Of the Authority or Power of remitting sins we shall speak more appositely hereafter in the following Article At this time I shall onely speak of the Form of words which some of the pretenders unto Reformation in Queen Elizabeths time did very much except against affirming That to use the words of our Redeemer and not to give the gifts withal was nothing but a meer mockery of the Spirit of God and a ridiculous imitation of our Saviours actions But unto this it is replied by Judicious Hooker that not onely the ability of doing miracles speaking with tongues curing diseases and the like but the authority and power of ministering holy things in the Church of God is contained in the number of those gifts whereof the Holy Ghost is the Author And therefore he which gives this power may say without folly or absurdity Receive the Holy Ghost meaning thereby such power as the Spirit of Christ hath pleased to endue his Church withal And herein he is seconded by that living Magazin of Learning Bishop Andrews who reckoneth the Apostleship or the very office to be a Grace one of the graces doubtless of the Holy Ghost such as St. Paul calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The grace we English it the gift of ministring unto the Saints 2 Cor. 8.4 For that the very Office it self is a grace St. Paul saith he avoweth in more places than one and in particular Mihi data est haec gratia according to the gift of the grace of God which is given unto me Ephes. 3.7 Where he speaks of his Office and of nothing else And such as this saith he was the grace here given of Spiritum called a Spiritual and of Sanctum an holy Calling from them derived unto us by us to be derived on others to the end of the World and that in the same form of words which our Saviour used For being the especial power which Christ at that time gave unto his Apostles consisted in remitting and retaining of sins and seeing that the same power is given by the Church of Christ why should not the same words be used as were used at first why may not the same words be used in conferring this grace of an holy calling whereby their persons are made publick and their acts authentical and they inabled to do somewhat about remitting of sins which is not of the like avail if done by others though perhaps more learned than they and more vertuous too but have not the like warrant nor the same accipite as is conferred in holy Orders Nor do I utterly deny but that together with the power the Holy Ghost doth give some fitness to perform the same though not in any answerable measure to the first times of the Church when extraordinary gifts were more necessary than in any time since For as the ointment which was poured upon Aarons head did first fall down upon his Beard and after on the skirts of his garments also So we may reasonably believe That the holy Spirit which descended on the head of Christ and afterwards on his Apostles as upon his beard hath kept some sprinklings also to bestow on us which are the lowest skirts of his sacred garments So far we may assuredly perswade our selves That the Spirit which calleth men to that holy Function doth go along with him that is called unto it for his assistance and support in whatsoever he shall faithfully do in discharge thereof and that our acts are so far his as that Whether we Preach Pray Baptize Communicate Condemn or give Absolution or in a word whatsoever we do as the Despensers of Gods Mysteries our Words Acts Judgements are not ours but the Holy Ghosts For this I have the testimony of Pope Leo the first a Learned and Religious Prelate of the Primitive times Qui mihi oneris est Autor ipse administrationis est adjutor Ne magnitudine gratiae there gratiae is used for the office or calling as before St. Paul succumbat infirmus dabit virtutem qui contulit dignitatem Which is in brief He that hath laid the burden on us will give strength to bear it But behold a greater than Pope Leo is here Behold saith Christ to his Apostles I am with you always to the end of the world that is to say Cum vobis successoribus vestris as Denys the Carthusian rightly with you and your Successors in the Work of the Ministry to guide them and assist them by his holy Spirit And when he said unto them upon other occasions He that heareth you heareth me and whatsoever ye binde on Earth should be bound in Heaven Did he not thereby promise so to own their actions that whatsoever they should say or do in order to the propagation of his Gospel and the edification of his Church should be esteemed as his act his act by whose authority and power it is said or done But the assisting of the Church and Ministers thereof with his Power and Spirit is not the onely publick benefit though it be the greatest which it receiveth immediately from the Holy Ghost Without some certain standing Rule by which the Ministers of the Gospel were to frame their doctrine and the rest of the people guide their paths in the way of godliness both Priest and People would be apt to pretend new Lights and following such ignes fatui as they saw before them be drawn into destruction both of body and soul. And on the other side Tradition hath been always found to be so untrusty in the conveyance of Gods will and pleasure to the ears of his people that in small tract of time the Law of God became obliterated in the hearts of men the righteous Seed degenerating after carnal lusts and Abraham himself serving other gods for want of a more certain rule to direct their actions Therefore to take away all excuse from back-sliding men it pleased God first to commit his Law to writing the Two Tables onely and afterwards to inspire many holy Men with the Spirit of Wisdom Power and Knowledge to serve as Commentators on that sacred Text whose Prophecies Reproofs and Admonitions being put into their mouths by the Holy Ghost for Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man but holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost as St. Peter hath it So by direction of the same Spirit were they put into writing Propter vivendi exemplum libros ad nostram etiam memoriam transmiserunt in the words of Ierom The Lord himself did on Mount Sinai give the Law the very Letter The Prophets and other holy Men of God being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 especially inspired to that end and purpose did compose the Comment By the same Spirit were the Evangelists and Apostles guided when they committed unto writing the most glorious Gospel and other the Records and Monuments of the Christian Faith The
Faith related not to points of doctrine which could not but be every where at all times the same because all guided by the same infallible spirit but only to the form of words wherewith they were to clothe and express those doctrines which if not in all points the same might amongst many simple and illiterate people be taken for an argument of a different faith Whereas the consonancie which all Churches held with one another not only in the Unity which they maintained amongst themselves in point of judgement but also in that uniformity wherewith they did express that consent in judgement was a strong evidence no doubt to the weak and ignorant who are governed more by words then matters that the Faith wheresoever they travelled was in all parts the same because they found it every where expressed in the self same words So that for ought appeareth by these shifts and cavils the CREED may still retain the honour which of old was given it and be as it is commonly called The Apostles Creed The next thing that I have to do is to resolve upon the course and order which I mean to follow in the performance of the work I have undertaken And here I shall declare in the first place of all that as the main of my design is to illustrate and expound the Apostles Creed so I shall keep my self to that Creed alone and not step out into those intricate points of controversie which principally occasioned both the Athanasian and the Nicene Creeds For though I thank God I can say it with a very good conscience that I believe the doctrine of the holy Trinity according to the Catholick Tradition of the Church of CHRIST yet I confess with all such is the want and weakness of my understanding that I am utterly unable as indeed who is not to look into the depths of so great a mystery and cannot but cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle did in another case Oh the unsearchableness the depth of this heavenly Oeconomie What then I am not able to inform my self in those things wherein I am not able to content and satisfie my own poor shallow understanding how can I hope so to express in words or writing as to give satisfaction and content to a minde more curious Id fides credat intelligentia non requirat was antiently the Fathers rule and shall now be mine In matters of so high a nature I believe more then I am able to comprehend the gift of faith supplying the defect of mine understanding and yet can comprehend more by the light of faith then I am able to express So that I shall not meddle in this following Tractate with the eternal generation of the Son of God or any of those difficult but divine sublimities which are contained in the Creed of the Nicene Councel nor with the manner of the holy Ghosts procession whether from the Father only or from the Father and the Son nor how God can be one in three and three in one Such lofty speculations and sublimities of so high a nature I leave to be discussed and agitated by men of larger comprehensions and more piercing judgements then I dare challenge to my self resting contented with those mediocrities which God who gives to every one his several Talent hath graciously vouchsafed to bestow upon me In other points I shall make use sometimes of such explications as the Athanasian or the Nicene Creeds do present unto me which I shall handle rather in a Scholastical and if occasion be presented in a Philological way also then a way meerly Catechetical or directly practical wherein I see so many have took pains already taking along the stating and debating of such points of Controversies as either naturally do arise from the words themselves or may be very easily deduced from thence on good and logical deductions And in such points of Controversie as shall here be handled as also in such Observations as shall be here amassed together I chiefly shall rely on the Antient Fathers whose reputation and authority is most precious with me but so that I shall now and then make bold as I see occasion to spoyl the Egyptians also of their choicest Iewels for the adorning of this body of Divinity which I had brought into the forge since my first retreat and is now ready for the Anvil St. Paul esteemed it no disparagement to his holy doctrine to strengthen it with reasons drawn from the best Philosophie to prove and press it home in a Logical way and to adorn it with the dictates of three old Greek Poets Menander Aratus and Epimenides whose testimonies he makes use of in three several places As long as Hagar doth submit herself to her mistress Sarah and not contend for the precedency with her so long she is and may be serviceable in the house of Abraham And humane literature especially in relation unto Paganish errours is of as necessary use as she in the Church of God if it conform unto the Scripture and be guided by it and do not bear it self too high on the conceit and reputation of its own great excellencies But for the main of this discourse I shall especially repose my determination on the authority and general consent of the Fathers as before I said not medling with the Protestant Writers of the forein Churches but when a doubt is to be cleared which concerns themselves nor often with the Writers of this Church of England but when I have occasion to enquire into such particulars as must be proved to be the true intent and doctrine of this CHVRCH by law established The holy Scriptures are the main foundation which I am to build on according to that sense and interpretation which have been given us of them by the holy Fathers and other Catholick Doctors of the Church of Christ who lived before the truth degenerated into Popish dotages and whose authorities and judgements I conceive most fit for the determining of such Controversies which are now on foot as being like to prove most indifferent Umpires because not any way ingaged in our present quarrels I know that Downe Dalie and others of great parts and wit have laboured to disclaim them as incompetent Judges not to be trusted in a business of such main concernment as the determination of the controversies in the Church of Christ out of an high conceit of their own great worth which is not willing to acknowledge a superiour eminence And I know well that many if not most of our Innovators whether it be in point of Discipline or Doctrine decline all trial by the Fathers Councels and other the records and monuments of the Catholick Church because directly contrary to their new devices But all this moves not me a jot nor makes me yeild the less authority to their words and writings The Church of England waves not their authority though some of her conceited children and others of her factious
ones have bâ—en pleased to do it Witness that famous challenge made by Bishop Iewel by which the several points in issue between the Church of England and the Church of Rome were generally referred to the decision of the Antient Fathers with great both honour and success Witness these words of Peter Martyr a man of great imployment in the REFORMATION of the Church and sent for hither by Archbishop Cranmer to mote it here In judging things obscure saith he the Spirit there are two ways or means for our direction whereof the one is inward which is the Spirit the other outward or external the Word of God to which saith he Si Patrum etiam autoritas accesserit valebit plurimum If the authority of the Fathers do come in for seconds it will exceedingly avail And unto this agrees Chemnitius also though of a different judgement from him in some points of doctrine who having told us of the Fathers that we may best learn from their own words and sayings what we may warrantably conceive of their authority gives in the close thereof this note and a sound one 't is Nullum dogma in Ecclesia novum cum tota antiquitate pugnans recipiendum that is to say that new opinion which seems new and is repugnant to the general cuâ—rent of Antiquity is to be entertained in the Church of God What is decreed herein by the Church of England assembled representatively in her Convocations what by the King and three Estates convened in Parliament we shall see anon In the mean time take here the judgment of the Antients in this very case 'T is true indeed the Fathers many times and in sundry places humbly and piously have confessed the eminency of Canonical Scriptures above all the writings of men whatsoever they be for which consent St. Augustine contr Faust. Manic l. 11. c. 5. de Baptismat contr Donatist l. 1. c. 3. Epist. 19. in Proem lib. de Trinitate desiring liberty of dissent from one another when they saw occasion and binding no man to adhere unto their opinions further then they agreed with the Word of God delivered by the holy Prophets and Apostles which have been since the world began De quorum Scriptis quod omni errore careant dubitare nefarium est and of whose writings to make question whether or not they were free from error were a great impiety And this is that whereof St. Hierome speaks in an Epistle to Pope Damasus Ut mihi Epistolis tuis sive tacendarum sive dicendarum Hypostase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 n detur autoritas that he might be left to his own liberty either in using or refusiug the word Hypostasis But then it is as true withall that Vincentius give it for a rule Multorum magnorum consentientes sibi sententias Magistorum sequendas esse that the antient consent of godly Fathers is with great care both to be searched into and followed in the Rule of Faith And 't is as true that having moved this question in another place that if the Canon of the Scripture be so full and perfect and so abundantly sufficient in it self for all things Quid opus est ut ei Ecclesiasticae intelligentiae jungatur autoritas what need there is that the authority of Ecclesiastical interpretations should be joyned with it returns this answer in effect Lest every man should wrest the Scriptures to his own private fancy and rather draw some things from thence to maintain his errours then for the advancement of the truth Of the same resolution and opinion was St. Augustine also who though he were exceeding careful upon all occasions to yeild the Scriptures all due reverence yet he was willing therewithall to allow that honour which was meet both to the writings of the Fathers which lived before him and to the Canons and Decrees of preceding Councels and to submit himself unto their Authorities For speaking of General Councels he subjoyns this note Quorum est in Ecclesia saluberrima autoritas that their authority in the Church was of excellent use And in another place alleadging the testimonies of Irenaeus Cyprian Hilarie Ambrose and some other Fathers he concludeth thus Hoc probavimus autoritate Catholicorum sanctorum c. This we have proved by the authority of Catholick and godly men to the end that your weak and silly novelties might be overwhelmed with their only authority with which your contumacie is to be repressed He speaks this unto Iulian a Pelagian Heretick And with these testimonies and authorities of such holy men thou must either by Gods mercy be healed i. e. recovered from his errour or else accuse the famous and right holy Doctors of the Catholick Church against which miserable madness I must so reply that their faith may be defended against thee even as the Gospel it self is defended against the wicked and professed enemies of Christ. More of this kinde might be produced from the Antient Writers But what need more be said in so clear a point especially to us that have the honour to be called the children of the Church of England who by a a Canon of the year 1572 doth binde all men in holy Orders not to preach any thing in their Congregations to be believed and holden of the people of God but what is conâ—onant to the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments Quodque ex illa ipsa doctrina Catholici Patres Veteres Episcopi collegerint and had been thence concluded or collected take which word you will by the Catholick Fathers and antient Bishops of the Church The like authority and respect is given to the first four General Councels by the unanimous vote and suffrage of the Prince and three Estates convened in Parliament in the first year of Queen Elizabeth of famous memory wherein it was ordained or declared rather amongst other things that nothing should be deemed or adjudged Heresie in the Kingdome of England but what had been adjudged so formerly in any of the said four General Councels or any other General Councel determining the same according to the Word of God c. Where we may see that the Estates in Parliament did ascribe so much to the authority of those four Councels and the judgement of the Fathers which were there assembled as not to question any thing which they had determined concerning heresie or to examine whether it agreed with Gods Word or not but left the people of this Kingdom totally to repose themselves upon their authority and to take that for heresie without more ado which they judged to be so And so I close this point with those words of Saravia a learned man and one that stood up stoutly in this Churches cause against the innovating humors which was then predominant though not so high as in these times of Anarchie Qui omnem Patribus adimit autoritatem nullam relinquit sibi that is to say He who depriveth the Fathers of their due authority will
Divinity Reader in Heidelberg though he both useth approveth this distinction yet to my seeming takes not the tearms to be so different as the members of a good Division ought to be by the rules of Logick and indeed so confounds them one with another that we can hardly see where the difference lyeth For he confesseth in plain tearms fidem Iustificantem Historicam semper inse complecti that justifying faith doth always comprehend the Historical in it and that the faith of Miracles hath either Temporary or Historical faith always joyned unto it If so the difference between them must be very small consisting more in magis minus and such degrees of comparison then in any spiritual and formal difference and possibly it may fall out that the faith of miracles as they call it is rather an extraordinary gift or effect of faith then any distinct species or branch thereof First for Historical faith that faith whereby we do believe Ea vera esse quae in libris Prophetarum Evangelistarum tradita sunt by which we do believe those things for true which are contained in the Books of the Old and New Testament as themselves define it I cannot see wherein it differeth from justifying or saving faith unless perhaps it be in the application which rather is an Act of faith then a species of it And 't is but a perhaps if that for in my mind Dr. Iackson reasoneth very well That our Faith is not to be counted unsound or non salvifical because Historical but rather oft-times therefore insufficient to some because not so fully Historical as it might be or in that our apprehension of divers matters related in Sacred stories is not so great so lively and sound as to equalize the utmost limits of some belief which yet may be fully comprehended under Historical assent there being no assent which can exceed the measure of that belief or credence which is due unto sacred Writers Which if it be on our parts as it ought to be to Gods general promises it will more forcibly more truly and naturally apply them to us in particular then we our selves can possibly do by beginning our faith at that particular application where indeed it must end For temporary faith they define that next to be an Assent unto the Doctrine of the Gospel accompanyed with joy and gladness and the outward profession of the same but such as lasteth but for a season and fades in time of persecution and affliction And this they ground upon that passage in our Saviours parable where it is said that He which receiveth the seed in stony places the same is he that receiveth the Word and anon with joy receiveth it yet hath he not root in himself but dureth for a season For when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the Word by and by he is offended But for my part I could never see any reason to perswade me yet that our Saviour in that Parable did purpose to represent unto our view the several kindes of Believers but the several kindes of hearers only many of which do hear the Word with divers ends and different purposes but only they which do so hear the Word of God as to bring forth the fruit of good living shall like the good grain in the following Parable be laid up at the last day in the barn of the Heavenly husbandman Or granting that they build this definition on a ground well laid yet I see nothing to the contrary but that the temporary faith which is there defined may be a true and lively faith and justifie the man that hath it in the sight of God though failing in the course of his Christian race he do not get the prize proposed unto them that win and hold out to the very end A temporary faith may justifie for the present time and bring forth many fruits of holiness and newness of life but it is faith with perseverance in the works of Piety which shall receive the Crown in the day of Judgement And if this Temporary faith be not saving also it is not in regard of it self that it wants any of those signs and tokens by which a saving faith is to be discerned but that the man that is endued or invested with it hath not the gift of perseverance but out of worldly fear or on by-respects makes shipwrack of his faith or casts it over-board in the storm as a thing unprofitable So that the difference between Temporary and Salvifical faith is not in any thing essential to the true nature of faith but only in duration which is accidental and extrinsical which make it no more a distinct species of faith or to fall short in any thing which true faith should have then that a man who dyeth in the flower of his youth wants any thing of being as compleat and perfect a man as he that lives unto the age of Methusalem That magis minus do not differre specie is an old rule in Logick And so Bucanus doth conclude to the point in hand though as professed and rigid a Calvinian as any other whatsoever affirming plainly Fidem languidam esse veram fidem that a weak and languishing faith is a true faith on this very reason Quia magis minus non variant rerum species as before is said Which rule if it hold good in the intension of Faith as to strength and weakness will certainly hold good in the extension of it also as to length and shortness of duration Last of all for the faith of Miracles or fides Miraculorum as they please to call it is defined by the said Vrsinus to be Donum singulare faciendi aliquod opus extraordinarium aut praedicendi certum eventum ex revelatione divina that is to say a singular gift of doing some extraordinary and supernatural work or foretelling things to come by divine Revelation But this considered as it ought is so far from being a distinct species of faith that it ought not to be called faith at all but is rather the effect of an eminent faith or some more extraordinary gift super-added to it For CHRIST our Saviour reckoneth it as the effect of a powerful faith saying to his Disciples when they seemed to complain because they could not cast the Devil out of a man who was brought before them that it was propter incredulitatem ipsorum by reason of their unbelief as our English reads it that it to say because their faith was yet but weak and newly planted not strong nor spiritful enough to effect such wonders And the Apostle reckoning up those gifts and graces of the holy Ghost which God bestowed upon his Church in her first plantations gives us this punctual list or catalogue of them saying that unto one is given by the Spirit the Word of Wisdom to another the Word of knowledge by the same Spirit to another is given Faith by
