it is God's own attestation I have shewed before § 66. I have opened the validity of the Apostles testimony of the Resurrection and miracles of Christ and the first Churches certain testimony of the miracles of the Apostles both of them having a three-fold certainty Moral Natural and Supernatural In all which I have supposed that such a testimony the Churches have indeed given down to their posterity which is the thing that remaineth lastly to be here proved § 67. The doctrine and miracles of Christ and his Apostles have been delivered us down from the first Churches by all these following ways of history 1. By delivering to us the same writings of the Apostles and Evangelists which they received from their hands themselves as certain truth and delivered down as such to us even the holy Scriptures of the New Testament They that believed their words believed their writings and have told us their belief by preserving them for posterity as Sacred Verities In the holy Scriptures the life and death and doctrine of Christ is contained with the doctrine of the Apostles and so much of the history of their Preaching and Miracles as Luke was an eye-witness of or had certain knowledge of who was commonly Pauls companion by which we may partly judge of the Acts of the rest of the Apostles And if the Churches had not believed all these they would not have delivered them as the infallible Writings of the inspired Apostles to their Posterity § 68 2. The very successive Being of Christians and Churches is the fullest history that they believed those things which made them Christians and Churches which was the doctrine and miracles of Christ A Christian is nothing else but one that receiveth the Doctrine Resurrection and Miracles of Christ as certain truth by the preaching and Miracles of his great Witnesses the Apostles so many Christians as there ever were so many believers of these things there have been It was this Doctrine and Miracles that made them Christians and planted these Churches And if any man think it questionable whether there have been Christians ever since Christs time in the World All history will satisfie him Roman Mahometan Jewish and Christian without any one dissenting voice Pliny Suetonius Tacitus Marcellinus Eunapius Lucian and Porphyry and Julian and all such enemies may convince him He shall read the history of their sufferings which will tell him that certainly such a sort of persons there was then in the World § 69. 3. The succession of Pastors and Preachers in all generations is another proof For it was their office to read publickly and preach this same Scripture to the Church and World as the truth of God I speak not of a succession of Pastors in this one City or that or by this or that particular way of ordination having nothing here to do with that But that a certain succession there hath been since the dayes of the Apostles is past question For 1. Else there had been no particular Churches 2. Nor no baptism 3. Nor no publick Worship of God 4. Nor no Synods or Discipline But this is not denyed § 70. 4. The continuance of Baptism which is the kernel or sum of all Christianity proveth the continuance of the Christian Faith For all Christians in Baptism were baptized into the vowed belief and obedience of the Son and Holy Ghost as well as of the Father § 71. 5. The delivering down of the three breviate Symbols of Faith Desire and Duty the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue is the Churches delivery of the Christian Religion as that which all Christians have believed § 72. 6. The constant communion of the Church in solemn Assemblies and setting apart the Lords Day to that use was a delivery of the Christian Faith which those assemblies all professed to believe § 73. 7. The constant preaching and reading of these same Scriptures in those Assemblies and celebrating there the Sacrament of Christs death and the custom of open professing their Belief and the Prayers and praises of God for the Resurrection and Miracles of Christ are all open undenyable testimonies that these things were believed by those Churches § 74. 8. The frequent disputes which Christians in all ages have held with the adversaries of the Scripture and Christianity do shew that they believed all these Scriptures and the Doctrines and Miracles therein contained § 75. 9. The Writings of the Christians in all ages their Apologies Commentaries Histories Devotional treatises all bear the same testimony that we have these things by their tradition § 76. 10. The Confessions Sufferings and Martyrdom of many in most ages do bear the same testimony that they believed this for which they suffered and that posterity received it from them § 77. 11. The Decrees and Canons of the Synods or Councils of the Bishops of the Churches are another part of the history of the same belief § 78. 12. Lastly the decrees and laws of Princes concerning them are another part of the history shewing that they did believe these things § 79. And if any question whether our Scriptures which contain these histories and doctrines be indeed the same which these Churches received and delivered from the Apostles he may easily be convinced as followeth § 80. 1. Various Copies of it in the Hebrew and Greek text were very quickly scattered about the World and are yet found in all Nations agreeing in all material passages § 81. 2. These Scriptures were translated into many Languages of which there are yet extant the Syriack Arabick Ethiopick Persian c. which agree in all material things § 82. 3. It was the stated Office of the Ministers in all the Churches in the World to read these Scriptures openly to the People and preach on them in all their solemn Assemblies And a thing so publickly maintained and used could not possibly be altered materially § 83. 4. All private Christians were exhorted to read and use the same Scriptures also in their Families and in secret § 84. 5. This being through so many Nations of the World it was not possible that they could all agree upon a corruption of the Scriptures nor is there mention in any history of any attempt of any such agreement § 85. 6. If they would have met together for that end they could not possibly have all consented Because they were of so many mindes and parties and inclinations § 86. 7. Especially when all Christians by their Religion take it to be matter of damnation to adde to or diminish from these sacred Writings as being the inspired Word of God § 87. 8. And every Christian took it for the rule of his Faith and the Charter for his heavenly Inheritance and therefore would certainly have had his action against the Corrupters of it As the Laws of this Land being recorded and having Lawyers and Judges whose calling is continually to use them and men holding their Estates and safety by them if any would alter them all
