shun the breath of such a Seducer as of one that is infected with the pestilence and whose converse is death and the eternal ruin of our very Souls 2. The Second Principle that he is closely to keep to is That I had almost said Omnipotent Faith in God through Christ I mean the belief of the assistance of his holy Spirit to overcome all manner of sin in us For if we keep up duely to this nothing will be able to withstand us but by patience and perseverance we shall be able to beat out Satan out of his strongest holds According to thy faith so be it unto thee is true as well in Christs healing our Souls as in his curing the bodies of the sick when he was upon earth This is a prime branch of that saving Faith and the greatest strength and sustentation we have to keep us from sinking back into sin and from being drown'd and carried away with the flouds of ungodliness If we let this hold go all is gone For they that doe not believe that they have power to resist sin must of necessity give up themselves captives to it And this is that which makes S. Paul so affectionately devout in the behalf of the Ephesians that God would be pleased to give them this special gift of Faith for their strength and corroboration of the inward man chap. 3. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man That Christ may dwell in your hearts by Faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love c. according as I have elswhere rehearsed And in the Doxologie immediately following this prayer of what unconceivable efficacy the operations of the Spirit are in us the Apostle again does intimate in a very high strain Now unto him that is able to doe exceeding abundantly above what we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us unto him be glory in the Church by Christ Iesus throughout all ages world without end Which words plainly imply that such is the inexhaustible richness of Grace and Assistance from the Spirit of God that the effect of its inward workings in us is for the present not imaginable much less expressible Wherefore our Faith cannot be too great in this supernatural Principle and the greater it is the greater courage and the more speedy and more absolute victory 3. And yet there is still another Principle that will further actuate our Faith and make us still more lively resolute and invincible and that is The Love of Christ which every young Christian is to warme himself with and inflame his courage more and more which he will best do by frequent Meditations upon Christs Passion what shame what sorrow and pain he underwent to gain the love of Souls and so to try them to himself in those sweet and inviolable bands of sincere love and friendship that by this golden chain he may pull them up after him from Earth to Heaven Let therefore our new-Covenanter as often as he reflects upon the exceeding great love of his Saviour and finds his heart begin to grow hot being touch'd with a ray from that celestial Flame that bright Sun of righteousness that now shines at the right hand of God let him be sure to remember what compensation he requires for all that dear affection he has shewn to us The lesson is but short and therefore must not be forgotten If you love me keep my Commandements CHAP. XI 1. The diligent search this new-Covenanter ought to make to finde out whatsoever is corrupt and sinful 2. That the truly regenerate cannot be quiet till all corruption be wrought out 3. The most importunate devotions of a living Christian. 4. The difference betwixt a Son of the Second Covenant and a Slave under the First 5. The Mystical completion of a Prophecy of Esay touching this state 1. THE young Christian being thus armed with Faith and Love and an unwavering sense of his duty in becoming holy even as he that called him is holy he will be then both willing and ready to look his enemies in the face and to seek them out if he cannot at first sight finde them and to pull them out of every hiding-place of Hypocrisy and bring them into the open light and slay them And if after diligent search he can finde none yet he will be so modest as to distrust the measure of his skill and will be earnest in Prayer to God to discover what inward hidden wickedness there may lurk yet in him to the end that the old Leven may be utterly cast out and that there may be nothing left that is contrary to the Scepter of Christ and the Kingdome of God in his heart 2. For indeed it is impossible that one is truely regenerate and has the seed of God and the life of his Spirit actually in him should be quiet till all that which is unholy and corrupt be wrought out But the case is much-what as in the natural body that is sick either death or health will in a competent time possess the body If the morbifick matter be not carried away by sweating purging or some evacuation or other Life it self will be carried away but if that which is contrary to life be remov'd Health must certainly take place 3. And so it is in the Divine life it self when it has taken root and growth whatever is contrary to it is burdensome to it like that tyrannick project of tying the living and the dead together Wherefore the true Christian can never be at ease and rest till he has cast off that heavy load the body of sin the old man that stinks earthily and unsavourly if he be perceived at all and indeed so unsufferably that the divine life and sense in a man cannot endure it Nor can endure to be in a condition so sensless that there should be any of that â—our Leven left and yet there be no perception of it And therefore the most importunate address to the throne of Grace in a living Christian is that God would be pleased to discover whatever ugliness or deformity there is in him in either practise or principle Which God of his mercy does by degrees not all at once that there may not arise overmuch distraction and confusion But if we be not wanting to our selves the work will be accomplish'd in due time and the Kingdom of heaven as well within as without will be as a grain of Mustard-seed The Crisis of the disease will be in a competent time as I said before and our whole man re-enlivened with the Spirit of God and restored to the state of righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost 4. For verily to be quiet upon any other terms but these is not to be a Son of the Second Covenant but a careless
Love of the Divine life and whatever design is imposed upon her by that Principle 7. The Example of this Fortitude is admirable in our blessed Saviour and transcends as much the general Valour recorded by the Pens of Poets and Historians as the valour of those Heroes does exceed the salvage fierceness and boldness of Bears Wolves and Lions For a man to encounter Death in an exalted heat and fire of his agitated Spirits is not much unlike a mere drunken fray where their blood being heated with the excesse of Wine the Combatants become unsensible of those mortal Gashes they make in one anothers bodies But to fight in cold blood is true valour indeed and the greater by how much more the occasion of the enterprise approves it self noble and the parties are not at first engaged by any rage or passion For then they sacrifice their lives but to a rash fit of Choler or at least to that Tyrant in them Pride which they for the better credit of the business ordinarily call The sense of Honour else they could willingly upon better thoughts save themselves the pains and danger of the Combate 8. But to speak of Valour more lawfull and laudable which is to meet the enemy in the field where their minds are enraged and heightned by the sound of the Drum and the Trumpet which are able to put but an ordinarily-metall'd man out of his wits it is yet counted a very valiant and honourable Act if a man in this hurry and tumult of his Spirits makes his sword fat with the blood of the slain and mows down his Enemies on every side as a Sacrifice to his Country and Friends I mean to his wife and children and all that are near unto him Which yet may be parallel'd with the Courage and Rage of Wolves and Tigres who will fiercely enough defend their young by that innate valour and animosity in them without help of any external artifice to heighten their boldness But the Valour and Fortitude of the ever-blessed Captain of our Salvation has no parallel but is transcendently above whatever can be named For what comparison is there betwixt that Courage which is inspired from the pomp of Warre or single Combat from the heat and height of the Natural Spirits from the rage and hatred against an Enemy or from the love to a Friend and such a Fortitude as being destitute of all the advantages of the Animal life nay clogg'd with the disadvantages thereof as with a deep sense of Death Fear Agony and Horror yet notwithstanding all this in an humble Submission to the Will of God and a dear Respect to that lovely Image of the Divine life wades through with an unyielding constancy and this which is not to be thought on without astonishment and amazement not to rescue or right a Friend but to save and deliver a malevolent Enemy 9. We have seen how Iustice Temperance and Fortitude are in a supereminent manner comprehended in the Divine life which taking possession of the Middle life or Rational powers must needs beget also in the Soul the truest ground of Prudence that may be For this Divine life is both the Light and the Purification of the Eye of the Mind whereby Reason becomes truly illuminated in all Divine and Moral concernments Which Mystery though it cannot be declared according to the worthiness of the matter yet some more external intimations may serve for a pledge of the Truth thereof As for Example in that it does remove Pride Self-interest and Intemperance that clog the Body and cloud the Soul it is plain from hence of what great advantage the Divine life is for the rectifying and ruling our Judgements and Understandings in all things 10. I have endevoured according to the best of my Abilities briefly to set before you the Excellency of that Life which we call Divine But it is impossible by words to conveigh it to that Soul that has not in her in some measure the Sense of it aforehand Which if she have it is to her the truest Key to the Mystery of Christianity that can be found and in this light a man shall clearly discern how decorous and just a thing it is that This Life which is transcendently better then all should at last after long Trials and Conflicts triumph over all and that for this purpose Jesus Christ should come into the world who is the Author and Finisher of this more then Noble and Heroical Enterprise BOOK III. CHAP. I. 1. That the Lapse of the Soul from the Divine life immersing her into Matter brings on the Birth of Cain in the Mystical Eve driven out of Paradise 2. That the most Fundamental mistake of the Soul lapsed is that Birth of Cain and that from hence also sprung Abel in the mystery the vanity of Pagan Idolatry 3. Solomon's universal charge against the Pagans of Polytheisme and Atheisme and how fit it is their Apology should be heard for the better understanding the State of the World out of Christ. 4. Their plea of worshipping but one God namely the Sun handsomely managed by Macrobius 5. The Indian Brachmans worshippers of the Sun Apollonius his entertainment with them and of his false and vain affectation of Pythagorisme 6. The Ignorance of the Indian Magicians and of the Daemons that instructed them 7. A Concession that they and the rest of the Pagans terminated their worship upon one Supreme Numen which they conceived to be the Sun 1. HAving with a competent clearness as I hope set forth the Nature of the Divine life to such as have a Principle to judge thereof as also of the Animal we shall the more fully understand wherein consists the lapse or revolt as well of the rebellious Angels as of fallen Man Which was in that they forsook the Law of the Divine life and wholy gave themselves up to the Animal life ranting it and revelling it there without any measure or bounds Of which this seems to be the sad effect that the Soul of man had quite forgot his Creatour being fully plunged and immersed into the very feculency of the Material world For that Faculty in him whereby he is capable of Corporeal joy which is the Mystical Eve had grown so rampant and lawless that it had quite devoured and laid waste those more noble and delicate Senses of the Mind and had so intimately joyned him in love and dependance on the Matter that his Soul having forsaken God her true Lord and Husband by a lively adhesion stuck so close to this gross Corporeal Fabrick this outward sensible Universe that in this near and affectionate conjunction with it she made good in the Mystery that which is said in the Letter concerning Eve after she was driven out of Paradise She brought forth her first-born Cain whose birth in the Mystical sense is nothing else but that false conceit that the reason of his name imports 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have got a man or
the strictest sense Mad-men Lunaticks or Epileptical men or any men extraordinarily distempered with Melancholy being by the Iews deemed and called Daemoniacks the people being as much over-prone to ascribe natural diseases to the Devil as many Physicians are to ascribe Diabolical distempers and vexations to Nature But Christ cured the diseases by his word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 suffering the people to call them by what title they pleased as he that has a Catholick Medicine is not very curious of either the name or the nature of Maladie But there is no question but that there was a competent number of Daemoniacks properly so called 11. Sixthly and lastly Supposing all so called were properly Daemoniacks and that there were a greater number of them in Christ's time and in those parts then there elsewhere has been at any time what inconvenience is there in this if Providence would so dispense for so good a purpose as Christ intimates in the case of the man that was born blinde where he professeth That it was not his Parents fault nor his own that he was born blind but it was the will of God it should be so that he might have the occasion of doing the more glorious miracle And there wanted nothing then but the Divine permission to make so many Daemoniacks no more then there was any thing more requisite but the permission of Christ for the Gadaren Devils to take possession of the Swine and so to hurry them into the midst of the Sea And certainly they are very captious that will not permit so free a Soveraignty to the Almighty to lay some hardship on some few of his Creatures for the general good of the rest especially when those Creatures themselves may have deserved infinitely worse at his hand then he inflicts upon them and are compensated with a peculiar advantage for their sufferings Some one of these Answers or several of them put together are sufficient if not more then sufficient to satisfie this first Difficulty CHAP. VII 1. That the History of the Daemoniack whose name was Legion has no incongruity in it 2. That they were a Regiment of the Dark Kingdome that haunted most the Country of the Gadarens and that whether we conceive their Chieftain alone or many of his army to possess the man there is no absurdity therein 3. How it came to pass so many Devils should clutter about one sorry person 4. The Reason of Christs demanding of the Daemoniacks name and the great use of recording this History 5. The numerositie of the Devils discovered by their possession of the Swine 6. Several other Reasons why Christ permitted them to enter into the Gadarens heards 7. That Christ offended against the laws of neither Compassion nor Iustice in this permission 1. THE Second Difficultie concerning that fierce Daemoniack that had so many Devils in him that he thought fit to call himself by the name of Legion as being possest by such a multitude of unclean Spirits though it bears at the first view the face of an extravagancie yet if it be throughly examined it will prove a very weighty History all being found congruous to the nature of things and decorous and beseeming so Divine a person as our Saviour who was to conquer the Devil and ruine his Kingdome as we see he has in some measure done at this very day That there should be such an Army of Spirits in one place ought not to seem strange to him that will believe the sight and report of the young man whose eyes were opened at the praier of Elisha whereupon he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about the Prophet Nor is it any real incongruity that there should be a multitude of Daemons or Spirits within the compass of one mans Body though it may be so many of that Legion were not entred into him but that he was actuated principally by the Captain thereof he being rebuked by Christ in the singular number and he answering as one in the name of many Which we may as well understand of those that were near him and followed him and had some maligne influence its likely on the Daemoniack by way of Obsession as of such only as were entred into him and properly did possess him 2. For it seems by their petition to Christ they were a Regiment of the Dark Kingdome that use to rove and ramble about in the Countrey of the Gadarens out of which they had no mind to depart those parts being more obnoxious to the Infernal powers they abounding so with Apostate Iews who being fallen from the holy Covenant became more subject to the Tyranny of the Devil Wherefore there is no necessity of granting◠a whole Legion of Fiends in this Daemoniack but a competent multitude or some Chief one of the Legion Though without any violence to their natures there may many lodge in the Body of a man these Spirits being able to draw themselves out of their usual extent into a far narrower compass and perhaps wholly to quit their own Vehicle to make use of anothers and so many may unite with the Blood and Spirits of a man 3. Nor need it seem so harsh that so great a number should be busied about one sorry Wight For that military word Legion suggests unto us a very fit and easie solution of this Difficultie viz. That this did not happen primarily but by consequence the Chief commander of this dark Regiment having his usual haunt and recourse to him therefore the obsession of this numerous rabble is only by sequel as if some Captain should make his stay for his own pleasure in some blind solitary cottage in the field it would be no wonder to see the house beset with the multitude of his Souldiers they being there in attendance on him rather then in any satisfaction or advantage to themselves there being not a proportionable booty for so great a company but the place notwithstanding would not fail to be foully pestred by them After this sort it far'd with this miserable Daemoniack who could not but be even stifled with the throng of this hellish Legion 4. Nor is it any question but that Christ knew how strong they were and numerous and therefore that the greater glory may accrew to himself and to him that sent him he makes them confess their numerosity by asking the possessed his Name And it was more fit that the Power of Christ should be demonstrated and the Divinity of his person in chasing a whole Hoast of Devils relating to one possessed then that there should be as many possessed as there were Devils for him to shew his power on For the victory is never the less the Devils being nothing the weaker for not appearing harnessed with humane flesh and a great deal of inconvenience to Mankind was declined besides the great noise and turbulency in the world which would have risen thereupon which Christ ever avoided But it was fit
utmost of that Light which was in those two grand Boasters which compar'd with that in Christ bears not so much proportion as the flame of a stinking Lamp to the glorious lustre of the Sun Insomuch that if they had not been both by themselves and others either equalized to or preferred before our Saviour I should not so much as have vouchsafed to have made any Comparison betwixt them or ever to have mentioned them in my Writings CHAP. IX 1. Mahomet far more orthodox in the main points of Religion then the above-named Impostours 2. The high pitch this pretended Prophet sets himself at His journey to Heaven being waited upon by the Angel Gabriel His Beast Alborach and of his being called to by two Women by the way with the Angels interpretation thereof 3. His arrival at the Temple at Jerusalem and the reverence done to him there by all the Prophets and holy Messengers of God that ever had been in the world 4. The crafty political meaning of the Vision hitherto 5. Mahomet bearing himself upon the Angel Gabriel's hand climbes up to Heaven on a Ladder of Divine light His passing through Seven Heavens and his commending of himself to Christ in the Seventh 6. His salutation of his Creatour with the stupendious circumstances thereof 7. Five special favours he received from God at that congress 8. Of the natural wilyness in Enthusiasts and of their subtile pride where they would seem most humble The strange advantage of Enthusiasme with the rude multitude 9. And the wonderfull success thereof in Mahomet Other Enthusiasts as proud as Mahomet but not so successfull and why 1. THE Third pretended Prophet and Head of the Nations is Mahomet who though he haply be not so moralized a man or at least not so cautious as these Two we last spoke of but more openly entangled in the pleasures of the Flesh if he be not belied then these two Sadducees were and more able to enjoy himself in those pleasures yet be it luck or choice or mere policy he seems more orthodox in the grand points of Religion then they he holding not only the Existence of a God and of Angels and Spirits but also the Immortality of the Soul and a solemn Judgment to come wherein every man shall receive according to what he has done in the flesh whether it be good or evil 2. The Success of this pretender has been so wonderfully great in the world that I think it not amiss to make somewhat a longer stay upon him then upon the two former We shall therefore take notice what pitch he sets himself at and after endeavour to level him and reduce him to his due place If we will then believe his own testimony we shall find him so much favoured by God and the Heavenly Powers as to be carried up into the highest Heavens at least by Vision But he tells the story of himself as if it was a real transaction viz. That once about midnight the Angel Gabriel knocked at his door and told him that he should travail up to Heaven for God Almighty would speak with him That the Angel brought along with him a milkùwhite Beast called Alborach something bigger then an Ass but less then a Mule which the Angel bad Mahomet get upon but the Beast kicking and refusing his Rider the Angel asked him why he did so for he never did nor ever could receive upon his back a better man then Mahomet But Alborach answered he would not admit him unless he would promise to procure him an entrance into Paradise which Mahomet promising he got up and the Angel led the Beast by the rains of the bridle till they were come to Ierusalem Now as they were in their way upon their journey Mahomet heard the voice of a certain woman crying to him aloud Mahomet Mahomet but the Angel forbad him to answer and when they had gone further another woman called him after the same manner but the Angel commanded him to hold his peace And that afterward he asked the Angel what these women were to which the Angel replied that the First was the Promulgatress of the Iewish the Second of the Christian law and that if he had answered to the first woman all the Mauri had become Iews if to the second Christians 3. When they had come to the gate of the Temple at Ierusalem that Mahomet lighted off from his beast Alborach and that he and the Angel went into the Temple where all the Prophets and Messengers of God that ever came into the world met him and saluted him saying Ioy to the Messenger and honourable Prophet of God Afterwards waiting on him in great pomp to the Chappell Mihrab with much reverence they desired him that he would pray for them all which when he had done they besought him also that he would be mindfull of them when he came into the presence of God This done they all went away and Mahomet and the Angel were left alone in the Temple 4. By which crafty figment Mahomet assuredly meant nothing else but a justification of himself for beginning a Third Sect distinct from the Religions of Iews and Christians and the recommendation of himself to the World as the greatest Prophet that ever yet appeared on earth But we are not come to the height of the Vision yet 5. The Angel and Mahomet afterwards coming out of the Temple found a Ladder made of Divine light which reached from Earth to Heaven whereby they both Mahomet bearing himself upon the Angels hand ascended up thither passing through seven Heavens The first of pure Silver where Adam was the second of Gold where Noah the third of a certain precious Gemme wherein was Abraham the fourth of Smaragdus wherein Ioseph the fifth of Adamant wherein Moses the sixth of Carbuncle wherein Iohn the Baptist was found and the seventh of Celestial light wherein was Iesus Christ. All these venerable personages welcomed Mahomet with loving salutations and kind embraces and commended themselves to him but in the seventh Heaven Mahomet seems to commend himself to Christ. The infinite numbers monstrous figures and immense bignesse of Angels that he sets off his Vision by for the greater astonishment of his Followers I thought good to omit as being too vile and tedious and he is not got to his journies end yet 6. The Angel Gabriel takes leave of him in this seventh heaven telling him he may goe no further with him but that God alone now must be his guide Mahomet therefore holding on his journie was carried on the tops of incredible heights and sublimities wading through much water and deep snow insomuch that he had been quite spent had not a voice refreshed him saying Mahomet come hither and salute thy Creatour He following therefore the sound of this voice saw so great a Light that he was almost blinded therewith For the Face of God was cover'd with veiles of Celestial light seventy miles thick to which he approached within the space
add the Description of the General Resurrection chap. 20. Which things being uttered by a Prophet whose Visions hitherto so punctually answer the known Events of things cannot but be an unexceptionable Demonstration of the Resurrection of Christ and of our own Immortality And indeed of the whole Truth of Christianity and especially of those two highest points thereof the Divinity of Christ and the Triunity of the Godhead For it being so generally acknowledged by the Church of God That the Gospel and the Epistles of S. Iohn and this Book of the Apocalypse have all one Author as indeed the very matter and style of them do further argue the Phrases and matter coming nearest the notions of the ancient Cabbala of the Jews as in particular his using of the term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in them all concerning Christ it cannot but be a great satisfaction that a person so highly honoured with the gift of Divine Revelation is so express an assertor of that holy Mysterie as he is surely in the beginning of his Gospel Which therefore even they are also to believe with reverence that are not able to fit themselves with any easie conception thereof it being not at all unreasonable that one so highly inspired as S. Iohn should have something communicated to him that passes the understanding of ordinary capacities So that Pride here must be the mother of Unbelief And this is the first and main general Use that may be made of this eminently-Divine Book of the Apocalypse and has reached I must confess further then the order of things requireth at this time But I cannot but prefer the Usefulness of my Discourse before the elegancy and accuracy of my proposed Method 3. But then secondly There is also another excellent Use thereof even against those whom either the pretence to or affectation of such kind of Knowledge has made either to appear or really to be very mad and extravagant For I think it not improbable that some men may be content to appear this way minded upon design and for advantage Which political abuse of the holy Oracles of God is in my apprehension one of the worst and the most execrable kinds of Sacrilege that is But by being well skilled in the meaning of the Visions of this Book we shall be the more able to defeat the evil purposes of such Enthusiasts and Impostours who being wholy ignorant of the affairs of the Kingdom of Christ will yet pretend to be the great Instaurators of his Empire and the beginners of the blessed Millennium and of the Reign of the Spirit Whose fraud and villanie is easily discoverable from the solidly-framed Synchronisms of Mr. Mede I speak chiefly in reference to that great Prophet of the Familists whom I have so often named whose imposture is easily confutable out of the Apocalypse For the Church having continued for some Ages Symmetral that is commensurable to the Reed of the Angel which Ages were before the Apostasie of the Church it is evident that the Faith and Practice of the Church Catholick then is allowable and approvable by the rule of God and therefore not to be reproved by men nor to be reformed any further then into that Primitive state when they held the Creed in the plain literal sense thereof without any shuffling Allegories as also the distinction of Laity and Clergy and met together in places set apart for publick Worship Which is an undeniable testimonie out of this so divinely-inspired Prophet S. Iohn against all those that would lay aside the Person of Christ and deny his Divinity with the Triunity of the Godhead antiquate his Mediatorship make no distinction betwixt Laity and Clergy would pull down Churches with the like wild fanatical professions and intentions Which certainly would have been accounted abominable in those Ages that the Church was Symmetral which lasted till about four hundred years from the Birth of Christ as appears out of that ingenious inference of Mr. Mede from the proportion of the outward Court of the Temple to the inward which according to Villalpandus is as 7 to 2 and therefore 1260 daies of Apostasie implies 360 daies of the Purity of the Church foregoing this Apostasie which added to the years from the Birth of Christ to his Suffering make up 400 years or thereabouts Or else if you reckon from these very times wherein this period of Apostasie should be near its expiration backward and take 1260 from 1660 there will remain 400 years again Till which time the Faith and Practice of the Catholick Church is out of the Visions of the Apocalypse assured to us as approvable before God Which I look upon as a fit Engine to beat back the fury of such Reformers as those Enthusiasts are I mentioned and a demonstration that for all their heat and canting they are but Demoniacks and no divinely-inspired men But as in the times that the Messias was personally to come into the world many Impostours instigated by the Devil stood up to deceive the people of the Iews and brought them into much misery and mischief so now the times being at hand that Christ is to appear in the Spirit and the dead Witnesses are to rise up and rule many false Dispensations will crowd in with fury boldness and tumult and pretend to be the true Dispensation Which will not be prevented by slurring the main Scope of the Apocalypse and pretending that all the matters there are meant either of the Destruction of Ierusalem or else of Rome Heathen this is but like the sprinkling a little water upon too violent a fire which will but make it rage the more but by applying our minds more throughly to understand the meaning of these Divine Visions that we may be the more able thereby to steer the zeal of men off from doing so much hurt as they may be instigated to doe that the wheat be not burnt up with the cockle but that what is pure and Apostolical may be preserved And so also in Secular affairs Whereas the very Power of the Civil Magistrate and his security is hazarded by wild and hot-spirited men that would raise a Fifth Monarchie by Bloud and Rapine and tumble down all Government according as either their own Enthusiastick heat shall instigate or opportunity invite or give leave pretending that all Authority all Orders and Degrees in this Fourth Monarchie are unholy and prophane and that they are the Pioners to level all plain and break all Government in pieces that Christ the Fifth Monarch may personally come and begin his Millennial Empire upon Earth it behoves the Christian Rulers whether Ecclesiastical or Civil to be so well acquainted with the meaning of these Prophecies that they may be able to stop the mouths of these loud Fanaticks by those holy Oracles they pervert thus and abuse and to shew them that there is no proof at all of such things as they thus vainly imagine as assuredly there is not as I have
