the carnal rest of the Jewes is a figure of the spiritual rest of Christians in grace here in glory in the world to come And therefore when he is afraid least he should have laboured in vain upon the Galatians IV. 10. because they observed days and moneths years when he teacheth the Colossians II. 16. not to be over-ruled in the mater of new Moons or Sabbath When he sheweth the Romanes XIV 5. that they who esteemed on one day before another were weak Christians He did not mean to remove the obligation of the seventh day upon the first but to show that Christians may as well think themselves bound in conscience to be circumcised as to be under the precept of the Sabbath And let me understand how we can be bound by the precept of the Sabbath and not be bound to that measure of rest which the precept of the Sabbath limiteth For the constitution which the Jews go by this day is so grounded in the Text that it is not possible to imagine that ever it was practised otherwise the leter of the Law manifestly distinguishing between worke and servile workâ— and permitting the dressing of meat upon the first and last dayes of the Passovâ—r Pentecost and the feast of Tabernacles but forbidding servile work that is to say such work as slâ—ves were imployed about for their Masters advantage but upon the Sabbath and day of atonement forbidding all work that is not onely servile work but the dressing of meat upon those days whereupon comes the express prohibition of kindling fire on the Sabbath not for the time that they lived in the wildernesse but as the Law expresseth in all their habitations Ex. XII 16. XXXV 30. XVI 23. Levit. XXIII 3. 7 8 21 25 28. Numb XXIX 1 7. And therefore Deut. XVI 8. where for brevities sake he saith of the Passover No worke shall be done in it The Greek adds out of Exodus and Leviticus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Besides what shall be dressed for meat And therefore when our Lord goes to dâ—ne with a Pharisee Luc. XIV 1. it is no marvail that he is invited upon a Festivall on which they hold themselves still bound to eat the best meat and drink the best wine and put on the clothes they have But he knew his entertainment must be upon meats dreâ—t the day before And therefore he not onely reproveth the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who for their own profit to draw their Oxe or their Ass out of the pit could bâ—lâ— it and in a charitable cause of healing a man stood upon it But further he showes it to be a meer positive precept of the Law when by the right of a Prophet he commandeth the lame man whom he had cured to cary away his bed upon the Sabbath Joh. V. 10. the Prophet of the old Law having forbidding to cary any burthen upon the Sabbath Jer. XVII 21. 22. And the reason my Father still worketh and so do I worke inâ—erreth that as the rest of God was not from bodily labour so neither is it the rest from bodily labour which he or his Gospel intendeth I conclude therefore that which will seem strange to unskilful people That the onely thing commanded by the leter of the fourth Commandement is to rest from bodily labour upon the seventh day of the week on which God rested from whence it is called the Sabbath But by the mysticall sense of it under the New Testament to rest from our own works of sinne here that we may attain to the rest of God in the world to come And I cannot see how a more evident argument can be expected for this then the extending of the precept to cattel and strangers not onely to children who otherwise are not under the precept For strangers in the Law that is those that worshipped the true God alone but were not circumcised who are therefore alwayes translated Conuerts in the Syriack to wit from Idols were onely tyed to seven precepts which all the Sons of Noe had received from him Whereof that of the Sabbath was none And therefore it is not they that are commanded to rest but Gods people are commanded that they shall not work as they are commanded that their Cattel shall not work I know there is a strong Argument against this in vulgar esteem which to me makes no difficulty at all that they are commanded to sanctifie or keep holy the Sabbath But he that admits the true difference between the Law and the Gospel must admit a legall as well as a spirituall holinesse And I would know what holinesse there is in offering a brute beast to God in sacrifice that is not in sitting still on the seventh day Both being stamped with Gods command and the rest of the Body signifying the rest of the soul from sinne which is very holy as the sacrifice is holy because it signifieth the holinesse of our Lord Christ or of them whom he sanctifieth The Apostle teacheth us thus to distinguish when he saith Heb. IX 11. If the blood of Bulls and Goats and the ashes of a red cow sprinkling the purified sanctifieth to the purity of the flesh For the holiness it procureth is but the capacity of free conversation amongst the people of the true God as to the leter of the Law And bodily rest upon the Sabbath is a full profession of the true God which made heaven and earth and brought his people out of Egypt I do not deny that the service of God was commanded by the Law upon the Sabbath But not by this precept You have an order for publick Assemblies on the Sabbath as well as on other Festivals Levit. XXIII you have an order for what sacrifices should be offered on each of them Num. XXVIII But had the Law gone no further then the fourth Commandment the Jews had not been tied to those precepts I acknowledge further that they were bound to serve God with other offices such as are common to them and us both upon the Sabbath as upon other Festivals when they had Synagogues or means to assemble themselves otherwise as Abenezra observes out of 2 King IV. 23. For had it not been the custome to resorâ— to the Prophets at the Festivals he would not have said Why wilt thou go to the Prophet It is neither new Moon nor Sabbath And the order for this which we see by the acts of the Apostles and the Gospels as well as by the Jews Constitutions no man will deny to have obliged them by virtue of the Law But not by the leter of it which had it been precisely followed the objection of Origen and other of the Fathers must have taken place and no man must have stirred out of the place where he should be found at the coming in of the Sabbath But in regard there was alwayes in that people a sense of that spiritual service of God which these carnal precepts tended to therefore was there provided a power
be and was sufficient means under the Law to make them understand their obligation to that spiritual obedience which the Gospel covenanteth for though wee suppose as the truth is that the Law expresly covenanteth onely for the temporal happinesse of the Land of Promise Therefore there was also sufficient meanes to oblige them to expect the coming of the Christ as wee see by the Gospel that they did at the coming of our Lord and as all that will maintain Christianity against the Jewes are bound to maintain And therefore to the objection proposed I answer That though the words of the precept of loving God with all the heart and all the minde and all the soul and all the might may contain all that Christianity requireth to be done in consideration of duty to God and with an intent of his honor and service Yet neverthelesse that sense thereof that depends upon the Covenant of the Law is to be limited to the observation of those precepts which God should confine their civil life to in the service of him alone The intent of the Covenant being to contract with God for temporal happinesse in the Land of Promise they undertaking as a Common-wealth to live by such civil Lawes as hee should give as well as to worship him by such Ceremonies as hee should prescribe And therefore supposing they observed those precepts they were to expect the inheritance of the Land of Promise though wee suppose that they did it out of respect to that reward and not onely to God and to his honor and service Yea though wee grant that for the acknowledging of the true God alone they were bound to indure persecution and death rather than for fear of torment to deny God or sacrifice to Idols or renounce his Law as wee see Daniel and the three Children did under Nebuchadnesar and the zealous Jewes in the Maccabees time under Antiochus Epiphanes For if the Heathen had cause to believe that which is received of all as the ground of civil Society that particular persons are bound to expose their lives for the defense of their Countrey that is to no other end but that they may live and die in the Lawes under which they are bred though they had no promise of God that they should hold their inheritance of this world by maintaining them Cereainly the people that obtained their inheritance by taking upon them Moses Law shall stand bound not onely to maintain it by the sword under the conduct of their Soveraignes but also by suffering for it when they were not to maintain it by force A thing nothing strange to a man that shall consider how desâ—rable life is to him that is forced from the Lawes of his Countrey As for the other part of loving our Neighbor as our selves it is without doubt pregnant with an evident argument of this truth seeing in plain reason the extent of the precept might so argue the intent of it For it is evident by infinite Texts of the Law that a mans neighbor in this precept extends no further than to Israelites whether by birth or by religion that is to say those that are ingraffed into the Covenant by being circumcised For example Let mee ask how the Law could forbid the Israelites to seek the good of the Moabites and Ammonites if it be part of the same Law to love all men under the quality of neighbors as themselves Let mee demand of any man how Mordecai was tied not to do that honor to Haman that his Soveraigne commanded to be done How hee could in conscience disobey his Prince in a mater of indifferent nature of it self had it not been prohibited by the Law of God Whether a Jew that is commanded by the Law to professe hostility against all Amalekites could be dispensed with in this obligation by any act of his Soveraign Whether any just reason can be alleged for Mordecai but this Nay those who are called strangers in the Law That is to say those that had renounced all Idols and professed to worship the true God and thereupon were privileged to dwell in the Land of Promise out of which the Israelites were sufficiently commanded to root all Idolaters those strangers I say by the leter of Moses Law are not comprehended in the precept of loving our neighbor as our selves For hee that asked who is the neighbor that the Law speaks of Lut. X. 27-37 is not convicted by our Lord by any leter of the Law but by a Parable intimating the example of that which hee did for mankinde to be the reason of that which the Gospel requires Forsooth if the love of Christians extend to strangers and enemies because the good Samaritâ—ne which is our Lord Christ extended his so farr then not because Moses Law had convenanted for it Therefore besides this precept of loving our neighbors as our selves it was requisite that the Law should by a particular provision limit that respect and tenderness wherewith they were required to use those strangers as converts to the true God for so the Syriack translation of the Law calls them alwaies to wit in the rank of Widowes and Orphans If this be true the precept of not coveting by the immediate intent of Moses Law stands confined to that sense which the Jewes at this day give it according to the decisions of their Doctors that no man by contrived oppresion or vexation designe to force his neighbor that was by the Law inabled to make a divorce to part with his wife or any thing else that hee called his own Which sense our Lord also in the Gospel manifestly favors Mar. X. 19. where recounting the precepts that those must keep that will inherit life everlasting after thou shalt not bear false witnesse hee inserres thou shalt not take away by fraud or oppression that which is another mans for the sense of the tenth Commandement thou shalt not cover that which is thy neighbors All which extendeth no further than the over act of seeking what is not a mans own And though this be out Lords answer to him that asks what hee is to do to obtaine life everlasting yet it may well seem that our Lord intended first to propound unto him the civil Law of Moses as necessary to salvation and a step towards it because the Gospel saith that our Lord loved him that answered All these things have I kept from my youth up as acknowledging that hee said true For that hee had kept these precepts in that spiritual sense and to the intent and purpose which the Gospel requireth it was not true And by that which followes when hee askes what remained to be done namely that hee leave all to follow Christ hee inferrs in one precept the whole inward and spiritual obedience of God which under the Gospel is expresly required To wit that a man set all the world and himself behinde his back that hee may follow Christ Therefore though they be the obedience
to limite the extent of the leter so as not to destroy duties of greater consequence And it seems they pitched upon a reasonable ground for a reasonable measure when they made a Sabbath dayes journey so much as the distance of the utmost camp from the Tabernacle in the wildernesse But he that was not within that distance of a Synagogue by going to a Synagogue must violate the Law that saith Thou shalt not stirre out of thy place on the Sabbath It was therefore holinesse to sit still otherwise the service of God must not have been omitted for it Therefore the service of God by those offices which Christians serve him with is no otherwise intimated rather then provided for by the Law then as the Gospel is witnessed rather then inacted by it And it is truly said that God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it in that he appointed his rest in the world to come for those who had rested from their own works here But consequently in that he appointed the rest of the seventh day in the Land of promise to be a figure of it For I take not upon me to say That God hallowed not the seventh day till he gave the Law understanding that which is said at the creation that he blessed and sanctified it by a Prolepsis because he did it when he gave the Law because I need not The designing of the thing signified by it which is more properly the rest of God then not working reflecting the attribute of holinesse upon the day which he designed for the sign of it For in that God rested the seventh day from making all his works he signified that he appointed rest for them that do his work here in the world to come In that delivering his people out of Egypt he appointed them to rest from bodily labour upon the seventh day he signified that he appointed them whom he had given the rest of the promised Land a shadow of resting from their own works to do his the substance whereof is the conversation of Christians in the Church which the Land of promise â—igureth as well here as in the world to come The former appointment is that which the blessing and hallowing of the seventh day at the creation the second that which the hallowing of the same at giving the Law signifieth Nor do I make it my business that the Fathers before the Law did ever keep or not keep the seventh day for Gods service because I neither see evidence for this nor for that For though the remembrance of the seven days of the week is so ancient and so general among all Nations as you may see by that very learned Work de Jure naturae Gentium secundum Ebraeos that you may well conclude it to be a mark and impress of the creation in seven days yet will this argue no observation of it under the Patriarches Because the appropriating of them to the seven Planets though conâ—rived by the Devill to divert that truth to superstition which is the ground of Religion according to the Scripture disables us to argue the creation it selfe from it to those that know it not otherwise much more any rule of Gods service grounded upon it But he that should say that the Sabbath was kept under the law of Nature as it was to be kept under the law of Moses must first answer Tertullian cont Jud. cap. IV. and Justine from whom he hath it and all Fathers that have used it after them and understood the interess of Christianity better then we do Quis legit Abrahamum Sabbatizantem For why should he think to perswade us to such a ridiculous imagination if he have no Scripture for it And therefore though I agree not with Philo that the Jews had forgot which was the seventh day till God recalled the remembrance of it by sending down Manna and therefore said Remember to keep holy the Sabbath yet I do not allow this to be said because they had forgot it by their Apostasy in Egypt where it is plain they forgot their God as I shewed you afore But because they forgot Gods first command at the giving of Manna therefore it is reason they should be charged to remember it for the future As little do I esteem of that meere voluntary presumption that being part of the Decalogue the precept of the Sabbath must needs be part of Gods perpetual Law whither naturall and morall or positive For is it not the Decalogue that saith That thy dayes may belong in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee Or doth the Land of promise in the leter belong to any but Israelites Again the tenth Commandment forbiddeth to covet another mans wise adultery being forbidden afore And therefore to covet another mans wife in the tenth Commandement is to compasse another mans wife which might be done where the Law alloweth divorces as Moses his Law doth If therefore the first and last Commandment of the second Table are by the terms of them appropriated to Gods ancient people is it strange that the precept of the Sabbath should not be thought perpetual to oblige all mankind but Ceremonial to oblige onely the same That there should be a Ceremoniall precept in the first Table of the Decalogue Nay seeing to all mankind it can import no more then a circumstance of time for the publick service of God what reason can be imagined why a precept of that consequence should make one in the first Table of the Decalogue whereas importing to that people the creation of all things by the true God and their deliverance out of Aegypt and by consequence the obligation of his whole Law it is worthily reckoned by the Jews Doctors among the very principall precepts of it As for Christians the literal sense of it is no lesse unlawful for them to observe then it is for them to be circumcised or to undertake the Law of Moses to the which the Sabbath next to circumcision obligeth And by consequence the spirituall sense of it importeth no lesse then the whole duty of a Christian which all ceremonies do figure that is to say resting from our works of sinne and consequently busying our selves about the works of Gods service And therefore I do marvel that those who so obstinately promote this Doctrine are not sensible of the scandall they give to them who have visibly been seduced to keep the Saturday by grounding themselves upon it And may by the same reason be seduced to be circumcised and turn Jewes If yet it be a thing to do and that divers English in these unstable times not distinguishing between that which did and that which doth oblige when they find both in the Scriptures have not hereby been moved to make that change For when they are told that by the leter of the fourth Commandment they are obliged to keep the first day of the week And by common sense discovering a great part of the premises discern that
communicate every day Though it were easy to show how the rest of the Fathers agree or disagree therewith For that supposeth the dayly celebration of the Eucharist whereas who ever heard of daily preaching all over the ancient Church For that the order thereof was to assemble for the praises of God Prayer and for instruction by reading the scripture more frequently then the boldest pulpit man could preach Neither is it questionable for mater of fact nor for the consequence in obliging them that would reform and not destroy to follow the example supposing the premises One thing more I desire may be considered All the affectation of preciseness in keeping the Lords day willnever induce any people indued with their senses to doe that which the Jewes by the Law of the Sabbath whilst it was in force stood obliged to doe Namely to dresse their meate the day before that so neither themselves nor their servants might he obliged to violate the rest of the Sabbath If this precept oblige Christians to heare preaching for the means of salvation how are servants dispensed with to be absent from preaching who cannot be dispensed with for resting on the sabbath For though Christian servants may dresse meate on the Lords day Yet as they are not dispensed with for serving God on the Lords day so if the service of God on the Lords day necessarily requires preaching they must be also preached to on the Lords day But if being catechized in their Christianity they may serve God by praying and Praising God and by heareing the instruction of the scripture read advance in the duties of Christianity then may they doe the duty of Christans to God at Church as well as to their masters at home the duty of Christian servants without heareing sermons on the Lords day In a point so unlimited wherein a private mans opinion is not to be Law I find no better ground for reasonable termes then that which the practice of the Chatholike Church reported by Gennadius intimates For it is not to be gathered from Gennadâ—uâ— that there was meanes to receive the Eucharist every day every where because neither can it be imagined that there was ever any time since the Empire turned Christian when there was meanes for all Christians to be present at it much lesse to communicate On the other side the relation of Gennadius supposing that the celebration of the Eucharist was maintayned when preaching neither was nor could be maintained it followeth that by the Custome of the Catholike Church Lords days and festivals the celebration whereof all Christians were alwaies concerned in are to be kept by celebrating the Eucharist when they cannot be kept by preaching and hearing sermons And that there can be no better order that God may be served by all sorts of Christians then where there is provision and where the custome is that all Christians may communicate on Lords daies and Festivales and when for reasons left to themselves they doe not communicate they may with their spirits as well as their bodies asist the celebration of it Remitting the custome which Gennadius his resolution supposes the celebrating the Eucharist every day to the greater Churches of the more populous Cities and Places But whereas the Apostolicall forme of divine service makes the sermon a part of it And at Corinth S. Paul orders many of those spirituall Graces to concurr to that worke which at assemblies on extraordinary occasions was somtimes practised by the primitive Churches as I have showed there it were too great wrong to common sense to extend this to all assemblies of Christians in villages and not consistent either with the necessities of the world or the interest of Christianity in frequenting those offices most which are principall in Gods service Laying downe then that tyranny which constraines all that have cure of soules to speake by the Glasse every Lords day twice which shuts all the service of God out of dores saving a prayer to usher it in and out The interest of Christianity will require that at and with the celebration of the Eucharist all Christians be taught the common dutys of Christians by them who are to answer for their Soules Not to please the eare with sharpnesse in reasoning or eloquence in language but to convince all sorts what conversation the attaining of Gods kingdome requires of them who believe that he made the world that he sent our Lord Christ to redeem it that by his spirit he brings all to confesse and show themselves Christians and in fine that by our Lord Christ he shall adjudge those that doe so to everlasting life and those that doe otherwise to everlasting death For the rest it is not my purpose to undervalue the labours of S. Chrysostome S. Austinâ— Origen S. Gregory or whosoever they are ancient or moderne that have laboured the instruction of their people even by expounding them the Scriptures out of the Pulpit supposing they expound them within the rule of our common faith But upon the account in hand onely I say that if they withdraw Christian people from serving God by those offices which the order of the Church makes requisite according to the premises which I am sure enough none of the ancients ever did their laboures are not for the common edification of the Church but for maintayning of parties in the Church The celebration of Lords daies and Festivales and times of fasting necessarily furnishes opportunitie both for all Curates to furnish their people with that instruction which they owe them as answerable for their soules and for those whom God hath furnished with more then ordinary graces of knowledg or utterance to advance our common Christianity by advancing the knowledge of Christians in the scriptures But the office of a Pastor necessarily requireth an exact understanding of the nature of humane actions in maters of Christianity whether concerning believing or working not to be attained without the study as well as the experience of a mans whole life And therefore to oblige them who are to provide necessary foode for the soules of their flock to be alwaies gathering the flowers of the scripturers to make them nosegayes of will be to starve them for the want of that knowledge which the common salvation of all necessarily requires that the more curious may have entertainement of quelques choses And therefore for the rest Christian people are to think themselves obliged to come to Church to serve God by prayer and the prayses of God to learn instruction out of the scriptures by hearing meditating upon the lessons of them on far many more houres and daies and occasions then there can be for preaching of Sermons CHAP. XXV Idolatry presupposeth an immagination that there is more Gods then one Objections out of the scripture that it is the worship of a true God under an Image the Originall of worshipping the elements of the world The Devil And Images Of the Idolatry of the
of fact to be the same For the Unity of so great a Body will not allow that the terms should be strict or nice upon which the communion thereof standeth But obligeth all tâ—at love the general good of it to pass by even those imperfections in the Laws of it which are visible if not pernicious But where this Unity is once broken in pieces and destroyeâ— and palliating cures are out of date the offense which is taken at showing the true cure is imputable to them that cause the fraction not to him that would â—ee it restored For what disease was ever cured without offending the body that had it The cause of Episcopacy and of the Service is the cause of the whole Church and the maintenance thereof inferreth the maintenance of whatsoever is Catholick Owning therefore my obligation to the Whole Church notwithstanding my obligation to the Church of England I have prescribed the consent thereof for a boundary to all interpretation of Scripture all Reformation in the Church Referring my â—pinion â—n point of Fact what is Catholick to them who by their Title are bound to acknowledg that whatsoever is Catholick ought to take place While all English people by the Laws of the Church of England had suffiâ—iâ—nâ— and probable means of salvation ministred to them it had been a fault to acknowledg a fault which it was more mischief to mâ—nd than to bear with But when the Unity that is lost may as well be obtained by the primitive Truth and Order of the Catholick Church as by that which served the turn in the Church of England because it served to the salvation of more I should offend good Christians to think that they will stand offended at it In fine all variety of Religion in England seems to be comprised in three parties Papists Prelatical and Puritanes comprehending under that all parties into which the once common name stands divided All of them are originally as I conceive terms of disgrace which therefore I have not been delighted with using This last I have found some cause to frequent when I would signifie some thing common to all parties of it If with eagerness at any time the English Proverb says Loosers may have leave to speak I finde my self disobliged by the Papists in that desiring to serve God with all Christians they barr mee their CoÌ„munion by clogging it with conditions inconsistent with our common Christianity I finde my self disobliged by the Puritanes in that desiring to serve God with all Christians but acknowledging the Catholick Church I stand obliged by the Rule of it not to communicate with Hereticks or Schismaticks I complain for no Benefice or other advantage That desiring to communicate with all Christians I am confined for opportunity of serving God with his Church to the scartered remains of the Church of England is that for which I complain If owning this offense I suffer mine indignation at the pretense of Inâ—allibility or of Reformation to escape from mee I do not therefore intend to revenge my self by words of disgrace Let him that thinks so call mee Prelatical let him use mee with no more moderation than I use In the mean time I remain secured that the offense which my opinion may give is imputable in the sight of God to those that cause the division One offense I acknowledg and cannot help That I undertake a design of this consequence and am not able to go through with it as it deserves I should not have set Pen to paper till my materials had been prepared in writing that no term might have escaped mee unexamined Till the quotations of mine Authors had been all before mee so as to need no recourse to the Copies A labor which I have not been able every where to undergo In fine till I had cleared all pretense of obscurity or ambiguity in my language For the obscurity of my mater I am not sory for If writing in English because here the occasion commences the reasons by which I determine the sense of the Scriptures in the Original if the consequence oâ— it in some maters seem obscure I conceive it ought to teach the World that the people are made parties to those disputes whereof they are not able to be judges And I am willing to bear the blame of obscure if that lesson may be learned by the people The desire of easing my thoughts by giving them vent hath resolved mee to put them into the world â—ough-baked on purpose to provoke the judgments of all parties â—or the furnishing of a second Edition if God grant mee life with that which shall be missing in this I am therefore content to confine my self to the model of an abridgment and referr my self for the consent of the Church to those books which I am best satiâ—fied with in each point When that could not be done I have alleged authorities which I may call translatitias because I lay them down as I finde them alleged Not doubting that I justifie my opinion so farr as I desire to do here that there is no consent of the Church against it What the sense of the Church is positively and hath been into which I conceive that which here I say hath made mee a fair entrance I shall upon examination of particulars indeavor to give satisfaction in that which may be found missing here In the mean time it shall suffice to have advanced thus much towards the common interest of Christianity in the re-union of the Church But let no man therefore barre mee the lot of Reconcilers To be contradicted on all sides I profess no such thing It is enough for the greatest Powers in Christendom to undertake If it be an offense for a man of my years equally concerned with all Christians in our common Christianity to say his opinion upon what terms the parties ought to reconcile themselves it remains that offenses remain unreconcileable But contradiction from all parties I shall not be displeased with Hee that will tell mee alone in writing what hee findes fault with and why shall do a work of charity to mee alone Hee that will tell the world the same shall do mee the same charity that hee does the world in it Hee who can delight in that barbarous course which Controversies in Religion have been managed with among Christians by casting personal aspersions Let him rather do it than be silent provided the stuff hee brings be considerable to bear out such inhumanity among civil people But let him consider the dependences and concernments of the point hee speaks to let him not say for answer that these things are answered by our Divines It is easie to make â—bjections but not easie to clear difficulties And whether or no these difficulties were clear already I must referr it to the Reader to judge In the mean time though no arbitrator to chuse a middle opinion for partiâ—s to agree in I take upon mee the person of a Divâ—ne in