lusts And nature it self doth abhor the notion when it is brought into the light and will hear him with some horrour who shall speak out and say God is not to be chiefly loved for himself nor as he is best in himself nor as my ultimate objective end but only to be loved next my self as a means to my felicity or pleasure as meat drink ease and sport and lust are And virtue or holiness is not to be loved chiefly for it self that is as it is the Image of God and pleasing to him but as it conduceth to my pleasure As Cicero excellently noteth there is a great deal of difference between these two To love vertue as vertue and so to take pleasure in it because it is virtue and To love virtue for pleasures sake more than for its own For he that doth so must say as Cicero chargeth Epicurus plainly to say that Luxury is not to be discommended if it be not unpleasant for the end is the measure and rule to judge of all the means If pleasure as pleasure be best then to him that so continues it to live more pleasedly in whoredom and drunkenness and theft and murder than in godliness and honesty it will be better so to do And virtue and lust or wickedness will stand in competition only in the point of pleasure And then which think you will have the greater party and what a case would mankind be in I am perswaded that the well studying the excellent discourse of Cicero on this point and the reasons which the Stoicks and the rest of the Philosophers give against the Plebeian Philosophers as Cicero calleth them may much conduce to help many Divines themselves to a righter understanding of the same controversie as in Theology they have otherwise worded it Whether God or our own felicity be most to be loved And yet without running into the fanatick extreme of separating the love of God and our selves and calling men to try whether for his glory they can be willing to be damned Only when you read the Philosopher saying that virtue in and for it self is to be loved as our felicity elucidate it by remembring that this is because that vertue in it self is the Image of God and by our felicity they mean the perfection of our natures in respect of the end for which we were made And that as the excellency of my knife or pen yea or my horse is not to be measured by their own pleasure but their usefulness to me because I am their end so is it as to man's perfection as he is made for God and related to him for all that he hath no need of us seeing he can be pleased in us Thus this Philosophical controversie is coincident with one of the greatest in Theologie Though I have displeased many Readers by making this Treatise swell so big by answering so many objections as I have done yet I know that many will expect that I should have made it much greater by answering 1. Abundance of particular objections from Scripture-difficulties 2. And many discourses of several sorts of persons who contradict some things which I have said But I supersede any further labour of that kind for these following reasons 1. It would fill many volumes to do it as the number and quality of the Objections do require 2. Those that require it are yet so lazie that they will not read this much which I have already written as esteeming it too long 3. They may find it done already by Commentators if they will have but the patience to peruse them 4. I have laid down that evidence for the main cause of GODLINESS and CHRISTIANITY by which he that well digesteth it will be enabled himself to defend it against abundance of cavils which I cannot have time to enumerate and answer 5. The scribles of self-conceited men are so tedious and every one so confident that his reasons are considerable and yet every one so impatient to be contradicted and confuted that it is endless to write against them and it is unprofitable to sober Readers as well as tedious to me and ungrateful to themselves To instance but in the last that came to my hands an Inquisitio in fidem Christianoram hujus seculi the name prefixed I so much honour that I will not mention it Page 3. he calleth confidence in errour by the name of certainty as if every man were certain that hath but ignorance enough to over-look all cause of doubting Page 13. He will not contend if you say that it is by divine faith that we believe the words to be true which are Gods and by humane faith by which we believe them to be the words of God He saith that Faith hath no degrees but is alway equal to it self to believe is to assent and to doubt is to suspend assent Ergo where there is the least doubt there is no faith and where there is no doubt there is the highest faith Ergo Faith is always in the highest and is never more or less And yet it may be called small when it is quasi nulla that quasi is to make up a gap in respect of the subject or at least hardly yielded and in regard of the object when few things are believed Page 26. He maketh the Calvinists to be Enthusiasts that is Fanaticks because they say that they know the Scripture by the Spirit as if subjectively we had no need of the Spirit to teach us the things of God and objectively the spirit of miracles and sanctification were not the notifying evidence or testimony of the truth of Christ The same name he vouchsafeth them that hold That the Scripture is known by universal tradition to be God's word and every mans own reason must tell him or discern the meaning of it And he concludeth that if every one may expound the Scripture even in fundamentals then every man may plead against all Magistrates in defence of murder or any other crime as a rational plea and say Why should you punish me for that which God hath bid me do As if God would have no reasonable creature but bruits only to be his subjects As if a man could knowingly obey a Law which he neither knoweth nor must know the meaning of and is bound to do he knoweth not what And as if the Kings subjects must not understand the meaning of the fifth Commandment nor of Rom. 13. Honour thy father and mother and Let every soul be subject to the higher powers and not resist Or as if Kings must govern only dogs and swine or might make murder adultery idolatry and perjury the duty of all their subjects when they pleased because none must judge of the meaning of God's Law by which they are forbidden or as if it were the only way to make men obedient to Kings and Parents to have no understanding that God commandeth any man to obey them nor to know any Law of God that doth
the rude and ignorant part of the world All the truth which any Philosopher teacheth is God's truth and it is no wonder if a God of so much goodness do bless his own truth according to its nature and proportion who ever be the messenger of it Whether the success of Philosophy be ever the true sanctification and salvation of any souls is a thing that I meddle not with it belongeth not to us and therefore is not revealed to us But it is visible in the Gospel that all that part of practical doctrine which the Philosophers taught is contained in the doctrine of Christ as a part in the whole and therefore the impress and effect is more full and perfect as the doctrine and the impress and effect of the Philosophers doctrine can be no better than the cause which is partial and defective and mixt with much corruption and untruth All that is good in the Philosophers is in the doctrine of Christ but they had abundance of false opinions and idolatries to corrupt it when Christianity hath nothing but clean and pure So that as no Philosopher affirmed himself to be the Saviour so his doctrine was not attested by the plenary and common effect of Regeneration as Christ's was but as they were but the Ministers of the God of Nature so they had but an answerable help from God who could not be supposed however had they wrought miracles to have attested more than themselves asserted or laid claim to Object But Mahomet ventured on a higher arrogation and pretence and yet if his doctrine sanctifie men it will not justifie his pretences Answ 1. It is not proved that his