believe the seasons of the year and the affairs of humane life to be managed by certain Spirits under him whom they endeavour to propitiate by certain rites of worship Leo Africanus testifies concerning some of the ancient African Idolaters that they worshipped Guighimo i. e. the Lord of Heaven which part of Religion he saith was not delivered to them by any Prophet or Teacher but was inspired into them by God himself Varenius takes notice of the false and imperfect description which is commonly given of the Religion of the Negroes and saith he understood by those who lived long among them that although they worship many Gods yet they acknowledge one Supreme whom they call Fetisso and believe him to be the Author both of the good and evil they receive and therefore endeavour to appease him by many Sacrifices Ceremonies and Prayers Mandelslo saith of the Inhabitants of Madagascar that he was informed that they believe there is one God who made Heaven and Earth and will one day punish bad actions and reward the good Ioh. de Barros saith that the Inhabitants of Monomotapa believe in one God whom they call Mozimo and if we believe him they worship nothing else besides him the same others say of the Mordui a people that inhabit the farther parts of Muscovy who declare that they worship only the Creator of the Universe to whom they offer the first fruits of all things even of their meat and drink casting some parts of them towards Heaven but they have no Idols nor baptism and say they live according to nature but Brietius saith they worship Idols or are Mahumetans Texeira and Pimenta say that the Sect of the Baneans called Lon Kah worship only the Supreme God without Idols but Mexery hath Idols and doth worship them Iosephus Indus a Native of Cranganor saith that the Gentile Idolaters there did worship the God of Heaven under the form of a Statue with three faces and his hands folded whom they called Tambram and he saith the King of Calecut is of the same Religion with them of Cranganor and Ludovicus Vartomannus saith that in Calecut they call the Great God Tamerani whom they believe to be the maker of the World but he adds that they believe him to live at ease and that he hath committed the Government of the world to Deumo whose Image they worship having on his head saith Vartomannus just such a Crown as the Popes of Rome have only it hath three horns upon it and the same is confessed by Iarricus The people of Narsinga likewise believe one Supreme God but worship Idols as the rest of the Indians do Linschoten gives this general testimony of them that although they worship the Sun and Moon yet they acknowledge one God Creator and Governor of all things and do believe the rewards and punishments of another life to be according to mens good or bad actions in this life But withall they worship Idols called Pagodes after such a terrible representation as we make of Devils whom they assert to have lived formerly upon earth and to have been famous for sanctity and miracles and to whom they address themselves as Mediators to the Supreme God for them The Kingdom of Siam is supposed to have been the ancient Seat of the Bramans from whence the Religion of the Indies did spread it self and here Schouten who lived long among them saith that the common perswasion of the Gentiles although different in other points is that there is one Supreme God who created all things and after him many inferiour Gods in Heaven that men shall receive rewards and punishments in another life according to their actions here And that this Religion hath been delivered down to them by the succession of many ages and confirmed by the Testimony of Saints whose memory they worship in their Images which they have set up like so many lesser Deities who have merited Heaven by their good Works The Ceremonies of their worship the nature of their Images the manner of their Oblations the customs of their Talapois or Friers are such that some few things excepted one would imagine no great difference between the Varelles of Siam and the Iesuits Church and devotions there M. de Bourges who hath given an account of the late French Mission into those parts confesses that their external devotion to their Images is extraordinary that they offer no bloody sacrifices but all their oblations are of the fruits of the earth and that they free themselves from the charge of Idolatry because they acknowledge and worship one God who is Lord over all and that their Images are intended to preserve the Memories of their Saints that by the sight of them the people might be excited to imitate their vertues And it is very true saith he that the Priests of Siam do thus answer the Christians who charge them with Idolatry and think themselves no more guilty than the Missionaries of the Church of Rome who charge them But he thinks he hath cleared the difference between them by saying that those of Siam are more uncertain in the belief of the Supreme God and defective in giving any peculiar worship to him and that they terminate their worship absolutely upon their Idols and ask of them those things which God alone can give As to the former we have seen the general consent of the Indians in the belief of a Supreme God which is no token of their uncertainty and that many of them did think internal worship most proper to him and for the latter if they suppose those Deities to be so by participation and subordinate to the Supreme I do not see how the difference is made appear between the addresses they made to their Saints by their Images and those made in the Church of Rome unless it be sufficient to say that the Pope at Rome hath only power to Canonize Saints and not the High-Priest of Siam And therefore Campanella very wisely confesses upon these principles the Heathens were no more guilty of Idolatry than themselves in case the persons they worshipped had real vertues and he doth not blame the wiser Gentiles but the common people who forgot the true God and worshipped their Varelles or Images with the worship of Latria which the Church of Rome likewise gives to the Cross but of these things afterwards If from the Indies the model of this Discourse would allow us to search into the Idolatries of these Northern parts we should find that the Nations which were the deepest sunk into Idolatry did yet retain a sense of one Supreme Deity Among whom we may justly reckon our Saxon Ancestors and yet from the Gothick Antiquities which have been lately published we have reason to believe that there was a Supreme God acknowledged among them too For in the Edda of Snorro Sturleson which contains the ancient Religion of the Goths the first
difficulties 2. But when they deliver their minds freely they reserve no one act of external adoration as proper to God and to be performed by all Christians Bellarmin saith that fere omnes actus exteriores communes sunt omni adorationi almost all external acts are common to the adoration of God and the Creatures excepting sacrifice and what belongs to that as Temples Altars and Priests which he saith God hath reserved to himself Arriaga saith that there is no external act of adoration but may be given to creatures excepting only sacrifice Suarez that sacrifice it self doth not signifie our acknowledgement of Gods soveraignty of it self but only by custom and imposition for the killing of a sacrifice doth not of it self signifie that God is the Author of Life and Death And for other parts of Religious worship he confesses that Temples are erected and Festivals kept to the honour of Saints at least secondarily that they are worshipped with Fastings Vigils Pilgrimages and such like that their worship is deservedly called Religious worship 1. Because it consists of Religious actions 2. Because it is so nearly conjoyned with divine worship 3. Because it tends to mens improvement in Religion 4. Because it is founded in sanctity which is next to Religion It seems then nothing is left to God but having the same things done to him in the first place which may in a secondary respect be done to his creatures for we are told that even Sacrifice it self may be offered to God for the honour of his creatures But what is this Sacrifice now among Christians which is peculiar to God There is no other saith Arriaga but that of the Altar and this as Cajetan observes cannot reach to all Christians but only belongs to the Priests to offer it but instead of this he saith from Aquinas that two sorts of spiritual sacrifices do belong to all viz. the offering up of their minds in devotion to God and the offering up the acts of other vertues So that at last we see no one external act of proper Religious worship is by them left as peculiar to God which all mankind are obliged to perform And to this purpose we have the plain resolution of Cardinal Lugo which I the rather mention because of his great Authority and Eminency and writing since the rest He puts the question Whether there be any sign or external act of adoration which it is not lawful to give to any but to God alone For saith he genuflection and smitting the breast and such like are given to Saints To this he answers 1. That it is possible such a sign or external act may be instituted by men as may signifie only that worship which is proper to God 2. That Sacrifice is not properly an act of adoration but of another kind distinct from it 3. That there is no one external act of adoration which is proper to Latria or the worship peculiar to God But to what end were there any such thing as publique Religious Worship among men on the account of Gods peculiar Soveraignty over us if the acts of that worship be not appropriated to himself For there is no necessity of publique worship for the acts of the mind which are performed out of the view of others What is publique must be external and if there be any necessity that God be publickly owned and worshipped by us as our only Lord and Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth the very same natural reason which directs to this doth likewise shew that what is intended for his publique worship ought to be communicated to none else besides him Neither is it enough that he have the first and chief place in worship which only implies a superiority of order and degree but since he is acknowledged to be infinitely above all creatures and to be the sole Creator and Governour of the world the acts of worship to him as such ought to be peculiar and appropriated wholly to himself For if other Beings come to have a share although secondarily with him in the acts of his worship they ought to have a share with him in the proper reason of that worship i. e. in the Creation and Government of the world But if Creation and Providence be the Foundations of divine worship and those do suppose infinite and incommunicable perfections on what pretence of reason can beings infinitely distant from God come to have a share in the Acts of Religious worship which were purposely designed for the acknowledgement of such a Being whom the most excellent creatures are bound to adore as well as we Is not this joyning subjects together with their Soveraign in the highest expressions of our duty to him What Prince in the world would bear such an affront from an Embassadour of a Foreign Prince as that in a publique Audience when he is introduced on purpose to express the Honour that is to be given to the Person of the King he should use all the same expressions of it to his servants and subjects who stand about him that he doth to himself Would this be a just excuse that these were done to him in the first place and only secondarily to his servants And if this would not be born by one Prince from the subject of another how much less from his own And if Princes will not bear this from their subjects who are of the same nature with themselves how can men be so vain to imagine the great God will bear it from his creatures to have no publique Religious act of worship given to himself but what is given to those who are confessed to be infinitely distant from him It is not the supposition of excellency in them will ever justifie this For let their excellency be never so great it is still but a created excellency And their excellency can never make them so much above us as their being created makes them inferiour to God and in acts of Religious worship we ought not so much to consider our distance from them as their distance from God Let them be never so much above us they are creatures still and that sets them at an infinite distance from him whereas all their excellencies can make them but finitely distant from us Let them be never so excellent they still worship the same God that we do and with the most profound adoration of Him and if their excellency be consistent with their worship of a Being infinitely above them it is not sufficient to make them an object of adoration to us We are willing to give them the utmost their excellency requires from us provided we be well assured of it and that is a mighty esteem of them and a readiness to express our honour in celebrating their praises and commending them as Heroick patterns of goodness and supposing them actually present with us the expressing our esteem in the highest tokens of respect that are used among men
that only reads T. G. and doth not understand the practice of the Roman Church would imagine all the dispute between him and me were whether the Saints in Heaven be capable of receiving any honour from men and whether that honour being given upon the account of Religion might be called Religious Honour or no This were indeed to wrangle about words which I perfectly hate I will therefore freely tell him how far I yield in this matter that he may better understand where the difficulty lyes 1. I yield that the Saints in Heaven do deserve real honour and esteem from us and I do agree with Mr. Thorndike whose words he cites therein that to dispute whether we are bound to honour the Saints were to dispute whether we are to be Christians or whether we believe them to be Saints in Heaven For on supposition that we believe that the greatest excellencies of mens minds come from the Grace of God communicated to men through Iesus Christ and we are assured that such persons now in Heaven were possessed of those excellencies it is impossible we should do otherwise than esteem and honour them For honour in this sense is nothing else but the due apprehension of anothers excellency and therefore it must be greater or lesser according to the nature and degree of those excellencies Since therefore we believe the Saints in Heaven are possessed of them in a higher degree than they were on earth our esteem of them must increase according to the measure of their perfections 2. That the honour we have for them may be called Religious honour because it is upon the account of those we may call Religious excellencies as they are distinguished from meer natural endowments and civil accomplishments On which account I will grant that is not properly civil honour because the motive or reason of the one is really different from the other And although the whole Church of Christ in Heaven and Earth make up one Body yet the nature of that Society is so different from a Civil Society that a different title and denomination ought to be given to the honour which belongs to either of them and the honour of those of the triumphant Church may the better be called Religious because it is an honour which particularly descends from the object of Religion viz. God himself as the fountain of it as civil honour doth from the Head of a Civil Society 3. That this honour may be expressed in such outward acts as are most agreeable to the nature of it And herein lyes a considerable difference between the honour of men for natural and acquired excellencies and divine graces that those having more of humane nature in them the honour doth more directly redound to the possessor of them but in Divine Graces which are more immediately conveyed into the souls of men through a supernatural assistance the Honour doth properly belong to the Giver of them Therefore the most agreeable expression of the honour of Saints is solemn Thanksgiving to God for them for thereby we acknowledge the true fountain of all the good they did or received However for the incouragement of men to follow their examples and to perpetuate their memories the primitive Christians thought it very fitting to meet at the places of their Martyrdom there to praise God for them and to perform other offices of Religious worship to God and to observe the Anniversary of their sufferings and to have Panegyricks made to set forth their vertues to excite others the more to their imitation Thus far I freely yield to T. G. to let him see what pittiful cavils those are that if men deserve honour for natural or supernatural endowments surely the Saints in Heaven much more do so Who denyes it We give the Saints in Heaven the utmost honour we dare give without robbing God of that which belongs only to him Which is that of Religious worship and consists in the acknowledgements we make of Gods supream excellency together with his Power and Dominion over us and so Religious worship consists in two things 1. Such external acts of Religion which God hath appropriated to himself 2. Such an inward submission of our souls as implyes his Superiority over them and that lyes as to worship 1. In prayer to him for what we want 2. In dependence upon him for help and assistance 3. In Thankfulness to him for what we receive Prayer is a signification of want and the expression of our desire of obtaining that which we need and whosoever beggs any thing of another doth in so doing not only acknowledge his own indigency but the others power to supply him therefore Suarez truly observes from Aquinas that as command is towards inferiours so is prayer towards Superiours now to this saith he two things are requisite 1. That a man apprehends it is in the power of the Superiour to give what we ask 2. That he is willing to give it if it be asked of him The expectation of the performance of our desire is that we call dependence upon him for help and assistance and our acknowledgement of his doing it is Thankfulness Now if we consider Prayer as a part of Religious worship we are to enquire on what account it comes to be so not as though thereby we did discover any thing to God which he did not know before nor as though we hoped to change his will upon our prayer but that thereby we profess our subjection to him and our dependence on him for the supply of our necessities For although prayer be looked on by us as the means to obtain our requests yet the consideration upon which that becomes a means is that thereby we express our most humble dependence upon God It being the difference observed by Gul. Parisiensis between humane and divine prayer that prayer among men is supposed a means to change the Person to whom we pray but prayer to God doth not change him but fits us for receiving the things prayed for This one consideration is of greater importance towards the resolution of our present question than hath been hitherto imagined for the Question of invocation doth not depend so much upon the manner of obtaining the thing we desire i. e. whether we pray to the Saints to obtain things by their merits and intercessions which is allowed and contended for by all in the Roman Church or whether it be that they do bestow the things themselves upon us which they deny but the true State of the Question is this whether by the manner of Invocation of Saints which is allowed and practised in the Roman Church they do not give that worship to Saints which is only peculiar to God Now we are farther to consider wherein that act of worship towards God doth lye which is not in an act of the mind whereby we apprehend God to be the first and independent cause of all good but in an act of dependence upon him for the
in another place he tells us what that worship did consist in which he there calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which we are certain what he meant by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before and so he reckons up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the first place their prayers or supplications and then vows hymns oblations and sacrifices the giving of any of these to Saints were to worship them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not as the ignorant or wilfully blind Writers of the Roman Church when they meet with this word they cry out presently mark that not with Latria and presently imagine that what sense a word hath obtained among them if they meet with it in the Fathers it must needs signifie the same thing when the sense of words hath been so strangely perverted by them as will more particularly appear by this very distinction of Latria and Dulia which they make S. Augustine the Author of but have carried it far beyond his meaning I come therefore to consider S. Austins mind in this matter which I am the more obliged to do since T. G. so unreasonably triumphs in S. Austins opinion in this matter and is not only content to drag me at his Chariot wheels but he makes a shew of me and calls people to see by my example to what miserable shifts and disingenuous arts they are put who will shut their eyes and fight against the light of a noon-day truth when I first read these words I began to rub my eyes and to look about me and to wonder what the matter was and I find my self as willing to see light as another and my conscience never yet accused me of using disingenuous arts in dealing with them if T. G. can clear himself as well it is the better for him I am sure by standers have not thought so as appears at large by Dr. Whitby especially in his last Chapter against him But it is not my business to recriminate hopeing sufficiently to clear my self in this matter It seems I had said that S. Augustine denyes that any Religious worship was performed to the Martyrs this T. G. again saith I could not affirm without shutting my eyes and yet I thank God by the help of my eyes I find S. Augustin saying the same thing still For is it not S. Augustin that saith non sit nobis Religio cultus hominum mortuorum let not the worship of dead men be any part of our Religion for if they have lived piously they do not desire such honours from us but they would have us to worship him by whom we may become partakers of their happiness honorandi ergo sunt propter imitationem non adorandi propter Religionem Is it possible for any man to speak plainer than S. Austin doth that they are not to have Religious worship given to them but such honour as may excite us to an imitation of them And this not by chance or in some incoherent passage but in a set discourse on purpose where he argues with strong reason against the Religious worship of Angels as well as Saints to the end of that Book And saith the utmost they expect from us is the honour of our love and not of our service and therefore S. Augustin did not by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 understand the service of Saints and Angels which he there disputes against from our happiness coming only from God our being the Temples of God the Angels prohibiting S. John to worship him and bidding him to worship God and that the very name of Religion is from tying our Souls to God alone Whosoever of the Angels loves God saith he loves me for worshipping him and he that hath Gods favour hath the favour of all that are good Therefore let our Religion bind us faster to one omnipotent God between whom and us there is no creature interposed with much more to the same purpose Is it not the same S. Austin that saith Haec est Religio Christiana ut colatur unus Deus this is the Christian Religion to worship one God and that for this reason because God only can make the Soul happy for saith he it is made happy only by the participation of God and not of a blessed Soul or Angel Not as though this were intended only against the expectation of our blessedness wholly from Saints or Angels but he makes use of this as an argument to prove that we ought to worship God alone who only is able to make us happy Is it not the same S. Austin that saith this is the character of the true Religion that it unites us only to one God without giving worship to any other Being how excellent soever and he looks on this as a divine and singular part of the Christian doctrine nullam creaturam colendam esse animae that no creature have the worship of our Soul what did he then think of praying to creatures not only with our voyce but our mind too as the Council of Trent saith it is profitable for us to do and not only for their prayers but for their help and assistance but saith good S. Austin the most wise and perfect man the most accomplished and happy soul is only to be loved and imitated and honour given to it according to its desert and order for thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve Could any man speak more plainly and fully against giving any Religious worship to creatures than he doth Is it not the same S. Austin that tells Maximus Madaurensis that in the Christian Church none that were dead were worshipped and nothing adored as God that is made by God but only one God who created all things Here T. G. smiles and thinks to avoid this presently for S. Austin speaks of any thing being adored as God which they abhor to do but his smiling will be soon over if he considers what being adored as God there means for no one ever suspected that the Christians believed the Martyrs to be the Supream God but only that they worshipped them as Gods of a lower rank by participation from the Supream And is not the very same thing said and defended in the Roman Church that the Saints are Gods by participation and they have the care and government of the Church committed to them and on that account are worshipped and if this be not being adored as Gods in S. Austins sense I know not what is Is it not the same S. Austin that undertakes to prove against the Platonists that good Spirits are not to be worshipped per tale Religionis obsequium by such Religious worship very right saith T. G. not by the worship of Sacrifices but S. Austin saith neither Sacris nor Sacrificiis which two comprehend all the Rites of Religious worship which were then used For he makes use of several phrases to express the acts of Religious worship sometimes by joyning those two