from the sight of men And if the wise Gentile could affirme so sadly nunquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset that he was never lesse alone then when he was by himself what need can any rational man suppose in Almighty God of having more company then himself in If this suffice not for an answer to that needlesse demand What God did before he made the World let him take that of Augustine on the like occasion who being troubbled with this curious and impertinent question is said to have returned this answer Curiosis fabricare inferos that he made Hell for all such troublesome and idle Questionists But it pleased God at last when it seemed best unto his infinite and eternal wisdome to create the World and all things visible and invisible in the same contained A point so clear and evident in the Book of God that he must needs reject the Scripture who makes question of it And as the Scripture tels us that God made the World so do they also tell us this that because he made the World he is therefore God For thus saith David in the Psalms The Lord is great and very greatly to be praised he is to be feared above all Gods As for the Gods of the Heathen they are but Idols but it is the Lord which made the Heavens Where plainly the strength of Davids argument to prove the Lord to be God doth consist in this because it was he only not the gods of the Heathen which created the World The like we also finde in the Prophet Ieremy The Lord saith he is the true God he is the living God and an everlasting King and the Nations shall not be able to abide his indignation Thus shall ye say unto them The Gods that have not made the Heavens and the Earth even they shall perish from the Earth and from under these Heavens He hath made the Earth by his power and established the World by his wisdome and hath stretched out the Heavens by his discretion In which two verses of the Prophet we have proof sufficient first that God made the World by his power and wisdome and secondly that this making of the World by his power and wisdome doth difference or distinguish him from the gods of the Heathen of whom it is affirmed expressely that they were so far from being able to make Heaven and Earth that they should perish from the Earth and from under Heaven But what need Scripture be produced to assert that truth which is so backed by the authority of the Learned Gentiles whose understandings were so fully convinced by the inspection of the Book of nature especially by that part of it which did acquaint them with the nature of the Heavenly Bodies that they concluded to themselves without further evidence that the Authour of this great Book was the only God and that he only was that great invisible power which did deserve that Soveraign title And this Pythagoras one of the first founders of Philosopie amongst the Grecians who in all probability had never seen the works of Moses as Plato and those that followed after are supposed to have done doth most significantly averre in these following verses which are preserved in Iustin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which may be thus paraphased in our English tongue He that will say I am a Power divine A God besides that one let him first make A world like this and say that this is mine Before he to himself that title take For the next point that God the Father Almighty did create the World it is a truth so clear and evident in the Book of God that he must needs reject the Scripture who makes question of it it being not only told us in the holy Scriptures that God made the World but also when he made it and upon what reasons with all the other circumstances which concern the same The very first words of Gods book if we look no further are in themselves sufficient to confirme this point In the beginning saith the Text God created the Heaven and the Earth As Moses so the royal Psalmist He laid the foundations of the Earth and covered it with the deep as it were with a garment and spreadeth out the Heavens like a curtain He made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that therein is And so the whole Colledge of the Apostles when they were joyned together in their prayers to God Lord said they thou art God which made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that in them is Made it but how not with his hands assuredly there is no such matter The whole World though it be an house and the house of God cum Deo totus mundus sit und domus said the Christian Oratour yet it is properly to be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an house not made with hands How then He made it only by his word Dixit et facta sunt He spake the word and they were made saith the sweet finger of Israel There went no greater paines to the Worlds creation then a Dixit Deus And this not only said by Moses but by David too Verbo Domini coeli firmatī sunt et spiritu oris ejus omnis virtus eorum i. e. By the word of the Lord were the Heavens made and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth In which it is to be observed that though the creation of the World be generally ascribed unto God the Father yet both the Son and the holy Ghost had their parts therein Verbo Domini by the word of the Lord were the Heavens made saith the Prophet David In the beginning was the Word All things were made by him and without him was nothing made saith St. Iohn the Apostle The Spirit of God moved upon the waters saith Moses in the Book of the Law and Spiritu oris ejus by breath of his mouth were all the hosts of Heaven created saith David in the book of Psalmes Made by his word but yet not made together in one instant of time to teach us men deliberation in our words and actions and to set forth unto us both his power and wisdome His power he manifested in the Method of the worlds creat on in that he did produce what effects he pleased without the help of natural causes in giving light unto the World before he had created the Sun and Moon making the earth fruitfull and to bring forth plants without the motion or influence of the Heavenly bodies And for his wisdome he expressed in as high a degree in that he did not create the Beasts of the field before he had provided them of fodder and sufficient herbage nor made man after his own image before he had finished his whole work filled his house and furnished it with all things necessary both for life and pleasures
time to enquire any further after the beginnings of things who made them and did first extract them out of the common masse or Chaos where before they lay Quid quaeâ—am saith he quae sint initia universorum quis rerum formator qui omnia in uno mersa et materia inerti convoluta disâ—reverit Macrobius speaks more plainly yet although he somewhat failed in his computation affirming that the World must be lately made Cujus cognitio bis mille annos non excedat considering that there was no monument or record thereof which could entitle it to the age of two thousand years The like may be affirmed of the Poets who do ascribe the glory of the Worlds Creation unto God alone Ovid in plain significant termes Sine ulla nominis dissimulatione as Lactantius hath it without boggling or scrupling at the name of God Virgil more covertly under the names of Mens and Spiritus under the which names the old Philosopers used to mask him For Ovid having before described the general Chaos then addes Hanc Deus et melior litem natura diremit Nam Coelo terras et terris abscidit undas That is to say But God the better nature this decides Who Earth from Heaven the Sea from Earth divides And shortly after speaking of the Creation of Man he gives God these most honourable titles the Maker of all things the Authour of a better World or Ille opifex rerum mundi melioris origo in his proper language Virgil although he speaks more covertly as before was said yet he ascribeth that to his Mens or Spiritus which Ovid in more plain terms doth assigne to God and so coâ—es somewhat near the truth Non longe fuit a veritate as Lactantius noteth For in his Aeneads thus he tels us Principio Coelum et Terras camposque liquentes Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque Astra Spiritus intus alit totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se â—orpore miscet Which may be Englished thus in brief Heaven Earth and Seas the Sun and Moons bright sphere In the beginning by some Spirit were Divinely cherish'd which diffus'd through all Did like the Soul quicken this massie Ball. In which we have not only intimated the powerfull influence of the Spirit but the words In principio which are used by Moses But to returne again to the Word of God we finde not only there that God made the World and that he made it in such time as himself best pleased but also the course and method which he used in so great a work A work which took up six whole dayes as before was said God taking a delight as it were in his own productions and giving them the commendation of good as they were created or pretermitting that commendation as sometimes he did when any thing was wanting unto that perfection which was after added For in the work of the second day wherein God did divide the waters above the firmament from those which were disposed beneath it we do not finde this approbation et vidit Deus quod esset bonum because that did not bring the waters to that use and perfection which after they received when they were separated from the Earth and gathered together into one body which he called the Sea And this consideration is alone sufficient to consute a strange conceipt of some late Divines Who on pretence of some authority out of Augustines works have told us that all things were created at once by the power of God and that not only in one day sed in eodem momento or eodem nunc as Vallesius phraseth it the distinction of six days being made by Moses the better to complie with our incapacities For questionlesse there cannot be a better reason why God should passe no approbation on the second days work and double it upon the third but that the separation of the Waters not being fully perfected till the said third day required one special approbation from the mouth of God as the production of the earth and the fruits thereof which was the work of that day also did require another But here a question may be made concerning those waters which are said to be above the firmament or rather of the firmament which is said to divide them I know the general opinion of most writers is that by the Firmament in that place we are to understand the Air as being interposed inter aquosam et humidam superioris Regionis molem etâ— aquas marium fluminumque between the waters of the upper Regions and that which is dispersed in the Seas and Rivers So Iunius for the Protestant Doctors and Estius for those of the Church of Rome do expound that Text and for my part I have not been unwilling to conforme to that in which both parties are agreed But I have met of late with the Observations of a right learned man upon some passages of Scripture in which I finde some strong presumptions that an Abysse of Waters must needs be granted to be above the highest Orbe whose Arguments I shall lay down as I finde them there and so refer the matter wholly to the Readers judgment For first he saith and I think very truly that the Waters above the Heavens called upon by David and the three Children in their Song to praise the Lord cannot be taken for the watery Region of the Air because in the same Canticle by an expresse enumeration of all the Meteors this Region is invited to the like celebration O every showres and dew blesse ye the Lord and magnifie his name for ever saith the Benedicite Fire and hail snow and vapour winde and storm fulfilling his word saith the book of Psalmes Psal. 148. He telleth us secondly that in the separation of the waters spoken of by Moses the waters below the firmament were gathered together into that Receptacle which he called the Sea and that in the space above the firmament he laid up the rest of the deep as in a store-house Psal. 33.7 From whence when he uttered his voice as at the flood there was a multitude or noise of waters in the Heavens Ier. 10.13 Which lest it might be gratis dictum he proves it by the story of the generall Deluge in which the waters being said to prevail at least 15. cubits above the top of the highest mountains must needs have more time then 40. days and 40. nights for their falling down according to the course of nature unlesse there had been some supply from this great Abysse and that God by an high hand had forced down those waters which he had laid up there as in a store-house And that there was such a supplie from this infinite and inexhaustible store-house he shewes out of those words of the 7. of Genesis where it is said that the fountains of the great deep or as the Angell calleth them in the Book of
Esdras the springs above the firmament were broken up which on the abatement of the waters are said to have been stopped or shut up again Gen. 8.2 A thing saith he not to be understood of any subterraneous Abysse without an open defiance to the common principles of nature Besides it doth appear from the Text it self that at the first God had not caused it to rain on the earth at all perhaps not till those times of Noah but that a moysture went up and watered the whole face of the ground Gen. 2.5.6 as still it is observed of the land of Egypt And that it did continue thus till the days of Noah may be collected from the bow which God set in the Clouds which otherwise as Porphyrie did shrewdly gather had been there before and if no clouds nor rain in the times before the Cataracts of heaven spoken of Gen. 7. 11. 8.2 must have some other exposition then they have had formerly Nay he collects and indeed probably enough from his former principles that this aboundance of waters falling then from those heavenly treasuries and sunke into the secret receptacles of the earth have been the matter of those clouds which are and have been since occasioned and called forth by the heat and influence of the Sun and others of the stars and celestiall bodies These are the principall reasons he insists upon And unto those me thinks the Philosophical tradition of a Crystalline heaven the watery Firmament we may call it doth seem to add some strength or moment which hath been therefore interposed between the eighth sphere and the primum mobile that by the natural coolness and complexion of it it might repress and moderate the fervour of the primum mobile which otherwise by its violent and rapid motion might suddenly put all the world in a conflagration For though perhaps there may be no such thing in nature as this Crystalline heaven yet I am very apt to perswade my self that the opinion was first grounded on this Text of Moses where we are told of Waters above the Firmament but whether rightly understood I determine not But I desire to be excused for this excursion though pertinent enough to the point in hand which was to shew the power and wisdome of Almighty God in ordering the whole work of the Worlds Creation To proceed therefore where we left As we are told in holy Scripture that God made the World and of the time when and the manner how he did first create it so finde we there the speciall motions which induced him to it Of these the chief and ultimate is the glory of God which not only Men and Angels do dayly celebrate but all the Creatures else set forth in their severall kindes The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Firmament sheweth his handy work saith the royall Psalmist And Benedicite domino opera ejus O blesse the Lord saith he all ye works of his Psal. 103.22 The second was to manifest his great power and wisdome which doth most clearly shew it self in the works of his hands there being no creature in the world no not the most contemptible and inconsiderable of all the rest in making or preserving which we do not finde a character of Gods power and goodness For not the Angels only and the Sun and Moon nor Dragons only and the Beasts of more noble nature but even the very worms are called on to extol Gods name All come within the compass of laudate Dominum and that upon this reason only He spake the word and they were made he commanded and they were created In the third place comes in the Creation of Angels and men that as the inanimate and irrational creatures do afford sufficient matter to set forth Gods goodness so there might be some creatures of more excellent nature which might take all occasions to express the same who therefore are more frequently and more especially required to perform this duty Benedicite Domino omnes Angeli ejus O praise the Lord all ye Angels of his ye that excel in strength ye that fulfil his commandements for the Angels are but ministring spirits Psal. 104.4 and hearken to the voyce of his words And as for men he cals upon them four times in one only Psalm to discharge this Office which sheweth how earnestly he expecteth it from them O that men would therefore praise the LORD for his goodness and declare the wonders which he doth to the children of men Then follows his selecting of some men out of all the rest into that sacred body which we call the Church whom he hath therefore saved from the hands of their enemies that they might serve him without fear in righteousness and holiness all the days of their lives And therefore David doth not only call upon mankinde generally to set forth the goodness of the Lord but particularly on the Church Praise the Lord O Hierusalem Praise thy God O Sion And that not only with and amongst the rest but more then any other of the sons of men How so because he sheweth his word unto Jacob his statutes and his Ordinances unto Israel A favour not vouchsafed to other Nations nor have the Heathen knowledge of his laws for so it followeth in that Psalm v. 19 20. The Church then because most obliged is most bound to praise him according to that divine rule of eternal justice that unto whomsoever more is given of him the more shall be required And last of all the Lord did therefore in the time when it seemed best to him accomplish this great work of the Worlds Creation that as his infinite power was manifested in the very making so he might exercise his Providence and shew his most incomprehensible wisdome in the continual preservation and support thereof And certainly it is not easie to determine whether his Power were greater in the first Creation or his Providence more wonderful and of greater consequence in the continual goverance of the World so made which questionless had long before this time relapsed to its primitive nothing had he not hitherto supported it by his mighty hand For not alone these sublunary creatures which we daily see nor yet the heavenly bodies which we look on with such admiration but even the Heaven of Heavens and the Hosts thereof Archangels Angels Principalities Powers or by what name soever they are called in Scripture enjoy their actual existence and continual beeing not from their own nature or their proper Essence but from the goodness of their Maker For he it is as St. Paul telleth us in the Acts who hath not only made the World and all things therein but still gives life and breath unto every creature and hath determined of the times before appointed and also of the bounds of their habitation And so much Seneca Pauls dear friend if there be any truth in those letters which do bear their names hath affirmed also
it so doth it signifie their office for Angelus nomen est officii non naturae as the Fathers tell us which is to be the messengers from God to Man as oft as there is any important businesse which requires it of them to be the Nuncios as it were from Gods supreme holiness to manage his affaires with the sons of men And unto this the Apostle also doth agree telling us that they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or ministring Spirits sent forth to minister unto them that shall be heires of Salvation Spirits they are according to the nature in which they were made and Ministring Spirits or Ministers as he calleth them out of David v. 7. with reference to the office unto which designed We have their nature in the word Spirits which sheweth them to be pure incorporeal substances not made of any corrupt matter as the bodies of men and so not having any internall principle of being they can have none neither of dissolution and yet as Creatures made by the hand of God they are reducible to nothing by the hand that made them although they have not in themselves any passive principle to make them naturally moral It is the priviledge or prerogative of Almighty God to be purely Simple without composition parts or passion The Angels though they come most near him yet fall short of this Who though they are not made of a matter and forme and so not naturally subject to the law of corruption yet are they made up or compounded of Act and Power or Actus aud Potentia in the School-mens language an Act by which they are a Power into which they may be reduced And being so made up of an Act of being and a Power of not being though probably that Power shall never be reduced into Act they fall exceeding short of the nature of GOD whose name is I AM and is so that it is impossible that he should not be or be any other then he is God being as uncapable of change as of composition Nay so great is the difference betwixt their nature and the nature of God so infinitely do they fall short of his incomprehensible and unspeakable Purity that though in comparison of Men as well as in themselves they are truly Spirits yet in comparison of GOD we may call them bodies But whatsoever their condition and ingredients be they owe not only unto God their continuall being by whom they are so made as to be free from corruption but unto him they are indebted for their first original without which they had not been at all St. Paul we see doth reckon them amongst things created and so doth David too in the Book of Psalmes Where calling upon all the Creatures to set forth Gods praises he first brings in the Angels to performe that office and then descends unto the Heavens and the other Creatures O praise the Lord of Heaven saith he praise him in the height Praise him all ye Angels of his praise him all his Hostes Praise him Sun and Moon c. Then addes of these and all the rest of the hosts of heaven He spake the word and they were made he commanded and they were created This with that passage of St. Paul before mentioned make it plain enough that the Angels were created by Almighty God And to this truth all sorts of writers whatsoever which do allow the being of Angels do attest unanimously Apollo in the Oracles ascribed unto him having laid down the incommunicable Attributes of God concludes it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that such is God of whom the Angels are but the smallest portion Where though Apollo or the Devil in Apollo's statua would fain be thought to be an Angel and as an Angel would be thought to have somewhat in him which might entitle him to be a Godhead yet he confesseth plainly that he owed his being to the power of God and was to be obedient unto his commands Hosthanes one of the chief of the Eastern Magi not only did allow of Angels as the Ministers aud messengers of the only God but made them so subservient to his will and power ut vultu Domini territi contremiscant that they could not look upon him without fear and trembling A Creature therefore doubtlesse not of self-existence and a Creature of Gods making too or else what need they tremble when they look upon him Of Plato it is said by Tertullian briefly Angelos Plato non negavit but by Minutius more expressely that he did not only believe that there were Angels but came so near the knowledge of their constitution as to affirme that they were inter mortalem et immortalem mediam substantiam a substance of a middle nature betwixt immortall and mortall that is to say not so eternally immortall as Almighty God nor yet so subject to mortality as the children of men And herein Aristotle comes up close to his Master Plato affirming more like a Divine then a Philosopher that to the perfection of the World there were required three sorts of substances the first wholly invisible which must be the Angels the second wholly visible as the Heaven and Earth and the third partly visible and invisible partly or made up of both And this saith he is none but man compounded of a visible body and an invisible soul. The Angels then though reckoned amongst things invisible yet being reckoned amongst such things as necessarily concurred to the Worlds perfection must have the same Creator which first made the World and made it in that full perfection which it still enjoyeth and such as hath before been proved could be none but GOD. The matter in dispute amongst learned men is not about the Power by which but the time when they were created In which as in a matter undetermined by the word of God every man takes the liberty of his own opinion and for me they may Some think that their Creation is included in the first words of Genesis where God is said to have created the Heaven and the Earth others when God said Fiat lux Let there be light and that from thence they have the title of the Angels of light Some will not have them made till the fourth day when the Sun and Moon and others of the Stars were made whose Orbes they say are whirled about by these Intelligences Cum ab omnibus receptum sit ab illis Coelos torqueri saith Peter Martyr But that they were created in one of the six dayes is the received opinion of all late Divines whether they be of the Pontifician or the Protestant party If so I would fain know the reason why Moses writing purposely of the Worlds Creation should pretermit the Master-peece of that wondrous work and not as well take notice of the Creation of the Angels as of the making of the Heavens and the Sun and Moon or of the Earth and other sublunary Creatures I know the common