Doctrine doth truly sanctifie any 2. The effect which it hath can be but lame defective and mixt with much vanity and error as his doctrine is for the effect cannot excell the cause 3. That part of his doctrine which is good and doth good is not his own but part of Christs from whom he borrowed it and to whom the good effects are to be ascribed 4. Mahomet never pretended to be the Son of God and Saviour of the World but only to be a Prophet Therefore his cause is much like that of the Philosophers forementioned saving that he giveth a fuller testimony to Christ 5. If Mahomet had proved his Word by antecedent Prophesies Promises and Types through many ages and by inherent purity and by concomitant Miracles and by such wonderfull subsequent communications of renewing sanctifying grace by the Spirit of God so ordinary in the World we should all have had reason to believe his Word But if he pretend only to be a Prophet and give us none of all these proofs but a foppish ridiculous bundle of Non-sense full of carnal doctrines mixt with holy truth which he had from Christ we must judge accordingly of his Authority and Word notwithstanding God may make use of that common truth to produce an answerable degree of Goodness among those that hear and know no better These Objections may be further answered anon among the rest And thus much shall here suffice of the great and cogent Evidences of the truth of the Christian Faith CHAP. VII Of the subservient proofs and means by which the forementioned Evidences are brought to our certain knowledge THE witness of the Spirit in the four wayes of Evidence already opened is proved to be sure and cogent if first it be proved to be true that indeed such a witness to Jesus Christ hath been given to the World The Argument is undenyable when the Minor is proved He whose Word is attested by God by many thousand years predictions by the inherent Image of God upon the frame of his doctrine by multitudes of uncontrolled Miracles and by the success of his Doctrine to the true Regeneration of a great part of the World is certainly to be believed But such is Jesus Christ Ergo I have been hitherto for the most part proving the Major Proposition and now come to the Minor as to the several branches § 1. I. The Prophetical Testimony of the Spirit is yet legible in the Promises Prophesies and Types and main design of the Old Testament § 2. The Books of Holy Scripture where all these are sound are certain uncorrupted records thereof preserved by the unquestioned tradition and care and to this day attested by the generall confession of the Jewes who are the bitterest enemies to Christianity There are no men of reason that I have heard of that deny the Books of Moses and the Psalms and the Prophets c. to be indeed those that went under those titles from the beginning And that there can be no considerable corruption in them which might much concern their testimony to Christ the comparing of all the Copies and the Versions yet extant will evince together with the testimony of all sorts of enemies and the morall impossibility of their corruption But I will not stand to prove that which no sober adversary doth deny To these Books the Christians did appeal and to these the Jews profess to stand § 3. II. The constitutive inherent image of God upon the Gospel of Christ is also still visible in the Books themselves and needeth no other proof than a capable Reader as afore described § 4. The preaching and Writings of the Ministers of Christ do serve to illustrate this and help men to discern it but adde nothing to the inherent perfection of the Gospel for matter or for method § 5. III. The testimony of the age of Miracles fore-described can be known naturally no way but by sight or other senses to those present and by report or history to those absent § 6. The Apostles and many thousand others saw the Miracles wrought by Christ and needed no other proof of them than their senses The many thousands who at twice were fed by Miracle were witnesses of that The multitude were witnesses of his healing the blinde the lame the paralitick the Demoniacks c. The Pharisees themselves made the strictest search into the cure of the man born blinde Joh. 9. and the raising of Lazarus from the dead and many more His miracles were few of them hid but openly done before the World § 7. The Apostles and many hundreds more were witnesses of Christs own Resurrection and needed no other proof but their sense At divers times he appeared to them together and apart and yielded to Thomas his unbelief so farre as to call him to put his finger into his side and see the print of the Nails He instructed them concerning the Kingdom of God for forty dayes Act. 1. He gave them their Commission Mar. 16. Mat. 28. Joh. 21. He expostulated with Peter and engaged him to feed his Lambs He was seen of more than five hundred brethren at once And lastly appeared after his ascension to Paul and to John that wrote the Revelations § 8. The Apostles also were eye-witnesses of his ascension Act. 1. What he had foretold
luculentissima Josephi edita paulo post annum à Christi abitu 40. Cum quibus consentiunt ea quae apud Thalmudicos de iisdem temporibus leguntur Neronis saevitiam in Christianos Tacitus memoriae prodidit Exstabant olim libri tum privatorum ut Phlegontis tum acta publica ad quae Christiani provocabant quilus constabat de eo sidere quod post Christum natum apparuit de terrae motu solis deliquio contra naturam plenissimo lunae orbe circa tempus quo Christus crucis supplicio affectus est Celsus and Julian do not deny the miracles of Christ Mahomet himself confesseth Christ to be a true Prophet and the Word of God and condemneth the Jews for rejecting him he confesseth his miraculous Nativity and mighty works and that he was sent from heaven to preach the Gospel He bringeth in God as saying We have delivered our declarations to Jesus the Son of Mary and strengthned him by the holy Ghost And We have delivered him the Gospel in which is direction and light c. And he teacheth his followers this Creed Say We believe in God and that which was delivered to Moses and Jesus and which was delivered to the Prophets from their Lord we distinguish not between any of them and we deliver up our selves to his faith And if Christ be to be believed as Mahomet saith then Christianity is the true Religion for as for his and his followers reports that the Scriptures are changed and that we have put out Christ's prediction that Mahomet must be sent c. they are fables not only unproved but before here proved utterly impossible Read Eusebius Eccles Hist l. 8 c. 17 18. l. 9. c. 10. of God's strange judgments on Maximinus the Emperour whose bowels being tormented and his lower parts ulcerated with innumerable worms and so great a stink as kill'd some of his Physicians which forced him to confess that what had befallen him was deservedly for his madness against Christ for he had forbidden the Christians their assemblies and persecuted them wherefore he commanded that they should cease persecuting the Christians and that by a Law and Imperial Edict their Assemblies should be again restored He confessed his sins and begg'd the Christians Prayers and professed that if he were recovered he would worship the God of the Christians whom by experience he had found to be the true God See Bishop Fotherby Atheomast l. 1. c. 3. p. 140 141. comparing his case with Antiochus his Paulus