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B20810
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A demonstration of the first principles of the Protestant applications of the apocalypse together with the consent of the ancients concerning the fourth beast in the 7th of Daniel and the beast in the Revelations / by Drue Cressener.
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Cressener, Drue, 1638?-1718.
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1690
(1690)
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Wing C6886
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379,582
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456
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Ordain That all usurped jurisdiction of any Bishops over another's Province shall be ipso facto void And that lest the fear of any Mans power should creep in under a shew of an Holy Function and so we should lose that Liberty insensibly and unawares which our Lord Jesus Christ did purchase with his own Blood the Ephesine Council not long after the time of Theodosius had made an excellent provision against any incroachment of any one part of the Christian Church over the rest so that though there might be some irregular exercise of the Imperial Authority yet whenever any considerable Diocese should have stood up for their Liberty though against the Roman Church they had a right to plead for it from that Council In this estate did things continue till the fall of the Western Empire and then the Arrian Goths being the Masters of Rome and the West there was a composition betwixt them and the Eastern Emperors for a f It appears from Cassiodor Variar L. 10. Ep. 26. That the Gothish Kings did not press any in Italy to their way Theodate to Justinian says there Since the Deity suffers many Religions to be we dare not enjoyn one alone to be followed For we remember it is said That Men must sacrifice willingly to the Lord not at the command of any one to force them to it With good reason therefore does your Piety invite us to that which the Commands of God do require And in the time of Justin before Thedoric forced him to leave off persecuting the Arrians in the East And Zeno and Anastasius before Justin are represented as Lovers of Peace and Union rather than a strict Conformity of which Zeno's Henoticon is an example Petavius says of the Emperour Anastasius That he gave every Man liberty to profess what Sect he pleased Rationar Temp. Part 1. l 7. c. 3. Theodoric to all the Jews lib. 2. ep 27. Gassiodor Variar We cannot says Command Religion because none is to be compelled to believe against his Will mutual Tolleration of Orthodoxy and Arrianism in their respective Jurisdictions And before that had the Emperors Zeno and Anastasius contrived a form of Faith for a Comprehension and Union and did connive at a general Liberty of Conscience But the Emperor Justin after them begins the Project of an Vniversal Conformity to the Roman Religion At the sollicitations of Pope Hormisda he makes g See Petav. Rationar Temp. Part. 1. l. 7. c. 3. Item Anastasius Bibliothecar in Hormisdâ an Union betwixt the Greek and the Latin Church which had been in a Schism against one another near forty years After that in Pope John's time sets out several Edicts against h Petav. ibidem Item Blondus de Inclinat Rom. Imp. in Occidente Pag. 37. Pope John in whose time the Emperour Justin being wholly set upon rooting out all the Heresies throughout the Eastern parts deprived all the Bishops of that Sect of their Places and put their Ministers out of their Churches And a little after not only the Eutichyan Heresy but all kind of different Parties were suppressed throughout all the East Anastasius Bibliothecar to the same purpose in Joanne 1. the Hereticks and heavily persecutes them so as even to suppress all kind of Heresie throughout the Eastern Empire But he was forced by i Anastasius Bibliothec. in Joanne 1. gives an account of Theodoric's sending Pope John in an Embassy to Justin to acquaint him That he would ruine all the Catholicks in Italy if he did not restore the Arrians in the East to their Dignities and Churches And that Justin did thereupon comply with him Theodorick king of Italy to desist and so his Design came to nothing But however there was so good a Correspondence by this means setled betwixt the Emperor and the Bishop of Rome for that common Interest that the Emperor submits to be crowned by the Pope which was the k Petav. Rationa Temp. Part 1. l. 7. c. 3. The Emperour received the Pope with all honour and was the first that received the Imperial Crown at the Popes Hands Anastas Bibliothec. in