Justification Just as much as the fair gay train of a Peacock to the bird that draws it after it make a fine show and that is all that we know of But the difficulty is yet very strong behind And that is seeing it is granted that some Faith in Christ is Justifying and some is not Justifying whence comes this about Is it not because one is a lively and operative Faith and the other is drie and unactive and unfruitful So that Faith which is said to Justifie is it self first Justified by its works For though as hath been said Faith doth absolutely produce good Works and not good Works Faith yet good Works are they in which its goodness consists next unto its object Christ and consequently render it Justifying actually And whereas they would evade his and elude St. James's autority by distinguishing the Cause and Sign of our Justification saying That we are Justified only by Faith effectivè effectually but by works as St. James saith ostensivè declaratorily as signs that we are Justified it is a sense meerly obtruded upon the Apostle there being no more grounds or occasion given by St. James why they should understand him that works justifie only declaratorily than are given by St. Paul that I should interpret that Justification which he ascribes to Faith to be only Declaratorily For though Faith received in the mind is not apparent yet when it is professed then it may be said no less to declare our Justification then good works as the Scripture it self testifies saying With the heart man believeth unto righteousness Rom. 10. 10. i. e. to the doing of works of righteousness which proceed from a true Faith and with the mouth confession is made unto Salvation CHAP. XX. Of the Special Notion of Faith and the Influence it hath on our Justification Of Faith Solitary and Onely Of a Particular and General Faith Particular Faith no more an Instrument of our Justification by Christ than other co-ordinate Graces How some Ancient Fathers affirm that Faith without Works Justifie ALL this while we have treated of the complex notion of Faith or at least as it is that first general Grace whereby we are inserted into Christ and justified by it together with its blessed retinue of subordinate Evangelical Graces which are reduced to these three Faith Hope and Charity where Faith standeth by its self and is a peculiar Grace of it self and hath in this acceptation a more then common prerogative attributed unto it in order to our Justification or the bringing us to Christ and partaking of Christ For that is it whereby we are only properly justified and all Graces serve for no other end here than to adopt us for the benefit of Justification through Christ and for Christ's sake alone So that no man can as yet complain That though I derogate somewhat from the vertue and value of Faith in reference to our Justification as it is explained by moderner Divines some I mean I do not in the least detract from the sufficiencies freeness and absolute necessity of Christ's Merits and Grace towards us Yea I establish it nay I augment and commend more the Free Grace of God then do they who have chose another way to express it For all this while I do not compare Works with Christ nor Hope nor Charity nor Obedience with Christ as is plain but I compare now one Grace with another and Faith simply considered with the obedience of Faith For Faith taken as in general for the embracing of the Fundamentum ergo esi justitiae Fides Ambr. Offic. Lib. 1. cap. 29. Lib. 2. cap. 2. Habet vitam aeternam fides quia est fundamentum bonum Habet facta quia vir justus dictis factis probatur c. Id. de Basilicis non Tradendis Fides quae est justitiae fundamentum quam nulla bona opera praecedunt sed ex qua omnia procedunt ipsa nos à peccatis nost◠is purgat c. Prosper Lib. 3. de Vita Contemplativa cap. 21. Fides est omnium bonorum fundamentum humanae salutis initium c. August in Vigilia Pentecostis whole Body of the Gospel hath this undoubted prerogative to be the Grace of all Graces the Mother of all the Fountain from which all flow and as the Fathers generally do justifie because it is the foundation of all access to Christ Which assertion of theirs however later Wits have slighted and contemned as not giving Faith its due in order to our Justification doth in my opinion with much greater perspicuity and simplicity and soundness express its proper office then those newly invented and several distinctions and sub-distinctions confunding rather than setling the judgment of a good Christian And first They ascribe this virtue of Justifying to a special Faith Then they say this Faith doth not justifie as a Work or Act but Grace Then they proceed to affirm That not as a principal cause but only as an instrument created by God in the heart to that end And yet farther Not as an Instrument active and operative but as an Instrument rather receptive and passive as appears by the example given of an Hand which is no true cause of an Alms given but yet it properly receives it But first What a disorder must these multiplyed niceties needs breed in the minds of the simpler sort who are not able to comprehend them and so are brought into great troubles of conscience whether their Faith be directed to Christ under the true relation it ought to bear How much more clear and easie is that Doctrine that teaches First That neither our Faith nor Works proceeding from thence can avail any thing without Christ and that all their sufficiencie is of Christ And next That this Faith and good Works do but qualifie us according to the Free Covenant of Grace for Christ Secondly If it be denyed as in truth it is That Faith is any more an Instrument whether active or passive or a Hand as it is called to lay hold especially in another kind of Christ than Hope or Charity I do not find how they can prove it For I may and do yield a greater degree of vertue in Faith special well founded on God than in other Graces distinct from it but I do not yield that this is the Faith properly by them contended for For It is a mixt compound Grace consisting of Hope and Love which they call Fiducia Confidence and resting upon God This indeed is a special Grace as considered in subordination to the general Grace whereby we assent and submit to the Gospel of Christ but it is not special as distinct from other co-ordinate Graces with it Calvin Inst Petrus Mart. Lo. Com. class 3. cap. 4. num 6. But what manner of Faith say they do we suppose that which goes so ill attended alone First I suppose there is such a Grace distinct from others and that which was set up against
be convicted of moral evil and so unconcernedly to omit the weightier matters of the Law as Judgment Mercy or Charity in Vnity and Faith what can Charity call this but meer Pharisaism and where must such Pharisaism end at length but in Sadducism even denying of the Blessings and Curses of a Future Life For as Drusius hath Si Patres nostri selvissent mâ—râ—â—â—s resurrecturâ— praemia manere â—ustos â—â—st hanc vitam nâ—n tantoperè râ—bellassent Drusius in Mat. c 3. v. 7. Item in c. 22 23. observed it was one Reason alledged by the Sadduces against the Resurrection If our Fathers had known the dead should rise again and rewards were prepared for the Righteous they would not have rebelled so often not conforming themselves to Gods Rule as is pretended by all but conforming the Rule of Sin and of Faith it self to the good Opinion they had of their own Persons and Actions which Pestilential Contagion now so Epidemical God of his great Mercy remove from us and cause health and soundness of Judgment Affection and Actions to return to us and continue with us to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. THE CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTERS Chap. I. OF the Nature and Grounds of Religion in General Which are not so much Power as the Goodness of God and Justice in the Creature And that Nature it self teaches to be Religious Chap. II. Of the constant and faithful assurance requisite to be had of a Deity The reasons of the necessity of a Divine Supream Power Socinus refuted holding the knowledge of a God not natural Chap. III. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature and the Infiniteness of God Chap. IV. Of the diversity of Religions in the World A brief censure of the Gentile and Mahumetan Religion Chap. V. Of the Jewish Religion The pretence of the Antiquity of it nulled The several erroneous grounds of the Jewish Religion discovered Chap. VI. The vanity of the Jewish Religion shewed from the proofs of the true Messias long since come which are many Chap. VII The Christian Religion described The general Ground thereof the revealed Will of God The necessity of Gods revealing himself Chap. VIII More special Proofs of the truth of Christian Religion and more particularly from the Scriptures being the Word of God which is proved by several reasons Chap. IX Of the several Senses and Meanings according to which the Scriptures may be understood Chap. X. Of the true Interpretation of Holy Scriptures The true meaning not the letter properly Scripture Of the difficulty of attaining the proper sense and the Reasons thereof Chap. XI Of the Means of interpreting the Scripture That they who understand Scripture are not for that authorized to interpret it decisively The Spirit not a proper Judge of the Scriptures sense Reason no Judge of Scripture There is no Infallible Judge of Scripture nor no necessity of it absolute The grounds of an Infallible Judge examined Chap. XII Of Tradition as a Means of understanding the Scriptures Of the certainty of unwritten Traditions that it is inferiour to Scripture or written Tradition No Tradition equal to Sense or Scripture in Evidence Of the proper use of Tradition Chap. XIII Of the nature of Faith What is Faith Of the two general grounds of Faith Faith divine in a twofold sense Revelation the formal reason of Faith Divine Of the several senses and acceptations of Faith That Historical Temporarie and Miraculous Faith are not in nature distinct from Divine and Justifying Faith Of Faith explicite and implicite Chap. XIV Of the effects of true Faith in General Good Works Good Works to be distinguish'd from Perfect Works Actions good four wayes Chap. XV. Of the effect of Good Works which is the effect of Faith How Works may be denominated Good How they dispose to Grace Of the Works of the Regenerate Of the proper conditions required to Good Works or Evangelical Chap. XVI Of Merit as an effect of Good Works The several acceptatations of the word Merit What is Merit properly In what sense Christians may be said to merit How far Good Works are efficacious unto the Reward promised by God Chap. XVII Of the two special effects of Faith and Good Works wrought in Faith Sanctification and Justification what they are Their agreements and differences In what manner Sanctification goes before Justification and how it follows Chap. XVIII Of Justification as an effect of Faith and Good Works Justification and Justice to be distinguished and how The several Causes of our Justification Being in Christ the principal cause What it is to be in Christ The means and manner of being in Christ Chap. XIX Of the efficient cause of Justification Chap. XX. Of the special Notion of Faith and the influence it hath on our Justification Of Faith solitary and only Of a particular and general Faith Particular Faith no more an Instrument of our justification by Christ than other co-ordinate Graces How some ancient Fathers affirm that Faith without Works justifie Chap. XXI A third effect of justifying Faith Assurance of our Salvation How far a man is bound to be sure of his Salvation and how far this assurance may be obtained The Reasons commonly drawn from Scripture proving the necessity of this assurance not sufficient c. Chap. XXII Of the contrary to true Faith Apostasie Heresie and Atheism Their Differences The difficulty of judging aright of Heresie Two things constituting Heresie the evil disposition of the mind and the falsness of the matter How far and when Heresie destroys Faith How far it destroys the Nature of a Church Chap. XXIII Of the proper subject of Faith the Church The distinction and description of the Church In what sense the Church is a Collection of Saints Communion visible as well as invisible necessary to the constituting a Church Chap. XXIV A preparation to the knowledge of Ecclesiastical Society or of the Church from the consideration of humane Societies What is Society What Order What Government Of the Original of Government Reasons against the peoples being the Original of Power and their Right to frame Governments Power not revocable by the people Chap. XXV Of the Form of Civil Government The several sorts of Government That Government in general is not so of Divine Right as that all Governments should be indifferently of Divine Institution but that One especially was instituted of God and that Monarchical The Reasons proving this Chap. XXVI Of the mutual Relations and Obligations of Soveraigns and Subjects No Right in Subjects to resist their Soveraigns tyrannizing over them What Tyranny is Of Tyrants with a Title and Tyrants without Title Of Magistrates Inferiour and Supream the vanity and mischief of that distinction The confusion of co-ordinate Governments in one State Possession or Invasion giveth no Right to Rulers The Reasons why Chap. XXVII An application of the former Discourse of Civil Government to Ecclesiastical How Christs Church is alwayes visible and how invisible Of the communion
distinct from Divine and Justifying Faith Of Faith Explicit and Implicit HAving thus spoken of the Rule of Christian Faith and its Auxiliary Tradition we are now to proceed to the Nature and Acts the Effects Subject and Object of it For as all Christian Religion is summed up in one Notion of Christian Faith so all Faith may be reduced unto the foresaid Heads Faith taken in its greatest extent containeth as well Humane as Divine And may be defined A firm assent of the mind to a thing reported And there are two things which principally incline the mind to believe The Evidence of the thing offered to the understanding or the Fidelity and Veracity of him that so delivers any thing unto us For if the thing be Fides est donum divinitùs infusum menti hominis quae citra ullam haesitantiam credit esse verissima quaecunque nobis Deus per utrumque Testtradidit ac promisit Erasm in Symbolum apparent in it self to our reasons or senses we presently believe it And if the thing be obscure and difficult to be discerned by us yet if we stand assured of the faithfulness of him that so reports it to us and his wisdom we yield assent thereunto But Faith properly Divine hath a twofold fountain so constituting and denominating it The Matter believed which is not common nor natural but spiritual and heavenly But more especially that Faith is Divine which is not produced in the soul of Man upon any natural reasons necessarily inferring the same but upon a superior motive inducing unto it that is Autoritie divine and because it hath declared and revealed so much unto us as St. Peter believing Christ to be the Son of God it is said Flesh and Boood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in heaven This Mat. 16. 17. was a divine Faith upon a double respect 1. by reason of the object Christ a divine person 2. by reason of the Cause God by whose power he believed the same it not being in the power of flesh and blood any natural reason to convince the judgement so far as absolutely to believe That Christ was so the Son of God so that to be revealed is that which makes the Faith properly divine and not the divine object or thing believed For as it hath been observed by others any thing natural and which by natural reason may be demonstrated and so must be believed by a natural Faith being also commended unto us upon divine autority or revelation may be also believed by a divine Faith That there is an invisible Deity is clearly demonstrable from the visible things of this World and accordingly may and ought to be believed upon the warrant of natural reason it self as St. Paul teacheth us saying The Invisible things of him from the Creation of the Rom. 1. 20. world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse That is If God had not revealed all this yet men ought to believe this out of sense and reason but this hinders not but this very thing should become an article of our Creed also and so because it is revealed Form in us a divine Faith But we must be aware of an ambiguity in Revelation which may mislead us For sometimes Revelation is used for the thing revealed And sometimes for the Act Revealing that which we call now The Revelation of St John and in truth all Scriptures as we have them now are the things God did reveal unto his servants but the Act whereby they were revealed or the Act revealing this to them ended with the persons receiving them And this is no superfluous or curious observation because of a received maxim in the Schools That without a supernatural act we cannot give due assent unto a supernatural object nor believe truths revealed by God without a super added aid of Grace illuminating and inclining the mind to assent thereto From whence doth follow That of all divine Faith is most properly if not only divine which doth believe that such things are Revealed of God and not That which supposes them to have been revealed by God and that he said so as is expressed unto us doth believe For this latter even any natural man and greatest infidel in the world would believe who believes there is a God it being included and implied in the very notion of a Deity that God cannot lie or deceive or affirm a thing to be which is not But the Christian Faith mounts much higher then Heathens and by the Grace of God believes that God hath Revealed such things wherein consists his Christian Faith The first thing then a true believer indeed must believe is That the Scriptures are the word of God and this as it is the most fundamental so is it most difficult of all to one not educated in the Faith of Christians because it neither can be proved by Scripture nor whatevermen who promise nothing less in their presumptuous methods then clear demonstrations may say and argue by Tradition The Scriptures though not testimonie of it self yet matter and manner may induce and Tradition fortifie that but the Crown of all true Christian Faith must be set on by Gods Grace A Second thing in order is when we believe that God hath spoken such things that we believe the things themselves so delivered to us of God For though as is said any rational heathen may well do this yet many a Christian doth it not For The foo◠not in knowledge so much as practise 〈◊〉 14. ◠◠Ti◠◠9. hath said in his heart there is no God saith the Psalmist and St. Paul that many out of an evil conscience have made Shipwrack of their Faith which really once they had A third degree of Christian Faith is When not onely we believe that God hath revealed his Law unto us and what he hath so revealed to be most faithful true and holy but obey the same For in Scripture Faith is taken for Obedience and Obedience for Faith as in the famous instance of Abraham who is said to believe God and that his Faith was counted for Righteousness And why is Abraham said to believe God so signally Because he was perswaded that God bade him offer up his Son unto him No but because he did it by Faith as is witnessed in the Epistle to the Hebrews And this acceptation of Faith is much confirmed by the contrary Heb. 11. 17. speech of Scripture in whose sense they who obey not God are commonly said not to believe him as in the Book of Deuteronomie Deut. 9. 23. Likewise when the Lord sent unto you from Kadesh-Barnea saying Go up and possess the Land which I have given you then ye rebelled against the Commandement of the Lord your God and believed him not nor hearkened unto his voice And therefore in the Acts of the Apostles it is said
his Benefits before he be in some manner actually in Christ For if all our works are Sanctified by Gods Spirit and acceptable to God only as they are done in Christ how can any such Acts lead us unto Christ or make us capable of him seeing it is one of the greatest perfections and excellencie of good Works or Faith for unless it and we be in Christ it cannot be a saving Faith i. e. leading us to Salvation to make us effectual partakers of and one with him These difficulties constrain us to distinguish both Faith and being in Christ into I cannot say properly two kinds as two eminent Periods and Degrees of Faith and being in Christ The one is initial and preparatory as a foundation which is not a distinct building from the house finished and furnished but a part of it and material Cause thereof The other is consummate and formed yet not so but addition of perfection though not of Parts may be made all mens Faith being capable of farther degrees in this life And from hence that mystical sense of our Saviours words in St. Johns Gospel may both give and receive illustration For in the sixth of John Christ hath these words No man can come unto me except the Joh. 6. 44. Father which hath sent me draw him And in the fourteenth of John he saith I am the way and the truth and the life no man cometh unto the Father but by Joh. 14. 6. me Teaching us That notwithstanding God is the First cause to bring us to be in Christ and that by his Predestination before time and his Calling and Electing us in time to the knowledge and Faith in Christ yet he is not reconciled unto us he doth not pardon us nor justify us before Christ brings us unto him and offers us to him as a new lâ—mp and as capable of his grace and favour which obtained we are then truly justified by Christ And as there are two distinct acts of God the one of his good Providence in bringing us to the Covenant made with mankind in Christ and the other of his special Grace in accepting us through Christ being in the Covenant So are there two principal Periods as I said of being in Christ and the First is when we are taken within the Covenant of the Gospel of Grace by baptism whereby we are made members of Christs mystical Body and inheritours of the Kingdom of Heaven Not that immediately and necessarily All baptized persons are sure to go to heaven but all baptized persons are thereby put into a capacity and Right to heaven To this St. Paul Gal. 3. 27. to the Galatians gives us his fair suffrage saying For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ And the same is implied in this his salutation Salute Andronicus and Junias my kinsmen and my Rom. 16. 7. fellow Prisoners who are of note among the Apostles who also were in Christ before me Where doubtless these persons are said to be in Christ before St. Paul because they were baptized and made profession of Christ before St. Paul And so when he speaks of the Churches of Judea which are in Christ Gal. 1. 22. he meaneth no more than such who were become of Jews Christians in Judea not intending that every one who so professed Christ should be infallibly Justified and saved by Christ as they shall who are arrived to the more perfect state of being in Christ of which the Apostle thus speaketh to the Colossians Whom Christ we preach warning every man and teaching every Col. 1. 28. man in all wisdome that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus Now what is or wherein this perfection in Christ doth consist is I suppose past any mans apprehension or Judgement precisely to determine that is what degree of holiness in Christ God will accept to our Justification but in general these two States of a Christian are plainly deseribed thus by St. Paul to the Corinthians If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature 2 Cor. 5. 17. Where being a new Creature and being in Christ are distinguished as Cause and Effect our being in Christ Jesus being the reason and cause of becoming New creatures So that we may well observe in this case a twofold Conversion requisite to make a man truly in Christ A conversion to Christ by renouncing false Religions and false opinions of a Deity and assenting to and embracing the doctrine according to Godliness This every man doth who takes on him the name profession and mitiating Sacrament of a Christian of this is to be understood what is spoken of the conversion of the Gentiles And this conversion is rather to speak properly Acts 15. 3. a conversion to the truth of Godliness than to true Godliness Or a conversion to the Truth of Faith rather then to the life of Faith of which St. Paul to the Galatians The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the Faith Gal. 2. 20. of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me The summ then of all this is this That to be in Christ effectually to our Justification and Salvation is so to be converted unto him as to believe the Faith of Christ and to Live the life of Christ This being cleared nearer access is made unto the solution of the prime Doubt which is What is that which so farr and fully enstateth us in Christ that thereupon God doth freely justifie us For it is now supposed and granted that our so being in Christ making us partakers of the merits mediation and Righteousness of Christ doth immediately and absolutely qualifie to Justification and secondarily that which brings us into Christ may properly enough be said to be it whereby we are Justified And here comes in the grand dispute about the vertue of Faith Whether that only and wholly performeth this For in what sense Faith may be said to bring us unto Christ or thus to lay hold as they say of Christ in the same may it be truly affirmed that next under God and Christ we are Justified by it This I know not how it can be effected better then by the help of a most obvious and necessary but most neglected distinction of the use and notion of Faith in holy Scripture omitting that threefold Faith above-mentioned and several others impertinently invented and ill imployed in this case For Faith is taken in Scripture either Complexly and Generally for the whole Body of Christian divinity and Graces contained in the New testament Or it is taken Simply and distinctly for a special Grace separate I mean in nature not in Operation from Hope and Charity which together constitute the three Theological Graces Instances of the former have been given already in the twelfth Chapter and need not here be repeated in particular For let any man of common equity and understanding weigh the subject and