scarce ever any man discovered greater than in so doing and I fear against his own conscience The true state of the case in S. Austin about the worship of Images is this 1. He exposes the worship of Images in general as a silly and ridiculous thing being of things much inferiour to the meanest Brutes and if men are ashamed to worship Beasts that hear and see and live and move they ought to be much more ashamed to worship a dumb stupid sensless Image and they might with greater reason worship the Mice and Serpents which are not afraid of their Images but shelter themselves within them Now it is plain this discourse of S. Austin doth reach to all sorts of Images for whomsoever they are intended For an Image made for the true God hath no more sense or life or motion in it than one of T. G's Idols or an Image made for a Chimera But because the Christian Church knew nothing at that time of the worship of Images therefore he directs his discourse against the Heathens to consider the pleas and excuses they made for it 2. He reckons up their several pleas for their Images 1. Some said that there was a secret Deity which lay hid in the Image and which they worshipped through it 2. Others that thought themselves of a more refined Religion said they neither worshipped Images nor Daemons but only beheld in the corporeal Image the Symbol of that which they ought to worship Which is the place cited by T. G. Now I appeal to the Reader whether this very place doth not prove what I intended viz. that the Heathens did look on their Images as Symbols or representations of that Being to which they gave divine worship Whereby I see T. G. hath done me a kindness indeed which I thank him for i.e. he hath proved that which I did intend and confuted that which I did not But there remains yet another charge of disingenuity to be answered which concerns the quotation of Trigantius the occasion whereof was this I had said if S. Paul had not thought men to blame in the worship of God by an Image he would never have condemned them for it as he doth Rom. 1. But he ought to have done as the Iesuits in China did who never condemned the people for worshipping Images but for worshipping false Gods by them and perswaded them not to lay them aside but to convert them to the honour of the true God and so melted down the former Images and made new ones of them Can we imagine S. Paul meant the same thing when he blames men not for believing them to be Gods but that God could be worshipped by the Work of mens hands and for changing thereby the glory due to God in regard of his infinite and incorruptible Being into mean and unworthy Images thinking thereby to give honour to him These are my words Now observe T. G's ingenuity instead of answering the argument he falls to the exercise of his best Talent cavilling the force of the argument lay in this S. Paul condemns the very manner of worshipping God by Images the Iesuits in China do not that but bid them lay aside their old Images and worship new ones what is the reason that the Iesuits vary from S. Pauls method but only because they differ in judgement i. e. S. Paul thought the worship of Images in general unlawful the Iesuits do not but only the Images of false Gods This was the thing designed by me to which he gives no manner of answer but only for several pages he tells a sad story how hard it was for him to come by the Book of Trigautius when he had it he thought he had gotten a mighty advantage against me because forsooth I render simulachra Images for the whole charge comes to this at last for whereas Trigautius distinguished the Heathen simulachra from the Images of Christ because I did not in the account of the thing for I designed no verbal translation as T. G. knew well enough by the character therefore this is charged to be the effect of some very bad design and an instance of my want of fidelity sincerity honesty ingenuity and what not I am sorry Trigautius was so hard to come by for it is possible if he had not been put to so much trouble in procuring him I might have escaped better But is it in good earnest such a horrible fault to translate simulachra Images I see what a good thing it is to have a good Catholick Dictionary for a hundred to one but others would have rendred it as I have done I had thought Tully's using the words Statuae Imagines Signa and simulachra promiscuously might have been sufficient ground for my translating it by Images But it seems the Ecclesiastical use of the word is otherwise I had thought Isidore a good Iudge of the Ecclesiastical use of a word and he uses it promiscuously with Imagines effigies but I confess Ecclesiastical uses have been much changed since Isidores time And it seems simulachra is only applyed to Heathen Images by no means to those among Christians But why so do they not vultum simulare as Horace expresses it bear a resemblance to what they represent Do they not pariles line as principali ab ore deducere which is Arnobius his description of the proper notion of simulachrum But for all this their Images are not simulachra and shall not be simulachra It seems when Images were baptized Christian they lost their former name and have gotten a new one and very much good may it do them and all those that worship them if the change of name would excuse their guilt Yet Agobardus was of another opinion when he saith that if those who forsook the worship of Devils had been bidden to worship the Images of Saints puto quod videretur eis non tam Idola reliquisse quam simulachra mutâsse I think saith he that it would have seemed to them that they had not left their Idols but only changed their Images Where we see Agobardus is my Author for making simulachra common to the Images of Heathens and Christians And S. Augustin calls the Image of the true God simulachrum But to set aside Authorities I hope the Images used in China before the Gentiles conversion and those after did agree in something common to them both although they were before the Images of false Gods and after of Christ or the B. Virgin yet they were all Images still Might I not be allowed to say that the Jesuits did not perswade the Converts to lay aside the use of Images but to convert them to the honour of the true God and so melted down the former Images and made new ones of them No by no means For them and them coming after one another and the first being the Images of false Gods it was scarce possible for an ordinary Protestant Reader not to
Stoicks forbear adultery and so may the Epicureans but the former do it because it is a thing repugnant to Nature and civil Society the latter because allowing themselves this single pleasure may debar them of many more so saith he in this matter those barbarous Nations forbear Images on other accounts than Iews and Christians do who dare not make use of this way of worshipping God Observe that he doth not say this of the way of worshipping false Gods or Images for Gods but of worshippin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Deity And he gives three principal reasons wherein they differed from those Nations 1. Because this way of worship did disparage the Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 again by drawing it down to matter so fashioned 2. Because the evil spirits were apt to harbour in those Images and to take pleasure in the sacrifices there offered which reason as far as it respects the blood of Sacrifices doth relate to the Heathen Images standing over the Altars at which the Sacrifices were offered But then Celsus might say what is all this to the purpose my question is why you have no Images in your own way of worship therefore he adds his third reason which made it utterly unlawful for Christians as well as Iews to worship them which is the Law of God mentioned before now I say if Origen answered pertinently he must give this as the Reason why Christians used no Images in their own way of worship and consequently was so far from thinking the worship of Images indifferent that he thought Christians ought rather to suffer Martyrdom than to worship them But to put this beyond possibility of contradiction Origen mentions a saying of Heraclitus objected by Celsus that it is a foolish thing to pray to Images unless a man know the Gods and Heroes worshipped by them which saying Celsus approves and saith the Christians were Fools because they utterly contemned Images in totum the Latin interpreter renders it To which Origen thus answers we acknowledge that God may be known and his only Son and those whom he hath honoured with the Title of Gods who partake of his Divinity and are different from the Heathen Deities which the Scripture calls Devils i.e. causally if not essentially as Cajetan distinguisheth but saith he it is impossible for him that knows God to worship Images Mark that he doth not say it is impossible for him that knows the Idols of the Heathens to worship them or the evil spirits that lurk in their Images but for him that knows the true God and his Son Christ Iesus and the holy Angels to do it Is it possible after this to believe that Origen supposed the worship of Images to be indifferent in it self and that God and Christ and Angels might be lawfully worshipped by them Was all this only periculum offensionis jealousie of offence before the Heathen Idolatry was rooted out Which supposition makes the primitive Christians in plain terms jugglers and impostors to pretend that to be utterly unlawful even for themselves to do and to mean no more by it but this yes it is unlawful to do it while there is any danger of Heathenism but when once that is overthrown then we may worship Images as well as the best of them For my part I believe the primitive Christians to have been men of so much honesty and integrity that they would never have talked at this rate against the worship of Images as not only Origen but the rest of them the best and wisest among them did as I have shewed in the foregoing Chapter if they had this secret reserve in their minds that when Heathenism was sunk past recovery then they might do the same things which they utterly condemned now Which would be just like some that we have heard of who while there was any likelyhood of the Royal Authority of this Nation recovering itself then they cry'd out upon Kingly Government as illegal Tyrannical and Antichristian but when the King was murdered and the power came into their own hands then it was lawful for the Saints to exercise that power which was not fit to be enjoyed by the Wicked of the World So these men make the most excellent Christians to be like a pack of Hypocrites The Heathens every where asked them as may be seen in Lactantius Arnobius Minucius and others as well as Origen what is the matter with you Christians that you have no Images in your Churches what if you dare not joyn with us in our worship why do not you make use of them in your own Is it only humour singularity and affectation of Novelty in You If it be you shew what manner of men you are No truly say they gravely and seriously we do it not because we dare not do it for we are afraid of displeasing and dishonouring God by it and we will on that account rather choose to dye than do it Upon such an answer the Heathens might think them honest and simple men that did not know what to do with their lives who were so willing to part with them on such easie terms But if they had heard the bottom of all this was only a cunning and sly trick to undermine Paganism and that they meant no such thing as though it were unlawful in it self but only unlawful till they had gotten the better of them what would they have thought of such men no otherwise than that they were a company of base Hypocrites that pretended one thing and meant another and that the Wicked of the World might not worship Images but the Saints might when they had the Power in their hands although before they declaimed against it as the most vile mean and unworthy way of worship that ever came into the heads of men that there could be no Religion where it obtained that it was worse than the worship of Beasts that it was more reasonable to worship the artificers themselves than the Images made by them that rats and mice had less folly than mankind for they had no fears of what men fell down before with trembling and great shews of devotion These and many such things as these the Fathers speak freely openly frequently on all occasions in all places against the worship of Images and after all this was no more meant by it but only this Thou O Heathen must not worship Images but I may And why not as well might the Heathen reply Thou must not commit adultery but I may Does the nature of the commands you boast so much of alter with mens persons Is that indeed lawful for you that is not for us Where doth the Law of Moses say Thou shalt not worship the Images that we worship but thou maist worship the Images that Christians worship And if the Law makes no difference either leave off your foolish babbling against our Images or condemn your own For to our understanding yours are as much against the Law as ours are
false representation for it is no otherwise false than every Image of a man is so for no Image can represent the invisible Nature of a Man And it adds much force to this that the Author of the Greek Excerpta about the use of Images from the Nicene Council and the Writers of that time saith that the design of the second Commandment is against making any Images of God which he looks on not only as an absurd but a very wicked practice and which he saith was then common among the Aegyptians 3. When an Image is worshipped for the sake of any sanctity vertue or Divinity abiding in it Whosoever doth so saith Iacobus Almain is an Idolater and so much is implyed in the Council of Trent it self when it declares that no worship is to be given to an Image on any such account if so then the doing it is a thing forbidden and unlawful and not only so but they looked on this as the certain way of putting a difference between Idolatry and their worship but men may suppose sanctity vertue and Divinity to be in an Image of a real Being and therefore such an Image may be properly an Idol and so Vasquez confesses that this is Idolatry to give worship although it be inferiour to any inanimate being as an Image is for the sake of any thing belonging to it or inherent in it Thus I have shewed that there is no pretence to excuse the worship of Images from being Idolatry and a breach of the second Commandment because an Idol is only a representation of only imaginary beings as T. G. saith such as Sphinxes Tritons Centaurs or the like 2. I now come to shew more particularly what the sense of the Law is by considering what T. G. saith in answer to what I had formerly said about it the original Question between us was whether God by this Law hath forbidden the giving any worship to himself by an Image No saith T. G. he hath not but what he forbids there is only giving his worship to Idols To resolve this Question being about the sense of a Law I proposed three wayes 1. From the Terms in which the Law is expressed 2. From the Reason annexed to it 3. From the judgement of the Law-giver himself But before T. G. comes to the handling of these he lays down some arguments of his own to shew that God did not intend by this Law to forbid the worshipping of himself by an Image but only the worship of Idols 1. Because the Iews did worship God by bowing down before the Ark and the Cherubim 2. Because S. Austin makes this Commandment to be only an explication of the first To these I shall give a distinct answer 1. T. G. on all occasions lays great weight on the worshipping of God before the Ark and the Cherubims which he makes to be the parallel of their worshipping God by bowing or kneeling before a Crucifix to which instance I had given this Answer 1. That the Iews only directed their worship towards the place where God had promised to be signally present among them which signifies no more to the worship of Images than our lifting our eyes to heaven doth when we pray because God is more especially present there 2. That though the Cherubims were there yet they were alwayes hid from the sight of the people the High-Priest himself going into the Holy of Holies but once a year and that the Cherubims were no representations of God but his Throne was between them on the Mercy Seat but that they were Hieroglyphical Figures of Gods own appointing which the Iews know no more than we do which are plain arguments they were never intended for objects of worship for then they must not have been meer appendices to another thing but would have been publickly exposed as the Images are in the Roman Churches and their form as well known as any of the B. Virgin But T. G. still insists upon it that the Reverence which the Iews shewed to the Ark and Cherubims was of the same nature with the worship they give to Images and he thinks I have not answered the argument he brought for it Therefore to give him all reasonable satisfaction I shall 1. Compare their worship of Images and these together 2. Examine all the colour of argument he produces for the worship of these among the Iews 1. For comparing their worship of Images with the Iews worshipping God before the Ark and the Cherubims As to their worship of Images I need only repeat 1. That they are publickly set up and exposed for worship in their Churches and over their Altars 2. That they are consecrated for this end 3. That the people in their devotions bow to them kneel and pray before them with all expressions of Reverence 4. That the Councils of Nice and Trent have decreed that worship is to be given to them on the account of their representation because the honour given to them passes to the exemplar 5. That the Images themselves on the account of their representation are a proper object of inferiour worship and that considered together with the exemplar they make up one entire object of supreme worship in these their Divines generally agree and condemn the opinion of those who say That they are only to worship the exemplar before the Image as contrary to the Decrees of Councils But if the Ark and Cherubims were neither set up nor exposed nor consecrated as objects of worship if the People of the Iews never thought them to be so nor worshipped them as such if the utmost were only that which the Divines of the Roman Church condemn viz. making them only a circumstance and not an object of worship then I hope the difference will appear so great that T. G. himself may be ashamed of insisting so much on so weak a parallel In external Acts of worship these two things are to be distinguished 1. The Object of worship or the thing to which that worship is given 2. The local circumstance of expressing that worship towards that object That there is a real difference between the object and local circumstance of worship by our lifting up our hands and eyes towards heaven when we worship God but no man that understands our Religion can say that we worship the heavens but only God as present in them wherefore God is the object and looking up to heaven barely the circumstance When we praise any person for some excellency in him if he be present we naturally turn our face towards him to let others by that circumstance understand of whom we speak but which way soever we looked the same person would be the object of our praise when we do this at anothers mentioning his name no man of common understanding will say that the praise is directed to the very name of the Person and if a man makes a Panegyrick upon another and reads it out of
