the number and circumstances of his sins So little pretence can there be from hence of this Injunction But if he profess his sorrow and resolution of amendment and by reason of some weakness or melancholy cannot lay such fast hold upon the Promise of remission upon unfeigned Repentance without this visible and palpable seal set thereto of Sacerdotal Absolution I do not see but a Priest anointed with the Spirit of Christ and full of holy compassion to a penitent member of his Church may rightfully and profitably by that Authority which was derived upon the Apostles and their Successours and by that divine power that assists the sincere exercise of his Ministery seal to him the Remission of his sins by pronouncing his Absolution and so restore to peace his disquieted Mind his sins being as certainly pardoned as if Christ himself in person had absolved him he in such a case as this assuredly ratifying in Heaven whatever is here transacted upon Earth Which I suppose Grotius himself will not deny nor conceive at all clashing with his interpretation of S. John he not pretending those he mentions the only occasions of remitting or retaining of sins but the most notable 7. And as this Voluntary Confession in general to the Priest in order to the Penitent's Absolution is usefull and commendable so likewise a Voluntary unbosoming a mans self in a more particular way to such an one as he could trust and can presume fit and able for his office to the end that he may have a more perfect understanding of the state of his Soul and thereby administer more sutable and effectual counsel is a thing questionless of very good consequence 8. But to extort from every Believer every year or oftener a punctuall enumeration of all his transgressions in thought word and deed with all their circumstances were but a vile and disingenuous pretence of insinuating into all mens bosoms for the getting out their secrets of which the Priest may make his private advantage or communicate to the Churchpoliticians such matters as will tend to the strengthening of their distinct Interest which is The conserving or promoting that Honour Wealth and Power which they affect in the World And truely by this means the secrets not of this man or that woman but of whole Families and Cities nay of whole Provinces and Kingdoms and of all Christendom may flow together into that common Cistern or if you will Sea of Ecclesiastick Intelligence which is the very Eye of Action and the Soul of Conduct in all affairs 9. But though this would be a sweet morsel to this Pseudo-Clergy we are now describing it would be sour sauce to the Laiety not only in that it is a foul badge of an inevitable bondage upon them to be constrained upon pain of Damnation at least once by the year to cast themselves down upon the ground before them that are so many fathom sunk into the Earth themselves and to reproach themselves by ripping up their own faults accurately and punctually before such as they have no assurance of either their Candour Judgment or Friendship and for a man to balk his own Priest in this case would be to brand him and so make one of his chiefest neighbours his greatest enemy I say besides the external slavery of the business and the doing of a Ceremonie which may goe so much against the hair even with good and ingenuous spirits a man may be obnoxious to very great dangers and mischiefs For he that has the office of hearing men thus accurately and necessarily accusing themselves once a year at least has a greater opportunity of injustly defaming them by some tacit insinuations or somewhat expresser notices then is fit to be put into the hand of any man that is not a Saint upon Earth of which sort we suppose in this Polity we speak of extremely few 10. Interrogatories also from such Confessours may in greatest likelihood prove to young men and women Lessons of sin and lust and the knowing of the secrets of Families the seeds of infinite contentions betwixt Neighbours and also betwixt those of the same Families For it will be a hard thing for those that by this Shriving of persons know much of their Interest or disinterest to hold their itching fingers from acting or intermedling in their affairs or their other prurient parts from the soliciting the Chastity of such parties as they find hopefull and coming or not to be officious Intelligencers or Game-finders for such as pursue the pleasures of Venus Besides that the vainness of their Penances which yet must needs look like the right value of the Sin may harden men into a conceit that there is no great hurt in sinning and teach them to esteem the transgressing of the Law of God as a thing slight cheap and trivial Whereas if the only Penance of sin were the pain of forsaking it urged upon them from the certain expectation of that most direfull Judgment to come though no other condition but that were annexed to Absolution it would make men more sensibly feel the weight of sin and make them make the greater speed to get from under the burthen of it But to draw to an end 11. That also will pinch very hard especially upon the more Intellectual or Rational complexions namely To be bound in their Conscience upon pain of Damnation to hold whatsoever the Church professes to be true while she in the mean time obtrudes such things upon mens belief as have no ground neither in Reason nor Scripture For even in things that are disputable either way it is the fate of some men notwithstanding to be in a manner invincibly inclined to conceive this part to be true rather then the other What struggling and conflicting therefore must he undergoe to hold to the Authority of the Church against such strong and fatal sentiments of his own Mind But if the Church should be thus Dogmatical not only in things that may according to the sense of the generality of men be either way but conclude and require the belief of such things as are point-blank against either Scripture or Reason and are impossible according to the Faculties of all men who are unprejudiced to be true as That one and the same Body may be wholy and entirely in a thousand places at once and at a thousand miles distance betwixt all those places That we may worship a graven Image and the like how unevenly must these conditions of Salvation sit upon the spirit of him that is not a mere sot What reciprocations of belief and misbelief of hope and despair of Salvation must such an one be tortured with that holds that his share in eternall bliss depends upon the hearty belief of the truth of the Church in all things when what she propounds according to all his Faculties is not only unlikely but impossible to be true CHAP. XXII 1. The dreadfull Figment of Purgatory 2. That by this affrightfull Fable
signifie certain performance but the duty what they ought to perform As when the Apostles are called the Light of the world and the Matth. 5. 13 14. Salt of the earth which onely signifies what they ought to be not what they were necessitated to be For those that ought to be thus may notwithstanding hide their Talent or grow unsavoury through their own fault as it fared in Judas and in all his succession of false Apostles which call themselves the Servants but are the betrayers of the Lord Jesus 13. But lastly Suppose that the Church then in general were here understood it does not follow That because that Primaeval and Apostolical Church should by a peremptory design of Providence have engraven upon it or exhibit to the world as Articles of belief nothing but what was true that the Church in succession should always doe the like For there was a prime care taken that the first establishment of the Church should be in truth and solidity but that being done which was sufficient for the after-carrying on the affairs of the Church in a right way by free Agents the success should afterwards lie upon their industry and fidelity at least so far as that by no miraculous and supernatural force they should be assisted or driven on to keep things pure and intemerate And that was sufficient for the Church I think which is thought sufficient for every particular man namely That the Christian Doctrines and Precepts being faithfully laid down in the Evangelists and other Writings of the Apostles they might that usual Grace of God which is not irresistible assisting them frame their lives and beliefs accordingly in those things that are plain And all are so that are necessary to Salvation Which Rule if it had been kept to no Error had crept into the Church to this very day 14. Which last Answer will contribute something towards an Answer to the last place alledged for it seems onely to contain a description of a special provision of God for the rightly settling his Truth in the first Ages of the Church To which purpose he appointed not onely Pastours and Teachers which Functions continue still but Apostles having a particular mission from Christ himself who breathed into them the Spirit of Truth as also Prophets and Evangelists men in a special manner inspired and assisted to erect the Fabrick of the Church according to the will and purpose of Christ who then in an extraordinary manner did supervise all by a miraculous assistence of his Spirit And therefore what-ever was wrote for the publick use of the Church while any of those unto whom our Saviour Christ said that the Spirit should abide with them for ever which should lead them into all Truth were alive or was approved by them is really of certain and infallible authority but what-ever after-Inventions or Super-additions there were in the Church they are to be measured by this unerring Rule These unerring Pastors therefore and Teachers Apostles Prophets Evangelists were not a promise to all Successions but an extraordinary gift as the Text it self imports which Christ at that time namely at his solemn Coronation or Triumph ascending above all Heavens that he Eph. 4. 10. might fill all things cast down as a Royal Largess upon his Church for the speedy completement of her for her growing up into the unity of the Faith and Knowledge of Christ and that she might not be carried about with every wind of Doctrine but adhere to that onely that was delivered by those Heavenly-inspired and miraculously-assisted Ministers of the Gospel The acknowledgement whereof I conceive had been the onely sure means to keep the Church in Unity for ever whenas the pretending to an Infallibility in the succeeding Church where indeed it was not and the taking upon them thereupon to impose things with equal authority to the Apostles themselves would naturally prove the fountain of all Error Schism and Confusion CHAP. II. 1. That the safe conveyance of the Apostolick Writings down to us by the Church does not infer her Infallibility 2. That the Plainness of Scripture in points necessary to Salvation takes away the want of an Infallible Judge 3. That the Scripture not pointing to any Infallible Judge nor any faithful Keeper of Traditions does ipso facto declare her self the onely sufficient Guide 4. That there is not onely no want of an Infallible Judge but better there should be none 5. That the want of Infallibility does not take away the Authority of the Church it being the duty of every person in things really disputable to compromise with her 6. That though a Visible Judge be necessary in Civil causes yet it is nothing so in Points of Religion 7. That every private man has not onely a liberty but a command to judge for himself in matters of Faith 8. The said Right or Privilege demonstrated also by Reason 9. That the Reason or Judgment of every private man is not a private Spirit in that reproachful sense that some speak it 10. That the claim to a right of judging for ones self in points of Faith does not make a man superiour to his Church 11. Nor yet equal 12. Nor implies that he thinks himself wiser then his Church but rather more careful of his own eternal Concerns 13. That it is not his private Wisdom he sticks to but the Wisdom of God known to all that are not wilfully blind 14. That the Church is not Infallible proved from the Example of the Jewish Church 15. That there is the same reason of the Christian. 16. That the want of an Infallible Interpreter is no such loss to the common people 17. That their assurance of the truth of the Scriptures by the Spirit is a Tenet not so superciliously to be exploded as some make shew of 18. That this Spirit is properly the Spirit of Faith distinguishable from that of Knowledge and Wisdom 19. The notorious Fraud and excessive Mischief of this pretence of Infallibility 1. BUT being worsted thus in Scripture they will pretend Demonstrations in Reason upon the presumption they are the true visible Church successively descended from Christ and his Apostles that Infallibility is for ever intailed upon them As first That unless the Church were successively Infallible we could have no certain and Infallible belief of the Holy Scriptures which are avouched to be such by the Church But I briefly answer That supposing this successive Church were a trusty undoubted Conveyer of the Copies of the Holy Scriptures uncorrupted yet it doth not follow that they must be Infallible Interpreters of these Scriptures no more then the faithful conveyance of Plato's and Aristotle's Writings to all posterity implies that the Conveyers thereof are Infallible Interpreters of them For they might preserve the Writings of either by a diligent comparing of Copies upon every transcription besides that there might be a special watchfulness of Providence over these Holy Writings for the conservation of
God to have interpreted the Scripture and not for their own ends or carnal satisfaction in any thing And questionless in this case they can shew their Commission and that they act by Authority Let all things be done to edification 1 Cor. 14. 26. But that because every Civil controversy must be determined by a Judge therefore there must be an Infallible determinative Judge of all the nice and unprofitable controversies that emerge amongst Christians about Scripture and Religion is but a weak and lame Illation For Civil controversies cannot be undecided without injury to some party but no man is injured by not having those unprofitable at least unnecessary questions determined for they may hold their several opinions without wronging one another if they will but keep to that known Law of Christ that Royal Law of Charity Nay the deciding such controversies by a pretended Infallible Judge were a vast wrong to one party it galling their consciences and streightning their liberty and making the way to Heaven narrower then Christ has made it For so does this Infallible Judge that imposes his Determinations on men upon pain of eternal Damnation But God of his infinite wisedom and mercy has not given the least Intimation for any such Usurpation And therefore this Infallible Judge being not appointed by God and being unappointable by man the Scripture alone and not these pretended Infallible decisions must be the Rule of our belief 7. The fourth and last pretence is That unless the Sense of Scripture be determined by the Infallibility of the Church every private Spirit must be Judge of the meaning thereof nay and which is worse be Judge of the Church and thereby superiour to the Church then which nothing can be more wild and extravagant This seems a big difficulty at first But I answer That every particular man should judge for himself he has a Commission from the very Word of God nay I may say a Command As where he is bid to try 1 Thess. 5. 21. all things and to hold that which is good as also not to believe every 1 John 〈◊〉 spirit but to trie the spirits whether they be of God and in another place to be ready to give a reason of his Faith The Beroeans also are commended 1 Pet. 3. Acts 17. for searching the Scripture and trying whether the things that Paul even an inspired and chosen vessel of God had taught them were true or no. But for any one man or any company of men to be appointed by God Authoritatively and absolutely to be Judges for others in matters of Faith and Religion we do not find any where in Scripture or in Reason any such Commission given unto them but we are rather admonished to take heed how we be led hoodwinkt by any lest the blind Matt. 15. 14. leading the blind both fall into the ditch 8. But not Scripture onely but Reason it self does plainly commissionate private Spirits as they call them to judge for themselves For these pretenders to Infallibility doe it onely upon the boast that they are the true successive Church from the Apostles But unless they will be above all measure ridiculous they must convince the Reason of him whom they would make a Proselyte to their Church that their Church is that true and Apostolical one For to say so without proof is a madness to be hooted at by all men But to goe about to prove it is to appeal to the private Reason of him they would convince And if he be a Christian already though not of their Church the common acknowledged Principles are the Holy Scriptures in arguing from which the Disputant appeals to him he would bring over if his Interpretation or Allegation of them be not true But if he be an Infidel or Pagan he is to use Reasons to prove the Truth and Authority of the Scriptures themselves Which is still an appeal to the conscience of him that is to be gained to the Church whether what is offered to him be true or false And that which is offered to him being the whole Christian Faith for that is it which makes a true Church it is plain that his Reason and Conscience is appealed unto whether the whole Summe of the Credenda in Christianity is not true That is to say Though the Church and he that argues in the behalf of the Church have already judged and firmly concluded that the Christian Faith is a true Faith in the whole and in every part and make no appeal from their own judgment in reference to themselves yet in reference to the party they would convince they appeal to him if the grounds of their Belief be not solid and so imply and acknowledge that he is Judge for himself in these affairs call that in him a private spirit or what you please 9. But I do not know but it may be too reproachfully called a private spirit at least in the sincere and simple-hearted who have no private designs but to know the Will of God and to doe it and it is the Will of God all men should doe so and the spirit of man * Prov. 20. is said to be the Lamp of the Lord and that which judges according to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the common notions of Reason in all men and has not lost the * Psell. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those common characters and ingenuous sentiments of Indispensable Truth and Morality which the Father of lights has of old sealed upon the Soul and which are hardly obliterated quite in any and are necessarily continued and that vigourously in the sincere I say such a Life or Spirit as this judging in a man is very hardly to be called a private spirit it judging according to the Universal sense of humane Nature and so as every one judges when he is unbiassed Nay if this will not serve I say that the Judgement which is thus made is the Judgement of that Universal King and Law-giver the Eternal Son of God it is his sentence in these cases but writ in the tables of our hearts and pronounced by our mouths as by the Praeco of a Court. So far is it from being the Judgement of a mere private spirit But that rather is the Judgement of a private spirit though it should bear the Title of an Infallible Church which is decreed not according to the plain Texts of Scripture so as all unprejudiced men would certainly understand them nor according to those indeleble Characters of Truth which Christ the Eternal Logos has writ in the Rational Souls of all mankind but according to partial Interest and depraved desires The sentence of Thousands nay of Millions of such Judges is more the verdict of a private spirit then the Judgement of the meanest private man that pronounces from such Principles as I have declared 10. Now for that odious imputation of making a mans self Superiour to the
