a revelation for what he did And the answer to this had been only pertinent and satisfactory So that he might have no reason to question it although he did not believe any thing more then common fidelity in his Fathers testimony For God never when revelations were most common thought it necessary to multiply revelations so far as to make one necessary to attest another but that revelation which was communicated to one was obligatory to all concerned in it though they could have nothing but Moral certainty for it By this it appears that when we now speak of the resolution of Faith though the utmost reason of our assent is that Infallibility which is supposed in Divine Testimony yet the nearest and most proper resolution of it is into the grounds inducing us to believe that such a Testimony is truly Divine and the resolution of this cannot be into any Divine Testimony without a process in infinitum 2. That when we speak of the resolution of Faith by Faith we understand a rational and discursive act of the mind For Faith being an assent upon evidence or reason inducing the mind to assent it must be a rational and discursive act and such a one that one may be able to give an account of to another And this account which men are able to give why they do believe or on what ground they do it is that which we call resolving Faith And by this it appears that whatever resolves Faith into its efficient cause which some improperly call the Testimony of the spirit though it may be true yet comes not home to the question For if by the Testimony of the spirit be meant that operation of the spirit whereby saving Faith is wrought in us then it gives no account from the thing to be believed why we assent to it but only shews how Faith is wrought in us by way of efficiency which is rather resolving the question about the necessity of Grace than the grounds of Faith Our question is not then concerning the necessity of infused habits of Grace but of those rational inducements which do incline the mind to a firm assent For Faith in us however it is wrought being a perswasion of the mind it is not conceivable how there should be any discursive act of the mind without some reason causing the mind to assent to what is propounded to it For without this Faith would be an unaccountable thing and the spirit of revelation would not be the spirit of wisdom and Religion would be exposed to the contempt of all unbelievers if we were able to give no other account of Faith then that it is wrought in us by the Spirit of God When we speak therefore of the resolving Faith we mean what are the rational inducements to believe or what evidence there is in the object propounded to make us firmly assent to it 3. According to the different acts of Faith there must be assigned a different resolution of Faith For every act being rational and discursive must have its proper grounds belonging to it unless we suppose that act elicited without any reason for it which is incongruous with the nature of the humane understanding There are then in the question of resolution of Faith these three questions to be resolved First Why I believe those things to be true which are contained in the Book called the Scripture 2. Why I believe the Doctrine contained in that Book to be Divine 3. Why I believe the Books themselves to be of Divine revelation Now every one of these questions admits of a different way of resolution as will appear by the handling each of them distinctly 1. If I be asked On what grounds I believe the things to be true which are contained in Scripture my answer must be From the greatest evidence of truth which things of that nature are capable of If therefore the persons who are supposed to have writ these things were such who were fully acquainted with what they writ of if they were such persons who cannot be suspected of any design to deceive men by their writings and if I be certain that these which go under the name of their writings are undoubtedly theirs I must have sufficient grounds to believe the truth of them Now that the writers of these things cannot be suspected of ignorance appears by the time and age they writ in when the story of these things was new and such multitudes were willing enough to have contradicted it if any thing had beeen amiss besides some of the writers had been intimately conversant with the person and actions of him whom they writ most of That they could have no intent to deceive appears from the simplicity and candour both of their actions and writings from their contempt of the world and exposing themselves to the greatest hazards to bear witness to them That these are the very same writings appears by all the evidence can be desired For we have as great if not much greater reason to believe them to be the Authors of the Books under their Names than any other writers of any Books whatsoever both because the matters are of greater moment and therefore men might be supposed more inquisitive about them and that they have been unanimously received for 〈◊〉 from the very time of their being first written except some very few which upon strict examination were admitted too and we find these very Books cited by the learned Christians under these Names in that time when it had been no difficulty to have found out several of the Original Copy's themselves When therefore they were universally received by Christians never doubted of by Jews or Heathen Philosophers we have as great evidence for this first act of Faith as it is capable of And he is unreasonable who desires more 2. If I be asked why I believe the Doctrine contained in these Books to be Divine I must give in two things for answer 1. That in the Age