inconsistent with the essence of a true Church And since no kind of Idolatry is lawful if the Roman Church hold it to be so she must needs hold an errour inconsistent with some Truth Most profoundly argued He only ought to have subsumed as I think such Logicians as I. W. call it but all Errour is Fundamental and inconsistent with the essence of a true Church or That Infallibility is necessary to the Being of a Church and when he proves that I promise to renounce the charge of Idolatry Now it is not possible saith I. W. that the Roman Church should bold any Idolatry lawful knowing it to be Idolatry unless she holds that some Honour which is due only to God may be given to a Creature I am afraid to be snapt by so cunning a Sophister and therefore I distinguish in time The Roman Church doth not hold any Idolatry lawful which it judges to be Idolatry or the Honour due only to God but the Roman Church may give the real parts of worship due only to God to a meer creature and yet at the same time tell men it is not a part of the Honour which is due to God To make this plain even to the understanding of I. W. The Church of Rome may entertain a false notion of Idolatry or of that worship which is due only to God which false notion being received men may really give the worship that only belongs to God to His Creatures and the utmost errour necessary in this case is no more than having a false notion of Idolatry as that there can be no Idolatry without giving Soveraign Worship to a Creature or that an Idol is the representation only of an Imaginary Being c. Now on these suppositions no more is necessary to the practice of Idolatry than being deceived in the notion of it If therefore T. G. or I.W. will prove that the Church of Rome can never be deceived in the notion of it or that it is repugnant to the essence of a Church to have a false notion of Idolatry they do something towards the proving me guilty of a contradiction in acknowledging the Church of Rome to be a true Church and yet charging it with Idolatry But I. W. saith That 't is impossible the Roman Church should teach or hold any kind of Idolatry whatsoever it be but she must hold expressly or implicitly that some Honour due only to God may be given to a meer Creature Such kind of stuff as this would make a man almost repent ever reading Logick which this man pretends so much to for surely Mother Wit is much better than Scholastick Fooling Such a Church which commits or by her doctrines and practises leads to Idolatry needs not to hold i. e. deliver as her judgment that some Honour due only to God may be given to a Creature it is sufficient if she commands or allows such things to be done which in their own nature or by the Law of God is really giving the worship of God to a Creature Yet upon this mistake as gross as it is the poor waspish Creature runs on for many leaves and thinks all that while he proves me guilty of a contradiction But the man hath something in his head which he means although he scarce knows how to express it viz. that in good Catholick Dictionaries a Fundamental errour and a damnable errour and an error inconsistent with the essence of a true Church are terms Synonymous Now I know what he would be at viz. that Infallibility is necessary to the Being of a Church therefore to suppose a Church to err is to suppose it not to be a Church But will he prove me guilty of contradiction by Catholick Dictionaries I beg his pardon for in them Transubstantiation implies none but whosoever writes against them must be guilty of many If he would prove me guilty of Contradiction let him prove it from my own sense and not from theirs Yet he would seem at last to prove that the practice of any kind of Idolatry especially being approved by the Church is destructive to the Being of a Church Which is the only thing he saith that deserves to be farther considered by enquiring into two things 1. Whether a Church allowing and countenancing the practice of Idolacry can be a true Church 2. Whether such a Church can have any power or Authority to consecrate Bishops or ordain Priests For this is a thing which T. G. likewise objects as consequent upon my assertion of their Idolatry that thereby I overthrow all Authority and Iurisdiction in the Church of England as being derived from an Idolatrous Church These are matters which deserve a farther handling and therefore I shall speak to them 1. Whether a Church may continue a true Church and yet allow and practise any kind of Idolatry And to resolve this I resort again to the ten Tribes Supposing what hath been said sufficient to prove them guilty of Idolatry my business is to enquire whether they were a true Church in that time This I. W. denies saying I ought to have proved and not barely supposed that the Idolatry introduced by Ieroboam was not destructive to the being of a True Church and several Protestants he saith produce the Church of Israel to shew that a true visible Church may cease Alas poor man he had heard something of this Nature but he could not tell what they had produced this as an instance against the perpetual Visibility of the Church and he brings it to prove that it ceased to be a true Church and the time they fix upon by his own Confession is when Elias complained that he was left alone in Israel which was not when the Idolatry of the Calves but when that of Baal prevailed among the people of Israel i. e. when they worshipped Beel-samen or the Sun instead of God Now that they were a true Church while they worshipped Ieroboams Calves I prove by these two things 1. That there was no time from Ieroboam to the Captivity of Israel wherein the worship of the Calves was not the established Religion of the ten Tribes this is evident from the expression before mentioned that the Children of Israel departed not from the sins of Jeroboam till God removed Israel out of his sight And it is observable of almost every one of the Kings of Israel that it is said particularly that he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam 2. That during that time God did own them for his People which is all one with making them a True Church Thus Iehu is said to be anointed King over the People of the Lord. And there is a remarkable expression in the time of Iehoahaz that the Lord was gracious unto them and had respect unto them because of his Covenant with Abraham Isaac and Jacob and would not destroy them neither cast he them from his presence as yet Would God have such
worship the same Gods with them nor offer up libations and the smoak of sacrifices to dead men Nor crown and worship Images that they agreed with Menander who said we ought not to worship the work of mens hands not because Devils dwelt in them but because men were the makers of them And he wondered they could call them Gods which they knew to be without soul and dead and to have no likeness to God it was not then upon the account of their being animated by evil Spirits that the Christians rejected this worship for then these reasons would not have held All the resemblance they had was to those evil Spirits that had appeared among men for that was Iustins opinion of the beginning of Idolatry that God had committed the Government of all things under the heavens to particular Angels but these Angels prevaricating by the love of Women did upon them beget Daemons that these Daemons were the great corrupters of mankind and partly by frightful apparitions and by instructing men in Idolatrous rites did by degrees draw men to give them divine worship the people not imagining them to be evil Spirits and so were called by such names as they liked best themselves as Neptune Pluto c. But the true God had no certain name given to him for saith he Father and God and Creator and Lord and Master are not names but titles arising from his works and good deeds and God is not a name but a notion engrafted in humane nature of an unexpressible Being But that God alone is to be worshipped appears by this which is the great command given to Christians Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve with all thy heart and with all thy strength even the Lord God that made thee Where we see the force of the argument used by Iustin in behalf of the Christians lay in Gods peremptory prohibition of giving divine worship to any thing but himself and that founded upon Gods right of dominion over us by vertue of creation In his Book of the Divine Monarchy he shews that although the Heathens did make great use of the Poets to justifie their Polytheism yet they did give clear testimony of one Supreme Deity who was the Maker and Governour of all things for which end he produces the sayings of Aeschylus Sophocles Orpheus Pythagoras Philemon Menander and Euripides all very considerable to this purpose In his works there is extant the resolution of several Questions by a Greek Philosopher and the Christians reply in which nothing can be more evident than that it was agreed on both sides that there was one Supreme God infinitely good powerful and wise Nay the Greek Philosopher looks upon the ignorance of God as a thing impossible because all men naturally agree in the knowledge of God But there are plain evidences in that Book that it is of later date than Iustins time therefore instead of insisting any more on that I shall give a farther proof that in his time it could be no part of the dispute between the Christians and Heathens whether there were one Supreme God that ought to be worshipped by men and that shall be from that very Emperour to whom Eusebius saith Iustin Martyr did make his second Apology viz. M. Aurelius Antoninus It is particularly observed of him by the Roman Historians that he had a great zeal for preserving the Old Roman Religion and Iul. Capitolinus saith that he was so skilful in all the practices of it that he needed not as it was common for one to prompt him because he could say the prayers by heart and he was so confident of the protection of the Gods that he bids Faustina not punish those who had conspired against him for the Gods would defend him his zeal being pleasing to them and therefore Baronius doth not wonder that Iustin and other Christians suffered Martyrdom under him But in the Books which are left of his writing we may easily discover that he firmly believed an eternal Wisdom and Providence which managed the World and that the Gods whose veneration he commends were looked on by him as the subservient Ministers of the Divine Wisdom Reverence the Gods saith he but withal he saith honour that which is most excellent in the world that which disposeth and Governs all which sometimes he calls the all-commanding reason sometimes the Mind and Soul of the World which he expresly saith is but one And in one place he saith that there is but one World and one God and one substance and one Law and one common reason of intelligent beings and one Truth But the great objection against such Testimonies of Antoninus and others lies in this that these only shew the particular opinions of some few men of Philosophical minds but they do not reach to the publick and established Religion among them which seemed to make no difference between the Supreme God and other Deities from whence it follows that they did not give to him any such worship a◠belonged to him Which being the most considerable objection against the design of this present discourse I shall here endeavour to remove it before I produce any farther testimonies of the Fathers For which we must consider wherei◠the Romans did suppose the solemn and outward acts of their Religion to consist viz. in the worship appropriated 〈◊〉 their Temples or in occasional prayers and vows or in some parts of divination whereby they supposed God did make known his mind to them If I can therefore prove that the Romans did in an extraordinary manner make use of all these acts of Religious worship to the Supreme God it will then necessarily follow that the controversie between the Fathers and them about Idolatry could not be about the worship of one Supreme God but about giving Religious worship to any else besides him The Worship performed in their Temples was the most solemn and frequent among them in so much that Tully saith therein the people of Rome exceeded all Nations in the world but the most solemn part of that Worship was that which was performed in the Capitol at Rome and in the Temple of Iupiter Latialis in Alba and both these I shall prove were dedicated to the Supreme God The first Capitol was built at Rome by Numa Pompilius and called by Varro the old Capitol which stood at a good distance from the place where the foundations of the great Temple were laid by Tarquinius Priscus the one being about the Cirque of Flora the other upon the Tarpeian Mountain There is so little left of the memory of the former that for the design of it we are to judge by the general intention of Numa as to the worship of the Deity of which Plutarch gives this account That he forbad the Romans making any Image of God either like to men or beast because the First Being is
Ceres and Bacchus and the madnesses and wickedness of the Greeks in celebrating their Religious mysteries but he saith all things that concerned Religion were said and done among the Romans with greater gravity than among the Greeks or Barbarians By this he would not have any think him ignorant that some of the Greek Fables might be useful to some persons either for natural or moral Philosophy or other purposes but upon the whole matter he did much more approve the Roman Theology because the benefit of those Fables was very little to any and those very few but the common people who are not versed in Philosophy are apt to take these things in the worst sense either from thence to learn to contemn their Gods or to follow their examples I do not undertake to defend all the Roman Theology nor can it be said that the Romans did in all things maintain that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or decency of worship which Dionysius magnifies them for as appears by the many indecencies which the Fathers charge the practice of their Religion with but as they were not to be excused in other things so we ought not to charge them with more than they were guilty of I mean when all the Poetical Fables of Iupiter are applyed to Iupiter O. M. that was worshipped in the Capitol at Rome But some Writers are to be excused who having been bred up in the Schools of Rhetoricians and practising that art so long before when they came to be Christians they could not easily forbear giving a cast of their former employment As when Arnobius had been proving the natural notion of one Supreme God in the minds of men he brings in the Romans answering that if this were intended against them it was a meer calumny for they believed him and called him Jupiter O. M. and built a most magnificent Temple to him in the Capitol which he endeavours to disprove because God is eternal and their Jupiter was born and had a Father and Mother and Uncles and Aunts as other mortals have Which indeed was an infallible argument that Iupiter of Crete could not be the Supreme God but for all that might not the Romans call the Supreme God by the name of Iupiter O. M The Question is not whether they did wisely to make use of a name so corrupted and abused by abominable Fables but whether under this name they meant the Supreme Being or no and they thought it a sufficient distinction of him from that infamous Iupiter of the Poets that they called him Optimus Maximus which Lactantius confesseth were the titles the Romans alwaies gave him in their prayers Quid horum omnium Pater Iupiter qui in solenni precatione Opt. Max. nominatur Which not only shews the titles they gave him but the supplications they made to him and the believing him to be the Father of Gods and Men and yet after this Lactantius rips up all the extravagancies of the Poets as though the Romans at the same time believed him to have done all those things and to have been the Supreme Governour of the world as he confesses they did Regnare in coelo Iovem vulgus existimat id doctis pariter indoctis per suasum est quod Religio ipsa precationes hymni delubra simulacra demonstrant Which words are a very plain testimony that they not only believed him to be Governour of the world but that they did intend to give solemn worship to him by prayers and hymns and sacrifices But when he immediately adds that they confess the same Jupiter to have been born of Saturn and Rhea he might have done well to have explained himself a little more for not long after he acknowledges that many did reject the Poets in these matters as guilty not only of lying but of sacriledge and besides these the Philosophers he saith did make two Ioves the one natural the other fabulous i. e. in truth they made but one rejecting the other as a figment of the Poets But he saith they were to blame in calling him Iove and what then this is only a dispute about the name whereas the question is whom they understood by that name and some think it was the most proper name they could have used Iove being only a little varied from the name the Supreme God was called by in the Scripture And Lactantius himself confesses they had the knowledge of the Supreme God among them and what other name had they to call him by especially when they joyned those two attributes of Power and Goodness as sufficient to prevent any mistake of him That the character given of this Iupiter O. M. by the Romans can belong only to the Supreme God S. Augustin confesses that they believed him whom they worshipped in the Capitol to be the King of the Gods as well as men and to represent this they placed a Scepter in his hand and built his Temple upon a high hill and that it is he of whom Virgil saith Iovis omnia plena and the same in Varro 's opinion that was worshipped by some without any Image by whom he means the Iews saith S. Augustin Luc. Balbus in Cicero saith by Iove they understood Dominatorem rerum omnia nutu regentem praesentem ac praepotentem Deum which are a full description of Gods infinite power and presence and Government of the world When we call Iupiter Opt. Max. and Salutaris and Hospitalis and Stator we mean saith Tully that the safety of men depends upon his protection And that they gave him the titles of Opt. Max. to express his Power and Goodness but first Opt. then Max. because it is a greater thing to do good than to exercise power You may safely saith Seneca call God by the titles of Jupiter Opt. Max. and Tonans and Stator not from stopping the Roman army but because all things do stand by him And you may give him what names you please while you thereby express his divine power and efficacy as Liber Parens because he is the Authour of all things Hercules because of his irresistible force Mercury for his Wisdom If you had received a kindness from Seneca and you should say you owed it to Annaeus or Lucius you would not change the person but his name for what name soever you call him by he is the same person still you may use what name you please while you mean the same thing And lest we should think this only a Philosophical subtilty in Seneca he tells us elsewhere that their Ancestors were not such Fools to imagine that Jove as they worshipped him in the Capitol and elsewhere did send forth thunderbolts from his hand as his Image was there placed sitting in a chair of State with sometimes a Scepter sometimes a Globe in one hand and a Thunderbolt in the other but by Jove they meant the same that we do the preserver
aether and Earth and Heaven and all things and if there be any thing above all Jupiter is it and Clemens is so far from thinking this an improper speech that he saith it was spoken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with a great deal of decency and gravity concerning God By this it appears that they who boast so much of the Fathers are not over conversant with them but Father Bellarmine or Father Coccius serves them for a whole Iury of them But I commend T. G. for his modesty for when he had said this was the sense of the Fathers he produces no more but good Father Origen and he is so kind hearted to him that though I believe he hath heard how he hath been condemned for a Heretick yet he with great judgement supposes that what he said was the common sense of the Fathers But besides this Clemens quotes a saying of Heraclitus approved by Plato wherein the only Wise Being is called by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Iove And to shew that one Supreme Being was received among the Greeks he cites farther an express testimony of Timaeus Locrus wherein he saith there is one unbegotten principle of all things for if it were begotten it were no first principle but that out of which it were begotten would be that principle which Clemens parallels with that saying of Scripture Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one God and him only shalt thou serve I omit the testimonies of Authors cited before but to them he adds Diphilus the Comaedian who was a little younger than Menander and lived in the time of the first Ptolemy who speaks plainly concerning the omniscience providence and justice of God in the verses cited out of him and calls God the Lord of all whose very name is dreadful and whose words afterwards are so full of Emphasis that I cannot forbear setting them down although I beg pardon for mixing so much of a foreign language in an English discourse he bids those men look to it who presume upon Gods patience because he doth not at present punish them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Look to it you that think there is no God There is there is if any man do ill Let him think time is gain For certainly Suffer he shall for what he hath done amiss But withal he quotes a saying of Xenocrates Chalcedonius wherein he calls God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Supreme Iove and another of Archilochus Parius a very ancient Poet in the 23 Olympiad saith S. Cyril of Alexandria wherein he begins 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O Iove thy Power is in Heaven and thou seest all that is done there whether good or evil and Menander saith that God is in all things good and Aeschylus celebrates the mighty power of God to this purpose Think not that God is like to what thou seest Thou knowest him not for he is like to that which cannot be touched or seen He makes the mountains tremble and the Sea to rage when his commanding eye doth on them look For the great God can do what he thinks fit But Diphilus saith yet farther Honour him alone that is the Father of all good things From all which Clemens concludes that the East and West the North and South have one and the same anticipation concerning the Government of one Supreme Disposer of things because the knowledge of his most common operations have equally reached to all but especially to the inquisitive Philosophers of Greece who have attributed a wise Providence to the invisible and only and most powerful and most skilful contriver of all things Although these things might be sufficient to convince a modest man that the Gentiles who were charged with Idolatry by the Primitive Fathers did agree in the acknowledgement of one Supreme Deity and were so thought to do by those who managed that charge against them yet I shall proceed from Clemens to Origen his disciple and see if the state of the Controversie were altered in his time The dispute between Celsus and him did not at all depend on this whether there were one Supreme God or no or whether Soveraign worship did belong to him for Celsus freely acknowledged both these I know Origen several times charges him with being an Epicurean but whatever his private opinion was he owns none of the Epicurean principles about Religion in his Book against the Christians wherein he declares himself to be both for God and Providence He calls God the universael Reason he acknowledges him to be the maker of all immortal beings and that all things are from him and saith that God is common to all good and standing in need of nothing and without envy nay he calls him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great God and saith that men ought to undergo any torments rather than to think or speak any thing unworthy of him that he is at no time to be forsaken by us neither night nor day in publick or private in our thoughts or actions but our soul ought always to be intent upon him Thus far Celsus seems a good Christian what is the matter then between Origen and him that they could not agree about Divine Worship since Celsus doth acknowledge the supreme excellency of God and consequently that Soveraign Worship is only due to him Why the dispute lay in this point Celsus contended with great vehemency that since God made use of inferiour spirits to govern the World that those ought to have divine honours given to them according to the customs of their several Countries that this tended more to the honour of the supreme Deity for that devotion saith he is more perfect which passeth through all to him that it was not to be conceived that God should envy the honour of his own Ministers but we ought rather to suppose that the Great God is better pleased with it So that all that Celsus pleaded for was either an inferiour service of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or at the utmost but a Relative Latria a divine worship which was to fall after an inferiour manner upon the lower Gods but to be finally terminated upon the supreme To this Origen answers two ways 1. By shewing that these inferiour Deities were not good Angels but Daemons i. e. evil Spirits which he proves many ways but chiefly by this that they seemed so covetous of divine worship from men 2. By insisting on this as the fundamental principle of worship in the Christian Religion that divine worship is to be given only to God himself and to his Son Christ Iesus This he inculcates upon all occasions this he lays down in the beginning of his Book that God alone is to be worshipped all other things whether they have beings or have not are to be passed by and although some of them may deserve honour
