this blessed Spirit on the particular Members of his Congregation that is to say the joyning of the Saints together in an holy Communion the free remission of our sins in this present life resurrection of the body after death and the uniting again of Soul and Body unto life eternal This is the sum and method of the following Articles and these we shall pursue in their order beginning first with that of the Holy Ghost Whose gracious assistance I implore to guide me in the waies of Truth that so the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart may be alwayes acceptable in the sight of God the Lord my strength and my Redeemer But because the word or notion of the Holy Ghost is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word of various signification in the Book of God we will first look upon it in those significations and then conclude on that which is chiefly pertinent to the intent and purpose of the present Article For certainly the Orators Rule is both good and useful viz. Prius dividenda antequam definienda sit oratio That we must first distinguish of the Termes in all Propositions before we come unto a positive definition of them According to which Rule if we search the Scripture we shall there find that the Holy Ghost is first taken personaliter or essentialiter for the third person in the Oeconomie of the glorious Trinity We find him in this sense in the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour as the principal Agent in that Work The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee Luk. 1.35 And in his Baptism descending on him like a Dove to fit him and prepare him for the Prophetical Office he was then to exercise And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a Dove upon him Luk. 3.22 From which descent St. Peter telleth us that he was anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power and that from thenceforth he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed with the Devil In the next place the Holy Ghost is used in Scripture to signifie the Gifts and Graces of the holy Spirit as in Act. 2. where it is said of the Apostles that they were all filled with the holy Ghost ver 4. not with his essence or his person but with the impressions of the Spirit the Gifts and Graces of the Holy Ghost such as the Gift of Tongues mentioned in the following words The Gift of the Holy Ghost as it is called expresly Ver. 38. Thus read we also that the holy Ghost was given by the hands of Peter Act. 8.17 18. And by the hands of Paul Act. 19.6 In which we read that when Paul had laid his hands upon them the Holy Ghost came on them and they spoke with tongues and Prophesied which last words are a commentary upon those before and shew that by the holy Ghost which did come upon them is meant the Gift of Tongues and the power of Prophecying both which the holy Ghost then conferred upon them And lastly it is taken not onely for the ability of doing Miracles as speaking with strange Tongues Prophecying curing of Diseases and the like to these but for the Authority and Power which in the Church is given to some certain men to be Ministers of holy things to the rest of the people As when Christ breathed on his Apostles and said unto them Receive the holy Ghost that is to say Receive ye an holy and spiritual power over the soules of men a part whereof consisteth in the remitting and retaining of sins mentioned in the words next following and serving as a Comment to explaine the former In which respect the Holy Ghost said unto certain of the Elders in the Church of Antioch Segregate mihi Barnabam Saulum Separate unto me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them Act. 13.2 It is the Holy Ghost which cals it is his work to which they were called and therefore separate mihi separate to me may not unfitly be expounded to my Work and Ministery and consequently to the authority and power which belongs unto it Which being premised the meaning of the Article will in briefe be this That we beleeve not onely that there is such a person as the Holy Ghost in the Oeconomy of the blessed Trinity though that be principally intended but that he doth so distribute and dispose of his Gifts and Graces as most conduceth to the edification of the Church of Christ. But this I cannot couch in a clearer way as to the sense and doctrine of the Church of England than in the words of Bishop Iewel who doth thus expresse it Credimus spiritum sanctum qui est tertia persona in sacra Triadi illum verum esse Deum c. i. e. we beleeve that the Holy Ghost who is the Third Person in the holy Trinity is very God not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding both from the Father and the Son by an unspeakable means and unknowne to man and that it is his property to mollifie and soften mans heart when he is once received thereinto either by the wholesome Preaching of the Gospel or by any other way that he doth give men light and guide them to the knowledge of God to the wayes of truth to newnesse of life and to everlasting hope of salvation This being the sum of that which is to be beleeved of the Holy Ghost both for his Person and his Office we will first look upon his Person on his Property or Office afterwards And yet before we come unto his Person I mean his Nature and his Essence We will first look a little on the quid Nominis the name by which he is expressed in the Book of God In the Original he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with a double Article as Luk. 3.22 in Latine Spiritus sanctus or the Holy Spirit but generally in our English Idiom the Holy Ghost The Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comes from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifieth to breath and is the same with the Latine Spiro from whence comes Spiritus or the Spirit a name not given as I suppose because he doth proceed from the Father or the Son or both in the way of breathing though Christ be said to breath upon his Apostles when he said receive the Holy Ghost but because the breath being in it selfe an incorporeal substance and that which is the great preservative of all living creatures it got the name first of Spiritus vitae we read it in our English the breath of life Gen. 11.7 and afterwards came to be the name of all unbodyed incorporeal essences For thus is God said to be a Spirit God is a Spirit Ioh. 4.24 The Angels are called Ministring Spirits Heb. 1.14 the Soule of man is called his Spirit let us cleanse our selves saith the Apostle from all filthiness both of flesh and Spirit that is of the body and
Spirit in which we shall discern both his power and office These gifts and graces of the Spirit the School-men commonly divide into Gratis data such as being freely given by God are to be spent as freely for the good of others of which kinde are the gift of tongues curing diseases and the like and gratum facientia such as do make him good and gracious on whom it pleaseth God to bestow the same as Faith Iustice Charity The first are in the Scripture called by the name of gifts Now there are diversity of gifts saith the Apostle but the same Spirit For to one is given by the Spirit the word of Wisdom to another the word of Knowledge by the same Spirit to another Faith by the same Spirit to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit to another the working of miracles to another prophecy to another discerning of spirits to another divers kindes of tongues to another the interpretation of tongues The later are called Fruits by the same Apostle The Fruits of the Spirit saith he are love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness faith meekness temperance The Gifts are known most commonly by the name of Gratis data the Fruits pertain to Gratum facientia The Gratum facientia belong to every man for himself the Gratis data for the benefit of the Church in common That which God giveth us for the benefit and use of others must be so spent that they may be the better for it because not given unto us for own sakes onely nor to gain others to our selves but all to him In which respect Gods Servants are to be like Torches which freely wast themselves to give light to others like Powder on the day of some Publick Festival which freely spends it self to rejoyce the multitude That which he gives us for our selves must be so improved that we may thereby become fruitful unto all good works vessels prepared and sanctified for the Masters use In the first of these we may behold the power of the Holy Ghost in the last his office His power in giving tongues to unlearned men knowledge to the ignorant wisdom to the simple the gift of prophecy even unto very Babes and Sucklings I mean to men not studied in the Liberal Sciences A power so great that no disease is incurable to it no spirit so subtile and disguised but is easie discerned by it no tongue so difficult and hard which it cannot interpret no miracle of such seeming impossibility but it can effect it In which regard the Holy Ghost is called in Scripture The power of God The power of the most High shall over-shadow thee Luke 1.35 And Christ our Lord having received the ointing of the holy Spirit is said to be anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power Acts 10.38 Nor want I Reasons to induce me unto this opinion that when Simon Magus had effected by his sorceries and lying wonders to be called the great power of God but that his purpose was to make men believe that he was the Holy Ghost or the Spirit of God which title afterwards he bestowed on his strumpet Helena and took that of CHRIST unto himself as the more famed and fitting for his devilish purposes Next for his Office that consisteth in regenerating the carnal and sanctifying the regenerate man First In regenerating of the carnal For except a man be born of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God saith our Blessed Saviour of Water as the outward Element but of the holy Spirit as the inward Efficient which moving on the Waters of Baptism as once upon the face of the great Abyss doth make them quickning and effectual unto newness of life Then for the Work of Sanctification that is wrought wholly by the Spirit who therefore hath the name of the Holy Ghost not onely because holy in himself formaliter but because holy effective making them holy who are chosen unto life eternal So say St. Peter the first and St. Paul the last of the Apostles St. Peter first Elect according to the fore-knowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience 1 Pet. 1.2 And so St. Paul But ye are washed but ye are sanctified but ye are justified in the Name of our Lord Iesus and by the Spirit of God 1 Cor. 6.11 That is to say Iustified in the Name of our Lord Iesus through Faith in him and sanctified by the Spirit of God through the effusion of his Graces in the Soul of Man The work of Sanctification is not wrought but by many acts as namely By shedding abroad in our hearts that most excellent gift of charity filling our souls with righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost by teaching us to adde To our faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charity that we be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ. Though Christ be the Head yet is the Holy Ghost the Heart of the Church from whence the vital spirits of grace and godliness are issued out unto the quickning of the Body mystical And as the vital spirits in the body natural are sensibly perceived by the motion of the heart the breathing of the mouth and by the beating of the pulse so by the same means may we easily discern the motions of the Spirit of Grace First It beginneth in the heart by putting into us new hearts more sanctified desires than we had before A new heart will I also give you and a new spirit will I put within you saith the Lord by the Prophet Ezekiel And to what end That ye may walk in my Statutes and keep my Iudgments This new heart is like the new wine which our Saviour speaks of not possible to be contained in old bottles but will break out first in new desires For Novum supervenisse spiritum nova demonstrant desideria as St. Bernard hath it Nor will it break out onely in desires or wishes but we shall finde it on our tongues for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh And if the heart be throughly sanctified we may be sure that no corrupt communication will come out of our mouths but onely such as is good to the use of edifying and may minister grace unto the hearers The same breath in the natural body is Organon vitae vocis as experience telleth us The Instrument of life and voice it is the same we live by and the same we speak by And so it is also in the Body mystical as well the vocal as the vital breath proceeding both alike from the Holy Ghost Nor stayes it onely on the tongue but as the beating of the pulse is best found at the hand so if we would desire to know how the
towards heaven Desierunt homines vultus suos in coelum tollere And thereupon it followed as perhaps it did that being once besotted with earthly pleasures they came in time to be infected with gross and earthly superstitions And no less sure I am that on this Contemplation Anaxagoras a wise man amongst the Gentiles being demanded for what cause he thought he was born made an answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to behold the Firmament So right a use did the Philosopher make of his bodily structure as to conceive the World and the pleasures of it to be so unfit an Object for his minde that it was not worthy of his eye Next for the form or soul of man it differeth more from that of all living Creatures then he doth differ from them in his bodily figure For whereas the soul of all other living creatures did rise out of the matter out of which they were made the soul of man had a more excellent sublime and divine original and was not either made with the bodie or out of the same dust whereof the body was made but infused immediately by God after the body was first framed and organized in every part to receive the same Of other animals it is said that God made the beast after his kind and the cattel after their kind that is to say matter and form at once without any distinction But when he cometh to the creation of man it is first said that God formed man of the dust of the ground and after that he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life whereby he became a living soul. And though I will not enter here upon that dispute whether the rational soul of man be a thing ex traduce whether begotten by his Parents or infused by God yet I confesse that the very order which God used in mans creation is of it self sufficient to make clear that point and to evince thus much that the soul of man is of a more noble extraction then the souls of beasts and not as theirs potentially in the seed of their generation Or if this be not sufficient to evince it then I conceive that he that was the best Divine and the greatest Philosopher of any of the sons of men even Solomon and all his wisdome hath so determined of the point as to make all sure affirming that the bodies of men being generated of grosse and earthly matter are in the end dissolved into that dust out of which they were primitively made but that the soul returneth into the hands of God by whom at first it was inspired Then saith he i. e. at the time of our death the dust shall return to the earth as it was and the Spirit shall return to him that gave it A Text so clear and evident to the point in hand that he who writ the Pamphlet called Mans mortality printed 1643. did very well and wisely to passe it over and not to put it in the number of those Objections which might be made against him from the word of God as being utterly destructive of that monstrous Paradox which he takes upon him to defend for true Catholick doctrine And if the Fathers may be suffered to come in for seconds where the authority of Scripture is so plain and pregnant we have a cloud of witnesses of unquestionable credit to confirme the same For the Greek writers first it is said by Clemens Alexandrinus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the principal faculties of the soul by which we have rational discourse is not engendred by projection of humane seed Theodoret doth not only say as much as he but brings good proof for it from the word of God The Church saith he believing the divine Scriptures teacheth us that the soul was and is created as well as the body not having any cause of its creation from natural seed but from the will of the Creatour after the body of man had been perfectly made For the divine Moses writeth that Adams body was first made and afterwards his soul was inspired into him and also telleth us in the Law that the body was first made then the soul infused The same he also proveth from a text in Iob and so concludeth that this confession touching the soul and body of man the Church had learnt from holy Scripture Next for the Latine Fathers it is said by Hilarie Animam nunquam ab homine gignentium originibus praeberi that the soul never cometh from the generation of men by Ambrose Ex nullo homine generantur Animae that the souls are not generated by the seed of man by Leo that the Catholick Church doth truly teach that the souls of men were not or had not any being at all before they were inspired into their bodies Nec ab alio incorporentur nisi ab opifice Deo neither are incorporated with the body but by God alone St. Hierome glossing on those words of Solomon before produced thus declareth himself Ex quo satis ridâ—ndi sunt qui putant animas a corporibus seri et non a Deo sed a Corporum parentibus generari Cum enim caro revertatur in terram et Spiritus redeat ad Deum qui dedit illum manifâ—stum est Deum patrem Animarum esse non homines I have laid down his words at large because they are a full and perfect exposition of that Text of Solomons on which I principally ground my self for Catholick doctrine though there be diverse other places one might build upon But for S. Hieromes words they are thus in English How worthily saith he are they to be derided who think the soul to be sown together with the body in the Mothers wombe and to be generated by our Parents not to come from God For being it is said by Solomon that the flesh returneth to the earth and the Spirit unto him that gave it it is most manifest that God is the Father of our souls not man T is true Ruffinus made some scruple whether the soul did come by propagation from Man or infusion from God by which as he gave very great scandall to all Christian people so was he very sufficiently scorned and confuted by S. Hierome for it T is true Tertullian sometime thought as this Pamphetler doth that the soul either was a kind of body or was ex traduce that is to say derived and propagated by traduction of humane seed but then it is as true withall that for this and other of his Heterodox tenets he is put into the Catalogue of Hereticks composed by Augustine And for S. Augustine himself though to avoid the difficulty which lay hard upon him touching the manner how the soul cometh to be infected with original sin made question whether the soul were infused by God or derived he knew not how from the soul of the Parent yet he rejected the opinion as absurd and grosse that is should be
this objection she might make not out of any disbelief of the Angels words for being then as faulty as old Zachary was she had been as punishable since God is no respecter of persons nor that she had vowed chastity as the Papists say and Gregory Nyssen doth report from an unknown Author whose history he doth confess to be Apocryphal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as his words there are for then she had done very ill to betroth herself unto an husband the vow of Chastity being inconsistent with the state of Matrimony But this she did because the Angel seemed to speak of her Conception as a thing instantly to be done and then in fieri at the least as Logicians phrase it and she though then betrothed to Ioseph was a Virgin still for the Text saith it was before they came together and more then so there was perhaps some part of the time remaining which usually intervened amongst the Iews betwixt the first Espousals and the consummation of the marriage But this bar was easily removed For it followeth that the Angel answered and said The holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee The holy Ghost shall come upon thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greek Text hath it that is to say the holy Ghost shall fall upon thee like rain into a fleece of wooll or like the dew of heaven upon a barren and thirstie land where no moisture is and make thee no less fruitful without help of man then was the Virgin Earth in its first integrity when no outward or extrinsecal moysture had yet fallen upon it but that there went up a mist only out of the very bowels thereof and watered the whole face of the ground And the power of the most High shall overshadow thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Greek and cover thee with the wings of his quickning virtue as the Hen doth Egges when she brings forth young To make this matter plainer yet we shall illustrate it by two Texts of holy Scripture equal to this both in the wonder and the agent In the beginning saith the Text God created the Heaven and the Earth and the Earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep And in the second of the same Book we read that God created man out of the dust of the earth vers 7. In each of these there is a subject some matter such as it was to be wrought upon that confused mixture of Earth and waters to be disposed into a world the dust and Atoms of that world to be contrived into a man The fashioning and accomplishment of which great works both of them seeming as impossible to sense and reason as the Conception of our Saviour in a Virgins Womb is in the Scripture attributed to the holy Ghost The Spirit of God saith Moses moved upon the face of the waters Hence the digestion of that matter fashioned into that goodly fabrick of Heaven and Earth which we so visibly behold with such admiration God breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitae from whence the Animation and soul of man This action then ascribed unto the holy Ghost which St. Luke calleth a supervenience or a coming upon and an obumbration or over-shadowing is likely to have been much of the same nature with that of moving in the first and that of breathing in the 2. of Genesis Gods Spirit as it breatheth where it listeth so can it quicken where it pleaseth Some there have been if Maldonate do report them rightly Qui turpe aliquid hoc loco somniant who have made some impure construction of this holy Text most impudently affirming Spiritum sanctum ad modum viri cum Maria concubuisse I abhor to English it but who they were he either was afraid or ashamed to tell us No doubt but they were some of the Romish party For had such a blasphemous and ungodly saying dropped from the mouth or pen of a Protestant all Christendome had been told of his name and Nation And therefore certainly this quidam whom he spares to name must be some such good fellow of the Catholick faction as Fryer Albert of the frock as they use to call him Of whom I remember I have read in some of their Authors that being a great Votary of the blessed Virgins she appeared nightly to him in her bodily shape espoused her self to him by a ring and suffered himself to converse with her in familiar manner Insomuch as he might say in the Poets language Contrectatque sinus forsitan oseula jungit He dallied with her Paps And kissed her too perhaps But I do ill to mingle these impurities with this sacred argument if the unmasking of the obscoenities of those great Professors of vowed chastity do not plead my pardon And yet I cannot choose but adde that these lazy lives of some of the Monks and Fryers have carryed them so far into spiritual fornications or rather into contemplative lusts that many of them have fancied to themselves such unclean commixtures as that of Fryer Albert with the blessed Virgin To what end else served those large Faculties which were given unto Tekelius a Dominican Fryer when he was sent to publish the pardons or Indulgences of Pope Leo the tenth in the upper Germany Who spared not to affirm even in common Alehouses that by his Buls he had authority to absolve any man whatsoever Etiamsi Virginem matrem vitiaverit though he had vitiated or deflowred the Virgin Mother as Sleidan tels the storie in his book of Commentaries I know that in the later Editions of this Author as in that of Colen printed An. .... the words are changed to Virginem aut matrein a maid or a mother and so to mend the matter they have marred the sense For what need such large faculties as Tekelius bragged of for pardoning fornication or Adultery for the deflowring of a Virgin or lying with another mans wife which every ordinary Priest can absolve of course Besides in the first Edition of that Author printed at ..... An. .... it is plainly Virginem Matrem the Virgin Mother And so 't is in an old English Translation of him printed at London and la Veirge Mere as plainly in a French Translation printed at Geneva An. 1574. Marvail it is that Maldonate hath not undergone the like castigation whose Quidam whatsoever he was offended more against the Majesty of the holy Ghost then Tekel did save that the Popes authority was concerned in it against the modesty and piety of the Virgin Mary To return therefore where I left as I abominate the impieties of these Romish Votaries so neither can I approve the conceit of Estius though otherwise a very learned and sound Expositor of holy Scripture where the interest of the Church of Rome