remains under that sin which by refusing the Gospel hee refuses to escape The man whom God showes competent reasons to convict him of the truth of Christianity does hee not thereby oblige to believe If so then is Christianity by those reasons and by out Lord and his Apostles advancing them published for Gods Law to all them to whom those reasons become known Suppose that not onely the Apostles but God himself do no more than perswade men to believe can any Secular Power do more For what can it do more in making a Law than declare the will of the Soveraign under a punishment expressed And doth not God declare when hee sends those that are furnished with means to convict the world of the truth of Christianity that it is his will that they become Christians And is it not competent punishment to inact a Law that by disobeying men become incapable of escaping their own sin and the punishment of it If Christianity be no Law because a man hath his choice whether hee will believe or not hath not a thief his choice whether hee will be hanged or not steal or is not the mischief that comes by refusing the Faith as great as that As for the point of justice is not gtatitude justice doth not God oblige them in point of justice whom hee obligeth in point of gratitude doth hee not oblige them in point of gratitude whom by his Gospel hee showes the way to come from under sin to everlasting happinesse Again is it not justice that mankinde should be subjects and not rebels to God doth not the Gospel preach that mankinde are become rebels to God and that they ought to return and become his Subjects If wee can owe a debt of justice to God or to our selves the greatest is that which the Gospel bindeth upon us But suppose not onely that which this Dogmatist granteth that hee who is bound to renounce Christ with his mouth when his Soveraign commandeth is bound to believe him with his heart at the same time let mee demand by what Law hee is bound to it if the Scriptures be not Law Or how a man can be bound to believe in heart that our Lord Jesus is the Christ and not be bound to receive either the mater or the motives to believe that which Christ teacheth which is all that the Scriptures containe Wherefore wee are by no means to admit that which this Author presumes upon as evident truth That it is one thing to demand why a man believes the Scriptures another thing to demand how a man knowes them to be the Word of God and a third by what authority they become Law Because saith hee one man believes for this reason another for that But to know the Scripture to be the Word of God is a thing that no man can do but onely hee to whom this or that Scripture was revealed For it is true that one man believes for this reason another for that if they believe not for that reason for which they ought to believe But there is but one reason for which God requires us to believe namely his will declared by the motives of Faith which hee by his messengers or deputies hath presented us with And hee that is moved to believe for any reason besides that is but called a believer for hee is not such in Gods esteem And hee that by these reasons stands convict that those messengers came from God though hee cannot know by the report of his senses nor by any evidence of the mater which they contain that the Scriptures are the Word of God yet may hee reasonably be said to know that they are so because hee knowes those reasons by which hee stands convict that they are no otherwise And I have now further showed that the publishing of Christianity that is the tendering of the Scriptures with this evidence that they contain the word and will of God bindes them for a Law upon the consciences of all that receive them so obliging them not onely to believe all that they contain to be true but to undertake and do whatsoever they require Wherefore it is true that the Scriptures or Christianity becomes the civil Law of a State because the Soveraign Power thereof inacteth it But wee are further to demand whether Secular Power is able to do this because it is Soveraign or because it is Christian For if because it is Sovetaign it will follow of necessity that those who are not subject to Christian Powers are not obliged to believe the truth of the Scriptures nor to be Christians if there be no other Law to require it at their hands but the will of their Soveraign Because the onely reason which this opinion saith obliges them to believe that is the act of Soveraigne Power is wanting If because it is Christian the question will have recourse what it was that obliged the Soveraign Power to become Christian For the act of Soverâ—igne Power hath no effect upon it self but upon those that are under it And yet the same reason why the Soveraign Power is bound to believe will convince all that are under it that they also ought to believe because concerning them as men or at least as those men whom the motives of Faith are published to not as of this or that Common-wealth But in this businesse I am most ashamed for Euclid's sake that a man so studied in Geometry should build such a vast pretense in Christianity upon such an imaginary ground Forsooth Abraham and the Patriarchs after him and then Moses had the Soveraign Power of their Families and of Gods people the Patriarchs by their birth and estate Moses by the contract of the Israelites accepting of God for their Civil Soveraign and Moses for his Lieutenant The same Patriarchs and Moses were absolute in maters of Religion because Gods people inferiors were to be ruled in it by no other Laws then those which God published to them by the hands of those Superiors Hee that will go about to draw the conclusion from these principles whether granted or onely supposed shall easily see that it followes not For half an eye will serve to distinguish two qualities in the Patriarchs and in Moses the one of Soveraignes the other of Prophets or Depuries and Commissaries or Interpreters of the will of God to his people And this distinction being made I will not be beholden to any man to say which of the two it was that could oblige their inferiors to obey as Gods Lawes those things which persons so authorized should declare in his name For if those whom God by sufficient evidence had witnessed to be his Prophets and messengers should falsify his trust the blame of that which should be done upon such deceit must needs redound upon God And therefore this author pag. 231 287. agreeth with that which I argued even now that revelations and inspirations of Gods Spirit are not granted under the Gospel but to those
But hee that complaineth of that will be bound to advance some other meaning of those texts which may be free from contradiction both to the Rule of Faith and to Historical truth which common sense justifieth And yet admit no mention of publick Penance in the Church no intent to speak of it in all the Scriptures there alleged Which perhaps will be too hard to do Further I labor not I will suppose no man so wilfull as to dispute the right of excluding from the Communion of the Church granting a power of limiting the conditions upon which it is to be restored to them who forfeited it And this is visible It was but a mater of LXX years after the decease of S. John according to Eusebius his Chronicle that Montamis appeared to demand that Adulterers might not be readmitted to the communion of the Church upon Penance That those that had married the second time might not communicate That the rule of Fasting might be stricter than was in use That it might not be lawfull to fly from persecution for the Faith It is manifest that these were his pretenses by Tertullian that maintaines them being seduced with the opinion of inspirations and revelations granted him and his partizans to that purpose These pretenses were afterwards in part revived at Rome by Novatianus to get himself the Bishoprick there by excluding from Penance and reconciliation those that had fallen away in the persecution of Decius It appeareth also that those men alleged for themselves the very passages of the Apostles which I allege to my intent Neither can it appear that ever any son of the Church did contradict them by saying that the Apostles meant nothing of Penance as they imagined And now let all men judge whether the Church have reason to hold this evidence of Penance and by consequence of its own being a Church Was Epiphanius and all that writ against the Novatians troubled to no purpose at the VI of the Ebrews when those Schismaticks alleging it for themselves might have been silenced by denying that it concerned Penance Why did not the Church allege that the sin unto death 1 John V. 17. is no such thing as Apostasy from Christianity when the Novatians alleged it to prove that Apostates were not to be reconciled to the Church How came it to passe that there was so much doubt made in the Church of Rome of admitting the Epistle to the Ebrews for Canonical Scripture witnesse S. Jerome Epist ad Dardanum as thinking that it did absolutely contradict the re-admitting of Apostates which had been practised in that Church before Montanus Tertullian of all men was troubled without cause that the incestuous person whom hee supposes to be excommunicated at Corinth by S. Pauls Order 1 Cor. V. should be re-admitted by his Indulgence 1 Cor. VII De Pudicitiâ cap. XIII XIV XV. because hee saw this was a peremptory exception against Montanus that a crime equal to Adultery should by S. Paul be admitted to Penance How easie a thing it had been for him to say that there is nothing of Penance nothing of Excommunication which Penance presupposes and therefore inferres in delivering to Satan the incestuous person in commanding them not so much as to eat with those that are called brethren that is Christians but are indeed such as the incestuous But hee being some fourteen hundred years nearer the beginning of Christianity than wee and being satisfied by his five senses of those things which new Heresies and Schismes oblige us to argue by consequences found that his Patriarch Montanus could not answer so And therefore thinking that the Church could not answer their arguments forces an answer to this by saying it was not the same man that is excommunicated by the Apostles Order 1 Cor. V. and restored by his Indulgence 2 Cor. VII Because hee saw the reconciling of a sinner to the Church by Penance as lively described and signified by S. Pauls Indulgence there as by any record of the Church at such time as it was most in use And can there remain any doubt of this Excommunication because the Church cannot now deliver to Satan for destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Surely all the writings of the Apostles do bear witnesse that the miraculous graces of the Holy Ghost which they had then but all Christians see the Church hath not now served not onely to witnesse the truth of Christianity but the authority of the Apostles in behalf of it This authority having taken effect by those Ordinances which the Church hath received at their hands It is no longer requisite that God should bear witnesse to his own Ordinances by such miraculous effects seeing hee doth no longer bear witnesse to the truth of Christianity by the like Hee that believes that whosoever is not in the Church is in the power of Satan needs no reason why hee is delivered to Satan that is put out of the Church Hee that believes it not is not to be perswaded that there is a power of Excommunication granted the Church But that the Christian saith which the Church preacheth is true for that without peradventure preached the Church At least till some body show us that this reason is insufficient hee must not demand that wee give an Article of our Creed and all the help to salvation which the communion of the Catholick Church pretendeth for such an objection as this Chuse now whether you will say as I say That under the Apostles difficulty was made of re-admitting some sorts of sins but never any peremptory order against it and so that Montanus and Novatianus were Schismaticks for seperating from the Church when the whole Church was agreed that there was a necessity of it or look about for a more reasonable sense to assoile the great difficulties of these passages Provided that you offer not violence to common sense and historical truth by imagining that so near the Apostles time there could be so much question about Penance they having neither meant nor ordained any thing about it To this argument all the most ancient records of the Church wheresoever mention is made of reconciling by Penance all the Penitential Canons of later ages will bear witnesse For who can undertake to answer or rather to obscure the evidence made in the place aforenamed that some sins were refused Penance and reconcilement in the first ages of the Church When wee have a whole book of Tertullian contending with Montannus to impose a Law upon it of re-admitting no Adulterers When wee know a whole sect of Novatians that left the Church that they might re-admit no Apostates As for the Penitential Canons of later ages it is manifest to any man that shall peruse and compare them with that which hath been said of the primitive times that they are nothing else but the abatement of that rigor of Discipline which during the primitive heat and zele of
observable than in the Psalmes XVI 11. Thou shalt make known to mee the way of life Fulnesse of joyes is before thee and pleasures at thy right hand for ever more Is not this true in the sense of Ezekiah Esa XXXVII 10 21 First hee saith I shall see the Lord no more in the land of the living But upon the tender of the Prophet hee askes What is the signe that I shall go up into the house of the Lord Where the presence or right hand of God and the pleasure of it is the joy that his people have to worship him before the Ark of his presence Psal XVII 15. As for mee I will behold thy presence in righteousnesse when I awake I shall be satisfied with thy likenesse The same thing hee meanes and hee awakes when hee comes out of trouble to serve God Though I am to grant that I cannot think of any text in all the book of Psalms wherein the world to come is more literally exâ—ressed thâ—n in these words Psalm CXXVI 5 6. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy Hee that now goeth on his way weeping shall doub lesse come again in joy and bring in his sheaves Whether at the returne from Captivity or in heaven let the beginning of the Psalme speak When the Lord turned again the Captivity of his people thâ—n were wee like men that dreame But there would be no end if I should go about to produce all those passages of the Psalmes wherein the same is to be observed Let us come now to the New Testament and produce first the sayings of the Apostles wherein my position is expresly affirmed especially in the Apostle to the Hebrewes VII 19. For the Law persited nothing but the bringing in of à better hope by which wee draw nigh unto God What is this better hope but that of the world to come so much better than the Land of Promise and what bringeth it in but the Gospel of Christ by whom alone sinners have accesse to God X. 19 Againe VIII 6. But now hee hath obtained a more excellent ministery by how much hee is the Mediator of a better Covenant which is inacted upon better promises IX 15. And therefore is â—ee the Mediator of a New Covenant that dâ—ath interceding for the redemption of those sins that were under the first Covenant those that are called may receive the promise of eternal life This more excellent Ministery is the Priesthood of Chriâ—t after the order of Melchisedeck To make way for which the whole Epistle ciâ—putâ—s that the Levitical Priesthood is removed as the interest of Christianity against the Law of Moses and the qâ—â—â—â—ion on foot required Now Melchisedek was â— Priest not by the law of a carnal precept but by the power of indissoluble life saith hee again Ebr. VII 19. What thiâ— carnal precept is you have IX 9-14 When hee saith that at present to wit under the Law gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot persit him that serveth as to the conscience consisting onely in meats and drinks and several washings and carnal justifications imposed till the time of Reforma 〈…〉 When Christ coming as a High Priest of good things to come and having fo 〈…〉 sage into heaven cleanses the conscience from dead works to serve the living â—â—d So that according to the Apostle the Sacrifices of the Law effecting onâ—ly a carnal right to the Congregation of Gods people the Sacrifice of Christ a right to heaven this right is tendred by the Gospel the other by the Law And thus S. Paul 2 Tim. I. 9 10. calleth the Gospel the Grace that was given us in Christ Jesus before the ages of the world but is manifested now by the appearance of our Lord Christ Jesus who hath destroyed death but declared life and incorruption by the Gospel For though the life to come was known and declared by the Prophets under the Law yet had they no expresse commission to ingage God for it till Christ rendred it as that which the Gospel covenants for on Gods part But I must not forget the occasion of that memorable passage quoted from Ebr. IX 9. from the discourse that went afore whereby the Apostle declares the whole course and constitution of the service of the Temple to be nothing else but a Parable of the present time to wit of Christianity As also the legal Tabernacle was nothing else but a Copy of the Heavenly by the pattern whereof hee observes that Moses was commanded to build it VIII 5 6. calling it therefore the Worldly Sanctuary IX 1. because it was a Copy as it were of this whole world in the several parts of it as Philo and Josephus have discoursed at large The most Holy place into which the High Priest entred once a year by the Apostles interpretation answereth to the highest heavens whereunto our Lord Christ is ascended whom therefore hee calleth the minister of the true Tabernacle which God and not man pitched VIII 7 And therefore the outward Sanctuary into which the Priests went once a day was intended to signifie the Starry heavens and the Court of the Tabernacle the World here below as Philo and Josephus declare justifying the reason why the Apostle calls it a Worldly Tabernacle This interpretation of the Ceremonial Law made by the Apostle in this place by that which it expresly affirmes concerning the twofold sense of that part of the Old Testament induces a consequence to the twofold sense of all the rest Inferring that if the mystical and allegorical sense of the Old Testament determine in the promises of the world to come then the literal and historical sense of the same determines in the promises of this life the allegory that is to say the reason of interpreting the Old Testament to that purpose consisting in nothing else but the correspondence between them I am not ignorant that some Divines have done their best to create one Controversie more to divide the Church by maintaining that there is but one sense of the Scriptures which the leter intends The things figured under the Old Testament and the figures of them there set down making but one and the same sense as a man and his picture are called the same man because without the things signified the signes are nothing at least in the nature of signes For my part I finde it a thing as easie as for every fool to tye knots which a wise man cannot loose to ingage in disputes in which men cannot yield to the truth while that ingagement continues But I finde no pretense why that sense of the Scriptures which they make one consisting of the figure and the thing figured should not be counted two one immediately the other principally intended Because the Gospel was a secret under the Law as S. Paul so many times layes down So that hee which knew the Law many times understood not the utmost intent of it under the Gospel Seeing then that this way of
is there just cause to think that thereby advantage is given to the Jewes against Christianity by granting that such passages out of which the New Testament drawes the birth and sufferings of our Lord are reasonably to be understood of his predecessors in Gods ancient people For it is plaine that it despite of the Jewes the works done by our Lord and his Prophesies concerning his Dying and Rising again and the destruction of the Jewes and the preaching of the Gospel to all Nations seconded by his Apostles and that which they did to winn credit that they were the witnesses of the same are the evidence upon which the Gospel obliges The Scriptures of the Old Testament which were no evidence to the Gentiles as much and more concerned in the Gospel than the Jewes were evidence and so to be not of themselves for what need Christ then have done those works But upon supposition that God intended not to rest in giving the Law but to make it the thred to introduce the Gospel by Which supposition as it is powerfully inforced by the nature of the Law and the difference between the inward and the outward obedience of God as it hath been hitherto declared and maintained So is it also first introduced by those works which our Lord declareth to be done for evidence thereof then made good by the perpetual correspondence between the Old and New Testament which any considerable exception interrupts And there reasons so much the more effectual because this difference of literal and mystical sense was then and is at this day acknowledged by the Jewes themselves against whom our Lord and his Apostles imploy it in a considerable number of Scriptures which they themselves interpret of the Messias though they are not able to make good the consequence of the same sense throughout because they acknowledge not the reason of it which concludes the Lord Jesus to be the Messias whom they expect If these things be true neither Origen nor any man else is to be indured when they argue that a mystical sense of the Scripture is to be inquired and allowed even where this ground takes no place For vindicating the honor of God and that it may appeare worthy of his wisedom to declare that which wee admit to be the utmost intent of the Scriptures For if it be for the honor of God to have brought Christianity into the world for the salvation of mankinde and to have declared himself by the Scriptures for that purpose then whatsoever tends to declare this must be concluded worthy of God and his wisedom whatsoever referres not to it cannot be presumed agreeable to his wisdom how much soever it flatter mans eare or fantasie with quaintnesse of conceit or language Now as I maintain this difference between the literal and mystical sense of the Old Testament to be necessary for the maintenance of Christianity as well as for understanding the Scriptures So are there some particular questions arising upon occasion of it which I can well be content to leave to further dispute As for example There is an opinion published which saith That the abomination of desolation which our Lord saith was spoken of by Daniel the Prophet concerning the destruction of Jerusalem Dan. IX 24 Mat. XXIV 15. Mar. XIII 14. was fulfilled in the havock made by Antiochus Epiphanes Which is also plainly called the abominatio of desolation by the same Prophet Daâ— XI 31. XII 10. Whether this opinion can be made good according to historical truth or not this is not the place to dispute Whether or no the difference between the literal and mystical sense of the Scriptures will indure that the same Prophesie be fulfilled twice in the literal sense concerning the temporal state of the Jewes once under Antiochus Epiphanes and once under Titus that is it which I am here content to referre to further debate One thing I affirme that notwithstanding this difference it is no inconvenience to say that some Prophesies are fulfilled but once Namely that of Jacob Gen. XLIX 8-12 that of Daniel IX 24. that of Malacbi III. 1. IV. 5 6. Because the coming of Christ boundeth the times of the literal and mystical sense And therefore there is reason why it should be marked out by Prophesies of the Old Testament referring to nothing else Againe I am content to leave to dispute whether the many Prophesies of the Old Testament which are either manifestly alleged or covertly intimated by the Revelation of S. John must therefore be said to be twice fulfilled once in the sense of their first Authors under the Law and again under the Gospel in S. Johns sense to the Church Or that this second complement of them was not intended by the Spirit of God in the Old Prophets but that it pleased God to signifie to S. John things to befall the Church by Prophetical Visions like those which hee had read in the ancient Prophets whereby God signified to them things to befall his ancient people For of a truth it is the outward rather than the spiritual state of the Church which is signified to S. John under these images A third particular must be the first Chapter of Genesis For in that which followes of Paradise and what fell out to our first Parents there I will make no question that hoth senses are to be admitted the Church having condemned Origen for taking away the historical sense of that portion of Scripture But whether the creation of this sensible world is to be taken for a figure of the renewing of mankinde into a spiritual world by the Gospel of Christ according to that ground of the difference between the literal and mystical sense of the Scripture which hitherto I maintaine This I conceive I may without prejudice leave to further debate But leaving these things to dispute I must insist that those things which the Evangelists affirm to have been fulfilled by such things as our Lord said or did or onely befell him in the flesh have a further meaning according to which they are mystically accomplished in the spiritual estate of his Christian people The chiefe ground hereof I confesse is that of S. Matthew VIII 17. where having related divers of our Lords miracles hee addeth that they were done That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet Esay LIII 4. Hee took our infirmities and â—are away our sicknesses Together with the words of our Lord Luke V. 17-21 where hee telleth them of Nazareth This day are the words of the Prophet Esay LXI 1. The Spirit of the Lord is upon mee because hee hath anointed mee to preach the Gospel to the poor fulfilled in your hearing And his answer to John Baptist grounded upon the same passage Mat. XI 4 5 6. Go and tell John what yee have heard and seen The blinde receive sight the lame walk the lâ—pers are cleansed the deaf heare the dead are raised and the poor have the Gospel preached them For