make so many addresses to the petty and Inferiour Deities This indeed was a thing to be wondred at and yet no doubt they thought they had as good reasons for it as T. G. gives why incontinent persons should rather make their addresses to S. Mary Magdalen in Heaven than to her Sister Martha or to God himself So the Roman women thought Lucina and Opis better for a good hour than Ceres or Minerva and Levana and Cunina for new born Children than Vulcan or Apollo and yet S. Augustin tells us many of them did not esteem these as any distinct Deities but only as representations of the several powers of the same God suitable to the conditions of persons but T. G. will not say that by S. Mary Magdalen he only understood the power of Gods Grace in converting incontinent persons but if he had he had given a much better reason of their praying to her yet even in such a case S. Austin thinks it were better to pray directly to God himself And the old Roman Matrons would have thought they could have directed such persons to Temples proper for them viz. those of Virtue and Chastity the one of which stood ad Portam Capenam the other in vico longo But I need not give such particular directions for I am afraid their Ruines are scarce left in Rome for neither Marlianus nor Alexander Donatus in their accurate descriptions of Rome can tell where to find them For our better understanding the controversie about Idolatry as it is represented by S. Augustin we are to consider that not only Scaevola and Balbus in Cicero but Varro and Seneca and the rest of their wiser men did with great indignation reject the Poetical Theology as they called it and wished several things reformed in the popular Religion and thought themselves as unjustly charged with the practises of the People as T. G. doth for their Church to be charged with all the ridiculous addresses that some make to Saints among them for Varro confesses that the People were too apt to follow the Poets as in the Church of Rome they are to pray by their Legends but they thought the people were better let alone in their fopperies than to be suffered to break loose from that subjection which their Superstition kept them in and with these S. Austin reckons the Philosophers with whom he saith the Question to be debated was this whether we are bound only to worship one Supreme God the Maker of all things or whether it be not lawful to worship many Gods who are supposed to be made by him And after he hath discoursed against Varro and those of his opinion who reduced all their Theology to Nature and made God to be the Soul of the World and the several parts of the world capable of divine Worship on that account in his eighth Book he undertakes those who asserted one Supreme Deity above Nature and the Cause of all things and yet pleaded for the worship of inferiour Deities he confesses that they had the knowledge of the true God and brings the several places of S. Paul mentioned in the entrance of this discourse to prove it and enquiring how the Philosophers came to such knowledge of him he first propounds the common opinion of the Fathers that they learnt it in Egypt meeting with the Books of Scripture there but he rather and with good reason resolves it into the natural knowledge of God for saith he that which was known of God was manifest to them for God had revealed it to them But it seems by S. Augustin that there were two opinions among them at that time about divine worship for some of whom he reckons Apuleius the chief were for the worship of Daemons although they acknowledged them to be subject to evil passions yet they looked on them as intercessors between men and the Gods and therefore to be worshipped but others who kept closer to the doctrine of Plato believed none to be Gods but such as were certainly good but were shy of declaring their opinion against the worship of Daemons for fear of displeasing the people by it and with these S. Augustin declares he would have no controversie about the name of Gods as long as they believed them to be created immortal good and happy not by themselves but by adhering to God which he saith was the opinion either of all or at least the best of the Platonists And now we are come to the true state of the Controversie as it is managed by S. Augustin in his tenth Book which is whether those rites of Religious worship which are used in the service of the Supreme God may be likewise used toward any created Being though supposed to be of the highest excellency and as near to God as we can suppose any creature to be And that this and this only is the state of the Controversie I appeal to his own words which I shall set down in the language he writ them that I be not blamed with artificial turning them to my own sense Hoc est ut apertius dicam utrum etiam sibi an tantum Deo suo qui etiam noster est placeat eis ut sacra faciamus sacrificemus vel aliqua nostra seu nos ipsos Religionis ritibus consecremus i. e. That I may speak plainly whether it be pleasing to them viz. good spirits that we offer divine worship and sacrifice to them or that we consecrate our selves or any thing of ours to them by Religious rites And this saith he is that worship which is due to the Deity which because we cannot find one convenient word in Latin to express it by I would call Latria as that service which is due to men is called by another name viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he gives this reason why he made choice of Latria to signifie divine worship in the Latine Tongue because the Latine word colere is so very ambiguous it being applied to the tilling of land inhabiting of places and therefore cultus could not so properly be applied only to divine worship nor yet ReligioÌ„ because that according to the custom of the Latins is applyed to other senses and the same reason he gives as to other names For my part I quarrel not at all with S. Augustins use of the word and think it proper enough to apply it in his sense which comprehends in it not meerly sacrifice but all those Religious Rites whereby we give Worship to God And nothing can to me appear more senseless than to imagine that S. Augustiâ—â— should here speak only of Soveraigâ— Worship proper to God in regard of his Supreme Excellency distinguishing that from an inferior kind of Religious Worship due tâ— created Excellency when it was agreed on both sides that there was one Supremâ— Excellency which was incommunicable to any creatures so that the dispute abouâ— Worship must suppose those
after a publick and solemn repentance But that this Prince was yet a worshipper of the Sun appears by what follows when the Emperor Zenâ— had him at his mercy and made him promise fidelity to him by bowing of himself to him he to avoid the reproach of it among his People carried himself so that he seemed only to them to make his Reverence to the Sun according to the custom of his Country But it will add yet more to the conviction of T. G. and to the discovery of the Nature of Idolatry to shew that those Nations which are at this day charged with Idolatry by the Church of Rome have acknowledged one Supreme God And I shall now shew that those Idolaters who have understood their own Religion have gone upon one of these three principles either 1. that God hath committed the Government of the world under him to some inferiour Deities which was the principle of the Platonists and of the Arabians and Persians Or 2. that God is the Soul of the world and therefore the parts of it deserve divine honour which was the principle of Varro and the Stoicks Or 3. That God is of so great perfection and excellency that he is above our service and therefore what external adoration we pay ought to be to something below him which I shall shew to have been the principle of those who have given the least external adoration to the Supreme God These things I shall make appear by giving a brief account of the Idolatry of those parts of the world which the Emissaries of the Church of Rome have shewed their greatest zeal in endeavouring to convert from their Idolatries There are two Sects in the East-Indies if I may call them so from whom the several Nations which inhabit there have received what principles of Religion they have and those are the Brachmans and the Chineses and the giving account of these two will take in the ways of worship that are generally known among them For the Brachmans I shall take my account chiefly from those who have been conversant among them and had the best reason to understand their Religion Francis Xaverius who went first upon that commendable imployment of converting the Indians saith that the Brachmans told him they knew very well there was but one God and one of the learned Brachmans in his discourse with him not only confessed the same but added that on Sundays which their Teachers kept very exactly they used only this prayer I adore thee O God with thy Grace and Help for ever Tursellinus saith that he confessed this to be one of their great mysteries that there was one God maker of the world who reigns in Heaven and ought to be worshipped by men and so doth Iarricus Bartoli not only relates the same passages but gives this account of their Theology that they call the Supreme God Parabrama which in their language signifies absolutely perfect being the Fountain of all things existing from himself and free from all composition that he committed to Brama the care of all things about Religion to Wistnow another of his Sons the care of mens rights and relieving them in their necessities to a third the power over the elements and over humane bodies These three they represent by an Image with three Heads rising all out of the same trunk these are highly esteemed and prayed to for they suppose Parabrama to be at perfect ease and to have committed the care of all to them But the Brachman Padmanaba gave a more particular account of the management of all things to Abraham Rogers who was well acquainted with him and was fifteen years in those parts Next to Brama they make one Dewendre to be the Superintendent Deity who hath many more under him and besides these they have particular Deities over the several parts of the world as the Persians had They believe both good and evil Spirits and call them by several names the former they call Deütas and the other Ratsjaies and the Father of both sorts to be Brachman the son of Brama In particular cases they have some saith Mr. Lord who conversed among them and to whom Mons. Bernier refers us to one who gave a faithful account of them whom they honour as Saints and make their addresses to as for Marriage they invocate Hurmount for Health Vagenaught for success in Wars Bimohem for Relief Syer c. and I suppose incontinent persons may have someone instead of S. Mary Magdalen to pray to The custom of their daily devotion as the Brachman Padmanaba said was first to meditate of God before they rise then after they have washed themselves they repeat 24 names of God and touch 24 parts of their bodies upon Suâ— rising they say prayers and pour down water in honour of the Sun and then 〈◊〉 down upon their knees and worship him and after perform some ceremonies 〈◊〉 their Idols which they repeat in the evening The particular devotion which theâ— have to their Saints and Images aâ—â— Reliques is fully described by Boullaye-le-Gouz in his late Travels into those parts Mandelslo saith that in the time of the publick devotions they have long Lessâ—â— about the Lives and Miracles of the Saints which the Bramans make use 〈◊〉 to perswade the people to worship them Intercessors with God for them Amoâ—â— their Saints Ram is in very great estimâ—tion being the restorer of their Religiâ—â— and a great Patron of their Braman Kircher supposeth him to be the 〈◊〉 with him whom the Iaponese call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Chinese Ken Kian 〈◊〉 Kircher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Kia saith Marini and those of Tunquin Chiaga or as Marini Thic-Ca in all which parts he is in very great veneration him they look on as the great propagator of their Religion in the Eastern parts and they say he had 80000 disciples but he chose ten out of them all to disperse his opinions From whence it is supposed that the Religion of the Brachmans hath spread it self not only over Indosthan but Camboia Tunquin Cochinchina nay China it self and Iapan too where it is an usual thing for persons to drown burn or famish themselves for the honour of Xaca This Sect was brought into China 65 years after Christ from Indosthan as Trigautius or rather Matthaeus Riccius tells us for Bartoli assures us that Trigautius only published Riccius his papers in his own name which he supposes was brought in by a mistake for the Christian Religion and surely it was a very great mistake but for all that Trigautius hath found a â—trange resemblance between the Roman Religion and theirs For saith he they worship the Trinity after a certain manner with an image having three Heads and one Body they extol coelibate 〈◊〉 a high degree so as to seem to condemn marriage they forsake their Families and go up and down begging i. e. the Order of Friers
subjects to give homage to him and another day to be placed upon the Altar as he is after his election by the Orders of the Roman Church there to receive adoration from the Cardinals as the Vicar of Christ would any man say he could see no difference in these because the same postures may be used in both Although then the outward acts may be the same yet the signification of those acts may be far from equivocal because determined by the circumstances which do accompany them I grant then that the meer external act of adoration in bowing or kneeling may be given both on the account of honour and worship i. e. upon the account of excellencie and superiority as some of the Patriarchs bowed to Angels as a token of honour of their excellencies and not out of Religious worship and men may bow and kneel to their Soveraign Princes on the account of civil worship and Children to their Parents in token of their subjection to them as well as creatures to their Creator in their solemn acts of devotion but I say in all these cases the different signification of these acts is to be gathered from the circumstances of them And that acts of Religious and civil worship might be distinguished from each other came the appointment of set times and places and solemn rites for the performance of Religious worship From hence Cicero gives that definition of Religion Religio est quae superioris cujusdam naturae quam divinam vocant curam ceremoniamque affert therefore they thought the solemn rites and circumstances of Religious worship were sufficient to discriminate the nature of that worship from any other and these they thought so peculiar to the divine nature that whatever Being they gave this solemn worship to they thought to deserve the name of a Deity although inferiour and subordinate because these acts of worship were appropriated to a Divine Being Aquinas cannot deny that there are some external acts of Religion so peculiar to God that they ought not to be given to any other and on this account he makes Religion a moral vertue and a part of justice because it is its office reddere cultum debitum Deo to give God the worship which belongs to him now saith he because the excellencie of God is peculiar to himself being infinitely above all others therefore the worship which belongs to him ought to be peculiar Ad Religionem pertinet saith Cajetan exhibere reverentiam uni Deo secundum unam rationem in quantum sc. est primum principium creationis gubernationis rerum But since this reason of Religious worship from the creation and government of the world is so peculiar to God as to be incommunicable to any else besides him is there not all the reason in the world that the Acts of this worship should be peculiar to him too And upon this ground Aquinas doth grant it in the case of sacrifice hoc etiam videmus in omni Republica observari quod summum Rectorem aliquo signo singulari honorant quod cuicunque alteri deferretur esset crimen laesae Majestatis ideo in lege divina statuitur poena mortis iis qui divinum honorem aliis exhibent From whence we infer not only that there ought to be peculiar external acts of Religious worship appropriated to God but that the giving the worship done by those acts to any creature is a crime of the highest nature The same Aquinas disputing against the Heathens saith that it is an unreasonable thing to those that hold one first principle to give divine worship to any other besides him and we give worship to God not that he needs it but that hereby the belief of one God may be confirmed in us by external and sensible acts which cannot be done saith he unless there be some peculiar acts of his worship and this we call divine worship Besides this external worship is necessary to men to raise in their minds a spiritual reverence of God and we find that custom hath a great influence on mens minds but it is a custom among men that the honour or worship given to the Supreme Governour should be given to none else therefore it ought to be much more so towards God because if a liberty be allowed of giving this worship to others of a higher rank and not only to the supreme then men and Angels might give divine worship to one another To which he adds that the benefits we receive from God are peculiar to him as that of creation and preservation and that he is our Lord by a proper title and Angels and the best of creatures are but his servants therefore we ought not to give the same worship to them that we do to God as our Lord. In his disputation about Idolatry he shews that the command Exod. 20. doth reach to external as well as internal worship and he argues against those who pleaded that all visible and external worship ought to be given to other Gods and only internal to the supreme God as being much better upon this principle that the external belongs only to him to whom the internal belongs and he disputes against those Hereticks who thought it lawful in time of persecution to give external worship to Idols as long as they preserved the true faith in their minds for saith he the external worship is a profession or sign of the internal but as it is a pernicious thing for a man to speak contrary to his mind so it is to act contrary to it and therefore S. Augustin condemned Seneca as so much the more culpable in the worship of Idols because he acted against the sense of his own mind In the next article he shews that Idolatry is a sin of the highest nature for saith he as in a commonwealth it is the greatest crime to give the honour due to the Soveraign to any other for this is as much as lies in a man to put all things into disorder and confusion so among the sins that are committed against God that seems to be the greatest whereby a man gives divine worship to a creature and saith that it includes blasphemy in it because it takes away from God the peculiarity of his dominion Cajetan there saith that the Idolater as much as in him lies tollit à Deo suam singularem excellentiam qua solus est Deus robs God of that peculiar excellencie whereby he is God alone Thus we see the necessity of some peculiar external acts of divine worship is asserted by these men in order to the preserving the belief and worship of one God in the world Suarez grants that as the excellency of God is singular and above all creatures so he ought to have a singular and incommunicable worship as is plain from those words of Scripture Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve but then he makes this worship
peculiar to God to consist chiefly in the internal acts of the mind which only in themselves and of their own nature are such as do belong to the worship of God but external acts are not so determined of themselves but they may be given either to God or to the creature however he grants that although outward acts be in themselves indifferent yet when sufficient Authority hath apprepriated some acts as peculiar to divine worship they ought to be used for no other purpose and that if these acts of worship be applied to a creature it makes that worship at least external Idolatry if it be not done ex animo and out of a false opinion In this point of the external acts of divine worship these two things may be observed of the Divines of the Roman Church 1. That in the general they confess that there ought to be some peculiar external acts of divine worship as most agreeable to Gods incommunicable excellencie and in particular when they are pressed with any difficulties from Scripture or Fathers about not giving divine worship to a creature then they are sure to tell us those places are to be understood of the worship that is proper only to God Thus they think to escape the force of that place which is so evident that it blinds them with the light of it Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve which was certainly understood of an external act of worship for the Devil said to Christ Fall down and worship me Yes say they that is very true of the adoration proper to God but what is that for they say there is no outward act of adoration but is common to God and his Creatures Tannerus excepts no creature inanimate or animate but only the Devil yet lest he should have gone too far in this he saith afterwards that physically speaking God may be worshipped in any creature but then men must have a care that they do not truely and properly worship the thing it self but only use the external signs of divine honour before it applying them to what is represented I confess this gives a very slender account of our Saviours answer for it seems he might physically speaking have worshipped God by falling down before the Devil all the danger was in the scandal and indecencie of it but being done in a Wilderness the scandal of it as to men at least had not been great Vasquez resolves the case that if the Devil appear to a man he may do all the external acts of adoration before him provided he be not well assured it is the Devil and that he direct his worship to God and that he proves by this demonstrative argument because all external acts of adoration are to be directed by the inward intention of the mind but he confesses many of their Divines allow only a conditional adoration in this case however it seems our Saviour spake a little too peremptorily in utterly refusing it upon any terms But then they tell us the Devil was too fancy and demanded the absolute worship proper only to God i. e. saith Vasquez not meerly the external act of adoration but that inward submission of mind which is only due to God which is more than appears by the words Bellarmine and the rest of them say that our Saviour refused to give the worship of Latria to the Devil by which it seems our Saviour did not answer to the purpose for the Devil expressed no more than falling down and worshipping him which according to them might be done without Latria by the same external act but not the same intention of mind which not being in the power of him that demands but only of him that gives nothing had been more necessary than to have expresly required the intention of the mind otherwise the Devil might have been easily cheated by directing the intention of the external act quite another way but for all that we can see the Devil was then to learn these subtilties However this now serves to turn off the plainest places that would seem to prove that all external acts of Religious worship are to be given only to God The Hereticks saith Arriaga object many things out of Scriptures and Fathers and Councils in which it is said that God only is to be worshipped but to all these we answer in one word that they only speak of the worship of Latria which is proper to God and so they would have answered thousands of places more as well as those that are urged against them so that the reserving this worship as peculiar to God serves them to very good purpose viz. to turn off as with a wet finger whatever is urged against them So Bernardus Pujol without more ado sends away all the Testimonies of the Fathers Ad loca sanctorum Patrum respondemus illa intelligenda esse de adoratione Latriae quae soli Deo tribuitur and so fare them well without any farther examination And yet some of these men upon better thoughts have concluded that some of the places of Scripture cannot be understood of the worship of Latria For although Aquinas Tannerus and several others answer the instance of Mordecai refusing to worship Aman with the common shift that he would not give Latria to him yet Cajetan Suarez Vasquez Pujol and Arriaga all conclude that this is not to be understood of the worship of Latria but that Mordecai refused to use the same external act of adoration which among the Iews they were wont to give to God wherein Cajetan thinks he was not so wise as he might have been because Jacob worshipped his Brother Esau Arriaga that he did well though he followed an erring conscience Suarez Vasquez and Pujol that he did prudently because the constant using of that act of adoration to Aman which among them did belong to the worship of God would have tended to the dishonour of God and Religion and have been a great scandal to the Iews Neither is Cajetan satisfied with the same answer to the instance of St. Iohn's offering to worship the Angel for this were saith he to charge St. John with committing a very great sin which the Angel hindred him from the consummation of but saith he St. John intended no more than the greatest external act of Reverence but because so great reverence ought to be reserved only to God that some outward reverence might be appropriated to Him therefore the Angel forbad him giving it to him Suarez confesses that it cannot be understood of Latria but that the Angel put it off with a complement as St. Peter did to Cornelius and with him the rest agree either as a complement to his Person or to humane nature since the Incarnation but Aquinas pertinently saith it was to avoid the occasion of Idolatry because the Angel immediately adds Worship God Thus far we find they go in the avoiding of
