charged that they might be guilty notwithstanding that concession of owning one God and that in divers respects that guilt was actually contracted by them They are charged with this high offence by Tertullian Clemens Alexandrinus Minucius Faelix Origen against Celsus S. Cyprian de vanitate Idolorum Arnobius Lactantius Julius Firmicus Maternus and a long order of others And to cite them in all the places which are pertinent to this matter were to repeat a great part of their works The matter is so notorious that I will illustrate it only by a single instance Let that instance be made in Julian the Apostate if he were ever a Christian in whom the tares of Gentilism were sown so very early by Libanius and appeared ripe so soon as ever the Glory of the Empire shone upon him This man hath been condemned by the common consent of the Christian Church in being since his time as a manifest and infamous Idolater and a very Bigot in Heathenism and yet he acknowledged one God and him who is truly the Lord of Lords He declared this to be the opinion of his Sect That there was a common Parent and King of Men. He worshipped that Jupiter who is the giver of all kinds of good who is the greatest and most powerful Being He worshipped though not without the intermixture of a false Religion the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. He says so much in Terms in one place and upon his Oath He says the same elsewhere in effect whilst he reports the pains he took though perfectly in vain to raise the Temple of Jerusalem out of its ruines and thereby as he pretended to erect a Monument to him to whom it was sacred It is true that S. Cyril doth bring his sincerity under question and believes that in his heart he placed the God of Abraham amongst his Topical deities Yet for Jupiter Ithometes worshipped by Julian S. Cyril granteth him to be esteemed the Prince of the Gods And why he should think that Julian believed not the God of Abraham to be the true Jehovah I cannot readily conjecture seeing that Emperor had perufed the Old Testament which declares him to be the Creator and Governour of all things and not meerly as the Nations transplanted into Samaria grosly imagined The God of the Land If now Julian and some other Heathens entertained so worthy a notion of God they are so far acquitted of that sort of Idolatry which establisheth the Polytheism of some or many eoequal Gods but still they might be in other regards the worshippers of Idols That they might be so appeareth from the definition of Idolatry in which it is shewed that the giving away the honour of God to another Object is a degree of that crime though it be not his supreme honour Though we do not take the Crown of incommunicable honour from him and by our fancy place it on a creature It appeareth again from the practice of the Jews who are by God himself accused of Idolatry even when they in part owned and worshipped him and before they were wholly led into captivity and mingled again among the Heathen They had not forgotten perfectly the God of Israel in whose Law they read though like Adulteresses they shared their Love with Idols Wherefore God Almighty required Hosea not as I think in a literal sense but according to the way of a Prophetical Scene to take unto him an Adulteress thereby personating the state betwixt himself and the Children of Israel who though they had not rejected him as their true and supreme Husband yet they had gone a whoring after the inventions of the Gentiles and provoked God to give them a Bill of Divorce Whilst I am here affirming that a people who own one God may yet commit Idolatry I mean not this meerly of such who judge him to be Nature the Sun or the Soul of the World all which are finite or imaginary Objects and by consequence Idols as often as they are adored in the place of God But I speak even of the Gentiles who own'd one true incomprehensible Creator who with Callicratidas the Pythagorean acknowledged 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one best Being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and such as was the Beginning and Cause of all things Some of these did actually commit Idolatry in their worship of the Statues of God of Demons and of the Images of those subordinate Deities PART 6. Of their Idolatry in worshipping the Statues of God FIrst their Idolatry consisted in the worship of the Statues of God This indeed was not the highest degree of that false Religion for they did not hereby dethrone God and give to the creature his most essential perfections but yet they gave away such honour as he had not bestowed who was the proprietor of it They did so in the worship both of the natural and of the artificial Statues of God The Principal natural Statue was the Sun For some of the Philosophical Gentiles made not the Sun it self the ultimate Object of their worship but they adored God in it Hence they gave to Vulcan that is the Sun the Name sometimes of God and sometimes of Fire as Plutarch c instructeth us out of Archilochus And Maximus Tyrius being one of more refined Reason than the generality of the Heathens would not confess that the Sun and the Fire were any further deified than as they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Statues or Images of God The same excellent Philosopher upbraideth the Persians for neglecting the Statues of the fruitful Earth and the glorious Sun and the great path of Commerce the Sea and chusing the devouring Fire as their Statue and their God In which words he supposeth the presence of a Deity in the Fire and the Fire to be only the Statue or Image of it according to the Persian Theology Now in Two things consisted the Idolatry of the Heathens whilst they worshipped the natural Statues of God First They were Idolatrous in setting up those natural Statues as the places of Gods peculiar Residence And this the Fathers objected to the Heathens shewing them that Christianity represented God as one that filled the World and not as one that dwelt like a Star in some coelestial Sphear and taught them in their Prayers to him to exalt their thoughts above all material Heavens Or as Origen is pleased to express it above even supercoelestial Places And for this they had Reason For the Gentiles by worshipping creatures as Gods Statues gave Gods relative honour to them whilst he owned them only as his workmanship and not as his especial Images or Temples Thereby likewise they bred in their minds a dishonourable Idea of God as of one who like a finite Being dwelt in certain places This was not the notion of him amongst all but the worship of him by natural Statues made all of them prone to it Plato himself was under the Temptation He
and on earth appoint a fit Symbol by which he might be most solemnly reverenced This Symbol for many years was but one the Ox at Memphis but afterwards it was doubled at Memphis the Ox Apis was worshipped the Ox Mnevis at Heliopolis Macrobius speaks of a third Ox worshipped at Hermuntis in the Temple of Apollo and called Pacis A name differing very little from Apis it being its plain Anagram after the casting away of a single letter But this Pacis is mistaken for Bacis a name by which as was said already Mnevis was called and it is no other than Bacchus more gently pronounced So that this third Ox is the same in effect with the first and second PART 11. Of the Idols Apis and Mnevis and the Commencement of their Worship Now in answer to the last Query I am to say something about the time of the division of this Symbol of the Ox. Egypt as a learned man observeth was of old divided into two parts the upper and the lower of which the first he saith had Memphis the other Heliopolis for its chief City Though Heliopolis be said by Pliny to have been built by the Arabians and was therefore of no very ancient foundation compared to Memphis And Egypt was naturally divided into three parts the upper in which was Thebes the middle in which was Memphis the lower in which was Heliopolis and now Cairo or Masre nigh the place where Heliopolis once stood Before the Invasion of the Pastors there was but one King over all Egypt who would scarce have permitted so open a faction and so plain an emulation of the glory of his Imperial City If now I had a mind to make the multiplication of this Idol almost equal with that of the division of the Kingdom a thing no way proved I would refer this to the times of Amosis called Tethmosis corruptly by Josephus and supposed to be the Contemporary of Shamgar Amosis was that Prince who first recovered Heliopolis from the Pastors imagined to be a sort of Arab-Egyptians He is reputed a Theban and from him Manetho begins his order of the Theban Kings He set himself industriously to improve Heliopolis and he might grace it in the quality of a Rival of the ancient Memphis which he had not such personal reason to be fond of He might on this occasion set up Symbol after Symbol for one part of his care and a very great one is said to be Religion He it was who purged Heliopolis of the barbarous custom of sacrificing men in the room of which he substituted three Images of Wax the Symbols it may be of Apis in the three places of Memphis Hermuntis and Heliopolis which rendred him properly a three-headed Pluto What I said of his purging Heliopolis is by Porphyry related from Manetho who where he speaks of it does mention Calves in the plural for he says that men were offered to Juno and proved after the manner of the selected pure and marked Calves of Egypt The truth is there is little certainty in the story of Amosis and least of all in the time of it And I might say the like of that of the Pastors And for the Bulls at Memphis and Heliopolis I cannot but think them much later than the times of Jeroboam If they had been extant long after Herodotus who knew Egypt so well and spake so often of Apis and of Heliopolis whose Traditions he went to compare with those of Memphis could as easily have mentioned Mnevis too as Diodorus Siculus Plutarch and Strabo in after-times PART 12. Whence the Original of Apis might be obscured IF now at length a new Question should be started and I should be askt by any curious man how this discovery of Apis as Moses has not been made before how it should come to pass that a Symbol so known in Egypt should at length every-where be mistaken I would answer him thus The Priests of Egypt were very reserv'd in the grounds of their Theology and they had great opportunity of concealing their Mysteries whilst the Priesthood belonged only to some certain Families Hence Herodotus is so sparing in his Relation of the state of Religion after inquiry made by him both at Memphis and Heliopolis And we learn from Strabo how very shie the Egyptians were of communicating their Arts much more of their Religion And he telleth us that of the Thirteen years which Plato and Eudoxus spent at Heliopolis much time was consumed not so much in learning Astronomy as in prevailing with the Priests to teach them something of their Mysteries Also they mixed the names and rites of their Deities and when the Religion of Greece came in with its Arms they quite confounded them Such confusion in part happened before for Cambyses made alteration in their Rites And time hath been so injurious to them through the Invasion of Arabians Persians and others through the burning of the Ptolomean Library and other such accidents that the very names of their Princes as well as their Gods are either perfectly forgotten or very imperfectly and indistinctly remembred Their grand Tyrant is to few known by his name but called Pharaoh a title of Regal power common with him to the rest of the Egyptian Princes Of them who speak of his name some call him Chenephren and others Chencres Chencheres or Cenchres others Arenasis others Bocchoris others Achernes others Petisonius others Tuthmosis Philastrius Thammuz But of this Argument enough and too much it may be for the men of this Age in some of which the love of ease in others the pursuit of the appearances of nature hath prevented the cultivation of Philology which howsoever it be now the most neglected is not the most barren and fruitless part of the field of Learning If any learned Philologer shall think all this a device of fancy he may please still to abound in his own sense There is not a more unjust tyranny than the imposition of Notions upon a free judgment And for this notion of Apis as the same with Moses I propose it only as my present conjecture and not in the quality of my fixed perswasion I will not contend about it or immodestly contest it with any learned Opponent I shall rather follow the advice of the Arabians in that Proverb of theirs which forbids me to shoot my soft Quills at a statue of Iron CHAP. VII Of the Idolatry of the Mahometans MAhomet was descended of the Koreischites a Tribe of the Arabians The Arabians were great Idolaters and it does not appear that he embraced any other Religion for some years than that to which his Education led him With the Arabians then he worshipped Statues and Daemons The Statues of the Arabians are those three mentioned in the Alchoran Allath Alozza and Menath Idols of stone What the two latter were is not so well understood but most agree that by the former or Allath was meant