Corporation of the Church by divine right it is sufficient in this place onely to show that there is a right in the Body of the Church by Gods appointment to do such things as the Nature of a Society founded upon a Charter of Gods inferreth For whatsoever persons shall be by the same appointment inabled to act for the Church and to conclude it as in no form of Government the whole is able to act by it self whatsoever is done by those persons is reasonably and legally said to be done by the Church though I referr it to another dispute to determine what persons they are and in what cases These reasons therefore do satisfie mee that the delivering to Satan which S. Paul condemns the incestuous person to implies indeed something extraordinary which the sentence of Excommunication in these dayes produceth not And it is this That during the time of the Apostles to manifest the presence of God in his Church those that were shut out of it became subject to the visible incursion of evil spirits plaguing them with bodily diseases Which S. Paul calleth the destruction of the flesh Intimating that Gods end in them was to reduce him to the sense of that Christianity which hee had professed that by inwardly returning to it the spirit might be saved in the day of Christ whether or no by outwardly professing it hee might be reconciled to the Church for salvation by the means of it As for the words of our Lord Dic Ecclesiae I will not insist upon the improbabilities of Erastus his interpretation that Let him be unto thee as a Heathen or a Publicane is no more but this Be it lawfull for thee to sue him in the Romanes Court. For this I say It is plain by S. Paul 1 Cor. VI. 1. that our Lords Disciples that is Christians might in no case implead one another before the Gentiles whatsoever Erastus imagine Which it is plain the Jewes also did their utmost to avoid Nor is the other more probable that makes it no more than that upon his neglect of the Synagogue hee was free to return scorn and to avoid him who had scorned the Synagogue For would our Lord binde his Disciples to resort to the Synagogue and yet obtain nothing but leave to scorn him that scorned them first and afterwards the Synagogue Besides the inconvenience common to both these interptetations that such a precept to his Disciples that is to all Christians should concern them no longer nor in any other consideration than that for which at the first Christians were bound to comply with the Synagogue which compliance not onely what it was but even what it signified they then understood no more than hee that understands nothing But I leave all other advantage to prosecute the principle premised That the Disciples of our Lord acknowledged a new King of Israel which the title of Gods anointed the Messias signified a new Covenant by which hee was their King a new Israel according to the Spirit not according to the flesh and by consequence new Laws which a New Common-wealth must needs inferr And therefore call it what you will Synagogue which as yet they understood not to be void or Church which they understood must be but that it should be distinct from the Synagogue understood not being commanded to tell the Assembly they must understand it to be an Assembly of themselves Christs Disciples which all Jews might be for any thing they yet understood And when our Lord saith Let him be unto thee as an Heathen man or as a Publicane though they understood that Heathen men and Publicanes resorted to the Temple as also those that were Excommunicate by the Synagogue did because the Law stood not upon any promise of the world to come but upon the privilege and sitl of a Jew to all rights that Jewes were indowed with yet they underflood also that our Lord spoke in Parables containing sharp speeches figures and riddles When hee faith Hee that smiteth thee on the right cheek turn him the left they underflood that himself no way balked his own command when being smitten by the Jews Ministers hee an-swered not by turning the other cheek But that his meaning was to have his Disciples as ready to do them good that so should assront them as if they should pleasure his anger by turning him another cheek to strike And when hee faith Hee that constraineth thee to go a mile with him go thou twain His meaning is not that they should leave their businesse to be counted fools for it But to be ready to do him as great a pleasure So hee that fees the Jews so to avoid the society of the Gentiles and by consequence of publiâ—anes who has necessary and continual frequentation with Gentiles that when they came from the Piazza they washed their hands before they went to meat as polluted by coming near them hee that fees S. Peter obliged to give account to his brethren the Jewish Christians why hee did eat with Cornelius and his Company though worthippers of the true God and such as had imbraced the Faith that fees God instruct him so to do by the vision of earing unclean beasts as if hee could no more do the one than the other by the Law Hee I fay that considers these things will say that our Lord when hee sayes Let him be to thee as an Heathen man or a Publicane hath very sharply expressed the fame that S. Paul means when hee sayes with such a one no not to eat And therefore I conclude his meaning to be that which I have concluded heretofore that his Disciples should carry none of their suits though concerning mater of Interest out of the Church but stand to what it shall determine For how should S. Paul demand Dare any of you having a cause with another go to suit before the unrighteous and not before the Saints I Cor. VI. I. If it had not been a Law known to Christians that their suits were to be determined within themselves Referring my self for further evidence that this was then in force to what hath been showed in another place and having not been contradicted must needs be in force And if any man shall object that this would be the ruine of all States so soon as they prosesse Christianity if the Jurisdiction of them should be swallowed up in the Jurisdiction of the Church all causes being in that case causes of Christians For an answer referring him not onely to that which I have said already there but to that which I purpose to say further before I have done with this point And upon these terms I grant Erastus that when out Lord sayes Let him be unto thee as a Heathen and a Publicane Hee sayes in effect be it lawfull for thee to sue him in the Court of the Gentiles Not as if our Lord did allow that which S. Paul forbids That a Christian should sue a Christian before Gentiles But
as they pretended to do thence calling themselves Gnosticks may be convinced by that evidence which the consent of all Churches in the same Faith tenders common sense for the Tradition of the Apostles Which saith hee wee must have stuck to had they left us nought in writing as those Christians then did which had not the use of leters Epiphanius Haer. LXI 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All Gods words do not need allegory but are to be understood as they are But they need consideration to know the force of each mater Tradition also is to be used For all is not to be had from Gods Sriptures For the Holy Apostles delivered some things in writing others by Tradition as the Apostle saith So Haer. LV. LXXV S. Jerome advers Lucif Multa quae per Traditionem in Ecclesiis observantur auctoritatem sibi scriptae Legis usurpà runt Orthod Non quidem abnuo hanc esse Ecclesiasticam consuetudinem Sed quale est ut Leges Ecclesiae ad haeresim transferas Many things that are observed in the Churches by Tradition have usurped to themselves the authority of written Law The Orthodox party answers I deny not the custome of the Church to be such But what a business is it that you transform the Lawes of the Church into Heresie S. Austine Epist CXVIII Illa autem quae non scripta sed tradita custodimus quae quidem toto terrarum orbe servantur dantur intelligi vel ab ipsis Apostolis vel plenariis Conciliis quorum est in Ecclesiâ saluberrima auctoritas commendata atque statuta retineri But those things which wee observe though not written but delivered being observed all over the world wee are given to understand that they are held as recommended and setled either by the Apostles themselves or by General Councils the authority whereof is very wholesom in the Church To the same purpose de Bapt. contra Donat. II 7. IV. 6 24. V. 23. de Vnitate Ecclesiae XIX contra Cresconiam I. 31 32 33. The supposed Dionysius the Areopagite Eccles Hierarchiae cap. I. mentioneth that instruction which the Apostles delivered without writing as a witnesse of the Church though not as a Scholar of the Apostles And Eusebius de demonstr Evang. I. 8. acknowledgeth written Lawes of the Apostles Concilium Gangrense in fine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And wee desire in summe that all things delivered by the Scriptures of God and the Traditions of the Apostles be observed in the Church And Greg. Nazianzene Orat. I. advers Jul. referrs those Ordinances which I quoted out of him afore to the Apostles as Authors of them Some sayings of the Fathers are also alleged to show that they held the Scriptures obscure Origen in Levit. Hom. V. allegorizeth the Law of burning some part of the peace-offerings to signifie that some things in the Scriptures are reserved to Gods knowledg least wee understand them otherwise than truth requires The same saith Irenaeus II. 47. even in the world to come that man may alwayes learn but God alwayes teach the maters of God S. Chrysostome in Joan. Hom. XL. observes that our Lord bids Search the Scriptures By digging as for mines or treasure So if they may be understood with searching yet it followeth not that every one is able to take that course in searching them that is requisite And Opus imperfectum in Mat. Hom. XLIV Ergò non sunt Scriptnrae clausae Sed obscurae quidem ut cum labore inveniantur non autem clausae ut nullo modo inveniantur Therefore the Scriptures are not shut Dark indeed they are so that they are found with pains But not shut so as by no means to be found Adding that as it is for the praise of them that finde them that they sought so for the condemnation of them that seek not that they understand them not S. Jerome ad Algasiam Quaest VIII Omnis Epistola ad Romanos miris obscuritatibus involuta est The whole Epistle to the Romanes is involved with marvellous darkness Epist ad Paulinum Hoc autem velamen non solùm in facie Moysi sed in Evangelistis Apostolis positum est This vail is not onely in Moses face but upon the Evangelists and Apostles And Nisi aperta fuerint universa quae scripta sunt ab eo qui habet clavem David qui aperit nemo claudit qui claudit nemo aperit nullo alio reserante pandentur Unless all things that are written be opened by him who hath the Key of David who opens and no man shuts who shuts and no man opens no man else will unlock and lay them forth Before him Origen in Exodum Hom. XII is afraid that the Evangelists and Apostles as well as the Prophets will prove not onely vailed but sealed to us as the Prophet saith unlesse wee both study and pray that the Lamb of the Tribe of Juda may open us the Seals of it Here I will advise the parties to consider how they can advantage themselves by those sayings of the Fathers which contain not the terms of that position which they do nothing unlesse they inforce Allege they what they can allege out of the Fathers to show that they acknowledg the Scriptures both sufficient and perspicuous I shall not be troubled at it but shall willingly concurr to acknowledg the same I acknowledg the Scriptures to be an Instrument of God though a Moral Instrument And I shall have a care not to acknowledg that God ever provided or used au Instrument that would not serve his turn Instrumentum Vetus Novum is a term in every mans mouth to signifie the Old and New Testament But there are Natural Instruments and there are Moral Instruments I say not that there is no third kind of Instruments for it may be there are Artificial Instruments of a several nature from both but my present purâ—ose obliges mee not to consider that difference When the substance or frame of the Instrument inables it to serve him that imployes it well may it be called a Natural Instrument as the parts of mans body or other creatures which execute the operations of the soul When neither the substance nor frame of the thing which that substance produces concurrs to the work to the which it is Instrumental but it is done meerly by the consent of mans will the reason is the same of Gods will if it be an Instrument between man and God then is it great reason why it should be called a Moral Instrument because the force of it lyes in the maners of those who use it to testifie those acts which they do not mean to transgresse Such as all civil records are in regard of the effect of those contracts or deeds which they come to witnesse The Old and New Testament are the records of two several Treaties or Contracts if you please that have passed between God and Man And therefore authentick because the writings of those who contracted those Treaties But does
therefore affected a compliance with the ancient Church And truly it is fit it should be thought that they complied with him because hee complied with the Catholick Church for by that reason they shall comply with the Church if in any thing hee comply not with it But it is a great deal too little for him to say that will say the truth for the Church of England For it hath an Injunction which ought still to have the force of a Law that no interpretation of the Scripture be alleged contrary to the consent of the Fathers Which had it been observed the innovations which I dispute against could have had no pretense If this be not enough hee that shall take pains to peruse what Dr. Field hath writ hereupon in his work of the Church shall find that which I say to be no novelty either in the Church of England of in the best learned Doctors beyond the Seas And sure the Reformation was not betrayed when the B. of Sarum challenged all the Church of Rome at S. Pauls Crosse to make good the points in difference by the first DC years of the Church Always it is easie for me to demonstrate that this resolution That the Scripture holding the meaning of it by the Tradition of the Church is the onely means to decide controversies of Faith is neerer to the common terms that the Scripture is the onely Rule of Faith than to that Infallibility which is pretended for the Church of Rome Having demonstrated that to depend upon the Infallibility of the present and the Tradition of the Catholick Church are things inconsistent whereas this cannot be inconsistent with that Scripture which is no lesse delivered from age to age than Tradition is though the one by writing the other by word of mouth and serving chiefly to determine the true meaning of it when it comes in debate And if prejudice and passion carry not men headlong to the ruine of that Christianity which they professâ— it cannot seem an envious thing to comply with the most learned of the Church of Rome who acknowledge not yet any other Infallibility in the Church then I claime rather than with the Socinians the whole Interest of whose Heresie consists in being tryed by Scripture alone without bringing the consent of the Church into consequence and that supposing all mater of Faith must be clear in the Scripture to all them that consult with nothing but Scripture But I cannot leave this point till I have considered a singular conceit advanced in Rushworthes Dialogues for maintaining the Infallibility of the Church upon a new account The pretense of that Book is to establish a certain ground of the choice of Religion by the judgement of common sense To which purpose I pretend not to speak in this place thinking it sufficient if this whole work may inable them who are moved with it duely to make that choice for themselves and to show those that depend on them how to do the like But in as much as no man will deny the choice of Religion to be the choice of truth before falshood in those particulars whereof the difference of Religion consists It is manifest that the means of discerning between true and false in mater of Faith which I pretend cannot stand with that which hee advanceth It consists in two points That the Scripture is not and that Tradition is the certain means of deciding this truth Which if no more were said will not amount to a contradiction against that which I resolve For hee that sayes the Scripture is not the onely means excluding that Tradition which determines the meaning of it doth neither deny that Tradition is nor say that the Scripture is the certain means of deciding this kind of truth But the issue of his reasons will easily show upon what termes the contradiction stands Hee citeth then common sense to witnesse that wee cannot rest certain that wee have those Scriptures which came wee agree by inspiration of God by reason of the manifold changes which common sense makes appearance must come to passe in transcribing upon such a supposition as this That so many Columns as one Book contâ—ins so many Copies at least are made every hundreth years and in every Copy so many faults at least as words in one Column Upon which account 15 or 16 times as many faults having been made in all copies as there are words it will be so much oddes that wee have no true Scripture in any place Abating onely for those faults that may have fallen out to be the same in several copies And if Sixtus V Pope causing 100 copies of the Vulgar Latine to be compared found two thousand faults supposing two thousand copies extant which may be supposed a hundred thousand in any Language what will remain unquestionable It is further alleged that the Scripture is written in Languages now ceased which some call Learned Languages because men learn them to know such Books as are written in them the meaning whereof not being subject to sense dependeth upon such a guessing kind of skill as is subject to mistake as experience showes in commenting of all Authors But especially the Hebrew and that Greek in which wee have the Scriptures That having originally no vowels to determine the reading of it wanting Conjunctions and Preposiaions to determine the signification of him that speaks all the Language extant being contained in the Bible alone the Jews Language differing so much as it does from it the Language of the Prophets consisting of such dark Tropes and Figures that no skill seems to determine what they mean This so copious and by that means so various in the expressions of it though wanting that variety of Conjugations by which the Hebrew and other Eastern Languages vary the sense that to determine the meaning of it is more than any ordinary skill can compasse Adde hereunto the manifold equivocations incident to whatsoever is expressed by writing more incident to the Scripture as pretending to give us the sense of our Lords words for example not the very syllables Adde the uncertainties which the multiplicity of Translations must needs produce and all this must needs amount to this reckoning That God never meant the Bible for the means to decide controversies of Faith the meaning whereof requires many principles which God alone can procure because so indefinite Which the nature of the Book argueth no lesse as I observed being written in no method of a Law or a Rule nor having those decisions that are to oblige distinguished from mater of a farre diverse and almost impertinent nature Upon these premises it is inferred as evident to common sense that the Scripture produces no distinct resolution of controversies though as infinitely usefull for instruction in virtue so tending to show the truth in maters of Faith in grosse and being read rather to know what is in it than to judge by it by the summary agreement of it with that which
for the waters are come in even unto my soul And Let not the water-stood drown me neither let the deep swallow me up And let not the pit shut her mouth upon me And XLII 9. One deep calleth another because of the noise of thy water-pipes All thy waves and billows are gone over me Whereupon S. Paul Romans VI. 3 4 5 Know ye not that as many as have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death We are therefore buried with him by baptism into death that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so we should also walk in newnesse of life For if we have been planted into the like death of his then shall we be also into the like of his rising again For when he saith again Rom. X. 7. Who shall go down into the deep to wit to bring up Christ from the dead He sheweth plainly that by the waters of the deep he understands death whereby I suppose it appears sufficiently that the water of Baptism not the fire of the Holy Ghost is the antitype to the waters of the deluge Besides the Baptism of the Holy Ghost is not called Baptism but by resemblance of the fire thereof infusing it self into all the soul as the whole body is drenched in the waters of baptism Therefore it is not called absolutely Baptism but with an addition abating the property of the sense the Baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire Therefore where the term Baptism stands without this addition or any circumstance signifying the same it cannot be understood Again the interrogating of a good conscience 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies as all men of learning agree metonymically or by Synecdoche the answer or rather the stipulation consisting of the interrogatories of Baptism and the answer returned by him that is baptized undertaking to believe and to live like a Christian For it is manifest that it Fath been alwayes the custom in the Church of God as still in the Church of England which S. Peter here shews that it comes down from the Apostles to exact of him that is baptized a solemn vow promise or contract to stand to that which he undertaketh And this it is which the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here signifies whereof he that doubts may see enough in Grotius his Annotations to make him ashamed to doubt any more When therefore S. Peter saith that Baptism saveth us not the doing away the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good conscience towards God he does not intend to distinguish the Baptism of water from the Baptism of the Holy Ghost in opposition to the same But to distinguish in the Baptism of water the bodily act of cleansing the flesh from the reasonable act of professing Christianity which being done out of a good conscience towards God he saith saveth us And that by the resurrection of Jesus Christ By vertue whereof S. Paul also saith that if we planted into the like death to Christs death we shall also be planted into the like resurrection of Christs Supposing that whosoever is baptized takes upon him the profession of Christs Crosse that is the bearing of it when his Christianity cals him to it For when our Lord saith in the Gospel I have a Baptism to be baptized with and how am I straitned till it be accomplished Luk. XII 50. And again to the sons of Zebedee Mat. XX 22. Are ye able to be baptized with the Baptism which I shall be baptized with He shews sufficiently that his Baptism is his Crosse In consideration whereof that is of undertaking to bear it out of a good conscience as Christ was raised from death to life again by the Spirit of Holinesse which dwelt in him without measure So those that are planted into the likenesse of Christs death in Baptism are promised the Grace of Gods Spirit to dwell in them and to raise them from sin here to the life of Grace and from death hereafter to the life of Glory in the world to come as I shewed you in the first Book So that S. Pauls argument proceeds not upon consideration of the Ceremony of Baptism and the naturall resemblance it hath with the duty of a Christian to rise from sin because he professes to die to it For that were to think that the Apostles have but weak argumens to inforce the obligation of Christianity with when this prime one is made to signifie no more then an indecorisne impertinence or inconsequence in signifying and professing that by our Baptism which by our lives we perform not But maketh Baptism the protestation of a solemn vow and promise to God and men and Angels to live for the future as the profession of Christians importeth And is it possible to show man overtaken in sin a more valuable consideration to expect salvation upon and therefore a stronger means to inforce the performance of what he hath undertaken then his own ingagement upon such a consideration as that We are therefore baptized with Christ unto death because we have undertaken upon our Baptism to mortifie our selves to the world that we may live to Gods service And upon that condition we promise our selves that we shall be raised from the dead again though by vertue of Christs rising again Being buried with him in Baptism wherein ye are also risen with him by faith of the effectuall working of God which raised him from the dead saith S. Paul Col. II. 12. For by obliging our selves to the profession of Christianity from a good heart and clear conscience we obtain the promise of the Holy Ghost whereby God effecteth the raising of us to a new life of righteousnesse necessarily consequent to the mortifying of sinne Besides these how many and how excellent effects are attributed to Baptism in the writings of the Apostles which without S. Peters distinction might seem strange that they should depend upon the clensing of the flesh but that they should by Gods appointment depend upon that ingagement whereby we give our selvs up to Christ for the future according to his distinction not at all For that this ingagement should not be effectuall till consigned unto the Church at Baptism cannot seem strange to him that believes the Catholick Church to be as I have shewed a corporation founded for the maintenance and exercise of that Christianity to which we ingage our selves by Baptism When the Jewes were pricked in heart to see our Lord whom they had crucified to be risen again and asked the Apostles Men and Brethren What shall we doe Acts II. 37 38. Peter saith unto them Repent and be baptized every one of you unto remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost Which if it depend upon Baptism what promise of the Gospel is there that does not To the same purpose Heb. VI. 6. It is impossible for them that have once been inlightned and tasted the heavenly gift and become partakers
the Father but of the World But what is there between God and the world but the old serpent and the leaven which he hath poisoned man with And this is that venim which we read of Psal LVIII 4 5 6. The wicked are estranged from their mothers womb as soon as they are born they go astray and speak lies They have venime like the venime of a serpent like the deaf addar that stoppeth his eare That will not hear the voice of the inchanters that inchant with charmes cunningly For if it be said that all this speakes onely of the wicked which of their own choice have addicted themselves to sinne and that by being bred to it by their Fathers and predecessor and so debauched from their own natural innocence I shall presently appeale to David himself and his confession with which he pretends to grace Psal LI. 7. 8. Behold I was formed in wickednesse and in sin did my mother conceive me But behold thou requirest truth in the intrailes and shalt make me to understand wisdome secretly I know it is said that this is nothing but an hyperbolicall expression of the Prophet whereby he chargeth himselfe with sinne even before he could understand what sinne was and that from the time of his conceiving in the womb were that possible he hath been liable to sinne and so left without mercy And to this purpose is alledged that of the Pharisees to the blind man John IX 34. Thou wast wholly born in sinne and dost thou teach us To argue that among the Jews it was an ordinary expression to aggravate a mans sinne by saying That he was borne in sinne And truly what the Jews of that time might conceive of the coming in of sinne is not alltogether so cleare in regard of the Apostles words to our Lord upon the occasion of the same man when they askt our Lord whether he was born blinde for his owne sinne or for the sinne of his parents John IX 2. Which our Lord answering for neither but for a particular intent of shewing a particular work of God upon him Denies not the common taint of our nature when he affirmes That particualr workes of providence upon particualr persons have particular reasons and ends for which God will have them come to passe But shews that there were severall opinions in vogue at that time through the nation and that there might be a conceit of mens soules sinning in other bodies or before they came into these bodies according to the position of Pythagoras or the conjecture of Origen Though the opinion of Herod concerning John the Baptist that he should be alive againe in our Lord Mat. XIV 2. doth not appeare to proceed from any such presumption as this but from an imagination that dead mens soules might come and live againe in the world whether in the same or other bodies From this opinion then the reproach of the Pharisees to this man that he was born in sinne may well seem to proceed And their error will not prejudice the truth that all men are indeed born in sinne But I observe further that the people of God as they were totally divided from the worship of Idols so from the consequences thereof which Paul in the first of the Romanes sheweth to have been all sorts of uncleanness in the first place and then the rest of those evils which towards the end of the Chapter he qualifies the Gentiles with For it is manifest that uncleannesse which contained no civil in justice was counted but an indifferent thing with all the Gentiles Let him that would be satisfied of this peruse what the Wise man hath said of the seed of the Gentiles which he compareth with the Jews whom they persecuted all along his whole work Wisdom III. 12-IV 1-6 Where it is manifest that he setteth forth the posterity of the Gentiles as defiled with the uncleannesse wherein they were bred and born And this is most certainely the reason why S. Paul saith of Christians married to Gentiles 1 Cor. VII 14. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband Else were your children uncleane but now are they holy To wit that a heathen husband or wife consenting to dwell in wedlock with a Christan is sanctified by a Christian husband or wife by whose meanes he is brought to this ingagement For when S. Paul adviseth the Christian party to continue in wedlock contracted with an Idolater before Christianity he presupposeth that the Gentile shall be willing to forbear the vulgar uncleannesses of the Gentiles for the love of a Christian yokefellow Otherwise it could not be honest nor for the reputation of a Christian among the Gentiles having power of divorcing as both parties had in the Romane Empire to continue in wedlock with him that acknowledged not Christian but onely civil wedlock That is the wife to be tied in regard of the issue but the man free to all uucleannesse which the Romane Lawes no way restrained And therefore their children so farre from being unclean according to the manners of heathen parents that they are holy upon presumption that they shall be bred in the instruction of Christianity by the meanes of that party which was Christian I observe againe that the Prophet David speaking of his wicked enemies the figure of the Jewes whom thereby he designeth aforehand to be the enemies of our Lord and his Church applieth the same expression to them being of the carnall people of God but farre from Jewes according to the spirit which the people of God other whiles use concerning the Gentiles when he saith that they are estranged from the wombe and as soone as they are born go astray and speak lies For it is manifest that he calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal LIX 6 9. which by the title appeares to be written of the Jewes his enemies And so Psal XLII 2. Which word commonly stands in as ill a sense with the Jewes as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gentes Nationes to the Christians not for people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but for Ethnicks or Gentiles that is to say Idolaters And so to this day the Jewes call us Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Gentiles And upon these observations I am induced to believe that the Pharisees and those of the Consistory out of the confidence they had of their own holinesse which they presumed of upon the Curisity which they kept the Law with did judge of those that pretended not to the same as of people once removed from Gentiles and so sinners from their birth by the grossenesse of those manners in which they were bred But when David comes to confesse of himself that he was altogether born in sinne and conceived by his mother in wickednesse It is not possible that any such reason should take place but rather such a one as may make good whatsoever
