I came I beheld great store of pictures and images in Churches of Roman catholicks which being in the postures either of their bloody martyrdoms which for their religion they underwent or apostolical sacrifice or sacred retirements meditations or other exercise of their faith hope or charity either towards God or their neighbours apostles martyrs confessours hermites monks virgins kings queens byshops as they made a goodly show so did they mightily assist the fansy unto a more united thought of the religion people came into the Church to fulfil and solemnise But the altar is seldom without the pourtraicts of Jesus and his Virgin Mother but never without the Crucifix the sight of all which is apt to cast into the mind of such as enter into the Church that meditation of the apostle in his epistle to the Hebrewes Non accessistis ad tractabilem montem accensibilem ignem c. Ye are not com to the high towring mount flaming fire and whirlwind and darknes and storm and sound of trumpet and nois of words which they that heard excused themselves and requested to hear it no more and it seemed so terrible that Moyses himself stood trembling and affrighted but ye are come to Mount Sion to the city of our living God to celestiall Jerusalem and society of angels the Church of primitive Christians conscript in heaven to God the Judge of all to the spirits of just perfect men to Jesus the mediatour of a new testament and to the Aspersion of blood speaking better things than Able And all these representations so much concurring to devotion and piety as they do the doctrine and men who tore them down and cast them out of our English Churches and broke and hewed them in pieces with so much rage could not be any friends whatever they might pretend either to our mount Sion or the citty of our living God the celestial Jerusalem society of angels the Church of primitive Christians or to the spirits of just men perfected or to Jesus mediatour of the new testament or lastly to the aspersion of blood speaking better things than Abel all which was there pour-traited and described It is the judgment of all men that the violation of an Image redounds to the Prototype and therefore Kings not only in Christendom but beyond it use to punish a grand traitour either deceased or fled even in his effigie Every particular person loves to behold the picture of him he esteems and again if he hate the person he detests the face thus even our late rebells here in England after they had murthered our good King shot his pictures with bullets and broke them with their cimiters and spears all the land over Thy adversaries saith the Prophet have roared and raged in the midst of thy synagogues and for thy ensigns have set up their own banners as once of those who with strong exes cut up the thickest of timber unto the temples structure it was esteemed an honourable and noble work in them so is it countd now if any on the contrary break in pieces thy sculptures with axe hammers they were Gods enemies then that did all this and that brake down his sculptures and by those very works of theirs concluded to be his enemies by a great Prophet who well enough understood who was Gods friend and who his foe If any would consider the constitution and exigence of mans nature he would soon find not only the convenience but necessity of such helps as ocular representations afford us for the fansy hath nothing but what it receives from the senses and the intellect works upon nothing but what it has from fansy and therfore did God make man in the last place after heaven and earth was framed to the end that in so great a variety of sensible objects he might find somthing to think of even in the first instant of his being wheras if he had been made before other things he had stood like a stock or stone without any possibility of a thought Now nothing administers to the fansy and consequently to the mind with that variety and life and power as doth the eye the supplies of the ear care but dead things to it especially in the account of exciting desire and love let Cicero speak a whole day upon the beauties of a princely seat countrey city man or woman yet when the eye comes once to see the thing in its own properties it discerns and represents more at one glance than could his or all the oratory in the world ever by the help of the ear imprint into the mind Indeed who is so ignorant that he has not observed ere this that the eye has a hundred fold the actuosity of the ear nor is it unknown what strange melting affections are caused in the heart by a continual sight and meditation of some sacred pictur of the Crucifix when sermons float by and effect little or nothing in comparison even as worldly objects so long as they are coached in aiery words pass away like wind but once seated in the throne of the eye they move impetuously Nor can all the ministers in the world give me a reason why the eye in a sacred purpos may not have the helps of her species as well as the ear have hers or why the minde that is to be moved and can never be moved too much in such things may not as well have the quicker as duller assistance For when any one preaches upon the Passion of Christ does he do any thing els but labour to work out such representations in the ear and minde as oratory may effect for the moving of affections corresponding to such an object and if such good meditations put into a book of devotion be assisted with an ocular representation which is more quick and full and carries more of life with it what harm is it surely he that deprives me of the more lively helps never means whatever he pretend I should