nought else but the Port of Salvation which whether it were formerly in the heavens above an apud Inferos or in the places under the earth I determine not Yea I had rather be still ignorant of it then rashly to pronounce of that which I finde not expressed in the Scripture In these things as I will not be too curious so neither will I define any thing therein nor will I contend with any man about this matter It shall suffice me to understand and confess that the godly of the Old Testament were in a certain place of rest and not in torments before the Ascension of Christ although I know not what nor where it was So he with great both piety and Christian modesty and with him I shut up this dispute CHAP. IX The Doctrine of the Church of England touching Christs descent into Hell asserted from all contrary opinions which are here examined and disproved THus have we seen the doctrine of the Primitive Church touching the Article of Christs descent into hell so much disputed or indeed rather quarrelled in these later times Let us next look upon the Doctrine of of this Church of England which in this point as in all the rest which are in controversie doth tread exactly in the steps of most pure Antiquity And if we search into the publick monuments and records thereof we shall finde this doctrine of Christs local descent into hell to have been retained and established amongst many other Catholick verities ever since the first beginning of her Reformation For in the Synod of the year 1552. being the fourth year of King Edward the sixt it was declared and averred for the publick doctrine of this Church to be embraced by all the members of the same that the body of Christ until his Resurrection lay in the grave but that his soul being breathed out was with the spirits in prison or hell and preached to them as the place of Peter doth witness saying For Christ also hath once suffered for sins the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but quickned by the Spirit By which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison c. 1 Pet. 3.18 19. But being the Articles of that year were set out in Latine take them according as they stand in the Original Nam corpus usque ad Resurrectionem in sepulchro jacuit Spiritus ab illo emissus cum spiritibus qui in Carcere sive in Inferno detinebantur fuit illisque praedicavit ut testatur Petri locus c. So also in the year 1562. When Q. Elizabeth was somewhat setled in her state she caused her Clergy to be called together in a Synodical way to the intent they might agree upon a Body or Book of Articles for the avoiding of diversities of opinions and for the establishing of consent touching true Religion Who being met and having agreed upon the two first Articles touching Faith in the holy Trinity and the Word or Son of God which was made very man and having declared in this second that Christ who is very God and very man did truly suffer and was crucified dead and buryed to reconcile us to his Father addes for the title of the third of the going down of Christ into hell Which being an entire Article of it self runs thus in terminis viz. As Christ dyed for us and was buried so also it is to be believed that he went down into hell Which Article with the rest being publickly agreed upon and passed in the Convocations of both Provinces and confirmed under the broad Seal as the law required became the publick authorized Doctrine of this Church of England and afterwards received such countenance in the high Court of Parliament that there was a statute made unto this purpose that all who were to be admitted unto any Benefice with cure of souls or unto any holy Orders should publickly subscribe the same in the presence of the Bishop or Ordinary The like care was also taken after for subscribing to it by all such who were matriculated in either of the Universities or admitted into any Colledge or Hall or to any Academical degree whatsoever and so it stands unto this day confirmed and countenanced by as high and great authority aâ— the power of the Prince the Canons of the Church and the Sanctions of the Civil State can give it Nor stands it only on Record in the Book of Articles but is thus touched in the Book of Homilies specified and approved of for godly and wholesome Doctrine by those Articles and ratified and confirmed together with them Thus hath his Resurrection saith the Homilie wrought for us life and and righteousness He passed through death and hell to the intent to put us in good hope that by his strength we shall do the same He paid the ransome of sin that it should not be laid to our charge He destroyed the Devil and all his tyranny and openly triumphed over him and took away from him all his captives and hath raised and set them with himself among the heavenly Citizens above So far the Homily There was also published in the beginning of the said Queens Reign a Catechisme writ in Latine by Mr. Alexander Nowel Dean of Pauls and publickly authorized to be taught in all the Grammar Schooles of this kingdome though not by such a sacred and supreme authority as the books of Articles and Homilies had been before in which the doctrine of Christs descent into hell is thus delivered viz. That as Christs body was laid in the Bowels of the earth so his soul separated from his body descended ad inferos to hell and with all the force and efficacie of his death so pierced unto the dead atque inferos adeo ipsos and even to the spirits in hell that the souls of the unfaithful perceived the condemnation of their infidelity to be most sharp and just ipseque inferorum Princeps Satan and Satan himself the Prince of hell saw all the power of his tyranny and of darknesse to be weakned broken and destroyed and contrariwise the dead who whilest they lived believed in Christ understood the work of their Redemption to be performed and felt the fruit and force thereof with a most sweet and certain comfort So that the doctrine of Christs descent into hell being thus positively delivered in the Articles and Homilies and Catechisme publickly authorized to be taught in Schools and being thus solemnly confirmed and countenanced both by Laws and Canons and by the subscriptions of all the Clergie and other learned men of this Realm of England how great must we conceive the impudence to be of the Romish Gagger who charged this upon this Church that we denie the descent of Christ into hell Nor do I wonder lesse at the improvidence of those who were then in authority in licensing Mr. Rogers comment on this Book
the soule and by a metaphor the motions of the minde whether good or evill are called spirits also as the spirit of giddiness Isa. 19.14 the spirit of error 1 Tim. 4.1 the spirit of envie Iam. 4.5 which come all from the unclean spirit mentioned Luk. 11.24 And thus in general the pious motions in the mind are called Spirits too Quench not the spirit saith St. Paul i. e. those godly motions to the works of Faith and Piety which the Holy Spirit of God doth secretly kindle in thee For the word Ghost it is originally Saxon and signifieth properly the soul of a man as when we read of Christ that he gave up the Ghost Mark 15.37 and in the rest of the Evangelists also the meaning is that his soule departed from his body he yeelded up his soule to the hands of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Original Expiravit as the Latine reads it that is to say he breathed out his soul or he breathed his last Nor doth it signifie the soule onely though that most properly but generally also any spiritual substance as doth the word spiritus in the Latine a touch whereof we have still remaining in the Adjective Ghostly by which we mean that which is spiritual as our Ghostly Father Ghostly Counsel i. e. our Father in the spiritual matters counsel that savoreth of the spirit So then the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit are the same Person here though in different words and the word Holy which is added doth clearly difference him from all other spirits Not that God being a spirit is not holy also or that the Angelical spirits are not replenished with as much holinesse as a created nature can be capable of but because it is his Office to sanctifie or make holy all the elect Children of God therefore hath he the title or attribute of holy annexed unto him And yet the title of holy is not always added to denote this person though when we find mention of the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit it is meant and spoken of him onely For sometimes he is called the Spirit without any adjunct the Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or by way of eminency but still with reference to those gifts which he doth bestow The manifestation of the spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the Article demonstrative is given to every man to profit withall For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdome to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit Sometimes he is called the Spirit of the Father as Matth. 10.20 It is not yee that speak but the Spirit of the Father which speaketh in you sometimes the Spirit of the Son as Gal. 4.6 where it is said that God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying Abba Father Most generally he is called the Spirit of God as Gen 1.2 and Matth. 3.16 and infinite other places of the holy Scripture and more particularly the Spirit of Christ Rom. 8.9 in which place he is also called the Spirit of God Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if that the Spirit of God dwel in you there the Spirit of God if any have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his So the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit both of God and Christ and in one verse both So far we are onwards on our way for discoverie of the nature of this blessâ—d Spirit as to have found him out to be the Spirit of God the Father from whom he doth proceed by an unspeakable way of emanation and unknown to man for he proceedeth from the Father as our Saviour telleth us and to be also the Spirit of Christ the Son of God by whom he was breathed on the Apostles and so proceeding from the Son doth proceed from both Sent from the Father at the desire and prayer of the Son I will pray the Father and he shall send you another Comforter Iohn 14.16 Sent by the Son with the consent and approbation of the Father whom I will send unto you from the Father Iohn 15.26 and so sent of both And yet not therefore the less God because sent by either than IESUS CHRIST is God God for ever blessed as St. Paul calls him Rom. 9.5 because he was sent by God the Father He sent his Son made of a woman Gal. 4.4 saith the same Apostle If any doubt hereof as I know some do he may be sent for resolution of his doubt to the beginning of Genesis where he shall finde the Spirit of God moving on the waters Gen. 1.2 And to the Law where he shall read how the same Spirit came down on the Seventy Elders Numb 11.26 And to the Psalms Thou sendest forth thy Spirit and they are created Psal. 104.30 And to the Prophets The Spirit of God is upon me saith the Prophet Isaiah Chap. 61.1 which was Christs first Text And I will pour my Spirit upon all flesh saith the Prophet Ioel Chap. 1.28 which was Peters first Text The Spirit of God is God no question for in Deo non est nisi Deus say the Schoolmen rightly Not a created Spirit as the Angels were For in the beginning when God created the Heaven and the Earth and all things visible and invisible then the Spirit was and was not onely actually in a way of existence but was of such a powerful influence in the Creation of the World that on the moving of this Spirit on the face of the Waters the darkness was removed from the face of the deep and the Chaos of undigested matter made capable of Form and Beauty In the New Testament the evidence is far more clear than that of the Old by how much the Sun of Light did shine more brightly in the times of the Gospel than in those of the Law Saith not St. Peter in the Acts Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie unto the Holy Ghost and then addes presently Thou hast not lied unto men but unto God What saith St. Austin on this Text The Holy Ghost saith he is God Unde Petrus cum dixisset ausus eâ— mentiri Spiritui Sancto continuo secutus adjunxit quid esset Spiritus Sanctus ait non mentitus es hominibus sed Deo i. e. Therefore when Peter said unto Ananias thou hast dared to lie to the Holy Ghost he added presently to shew what was the Holy Ghost Thou hast not lied unto men but unto God Saith not St. Paul Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God How so Because the Spirit of God dwelleth in you What saith the Father unto this Ostendit Paulus deum esse Spiritum Sanctum ideo non esse Creaturam that is to say St. Paul by this sheweth That the Holy Ghost is God and so no Creature Doth not the same Apostle say in another place Know ye not that your bodies are the Temple of the Holy Ghost
first of the Evangelical Scriptures was the Epistle Decretory which we finde in the fifteenth of the Acts and that was countenanced by a visum est spiritui sancto i. e. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost And when St. Paul writ his Epistle unto those of Corinth for fear he might be thought by that factious people to injoyn any thing upon them without very good warrant he vouched the Spirit of God for his Author in it They preached the Gospel first to others as Christ did to them by word of mouth that being the more speedy way to promote the Work But being they could not live to the end of the world and that the purest waters will corrupt at last by passing through muddy or polluted Chanels they thought it best to leave so much thereof in writing as might serve in all succeeding Ages for the Rule of Faith Postea vero per voluntatem Dei in Scripturis nobis Evangelium tradiderunt firmamentum columnam fidei nostrae futuram as in Irenaeus A man might marvel why St. Iohn should give that testimony to the Gospel which was writ by him that it was written to the end That men might believe that JESUS is the CHRIST the Son of God and that believing they might have Faith through his Name considering that none of the rest of the Evangelists say the like of theirs or why he thundred at the end of his Revelation that most fearful curse against all those who should presume to adde anything to the words of that Book or take any thing from it being a course that none of all the sacred Pen-men had took but he But when I call to minde the Spirit by which Iohn was guided and the time in which those Books of his were first put in writing methinks the marvel is took off without more ado For seeing that his Gospel was writ after all the rest as is generally affirmed by all the Antients those words relate not as I guess to his own Book onely but to the whole Body of the Evangelical History now perfectly composed and finished for otherwise how impertinent had it been for him to say That IESVS did many other signs in the presence of his Disciples which were not written in that Book if he had spoken those words of his own Book onely Considering that he had neither written of the signs done in the way to Emaus mentioned by St. Luke or his appearing to the eleven in a Mountain of Galilee which St. Matthew speaks of or his Ascension into Heaven which St. Mark relateth which every vulgar Reader could not chuse but know The like I do conceive of those words of his in the Revelation viz. That they relate not to that Book alone but to the whole body of the Bible St. Iohn being the Survivor of that glorious company on whom the Holy Ghost descended in the Feast of Pentecost and the Apocalypse the last of those Sacred Volumes which were dictated by the Spirit of God for the use of his Church and now make up the Body of the holy Scriptures God had now said as much by the mouths and pens of the Prophets Evangelists and Apostles as he conceived sufficient for our salvation and so closed up the Canon of the Scriptures as St. Augustine telleth Deus quantum satis esse judicavit locutus Scripturam condidit as his own words are which certainly God had not done nor the Evangelist declared nor St. Augustine said had not the Scripture been a sufficient rule able to make us wise unto salvation and thoroughly furnished unto all good works Which being so it cannot but be a great dishonor to the Scripture and consequently to the Spirit of God who is Author of it to have it called as many of the Papists do Atramentariam Scripturam Plumbeam Regulam Literam Mortuam that is to say An Ink-horn Text a Leaden Rule and a Dead Letter Pighius for one as I remember gives it all these Titles or to affirm That it hath no authority in the Church of Christ but what it borroweth from the Pope without whose approbation it were scarce more estimable than the Fables of Aesop which was one of the blasphemous speeches of Wolf Hermannus or that is not a sufficient means to gain Souls to Christ or to instruct the Church in all duties necessary to salvation without the adding of Traditional Doctrines neither in terminis extant in the Book of God nor yet derived from thence by good Logical inference which is the general Tenet of the Church of Rome or that to make the Canon of the Scripture compleat and absolute the Church as it hath added to it already the Apocryphal Writings so may it adde and authorize for the Word of God the Decretals of the Antient Popes and their own Canon Law as some of the Professors of it have not sticked to say So strongly are they byassed with their private interess and a desire of carrying on their faction in the Church of Christ as to place the holy Spirit where he doth not move in their Traditions in Apochryphal and meer Humane writings and not to see and honor him where indeed he is in the holy Scriptures Of the Authority Sufficiency and Perspicuity of which holy Scriptures I do not purpose at the present any debate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is a work more fit for another place and such as of it self would require a Volume onely I say that if the written Word be no rule at all but as it hath authority from the Church which it is to direct and then not an entire but a partial rule like a Noune Adjective in Grammar which cannot stand by it self but requireth somewhat else to be joyned with it in Construction and that too so obscure and difficult that men of ordinary wits cannot profit by it and therefore must not be permitted to consult the same the Holy Ghost might very well have spared his pains of speaking by the Prophets in the time of the Law or guiding the pens of the Apostles in the time of the Gospel and the great Body of the Scripture had been the most impertinent and imperfect peece the most unable to attain to the end it aims at that was ever writ in any Science since the world began Which what an horrid blasphemy it must needs be thought against the majesty and wisdom of the holy Spirit let any sober Christian judge And yet as horrid as those blasphemies may be thought to be some of the most profest enemies of the Church of Rome and such as think that the further they depart from Rome they are the nearer to Christ have faln upon the like if not worse extravagancies For to say nothing of the Anabaptists and that new brood of Sectaries which now swarms amongst us whom I look on onely as a company of Fanatical Spirits did not Cartwright and the rest of our new
