obtains place § 2. The God of Israel hath his Priests amongst the Gentiles § 3. No acceptable Oblation but what Christians offer tender'd to Israels God § 4. The Gospel hath utterly abolish'd Idols made Virmin-Gods creep into holes § 5. Daphnaean Apollo choakd with the Bones of Babilas Heathen Testimony for the silencing of Oracles the Vanity of their Reasons § 6. Gross Idolatry in the Roman Pale by her own Doctors Confessions and Definitions the Legend of the Golden Calf yet not in the proper and prophetick sence CHAP. VI. Touching the Millenium Revel 20. § 1 Pagan Idol's Fall and Satans binding Synchronize Christianity grew upon the Empire by degrees § 2. Charity 's Cloak cast over the first Christian Emperours § 3. Theodosius made the first Penal Laws against Paganism § 4. Honorius made Paganism Capital then was Satan bound CHAP. VII The Millenium yet to come is a Dream of Waking Men. § 1. The Millenaries shifting of Aera's Apes of Mahometans and Papists Alsted's Boreal Empire § 2. Mr. Meed's Principles overthrow the Faith and Placits of the Ancients Christ will not come to convert but destroy the Jews Satans Binding Synchronizeth with the downfall not of Mahometanism but Gentilism § 3. America though anciently inhabited yet unknown to the ancient Church and therefore implicitly only comprehended in her Faith Hope and Charity § 4. The Millenaries impious and uncharitable Conceptions touching the Gogick-war Their Triumphant Church-Militant § 5. Christ will find more Faith in America than in this upper Hemisphere § 6. Satan's Chain shortned in the lower not lengthened in this upper Hemisphere CHAP. VIII That Satans loosing will not be till the Dawning of the day of Judgment Problematically discuss'd § 1. Elect gathered into the Air over the Valley of Jehoshaphat Chancells not all Eastward but all toward that Valley § 2. The Elect secur'd Satan reenters and drives his old Demesne The wicked destroyed as Rebels actually in arms Believers tried as Citizens by the Books of Conscience and Book of Royal Law § 3. Gog. Revel 20. a greater multitude than will meet before the day of Judgment When Prophecies are to be expounded Literally when Figuratively § 4. The Ottoman Army is not this Gogick § 5. The Fire of the last Conflagration carrieth Infidels into the Abyss The Goats are cast into it after they are convict by the Covenant of Grace White Throne New Heaven and Earth Flames of Fire divided § 6. They that are in Christ rise first but Infidels are first judged The Objection from their being in termino § 7. The Jews Septimum Millenarium is the eternal Sabbath The days of a Tree Isa. 65. 28. The Text Paraphrased CHAP. IX The Force of the general Argument from Prophecy urged § 1. Prophetick Events demonstrate the Reveilers infinite science § 2. And Omnipotencie § 3. The Divine Original of the Gospel § 4. Christ Circumstantiated old Prophecies of Jerusalem's Fall § 5. When her Fall was most unlikely § 6. Precognition demonstrates Pre-existence CHAP. X. The Demonstration of Power § 1. Christians Gleanings exceed Pagans Vintage § 2. Christian stories of undoubted Pagan of dubious Credit § 3. Pagan Miracles mis-father'd § 4. Rome's Prosperity whence § 5. Wonders among Gentiles for the fulfilling of Prophecies § 6. For the punishment of Nations ripe for Excision § 7. Empires raised miraculously for the common good CHAP. XI The Deficiency of the false Characters of true Miracles § 1. Heathen Wonders unprofitable § 2. Of an impious Tendency § 3. Not above the power of Nature § 4. Moses and the Magicians Rodds into serpents § 5. The suns standing still and going back The Persian Triplasia § 6. Darkness at our Saviours Passion § 7. Christs Resurrection the Broad-seal set to the Gospel CHAP. XII The Supernatural Power of Salvifick Grace § 1. The Church triumphs over the Schools § 2. Christianity lays the Ax to the Root § 3. The Rule imperfect before Christ. § 4. The Discipline of the Schools was without Life and power § 5 Real Exornations before Verbal Encomiums Christian Religion 's APPEAL To the BARR of Common Reason c. The First Book It was morally impossible that the Apostolical Church should delude the World with feigned Miracles or Stories CHAP. I. The Contents The Age wherein the Apostles flourish'd was sufficiently secured against the Impostures of Empiricks by its Knowledge in Physicks Ignorance in Naturals the Mother of superstitious Credulity The Darkness at our Saviours Crucifixion compared with that at Romulus his Death Heathen Records of the Darkness of Christ's Passion Sect. 1. HOW easily how certainly would the fraud have been detected had our Saviour and his Apostles wrought their wonderful Cures and stupendous Works by the Application of Natural Causes That Age wherein they were done being an Age of the most improved Wits in Natural Science that the benign Genius of any Age had till then or hath to this day produced Pliny that great Secretary of Nature so industrious a searcher into her Mysteries as in pursuit of the knowledge of the Causes of Vesuviums Conflagration he made so near an approach to that burning Mountain while the dreadful fragor of that fierce Eruption put the most undaunted Spirits into that fright as they fled as fast and far from it as their heels would carry them as he was stifled with its Sulphureous Steam choosing rather to die in the attempt of seeking out than to live in the ignorance of Natures secrets and to throw himself into its flaming Mouth by which it vented what was in its Heart rather than not to know from what abundance of the Heart it s now opened and gaping Mouth spake This unparallel'd Example for our modern Virtuosi who think they infinitely oblige Humane kind and let them never râ—ap the fruit of their ingenuous labours who grudge them that honour by the Experiments they make at the Expence of so much sweat and with the hazzard of stopping their own breath with the Exhalations of their Furnaces This so diligent an Attender upon Natures Cabinet-council was our Saviour's Contemporary by that compute of his age which his Nephew Plinius Secundus gave to Cornelius Tacitus Lib. 6. Epist. 16. requesting from him an account of his Unkles death that he might in his History transmit to posterity the memory of so brave an Exploit A little before him in years and not behind him in sagacity after Natures footsteps flourish'd Mithridates King of Pontus whose name to this day is famous in Dispensatories Regum Orientis post Alexandrum Magnum maximus the greatest of all the Eastern Kings after Alexander the Great so potent as he held the Romans in play 40 years and in his ruine involved almost the whole East and North L. Florus Appianus c. having 25 Provinces under his Dominion and understanding as many Languages as well as the Natives so that he answered all Embassadors in their Mother Tongue Agellius noct Att. l. 17. c. 17. Ingentis
