this is my Bod. The Subject of this Proposition is the Bread Christ had in his hands and gave his Disciples to eat The Predicate is our Saviours Body and the question is how to understand the words of the Predicate so as they may be agreeable to the Subject The words of the Predicate are indifferent to be taken for a real or figurative Body and to be determined according to the quality of the Subject that so the Identity of both requisite for a true Proposition may be seen according to the rule above mentioned by Mr. I.S. all which proves that the word Body is to be taken rather in a figurative sense then in a real otherwise it could not be agreeable to the Subject which was Bread real and visible and called such before and after Consecration both by Christ and St. Paul Now take notice Reader of the egregious fallacy of our Adversary The foresaid complex Proposition he assumes to work upon This is my Body which is given for you is composed of two Propositions the one is hat now declared relating to what Christ had in his hand This is my Body The other relating to Christ's Body of which as subject of the second Proposition another Predicate is affirmed that it was given for us upon the Cross which was given for you Mr. I. S. to do his own work confounds these two Propositions and makes the Predicate of the former Proposition a Subject to the latter and instead of fitting the said Predicate of the former Proposition to the Subject of it as he should do being to speak to
Abihu all those strange Kings that made war against the Children of Israel all the false Prophets of Baal Of all these Heretics he saies I am become an associate by embracing the confession contained in the 39 Articles of the Church of England But is not all this rage without any mixture of reason Is it not a sufficient confutation of the Man and a foul confusion to him to repete this raving speech of his In what part of the 39 Articles or of the three Creeds we use in the Church of England will he find those Heresies he appropriats to us But he will come nearer home and make a long narrative of errors and vices related of Luther Calvin Melanchton and others who contributed with their writings to the reformation of the Church To which I say first that I have but too much reason not to believe all that they say of their opposers Secondly that tho some of those who concurred to the Reformation should have fallen as men into some vices or errors the Reformation it self which certainly was a work of God ought not to be undervalued for that The sacred Colledg of the Apostles first founders of the Christian Church had in it one as bad as Judas shall the whole Colledg of the Apostles and the Religion founded by them be disesteemed for that Several of those renowned Fathers preachers and defenders of the Gospel after the Apostles in the primitive Church as Origen Tertullian c. through human frailty were guilty of no few errors shall we therefore despise the work they did and the healthful part of their Doctrine If you did tell me of some Doctrine imposed upon us as an article of belief and rule of manners that were Heretical or opposit to the law of God that were pertinent to work upon me but this I am certain you will never be able to do and no less certain am I that your Church is guilty of such impositions upon its followers as I shall demonstrate by several instances in the second part of this treatise But to tell me of vices and errors of particular persons is both impertinent and imprudent I knowing so much how matters go on your side I appeal to your own knowledg by what you have seen and heard of of the Court of Rome And if you will conceal your knowledg herein I remit your self and the Reader not to Protestant Historians which happily you may suspect but to your own most qualified as Platina Onuphrius and even Baronius Read in them the acts and lives of several of those your holy Fathers and infallible oracles of Doctrine the Popes of Rome see the transactions of John the thirteenth about the year 966 or of Sylvester the secound about the year 999. or John the 18. about the year 1003. or Benedict the 9. about the year 1033. or of Gregory the 7. about the year 1080. or Boniface the 8. about the year 1294. or Alexander the 6. and of his outragious Son Caesar Borgia about the year 1294. and you shall find them to be such men as no Epicurean monster storied out to the World has outgon them in sensuality cruelty tyranny and all manner of vices And while I have in my memory and before mine eies unfeigned Histories of this kind spare heaping fables against some particular persons concurring to the reformation But who will not admire the mans disingenuity in reproaching me and the Church of England with the Tenets or madness of the Quakers which he relates at the end of the 16 chapter of his Book knowing and confessing in the same place that they are reproved and punished by this Church and that the author of them James Naylour was condemned to a perpetual imprisonment after being whipt publicly and his tongue bored with a