was unknowne and by him to his disciples whereby after the power came downe upon him from above he did miracles And that when he had suffered that which came from above flâ—w up againe from Jesus So that Jesus suffered and rose againe but the Christ which came upon him from above flew up againe without suffering which is that which came downe in the shape of a dove and that Jesus is not the Christ Where you see he makes the coming of Christ to be nothing else but an escape made by the Holy Ghost when he came upon our Lord out of the Fullnesse of the Godhead to return thither againe when he had suffered Now it is agreed upon that Cerinthus had spread his Heresies in Asia when Saint John writ his Gospell And though Epiphanius report that it was Ebion whom Saint John met with in the bath and refused to come in it so long as he was there calling away his Scholars with him Yet it must be resolved that it is a meere mistake of his memory because himselfe testifies as afore that the Heresy of Cerinthus flourished in Asia and in Galatia and because Eusebius after Irenaeus who conversed with Saint Johns Scholar Polycarpus reports it of Cerinthus As for the Heresy of Ebion it is manifest by Epiphanius himself in his Heresy that it sprung up first and flourished most in the parts of Palestine beyond or besides Jordane which they called Peraea what time the Church of Jerusalem had forsaken the City to remove themselves to Pella where God had provided for them at the destruction of it So that it appeareth not that Saint John saw the birth of it being probably removed into Asia before that time I shall therefore neede to say nothing of the Heresy of Ebion having Saint Jerome in Catalogo to witnesse that the Gospell of Saint John was written at the request of the Bishops of Asia in opposition to Cerinthus But the stocke of that evidence which I shall bring out of the Scripture for the state of our Lord Christ and his Godhead before his coming in the flesh lying therefore in the beginning of that Gospell which was writ on purpose to exclude it I shall referre the rest of that which I shall gather out of the New Testament to the sense and effect of it CHAP. XIII The Word was at the beginning of all things The apparitions of the Old Testament Prefaces to the Incarnation of Christ Ambassadors are not honoured with the honour due to their Masters The Word of God that was afterwards incarnate was in those Angels that spoke in Gods Name No Angel honoured as God under the New Testament The Word was with God at the beginning of all things as after his return THE Gospel of Saint John then beginneth thus In the beginning wâ—s the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God The same was in the beginning with God In which words the Socinians will not have the beginning to be the beginning of all things but the beginning of preaching the Gospel That is to say when John the Baptist began to preach And the Word to be the man Jesus so called because he was the man whom God had appointed to publish it So that in the beginning was the Word is in their sense When John the Baptist began to preach there was a man whom God had appointed to publish the Gospel And truly I cannot deny that the beginning here might signifie the beginning of the Gospel by the same reason as in the Scripture and in all Languages words signify more then they expresse But that reason can be no other then this because a man speakes of things mentioned afore in discourse or of that which is otherwise known to be the subject of his discourse So words signifie more then they expresse because something that is known need not be repeated at every turne What is the reason then why this addition not being expressed is to be understood Forsooth Saint Mark beginneth his Gospel thus The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Sonne of God As it is written in the Prophets Behold I send my Messenger before thy face that shall prepare thy way before thee The voice of him that cryeth in the wildernesse Prepare â—e the way of the Lord make his path plaine John was baptizing in the wildernesse Is not this a good reason Because in one Text of Saint Marke you find the beginning of the Gospel to be the preaching of John therefore wheresoever you read the beginning you are to understand by it the beginning of the Gospel At least in the beginning of S. Johns Gospel we must seek no other meaning for it But who will warrant that the word Gospel in S. Marke signifies the preaching of the Gospel as sometimes it does or this book of the Gospel which S. Mark takes in hand to write The words it is manifest may signifie either and therefore it cannot be manifest that the word beginning without any addition is put to signifie the one and not the other For if you understand the beginning of the book of the Gospel when S. John saies In the begining was the Word Their turne is not served As for the title of the Word which scarce any of the Apostles but S. John attributes to our Lord Look upon the beginning of his first Epistle That which was from the beginning which we have heard and seen and our hands have handled of the Word of Life for the Life hath been manifested and we have seen and bear witnesse and declare unto you that everlasting Life which was with the Father and hath been manifested unto us That which we have heard and seen declare we unto you Here it must be a man that S. John calls the Word when he speakes not onely of hearing but of seeing and handling the Word of Life But when he saies that the Word was with God from the beginning and since hath been made manifest to us is there nothing but the man and his office of preaching the Gospel to be considered for the reason why he is called the Word What meant then the Apostle Ebr. IV. 12 13 The Word of God is quick and active and cutteth beyond any two edged sword and cometh so farre as to divide between the soul and the spirit to the joints and marrow and judgeth the thoughts and conceits of the heart Neither is any creature obscure to it but all things naked and bare to the eyes of him whom we have to do with Where you see he begins his discourse concerning the Gospel but ends it in God And therefore attributes to the gospel under the name of the Word those things which onely God can do because to the Author of it under the Name of the Word he attributes the knowledge and governing of all things For the reason then why our Lord is called the Word we must have recourse to that which the most ancient
Church which they corrupted by denying these attributes to the man Jesus attributed the same things to him which they denying were therefore excluded out of the Church When S. John proceedeth saying We saw his glory as the glory of the onely begotten Sonne of God he refers to that which went afore he dwelt among us Now seeing it is so ordinary for the Jewes to call the majesty of God dwelling among men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the very word that S. John uses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we are obliged thereby to understand that the majesty of God dwelling among us in the tabernacle of Christs flesh bodily as figuratively it had done in the Tabernacle or Temple of the Jews declared it self notwithstanding by those glorious works which it wrought in his flesh to be what it was For the title of Sonne of God is given in the Old Testament to the Angels first and to the Messias when David saith Ps LXXXIX 18. I will make him my first born higher then the Kings of the earth Whereby it is evident that this title in the Literall sense belonged first to David Of whom also he that will maintaine the difference between the literall and the Spirituall sense upon that ground which I setled before must maintaine those words of David Psal II. 7. Thou art my Sonne this day have I begotten thee To be said Now I suppose that those who expected the Messias to come as a temporall Prince to deliver the people of Israel from the yoke of their oppressors into the free use of that Law which they had received from God as did not onely the rest of the world when Christ came but even his own disciples before his rising againe could by no meanes be informed of that Spirituall kingdome which by the dwelling of the Word in our flesh was intended to be raised Which if it be true though they called the Messiah the Sonne of God as well as the Sonne of David yet is it impossible that they should conceive the same ground for which he is so called and by consequence understand the title in the same sense as we do And this difference of signification is necessary even in the understanding of the Gospel For when the Centurion saith at our Lords death Mark XV. 39. Of a truth this man was the Sonne of God It is not reasonable to imagine that he who dreamed not at all of his rising againe but was a meer heathen should call him the Sonne of God in that sense which we believe But either as Heathenisme allowed Sonnes of the Gods as some thinke or as by conversing with the Jews they had understood them to hold the Messias whom they expected to be the Sonne of God as Prince raised by God What shall we say then of the Apostles demand Vnto which of the angels said he at any time Thou art my Sonne this day have I begotten thee When we find the title of Sonnes of God in the Old Testament attributed to Angels Surely it is necessary to have recourse to that sense in the which it was then known that Christians attributed this title to our Lord Still known by the honour which then and now the Church tendereth him according to it For what will all that Socinus acknowledgeth availe to make good the Apostles assumption when he saies that our Lord is the Sonne of God because conceived without man by the holy Ghost in the womb of a Virgine Is this any more then Adam may challenge for which he is called the Sonne of God Luke III. 38 For the effective cause entereth not into the nature of that which it produceth Neither importeth it any thing to the state of our Lord that he was conceived of the holy Ghost if we suppose nothing in him but a soul and a body which those that are born of man and woman have How then is the title of the Sonne of God incompetible to the Angels which Adam thus farre challenges If you look back upon the premises there remaines no doubt nor any way to escape it otherwise The holy Ghost overshadowing the blessed Virgine not onely workes the conception of a Sonne but dwells for ever according to the fullnesse of the Godhead in the manhood so conceived as by the nature of the Godhead planted in the Word which then came to dwell in the manhood so conceived Therefore that holy thing which is borne of the Virgine being called the Sonne of God is made so much above the Angels as the esteem which this name imports is above any thing that is attributed to them in the Scriptures Therefore is this Sonne of God honoured as God during his being upon earth by them that were instructed to understand the effect of it though they that were not disciples but took it onely for a title of the Messias which they knew he pretended to be perhaps conceived not so much by it Therefore our Lord himself poses the Pharisees how they would have David to understand the Messias to be his Lord whom they knew to be his Sonne Mat. XXII 42 45. Mark XII 35 37. Luke XX. 41 44. This is then that which S. Paul saith Col. I. 19. For in him it pleased God that all the fullnesse should dwell And Col. II. 9. 10. For in him dwelleth all the fullnesse of the Godhead bodily And Ye are filled through him Speaking of Christ I shewed you before that the heresies of that time some whereof it is manifest were then seducing the Colossians did all agree in preaching God the Father of all things to be unknown together with all that belonged to the compleating of the Godhead till they made him known And all this contrived by the devil to subvert the Faith of Christ by counterfeiting something like it in sound like false coyne to cozen the simple with Whereas therefore S. Paul here saith that the fullnesse of the Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ And our Lord so often in S. Johns Gospel that the Father dwelleth in him and he in the Father And the fullnesse of the holy Ghost dwelleth in the Word incarnate as I shewed even now It is manifest that they laboured to introduce a counterfeit Fullnesse of the Godhead of their own devising into that esteem and worship which the fullnesse of the Godhead contained in the Father Sonne and holy Ghost preached by our Lord Christ and his Apostles challengeth And therefore that the fullnesse of the Godhead challenged by S. Paul to dwell in the flesh of Christ must stand in opposition to that fullnesse which these sects worshipped Being challenged by S. Paul as vindicating the Christian Faith from that corruption wherewith these Sects pretended to adulterate it And being challenged by those Sects in opposition to S. Paul and the Christian Faith which he vindicateth to rest in those whom they severally preached not in the Sonne and holy Ghost together with the Father as he maintaineth For when the fullnesse of
Irenaeus II. 7. Irrationale est autem impium adinvenire locum in quo cessat finem habet qui est secundum eas Propater Proarche omnium Pater hujus Pleromatis Nâ—c rursus in sinu Patris alterum quendam dicere tantam fabricasse creationem fas est vel consentiente vel non consentiente Now it is unreasonable and impious to imagine any place in which their Forefather and Forebeginning the Father of all and of this Fulness ceaseth and endeth Nor is it lawfull again to say that any other in the bosome of the Father made this great creation either with his consent or without it For here you see that the Gnosticks faigning some Principle besides the Father but resident in his bosome to have made the World are reproved by Irenaeus for adulterating the Christian Faith which maintaining the Son to be in the bosome of the Father signified him to be no stranger to the Father but of his own nature Whereby we see further what S. John means when he sayes that the Word was in the beginning with God and came into the World from thence In fine when S. John attributes to our Lord the title of onely begotten of the light and the truth which he that reads Irâ—neus will see that the Gnosticks made severall persons constituting that Fulness which severall Sects of them did imagine it must be concluded that â—â—ey finding these titles attributed by the Christians to our Lord did by attributing them to severall persons of whom the severall Sects of them framed their severall Fulnesses adulterate Christianity And that he finding them so doing vindicates it to the be true sense by fixing the said titles and the Godhead which they import upon our Lord Christ where they are due Here I alledge the words of the Apostle Heb. I 3. concerning Christ Who being the brightness of his glory and the Character of his substance and sustaining or moving all things as it follows in those words which have been already examined Which words the Socinians think they avoid fairely by saying that As the words of men are all Images of their minds so the man Jesus being to signifie that is to resemble the counsell of God to mankind is called the image of God as I sayd afore that he is called the Word of God in their sense And to this they think the words of S. Paul inclinable 2 Cor. IV. 4 5 6. where he saith that The God of this World hath blinded the conceptions of unbelievers that the inlightning of the glorious Gospell of Christ who is the Image of God might not shine on them For we preach not our selves but Christ Jesus the Lord and our selves your Servants for Jesus sake Because it is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness that hath shined in our hearts to enlighten us with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face or person of Christ Jesus Because in these words which intitle Christ the Image of God the preaching of the Gospel is so much insisted upon as the reason of it But as for the reason why our Lord is called the Word I refer my self to the premises so that he should be intituled the Image of his glory the character that is printed off from his substance that in consideration of the same he should have purged mans sins and be set on Gods Throne to be honoured with Gods own honours which all follows in the Apostles words is too gross for any reasonable man to digest And therefore in the title of Gods Image as I sayd before in the title of Gods Word there must be couched and understood a reason upon which all this may flow Which is nothing else but the fulness of the Spirit or the Godhead lodged for ever in the flesh of our Lord and rendring him capable as well to redeem all sinnes and to be advanced to the Throne of God that is to the Worship of God as to preach and make good that Gospel wherin the glory of Gods Wisdome and goodness so much appeareth And thus and not otherwise the account will be sufficient not only why our Lord â—s intituled the Image of God but how he is preached to be the Lord and the Apostles his Slaves how the glory of God shines off from his person or face upon the hearts of Believers For I do firmly believe as the Apostles writings have alwaies reference to the Scriptures of the old Testament to shew how they are fulfilled by the new So that our Lord is here called the image of God as the second Adam in reference to the first who is said to have been made in the Image and likenesse of God But with that difference which S. Paul hath expressed 1 Cor. XV. 45. As it is written the fiâ—st Adam was made a living soul so is the second Adam made a quickning Spirit For having shewed that the Spirit of Life which raised Christ from the dead is the fullnesse of the Godhead hypostatically united to the flesh of Christ well may I inferre that it is in consideration therof that he is called the image of Gods glory and the express character of his substance from which will also follow the expiation of our sins and his sitting upon Gods throne to be worshiped as God Thus shall the first Adam made a living soul in the image of God be the figure of the second Adam made a quickning Spirit in the image of God Thus shall the Old Testament be the figure of the new and the animal life given by the Word and Spirit of God the figure of spirituall and everlasting life given by the same Spirit of God dwelling in the Word of God incarnate I will here shew you the strange tale that Saturninus framed out of the relation of Moses concerning the making of man related by Epiphanius that you may judge thereby of the truth of that which he indeavored to disguise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So I read Epiphanius in stead of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which makes no sense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Because saith he that same light which was the image of the Power above peeping down wrought a certaine provocation in the said Angels by whom he saith the World was made they attempted to frame man out of the â—ust they had to the image above For being in love with the light above and taken with the lust of it appearing and disappearing to them and unable to satisfie themselves of the comelynesse of that which they were in love with because his light flew up as soone as it came at them hereupon this Iugler frames the scene and saies that the angels said Let us make man to wit According to the image not according to our image because he denies that man was made after the image of God that made the world but after the image of the unknown Father which peeped down upon them in the Fullnesse of the Godhead and
drew back straight Shewing thereby that the Christiane Faith which he meant to sophisticate makes the living soul to which the first Adam was framed to be the image of God because the quickning Spirit which our Lord Christ was to become by being incarnate was figured by it CHAP. XVI The testimonies of Christs Godhead in the Old Testament are first understood of the figures of Christ Of the Wisdome of God in Solomon and elsewhere Of the writings of the Jewes as well before as after Christ BEE This then the evidence of the state of our Lord Christ afore his coming in the flesh out of the Scriptures of the New Testament The sense of which to make good I have been forced to imploy two peremptory arguments grounded upon that reason upon which we admit the New Testament to have been signified by the Old The first the Name and honour of God alone given to the Angels that were imployed by God to speak to his Prophets in his own person and names as the forerunner of our Lord. The second those passages of the Old Testament concerning the Messias which attribute to him the name and works and honour of God and by those that admit the New Testament cannot be denied to belong to our Lord Jesus by the â—ewes themselves they are most an end acknowledged to belong to the Meâ—â—â—as And of this I was to put the reader in mind that he may expect this truth out of the Old Testament by evidences answerable to that declaration thereof which the Light of that time required For I shall freely avow that the next argument that I shall use standeth absolutely upon supposition of that which I delivered in the first book concerning the figuring of the Messias by those persons of whom the Prophets of the Old Testament writ So that the sense of the passages which I shall now alledge is in some sort fulfilled and verified in those things which fell out to those figures Though admitting the said ground it will be requisite to look after a more perfect and compleat verifying of them in our Lord Christ Whereupon it cannot be strange that the meaning of them should appear more full and proper in him then it can be maintained in them of whom it cannot be denied that they are meant in the Old Testament Sâ—ch is that memorable passage of the Prophet David Psal XLV 8 9. Thy seat O God is for ever The Scepter of thy kingdome is a scepter of righteousnesse Thou hast loved righteousnesse and hated iniquity therefore God even thy God hath anointed thee with the oyl of gladnesse above thy fellows And Psal LXXII 15. He shall live and unto him shall be given of the gâ—â—d of Arabia prayer shall be made ever unto him and daily shall â—e be praised Of the same kind is that of the Prophet Isaiah IX 6 7. A little one is given us A sonne is borne us On whose shoulder is the Rule And his name shall be called the Admirable the Counsellor the mighty God the Father of eternity the Prince of Peace Of the greatnesse of his Empire and peace there shall be no end Vpon the Throne of David and his kingdome to restore and settle it in judgement and righteousnesse from this time forth for evermore And Isa XI 12. And there shall come forth a shoot from the root of Jesse and a bud shall come up from his stock Vpon whom shall rest the Spirit of the Lord The Spirit of wisdom and understanding the Spirit of counsel and fortitude the Spirit of knowledge and godlinesse and he shall smell with the fear of the Lord. And Jer. XXIII 5 6. Behold the dayes come saith the Lord that I will raise up unto David a sproute of righteousnesse and he shall reign as a king and be wise and execute judgement and righteousnesse upon the earth In his daies shall Judah be saved and Israel dwell safe And this is the Name by which they shall call him The Lord our righteousnesse Or our righteous Lord. For I do avow and maintaine that all that will justifie that our Lord is foretold and figured in the Old Testament upon true grounds and consequent to their own sayings must say that these things are verified of some Prince of Gods ancient people This of Jeremy for the purpose in Zorâ—babel who is called the Sprout Zach. VI. 12. And King Zach. IX 9. Jer. XXXI 7. those things of Esay in Ezekias as those things of David no man doubts to be fulfilled first in Solomon of whom the title of Psal LXXII saies expresly that it is intended Neither will I make any difficulty to yeeld the Socinians that the title of Zorobabel may well be God is our righteousnesse or that the title of Ezâ—kias in Isa VII 14. may well be God is with us No otherwise then the pillar which Moses erected Ex. XVII 15. is called the Lord my standard Or the altar of Isaac Gen. XXXIII 20. God the God of Abraham But when it is granted on their side which the Jews themselves cannot refuse that these things are meant in a more sublime sense of the Messias And that in respect of Salvation purchased us and divine honors to himself which the Socinians cannot refuse though the Jewes do those things which are said of God in the Old Testament are attributed to our Lord Christ in the New Then will I stand upon it that the throne of the most high God ascribed to our Lord Christ by David imports no more then when he saies Psal CX 1. The Lord said unto my Lord sit thou on my right hand untill I make thine enemies thy footstool And therefore that there can be no cause either to abuse the signification of the Name of God when the Prophet saith Thy throne O God is for ever Or to have recourse to that other shift that God is said to be Christs Throne because the founder of it when it is manifest that the Throne which is spoken of is Gods Throne For it is to be considered that when it is said Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever using that Name of God which is communicated to his Angels and to the Rulers of his people and therefore in the first place to the Messias that is to our Lord Jesus supposing him to be the Christ Whatsoever conceit of the Messias the Old Testament can allow when the new declareth that our Lord Jesus is set down at Gods right hand upon his own Throne it necessarily declareth him the same God with him upon whose Throne he sits In like manner I do not deny but challenge and maintaine that the prayer and praises tendered the Messias according to David may and must be understood to be such as might be tendered to Solomon an earthly Prince But when I can charge all that admit the New Testament by their own consent that it is the honour of the onely true God which Christians tender our Lord Christ of whom they