when the Doctrine was delivered there was sufficient reason to believe it Divine 2. That if there was sufficient reason then we have sufficient reason now 1. That in the Age when the Doctrine was delivered there was sufficient reason to believe it Divine Supposing then that we already believe upon the former answer that all the matters of fact be true I answer that if Christ did such unparalleâ—d miracles and rose from the dead they who heard his Doctrine had reason to believe it to be of God and this I suppose the greatest Infidel would not deny if himself had been one of the witnesses of his actions and resurection 2. That if they had reason then we have so now because tradition to us doth only supply the want of our senses as to what Christ did and spake i. e. That tradition is a kind of derivative and perpetuated sensation to us it being of the same use to us now which our eyes and ears had been if we had been
is roving and uncertain 2. That notwithstanding his brags he must have recourse to a private spirit himself 3. That though the Bishop would seem to deny it diverse eminent Protestants do resolve their Faith into the private spirit This being the substance of what you say I shall return a particular Answer to each of them For the first you tell us He delivers himself in such a roving way of discourse as signifies nothing in effect as to what he would drive at No that is strange when that which his Lordship drives at is to shew how far this opinion is to be allowed and how far not which he is so far from roving in that he clearly and distinctly propounds the state of the question and the resolution of it which in short is this If by the testimony of the spirit be meant any special revelation of a new object of Faith then he denies the truth of it at least in an ordinary way both because God never sends us to look for such a testimony and because it would expose men to the danger of Enthusiasms but if by the testimony of the Spirit be meant the habit or the act of Divine infused Faith by vertue of which they believe the object which appears credible then he grants the truth but denyes the pertinency of it because it is quite out of the state of the question which inquires only after a sufficient means to make this object credible against all impeachment of folly and temerity in believing whether men do actually believe or not And withal adds that the question is of such outward and evident means as other men may take notice of as well as our selves Judge you now whether this may be called roving if it be so I can freely excuse you from it in all the discourses I have met with in your Book who abhorre nothing more then a true stating and methodical handling any question But yet say you the Bishop cannot free himself from that imputation of recurring to the private Spirit against any that should press the business home Sure you refer us here to some one else who is able to press a business home for you never attempt it your self and instead of that only produce a large testimony out of A. C. That he did not acquit the Bishop wholly of this Whether he did or no is to little purpose and yet those very words which his Lordship cites are in your testimony produced out of him Only what you add more from him that he must be driven to it that his Lordship denies and neither A. C. or you have been able to prove it But though the Bishop seems not only to deny any such private revelation himself but will not confess that any Protestants hold it yet you say there can be no doubt in this since Calvin and Whitaker do both so expresly own it But according to those principles laid down before both these testimonies are easily answered For 1. Neither of them doth imply any private revelation of any new object but only a particular application of the evidence appearing in Scripture to the conscience of every Believer 2. That these testimonies do not speak of the external evidence which others are capable of but of the internal satisfaction of every ones conscience Therefore Calvin saith Si conscientiis optimè consultum volumus c. if we will satisfie our own consciences not If we will undertake to give a sufficient reason to others of our Faith So Whitaker Esse enim dicimus certius illustrius testimonium quo nobis persuadeatur hos libros esse sacros c. There is a more certain and noble testimony by which we may be perswaded that these Books are sacred viz. that of the Holy Ghost 3. Neither of these testimonies affirm any more than the more judicious Writers among your selves do Your Canus asserts the necessity of an internal efficient cause by special assistance of the Spirit moving us to believe besides and beyond all humane authorities and motives which of themselves are not sufficient to beget Faith and this a little after he calls Divinum quoddam lume◠incitans ad credendum A divine light moving us to believe and again Interius lumen infusum à Spirit◠Sancto An inward light infused by the Spirit of God There is nothing in the sayings of the most rigid Protestants is more hard to explain or vindicate from a private revelation then this is if as you say one would press it home Nay hath not your own Stapleton Calvins very phrase of the necessity of the secret testimony of the Spirit that one believe the testimony and judgement of the Church concerning Scripture And is there not then as much danger of Enthusiasm in believing the Testimony of your Church as in believing the Scriptures Nay doth not your Gregory de Valentiâ rather go higher then the testimonies by you produced out of Calvin and Whitaker on this very subject in the beginning of his discourse of the resolution of Faith It is God himself saith he in