tell you of them Sing unto the Lord a new song and his praise from the end of the earth ye that go down to the sea and all that is therein the Isles and the inhabitants thereof Let the Wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice the villages that Kedar doth inhabit Let the inhabitants of the rock sing let them shout from the top of the mountains let them give glory unto the Lord and declare his praise in the islands The Lord shall goe forth as a mighty man he shall stir up jealousie like a man of war he shall cry yea roar he shall prevail against his enemies I have long time holden my peace I have been still and refrained my self now will I cry like a travailing woman I will destroy and devour at once I will make wast mountains and hills and dry up all their hearbs I will make the rivers Islands and I will dry up the pools And I will bring the blind by a way that they know not I will lead them in paths that they have not known I will make darkness light before them and crooked things straight These things will I doe unto them and not forsake them 4. It is a very high representation of that mighty power of God from above that assists his Church and how Christ by the dispensation of the Gospel does set us free from the bondage of sin how he opens the understandings of the ignorant and procures liberty for those that were shut up in the dungeon of a dark conscience and held in captivity under sin how those that are dry and barren like the wilderness and the tops of rocks shall be watered with springs of living water and how the villages that Kedar possesses that is those that are overshadowed with sorrow and darkness a light shall spring up unto them and how they shall give glory unto the Lord for that he himself will be their champion he shall fight their battels and by the power of his Spirit and by that fire wherewith he will plead with all flesh wither the top and flower of their pride and dry up their restagnant lusts and lighten their paths before them and lead them forth into the land of Righteousness These are the true Warfares and Victories of the Church of Christ as those that have the veil taken off from their eyes and hearts can easily discover And surely with any other usefull sense then this cannot we ordinarily read the like descriptions of the Churches triumphs by Christ over her enemies or by those that have been Types of him as David was an eminent one And therefore if I would read the 18 Psalm I will love thee O Lord my strength c. I should hope for very small edifying thereby but in such a Mystical sense as this is that is by supposing that in me which partakes of Christ that is my inward Mind or Spirit raising war against Saul which is the power of the Flesh the craving pit of Hell that sin that lodges in this mortal body whose vain desires have no bottom nor end 5. I might abound with these allegations out of the Prophets and Psalms but I have given a Key into the hand of the judicious and he may unlock those treasures himself if he desires to have his Faith enriched and strengthened by those plentiful Promises of this assistance we speak of made to them that are serious professors of the Gospel I shall only adde one testimony more which in my apprehension is very express and that is Isa. 35. Strengthen the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees Say to them that are of a fearfull heart Be strong fear not behold your God will come with vengeance even God with a recompence he will come and save you Then shall the eyes of the blinde be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped Then shall the lame man leap as an Hart and the tongue of the dumb shall sing For in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desart And the parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land Springs of water In the habitations of dragons in the places where they lay shall be grass with reeds and rushes And an high-way shall be there and a way and it shall be called a way of holiness the unclean shall not passe over it but he shall walk in the way with them and the simple shall not erre No Lion shall be there nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon it shall not be found there but the redeemed shall walk there And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Sion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads they shall obtain joy and gladnesse and sorrow and sighing shall flee away CHAP. IX 1. The great use of the belief of The Promise of the Spirit 2. The eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his bloud what it is 3. Further proof of the Promise of the Spirit 4. That we cannot oblige God by way of Merit 5. Other Testimonies of Scripture tending to the former purpose 1. THese places which we have recited out of the Old Testament cannot but warm and encourage him that reads them by reason of the loftinesse of their Prophetical style provided that he have in himself a facility of mystically applying of things to the great purpose they drive at But what we shall adde out of the New though they will not strike the phansy with so high language yet they will it may be reach ones Reason more surely and extort assent more powerfully even from them that are loth to finde it true That there is such a mighty supernatural assistance afforded from God viz. the Cooperation of his holy Spirit in our conflicts against sin Which perswasion is of great consequence to make us resolute in resisting all Temptations and to gain the victory in every assault and therefore we will produce sufficient evidences of the truth thereof 2. And the first that occurs to my minde is that of our blessed Saviour Luke 11.13 If ye being evil know how to give good gifts to your Children how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the holy Spirit to them that ask him And that this Dispensation of the Spirit of Sanctification is a common gift to all Christians appears out of what we have already recited out of S. Matthew where Iohn professes himself only able to baptize with water unto repentance but that the Baptisme of Christ should be with the holy Ghost and with fire that is with the power of the Spirit that will melt and purifie us as silver is purified in the fire Also from Ioh. 6. where Christ styleth himself the Manna that came down from Heaven and declareth that he that eateth his flesh and drinketh his bloud hath eternal life with other expressions of the like nature Wherefore his Disciples began to be scandalized at it but Jesus answered and
when others in civil respect put it off are the main Effects of that Spirit that distinguisheth you from others of the Nation 3. Is this therefore the great purchase you have obtained by turning your back on Christ and contemning of his Person to grow rude and clownish to all the World beside But methinks I hear you answer again As for this man we know not what is become of him but behold the Spirit is sensibly present amongst us even at this day But I demand by what Signs O we shiver and quake every joynt of us But that is no certain signe of the Spirit of God Was not the winde suddenly turned into the North or had you not an Ephemera or was not your over-excited Choler entangled or turned out of the way by Phlegme or Melancholy What miraculous power is there in all this O but there are also amongst us that have fallen down into a trance that have foamed and swelled till their buttons break off Wherefore of a truth these men could not but be full of the Spirit and this be a Miracle indeed If your Religion oweth not its growth to the tricks of Juglers and Tumblers or to artificial Epilepsies I do confesse it is a Miracle from these Symptomes if Satan himself drives not on the designe For these are plainly the passions of Pythonicks such a kinde of possession as seized the Pagan-Prophets and Priests of old who were no better then the worshippers of Devils whose Oracles Christ has silenced long since Wherefore examine your selves if you glory not in your shame See how you tread look behinde you or rather search within you who is the Prompter or first Mover in this new Scene of things 4. For tell me I beseech you what did your foaming Prophets when they vented themselves discharge into your ears whereby they may be deemed more Divine then those Fanatick Pagans Was not their continual song so soon as they got upon their feet the burning up of all Ordinances From whence therefore could this voice come but out of the flames of hell or what could swell the bodies of your Inspired but the venome and poison of the Devil which at last working up to their mouths he spit out enviously against the worship of Christs Person and all his holy Offices Which is another evidence against you that your pretended Inspirations are not divine but diabolical and that the mystery of Satan worketh amongst you who would fain pull down Him whom of a truth God hath set up to be a King and Priest to the Nations for ever 5. But the sweetest satisfaction of all is that you are so extraordinarily illuminated that you understand all the Mysteries of Christs kingdom better then any one else and can in a supercilious pity bemoan the ignorance of the World or with an imperious bitterness fly in their faces and reproach them for it especially the Teachers of the people that they have not taken up your Allegorical knacks nor know how to give a mystical meaning of the Gospel from the preaching of Iohn the Baptist to the coming of Christ to Judgement But you are indeed so unilluminated as not to understand that such devices as these are merely Allusions of humane Wit and help very little to the enforcing of that they are made to signifie namely Repentance and Mortification of every evil lust and concupiscence and a renovation of our mindes into the perfect image of Christ that his spirit may rule in us and that the works of death and darknesse may be utterly destroied For this Truth is plainly and literally contained in the Scripture so that if your mindes were not more set upon fancies then savoury instruction you need not run a gadding after any new Guide for the attainment of this light And God be thanked many honest plain-hearted Christians that do not swagger and make such a noise with Mystical phrases as you both hear and live according to these Gospel-Precepts using a secret and silent severity upon themselves not acting the rough and hairy Baptist upon others as you do who love to oâ—tentate your self-chosen austerities to the eyes of the world like the Pharisees who made sowr faces for fear the people should not take notice that they afflicted their bodies with fasting What purchase therefore have you got by your Allegorical Mysteries unlesse you have been emboldned thereby to let go the Historical truth of the Gospel and have found your selves much at ease that your belief is not charged with such miraculous things as are written of Christ partly done already and partly to be done at the end of the World For hereby you do proclaim your selves Infidels and that for all your boasting your spirits are so foul and impure that they are no fit receptacles of the holy Christian Faith but that you have levelled your selves as low as Epicures and Atheists who are no more capable of the belief of these things then the Beasts of the Field 6. If it be thus with you I dare appeal unto you whether you keep so precisely to the light within you but that you have consulted with that blinde Guide H. Nicolas and tasted of the treacherous sops of his abhorred Passover whose Fanatick boldness has led the dance to this mad Apostasy Have you not celebrated his detestable Phase who has gone about to perswade the World that the greatest and truest Arcanum of the Lords Supper is Iudas-like to betray their Master to kill Christ according to the flesh that is to lay aside and misbelieve the Truth of his History Ask your own hearts if the warmth of this sop has not so encouraged you nay inflamed you with insufferable bitternesse against the Ministers of Christ as teaching nothing but lies because they have not ceased to believe the Truth Has not this with him that entred in with it so intoxicated you with rage that you have trampled the holy Bible under your feet Is it not this that hath made you so often roar against and revile the Preacher in the Pulpit and disturb the publick Assemblies by your rude and frantick interpellations Which Extravagancies demonstrate by what Spirit you are led and that you are plainly Rebels against Christ and are revolted to the Powers of the dark Kingdom 7. These things I could not forbear to write as being very much pressed in Spirit thereunto For the Light within me that is my Reason and Conscience does assure me that the ancient and Apostolick Faith according to the Historical meaning thereof is very solid and true and that the Offices of Christ are never to be antiquated till his visible return to Judgement according to the literal sense of the Creed and that Familisme is a mere Flam of the Devil a smooth tale to seduce the simple from their Allegeance to Christ. And therefore I beseech every man in these daies of Liberty to take heed how they turn in thither especially those that are of an
persons at great distances off nor doth cease till a due distance after the congress 7. Concerning Preaching that which is most remarkable is this That whereas there are three chief kindes thereof namely Catechizing Expounding a Chapter and Preaching usually so called whereof the first is the best and the last the least considerable of them all this worst and last is the very Idol of some men and the other rejected as things of little worth But assuredly they are of most virtue for the effectual implanting the Gospel of Christ in the mindes of men and of the two as I said Catechizing the better because it enforces the catechized to take notice of what is taught him and what is thus taught him is not so voluminous but that he can carry it away and remember it for ever and withall the most Useful as being the very Fundamentals comprized in the Christian Creed or the first and most natural results from them tending to indispensable duties of life and therefore will alone if sincerely believed and faithfully practised carry a man to Heaven But the next profitable way of Preaching is Expounding of a Chapter provided that he that does so makes it his only business without any vain excursions to shew his reading to render those places of the Chapter that are obscure easie and intelligible to the capacity of the Auditors with some brief but earnest urging of their duties from such passages as most necessarily tend thereto This will make the private Reading of Scripture pleasant to his charge And it will prove the more effectual for their good if he contain himself within the New Testament and fetch only so much out of the Old as will be subservient for the full understanding of the New There is nothing so likely to convince the Conscience as this when men are able to reade and understand the Text of Scripture it self and are sensibly beat upon by the power of that Spirit that is found in those Writings far beyond all the fine Speeches and Phrases of humane Eloquence Which yet is the greatest matter in this Third way of Preaching and the truest use that can be made of it namely not to fill the peoples head with unprofitable or hurtful Opinions but by the artifice of a more florid and flowing style to raise the affections of the Auditors to the love and pursuit of such things as are commanded us by the Precepts of the Gospel I confess therefore This exercise may be of laudable use in such a Congregation where all the people are throughly grounded in the Fundamentals of Christianity and are well skilled in the knowledge of the Bible otherwise if the other Two necessary wayes of Preaching be silenced by this more overly and plausible way it is to the unspeakable detriment of the flock of Christ. Which will happen even then when it is performed after the very best manner How great then is the evil think you when the exercise of their popular Eloquence is nothing but a Stage of ostentation and vain-glory to the Speaker and begets nothing but an unsound blotedness and ventosity of Spirit in his hearers and admirers they being intoxicated with lushious and poisonous Opinions which tend to nothing but the extinguishing of the love and endeavour after true Righteousness and Holiness and the begetting in them a false security of minde and abhorred Libertinisme Had it not been far better that they had rested in the Fundamentals of their Faith comprised in the Apostles Creed with an obligation on their Conscience to live according to the Laws of Christ and his holy Precepts then to be led about and infatuated by the heat and noise of such false Guides 8. Concerning Praying it is an Epidemical mistake That men think extemporary Prayers are by the Spirit and that the Spirit is not in a Set Form Whenas in truth the Spirit may be absent in the highest extemporary heats and present in the use of set Forms where there may appear greater calmness and coolness For the Spirit of Praier does not consist in the invention of words and phrases which is rather a Gift of Nature as the Faculty of extemporary speaking in other cases is proceeding from heat and phansy and copiousness of the Animal Spirits but in a firm belief in God through Christ and in an hearty liking and sincere desire of having those holy things communicated to us that we pray for And therefore he that reads or hears a publick Liturgy read in such a frame of minde as I have described does as truly pray by the Spirit as he that invents words and phrases of his own For there is nothing Divine but this holy Faith and Desire the rest is mere Nature And it is a demonstration how ignorant these men are that talk so loud of the Spirit whenas they cannot so much as discern what is truly Spiritual from what is but Animal and Natural To which you may adde That if none pray by the Spirit but those that invent their own words the whole Congregation are very Spiritless Prayers they all hanging upon the lips of the Minister who alone will be acknowledged to pray by the Spirit Whose pretended assistance is not yet always so powerful as to protect him from the incurring of the danger of Non-sense and of making the Publick Worship of God insipid or else distasteful and loathsome or which is even as ill contemptible and ridiculous 9. Wherefore it is far more safe as it is undoubtedly more solemn to use a publick Liturgy that bears the authority of the whole Church then to venture so holy and devotional a performance upon the uncertainty of any mans private spirit who will be but tempted to ostentate his own conceited Eloquence or forced to discover his own weakness and folly Whenas a set Form will prevent all Pride and knackishness and preserve the publick worship in its due reverence and honour especially where it is contrived with that cautiousness that nothing is expressed therein that engages the Minde in controverted Opinions but speaks according to the known tenour of Scripture undepraved by humane glosses 10. But you will say if a Minister be cut so short in these performances of extemporary Praier and expatiating Preachments how shall he be able to give any eximious Testimony of his abilities in his calling how shall he have the opportunity of shewing his Gifts To which I answer That the end of the Ministry is not the Ostentation of any mans particular Gifts but the Edification of the People which are better edified by diligent catechizing and faithful and judicious expounding of the Scripture then by loose and ranging Discourses out of the Pulpit where he that speaks having taken leave of his short Text may fill the ears of his Auditors with nothing but the noise of his own conceits and inventions whenas in the Exposition of a whole Chapter suppose at a time the peoples mindes will be kept closer to those
then by any other way conceivable For those words of so great sound and of no less import namely the Millennium the Reign of the Saints the New Jerusalem and the like to them that are not very wild or ignorant can signifie nothing else but the recovery of the Church to her ancient Apostolick purity wherein nothing shall be imperiously obtruded upon men but what is plainly discoverable to be the Mind of Christ and his Blessed Apostles There shall be nothing held Essential and Fundamental but the indispensable Law of the Christian life and that Doctrine that depends not upon the fallible deductions of men but is plainly set down in the Scripture other things being left to the free recommendation of the Church ensnaring no mans Conscience nor lording it over the flock of Christ. 14. Which certainly they do that call those things Antichristian that are not and thereby make more Fundamentals then Christ or his Apostles which Errour is the very Essence and Substance of Antichristianisme and of the grand Apostasy of the Church As methinks should appear plainly to any man that considers it from the description of the New Jerusalem whose Foundation and whole Fabrick runs so upon Twelve For truly it seems to me very unsafe and over-near the brinks of reproach to the Spirit of God to conceit that Wisdome which dictated this Prophecy so shallow and trifling as to mean nothing by that so industriously inculcating the number Twelve but the Churches proceeding first from the preaching of the Apostles a Truth that no man never so destitute of the spirit of divination could misse of or possibly think otherwise Wherefore the meaning of the Prophecy questionless is That after the Church has added false Fundamentals to the Christian Faith and as bad Superstructures the time will come when it shall be again restored to its former purity and That as the root Twelve is the Embleme of the pure Church so there is also a root of a number that will discover that Church which is the Mother of this great Apostasy as really in my judgement Mr. Potter in the number 666. has ingeniously demonstrated But it is manifest that all the zealous Corrivals for the Government of this Nation by either decrying things for Antichristian that in themselves are innocent and of an indifferent nature or by obtruding Opinions that are worse then indifferent have but shewed themselves Branches of that great Stock of Apostasy and are too far removed from the reputed merit of either being or beginning of a Church that is purely Apostolical 15. This Honour therefore seems to have been reserved by Providence for the eternizing the happy Reign of our Gracious Soveraign and all the parturient Agonies and zealous presages of the people of this Nation as if there was an approach of some extraordinary Good to be revealed suddenly to the World to have been nothing else if they knew their own meaning but a less explicite presensation of the return of CHARLES the Second to the rightfull Government of his Kingdomes And truely it will be the greatest Miracle to me in the world if he can frustrate our expectation For whether we consider the excellent Qualifications of our Gracious Prince whom Providence has so long time disciplined in the most effectual method of Prudence and Vertue besides the express Declaration of His own Royal inclinations this way or whether we look upon the Reasonableness of the thing it self it being not onely recommended to us both by Precept and Prophecies but also offering so irrefragable evidence from its own nature of the indispensableness of the duty there being no other possible means to reduce the World to a right Christian tenour of Spirit and to recover it to a due strength and soundness of complexion but by shearing off those large excrescencies of either useless or scandalous Ceremonies and Opinions the foments of strife and palliations of Hypocrisy men seeking by these to be excused from the most weighty Precepts of the Gospel or lastly we take notice of the great Interest the wise and reverend Clergy of this Nation cannot but discover herein even in reference to themselves it is almost impossible to doubt of either endeavour or success in this so important affair For certainly nothing can so well secure their peace and make them impregnable as the using of their Power and exercising their Discipline in the behalf of such Truths and Rites as are plainly and confessedly Apostolical and the being more facil and easie in additional circumstances and cutting quite off all useless and entangling Opinions For hereby will their Opposers be manifestly found to fight against God and his Christ while they contest with his Ministers who urge nothing upon the People but what was plainly taught and practised by himself and his Apostles whose Waies and Doctrines are so sacred that they ought to be kept up with all lawful severity Which one plain and generous Rule of Government if faithfully kept to is the most effectual means imaginable of making the world good and for both the Unity and Enlargement of the Church infinitely above all those many fine artifices and small devices of the most professed Politicians in the Church of Rome provided we be not course and sordid but reverent and comely in our publick Worship 16. But to return In the third and last place Although the exigency of the Times which then urged me to write thus carefully touching the Quakers and Familists is now God be thanked changed into a more safe Scene of things and the resettlement of our Gracious Soveraign in his Throne doth again secure the Scepter of Christ to his Church yet I thought it fit not to exâ—unge what I had wrote concerning these Sects For for the present It cannot but contribute considerably to an unfained composure of their Spirits and peaceful acquiescence in the known Christian Truth their minds being more at leisure now better fitted to consider what is true then they were before when the heat of Enthusiastick hopes of I know not what great success inflamed them and blew them up so high that the voice of sober Reason could not well be heard in that fanatick storm and Bluster nor an Errour easily let go which seemed a pledge of the sudden approach of so great advantages to the entertainers of it And then for the future So fundamental a discovery of the unsoundness and madness of these Sects cannot I think but be very effectual for the preventing their spreading hereafter that it will not be any longer in the power of their false Teachers to befool well-meaning men with fine words and make them unawares countenance a Faction the deepest Arcanum whereof is absolute rebellion against the Person of Christ and an utter abrogation of Christian Religion Which task though others heretofore have undertaken and I question not but with like faithful and zealous regard to the good of the Church yet their discovery
were not asleep at so concerning a Sermon 6. Again 2 Cor. 5. v. 8. We are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the Body and to be present with the Lord. Here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 plainly intimates a going out of this Mortal Body not a change of it into an Immortal one therefore we may safely conclude that this courage and willingness of the Apostle to die implies an enjoyment of the presence of Christ after death before the general Resurrection Else why should he rather desire to die then to live but that he expects that Faith should be presently perfected by Sight as he insinuates in the foregoing verse But assuredly better is that enjoyment which is onely by Faith then to have no enjoyment at all as it must be if the Soul cannot operate out of this Body 7. A like Proof to this and further Confirmation of the Truth is that of Philipp 1.21 22 23 24. where the Apostle again professing his courage and forwardness to magnifie Christ in his body whether by life or by death uses the like Argument as before For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain But if I live in the flesh it will be worth my labour yet what I should chuse I wote not For I am in a strife betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needfull for you 8. The genuine sense of which Place is questionless this That while he lived his life was like Christ's upon Earth innocent but encumbred with much hardship and affliction bearing about in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus but if he died he should then once for all seal to the Truth of his Martyrdome and not onely scape all future troubles which yet the love of Christ his Assistance and Hope of Reward did ever sustain him in but which was his great gain and advantage arrive to an higher fruition of him after whom he had so longing a desire But if to be with Christ were to sleep in his bosome and not so much as to be sensible he is there it were impossible the Apostles affections should be carried so strongly to that state or his judgement should determine it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so exceedingly much better especially his stay in the flesh being so necessary to the Philippians and the rest of the Church and what he suffered and might further suffer in his life no less a Testimony to the Truth then Death it self 9. Fourthly Those phrases of S. Peter 2 Pet. 1.13 Yea I think it meet so long as I am in this Tabernacle to stir you up and put you in remembrance Knowing that I must shortly put off this Tabernacle c. And so vers 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in all likelyhood alludes to the same as if his Soul went out of the Body as out of a Tabernacle All these Phrases I say seem to me manifestly to indicate that there is no such necessary Union betwixt the Soul and the Body but she may act as freely out of it as in it as men are nothing the more dull sleepy or senseless by putting off their cloaths and going out of the house but rather more awakened active and sensible 10. Fifthly Hebr. 12. There God is called the Father of Spirits the Corrector and Chastiser of our Souls in contradistinction to our Flesh or Bodies and then vers 22. lifting us up quite above the consideration of our Corporeal condition he brings us to the Mystical mount Sion the City of the living God the Heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels to the Universal assembly and Church of the first-born which are inrolled in heaven and to God the Iudge of all and to the Spirits of just men made perfect Now I demand what Perfection can be in the Spirits of these just men to be overwhelmed in a senseless Sleep or what a disproportionable and unsutable representation is it of this throng Theatre in Heaven made up of Saints and Angels that so great a part of them as the Souls of the Holy men deceased should be found drooping or quite drown'd in an unactive Lethargie Certainly as it is incongruous in it self so it is altogether inconsistent with the magnificency of the representation which this Author intends in this place 11. Sixthly Matth. 10.28 The life of the Soul separate from the Body is there plainly asserted by our Saviour Fear not them that kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul but rather fear him who is able to destroy both Body and Soul in Hell i. e. able if he will to destroy the life both of Body and Soul in Hell-fire according to the conceit of those whose opinions I have recited in my Treatise Of the Immortality of the Soul Book 3. chap. 18. or else miserably to punish or afflict both Body and Soul in Hell the torments whereof are worse then Death it self For as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perire signifie to be excessively miserable so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perdere may very well signifie to make excessively miserable But now for the former part of the verse but are not able to kill the Soul it is evident that they were able if the Soul could not live separate from the Body For killing of the Body what is it but depriving it of life wherefore if the Soul by the death of the Body be also deprived of life it is manifest that she can be killed which is contrary to our Saviour's Assertion CHAP. X. 1. A pregnant Argument from the State of the Soul of Christ and of the Thief after death 2. Grotius his explication of Christ's promise to the Thief 3. The meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4. How Christ with the Thief could be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in Paradise at once 5. That the Parables of Dives and Lazarus and of the unjust Steward implie That the Soul hath life and sense immediately after death 1. WE have yet one more notable Testimony against our Adversaries Our Saviour Christ's Soul and the Thief 's upon the Cross did subsist and live immediately upon the death of the Body as appears from Luke 23.42 43. And he said unto Iesus Lord remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdome And Iesus said unto him Verily I say unto thee This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise As if he should thus answer Thou indeed beggest of me that I would be mindfull of thee when I come into my Kingdome but I will not deferre thee so long onely distrust not the unexpected riches of my goodness to thee For verily I say unto thee That this very day shalt thou be with me in Paradise And there is no evasion from this Interpretation the Syriack as Grotius noteth interpointing betwixt I say unto thee and Today and all the Greek copies as Beza affirmes joyning
