infinite reasons First from the Object of their worship generally directed to a multitude of Gods and patching up a plenitude of power out of the shreds of innumerable Demi-gods or pieces of Gods whereof one should have power and vertue in one thing and another in another but this is to deny God in effect who if he be not absolute is not at all and indeed all the arguments before used to prove there can be but one God do prove that to be a false and foolish Religion which alloweth and worshippeth more than one Neither can it suffice to excuse them to say that the wiser of the Heathens acknowledged but one God because it availeth nothing at all but to add to their condemnation for any persons to have a right sense and meaning reserved to themselves and to proceed directly contrary to such found judgment in their practice and worship it self And therefore the most absurd and abominable manner of worshipping their pretended Deities is sufficient conviction of the Religion it self For whereas modesty sobriety temperance chastity truth justice and the like moral vertues were such as the Light of Nature did commend to all men and all consented to be excellent and laudable All these were contemned by the admirers of these Gods yea the very Religion it self tempted and incited many to offend against all these and that which is most intolerable from the examples of the pretended gods so chusing to be worshipped from whence must needs follow what St. Paul affirmeth of the Gentiles Religion and gods The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to Devils and not to God They were impure and wicked 1 Cor. 10. 20. spirits delighting in absurd and vitious practises And therefore upon this subject no more need be spoken at present The Neat pretender to true worship may be the Mahometan who worshipping the True God so far as may be discerned yet faileth egregiously in the manner of exhibiting the same the very grounds and end also being false and unreasonable For first that the Author and Coiner of that worship was an impostor and made pretences of Sanctity in the midst of impurities and infirmities he was subject unto is apparent out of Histories of those times and places where he by the assistance of a Fugitive Nestorian Monk laid the plot and whole design of his Religion and that among a people altogether rude ignorant barbarous easie to be deceived and cheated into a credulity of pretended Revelations Again the many absurdities and contradictions of their Law most sacred as misnaming of persons mistiming of Facts mistaking of Histories in the gross impossible prophane blasphemous opinions concerning the nature the will the Actions of God contrary to common philosophy and reason Ridiculous and foolish imaginations of Angels utterly false opinions of the nature of things and such like being duly and soberly weighed and examined do convince the whole Fabrick of that superstition of Idleness and foolish fictions And not to multiply more arguments here The way of propagating this Erroneous Fashion of serving God discovereth the Errour of the thing it self For it is a general and most rational Principle deserving admission and belief of all That Religion being the most excellent act of humane Creatures ought to have the most high and noble Faculty of the soul for its proper seat and fountain from whence it should proceed such as is the intellectual faculty of Man But this superstition is carried on by the ministery of the Senses chiefly And moreover It ought to have for its end the most sublime and divine of all But the Mahometan constituteth the low pleasures of the Senses as the sufficient and proper end of all their service making the beatitude of Heaven to consist in perpetual Licentiousness and fresh delights of senses And therefore no need of insisting on this subject here What is here spoken being for method sake rather then necessity or a formal confutation of those Errours CHAP. V. Of the Jewish Religion The Pretence of the Antiquity of it mulled Their several Erroneous grounds of the Jewish Religion discovered DUT the Religion of the Jew requireth more diligent examination as well because of a notable presumption from ancient Tradition and a certain preoccupation of divine truths and auctority of divine Constitution as because the consideration thereof is an introduction to Christian Religion and the disproof of that a proof of the Christian And if according to Christians own concessions and the eminentest Apostle St. Paul they were once the people and true Church of God To Rom. 3. 2. cap. 9. 4. them were committed the Oracles of God To them pertained the Adoption and the glorie and the Covenant and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises Why not alwayes a Church If once Gods people Why not alwayes so If once confessed to be pure and Faithfull When did they cease to be so When first entred corruptions into their Church Under what High Priest And who brought such errours first in This is the sum of what they can say either for themselves or against the Christians of whose Religion which undoubtedly they do and will call Heresie they can give the time and place when and where it sprang up and the person who first founded and advanced the same And if any Church or Society of men in the world can lay claim to the Promises of perpetuity and infallibility surely the Jewish will pretend much more from the Prerogatives peculiar to them as do witness every where the Law and the Prophets To all this a sufficient answer shall be comprehended in the prosecution of the contrary Grounds which here follows which I reduce to these two whereof One concerns their Errour about their Law and the Other about their Messias The first general Errour concerning their Law is first that they suppose that the word of God given to Moses for their proper use was equally to oblige all Nations saving where certain priviledges were pretended to Jews by birth which they suppose no people were worthy or capable of except the stock of Abraham But that all nations could not be included in that Covenant which was made with Abraham nor were all obliged to the Rites and Ceremonies thereof appears from the ordinary impossibility of being observed by all People For how could people of the remotest parts of the earth appear thrice a year at Jerusalem as was commanded the Israelites by God who dwelt in the Land of Canaan How Levit. 12. 6. could all Nations at any time bring their Sacrifices to the door of the House of the Lord to be there received and offered by the Priests Another Errour concerning their Law received by Moses is that they say It was it whereby men should be justified Which is false and that First because the most ancient holy and renowned Patriarchs of the Jewish Line were not so Justified They were not justified by the
handling of the two former we took in their Contraries Heresie and Schism so now doth it appear in like manner expedient for the conclusion of the latter to treat briefly of Superstition the Enemy to the true Service of God There are two extreams saith Clemens Alexandrinus of Ignorance Atheism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Id. Strom. lib. 7. and Superstition The former is a total Renunciation of a Deity The latter a vehement and excessive addition to a Deity without judgment or sobriety Fearing Doemons or Spirits instead of God and deifying every thing or mistaking the worship of the true God And to make a fuller discovery we shall not much trouble our selves with the various acceptations or uses of the word Superstition Whether it is derived from Supra statutum or Supra stare it matters but little provided we can arrive to the due knowledge of the thing intended by that word which men have endeavoured of late to render very uncertain and mutable as their several opinions and fears and interests of Religion lead them But undoubtedly Superstition is a Religious Passion of the mind as Atheism is a Passion of the Inferiour Senses and a Stupidity of the Mind as Clemens Alexandrinus now cited truly tearms it Now what Passion can it be so properly called as Fear in excess and Fear not directed to Man but God not cowardise but confusion It may be answerable to the description given us by the Wiseman in these words Wickedness condemned Wisd 17. 11 12. by her own witness is very timorous and being pressed with Conscience alwayes forecasteth grievous things For fear is nothing else but the betraying of the succours which reason offereth And we know the most generally received word with the Greeks expressing Superstition is compounded of a word signifying Fear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Latine word which we retain in our Language Superstition comes very much short in significancie to the Greek For that implyeth in it both the Act of him that is superstitious and the Object about which such Superstition is used And that is a Fear of somewhat of the nature or esteem of God Daemons Whis is not much amiss For though Evil Spirits or Good Spirits being the object of our Worship inevitably turn it into Superstition yet may there be Superstition in the manner of Worship as well as in the Object when a man worships the true Object God in an undue manner But the Latin word Superstition seems to import no more than an errour in the choice of our Object which it maketh to be somewhat superviving even beyond our Senses or common Reason Such as were the Spirits of men dead and yet believed to be alive in their souls and honoured either for their great vertues or the servent affection the superstitions person bare to him in his life time And thus Tully and Varro took the meaning of the word not amiss however Lactantius rejected this account I suppose because it was too narrow to contain the whole Evil of Superstition which truly relates to the irregular manner of serving God as well as to the thing we worship For certainly there is a Pharisaical Superstition and an Athenian and the one we find reprehended by our Saviour Christ in St. Mark where he accuses them for admiring and preferring their own Traditions before Gods express and more necessary Laws and Laying Mark 7. 9 10 11. aside the Commandment of God and holding the Tradition of men supposing surely that by such commutation they should satisfie to the full if not exceed the main intent of Gods Commandment which was a very vain and presumptuous supposition The like to which if any stomacher of Ecclesiastical Prescriptions and Constitutions could in the least degree of probability prove to be either done or intended by Ecclesiastical Ceremonies and Orders they had all the reason in the world to stand it out as they do to the utmost and contend resolutely for the Faith and pure Worship so endangered but this being impossible to be made good as will by and by appear it will there also appear that Superstition as properly pertaineth to them as any other The Athenian Superstition or Gentile ignorant of the true God is that which giveth Religious Worship to an Object uncapable thereof which was that St. Paul condemns them for in the Acts of the Apostles saying Ye men of Athens I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious viz. for their infinite and endless Acts 17. 22. sollicitude in multiplying objects of Divine Worship when in truth there was but one And this is the most ancient sense of Superstition amongst the Gentiles as Clemens Alexandrinus noteth speaking thus The Atheist is he who acknowledges no God But he is superstitious who 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Alex. 7. Strom. feareth Daemons Spirits or False Gods and Deifies as it were all things So sensible and fearful is he of a Divine Power that he thinks he cannot extend his Devotion wide enough unless he takes in all he can imagine to himself or others vainly suggest unto him And least after all he should incurr the displeasure of any one adds honour likewise To the unknown God Neither knowing that any such there is or what he is but to make all sure worships at a venture without rule of Reason or Revelation for fear of the worse From this consideration the Schoolmen do make all Idolatry a main part of Superstition and all combination and confederacie or consultation of Spirits whether Angelical or Humane both Idolatrous and Superstitious it being death by the Law of Moses to deal in such Merchandise and judged very irrational and irreligious by the Prophet so to apply ones self And when they shall say unto you Seck unto them that Isaiah 8. 20. have familiar Spirits and unto Wizards that peep and that mutter should not a people seek unto their God For the living to the dead To the Law and to the Testimony signifying that the revealed will of God called the Law and Testimony is altogether sufficient and necessarily requires our squaring our Worship thereby at least as to the Object of it And therefore St. Paul to the Colossians well adviseth Let no man beguile you of Coloss 2. 18. your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of Angels intruding into those things which he hath not seen vainly puft up by his fleshly mind c. declaring unto us the dangerous Superstition of engaging in such Worship for which there is no ground to be seen in his Word but only in the vain and fleshly mind of man which is curious in searching into that which is not made known to him of God and to please himself in such bold inventions This certainly is Superstition But this is not only Superstition but that also which invents an essential form of Worship to the prejudice of that truly divine and ordained and may truly be distinguished into two