have any cordial feeling of the things he talks of And verily the Protestant pretenses for their removal of images out of our Churches are but simple ones and the simpler they be the the better it seems they serve the deluded vulgar First say they God has in his commandements forbidden the making of graven images Good and has he so do you not find too that he commanded it see if he did not give order in the same scripture for Cherubins and Seraphins to be made and set up in his sanctum sanctorum over the ark what then did God or Moses forget himself and contradict his own words or are you blind or only catholicks fools or what is the matter Look seriously and you shall find that Moses forbad prophane and forreign images but he commanded his own though he disliked the ugly face of Molech Dagon and Astaroth yet did not he therefor will his people should tear down his own Cherubins And Christians likewise have not any images of Simon
the reason is very good for the true Church wherein Christ really resides is ever in a posture of quietness and defens But they that go out of her and set up new wayes of their own are ever in clamour and dissention which of them should do it best and the cry is heard aloud and without ceas Here Here. Christ is here saith the Protestant and not amongst the Papists nay quoth the Presbyterian by your favour he is Here nay then sayes the Anabaptist Here he is if you be at that quoth the Quaker you are all blinded men if any would find the true light com to us for here it is and no where but here But when all is done truth is not in division but unity not in sedition and clamour but meekness and peace If ten men stand gazing in a street and all agree that they see a thing there but disagree all in the description of it a stranger coming by will rather guess they are all mad than that they see any thing at all One thing I am sure of if all men would be humble minded and sober and cast out of their hearts the great prejudice they have taken up against one another they would see the better for it To conclude this subject for I would say no more than what may help to lop the vain and superfluous excrescencies of faction and dissentions about religion which perhaps none of us do rightly understand and would be loth to cut the tree it self to the quick it may appear sufficiently by what I have said and yet far more if we joyn our own experimental knowledg and ratiocination of further things which I do purposely omit that God is in himself an unsearchable abyss and his essence and counsels past finding out nay he is the great primo genial and father-abyss of all others not to be approached by angels or men but according to such few exteriour conceptions himself hath either revealed or imprinted in them which be far from reaching home either to his counsels or proper essence And who hath been his mate or counsellour that he should tell us news of him never heard before If any news there be of him it is surely to be had from Christ whom we beleev to be his very substantial word and the splendour of his glory and if Christ hath left any secrets of him to be revealed unto mankind we must have them from his Church which is the pillar and foundation and treasury of all his truth and if any Church is to be consulted I should think it should be that and only that which by an uninterrupted succession hath descended from himself which is that very same that first brought Christian religion into this land which without all controversy is the Catholick now by contempt surnamed Papist and if any one be otherwise minded etiam hoc Deus ipsi revelabit In the mean time let us be peaceable and sober §. 7. Obscurity of nature THe second abyss is that of Gods works and the whole creation which all men that have considered it aright find unfoardable and if any have not let me crave his company a while but in a slight survay of this wondrous fabrick and then tell me what he thinks When we confider those myriads of intelligencies angels and spirits and the whole intellectual world the first exteriour issue of divine brightness we are not then much nearer apprehension of any thing in particular than in the first abyss what they are either for substance or place or operation or extent of presence or knowledg or power or motion or order or any thing els in particular In the visible world we begin a little to find our feeling and know at least where we are but not much more Here we see a wonderful face of things but what els what is the basis on which all the frame stands and how is it setled upon it in its various and stupendious motions the order of things little or nothing appears their essences altogether unknown their properties dependances and mutual connexion obscure their limits and vigour and duration and influences doubtful their motions uncertain the mode method and chain of operation utterly hidden And what is it then we know wherein consists the excellency of our science that we should boast our selves and contemn the world and what are we able to determin in the truth of these things without uncertainty and errour This our ignorance of nature is sufficiently insinuated and evinced in that solid piece of moral-divinity in sacred writ commonly called Job from ch 38 to 42. It were worth my pains to insert here all that eloquent discours But becaus the Bible is in every mans hand he that pleases may read it there at leasure And although Doctor Brown say in his Vulgar errours as I remember that the difficulties of nature there propounded will now adayes be easily answered by every puny scholler yet those words of his be unwary both becaus