contrary to a Father then to murther his genuine children and for that very reason because they so lively resemble him and so faithfully adhere to their Father's vertuous practices and principles 10. I might adde also that the over-exercising of the Minds and Bodies of men in the multifarious observances of external Ceremonies and making them dance or trot from one Superstitious performance to another might be a disappointment of the Divine Birth as the over-much exercising of Women in dancing or what other feats of Activity or sore labour makes them often miscarry in that Child-bearing that is natural But I will not insist upon these things 11. The Sixth and last Title is The Prince of Peace In which Principality or Authority if any should claim succession and yet administer the Affairs of Christ's Church such a way as will naturally if not necessarily fill it full of broils and contentions this power would certainly beâ—… a supplanter of the Peaceable government of Christ and be the Author of an Antichristian Tyrannie and Confusion As for example If this usurping Power should coin new Articles of belief for their own benefit contrary to the known Principles of Scripture and Reason and require the profession of these from the Church of Christ as also appoint suspected Observances smelling rank of Idolatry and Superstition it were in a manner impossible but that it should cause vast rendings and tearings in the Church and fill the world full of strife and opposition Also if they should make it their business to define the sense of Scripture by a more determinate meaning then there were use of in the Church and put their Determinations and Expositions upon men as necessary points of belief This would also make much against the Peaceableness of the Church men being in a manner fatally propending to think this or that way in things that are not necessary to Salvation to be determined either There would needless violence therefore be done to the Consciences of men thereby to set the world on fire Whenas what is general is large and unitive and takes all in and gives them leave to live peaceably one by another without justling or crowding 12. But the Folly and Fraud of this curiosity would be the Endeavour of gaining or rather extorting respect from the people and of making their Function seem considerable and their Learning great and their Judgements unerrable and that they may feel their Authority and make others to feel it though to the discontent and dissettlement of the Church of Christ. As if their living exemplarily and urging the performance of what is plain in Scripture and keeping an orderly Discipline in those things would not gain them more respect and make them more honourable both in the eyes of God and man or as if they would not appear more infallible by insisting in his steps who is the Way the Truth and the Life then by grossely crossing this way or going out of it for some by-advantages of the World The discovery of which Frauds must needs make them odious to all men And lastly as for their having their Authority felt Christ has shewed them the way if they would follow it He taught as having authority and not as the Scribes for they say and Matt. 7. Chap. 23. doe not 13. This is one way of Antichristianizing against that sacred Title of Christ The Prince of Peace There is another more vile and execrable then that heart could imagine that is not acquainted with the depths of Satan and that is If this Antichristian power we describe should take upon them to absolve the Princes of Christendom from their Oaths and Covenants they make one to another upon their terms of Peace as also to absolve Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance to their Sovereigns were not this to break a-pieces all the bonds of Unity that not onely Religion but the Laws of Nature do afford thus to destroy the Sacredness of an Oath which is the end of all strife How then can that Heb. 6. 16. Power challenge a right of succession to the Prince of Peace which takes away the chiefest tie of Peace that humane affairs are capable of 14. And lastly that bloudy position of taking away mens lives for mistakes in Opinion when notwithstanding they are otherwise unblameable in faith and conversation and unfeigned professours of Christian Truths that are evidently revealed in the Word of God nay to take away their lives for not doing and holding things quite contrary to the express Word of God written both in our inward Souls and in the Holy Scripture as I have in several Instances declared in this description of Chap. 3. Sect. 8. Antichristianism What were this but to hang out the bloudy flag against the true Church of Christ and to proclaim open war against them to bid battel against them that are inrolled into the company of the Lamb and are the professed Souldiers of the Prince of Peace Whose opposers therefore in such a sort as I have intimated cannot but be that Apocalyptick Beast that makes war with the Saints or that Mother Chap. 13. 7. of Har lots who is drunk with the bloud of the Martyrs of Jesus So little doubt would there be of this last Opposition's proving an Antichristian Chap. 17. 6. Character of the deepest dye But of this subject more hereafter CHAP. VII 1. That any Constitution of things that naturally opposes and suppresses the Divine Life is Antichristian in the highest measure 2. Such as Idolatry Superstition and all the above-mentioned Oppositions to Christ's Offices and Titles 3. The opinion of a virtue in the Sacraments ex opere operato and of the needlessness of our attention to our Devotions 4. Dumb shows and the resting in the mere doing of a Religious duty be it from what principle it will 5. Easy Absolution and slight Penances 6. Plenary Indulgences purchased by money from Ecclesiastick Authority 7. A general note prefixed touching the Mischiefs of the several Oppositions against the Divine Life 8. The plausibility of the Supposition of an Ecclesiastick Power and Pomp more then Imperial 9. The weakness of the grounds for the said Supposition 10. The consequential Mischief thereof in driving the minds of Church-men from the study of Truth and Holiness 11. Yea in making them oppose every thing that is True and Holy if it oppose their designs of Ambition and Avarice 12. That such a Luciferian Power as this were the very ruine of the Kingdom of Christ upon Earth 13. And the turning of his Church into a mere Mart or Fair. 1. THus expressely and clearly have we delineated the Image of Antichrist in his opposing of Christ in his Offices and in running quite counter to the most Sacred Titles that do adorn his Person We come now to the Divine Life as it is propagable in the world and for which Christ was pleased to take our nature upon him and to lay down his life
Truth of the Gospel for then their Power and Credit would fail in the world But it were the Interest of the Church of God they did so and therefore they are the worst enemies that can be doing more mischief under the colour of friendship then any declared enemy can Besides that there are pregnant proofs in the Scripture that Antichrist is to be a Christian in external Profession not a Pagan or any other Alien from the Church To the second That their not killing all that are called Christians shews that their Malice and Cruelty is more exquisitely opposed and directed against Christ in that their spight is onely against his true and sincere Members For those that are spared are not truly Christ's Servants but this High-priest's vassals or at least are taken to be so by him else they could not escape his sury so that his opposition to Christ is onely more judicious and adequate not less fierce nor malicious And to the last that they worship the Images or Persons not of Venus or Neptune or Mars but of the Blessed Virgin S. Peter S. Paul c. Suppose a mighty Potentate and as vertuous as mighty should put out severe Edicts against Adultery and carnal Fornication and that some guilty of the fact should apologize for themselves to their Prince on this wise It is true indeed Great Sir that we have committed Fornication but beseech you to take notice of the excusableness or justifiableness of the circumstances For we are not such gross and course-grain'd Fornicators as defile themselves with any Flesh but onely such as we have and that upon high desert a very great respect for and entire love to and that the rather for their near Relation to your Highness namely your Daughters Sisters and Neeces and others that are more near then ordinary Would not such an Apologie as this enrage the Prince with the greater wrath against their wicked Leudness How odious then and ridiculous would such a Plea be touching this Spiritual Fornication with the nearest Relations and Friends of our Blessed Saviour Can Spiritual Adultery which is Idolatry committed upon the Blessed Virgin upon S. John and others be more tolerable then upon Diana Apollo and other Mortals canonized by the Heathen Nay indeed would not this latter be but onely simple Fornication or Adultery there being no aversation in such unsanctified persons from the receiving of Divine honours but the former an execrable Rape they committing Idolatry or Spiritual Fornication against the wills of these Holy Saints they thus blaspheme and abuse So that I see not the least reason left to doubt but that I have decyphered the Idea of the most perfect and most detestable Antichristianism that can be 10. And thus having fully perfected the Draught of the Idea of Antichristianism I might according to the method I intimated make Application thereof to the state of the Church apostatized thereinto But because some men are so very hardly brought off to believe that any degeneracy of the Christian Church so long as they do still formally profess Jesus to be the Christ can amount to the production of that famous and signal Antichrist the Prophecies seem to point at whom they with all peremptoriness contend to be an open Denier of Jesus and as express an Assertor of himself to be the expected Messias no pretended Successor nor Disciple of the true Christ I think it very convenient before I proceed to the Application of my Idea of Antichristianism to make a more exquisite search into the Prophecies and thence to demonstrate as I hope with unexceptionable evidence That such an Antichrist for the main as is represented in that Idea is also prefigured or fore-told by the Holy Prophets that is to say such an one as doing such abominable villainies as I have instanced in yet professes himself to be Part nay Chief of the Body of Christ which is his Church For unless I doe this I know that such is the shuffling disposition of Ignorance and Falshood that they will think they can evade all by saying That I have indeed made an operose Description of A true Idea but not of The true Idea of Antichristianism such as my Title pretends to that is to say That the Church does indeed very naughtily and in some sense Antichristianly in these miscarriages but it will not amount to the making up the Antichrist properly and signally so called and pointed unto by the Predictions of the Prophets Which therefore we are necessitated to search into before we goe any further and are the more easily induced so to doe the Method being indifferently natural either way For the first intended Method was After this Description of the Idea of Antichristianism to make punctual Application thereof to the Apostatized condition of the Church to discover who is de facto that grand Antichrist and then to apply the Prophecies to the Events to shew that they also do indigitate the same that my Idea does discover My present purposed Method is After this Description of the Idea of Antichristianism to make search into the Prophecies to find out that their prefigurations of Antichrist are in the main strokes for neither are the Prophecies concerning Christ predictions of all his particular actions most manifestly answerable to the Idea we have given and that the Antichristianism which they foretell of is a Degeneracy or Apostasy of the Church still formally professing Christianity accordingly as we have described things in our Idea and then in the last place to make a more punctual Application of our Idea of Antichristianism thus justified by the agreeableness it hath with the Prophetick Predictions unto the Apostatized state of the Church for so many Ages to our own times Which will be a more plenarie eviction of the stupendious veracity of the Prophecies And it is as good and natural a method to prove the Truth of the Prophecies by the Fulness of the Events as to illustrate the Nature of the Events by the Application of the Prophecies But in the mean time there will be a necessity in this present search to have recourse unto Events in some sort or other for who can explain a Prophecie without any recourse to Events But all the History we need to have recourse to being either such as is distinct from any part of this Idea we have delineated and therefore to be brought into view in the interpreting of such passages as require it or else being but a general knowledge of those Limbs of Antichristianism I have described of which scarce any are ignorant or unpersuaded of for the main we may without the least confusion or obscurity partly by referring to this Idea in things that want no proof and partly by producing History where occasion requires apply our selves to our intended search into the Prophecies for a more full demonstration of the truth of our Idea of Antichristianism Which having finished we shall make a more punctual Application thereof