to have a new birth as the same Isidore saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4. After such ploughing the Jew hath no ground to hope for such a Crop for the Prophets stile this the last and that which is to continue for ever that is the ever of their Law and that wherein the Sons of Aarou shall stand ministring during the limited Eternity of Mosaical Ceremonies till Messiah comes and renews all things makes all old things pass away introduces a new World a new Heaven and new Earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Is. Pel. lib. 4. ep 17. And therefore Vespasian's Reply to the Jewish Priests suing for their Lives after their Temple was sack'd was more pertinent and pat to the Idiom of the Old Testament than I believe he was aware of when he told them that now their Temple was gone it was fit they should perish with it as being become wholly useless Creatures that being destroyed for whose sake only they could desire to live Joseph Bel. Jud. 7. 13. § 7. The Conclusion of this Book These Arguments are commonly urged to prove the Divinity of our Religion and they might pass for good Mediums still in that Question were not our modern Atheists grown to that degree of Ingenuity in contriving their own everlasting perdition as to put in all Exceptions imaginable against the Evidences brought for the Probate of the Common Salvation and the Way to it the Common Faith I have therefore so far gratified the delicate Scepticism the versatile Wit of these Pretenses as to draw no other Conclusion from these Premisses but this That the Apostles were men of sound Intellects and not such silly Animals as they deem them And seriously if they deny me the Validity of this Argument they will very much impair the Repute the World hath of themselves as men of Reason and dis-enable themselves of all possibility of making Indication of their own Wit For if the Apostles notwithstanding their contriving the Gospel in such an admirable Compliance with whatsoever things are true whatsoever things are honest venerable as the Philosophers esteemed Virtue whatsoever things are just pure lovely of good report whatsoever things can be thought on as praise-worthy Phil. 4. 8 9. all which the Apostle affirms the Philippians had learned and received and heard and seen in him must still pass for Fools do they not teach the World to think themselves such for all their witty contrived Plays and Romances Sophocles was accused by his Children to have been grown into Dotage but absolved by the Judges when he produc'd a Tragedy which he then made saying Is this the work of a man besides himself Good God! must he that can make five Acts of a Comedy hang together and yet not all out so exactly but that he is forc'd ever and anon to call down some God upon the Stage to help his Invention at a dead lift be writ A WITT With a double W and double T and a great A and those men presented as Fools that acted upon the Stage of the great World that have made Mercy and Truth meet together Righteousness and Peace kiss each other that have made all the Results of true Reason and Religion that were in the World before them scrape acquaintance with and take knowledg of one another and by joynt consent do obeysance to Christian Philosophy Shall the Fame of those Scavinger-inventions go rumbling like a Wheel-barrow that can scrape together the Obscenities of Aristophanes the Impieties of Lucian and lay their Dung on orderly heaps before the Noses of their applauding Spectators who as also Alcaeus writ their Poems when they were drunk saith Athenaeus in his Dipnosoph lib. 9. And the memories of these be turned into the silent Grave with the Burial of an Ass who have gather'd all the Daisies and Lillies of the Vallies the natural Emanations of every vulgar Soul all the rarer Flowers of the best cultivated Gardens of the most refined and abstruse Philosophy and bound them into one Posie a Nosegay for the Bride of the King of Kings Shall the more civilized Atheist for the Steam of that Augean Stable where those neighing Stone-horse-men stand of that Hog-sty where Epicurus his Herd wallow does almost stifle me and I hasten out of it be stroak'd upon the head as a person of a deep reach who can frame his maximes of State sutable to theirs in St. Austin Nolunt stare rempublicam firmitate virtutum sed impuritate vitiorum August Volusiano ep 3. to the humours of the half-witted Vulgar of one Age of one Province and by temporizing therewith keep the Cart on Wheels for a while that is till the Team find the Reins loose upon their Necks and an opportunity of bringing the Wheel over their ungodly Drivers for when the Horse comes to find his own strength and he will quickly learn that if he be not kept in with Bit and Bridle off goes his Rider and give me leave to give our modern Statists this Item that there are a Generation of men in the World that are subject not for Conscience sake but Fear and with these no Governour shall be longer good than he has power over them and they awed from calling him all to nought Shall then I say these Tinker-Machiavilians who in stopping one hole make two pass for great Head-pieces And the Apostles be reputed to have had heads no better than that which the Monkey played with in the Carver's Shop who have laid down such an absolute Model of Polity so fitted to the universal eternal Rules of Reason so perfectly complacential to the Dictates of all men so exactly limitting Superiours and Inferiours in all Ranks of all sorts to their proper Bounds and Vocations as it is impossible for any State Kingdome Empire Corporation Family not to prosper and flourish under the due observation of it or to subsist under the neglect of it execpt it be in judgment to themselves or others Advertit Plato in omni sermone suo de reipublicae institutione proposito infundendum animis justitiae amorem sine qua non solum Respublica sed nec exiguus hominum caetus nec domus quidem parva constabit Macrobius in Som. Scipionis lib. 1. cap. 1. where he gives that as the reason why Plato and Cicero preface their Treatises of the Commonwealth with the discourse of the Soul's Immortality and eternal Rewards Shortly say the Gospel be a Fable it is the most profitable one that ever was devised and the most cunningly devised that ever was shown to the World and shown to the World at its Age of best Discretion Let the whole College of Atheists frame such another piece of Workmanship a piece made up of the Perfections of all other Writings as the Painters Venus of all other Beauties in so perfect a Symetry of parts as they cohere better in this Copy than they did in their several Originals Celsus indeed made a faint offer to shew many things in