reaching to every Individual thing or Person in the world It being as easie for God to see all things as to see any one thing his Perception being Infinite and therefore Undistractable and Indefatigable Now his Goodness and Power being no less immense it will necessarily follow That there is not any thing that befalls the meanest Creature in the whole Creation but that it was suitable to the Goodness of God either to cause it or permit it For though it may seem at the present harsh to that particular Being yet at the length it may prove for its greater Advantage at least it may be deemed good for the Universe as Marcus Aurelius solidly and judiciously ever and anon does suggest and I think he is but a shallow Philosopher that cannot maintain this Cause against all Atheistical surmises and cavills whatsoever CHAP. III. 1. His Third Assertion That there are Particular Spirits or Immaterial Substances and of their Kinds 2. The Proof of their Existence and especially of theirs which in a more large sense be called Souls 3. The Difference betwixt the Souls or Spirits of Men and Angels and how that Pagan Idolatry and the Ceremonies of Witches prove the Existence of Devils 4. And that the Existence of Devils proves the Existence of Good Angels 1. MY Third Assertion is That there are Particular Spirits or Immaterial Substances Which will easily flow from what is so firmly proved already That there is one Omnipotent Omniscient and infinitely-Benign Spirit which we call GOD who therefore acting according to his nature we cannot doubt but that he has created innumerable companies of Spirits to enjoy themselves and their Creatour Which are either purely Immaterial having no communion at all with Matter with the Greeks again divide into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into pure Intellects or Minds and simple Unities or else such as although according to their very Substance or Essence they be Immaterial yet have a propertie of being vitally united with and also affected by the Matter To these Spirits for want of a better term I must take the boldness to abuse a known word to a greater latitude of sense and give the name of Souls to them all because they do vitally actuate the Matter be it Aethereal Aereal or Terrestrial Whether there be not also a middle sort betwixt these Souls and pure Intellects a man may well doubt which differ from Intellect in having an immediate power of moving the Matter and from Souls in not being vitally joined therewith but acting merely as Assistent Formes such as the Aristoteleans phansie their Intelligencies to be 2. For the Existence of the Three first Orders we have intimated already a considerable Argument which reaches all the Orders of Spirits indifferently The last Order falls not only under the knowledge of more abstracted Reason but also under Experience it self For that there is a Spirit in the Body of Man is evident to us because we find such Operations in us as are incompetible to Matter if we more closely and considerately examine them This Spirit that thus acts in us is called a Soul But that there is some such analogical Principle in the Aereal or Aethereal Genii the actions and conditions of some of them do confirm For if their Nature were not such as we have described that is if they did not inhabit and vitally actuate corporeal Vehicles how could they ever sin or fall For it is out of the conjunction of these two Principles Spirit and Vehicle that there ever could be brought in any inward Temptation Distraction or Confusion in any of the Orders of the Genii or Angels But Pure and Simple Abstract Beings seem utterly Impassible and therefore Impeccable Wherefore it is very highly probable That all fallen Angels which we ordinarily call Devils are of the Fourth Order of Spirits which we have described 3. Which Spirits of the Genii fallen or not fallen notoriously differ from these Spirits of men in that they are not capable of informing an Humane or Terrestrial Body and therefore bear themselves above them as a Superior Being and out of their pride and scorn have ever since their fall either by fraud or force universally entangled poor contemptible Mankinde in sundry performances of Idolatrous worship unto them which they could not have done if men were not lapsed as well as they Wherefore the Pagans Superstitions and the History of Witches will make good that there are Devils and that they are of that nature we speak of 4. And I think this being evinced no man will question but that there are also Good Angels to conflict with and moderate the Bad. For God will not let the great Automaton of the Universe be so imperfect as to be forced to step out perpetually himself to do that which some Noble part of his Creation might perform nor set those things one against another that are quite of another kinde Besides those Philosophers that have wrote of these things with most judgment do not easily conclude That there are any other created Intellectual Beings but such as are capable of being vitally united with some Vehicle or other Which if it were true is nothing prejudicial to us the admission of the Three First Orders being little or nothing serviceable to our design And lastly it is improbable but that the Fall of the Angels being from a Free principle as some fell so others stood and that there has ever been since their fall both Good and Bad Angels in the world in that sense as I have explained the Nature of the Angels or Genii whether Good or Bad. CHAP. IV. 1. His Fourth Assertion That the Fall of the Angels was their giving up themselves to the Animal life and forsaking the Divine 2. The Fifth That this fall of theirs changed their purest Vehicles into more gross and feculent 3. The Sixth That the change of their Vehicles was no extinction of life 4. The Seventh That the Souls of Men are immortal and act and live after death The inducements to which belief are the Activity of fallen Angels 5. The Homogeneity of the inmost Organ of Perception 6. The scope and meaning of External Organs of Sense in this Earthly Body 7. The Soul's power of Organizing her Vehicle 8. And lastly The accuracy of Divine Providence 1. WE add Fourthly That these Angels before their Fall had a twofold Principle of Life in them Divine and Animal and that their Fall consisted in this In leaving their obedience to the DIVINE LIFE and wholy betaking themselves to the ANIMAL LIFE without rule or measure 2. Fifthly That this Rebellion had an effect upon their Vehicles and changed their pure Aethereal Bodies into more Feculent and Terrestrial understanding Terrestrial in as large a sense as Cartesius does which will take in the whole Atmosphere They have forfeited therefore these more resplendent mansions for this obscure and caliginous Air they wander in and have now in
their polluted Vehicles less of Heaven then the meanest Regenerate Soul that dwels in these Tabernacles of Earth and that of the Prophet is most true of them that their Sun is gone down at mid-day 3. Sixthly That the Destruction of these Aethereal Vehicles was not an utter Extinction of life to them but onely an Exclusion from the life and pleasures of that Supernal Paradise which they enjoyed in those Heavenly Vehicles For that they now live and move and act is manifest in that the whole World rings of their exploits and villanies 4. Seventhly That the Souls of men which are as much Immortall they being Spirits as those of the faln Angels are are not devoid of life after the death of this Body For as the Souls of the fallen Angels descended from thinner to thicker without the loss of Sense and Life so do our Souls ascend from thicker to thinner habitations with the like if not greater security of acting and living after the Death of the Body 5. Which we shall the easilier believe if we consider how contemptible and homely a thing that Organ is which is the ultimate and immediate conveigher of whatever we perceive in the outward world and which is most remarkable in which alone the Soul has any Sense at all of any thing that arrives to her cognoscence Which if it be not the Animal Spirits within the Brain which makes most of all for us I confess with Cartesius I think it most probable to be the Conarion then which nor Water nor Air nor Aether nor any other Element else seems more Simple and Homogeneal So that the advantage seems not to be in the nature of that Organ but it is because the Soul by those lawes that brought her into the Body has placed her Centre of Perception there 6. Which little Pavilion of the Soul's Centre of Perception being of so gross consistence as it is and becoming thereby less Passive and Alterable it was very requisite that there should be that curious frame of the external Organs of the Eye the Ear the Nose and other parts to strengthen those motions and impressions that they transmit so that they may be able forcibly enough to strike upon the Conarion or at least strike through the Organs and penetrate to the Animal Spirits in the Brain supposing them the most inward and immediate Organ of Perception And that the Conformation of the external Organs of Sense is such that they are to admiration fitted to this end is a thing so well known amongst the Anatomists that I need not insist on the proof of it as it is also among Physitians That none of the external Organs have any Sense at all in them no more then an Acousticon or a Dioptrick glass From whence is discovered the Unreasonableness of their Despair that conceit that when the Soul is devested of her Organical Body she can have no Sense nor Perception of any thing For this curious Organization tends to nothing else but the proportionating the vigour of Motion to the difficulty of its passage through the Nerves or to the grossness of the consistency of the Conarion Which Organical contrivance therefore may not be at all needfull in the Soul separate from the Body the Centre of Perception being placed bare in a more tender and passive Element such as Air Aether and the like So that it will be the greatest wonder in the world that the Soul should sleep after death so small a thing being able to waken her 7. Besides it is not Unreasonable but that She and other Spirits though they have no set Organs yet for more distinct and full perception of Objects may frame the Element they are in into temporary Organization and that with as much ease and swiftness as we can dilate and contract the pupil of our Eye and bring back or put forward the Crystalline humor 8. And not only to respect the Natures of Humane Souls but also the Will and Purpose of God there was never any yet that pretended to knowledge in Philosophy that denied the Immortality of the Soul in this sense which we contend for but they deni'd first a Particular Divine Providence which for my own part I think it is impossible for any one to deny that will diligently and indifferently search into the matter And therefore this Seventh Assertion may very well stand That the Souls of men are Immortal and act and live after Death Of this Subject I have wrote more lately and more fully in my Treatise Of the Immortality of the Soul to which the Reader may have recourse CHAP. V. 1. The Eighth Assertion That there is a Polity amongst the Angels and Souls separate both Good and Bad and therefore Two distinct Kingdomes one of Light and the other of Darkness 2. And a perpetual fewd and conflict betwixt them 3. The Ninth That there are infinite swarms of Atheistical Spirits as well Aereal as Terrestrial in an utter ignorance or hatred of all true Religion THE Eighth Assertion is That every Angel Good or Bad is as truly a Person as a man being endued also with Life Sense and Understanding whence they are likewise capable of Ioy and Pain and therefore coercible by Laws And mutual Helps being able to procure what Solitude cannot they must of necessity be Sociable and hold together in Bodies Politick and obey for either hope of advantage or fear of mischief Out of the whole masse therefore of the Angelical Nature taking in also according to Philo the Souls of men be they in what Vehicles they will there arise since their Fall two distinct Kingdoms the one of Darkness whose Laws reach no further then to the Interest of the Animal life the other of Light which is the true Kingdom of God and here the Animal life is in subjection and the Divine life bears rule as the Divine life is trodden down in the other Kingdom and the Animal life has the sole Jurisdiction 2. Now the inward life and spring of Motion in each Kingdom being so different it follows that these two Kingdoms must alwaies be at odds and that there must be a perpetual conflict till victory Which we shall still more easily conceive if we admit what is very reasonable That the Kingdom of Light reaches from Heaven to Earth that is That as there are found on the same surface of the Earth Animals both wilde and gentle harmless and poisonous and men good and bad pious and impious so likewise even in the same Regions of the Air that there are scatter'd Spirits of both Kindes good and evil Subjects of the Kingdom of Darkness and the Kingdom of Light In the order of those Aereal Angels the ancient Philosophers ranked the Souls of men deceased whether Vertuous or Wicked unless they had reached to an extraordinary and Heroical degree of Purity and Perfection for then they conceited that they were carried up to those more high and Aethereal Regions 3. Ninthly That there
Virginia Mexico Peru and Brasilia But it would be as tedious as needless to harp so long on one string by so voluminous an Induction and it is more warrantable to be sparing then over-lavish in so copious and confessed a matter Whoever reads those Writers which are numerous enough that can inform them in this inquiry he will assuredly find That the Religion of the Heathen reached no further then the Objects of the Animal life and that though they may go under several names yet that they are the same things every where viz. Wrath Lust and Sensuality or such things as are in subserviency to these as Corn Wine and other Requisites for the necessities or delights of Man as also those Powers that have an influence upon these as the Sun Moon and Stars Fire Water Air and the like 8. We may adde to these Inanimate things Eminent persons whom they could not but acknowledge as their great Benefactors Such were their Law-givers Kings and Commanders that fought their battels successfully the first Inventours of Arts or any useful contrivance for the convenience of life Wherefore the most subtil defenders of the worship of the Pagans let them elude the charge of Idolatry as well as they can or Polytheism yet they can never avoid the imputation That their serving of God in the Heathens Ceremonies is not any thing more then the acknowledging that Power that is able to gratifie or grieve the Spirit of the mere Natural Man CHAP. VIII 1. That Judaism also respected nothing else but the Gratifications of the Animal life as appears in all their Festivals 2. That though the People were held in that low dispensation yet Moses knew the meaning of his own Types and that Immortality that was to be revealed by Christ. 3. That their Sabbaths reached no further then things of this life 4. Nor their Sabbatical years and Iubilees 5. Nor their Feasts of Trumpets 6. Nor their Feast of Tabernacles 7. Nor their Pentecost 8. Nor lastly their Feast of Expiation 1. AND truly that the absolute Transcendency of the Christian Religion may be the better understood I cannot here omit that Iudaism does very much symbolize with Paganism in this point we are upon For though the Iewes were very right and orthodox in this in that they did direct their worship to that One and only true God that made Heaven and Earth and is the Author and Giver of every good gift and that without the offence and scandal of Idolatrous worship yet under this dispensation of Moses he seems openly to promise nothing more to the people of the Iewes then the present enjoyments of this Natural life nor threatens any thing but the plagues thereof as seems manifest Deuteronomy 28. where the Blessings of obedience to Moses his Law and the Cursings of disobedience are largely set down 2. Not but that I can easily believe that Moses himself understood the Mystery of Immortality and the Promise of those Eternal joyes to be revealed by the Messias in the fulness of time as also the meaning of all the Types that refer unto him and that his Successors also in that nation their Holy Men or Prophets had some measurable Knowledge thereof But my meaning is that the Generality of the Iews were locked up in this lower kind of Dispensation and that Moses his Law in the Externals thereof drives at no higher then thus as is apparent from all the Festivals thereof they none of them concerning any thing more then the enjoyments and conveniences of this present life 3. For as for their Sabbaths they were but a Memorial of the Creation of this visible world the belief whereof the Sadducees embraced as well as others though they denied that there was either Angel or Spirit for there is not any mention of the Creation of any such thing in the external letter of Moses and therefore the Appearances of Angels they look'd upon as only present Emanations from God which ceased as he disappeared 4. And for their Sabbatical year as also the year of Iubilee which was celebrated at the end of seven times seven years besides that they are not without a reflection upon the Creation of the World which was compleated at the seventh day wherein therefore God rested the other reasons according to the Text of Moses reach no further then the things of this present life For as concerning the Sabbatical year the Precept runs thus Six years thou shalt sow thy land and gather the fruits thereof but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lye still that the poor of thy people may eat in like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard and with thy olive-yard And for the Iubilee it is evident that it had a secular use for the releasment of Servants and restoring of lands to their first owners who were necessitated to sell them Those Feasts therefore were instituted in order to a Political good 5. Their Feasts of Trumpets and their New-Moons seem indeed to have an higher use to call the people together to hear the Law but I told you before that the Blessings and Cursings of the Law were merely Temporal And for their Sacrifices of Thanksgiving and of Atonement they were in reference to what is Good or Evil to this life of the Flesh. 6. Their Feast of Tabernacles was instituted in remembrance that the Children of Israel dwelt in Tabernacles and Boothes when God brought them out of the land of Aegypt As also their Passeover was a more particular representation of the manner of their delivery out of the hands of the Aegyptians as you may see Exodus the 12. 7. Their Pentecost that is the fiftieth day after the Passeover in this they offered two wave-loaves as upon the second day of the Passeover they offered a sheaf of the first fruits of their Harvest so that those Solemnities respected merely the Fruits of the Earth 8. And lastly as for the Feast of Expiation wherein the Scape-goat carried away the sins of the people and the evils deserved thereby into the wilderness being as I have already intimated that those plagues or evils denounced in Moses his Law be but of a secular consideration it is plain that this particular Ceremony in the Religion of Moses in the letter thereof reaches no further then the Pleasures or Aggrievances of this mortal life It being reserved for Christ alone to bring the most certain and most comfortable News of that Eternal Joy which we shall be made partakers of with him for ever in the Heavens who was to abolish Death and to bring Life and Immortality to light through the Gospel as S. Paul speaks CHAP. IX 1. The Preeminency of Judaism above Paganism 2. The Authors of the Religions of the Heathen who they were 3. How naturally lapsed Mankind fals under the superstitious Tyranny of Devils 4. The palpable effects of this Tyranny in the Nations of America 5. That that false and wilde Resignation in the Quakers does
stark naked in the Lupercalia which were celebrated to the honour or rather dishonour of Pan Lycaeus Faunus or Sylvanus for it is nothing but a memorial also of his defeated lechery For Hercules having retired into a wood with his wife Omphale a fair and goodly person and richly attired this Rural God by chance espying her fell in love with her watched where they took up their lodging and silently stole into the Cave by night where Hercules and Omphale having changed garments he lying in his wives clothes and she in his Lions skin made the lustfull God mistake so unluckily that it cost him besides the shame the bruising of his Body against the sides of the Cave where the enraged Heros cast him discharging himself of so uncouth and unsutable a Bed-fellow And this is the Reason why Sylvanus will have his Ceremonies performed by naked men in detestation of that deceit and mistake that may ly under clothes Veste Deus lusus fallentes lumina Vestes Non amat nudos ad sua sacra vocat The God abus'd by cloths that hinder sight Unto his Feasts the naked doth invite So lascivious are the Rites and so frivolous the Theology of the ancient Pagans 5. Flora is a name that sounds more innocently but yet her Solemnities are not performed without shameless wantonness and uncivil mirth lewd Harlots being appointed to run up and down naked pleasing the Spectators with their obscene gestures and Meretricious disportments 6. Their Goddess Venus can be no sooner mentioned then suspected and that deservedly For though Plato and Plotinus acknowledge a Twofold Venus the one Heavenly the other Popular and Carnal yet that Distinction in the true meaning thereof seems only to be lodged amongst the better sort of Philosophers the people doing their devotions to that lower Deity as it appears by the Epithets they give her and the Ceremonies they perform to her For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Argivi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Athenians and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Syracusans worshipped can be no other but that Power which is the President of Lust as the meaning of those unchast Epithets does plainly demonstrate And that Venus which was worshipped at Cyprus the Phallus which was shewn amongst other of her Ceremonies evidently declares her Nature to be of the same kind 7. There was indeed an Urania a Celestial Venus she is called the Queen of Heaven in Scripture Venus Mylitta in Prophane writers Mylitta signifying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which was worshipped as well in some parts of Africk as in Babylonia but the reason of her name which we have already told as also the manner of her Ceremonies do manifestly shew that she was but that Popular Venus we spoke of before For young Women sate in her Temple their places being distinguished by certain lines or threads which any stranger that would make use of their bodies broke and so carried her apart that he had a mind to deal with from the rest and gave her a piece of mony for a requital and after this superstitious kind of fornication she was permitted to marry whom she pleased The better sort of Women made their abode near the Temple in certain Waggons covered like Tents from whence the abomination was called Succoth Benoth and the Goddess her self Benoth for shortness whence the Criticks with great probability derive the Latine word Venus 8. This Venus which was worshipped so in several places is conceived by some to be the Moon as by Philochorus who affirms her to be sacrificed to if by men in womens apparel if by women in mens apparel Which Planet is rightly called the Queen of Heaven and under the name of Hecate is also Maleficarum Venus as Selden notes Astarte also is the same Numen served by her impure Priests men of filthy and effeminate manners The abominableness of the Worship of this Goddess of Lust is lively set out by Eusebius in the life of Constantine Nemus erat delubrum extra publicam viam spurco Veneris daemoni in parte verticis montis Libani in fruticeto positum Erat hîc malitiae Schola omnibus lascivis ubi viri non viri muliebri morbo daemonem placabant And besides this it was as he sayes the Rendezvous of all lewd persons men and women given to wantonness where they committed adultery fornication and Sodomy with impunity because no man of any repute would come amongst them CHAP. XII 1. Of their famous Eleusinia how foule and obscene they were 2. The magnificency of those Rites and how hugely frequented 3. That the bottome thereof was but a piece of Baudery held up by the Obscene and ridiculous story of Ceres and Baubo 4. Of their foul superstitions in Tartary Malabar Narsinga and the whole Continent of America 1. THat so villainous doings are found under so bad a title as this Goddess bears may seem less marvel but such Solemnities as have had the greatest fame for Mysteriousness and Sanctity are not found clear of this course kind of filthiness We will instance in one example for all in the Sacra Eleusinia instituted to the honour of Ceres whom one would expect that she should approve her self an honest country Matron whenas some of the sights to be seen in her Temple as holy as they made those Mysteries were but the ensignes of a Bawdy-house which was the cause I suppose that made Socrates and Demonax not care to be initiated 2. But what by the power of delusive Spirits or the fraud of the Priests that caused unexpected flashings of light and astonishing thunderings besides other strange sights which they exhibited to them that were come to an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these Mysteries were in so great request that they were honoured sometimes with the presence of no less then thirty thousand persons Claudian in his de Raptu Proserpinae sets out the solemness of these Rites very livelily Iam mihi cernuntur trepidis delubra moveri Sedibus clarum dispergere culmina lumen Adventum testata Dei jam magnus ab imis Auditur fremitus terris Templumque remugit CECROPIDUM Now do I see the trembling Temple move From the foundation and the Roof all bright To send down sudden day shot from above Sign of the Gods approach Now strange affrights Of bellowing murmurs echoing under ground Fill the CECROPIAN structures with their sound 3. But this magnificent description of the Poet will be quite dash'd out of countenance if we do but produce that smart taunt to their foul Superstition set down by the pen of one of the ancient Fathers Tota in Adytis divinitas tota suspiria Epoptarum totum signaculum linguae simulacrum membri virilis revelatur To this of Tertullian we might add out of Theodoret or rather as some would have it correct Tertullian's mistake For they did
other World But of this enough CHAP. XVII 1. The Third Observable The Mediation of Daemons 2. This Superstition glanced at by the Apostle in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that Daemons are the Souls of men departed according to Hesiod 3. As also according to Plutarch and Maximus Tyrius 4. The Author's inference from this position 1. THE Third thing Observable is their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Daemons I mean their Dii Medioxumi or rather Those Spirits that were Mediatours as I may so call them betwixt the Supreme Deities and Men. According to this sense is that of Plato in his Symposion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. God intermingles not himself with man but all the Converse and conference betwixt the Gods and Men is performed by Daemons And the same Philosopher saies plainly and expresly That these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 receive the praiers and oblations that men make and present them to the Gods and bring back from them rewards and injunctions which they communicate some way or other to men But this is not Plato's opinion alone but of most of the ancient Philosophers that would venture to say any thing at all in Religion as of Zoroaster Thales Pythagoras Celsus Plutarch Apuleius and who not Nay this conceit is so natural that it is found among the rude Americans who profess that their Zemes are no other then Mediatours and Messengers from the great God that is Eternal and Invisible as Peter Martyr relates in his first Decad lib. 9. concerning the Inhabitants of Hispaniola 2. This opinion of the Heathen was glanced at by the Apostle Coloss. 2.18 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Grotius observeth upon the place Nor does the difference of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make any difference in the thing the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo has noted and either of them is competible to the Soul out of the Body as the same Author also acknowledgeth But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies also the Soul in the Body according to Xenocrates in Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. In like manner that he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. happy who has a good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Genius as Xenocrates says that be is happy or has a good Genius that has a good Soul For the Soul is every man's Daemon or Genius But the more proper sense and that which we mean in this place is that of Philo to whom we may add the suffrage of Hesiod out of Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. But Soules that have quit themselves from Generation and are for the future free from the incumbrances of the Body become Daemons carefull Inspectours over mankind according to Hesiod From whence haply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divido it signifying the very same that Anima separata 3. And Plutarch himself subscribes to Hesiod's opinion That Souls freed from their Bodies become Daemons or Genii and that they goe up and down the Earth as being observers and rewarders of the actions of men and that though they be not actors themselves yet they are abbettors and encouragers of them that act as old men that have left off the more youthfull sports love to set the younger sort to their games and exercises themselves in the mean time looking on So Plutarch in his De Genio Socratis and Maximus Tyrius endeavour at large to prove that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Genii are nought but the Souls of men departed who are occupied much-what in such emploiments as they were in the flesh 4. From whence it will follow that Good men that were full of humanity love to mankind will prove good Genii by how much their Love is greater and their Spirits more free and universal that they will have a more generall inspection or at least they will be more fit for it were they but armed with sufficient Power and Authority from above answerable to that noble dear affection they bear to man and in that themselves have been in the flesh and tasted what belongs to our condition they will be the more kindly Mediatours and Negotiatours in our affairs So reasonable is this opinion of the Pagans concerning the Intercession of their Genii but their Worshipping of them as rash they having no sufficient warrant thereunto CHAP. XVIII 1. The Fourth and last thing to be noted namely their Heroes who were thought to be either begot of some God or born of some Goddess the latter whereof is ridiculous if not impossible 2. The former not at all incredible 3. Franciscus Picus his opinion of the Heroes feigned so by the Poets as begot of the Gods that they were really begotten of some impure Daemons with Josephus his suffrage to the same purpose 4. The Possibility of the thing further illustrated from the impregnation of Mares merely by the Wind asserted by several Authors 5. The application of the History and a further confirmation from the manner of Conception out of Dr. Harvey 6. Examples of men famed for this kind of miraculous Birth of the Heroes on this side the tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. THE Fourth and last thing I would propound to your view is their Heroes which are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also that is the Souls of men departed this life but there was something special in their Birth in that they were conceived to be born of some Goddess impregnated by a man or of some woman impregnated by some God From whence Plato would give the reason of the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love Because the Heroes were begot by some God or Goddess falling in love with Mortals Such was the birth of Aeneas as Antiquity has conceited who was begot on Venus by Anchises and of Achilles the Son of Thetis by Peleus But that Goddesses that is Spirits susteining the person of Women should bring forth Children though there be pretended true stories of such things and that it may be it is not impossible yet it seems to me very incredible 2. But that the Genii or Spirits which Antiquity called Gods might impregnate Women so that they might bring forth children without the help of a man seems not to me to be at all incredible and most of your Heroes have been reported to be such the greater number of the most famous of them being certain By-blows of Iupiter upon several women he fell in love with For he is said to beget Hercules upon Alcmena Pelasgus of Niobe Sarpedon of Laodamia Dardanus of Electra Amphion of Antiope Minos and Rhadamanthus of Europa of Leda Castor and Pollux and Perseus of Danae His four last Adulteries are handsomely comprized in a Distich by the Epigrammatist with the fashion or fraud he