as they maintain with truth as the Papists are of their own party even in their obtruded Falsities and Deceits It may therefore more rightfully be imputed to my fidelity to the true Church of Christ then Uncharitableness to the Church of Rome that I again bring into play with all due advantages this common Assertion of the Protestants touching the Great Antichrist Which appearing to me so solid and unexceptionable a truth I should be conscious to my self of the highest degree of Uncharitableness to the precious memory of the first Reformers those Witnesses whom Divine Providence so miraculously raised from the dead if I did not what in me lies for the maintaining their Credit in so grand a Point wherein they cannot seem to fail but with infinite dishonour to themselves and an irreparable prejudice to the Protestant Cause For as there is no Doctrine wherein the Romanists and we differ more true so there is none any thing near so potent for the bearing off all their assaults against us as this of their Church being that City of Babylon which the People of God are expressly commanded to come out of lest they partake of her sins and of her plagues Which that Apoc. 18. 4. wise Prince King James of ever-glorious memory knew full well and accordingly kept entire those Primitive Sentiments of the Protestant Reformation or rather adorned them and improved them by his Royal Pen as also did those singularly Devout and Learned Prelates Bishop Andrews and Bishop Jewell and several other Pious and Learned Bishops of our Church Nor will I omit how explicit our Church herself is touching this point in her Homily of the Peril of Idolatry as also in that against Rebellion Which illustrious witnesses to so concerning a Truth it were both uncivil and unjust to either suspect or accuse of Uncharitableness And for my own part I cannot but farther adde having such an apprehension of things as I have and so great encouragement from those Heroical Examples in whose footsteps I insist for the main in my Prophetick Interpretations that I should think my self not onely Unfaithfull to the true Church of Christ and to the Interest of his Kingdom which Charity will never betray but Uncharitable also even to the Church of Rome herself if I should not use this liberty of prophesying against her which I have or rather of interpreting Prophecies for her just Reproof and Amendment Stultorum incurata pudor malus ulcera celat That saying is true as well of him that conceals the sore of his friend when the disclosing thereof tends to the healing of it as of him that conceals his own sore And her own professed Nurslings either cannot or dare not use these Scripture Reproofs to her they being either blinded with her Lustre or terrifi'd by her Cruelty Whence it must be some good Samaritan Stranger that must work her cure But if it be Uncharitableness to speak some few hard words against her though never so true what Barbarity would it be to expose her to the greatest hardships of Fortune that humane Affairs are obnoxious to as suppose to betray her to the successfull Rage and Ravin of the overflowing Turk would that be such a piece of indearing Kindness and Charity And yet surely those doe so to her that sow pillows under her Elbow that sooth her up and call her my Sister and my Mother and say there are no considerable miscarriages in her whenas she stands guilty of all those sins that are reckoned up Revel 9. 20 21. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 multifarious Idolatries bloudy Persecutions Conjuring or Enchanting defiled Coelibate and pious Frauds or wicked Policies with Impenitency added to them all For these sins have the Locusts and Euphratean Horsemen the Turks and Saracens laid wast the Eastern Church and yet it is Uncharitable to admonish the Latine Church thereof which is much more guilty of these high miscarriages yea and that in such a time as the Mahometan Forces have fallen so grievously upon the disspirited Empire and have made all fly before them To give a stop to whose fury for the future I am confident nothing can be more effectual then the Reformation of the Roman Church according to the Word of God and the first Primitive Ages or to speak more compendiously according to the platform of our excellent English Reformers For this would put a new life and spirit into Christendom and make her grow young and strong again and able to repulse the Turkish forces for ever with Victory And truely the whole summe of what may seem either so affrightfull or distastfull in my old Orthodox Protestant way of interpreting the ensuing Prophecies to either the Church of Rome her self or any of her hidden friends or well-willers is but to reduce the whole Western Church to that unexceptionable Purity and Beauty that our Royal and Reverend Reformers through the special assistence of God did reduce this of ours But if this be of such excellent purpose must it not be to very great purpose to make the Church of Rome sensible that she wants this Reformation And is there any thing that can convince her more of that want then that her enormous miscarriages are so plainly depainted as most certainly they are in those Visions we have explained in this Treatise nay are very stingingly and satyrically set out by the Spirit of God on purpose to awake the Christian World out of this deep Sopour or Lethargie For it must be some such rousing Rebuke that can wean or reclaim that Church from so inveterate errours rooted in Custom and founded in a sweet bewitching Interest not to be parted withall upon any easy terms Which power of the Light of the true meaning of these Prophecies that obnoxious Church does plainly acknowledge herself sensible of in her hiding herself as well as she can from the convictive perstringency of them and in getting men to palliate her deformities with all possible art and to shelter off the searching gleams and piercing Lustre of these veracious Visions by their false and adulterate Glosses Which is the greatest Uncharitableness and Disser vice that can possibly be done unto her thus to lull her asleep to be surprised by the irresistible wrath of God and to expose her to the fury of his Jealousy Wherefore had she not better cease to take Sanctuary in such forced and incredible misinterpretations of Scripture and letting go those false shifts reform herself according to that Platform which has so manifest approbation from the Divine Oracles in a sense not onely credible but true 16. For it is demonstratively true by the second Consectary of my Joint-Exposition That the Church was not grown Antichristian till How well the Protestant Reformation is attested to out of the Apocalyps especially that of our English Church And what were the main hinderances to the Authour from the applying so illustrious an Event to the Prediction about 400 years after Christ As also
reason Grotius has to exile S. John into Patmos in Claudius his time for Claudius his expelling the Jews from Rome falls short of banishing John into Patmos by many degrees For first Grotius was to prove that by Jews are meant Christians in that place For there are no contemptible reasons to induce one to believe that the Jews not the Christians are meant there First Because the Christians sought a Kingdom above not on the Earth but the Jews ran mad after such a Christ or Messias as would make them Masters of the World and therefore they onely could seem dangerous in Rome as whose Tumults tended to an Earthly Booty Secondly In the Acts this Edict of Claudius is mentioned as touching the Jews onely and Aquila and Priscilla as being Jews for there is not the least intimation of their being Christians are said to depart from Rome to Corinth Thirdly The fresh remembrance of Tiberius his Edict against the Accusers of Christians might have still that influence upon the mind of his Successors that so suddenly no such harsh Sentence should pass against them especially they being a people as I said whose thoughts were on Heaven did not lie at catch for things on Earth And lastly None of the Ancients ever taxed Claudius for any injury done to the Christians whenas if they had been banished and S. John himself confined to Patmos which had been a very severe punishment and to flesh and bloud little less tolerable then death undoubtedly the Infamie of so great a Cruelty would have been transmitted to Posterity by the Church and Claudius not escaped the brand of a Persecutor Nor do those words of Suetonius prove the Edict to belong to the Christians Claudius Judaeos impulsore Chresto tumultuantes Româ expulit but onely that there was an Edict against the Jews For who can believe any weight in his asserting that they tumultuated impulsore Chresto whenas Christ was not then alive on Earth much less at Rome to incense the Jews into Tumults unless it was that the Jews were occasionally vext at the Christians in Rome and made a great deal a-doe at their acknowledging such a Messias as was crucifi'd and therefore of whom there was no hope of serving their turn for the regaining of their liberty and making them great men in this world Wherefore there being such a stir with the Jews concerning their Chrestus or Messias against the Christians uncertain Fame might make Suetonius phrase it so as he has but this Inspection into the Genius of the Jews might cause Claudius to expel them out of the City it may be in favour of the Christians as well as for his own security This passage in Suetonius is so far from determining this Edict to the Christians that Orosius gives this judgment of it Utrùm Oros. lib. 7. cap. 6. contra Christum tumultuantes Judaeos coërceri comprimi jusserit an etiam Christianos simul velut cognatae religionis homines voluerit expelli nequaquam discernitur So little assurance is there that Claudius did any evil at all to the Christians by that Edict mentioned in Suetonius 6. But suppose that Decree reached the Christians also at Rome it is but an arbitrarious surmise to think it reached to other parts of the Empire and if to other parts of the Empire it is not a Confinement as I have above hinted but a Banishment at large from some one certain place and then onely of such it is most likely as were in Tumults or at least from such Towns where they might have caused Tumults which was most unlikely in the place where S. John resided the sweetness and peaceableness of whose spirit would tempt any discreet Governour to retain him for the better keeping things in peace And yet so extravagant is this supposition that he is the onely man that is thus sharply dealt with nor can they produce an example of any one else thus banished in Claudius his time and yet all the Apostles certainly were busie enough in doing their duties to propagate Christianity in the Empire 7. I but you will say this Record of Claudius his expelling the Jews from Rome being seconded with the Testimony of Epiphanius who affirms him banished into Patmos under the same Emperour is such a double cord as will not easily be broken Which I would the easilier grant if they had any strength at all single as I have shew'd the first has none and shall doe the like for the second There are two places alledged out of Epiphanius The one Haeres 51. Sect. 33. where speaking of S. John he writes thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. But these words are not spoken definitively of S. John's being in Patmos in Claudius Caesar's reign but onely that he was in Patmos and did prophesie there but for the time he says it was at the farthest in Claudius his reign for that is the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it was the soonest that he could be thought to prophesie in Patmos as an Exul there but he does not say absolutely he prophesied then So that it is a more lax and conjectural Affirmation concerning the time and onely says that it is the utmost distance within which he may be thought to have prophesied not denying but that the time of his Prophesying might be later suppose in Domitian's time Of which Petavius is so confident that he writes over against Imperante Claudio in the Text this short Marginal Note Mendosè pro Domitiano he taking it for granted that Epiphanius speaks more definitively then I think he does And I believe both Grotius and others that cite the place to the same purpose with him were aware of such a sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as I have hinted which made them leave it out of their Citation as weakening the force thereof Nor is it any Argument that Epiphanius does dogmatically define that S. John prophesied in Claudius his time because if he was not perswaded of that opinion he would have followed the ordinary one as being fitter to use against the Montanists that would derogate from the truth of the Apocalyps by reason of the Epistle to the Church of Thyatira which they pretend to be wrote before there was any Church there for then the later written the better But supposing the Father uncertain which was true and not assured but that the Montanists would prove that there was no Church as yet at Thyatira in Domitian's time neither were there any likelihood that â—…e would peremptorily pitch upon Domitian's reign rather then of the other or rather not decline both and betake himself to some other Answer as indeed he does For he seems to be in love with the Objection thus circumstantiated he gaining so much as he conceives upon the Objectors as by their own Supposition to make them acknowledge S. John or the Author of this Book of Visions to be really endued with the Spirit of Prophecie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
any Infallible Judge nor any faithful Keeper of Traditions does ipso facto declare her self the onely sufficient Guide 4. That there is not onely no want of an Infallible Judge but better there should be none 5. That the want of Infallibility does not take away the Authority of the Church it being the duty of every person in things really disputable to compromize with her 6. That though a Visible Judge be necessary in Civil causes yet it is nothing so in Points of Religion 7. That every private man has not onely a liberty but a command to judge for himself in matters of Faith 8. The said Right or Priviledge demonstrated also by Reason 9 That the Reason or Judgment of every private man is not a private Spirit in that reproachful sense that some speak it 10. That the claim to a right of judging for ones self in points of Faith does not make a man superiour to his Church 11. Nor yet equal 12. Nor implies that he thinks himself wiser then his Church but rather more careful of his own eternal Concerns 13. That it is not his private Wisedom he sticks to but the Wisedom of God known to all that are not wilfully blind 14. That the Church is not Infallible proved from the Example of the Jewish Church 15. That there is the same reason of the Christian. 16. That the want of an Infallible Interpreter is no such loss to the common people 17. That their assurance of the truth of the Scriptures by the Spirit is a Tenet not so superciliously to be exploded as some make shew of 18. That this Spirit is properly the Spirit of Faith distinguishable from that of Knowledge and Wisedom 19. The notorious Fraud and excessive Mischief of this pretence of Infallibility 92 CHAP. III. 1. That the keeping the Law of Christ in an unknown Tongue is an undermining or opposing of his Sovereignty 2. As also the reproching and vilifying his Law 3. Their fraudulent pretence of hiding the Scriptures with a vindication of their Usefulness and Excellency 4. The vilifying of the Laws of Christ by setting far less penalties upon the transgression of them then of the inconsiderable Institutes of the Church 5. That their rigid Impositions are against the Kingdom of Christ as also the reading of Legends instead of his Law in Churches 6. The dispensing also with the Divine Laws The Fraud and Mischief thereof 7. The treasonable pretence of this Power 's being absolute by right of succession in Christ's seat 8. The evil effect of this pretence discoverable in several Institutes contrary to the written Laws of Christ 9. As also in nulling those Laws he has given as he is the Eternal Word 10. The bloudy opposing the Sovereignty and Kingdom of Christ in murthering his faithful Subjects 102 CHAP. IV. 1. Sundry particular Oppositions against the Prophetick Office of Christ which may be the Characters of that grand Pseudo-prophet that was to come into the world 2. That the Spirit of Prophecy is not to be monopolized by any one person but is free 3. An Excerpt out of Caelius Secundus Curio to that purpose 4. The silencing the Dictates of those common Notions implanted in humane Souls the highest affront to the Prophetick Office of Christ that can be 5. Several Absurdities propounded as Instances of that Tyranny over the immutable Principles of humane Understanding with the detection of that eminent False-prophet thereby 6. That it is infinitely more likely that this pretended Prophet should be fallible then the foregoing Absurdities true 7. That the slaying of the Prophets 8. Together with the above-mentioned Oppositions against the Prophetical Office of Christ make up a conspicuous Limme of Antichristianism 106 CHAP. V. 1. That the pretence of repeating the Oblation of the real Body of Christ is a derogation to the Excellency of Christ's Priesthood 2. Fuller Aggravations of this wicked affront 3. A prevention of a subterfuge 4. Another more dangerous assault against the Priesthood of Christ and the main end of his Suffering 5 6. The making the Bloud of Christ available to take away the Guilt of sin onely and not the Punishment how salvagely Antichristian 7. Farther Aggravations of this despightful piece of Antichristianism 8. That there can be nothing more fundamentally Antichristian then it 9. That the crime considering the circumstances seems worse then that of Judas with the Fraud of this wickedness 10. As also the great Mischief thereof 11. Injuries against the Mediatourship of Christ. 12. An Answer to some slight pretences 13. A farther confutation of such Antichristian errors and mispractices 14. The Fraud and Mischief of multiplying Mediators 15. A special Mischief done thereby to our growth in grace and holiness 110 CHAP. VI. 1. The opposing of Christ in his three noted Offices how hainously Antichristian 2. An enumeration of other Titles of Christ. Opposition against him as he is the Truth 3. As he is the Light 4. As he is the Life 5 6. Opposition to his Divinity by equallizing Saints and Angels to him 7. Yea by preferring what is but a Creature before him 8 9 10. Opposition against his Paternal Title by injuries and cruelties to his children 11. Opposition to him as he is Prince of Peace 12. By needless Definitions in points of Opinion 13. By taking away the obligation of Oaths 14. By making war with the Saints 118 CHAP. VII 1. That any Constitution of things that naturally opposes and suppresses the Divine Life is Antichristian in the highest measure 2. Such as Idolatry Superstition and all the above-mentioned Oppositions to Christ's Offices and Titles 3. The opinion of a virtue in the Sacraments ex opere operato and of the needlessness of our attention to our Devotions 4. Dumb shows and the resting in the mere doing of a Religious duty be it from what principle it will 5. Easie Absolution and slight Penances 6. Plenary Indulgences purchased by money from Ecclesiastick Authority 7. A general note prefixed touching the Mischiefs of the several Oppositions against the Divine Life 8. The plausibility of the Supposition of an Ecclesiastick Power and Pomp more then Imperial 9. The weakness of the grounds for the said Supposition 10. The consequential Mischief thereof in driving the minds of Church-men from the study of Truth and Holiness 11. Yea in making them oppose every thing that is true and holy if it oppose their designs of Ambition and Avarice 12. That such a Luciferian Power as this were the very ruine of the Kingdom of Christ upon Earth 13. And the turning of his Church into a mere Mart or Fair. 124 CHAP. VIII 1. That such a Frame of things as naturally tends to the extinguishing of Faith is highly Antichristian 2. That A trade of Worldliness in the Spiritual Guides is one part of this Frame 3. And a Self-ended policy in all the Doctrines and Practices of this Church another 4. Thirdly The profession of uncertainty and obscurity in the Christian Faith 5.