numbered Amongst them beyond the Seas I will name only Danaeus and Hottinger Daneus in his Appendix to the Catalogue of Heresies written by St. Austin recounteth the Hereticks who had offended as he thought in particular manner against the several precepts of the Decalogue And under the second Commandment he placeth the Simonians the Armenians the Papists and some others as notorious violaters of it Hottinger distributeth the false worship of the Papists into six kinds of Idolatry under the Greek names of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Bread-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Marian-worship to wit that of the Blessed Virgin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Saint-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Angel-worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Relick-worship and lastly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the worship of Images PART 2. Of the mitigation of the charge of Idolatry against the Papists THE learned Hugo Grotius especially in his Annotations on the consultation of Cassander in his Animadversions on the Animadversions of Rivet and in his Votum pro Pace The learned Mr. Thorndike in his Epilogue and in his Just Weights and Measures Curcellaeus in his Epistle to Adrian Patius These three together with some others have pronounced a milder sentence in this cause though they approved not of such Invocation of Saints and worship of Images as is practised in the Church of Rome But it is not my design to decide the controversie by the greater number of modern Authorities but rather to look into the merits of the cause And this I purpose to do so far only as Angels or rather Saints and Images are the Objects of this Disquisition Of Relicks and the Sacramental bread I forbear to say more than that little which follows For the first that which will be said concerning the worship of Images will help us sufficiently in judging of the worship of Relicks If they be made Objects of Religious adoration if they be honoured as pledges of Divine protection if they be trusted in as Shrines of Divine virtue at adventure and in all ages they become as the Manna which was laid up for any other than the Sabbath-day useless to the preservers offensive to God and unsavory to men of sagacious Noses Concerning that substance which after Sacramental consecration appeareth as Bread that excellent Church in whose safe communion I have always lived doth still call it Bread For the Priest after having consecrated the Elements and received the Communion himself in both kinds is required by the Rubrick of that Office to administer to others and when he delivereth the Bread to any one to use this Form The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee preserve thy Body and Soul to Everlasting life Now a Discourse concerning the worship of that Substance which appeareth as Bread will in effect be a Discourse about the Corporal presence of Christ under the shews of that creature and run the Disputant into another Question which hath been industriously sifted by Thousands Neither are the printed Volumes touching this subject few or small There is a great heap of them written by the learned Messieurs Arnaud and Claud and Monsieur Aubertin hath obliged the World with a very large and laborious work about Transubstantiation in which may be seen the sense of the Ancients Forbearing then any further Discourse about the Worship of Relicks or the Sacramental bread I proceed to the Worship of Saints Angels and Images inquiring how far the Church of Rome doth by her Veneration render them Idols At the entrance of this Inquiry the trueness of her Faith in one God and three Persons is to be acknowledged and observed The Creed which is formed by order of the Council of Trent beginneth with the Articles of that of Nice though it endeth not without Additions And Dr. Rivet in his Reflections on those excellent Notes with which the acute Grotius adorned the consultation of Cassander doth in this point own the Orthodoxy of the Roman Faith In the Article of the Divine Trin-unity there is nothing saith he controverted betwixt Papists and Protestants And thus much is true if spoken of the generality of them for they herein adhere to Catholick Doctrine Thus do the Protestants of the Church of England but all do not so either here or beyond the Seas who commonly pass under the name of Protestants Curcellaeus for instance sake is called a Protestant yet may seem no other than a Tritheite as may appear by the first of those four Disputations which he wrote against his sharp Adversary Maresius The Romanists then professing the true Catholick Faith in the Article of the blessed Trinity and owning the second Synod of Nice which though it favoured Images so very highly yet it ascribed Latria to God only they seem injurious to them who do not only charge them with Idolatry but also aggravate that Idolatry as equal to the false Worship of the most barbarous Gentiles They seem unjust I say in so doing unless this be their meaning that the least degree of that crime under the light of Christianity be equal to the greatest under the disadvantages of Heathenism It is certain that the Romanists who worship the true God do not worship Universal Nature or the Sun or the Soul of the World in place of the Supreme Deity as did millions of Pagans Also for the Angels which they worship they justifie only the adoration of those Spirits who persisted in their first estate of unspotted Holiness and they renounce in Baptism the Devil and his Angels after the manner of the Catholick Church And when an Heathen is by them baptized the Priest after having signed him first on the Forehead and then on the Breast with the sign of the Cross does exhort him in this Form Abhor Idols Reject their Images But the Gentiles sacrificed to Devils and to such who by the light of nature might be known to be evil Daemons because they accepted of such Sacrifices as were unagreeable to the justice and charity and piety of mankind Sacrifices vile and bloody such whose smoke might be discerned by a common nostril to smell of the stench of the bottomless pit Yet some of the Heathens expresly denied the practice of such worship and made to the Christians this following profession We worship not evil Daemons Those Spirits which you call Angels those we also worship the Powers of the Great God and the Ministeries of the Great God For Hero's they worship those only whom they believe to have professed Christian Religion and to have been visible Members of the Catholick Church For into that whatsoever particular communion it was which afterwards they visibly owned they were at first Baptized Whereas the Gentiles worshipped many who had been worshippers of false gods Such worshippers were Castor Pollux Quirinus among the Romans These first worshipped false Deities and were afterwards worshipped themselves with the like undue honour
Imprimatur Guil. Jane R. P. D. Hen. Episc. Lond. a Sacris Dom. Nov. 10. 1677. OF IDOLATRY A DISCOURSE In which is endeavoured A Declaration of Its Distinction from Superstition Its Notion Cause Commencement and Progress Its Practice Charged on Gentiles Jews Mahometans Gnosticks Manichees Arians Socinians Romanists As also of the Means which God hath vouchsafed towards the Cure of it by the SHECHINAH of His SON By THO. TENISON B. D. Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty and late Fellow of Corpus-Christi Colledg in Cambridge LONDON Printed for Francis Tyton at the Three-Daggers in Fleetstreet over against St. Dunstans Church 1678. To the Right Honourable ROBERT Earl of MANCHESTER One of the Gentlemen of his Majesty's Bedchamber Lord Lieutenant of the County of Huntington c. My LORD IT is now a year and almost another since I wrote a Letter for private Use about the Worship of Images A Practice most scandalous to the Christian Religion and as some use it so extremely ridiculous that the very statue had it any apprehension would modestly bow it self and prevent the Adorer From that small beginning has arisen a Book sufficiently big but of the less solidity by reason of the hasty growth of it More art together with more hours of leisure would have made it a lesser Volume For in writing of Books as in carving of Statues the cutting away of each superfluity is a work of skill and time But if this Volume were equally great and good it would be the more suitable Present for your Lordship to whom the Dedication of it is due whether the Author be considered or that which be hath written For the Author he hath had long dependance on your Honourable Family such as may almost be dated from that happy time in which these Islands were disenchanted and received their true and undoubted Soveraign in place of that Spectre of Authority which then walked at Whitehall He is possessed of one Living by the Bounty of the then Lord Chamberlain your Father whose most generous kindness and condescension must for ever be remembred by him And seeing the Noble offer makes the favour and not the acceptance he owes to your Lordship his acknowledgments for another Many other Obligations from your Honourable Person and Family and therein from your most excellent Lady whose eminent and exemplary Virtues surpass the very heighth of her Birth and Quality as in Gratitude I must not forget so in good manners I ought not here to repeat them at large for it would be a rude abuse of your Lordships patience to turn this Epistle into a second Book For the Book it self some part of it was meditated the whole revised at your Castle of Kimbolton a place where your Lordship does yearly offer new matter to the admiration of Travellers who speak with such praise of the Fair Villa's of England It was enlarged and now at last published not without the desire of some of your Lordships very Learned Relations who by their own accurate Pens have made amends to the world for any trouble they may occasion by mine It hath already some hope of your favourable acceptance and therefore it lays it self with the greater assurance at the feet of your Honour Where it offendeth either in Matter or Form for in an heap of so many particulars some which are not very current may pass through my hand undiscerned I beg not Patronage but excuse In the matter I would hope that the main of it is passable because I have used as its touchstone the Doctrine and Worship of that Church in whose Communion by Gods good Providence I have always lived the Church of England a Church of unparallel'd sobriety and invincible Truth The Country was one of the last of those which the Arms of the ancient Romans subdu'd and the Church is such that it can never be conquered by the Arguments of the Modern It is true I have said many things which the Church hath not said for I was unwilling to disgust any curious Reader by serving up nothing but what had formerly been often set before him But against the Church I am not conscious that I have written a syllable And for some Speculations which might have been subject to misconstruction I have committed them to that which they call the best keeper of Secrets the Fire If any offensive phrase or notion have escaped me as soon as I am shewed it I shall be readier to blot it out than I was ever to write it Touching my manner of writing I crave leave to observe a few things about the stile and the temper of this Discourse Concerning stile had it been my Talent it had not been possible in such an Historical and Philological Argument to have made any considerable use of it A Discourse into which the words of other men of differing Professions Ages Countries Languages and stiles are so