World who have ever and anon had new Instances of Apparitions and Communications with evil Spirits and fresh occasions of executing the Laws they had made against Witches and wicked Magicians 4. I should now pass to the second head I propounded could I abstain from touching a little upon the circumstances of the Birth of that famous Corrival of our Saviour Apollonius Tyaneus whose story writ by Philostratus though I look upon it as a mixt business partly true and partly false yet be it what it will be seeing it is intended for the highest Example of Perfection and that the Heathen did equalize him with Christ you shall see how ranck his whole History smells of the Animal Life and how hard a thing it is either in actions or writings to counterfeit that which is truly holy and divine For which end I shall make a brief Parallelisme of the Histories of them both in the chief matters of either that the Gravitie and Divinitie of the one and the Ridiculousness and Carnality of the other may the better be discerned 5. As in this very First point is plain and manifest which is dispatched in a word For in that Philostratus writes how Apollonius was of an ancient and illustrious Pedigree of rich Parents and descended from the founders of the City Tyana where he was born is not this that which is as sweet as honey to the Natural man and such as an holy and divine Soul would set no esteem upon Like to this is his Mother's being waited upon by her Maidens into a Meadow being directed thereto by a Vision where while her servants were straying up and down making of posies and chaplets of flowers O what fine soft pompous doing is here and her self disporting her self in the grass she at last falls into a slumber the Swans in the mean time rangeing themselves in a row round about her dancing and clapping their wings and singing with such shrill and sweet accents that they filled the neighbouring places with their pleasant melody they being as it were inspired and transported with joy by the gentle breathings of the fresh and cool Zephyrus whereupon the Lady awaking is instantly delivered of a fair Child who after his Fathers name was called Apollonius 6. The amenity of the story how gratefull and agreeable it is to flesh and bloud But how ridiculous is that dance and rountlelay of the musical Swans compared with that Heavenly Melody of the holy Angels at the Nativity of Christ For that if it could be true is but a ludicrous prodigie and presignification that Apollonius would prove a very odde fellow and of an extraordinary strein and serves only for the magnifying of his person But this is a grave and weighty indication of the Goodness of God and the Love of his holy Angels to men and a prediction of that peace and grace which should be administred unto them through Jesus Christ that was then born Behold said the chief Angel whose glorious presence surrounded the shepheards with light Behold said he I bring you good tidings of Great joy which shall be unto all people For unto you is born this day a Saviour which is Christ the Lord whereupon there was suddenly with this Angel a multitude of the heavenly Hoast praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace good will towards men CHAP. III. 1. That whatever miraculously either happened to or was done by our Saviour till his Passion cannot seem impossible to him that holds there is a God and ministration of Angels 2. Of the descending of the Holy Ghost and the Voice from Heaven at his Baptisme 3. Why Christ exposed himself to all manner of hardship and Temptations 4. And particularly why he was tempted of the Devil with an answer to an Objection touching the Devil's boldness in daring to tempt the Son of God 5. How he could be said to shew him all the Kingdoms of the Earth 6. The reason of his fourty daies fast 7. And of his Transfiguration upon the Mount The three first reasons 8. The meaning of Moses and Elias his receding and Christ's being left alone 9. The last reason of his Transfiguration That it was for the Confirmation of his Resurrection and the Immortality of the Soul 10. Testimonies from Heaven of the Eminency of Christs person 1. WE have done with the Birth of Christ we proceed now to his Life wherein we shall consider only those things that extraordinarily happened to him or were miraculously done by him till the time of his Passion wherein nothing will be found impossible to them that acknowledge the Existence of God the active malice of Devils and the Ministery of Angels But that which I intend mainly to insinuate is the comeliness and sutableness of all things to so Holy and Divine a person which that it may the better appear I shall after shew the difference of this true example of solid Perfection Christ and that false pattern of feigned holiness in that Impostour Apollonius whom the later Heathen did so highly adore 2. The chief things that happened in an extraordinary way to Christ before his Passion are these Three 1. The descending of the Holy Ghost upon him in the shape of a Dove at his being baptized and the emission of a Voice from Heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased 2. The Temptation of the Devil upon his fasting and 3. His Transfiguration upon the Mount Concerning the First there is great reason for that Miracle For God having a design to set on foot the Divine life in the World by his Son Iesus Christ why should he not countenance the Beginning of his Ministery by some notable sign by which men might take notice that he was the Messias sent of God And Iohn the Baptist confesses himself assur'd thereof by this Indication And being there was to be some extraordinary appearance what could be more fit then this of a Dove a known embleme of Meekness and Innocency inseparable branches of the Divine life and Spirit and at what better time then when Iesus gave so great a Specimen of his Meekness and Humility as to condescend to be wash'd as if he had been polluted when he was more pure then light or snow and to be in the form of a disciple to Iohn when he was able to teach him and all the world the Mysteries of God Which may be noted to the eternal shame of our conceited Enthusiasts who phansying they have got something extraordinary within contemn and scorn the laudable Institutions of the Church which is an infallible argument of their Pride as this of our Saviour's Humility But while he humbled himself thus God did as highly advance him adding to this silent show an articulate voice from Heaven the better to assure the by-standers that he was the Messias the Son of God 3. As for his being tempted of the Devil it has the same meaning that the
the true knowledge of God CHAP. IX 1. The Miracles of Apollonius compared with those of Christ. 2. His entertainment at a Magical banquet by Iarchas and the rest of the Brachmans 3. His cure of a Dropsy and of one bitten by a mad dog 4. His freeing of the City of Ephesus from the plague 5. His casting a Devil out of a laughing Daemoniack and chasing away a whining Spectre on Mount Caucasus in a Moon-shine night 6. His freeing Menippus from his espoused Lamia 1. WE have now done with the Actions of Christ such as were more extraordinary and miraculuos we will proceed to his Passion after we have made a short comparison of the most famous exploits of Apollonius with these of our Saviour according to those Heads we have already insisted upon His miraculous feeding of the People His curing diseases His casting out Devils His raising of the dead and His predictions of things to come 2. As for the First I do not remember any example of it in Apollonius his life only Philostratus writes that Apollonius himself was entertained by the Brachmans at such a banquet as was provided in a miraculous manner together with the King of Media where three-sooted tables were brought in and plac'd in the midst without the help of any mans hand as also the floor spread with odoriferous herbs and flowers and bread wine fruits and sweet-meats on plates conveighed through the air and set upon those tables without any servitours to carry them Which story being so very like the junketings of Witches and the behaviour of Iarchas and his brother Brachmans being so full of scorn and insolency towards the King and the very chief of his retinue his brother I mean and his sons may fully confirm any man that they were no better then Magicians nor their great Favourite and disciple Apollonius any other then a Wizzard and a Necromancer as his conjuring up of the Ghost of Achilles does further prove 3. As for his Cures I do remember but Three the First of which seems to have more of the power of Nature and Morality then of a Miracle he curing a young man of a Dropsie by precepts of Temperance in the Temple of Aesculapius The other was of one bitten by a mad Dog who was so distempered therewith that he would bark goe on all four and couch on the ground like a Dog But it looks so like a piece of Witchery and Apollonius was so punctual in discovering what the Inhabitants of the place which was Tarsus could not inform him of as of the colour shaggedness and other qualities of the Dog as also where he was that it is a suspicion that he that cured the disease did inflict it himself or rather his Familiars for him and so it is likely that the dog as well as the man was bewitched For he came along from the river-side where he was shivering as if he had an ague so soon as Damis had whispered in his Ear that Apollonius would speak with him who told the people also while he was cherishing him and stroaking him that the Soul of Telephus the Mysian was entred into him which is a further confirmation of our conjecture But indeed all the circumstances of the Story are either ludicrous and ridiculous or else impious As his making the Dog cure the man by licking of him and then himself curing the Dog by praying to the River Cydnus and slinging the Dog into the stream 4. But the most famous cure of all is that when he freed the City of Ephesus from the plague But it being discovered already what a kind of man this Apollonius was viz. a mere Magician I cannot but suspect that the case is the same with that former and that the whole City suffered so direfull a disease as the devouring pestilence by the hand of the Devil to get the greater renown to Apollonius that stout Hyperaspistes of Paganisme who for the advancing of his own credit was to free them from this raging evil Of which opinion of ours there are two grand Arguments The one his assembling the people in the Theatre and there incouraging them to stone an old ragged Begger which he perswaded them was the plague but it seems it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a destroying Daemon as it appeared by his eyes as he was a stoning and by that delusion of a shagged Dog as big as a Lion found under the heap of stones when the people had thought to have seen him there in his former shape of a patch'd Begger The other Argument is the Ephesians erecting the Image of Hercules Apotropaeus in the place where this old Mendicant was stoned which is a sign that Pagan Idolatry was the upshot of the plot Wherefore I look upon these two last Cures as done out of suspicable Principles and upon extravagant Objects 5. As for his casting out Devils I do not remember any example thereof saving one and that was of a young man of Corcyra who was a laughing Daemoniack out of whom at Athens by a many repeated menaces and imperious railings he at last ejected the Evil Spirit who for a sign of his departure made a great Image tumble down from the royal Porch in the City with a great noise and clatter To this Head we may refer also though by an improper reduction his conjuring of a Phantasme that appeared to him and his fellow-travellers as they were journying on Mount Caucasus in a bright Moon-shine night Which Phantasme went before them sometime in one shape and sometime in another but by many vehement chidings by many railings reproaches and execrations was made to disappear at last and to depart crying and whining at the discourteous usage 6. We may add to these the story of Menippus and the Lamia Who in the form of a beautifull young woman made love to Menippus and at last perswaded him to marry her But Apollonius being at the Nuptials discovered the illusion and by reproaching the Bride made I think the whole Edifice which was supposed to be plac'd near Corinth I am sure the furniture and riches thereof all the moveables the Tapestry the gold and silver vessels nay the pages servants and officers of this fair Lady to vanish at once and her self only left was compelled to confess her self a foul carnivorous Fiend So either frivolous or exorbitant are all the miraculous exploits of this deified Impostor But all the Objects of our Saviour's Miracles were as I at first noted more obvious and familiar which is the greater assurance as well of the Innocency and Sincerity of his Person as of the Truth of his History CHAP. X. 1. Apollonius his raising from death a young married Bride at Rome 2. His Divinations and particularly by Dreams 3. His Divinations from some external accidents in Nature 4. His Prediction of Stephanus killing Domitian from an Halo that encircled the sun Astrology and Meteorology covers to Pagan Superstition and converse with Devils 5. A
a generous sense of Political Iustice a severe profession of Temperance and a great affectation of Knowledge especially of things to come But as for Political Iustice and Civil Agreement and Concord which he seems often to be very sensible of and earnestly to exhort the Cities to where he went no less then this can be entertained in the very Kingdome of Satan which if it were divided against it self could not stand And for his vehement affectation of Knowledge it is evident that it is a mere branch of the Natural life and such as is as competible to the Apostate Spirits nay more by far then to an ordinary good man and Apollonius his Temperance aiming but at this which is so low and vile how far short does it fall of what is truely Heavenly and Divine This therefore is observable in him that if he quitted one Entanglement of the Animal life it was the more fully and willingly to be fettered by another 3. But the strongest chain of darkness that he was caught in is that of Pride which though it be made of more subtil and small links yet holds us longer captive then any This is that which blemishes the History of his Life more then any Immorality else whatsoever For to what but this can be reduced that scornfull and ridiculous Prayer he made to Apollo at Antioch that he would turn the countrey-people into Cypress-trees that the winde taking their branches they might at least by that means make some sound they being as yet quite mute and not able to discourse with so sage a Philosopher To what but this can we impute that magnificent answer he gave the keeper of the bridge as he passed into Mesopotamia when he was demanded what merchandizes he brought To whom he reply'd That he brought along with him Iustice Temperance Fortitude Continence Tolerance Magnanimity and Constancy He addes Modesty to the rest but it was ill plac'd in so flaunting a display of his own praises To what but this can you referre his cavilling with the sober questions ask'd him by the Captain of the guards on the confines of Babylon where he takes upon him as if himself was King of every country he came into 4. But what need we recite particulars his whole Life being nothing else but a lofty strutting on the stage of the Earth or an industrious trotting from one Nation of the World to another to gather Honour and Applause to himself by correcting the Customes of the Heathen or renewing their fallen Rites and playing the uncontrollable Reformer whereever he pleas'd Which is a very pleasant thing to flesh and bloud Besides the bold visits he gave to Princes and Potentates with the greatest confidence and ostentation of his own Vertues that could be imagined making himself the measure of others worth insomuch that he would not do the ordinary homage to Bardanes King of Babylon til he was certified whether his Vertues deserved it or no. With whom as also with other Princes he treated of Political affairs not detrecting to intermeddle with the present administration of Justice But this unexpected audacity of his proved ever succesful he alwaies by I know not what luck or power swaggering himself into Respect by despising the both pomp and persons of the greatest So that he was ever haile fellow well met with the highest Kings and Emperours they being ever taken with great admiration of his Wisdome And therefore Bardanes is brought in in the Story courting of him at last and earnestly intreating the beggerly Philosopher to take his lodging in his Palace shewing him all the glory and pomp of his Kingdome offering him great summes of gold and precious stones The former whereof though he refused yet he could not well abstain from fingering the latter under pretence forsooth that there was some strange Philosophick virtue in them as also that they should be an offering to the Gods at their return into their own country 5. So also Phraotes King of India is said to receive him with very great Respect he carrying him to bathe himself in his Royal bath and after receiving him at a Feast and placing him next himself above his Nobles Beside the great Honour he had from Iarchas and the rest of the Brachmans to whom the King of India wrote in his behalf Where in conference with those Sages he was plac'd in Phraotes his chair of State forbad also to rise up at the coming in of the King of Media with whom at that banquet which I have already mentioned he having some contestation the King became at last so much his friend that he was almost uncivilly importunate to see him at his own Court in Media at his return 6. Adde unto these his busy intermedling in the affairs of the Roman Empire his large Political conferences with Vespasian his abetting conspiracies against Nero and Domitian his learned discourses with the Babylonian Magi concerning whom he told Damis that they were not so perfect but that they wanted the benefit of some of his instructions as he confessed that something he learned from them his campling and cavilling with the Gymnosophists who though they seemed not so great Wizzards yet were not less vertuous then either the Brachmans or himself and lastly his plausible language and great Eloquence he making in several places very winning Orations and Exhortations to Morality and the observance of the most behooffull Laws and Institutes such as would tend most to Civility and the Peace and Security of the People 7. From all which it is most evident That a naturall sense of Honour and Gallantry was the wing and Spirit that made Apollonius such a great stickler in his time and that he being of a lofty and generous nature apt to reach out at high things the Kingdome of darkness hook'd him in to make an Instrument of him for their own turn and so to dress up Paganism in the best attire they could to make it if it were possible to vie with Christianity and that there should be nothing wanting to this Corrival of Christ the Indian Brachmans pronounced him of that eminency that he deserved to be reputed and honoured as a Deity both living and dead as I have already related to you 8. But if the Excellency of his Person be better examined he will be found so far from being in the rank of a God that there can be no more acknowledged of him then that he was of the better sort of Beasts that is that he was a mere natural man onely dressed up and disguised by his Pythagorick diet and habit and a Magical power of doing of Miracles as is demonstrable from the whole tenour of his Story there being nothing in it that relishes or savours what is above the Animal life From whence we may safely conclude there is nothing in him Divine CHAP. XII 1. The Contrariety of the Spirit of Christ to that of Apollonius 2. That the History of Apollonius be it true or
you will see at length it will come to nothing 2. First therefore let us set down the like Accidents to this that have fallen out and been as conspicuous to all the World As that Sensible obscurity and languor of the Sun in Iulius Caesar's time as also in Iustinian's time and lastly that Bloudy dulness in the face of that Luminary for four daies together in the times of Carolus Quintus things as remarkable in themselves as this Eclipse at the Passion of Christ and all it 's likely proceeding from like Causes But the moderating of these Causes so as that the Effect should take place just at the time of our Saviour's suffering this was miraculous and by special Providence Now I demand for that First observation of the Sun that indured a whole year together was a concomitant of Iulius Caesar's death when there were so many Historians in the after-Age till Suetonius his time viz. Livy Strabo Valerius Maximus Velleius Paterculus Philo Mela Plinius Iosephus Plutarchus Tacitus how many of these recorded so great a Prodigie I doe not find any Historian alledged but Pliny who likely had it from Ovid and Virgil who after the manner of Poets pleasing themselves to record strange things and to magnifie great men recite this Accident in Nature in honour to Iulius Caesar. Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam Cum caput obscurâ nitidum ferrugine texit Impiáque aeternam timuerunt secula noctem At Caesar's death he Rome compassioned In rusty hue hiding his shining head And put the guilty world into a fright They were surpriz'd with an eternal Night As Virgil has it in his Georgicks And Ovid in his Metamorphoses to the same purpose Solis quoque tristis imago Lurida sollicitis praebebat lumina terris The Sun 's sad image Caesar's fate to moan With lurid light to anxious Mortals shone Which condition of the Sun Pliny writes lasted for a whole year The like Cedrenus reports to have happened in Iustinian's time But there were nigh twenty considerable Writers from Iustinian's time till Georgius Cedrenus I would therefore remit the Caviller to peruse these Historians and observe in how few of them this Prodigie in Iustinian's daies is recorded The same may be said of what happened under Carolus Quintus And then if he deprehend that so remarkable Accidents be taken no notice of by many Writers that had a capacity of recording them I would have him also to consider that such like Reasons that might cause them to omit the writing of those Prodigies might also fit those that omitted the setting that down that happened at our Saviour's Passion and to rest contented that he finds it recorded by them that are most concerned in it that is Three of his faithfull followers Matthew Mark Luke who bearing a truer respect to Christ's person then those flatterers of Princes Virgil and Ovid to the deceased Iulius recorded this Miraculous Eclipse to his Honour as they did that long obscuration of the Sun to the honour of their adored Caesar. 3. Neither is this all for I may further add That there are greater Reasons why all saving Christ's own Followers should omit the recording that Eclipse at his Passion then that those Writers we speak of should the continual obscurity of the Sun that was to be observed for a whole year together about the Exitus of Iulius Caesar's Reign For the noveltie of that in Caesar's time might make the greater impression upon mens Spirits whenas that obscuritie of the Sun at our Saviour's suffering though I doubt not but that it was so great as that the Stars appeared through the defect of the Sun 's light so as they may doe in a Summers night might well be neglected by the Nations of the World they having noted already that the Light of the Sun is obnoxious to such obfuscations and dulnesses and that for so long a time together So that although this lurid deadness of the Sun at the Passion was far greater then that at Caesar's death yet it being shorter by far as lasting not above three hours it might seem to them less considerable especially they not knowing what was the meaning of it And when they did they had the less encouragement to record it it making for a new Religion contrary to their own So that even that Consideration may seem a sufficient Reason why this notable Accident may be pretermitted by both Jewish and Heathenish Historians 4. But Grotius out of Phlegon a Pagan writer ventures to answer more point-blank namely That the said Author does affirm that in the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad which is the year wherein Christ suffered according to the usual opinion there was the greatest Eclipse that ever was known night surprizing men at the sixth hour of the day which is at noon and being so dark that the Stars were seen at that time of the day He mentions also therewith a mighty Earthquake in Bithynia and how the greatest part of Nicaea was ruined thereby To this purpose is there also recited out of another Pagan writer by Eusebius whom Grotius discovers to be one Thallus Which Testimonies will stand good till the Opposer of the Truth of the Narrations of the Evangelists shall either prove infallibly by Chronology That Christ did not suffer that year or else by Astronomical calculation That there was a natural Eclipse of the Sun in that year he suffered so horrid and dismal as Phlegon describes But Phlegon confining it to no place intimates it was Universal and therefore not Natural Tertullian also speaking to the Pagans concerning this matter appeals to their own Records concerning the Truth thereof And for my own part I make no question but that it is true in the very sense we speak of viz. that it was an Universal Eclipse whatever becomes of the testimonies of Thallus and Phlegon 5. But being the Text does not necessarily implie thus much we may with Calvin restrain it to Iudaea God miraculously intercepting the light of the Sun from those parts only by the interposition of some conspissated body or by raising a black caliginous mist such as he caused in the land of Aegypt For the Scripture will sute well enough with any of these senses so little of any just occasion is there left to the Caviller and Infidel So that the Credibilitie and Reasonableness of the chief Circumstances of our Saviour's Passion is sufficiently cleared 6. To which we have nothing to parallel in Apollonius his life except it be his Arraignment before Domitian Where Domitian quitting him from the charge that was laid against him yet he for ostentation sake to shew what an expert Magician he was vanishes in the midst of the Court to the great amazement of the Emperour and the rest of his Judges But in the mean time he having such a trick of Legerdemain as this to keep himself from peril it makes all his magnanimous Precepts
concerning the Contempt of Death that he so gravely imparts to Damis and Demetrius encouraging them to suffer any thing for the cause of Philosophy hypocritical and ridiculous So whifling and ludicrous is every thing of Apollonius if compared with that solid Truth and real Excellency that is discoverable in Christ. BOOK V. CHAP. I. 1. Of the Resurrection of Christ and how much his eye was fixed upon that Event 2. The chief Importance of Christ's Resurrection 3. The World excited by the Miracles of Christ the more narrowly to consider the Divine quality of his Person whom the more they looked upon the more they disliked 4. Whence they misinterpreted and eluded all the force and conviction of all his Miracles 5. Gods upbraiding of the World with their gross Ignorance by the raising him from the dead whom they thus vilified and contemned 6. Christ's Resurrection an assurance of man's Immortality 1. WE have done with the Passion of Christ we come now to his Resurrection and Ascension and First his Resurrection Concerning which it is observable That our Saviour's eye was fix'd upon nothing more then it He prophesying of it in his life-time under that Parable of destroying the Temple and then raising of it up within three daies meaning the Temple of his body as also in the application of that strange Accident that befell Ionas For as Jonas was three daies and three nights in the Whales belly so the son of man should be three daies and three nights in the belly of he Earth He deferred also the divulging of his Transfiguration in the mount till his Resurrection as not being of any such efficacy to beget Faith in the people till this also had happened unto him 2. Now the grand importance of this so wonderfull an Accident consists chiefly in these Three things First In that it is a very eminent Triumph of the Divine life in the Person of Christ. Secondly In that it is so plain an assurance of a blessed Immortality And Thirdly In that it is so sure a Seal and so clear a Conviction of the truth and warrantableness of all the Miracles Christ did in his life-time 3. That our Saviour Christ was the most illustrious Example of the Divine life that ever appeared in the world cannot be denied by any but such as are blinde and have no eyes to behold that kind of splendour But that the judgement of the world might be the more notoriously baffled God assisted this Divine worth with many strange Miracles that they might more fixedly and considerately contemplate this so holy and lovely a person But the more it seems they looked upon him the more they disliked him the whole World being so deeply lapsed into the Animal life the Jews themselves not excâ—pted that they had no knowledge nor relish of the Divine Nay they had an Antipathy against him as the wise man expresses it He is grievous unto us even to behold His life is not like unto other mens his waies are of another fashion He was made to reprove our thoughts 4. Wherefore they having so settled an hatred against him all the Miracles that he did or whatsoever happened miraculously unto him did but set a more venemous edge of their spleen against him From whence it was easie for them to misinterpret and elude every thing imputing his casting out Devils to a contract with Beelzebub the Prince of the Devils The Testimony from Heaven That he was the Son of God to the delusion of evil Spirits that would lapse them into Idolatry His feeding the multitudes in the Wilderness to Witchcraft and Sorcecery and his raising of men from the dead to the nature of some Lethargical or obstupifying disease that may seem to make a man devoid of life for four daies together The Eclipse of the Sun indeed was a very strange thing if the darkness was in the Sun it self but they might remember at least from the relations of others that it was strangely obscured for a whole year together about the death of Iulius Caesar and so interpret this at the Passion as a mere casual coincidence of things or that some delusive Spirits intercepted the light of the Sun in favour of the great Magician whom they thought just to crucifie betwixt those other two Malefactors 5. But he whom they numbred amongst the transgressours and took to be the vilest of men because he was not recommended by any thing that the Animal life likes and applauds as Nobleness of Birth the power of popular Eloquence Honour Wealth Authority high Education Beauty Courtship Pleasantness of Conversation and the like he is I say notwithstanding this general contempt from men very highly prized by him who is the infallible Judge whose waies are not as our waies nor his thoughts as our thoughts But that he might conform our apprehensions to his own raised Iesus Christ from the dead bringing that passive contemptible Divinity that lodged in him into a deserved victory and triumph exprobrating to the blind world the ignorance of that Life that is most dear and precious to himself making him alive whom they maliciously killed and preparing a way to an universal Homage for him who was universally scorned and became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the off-scouring of all though his Spirit Life and Nature was of more worth then all the things of the World beside 6. Nor is this Resurrection of Christ only a particular honour and high Testimony given to the person of Christ who was so splendid an Habitation of the Divine life but it is also an assurance of a blessed Immortality to all those that will adventure to follow his Example that their labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. And therefore he is not said here to rise alone but in token of what a general concernment his Resurrection was the Monuments of some lately-deceased Souls flew open and themselves appeared to several in the Holy City Which things were a palpable Prohetical prefiguration of that blessed Immortality that Christ has purchased for all men that believe in him and obey him CHAP. II. 1. The last End of Christ's Resurrection the Confirmation of his whole Ministry 2. How it could be that those chief Priests and Rulers that hired the Souldiers to give out that the Disciples of Christ stole his body away were not rather converted to believe he was the Messias 3. How it can be evinced that Christ did really rise from the dead and that it was not the delusion of the some deceitfull Daemons 4. The first and second Answer 5. The third Answer 6. the fourth Answer 7. The fifth Answer 8. The sixth and last Answer 9. That his appearing and disappearing at pleasure after his Resurrection is no argument but that he was risen with the same Body that was laid in the grave 1. THE last End of Christ's Resurrection is the Confirmation of his whole Ministry For assuredly the Jews dealt with him as with some
Magician and Impostour who though he did very strange things whilst he lived yet if he were once judicially tried condemned and put to death they did not make any question but that it would be with him as with other Malefactours the trouble of him would end with his life as is usually observed in matters of this kind otherwise it would be a great flaw in Providence and the generations of men would not be able to subsist for the insolencies of Witches and Sorcerers But God thus extraordinarily and miraculously interposing his power in raising Iesus from the dead gave the most certain and most confounding Testimony against the malicious cruelty of the Jewes if we may call that Malice which the love and Candour of Christ in the midst of his bitter sufferings named only Ignorance that possibly could be given For their judicial proceedings are hereby not only in an extraordinary way made suspicable and taxed of injustice but by such a miraculous means that it is manifest that none other but God himself is their Accuser as well as the Acquitter of the innocent whom they put to death and did so throughly martyr that none but the hand of God could recover him to life The same therefore of so notable an Accident the chief of the Jews very well knowing and that it would if believed demonstrate that all he did or said before in his life-time was right and from an undeniable principle that the people might not receive him for their Messias now whom three daies agoe they had crucified hired the Souldiers that watched his Monument to tell abroad that his Disciples stole him away by night while they were asleep 2. But here haply some may demand how it came to pass that these chief Priests and Rulers being so punctually informed by the Souldiers which watched the sepulchre of Christ that he was risen from the dead were not converted to the Faith themselves and convinced that Iesus was indeed the expected Messias But we may very well conceive that what might prove very effectual to move others to believe in Christ might yet take no hold upon them Partly because they were further engaged in this bloudy and direfull Tragedy then others were and having a deeper sense of honour and repute with the people then of the favour of God and love to the Truth they might in a desperate and obdurate condition venture as the saying is over shoes over boots being more willing to expose themselves to any thing then to that shame and reproach that would attend the acknowledgment of so hainous an errour And then partly because though this Accident may seem very strange yet they might conceit that it was not above the power of Evil Spirits to perform who might change themselves into the lustre of Angels of light and therefore that it was but a greater temptation upon them to try their faithfulness and obedience to the Law of Moses For what would not they think rather then find themselves guilty of so grand ignorance as not to know the promised Messias when he came into the World and of so gross a crime as to be murderers of him that from Heaven was declared the Son of God 3. But out of this Solution you 'l say arises as great a Difficultie as the former viz. How we can be ascertained that Christ is really raised from the dead Because some delusive Spirits might open his Sepulchre and carry him away and afterward appear in his shape making use of his Body to shew to Thomas or changing their own vehicles into the likeness of flesh and bones so that no man's sense may discover any difference But to this many things may be answered and 4. First That that which may be an Exception or Evasion in any case is of consequence in no case For what does there at any time really happen but Evil Spirits have a power to imitate so near that our Senses may well be deceived Secondly Though they have this power in themselves yet I deny that they can exert it when and so far as they please and therefore God would not permit them to add so irresistible credit to the whole Ministry of Christ by this last Miracle if Christ had not really been the Messias but he being the Messias it was no delusion of theirs but a real transaction by that hand that is Omnipotent 5. Thirdly Every thing was exactly as if he had risen from the dead the Watch saw the Earth-quake and the stone rolled from the door of the Sepulchre by an Angel from Heaven Peter look'd in and beheld the linen cloaths lying by themselves the Body of Christ was missing there He appeared to his Disciples elsewhere he discoursed with them eat drunk with them they felt his flesh and put their very fingers into his wounds What greater demonstration then this could there be that he was really risen from the dead And therefore by men indifferent it must needs be acknowledged to be so though there be a possibility of being otherwise 6. Fourthly Those Miraculous things either happening to him or done by him while he was alive they being so real as they were must needs beget Faith in the unprejudic'd that this Accident was real also For is it so strange a thing that that Divine power should raise Christ from the dead that enabled him to raise Lazarus out of the Grave when he had been four daies buried to say nothing of his other Miracles and those evident Testimonies from Heaven that he was the Son of God For though there was some room left for the shuffles and subterfuges of the blinded Jews yet to those that are free and piously disposed the Resurrection of Christ compared with what either supernaturally was done by him or happened to him in his Life and at his Passion they do so binde and strengthen one another that there is no place left for misbelief 7. Fifthly Besides the Testimony of the Angels that told Mary Magdalen Ioanna and others that Christ was risen and that they did fondly to seek the living amongst the dead our Saviour's owne Prophesie concerning his rising the third day could not but make the thing undoubtedly sure to his Disciples and all such as were concerned in it and had believed on him before whereby they became zealous assertors and witnessers of it to the World 8. Sixthly and lastly All these things happening thus extraordinarily and supernaturally to a person that professed himself the Messias at that very time that the Jewish Prophesies foretold the Messias would come it is an unanswerable Demonstration that this was he and that therefore all things that he did spoke or happened unto him were no vain Illusion but Reality and Truth 9. Neither does his appearing and disappearing at pleasure and coming in to his Disciples when the doors were shut at all weaken the truth of his Resurrection and vital actuating that very Body that lay in the grave For he gave
