given way to his thoughts changed and corrupted the truth to follow their owne motions but wee must not wonder if Philosophers have made this worke of the oracles of the old Testament seeing wee have amongst us people who shew themselves children worthy of such fathers infecting the purity of our new Gospell with the corruption of their owne opinions animated with the spirit of Philosophy and who by this onely way which brought to the knowledge of the truth have drawn many crooked paths wherein men cannot engage themselves without losing themselves whereof I would willingly advertise you that the diversity found betweene us makes you not imagine our profession is like that of the Philosophers and that you judge not ill of the truth because wee desend it by different meanes and are divided in our doctrine These people that are seperated from us have violated the faith of Jesus Christ and wee beat downe their crrours by this onely exception that the true rule of truth is that which hath beene taught by our Master and transmitted to us by these holy persons who had the happinesse to heare his word and receive his Divine instructions We shall shew in another place that all which is not conformable to this rule hath beene invented by new Doctors who came not till after the blessed companions of the son of God to destroy the truth men have made use of truth it selfe by the suggestions of the spirits of error who have inspired them to fight with it with its owne armes they are they who have excited them to corrupt so saving a dâ—ctrine they are they have invented fables wherewith its holinesse hath been prophaned that by their resemblance they take away the beliefe from truth or rather get it for themselves They would ruinate faith by this detestable tricke perswading men they must not believe Christians by the same reason not believe the Poets nor Philosophers or rather wee should believe the Poets and Philosophers because not believe the Christians It is this sacrilegious imitation that makes them laugh at us when wee preach the last judgement the Poets and Philosophers upon the ground of this truth set up a tribunall in Hell They mocke at us also when wee threaten them with eternall torments which are those hidden flames the earth shuts up in her bosome and are reserved by the justice of God as in a treasure for the punishment of the wicked for these prophaners have invented that there is is hel a River of burning fire if wee speake to them of Paradise a place fild with agreeable and Divine beauties ordained to be the residence of the soules of the blessed and seperated from the world by the interposition of this Zone of fire which God hath put before it presently the Elysian fields comes in their thoughts they imagine that there is that delicious place wee declare unto them Tell mee I pray you where the Poets and Philosophers have drawn these things so like to our doctrine if it bee not from our bookes and Discipline if they have drawne them from our Discipline they have without doubt the prerogative of antiquity upon them therefore it followes that what wee teach is truer and ought to have more beliefe then all these vaine opinions In effect these opinions are but the shaddowes of truth and seeing the world hath given faith to these vailes they ought rather to believe the truth that is the substance If the Poets and Philosophers are the first authors of these things which they have written it must bee then that our Discipline is but the figure of that which is come after it which nature permits not because the shadow is not before the body and the figure cannot have beene before the truth from whom it takes its originall CHAP. XLVIII IT must bee acknowledged that the usage wee receive from you and that you give the Philosophers are very different if a Philosopher sets out what Laberius left in writing according to the opinion of Pythagoras that a mule is changed into a man a woman into an adder if he displayes al the cunning of his eloquence if hee sets out with addresse all his arguments to settle this opinion is it not true that hee moves your minds that he drawes you to his partie that hee forceth you to believe you must abstaine from the flesh of beasts and that after there are some found with you that make some scruple to tast it because in eating a peece of beese they feare to devoure some of their auncestors contrarily if a Christian assures you a man that is dead shall live againe one day that hee that is in the grave shall come out and take againe the same forme he had hee is abused by the people not onely with blowes of the fist but also with stones cast at him Now mee thinkes there is much blindnesse in receiving the opinions of these Philosophers and in condemning the Doctrine wee propose to you upon the point of the resurrection for if there bee reason perswades that the soule of a dead man reenters into a body why may not wee believe it enters into the same body again and returnes into the same matter from whence it is seperated seeing the effect of a true Resurrection is to be that which it was before the soules after they have changed their bodies according to the opinion of Pythagoras and his Disciples are no more the same they were heretofore because they could not become what they are not unlesse they cease to be what they were