Joanne 1. first Example of that kind and got the name of Justin l Hieron Rubeus Histor Ravennat pag. 141. Item Anastas Bibliothec. in Joanne 1. the Orthodox for his Piety to the Church This good Correspondence betwixt the Secular and Ecclesiastical Power of Rome was the only means to carry on an Vniversal Vniformity in the Roman Religion For the Imperial Authority was now confined to a very small Jurisdiction and the rest of the Empire was divided into several Kingdoms which had no other Secular Sovereign to command them but their own particular Kings There was therefore no other way of reducing them all to one Religion but by the advancement of a Spiritual Roman Authority to be the principle of Vnity amongst them whose business it should be to overawe the Conscience with the Curses of the Church for the enforcing the execution of the Imperial Penalties For as the Imperial Laws were for every thing else the standing Laws of these divided Kingdoms so the only way to make their Edicts and Sanctions of Councils about Church-matters to take place amongst them was to have them confirmed and enforced by the Authority of an Universal Head of the Church And though the Church Head seems by this to be the principal in all this Affair yet the Temporal Penalties of the Laws being the only certain means to effect an Universal Conformity and this Sovereign Head of the Church himself being also a Creature of the Imperial Power to carry on his design of Uniformity in the Roman Religion as has been observed all the Obedience that Chap. 22. is given by other Princes and their Subjects is really nothing but the Worship of the Beast or of the Imperial Religion and they give their Kingdoms to the Beast when they force their Subjects to submit to that Religion There was nothing that could make it look more like the worshipping of that Roman Authority than this Submission of the Ten Kings who were absolute in their Kingdoms and had as much right to appoint the Laws of Religion to their Subjects as the Roman Emperor had in his own Territories But by this conformity to the Romans they did seem to lay down their N. B. Crowns at the feet of that Nation and to adore them as the great Dictators and Oracles of the Will of God There is indeed not the least appearance of so general an Uniformity at the end of the Reign of the Emperor Justin who as has been observed was not able so much as to bring it about within the bounds of his own Territories But Justinian immediately after him appears in this Design like a new Blazing-star in the East whom all the World began to be afraid of One would indeed from a cursory view of his History be apt to entertain no other Idea of him than as a very eminent Conqueror
Prophecy And this it came not to be till it was the worship of the last Ruling Head in the midst of the several divided Kingdoms of the Roman Empire according to the description of it in the show of the Figure Chap. 13. 17. And besides there is one peculiar circumstance in the worship of the Beast which was never fulfilled till the time of his Reign and that is an actual conformity of all the whole world to it How peremptory soever the command for that Worship might be before yet it will appear that it could not long obtain amongst all those that were of a contrary judgment before the setled establishment of it at the new return of the Imperial Government in the West The reason that I give for this is because the Laws and Commands of the Emperors for Uniformity either had not before that time any penalties in them sufficient to make all the world to comply with them or were hindred from any setled continued execution of them The Penalties annexed to their Laws for Conformity were generally either nothing but Anathema's which Dissenters would not value or deprivations of Clergy-men and Military men And the pulling down and confiscating the publick Meeting-place or prohibitions to all men against coming into the Imperial City And there was no force in these Penalties for an Universal Conformity And the Commotions in the Western Empire would not allow the other severe and more general Penalties to have any constant effect We see Honorius soon after alledging this reason for his renewing his Commands for the terrifying of Hereticks viz. because he was then delivered from the fear of Attalus the Tyrant and Alaricus the Gothish King Now says he that the Oracle is taken away by whom they were encouraged to the exercise of their Heretical Superstition Let all the Enemies of the Holy Law know that they shall be punished with Banishment and also to blood if they will dare to meet still in publick Hieron Rubeus Histor Ravennat lib. 2. pag. 