the Spirit of prophesie as Minutius Felix well observeth Nay being spirits as they are of an excellent knowledge and either by a foresight which they have of some things in future or by conjecturing at events out of natural causes or coming by some other means to be made acquainted with the will of God they took upon them to effect what they knew would follow and to be the Authors of those publick blessings which were hard at hand so that indeed it was no wonder Si sibi Templa si honores si sacrificia tribuuntur if thereupon the people would erect them Temples and offer sacrifice unto them and yeild them other Divine honours fit for none but Gods By means whereof they did not only raise themselves into the Throne and Majesty of Almighty God and captivated almost all the world in a blinde obedience to their will and commands Sed veri ac singularis Dei notitiam apud omnes gentes inveteraverunt as the same Lactantius rightly noteth but in a manner had defaced the knowledge of the true one and only God over all the earth And in this blindeness and Idolatry did the world continue till the birth of CHRIST the Idols of Egypt falling down flat before him when he was carryed into that countrey in his Mothers arms as Palladius telleth us and all the Oracles of the Gentiles failing at the time of his death as is collected out of that work of Plutarchs inscribed De defectu Oraculorum Which preparation notwithstanding these Devils or Daemons call them which you will had gotten such possession of the mindes of men that the Apostles and Evangelists found it a far easier matter to cast the Devils out of their bodies then out of their souls and long it was before the rising of the Sun of righteousness was able to dispel those thick clowds of darkness wherewith they had thus overspread the whole face of the Earth Which with their power and influence in the acts of sin occasioned the Apostle to make this expression that he wrestled not against flesh and bloud but against Principalities and Powers against the Rulers not of this world but of the darknesse of this world and against spiritual wickednesses in high places By which words as he means the Devils and infernal spirits against which the man of God is to combate daily so by those words he gives me a just ground to think that the Angels which did fall from the primitive purity and have since laboured noithing more then the ruine of man were chiefly of those Orders of Aâ—gels which are called Principalities and Powers in the holy Scriptures And this I am the rather induced to think because I finde them called by those names in another place where the Apostle speaking of Christs victory over Hell and Satan describes it thus that having spoiled Principalities and Powers he made a shew of them openly and triumphed over them But of this argument enough It is now time that we proceed to the Creation and fall of man as that which more immediately conduceth to the following Articles of the Incarnation death and passion of our Lord and Saviour And first for mans Creation it was last in order though first in Gods intention of the six days work it being thought unfit in Gods heavenly wisdome to create man into the world before he was provided of a decent house and whatsoever else was necessary both for life and comfort For it we look unto the end for which God made many of the inferiour creatures reperâ—â—mus eum non necessitati modo sed oblectamento voluisse consulere as Calvin rightly hath observed we shall finde that he not only intended them for the necessities of mans life but also for the convenience and delight in living And whereas all the rest of the six days work were the acts only of his power the creating of man doth seem to be an act both of power and wisdome In all the rest there was nothing but a Dixit Deus he spake the word and they were made saith the Royal Psalmist But in the making of man there was somewhat more a Faciamus hominem a consultation called about it each Person of the Trinity did deliberate on it and every one contributed somewhat to his composition For God the Father as the chief workman or the principal agent gave him form and feature in which he did imprint his own heavenly Image The Son who is the living and eternal Word gave him voyce or speech that so he might be able to set forth Gods praises and the holy Ghost the Lord and giver of life as the Nicene Fathers truly call him did breath into his nosthrils the breath of life Or if we look upon it as one act of all we shall finde man agreeing with many of the creatures in the matter out of which he was made but very different from them all both in form and figure For though God pleased to make him of the dust of Earth to humble him and keep him from aspiring thoughts as oft as he reflected on his first Original yet did he make him of a straight and erected structure advanced his head up towards the Firmament and therein gave him the preheminence over all creatures else which had been made before of the same materials And this is that which Ovid the Poet thus expresseth Pronaque cum spectant animalia caetera terram Os homini sublime dedit coelumque videre Iussit erectos ad sydera tollere vultus That is to say And where all Creatures else with down cast eye Look towards th' Earth he rais'd mans Head on high And with a lofty look did him indue That so he might with ease Heavens glories view A thing of principal moment if considered rightly not only to the beeing but well being of man who is hereby instructed by the Lord his God that in the setling of his desires and affections he should take counsell of his making so to advance his meditations as God doth his head and not by fastning both his looks and thoughts on the things below him to disgrace as much as in him is the dignity of his creation and consequently merit to have had the countenance even of those very beasts whose minde he carryeth For I am verily perswaded that if the worldly minded man and such as are not well instructed in the things of God did but consider of the figure of his body only that very contemplation would promote him in the way of godliness and rectifie such errours and misperswasion wherewith his soul hath been misguided in the way of truth Certain I am that Lactantius whom I have so often cited in this present work examining the Original and growth of Atheism with which the world had been infected in the former times makes this amongst some other causes to be one of the principal that men had formerly neglected to look up
those Prophesies which himself delivered of a spiritual Kingdome in the souls of men such as our Saviour Christ erected in his holy Church in whom the said predictions were accomplished and of whom intended and not rather of the flourishing and continuance of his temporal Kingdome the Royal seat whereof was by him setled on Mount Sion and the renown of his magnificence and personal valour had made so formidable to the Nations which were round about him And may it not be questioned also if not out of question whether that famous Prophesie Behold a Virgin shall conceive had any reference in the intention of the Prophet Isaiah to the Virgin Mary and the birth of Christ But of this more hereafter in another place The like whereof might be made good in most of the rest of the Prophets if one would put himself to the trouble of searching into all particulars which might be disputed or rather if our Saviour CHRIST himself had not already put it beyond all disputes when he thus said to his Disciples that many Kings and Prophets have desired to see the things which ye see and have not seen them and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them upon which words we may infer that the Evangelists and Apostles being bound to teach no other things in the Church of CHRIST then what had been foretold by Moses and the holy Prophets both knew and taught others also to believe many things of CHRIST which the Prophets no not David himself the Kingly Prophet although they very much desired it did not see nor hear of and therefore that they did not distinctly apprehend the meaning of the holy Ghost in all those things which he was pleased to utter by their mouths or express by their pens touching CHRIST to come For otherwise they must have seen all that the Evangelists saw and have known all the mysteries of the Kingdome of Heaven which the Apostles after our Saviours resurrection either knew or taught which is directly contradictory to our Saviours words and to the truth of his assertion When therefore it is said so often in the holy Gospel that some things were either done or suffered that the sayings of the Prophets might be fulfilled we must not understand it in that sense alone whereof the Prophets did intend it or of that natural proper and immediate end to which the Prophets did direct it but of some further mystical or mysterious meaning reserved in the intention of the holy Ghost and in the fulness of time accomplished by our Lord and Saviour according unto that intention though no such meaning was imparted to the Prophets themselves whose mouths he made the pen of a ready writer But then perhaps it will be said that if the Prophets had not a distinct and explicite apprehension of every thing by them delivered in the way of Prophesie but either knew not what they spake or spake what they did not understand they differed little if at all from the Heathen Sooth-sayers who foretold many things which did come to pass but without any apprehension of the truth thereof For satisfying of which scruple we may please to know that when the evil spirit did intend to foresignifie any thing to come by the mouth of the Sooth-sayers or Diviners amongst the Heathens he used to cast them into a trance or extasie so that they used to rave or speak in those sudden fits that which they neither understood at the time they spake it nor could remember when they came to their sense again These they called Arreptitii in the Latine as being snatched up as it were from the use of their senses to move divine and immaterial contemplations but generally both in Greek and Latine they were called Ecstatici from the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Hierome rightly rendreth excessus mentis an exilience or transport of minde adding that he can tell of no other word by which to express it in the Latine Aliter enim Latinus sermo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exprimere non potest nisi mentis excessum Tertullian doth not only make it a transport of minde but such as is conjoyned with a spice of madness Extasin dicimus excessum sensus amentiae instar And such an extasie he thought had been fallen on Peter when saying on the sight of his Masters glorious transfiguration Bonum est nobis esse hic that it was good for them to continue there the Evangelist gives this character or censure of him Nesciens quid diceret that he understood not what he said Luk. 9.33 But this was only a device or conceit of his being now fallen into the heresie of Montanus to countenance by the like frenzy of St. Peter the raving follies or plain madness of Maximilla Prisca and such other Prophetesses to whom that wretched and infatuated man had given up himself Of those or one of them he telleth us in his Book De Anima that in those extasies which she suffered by the Spirit of God she had the grace of Prophesie imparted to her Est hodie soror apud nos Revelationum charismata sortita quas in Ecclesia inter Dominica solemnia per Extasin in Spiritu patitur and this he plainly calleth in another place Spiritalis extasis i. e. amentia a spiritual extasie or madness Whereof he gives this reason in another of his Books against the Marcionites In spiritu enim homo constitutus praesertim quum gloriam Dei conspicit vel quum per ipsum Deus loquitur necesse est ut excidat sensu obumbratus scilicet virtute divina that is to say a man being ravished in the Spirit especially when he beholds the glory of God which he took to be S. Peters case or when God doth please to speak by him which was the case of Prisca and her fellow Prophetesses must needs be ravished from his senses being so fully over-shadowed by the Spirit of God His exposition of the word we allow well of and doubt not but it was a plain spirit of madness which fell on Maximilla and her fellow Prophetesses as well as on any of the Heathen Soothsayers at the time of their prophesying whom for this cause the Latines called Furentes or Furiosos men besides themselves Hi sunt Furentes quos in publicum videtis excurrere vates ipsi absque Templo sic insaniunt sic bacchantur sic rotantur as Minutius hath it In which we do not only finde their name but those frantick and absurd gesticulations which they did commonly express in the time of those extasies to signifie what an heavy burden of the Spirit did then lie upon them But so it was not with the Prophets inspired by God who very well understood what they said and did and did not only prophesie what should come to pass but did it in a constant and coherent way of expression and with a grave
by him suffered the generality of them at the least to walke in their own wayes and fulfill those lusts to which they naturally were addicted And some there were who by conforming of their lives to the Law of nature and cherishing those good motions which they felt within them attained unto so clear a knowledge of the nature of God and such an eminent height in all moral vertue that greater was not be found amongst those of Israel For what could any Iew say more of the nature of God his divine Attributes his Power and Providence the making of all things out of nothing by Gods mighty hand and the sustaining of the same by his infinite wisdome then we have formerly declared to have been believed by the most knowing men amongst the Heathens whom they called Philosophers Insomuch as we may justly think as Octavius did Aut nunc Christianos Philosophos esse aut Philosophos jam tunc fuisse Christianos that in this point Philosopher and Christian had been termes convertible Nor did they rest themselves contented with that general knowledge of his eternal Power and Godhead which they had studied and found out in the book of nature but they knew also very well that God was to be worshipped by them in their best devotions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the first place to worship God is one of the first counsels in the Grecian Oratour And it was Catos first rule which we learnt at School that God being as he is a Spirit is to be worshipped by us with spiritual purity Si Deus est animus nobis ut carmina dicunt Hic tibi praecipue sit pura mente eolendus Which may be Englished in these words If God as Poets say a Spirit be Then with pure minde let him be serv'd by thee Which principle of natural piety being planted in them there is no point of reverence whatsoever it be either required of or practised by the people of God in his outward worship which was not punctually performed by the antient Gentiles Of Solomon it is said in the book of Kings that when he had made an end of praying all his prayers and supplication to the Lord he rose from before the Altar of the Lorld from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up unto the heavens Where we finde kâ—eeling on the knees and lifting up of the hands to be the usuall as indeed the fittest posture in the act of prayer Finde we not that the Gentiles did observe the same and went as far as Solomon if not beyond him First for the lifting up of hands we finde in Homer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Virgil Duplices tendens ad sydera palmas in Ovid Vtraque Coelo brachia porrexit and finally Tendere palmas ad delubra deum in an old Latine Poet cited by Lactantius And as for kneeling on their knees they so little scrupled it that they conceived themselves not to do enough in the adoring of their Gods unlesse they flung themselves prostrate on the ground before them Of which Ovid thus speaking of Deucalion and Pyrrha Vt Templi tetigere gradus procumbit uterque Pronus humi gelidoque pavens dedit oscula saxo Which is thus Englished by G. Sandys Then humbly on their faces prostrate laid And kissing the cold stones with fear thus prai'd The like may be affirmed of lifting up the eye to the throne of grace when we petition God for his mercies towards us Which as it is exemplifyed in that of David Early in the morning will I direct my prayer to thee and will look up so do we finde it parralleled in that of Virgil Illi ad surgentis conversi limina solis which if it rather seem to speak of turning to the East in the act of prayer then of lifting up the eyes to heaven let us take that of Ovid which is plain enough where speaking of poor Io and her prayers to Iupiter he saith that she looked up to Heaven tendens ad sydera vultus when she made her prayers And lest it should be thought as perhaps some will be apt to think that they stood more upon the outward reverence of the body then the inward purity of the soul in the act of worship remember Catos pura mente which before we had And add to that the memorable saying of the wiseman Socrates that God regardeth not so much the perfumes which were used in sacrifices as the souls and virtues of mortal men or that of Persius one of the Latine Poets who doth require that in all their addresses to the Gods they should be sure to take along with them Compositum jus fasque animi sanctosque recessus Mentis i. e. a soul replenished with righteousness and religious thoughts Upon which words Lactantius who doth cite them giveth this glosse or descant Sentiebat non carne opus esse ad placandam coelestem Majestatem sed mente sancta that he conceived the sanctity of the minde to be more necessary for the appeasing of the Gods then any service of the body But being that these applications and addresses howsoever qualifyed were made to those that were no Gods they cannot scape the censure which St. Paul gives of them that knowing God they worshipped him not as God but became vain in their imaginations changing the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things The like may also be affirmed of those frequent sacrifices wherewith they sought to expiate their offences and appease the anger of their Gods The rites and reason of the which they received from Noah and not from any diabolicall suggestion as some men conceive as Noah had them by tradition from the elder Patriarchs For being well enough perswaded that the Gods were much offended at the sins of men and finding many terrible effects of divine vengeance to pursue them they could not better study their own indemnity then to have recourse unto those sacrifices which had been found effectual in the former times for the appeasing of Gods anger and expiating those offences which they had committed Examples of this kinde in all antient Authors Greek and Latine are obvious to the eye of every reader T is true the Devil did maliciously pervert this Institution and caused it in tract of time to be so altered in the object that in stead of being offered to the God of Heaven they sacrificed to Idols made of silver and gold even the work of mens hands worshipping and serving the creature more then the Creatour as St. Paul saith of them whereby the truth of God was changed into a lie and that which first was instituted for a Propitiation became to them a manifest occasion of falling into greater and more hainous sin And it is also true that the Devil not content with this first imposture in drawing to himself
Servator on us in the place thereof Concerning which St. Augustine hath this observation that antiently Salvator was no Latine word but was first devised by the Christians to express the greatness of the mercies which they had in Christ. For thus the Father Qui est Hebraice JESUS Graece 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nostra autem locutione Salvator Quod verbum Latina lingua non habebat sed habere poterat sicut potuit quando voluit Nay Cicero the great Master of the Roman elegancies doth himself confess that the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a word of too high a nature to be expressed by any one word of the Latine tongue For shewing how that Verres being Praetor in Syracusa the chief town in Sicily had caused himself to be entituled by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he addes immediately hoc ita magnum est ut Latino uno verbo exprimi non possit And thereupon he is compelled to use this Paraphrase or circumlocution Is est nimirum Soter qui salutem dedit i. e. He properly may be called Soter who is giver of health So that the Latine word Servator being insufficient to express the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and consequently the Hebrew IESVS the Christians of the first times were necessitated to devise some other and at last pitched upon Salvator which to this purpose hath been used by Arnobius l. 1. adv Gentes Ambros. in Luk. c. 2. Hieron in Ezek. c. 40. August de doctr Chr. l. 2. c. 13. contr Crescon l. 2. c. 1. besides the passages from Ruffinus and the same St. Augustine before alleadged So then the name of Iesus doth import a Saviour and the name of IESVS given to the Son of God intimates or implieth rather such a Saviour as shall save his people from their sins This differenceth IESVS our most blessed Saviour from all which bare that name in the times foregoing Iesus or Ioshua the son of Nun did only save the people from their temporal enemies but IESVS CHRIST the Son of the living God doth save us from the bonds of sin from our ghostly enemies IESVS the son of Iosedech the Priest of the Order of Aaron did only build up the material Altar in the holy Temple but IESVS the High Priest for ever after the Order of Melchisedech not only buildeth up the spiritual Temple but is himself the very Altar which sanctifieth all those oblations which we make to God Iesus the son of Sirach hath no higher honour but that he was Author of the book called Ecclesiasticus a book not reckoned in the Canon of the holy Scripture but IESVS CHRIST the Son of God and the Virgin Mary not only is the subject of a great part of Scripture but even the Word it self and the very Canon by which we are to square all our lives and actions I am the way the truth and the life as himself telleth us in St. Iohn Look on him in all these capacities he is still a IESVS a Saviour of his people from their sins and wickednesses a builder of them up to a holy Temple fit for the habitation of the holy Ghost a bringer of them by the truth and way of righteousness unto the gates of life eternal a true IESVS still So properly a IESVS and so perfectly a Saviour to us that there is no salvation to be found in any other nor is there any other name under Heaven given amongst men whereby they must be saved but this name of IESVS Aâ— name if rightly pondered above every name and given him to this end by Almighty God that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in Heaven and earth and under the earth And there may be good reason besides Gods appointment why such a sign of reverence should be given to the very name not only a name above other names and therefore to be reverenced with the greater piety but as a pregnant testimony of that exaltation to which God hath advanced him above all other persons We bow the knee unto the persons of Kings and Princes And therefore Pharaoh when he purposed to honour Ioseph above all the Egyptians appointed certain Officers to cry before him saying bow the knee CHRIST had not been exalted more then Ioseph was had bowing of the knee been required to his Person only and therefore that there might appear some difference betwixt him and others the Lord requires it at his name And though the Angels in the heavens and the Spirits beneath have no knees to bow which is the principal objection of our Innovators against the reverent use of bowing at the Name of Iesus used and enjoyned to be used in the Church of England yet out of doubt the spirits of both kindes both in Heaven and Hell as they acknowledge a subjection to his Throne and Scepter so have they their peculiar ways such as are most agreeable to their several natures of yeilding the commanded reverence to his very Name Certain I am St. Ambrose understood the words in the literal sense where speaking of the several parts of the body of man he maketh the bowing at the name of JESUS the use and duty of the knee Flexibile genu quo prae caeteris Domini mitigatur offensa gratia provocatur Hoc enim patris summi erga filium donum est ut in nomine JESU omne genu curvetur The knee is flexible faith the Father whereby the anger of the Lord is mitigated and his grace obtained And with this gift did God the Father gratifie his beloved Son that at the Name of JESUS every knee should bow Nor did St. Ambrose only so expound the Text and take it in the literal sense as the words import but as it is affirmed by our Reverend Andrews there is no antient Writer upon the place save he that turned all into Allegories but literally understands it and liketh well enough that we should actually perform it Conform unto which Exposition of the Antient Writers and the received usâ—ge of the Church of Christ it was religiously ordained by our first Reformers that Whensoever the Name of IESVS shall be pronounced in any Lesson Sermon or otherwise in the Church due reverence be made of all persons young and old with lowness of curâ—esie and uncovering of the heads of the mankinde as thereunto doth necesâ—aâ—ily belong and heretofore hath been accustomed Which being first established by the Queens Injunctions in the yeer 1559. was afterwards incorporated into the Canons of King Iames his reign And if of so long standing in the Church of England then sure no Innovation or new fancy taken up of late and bâ—t of laâ—e obtruded on the Church by some Popish Bishops as the Novators and Novatians of this present age the Enemies of Iesu-Worship as they idlely call it have been pleased to say And should we grant that this were no duty of
the Text as I think we need not yet might it give the Church a justifiable ground of commanding such a duty to all Christian people To the end that by those outward ceremonies and gestures their inward humility Christian resolution and due acknowledgement that the Lord IESVS CHRIST the true and eternal Son of God is the only Saviour of the world in whom alone all the graces mercies and promises of God to mankinde for this life and the life to come are fully and wholly comprehended Which is the end proposed and published by the Church of England as appears plainly by the 18. Canon An. 1603. As IESVS is the name of our Lord and Saviour his personal and proper name by which he was distinguished from the rest of his Fathers kindred â—o CHRIST is added thereunto both in the holy Scriptures and the present Creed to denote his offices Christus non proprium nomen est sed nuncupatiâ— potestatis regni CHRIST saith Lactantius is no proper name but a name of power and principality It signifieth properly an anointed and is derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth to anoint and was used by the old Grecians for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is a word of the same signification but more common use And so the word is used by Homer the Prince of the Greek Poets saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. they washed and then anointed themselves with oyl The Hebrew word Messiah corresponds to this as appears evidently by that passage in St. Iohns Gospel where Andrew telleth his brother Simon this most joyful news viz. We have found the Messias which being interpreted is the CHRIST And ' â—is no wonder if Andrew ran with so much joy to acquaint his brother with the news for by the name of the Messiah the Iews had long expected the performance of the promise which God made to David that of the fruit of his body there should one sit upon his Throne for evermore But the word CHRIST implyes more yet then a name of Soveraignty For though Kings antiently were anointed as is plain by examples of the Saul 1 Sam. 10.1 2 Sam. 2.4 yet not only they The High Priest also was anointed For it is said of Moses that he powred the anointing oyl upon Aarons head and anointed him to sanctifie him And so the Prophet seems to be in the Book of Kings where Elijah is commanded to anoint Elisha the son of Shaphat to be the Prophet in his room Vngebantur Reges Sacerdotes Prophetae saith a learned Writer and each of these respectively in their several places might be called Christus Domini the Lords anointed or the Lords Christ but our Redeemer after a more peculiar manner was Christus Dominus the Lord Christ or the Lord anointed And certainly there was good reason why the Name of CHRIST should be applyed to him in another manner then it had been to any in the times before he being the one and only Person in whom the Offices of King Priest and Prophet had ever met before that time Although those Offices had formerly met double in the self same person Mâ—lchisedech a King and Priest Samuel a Prophet and a Priest David a Prophet and a King Yet never did all three concur but in him alone and so no perfect CHRIST but he A Priest he was after the order of Melchisedech Psal. 110. vers 4. A Prophet to be heard when Moses should hold his peace Deut. 18.18 A King to be raised out of Davids seed who should reign and prosper and execute judgement and justice in the earth Ier. 23 5. By his Priesthood to purge expiate and save us from our sins for which he was to be the Propitiation By his Prophetical Office to illuminate and save us from the by-pathes of errour and to guide our feet in the way of peace By his Kingdom or his Regal power to prescribe us laws protect us from our enemies and make us at the last partakers of his heavenly Kingdome Ieremies King Davids Priest Moses Prophet but in each and all respects the CHRIST Not that he was anointed with material oyl as were the Kings and Priests in the Old Testament but with the Oyl of gladness above his fellows Psal. 45.7 but with the Spirit of the Lord wherewith he was anointed to preach good tidings to the meek Esai 61.1 which he applyed unto himself Luk. 4.18.21 anointed with the holy Ghost and with power as St. Peter telleth us Act. 10.38 Anointed then he was to those several Offices and in that the CHRIST But how he doth perform these Offices and at what times he was inaugurated to the same shall be declared in the course of the following Articles which relate to him save that we shall refer the Execution of the Prophetical function to the Article of the holy Ghost by the effusion of whose gifts on the Pastors and Ministers of the holy Church it is most powerfully discharged The Name of CHRIST as it is commonly added unto that of IESVS to denote his Offices so in a sort it is communicated unto those whom he hath chosen to himselfe for a royal Priesthood a chosen generation a peculiar people and for that reason honoured with the name of Christians And the Disciples were called Christians first at Antioch saith the book of the Acts. Called Christians what by chance I believe not that The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 used in the Original hath more in it then so We have the same word in the second of St. Matthews Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 speaking of the Wise men that came from the East to worship CHRIST and there we render it that they were warned by God warned by him in a dream not to goe to Herod 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then in this place of the Acts must have some reference to God and seems to intimate at least if not fully evidence that they took not this name upon themselves but by Gods direction The Iews had formerly called them Nazarites as the Mahometans do still in the way of reproach And though the Disciples were neither ashamed nor afraid of any ignominy which was put upon them for the sake of their Lord and Master yet they conceived it far more honorable to him into whose heavenly house and family they were adopted to own themselves by that name which might most entitle them to all those priviledges which did acrew uuto them in the right of Adoption A caution to which God more specially might encline their hearts that his dear CHRIST might look upon them as his own to whom he gave the unction or anointing of the holy Spirit The anointing which ye have received of him saith the beloved Disciple abideth in you and ye need not that any men teach you That God had a directing hand in it the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth perswade me which intimates at