Church hath not denyed that Liberty and where they have made no Vow to the contrary bereaving themselves of that Liberty 33. There is no Purgatory 'T is little less then Heretical to Artic. Chur Eng. 22. affirm there is in the Roman sense 34. There is no external Sacrifice Most true in a strict proper sense 35. Devils cannot be driven away by Holy Water and the Sign of the Cross By these alone we have few or none Instances in the Ancient Church that Devils were cast out of the Possessed But many we find and those most authentique and undeniable whereby it appears that the ancient Christians even to St. Chrysostoms dayes did exorcise or cast out Devils by Prayers and Humiliation with which were used the sign of the Cross but not so ancient was Holy Water to that purpose And though we look on this as the Gift of Miracles formerly more general and effectual then now-a-days it is any where honestly to be found yet neither do we deny such power absolutely nor hold such unnecessary Rites utterly unlawful to be used 36. It is unlawful and an horrible wickedness for a man to erect the Image of Christ in Christian Temples No such matter The wickedness consists in giving it the accustomed Worship in the Church of Rome And thus have I given certain Instances of the injurious dealings of both extreams against us as by themselves stated it being my design in the ensuing Treatise to state rather then largely dispute matters more equally and thereby to discover the frauds and falsities current against us I shall now requite their pains in collecting falsly and fraudulently the opinions of our Church by a sincere and faithful proposing of the Heretical and pestilent Dogmes of the Roman Church as I find them laid down and maintain'd by Bellarmine that so even common reason if not sense of indifferent Christians may judge which Church holds most contrary Doctrines to Gods and Mans Laws 1. The Books by us called Apocryphal and so proved by Bellarm. De Verho Dei l. 1. c. 7. the general Consent of the Church in all Ages are Canonical and properly Divine 2. It is neither convenient nor profitable that the Scriptures L. 2. c. 15. 16. or Prayers of the Church should be in the Vulgar Tongue 3. All things necessary to Faith and Holy Life are not contain'd L. 4. c. 3. in the Scriptures but Traditions also 4. Scriptures without Tradition are not simply necessary C. 4. nor sufficient 5. The Apostles applyed not their minds to write by God's C. 4. command but as they were constrained by a certain necessity 6. Scriptures are not Rules of Faith but as a certain C. 12. Monitorie to conserve and nourish the Doctrine received 7. Hereticks deny but Catholicks affirm Peter to be the De Rom. Pontif. l. 1. c. 2. Head of the Universal Church and made a Prince in Christs stead 8. When Christ said Simon son of John so the Vulgar L. 4. c. 1. Translation in Bellarmine corruptly for Jonas Feed my Sheep he spake only to Peter and gave him his Sheep to feed not exempting the Apostles 9. Whether the Pope may be an Heretick or not it is to be L. 4. c. 2. believed of the whole Church that he can no ways determine that which is Heretical 10. Neither the Pope nor the particular Roman Church C. 4. can erre in Faith 11. The Pope cannot only not erre in Faith but neither C. 5. in Precepts of Manners which are prescribed the whole Church and which are concerning things necessary to Salvation or things in themselves good or evil 12. The Pope alone hath his Jurisdiction immediately from C. 24. Christ but all other Bishops their ordinary Jurisdiction immediately from the Pope 13. The Pope hath Supream power indirectly in all Temporal L. 5. c. 1. 6. matters by reason of his Spiritual power This is the opinion of all Catholick Divines 14. The Pope as Pope may not ordinarily depose Temporal Ibid c. 6. Princes though there be just cause as he may Bishops yet he may change Kingdoms and take them away and give them to another as the highest Spiritual Prince if it be needful to the Salvation of Souls 15. As to Lawes the Pope as Pope cannot ordinarily make a Ibid. Civil Law or establish or make void Lawes of Princes because he is not the Political Prince of the Church yet he may do all these if any Civil Law be necessary to the Salvation of Souls and Kings will not make them and so if Laws be pernicious to Souls and Kings will not abolish them 16. Though the Pope translated the Empire and gave a De Translat Imp. l. 3 c 4. Right to choose a Prince yet he transferred not nor gave that power Supream and most ample which himself had of Christ over all the Church And therefore as when the Cause of the Church required he could translate the Empire from the Greeks to the Germans in like manner might he translate it from the Germans to another Nation upon the like reason c. 17. No obedience is due to a Prince from the Church Câ—â— Berâ—â—â— c. 31. Tom. 7. when he is excommunicated by publick Authority The Pope and his Predecessors never forbad Subjects to obey their Princes for being once deposed by them they were no longer lawful Princes This is it we teach 18. To call General Councils belongs properly to the Tom. 2. de Concil l. 1. c. 12. Pope yet so that the Emperor may do it with his consent 19. Particular Councils confirmed by the Pope cannot erre L. 2. c 5. in Faith and Manners 20. The Pope is simply and absolutely above the whole C. 17. Church and above a General Council so that he may not acknowledge any Judicature on earth above him 21. The Church is a Company of men professing the L. 3. c. 2. same Christian Faith joyned together in the Communion of the same Sacraments under the Government of lawful Pastors and especially One Vicar of Christ on earth the Bishop of Rome 22. Purgatory may be proved out of the Old and New De Purgaâ— 1. c. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Testament 23. Purgatory is a Doctrine of Faith so that he who believeth Cap. 15. not Purgatory shall never come there but shall be tormented in Hell in everlasting burning 24. Invocation of Saints may be proved from Scripture De Sanct. Beaâ—â—â—d l. 1. c. 19. 25. It 's lawful to make the Image of God the Father in De Reliq c. 8. the form of an Old Man and of the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove 26. The Images of Christ and of Saints are to be worshipped L. 2. c. 21. De Imag. not only by accident and improperly but also by themselves properly so that they may terminate Worship as considered in themselves and not only as they
7. 1. Eph. 5. 21. place The Psalmist saith They have no fear of God before their eyes St Paul saith Perfecting holiness in the fear of God and elsewhere Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God All which with many more places import as much as Religious worship of God And so doth the Love of God also as in St. Luke our Saviour saith to the Pharisees Wo to you Pharisees for ye tithe Mint and Rue and all manner of Herbs and pass over Judgment and the Love of God where Love of God stands for the Luk. 11. 42. true Service of God and duely to him as Judgment insinuates our duty towards our neighbour And so St. Paul to the Thessalonians The Lord direct your hearts into the Love of God And St. John most frequently in 2 Thes 3. 5. all his writings Leaving therefore this general consideration let us in this order inquire farther into 1. The Parts 2. The proper States of serving 3. The special Kinds of Divine Worship CHAP. II. Of the two parts of Divine Worship Inward and Outward The Proof of outward worship as due to God and that it is both due and acceptable to God Several Reasons proving bodily worship of God agreeable to him Wherein this Bodily worship chiefly consists Certain Directions for Bodily worship Exceptions against it answered BY what is expressed in our General description of Worship it may appear that there are two Principal Parts of it The one consisting in inward affection and the other in the outward Actions The inward disposition of the mind or soul of man is that on all hands is agreed upon as most justly due and proper to God alone in the supreamest manner God calleth for the heart so often in his holy word as his proper portion and the Spirit as that which draweth nearer to the nature of God as purely spiritual and incorporeal For God saith Christ is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth Though if we should take these words according to the prime intention they would be found not to aim so much if at all at diverse manners of worship under the same kind but at several kinds such as were the Judaical and Christian the meaning of Christ being this that the hour or time was coming when there should be no longer use of those corporal services and Sacrifices under the Law but in lieu of them the spiritual and true worship of the Gospel should succeed But no question can be made of the excellency of that true spiritual inward devotion of the heart and mind to God as the most absolute most required most accepted and in comparison of that all outward worship being no better without it than gross Hypocrisie rather incurrs the displeasure of Almighty God than pleases him Therefore leaving that which all Christians are in their judgements sufficiently satisfied in and hold themselves obliged unto we shall take up the defence of the outward worship in great manner opposed by too many And truly They that argue so contemptuously and wildly as the vulgar custome doth against outward worship of God shall not need to go far to see their own folly For to say God is a Spirit and 'T is the heart that God calls for and 'T is the zeal of the Soul and such like loose sayings what do they but cut the throat as much of vocal prayer and Preaching as of any thing else For if God will accept the heart and looks no farther than the purity and good dispositiâ—n of the mind Audible Prayer and Preaching must together with the rest be excluded as impertinent in Gods service We know that the prayer of the heart as in the Case of Hannah is accepted of God at some times and in some places as the true Love and Charity to our Neighbour inclining us to do him good and relieve him when it lies not in our power but St. James looks on them and censures them as meer uncharitable mockers and not relievers of their neighbours who shall only pretend they mean them well inwardly and say unto them Depart Jam. 2. 16. in peace be ye warmed and filled notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body Even so Faith and so the will and the heart and the Spiritual worship without works are all dead and are a meer mockery of the divine Majesty a corrupting and perverting of his holy word and a bitter Sarcasm turning it against himself and as much as if it should be said Seeing you will needs have the heart you shall have it that is so as to have nothing more It were superfluous and shameful to cite the many misunderstood and misapplied texts of Scripture to delude the most ignorant and at the same time most presumptuous of Scripture None speak more after the phrase which hath deceived so many than that not long since quoted Wo be to you Pharisees for ye tithe Mint and Rue and Luk 11 42. all manner of Herbs and pass over Judgment and the Love of God Doth not the Scripture here seem to condemn and that under a curse such litle services as are there expressed It seems so indeed and really doth as much as any outward worship of God But it doth but seem so For undoubtedly it was most agreeable to it that such minuter services should be perform'd but that so performed as studiously and superstitiously to neglect the other more weighty was it which incensed God against them And here comes in that general argument also above touched Fast from sin say they and for outward fasts it matters not Wisely and profoundly said like able Divines indeed And so fast or abstain from sin and ye shall never need to pray nor hear Sermons nor to feed the Hungry nor cloth the Naked no nor to believe in God which is all such persons have left them of Religion starved into an unactiveness Would it not make a mans Hair stand upright to see and hear what precipices of Heathenism and follies Men dispute themselves into And so they may as they suppose enjoy their lust of contradiction and contempt of others strike through the loins of all Reason and Religion at the same time Reason which they set by such sophistry as this to fight against it self For Serving of God in Spirit and in truth and abstinence from all sins as well of Omission as Commission is the very perfection and end of all Religion And if there were no more required but a simple command to do it on Gods part not directing us to the way and no more on our part but presently and immediately to become holy and perfect without the proper means conducing to such high and not easie ends then forsooth these Disputants were the best Councellors but if there be outward means ordained in general by God and applicable many times by humane prudence to the effecting such ends and
be it is an intolerable injury and affront to God to be exterminated with all fire and sword c. And doth not the Scripture expressly call the Golden Calf an Idol saying And they made aCalf in those days and offered Sacrifice unto the Idol and rejoyced in the works of their own hands Truly therefore whether Grammatically enough I will not enquire saith Philastrius Ipsum nomen Idoli species doli est c. The very name of an Idol implies deceit and a prevaricating of the form of any thing according to the Etymology is so cal'd It is therefore first to be known what is an Idol that we may know better what is Idolatry For it is too common mistake to think that the Idol makes the Idolatry and not the Idolatry the Idol True it is indeed that according to the course of Nature a thing must be before it be worshipped but speaking in the Christian sense certain it is that nothing is an Idol before it be worshipped For until such an Act be directed to it it iâ— but an Image or some innocent laudable representation of a thing of Gods making then it becomes an Idol when it is worshipped It were vain to object that the Images of Saints or God himself Idols in themselves And it is as vain to answer that they are Representations of most holy persons and not such as were the Images of the Heathen representing Divels or Imaginary Gods for neither the one nor other are Idols in themselves and most certain it is that either of them may be made Idols at the pleasure of Superstitious man and the Epigrammatist spake more like a Divine than such Mort. Epig. Schoolmen who saith Non quisquis fingit sacros de marmore vultus Ille Deos fingit qui colat ille facit Not he that makes Images of Gods makes Gods but he that worships them he makes the Gods and the Udol too And therefore as no works of Nature neither Sun or Moon nor Angel nor Cherubin nor Saint are of themselves Idols so no work of Art made to the likeness of any thing is an Idol until it partaketh of the worship due to God and then the Image intended for Idoiam est false alacujus numihis 〈◊〉 sinulacoum quod numen inane â—anum reprae sentar Azorius ib. c. 11. Pagani ca colunt quae sunt sed pro diis colendi non sunt August Cont. Fanst Manch l. 2. c. 3. Dallus obs Cicero de Natura Deorum l. 2. Nihil est difficilius quam à câ—nsuemdine oceleru aciem mentis abducere Ea dif ficultas indaxit vulgos imperito simits Philosophes imporitorum ut nist figu is 〈◊〉 constituts nihil diis of 〈◊〉 sunt 〈…〉 the true God becomes an Idol And therefore we utterly deny the definition by Romanists given of an Idol that It is the Effigies of some false God which representeth an empty and vain Deity S. Augustine much better Pagans worship things which are but are not to be worshipped for Gods And true it is there is not only Metaphorical Idolatry of the brain or Imagination when the heart is devoted more to some created thing than to the Creatour but proper also when a man frames to himself an object within himself and directs his worship to it as to God for still the general definition given by the best advised among Papists viz. That it is Idolatry to give divine worship to any thing but God takes hold of this also And it was an old piece of Epicurism which I have heard alledged in behalf of outward representations of God viz. that we cannot conceive of God without some material Quidditie as they call it in our brain and it is much the same Case whether we frame a sensible or a Mental Image of God I confess this but Tully was the best Catholique in this point when he derided Epicurus his sensual divinity for being able to think nothing of God but under sensible forms It is very true we cannot conceive either what God is or any Spirit but we must cloath him with figure form answerable to material things and to conceive so of Spirits created is only an error in Philosophy or the nature of things inferring no superstition natural But there is no necessity a man should think with himself what God is for then he must needs circumscribe him but that he is Simply and Abstractly and so ought we to worship him yet if any man shall through the infirmity of oar understanding generally conceive of God under some shape he doth not thereupon necessarily fall into Idolatry no though he uses it as a means to worship by so he makes it not the tearm of his service to the setting aside of God himself when he so worships As the framing a sensible Image of God is no Idolatry nor Idolatry in the strictest sense to worship God by mediation or help of that but to make any Image of God was always interdicted as tending naturally to Idolatry and if it should never be used in any Religious way yet were it no better than a blasphemous attempt to compare God to any likeness of Colour Wood or Stone or the likeness of any of these 〈◊〉 â—ature and form of God as St. Paul tells the Athenians Acts 17. 29. plainly in the Acts We ought not to think that the Godhead is like to gold or silver or stone graven by art or mans device And yet it is well known with a Scholastick distinction newly invented and accommadated to the case Bellarm. how boldly and impiously this is practised by the Romanists and defended by the learnedest of them however there are sundry very grave men amongst them who declare against it but in vain The Greeks who are more then enough devoted tolmage-worship and the moderner the worse yet God be thanked have kept themselves pure from this abomination And Damascen pronounces it a folly and extream impiety Vide Lyram in Exod. 20. Dainascer Orthod Fid. c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theodoret. Serm. 2. in Graecos to figure the Divinity Nicephonus Patriorch of Constantinople as Leo Allatius hath set him forth affirms it a crime to be punished with death to make the Image of God But none of all these nor the constant practise of all Christian Churches move the resolute admirers of the inventions of their own brains and works of their own hands but on they will go to prodigious practises in this kind sheltring themselves under the protection of a Church that cannot fail or deceive them and a wretched distinction or two coyned on purpose to help them out of the mire But it is time now to consider the second main shelter from the charge of Idolatry made against the Roman Church and that is from the distinction of Formal and Material Idolatry by which they would perswade us that first having a certain knowledge of the true God and next always intending