burning iron May not I with the same reason reproach him and his Church with the horrid impieties of the Jews Moors and Atheists as thick set in Spain and Italy as Quakers among us But were that fair dealing I knowing that such Sects are not approved of but rather punished in those Countries Why then for shame will N. N. tell me I am become of the society of Quakers by adhearing to the Church of England he telling at the same time how severely they are punished amongst us And if I were of his temper for pleasuring vulgar readers with stories and rarities of this kind I could with more ground of truth and therefore more sensibly return upon him a large sum of practices which to indifferent judgments would appear no better then madness yet daily used by persons and societies approved and applauded in his Church But I reserve my time and labour for a more serious and becoming work in the mean time I remit him to Sir Edwin Sandys his Book containing a Survey of the Western Church where he shall see set down with candor and ingenuity becoming a Gentleman and a Christian the rites and customs he saw practised in several societies of the Roman Church He do's not grudg to praise them where he finds them praise worthy neither do's he soure his pen in relating their faults If you will be ingenuous you will confess he saies nothing but what you know your self to be in practise and if long custom and passion got by it has not blinded your judgment you shall perceive many of those practices to be as unreasonable and mad as any of those you relate of the Quakers And if you will have a more exact and vigorous discussion of this point go to Dr. Stilling fleet his Book where he speaks of the fanaticism practiced in the Church of Rome and you shall find in it confusion enough and reason to spare objecting to us the follies of Quakers And whereas you pretend to fright me with representing to me errors of particular persons of the Protestant Church if I would resolve to make a return to you of that kind I could make my Book swell and the Readers heart tremble by relating the Heresies Blasphemies and execrable Doctrines which I have heard preached and saw printed by persons of your Church I will only relate to you for example some few propositions of Books that came to my own hands the one was of a grave preacher who prepared for the print a large volume of Commentaries upon the Gospel of St. Mark This book was sent by the Provincial of his order to be examined by me and having read it with attention I voted against the printing of it for several faults I specified in my censure but especially for containing some desperat blasphemous propositions as this following touching St. John Evangelist Joannis Excellentia titulo dilecti maxima est major est quam Redemtoris etiam in deo Tanta est quanta esse Deum trinum unum imo propter hoc verbum caro factum est For the understanding of which mad piece of Rhetoric it is to be considered that there are two Sects of Nuns the
go through streams of blood to extend the Popes power and their own earthly advantages with it under the color of Catholic Faith But by what is said hitherto and will be further confirmed in the discourse following it will easily appear to the unbyassed Reader that it is no want of true Catholic Faith in the Church of England nor any true zeal for it in the Roman Court makes them disturb thus the peace of these Kingdoms obstinately endeavouring the ruine of them And if the Irish be not quite given over to the Spirit of delusion they will look upon all bloody suggestions of this kind as proceeding from him that was the first author of rebellion in Heaven and upon earth and a Murderer from the beginning a Joh. 8.44 and they will accordingly reject and detest them not only for b Rom. 13.5 conscience which ought to be the principal motive but also for wrath remembring the sad effects of Gods wrath against them in each one of their several rebellions whether for Religion or for any other cause CHAP. XXI A Conclusion of my Discourse with N. N. with a friendly Admonition to him SR if the severe Decree of your Church prohibiting to the common sort the reading of Controversial writings doth not comprehend you also I hope you will bestow an attentive reading upon this Book for our old friendships sake but more for the love of Truth and if you have not made a firm inflexible resolution of not yielding to any evidences be they never so clear that may justify the way I took or discover the errors of that which you are in I may expect that by reading this Treatise you shall find that I am not in that deplorable condition by my change which you seem to imagin That by it I have not forsaken the whole house of God as you say but removed to the soundest and safest part of it that I have not deserted the Society of the holy Fathers of the Church nor am become an associat of Heretics having come to a Church where I find as much veneration and study of those Fathers and as much aversion to the Heresies you mention as ever I saw among you And if you read further the