wee might find wherewithall to jest on this subject if disposed to sport our minds and entertaine our leasure with mirth it wou'd bee a very pleasant thing to enquire in what beasts persons have beene changed that lived before us but it is better we resolve to determine the truth of this proposition We say then it is more convenient to the dignity of our nature to believe man shall become man againe that every one in particular shall rise againe to be the same he was and informed with the same soule that animated him with the same qualities wherewith he was endowed although the body receive some change in his exterior figure In sum the designe of the Universall judgement being the effectuall reason of our resurrection it is necessary the same man that is dead live againe that God may recompence or punish for his good or evill actions the same persons And the same bodies that are in the dust of the grave must appeare at this judgement because the soule cannot suffer alone and without a sensible matter that is to say without its flesh and as it hath not sinned but in its flesh it also hath not merited but with its flesh the punishments the justice of God hath ordained for its crimes But you say to mee how can it bee that a matter reduced to dust should represent it selfe consider with thy selfe O man that makest this objection to me
the Judges So you condemn a Christian when once found out although according to the design of your Lawes hee should bee assured against all searches and when you condemn them I doe not beleeve you judge them worthy of the punishment you ordain them because guilty but onely because discovered and that there are people found bold enough to enquire of their life against the publick ordinances But when a Christian is in your hands you doe not act against him as you are used to act when you would pursue the vengeance of a crime for when the other accused boldly maintaine they are not guilty you ordayn they should bee put to the rack to the end that torture may force them to confesse and contrarily you apply it to the Christians only to force them to deny If our Religion were evill without doubt wee should flie to denyings in the same maner as criminalls doe and you would be forced to draw confessions from us by the force of torments you say you doe not think your selves obliged to seek by tortures the proofe of the evill we doe because you certainly beleeve the confession of the name Christian carries enough with it of all crimes But this pretence is not lawfull for if a man be accused of murder although you know well enough of what nature his crime is yet you doe not content your selves with the confission but you force him to declare the order hee took to commit it you doe not deal so with us and the strangeness of your proceeding discovers visibly your injustice You hold that to confesse the name Christian makes us guilty and you make use of violence to force us to retract it in disavowing the name of Christian we discharge our selves at the same time of the crimes you impute to us because of this confession But I think you do so because you will not have us destroy our selves wee whom you take for execrable persons It may be you are wont to bid a murtherer deny the murther he is accused of and injoyne a sacrilegious person to suffer more torments if he persevers inconfessing his impiety Now seeing you proceede not against us as against Criminals it s a figne you thinke us very innocent Then therfore it is without doubt you will not have us persist in this confeission whereas you know very well that condemnation is grounded on the necessity imposed on you to obey the lawes of the state and not on the rules of justice A man cryes out in the midst of his torments and saith I am a Christian he declares openly what he is you would heare from his mouth what he is not You are resolved purposed determined to draw the proofe of the truth by the confession of the accused and of all other men but there are none but we of whom you strive to heare lies You ask me saith one of us if I be a Christian and I answer I am Why endeavour you to corrupt me by force of tortures I confesse and you torment mee What would you doe if I should deny when those that are guilty protest they are innocent you believe not the truth from their words and you believe us so soone as wee say wee are not Christians Certainely this unjust affection which so unhapplly troubles your reason is to be suspected and ought to make you thinke ther 's some secret violence that workes in your minds and makes you proceed in our cause against the order and nature of judgement and also against the Laws If I bee not deceived the laws command us to discover and not conceale ofoffenders in withdrawing them from punishment it or daines that those who confess themselves guilty should be condemned and not absolved These are the rules established by the authority of your Senate and custome of your Princes these are the maximes which are in use in the exercise of the power whereof you are ministers for the authority of your magistracy is lawfull and not Tyranicall Tyrants are accustomed to add tortures to ordinary punishments to render them more cruell but as your pollicy is full of humanity you make no use of it but force the accused 10 confesse Keepe this Law in its vigour