any but that which is truly the Deity as I have noted in its due place 4. As for the places in the New Testament they are more copious and not less express The first is that in the Acts where when the Chap. 14. v. 14 15. Priest of Jupiter would have sacrificed to Paul and Barnabas at Lystra by reason of the great miracles he saw done they rent their cloaths and ran in amongst the people crying out and saying Sirs why do you these things We also are men of like passions with you and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God which made Heaven and Earth and the Sea and all things that are therein And what vanities are those from which they must turn but from the giving Acts 17. 29 30. of Divine honour to mere Creatures The same Apostle also at Athens in his Speech he made to them on Mars-hill reads them a very round lesson against Idolatry Forasmuch then as we are the off-spring of God we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto Gold or Silver or Stone graven by art and mans device And the times of this ignorance God winked at but now commandeth all men every where to repent Which exhortation certainly Paul made with the greatest earnestness that could be it being said verse the 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that his spirit was in a very sharp fit in a paroxysm of zeal when he saw the City of Athens so given to Idolatry Again in his first Epistle to the Corinthians he makes Idolatry the very Chap. 12. v. 2. Character of Gentilisme which Christ came to reclaim the world from Ye know that ye were Gentiles carried away to dumb Idols even as ye were led And elsewhere in the same Epistle he exhorts them more copiously and Chap. 10. v. 14 20 c. vehemently Wherefore my dearly-beloved flee from Idolatry The things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to the Daemonia and not to God Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of the Daemonia Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy are we stronger then he And this was only about the meat sacrificed to these Daemons what had it then been to bow to their Idols He speaks also very smartly on this subject in his second Epistle to these Corinthians What fellowship hath righteousness Ch. 6. v. 14 16. with unrighteousness what communion hath light with darkness and what agreement hath the Temple of God with Idols And in his Epistle to the Galatians he plainly reckons up Idolatry amongst the grossest works of the flesh Murther Sorcery and Adultery And therefore accordingly Chap. 5. v. 20. in the Apocalyps Idolaters together with Murtherers and Sorcerers Chap. 21. v. 8. are threatned with the lake that burns with fire and brimstone and are shut with obscene Dogs out of the holy City And therefore assuredly Chap. 22. v. 15. S. John is in very good earnest in his dehortation from Idolatry in the 1 John 5. 20. close of his general Epistle And we know that the Son of God is come and has given us an understanding that we may know him that is true and we are in him that is true through his Son Jesus Christ This is the true God and eternal life Little children keep your selves from Idols Amen From these places I think it is abundantly manifest That the divulging of the Gospel aimed at the taking away of Idolatry that sottish depravation of Religion out of the World 5. And we may be still the more assured of it by those words from our Saviour's own mouth The hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father John 4. v. 23 24. seeketh such to worship him God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth Where Grotius and I think very truly interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sublatis ut ritibus ita locorum discrimine And surely the Christian worship being so pure as to abhor from the voluminousness of Judaizing ceremonies and the affixing of the residence of God to a consecrated place as in the Temple of the Jews Imagery and Idolatry must be abhorred infinitely more as infinitely more inconsistent therewith And if God may not be worshipped with an Image much less any thing that is not God either with an Image or without it CHAP. III. 1. What is meant by Grace and Truth coming by Christ. 2. Further Testimonies of Scripture to evince that Christ came to ease men of the Judaical burthen of Ceremonies The meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. That the Death of Christ upon the Cross was the solution of the Ceremonial Law of Moses 4. Further proofs to the same purpose 1. BUT now That the grossness and carnality of the Judaical Ceremonies and the unprofitable burthen of them was to be done away by the coming of Christ which is the other point to be proved is very apparent out of several places of Scripture For the Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ that is to say The John 1 17. Law both Moral and Ceremonial was given by Moses but even that Moral Law was but such an one as could not give life as the Apostle Gal. 3. 21. speaks but the gracious assistance of the Spirit of God promised in the Gospel that does give life and strength to walk according to the will of God And then for the Ceremonial Law both it and indeed all things else happening to the Jews were but Types and Shadows but in Christ is the Truth They were not what they made a show to be and therefore in that sense may be said to be false so as he that says that the Image or Picture of a Man or Horse is a Man or Horse indeed pronounces false And therefore our Saviour speaks true when he saith Moses gave you not that bread from Heaven but my Father giveth you that true bread John 6. 31. from Heaven Whenas yet it is said of the Manna Psalm 78. He gave them bread from Heaven to eat But it being but a shadow of the true Vers. 25. bread from Heaven which is Christ it is said not to be the bread from Heaven As in the Epistle to the Hebrews the Law is said to have a Heb. 10. 1. shadow of good things to come and Paul to the Colossians Let no man judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of an holy-day or of the Coloss. 2. 16 17. new Moon or of the Sabbath which are a shadow of things to come but the body is Christ's So plain is it what is meant by Grace and Truth coming by Jesus Christ. For he is that Truth which was signified by the shadows of the Law and by him is
said These be thy Gods O Israel which brought thee up out of the Land of Aegypt But it is manifest that this Calf did not bring them out of the Land of Aegypt but they brought it I mean the materials of it and that therefore they understood it only as a visible Image and Representation of the presence of him that did bring them out thence namely of Jehovah the true God 2. Nor is there any scruple to be made from the pronouncing thereof in the plural number as if that One true God could not be meant there For Elohim is not only as fitly said of one single Deity as of one single Image but is really and that frequently said of this One God Jehovah And Nehemiah reciting this passage shews plainly that the sense is to be ch 9. v. 18. understood of one he reading not These are thy Gods but This is thy God that brought thee up out of Aegypt Nor does the verb being in the plural number make any infringement to this Truth For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 joyned with a verb of the plural number is notwithstanding understood of this One true God as appears from * See Gen. ch 20 v. 13 ch 35. v. 7. sundry places of Scripture And to make all sure Aaron after he had made the Calf is said to build an Altar before it and to make proclamation saying To morrow is a Feast to the Lord that is to Jehovah the known God of the Israelites And the Psalmist taxing this transgression of theirs They made saith he Psal. 106. 19 20. a Calf in Horeb and worshipped the molten Image Thus they changed their Glory into the similitude of an Ox that cateth grass Which Glory whether you refer to God himself or to the conspicuous Symbols of his residence which later Ages did more expresly call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Glory and indeed I think may be fetched higher then those times the Ark of the Covenant being so called in the first of Samuel and it may be Psalm 85. 1 Sam. 4. 22. Psal. 85. 9. and 63. 2. Jer. 2. 11. and according to Munster in the 63. and in Jeremie 2. if the ancient reading was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Grotius would have it and lastly in this very Psalm if the ancient Hebrews read not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not their glory but his glory as Grotius also suggests I say whether it be referred to God himself or to his Symbolical presence in the Ark of the Covenant it is manifest that the worship was intended to God when they adored this graven Image 3. Which as it is most certain from these Texts of Scripture so it will seem less strange if we do but consider that the Golden Calf which Aaron made was in all likelihood nothing else but the figure of a Cherub such as was after made by Moses himself and placed in the Ark. For Cherub signifies properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Calf or Ox from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to plow and is one of those four Animals which are in the Chariot of God in the vision of both Ezekiel and S. John And it is remarkable in Ezekiel that when he had reckoned those four several forms of a Man Lion Ox and Eagle in Ezek. 1. 10. Ezek. 10. 14. the first Chapter he repeating the same in the tenth in stead of Ox puts the name of Cherub And every one had four faces the first face was the face of a Cherub and the second face was the face of a Man and the third the face of a Lion and the fourth the face of an Eagle The first therefore must needs answer to the Ox specified in the former But in the first Chapter he observes generally of them all that their feet were as the feet Vers. 7. 〈◊〉 of Calves which is no obscure intimation that Aaron's act was not so extravagant as it seems at first sight he erecting such a Symbol of the Divine presence as was to be afterward reposited in the Ark namely the figure of a Cherub or Golden Calf But to conceit that so holy a man as Aaron proposed to them the worship of the Aegyptian Apis and made them an Idol of an Idol to celebrate a Festival to Jehovah by it is a thing so impious incoherent and exorbitant that it seems utterly incredible 4. Wherefore in brief the case seems to stand thus God having by Moses promised to his people his visible presence to conduct them into the Land of Canaan which Symbolical presence was to be in the Ark and especially in the Cherubim on which he was seen to sit by Aaron when he was admitted into the sight of God in the Mount He being therefore privy to the design of this manner of representing the presence of God by Cherubims or Golden Calves and Moses having staid so long in the Mount that both Aaron and the people took it for granted that he was dead they requiring of him that he should make good that promise of the sensible presence of God to make Gods to conduct them to Canaan or at least back again to Aegypt that they might not be lost and perish in a barren wilderness he thought fit in this exigency of affairs to erect that Symbol of the Divine presence which was intended by Moses and so made this Cherub in the form of a Calf both out of skill and integrity But it was the vainness and wickedness of the people to turn it into an Idol by worshipping it and so to Aegyptianize in the adoration of the God of Israel Which he endeavoured as wisely as he could to prevent in chusing this form rather then that of an Eagle Lion or Man as being the least alluring to Religious worship which was the reason of Moses his choice also who is thought to have made both the Cherubims in this shape And that idle mistake of Tacitus and others of the Jews worshipping the head of an Asse may probably be grounded upon the seeming vility of these figures as being little superiour to those slow creatures And therefore the more unlikely say I of ever being intended for Objects of worship as certainly they were not but only for Symbolical Representations of the Chariot of God and of his visible appearance to the Prophets Which Visions themselves I do not doubt but were a figure or symbol of some very noble and substantial Truths which would be too long here to dive into To this purpose Moncaeus argues in his Treatise of the subject where he pursues the matter more copiously which if a man duely consider he cannot imagine but the worship given to the Golden Calf was not intended for the Aegyptian Apis or any other forein Deity but for Jehovah himself the Lord of Israel 5. And there is the same reason assuredly of the Golden Calves in Dan and Bethel which Jeroboam set up which will both give light to and
he intimates to be smart monitours to them that transgress Origen contra Cels. lib. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to terrify the rude multitude But whether these terrours were also by some frauds of the Priests or merely from the peevishness of the Daemons I will not here dispute But questionless it struck a great dread into the simple people of the Images themselves as if there were a Power and Divinity in them 6. But yet I am not come to what I was aiming at which is A conceit of so near an union of the Daemon and the Statue as if they were one sacred Animal or Person For such certainly the Tyrians thought the Statue of Apollo who by binding it with golden chains conceived they tied Apollo himself so fast to them that he could not goe away As the Athenians also seem to have presumed concerning the Image of Victory who by clipping her wings off thought to keep the Goddess herself from flying from them Which opinion certain prodigious passages in these kind of Images might very well foment As that in the Image of the God Adranus who when the Adranites were engaged in a warre was seen to sweat copiously as also to shake the top of his Spear as Plutarch relates in the life of Timoleon And * Lib. 1. c. 8. Valerius Maximus also writes how the Statues of Juno Moneta and of Fortuna spoke the one signifying her willingness to goe to Rome the other approving the manner of her consecration Ritè me matronae vidistis ritéque dedicâstis The Teraphim also of the Gentiles which were made under a certain figure or constellation of the Heavens were erected to receive answers from as Oracles and in all likelihood are the Statuae animatae futurorum consciae which Trismegist speaks of in Asclepius and of which kind of speaking Statues are sundry stories but I have run out too far already 7. The case that emerges from the consideration of the occasions of the people's thinking these dedicated Statues or Images whether it be from the fame of Truth or mere conceit to be real Deities is this Whether they can be said to be Idolatrous in giving Divine worship to them not as to the Images of any thing else but according to their belief as to true and living Gods In which point I conceive there is very little difficulty For if the worship of that which is not God under the notion of a saving and living Deity be not Idolatry there will be none found Idolaters but those that think they wipe their mouth cleanest of this Fornication by pretending they worship not the Image for it self but in reference to the Deity whose Image it is but in the mean time give Religious worship to what is no Deity but a dead Being But we have above proved That the worshipping the Sun and Moon or any Daemon though without an Image is Idolatry and I think there is no Christian that did ever stick to confess it wherefore the worshipping of an Image or the Complicate of an Image and a Daemon actuating it for a Deity which is not the True and Only Godhead Almighty and Infinite but a Finite Being and such as there may be many others besides is without all peradventure down-right Idolatry which we may observe to be a Fourth Mode thereof CHAP. VIII 1. That the Heathen held One Supreme God the Maker of all things 2. Proclus his conceit of so uniting the Supreme Deity with a Magical Statue as that the Complicate becomes one visible and Supreme Godhead 3. Whether the worshipping of this Magical Complicate by him that is persuaded it is the visible Deity were Idolatry 4. Wherein the sinfullness of Idolatry does consist and that the worship of this Magical Statue was a Fifth Mode thereof 5. The reduction of other cases to these Five-Modes of Idolatry 6. That the worshipping any thing but God is Idolatry and of Numa's casting away Image-worship and of the affinity of his Religion with Pythagorism 7. The first pollution of that Philosophy and that the Object of Divine worship is as well One as Invisible 1. BUT there is yet another case behind with which we will conclude That the better sort of the Heathen were not so ignorant of the Deity but that they acknowledged the Unity of his Essence his Omnipotency also and his Omnisciency were an easy thing to prove if it were not admitted at the first offer Falluntur in nomine sed de una potestate consentiunt qui Jovem principem volunt saith Minutius Felix And I think he spoke sparingly in their praise in that he said they were mistaken in the name For Jovis is so near to Jovah that to deduce it from Juvo rather then from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is like fetching the notation of Fur from furvus rather then from the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for which Gellius reprehends Noct. Attic. lib. 1. c. 18. Varro That the inhabitants of Thebais worshipped the maker of the world the Statue wherein they worshipped him witnesses for them it being the Image of a man with an egge coming out of his mouth As if the meaning Pier. Hieroglyph lib. 59. was so exactly Mosaical or Christian as to intimate not only the Creatour of the world but that he created it by his word And * Dion Chrysost Orat. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dion Chrysostomus and * â—…lax Tyr. dissert 38. Maximus Tyrius both Heathens do plainly profess that in their Images of Gold and Silver and Ivory they worshipped the most High God the Maker and Conserver of all things But I will not enter into any copious proof of this the bare supposition serving my turn 2. Let us therefore suppose that some Heathen Philosopher who knew the true God of the Universe but was not yet cleansed from the practice of Image-worship should either himself believe or at least for some ends best known to himself should fully perswade another that there is some such mysterious Art as Proclus seems to glance at in his short Treatise De Sacrificio Magia where upon this ground That there is such a close concatenation of Terrestrial with Celestial and of Celestial with Supercelestial Essences as also such a particular respect or Harmonie of several of the one with several of the other he would insinuate to us That there is a secret method of framing a Magical Statue out of certain choice materials which Divine symbols rightly mingled and adapted into a consecrated Image by some mysterious Priest or Magus will become unum tale quale Divinum existit secundùm essentiam and therefore by power of cognation and similitude will not fail to fetch down Jupiter Olympius himself from his highest or inmost supercelestial throne and make him vitally actuate this Divine Statue in such sort that the Statue and Divinity it self shall become one visible Jupiter 3. The Question now emerging from hence is Whether if a simple