the first place which must convince and perswade the minds of men of the truth of the Christian Doctrine and consequently of the Sacred Scriptures by some inward instinct and impulse as it appears from Scripture it self is fully explained by Prosper If you will then undertake to clear this inward instinct and impulse upon the minds of men whereby they are perswaded of the truth of Christianity and Scripture from Enthusiasm and a private spirit you may as easily do it for the utmost which is said by Calvin or Whitaker or any other Protestant Divine This therefore is only an argument of your desire to cavil and as such I will pass it over For what concerns the influence which the Spirit hath in the resolution of Faith it will be enquired into afterwards The last way mentioned in order to the resolution of Faith is that of Reason which his Lordship saith cannot be denyed to have some place to come in and prove what it can According to which he tells us no man can be hindred from weighing the tradition of the Church the inward motives in Scripture it self all testimonies within which seem to bear witness to it and in all this saith he there is no harm the danger is when a man will use no other scale but reason or prefer reason before any other scale Reason then can give no supernatural ground into which a man may resolve his Faith that the Scripture is the word of God infallibly yet Reason can go so high as it can prove that Christian Religion which rests upon the authority of this Book stands upon surer grounds of nature reason common equity and justice then any thing in the world which any Infidel or meer naturalist hath done doth or can adhere unto against it in that which he makes accounts or assumes as Religion to himself This
that the Catholick Church is the subject of Infallibility But I had thought nothing could have been more necessary than to have known this But I proceed then How comes this Catholick Church to have this Infallible Assistance Cannot I suppose that Christ and the Holy Spirit may exist without giving this Assistance cannot I suppose that Christian Religion may be in the world without such an Infallibility Is this Assistance therefore a necessary or a free Act A free Act. If a free Act then for all you know Your Catholick Church may not be so assisted No you reply you are sure it is so assisted But Whence can you be sure of an arbitrary thing unless the Authours of this Assistance have engaged themselves by Promise to give your Catholick Church that Infallible Assistance Yes that they have you reply and then produce Luk. 10.16 Mat. 28.20 Joh. 14.16 But although our Infidel might ask some untoward Questions still as How you are sure these are Divine Promises when the knowledge that they are Divine must suppose the thing to be true which you would prove out of them viz. that your Church is infallible Supposing them Divine how are you sure That and no other is the meaning of them when from such places you prove that your Church is the only Infallible Interpreter of Scripture But I let pass these and other Questions and satisfie my self with this That it is impossible for you to prove such an Infallible Assistance of Christ and the Holy Spirit unless you produce some express Promise for it 2. This being impossible it necessarily follows That the only Motives of Credibility which can prove your Church Infallible must be such as do antecedently prove these Promises to be Divine This is so plain and evident a Consectary from the former that it were an affront upon humane understanding to go about to prove it For if the Infallibility doth depend upon the Promise nothing can prove that Infallibility but what doth prove that Promise to be True and Divine True or else not to be believed Divine or else not to be relyed on for such an Assistance none else being able to make a promise of it but the Authour of it As therefore my right to an estate as given by Will depends wholly upon the Truth and Validity of that Will which I must first prove before I can challenge any right to it So your pretence of Infallibility must solely depend upon the Promises which you challenge it by By which it appears that your attempting to prove the Infallibility of your Church by Motives of Credibility antecedent to and independent on the Scripture is vain ridiculous and destructive to that very Infallibility which you pretend to Which being by a free Assistance of Christ and his Spirit must wholly depend on the proof of the Promise made of it For if you prove no Promise all your Motives of Credibility prove nothing at all as I have at large demonstrated before and shall not follow you in needless repetitions 3. No right to any priviledge can be challenged by virtue of a free Promise made to particular persons unless it be evident that the intention of the Promiser was that it should equally extend to them and others For the Promise being free and the Priviledge such as carries no necessity at all along with it in order to the great ends of Christian Religion it is intolerable Arrogance and Presumption to challenge it without manifest evidence that the design of it was for them as well as the persons to whom it was made Indeed in such Promises which are built on common and general grounds containing things agreeable to all Christians it is but reasonable to inferr the universal extent of that Promise to all such as are in the like condition Hence the Apostle inferrs from the particular Promise made to Joshua I will never leave thee nor forsake thee the effect of it upon all believers Although had not the Apostle done it before us it may seem questionable on what ground we could have done it unless from the general reason of of it and the unbounded nature of Divine Goodness in things necessary for the Good of his People But in things arbitrary and such as contain special Priviledge in them to challenge a right to a Promise of the same Priviledge without equal evidence of the descent of it as the first Grant is great presumption and a challenge of the Promisor for partiality if he doth not make it good Because the pretence of the right of the Priviledge goes upon this ground that it is as much due to the Successor as to the Original Grantee 4. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to challenge a right to a Priviledge by virtue of such a Promise which was granted upon quite different considerations from the grounds on which that right is challenged Thus I shall after make it evident that the Promise of an Infallible Assistance of the Holy Ghost had a peculiar respect to the Apostles present employment and the first state of the Church that it was not made upon reasons common to all ages viz. for the Government of the Church deciding Controversies Foundation of Faith all which Ends may be sufficiently attained without them But above all it seems very unreasonable that a Promise made to persons in one office must be applied in the same manner to persons in a quite different office that a Promise made to each of them separate must be equally applied to others only as in Council that a Promise made implying Divine Assistance must be equally applied to such who dare not say that Assistance is Divine but infallible and after a sort Divine that a Promise made of immediate Divine Revelation and enabling the persons who enjoyed the Priviledge of it to work miracles to attest their Testimony to be infallible should be equally applied to such as dare not challenge a Divine Revelation nor ever did work a miracle to attest such an Infallible Assistance Yet all this is done by you in your endeavour of fetching the Infallibility of your Church out of those Promises of the assistance of Christ and his Spirit which were made to the Apostles These general Considerations do sufficiently enervate the force of your whole Chapter which yet I come particularly to consider His Lordship tells A. C. That in the second sense of Church-Tradition he cannot find that the Tradition of the present Church is of Divine and Infallible Authority till A. C. can prove that this company of men the Roman Prelates and Clergy he means are so fully so clearly so permanently assisted by Christ and his Spirit as may reach to Infallibility much less to a Divine Infallibilility in this or any other Principle which they teach In answer to this you tell us That the Bishop declines the Question by withdrawing his Reader from the thesis to the hypothesis from the Church to the Church of Rome But
Customs controverted between the Papists and us which no doubt is the true reason why the three first ages are declined by Cardinal Perrone yet there is not the least shadow of pretence why they should be silent in this present Controversie since the great business of their writings was to vindicate the Christian Faith to perswade the Heathens to believe it and to manifest the grounds on which they were induced to believe themselves If therefore in this they do unanimously concurr with that resolution of Faith I have already laid down nothing can be desired more for the evidence and confirmation of the truth of our way than that it is not only most consonant to Scripture but built on the truest Reason and was the very same which the Primitive Christians used when they gave an account of their Faith Which I shall do not by some mangled citations but deducing it from the scope and design of their writings and drawing it successively down from the first after the Apostles who appeared in Vindication of the Christian Faith I begin with Justin Martyr who as Photius saith of him was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not far from the Apostles either in time or virtue and who being a professed Philosopher before he became a Christian we may in reason think that he was more inquisitive into the grounds of Christian Faith before he believed and the more able to give an account of them when he did Whether therefore we consider those arguments which first induced him to believe or those whereby he endeavours to perswade others to it we shall find how consonant and agreeable he is to our grounds of Faith how far from any imagination of the Churches Infallibility In the beginning of his excellent Dialogue with Trypho where if I may conjecture he represents the manner of his conversion in a Platonical way introducing a solemn conference between himself and an ancient person of great gravity and a venerable aspect in a solitary place whither he was retired for his meditations Pet. Halloix is much troubled who this person should be Whether an Angel in humane shape or a man immediately conveyed by an Angel to discover Christianity to him which when he had done he was as suddenly carried back again Scultetus I suppose from this story asserts Justin Martyr to be converted by Divine Revelation But if I be not much mistaken this whole Conference is no more than the setting forth the grounds of his becoming a Christian in the Platonical mode by way of Dialogue and probably the whole Disputation with Trypho may be nothing else but however that be it is apparent Trypho looked on him as a Platonist by his Pallium and Justin Martyr owns himself to have been so and therefore it was very congruous for him to discourse after the Academick manner In which discourse when Justin Martyr had stood up in vindication of the Platonick Philosophy and the other Person