and stretch it not further then its bounds its necessary to draw confession from the mouth of criminalls but if they prevent its rigour men must not use it there remaines nothing in this case but to judge and punish it Punishment established by the laws is a debt which they are bound to acquit and whereof its unjust to discharge it after it is confest Indeed wee see nojudge that strives openly to save a wicked person Neither is he permitted to have a will to it and from thence it comes in order of judgement wee doe not force men to denie You believe a man cannot make profession of Christianity without being tainted with all sorts of crimes without being an enemy to the Gods to Princes to the lawes to good manners and to nature and that a Christian cannot be acquitted unless he denyes himselfe to be a Christian you force him to deny that you may acquit him which is apparantly tobetraye the justice of the lawes What would you have him deny he is guiltie that you may make him innocēt even against his wil that a man cannnot after impute to him what is past to render him criminall tell us what motion inspires you with an affection so unreasonable and from whence comes it you resolve not to believe him that voluntarily confesseth rather then the party that denyes what hee is accused of by constraint This last being forced in his judgement mayspeake against his conscience and keeping in his heart the Christian Religion after hee is absolved deride you at the same time you come to judge him because of the partiality you shew in maintaining your opinions at the charge of justice Now seeing you treat us in every thing otherwise then criminalls and your onely end is to make us foregoe the name wee beare and wee undoubtedly relinquish the same if wee doe what they doe who are not Christians you may easily apprehend we are not guiltie of any wickednesse that our being named Christians is our onely crime that his appellation is unjustly prosecuted by the motions of a rash and blinde hatred whereof the first effect is to take from men the desire of knowing certainly the things which they know they have no assured knowledge of at all So they believe all that is published against us although they see no proofes and they will not let our lives be enquired after for feare a lawfull proceeding discover onely the things they will not have to bee believed to bee true and they take occasion to condemne this name which is the object of their hatred on the onely confession wee make as if the confession of the name were sufficient for the conviction of those crimes they attribute to it without any other ground then their
his substance is I have already declared that God created the Universe by the power of his word the operation of his wisedome and the vertue of his power The ancient Wise-men also were of this opinion that the word and wisedome which they named of one onely word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say the word did make the World Zenon saith this word is the Authour of that order and admirable disposition we see in nature also that the same that is called Destiny is God the mind of Jupiter and necessity of all things Cleanthes makes a spirit that goes into all the parts of this Universe As for us as wee say God hath made all things by his word wisedome and vertue wee attribute to the word wisedome and vertue of God a Spirit that is their proper substance and which is the word to command the wisdom to dispose and the vertue to give perfection to his workes Wee have learnt that God hath produced this spirit which we call the word that God in producing it hath begot it and therefore it is the Sonne of God and also God in regard the substance of God and his owne Son are but one selfe same substance because God is also a Spirit it is even as of a beame comming from the body of the Sun this Planet in producing the same gives it a portion of its light which notwithstanding it cannot lose for it is alwayes in its beame because the beame is alwayes a beame of the Sun the substance of the light is not separated but spreads forth So in the internall generation of the word the spirit derives from the spirit and God derives from God as the light of a Candle is taken from another Candle which hath comunicated to it its light the light remains all intire in the Candle from whence it is taken and suffers not any diminution although men borrow the quality to distribute it to many Candles It is even so of God that which comes from him is God the Son of God and both together God and his Sonne are one and the selfe same God From whence it follows that this distinction of spirit to spirit of God to God is not in the substance but person makes not a division in God but only a distribution of the qualities of Father and Son not a diversity of conditions between Father and Son but onely an order of God the Father to God the Son and finally that God the Son springeth and is not separated from the substance of God wherefore the beame of God being come downe into the body of a Virgin and incarnate in her womb is come likewise into the world Man and God together This marvellous composure of mortal flesh the spirit of God hath been nourished brought up grown in years spoken taught wrought is this Man Jesus Christ Take if you wil this truth for a fable you may receive