Divines do confess That sacrifice doth not naturally signifie any worship of God but only by the imposition of men and that which it signifies say they is Gods being Author of Life and Death and if we take away this imposition it contains nothing of divine worship in it so Suarez who saith he follows St. Augustin in it How comes the destruction of any creature under our command to signifie the inward subjection of our selves to God What pleasure can we conceive the Almighty should take in seeing us to destroy his creatures for his sake Our minds may be as far from submitting to God as these things are of themselves from signifying such a submission Nay how comes a sacrifice to stand so much in our stead that because we take away the life of that therefore we own God as our Lord It might rather of it self signifie that we have the power of life and death over Beasts than that God hath it over us yet all that Sacrifice signifies saith Vasquez is that God is acknowledged thereby to be the Author of life and death and to this end saith Ysambertus it is necessary that the thing be destroyed because the reason of Sacrifice lies in the destruction of a thing offered to God Be it so but of all things in the world it would never have come into my mind nor I think into any mans well in his senses to offer up God himself unto God as a Sacrifice in order to the testifying the devoting of our selves unto him and yet this after all their talk comes to be that external Sacrifice which is the only appropriate sign of the absolute worship of God viz. the Sacrifice of the Mass wherein the Priest is believed to offer up God himself under the species of Bread and Wine to the Eternal God in token of our subjection to him Methinks yet it were somewhat more reasonable to offer up brute Creatures that are under us than God that is so infinitely above us and such is the weakness of my understanding that this seems to be rather an argument of our power over God than of our subjection to Him But since the formal reason of a Sacrifice is said to lie in the destruction of it Good Lord what thoughts must these men have in their minds if they have any when they think it in their power first to make their God by speaking five words then to offer him up as a Sacrifice then to suppose him destroyed and all this to testifie their submission to God! I want words to express the intolerable blasphemy and absurdity of these things Yet this saith T. G. is so appropriate a sign of the absolute worship of God that that Religion which admits no external visible Sacrifice must needs be deficient in the most signal part of the publick worship of God What external visible Sacrifice have you that we have not besides that of God himself whom you believe to be personally present as the object of divine worship under the species of Bread and Wine and yet when you have pleaded so much for this presence to justifie your Adoration you then make a Sacrifice of Him and that he may be so you grant it is necessary there be some destruction of what was before i. e. if to the purpose of him that was the Sacrifice otherwise the species are made the Sacrifice and not the body and blood of Christ. But suppose you only make him a Sacrifice as to his body and blood and not as to his divine nature what becomes then of the body and blood of Christ for it must be destroyed to make a Sacrifice where how by what means comes the body and blood of Christ to be destroyed When you say it is there without the qualities of a body that it cannot be seen or felt or tasted and yet is capable of being destroyed suppose all this be passed over how comes the offering up the very body and blood of Christ to God to signifie our absolute worship of him Will nothing else satisfie to testifie that we are his subjects unless we offer up to him the body and blood of his own Son Is this indeed the most signal part of divine worship which we must be deficient in if we have it not We do from our souls praise God for that unvaluable Sacrifice the Son of God was pleased to make of his own life when he was incarnate in our nature We do frequently commemorate this Sacrifice of his according to his own institution and in the doing of that we offer up our selves unto Him as a reasonable service We adore and magnify Him for all His mercies especially the sending of His Son to die for us as the greatest of all But we dare not let it enter into our thoughts that we should ever eat or swallow down the very body and blood of Christ and then pretend we have offered it up to God as a Sacrifice and that in token of our absolute worship of Him But setting aside the nature of this Sacrifice which is the only external and visible sign of appropriate worship to God they pretend to have I desire yet to know how a Sacrifice doth come to signifie this absolute worship more than adoration Not by nature for the lowly submission of our bodies seems more naturally to signifie the behaviour of our minds than anything without us can do if it be by institution it must be either Gods or mans if mans then either offering Sacrifice to a creature is Idolatry or not if not then giving absolute worship to a creature is no Idolatry if it be then it is Idolatry to make use of the outward signs of divine worship which mankind have agreed upon to any thing else but God If it be said to be Gods institution then it follows that the applying any outward signs of worship which God hath appropriated to himself to any Creature is Idolatry which is as much as I desire for then it will equally hold for Religious Adoration especially if the principle of Arriaga hold true true that the value of Sacrifice lies in the act of adoration performed by it But T. G. pleads That the act of adoration is equivocal that is that we read in Scripture that it hath been given to men as well as to God and therefore cannot be such an appropriate sign of divine worship To this I have already answered by distinguishing the Act and the signification of it the external act I grant may be performed upon several grounds As 1. Civil subjection as by Nathan to David 1 Kings 1.23.2 Civil respect as by Abraham to the Children of Heth Gen. 23.7.3 Religious respect or as some call it Moral Reverence i. e. out of an opinion of great sanctity without superiority as Nebuchadnezzar to Daniel Dan. 2.46 And so Abraham bowed to the Angels Gen. 18.2 if he knew them to be what they were but if not as
invention to extricate my self out of this Labyrinth But doth not T. G. remember the old woman in Seneca that thought the Room was dark when she lost her sight and no doubt would have pleased her self to think she left Children in the dark when the Sun shined I would desire T. G. to look for the Labyrinth nearer home for I cannot discern any unless it should be in the perplexity of his own thoughts for I am unwilling to believe that he doth this with a design to play tricks and to fly-blow my words on purpose to make others distaste them But what if after all this Sophistry T. G. very mercifully yields me the thing I pleaded for viz. that the worship which God hath forbidden cannot be terminated upon himself For he saith that if God have forbidden himself to be worshipped after such a manner the giving him such worship will be a dishonouring of him though the Giver intend it never so much for his Honour I see T.G. after all is a good natured man and although he will shew a thousand tricks rather than be thought to have it forced from him yet let him alone and he will give as much as a man would desire For what could I wish for more than he here grants Prohibited worship he grants is dishonouring God though a man intend it never so much for his honour and worship he yields to be an external signification of honour then God is honoured when he is worshipped how then can he be worshipped by the same act by which he is dishonoured for so he would be honoured by that by which he is dishonoured which comes much nearer to a contradiction than any thing he charges me with But all this while he cannot understand that this is terminating the honour due to God on the Image I ask him then where that honour rests it must be some where not on God for he confesses God is dishonoured and therefore it can be no where else but on the Image and consequently it is real Idolatry and not meerly Metaphorical or by extrinsecal denomination 3. I now proceed to shew that the Christian church hath condemned those for Idolatry who have been guilty only of applying some external appropriate acts of divine worship to other things besides God What made the Church of Alexandria be so severe with Origen for but holding the incense in his hands which those about him cast from thence upon the Altar yet for this he was cast out of the Church saith Epiphanius In the Acts of Marcellinus which Baronius produces he is condemned for offering incense in the Temple of Vesta out of complyance with Dioclesian yet he was only guilty of the external act of Idolatry saith Bellarmin having no infidelity in his mind and this was the common case of the Thurificati viz. of those who offered incense only out of fear and not with an intention to honour the Idol by it yet these were looked on as lapsed persons and great severities of penance were prescribed them as appears by the Canons of Ancyra and many others But if there be no external appropriate acts of divine worship if burning inâ—ense be an indifferent thing and may be used to God or the Creature if Idolatry depends on the intention of the mind I desire to know what the fault of the Thurificati was For if it were lawful to burn incense to a creature what harm was there in the doing it by Marcellinus at the request of the Emperour if he intended it for no more than a civil respect to him But it was in the Temple of Vesta and therefore was divine worship Then say I an act in it self equivocal becomes appropriate to divine worship being performed with the circumstances of Religion which is that I have been hitherto proving But if external acts receive their denomination from the inward intention of the mind no doubt the Iesuits in China were far more in the Right than the primitive Church and by this doctrine of directing the intention in outwards acts of worship the lives of many thousand Martyrs might have been saved For in the Roman Martyrology Decemb. 25. we find in Nicomedia at one time many thousand Martyrs destroyed by Dioclesian being met together in a Church rather than they would escape by offering a little incense at their coming out the Greek Menology saith they were twenty thousand too great a number to lose their lives for so indifferent a ceremony as T.G. accounts it might not they when they were bid to offer incense to Iove direct their intention to the Supream God and then T. G. would assure them the act must pass whither it was directed and it was meer ignorance of the nature of humane acts for men to imagine otherwise What great pity it is so saving a doctrine to the Lives at least though not to the Souls of Christians had not been known in that age when so many poor Christians suffered Martyrdom for the want of it How admirably would T. G. upon his principles have perswaded those Christians of Nicomedia to resolution and constancy in suffering What is it the Emperour requires of you to save your Lives O Sir say they it is to burn incense To burn incense is that a thing for you to venture your Lives for I am ashamed of your ignorance what do not you know that burning incense at least now in the New Law is an indifferent ceremony and may be used to God or to men O but we are required to burn incense to Jove What have none of you looked over Aristotles threshold that you do not know that actions go whither they are intended well let me give you this advice when you burn the incense direct your intention aright to God and my life for yours the act will pass to him and not to Iove as surely as an Arrow well level'd hits the mark that is aimed at I see plainly this threshold of Aristotle would have done more service to have saved the Christians Lives than all the precepts of Christ or his Apostles But I find none of the primitive Christians had peeped through Aristotles Keyhole much less had they stept over his threshold unless they were those Philosophical Christians the Gnosticks for they perfectly understood this principle and ordered their actions accordingly for they had a mighty care of their intention and kept a good sound faith within and for all the outward acts of worship among the Gentiles they could do them with the best of them and only they did by them as they do with Pigeons in the East they bound their intention fast about them and with them then they were sure they would fly to the place they intended them But why doth S. Augustine find such fault with Seneca for complying with the outward acts of worship among the Heathen Idolaters and with the rest of the Philosophers for the same things Why doth
Aquinas quote these passages with approbation Did they know the intention of Seneca or the Philosophers Why doth Cajetan say that a man that commits only the external act of Idolatry is as guilty as he that commits the external act of theft To both which he sayes no more is necessary than a voluntary inclination to do that act not any apprehension in the mind that what he worships is God nor any intention to direct that act only to the Image Nay why doth Gregory de Valentia himself say that outward acts of worship may be so proper to God either from their own nature or the consent of mankind that whosoever doth them whatever his inward intention be ought to be understood to give the honour proper to God to that for whose sake he doth them And this he calls an implicit Tannerus an indirect intention but neither of them suppose it to be either an actual or virtual intention of the mind but only that which may be gathered from the outward acts Nay T. G. himself saith that on supposition the Philosophers did believe one God and yet joyned with the people in the practice of their Idolatry they were worthily condemned by the Apostle though but for the external profession of praying and offering sacrifice to their Images Say you so and yet do outward acts certainly go whither they are intended Suppose then these Philosophers intended to worship the true God by those Images where this Idolatry or no if not why were they so much to blame for giving worship to the true God by an Image which T. G. commends as a very good thing Was it the figure of their Images displeased him that could not be for the Statue of Iupiter Capitolinus might as fitly represent God to them as that of an old man in their Churches and young Iupiter in the lap of Fortune an Image Cicero mentions might put him in mind of one of the most common Images in their Church and by the help of a good intention might be carryed to a right object And why might not intention do that which their Church afterwards did when it changed the Temple of Hercules to S. Alexius because he was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that of the two Brothers Romulus and Remus or as Bellarmin saith Castor and Pollux to Cosmas and Damianus and the Pantheon to Omnium Sanctorum If there be no harm in the thing there could be none in the intention Or was it the scandal of their practice but to whom was the scandal given it would have been rather scandal among them not to have done it So that if a secret Intention doth carry that act whither it is intended and it be lawful to worship God by Images I do not see wherein the Philosophers were to blame in complying with those outward acts whose good or evil according to T. G. depends upon the intention of the doers of them But if they were really to blame it was for doing those external acts of worship to creatures which belong only to the worship of God and so the Apostle by condemning them doth prove that which I intended viz. that there are such peculiar external acts of divine worship that the doing of them for the worship of a Creature is Idolatry But my Adversary thinks to clear the Church of Rome from the charge of Idolatry by two general answers which serve him and his Brethren on all occasions viz. 1. That there are two sorts of worship one called Latria or Soveraign worship which is proper to God and another called Dulia or inferiour worship that may be given to creatures on the account of excellencies communicated to them from God 2. That the worship they give to any inanimate creatures that have no proper excellencies of their own is not absolute but a relative Latria they intending thereby only to worship God In the examining of these two I shall clear the last part of this Discourse viz. 3. How the applying the acts of Religious worship to a creature doth make that worship Idolatry 1. I shall consider the different sorts of worship which T. G. insists upon to clear the Church of Rome from the practice of Idolatry The Question at present saith T. G. between Dr. St. and the Church of Rome is not whether Divine worship be to be given to Saints for this is abhorred of all faithful Christians but whether an inferiour worship of like kind with that which is given to Holy men upon earth for their Holiness and near relation to God may not be lawfully given to them now they are in Heaven Again he saith if by Religious worship I mean that honour which is due to God alone it is true what the Fathers say that it is not to be given to the most excellent created Beings but nothing at all to the point in debate between us if I mean that honour of which a creature is capable for Religions sake and that relation which it setleth he will he saith shew it to be false that the Fathers deny any such honour to be given to the Holy Angels or Saints and if I prove that this worship ought not to be called Religious he tells me from S. Austin that it is but a meer wrangling about words because Religion may be used in other senses besides that of the worship due to God And by the help of this distinction between the Religious worship due to God and that of which a creature is capable for Religions sake he saith he can clearly dispell the mist I have raised from the Testimony of the Fathers and let the Reader see that I have perverted their meaning and yet said nothing to the purpose Thus he answers the testimonies of Iustin Martyr Theophilus Origen S. Ambrose or the Writer under his name Theodoret S. Austin and if they had been a hundred more it had been all one they had been all sent packing with the same answer let them say what they would they must be all understood of Divine worship proper to God and not of the inferiour worship which creatures are capable of which from S. Austin he calls Dulia as the former Latria The whole strength of T. G's defence as to the Worship of Saints and Angels lyes in this single distinction which I shall therefore the more carefully consider because it tends to clear the nature of Divine worship which is my present subject To proceed with all possible clearness in this debate which T. G. hath endeavoured to perplex I shall 1. Give a true account of the State of the Controversie 2. Enquire into the sense of the Fathers about this distinction about Soveraign and inferiour worship whether those acts of worship which are practised in the Roman Church he only such as the Fathers allowed 1. For the true state of the controversie which was never more necessary to be given than in this place For any one
obtaining that good we stand in need of For a man may apprehend God to be the first Author of all good and yet make no prayer to him nor use the acts of Religious worship because he may suppose that God may have committed the care of humane affairs to inferiour Deities and therefore all our addresses and acts of worship are to be performed to them on this account the worship proper to God must lye in dependence upon him as the Sole Author of all Good to us and this to be expressed by our Solemn Invocation of him For although the internal desire be sufficiently known to God yet the necessity of external Religious worship and owning this dependence upon God to the world doth require the expression of it by outward duties and offices of Religion in such a manner that our sole dependence upon God be understood thereby Now the Question between T. G. and me is this whether the doctrine and practice of the Roman Church in the Invocation of Saints and Angels be consistent with the acknowledgement of our sole dependence upon God for all our Blessings The doctrine of their Church is thus delivered by himself in the words of the Council of Trent It is good and profitable for Christians humbly to invocate the Saints and to have recourse to their prayers aid and assistance whereby to obtain benefits of God by his Son our Lord Iesus Christ who is our only Redeemer and Saviour Where we take notice of the phrase suppliciter invocare to invocate them after the manner of suppliants and that not only voce but mente with words but mental prayers as the Council adds which words seem to be put on purpose to distinguish it from that office of Kindness in one man to another when he desires him to pray for him for this is as much as they would use concerning the Saints in Heaven praying to God that they do suppliciter invocare this phrase then doth not limit the signification of this invocation to be no more than praying to the Saints to pray for us For a man doth I suppose answer the signification of that phrase by praying to them to give rather than by praying to them to pray for the one imports more the humility of a suppliant than the other doth And if there had been apprehended any danger of praying to them as the givers of blessings is is not to be imagined but so wary a Council would have expressed it as it was most easie to have done and most necessary to avoid that danger if they had any regard to the good of mens souls And that man must have an understanding indeed of a very common size that can apprehend that the Council of Trent disallowed the praying to Saints as the Givers of Blessings which was known to be practised in their Church when they commend the humble invocation of Saints without the least censure of that manner of praying to them Nay farther which puts the matter out of dispute with all who do not wilfully blind themselves the Council of Trent commends the making recourse not only to the prayers of the Saints but to their aid and assistance what doth this aid and assistance signifie as distinct from prayers and expressing somewhat beyond them or else those words were very weakly inserted in such a place where they are so lyable to misconstruction unless it be that which they pray for to them viz. that they would help comfort strengthen and protect them Of which sort of prayers I produced several instances in their most Authentick Offices And what saith T. G. to this why truly these Forms of prayer to Saints cannot be denyed to be in use among them but yet the sense of them is no more than praying to them to pray for them and this is only varying the Phrase to say to the Blessed Virgin Pray for me or Help me and comfort me and strengthen me O Blessed Virgin But I asked him whence must people take the sense of these prayers if not from the signification of the words He answers not meerly from Lilly 's Grammar Rules but from the doctrine of the Church delivered in her Councils and Catechisms and from the common use of such words and expressions among Christians I am content with this way of interpreting the sense of these prayers provided that a generally received practice never condemned by their Councils but rather justified by them and a doctrine agreeable to that practice allowed and countenanced in that Church be thought a sufficient means to interpret the sense of these prayers And to make the matter more plain besides the prayers already mentioned I shall give only a Tast of some few of those which are recommended to the Use of the devout Persons of their Church in the Manuals and Offices which are now allowed them in our own language in which we may be sure they would be careful to have nothing they thought scandalous or repugnant to the doctrine and practise of their Church In the Manual of Godly Prayers which hath been often printed and once very lately I find these words under the title of A Most Devout Commendation to our most Blessed Lady O most singular most excellent most beautiful most glorious and most worthy Mother of God most Noble Queen of Heaven and most entirely beloved and most sweet Lady and Virgin Mary so often from the bottom of my heart I do salute thee as there be in number Angels in Heaven drops of water in the Sea Stars in the Firmament leaves on the Trees and grass on the earth I do salute thee in the union of love and by the blessed and most sweet heart of thy most dear Son and of all that love thee I do commend and assign my self unto thee as to my dear Patroness to be thy proper and loving Child And farther I humbly beseech thee O blessed Lady that thou wilt vouchsafe to entertain and receive me and obtain of thy dear Son that I may be wholly thine and thou next unto God may be wholly mine that is my Lady my Ioy my Crown and my most sweet and faithful Mother Amen Lilly's Grammar I confess will not help us out here nor the Construing Book neither I do not think any Rules will do it It must be a special gift of interpreting that can make any one think that no more is meant by all this but to pray to the Blessed Virgin to pray for them In the same Manual I find another Recommendation to the Virgin Mary in these words O my Lady Holy Mary I recommend my self into thy blessed trust and singular custody and into the bosome of thy mercy this night and evermore and in the hour of my death as also my Soul and my Body and I yield unto thee all my hope and consolation all my distress and miseries my life and the end thereof that by thy most holy intercession and by thy merits all