here also as 1 John 4. 16. God is love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him and Love is the fulfilling of the Law saith St. Paul And the particular consequents and effects of Love are outward bounty towards Gods Worship and Service towards his Servants and faithful Children Zeal for the spiritual as well as temporal good of our Neighbour and for the general glory of God and the propagation of the true Faith Defence of the Church Reverence and Respect to his Officers and Ministers Perseverance in well-doing Constancy in the true Faith even to suffering of reproaches displeasures contempts indignities and to suffer joyfully the Hebr. 10. 34. spoiling of our Goods and cheerfully the loss of our lives by holy Martyrdome for the love we bear to God in Christ For as St. John saith Perfect 1 John 4. 18. love casteth out fear because fear hath torment he that seareth therefore is not made perfect in love that is Love is of such a powerful nature that where it is truly there it overcometh all oppositions and difficulties which are apt to assail it and fears nothing that may stand in its way between Christ and it or its duty and God Now the contrary Vices to these forbidden when it is said Thou shalt have no other Gods but me are Atheism and contempt of all Divine Power Disbelief affected Ignorance of the true God and his Worship or Superstition in multiplying Gods either of equal or inferiour order to God Confederacies with the Devil consulting with him or any pretending to derive their art or skill from Evil Spirits Seeking to any such for remedy or relief in losses or sicknesses or any such like distresses And if any shall say They can find no other remedâ—es from some heavy Evils they are to consider the excellent advice and exhortation of St. Chrysostome to persevere notwithstanding in that condition it hath pleased God to bring them to and so patiently resisting the temptation of such unlawful deliverance they shall both suffer and be crown'd as Martyrs For such were some of those Martyrs mentioned by St. Paul Not accepting deliverance Again Carnal Hebr. 11. 35. Security Despair of Gods Grace and Mercy by Impenitence Worldly mindedness or any covetousness of the Creature or the comforts of it above God which is Idolatry But more literally Any more than Civil and Coloss 3. 5. Humane Worship given to any Creature whatever though with real intentions to worship the true God only when there are competent advises and means to discern the mistake Now what are competent notices is to be judged from the common Rule to other errours as well as that of Idolatry And therefore the modern Invention of Hyperdoulia or service above that ordinarily competible to Creatures is a manifest piece of Superstition and that Idolatroas it being not found out yet by the wit of man to put any mean between Divine worship and Civil For if by Hyperdoulia they mean a higher and nobler act of Service than is given to other blessed Spirits besides the Virgin Mary they must either mean Nobler and Higher in Kind or Degree But there is no Kind betwixt that proper to God which we call Divine and that communicable to Creatures which we call Civil and Religious not for the acts sake whereby they are honoured by us but for the ground and occasion of that act viz. their Religion or Holiness And if they mean Higher degrees of worship of the same kind then do they speak most absurdly and obscurely because nothing can receive such degrees as to denominate it above its nature And besides degrees have respect not to the very thing it self but to the quality of it No man can say water is cold above cold or fire is hot above the nature of heat So can no man with sense if he means honestly say Doulia is to be above Doulia or worship above worship but must say above such a proportion or degree of worshâ—p But the first is absurdly and the second wickedly said for where such a general licence of service is allowed and given without any limits set stinting and bounding the same who there can stay his devotion from running out to extremity and all excess Hyperdoulia therefore or as I may render it Super service doth naturally lead men to Idolatry and that before they are aware For if it be demanded What mean you by this Super-service Have they found out as yet any other description than that most ridiculous of defining a thing by it self telling us Super-service is that to be given to the Virgin Mary properly and it being altogether as obscure what is that reverence due to the Virgin Mary properly How should we serve or worship her otherwise than we do other Saints or Angels have they at all explained themselves otherwise than by this Hyperdoulia or Super-service this say they is due to her but what this is we are as far to seek as at the very first Only we are sure of this that by the term it self we may give her most properly Divine Worship and be born out by that word For it manifestly implyes somewhat exhibited above other Creatures but nothing at all of the inferiourness of that service to that given to God And therefore I see no reason to doubt but this vile invention doth commonly end in Idolatry and that against the first Commandment Let us now proceed to the Second The Second Precept in the Decalogue is Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image nor the likeness of any thing c. The true meaning of §. II. which can have or need no better exposition than the general practise of the Popish Churches For being resolved to hold to their corrupt way of making the Image of God contrary to their Forefathers who alwayes abhorred all representation of God whether by Picture or Statue and to their gross sense of giving reverence to that and others of Saints and Angels have laid this Precept aside as being certainly inwardly convicted that it makes against them as men are apt to turn those Servants or Children out of doors who will not be kept in good order or ruled by them or wicked Subjects who turn their Soveraign out of his Place his Throne because he will not rule as they would have him yet still perhaps will allow him the title of King under confinement This Commandment is not by them wholly cancell'd and rased out of Scripture but it is kept under restraint lest it should reduce Christians to its due Obedience They say It is the same in effect with the first and contained in it If so why they do they not suffer it to speak and to bear its part in their Religious Books as well as the other If it be not why do they deny it its proper place and use Surely their reason at hand we cannot but accept as good and reasonable viz. It may
be convicted of moral evil and so unconcernedly to omit the weightier matters of the Law as Judgment Mercy or Charity in Vnity and Faith what can Charity call this but meer Pharisaism and where must such Pharisaism end at length but in Sadducism even denying of the Blessings and Curses of a Future Life For as Drusius hath Si Patres nostri selvissent mâ—râ—â—â—s resurrecturâ— praemia manere â—ustos â—â—st hanc vitam nâ—n tantoperè râ—bellassent Drusius in Mat. c 3. v. 7. Item in c. 22 23. observed it was one Reason alledged by the Sadduces against the Resurrection If our Fathers had known the dead should rise again and rewards were prepared for the Righteous they would not have rebelled so often not conforming themselves to Gods Rule as is pretended by all but conforming the Rule of Sin and of Faith it self to the good Opinion they had of their own Persons and Actions which Pestilential Contagion now so Epidemical God of his great Mercy remove from us and cause health and soundness of Judgment Affection and Actions to return to us and continue with us to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. THE CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTERS Chap. I. OF the Nature and Grounds of Religion in General Which are not so much Power as the Goodness of God and Justice in the Creature And that Nature it self teaches to be Religious Chap. II. Of the constant and faithful assurance requisite to be had of a Deity The reasons of the necessity of a Divine Supream Power Socinus refuted holding the knowledge of a God not natural Chap. III. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature and the Infiniteness of God Chap. IV. Of the diversity of Religions in the World A brief censure of the Gentile and Mahumetan Religion Chap. V. Of the Jewish Religion The pretence of the Antiquity of it nulled The several erroneous grounds of the Jewish Religion discovered Chap. VI. The vanity of the Jewish Religion shewed from the proofs of the true Messias long since come which are many Chap. VII The Christian Religion described The general Ground thereof the revealed Will of God The necessity of Gods revealing himself Chap. VIII More special Proofs of the truth of Christian Religion and more particularly from the Scriptures being the Word of God which is proved by several reasons Chap. IX Of the several Senses and Meanings according to which the Scriptures may be understood Chap. X. Of the true Interpretation of Holy Scriptures The true meaning not the letter properly Scripture Of the difficulty of attaining the proper sense and the Reasons thereof Chap. XI Of the Means of interpreting the Scripture That they who understand Scripture are not for that authorized to interpret it decisively The Spirit not a proper Judge of the Scriptures sense Reason no Judge of Scripture There is no Infallible Judge of Scripture nor no necessity of it absolute The grounds of an Infallible Judge examined Chap. XII Of Tradition as a Means of understanding the Scriptures Of the certainty of unwritten Traditions that it is inferiour to Scripture or written Tradition No Tradition equal to Sense or Scripture in Evidence Of the proper use of Tradition Chap. XIII Of the nature of Faith What is Faith Of the two general grounds of Faith Faith divine in a twofold sense Revelation the formal reason of Faith Divine Of the several senses and acceptations of Faith That Historical Temporarie and Miraculous Faith are not in nature distinct from Divine and Justifying Faith Of Faith explicite and implicite Chap. XIV Of the effects of true Faith in General Good Works Good Works to be distinguish'd from Perfect Works Actions good four wayes Chap. XV. Of the effect of Good Works which is the effect of Faith How Works may be denominated Good How they dispose to Grace Of the Works of the Regenerate Of the proper conditions required to Good Works or Evangelical Chap. XVI Of Merit as an effect of Good Works The several acceptatations of the word Merit What is Merit properly In what sense Christians may be said to merit How far Good Works are efficacious unto the Reward promised by God Chap. XVII Of the two special effects of Faith and Good Works wrought in Faith Sanctification and Justification what they are Their agreements and differences In what manner Sanctification goes before Justification and how it follows Chap. XVIII Of Justification as an effect of Faith and Good Works Justification and Justice to be distinguished and how The several Causes of our Justification Being in Christ the principal cause What it is to be in Christ The means and manner of being in Christ Chap. XIX Of the efficient cause of Justification Chap. XX. Of the special Notion of Faith and the influence it hath on our Justification Of Faith solitary and only Of a particular and general Faith Particular Faith no more an Instrument of our justification by Christ than other co-ordinate Graces How some ancient Fathers affirm that Faith without Works justifie Chap. XXI A third effect of justifying Faith Assurance of our Salvation How far a man is bound to be sure of his Salvation and how far this assurance may be obtained The Reasons commonly drawn from Scripture proving the necessity of this assurance not sufficient c. Chap. XXII Of the contrary to true Faith Apostasie Heresie and Atheism Their Differences The difficulty of judging aright of Heresie Two things constituting Heresie the evil disposition of the mind and the falsness of the matter How far and when Heresie destroys Faith How far it destroys the Nature of a Church Chap. XXIII Of the proper subject of Faith the Church The distinction and description of the Church In what sense the Church is a Collection of Saints Communion visible as well as invisible necessary to the constituting a Church Chap. XXIV A preparation to the knowledge of Ecclesiastical Society or of the Church from the consideration of humane Societies What is Society What Order What Government Of the Original of Government Reasons against the peoples being the Original of Power and their Right to frame Governments Power not revocable by the people Chap. XXV Of the Form of Civil Government The several sorts of Government That Government in general is not so of Divine Right as that all Governments should be indifferently of Divine Institution but that One especially was instituted of God and that Monarchical The Reasons proving this Chap. XXVI Of the mutual Relations and Obligations of Soveraigns and Subjects No Right in Subjects to resist their Soveraigns tyrannizing over them What Tyranny is Of Tyrants with a Title and Tyrants without Title Of Magistrates Inferiour and Supream the vanity and mischief of that distinction The confusion of co-ordinate Governments in one State Possession or Invasion giveth no Right to Rulers The Reasons why Chap. XXVII An application of the former Discourse of Civil Government to Ecclesiastical How Christs Church is alwayes visible and how invisible Of the communion