Reformers in Queen Elizabeths time say as much as this The Scriptures say the Papists in their Council of Trent for I regard not the unsavory Speeches of particular men Is not sufficient to Salvation without Traditions that is to say without such unwritten Doctrinals as have from hand to hand been delivered to us Said not the Puritans the same when they affirmed That Preaching onely viva voce which is verbum traditum is able to convert the sinner That the Word sermonized not written is alone the food which nourisheth to life eternal that reading of the Word of God is of no greater power to bring men to Heaven than studying of the Book of Nature that the Word written was written to no other end but to afford some Texts and Topicks for the Preachers descant If so as so they say it is then is the written word no better than an Ink-horn Scripture a Dead Letter or a Leaden Rule and whatsoever else the Papists in the height of scorn have been pleased to call it Nay of the two these last have more detracted from the perfection and sufficiency of the holy Scripture than the others did They onely did decree in the Council of Trent That Traditions were to be received Paripietatis affectu with equal Reverence and Affection to the written Word and proceed no further These magnifie their verbum traditum so much above it that in comparison thereof the Scripture is Gods Word in name but not in efficacy They onely adde Traditions in the way of Supplement where they conceive the Scriptures to be defective These make the Scriptures every where deficient to the work intended unless the Preacher do inspire them with a better Spirit than that which they received from the Holy Ghost Good God that the same breath should blow so hot upon the Papists and yet so cold upon the Scriptures that the same men who so much blame the Church of Rome for derogating from the dignity and perfection of the Holy Scriptures should yet prefer their own indigested crudities in the way of Salvation before the most divine dictates of the Word of God But such are men when they leave off the conduct of the Holy Ghost to follow the delusions of a private Spirit Articuli IX Pars Secunda 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam i. e. The Holy Catholick Church CHAP. II. Of the name and definition of the Church Of the Title of Catholick The Church in what respects called Holy Touching the Head and Members of it The Government thereof Aristocratical IN the same Article in which we testifie our Faith in the Holy Ghost do we acknowledge That there is a Body or Society of faithful people which being animated by the power of that Blessed Spirit hath gained unto it self the name of the Church and with that name the attribute or title of Catholick in regard of the extent thereof over all the World of Holy in relation to that piety of life and manners which is or ought to be in each several Member And not unfitly are they joyned together in the self same Article the Holy Ghost being given to the Apostles for the use of the Church and the Church nothing but a dead and lifeless carcass without the powerful influence of the Holy Ghost As is the Soul in the Body of Man so is the Holy Ghost in the Church of Christ that which first gives it life that it may have a Being and afterward preserves it from the danger of putrefaction into which it would otherwise fall in small tract of time Having therefore spoken in the former Chapter of the Nature Property and Office of the Holy Ghost and therein also of the Volume of the Book of God dictated by that Blessed Spirit for that constant Rule by which the Church was to be guided both in Life and Doctrine We now proceed in order to the Church it self so guided and directed by it And first for the Quid nominis to begin with that it is a name not found in all the writings of the Old Testament in which the body of Gods people the Spiritual body is represented to us after a figurative manner of Speech in the names of Sion and Ierusalem as Pray for the peace of Jerusalem Psal. 121. And the Lord loveth the gates of Sion Psal. 87. The name of Church occurreth not till the time of the Gospel and then it was imposed by him who had power to call it what he pleased and to entitle it by a name which was fittest for it The Disciples gave themselves the name of Christians the name of Church was given them by our Saviour Christ. No sooner had St. Peter made this confession for himself and the rest of the Apostles Thou art Christ the Son of the living God but presently our Saviour added Upon this Rock that is to say The Rock of this Confession as most of the Antients and some Writers also of the darker times do expound the same will I build my Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Greek The word used by our Lord and Saviour is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whence the Latines borrowed their Ecclesia the French their Eglise and signifieth Coetum evocatum a chosen or selected company a company chosen out of others derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is as much as evocare to call out or segregate In that sense as the word is used to signifie a company of men called by the special Grace to the Faith in Christ and to the hopes of life eternal by his death and passion is the word Ecclesia taken in the writings of the holy Apostles and in most Christian Authors since the times they lived in though with some difference or variety rather in the application to their purposes But antiently it was of a larger extent by far and signified any Publick meeting of Citizens for the dispatch of business and affairs of State For so Thucidides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. That the Assembly being formed the different parties fell upon their disputes and so doth Aristophanes use it in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. That the people should now give the Thracians a Publick meeting in their Guild-hal or Common forum of the City St. Luke who understood the true propriety as well as the best Critick of them all gives it in this sense also Acts 19.32 where speaking of the tumult which was raised at Ephesus he telleth us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Assembly was confused And in the 26. Psal. Ecclesia malignantium is used for the Congregation of ungodly men APPLICATION BUt after Christ had given this name unto the Body of the Faithful which confessed his Name and the Apostles in their writings had applied it so as to make it a word of Ecclesiastical use and notion the Fathers in the following Ages did so appropriate the same to the state of
all that required Baptism When first made part of the publick Liturgy and rehearsed by the people standing in what particulars discriminated from other Formula's The first objection that the Creed is no Canonical Scripture produced and answered An answer to the second objection about the variation of the words in which the Creed was represented Several significations of the Greek word Catholick and that it was a word in use in and before the time of the Apostles contrary to the third objection The last objection from the words of Ruffinus answered The scope and Project of this work The Authors appeal unto antiquity The testimony given unto antiquity by the Antient Writers and also by the Church of England Calvins Authority produced for the asserting of this Creed to the twelve Apostles closeth up the Preface PART I. CHAP. I. Of the name and definition of faith the meaning of the phrase in Deum credere The Exposition of it vindicated against all exceptions THe Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what it signifies and from whence it comes The proper Etymologie of the Latine fides Faith how defined and how it differeth from experience knowledge and opinion The grounds of faith less falliâ—le thâ—n that of any Art or Science Why faith is called by St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the substance of things not seen c. The usual distinction between credere Deum credere Deo and credere in Deum proposed and explicated according to the general tendries of the Schools neither the phrase in Deum or in Christum credere and the distinction thereon founded so generally true as it is pretended Credere with the proposition in not so peculiar unto God as by some conceived No difference in holy Scripture between Deo and in Deum credere nor in the meaning of the Creed Of the faith of Reprobates and why faith hath the name of fides electorum in the Book of God The faith of Devils what it is and why it rather makes them tremble then serves to nourish them in the hope of grace and pardon The Vulgar distinction of faith into Salvifical Historical Temporary and the faith of Miracles proposed examined and rejected CHAP. II. That there is a God and but one God only and that this one God is a pure and Immortal Spirit and the sole Governour of the world proved by the light of reason and the testimony of the antient Gentiles THe notion of a Deity ingraffed naturally in the soul of man Pretagoras Diagoras and Euhemerus why counted Atheists in old times Fortune and Fate why reckoned of as gods by some old Philosophers Natural proofs for this truth that there is but one God summed up together and produced by Minutius Felix and seconded by the testimonies of Mercurius Trismegistus the Sibyls and Apollo himself confirmed by the suffrages of Orpheus and the old Greek Poets The beeing of one God alone strongly maintained by Socrates affirmed by Plato and his followers countenanced by Aristotle and the Peripateticks verified also by the Academicks the most rigid Stoicks and by the general acknowledgment of all sorts of people The judgement of the learned Gentiles touching the Essence and Attributes of God conformable to that of the Orthodox Christians The Heresies of the Manichees and the Anthropomorphites confuted by the writings of the old Philosophers A parallel between the Tutelary gods of the old Idolaters and the Topical or local Saints of the Pontificians CHAP. III. Of the Essence and Attributes of God according to the holy Scripture the name of Father how applyed to God Of his Mercy Justice and Omnipotency THe diligence of Iustin Martyr when an Heathen in the search of God The name IEHOVAH when and for what occasion first given to God in holy Scripture The superstition of the later Iews in the use thereof The Hebrew Elohim sometimes communicated to the creature The several Etymologies of the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The names of El Elion and Adonai what they do import Of the Simplicity Eternity and Omnipresence of God Of his Knowledge Wisdome and Omnipotency The name of Father Almighty given to God by the learned Gentiles God in what sense the Father of our Lord IESVS CHRIST and of none but him The preheminence due in that respect to God the Father the name of Father how communicable to the whole Godhead God proved to be the Father of all mankinde in the right of Creation and of his faithful people by the laws of Adoption Many resemblances between adoptions among men and mans adoption to the sonship of Almighty God The love care and authority of our Heavenly Father compared with that of our earthly parents The care of God in educating all his children in the knowledge of his will how far extended unto the Infidels and Pagans and how far beneficial to them The title of Almighty given to God the Father what it importeth in it self and what in reference to the creature to his Church especially CHAP. IV. Of the Creation of the World and the parts thereof that it was made at first by Gods Almighty power and since continually preserved by his infinite Providence GEneral inducements moving God to create the world An answer to that idle question what God did before the creating of the world The error of Lactantius in it God differenced by this great work from the gods of the Gentiles and that in the opinion of the Gentiles themselves The work of the Creation ascribed to the whole Godhead jointly in the holy Scripture Of the first matter out of which and the time when it was created The opinion of the worlds eternity refelled by Cicero why supposed by Aristotle The worlds creation by the power of Almighty God proved by the testimonies of Trismegistus of Plato Aristotle and others of the learned Greeks As also by the suffrages of Varro Tully Seneca and others of the principal wits amongst the Latines Why God did pass no approbation on the works of the second day and doubled it upon the third Probable proofs that by the waters above the Firmament mentioned in the first of Genesis Moses intended not the clowds and rain but some great body of waters above the Spheres The praise and honour due to God for the worlds creation The general Providence of God in ordering the affairs thereof asserted both against the Stoicks and the Epicureans Gods goodness towards all mankinde especially to his chosen people And of his Iustice or veracity in performing the promises made unto them Gods justice in retaliating to the sons of men and meting to them with that measure which they mete to other Vngodly men how used as executioners of divine vengeance That neither the impunity nor prosperous successes of the wicked in this present world are inconsistent with the justice of Almighty God CHAP. V. Of the creation of Angels The Ministry and office of the good The fall and punishment of the evil Angels and
also as before was shown Which if it may not be admitted in the Articles of the Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints with the rest that follow I see no cause why it should be admitted in the front of all which was to be the leading Case unto all the rest But other men of higher mark have seen this before me who give no other sense theâ—eof in this place of the Creed then to believe that there is one only eternal God the Maker of all things For thus the Book entituled Pastor and commonly ascribed to Hermes St. Pauls scholar Ante omnia unum credere Deum esse qui condidit omnia i. e. Before all other things believe that there is one God who made all things Origen thus Primum credendus est Deus qui omnia creavit i. e. In the first place we must believe that there is a God by whom all things were created S. Hilary of Poyctiers thus In absoluto nobis facilis est aeternitas Iesum Christum a mortuis suscitatum credere i.e. Eternity is prepared for us and made easie to us if we believe that Christ is risen from the dead And finally thus Charles the Great in the Creed published in his name but made by the most learned men which those times afforded Praedicandum est omnibus ut credant Patrem Filium Spiritum sanctum unum esse Deum omnipotentem i. e. the Gospel must be preached to all men that they may know that the Father Son and holy Ghost is one God Almighty Which resolution and authority of the antient Fathers is built no doubt upon the dictate and determination of S Paul himself who did thus lead the way unto them viz. He that câ—meth to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him Where the first Article of the Creed I believe in God is thus expounded and no otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I believe that God is that there is a God According to which Exposition of the blessed Apostle our Reverend Iewell publishing the Apology and Confession of the Church of England did declare it thus We believe that there is one certain Nature and Divine power which we call GOD c. and that the same one God hath created Heaven and Earth and all things contained under Heaven We believe that Iesus Christ the only Son of the Eternal Father when the fulness of time was come did take of that blessed and pure Virgin both flesh and all the nature of man c. that for our sakes he died and was buried descended into Hell c. We believe that the holy Ghost is very God c. and that it is his property to mollifie and soften the hardness of mens hearts when he is once received thereunto c. We believe that there is one Church of God and that the same is not shut up as in times past amongst the Iews into some one corner or Kingdom but that it is Catholick and Universal and dispersed throughout the whole world c. and that this Church is the Kingdom the Body and the Spouse of CHRIST c. To conclude we believe that this our self same flesh wherein we live although it dye and come to dust yet at the last shall return again to life by the means of Christs Spirit which dwelleth in us c. and that we through him shall enjoy everlasting life and shall for ever be with him in glory Which consonancy of expression being so agreeable to that observed before by the antient Fathers and that observed before by the antient Fathers so consonant unto the expression of S. Paul the Apostle is the last reason which I have for this resolution that the so much applauded explication of the phrase in Deum credere is not to be admitted in this place of the Creâ—d And this shall also serve for a justification of that gloss or Commentary which I have given on this first Article viz. that to believe in God the Father Almighty is only to believe that there is one Immortal and Eternal Spirit of great both Majesty and Power which we call GOD and that this God is the Father Almighty the Father both of IESVS CHRIST and of all mankinde who as a Father hath not only brought us into the world but hath provided us of all things necessary both for body and soul protecting us by his mighty power and governing us and our affairs by his infinite wisdome But against this there may be some objections made which must first be answered before we come unto the further explication of this Article For if Faith be no other then a firm assent to supernatural truths revealed the Reprobate as they call them may be said to have faith which yet is reckoned in the Scripture as a peculiar gift of God unto his Elect which is therefore called Fides electorum or the Faith of the Elect Tit. 1.1 2. If to believe in God the Father Almighty and in IESVS CHRIST his only Son c. be only to believe that there is a God and that all those things are most undoubtedly true and certain which be affirmed of IESVS CHRIST in the holy Scripture the Devil may be reckoned for a true believer S. Iames assuring us of this that the Devils do believe and tremble Iam. 2.19 And 3. if the definition and the explication before delivered be allowed for currant it will quite overthrow the received distinction of Faith into Historical temporary saving or justifying faith and the faith of Miracles so generally embraced in the Protestant Schools This is the sum of those objections which I conceive most likely to be made against me but such as may be answered without very great difficulty For that the Reprobate as they call them may have Faith in CHRIST is evident by many instances and texts of Scripture Of Simon Magus it is written in the Book of the Acts that he believed and was baptized and continued with Philip the Evangelist Adhaerebat Philippo saith the Vulgar he stuck so fast unto him that he would not leave him Ask Calvin what he thinks of this faith of Simons and he will tell you Majestate Evangelii victum vitae salutis authorem Christum agnovisse ita ut libenter illi nomen daret that being vanquished by the power and Majesty of the Gospel of Christ he did acknowledge him to be the Author of salvation and eternal life and gladly was inrolled amongst his Disciples And whereas some had taught and published amongst other things that Simon never did believe but counterfeited a belief for his private ends Calvin doth readily declare his dislike thereof acknowledging this faith of Simons to be true and real though but only temporarie Non tamen multis assentior qui simulasse duntaxat fidem putant quum minime credâ—ret I cannot yeild to them saith he which think
the same Spirit to another the gift of healing by the same Spirit to another power to do miracles to another prophecy to another the discerning of spirits to another diverse kindes of tongues c. Where plainly Faith the gift of healing Prophecying and the power of working Miracles are counted for distinct graces of the holy Ghost by consequence the power of working Miracles is no species of faith but rather something extraordinary super-added to it as before I said So that we need not stand so much upon this distinction as in regard thereof to recede from the Exposition before delivered wherein it was affirmed that in Deum credere to believe in God is only to believe that there is one Immortal and Eternal Spirit of great both Majesty and Power which we call GOD and that this God is the Father Almighty who as he made all things by his mighty power so he doth still preserve them by his divine Providence and preserve them by his infinite wisdome And this Interpretation of the phrase in Deum credere or in Christum credere doth hold best correspondence with the definition of faith before laid down For if Faith be no other then a firm assent to supernatural truths revealed then to include no more in these forms of speech then that there is a God an Almighty God the maker of all things and that his only Son IESVS CHRIST our Lord both did and suffered all these things which are affirmed of him in the holy Scriptures and briefly laid together in the present Creed must needs be most agreeable to the nature of faith Which being premised once for all we shall proceed unto the proof of the present Article in which we shall first make it clear and evident out of monuments and records of the learned Gentiles for in this point it were unnecessary to consult either the Scriptures or the Fathers that there is an infinite incomprehensible and eternal Spirit whom we call by the Name of GOD and secondly that this GOD is only one without any Rival or Competitor in the publick Government of the Universe And this shall be the argument of the following Chapter CHAP. II. That there is a God and but one God only and that this one God is a pure and immortal Spirit and the sole Governour of the World proved by the light of Reason and the testimonies of the Antient Gentiles THat GOD is or that there is a God is a truth so naturally graffed in the soul of man that neither the ignorance of letters nor the pride of wealth nor the continual fruition of sensual pleasures have been able to obliterate the Characters or impressions of it For Tully very well observeth Nullam gentem tam feram esse neminem omnium tam immanem cujus mentem non imbuerit deorum opinio That there was never Nation so barbarous nor man so brutish and inhumane but was seasoned with this opinion that there was a God And though saith he many misguided by ill customes or want of more civil education do conceive amiss of the Divinity yet they did all suppose a nature or power Divine to which they were not drawn by conference and discourse with others nor by tradition from their Ancestors or the laws of their Countrey but by a natural instinct imprinted in them quae gentium omnium consensio lex putanda est which general consent of all people concerning this matter is to be esteemed the Law of Nature And though the civil wisdome which appeareth in the laws of Lycurgius Numa and other antient Legislators amongst the Heathens may argue probably an opinion in them of framing many particular rites of Religion as politick Sophisms to retain that wilde people in awe for whose sake they devised then yet could not their inventions have wrought so succesfully upon mens affections unless they had been naturally inclined to the ingraffed notion of a GOD in general under pretence of whose Soveraign right those particulars had been commended to them or obtrudâ—d on them A more plentiful experiment of which evident truth hath been suggested to us in these later Ages wherein divers Countries peopled with Inhabitants of different manners and education have been discovered the very best whereof have been far more barbarous then the worst of those which were so counted in the days of Tully yea or of Numa or Lycurgus though long time before him And yet amongst these savage Indians who could hardly be discerned from brute beasts Nisi in hoc uno quod loquerentur as Lactantius once said in a case much like but only in that they had the use of speech were found to have acknowledged several Gods or superior powers to which they offered sacrifices and other rites of Religion in testimony of their gratitude for benefits received from them As if the signification of mans obligements to some invisible power for health food and other necessaries or for their preservation from dysasters and common dangers were as natural to him as fawnings or the like dumb signs in doggs other tame domestick creatures are to those who cherish them Concerning which as Cicero one of the wisest of the Gentiles gives an excellent rule so of that natural inclination did the Apostle of the Gentiles make an excellent use For there were many great and famous Philosophers which did not only ascribe the government of the World to the wisdom of the Gods but did acknowledge all necessary supplies of health and welfare to be procured from their providence Insomuch that corn and other increase of the Earth saith Cicero together with that variety of times and seasons with those alterations or changes of weather by which the fruits of the Earth doe spring up and ripen are by them made the effects of Divine goodness and of the love of GOD to mankinde And on this ground St. Paul proceeded in his Sermon to the people at Lystra whom he endevoured to bring unto the knowledge of the only true invisible GOD by giving them to understand that though in times past he had suffered all Nations to walk in their own ways yet did he not leave himself without witness in that he was beneficial or did good unto them and gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons filling their hearts with food and gladness From which one stream of Divine goodness experienced in giving rain to proceed no further did the old Grecians christen their great god Iupiter by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Latines on the same reason did surname him Pluvius And to say truth the prudent Orator had very good ground both for his observation and the reason of it For of all the Nations known in the times he lived in there was none branded with the stain of Atheism but the poor Fenni a Sect or Tribe amongst the Germanes Of whom it is affirmed by Tacitus that they had neither houshold gods nor corn nor cattel nor any