is not concerned who by the power of the most High understands here the very person of God the Son and by this over-shadowing of the blessed Virgin his voluntary Incarnation in her sanctified womb His words are these Per virtutem Altissimi intelligi ipsum Dei Filium qui est virtus brachium potentia Patris quique obumbraturus significatur Virginem illapsu suo in uterum Virginis per occultum Incarnationis mysterium But by his leave I cannot herein yeild unto his opinion though Chrysostom and Gregory for the antient Writers Beda and Damascene for the Authors of the middle times do seem to contenance it For not St. Augustine only as himself confesseth and Euthymius a good writer also are against him in it but the plain text and context of the holy Scripture which makes the quickning of the womb of this blessed Virgin to be the work only of one Agent though it be expressed by different titles Nor are such repetitions strange or extraordinary in the Book of God nor can it give any colour to distinguish the power of the most High from the holy Ghost as if they were two different Agents unless we can distinguish the Lord our God from him that dweleth in the Heavens because we finde them both together in the 2. Psalm He that dwelleth in the Heavens shall laugh them to scorn the Lord shall have them in derision And though it cannot be denyed but that the Son of God is the very power and strength of his Father yet himself doth give this very name of power to the holy Ghost For when he commanded the Apostles to abide in the City of Hierusalem donec induantur virtute ex alto i. e. until they were â—ndued with power from on high what else did he intend thereby but that they should continue there until they were endued with the holy Ghost Of which see Act. 2.4 Besides if this opinion should be once admitted we must exclude the holy Ghâ—st from having any thing to do in so great a mysterie and so not only bring the Creed under an Expurgatorius Index but the Scripture too Letting this therefore stand for a truth undeniable that the over-shadowing as the Text calleth it of the blessed Virgin was the proper and peculiar work of the holy Ghost let us next see whether the nature of the miracle be not agreeable to the operatioâ—s of the holy Spirit or such as may not be admitted for a truth undoubted by equal and indifferent men though they be not Christians nor take it up upon the credit of the Word of God And first that of it self it is agreeable to the operations of the Spirit the course of his Divine power in the works of nature doth expresly manifest For as in the spiritual regeneration though it be Paul that planteth and Apollo that watereth yet it is God who gives the increase without whose blessing on their labours their labours will prove fruitless and ineffectual so also in the act of carnal generation though the man and woman do their parts for the pro creation of children yet if the quickning Spirit of God do not bless them in it and stir up the emplastick virtue of the natural seed they may go childless to their graves It is the Spirit which quickneth what the womb doth breed And therefore in my minde Lactantius noted very well Hominem non Patrem esse sed generandi Ministrum that man was nothing but the instrument which the Lord did use for the effecting of his purpose to raise that goodly edifice of flesh and bloud which he contemplates in his children It is the Spirit of God as the Scripture tels us which first gave form unto the world from whence that known passage of the Poet Spiritus intus alit had its first Original of which we have made use in our former book And if the chief work or rather the principal part in the work of nature in the ordinary course of Generation and first production of the Word may be ascribed as most undoubtedly it must unto the powerful influence of this quickning Spirit with how much more assurance may he be entituled to the Incarnation of the Word to which one sex only did contribute and that the weakest without the mutual help and co-operation of the seed of man Nor is the greatness of the Miracle so beyond belief but that there is sufficient in the holy Scripture to convince the Iew and in the writings of the Poets to perswade the Gentiles to the admission of this truth and consequently to confirm all good Christians in it Out of the Virgin-Earth did God first make Adam and out of Virgin Adam he created Eve Adam first made without the help of man or woman and Eve made after out of Adam who had no wife but this which was made out of him Why might not then the blessed Virgin be as capable of conceiving a Son by the sole power and influence of the holy Ghost without help of man as Adam was of being Father unto Eve by the self same power without the use of a woman Without a Mother Eve without Father CHRIST Adam without both Father and Mother but all the handy-work of God by the holy Spirit Equivalent in effect to the creation of Adam and the production of Eve was the birth of Isaac conceived by Sarah when it had ceased to be with her after the manner of women by consequence as indisposed to the act of conception as if she had been still a Virgin or which is more then that under years of marriage The strength that Sarah had to bring forth that Son was not natural to her for she was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 past the age of childe-bearing as the Text informs us but a strength supernatural given from God on high and therefore called a received strength she received strength to conceive seed Heb. 11.11 because not naturally her own but received extraordinarily from God As Isaac was in many things a Type of CHRIST so in no one thing more exactly then that he was the only Son or the dearly beloved Son of his Father begotten on a woman past the time of her age whose dead womb could not but by such a miracle be revived again To this the Iews most cheerfully do give assent boasting themselves to be the children of Abraham by this very venter What reason have they then not to yeild to this but that they resolved not to yeild to reason Next for the Gentiles do we not finde it in their Poets that Venus was ingendred of the froth of the Sea animated by the warmth and influence of the Sun that Pallas issued from Ioves brain and Bacchus from the thigh of Iupiter Do we not read that most of their Heroes so much famed of old were begotten by their Gods upon mortal creatures as Hercules on Alcmena by Iupiter Phaeton on Clymene by Phoebus and Paâ—
on Penelope by Mercury And is it not recorded in their most authentick Histories that Romulus the first King and founder of Rome was begotten by Mars upon the body of Rhea a Vestal Virgin Romulus a Marte genttus Rhea Silvia as Florus summarily reports it Had not the Lusitanians a race of Horses which they believed to be engendred by the winde the fancy growing from the knowledge of their excellent swiftness At this Lactantius toucheth in his Book of Institutes and makes it a convincing Argument in this case against the Gentiles who might as easily believe the miracle of the incarnation as give faith to that Quod si animalia quaedam vento aura concipere solere omnibus notum est cur quisquam mirum putet cum Spiritu Dei cui est facile quicquid velit gravatam Virginem esse dicimus No question but the Spirit of God might be conceived as operative as the winde or ayr But leaving these Romances of the antient Heathens though arguments good enough ad homines and beyond that they are not meant let us next look a while on the blessed Virgin who questionless did somewhat to advance the work and left it not wholly to the managing of the holy Ghost But what she did was rather from the strength of faith then nature For had she not believed she had never conceived And thereupon it is resolved by St. Augustine rightly Feliciorem Mariam esse percipiendo fidem Christi quam concipiendo carnem Christi that she was happier by believing then she was by conceiving though in that too pronounced the most blessed amongst women Now in the strengthning of this faith many things concurred as the authority of the Messenger who coming from the God of truth could not tell a lye the general expectation which the Iews had about this time of the Messiahs near approach the argument used by the Angel touching Gods Omnipotence with whom nothing was said to be impossible and so not this the instance of a like miracle wrought upon Elizabeth the wife of Zachary almost as old but altogether in the same case with Sarah who had conceived a son in her old age beyond the ordinary course of nature And to say truth these arguments were but necessary to beget belief to so great a miracle to which no former age could afford a parallel though that of Sarah came most nigh it And if that Sarah thought it such a matter of impossibility then to conceive and bear a son when it only ceased to be with her after the manner of women as the Text tels us that she did how much more justly might the Virgin think it an impossible thing for her to be conceived with childe and bring forth a Son and yet continue still a Virgin But at the last the strength of faith overcame all difficulties and by the chearfulness of her obedience she made a way for this great blessing which was coming towards her Behold the handmaid of the Lord Be it to me according unto thy word Which whether they were words of wishing that so it might be as St. Ambrose Venerable Beda and Euthymius think or of consent that so it should be as Ireneus and Damascen are of opinion certain it is that on the speaking of those words she did conceive Coelestial seed and in due time brought forth her Saviour As is affirmed by Irenaeus l. 1. c. 33. Tertullian in his book De Carne Christi Athanasius in his Oration De Sancta Deipara and divers others A work as of great efficacy unto our Salvation so of especial esteem in the Christian Church the day whereof called usually the Feast of the Annuntiation hath anciently been observed as an holy Festival as appears by several Homilies made upon this subject by Gregory surnamed Thaumaturgus who lived in the year 230. and that of Athanasius in the time of Constantine A day of such high esteem amongst us in England that we begin our year from thence both in the vulgar estimate and all publick Instruments though in our Kalenders we begin with the first of Ianuary according to the custome of the antient Romans But here it may be asked why CHRIST should not be called the Son of the holy Ghost according to his humane nature considering that not St. Luke only ascribeth unto him the work of the Incarnation under the title of an overshadowing but that it is affirmed by St. Matthew in tearms more express that she the blessed Virgin Mother was found to be with child of the holy Ghost And he by whom a woman is conceived with childe is properly and naturally though not always legally for Pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant as the Lawyers tell us the right Father of it A consideration which prevailed so far with some of St. Hieromes time that they began to stumble upon this opinion but with no better reason in true Divinity then Christ may be affirmed to be the Father Almighty intended in the former Articles because creation is the work of the Father Almighty and it is written by St. Iohn that by him that is to say the Son all things were made For all things were so made by the Word as the Word was made flesh or incarnate by the holy Ghost God I mean God the first Person here as generally the Scripture doth where it speaks of God without limitation or restrictions acting by them those two great works which in the holy Text are to them ascribed yet by them not as Ministers subservient to him but co-working with him God saith St. Paul hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son whom he appointed heir of all things by whom also he made the Worlds God made the world though he made it by his Son to the end that all things being created by him might be also for him And so 't is also in the work of the incarnation God by his Spirit fructifying the Virgins womb and sanctifying the materials with which the Word which in the beginning was with God was to be invested to the intent that the Spirit might bear witness to us that he was the beloved Son of God in whom his Father was well pleased And yet there is another reason why he should rather be called the Son of God then of the holy Ghost because he had a pre-existence before he was incarnate in the Virgins womb as he was the Word the Word which in the beginning was not only with God but was also God by an unspeakable way of emanation from the Father only as the Word is first conceived in the minde of man before it be uttered by the voyce For as the Son is to the Father so is the Word to the Minde The Son proles parentis the Word proles mentis saith the learned Andrews God therefore being an eternal everlasting Minde did before all beginnings of time produce the Word
in his Tribunal or Judgement Seat he caused the Souldiers of his Guard to fall upon them not with swords but staves who wounded many and killed some and for the rest falling on one another in an hasty flight as commonly men do in such affrightments they came unto a wretched and calamitous end Such another wicked and ungodly act was the slaughter of the Galileans who being more tender conscienced then the rest of the Iews would not as they did offer sacrifice for the health of the Romans and therefore came not to the Temple the place of sacrifice but held their Congregations and performed their sacrifices by themselves apart This coming unto Pilates ear and notice being given withal when they met together he caused his men of war to fall upon them and most cruelly put them to the sword And these were those poor Galileans which the Gospel speaks of whose bloud Pilate is there said to have intermingled with their Sacrifices This was not long before the time of our Saviours death that is to say about the third year of his Ministerie So that being in himself of a barbarous and cruel nature and fleshed in a continual course of shedding bloud he was the more like to serve the turn of those murderous Iews whom nothing else would satisfie but the death of the Saviour their crucifying of their long expected Messiah What became of him afterwards I shall let you know towards the conclusion of this Article when he had put an end by death to those many temptations and afflictions which our Saviour suffered during the time of his command This is enough by the way of Preamble to give the reader a short touch and character of him and so to let him see with what truth and plainness S. Austin tels us of the man that he was put into the Creed or Symbol not for the merit of his person propter signationem temporis non propter dignitatem personae as the Father hath it but for the pointing out of the time of our Saviours passion which he doth also touch at in his Encheiridion to Laurentius cap. 5. And so much briefly shall suffice for this present time touching the life and manners of this Pontius Pilate under whom CHRIST suffered let us next look upon Christs sufferings under Pontius Pilate Now for the sufferings of our Saviour they may be principally divided into internal and external the inward or internal being either temptations or afflictions the outward or external either shame or corporal punishments and these again may be considered either as being inflicted on him before his crucifying or in the act of crucifixion Of these the first were those temptations which were laid before him by the Devil immediately upon his Baptism at the performance of which ceremony he was acknowledged by Iohn Baptist to be the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world anointed for his following Ministery by the unction of the holy Spirit descending visibly upon him in the shape of a dove and publickly proclaimed by a voice from heaven to be the beloved Son of God in whom he was well pleased This is the first alarm which the Devil took and it concerned him to betake himself to his weapons presently The Devil was an expert warrier and was resolved not to be set upon in his own Dominions but to give the first blow as we use to say and take the enemie whom he feared at the best advantages which were presented and as unprovided as he could And therefore he drew after him into the Wilderness of Iudaea into which our Saviour had been led by the holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He was led into the Wilderness by the Spirit as St. Matthew hath it that is to say a Spiritu Sanctitatis as the Translatour of the Syriack 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the holy Spirit as we read in Chrysostom And so no question but it was For by what spirit else but the Spirit of God could he be led into the Wilderness to whom all other spirits in the world were subject as they themselves confess in sundry places of the Gospel especially considering that the word is a word of violence such as our Lord and Saviour was not subject to For though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Matthew be a word more gentle and may imply a peaceable and quiet leading yet in St. Mark we finde 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he was driven into the Wilderness by the Spirit the holy Ghost or Spirit of God conducting him into the Desert half against his will that is to say with such reluctance in his will considering to what end he was carried thither which was ut tentaretur a Diabulo that he might be tempted of the Devil as many of Gods Saints have found within themselves distracted between hope and fear upon the undertaking of some dangerous enterprise Of which St. Chrysostom in his Homilies on St. Matthew gives us this good note that we are not rashly and unadvisedly to thrust our selves into temptations which is a thing so contrary to Christs example though we are bound by his example to resist temptations as often as the Devil doth suggest them to us In which it is a great part of our Christian duty to call upon the Lord our God that he would be pleased not to lead us into temptation or if he do that he would graciously deliver us from the evil of it and doing so to be assured that no temptation shall be laid upon us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but such as incident to man and may well be born that God will not suffer us to be tempted beyond our power but will make way for us to escape that being tryed in this fiery furnace of temptation we may receive that Crown of life which the Lord hath promised to all those which overcome it Now in this story of the temptations of our Saviour there are these three parts to be considered the place the preparation and the temptation it self The place or scene of this great action was the Wilderness of Iudaea as before we said not the inhabited parts thereof for there were many villages interspersed therein as commonly there are in al great Forrests but those which were the furthest and the most remote from humane society The spirit led him not saith Chrysostom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into the City or the Market place but into the Wilderness and more then so into the least frequented and most savage part of it where he conversed with none but Beasts as St. Mark informs us And this was done on great and weighty considerations First he was led into the Wilderness the better to comply with the type or figure of the Levitical Scape-goat of which it is thus said in Scripture that the Goat on which the lot fell to be the Scape-goat shall be presented alive before the Lord to
death he addeth in the very next words that he was heard in that he feared that is to say the prayers and supplications which he made to God were not ineffectuall but he obtained that of the Lord for which he prayed so earnesly and devoutly to him in regard that his said prayers proceeded 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the text from a godly and religious fear such as the School men call by the name of the fear of reverence Now that the matter of these prayers might be in reference to his offering of himself for the good of mankinde many of the Fathers say expressely St. Paul here saith as Ambrose writeth that Christ offered prayers and supplications non timore mortis sed nostrae causa salutis not so much for the fear of death as for mans salvation and thereupon Paul saith in another place that the bloud of Christ cryed better things for us then the bloud of Abel so saith Primasius Totum quicquid egit Christus in carne c. All that Christ did in the flesh were prayers and supplications for the sins of mankinde and the shedding of his bloud was a strong cry in which he was heard of God his Father in regard of his reverence i. e. for his voluntary obedience and most perfect charity The like saith Haymo on the text a writer of the middle times but of very good worth who keeps himself in the particular to the words of Primasius But above all Sedulius comes most home to the point in hand a writer of good credit under Theodosius the 2. Ann. 430. or thereabouts Christ saith he prayed with tears not shed for fear of death but for our salvation and was heard of God the Father when the Angel did comfort him for his reverence either his with his Father or else his Fathers towards him So that if either the mitigation of those feares and terrors which were then upon him or the acceptance of his death in ransome for the sins of the world were any part of those prayers which he made in the Garden as in all likelihood they were it could not but be most comfortable news unto him that his prayers were granted and the Angel a most welcome messenger by whom such comfortable news was sent And this we may the rather think to be the message which the Angel brought in regard that after this we finde no more mention of those fears and sorrows which formerly had seized upon him but that he cheerfully prepared himself for the stroke of death and called up his Disciples to go forth to meet it So carefull was his heavenly Father of his dearest Son as not to hold him in suspence but to impart unto him upon all occasions how grateful his obedience was how infinitely he was pleased with that zeal constancy which he had manifested in his greatest and most fiery trials In which regard no sooner had he driven away the Devil in that great temptation which at first he suffered in the Wilderness but behold the Angels came and ministred unto him as St. Matthew telleth us And here no sooner had he overcome the difficulties which flesh and bloud and humane frailty had proposed unto him and called upon the Lord for strength to goe through with so great a work and for the acceptation of that offering he was then to make but straight an Angel came from Heaven to strengthen him in his sufferings and comfort him in his afflictions No mention after this of those fears and sorrows which formerly had seised upon him and of the which he had complained so sensibly unto his Disciples But then perhaps it will be said If on the coming of the Angel he received such comforts what then could bring him to that Agony which the Gospel speaks of and speaks of in the very next words to those of the appearance of the holy Angel an agony so sharp and piercing that his sweat was as it were great drops of bloud I know indeed that many do impute this Agony to that extremity of grief which our Saviour suffered and others to those hellish and infernal torments which they conceive according to the new devise to have been within him and that the bloudy sweat which the Scriptures speak of was an effect or consequent of those griefs and torments But on a further search into the business we shall finde it otherwise the Agony into which he fell proceeding not from the extremity of pain or sorrow but from a greater vehemency in prayer And being in an agony saith the Text he prayed more earnestly in which he was so zealously inflamed against sin and Satan that he powred forth not only the strength of his soul but the very spirits of his body For though the word Agony be sometimes improperly taken for fear yet properly it is affirmed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of him that is ready to descend to any combat or conflict as Orion a most antient Grecian observeth in which regard Damascen gives this exposition of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 standing in doubt or fearing lest we fail in our undertakings we are said to be agonized or to be in an agony And hereto Aristotle that great and wise Philosopher agreeth also where he sheweth not only that an agony may be where there is no fear as when we attempt things honest and commendable though difficult to be attained 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for which men strive and are agonized without fear but also that sweating in an agony proceeds not from fear but rather from zeal and indignation An agony saith he is not the passing of the natural heat from the higher parts of the body to the lower as in fear but rather an increase of heat as in anger and indignation and he that is in an agony is not troubled with fear or cold which crosseth ex diametro this new devise but with expectation of the event So that an agony to speak properly inferreth neither fainting fear nor deadly pain as some misconceive it but noteth a contention or intension of body or minde whereby men labour to perform their desires and strive against the dangers which may defeat them of and in their enterprise And for this agony of Christs if we compare it with those circumstances which attend the text we shall plainly see that it proceeded not from the extremity of grief or sorrow against both which he had received strength and comfort by the hands of the Angel but from that fervency of zeal and contention of minde to prevail in that which he desired and to remove all rubs and difficulties which were set before him The Devil as we know did attempt our Saviour at the first entrance on his Ministery when he was first proclaimed to be the Son of God though then he had no more quarrel to him then to finde out the truth of that proclamation whether he were the Son of God or not