frequently woven must needs be uneven and parti-coloured Concerning the Temper observed in this writing I have endeavour'd to abstain from all unnecessary heat and severe Language For I cannot perswade my self that the Witchcraft of Error can be removed or so much as weakned by the meer scratches of the Pen. It hath also been my care not to misrepresent the opinions of those from whom I differ Yet I am sensible that this very Impartiality with which I move in the middle path will draw upon me the censorious lashes of many Zealots who place themselves on either hand Those whom Jesuitick Bygotry possesseth will say I have maliciously blackned their Church Others whose over-rigid humour must needs pass for the only Protestancy whose Religion sheweth it self in nothing but in a fierce and indiscreet zeal against Popery will think my Pen hath flattered They will cry out that it hath imitated his pencil who drew the loose Gabrielle in the figure of chaste Diana But I have I hope avoided both those Extremes Most certain I am I have studied to do so And if just moderation must be blamed I am willing to be a sufferer in so good so honourable a cause There are another sort of Enemies of whose Censures I am also in some expectation though in no fear at all I mean the lower sort of Criticks into whose Province of Philology I have sometimes stepped This sort of men seemeth to me like those wretched Barbarians on the Coast of Guinea whose Idol is a certain Bundle of Feathers Religious men of the warmest temper are not more earnest about matters of Faith than these are in questions of wit and debates about words and tittles For though the interest of the thing they contend about be insignificant yet they think that power and mastery in any thing is worthy their zeal If I have but mispelled the name of some Heathen-god I expect severe usage from such Grammarians But though they shall prove angry I will not retaliate It is not worth the while to keep up a controversy begun about a
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
principally the Sun though great men likewise when deified after their deaths obtained that Name as a Title of highest renown And from the many names of Canonized Heroes given to the Sun hath risen a great part of that uncertainty and confusion with which the Reader is perplexed in the Labyrinths of Heathen Mythologers This however is generally confessed that the Sun was the first Idol instead of which why Jarchi hath put men or herbs into the first place is hard to understand till he come and be his own Elias Maimonides begins with the Stars and he hath ground not only from natural Reason but from the Authority also of Job and Moses Job thus expresseth the Idolatry of those ancient times in which he lived If I beheld the sun when it shined or the Moon walking in brightness And my heart hath been secretly enticed or my mouth hath kissed my hand If with devotion of Soul or profession of outward Ceremony I have worshipped those heavenly bodies which by their heighth motion and lustre ravish the senses This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge for I should have denied the God that is above Moses giveth caution to the people of Israel who were coming out of that Idolatrous Land of Egypt and were journeying towards Idolatrous Canaan who were coming from temptation and going likewise towards it That when they lifted up their eyes to the Heavens they should arm their minds against that inchantment to which they were subject by the sensible glory of the Sun Moon and Stars Rabbi Levi Ben Gerson glossing upon this place in Moses Observeth that the Sun is first named because his vertues are most manifest The most ancient inhabitants of the World saith Diodorus Siculus meaning them that lived soon after the Flood and particularly the Egyptians contemplating the World above them and being astonished with high admiration at the nature of the Universe believed that there were eternal Gods and that the two principal of them were the Sun and the Moon Of which they called the first Osiris and the second Isis. And of late years when the Mariners Compass directed men to a new World in America peopled no doubt from several distant parts of the old many different Idols were found in peculiar places but for the Sun it was a Deity both in Mexico and Peru. Babylon was the Mother of this kind of Idolatry not Egypt as the Author de Dea Syria and some in Diodorus Siculus who make Sol the first King of it have erroneously conjectured For Egypt was not a Nation when the Sun began to be worshipped in Chaldea where Ur it may be in aftertimes with respect to the worship of that hot Luminary was a kind of lesser Babylon Babylon infected Egypt Assyria Phaenicia and they spread the contagion throughout the World To the worship of the Sun Moon and Stars and other appearances in Heaven or the Air such as Comets and Meteors for the worship of the former was apt to draw on that of the latter succeeded the false Religion towards Heroes confounded as I guess with original Demons or Angels And this came to pass in the days of Serug according to Eusebius Epiphanius and Syncellus The Sun was no sooner called Bel Baal or El that is Lord or Governour but the souls of men of renown were also flattered with like Appellations and became properly the Idols of the people Nimrod and Osiris were Baals and the King of Phaenicia was Bel and they had Religious veneration payed to them If other Demons were worshipped as no doubt they were being permitted to appear to them it is a question whether the Gentiles did not by them misunderstand the deified Souls of some of their Ancestors distinctly or confusedly remembred rather than natural Genii or Angels For such Beings owed much of their manifestation as such to the Tradition conveyed in the Loyn of Abraham and Moses The worship of Demons was followed by that of Pillars or Artless Monuments of remembrance Such a Monument was that Pillar anointed by Jacob. It was no Idol in the quality in which he made it but a Record of the Divine presence But it is commonly thought that others did take from it a pattern of their follies Statues or Images were of a like antient date as is plain from the History of the Teraphim though Artists were then rare The infancy of this new World being also the infancy both of Mechanical and Liberal Arts. Idolaters likewise chose for their Deities living Statues such as the Bull in Egypt for the heavenly Taurus according to Lucian or rather for the Deity of the Sun or of an Hero according to truth Pausanias in his Survey of Greece findeth Stones sharpened at the top to have been the earliest Symbols of their Gods They were it may be Cones relating to the Sun the parent of fire which as was before noted ascendeth a Pyramis and was thought to be an element of Triangular figure by the ancient Philosophers of Greece Scaliger in that learned Appendix of his to his Book of the Emendation of the accounts of time doth mention Rude Stones as the original Statues in Phenicia What the first Symbols amongst the Romans were is not distinctly understood One would guess by Numa's Temple they were Symbols of the Universe But for particular Images we have it upon the good authority of a most learned Roman That an Hundred and Seventy years were passed ere they came in amongst them Under Christianity the vanity and veneration of Images succeeded the Symbol of the Cross. At this day the Barbarians on the Coasts of Africa reverence Stones like our greater Land-marks as Fetiches or Divine Statues believing them to be as ancient as the World it self It appeareth by this short account of the Original of Idols that they may plead antiquity But still their age is nothing if we compare it to his who is God everlasting CHAP. V. Of those who are charged with Idolatry and of the conformity or inconformity of their worship to the Nature of Idolatry Of Gentiles Jews Mahometans Christians Amongst them who have professed Christianity of the Gnosticks Manichees Arrians Socinians Roman-Catholicks the real Catholicks of the Communion of the Church of England And first of the Idolatry charged on the Gentiles PART 1. How far the Gentiles were Ignorant of one Supreme God I Have insisted hitherto on the Nature Occasions and Commencement of Idolatry The next consideration shall extend to the persons charged with it and in the first place to them who have first and most generally transgressed that is to say the Gentiles Concerning their worship it is here proper for me to attempt the resolution of three Questions First Whether the Gentiles acknowledged one Supreme God Secondly Whether they made Religious Application to him Thirdly Whether upon the concession of such acknowledgment and Application they may be and really are chargeable with
Idolatry First then I enquire how far the Gentiles owned one supreme God This enquiry is not capable of any nice and accurate resolution For there is no one Systeme of the Gentile Theology as there is of Judaism Mahometanism and the Christian Religion Divers persons in divers places had divers apprehensions concerning a Deity and divers Rites of worship And those distinct Rites by the commerce of Nations were often so mixed together that they made a new kind of Religion It is not unlikely that the dregs of the people among the Gentiles whom God had given up to brutishness of mind did rise little higher than Objects of sense They worshipped many of them together each as supreme in its kind or no otherwise unequal than the Sun and the Moon or the other coelestial bodies by the adoration of which the ancient Idolaters as Job intimateth denied or excluded the God that is above Porphyry himself one of the most plausible Apologists for the Religion of the Gentiles doth own in some the most gross and blockish Idolizing of mean Objects He telleth us that it is not a matter at which we should be amaz'd if most ignorant men esteemed wood and stones Divine Statues seeing they who are unlearned look upon Monuments which have inscriptions on them as ordinary Stones and esteem valuable Tables as pieces of common wood and regard Books no otherwise than as so many bundles of Paper Sensible objects arrested the stupid and unactive minds of the vulgar who like those indevout Idolaters of Japan reason'd no further concerning the original or Government of the World For few Heads are exercised by Philosophy and we meet not with one Peasant of a Thousand among our selves who asks how the Sun enlightens this Globe though he believes the body of it no bigger than his Bushel Such Heads are inclined to turn the Truth of God into a Lie to exchange the Sovereign Deity for that which is esteemed a God but is not and to multiply the kinds of it according to the variety of considerable effects and appearances whose Causes are only known to the Secretaries of Nature It is more probable still that many Gentiles reached no higher in their devotion than to Demons Saint Paul taxeth them with offering to Devils and not to God The same Apostle inform'd the Lycaonians that the design of his Preaching was the converting of men from vanities that is from their many Idols which were not what they were judged to be which being no Deities were in that respect nothing and vanity unto one God the true and living God from whom therefore these many Idols had withdrawn many of the Heathen The Inferiour objects had thrust the Superiour out of possession as in the Case of that woman under the Papacy who is said to have forsaken God for the Virgin and the Virgin in Heaven for that Lady as she called her which she saw before her eyes in the Church Divers Idols I say might crowd the Sovereign God out of their minds Jehovah might be banished whilst their imaginations were filled with many hundreds of Jupiters with no fewer than Thirty thousand in the account of Hesiod if he swelleth not the reckoning with Names and Sir-names instead of distinct Gods Some of the Gentiles who knew God that is had means by the things that are seen of ascending to the knowledg of the invisible Creator did notwithstanding not truly know him nor reach him by that wisdom or vain sort of Philosophy which did not edifie them though it puffed them up PART 2. Of their worship of Universal Nature c. as God THis is the common oppinion concerning many of the Gentiles but there is not sufficient reason to believe the same thing concerning them all For it is evident from the History of ancient and modern