night for his voiage For then the highest Mystery if it be not a mere forgery that may be in it is but thus much That these young girles the Nymphs of Diana called and carried away the old Wizzard to the enjoyment of those disportments and pleasures that such ludicrous Spirits together with old Hags and others of the fraternity use to make with one another in farre remote solitudes under some broad-spred Oake or on the top of some steep Mountain environ'd with woods and shady Trees which Solemnity is called Ludus Dianae by the Ancients as I have noted already out of Mirandula where out of a special favour to him for the great service he did the Powers of darkness they might break his neck in a frolick from some precipice cracking the shell to enjoy the Kernell or some more handsome way or other uncase him of his wrinkled and loathed vestments of mortality that so being stript more naked then when he appeared before the Tribunal of Domitian he might be entertain'd with the more loving embraces of the Officers of the dark Kingdome and receive the wages thought due to so faithfull and industrious a servant which were but such though it may be in an higher degree as other Magicians and Enchanters do receive So vain so frivolous and vulgar are all things in the life of Apollonius if compared with what is recorded in the life of Christ. 6. But be his departure out of this world what way it will it is likely that the secrecie thereof conciliated much credit to his person and by adding to his Pagan zeal the spurious pretences of Abstinence Chastity Contempt of the World and other plausible showes of Morality besides those Miracles as a man may call them which he did by the assistance of the powers of the dark Kingdome he did not fail to be thought by some to have been carried Body and Soul into Heaven as Enoch and Elias were and to have obtain'd an happy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the Gods In confidence whereof they erected Statues to him here on earth as Philostratus relates and particularly in Tyana the town where he was born 7. Grotius relates out of an Ecclesiastical Writer that there was a Statue of his that spoke being actuated by some assistent Daemon but that his mouth was soon stopped by the power of Christ and the preaching of the Gospel He dictated also certain Verses to a young Student of Philosophy in Tyana concerning the Immortality of the Soul who had for some ten months together earnestly prayed to him to resolve him of that point which Verses he recited to his fellow-students in a frantick posture starting out of his sleep and averring Apollonius was there present though none see him but himself Which would make a man think it was nothing else but the continuation of a confused dream which he compleated betwixt sleep and waking it being no rare thing for men asleep to answer to more questions then his fellow-students put to this young Philosopher 8. But his real appearance to Aurelian the Emperour seems more probable For his forces as Vopiscus writes marching against Tyana and the Citizens shutting the gates of the Town against him incensed the Emperour so that he made a rash vow that he would not leave one Dog alive in the City But Apollonius his Ghost appearing to him in his tent and dehorting him from so great a cruelty and threatning him into a better minde prevented the mischief so that the town being taken he merrily interpreted his resolution to the destruction of the doggs onely but strictly charged his Souldiers to spare the Citizens This story if it was not true it was handsomly contrived both for the keeping up of the honour of the deified Apollonius by making him so seasonably deliver his native Town in so great an exigency and also for the saving of the Emperour's Credit with the Souldiers that he might seem by the Divine powers to be absolved from that rigid vow of giving the whole Town up to the slaughter and plunder of the Souldiery 9. These are the main things I have met with concerning Apollonius his manner of leaving of the World and the Effects of his supposed Divinity after he had left it But besides the uncertainty and suspicability of the Story it is evident that they are very sorry and obscure indications thereof if they be compared to the evidences that are produced for the real 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Christ. For Stephen while he was a stoning to the great corroboration of his Spirit in his cruel Martyrdome saw the Heavens opened and Christ standing at the right hand of God in glory and great majesty And Paul as he was going to Damascus to persecute the Disciples of Christ was struck off from his furious purpose by the glorious appearance of Christ from Heaven For there shone a very great light about him and a voice was heard from Heaven saying Saul Saul why persecutest thou me c. His fellow-travailers saw also the coruscation of the light and were astonished and heard the sound from Heaven though they understood not the meaning of it they hearing it not so articulately as he that was most concern'd in it Which are Two notable demonstrations of the truth and legitimateness of Christ's Apotheosis to which there is nothing comparable in the story of Apollonius CHAP. VIII 1. The use of this parallel hitherto of Christ and Apollonius 2. Mahomet David George H. Nicolas high-pretending Prophets brought upon the stage and the Author's Apology for so doing 3. That a misbelief of the History of Christ and a dexterity in a moral Mythology thereof are the greatest Excellencies in David George and H. Nicolas 4. That if they believed there were any Miracles ever in the world they ought to have given their reasons why they believe not those that are recorded of Christ and to have undeceiv'd the world by doing Miracles themselves to ratifie their doctrine 5. If they believed there never were nor ever will be any Miracles they do plainly betray themselves to be mere Atheists or Epicures 6. The wicked plot of Satan in this Sect in clothing their style with Scripture-language though they were worse Infidels then the very Heathen 7. That the gross Infidelity of these two Impostours would make a man suspect them rather to have been crafty prophane Cheats then honest through-crackt Enthusiasts 8. That where Faith is extinct all the rapturous Exhortations to Vertue are justly suspected to proceed rather from Complexion then any Divine principle 1. WE have now stretch'd the Parallel as far as it will go the line failing on Apollonius his side but so long as the matter would afford we thought it worth our pains to continue the Comparison that the Excellency of our Saviour's Person might more clearly appear so illustrious a Counterfeit becoming his competitour and that all the world may be satisfied that it was not chance or luck
no not the fear of death or torment could hinder them from being open witnesses to the World of all those things which they had seen and most certainly knew concerning the crucified Iesus the Son of God and Saviour of Mankind 3. We have seen in general how requisite this Supernatural assistance was to the Apostles We shall now take notice in particular how congruous at least decorous the First appearance thereof was at the day of Pentecost The Apostles together with other Disciples being met in an upper room at Ierusalem and being all of one mind and of one faith and expectation of the promise of the Spirit at the above-named day of Pentecost of a suddain there came upon them a sound from Heaven as of a mighty rushing winde which filled the house where they were sitting and there appeared unto them cloven Tongues like as of Fire which sate upon each of them and they all filled with the Holy Ghost began to speak with other Tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance 4. Supposing a God a Providence and the Ministry of Angels and Spirits there is not a jot of this impossible or incredible But we shall also take notice of the Congruity of circumstances which are either for an handsome Symbolical sense or else for a more indispensable convenience as I conceive the Day to be and their assembling thus together on this day of Pentecost in one place For their seeing what happened thus miraculously to every one of them is a stronger confirmation of all their faiths and they are the more sufficient witnesses to all the World of what thus miraculously befell them And the Day of Pentecost was the most convenient time for this to happen because of the greater concurse of people on that day 5. But it does not exclude that more Mystical and Symbolical sense of S. Austine's That as the written Law was given to the Iews on the fiftieth day after the Passeover so the Law of the Spirit which was to be written in mens hearts was thus wonderfully begun here on the same day by the preaching of the Apostles on whom the Spirit descended in such an extraordinary manner Nor does that other sense concerning the Unity of place exclude that Moral intimation of Grotius Deus dona sua promisit unitati That also of their being seated in an upper room must signifie Morally or nothing considerable for else the more removed from the Earth the never nearer to God especially within the smell of the Atmosphere Which Philosophick contemplation Apollonius pursues with a great deal of pomp and gravity indoctrinating Damis while they were travailing on mount Caucasus which the neighbour Inhabitants look'd upon as the holy Mansion of the Gods as other hills also are call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from that opinion that a man is never the nearer the knowledge of Religion and Vertue if he were mounted upon the highest Athos Olympus or all the Caucasus's in the World unless he contemplate religious and Divine matters not so much in a pure and subtile Air as from an undeprav'd and sincere Spirit 6. But that which is of the greatest significancy is the mighty rushing Wind and the fiery cloven Tongues The former whereof is an Emblem of the External violence which God would doe to the World in the introducing of the acknowledgment of his Son into it For without doubt those wonderfull Miracles that were done by the Apostles beat so strongly upon the outward Senses of men that they were after a manner forcibly driven to acknowledge that the hand of God was with them and that the doctrine which they taught was true The knowledge whereof at last with the fame of their Miracles filled the whole World as that Sound from Heaven and mighty rushing Wind filled the whole house where they sate I am sure the chief Priests complained betimes that the Apostles had filled all Ierusalem with their doctrines 7. The latter viz. the Fiery cloven Tongues the fieriness of them intimates the searching penetrating melting and purifying power of the Spirit as their being cloven or divided the effect of the living word which accompanied their preaching which we may better call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then the Stoicks their meager Reason For this is that which is sharper then any two-edged sword dividing the very joints and marrow and piercing to the inmost penetrals of the heart as may be observed at the preaching of Peter's Sermon Or not to be altogether so Mystical or Spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these divided or cloven tongues may be only an external symbol of that inward power given them to speak and understand several Tongues though they were never taught them Which was a gift of very sober and necessary use as all the Miracles are that were done either by Christ or his Apostles they being to preach to men of several Nations then sojourning at Ierusalem and afterwards to travail into several Countries to convert men to the Faith 8. This is a solid account of all the Circumstances of that great Miracle done partly upon and partly by the Apostles after Christ's Ascension into Heaven Which Divine power ever after assisted them in all their travails and labours in the Gospel as you may see in the Acts. Where you shall find them not only endued with this miraculous power themselves but by prayer and imposition of hands conferring it upon others for the benefit of the Church where you shall see them healing the sick making the lame to walk raising the dead casting out devils and doing over again all the most considerable Miracles of our Saviour and some which he never did as the speaking with tongues and healing by the mere shadow of their bodies which seems more wonderfull then by the touching of the hem of Christ's garment To which you may adde what strangely happened to them as upon their praiers and devotions how the house shaked under them as in an Earthquake through the sensible presence of the Divine power attending them Their being transported through the Air by the hand of an Angel from one place to another Their being visited by Angels in prison who opened the prison doors and made the fetters fall off from their bodies of their own accord The transfiguration of their countenances into an Angelical glory and the appearance of Christ from Heaven to them in a splendour more bright and radiant then the Sun at mid-day as it happened to Paul as he was travailing to Damascus The Credibility of which things as also of the Resurrection and Miracles of Christ the Success it self does plainly argue 9. For it seems utterly impossible that Christ a man cut short of all accomplishments that are plausible to flesh and bloud being neither arm'd by the power of Eloquence the knowledge of Philosophy the authority and honour of the World nor the advantages of Birth or Fortune but on
the contrary being disadvantaged by leading a life and offering himself an example of manners that are either scorn'd or hated by every natural man who was still made more odious and contemptible by his suffering a shamefull death betwixt two groâ—s Malefactors I say if an high hand from Heaven had not carried on the affairs of Christianity that is if Christ had not done some such Miracles himself as are recorded if he had not risen from the dead ascended into Heaven and thence powred forth his Spirit upon the Apostles and enabled them to doe such wonderfull works as they did it had been utterly impossible that Christianity could have had any such success in the world as we see it has at this day So that the whole History of Christ is very congruous and coherent and such as according to the nature of the thing ought to be whenever the Messias was to come into the World CHAP. XII 1. Three main Effects of Christ his sending the Paraclete foretold by himself Iohn 16. When the Paraclete shall come c. 2. Grotius his Exposition upon the Text. 3. The Ground of his Exposition 4. A brief indication of the natural sense of the Text by the Author 5. The Prophesie of Christ fulfilled and acknowledged not only by Christians but also Mahometans 6. That the Substance of Mahometism is Moses and Christ. Their zealous profession of One God 7. Their acknowledgment of Miracles done by Christ and his Apostles and of the high priviledge conferred upon Christ. 8. What Advantage that portion of Christian Truth which they have embraced has on them and what hopes there are of their full conversion 1. IT would be too tedious a business particularly to prosecute that ample Success that the Passion Resurrection Ascension of Christ and his Sending the Holy Ghost had in the World but the most universal and farthest-spreading Effects thereof we cannot pass by in silence especially those Three which himself foretells of John 16. That when the Paraclete should come he would convince the world concerning Sin Righteousness and Iudgment Concerning Sin because they believe not on me Concerning Righteousness because I goe to the Father and you see me no more Concerning Iudgment because the Prince of this World is judged 2. All which as Grotius interprets the place in a Forensal sense is of a very large extension and acknowledged as well by Turk as Christian. For that learned Expositour makes Christ to send the Spirit as an Advocate to plead his cause against the World and indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly signifies so and nothing else and thereby to convince the World First of that great Crime of Infidelity and of killing of their true Prophet nay their expected Messias This properly respects the Jews who crucified him and they felt the Divine vengeance for so heinous a fact their City being sacked their Temple demolished and themselves scattered and made underlings in all places of the World Secondly of the Equity and righteous dealing of the just God with Christ who because he had suffered so wrongfully made him a compensation by making him a partaker of his Heavenly glory for the reproach and injury he bore upon the Earth Thirdly lastly of Iustice betwixt party and party and that therefore as the Devil excited the Jews to put Christ to death so by way of Retaliation Christ should put the Devil out of his present dominion and rule in the world by the destruction of Idolatry and the worship of those Apostate Spirits though the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems something lame here the members being so heterogeneall one to another 2. But the Exposition will appear sufficiently ingenious for all that if we do but consider what he sets down for the ground of his interpretation That Sin Righteousness and Iudgment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answer to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying publica judicia de criminibus but the other two privata judicia unum ex aequo bono which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 alterum certam ex lege formulam habens which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which assuredly comprehends such Laws as concern the right of Possession as well as that of Retaliation which Grotius so specially aims at in his citing Levit. 24.20 The Devil therefore being a mere usurper and having no right to the rule and dominion of the World the Action will lie against his Usurpation and thus the Interpretation will be unexceptionable And that the action is of this kind is plain in that Christ the Son of God is heir of all things as himself somewhere intimates and the Apostle also in plain terms declares 4. The sense therefore of the forecited Text in short is this That the Spirit which is called the Paraclete or Advocate when he comes should convince the World of the Veracity of Christ and the Infidelity and Cruelty of the Iews that crucified him who was a true Prophet neither Deceiver nor deceived and of the Equity of God that compensated his sufferings amongst the Jews by taking him to himself and crowning him with immortal glory and of the Iudgment of God against the Devil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that God has given sentence against him already that he shall be ejected out of his usurped dominions and that all the Pagan forms of worship shall be abrogated and destroy'd 5. This the Paraclete or Spirit of God coming upon the Apostles and assisting them and the Church so miraculously for many Ages has with such undeniable conviction made good that not only all Christendome is assured thereof but that vast Empire of the Turks and all the Mahometans whereever dispersed in the World So that after a manner the whole Earth is filled with the belief thereof which I thought worth the taking notice of that this Success may not seem less ample then it is 6. For though the Mahometans are not Christians but Pagans in too true a sense yet it is plain that much of the letter of their law is Moses and Christ. And to the confusion of gross Idolatry and Polytheism they profess One only God Creatour of Heaven and Earth and their great stress of their Religion lies upon this main Article with which they are so transported that they spend a great deal of their time in their Mosco's in chanting out this one Truth La illa ilella la illa ilella that is There is but one God as Historians relate But this is no more then the Jews believe nor upon so good grounds but they proceed further as if they were ambitious to make out that broken title that one gives them who calls them Semichristianos Half-christians 7. For partly in their Alcoran and partly in Zuna it is recorded how Iesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost and so born of the Virgin Mary That the Gospel is the way the light and salvation of men and
Ierusalem ceased so to be when the Jews had ceased to be God's people The trampling the holy City he interprets of the building of a Temple there to Iupiter Capitolinus As if that Temple stood but three years and an half But he would terminate these years from the beginning of the building of this Temple to the sedition of Barchochab but brings no History to make good his device and if he could make this time of Barchochab good it were yet good for nothing unless he could also pull down the Temple at the three years and an half 's end The Two Witnesses he would have the Two Churches in Aelia the one speaking Hebrew the other Greek as if the Spirit of God divided these into Two that professed one faith and were of one mind not distinguished in any thing save in outward language The bodies of these slain Witnesses lying in the streets of the great City three days and an half this he interprets of the oppression and persecution by Barchochab which certainly was very short if but three days and an half long neither does he here bring any proof of History nor is it probable that divine Prophecy would affect the preciseness of half a day or three days and an half in such a general prefiguration of things as the Apocalypse is Besides how unlikely is it that Ierusalem that had now lost all its glory and power should be styled by the name of the great City The chiefest ground that they have to think so is that expression as if our Lord was crucified there But I answer that our Lord in a literal sense was not crucified either in Sodome or Aegypt which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immediately referres to nor in a spiritual sense more in Ierusalem then in the rest of the Roman Empire Wherefore this City is nothing else but the degenerate Polity of the Apostate Church where Christ is persecuted as he complained to Saul in his true and living members Where also Christ according to the Spirit that is the Divine life is rightly said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be crucified not in the time past only but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indefinitely was is and will be crucified so long as this power of Apostasy holds up For the Praeter Tense in Prophecy is very usual for the Future But if any one disrelish this more Mystical sense I shall substitute that of Mr. Mede's which the coursest Literalist cannot evade namely that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is understood the Extent of the whole Romane Empire within which Christ was literally crucified See Mr. Mede upon the Text. The Vision of the Woman crowned with twelve starres which number signifies the pure and Apostolical Church her being in the wilderness 1260 days he interprets of the extinguishing the Church to outward sight at least at Rome by the Miracles and Sorceries of Simon Magus which yet is a suspected History and her appearing onely in the country and villages which are but as a Desart in respect of the populosity of that renowned City But the time of 1260 days he makes out by no History To say nothing how this interpretation depends on another very harsh one namely the expounding And her child was caught up unto God and to his throne of the disappearing of the Church by the seductions of Simon Whenas to be carried up to the throne of God surely signifies Magistracy as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Magistrates As is intimated also in the foregoing part of the verse that he should rule the nations with a rod of iron The Vision of the Whore sitting upon the Scarlet Beast with seven heads and ten horns and if you will of the Beast coming out of the sea Chap. 13. For we may put them together they being the same according to Grotius his own confession This Beast he makes the Sin of Idolatry Which is quite out of the way of interpreting Prophetick Schemes where Beasts signifie Kingdomes or Dominions as is plain out of Daniel But the Ten horns he will allow to be Ten kings in which he were right if he had acknowledged a body fit to bear them The Seven heads he makes the seven Caesars Claudius Nero Galba Otho Vitellius Vespasian Titus But if the Caesars be heads there must be more heads then seven for there were four Caesars before Claudius and I think thirty after Titus that were not Christians But Claudius saith he is the first that banished the Christian Teachers Which act was yet so inconsiderable that the First persecution was fixt on Nero and the other Nine noted persecutions were after Titus the last of them raging a little before Constantine the Great So that there is a juster reason that this Beast should have above thirty heads then but seven Again in this Beast which the Prophet Iohn resembles to a Leopard in his body and to have the feet of a Bear and the mouth of a Lion he will have Claudius who before was one of the heads of the Beast now to be the Body thereof and Domitian who is later then the last of these Seven Caesars and so in order more like the Tail to be the Mouth of the Beast and in chap. 17. to be the Beast it self So much of forcedness and incoherency is there in the making out this false Hypothesis That also is harsh in my judgement the making presently one of these Heads which were before Caesars to be the Capitol at Rome though it be said to be wounded to death that by the stroke of a sword and to be healed also which methinks are very unnaturally applicable to a Hill or a Tower He pretends he has hit the time of the forty two months this Beast should make warre but he referrs to no History and Helvicus affixes the beginning of the Second persecution to the Tenth of Domitian's reign Whence it will not be Three years and an half but rather Six years that he wars against the Saints But the chiefest artifice of his misinterpretation is upon Chap. 17. of the Revelation Where the Beast that was and is not and is to ascend out of the bottomless pit and to go into perdition he again applies to Domitian making nothing of transfiguring a single Head into a whole Beast But the description is more accurate vers 10 c. The seven heads are seven kings five are fallen and one is and the other is not yet come and when he cometh he must continue a short space And the Beast that was and is not even he is the eighth and is of the seven and goeth into perdition And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings which have received no kingdome as yet but receive power as kings one hour with the Beast The five kings here that are fallen saith Grotius are Claudius Nero Galba Otho and Vitellius which how fond a conceit it is I have already demonstrated And one is
Truth whose Foundation is no less firm then what is built upon these undeniable Grounds That there is a God and a Perfect and Particular Providence That there are Angels and Spirits of men really distinct from their Bodies and That the one as well as the other are lapsable Which things I have demonstrated partly in this present Treatise partly in other Writings and I appeal to all the World if they have any thing solid to oppose against what I have writ Moreover That this Lapse of Men and Angels is their forsaking of the Divine Life and wholy cleaving to the Animal without any curb or bounds whereby as well the fallen Angels or Devils as Man himself are become as much as respects the inward life mere Brutes being devoid of that touch and sense of the Divine Goodness And therefore their Empire is generally merely like that of the Beasts according to Lust and Power where the stronger rules with Pride and Insolency over the weaker and so the Devils being a degree above men of more wit and power then they it naturally falls to their shares to tyrannize over Mankind who were in the same condemnation with themselves having become Rebels to God as well as they 3. And it is but a piece of Wisdome and Justice in that great Judge and Dramatist God Almighty to permit this to be for a season And therefore the generality of the World were to be for a time under the Religion and Worship of Devils who were wild and enormous Recommenders of the mere Animal life to the sons of men without any bounds or limits themselves in the mean time receiving that tribute of abused Mortals which was most agreeable to their Pride and Tyrannical natures that is Religious Worship and Absolute Obedience as I have proved by many Examples in History 4. And that God should stand silent all this time is no wonder partly from what I have intimated already and partly because he is out of the reach of any real injury in all this as also because the Object of this irregular Fury of both Men and Devils in which they please themselves so much is but the Effect of that one Power from whence are all things or some shred or shadow of the Divine Attributes For I have shewn fully enough That all the Branches of the Animal life are good and laudable in themselves and that only the Unmeasurable Love and Use of them is the thing that is damnable The great Rebellion therefore of both Men and Angels is but a phrantick dotage upon the more obscure evanid and inconsiderable operations or manifestations of that Power which hoots into all 5. In this low condition is held the Kingdome of Darkness who maugre all their Lawlesness and Rebellion do ever lick the very dust of his feet from whom they have revolted For there is no Might nor Counsell against the Eternal God but his Will shall stand in all That all-comprehending Wisdome therefore was not outwitted by these Rebels but she suffered them to introduce a Darkness out of which herself would elicite a more marvellous and glorious Light and let them prime the tablet with more duskish colours on which she was resolved to pourtray the most illustrious beauty that the eyes of man could desire to look upon 6. And that there is a Lapse of Men and Angels is very manifest That of Man is so plain that not only the better sort of Philosophers such as the Pythagoreans and Platonists but the making of Laws and appointing of Punishments and mens general confession of their Proneness to Vice and Wickedness doth abundantly testifie And that there are wicked Spirits or evil Genii as well as good the Religion of the Pagans and the Confession of Witches and the Effects of them in the possessed are a sufficient argument 7. Now that Wisdome as I have said that orders all things sweetly is not in the least measure baffled by this Misadventure of the fall of Angels and Men but looks upon it as fit fuel for a more glorious triumph of the Divine Life And that noted Aphorisme amongst the Pythagoreans who laid no Principles for mean ends comes in fitly here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Worser is made for the service and advantage of the Better And the Kingdome of Darkness no question by Him that rules over all is very dextrously subordinated to the greater advantage of the Kingdome of Light it yielding them a due exercise of all their Faculties in the behalf of the Divine life which God most justly does magnifie above all things as also a most successfull victorie and triumph So that the Period of Ages ought to end so exact a Providence attending things as a very joyfull and pleasant Tragick Comedie This the Reason of man will expect upon supposition that there is a God and Providence as most certainly there is both especially if one quality of Souls and Spirits be better and more precious then another and the Divine life the most lovely Perfection of all 8. Which is as true as touch to all that have once tasted the Excellency of it and the Ignorance of the blinde is no argument against the certain Knowledge of them that see For one Soul Angel or Spirit though they may be the same in Substance as all Corporeal things are the same in Matter may differs as much from another as Gold Diamonds and Pearls do from common Dirt or Clay or the most exquisite Beauty from the horriblest Monster That therefore that is base shall be rejected and that which is precious and noble shall be gathered up in that day that the Lord shall make up his Jewels 9. And that there will be such a visible Day of Vengeance wherein the whole Earth shall burn with the wrath of God not only the common Fame throughout all Ages and Places of the Final Conflagration of the World and natural Reasons in Philosophy but also a necessity of some universal palpable and sensible Punishment on impudently-prophane and Atheistical People is a warrantable Inducement to believe 10. The great Good therefore that does arise out of this Revolt of Men and Angels is a setting the Activity of the Creation at an higher pitch and making the Emanations of all manner of Life felt more to the very quick exciting and employing all the Faculties and Passions of Souls and Spirits in a greater degree of life and motion with more vigilancy and a more favoury sense of acquired enjoiments then if there had been no such opposition betwixt the Light and Dark Kingdomes 11. Now therefore though God may seem at first to give the Dark Kingdome and Animal life the start of the Divine yet he is in due time by some very effectual means so to raise up so to back and assist the Divine Life against the Powers of Darkness that she may be found to have very visible Victories against the usurpation of Satan over the sons of men Wherefore