force and violence offered to them if there be any harm what is it Idolatry or not if only scandal why were they not put in other words if Idolatry then T. G. himself charges them with Idolatry that understand their prayers by Lilly's Grammar unless he thinks it much better for them not to understand them at all But I shall beg the Favour of one of their Church-Dictionaries to interpret this late Ode of Rapin to the Lady of Loretto so as to make me construe it to be only praying to her to pray for them Ad Divam Virginem Lauretanam Diva quam rebus trepidis benignam Rure Piceno veneratur Orbis Cui suos sternit facilis moveri Adria fluctus Si qua Pastoris tibi Vaticani Cura vel Sacri superest Ovilis Italis Thracem procul inquietum Finibus arce Si faves totis trepidabit undis Bosphorus rupes Scyticae pavebunt Turca pallebit timidumque cornu Luna recondet Namque te dudum pelagi potentem Non semel verso tremuere ponto Mersa Threissi rate dissipata Arma Tyranni Ne tibi fidam pavor ille gentem Angat aut saevis male turbet armis Quos tuis laeti meditamur aris Ponere honores If this be not making a Goddess of her surely the Heathen Poets never made one of Minerva and yet I hope Rapin a Iesuit and a Scholar did well enough understand what was agreeable to the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome Yet supposing T. G's sense were all that were understood by the Church of Rome in this matter it doth not acquit them from giving that Religious Worship which Invocation imports to something else besides God For let us suppose that the Arrians only looked on Christ as a powerful intercessor with God and on that account did in their publick offices of Religion make their solemn Addresses to him to intercede and pray for them to God were this giving him any part of Divine worship or no Especially when performed with all the external acts of adoration which are proper to God If this were not any part of Divine worship the Fathers were extreamly out in their proofs that Christ could be no creature because the external act of adoration was given to him if it were a part of divine worship then those in the Church of Rome do give it to a creature when with all the solemn Acts of Devotion they pray to Saints which they use to God himself although it be only to be intercessors with God for them especially when they do not only pray thus to them but rely upon them for their help and assistance and return thanks to them when they receive the Blessings they prayed for Would not the Fathers have called this bringing in Polytheism and reviving the antient Idolatry of the Heathens Since the great principle of Christianity they said was the reserving all parts of Religious worship to God alone Nay some of the Writers of the Roman Church have been so ingenuous in this matter to confess that if the modern practice of Invocation of Saints had been introduced in the Apostolical times it would have looked too like the introducing of Gentilism again Franciscus Horantius in his Answer to Calvins Institutions confesses that Invocation of Saints was not expresly commanded under the Gospel nè gentiles conversi crederent se iterum ad cultum terrigenarum trahi lest the Gentile Converts should believe that they were again drawn to the worship of Creatures which words he had borrowed from Eccius and the same are repeated by Harpsfield Martinus Peresius Ayala a learned Spanish Bishop assigns this for the reason why he could meet with no footsteps either of the invocation or intercession of Saints before the time of Cornelius Bishop of Rome viz. that the Apostles would have been thought to have made themselves Gods if they had delivered the doctrine of invocation and intercession of Saints By which we see these persons did truly apprehend a great affinity between their practice of Invocation of Saints and the Heathen Idolatry or else there was no danger one should be mistaken for the other And although T. G. tells us he never met with any Catholick so ignorant as not to understand the sense of their prayers to be to desire the Saints to help them with their prayers yet I meet with some men who understood Catholicks as well as T. G. and yet do give a quite different account of them For the same Spanish Bishop thinks the people had great need to be better instructed in this matter of worship lest saith he they make Gods of the Saints nam multos inveni in hac parte non satis Christianè institutos I have found many not well instructed in this matter it seems not only the people committed Idolatry but their Teachers did not instruct them well enough to avoid it And Ludov. Vives was not so lucky a man as T. G. for he saith that many Christians do most times offend in a good thing i. e. giving honour to Saints for he saith they worship them no otherwise than they do God neither do I find in many things any difference between their opinion of the Saints and the Heathens of their Gods T.G. takes notice of this passage of Vives and blames me for leaving out in re bona in a thing good in it self let him make as much of this as he please for it only shews that he was a through Papist although he charged the people with the downright practice of Idolatry and if it only implyes an error and abuse in practice yet he shews both these were too common among them and that the Catholicks in his time were not so wise as those T. G. hath met with But it may be he means no more than that if they be asked the Question in their Catechism they answer it as he saith which is as good a way to free them from the practice of Idolatry as if a man should be suspected of Adultery and T. G. should answer for him that cannot be for he understands better than so for when I asked him the Commandments he said he ought not to commit Adultery Polydore Virgil was not so happy as T. G. for speaking of the solemn Rite of Supplication when the Images of Saints are carryed in procession he saith I fear I fear we rather please the Heathen Gods than Christ by such practices which without all question he saith was taken from the Heathen customs And what he saith of the worship of Images is as true of that of Saints that the people were arrived to that degree of madness that their worship differed very little from Idolatry Cassander saith that the people trusted so much to the Patronage and Intercession of the Saints whom they worshipped with dull not to say profane Ceremonies that they hoped for the pardon of their sins although they did not amend their
lives on the account of their intercession for them and that they trusted more to them especially to the Blessed Virgin than to Christ himself And that what interpretations soever some men put upon those titles of the Queen of Heaven Mother of Mercy c. the common people did not understand them according to their sense of them Nay Erasmus goes farther saying that their very Preachers worshipped the Blessed Virgin with more Religion or devotion than they did Christ himself or his Holy Spirit calling her the Mother of Grace By all which we see that the doctrine of Divine worship is not so clearly stated by them but that the more ingenuous men who have lived and dyed in the communion of that Church have thought not only the people but the Teachers very much to blame in it 2. My business now is to give an account of the sense of the Fathers in this dispute about the notion of divine worship not to handle particularly the Testimonies of the Fathers in dispute between us which belongs to the Question of Invocation of Saints but to shew that they went upon the same principles I have here laid down in the distinction between the Honour and the Worship of them and while they speak most for the Honour of the Saints they deny any Religious worship to be performed to them Origen in the beginning of his Book against Celsus makes that to be the property of the doctrine of Christ that God only was to be worshipped but that other might be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worthy of honour but not of worship And in another place he speaks as plainly as words can express his meaning although saith he we should believe that Angels were set over these things below yet we only praise and magnifie them but all our prayers are only to be made to God and not to any Angel and only Iesus Christ is to offer up our prayers to God and lest any should imagine he meant only some kind of prayers he saith expresly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all prayer and supplication and intercession and saith that we ought not to pray to them who pray for us But now what saith T. G. to these places which excepting the first I had objected against the practice of invocation of Saints and Angels in my former discourse Why truly he saith that Origens meaning is partly that we are not to pray to them in the same manner that we do to God but we may pray to them after another manner But is that inferiour sort of prayer prayer or not when we desire them to pray for us is not that desiring their intercession for us but Origen denyes that any prayer is to be made to them or any one to be prayed to although it be only to intercede with God for us but only the Son of God I remember an answer of a devout servant of the Blessed Virgin much like this of T. G. For when it was objected that she could not be the Mother of Redemption for mankind because it is said Isa. 63.3 I have trodden the wine-press alone and of the people there was no man with me True saith he there is no man with thee but there might be a woman for all that So doth T. G. deal with the testimonies of the Fathers let them be never so express against all sorts of prayers and Invocations they hold only of such a sort of prayer but there may be another and inferiour sort notwithstanding But is there any sort that is not comprehended under all And that Origen cannot be understood in these passages of such prayer only as supposeth the supream excellency in God most evidently appears by the dispute between Celsus and him which was not about the worship of the Supream God but of Inferiour Spirits and Ministers to him as hath been fully proved already The Church of Philomelium in that noble Testimony concerning the Martyrdom of Polycarp makes the same distinction between honour and worship for they utterly deny giving any worship to a creature as inconsistent with Christianity but at the same time they confess the honour and esteem they had for the Martyrs which they expressed by meeting at the places of their Martyrdom keeping their Anniversary dayes and recommending their examples to the imitation of others In the former Discourse I produced the Testimonies of Iustin Martyr Theophilus Antiochenus and mentioned many others to the same purpose viz. that all Religious worship was due only to God and with this double caution to prevent cavils 1. That it was without making any distinctions of absolute and relative worship which they must have been driven to in case they had given Religious worship to any besides 2. That when the Christians refused to give adoration to the Emperour it could not be understood of the adoration proper to the Supream God for none can be so sensless to imagine they required that but such kind of Religious worship as they gave to the Images of their Gods To all this T. G. replyes I. That these Testimonies are impertinent because they are to be understood only of that divine worship which is due to God alone and not of the Inferiour worship which belongs to Saints or Angels Might he not as well have said that they prove that no man might be worshipped but a woman might For the force of the Testimonies did not lye meerly in this that they attributed divine worship only to God but that they made use of the most general terms which signified worship without any distinction of the nature and kind of that worship supposing it to be on a Religious account For no men of common sense would have written as they did if they had believed that some sort of Religious worship were lawful to be given and another not Doth T. G. think that he should ever escape censure in his Church if he should say peremptorily that it is unlawful to give any kind of Religious worship to a creature when the very Indices of the Fathers cannot escape the Index Expurgatorius for blabbing so great a Truth No we should have T. G. presently out with his distinctions worship is of two sorts Supream called Latria inferiour called Dulia Religious may be taken in two senses 1. That which proceeds from the vertue of Religion and that is proper to God 2. That which tends to the honour of Religion and that may be given to creatures And thus would the Fathers have written if they had ever looked over Aristotles threshold and been of T. G's mind and therefore my argument which proceeded upon the general terms of the Fathers without intimating any such distinction doth hold good that either they did not write like understanding men or they knew no such distinctions as these 2. That although Justin Martyr and Theophilus deny divine worship to be given to Emperours yet they both imply that lawful worship
foregoing Discourse But T. G. seems to understand no difference between titles of respect and acts of worship between expressions of esteem and devotion between Religious and Civil worship for he blunders and confounds all these together and whatever proves one he thinks proves all the rest these are not the best wayes of reasoning but they are the best the cause would bear Well but yet the matter seems not altogether so clear for the worship we are to give to Princes is as they are Gods Vicegerents and this is given on a Religious account because God commands us to give honour to whom honour is due the place urged by T. G. Rom. 13.7 To this a very easie answer will serve Worship may be said to be Religious two wayes 1. As it is required by the Rule of Religion and so the worship given to Magistrates is Religious 2. In its nature and circumstances as it consists of those acts which God hath appropriated to his worship or is attended with those circumstances which make it a Religious performance and then it is not to be given to Princes or any Creatures but only to God himself This will be made plain by a remarkable instance among the antient Christians While Divine honours were challenged by the Emperours to themselves i. e. the honours belonging to consecrated men for they meant no other the Christians refused giving to them those external acts of Reverence which might be supposed to have any Religious worship in them although they expressed the greatest readiness at the same time to obey their Laws that did not require any thing against Christianity and to pray for their safety and prosperity This being known to be the general practice of Christians Pliny in his Epistle to Trajan mentions this as one of the wayes of trying Christians viz. whether they would Imagini Caesaris thure vino supplicare give Religious worship to Caesars Image by burning incense and pouring out wine before it which were the Divine honours required This Pliny saith all that were true Christians refused to do and those who did it presently renounced Christ. Thus this matter stood as long as the Emperours continued Gentiles who were presumed to affect Divine honours but when Constantine had owned Christianity and thereby declared that no Religious worship was to be given to him the Christians not only erected publick Statues to Emperours but were ready to express before them the highest degrees of Civil worship and respect This Iulian thought to make his advantage of and therefore placed the Images of the Gods among those of the Emperours that either they might worship the Gods or by denying Civil Worship to the Emperours Statues which the custom then was to give they might be proceeded against as disaffected to the Emperour And when he sate on the Throne distributing New-years-gifts he had his Altar of Incense by him that before they received gifts they might cast a little incense into the fire which all good Christians refused to do because as Gothofred observes the burning of incense was the same tryal of Christians that eating of Swines flesh was of Iews But after the suspicion of Religious worship was removed in the succeeding Emperors the former customs of Civil worship obtained again till Theodosius observing how these customs of Civil adoration began to extend too far and border too much upon Divine honours did wholly forbid it in a Constitution extant to that purpose and that for this reason that all worship which did exceed the dignity of men should be entirely reserved to God By this true account of the behaviour of Christians in this matter T. G. may a little better understand what that worship was which the primitive Christians refused to give to Emperours and what difference they made between the same external acts when they were to be done on a Civil and on a Religious account which are easily discerned either by the nature of the acts themselves as the burning incense or the circumstances that attend them as in adoration It were needless to produce any more Testimonies of Antiquity to prove that Divine worship is proper only to God since T. G. confesses it but gives quite another sense of Divine worship than they did for under this they comprehended all acts of Religious worship as appears by the worship they denyed to Emperours It remains therefore to shew that those who spake most for the honour of the Saints did not by that mean any Religious acts of worship but expressions barely of honour and esteem Iulian objected this against the Christians as it was common with the Heathens to object many false and unreasonable things that instead of the Heathen Gods they worshipped not one but many miserable men To this S. Cyrill answers that as to Christ he confesses they worshipped him but they did not make a God of a man in him but he was essentially God and therefore fit to be worshipped but for the Martyrs they neither believed them to be Gods nor gave them the worship which belongs to Gods Which is unquestionably S. Cyrill's meaning or he doth not answer to the purpose For Iulian never charged the Christians with giving that worship to Martyrs which is proper to the Supream God considered as such but that they gave to them that Religious worship which Iulian pleaded to be due to the inferiour Gods as appears by the State of the Question between them This therefore S. Cyrill denyes that they gave to Saints and Martyrs which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. to give them the worship which the Heathens gave to their inferiour Deities what they gave to the Martyrs was upon another account it was only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 respectively and by way of honour And lest any should suspect he meant any kind of Religious worship by this he presently explains himself that what he said was only to be understood of those honours they gave to them for their generous suffering for the faith despising all dangers and thereby making themselves great examples to other Christians and after he let us understand what these honours were when he brings the instance of the Athenians meeting together at the sepulchres of those who were slain at the Battel of Marathon for the liberty of Greece and there making Panegyricks upon them and therefore he wonders why Julian should exclaim so much against these honours done to the Martyrs since this was all the reward they could give them And elsewhere he saith these honours consisted in preserving their Memories and praising their vertues and brings the very same instance of the Athenians again but for any matter of worship towards them he utterly denyes it because they were bound to give it to none but God And that we might fully understand what he means when he saith that Christians do not give to Saints the worship the Heathens gave to their inferiour Gods