endeavours to convince him of the impossibility of attaining true happiness by any Philosophy For when Justin had said That by Philosophy he came to the Knowledge of God the other person demanded How they could know God who had never seen him nor heard him He replied That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God was only intelligible by our minds as Plato said He again asks Whether there were such a faculty in the minds of men as to be able to see God without a Divine Power and Spirit assisting it Justin answers that according to Plato the eye of the understanding was sufficient to discover that there is such a Being which is the cause of all things but the nature of it is ineffable and incomprehensible Upon which he proceeds to enquire What relation there was between God and the Souls of men and what means to come to the participation of him after a great deal of discourse on which subject between them Justin comes at last to enquire if there were no truth and certainty in Philosophy By whose instruction or by what means he should come to it To which that person returns this excellent Answer That there had been a long time since several persons much elder than the reputed Philosophers blessed men just and lovers of God speaking by the inspiration of the Divine Spirit foretelling things which have come to pass since whom they call Prophets These only saw the Truth and declared it to men neither flattering nor fearing any nor conquered with the love of honour But they only spake the things which they heard and saw being filled with the Holy Spirit Whose Books are still extant which whosoever reads and assents to will find himself much improved in the principles and ends of things and whatever becomes a Philosopher to know For they write not by way of argument or demonstration but that which is above it they are most faithful witnesses of Truth For the things which have and do come to pass do enforce men to believe the Truth of what they spake And not only so but they are most worthy to be believed for the Miracles which they wrought Moreover they extol the Maker of the World God and the Father and declare to the World his Son Christ which the false Prophets who are acted by a seducing and impure spirit neither have done nor yet do do but they attempt to shew some tricks for the amazement of men and cry up the evil and deceiving spirits But do thou above all things pray that the gates of light may be opened to thee For these things are not seen nor understood by all but only by them to whom God and Christ shall grant the knowledge of them A most signal and remarkable Testimony as any is extant in all Antiquity for acquainting us with the true grounds and reasons of Faith which therefore I have at large produced The very reading of which is sufficient to tell us How true a Protestant this whether Angel or Man was When Justin asked him What Teachers he should have to lead him to Truth He tells him There had been long before Philosophers excellent persons in the world called Prophets men every way good who did nothing for fear or favour or love of themselves But Justin might further ask How he should come to be instructed by them He tells him Their Writings were still extant wherein were contained such things as might hugely satisfie a Philosophical mind concerning the Origine and Principles of things He might still enquire Whether those things were demonstrated or no in them No he replies but they deserve assent as much if not beyond any demonstration because they manifest themselves to be from God by two things the exact accomplishment of the Prophecies made by them and the unparalleld Miracles which were wrought by them But might not the evil spirits work such things No For although their false Prophetsâ—ay â—ay do several things to amaze men yet they can do no
adored we procure favour by shewing reverence to all that require it Where we are still to take notice that the Heathens did not blame them for not giving the highest kind of Worship to these Inferiour Deities but for not worshipping them with the subordinate relative Worship which they said belonged to them Now when in the Answer he saith That in worshiping God they worship'd all that was to be worship'd he utterly destroies any such Relative Worship which may be given to Inferior Spirits For we are to consider that the Heathens themselves did not give the same kind of Adoration to their Heroes and Inferiour Deities which they did to him whom they accounted Supreme And setting aside the difference of the object I can find no possible difference between the Invocation of Saints in the Church of Rome and that of Daemons among the Heathens And althougâ— Bellarmin hath taken the greatest pains to clear the nature of that Worship which is given to Saints yet upon a thorow examination of it we shall find that all his pleas would have held as well for the Worship of Daemons in the Platonists sense of them as they do for the worship of Saints among Christians Three things he tells us Adoration consists in An Act of Vnderstanding apprehending some excellency An Act of the Will whereby we are inwardly inclined to do something by an internal or external act by which we declare our sense of that excellency and our subjection to it and lastly An external Act in which we bow or kneel or shew some outward sign of subjection Now of these three he saith the second is most proper and essential because the first may be without Adoration and the last with Irrision of that we pretend to worship Further he observes that there are so many sorts of Adoration or Worship as there are degrees of excellency of which he reckons three kinds Divine Humane