And it is registred for the reverend say of old Cleanthes O Deus rege me per eam causam per quam omnia temperas moderaris Rule me O God by that prime cause whereby thou dost dispose of all things Which Cause they called by the name of Fate or destiny Epictetus as of later time so he speaks more plainly whose dictates are much made of by the old Platonicks Proclus Simplicius and the rest Discendum ante omnia unum esse Deum c. It is to be learned saith he in the first place that there is but one God who doth govern all things and whatsoever we do or say or think is not hid from him In Seneca whom Lactantius calleth Stoicorum acerrimum the most resolute Stoick of the Romanes there are so many several passages to prove this point that he who would produce them all must transcribe him wholly For an essay therefore take that which Lactantius citeth where he calleth God Deorum omnium Deum or the God of gods the Governour of Heaven and Earth by whom those other Deities whom the people worshipped were many times suspended and restrained from action Hitherto have we traced the footsteps of the antient Poets and all the several sects of the old Philosophers and found a general consent amongst them that there is a GOD and that there is but one God who takes care of all things Whom if they call sometimes by the name of Fate or Providence or Nature as sometimes they do we must still understand them of that one God in whom we Christians do profess that we do believe Or if they sometimes call him by the name of Iupiter we are to understand the same one God in whom the rest are comprehended as subservient Instruments So witnessed the most learned Varro affirming as I finde him cited by St. Augustine that though the Doctors of the Gentiles did use sometimes to speak of the Gods and Goddesses yet were they all contained in Jupiter whose powers and Ministers they were And thereupon the Father buildeth this resolution that our Ancestors were not either so blinde or simple as to think that Bacchus Ceres and the rest were Gods indeed but rather the gifts and ministrations Munera functiones as his words are there of that one only God whom they did believe in And this perswasion was so naturally implanted in the mindes of all men that in their dangers and necessities and more sober thoughts they still made mention of one God and but one alone What was observed to this purpose by Minutius Felix is declared before The same we finde to be observed by Tertullian also Anima licet diis falsis ancillata c. The soul saith he though servilely obsequious unto these false Gods yet upon better thoughts as if awakened newly from sleep and wine it speaks of one God only in the singular number it being the common voice of all to say If God grant me this or looking on him as their judge to pronounce these words God seeth and I refer it unto God and God shall acquit me And saying this saith he they lift their eyes up towards heaven not toward the Capitol Novit enim sedem Dei vivi as knowing Heaven to be the seat of the living God The like Lactantius telleth us too Cum jurant cum optant c. When they swear or wish or render thanks or that the noise of war do affright their ears they neither do then speak of IOVE or their many Gods but of God alone though after they have scaped the danger ad Deorum Templa concurrunt they run unto the Temples of their Idol-gods to offer sacrifice May we not say of these and the like expressions as Tertullian doth that they are testimonia Animae naturaliter Christianae the testimonies of a Soul that is naturally inclined to the Christian faith or the Confession of a Christian saying his Belief as Minutius phrased it If now after these testimonies of the learned Gentiles and the general acknowledgement of all sorts of people we should proceed to prove by reason or in way of argument that there is one God and but one alone it might be thought an endless and impertinent work consideringâ— that there is no hearb so ordinary nor flye so small nor worm or creature so contemptible but is an argument sufficient to evince a God-head Minutius hath so fully satisfied in that particular that they which are more copious in pursute thereof are but as Commentators and he the Text discoursing on his plain song with a fuller descant And therefore I shall supersede from that way of discourse resting content with that discovery and progress we have made herein out of the antient Poets and the old Philosophers and the concurrent testimony of all sorts of people who lived in those dark times of ignorance when as the multitude of Gods was in most esteem and the true worship of this one God confined and as it were imprisoned in the House of Israel This therefore being proved or supposed as granted that there is one GOD and but one alone the next particular enquiry which we are to make must be to finde out what GOD is how we are to define him A point esteemed so difficult in the former times that Simonides being asked by Hiero of Syracusa Quid Deus esset what God was desired first one day to consider of it afterwards two then four and still more and more Of which being asked the reason he returned this answer that the more he did consider of it the more he was unable to determine in it Both Xenophon and Plato did conceive so also as Plotinus witnesseth who hath recorded this for a speech of theirs Deum pervestigare nec possibile c. that it was neither possible nor lawful to enquire too far into the nature of GOD. And yet they ventured many of them upon such particulars as though they do not make amongst them an exact definition yet they describe him by those Attributes as shew they were not ignorant of his heavenly nature Their judgements in this point collected by Minutius Felix take together here Sit Thales Milesius omnium primus c. Let us begin saith he with Thales who though he make water the first cause of all things yet makes he God to be that universal Soul who out of that created all things the mysterie of water and the Spirit being more sublime then to be understood by the sons of men Anaximenes and after him Apolloniates Diogenes make him to be the Air because both infinite and immensurable Anaxagoras his opinion was that GOD was an infinite understanding Pythagoras that he was that Soul which dwelling in the whole frame of Nature did give life to all things Xenophanes did use to say that every infinite with understanding might be called GOD. Antisthenes that there were many popular Gods and but one natural one or one God
time to enquire any further after the beginnings of things who made them and did first extract them out of the common masse or Chaos where before they lay Quid quaeâ—am saith he quae sint initia universorum quis rerum formator qui omnia in uno mersa et materia inerti convoluta disâ—reverit Macrobius speaks more plainly yet although he somewhat failed in his computation affirming that the World must be lately made Cujus cognitio bis mille annos non excedat considering that there was no monument or record thereof which could entitle it to the age of two thousand years The like may be affirmed of the Poets who do ascribe the glory of the Worlds Creation unto God alone Ovid in plain significant termes Sine ulla nominis dissimulatione as Lactantius hath it without boggling or scrupling at the name of God Virgil more covertly under the names of Mens and Spiritus under the which names the old Philosopers used to mask him For Ovid having before described the general Chaos then addes Hanc Deus et melior litem natura diremit Nam Coelo terras et terris abscidit undas That is to say But God the better nature this decides Who Earth from Heaven the Sea from Earth divides And shortly after speaking of the Creation of Man he gives God these most honourable titles the Maker of all things the Authour of a better World or Ille opifex rerum mundi melioris origo in his proper language Virgil although he speaks more covertly as before was said yet he ascribeth that to his Mens or Spiritus which Ovid in more plain terms doth assigne to God and so coâ—es somewhat near the truth Non longe fuit a veritate as Lactantius noteth For in his Aeneads thus he tels us Principio Coelum et Terras camposque liquentes Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque Astra Spiritus intus alit totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se â—orpore miscet Which may be Englished thus in brief Heaven Earth and Seas the Sun and Moons bright sphere In the beginning by some Spirit were Divinely cherish'd which diffus'd through all Did like the Soul quicken this massie Ball. In which we have not only intimated the powerfull influence of the Spirit but the words In principio which are used by Moses But to returne again to the Word of God we finde not only there that God made the World and that he made it in such time as himself best pleased but also the course and method which he used in so great a work A work which took up six whole dayes as before was said God taking a delight as it were in his own productions and giving them the commendation of good as they were created or pretermitting that commendation as sometimes he did when any thing was wanting unto that perfection which was after added For in the work of the second day wherein God did divide the waters above the firmament from those which were disposed beneath it we do not finde this approbation et vidit Deus quod esset bonum because that did not bring the waters to that use and perfection which after they received when they were separated from the Earth and gathered together into one body which he called the Sea And this consideration is alone sufficient to consute a strange conceipt of some late Divines Who on pretence of some authority out of Augustines works have told us that all things were created at once by the power of God and that not only in one day sed in eodem momento or eodem nunc as Vallesius phraseth it the distinction of six days being made by Moses the better to complie with our incapacities For questionlesse there cannot be a better reason why God should passe no approbation on the second days work and double it upon the third but that the separation of the Waters not being fully perfected till the said third day required one special approbation from the mouth of God as the production of the earth and the fruits thereof which was the work of that day also did require another But here a question may be made concerning those waters which are said to be above the firmament or rather of the firmament which is said to divide them I know the general opinion of most writers is that by the Firmament in that place we are to understand the Air as being interposed inter aquosam et humidam superioris Regionis molem etâ— aquas marium fluminumque between the waters of the upper Regions and that which is dispersed in the Seas and Rivers So Iunius for the Protestant Doctors and Estius for those of the Church of Rome do expound that Text and for my part I have not been unwilling to conforme to that in which both parties are agreed But I have met of late with the Observations of a right learned man upon some passages of Scripture in which I finde some strong presumptions that an Abysse of Waters must needs be granted to be above the highest Orbe whose Arguments I shall lay down as I finde them there and so refer the matter wholly to the Readers judgment For first he saith and I think very truly that the Waters above the Heavens called upon by David and the three Children in their Song to praise the Lord cannot be taken for the watery Region of the Air because in the same Canticle by an expresse enumeration of all the Meteors this Region is invited to the like celebration O every showres and dew blesse ye the Lord and magnifie his name for ever saith the Benedicite Fire and hail snow and vapour winde and storm fulfilling his word saith the book of Psalmes Psal. 148. He telleth us secondly that in the separation of the waters spoken of by Moses the waters below the firmament were gathered together into that Receptacle which he called the Sea and that in the space above the firmament he laid up the rest of the deep as in a store-house Psal. 33.7 From whence when he uttered his voice as at the flood there was a multitude or noise of waters in the Heavens Ier. 10.13 Which lest it might be gratis dictum he proves it by the story of the generall Deluge in which the waters being said to prevail at least 15. cubits above the top of the highest mountains must needs have more time then 40. days and 40. nights for their falling down according to the course of nature unlesse there had been some supply from this great Abysse and that God by an high hand had forced down those waters which he had laid up there as in a store-house And that there was such a supplie from this infinite and inexhaustible store-house he shewes out of those words of the 7. of Genesis where it is said that the fountains of the great deep or as the Angell calleth them in the Book of
how to comfort them with the joyfull news of his recovery Sorrow and grief and anguish and disconsolation our Saviour did begin to feel there 's no doubt of that though not in such a high degree as to make him fall into those extremities of passion as neither to know what he did nor for what he prayed He that could come to his Disciples in the middest of his anguish and reprove them for their sloth and sleepiness had neither lost the use of his speech nor senses And if his prayers were full of faith as no doubt they were for the Scriptures say that he was heard in that he prayed for which could not be without a perfect measure of faith assuredly however he was heavily oppressed under the burden of afflictions he knew full well both what he prayed for and to whom But this was only the beginning of his sorrowes as before was said It followeth in the text both in Matthew and Marke My soul is exceeding sorrowfull even unto the death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my soul is compassed round with sorrowes such as doe seem to threaten me with no lesse then death and yet no way to scape them as in both Evangelists And certainly it stood with reason that it should be so For as an eminent Prelate of our own doth observe right well The whole work and weight of our Redemption was now before Christs eyes and apprehension in a more exact and lively manner he now appearing before the judgment seat of God then we in this body can discern For as all things needfull shall be present and patent to us when we are brought to Gods tribunall so Christ presenting himself before the judgement of God to the end that man might be redeemed by the ransome which he was to pay for him and Satan ejected from prevailing against his members by his mediation did fully and perfectly behold the detestation which God had conceived against our sins and the power of his wrath provoked by our defection and rebellion as also the dreadfull vengeance prepared and ordained for sin and our dull and carelesse contempt of our own misery together with the watchfulnesse and eagernesse of the common adversary the brunt and burden of all which he was to bear and to avert them from us by by that satis â—action which the justice of God should then require at his hands as a just price and full recompence for the sins of men The due consideration and intuition whereof being in Christ more clear then we can conceive might worthily make the manhood of Christ both to fear and tremble and in his prayers to God to stir and inflame all the powers and parts both of soul and body as far as mans nature and spirit were able with all submission and deprecation possible to powre forth themselves before his God Here was full cause undoubtedly to make him sorrowful and sorrowful unto the death How could it otherwise be conceived when the just and full reward of our iniquities was thus presented to his sight when he beheld the greatnesse and the justnesse of Gods wrath against it and therewithall considered within himself how dear the price must be and how sharpe the pain which should free us of it And on the other side considered how precious his own person was how infinite his obedience how pure his life and yet how that most precious life must be taken from him that by one death and that death only of the body he might deliver us from the death both of body and soul. So then his soul was â—ull of sorrow there was good cause for it but not oppressed with any pains much lesse tormented and inflanted with the pains of hell as some would fain gather from the text for neither tristitia in Latine nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greek either amongst divine or humane writers signifie any such impression of pain and torment but an affection only which afflicts the minde rising upon the apprehension of some evill either past or instant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greek amongst the choycest humanitians is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Cicero translates opinio recens mali praesentis a fresh opinion of present or impendent evill And Austin telleth us for the Latines that grief and anguish when it is in the soul is called tristitia that is sorrow but when 't is in the body then 't is molestia pain or trouble Thus is the word taken also in the holy Scripture where St. Paul saith I would not come again unto you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in sorrow or heaviness for fear he should have sorrow of them of whom he did expect to be received with joy and where it is affirmed of the rest of the servants when they perceived how cruelly their fellow-servant which was pardoned so great a sum dealt with one of his debters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were very sorry And certainly they might be very sorry on so sad an accident out of a fellow-feeling of their Brothers miserie we have no reason to conceive them to be full of pain Hitherto we have met with such griefs and sorrows in our Saviour as never man endured before but yet they prove not to be such as either did confound all the powers of his soul or astonish all the senses of his body or brought him into such amazement that he considered neither what he said or did Some have endevoured to infer this as before was noted out of the texts and words foregoing but with ill successe and therefore they are fallen at last on an other Scripture which they think makes for them How is my soul troubled saith our Saviour and what shall I say Father save me from this hour but for this cause came I unto this houre Here they observe a contrariety or contradiction in our Saviours words which could not possibly proceed but from a soul distracted and a minde confounded and what could work so strange and sensible a confusion in him but the pains of hell which were within him But whatsoever they observe the most eminent men for parts and learning in the times before them could see no such matter Erasmus in his Paraphrases gives this glosse upon them which Bullinger a learned Protestant writer doth extol most highly and calleth an excellent explication I finde my soul troubled for the day of my death approaching and what shall I say For the love of mine own life shall I neglect the life of the world By no means I will apply my self to the will of my Father Mans weaknesse troubled with the fear of death may say unto him Father if it be possible save me from this hour from this danger of death which is now so near me But love desirous of mans salvation shall presently add Nay rather if it be expedient let death which is desired come for as much as wittingly and willingly by the