than guide or promote men in the knowledge of Scripture it self which naked would be better understood and resolved on then with them Fifthly The seeming opposition and contradiction in Scripture are no little impediments to the setling of mens minds in the knowledg of them Sixthly a Sixth difficulty will be The distinguishing of things Judicial Ceremonial and Moral so far as to be assured How far it is lawful to use or necessary to refuse what is prescribed by Precept or example in the Old Testament Seventhly To name no more The several various Lections may much offend the simplicity of such who shall not be well inform'd concerning the substantial integrity of Divine writ And all these I recite to no other end than to flacken the precipitancy and cool the impetuous and presumptious heat of such who the less able they are to examine and judge the more confident they are to conclude out of Scriptures what they phansie and like best refusing the outward and ordinary means of receiving the true sense upon indeed a certain truth That Gods Spirit is the best interpreter of its own Laws and God is able to direct them in the sober use of them but a most unsound and unsafe inference from hence that God doth or will so assist them when they neglect those sober outward means he hath no less ordained to that end then the former Of which means we are in the next place here to treat CHAP. XI Of the Means of interpreting the Scripture That they who understand Scripture are not for that authorized to Interpret it decisively The Spirit not a Proper Judge of the Scriptures sense Reason no Judge of Scripture There is no Infallible Judge of Scripture nor no necessity of it absolute The grounds of an Infallible Judge examined THE Opinion That all things necessary to salvation are plainly enough delivered in Scripture is pious and reasonable enough taken with its due qualifications and limitations namely of Persons of Times of Places and such like For of things supposed to be necessary all are not to all men alike necessary no not to the same man at all times For there are some Articles of Faith that are sufficiently explained and propounded to him others are not so and therefore in relation to such a person not so necessary to be explicitly believed Again some points of Religion are necessary to be received for their own sakes after due proposal others are necessary to be received for the sake of others and so imediately only necessary The Articles in the Creed of the Apostles are most of the former sort to be for their own sakes believed But the Articles of the Church and its power and autority which I take not to be mentioned in the Creed as most do are necessary for the preservation of the true Faith it self For without the use and receiving of Discipline there can be no Church properly so called as may hereafter be prooved and without a Church there can be no long continuance of Faith Therefore from hence it is not difficult to null the pretensions of some ranck Disputants who lay it as a Principal foundation and so reasonable that it scarce needs any thing but clamours and out cries to make it take effect on them that shall dare to reject it That nothing is necessarily to be offered to the Faith of any or to be by him received which is not expressed in holy writ For in holy writ it is necessary to observe and obey such as are set over us in the Lord so far as we are not convinced that they determine or impose any thing contrary to the word of God And for ought doth appear it is as necessarily required that we should depend upon our Guides in the Church for the due meaning of the Scriptures as upon the suggestions of Gods Spirit which refuseth not but requireth such outward means concurring with its direction For nothing can be more absurd or vain than simply to depend upon divine intimations of Gods Spirit because it is all sufficient of it self to such purposes For it is not only sufficient to them but to all other as well divine as natural ends and yet to so rest on it as to neglect or pass over contemptuously other meanes is rather to provoke God to denie the ordinary assistance of it For God doth not act in the world according to his power but according to his Will and Promise made unto us It is true that Christ hath promised in St. Mathew Whatsoever ye ask in my name believing ye shall receive and Math. 21. 22. by St. Luke more expresly If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts Luk. 11. 13. unto your children how much more shall your heavenly Father give the holy Spirit to them that ask him These and such like promises of being invested with Gods blessed Spirit must not be so absolutely understood as that all who simply crave it should forthwith certainly be therewith endowed because St. James as other places of Scripture explains and restrains this large promise according to the Oeconomie or more general tenour of the Gospel i. e. That we ask aright and believing which whether we in prayer do duly observe may be well doubted of us though we doubt not of the Thesis it self or Rule That he that asketh aright shall receive And besides these are senses in which such promises are truly verified and Gods Spirit truly given and yet not a full importment of all the graces which flow from it For they who at first were called to the Faith of Christ and baptized were indued with the holy Spirit and yet not presently instated in the discerning of all the mysteries of Christian Faith but still depended upon the Prophets and Apostles and interpreters of Gods will for the attaining of his will even revealed in General For according to the known distinction there are spiritual Gifts signally so called and spiritual Graces And some men may receive the influence of Gods Spirit in the way of Grace which sanctifies the will and affections and not of Gifts which illuminates the mind and understanding and that not only to the use of things absolutely necessary to our Salvation but to the benefit of others Add hereunto That notwithstanding the Spirit is so sufficient of it self and God doth grant it to them who ask it of them We know that generally it is not granted to any but in the way which Christ ordained the same and that was that first it should descend as it also did immediately and primarily upon the Church representative or Ruling who were then his Apostles and holy Disciples and in like manner is it still to be expected soberly through the mediation of such as are by Christ set to govern the Church and rule under him herein succeeding the Apostles and not immediately and by a leap from the head to the lowest members which though it may be yet is so rarely
that none can without another extraordinary confirmation rest satisfied that so it is really with him Lastly for our clearer proceeding We are herein to distinguish between the attaining to the true sense of Scripture and the decision or determination of Controversies according to the Scripture And that the most important Query is not so much Whether a man hath the Spirit or not or whether he hath the truest and most genuine meaning of the Spirit speaking in the Scriptures or not but how this should be made known and manifested so far unto others as that they should rationally and soberly rest satisfied in the opinions of the said pretenders to such truths For it s well and smartly said in this doubt The Question is not Whether the Spirit in a Man or Church or the Scripture though this last way is very improperly expressed be the best Judge of the Sense of Scripture but where it resides to such purposes And what a great stir is made to little purpose while the former is so easily granted on all sides and there is nothing done at all to convince a sober man or Christian That such or such persons are they we ought expect the dictates of Gods Spirit from For Judgement properly so called can never be separated from Autority or lawful presiding over others joyned with power to oblige to such sentence as shall be passed but how this should be competible to single or many Persons agreeing in the same thing in their private capacity yea though enabled with the spirit more than ordinary cannot well be understood So that at most they can be judges of controversies only for themselves and that at their own peril and can do no more than perswade advise and exhort not oblige others to think as they do But Judges must and ought to do more or they had as good do nothing So that that which hath found great acceptance and applause by too many doth upon examination prove very insignificant and impertinent to the resolution of the difficultie in hand viz. That things that are necessary are obvious in Scripture and Every man is Judge to himself granting I say This which is yet really untrue yet scarce any thing is said to the purpose which enquired not so much How a man might perswade himself but how and with what influence he may proceed to the conviction and reducing of others so that the essential to a Church be not destroyed as it certainly must be where no communion is and there will infallibly cease all communion where it is meerly arbitrary for Christians to believe and judge and walk and worship as they please For this it is for every man to judge for himself Will it be yet farther said That we should bear with one another and live peaceably and charitably one with another and not molest each other for his Judgement If it be as I know it is I reply first That this plausibility without possibility is not true according to the opinions of them who use it For they certainly hold That Heresie and Schism are not to be endured or born withal Christ and God must not be blasphemed by unsound opinions or prophane or superstitious actions and this diversity yea contrariety of judging must needs find these faults in one another very often and consequently be of opinion That they are not to be suffered and Charity must not be so far mistaken or abused as to licentiate such enormities But What if after all this contention for the Spirit it be not judge at all as in truth it is not in any proper sense For the Spirit is only the due qualification of the Person or Persons not simply to judge for that descends upon them by being ordinarily and orderly constituted over the Church of Christ but to judge aright and to give faithful and unerring sentence in matters under debate and question And the same may be in proportion affirmed of Reason termed by some who would seem to excell others in reason most improperly as well as unreasonably Judge of Controversies For all judgement disquisition and expositions are made by Persons not by things Reason indeed is the Instrument whereby a Person is enabled to judge or find out the truth unto which unless there be a due accession of Autority and Power such reason though very exquisite and happy must keep within its own doors and judge at home for it self and not for others nor contrary to more publick and autoritative determinations without the peril of being taxed of Arrogance and it self justly condemned if not for the Inward errours of the mind for the outward errors in ill managing truths If it were so That Reason in men were infallible we ought not to stand upon nicities of terms or improper language But for men to deny others the Seat and Power of Judicature because they may err and to take it to themselves as if the spirit of Error had no power over them is at the same time a grievous though pleasing error both against Reason and common justice too And if it be said That every man is bound by the Law of nature being indued with reason to use that reason and not bruitishly to suffer himself he knows not or cares not whether to becarried by others Reasons and not his own I retort And every man is obliged by the Law of Nations which is a more refined principle than that of gross Nature properly taken to contain himself in the order of Community he is placed and to submit to the reason of common Judgement no less than his own For undoubtedly until every man in private and particular be unerrable which is not to be expected on this side heaven there will diverse inconsistent judgements prevail and divide one from another and cause such a breach as the society whether divine or humane will soon perish and come to nothing But granting what was before demanded That every man must act according to his reason above the nature of beasts this doth not conclude That therefore he must be let alone and not brought even by force to submit to others against such reason First Because it is not resolved by any but a mans own deceitful opinion That it is really reason which is so presumed to be Secondly Because he that is so constrained to submit his reason is not thereby denyed either the nature or use of his but still much transcendeth the capacity of beasts For He discusses he discourses he judges rationally after the manner of men even when the effect of all these Acts are contrary to reason And lastly In wise men and good humble Christians there is a superior principal of reasonableness to that of meer direct nature For That he that has most reason on his side and when that it self is controverted he that according to appearance of Circumstances may lay the fairest claim to that is to be followed no rational man can deny Therefore should a Mans
private reason perswade him That he hath found out the truth and yet at the same time assure him That he is no less fallible than another man and therefore may possibly embrace and hug a false conception with as much fondness as a true and withal That private Judgements are not in themselves so safe as publique nor single as many What violence were this to his reason nay how much more rational than the first simple Act to comply with the Reason of others whom reason also requires to listen to and obey and Scripture much more From hence we may rightly conclude against both extremes in these days who yet agree in this very ill-grounded opinion That there must be an Infallible Director or Judge or we cannot submit to them in matters of Faith and our Salvation This is absolutely untrue both in humane and divine matters Who sees not indeed that it were to be wished for and above all things desired Who sees not the great inconvenience for want of such a standard of opinions as this But can we rationally conclude therefore that so it is Or hath God or ought he of his necessary goodness and wisdom as some have ventured to affirm to grant all things that are infallibly good for man Is it not sufficient that a fair though not infallible way is opened to attain the truth here and bliss hereafter but every one must find it Is it little or no absurditie That infinite never come to means of truth and so great that many who enjoy them do not receive the benefit by them Again Are good manners and virtues no less essential to Salvation than Faith and is there no infallible Judge of manners Is there no infallible Casuist And must there be of points of Faith How many have the infallible Rule of holy Life and yet mistake either in the sense or application of it so far as to perish in unknown Sins And yet none have to prevent that great and common evil call'd for an infallible Censour whose determinations might settle doubtful consciences in greatest safety and silence all apologies which are wont to be made for our sins and errors and so bring us nec essarily to truth or leave us under self and affected condemnation But The Ground of this mistake being farther searched into will be found very weak and fallacious An infallible Faith say they must have an infallible Judge And of these some assume thus There is no man infallible Therefore no man can be Judge of Faith Others assume thus But there is and must be an infallible Faith Therefore there must be an infallible Judge So that we see both would have infallible Judges but differ only in their choice of them For The former would have the Scriptures Judge and Rule which is very honest but very simple The later would have some external Judge which hath much more of reason in it And fails only in the choice of this Judge or in the description of him For There is nothing more unreasonable than to ordain that which is under debate to be Judge of it self besides the great absurdity of confounding the Rule or Law and the Interpreter and Judge And There is nothing more fallacious than to confound Causes and occasions together as the later opinion doth For If the Church or whatever Judge may be supposed were the true direct cause of our Faith then indeed it would necessarily follow That our Faith could no wayes be infallible unless the Judge were also infallible the effect not exceeding the cause nor the Conclusion the Premises or propositions from whence it was deduced But Because the Church is only on Occasion or a Cause without which we should neither believe the Scriptures in general to be the Word of God nor any sentence to be duly drawn from the same there is no necessity at all of such a consequence For The Infallibility now spoken of is either the thing believed which is the Word of God of which the Church I hope is no Cause or the Grace of Faith excited and exercised by us through the Spirit of Grace in us the mynistery of the Church serving thereunto acording to St. Paul saying We therefore as workers together with 2 Cor. 6. 