alledged more pregnantly proving the power of that fiducial Faith as I may so call it in order to the Justification of a man before God and yet it must here be granted That this trust is much different from the Faith contended for And that from hence or the like Texts not a different vertue in nature or kind though peradventure more effectual and prevalent is ascribed to it above other Graces in order to our Justification All which is no less true of our Sanctification than our Justification For we are altogether as much sanctified by Faith alone as we are justified by Faith alone or only as appeareth from the Scripture which saith That our hearts are John 15. 3. Acts 15. 9. purified by Faith So that in this much disputed Question I know no readier way of satisfying the fearful and dubious mind than by taking a due estimate of the power of a General or Particular Faith in reference to Fides nos à peccatis omnibus purgat mentes nostras illuminat Deo concliat Prosper ubi supr our Sanctification and judging alike of our Justification thereby For we are sanctified as freely by Grace as we are justified and as much by Faith too as Prosper before cited saith And therefore lastly in answer to divers places of the Ancients which are produced to confirm the modern sense of Justification by Faith alone I answer in a word That it is true their words seem to attest so much but their meaning was plainly no more than this That Faith many times doth justifie without Works that is any outward manifestation of their Faith by such fruits but never without inward acts of Repentance and Charity distinct from this special Faith nor without such a devotion to good Works which wants nothing but opportunity to exert them which is by an extraordinary Clemencie and Grace of God accepted for the thing it self This appears by the example by them given to manifest their meaning of the Thief on the Cross who was so justified and saved by Faith alone without good Works answerable thereunto because his sudden faith was prevented by sudden death Nevertheless That his Faith was so much alone as to exclude Repentance and such Graces as were competible to one in his condition from a proportionable concurrence to that effect is no where said nor intended by any of the Fathers whose judgment is of account in the Church of God CHAP. XXI A third Effect of Justifying Faith Assurance of our Salvation How far a man is bound to be sure of his Salvation and how far this assurance may be obtained The Reasons commonly drawn from Scripture proving the necessity of this assurance not sufficient c. ANother effect of Faith or at least consequence upon it hath the certainty or assurance of our Justification and Salvation been commonly reputed The better to understand which we must take as supposed and granted the difference between the Truth of a thing and Evidence of it or the Certainty that such a thing is and the knowledge that so it is So that the doubting of our Justification or Salvation doth not make the thing infallibly so but leaves us under fears and sometimes disconsolations But a competent remedy seems to me to be ready at hand if we consider that our opinion of our selves is no good conclusion against our selves but rather being founded in humility and disowning of our worth and righteousness an introduction to a comfortable hope in Gods mercy who hath begun at least the work of Grace in us by rendring us studious and anxious about his service and our salvation unless it could be proved which we shall see presently whether so or not out of the word of God that it is his will and direct command that we should have this assurance in us For as saint John saith Hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assurt 1 John 3. 19 20. our hearts before him For if our heart condem us God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things i. e. the hearts and consciences of the children of God do frequently condemn them but their comfort is that God is greater than their hearts and doth not judge according to what opinion good or evil we have of our selves but according to his own Wiâ—dom and Grace So that it is no just inference at all I do not believe I shall be saved therefore I shall not be saved Nor this I do believe I shall not be saved therefore I shall not be saved Only they have great cause thus to argue and conclude against themselves who are wont on the contraâ—y to reason I believe I shall be saved therefore I shall be saved abusing and corrupting the Doctrine of Faith two wayes most dangerously First In making it the simple and direct cause or means unto Justification and then a reason of a Reflex act whereby they stand assured that they are so acquitted and justified before God But St. John in the former words cited reasons much otherwise For having in the 18. verse exhorted to and urged the duty of mutual Christian Charity he inferreth from thence in the 19. verse Hereby we know that we are of the truth c. i. e. from the Indication of Love and Charity to the Brethren â—ere is then an assurance and that before God and yet as we have seen there resteth and consisteth withall a diffidence and doubting as we have shewed The reconciliation of this seeming opposition doth lead us to a necessary distinction tending to the resolving of the principal Querie and it is between the State of Justification and the Act of Justification And again as to Assurance here spoken of It is one thing to be assured of our Justification and another of our Salvation as shall hereafter appear First then I hold it sufficiently demonstrable out of Scripture That a man may and every good Christian ought to be assured that he is in a state of being justified and saved likewise This we teach well in our Church Catechise in answer to this Question Doest not thou think that thou art bound to believe as they have promised for thee thus Yes verily and by Gods help so I will and I heartily thank our heavenly Father that he hath called me to this State of Salvation through Jesus Christ our Saviour Every Christian that in Baptism hath put on Christ and is entred into a Covenant of Grace with God is bound to believe assuredly that thereby he is in a state of Salvation and Justification For thereby God hath especially elected him to salvation of which Election the Scriptures chiefly if not only speak which are drawn to signife the Eternal Decree of God choosing not only men estranged from God to the Covenant of Grace but such as are first within the Covenant to an infallible Justification and Salvation This I say is rarely if at all intended by any of those many Texts of Scripture alledged to
which we have shewed they have not as Jews and he will undoubtedly conclude against their antiquated Religion and Innovated Superstitions CHAP. VII The Christian Religion described The General Ground thereof The Revealed Will of God The Necessity of Gods Revealing himself AFTER the consideration of Religion in General and the reasonableness thereof with the Exclusion of the principal false pretenders of worshipping the true God it follows to treat of the Christian Religion and the Reasonableness and several incomparable Prerogatives thereunto proper And first it is to be known what we mean by Christian Religion and what it is Christian Religion is the worship of the only true God in the unity of nature and trinity of persons through one Mediatour between God and man the Man Christ Jesus according to his Will and Laws revealed in his holy Word commonly called the Scriptures This description whether artificial enough I will not contend but full enough I suppose it is to declare as well What it is in it self as Wherein it is distinct from others And therefore omitting to treat of the more curious and formal part thereof we shall here shew briefly What great advantages it hath above any other to the obliging us to a more faithful and devout observation thereof and that this only and no other can truly please God and lead us to him and crown us hereafter with eternal bliss and glory And it having been proved that by the consent of all Nations there is a God and it following more strongly upon that ground supposed that such a Supream and Infinite being is to be worshiped and that this worship is that which we call Religion and that of the Religions pretending to be divine the others have been found vain and deficient the Right of being received as the only proper worship of God must of necessity devolve upon the Christian Religion as that which is least obnoxious to the same or like exceptions and hath many more sober and rational inducements to perswade the same to any equal judgment Which argument might well be drawn from the very Body of this Religion and the several parts whereof it consisteth together with manifold Pregnant Circumstances attending the same But because this would ask a far longer time and more tedious labour both to Writer and Reader then can consist with this intended Compendium it may abundantly suffice to give such probable and credible proofs of the Scriptures That they are the revealed will of God as Christians do believe without question For the summ and substance of all Christian religion so far as it is truly so called and professed being founded on the Holy Scriptures and there expresly contained if it be evinced that they are of divine Original it will follow That what they deliver is so likewise and consequently the Religion built upon them But because it is one Principle which Christian Religion is built upon in common with all Religions that somewhat must so be believed that no natural reason or Mathematical can invincibly demonstrate And the reason hereof is because the ground of all such demonstations is setled upon the order of Nature between Cause and Effect in point of right rather than matter of fact But that the Scriptures are so the word of God as to be revealed by his Holy Spirit to certain select Persons to that end is altogether matter of fact and that not proceeding from such a necessary and natural Agent as that according to the course of Causes and Effects it could be no otherwise but from a free Agent which certainly might have suspended such acts of Revealing his Will And the same Reason holds against all proper Demonstration from Effect For as it cannot be demonstrated that such a Cause must necessarily have such an Effect it cannot be infallibly proved that such an Effect must have such a Cause For unless it could be proved that fire must necessarily burn it could not be proved that what we see burnt must necessarily proceed from fire For before this can be don it must be shewed that nothing in the world has the same virtue but fire and this supposes that we have a perfect and exact knowledg of every thing and the nature of it in the world Take we an instance yet nearer to our present subject It is a common Maxime amongst the Schoolmen That no Creature can work a Miracle of it self but it must have the Supernatural power of God either immediately or mediately and That whatsoever Effects are wrought by any Spirit inferiour to God deserve not the name of a Miracle And yet it is confessed withall that diverse such works which appear to us as extraordinary and above nature are not of God but some perhaps evil Creature Must it not then first be known what those extraordinary acts are and how they are wrought before it can be concluded that they are of God And how can this infallibly be discern'd but by another miracle and this by a third a third by an infinity of which there can be no knowledg So that in truth the received doctrine of the Schools being thorowly examined the contrary will appear the more reasonable of the two and that we must rather first of all acknowledg a Divine Power precedent and effecting this extraordinary stupendious work before we may call it a Miracle than first admit this to be a Miracle and then and thence infer a Divine Power So that it seems very difficult and dubious to make scientifical conclusions of any thing divine And that after all there may be sufficient presumptions to render a thing credible without lightness and rashness yet the Arguments perswading shall not be so pressing and cogent but due place should remain for a Faith or assent which may not be properly humane and natural which it must needs be if it proceeded simply from sense or reason natural but divine and an admirable temperament be found in that we call The true Christian Faith wherein the Grace of God inwardly moving and inclining the Will to embrace that to which it might notwithstanding all reasons to the contrary not altogether unreasonably have dissented and yet with reason doth assent the Grace of God pulling down 2 Cor. 10. 4 5. strong holds casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth it self against the knowledg of God and bringing into Captivity every thought unto the obedience of Christ As St. Paul excellently saith speaking of the carnal warfare of humane ratiocinations either for or against Divine Faith and Doctrine which have no might but through God as he suffers by his justice the reasonings and eloquence of men to take place against his doctrine or to prevail towards the receiving of the truth by the superadded Power of his Holy Spirit as to this end St. Paul speaks in his first Epistle to the Corinthians thus And my speech and my preaching was not 1 Cor. 2. 4 5. with enticing words of mans
the several Senses and Meanings according to which the Scriptures may be understood IT being found what is the Letter of the Word of God It is necessary to know what is the true sense of it For this is only in truth the Word and not the Letters Syllables or Grammatical words To know this we must first distinguish a Sense Historical and Mystical The Historical Sense is the same as the Literal so called because it is that which is primarily signified and intended by such a form of words And this is twofold For either these words are to be taken in the proper and natural signification as I may call that which is in most vulgar use or in their borrowed and mataphorical Sense As when I call a thing hard and apply it to Iron or Stone I speak properly and according to the Natural sense but when I apply Hardness to the heart I speak improperly and Metaphorically and yet Literally too intending thereby to signifie not any natural but moral quality in the heart The Seven Ears saith Joseph in Genesis are seven years and the Seven fat Kine are Seven years And so Christ in the Gospel This is my Body and infinite others in Scripture are Metaphorical and Literal Senses both The Mystical Sense is that which is a translation not so much of words from one signification to another as of the entire Sense to a meaning not excluding the Historical or Literal Sense but built upon it and occasion'd by it And is commonly divided into the Tropological Allegorical and Anagogical which some as Origen make coordinate with the former saying The Scripture is a certain Intelligible world wherein are four Parts Origen Homil 2. In Diversos as four Elements The Earth is the Literal Sense The waters is the profound Moral Sense The Air is the Natural Sense or natural science therein found And above all the sublime sense which is Fire In another place he mentions only the Historical Moral and Mystical And generally Idem Homil. 5. in Leviticum the Fathers do acknowledg all these though with some variation not distinguishing them as we have as might be shown were it needful to enlarge here on that subject The Moral Sense is that which is drawn from the natural to signifie the manners and conditions of men The Allegorical is a sense under a continuation of tropes and figures The Anagogical a translation of the meaning of things said or done on earth to things proper to heaven The Oxe being suffered to eat while he trod out the Corn according to St. Paul in the Moral sense signified that the labourer was worthy of his hire Mount Sinah and Mount Sion as the same Gal. 2. 24 25. Apostle saith signified the two Cities of God Earthly and Heavenly Allegorically And the Church of God upon Earth the Church Triumphant in heaven It is therefore without reason and modesty both that some strickt Modern Divines have set themselves against the Antient in contracting all these senses into one so as to allow no more which is of very ill consequence to the Faith both of Jew and Christian For generally all the hopes of the Jews concerning the Messias to come and all the proofs of the Christian taken from the Old Testament That he is come would come to little or nothing seeing there is manifestly a Literal or Historical sense primarily intended upon which the Mistical is built So that the arguments of the Evangelists and St. Paul in his Epistles convincing that Christ was the true Messias must needs be invalid seeing their quotation to that purpose had certainly another Literal Sense And it is against the condition of the whole Law it self which as St. Paul Heb. 10. 1. saith was a Shadow of good things to come and not the very things themselves It is here replied commonly That all these are but one Literal Perkins on Galâ—â— 22. sense diversely expressed which is to grant all that is contended for but with a reservation of a peculiar way of speaking to themselves that having been so infortunate as to judge of things amiss they may in some manner solace themselves with variety of phrase too commonly found amongst such as resolve to say something new where there is no just cause at all And to that which seems a Difficultie That no Symbolical sense can be argumentative or prove any thing in Divinity we answer That it cannot indeed unless it be known first to be the true Mistical sense of the words alledged For neither is the Literal sense it self until it be known that such was the true intent of the Speaker But those things which were symbolically and Mystically delivered in the Law being well known to Christ and his Apostles as likewise to the Learnedest of the Jewish Doctors by a received current tradition amongst them were of force to the ends alledged by them But where such a Mystical sense is not received nothing can be inferred from thence which is conclusive CHAP. X. Of the true Interpretation of Holy Scriptures The true meaning not the letter properly Scripture Of the difficultie of attaining the proper sense and the Reasons thereof IT availeth a Christian as little to have the Letter of the word of God without the genuine sense as it doth a man to have the shell without the Kernel For the sense is the word of God not the Letter Wicked men yea the Devil himselfe maketh use of the Letter to contradict the truth it self as St. Hierome hath observed and other Fathers and constant experience certifieth not without the consent of the Scripture it self which saith of it self In it are some things hard to be understood which 2 Pet. 3. 16. they that are unlearned and unstable wrest as they do all other Scriptures to their own destruction Therefore because it is very necessarie to be informed of the difficulties and dangers in misinterpreting Scripture before we can throughly apply our selves to prevent and avoid them we will First shew briefly That many things are difficult in Scripture and the Reasons why and after proceed to the most probable means rightly to interpret the same And these obstacles in attaining the true sense of Gods word are either found in our selves or in Gods wisdome and Providence or lastly in the Word of God it self Some indeed piously but inconsiderately make all the reason of difficulties not denied by them altogether in the Scripture to be in Man supposing they hereby vindicate Gods Providence from that censure it might otherwise be liable unto if so be that God should deliver such a Law to man which could not well be understood but apt to mislead men into errour And therefore say they It is the darkness and perversness of mans understanding and will that make things in Scripture obscure and not the condition of the Scriptures themselves But this no ways doth attain its end For when did God deliver his written word unto Mankind
private reason perswade him That he hath found out the truth and yet at the same time assure him That he is no less fallible than another man and therefore may possibly embrace and hug a false conception with as much fondness as a true and withal That private Judgements are not in themselves so safe as publique nor single as many What violence were this to his reason nay how much more rational than the first simple Act to comply with the Reason of others whom reason also requires to listen to and obey and Scripture much more From hence we may rightly conclude against both extremes in these days who yet agree in this very ill-grounded opinion That there must be an Infallible Director or Judge or we cannot submit to them in matters of Faith and our Salvation This is absolutely untrue both in humane and divine matters Who sees not indeed that it were to be wished for and above all things desired Who sees not the great inconvenience for want of such a standard of opinions as this But can we rationally conclude therefore that so it is Or hath God or ought he of his necessary goodness and wisdom as some have ventured to affirm to grant all things that are infallibly good for man Is it not sufficient that a fair though not infallible way is opened to attain the truth here and bliss hereafter but every one must find it Is it little or no absurditie That infinite never come to means of truth and so great that many who enjoy them do not receive the benefit by them Again Are good manners and virtues no less essential to Salvation than Faith and is there no infallible Judge of manners Is there no infallible Casuist And must there be of points of Faith How many have the infallible Rule of holy Life and yet mistake either in the sense or application of it so far as to perish in unknown Sins And yet none have to prevent that great and common evil call'd for an infallible Censour whose determinations might settle doubtful consciences in greatest safety and silence all apologies which are wont to be made for our sins and errors and so bring us nec essarily to truth or leave us under self and affected condemnation But The Ground of this mistake being farther searched into will be found very weak and fallacious An infallible Faith say they must have an infallible Judge And of these some assume thus There is no man infallible Therefore no man can be Judge of Faith Others assume thus But there is and must be an infallible Faith Therefore there must be an infallible Judge So that we see both would have infallible Judges but differ only in their choice of them For The former would have the Scriptures Judge and Rule which is very honest but very simple The later would have some external Judge which hath much more of reason in it And fails only in the choice of this Judge or in the description of him For There is nothing more unreasonable than to ordain that which is under debate to be Judge of it self besides the great absurdity of confounding the Rule or Law and the Interpreter and Judge And There is nothing more fallacious than to confound Causes and occasions together as the later opinion doth For If the Church or whatever Judge may be supposed were the true direct cause of our Faith then indeed it would necessarily follow That our Faith could no wayes be infallible unless the Judge were also infallible the effect not exceeding the cause nor the Conclusion the Premises or propositions from whence it was deduced But Because the Church is only on Occasion or a Cause without which we should neither believe the Scriptures in general to be the Word of God nor any sentence to be duly drawn from the same there is no necessity at all of such a consequence For The Infallibility now spoken of is either the thing believed which is the Word of God of which the Church I hope is no Cause or the Grace of Faith excited and exercised by us through the Spirit of Grace in us the mynistery of the Church serving thereunto acording to St. Paul saying We therefore as workers together with 2 Cor. 6. 1. him beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain For as in things natural He that applies Actives to Passives that is the Cause proper to the matter about which the Action is is not the proper or natural cause of the Effect but the occasion only yet is said vulgarly so to be as when a man applies fire to combustible matter he may though improperly be said to burn it when it is the fire and not he that burns it So the Church or Judge of Scriptures sense applying the same to a capable subject the effect is true and infallible Faith but it is not the effect of the Church or instrument or mean rather but of the Holy Spirit of Grace which taketh occasion from thence to produce Faith and that infallible For Were this Infallibility we now speak of the Churches then when ever the Church should so propound and urge points of Faith they must needs have an effect in the Soul For if they say The Church teaches in an humane way they say she teaches in a fallible way which overthrows all And from this is cleared that difficulty which opposeth a Judge of Scripture and Faith because none could be found infallible For not making the Judge the cause of Faith but occasion he may be necessarily required to Faith God who is the only principal cause with his holy word seldom or never concurring without those outward means And therefore though I readily enough grant That the Scriptures are so plainly written that a single simple person wanting greater helps to attain to the abstruser sence of them and using his honest and simple endeavour may easily find so much of the Rule of Faith and holy Life as to be saved by them yet I cannot say the same of any men who presuming on Gods power against his promise which includeth the use of outward meanes or mistaking his promise for absolute when it is conditional shall look no farther than their own wits shall lead them Now The outward meanes to which God hath annexed his promise of Grace may be these First That which we have here handled a general and sober submission to the Guides of our youth and our spiritual Fathers and Pastors in Christ which to forsake is the part of a wanton and fornicating Soul according to Solomon This common Reason and nature it self seem to require of all Prov. 2. 17. under Autority by the disposition of Almighty God That they in the first place hearken unto the voice and explication of the Church wherein they are educated until such time as a greater manifestation of truth shall withdraw them unwillingly from the same For so long as Senses are equally probable on both
Traditions It is as seldome found That a tale should be reported in the very same phrase or words it was at first told as it is that things transcribed with any common honesty or diligence should fail considerably so much as in the Letter And if they say in Tradition forms of words are not so much to be stood upon doth it not altogether hold as good when this Tradition is written How then do not men blush to argue so boldly and at the same time so weakly There is therefore a twofold Infallibility to be distinguished as well in Relation to unwritten Doctrines as written the one consisting in the Matter delivered the other in the manner so delivering And truly as to this later it cannot be said without some strong Presumption to the contrary the written Traditions which are the Scriptures have been so preciseâ—y and absolutely defended from either the common injuries of time or special miscarriages incident to humane frailty or perhaps as some conjecture the studious mischiefs of sacrilegious hands laid on them as not one title one word one period should not have been damnified thereby The Providence of God granting some such minuter defections from the Original Copies hath been singular in preserving them in that degree of perfection and entireness we now enjoy them So that infinite is the disparity in this case between them and unwritten Traditions which none have been so audacious positively to affirm though indeed their large and loose reasons seem to tend that way that any one unwritten doctrine hath been conserved unto us in the same form of words it was at first delivered to the Church And the like though not so great advantage is to be acknowledged on the Scriptures part compared with the pretended unwritten word of God in reference to the matter and that in these three respects 1. The Evidence 2. The Importance and 3. The Influence that the doctrine of the Scriptures have and ought to have over all Traditions And for the first It is impossible taking traditions as they are distinguished from Scripture that the like grounds of Faith should be offered to us as we have above shown are to be found proving the Scriptures to be the word of God For are all or some only Gods word All cannot be because Traditions in several Places of the world have been diverse and even contrary Because some are acknowledged to have been the Constitutions of Men or the Church since the Apostolical Age. Because many are acknowledged to have been quite lost Because many have been confessed to be changed of them which remain Now if the Church hath failed in the due Custodie of such treasures committed to her How can any man be assured sufficiently of the integrity of the remainer How can the Church be esteemed an Infallible Witness of traditions And who can but admire the Confidence of such Patrons of the Churches fidelity or rather felicity for I would not nor need I call in question its good will and Honesty in her Office of Preserving the Monuments of our Religion untouch'd by errors who by reasons would demonstrate that that cannot be which we see done before our eyes For at other times the same Party if not the same persons stick not to profess that divers Antienter Traditions are perished and more modern have succeeded them They say that some Traditions are as 〈◊〉 as sense can make them The Tradition that there were such famous Cities as Nineve and Babylon and are such as Constantinople and Rome requires the same Faith as the beholding them with our Eyes But first It should have been said in the argument They are as evident as those things we are informed of by our senses but this is far from truth All the testimonies of Past and present persons affirming that to be so which I have no sense of immediately being abundantly sufficient to beget a belief but not equalling in evidence the testimonie of any mans well-disposed senses For does not this so general testimonie it self depend upon a mans senses receiving the same Or can any man be so well assured upon the Credit of any persons whatever that the Apostles delivered such things to be believed and observed by the Church as if he himself immediately received the same from them If it be said that the case of Ecclesiastical Tradition is far different from humane in that the Church is divinely assisted to such ends supposing this at present still we are no less intregued then before For as is said The truth of a thing and the Evidence whereby it appears to be true are very much different And here it will be no less difficult to make such a supposed Assistance appear then the tradition it self which it commends to the World upon such pretences And therefore they who have sifted this matter more narrowly and stated it most rationally have thought it best to forsake such topicks at present as Extraordinarie Assistances and Hen. Holdeni Analysis Fid. tell us plainly that what the Church doth in this case she doth it not as divinely directed but as so many Men delivering their testimonie which is true but then what becomes of Infallibility all men singly and conjointly as men being fallible Well therefore they proved to tell us That to a jugde of Controversies Credible Testimonie or moral infallibilitie may suffice and to this I agree in the main though the term Moral Certainty and Moral Infallibilitie seems to me as vain and improper as it is modern it upon enquirie amounting to no more then the old Probabilitie well and reasonably grounded The next thing in Holy Writ is the much greater importance the things therein contained are of above unwritten doctrines For who of all the Ancients but such as are by tradition stigmatized for Heretiques for such their Basil Ma. de spiritu sancto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 opinions did constitute any rule of Faith distinct from the Scriptures or bring any to stand in competition therewith Some 't is true have distinguished between Dogmes of Traditions and doctrines of the Scripture and haveaffirmed That as well the one as the other ought to be received by a good Christian All this we agree to how we shall show by and by more fully and here by comparing this by the words of St. John saying This Joh. 4. 21. Commandment have we from him that he that loveth God love his brother also By which it is not required that any Christian should with the same kind or degree of Love love his neighbour with which he loveth God For we must love God only for his own sake and our brother for Gods sake Nay when God sayes we must love our neighbour as our selves he does not exclude difference in degrees of love In like manner when it is said That we ought to believe and receive the unwritten as well as written traditions it was never intended by that excellent Father that we should admit