78. Wherefore it can never be thought that there was any thing of this General Conformity in the 4th or 5th Centuries either in the Reign of the Orthodox or Arrian Emperors Constantine seems to have gone as high in his Commands as most that came after him till the time of Theodosius We have a SEE Note the 8th on the 2d Chapter Socrates l. 1. c. 6. in his Edicts and Epistles all the great apprehensions that the World had of General Councils as immediately inspired by the Holy Ghost as the only Warrants for Unity and Uniformity and as vested with a power of denouncing the Curses of God upon Dissenters We find there the suppression of all their b Euseb de Vita Constantini l. 3. c. 63. To the Hereticks We Enact and Command by this Law That none of you shall dare hereafter to meet at Conventicles and that all those places where you were wont to keep close meetings be demolished provided also that you shall not keep any meetings either in publick or in private Houses or in remote places c. 64. And threatned their maintainers with punishments Conventicles the deposing of dissenting Bishops and which seems more terrible than any thing that we find in his Successors the c Socrates l. 1. c. 6. Constantine to the Bishops and People For as soon as he be taken our pleasure is That his Head be stricken off his Shoulders Sozom. l. 1. c. 21. penalty of death threatned to those that should conceal any of Arrius's Books and not deliver them up to be publickly burned but there was nothing in all this that did oblige the generality of the Arrians to Church Communion The Laws of Theodosius were indeed something more severe and of more force for a general conformity d Cod. Justinian lib. 1. de Summa Trinitat Theodos Edict ad pop Constantinop We will have all the people of our Empire be of that Religion which St. Peter the Apostle delivered to the Romans and which it is manifest that Pope Damasus does now follow and Peter Bishop of Alexandria And we command those that follow this Law to take the Name of Catholick Christian upon them and the rest only the name of Hereticks we decree shall be chastised by a Divine Vengeance first by Excommunication and afterwards also by the Revenge of the motions of our own mind as Heaven shall incline us And all over the Theodosian Code Tit. de Haereticis there are nothing but Laws either for pulling down the Meeting-houses of Hereticks or for punishing them and that even to Banishment So Cod. Theodos l. 15. Tit. 5. de Haereticis l. 16. Tit. 4. de his qui supra Religionem contendunt Lex secunda item lex tertia c. 67. de Haereticis l. 21. item l. 26. And Inquisitors appointed l. 9 13 15 31 32 35 52. Cod. de Haereticis Socrates l. 3. c. 4. The Emperour Basilicus's Edict there does mention and enforce Theodosius's Laws viz. That Laicks be punished with Banishment and Confiscation of Goods and Bishops with Deprivation to the Roman Church But whatsoever force these Laws might have yet we may be sure that the inundation of the Barbarous Nations who Baron Anno 585. were generally Arrians all over the whole Empire a few years after must necessarily put an end to that General Uniformity Socrates who lived in those times does indeed tell us That Socrat. l. 5. c. 2. 4. 20. as Gratian before him had granted a general Toleration so Theodosius constrained none of the Sects to be of his Communion but gave them the free exercise of their Religion in publick without the Walls of the City But Sozomen lib. 7. cap. 4 and 5. and Theodor. 5. 15. asserts the quite contrary of Theodosius that he made Decrees for punishing the Arrians with the greatest Severities To the same purpose Philostorgius l. 9. c. 19. If indeed we come narrowly to search into the Laws of Theodosius Arcadius and * Honorius ad Heraclian Comit Africâ An. 411. Sciant omnes Sanctae legis inimici plectendos se poenâ proscriptionis sanguinis si ultra convenire in publicum tentaverint Honorius one may very reasonably question Socrates's fidelity in this account of those times However the Confusions of the Empire by the Inundations of the Barbarians till the fall of the Western Empire may with all reason be judged to have given a continual interruption to the execution of the severest Laws of this kind at least to that general Conformity which is made the Character of the Power of the Beast And then the momentary appearance of this Power of the Beast for so inconsiderable a time can be taken for nothing but his endeavour to appear and which upon its first rise was immediately crushed It is certain that e Concil Ephesin Canon 8. Upon the complaint of the Cyprian Bishops against the Bishop of Antioch's usurped jurisdiction over them They