second Part now to follow of this same Book you shall find that I did not forsake the Communion of the Roman Church without grave and urgent reasons forcing me to it Those reasons I have laid open in my first Sermon preached at Dublin and printed great labor and study hath bin emploied in answering them yet if you bring indifference with you to read my reply to that answer you shall find that my reasons alledged do still remain in their force and that the errors I refuted are further discovered and cleared by occasion of the defence made of them But if you resolve either not to read my Book or bring to the reading of it a firm purpose of not yielding to any reason that may oppose those sentiments you are prepossest with then my labor is lost as to you but I hope not so as to others more rationally disposed The word of God is a grain of seed and brings forth its fruit in time differently according to the different disposition of the subjects it meets with but especially I hope that my endeavors will avail me with God in whose presence I write with sincerity what I understand to be conformable to his holy Word Will and with a constant desire in all these scrutinies to satisfy my own conscience principally of the righteousness of the way I took and to help others also to the knowledg of the same truth When St. Paul was brought before King Agrippa and the Governor of Judaea Porcius Festus to give account of himself and his Religion he gave it so full that Agrippa said almost thou perswadest me to be a Christian To which the great Apostle replied I would to God that not only thou but all that hear me were such as I am except these bonds Act. XXVI 29. If you read with indifferency and attention the account I give of my resolution and of the Religion I embraced I am perswaded whatsoever your outward expression may be it will work upon your mind a motion like that of Agrippa And if you ask whether I would have you do what I did in this point I say freely as St. Paul did say to Agrippa that I would to God that both you and your brethren did take the like resolution but that it may be with less difficulty and reluctancy then I had and with less crosses and dangers for doing it You tell me I am old and I have many reasons to believe it by my long continued infirmity of body but I remember the time when you called me a young man and your self an old man then I being now old you must be very old and therefore both of us ought to measure our resolutions and doctrine with the rules of Religion and the interest of Eternity rather then with those of earthly policy and temporal Advantages in which we can have but a little share and a short enjoyment How then come you to speak to me of the loss of Friends and of infamy got by my change If it hath bin for the best in the presence of God and I am certainly perswaded it was I have got by it the grace and favor of God and given joy to his Angels and this applause is to be preferred before that of the earthly friends you speak of I am much afraid that the fear of temporal shame and dammages is too strong with you and many others of your party to keep you from following truth and from searching after it with due care I found it to be so in my self I confess my weakness herein with sorrow humbly craving pardon of God for it The fear of shame and loss among men more then any superior consideration made me struggle along time against the inward callings of God from my former errors and to use all means possible to silence the cries of conscience but the more I laboured and studied to allay them the more force they got and when I saw clearly by a strict inquiry that they were indeed from God I yielded to them notwithstanding my natural reluctancies and the heap of shames crosses and dangers which I saw in the way looking upon Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame Heb. XII 2. In the life and doctrine of Christ we shall find Lessons of this kind but never in the dictats of nature How would you imagine it should be a natural inclination that a man in his declining Age should change a state of quiet honor and plenty of all things necessary for humane life into another of troubles crosses affronts no certainty of a competent lively-hood and a certain and continual danger of losing his life This
Colledg of Pamplona and Divinity scholastic Moral Polemic or Controversial in the Colledges of Pamplona Palencia Tudela and Salamanca joyning with these functions of continual teaching which in those parts are exceedingly laborious the practise of very frequent preaching together with a constant and eager study of holy scripture counsels Fathers and History Ecclesiastic in which kind of study I had alwaies my chief delight when duty and employments enjoyned upon me forced me to the study of those other faculties And is this to be a vagrant person that could bear no fruit united to the stock what fruit would be man have me bear But what if we refer him to himself few pages after saying still excessive that before I was vir Apostolicus a most resplendent star in