those intricacies of the creation are there propounded by no less a person than almighty God as insoluble and not to be dived into by man as also becaus the Doctour if he consider right cannot but know that he that were able to give a full satsifactory reason even of the smaller things in nature as the winde or rain would be able to tell what weather it would be or what wind would blow every day in the year in any part of the earth until the worlds end so sure and fixed is the whole frame of nature But such kind of puny schollers the world never yet saw And although man sees and knows enough in nature to make him admire and adore the Authour yet not to contend with him in questions and replies about it The whole world is an immens intangled gordian knot which the wisest of men could never yet untye or discern the intermingled series of the many voluminous causes concatenated therein Even the progress of a poor plant from its seed to its decay who can declare or conceiv it so many several seeds both of plants and animals how do they shoot forth so orderly into their parts and organs peculiar each one to themselvs where lies that celestial particle in the little seminal origen which is the spring of life and motion in every thing In the first primogenial sours how is distinguished either kind from kinde or part from part in the same kind and which is that part that is to run forth into the head and which into the arms and how is it done I see wheat and barley elm and oak hors and man to shoot up constantly each one from their own seed in their own proper and peculiar mode and method and perhaps an angel or intelligence may distinctly see the reason of all in the very seeds for som reason is certainly there to be seen but what man can do it how comes such variety of bulk parts odour and colour unto
flowers there is a reason it must needs be so and no otherwis than so what is it Be there put case a thousand plants upon earth much mineral and metal within it huge variety of birds and fish and beasts about it what is it we know of all this from the egge to the apple If the earths semidiameter be three or four thousand miles what lies hid in all that vast bosom Do the seas meet in a center as well as close in a surface what preservs this vast globe of earth in its huge entrails that it rot not and tumble all into putrefied heaps and we with it what rivers run hurrying under ground to and fro crossing one another in several depths of earth like veins in the great massy body whence com they and whither do they go Pursue the river of Thames to his first original and tell me how far it creeps under ground before its appearance and whether it proceed at length from som greater subterraneous channel like a small artery from a vein and whence that underground channel it self proceeds and if from the ocean from what part of it and how and where and whether all rivers that appear in our hemisphere fall to us by som secret passage under earth from the seas of our antipodes How comes the crumbling earth to be made to flow in tenacious liquid streams so rare and yet so strangely compact that water even in a bottle can hardly be crowded nearer What is the true nature of air and the etherial limits The earth and sun which of them moves about the other and why within the limits of the zodiaque What is the order in that camp of glory over our heads are the stars like the stones in the street without any rank as they seem to our eye and what are they holes in a solid firmament where the glimpses of glory above dart forth unto the eyes of mortals or solid bodies themselvs and all suspended in liquid air as our earth is and what sustains either our earth or them what shoves them on so equally in their cours do they move daily through all that vast expans so that they must necessarily fly so many thousands of our miles in one hours space as we conceiv or is that errour ingendred in us by our own motion either upon our own or the worlds axletree what creatures live there or be there in the univers no other corporal intellectual creature but man in this our earthly system to serv contemplate and bless that infinite holy one who is the conserver and caus of all things A man of himself might easily doubt it for it makes more to the glory of that great blessed Being that he should be enjoyed praised and served in worlds innumerable under innumerable degrees of perfection by creatures intellectual of several modes constitutions and excellencies rather than onely in this one world of ours a world of known ignorance and darknes a world of sin and malice that probably may lie under som unknown malediction it knows not his own weal and as little heeds it when it is known a world of much naughtines and so far alienated from God and true piety and peace that Origen seems not irrationally to conceit it to be a hous of correction for offendours delivered up for som space unto the prince of darknes not much beside the fansy of good S. Paul who was as good a philosopher as divine to inveigle harrass and plague us for a season This book of the creation or volum of Gods works is a noble and most excellent bible opened to us here on earth altho in part only for our exercise being intellectual indeed but the most infantile intellect that can be imagined opened I say to us to look on as little children upon a primer whose letters they see but know none of them nor yet their connexion or end to other more excellent corporeal creatures in the stars above if any there be for further understanding and knowledg and to incorporeal intelligences for a more absolute apprehension But our