mixt with mercy God in his every days anger is strong and patient strong in sparing spends but part of the Arrows in the Quiver of the Menacy Propheticus mos est Summam consternationem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 describere petitâ translatione ab iis quae efficient consternationem in adventu Christi quo veniet ad judicandum mundum But the burthen of Prophesie where it shall fall last will fall with all its weight when it is to have its accomplishment it will have its full accomplishment Ezech. 37. 12. The Prophet understands the Metaphorical Resurrection of Israel from that forlorn estate but he alludes to the Resurrection that shall be at the last day and from his alluding to that Tertullian concludes that that Text will have a fuller accomplishment then Hoc ipso quòd recidivatus Judaici status de recorporatione readunatione ossium figuratur id quoque eventurum ossibus probatur non enim posset de ossibus figurâ componi si non id ipsum ossibus eventurum esset de vacuo similitudo non competit de nullo parabola non convenit Tert. de resurrectione cap. 30. St. Jerom on Ezek. 37. nunquam poneretur similitudo resurrectionis ad restitutionem Israelitici populi significandam si non staret ipsa resurrectio The Prophets would not borrow words from the last judgment from that notion and conception which the world by tradition had thereof to describe particular judgments if those words were not to be fulfilled at that last judgement Tertullian affirms that divine Promises are of the like nature fully accomplishable at the last day quum igitur ultimorum temporum statum Scripturae notent totam Christianae spei frugem in exodio seculi collocent apparet aut tunc adimpleri totum quòdcunque nobis à deo repromittitur c. Tertul. de resur cap. 25. Franc. Junius notes the corrupt reading of exordio for exodio seculi Seeing therefore the Scriptures denote the state of the last times and place the harvest of Christian hope at the latter end of the world it is manifest that then shall be fulfill'd whatsoever God hath promis'd otherwise And therefore we do but adulterate Prophecies touching the last day in receding from the Literal sence in allaying the briskness of that Cup of Fury with the sober Nymph the water of figurative Expositions any farther than to tame the killingness of the Letter its manifest either Iniquity or Impossibility of which the Literal Exposition of these words which I give are out of danger for 't is possible enough that at the Resurrection of the unjust when all the Infidels and excommunicate persons shall stand up out of the dust together they will cover the breadth of the Earth the Wings of that Army of Aliens from the Covenant of Grace will reach North and South and their Files be as deep as from East to West though they stand at no greater distance one from another than an Army in Battalia It has been doubted by some how so great a multitude could make their appearance together before the Judge and therefore they have thought the judgment of the Heathen would take up a thousand years while God called them one after another but my Hypothesis salves that doubt without the help of such a subterfuge However the raising of such doubts is an argument that in common sence there will be people enough to fill the whole face of the Earth saving that part of it that shall be railed in about the holy Mount And that 's an Argument that the far greatest part of that Army must rise out of the Earth for from whence else can so many be gathered as shall cover the whole superficies of the Earth Caelum non habet unde cadat and so many living together in a mortal state would put the world into such a crowd as might well excuse the Americans for seeking to enlarge their quarters As for that other expression as the sands on the Sea shore for multitude he that thinks it an Hyperbole may think it so still for me and without prejudice to my Position for as it is manifest that so many men as there are grains of sand upon the shore would not have room to stand upon the Earth and therefore according to the caution I have given we must fly to the Figurative sence here the Literal being manifestly impossible so all that I need affirm is this that this Gogick and Magogick Army shall for multitude come as near the Sand on the Sea-shore as an Army can do that is pitched on the Earth § 4. Secondly When Satan marcheth in the head of this Army the Saints must be locally imbodyed for it encompasseth the holy City and the Camp of the Saints assembled and in procinctu into which posture how they could be drawn but by the summons of the last Trumpet is not conceivable except we fancy that some lesser City and Assembly than the general of the Saints shall be besieged by this General Army of Infidels As the Learned Dr. Hammond applies it to the Turks taking of Constantinople whereas there is no mention in the Text of taking but only of encompassing the holy City in the act and attempt whereof they are said to be destroyed by Fire coming down from God out of Heaven And though the Ottoman Family the off-spring of the Lydians who are called the People of Gog from Gyges their first King or Scythians stiled by Josephus Magogaei might be a Type of St. John's Gogs and Magogs encompassing the Camp of the Saints in their besieging Constantinople yet as they did not in all points Typifie this Gogick Army so they did not in any one point Typifie it fully not in multitude for instance for though the Ottoman Armies be very numerous yet they are not comparable to the old Scythian Armies under Tomyris nor the Lydian under Gyges much less to that Muster of this Army which St John brings in and therefore in that respect cannot so much as be an Antitype of Ezekiels old Gog much less the very Gog of St. John For Prophecies acquire strength in their motions towards a perfect accomplishment Vespasian's sacking of Jerusalem and captivating of the Jews came higher up to the terms of the old Menacy than that which was inflicted by Nebuchadnezzar and the Judgment of the last day will out-doc Vespasian's Desolation and make up whatever that wanted of fulfilling every tittle of that Prophecy which described those Judgements in Terms borrowed from the horror and greatness of this § 5. Thirdly It is the common Tenet of the Schools that Ignis ultimae conflagrationis that Fire that shall refine and purge the Sublunary World shall go before Christ when he comes to his Judgment-seat and by purging its dregs from the old make a new Heaven and a new Earth wherein his white Throne shall be erected Quòd per ignem conflagrationis ultimae futura sit elementorum purgatio probatur
Israel and to have born up the Spirits of Idol-worshippers sinking under those burthens which Gods Prophets saw against false Gods whom according to their Prophesies we have seen broken to pieces like a Potters vessel with the Iron-rod of that Son of God whom he hath set up as King upon the Hill of Sion to whom he hath given the Heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the Earth for his possession Who coming out of his Chamber as a Bridegroom that is Conjugatum carni humanae Verbum processit de útero virginali August de consens 1. 