the firmament of the true Church c. now plunged in all the contrary vices and cries * page 27. quomodo obscuratum est aurum mutatus est color optimus how is the Gold become dim how is the most fine gold changed Truly I am to return the same question upon him How came this change or * Thren 4. how came he to know it For I feel no other change in me but to the better to a quiet of conscience and full satisfaction that I am in the right way of worshipping God But I find in his own words an answer to all he saies I was before vir Apostolicus now Apostata vilis dictus a vile Apostate not really but called so and by whom by a party which I prove by demonstrative reasons not railing at random as I. E. that they have apostatized from the true faith and Doctrine of Christ in several points as evidenced both in my former discourse printed and in the second part of this treatise at large wherefore to be called Apostate by them is to me the same as if I were called a Theif or high-way Robber by one that is such himself I knowing my self to be an Alien from those practises or as if I were called an Infidel by a Turk or Pagan If I was induced to make a blind vow of blind obedience to the Pope of Rome and his Ministers I made a former vow of Religious obedience to God and his holy Laws in my baptism if I find the latter vow made to the Pope not to consist with the complyance of the former made to God as I found clearly not to consist then must I stand to my former vow made to God and rescind the latter made to the Pope If this Libeller were contented to rail at me his guilt had bin less but he extends his insolent soul language to the whole Protestant Church belching out streams against it I know not which more of brutish ignorance or hellish malice in most notorious calumnies * Pag. 30 You deserted a Church saies he in which only is Faith Religion Priests Sacrifice Altars Sacraments and real remission not only of originall sin but also of actual mortal sins all which is excluded and exploded and quite abolished by your Protestant Sect. And all this he bables out boldly without giving one word of reason for all or any part of it but I have proved with clear demonstrative reasons from the beginning of this Treatise that in the Protestant Church we have and do profess the same true Catholic faith and Religion which Jesus Christ and his Apostles taught and was professed by the Church first called Catholie That we have a right Hierarchy and due ordination of Bishops Priests and Deacons and therefore a due administration of Sacraments and remission of sins both original by Baptism and actuall by contrition and also by absolution upon confession not only allowed but commended and enjoyned to our people and practised by many if neglected by others it s their fault not of our Church and of the horror some have to this practise wee may well say your Church to be the cause by its intolerable tyranny over consciences as well in the reservation of cases to be absolved only by Prelates or by the Pope as in the difficulties daily added touching the mode of Confessions and circumstances to be declared in them which deters many even from the right use of it and is thought to be occasion of more loss then gain of souls among you He tells me * 63. Page that I know in my conscience that the Protestant Sect doth place all happiness in the pleasures honours liberty and contentments of the body and obstructs all means and waies to vertue to Sanctity Piety Mortification c. and doth stifle the fear of a living dreadful God and all this likewise without any proof of it Was there ever seen a more desperate insolency false prophet who dost pretend to dive into the inward of my conscience known only to God and to my self I will declare to the glory of God and edification of the Christian people miserably deluded by such Slaves of fury and lies what I know in my conscience to be true That in the Protestant Church I saw more practise of solid vertue piety and devotion and of the fear of God more apt means used to purchase those vertues both by the doctrine of our Church and by the ordinances of our state then ever I saw among the Romanists Since my coming to the Protestant Church my constant habitation has bin in Trinity Colledg of Dublin where I see more practise of sobriety devotion and piety then ever I saw in a Colledg of so many young men on the Romish side Three times a day they go all to prayers to the chappel at six in the morning ten at noon and four in the evening with admirable reverence and attention their Prayers most grave and pious for all purposes and for all sorts of persons they say kneeling the Psalmes standing and the sacred Lectures they hear sitting reverently and bare-headed with a respect due to the Lessons used by them sacred indeed as taken out of those blessed fountains of Living waters of the old and new Testament not out of the broaken Cisterns of Romantic Legends all being read in a voice audible and language intelligible and thereby sutable to the edification and instruction of all the people present The same order and style I see observed in the Palaces of Princes and Prelates and in the houses of Gentlemen and godly persons all the family being called to pray together in the Chappel or other decent room of the house after the manner now declared When I come to the Royal Castle or palace of Dublin there I see the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to whom a judicious French * Georg Fournier in geograph li. i. cujus praecipua inter omnes qui n Europasunt Pro reges eminent authoritas writer gives the Chief place among all the Viceroyes of Europe with all his flourishing family and many Nobles attending on his Excellency break off discourses and business tho weighty and serious and answer the found