them in equal veneration For most things there by him instanced in are apparently extrinsical to Faith Therefore the true meaning is That no good Son of the Catholick Church can or ought to refuse the customes or practices or forms of words concerning the doctrine of Christ because they are not so express'd or contain'd in Scripture as other matters are And if we mark we shall not find any one thing exacted of Christians in the purest and most flourishing state of the Church as points of Faith which only depended upon unwritten Tradition and were not thought to have the written word of God for their warrant and foundation And in this one thing were there no more doth the prerogative of the Scripture manifest it self sufficiently above Traditions distinct from it That whatever vertue or credit they have is first of all owing to the Scriptures For otherwise why should not the Traditions of the Jew or Mahometan be as credible to a Christian as they of the Church but that he suck'd in his principle with his Mothers milk That the written word of God hath given so fair testimonie of the Church and its traditions For the testimonie of the Church otherwise would certainly be no more to be valued than that of any other societie of like moral honestie So that the Scriptures must be the very First principle of all Christian belief But here steps in the old objection drawn from a most eminent Father of the Church which Extollers of tradition can as well forget their own names as leave out of their disputations on this subject though according to their Augustin custome they have a very bad memory to bear in mind what hath been sufficiently replied to it I should not saith that Father have believed the Scriptures but for the Church and yet we have said we should not have believed the Church but for the Scriptures How can these stand together Very well if we please to distinguish the several wayes of information for in the same there must be granted a repugnancie And the distinction is much the same with what we have before laid down viz. Of the Occasion and the direct Cause of Faith For though the Churches tradition be an Introduction to the belief of the Scriptures and such a necessary Cause without which no man ordinarily comes so much as to the knowledge of them yet it doth not at all follow that through the influence of that supposed Cause an effect of Faith is wrought in the Soul concerning them but from a superiour illumination and interiour power which has been generally Joh. 4. required to such praeternatural Acts. As the Woman of Samaria brought her fellow Citizens to Christ but was not the author of that faith which after they had in him as the true Messias or as the Horse I ride on carrying me from London to York is not the proper Cause that I see that City but mine own senses though I perhaps should never have seen it otherwise But another more Ancient and no less venerable Father of the Church is Irenaeus here brought in demanding What if nothing had been written must we not then have altogether depended on the Traditions To such as extend this quaerie too far I move the like question What if we had no Traditions at all must not then every man have shifted as well as he could and traded upon the finall stock of natural reason in him Or was it impossible that man should come to bliss without the superadded light outwardly exhibited That as the case stands man ordinarily cannot be saved without such received revelations as are dealt to us from the Church I believe But upon supposal that no such means were extant that there should be no other Ordinary way of Gods revealing himself to man in order to his salvation believe it who will for me I answer therefore directly No question but tradition would have sufficed if nothing had been committed to writing For either God would have remitted of that rigour as no man can doubt but he might have made the terms of the Covenant fewer and lighter with which we now stand obliged to him according to that most equal Law of the Gospel as well as Reason Unto whom much is given of him shall be much required and to Luk. 12. 48. Mat. 25. whom men have committed much of him they will ask the more Neither is it probable against the intent of Christs most excellent Parable in St. Mathew that of that Person or that People to whom he hath delivered but two or five Talents he should extort the Effect of ten Well therefore doth that Father argue against such as should dare to consine God only to Scripture and so superciliously or contemptuously look on the Traditions of their Christian Fathers as not worth the stooping to take up yea as necessarily warring against the Word written Whenas it is certain a thing is written because it is first declared and is the Word of him that speaketh no less before than after it is written and not so because it is written St. Paul therefore joyns them both together in his Epistle to the Thessalonians saying Therefore brethren stand stedfast and hold 2 Thes 2. 15. the Traditions which ye have been taught whether by word or our Epistle Here are plainly both written Traditions and unwritten and written Word of God and unwritten and they differ only in the several ways of promulgation and not in the Law of God And it is more then probable That those first principles of Christian Faith were not received of St. Paul in writing of which he speaks in his first Epistle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 15. 1 2 3 4. concerning the Incarnation Passion and Resurrection of our Saviour nor delivered in writing at his first publication yet were no less the word of God then than afterward Yet as this sufficiently allayes the heat of hostility indiscreetly conceived against all Traditions even for the very names sake which is become odious to us so doth it not so much favour the contrary party as hath been phantasi'd For 't is observable That there is a very great difference between the Tradition now touched and that so commonly and passionately disputed of in the Church That was and may be called a Tradition as every thing expressed by Word or Writing whereby one man delivers his mind for so the English Phrase hath it not amiss to another transiently But the Tradition now under debate may be described A constant continuation of what is once delivered from Generation to Generation For No man can with any propriety of speech term what is not a year or two in standing Tradition Tradition is a long custom of believing The things which are so called in the Scriptures are not such and therefore can be no president for those of these dayes There being not the like reason that we should give the same respect or esteem so
decision I wish with all my heart so far am I from an evil eye or niggardly affection towards Scripture they could make their words good when they tell us all things are contained in Scripture It is a perfect Rule of all emergent doubts and acts in the Church It is Judge and Law both of Controversies but alas they cannot For they take away from it more then by this rank kindness they give to it Gods word is Perfect as a Law and so far as he intended it but it must cease to be a Law and take another nature upon it if it were a Judge too in any proper sense And the Canon of Scripture must be it self variable and mutable if it could particularly accommodate it self to all occasions and exigencies of Christians But this is not only absurd but needless For God when he made men Christians did not take away from them what they before had as Men but required and ordained that humane judgement and reason should be occupied and sanctified by his divine Revelations He in brief gave them another and far better Method Aid and Rule to judge by and did not destroy or render altogether useless their Judgement even in matters sacred To the Law and Esay 8. 20. to the Testimonie saies the holy Prophet if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them This indeed plainly declares the Rule by which we are to walk and Judge but it doth not tell us that the Law it self doth speak but men according to it And this is to Judge Now because no one man no one age no one Church should judge for all no nor for it self contrary to all doth the necessity and expediencie of Tradition not to affront or violate but secure the written word of God and that in two special respects appear First as giving great light and directions unto the Rulers of the Church and limiting the uncertain and loose wit of man which probably would otherwise according to its natural pronitie flie out into new and strange senses dayly of holy Scripture The Records of the Church like so many Presidents and Reports in our Common Law giving us to understand Low Consuetudo etiam in Civilibus rebus pro Lege suscipitur cùm deficit Lex nec differt Scripturd an ratione consistat quando Legem ratio commendet Tertul. de coron mil. cap. 4. such places of Scripture were formerly understood and on which side the case controverted passed And why this course in divine matters should not be approved I see not unless unquiet and guilty persons shall seek under colour of a more absolute appeal to Scripture which is here supposed to be sincerely appealed unto before to wind themselves into the seat of Judicature and at length not only as fallibly but also usurpingly decree for themselves and others too This event hath so manifestly appeared that there is no denying of it or defending it They therefore who professedly introduce Tradition to the defeating and nulling of Scripture deal indeed more broadly and in some sense more honestly as being what they seem than they who give all and more then all due to it in language but in practise overthrow it But we making Tradition absolutely subordinate and subservient to Scripture and in a word of the nature of a Comment and not of the Text it self we are yet to seek not what deceitfully and passionately for we know enough of that already but soberly can be objected against it For if it be said Tradition is it self uncertain it is obscure it is perished it contradicts it self and so can be of little use we readily joyn with them so far as to acknowledge that such traditions and to them to whom they so appear can with no good reason be appealed to But we deny that there are none but such and that such as prove themselves to be true and honest men upon due trial and examination ought to be hang'd out of the way because they were found in company with thieves and Cheats Supposing then That such honest Traditions are to be found in the Church another great benefit redoundeth to the Church from thence in that it doth in some cases supply the defects of the Law it self the Scripture But here I must first get clear of this reputed Scandal given in that I suppose the Scriptures defective or imperfect I have already and do again profess its plenitude and sufficiency as far as a Rule or Law is well capable of Now what God by his infinite wisdom and power might have done I cannot question in contriving such an ample Law as should comprehend all future and possible contingencies in humane affairs but this I say That he disposing things by another Rule viz. to act according to humane capacity and condition never did or so much as intended to deliver such an infinite Law Is not Moses and Gods dealing to him and his ministry to God and the people frequently alledged as a notable argument to convince us of the amplitude of the New Testament Moses say they was faithful in all his house And therefore much Heb. 3. 2. more was Christ Very good and what of all this As much as comes to nothing For wherein did the faithfulness of Moses consist In powring out unmeasurably all that might be said touching divine matters Or rather in delivering faithfully and exactly all that God commanded him This truly did Moses and therefore was very true and faithful to him that sent him and gave him his charge This did Christ and this did the Apostles of Christ and his inspired servants and therefore were all no less faithful to God than Moses But did not Moses leave more cases untouched in the Administration of the Jewish Policie then were litterally expressed Yes surely judging it sufficient that he had laid down general Rules and Precepts according to which Emergencies which might be infinite should by humane prudence be reduced and accordingly determined And so choose they or refuse they must they grant did Christ and his Instruments leave the Law of the Gospel which yet not wanting all that can be expected from a Law cannot modestly be pronounced imperfect notwithstanding as is said manifold particulars are not there treated of Now those are they we say Tradition doth in some measure supply unto us and the defect of Tradition it self which hath not considered all things is made good by the constant power of the Church given by the Scriptures themselves in such cases which require determination of circumstances of time place order and manner of Gods service according to the Edification of the Church of Christ CHAP. XIII Of the nature of Faith What is Faith Of the two general grounds of Faith Faith divine in a twofold sense Revelation the Formal reason of Faith Divine Of the several senses and acceptations of Faith That Historical Temperance and Miraculous Faith are not in nature
Prophet in the name of a Prophet shall receive a Prophets reward And he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a Righteous mans reward And so to those that suffer for Christ which is reputed amongst the chief of Good deeds Rejoyce and be exceeding glad Mat. 5. 12. for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets And Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water Mat. 10. 42. only in the name of a Disciple verily I say unto you he shall in no wise loose his reward And in St. Luke Christ saith But love your enemies and do good Luk. 6. 35. and lend hoping for nothing again and your reward shall be great and ye shall be the Children of the Highest For he is kind unto the unthankful and evil Here besides the positive promises is added a reason to assure all that shall do good works that great shall be their reward viz. because Gods goodness and mercy is such that he imparteth of the same unto the wicked he doth good unto the ill-deserving and shall he not much more do good to those that are good and abound in Good works To ascribe therefore so much to a modern notion of Faith as many do though the Learneder favourers of it closely dealt with are constrained to depart from this new rigour as I could show by divers instances as to divide it from it self that is the works of Faith from Faith the fountain in order to Justification and Sanctification and Salvation is in effect to denie the Christian Faith and introduce one of their own invention to the great dishonour of God and reproach of Christian Faith which consisteth in these two things principally Evangelical Obedience and a Glorious reward And now least some prejudiced mind may suppose that I have stated this point too favourably to the Roman sense and injuriously to the Franckness of Gods grace and mercy in relation both to our Sanctification and Justification and also to the vertue and efficacie of Faith in order to them I shall end this discourse with the Stating of this cause as I find it by Vortius a most severe and rigid Calvinist as they call such men in this negative Vort. disput Select Part. 2. p. 728. 726. way The Controversie therefore said he between us and the Papacie First is not Whether good works are to be done For we affirm it 2. Neither whether they be necessary and profitable to salvation we affirm both 3. Neither whether they are pleasing to God which we affirm 4. Nor whether God grants a Remuneration and Reward to them For we affirm it 5. Nor whether it be lawful to do good works with an eye to the reward We say so 6. Nor yet whether good works are sins we stoutly deny 7. Nor lastly Whether the just be worthy of a Crown For this we yield with this limitation Not out of their own worth but the worthiness of God c. And if all this be honestly and fairly agreed to I see no reason to fear the empty cavils and vain exceptions of some men who have run themselves they can scare well tell whether themselves from Popery but I may venture to tell Why viz. Partly out of a blind implicite Faith in the Teachers they raise to themselves and partly to save their Credit and purses by a strange and monstrous notion of Faith rather then their souls But the main block of Offense taken not given by this doctrine seems to be an opinion of Merit favoured hereby Of this therefore we shall speak next CHAP. XVI Of merit as an effect of Good Works The several acceptations of the word Merit What is Merit properly In what sense Christians may be said to merit How far Good Works are Efficacious unto the Reward promised by God TO merit is of a very various and ambiguous sense among the the Ancients humane and divine It were superfluous to note all and to omit all injurious to our present design These three are the most needful to be observed For sometimes it is used in prophane Histories for Service military as the souldier under such a Commander is said to merit Mereri under him Meruit sub Servitio Isaurico in Cilicia sed brevi tempore c. Suet. de Julio Caesare in Vita Aere mereâ—t parvo Lucan lib. 9. Vocabulum merendi apud veteres Ecclesiasticos Scriptores fere idem valet quod consequi seu aptum idoneumque fieri ad consequendum Id. Cassand Schol. in Hymnos Ecclesiast p. 179 It is likewise frequently used by humane and Ecclesiastical Authors for to obtain or acquire only by just and due endeavours without any just deserts of the Partie said to merit but rather of Grace and favour of him who hath appointed and promised freely to reward such actions as are enjoyned and assigned with such ends and remunerations which far exceed the proportion or value of the work For surely in publick and antient Games from which practice St. Paul hath borrowed many a Metaphor describing the service and contention of Christians in the service of God to outrun and prevent by footmanship him that was matcht with one did not properly deserve such a vast reward as was usually conferred on him who excelled his Fellow For what title of justice can the hasting to take a crown give to him that receives it yet was he said to deserve it and that either comparatively because he in reason ought to be preferred before any other that came behind him and therefore merit it rather than he Or because the Authors of such rewards having solemnly and fairly quitted all their Rights and by publick promise setled the same upon other upon certain conditions they shall judge fit there is a conditional Right thereby devolved upon others yet not out of the worthiness of the acts leading to the accquiring the same But a third notion of merit implies such a proportion between the Act and the end or recompence that it were no less than unjust and unreasonable for him who is concerned in the reward to denie it to him or detain it from him the work being accomplished It being a Principle of common justice what Christ pronounces as Christian reason too The Labourer is worthy of his hire i. e. he merits it And therefore Luk. 10. 7. Jam. 15. 4. James saith well in the like case Behold the hire of the labourers which have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud crieth and the cries of them which have reaped are entred into the ears of the Lord of Sabbath i. e. they crie for justice against them who are indebted to them for such service which deserve much reward Upon these general grounds thus premised we shall have easier access to the difficultie of meriting in relation to God and the reward he holdeth forth to his
faithful servants For in truth this latter sense is scarce maintained or allowed by any Good Christian or if it be we shall not account it worth the expence of so much paâ—ns and time to refute them any further than the thing it self doth rightly considered For merit as is said effect is the just right that a man hath to a thing in possession of another there being no difference in such cases between what man enjoys and what he doth not enjoy but that the one is in the possession of himself and the oâ—her of another both being of right his own the one by ancient and the other perhaps by moderner purchase And this is founded upon the equity of Commutative Justice whereby one thing is exchanged for anoâ—her as about for reward such a commensurateness of the Action of a Christian being never to be found in order to the end promised For alâ— that we can do is our duty to God and not our desert And though God may have seem'd to have receeded in some manner from his original Râ—ght over us in that he stipulates with his servants and Covenants with them for such imâ—ense â—ecompence for such light labours yet this doth not extinguish his dominâ—on absolute over us nor extenuate or bring down the vaâ—ue of the reward it self so far as to ballance the account between God and man so that they should relate to one another as do Debtor and Creditor Because whether man contracts or not whether he promises or not Justice in behalf of the Servant claims a proportionable reward and a Debtor he is really though perhaps Legally he be not But between God and man theâ—e is no such natural mutual obligation before a free promise on Gods part issued out And therefore after such promise made impossible it is that any or many Acts on mans part should be commensurate to the goodness of the reward expected but it must all depend upon favour and grace For who hath pâ—evented Job 41. 11. me saith God in Job that I should repay him And St. Paul to the Romans Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of Grace but Rom. 4. 4. of debt The principal enquiry then is about the works of such as acknowledge a Freeness of promise in God as most or all Christians do what proportion they may bear to the reward so freely promised And in truth there seems no less then a contradiction after an acknowledgement of the freeness of a promise infinitely exceeding the labour or work made to impute the reward rather to the work than to the promise For he that cannot merit the cause absolutely required to the effect cannot be said to merit the Effect so that he who protests against the sufficiency of his work to merit the promise can have no tolerable pretension to merit the effect Hence it is that Paul saith against such as may glory in their works Where is boasting Rom. 3. 27. then It is excluded By what Law Of works Nay But by the Law of Faith And yet in the two more favourable and less proper senses above specified may a man without prejudice to Gods free Grace or Faith on Christ be said to merit there being more exotiqueness to Scripture Phrase and harshness to ears tender of Gods free Grace than guilt in that word For first who can denie that he is the servant of God that he is according to the vow in baptism a Souldier of Jesus Christ that he serves under him in the work of the Gospel against the world and flesh and Devil to the encrease of Grace and vertue according to Godliness This is to merit many times with the ancient without any implication of obligation upon God or Christ towards us for our service The second acceptation then is cheifly to be discussed which allows not only a service but an efficacie to Good works so far as to render them capable of such a term as Merit For there is a wide difference between a sufficiencie of a work to obtain a thing and the efficiencie The former indeed is absolute The latter not so St. Paul saying to the Corinthians 2 Cor. 6. 1. We therefore as workers together with him i. e. God doth certainly impâ—ie somewhat of activeness and efficiency by way at least of Instrument subordinate to that of God towards the great work of advancing the Gospel but he disavows a sufficiencie when he saith Who is sufficient for these 2 Cor. 2. 16. 1 Cor. 3. 5. things and when he saith Who then is Paul and who is Apollos but Ministers by whom ye believed even as the Lord gave to every man and so then neâ—ther is he that planteth any thing neither he that watereth but God that giveth the 7. increase No man can be a minister or instrument to another but he must act Non est tamen alienum nâ—c arrogans si etiam David remunerâ—tionem à Domino Deo suo pro egregiis latoribus posâ—ulet Praerâ—gativa est fâ—dâ—i atque justitiae de Domini favore mercidem usurpare Ambros in Psal 119. 1. Et tamen si bene cogites ipse dedit fidem primò qua cum promeruisii non enim de tuo promeruisti ut tibi aliquid deberetur c. Aug. Tract 3. in Joan. Ipsa vita aeterna quae utique in fine sine fine habebitur ideo meâ—itiâ— praecedentibus redditur quia ea merita quibus redditur non a nobis parata sunt per nostram suffâ—cientiam sed in nobis facta per gratiam etiam ipsa Gratia nuncupatur non ob aliud nisi quia gratis dâ—tur Aug. Ep. 105. â— together with him Again No man that is an instrument or minister to another can intitle himself absolutely or principally to the effect So then supposing that upon works evangelical reward certainly follows of course of Gods promise vet this glory is not to be assumed to the Instrument but Principal causes moving thereunto which are three principally arising and over-ruling a Christian The inward Grace of Gods spirit in respect of man working The Indulgence of God in remitting the rigour of the Law according to whose exactness the work is to be but seldom or never is performed And the promise of God condescending to such low and favourable terms in bestowing his rewards So that notwithstanding as is said there be certainly an efficacy which sometimes the holy Fathers call merit in Good works there is never found a sufficiencie or such a worth in the best Christians actions which may be commensurate to our Salvation For though as many of the reformed have truly spoken we be saved by our Good works we are not saved for our Good works no more then being saved and Justified by our Faith we are Justified for our Faith as shall be seen by and by So then all the merit of a true Christian consists in this That being by Faith built upon that sure and