16. the Word Married to humane flesh came out of the Virgins Womb. Rejoyceth as a Giant to run his course not only from one end of the Hemisphere unto the other as they would bound Christs Kingdom who exclude America from the hopes of it but from one end of the Heaven to the other and if that be not plain enough nothing is hid from the heat thereof not any part of the round World that the corporeal Sun visits Mankind receives the cherishing warmth of its Beams and basks it self in that Fountain of Light The Serpent feels their scorching heat and flees therefrom Et adhuc isti fragiles contradictiunculas garrientes eligunt magis isto igne sicut stipula in cinerem verti quam sicut aurum à sorde purgari And will the crazy-headed Sceptick yet chatter and gaggle out his petit and bublie Exceptions which break with the least touch with the gentlest blast and choose rather to be consumed to ashes in this fire as stubble than to be purged by it from his dross as Gold § 3. Or is he of so thick-skin'd a Soul as not to feel the heat of Christs Divinity in those Prophetick Rayes emitted from his Spirit before he came in the Flesh as not to conceive that the accomplishments of Old Testament-Prophecies is a demonstration not only of their own but of the Gospels Divine Original which can be the Workmanship of none other Architect but of him who drew the Model and Idea of these new Heavens that new Creation that new face of things which we see produc'd in the Age of Christianity Humane Wit indeed might have drawn another Model perfectly resembling that might have fram'd an History parallel to Prophecy though they that could make the Counter-part so exactly answer the Original and write so perfectly after the Copy as the Apostles have must be Persons of a steady Hand excellently composed Spirits and solid Judgements And therefore all the Inference we drew in our Second Book from the Apostles proportioning every Limb and Line of their Story to the Old Testament-Draught was that they had thereby demonstratively acquitted themselves from all suspicion of being themselves deluded But it is out of the reach of Humane power to bring the Matters there prophesied of unto Birth the erecting of the Structure it self the production of what was fore-told into real existence cannot be the Effect of any but of him alone who hath as great an Infinity of Power to bring to pass as he hath of knowlege to foresee them And therefore having proved the Truth of what the Apostles reported that what they say was done in order to the accomplishment of Prophecy was done indeed he must be a person of very short Reason that from the improvement of the Premisses cannot improve the Conclusion and draw this Inference That as nothing but Omnisciency could foresee so nothing less than Omnipotency could effect That a Virgin should bring forth a Son externally so mean as those among whom he convers'd saw so little comliness in him as they Crucified him as an Impostor for saying he was the Son of God the King of the Jews that Messia promised in the Law and so much predicated by the Prophets and yet really so full of Majesty as he is become King of Kings hath subdued the World to his Obedience abolish'd all the Gods of the Nations and erected every where the Worship of that one God that made Heaven and Earth that God of whom Moses writes known formerly only in Jewry but now no where less known than among the Jews they being the greatest strangers to their own Prophets and their Fathers God being the greatest stranger to them of any Nation upon the face of the Earth § 4. But that I may not put the Sceptick to the expence of all the Reason he hath and that he may not think it is through penury of New Testament-prophecies that I pitch upon those of the Old and that he may grope out the Divinity of the Blessed Jesus in some palpable accomplishments of the Predictions he made in person as well as by Proxy I shall here mind him of this Note That Christ espoused all the Old Testament-prophecies commented upon them applied them and not only attested the coming to pass of what the Prophets had foretold in general but as it were individuated those generals by more particular and punctual Circumstances not so much as hinted by them of old and appeal'd to their accomplishment in that way and with those Circumstances wherewith he cloath'd them The prophets gave only the rough draught of what Christ drew to the life he lickt their rude Lumps into so distinct and explicite forms as the Prophecies became his own his Gleanings were more than their Vintage To instance in one for all Christ in his Prophecy of the Destruction of Jerusalem referrs to Daniel when you shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel thereby appealing to its accomplishment as that which he was content to stand or fall by as to mens belief that he was the Messias as if he had said if you see it not within the Term of Daniels Weeks within so many years after my offering an Attonement for sin as Daniel states it after the Oblation of the Messias believe me not that I am he But withal he leaves it not in such curious Calculations as Daniel did but what he had writ in figures Christ transcribes in words at length and applies it to that Generation with that perspicuity and in such particularities as an Historian can scarce tell what has been done more punctually than Christ foretells what should be done 1. As to the time of its taking Effect there be some saith he standing here that shall not tast of Death till all these things shall be fulfill'd and in particular St. John shall tarry till Christ come to avenge himself on the Jewish Nation 2. As to the Instruments to be employed by Christ for the destruction of their place and Nation he describes them by their Banners the Eagles under which the Roman Legions those Birds of prey march'd when divine Justice conducted them into Judaea that they might flesh themselves upon that Nation whose Inhabitants their sins being ripe were as Carcasses fatted and prepared for them signified as Tacitus thinks by that prodigy of a Dog bringing to Vespasian a dead
which actuated the Divining Faculty of the Mind as the Light doth the Eye and made it exert it self in prophesying which in time were either wasted or diverted to some other place as it happens to Fountains which in length of time either dry up or flit by reason that the subterranean Fire which distills them either goes quite out for want of fuel or Creep after its fomes till it meet with matter enough to feed it and caverns long enough to be Limbecks for such distillations A Salvo which is neither broad enough for the sore for it cannot be a sufficient reason why all the Oracles should at once be silenc'd nor consist with common Principles touching those delusive Responds and exploded by Cicero de divinat nor comparable to that which the Christian brings and the Oracle of Apollo himself was forc'd to acknowledge though so much against his will As when the obstinate Pagans would not rest satisfied with that answer but labour'd to overcome his obstinate silence and by Charms extort a better Respond from his Tripos that he might be no longer forc'd to speak so much to his own disgrace he stifled his Prophetess whom against her will they thrust into the Cave when by all ordinary dumb shows he had first exprest his dislike of their making enquiry at his Oracle the Victim standing still as without sense at the first libations and scarce shrugging when they rain'd powr'd whole showers of water upon him What could the poor dumb Idol do more towards the rebuking the madness of the enquirers that would still be asking questions of him after he had so often and with so much passionate grief told the world he was tongue-tied from giving any other answer then this That he was forbid by an higher power the Hebrew Child whom all Gods are commanded to obey and worship to give answers What could the poor dumb Beast do more towards the stopping them in that prohibited way than to stand stone still neither winnying as we say in the North nor wagging the Taile neither tossing her horns nor shaking her ears when water was poured on her head it being a received Maxim in the Pontifical Schools That when the Libations proceeded not Canonically it was an infallible sign of the aversion of the Daemon of his