Idolatry and from the Writings of some of the Gentiles that the acknowledgment of one supreme Deity was not wholly banished from all parts of the Pagan World But herein likewise some of them greatly erred For first There were those amongst them who acknowledged Universal Nature as that one supreme Deity This Deity the Egyptians vailed sometimes under the names of Minerva and Isis before whose Temple Sai as Plutarch witnesseth this Inscription was to be read I am all that which was and is and will be hereafter And in her Image were placed the emblems of all the kinds of things with which Nature is furnished Such a Deity the Arcadians worshipped under the proper Title of Pan who as Pornutus contendeth is the same with the Universe The same Pornutus proceedeth in shewing that his lower part was shaggy and after the fashion of a Goat and that by it was meant the asperity of the Earth Bardesanes Syrus describeth at large the Statue of the Universe by which the Brachmans worshipped Nature It was an Image of Ten or Twelve Cubits in heighth It had its hands extended in the form of a Cross. It had a face Masculine on the one side and Feminine on the other It had the Sun on one of its breasts and on the other the Moon And on the Arms were to be seen a very great number of Angels together with the Heavens Mountains Seas Rivers the Ocean Plants and Animals and such other parts in Nature as make up the Universe Yet I cannot say that this was the Statue of their supreme Deity For they tell us concerning it that this was the Image which God set before his Son when he made the World as a pattern by which he should form his Work But I may say it more truly of some worshippers of Isis that they supposed her supreme and did adore her not with others as the inferiour Earth but in the quality as I just now noted of universal Nature So Pignorius hath taught us and before him Servius and Macrobius Hence was it that the Infcription on an Antient Marble at Capua owneth Isis as all things A like opinion may be with ground entertained concerning Vesta and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fire or Sun in the midst of her Temple as Plutarch in Numa hath suggested Wherefore no Image was consecrated to her besides that of her Temple which by its roundness denoted the World and by its sempiternal fire the Sun in it That fire was renewed each year on the first of March in allusion sure to the vigour of that Planet which then beginneth in especial manner to comfort those parts of the Earth Others again amongst the Gentiles ador'd the Sun as the one Sovereign Deity Such were they in Julius Firmicus who expressed their devotion in this form O Sol Thou best and greatest of things Thou mind of the Universe Thou Guide and Prince of all A like Egyptian form translated out of that language by Euphantus is remembred by Porphyrie and thus it beginneth O Sun thou Lord of all and ye the rest of the Gods
or Dii Consentes Nay of Jove Plato himself saith that men esteemed him the best and most just of the Gods and one who held his father in Chains for his unnatural cruelty to his Children Secondly Because the worship of Jupiter in how high a notion soever he was sometimes taken was not looked upon only by it felf but as the principal worship in the Religion of the Gentiles giving denomination to the other parts of it For the worship of Jupiter was in effect an acknowledgment of the whole Gentilism of Rome Pagan And he that had adored Jupiter would by that have been judged to have been likewise a devout Servant of Juno and Venus and the rest of that Society of Grecian and Roman Idols However under this name some of the wise Gentiles did mean the supreme Deity distinct from their College of Demons and I suppose Marcus Antoninus that Philosophical Prince to have been one of them He says indeed concerning the thundering Legion That they prayed to a God which himself knew not Not that he owned not one supreme God but that he understood him not in the subsistences of Father Son and Holy Ghost in which quality the Christians applyed themselves to him Thirdly Jupiter when thought of under the notion of one highest God whatsoever he was in speculation he was actually but an evil Demon. For the Persons and things which he countenanced could never be approved of by the true and righteous God Let it then be granted for why should men oppose the evidence of plain words that some Gentiles entertained a notion of that God who is one and supreme PART 4. What Applications they made to one God THis being confessed There is a Second inquiry to be made whether such Gentiles worshipped him or made Religious Application to him And it is evident they did so both by Prayers Sacrifices and Images Prayer to him was consequent to their Apprehensions of him as the Allsufficient and bountiful Governour of Mankind And sometimes they prayed to him in the very form of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Lord have mercy which the Ancient Christians used Ennius in Cicero declareth that Jove was invoked by All. He calleth him Sublime Candens not meaning the Sun but the Power that causeth Lightning and the Jove who in Euripides there also cited by Tully is owned as Summus divns the supreme God Simplicius in the conclusion of his Notes on Epictetus useth this excellent form I address my self humbly to thee O Lord thou Father and guide of our Reason that we may be mindful of that nobility with which thou hast adorn'd us That we may be purged from the contagion of the body and bruitish affections governing them as becometh us and using them as Instruments If Simplicius be said to learn this under Christianity that cannot be objected against Socrates and Plato Socrates prayeth not only to the gods but to the supreme God under the Title of Pan in the first place And he prayeth that he may be beautiful within and that he may esteem the wise-man only to be the man truly wealthy referring to the things before discoursed of in the Phaedrus of Plato The same Plato begins his second Dialogue called Alcibiades e by this question put to that Philosopher by Socrates who apprehended him to be in a deep contemplation Whether he were going about to call on God And thence occasion is taken of saying many wise things on that Subject in the sequel of that Dialogue And about the middle of that Discourse he repeateth a very prudent form of Prayer used by a Poet who beseecheth his God to give him the things which were good for him though he should happen not to pray for them and to keep from him such things as were hurtful though through error he should make supplication for them Again in Timaeus Plato observeth that those who have any share of understanding when they undertake any thing be it of smaller or of greater concernment do always invoke God To such Invocation he exhorteth at the constitution of any City or civil Body And he urgeth Prayer in so many places that I have not room for the repetition of them in that compass to which I have design'd to confine my Discourse For Sacrifice That also the Gentiles offered to God Plato joyneth both together in the conclusion of his Theages There Theages exhorteth to an appeasing of the Numen worshipped by Socrates by Prayer and Sacrifice and Demodocus and Socrates are consenting to it And Porphyry supposeth some Gentiles to have offered Sacrifice to the supreme God whilst he taxeth them for offering to him Animals as unmeet oblations or indeed any thing besides a pure Mind Martinius in the Fourth Book of his History of China thinketh that people to have worshipped the true supreme God under the name of Xangti And he further observeth that they offered Prayers and Sacrifices to him though they used no Images in his worship For Images The Gentiles used them in the worship of the one God and not only whilst they Religiously observed their Demons Origen supposeth Statues of both kinds in use amongst them where he saith that Those Heathens expose themselves to the derision of all men of sound mind who after their Philosophical disputations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of God or gods respect Statues and either pray to them or endeavour by the contemplation of them as by conspicuous signs to raise their minds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the Intelligible Deity In the mean time as he continueth his Discourse the meanest Christian is effectually perswaded that all the World is the Temple of God And he prayeth to him in all places with closed eyes but with the Lights of his Mind erected towards Heaven This had been no refutation of Celsus if the Gentiles had not worshipped the God that is every where without Images by Prayer and a pure intention Origen in the same Book in answer to Celsus who had denied Images to be worshipped as Gods and affirmed them to be Divine Statues only replyeth in this manner We cannot think these Images to be so much as Divine Statues seeing we circumscribe not the incorporeal and invisible God with any figure He supposeth the Heathen had done so else he had in vain contended against their Statues by such an Argument fetched from the spirituality and ubiquity not of Demons but of the true and Sovereign God To him it appeareth that some Gentiles did apply themselves in the three ways abovementioned of Prayer Sacrifice and Image-worship PART 5. Whether they worshipping one God could be guilty of that sin NOW that being proved a third Question comes to be resolved Whether the acknowledgment of one God by the Gentiles and their Application to him being granted they are yet liable to the charge of Idolatry In answer to this enquiry I purpose to shew that they are still
up their acknowledgments to the Queen of Heaven When God healeth them they sacrifice to AEsculapius as to him that removed their distemper from them This is a very great Iniquity and the common grounds or occasions of it are highly unworthy of the true God For most of them who believe not his immediate Providence do measure his actions by those of worldly Potentates They conceive him out of state to do little by his own person or out of ease and softness to commit the management of his affairs to others both by temporary command and by standing Commission As if the greatest variety of business could distract or weary him who is Infinite in Knowledg and Greatness and Power Thus St. Cyril judged of them who substituted lesser Deities under him that was supreme He thought that they impeached God of Arrogance or floth or want of Goodness which envieth none the good it can do And Isaiah tacitly upbraideth those who distrusted his Providence of the like vile opinion concerning him whilst he saith of the Creator that He fainteth not neither is weary Secondly The Gentiles were Idolaters through the worship they gave to such Demons as were evil spirits It is true that Plato owned no inferior Deities but such as were by him esteemed good He maintaineth this in his Tenth Book of Laws and St. Austin confesseth it to be his judgment He saith in his Phaedo That none were to be registred among the gods but such who had studied Philosophy and departed pure out of this life When he speaketh of Demons who afflict men he is to be interpreted rather of good Spirits executing Justice than of evil Angels venting their malice But whatsoever his opinion was it is most evident that the generality of the Heathens worshipped such Demons as were morally malignant And such Porphyry esteemed those Genii who had bloody Sacrifices offered to them The Gentiles sacrificed to Devils to the Powers of the Kingdom of Darkness which were not only not God but enemies and professed Rebels against him They were in Porphyry's account Terrestrial Demons such who had gross Vehicles and consequently were of the meaner and viler sort of their Genii and as they love to speak sunk deepest into matter Psellus and Porphyry represent them as united to a body of so gross contexture that they could smell the Odors of the Sacrifices and be fat with the steam of human blood Lucian in his Book de Sacrificiis abounds with pleasant or rather to them who pity the decays of human nature with very sad stories of the Revels of Demons Whether they were Terrestrial ones or not I here forbear to dispute but I conclude concerning them that they were evil Their nature shews it self by the services which they accepted by the persons whom they have favoured and by the appearances and wonders with which they sometimes encouraged