affliction viz. they gave me gall for meat and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink They stripped him of his garments which they shared amongst them and lifting up his naked body a lamentable spectacle of reproach and shame extended him upon the Cross stretched him in all his joints till the sinews cracked and so nailed him fast thereby accomplishing that in him which was foresignified by David but literally executed upon Christ not David they have pierced my hands and feet Psal. 22.16 Nor staid they here but to adde shame and infamy to his other sufferings they cause him to be crucified between two Malefactors to make the world believe if it had been possible that they were equally involved in the same guilt because involved alike in the same condemnation Nay more then that vinegar and gall which they gave him to drink was but a taft of that extremity of gall and bitterness which they had in their hearts which they did vomit out in blasphemous words exposing him to contempt and scorn not only with the by-standers but the passers by the very malefactors joining with them to increase his sorrows as if thereby they could have mitigated and removed their own So that he might most justly have cryed out and said Consider and behold all ye that pass by the way if ever there were sorrow like my sorrow which was done unto me wherewith the Lord afflicted me in the day of the fierceness of his wrath Never so true a man of sorrows In which extremity of pain and grief of heart no wonder if nature made a start and seemed to tremble at the apprehension of so many miseries especially considering that the most bitter draught of that deadly CVP was to drink off yet And in this anguish and distress it was that he cryed aloud Eli Eli Lamasabaâ—hthani that is to say My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Which words because they seem to some to be an argument oâ— proof for those hellish pains which they have fancied to themselves in the soul of Christ by others are conceived to proceed out of desperation which is indeed one of the greatest torments in the pit of hell we will the rather look into them to see whether any such constructions can be gathered thence Now for the clearer exposition of this text of Scripture we will lay these grounds 1. That dereliction and forsaking do no where throughout Gods book import damnation but are applyed always to the judgements of this present life 2. That in wicked and udgodly men it argueth reprobation from grace and despair of glory which to imagine of CHRIST were rather a most furious blasphemy then an erroneous folly 3. That in the godly as in David whose words they were they either note destitution of help or diminution of comfort but neither in David nor in Christ the true pains of the damned and 4. That no construction must be made of these words which may decrease in Christ the fulness of truth and grace which never wanted in his soul or draw him within the compass of mistaking or mistrusting Gods favour towards him For how could he be tainted with any distrust of Gods mercy and purpose towards him who with such confidence commended his pure Spirit into the hands of his Father who in the midst of his extremities did promise to invest the penitent Thief in the joys of Paradise and finally who in the height of his afflictions when he spake these words had such an interest in God as to call him his own God My God my God and not God only as the text informs us Which grounds so laid we may the better understand the meaning of the words before us and what construction they will bear agreeable and conform to the rule of faith And first I know that many of the antient Fathers were of opinion that as Christ took upon him at this time the person of all mankinde so he made this complaint not in behalf of himself but of his members as when he said to Saul in another case Saul Saul why persecutest thou me he did not mean it of his person which was then in heaven but of his Church militant here on earth Thus Cyprian for the Latine Fathers Quod pro iis voluisti intelligi qui deseri a Deo propter peccata meruerant this complaint of being forsaken thou wouldst have understood as spoken of them who had deserved to be forsaken of God in regard of their sins To the same purpose Augustine Epistola 120. and Leo in his 16. Sermon de Passione Thus also venerable Beda Quare dereliquisâ—i me i.e. meos c. Why saith he hast thou forsaken me i. e. mine because sin saith he did keep them back from saving me that is mine It is plain then that the head doth not speak here in his own Person for how could he be possibly forsaken or out of hope of salvation Thus Athanasius for the Greeks in fewer words but as significantly as the others Christ spake these words in our person for he was never forsaken of God And to this purpose speaks Theodoret in Psal. 21. and Euthymius on the same place also Thus also Damascene Christ saith he having put on our person and appropriated the same unto him prayed on that sort as when a man doth put on anothers person out of pity or charity and in his stead speaks such words sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as do not agree unto himself But this construction of the text though both pious and profitable is not so generally received but that some others of the Fathers do expound them otherwise who think that this complaint was poured out by Christ because he saw himself left helpless to the rage of the Iews and that he seemed so long forsaken of his heavenly Father not in regard of inward grace and comfort but of outward help An exposition so agreeable to the text in all the circumstances of it that some of those who did expound the same of Christs not speaking in his own person but in the person of his members do approve thereof For thus St. Hierom Marvail not at Christs complaint of being forsaken when thou seest the scandal of the Cross. St. Ambrose thus He speaketh as a man which was no shame for him to doe because that we our selves when we are in danger do think our selves forsaken of God Which words Venerable Bede Rabanuâ— Maurus and Aquinas in their Expositions of this Scripture do repeat and follow And this St. Augustine well approves of Quare me dereliquisti tanquam dicereâ— relinquendo me c. Why hast thou forsaken me as if he should have said by leaving me in the time of my trouble because not hearing me when I call upon thee thou art far off from my salvation praesenti scilicet salute hujus vitae that is to say in reference to
by unfaigned repentance Those of the first sort according to the rules of Divine justice must be eternal in regard of duration and by consequence accompanyed with desperation which is always found where there is an impossibility of ever coming to enjoy a better estate whereas it is not any way necessary nor doth the justice of God require it that the punishments of sin which is repented of ceasing and forsaken should be either everlasting or joyned with despair For as in every act of sin on the aversion from God who is objectively infinite and incommutably good there followeth poena damni or the loss of God which is an infinite loss and as to the inordinate conversion of the sinner to things transitory which must needs be finite there answereth poena sensus which though violent and bitter for a time is yet finite also so to the eternity of sin remaining everlastingly in sâ—ain or guilt answereth the eternity of punishment which followeth on it so to sins intermitted ceasing and repented of a suffering also for a time proportioned to it So that though every sinner sinneth in suo aeterno as St. Gregory speaketh in that he would sin ever might he live for ever and thereby casts himself into an impossibility of giving off in himself and consequently into an eternity of punishment which is due to him for the same yet if he make such use of the grace of God as to cease from sin and turn from his iniquities to the living Lord Gods justice may require extremity of punishment proportionable to the sin committed but the eternity of punishment it requireth not And therefore seeing our Saviour suffered for such sins and for such alone as might be broken off by grace and the benefit of true repentance it was no way necessary to the satisfaction of the Divine justice of God that he should endure eternal punishment Which being summed together make a perfect answer to the question formerly proposed that is to say Whether Christ ought to suffer all those punishments for the redemption of man which man himself must needs have suffered had not Christ come to redeem him The summe of which is briefly this that Christ suffered the whole general punishment of sin that onely excepted which is sin or consequent on the inherence and eternity of it as remorse of conscience and despair and that although he did not suffer the pains of Hell or any punishment of the damned either in specie or in loco yet did he undergo some punishments conformable and answerable to them in extremity as the apprehension of the wrath and anger of the Lord avenging himself upon the sinner but neither infinite nor eternal as the rejection of a sinner from the sight of God Against this truth thus stated and determined by us there remain only two objections the one relating generally to the doctrine of Christs descent into hell the other to it as it stands established in the Church of England And first as to the Doctrine generally it is thus objected that if there were no more in the sufferings of Christ then the submitting of himself to a bodily death and to the anger of the Lord for so short a season it could not possibly occasion such a consternation such a fear and horrour as he expressed both in the Garden and upon the Cross or if he did how infinitely short must he fall of that magnanimity which is found in ordinary Theeves and Robbers which is Calvins argument or of the gallantry of the Primitive Martyrs as other more modestly infer who most couragiously both did and do go forth continually to meet their deaths and satisfie the fury even of partial Judges For answer unto which though it may be said that those particulars of whom they speak endure a stronger conflict with the powers of death then we are conscious of which look on at random and are not sensible at all of the pains they feel or the extremities in the last act of their Tragedy yet we shall give a more particular and punctual answer And first we say for Malefactors that God doth many times give them over to a reprobate sense so that they carelessely seeme to contemn Gods judgements in this present world and so prepare themselves more fully for the judgments of the world to come As for the Martyrs they know well that the wrath of God towards them is appeased by Christ that they shall feel no more but the hands of men and that as the cruelty of men increaseth towards them so God doth give them strength and comfort to undergo what ever shall be laid upon them whereas CHRIST was to satisfie Gods wrath for the sins of mankinde to undergo the punishment which was due unto them according to the Rules and limitations before laid down and not alone to fall into the hands of men but to endure a bitter conflict with the powers of hell which did on every side assault him which never any Martyr was markt out to do Next in relation to this doctrine as now it stands established in the Church of England it is objected that howsoever the Articles of Religion in King Edwards days might seem to intimate a local descent into hell according to the sense of the Antient Fathers yet no such thing could be inferred from the present Article established in the form and manner declared before Their reason is because that allegation of St. Peters words touching Christs preaching to the spirits in prison which was contained in the Book of King Edwards time to shew what manner of descent it was they meant is totally left out in the present Article established in the reign of Queen Elizabeth This they conceive to be an evident declaration that the Church doth not now understand that Article as at first it did and therefore since it doth not mean such a local descent as hath been hitherto maintained in this discourse it may be construed in that sense which they put upon it To which we need but answer this that the words alleadged from St. Peter in the former Article were omitted by the Synod in the late Queenes times not because they did not so understand the Article as both their Predecessors and the Fathers did but either because Christs preaching to the spirits in prison seemed to be set down for the sole reason of his descent into hell or that they thought not fit to impose that for the meaning of St. Peters words to be beleived of necessity by all good people in the Church of England As for the putting their own sense upon it as indeed they do I will but adde this declaration or Injunction of his Sacred Majesty that is to say that no man shall hereafter either print or preach to draw the Articles aside any way but shall submit unto it in the plain and full meaning thereof and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning
after Easter which is the Anniversary feast of the Resurrection are those of the Ascension of our Lord and Saviour and the coming of the holy Ghost or the Feast of Whitsuntide Which method of the Church in these great solemnities seemes to be borrowed from the method of the Creed which we have before us wherein unto the Article of the Resurrection is presently subjoyned that he ascended into Heaven there sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and there shall tarry and abide untill he come to judge both the quick and the dead and after that the Article of the holy Ghost And there was good reason for this too For therefore did our blessed Saviour raise himself from the shame and obloquie of the grave that he might ascend in glory to the Heaven of Heavens that being gone from thence and ascended thither he might send them as he had foresignified another Comforter that should abide with them for ever And as it seems the Royal Psalmist the sweet singer of Israel fore-saw the neer conjunction of those two great Festivals the necessary dependance which the coming of the holy Ghost had on Christs Ascension Thou art gone up on high saith he thou hast led Captivity Captive and received gifts for men that the Lord God might dwell amongst them So that the Text beginneth with the ascending of CHRIST and ends with the descending of the holy Ghost For if a man should ask as the Eunuch did of whom doth the Prophet speak this of himself or of some other man we must needs answer with St. Philip and say that it relateth unto Jesus Christ. That so it is we have St. Paul to be our warrant who thus cites the Text with reference unto Christ the Lord When he ascended up on high he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men He received gifts for men saith the Psalmist he gave gifts to men saith the Apostle He did reâ—eive them of his Father that he might give them unto us Well then what gifts are they that he tels us after And he gave some to be Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers to the gathering together of the Saints to the work of the Ministration and to the edifying of the Body of Christ. These were the gifts which Christ conferred upon his Church by the holy Ghost first by his first descent or coming upon Whitsunday when he gave Apostles and Evangelists falling upon their heads in likeness of cloven tongues and ever since by furnishing the Pastors and Teachers of it with those gifts and graces of the Spirit which are expedient for their Calling And this is evident enough from the Psalmists words where it is said that He received gifts for men that the Lord God might dwell amongst them Which cannot be applyed unto Christ himself for then it must not have been said that he had ascended up on high and was parted from us but that he tarried here below to be always with us Therefore God here must needs he God the holy Ghost who came not down till after Christ was gone up and then came down noâ— only to remain among us but to be in us saith our Saviour and to abide with us for ever So that this Text containing as you see it doth the substance and occasion of these two great Festivals we will begin first with the holy Thursday part thereof which is Christs Ascension according as the method of the Creed doth lead me Where by the way the Feast of holy Thursday of the Lords Ascension is of as great Antiquity as eminencie in the Christian Church it being reckoned by St. Augustine amongst those feasts and there were but four of them in all which had been generally received in all ages past and thought to be of Apostolical Institution Now for this great act of the Ascension St. Mark delivereth it in brief that When he had spoken unto them he was received into heaven and sate him down on the right hand of God St. Luke a little more fully in his Gospel thus that he led them out into Bethany and blessed them and it came to pass that as he blessed them he departed from them and was carryed up into Heaven But in the Acts the story is laid down at large and with more particulars There we are told that from the time of his Resurrection he continued forty days upon the earth appearing many times in that space or Interim unto his Apostles and speaking to them of the Kingdome of God that on the fortieth day he led them to a Mount which is called Olivet being from Hierusalem a Sabbath days journey which some conceive to be a mile or but two at most that being there and speaking unto his Apostles about the Kingdome of Israel while they beheld he was taken up on high and a Cloud received him out of their sight And finally that as they followed him with their eyes towards Heaven behold two men stood by them in white apparel which also said Ye men of Galilee why stand ye gazing up into Heaven This same IESVS which is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come even as ye see him go into Heaven This is the substance of the story in which we have some passages to be further looked on and others to be reconciled with the Creed from which they seem in words to differ For first whereas it is said that he appeared unto them forty days which is not to be so interpreted as if he shewed himself unto them every one of those days but that in the said forty days from his Resurrection frequenter se eis viÌ„dâ—â—dum exhibuerat he had offered himself to them oftentimes to be by them and to discourse with them of the things of the Kingdom of God In the next place St. Luke who tels us in the Acts that our Saviour made his ascent from the Mount of Olives informs us in the Gospel that it was at Bethany Which difference is easie to be reconciled would there were no worse For Bethanie was a village neer unto Hierusalem about fifteen furlongs from it as the Text instructs us and seated at the foot of the Mount called Oâ—ivet In which respect it is called Bethanie at the Mount of Olives Mark 1.1 So that whether Mount Olivet was esteemed to be within the limits and precincts of the Village of Bethanie or Bethanie was reckoned for the lower part of the Mount of Olives it comes all to one But the main point to be considered is the seeming difference which is between the words of the Creed and the words of the Gospel Ascendit ad Coelum saith the Creed he ascended into Heaven 't is his own act here Assumptus est in Coelum saith St. Mark ferebatur in Coelum saith St. Lukes Gospels elevatus est saith the Book of the Acts he was carryed up into
But presently comes Abraham fals upon the Victors takes the five Kings and with them Lot also Prisoner by means whereof both Lot and they became Abrahams captives to be disposed of as he pleased who had got the mastery So was it with the sons of men till they were rescued from the Devill by this son of Abraham We were the miserable children of this captivitie They to whom we were captives were taken captive themselves and we with them So both came into Christs hands were both made his Prisoners and both accordingly led in triumph on this glorious day Both indeed led in triumph but with this great difference Their being led in triumph was to their confusion they were condemned also as we saw before to perpetuall prisons there to expect the torments of the day of judgment We by this new captivity were released of our old restored unto the glorious liberty of the sons of God And this was felix captivitas capi in bonum a fortunate Captivity that fell out so happily And yet it did not end so neither as if the giving of us our lost liberty had been all intended though we perhaps had been contented well enough had it been no more One part of this great triumph doth remaine behind the dona dedit of the Psalmist the scattering of his gifts and Largesse amongst his people Missilia the old Romans called them to make his conquest the more acceptable to all sorts of men And this he could not do untill his Ascension till he had took possession of the heavenly palaces Every good and perfect gift coming from above as St. Iames hath told us I speak not of those gifts here which concern the Church the body collective of the Saints the whole Congregation The giving of those gifts was the work of Whitsuntide when the Apostles received gifts for the publick Ministery and for the benefit of the Church in all times succeeding I speak of such gifts only now as concerne particulars which he conferreth upon us with a liberal hand according to our wants and his own good pleasure Are we in danger of our enemies By being ascended into heaven he is the better able to deliver us from them for standing on the higher ground he hath got the vantage from whence he can rain down fire and brimstone on them if he thinke it necessary Ascensor Coeli auxiliatur He that rid upon the Cloudes to Heaven is our helpe and refuge saith Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy Are we in want of necessaries to sustain our lives He shall send down a gracious rain upon his inheritance the former and the latter rain as the Prophet cals it Are we unfurnished of such graces as are fit for our Christian calling Out of the fulnesse of his treasure shall we all receive and that too grace for grace saith the great Evangelist that is to say not all of us one and the same grace but diversi diversam to every man his severall and particular grace as Maldonate and I thinke very happily doth expound the Text. For unto one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdome and to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit To another working of miracles to another prophecie to another discerning of spirits to another divers kinds of tongues To one a supereminâ—nt faith to another an abundant charity to every man some gift or other the better to prepare him for his way to Heaven and make him the more welcome at his coming thither And this indeed is the main gift we are to look for the greatest benefit we can receive by Christs ascensun All other gifts are but in order unto this to provide heaven for us In that he is ascended into heaven in our humane nature he lets us know that heaven is to be ascended and that our nature is made capable of the like ascension if we have ascensiones in corde first and ascend up to him in our hearts by saith and piety Nay therefore did our Saviour ascend into heaven that he might shew us the way thither bespeak our entertainment for us and prepare our lodging I go saith he to prepare a place for you Ioh. 14.3 And so perhaps he might doe and we never the better he might prepare the place and we not come at it He tels them therefore in plain termes If I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto my self that where I am there ye may be also This is indeed the greatest fruit and benefit which redounds to us by Christs Ascendit in altum by his ascending up on high He overcame the sharpnesse of death by his resurrection by his ascension he set open the Kingdome of heaven unto all believers that where he is we may be also Such other of the fruits and effects hereof as be in ordine to this will fall more fitly under the consideration of the next branch of this Article his sitting at the right hand of God the Father and till then we leave them In the mean time it will be fitting for us to take up that Psalme of David and sing Non nobis Domine non nobis that this great work was not wrought for our sakes alone There is a Nomini tuo da gloriam to be looked on too somewhat which Christ acquired thereby unto himselfe that must be considered He was made lower then the Angels in his humane nature not to be crowned with immortality and glory till in his humane nature he ascended into heaven All power had formerly been given him both in heaven and earth He had a jus ad rem then when he sojourned here The exercise of this authority or the jus in re at least the perfect manifestation of it in the eyes of men was not till he had took possession of the heavens themselves the Palace royal of his kingdome Iesus he was a Saviour from his very birth acknowledged by St. Peter for the Christ of God and in his mouth by all the rest of the Apostles Yet finde we not that they looked otherwise on him then as some great Prophet or at the most a Prince in posse if all things went well with him They never took him for their God and Lord though many times they did for their Lord and master nor did they worship and adore him untill his ascension Then the text saith indeed they did it but before that never And it came to passe saith St. Luke that while he blessed them he was parted from them and carried up into heaven and they worshipped him and returned to Hierusalem with great joy The Papists make a great dispute about this question An Christus sibi aliquid meruerit i. e. Whether Christ merited any thing for himself or for mankinde only In the true meaning of the word and not as they mean merited it is plain he did For properly