only foundation besides which none can â—ay any other neither is there any other name under Heaven whereby a man may be saved Christ Jesus this Faith is so active and operative in holy works proceeding from it that the Person is qualified thereby according to the frankness of Gods Covenant made with him in Christ to become capable of the benefit and end of the Covenant Viz. More Grace here and fruition of Glory hereafter For notwithstanding a the sufferings no not of Martyrdom for Christ of this life are not worthy of themselves nor indeed by the accession of Gods Grace to be compared to the glory to be revealed yet may they be a means and a Rom. 8. â— way leading to the same And though b Tit. 3 5. We are saved Not by Works of Righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy by the washing of regeneration and renuing of the holy Ghost Yet this we are not capable of so freely but c Gal. 5. 6. by Faith working by Love Which moveth the Apostle to exhort us thus d Phil. 2. 12. My beloved as ye have always obeyed not as in my presence onely but now much more in my absence work Out your own salvation with fear and trembling And left any man should conceive amiss of the Grace of God as perfecting all things without our concurrence or should presume so far of his own strength as to judge himself able of himself to effect that it is most wisely and seasonably added e v. 13. For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure Whence it is that Eternal life is termed expresly f Rom. 6. 23. The gift of God Nay moreover the means conducing hereunto next under God is acknowledged owing unto God by the same Apostle to the Ephesians g Eph. 2. 8 9. For by Grace are ye saved through Faith and that not of your selves it is the gift of God Not of Works least any man should boast Yet notwithstanding these and many other places of holy Scripture magnifying the grace of God are not Works of Faith excluded any more then Faith it self from their proper vertue in obtaining the promises For still the reward is not of Debt but of Mercy as some of late distinguish and yet it is not so of mercy as that Justice subsequent and conditional to the promise should be wholy exploded For what can the Scripture else intend when it saith If we confess 1 Joh. 1. 9. our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness And doth not St. Paul joyn them both together saying That Rom. 3. 26. he might be Just and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus Is it not here as plain as words need make it that the Apostle concerneth the justice of God in the justification of him that believeth How then can these be reconciled but by distinguishing a twofold Justice in God in reference to the work of Man An absolute or antecedent Justice before his promise freely made and a consequent conditional Justice supposing a free stipulation made by God which never could be deserved neither is deserved by the completion of the terms to which Man stands obliged to God So that St. Paul joyns them both together thus considered without any suspition of contrariety For saith he to the Thessalonians It is a righteous 2 Thes 1. 6 7. thing and that is no less then just with God to recompence tribulation to them that trouble you And to you who are troubled rest with us c. But some have said concerning the reward in such cases as holy faithful working promised that it is promised to the Person and not to the Work Which if it were so as upon tryal would scarce prove so what an evasion doth this prove Seeing in such cases it is most absurd to divide and oppose those two which are inseparable For God neither doth reward the work without the person neither the person without the work but the person working as the person believing Therefore when St. Paul saith in his second Epistle to Timothy I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the Faith he declareth his holy Life and good works and when he addeth Henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the Righteous or just Judge as the old Translation had it shall give me at that day and not unto me only but unto all them also that love his appearing doth sufficiently implie an inseparableness of the person from the work and that which puts the person into a capacity of the reward or Crown is the dutifulness of the person towards God So that there must of necessity be a Causality in good deeds in order to our Salvation though considering the most vulgarousness of the word merit and not the sense diluted with the abovesaid qualifications it is both immodest and unsafe to applie the same to Acts which are Good neither for their own sake nor for the Agents sake but for Christs sake and the liberal promise sake of God So that to say That Christ merited that we might merit is very improperly as well incroachingly spoken upon the Grace of God but to say That Christ merited to the end we might effectually work out our Salvation is to say no more then St. Paul intendeth in his Epistle to the Thessalonians where he affirmeth that God hath not appointed us to wrath but to obtain Salvation by â—â—hes 5. 9. our Lord Jesus Christ And how obtain the words going before and following speaking of good works sufficiently declare and yet shall be more fully explained in the succeeding Chapter CHAP. XVII Of the two special Effects of Faith and Good Works wrought in Faith Sanctification and Justification what they are Their Agreements and differences In what manner Sanctification goes before Justification and how it follows it WE have shewed the Effect of Faith to be Good Works we have also shewed how and in what sense the Effect of good Works is Salvation but there remains two other effects both of Faith and works of Faith here to be considered before we proceed and they are Sanctification and Justification For good Works are fruitful not only in reference to an ample and manifold reward but in Serva ergo mandata Dei-Sanctifica cor tuum ut Deus inhabitet in te Et quotidie magis magis invenies Deum Opus Imperfect in Mat. Him 4. reference to good Works as the Parable of our Saviour in the twenty fifth of Mathew plainly informs us where it is said Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them other five talents These five talents acquired to the first five cannot be interpreted the reward ultimate for that is expressed afterward to be the Joy of the Lord
Justice But to arrive in this doubtful and perplexed way to the right end of this Dispute it will be necessarie to pass briefly through all the several Causes of our Justification and so much the rather because divers before have so done and failed in their Divinity because of a mistake in Logick in miscalling Causes And first we must know otherwise then some have taught That the Material Cause of our Justification is not the graces in us nor the pardon without us nor remission of sins nor obedience of Christ nor of our selves but the person justified is the subject of Justification For who with good sense can say Our sins are justified our good works are Justified Acts. 13. 3â— True it is St. Paul saith by him Christ all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be Justified by the Law of Moses Shewing hereby that we are Justified from our sins but not that our sins are Justified And so where St. James speaks so often of which hereafter that we are Justified by Works he intendeth not to say our Works are Justified For t is the person not the qualities of him that is Justified And if any speak otherwise they must be helpt out by recurring to Figurative not proper speaking In such cases as these if ever we would judge aright we must hold as precisely as can be to propriety of speech About the Final cause of our Justification I find nothing singular but in common with all the Acts of God towards man and all the Actions of Man towards God viz The glory of God Neither is there any difference of parties herein But concerning the Formal Cause of our Justification before God some discord is found yea concerning a Formal Cause in General what it is and wherein it consisteth which is very necessarie to be understood to attain to the true notion of being Formally Justified A Formal Cause then is that whereby a thing is what it is subsists in it self and is distinguished from other things being always essential and intrinsecal to the thing so by it constituted that it cannot be so much as conceived without it and cannot possibly but be with it This whether artificial or not I weigh not much but is a true description of that Cause For instance sake A man is a man properly by his soul and not by his body his soul being his Inward form and as it is impossible that he should be so without it so is it impossible but that he should be so with it whatever outward visible defects or imperfections may appear otherwise So in the present cause it must necessarily be that the Formal Cause of our Justification be intrinsecal to the Justified person and that not being that he should not be justified Contrary to what some have affirmed upon this occasion who from an instance of an Eclipse would show that the formal Cause is not alwayes intrinsecal to that which it formeth For say they as it should seem by the autority of Zabarel In an Eclipse of the Sun the Moon interposing is the formal Cause of the Darkness of the Earth and yet it is not intrinsecal to it but separate But the mistake is plain that the Moon being not the cause of the earth it self but of the darkness of the earth only it is not the Formal Cause of that and so may be extrinsecal to it and intrinsecal to the darkness as the formal cause but whether this be so or not we are here only to show that no cause formal can be external to the thing of which it is the form and by consequence that nothing without us can be the formal cause of our Justification or that whereby we are denominated Just before God So that neither Christ nor his merits do render us so Justified And therefore they who to magnifie the mistery of our Justification do object to themselves How a man can be Just by the justice of another and how righteous by another persons righteousness any more than a man can hear with another mans ears or see with another mans eyes do tie such a knot as they can by no means loose For in plain truth neither the one nor the other can formally be But they may say As it is Christs righteousness indeed and rests only in him so we cannot be said to be justified formally by it but as it is made ours especially by Faith and is applied unto us so we may be formally Justified by it To which I say that if that individual formal Righteousness which is in Christ were by any means so transferred formally unto us and infused into us that we should in like manner possess it as did Christ then indeed the argument would hold very good that by such application we were Justified formally by Christs righteousness but no such thing will be granted neither is any such thing needfull For though the Scripture saith directly that Christ is The Lord our Phil. 3. 9. righteousness and St. Paul desireth to be found in Christ not having his own righteousness which is of the Law but that which is through the Faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God by Faith Yet we are not to understand hereby that the formal righteousness of Christ becomes our formal Righteousness but that he is by the Gospel he revealed unto us the teacher of Righteousness and that far different from that Righteousness of the Law which St. Paul calls his own as that which he brought with him to Christ and he is Justification is neither but a certain action in God applied unto us or a certain respect or relation whereby we ar acquit of our sins and accepted to life everlasting Perkins Gal 2. 16. Rom. 8. 30. the Prime Cause of our Righteousness sending his holy Spirit unto us and by his merits appeasing the wrath of God and satisfying his Justice for us all which is not the formal cause of our Righteousness or Justification For neither is that formal righteousness in us which is inherent Righteousness the formal Cause of our Justification But our Justification formal is an Act of God terminating in Man whereby he is absolved from all guilt reputed Just and accepted to Grace and favour with God When God hath actually passed this divine free and gracious sentence upon a sinner then and not before is he formally Justified This is the end and consummation of all differences between God and man and the initiating him into all saving Grace here and Glory hereafter as St. Paul writing to the Romans witnesseth in these words Whom he predestinated them he also called and whom he called them he also Justified and whom he justified them he also glorified CHAP. XIX Of the Efficient Cause of Justification IT remains therefore now that we proceed to the means causes and motives inducing God Almighty thus to Justifie Man a sinner whom he might rather condemn for his unrighteousness And these as
prove the same they meaning no more then Gods Election to the state of Grace that is the Faith and Profession of the Gospel Whence it is that the persons so called and converted to Christ are by St. Paul called the Election as Rom. 9. 11. For the children being not yet born neither having done good Rom. 9. 11. or evil that the purpose of God according to Election might stand not of works but of him that calleth Here the purpose of God is distinguished from the election of God meaning That what God had before-time purposed and resolved on he in time executed in electing the younger and relinquishing the elder and that rather from his own Free-will then my difference in the Persons so elected inducing him thereunto And so Chapt. 11. v. 5. The remnant according to his election is the remnant elected Chap. 11. v. 5. 7. 28. And again verse 7. he saith The election hath obtained And verse 28. Touching the election they are beloved In which three places it is to me plain That by election St. Paul doth mean the Persons elected from Jewish Superstition to Christian Profession As St. Peter also useth the same word saying of the Jewish Converts Elected together with you And 1 Pet. 5. 13. 1 Pet. 1. 2. Matth. 24. 22 24 32. and several other places in which nothing more is intended by the Holy Ghost than they who were in outward communion of Faith So that being sure of a mans Election as every ordinary Christian is he becomes in proportionable manner surâ— of his Justification and Salvation that is sure that the Faith he professes is altogether sufficient to lead him infallibly to salvation which neither the Religion of the Jew or Gentile can assure him of Yet to the reapinâ— of the fruit hereof it must alwayes be supposed That such conditionâ— as God requires on the Party stipulating be not wanting Now of this sort of Assurance I make no doubt but the word of God is more genuinely interpreted and applyed than of that personal assurance peculiar to some who frame another notion of being elected which is of being signally chosen out of the former Elect to an infallible assurance of their Justification and Salvation which though I willingly grant o be true viz. That God hath his peculiar ones amongst Christians too as Christians amongst Heathen yet I find little or nothing spoken of under the said Appellations of Elect Elected Election in Scripture but of the first sense generally My appeal shall be to the indifferent judge by laying the testimonies before him which are principally these many coming nothing near the point St. Paul saith to the Romans of Abraham That he did not doubt of the promise of God through unbelief but was strong Rom. 4. 20 21. in saith giving glory to God And being fully perswaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform How far this is beside the matter every sober man will easily see that shall consider seriously That these Promises were made directly and expresly to Abrahams person and not in common with other persons And can any man be so unadvised as to conclude That because Abraham having such a particular and personal Promise made to him by God and indeed absolute and inconditionate that he should have a Son by Sarah his wife which he believed and without staggering was assured of therefore they who have no such personal assurances given of God but only general and alwayes conditional of their Justification and Life Everlasting can be in like manner assured of the same or ought to believe that they shall be saved as much as Abraham did that God would send him a Son as he promised The sum of Gods infallible Promise to Christians is this in St. Matthew He that believeth Matth. 16. 1â— and is baptized shall be saved where it must of necessity be granted that Believing is a very comprehensive word according to our distinction of Faith above given and consequently that it cannot be so evident to a man that he believeth according to the Tenour and intent of the Covenant of Grace as it was to Abraham that God himself made such a Promise to him and therefore hath not the like footing for his Faith assuring him that he believeth aright as that he should have a Son when his common sense told him that God had promised he should It is said that Faith is opposite to doubting For Christ said to Peter Matth. 14. 31. O thou of little Faith wherefore didst thou doubt This is very true and therefore we say It is no article or object of our Faith to believe that we shall be infallibly saved but it is rather an object of our Fear and more properly of our Hope For though it be said in the Apostles Creed I believe the remission or forgiveness of sgins it is not meant that any man should thereby stand obliged to believe as an Article of Faith the actual forgiveness of his own sins but that his own sins and all other Christian peoples are remissible and that in the Catholick Church there is forgiveness to all that repent and believe And this is no more then that General Assurance that by being baptized we are in a state of Salvation as is above-said To multiply many Texts to infer this from Gods faithfulness who promiseth and from his gifts being without repentance and such like are not worth their time that use them nor would it be worth mine to examine them any farther then to say That they are a great deal too large to have any particular relation to a mans personal state As if God must needs change if a man falls from his stedfast purpose Or God when he in his own counsel determines to save any man infallibly must inseparably annex thereunto this Evidence of his will to the Party any more then it is necessary that all men who leave others their Estates should tell them so much and require at their hands that they make no question of the same under the penalty of forfeiting all The surest grounds therefore for this seem to be taken from revelation which no Christian can absolutely oppose For not only may God but God hath revealed this to others by the testimony of his Spirit or other sufficient Evidence for to beget an assurance But two exceptions are made against this way the one That the dispute is only about the Ordinary dispensations common to all true believers The other That these places alledged prove no more than the common Justification of believers and their Adoption As for instance John 1. 12. As many as received him John 1. 12. to them gave he power to become the Sons of God even as many as believe in his name Here say they believing is put for receiving so that true faith receiveth Christ and this it doth by a particular application of general promises unto a mans self Therefore a man ought to be
are intimated to us in these words of St. Paul which are vulgarly brought against us viz. Nevertheless the foundation of God 2 Tim. 2. 19. standeth sure having this seal The Lord knoweth who are his And let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity The first foundation of God is that which he hath layed in his assuring us that he will have a Church in despite of all Enemies and Persecuters which would destroy it The second is the seal to this Charter which relating to special persons is twofold The First That God knoweth who are his that is according to Scripture phrase owneth and asserteth the cause of those that are his and will never forsake them otherwise than he hath declared that is they not violating egregiously the Covenant on their parts The second is that which follows viz. Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity This is the seal set to the Covenant made by God which if not duly and proportionably to the favourableness of the Evangelical Covenant observed by man the seal of God avails but little to the benefit of a Christian A second conclusion may be That notwithstanding God hath no where enjoyned us under any forfeiture to obtain this assurance yet he requireth us to be alwayes so pressing and proficient in Faith and Holiness of Life that above his Capitulations or ordinary Promises made in his Word he may communicate his pleasure unto us and good-will concerning the particular salvation of us This hath been imparted unto divers and may again when it seems good to God But it is no Rule to us Thirdly A faithful Christian ought to endeavour the attaining to a strong and true degree of Hope by Gods grace and the working out of his Salvation with fear and trembling For St. John saith That a man may arrive to such a state of assurance as 't is called that considering and believing the undetermined mercy of God in the Gospel he may have confidence of Gods love towards him his own conscience not condemning him as St. John saith Beloved if our heart condemn us not then 1 John 3. 21. have we confidence towards God Lastly This sense serves much to the comfort and tranquility of the mind of scrupulous Christians more than the holding of a peremptory assurance of Salvation which they who require it cannot deny to be wanting to many faithful servants of God For when they consider that the want of this assurance is no indication or character of a Reprobate as some would make it and they must who bring it under precept and promise then are they heartened still to press towards holy and devout exercises believing that God not seeing nor judging as man judgeth nor as they of themselves but out of his incircumscribed mercie may accept them and have mercy on them And here properly doth that doctrine of Faith commended in the Articles of our Church as very comfortable take place viz. as that which when we have done all we must betake ourselves unto and which brings us neerest to God namely not that we believe we are justified for or because we believe we are freely but because Faith and trust in God as it is the first stone in our heavenly building so is it the crown and consummation of all when we disown and disavow all sufficiencie in ourselves or our most Christian Acts even Faith it self and trust in his mercy to be accepted under all our fears and reasonings to the contrary not manifestly violating the Covenant with God for which our own hearts and ordinary apprehensions may condemn us CHAP. XXII Of the Contrary to true Faith Apostasie Heresie and Atheism Their differences The Difficulty of judging aright of Heresie Two things constituting Heresie The Evil disposition of the mind and the falseness of the Matter How far and when Heresie destroyes Faith How far it destroyes the Nature of a Church THus having sufficiently treated of the most general and principal Effect of Faith before we leave this we are in reason to enquire into that which privatively relates to true Faith and that is Heresie What that is and wherein it consisteth For Heresie cannot properly be applyed to any but such who are of the Faith and in some degree belong to the Catholick Church wherein it is distinct from Atheism Apostasie and professed Infidelity For Infidelity though it carries with it in its name a sense which comprehends both Atheism and Apostasie yet use hath prevailed so far as to apply it only to such who do receive some Articles of the Christian Faith and them fundamental too though not as the Christians For Example Infidels may believe there is a God and that God but one and that there shall be a Resurrection of the Just and Unjust and Life everlasting either in misery or bliss yet being either wholly ignorant of or directly denying some fundamental Points of Faith as Christian they continue Infidels though not Atheists Neither can they be accounted Hereticks having never been of the Church nor initiated into or embraced the true Faith These are Negatively only related to the Church as Logicians say Dissimilary things relate one to another viz. A black thing to a white But Heresie is of a privative sense and an opposition to the true Catholick Faith with an Obligation not only taken from the matter of Faith it self to which all the world owe homage and obedience but from some extrinsecal formalities whereby some men more especially contract a relation to the Church of Christ And the first and most principal cause hereof is the solemn dedication which is made by ourselves or others we not oppugning it of us in the initiating Rite of Baptism wherein renunciation is openly made of all things persons and opinions contrary and inconsisting with that Doctrine we there submit unto and vow to observe This Dedication of us to Christ doth make and denominate us Christians and Catholicks according to the less ancient use of the word of which we shall hereafter speak Now according to the degree or manner of violating this most solemn and sacred Vow in Baptism are men said to be Apostates and Hereticks And an Apostates are Hereticks but not all Hereticks Apostates The principal difference consisteth in this 1. That the Apostate doth renounce even the first principles of Christian Faith as Christian And they are they which are expresly contained in the form of Baptism whereby he became a Christian 2. In a formal profession contrary to such Covenant made with God in Christ But Heresie doth not absolutely deny the Grounds of Christianity it self but whether by affected errour or invincible doth resolutely and firmly assert things contrary to true Doctrine But to give a precise definition of Heresie as St. Augustine of old so we find at this day very difficult and not to turn to the right hand or to the left not to make it too broad and wide
drunkenness who putteth the bottle to his neighbours mouth provoking him to drink to excess or of Theft who will by no means steal himself but is aiding in his advice and putting advantages into his hands to take anothers Goods In like manner the necessary consequence of a light Errour being very notorious though a person be not formally an Heretick in the conclusion which he may protest against as not following from his erroneous proposition yet if in truth it doth so and is generally so reputed to the mis-leading of Christians such a man is really or virtually an Heretick and obnoxious to the guilt and punishment due unto such Errours which he denies For instance It is a notorious Heresie to hold it unnecessary there should be any Church of Christ and to affirm That it suffices that every good Christian hath the word of God and believes and lives by himself though the word of God contradicts this impiety sufficiently and to be a Christian at large If any person heretically inclined shall deny that this is his opinion or that thus he would have it yet if he preaches such Doctrine and publishes such Opinions which do necessarily infer thus much he is a notorious Heretick in reality though not in the formality As also if he should teach The Church hath no power to enjoyn any thing besides what the word of God requires This Errour taken simply and nakedly hath no such monstrousness as may not pass for tolerable but in the necessary consequence it is as pernicious to the community of Christians as to preach against Christ himself And therefore the argument of late Rationalists is very false founded upon this ground Socinus Chi. viz. That Christians are not to be obliged under pain of damnation such as Anathema's and Excommunications are to any thing which Christ hath not by his Law prescribed For this indeed taken strictly is true Christ for ought may appear doth not in Scripture command Rites in use with the Church but Christ under pain of his displeasure doth require that we should do all things not contrary to his injunctions for the keeping up Non sunt parva existimanda sine quibus magna consistere enim possint Hieron of the nature of a Church and Christian Society and therefore though the Errour be in it self light it falls in the event heavy upon Christianity it self and deserves no less rigour than is used towards the offender in Faith it self Lastly From hence we may reasonably judge of the frequent denunciations of alienation from the Faith and Church against them who erred heretically affirming in general That Heresie quite alienated from the Church and that Society could not be of the Church which maintained an Heresie For first we are to note that few or none before St. Cyprians time were so severely censured by the ancient Fathers but such as were offenders against the very principles of Christianity it self St. Cyprian indeed and others from him extended this censure to such as were less criminal For it is a very hard matter to instance in any one Article of Faith though I know some great Clerks have attempted it which Novations or Donatists rejected or offended against So that abating somewhat for the vehemence of the zeal conceived against such enemies to the Church in the writings of Fathers against Hereticks it will appear that it was matter of Fact rather than Faith or Heresie which exposed them to such censures For uncharitableness will as certainly damn as unfaithfulness And he that dies for Christ as divers Hereticks did in animosity groundless against his brother and especially against the Church of which he is or ought to be a member may notwithstanding loose his Life hereafter as well as here But of this more now we are to speak of the Church CHAP. XXIII Of the proper Subject of Faith the Church The distinction and description of the Church In what sense the Church is a Collection of Saints Communion Visible as well as Invisible necessary to the constituting a Church HAving spoken of the Nature Kinds Acts and Effects of Christian Faith we proceed now to speak of the proper Subject of Faith which is the Church Which word is commonly used as well for the Place where our Lord is publickly and solemnly worshipped as for the People of God serving and worshipping him But of this latter only we art to treat at present which we define to be A Calling and Collection of Saints from The Church is an universal Congregation or fellowship of Gods faithful People and Elect built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets Jesus Christ being the head and corner stone Hom. Chur. of Engl. Part. 2. pa. 213. their vain Conversation in the world to the Faith and Worship of God according to the Rule and Laws of his Holy word and to visible communion with themselves which description I doubt not to be grounded in all its parts upon the Scriptures themselves And that God is the Author and only Institutor of such a Church if it needed any proof the Scripture would soon afford it St. Paul saith to the Corinthians Chap. 7. * 1 Cor. 7. 17. But as God hath distributed to every man as the Lord hath called every one so let him walk and so ordain I in all Churches And so exhorteth the Thessalonians to †1 Thess 2. 12 walk worthy of God who called them to his Kingdom and Glory And so in very many places else where as will appear farther now we consider the Term from whence God doth call and choose his faithful people and that is the World the world not taken in its natural sense signifying the Natural bodies of all sorts of which it consisteth nor absolutely from it in the more special sense in which Mankind is sometimes called the world for civil conversation and humane mutual Offices may be maintained and ought between Christians and Heathens or Infidels but rather in a moral sense that is unnatural unjust unrighteous communication with the wicked of the world as wicked as St. Paul explaineth himself to the 1 Cor. 5. 9 10. Corinthians I wrote unto you in an Epistle not to company with fornicatours Yet not altogether to refuse to converse with the fornicatours of this world or with the covetous or extortioners or with Idolaters for them must ye needs go out of the world but if any man that is called a brother be a fornicatour c. St. Peter takes most of the terms in our description speaking 1 Pet. 2. 9 10. of Converts to the Faith Ye are a chosen generation a Royal Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar People that ye should shew forth the praises of God who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light c. And St. Paul to the Ephesians According as he hath chosen us in him before the Ephes 1. 4. foundation of the World that we should be holy and