which the voice from heaven proclaimed him openly to be But since that time there had been many bickerings between them in which the Devil always went away with the loss his Ministers disgraced and their crimes laid open even in the sight of all the people his Kingdome in the souls of men in danger to be lost for ever by the preaching of that Gospel which our Saviour taught and as a preparative thereunto himself ejected violently out of many of his strongest holds and fortresses I mean the bodies of those men which he had possessed And then why may we not conceive that either to revenge himself on his mortal enemy in a desperate hope to prevail against him he had now mustred all his forces for another onset and was resolved to put the whole fortune of his affairs upon the issue of this combat and by the issue and success thereof of so great a battel to decide the title which he pretended and laid claim to in the souls of mankinde Why may not this be thought the conflict in which our Saviour was ingaged or willingly had ingaged himself on the appearance of the Angel for the success whereof he prayed so earnestly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in the Greek with greater earnestness of minde and fervency of zeal then he did before For my part I can see no reason but it might be so Certain I am that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a race a wrastling or some such solemn publick exercise and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the plural number denote such things as appertain to those games and exercises Thus read we in the book of Maccabees 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cum quinquennalis Agon Tyro celebraretur i. e. when the games of every fift year were kept at Tyre and in the first to the Corinthians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nam qui in Agone contendit c. i. e. Every man that striveth for the mastery as the English reads it And it is plain to any who is conversant in the Greek not only that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth signifie to be solicitous and in anguish but also to contend or strive about the victory but also that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word here used by the Evangelists though it doth generally denote a dismaying sorrow yet is used sometimes to express Luctantis angustias difficillimas the straights which Wrastlers are reduced to in those publick exercises But whether this conjecture be approved or not for I leave it arbitrary there is no question to be made but that the bloudy sweat which the Scripture speaks of proceeded not from fear but fervency not from the anguish of his heart but from that heat of zeal and strong intension of minde which was then upon him It could not come from fear that 's certain for fear as Galen hath observed doth presently drive the bloud and spirits towards their Fountain and contracteth them together by cooling the uttermost parts of the body For on the apprehension of any imminent danger the bloud and spirits which are naturally diffused through all the parts of the body repair immmediately unto the heart as the principal fortress for the strength and preservation of the whole repercussis spiritibus atque in intimos cordis sinus receptis as we read in Scaliger So that the bloud and spirits being drawn back to the heart or towards their fountain as Galen saith as usually they are in the case of fear it cannot be that any extremity of fear should be the cause of such an unusual kinde of sweat as that which did befal our Saviour And on the other side it is no new thing that fervency of zeal and a vehement contention of the minde being they heat and thin the bloud and not cool and thicken it as we are told by Galen that fear doth most commonly should produce such a strange effect as a bloudy sweat For the Physitian whosoever he was who writ the Book De utilitate respirationis amongst Galens works doth affirm for certain Contingere poros ex multo aut fervido spiritu adeo dilatari ut etiam exeat sanguis per eos fiatque sudor sanguineus that is to say it sometimes hapneth that abundant or fervent spirits do so dilate the pores of the body that bloud issueth out by them and so the sweat may be bloudy Which observation being true as no doubt it is we may well think if we look to the order and sequence of the Gospel that the fervent zeal of our Redeemer extremely heating the whole body melting the spirits rarifying the bloud opening the pores and so colouring and thickning the sweat of Christ might in most likelyhood be the cause of that bloudy sweat Doth not the Gospel say expresly that being in an Agony or dangerous and dreadful conflict he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was as it were great drops of bloud falling down to the ground and was not then that bloudy sweat a natural and proper effect of that fervency and zeal of prayer of which it is made a consequent in the holy Gospel Certain I am that Zuinglius one of the first men that laboured in the present Reformation of the Church did conceive it so Non lacrymas modo oculis sed sanguinis guttas e corpore exprimit seria devota oratio c. Serious and fervent prayer saith he doth not only draw tears from the eyes but a bloudy sweat also from the body as we see in Christs agony And doth not Bernard say to the same effect that Christ falling into an agony and praying the third time seemed to weep not only with his eyes but with all the parts of his body Nor doth it hinder us at all that the drops are said to be great great drops of bloud as in the English such as the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Latines Grumi but doth rather help us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indeed doth sometimes signifie the congealed parts of that which is liquid and the compacted peeces of that which is powdered But it stands very well with reason that Christs sweat might be thick by reason it issued from the inmost parts of his body and was mixed with bloud or might break out in great and eminent drops as coming from him violently and abundantly and being coloured with bloud and congealed with the coldness of the ayr might trickle down like strings or great drops of bloud to the very ground The greater those drops seemed to be the greater was that fervency of Spirit in which he prayed unto the Lord the greater the occasion he had to powre sorth those prayers He was now in his great incounter with the powers of darkness the safety and salvation of all mankinde depended on the issue and success thereof Angels and Archangels and all the hosts of heaven were gathered as
this present life And Lyra also saith the same though of later date Dixit Christus se derelictum a Deo Patre quia dimittebat eum in manibus occidentium i. e. Christ saith he was forsaken of God his Father because he was left in the hands of them that slew him And so Theodoret for the Greeks CHRIST saith he calleth that a dereliction or forsaking of God which was a permission of the Godhead that the humanity might suffer With these agree some Doctors of the Protestant Churches of great name and credit as Bucer and Bullinger in their Comments on the 27. of S. Matthew and Munster in his observations on the 21. Psalm Other forsaking other dereliction more then the leaving of him in the hands of his enemies they acknowledg none sure I am no withdrawing from him of the divine presence and assistance of God For so Tertullian doth affirm that God was said to have forsaken him in a sort dum hominem ejus tradidit in mortem whilest he delivered him in his humane nature to the hands of death but that he did not leave him altogether in that it was into the hands of his Father that he commended his Spirit Fulgentius saith as much or more saying that though in the death of Christ his soul was to forsake his dying body Divinitas tamen Christi nec ab anima nec a earne potest separari suscepta yet the Divinity could not be separated from his soul nor from the body neither which it had assumed And how far Christ was then from thinking that he had either lost the favour of Almighty God or his own interest in disposing of the heavenly glories doth evidently appear by that of Hilariâ— derelinqui se ad mortem questus est sed tunc Confessorem suum secum in regno Paradisi suscepit CHRIST saith he doth complain of his being forsaken or left unto the powers of death and yet even then he received the Theef that did confess him into the assured hopes of Paradise Where by the way all the forsaking which this Father doth take notice of was derelictio ad mortem a leaving of our Saviour to the hands of death The Schoolmen also say the same who make six kindes of dereliction or forsaking according as I finde them in our Reverend Field 1. By disunion of person 2. by loss of grace 3. by diminution or weakness of grace 4. by want of the assurance of future deliverance and present support 5. by denial of protection and 6. by withdrawing all solace and destituting the forsaken of all present comfort Then they declare that it is an impious thing to think that Christ was forsaken any of the four first ways in that the unity of his Person was never dissolved his graces neither taken away nor diminished no possibility that he should want assurance either of present support or future deliverance But for the two last ways he may be rightly said say they to have been forsaken in that his Father had denyed to protect and keep him out of the hands of his cruel bloudy and merciless enemies no way restraining them but suffering them to do the uttermost of that which their wicked malice could invent and that nothing might be wanting to make his sorrows beyond measure sorrowful had withdrawn from him also that accustomed solace which he was wont to find in God and removed from him all those things which might any way asswage the extremity of his pain and misery The Master of the Sentences gives it thus more briefly Separavit se divinitas quia substraxit protectionem separavit se foris ut non esset ad defensionem sed non intus defuit ad unionem All the forsaking then that the Lord complained of on the Cross was that he had been left to the hands of his enemies and that his heavenly Father had forborn all this while to shew any open sign of love or favour towards him in the sight of the Iews by whom he had been so afflicted and reproached and indeed blasphemed This is the most that can be said of this bitter and compassionte cemplaint which our Saviour made whether in reference to himself or to all mankinde or perhaps to both unless it may be further added that he desired in these words as some think he did that God would please to manifest by some publick sign what an esteem he had of that sacred Person whom both the Iews and Gentiles had so much oppressed and despised and of whom he had seemed all this while to make little reckoning And this is that which Athanasius hath observed in his fourth Oration or Discourse against the Arians who stood much upon it Loe saith he upon Christs speech why hast thou forsaken me the Father shewed himself to be even then in Christ as ever before For the earth knowing her Lord to speak did straightway tremble and the vail rent in twain and the Sun did hide himself and the rocks clave in sunder and the graves were opened and the dead men rose And that which was no less marvellous indeed the standers by which before denyed him confessed him to be the Son of God To proceed then this exclamation being made and gaining no more from the standers by but addition of scorn to misery and contempt to scorn the people mocking him as if he had called upon Elias to come and help him he cryed out I thirst and even the matter of that cry gives them another opportunity to put a scorn upon him and increase his griefs One of them saith the Scripture ran and took a spunge and filled it with vinegar and put it on a reed and gave it him to drink Matth. 27.48 Where mark the malice of the man if he may so be called which had no humanity Our Saviour called for drink to asswage his thirst the wicked fellow gives him vinegar not to accelerate his death or send him out of hand to the other world for fear Elias indeed should come to help him as Theophylact thinks but rather to continue him the longer in those terrible pains It is the quality of vinegar as we read in Pliny that it stancheth the effusion of bloud Sanguinis profluvium sistunt ex aceto as that Author hath it And therefore I concurre with them who think this vinegar was given him to no other end but out of a most barbarous purpose to prolong his torments for fear least otherwise he might bleed to death and put too speedy an end to their sports and triumphs But contrary to the expectation of this wicked man no sooner had our Saviour took a tast thereof but the work was finished He cryed out with a loud voice Matth. 27.50 It is finished Joh. 19.30 and presently he bowed his head and said Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit and having thus said he gave up the ghost In which it
to bury it the only means to weaken and unloose the bonds thereof that it should be no more a Prison but a place of rest wherein the bodies of Gods servants were to wait his pleasure in sure and certain hope of a Resurrection to eternal life But there was more in it yet then so The adding of these two words and buried seem unto me to have been done by the spirit of Prophecie for the preserving of a great part of the following Article which else had been in danger in these quarrel some times to be lost for ever Great pains is taken by some men and those of eminent parts and reputation to prove that nothing else is meant by Christs descent into hell but either his lying in the sepulchre or being made subject to the ignominy of the grave or his continuance for a while in the state of death as we shall see at large in the chapter following all which are fully comprehended in these words and buried What an advantage think we would these men have taken to put their own erroneous sense upon that Article had these words been wanting who have presumed to advance their own particular fancies above the Catholick Tradition of the Church of Christ notwithstanding these two words stand still to confute them in it But of this anon All I shall adde unto these Observations on Christs death and burial and his continuance in the grave is that in memory thereof the Church hath antiently appointed that Friday and Saturday should be fasted weekly the one in memory of the death and passion of our Lord CHRIST IESVS who on that day suffered for our sins the other in relation to the woful and disconsolate condition of the first followers of our Saviour who all that day distracted between hope and fear did seem to fit in darkness and the shadow of death And though the first Christians of the East did not fast the Saturday for fear of giving scandal to the Iews amongst whom they lived yet they made up the number of two days in the week by adding Wednesday to the Friday that being conceived to be the day on which he had been bought and sold by the Traytor Iudas But that concerns not us of the Western Churches in which the Friday and the Saturday fast are of such antiquity that it is generally believed by all moderate men to be derived from Apostolical Tradition Certain I am there is as much authority to keep those days fasting as the Canons of the Church can give them and the Statutes of this Realm can adde to those antient Canons and were accordingly observed by all Christian men till these wretched times in which the sons of the old Heretick Arius have turned all order out of dores and introduced a most unchristian or rather Antichristian licentiousnes under the colour and pretence of Christian liberty Thus have we brought our Saviour CHRIST unto the bottome of the grave the lowest step of his humiliation for the sons of men for lower then the grave he could hardly go And here we should conclude this Article but that as we began with some Observations touching Pontius Pilate under whom Christ suffered as also touching Annas and Caiaphas the High Priests two of the principal actors in this happy Tragedy so we will close this Article with the relation of that fearful and calamitous end which did most justly fall upon them and on the rest of their accomplices in this act of bloud But first we will begin with Iudas the Architect and chief contriver of the the plot of whom it is recorded in the holy Scriptures that being touched in conscience for so foul a treachery as the betraying of the innocent bloud of his Lord and Master he brought back his money to the Chief Priests and Elders and finding that they would not take it threw it down in the Temple went out and hanged himself S. Matthew there leavs off the story unto which Luke addes that falling headlong from the tree whether by the breaking of the rope or by some other way that the Scriptures say not he burst asunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out And certainly it was but just that he should lose his bowels who had so long before lost his compassion If now a man should ask what death Iudas dyed St. Matthew would make answer that he hanged himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Greek abiens laqueo se suspendit as the Latine hath it Which words lest they should seem of a doubtful sense and not import as much as the English makes them we will see what is noted of them by the Antient Fathers And first St. Hierom is express for this that Iudas laid violent hands upon himself and was the Author of his own death adding self-murder to the heap of his former crimes Ad prius scelus proprii homicidii crimen addidit so that Father hath it St. Augustine goeth more particularly to work Et laqueo vitam finivit and tels us in plain tearms that he hanged himself The Translator of Chrysostom doth affirm the same saying Projecta in Templo pecunia abiit gulam laqueo fregit that throwing down the wages of his iniquity upon the pavement of the Temple he went out and broke his neck with an halter which is the same with that of Augustine though in other tearms And finally Theophylact though many others might be named who doubtless understood his own language well doth resolve it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that putting his neck into the noose which himself had made he fell violently from off the tree and so burst asunder in the midst The general tradition of the Church doth run this way also Nor had I took this pains in a case so clear but that I see the Fathers put to school again by our modern Criticks who will not have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to signifie that he hanged himself but that he fell into such an extremity of grief with remorse of conscience that the anguish of it stopped his breath so that falling flat upon the ground he broke asunder in the middle A death so much too good for so vile a Traytor and so improbable if not impossible in the last part of it that he is fain to bring in the Devil Diabolo operante to pull out his bowels But of this new devise enough look we next on Pilate who having so unjustly condemned the Innocent and drawn upon himself the vengeance of a most just Judge was not long after outed of his Government by L. Vitellius Lord President of Syria and sent back to Rome Where being come so many grievous complaints were made against him to the Senate that he was banished to Vienna a City of France The Roman Legends do relate that he was prosecuted at Rome by Veronica of whom they fable that our