themselves an hodie aeternitatis something which may be called this day before all eternity Which exposition of the words as it is very justly disliked by Calvin so is he very unjustly quarrelled for by some latter writers who look no further on the words then the words of David and not upon the application which St. Paul makes of them Clearly St. Paul who spake by the same Spirit that David did and therefore could not erre in expounding the words of David intends them neither to CHRISTS natural birth as the son of the blessed Virgin Mary nor his eternall generation as the Son of God but to his birth day or begetting to the Crown of the heavenly Canaan the day of their advancement to the regal throne being esteemed as their birth day by most Kings and Princes For who so ignorant in the affaires of the world so little conversant in the monuments of former times as not to know that it is usuall in most States and Kingdomes not only to celebrate with great feasts and triumphs the naturall birth-day of their Kings which they call Diem natalem imperatoris but the inauguration day the day wherein he was exalted to the Crown imperial which they call Diem natalem imperii Certain I am that the day whereon Augustus did assume the imperial power was solemnized in Rome every tenth year with a great deal of joy and that Caligula did decree that the day whereon he began his Empire Dies quo cepisset imperium as my Authour hath it should be called Palilia and celebrated as that was by the antient Romans in memory that their City was on that day founded And thus it hath continued in most States of Christendome but most unprosperously of late as if it were an Omen of the present troubles laid aside in ours And this interpretation of the Psalmists words receiveth good countenance from another place of the same Apostle in which those words of David are again recited The place is this Christ saith he glorifyed not himself to be made high Priest but he that said unto him thou art my Son to day have I begotten thee as he saith also in another place Thou art a Priert for ever after the order of Melchisedech The meaning of this passage we have shewn before and is this in brief that Christ being called by God to the two great offices those of the Priesthood and the Kingdome was not exalted unto either though designed to both till God had glorifyed him in the sight of the people by his resurrection And to my seeming Davids words had not St. Paul conducted us to this exposition could have no other meaning then is here made of them For if we marke the composition of the same and the place in which these words are ranked we shall finde that God had first advanced his King and set him on his holy hill of Sion on the royall throne before and but immediately before these words Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee But what need one Apostle be called to witnesse in this point when we have all that glorious company the Apostolical College and the rest of their company apply the whole Psalme to the person of Christ of Christ anointed to the Kingdome by the hands of God but not till Herod Pontius Pilate the Gentiles and the people of Israel had conspired against him to do whatsoever the hand and counsell of God had before determined Having thus brought our Saviour to the Regall throne and set him on the right hand of God in the heavenly places let us next look upon him in his forme of Government according to the arts of Empire These by the Stalists are reduced unto two heads the one consisting in protecting and defending the people committed to them which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the other in prescribing laws and executing justice on the transgressours which they terme 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Both these most perfectly discharged by our Prince and Saviour And first the Enemies against which he protects his people are these three the Devil sin and persecution The two first he discomfited in that painfull combat in which he paid the price of our redemption and made his passage open to the new Hierusalem Since that time there is nothing left in Satan but a powerlesse malice and though he roare against the Church he shall never devour it The gates of hell shall not prevail against it said the glorious Conqueror Sin at the same time lost his strength which was the curse of the Law and not his strength only but his Empire too And though he may sojourn for a time in our mortal bodies yet shall he never reigne over us and have us in subjection as before he had unlesse we willingly betray our selves and captivate our souls to those conquered powers which God hath given us grace to master Nor deales otherwise with the Persecutors of his Church and people then he hath done with sin and Satan whom he doth crush at last with a rod of iron and break them into pieces like a potters vessell as David telleth of him in the second Psalme And though sometimes to manifest his own glory in his peoples sufferings and to make tryall of their faith and Christian patience he doth permit their enemies to prevail against them yet was he never wanting in his own due time to make their deliverance more remarkable then all their afflictions Witnesse the persecutions of the primitive times in which the Princes of the earth and the powers of hell banded themselves against the Lord and against his anointed times in the which it were a difficulty to determine whether the gallantry of the Martyrs or the tyranny of the persecutors gave juster cause of admiration to the sad spectators With such a chearfull countenance did they beare their sufferings that they even wearied their tormenters and did not lose their lives but give them With what a noble confidence did they mount the scaffold on which they were to suffer the most cruel death which the wit of man and malice of the Devil could inflict upon them so bravely and without amazement as if they had been mounted rather to behold a triumph then to be brought to execution Never was tragedy of death more bravely acted nor actor honoured with a richer and more glorious crown And for his enemies and theirs the vengeance of the Lord found them out at last and laid them in the dust with disgrace and ignominy For which was there of all the persecutors who made themselves drunk with the bloud of the Saints and Prophets or that have raged against the Church since those furious times to whom he gave not bloud to drinke whom either in their gray haires or in the pride and flourish of all their glories he brought not to the grave with reproach and sorrow or left their dead bodies to be meat to
the fowles of the Aire Next for the Nomothetical arts of Empire let us look on those and we shall finde that as he came not to destroy the Law of God but to fulfil it so hath he added more weight to it either by way of application or of explication then before it had They who consult our Saviours Sermon on the mount and look upon his Commentaries on the law of Moses which the chief Priests and Pharisees had perverted by adulterate glosses will quickly finde that he discharged us not from the Obligation which the moral law had laid upon us but only did become our surety and bound himself to see it faithfully performed by us in our severall places The burden was not made lesse heavy then it was before I speak still of the Moral Law not the Ceremonial but that he hath given more strength to bear it more grace to regulate our lives by Gods Commandements And somewhat he did adde of his own auhority which tended to a greater measure of perfection then possibly we could attain to by the Law of Moses and that not only in the way of Evangelical Counsels and that there are such Counsels I can easily grant but of positive precept For so far certainly we may joyn issue with the Council of Trent that IESVS CHRIST is to be honoured and observed Non tantum ut Redemptor cui omnâ—s fidant sedut Legislator cui obediant not only as a Saviour unto whom we may trust but as a Law-maker also whom we are to obey The same position is maintained also by the Arminian party but not the more unsound for either Veritas a quocunq est est a Spiritu sancto as St. Ambrose hath it And this is so agreeable to the Word of God that either we must deny the Scripture or else confess that it proceeded from the Spirit of God Nor are his laws indeered only to us and sugred over as it were by the promise of a great reward but enjoyned also under pain of grievous punishments punishment and reward being the square or measure of the heavenly government no otherwise then of the earthly Tribulation and anguish saith St. Paul shall come upon the soul of every man that doth evil but glory and honour and peace to every man that doth good to the Iew first and also to the Gentile for God is no respecter of persons By which two general motives set before our eyes and the co-operation of the holy Spirit working with his Word he doth illuminate our mindes and mollifie our hearts and quench our lusts instruct us in the faith confirm us in our hopes and strengthen us in Christian charity till in the end he bring us to the knowledge of his holy will then to obedience to his Laws and finally to a resemblance of his vertues also If after all this care and teaching either by frailty or infirmity we do break his laws or violate his sacred Statutes as we do too often he doth not presently take the forfeiture which the Law doth give him for then O Lord should no flesh living in thy sight be justified but in the midst of judgement he remembreth mercy We may affirm of him most truly as Lactantius did Vt erga pios indulgentissimus Pater ita adversus impios justissimus Iudex as terrible a Iudge he is to impenitent sinners as an indulgent Father to his towardly children as before was said Such is the nature and condition of our Saviours Kingdome which sitting at the right hand of Almighty God he doth direct and govern as seems best to his heavenly wisdome and so shall do untill his coming again to judge both the quick and the dead Although he hath withdrawn himself and his bodily presence yet is he present with it in his mighty power and by the influences and graces of his holy Spirit And in this sense it was that he said unto them Behold I am with you alwayes to the end of the world And that not only with you my Apostles unto whom he spake but cum vobis successoribus vestris with all you my Disciples and with your successors also in your several places till time be no more Though he be placed above in the heavenly glories and is not joyned unto his Church by any bodily connexion yet he is knit unto it in the bonds of love and out of that affection doth so guide and order it as the Head doth the members of the Body natural Habet ecclesia Caput positum in Coelestibus quod gubernat Corpus suum separatum quidem visione sed annectitur Charitate as St. Austin hath it Vice-roy there needeth none to supply his absence who is always with us Nor we the assistance of a Vicar General to supply his place whose Spirit bloweth where him listeth and who is linked unto us in so strong affections But for all this our Masters in the Church of Rome have determined positively that in regard our Saviour hath withdrawn himself from the Church in his Body secundum visibilem praesentiam for as much as doth concern his visible presence he needs must have some Deputy or Lieutenant General qui visibilem hanc Ecclesiam in unitate contineat to govern and direct the same in peace and unity It seemes they think our Saviour Christ to be reduced unto the same straights as Augustus was of whom it is reported in the Roman stories that he did therefore institute a Provost in the City of Rome because he could not always be there in person 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and durst not leave it absolutely without a Governor And sure however others may complain of our Saviours absence and for that reason think it necessary to have some general Deputy to supply his place yet of all others those of Rome have least cause to do it who can command his presence at all times and on all occasions For as Cornelius a Lapide affirms expressely by saying only these words Hoc est Corpus meum the Bread is not only transubstiated into our Saviours Body but Christ anew begotten and born again upon the Altar And not his Body only that 's not half enough but as the Canon of Trent tels us there is totus Christus una cum anima Divinitate whole Christ both body and soul and the Godhead also personally and substantially on the blessed Sacrament That he is present every where in his power and Spirit there is none of us which denyeth If they can have his bodily presence also in so short a warning what use can they pretend for a Vicar General Adeo Argumenta ex falso petita ineptos habent exitus said Lactantius rightly Besides it is a Maxime in Ecclesiastical Polity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that the external Regiment of the Church of Christ is to be fitted to the frame and order of the
this blessed Spirit on the particular Members of his Congregation that is to say the joyning of the Saints together in an holy Communion the free remission of our sins in this present life resurrection of the body after death and the uniting again of Soul and Body unto life eternal This is the sum and method of the following Articles and these we shall pursue in their order beginning first with that of the Holy Ghost Whose gracious assistance I implore to guide me in the waies of Truth that so the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart may be alwayes acceptable in the sight of God the Lord my strength and my Redeemer But because the word or notion of the Holy Ghost is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word of various signification in the Book of God we will first look upon it in those significations and then conclude on that which is chiefly pertinent to the intent and purpose of the present Article For certainly the Orators Rule is both good and useful viz. Prius dividenda antequam definienda sit oratio That we must first distinguish of the Termes in all Propositions before we come unto a positive definition of them According to which Rule if we search the Scripture we shall there find that the Holy Ghost is first taken personaliter or essentialiter for the third person in the Oeconomie of the glorious Trinity We find him in this sense in the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour as the principal Agent in that Work The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee Luk. 1.35 And in his Baptism descending on him like a Dove to fit him and prepare him for the Prophetical Office he was then to exercise And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a Dove upon him Luk. 3.22 From which descent St. Peter telleth us that he was anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power and that from thenceforth he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed with the Devil In the next place the Holy Ghost is used in Scripture to signifie the Gifts and Graces of the holy Spirit as in Act. 2. where it is said of the Apostles that they were all filled with the holy Ghost ver 4. not with his essence or his person but with the impressions of the Spirit the Gifts and Graces of the Holy Ghost such as the Gift of Tongues mentioned in the following words The Gift of the Holy Ghost as it is called expresly Ver. 38. Thus read we also that the holy Ghost was given by the hands of Peter Act. 8.17 18. And by the hands of Paul Act. 19.6 In which we read that when Paul had laid his hands upon them the Holy Ghost came on them and they spoke with tongues and Prophesied which last words are a commentary upon those before and shew that by the holy Ghost which did come upon them is meant the Gift of Tongues and the power of Prophecying both which the holy Ghost then conferred upon them And lastly it is taken not onely for the ability of doing Miracles as speaking with strange Tongues Prophecying curing of Diseases and the like to these but for the Authority and Power which in the Church is given to some certain men to be Ministers of holy things to the rest of the people As when Christ breathed on his Apostles and said unto them Receive the holy Ghost that is to say Receive ye an holy and spiritual power over the soules of men a part whereof consisteth in the remitting and retaining of sins mentioned in the words next following and serving as a Comment to explaine the former In which respect the Holy Ghost said unto certain of the Elders in the Church of Antioch Segregate mihi Barnabam Saulum Separate unto me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them Act. 13.2 It is the Holy Ghost which cals it is his work to which they were called and therefore separate mihi separate to me may not unfitly be expounded to my Work and Ministery and consequently to the authority and power which belongs unto it Which being premised the meaning of the Article will in briefe be this That we beleeve not onely that there is such a person as the Holy Ghost in the Oeconomy of the blessed Trinity though that be principally intended but that he doth so distribute and dispose of his Gifts and Graces as most conduceth to the edification of the Church of Christ. But this I cannot couch in a clearer way as to the sense and doctrine of the Church of England than in the words of Bishop Iewel who doth thus expresse it Credimus spiritum sanctum qui est tertia persona in sacra Triadi illum verum esse Deum c. i. e. we beleeve that the Holy Ghost who is the Third Person in the holy Trinity is very God not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding both from the Father and the Son by an unspeakable means and unknowne to man and that it is his property to mollifie and soften mans heart when he is once received thereinto either by the wholesome Preaching of the Gospel or by any other way that he doth give men light and guide them to the knowledge of God to the wayes of truth to newnesse of life and to everlasting hope of salvation This being the sum of that which is to be beleeved of the Holy Ghost both for his Person and his Office we will first look upon his Person on his Property or Office afterwards And yet before we come unto his Person I mean his Nature and his Essence We will first look a little on the quid Nominis the name by which he is expressed in the Book of God In the Original he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with a double Article as Luk. 3.22 in Latine Spiritus sanctus or the Holy Spirit but generally in our English Idiom the Holy Ghost The Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comes from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth to breath and is the same with the Latine Spiro from whence comes Spiritus or the Spirit a name not given as I suppose because he doth proceed from the Father or the Son or both in the way of breathing though Christ be said to breath upon his Apostles when he said receive the Holy Ghost but because the breath being in it selfe an incorporeal substance and that which is the great preservative of all living creatures it got the name first of Spiritus vitae we read it in our English the breath of life Gen. 11.7 and afterwards came to be the name of all unbodyed incorporeal essences For thus is God said to be a Spirit God is a Spirit Ioh. 4.24 The Angels are called Ministring Spirits Heb. 1.14 the Soule of man is called his Spirit let us cleanse our selves saith the Apostle from all filthiness both of flesh and Spirit that is of the body and
the soule and by a metaphor the motions of the minde whether good or evill are called spirits also as the spirit of giddiness Isa. 19.14 the spirit of error 1 Tim. 4.1 the spirit of envie Iam. 4.5 which come all from the unclean spirit mentioned Luk. 11.24 And thus in general the pious motions in the mind are called Spirits too Quench not the spirit saith St. Paul i. e. those godly motions to the works of Faith and Piety which the Holy Spirit of God doth secretly kindle in thee For the word Ghost it is originally Saxon and signifieth properly the soul of a man as when we read of Christ that he gave up the Ghost Mark 15.37 and in the rest of the Evangelists also the meaning is that his soule departed from his body he yeelded up his soule to the hands of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Original Expiravit as the Latine reads it that is to say he breathed out his soul or he breathed his last Nor doth it signifie the soule onely though that most properly but generally also any spiritual substance as doth the word spiritus in the Latine a touch whereof we have still remaining in the Adjective Ghostly by which we mean that which is spiritual as our Ghostly Father Ghostly Counsel i. e. our Father in the spiritual matters counsel that savoreth of the spirit So then the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit are the same Person here though in different words and the word Holy which is added doth clearly difference him from all other spirits Not that God being a spirit is not holy also or that the Angelical spirits are not replenished with as much holinesse as a created nature can be capable of but because it is his Office to sanctifie or make holy all the elect Children of God therefore hath he the title or attribute of holy annexed unto him And yet the title of holy is not always added to denote this person though when we find mention of the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit it is meant and spoken of him onely For sometimes he is called the Spirit without any adjunct the Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or by way of eminency but still with reference to those gifts which he doth bestow The manifestation of the spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the Article demonstrative is given to every man to profit withall For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdome to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit Sometimes he is called the Spirit of the Father as Matth. 10.20 It is not yee that speak but the Spirit of the Father which speaketh in you sometimes the Spirit of the Son as Gal. 4.6 where it is said that God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying Abba Father Most generally he is called the Spirit of God as Gen 1.2 and Matth. 3.16 and infinite other places of the holy Scripture and more particularly the Spirit of Christ Rom. 8.9 in which place he is also called the Spirit of God Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if that the Spirit of God dwel in you there the Spirit of God if any have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his So the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit both of God and Christ and in one verse both So far we are onwards on our way for discoverie of the nature of this blessâ—d Spirit as to have found him out to be the Spirit of God the Father from whom he doth proceed by an unspeakable way of emanation and unknown to man for he proceedeth from the Father as our Saviour telleth us and to be also the Spirit of Christ the Son of God by whom he was breathed on the Apostles and so proceeding from the Son doth proceed from both Sent from the Father at the desire and prayer of the Son I will pray the Father and he shall send you another Comforter Iohn 14.16 Sent by the Son with the consent and approbation of the Father whom I will send unto you from the Father Iohn 15.26 and so sent of both And yet not therefore the less God because sent by either than IESUS CHRIST is God God for ever blessed as St. Paul calls him Rom. 9.5 because he was sent by God the Father He sent his Son made of a woman Gal. 4.4 saith the same Apostle If any doubt hereof as I know some do he may be sent for resolution of his doubt to the beginning of Genesis where he shall finde the Spirit of God moving on the waters Gen. 1.2 And to the Law where he shall read how the same Spirit came down on the Seventy Elders Numb 11.26 And to the Psalms Thou sendest forth thy Spirit and they are created Psal. 104.30 And to the Prophets The Spirit of God is upon me saith the Prophet Isaiah Chap. 61.1 which was Christs first Text And I will pour my Spirit upon all flesh saith the Prophet Ioel Chap. 1.28 which was Peters first Text The Spirit of God is God no question for in Deo non est nisi Deus say the Schoolmen rightly Not a created Spirit as the Angels were For in the beginning when God created the Heaven and the Earth and all things visible and invisible then the Spirit was and was not onely actually in a way of existence but was of such a powerful influence in the Creation of the World that on the moving of this Spirit on the face of the Waters the darkness was removed from the face of the deep and the Chaos of undigested matter made capable of Form and Beauty In the New Testament the evidence is far more clear than that of the Old by how much the Sun of Light did shine more brightly in the times of the Gospel than in those of the Law Saith not St. Peter in the Acts Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie unto the Holy Ghost and then addes presently Thou hast not lied unto men but unto God What saith St. Austin on this Text The Holy Ghost saith he is God Unde Petrus cum dixisset ausus eâ— mentiri Spiritui Sancto continuo secutus adjunxit quid esset Spiritus Sanctus ait non mentitus es hominibus sed Deo i. e. Therefore when Peter said unto Ananias thou hast dared to lie to the Holy Ghost he added presently to shew what was the Holy Ghost Thou hast not lied unto men but unto God Saith not St. Paul Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God How so Because the Spirit of God dwelleth in you What saith the Father unto this Ostendit Paulus deum esse Spiritum Sanctum ideo non esse Creaturam that is to say St. Paul by this sheweth That the Holy Ghost is God and so no Creature Doth not the same Apostle say in another place Know ye not that your bodies are the Temple of the Holy Ghost