dislike of what they were about Capram argui frigida affusa si non moveatur Non enim esse animae secundùm naturam affectae non moveri atque affici cum libamenta inverguntur Constanter verum est litare signum esse exiturae sortis non litando demonstrari responsum nullum exiturum iri Plut. ibid. 677. And a Principle with the Delphick Priests that if the Sacrifice during the libation did not furiously rage and fling about not her head only but her whole body it was a demonstration that Apollo would give no answer had no mind to speak at that time Quos perdere vult Jupiter dementat whom God intends mischief to he takes sense from and therefore though the G 〈…〉 sullen stupidity spake Apollo's sullen silence yet Pythia must down into the Cell she must take the question and fit brooding upon the Tripos to hatch an Answer but no Answer she receives from the Daemon saving that which stopt her own breath and all future access to Delphos For at her first entrance into the prophetick Cave she was replete with a malignant and dumb Spirit and by hideous shrieks exprest she was not able to bear the burthen of the enraged Daemon by whom after she had been every way tost she was at last hurl'd up to the mouth of the Den in so ghastly a posture and with so terrible a clamour as frighted away not only the inquirers but the whole College of the Priests and Nicander the Wizzard This is the last news we hear in Pagan Authors of the Delphick Oracle § 6 Of the hitherto-accomplishment of the last Branch of those kind of prophetick Texts viz. That where the Gospel comes it utterly abolisheth all Pagan Idols so as they shall never get footing there again our eyes may inform us if we carry them through those Countries where Christian Religion hath once been establish'd though many of them have by publick Sanction since exploded it yet we shall find Christ still keeping possession of those Countries by parties professing the Gospel there in all Mahometan Nations there is a remnant of Christians And though Christian Religion be discountenanced by the Secular Power yet hath there not been any where a restauration of any of the Pagan Gods or any God allowed to be worship'd but the God of Israel the God that made Heaven and Earth Though the Christian World be deplorably immers'd in Metophorical Idolatry of Pride and Self-adoration of Avarice and making Gold its hope and delight of sensuality and making a God of the Belly which is in us the same translated foolery that the worshipping of Garlick was in the old Aegyptians Though the School-doctrine touching the worshiping of Angels Images and Saints departed bids fair for the restauration of the Pagan Doctrine of Daemons and would bring the vulgar into extream peril of as gross as senseless Idolatry as any the Heathens committed if it were practised which I add because I think the veriest Ideot a wiser man than to follow the Dictates of those great Clarks who always musing in their Cells bring forth sometimes through want of concourse with men as inform Notions as those lumps of Flesh or concealed Menstrâ—a's which some Virgins are delivered of without the knowledge of Man when the Passive Seed of that Sex betaking it self to the Matrix obstructed and wanting the Plastick male Sperm to digest it into form piles it self into a rude heap So monstrous are some of the Issues of these mens brains brought forth upon this subject as Cassander that wise and yet zealous Papist cannot lick them into any tollerable or practicable Form and therefore adviseth Charles the Fifth that Biel's Doctrine which substitutes the Virgin Mary or other Saints in the Office of Christs Mediatorship might be exploded that those Titles given her of Queen of Heaven Queen and Mother of Mercy our Life our Hope Light of the Church Advocate and Mediatrix might be laid aside that those Liturgical forms wherein a power is ascribed to her to command Christ now Reigning in Heaven might be expung'd Such as these Ora matrem jube filio If you pray to the Mother you command the Son Oh faelix puerpèra Nostra pians scelera June matris impera Redemptori That he would wholly prohibit all ostentation of Reliques and take care that the people might be taught to reverence the true Reliques of Saints only to wit the Examples of their Piety and Vertues And as to the Worshipping of Images he wisheth that the German and Gallican Churches had still persisted in the Opinion of the Ancient Church and of their Progenitors for it is saith he more manifest than that
abolition of Idols so they laid a sure ground for the Fathers of the succeding century to conclude that the beatum Millenium the Reign of the Saints on the Earth with Christ and the time of Satan's binding was then commenc'd when they saw Paganism wholly exterminated from the Earth Idols either broken or cast into holes all the then known World over For the Fathers generally never dreamt of the Antipodes but in scorn of their possible being For a Millenary I will name Lactantius Institut lib. 3. cap. 24. Quid illi qui contrarios vestigiis Antipodes putant Num aliquid loquuntur aut est quispiam tam ineptus qui credat esse homines quorum vestigia sunt superiora quam capita aut ibi quae apud nos jacent universa pendere fruges arbores deorsùm versùs crescere pluvias nives grandinem sursùm versùs cadere in terram miratur aliquis hortos pensiles inter septem mira narrari cùm Philosophi agros maria urbes montes pensiles faciunt For an Antimillenarian St. Austin who de Civitate 16. 9. censures the relation of the Antipodes to be an incredible Fable Now St. Austin who lived to see the utmost bounds of the Empire and of this upper Hemisphere subjected to Christs Septer and freed from the service of Idols speaks of those Prophesies which foretel that Christ should reign from Sea to Sea and to the worlds end as then fulfilled and Lactantius would have joyned with him in that triumphant Song had he lived to that Age and seen that one God alone exalted in the Earth who in his time was rival'd with so many false Gods § 3. But you will say this was triumphing before the Victory a mistake of the Fathers to think the whole VVorld was become Christs when one half of it stood out against him In answer to this Objection some say and have perswaded themselves to think that America hath not been long inhabited but that it was first possest by such Pagans as from the Light of the Gospel and the penalties of the Imperial Laws fled thither before the face of Jesus as the Tyrians to Carthage from before Joshua If this surmise were true it would be a good Salvo and give light to those passages in Old Testament prophesie where it issaid the Idols shall go under ground be cast to the Moles and Bats to that Hemisphere which was then uninhabited c. But it is wholly against reason that a place so near that part of the World where Noah's Posterity first seated themselves as some question whether it be not the same Continent and others confess them sever'd by a narrow Sea Fullers Miscelan l. 2. c. 4. should not more early be found out Noah having taught the World how the Seas might be made passable and those parts where he seated his children so crowded with inhabitants as men to enlarge their quarters and to avoid hunger which breaks stone walls forc'd their way to new