Ireland whither I was sent to convert Protestants The case was with Papists who concerned for the Salvation of their Relations and Friends of the Protestant Communion enquired whether such believing sincerely they were in the right never convinced of the contrary and living religiously in the fear of God and in the observation of his Commandments might be saved I answered they might and were not Heretics but Members of the Catholic Church a dignity received in their Baptism and not to be lost otherwise then by formal Heresy or Infidelity whereof they were not guilty by the foresaid Supposition You say all is true but 't is not discretion to declare truth it self when there is no obligation of declaring it Well but was there not an obligation upon me when question'd to answer according to truth No say you for if the Inquirers were Papists they needed not to be instructed in that truth 't is no Fundamental Truth If Protestants they were not oblig'd to know it for the same reason and that the answer was an encouragement to them to remain as they were A pretty subtilty We have declared before how touching Points not Fundamental there may be pernicious errors Such is that opposite to the Truth we now speak of an error subversive of Christian charity and public peace a seed of those Animosities Rebellion and Combustions which made this Land unhappy And ought not a sincere Instructor and faithful Minister of the Word of God to oppose this error No say you because it was to encourage Protestants to remain as they were and not to come under the Popes Obedience There is the ground of your dislike of me Thus indeed stood the case and this was one of my chief reasons to be dissatisfied of your way That the rule of my doctrine among you must not be truth but the interest of the Bishop of Rome and the increase of his Dominion whether by right or wrong This point of policy or discretion as you call it I refused openly to learn from you chusing rather to be of the Children of Light tho with less prudence in your opinion then of the Children of this World by that elevated point of prudence you would teach me of prostituting truth and honesty to the Popes pleasure and interest CHAP. VII Mr. I. S. his Answers to my Objections against the Popes Infallibility refuted his defence of Bellarmin of the Council of Constance and of Costerus declared to be weak and vain OUR Adversary fore-seeing what small assistance he could have from Scripture and reason to maintain his Tenets emploies his main forces in setting up their ordinary great engine of the Popes Infallibility and having bestowed the far greater part of his Book upon that subject turns to it again beginning the second part of his said Book with reflexions upon some of my Arguments against their pretention and wanting it seems materials to bring his Book to the intended bulk repotes much of what he said before wherein I will not imitate him by repeting my replies my desire being to abbreviate as far as may consist with a full satisfaction to all his Objections He pretends to cast a mist over the case turning the usual term of Popes Infallibility to Infallibility of the Church and by Church he means fraudulently not the Church Universal truly Catholic and Apostolic to which I allow all the priviledges and assistances of the Holy Ghost promised to it in Scripture tho he signifies that he doubts of my meaning herein but his own particular Church I do not mean the Diocess of Rome as he do's wilfully impose upon me happily to gain time or draw us from the point but the Congregation subject to the Pope wheresoever extant Defenders of a bad cause do love such confusion and obscurities as Foxes holes and thickets but we must keep him to the Light and to the ordinary use of terms taking for Popes Infallibility the same which he or any of his Communion attributes to their Church depending upon the Pope as is declared above in the beginning of the fifth Chapter I said I admired that Bellarmin should make it an Argument of the Popes Infallibility that the high Priest did bear in his Breast-plate two Hebrew words signifying Doctrine and Truth I questioned whether he believed all those high Priests even Caiphas condemning Christ to be infallible in their judgments Mr. I. S. to relieve Bellarmin endeavors to autorize the Affirmative and to that of