16. And since it is not another thing to say The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father and the Son than that he is or proceeds from the Father and the Son in this they seem to agree with us in eandem fidei sententiam on the same doctrine of Faith though they differ in words Thus also Rob. Grosthead the learned and renowned Bishop of Lincoln as he is cited by Scotus a famous Schoolman delivereth his opinion touching this great Controversie The Grecians saith he are of opinion that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Son but that he proceedeth not from the Son but from the Father onely yet by the Son which opinion seemeth to be contrary to ours But happily if two wise and understanding men the one of the Greek Church and the other of the Latine both lovers of the truth and not of their own expressions did meet to consider of this seeming contrariety it would in the end appear Ipsam contrarietatem non esse veraciter realem sicut est vocalis That the difference is not real but verbal onely Azorius the great Casuist goeth further yet and upon due examination of the state of the Question not onely freeth the Greeks from Heresie but from Schism also By consequence the Church of Rome hath run into the greater and more grievous error in condemning every Maundy Thursday in their Bulla Coenae the whole Eastern Churches which for ought any of her own more sober children are able to discern on deliberation are fully as Orthodox as her self in the truth of Doctrine and more agreeable to antiquity in their forms of Speech For if we please to look into the Antient Writers we shall finde Tertullian saying very positively Spiritum non aliunde quam à Patre per filium which is the very same with that of Damascen before delivered And Ierom though a stout maintainer of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son also yet doth he sometimes fall upon this expression Spiritus à Patre egreditur propter naturae societatem à filio mittitur That he proceedeth from the Father and is sent by the Son which none of the Greek Church will deny But if we look upon the Fathers of the Eastern Churches we shall finde not onely private men as Basil Nazianzen Nyssen Cyril not to descend so low as Damascen to make no mention of the proceeding of the Holy Ghost from the Son at all but a whole Synod of 180 Prelates gathered together in the second General Council at Constantinople to be silent in it though purposely assembled to suppress the Heresie of Macedonius who had denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost For in the Constantinopolitan Creed according as it stands in all old Records the Fathers having ratified the Nicene Creed added these words for the declaring of their Faith in the Holy Ghost viz. I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord and giver of Life who proceedeth from the Father who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified who spake by the Prophets No word in this of his proceeding from the Son And though this Creed was afterwards continued in the Council of Ephesus yet so far was that Council from altering any thing which had been formerly delivered as to this paâ—ticular that it imposed a curse on those who should adde unto it And so it stood a long time in the Christian Church possessing that part in the Publick Liturgies which it still retaineth But in some tract of time some Spanish Bishops in the eighth Council of Toledo added the clause à filioque and made it to run thus in their publick Formulas who proceedeth from the Father and the Son The French not long after followed their example but still the Church of Rome adhered to the old expression Whereupon Charls the Great commanded a Council of his Prelates to be held at Aken Aquisgranum it is called in Latine to consider somewhat better of this addition and caused some of them to be sent to Pope Leo the third to have his opinion in the matter who was so far from giving any allowance unto the addition that he perswaded them to leave it out by little and little And nor content to give this Counsel unto them for fear lest the addition might creep in at Rome he caused the Constantinopolitan Creed to be fairly written out on a Table of Silver and placed it behinde the Altar of St. Peter to the end it might remain unto posterity as a lasting Monument of the true Faith which he professed The like distast did Iohn the eighth declare against this addition in a Letter by him written unto Photius Patriark of Constantinople in which he gives him to understand not onely that they had no such addition in the Church of Rome but that he did condemn them who were Authors of it adding withal That as he was careful for his part to cause all the Bishops of the West to be so perswaded of it as he was himself so that he did not think it reasonable that any should be violently constrained to leave out the addition But after in the yeer 883 Pope Nicholas the first caused this clause à filioque to be added also to the Creed in all the Churches under the Command and Jurisdiction of the Popes of Rome and from thence-forwards did they brand the Greek Churches with the brand of Heresie for not admitting that clause to the Antient Creeds which they themselves had added of their own Authority without the consent of the Eastern Churches or so much as the pretence of a General Council But as my Lord of Canterbury hath right well observed in his learned Answer unto Fisher It is an hard thing to adde and anathematize too And yet to that height of uncharitableness did they come at last that whereas it was the miserable fortune of Constantinople to be taken by the Turks upon Whitsunday being the Festival of the coming of the Holy Ghost this was given out to be a just judgment on them from the Almighty for thinking so erroneously of his Blessed Spirit as if it might not be concluded in as good form of Logick That sure the Knights of Rhodes had in their lives and actions denied Christ who bought them because that Town and all the Iland was taken by the Turks upon Christmas-day or that the People of Chios had denied and abnegated the Resurrection of our Saviour who redeemed them because that Town and therewith all the Iland also was taken by the said Turks upon Easter-day I have now done with so much of the present Article as relates unto the Person of the Holy Ghost which is the first signification of the term or notion as it is taken personaliter and essentialiter We must next look upon the word as it is used to signifie in the Book of God the gifts and graces of the
Spirit in which we shall discern both his power and office These gifts and graces of the Spirit the School-men commonly divide into Gratis data such as being freely given by God are to be spent as freely for the good of others of which kinde are the gift of tongues curing diseases and the like and gratum facientia such as do make him good and gracious on whom it pleaseth God to bestow the same as Faith Iustice Charity The first are in the Scripture called by the name of gifts Now there are diversity of gifts saith the Apostle but the same Spirit For to one is given by the Spirit the word of Wisdom to another the word of Knowledge by the same Spirit to another Faith by the same Spirit to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit to another the working of miracles to another prophecy to another discerning of spirits to another divers kindes of tongues to another the interpretation of tongues The later are called Fruits by the same Apostle The Fruits of the Spirit saith he are love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness faith meekness temperance The Gifts are known most commonly by the name of Gratis data the Fruits pertain to Gratum facientia The Gratum facientia belong to every man for himself the Gratis data for the benefit of the Church in common That which God giveth us for the benefit and use of others must be so spent that they may be the better for it because not given unto us for own sakes onely nor to gain others to our selves but all to him In which respect Gods Servants are to be like Torches which freely wast themselves to give light to others like Powder on the day of some Publick Festival which freely spends it self to rejoyce the multitude That which he gives us for our selves must be so improved that we may thereby become fruitful unto all good works vessels prepared and sanctified for the Masters use In the first of these we may behold the power of the Holy Ghost in the last his office His power in giving tongues to unlearned men knowledge to the ignorant wisdom to the simple the gift of prophecy even unto very Babes and Sucklings I mean to men not studied in the Liberal Sciences A power so great that no disease is incurable to it no spirit so subtile and disguised but is easie discerned by it no tongue so difficult and hard which it cannot interpret no miracle of such seeming impossibility but it can effect it In which regard the Holy Ghost is called in Scripture The power of God The power of the most High shall over-shadow thee Luke 1.35 And Christ our Lord having received the ointing of the holy Spirit is said to be anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power Acts 10.38 Nor want I Reasons to induce me unto this opinion that when Simon Magus had effected by his sorceries and lying wonders to be called the great power of God but that his purpose was to make men believe that he was the Holy Ghost or the Spirit of God which title afterwards he bestowed on his strumpet Helena and took that of CHRIST unto himself as the more famed and fitting for his devilish purposes Next for his Office that consisteth in regenerating the carnal and sanctifying the regenerate man First In regenerating of the carnal For except a man be born of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God saith our Blessed Saviour of Water as the outward Element but of the holy Spirit as the inward Efficient which moving on the Waters of Baptism as once upon the face of the great Abyss doth make them quickning and effectual unto newness of life Then for the Work of Sanctification that is wrought wholly by the Spirit who therefore hath the name of the Holy Ghost not onely because holy in himself formaliter but because holy effective making them holy who are chosen unto life eternal So say St. Peter the first and St. Paul the last of the Apostles St. Peter first Elect according to the fore-knowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience 1 Pet. 1.2 And so St. Paul But ye are washed but ye are sanctified but ye are justified in the Name of our Lord Iesus and by the Spirit of God 1 Cor. 6.11 That is to say Iustified in the Name of our Lord Iesus through Faith in him and sanctified by the Spirit of God through the effusion of his Graces in the Soul of Man The work of Sanctification is not wrought but by many acts as namely By shedding abroad in our hearts that most excellent gift of charity filling our souls with righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost by teaching us to adde To our faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charity that we be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ. Though Christ be the Head yet is the Holy Ghost the Heart of the Church from whence the vital spirits of grace and godliness are issued out unto the quickning of the Body mystical And as the vital spirits in the body natural are sensibly perceived by the motion of the heart the breathing of the mouth and by the beating of the pulse so by the same means may we easily discern the motions of the Spirit of Grace First It beginneth in the heart by putting into us new hearts more sanctified desires than we had before A new heart will I also give you and a new spirit will I put within you saith the Lord by the Prophet Ezekiel And to what end That ye may walk in my Statutes and keep my Iudgments This new heart is like the new wine which our Saviour speaks of not possible to be contained in old bottles but will break out first in new desires For Novum supervenisse spiritum nova demonstrant desideria as St. Bernard hath it Nor will it break out onely in desires or wishes but we shall finde it on our tongues for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh And if the heart be throughly sanctified we may be sure that no corrupt communication will come out of our mouths but onely such as is good to the use of edifying and may minister grace unto the hearers The same breath in the natural body is Organon vitae vocis as experience telleth us The Instrument of life and voice it is the same we live by and the same we speak by And so it is also in the Body mystical as well the vocal as the vital breath proceeding both alike from the Holy Ghost Nor stayes it onely on the tongue but as the beating of the pulse is best found at the hand so if we would desire to know how the
Spirit beateth let us next take it by the hand or rather by his handy works For some there be who do confess Christ with their mouths but yet deny him in their works The Spirit of God is very active and wheresoever it is it will soon be working if it do not work it is no Spirit For usque adeo proprium est spiritui operari ut nisi operetur non sit as the Father hath it So natural it is for the Spirit to bring forth good works that if it do not so then it is no Spirit These Works St. Paul calls plainly The fruits of the Spirit Love joy peace gentleness goodness and the rest that follow Which as they are planted in the Soul may be called the Graces but as they are manifested in our actions the Fruits of the Spirit to shew us that it is a dead spirit which brings forth no fruits even as it is a dead faith in St. Iames his judgement which brings forth no works In a word as it was in the generation of our Saviour Christ so it is also in the regeneration of a Christian man both wrought by the effectual operation of the Holy Ghost But these being chiefly matters practical are beyond my purpose Proceed we then to such as are more Doctrinal which is the proper subject of my undertaking from this acception of the word in which the Holy Ghost is taken for those gifts and graces which out of his great bounty he bestoweth upon us to that wherein it signifieth The Power and Calling which in the Church is given to some certain men to be Ministers of holy things to the rest of the people That in this sense the word is taken we have shewn before and are now come to shew how it is performed by what authority and what gifts discharged and executed The office of teaching in the Church doth properly belong to Christ the Prophet of the New Testament of whom Moses prophecied Deut. 13.15 As both St. Peter and St. Stephen do affirm expresly A Prophet whom all the people were to hear in every thing which he was pleased to say unto them and that commanded under such a terrible commination that every Soul which would not hear the voice of that Prophet was to be destroyed from amongst the people Yet though it were an office proper to our Lord and Saviour so proper that he seemed to affect it more than either the Priesthood or the Kingdom He entred not upon the same until he had received some visible designation from the Holy Ghost That he took not on him to discharge his Prophetical Function till after he was baptized by Iohn in Iordan is evident by course and order of the Evangelical story Not that his Baptism could confer any power upon him or give him an authority which before he had not for without doubt the lesser is blessed of the greater as St. Paul affirmeth and Iohn confessed himself so much less than Christ as that he was not worthy to untie his shooe but that as man he did receive this power from the Holy Ghost descending on him at that time in a bodily shape and withal giving him that Sacred Vnction whereby he was inaugurated to so high an office And to this Unction of the Spirit doth he himself refer the power he had to Preach the Gospel and to discharge all other parts of that weighty Function and that too in the very first Sermon which he ever preached to give the people notice that he preached not without lawful calling or exercised a power which belonged not to him For entering into the Synagogue of Nazareth on the Sabbath day he took the Book and fell upon that place of the Prophet Isaiah where it is said The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering sight unto the blinde to set at liberty them that are bruised and to preach the acceptable yeer of the Lord Which having read he closed the Book and said unto them This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears That he did preach by vertue of some unction from the holy Spirit is evident by his own Application of the Text by which he gave his Auditors to understand That he did not undertake the office of his own head onely but by the motion and impulsion of the Holy Ghost by whom he was abundantly furnished with all requisite gifts which might prepare him thereunto Non meo proprio privatoque sed divino spiritu missus sum eo actus eo impulsus eo plenus ad praedicandum Evangelium venio as the learned Iesuite glosseth on it But if you ask where or at what time he received this unction we must send you for an Answer to St. Ieroms Commentary on those words of the Prophet where we shall finde Expletum esse hanc unctionem illo tempore quando baptizatus est in Jordane Spiritus sanctus in specie Columbae descendit super eum maenfit in illo That is to say This unction or anointing was performed or fulfilled at that time when he was baptized by Iohn in Iordan and the Holy Ghost descended on him in the shape of a Dove and remained with him Nor doth St. Ierom stand alone in this Exposition Irenaeus Athanasius â—uffinus Augustine and Prosper all of them Antient Writers and of great renown concurring with him in the same And to this unction or anointing at the time of his Baptism St. Peter questionless alludeth where preaching to Cornelius and his Family he lets them know how God anointed IESUS of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power who from that time forwards not before went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil In which place by the anointing with the Holy Ghost I understand the furnishing of the Man CHRIST JESUS Iuxta dispensationem carnis assumptae as St. Ierom hath it with those gifts and graces of the Spirit which were requisite and fit to qualifie him for the undertaking By power the Calling and Authority which that Unction gave him to preach the Gospel and do the rest of those good works which properly did pertain to his Ministration But that both gifts and power were conferred upon him by the descension of the Spirit at the time of his Baptism to which St. Peter doth allude I have Maldonate concurring in opinion with me saying Loquitur Petrus de Baptismo Johannis quem Christus susceperat postquam à Spiritu sancto unctum fuisse significat This Office as our Saviour was pleased to execute in his own Person as long as he sojourned with us here upon the Earth so being to withdraw himself from the sight of man he thought it requisit to make choice of some to be about him who might
Pastors and Teachers That is to say either he gave unto some men such a measure of Gifts as might fit them to the severall Callings which are there enumerated or else he gave the men so gifted to the use of the Church and dedicated them Gifts and all to the publick service Either or both of these was done and done unto the end which is after specified viz. for the perfecting of the Saints for the worke of the Ministery for the edifying of the body of Christ. These were the Gifts which Christ conferred upon his Church by the Holy Ghost First by his first descent or coming on the feast of Pentecost when he gave Apostles Prophets and Evangelists and ever since by furnishing the Church with Pastors and Teachers for the work of the Ministry and fitting them with those Gifts and Graces of the Holy Spirit which are expedient for their calling And though St. Paul in this recital doth not speak of Bishops yet questionlesse he doth include them in the name of Pastors For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is used in the original doth signifie a Ruler as well as Pastor And Christ is called Episcopus Pastor animarum the Bishop and Shepheard of our soules as our English reads it to shew that the Episcopal and Pastoral Office is indeed the same And this I could make good out of the constant tendry of the Ancient Fathers had I not handled it already in another place Nor shall I adde more here out of that Discourse but that it is affirmed positively by our learned Andrewes Apud vâ—teres Pastorum nomen vix inveniri nisi cum de Episcopis loquntur i. e. that the name of Pastors is scarce read amongst the Ancients but when they have occasion to speak of Bishops And Binius in his notes upon the Councils excepts against a fragment of the Synod of Rhemes for laying claime to more antiquity than belongs unto it and that he doth upon this reason eo quod titulum Pastoris tribuat Paracho because the Parish Priest there is called Pastor contrary to the usage of those elder times But to put the matter out of doubt though S. Paul doth not speak of Bishops by name in that place of the Ephesians before alleged yet when he called the Rulers of the Church to appear at Ephesus before him he doth not only give them the name of Bishops but saith that they were made Bishops by the Holy Ghost In quo vos spiritus sanctus posuit Episcopos as all Translations read it but our English onely Christ did not so desert his Church as to leave it without Order and the power of Government nor hath so laid aside his Prophetical Office but that as well since his Ascension as while he sojourned here on the Earth amongst us he is still the chief Pastor and Bishop of our Souls as St. Peter calls him Onely it pleased him to commit a great part of this care to the managing of the blessed Spirit whom he promised to send to his Apostles after his departure to the end that he might guide them into all truth and abide with them always to the end In which respect Tertullian calleth the Holy Ghost Vicarium Christi the Vicar or Deputy of Christ his Usher as it were in the great School of the Church and doth assign this Office to him Dirigere ordinare ad perfectam producere disciplinam that he direct dispose and perfect us at the last in all Christian pietie Not that the Holy Ghost doth of himself immediately discharge this duty but by the Ministry of such men as are called unto it Whom he co-operates withal when they Preach the Gospel by working on the heart on the inward man as they upon the understanding by the outward senses Without the inward operation of the Holy Spirit the Preaching of the Word would be counted foolishness and all the eloquent perswasions unto Faith and Piety which could be uttered by the tongues of Men or Angels would seem but as tinckling brass and a sounding cymbal Without an outward calling to attend this Ministry Vzzah will press too near the Ark Uzziah take upon him to burn incense on the Altars of God and both not draw destruction on their own heads onely but prove a stumbling block and scandal to the rest of the people Not every one which prophecieth in the Name of Christ or doth pretend in his name to have cast out devils or done any other wonderful works shall be acknowledged by him in that terrible day but he that doth it in that Order and by those warrantable ways which he hath appointed Christ must first send them ere they go upon such an errand and send them so as he did his Apostles to Preach the Gospel first giving them a power to minister the things of God and then commanding them to go into all the world to teach all nations It had not been sufficient for them to pretend a mission unless they could have shewn their commission also and that they had not till he pleased to breathe upon them and said Receive the Holy Ghost with the words that follow And so it hath been with the Church in all Ages since We must receive the Holy Ghost and be endued with power from above before we enter on the Ministry in the Church of Christ and not perswade our selves to pretend unto some special gifts and illuminâ—tions unless we have the Holy Ghost in the sense here spoken of unless the power which we pretend to be conferred upon us by those hands which have power to give it Those words Receive the Holy Ghost import not the receiving of saving grace or of inward sanctimony nor the conferring of such special gifts of the holy Spirit as after were given to the Apostles for the use of the Church but the receiving of a power to execute a Ministry in the Church of Christ a special and spiritual power in the things of God and in the dispensation of his heavenly Mysteries And as they were then used by Christ at the authorizing of his Apostles to Preach the Gospel so are they still the verba solemnia the solemn and set form of words used at the Ordination of all Priests or Presbyters used antiently in that sacred Ceremony without any exception and still retained with us in the Church of England for I look not on the new Model of Ordination as a thing in which the Anglican Church is at all concerned as the very operative words by which and by no others of what kinde so ever the order of Priesthood is conferred And had not those of Rome retained them in their Ordinations their giving power to offer sacrifice for the quick and the dead Accipe potestatem sacrificandi pro vivis mortuis which new patch they have added to the antient Formulas had never made them Priests of the New Testament
first of the Evangelical Scriptures was the Epistle Decretory which we finde in the fifteenth of the Acts and that was countenanced by a visum est spiritui sancto i. e. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost And when St. Paul writ his Epistle unto those of Corinth for fear he might be thought by that factious people to injoyn any thing upon them without very good warrant he vouched the Spirit of God for his Author in it They preached the Gospel first to others as Christ did to them by word of mouth that being the more speedy way to promote the Work But being they could not live to the end of the world and that the purest waters will corrupt at last by passing through muddy or polluted Chanels they thought it best to leave so much thereof in writing as might serve in all succeeding Ages for the Rule of Faith Postea vero per voluntatem Dei in Scripturis nobis Evangelium tradiderunt firmamentum columnam fidei nostrae futuram as in Irenaeus A man might marvel why St. Iohn should give that testimony to the Gospel which was writ by him that it was written to the end That men might believe that JESUS is the CHRIST the Son of God and that believing they might have Faith through his Name considering that none of the rest of the Evangelists say the like of theirs or why he thundred at the end of his Revelation that most fearful curse against all those who should presume to adde anything to the words of that Book or take any thing from it being a course that none of all the sacred Pen-men had took but he But when I call to minde the Spirit by which Iohn was guided and the time in which those Books of his were first put in writing methinks the marvel is took off without more ado For seeing that his Gospel was writ after all the rest as is generally affirmed by all the Antients those words relate not as I guess to his own Book onely but to the whole Body of the Evangelical History now perfectly composed and finished for otherwise how impertinent had it been for him to say That IESVS did many other signs in the presence of his Disciples which were not written in that Book if he had spoken those words of his own Book onely Considering that he had neither written of the signs done in the way to Emaus mentioned by St. Luke or his appearing to the eleven in a Mountain of Galilee which St. Matthew speaks of or his Ascension into Heaven which St. Mark relateth which every vulgar Reader could not chuse but know The like I do conceive of those words of his in the Revelation viz. That they relate not to that Book alone but to the whole body of the Bible St. Iohn being the Survivor of that glorious company on whom the Holy Ghost descended in the Feast of Pentecost and the Apocalypse the last of those Sacred Volumes which were dictated by the Spirit of God for the use of his Church and now make up the Body of the holy Scriptures God had now said as much by the mouths and pens of the Prophets Evangelists and Apostles as he conceived sufficient for our salvation and so closed up the Canon of the Scriptures as St. Augustine telleth Deus quantum satis esse judicavit locutus Scripturam condidit as his own words are which certainly God had not done nor the Evangelist declared nor St. Augustine said had not the Scripture been a sufficient rule able to make us wise unto salvation and thoroughly furnished unto all good works Which being so it cannot but be a great dishonor to the Scripture and consequently to the Spirit of God who is Author of it to have it called as many of the Papists do Atramentariam Scripturam Plumbeam Regulam Literam Mortuam that is to say An Ink-horn Text a Leaden Rule and a Dead Letter Pighius for one as I remember gives it all these Titles or to affirm That it hath no authority in the Church of Christ but what it borroweth from the Pope without whose approbation it were scarce more estimable than the Fables of Aesop which was one of the blasphemous speeches of Wolf Hermannus or that is not a sufficient means to gain Souls to Christ or to instruct the Church in all duties necessary to salvation without the adding of Traditional Doctrines neither in terminis extant in the Book of God nor yet derived from thence by good Logical inference which is the general Tenet of the Church of Rome or that to make the Canon of the Scripture compleat and absolute the Church as it hath added to it already the Apocryphal Writings so may it adde and authorize for the Word of God the Decretals of the Antient Popes and their own Canon Law as some of the Professors of it have not sticked to say So strongly are they byassed with their private interess and a desire of carrying on their faction in the Church of Christ as to place the holy Spirit where he doth not move in their Traditions in Apochryphal and meer Humane writings and not to see and honor him where indeed he is in the holy Scriptures Of the Authority Sufficiency and Perspicuity of which holy Scriptures I do not purpose at the present any debate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a work more fit for another place and such as of it self would require a Volume onely I say that if the written Word be no rule at all but as it hath authority from the Church which it is to direct and then not an entire but a partial rule like a Noune Adjective in Grammar which cannot stand by it self but requireth somewhat else to be joyned with it in Construction and that too so obscure and difficult that men of ordinary wits cannot profit by it and therefore must not be permitted to consult the same the Holy Ghost might very well have spared his pains of speaking by the Prophets in the time of the Law or guiding the pens of the Apostles in the time of the Gospel and the great Body of the Scripture had been the most impertinent and imperfect peece the most unable to attain to the end it aims at that was ever writ in any Science since the world began Which what an horrid blasphemy it must needs be thought against the majesty and wisdom of the holy Spirit let any sober Christian judge And yet as horrid as those blasphemies may be thought to be some of the most profest enemies of the Church of Rome and such as think that the further they depart from Rome they are the nearer to Christ have faln upon the like if not worse extravagancies For to say nothing of the Anabaptists and that new brood of Sectaries which now swarms amongst us whom I look on onely as a company of Fanatical Spirits did not Cartwright and the rest of our new