looking upon the world is not to be meerly sensual and exteriour as a hors or a cow looks up to the sun but a savory and affectionate speculation if we will have it a humane action our want of knowledg being supplied by love in admiring that power whose works we see indeed but cannot comprehend Hence it might not irrationally be beleeved although religion were silent that the soul of man is surely immortal and that an intellect such as mans is being admitted by his creatour to a rational sight of his works as all know ours is and the bruits is not shall at length he translated unto some better state of more perfect and comprehensiv knowledg both of his works and providence and essence too which here we cannot attain For so we use to put little books into the hands of our infant children when they can make little more use of them than a bruit to accustom them to the outward sight of that they shall afterward in their riper growth more fully understand but we do not the like to young whelps or fawns altho at their birth they seem far more mature than one of our slavering babes becaus the nature of such creaturs will in no state be able to reach the knowledg Hence I say may proceed a suspicion of our souls immortality which is afterward strengthened by religion and philosophy The beasts of the field see nothing but their food but man sees that is considers and admires all things visible and invisible I mean in his human life and operation for man is so set in the horizon of eternity and corruption that he may betake himself unto which life he pleases either human or bestial and it is in his power either to make himself a beast or angel this by superiour and intellectual that by inferiour and sensual propensions thoughts and operations but with this difference that a created angel or intelligence shall still have a greater amplitude of intellect by precedency of nature and exacter clearnes of thought by segregation from all matter but a made angel or the spirit of man angelized may have notwithstanding through the difficulty of his combate a greater crown of glory and comfort at the feet of his maker §. 8. Item NOt to wander from my purpos The gulf of the creation is indeed but a secondary abyss and nearer to our feeling but far from our comprehension sith we neither know the nature of those visible bodies we behold both above and below us nor the manner of their first rise when they started out of their ancient nothing nor their dependances one upon another nor their motions nor the limit and extent either of the elements and stars or of all the univers together For is the world finite where ends it in the highest stars who can tell if we were there but that our eye should still discover other new
wonder take any one kingdom under his spiritual jurisdiction and they shall remain a hundred yea thousand years in all peace and unity upon religions account But let that kingdom once divide and separate from him and presently all those very self same byshops who before in their subordination to the Pope easily mannaged the peoples consciences and kept them in a most orderly peaceablenes not know in their separation from him which way to turn themselves but that heresies and schismes will rise and augment themselves without end in despight of all their power and endeavours as if unity and truth and peace were tied to the Popes chair Those that understand not catholick religion have stood many of them exceedingly amazed at this consideration and not without caus for whence can this happen It is not becaus Popes are all saints and only they for the venerable and renowned priests under him and great multitudes of people about him in all nations which shine like stars in the firmament may be without controul as good and holy many of them as himself and although Popes be for the most part very good civil and discreet men yet if it should happen that som one be no better than he should yet even that man shall be as zealous of unity in religion and preserv it as exactly as the best which exalts our wonderment unto such a height that we are even forced to acknowledg that there is some great secret in this business not easily to be resolved for all other byshops and princes the more worldly and sensual they be the less care have they of their flock and people If we shall say that these be the great powers of God upon him the doubt is at an end and a reason appears why people do fear so much to be excluded his communion if this be not admitted I am at a loss and can find no reason why a good king and true head of his Church if himself or the people can make him so should not be able by his acknowledged autority and sword to keep his own subjects in an unity of faith and peace as well as a bad Pope for so we beleev them all to be and pretended head keeps together other mens subjects of different manners and languages without sword or axe or corporal rods only by the meer love of his communion and fear they have to lose it Nor can we say that new opinions about religion are never broacht among catholiks for this as it cannot be expected amongst so many millions of great wits and spirits that be amongst them up and down the world so is it so far from being true that all the heresies that have rose in Christianity were invented ever by some catholick I mean that had been formerly such for his opposition to and apostacy from his general Pastour makes him ceas to be catholick any longer and generally by priests who preferring their own judgments before their pastours and the tradition they had hitherto walked by in the pride of their hearts led people after