Vestments would vie in number with the Vestments of Aaron the High-priest and imitate also his in Analogie his Breast-plate his Ephod his Robe his broidered Coat his Mitre and Girdle and the Bishops not content with these should adde for the further adorning themselves as if they had a mind to out-doe the Ceremonial Habiliments of Aaron himself six more holy Ornaments nay I will suppose nine more besides the consecrating of these Priests with holy oyl on their shaven Crowns and in their hands which become thereby so sanctified that the more devout would eagerly and zealously kiss the hand of the Priest strait after his Ordination hoping thereby to partake more fully of his devotedness and sanctity What were this I say but to Judaize under Christianity and to illaqueate the minds of men with such Superstitions as our Saviour Christ came to set them free from Which intimation is sufficient to shew the Falsness and groundlesness of such an Oeconomy in the Church 5. But as for the pretence for such kind of Aaronical Ornaments I can imagine none unless it be the imitation of the Levitical Laws which is a very bad one those Laws being to be abolished by Christ. Besides that the Robes of Aaron were of a more * Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala Ch. 5. Sect. 2 3 4. profound and important signification then to be imitated upon any slight or superficial design as well they as other Mosaical figures being prescribed according to a certain Pattern exhibited by God in the Mount which being the shadows of things to come do naturally vanish in this Meridian and Vertical Sun-shine of the Gospel And therefore to bring in so many New shadows is to reenvelop the Church with darkness and divert us from the rightly understanding of the meaning of the Old which assuredly were all Types of that more full knowledge of Jesus Christ and of that inward and Spirituall Sanctity we have in him But that advantage which this erroneous Priesthood might seek to it self herein is this That by these Histrionical disguises and peculiar adornings they may become more honourable in the eyes of the People who are much struck with outward shews I mean the simpler sort of them and that their Persons may be accounted very holy whose Ordination is with such pompous Ceremonie and whose sacred Unction makes it in some sort to vie with the Coronation of Princes Could they be more through-paced in the imitation of that great high-Priest of the Jews and adorn themselves with what in analogie should answer to his * See the Preface General to the Collection of my Philosophicall Writings Sect. 3. Urim and Thummim that is Illumination of mind and Sincerity of heart that indeed would be an happy emulation and would absolve them from an over-rigorous pursuance of the rest 6. But so it is according to our Hypothesis that instead of so great a good there follow these Inconveniences That this Sacerdotal Pomp and Gayness to those Priests that understand the nature of Christianity is both a Scandal and a Burthen to those that do not rellish Christianity in the right sense of it it is to them an occasion of insufferable pride and conceitedness and of great security and neglect of those true and indispensable endowments of the Christian Priesthood of that Anointing 1 John 2. 27 which will teach them all things even that of the Holy Spirit of God which is not lodged in consecrated Garments but in those purer habits of the Mind in the Inward man wholy and throughly dedicated to God by perfect and real abrenunciation of himself and of the flesh the world and the Devil by entirely giving up ones self to the sincere Love of God and of his Neighbour to Purity and Sobriety of life and to unfeigned Humility and Self-denial Which real Accomplishments should be the Foundation of respect to the Christian Priesthood not those exteriour Ornaments that may be the covers of a Beast or Devil And lastly for the People themselves As some are liable to be miserably deceived by those external Pomps so others to be much offended I mean those who are more seriously set upon the real duties of Christianity and find their wholesome appetite mock'd not fed with those outward shews in the publick Service of God 7. Which we shall better understand if we make a more plenary representation of their Publick worship and adde to the Consecrated Garments of the Priest the dedicating of an unknown Tongue to their Publick Prayers and Offices to the great disedification of the People What spectacle could one behold more Antichristian To see a man in those Sacerdotal disguises all of them consecrated and dedicated to the purpose himself having had both Head and Hands anointed with holy oyl standing in an anointed Church and at anointed Altar with his anointed Chalice and other anointed Utensils whose Church-yard is holy by the consecration and benediction of sprinkled Holy-water for the frighting the Devils from hanting that consecrate ground and molesting the sleep of the bodies of the Dead nay whose very Bells of his Steeple are Christned and Chrismatized for the chasing away the foul fiends out of the Aire at the departure of a Soul by their tolling or ringing To see him in his holy postures now at the one end of the Altar now at another now turning his face toward the people now his back-side one while holding up his hands another while holding them down another while a-cross at his breast now making with his hand a single Cross now two or three Crosses together now sitting then standing and another while stooping and kissing the holy Altar now speaking aloud then muttering to himself in a lower tone but always in a tongue that is not at all understood by the People To see I say such a Sight as this and to compare it with that of our Saviour The hour cometh when the true worshippers John 4. shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth for the Father seeketh such to worship him It would necessarily extort from the Spectatour this just Censure That these are either false-worshippers or our Saviour's prediction not true or else the completion thereof past in the simplicity of the Primitive times or rather that if he would find these true Christian worshippers he must seek them somewhere else for here is neither Spirit nor Truth nor intelligible language but all more dark and blind and dumb then in the very Midnight-shadows of the Mosaical Dispensation 8. And therefore as I was a-going to conclude as the more sottish people will be liable to be even brutishly amazed and amused by this unintelligible and unedifying pomp and spectacle and be made the more obnoxious to all the Frauds and Tyrannies of this Unchristian though over-much Anointed Priesthood so the more nasute will be tempted to look upon it but as a kind of circumforaneous Masking or Mumming nor easily be persuaded that
is not for the Remission of Punishment but of Guilt and that he that would goe to Heaven must travel thither upon his own proper cost and charges must satisfie in his own person for his faults and corruptions in such ways as this adulterous Church has prescribed Which is no method of freeing Souls from the pains of Purgatory but of the inslaving them as I have said to a worse then Aegyptian bondage and condemning them to gather stubble and make bricks to work and drudge to hold up the wealth and magnificency of this imperious Pharaoh and his cruell Task-masters Which is a Servitude as abominable and Antichristian as can be invented or imagined For it does absolutely change the condition and nature of Christian Religion then which there is nothing more free and ingenuous and more professedly opposed to the yoke of the Mosaical Law into a poor pitifull ignorant and servile Pedagogie and makes it not only exceed the burthen of Moses but which I cannot too often inculcate the very bondage of Aegypt it self 5. But though this Figment of Purgatory would be a very profitable invention for the increasing of the wealth and power of this Pseudo-Clergie and bring vast revenues to their Church there being a like fear of it and desire to be rid of it in Princes and Peasants in Gentle and simple yet it cannot be denied by any but such as are past shame but that it is a mere Figment and has no grounds of truth at all in it nay is contrary to what is most certainly true For it is assuredly true and any good Christian may feel it to be so that Christ has satisfied as well in respect of Punishment as Guilt and it is perfect Non-sense that the sincerely-minded should be justified by the merits of Christ's Passion and the excellencie of his Person he being that innocent Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world that is to say in a Forensal sense be esteemed as Just and yet be handled or treated as Sinners For it is as if a man should be acquitted and yet punished for the same crime at the same Court then which nothing is more foolish or incongruous Wherefore it is manifest that there can no external punishment abide the Sincere soul after this life for I cannot pronounce any thing in the behalf of the unsincere but that Hell it self is their portion no fire no whips of Furies or Devils to afflict them no infernal Bailifs or horrid Pursivants of Purgatory to arrest them but they may pass free through all guards and scouts of the invisible Regions and not one dare to offer to molest them 6. And that he that was sincere-hearted in this life and did not onely believe in Christ but to the best of his power and skill followed his Precepts and had a real enmity against all the appearances of sin whensoever they assaulted him nor could be overtaken or overcome by the importunity of his Body without sorrow regret or indignation that this man should carry in himself any tormenting Hell or Purgatory in his freedom from the body is a thing impossible and unconceivable For he being freed from that with which he was so often forced to tugg and in the midst of his greatest conflicts his life being comfortable to him through the sense of his own sincerity and through the assurance of the Love of God in Christ Jesus what can Death be to such a man but Life from the dead He that in patience can possess his soul in a prison cannot fail to enjoy himself in the fresh aire and he that can walk upright in fetters may easily if he will dance for joy when he is out of them So little fear is there of any such Mormo's or Bug-bears to the sincere Christian when he has passed out of this mortal life 7. Some pretence indeed they may have for Purgatory from that passage in S. Paul If any mans work be burnt he shall suffer loss but himself 1 Cor. 3. 1â—… shall be saved but yet so as by fire which is the only place in Scripture which makes any show for them But yet if it were meant of a Purgatory-fire after this life it will not at all serve their purpose as neither those several passages of the Fathers do which seem to make this way which would be too prolix a business to enter into But the interpretation which Scaliger and Hugo Grotius give of the place is so genuine and natural and so little inferring any such Purgatory-fire that this ground will prove very lubricous to the builders upon it For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Scaliger and Grotius expound thus That he shall escape but so as out of the hot fire it being nothing but a proverbial expression signifying the great danger he will be in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est preverbiale ad significationem summi periculi So that the sense is nothing but this He will hardly escape the dreadfull judgment of God As for Origen's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the like expressions of the Fathers they will never establish such a Purgatory as these Masters of mischief would erect in the Universe who make sure that no man may doe any thing meritorious in this condition nor make any progress in grace and holiness for all the very Fire is called Purgative For this would beat down the price of Pardons and Indulgences make men careless of hiring Masses for the dead and take away all that costly sollicitude from friends for their deceased kindred if they were conceived to be in a capacity by their own demeanour and carefull management of their affairs in the other world to wind themselves out of trouble 8. But how weak soever their Proofs were for Purgatory their Motives thereto would be very strong this Figment making all the rest of their Frauds take more certain effect with men they being hereby affrighted into a facil and foolish good humour of parting with any thing even to the impoverishing of themselves and their posterity so that those may be satisfied who pretend they have the Keys of this prison of Purgatory and may be persuaded either to excuse them from ever entering into it or if they must enter into it to deliver them out of it as timely and speedily as may be But the grand Mischief of this cheating Invention is a blasphemous affront to the Merits and Satisfaction of our dear Saviour and a Tyrannicall oppression of the consciences of the simple but so great a scandal to the more nasute that it were a strong temptation to them to misbelieve the whole summe of Religion or any state at all of the Soul after death but that she is mortal and perishes these false Apostles having abused the belief of the Doctrine of her survival after the death of the Body so grossely and rancidly merely to the advancing their own estates in this life and to the wallowing in
shadows of the Truth if they be that Such a constitution of things as this does plainly discover it self to be Antichristian and to oppose that Title of Christ which styles him The Truth Without are Rev. 22 15. Murtherers and Sorcerers and every one that loveth and maketh a Lie That is not so remarkably spoken in the Apocalyps for nothing And it is worth the noting also in * Chap. 8. Daniel that Antiochus who is generally look'd upon as a Type of Antichrist is said to cast down the Truth to the ground 3. The next Title is The Light which is a figurative Title and signifies Wisedom and Knowledge and indeed upon the matter is but a symbolical expression of the former For Truth and true Wisedom are one and the same thing but in that it irradiates and informs the minds of others it is more especially called Light And Christ is so called both in that he enlightens every man that comes into the world according to his Divine nature and in that he was the Light of the Gentiles and the Glory of his people Israel in his exteriour Personal manifestation to the world Wherefore to endeavour to keep the people in a worse then Aegyptian darkness under pretence of raising their devotion to God when the plot is to have them wholy at their own devotion and to abuse them and mislead them as they please it were plainly to Antichristianize against this Second Title of Christ The Light and to defeat the End of his coming into the World which was to be a Light to lighten the Gentiles and to Isa. 42. 6. bring them that sit in darkness out of the Prison-house And Christ has entailed this Title also upon his true followers and Successours Ye are Matt. 5. 14. the Light of the World What then are they that are not onely not shining Lights themselves but industrious abettors and promoters of darkness and ignorance and diligent hinderers of any true light that may be let into the Church from others 4. The Third Title of Christ is The Life as it is written in S. John's Gospel In him was the life and the life was the light of men Which life I conceive S. Paul describes very savourly when he saith That the Kingdom of Heaven is not meat nor drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost Christianity therefore is a dispensation of inward life flowing out into all laudable and usefull actions not a Babel of confused and intangling Opinions and unprofitable Observances a heap of Ceremonies and Conceits but a steddy abode in God who is Love and will teach us and inable us from an inward sense of Life to love him with all our hearts and all our souls and our Neighbour as our selves which is the most eminent fulfilling of the whole Law Wherefore instead of this holy dispensation of the Spirit and Life if there were introduced a rigid adherence to empty Opinions and unedifying Observations of multifarious Ceremonies this would be an Antichristian Trespass against this Third Title of Christ while we thus substitute insipid Theories and dead Formalities in the place of the Power and Life of Godliness 5. The Fourth Title is The mighty God and the Divinity of Christ is an acknowledged Article of our Faith and so choice a Prerogative of his Person that whatsoever does derogate from this infringe or weaken it cannot but be deemed considerably Antichristian Such therefore must be the building of Temples and Altars the burning of Incense and religious Invocations and Prayers to Saints or Angels Nay though there were no Prayers put up to them the solemnly reposing the Reliques of Saints in any Church or Chappel and making them therewith the Patrons or Tutelar Genii as it were of such a City or Province were no less then Idolatry and a Superstition much like that of the ancient Pagans in their Telesms and Palladiums and their Dii Tutelares whose presence they conceited to be detained by these superstitious Ceremonies and so made them Patrons and Protectours of their Cities and Countries Wherefore if the Christians by religiously reposing the Reliques of this or that Saint in this or that City should be so superstitiously conceited as to repose a Trust in the Aide of these Saints from Pestilence from War from Thunder from Earthquakes or the like believing them powerfull and benigne Protectours of the Place this undoubtedly were a kind of Religious worship done to them and could not be less then the sin of Idolatry For all such Faith and Repose upon any particular invisible Power is Idolatrous as well as Invocation because it as well supposes in that particular invisible Power what is onely proper to God For there is no certainty of the Presence and consequently of the Assistence of an invisible Power in any one place unless the nature of that Power be to be in all places at once And therefore he that puts his Trust for Aid and Assistence in such a sort as I have described in a particular invisible Power makes that invisible Power Omnipresent or Omniscient which are the incommunicable Attributes of God and thereby commits Idolatry as I have above more fully argued in the like case 6. The mere trusting therefore in Saints as Patrons and Protectours of such and such Places as well as the building of Altars burning of Incense to them or invoking them derogates from the onely-assured Patronage and powerfull Divinity of our Blessed Saviour For by these Divine honours we equallizing such Patrons or Mediatours as these to the onely-begotten Son of God make him less then he is and but like them that is to say make him unlike himself obscure the peculiarity of his Divinity and disclaim his Godhead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the * Coloss. 2. Apostle speaks letting go our true Head and putting our selves under another Chieftain For there is onely one that is capable of this Divine honour which therefore if we give to any other we act the part of that Antichrist who is defined by the denying the Father and the Son 1 John 2 22. For the Father and the Son are one Such an arguing as this God seems to implie in his expostulation with the Israelites in the wilderness O ye house of Israel have ye offered to me Victimes and Sacrifices by the space of forty years in the Wilderness Yea ye Acts 7. took up the Tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your God Remphan c. The sense of which assuredly is this That though the Israelites did sacrifice as they thought or did pretend their usual sacrifices to God according to the Law of Moses during their abode in the wilderness yet because they served and acknowledged other Gods besides him he infers and that truly and justly even according to the humane Faculties that they really did not serve him at all that is did not acknowledge him to be what he was the onely true God And