1. him beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain For as in things natural He that applies Actives to Passives that is the Cause proper to the matter about which the Action is is not the proper or natural cause of the Effect but the occasion only yet is said vulgarly so to be as when a man applies fire to combustible matter he may though improperly be said to burn it when it is the fire and not he that burns it So the Church or Judge of Scriptures sense applying the same to a capable subject the effect is true and infallible Faith but it is not the effect of the Church or instrument or mean rather but of the Holy Spirit of Grace which taketh occasion from thence to produce Faith and that infallible For Were this Infallibility we now speak of the Churches then when ever the Church should so propound and urge points of Faith they must needs have an effect in the Soul For if they say The Church teaches in an humane way they say she teaches in a fallible way which overthrows all And from this is cleared that difficulty which opposeth a Judge of Scripture and Faith because none could be found infallible For not making the Judge the cause of Faith but occasion he may be necessarily required to Faith God who is the only principal cause with his holy word seldom or never concurring without those outward means And therefore though I readily enough grant That the Scriptures are so plainly written that a single simple person wanting greater helps to attain to the abstruser sence of them and using his honest and simple endeavour may easily find so much of the Rule of Faith and holy Life as to be saved by them yet I cannot say the same of any men who presuming on Gods power against his promise which includeth the use of outward meanes or mistaking his promise for absolute when it is conditional shall look no farther than their own wits shall lead them Now The outward meanes to which God hath annexed his promise of Grace may be these First That which we have here handled a general and sober submission to the Guides of our youth and our spiritual Fathers and Pastors in Christ which to forsake is the part of a wanton and fornicating Soul according to Solomon This common Reason and nature it self seem to require of all Prov. 2. 17. under Autority by the disposition of Almighty God That they in the first place hearken unto the voice and explication of the Church wherein they are educated until such time as a greater manifestation of truth shall withdraw them unwillingly from the same For so long as Senses are equally probable on both
sides we are obliged by conscience to our proper Fathers in Christ For to do otherwise is to provoke God to deliver such over as light and gadding Huswifes to the impure embraces of any seducer to Schism and Heresie But when such a conviction shall be wrought in us of the errors and unsafety of that communion in which we were educated That we must either forsake that or Christ then must the advice and sentence of our Saviour prevail with us in St. Luke If any Luâ— 14. 26. man comes to me and hate not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brethren and Sisters yea and his own Life also he cannot be my Disciple And as we should go against common prudence and humanity it self out of an opinion That our Parents natural may err and set us upon unwarrantable Acts to turn them off and deny all obedience unto them least they should lead us into errors so should we do very unchristianly and against apparent precepts of Scripture contemptuously and proudly to deny submission both of Judgement and practise unto our spiritual Parents because forsooth they are men and may err the Spirit of disobedience tacitly insinuating unto us a much more pestilent opinion That while we do as best liketh our selves we shall be much more safe if not infallible as if we might not err But of this as we have already spoken in part so may there offer it self a more proper place more fully to speak afterward A second general means to attain the true sense of Scripture is indeed the Spirits assistance by which it was at first composed There is certainly none like to that For as St. Paul hath it What man knoweth the 1 Cor. 2. 11. things of a man save the Spirit of a man which is in him Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God The only hazard we here run is and that no small one That we presume not lightly upon such a peculiar guidance of the Spirit which we have not The general remedie therefore of this evil is that prescribed by our Lord Christ viz. Prayer For Thus he speaketh by St. Mathew All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer believing ye shall receive And more Mat. 21. 22. Luk. 11. 13. particularly by St. Luke If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children how much more shall your heavenly Father give the holy Spirit to them that ask them And a Third means is when being soundly and well instructed in the general Augustin de Doct. christ Lib. 3. cap. 2. drift and design of Faith or Gods holy word we by the Analogy which one part of Faith must bear with another do judge of the truth or error of any thing contained in Scripture And To this belongs a Fourth as it is commonly reckoned viz. due and Id. 16. cap. 3. prudent comparing of several places of Scripture knowing that no sense can be admitted of Scripture which disagreeth with any part of Scripture Skill or knowledg of the original tongues in which they were wrot may be accounted a Fifth meanes and herein a special observation of the several Idioms of both Old and New Testament Lastly Consideration of the Histories of Countries Persons and Customes to which Holy writ do relate To these several others of inferior Order might be named but I here pass them to come to a more exact and seasonable treatise of Tradition so much conducing to the abovesaid ends CHAP. XII Of Tradition as a Means of Vnderstanding the Scriptures Of the Certainty of unwritten Traditions that it is inferior to Scripture or Written Tradition No Tradition equal to Sense or Scripture in Evidence Of the proper use of Tradition TO this place is due the Treating of Tradition as well for the better compleating of what may yet seem wanting in directions for the attaining the proper sense of the Rule of Faith the Scripture as because of the pretensions in its behalf made by some to an equal share in the Rule it self by laying down this fundamental Division of the Word of God into Written commonly called Scripture and Unwritten called Tradition And That the Word of God may be left unwritten as well as written is Moreman said the Church was before the Scriptures Philpoâ— shewed that his argument was fallacious For he took the Scriptures only to be that which is written by men in letters whereas in very deed all Prophesy uttered by the Spirit of God was counted to be Scripture Fox Martyr Vol. 3. pag. 29. undeniable nay That actually it was delivered by word of mouth before it was committed to writing is evident from the infinite Sermons of the Apostles Evangelists and Evangelical Preachers who declared the same For To them who were contemporary to the immediate Disciples of Christ the word of God was delivered by speech to the end it might be written so far as it seemed expedient to Divine Providence for the perpetual benefit of succeeding generations but to us The word of God is preached vocally or orally because it is written And so we read our Saviour himself used it against the Devil and incredulous Jews not quoting the uncertain and unecessary Traditions remaining with the Jews but the written Word saying by St. Mathew * Mat. 4. V. 4. 7. 10. Joh. 8. 17. It is written man shall not live by bread alone And verse the seventh It is written again And the third time It is written thou shalt worship the Lord thy God c. And so by St. John and innumerable other places It is written in your Law Christ in all his disputes against his Jewish adversaries seldome or never arguing from their Traditions which were many but from the written word of God only And notwithstanding speaking Philosophically it is not repugnant to reason That things delivered from Father to Son through many ages should persevere in their pristine integrity and be preserved incorrupt in the main yet is it inconsistent with the Fallibility of humane nature to secure them in all Points from violation either without writing or with All the world concurring in this That the Invention of Letters was a special gift of God towards Mankind for the more safe and profitable continuance of things passed to following times Such an intollerable Paradox Cresies Exomologesis is that which modern Wits their scarce tollerable Tenets urging them thereunto have of late vented and to their best defended That Tradition taken in contradistinction to Writing is more safe than writing as if writing had not all the priviledges belonging to oral Tradition with great advantage or because written monuments may suffer by tract of time and passing so many hands unwritten traditions might pass so many ages and mouths inviolate When while we see too great variety in the reading or letter of books we could be so blind as not to behold infinite more of the same nature in
particularly assured of his being in Christ The whole Antecedent I grant viz. That every man believeth Christ when he receiveth him and that Christ is received by Faith And that every man is bound to apply Christ particularly and his Promises to himself But the consequence here made follows not from hence For by the former a man believes assuredly that the Promises of Grace made through Christ to the Church do particularly belong to him he hath a right to them being called to the Covenant Neither do we promise any other security of Salvation by only Faith but to those that labour in their calling and be fruitful of good Works Dr. Fulk on Rhem. Test Phil. 3. v. 11. And thus far a man is and ought to be sure of his Salvation But there being implyed in all Promises of Everlasting Salvation certain conditions of obeying and repenting as well as believing simply whether a man is to that degree proficient in these as to put him in actual possession of Christ this is no where revealed neither are we commanded to believe it And when St. Paul saith to the Romans * Rom. 8. 15 16. See likewise 1 John 5. 9 10 Ye have not received again the spirit of bondage to fear but ye have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father What is more plain than that his meaning is to distinguish the general state of the Church of the Jews from the Church of the Gentiles and the spirit of Moses as I may so say which tender'd to bondage from the spirit of Christ which is that free Spirit For as it is elsewhere said If the Son make you free then shall you be free indeed And from hence no more can be concluded to any single person than to the whole Church of God in which there are many reprobates as all agree Neither is the matter helped out any whit by what follows The Spirit it self beareth witness with our Spirit that we are the Sons of God I presume few will be so severe and ignorant as to deny the large acceptation in Scripture of the Children of God and Sons of God and Saints viz. That generally they signifie no more than those who were elected outwardly to the Faith and Profession of Christ and to the means of becoming not only denominatively and of Right but really and effectually in Fact the heirs of Eternal Salvation To be then the Sons of God here with St. Paul signifies no more than by Faith to be the peculiar people and favorites of God above all such as were not thus brought home to Christs Fold Now that such singular Grace and Priviledges belonged to Christian St. Paul proves from the testimony of the Spirit namely That the Christian Religion is only the true Religion thus The Spirit beareth witness with our Spirit Our own Judgment our Consciences doth stedfastly assure us that we are the Children of God but this is not all this proves nothing to another to the convincing of him that we are the true Servants and Children of God but the Spirit of God bearing witness with our Spirit doth And the Spirit of God beareth witness with us sufficiently when it declareth openly by miracles signs and wonders wrought before the eyes of our Adversaries that what we preach and believe is the truth Which is the same with what St. Paul writes to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 2. 4. saying And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of mans wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power That your faith might stand not in the wisdom of man but in the power of God In which words he plainly sheweth the ground of the Corinthians faith not to be taken from any fair or plausible Rhetorick or form of words whereby men are led oftentimes to believe against reason but on the more solid grounds of extraordinary miracles wrought by the power of God and which did demonstrate to all equal judges That it was the Spirit of God which both taught them such mysteries of Faith as they preached and confirmed the same by such signs and wonders as did appear generally at the publication of the Gospel Now what doth all or any of this concern the supposed particular inward tacit testimony whereby it is said a man is to be assured of his Salvation And no more do the words of the Apostle in the end of the same Chapter prove too long to be recited but this Rom. 8. 35 36 37 38 39. is briefly to be answered 1. That they speak not at all of any individual single Christian but of the Church of God and that indefinitely or at large viz. That God hath so determined to plant propagate and maintain that Religion into which divers were collected by the ministry of the Apostles that whatever or from whomsoever evils might befall the Church of God yet they should never prevail with such persecutions to separate the faithful from Christ no not all the Powers nor Principalities on Earth nor all the Angels of Heaven or of Hell But to secure these and the like testimonies the better to their opinions some much admired persons of the Reformation peradventure suspecting what might be answered have proceeded to say That what promises Calvin Inst Christ hath made to his Church do equally concern every Christian as well as the Church which I cannot yield to without these Exceptions First That it may be understood of a particular Church as well as particular Persons But as may hereafter appear God hath made no absolute promise to any particular Church so far that it can be any point of Faith to believe that Gods counsel decree are such to it as never to suffer it to Apostatize from him So that no individual Church can be sure of its perseverance in the truth and if not that how should any particular person claim so much But the Promises of Christ being taken as they ought of a Church indefinitely it is most agreeable to Gods word to maintain an infallible perpetuity of the same Again It is to be remembred that all this while we are speaking not so much of certainty before God according to which we may yield the Salvation of men to be infallible but certainty before men or to the party concerned immediately which we call Assurance or Evidence In the body of an Orthodox Church it is certain in it self that many men shall be saved but not certain to us that any one therein shall nor evident to any one that he shall To the reasons taken from the Power of God who is able to save and reveal this And the truth of God who is faithful in his Promise And the Knowledge of God that he knoweth who are his what need we make any answer besides showing the vanity of that inference which is drawn from the possibility of any thing to the Fact it self and of that presumption rather than faith which