them out of the fold of the Church And whoever does so puts himself by his own autority in locum Petri and is to be looked upon by all good Catholicks who have care of their own salvation as a dangerous guide Thus did first begin our own Protestancy by Martin Luther Calvin and other fallen priests and the fall of murmuring Judas from the colledg of apostles of contesting Adam and Eve from the bliss of paradise of dissenting Lucifer and his angels from heaven who are said to dispute with Michael and his angels as Luther did with Eckius and his fellow Catholicks signifie nothing else But what does the Pape or Christian pastour do in this case When the tumult is once raised and a disorder begun in any part of his flock by som proud turbulent spirit amongst them the Pape first whistles him and his fellow petulcous rams into order by charitable admonition which still increases lowder by degrees and if this will not serv but that they will still be refractory he casts in his shepheards crook amongst them and divides the turbulent from the peaceful and so the infection stayes The disquiet ones being driven out depart in a rout together but within a while they separate and walk by sixes and seavens and subdivide at length so often that at last they go single whiles every sheep amongst them will be a ram and every ram a shepheard But the other quiet ones that hear the voice of their sheapherd and follow him in peace as becoms sheep to do enjoy all happines and spiritual content amongst themselvs to the unspeakable comfort of their souls under him whom Christ the great Messias hath set over them and this is called the Catholick flock which for the love they bear to their honoured pastour and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we commonly call Papists and somtimes becaus they will not forsake either their sheapheard or divine pastures of truth and sacraments wherein they have been brought up when we would speak more civilly we call them Recusants If any one shall think I speak too much in favour of catholick religion let such know that I favour nothing but truth and peace and it is the part of an ingenuous and well bred nature to support what he can the weaker side especially if he know it to be innocent and injuriously opprest as it often happens in this world that the stronger in right may be the weaker in repute Nor can any fewd amongst us ever be ended which is the thing I aim at so long as errour and injustice are maintained And although we quarrel furiously one with another yet considering that our strifes amongst our selves proceed upon the very same grounds and motives we pretend all of us to have against the general adversary we all hate till this capital dislike of Popery be diminished our other fewds must needs be kept alive No peace amongst our selves till we revoke our words and ill deeds against our innocent neighbours and at last comply charitably with them against whom our first dissention sprang up in this land Ephraim is against Manasses and Manasses against Ephraim but both against Juda and becaus they are both against Juda their lawful superiour therefor are they so furiously bent against one another whiles Ephraim to be in Juda's place who is thrust out by both parties labours to depress Manasses and Manasses for the same reason to trample upon Ephraim Thus is Presbyterian against Independent and Independent against Presbyterian but both against the Papist Protestant against Puritan and Puritan against Protestant but both against the Catholick And as soon as the Protestant had by violence supplanted and cast his Roman-neighbours out of all their dignities honour and livelihood the rancour had utterly ceased had not the Puritan rose up out of the Protestant bowels and subverted him by the same means he had used to his catholick foregoers and
men for my name but who shall persever unto the end he shall be saved But I hope our countreymen will at length discern their own dangerous mistake and perceiv with me that the Popish Mass which is the old opostolical devotion merits not the hatred and mischief we have either wrought or intended the observers of it in our land Hitherto then I hope we have no reason to hate popery upon the account of their Messach which is indeed the chiefest piece of our division and occasion of the many contumelies we put upon them especially considering that in our own Communion so far as it goes we do but imitate great part of it and that in their very words § 23. B. V. Mary AL Catholiks I could ever see or hear or read of bear a most devout respect to the Virgin MARY whom others care not how they villify and dishonour either by their words or writings and I cannot but dislike this our uncivil carriage to say no wors of it as much as I do approve of their piety Surely that Virgin of whom God would be incarnate and with whom he lived so many years together must needs be a person of strang perfection and worthy of great esteem amongst all such as worship her Son and look upon him indeed as their Redeemer He that loves him that begets saith the good apostle loves him that is begotten and I should think he that worships him that is begotten must needs have some respect for her that bare him The blessed Virgin was her self so confident of this that she was bold to say Ecce enim ex hoo beat am me dicent omnes generationes all generations all nations saith she shall call me Blessed And surely if this be true and in gospel it passes for divine words we that instead of calling her Blessed presume so highly to villify and blaspheme her even in our publick streets for which in catholick countries