being typified in the Sanctum Sanctorum and by that entituled as before we saw unto which none might enter but the High Priest only From Types proceed we next unto the way of Prophecy and there we finde assured proof not only for the Substance of the Lords Ascension but for every Circumstance First for the substance thus saith the Prophet David Psal. 24. Lift up your heads O you gates and be you lift up you Everlasting doores and the King of Glory shall come in Who is the King of Glory the Lord strong and mighty the Lord mighty in battel Which Psalm as it was framed by that sweet singer of Israel on the reduction of the Ark to the City of David and literally meant of the Gates of the Tabernacle through which the Ark the glory of the Lord of Hosts was to have its entrance so was it mystically and Prophetically spoken of our Saviour Christ who in a mighty battel had subdued all the powers of hell and afterwards by his Ascension did set open the Gates of Heaven as all the Fathers generally down from Iustin Martyr do expound the place The Gates were lift up in the Psalm for the King of glory and opened in the Gospel for the Lord of glory as the Apostle with some reference to the Psalmist cals him Where by the way I think we need not go much further to resolve a doubt which hath been made by some in the Church of Rome that is to say whether the Heavens did open to make way to our Saviours passage an vero sine diversione eos penetravit or that he pierced or passed through the Coelestial bodies as they conceive he came unto his Disciples when the dores were shut The reason of this querie we know wel enough It is to help them at a pinch when they are put to it in maintenance of that monstrous Paradox of Transubstantiation which utterly destroys the being of Christs natural body But unto this the lifting up of the Gates gives a ready answer and such an answer as hath countenance from the Gospel also For if the Heavens were opened to make way for the Spirit of God to descend upon him at his Baptism as we know it was with how much greater reason must they then be opened when he ascended into Heaven not in Spirit only but also in his body in his humane nature Next for the circumstances which occur in the Lords Ascension we have the time thereof the fortieth day precisely from his Resurrection prefigured in the forty days of respit which God gave to Nineveh before he purposed to destroy it The correspondence or resemblance doth stand thus between them that as God gave the Ninivites forty days of Repentance after the miraculous deliverance of Ionah from the belly of the Whale had in all probability been made known unto them to confirm his Preaching so he gave forty days to the Iews also after Christs Resurrection to see if they would turn from their sins or not before he did withdraw the presence of their Saviour from them and lay them open to that desolation which he had denounced against them for their wickedness And this I am the more confirmed in by another passage of this kinde in the Book of Ezekiel where it is said Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days I have appointed thee each day for an year Which Prophesie what ever it might aim at at that present time in which it was declared by the mouth of the Prophet was questionless most punctually fulfilled in those forty days which Christ continued on the earth untill his Ascension For having born those forty days the iniquities of the house of Iudah and kept off by his presence all those plagues and punishments which were due unto them for the same he left them unto that destruction which at the end of forty years reckoning each day for an year as the Prophet bids us befell both their Temple and their Nation For the place next we finde it on record in the Prophet Zachary in these words His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives which is before Hierusalem on the East and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof Which part of the Prophesie concerning the feet of God which were to stand on the Mount of Olives was never before so literally verified as in the day of oâ—r Saviours Ascension his sacred feet making such an impression on the ground where he took his rise if I may so say as seemed to cleave the ground in twain and there continued for the space of four hundred years if the Tradition of the Antients be of any credit Certain I am that so it is affirmed by Paulinus no fabulous Writer but of a very great esteem for piety in the best times of the Church and he tels it thus Mirum vero inter haec quod in Basilica Ascensionis locus ille tantum de quo in nube susceptus ascendit ita sacratus divinis vestigiis dicitur ut nunquam tegi marmore aut paviri receperit semper excussis se respuente quae manus adornandi studio tentavit apponere Itaque in toto Basilicae spacio solus in sui caespitis specie virens permanet impressam divinorum pedum venerationem calcati Deo pulveris perspicua simul irrigua venerantibus conservat I have put down the words at large on the Authors credit and so commit them to the censure of the learned Reader Then for the cloud in which our Saviour made his Ascent to Heaven we have it thus fore-signified by the Prophet Daniel Behold saith he one like unto the Son of man came in the Clouds of Heaven and approached unto the antient of days and they brought him before him And he gave him Dominion and honour and a Kingdome that all people Nations and languages should serve him his Dominion is an everlasting Dominion which shall never be taken away and his Kingdome shall never be destroyed Where by the way we have a full description of that power and honour which God conferred upon our Saviour and by St. Mark is intimated in that form of speech and sate down on the right hand of God But this I touch but on the by referring the full disquisition of it to the next branch of this Article to which it properly belongeth In the mean time let us behold the pomp and ceremonie of the Lords Ascension which David hath described in the words before that is to say When he ascended up on high he led captivity captive and received gifts for men He gave gifts to men saith the great Apostle which how they do agree was before delivered In which it seemes to me that the sacred Pen-men have made the course and order of the Lords Ascension like to the pomp and glory of the antient Triumphs It was we know the custome of the
the fowles of the Aire Next for the Nomothetical arts of Empire let us look on those and we shall finde that as he came not to destroy the Law of God but to fulfil it so hath he added more weight to it either by way of application or of explication then before it had They who consult our Saviours Sermon on the mount and look upon his Commentaries on the law of Moses which the chief Priests and Pharisees had perverted by adulterate glosses will quickly finde that he discharged us not from the Obligation which the moral law had laid upon us but only did become our surety and bound himself to see it faithfully performed by us in our severall places The burden was not made lesse heavy then it was before I speak still of the Moral Law not the Ceremonial but that he hath given more strength to bear it more grace to regulate our lives by Gods Commandements And somewhat he did adde of his own auhority which tended to a greater measure of perfection then possibly we could attain to by the Law of Moses and that not only in the way of Evangelical Counsels and that there are such Counsels I can easily grant but of positive precept For so far certainly we may joyn issue with the Council of Trent that IESVS CHRIST is to be honoured and observed Non tantum ut Redemptor cui omnâ—s fidant sedut Legislator cui obediant not only as a Saviour unto whom we may trust but as a Law-maker also whom we are to obey The same position is maintained also by the Arminian party but not the more unsound for either Veritas a quocunq est est a Spiritu sancto as St. Ambrose hath it And this is so agreeable to the Word of God that either we must deny the Scripture or else confess that it proceeded from the Spirit of God Nor are his laws indeered only to us and sugred over as it were by the promise of a great reward but enjoyned also under pain of grievous punishments punishment and reward being the square or measure of the heavenly government no otherwise then of the earthly Tribulation and anguish saith St. Paul shall come upon the soul of every man that doth evil but glory and honour and peace to every man that doth good to the Iew first and also to the Gentile for God is no respecter of persons By which two general motives set before our eyes and the co-operation of the holy Spirit working with his Word he doth illuminate our mindes and mollifie our hearts and quench our lusts instruct us in the faith confirm us in our hopes and strengthen us in Christian charity till in the end he bring us to the knowledge of his holy will then to obedience to his Laws and finally to a resemblance of his vertues also If after all this care and teaching either by frailty or infirmity we do break his laws or violate his sacred Statutes as we do too often he doth not presently take the forfeiture which the Law doth give him for then O Lord should no flesh living in thy sight be justified but in the midst of judgement he remembreth mercy We may affirm of him most truly as Lactantius did Vt erga pios indulgentissimus Pater ita adversus impios justissimus Iudex as terrible a Iudge he is to impenitent sinners as an indulgent Father to his towardly children as before was said Such is the nature and condition of our Saviours Kingdome which sitting at the right hand of Almighty God he doth direct and govern as seems best to his heavenly wisdome and so shall do untill his coming again to judge both the quick and the dead Although he hath withdrawn himself and his bodily presence yet is he present with it in his mighty power and by the influences and graces of his holy Spirit And in this sense it was that he said unto them Behold I am with you alwayes to the end of the world And that not only with you my Apostles unto whom he spake but cum vobis successoribus vestris with all you my Disciples and with your successors also in your several places till time be no more Though he be placed above in the heavenly glories and is not joyned unto his Church by any bodily connexion yet he is knit unto it in the bonds of love and out of that affection doth so guide and order it as the Head doth the members of the Body natural Habet ecclesia Caput positum in Coelestibus quod gubernat Corpus suum separatum quidem visione sed annectitur Charitate as St. Austin hath it Vice-roy there needeth none to supply his absence who is always with us Nor we the assistance of a Vicar General to supply his place whose Spirit bloweth where him listeth and who is linked unto us in so strong affections But for all this our Masters in the Church of Rome have determined positively that in regard our Saviour hath withdrawn himself from the Church in his Body secundum visibilem praesentiam for as much as doth concern his visible presence he needs must have some Deputy or Lieutenant General qui visibilem hanc Ecclesiam in unitate contineat to govern and direct the same in peace and unity It seemes they think our Saviour Christ to be reduced unto the same straights as Augustus was of whom it is reported in the Roman stories that he did therefore institute a Provost in the City of Rome because he could not always be there in person 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and durst not leave it absolutely without a Governor And sure however others may complain of our Saviours absence and for that reason think it necessary to have some general Deputy to supply his place yet of all others those of Rome have least cause to do it who can command his presence at all times and on all occasions For as Cornelius a Lapide affirms expressely by saying only these words Hoc est Corpus meum the Bread is not only transubstiated into our Saviours Body but Christ anew begotten and born again upon the Altar And not his Body only that 's not half enough but as the Canon of Trent tels us there is totus Christus una cum anima Divinitate whole Christ both body and soul and the Godhead also personally and substantially on the blessed Sacrament That he is present every where in his power and Spirit there is none of us which denyeth If they can have his bodily presence also in so short a warning what use can they pretend for a Vicar General Adeo Argumenta ex falso petita ineptos habent exitus said Lactantius rightly Besides it is a Maxime in Ecclesiastical Polity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that the external Regiment of the Church of Christ is to be fitted to the frame and order of the
suffer But that being done they doe confign him over to the Fiends of hell to the Tormentors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as our Redeemer cals them in the 18. chapter of St. Matthew vers 34. The holy Angels are the Ministers of this dreadful Court the Devil and his Angels are the Executioners who bearing an old grudge to man from the first beginning will doubtless execute his Office on him with the most extremity And thus accordingly they do Anima damnata continuo invaditur a Daemonibus qui crudelissime eam rapiunt ad infernum deducunt as before we had it from St. Cyril But in their Ministery after Judgement to the just and righteous the case is otherwise The Angels as the Scripture tels us are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ministring Spirits sent out to minister unto them which shall be heirs of Salvation Sent out to minister unto them when they are alive sent out to carry their souls as they did that of Lazarus into Abrahams bosome when they are deceased sent out to gather the Elect together from the four windes And when the joyful sentence is pronounced upon them they leave them not till they have brought them to their place in the heavenly glories It is not only Colligite gather them together but Congregate in horreum meum in our Saviours Parable Gather the Wheat into my barn that is to say as he expounds himself in another place in gaudium Domini into the joy of the Lord Regnum a constitutione mundi paratum the Kingdom prepared for them before the foundations of the world were laid or as St. Paul doth change the phrase in Civitatem Dei viventis the City of the living God To such end serve the Angels in the day of Iudgement Which though they execute with great chearfulness at the Lords command and are assured of their own confirmation in the state of bliss yet can they not but tremble as the Fathers have it at the great hazard which is then to be undergone by their Fellow-servants So witnesseth St. Basil saying At Christs coming from the Heavens every creature shall tremble Even the Angels themselves shall not be without fear for they shall also be present though they shall give no account to God Not without fear Of what Of their fellow-servants and of Gods wrath upon the world as St. Chrysostom hath it At that day saith the Father all things shall be full of astonishment horror and fear A great fear shall even then possess the Angels and not the Angels only but the Archangels and Thrones and Powers of Heaven because their fellow-servants are to undergoe the judgement of their actions past Such and so terrible is the manner of Christs coming to Iudgement that not alone the guilty persons or the Saints themselves but even the very Angels are possessed with terror As for the method of this day whether the righteous or the wicked shall come first to judgement hath been made a question some thinking that the wicked shall be first condemned before the righteous do receive their absolution and others that the righteous shall be first absolved before the wicked have the sentence of their condemnation They that maintain the first opinion do ground themselves upon that passage in our Saviours Parable in which the Reapers are commanded first to gather the Tares and binde them in bundles for to burn them and then to gather the Wheat into his Barn But this illation is ill grounded and doth much worse agree with our Saviours method used in other places For in the parable of the Net cast into the Sea the good fish were first gathered into Vessels before the bad were thrown away and in the other parable of the Sheep and the Goats Venite hath precedencie of Discedite the blessed of the Father were first absolved before the cursed were condemned to eternal torments Nor will it serve the turn which is said by some that though the merits of the just are prius in discussione first taken in consideration and enquired into yet shall the punishment of the wicked and ungodly man be prius in executione first put in execution and inflicted on them For this as ill agreeth with those texts of Scripture in which it is said not only in particular of the twelve Apostles that they shall sit on twelve Thrones judging the twelve Tribes of Israel but also of the Saints in general that they shall judge the world as St. Paul hath told us That they shall judge the world but how Not only sâ—la comparatione by telling them or rather upbraiding them with their impieties and impenitencies as full well they may in which respect the Ninivites and the Queen of the South are in the Gospel said to condemn the Iews but Approbatione Divinae sententiae by approving and applauding that most righteous judgement which Christ the Supream Judge shall pronounce against them Which could not be in case the wicked did receive their final condemnation before the righteous were admitted into some participation of the heavenly glories When therefore it is said in the former parable Colligite primum Gather first the tares together either the word first must have reference to that of binding which doth follow after first gather them and then binde them up Or else it must be said and perhaps more rightly that the gathering of the tares is there first propounded not because first in order of the several judgements but because they gave occasion unto that discourse betwixt the Heavenly Husbandman and his household servants This difference thus composed and this rub removed the method used in this great action will disclose it self The Lord CHRIST IESVS being set in his glorious Throne the many thousands of his holy Angels shining round about him and the Saints apparelled with their bodies standing all before him or rather placed at his right hand as in the Parable the Reprobates being left on the Earth beneath or standing at his left hand at as great a distance he shall first pronounce the sentence of Absolution upon his Elect Come saith he O ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdome prepared for you from the foundation of the world And this shall first be done for these reasons specially first that the wicked seeing from what bliss they are fallen and what reward is laid up for the righteous man may be the more confounded in the apprehension of their own misfortune and secondly to shew how much more CHRIST is prone to mercy then he is to judgement according to the good old verse Ad poenam tardus Deus est ad praemia velox This done there shall be placed twelve Thrones neer the Throne of Christ for the twelve Apostles who as they were the Lords chief Agents in the work of the Gospel so shall they be his principal Assessors in the Act of Judicature the residue of the Saints
and Martyrs approving and applauding as before I said that most righteous judgement which CHRIST shall then pronounce against all the wicked saying Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels This dreadful sentence thus pronounced and the condemned persons being delivered over by the Angels of God to the Devil and his according to the sentence of that righteous Iudge CHRIST shall arise from his Tribunal and together with his elect Angels and most blessed Saints shall in an orderly and triumphant manner ascend into the Heaven of Heavens where unto every one of his glorious Saints he shall bestow the immarcessible Crown of glory and make them Kings and Priests unto God the Father When all the Princes of the Earth have laid down their Scepters at the feet of CHRIST God shall be still a King of Kings a King indeed of none but Kings Rex Regum Dominus Dominantium always but most amply them For then shall CHRIST deliver up the Kingdom unto God the Father which how it must be understood we have shewn before And the Saints laying down their Crowns at the feet of Christ shall worship and fall down before him saying Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever For thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy bloud out of every kindred and tongue and people and Nation and hast made us Kings and Priests to God to reign with thee in thy Kingdome for evermore Thus have I made a brief but a plain discovery so far forth as the light of Scripture could direct me in it both of the manner of our Saviours coming unto Judgement and of the Method he shall use in the act of judging That which comes after Iudgement whether life or death whether it be the joys of Heaven or the pains of Hell will fall more properly under the consideration of the last Article of the Creed that of Life Everlasting and there we mean to handle all those particulars which I think pertinent thereunto In the mean time a due and serious consideration of this day of Iudgement will be exceeding necessary to all sorts of people and be the strongest bridle to restrain them from the acts of sin that ever was put into the mouths of ungodly men For what a bridle think we must it be unto them to keep them from unlawful lusts nay from sinful purposes when they consider with themselves that in that day the hearts of all men shall be opened their desires made known and that no secrets shall be hid but all laid open as it were to the publick view What a strong bridle must it be to curb them and to hold them in when they are in the full careere and race of wickedness when they consider with themselves that there will be no way nor means to escape this Judgement Though they procure the Rocks to fall upon them and the Hils to hide them yet will Gods Angels finde them out and gather them from every corner of the World be they where they will Though they have flattered their poor souls and said Tush God will not see it or have disguised themselves with fig-leaves out of a silly hope to conceal their nakedness or wiped their lips so cunningly with the harlot in the Book of Proverbs that no man can discern a stollen kiss upon them yet all this will not serve the turn God will for all this bring them unto judgement and apprehend them by his Angels when they go a gathering There shall not one of them escape the hands of these diligent Sergeants Ne unus quidem no not one And finally what a bridle must it be unto them to hold them from exorbitant wickedness as either the crucifying again of the Lord of glory the persecuting of the Saints their mischievous plots against the Church in her peace and Patrimony when they consider with themselves that he whom thus they crucifie is to be their Iudge and that those poor souls whom they now contemn shall give a vote or suffrage on their condemnation and that the poor afflicted Church which they made truly militant by their foul oppressions malgre their tyranny and confederacies shall become Triumphant And on the other side what a great comfort must it be to the righteous man to think that Christ who all this while hath been his Mediator with Almighty God shall one day come to be his Iudge What a great consolation must it be unto him in the time of trouble to think that all his groans are registred his tears kept in a bottle and his sighs recorded and that there is a Iudge above who will wipe all the tears from his eyes and give him mirth in stead of mourning What an incouragement must it be unto him in the way of godliness when he considereth with himself that there is laid up for him a Crown of glory which the Lord the righteous Judge will give him at that day and give it him in the fight both of men and Angels Finally what strength and animation must it put into them to make them stand couragiously in the cause of Christ and to contemn what ever misery can be laid upon them in the defence of Christs and the Churches cause when they consider with themselves that there is no man who hath lost Father or Mother or wife or children or lands and possessions for the sake of Christ but shall receive much more in this present world and in the world to come life everlasting For behold he cometh quickly as himself hath told us and his reward is with him to give to every man according as his work shall be Even so Lord Jesus So be it Amen THE SUM Of Christian Theologie Positive Philological and Polemical Contained in the APOSTLES CREED or Reducible to it THE THIRD PART By Peter Heylyn 1 Cor. 12.13 For by one Spirit are we all Baptized into one Body whether we be Iews or Gentiles whether we be bond or free and have been all made to drink into one Spirit LONDON Printed for Henry Seyle 1654. ARTICLE IX Of the Ninth ARTICLE OF THE CREED Ascribed to St. IAMES the Son of ALPHEVS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Credo in Spiritum sanctum sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam i. e. I beleeve in the Holy Ghost the holy Catholick Church CHAP. I. Touching the Holy Ghost his divine Nature Power and Office the Controversie of his Procession laid down Historically Of Receiving the Holy Ghost and of the severall ministrations in the Church appointed by him WE are now come unto the third and last part of this Discourse containing in the first place the Article of the Holy Ghost and of the holy Catholick Church gathered together and preserved by the power thereof And in the rest those several Gifts and special Benefits which Christ conferreth by the operation of