it in the mean time till we bring further proofs of our Master as wee receive many tales made touching those gods you confess This wonder was knowne to them of whom you hold all the follies you believe of a Deity They have invented them by a sacrilegious emulation to destroy the eternall truth of a God-man in exposing to them the lies which have some relation with them If then you will have witnesses of the incarnation of the Son of God we tell you the Jews knew it from the mouths of the Prophets that hee was to be borne among men and they expect him still and the greatest difference between them and us is that they doe not believe he is already come The holy Scriptures make mention of two commings of the Son of God the first when he appeared in the weakness of humane nature and condition of a very low humility The second which to bring with it the end of all times and wherein he will shew himselfe with all the splendor of his God-head The Jewes have not heard of the first and they hope for the second which hath been so clearly declared perswading themselves that the Son of God should come this onely time on the earth Their sins are the just cause of their blindness they have deserved by their crimes committed against God not to understand this first comming yet without doubt they would have believed this glorious Mystery if they had uhderstood it and if they Would have believed it he had acquired for them eternall salvation This punishment was foretold them and they may read in the holy Scripture that God hath threatned they should not know his secrets that their understanding should not comprehend them that they should have eyes and not see his light eares and not heare his word Now as they could not imagine him whom they saw in this low humility to be a God so they took him only for a man whom when reflecting upon them the effects of his power they gave out that he used Magick and by the helpe thereof cast Divels out the bodies of men restored sight to the blinde cleansed the Lepers healed them that were sicke of the Palsey raised the dead made the Elements obey him appeased Tempests went upon the waters all actions by which hee shewed himselfe to be the ancient Word the first born accomplished with vertue and wisdome as also informed with the spirit of God himselfe The Doctors of the Law and the greatest among the Jewes who saw when he preached that he confounded their errours and that an infinite multitude of people followed him were so incensed against him that in conclusion they accused him before Pontius Pilat the then Governour of Judea under the authoritie of the Emperour Tiberius and by violating justice forced him to deliver them Jesus to bee nailed on the Crosse Hee foretold they should thus unworthily use him but it may be 't would not be enough if the Prophets had not declared it a long time before yet Jesus being on the crosse gave many signes by which he shewed hee was truly the Son of God for after making that great exclamation when a dying he rendered of his own accord his spirit to God his Father preventing therby the Executioners accustomed to breake the thighs of those that were crucified to hasten the end of their lives and deliver them from the pains of a longer punishment Moreover in that very moment wherein Jesus expired which was at noone the Sun lost his light and the Earth was covered with darkness even they who knew not this prodigy should happen at his death and that revealed before to the Prophets did take it for a miracle and because unwilling to discover the reason thereof they denied it that came to pass But you cannot make this wonder suspected seeing your owne Calenders have remarked it and your selves retaine the testimonies thereof in your owne registers The Jews having took Jesus from the Crosse and put him into the sepulchre encompass'd it with a great number of Souldiers
them in perticular And to begin with chastity I read the Athenians gave sentence against Socrates as a defiler of young boyes a Christian man as making love to a woman onely accustomes not to seeke a brutish pleasure in changing the sex which nature hath ordained I have heard a Phrynè hath beene made use of for Diogenes debâ—ystnesse and submitted her body to his fowle affections That Speusippus a Philosopher of platoes schoole was kild n adultery a Christian is permitted to accompany with his lawfull wife onely Democritus deprived himselfe of his sight because hee could not looke upon women without lusting after them and afflicted himselfe when hee could not injoy them and so by consequence witnessed his own incontinence A Christian hath eyes and yet in looking upon women sees them not that is with any unlawfull concupisence being wholly blind in his mind to such desires though quicke sighted enough to behold such like objects with the eyes of his body If question of common civility behold Diogenes with his filthy feet in greater arrogance treads on sumptuous carpets then Plato whose sumptuous carpets they were Neither is a Christian high minded towards the poor If speake of moderation Pythagoras among the Turiens and Zeno among them of Priene play the Tyrants when as a Christian hath not the ambition to be in the least power or office over the people among whom hee lives if wee treat of contentment in mind Lycurgus will famish