Whatsoever my Father giveth me shall come to me And No man can come to me unlesse my Father that sent me draw him And the Apostle 1 John VI. 19. We love him because he loved us first Heb. XII 2. Every good and perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom is no change or shadow of turning Gal. VI. 3. If any man think himself something being nothing he deceives himself Heb. XIII 22. God make you of one mind in every good work to do his will working in you that which is acceptable before him through Jesus Christ To wit by the meanes of his Spirit 2 Tim. â— 9 10. It is God that hath saved us and called us with an holy calling not according to our works but his owâ— purpose and grace given us through Christ Jesus before eternall times but now manifested by the appearance of our Saviour Jesus Christ having abolished death but shined forth life and incorruption by the Gospel The abolishing of death and the declaration of eternall life wherein the calling of men to Christianity consists together with the saving of us which is effected by meanes of the Sonne how these things come by Christ we learn from his words John XII 24 31 32 33. Verily verily I say unto you If a graine of wheat fall not into the earth and dy it remaineth alone But if it dy it beareth much fruit And Now is the judgement of this world Now shall the prince of this world be cast forth And I when I am lifted uâ— from the earth will draw all men to me This he said signifying what death he should dy But signifying also what should be the force and effect of that death Then those Scriptures which make charity to be the gift of God and of the holy Ghost John IV. 7. Rom. V. 5. 1 Cor. XII 31. XIII 1. Gal. V. 22. which holy Ghost our Lord Christ by his death hath obtained for us as afore Unto all which I will adde in the last place those which speake of the predestination of God as it signifies no more then the preparation of that grace from everlasting whereby we are saved in time S. Paul indeed when he excludes the presumption which the Jews had of being saved by the Law as the Fathers they thought were distinguishing between the seed of Abraham according to the flesh and according to promise Rom. IX 6-13 which promise he supposes to be the forerunner of Christs Gospel Manifestly declares no more then the question which he is there engaged in requires him to declare To wit that they were not saved by virtue of the Law but by virtue of that Grace which now the Gospel openly tendereth So that Israel and Esau holding the figure of the Jews that expected to be saved by the works of the Law Isaac and Jacob consequently answer the Christians who expect salvation not by their birth but by Gods promise not by works but by him that calleth To wit to the said promise Whereby it appeareth that the words of the Prophet which he alledgeth Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated signify no more according to the spirituall sense of the Old Testament which the New Testament yeildeth but the accepting of the Church in stead of the Synagogue of the Christians in stead of the Jews And that this is the purpose of God according to choice which S. Paul speakes of immediately afore In as much as God purposed from the beginning when first he took the seed of Abraham from among the Nations to place his name among them that his choice ones of Isaacs posterity as well as Abrahams should be those that bore the figure of the Christian Church promised afore and born upon the promise that they should be beloved All this being granted which I count most true and undeniable notwithstanding the purpose of God according to choice as it expresses a declaration of receiving the Church in stead of the Synagogue so it implies and presupposes a purpose of God to make and to build Christs mysticall body which is the Church upon which purpose of God all those prophesies are grounded whereby God foretelleth of his new people Israel according to the Spirit which Christians know to be those children which he raised up to Abraham out of the stones For we cannot think so slightly of Gods providence that by foretelling this secret he obliges himself onely to finde sufficient meanes to convert men to Christianity But also those which should take effect and bring to passe the conversion of the World to Christianity by the Gospel of Christ Seeing then that the Church is nothing but the souls whereof it consisteth and that the foreknowing and the foretelling of the Church which Christians believe to be fulfilled consisteth in foreknowing and foretelling the conversion of those persons who have constituted and shall constitute the number of believers from the preaching of Christianity til the worlds end It followeth that this purpose of God according to election can no way stand without an intent of God to bring the said election that is this multitude of Gods choice ones to Christianity whether by the preaching of the Gospel or by the helps which depend thereupon as it depends upon Christs death And this is most manifest by S. Pauls answer to an objection which followes upon his conclusion of this point That if God hath mercy upon whom he pleaseth and pardons whom he pleaseth he has no cause to complaine of any man to wit of the Jews who believe not because no man can resist his will That is to say because he is able to convert them if he please Which inference S. Paul not denying that God could convert the unbelieving Jews if he pleased thus avoideth Nay O man who art thou that disputest with God shall the pot say to the potter Why hast thou made me thus and afore What shall we say then Is there injustice with God God forbid For he saith to Moses I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I compassionate So it is not in the willing nor in the running but in God that shewes mercy Rom IX 18 19 20. 15 16. Where it is plaine that S. Paul no way denies the truth of the assumption That God may if he please imploy such meanes as shall make any man a Christian How he avoides the consequence is another matter and not belonging to this dispute inasmuch as it is manifest to all that understand learning that it is one thing to prove a truth another to clear the objections that ly against it That I shall indeavour to do before I leave the businesse In this I shall think thus much evidenced by the premises that God who knew from the beginning of the sending of Christ and inabling his Apostles and their successors of the Church to convict the world of it who should obey the Gospel and who
principles to spirituall good can no way impeach it as coming from the constitution of our nature supposing the ornaments and additions of grace to be removed The opinion of the fulfilling of Gods Law by Christians supposes that the remaines of concupiscence in the regenerate and the immediate effects thereof in the first motions to sinne which cannot be prevented are not against Gods Law but onely besides it From whence it will follow that he who of his free will imbraces Christianity and perseveres in the good works which it injoyneth meriteth of justice the reward of the Life to come And truly for my part I cannot deny that all this is justly pleaded against those that are of this opinion and cannot by them justly be answered But that this opinion is injoyned by the Church of Rome I cannot understand seeing divers learned Doctors of the Schools alledged by Doctor Field for the opposition which he maketh to this opinion and that very truly and justly shewing infallibly that the contrary opinion is allowed to be maintained in the communion of the Church of Rome And that nothing hath been done since the authors whom he alledgeth to make this unlawfull to be held amongst them I suppose it will be enough to produce the decree of the Council of Trent since which it is evident that it is lawfull among them to maintaine that concupiscence is originall sinne For though the decree declareth that the Church never understood concupiscence in the regenerate to be truly and properly sinne but to be so called as proceeding from sinne and inclining to sinne Yet in as much as it is one thing to speak of concupiscence in the regenerate another in the unregenerate and in as much as it is one thing to declare the sense of the Church according to the opinion of the Synode another to condemn the contrary sense as opposite to the Faith it is manifest that this declaration condemns not those that hold originall concupiscence to be originall sinne but onely shewes that they could not answer the difficulty of originall sinne in the regenerate On the other side it cannot be justly said so farre as I understand that those of the Reformation do affirme that the grace given to Adam at his creation was due to his nature in this sense and to this effect as if they did intend to deny that he was created in such an estate and to such a condition of happinesse as the principles and constitution of his nature do not necessarily require But onely this That the gifts which by his creation he stood indowed with were necessary to the purchase of that happinesse which he that is to say his nature was created to whereupon they are justly called the indowments of nature Here I must not omit the opinion of Catharinus in the Council of Trent That Adam received originall righteousnesse of God in his own name and the name of his posterity to be continued to them he obeying God Whereupon his disobedience iâ— in Law their disobedience though in nature onely his and the act of his transgression imputed to them is their originall sinne as personall as the penalties of it No otherwise then Levâ— paid Tithes in Abraham Many passages of S. Augustine he had to alledge for this as also a Text of the Prophet Osee and another of Ecclesiasticus But especially the expresse words of S. Paul That by the inobedience of one man many are made sinnerâ— And That by sinne death came into the world which surely came into the world by the actuall transgression of Gods commandment Alledging that Eve found not her self naked till Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit Nor had originall sin been had the matter rested there And by this reason he thought he avoided a difficulty not to be overcome otherwise how the lust of generation can give a spirituall staine to the soul which must needs be carnall if it come from the flesh And by this meanes nothing but an action which transgresseth Gods Law shall be sinne which all men understand by that name This opinion the History saith was the more plausible among the Prelates there as not bred Divines but Canonists or versed in businesse and so best relishing that which they best understood to wit the conceit of a civile contract with Adam in behalfe of his posterity as well as himself To give a judgement of this opinion I shall do no more but remit the reader to those Scriptures which I have produced to shew that there is such a thing as originall sinne concluding that the nature of it wherein it consists must be valued by the evidence of it whereby it appeares that it is It will then be unavoidable that when death is the effect of sinne because righteousnese is the cause of life as Adams sinne is the cause of his death so the death of his posterity depends upon their own unrighteousnesse Why else should Christianity free us from death as hath been shewed Why should S. Paul complain of the Law that he found in his members opposing the Law of righteousnesse why should the flesh fight with the Spirit and the fruits of the flesh be opposite to the fruits of the Spirit but that the same opposition of sinne to righteousnesse is to be acknowldged in the habituall principles as in the actuall effects which proceed from the same As for that onely text of S. Paul in which he could find any impression of his meaning if the reader observe the deduction whereby I have shewed that S. Pauls discourse obliged him to set forth the ground whereupon the coming of Christ and his Gospel became necessary to the salvation both of the Jews and Gentiles he will easily find that the question is of the effective not of the formall cause that S. Paul is not ingaged to shew wherein that source of sinne which our Lord Christ came to cure consisteth but from whence it proceedeth True it is when the posterity suffers losse of estate and honour for the Fathers treason it may properly be said that the Fathers crime is imputed to the posterity Not because any reason can indure that what is done by one man should be thought to be done by another but because the effect of what one man does may justly be either granted to or inflicted upon another whether for the better or for the worse As in a civile state suppose the Laws make treason to forfeit lands and honours which every man sees are held by virtue of the Lawes that posterity which hath no right to them but from predecessors and the obligation which they had to maintaine the state should forfeit them by the act of predecessors is a thing not strange but reasonable Though so that the forfeiture may transgresse the bounds of reason and humanity if the Law should not allow posterity or kindred to live in that state to which predecessors have forfeited when there is so much cause to believe that the
uprightnesse of Adams posterity upon the condition of his obedience when as it is evident enough that it was in his power to have done otherwise And this account being rendred it will be easie to say why Eve found not the effect of her transgression before Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit To wit Not because she should never have found any had not he sinned But because the effects of it do not necessarily follow instantly at all times and in all things and that in tempting Adam which was the next thing she did they did instantly appear As for the great difficulty how the spirituall substance of the soul should receive a taint from the carnall concupiscence whereby it cometh to be united to the body I will here challenge the benefit of that principle which I have once established That which once was not matter of Faith can never by processe of time or any act the Church can do become matter of Faith Though we may become more obliged to believe it not by the generall obligation of Christianity but by having studied the reasons by which it is deduced from the principles of Faith Besides that light of reason which Faith presupposeth And by the same reason the Church may justly injoyne it to be received â—hat is to say not openly contradicted For such is the matter of the propagation of mans soul whether by transplanting as part of the Fathers hold or by immediate existence from God in the body which nature prepareth for it Which having been manifestly disputable in S. Augustines time I hold it very consequent to that which I have done in the point of the Trinity whether it may be made evident to reason or not to leave it without producing any mans reason by which I pretend to maintaine that it is either traâ—uced or created A wayes supposing that no reason can be receivable which provideth not for the immortality of it which no man questions Lastly it is manifest that actuall sinne â—s first called by the name of sinne because first subject to sense but so that the displeasure of God and by consequence the name of sinne is no lesse reall against habituall sinnes So I will confesse further as afore of the terms of essence and person in the mystery of the blessed Trinity that they were brought into the Church to prevent the malice of hereticks and to settle a right understanding in that which was necessary to be received by Christians So now that the terme of Original sinne was first brought in by S. Augustine and the Church of his time to expresse that ground upon which the Church had from the beginning maintained the grace of our Lord Christ and the necessity of it But that thâ—s ground is not to be maintained unlesse we acknowledge besides those habits of sinne which we contract an habituall inclination to sinne bred in our nature from the fall of Adam which may be called sinne in regard of the likenesse and correspondence of it to and with other inclinations to sinne contracted by custome Having thus set aside this opinion before I come to decide the difficulty proposed I hold it necessary to debate that which both parts seem to take for granted neither of them having expressed any reason to oblige us so to take it That is whether Adam were created to supernaturall happinesse which is that which Christians now expect in the presence of God for everlasting and therefore indowed with those graces which might make him capable of it Or onely in a state of naturall happinesse consisting in the content of this life onely and supposing perfect obedience to God in the course of it Were it but for the the repute I have of Grotius for his skill in the Scriptures who in one of his Annotations upon Cassander hath declared this opinion for part of his judgement I should count it worth the debating But I have found it further maintained by reasons which seem to me considerable and no way prejudiciall to the Faith Which notwithstanding I do not intend to propose for mine own ingaging my self to maintaine this but to confront with the reasons brought for it what I find reasonable to be said on the other side that in a nice and obscure point the discreet reader may chuse what he shall think most fit to allow Now all the argument that can be drawn into consequence on either side arising from the relation of Moses compared with such texts of the New Testament as may give light to it It is first argued That seeing God first framed man of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life and man became a living soule It seemeth evident that he was made in a state of naturall life onely S. Paul having said in comparing him with Christ 1 Cor. XV. 45. So also it is written The first man Adam became a living soul The last Adam became a quickning Spirit Meaning to say That as Moses saith that Adam became a living soul So not that Moses saith but that Christians may say that Christ is become a quickning Spirit For hereupon it followes in S. Paul that as that which is spirituall was to follow so that which is naturall or animall was to go before But to this on behalf of the other part me thinks it may be said That Moses as all the Old Testament speakes onely of the state of our naturall life but intends by the correspondence between materiall and spiritual things as the figure and that which it figures to signify to us that which belongs to that spirituall life which the Gospel introduces Of which intent all that I have produced to settle that difference between the litterall and mysticall sense of the Old Testament is evidence So that Gods breathing the breath of life into mans nostrills is the figure of his breathing the spirituall life of Grace into the soul which divers ancient Fathers of the Church have understood to be signified by the same words and that according to the true ground and rule of expounding the Scripture if they suppose the breath of naturall life signified first by the same words to be inspired as a figure of the spirituall life of grace To which agrees well enough that which followes That man became a living soul in correspondence to the second Adam who is become a quickning Spirit according to S. Paul For Christ is become a quickning Spirit because he shall raise the mortall bodies of those in whom his Spirit dwelt here But Adam though we suppose him to be made a living soul in respect of the life of Grace yet had that life from the Spirit of Grace the fullnesse whereof dwelt in Christ On the other side it is argued that seeing man was made in the image of God and his likenesse Gen. I. 26 27. IX 6. and that the image of God consists in that righteousnesse and true holinesse to which Christians are regenerated by grace Ephes IV.
neglecting opportunities of being informed cannot be said to have had that grace which is immediately â—ufficient to save them For if Christ immediately preached is onely grace immediately sufficient then have not they to whom Christ is not immediately preached that grace which onely is immediately sufficient So that the motives of Christianity the last whereof is the fulfilling of all Prophesies concerning the calling of the gentiles being absolutely provided that grace is provided for all which is sufficient to save all at a distance But the preaching of Christ to all not being immediately provided by God but recommended to his Church under that obligation which he hath laide upon it to that purpose that grace which is immediately sufficient to save all is not immediately given all being given by that wil of God the effect whereof he hath trusted to the ministry of his church by consequence left the guâ—â—t of making void his counsaile in it not upon those that never heard of any such counsaile of his but upon the causers of intestine divisions in the Church of corruption in the faith and in the manners of the Church For it is utterly impossible that without unity in the faith without living conformably to that which we professe that Faith which is destroyed by them that professe it should prevaile over the enemies of it In particular let no man think that I allow that preaching of the gospell which I maintaine to be sufficient grace to consist in never so many declamations or rather exclamations out of the Pulpits to return to the waies of Christianity cautioning in the meane time that all the promises of the gospell are due by the immediate and personall imputation of the obedience of Christ unto the elect alone God in his time immediately determining their will to imbrace Christ as the wills of the reprobate to cast him away For if the true motives of Christianity represented by the Church as they are delivered by the Scriptures be sufficient grace to save all men then is it a peremptory barre to the sufficience thereof to make those motives inconsistent with the common sense of all men in the conviction whereof this sufficience consisteth And they who preach so how much soever they call themselves ministers of the gospell are not the ministers of Gods word but their own CHAP. XXIV Though God determineth not the will immediately yet he determineth the effect thereof by the meanes of his providence presenting the object so as he foresees it will chuse The cases of Pharoah of Solomon of Ahab and of the Jewes that crucified Christ Of Gods foreknowledg of future conditionalls that come not to passe The ground of foreknowledg of future contingencies Difficult objections answered Now that I may resolve you what it is that makes this sufficient grace become effectuall I say that though God determine not by his immediate act the freewill of man to doe or not to doe this or that yet he hath determined from everlasting the events of all future contingencies by determining the objects whether inward or outward which all men in all occasions that shall come to passe shall meete with knowing that the considerat on of them will move them effectualiy to resolve upon doing or not doing â—hat which they shall doe or not doe Outward objects I call the things themselves that present themselves to mans senses Inward the representations of them laid up in the storehouse of mans mind whether for the fansy or understanding the consideration whereof may tender him that which comes under deliberation under the appearance of good whether true or counterfeit And my meaning is that the providence of God in determining the objects which every man shall meet with to move him to resolve this or that proceeds either upon the originall right of God toward his creature in presenting it with that whereupon he knowes a man will resolve to doe either good or bad Or upon the reason of reward or punishment which the foregoing actions of every man and the impressions and inclinations to good or evill which they have left in him shall discerne Saving what his owne free grace shall disburse of meere bounty over and above that which his mercifull justice that is to say those promises which of his free goodnesse he hath made to man doth any way require at his hands For as it is Gods free grace to enter into covenant with man so it is a part of Justice in him according to the scriptures to make good his promises even unto them who by the terms of the covenant which they so often transgresse can challenge nothing at his hands My position is averred by all those scriptures which declare how God brings to passe his counsailes declared a fore In rendring the sense whereof I shall not need to suppose that which having proved already I may of right suppose That God by his immediate act determines not the will of man to doe this or that or not to doe Because by the true course which the Scriptures expresse God to hold in bringing his purposes to effect that course will appeare to be false over and above what hath been said I being with Pharaoh When God intends to deliver the Isralites out of his hands when God suffered the Magicians to doe the three first plagues was it because he that suffered not Balaam to curse Israel when he sacrifised thrice to his Devils to put a curse against Israel in his mouth Num. XXIII 2-17-34 could not have hindred their acts to take effect Or because he had deserved by oppresseing Israel to be given up to their temptations which because God knew they would prevaile over him it is truly said both that God haâ—â—ned Pharaohs heart and that Pharoh hardned his heart or that his heart was hard Ex. VII 3. 13. VIII 10 15 28. IX 7. 12. 34. X. 11. 20. There is an other passage of the story very much to be observed because the sense of it lies in the â—â—ghâ— translation of the originall words which how unusuall soever it seem is very manifest by the consequence of the text Ex. IX 14. 15. 16. For at this time I send all my plagues upon thine heart and thy servants and thy people that thou mayest know that there is none Like me in all the earth For already had I sent my plague and struck thee and thy people with the Pestilence which had destroyed the cattle afore Ex IX 6 that hadst been destroyed from the earth Onely for this have I preserved thee to shew thee my power that my name mâ—ght be spoken of all over the earth It is manifest tâ—at God meanes to say that he had destroyed Pharao aâ—â—re had it not beene to shew a greater work And he that considers that the Hebrew hath nothing but the indicative to signifie all moods and tenses will makâ— no quest on of it The Greek plainely expresseth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the
Chaldee of Oâ—kelus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nunc enim aderat mihi â—t mitterem For it was now neere me to stretch forth my hand That is I was neere doing it Perhaps signifies neither more nor lesse And if S. Paul translates part of iâ— word for word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For this cause have I raised thee up that I might sâ—ew my power upon thee Yet is that nothing to the sense of that which went afore nor to argue any intent in S. â—aul to give occasion for those horrible imaginations that have been framed upon these words as if God made Pharo and all in his case on purpose to shew his power and get glory by damning them to everlasting torments For it followes a litle after in S. Paul What if God wiâ—ling to shâ—w his wrath and make knowne his power have borne with much long â—uffering the vessels of wrath fit for destruction And that to make knowne the riches of his Glory upon vessels of mercy which he had prepared for glory In which words it is manifest that God spared the life of Pharao in the plague of pestilence though then fit for destruction For by this discourse it appeares 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here signifiâ—s Fit of themselves not fitted by God out of his long suffering though willing that is determining to make his power knowne by destroying him proving utterly obdurate But this out of an intent by the consideration of what they had seen come upon him to win his owne people from the Idolatry of Egypt to submit to his law As when S. Paul writ by the judgements of God upon the Jews for rejecting Christianity he called the gentiles to it For this is the inference that S. Paul makes in the next words Which are even we whom he hath called not onely of the Jews but of the Gentiles Introducing in the same words that comparison between the Jews whom he then called to the Law and the Gentiles whom he was now calling to Christianity which the correspondence between the Old and New testament importeth And so the sense of S. Paul is the same with that which S. â—eter said in the words quoted afore that God delaies his wrath in taking vengeance upon the oppressors of his people because he would have none of them perish but all come to repentance The sense which I deliver you have in Grotius his Annotations before the publishing of them in a booke of Miletrius concerning this subject since in the late Annotations and before any of them came forth many yeares I had declared it for my sense of these words By which you may see that Pharao seeing himselfe and his people not cut off when their cattle were destroyed by the pestilence did not believe that it came from God And also when God had declared his purpose in preserving him alive to terrifie him the more and when he had caused the plague of Haile to cease which then he moveth him with is by the love of rule over those whom by right he had nothing â—o doe with perswaded to breake his promise of letting them goe when it should cease Moses having told him that he would breake it Ex. IX 27-35 And because God knew that these temptations would prevaile over Pharao therefore he had foretold the plagues and the deliverance of his people upon them Ex. III. 19. VI. 2. anâ— therefore it is truly said both that God hardned Pharos heart to wit by causing him to meet with these considerations which made him neglect the plague For that which elsewâ—eâ—e is called hardening of his heart is called not setting his heart upon the plague â—x VII 23. and that Pharao hardened his heart or that his heart was hard Ex. VII 3. 13. VIII 10 15. IX 7. 12 34 X. â— v 20. Lastly observe that when Pharao had let the people goe God led them not by the way of the land of the Philistiâ—s which was the neerest because God said lest the people repent them when they see war and returne into Egypt But made them goe about by the way of the wildernesse of the Red Sea Ex XIII 17. 18. And againe Ex. XIV 1-5 God spake to Moses saying speake to the children of Israel and let them return and incamp against Pâ—â—hahiroth between Migdol and the Sea before Baalsephon even against it shall they incampe beside the Sea And Pharao will say of the children of Israel they are intangled in the land the wildernesse hath inclosed them And I will harden Pharaâ—hs heart and he shall pursue them and I will get glory upon Pharao and all his host and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. And they did so And it was told the King of Egypt that the people â—led For it is to be observed that God had not yet required of Pharo that he should let them free for ever though he had made him let them goe withouâ— any promise of returne When therefore he sees on the one side that the meaning of God was not that they should return any more which made him so unwilling to let them goe as alwaies supposing it And on the other side that by their undiscreet march as he thought which God had provided for another cause there was hope to bring them backâ—â—â— is old thoughts revived that all these plagues come not from God but otherwise that he might yet bâ—â—ng them under his rule Whereby it is most evident First that the destruction of Pharaâ— was designed by God through these meanes in consideration First of oppressing his people then his impenitence upon these extraordinary tryals Then that it appeared to him that they wouâ—d take effect when he saith Pharao will say they are intangled in the land and that this is the hardening of Pharaos heart by God And hereupon dependeth that which is said of the Egyptians Wisdome XIX 1 2. But wrath without mercy pursueth the wicked unto the end because he also had foreseen what they should doe in time to câ—me To wit that repenting themselves they would straightway pursue those whom they should have leâ— goe diligently intreating them to depart Seeing the impenitenâ—e and unbeliefe of their obdurate hearts to have been such that there by it appeared to God how upon the first overturne they would returne to their first hope of reducing the Israelites to their bondage See the like in the enemies that God raised Solomon to punish his idol a tries 1 Kings XI 14-23-26 Hadad the Edomiâ—e having escaped into Egypt every man knowâ—s that jealousies between neighbouring Princes makes them ready to entertaine their Neighbours Enemies though under colour oâ— relieving of the oppressed even when the cause is noâ— cleare And though â—adad were never so welâ—ome in Egypt yet every man knowes what diffâ—rence there is between râ—â—â—ng at home and courâ—ing Pharao in Egypt And can there remaine any question how God raised Hadad for an enemy to Slâ—mon Hâ—w but by providing that