Caiphas saâ—es nothing and so gives us leave to think that he held him also infallible according to that rule qui tacet consentire videtur By which we have this further notice of Mr. I. S. his singular doctrine that he finds Caiphas infallible in his judgment passed against the life of our Saviour and taxes me with ignorance for not knowing so much I accused them of making the Pope Arbiter and supreme Judg over Gods Laws So Bellarmin lib. 4. de Rom. Pont. c. 5. sticketh not to say That if the Pope did command Vices and prohibit Virtues the Church would be obliged to believe Vice to be good and Virtue bad And the Council of Constance commanded the Decrees of Popes to be preferr'd before the Institutions of Christ since having confessed that our Saviour did ordain the Communion under both kinds to the Laity and that the Apostles did practice it they command it should be given for the future but in one kind alledging for reason that the precedent Popes and Church did practice it so Which is to extol the Decrees of Popes above them of Christ As if the Laws of England were not to be understood or practiced in Ireland but according to the will and declaration of the King of France certainly the King of France would be deemed of more power in Ireland then the King of England and the People more his subjects To that of Bellarmin you say he spoke of Vices and Virtues when there is a doubt of their being such for example if there should arise a doubt of Usury 's being a Vice and in that case the Pope should command Usury to be practiced we should be obliged to practice Usury Herein Sir you allow us all that we pretended and you confess what we condemned in Bellarmin I could alledg many Texts of Scripture supposing and affirming Usury to be a Vice But you spare me that labour presupposing that Vsury of it self is a Vice of its nature bad Per se malum and that you all know it to be such and notwithstanding that knowledg and Gods declaration in Scripture you say if the Pope should command Usury to be practiced we should be obliged to practice it And so it is indeed with you both in Usury and other Vices We know all that Rebellion is a sin and soodious to God that in Scripture it is compared to Witchcraft and Idolatry 1 Sam. xv 23. But if the Pope should command you to rebel against your King for Religions
him and others immediatly following wherein he attributes the same opinion to the Council of Trent Sessione 25. in decret Fdei de sacris Imaginibus and to the seventh Synod Vasquez lib. 2. de Adoratione disp 6. cap. 2. gives this further Account of the mode of worshipping Images in the Roman Church Catholica veritas est Imaginibus deferendam esse adorationem h. e. signa servitutis submissionis amplexu luminaribus oblatione suffituum capitis nudatione c. That it is a Catholic verity that worship is to be given to Images that is to say expressions of Service and Submission by embraces light burning offering of Incense uncovering the head Azorius quotes for the same opinion Aquinas Bonaventure Alensis Cajetan and several other ancient and modern Schole-men Mr. I. S. will not have us believe all these Doctors in this their Declaration touching the Romish worship of Images But who are you good Mr. I. S. Quidam nescio quis nec puto nomen habet one I know not who and as I see nameless that we must believe you rather then so many famous Doctors now mentioned Give to your worship of Images what name you please to worship them at all is a formal transgression of the divine Precept above mentioned and therefore a grievous fin You would fain prove out of Scripture that God ordered Images to be adored which is to pretend that God should contradict himself and so it appears in the ill success of your attempt upon finding your doctrine in Scripture Your first discovery in Scripture is that God commanded the Brazen Serpent to be put up to be adored say you Gods command touching that matter is set down Numb XXIV 8. in these words Make thee a fiery Serpent and set it upon a Pole and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten when he looketh upon it shall live Here is no mention of adoring that Serpent you say that looking upon it was to be with inward reverence and veneration wherein adoration or worship doth properly consist Then when we look upon a Church with reverence as being the house of God we adore it the same when we look upon the Bible when a dutiful child looks reverently upon his Father all is adored Likely the Israelites in time came to be of your opinion and to adore the Serpent but how well was that taken at their hands you may see in the second of Kings XVIII 4. That the godly King Ezechias brake in pieces the brazen Serpent that Moses had made for unto those daies the Children of Israel did burn Ineense to it While they only looked upon it according to Gods Ordinance it was beneficial to them but when their devotion grew to a worship it provoked Gods Indignation declared in that action of Ezechias which the sacred Writer approves in these words And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. Your