seats through the most inhospitable Climates Secondly I therefore prefer here this answer that this upper Hemisphere in the common dialect of the Prophets signifies the whole world God being pleased to accommodate his language to the Conceptions of the vulgar And therefore he himself put that new Song into the Churches mouth wherein she triumph'd in her Christ as install'd sole King over the VVorld when he gain'd that eminent part of it into his possession that had been the Stage of Scripture-history and of the Apostles Peregrination and was at that time both when they were given out and began to receive their accomplishment the only known VVorld Not that I subscribe to that of Mr. Meed that this Hemisphere is to be solely partaker of that universal Restauration which the Scriptures mention and what Nation soever are out of its bounds are reserv'd for Christs Triumph at the day of judgement and to be destroyed with that fire which shall consume those Armies that shall compass the holy City which that learned person conceives shall be listed by Satan in America and thence drawn up against the Camp of the Saints that is as he opines the old VVorld men wholly reigning with Christ. For this is not only contrary to Experience whereby we learn that that new VVorld is coming in a pace to Christ. Vide Heylin Amer. 2019. But other express Prophesies that mention the round VVorld and all that dwell therein all Nations whom God hath created as portions of Christs Inheritance that mention every Tongue and every Knee confessing to and bowing to the God of the whole earth c. And therefore as those that lived before the discovery of this new found VVorld might when they saw the old converted appropriate that universal Restauration unto it in Faith and Charity extending themselves to the utmost bounds of the explicite hope of those Centuries which preceded that subjection of that old VVorld to the Royal Law So we to whom the knowledge of the new VVorld is communicated by our excluding of that from the benefit of Redemption transgress the Law of Faith Hope and Charity 1. Of Faith for though the belief of the being of the Antipodes be no Article of Christian Faith yet the belief of their future Call upon supposition of their being is that is he that knows there are Tongues and Knees under the Earth is bound to believe that in Gods appointed time every knee there shall bow to every tongue there shall confess to the only true God Yea were I sure by a certainty of Reason or indubitable Intelligence that men inhabit the VVorld in the Moon I were bound to be sure by an equal certainty of Faith that the Inhabitants of that VVorld shall have their season of Grace as well as we 2. Of that Hope which the Primitive Church had which expresly dilated it self to the expected Conversion of all Nations and implicity upon supposition that there were Nations and Languages there of those of the lower Hemisphere And 3. Lastly of that Charity wherewith the first Christians embrac'd all that VVorld they could grasp with their minds From which Christian Charity how far do they deviate from whose Pens fall such unmerciful Sentences such bitter things against the poor Americans as the defence of their Hypothesis naturally draws from our Modern Millenaries from the guilt of which uncharitableness they will hardly be acquitted by wiping their mouths and ascribing this severity justo at nobis incognito Dei judicio to the just but to us unknown judgement of God upon that so great a part of the VVorld For though the deferring of their Conversion so long may piously be ascribed to the secret and incomprehensible counsel of the all wise God at the depth whereof in this case of his having mercy upon some of the most barbarous Gentiles so early in the day of the Messias and so long before he had mercy on far more civilized Nations Reason and Religion
Infidels into the Abyss The Goats are cast into it after they are convict by the Covenant of Grace White Throne New Heaven and Earth Flames of Fire divided § 6. They that are in Christ rise first but Infidels are first Judged The Objection from their being in termino § 7. The Jews Septimum Millenarium is the eternal Sabbaoth The days of a Tree Isa. 65. 28. The Text Paraphrased § 1 THat this loosing of Satan shall not be till the Dawning of the Day of Judgement touching which I humbly submit to the candid Censure of the Church these my conjectures with my Reasons for them That Text Rev. 20. He shall gather them together from the four corners of the Earth seems to allude to Mat. 24. 31. and to be subsequent to that gathering of the Elect. He shall send his Angels with a great sound of a Trumpet and they shall gather his elect from the four winds and from the one end of the heaven unto the other touching which first gathering of the Elect St. Paul tells us it shall be in order to their meeting of Christ in the day of Judgment at the sound of which Trumpet the dead in Christ shall rise first and then those Christians whom that day shall find alive shall in the twinckling of an eye be changed into the same form and condition of body with those that arose from the Dead and be caught up in the Air to meet Christ. Qui merebantur compendio mortis per demutationem expunctae concurrere cum resurgentibus Tertul. de resur cap. 41. They who obtained by that short cut of death cancel'd by change the priviledge to run together with them that rise to the place of Judgment And the ancient Church generally thought that the Center to which this gathering of the Saints should be is the Valley of Jehoshaphat whither she expected Christ would come to judge the World and in testimony of that her expectation and that she might in all her religious Assemblies be found waiting for that appearance of her Lord and be mindfull of that our general gathering unto Christ she turn'd her face while she worship'd toward that point of the Earth and therefore the sacred Places of Publick Worship were built with their Chancells where the Communion-Table the visible Throne of Grace stood at the East end if the place were Westward but at the West end of their Church if the place were East of that Valley that so in what coast soever the Name of Christ was invocated their Eyes and Minds might be directed thither this is the very reason why the Chancel of the Patriarchall Church of Antioch stood at the West-end and without doubt all the Churches within that Patriarchat that stood East of Judea were conformable to the Mother-Church as that was to the Practise of the Universal which from every point of the Circumference had its Lines drawn to that Navel of the Earth that Center of the general Assembly And therefore Socrates is out in his giving the standing of the Chancel of that Church contrariwise to the Chancels of the European and Natolian Churches for an Instance of the different Usages and Rites of some Churches from others for though in the rest of the Examples that he produceth one Church differ'd from another without breach of Charity or contempt of Religion yet in this Ceremony of looking towards the Valley of Jehosaphat there was an Universal Conformity no Church having so little manners as to turn her breech upon the place of Judgment while she worshipp'd the Judge and made Confession of her