them The Rites with which they were worshipped were bloody rude unclean such as an honest man would be ashamed to observe Porphyry though a Gentile hath recorded many of the bloody Sacrifices offered by the Rhodians Phoenicians and Graecians and he telleth of a man in his time sacrificed in Rome at the Feast of Jupiter Latialis The like barbarity was commonly used in the worship of Moloch and Bellona And he must have such a measure of Assurance as will suffer him no more to blush than his Ink who writes down all the Obscenities used in her worship whom they usually called the Mother of the Gods Origen telleth Celsus concerning the Christians That they had learned to judg of all the Gods of the Heathen as of Devils by their greediness of the blood of their Sacrifices and by their presence amidst the Nidors of them by which they deceived those who made not God their refuge And in another place he proveth this truth out of their own Histories and he instanceth particularly in their Deity Hercules and he objecteth against him his immoral love and that vile effeminacy which their own Authors record I will not tell over again their foolish stories so very often told already but offer to the Reader a Relation of fresher date out of Idolatrous America In Mexico saith an Author who had sojourned in that City the Heathens had dark houses full of Idols great and small and wrought of sundry Metals these were all bathed and washed with blood the blood of men the walls of the houses were an inch thick with blood and the floor a foot The Priests went daily into those Oratories and suffered none other but great Personages to enter with them And when any of such condition went in they were bound to offer some man as a Sacrifice that the Priests might wash their hands and sprinkle the house with the blood of the Victim With such Sacrifices no good Angel could be pleased wherefore the worship of such being an honour done not to God or his Ministers but to the Devil and his Angels who live in perfect defiance of true Religion is an Idolatry so detestable that I have not at hand a name of sufficient infamy to bestow upon it PART 8. Of their Idolatry in worshipping the Images of Demons THirdly The Gentiles were Idolaters in worshipping the Statues or Images of Demons or Heroe's either as those Powers were reputed the Deputies of God or as they were really evil spirits The Religious Honour given to the Prototype was Idolatrous and therefore the Honour done to the Image respecting the Prototype was such also So he that bows towards the Chair of an Usurper does give away the honour of the true Soveraign because the external sign of his submission is ultimately referred to the Usurper himself The Honour which the Gentiles did to their Statues redounded generally to their Demons for their Theology did not set up such Images whatsoever vulgar fancy or practice did as final objects of worship or Gods in themselves It set them up as places of Divine Residence wherein the Genii were thought to dwell or to afford their especial presence in Oracles and other Supernatural aids as the true God was said to dwell amidst the Cherubims The Egyptians as Ruffinus storieth entertained this superstitious perswasion amongst a multitude of others That if any man had laid violent hands on the Statue of Serapis the Heavens and the Earth would have been mixed together in a new Chaos Olympius the Sophist exhorteth the Gentiles still to adhere to the Religion of their Gods notwithstanding the Christians defaced their Statues And he gave them this as the reason of his counsel Because said he though the Images be corruptible things yet in them did dwell Virtues or Demons which from the ruins of their Statues took their flight to Heaven This Opinion Arnobius and Lactantius acknowledg to have been common among the Gentiles and we may still read it in the writings of the wiser shall I say
a Deess like Venus or Urania She had also among them the name of Cabar or Cubar Herodotus remembreth this Arabian Urania by the name of Alilat in his Thalia though in his Clio he had called her Alitta Neither did they worship Statues alone but they worshipped Daemons too of which such Statues were generally the Symbols There is mention in the Alchoran in Suratâ Noachi of Vodda Seraha Jaguth Jauk Neser Beidavi tell us that these were the names of good men who lived betwixt Adam and Noah that after death Images were made of them that from them a benediction might be obtained that in process of time they began to be worshipped That Vodda was represented in the figure of a Man Seraha of a Woman Jaguth of a Lion Jauk of a Horse Neser of an Eagle and that this kind of Idolatry was translated to the Arabians Other Authors make mention of their worship of Bacchus Hesychius calleth him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tertullian Diasares or Disares as it is read in the late Edition of Paris That name may be but the corruption of Osiris though it is thought to be taken from a mountainous place in Arabia called Dusares and mentioned by Stephanus de Urbibus The Arabians also worshipped Angels as well as Heroes calling them Proverbially the Daughters of God The Alchoran chargeth them with this Idolatry in Suratâ de Bestiis saying They joined Genii that is Angels as Companions to God Mahomet growing weary of this false worship about the fortieth year of his age and perhaps of all real Religion invented a new one of his own which hath grown exceeding rankly since the first planting of it as is the manner of many deadly and poysonous weeds In this new Religion of his he applaudeth himself as the Restorer of the Worship of one God and declameth vehemently against Idols And no wonder for he took to him a Nestorian Monk as his Assistant and he was himself the Son of a Jewess to whose Religion he might have some respect by reason of that Relation though his mother died too soon to instil her Principles into him This Impostor in the Alchoran calleth the Gentiles Associators or such as join others with God as sharers and fellows in his government because they worship Angels and men in the place of Gods He giveth the like name to the Jews because of their high veneration for Ezra whom in his uncharitable opinion they had set up as the fellow of the Deity He also calleth the Christians Associators by reason of the Trinity which they worship His blasphemous pride dethroning Christ and setting up himself as a greater Prophet He perpetually inculcated the worship of one God and this is one of the forty conditions on which he promised Paradise to his Disciples If they bear witness that there is no God but the one supreme God and that he is his Apostle His Ministers when they call the people to prayers cry Alla Achbar Alla that is God the Highest God not Alla oua Kubar Alla God and Venus their Deity as some have imagined as if they had worshipped their Gentile Allath Cabar or Cubar after they had become the Disciples of Mahomet Elmacinus summing up the precepts of Mahomet beginneth in this manner Mahomet in the forty-fourth year of his age published his Call his pretended commission from God for before that time he had secretly invited the people to his Religion In the publication of it First he taught them to believe in God alone Secondly to worship and adore him Thirdly he destroyed the worship of Idols In the forty-first Surata of the Alchoran he condemneth the worship of Angels And this worship saith Beidari he abolished first at Mecca For Images he was so severe against the worship of them that he forbad all Statues and Pictures a Law by which the Grand Signior loseth much glory and ornament in his Empire He brake in pieces with his own hands a wooden Dove found in Caaba he sent Chaledus to destroy the Idol Alozza Chaledus pull'd down the house or Temple and burnt the Image or Tree with fire Thence a Daemoness issued out with great exclamation and he smote her with his sword which when he had reported to Mahomet he assured him that that Daemoness was Alozza whose worship should thenceforth cease Notwithstanding all this his Disciples are accused of a double Idolatry First They are accused as worshippers of their Prophet in the quality of the highest Lieutenant of God And Mahomet himself gave the occasion of this worship by teaching them this Creed That there is one God and Mahomet his Prophet setting himself as it were at Gods right hand It is most notorious that they pray frequently to him and they pray not only to him to intercede for them with God but to give them present assistance by virtue of the commission which he hath received from God For this it seems is one of their Forms in which they pray for the Grand Signior God make you victorious over your enemies and may our good Prophet pour down his blessing into your heart And in this worship they offend two ways for they give the honour to Mahomet of a power which God hath not bestowed by commission upon him and which he hath not in himself as he is a creature of his kind And they give this honour not meerly to an Hero but to the wicked soul of a vile Impostor Secondly They are accused as worshippers of the Tomb of their Prophet I have not read in any good Author that they bow or kneel to it as to an object of worship And yet I find it said of them by Cornelius Curtius That they worship the Urn of their Prophet He I confess is not a competent witness for a little before having asserted a summus cultus that is sure supreme worship to be merited by the Nails of the Cross he saith of the Jews that they in such manner venerated the rod of Aaron the two Tables of stone and the Ark of the Covenant Yet this methinks may be pronounced against them as a righteous sentence That if they expect as they appear to do some extraordinary blessing at the Tomb at Mecha by virtue of the commission of their Prophet and of the Mahometan Religion they exercise a religious trust in that which is a lie and they are tempted as often as the event prayed for succeeds their Pilgrimage and Devotion to give thanks to an Impostor for whose sake God does not will not hear them And such trust and thanks are highly dishonourable to the true God who dwells not in any Shrine and delights not in any false Prophet Such Idolatrous trust some of them seem to put in the Magical coins or gems which are used by them Many of them are mentioned by Hottinger and amongst them one which contained the names of twenty Surata's in circular
That it is a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture but rather repugnant to the Word of God Now what can we judg of that Worship which hath for its object something else besides God and is contrary to the Scripture We cannot but think it not a mere impertinence but a wicked act an act which by contradicting his Authority diminisheth his honour and being an act of Worship nothing less than one degree of Idolatry Again in its twenty-eighth Article it teacheth concerning the consecrated Elements That they were not by Christs institution or ordinance reserved carried about lifted up and worshipped By which words it noteth the Adoration of the Host in the Church of Rome not as an innocent circumstance added by the discretion of that Church but as an unlawful worship though it doth not expresly brand it with the name of Idolatry In the Rubrick after the Communion the Adoration of the consecrated Elements is upon this reason forbidden Because the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances And it is there added That they so remaining the Adoration of them would be Idolatry to be abhorred by all faithful Christians This Rubrick doth in effect charge the Church of Rome with gross Idolatry for it supposeth the Object which they materially worship to be in its natural substance still a creature and a creature disjoined from Personal union with Christ and not according to the words of their St. Thomas inserted into their Missal a Deity latent under the accidents of Bread and Wine And it concludeth that the worship of such a substance is such Idolatry as Christian Religion abhorreth It doth not indeed affirm in terms that the worship of such a substance by a Romanist who verily thinks it to be not bread but a Divine body is Idolatry but it saith that whence such a conclusion may be inferred It saith that the bread is still bread in its substance and if it be really such whilst it is worshipped the mistake of the worshipper cannot alter the nature of the thing though according