Spirit beateth let us next take it by the hand or rather by his handy works For some there be who do confess Christ with their mouths but yet deny him in their works The Spirit of God is very active and wheresoever it is it will soon be working if it do not work it is no Spirit For usque adeo proprium est spiritui operari ut nisi operetur non sit as the Father hath it So natural it is for the Spirit to bring forth good works that if it do not so then it is no Spirit These Works St. Paul calls plainly The fruits of the Spirit Love joy peace gentleness goodness and the rest that follow Which as they are planted in the Soul may be called the Graces but as they are manifested in our actions the Fruits of the Spirit to shew us that it is a dead spirit which brings forth no fruits even as it is a dead faith in St. Iames his judgement which brings forth no works In a word as it was in the generation of our Saviour Christ so it is also in the regeneration of a Christian man both wrought by the effectual operation of the Holy Ghost But these being chiefly matters practical are beyond my purpose Proceed we then to such as are more Doctrinal which is the proper subject of my undertaking from this acception of the word in which the Holy Ghost is taken for those gifts and graces which out of his great bounty he bestoweth upon us to that wherein it signifieth The Power and Calling which in the Church is given to some certain men to be Ministers of holy things to the rest of the people That in this sense the word is taken we have shewn before and are now come to shew how it is performed by what authority and what gifts discharged and executed The office of teaching in the Church doth properly belong to Christ the Prophet of the New Testament of whom Moses prophecied Deut. 13.15 As both St. Peter and St. Stephen do affirm expresly A Prophet whom all the people were to hear in every thing which he was pleased to say unto them and that commanded under such a terrible commination that every Soul which would not hear the voice of that Prophet was to be destroyed from amongst the people Yet though it were an office proper to our Lord and Saviour so proper that he seemed to affect it more than either the Priesthood or the Kingdom He entred not upon the same until he had received some visible designation from the Holy Ghost That he took not on him to discharge his Prophetical Function till after he was baptized by Iohn in Iordan is evident by course and order of the Evangelical story Not that his Baptism could confer any power upon him or give him an authority which before he had not for without doubt the lesser is blessed of the greater as St. Paul affirmeth and Iohn confessed himself so much less than Christ as that he was not worthy to untie his shooe but that as man he did receive this power from the Holy Ghost descending on him at that time in a bodily shape and withal giving him that Sacred Vnction whereby he was inaugurated to so high an office And to this Unction of the Spirit doth he himself refer the power he had to Preach the Gospel and to discharge all other parts of that weighty Function and that too in the very first Sermon which he ever preached to give the people notice that he preached not without lawful calling or exercised a power which belonged not to him For entering into the Synagogue of Nazareth on the Sabbath day he took the Book and fell upon that place of the Prophet Isaiah where it is said The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering sight unto the blinde to set at liberty them that are bruised and to preach the acceptable yeer of the Lord Which having read he closed the Book and said unto them This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears That he did preach by vertue of some unction from the holy Spirit is evident by his own Application of the Text by which he gave his Auditors to understand That he did not undertake the office of his own head onely but by the motion and impulsion of the Holy Ghost by whom he was abundantly furnished with all requisite gifts which might prepare him thereunto Non meo proprio privatoque sed divino spiritu missus sum eo actus eo impulsus eo plenus ad praedicandum Evangelium venio as the learned Iesuite glosseth on it But if you ask where or at what time he received this unction we must send you for an Answer to St. Ieroms Commentary on those words of the Prophet where we shall finde Expletum esse hanc unctionem illo tempore quando baptizatus est in Jordane Spiritus sanctus in specie Columbae descendit super eum maenfit in illo That is to say This unction or anointing was performed or fulfilled at that time when he was baptized by Iohn in Iordan and the Holy Ghost descended on him in the shape of a Dove and remained with him Nor doth St. Ierom stand alone in this Exposition Irenaeus Athanasius â—uffinus Augustine and Prosper all of them Antient Writers and of great renown concurring with him in the same And to this unction or anointing at the time of his Baptism St. Peter questionless alludeth where preaching to Cornelius and his Family he lets them know how God anointed IESUS of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power who from that time forwards not before went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil In which place by the anointing with the Holy Ghost I understand the furnishing of the Man CHRIST JESUS Iuxta dispensationem carnis assumptae as St. Ierom hath it with those gifts and graces of the Spirit which were requisite and fit to qualifie him for the undertaking By power the Calling and Authority which that Unction gave him to preach the Gospel and do the rest of those good works which properly did pertain to his Ministration But that both gifts and power were conferred upon him by the descension of the Spirit at the time of his Baptism to which St. Peter doth allude I have Maldonate concurring in opinion with me saying Loquitur Petrus de Baptismo Johannis quem Christus susceperat postquam à Spiritu sancto unctum fuisse significat This Office as our Saviour was pleased to execute in his own Person as long as he sojourned with us here upon the Earth so being to withdraw himself from the sight of man he thought it requisit to make choice of some to be about him who might
Ecclesia malignantium as the Psalmist calls it Or if you will we may by these behold the Church in her chief ingredients which are the sanctimony of life and conversation it is an holy Church and the integrity of her doctrine free from all Heresie and Error in the title Catholick For the word Catholick is not onely used to signifie Universality of extent but purity of doctrine also The first in the natural the second in the borrowed sense of the word In the first sense the Church is called Catholick in respect of place Thou hast redeemed us by thy blood out of every kinred and tongue and people and nation To which accordeth that of an Antient writer saying Ab ortu solis ad occasum lex Christiana suscepta est That the Gospel of Christ had been admitted from the rising of the Sun to the setting of it that is to say In all parts of the world And it is called Catholick too in respect of persons who are promiscuously and indefinitely called to the knowledge of Christ In whom there is neither Iew nor Gentile bond nor free male nor female but all called alike And so Lactantius telleth us also Universos homines sine discrimine sexus vel aetatis Minutius addes Aut dignitatis ad coeleste pabulum convocamus Lastly it hath the name of Catholick in respect of times as comprehending all the faithful since our Saviours days unto the age in which we live and to continue from henceforth to the end of the world Of which duration or extent of the Church of Christ the Angel Gabriel did fore-signifie to his Virgin-mother that he should reign in the house of Jacob for ever and of his Kingdom there should be no end And in this sense it doth not onely include that part of the Church which is now Militant on the Earth but also that which is Triumphant in the Heaven of Glories Both they with us and we with them make but one Body Mystical whereof Christ is Head and all together together with the Antient Patriarcks and other holy men of God which lived under the Law shall make up that one glorious Church which is entituled in the Scriptures The general Assembly the Church of the first-born whose names are written in the Heavens For the better clearing of which Vnion or Concorporation which is between these different Members of the Body Mystical the Fathers of the Constantinopolitan Council added the word One unto the Article reading it thus And I believe one holy Catholick and Apostolick Church Catholick then the Church may be rightly called in regard to extent whether it do refer to time place or persons and it is called Catholick too in respect of Doctrine with reference to the same extensions that being the true Catholick Doctrine of the Church of Christ Quae semper quae ubique quae ab omnibus credita est which hath always and in every place been received as Orthodox and that too by all manner of men according to the Golden Rule of Lerinensis Catholick in this sense is the same with Orthodox a Catholick Christian just the same with a true Professor by which the Doctrine is distinguished from Heretical and the men from Hereticks Iustinian in the Code doth apply it so Omnes hanc legem sequentes Christianorum Catholicorum nomen jubemus amplecti That for the persons the Professors it followeth after for the Doctrine Is autem Nicenae adsertor fidei Catholicae Religionis verus cultor accipiendus est c. A National or Topical Church may be called Catholick in this sense and are often times entituled so in Ecclesiastical Authors For Constantine the Emperor writing to the Alexandrians superscribed his Letters in this form 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. To the Catholick Church of Alexandria And Gregory Nazianzen being then Bishop of Constantinople calls himself in his last Will and Testament 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The Bishop of the Catholick Church in the City of Constantine Of this word Catholick in this sense there hath been different use made as the times have varied The Fathers of the purest times made use of it to distinguish themselves from Hereticks according to that so celebrated saying of Pacianus Christianus mihi nomen est Catholicus cognomen Christian saith he is my name and Catholick my sirname by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks And so long as the main body of Christianity retained the form of wholesome words and kept the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace it served exceeding fitly for a mark distinctive to known an Orthodox Professor from those who followed after Heretical and Schismatical Factions But when the main Body of the Church was once torn in peeces and every leading faction would be thought the true Church of Christ they took unto themselves the names of Catholicks also as if the truth was not more Orthodoxly held by the soundest Christians than it was by them And this hath been a device so stale and common that the Nestorians in the East though antiently condemned for Hereticks in the Third General Council do call their Patriark by the name of Catholick that is to say The Catholick or Orthodox Bishop as Leunclavius telleth us very rightly not Iacelich as the Copies of Brochardus and Paulus Venetus do corruptly read it In the same Error are our great Masters in the Church of Rome who having appropriated to themselves the name of Catholicks and counting all men Hereticks but themselves alone First cast all others out of the Church by the name of Hereticks who do not hold communion with them in their sins and errors and then defend themselves by the name of Catholicks from having dealt unjustly with their Fellow-Christians men every way more Orthodox than they be themselves Just so the Collier justified himself for a true Believer because he believed as the Church believed though he knew not the doctrine of the Church and the Church believed as he believed though the Church troubled not it self about his opinions I know the great Cardinal presumes very much on the name of Catholick making it to be one of the signs of the true Church now because an adjunct of the true Church in the Primitive times And wonder it is that we are grown so prodigal of late as to give it to them A courtesie which they receive with a great deal of joy and turn the bare acknowledgement to their great advantage there being no Argument more convincing than that which is drawn from the confession of an adversary Upon this ground doth Barclay build his Triumph for the cause of Rome Adeo probanda est ecclesia nostra à nomine Catholicae quod extorquet etiam ab invitis hareticis as he brags it there For my part as I never gave it them in writing nor in common speech as thinking
be Saints in the Church Triumphant But whether it be there or here a mutual communion there is always to be held between us between the Saints upon the Earth though Saints by outward calling onely united in the joynt participation of the Word and Sacraments and the external Profession of the Faith and Gospel but more conspicuously between those which are Saints indeed not onely nominally but really and truly such in that harmony of affections and reciprocal offices of love which makes them truly one Body of Christ though different Members And a communion there is too of this later kinde between the Saints upon the Earth and those which have their consummation in the Heaven of Glories who though they have in some part received the promise yet being fellow-members of the same one Body they pray for and await our ransom from this prison of flesh without which God hath so disposed it they should not be made perfect Which said we may now clearly see in what particulars the Communion of Saints intended in this Article doth consist especially which may be easily reduced unto three heads 1. A Communion in the Mysteries of our Salvation by which they are made members of one another and of Christ their Head 2. A Communion of Affections expressed in all the acts of love and charity even to the very communicating of their lives and fortunes And 3. A communion of entercourse between the Saints in Heaven and those here on Earth according to the different states in which God hath placed them All other kindes of Christian Communion are either contained in and under these or may be very easily reduced unto them And first for the Communion in the Mysteries of our Salvation and the benefits which redound thereby to the Church of Christ St. Paul hath told us That the Cup of blessing which is blessed in the holy Eucharist and the Bread there broken is the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ and that being made partakers of that one Bread we are thereby made though many to be one Bread also and one Body even the Body of Christ one Bread though made of many grains and one Body though composed of many members A better Paraphrase upon which place of the Apostle we can hardly finde in all the writings of the Fathers than that of Cyril Ut igitur inter nos Deum singulos uniret quamvis corpore simul anima distemus modum tamen adinvenit consilio patris sapientiae suae convenientem Suo enim corpore credentes per Communionem mysticam benedicens secum inter nos unum nos corpus efficit c That Christ might unite every one of us both with our selves and with God though we be distant from each other both in body and soul he hath devised a way agreeable to his own Wisdom and the Counsel of his Heavenly Father For in that he blesseth them that believe with his own Body by means of that Mystical Communion of it he maketh us one body with himself and with one another For who will think them not to be of this Natural union which be united in one Christ by the Union or Communion of that one holy Body For if we eat all of one Bread we are all made one Body in regard Christ may not be dis-joyned nor divided In which full passage of the Father we finde an union of the faithful with Christ their Head as well as a conjunction with one another effected by the Mystical communion of his Body and Blood A double union first with Christ and with each others next as the members of Christ. The union which we have with Christ is often times expressed in Scripture under the figure and resemblance of the Head and Members which as they make but one Natural Body so neither do they make but one Body Mystical Know you not saith the Apostle that your bodies are the members of Christ 1 Cor. 6.15 That ye are the body of Christ and members in particular 1 Cor. 12.27 That we are members of his body and of his flesh and of his bones Ephes. 5.30 And doth not the same Apostle tell us That God hath given Christ to be head over all things unto his Church Eph. 1.22 That Christ is the head of the Church Vers. 23. And that from this head all the body by joynts and bonds having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God Col. 2.19 Occumenius hereupon inferreth That neither Christ without the Church much less the Church without her Christ but both together so united make a perfect body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as that Author hath it Others of more antiquity do affirm the same For thus St. Chrysostom Quidnaem significat panis Corpus Christi quid fiunt qui accipiunt Corpus Christi What signifieth the Bread The Body of Christ What are they made that do receive it The Body of Christ. St. Augustine thus Hunc cibum potum societatem vult intelligi corporis membrorum suorum i. e. He would have us understand that this meat and drink is the fellowship of his body and of his members What of the members onely with one another Not onely so but of the fellowship or communion which they have with him that is their head who though he be above in the heavenly places and is not fastned to his body with any corporal connexion yet he is joyned unto it by the bonds of love as the same Father hath it in another place Habet ecclesia caput positum in coelestibus quod gubernat corpus suum separatum quidem visione sed charitate annexum St. Cyprian speaks more home than either both to the matter and the manner of the union which we have with Christ. Nos ipsi corpus Christi effecti Sacramento re Sacramenti capiti nostro conjungineur unimur We are then made the Body of Christ both by the Sacrament and the grace represented by it when we are joyned or united unto Christ our Head Not that we are not made the members of Christs Mystical Body but onely by a participation of the Sacrament of his Body and Blood but that this Mystical union and communion which we have with Christ is most fitly represented by it For otherwise St. Paul hath told us That by one Spirit we are all baptized into that one Body and consequently made the members of Christ. According unto that of Divine St. Augustine Ad hoc baptisma valet ut baptizati Christo incorporentur membra ejus efficiantur To this saith he availeth Baptism that men being baptized may be incorporated unto Christ and made his Members But this supposeth a relation to the other Sacrament of which although they may not actually participate before they die yet they have either a desire to it if they be of age and a right or interess in it
if they die in their Baptism in which respect they may be said to communicate with the rest of the faithful Concerning which the same St. Augustine hath most excellently resolved it thus No man in any wise may doubt but that every faithful man is then made partaker of Christs Body and Blood when in Baptism he is made a member of Christ And that he is not deprived of the Communion of that Bread and that Cup although before he either eat of that Bread or drink of that Cup he depart this world being in the unity of Christs Body For he is not deprived from partaking of the benefit of that Sacrament so long as he findeth in himself the things or the res Sacramenti as St. Cyprian calls it which the Sacrament signifieth As for the Union or Communion which the faithful have with one another though that arise upon their first incorporation in Iesus Christ by holy Baptism yet is more compleatly signified and more fully effected by that communion which they have in his Body and Blood And so St. Cyprian and St. Augustine and the rest of the Fathers do declare most plainly St. Cyprian as more antient shall begin the evidence and be the foreman of the Inquest That Christian men are joyned together with the inseparable bonds of charity the Lords Supper doth saith he declare St. Augustine generally first of all outward Sacraments In nullum nomen Religionis seu verum seu falsum coagulari possunt homines nisi aliquo signaculorum vel sacramentorum visibilium consortio colligantur Men saith he cannot be united into any Religion be it true or false unless they be joyned together in the bond of some visible Sacraments What he affirmeth of this particularly we shall see anon first taking with us that of Dionysius an Antient Writer doubtless whosoever he was Sancta illa unius ejusdem panis poculi communis pacifica distributio unitatem illis divinam tanquam unà enutritis praescribit that is to say That holy and peaceable distribution of the same one Bread and that common Cup prescribeth to them which are so fed and nourished together a most heavenly union More elegantly in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which Pachymeres the Greek Paraphrast doth thus reason for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Because that common feeding together with such joynt consent bringeth to our remembrance the Lords Supper Nor doth the participation of this blessed Sacrament produce an union or communion between them alone who do receive the same together at one time and place but it doth joyn and knit together all the Saints of God how far soever they are distant and scattered far and near upon the face of the Earth For therein we profess that we are all servants in one House and resort all to one Table and feed all of one Spiritual Meat which is the Flesh and Blood of the Lamb of God The Prayers which are used in that holy action being so fitted and contrived in all Antient Liturgies that they extend not unto those onely which do then communicate but that they and the whole Church with them may by the death and merits of Iesus Christ and through Faith in his Blood obtain remission of their sins and all other the benefits of his passion as it is piously expressed in the Liturgy of the Church of England To this St. Ierom gives a clear and most ample testimony who being pressed by Iohn the then Bishop of Ierusalem with whom he had some personal quarrels to go to Rome and witness his integrity by communicating in the face of that Church A qua videmur communione separari from whose communion he had seemed to separate returns this Answer Non necesse esse ire tam longè that it was not needful for him to go so far How so Et hic in Palestina eodem modo ei jungimur In viculo enim Bethlehem Presbyteris ejus quantum in nobis est communion◠sociamur For here saith he in Palestine do we hold communion with that Church and I residing in this Village of Bethlehem am joyned in the communion with the Priests of Rome By which we see that whosoever doth worthily eat the Body of Christ and drink his Blood according to the Institution of our Lord and Saviour communicates thereby with all Christian men of all Countreys and Nations whatsoever and that by vertue and effect of the said Communion they be all knit and joyned together as members of the same one Body in the bonds of love And this is that which is affirmed by St. Augustine Non mirum si absentes adsumus nobis ignoti no smet novimus cum unius corporis membra simus unum habeamus caput una perfundamur gratia uno pane vivamus una incedamus via eadem habitemus is domo It is no wonder saith the Father that being absent we be present together and being not acquainted do know each other considering that we be the Members of one Body have the same one Head an endowment of the self-same Spirit and that we live by one bread go the same way and dwell together in one House To testifie this Communion which they had with each other by vertue of the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper it was a custom of the Primitive and Purest times to send some part of the consecrated Elements unto them which were absent and joyned not with them in that action And sometimes for one Bishop to send to another a Loaf of Bread as a token of consent in the point of Faith and in all brotherly love and concord which he that did receive it if he thought it fitting might consecrate and use at the Ministration Touching the first of these it was well observed by Irenaeus that when any of the Eastern Bishops came to Rome the Popes thereof which preceded Victor did use to send them some of the blessed Sacrament although they differed in the observation of the Feast of Easter whereby a mutual concord and communion was preserved between them Of which he writeth thus to the said Pope Victor Qui fuerunt ante te Presbyteri etiam cum non ita observarent Presbyteris Ecclesiarum of the East he meaneth cum Romam acciderent Eucharistiam mittebant And of the other it is said in those Epistles which Paulinus wrote unto St. Augustine Panem unum quem unanimitatis indicio misimus charitati tuae rogamus ut accipiendo benedicas i. e. The Loaf of Bread which I have sent unto you as a token of unity I beseech you to receive and consecrate See also to what purpose he sent those five Loaves which were designed for the said St. Augustine and Licinius of which he speaketh in the Six and thirtieth Epistle of that Fathers works and that other single Loaf in the Five and thirtieth where it appeareth That the Loaves so sent and consecrated