we should be in danger of being stoned to death by the people show our selvs to be a nation that belongs not to the Magnificat Indeed all here amongst us are not so rude but such as be are neither punished nor questioned for it And what in the name of God hath the Virgin Mary don to us what ill or harm hath she ever wrought us that any English Christian should cast so many gibes and show so much disesteem to that blessed creatur whom the whole catholick world the angels of heaven nay our Lord himself and that great God that made heaven and earth have set in so high a place of honour Will our incivility as it hath no ground or reason admit likewise of no limits It may be feared that the spirit of Luther anisme is some very foul one for it hath moved the professours of it in several places unto most unseemly language and highest disesteem of very thing that is venerable Not only princes and prelates priests and altars shrines and sacrifice byshops and their sacred ordinations the real presence tribunal of our reconciliation and the like but the very saints and angels of heaven nay the most innocent blessed Maid whom the very Turks do honour to this day and that she may not be thought the wors of for that an angel from heaven saluted by the mandate and in the name of him who is primogeneal Life and substantial Truth with the title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Most beloved and Gratious escape not the lash of our lips and pens And yet this is not all neither Do not I know that the primitive protestants in forreign parts have uttered some openly some more obscurely in their writings many odde words against the very honour of Jesus Christ himself although our more moderate Church of England I am confident hates them for it Did not Calvin taunt at his ignorance and passion and too much haste for his breakfast when he crust the figtree that had not fruit upon it when he sought it if he had studied catholick divines they would have taught him a more modest and pious interpretation than that idle wicked one of his own Did not Michael Servetus that bold apostate Spanish youth speak openly amongst his fellow protestants in Geneva that he wondered that they had raised all their controversies so many as they had against the Church which is named the body of Christ and yet never a one against Christ the head of that body did not Valentine Gentile that unhappy Italian after he had revolted to Calvin take it ill that all the reformed Churches agreed yet with the papists in the beleef of a Trinity and with him sided Matheus Gribaldus Lismanin Francis David and Jacobus Paleologus though this last recanted afterward and returned happily to his catholick faith And who-knows not that Luther Brentius Calvin Suinglius yea and Erasmus too who though he yet remained catholick would be nibling now and then at Arrian and Socinianisme let fly many a secret dart at Christ and the sacred Trinity though they were not yet so bold as to profess openly with som others of their brethren whom they saw to suffer in their repute for it any such opinion till they found the world in a more forward disposition to accept it and all these bent their bowes and fitted their arrowes to the string that if not openly yet at least in the dark and in Lunâ as the prophet phrases it they might shoot and hit every thing that is sacred even Christ himself So true it is that he who loves him that begets loves him that is begotten and he that hates the one does not truly love the other But the penmen of our creed and gospel who made honourable mention of the Virgin Mary were of another spirit than we be that so much dishonour her although for fashion sake we read over those holy penmens words A certain protestant byshop did not many years ago examin a catholick child that stood before him if he could say his prayers the boy replying yes said first his Pater noster after that began his Ave Maria which catholicks use to repeat in memory of Christs incarnation at which words nay quoth the byshop let her alone let her alone we have nothing to do with her The child went on to his Creed and when he came to conceptus est de spiritus sancto natus ex he sodainly stopt and she is here again quoth the child she is here again my Lord what shall I do with her now you may let her pass quoth the byshop in your Creed but not in your prayers As though we might have faith but neither hope nor charity for her But if we seriously consider the spirit of those who wrote either our Gospel or Creed we shall find that of Roman catholicks to have a most near consanguinity with it and loving them we cannot hate these for the respect they bear his virgin Mother whom we all worship §. 24. Images IN all places where
Magus although they have St. Peters the Crucifix they will keep and use and honour not the portraict of Him with a cloven foot if they esteem the memory and effigies of great Constantine yet not of wicked Dioclesian if we find in their Churches the image of blessed S. Bennet or good Saint Francis yet shall we never meet there with the face of Luther or Calvin so that here in the catholick Church as well as in Moses law is both Thou shalt make graven images and again Thou shalt not Thus much Anticatholicks might themselvs understand if they would consider any thing seriously by the very words of the text Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image not make to thy self As if he had said when you com into the land amongst the gentiles let none of you be inveigled either by their example or words to make to himself any of the images he shall see there set up by the inhabitants