be pronounced by others who are ordained of God to be judges of our state of Grace upon the discovery of our consciences to them then can be by our selves which is sufficient but of the unalterableness of that state no man can certainly affirm any thing Which holdeth true likewise as to the contrary state of Damnation For though a more than probable judgment may be made of the state of Damnation of him who continues impenitently in notorious sins yet may no man pronounce a peremptory sentence against any such person that he inevitably shall be damn'd because he cannot see into the abstruse Counsels of Almighty God so far as to deny a Liberty left in him to confer such efficacious grace upon such a notorious offender as may reduce him to God no more than withdraw grace from him who at present standeth in all probable way of perseverance This being so it followeth from hence necessarily That the Church of Christ taken for the so faithful and elect that they shall without all peradventure attain the Crown of the Triumphant is evermore in its own nature invisible that is not to be distinguished by us nor known certainly and if so then in vain and to no purpose at all are such Disputations as are made about the invisible Church in that sense of invisibility which signifies that which can in no manner appear certainly to us The other sense of invisibleness according to which a thing is possible to be seen is an object of sense but actually is either not to be seen or with very great difficulty For as in Philosophy it is with Divisibility so may it be with Visibility in Divinity Every thing that hath Quantity according to the Philosopher is divisible or is capable of being divided into lesser parts even without end but yet so small may the parts so divided become at last that no Artist shall be able to cut them any more in pieces So may we understand a thing to be visible which is so small and inconsiderable that actually it can hardly if at all be perceived But visible and palpable being taken for things which not only affect the senses simply but with some more than common notoriety the usual question Whether the Church of Christ is alwayes visible ought to be understood of such a competence of perspicuity as may ordinarily be discerned by persons rightly disposed in their understandings taking here right disposition of our inward apprehensions in a proportionable manner to that which relates to our common outward senses which if it be called into doubt as it may no wonder that the other may be and that without remedy Now according to the most strict acceptation of Visible for whatsoever may possibly be discerned the reasolution will be easie That Christs Church is and must alwayes be visible For thus to be Invisible is as much as not to be at all For seeing the Parts of which it consists be they but two or three persons in the most rigorous sense are Visible the whole must needs be visible too of it self however it may in the more received sense be termed invisible because compared with the Church of Christ as prophesied of and promised in the Gospel it is so inconsiderable as may deserve rather to be accounted invisible it being out-shined and over-shadowed by other Pretenders But there being two things which constitute the Church one the association of many persons into outward communion one with another the other the inward communion in the true Faith of Christ and the former being common very often to Hereticks as well as true Christians it may be doubted whether the true Church of Christ as opposed to heretical Societies is at all visible For seeing the true and orthodox Faith together with its practical holiness do not occur plainly to our senses the true Faith cannot be discerned visibly from the false by any outward sense How can it possibly be said that the Church of Christ is at all visible or apparent to a man 'T is true a man may discern a real man from a painted man or from any other creature from the outward notices of his body though he cannot see his soul which doth primarily constitute the person of man but he cannot see whether he be a true and honest man in a moral sense from any thing appearing outwardly So may one discern the Faith professed in general to be Christian by the outward frame and fashion of the Church professing the same but the soundness of the same and sincerity according to Christs will and institution he cannot from thence conclude upon And therefore if the Catholick Faith as Catholick in the stricter sense can never be visible the Catholick Church so being and denominated from that Faith can never be said to be properly visible but only as a Society not as the true Society of Christians in opposition to the false For instance sense or common reason not informed from the word of God could never judge whether the Arrian or the Catholick Faith as it then began to be called were most truly Christian but they both might judge that they were Christian Societies and so at least outwardly made a true Church But because it is one thing to profess the true Faith and another quite distinct from that Truly to profess the Faith as it is one thing to profess Justice and Truth and Honesty and another truly to profess these and practise them therefore can there be no estimate taken of the true Catholick Church from the persons professing the Catholick Faith who are alwayes uncertain and mutable but judgement must be made from the outward constitution only which are Discipline or Government and not Doctrine or Faith For where the former is not rightly composed according to the mind and institution of Christ there cannot be said to be a true Church And where the second is wanting there must likewise be no Church the foundation of the Church and Rule failing viz. the true Faith But wherever these be inviolately and incorruptly preserved and publickly professed though we should suppose every particular Member of such a Society to be notorious Hypocrites yet the Church might be said to be a true Church because the Church doth not receive any more than its material subsistance from the persons believing but its formal and more distinct Being it hath from the true Regiment and Faith which it is possible though scarce probable may be sufficiently preserved under hypocritical and wicked members of the same This is not only true in it self but appears so to be from the necessity of having any knowledge of the true Church at all and its being visible at any time For it never being certainly visible who are the predestinate infallibly to Life and who are not who shall constantly stand and who shall fall who are inwardly hypocrites and who are faithful and sincere indeed seeing notwithstanding the exactest judgment and search of man there
and for ought appears the Schismatical may be in greater unity within it self than the Catholick how can any man discern from unity which is the Catholick or true Church The Unity therefore which may any wise describe or distinguish the sounder part of Christs Church from the heretical must not be taken from that which it holdeth within it self but with some other which is acknowledged for Catholick wherein comes the use of Antiquity again because the Ancient Churches of Christ were saved by the same Faith and Worship that all succeeding Churches must be therefore if it may appear that a Church doth not agree in all necessary or considerable points of Faith Worship and Government with them of former ages supposed to be truly Catholick it self cannot be Catholick or a true Christian Church But they who look no higher than one Age or two and no farther then one place or two and finding convenient agreement amongst themselves do characterise themselves for Christs Church fall into the censure of St. Paul to the Corinthians who measuring themselves by themselves and comparing 2 Cor. 10. 12. themselves among themselves are not wise And in the Revelation of St. John we read of some Nations into whose heart God hath put to fulfill Revel 17. 7. his will and to agree and give their Kingdom unto the Beast until the word of God should be fulfilled I hope this unity of consent will not be taken for any argument of the faithfulness of their consent or Catholickness But more we shall have occasion to speak of Unity in the treating of Schism In the mean time I see no force at all in the places alleadged out of the Old Testament to prove so much as may be well allowed to the unity of the Church as where it is said My Beloved is but one and to the Cantic like purpose For such places taken in relation to Fact and not to Precept and counsel rather that Gods Church should be so and endeavour to keep the Spirit of Unity in the bond of peace as the Apostle speaks can Ephes 4. 3. be understood strictly only of that single Nation of the Jews which was alone chosen so peculiarly to himself Or of the future Coalition of Jew and Gentile into one Body as the same Apostle in the same Epistle speaketh of Christs Passion That he might reconcile both unto God in one Chap. 2. 16. Body by the Cross having slain the enmity thereby i. e. between Jew and Gentile These difficulties and uncertainties in this Note of Unity have constrained the Patrons of the Roman Cause to find out such an Unity which indeed is more apparent and certain to him that commits his Faith to be guided by some outward sign but so much repugnant to all ancient Churches so wholly strange to them and unheard of that it may seem to do them much more mischief than advantage as that which excludes all Antiquity from having any suffrage in this cause And this their Note is Unity Bellarm. de Notis Eccles lib. 4. cap. 10. init with the Bishop of Rome as boldly said and as weakly proved as their enemies could wish St. Hierom indeed saith to Damasus he is resolved to hold as He and that See believed in one particular of the Trinity and used not simply and abstractly consider'd this as a probable argument of Orthodoxness and preserving the peace of the Church but with the concurrence of other Circumstances rendring his Opinion probable But doth he or any ancient Author deserving with themselves the name of a Father teach as they would perswade indefinitely That to hold communion with the Bishop of Rome is to be assured you are of the true Catholick Church Christs Charter much stood upon to St. Peter and the Rhetorical flourishes many times of the Holy Fathers extolling St. Peter and his Successors but never categorically affirming or soberly determining so will not amount to this Hence they proceed to Universality too as a sign of the true Church and an help to Unity it self For it profitteth nothing that there be some one Church and that in one Age and Place which is at unity with it self if it be not universal Christs Church is said to be universal but so many senses are given of Universality it self that it is hard to apply it positively to any pretending to it For nothing so plain as that the Christian Faith doth not and never did possess all Nations nor all the persons of those Nations where it hath flourished No man therefore can know the true Church by that which is not true of it And therefore I make no doubt but the most anciently genuine and proper sense of that expression in the Apostles Creed where it is said I believe the Catholick Church Vide Augustinum Epistolâ— 50. aimed at no more than to cause us to believe that Christs Church was from that time forward no longer to be of one Nation or one Denomination as it was before Christs Incarnation but Catholick that is Universal and indifferently to extend to all People For at that time when the Creed was composed the secondary sense wherein Catholick and sound Believer signified the same thing was scarce at all heard of no not before the Councel of Nice under Constantine Afterwards it was applyed to particular Sees as well Alexandrian Antiochian and some others as Roman In Theodosius the second his dayes which above 400 years after Christ a Sozomenus Ecclesiast Hist lib. 7. cap. 4. Law was made that none should call themselves Catholicks but such as believed aright concerning the Holy Trinity the rest should be termed Hereticks Afterward notwithstanding every Sect and Heresie usurped that name as may appear from that very place corruptly cited out of Austin August Epist ad Epistolam Fundamenti by some to prove the true Church from the Title of Catholick it self For saith he however all Hereticks desire to be called Catholicks yet if any enquired for a Catholick Church they were directed to the Orthodox and not Heretical Churches But if we take the word Catholick in a more restrained sense not for that which is all over the world actually but so far as it doth extend passeth generally through all and that not Places but Ages too where shall we find a Catholick Church Christians never for fourteen or fifteen hundred yeers not conspiring into one belief no not in things held very important to Faith and I mean not only single persons but Societies of Christians Therefore neither from hence can we conclude directly of the true Church in opposition to Heretical And therefore the Patrons of this opinion of the Universality finding themselves harder pursued with difficulties than they can evade being taken in their own snares are forced according to their very vain custom to leave off the tryal of the truth from matter of Fact which is most plain and ready and proceed to say It ought so
to be for certain reasons they draw at their pleasure out of Scripture and the necessity of our knowledge of it which is as solid a way of proceeding as if I finding my self by natural sense cold another should attempt to demonstrate the contrary because it is Midsommer But this use we may yet make of Universality to jude of Catholickness of Faith taking it for the most constant for time place and persons according as all humane account requires to ascribe that to the more numerous and eminent which is strictly proper only to the whole entire Body as a Councel or Senate is said to decree a thing when the chiefest do so some dissenting surely this is a very probable argument of the Catholickness of that Faith and consequently that Church so believing But what we before observed must not be forgotten here viz. That in all such enquiries as these the Estimate must be taken from the whole Church passed as well as Present and that there is as well an Eminency of Ages as Persons to preponderate in this Case Lastly the advantage Negative from Universality is very considerable to discern the true Faith and Church from false because it is most certain if any Doctrine or Discipline shall be obtruded on the Church which cannot be made evident to have been actually received in the Church and not by colourable and probable conjectures and new senses of Scripture invented to that purpose in some former Age that is Heretical and Schismatical and in no good sense Catholick The last Note which we shall mention is Sanctity which we hold very proper to this end taken abstractedly from all Persons as considered in Doctrine and Principles For if any Church doth teach contrary to the Law of nature of moral vertues of Justice or the like we may well conclude that to be a false Church though it keeps it self never so strictly to the Rule of Scriptures in many or most other things For it is in the power of mans wit and may be in the power of his hands to devise certain Religious Acts and impose them on others which shall carry a greater shew of severity and sanctity than there is any grounds for in Scripture or Presidents in the best approved Churches and yet this is not true Holiness of Believers For to this is principally required that it be regulated and warranted by Gods holy Word Yet neither so directly and expresly as if it were unlawful to act any thing in order to Holiness without special precept from thence For I see no cause at all to reject the ancient distinction found frequently with the Fathers of the Church of duties of Precept and duties of Councel For there ever was and ought to be in Christs Church several ranks of Professours of Christs Religion whereof for instance some live more contemplative some more active lives But if all commendable and profitable States were under Precept then should all sin that do not observe the same but God hath taken a mean course in not commanding some things of singular use to the promoting of Piety in true Believers but commending the same unto us Such are Virginal chastity Monastick life Travelling painfully not only towards the salvatian of a mans own soul but of others likewise and certain degrees uncommanded of Duties commanded as of charity towards our Christian neighbours Watchings unto Prayer and spiritual Devotion which being prescribed no man can determine to what degree they are by God required of us precisely some therefore are left to the Freewill-offerings of devouter persons who thereby endeavour either to assure themselves more fully of their salvation or increase of the glory afterward to be received For as Christ tells us in the Gospel Much was forgiven to Mary because she loved much so shall much be given upon the same reason They therefore that teach contrary to such wholesome and useful means of Holiness as these or the like under perhaps vain suspicion of too great opinion may be had of their worthiness incur at least with me the censure of being enemies to the holiness of Christs Church and render their Churches more suspected for the opposing of them than others for approving or practising them The Holiness then of the Church commending it to the eye and admiration of the World doth consist in the divineness and spiritualness of its Doctrine and Ecclesiastical discipline in use in it exceeding moral civility For it may be that such a severe hand of civil Justice may be held over a people that they may live more orderly and inoffensively to the world than some true Christian Churches but if this be done as often it is out of civil Prudence natural Gravity or a disposition inclined rather to get an estate than riotously and vainly to spend on which brings such scandal to Religion then is not this a sign of a true Church or Christian because it proceedeth not from principles proper to Christian Religion but secular interest how specious soever it may appear to the World CHAP. XXXI Of the Power and Acts of the Church Where they are properly posited Of the Fountain of the Power denyed to the Church Neither Prince nor People Authour of the Churches Power But Christ the true Head of the Church The manner how Christs Church was founded Four Conclusions upon the Premisses 1. That there was alwayes distinction of Persons in the Church of Christ 2. The Church was alwayes administred principally by the Clergy 3. The Rites generally received in the Church necessary to the conferring Clerical Power and Office 4. All are Vsurpers of Ecclesiastical Power who have not thus received it In what sense Kings may be said to be Heads of the Church AFter the Church found and founded as abovesaid the special Acts thereof claim due consideration and the Power or Right of so acting And this Power we make two-fold in General Political and Mystical or Sacramental Of both which we must first enquire after the proper Subject before we treat of the proper Acts thereof That all Power which is given by Christ doth reside in the Church as its subject no man can or doth question But because the Church it self being as is said a Society united in one Faith and administred outwardly by Christian Discipline according to Christs mind admitteth of several senses and acceptations therefore it must be first understood which and in what sense is according to Christs intention the proper seat of this power And before we come to Scriptural grounds we take no small help in this Enquiry from the common state of all Government which we have already shown to be such as is not ascending but descending It cometh not originally nor can from the multitude or people who are the object of this power i. e. the Persons properly to be governed and not governing all the Examples of former Ages confirming not only the unnaturalness and unreasonableness but impossibility of the People governing
Eucharist and especially going upon the grounds of Luther Calvin Perkins and some others of Great note that all Sacerdotal they may call them if they please Ministerial Acts done by him who is no true Minister are really null and void Fourthly we conclude that seeing all Ecclesiastical power as Ecclesiastical doth proceed from Christ and his Successors and that by Ordinary and visible means they who have not received the same by such Ordinary Methods are usurpers of the same whether Political or Mystical And that to deny this to the Church is to deny that which Christ hath given them and such a Principle of the Churches well Being without which it cannot subsist and it not subsisting neither can the Faith it self And to the reason above given we may add Prescription beyond all memory For from Christs time to this day a perpetual and peculiar power hath ever been in the Clergy which hath constantly likewise born the name of the Church to assemble define and dispose matters of Religion And why should not Prescription under Unchristian as well as Christian Governours for so many Ages together be as valid sacred and binding to acknowledgment in the Case of Religion as Civil Matters will ever remain a question in Conscience and common Equity even after irresistible Power hath forced a Resolution otherwise It is true such is the more natural and Ancient Right Civil Power hath over the outward Persons of men than that which Religion hath over the Inward man that it may claim a dominion and disposal of the Persons of even Christian subjects contrary to the soft and infirm Laws of the Church because as hath been said Men are Men before they are Christians and Nature goeth before Grace And Civil society is the Basis and support to Ecclesiastical Yet the grounds of Christianity being once received for good and divine and that Religion cannot subsist nor the Church consist without being a Society and no Society without a Right of counsel and consultation and no consultation without a Right to assemble together the Right of assembling must needs be in trinsique to the Church it self Now if no man that is a Christian can take away the essential ingredient to the Church how can any deny this of Assembling For the practise of it constantly and confidently by the Apostles and brethren contrary to the express will of the Lawful Powers of the Jews and Romans and the reason given in the Acts of the Apostles of obeying God rather then man do imply certainly a Law and Charter from God so to do and if this be granted as it must who can deny by the same Rule necessity of Cause and constant Prescription that they may as well provide for the safety of the Faith by securing the state of the Church as for the truth and stability of the Church by securing the true Faith by doctrine and determination The Great question hath ever been Whether the Church should suffer loss of power and priviledges upon the Supream Powers becomming Christian Or the Supream power it self loose that dominion which it had before it became of the Church For if Christianity subjected Kings necessarily to the Laws of others not deriving from them then were not Kings in so good a Condition after they were Christians as before when they had no such pretences or restraints upon them and so should Christs Law destroy or maim at least the Law of God by which Kings reign But there may be somewhatsaid weakning this absurdity For Granting this That there is a God and that he is to be worshipped and that as he appointeth all which we must by nature believe it seems no less natural to have these observed than the Laws of natural Dominion Now granting that at present which if we be true to our Religion we must not deny viz. That Christian Religion is the true Religion and that God will be worshipped in such sort as is therein contained For any Prince absolute to submit to the essentials of that Religion is not to loose any thing of his Pristine Rights which he had before being an Heathen for he never had any Right to go against the Law of God more then to go against the Law of Nature but it doth restrain his Acts and the exercise of his Power And if the Supream after he hath embraced Christianity shall proceed to exert the same Authority over the Church as before yet the Church hath no power to resist or restrain him Civilly any more than when he was an Alien to it Now it being apparent that Christian Faith and Churches had their Forms of believing and Communion before Soveraign powers were converted and that he who is truly converted to a Religion doth embrace it upon the terms which he there finds not such as he brings with him or devises therefore there lies an Obligation upon such powers to preserve the same as they found it inviolate And truly for any secular Power to become Christian with a condition of inverting the orders of the Church and deluting the Faith is to take away much more than ordinary accrues unto it by such a change It is true the distinction is considerable between the Power of a Christian and unchristian King exerted in this manner because taking the Church in the Largest sense in which all Christians in Communion are of it what Christian Kings act with the Church may in some sense bear the name of the Church as it doth in the State acting according to their secular capacity but much more improperly there than here because there are no inferiour Officers or Magistrates in such a Commonwealth which are not of his founding and institution whatsoever they do referr to him and whatsoever almost he doth is executed by them But Christ as we have shewed having ordained special Officers of his own which derive not their Spiritual Power at all from the Civil and to this end that his Church might be duly taught and governed what is done without the concurrence of these can in no proper sense bear the name of the Church But many say the King is a Mixt person consisting partly of Ecclesiastical and partly Civil Authority but this taken in the ordinary latitude is to begg the Question and more a great deal than at first was demanded For who knows how far this Mixture extends and that it comprehends not the Mystical Power of the Church as well as the Political And how have they proved one more than the other by such a title It were reasonable therefore first to declare his Rights in Ecclesiastical matters as well as Civil and thence conclude he is a Mixt Person and not to affirm barely he is a Mixt Person and from thence inferr they know not what Ecclesiastical power themselves And if he hath such power whether it is immediately of God annexed to his Natural Right or by consent of the Church is attributed unto him For by taking this course we