Orosius histor li. 6. fine telleth us of a Fountain of Oyl which flowed a whole day in Augustus Reign and how Augustus refused to be called Dominus and how he shut up Janus Temple because of the Universal Peace and that eo tempore id est eo anno quo fortissimam verissimamque pacem ordinatione Dei Caesar composuit natus est Christus cujus adventum pax ista famulata est in cujus ortu audientibus hominibus exultantes Angeli cecinerunt Gloria in excelsis Deo in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis See also what after others he saith of Tyberius motioning to the Senate that Christ might be accounted a God and Sejanus resisting it li 7. Auct Bib. Pat. To. 1. p. 209. where he saith also that aliquanti Graecorum libri attested the darkness at Christs death And li. 7. p. 216. he sheweth that as after the ten Plagues of Egypt the Israelites were delivered and the Egyptians destroyed so was it in the Roman Empire with the Christians and Pagans after the particular revenges of the ten Persecutions But because he is a Christian Historian I cite no more from him CHAP. IX Yet Faith hath many Difficulties to overcome What they are and what their Causes THere are two sorts of persons who may possibly peruse these things and are of tempers so contrary that what helpeth one may hurt the other The first are those who see so many objections and difficulties that they are turned from the due apprehension of the Evidences of Christianity and can think of nothing but stumbling-blocks to their Faith To tell these men of more difficulties may adde to their discouragement and do them hurt And yet I am not of their minde that think they should be therefore silenced For that may tempt them to imagine them unanswerable if they come into their mindes The better way for these men is to desire them better to study the Evidence of truth And there are other men who must be thought on who seeing no difficulties in the work of Faith do continue unfortified against them and keep up a Belief by meer extrinsick helps and advantages which will fall as soon as the storms assault it And because no doubt is well overcome that is not known and Nil tam certum quà m quod ex dubio certum est I will venture to open the Difficulties of Believing § 1. That Believing in Christ is a work of Difficulty is proved both by the paucity of sound Believers and the imperfection of Faith in the sincere and the great and wonderfull means which must be used to bring men to believe Superficial Believers are a small part of the whole World and sound Believers are a small part of professed Christians And these sound Believers have many a temptation and some of them many a troublesom doubt and all of them a Faith which is too farr from perfection And yet all the Miracles Evidences Arguments and Operations aforesaid must be used to bring them even to this § 2. The Difficulties are I. Some of them in the things to be believed II. Some of them in extrinsecal impediments III. And some of them in the minde of Man who must believe § 3. I. 1. The mysteriousness of the doctrine of the blessed Trinity hath alwayes been a difficulty to Faith and occasioned many to avoid Christianity especially the Mahometanes and many Hereticks to take up Devices of their own to shift it off § 4. 2. The Incarnation of the second Person the Eternal Word and the personal union of the Divine Nature with the Humane is so strange a condescension of God to man as maketh this the greatest of difficulties and the greatest stumbling-block to Infidels and Hereticks § 5. 3. The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ and the advancement of mans nature in him above the Angelical nature and glory is a difficulty § 6. 4. To believe all the history of the Miracles of Christ the Prophets and Apostles is difficult because of the strangeness of the things § 7. 5. It is not without difficulty firmly to believe the Immortality of Souls and the endlesness of the felicity of the life to come § 8. 6. And it hath proved hard to many to believe the endless miseries of damned souls in Hell § 9. 7. And it is as hard to believe the paucity of the blessed and that the damned are the farr greater number § 10. 8.
Apostles may cause variety of style and other accidental excellencies in the parts of the holy Scriptures and yet all these parts be animated with one soul of Power Truth and Goodness But those men who think that these humane imperfections of the Writers do extend further and may appear in some by-passages of Chronologies or History which are no proper part of the Rule of Faith and Life do not hereby destroy the Christian cause For God might enable his Apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of the Gospel even all things necessary to salvation though he had not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance no more than they were indefectible in life As for them that say I can believe no man in any thing who is mistaken in one thing at least as infallible they speak against common sense and reason for a man may be infallibly acquainted with some things who is not so in all An Historian may infallibly acquaint me that there was a Fight at Lepanto at Edge-hill at York at Naseby or an Insurrection and Massacre in Ireland and Paris c. who cannot tell me all the circumstances of it or he may infallibly tell men of the late Fire which consumed London though he cannot tell just whose houses were burnt and may mistake about the Causers of it and the circumstances A Lawyer may infallibly tell you whether your cause be good or bad in the main who yet may misreport some circumstances in the opening of it A Physician in his Historical observations may partly erre as an Historian in some circumstances yet be infallible as a Physician in some plain cases which belong directly to his Art I do not believe that any man can prove the least error in the holy Scripture in any point according to its true intent and meaning but if he could the Gospel as a Rule of Faith and Life in things necessary to salvation might be nevertheless proved infallible by all the evidence before given Object XVIII The Physicks in Gen 1. are contrary to all true Philosophy and suited to the vulgars erroneous conceits Answ No such matter there is sounder doctrine of Physicks in Gen. 1. than any Philosopher hath who contradicteth it And as long as they are altogether by the ears among themselves and so little agreed in most of their Philosophy but leave it to this day either to the Scepticks to deride as utterly uncertain or to any Novelist to form anew into what principles and hypothesis he please the judgment of Philosophers is of no great value to prejudice any against the Scriptures The sum of Gen. 1. is but this That God having first made the Intellectual Superiour part of the world and the matter of the Elementary world in an unformed Mass or Chaos did the first day distinguish or form the active Element of Fire and caused it to give Light The second day he separated the attenuated or rarifi'd part of the passive Element which we call the Air expanding it from the earth upwards to separate the clouds from the lower waters and to be the medium of Light And whether in different degrees of purity it fill not all the space between all the Globes both fixed and planetary is a question which we may more probably affirm than deny unless there be any waters also upwards by condensation which we cannot disprove