I would not have you ignorant brethren that our Fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the Sea and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloude and in the Sea and all eate the same spirituall meate and all drank the same spirituall drink For they all drank of the spirituall rock that followed them Now the rock was Christ They that entred into a Covenant of workes to obtaine the Land of promise as I have showed they did entred not expressely into a Covenant of Faith in Christ for obtaining the world to come No more then being baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the Sea as he sayes here they were that is into his goverment into the observation of the Lawes he should give in hope of the promises he should give they can be said to have been baptized expressely into Christ and that profession which his promises require Wherefore when he saith that the rock was Christ his meaning is not immediately and to those that rested in this temporall Covenant of workes But as the Manna was Christ and Moses was Christ by the meanes of that faith which God then received at their hands to wit the assurance of everlasting happinesse for them who under this calling should tender God the spirituall obedience of the inward man upon those grounds which his temperall goodnesse the tradition of their Fathers and the instruction of their Prophets afforded at that time Now I appeale to the sense of all men how those can be said to have that interest in Christ which I have showed that Christians have and therefore upon the same ground if there were no consideration of Christ in the blessings of Christ which they injoyed Wherefore when S. Paul proceeds hereupon to exhort them not to tempt Christ as some of them tempted we must not understand that he forbids us to tempt Christ as they tempted God But that they also tempted Christ who went along with them in that Angel in whom the name of God and his word was as I said afore So when the Apostle saith that Moses counted the reproch of Christ greater riches then the treasures of Aegypt for he looked at the recempense of reward Ebr. XI 26 when putting them in mind to follow their teachers considering the end which they had attained and Moses aimed at he addeth Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to day and for everlasting Ebr. XIII 8. when S. Peter sayes that the Prophets who foretold the Gospell searched against what time the Spirit of Christ that was in them declared and testified before hand the sufferings of Christ and the glorious things that followed 1 Pet. I. 10. when S. Paul saith that all Gods promises are yea and Amen in Christ 2 Cor. I. 20. me thinkes it is strange that a Christian should imagine that there was no confideration of Christ in these promises under which they ranne the race of Christians Nor could S. Paul say As by Adam all dy so by Christ shall all be made alive 1 Cor. XV. 22 Nor could the comparison hold betweene the first and second Adam which he makes Rom. V. 12-19 if that life which I have showed how Christ restores Christians to were given to the Fathers before Christ without confideration of Christ Nor could the Apostle otherwise say That Christ is the mediator of a New Covenant that dâ—â—th coming for the ransome of those transgressions that were under the Old they that are called may receive the promise of an everlasting inheritance Ebr. IX 15. but because those sinnes which were redeemed onely to a temporall effect by the sacrifices of the Old Law as also those which were not redeemed at all by any as I said were by the sacrifice of Christ redeemed to the purchase of the world to come Which is that which S. Paul tells the Jewes Acts XIII 29. that through Christ every one that beleeveth is justifiyed from all thinges which they could not be justified of by the Law of Moses For as the Law did not expiate capitall offenses so it expiated none but to the effect of a civil promise And though we construe the wordes of S. John Apoc. XIII 8. whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lambe slaine from the foundation of the world out of the same sense repeated Apoc. XIII 8. Not that the Lambe was slaine from the foundation of the world but that their names were written in his book from the foundation of the world yet in as much as it is called the book of the Lambe that was foreknown from the foundation of the world 1 Pet. I. 19. when Moses demands not to be written in Gods book or when mention is made of it in the New Testament it must be the book of Christ in the mysticall sense And when S. Paul sayes that Christ gave himselfe a ransome for all A testimony for due time What can he meane but that though he gave himselfe for all yet this was not to be testified till the proper time of preaching the Gospell And what is this but that though this is testified onely by the preaching of the Gospell yet he was a ransome for all Which reason suffers not the same terme all Ebr. II. 9. Rom. III. 23. to be restrained from that generality which it naturally signifies Lastly when the Apostle argues that if Christ should offer himselfe more then once that he might more then once enter into the Holy of Holies he must have suffered oft from the foundation of the world that is before the end of the world in which he came indeed Ebr. IX 25. 26. he must needs suppose that he suffered for all that were saved before the Gospell For what pretense can there be that he should suffer for sinnes under the Gospell before the Gospell more then that the High Priest before the Law should expiate those sinnes which were committed against the Law by entring into the Holy of Holies And here you may see that I intend not to affirme that all that were saved under the Law though in consideration of Christ did know in what consideration Christ should be their salvation as Christians under the Gospell doe But to referre my selfe to the determination of S. Augustine and other Fathers and Docters of the Church that they understood it in their Elders and Superiors the Prophets of God and their disciples the Judges of Israell who were also Prophets and the Fathers of severall ages of whom you read Ebrews XI who being acquainted with the secret of Gods purpose were to acquaint the people with it so sparingly and by such degrees as the secret wisdome of God had appointed These things thus premised I do acknowledge and challenge the act of God in dispensing in the execution of his originall Law and bringing the Gospel into effect in stead of it not to be the act of a private person remitting this particular interest in the punishment of those sinnes whereby
give not thine heritage for a reproach Joel II. 12-17 Sure this is something more then not allowing a mans self to sinne or not liking that which he does when he sinnes which no man that ever heard of Christianity can do till he have contracted such a custome of sinning that he is not sensible of any remorse for it And it is a thing most strange that those who pretend to be the cream of Christianity should think the sinnes of the regenerate not to forfeit the state of Grace nor contract Gods displeasure because they are done with dislike Judas might have robbed the poor so oft that at length he might be without remorse but certainly he betrayed not his master without reluctation The regenerate if truly so and not hypocrites must needs find the burthen of sinne which they commit aggravated by the grace which they had received afore And therefore must needs find themselves obliged to a deeper measure of humiliation to expiate their ingratitude and to recover the favour of God which they had forfeited by abusing it afore This seems in my opinion to perswade a good Christian that workes of humiliation and Penance are requisite to recover the state of Grace and to render God againe propitious to those that have fallen from the grace of their Baptisme As that which I said afore seemes to show that it is not prejudiciall to the satisfaction of our Lord should be satisfied by such meanes Now the originall and generall practice of Gods Church punctually agreeth with that which hath been said Our Lord preacheth repentance but admitteth all that professe it to be his disciples not taking cognizance what they had been professing to become such as he requireth for the future So his Church knowing that there is no sinne so deep that his bloud cannot wash away admitteth all to Baptisme declaring that without repentance it availeth onely to their damnation but demanding no visible satisfaction of it in them that were not hitherto of the Church But those who falsify the profession upon which they were admitted to Baptisme and that so visibly that the forfeiture of Gods grace is visible by the same meanes those were so excluded the communion of the Church which ought to suppose a presumption of the state of Grace at least the possibility of it that at the first the greatest question was whether they should be admitted to any hope of reconcilement by the Church or not As it appeareth by the breaches of the Montanists and Novatians and partly of the Donatists and Meletians If this admission were granted it was onely to this effect at the beginning that they might tender the Church satisfaction of the sincerity of that sorrow wherewith they pretended to satisfy God that is to appease his wrath and to recover his grace Those who think Penance was injoyned to no other effect in the ancient Church then to make satisfaction for the scandall which the notoriousnesse of sinne had contracted are as farre wide of the truth as those who think it onely made satisfaction for a debt of temporall punishment the staine of sinne and guilt of eternall punishment being abolished by submitting it to the Keyes of the Church out of that sorrow which they call Attrition which they will have to be changed into Contrition by the humility of that confession which submitteth a mans sinne to the keyes of the Church In what sense attrition may be said to be changed into contrition by the ministery of Penance I shall have occasion to debate againe in the third Book For the present I must not forget the ground which I have presupposed that the Gosspel is presupposed to the being and constitution of the Church And therefore that remission of sinnes by the Church and the ministery of Penance in the Church supposeth the accomplishment of that condition and the production of that disposition which by the Gospel qualifieth for remission of sinne Neither can the ministery of the Church be otherwise necessary then as it may be effectuall to produce the same How in the Penitent that sorrow for fear of punishment which the first sight of sinne necessarily causeth which is attrition in their termes is changed into that sorrow for having offended God which the love of God causeth is to be understood I conceive by that which I said afore That the ministery of the Church cannot supersede or dispense with the meanes whereby that change is brought to passe as the argument proposed evidences by the Scriptures So from the Tradition of the Church I conceive I have peremptory evidence For those that deferred their Penance till danger of death then confessing their sinnes submitted to the keyes of the Church though they were not refused reconcilement in that estate though they were admitted to the communion of the Eucharist yet their salvation remained questionable in case they survived not to perform their Penance This you shall find at large in Saint Augustine Homilia XLI ex L. though some attribute it to Saint Ambrose But you have it in Saint Augustine againe de Tempore sermone LVII And when it is found in a letter of Faustus in answer to Paulinus of Nola it cannot be excepted that Faustus is a suspected author because of his opposition to Saint Augustine in a point wherein it is evident that he concurreth with Saint Augustine But in the fourth Councill of Carthage also Can. VII and VIII those that submit to Penance and receive the Eucharist in danger of death are not to think themselves acquitted of their sinne if they survive sine manus impositione That is without performing their Penance during which they were at the service of the Church prayed for with imposition of hands And therefore he who having thus submitted to Penance and received the Eucharist recovered might be promoted to the Clergy according to the IV Councill of Toledo Can. LIII and Concil Gerund can IX Whereas whosoever had done Penance in the Church could never be admitted to the Clergy afterwards Because such a one had not been properly under Penance the sinne that is supposed in the case of the former Canon not being specified but onely generally confessed for sinne Whereby it appeareth sufficiently that in regard it is possible the sorrow wherewith a man submitteth to Penance in that case should be so sincere as to obtaine pardon at Gods hands therefore the communion was not refused But in regard of the doubt that remained in the businesse the Church warranted not the pardon till satisfied of his conversion by the performance of his Penance And therefore it is manifest that the ancient Church did not believe attrition to be changed into contrition by submitting to the Keyes of the Church making question of the salvation of those upon whom the Keyes of the Church had passed because the operation of Penance injoyned was prevented by death And so the practice of the ancient Church concurreth with the doctrine of the Apostles to
the bread and the wine to remain in the Sacrament of the Eucharist as sense informs and the word of God inforces if the same word of God assirm there to be also the body and bloud of Christ what remaineth but that bread and wine by nature and bodily substance be also the bodily flesh and bloud of Christ by mystical representation in that sense which I determined even now and by spiritual grace For what reason can be imagined why the material presence of bread and wine in bodily substance should hinder the mystical and spiritual presence of the body and bloud of Christ as in a Sacrament whereby they are tendered of grace to them that receive Shall they be ever a whit the more present in this sense if the substance of bread and wine be abolished than if it be not Certainly unlesse wee believe the spiritual grace of Christs body and bloud in the Sacrament of the Eucharist to possesse those dimensions which the Elements hold and if so then are they not there Sacramentally and mystically but bodily and materially wee can give no reason why the bodily presence of the Elements should hinder it So farr is this from being strange to the nature and custome of humane speech that supposing the invisible presence of one thing in another and with another which is visibly present it cannot otherwise be expressed than by saying this is that though every man know what distance there is between their natures The Dove in the which the Holy Ghost was seen to come down and rest upon our Lord the fiery Tongues in which the Holy Ghost rested upon the Apostles the fire and the whirlewinde in the which Gods Angels attend upon him and upon his commands in regard whereof it is said Psalm CIV 4. Hee maketh his Angels Spirits and his Ministers a flaming fire are they not as truly said to be the Holy Ghost or those Angels as the Holy Ghost or those Angels is said to come down to rest or to move because those things rest and come down or move whereas the Holy Ghost otherwise can neither rest nor come down nor those Angels move as the fire or the winde moves in which they are I know it may be said that neither the Dove nor those Tongues are called the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures Nor do I intend to build upon any supposition that they are This I say whosoever understands the capacity of words serving for instruments to signifie mens mindes may firmly conclude rhat they may as well be said to be the Holy Ghost as it may be said that the Holy Ghost came down because the Dove came down For can there be any occasion for a man of sense to conceive cloven Tongues of fire to be the Godhead of the Holy Ghost because they are called the Holy Ghost in regard they are used to demonstrate the presence of it when no man complains that any man of sense hath occasion to mistake the God-head to move because the Holy Ghost is said to come down in the bodily shape of a Dove I know it may be said and is said that in the Text of the Psalm that I quoted it is not to be translated winds but spirits or spiritual substances because the Apostle having alleged it to show the difference between them and our Lord Christ Ebr. I. 7 14. inferreth that they are ministring Spirits signifying thereby not winds but that which Christians signifie by the name of spiritual substances And I yield that they are so called not onely in the common language of Christians but in the Apostle also here and by our Lord speaking in the common phrase of Gods people when hee saith A spirit hath not flesh and bones as yee see mee have Luke XXIV 39. upon occasion of that appearance of Gods majesty which is either presented to or described by the Prophets in the Old Testament with his Throne attended by Angels the visible signs of whose presence are whirlewind and fire So in the place quoted Psalm CIV 2. That puts on light for a robe stretches the heavens as a curtain laies the beams of his chambers in the waters makes the clouds his chariot and walks upon the wings of the winde Whereupon followes That makes his Angels Spirits or Winds and his Ministers a flame of fire which answers winds not spiritual substances Compare the description of Gods appearance Psal L. 3. Our God shall come and shall not keep silence a consuming fire shall go before him and be very tempestuous round about either with the visions of the Prophet Ezekiel I. and Daniel VII or with the description of the same laid down Psalm XVIII 10-14 and you will have reason to say as I do Especially when you reade Hee rode upon a Cherub and did fly hee came flying upon the wings of the wind where a Cherub in the first clause is the wind in the second The same sense being repeted according to the perpetual custome of the Psalms So when Angels appeared in the shape of men was it not true to say this is an Angel but wee must suppose the nature of man abolished If the Holy Ghost and Angels be of spiritual nature the flesh and the bloud of Christ bodily then are they at as great distance from the Dove from the Tongues from the Fire from the Wind from the men in which they appeared as the flesh and bloud of Christ from the elements of the Eucharist Nor is the mystical and Sacramental presence of the flesh and bloud of Christ in the Eucharist ever a whit more destructive to the bodily presence of the elements then the invisible presence of the Holy Ghost or Angels to the visible presence of those things in which they were Nay if I may without offense allege that which is most pertinent to this purpose not being usually alleged in it That maner of speech which all orthodoxe Christians use in calling the person of our Lord Christ either God or Man according to the nature which they intend chiefly to signifie or in ascribing the properties of each nature to the said person respectively to the subject of their speech hath no other ground than this which I speak of For all affirmatives Philosophers know signifie the subject that a man speaks of to be the very same thing with that which is attributed to it As when this wall is said to be white this wall is the same subject with this white Therefore when a thing is said to be that which in nature wee see it is not as when a mans picture is said to be hee the saying though extremely proper if you regard what use the elegance of speech requires is unproper to the right understanding of the nature of the things wee speak of though a man would not be so well understood commonly if hee should go about to explain his meaning by more or other words As I conceive I am not so well understood in writing thus
his Crosse faithfully resolve to undertake it do by the Spirit eat his flesh and drink his bloud Therefore when in correspondence hereunto hee pretends to institute the Sacrament of the Eucharist that they who eat his flesh and drink his bloud in that Sacrament may eat and drink the same spiritually as unlesse they crucifie him again they cannot chuse but do it behoves indeed that hee procure the flesh and bloud of Christ to be there by the operation of that Spirit which framed them for an habitation to it self in the womb of the Virgin that so the receiving of his flesh and bloud may be the means of conveying his Spirit But how is it requisite that they be there in bodily substance as if the mystical presence of them were not a sufficient means to convey his Spirit which we see is conveyed by the meer spiritual consideration and resolution of a lively and effectual faith S. Paul writes thus to the Corinthians I would not that you should be ignorant Brethren how that all our Fathers did eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink the same spiritual drink For they drank of the spiritual rock that went with them Now that rock was Christ 1 Cor. X. 1 3 4. The meat and drink of the Fathers in the wilderness can no otherwise be understood to be spiritual then as I have proved the Law of Moses to be spiritual That is as intimating spiritual promises it intimates a contract for spiritual obedience So S. Pauls argument holds If they who were sustained by God in their travel to the Land of Promise not keeping their Covenant with God fell in the wildernesse Then shall it not serve our turn that being baptized wee are fed by the Eucharist to everlasting life if wee perform not that which by our Baptism wee undertake The Rock then and the Mâ—nnâ— were spiritual meat and drink because they signified the flesh and the bloud of Christ crucified for us Which who so believes as thereupon to undertake Christianity our Lord when hee had not yet instituted the Eucharist promiseth that hee shall be nourished by his flesh and bloud to life everlasting The effect of which promise all Christians find that by the assistance of his Spirit overcome the world in approving themselves Christians When our Lord annexed the promise of his Spirit to his Baptisme and Eucharist by instituting those Sacraments hee tied the spiritual eating and drinking of his body and bloud to the Sacramental in respect of all them whom the affirmative Precepts of using those Sacraments should oblige Christ then was the food and the drink of them who attained Salvation under Moses Law because by the faith of Christ to be crucified they were saved as wee by the faith of Christ crucified But to follow God in hope of Salvation by Christ to come is not the same as to undertake that Christianity which by his coming hee hath taught us The signs of good things to coâ—â—â—ed onely those that were led by the promise of them The rest found by them onely the nourishment of their bodies in their travel to the Land of promise But when our Lord having promised his flesh and bloud for food to those Souls that should conform themselves to his Crosse instituteth the Eucharist and confineth the spiritual eating and drinking of his flesh and bloud to it so far as the precept thereof obligeth Shall hee not be understood to promise his body and bloud by that Sacrament without which hee will not grant it to those that are tied to the Sacrament and neglect it The presence of his body and bloud in the Sacrament is that which makes good the promise of his body and bloud made before the instituting of the Sacrament to them who are obliged to use the Sacrament by the institution of it CHAP. III. That the presence of Christs body in the Eucharist depends not upon the living Faith of him that receives but upon the true profession of Christianity in the Church that celebrates The Scriptures that are alleged for the dependence of it upon the communication of the properties They conclude not the sense of them by whom they are alleged How the Scripture confineth the flesh of Christ to the Heavens IF these things be true it will be requisite that wee acknowledge a change to be wrought in the Elements by the consecration of them into the Sacrament For how should they come to be that which they were not before to wit the body and bloud of Christ without any change And in regard of this change the Elements are no more called by the name of their nature and kind after the consecration but by the name of that which they are become Not as if the substance thereof were abolished but because it remains no more considerable to Christians who do not nor are to look upon this Sacrament with any account of what it may be to the nourishment of their bodies by the nature of the Elements but what it may be to the nourishment of their Souls by the Spirit of God assisting in and with his flesh mystically present in it But this change consisting in the assistance of the Holy Ghost which makes the Elements in which it dwells the body and bloud of Christ it is not necessary that wee acknowledge the bodily substance of them to be any way abolished Nay as I am perswaded that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist cannot be better expressed than by that term which the Council of Trent useth calling it a Sacrament and saying that the flesh and bloud of Christ is Sacramentally there So there is nothing more demonstrative to mee that no such thing as the abolishing of the Elements is revealed by the Scriptures than that the sense of them is so fully satisfied by this term So that the anathema which it decreeth against them that do not believe them to be abolished can by no means be grounded upon the Scriptures Nor do I think the term any lesse fit or serviceable because it serves them to signifie the Local presence of Christs body and bloud under the dimensions of the Elements the substance of them being gone For I shall not be obliged to grant that the Sacrament of Christs body and blood can properly be understood supposing the sign and the thing signified to be both the same subject the dimensions of the Elements being become the dimensions of Christs body and bloud and by the means of them all the bodily accidents of the Elements subsisting in the same And therefore the Sacramental presence of Christs body and bloud cannot properly be maintained unlesse acknowledging the true being and presence of the thing signified wee acknowledge also the sign to remain But if a man demand further how I understand the body and bloud of Christ to be present in or with or under the Elements when I say they are in and with and under them as in and with and under a