require as absolute Righteous internal and external as man is able to attain to in this world and as the Law required though nor so as if without it there were no possibility of Salvation though for want of it there be a merit of dammation but the rigour is qualified and remitted to us upon the intuition of Christs merits who interposeth for us with God not to exempt us in any kind from any imaginable part or degree of Holiness competible to us but to mitigate and remove the displeasure of God justly conceived against us for not being perfect For it no wayes follows That because such a small proportion of Holiness shall be accepted and such a vast proportion of wickedness shall be forgiven and passed over through Gods free Grace in Christ therefore by the general tenour of the Gospel God requires no more of the one nor less of the other For if the Gospel be as sure it is a more holy Law than that of Moses Is it not so because it requires of those under it greater Holiness A third difference I find is That the Law promiseth Life upon condition of Works but the Gospel upon condition of our committing our selves to Christ by Faith This is very ambiguously spoken and inclining to a very bad sense For what Life and what works are we here to understand It is shewed above how ill-agreed wise Interpreters are Whether any life besides this present is promised by the Law as Mosaical and not Evangelical and with this imitation I profess the Negative Part. Again What works Are we not to understand Works brought in and appointed by Moses To these works are promised indeed Life answerable to thom i. e. temporal and no more But he that saith we attain Life by committing our selves to Christ by Faith doth certainly mean Life spiritual and eternal which vast diversity in the end and reward quite nulls the comparison And besides how by committing our selves to Christ by Faith So as that works of the Gospel and Faith should be laid aside Yes say they as to our Justification though not to the commendation and approbation of our Faith But the vanity of this we have already discovered where we have proved that there is no promise made to us under the Gospel of being justified by Faith that the works of Faith may not be as instrumental to our Justification and Salvation as the Act of Faith so much presumed upon and that the one is as derogatory to the fulness and freeness of Christs Grace and Gods Mercy as the other and no more A fourth difference is That the Law was written in Tables of Stone but the Gospel in the Tables of the Heart Jerem. 31. 33. 2 Corinth 3. 3. This hath a true sense and therefore may pass though lyable to just exceptions as taking the Scriptures in a sense scarce intended Fifthly They say The Law was instill'd into our Nature at our first Creation But the Gospel was above nature and given after the Fall But we are not to distinguish the part from the whole nor the inchoation of a thing from its perfection The Gospel was in more particulars of agreeing with the Law of Nature then the Law of Moses and given in substance before the Law of Moses and 't is these two whose differences are sought after at present In the sixth place it is rightly said that Moses was the Mediatour of the Old Law and Christ of the New by which they explain themselves That by Law they mean Moses his Law For Moses was not the Mediatour of the Law natural but Adam rather And truly in the seventh place it is said The Law was dedicated by the blood of Beasts but the Gospel by the blood of Christ But the conclusion to these viz. That the two Testaments the Law and the Gospel are two in nature substance and kind is so far only true as the Law is taken precisely for that introduced by Moses and not concretely and conjoyntly with that Covenant made between God and Adam after his Fall CHAP. XXXV Considerations on the Sacraments of the Law of Moses Of Circumcision Of the Reason Nature and Ends of it Of the Passover the Reason why it was Instituted Its Vse VVHAT is now said of the nature and distinction of the Covenants made between God and Man do serve much to the clearing of the Nature and Number of Sacraments here to be explained briefly For all Sacraments properly so called are of a Foederal nature between God and Man And this covenanting made by God and Man is signed sealed and confirmed by these Sacraments And therefore according to the variety of these Covenants is also the variety of the Sacraments unless we except that most ancient Covenant of all between God and Man before his Fall For while man retained those connatural Graces bestowed on him by God he needed no such outward helps as Signs and Sacraments to contain him in due obedience to him nor such signs of Gods promises to him being able to act more spiritually freely and perfectly then now But upon the disabling of his inward man by sin once committed and the hebetation of his mind it was no less than necessary that by his outward senses occasion should be offered to the increase of his knowledge fear love and faith in God which is done by the mediation of Sacraments instituted by God and these diversified according to the variety of the Oeconomie it pleased God to use to the World For under the Law of Nature before Moses or Abraham men stood obliged to serve and worship God And in this condition the Sacrifices given to God and Oblations were of the nature and force of Sacraments For whether by light of nature or by special precept men offered Sacrifice to God it is apparent that was rather a signal to testifie their revering his Majesty and duty to him than any actual absolute worship and to insinuate an absolute Dominion and Right God had to our own lives in that instead of them which were forfeited to God by sin we offered Beasts slain to him and to all things in the World in that was exhibited to him so far as might be and returned that which was received from him But to these before Abraham was added that of Circumcision and afterward that of the Passover But we must note that these two Sacraments as they were not originally or from the beginning instituted of God so neither to all men nor for all times And this will appear from the particular occasions taken and reasons rendered of their Ordination For when God commanded Abraham to circumcise his Son and himself and all the Males of his Family it was no sign at all of any thing of general concernment to mankind or of the Messias simply which was before promised but it was a sign only that the Messias should proceed out of his Loyns and Seed which was an extraordinary honour and singular priviledge conferred
accepted if done by her more soberly and seriously as it ought by all whether Minister or otherwise And that this Act of Zipporah was not so exorbitant in the manner of doing as vulgarly supposed more learned Men have shewed at large And secondly That is was not so extraordinary doth appear from the practice of the Jews who as P. Fagius hath observed upon Deuteronomy Fagius in Deuteron C. 10. 16. Cap 10. v. 16. do believe if a Man be wanting to whom it belongs one Uncircumcised as a Servant a Woman so not an Heathen or Infidel a Youth may circumcise an Infant Neither was Circumcision to be repeated made by what man soever though an Heathen or Infidel And in brief We find no person excluded by the Catholick Church from doing this office for one desiring it or capable otherwise of it but a Mans self And yet we are told by searchers into the ancient practice of the Jews that a man might circumcise himself And thus much of the First Proper and Generally necessary Sacrament to Salvation Baptism adding only one thing more for a conclusion and that is about the Repetition of Baptism or Anabaptism Of which prophanation of that solemn Sacrament I find many really guilty but not so much nor upon those grounds they are Generally charged For I have not met with any that directly affirm it to be requisite or lawful to reiterate Baptism though in fact they do so For the Novatians the Donatists the Arrians and they of Late years who are called from the Renewing of their Baptism Anabaptists have none of them that we find declared it reasonable that Baptism once truly performed should be acted over again but all these suppose it not done and therefore they do it It was always the opinion of the Catholick as well as Heretical and Schismatical Churches That all outward words or washings sufficed not to the due effect of baptism There were three several incapacities which render'd pretended baptism void so far that the Person so baptized was held obliged to be again baptized The incapacity of the Minister or Baptizer The incapacity of the Person or subject to be baptized Thirdly the incapacity of the Form used in Baptism If the Minister had any time fallen from or denied the Christian Faith or was of impure and Scandalous manners he was reputed by the Novatians and Donatists uncapable of such a sacred Office and consequently in that though a Priest did not effectually administer that Holy Sacrament imagining that he who was so defiled himself could not by his Ministration cleanse another and therefore he was baptized not as repeating former baptism but as not being baptized at all The Arrians being enemies to the second Person in the Trinity and judging the Catholicks to be so too in ascribing too much unto Christs divine nature looked on the form of baptizing as corrupt and insufficient to such an end and therefore thought another necessary And our modern Anabaptists as they are called not thinking Infants capable of that Sacrament for want of Faith and Repentance which they hold absolutely necessary to Salvation and that in the properest sense deny any effect to follow upon those Actions used So that we see there are no proper Anabaptists such I mean who hold it so much as needful to baptize any persons above once Though in Fact they stand guilty of this prophanation upon the grounds of others not hard to be made Good against them as we have against these last shewing the Capacity children are in of receiving Baptism as also that the unworthiness of the Person ministring Sacraments doth not impede the effect of those Sacraments while he hath a proper subject to work upon and observes the proper form required Now this form according as the Arrians excepted against at doth depend upon the disputation of the Divine Nature of Christ proper to another place It may here be doubted whether the zeal of some of the Ancients but of most of the Schoolmen hath not too far transported them who damn all such as repeat Baptism once rightly administer'd it being impossible in their opinion that Baptism should be twice acted but the Former must be renounced and truly if Baptism once truly performed be renounced that which follows is also renounced being in it self good For there is but One Baptism as St. Paul saith But this can never be proved as necessarily Ephes 4. and perpetually true They indeed of whom now we have spoken who were so engaged in heretical opinions and societies as to believe the imperfection and insufficiency of that Baptism they received could not admit of another but they must reject the first But then whether absolutely they rejected true Catholick Baptism may be a doubt For he only renounces his Baptism properly who rejecteth the Form it self and the Faith therein implied And this is the One Baptism of which St. Paul is certainly to be understood that is necessarily One in nature but that it should be also so One in number as multiplied both should be made void no reason is given And surely St. Paul intended no such thing though he may be said much less to have intended the multiplication of it The more probable opinion therefore of the two is That the Second Baptism is void rather than the first As if two married persons being joyned together in Lawful Matrimony once should presume a Second time to go through the same Ceremony it may be only to confirm them in that state this were to baffle and prophane such Ordinances but it were not to make the former Vows and Rites void And for the reasons given against Iteration of Baptism though I yield the Conclusion that it ought not so to be I do not hold them convincing used to this purpose Not that taken from the indelibleness of that Character supposed to be imprinted in the soul by that Sacrament 'T is true Circumcision had a visible character made in the body which could scarce be altered or removed But that therefore to answer this there must be a proportionable impresâ—â—on the soul which is invisible follows not St. Paul calls Circumcision a sign and a seal and it is Baptism in a Metaphorical sense And the Fathers who many times mention such things intended nothing more than an immutable Obligation on our part to God and an infallible communication of Gods grace to them who duly are partakers of his Sacraments It is also true a Man can be born but once spiritually as naturally and therefore supersluous and prophane are all attempts to a Regeneration a second time the principles of spiritual life being preserved intire in themselves though in a way to be extinguished upon pertinacy in sin and dying in impenitency And for those places of Scipture where St. Paul tells us we are sealed by Gods spirit alledged 2 Cor. 1. 21 22. Eph. 1. 13 14. Eph. 4. 30. to prove that we have a Character made in Baptism
Divine power should be of the nature of Substance but such confusion and havock in nature to bring in an unnatural Dogm is no ways to be admitted not out of any defect in the Divine Power but an incapacity of the Creature to be so order'd against its nature And as this Condition of Species subsisting or existing separately of themselves is contrary to their nature So the significativeness of these Species is contrary to Christs Intention and Institution which were to make a representation of his death and passion by Bread and Wine and not by the Similitudes of Bread and Wine And this is to be noted That when the Ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin do affirm that Christs Body or Blood are present under the Species and Forms of Bread and Wine they do not mean such Species as the Schools of Aristotle have introduced for I find not that they took any notice of them distinct from the subject to which they relate but they took them in a more plain sense for the thing it self so affected and formed and Under the Species signified with them as much as Under the Kinds of Bread and Wine Christs Body was present And they never destroyed the Sacrament it self to give an extraordinary Being to the Body of Christ therein CHAP. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered AND If this be once made good That there is a Proper Sacrament remaining after Consecration it will be much less difficulty to agree upon the manner of Christs presence in the Sacrament For the doubt will not be so much about the Concomitance and co-existence of it with the Sacramental Signs as Whether that which we See with our eys and touch and taste be properly and not denominatively and Figuratively only the Body of Christ And in effect Whether it be the very Sacrament it self or whether only in the Sacrament The Doctrine of the Church of Rome determines not only that There it is but directly and expresly This it is and this we deny as that which indeed must include such a Transubstantiation as is by them affirmed and the chiefest grounds whereof we are now to examine And First from Scripture they are wont to argue and that from the Old Bellarm Lib. 1. Cap. 3. De Sacram. Eucharist Testament where are recorded many Types and Figures of Christ and particularly his Passion which were no less if not much more clear than the representations in the Eucharist if Christ himself be not there otherwise than Figuratively For the Paschal Lamb slain seems to represent Christs Passion more Lively and expresly than the Sacramental Elements Therefore if that the Sacraments of the Gospel might exceed them of the Law it is necessary that what was done there Figuratively only should be properly and really performed in our Sacraments Answ But first supposing Transubstantiation is Christ more clearly in the Sacrament than if there were no such thing Or can the Sacrament of the Gospel be said to be more clear for this when in truth it is more Mystical and abstrufe But though it be not more clear to the sense or Reason yet it is in it self more really present For otherwise the Legal Sacrament must have been only a Figure of this Figure of Christs Body and not of the Bertramus Body it self But the answer of Bertram to this about eight hundred years ago is sufficient to this purpose that both the Paschal Lamb and the Sacramental Elements both Figured and represented Christs body The former Christs Body future and its Passion and the other Instant as at the Institution or Part and compleated So that in truth a great preheminence there is in the Sacraments of the New Testament above them of the Old which is the thing contended for But Christ was really received in both The next Argument taken from Christs words in the sixth of John where he saith amongst many other things I am the Bread of Life And again Verily Joh. 6. 48. 53. 54. Verily Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood ye have no life in you For my Flesh is meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed Is answer'd two ways First from a consent on both sides by some of the Learnedest That Christ spake not of a Sacramental Eating and Drinking of him but Ordinary in receiving him by Faith preached But because as many on both sides affirm that he pointed at the Eucharist in these words therefore I think it most reasonable and equal to take in both senses and that Christ intended the receiving of him by Faith in the word preached and in the Eucharist too And though Christs Flesh be meat indeed and his Blood drink indeed it doth not follow at all that it is properly so For things Metaphorically such are really though not Properly And Christ doth not say Caro mea est verus cibus or Sanguis meus verus est potus i. e. My Flesh is true meat or Proper My Blood is true Drink but My Flesh is Meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed that is verily and really And besides the difference before intimated between these expressions and that at the Celebration of the Eucharist when he calls the Bread his Body is very great especially with the precise stickers to the Letter For according to these Christ Transubstantiated Bread into his Body but here according to the same Rule of interpretation he should convert his Body into Bread the words being alike operative But if Christ did at no time make a Transubstantiation of his Flesh or body into bread though he affirmed his Body to be bread What reason is there we should believe upon no better grounds than he affirming bread to be his Body should thereby change it into his proper Body A Third principal Argument is taken from the words of Christ at the Celebration viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And upon the proper acceptation of these words they make no doubt to put to silence all seeming oppositions and contradictions and impossibilities in nature For be it say they how it will Christ saying it who is truth it self no doubt is to be made of it For as they teach the vulgar to speak If Christ should say that this stone were his Body we ought to believe it All which is granted But we must distinguish as all sober men do between Loquela and Sermo He that rehearses a certain number of Articulate words doth Loqui or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but he only who doth deliver the word conceived in his mind which is his meaning at his mouth doth Sermocinari or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now if it can be proved by any certain Circumstance that Christ meant these words in a proper sense and not improper in which he delivered no small part of his doctrine in the Gospel we have done the Controversy is at an end we are to lay our hands on our mouths and
and to deny Luk. 22. 20. V. 17. their senses when he saith This is my Body And as reasonles and frivolous are their Answers to St. Augustine who 1 Cor. 11. 27. affirms it to be a Prophane and blasphemous sense to understand Christ of Aug. de Doctrina Christ his proper Body and to eat it For can any thing be more Elusorie and ridiculous than to Scholie on him with a That is As meat is bought and sold in the Shambles Nam Sacramentum Alâ—ptionis suscipere dignatus est Christus et quando circumeisus est et quando baptizatus est et potest Sacramentum adoptionis Adoptio â—uncupari sicut Sacramentum coâ—poris et sanguints jus quod est in pane poculo consecrate Corpus jus sanguinem diciâ—us Non quod proprie corpus ejus sit panis poculum sanguinis Sed quod in se Mysterium coâ—poris ejus et sanguinis ejus contineant Hinc ipse Dominus Benedictum panâ—m Calicem quem Discipulis tradidit corpuaae sanguinem ejus voâ—â—vit Quocirea sicut Christi fideles sacramentum Corporis sanguinis ejus accipientes Corpus et sanguinem ejus recte dicuntur accipere c. Facundus Hâ—rmianensts Pro. 3. Capitulis Lib. 10. Cap. 5. But if it be possible to express any thing more clearly Facundus Hermianensis and that as set forth by Syrmondus doth both expound St. Austins meaning and our Saviour Christs yet more irrefragably writing against the Eutichians in these words For Christ vouchsafed to take on him the Sacrament of Adoption both at his Circumcision and at his Baptism and the Sacrament of Adoption may he called Adoption as the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ which is the Bread and Cup Consecrated we call his Body and Blood not that properly his body is Bread or his Blood the Cup but that they contain in then the Mystery of the Body and Blood of him Whence our Lord himself called the Blessed Bread and Cup which he delivered to his Disciples his Body and his Blood Wherefore as Christian believers taking the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of him are said truly to take the Body and Blood of Christ So Christ when he took the Sacrament of Adoption of Children might truly he said to take the Adoption of Children Thus he and Syrmondus in his notes upon this place doth confess these to be very harsh expressions like unto some of St. Austins there mentioned And to our urging the name fruit of the Vine given to the Consecrated substance and thence concluding that the real nature of Wine remains they answer that it is not unusual to give the name to a thing as a little before it was or seems to be Which we deny not And by the parity of reason return upon them to their loss For we know it is not unusual for a thing to be called by the name not which is proper to its nature but which it represents And to the eye of Faith the consecrated Elements Heb. 5. are the Body and Blood of Christ and so may not unaptly be so called by those whose senses are exercised as the Apostle speaks to discern both good and evil though in nature they be farr otherwise Some indeed as I conceive have been but too free of the Figures in this question supposing that the very word Est or Is must not be taken in its proper sense but stand for as much as Significat Signifies but this is without ground in Grammar or Divinity For he that saith as St. Paul 2 Tim. 4. 17. is interpreted to speak Nero is a Lion doth not lay the agreement upon Est or Is but upon the subject Nero For the Verb Substantive is equally indifferent to Comparative and Proper Speeches and continues so applied to any thing The Signification or Similitude lies in the two Terms Nero and a Lion and Bread and Wine and the Body and Blood of Christ Now there being no difference between a Similitude and a Metaphor but that the one is at large and in many words what the other is in one To say Christ is a Lamb or This which is bread is Christ is no more than to say Christ is as a Lamb and Bread is as Christs Body For the many agreements between the natural and Spiritual senses The one and that principal is that of Sacrifice which ought here to be briefly explained CHAP. XLIV Of the Sacrifice of the Altar What is a Sacrifice Conditions necessary to a Sacrament How and in what sense there is a Sacrifice in the Eucharist GREAT contentions have been about the Sacrifice of the Altar and perhaps though with just Cause yet not so great as is generally believed For these two Terms do much illustrate one the other For neither is the Altar upon which Christians offer properly an Altar any more then as is said before the Lords-Day now observed is properly a Sabbath nor is the Sacrifice thereon performed properly a Sacrifice Some will have that only truly called a Sacrifice which consisted of living Creaturs slain and offered to God Dixerunt aliqui quia Sacrificium non est nisi de Animalibus et erraverunt in hoc c. Guliel Parisien de Legib. Cap. 3. and to this sence do I most incline For there must be in all things some one thing which is as a Rule and Law and gives denomination to others according as they agree with it Now if all offerings to God as fine Flower and fruits of the Earth be called a Sacrifice in an equal sence to the most proper then have we no Rule to go by in Judging of Sacrifices And therefore Gulielmus Parisiensis who rejecteth the former acceptation because we Read in Leviticus 20. of a Sacrifice of fine Flower and Exodus 31. Sweet Smell seemeth himselfe to erre as he saith others do in the Notion of a Sacrifice For either these things and such-like were more properly called Oblations than Sacrifices or when they were called Sacrifices they were so called because of the Proper bloudy Sacrifice as the principal thing to which they were adjuncts Five things are said to be required to constitute a Sacrifice 1 A Proper Lessius de Ju. Just it Minister who is the Priest Heb. 5. Secondly the Matter must be sensible 3. The form of that matter must be changed and that after the nature of it Thirdly It must be directed and devoted to a Good end God And fiftly It must be offered in a proper place But not all these are certain and constantly true For Cain and Abel and Noah and Abraham and the rest under the Law offered proper Sacrifices but that they had peculiar Temples or Altars is not true For until that injuction of God in Deuteronomie Take heed to thy selfe that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in Deut. 12. 13. 14. every place that thou seest But in the place which the Lord shall