in several ranks appointing unto every rank the course of his ministery composing Psalms and Hymns to the praise of God prescribing how they should be sung with what kind of instrument and ordering with what vestments the Singing-men should be arayed in the act of their service We shall there finde the Feast of Purim ordained by Mordecai who then possessed the place of a Prince among them and that of the Dedication by the Princes of the Maccabean progeny yet both religiously observed in all times succeeding this last by Christ himself as the Gospel telleth us We shall there finde how Moses broke in peeces the Golden Calf and Hezekiah the Brazen Serpent how the high places were destroyed and the groves cut down by the command of Iehosaphat and what a Reformation was made in the Church of Iudah by the good King Iosiah Finally we shall therein finde how Aaron the High Priest was reproved by Moses Abiathar deposed by Solomon the arrogancy of the Priests restrained by Ioas Such power as this the godly Princes of the Iews did exercise by the Lords appointment to the glory of Almighty God and their own great honor If they took more than this upon them and medled as Vzziah did in offering incense which did of right belong to the Priests office A Leprosie shall stick upon him till the hour of his death nor shall he have a sepulchre amongst the rest of the Kings And such and none but such is that supream power which we ascribe unto the King in the Church of England The Papists if they please may put a scorn on Queen Elizabeth of most famous memory in saying Foeminam in Anglia esse caput ecclesiae that a woman was the head of the Church of England as once Bellarmine did and Calvin if he list may pick a quarrel with the Clergy of the times of King Henry the eighth as rash and inconsiderate men and not so onely but as guilty of the sin of blasphemy Erant enim blasphemi cum vocarunt eum summum caput ecclesiae sub Christo for giving to that King the title of Supream Head of the Church under Christ himself But Queen Elizabeth disclaimed all authority and power of ministring divine service in the Church of God as she declared in her Injunctions unto all Her Subjects And the Clergy in their Convocation Anno 1562. ascribe not to the Prince the Ministery of the Word and Sacraments nor any further power in matters which concern Religion than that onely Prerogative which was given by God himself to all godly Princes in the Holy Scriptures More than this as we do not give the Kings of England so less than this the Christian Emperors did not exercise in the Primitive times as might be made apparent by the Acts of Constantine and other godly Emperors in the times succeeding if it might stand with my design to pursue that Argument Take one for all this memorable passage in Socrates an old Ecclesiastical Historian who gives this Reason why he did intermix so much of the acts of Emperors with the affairs of holy Church viz. That from that time in which they first received the Faith Ecclesiae negotia ex illorum nutu perpendere visa sunt c The business of the Church did seem especially to depend on their will and pleasure insomuch as General Councils were summoned by them for the dispatch of such affairs as concerned Religion even in the main and fundamentals and other emergent occasions of the highest moment CHAP. III. Of the Invisibility and Infallibility of the Church of Christ And of the Churches power in Expounding Scripture Determining Controversies of the Faith and Ordaining Ceremonies BUt laying by those Matters of External Regiment we will look next on those which are more intrinsecal both to the nature of the Church and the present Article For when we say That we believe the Holy Catholick Church we do not mean That we do onely believe that there is a Church upon the Earth which for the latitude thereof may be called Catholick and for the piety of the Professors may be counted Holy but also that we do believe that this Church is led by the Spirit of God into all necessary Truths and being so taught becomes our Schoolâ—mistress unto Christ by making us acquainted with his will and pleasure and therefore that we are to yeeld obedience unto her Decisions determining according to the Word of God This is the sum of that which we believe in the present Artiâ—le more than the quod sit of the same which we have looked upon in the former Chapter and to the disquisition of these points we shall now proceed A matter very necessary as the world now goes in which so many Schisms and Factions do distract mens mindes that Truth is in danger to be lost by too much curiosity in enquiring after it For as the most Reverend Father the late Lord Bishop of Canterbury very well observes Whiles one Faction cries up the Church above the Scripture and the other side the Scripture to the contempt and neglect of the Church which the Scripture it self teacheth men both to honor and obey They have so far endangered the belief of the one and the authority of the other That neither hath its due from a great part of men The Church commends the Scripture to us as the Word of God which she hath carefully preserved from the time of Moses to this day and so far we are willing to give credence to her as to believe that therein she hath done the duty of a faithful witness not giving testimony to any supposititious or corrupted Text but to that onely which doth carry the impressions in it of the Image and Divine Character of the Spirit of God But if a difference do arise about the sense and meaning of this very Scripture or any controversie do break forth on the mis-understanding of it or the applying and perverting it to mens private purposes which is the general source and fountain of all Sects and Heresies we will not therein hearken to the voice of the Church but every man will be a Church to himself and follow the Dictamen or the illumination as they please to call it of their private Spirit It therefore was good counsel of a learned man of our own Not to indulge too much to our own affections or trust too much unto the strength of a single judgment in the controverted points of Faith but rather to relie on the authority and judgment of the Church therein For seeing saith he that the Controversies of Religion in our time are grown in number so many and in nature so intricate that few have time and leasure and fewer strength of understanding to examine them what remaineth for men desirous of satisfaction in things of such consequence but diligently to search out which of all the Societies of men in
as in the West did gainsay the same had their several Errors which never could finde entertainment in the Church of Rome Insomuch as one might safely say of Theological truths as was once said of Philosophical viz. Though they may not possibly be found all at once together in a National or Particular Church yet they are all preserved in the Vniversal And it is the Vniversal Church or the Church Essential not any Topical Church whatever which is free from Error This being granted as I think it is proved sufficiently that the Church Essential cannot fall into any Error which is destructive of divine and salvifical truth We will next see whether and if at all how far this privilege may be extended to the Representative For being it is impossible for the whole Church the diffusive Body to meet together in one place for the composing of such Differences and suppressing such Heresies as may occasionally arise in some part thereof it hath been found expedient in all former ages to delegate some choice men out of the particulars which being met should represent the whole Body Collective and in the name of those that sent them agree amongst themselves what was fit to be done These Meetings were called General Councils Concilia à conciliando from reconciling and attoning such material differences as did disturb the publick peace and general in relation unto National and Provincial Councils assembled on occasions of more private nature From the Apostles times did this use continue Who on the dissention raised by some which came down from Iudea and mingled Circumcision and the Law of Moses with the Gospel of Christ did meet together to consider and determine of it And having resolved upon the point they sent their Decretory Epistle unto all the Churches requiring their obedience and conformity to that resolution which on debate amongst themselves and by the guidance and assistance of the Holy Ghost had been made therein This as it was the first General Council of the Church of Christ so was it the model also of all those that followed and of this Council it is certain that it could not erre Partly because composed for the most part of the Lords Apostles but principally because guided and directed by the Spirit of Truth who had the supream managing of the Action But this we cannot say of those General Councils which after were assembled on the like occasions For though the Church essential might delegate her power unto those Commissioners whom she imployed at such Assemblies yet could she not also import her Privilege And for the Members who convened they neither were endued with a like measure of the Spirit as the Apostles were possessed of nor sure infallibly of such assistance from the Holy Ghost as he vouchsafed to them in that great affair and therefore could not warrantably presume of the like freedom from error which that first General Council might lay claim unto Augustine hath resolved it so against Cresconius Non debet se Ecclesia Christo praeponere cum ille semper veraciter judicet Ecclesiastici autem judices plerumque falluntur The Church saith he ought not to prefer her self before Christ i. e. Before Christ speaking in his Gospel considering that he always judgeth according to truth but Ecclesiastical Iudges being men are oft-times deceived And so it is resolved by the Church of England who hath declared That for as much as General Councils be Assemblies of men whereof all be not governed by the Spirit and Word of God they may erre and sometimes have erred in things appertaining unto God A possibility then there is in the judgment of the Church of England That General Councils may erre in the things of God whether in points of Faith or not there is nothing said For being the Conveners are no more than men men subject as all others are to Humane affections and byassed many times by their private interesses it cannot be but such a possibility may be well supposed And a declaration there is also that some General Councils have actually erred as did the second Nicene in the matter of Images for which it stands censured by the Bishops of France and Germany in the Synod held at Franckford under Charls the Great Which notwithstanding such and so sacred is the name of a General Council if truly such that is to say if it be lawfully called and rightly constituted That the determinations of it are not rashly to be set at nought or wilfully opposed or scornfully slighted it being the Supream Tribunal of Christ on Earth For since the Lord was pleased so graciously to promise That when two or three were gathered together in his name he would be in the midst of them It may be piously inferred in Pope Celestines words Cum nec tam brevi numero Spiritus defit quanto magis eum interesse credamus turbae convenientem in unum sanctorum If the Spirit saith he be not wanting to so small a number how much rather ought we to believe that he vouchsafes to be present with a great multitude of good and godly men convened together He that heareth you heareth me and he that despiseth you despiseth me said Christ himself also unto his Apostles and in them unto their Successors in his holy Ministery May it not piously be inferred from those words of Christ as did some of the Antients in an African Synod to be a very gross absurdity for a man to think That God would give an understanding and discerning Spirit to particular men Et sacerdotibus in Concilium congregatis denegare and not afford it to be a company of godly Bishops met together in counsel And reason good For as many eyes see more than one and the united judgments of learned men assembled together carry more authority in Natural or Political things than of some single persons onely so questionless the joynt prayers of many devout and godly men prevail more with God for the assistance of his Spirit in their consultations than any private man can chalenge or presume upon when points of Faith and matters appertaining to the service of God are to be debated Upon these grounds from the Apostles times to these the Church hath exercised a power in her Representatives of setling such affairs as concerned the publick whether it were that some new controversie did arise in the points of Faith or an emergent Heresie was to be suppressed or that some Text of holy-Scripture which Hereticks had wrested to their private ends was to be expounded or finally that the worshipping of God the Lord in the beauty of holiness did require it of them Nor was it onely exercised by the Church de facto but de jure too And so it is resolved by the Church of England in her Twentieth Article the first and last expresly the second upon strong and necessary consequence The Church hath power to decree Rites or
it is that God of his great goodness and love to man hath so provided that no man can complain that he wants help to get out if he be not wanting to himself but will stretch out his hand and lay hold of such means as are by God prepared to that end and purpose If we sing Domine de profundis and call upon him out of the deeps of our sin and misery no doubt but he will hear our voyce and take pitty on us for with him there is mercy saith the Royal Psalmist with him is plentious redemption sufficient to deliver Israel from all his sins The pit of sin is deep that of mercy bottomless a kind of Puteus inexhaustus a Well which can never be drawn dry as the Pope said of England when at his devotion Though man sin grievously and unpardonably in the sight of others yet hath God mercie still in store for the greatest sinner Gods goodness being so transcendent as not to be exhausted by mans maliciousness Bonitas invicti non vincitur said Fulgentius rightly Those of the Church of Rome have made a difference of sins accounting some to be venial others mortal which terms we well enough approve of rightly understood but I approve not the distinction of some Protestant Doctors of remissible and irremissible of sins which may be pardoned and of sins that may not First We deny not the distinction of venial and mortal sins rightly understood but do think that some sins are fitly said to be mortal and some venial because some are forgiven some not according to the quality of the sin and the party sinning Not that we think that some are worthy in themselves of eternal punishment and others but of temporal onely whereof the first are counted mortal and the others venial as the Papists think but that some sins either in respect of the matter wherein men offend or ex imperfectione actus in that they are not committed with a full consent are not so inconsistent with the Spirit of Grace but that the Spirit of Grace still remaining in him which doth them and preserves him in the good opinion and esteem of God These we may call Peccata quotidianae incursionis sins of daily incursion vain thoughts and idle words and unseemly motions which the best men are subject to at some time or other And if God were extream in marking what is done amiss in these several waies no flesh were able to abide it He that is faulty in these kinds though he deserve punishment and eternal punishment at the hands of God if God should take advantage of the Law against him yet shall his punishment be lesse and his stripes far fewer than it shall be in those who transgress maliciously and sin with an high hand of presumptuous wickedness We have not so much of the Stoick as to make sins equal or to maintain peccata omnia sunt aequalia in the way of Paradox as once Tully did though the Papists falsly charge it on us For though we use not the distinction in their sense and meaning yet neither do we say that all sins are equal and of like deformity or in the same degree of contrariety with the grace of God or that they have the same effects and shall be punished at the last with the like extremity Onely we take it for a dangerous and presumptuous doctrine to teach that any sin if properly and truly sin is venial in and of it self without true repentance as that which doth include nothing offensive to God or is meritorious of his judgements For Almain one of their great Doctors doth affirm expresly that it is a question amongst the Schoolmen whether there be any such sin or not And himself concludeth out of Gerson that no sin is venial of it self but onely through the mercy of God it being a contradiction that God should forbid an act under a penalty and when he hath done that act should not be mortal in its own nature because being thus forbidden it is against the Law of God and that which is against Gods Law must needs be infinitely evil and by consequence mortal And so it is also in respect of the party sinning For as Cajetan hath well observed That which doth positively make sin venial or not venial is the state of the subject wherein it is found If therefore we respect the nature of sin as it is in it self without grace it will remain eternally in stain or guilt and so subject the sinner to eternal punishment But yet such is the nature of some sins either in regard of the matter wherein they are conversant or their not being done with full consent that they do not necessarily imply an exclusion of Grace out of the subject in which they are found and so do not necessarily put the doers of them into such a state which positively makes them not to be venial by removing grace which is the fountain of remission So that no sin is positively venial as having any thing in it self which may claim remission because it hath not any thing of Grace from whence all remission doth proceed though many sins ex genere or ex imperfectione actus as before was said that is to say in reference to the matter wherein man offendeth or to the manner as not done with a full consent may be said to be venial negative and per non ablationem principii remissionis in that it doth not necessarily imply the exclusion of grace by the exclusion of which grace from the souls of men sins are named mortal For being that Grace onely is the fountain whence remission springs nothing can make sin positively venial but to be in Grace nor nothing make it positively mortal but to be out of the state of Grace And so we see that some sins may be called venial according to the quality of the sin and the party sinning in that they bring not alwaies with them eternal punishment though possibly not repented of particularly and that all sins are venial ex eventu too though otherwise mortal in themselves in that there is no sin so great but by the blood of Christ and sincere repentance may â—e done away and freely pardoned by the merciful goodness of the Lord our God who desireth not the death of a sinner but rather that he should turn from sin and be saved For that there is no sin so great which is unpardonable or irremissible in respect of God the infinitness of his mercy over all his works his graciousness in pardoning Davids Murther Solomons Idolatries Pauls Persecuting of his Church Peters denying of his Master and thousands of the like examples do most clearly evidence If ever men had reason to despair of pardon none I am certain could have more than those we did so wilfully and maliciously imbrew their hands in the most innocent blood of our Lord and Saviour yet when their hearts were touched at St.
all them that are sanctified Blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances which was against us and nailed it to his cross for ever to the end that being mindful of the price wherewith we were bought and of the enemies from whom we were delivered by him We might glorifie God both in our bodies and our souls and serve the Lord in righteousness and holiness all the days of our lives For if the blood of Bulls and of Goats and the ashes of an Heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctified to the purifying of the flesh in the time of the Mosaical Ordinances How much more shall the Blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God in the time of the Gospel This is the constant tenor of the Word of God touching remission of our sins by the Blood of Christ. And unto this we might here adde the consonant suffrages and consent of the antient Fathers If the addition of their Testimonies where the authority of the Scripture is so clear and evident might not be thought a thing unnecessary Suffice it that all of them from the first to the last ascribe the forgiveness of our sins to the death of Christ as to the meritorious cause thereof though unto God the Father as the principal Agent who challengeth to himself the power of forgiving sins as his own peculiar and prerogative Isai. 43.25 Peculiar to himself as his own prerogative in direct power essential and connatural to him but yet communicated by him to his Son CHRIST IESUS whilest he was conversant here on Earth who took upon himself the power of forgiving sins as part of that power which was given him both in Heaven and Earth Which as he exercised himself when he lived amongst us so at his going hence he left it as a standing Treasury to his holy Church to be distributed and dispensed by the Ministers of it according to the exigencies and necessities of particular persons For this we finde done by him as a matter of fact and after challenged by the Apostles as a matter of right belonging to them and to their successors in the Ministration First For the matter of fact it is plain and evident not onely by giving to St. Peter for himself and them the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven annexing thereunto this promise That whatsoever he did binde on Earth should be bound in Heaven and whatsoever he did loose on Earth should be loosed in Heaven But saying to them all expresly Receive the Holy Ghost Whose sins soever ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained And as it was thus given them in the way of fact so was it after challenged by them in the way of right St. Paul affirming in plain terms That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself by not imputing their trespasses unto them but that the Ministery of this reconciliation was committed unto him and others whom Christ had honored with the title of his Ambassadors and Legates here upon the Earth Now as the state of man is twofold in regard of sin so is the Ministery of reconciliation twofold also in regard of man As he is tainted with the guilt of original sinfulness the Sacrament of Baptism is to be applied the Laver of Regeneration by which a man is born again of water and the Holy Ghost Iohn 3.5 As he lies under the burden of his actual sins the Preaching of the Word is the proper Physick to work him to repentance and newness of life that on confession of his sins he may receive the benefit of absolution Be it known unto you saith St. Paul that through this man CHRIST IESUS is preached unto you remission of sins and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses And first for Baptism It is not onely a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christian men are discerned from others which be not Christned as some Anabaptists falsly taught but it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth whereby as by an instrument they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church the promises of the forgiveness of sin and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost are visibly signed and sealed Faith is confirmed and Grace increased by vertue of Prayer unto God This is the publick Doctrine of the Church of England delivered in the authorised Book of Articles Anno 1562. In which lest any should object as Dr. Harding did against Bishop Iewel That we make Baptism to be nothing but a sign of regeneration and that we dare not say as the Catholick Church teacheth according to the holy Scriptures That in and by Baptism sins are fully and truly remitted and put away We will reply with the said most Reverend and Learned Prelate a man who very well understood the Churches meaning That we confess and have ever taught that in the Sacrament of Baptism by the death and Blood of Christ is given remission of all manner of sins and that not in half or in part or by way of imagination and fancy but full whole and perfect of all together and that if any man affirm that Baptism giveth not full remission of sins it is no part nor portion of our Doctrine To the same effect also saith judicious Hooker Baptism is a Sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church to the end That they which receive the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ and so through his most precious merit obtain as well that saving grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness and also that infused divine vertue of the Holy Ghost which giveth to the powers of the soul the first dispositions towards future newness of life But because these were private men neither of which for ought appears had any hand in the first setting out of the Book of Articles which was in the reign of King Edward the Sixth though Bishop Iewel had in the second Edition when they were reviewed and published in Queen Elizabeths time let us consult the Book of Homilies made and set out by those who composed the Articles And there we finde that by Gods mercy and the vertue of that Sacrifice which our High Priest and Saviour CHRIST IESUS the Son of God once offered for us upon the Cross we do obtain Gods grace and remission as well of our original sin in Baptism as of all actual sin committed by us after Baptism if we truly repent and turn unfeignedly unto him again Which doctrine of the Church of England as it is consonant to the Word of God in holy Scripture so is it also most agreeable to the common and received judgment of pure Antiquity For in the Scripture it is said