themselves For though infinite Instances may be given of Cities and Nations which have wrung the Civil Power out of the hands of their Princes and Magistrates and pretended they would be ruled by their own Counsels and power yet could they never effect this but were constrained after all devices used to no purpose to let go their hold if not Pretensions and suffer the assumed Power to return to a more capable subject Which incapacity of using such Power is no less then an unanswerable Demonstration to me that it was never there placed by any divine Will or Right but somewhere else Now though some eminent Reformers of the Late Age have been so superfluously and in truth superstitiously nice and as is pretended jealous for Christs honour and absolute Headship over his Church that would not so much as allow the name of Government to the Church or any in it least Christ should suffer loss but administration must be the Junius de Ecclesia name signifying power and Rule exercised in the Church yet in truth all this is no better then a Superstitious fear where there is no fear For they are not names but things that are so much to be heeded And if these men in their Charge had not acted the part of Governours as well as others we might have allowed this invention for tollerable but the truth is the honour pretended to Christ and the Gentle usage of the People have ended in the same thing which the other more openly and honestly professed to do the difference being only in the Hands so acting But 't is no new thing to beguile dissetled people with new words into new orders neither will it ever be left off as common a Stratagem as it is so long as the People are people and Craft and Ambition shall spurrmen of Fortune to currie and scratch that unruly beast to the end that when they find it convenient they may get up of them and ride them at their pleasure This incapacity of all Christians to rule themselves being the same with the other necessarily inferreth a more proper subject of that Power which not being assumed but delivered any more then the Faith it self founds a distinction of Christians and the Church as ancient as the Church it self not unknown to Civil Societies For as hath been said a Kingdom or Commonwealth is said to decree and act such a thing when not the thousand part thereof so much as know any thing of it till it be done so that clearly there is a Nation Real and Representative and Formal and proper This consisteth of all Persons in that Society and every member of that Political Bodie The other of such Principal Parts of that Bodie as are in Possession of autority and power to Rule the rest and whose Acts are interpreted to be the Acts of the whole State And that the Church consisting of infinite Persons uncapable of consulting or acting Decretorily must and alwayes had certain Select Persons representing the whole which it should conclude the thing it self together with Precedents of all Places and Ages do prove The greatest arguments and most colourable are taken from the Infancy of the Church to the contrary For both Hereticks and Schismaticks endeavour at contrary conclusions from the Scripture Patrons of the Popes absoluteness argue from a Superiority or Primacy of order in St. Peter when the Church consisted it may be of twenty persons to make good the Popes pretensions to supremacy over the universal Church when it consisteth of so many Nations But to this our answer is ready First that the like power was never in St. Peter over his fellow Apostles and the Rest that is claimed by the Present Bishop of Rome Secondly That if such a Power as is asserted to St. Peter for the Popes sakehad ever been in him really yet it could be no good ground of his Successors claiming the same over the Catholick Church And that First because there is no probability of the like Gifts and Graces requisite to such Autority in the Popes of Rome as were given by Christ to St. Peter yea there are more instances to be given of the Ignorance and horrible vitiousness of Persons possessing that Chaiâ— then in any other Patriarchal See in Christendom Secondly There is no Rule of Certainty setting aside the Personal incapacities and imperfections how far the Apostolical power was derived to their Successors but what may be taken from the end of such power which was to conserve the Church in due order of Government Devotion and Faith and this may as well and better be performed without one Persons engrossing to himself the Disposal of all things Primarily though not in the Execution Thirdly the difference is vast between the Church consisting of so few and contracted into so narrow a circuit as at the first founding of it when one man might have with great facility taken the whole management of the Church upon him and in following Ages when it was diffused into so many and far distant quarters of the Universe not to be inspected or managed by one man though an Apostle On the other side Persons of Democratical Principles and purposes finding in holy Writ that the whole Church without distinction of Persons were often assembled together and that during their such meeting matters concerning the due administration of the Church were treated of collect from thence that in right and not rather occasionally they concurred to Publick Acts of the Church but this likewise is a fallacy without any necessity of consequence as will appear from the original and orderly search made into the first Constitution and the gradual Progress of Ecclesiastical Persons and functions First then That Christ is the Head of the Church and under that General notion of Power life and motion doth communicate his influence unto his Body the Scripture is so manifest and it is so generally and willingly by all assented to that it were lost time to insist on it He is then by immediate consequence the fountain of all Power resting in that Body as doth appear from the several Appellations subordinate to that of Head attributed unto him in Scripture For Hebrews the third and first he is called The Apostle of our profession And in the Book of the Acts he is stiled that Prophet Heb. 3. 1. Acts. 3. 22. Deut. 18. 15. Luk. 4. 18. which was in Deuteronomie promised to the true Israel And an Evangelist he is made to us by his own words verifying the Prediction of Esaias upon himself Saying The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel And St. Peter calleth him our 1 Pet. 2. 25. Mat. 23. 10. Bishop Doctour or Master he claims as proper to himself in St. Mathew And to the Hebrews as before he is called a Priest an High priest yea lastly a Deacon or Minister for the words properly used signify the same Rom. 15. 8. thing
defines it 1. Qu. 8. Ar. 1. 2. The communication of one thing with another so many waies as a Body imparts it self to another so many may it be said to be Present to it And these ways are commonly resolved to be two First by immediate contact and conjunction Secondly by a Virtual or Effectual communication with it the Substance it self continuing remote So that though Christs body should be determined to one certain place in Heaven yet may it by its vertue communicate it self to us in the Sacrament and be said to be Present really though not Corporally after the manner of bodies in their natural state by contiguity And what we now say of the Subject of this Sacrament will hold no less in the Case of Participation of Christs Body and Blood in the Eucharist For as Christs Body may be said to be really though not Corporally Present and immediately So may it be said to be received Really and not Phantastically only though not Corporally after the manner that other bodies are received For they that affirm that Christs body is Corporally Sacramentally received do say if not what they know not themselves yet what no body but themselves can apprehend For either these terms are really distinct or Not. If they be not then are they either superfluous or at most explicatory one of another but this latter cannot be said because Sacramentally is more obscure than Corporally and Corporally signifies a much grosser degree of Presence than the Framers of this distinction will admit to agree with these Divine Mysteries If they be distinct whence shall we fetch the nature of this Sacramental Presence whenas there is nothing to be found in Nature to resemble or explain it but it must be described by it self And Sacramentally Present is no more than to be present in the Sacrament But what it is to be present in the Sacrament or how a thing may be said to be present in the Sacrament otherwise than in other Cases we shall ever be to seek and consequently never learn Therefore we must be constrained at length to reduce this large and unintelligible Presence Sacramental to one of the two old sorts of the Presence of Influence only or Presence of Substance it self or Suppositum So that either the Influence only of Christs Body and Blood should be found in the Eucharist and the vertue of them be therein communicated unto us or the very natural Substance also We have hitherto spoken of the Presence it self precisely taken from its Causes and manner external For according to Philosophers there is a Modus Essentialis and a Modus Accidentalis The Essential manner is simply to be after the intrinsique natureof a thing as the intrinsique nature and manner of a Body is to be Corporally and of a Spirit to be Spiritually that is As a Body and as a Spirit But as a Body ordinarily and naturally palpable and visible may remain a true real Body and yet not be seen or felt so may a Spirit remain a Spirit in substance and yet appear as a Body So that it is possible Christs Body may be present corporally in the essentials and formal nature of a Body and yet not appear in the accidental or separable formalities of a Body which are actually to be seen and felt at a competent distance These I call accidental because they may be wanting as well by reason of the defect of the senses which should perceive them as of the sensiblenes of such objects For a Divine power may take away the one as well as the other by impeding the sense though seeing the very nature and essence of a Body consisteth in being extended and quantitative it cannot be conceived how a Divine Power can divide them which mutually constitute one another though it may render them imperceptible to outward sense And so Christs Body may be in the Eucharist so far corporally as to have all real and essential modifications of a Body but not so Corporally as to appear in the proper forms of a Body But granting or supposing rather that Christs Body were in this Latter sense present in the Sacrament there appears no great reason why this should be called a Sacramental Presence more than that presence when he was with his Disciples at Supper and as the Scripture saith Vanished out of their sight Luk. 24. 31. that is as the word and sense import not translating his Body suddainly to another place but disappearing in that place or ceasing to be seen by them answerable to the contrary power shewn in his sudden appearing without any previous Act and standing in the midst of them before they V. 36. could be aware of it or suppose any such thing which was occasion of their great Affrightment and amazement supposing him to be a Spirit 37. But it is one thing to be Possibly and another Actually so to be And yet farther Actually for Christs Body and Blood so to be present and to be so Present as there should remain nothing substantial or material besides them and the Signs to be changed into the things signified by them absolutely and totally the shew or Accident only excepted So that the Question is double First Whether those Substances of Bread and Wine remain after consecration really the same they were before or be totally abolished Secondly It is inquired not so much whether Christs Body and Blood be really present in the Sacrament but whether it be really the Sacrament it self as it must necessarily be if so be that they be in such manner really present as there remains no other substance besides them For the former of these the knowledge of the Real Presence of Signs Bread and Wine do exceedingly conduce to the understanding of the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ under or through those Signs And it should seem that the Roman Advocates of the New sense of a Real Presence of Christs Body and Blood proceed not in the proper and natural method rightly to found their Doctrine For as according to them there must be in order of nature though not of time a Desition or abolition of the Elemental substances before there can succeed those Divine substances so should they have first by sound and sufficient arguments proved the destruction of the preceeding Bodies and then have inferred the succeeding But on the contrary They first presume on the Second upon what grounds we shall hereafter see viz That Christs Body is so really subsisting there and then conclude that the Elements are not there subsistent For he that holds that the Sacramental Signs do not exclude the Body and Blood of Christ doth likewise hold that the Body and Blood of Christ are not inconsistent with the Real Presence of the Elements It must not be denied that those texts of Scripture which are commonly alleadged to Parallel Christs words and consequently to give a more favourable sense than that of Transubstantiation do not exactly