The third day he separated the rest of the passive Element Earth and Sea into their proper place and bounds and also made individual Plants in their specifick forms and virtue of generation or multiplication of individuals The fourth day he made the Sun Moon and Stars either then forming them or then making them Luminaries to the earth and appointing them their relative office but hath not told us of their other uses which are nothing to us The fifth day he made inferiour Sensitives Fishes and Birds the inhabitants of Water and Air with the power of generation or multiplication of individuals The sixth day he made first the terrestrial Animals and then Man with the power also of generation or multiplication And the seventh day having taken complacency in all the works of this glorious perfected frame of Nature he appointed to be observ'd by mankind as a day of rest from worldly labours for the worshipping of Him their Omnipotent Creator in commemoration of this work This is the sum and sense of the Physicks of Gen. 1. And here is no errour in all this what ever prejudice Philosophers may imagine Object XIX It is a suspicious sign that Believing is commanded us instead of knowing and that we must take all upon trust without any proof Answ This is a meer slander Know as much as you are able to know Christ came not to hinder but to help your knowledge Faith is but a mode or act of knowing How will you know matters of History which are past and matters of the unseen world but by believing If you could have an Angel come from heaven to tell you what is there would you quarrel because you are put upon believing him if you can know it without believing and testimony do God biddeth you believe nothing but what he giveth you sufficient reason to believe Evidence of credibility in Divine faith is evidence of certainty Believers in Scripture usually say We know that thou art the Christ c. You are not forbidden but encouraged to try the spirits and not to believe every spirit nor pretended prophet Let this Treatise testifie whether you have not Reason and evidence for Belief it is Mahomet's doctrine and not Christ's which forbiddeth examination Object XX. It imposeth upon us an incredible thing when it perswadeth us that our undoing and calamity and death are the way to our felicity and our gain and that sufferings work together for our good At least these are hard terms which we cannot undergoe nor think it wisdom to lose a certainty for uncertain hopes Answ Suppose but the truth of the Gospel proved yea or but the Immortality and Retribution for Souls hereafter which the light of Nature proveth and then we may well say that this Objection savoureth more of the Beast than of the Man A Heathen can answer it though not so well as a Christian Seneca and Plutarch Antonine and Epictetus have done it in part And what a dotage is it to call things present Certainties when they are certainly ready to pass away and you are uncertain to possess them another hour who can be ignorant what haste Time maketh and how like the Life of man is to a dream What sweetness is now left of all the pleasant cups and morsels and all the merry hours you have had and all the proud or lustfull fancies which have tickled your deluded fleshly mindes Are they not more terrible than comfortable to your most retired sober thoughts and what an inconsiderable moment is it till it will be so with all the rest
she spake to him as the Priests of Baal to their God that could not hear and made but matter of laughter and pity to those that heard of it There hath not been in England in our dayes that ever I could hear of either by Jesuit Fryer Quaker or other Fanatick so much as a handsome Cheat resembling a Miracle which the People might not easily see to be a transparent foolery But many wonders I have known done at the earnest Prayers of humble Christians So that he who shall compare the Fryers and Fanaticks with the Apostles and other Disciples of Christ whose Miracles were such as afore-described will see that the Devils apish design though it may cheat forsaken Souls into infidelity is such as may confirm the faith of sober men 4. And what Spirit of sanctification doth accompany any of their peculiar doctrines If any of them do any good in the World it is only by the doctrine of Christ But for their own doctrines what do they but cheat men and draw the simple into sin A Frier by his own doctrine may draw men to some foppery or ridiculous ceremony or subjection to that Clergy whose holy diligence consisteth in striving who shall be greatest and Lord it over the inheritance of Christ and rule them by constraint and not willingly A Quaker by his own doctrine may teach men to cast away their bands and cuffs and points and hat-bands and to say Thou instead of You and to put off their hats to no men and to be the publick and private revilers of the holiest and ablest Preachers of the Gospel and the best of the people and with truculent countenances to rail at God's servants in a horrid abuse of Scripture-terms If this image and work of the Devil were indeed the image and work of God it were some testimony of the verity of their doctrine And yet even these Sects do but like a flash of lightning appear for a moment and are suddenly extinct and some other sect or fraternity succeedeth them The Quakers already recant most of those rigidities on which at first they laid out their chiefest zeal If a flash of such lightning or a squib or glow-worm be argument sufficient to prove that there is no other Sun then Friers and Fanaticks as oft as they are mad may warrant you to believe that all men are so too even Christ and his Apostles Object IV. But the power of cheaters and credulity of the vulgar is almost incredible The great number of Papists who believe their holy cheats and the greater number of Mahometans who believe in a most sottish ignorant deceiver do tell us what a folly it is to believe for company Answ This is sufficiently answered already no doubt but cheaters may do much with the ignorant and credulous multitude but doth it follow thence that there is nothing certain in the world None of these were ever so successful in deceiving as to make men of sound understanding and senses believe that they saw the lame and blind and deaf and sick and lunatick healed and the dead raised and that they themselves performed the like and that they saw and were instructed by one risen from the dead when there was no such thing or that abundance of men did speak in many unlearn'd tongues and heal the lame and blind and sick and raise the dead and this for many years together in many Countries before many Congregations and that they procured the same spirit to those that believed them to do the like and that by this means they planted Churches of such believers through the world Who is it that hath been such a successful deceiver As for the Mahometans they do but believe by education and humane authority that Mahomet was a great Prophet whose sword and not his miracles hath made his sect so strong that they dare not speak against it Those few miracles which he pretendeth to are ridiculous unproved dreams And if there be found a people in the world that by a Tyrants power may be so barbarously educated as to believe any foppery how foolish and vain soever be the report it doth not follow that full and unquestionable evidence is not to be believed Object But what can be