it implies as much as to say Give us but our demands and then we will be quiet by which Rule no man should defend his own right in lesser matters which to part with perhaps would not utterly undo him but he must be lookt on as accessary to and guilty of his own destruction if the Invader shall have power enough to bring it upon him because he will not peaceably satisfie his unjust desires A man may be and our Saviour in the Gospel saith expresly Luk. 16. 10. is unjust in the least as well as in much And so undoubtedly are they who having no Autority but what they frame to themselves shall by violence and aggressions attempt to extort the least thing belonging of right to another though haply better spar'd than kept For it is a Case of Justice rather than Christianity In justice and common equity the inferiour members of a Church and state owe obedience to their Superiours in all things not contrary to the Law of God the Church or the Nation but at most they can claim such things that are as they say indifferent to be granted them out of Courtesie or Charity only And whoever was so wilfully stupid as not to perceive that Injustice is much more a sin than Uncharitableness and so whatever mischief or guilt shall fall out in such contentions must necessarily light upon the heads of the unjust Aggressour and not indiscreet Resister were it indiscretion to withstand to deny such bold and insolent demanders or uncharitableness both which are denied in the present Case For there can be nothing more unjust on the one side and unwise on the other than so rudely and unrighteously to require of another all that may be granted or to grant all such things as are so demanded And if they urge still The peace of the Church to require such concessions I shall answer Let them first as all good Christians ought to do observe the Peace of Nature and the Peace of Nations which is not to offer violence nor to be unjust nor to go out of their Rank and Order but with good Autority and then take care for the Peace of the Church But what can be more absurd than that men should break the Peace of Nations and Nature it self yea the Law of God and Scriptures which require to obey all that are in autority over us as well Ecclesiastically as Civilly and then so much as to mention the Peace of the Church especially calling that only the Peace of the Church which puts them into quiet possession of their desires But to this we add that it is also very false which is here supposed to be true For there is nothing more manifest than that with diverse things of indifferent nature they mix many things of indispensable use to a Church and such is that so much reproached and derided Hierarchie which all the earth sees they have made it their business to Destroy utterly And when we plainly see as we do that those things in nature indifferent are demanded chiefly as an introduction to a farther abolition of things we hold necessary we hold them no longer indifferent nor can we in common prudence or Christianity part with them to such person any more than we can in a neighbourly manner lend away an Ax or Hammer when we are assured they will be made use of to break open our houses and spoil us though we know they may possibly be made use of to other purposes The Second Obstacle rather than Objection cast in our way is the parity of their Case with the Church of England with that of the Church of England with the Roman wherein whether they show more Spite or Policy may be a question Their Policy imitates them who finding the war to lie heavy upon them at their own doors contrive by all means possible to translate it into another Country as was particularly seen in Hindersons Letter to his late Sacred Majesty who finding the ability of his pen and weight of his discourses advised him rather to turn himself against the common enemy the Papist And thus these men would needs oblige us to make our quarrel good against the Romanists that they may be the les molested in the pursuance of their most Schismatical designs against the Church in which they were educated And this being discovered we might well excuse ourselves from such a task as they would set us But this we have before resolved in good part and had we not might and shall in a very few words dispatch as somewhat out of its proper place We grant then there is a Schism between us and the Romanists And we grant that there can be no cause to be Schismaticks though for a Separation there may and that they are truly Schismaticks who have ministred just Cause of Separation Some we know out of an ancient Father have urged against us That there can be no cause to divide the Church which is true in two senses only First when that Church is not before really divided from other Churches of unquestion'd integrity Realy I say by deserting some considerable point of Faith or introducing some unchristian manner of worship though not Openly and Formally as hath been said Again it is true only in such junctures as the Father spake those words in which was an apt and orthodox agreement within itself both in Faith and manners in such Cases there can be no cause to divide the Church as did the Novatians and Donatists But it was never his purpose to say that no case could happen in which it was not lawful for one Church to leave the Communion of another when it was so often done So still the point is wholly whether cause was given or not and not whether such outward and wilful Separation was made For undoubtedly however some would mince the matter Separate we did and that wilfully from the Church of Rome and chose rather than were forced to go out And upon those very grounds we still stand out and refuse to return The gross corruptions there maintained and not lurking and the fear of the loss of our souls in there continuing and much more thither returning What those are hath been even now touched and we here add that notwithstanding 't is confessed such senses are found of their doctrine and superstitious worship in some private authors amongst them which they offer at first to them they would seduce which may put persons into a possibility of their continuing without incurring damnation yet the Publick autority of that Church which I suppose they will call their Church having evermore of late years censur'd purged and expunged such more tollerable constructions and appeared for the most harsh and uncatholick there can be no great regard had to the fairer opinions Again it is not sufficient that a Church hath a true sense of Christian Faith if it alloweth and commendeth a false and a wicked sense 'T is little to the
purpose or to their advantage to say for instance sake as the more sober especially when they would gain upon the good opinion of men That Images may be worshipped relatively and as instruments to devotion and helps but when there are found and generally known to be such doctrines as teach a veneration of Images for their own sakes and directly and that with the same sort of worship that the things they represent are capable of though perhaps they upon a pinch can insert a distinction which neither can be understood nor profit such a doctrine as this known to be delivered by the Principal Doctors of their Churches and maintain'd not being condemned by that Church however not generally embraced may subject a Church to a censure of Heresie and Idolatry of both and so in other things whereof tolerable senses are given in the Church of Rome or else they could not be said so much as to be a Church at all but intolerable and Heretical are also uncondemned and so are no true Church and so may be separated from without Schism but not without peril of damnation united to And do not our brethren for such they were before they professed Schism and I hope may be after they have renounced it see now plainly enough the vaniâ—y and spitefulness of their Evasion Are not the Cases infinitely different and that in their own eyes Hear they what Perkins saith to our and their purpose So long as a Church Perkins on Gal. C. 5. V. 20. or people do not Separate from Christ we may not separate from them 2 Pro. 24. 21. Fear the King and meddle not with them that vary i. e make alterations against the Laws of God and the King Indeed Subjects may signifie what is good for the State and what is amiss but to make any alteration in the State either Civil or Ecclesiastical belongs to the Supream Magistrate And â—n another place the same Author hath these words Great therefore is the rashness Id. Galat 1. V. 2. and want of moderation in many that have been of us that condemn our Church for no Church without sufficient conviction going before If they say we have been admonished by books published I say again these be grosser faults in some of those books than any of the faults that they reprove in the Church of England and therefore the books are not â—it to convince especially a Church Thus we see how the cases in the matter difier And no less may we see the difference in the manner For 't is apparent that Schismaticks against the Church of England never had any Legal autority to warrant their vile and Scandalous practices but were forced to give names to things uncapable of them to excuse themselves or else by an unnatural course to entitle the People to a Power Supream who have none at all but what is given them from another fountain neither did the people concurr with such misdemeaners as was pretended they did But thirdly another difference is to be noted from the Rights of a Patriarchal Power over a Provincial Church not properly of its Diocess and that of a Metropolitan with his Suffragans over the members of the Church which they altogether make For according to the constitutions of the Church though a Patriarchs Power was Intensively equal to Episcopal over his proper and immediate Diocess and Extensively much greater than the Metropolitans or Bishops in relation to other Diocesses yet was it never so Intensive i. e. so particular and great in those Bishops Diocesses over which he had only an Order of Unity rather than Intrinsick power to dispose matters therein though in process of time this also was invaded much by him and might be recovered to the proper Bishop by the Laws of the Church But the Bishops of this Church had the sole and immediate disposing of the affairs of it and nothing could be concluded without obligation of obedience out of Conscience without their Concurrence as desparately as Schismaticks then did and still do rage at this truth But then as Hinderson saith with others They would never reform themselves It is very likely so meaning as they would have them but that not to the better Rule of the Ancient Churches and the Scriptures is more than they knew or would acknowledg when they saw because still they would have done otherwise and invented a new Rule of their own But seeing the grounds and Cause of separation are they upon which the Guilt of Schism is avoided or contracted according to the nature of them and obscure and difficult and tedious is the method leading to the tryal of the sufficiency of them to justifie a Separation therefore it were well contrived if as in the search of a true Church they may being very long and uncertain and grievous to most proceeding upon the points of Faith and Parts of worship themselves certain infaâ—lible obvious and plain Characters could be produced to convince the Schism and distinguish it from simple and innocent Separation A Fair attempt to which hath been made by Austin who dispuâ—ing against the Donatists denies that any man can separate from the Universal Church innocently So that although it should be doubtful as most things are managed by Learned Partisans whether considering the grounds of Separation in themselves the Separation be Schismatical or lawful and laudable yet by such an outward Characteristick it might be competently discerned And so farmust I needs comply with that Judicious and Holy Father and such as urge this out of him against us as to yield it a most probable outward Note of Schism for any man or number of men not a Church but in Fieri as they speak only and in breeding to divide from the Universal Church not only as comprehending all Ages but of any one Age the weight and evidence of which Concession will appear from the esteem of the Church Catholick and the wrath and extent of Christs promises to preserve it in All truth For this is certain That Christ directed his promises and restrained them to no one time or Age. And it is not probable there should be such an Intercession or intermission of Faith or Christianity that the universal Church should mortally err in any one thing necessary to salvation nay though we take it not in such a large sense as sometimes it is wont to be used for all individual persons in it as well as Churches of which the whole is constituted And therefore to desert the communion of all Churches not of persons for this is scarce to be supposed to happen at any time doth argue shrewdly That the separation hath much of Schism in it without examination of particular grounds which are pretended sufficient For it will be said That it ought not to be supposed that Christ should deliver over his whole Church to such heretical errours which only can exempt a Separation from Schism From such notorious suspicions as these we
be made apparent in how many and great things they have degenerated in their Doctrine and Worship since it pleased God to withdraw his holy Spirit from that Church upon their rejecting of the true Messias sent them and to translate it to the Church of the Gentiles And no wonder that they who observe not that now should argue against it as a thing not to be done and moreover deny that ever it was believed or practised by their Forefathers for there remains no other way to excuse themselves in their present error but to maintain that it was never otherwise held This is a common evasion of all Hereticks and Sectaries But that the Scriptures of the Old Testament contained this Doctrine in substance though the more perspicuous and glorious manifestation of the same was reserved for the New is not to be denied especially if we consider how that many of their own Doctors and Rabbies have so interpreted the same And some have admired the Hebrew Language as the holy Tongue not so much as some of moderner standing amongst them have given out because of the neat and modest expression of things of impure and obscene nature for it is very plain that the most obscene things are there as broadly and manifestly expressed as elsewhere but from the matter which it treats of generally very divine and particularly from the nature of that Tongue in every word of which being a Radix or original the Mystery of the Trinity is implied in that it consists but of three principal Letters which Letters make but one word But there are more sure words of Prophesie than they and such are these together with the Comment and approbation of the Chaldee Paraphrast Gen. 3. v. 8. it is said They heard the voice of the Gen 3. 8. Lord God walking in the Garden which words Onkelos renders thus And they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God where we see that Voice and Word are distinguished the one being taken for the Word spoken the other for the Word subsisting or personal And again v. 22. where the Hebrew hath And the Lord God said c. Jonathans or as some more properly the Hierusalem Targum hath The Word of the Lord said And the same Hierusalem Targum on Deuteronomy the 33. 7. hath The Word of the voice of the Lord heard Judah where the Original and other Translations have Hear Lord or receive Lord the voice of Judah And so in other places which doth argue a Personality ascribed unto the Word of God Which doth farther appear for that the action of Creation extending the Heavens and Repenting is attributed unto the Word of God But I leave the asserting of the Mystery of the Trinity from the Scriptures of the Old Testament interpreted by the learnedst and most renowned of the Jewish Doctors to such who have made it their design to convince them from testimonies of their own Authors as Petrus Galatinus and more exactly Josephus de Voisin in his Comments on Prigro Christianae Fidei and especially de Trinitate I shall only add here that memorable passage in Bibliander out of the Jewish Rabbies upon that place in Bibliander de Paschate Israel Gen. 28. 11. Gen. 28. And he lighted upon a certain place and tarried there all night because the Sun was set and he took of the stones of the place and put them for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep Where some Rabbies saith Bibliander do understand that he took two stones but others as Rabbi Nechemias that he took three and in this manner prayed to God If God shall write his Name upon me as he did his Name upon mine Ancestors let all these become one and he found them all one By which type of the stone they give to understand God to be the Original of all things for the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in Hebrew is a stone implies in a mystery the Trinity for in Aben Ab intimates the Father Ben signifies the Son and ◠or N. Neshanna or Spirit Thus they Which their interpretation whether it hath not more of wit than solid Argument I am not here to determine it sufficing our present purpose to shew that the Doctrine of the Trinity is no invention of Christians as moderner Jews vainly give out for if their forefathers mention the same though their grounds may not be of the soundest it argues they knew and received it Other Texts from the Old Testament implying this Mystery are chiefly these 2 Sam. 23. 2. Isa 48. 16 17. and chap. 61. 1. and chap. 63. 9. Psal 33. 6. compared with Joh. 11. 1 2 3. Haggai 2. 5. compared with Gen. 1. 26. Isa 6 3 c. Concerning all which it is to be observed First That it is not to be expected the testimonies of the Old Testament whose design it was to deliver all things more covertly and obscurely should be altogether so literally and expresly taken as that none other may be found as proper as that sence given by Christians but it may suffice that an apt accommodation may be made to the confirmation of our Faith and that by the chief enemies to it Secondly That the Tradition of the Jewish Church differed from the historical or literal sence Hence our Saviour Christ proves the Messias to be God out of Psalm 110. v. 1. The Lord said Psal 110. Matth. 22. 42. unto c. arguing to this effect He who was greater than David himself from whom the Messias should come must needs be God David calling him in Spirit Lord but David in Spirit calls the Messias his Lord whereas David being himself absolute Soveraign had no mortal greater than he therefore he must be God This was then generally received amongst the wisest of them That the Messias was there intended though the words might be capable of a more literal sence And the like may we judge of the Arguments of St. Paul drawn out of the Old Testament to confirm the Doctrine of the New and particularly this for it is confessed that he bringeth many proofs as do also the other sacred Pen-men out of the Books of the Old Testament which have a literal sence much differing from that purpose to which they are alledged But it is certain that the ancient Jews did maintain two sences a Literal and a Mystical and that St. Paul being educated in the prime Traditions and Mysteries of their Divinity used them according to the known sence of the learned For otherwise it had been as easie then for the Jews to have put in their exceptions against his Doctrine as now it is for Jews to cavil at them But besides the Autority of the Old Testament principally to be used against Jews the Autority of the New must be enforced against the Heresies of Christians against this great Mystery Go ye saith Christ in St. Matthew and teach all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father Matth.
fishes some were taken in one haven and some in another and eaten of others And again these men that have eaten these fishes which devour'd the man happen to dye in other Countries and that perhaps devoured by wild beasts Such a confusion and dissipation being made how shall that man rise again Who is he that reduces the dust again But why O man dost thou thus speak and patches a long train of tales together and offerest it as insoluble For answer me What if that man doth not go to Sea and be not drownd If no fish eat him nor the fish be afterward eaten of infinite men but that he be laid decently in his Coffin and neither worms nor any thing else molest him How shall that dust and ashes be compacted together again Whence shall that body flourish again Is not this unanswerable If they be Greeks Heathens who doubt of these things We can answer a thousand things But what Because there are some amongst them who put souls into Plants and Fruit-trees and Doggs Tell me which is easier for a soul to recover its own body or another Again there are others who says that fire shall catch them that their garments shall arise and their shooes and no body laughs at them And some introduce Atomes But we have nothing to say to them But to Believers if we may call them believers who thus doubt we shall say with the Apostle All life is subject to corruption all plants all seeds Seest thou not c. Here that eloquent Father expatiates in the mysteries and subtilties of nature shewing how little we understand of them and concludes this point thus But these things humane reason is to seek in But when God works all things yield to him In another place he doubts whether he be an Infidel or Christian who calls in question the Resurrection and the reason hereof is because as the power of God is infinite so infinite wayes there are for his infinite wisdome to bring to pass his own pleasure and to make good his words in which he hath caused his servants to trust CHAP. XIX Of the most perfect effect of Christs Mediation in the Salvation of Man Several senses of Salvation noted That Salvation is immediately after death to them that truly dye in Christ And that there is no grounds in Antiquities or Scripture for that midde state called Purgatory the Proofs answered Of the Consequent of Roman Purgatory Indulgences the novelty groundlesness and gross abuse of them The Conclusion of the first Part of this Introduction SAint Paul where he disputes the manner of Gods free Election of his people to the grace of the Gospel doth also declare unto us the end of such Election to be another Election and that to glory as in these words That he might make known the riches of his glory Rom. 9. 23. of Grace on the vessels of mercy which he had before prepared unto glory This is yet more fully expressed by St. Peter in this order Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again to a lively hope by the Resurrection 1 Pet. 1. 3. of Jesus Christ from the dead To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time But before we engage far in this subject of Salvation it is requisite we observe a twofold Salvation frequently mentioned and promised in Scripture A Temporal and Eternal For herein common mistakes have surprised many who willing to amplifie and extend all the promises of Gods deliverance equally to us of this last Age of the Church and to them of the former and Apostolical do willingly interpret many places of Scripture peculiar to them as concerning us to which cannot be literally done though figuratively it may For the Church of Christ being in those first Ages in continual conflicts with her enemies Jewish and Gentile and most violent persecntions harrassing and wasting the tender body of the Infant-Church many weak Christians were of desponding minds and looked upon the same as Job upon natural man as having a short time to live and full of sorrows Which moved the Apostolical Writers to confirm the Hope and Faith of them by the assurances of deliverances and salvation And none can deny this to be the literal meaning of St. Paul in his eighth Chapter to the Romans from whence so many draw an Argument to prove the innumerable purpose of God towards particular persons in predestinating and electing and glorifying them when upon faithful examination nothing more was primarily intended then assurance of Gods temporal preservation of the Church and making it outwardly glorious in despight of all its adversaries so that none should separate the flook of Christ so far from the love of Christ by persecution tribulation distress or famine or nakedness or peril or sword but that at length it should be more than conquerer through him that loved it And that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come c. should cause God to forsake it And no other is the meaning of the same Apostle in his thirteenth Chapter to the Romans where he saith And that knowing the time that now it is high Rom. 13. 11. time for us to awake out of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed i. e. having continued thus long in the faith the time now draweth near we should be secured and saved from our enemies And the Salvation to be revealed in the last times spoken of by St. Peter was the Deliverance which at last should be manifested to the Church in constant expectation of which they were kept by Faith and confidence of Gods mercy And if we shall consult the Apocalypse we shall scarce find the word Salvation used in any other sense then that of temporal deliverance Rev. 7. 10. 12 10. 19 1. of Gods Church But withal most certain it is that by Salvation is very often indended by Gods word the deliverance from the miseries of sin and suffering in this world into a state of such perfect bliss as man is capable of in which sense St. Paul saith The Gospel is the power of God unto Rom. 1. 16. salvation And that with the mouth confession is made unto Salvation which salvation was in those dayes the destruction of them that confessed Christ For St. Paul to animate the weak Believers to a stout and resolute profession of Christ against the terrors of death threatning those that were known to be Christians tells them that if they so boldly confessed Christ with their mouth as to dye in that profession they should be saved And when St. Paul advises the Philippians to work out their salvation Phil. 2. 12. with fear and trembling he means without
following these words For it is most certain that the Apostles aim was to discover and oppose false teachers start up to the prejudice of the true Apostles of Christ and laying at least in shew another foundation of faith v. 10 11. than Christ had laid or building otherwise upon St. Pauls foundation than became them Now what think we doth St. Paul abruptly leave the subject he was treating of and the persons he was confuting of and warning the Corinthians against and pass to the Doctrine nothing at all depending upon what went before or after of Purgatory Or if he did not altogether desert his subject but as may be granted by them declare what would be the end of such Doctours or Doctrines after they were all dead and gone would this satisfie the expectation of such who stood in need of present advice and directions to secure themselves from such Impostures Surely no. St. Paul therefore doth certainly in this Metaphorical or Allegorical manner apply himself to the present state of the Corinthians whom he adviseth to beware of such dangerous teachers And how doth he this First under the Metaphor of a Workman insinuating the teacher himself Secondly under the Metaphor of a piece of Work figuring the Doctrines taught and instilled into men Thirdly by Fire certifying the manner of discerning the true Doctrine from the false and that fire is afflictions and persecutions which then were actually on the Church but were soon after like to fall more heavily on it Fourthly by hay stubble wood he means corrupt and erroneous Doctrines by gold silver precious stones sincere and sound Doctrine Now collect we all into one and can any man desire any plainer and more current consonancie between the figurative speech as most infallibly this is and the proper intention of the Apostle I have begun amongst you O v. 10. Corinthians to preach Christ I have lald the foundation of saving Faith like a wise Master-builder yet there are some who building partly upon my Doctrine and partly laying another foundation of their 11. own heads when in very truth there can be no other foundation laid by any man than that is already laid by me which is Jesus Christ Now if any man build upon this foundation thus laid gold silver 12. precious stones wood hay stubble that is sound or unsound ye shall know which Doctrine is as gold silver and precious stones sound and valuable and which as wood hay and stubble that is refuse and corrupt For the day shall declare it What day The day of tryal What tryal the tryal by fire for the fire shall try every mans work of what sort it is But what fire The fire of Persecution 1 Pet. 4. 12. or fiery tryal as St. Peter speaks And this is the second ground of this interpretation taken from the frequencie of this phrase Fire signifying in Scripture no more than afflictions or persecutions which may convince us of the true acceptation here Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke saith I am come to send fire on the earth and what Luke 12. 49. will I if it be already kindled And that this fire was no other than persecutions and troubles with which the followers of Christ were to contend and struggle is manifest from the following words And Tertullian taking occasion to speak of those words saith Ipse melius interpretabitur ignis illius qualitatem c. He Christ himself explains better the condition of that fire Do ye think that I came to send peace on v. 51. the earth St. Peter commeth much nearer to our present case where he saith That the tryal of your faith being much more precious than of gold 1 Pet. 1. 7. that perisheth though it be tryed with fire might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearance of Jesus Christ The Psalmist saying Thou hast caused men to ride over our head we went through fire and Psalm 66. 12. through water c. what can we understand but afflictions And no need of any more instances to the purpose i. e. either to show in general that Fire in holy Scripture imports afflictions or that so it is here with St. Paul used Yet the words immediately following agree so exactly with it that it is yet farther put out of question what should be the meaning of the former viz. If any mans work abide which he hath built thereupon he shall receive a reward If any mans work shall be burnt he shall suffer loss but he himself shall be saved yet so as by fire That is if any man hath so built upon the foundation Christ Jesus as his work abides the tryal and so be found good and laudable then he shall have his due reward for his pains But if otherwise his work shall be burnt that is upon tryal not be found as gold and silver which cometh out of the fire better and purer but Persecutions and Examinations shall reveal or manifest it to be dross vain and corrupt then shall such an one suffer loss he shall have lost his labour and his reputation yet may we not despair of him For however he be found defective in his Doctrines yet himself may be saved upon his repentance so as by fire i. e. by having passed himself through such persecutions as may bring him to the sincere profession of the Faith though his erroneous Doctrines perish and come to nought And to this sense of the Apostle do I stick though I am not ignorant how diversly he is interpreted by as well Ancient as Modern Divines to whom to be tyed when they are so dissonant were too hard measure especially when the simplicity of a literal sense offers it self so fairly as here and the greatest part of the expositions agree hereunto Thirdly It is not very strange that the words of St. Paul elsewhere to the Corinthians should be drawn this way too viz. What shall they do 1 Cor. 15. 29. Hic locus apertè convincit quod volumus si bene intelligatur Bellar. de Purg. l. 1. c. 6. that are baptized for the dead and that as he that alledges them saith manifestly making for what they would have them when as immediately he brings six several senses given of them Can they then be so very plain He well therefore adds If they be rightly understood And when are they rightly understood according to him Not until they make for Purgatory It were too tedious and polemical to refute all brought for the vindicating these words to the use of Purgatory or to contend about the sense of them farther then what Epiphanius long since hath with great judgment and simplicity lead us too which I profess to adhear to and with which most imaginary senses are answered For says he there were a certain sort of Hereticks crept into the Church in St. Pauls dayes which maintained such a necessity of Baptism to be saved that they would baptize