and Beasts neither can there many as different in kind as Man and Beast are distinct nor in number as men differ one from another so neither can there be One differing as it were from it self in Parts or other like composition of nature as man doth For seeing as Boetius hath observed God Boetius Consoâ—â—â— Lib. 3. â—â—os 10. is that which is most absolute and perfect and than which nothing more excellent can be conceived by the mind of man If more than one could be in nature or number there could not be one most absolute but One more absolute and simple might by the Understanding of Man be conceived which necessarily must be thought to be God rather than those diverse ones And if we should suppose the Nature Individual of God to be made up of several sorts of things and naturesas the Body of man then did we not pitch upon the true Notion of God which we must alwayes suppose to be most perfect But we have more than conjectural knowledge that some things in the world are not compounded at least as we are but of a more pure and simple substance such as we call Spirit And we maâ— well believe that all of that nature are not of equal perfection or if possibly they should that still there is a possibility of a more transcendent purity of subsisting than they are of until we come to the most absolute pure and perfect Being than which nothing can be or conceived to be more Pure and Perfect and that must of necessity be God Again such a composition would destroy the nature of God because such it must be that nothing either in act or Cogitation can possibly precede it but where there are distinct parts or humors concurring to make one Entire thing there a real priority at least of nature must needs be because it cannot be supposed but the Cause must in some manner go before the Effect and such supposed compositions have of the nature of a material Cause to such a thing as they so constitute Thirdly all things of a differing nature concurring to make One cannot move themselves nor of themselves meet with such concord as to make one thing without the power and wisdome of some third Superiour Agent bringing them so together So that to suppose such a God is to suppose one Above and before him who should Effect all this which is repugnant to the nature of God Lastly nothing can be so well set together but it may be supposed to be undone and dissolved again either by the nature of things themselves tending to separation or by the same power or if they will fortune as some have called it which brought them together This is yet further confirmed unto us from the Holy Scriptures which were best able to reveal the nature of God unto us so far as was expedient or perhaps for us in this life possible to understand where God most admirably describeth himself thus I am that I am which is his name for Exod. 3. 14 15. ever which no created thing can claim to it The like to which is that name Jehovah whereby he calls himself signifying an absolute essential Being For nothing besides God can define God Every thing but he is defined by another thing which differs in some manner from it but God is defined by himself because nothing can be Higher than he and nothing in him is really distinct from him as in other things And therefore truly may it be said of God The Lord thy God is one Lord i. e. One in number nature Deut. 6. 4. and Simplicity of Being And therefore such definitions of God as Joh. 4. 24. 1 Tim. 1. 25. Psal 90. 2. Jer. 23. 23. 34. Psal 130. v. 7. 1 Tim. 6. 16. this God is a Spirit or Substance Spiritual Uncreated Most Pure Eternal Infinite Incomprehensible Immutable Everliving c. Are rather to be understood Negatively than Positively that is that God is so a Spirit that he is infinitely above the nature of Corporeal Beings though he be not so a Spirit as to be of the Nature of Angels or such like Spirits but much more transcends them in excellency than they do the most gross and earthly Bodies And said to be Infinite because no limitation of his Being or Power or Presence can be supposed which is commonly called the Negative way of attaining knowledg of Gods nature viz by removing or excluding all imperfections of the Creature from God the Creatour And Positively ascribing all things to him which appear to humane understanding most Perfect and Excellent CHAP. III. Of the Vnity of the Divine Nature as to the Simplicity of it And how the Attributes of God are consistent with that Simplicity BUT against the fore said Simplicity seem to make several things ascribed unto God and believed of him as First Attributes of God as Most Holy Most Wise most Just Most Merciful and such like Secondly the descriptions made of God in Holy Scripture Thirdly The Existence of God in a triplicity of Persons Of the first we shall here speak most briefly as no difficulty For we are to understand them not as really distinct things from the Nature of God himself which is most simple but only Relatively and after the manner of mans conception who being able no otherwise than from sensible and natural occasions to understand God must of necessity frame to himself such affections and severally distinguish them for to exercise the several Acts of Service due to God For if Man consider'd God altogether under one manner of Being then could he not sometimes humble himself under his wrath and displeasure conceived for his sins Then could he not at other times rejoyce in his mercy and express his thankfulness for his grace and Goodness received Then could he not implore his aid against unjust dealings and injuries suffered in the world Then could he not Pray unto him to relieve him in his necessities and straits none could crave supply from his bounty and fulness in his wants These distinct conceptions therefore of God are requisite though God be absolutely the same And God having vouchsafed to express himself in such manner in his Word doth thereby give warrant for us to be affected alwayes provided that we proceed not to any gross imagination of him as really so affected and compounded but according to a Metaphorical or Metonymical sense familiarly used in all authors as well as in the Scriptures For it is to be noted the Scriptures do choose to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost Homil. 15. in Joann in compliance with mans capacity not according to the dignity of the subject of which it treats nor according to the Splendour and illuminated state of the Understandings receiving divine Revelations but according to the proportion of mens ordinary apprehensions to which they are directed as Philosophy hath observed that All Agents do work agreeable to the condition of the
denied him as having no pre-existent matter out of which they can be said to be fram'd It must be consessed the word Create and Creation in Scripture is not so strictly used as in Philosophers Books but imports any notable production as well as that simple one without pre-existence Yet the thing it self is affirmed as where it is said All things were made by God for there nothing is excepted or exempted from his Power as Heb. 11. Heb. 11. 13. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear and he only can preserve all things who maketh all things But God in Christ or Christ through God upholdeth all things by the word of his Power Heb. 1. 3. Rev. 4. 11. And in the Revelations it is said Thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure Chap. 10. 6. they were and are created And in the tenth Chapter the Angel sweareth by him that liveth for ever and ever who created Heaven and the things that are therein and the Earth and the things that therein are and the Sea and the things that are therein And aptly do the words of the Psalmist answer the History of the Creation who speaking of the particulars Psal 148. 5. of this natural world saith of God He commanded and they were created this being the only means and method that we read all things to have been produced viz. the word of his Power Let there be Light Let there be the Firmament c. which being a demonstration of his immediate will most wisely implieth as some eminent Philosophers have with great admiration observed the proper Power of God Almighty to whom nothing is difficult that he willeth should come to pass Now where there is no limitation upon an agent but what proceeds from its own will there nothing is impossible and if it be possible for God to will as must be seeing man may desire to produce somewhat from nothing it must be possible to come to pass what so is willed by him otherwise God should be disappointed and frustrated in his intentions than which nothing can be thought more absurd or repugnant to the Nature of God And thus at the same time it appears as well what God made as how viz. That there is nothing extant whether visible or invisible but what was framed by him and that absolutely as the Apostle more expresly testifieth to the Colossians By him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in Col. 1. 16. earth visible and invisible whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers all things were created by him and for him By which we understand that all the Angels and several orders of those invisible Spirits in Heaven were the effect of his Power no less than were inferior and visible Creatures And though there be no particular mention of the time order place or manner of the Creation of Angels yet that they were so created general assurance we have from the Word of God the holy Ghost advisedly omitting and mens wits only conjecturing at the other things to prevent pride and curiosity in man to whom it was sufficient to make a description of those things which related to this visible world and concerned him to know So that the Heavens themselves with the glorious and numerous Lights thereof are no farther explained unto us than as their influences concern the nature and actions of Man It is a true Axiom that all things were made for man but it is not true that they had no other end why God created them namely Heavens heavenly Bodies and heavenly Spirits but for to serve the uses of man next to the ultimate end of all his own Glory For though it be said of Angels and we take the word in the properest sense and not as it may be for the several Messengers and Dispensers of Gods will and Word to the several Ages of men Are they not all ministring Spirits Heb. 1. 14. sent forth to them who shall be heirs of salvation Yet we look on their attendance in such cases as an honorary command and tuition over us and secondary end to their first Institution rather than any thing of subjection or servility For when the Shepherd looks to his Flock and when the King is said to be for the People we are not in reason or sobriety to imagine a worth in the governed above the governour as some have sondly wretchedly and dangerously concluded For that Rule The end is more excellent than the means or thing ordained to that end holds true only when the thing is so ordain'd that its own end and good is not equally or more eminently included in the same or when the end is the principal agent in instituting such a thing to such an end But the Sheep never appointed the Shepherd to serve to rule and protect them nor did men oblige Angels to wait upon them nor as is above demonstrated the People firâ—t erect or constitute Governors or Governments over themselves these were done by a superior Power over them neither at this day can they that is ought by any imaginary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theodoretus Haeret. Fabular lib. 5. cap. 7. Charter alter the Archetype of Gods Institution And they that do attempt and have pretended to confer Power sometimes on Governors can at all do it directly and validly But they seem and are interpreted by many so to do when they unwarrantably and unreasonably deny it to others and submit to their own favourites though how lamely and improperly these acts of strength and not of right are carried on is also elsewhere shewed For no question but if the common sort of men could extend their presumptuous Power to Spirits as they do to Princes they would take such offence against their tutelary Angels as to put them out of office when they find themselves crossed in their inclinations or designs by them or perswading themselves they are neglected by them choosing others in their places and justifie such their acts from a dignity supposed in themselves from being the end of their care and ministration If indeed we appointed Spirits or Princes over us as men do choose servants to do their work for them and serve them then surely we might as justly turn them off again when ever they became unserviceable and prejudicial to us but seeing both are appointed by God we are to know our distance notwithstanding the good offices they do for us And that considering secondly That their own ends are no less principally and primarily served in such ministrations than the ends of others And yet I make no doubt but many persons to whom God hath given holy and righteous Spirits to protect and preserve them being ungoverned and refractory lewd and licentious contrary to the mind and motions of them presiding over them do in effect
by the Greater sort who commonly by building themselves large and stately Pews and inclosing what is every poor Christians Freehold as well as the richest and noblest of the parish make it more sacred to the common Christian than any other part of the Church besides For that must be kept under lock and key and if not yet the greatness and power of the person who hath laid that out for himself suffices to deter any ordinary man from making the like use of that as of any other part of the Church lest his secular hand lye heavier upon him than the Ecclesiastical power can or must upon him for such invasion of every parishioners right as well as his So that what it is not lawful for or just to do to the Common for beasts or Town-Green where he lives he makes no scruple at all to do to Gods Peculiar and the Common to Christians As if so be Churches now-a-dayes were of the same nature with new found and possessed Lands in the Indies every man may have what he can enclose and fense in for himself and his friends only Whereas this should be well understood by every good Christian that hath the fear of God as a Christian ought before his eyes that the poorest person that takes collection in the parish hath as much reason and right to erect places in the Church to themselves and to possess themselves of any part of it as the rich but that it is not so much in his power And doth any man think he hath a good Right because he can do it That we can do saith the Law which we can Idpossumus qued sure possumus lawfully do But that we can lawfully do which the Common Law doth not interdict alwayes For the Common Law whether because it concerns altogether men in their civil capacities and proprieties such as this is not or whether it hath not heretofore been such a Dragg to enclose all it could lay hold on without consideration of other Courts Ecclesiastical which were alwayes received in all Christian Commonwealths but left many things to the decision of the more peculiar Laws made in behalf of Churches and Ecclesiastical Cases hath made no provision at all for the securing of the Rights of the Church or Christians thereunto belonging I mean in their Capacities properly Ecclesiastical so that scarce any remedy can be obtain'd from thence if a man shall steal any thing off the very body of the Church it self And can any man that hath any sense of Religion take sanctuary or protection from that in defense of his violation of Christians Rights and think all well done that is not punishable by that Law and lawful that it doth not interdict For by the same reason a man may inclose to himself a third part or more of the Church But they will modestly say that were unreasonable and I will boldly say so is the other and especially where when the Authours of such Fabricks making no use of them themselves shall deny the use of them to others case so requiring But that which is yet more intolerable is That the power and purse of the Great man who is alwayes to remember that the poorest man in the parish hath as much Law and Right on his side to shut him out as he hath to exclude and over-top the poor in his building should enable and embolden him so far as to take a considerable part of Gods sanctuary and inclose that from all use and access to lay the bones of his Family in and wholly to alienate it from all Divine Services and dedicate it only to corruption and with impudent Sacriledge to erect many Monuments and Tombs in a Canton they have usurped to themselves which being as is said no less lawful for any man than for one man instead of Christians in time we should have a Church filled with Sepulchres of the dead And when this is once done to endeavour a redress of such sacrilegious invasions of Gods and good Christians Rights is to expose Gods servants to not only the obloquy power and mischief of too potent an Adversary but to the dammage of Common Law which though it can give no right so to do yet will certainly defend the wrong-doer if he can plead custom But I have often thought that God in this last Age hath done himself Justice against such Families as have been guilty of such prophane usurpations in that he hath stirred up a barbarous Sect of Christians of late and let them justly into Churches like Goths and Vandals to break to pieces pull down and raze the scandalous monuments of many Churches erected to the honour of Man and dishonour of God At first all dead Bodies were lookt upon by the Heathens themselves as unclean and unworthy to be buried within the walls of their City Lycurgus was the first that suffered Corps to be interr'd in the City and that Plutarch in vita Lycurg Eutropius Lib. 8. Cicero de Legibus l. 2. near the Temples in Lacaedemon saith Plutarch The first of all Roman Emperours and much more of the inferiour people that was buried within the City was Trajane the Emperour which was prohibited by a Law of the twelve Tables as Cicero witnesseth And St. Vedastus was wont to say That the dead should not be buried within the walls of a City which was a place for the living and not for the dead as Alcuinus in his life writes And it is certain no Christians at all were buried in Churches for many hundred years but certain proper Cemateries or Dormitories were allotted for that purpose remote from Churches Pope Nicholas the first about the year 867 was thought to be preferred to be buried before the Church doors of St. Peter saith Nauclere And the same Nauclere writeth how Nauclerus Vol. 3. p. 64. ibid. p. 94. that about the year 983 Otho the third Emperour was buried at the Threshold of St. Peter at Rome And when they had brought dead bodies to the Church door they soon presumed to bring them in and found a reason so to do because the bodies of true Believers and holy Servants of God were not to be looked on as unclean or unworthy of so sacred a place because they had been themselves Temples of the Holy Ghost and were to be rennited again to their blessed spirits in heaven And not only so but the nearer the Altar always the better mistaking that place in the Apocalypse I saw under the Altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and Rev. 6. 