imagined by the wit of man more certain than sense when it is sound senses and all the senses and all mens senses upon an object suitable and near with convenient media c. And yet in the point of Transubstantiation it is not a few fools but Princes Popes Prelates Pastors Doctors and the most profound and subtil School-men with whole Kingdoms of People of all sorts who believe that all these senses are deceived both other mens and their own What therefore may not be believed in the world Answ And yet a nihil scitur vel certum est is an inhumane foolish consequence of all this nor hath it any force against the certainty of the Scripture Miracles For 1. All this is not a believing that positively they see and feel and taste and hear that which indeed they do not but it is a believing that they do not see and hear and feel and taste that which indeed they do they are made believe that there is no Bread and Wine when indeed there is But this is no delusion of the senses but of the understanding denying credit to the sense If you had proved that all these Princes Lords Prelates and People had verily thought that they had seen and tasted and felt Bread and Wine when it was not so then you might have carried the cause of unbelief but upon no other terms which is to be remarked than by proving that nothing in all the world is certain or credible For all the certainty of the Intellect is so far founded in the certainty of sense and resolved into it in this life that it cannot possibly go beyond it If you suppose not all mens sound consenting senses to have as much infallibility as man is capable of in this life for the ordinary conduct of his judgment you must grant that there is no further infallibility to be had by any natural way For he that is not certain of the infallibility of such consenting senses is not certain that ever there was a Bible a Pope a Priest a Man a Council a Church a World or any thing 2. And for my part I do not believe that all these that you mention do really believe that their senses are deceived though if they did it s nothing to our case Most of them are frightned for carnal preservation into a silencing of their belief others know not what Transubstantiation meaneth Many are cheated by the Priests changing the question and when they are about to consider Whether all our senses be certain that this is Bread and Wine they are made believe that the question is Whether our senses are certain of the Negative that here is not the real Body and Bloud of Christ And they
must give light to Christianity and prepare men to receive it And they think to know what is in Heaven before they will learn what they are themselves and what it is to be a man Cond 4. Get a true Anatomy Analysis or Description of Christianity in your minds for if you know not the true nature of it first you will be lamentably disadvantaged in enquiring into the truth of it For Christianity well understood in the quiddity will illustrate the mind with such a winning beauty as will make us meet its evidence half-way and will do much to convince us by its proper light Cond 5. When you have got the true method of the Christian doctrine or Analysis of faith begin at the Essentials or primitive truths and proceed in order according to the dependencies of truths and do not begin at the latter end nor study the conclusion before the premises Cond 6. Yet look on the whole scheme or frame of causes and evidences and take them entirely and conjunct and not as peevish factious men who in splenish zeal against another sect reject and vilifie the evidence which they plead This is the Devils gain by the raising of sects and contentions in the Church he will engage a Papist for the meer interest of his sect to speak lightly of the Scripture and the Spirit and many Protestants in meer opposition to the Papists to sleight Tradition and the testimony of the Church denying it its proper authority and use As if in the setting of a Watch or Clock one would be for one wheel and another for another and each in peevishness cast away that which another would make use of when it will never go true without them all Faction and contentions are deadly enemies to truth Cond 7. Mark well the suitableness of the remedy to the disease that is of Christianity to the depraved state of man and mark well the lamentable effects of that universal depravation that your experience may tell you how unquestionable it is Cond 8. Mark well how connaturally Christianity doth relish with holy souls and how well it suiteth with honest principles and hearts so that the better any man is the better it pleaseth him And how potently all debauchery villany and vice befriendeth the cause of Atheists and unbelievers Cond 9. Take a considerate just survey of the common enmity against Christianity and Holiness in all the wicked of the world and the notorious war which is every where managed between Christ and the Devil and their several followers that you may know Christ partly by his enemies Cond 10. Impartially mark the effects of Christian doctrine where ever it is sincerely entertain'd and see what Religion maketh the best men and judge not of serious Christians at a distance by false reports of ignorant or malicious adversaries And then you will see that Christ is actually the Saviour of souls Cond 11. Be not liars your selves lest it dispose you to think all others to be liars and to judge of the words of others by your own Cond 12. Be-think you truly what persons you should be your selves and what lives you should live if you did not believe the Christian doctrine or if you doe not believe it mark what effect your unbelief hath on your lives For my own part I am assured if it were not for the Christian doctrine my heart and life would be much worse than it is though I had read Epictetus Arrian Plato Plotinus Jamblichus Proclus Seneca Cicero Plutarch every word and those few of my neighbourhood who have fallen off to infidelity have at once fallen to debauchery and abuse of their nearest relations and differed as much in their lives from what they were before in their profession of Christianity though unsound as a leprous body differeth from one in comeliness and health Cond 13. Be well acquainted if possible with Church-History that you may understand by what Tradition Christianity hath descended to us For he that knoweth nothing but what he hath seen or receiveth a Bible or the Creed without knowing any further whence and which way it cometh to us is greatly disadvantaged as to the reception of the faith Cond 14. In all your reading of the holy Scriptures allow still for your ignorance in the languages proverbs customs and circumstances which are needful to the understanding of particular Texts and when difficulties stop you be sure that no such ignorance remain the cause He that will but read Brugensis Grotius Hammond and many other that open such phrases and circumstances with Topographers and Bochartus and such others as write of the Animals Utensils and other circumstances of those times will see what gross errors the opening of some one word or phrase may deliver the Reader from Cond 15. Vnderstand what excellencies and perfections they be which the Spirit of God intended to adorn the holy Scriptures with and also what sort of humane imperfections are consistent with these its proper perfections that so false expectations may not tempt you into unbelief It seduceth many