Negatively not to believe them and Privatively or contrarily to believe The state of Nature and of the Jews might be such before Christ as not to have the true and clear notion of Christ as the Son of God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Chrysost ad Judaizantes Serm. 27. Tom. 6. pag. 369. of the Trinity and yet not to oppose or directly deny it as Jews and Turks at this day For they have now a contrary Faith unto these and therefore how they can be excused from Idolatry according to the favorablest staters of Idolaters here now mentioned I cannot see For they who worship God as he is not but as he is framed by such mens wits are a kind of Idolaters But Christian Faith teaches us that to God it is essential to be Three in One and One in Three which is by all but Christians I mean Turks and Jews absolutely denyed And therefore Chrysostom denyes the Jews worship God This likewise prosecuted gives us no small help towards the resolution of that doubt and reconciling of that contrariety which seemeth to have been the main motive to the entertaining a new notion of Idolatry and clearing thereby the Church of Rome from that foul and mortal Imputation For it being generally granted that the Church of Rome is a true Church it must of force be denied that it is Idolatrous because Idolatry is inconsistent with the Nature of a true Church and destroyeth the Faith in the very foundation To which argument very pressing I confess I offer this Reply First calling to mind the distinction heretofore laid down of a true Church either in the Integral Parts of Christian Doctrine or Essential We deny the Romane Church to hold all the Integral Parts of the body of Faith and so not a true Church We hold also that it retaineth the Essentials and so may be termed a true Church Again of Essential or Fundamental points of Faith we distinguish the Abstract sense and the Concrete sense And affirm that although in the Abstract sense or Proposition the Church of Rome is in many points free from Idolatry yet taking their doctrines concretely with their practise interpreting them they are certainly Idolatrous But a Church is chiefly to be judged by the article in iâ— self and not in the unnatural sense appearing in particular practises The Church of Rome holds That the true God alone is to be worshipped But if the Sons of that Church notwithstanding worship somewhat besides God this is a corruption in Fact and not in Faith And perhaps the Church being an Abstract Body from single Persons and the Faith from single Practise the particular errors which are committed there not flowing necessarily from that general Principle may not be charged but in a vulgar sense upon the Church But yet be it so that the Churches determinations should not oblige men necessarily to Idolatry the Idolatrous Practises of so many in the worshiping of the Host Agnus Dei Images and Saints and Angels permitted and countenanced in that Church were sufficient ground of separation from that Church without Schismaticalness But secondly we are bound here to distinguish of Idolatry which as may appear by what is said admitteth of diverse senses and acceptations and degrees For there is an Idolatry which hath quite another object both real and formal from the true divine object of worship and that cannot stand with Christianity And there may be an Idolatry which errs only in the real Object but retaineth the Formal Object of Worship The real Object is the thing Qui ad Idol latriam develvitm non plené nec integâ—è prophams officitur misi negaverit Chrisâ—um Ruffin Invectivá 2. in Hieron Christians in their Apostafie neither did nor were to make an absolute Apostasie from God the Father and Christ but in outward profession still to acknowledg them and to be called Christians c. Med Apost p. 66 67. Gen. 20. 1 Tim. 1. 13. it self to which an Act is directed The Formal Object is the thing under such a Form or Consideration Now though the romanists do err as certainly they do in the real Object of worship they profess they own and retain the true formal reason of Worship in that they designall to the honor of the true God and Christ and lay that down as a Reason of their worshiping that Object For if that be true which Ruffinus and Mr. Mede affirm as I conceive it is That those Christians who in Persecution fell away to Gentile Idolatry became not thereby wholly prophane unless at the same time they denyed Christ much more is it true that they who profess and intend as they say ultimately the honor of Christ in their outward Idolatry are to be looked upon as belonging Radically to Christs Church The sum therefore of our opinion is this That we really believe the Romane Church to be Idolatrous but not to cease thereby to be Christian unless it declared against Christ And we believe that more refined sense of Idolatry to be damnable in it self but whether by general deprecation of all Sins known and unknown as also that they as they profess do it with Abimelech in the integrity of their heart and with St. Paul fighting against Christ Ignorantly they may not find mercy is hard to determine but t is easie to determine them to be in the way of damnation who shall fall wilfully after better education and information into those heinous practises But if they should urge this argument so strongly to me that I must be forced to that which as yet I am not sensible or viz. either to deny the Romane Church to be a true Church or to deny it to be guilty of Idolatry I should soon choose to deny the Church of Rome to be a true Church of Christ especially since the late corrupt decisions of what was ambiguous before and capable of a fair interpretation for the worst than Ego hoc arbitror quòd non pallut nomen Domini nist ille qui visus est homini ejus credere quomedo tollit membra Christi facit membra meretricis qui prius Christo credit sie ille poliuit nomen Domini qui prius nominis ejus fidem susceperit Hieron in c. 43. Ezech. deny that to be Idolatry which the principal of their Doctors have taught and the generality of the People do constantly practise For what doth it avail them to confront those foul and notorious dogmes alledged cut of their prime Writers making for plain Idolatry or the instances of gross practises with showing some tolerable sense quite antiquated which such Facts may be done in Whenas first they can give not so much reason why the moderate and favourable construction made should be the sense of their Church as may be given why it is Secondly if it were not so that some remained in that Church to buoy up in some manner the sinking Faith and stand up for the
to them not only because it is a Liturgy prescribed but because it is too long and painful or that which prayes what it pleases and as long and short as it pleases and with what lazy crude matter it pleases never more troubling themselves or being sollicitous what or how they shall pray extemporary than he is or needs be that reads all out of the book And surely it is less trouble thus to pray without book than with it to any man that will give his mind to it or will boldly enough offer at it And for their Sermons what have they in them to commend them for elaborate or the Speaker of them for laborious Have they not fallen into admiration of one kind of order and method in preaching and which with so much Superstition they cleave to as neither to care nor dare to vary that half their Sermons are made before they begin For the Form they have constantly by them and that shall serve for all texts and occasions whatever and that brings the matter in naturally almost and so neither their invention nor memory are so pained or hard put to it that they should need to boast much of their painful Preaching Surely then it must be their preaching twice a day that they have to trust to for being accounted deservedly painful Preachers But if we consider how they that preach twice spread and beat out their metal and so slip it into two pieces we shall perceive we have but two Six pences for a Shilling which may make more noise and number but weigh no more than one And in truth upon tryal considering likewise what constant Repetitions and Introductions they make to their second Sermon it will be found that to pass to a new subject on Afternoons by Catechizing and treating for half an hour on the principal heads of Christian doctrine and worship as it is more profitable and to the edification of the Generality who are not puff'd up in their fleshly mind with the name of preaching and the place from whence it comes the Pulpit which is their High Altar so is it more difficult to the Performer of it Now these things being so that there is as much work cut out by order of the Church for Ministers to finish as ordinarily one mans strength of Body and Spirit can go through with not prejudicing the health of him which God no ways requires how spiteful and groundless is that charge viz. That we have a lazy Ministry which they promise to out do when they are uppermost If these Rules and Prescriptions of the Church which will certainly keep him from Idleness that observes them more than their Discipline will be not practised as becometh themselves that accuse are in fault chiefly who have shamefully traduced and opposed the same and to gratifie whom negligence hath been countenanced too far in these things And so are they whoever they be that can content themselves with the titles dignitys and profits of Governors of the Church and withdraw themselves from their bounden duty and service to it in seeing better execution done I know their Apology is the strong hand of the Adversary opposing their endeavors in that behalf which would have justifyed and vindicated them much more than now it doth if they had not given evidence of their little sincerity and zeal for Religion in those things which were free and easie for them to do and for which they might have thanks on all sides But Prudence forsooth hath been so infinitely cryed up and magnified and that consisting chiefly in doing nothing and offending no body but God Almighty that Piety and zeal are no better then incivility and Pragmatiqueness the Rule most sacredly observed by them being this We do not do it therefore it ought not or need not be done And thus while we are doubting what Government we should have and how we should be ruled are we made subject to the Triumvirate of Pride Folly and Laziness nothing being done without their consent and approbation But this belongs more properly to the next place CHAP. XVII The Fifth General head wherein the Exercise of the Worship of God doth consist Obedience That Obedience is the end of the Law and Gospel both That the service of God principally consisteth therein Of Obedience to God and the Church The Reasons and Necessity of Obedience to our Spiritual as well as Civil Governors The frivolous cavills of Sectaries noted The Severity of the ancient and latter Greek Church in requiring Obedience The Folly of Pretenders to Obedience to the Church and wilfully slight her Canons and Laws more material than are Ceremonies THE Third and last General head wherein consisteth the proper worship of God is Obedience The distinction of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristot the Philosopher of Practise into Acts and Facts holdeth very good in Religion as well as Nature or Morality For besides the Contemplative part which imploies it self in the knowledg and consideration of the doctrine of Faith there must of necessity be a Practical or Operative Part which is the end of the former as is apparent out of holy Scriptures as well as books of Philosophers For we read in Deuteronomy how that Obedience was the end of the Deut. 4. 5. Commandments given to the Israelites Behold I have taught you Statutes and judgments even as the Lord my God commanded me that ye should do so in the Land whither ye go to possess it Keep therefore and do them for this 6. is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of all Nations And in the beginning of the fifth Chapter propounding the Law and Commandements given them by God it followeth That thou mightest fear the Lord Chap. 6. 1 2. thy God and keep all his Statutes and Commandements which I command thee Thou and thy Son and thy Sons Son all the dayes of thy life and that thy dayes may be prolonged Hear therefore O Israel and observe to do it that it may be well with thee Which condition and injunction is constantly annexed unto the Promises of Life and Salvation in the Gospel We read indeed frequently of being justifyed by Faith and saved by Faith and in what sense we have explained in its proper place viz. as it implies the works and fruits of Faith together with the acts of believing and no otherwise which is plainly affirmed by the Apostle to the Hebrews speaking Heb. 5. 9. of Christ our High Priest who being made perfect he became the author of Salvation to all them that obey him Sometimes Obedience is in Scripture put for believing it self because Faith is a principal act of the will bowing and yielding to God assent as in the Acts of the Apostles We are his witnesses of these things and so is also the Holy Ghost whom God Acts. 5. 32. hath given to them that obey him That is surely to them that did believe that testimony
praecipit vel humana Constitutio Et ut facilius ita tutius quâ—que est omnes Imagines è templis submovere qudâ—n impâ—trare uc nec modus praetereâ—â—ur nec admiscedtur superscitio Eratm in Symb. Decalog Cateches 6. commended yet have not men dared as yet by any direct Precept to command the use of Images at all in Churches For that Images should be in Churches saith Erasmus no Constitution so much as humane requireth And as is is more easie so is it more safe to withdraw all Images out of Churches then to prevail that the Mean should not be exceeded nor Superstition mingled therewith Thirdly If that Rule of Explication holds good viz. that in the Decalogue where a sin is forbidden there the occasion leading thereunto is also forbidden I make no doubt but to worship the Creatour or any Creature by an Image is also here forbidden as Idolatrous though perhaps not Idolatry absolute And contrary to the current sense and distinction of modern Romanists concerning Material and Formal Idolatry of which we have before spoken denying an errour about the Object to be Formal Idolatry provided the intention be directed to the only true object of worship God we may more safely and properly call this outward visible adoration given to outward objects or at least seeming to be given to them Formal Idolatry than Material because there is nothing wanting to common sense which might make and denominate it Idolatry and this to have the Formalities of Idolatry but if they take Formal for the intrinsick specification of a thing then it is a Contradiction and Nonsense to say or suppose that there can be any Idolatry not Formal as to imagine any thing can be without its form or that which is absolutely necessary to make it what it is Furthermore this worshipping of God by any thing made is forbidden by this command if not as simply and immediately unlawful in it self yet under the head of Scandal unjustly and unnecessarily given For in this Case it will no more if so much as excuse a man from the just suspicion of Idolatry that he upon occasion declares he does not worship the thing before which he worships than it could do them of whom St. Paul to the 1 Cor. 8. 4. Corinthians speaks who sat in the Idols Temple being Christians and knowing an Idol was as much as nothing in the world and a man having so much Faith and Knowledge might do as he please in neglect and contempt of that but St. Paul could not be put off so but knowing and taking for v. 7. 10 11. granted that some did eat before an Idol with a conscience and sense of an Idol as it were adjured such presumers under the terrour of being accessary to the ruin of their brothers Souls not to have to do with them So what if it be true as most true it is a man may worship God or Saints before an Image and have a right intention and pure conscience towards God is it not also as true that he may have an erroneous and idolatrous intention Nay are not the Evidences and Presumptions much more clear and strong that his intention is corrupt then that it is pure Can flesh and bloud put any difference between the visible act of him that doth worship an Image directly and properly and of him that doth not Is not this then scandalous to sin So that we may reasonably conclude this Command to stretch it self to forbid all worship by Images and especially in publick where there is more danger to others though not under the same guilt or penalty as flat idolizing of any thing besides God For in that it is said Thou shalt not bow down to them is plainly forbidden external reverence to or before them in any way of Religious worship In that it is said Nor worship them is expressed the internal act and forbidden And thus far of the more literal sense of this Precept the more remote and reductive sense as I may call it is to interdict all worshipping of Imaginations or vain opinions which are certain Idols of the mind as the other are of the outward senses And thus Hierom upon the Prophet Esay Hieron in Isaiam c. 40. tropically applies his words To whom will ye liken the Lord c. We may say that Arch-hereticks are here rebuked who make sundry Idols out of their own heart c. And again upon the same Prophet afterward Quicquid Id. in Isaiam c. 44. v. 15 16. de Idolis dictum est potest referri ad haereseon Principes c. Whatever the Prophet speaks of Idols may be referred to the Ringleaders of Hereticks who dexterously frame out of their own hearts certain images of their opinions and of a lye and worship them knowing that they made them themselves And think it not sufficient to keep them to themselves unless they seduce other simpler folk with the adoration of them Against this little noted but most frequently practised Idolatry we have an excellent Sermon of a Reverend Bishop Andrews Sermon of worshipping Imaginations Sin ulachris phantasmatum suprum sectatores suos omnis error illidit Aug. Expos Ep. ad Rom. Inchoata lib. Prelate long since made and never more need was there then is now to inculcate this when people blinded with the love of their own inventions and opinions of the sense of Scripture run carelesly and rashly into the Idolatry of their own wayes having first consecrated them with an obscure and mistaken Text of Scripture or two and so made them as they think Divine This is condemned in this Commandment as are also all corrupting depraving mis-sensing Gods Holy Word bringing in Sects and Heresies disesteem and abuse of his Sacraments And to name no more to be remiss prophane and negligent in the true Service and Worship of God either by inward aversion or outward absenting themselves without just cause from him in his house and denying him that outward adoration and humiliation which he here forbids us to give any but himself which he surely never would have done had he not set some value on it himself And on the contrary we are required positively here to give all outward as well as inward worship to him as he is in his illimited nature without circumscribing him in our minds or likening him to any corporeal being how excellent soever The second Part of this Commandment gives us the reason of it viz. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God deterring all men from the violation of the same from the Power Majesty and Justice of him against such contemners of his worship and his word So that as too often it is seen that some fond worldly and covetous Parents will even venture their own necks and damn their souls out of an extream desire to advance their children and to settle them sure and flourishing as they think in the world after them God confounds this their plot
oppressed truth they could in no tolerable sense be called a Church at all But by reason of that small struggling for Life in that Church they may be termed a Church out of Charity at least if not verity For Charity believeth all things CHAP. XV. Of Idolatry in the Romish Church in particular viz. In worshipping Saints Angels Reliques and especially the supposed blood of Christ No good foundation in Antiquity or the Scriptures for the said Worship FROM what hath passed may we with greater expedition conclude what remains of the Object of Worship and the superstition even to Idolatry committed in worshipping of Saints and Angels not only in themselves but Reliques For certainly Prayer to them or invocation of them is a proper Act of adoration no man doubts it And therefore see in what degree men pray to them they worship them as likewise what outward honor they give them or their Remains or Images And for the Spirits of just men made perfect as also their Reliques really such we allow due respect proper for such Objects But for the Images of Saints we know none proper to them as not at all belonging to them no part of them bearing no relation to them but as it shall please vain men to appoint it Yet though we hold no reverence at all is due to the Image of Saints or Angels for their own sakes or for the sakes of them they represent yet also hold we it unlawful to offer any indignity to them unless constrained from the abuses and superstitions used toward them which when they arrive at that height as to be made objects mediate or immediate of religious worship may lawfully suffer the same fate with the brazen Serpent in Hezechiah's dayes But first of Invocation of Saints in any sense How can we sufficiently wonder at the uncertainty yea contradiction of the greatest Patrons of it Whereof not only some affirm and some deny but the same Persons sometimes affirm and sometimes deny any such thing to be required or mentioned in Scripture Pighius and Cope give their reason why Saints were not worshipped under the Old Testament to be because they were not then partakers of the beautiful Vision as afterward Bellar. de Batitud Sanct. l. 1. c. 19. And this reason gives Bellarmin likewise yet for all that presums to alledg the words of Jacob Gen. 48. very ridiculously First because he confessed the Old Testament afforded no Presidents or Precepts for it Secondly because those words have quite another Sense than that he would draw them to I shall therefore cut off all that may be answered to the frivolous allegation of Scripture in that behalf as duly examined making more suspected of error than point than confirming it so very violent is the use of them And enquire rather first about the manner and then the reason and lastly the Authority or Tradition for this very briefly Of the three several distinct wayes wherein we are said to pray unto Saints one is not to pray to Saints at all but unto God For the first named by learned men which is to pray to God that upon intuition or consideration of Saints worth or prayers or intercession he would hear us doth not make Saints at all the Object of our prayers but the subject or matter of them which whether convenient to be used or not is besides our present question and belonging to another place and therefore may well be passed over and rather granted to be lawful and useful than disputed For certainly he that petitions a King to grant him any thing for such a Favorites sake who is about him and is his friend doth not thereby petition such a Courtier himself And this may be proved out of the ancient offices of the Church A second way is when we directly pray to them but not Particularly supposing they should either particularly understand all that we do or beg but by a general Petition desiring that they would pray for us A Third way is when we desire of Saints and Angels such things as are proper only to God to give us As if we should pray unto them to forgive us our sins to give us grace of mind and health of Body But these two do not seem to be distinct kinds but only differing in extent and matter For in the first a man doth make the matter of his request that they would promote that request which tendeth principally to God and ultimately In the second that they would procure to them the things prayed for which two differ in degrees not kind of Invocation Again they are wont here also to distinguish of Civil worship and religious And of Religious worship again into Divine proper and improper As for the former I see no reason how common soever it is to grant any such thing to Saints or Angels seeing all the ground of civil reverence given from one to another as in profession of our service honor and obedience to our Parent Masters or Governors wholly dependeth upon our civil and visible communion with them and civil Acts passing from one to another which communion or relation is extinguished quite by their natural death and departure out of this world as appeareth in the most intimate of all relations between men in this world which is that of Man and Wife which Nature Reason and the Scripture teach us to be as free as if they had never met together or known one another after the decease of either And surely all civil relations being founded on flesh and blood or Nature the foundation taken away must also cease and come to nothing Should a subject ask a Petition of his Soveraign that were alive but some hundred miles distant or out of hearing or of whose capacity to hear his prayers he had no competent assurance I cannot tell what more to call it but I am sure it were very absurd and ridiculous Now whether the communion of Saints and Angels which generally is no more than mystical and not at all civil or natural with us be such as doth not wholly render them unsensible of our Acts though directed to them here I at present determine not but this I may say that the bond of civil communion is quite broke between us and them and therefore are all Acts of that nature vain and groundless So that I may pray any Christian brother to pray for me here while we hold both civil and religious communion together but thiâ— being built upon that ceaseth together with that and becoms no longer of a mixt nature partly religious and partly natural or civil but purely Mystical and not to be exercised by such mixt acts as Invocation or outward veneration there being no known intercourse or reciprocation civil between us Therefore of necessity whoever maintains worship to be given to Saints must ascribe and defend divine worship to them and so in express terms we find them to do however they please to mollifie and extenuate