and between both as the Grace and Glory of the Saints and that these several sorts of Worship according to these several excellencies are not univocal but analogical and that they may be very well distinguished by the Internal Acts for the inclination of the will is greater or less according to the degree of excellency apprehended in the object But as to the External Acts it is not easie to distinguish them for almost all External Acts sacrifice only and the things referring to it excepted are common to all kinds of Adoration This is the substance of what he hath for explaining the nature of Divine Worship And by which I cannot possibly see but that kind of Worship which was given by the Heathens to their Daemons was defensible upon the same grounds that the Invocations of Saints is now For as these apprehend a greater excellency in God than in the Saints so did they in the Supreme God than in those Inferiour Deities which they did not acknowledge to have an Infinite Nature in themselves but only that they had the honour of being solemnly worshipped bestowed upon them But this will be much clearer in the case of the Heroes or the Apotheosis of the Roman Emperours as Augustus for instance The Roman Senate decrees that Divine Honours shall be given to Augustus we cannot think that by virtue of this decree he assumed a Divine Nature or became absolutely God so that the Act of the Vnderstanding was of the same nature which it would have been supposing some Roman-Catholick should believe Augustus to have been a Saint on which supposition we will suppose a Heathen and him to be at their prayers together to him I pray now tell me Wherein lyes the difference that one is Idolatry and the other is not for neither of them suppose him to be the Supreme God both look on him as having a middle kind of excellency between God and man the external actions are the same in both and their apprehensions of excellency being equal the inclinations of their Wills to testifie their devotion must be equal too If you answer me that one looks on him as a Saint and the other doth not I may soon tell you that is nothing to the purpose for the Question is not Whether he was a Saint or no but Whether the apprehension of a middle excellency between Divine and Humane with a correspondent inclination of the Will testified by external acts of Adoration be Idolatry or no If it be Idolatry in the one it must be in the other for the ratio formalis is the same in both viz. the apprehension of an excellency between Divine and Humane for we are not enquiring Whether the apprehension be true or false but What the nature of that act of Religion is which is consâ—quent upon such an apprehension Now if it were not Idolatry in him that believed Augustus to be a Saint and worshipped him How can it be made appear to be so in him that believed him deified or that Divine Honours did belong to him And if this be granted for my part I cannot tell how you can excuse the Primitive Christians that would rather suffer Martyrdom than worship the Heathen Emperours for although they all thought it Idolatry yet upon these principles it could not be so but the worst that could be made of it was this That the Senate took that upon it which it had nothing to do with because it belonged to the Pope to Canonize men and not to the Roman Senate For let me put it seriously to you Whether you do not attribute the very same kind of authority to the Pope now which the Roman Senate challenged in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Roman Emperours For whosoever will compare the rites of Canonization in Bellarmin with the ancient rites of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will find them exactly answering to each other For 1. They are put in a Catalogue of Saints and must be owned by all for such 2. Invocantur in publicis Ecclesiae precibus They are prayed to in the publick prayers of the Church 3. Temples and Altars for their sake are dedicated to God 4. The sacrifices of the Eucharist of prayers and praises are publickly offered to God for their honour and then follow their Festivals Images Relicks c. What was there more done then that publick Divine Honours were made to the Deified Emperours not that these Honours were wholly terminated upon them but they thought the giving of this relative Honour to them did redound to the greater Honour of the Supreme Deity So that we see a new object of Divine Worship is solemnly appointed upon the Popes Canonizing a Saint and no pretence can be made to excuse this from Idolatry which would not have excused all those Heathens from it who believed there was one Supreme Deity and yet allowed Divine Honours to be given to such Spirits which were imployed by him or attended on him So that if the notion of Idolatry must only lye in such an
act of the Will which results from an apprehension of infinite excellency which is only in the Supreme Being very few if any of the more intelligent Heathens were ever guilty of it But if the formal reason of their Idolatry lay in offering up those devotions to that which was not God which only belong to an Infinite Being I see not but the same charge will hold on the same grounds against those who Invocate Saints with those external acts of devotion which are confessed to be the same with those wherewith we call on God But nothing can be more unreasonable than that Bellarmin should except Sacrifices and things belonging thereto from being common to the first and second sort of Adoration and not except Invocation For Is it possible to conceive any act which doth more express our sense of an Infinite Excellency and the profession of our subjection to it than Invocation