to infidelity to imagine that if Scripture be the word of God it must needs be most perfect in every accident and mode which were never intended to be part of its perfection Whereas God did purposely make use of those men and of that style and manner of expression which was defective in some points of natural excellency that so the supernatural excellency might be the more apparent As Christ cured the blind with clay and spittle and David slew Goliah with a sling The excellency of the means must be estimated by its aptitude to its end Cond 16. If you see the evidences of the truth of Christianity in the whole let that suffice you for the belief of the several parts when you see not the true answer to particular exceptions If you see it soundly proved that Christ is the Messenger of the Father and that his word is true and that the holy Scripture is his word this is enough to quiet any sober mind when it cannot confute every particular objection or else no man should ever hold fast any thing in the world if he must let all go after the fullest proof upon every exception which he cannot answer The inference is sure If the whole be true the parts are true Cond 17. Observe well the many effects of Angels ministration and the evidences of a communion between us and the spirits of the unseen world for this will much facilitate your belief Cond 18. Over-look not the plain evidences of the Apparitions Witches and wonderful events which fall out in the times and places where you live and what reflections they have upon the Christian cause Cond 19. Observe well the notable answers of Prayers in matters internal and external in others and in your selves Cond 20. Be well studied at home about the capacity use and tendency of all your faculties and you will find that your very nature pointeth you up to
Marble feeleth no more than the solid stone nor the air than the earth for any proof that we have of it The boys that whip their tops and the women that turn their wheels so swiftly that the motion shall not be discerned yet put no feeling into either though the motion be swifter than that of the heart or lungs or blood What the learned Dr. Ward hath said of this against Mr. Hobs I refer you to peruse and excuse me for transcribing it Scaliger Sennertus and many others have heretofore challenged these Philosophers to shew the world how atoms by motion or elements by mixture can get that sense which neither matter motion nor mixture have but we can meet with no account of it yet worth the reading not by Cartesius not by Regius or Berigardus not by Gassendus nor any other that we can get and read How unsatisfactory is it to tell us that facultas sentiendi movendi quae anima sensitiva vulgo dicitur est partium animalis in spiritus nervos alia sensoria c. talis attemperatio conformatio qua animal ab objectis variis motibus affici potest as Regius l. 4. c. 3. p. 267. This is an easie solving of the Phaenomena indeed But qualis est illa contemperatio quomodo potest contemperantia insensibilium sensibile constituere Nonne dat ista contemperatio quod non habet Perhaps you will say with him in Cicer. de Nat. Deor. that by this argument God must be a Fidler because he maketh men that are such Answ By this argument no fidler nor any other man hath more wisdom than God or can do that which God cannot do but because God is above him in his skill doth it follow that the names which signifie humane imperfection must be put on God Can God enable a man to that which he is not able to do himself and can he give that which he hath not to give Object None of the parts of a clock can tell the hour of the day and yet all set together can and none of the letters of a book are Philosophy and yet the whole may be a learned system and no atoms in a Lute can make melody as the whole can do Answ This is but to play with words In all these instances the whole hath nothing of a higher kind in nature than the several parts but only a composition by the contribution of each part The clock telleth you nothing but per modum signi and that signum is only in the sound or order of motion And sound and motion belongeth to the whole by vertue or contribution of the parts and is not another thing above them And that the motion is so ordered and that man can by it collect the time of the day is from the power of our understandings and not from the matter of the engine at all So the book is no otherwise Philosophy at all but per modum signi which signum is related to mans understanding both as the cause and orderer and as the receiver and apprehender So that the letters do nothing at all but passively serve the mind of man And so it is in the other instance the strings do but move the air and cause the sound which is in the ear that this is melody is caused only by the mind of man who first frameth and then orderly moveth them and then suo modo receiveth the sound and maketh melody by the aptitude of his apprehension If you had proved that Clock or Book or Lute do make themselves and order and use themselves and know the time or understand or delight in themselves you had done something But by the deceitful names of Philosophy and Melody to confound the bare natural sound and sign with that ordering and that reception which is the priviledge of a mind is unfit for a Philosopher Moreover I expect from Matter and Motion an account of motions great concomitants that is of Light and Heat Mistake me not I am not undervaluing the effects of motion I take it for a most noble and observable cause of most that is done or existent in the corporeal world but must it therefore be the solitary cause I have long observed amongst wranglers and erroneous zealots in Divinity that most of their error and misdoing lieth in setting the necessary co-ordinate causes or parts of things as inconsistent in opposition to one another It would make one ashamed to hear one plead that Scripture must be proved by it self and another that it must be proved by reason and another that it must be by miracles and another by the Church and another by general History and Tradition c. As if every one of these were not necessary concurrent parts in the proof Such work have we among poor deluded women and ignorant men while the Romanists say that they are the true Church and the Greeks say it is they and the Lutherans say it is they and the Anabaptists say it is they as if my neighbours and I should contend which of our houses it is that is the Town And so do these Philosophers about the Principles and Elements The Intellectual nature which is the Image of God hath notoriously three faculties Vnderstanding Will and Executive Power and men think that they cannot understand the one without denying the other two and the fiery nature which constituteth the Sun and other Luminaries and is the image of the vital nature hath three notorious powers or properties Light Heat and Motion and they cannot understand Motion without making nothing of Light and Heat or greatly obscuring and abusing them Cull out into one and set together but what Patricius hath said of Light and what Telesius hath said of Heat and Campanella after him and what Gassendus and Cartesius have said of Motion and cut off all their superfluities and you will have a better entrance into sound Philosophy than any one book that I know doth afford you I confess that as wisdom must lead the will and determine its acts quoad specificationem and the will must set a work the same intellect and determine its acts quoad exercitium and the active power doth partly work ad intra in the operations of both these and ad extra is excited by the imperium of the will so that these three faculties as Schibler Alsted and many others truly number them are marvellously conjunct and co operative Even so it is in the Motion Light and Heat of the active element or fiery or aethereal nature I know motion contributeth to light and heat but it 's as true that light and heat have their proper coequal and co-ordinate properties and effects and that heat contributeth as much to motion at least as motion doth to heat indeed in one essence they are three coequal vertues or faculties the Vis Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva And so vain is their labour who only from matter