belief that she dayly expected his appearance over that place where at his ascension he was taken out of the sight of his Disciples into heaven and his Angels after that assured them that he should so come in like manner as they had seen him go into Heaven Which among other circumstances must imply that of the Place if not mean that above any other For as to other manner of his second Coming it will be with a far greater Train of Angels than they then saw him ascend with and in far greater Glory § 2. The Elect that is all that have profest the Worship of the true God or as David calls them Gods Saints that have made a Covenant with him by Sacrifice being gather'd to the place of Judgment or during their gathering thither For it seems Tertullian thought the Pagans would be at the heels of the rising Saints and that they might not surprise the Saints then living they should be changed in a moment and in the twinkling of an eye be in readiness to march up to the place of Judgement with those that are risen before the Antichristian party both of the then living and immediately to be rais'd could seize upon them Hujus gratiae privilegium illos manet qui ab adventu Domini deprehendentur in carne propter duritias temporum Antichristi moriebuntur compendio mortis c. Tertull. Ibidem This Election I say being gathered or a gathering to the place of Judgements the reprobates that is all Idolaters the whole Pagan World that have lived and died in Gentilism shall be raised and those that are living shall be changed And Satan now let loose the whole Church waiting in the Air the Judges coming will re-enter upon his old Demesne and drive all the Cattle he there finds as his own as weises and strays from the great Shepherd of Souls and perswading them perhaps that he raised them from the dead and would now at last be reveng'd on Christ and his Saints and dequoying them into an opinion that they had a fair opportunity of making havock of the City and People of God altogether of swallowing up the little Flock of Christ at one morsel now they were all in a body and a body so contemptible in comparison of those multitudes which he headed being as the Sand on the Sea-shore or by whatsoever insinuations he will prevail with them to march up under his and his Angels conduct from all parts of the World Gog and Magog tectum intectum as St. Jerom expounds Ezek. 28. and 29 the hidden Climes of the lower the known World of the upper Hemisphere against the holy Land and the Camp of the Saints which while they are encompassing the Judge appears and with that devouring fire that goes before him destroyes them in a moment For they being taken in the act of Rebellion as Cora and his Complices divine justice shall not need to proceed against them in a formal way of trial but the Earth chapt with this Fire of the last Conflagration cleaves asunder opens her mouth and receives them with the dregs of the whole Creation into that Abyss whither that Deluge of Fire to which the Heaven and Earth that now are are reserved shall drive them Judicium quod est retributio pro peccatis omnibus competit judicium quod est discussio meritorum solis fidelibus nullo
in Ps. dicitur in conspectu ejus ardebit ignis posteà loquitur de judicio advocabit caelum desursum terram discernere populum suum 2 Pet. ult Caeli ardenter solventur elementa ignis ardore tabefient Aquin. sum par 3. q. 74. And that this Flame and Tempest shall burn up Gods enemies round about inflammabit in circuitu inimicos Aquinas proves out of the Psalms and Dan. 7. Fluvius igneus rapidusque egrediebatur à facie ejus A Fiery stream shall go out of his mouth Upon which he alledgeth this Gloss ut malos puniat bonos purget That he may punish the evil and purge the good And thence draws this conclusion Ergò ignis finalis conflagrationis in infernum cum reprobis demergetur Therefore the Fire of the last Conflagration shall sink into Hell with Reprobates and carry with it the Lees of the whole Creation that is all the Lees which that fire can naturally separate and finds unseparated to wit the corruptible properties of and the stains which sin hath cast upon the whole sublunary world And therefore we must except here humane mortality for that shall be removed by the resurrection of the dead and the change of the living By the way take notice that Thomas his bonos probet is a Popish Novelty the dreggs of the School doctrine of purgatorie brought in to doe that in instanti which they fancy the fire of Purgatory to effect by degrees and in time Except he thereby mean that this fiery cataract by not touching them by leaving no more smell of burning upon them than that furnace Fire did upon the three Children will prove the Elect to be at their Resurrection Fire proof though that is more than need for the Church will be in the air higher above this flood of Fire than Noah was above the Flood of water But that which I observe as truly Catholick in the School Doctrine concerning this last Conflagration is that this stream of Fire that shall proceed out of the judges mouth at his appearance that flaming Fire wherein the Lord Jesus when he shall be reveiled from Heaven with his mighty Angels shall take vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not his Gospel that is Infidel-Jews and Gentiles 2 Thes. 1. 7 8. 9. will deluge all those Infidels and drive them and the Devil into the Abyss or in St. Pauls stile shall punish them with everlasting destruction from that presence of the Lord and from that Glory of his power wherein he shall appear when he cometh to be glorified in his Saints and to be admired in all them that believe That this Fire I say shall carry Infidels in the stream of it into the pit from the presence of Christ Whereas the Goats shall be dismist into it Depart from me ye wicked into everlasting Fire In its proceeding from Christs presence it drives Infidels before it but the Goats are sent after them into it It casts the whole Kingdom of Satan all his profest Subjects with its rowling waves into the uttermost Hell But after that the Angels gather whatsoever upon trial is found offensive all the Tares in the Field of the Church and shall cast them into it after they have bound them in bundles That at this Fiery appearance of Christ at which the Saints shall lift up their heads they that are so indeed confidently and they that are so only by calling hopefully the first being assured of Heaven the last not altogether despairing to receive Absolution For Aliud est ad veniam stare aliud ad gloriam pervenire aliud pendere in die judicii ad sententiam Domini aliud statim a Domino coronari Cyprian ep 52. Anton. fratri lib. 4. epist. 