9. for the testimony which they held collecting from hence that for Martyrs and holy persons that was the properest place to be buried in And the Cannon Law surely misguided by such a vain perswasion hath decreed it necessary to the Consecration of a Church that there be the body or at least some Relique of a Saint there posited But more reasonably doth it erre when it
ventantia ad hoec decem redigant Capitalium peccatorum species quae septem numerantur in aliquod horum referum sed sedulâ diligentiâ magis quam serid Erasm Cateches 6. in Decal Thom 22. qu. 148. 2. ad 1. Contrivers of them may as well as many other things be refused at pleasure as an humane Invention For mine own particular I think Erasmus has spoken judiciously and truly in the Case Here I see some labouring hard to reduce all Precepts whether commanding or forbidding to these Ten and to refer the seven deadly sins to some of these but with diligence more sedulous than serious And no other instance needs be given of an incapacity in the Decalogue of Regular reduction of this nature than what Thomas has given us whose Logical head was able to do as much in this kind as any mans Framing an Objection to himself that Gluttony was no mortal sin because it was not contrary to any of the Ten Commandments answers thus Gluttony is a mortal sin in as much as it averts us from the Ultimate end and according to this by a Certain Reduction by which every thing may be reduced to every thing is opposed to the Command of Sanctifying the Sabbath in which is required our rest in the Ultimate End If this be fair and allowable what needed we any more Commandments than that of keeping holy the Sabbath day For surely all sin as well as Gluttony turns us away from our Last End which is God and our resting in him and therefore by this reason all sin should be Sabbath-breaking St. James James 2. 10. indeed saith Whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point he is guilty of all that is a breaker of all But he very well explains himself immediately after that he meant not so much in respect of the matter of the Law that a man could not sin against it in one case but he must sin against it in another but in respect of the Manner For saith he He that said unto thee do not commit adultery said also do not kill c. implying thus much that the same evil mind that disposes a man to disobey God in one point of the Law will incline him to the like in others and the Cords of Fear and Love of God being broken to offend God in one sin leave him at liberty to offend him in any other whatever Not that a man doth directly or actually commit sin against the whole Law As in the case of Moral Vertues according to Philosophers all are so connected and dependent upon one another in Prudence that whoever wants that lies open to all vices But our enquiry is concerning the connexion of vertues and vices in the matter of them whether the offender in one sin is guilty of all whether the Drunkard be a Thief or the Sabbath-breaker an Adulterer For according to the large extent of Rules commonly given either of these may be made good and without such a latitude drunkenness will hardly find a proper place in any of the Ten Commandments unless we say as some more wittily than solidly Drunkenness slaggers through all the Commands And in the like sense What sin doth not And therefore Thom. ibid. Thomas is constrained to acknowledge that Not all Mortal sins are directly contrary to the Precepts of the Decalogue but those only which contain injustice because the Precepts of the Decalogue in especial manner pertain to Justice and the parts thereof That so many Ancient as well as Modern Doctors of Christs Church have endeavoured to bring all Sins and Graces and Duties to the Ten Commandments I take to proceed from this three-fold cause First in Imitation of the Jews who agreed with Christians in the Use of the Decalogue Novatianus Epistâ—de Judaicis apud Tertul cap. 3. Deniqu dâ—eem sermones â—lh in tabulis nibil novum dacent c. Grot. in Decalogum as being no more than a restoring the decayed Law of Nature in man and reprinting it in his mind as well hath Novatianus observed thus Lastly those ten sayings in Tables teach no new thing but what was blurred they admonish that Justice contained in them as fire buried might as it were by the breath of the Law be re-enkindled And Philo testifieth of the Jews not only of his Times but ancienter that they were wont to reduce All the Precepts of Moses his Law to these Ten not that they did believe that they were all contained in them as Grotius hath observed but that those things we have here belong to such general heads of Actions unto which for memory sake others may be reduced in like manner as Philosophers are wont to Sixt. Sen. Bib. l. 4. reduce all things to Aristotles Ten Categories or Predicaments though by the way it is observed by Sixtus Senensis out of ancient Authors that Aristotle was not the true Author of the Ten Predicaments but rather Architas Tarentinus And this Christians did more accurately as being better endowed with the Holy Spirit and obliged to higher vertues A second reason might be for that the Decalogue as we have already said though it be not such an exquisite and ample Rule as to contain all things without great straining and force yet it being the most significant is any where extant in Scripture Christians chose that for their Compendium to which other duties might relate And this Thirdly because of the expediency of advancing some one Form of Words to be a Rule of Practise as were the Creed and Lords Prayer instituted as Forms of Faith and all Prayers and that chiefly for help to the Memory of men in their compleat duty towards God and Man The first that I have observed who brought this way of Reduction of all things to the Commandments was St. Hieromne who hath delivered such General Rules for this purpose as have been much improved and multiplied by many Catechises and Commentators upon them To which I shall refer the Reader at present passing or rather posting from the Use in General to the Particular Use of it in the Third thing viz. The Explication CHAP. XX. Of the Ten Commandments in Particular and their several sense and importance IN all Laws three things are to be considered saith a late excellent Die â—mâ—bi Hâ—los-phasier Oretzere si non tres Leâ—uâ— partes dâ—â—mmâ—â— Philosophis Platone Possidonio Cicerone alits consittuantur nempe Preoemium Lex ipsa Epilogus sive sanctio Goldastus Replicat ad Gretz c. 11. person in the Civil Law The Preface the Law it self and the Epilogue or Conclusion to it or Sanction And these are all found in the Decalogue And where some have no special Preface there the General Prologue is to be current and applyed unto them And so where other particular precepts want the enforcement of them in the conclusion they may well borrow it from some other as for Example I am the Lord thy God set
give offense to the people contrary to the use of that Church And why so It it not because their doctrine and practise are quite contrary to it Is it not because the native sense of those words is so manifest and obvious that they would certainly understand them aright could they be suffered to come to the true knowledge of them And this is the scandal and offence would be given them And in the Reign of Henry the Eighth of England who opened the Hatches a little whereby men were kept in hold from discerning the clear light above and about them when they could no longer conceal the Second Commandment from the people but it must appear in its own entireness in the English tongue Gardiner and other Romanists would have added for safety sake their own gloss to the Word of God viz. to Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image nor the likeness Antiquit. Brittan 1 ag 338. of any thing c. with that intent to give to them Divine Worship Which sufficiently betrayes the guilt to which they are conscious in their false dealing with this Precept and the common people about it But neither of these being likely to take effect a more effectual and bold coarse is invented and defended That this Commandment was Ceremonial and Judicial and Temporary only ordained to prevent the Jews from falling into Idolatry to which they were so prone 'T is true they were so prone then to Idolatry and however they are now-a-dayes more than enough averse from it yet would they at this day be as prone as ever were but the liberty given of the use of Images in the sense of the Roman Church This they have found by experience of their Forefathers and others of succeeding Generations and therefore hold it safest and best to set a less Superstition to keep at a distance a far greater and to make a scruple of all use of images which can scarce amount to the nature of sin at all though it may of folly to secure themselves from the contagion of the other extream in the superstitious use of them It is controverted between the ancient Hebrew Doctours of which you Petavius Theolog. Dogmati To. 4. l. 15. cap. 6. Grotius Exposst Decal may read Petavius and Grotius whether Gods intent it was here wholly to deny the Jews the use of Images as Philo and Josephus suppose or the use only in a Divine manner as others this later Opinion is chosen by Petavius and the Adversaries to the Iconoclasts or Image-breakers But my opinion is First That all Jews concur in this and all Christians not led by the nose by the Pope of Rome that to make the Image of God at all under what pretence soever is absolutely forbidden And therefore I wonder more at Gerson than at them who lived with and after him that he should endeavour to excuse the Latin Church thus Before the Incarnation when the Law was given there appeared no Image of the Incorporeal God either in wood Gerson To. 2. De 10 Praecept in Praec 1. or stone because the Image of a Spirit cannot be made And therefore all Images were then to be rejected but because that may be now done since the Incarnation of the Son of God therefore from that time it is allowed to be done by him who might dispense Thus he And how weakly who may not see First Why could not the Image of God be made as well before the Incarnation as after And why might not the Image of the Son of God be made before he was Incarnate therebeing some knowledge of the same as we may well suppose amongst the Jews before the Incarnation and some Umbrages and Representations of it in Apparitions made to the ancient Patriarchs without the view of his Colour Stature and Lineaments as well as after when we have certainly lost the truest form of Christ and go by guess and uncertain tradition Again could not there be drawn the Image of a Spirit before Christ and can there now I would fain see how where or by whom What Because Christ who is a Spirit who is God may be drawn according to his Humane nature may be also according to his Divine The Divine Person may indeed but the Divine Nature can no more now than before be resembled and that Deity only by concomitance and implication and not in form at all When the Image of a Man is made the Image of him is made who hath a spiritual and divine Soul but the Image of his Soul is not at all made and much less is the Image of God made unless metonymically as Man is said to be the Image of God when Christ is figured unto us But could this be which neither can nor ought to be what warrant at all can it be to make the Image of God in contradiction to Christ as is pleaded for and usual among Roman Catholicks when they upon a vile fansie occasioned from a vision in Daniel make God the Father like a decâ—epit old man well clothed indeed and most like to the Picture of Winter we have seen but that he wants a pan of coals by him to warm his old and cold fingers over and as it were his Grandchild standing by him Could not all this foul daubing of the Deity have been made before Chrusts Incarnation Or ought it in any sober mans judgment to be made now Lastly because they speak of some special Dispensation to do this now which was never allowed formerly let them be so ingenuous and courâ—eous to show us if not the Original lest they should be cousened of it the Copy or but one word of it and it will satisfie us otherwise we think they have said much more already than they needed For we should have been as well satisfied altogether if they had said only It ought to be so as to give such a Reason which is as incredible as the thing it self viz. that It is dispensed with now under the Gospel Nay in that they say it is dispensed with under the Gospel they impty it was more than Mosaical and Ceremonial under the Law because Rites and Ceremonies are not so much dispensed with as directly abolished and destroyed Secondly I hold it absolutely forbidden the Jews by the same Law to make use of any Images in the worship of God though not to that degree as to worship them but only By them and that for fear of Idolatry and if not in passing by or neglecting God himself and directing and fixing the mind and heart on the visible Object yet by help of that For that contradicts the mind of God as may appear by the whole Body of Gods worship and every part thereof instituted by himself without the least insinuation of such manner of worship Nay it is very strange what Erasmus hath observed That though indeed in practice it hath been connived at yea Nam ut Imagines sint in Templis â—ulla