to the degrees of unavoidableness in the causes of his ignorance it may extenuate the crime Upon supposition that still 't is very bread in its substance Costerus and it may be Bellarmine himself would have condemned the Latria of it as the Idolatrous worship of a Creature even in Paul the simple of whom stories say that he was extreamly devout but withal that he knew not which were first the Apostles or the Prophets And here it ought to be well noted that there is a wide distance betwixt this saying That Idolatry is a damnable sin and this assertion That Idolatry in any degree of it and in a person under any kind of circumstances actually damneth I would here also commend it to the observation of the Reader that the Church of England speaketh this of the worship of the corporal substance of the Elements present in the Eucharist after consecration and not of the real and essential presence of Christ. And for this reason it left out the terms of Real and Essential used in the Book of King Edward the sixth as subject to misconstruction Real it is if it be present in its real effects and they are the essence of it so far as a Communicant doth receive it for he receiveth it not so much in the nature of a thing as in the nature of a priviledg But I comprehend not the whole of this Mystery and therefore I leave it to the explication of others who have better skill in untying of knots In the Commination used by the Church of England 'till God be pleased to restore the Discipline of Penance a curse is denounced against all those who make any carved or molten Image to worship it And it is the curse which is in the first place denounced on Ash-Wednesday It is true that it is taken out of the Book of Deuteronomy and it is the sense of a verse in that Book used at large in the former Common-Prayer-Book in these words Cursed is the man that maketh any carved or molten Image an abomination to the Lord the work of the hands of the craftsman and putteth it in a secret place to worship it That is though it be done without scandal to men and in such private manner as to avoid the punishment which the Law inflicteth on known and publick offenders But the Church of England repeating this Law in its Commination doth thereby own it to be still of validity and to oblige Christian men The Homilies which are an Appendage to our Church do expresly arraign the Roman-Catholicks as Idolaters in the learned Discourses of the peril of Idolatry Also English Princes and Bishops have declared themselves to be of the same perswasion King Edward the sixth in his Injunctions reckoneth Pictures and Paintings in the Churches of England as adorned by the Romanists amongst the Monuments of Idolatry Of the Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth this is the Thirty-fifth That no persons keep in their houses any abused Images Tables Pictures Paintings or other Monuments of feigned Miracles Pilgrimages Idolatry and Superstition Of the Articles of Inquiry in the first year of her Reign this is one and pertinent to our present Discourse Whether you know any that keep in their Houses any undefaced Images Tables Pictures Paintings or other Monuments of feigned and false Miracles Pilgrimages Idolatry and Superstition and do adore them especially such as have been set up in Churches Chappels and Oratories This likewise is one of the Articles of Visitation set forth by Cranmer Arch-bishop of Canterbury in the second year of Edward the sixth Whether Parsons c. have not removed and taken away and utterly extincted and destroyed in their Churches Chappels and Houses all Images all Shrines Pictures Paintings and all other Monuments of Idolatry and Superstition Bishop Jewel's opinion is so well known that his words may be spared And that Confession of Faith which he penned and which maketh a part of his Apology for the Church of England and in which he calleth the Invocation of Saints in the Church of Rome a practice vile and plainly Heathenish is put into the collection of the Confessions of the Reformed under the Title of the English Confession But the Churches Confession it cannot be called with respect to her Authority which did not frame it whatsoever it be in its substance and in its conformity to her Articles For others of the Church of England a very Learned person the Hannibal and Terrour of Modern Rome hath named enough T. G. hath indeed excepted against many of the Jury but whether he hath not illegally challenged so many of them remaineth a Question or rather it is with the Judicious out of dispute The sentences of private men spoken on this occasion both here and beyond the Seas either broadly or indirectly are scarce to be
though it may be and it is certain they have not in all Ages known according to what is in the Prophesie of St. John what Jesus Christ will do next yet that still by the spirit of Prophesie as it were the Saints have been guided to seek for those things at the hands of God and Christ which he was about to accomplish Also that the Saints in Heaven before the day of Judgment have a share and an hand in Christs government of the world and that they have a knowledg by the Angels that are continually Messengers from Heaven to Earth of the great things that are done here And he that writeth the Epistle to the Reader maketh this Application of Mr. Goodwins Doctrine Now saith he what may we think the Saints in Heaven who within these ten years last past lost their lives in the Cause of Christ he meaneth the Army-Saints from the year forty-four to that of fifty-four who dy'd in maintenance of the Bad Old Cause are EMPLOYED ABOUT at this time they understanding by the Angels what great changes are come to pass on our Earth Those of whose Saintship we have better assurance though in a state of rest and light are esteemed by the Fathers but a kind of Free Prisoners not being acquitted by the publick Sentence of the General Judgment And their opinion who give them a Lieutenancy under God in the Government of the World before that day does recall to my mind the Argument used by that truly great man Sir Walter Raleigh in his own unhappy Case He pleaded that the grant of a Commission from the King did argue him to be absolved and that he who had power given him over others was no longer under a sentence against his own life Abraham and Isaac do not now rule us and it may be they are ignorantt of us which whilst I affirm I do not wholly ground my Assertion on the Text in Isaiah That soundeth otherwise whether we take it in its positive or hypothetical sense It s positive sense may be this Doubtless thou art our Father notwithstanding we live not under the care of Abraham or Isaac but are by many generations removed from them who therefore knew us not or own'd us not we being not men of their times we are their seed however though at a great distance and to such also was thy promise made And for the Hypothetical sense it may be this Be it supposed that Abraham knows nothing of us yet certain we are that thou art the God of Israel whose knowledg and care of thy people never faileth I admit here that the Saints pray for the Church in general that Angels are concerned in particular Ministrations but that Angels and even Saints have shares of the Government of the World though in subordination to God so as to be Commission-Officers under the King of Heaven and not only Attendants on his Throne and as it were Yeomen and Messengers of his Court the general condition of the Angels I cannot admit without peril of Idolatry This in my conceit is the great resemblance betwixt the Romanists and the Gentiles Both of them suppose the World to be ruled under God by several Orders of Daemons and Heroes though I have confessed already that they are not so exactly alike but that Rome-Christian may be distinguished from Rome-Pagan For the Gentiles so much hath been shewn already and it may appear further from the place of the Greek Historian cited in the Margent And for the Romanists that too hath already been manifested in part and shall be further declâ—…red and Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law or Commentary on the Twelve Tables does very honestly confess it He having commented on that Law which ordereth the worship of the Heathen gods both Daemons and Heroes letteth fall words not unfit to be here gathered up by us Christians saith he meaning those of the Roman Communion retain a Religion like to this for they worship God immortal and for those that excel in Virtue and shine with Miracles first with great pomp and inquisition they register them among the Deities or Saints and then they worship them and after that they erect Temples to them as we see in the case of S. John S. Peter S. Catherine S. Nicholas S. Magdalen and other Deities In this point then let us join issue and offer on our side the manifestation of these particulars First On what occasions this worship of Ruling-spirits came into the Church Secondly How it derogateth from the honour of God as Governour of the World Thirdly How it derogateth from the honour of Jesus as the Mediator and King ordained by God First For the occasions of this Worship I conceive them to be especially these two The Celebration of the Memory of the Martyrs at their Tombs and the compliance of the Christians with the Northern Nations when they invaded Italy and other places in hope of appeasing them and effecting their conversion First I reckon as an occasion of this Worship the celebration of the memory of the Martyrs at their Tombs and Monuments and Reliques and in the Churches sacred to God in thankfulness for their Examples The thankful and honourable commemoration of the Martyrs was very ancient and innocent at the beginning For as the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna concerning the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp testifies They esteemed the bones of the Martyrs more precious than Jewels They kept their Birth-days that is the days of their Martyrdom on which they began most eminently to live they pursu'd them with a worthy affection as Disciples and Imitators of Christ but they worshipped none but Christ believing him to be the Son of God But laudable Customs degenerate through time And this in the fourth Century began to be stretched beyond the reason of its first institution as appeareth by the Apostrophe's of St. Basil St. Gregory Nazianzen and others of that Age. Afterwards the vanity of men ran this Usage into a dangerous extreme and those who had been commemorated as excellent and glorified Spirits and whose Prayers were wished were directly invoked and worshipped as the subordinate Governours of Gods Church This Veneration of the Martyrs which superstition thus strained was occasioned by the Miracles which God wrought where his Martyrs were honoured Times of Persecution at home and of Invasion from abroad required such aids for the Encouragement of Catholick Christians and the Conversion of Infidels and misbelievers Thus in the days of St. Austin in whose Age the Getae or Goths sacked Rome and many of the barbarous people imputed the present misfortunes of Italy to the Christian Religion God pleased to work Miracles at the Bodies of the Martyrs Protasius and Gervasius in the City of Milan Thus as is reported by Procopius and Egnatius he miraculously saved those Christians at Rome and Pagans also both in the time of Alaricus and Theudoricus who