that are so transported and overcome with those Allusions and Allegorical Reflexions as such high Attainments that they think themselves illuminated above the capacities of all other Mortals being more pleased with the gaudy colours of the Rainbow then with the pure light which is reflected thence Which yet all true Christians plainly see and feel in the simplicity of its own nature without any such cloudy refractions and know that the rest is not the dictate of the Spirit but the mere service of Phansy lending its aid to the setting forth of divine Perceptions And yet this slight sallad is the chief food this pretended Prophet feeds his followers withall and the greatest demonstration of his being extraordinarily called and inspired 5. For as for Miracles he never did any as you may see in that Book of his Life entituled Mirabilia Dei where nothing miraculous is recorded unless a certain Prophetical Dream wherein he seemed to be frighted together with some devotional expressions after he awakened out of it as also a lucky escape out of the hands of his Persecutors who haply being not so vigilant as they might be the phrase of the story makes them struck with blindness and lastly his witty questions and answers to the Priest or Confessor when he was a child wherein he does so fully utter the chief of his Doctrine that he seems as wise at eight years old as ever he was since though he lived to a very considerable Age. But any one that has any insight in things may easily discern that the Discourse was never intended for a true History but a spiritual Romance So that as petty businesses as these are they have no assurance of their truth 6. Now for his Pretensions of being the most eminent Preacher of Perfection it is a mere Boast For whether he means by Perfection Love which is the perfection of the Law it cannot be more clearly and advantageously preached then it is in the New Testament by Christ and his Apostles And what Comparison is there betwixt such a Teacher of Love who being the declared Son of God by Signes and Miracles gave his life out of dear compassion to mankind and a soft Fellow that onely talks fine phrases to the World Or whether he pretend to a more general Perfection in the divine Graces or holy Life whose Root is true Faith in God and his Promises through Christ and the branches Charity Humility and Purity it shall appear anon that as for true Faith he is perfectly fallen from it and that he is as a dead tree pulled up from the root And for the present it is evident also out of his own writings not to charge him with accusations out of others that he is far from being perfect either in Charity Humility or Purity For what greater sign of Uncharitableness then to charge all men that are not of his Communialty to be of the Synagogue of Satan and children of the Devil and what greater Pride then to prefer himself before Abraham Moses and Christ and make as if he were God himself come to judge the World with his thousands of Saints and Seraphims And lastly what greater Symptoms of Lust Impurity then to be sunk down from all sense and presage of a life to come To say nothing of his complaints in his Glasse of Righteousness of such as came in to spy out their liberty and his lusty animations against Shamefacedness and Modesty in men and women and their shiness to such acts as ordinary Bashfulness is loath to name Which in my apprehension are very foul spots in that Glasse of his as if it had been breathed upon by the mouth of a menstruous Woman 7. But there is also a more subtil Uncleanness from which who is not free if he knew his own weakness he would be ashamed to profess himself perfect and that is the Impurity of the Astral Spirit in which is the Seat and Dominion of unruly Imagination Hence are our Sidereal or Planet-strucken Preachers and Prophets who being first blasted themselves blast all others that labour with the like impurity by their Fanatick Contagion Those in whom Mortification has not had its full work nor refined the Inmost of their natural Complexions are subject to be smitten and overcome by such Enthusiastick storms till a more perfect Purification commit them to the safe custody of the Intellectual Powers Wherefore let this pretended Prophet boast as much as he will of his glorious Resurrection from the dead it is manifest to the more perfect that he has not yet so much as passed through that Death that should have led him to the unshaken Kingdome of Truth and letten him in to the immovable Calmness and serene stilness of the Intellectual World where the Blasts and Blusters of the Astral Spirit cease and the Violence of Phansy perverts not the faithful representations of Eternal Reason For God is not in these fanatick Herricanoes no more then he was in the tempestuous Wind Earthquake or Fire that passed before the Prophet Elias But the Divine Truth is to be found in that still small voice which is the Echo of the Eternal Word not urg'd upon us by that furious Impulse of complexionall Imagination but descending from the Father of lights with whom there is no shadow of change This was an Attainment out of this Boasters reach of which he had not the least sense or presage and therefore was wholy given up to the hot scalding Impressions of misguided Phansy in his Astral Spirit Which being strangely raised and exalted in this false light has a power by words or writings to fire others and to intoxicate them with the same heat and noise in their enravished Imagination whereby that still and small voice of Incomplexionate Reason cannot be heard CHAP. XIV 1. That neither H. Nicolas nor his Doctrine was prophesied of in Holy Scripture That of the Angel preaching the Everlasting Gospel groundlesly applied to him 2. As also that place Iohn 1.21 of being That Prophet 3. His own mad Application of Acts 17. v. 31. to himself 4. Their Misapplication of 1 Cor. 13. v. 9 10. and Hebr. 6. v. 1 2. to the Doctrine of this new Prophet 5. Their arguing for the authority of the Service of the Love from the Series of Times and Dispensations with the Answer thereunto 6. That the Oeconomie of the Family of Love is quite contrary to the Reign of the Spirit 7. That the Author is not against the Regnum Spiritûs the Cabbalists also speak of but onely affirms that this Dispensation takes not away the Personal Offices of Christ nor the External comeliness of Divine Worship 8. That if this Regnum Spiritûs is to be promoted by the Ministry of some one Person more especially it follows not that it is H. Nicolas he being a mere mistaken Enthusiast or worse 1. AND therefore being blinded with the wind and dust of this Fanatick Tempest they are carried on
the Scripture-learned teach them which is plainly to deny the History of Christ and to profess our selves mere Infidels Out of which Spirit of Infidelity he has so distortedly allegorized all the clauses of the Creed that to such as are not bewitched and besotted by his fanatick blasts to a better opinion of him then he deserves he must needs appear an Infidel Lastly in his Introduction Chap. 9. sect 35. there again he does boldly affirm That it is certainly mere lies what the Letter-learned institute or set forth how clear soever in understanding if they be yet unreformed by the Love and her Service And in the following Section he plainly declares That the Scriptures are not to be taught nor held forth Historically but as Prefigurations of the Promises that are fulfilled in his Service of the Love Whence it is evident he had no belief in the Letter of the Scripture nor of the miraculous History of Christ and of the Predictions concerning him whereby our Faith should be affixed to his Humane Person Against which he useth all diligence imaginable as if not simple Care but an inspired Envy or Satanical Spite against the honour of his Person did actuate him in all his Writings 2. To which purpose I conceive is that Caution in his Introduction That no man bind his heart to any outward thing which he is served with to the Righteousness of life For of all outward things nothing can be more serviceable then the Humane Person of Christ who suffered for us and redeemed us from the wrath to come if we stand faithfull in the Covenant Those places also where he saith That the Godly life is the very Saviour himself and that no man knows Christ nor can confess him unless his shape be in him that is his Life and Image be in him seem intended as justling against the External Person of Christ as also what he saith Chap. 22. namely That no other Foundation may be laid then that Iesus Christ who from everlasting was and is and abideth for ever whereby I doubt not but he intends the exclusion of his Humane Person whose compute began but about 16 hundred years agoe But the most wonderfull sleight he puts him off by is his Mystical meaning of Christ's celebration of the Passeover with his Disciples Which we shall easily understand if we take notice what he means by Flesh in his Writings namely by Flesh is meant the Letter or History In his Prophecy of the Spirit of Love Chap. 13. ver 4. Verily therefore they do all erre very much that judge according to their understanding out of the earthly Being or out of the Flesh or Letter God's truth which is Heavenly and Spiritual See also Introduct ch 14. sect 20. Now if you will but read his Evangely chap. 21. sect 3 7 8 10. also chap. 22. sect 5 6. and chap. 25. sect 1 2. you shall find in brief for it were too tedious to write these allegorical Ambages that the right Celebration of the Pascha or Passeover with Christ is That he namely Christ after the Flesh they are his own words should be slain that is that Christ according to the Letter or History should be abolished that he may be entertained only according to the Spirit Which is the great Arcanum of this Sect of the Family Behold saith he this is the right Passeover with Christ and the right Supper which the upright Believers and Disciples of Christ keep with Christ to wit that they depart even so with Christ out of the Flesh that is that Christ according to the History or Letter be crucified or slain in them that is nullified and rejected as a mere Legend or Fable and pass into the Spirit that is the spiritual Mystery of Christ the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Moral of the Fable and out of the Death or Mortality that is out of the dead Letter into the Eternal Life of everlasting Immortality In which sonorous language that you may not promise to your self any such lasting purchase there is nothing meant but the state of Perfection which these Familists phansie to themselves here upon Earth and is everlasting in no other sense then in succession they promising themselves that their Sect will continue for ever and therefore he adds wherethrough sin and all destruction becomes vanquished namely by this state of Perfection wherein sin and every imperfect and destroyable state is swallowed up For they having come to the highest there is no change of things though their persons be mortal according to their own doctrine This Allegorie of the Passeover is so odd a conceit that did I not suppose the Author deeply Fanatical I should suspect it accompanied with a sly jearing and scorn against the History of Christ and to be the product of a scoffing Atheistical Spirit For no Atheist could exercise his wit here with more villainous sliness against the truth of the Scriptures then thus Which makes me sometimes think that he was not simply Fanatical but either Atheistical or possessed by the Devil himself in the mean time not knowing whose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was 3. And thus we have had a taste in general how sedulously this Author endeavours to out the Person of Christ. We shall now pursue the matter in two main heads the Office of his Priesthood and his coming visibly to judgment in his Humane person To which is annexed the promise of a glorious Resurrection and Eternal Life in a plain and true sense without any shuffling or equivocating That he makes nothing of the atonement of Christ's personal sufferings he does in my judgment too plainly discover chap. 13. sect 8. of his Documental Sentences where rather then he will acknowledg the usefulness of that Advocate with the Father Iesus Christ the righteous who is a propitiation for our sins he does pronounce him that sins by violence or Temptation to be guiltless as the ravished virgin Deuteronomie 22 that so there may be no need of Christ's Sacrifice whose personal death and Priestly office he never takes notice of to this purpose As you may observe further Exhortat chap. 20. from sect 19 to the end of the chapter Where although he supposes a mans stumblings and fallings daily very great and terrible before him and that for that cause he is very wofull of heart feels the pricking of sin the darts of death and condemnation of Hell and so is in much anguish and affliction of mind yet is there no application at all of the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross nor any help nor comfort at all held out by his sufferings though it was the most proper place that could be to mention them And chap. 24. in the praiers he puts up there in stead of making use of the mediation of that Christ that felt the pains of death on the Cross for us he makes use only of Gods supposed Promise or Covenant he has made with the House of
and other circumstances and so many that it may seem improbable to be imputed to Chance though Chance has such a latitude that it is difficult to say any thing is not by Chance that happens suppose but four times seldomer then the contrary it will not yet follow that they are free from other things which are assuredly worse more horrid and more execrable such as the consulting of Ghosts and Familiar Spirits a wickedness that that zealous Patron of Astrology Sir Christopher Heydon acknowledges to be too frequently palliated under the Pretence of this Art 5. And truly for my own part I do not much doubt but that Astrology it self is an Appendix of the old Pagans Superstition who were Worshippers of the Host of Heaven and whose Priests were Confederates of the Devil and therefore it is no wonder if Daemonolatry creep in upon Astrology and renew their old acquaintance with one another And assuredly it is a pleasant Spectacle to those aiery Goblins those Haters and Scorners of Mankinde to see the noble Faculties of men debased and intangled in so vile and wretched a mystery which will avail nothing to Divination unless these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these malicious Deceivers act their parts in the Scene For it is not unconceivable how these invisible Insidiators may so apply themselves to a mans curiosity that will be tampering and practising in this Superstition that suppose in Horary Questions they may excite such persons and at such a time to make their demands that according to the foreknown Rules of Astrology the Theme of Heaven will decypher very circumstantially the Person his Relations or his Condition and give a true solution of the demand whether about Decumbitures Stollen goods or any such questions as are set down in Dariot's Introduction Which needs must enravish the young Astrologer and inflame him with the love and admiration of so strange an Art And as for Nativities and punctuall Predictions of the time of ones death and it may be of the manner of it which either only or most ordinarily happens in such as are addicted to or devoted admirers of this Art it is very suspicable that the same invisible Powers put to their helping hand to bring about the Effect and so those whose misfortunes and deaths are predicted must to the pot to credit the Art and be made Sacrifices to the lust and ambition of those rebellious Fiends to whose secret lash and dominion men expose themselves when they intermeddle with such superstitious Curiosities as are Appendages to ancient Paganism and were in all likelihood invented or suggested by those proud and ludicrous Spirits to entangle man in by way of sport and scorn and to subjugate him to the befoolments of their tricks and delusions For it is not unreasonable to think that by certain Laws of the great Polity of the Invisible World they gain a right against a man without explicit contract if he be but once so rash as to tamper with the Mysteries of the Dark Kingdome or to practise in them or any way to make use of them For why not here as well as in the Ceremonies of Witchcraft But I must not make too large excursions And therefore I think it the safest way for every one that has given his name to God and Christ not to meddle nor make with these Superstitious curiosities of Astrology either by practising them himself or consulting them that do that no ill trick be put upon him by being made obnoxious to the invisible scourge or by making others so in whose behalf he consults 6. I say then these vagrant Daemons of the Air either secretly insinuating themselves into the actions of Astrologers or after more apparently offering themselves to familiarity and converse for to grace their profession by oral revelation of things past present or to come in such a way as is above humane power I demand how it shall appear that Cardan's for example and Ascletarion's deaths and others more punctually that I could name predicted by themselves or others was not by the familiarity of Daemons but the pure principles of Astrology And so of whatsoever Honour or other Events that have been found to fall out just according to Astrological predictions I demand how it can be proved that Astrology was not here only for a vizard and that a Magician or Wizzard was not underneath By how much accurater their Predictions are by so much the more cause of suspicion 7. Now therefore to conclude seeing that the Principles of Astrology are so groundless frivolous nay contradictious one with another and built upon false Hypotheses and gross mistakes concerning the Nature and System of the World seeing it has no due object by reason of the interposing of the free Agency of both men and Angels to interrupt perpetually the imagined natural series of both Causality and Events seeing there is not sufficient Experience to make good the truth of the Art they that have practised therein having not observed the pretended Laws thereof with due accuracy and therefore if any thing has hitherto hit true it must be Chance which quite takes away their plea from Events so that their Art is utterly to seek not only for Principles which I have demonstrated to be false but for Experience and Effects which hitherto have been none And assuredly they make nothing of pronouncing loudly that such or such a Configuration will have such an Event though they never experienc'd it at all or very seldom as it must needs be in the conjunction of Saturn Iupiter and Mars which returns not in seven hundred years seeing also that those Predictions that are pretended to have fallen right are so few that they may justly be deemed to have fallen right by Chance and that if any thing has been foretold very punctually and circumstantially it may as well nay better be supposed to proceed from the secret insinuations or visible converse with the aiery Wanderers then from the indication of the Stars and lastly seeing there is that affinity and frequent association of Astrology with Daemonolatry and ancient Pagan Superstition that person certainly must have a strangely-impure and effascinable passivity of Phancie that can be bound over to a belief or liking of a Foolery so utterly groundless as Astrology is and so nearly verging toward the brinks of Apostasie and Impiety 8. I have now finished my Astrological Excursion to which I was strongly tempted in a just zeal and resentment of that unparallel'd presumption and wicked sauciness of the vain-glorious Cardan who either in a rampant fit of pride and thirst after admiration or out of a malicious design to all true Piety would make the world believe that the Divinity and Sacrosanctity of Christian Religion was subjected to his imaginary laws of the Stars and that the fate of Christ the Son of God miraculously born of the Holy Ghost was writ in his Nativity which forsooth he pretended to have calculated As if all
God because he findes them harmless peaceable and beneficiall or because himself is of a good sanguine benigne complexion But this Love in a man that makes not conscience of the Commandements of God is merely animal and natural not proceeding from that community of the Divine Spirit which all the Regenerate participate of but out of complexion and self-love which will adhere to any thing that it feels a naturall comfort from But if this Childe of God prove something spinose and harsh in opposing rebuking or it may be not complying with some dearly-beloved humours of this good-natured sanguine his corrupt bloud will then begin to boyl against the Son of God and return him hatred for his good will 3. And as this blessed Apostle and peculiarly-beloved of our Saviour has made so carefull a caution that the Love he recommends to the world should not slack so low as to draggle in the dirt so has he wisely provided against the Hypocrisie of high-flown Religionists who pretend to be so transported with love to God and his service that they quite forget their neighbour and therefore at the end of the foregoing Chapter he does plainly pronounce that If a man say I love God and hateth his brother he is a lyar For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen And this commandement have we from him that he that loveth God love his brother also Which duty of the Second Table being most hard and the most lâ—able to be cast off through the Hypocrisie of mens hearts the inculcation thereof is most frequent with the Apostles Paul to the Ephesians chap. 4. ver 31. Let all bitternesse and anger and wrath and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice And be ye kinde one to another tender-hearted forgiving one another even as God for Christs sake has forgiven you Be ye therefore followers of God as dear Children and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us an Offering and a Sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour And Colos. 3.12 Put on therefore as the elect of God holy and beloved bowels of mercies kindenesse humblenesse of minde meeknesse long-suffering Forbearing one another and forgiving one another even as Christ forgave you And above all things put on Charity which is the bond of perfectnesse and let the peace of God rule in your hearts c. Peter also in his first generall Epistle Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently And in his second Epistle ch 1. And besides this giving all diligence adde to your faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godlinesse and to godlinesse brotherly kindnesse and to brotherly kindnesse charity 4. The coherence of this golden chain of Divine Graces is so admirable that I cannot passe it by though it be beside my present purpose to speak any thing of the places I cite But we shall not so well understand the fit connexion of these Vertues with themselves nor of the whole link of them with the precedent Text without rectifying the Translation in a word or two The Apostle in the foregoing verses intimates to them how God has provided for them according to his divine power all things appertaining to life and Godlinesse through the knowledge of his Son Iesus Christ who hath called us in glory and virtue and given us exceeding great and precious promises that having escaped the corruption that is in the World through lust we should be partakers of the divine nature and then comes in what has been recited 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which they have rendred And besides this Which Translation makes no connexion of sense with the former words but is very abrupt nor will the phrase I think bear that meaning It is better sense and more laudable Criticisme to render it thus And therefore forthwith or without any more adoe adde to your faith vertue c. Which latter words are not well rendred neither The Greek is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Grotius would have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be redundant there so that his suffrage is for the English Translation But for my own part I think that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is so far from being redundant that it is essentiall to the sentence and interposed that we might understand a greater Mystery then the mere adding of so many Vertues one to another which would be all that could be expresly signified if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were left out But the preposition here signifying causality there is more then a mere enumeration of those Divine Graces For there is also implied how naturally they rise one out of another and that they have a causall dependence one of another Therefore the sense is That God having on his part fitted all things for their Salvation and they having obtained like precious Faith with the Apostle himself that through the efficacy of their Faith they should also acquire Virtue that is Strength and Fortitude For high and noble Promises excite courage and resolution to set upon the difficulties through which they must passe that would obtain the Promises And this encountring with the difficulties that are in a Christian mans way while he is not a talker of Christianity but a reall actour and cordiall endeavourer to follow the Precepts and Example of Christ will beget not verbal but true Knowledge in him that is holy Experience in the wayes of God And in this Experience he is taught how those fleshly and worldly lusts and desires have often deceived him and led him out of the way blinding his judgement by their importunate suggestions and extinguishing or at least dulling those more religious and divine senses of the Soul when their importunities are listened to and their cravings satisfied And therefore this Knowledge and Experience begets Temperance that is a more rigid resolution of curbing and keeping under of all worldly and carnal desires and a peremptory refraining from giving any answer to their impudent beggings and cravings Which things if a man seriously attempt in its due extent and latitude questionless he will put himself upon a very intolerable task and there will be no remedy but Patience which he will find so mightily out of his power that he will be forced upon his knees to the God of heaven to comfort assist and strengthen him in his agony and conflict against his domestick enemies and to support his spirit in so great anguish and pain Whence it is plain that we cannot keep close to the laws of Temperance but that Patience will necessarily emerge therefrom nor be kept in this Spirit of Patience without the invocation and acknowledgment of Divine assistance which is an unquestionable
Dispensation are we well approved of by God and being justified thus by faith we have peace with him through our Lord Iesus Christ Rom. 5.1 So that this Iustification is not a mere belief that Christ died for us in particular or that he was raised from the dead whereby anothers Righteousness is imputed to us but a believing in God that he has accepted the bloud of Christ as a Sacrifice for sin and that he is able through the power of the Spirit to raise us up to newness of life whereby we are encouraged to breath and aspire after this more inward and perfect righteousnesse Which advantages God propounds to all the hearers of the Gospel without any respect of works or former demurenesse of life if so be they will but now come in and close with this high and rich dispensation and be carried on with couragious resolutions to fight against and pull down the man of sin within themselves that this living and new way of real Divine righteousnesse may be set up and rule in their hearts I say if they be encouraged to this holy enterprise by Faith in Christ for the remission of sins and for the power of his Spirit to utterly eradicate and extirpate all inward corruption and wickednesse this Faith is presently imputed to them for Righteousnesse that is they are and are approved by God as dear children of his and as good men and are of the seed of the Promise For they are born now not of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh but of the will of God and their will is wholly set upon righteousnesse and true holinesse which they hunger and thirst after as sincerely and eagerly as ever they did after their natural meat and drink and God who feeds the young Ravens is not so cruell as to deny them this celestial food which food they reach at and as it were wrest out of his hands by Faith in the power of his Spirit whereby they account themselves able to doe all things 9. And this is the only warrantable notion that I can finde of being justified by faith Nor do those places above recited prove any other then this For that which seems to make most of all for another viz. Rom. 4.5 But to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness may very well be interpreted according to that tenour of sense I have already declared For that is the great and comfortable priviledge of the Gospel that without any respect of former works if so be we do but now believe remission of sins in Christ and believe in his power that justifies the ungodly i. e. that makes just the ungodly and purifies and purges them from all sin and iniquity from which by their own naturall power they could not purged and restores them to inward reall righteousnesse by the working of his Spirit this Faith is imputed for Righteousnesse For they that do thus believe are good and righteous men for matter of sincerity so that they have peace with God through the bloud of Christ and by the power of that Spirit that is now working in them are renewed daily more and more into that glorious image and desirable liberty which arises in the further conquest of the Divine life in them and makes them righteous even as Christ was righteous And now the hardest is satisfied the other places alledged will easily fall of themselves by the application of what has been said concerning this nature of Faith and Iustification 10. As for those places of Scripture that seem to attribute the Righteousness of Christ to us as where he is said to be made unto us wisedom righteousness sanctification and redemption the sense is only this that he works in us wisedom righteousness c. Otherwise it might be inferred that we shall have only an imputative Redemption and that we shall not be really saved and redeemed As for that other As by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners so by the obedience of one man many shall be made righteous I say it is a place against themselves For by Adam we became really sinners and sinful contracting original corruption from his loins therefore by Christ we are to be made really righteous And this was the end of his obedience that was obedient even to the death of the crosse that we being buried with him by baptisme into death like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life Rom. 6. Wherefore there really being no ground in Scripture for this childish mistake and it being as unreasonable that one Soul should be righteous for another as that one Body should be in health for another if I shew that the Scripture it self does expresly require of us that we be righteous and holy in our own persons there is then nothing wanting to the full discovery of this childish and ungrounded conceit of being righteous without any Righteousness residing in us 11. And in my apprehension this very Text of S. Iohn is a clear eviction of this Truth it plainly declaring that they are mistaken who ever conceit themselves righteous without doing righteousnesse or without being righteous in such a sense as Christ himself was righteous There are also several other Testimonies of the Apostles to the same purpose some whereof I have noted already as where he saith That Christ was manifested to take away our sins and that he came to destroy the works of the Devil and that he that is born of God sinneth not because the seed of God abideth in him that is a permanent Principle of Divine life and sense whereby he seeth and abhorreth whatsoever is wicked and unholy And again 1 Ioh. â— Hereby we know that we know him if we keep his commandements He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandements is a lyar and the truth is not in him but whose keepeth his word in him verily is the love of God perfected Hereby know we that we are in him He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked Like that 2 Tim. 2.19 Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity CHAP. VI. 1. Their alledgement of Gal. 2.16 as also of the whole drift of that Epistle 2. What the Righteousnesse of faith is according to the Apostle 3. In what sense those that are in Christ are said not to be under the Law 4. That the Righteousness of faith is no figment but a reality in us 5. That this Righteousnesse is the New Creature and what this new Creature is according to Scripture 6. That the new Creature consists in Wisedom Righteousness and true Holiness 7. The Righteousnesse of the new Creature 8. His Wisedom and Holinesse 9. That the Righteousness of faith excludes not good Works The wicked treachery of those