our selves and lessoneth us not to set so high a price upon our lives but that we may be willing to lay them down as often as the preservation of Religion the safety of our Country or the necessary service of the State do require it of us A duty which we should not doubt to discharge most gladly did we consider as we ought that loss of life on such occasions is but like the putting off of our garments over night to be worn again upon the morrow For certainly those men acquit themselves with the bravest spirit who least regard the terrible approach of death Nor can there be a stronger Motive to induce us to it than that the Bodies so abandoned to the Sword of the Enemies or to the Persecutors of the Church of God shall be revived and reunited to the Soul again It is reported of the Druides whom before I spoke of that they taught amongst these Northern Nations not onely an immortality of the Soul but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or transmigration of it into other bodies And it was thought an happy error to be so perswaded for being throughly possessed with this opinion they never feared to run upon the greatest dangers to brave them with undanted courage and to encounter with the violentest and most terrible engigns which were then invented So poor a matter was it thought to be coy and sparing of those lives which they were sure to finde again in another body Felices errore suo quos ille timorum Maximus haud urget lethi metus inde ruendi In ferrum mens prona viris animaeque capaces Mortis ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae Which may thus be Englished Thrice happy they whom the extreamest fear Of death afflicts not who upon the spear Dare boldly run and in their hearts disdain To spare that life which shall return again How brave a courage then ought we to carry with us in our Christian Warfare who have such excellent advantages above those Antients To us it is ascertained by the Word of God not that our souls shall be transmitted into other bodies but be conveyed immediately to a place of rest there to expect a Resurrection of those bodies which before they lived in To us it is ascertained by the Word of God that each several Atom of the body shall be recollected and married to the soul for ever that the bones which were broken may rejoyce and that the body and soul being thus united shall pass immediately into the glories of eternal life prepared for them before the beginnings of the world A brave encouragement to gallant and heroical resolutions Preciumque causa laboris in the Poets language The cause and recompence of all our labors But some I know have otherwise provided for themselves than so and found out a Terrestrial Paradise wherein they shall enjoy for a thousand years all the pleasures of Earth before they be admitted to the joys of Heaven A fancy if I may so call it of no mean antiquity defended by some principal men of the first times of the Church who took it upon trust without more enquiry and having made it better than at first they found it commended it unto the Church for good Catholick doctrine For some there were even in the infancy of the Gospel who being too much in love with this present world conceited to themselves such a sensual and voluptuous kinde of life after the Resurrection from the dust of the Earth wherein they should have use of women and wallow in all carnal and libidinous pleasures which the most Epicurean soul could affect or covet A fancy meerly Iewish in its first original afterwards entertained by some Heretical Iudaizing Christians and finally rather rectified than refelled by many of the Fathers in the Primitive times And first beginning with the Iews we shewed in our discourse of the Kingdom of Christ how much they were besotted with the expectation of a Temporal Monarchy looking for such a Messiah as should come with power restore again the Crown of Iudah to the house of David and make that Commonwealth more formidable to the Neighboring Princes than ever it had been in the times before And to befool themselves the more in this fond conceit there was no promise nor no prophecy in the Old Testament intended to the building up of the Spiritual Temple or to the raising of Christs Kingdom in the souls of men which they applied not to the founding of a Temporal Monarchy the repairing of Ierusalem the new erecting of the Temple and to the re-establishment of Circumcision and other of the Rites and Ceremonies of the Law of Moses Concerning which consult St. Ierom in his Comment on Isai. 31. and on Ezek. 36. and on Micah 4. Tertullian in his third Book against Marcion cap. ult and divers others of the Antients not to say any thing in this place of the Iewish Rabbins who run all that way In which it will appear that they both did and do expect a restitution of their temporal power and all the pleasures of a rich and flourishing Empire which are most correspondent to a carnal minde Which fancy being taken up and so strongly fixed that there was no removing of it out the hearts of the Iews was forthwith entertained by some nominal Christians who out of a compliance with that obstinate people embraced not onely many of their Rites and Ceremonies but of their dreams and fancies also Whom therefore Ierom calleth Christianos Iudaizantes Iudaizing Christians in many places of his works in which Iudaei Christiani Iudaizantes or Iudaei eorum erroris haeredes the Iews and those that do inherit their Superstitions march along together Of these the first was that Arch-heretick Cerinthus who did not onely set on foot in the Church of Christ the Festivals and Sacrifices of the Law of Moses but also taught Regnum Christi post Resurrectionem terrenum fuisse carnem nostram Hierosolymis cupiscentiis voluptatibus carni servituram That after the Resurrection Christ should have an Earthly Kingdom in which his followers should enjoy in their New Ierusalem all the delights and pleasures of the flesh of what kinde soever And this not onely to endure for a little while the ordinary life a man or so but for a thousand years compleat as Nicephorus addeth Marcus another leading Heretick was of this opinion and so was Nepos also an Egyptian Bishop who teaching first That all the promises made by God in holy Scripture Iudaico more reddendas esse were to be understood according to the Iewish Glosses did thereon build this following Tenet That the Saints should for a thousand years injoy all manner of corporal delights and pleasures in the Kingdom of Christ which after the resurrection should be founded here upon this earth Against this Nepos and his doctrine in this particular Dionysius that great and learned Bishop of Alexandria wrote
did eat drink and sit down together at the self-same Table And therefore unto these and such Texts as these which speak of eating and drinking or sitting down with Abraham Isaac and Iacob in the Kingdom of Heaven there cannot be given a better answer than that which Christ returned to the captious Saduces viz. That in the Kingdom of Heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the Angels of God And if they are as the Angels of God there shall be neither eating nor drinking then we are sure of that Nor is it like that glorified and immortal Bodies alimoniis terrenis sustentanda sint can be sustained with corruptible and earthly food For as Ierom very well inferreth Vbi cibus sequuntur morbi c. Where there is meat there will be sickness where there is sickness death will follow and after that another Resurrection is to be expected and then another thousand years to be added to that Et sic de coeteris As for those passages alleged from the Revelation if they be literally understood they seem to be expresly for the Millenarians but then withal it draweth after it such inconsequences as plainly overthrow their whole foundation For I hope they will provide themselves of a better Supper Than to eat the flesh of Kings and the flesh of Captains and the flesh of Mighty-men and the flesh of Horses and of them that sit on them and the flesh of all men both bond and free and small and great Such chear and such an earthly paradise as they seem to dream of will agree but ill I must desire to be excused for calling it a Dream of an earthly paradise for I am verily perswaded that it is no other It hangs upon such doubtful proofs and is so differently reported by the Patrons of it that never sick-mans dream was more incoherent Which that we may the better see and see withal how every one added somewhat of his own unto it according as the strength or weakness of his fancy led him I shall put down a memorable passage of Gennadius which most fully speaks it In divinis repromissionibus nihil terrenum vel transitorium expectamus sicut Melitani sperant Non nuptiarum copulam sicut Cerinthus Marcus delirant Non quod ad cibum vel ad potum pertinet sicut Papiae Autori Irenaeus Tertullianus Lactantius acquiescunt Neque per mille Annos Resurrectionem regnum Christi in terra futurum Sanctos cum illo in deliciis regnaturos speramus sicut Nepos docuit qui primam justorum Resurrectionem secundam impiorum confinxit By which we see that Melito did fancy onely a transitory and earthly Kingdom Cerinthus and Marcus introduced the use of the marriage-bed Papias seemed to be content with eating and drinking and Nepos found out the distinction to make all compleat between the first and second Resurrection making the first to be onely of the just and righteous the second of the wicked and impenitent sinner after the end or expiration of the thousand years This is the Genealogie or Pedigree of this Opinion which hath of late begun to revive among us and findes not onely many followers but some Champions also Whom I desire more seriously to consider in their better thoughts whether this their supposed Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour commended to the world by some Antient Writers gave not the first hint unto Mahomets Paradise In which he promiseth to those who observe his Law most delicious dwellings adorned with flowery Fields watered with Chrystalline Rivers and beautified with Trees of Gold under whose comfortable shade they shall spend their time with amorous Virgins and be possessed of all voluptuous delights which to a sensual minded-man are the greatest happiness I know that some of late times and of eminent note have given us this opinion in a better dress delivering upon probable grounds That before the end of the world there shall be a time in which the Church of Christ shall flourish for a thousand years in greater purity and power both for faith and manners and in more outward lustre and external glory than hitherto it hath done in all former ages Coelius Secundus Curio in his Book De Amplitudine Regni Dei P. Cunaeus in that De Repub. Iudaeorum Du Moulin in his Christian Combat Piscator in his Comment on the Revelation Alstedius in a Tract of his called Diatribe de mille Annis Apocalypticis and divers others not inferior unto them for parts and learning have declared for it And for my part I see no danger in assenting to it If this will satisfie the Millenarians they shall take me with them but if they stand too stifly to their former tendries and look not for this flourishing time of the Gospel till the Resurrection of the just be first accomplished and then expect to have their part and portion in the pleasures of it I must then leave them to themselves The method of my Creed doth perswade me otherwise which from the Resurrection of the Body leads me on immediately unto the joys and glories of eternal everlasting life to which now I hasten I know it doth much trouble many pious and sober men to finde the force and efficacy of our Saviours Argument in the place foregoing which seems more plainly to assert the Immortality of the Soul than the Resurrection of the Body the bodies of Abraham Isaac and Iacob being dissolved into dust in the time of Moses though their souls were living with their God Concerning which we are to know 1. That the Sadduces by whom this Question was propounded did not alone deny the Resurrection of the dead but so as to affirm withal Animas cum corporibus extingui That the Soul it self did also perish with the body as Iosephus tells us They said that there was neither Angel nor Spirit as St. Luke says of them 2. That though the Pharisees who were their opposite faction in the latter end of the Iewish state did grant a Resurrection or Reviviscency from the dead yet was it after such an Animal and Carnal sense in eating drinking and conversing with women In qua cibo potu opus esset conjugia rursum jungerentur c. saith my Author of them as the Mahometans now dream of in their sensual paradise And against this absurd opinion as indeed it was the Sadduces had found out that Argument about a woman which had or might have had seven Husbands by the Law of Moses whose writings onely they received as Canonical Scripture desiring to be satisfied in their curiosity to which of the seven she should be wife at the Resurrection Which when the Pharisees could not answer as keeping to those principles indeed they could not they thought to put our Saviour to it at the self-same weapon But they found there another manner of Spirit than what had spoken to them by and
in the Pharisees For Christ who knew their hearts found their cunning also And therefore did so shape his answer as by declaring the true nature of the Resurrection against the Pharisees to justifie the Immortality of the Soul against the Sadduces 1. Then he tells them how much they were mistaken in the nature of the Resurrection for want of a right understanding of the holy Scriptures Erratis nescientes Scripturas as the Vulgar reads it The Scriptures which do speak of a Resurrection not being to be understood in such an Animal and Carnal sense as the Pharisees did understand them Those bodies which were sown in corruption were to be raised again incorruptible and therefore not to live by the food which perisheth Those bodies which were sown in their mortality by reuniting with the Soul should become immortal and therefore not to stand in need of any Seminal or Carnal way of Propagation For in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage neither can they die any more but are as the Angels of God in Heaven in the condition of their being as to those particulars This said and so much of their doubt resolved as concerned the error of the Pharisees he lets them see the weakness of their own opinion touching the annihilation or extinguishment of the Immortal soul of man And that too from the works of Moses which themselves embraced without consulting any other of the holy Pen-men For when God said to Moses in the present tence I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob it must needs be that Abraham Isaac and Iacob must be accounted of as living at that present time and living otherwise they were not at that present time but as their blessed Souls did live in the sight of God their Bodies being long before consumed and perished though even those bodies by the infinity of comprehension which is in God might be looked upon as living also in reference to that eternal life which was prepared for them in the day of the Resurrection And this I take to be the meaning of St. Luke who doth not onely say in the present tence That the dead are raised but addes these following words to the other Evangelist viz. For all live in him that is to say All men though buried in their dust are living in the sight of Almighty God who sees at once all things that have been are and shall be unto all eternity as if present with him and consequently beholds the Souls of his righteous servants Abraham and Isaac and the rest in the bliss of Paradise as if apparrelled with those bodies which before they had So then the Immortality of the Soul being so fully proved by our Saviours Argument The Resurrection of the dead being the thing which seemed to be scrupled by the Sadduces was concluded also and yet not such a Resurrection the Pharisees dreamed of in which there should be marrying and giving in marriage that is to say In which things should be ordered by the rules of this present life but such a one wherein the Saints of God should be like the Angels discharged from all relations incident to flesh and blood exempt from all humane affections of what sort soever For certainly had not the Argument concluded strongly and convincingly to the point proposed neither the Scribes men better studied in the Scriptures than any of the rest of the Iewish Nation had given this testimony to it Magister dixisti benè as we see they did nor had the mouths of such curious and captious Sophisters been muzzled as we see they were from asking him the like Questions for the time to come both which the story tells us in the close of all But I have staid too long on this Text of Scripture it is now time I should proceed to the rest that follows ARTICLE XII Of the Twelfth Article OF THE CREED Ascribed to St. MATTHIAS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Et Vitam Aeternam Amen i. e. And the Life Everlasting Amen CHAP. VIII Of the Immortality of the Soul and the glories of Eternal Life prepared for it As also of the place and torment of Hell Hell-fire not metaphorical but real The conclusion of all MOrs non extinguit hominem sed ad praemium virtutis admittit Death saith Lactantius doth not put an end to the life of man but rather openeth him a way to receive the recompence of his wel deservings For though the body be returned unto the earth out of which it was taken and that there were no Resurrection to be looked for for it yet in the better part the soul he is incorruptible and immortal not subject to the stroke of death nor to be made a prey unto worms and rotâ—enness In this respect it is to be disposed of in some suitable place and to be punished or rewarded in a suitable manner none but an Everlasting Life or eternal punishments being the doom thereof in the world to come according to the good or evil which in this world it hath projected or accomplished Now that the Soul of man is not onely a spiritual essence which actuates the body in the which it is but an immortal essence too which shall over-live it we have good proof in holy Scripture and that both from the Old Testament and from the New The souls of the righteous saith the wise man are in the hands of the Lord And though the Body go down into the Earth yet the Soul returneth unto him that gave it saith a wiser than he But behold a greater than Solomon or the wisdom of Solomon even CHRIST the wisdom of the Father hath affirmed the same not onely commending his own Soul to Almighty God but teaching St. Stephen and all the rest of the Saints in him how to do the like This day saith he to the good Theef thou shalt be with me in Paradise And more than so he doth convincingly conclude the immortality of the Soul from those words in Exod. I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob which sufficiently doth prove that point This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise Not in their bodies either of them for the body of the one was on the cross and the other in the Grave till the resurrection It must be therefore in their Souls which neither the Cross could crucifie nor the Grave bury St. Iohn affirmeth the same as a matter of fact which in the former Texts except that of Exodus we finde but in hope or promise For speaking of the estate of the Saints departed which he beheld as clearly in an heavenly Rapture as if it had been a thing done before his eyes he telleth us that he saw under the Altar the soules of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they had And they cryed with