contrary to the ceremonies of Moses and practis of the synagogue which doth so honour her own Cherubins that she abominates all idols and their sculptures And thus if any catholick should make to himself and upon his own head and fansy contrary to what is allowed any peculiar image of the planets for example or wicked men to worship it for sacred I beleeve he will be punished for his transgression So that images are not forbidden in the general notion of images but only of such or such a kind as if I should forbid my servant who travels with me into France and keeps my purs to make unto himself any cloathes I intend not that he shall go naked but only that he make no cloathes but what and when and in what fashion I approve Secondly they say it is idolatry But this is spoken without logick Except the thing represented be an idol devil or somthing opposite to God or below man whom yet he will worship the honour and use of the image cannot be idolatry If I may respect and love the person I may love and respect the image too sith this my esteem is terminated ultimatly only upon the prototype Moses never feared idolatry with his own Cherubins and yet he had as much reason to fear it as the Christian Church can have The honour of an image is but a natural resultancy from the exemplar represented in it and this can be no other affection but what is due to that as any man may perceive by four several images set before him the first of his king the other of his father a third of his sweet-heart a fourth of his mortal adversary upon the sight of all which he conceivs and can conceiv no other but that passion he bears the prototype or thing resembled honour to one duty to the other tender love to the third and hateful disaffection to the last Now that the saints and angels of God spirits assisting to Gods glory and worship and administring to our necessities deserv a veneration at our hands I shall speak anon and from the image can result no other but what is their due As they be no Gods so neither can their image make them so the image of my enemy makes him not my sweet heart nor can the picture of my neighbour make him my king And how can the representation of Gods saints and servants make them otherwise than what they are But all these petty arguments are taken from the rancourous Jewes who were never bent against images in general till they saw the Christians to keep and worship the figure of Jesus Christ whom they all hated And if Protestants can love Jesus Christ crucified and hate the representation of his cross which two things how they can consist together no reason of man can comprehend yet let us not maligne the innocent Papists for doing that which the reason of all mankind allows What person soever I may love I may like his image also §. 25. Latin Service THe catholick liturgy is and ever was all over the western empire in the latin tongue This general custom of keeping both mass and bible in an unknown tongue from vulgar hands as it may be made to carry with with it a plausible surmise either of fraud or envy so hath it been the great engine used by Protestants both to draw and keep a vast number of people from the bosom of the catholick Church The busines of Scripture I have already hinted at For catholicks have the summ of scripture both for history and dogme delivered them in their own language so much as may make for their salvation good orders being set and instituted for their proficiency therein and what needs any more or why should they be further permitted either to satisfy curiosity or rais doubts or to wrest words and examples there recorded unto their own ruin as we see now by experience men are apt to do Besides the book is sacred and therefor not to be sullied with every hand What God hath sanctified let not man make common It is against the natur of a thing segregated to divine use to be vulgarly mixt with our prophane utensils and touch and talkings and indeed it is a contradiction in rearms for if it be segregated from them how is it mixed with them if it be mysterious how can it be vulgar And this is the judgment of the whole world both present and past Not onely mahometans and pagans who evermore kept the book that spake forth the secrets of their religion still in that one language it was delivered in but the Hebrewes too as well as the Christian Church Nor was the bible the law of Moses or the prophets or hagiography ever put out of their hebrew into syriack either in Moses time or after either by his command or any permission of the high priests that followed Nay it was so far from that that it was not touched or looked upon by the people even in its own language but kept privately in the ark or tabernacle and brought forth at times to the priest who might upon the sabboth day which is our saturday read som part of it to the people and put them in mind of their laws religion and duty Whereas the Christian bible is in the hands of all who understand either greek or latin So great is the indulgence of the Catholick Church and so good an opinion hath she above all others of her children though every one is not permitted to prattle and dispute about it as I think no wise man will think it fit they should And this retirednes of sacred doctrin and rare approach unto the eye and ear with high reverence and solemnity works in the minds of people a wonderful great awe and impression of respect whereas familiar usage renders it contemptible Indeed after that sacred book becomes once to be slightly thrown about with ordinary touch and tongue what doth it work but self will and conceit contentions pride schismes and wars