himself may at the same time move and rest lie along and walk be many miles absent from his friend and present with him at once may be now in Heaven and then in a moment on the Earth without passing any of the Regions betwixt with many such like Incongruities which we having above noted it is needless any longer here to insist upon 20. It is already plain enough that Transsubstantiation or the turning of the Bread into the very Body of Christ is encumbred with so many and so manifestly gross Impossibilities and easily deprehensible that the Impossibility of the Churche's either ignorantly erring or voluntarily imposing uponmen for her own gain can bear no weight at all to turn the scales in her behalf but there will be such an irresistible moment of these apparent and plain Contradictions of this so boldly obtruded Article of the Church I mean this of Transsubstantiation that the weight thereof will naturally sink all her sons that but a little consider of it if nothing better then their Church help them and buoy them up into the abhorred pit of Infidelity first and then of Hell 21. For there is no plastering over such Impossibilities which are deprehended to be such according to the Universal and Immutable Laws of Reason by feigned Miracles to give countenance thereto As if they should make such Stories as these That the Sacrament being struck with a dagger did bleed That when the Bread as was thought was taken out of the mouth of the Communicant it proved Flesh in the fingers of the Priest That the Host has dropt many drops of bloud upon the Corporall as it has been taken into the Priest's hands That it has flown out of his hands round about the Church dropping drops of bloud on the Marble pavement all the time of its flight That a lovely fair Child has been seen sometimes to appear out of the consecrated Bread and the like For these Stories could not evince the truth of that which is impossible to be true but would argue their own falseness by the end of their producement For commonly liers back lies with lies 22. And now I think I have described so plentifully and punctually this particular Limb of Antichristianism which is opposite to the Root of the Divine Life Faith that nothing can be conceived wanting to the perfection of such a Contrariety nor any man doubt but that Church which is thus described is really one and the same with that which is excluded out of the New Jerusalem as being opposite to her inhabitants For from such a Constitution of things as I have here in this member of Antichristianism set forth it will plainly follow that the professed sons of this false Church as those in the * Chap. 21. Chap. 22. Apocalyps must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say They must either be men whose spirits are intimidated with superstirious Fables which are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the fearfull and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as love to hear lies and believe vain things out of a sottishness and imbecillity of mind and brutish simplicity or else they must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Unbelievers and Atheists though they externally for their own peace sake submit to the Orders of their Church or lastly they must be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as forge lies and help to deceive the people with multifarious Falsehoods and Impostures Which being the Characters of that Church which is opposite to the Holy City it is a farther Indication that in the putting together these things that do so diametrically oppose or undermine the Christian Faith we have truly described a notorious Limb of Antichristianism CHAP. IX 1. Humility the proper Characteristick of the Person and Spirit of Christ. 2. The Affectation of an Ecclesiastick Sovereignty contrary to this Divine Grace 3. The pretence for this Ambition That the visible Church being One requires one visible Head with the Answer thereto 4. Further Reasons to prove the Church wants no visible Head besides Christ. 5. That this one Head Christ Jesus and one Apostolick Law does make the Church sufficiently One 6. That there is no just pretence for any such claim of being this Universal Head in any Bishop 7. But that Ambition may purchase such a Title by wicked practices 8. The method of this Universal Bishop's enslaving the Clergie to himself and undermining the Secular Powers 9. His Frauds against the Emperour and other Princes 10. A further description of the Frauds Rapine and Pride of this Universal Pastour and of his Usurpation in a manner of the whole Power of the Empire 1. WE proceed now to the Description of as lively Opposition as we can to the First Branch of the Divine Life namely Humility which being so special a Characteristick of the nature and Genius of Christ's own Spirit and so pronounced by himself in his own person when he was upon Earth Learn of me for I am humble and meek Matt. 11. 29. that which is perfectly opposite to this must needs be exquisitely Antichristian in all manner of people but especially in those that do in a more peculiar way presume themselves to be Successours of Christ and his Apostles whom he of old premonished of Pride and Lordliness and affectation of Superiority saying The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them and they that are great exercise authority upon them But Luke 22. Mark 10. it shall not be so among you c. Which lesson Peter remembred and endeavoured to transmit it to others where he advises the Pastours to feed their flocks not for filthy 1 Pet. 5. 2 3. Lucre but of a ready mind neither as being Lords over God's Heritage but being ensamples to the flock How contrary therefore to this would it be if some pretended Supreme Pastour whom others in their severall subordinate capacities would in proportion naturally imitate should not onely Lord it over his flock but tyrannize over Kings and Emperours and Lucifer-like place himself in the same Throne with God and Christ or rather displace them and domineer absolutely according to his own will treading under foot the plainly-promulgated Laws of God 2. Let us therefore dip our pencil a little deeper in some of those colours which we made use of in the Description of that member of Antichristianism which was opposite to the Divine Life in general and pourtray out more fully such an Ecclesiastick Polity as will appear most oriently Luciferian and Antichristian and most diametrically opposite to that holy Humility that was recommended by Christ to his Successours We will therefore suppose as before some one Prelate that has got the start of the rest to put in for the Title and Authority of Universal Bishop which whosoever does was declared by Gregory the Great the Fore-runner of Antichrist the Fore-runner of that Rex Superbiae cui
of the spoil or rather to erect a Spiritual Polity to enslave all and bring the most insupportable Servitude of Body Soul and Estate such as Paganism could scarce ever shew the like certainly this must be very highly Antichristian For indeed what can be more salvagely oppressive in reference to the very Estates of men then to frame such a Religion upon the pretence of their Infallibility as is perfectly repugnant to the plain Word of God and immutable Rules of Reason depraving of things so for their own worldly advantage as I have already abundantly set out to bring in a more ample Revenue to feed the Pride and Luxury of this false Church And then when they have thus grossly perverted the Truth of God to declare that they who will not say Amen to their lies and forgeries have no more right to their own Estates then a Thief or Robber to what he has got by unlawful spoil and therefore accordingly not onely to hinder them from any employments of either profit or credit but disable them from making of Wills and their Heirs from inheriting their Estates and awing them from laying claim to their Patrimonies lest their Father's Heresie be intailed upon them whether they will or no. 7. To which Antichristian Barbarities you may adde also the scornful and cruel Penances they put upon them that do submit themselves to their Church making them go in procession in contemptible disguises or else enjoyning them to march in their shirts bare foot and bare leg and to whip their own bodies in the sight of the people as they go along How unlike nay how utterly contrary is this to that Meekness and Sweetness that is described in the Discipline and Government of the Kingdom of Christ But we need not insist upon these things we having treated sufficiently of them already 8. Now upon the second particular viz. that Humility and Lowliness which is also one fruit of Charity and by which the Person and Rule of our Saviour is described in the ancient Prophecies We have shewn the Antichristian Detestableness of the opposite to this Vertue already in the first Branch of the Divine Life and need adde nothing more thereto 9. The third character of Charity is her delighting in true and faithful dealing amongst men The opposites to which are easily discoverable To say nothing therefore of the manifold Frauds which we have already taken notice of all along in this our Description of Antichristianism this certainly must be very Antichristian and uncharitable namely To misrepresent mens Actions and Opinions in publick Speeches or Writings nay to invent notorious lies and fictions to the disparagement of mens Persons and Doctrines and suborn men to write them and divulge them to the world for truths Which is to doe so as was the custom of those who were under the Dragon that old Serpent and false accuser of the ancient primitive Christians whom they aspersed and calumniated as worshippers of the Sun because they put up their prayers with their faces towards the East as Man-sacrificers and as Eaters and Drinkers of humane flesh and bloud because of their calling the Eucharistick Bread and Wine the Body and Bloud of Christ they understanding it onely in a mystical or symbolical sense For professing with S. Paul There is neither Male nor Female in Christ but that both have equal admission into his eternal Kingdom That they had no regard of Sexes but were vile Sodomites and abusers of themselves with Mankind For meeting together to serve God in private in Grotts and Caves of the Earth for fear of persecution That they were Conspirators against the Roman State and Empire And lastly for their reverently receiving the Elements of Bread and Wine at their holy Communions That they were Worshippers of Ceres and Bacchus 10. In like manner we may imagine that this Pseudo-christian Church may raise such perverse Calumnies against the true members of Christ as namely traducing them for Atheists or at least Arrians because they will not acknowledge the Divinity of a consecrated piece of Bread reporting them as Manichees because they do not hold the power of the Church to be superiour to that of Emperours and Kings to make thereby but one Sovereignty in the Church but affirm the Secular Power independent thereon as if the holding these two distinct Powers were forsooth the holding the two Principles of the Manichees defaming them for Beesoneriders or Witches because they have by reason of hard persecution been driven to inhabit desert and mountainous places or upon their meeting more privately in houses by night to impute to them some such horrid and villainous practices as were reported of the primitive Christians that the Candle being put out they committed Incest and all manner of Uncleanness in the dark nay that they killed their own children in these concealed Assemblies of theirs To accuse them of reviling the Saints merely upon their professing it unlawful to invoke them or of blaspheming the Blessed Virgin because they hold it unfit to worship her To tax them of disobedience to the Magistrate onely because of their persisting in the sincere profession of that Faith that is consonant to the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles And lastly to father upon them what abominable actions they please and speaking without a Metaphor to gag the mouths of the thus accused and slandered that they may not answer for themselves to clear themselves in the audience of the people Nay to rack men till their very bowels break out of their belly to force them to acknowledge themselves or their party guilty of such villainous crimes as it is incredible their very persecutors should in good earnest suspect them of merely to get a pretence from such an extorted Confession to verifie their wicked Slanders to the world and to make the harmless and innocent professors of the Truth of the Gospel to be odious and hateful in the eyes of all men Certainly if this be not diametrically opposite to that part of Charity that discovers it self in true and faithful dealing nothing can be excogitated that is so CHAP. XIV 1. The nick-naming of the true Christians by the odious Title of Hereticks with their barbarous injuries thereupon 2. That Heresie and Schism are sins against the truly-Catholick and Apostolick Church 3. What is meant by One Catholick and Apostolick Church 4. What is that hainous sin of Heresie 5. What Schism 6. That while men are sincere members of the Apostolick Body they can be neither Hereticks nor Schismaticks 7. The Hypocritical and Schismatical Niceness of this Antichristian Church in forbearing to joyn in any Religious Duty with any member of the truly-Apostolick Body 8. Their fraudulent purpose in fostering this Schismatical Niceness and Unsociableness 1. BUt we will also take notice of that which will be so usually cast upon the Dissenters from this false Church that it will be scarce accounted any reproach done to them but rather civility
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Apocal. 12. that great red Dragon with seven Heads is so called from his Sanguinolency But that his Seventh head 's growing out of this red body signifies that this Beast will be cruel also under the Seventh Head and that this Cruelty it self is part of the Image of the Beast this every one has not noted 5. Resurrection That the Resurrection of the dead has a Political sense as well as a Theological or Physical may appear plainly from Ezekiel 37. 9. Then said he unto me Prophesy unto the wind prophesy son of man and say to the wind Thus saith the Lord God Come from the four winds O breath and breathe upon these slain that they may live So I prophesied as he commanded me and the breath came into them and they lived and stood upon their feet an exceeding great army That this is to be understood in a Political sense concerning the restoring of the people of Israel to their own Land out of thraldome and captivity is plain from the very mouth of God himself in the following verses Then he said unto me Son of man these bones are the whole house of Israel Behold they say Our bones are dried and our hope is lost we are cut off for our parts Therefore prophesy and say unto them Thus saith the Lord God Behold O my people I will open your graves and cause you to come out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel Whence it is plain that to be cut off to be slain and to rise from the dead has as I said a Political sense as well as a Natural or Theological and that Resurrection is a Recuperation of such rights and liberties as have been taken away and a deliverance from persecution affliction and bondage Achmetes cap. 5. according to the Indian doctrine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And cap. 6. according to the doctrine of the Persian Onirocriticks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And lastly according to the Aegyptians c. 7. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The sense of all which put together is That the dreaming of men rising from the dead signifies the execution of Justice and deliverance from war bondage and affliction 6. Rivers A River has a double consideration The first in respect of its Original and its recourse thither which is hinted Ecclesiast 1. 