comparison S. Cyril of Jerusalem uses in this case is sanctified by virtue of the Name of Christ remaining the same for sensible substance for I confidently maintain that the negative 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 destroyes the sense as the comparison justifies for who sayes that the oile of the Chrisme or the water of Baptisme is changed for substance but for force changed into a spiritual virtue So also the water both that is exâ—rcized and that which Baptisme is done with not onely retains the worse but also receiveth sanctification Theodoret Dial. I. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Our Lord would have those that receive the divine mysteries not regard the nature of the things they see but upon the change of their names believe the change which grace effecteth For hee who called his natural body corn and bread and again named himself the Vine honours the visible Symboles with the name of his body and bloud not changing the nature but adding his grace to it And Dial. II. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For neither do the mystical signes after consecration depart from their own nature but remain in the same substance and figure and form and may be seen and touched as afore The Pâ—eface to the Romane Edition of these Dialogues â—aith that Theodoret uses this language because the Church had as yet decreed nothing in this point An excuse much like the censure of the Epistles of Isidore of Pâ—lusium printed at Anwerpe which are licenced as containing nothing contrary to faith oâ— good manners For if the Church is able to make new Articles of Faith then may whosoever licenses books passe this censure because by the act of the Church making that Faith which was not so afore the dead might incurr the contrary censure But supposing that the Church is not able to do such an act that which was not contrary to the Faith when Theodoret writ it can never be contrary to it I will end with Facundus because the formal terms of my opinion are contained in his words Sicut Sacramentum corporis sanguinis ejus quod est in pane poculo consecrato corpus ejus sanguinem dicimus non quòd propriè corpus ejus sit panis poculum sanguis sed quod in se mysterium corporis ejus sanguinisque contineant Hinc ipse Dominus benedictum panem calicem quem discipulis tradidit corpus sanguinem suum vocavit As wee call the Sacrament of his body and bloud which is in the consecrated bread and cup his body and bloud Not because the bread is properly his body and the cup his bloud but because they contain in them the mystery of his body and bloud Whereupon our Lord himself also called the bread and cup which having blessed hee delivered to his disciples his body and bloud This is in few words the sense of the whole Church concerning this businesse Ignatius in his Epistle to the Church of Smyrna saith that the Gnosticks forbore the Eucharist because they believed not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins which the Lord raised again by his goodnesse But why believed they not this because they would not believe Transubstantiation or because they would not believe that our Lord Christ had flesh Let Tertullianâ— speak contra Marc. IV. Acceptum panem distributum discipulis corpus suum illum fecit Hoc est corpus meum dicendo id est figura corporis mei Figura autem non fuisset nisi veritatis esset corpus Caeterùm vacua res quod est phantasma figuram capere non posset That bread which hee took and distributed to his disciples hee made his body saying This is my body That is the figure of my body But the figure it had not been if the truth of his body were not Otherwise an empty thing such as an apparition is â—ad not been capable of a figure For as Maximus saith in the third of those Dialogues against the Marcionists that go under Origens name what body and bloud was that whereof hee ministred the bread and the cup for signs and images commanding the Disciples to renew the remembrance of them by the â—ame As for that which is alleged out of Irenaeus I. 9. of Marcus the Magician and Heretick Pro calice enim vino mixto â—ingens se gratias agere in multum extendens sermâ—nem invocationis purpureum rubicundum apparere facit uâ— putetur ea Gratia ab eis quae sunt super omnia suum sanguinem stillare in illius caliâ—em l. illum per invocationem ejus Making as though hee would give thanks for the cup mixed with wine and inlarging the word of invocation by which I said the Eucharist is consecrated to much length hee makes it to appear purple and red That men may think that Grace drops the bloud thereof from the Powers over all into that cup by the means of his invocation For had Irenaeus said that this Magician turned the wine into the substance of bloud in truth or in appearance it might have been alleged that the Christians whose Sacrament this Magician counterfeited though other Gnosticks as Ignatius saith quite balked the Eucharist and used it not believed that to be bodily bloud which is in the chalice and that therefore hee did it But when hee saith onely that hee made it appear purple and red perhaps hee used white wine which by juggling hee made seem red However there is no appearance that because hee made that look red which was in the cup therefore those Christians whom hee labored thereby to seduce did believe the bodily substance of Christs bloud to be in the Eucharist in stead of the substance of wine and under the dimensions of it It remains that I take notice in as few words as is possible of those contentions that have passed about this presence and the dissiculties which Transubstanhath found in getting the footing which it hath in the Western Church The book which Paschasius Radbertus Abbot of Corby near Arniens writ under the Sons of Charles the Great to prove that the Body of Christ in the Eucharist is that same which was born of the Virgin is yet extant Though the more curious finde no such thing as Transubstantiation in it but rather a conceit of the impanation of Christs body if such a hideous term may passe that is that the God-head of our Lord Christ being by the operation of the Holy Ghost united to the elements the body and bloud of Christ is by the same means united to the fame A conceit not farr wide of that which Rupertus Abbot of Duitsh near Cullen about the year MCX teacheth that the bread is assumed by the Word of God to be his body as that is his body which was formed of the flesh of the Virgin Nor is there in effect much difference between this conceit and that of Consubstantiation at least according to those that ground
counted the Sacrifice of Christ crucified mystically and as in a Sacrament represented to feasted upon by his people The Apostle saith that Christ is gone into no holy place made with hands figurative of the true but into heaven it self to be presented before God for us Nor to offer himself many times as the High Priest goes once a year into the Holy places with that bloud which is not his own For then must hee many times have suffered since the foundation of the world But now once in the end of times is hee manifested by the sacrifice of himself to the voiding of sin And as it is appointed for men once to dye and after that judgment So Christ once offered to take away the sins of many shall appear the second time without sin to those that look for him to salvation Ebr. IX 24-28 But have I said any thing to cause any man to imagine that I suppose Christ to be crucified again as often as the Eucharist is celebrated Do I say those that celebrate it are those Jewes that crucified him once Or do I or can I imagine them to be Jewes at all that would have the sacrifice of our Lord Christ upon the Crosse repeated again and again as legal sacrifices are Certainly I will speak freely neither can they that hold Transubstantion be truly said to stand obliged to any such consequence so long as they acknowledg with all Christians that the Covenant of Grace is for once settled by the one Sacrifice of our Lord upon the Crosse Why because though they believe the natural flesh and bloud of Christ as crucified to be there yet not naturally but sacramentally that is in their sense under the accidents of bread and wine which is indeed and in the sense of the Church under the species or kinds which difference is so great an abatement of that common and usual sense in which all Christians understand that Christ was sacrificed upon the Crosse that all that know it to be their profession which all must know that will not speak of they know not what must acknowledg that the repeating of the Sacrifice of Christ crucified by the Eucharist is not the repeating of that Sacrifice by which mankinde was redeemed otherwise than as a Sacrament is said to be that whereof it is a Sacrament What ground and advantage this gives mee and any man of my opinion to argue from those things which themselves acknowledg that there is no cause why they should insist upon the abolishing of the substance of the Elements in the Eucharist I leave to them that shall think fit to consider the premises to judg But for mee who demand no more than this That in as much as the body and bloud of Christ is in the Eucharist in so much it is the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Crosse I cannot foresee what occasion slander can have to pick any such consequence out of my sayings Certainly the Sacrifices of the Old Law ceased not to be Sacrifices because they were figures and Prophesies of that one Sacrifice upon the Crosse which mankinde was redeemed with And why should the commemoration and representation in that sense of this word repraesentation which I determined afore of that one Sacrifice of Christ upon the Crosse which mankinde was redeemed with be lesse properly a Sacrifice in dependance upon denomination from that one which the name of Sacrifice upon the Crosse was first used to signifie For all conceit of legal Sacrifice is quite shut out by supposing that Sacrifice past which the Sacrifice of the Eucharist represents and commemorates Whereas all Sacrifices of the Old Law are essentially at least to Christians figurative of the Sacrifice of Christ to come Indeed by that which I have said concerning the nature of a Sacrifice in the Eucharist as it is intended for Christians to feast upon it is evident that this commeâ—orative and representative Sacrifice is of the nature and kinde of Peace-Offerings which by the Law those that offered were to feast upon I will take the Cup of salvation and call upon the Name of the Lord. I will pay my vowes now in the presence of all his people Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints saith the Psalm CXVI 12 13. And that in answer to the question made What reward shall I give unto the Lord for all the benefits that hee hath done unto mee At feasting upon the parts or remains of Peace-Offerings the Master of the Sacrifice began the Cup of Thanksgiving for deliverance received in consideration whereof hee payes his vowes And the Sacrifices which hee payes are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Sacrifice of Thanks-giving for deliverance received Is not this the â—ame that Christians do in celebrating the Euâ—harist setting aside the difference between Jews and Christians Wherefore I have showed that it is celebrated and is to be celebrated with commemoration of and thanksgiving for the benefits of God especially that of Christ crucified Which thankâ—giving as it tends to the consecrating thereof so in as much as the consecration tends to the receiving of it another thanksgiving at the receiving of it becomes also due as at feasting upon Peace-Offerings And hereupon I have showed that it is called by the Apostle the sacrifice of Praise the fruit of our lips giving thanks to God And that hâ—ving showed that Jewes have no right to it as a Propitiatory Sacrifice that is not to it because not to the Propitiatory Sacrifice which it representeth But therefore that Christiâ—ns have right to feast upon it as the Jews upon their Peace-Offerings But if it be true as I have showed that the celebrâ—tion of the Eucharist is the renewing of the Covenant of Grace which supposeth propitâ—ation made for the sins of mankinde by that one sacrifice which it commemorâ—teth and representeth the celebration thereof being commanded as a condition to be performed on our part to qualifie us for the promise which it tendreth to those that are qualified as it requireth Shall it be a breaâ—h upon Christianity to say also that it is such a Sacrifice whereby wee make God propitious to us and obtain at his hands the blessings of Grace which the Covenant of Grace tendreth This indeed requireth yet further consideration for what reasons the Sacrament of the Eucharist may be accounted and called a Sacrifice that wee may be able to judge in what sense and for what reason it may be accounted Propitiatory and Impetratory without prejudice to Christianity First then let it be remembred that by the institution and ordinance of God those that dedicate themselves to the service of God in the faith of Christ by Baptism are to dedicate their goods to the maintenance of the Communion of the Church in the said service the chief Office whereof is the celebration of the Eucharist proper to Christianity as I showed a little afore Then be it observed that there were two
next successors till the order of Deacons was brought in by the Church Which to me seems strange that the titles of the Apostles and their companions should constitute or signifie an inferiour order of Presbyters And therefore think it more pertinent to the meaning of those texts to observe the terms which are added in them to limit that Ministery for which they are called Ministers either by the persons or subject mater to which it relates For the Apostles commission being immediate from our Lord as the commission of their companions when they became their Apostles from themselves and the mater in which the Apostles ministred to God or Christ their companions also to them being the Word or the Gospel that is the work of publishing it distinguishes them from the Deacons that are under Bishops in S. Paul as those that ministred to their respective Bishops and by their appointment to the people as the VII at Jerusalem by the appointment of the Apostles For if S. Paul be called Minister of the Church Col. I. 15. he is so called as Minister of the whole Church or Minister of God in the work of it not of this or that Church which Deacons are called Deacons because they minister to but at the Order of their Bishops and Presbyters As for the companions of the Apostles when they are sent upon their commissions to preach the Gospel they are fitly called Ministers of the word the Gospel the New Testament or Evangelists when they give personall attendance upon them the Apostles they may fitly be understood to be called their Ministers in the same sense as Deacons are called Deacons for attending upon their Bishops allowing alwaies as much difference between them and ordinary Deacons as between S. Paul for example and the Bishop or Priest on whom the Deacon attends And for these two several notions you have just ground in the texts of the Apostles Acts I. 17. 25. VI. 1. 4. XIX 22. 2 Tim. IV. 5. 6 7 11. Besides when Phaebe is alled a Deaconnesse of the Church at Câ—nchrâ—ae Rom. XVI 1. when S. Paul sayes that they who Minister well procure themselves a good step and much freedom in the faith which is in Christ Jesus 1 Tim. III. 13. I understand not what this opinion would make of Deaconnesses or what is that faire step which Deacons attain by ministring well which in my opinion is clearly the rank of Presbyters as Clemens Alexand. and others of the Fathers have expounded it Neither do I think it possible to give a more reasonable reason why the vulgar translating 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ministros so often elsewhere should translate it Diacones Phil. I. 1. 1 Tim. III. 8. then to put a difference between that sense in which it stands for the Deacons of Churches which the Greek word Diaconus had been used to signifie all over the Latin Church and that signification in which the Apostles and their companions are called the Ministers of Christ or of the Gospel In which because the Greek Diaconi was not famous in the Latine therefore he imployeth tke Latine Ministri that answers it Plainly seeing the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 beareth a notion of waiting upon anothers pleasure in executing his orders and the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of ruling and governing and seeing I have showed that the Presbyters according to the ancient custome of the Church derived originally from the Synagogue did sit with their Bishop though in a rank under him while the Deacons hood as waiting upon them as you may see in the Apostolicall form of divine service Chap. III. IV. and in the Right of the Church Chap. III. I cannot see how both these names can be accepted to signifie the same persons Or how the degree which S Paul saith is attained by well performing the Deacons office can be any thing but the rank of Presbyters There remains the words of the Apostles 1 Thes V. 12. 13. Now we request you brethren to know those that labour amongst you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you And to esteeme them more then abundantly in love for their works sake And again Heb. XIII 7. 17. Remember your Leaders which have spoken to you the word the issue of whose conversation seeing imitate ye their faith And Be ruled by your Leaders and yield to them for they watch for your souls as those that must give account That they may do it joyfully and not groaning For that is not for your turn Where it is manifest he distinguisheth those that first planted the Churches to whom he writes from those that governed them at present But whether it be more reasonable to understand by these words one governour to one Church or a Bench of Presbyters to each whether assigned to one particular Church or belonging to any Church as much as to these I shall willingly referre it to the Reader to Judge The words of S. Jame I conceive admit no denyal Jam. V. 14. Is any man among you sick let him call for the Presbyters of the Church and let them pray over him anointing him with oyl in the name of the Lord here are Elders more then one and those proper and relative to one and the same Church and the office which they do not competible to any Lay Elders according to any pretense supposing especially that which I said afore to clear the intent of it In fine the seven stars which are the Angels of the seven Churches and the seven Candlesticks which are the seven Churches Revel I. 20. seem to yield us a pregnant evidence of so many Governours proper to so many Churches To wit so many Bishops as is argued elsewhere As for the words of S. Paul 1 Cor. XII 28. And some hath God set in the Church first Apostles secondly Prophets thirdly Doctors then miracles then Graces of healing helps Governments kinds of Languages And Ephe. IV. 11. And he gave some Apostles some Prophets some Evangelists some Pastors and Doctors It is true the offices of Apostles and Evangelists cannot be confined to one particular Church but the offices of Pastors and Doctors may and ought of Helps and Governments must At least if we understand them as I have showed that they are to be understood to wit Governours of the sick impotent and needy and their assistants in that work For I may freely say there hath nothing been said to the purpose of those Offices but this And therefore seeing the Apostle in both places speaks of the whole Church which consisteth of all Churches the form whereof is still the same how much soever they differ in bignesse it seemeth to me very reasonable to understand by S. Paul that God hath placed in the Church as well those offices which relate to all or to many Churches as those which relate unto one that by the means of all of them the University of Christians may be edified in and to the unity of one Body
time the place the maner and form the ceremonies and solemnities whereby the celebration of Church offices is either already determined by Gods Law or remains determinable by the Law of the Church And this I cannot do better then beginning with the times of divine service and considering what Laws of God what Laws of the Church all Christians ought to be tied to in that point whence it may appear what may be the subject of Reformation in it Where I find it requisite in the first place to debate by what right the first day of the week called Sunday is set apart for the service of God under Christianity There is an opinion too well known amongst us that the first day of the week is kept by Christians in virtue of the fourth Commandment which obliged the Jews to keep the seventh day of the week Which opinion if it be true they have some ground for confining the service of God to it But it cannot be maintained without two assumptions The first That the seventh day in the fourth Commandment signifies not the seventh day of the week on which God rested from creating any more but one of the seven dayes The second That the resurrection of Christ upon the first day of the week is a reason that necessarily determines all Christians to do that which they are bound to do on one day of the seven upon the first and none else Neither of which is true though the later have farre the more appearance of truth in it For it is manifest that the will of God may be having obliged the Jewes to keep one day in seven to oblige Christians to keep one day in six or lesse unesse it be otherwise determined by some commandment of Gods Now it appeareth that the first day of the week was kept in the times of the Apostles our Saviour having peared unto them after his Resurrection upon that day Joh. XIX 26. Act. XX. â— 1 Cor. XVI 2. Apoc. I. 10. But of any precept to make this a Law to all Christians nothing appears in the Scriptures of the New Testament Again it may be said That the Gospel requireth more plentiful fruits of obedience then the Law And therefore if the Law required one day of seven for the service of God that the Gospel requires more Nor will it concern me here to prove that this opinion is true It is more then enough that I can say that before this novelty came into England it cannot appear that ever any Christian thought otherwise For I argue no more in this place but that the rising of our Lord upon the first day of the week doth not necessarily determine the Church to keep one day of the seven as the command of God doth For had God commanded one day of seven to be kept under the Gospel as under the Law there had been no room for further consideration But so long as there is onely a reason on the one side That the Resurrection to Christians is as the Creation to Jews And a reason on the other side That it becomes Christians in this as in all to do more then Jews I cannot deny that there is a sufficient reason for him that hath power of determining that which God hath not determined to appoint the first day of the week but I utterly deny that there is any Law of God before the act of this power to determine it And the reason is plain For in maters of this nature there may be sufficient reason for several determinations because it is not the substance but the circumstance of that which is by nature necessarily good and Gods service Again supposing that Christians are bound to keep one day of seven for Gods service may I not ask why the passion of Christ should not determine them to keep the sixth as well as the Resurrection the first day of the week Especially in the sense of them who think they have reason to feast on good Friday and to celebrate their Fasts on the Lords day For if the resurrection of Christ be no reason to make the day thereof Festivall nor his Passion why we should rather fast on the day of it certainly where both cannot be kept the one concerns us as much as the other do and therefore there is as much reason to keep this as that This to the later of the two assumptions But in the former there is no colour of truth Nor do I see how any thing can be more strange then this That so many men professing learning and zeal to the Scriptures alone should read in the Commandment that God resâ—ed the seventh day from making the world and therefore commanded the seventh day to be kept holy And understand by all this onely that God would have one day of seven not that day of the seven on which himself rested Unlesse it be still more strange that men of common sense should believe that the Jews were not tyed by Gods Law to keep the day on which God rested but onely one of seven so that the keeping of the seventh was not by Gods Law but by mans For if it be once granted that God commanded them to keep not onely one day of seven but in particular the seventh how can any common sense understand that Christians by the same command should be tied to keep the first day of the week If prejudice and faction went not under the colour of zeal to the Scriptures it would appear to be zeal towards our selves and ours that offers such violence to our own sense in seeking to impose this sense upon the Scriptures In plain terms there can be nothing more manifest to Christians in the Law of Moses then it is manifest that the precept of the Sabbath is a ceremonial Precept figuring the rest of Christians from the bondage of sin by doing for the future God works here in the Church militant and from the bondage of pain when that rest is become perfect in the triumphant Church of the World to come And all this by the work of this precept that is by resting from bodily labour in the Land of promise in remembrance of the bondage of Aegypt which the Israelites had escaped For in Deutronomy V. 15. this is the reason alleged why they where to rest Ezek. XX. 12. Ex. XXXI 31. I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them that they might know that it is I the Lord their God that sanctifieth them And therefore the Apostle Heb. IV. 4. 5 9 10. showeth the seventh day to signifie the rest of the Land of pâ—oâ—iâ—e For saith he in one place it is said God rested on the seventh day from all his work And here Psalm XCV 11. if they shall enter into my rest For he that is entred into his rest hath ceased from his own works as God from his Therefore there remaineth another rest to the people of God as the Apostle argueth by the same reason as
Magicians and of the Gnosticks What Idolatry the cases of Aron and of Jerâ—boam involve Of the Idolatries practised under the Kings and Judges in answer to objections THere remaines some difference aswell concerning the ceremonies and Solemnities as the order circumstances of Gods publicke service which I foresee cannot be voided without presuming upon some conclusions for grounds which hitherto are not resolved For the chiefe of those difference concerneth the charge of Idolatry upon the Church of Rome in those prayers to the Saints departed in that worship of Images and Reliques of Saints in that adoration of the Eucharist which they maintaine and practice Also those Prayers which are made for the deliverance of soules from Purgatory paines is no small part of the controversies which concerne the publike service of the Church Whereas among our selves it seemes yet to be in dispute whether any ceremonies at all are to be used in the publike service of God The pretenses of this time having extended the imagination of Idolatry so far as to make the ceremonies and utensils of Gods sevice Idoles the ceremonies which they are used with Idolatries For the voiding of which difficulties I cannot find so neare a course as in the first place to dispute wherein the nature of Idolatry consisteth and what the very being of an Idole includeth requireth presupposeth In the next place I shall dispute of the state of soules departed hence before the generall judgement rather then of the place or places in which they are bestowed as being too obscure and more for this purpose which speaketh to common understandings though the new state of things in dispute constrain it to use those termes the novelty whereof will make it obscure to most of them whom it concerneth After that of ceremonies generally in the publike service of God what is the end of them and what use may and ought to make them receiveable or rather recommend them to Gods people for that purpose If God make me able to dispatch these propositions with any satisfaction to my own judgement I shall not doubt to conclude without any great difficulty that which may remaine in dispute concerning the differences proposed To begin then first to inquire wherein the nature of Idolatry consisteth and what the crime thereof requireth or supposeth I doe not find what exception can be made to that signification of the word which defineth it to be the giving of divine or religious honour or worship to a creature Taking Divine and Religious both for one and the same that is understanding that Religious honour or worship which is also divine in case it may appeare that there is or may be some Religious honour or worship which is not divine But this being onely the signification of the word That is to say the description of that whâ—ch the word Idolatry expresseth to him that begins to consider it I cannot tell whether those that use the terms of divine and religious honour doe consider the importance of those termes which themselves use For Divine honour or worship is that honor or that worship which is due to God alone in regard of his incomparable excellence above all his creatuâ—es to which therefore it remaines utterly incommunicable And I have cautioned that Religious signifies the same Religion being that part of justice which gives God his due which no man can doe that honuors him and worships him not wâ—th that honour and worship which is utterly incommunicable to any of his creatures Now all honour and all worship is either the opinion and conceit that a man hath of the excellence and worth of that which he honoureth and worshippeth or the effect of it Whether inward in that reverence wherewith he submitteth himselfe his soule his heart and mind to it or outward in those bodily motions and gestures or other actions wherewith man is wont to expresse and signifie the apprehension which he hath of the excellence of that which he honoureth and worshipeth So that supposing in a man an uncorrupted opinion of the incomparable distance that indeed is found between God and the most excellent of his creatures it is no more possible for him to attribuâ—e the honour due to God alone to that which he conceiveth to be a mere creature then it is possible for a man in any other case to act against that judgement which presently dictates what he ought to doe For the present apprehension of the excellence of God above all creatures necessarily includeth and inferreth a decree resolving his Judgement to honour him as such Honour being the opinion of excellence as I said and the reverence which it produceth being inseperable from that opinion by any meanes but the understanding of him that considers it It is therefore utterly impossible that a man should atribute that honor which is due to God alone unto any creature standing the opinion that no creature is comparable with his excellence For that were at once to have an apprehension opinion or conceite that Gods excellence is incomparably above that of any creature and yet the same with it in as much as we suppose all honor and worship to consist in this opinion of excellence Indeed if we speake of the outward acts of honor and worship true it is and easy to be seen that a man may and must honor God with those expressionâ— which may and perhaps ought to serve him to signifie the honor which he worshippeth some creature with But those acts are not properly honor or worship but the signs of it and are called honour worship by the same denomination ab extrinseco or if you please the same figure of speech by which signes are called those things which they signifie Wherefore it is not onely no inconvenience but absolutely necessary to come to passe that these signes should be many times equivocall That is themselves the same when the honour respect signified by them to be attributed to God holds that distance from that which by them is atributed to the creature which is supposed between God and the creature For all Philosophers and Divineâ— know how much difference there is between the conceptions which men apprehend by the same termes of Wisdome justice and goodnesse when they are atributed to God and when they are atributed to his creatures Though I dispute not hereupon whether equivocall or not Because nothing to the purpose whether so or noâ— so long as it is no inconvenience that in regard of the distance between the conceits so signifyed they be called equivocall in that sense which the subject matter will beare Now that equivocation which words are subject to when atributed to God and to his creatures because of the distance of the conceite which they signifie the same are all motions and gestures all actions or other markes of honor and worship necessarily subject to when they are exhibited to God to the creature both Suppose for the purpose a man