doth which doth it far more than Sacrifice doth for that being a meer external act is consistent with the greatest mockery of God but solemn Invocation implies in its own nature our dependence upon God and an acknowledgement of his Infinite Knowledge and Power For Invocation lyes chiefly in the internal acts and denotes primarily the inward desire of obtaining something from a Being above our own So that though I should grant the meer external acts of bowing and kneeling to be common to Adoration given to infinite and finite perfections yet I utterly deny that these acts are common to both when the circumstances do determine the end and design of them As no man by the meer bowing of Abraham to the Children of Heth could tell whether it were civil or divine Adoration which he meant but none who understood all the circumstances of it would have any reason to question it But suppose it had been declared before that these men expected a more than civil Adoration and that all the rites of solemn Invocation which Abraham at any time used to God must be used to them too then the same external acts must have received a new denomination So that though the meer external acts be common to civil and religious Worship yet as those acts are considered with their several circumstances they are appropriated to one or the other of them Thus though a man may use the same form of words to an Emperour on his Throne and the same external posture which he doth use after his death in a Temple consecrated to him yet in the one they are meerly signs of Civil Worship but in the other they become Testimonies of Religious Adoration So although in the Invocation of Saints no other words were used but such as denote them to be Creatures still yet if they be used with all the rites of solemn Invocation in places appropriate to Divine Worship and in Sacred Offices they thereby declare the Adoration intended to be greater than any meer creature is capable of For we must consider that as God is owned to be Infinite in himself and to have incommunicable perfections so by reason of them there ought to be some appropriated acts or signs of Worship to declare our subjection to him which being determined for this end either by the Law of God or the consent of people the attributing of them to any else but him is a publick violation of his honour Although in so doing men profess that they intend them only as expressions of a lower kind of Worship than is due to the Supreme Being But in such cases the protestation avails not where the fact is evident to the contrary For when men in the most solemn manner in publick places of devotion and in sacred offices do invocate Saints and yet think they dishonour not God by it because they say they do not worship them as God it is just as if a man should upon all occasions in the Presence-Chamber address himself to one of the King's subjects as to the King himself and being questioned for it should only say he did not dishonour the King by it because he meant it not to him as a King but as a Subject But by so much is the dishonour greater because the Soveraignity of the King doth require that the rights of Majesty should not be given to any Subject whatsoever So that it is but a vain pretence when men use all the expressions whereby we declare our sense of the Infinite Perfections which are in God to any Creatures to say They give them not that Worship which belongs to God meerly because they do believe they are Creatures still But Is it possible for men to give the honour which is due to God to the Creatures or no acknowledging them to be Creatures still or Is it not If not then none of the Heathens could be guilty of Idolatry in worshipping Daemons Heroes and Deified Emperours if it be possible then the acknowledging the Saints not to be God cannot excuse men from the same kind of Idolatry in the Invocation of them And it is as frivolous a plea which is made for those forms of Invocation which are made to the Saints in plain terms not to intercede with God for them but to bestow upon them both temporal and spiritual Blessings of which multitudes have been produced by our Writers viz. That though the form of words be the same that is used to God yet the sense is wholly that they would pray to God to bestow them For How should any other sense be understood when these forms are allowed in Invocation For although the Scripture may sometimes attribute the effect to the subordinate Instrument as when S. Paul is said to save some yet certainly the Scripture is far from allowing such a liberty in solemn Invocation For upon this ground it might have been lawful for men to have fallen down upon their knees to St. Paul and have intreated him to save them Do you think St. Paul would have approved such phrases in Invocation So that it is not the meer phrase but as it is joyned with all rites of Invocation which makes it look so like the most gross Idolatry When you pray to the Virgin Mary to protect you from your enemies and receive you in the hour of death and to the Apostles to heal your spiritual maladies which forms are acknowledged by Bellarmin Can any reasonable man think that the meaning of them only is that they would pray to God to do these things for them If one should bring his Petition to a Courtier for his Pardon and in plain terms beg that of him which the King only can grant What man that had his wits about him would ever imagine that he only meant by it that he would entreat the King to do it for him But God is more jealous of his honour than to be put off by such Mockeries as these are Nay when your great men at the end of their most elaborate works conclude with a Laus Deo beatissimae