7. All the Rivers run into the Sea yet the Sea is not full unto the place from whence the Rivers come thither they return again According to which consideration supposing the Sea a Type of the Extent of the Jurisdiction or Empire of any Potentate as it indeed is Rivers will signifie any Emissary Powers from thence whether Armies or Provincial Magistrates or what Agents abroad soever that are under this chief Power and so act in reference to it These may according to exact Analogie be called Rivers because both themselves and their affairs have recourse to the main Sea the amplitude of that Jurisdiction to which they belong Achmetes c. 178. according to the mind of the Indians Persians and Aegyptians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The sense of which is That any great King is resembled by the Sea I suppose he means his Kingdom and as all Rivers run into the Sea so the wealth of the world to him And again to the same purpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That new Rivers running into the Sea signify new Revenues accruing to the King or Kingdom from people afar off suppose made Provinces by his power 7. The other consideration of Rivers is their limpidness and irrigation but in this respect they have either a Spiritual sense or more Mundane The former appears from what our Saviour hath said John 7. 38. He that believes in me out of his belly shall flow Rivers of water This he spake of the Spirit which they that believed in him should receive The fruit of which Spirit as it is communicable to the generality of the Church is Righteousness Peace and Joy according to that Onirocritical solution of Astrampsychus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of this Water our Saviour Christ John 4. Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life Like that in Esay 58. And thou shalt be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters fail not But Waters are also meant of worldly affluency Jerem. 31. 12. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Sion and shall flow together for the goodness of the Lord for wheat and for wine and for oil and for the young of the flock and of the herd and their soul shall be as a watered garden and they shall not sorrow any more at all Achmetes c. 176. according to the Aegyptian Solutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rivers that water the soil are interpreted of mans livelihood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If one sees a River that uses to water the country dried up it portends death sorrow and affliction 8. Saints The first style of Saintship belongs to the Israelites who were a separate people set apart from other Nations and made holy to the Lord by adhering to that Law he gave them not contaminating themselves with the Idolatrous Institutes of the Gentiles Deuteron 33. 2. The Lord came from Sinai and rose from Seir unto them he shined from mount Paran and he came with ten thousands of Saints that is to say saith Vatablus cum populo Israel quorum fuerunt quidem multa millia licèt nâ—…n singuli Sancti tamen sancta fuerunt millia quòd Deus illos sanctificâsset in populum suum illos sibi segregâsset And further in the following verse Yea he loved the people all his Saints are in thy hand Which is plainly spoke of the Israelites according to that sense in Exodus ch 19. v. 5 6. where they are called a peculiar treasure above all people and also a Kingdom of Priests and an holy Nation And this they are said to be if they obey his voice and keep his Covenant Whence it is easy to conceive that those Christians succeed into this Title that are purely Evangelical and do not contaminate themselves by any Idolatrous Practices against the Command and Covenant of God they are Saints in this peculiar and separate sense in that they do not mingle with the Rites of the Gentiles but keep themselves to the Commands of that one Master Christ. If they doe this sincerely and constantly and truly there is little doubt of their sincerity that did not stick to lay down their lives for the truth though they be not so wise and plausible according to the mode of the world nor devoid of all blemishes of humane infirmity yet undoubtedly they are those Saints of which there is so frequent mention in the Apocalyps and are the true Israel of God under whatsoever hardship or low condition of fortune they
coherence or ligation with the time of the Prophet but onely with one another For so far forth as is expressed in this verse the signification is onely of succeeding Order in Existence and Non-existence and Re-existence which changes upon that consideration are indeed tied to one another but free as yet from being fixed to the Prophet's time or any ones time else Which thing though I have been so carefull to make good yet is an apprehension so easy to admit that Alcazar in his Exposition supposes it without asking leave or giving any account For he understanding the revived or re-existent Beast of the persecuting Empire under Julian the Apostate whom he makes the eighth King and acknowledging the Visions exhibited to John in Domitian's time when the Roman Empire was actually persecutive does evidently implie that The Beast which thou sawest was and is not is not to be understood of Existence or Non-existence joyned with the time of the Vision for it had been false to say the Beast is not in Domitian's time but onely of permutations and successions of the Condition of the Empire Cùm igitur saith he persecutiones interrumpendae forent hâc ipsâ interruptione significatur quod Angelus ter repetit capite decimo septimo dum ait de Bestia Fuit non est Erat non est Quod idem est ac si diceret Modò est modò non est Which phrase signifies no set time of Existence or Non-existence but onely the vicissitude of them This upon the Thirteenth Chapter and to the same purpose he speaks upon the Seventeenth where he asserts that by the Beast that was and is not the Angel onely intimates that there would be an Intermission of Persecution I might adde also that our Protestant Expositours go generally upon the same supposition as Paraeus has noted But this point I hope is abundantly cleared 10. And what has been said of this first Description of the Beast Was is not and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition is to be understood of the second Was is not and yet is namely that it is the Name Nature or Character of the Beast not any Assertion concerning his present Existing or Not-existing For of that Idolatrous Empire which is here indigitated it could not be properly said when S. John wrote that it was but is not for it did then continue still in an uninterrupted being Nor could it be said of it Is not and yet is for it was not the Image of the Pagan Idolatrous Empireâ—… but that very Empire it self And it is remarkable that this Beast is described as to come hereafter out of the bottomless pit and that the world shall wonder at him when he ascends again upon the Stage beholding the Beast that was and is not and yet is Where therefore neither Was nor Is not have any connexion or ligation with that present Age of S. John seeing it is so evident that Is has not the prediction being not of a present Beast but of one to come And indeed to me it seems very improbable that the Title or Name of the Beast would have been so presently in the same verse repeated again with this little variation had it not been done on purpose to be a Key to the meaning of the former Title and to cast the considerate Reader upon such a sense as I have pitched upon But to reade 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to make the Prophecy guilty of a sapless and useless Tautologie and to deface in it a special Note and Mark of direction to the true meaning thereof But we proceed 11. Nor can Is not and yet is be understood of any Object but with a close touch on the known laws of a right Contradiction Which is the Mysterious dress which is here affected to excite amusement and without which it will not sound like either sense or an Elegancy The same thing therefore in some sense or other must be affirmed and denied of the same Subject Wherefore as by that part of the Title Was and is not it is naturally understood he is not what he was and as Is not is to be understood in the same extent that Was as if Was intimate his whole Existence Is not must take away his whole Existence and if Was intimate onely the Condition or Qualification of Existence Is not must take away just so much and no more So Is not and yet is must be understood in the same extent and the Object of their Affirmation and Negation must be equal that is to say either the whole Existence of the thing must be affirmed and denied or the same Condition or Qualification 12. The former in this case cannot be pretended to it being so real a Contradiction that it is a down-right Falsity And in the latter if there were a perfect Sameness it would be as rank and as unreconcilable a Contradiction As suppose a man were a King and should be deposed for a time but then afterwards be restored to his Kingdom in as full power as ever it were a real contradiction and gross falshood to say He is not King as well as He is King Whence the fondness of Hugo Grotius his interpretation is detected who makes Domitian the Beast that is not and yet is For it could never be said of him while he was Emperour that he was not Emperour or while he was not Emperour that he was Emperour because to be Emperour was utterly the same Condition at both times he was so if he was so twice For which he has no evasion but by reading 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But when this sameness is in some respect defective and verges rather towards similitude then exact Identity then indeed this Riddle is proper and though the Aenigma seems to amuse a man with a contradiction yet it declares a truth As is apparent in our Interpretation of the Beast that Paral. 2 Agr. 5. is not and yet is which is this That the ancient Idolatrous Empire is not and yet is where both parts are true For as to the manner of Idolatry it is the same Beast but in respect of the persons whom they would worship it is not the same and therefore as I have already noted is also called the Image of the Beast 13. Wherefore this second Title of the Beast Was and is not and yet is being thus plainly discovered not to signify existence but condition and order of succession it is a farther assurance that our Interpretation of the former Title of the Beast is true also and that the omitting of the Intersertion or subjunction of This is his Name or Property or the like is a mere Prophetick Ellipsis and Artifice of concealment warrantable upon a double ground either as spoken rapturously and ecstatically and therefore thus Elliptically or else because there are Examples of such an Ellipsis in other places of Scripture and in the very
sense in this notable Ellipsis because though the commissure be as invisible as that in curious Steel-work yet the apparent Agreements of this second Parallelism betwixt the Seven-headed Beast in this and the Thirteenth Chapter would not fail to unscrue the meaning with the considerate and intelligent 20. Is not and yet is Of which I have shewn already that there can Paral. 2. Agr. 5. be no good sense unless we understand not a perfect Identity but rather a Resemblance or Similitude Which Resemblance by way of elegancy gives the title of Identity as if that which is very like were exactly the same So he that came in the Spirit of Elias was called Elias and one egregiously Epicurean or Platonical might be called Epicurus redivivus or Plato redivivus as if the one were really Epicurus the other Plato And it is a vulgar expression That such an one will never die while such a Son of his namely one that is exactly like him is alive conceding herein that the Father may be dead and alive at once dead in his own person but alive in that lively image of himself his surviving Son Quanquam nullum monumentum clarius Servius Sulpitius relinquere potuit quà m effigiem morum suorum constantiae pietatis ingenii filium Of such a son as this is that saying of Siracides Though his father die Ecclesiastic 30. 4. yet he is as though he were not dead for he has left one behind him that is like him So then as Servius Sulpitius may be said to be dead and alive at once dead in his own person but alive in his son who is so perfect an Effigies of him so it may be said of the Beast that he is not and yet is Because he is not really that ancient Pagan Empire which was the Beast killed by the introduction of pure Christianity but yet he is in that he is revived in the Empire 's becoming again so Paganly Idolatrous and so lively representing the state thereof in the Dragon's time Res enim dicitur existere saith à Lapide cùm ejus Exemplar Imago Typus aut Figura existit And how lively an Image or Resemblance this degenerate Empire is of that under the Dragon I might here particularly display but I will rather defer it to the following Chapters In the mean time this may suffice in general to prove the fifth Agreement of our second Parallelism CHAP. XIV Ver. IX What is the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that Siracides seems to allude to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in his description thereof 2. That Constantinople is also allowed to have Seven Hills and that it makes for the proof of the eighth Agreement of the first Parallelism Ver. X. That the making the seven Heads seven sorts of Governours is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but a natural and necessary truth 2. How naturally the different successions of the Supreme Powers of the Roman Empire fall into eight parts 3. The onely true reason why there are numbred Eight Kings though but Seven Heads of the Beast 4. That the dividing of the Emperours into Pagan Christian and Pagano-Christian is aimed at or supposed in the enumeration of the Eight Kings is an unexceptionable Truth 5. That it is most credible that after the Sixth King no other account of distinction of the Supreme Power of the Empire was look'd upon by the Angel but what respected Religion 6. A demonstrative Inference from One is that there is an Ellipsis in The Beast that thou sawest was and is not c. 7. Why * Apocal. 17. 10. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whence the last subdivision is confirmed and the tenth Agreement of the second Parallelism made good 8. The fourth Agreement of the second Parallelism Ver. XI That the description of the Beast is his Name and part thereof used for the whole as in the Name of God which farther confirms the above-mentioned Ellipsis 2. The easie and genuine meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. That the meaning of * Verse 11. The Beast that was and is not he is the eighth is that his Head is the eighth 4. That the Eighth King by an Henopoeia may admit of more Caesars then one reigning at a time and why 5. The ninth Agreement of the second Parallelism 6. The seventh Agreement Ver. XII The eleventh Agreement of the second Parallelism 2. The twelfth Agreement 3. The meaning of * Verse 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ver. XIII The thirteenth Agreement together with the meaning of * Verse 13. being of one minde and of giving their strength and power to the Beast 2. That the Pope once emerged above the Emperour even in Secular Power may continue the succession of the seventh Head there being nothing else intended thereby but the secular Pagano-christian Sovereignty of the Empire Ver. XIV The fourteenth Agreement of the second Parallelism 2. The fifteenth Agreement 3. The sixteenth Agreement of the second Parallelism Ver. IX AND here is the mind that hath wisdom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In such a sense as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ch 13. 18. Here is wisedom that is Here is a special Arcanum Here is recondite Wisedom or a Cabbalistical Parable According as is intimated Ecclesiastic 6. 22. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For wisedom is according to her name and is not manifest to the vulgar Where Siracides in all likelihood alludes to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies to cover over a thing and so conceal it as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were derived from thence And assuredly the Wisedom of the Ancients was such had an outward crust or rind as well as an inward pulp And Diogenes should have rather wrote thus of Parmenides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the ancient Sophia which Siracides would have sound like 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had a double sense one according to external appearance the other according to an inward truth Wherefore as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies Here is such a kind of recondite wisedom as I have described so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies Here is a meaning that implies a special example of the ancient Sophia which used to hide great and concerning Truths under outward Hieroglyphicks and Types 2. The seven Heads are seven Mountains on which the Woman sitteth That Old Rome is here indigitated by these seven Hills Interpreters generally consent that City being so famously taken notice of for them both by Historians and Poets As by Dionysius Halicarnasseus Pliny Plutarch also by Varro Tertullian and others By Poets as Virgil Horace Ovid Claudian and the Sibylls Which things being so well known and obvious in Commentators I think it needless to produce any examples But there are that please themselves in finding Records of Constantinople's being also noted for her seven Hills which Bishop Mountague does Part 2. Ch. 5. in his Appello