them that the Cure had been to have made them more Religious and not less And that the true Belief of a Life to come is the end the motive the poise of all wise and regular actions and of Love and Peace of right Government and obedience and of justice mercy and all that is lovely in the world An OBJECTION about the Worlds Eternity HAving said thus much about the point which I thought most considerable I shall answer an Objection about the Worlds Eternity because I perceive that it sticks with some Obj. We finde it the harder to believe the Scripture and the Christian Doctrine because it asserteth a thing which Aristotle hath evinced to be so improbable as is the Creation of the World within less than 6000 years When no natural reason can be brought to prove that the World is not eternall Answ 1. It is you that are the affirmers and therefore on whom the natural proof is incumbent Prove if you can that the World is eternal Were it not tedious I should by examining your reasons shew that they have no convincing force at all 2. There is so much written of it that I am loth to trouble the Reader with more I now only again referre the Reader to Raymundus Lullius desiring him not to reject his arguments if some of them seem not cogent seeing if any one of all his multitude prove such it is enough 3. I now only desire that the Controversie between the Christian and the Infidel may be but rightly stated And to that end do not charge Christianity with any School-mans or other confident persons private opinions nor suppose Christ or Scripture to determine any thing which they do not determine 1. Christianity and Scripture do not at all determine whether the whole Universe was created at the same time when this our Heaven and Earth was But only that the Systeme or World which we belong to the Sun and Moon and Starrs and Earth were then created Nay a great part of the ancient Doctors and of the most learned late Expositors on Gen. 1. do expound the Heavens which God is said to create as being only the visible Heavens and not including the Angels at all And others say that by In the beginning is meant ab initio rerum and that the Heavens there meant being the Angelical Habitations and the Earth as without form were both ab initio rerum before the six dayes Creation which began with the making of Light out of the pre-existent Heavens or Chaos I think not this opinion true but this liberty Christian Doctors have taken of differing from one another in this difficult point But they utterly differ about the time of the creation of Angels on Gen. 1. and on Job 1. and consequently whether there were not a World existent when this World was created 2. Or if any that seeth more than I can prove the contrary yet it is certainly a thing undetermined by Scripture and in the Christian Faith whether there were any Worlds that had begun and ended before this was made That God is the maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible is most certain But whether this Heaven and Earth which now is was the first which he hath made is a thing that our Religion doth not at all meddle with They that with Origen affirm that there were antecedent worlds are justly blamed on one side not for speaking things false but things uncertain and unrevealed and for corrupting Christianity by a mixture of things alien and doubtfull And those who affirm that there were no antecedent worlds are as much culpable on the other side if not more on the same account and upon further reasons On the one side we know that God needeth nothing to his own felicity but is perfectly sufficient for himself and that he createth not the World ex necessitate naturae as an agent which acteth ad ultimum posse And on the other side we know that though he hath a Goodness of self-perfection unspeakably more excellent than his Benignity as Related to man not that one Property in God is to be said more excellent than another in it self but that quoad Relationem there is an infinite difference between his Goodness in Himself and his Goodness only as Related to his Creatures and measured by their interest yet we confess that his Fecundity and Benignity is included in his own Goodness and that he delighteth to do Good and is communicative and that he doth Good ex necessitate voluntaria ex naturae perfectione without coaction it being most necessary that he do that which his Infinite wisdom saith is best which made Th. White de Mundo say that God did necessarily make the World and necessarily make it in time and not ab aeterno and yet all this most voluntarily because he doth necessarily do that which is best in the judgement of his Wisdom And we deny not that if a man will presume to give liberty to his Reason to search into unrevealed things that it will seem to him very improbable that he who is Actus purus of Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness and who now taketh pleasure in all his works and his delights are with the Sons of men should from all Eternity produce no Creature till less than 6000 years ago when a thousand years with him are but as a day and that he should resolve to have Creatures to all Eternity who as to future duration shall be so like to Himself when from all Eternity he had no Creature till as it were five or six dayes agoe Christians are apt to have such thoughts as these as well as you when they look but to rational probabilities But they hold that all these matters whether there were antecedent worlds and how many and of what sort and of what duration whether this was the first are matters unrevealed which they ought not to trouble the world or themselves with prying into or contending about And they finde that they are unfruitfull speculations which do but overwhelme the minde of him that searcheth after them when God hath provided for us in the Christian Faith more plain and sure and solid and wholsom food to live upon 3. And if it be unrevealed in Scripture whether before this there was any other World we must confess it unrevealed whether there were any emanant or created Entity which God did produce from all Eternity considered quoad durationem only For the Scripture saith no more of one than of the other And if there were one moment dividing Eternity only imaginarily in which there had been nothing but God we must equally confess an Eternity in which there was nothing but God because Eternity hath no beginning 4. But Christianity assureth us of these two things 1. That certainly there is no Being besides God but what was created produced or totally caused by Him And that if any Creature were eternal as to