the power of his might Put you on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil For we wrestle not against flesh and bloud but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world even against the wicked Spirits of the air Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand in the evil day and having vanquished all to stand Stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth and having on the breast-plate of righteousness and your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace Above all taking the shield of faith whereby you shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked and take the helmet of Salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God We shall add only a short speech to the Christian souldier thus harnessed from the Captain of our Salvation Jesus Christ Revel 3. To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne Which things thus put together and carefully considered cannot but awaken us out of that drouzy and lazy dream of unoperative Faith and sluggish sordid slavery to sin under pretence of invincible infirmity into a full belief of the mighty power of Christ and of his Armature and Ammunition whereby we are able to overcome all our domestick lusts though abetted and incensed by the fiery Stratagems of the Devil 6. To him that overcomes When I beseech you is this overcoming Is not Victory wone in the same field the battel is fought and is not our warfare here upon this earth wherefore it is plain our Victory must be here also It is in this life we are commanded to kill and slay the old man in us with all his deceiveable lusts who while he is alive will be alwaies plotting and inventing some evil device or other to undermine and root the Kingdome of Christ out of our hearts And therefore we must be wholy the one or wholy the other We cannot serve Christ and Belial Light and Darkness cannot abide together And verily the Apostle has furnished us with so compleat an armature that we cannot but confess our selves stronger then the strong man that has hitherto kept the house so that if he be not dispossessed it is long of us For the faithfull Christian Souldier is so well appointed being girt with Truth his Heart fortified with Uprightness and Sincerity his Mind with representations of Eternal life his feet with readiness unwearied resolution of walking as becomes the Gospel of Christ his Memory with the choicest and most useful encouraging Precepts of the Scripture his whole Soul bearing it self strong in the Faith of the power of God against all assaults and temptations of the enemies of our Salvation that he cannot but get the day and stand Conquerour in the field though his own domestick lusts be assisted by the powers of the Prince of the Air that rules in the Children of disobedience For this shield of Faith is able to quench all the fiery darts of the Devil This is that Faith whereby the ancients have subdued kingdomes and wrought righteousness And this is that whereby every Christian shall advance his conquests against the Kingdome of Darkness and Unrighteousness as much as he pleases For according to a mans Faith so shall it be unto him 7. Wherefore those that plead for a lazy Slackness and Remisness in these attempts are not faithfull Christians but false brethren got amongst us He that puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdome of God Again He that loveth Father or Mother more then me is not worthy of me and he that loveth son or daughter more then me is not worthy of me Nay he that loveth his own life more then Christ is not worthy of him nor can he be his disciple as our Saviour himself has declared How can then any be Christ's disciple that loves any lust whatsoever though never so pleasant though never so profitable more then the Son of God that redeemed him with his own bloud Wherefore all true Christians have been in this point in good earnest in both practice profession and praiers in breathing and contending after all exquisiteness of purity and integrity both of flesh and Spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of God as the Apostle exhorts the Corinthians According to which also S. Iames in his Epistle general chap. 1. v. 4. Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire being defective in nothing Like that praier of Epaphras for the Colossians chap. 4.12 who is said there to labour fervently for them in praier that they may stand perfect and complete in the whole will of God Which is the same with S. Peter's 1 Epist. the last chapter The God of all grace who hath called us to his eternal glory by Christ Iesus after that you have suffered a while make you perfect stablish strengthen settle you To which we will add that of the Author to the Hebrews and so conclude Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Iesus the great shepheard of the sheep through the bloud of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to doe his will working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Iesus Christ to whom be glory for ever and ever Amen CHAP. VIII 1. That the Christians assistance is at least equal to his task 2. The two Gospel-powers that comprehend his duty 3. The first Gospel-aid The Promise of the Spirit with Prophecies thereof out of Ezekiel and Esay 4. Some hints of the mystical meaning of the last 5. Another excellent prediction thereof 1. WE have made it very evident That that degree of Righteousness that the Christian is called unto is no lazy sluggish inclination to holiness no maimed halting Hypocritical following after Christ but a sound and chearfull endeavour and at last a joifull acquisition of such a degree of Sanctity and Righteousness as far surmounts the pretensions of all other Religions whatsoever and is indeed so exquisite and perfect that nothing better can be desired or imagined So holy and Heavenly a calling is the calling of a Christian. And indeed the expectation is so great that if our aids and assistances were not proportionable we could never arrive to the End of our calling But our helps are in my apprehension far greater then our task if we were not wanting to our selves 2. We have hitherto seen how necessary inward Sanctification is to a Christian as also to how ample a measure he is called Both these he is indispensably obliged to endeavour and breath after perpetually as is manifestly declared by Christ his Apostles and the Prophets before them Wherefore these two I
mean The evidence that we are to be inwardly and really righteous and not only so but in an extraordinary manner are the two Powers of the Gospel that comprehend our great and ultimate duty of being holy as he that has called us is holy of becoming perfect as our Father which is in Heaven is perfect The following Gospel-Powers all of them are aids and helps to this design The first whereof is The Promise of the Spirit through Christ's Intercession the second The Example of Christ the third The Meditation on his Passion the fourth on his Resurrection and Ascension and the last on the last Iudgement These Powers are of such admirable efficacy if rightly applied that they are able to pul down every strong hold and to cast out all evil imaginations and every high thing that exalts it self against the knowledge of God and to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ as the Apostle speaks No strength of habituated sin no violence of any lust shall be able to stand before them 3. The first of these Powers is The Promise of the Spirit I do not mean for the doing Miracles for that was but a transient business and accommodate only to the first Ages of the Church but for through-sanctification and cleansing us from all our sins and for our perfect growth in Righteousness and Holiness That this Power is a concomitant to the Dispensation of the Gospel in all true Believers is apparent both from the predictions of the Prophets and from the mouth of our Saviour and his blessed Apostles Esay 44. Hear now O Iacob my servant and Israel whom I have chosen Thus saith the Lord that made thee and framed thee from the womb and will help thee Fear not O Iacob my servant and thou Iesurun whom I have chosen For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thy offspring And they shall spring up as among the grass and the willows by the water-courses Which Prophecie is most properly applicable to the Church of Christ who is the true seed of Iacob those wrastlers with God and strivers to get in at the narrow gate that leads to life they are the true Iesurun the upright of heart and sincere seekers after God those that truly hunger and thirst after righteousness and therefore God will satisfie them by the supernatural assistance of his blessed Spirit Again Ezekiel 36. ver 25. prefiguring the blessed dispensations of the Kingdome of Christ Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your Idols will I cleanse you A new heart also will I give you and a new Spirit will I put within you and I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you an heart of flesh And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and ye shall keep my judgments and doe them Also Esay 41. v. 10. where certainly according to analogie of interpretations of Prophecie the seed of Abraham being a Type of the Spiritual Church of Christ and their warfare not carnal but spiritual nor the waters promised by Christ such liquors as run in Brooks and Rivers but emanations of the purifying and refreshing powers of the Spirit of God we may see with what close and faithfull assistance God is pleased to adhere to his true Israel in whom there is no guile but they are sincerely waging war and to the utmost resisting all the Temptations of the World the Flesh and the Devil But thou Israel my servant Iacob whom I have chosen the seed of Abraham my friend fear thou not for I am with thee be not dismaied for I am thy God I will strengthen thee yea I will help thee yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness Behold all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded they shall be as nothing and they that strive with thee shall perish Thou shalt seek them and shalt not find them even them that contended with thee they that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of nought For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand saying unto thee Fear not I will help thee Fear not thou worm Iacob and ye men of Israel behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing-instrument having teeth thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat them small and shalt make the hills as chaffe Thou shalt fan them and the wind shall carry them away and the whirlwind shall scatter them and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord and shalt glory in the holy One of Israel When the poor and needy seek water and there is none and their tongue faileth for thirst I the Lord will hear them I the God of Israel will not forsake them I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the vallies I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water This Prophecie is an exquisite description of those full and complete Victories the Church gets against Sin and Satan by the supernatural assistance of the Spirit of God Which Promise is again repeated in the following chapter which though it be larger then the former and part cited already to another purpose yet I cannot refrain from transcribing the whole it being so plain a Prophecie of Christ as appears from the fore-part thereof and of the power of his Kingdome through the Spirit for the vanquishing of all sin and wickedness in them that do truly believe Behold my servant whom I uphold mine elect in whom my soul delighteth I have put my spirit upon him he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street A bruised reed shall he not break and smoaking flax shall he not quench he shall bring forth judgement unto truth He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he hath set judgement in the earth and the Isles shall wait for his Law Thus saith God the Lord he that created the Heavens and stretched them out he that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it he that giveth breath to the people upon it and spirit to those that dwell therein I the Lord have called thee in righteousness and will hold thine hand and will keep thee and give thee for a covenant of the people for a light of the Gentiles To open the blind eyes to bring out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house I am the Lord that is my name and my glory will I not give to another neither my praise to graven images Behold the former things are come to pass and new things do I declare before they spring forth I
of God Be not deceived neither Fornicatours nor Idolaters nor Adulterers nor Effeminate nor Abusers of themselves with mankind nor Thieves nor Covetous nor Drunkards nor Revilers nor Extortioners shall inherit the kingdome of God And Hebr. 12.14 Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And thus we see that all the Happiness of man and his real good is utterly subverted and destroyed by this mischievous imagination of being righteous otherwise then by true and living Righteousness 10. And it is as plain that this imposture will rob God of his Glory as well as defeat man of his Happiness For whether we understand by the Glory of God the Image of God communicable to men as the Image that is the light of the Sun is the glory of the Sun or whether we understand the acknowledgment of that Excellency and Perfection that is in God first deeply conceived in our hearts and then fully and freely professed by our mouths both these are assuredly taken away by this false conceit And of the former there is no doubt being that the Spirit of Righteousness is that very Glory of God or Image of Christ. Wherefore whatever does intercept this does really eclipse the Glory of God And it is as true also of the other For seeing that the most rich and precious Excellencies of the Divine Nature cannot be discovered by the Soul as they ought to be but by becoming Divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If thou beest it thou seest it as Plotinus speaks it must needs be that they cannot be worthily admired and extolled by any Soul but such as is Divine that is such a Soul as God has poured the Spirit of Righteousness and true Holiness on without which it is impossible to see God To all which Particulars that concern every private man you may add that great summe of an incomputable damage that respects the Publick For what Peace or Faithfulness can there be amongst men where the professed Mysterie of their Religion is the Explosion of real Righteousness Or what can possibly take place in stead thereof but Fraud and Falshood foul Lusts phrantick Factions rude Tumults and bloudy Rebellions To which you may cast in the loss of our very hopes that the World should ever grow better or that the holy Promises of God should take effect For there is not a more cruel or butcherly weapon for the slaying of the Witnesses nor a more impregnable Fort against the approaching Kingdome of Christ and that millennial Happiness which many good and faithfull Christians expect then this hell-hatch'd doctrine of Antinomianisme CHAP. XII 1. Of the attending to the Light within us of which some Spiritualists so much boast 2. That they must mean the Light of Reason and Conscience thereby if they be not Fanaticks Mad-men or Cheats And that this Conscience necessarily takes information from without 3. And particularly from the Holy Scriptures 4. That these Spiritualists acknowledge the fondness of their opinion by their contrary practice 5. An appeal to the Light within them if the Christian Religion according to the literal sense be not true 6. That the Operation of the Divine Spirit is not absolute but restrained to certain laws and conditions as it is in the Spirit of Nature 7. The fourth Gospel-Power The Example of Christ. 8. His purpose of vindicating the Example of Christ from aspersions with the reasons thereof 1. WE have now gone through the Three first Powers of the Gospel of which Three the last namely The Promise of the Spirit may seem so sufficient of it self to some without any thing further and I am sure does so to others that professedly they take up here and exclude or at least neglect all that advantage that accrues from the History of Christ and hereby do antiquate the Christian Religion These are those great Spiritualists that talk so much of The Light within them and the Power within them and boast that they want nothing without to be their Guide and Support but that they can goe of themselves without any external help For keeping to the Light within them the Power of God and the Spirit of God will assist them and will lead them into all truth And truly I cannot but say Amen to what they declare For I know assuredly that it is most true if they would leave off their canting language and say in down-right terms That keeping sincerely to the dictates of Reason and Conscience and the perpetually denying themselves in such things as they know or suspect to be evil with devout addresses to the Throne of Grace for the assistance and illumination of the Holy Spirit to discover and overcome all Errour Falseness Pride and Hypocrisie that may lurk in their hearts I say I am well assured that this Dispensation faithfully kept to will in due time lead unto all Saving Truth and that such a one at the last cannot fail to become a Christian in the soundest and the fullest sense such as firmly adhered to Christ in the first and most unspotted Ages of the Church But if they will call any hot wild Imagination or forcible and unaccountable Suggestion the Light within them and follow that this is not to keep to Reason and Conscience but to be delivered up to a reprobate sense and to expose a mans self to all the temptations that either the Devil or a mans own Lust or a sordid Melancholy can entangle him in 2. Wherefore by the Light within them they must understand an accountable and rational Conscience within them unless they be perfect Fanaticks or Mad-men or what is worse mere Impostors and Cheats who would pretend to a Conscience but yet irrational and unaccountable to any one and hereby have the liberty of doing what they please being given up at length to nothing but Fury and Lust. And then lastly This Conscience within them is not a thing so absolutely within them that it can take no information from what is without For it is manifest that this Lamp of God that burneth in us is fed and nourished from external Objects For the invisible things of him from the Creation of the World are clearly seen being understood by things that are made for by these from without are we advertised of his Eternal power and Godhead And as we are thus taught by the outward Book of Nature concerning the Existence of God and his general Providence in the world as to the necessities of life both of Men and Beasts so may we also by external VVritings or Records be more fully informed of a more special Providence of his to the Sons of men concerning the State in the other world and of that Eternal life manifested by Christ. But I grant that it is still this Light within us that judges and concludes after the perusal of either the Volumes of Nature or of Divine Revelation 3. But as he that gives his Mind to Mathematicks Architecture Husbandry
do the utmost of despight unto him for all one might have thought that Apologetical reason for the business might have prevented their choler or asswaged it Is it lawfull to do good on the Sabbath-day or to do evil to save life or to destroy it But methinks there cannot be imagined any answer so smart and hit more home then that in the second of Mark v. 27. The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath Where the well-prepared Christian is taught in a short sentence worthy to be writ in letters of Gold or rather in the Heart of every holy and understanding man not only what concerns the Sabbath but even the whole businesse of Religion That it is rather Hominis gratiâ quà m Dei and that though God's Honour be mainly pretended in it yet it is mans Happinesse that is really intended by it even of God himself Which wretched men of ignorant and dark mindes and deeply levened with the sowr Pharisaical leven understanding not create much trouble to themselves and all the world besides in their peevish and inept prosecution of matters of Religion they being no meet Judges of their either Apprehensions or Actions whom the Divine Freedome and Benignity has transformed into a contrary nature to themselves 4. Now for Neutrality that seems so intolerable and detestable to those whose uncurbed desire of worldly advantage or humorous projects makes them even hate all that may be and yet are not instrumental to their precipitate designs it is so far from being a Fault in our Saviour that in my opinion it was a very graceful Ornament in the demeanour of so Divine and Pious a Personage as he was who was set apart for better purposes then to attend Political Squabbles and Dissensions which seldom fail of being begun and continued from any better Principles then Envy Ambition and Covetousnesse Our Saviour being very craftily tempted to declare himself to be of judgement either for or against Caesar Matth. 22. by this Question Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or no he as warily avoids giving his sentence for the justnesse of this or that cause as may be returning only this well-attemper'd Answer Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's Ita Christus sapientissimo responso seditionis motae violatae Religionis calumniam in quaestione insidiosissima effugit as that excellent Interpreter observes and so he quits himself from appearing either Herodian Gaulonite or Caesarean 5. What semblances they can feign of Injustice or Partiality will be picked out of such passages as these His unseasonable cursing the Fig-tree for not bearing fruit whenas the time of year was not for fruit His blaming the Pharisees for long Prayers when himself is recorded to have prayed a night together and lastly His quitting the woman that was taken in the very act of Adultery But as for the first As the Fig-tree felt no hurt so no hurt was done in withering it but this was merely a Symbolical passage whereby the judgement of God was prefigured against the unfruitfull Religion of the Jews as I have above noted For long Prayers Whereas our Saviour is said Luke 6. to have gone out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God the Greek has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is more likely to signifie in proseucha Dei or Divine Oratory or Place of Prayer to God as is plain from that of the Satyrist Ede ubi consistas in qua te quaero proseucha However it is to be conceived our Saviour condemned rather the Hypocrisie and effectedness of long Prayers then the mere length of them it being impossible for any of so accomplished a Spirit as our Saviour to blame either the shortness or length of mens devotions arising out of a soberly-guided affection not a vain affectation For the acquitting the Adulteresse it cannot be interpreted as a countenancing of any such foul miscarriage but as an exprobration to the Jews of their own wickednesses which whenas they ought to have been conscious to themselves of they should not have been over-forward to do execution upon those that were but sinners as themselves especially that power of condemning and punishing being then in a manner taken out of their hands by the Romans And here Christ did also worthily of that divine and benigne nature which dwelt in him of which this fruit was but as an handful to that full Harvest the Sons of Adam afterward reaped from his Doings and Sufferings 6. As for the Imputation of railing One of the worst speeches that ever fell from his lips was when he called the Scribes and Pharisees Hypocrites which according to the propriety of the word is as much as Histriones or Stage-plaiers and indeed the Scribes and Pharisees of old and their posterity ever since have so dressed up themselves and their Religion too that that Title might deservedly have been entailed on them and their seed for ever But Christ elsewhere seems more bitter where he speaks out in plain English Ye are of your Father the Devil But it was a Title that fell out so fittingly for them upon their vain boast of their Father Abraham whose Sonship they had forfeited by being quite of a contrary nature to him that it had been a piece of inexcusable Forgetfulnesse not to have reminded them of their true Descent and Pedigree he having so full authority thereto 7. That seeming injurious and tumultuary Zeal where he whips the Tradesmen out of the Temple and overthrows the Tables of the Money-changers the very manner of the doing of it does justifie the act it being plainly miraculous that a private man destitute both of arms and authority from men should drive so many both from their station and gain Nor would this zeal seem it never so tumultuous look misbecomingly if we did consider from whence it sprung Our Saviour certainly conceived high indignation and sorrow in his heart while he observed that scorn and contempt those blinde Superstitionists the Iews bore against the poor despised Gentiles in thus profaning their Place of worship But I may not stay here especially having touched upon this Objection already I will only cursorily note this That there was nothing could more effectually attempt to move that milde Spirit of our Saviour to Ire and Impatiency then the scornful Pride and smooth Hypocrisie of great Pretenders to Religion 8. What is alledged against him of Despair and Distrust in God is from those last dreadful and Tragical words Eli Eli lama sabacthani which being uttered in the very pangs of death and insufferable torture if they had been more harsh and unreasonable then they seem there had been little reason to accuse Christ for them Christ then according to his humane nature being at the same disadvantage that those
that they made some of these Tutelar Gods under certain Constellations which is no wonder say I the Host of heaven being the Deities of the Pagans Telesmes and Astrology both rags of that ancient Superstition And Apollonius Tyaneus who trotted and trudged about the world so much to restore the Heathen Religion had an excellent gift if Historians do not belie him of consecrating Telesmes against Storks Gnats Inundations of Rivers Winds and Storms and other noxious Things Which notwithstanding that nasute Sophist Philostratus was willing to omit in his Legend of him as being very solicitous to save him harmless from the imputation of being a Magician as a man may observe by several passages in him So that either way the natural efficacy of Telesmes is discovered to be but a figment But that their Formation is but a Paganical Superstition those more exact Collections and Transcriptions of Gregory will further clear if a man do but peruse them For there he may see how in the building of Cities they did not only consult the Rules of Astrologie for a fit Configuration of the Heavens but also sacrificed and that sometime with mans bloud to the Genius of the place erecting a figure of Brass whereinto as they thought they Telesmatically conveyed the Tutelar Deity of the City Which Statue was therefore placed in some safe Recess or else in some eminent place but whereever it was there they conceived was contained the Fate or Fortune of all Of this sort doubtless was the Trojane Palladium and the Lame and the Blinde that the soul of David so hated 2. Sam. 5. as Gregory has with very good reason I think concluded 5. This is enough to intimate from what Principle these Telesmatical Fooleries sprung let them be of what kind they will And the Effects of them such as are recorded are plainly such as cannot be imputed to the power of the Heavens if we carefully consider the circumstances of things As for example what influence from Heaven can be derived upon a City for having the first stone of it or any one stone of it laid under such an Aspect What is this to the whole City that shall be so many months it may be years in building afterwards Besides that I have already demonstrated the whole Artifice of Astrology to be but a Foppery So that certainly it is nothing but the Consecration of the City and the Recommendation of it to the Tutelage of a Daemon And though we should admit that the Telesmatical Figure of a Stork suppose or a Scorpion may drive away Storks or Scorpions how should the Telesmatical Statue of a Man drive away Men and keep a Fort or Country impregnable from the incursions of the enemy as the silver Statues did buried in the confines of Thracia and Illyria that Valerius commanded to be digged up and taken away upon which those countries within a few daies after were overrun with the Goths and Hunns Besides it is much that the humane Statues should make such a difference as to take part with some men and be against others when the Telesmatical Figures of other Creatures drive away Creatures only of the same Species Which are things utterly inexplicable from the Laws of Nature 6. If there by any Natural Power in these things it must be from Similitude but it is most ridiculous to think that this Similitude has any thing to doe with the Stars For though there be the name there suppose of a Scorpion yet there is no Scorpion there nor the Image of one But if there were any Antiscorpionical Power in that Constellation that Matter or Metall that will receive it at all will receive it in any other figure as well as in the figure of a Scorpion and in some it 's likely better But this Influence being nothing but some thin particles that must pervade the pores of this Brazen Serpent can as easily goe out as come in and will give place to the next influence and so never be the same It is simply therefore the Similitude of a brazen Scorpion that must drive away the Scorpions which no man can imagine any reason for if the experience be true but the communitie of the Spirit of Nature and that Instance of one Chord trembling while that which is unisone to it is struck and of Sympathie in Persons by reason of Similitude and Cognation as in those two young children brothers and extremely like one another born at Riez in France who if one were sick sad sleepy the other would be so also Which are the most plausible reasons that Gaffarel alledges for his so-dearly-beloved Conclusion If therefore Scorpions and Gnats fled from the place upon the making of such a Figure of a Gnat or Scorpion suppose in brass or in any other metall I should think the reason was because the Spirit of Nature being harshly affected in the body of that which has so complete a similitude with such a creature may in some measure raise an harsh sense in those creatures and therefore finding themselves in such a place in an unpleasing temper they will be sure to keep far enough from it But if this be a right cause such a Telesme may be made without any regard to the Configuration of the Heavens Whence again all these Astrological Ceremonies will be demonstrated to be but Fooleries But I shall demonstrate further that this also is a Foolery and that there is no Natural efficacy at all in Telesmes and that from their own History For either Gregory or Gaffarel tells us that if part of a Telesme be broken off the Effect ceases Which we might have alledged as an argument that the virtue is in the Figure merely And they instance in a Telesmatical Crocodile whose chap was broken off For then the Crocodiles returned Which to me is an Indication that the Effect is not from the Spirit of Nature but from some ludicrous and deceitfull Daemons that love to befool Mankind For if Telesmatical Emerods and the Phallus work upon those parts why should not the above-named Crocodile that wanted but a chap work upon all the parts of the Crocodiles but their chaps which would be diseasement enough to keep them away And the Phallus Gregory mentions which he rightly I think reckons amongst these Telesmes cured or diseased the privy parts of the Athenians according as they received the Deity to which they were consecrated From whence a man may conjecture concerning the rest of these Trumperies 7. Again these Telesmes are made against such things as have no life nor sense in them as against Fire and Water Of which the engravements can have no such similitudes one would think as to engage the Spirit of Nature to act any way and yet Gaffarel tells us a very reverend story of a Telesme against Fire found under a bridge at Paris VVhich certainly if it had any natural power to preserve the City from great Fires such as would destroy the