that of Naaman's He doubtless did some other homage separately from his Master to shew his supposed Religion and they have none leaning on them unless by accident by complement to whom they may interpret the sign in part of a civil respect But how doth one external sign split in each single exhibition of it into two significations appear to signifie doubly to the common spectators That no mistake may be committed the Roman Assemblies had need be so many Conventions of great Clerks and wise Schoolmen But in all Assemblies how few are good Judges And how many Spies are there Jewish and Mahometan and Heathen to whom it is morally impossible to know their distinctions And how many of the same Communion have gross and stupid minds and devotions begotten of ignorance And what uncharitableness is it to make a Ditch in the daily walks of the Blind and the Weak and the inadvertent and what a scandal is this in India or China where the Gestures are seen and the Books that explain them are not understood or handled by one of a thousand And where their own worship of Images maketh them think the Christians not far from their Religion They who use Images in their devotions and are as discreet in their devotions as that usage will give them leave these profess that they bow not to the Image at all but only to God before it for thus S. Gregory Durandus Halcot Biel seem to profess And it is honour enough to the Image that our devotion is on choice done at the foot of it They ought to profess that when they kiss the Image though the external sign of worship toucheth it and adheres to it yet it doth not so adhere to it in the quality of an object which it terminateth on but as a kind of resting-place in the way whilst it cannot reach its journeys-end by the body but by the mind only That being moved by holy passion towards the blessed Jesus they salute the Image of Christ not being able to reach his person and they may illustrate their meaning by the wish of Thomasinus who passionately breaketh into this language O that there were any man to whom I might be beholding for the Images of Molinus and Pignorius men to be by me eternally honoured that I might kiss the Portraict of those whom I cannot embrace in person They may further thus far apologize for the Heathens and say that when they worshipped the Sun by the kissing of their hand they did not so much kiss their hand as the presumed deity whom they could not reach They may add that when they kiss the Image of the Son they exhibit this Ceremonie not only as an effect but as a sign of their love to him For so a man that kisseth the Hemm of a Garment does in truth but touch the Hemm and offer it as it is a sign of observance unto the person The materiality of the Act reacheth the Image the formality the Prototype In England in the days of Henry the Seventh some Romanists spake not so rashly as Bellarmine who without necessity imposed on him by the Decree of Trent asserted a proper veneration of Images as objects terminating that worship in themselves and not as sustaining the place of the Prototype Amongst them I find an ancient Author who hath written in Folio an Exposition of the Ten Commandments in the way of a Dialogue betwixt Dives and Pauper And because he speaks soberly in this Argument and is not in many hands I will here transcribe some places out of him Dives Whereof serve these Ymages I wolde they were brent alle Pauper They serve for thre thynges for they be ordeyned to stere mannys mynd to thynke on cristes incarnation and on his passion and on his lyvinge and on other seintes lyvinge Also they ben ordeyned to styre mans affection and his herte to devocion For ofte man is more steryd by sight than be herynge or redynge Also they be ordeyned to be a token and a boke to the leude peple that they may reade in Ymagery and painture that Clerkes rede in in the Boke as the Lawe sayth de consecra distinct 3. prolatum where we fynde that a bisshop destroied Ymages as thou woldest do and forfendyd that no man shuld worship ymages He was accused to the Pope Seynt Gregory which blamyd him gretely for that he had so distroyed the ymages but utterly he prised him for ' he forfendyd them to worshyp ymages The 2. chaptre Dives How shuld I rede in the boke of paynture and of ymagery Pauper whanne thou seest the ymage of the Crucifixe thynk on him that died on the crosse for thy synne Take hede by the ymage howe his hede was crowned with a garlonde of thornes Take hede by the ymage how his armes were spradde abrode in token that he is redy to halse and clyppe the c. on this maner I pray the rede thy Boke and falle down to grounde and thanke thy God that wolde do so moche for the and worshyp above al thynge nat the ymage nat the stock stone ne tree but him that dyed on the tree for thy synne and thy sake So that thou knele if thou wylt before the ymage nat to the ymage make thy prayer before the ymage but nat to the ymage for it seeth the nat herythe the nat understondeth the nat make thyn offrynge if thou wilt before the ymage but nat to th' ymage make thy pilgramage nat to the ymage ne for the ymage for it may nat help the but to him and for him that the ymage representeth to the. For if thou doo it for the ymage or to the ymage thou doste ydolatry The 3. chaptre Dives me thynkith that whanne men knele before the ymage pray and loke on the ymage with weepyng teres bunche or knock their brestys with other such countynaunce they do al this to the ymage and so wenyth moche peple Pauper If they doo it to the ymage they synne gretly in ydolatry agenst reasone and kynde Dives how might they do alle before the ymage and not worshyp the ymage Pauper Oft thou seest that the Preest in the Chirch hath his boke before him he knelyth he stareth he loketh on his boke he holdeth up his hondes And for devocion in case he wepith and maketh devout prayers to whom wenyste thou the Preest doth alle this worship Dives To God and nat to the boke This instance by the way is not so proper for the Book though it relateth to Christ is not an object which representeth him nor doth the Priest speak to it as he doth often to the Crucifix And that 's the next Objection of Dives in the fourth Chapter Dives On Palm-Sunday at Procession the Prest draweth up the Veil before the Rode and fallith down to grounde with alle the people and saith thries Ave Rex noster Hayle be thou oure Kynge and soo he worshipeth that ymage
original Quaker but as of one who by believing that God is not distinct from the Saints and by worshipping that which he calls his Light or Christ within him rejecteth the Person of our Redeemer and committeth Idolatry with his own imagination must not they make a like judgment of such as Anna Trapnell who believed for a while that God dwelt essentially in his Saints must not they also judg of Lodowick Muggleton as of a mad-man or of an Impostor selling his Blessings at a very profitable rate or of an Idolater worshipping nothing for the one true God but a confined person of flesh and bones For he owneth no other Godhead than that which was conceived in the womb of the Virgin and circumscribed by it for a season and as he blasphemously continues to speak such as lost it self for a while both in honour and knowledg not knowing till he was glorified that himself was God the Father but that Elias was his God and his Father For that also is one of his Blasphemies That God not finding it safe to trust the Angels upon his descent from Heaven he committed his place to the safer trust of Moses and Elias A blasphemy worse if possible than that in Irenaeus of the extravagant Gnosticks who supposed the place of the Logos to have been on earth supplied by the Angel Gabriel But I forbear any further repetition of his abominable Fancies which will cause as great pain in the ears of pious Christians as the Justice of the Magistrates has lately done in his own I shut up this Chapter with the Prayer of that Learned French-man Isaac Casaubon Thou O Lord Jesu preserve this church of England and give a sound mind to those Nonconformists who deride the Rites and Ceremonies of it CHAP. XIV Of the means which God hath vouchsafed the World towards the cure of Idolatry and more particularly of his favour in exhibiting to that purpose the Shechinah of his Son PART 1. Of the Cure of Idolatry THE Notion of Idolatry being stated and also illustrated by the practice of it amongst Gentiles Jews Mahometans and Professors of Christianity I proceed to shew the means which God in pity of our weakness hath given us towards the Cure of this Evil. Against all manner of false Gods and ruling-Daemons he gave to all the world a Principle of Reason which teacheth that there is one Supreme Being absolute in Perfection and by consequence that he being every-where by Almighty Power Wisdom and Goodness is every-where to be adored and trusted in as the only God The same Principle of Reason teacheth them that God can neither be represented by an Image nor confined to it neither knoweth it much more of the inferiour Powers of the invisible World save that they are and consequently it hath no ground for addresses to them For the Jews they had an express command for the worship of one God without Image and many declarations of God as governing the world by his immediate Providence Also Christian Religion sheweth plainly that the gods of the Heathens were Doemons or evil spirits and that there is but one God and one Mediator to be by Christians adored It establisheth a Church or Corporation of Christians who agree in the worship of one God in Trinity In Baptism or the Sacrament of admittance into that Society it prescribeth a solemn Renuntiation of the Devil and his works of which a part were the Pomps or Processions in honour of Idols In the Sacrament which is a memorial of the Passion of Christ the Head and Founder of this Society it offereth to us the Cup of the Lord in opposition to the cup of Devils On the First-day of the Week set a-part for publick worship it maketh a Remembrance of the Creation of the world by the Son by whom the Father made all things and not by any Doemons as also of the Resurection of Christ from the dead by which he conquered the powers of darkness In the Form of Prayer which our Lord taught the Church it prayeth for deliverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from that evil one from Satan the destroyer as Rabbi Judah was wont to petition and in the Doxology it ascribeth not with the Heathen world which then lay in maligno illo under the Power of the God of this world in general Idolatry the Kingdom Power and Glory to the Devil but to that one true God who was the Father of Jesus Christ. But upon most of these Subjects I have already inlarged It remaineth therefore that I speak of the means which God hath specially vouchsafed in the case of Images a Subject not commonly discoursed of and hinted only in the former Papers This Disquisition I will begin with the notion of the Invisibility of God proceeding thence to the condescension he vouchsafes towards the very eye and fancy of man in the Shechinah of his Son There is in the very Creation a great part of invisible matter and motion Many things besides God Almighty are not immediately subject to mans sense though his Reason can reach them after a Philosophical consideration of their palpable effects God indeed could have made that matter which is now invisible to have been seen by man in all the minute and curious Textures of it For what should hinder that omnipotence which formed the light and created the soul from framing the Fibers of the Nerves in such delicate manner in this life what possibly he may do in the coelestial body as to give to man a kind of natural Microscope But for his own Divine substance which hath neither limits nor parts nor Physical motion which is the division of Parts nor figure which is inconsistent with immensity nor colour which is an effect of figure and motion upon the brain it is certain that in this body we cannot see it and there is great reason to doubt whether we can do so in any other which though it be coelestial is still but body For this sight then we are not to hope unless we mean it of the fuller knowledg of Gods will and interpret the antecedent by the consequent in that place of Scripture which saith No man hath seen God at any time the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father he hath reveal'd him St. John in that place denieth expresly actual sight as also he doth again in his first Epistle Tertullian in his refutation of Praxeas discourseth of the invisibility of God and the visibility of the Son of God illustrating his sense by the appearance of the Sun which is not seen in its very body but by its rays And he further noteth of St. Paul that he had to this purpose denied both the actual and potential sight of God No man said that Apostle hath seen God nor can see him No man whilest alive can see God as he is as he dwells in Heaven the Palace and