To excite their devotion that when they made their addresses to these Images they might believe they made them to the Gods themselves And according to T. G. what harm was there in all this provided that these were declared not to be proper likenesses of the Deity and so we see they were by their best and wisest men But the people might imagine the Gods to be like them and what then may they not do the same in the Roman Church and with as good reason when they see God painted like a Pope with his Crown and Pontifical Vestments may they not as reasonably think that as the Pope is Gods Vicar on earth God himself is the Pope in Heaven If they say they take care the people be better informed not too much of that neither but did not Cicero and others do the like by the Heathens who argued against the folly of supposing the Gods to be like men and derided the Epicureans for asserting it as men that neither understood the nature of Gods or Men. And Cicero in the same place is so far from looking on this practice of worshipping the Gods in Images of humane shape as Universal that he confesses it to be almost peculiar to the Greeks and Romans and saith that the Epicureans who did assert the Gods to have the members of mens bodies but made no use of them did only droll and in words assert a Deity which in Truth they denied Maximus Tyrius debates the case about the several ways of representing God and although he makes the manner as indifferent as whether our words be expressed in Phoenician or Ionian or Attick or Aegyptian Characters they being all intended only as helps to our understandings and Memories and as far distant from the Deity as Heaven from Earth yet he saith they are useful to the duller part of mankind who like Children are taught to read and understand by these broader characters which are intended only as a Manuduction to them yet he prefers that which he calls the Greek way of representing the Gods with the most exquisite art in humane Figures but he doth it so timorously that he only saith it is not unreasonable not that he imagined the Gods to be like them but only because the Soul of man comes nearest to God and that habitation which God had chosen for a divine Soul seemed the fittest to be a Symbol of the invisible Deity But he does not blame the other Nations which made use of other wayes of representing the Deity which he must have done if he had thought the Greek Images the proper likenesses of God for although he disputes against the Persians and Aegyptians yet he concludes all at last with this saying whether men worship God by the art of Phidias as the Greeks or by the worship of living Creatures as the Aegyptians or by the worship of Rivers or of Fire as other Nations I condemn not the variety let them only understand and love and remember him whom they worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. in T. G.'s Translation let a man only direct his intention towards God and then without doubt the actions go whither they are intended And upon these grounds none of the Heathens were to blame in the worship of Images provided they looked on them only as Symbols or Analogical representations of the Deity as Maximus Tyrius saith they did and directed their worship towards the Supreme Being as he adviseth them all to do For saith he God who is the Father and Maker of all things elder than the Sun and Heaven better than Time and Age and all Fluid things a Lawgiver without name that cannot be expressed with words or seen with eyes whose essence being incomprehensible by us we make use of all helps from sounds and words and living Creatures and Images of Gold and Ivory and Silver and Plants and Rivers and Mountains to bring us to the Conception of him and because of our Weakness those things we account good we attribute to him as lovers use to do who delight in any representation of him they love and behold with great pleasure the harp or the dart or the seat he sate upon or the place he ran in and whatever brings him to mind What need I say any more concerning Images Let God only be in the mind Is not this a Vindication of Heathen Idolatry to T. G.'s hearts desire For saith T. G. Is it not an honour to the King to kiss his Picture And the very light of nature teaches that the honour or dishonour done to a picture or Image reflects upon the person represented by it Now saith Max. Tyrius we look upon Images and Trees and Rivers and Mountains but as so many imperfect pictures and representations of the Deity but although they do not come near his beauty yet we honour them for the sake of him whom they represent wherein we do but as great lovers do we kiss the footsteps where he trod we embrace admire and value things as they represent him and bring him to our minds And is there any thing more natural than this For is it not an honour to the King to kiss his picture or as the Emperour Iulian more elegantly expresses it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. He that loves the King takes pleasure in seeing the picture of the King he that loves his Child loves any representation of him and so doth he that loves his Father even so saith the devout Emperour Iulian by the meer light of Nature every one that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Lover of God loves the representations of the Gods and beholding their Images doth secretly fear and reverence them which although invisible themselves do behold him Wherein we see how admirably Iulian and T. G. have hit not only on the same principle of nature but the very instance and almost the very same expressions It seems this great man did not corrupt himself in those things he knew naturally but pursued the light of Nature towards the Defence of Pagan Idolatry making the Worship of Images a part of Natural Religion as T. G. doth But what spight is this for me to mention Julian and T. G. together whereas it is well known that Julian was against Invocation of Saints and called that as great Idolatry as the Heathens as T. G. notably observes against Dr. St. But for all this Iulian though an Apostate and great enemy to Christianity was a shrewd understanding man and found out the very fundamental principle of the worship of Images and resolved it into the Light of Nature as T. G. doth But Julian supposed these Images to be proper Likenesses of the Gods and consequently the worship of them as such is condemned no such matter I assure you Iulian was a more Orthodox man than so he was no follower of that damnable heretick called Anthropomorphus for so I find him in an ancient Catalogue of Hereticks Iulian
by an Image since Images are intended to represent the absent but God is every where present But if there ought to be any Image of God which he calls simulachrum Dei and surely doth not signifie an Idol in T. G's sense and I hope here he will not charge me with want of fidelity in translating it Image it ought to be living and sensible because God lives for ever therefore that cannot be the Image of God that is made by the Work of mens hands but Man himself who gives all the art and beauty to them which they have but poor silly men as they are they do not consider that if their Images had sense and motion they would worship the Men that made them and brought them into such a curious figure out of rude and unpolished matter Who can be so foolish to imagine there can be any thing of God in that Image in which there is nothing of man but the meer shadow But their minds have the deepest tincture of folly for those who have sense worship things that have none they who think themselves wise things that are uncapable of Reason they that live things that cannot stir and they that came from heaven things that are made of earth What is this saith he but to invert the order of Nature to adore that which we tread upon Worship him that lives if ye would live for he must dye that gives up his Soul to things that are dead And after he hath fully shewn his Rhetorick in exposing the folly of worshipping Images he concludes very severely quare nonest dubium quin Religio nulla sit ubicunque simulachrum est Wherefore there can be no true Religion where there is the worship of Images no although it be simulachrum Dei the worship of God by an Image for his reason holds against all Religion saith he is a divine thing and whatever is divine is heavenly but whatever is in Images is earthy and therefore there can be no Religion in the worship of Images What sport do Tertullian Minucius and Arnobius make with the Images which were consecrated to divine worship from the meanness of the matter they are made of the pains and art that is used to bring them into their shape the casualties of fire and rottenness and defilements they are subject to and many other Topicks on purpose to represent the ridiculousness of worshipping such things or God by them O saith Arnobius that I could but enter into the bowels of an Image and lay before you all the worthy materials they are made up of that I could but dissect before you a Jupiter Olympius and Capitolinus Yet these were dedicated to the worship of the Supreme God Would men ever have been such Fools to have exposed themselves rather than such Images to laughter and scorn if they had used any such themselves or thought them capable of relative divine worship How easily would a Heathen of common understanding have stopt the mouths of these powerful Orators with saying but a few such words to any one of them Fair and soft good Sir while you declaim so much against our Images think of your own what if our Iupiter Olympius or Capitolinus be made of Ivory or Brass or Marble what if the Artificer hath taken so much pains about them what if they are exposed to Weather and Birds and Fire and a thousand casualties are not the Images of S. Peter and S. Paul or the several Madonna 's of such and such Oratories liable to the very same accusations If ours are unfit for worship are not yours so too if we be ridiculous are not you so and so much the more because you laugh at others for what you do your selves So that we must either think the first Christians prodigious Fools or they must utterly condemn all Images for Religious Worship and not meerly the Heathens on considerations peculiar to them And that we may not think this a meer heat of Eloquence in these men we find the same thing asserted by the most grave and sober Writers of the Christian Church when they had to deal not with the rabble but their most understanding Adversaries We have no material Images at all saith Clemens Alexandrinus we have only one intellectual Image who is the only true God We worship but one Image which is of the Invisible and Omnipotent God saith S. Hierome No Image of God ought to be worshipped but that which is what he is neither is that to be worshiped in his stead but together with him saith S. Augustin Where it is observable that the reason of worship given to this Eternal Image of God is not communicable to any Image made of him as to his humane Nature for it cannot be said of the humane nature it self that it is God much less of any Image or representation of it Therefore let T. G. judge whether the worshipping Christ by an Image be not equally condemned by the Fathers with the worship of God by an Image but of that hereafter Eusebius answering Porphyrie about the Image of God saith What agreement is there between the Image of a man and the Divine understanding I think it hath very little to a mans mind since that is incorporeal simple indivisible the other quite contrary and only a dull representation of a mans shape The only resemblance of God lies in the soul which cannot be expressed in Colours or Figures and if that cannot which is infinitely short of the Divine Nature what madness is it to make the Image of a man to represent the Figure and form of God For the Divine Nature must be conceived with a clear and pure understanding free from all corruptible matter but that Image of God in the likeness of man contains only the Image of a mortal man and that not of all of him but of the worst part only without the least shadow of Life or Soul How then can the God over all and the Mind which framed the World be the same that is represented in Brass or Ivory S. Augustin relating the saying of Varro about representing God by the Image of a mans body which contains his Soul which resembles God saith that herein he lost that prudence and sobriety he discovered in saying that those who first brought in Images among the Romans abated their Reverence to the Deity and added to their errour and that the Gods were more purely worshipped without Images wherein saith S. Augustin he came very near to the Truth And if he durst speak openly against so ancient an errour he would say that one God ought to be worshipped and that without an Image the folly of Images being apt to bring the Deity into contempt Is it possible to condemn the worship of God by an Image in more express words than S. Austin here does 2. Because the worship of God by Images is repugnant to his Will Clemens Alexandrinus mentions the
Law given by Moses against the making any Image of God in the place before mentioned and which he there asserts to be still obligatory to Christians But although he there repeats the Command at large against all sorts of Images yet it is observable that when he goes about to set down all the Commandments this by some artificial hand is conveyed out of the way and the second Commandment is Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord c. which made me not a little wonder finding Clemens so often in other places expressing his zeal against Images But it is not hard to guess what hands his Greek Copies have passed through since the second Nicene Council yet we are beholding to them for leaving so much evidence of their foul dealing behind them for within few Pages he saith the tenth Commandment takes in all sorts of Concupiscence and therefore the precept against Images must be a distinct Command to make up the number so that Sylburgius justly complains that the place is mutilated If Clemens did not think this precept concerned Christians he would never have objected it as an absurdity against a sort of Gnosticks that thought themselves bound to oppose the Law why then saith he when God said Thou shalt not make any Graven Image you were best go and worship Images By all which we see that he thought the precept to be still in force and that it was intended against the worship of Images and those Images such as respect God and not meerly the Heathen Idols Origen saith that for the sake of that Law Thou shalt not make to thy self any Graven Image the Christians would rather die than defile their Faith with such impieties as the worship of Images and therefore their case was very different from that of the Scythians Numidians Seres and Persians with whom Celsus joyned them in the contempt of Images When Symmachus pleaded with Valentinian for the toleration of the Pagan Religion on this pretence that the same God was worshipped by all and that by several waies men aimed at the same end S. Ambrose answers That God himself was fittest to teach what way he would be served in You worship the Work of mens hands we account it an injury to God to call anything by His Name that can be made by man Non vult se Deus in Lapidibus coli God hath declared He will not be worshipped after such a manner Whereby we see the Primitive Christians fixed themselves on the Command of God as upon an immoveable rock against the Worship of Images Thus much may suffice to have shewn in this place that the Controversie between the Christians and Heathens about the worship of Images was not whether they were proper Likenesses of God from the apprehensions they had of their Images I proceed now to shew it 2. From the Notions they had of their Gods And here I must in the first place exclude those who in Truth were Atheists and not Idolaters I mean the Epicurean Philosophers who although they seemed to assert some pleasant Beings that lived in perfect ease far from the noise and smoke of the World yet they utterly overthrew all foundations of worship in Prayers or Sacrifices by denying the Gods to have any regard to the actions of men for fear of disturbing their sweet repose These indeed made their Gods like men but so thin and airy that they could not bear the least justle of Atoms and so quiet and still that the least thought of business would destroy their happiness These were only made for fine Idea's to amuse the people with but any one might see that they were never intended for the objects of worship and therefore Plutarch and Athenaeus say That Epicurus took away all the worship of the Gods however he complyed with the common practises of the people and when he lift up his Hands to his Mouth in token of adoration he could not but laugh through his Fingers at the Gods they worshipped But we may see by the discourse of the Academick and Stoick with the Epicurean in Cicero how much they abhorred this Epicurean doctrine of the Gods being like to men and Velleius the Epicurean doth in effect confess there were no Philosophers of that mind besides themselves For he reckons up all the opinions of the other Philosophers concerning the Nature of the Gods after such a manner as to discover that this opinion was peculiar to their own Sect. He acknowledges that Thales asserted God to be an Eternal Mind which framed all things out of Water even Anaximander and Anaximenes who held only Material Gods or first principles for even the Atheist were willing to have matter believed to be a God by them to avoid the odium of Atheism among the people yet these rejected a humane form at which the Epicurean is displeased as though they might have flattered the people as they did in the fashion as well as in the name of a Deity Some have undertaken to clear Anaximenes and to make him of the same opinion with Thales concerning an incorporeal Deity saying that by Air he meant only a Divine Spirit and therefore in Plutarch he compares it to the Soul of Man which being Air doth animate the body and Diogenes Apolloniates his disciple held Air only for matter and Reason for the efficient cause as St. Augustin tells us However Anaxagoras another disciple of Anaximenes is confessed by Velleius to hold God to be an infinite and active mind free from all mixture of matter as the words of Anaxagoras in Simplicius do express his meaning and S. Augustin under takes his vindication against the Epicurean objections which suppose it impossible for us to understand any such thing as Mind without the conjunction of sense and Matter Pythagoras said That God was a quickening Spirit diffused through the World which is best expressed by Virgil in those words after the sense of Pythagoras Spiritus intus alit totosque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem magno se corpore miscet Xenophanes falls under the same condemnation with the rest for asserting God to be a Mind but he went somewhat farther for in the Verses cited out of him by the Fathers he said That God was like to man neither in body nor in mind and for men to make an Image of God like to themselves was all one as if a Horse should paint him with a long tail and four feet if he had understanding enough to make a representation of the Deity or an Ox or a Lion should draw him by their own Figures Parmenides made God to be of a circular figure in the fashion of a Crown or Orb of Light compassing about the Heavens Whatever the opinions of Alcmaeon Empedocles Protagoras Diogenes Apolloniates were it is certain the Epicurean despises them all because they either appeared too doubtful and obscure in
avoid being mistaken In what in thinking they did not worship Images after as well as before their conversion no but in supposing that they made use of the same Images afterwards which they did before and what if they did what harm was there in it on T. G's principles supposing the intention be directed aright Nay T. G. after all his clamour yields the thing for saith he St. Gregory turned the Pagan Festivals into Christian Assemblies and Heathen Temples to Christian Churches without ever pulling them down to build them up again and supposing the worship of Images lawful why not those to be used as well as Temples And yet I no where say that they made use of the very same but they melted them down and made new ones of them which is plainly to say that though they did not allow those particular Images yet they did not condemn the Use of Images for divine worship but of the materials of the former Images they made new ones to be used by them as Christians after that manner of worship which the Iesuits delivered to them which was all that was necessary to my purpose And now I leave the Reader to Judge whether in all this charge about these citations T. G. hath not shewed himself to be a man of admirable ingenuity and whether he be not well accomplished in the most laudable vertue of a Writer of Controversies viz. sincerity and fair dealing CHAP. II. The State of the Controversie about Images in the Christian Church HAving thus far endeavoured to State the Dispute about Image-worship as it was managed between Christians and Heathens I now come to the Rise and Progress of this Controversie in the Christian Church Wherein I shall proceed according to these following Periods 1. When Images were not used or allowed in the Christian Church 2. When they were used but no worship allowed to be given to them 3. When inferiour worship was given to them and that worship publickly defended 4. When the doctrine and practice of Image-worship was settled upon the principles allowed and defended in the Roman Church and from thence to shew wherein lie the main points of difference between us and the Church of Rome as to this Controversie about the Worship of Images 1. As to the First Period I had said in my former Discourse That the Primitive Christians were declared enemies to all worship of God by Images but I need the less to go about to prove it now since it is at last confessed by one of the most learned Iesuits they ever had that for the four first Centuries and farther there was little or no use of Images in the Temples or Oratories of Christians but we need not their favour in so plain a Cause as this as shall be evidently proved if occasion be farther given This T. G. had no mind to and therefore saith Not to Dispute the matter of fact of which he confesses there was some little use much as if I should say that T. G. hath shewn little or no ingenuity in his Book and he to his great comfort should infer there was some little ingenuity in it but Petavius his words are supprimi omittique satius visum est it was thought better to suppress them and let them alone was it all one in T. G's sense to use them and to omit the use of them And for the little reason he saith he had to doubt my sincerity in relating Petavius his words from what I did with Trigautius in truth there was as little as might be but I have great reason to believe from his usage of me about other citations that if he could have found any words before or after that he could have interpreted to another sense he would have made little or no conscience of saying those were the words I translated thus and thus But instead of debating the matter of fact as to the Primitive Church he saith he will give me the answer of Mr. Thorndike that at that time there might be jealousie of Offence in having Images in Churches before Idolatry was quite rooted out of which afterwards there might be no appearance and therefore they were afterwards admitted all over for it is manifest the Church is tyed no farther than there can appear danger of Idolatry This he calls Mr. Thorndikes answer but it is truly the answer of Petavius from whose words it seems to be translated dum periculum erat saith Petavius ne offensionis aliquid traheret externa quorundam rituum species cum iis que ab Ethnicis celebrabantur similitudine ipsa congruens c. Therefore I shall consider it as the answer of Petavius and here examine whether this were the ground on which the Primitive Church did forbear the use and worship of Images I shall prove that it was not from these two Arguments 1. Because the Reasons given by them against the worship of Images will equally hold against the worship of Images among Christians 2. Because the notion of Idolatry which they charged the Heathens with may be common to Christians with them 1. This supposes the Primitive Christians to look on the worship of Images as in it self indifferent and to be made good or evil according to the nature of the object represented by them which is a supposition as remote from the sense of the Primitive Church as any thing we can easily imagine For then all the arguments used by them against the worship of Images must have been deduced only from the objects represented or the nature of the worship given to them whereas they frequently argue from the unsuitableness of Images as a Means of worship and the prohibition of the Divine Law Would any man of common sense that had thought the worship of Images in it self indifferent have said as Origen doth that the Christians as well as the Iews abstain from the worship of Images for the sake of the Law of God which requires rather that we should dye than defile our selves with such impieties Yes it may be said this is acknowledged that the Law of God did forbid the worship of the Heathen Images but they who make this answer never looked into Origen or have forgotten what they read there for Origen doth not there give an account why the Christians did not comply with the Heathen Idolatry but why the Christians had no Images in their own worship For Celsus charges this upon the Christians that they thought it such a mighty matter that they had no Images whereas herein saith he they were but like the barbarous Scythians Numidians and Seres and other Nations that had neither Religion nor civility To this Origen answers that we are not only to look at the bare action but at the reason and ground of it for those that agree in the same thing may yet have very different principles and they that do it on a good principle do well and not otherwise as for instance the