Houses it would also have hâ—ndred them from lighting their candles at a tinder-box and warming their fingers in a frosty morning And yet this curious Philosopher seems to lament the losse of that Telesme they having thereby as he saies exposed the City to frequent Scale-Fires ever since But let the Telesmatical Sculpture of Fire and VVater be never so like insomuch that we may hope that it may affect the Spirit of Nature something there being no sagacity nor sense in the River Lycus suppose which Apollonius curb'd with such a device nor in Fire now existent much lesse that which is to come how can they withdraw themselves from such places where Telesmes are laid up they having not as Animals have the power of spontaneous motion Lastly There are Telesmes that have no similitude at all with the things they are to keep off as that Man on Horseback in brasse set up at Constantinople against Pestilential Infection which say they being once demolished the City has been extraordinarily subject to Plagues and fearful Mortalities That Ship also of brasse there Telesmatically consecrated against the dangers of that tempestuous Sea it had no similitude at all of either the Water or VVinde but yet of such force it was that a piece of it being broke off and lost the Sea returned to its former Unrulinesse but being found and put together the Sea became quiet again They took it therefore apieces again for experience sake and the Windes and Sea were suddenly rough and boistrous so that a Ship could not come up into harbour but the brazen Ship being again handsomely compacted the Windes and Sea were again peacefull and calme Wherefore if a man do but cast an indifferent eye upon the whole matter it will be very difficult for him not to pronounce That he that can believe that the power of Telesmes is natural is more irrationally credulous then the most simple Superstitionist in the world 8. Out of what has been said it is evident that the Brazen Serpent erected by Moses in the Wildernesse was not a Telesme in that sense Gaffarel would understand the word that is a Sculpture Statue or Similitude of something made so by Astrological Art that what Effects it has for the keeping off evil or remedying what has already befallen is merely from the concurrence of natural causes though the Application of them was Artificial the chief whereof is the Influence of the Heavens and the Figure of the Telesme For it is apparent there can be no such But if they mean by a Telesme such a Figure of some creature consecrated in a way of Religion for the services above-named nothing hinders but that the Brazen Serpent may be a Telesme whether from the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies an Image or from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which denotes Consecration And this of Moses was both a warrantable and effectual Telesme For it was by the prescription of God himself and throughly did the effect it was set up for But the cures that it did being supernatural and neither the Figure nor the Matter of the Serpent contributing any thing to the healing of them that were bitten by those fiery flying Serpents it is plain that Moses had been left free from making any such Telesme of the Figure of a Serpent there being nothing in the thing it self to invite him to it had not God moved him thereto Nor can we imagine any other cause why divine Revelation should suggest such a thing unto him unlesse there were some mystery in it Something therefore that did notably concern the Church of God was denoted thereby and what I was a going to say at first having removed all obstacles I now again resume and dare pronounce That it was a plain though Typical Prophecy of the Messias his Passion and of the use of it and so clear that no words could have more punctually prefigured it to us For the Analogy and Resemblance is most exquisite if we cast our eye upon the whole Scene of things 9. For how naturally doe the Israelites in the Wildernesse represent the Church of Christ in the World and their being bitten with fiery flying Serpents our being poisoned and pained with vexatious lusts and remorse of conscience when sin has entred into our Souls What could more lively represent our Saviour upon the Crosse who knowing no sin yet was made sin for us then this Brazen Serpent set upon a pole in the Camp of Israel Which indeed had the outward shape of a fiery flying Serpent but was so far from being a Serpent that it had nothing of a Serpent but external form thereof and healed all them that were bit with those poisonous and deadly Serpents So our blessed Saviour devoid of Sin himself yet being in the most ugly outward appearance of Sinfulnesse that could be put upon him he suffering betwixt two criminal Malefactors as it was prophesied of him that he should be numbred amongst the transgressors he is in this posture where he looks so like Sinfulnesse it self unto the whole Church of God when they are smitten with the fiery excitements of Sin or the deadly pangs or remorse of Conscience those rancorous wounds that Sin leaves in the Soul when she has been once bitten therewith he is I say thus hanging upon the Crosse if they look upon him with the eye of Faith the most soveraign Remedy and the most presentaneous asswagement of their Pain and Malady that can be offered to the thoughts of men I am sure of any humble and well-meaning man 10. But for those that are self-conceited of a perverse Reason and of an high-flown Luciferian Temper that prefer the subtilty of their own opinionated Wit and curious search into all secrets and magnifie their own natural Worth before the Friendship of him that loved us even to the death these men are not fit Relishers of the Sweetnesse of that abundant Goodnesse and kinde Condescension of Divine Providence in his manifestation of Jesus Christ to the world as neither the fiery Enthusiast filled with the sense of his own foolish Revelations and Divine Visitations as he phansies them so stout so stiffe and so perfect as the flatteries of his own Imagination would bear him in hand that he findes nothing but God and himself worth thinking of and will be an immediate Reteiner to the Almighty without any Interposal whatsoever To that height and hardnesse is he swollen in his own conceit But the true Character of him is that which the Apostle Iude has given him that he is but a mouth filled with great swelling words puffed up sensual knowing not the Spirit Such as these are those in too great a measure that wholly neglect the meditation on Christs Passion though it be of so great efficacy for the quenching and suppressing of all the restlesse and fiery motions of Sin in them But execrable Blasphemers are they whose Pride and Conceitednesse has made
misbeseeming their most serious thoughts which is the perfecting and finishing of the Redemption of the Godly VVe shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed and that for the better For whatever is mortal then shall put on Immortality and none of the Saints shall be worse clothed then in a Body of an Heavenly and Aethereal consistence This is that incorruptible crown of Glory of Life and of Righteousness which the Apostles mention and S. Paul expresly declares to be laid up for him against that day namely the Day of Iudgement Which the Lord the righteous Iudge shall give him at that day and not to him alone but to all those that love his appearing that is to say Whose affections and consciences are so sincere that they longingly expect when he will consummate and finish the happinesse of his Church and should be so far from fear that their hearts would exult for joy to hear the sound of the Trump and see the Sky grow bright by the overspreading of his Heavenly Camp in the Air. 2. This Meditation therefore reaching as well the unconverted as the converted it had been ill omitted of us And that it may take the better effect we are to suggest what will be able to break down or prevent such false and foolish Fortifications as the Minde of man may rear up against it to bear off the powerful Assaults it makes upon his Soul and Conscience These are chiefly two The one the long Intervall of time from hence to that Day which makes the terrour thereof little as things seem lesse the farther they are removed from our eyes The second is the hope that within so long a space they may have time to repent and be converted though they live as they lift in this life For they may prepare themselves for that Day in the other life which is to come But to the first I answer That the approach of this Day is very uncertain by reason of the obscurity of Prophecies and of the very Completions of them and is left so for the present exercise of the good and the perpetual vexation of the wicked both in this state of things and that which is to come His appearance therefore will be sudden like a Comet or blazing-Star which no man could tell when it would first appear but more terrible and minacious by farre not threatning the death of this or that Prince or the change of this or that State but the overturning of all States and Kingdoms and the burning up the Earth with all the Works and Inhabitants thereof with unquenchable Fire And that evil which a man does not know but may begin to morrow if duely thought upon cannot seem at a great distance but near at hand and ready to surprise him 3. To the other I answer That he that wilfully rejects the offers of Grace and Opportunities of becoming holy and good in This life he shall have no more priviledge in the other then the Devils themselves have who as S Iude expresly tels us are reserved in everlasting chains of Darknesse unto the Iudgement of the great Day who shall then inevitably undergo the Fate of Sodom and Gomorrha who are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal Fire And what manner of Persons these are Iude and Peter have both very graphically described such as had totally evaded all obligation to true Holinesse and Righteousnesse and were of an impure and foul conversation Filthy dreamers defiling the Flesh despising Dominion and speaking evil of Dignities Followers of Balaam perverting the truth for a reward Spots in the Christian Societies feeding themselves without fear Clouds without water blown about with every winde of false doctrine Fruitless Trees Raging waves of the Sea foaming out their own shame Wandring Starres to whom is reserved the blacknesse of darkness for ever No more hope of them therefore then of Lucifer and his accursed Accomplices And S. Peter pronounces the same sentence of them for they are plainly the same persons namely bold and daring spirits arrogant and self-conceited despising government and reproaching authority such as speaking great swelling words of vanity allure through the lusts of the flesh in much wantonnesse those that were clean escaped from them that live in errour Day-rioters having their eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin or forbear the recommending of the liberty thereof to others but beguile unstable souls Having their hearts exercised with crafty and covetous practises Wells without water Clouds carried about with Tempests adjudged to utter darkness for ever For with the Devils they are cast down into Hell and delivered up even as they to chains of darknesse to be reserved to the day of Iudgement 2 Pet. 2. So that there is no more hope of such impenitent Sinners that have laid waste their Consciences and wilfully neglected or resisted the manifold convictions clear illuminations and frequent offers of Grace and Assistance from the dispensations of the Gospel after this life then there is of those old Apostates the wicked spirits that are kept as Prisoners in Hell till that fearful and terrible Day of the Lord. 4. That Day of the Lord wherein all unbelieving Flesh shall tremble and every Face gather blackness For this will prove a day of Wrath indeed a day of Anguish and Distresse a day of Devastation and Desolatenesse a day of Darknesse and of Gloominesse a day of Clouds and of thick Darknesse a day of the Trumpet and Alarm against the fenced Cities and the high Towers not of Iudah only but against all the Nations of the Earth For the Lord himself will descend from Heaven to revenge him of his Enemies He shall take to him his Iealousie for compleat Armour and turn the whole Creation into weapons of his displeasure His severe wrath shall be sharpened for a sword and the World shall fight with him against the unwise Then shall the right-aiming Thunderbolts go abroad and from the Clouds as from a well-drawn Bow shall they fly to the mark And hail-stones of wrath shall be cast as out of a Stone-bow and the waters of the Sea shall boil and rage against them and hot scalding Flouds shall overflow them and drown them and they shall be blown about with fiery Windes and wearied out with the whirlwinde and they shall have no Peace nor Solace for ever The Moon and Stars shall withdraw their shining and the Sun shall be turned into bloud For nothing but Mists and Fogs and Stench nothing but sulphureous Vapours smoring Heat dark Clouds charged with horrid Thunder and Lightning immense Earthquakes and innumerable Eruptions of subterraneous Flames crackling Volcanoes smoaking Mountains high flakes and tortuous streams of Fire from burning Forrests and Woods lowd Shreeks and howlings of affrighted Men and Beasts grim and grisly Apparitions deep and dreadful Groans of tormented Ghosts nothing but such uncomfortable Objects as these shall fill up the Scene of
Ghost by his mysterious union with the Eternal Word by his miraculous Resurrection from the dead and by his visible Ascension into Heaven and Session now at the right hand of his Father This is warrant enough to do all Divine homage to our blessed Saviour as to the only-begotten Son of God And truly the Church to give them their due has not been sparing the very constitution of our Religion being so effectual for this purpose For so Divine a Person as Christ was namely The very Son of God and yet condescending to undergoe so horrid a death for the World how could engaged Mankind stint themselves from shewing of all manner of expressions of Love and Devotion toward him 3. Wherefore they erected innumerable magnificent Structures of Temples Chappels and other Religious Edifices and consecrated them to his Name They endowed the Christian Priesthood with ample Riches and Dignities set up Church-musick sung divine Anthems in honour of our Saviour adorned their Churches celebrated his Passion with unexpressible reverence instituted Festivals and filled both Time and Place with such variety of Ornaments that a man might observe that the greatest part of the Splendour and Pomp of Christendom was in reference to their Religion Which certainly would have been a very goodly and lovely spectacle if Superstition Hypocrisie and Ecclesiastick Tyranny could have been kept out 4. But this External Worship and the Ceremonies thereof things equally performable by the evil and the good by the regenerate and mere natural man these took growth enormously and like ranck Weeds choaked the Corn or what happens in full and over-fed bodies in which natural heat and activity is very much lost the huge load and bulk of visible Formalities extinguished the Life and Spirit of Religion 5. But however this outward Homage to our Saviour continued and does continue in a great measure over the face of Christendom to this very day though their expressions are not alike courtly every where Which continuation of Divine Honour done unto him cannot but gratifie his faithfully-devoted Servants they having a deep resentment of the shameful Sufferings their Lord and Master underwent out of his dear love to them and therefore do naturally rejoyce at this Tribute of Divine Adoration the World gives to so holy and sacred a Person it being so sutable a part of compensation of his Humiliation and Reproach Besides that they receive some satisfaction that Divine Providence has so brought it about touching the true Members of Christ whose Principles are so opposite to the Guise of the world and their Persons so contemptible that yet the World are fain with the lowest prostrations to adore that in Christ which they kick about and trample upon so in his despised Members But I will insist no longer on this Theme having spoke enough of it elsewhere We have now shewn the Usefulness of the Mystery of Godlinesse in all holy and religious respects I shall adde only a word or two in reference to things of this Life and so conclude the fourth part of my Discourse CHAP. XX. 1. The Usefulnesse of Christianity for the good of this life witnessed by our Saviour and S. Paul 2. The proof thereof from the Nature of the thing it self 3. Objections against Christianity as if it were an unfit Religion for States Politick 4. A Concession that the primary intention of the Gospel was not Government Political with the advantage of that Concession 5. That there is nothing in Christianity but what is highly advantageous to a State-Politick 6. That those very things they object against it are such as do most effectually reach the chief end of Political Government as doth Charity for example 7. Humility Patience and Mortification of inordinate desires 8. The invincible Valour that the love of Christ and their fellow-members inspires the Christian Souldiery withall 1. THat Christianity contributes also to the Happinesse of this present World is evident both from the Testimony of Christ and his Apostles and also from the nature of the thing it self Matth. 6. Where our Saviour having exhorted us not to be over-sollicitous for the things of this Life food and raiment setting before our eyes the care of Divine Providence in Creatures of far lesse price then our selves how the Fowls of the Air are provided for that neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns how gloriously the Lilies of the Field are arraied that neither weave nor spin he concludes That we should not so eagerly and carefully seek after those things as worldly-minded men do But seek ye first the kingdom of God saith he and his righteousnesse and all these things shall be added unto you For your Heavenly Father knows that ye have need of all these things And Paul to Timothy Godlinesse is profitable for all things having the promise of this life and that which is to come 2. And if we consider the nature of the thing it self there is an accruement of present Happinesse from true Christianity not only by virtue of Promise but even by natural dependence of Causes and Events especially when that Christian frame of Spirit has arrived to any considerable degree of perfection and maturity For there is no such obliging person in the world as a mature and ripe Christian nor any truer Policy then to be obliging Which Temper the more sincere it is the more taking it is and the more sure Fortress against adverse Fortune Wherefore what advantage Humanity has he has it in the greatest measure Besides that his calm and castigate spirit makes him sensible discreet above all expression and of a sagacity beyond all conceit of the unregenerate man His Faithfulnesse also and honest and chearful Industry have their proper blessing attending them And his moderate desires of Riches and Honours and his laudable use of them unblemished with any blot of either sordid Covetousnesse or vain Ostentation prevents or beats back the ill-aimed darts of secret Malice and Envy And if but a meaner share of the things of this world be allotted to him yet his contentments are not the lesse he finding that true which both David and Solomon have pronounced That better is a little that the righteous has then great possessions of the ungodly And when more unsupportable pressures and afflictions fall upon him such as great Fits of Sicknesse Imprisonment and the Approaches of Death his Advantages in this Condition are unspeakably above what any other mortal is capable of For the more these urge his outward man the more his inward is inflamed and excited to the exercise of those powers that are most holy and precious and needing no admonition though so fit and apposite as that of Epictetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Circumstances of things themselves will assuredly awaken this Christian Champion to the exertion of all the strength of his Soul and to the successful use of his spiritual weapons wherewith he is armed against the day of battel For
That the punctual Correspondence of the Event to the Prediction of the Astrologer does not prove the certainty of the Art of Astrology 5. The great Affinity of Astrology with Daemonolatry and of the secret Agency of Daemons in bringing about Predictions 6. That by reason of the secret or familiar Converse of Daemons with pretended Astrologers no argument can be raised from Events for the truth of this Art 7. A Recapitulation of the whole matter argued 8. The just occasions of this Astrological excursion and of his shewing the ridiculous condition of those three high-flown Sticklers against Christianity Apollonius Cardan and Vaninus 356 BOOK VIII CHAP. I. THE End and Usefulness of Christian Religion in general 2. That Christ came into the World to destroy Sin out of it 3. His earnest recommendation of Humility 4. The same urged by the Apostle Paul 361 CHAP. II. 1. Christs enforcement of Love and Charity upon his Church by Precept and his own Example 2. The wretched imposture and false pretensions of the Family of Love to this divine Grace 3. The unreasonableness of the Familists in laying aside the person of Christ to adhere to such a carnal and inconsiderable Guide as Hen. Nicolas 4. That this Whifler never gave any true Specimens of real love to Mankinde as Christ did and his Apostles 5. His unjust usurpation of the Title of Love 6. The unparallel'd endearmentâ— of Christs sufferings in the behalf of Mankiâ—d 364 CHAP. III. 1. The occasion of the Familists usâ—rpation of the Title of Love 2. Earnest precepts oâ—t of the Apostles to follow Love and what kind of Love that is 3. That we câ—nnot love God unlesse we love our neighbour also 4. An Exposition of the 5 and 6 verses of the 1 chapter of the 2 Epist. of S. Peter 5. Saint Paul's rapturous commendation of Charity 6 His accurate description thereof 7. That Love is the highest participation of the Divinity and that whereby we become the Sons of God Aâ—d how injurious these Fanaticks are that rob the Church of Christ of this title to appropriate it to themselves 368 CHAP. IV. 1. Our Saviour's strict injuction of Purity from whence it is also plain that the Love he commends is not in any sort fleshly but Divine 2. Several places out of the Apostles urging the same duty 3. Two more places to the same purpose 4. The groundless presumption of those that abuse Christianity to a liberty of sinning 5. That this Errour attempted the Church betimes and is too taking at this very day 6. Whence appears the necâ—ssiâ—y of opposing it which he promises to do taking the rise of his Discourse from 1 Iohn 3.7 373 CHAP. V. 1. The Apostle's care for young Christians against that Errour of thinking they may be righteous without doing righteously 2. Their obnoxiousness to this contagion with the Causes thereof to be searched into 3. The first sort of Scriptures perverted to this ill end 4. The second sort 5. That the very state of Christian Childhood makes them prone to this Errour 6. What is the nature of that Faith Abraham is so much commended for and what the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 7. A search after the meaning of the term Justification 8. Justification by faith without the deeds of the Law what may be the meaning of it 9. Scriptures answered that seem to disjoin Reall Righteousness from Faith 10. And to make us only righteous by imputation 11. Undeniable Testimonies of Scripture that prove the necessity of real Righteousness in us 376 CHAP. VI. 1. Their alledgement of Gal. 2.16 as also of the whole drift of that Epistle 2. What the Righteousness of faith is according to the Apostle 3. In what sâ—â—se those that are in Christ are said not to be under the Law 4. That the Righteousness of faith is no figment but a reality in us 5. That this Righteousness is the New Creature and what this new Creature is according to Scripture 6. That the new Creature consists in Wisdome Righteousness and true Holiness 7. The Righteousness of the new Creature 8. His Wâ—sdome and Holiness 9. That the Righteousness of faith excludes not good Works The wicked treachery of those that teach the contrary 384 CHAP. VII 1. That no small measure of Sanctity serves the turn in Christianity 2. As appears out of Scriptures already alledged 3. Further proofs thereof out of the Prophets 4. As also out of the Gospel 5. And other places of the New Testament 6. The strong Armature of a Christian Souldier 7. His earnest endeavour after Perfection 388 CHAP. VIII 1. That the Christians assistance is at least equal to this task 2. The two Gospel-powers that comprehend his duty 3. The first Gospel-aid The Promise of the Spirit with Prophecies thereof out of Ezekiel and Esay 4. Some hints of the mystical meaning of the last 5. Another excellent prediction thereof 391 CHAP. IX 1. The great use of the belief of The Promise of the Spirit 2. The eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his bloud what it is 3. Further proof of the Promise of the Spirit 4. That we cannot oblige God by way of Merit 5. Other Testimonies of Scripture tending to the former purpose 395 CHAP. X. 1. A Recapitulation of what has been set down hitherto concerning the Usefulness of the Gospel and the Necessity of undeceiving the world in those points that so nearly concern Christian Life 2. The ill condition of those that content themselves with Imaginary Righteousness figured out in the Fighters against Ariel and Mount Sion 3. A further demonstration of their fond conceit 4. That a true Christian cannot sin without pain and torture to himself 398 CHAP. XI 1. That the want of real Righteousness deprives us of the Divine Wisdome proved out of Scripture 2. As also from the nature of the thing it self 3. That is disadvantages the Soul also in Natural speculations 4. That it stifles all Noble and laudable Actions 5. And exposes the imaginary Religionist to open reproach 6. That mere imaginary Righteousness robs the Soul of her peace of Conscience 7. And of all divine Ioy 8. Of Health and Safety 9. And of eternal Salvation 10. That God also hereby is deprived of his Glory and the Church frustrated of publick Peace and Happiness 400 CHAP. XII 1. Of the attending to the Light within us of which some Spiritualists so much boast 2. That they must mean the Light of Reason and Conscience thereby if they be not Fanaticks Mad-men or Cheats And that this Conscience necessarily takes information from without 3. And particularly from the Holy Scriptures 4. That these Spiritualists acknowledge the fondness of their opinion by their contrary practice 5. An appeal to the Light within them if the Christian Religion according to the literal sense be not true 6. That the Operation of the Divine Spirit is not absolute but restrained to certain laws and conditions as it is in the Spirit of
understand the Providence of God the purpose of Prophecies and the Authority of that Religion which God has peculiarly appointed us to walk in without external assistances How can you make a due judgement of the Truth of Christianity without a rational explication of the Prophecies that foretold the coming of Christ without weighing what may be said concerning the authentickness and uncorruptedness of his History in the Gospels and without considering the Reasonableness of all those Miraculous matters there recorded concerning him and of what is behinde for him to perform at his visible return to judge the quick and the dead No light within you unassisted of helps without and of the knowledge of History Tongues and Sciences and carefull exercise of Reason that excellent gift of God to mankinde can ever make you competent Judges of this matter 9. And as you do thus forfeit the knowledge of the Truth by this sullen Self-sufficiency of yours within so do you also endanger your eternal Salvation For you cannot justly excuse your selves by the close following the light within you if you do it in such a contemptuous manner that you will listen to nothing offered you from without though never so accommodate and agreeable to those rational Faculties God has given you Wherefore it being no necessitated ignorance but your own wilfulness that has made you Apostates from the Law of Christ your unbelief is no abrogation of that Law to you but stop your ears as hard against it as you can yet you shall be judged by it at the last day when you having not served God as he would be served he will assuredly reward you as you would not be rewarded For there is no other Name under Heaven whereby we must be saved but that of Iesus Christ of Nazareth whom the Iews crucified and God raised from the dead Wherefore you who make it the chiefest point of your Religion to crucifie him again by celebrating that execrable Pascha or Phase which is your detestable killing of Christ according to the flesh that it to say according to the Letter or History which is to put Christ out of all his Offices assigned to him by his Father and to turn mere Pagans and Infidels think as smoothly and favourably of your selves as you will that doom must pass upon you at last not according to your self-flattering Mysteries but according to the truth of the Letter which shall adjudge all the wicked to that everlasting fire which is prepared for the Devil and his Angles CHAP. XIII 1. The Authours application to the better-minded Quakers 2. He desires them of that Sect to search the grounds and compute the gains of their Revolt from Christ. 3. That there are no peculiar Effects of the Spirit of God in the Sect of the Quakers but rather of Pythonisme 4. That their Inspirations are not divine but diabolicall 5. The vanity of their boasting of the knowledge of their mysterious Allegories 6. The grounds of their insufferable bitterness against the Ministers of Christ. 7. That he was urged by the light within him to give witnesse to the Truth of the History of the Gospel and to admonish the Quakers His caution to the simple-minded among them how they turn in to Familisme 8. His ease and satisfaction of minde from disburdening himself of this duty 9. The compassionablenesse of their condition 10. And hope of their return to Christ. 1. KNowing therefore the terrour of the Lord we were earnestly moved in minde to forewarn you and exhort you I mean as many of you are curable and reducible to the Truth For some have celebrated that accursed Pascha so fully and obdurately that they are become past feeling having not any sense nor hope left of the concerns of another life God having justly given them up to a reprobate sense for the denying of the Lord that bought them But for you whose defection is not compleated nor your eyes sealed up to perfect infidelity let me desire you to make a stand awhile to lay your hands upon your own hearts and impartially examine your selves what you would have where you would be and what good thing you would seek that is not plainly exposed to your view in the Gospel of Christ. You had begun well Who has hindred you What has tempted you out of the way Do you now sincerely seek the kingdom of Heaven or gape after a booty upon Earth Examine your own Consciences and answer to your selves I desire not to broach your shame But I hope you will not account me injurious if I take notice of such things as you conceal from none 2. Search therefore your own hearts and try your selves what manner of Spirit has taken hold upon you since you have been so imbittered against the School of Christ. There is no Vertue you can pretend to that is not comprehended in his Life and Doctrine in the highest perfection and clearnesse How can you then take a new guide unless it be to be led into some pleasing errour And truly it is no small pleasure to the proud to have something separate and peculiar of their own to seem wiser and holier then other men And I desire you to appeal to your own Conscience how great a stroke this Vice has had in furthering on your Apostasy and beseech you to compute if you be still serious in Religion what you have gained by your revolt Is your Reason any thing more improved nay certainly that ye have cut off and cast from you as carnal and unholy Are you more humble and more charitable If you be you do ill to conceal your Vertues who would have the World believe so highly of you You affect indeed to be very homely and sordid in your habits but you do not perceive how sowr your affected sordidness smels of the leven of the Pharisees who loved to be seen of men and how you have but licked up what Diogenes that Pagan Sophist left in his Tub and have chosen rather to be proud Cynicks then civil Christians And if your Humility have so strong a sent of Pride how noisomely does your Pride it self stink in the nostrils of all men your disrespect to your betters your sawciness your censoriousness quite contrary to the precepts and practice of all holy men in all Ages Your Humility therefore being so little your Charity certainly cannot be great For indeed you count all besides your selves a rude unsanctified mass the Weeds of the World fit for nothing but the fire of your Fanatick wrath to burn up I but you will say though you have forgone your Reason and good manners yet you have the Spirit of God amongst you which is worth all If you have shew me the fruit thereof For Pharisaical sowrnesse Contest with the Magistrate affronting the Minister in his publick Function these are no fruits of the Spirit of God but these alone with certain clownish forms of calling Thou for You and keeping on the Hat