second discovery is Josue VII 6. where only we find that Josue together with the Elders of Israel fell upon their faces before the Ark and praied to God and that you take for an adoration of the Ark. So whensoever you pray before an Altar or a Bible you adore the Altar and the Bible The third Instance to which you say Protestants will never answer is that the Lords Supper is a representation of Christs Passion and a figure of his Body and is religiously worshiped by them if they do what St. Paul requires 1 Cor. XI 28. And what do's St. Paul require in that place This Let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that Bread and drink of that Cup. That Protestants should never answer this Argument is no wonder what answer can be where no question is and questionless there is no sign or the least insinuation of Adoration to be paid unto the Communion Bread in the place you quote It is a work of your fancy no discovery of common sense to imagine worship given by Gods Ordinance to the Serpent to the Ark or to the Communion Bread in the places you relate You are to give me leave to tell you that your Argument is so frivolous as requires no more serious answer then to put you in mind of a Spanish Proverb Quien Vaccas ha perdido cencerrosse le antexan who has lost his Oxen Bells do ring in his cars His vehement desire of finding his Oxen makes him think every noise of a bough or leaf of a tree stirred be the wind to be the sound of the Bells his Oxen bare so your strong fancy for Image-worship makes you conceive it even where no shape nor sound of it appears You confess Images were little used in the Primitive Church nay were absolutely prohibited in the Council of Eliberis but that was say you to avoid the scandal of Pagans and the relapse of those converted from Paganism And are there not Pagans yet in the world Is not a conversion of them still procured What consequence is it to decry their adoration of stocks and stones and when they come to your Churches to see you perform to Images all those acts of worship which they used to their Idols by genuflexion thurification c. To speak to them of your distinction of terminative and relative worship will be insignificant as in it self its vain for the reasen I proposed pag. 70. of my former discourse to which you give no answer I alledged Nicephorus saying It is an absurd thing to make Images of the Trinity and yet they do it in the Roman Church You say that what Nicephorus and others do hold absurd is to paint Images of the Father Son and Holy Ghost as they are in their proper substance and nature Nor do the Catholics use it as you falsly criminate them say you to me but herein certainly you do most falsly criminate me in saying I should impose such a thing upon them Where have I said that Papists do paint the Father Son and Holy Ghost as they are in their proper substarce and nature Or how could any man in his senses conceive Images of that kind could be drawn with material colors To attemt the drawing of any shape of them is what Nicephorus called absurd and * Damascen l. 4. c. 15. ante medium Damascen madness and impiety Insiplentiae summae est impictatis sigurare quod est divinum Of this madness Cajetan more ingenuous then you confesses your Church to be guilty who after having said that in the old Law certainly Images of God were prohibited and for the same reason were reprehended as unlawful by several Doctors among Christians since in both occasions they may engender in men a false conception of Gods nature yet he concludes in these words In oppositum autem est usus Ecclesiae admittens Trinitatis Imagines representantes non solum silium incarnatum sed Patrem Spiritum Sanctum That contrary to the said reasons autority of Damascen the Church
uses to admit Images of the Trinity representing not only the Son Incarnate but also the Father and Holy Ghost To which I add of my knowledg that they use not only a Picture of the Trinity as you describe in the forms of an old Man our Saviour and a Dove but in the form of one Man with three heads or three faces in one head both undecent and horrible to look upon And thus much for the matter of fact of your painting the Holy Trinity Now I will pass to to see how able you are to defend your practice herein from the guilt of Idolatry CHAP. XXIII Mr. I. S. his defence of the Romish Worship of Images from the guilt of Idolatry confuted The miserable condition of the Vulgar and unhappy exgagement of the Learned among Romanists touching the Worship of Images discovered YOU pretend tho it be Idolatry to adore an Image as a God yet not so to adore God in an Image To which I say first that very many of your best Authors such as are Alensis Albert Bonaventure Abulensis Soto and others related and followed by Vascuez in 3. p. disp 104. c. 2. do affirm that God did not only forbid in the second Commandment that which was unlawful by the Law of Nature as the worship of an image for God but the worshiping the true God by any Similitude You will not be engaged in defending the