himselfe because the Lacedemonians went about but to reforme and amend his lawes A Christian even when condemned to die is thank full to those that condemne him If question of faithfullnesse in things committed to anothers trust Anaxagoras refuseth the restitution of goods left with him to his guests A Christian even by those that are not Christians is reckoned trusty because made proofe they have of his fidelity If touch on lowlinesse I find Aristotle made his friend Hermias goe shamefully from the place he had assumed A Christian offers wrong to no body no not his greatest enemie The same Aristotle in designe to governe Alexander the easier flatters him with as much infamy as Plato Dionysius when for good cheere hee soothed up the Tyrant in his liberty Aristippus in the midst of his purple carrying the markes of great severity in his lookes gives himselfe over to all kind of excesses And Hippias when about to betray his countrey is suddenly murdered an act of barbarous revenge never yet undertooke by a Christian to a man linked with him in the interest of the same Religion though with never so much fury persecuted by them But some will say even among us there are a people that gives themselves the liberty of doing evill that free themselves from subjection to our lawes from any what ever exact observation of what legally commanded by us It is true there are some such but so soone as they fall into this disorder wee hold them on more for Christaians But contrarily these Philosophers notwithstanding the irregularity of their lives keepe still with you the name of wise men and the honour which appertaineth to so glorious a title so then what resemblance is there betweene a Philosopher and a Christian a Disciple of Greece and a Disciple of Heaven a mind desirous of vaine reputation and a soule that seekes his salvation onely A man that is vertuous in words onely and hee that is so indeed one that is wholly occupied in doing good and another that makes no conscience in committing what ever wickednesses he that corrupts the truth to establish error and he that by subduing error renders to truth the beauty of its originall hee that turnes truth out of doores as a theefe and steales it away from the sight of men and hee that keepes it faithfully that it may bee known by all the world CHAP. XLVII THe antiquitie of the holy Scriptures which I have heeretofore discovered is a famous testimony which may serve mee still in this place to let you know this holy booke is a treasure from whence these wise men of the world who are come since have taken all they have left to posterity this proofe is proper but long and the onely thing that hinders mee to undertake it is the feare I have to make too great a volume Is there any Poet or Sophister that hath not drawn what he hath of excellent concernment from the rich sources of the Prophets It is in these delicious fountains the Philosophers plunged themselves to qualifie the desires of their minds and some people have also banished Philosophy from them as the Thebans those of Sparta and of Argos because their Philosophers corrupting what they had read in the writings of these men sent from God composed pestilent doctrines which a man could not heare but with horror so these people who as I have said laboured not but for glory and had no affection but for eloquence having met in the holy Scriptures with things that might be gainfull to them made their profit of them and as they had no intention but to Content their curiosity accommodated the same to their designes not acknowledging its holinesse which should have hindred them from corrupting it and not understanding well the sense then covered with cloudes and which the jewes themselves for whom the Prophets had written it apprehended not but thorough shadows that wrapt them up They saw truth there with simplicity alwayes accompanied but humane prudence blinded with her errors not willing to believe in this truth which was shewed to her remaines more doubtfull and unresolved then before from whence it comes these wise men of the world have formed opinions variable and uncertaine touching the same things they found or declared proved with infallible certainty They have learnt onely from the holy Scriptures there is one God and the opinions they have had of the nature of God divides them into many sects One assitming God hath no body other that he is corporeal1 as the Platonicks Stoicks one that God is composed of Atomes other of numbers as Epicurus Pythagoras one that his substaÌ„ce is of fire as it seemes to Heraclitus the Platonicks hold he takes care of the conduct of the world contrarily the Epicurians that he remaines in an idle tranquillity without exercise meddles not at all with human things The Stoicks believe God hath his seat out of the Universe from whence he manageth removes as a potter turnes his frame The Platonicks put him in the world and say hee governes it within as hee that holds the rudder of a ship so they are of different opinions concerning the nature of the world to know whether it hath not been made or whether it hath not beene if it must end one day or must last alwaies so they are not agreed of the condition of our soule some maintaine it is divine and eternall others that it is subject death each of them hath spoken according to his sense