never had life in them but that which hath life and sense and motion hath a greater influence from that Divine Wisdom which governs all things therefore saith he these ought not to be looked on as inferiour representations of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Being than those Images which are made of Brass or Stone by the Workmanship of men and are subject to corruption and destitute of all sense and understanding Whereby we see that Plutarch did put a difference between the common practises of the People and the intention of the wiser men in the Egyptian Idolatry He before takes notice of the follies of the People that worshipped the living creatures themselves as Gods and thereby not only exposed their Religion to the scorn and contempt of others but led some men into horrible superstition and tempted others to turn Atheists and then he gives this as the most reasonable account of the worship of these Animals according to their wiser men whose opinions ought most to be followed in Religion From whence it appears that the distinction of the practice of the People and the Doctrine of Divines hath obtained among the grossest Idolaters and if the Peoples Practice be excused because the Divines teach otherwise the most sottish Egyptian Idolaters are excusable as well as those in the Roman Church For what is there in this principle of worship laid down by Plutarch which may not be defended by the avowed doctrine of the Roman Church Here is 1. a right ultimate object of worship viz. the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Being which orders and governs all things 2. Here is a representation of that object by the perfections derived from that Being to a Creature 3. Here is a right directing the Intention through that representation to the ultimate object And 4. the formal reason of worship is the derivation or participation of that perfection which represents God from the divine Being and therefore this is no Soveraign worship which is given to it The only difficulty here is to shew that the Egyptians did intend to worship the Supreme God by either sort of their Images which is not only affirmed by Plutarch who saith They understood by Osiris the wise Providence of God and by Porphyrie who saith The Egyptians by the several animals they worshipped did express their devotion towards the Almighty power of God and by Apuleius who was initiated in the Egyptian Mysteries and in the conclusion of his Metamorphosis Osiris is called Deus Deum magnorum potior majorum summus summorum maximus maximorum regnator Osiris which are descriptions of no less than the Supremest God but Max. Tyrius yields at last that the Egyptians did worship the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Deity by the worship of Animals as the Greeks did by the Statue of Phidias And there is a considerable Testimony to this purpose in Vopiscus taken out of an Epistle of the Emperour Adrian which he wrote to Servianus from Egypt giving an account of the manners of the Egyptians wherein are these words Unus illis Deus est hunc Christiani hunc Iudaei hunc omnes vener antur gentes They had one God whom Christians and Iews and all Nations worshipped Is. Casaubon suspects this passage but without any reason as Salmasius proves and is apparent because the same thing is said in the beginning of the same Epistle Where he saith that however they differed in other points yet they all agreed in the worship of Sarapis by whom Phylarchus in Plutarch understands That God which Governs the World and Seguinus shews from ancient Coynes and Authors that Sarapis and Iupiter Ammon and Iupiter Pharius and Iupiter rerum omnium potens were all one Thence the Inscriptions D.E.O. I.N.V.I.C.T.O. S.E.R.A.P.I. S.E.R.V.A.T.O.R.I. D.E.O. M.A.G.N.O. S.E.R.A.P.I. and that mentioned by Tristan I.O.M. S.A.R.A.P.I.D.I. P.R.O. S.A.L.V.T.E. I.M.P. From which it appears that supposing the Israelites did relapse to the Egyptian Idolatry it doth not from thence follow that they did not worship the true God by an Image I proceed now to the two Calves of Ieroboam at Dan and Bethel which being made in imitation of the Golden Calf must stand or fall by what hath been said already concerning that But I shall here make good the peculiar arguments to Ieroboam's case which were brought to prove that he did intend to worship the God of Israel by the Calves of Dan and Bethel 1. Because Ieroboam manifests no design of taking the people off from the worship of the true God but only from the worshipping Him at Hierusalem For all that he saith to the People is It is too much for you to go up to Ierusalem behold thy Gods O Israel which brought thee up out of the Land of Egypt If Ieroboam's intention had been to have altered their Religion he would have spoken against that and not only against the place of it and to shew to them that he had no such intention he continued the same Feasts and way of worship which were at Ierusalem To this T. G. answers That Jeroboam 's end was to secure the Ten Tribes to himself and the likeliest way to effect it was the making them such Idols as their Fathers had worshipped in Egypt and the Wilderness and yet soon after T. G. represents him as a great Polititian that would not make any sudden Changes But could there be any change greater or more sudden than to change the true God for Molten Gods and Devils as T. G. saith he did which words if they be understood in T. G's sense for the Egyptian Idols and Devils in them was as great a change as could be made in Religion and too sudden to be made by such a Polititian He should have begun the alteration in the smaller matters if he intended no sudden change and first have gained some of the Great men to him to be ready to joyn with him when opportunity served with hopes of Preferment and Places at Court when these were secured then put in some of the vilest of the people into the Priesthood as he did to render that sacred Office mean and contemptible the better to prepare the people for a change then to send Agents abroad to tamper with the most active among them to allure some and to terrifie others according to their several dispositions then to give liberty to those tender consciences that longed for the Onions and Fleshpots and Bulls of Egypt and when he had by degrees prepared a considerable party that would be sure to adhere to him then by little and little to open the great Design to them which he aimed at all this while But it was too great a Change for such a Polititian to say at the very first to them Come renounce the God of Israel without more ado I have set up other Gods for you to worship and I command you all
Mouse-hole but he soon grows too big ever to get out again For Baluzius saith what I affirmed and Agobardus saith no such thing as he affirms of him and in that very Synopsis of his doctrine by Massonus to which he referrs we have just the contrary Picturae aspectandae causâ historiae memoriae non Religionis Images are to be looked on for history and memory sake but not for Religion and what is this but for instruction of the people Whosoever it was that helped T. G. to this citation I desire him as a Friend that he will never trust him more for I would think better of T. G. himself than that he would wilfully prevaricare But if this were Agobardus his opinion why have we it not in his own words rather than those of Pap. Massonus who talks so ignorantly and inconsistently in that very place where those words are but are not set down by him as the judgement of Agobardus If T. G. would have taken no great pains to have read over Agobardus his discourse of Images he would have saved me the labour of confuting him about his opinion for he delivers it plainly enough against all worship of Images though for the sake of the Exemplar but he expresly allows them for instruction I am sorry T. G. makes it so necessary for me to give him such home-thrusts for he lays himself so open and uses so little art to avoid them that I must either do nothing or expose his weakness and want of skill But all this while we are got no farther than towards the middle of the ninth Century the Church of France might change its opinion after this time and assert the Council of Nice to have been a General Council and submit to the Decrees of it I grant all this to be possible but we are looking for certainties and not bare possibilities Hincmarus of Rhemes a stout and understanding Bishop of the Gallican Church died saith Bellarmin A. D. 882. and he not only calls the Nicene Synod a false General Council but he makes that at Francford to be truly so And these latter words of his are cited with approbation by Card. Cusanus and he condemns both Factions among the Greeks of the Iconoclasts and of the Nicene Fathers In the same Age lived Anastasius Bibliothecarius who made it his business to recommend all the Greek Canons and Councils to the Latin Church he was alive saith Baronius A. D. 886. He first translated the eighth General Council at which himself was present and when this was abroad he tells the Pope what a soloecism it would be to have the eighth without a seventh ubi septima non habetur are his very words from whence it appears in how very little Regard that Council was in the Western Church It is true he saith it was translated before but it was almost by all so much contemned that it was so far from being transcribed that it was not thought worth reading This he would have to be laid upon the badness of the translation he hath mended the matter much when in his Lives of the Popes he saith it was done by the particular Command of Pope Hadrian and laid up in his Sacred Library But when he hath said his utmost for the Catholick doctrine of Image-worship as he would have it believed he cannot deny that the admirable usefulness of this doctrine was not yet revealed to some of the Gallican Church because they said it was not lawful to worship the Work of mens Hands After this time came on the Midnight of the Church wherein the very names of Councils were forgotten and men did only dream of what had past but all things were judged good that were got into any vogue in the practice of the Church yet even in that time we meet with some glitterings of light enough to let us see the Council of Nice had not prevailed over the Western Church Leo Tuscus who was a Secretary to the Greek Emperour and lived saith Gesner A. D. 1170. giving an account of the Schism between the Greek and Latin Churches hath these words saith Cassander that among the Causes of the Breach that Synod was to be assigned which was called by Constantine and Irene and which they would have called the seventh and a General Council and he adds moreover that it was not received even by the Church of Rome About the year 1189. was the Expedition into Palestine by Fredericus Aenobarbus and Nicetas Acominatus who was a great Officer under the Greek Emperour Isacius Angelus and present in the Army saith Baronius gives this account of the Germans opinion in those times about the worship of Images When saith he all the Greeks had deserted Philippopolis the Armenians staid behind for they looked on the Germans as their Friends and agreeing with them in Religion for the worship of Images is forbidden among both of them Which being a Testimony of so considerable a Person and not barely concerning the opinion of some Divines but the general practice of the people doth shew that in the twelfth Century the Necene Council had not prevailed all over the Western Church when T. G. affirms it did for many hundreds of years before the Reformation Especially if we consider what the judgement and practice of the Armenians was as it is delivered by Nicon who is supposed to have been a Saint and Martyr in Armenia who saith that they do not worship Images and their Catholick Bishop or Patriarch excommunicates those that do Which is confirmed by what is said to the same purpose by Isaac an Armenian Bishop who lived in the same Century viz. that they do not Worship the Images either of Christ the B. Virgin or the Saints And Pet. Pithaeus a learned and ingenuous Papist confesses that it was but very lately that those of the Gallican Church began to be fond of Images and he writ that Epistle wherein those words are extant A. D. 1568. Surely he did not think the doctrine of the Nicene Council had been received in the Gallican Church for many hundred years But suppose the Nicene Synod were not owned for a General Council yet it might be very wise and judicious Assembly to say that is to reflect on the Emperour Charles the Great and all the Western Bishops in his Dominions And I am sure their expressions would justifie me if I had spoken sharper without an Irony for in the Caroline Book we frequently meet with such expressions as these concerning those grave Fathers ut illi stultissimè irrationabilitèr putant indoctè inordinatè dicunt quam absurdè agant quod magnae sit temeritatis dicere quod non minus omnibus sed pene plus cunctis Tharasius delirasse dignoscitur Deliramento plena dictio Leonis Ut illi delirant ut illi garriunt Ridiculosè pueriliter dictum infaustè praecipitantèr sive insipienter dementia
immediately to obey me methinks this would seem too harsh and unpolitick and too dangerous for so new a Government as his was a little Indulgence for tender consciences for a time with the sweetest words had better become such an Achitophel as T. G. calls Ieroboam This this had been the way to have wheadled and drawn in the silly and injudicious multitude By telling them what an oppression it was for them to be under the jurisdiction of the High Priest and his Brethren at Ierusalem and that there was no Reason such a vast number of lazy Priests and ignorant Levites should be maintained out of their labours by Tythes and Offerings that all the pretence of the true worship of God being confined to the Temple at Ierusalem was only out of a design to enrich the Priests and the City that it was only zeal for their own interest and revenues which made them so earnest for that particular way of worship which was so different from the rest of the World What! could they imagine that God had no other people in the World but such as went up to Ierusalem to worship what would become of the Catholick way of worship which was in all the Nations round about them Was it credible that God should suffer so great a part of mankind to run on in such Idolatry as a few Iews accounted it If it were so displeasing to God could it ever be thought that the Wisest King they ever had viz. Salomon should in the wisest time of his Life viz. in his old Age fall to the practice of it Besides all this they ought to consider how much the honour and safety of the Nation was concerned in embracing the same Catholick way of worship which prevailed round about them Their pretending to greater purity of worship than their Neighbours made them hated and scorned and reproached by their Neighbours of all sides viz. by Moab and Ammon and Amalek the Philistins and those of Tyre but if they returned to the worship of the Neighbour Nations they might be sure of the assistance of the King of Egypt with whom Ieroboam had lived many years who would be ready to help them on all occasions and their lesser enemies would then be afraid to disturb them Thus we see what plausible pretences there were to have drawn the people off from the Law of Moses to the Idolatries of Egypt but we read not the least intimation of this Nature in the whole History of this Revolt but Ieroboam only saith These are thy Gods which brought thee out of the Land of Egypt which was the most unpolitick way of perswading them to return to the Gods of Egypt Besides he not only appointed a Feast like unto that in Iudah but it is said That he offered upon the Altar and sacrificed unto the Calves which he had made i. e. according to the custom of the Iewish Sacrifices than which nothing could be more repugnant to the Egyptian Idolatry as I have already proved But T. G. saith The Text speaks but of one Feast it is very true it mentions but one but it is said afterwards in several places That they departed not from the way of Ieroboam and that very Feast being accompanied with so many Sacrifices was a plain evidence it was not the Egyptian Idolatry which he then set up And it is remarkable to this purpose that every one who was to be consecrated a Priest to the Golden Calves was to be consecrated with a Sacrifice of a young Bullock and of seven Rams which according to the Rites of the Egyptian Idolatry were enough to have profaned the most sacred Person And Iosephus who may be allowed to have understood the mind of Ieroboam as well as T. G. saith expressly That in the speech he made to the People he only pleaded that God being every where present he might be worshipped at Dan and Bethel as well as Jerusalem and that for their greater conveniency he had set up the Calves at Dan and Bethel that there they might worship God Thus we see that in this worship at Dan and Bethel Ieroboam intended no more than to worship the God of Israel there I will not deny that Ieroboam was for Liberty of Conscience and allowed the practice of Egyptian Idolatry and appointed Priests to serve at the several Altars as the People had a mind but the established worship at which himself was present was at the Calves of Dan and Bethel For it is said That he offered on the Altar there But we read that he appointed Priests not only for the Calves but 1. for the High places which were of two sorts 1. Some for the worship of false Gods as those which Salomon allowed to be built for Chemosh and Moloch on the Mount of Olives 2. Others were for the worship of the true God in the ten Tribes For there being some dissenting Brethren among the Israelites who would neither join with the House of Iudah in the worship at Hierusalem nor with Ieroboam in the worship of the Calves at Dan and Bethel to keep these secure to his interest he permits them to worship God on the High places i. e. Altars erected to that purpose upon an ascent of ground And this I prove from that passage of Elias They have thrown down thy Altars speaking of the Children of Israels demolishing them in the time of Ahab who was the eighth in succession from Ieroboam And in the Reformation of Iosiah he puts a difference between the Priests of the High places for some of them were permitted to eat unleavened bread among their Brethren and others he slew upon the Altars Which shews that both in Iudah and Israel there were some who did still worship the true God on the High places 2. Ieroboam appointed Priests 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pilosis to the hairy ones which I wonder how it come to be translated Devils both here and Levit. 17. since in above fifty places of Scripture it signifies Goats and but in one the LXX render it by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and there Aquila hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Vulgar Latine Pilosi and our translation Satyrs and since the worship of Goats and other hairy animals was so frequent among the Egyptians as of Dogs Wolves Cats Ichneumons Apes c. but especially the Goats as Herodotus Strabo Diodorus Plutarch and others relate and the Pan and Faunus and Silenus and Silvanus and Satyri were but a sort of Goats for the Arabick word Satar is a Goat and the Egyptian name for Pan is Mendes which saith Bochartus signifies a Goat too And since this worship was so common in Egypt was there not reason to forbid it by a Law Levit. 17.7 and is there not cause where we meet with this word relating to an object of worship to understand it according to the common practice of Idolaters
and the common sense of the word Therefore I grant that Ieroboam did permit the Egyptian Idolatry but he established the Golden Calves as the Religion of the State 2. I shewed that the true God was worshipped by the Golden Calves because the sin of Ahab who worshipped Baal is said to be so much greater than the sin of Jeroboam And it came to pass as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Ieroboam that he took to wife Iezabel daughter of Baal King of the Zidonians and went and served Baal and worshipped him and he reared up an Altar for Baal in the House of Baal which he had built in Samaria Yes saith T. G. Ahabs sin was greater because he added this Idolatry to the other Who denies that his sin might have been greater in that respect but that it was not so to be understood appears by the opposition between God and Baal in the words of Elijah How long halt ye saith he to all the People between two opinions if the Lord be God follow Him but if Baal then follow him Now there being three several waies of worship among the people if two of the three had not agreed in the same object of worship viz. the God of Israel Elijah could not have said that they halted only between two opinions of God and Baal if some were for the God of Israel others for the Gods of the Egyptians and others for Beel Samen or the God of the Zidonians But saith T. G. Elijah supposes a general Apostasie of the ten Tribes to Baal in the next Chapter And what then It was but very lately so and they were not yet so fixed but they might be put in mind that they were lately of another opinion and some render it How long will ye pass from one extreme to another how long will ye be so uncertain in Religion now for God and then for Baal So Vatablus renders it Quousque tandem alternis c. Now of one side then of the other or as some imagine they themselves worshipped the Calves and sometimes Baal So that notwithstanding what T. G saith the opposition is here plain between the God worshipped by the Calves which was the publick and established worship of the ten Tribes and the worship of Baal which was newly introduced and so the True God is supposed to be worshipped by those who did not worship Baal To confirm this I added that Iehu magnifies his zeal for Iehovah against Baal when it is said of him but a little after That he departed not from the Calves of Dan and Bethel which evidently shews the opposition between the God of Israel worshipped by the Calves and the worship of Baal No saith T. G. Iehu's zeal for the Lord doth not acquit him from Idolatry in following Jeroboam any more than the lawful act of Matrimony acquits a Husband from the Crime of Adultery who defiles his Neighbours Bed I perceive T. G. grew very sleepy when he wrote this and forgot what we were about for I never intended to clear Iehu from Idolatry by his zeal for Iehovah but from such an Idolatry as excludes the worship of the True God For that was my business to shew that he might be guilty of Idolatry and yet worship the true God by the Calves of Ieroboam as he not only shews by that expression to Ionaedab but by distinguishing between the Priests of the Lord and the Priests of Baal and yet soon after that character is twice given of Iehu That he departed not from that worship which Ieroboam had established To the last instance I brought of the Samaritans who sent to the King of Assyria for an Israelitish Priest to teach them the accustomed worship of the God of the Land who accordingly came and dwelt in Bethel and taught it them upon which it is said They feared the Lord T. G. returns a strange answer viz. That there is no mention at all made of his teaching them to worship him in the Calves as Symbols of his presence here T. G. nodded again For if he would but have held his eyes open so long as to have looked back on the 22 and 23 verses of the same Chapter he would have found these words For the Children of Israel walked in all the sins of Ieroboam which he did they departed not from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight as he had said by all his servants the Prophets So was Israel carried away out of his own Land to Assyria and then immediately follows this story of the Samaritans desiring to know the worship of the God of the Land what can this refer to but to the worship established by Ieroboam I leave this to be considered by T. G. when he is awake for he seems to have written these things in a Dream As to what he saith of his having confuted my conjectures or rather Monceius his when it is apparent I differ from Monceius in his main ground to any man that hath read him I leave it as a fresh token of his kindness when he will not so much as suffer me to be the Author of such weak conjectures which he hath so easily and so pleasantly confuted and for the phrase of my plowing with his Heifer I suppose it hath relation to the Calves of Dan and Bethel which I take notice of that he may not think his Wit is lost upon me To conclude this point of the meaning of the Second Commandment I said That since the Law giver hath thus interpreted his own Law we need not be solicitous about the sense of any others yet herein I say we have the concurrence of the Iewish and Christian Church The Iews have thought the prohibition to extend to all kinds of Images for worship and almost all for ornament and the Image worship of the Church of Rome is one of the great scandals to this day which hinder them from embracing Christianity All that T. G. answers to this is That he would gladly know whether we must stand or fall by the interpretation of the Iews Did I bring their Testimony for that purpose or intimate the least thing that way did I not use so much caution on purpose to prevent such a cavil I declared that I did not need their Testimony in so clear a case and yet it is no small advantage to our Cause that we have herein the concurrence of all that had any Reverence to this Law of God whether Iews or Mahumetans and not barely of them but of the whole Christian Church for so many Ages as I have fully proved in the precedent Chapters As to the Prophetical confutation of my opinion about Idolatry and the Second Commandment by Mr. Thorndike I do assure him if I could have thought what that learned Person had said in this matter to have been agreeable either