He seemeth not to Platonize 165 408 Saw God what it means 335 336 Whether Osiris Bacchus Apis 125 c. Bishop Montague his opinion about praying to Saints Angels Guardian Angel 207 208 Mountains British Islands 28 Moon Its character on Apis not from the beginning 118 Muggleton 's gross Deity 221 309 310 N NAils of the Cross worshipped with Latria by C. Curtius 147 284 285 Nature Pliny 's and Spinosa 's Goddess 26 27 Called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 399 Negative honouring of Images 280 Neton in Macrobius is Mnevis 131 Nice Council second what it means by adoration of Images 288 S. Nicholas made a Guardian-Saint 231 Nocca a kind of Northern Neptune 16 Nous of Plato the Intellectual world 399 400 401 Numa 's Temple and fire in it what 48 53 His zeal against Images 59 The fire in his Temple why renewed each March 53 Nysa what place 128 O ONion of what kind the Idol of Egypt was 28 Ophites their Diagram 153 Of Orders of Angels 165 166 167 212 Origen of the power of words 4 Orpheus 's one God 56 Osiris Bacchus 129. Apis 130. Moses 131. Osarsyphus Disaris 131 144 Oxen how sacred 111 112 113 114 136 353. with their faces Cherubim appear'd 337 338 P PAgod what 410 Pamelius a false charge of his against Tertullian 332 Patrocinie of Saints 194 to 256 Pectoral a lesser Ark 351 Permiseer of the Benians 58 Of Petavius 's calling Arius a Platonist 77 396 Pictures of Christ crucified lawful 277 None of Saints departed as such possible 296 297 Of Gods Shechinah 383 to 387 Pillar of Fire and Cloud what 331 Pix carried as the Ark 296 Plato he own'd one God 57 58 Yet he was an Idolater 69 76 to 81 His Triad not the Christian Trin-unity 77 78 398 399 c. Whence it came 407 408 His Ideas what 78 79 399 c. His Daemons what kind of spirits 85 86 How far he own'd Providence 81 Platonism an occasion of Gnosticism 149 150 Plutarch's Translation mended Poets how causes of Idolatry 36 37 Polytheism what kind possible 411 Pluto who 124 Porphyry his reason for the worship of God by the image of a man 74 His Translation mended 86 His abstracted worship 96 His not owning the Gods to have been men 118 Prayer our Lords said to Saints 197 Of Socrates and Simplicius 63 To Saints if only to pray for us 192 to 196 c. To fictitious persons 207 259 To some of suspected Saintship 256 to 258 Real Presence 94 181 185 346 347 Profit that which did not profit in Jer. 2. 11. meant of an Idol 338 Providence its extent acc to Maimon 84 Purgatory Fire one probable occasion of the belief of it 378 Pyramids what 42 43 Pythagoras his two Principles 15 76 155 156 393 His Image among the Gnosticks 153 His Dogma of the Imnortality of the Soul not like Christs 409 410 The form of the Oath of his Disciples 405 406 His Tetractys not the Tetragrammaton a double Quaternary what it was 404 405 406. R RApine's excess of devotion towards the Virgin 249 Representations of God unmeet 272 273 Reprisal of all things at last into Gods substance the Cabala of the Pendets 36 Resora an Indian Idol 29 Revel 22. 9. its various reading 175 Rites of worship their indecence great number taxed 5 6 7 8 Romans their Religion when corrupted 59 S. Rosa made a Patroness 232 W. Rufus his Apparition 262 S. SAbbath designed against Idolatry 99 100 Sacrifices enjoined as a means against Idolatry 100 101 Saint-worship two occasions of it 217 218 219 220 Saints little mention of their appearing unraised in SS 206 Solomon 's beginning of Idolatry 103 342 Sanedrim above what 105 Saturday where and how sacred to the Virgin 249 Sandius his conceit about the Holy Ghost 399 Scarabee the Hieroglyphick of the Sun 19 Scaliger a mistake of his 364 Not Seen his shape what it means 373 Mr. Selden answered about the Antiquity of Apis 114 to 117 Semis a Northern Idol 125 Serapis Pluto 119 124 141 His image 91 120 Seraphim what 351 to 360 Serpent which seduced Eve what and in what form 354 355 Of the Brazen-serpent 359 360 Serpents sacred 352 353 Of the fiery flying kind 352 Servetus his Frenzies 158 Signs external Idolatry by them 286 to 290. what allow'd at Trent 285 Sleep of the soul 162 Sneezing Prayer at it 10 307 Socinians make Christ a kind of thinking Machine 169 170 Sons of God in Gen. 6. 1 2. what 39 Sophocles 's one God 56 Soul of the world an assistant form 35 394 395 Varro 's God 54 called the Father in Plato 394 408 Not very God as explain'd by Plato 401 402 403 Spalato his judgment concerning Saint-worship 263 Spirit moving the Chaos whether a mighty wind 409 Spirits whence their worship 34 Squango an Enthusiast of New-England 75 Statues of Idols what 30 69 88 89 90 91 Sun and Moon the first Idols 47 48 Sun a statue 68 Several Hieroglyphicks of it 115 Called the divine Harp 71 And the seat of Christ 278 323 377 Superstition described 3 4 5 Of the Pharisees what 9 Syncellus refuted 119 Shechinah whence 372 T TAbernacle of Moloch what 102 Holy Table by some called the Ark 389 390 Temple of Solomon what 339. whence occasioned acc to S. Chrysost 329. and Maimon 340. Christ the Temple 374 375 Prayers towards the Temple 369 Teraphim Seraphim Urim the same 349 350 Tertullian 's opinion of Idolatry in Seth 's time 38 Tetractys of Pythagoras 405 406. of the Gnosticks 153 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what 373 S. Thomas of Canterbury a devout servant of the Virgins 245 His shirt said to be mended by her 261 His Saintship doubted 256 Thorn a German Idol 27 28 Mr. Thorndike his opinion of worshipping Idols as ultimate objects 95. of Romish Forms of Prayer 190 191. of Idolatry as unjustly charged on the Church of Rome 176. of the peril of Idolatry in it 203 Throne and Fund of Matter what 394 Thrones Principalities Powers c. in S. Paul what 165 to 167 Tillage of Egypt 136 137 Truth by Christ in Joh. 1. 17. what 365 Trinity of its appearing under the Old Covenant 318 328 Triad Platonick how one 398 Thummim what 347 348 349 350 351 361 to 365 Two why Seraphim in the Pect Two 356 V U VAtablus 's exp of Bama 43 Of the Angel of Greece 83 Ubiquity whether ascribed to Saints and Angels by the Worshippers of them 204 205 Tho. de Villa Nova a Guardian-Saint 232 233 Ulma it s many Guardian-spirits 220 221 Viretus 's mistake about Plato 's Image of God 73 H. Virgin Forms of Prayer to her 189 190 195 198 201 211 212 225 227 230 231 235 By some Romanists parallel'd with Christ 248 249 251 Origine of her worship 251 252 A general Patroness acc to R. Rapine 234 235. and acc to the Synod of Mexico 249 Her seven joys on earth and
of object it deservedly obtaineth that high honour This is strange language from the Provincial for Belgium But the Fathers of Trent spake more modestly and we will take their words into further consideration They allow external signs of worship both before and to an Image The external signs mentioned by them are saluting uncovering the Head kneeling bowing or prostration And the Synod of Cambray teacheth that the external signs of that Honour Worship and Invocation which they refer to the thing signified such as are bending of the knee and other signs of the like kind are given rightly to Images And it would not have this seem absurd or impious to any man whilst by the signs they worship the Prototypes This declaration of honouring the Image it self Mr. Thorndike taxeth as an idle thing he might also have proceeded and called it perillous and a means of scandal For the external honour of Christ is his honour though not the only honour which is due to him And sometimes Hypocrites promote his Honour in the world by the meer shews of it and sometimes men blindly devout betray it by exhibiting the signes of it where they are not due It is true that salutation is both a Civil and a Religious ceremony Coecilius in Minutius Foelix pointing to the Image of Serapis Kissed his hand in token of his devotion to that Idol And the Romans were wont when they complemented one another first to reach forth their hand and then drawing it up to their mouth to kiss it and this was called adoring and venerating of them So Tacitus saies of Otho that he stretched out his hand and adored the people and threw his Kisses among them And of Nero that he worshipped or venerated the Assemblie with his hand Also Bowing Kneeling Prostration are equivocal signes and as we use them towards God so we do the like towards Princes and before their empty Chairs of State Before them I say for to bow to them though it be not Idolatry yet it is a debasement of our reasonable persons For that external sign is the sign of an homage not due to them but to the absent Prince of whom they put us in mind and the Ceremonie interprets and declares that inward homage and submission to them whose Chairs they are Now though such signes are thus equivocal yet they are so determined by their Objects and Circumstances to their particular sense that a weak capacity can scarce commit an error in their interpretation He that sees a Cross made by a Shepherd on one of his Sheep does not think it signifies alike with the Cross impression which a Priest or metaphorical Shepheard makes at the Holy Font on the Forehead of a Child whom he hath just incorporated into his Flock He that sees another saluting him by pulling off his Hat and bowing and crying God save you cannot think he is thereby made a God or an Idol but he interprets all this as a sign of respect according to the usage of his Country But if he sees a second James Naylor riding on an Ass in triumph into Bristol and hears the women cry Hosannah and sees them bow their knees he hath cause to believe that they are both mad and idolatrous so much there is of Idolatry in that which the Quakers judged Religion and so little of it in that civility which they think is irreligion and the worship of the creature He thas sees an Artist in the Shop of a Statuary kneeling before the Image of Hercules and finishing his Foot will look upon him as a man employed in his mechanical Trade But if he finds him in a Church at the hours of Prayer kneeling or prostrate with uncovered Head with Beads in his Hands and Tears in his Eyes and Kisses from his Mouth at the Pedestal of a Crucifix or of an Image of Christ an Image set up for that use an Image consecrated and perfumed with consecrated Incense and rendred illustrious with consecrated Tapers he will not then think him at his ordinary work but at his earnest devotion Now it may here be properly demanded of a Romanist whether the sign of bowing kneeling or prostration be exhibited to the Image alone to God alone or to both of them and if to both whether in equal or unequal degrees It cannot be said that it is done only to the Image as a sign of civil respect and not to God because the man is exercising himself in such devotions as have God only the Romanists confessing it for their ultimate Object He is at his Prayers to God or some person in the Trinity and kneeling or bowing at such a time is as much the external part of worship as the submission of the mind is the part internal It cannot be said by a true Romanist to be done to God only because the Great Synod and the Rituals of that Church declare such external Ceremonies to be addresses to the very Images as Images of Christ Such Ceremonies the Synod of Nice seemeth generally to mean when it presseth the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worship or adoration of Images i. e. the veneration of the body of which men only can take cognizance Such veneration the Council of Trent as hath appeared already doth give by her decree to the very Images with regard to their divine Relation though not in respect to their matter or form The Missal commands the Priest after having fixed the Cross in a place prepared for it before the Altar to pull off his Shoos and adore the Cross that is not orare ad the old derivation of adorare to pray to it for it prescribes no form there but to bow to it and then to kiss it The Pontifical indeed speaketh sometimes of worshipping before an Image but in other places it râ—…quireth the worship of it For so in the benediction of a nâ—…w Cross the Bishop is required once and again to bow his Knees before it and to adore it devoutly Nay once it declareth that the worship Latria is due to the Cross. It cannot be said by a Romanist who regardeth his Creâ—…d that this external address is made to Christ and his Image in â—…qual degree for that were to give Honour properly Divine unto a Creature a sign of Honour being Honour An Act of acknowledgement in our selves and a means of procuring it amongst other persons They must then say if they will speak with shew of consistence that the mind doth apply the act of incurvation to the Image as a sign of inferior honour and to Christ as a sign of that honour which is supream That the Case is like to that of Naaman before his conversion unto Judaism for then he worshipped the Idol of Rimmon with religious worship and yet by the same act of external adoration or bowing he did testifie his civil respect to his Master that leaned on him But their worship is not so circumstantiated as