divinity of Plato was a tradition derived by Pythagoras from the familiarity which he had with uncleane spirits seeking to refine the grosse Idolatry of the Gentiles into a more subtill way of worshiping the Devile Which being imitated by Simon Magus and his followers of whom Menander professed Magick as Basilides and Marcus also did and the monuments of the Basilidians Magicke are extant to this day in the hands of Antiquaries as you may see in Baronius his Annales and the life of Peireski written by Gassendus and still more plentifully in a latter Booke on purpose to expound the monuments of the Basillidians God called Abraxas in those severall Fulnesses of the Godhead which the severall sects of them tuaght worshipped brought forth that worship of Angels which S. Paul condemned Col. II. 8-9 Whether as belonging to the fulnesse of the Godhead or as revealers of it Especially if it be considered that the deriving of the Originall and beginning of evill from a principle belonging to that Fulnesse of the Godhead which each sect of the Gnosticks acknowledged a position common to them all is also a part of Plato and Pythagoras his Philosophy which the Stoicks also from whom the Heretick Hermogenes in Tertullian deriveth it were tainted with as well as with the opinion of Fate utterly inconsistant with the worship of the true God as Aristotle and Epicurus his Philosophy free enough from familiarity with uncleane spirits is with denying of providence at least in human affaires which the eternity of the world necessarily produceth Neither is the Heresy of Cerdon and Marcion which succeeded the Gnosticks any thing else but Pythagoras his position of a principle of Good and an other of Evil applyed to the supposition of Christianity though such as they thought good to admit As for that of the Manichees we may an well allow Epiphanius deriving it from one Scythianus a rich merchant from Arabia to Egypt who having also learned their Magick writ foure books to maintaine Pythagoras his two principles And going unto Jerusalem to confer with the Christians there who maintained one true God and getting the worse betook himselfe to his Magick and exercising the same on the top of an house was cast downe from thence and dyed His disciple also and slave Terbinthus whom he left his heire going into Persia to confer with the priests of Mithras about the same purpose and being worsted betook himselfe to his masters Magick and got his death as his master had done Thus saith Epiphanius and that Manes marying his widow by his books and by his wealth became author of this sect onely that having got the books of the Old New Testament he used what colours they would afford him to intitle his device to Christianity for the seducing of Christians But whoso considers what master Pocâ—â—k hath produced out of the relations of the Saracens concerning the religion of the Persians p. 146. 150. whatsoever contest his predecessors might have with the Persians must acknowledg the Heresy of the Manichees to come from the Idolatry of the Persians the divines where of acknowedg a Principle of darknesse opposite to a Principle of light as we read also in Agathias expressely lib. II. that the religion of the Persians is that of Manichees And these considerations here put together upon this occasion may well seeme as I conceive to satisfie us that it is no marvaile the Pagane Greeks Romans should be so brutish as to worship stocks and stones having among them those wits that have left such excellent things of God and of mans duety to God upon record Seeing it appeares that the most divine of them were no otherwise taught then as it might best serve the Deviles turne to detaine them in the more subtill Idolatry of Magicians The rest being tainted with such positions as stand not with the worship of one true God So that it is no marvaile if they complyed with the vulgar Idolatries of their nations to him that considers that which I have written in the review of my booke of the right of the Church in a Christian state p. CLXVII to show that the followers of Plato and Pythagoras in the first times of Christianity as they were themselves Magicians so were great instruments to promote the persecuting of Christianity Which is also the true reason why the Gnosticks having devised every sect a way of Idolatry proper to themseves did indifferently counterfeit themselves Jewes Christians or Pagans for avoiding of persecution or for gaining of Proselytes eating things sacrificed to Idoles in despite of S Paul and taking part in the Idolatrous spectacles and sight of the Gentiles as Irenaeus with the rest of the Fathers witnesseth These particulars I have thus far inlarged to make a full induction of all the waies of Idolatry mentioned in the scriptures wherewith all the writings of the Jewes Pagans and Christians exactly agree by which induction it may appeare that all the waies of Idolatry which the Scripture mentioneth doe presuppose the beliefe of some imaginary and false Godhead properly called an idole as imaginary and without subsistence though that name is no lesse properly attributed to the image of it then the Image of any thing is called by the name of that which it representeth because of the intercourse which by the meanes of such Images those that worshipped them had with the author of such Imaginations even the Devile thinking they had it with theire imaginary Deities And the worshipping of those Dieties whether before under such an image or without it is that which is called Idolatry in the Scriptures For though the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may generally signifie all images and can have no bad sense in the usage of Hethen writers because they could never thinke amisse of the Images which they thought represented their Deities Yet when Christianity had brought in a beliefe that it was the Devile whom the Gentiles worshipped under those Images the word Idole being appropriated to them must needs be are a sense of that which the Christians detested Iust as I said even now of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it must needs beare another sense to the eares of Christans then it could among the heathen poets or Philosophers This language S. Jerome useth when in his translation of Eusebius his Chronicle num MDCCCLIV he saith of Judas Maccabaeus Templum ab Idolrum imaginibus expurgavit that he purged the temple from images of Idoles supposing the difference which I make between imaginary deityes and their Images And S. Austine in lib. Jud. Quaest XLI speaking of the case of Gedeon Cum Idolum non fuerit id est cujusdam Dei falsi simulacrum seeing it was no idole that is to say the image of any false God Which if it be true it will no way be possible to exempt the case of Aaron or Jereboam from that reason of Idolatry which this induction inforceth Or to imagine that
VII 47-50 He showeth plainly that the vulgar conceit of the Jewes came farre short of the doctrine of the Prophets in this point and that this was then a great hinderance to the Jewes Christianity which vulgarly publisheth that which onely the worshippers of God in Spirit and truth understood under the Law As Barnabas also in that Epistle which the ancientest of the Fathers have acknowledged and is lately set forth declareth Now for the text of the Judges concerning that which the Jewes call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Idol of Micah Is it to be considered that there may be and are two opinions concerning the true sense and intent of the second commandment where it saith Thou shalt not make to thy self any 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or carved image the likenesse of any thing For the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the originall of it signifying all carved work it may be thought that God intends by these words to prohibite all use of carved work among his people Not as if the making of a carved image were idolatry but to avoid the occasions of idolatry which as I have said that art though it introduced not yet it increased And therefore it followeth For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God For jealousie forbids as well the meanes of adultery as adultery But if we suppose the signification of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 extended by use beyond the original of it it may import onely such statues as are made to represent a godhead imagined afore And then the letter of the precept forbids no more then to make any carved work for the image of God According to the first sense the making of the Cherubims over the Ark falls within the precept And is to be taken for a dispensation of the Lawgiver in the matter of a positive precept which his own act onely rendered unlawfull But according to the later being not included in the matter of the precept there needs no exception to render it lawfull The same is to be said of the brazen serpent Whether of these opinions is true I need not here dispute Onely as I began to say afore I say further that during the time that high places were licensed it can be no inconvenience to grant that there was the like furniture provided for the service of God there to that which was prescribed in the Tabernacle For upon what ground that People thought it commanded by God there in which there could be no just occasion of idolatry upon the like ground and to the like purpose it might be taken up in the high places Though that reason which had moved God to prohibit high places after the place of his worship should be setled Levit. XVII 5. 7. might alwayes indanger them to go astray as the story of Gideon showes For though so long as they understood the ground upon which and the intent to which they were used they remained secure yet forgetting it by the deceitfullnesse of error they were subject to be seduced The fact of Micah then hath two of these handles which Epictetus his manuall mentions It may be taken as if he meant onely to make an high place for the service of the onely true God according to the Law the carved work which he furnished it with being onely in stead of the furniture of the Tabernacle Which is the case of Gideon as I stated it afore For when the Prophet Osee threatens the ten tribes that they shall dwell a long time without Ephod or Teraphim He does not mean it for a punishment that they should be restrained of the idolatry which they practised to the Calves But he signifieth that the Cherubim of the Temple where they ought to have served God and where it would be the blessing of that promise which the Law tendereth to serve God have the name of Teraphim common to them with the Calves Though those the objects of idolatry these the instruments of Gods service For on the other side the fact of Micah may be so taken as if he intended to set up a carved image of an imaginary Godhead to be worshipped for the onely true God And this intent seems to me the more probable of the two For there stands upon it the mark of a thing done against Gods Law Judg. XVII 6. In that day there was no king in Israel every man did what seemed right in his own eyes Which of the case of Gideon originally could not have been said And besides That Micah could not have any of the Tribe of Levi to minister in this high place but was faine to take his sonne in the mean time till he lighted upon a wandering Levite whose necessity might debauch him to any imployment This also seems an argument that his house of gods which he furnished with Ephod and Teraphim Judg. XVII 5. was erected to false gods For that his mother had consecrated her money to the incommunicable name of God v. 2. is easily answered by the same that hath been said to the cases of Aaron and Jeroboam But my opinion remaines never a whit prejudiced though these arguments seem insufficient and though it be said that the worship of the true God was that which Micah hereby intended For still the same alternative will have recourse which takes place in Jeroboams case Either his intent was the service of the true God and then though we suppose that he sinned against the precept of the Law Levit. XVII 5. yet he sinned not the sinne of idolatry Or his intent was the service of some imaginary Godhead and then he committed idolatry according to my opinion notwitststanding that he used the name of the onely true God in the businesse As for that which is objected that according to this opinion there would be no sufficient reason for that difference which the Scripture maketh between the sinne of Jeroboam which made Israel to sinne and the idolatries of Ahab and of the house of Omri and those wherein Manasses followed the Amorites How much he is deceived that thus reasons may easily appear to him that compares those murders those uncleannesses those horrible vilanies which the devil had seduced the Gentiles to under the pretense of Gods worship and for the discharge of that obligation which the sense of Religion binds all men with That compares these I say with the service of a false God but otherwise according to the same rites and ceremonies which the Law commands the true God to be served with Nor shall I need to say any thing to that which remaines either what interest Jeroboam could have to cary the people to the worship of any other then the true God who was to count his turn served if they went not up to Jerusalem Or how either he or they who conformed to his command could by onely so doing blot out of their mindes that opinion of the true God which they had suckt in with their milke and
bodies the holy Ghost that dwelt in them here raiseth This is that precious pearle and that hid treasure this is that grain of mustard seed that leaven which being purchased at the price of all we have and sowed in the heart and layd up in the past of our thoughts makes all our actions fruitfull to the riches of everlasting happinesse This is that little spot of truth for the maintaining whereof so many bloudy fields of Controversies in Religion are and have been fought by soules that perish by maintaining division in the Church to the prejudice if not the losse of that truth for which they fight As the country alwaies suffers by the warre that is made for it All this while it is to be remembred that Baptisme tieth not onely to professe this faith unto death but to live according to Christianity Whether it be by virtue of Moses Law cleared by our Lord of the false glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees or by the New Law of Christ clearing the spiritual intent of the Old it is not necessary to salvation for a Christian to know For Irenaeus briefly distinguishing mater of Faith from mater of Knowledge in the Scriptures 1. 2 4. makes all that which concerns the reason of the difference in Gods proceeding under the Law and the Gospel to be mater of abundant knowledge not of necessary faith But it is necessary for the salvation of a Christian to know that by being a Christian he undertakes to suppresse mortify and prevent as far as in him lies even the first motions of concupiscence whether in the lusts of the flesh or the lust of the eyes or the pride of life as our Lord in the Gospel hath clearly laid forth howsoever the Law have expressed or intimated the same And this is that warre with the devil the world and the flesh for the keeping of Gods commandments which our Baptisme undertaketh For there is no difference in things to be done concerning a private Christian as a private Christian that seems to be any considerable ground of division in the Church The substance of our common Christianity in that part seems to remain without dispute In things that are to be believed it were well if it could be said so truly that there is no part of the rule of Faith in dispute In the meane time the substance of Christianity containing whatsoever it is necessary for the salvation of all Christians to know whether in matter of Faith or of maners whereof to speak properly the rule of Faith signifieth onely the first part consisteth onely in that which concerns a particular Christian as such whether to be believed or to be done But what then shall the beliefe of one holy Catholicke and Apostolicke Church in our Creed signify Onely that there are Christians in the world Shall a Christian be saved by believing that which all Christians see that there is a company of men that call themselves Christians Or shall it therefore be necessary to the salvation of all Christians to know that God hath founded the whole body of the Church consisting of all Churches for a Society and Corporation subsisting by his Law shall it concern the salvation of simple Christians to understand the nature of Corporations and to know how visible communion in Christian Offices makes the Church such a one believing that this comes by Gods appointment I do not imagine any such thing Indeed whosoever allowes no ground of difference between true Christians on the one side and hereticks and schismaticks on the other side cannot admit the belief of one Catholicke Church for an article of his Creed For had there never been heresie or schisme the communion of all Christians with all Christians going forwards without interruption the Church had been no lesse Catholicke then now that it is called Catholicke to distinguish it from heresies and schismes which prevailed sometimes in some places but never spread nor lasted with the Church But had there been no profession qualifying for communion with the Church Had there been no power in the Church to limit the Order and circumstance of Communion in the Offices of Christianity it could never have been visible whom a Christian was to communicate with professing himself bound by believing one Catholicke Church to communicate with it Because by this meanes it was visible and because being visible an obligation was acknowledged of communicating with it the profession of this obligation was to be part of the common Christianity which the Creed was to signify But when it is no more visible whom a Christian is to communicate with by reason of division in the Church what is it then that resolves whom a Christian is to communicate with That is indeed the question which this whole businesse intends to resolve For the Reformation having occasioned division in the Church the parties are both visible but which is the true Church remaines invisible so long as it remaines in despute For though it be not invisible to that reason which proceeds aright upon due principles yet that is not required of all Christians that would be saved And therefore if it be not visible to the common reason of all men it is invisible This I alledge to no further purpose then to show how much all parties stand obliged to procure the reunion of the Church as answerable for the soules that may miscarry by chusing amisse in that which Gods ordinance makes visible but mens disorder invisible to common sense For the more difficult the way of salvation proves by this meanes the more shall all estates stand obliged to clear it Let us then see wherein the difficulty of the choice consisteth let us see what satisfaction the parties tender common sense that salvation is to be had by leaving of them The Word and the Sacraments are the markes of the true Church So say the Doctors of the Reformation so say perhaps their confessions of Faith It were too long to dispute that But how are these markes distinctive For I suppose they pretend not to make known the Reformed Churches to constitute the true Church in opposition to the Church of Rome by markes common to both And will any common sense allow that the Church of Rome will grant that they have not the word of God or the Sacraments which they allow the Reformed to have If you adde the pure preaching of the Word and the pure ministring of the Sacraments you advance not a foot For is common sense able to judge that the Reformed way is pure that of the Church of Rome impure It judgeth that they who call it so think so Whether it be so or not it must come under dispute And appealing to the Scriptures it appeareth that common sense is not judge in the meaning and consequence of them upon which the resolution depends It is therefore manifest that the preaching of the word and the ministring of the Sacraments is no mark of the Church unlesse
you say something more to limit the ground upon which they may be no lesse What limitation I would adde is plain by the premises The preaching of that Word and that ministring of the Sacraments which the Tradition of the whole Church confineth the sense of the Scriptures to intend is the onely mark of the Church that can be visible For I suppose preaching twice a Sunday is not if a man be left free to preach what he will onely professing to beleeve the Bible which what Heresy disowneth and to make what he thinks good of it And yet how is the generality of people provided for otherwise unlesse it be because they have preachers that are counted godly men by those whom what warrants to be godly men themselves In the mean time is it not evident that Preachers and people are overspread with a damnable heresy of Antinomians and Enthusiasts formerly when Puritanes were not divided from the Church of England called Etonists and Grindeltons according to severall Countries These believe so to be saved by the free Grace of God by which our Lord died for the Elect that by the revelation thereof which is justifying Faith all their sinnes past present and to come are remitted So that to repent of sinne or to contend against it is the renouncing of Gods free Grace and saving Faith How much might be alledged to show how all is now overspread with it The Book called Animadversions upon a Petition out of Wales shall serve to speak the sense of them who call themselves the godly party as speaking to them in Body Thus it speaks pag. 36. Look through your vail of duties profession and ordinances and try your heart with what spirit of love obedience and truth you are in your work And whether will you stand to this judgement Or rather that God should judge you according to grace to the name and nature of Christ written upon you and in you Sure the great Judge will thus judge us at last by his great judgement or last judgement Not by the outward conversation nor inward intention but finally by his eternall Election according to the Book of Life This just afore he calleth the seed of Christ and his righteousnesse in a Christian And pag. 38. When we are inraged we let fly at mens principles being not satisfied to rebuke mens actions opinions and workes but would be avenged of their Principles too As if we would kill them at the very hart pull them up by the Rootes and leave them in an uncurable condition rotten in their Principles But Principles ly deeper then the heart and are indeed Christ who is the Principle and beginning of all things who though heart fail and flesh faile yet he abides the root of all Shall he pretend to be a Christian that professes this Shall any pretend to be a Church that spue it not out Let heaven and earth judge whether poor soules are otherwise to be secured of the Word then by two sermons a Sunday when the sense of the Godly is claimed to consist in a position so peremptorily destructive to salvation as this It will be said perhaps that now the Ministers of the Congregations have subscribed the confession of the Assembly But alas the covering is too short When a Bishop in the Catholick Church subscribed a Councile there was just presumption that no man under his authority could be seduced from the Faith subscribed Because no man communicated with the Catholick Church but by communicating with him that had subscribed it Who shall warrant that the godly who have this sense not liable to any authority in the Church shall stand to the subscriptions of those Ministers or to the authority of the Assembly pretended by the Presbyteries If they would declare themselves tied so to do who shall warrant that there is not a salvo for it in the Confession which they subscribe If there were not why should any difficulty be made to spue out that position which is the seed of it That justifying Faith consisteth in believing that a man is of the number of the Elect for whom Christ died excluding others Why that which is the fruit of it That they who transgresse the Covenant of Baptisme come not under the state of sin and damnation come not from under the state of Grace Why but because a back-door must be left for them that draw the true conclusion from their own premises reserving themselves the liberty to deny the conclusion admitting the premises It is not then a confession of faith that will make the Word that is preached a mark of the Church without some mark visible to common sense warranting that confession of Faith As for the Sacraments no Church no Sacraments If they suppose that ground upon which that intent to which the whole Church hath used them there is no further cause of division in the Church for that secures the rule of Faith If not they are no Sacraments but by equivocation of words they are sacriledges in profaning Gods Ordinances The Sacrament of Baptisme because the necessary meanes of salvation is admitted for good when ministred by those who are not of the Church but alwaies void of the effect of grace To which it reviveth so soone as the true Faith is professed in the unity of the Church If a Sacrament be a visible signe of invisible grace that baptisme is no baptisme which signifieth the grace it should effect but indeed effecteth not Such is that Baptisme which is used to seale a Covenant of Grace without the condition of Christianity a Covenant that is not the Covenant of two parties but the promise of one Whence comes the humor of rebaptizing but to be discharged of that Christianity which the baptisme of the Church of England exacteth Why do they refuse Baptisme in New England to all that refuse to enter into the Covenant of Congregations How comes it more necessary to salvation to be of a Congregation then to be Baptized and made a Christian Is it not because it is thought that salvation is to be had without that profession of Christianity which the Sacrament of Baptisme sealeth That it is not to be had without renouncing it Upon these termes those that are denied Baptisme by the Congregations because they are not of the Congregations are denied salvation as much as in them lies but not indeed and in truth For the necessity of baptisme supposing a profession of the Catholicke Church they perish not by refusing it who will not have it by renouncing the Catholicke Church that is by covenanting themselves into Congregations They that are so affected must know that they have authority of themselves to baptize to effect which no Congregation in New England is able to do If the Sacrament of the Eucharist seale that Covenant of Grace which conditioneth not for Christianity it is no sacrament but by equivocation of words Where that conditionall is doubtfull or voide there is no security