by re-introducing Idolatry again into the Empire and by Paganizing upon the Objects of Christianity Which may be also farther confirmed from the sixth Seal where Heaven and Earth seem to fall together and the whole Political Universe to be dissolved and yet the Roman Empire it self stood still in Being onely there was a change from Paganism to the Christian Faith Of which sixth Seal Mr. Mede himself notes thus I am verò Mutationis hujusce Objectum est Imperium Romanum at non quà politicè à Caesaribus gubernatum sed quà Satanae principi ejúsque Angelis Daemonibus religioso nomine subditum Wherefore it is evident that according to the Prophetick style this Fourth Idolatrous Monarchy may be destroyed by the mere extermination of Idolatry out of it again and whatsoever is Antichristian and that thereupon ipso facto the true Kingdome of the Saints of the most High begins though not an hair of any mans head falls to the ground nor any Prince or Subject be injured in any of their Rights or Possessions This Consectary is exceeding plain and as highly useful for the asswaging that furious heat in some kinde of Fanaticks that expect such a Kingdome of the Saints as the Jews did a Messias one that would serve their temporal Advantage But the love of the world has blinded both their judgements alike Consect VIII That no Exposition of the Seventeenth Chapter of the Apocalyps that makes not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Seventh King purely Christian can be true and perfect 7. This will easily appear if we consider that wonderful Harmony which is found upon this supposition betwixt the Thirteenth and Seventeenth Chapters where the Beast is said to be slain in one of them and to cease to be in the other to be the revived Image of the Beast in one and the Beast that was is not and yet is in the other That though there be eight Kings yet there are but seven Heads of the Beast which nothing can salve but this Hypothesis For while the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reigned the Beast was not But if that Head was not purely Christian but Idolatrous the Beast was still in Being and had eight Heads in the computation of the Angel himself But it is plain that there is supposed in the Beast a ceasing to be from those words Was and is not and shall ascend out of the bottomless Pit which that excellent Interpreter Mr. Mede has failed to give their genuine sense for want of this supposition For he saith it may be said of this Beast and that in S. John's time jam olim eam fuisse necdum See Preface Sect. 7 8 9. tamen natam esse which to an unprejudiced minde must needs sound very harshly applied to the words of the Text. For no man will say of a thing still in Being It was much less adde and is not Such an harshness as this grates so hard upon my senses that if I could not understand the Prophecy without such violence against the ordinary meaning of words I should be much dis-heartened from giving my assent But Mr. Mede has done so singularly well in other things that we may well excuse him in this Consect IX That the Whore of Babylon sits not now at Constantinople but that Old Rome is if we may so speak her Seat Imperial 8. The truth of this Consectary appears from several Conclusions in our Joint-Exposition 1. That the Whore of Babylon rides upon the Roman Empire and guides and governs it in matters of Religion which is not true of the Turk at Constantinople 2. The Whore sits upon that Seven-hill'd City that was as it were the Lady of the World in Saint John's time that is given as the surest character of her Seat which we know Constantinople then was not 3. The Name of the Beast is found to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Beast with two Horns being the same with the Whore it is plain that this Whore is seated in Italy And though Bishop Mountague has shewed his wit and pleasantry in finding the number 666 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet I think he did it onely to sport with his despised Opposers and to play upon their ignorance For how can 666 be supposed to be meant for the Name of Mahomet whose Name is wrote so variously in Greek Historians For in Nicetas he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Chalcocondylas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Joannes Cantacuzenus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Ducas Michael 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and lastly in Joannes Cananus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is no where called that I can meet with nor is it likely that his name would end in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that I suspect that it is onely a witty Commentum of the Bishop's to make himself merry withall 4. The famousness of the Seven Hills at Rome does so drown the notice of the other that it is not likely but they are though not onely yet chiefly aimed at in the description of the Seat of the Whore But if one of the Cities onely were aimed at it were intolerable to conceit that the Prophecy is so lubricous and defective as when there were two Cities the one exceeding famous for her Seven Hills the other so little famous that it is frequently question'd whether she has Seven Hills or no that it should understand this latter by the Seven-hilled City and not the former there being no intimation in the Text given to understand it of the latter or any way to determine it thereto 5. The Whore or Antichrist that sits on the Seven Hills was many hundred years as appears by the fourth Consectary before the Turk was Master of Constantinople which happened not passing two hundred years ago so that Antichrist it should seem sat a thousand years besides the cushion 6. Upon the fore-head of the Whore of Babylon is written Mystery but the Turk is an open and professed Enemy of Christians 7. And lastly The Whore or Antichrist is the debaucher of the Empire with Idolatry and the worshipping of Idols the Turk a destroyer of them So fond is their conceit that can imagine the Turk to be the Antichrist prefigured in the Apocalyps Consect X. That the Church of England or any other Protestant Churche's departing from the Church of Rome is no Schism 9. This is plain at first sight out of our Joint-Exposition Nor can it be Schism to doe that which it were a sin to omit the doing of or if that will not serve which we are exhorted to doe by the voice of God in the Apocalyps Come out of her my people that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues Which is a Monition worth the Apoc. 18. 4. listening to for as many as tender their safety and salvation their security from sin
Fourthly The necessity of being in a Church where there is no Interruption by misordination 6. Fifthly The bearing men down that Dissent in any thing takes away certainty in all things 7 12. Sixthly Lying Miracles 13 16. Seventhly A rabble of incredible Reliques 17. Eighthly Transsubstantiation 18. How naturally it super-induces Atheism 19. What a bundle of Impossibilities it is 20. That the pretended Infallibility of the Church is infinitely too light to weigh against it 21. Nor can it be made credible by the countenance of feigned Miracles 22. Several Characters of them that are excluded the Holy City comprised in this present Limb of Antichristianism 130 CHAP. IX 1. Humility the proper Characteristick of the Person and Spirit of Christ. 2. The Affectation of an Ecclesiastick Sovereignty contrary to this Divine Grace 3. The pretence for this Ambition That the visible Church being One requires one visible Head with the Answer thereto 4. Farther Reasons to prove the Church wants no visible Head besides Christ. 5. That this one Head Christ Jesus and one Apostolick Law does make the Church sufficiently One 6. That there is no just pretence for any such claim of being this Universal-Head in any Bishop 7. But that Ambition may purchase such a Title by wicked practices 8. The method of this Universal Bishop's enslaving the Clergie to himself and undermining the Secular Powers 9. His Frauds against the Emperour and other Princes 10. A farther description of the Frauds Rapine and Pride of this Universal Pastour and of his Usurpation in a manner of the whole Power of the Empire 139 CHAP. X. 1. The wicked method of raising the Power of this Supreme Pastour to this height a demonstration of the excess of Ambition 2. His blasphemous usurpation or acceptation of the Divine Titles 3. His barbarous insultation over Excommunicated Kings and Emperours 4. The excess of Homage done to him by the greatest Personages 5. His exalting himself above God in point of Jurisdiction 6. His elation of himself above him in point of Honour or Precedency 7. Other Instances of that kind of Pride 8. His exaltation of himself above God even in the very House of God literally so called 144 CHAP. XI 1. That the Pride of this Superlative Head will diffuse it self also into its Members 2. Farther general Incentives to this Vice in this usurping Priesthood 3. Peculiar Incentives thereto in some great Dignities 4. The singularity of Habits and way of living in some Religious Orders an occasion of Pride 5. The pretence of meriting in these Orders an high and hateful Instance of this Vice 6. That such an elated Pseudo-Clergie as this might well go for that Man of sin that exalts himself above every thing that is worshipped 7. And be emblematized in the description of the Leviathan who is called the King of the children of Pride 147 CHAP. XII 1. An Antichristian Frame opposite to the Divine Grace of Purity described in general 2. That the Numerousness of Festivals joyn'd with a dead and Spiritless exercise of Worship leads to Impurity 3. As also the Vow of Coelibate in unmortified Monks and Priests 4. The opportunities of their Order and Function 5. The opinion of Fornication being no sin and Adultery a less one then the breach of the Vow of Single life 6. Easy Rates for Pardons and Indulgences in these Vices 7. Slight Penances 8. The dedicating a considerable part of the year to wild extravagancies under Masks and Vizards 9 10. Concubines allowed to Priests 11. The pompous Equippage of Courtesans and the Supreme Pastour's receiving Tribute from their trading 12. The example of this High-priest and his Clergie 13. The rifeness of Sodomie near his Palace 14. And its spreading thence into the remotest parte of his Dominion 15. That an Ecclesiastick Polity in this condition were the Mystical City of Sodom and characterized in those Apocalyptick Catalogues under the titles of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 151 CHAP. XIII 1. The excellency of Charity and that it is the very Life and Soul of the Polity of Christ. 2. A Description of the nature of Christ's Kingdom out of Scripture 3. A Collection of the Properties of his Government out of the fore-cited Predictions and that they are all the Effects of Charity 4. To which the Kingdom of Antichrist is opposite 5. The Oppression of the poor and needy by this Antichristian Polity 6. The defrauding men of their Estates upon a false pretence of Heresie 7. The imposition of barbarous Penances 8. Their unparallel'd Pride 9. Their raising of vile Calumnies against the professors of the Truth as the Pagans did against the Primitive Christians 10. Several Instances of these Antichristian Calumnies 157 CHAP. XIV 1. The nick-naming of the true Christians by the odious Title of Hereticks with their barbarous injuries thereupon 2. That Heresie and Schism are sins against the truly-Catholick and Apostolick Church 3. What is meant by One Catholick and Apostolick Church 4. What is that hainous sin of Heresie 5. What Schism 6. That while men are sincere members of the Apostolick Body they can be neither Hereticks nor Schismaticks 7. The Hypocritical and Schismatical Niceness of this Antichristian Church in forbearing to joyn in any Religious Duty with any member of the truly-Apostolick Body 8. Their fraudulent purpose in fostering this Schismatical Niceness and Unsociableness 161 CHAP. XV. 1. What Incendiaries to War and Plotters of abhorred Murthers these falsely-pretended Successours of Christ are 2. Their Butcherly Cruelty to the Sheep of Christ's Fold 3. Instances of prodigious Barbarities upon them for their very faithfulness to their Saviour and Redeemer 4. The numerousness of them that thus suffer with some particular kinds of Cruelty 5. More Instances of this Diabolical Barbarity 6. All the Elements made Instruments of the wrath and fury of this Antichristian Power 7. Most beastly and unnatural Examples of this Antichristian Salvageness 166 CHAP. XVI 1. A new Scene of Diabolical outrages done to the innocent Flock of Christ. 2. That they are all to be imputed to this Antichristian Synagogue though not particularly appointed by them 3. A description of an Infernal Tribunal coloured over with the specious Title of The Holy Inquisition 4. The Demeanour of these Infernal Judges to the accused 5. The salvage usage of the sentenced party by the grim Executioner 6. A new addition to the former Torture 7. The Torment of the hollow Trough 8. And pan of Charcoal 9. That this exemplary Cruelty in these Spiritual Judges influencing all the Instruments and Adherents to their Church makes her guilty of all the Military outrages also 169 CHAP. XVII 1. That this Opposition against the Divine Grace of Charity is a most substantial Limme of Antichristianism and the Character of them without the Holy City 2. That that repeated Catalogue of abhorred Titles in the Apocalyps is plainly a Synopsis of the main Characters of the Antichristian Polity we describe 3. The
prolixity of the Title hinders not but that it may be called the Name of the Beast 4. The meaning of the Name 5. That the Angel having considered the whole Successions of the Roman Kingdom or Empire fixed his mind on that time the Empire was purely Christian and why And that it thence appears what succession of the Beast's time is understood 6. As likewise from his name a little varied into Was is not and yet is Whence the fifth Agreement of the second Parallelism is also evinced 7 8. How the Angel came to give the Beast these Names And that there is an Ellipsis in the Angel's saying The Beast which thou sawest was and is not c. 9. That the Name Was and is not and shall ascend c. signifies the successive Order in being not the actual being or not being of the Beast with a confirmation thereof out of Alcazar 10. A plain Eviction from the Name Was is not and yet is that Was and is and is not do not signifie actual Existence or Non-existence but order of Existence and Similitude 11. That Is not and yet is would neither be good sense nor any elegancy unless the Laws of a right Contradiction were closely touched on in this mysterious Assertion 12. And yet that an absolute Sameness in either Essence or Qualification could not be under this affirmation and negation without falsity Whence Similitude is necessarily intimated thereby 13. That the certainty of the meaning of this Title Was is not and yet is confirms the sense of the former and demonstrates a latitant Ellipsis in the Application of these Names of the Beast which is farther argued from other considerations 14. Why he interprets the Re-existence or Image of the Beast of the Empire 's becoming Idolatrous again rather then of the Revival of its ancient Polity in the Pontifical Power 15. The third Agreement of the second Parallelism 16. The sixth Agreement 17. The seventh 18. The eighth Agreement 19. The third Agreement again noted with a Confirmation therefrom of the above-mentioned Ellipsis 20. That near Resemblance stands for Identity in common elegancy of speech Whence The Beast that was is not and yet is and the Image of the Beast is again evinced to be all one and the fifth Agreement of our second Parallelism thereby farther confirmed 286 CHAP. XIV Ver. IX What is the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that Siracides seems to allude to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in his description thereof 2. That Constantinople is also allowed to have Seven Hills and that it makes for the proof of the eighth Agreement of the first Parallelism Ver. X. That the making the seven Heads seven sorts of Governours is no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but a natural and necessary truth 2. How naturally the different successions of the Supreme Powers of the Roman Empire fall into eight parts 3. The onely true reason why there are numbred Eight Kings though but Seven Heads of the Beast 4. That the dividing of the Emperours into Pagan Christian and Pagano-Christian is aimed at or supposed in the enumeration of the Eight Kings is an unexceptionable Truth 5. That it is most credible that after the Sixth King no other account of distinction of the Supreme Power of the Empire was look'd upon by the Angel but what respected Religion 6. A demonstrative Inference from One is that there is an Ellipsis in The Beast that thou sawest was and is not c. 7. Why Apocal. 17. 10. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whence the last subdivision is confirmed and the tenth Agreement of the second Parallelism made good 8. The fourth Agreement of the second Parallelism Ver. XI That the description of the Beast is his Name and part thereof used for the whole as in the Name of God which farther confirms the above-mentioned Ellipsis 2. The easie and genuine meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. That the meaning of Verse 11. The Beast that was and is not he is the eighth is that his Head is the eighth 4. That the Eighth King by an Henopoeia may admit of more Caesars then one reigning at a time and why 5. The ninth Agreement of the second Parallelism 6. The seventh Agreement Ver. XII The eleventh Agreement of the second Parallelism 2. The twelfth Agreement 3. The meaning of Verse 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ver. XIII The thirteenth Agreement together with the meaning of Verse 13. being of one minde and of giving their strength and power to the Beast 2. That the Pope once emerged above the Emperour even in Secular Power may continue the succession of the seventh Head there being nothing else intended thereby but the secular Pagano-christian Sovereignty of the Empire Ver. XIV The fourteenth Agreement of the second Parallelism 2. The fifteenth Agreement 3. The sixteenth Agreement of the second Parallelism 296 CHAP. XV. Ver. XV. The seventh Agreement of the first Parallelism Ver. XVI The folly of those Interpreters that understand the Burning of the Whore of the burning of the Houses of Rome by fire Ver. XVII The Ten Kings giving their Power and Kingdom to the Beast according to the will and purpose of God how stupendious an Arcanum 2. In what sense God may be said to put it into their hearts 3. That it is rather Fate then Policy that has carried on the affairs of the Whore so prosperously hitherto with an Admonition thereupon 4. The meaning of Until the words of God be fulfilled with a farther Admonition to the Apostatized Church 5. The eviction of the truth of the seventeenth Agreement of the second Parallelism Ver. XVIII Why the Seat of the Whore is so determinately affixed at last to Old Rome in this Prophecie 2 3. A clear and confessed evidence that Old Rome is here pointed at as the Seat of the Whore with a short Paraphrase upon the sense of the Verse 4. That the Seat of the Two-horned Beast is also fixed to Old Rome and of the Cabbalisticalness of the Apocalyps 5. That the Numeral Name of the Beast is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that it is so to be written and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 proved from the ancient Orthography of both the Greek and Latin Tongue 6. That the ancient Latines who usually sounded long i as a Diphthong pronounced their Vowels nearest to the Greeks 7. How exquisitely this name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answers to Events 8. That the finding the number 666 in other names does not at all weaken the determinate applicability of this 9. In what sense 666 is called the number of the Beast 10. The application of the Root thereof illustrated from the Cabbalistical application of the Root of the Tetractys 11. The last Agreement of the first Parallelism 12. The last Agreement of the second 13. That the Vision of the Whore is more appropriate and peculiar to the Church of Rome 14. Of the Inscription Mysterium on