coherence of their doctrine herein with saying that the same Precept of not adoring God by an Image should not oblige Christians neither indeed is it easie to find the coherence of it Certainly you will never find that God did dispense in the foresaid Law with Christians neither can any reason be imagined why such a practice should be lawful in one time and not in another Why Jews should be further from Idolatry then Christians This to have bin the sin of the Jews in the worship of the golden Calf which was so offensive to God I mean that they did adore it as an Image of God and not believing it was a real God is most apparent by the words of the Context These be thy Gods Oh Israel which brought thee up out of the Land of Egypt Exod. XXXII 4. Who can believe that men not altogether destitute of common sense would seriously judg that Images made before themselves of their own gold should be a real God In what sense or reason could they say it was he that brought them out of the Land of Egypt which was don long before that Calf was made If you say that Aaron declared that Calf to be a God saying These are thy Gods or this is thy God as you have in the ninth of Nehemiah the plural being taken for the singular in the former place by a Hebraism I answer it was a tropical Expression as you are wont to say where Images are of the Apostles This is St. Peter and this is St. Paul meaning the Images of St. Peter or St. Paul And as you say in your Processions of holy Friday of the Cross you bear in your hand and raise up to be adored by the people bowing upon their knees Ecce lignum crucis in quo salus mundi pependit Behold the timber of the Cross upon which was fixed the Saviour of the world Surely you are not so senseless as to think these words should be verified in a literal sense of the Cross you bear in your hand but rather in a tropical relating to the Cross whereon our Saviour was really fixed In the like sense you are to conceive Aaron did speak of the golden Calf if you will not make him quite senseless when he said This is thy God oh Israel which brought thee out of the Land of Egypt which is to say This is a Type or Image of thy God who brought thee out of the Land of Egypt and under that notion the people did adore it And all this while I hope you will not pretend to absolve them from the guilt of Idolatry for which they were so severely punished by God as we read in the 32. ch of Exâ—dus Therefore Idolatry is not only to adore an Image as God but also to adore God in an Image If we will give credit to Pagans touching their belief they will tell us they were never so blind as to think the Statues they adored were Gods Nemo unquam tam fatuus fuit saies Cicero qui saxum lapidem Jovem esse credidit None ever was so void of sense as to say that a stone should be Jupiter Neither could such a belief consist with what is generally supposed by them that their Gods are in heaven So the Inhabitants of Lystra when they saw Paul and Barnabas heal one that was a Creeple from his birth said The Gods are come down to us in the likeness of men Act. XIV 11. And if even Pagans thought it a stupidity unbecoming men of common sense to conceive a stock or stone to be a God less ought we to imagine that the Israelites with so much advantage of instruction should be so brutish Their guilt therefore was not to believe the golden Calf was a God but to attempt the worshiping of God by an Image which is your guilt You conclude that to worship the Image of Christ and his Saints cannot be called Idolatry For an Idol say you is a representation of a Deity that has no being but Christ and his Saints â—ave a being c. If you speak of the subject of Idolatrous worship tending to something created it is true that it looks upon a Deity that hath no being But if you believe S. Paul the real object of their worship was the true God which he preached Whom you ignorantly worship him declare I unto you Acts 17.23 and notwithstanding he rebuked them for Idolaters therefore Idolatry is not only a worship dedicated to false Gods but also a worship of the true God by a way prohibited But how will this your discourse reach to save from Idolatry the worship given to Images of Saints that have in them no Divinity real or apprehended Is it because they have a being opposite to a Chimera or nothing then the adorers of Mars and Apollo in their Statues and so of other Idols were no Idolaters Those Statues or Idols were representations of men whether living or dead is not material not Chimerical but such as had a real being Read the origin of Idolatry described in the 14. Chapter of Wisdom from the 12. verse you shall find it begun by making Images of men absent or dead to honor their memory Besides your supposition is clear contrary to what Gods Commandment against the worship of Images supposes Thâ—u shalt not make unto the any graven Image or any likâ—ness of any thing that is in Heaven above or that is in the Earth beneath c. Exod. 20.4 Images of things are prohibited to be worshipped and of things really being in the Heaven or upon