2. and the foolish Virgins stand at door and knock and wait and hope for entrance till they hear the sentence That at this Fiery appearance I say the Heaven and Earth that now is shall pass away and bear down with their dregs the whole Company of Infidels into the place of torment into the sink of all the Scum of the Creation That God shall thus divide the Flames of Fire before he divide the Goats from the Sheep as both Goats and Sheep shall warm themselves thereat while the strangers to the Covenant flie from their scorching heat and are beaten down by the beams of it into the everlasting Dungeon is well exprest by St. Jerom in his First Epistle to Heliodorus Pavebit terra cum populis tu gaudebis Judicaturo Domino lugubre mundus immugiet tribus ad tribus pectora ferient potentissimi quondam reges nuda latera palpitabunt Exhibebitur cum prole suâ Venus tunc Ignitus Jupiter adducetur cum suis stultis Plato discipulis Aristoteli sua argumenta non proderunt Tunc rusticanus pauper exultabis videbis dices ecce Crucifixus meus qui obvolutus pannis in praesepio vagiit hic est ille operarii questuariae filius hic qui matris gestatus sinu hominem Deus fugit in Aegyptum hic vestitus coccino hic sentibus coronatus hic Magus demonium habens Samarites Cerne manus Judaee quas fixeras cerne latus Romane quod foderas videte corpus an idem sit quod dicebatis clam nocte sustulisse discipulos The Earth shall tremble with its inhabitants when the Lord comes to judgment the World shall lament Tribe by Tribe shall smite their breasts the most potent Kings of old their hearts will be at through their naked sides Venus will appear with her off-spring Fiery Jupiter shall be brought into the Court and Plato with his foolish Scholars Aristotle ' s arguments will stand him in no stead Then shalt thou who art a Christian though never so clownish and poor exâ—lt and laugh and say Behold this is he who was Crucified for me who was wrapped in swadling cloaths laid in a Manger wayling this is that son of the Carpenter and of her who earn'd her bread with the sweat of her brows this is he who being God was carried in his Mothers bosom and fled into Aegypt from the fury of a man this is he that was arrayed in purple and crowned with Thorns this is that Samaritan Conjurer that had a Devil Behold those hands Jew which thou nailedst see that side Gentile which thou piercedst see whether this be the same body which you said his Disciples stole away by night And as plainly asserted by St. John who not only mentions the erecting of the white Trone on which Christ is to sit in Judging the Saints by calling after the destruction of the Infidels and after that Heaven and Earth was fled away from the face of the Judge at his first appearance Musculus in Thes. 4. We shall be caught up into the air to meet the Lord Tum sane expiabitur repurgabitur aer ab immundiciâ malorum spirituum quemadmodúm terra ab inhabitatione impiorum
the holiness of that Society whereof they are no Members nor the Efficacy of that Religion they either never came under the power of or have rejected the yoak of what must it be presum'd that the Sun shines not that its beams warm not because those men see not its Light are not refresh'd and vegetated with its Warmth who either shut their eyes or remove into a Clime it never visits Dr. Hammond An. in Heb. 4. 2. But the word that was heard did not profit those who were not by Faith joyned to them that obeyed it Shall we condemn the Seed because it thrives not to maturity of Fruit in the ground of a dishonest heart where either the fowles of the Air pick it up or it wants depth of earth or is choak'd with Thorns and Weeds Shall we question whether Christ be risen because men whose affections are so strongly set upon the earth as they cannot elevate them towards Heaven are not risen with him when we see such palpable Effects and Demonstrations of it in his raising those to a newness of Life who do not resist grieve or quench his Spirit but with an humble teachableness follow its conduct in that way of holiness his Word hath chalk'd out before us In order to our perseverance in this way and confirmation in our assurance that it will infallibly lead us to Peace here and eternal Glory hereafter I have undertaken this vindication of the Christian Faith against the prejudices which our modern either Scepticks or Atheists have taken up against it which as they took their rise from the Scandals which have been cast upon Religion by the woful miscarriages of men professing it in guile and hypocrisie so they must fall before a Spirit of Grace and Glory resting upon the embracers of it in Truth and Sincerity and shining out upon the World in their so peaceable humble meek and every way Christian deportment and men seeing their good works may glorifie their Father who is in Heaven and revere that Discipline as proceeding from that Father of Lights by whose influence the wildness of common Nature is abated and its vertuous Seeds so improved as to bring forth Fruit chearing the heart both of God and Man To which if thou beest instigated Christian Reader to aspire by the perusal of this Discourse and so become one of Christs Witnesses by sealing to the Truth of the Gospel by a Life answerable to its most holy just and yet easie Precepts thou wilt lay up for thy self a good Foundation for time to come and contribute towards the conviction of the Adversaries of the Christian Faith by an Argument so familiar as it incurrs into every mans sense and so strenuous as the most stubborn Atheist will not be able to resist it but be forc'd to confess the unreasonableness of his own Exceptions against a Religion that brings forth such Divine Effects Would we all study thus to adorn the Doctrine of God our Saviour in all things such real exornations would render Religion more venerable in the eyes of the VVorld than all verbal Encomiums those whom the close fist of the most Logical Arguings cannot force the commanding beck of that open-handed Eloquence would allure to a silent admiring of that sacred Fountain whence they see such healing VVaters flow That this my Request to my Readers may take effect I shall back it with that Request to God which my Dear Mother the Holy Church of England hath put into her Childrens mouth More especially we pray for the good estate of the Catholick Church that it may be so guided and govern'd by thy good Spirit that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of Truth and hold the Faith in Unity of Spirit in the Bond of Peace and in Righteousness of Life And this we beg for Jesus Christ his Sake To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour and Glory world without end Amen FINIS To their old Cells and Altars the whole crew Of Guardian Gods Troy falling bid adieu While impious Caesar and his Godded rout Spurn Phoebus Tripos with insulting foot The learned Varro useth to expend So many hours in reading as we deem A winged minutes scantling can scarce lend It self unto his pen yet that doth seem To trust more notions to his sweating Page Than quickest eye can run o're in an Age. To my dark Cabin in the Stygean strand Dismiss me or if that be too much ease Send me to Phlegethon where I may stand Rather than here chin-high in fiery seas Haled from Styx to Thebes my ancient seat Had I my choice hard choice I would retreat If Heaven the fire and Earth the dam of things Had been from Ever whence is 't no Poet sings Of Wars more old than Troy of Floods than Noah Of Rapes than Jove and thousand wonders moe Had men nor hands to act nor hands to write During the seculum Prae-Adamite Had Nile for ages numberless no Reed Nor Bees Wax nor Trees Bark nor Hills a breed of Sheep nor Sheep a Skin nor Goose a Quill Nor Polypus his native Ink distil Or Man the Goose of all not wit to learn To make a Pen much less to guide a Stern Or build a Ship or break a Horse or bring The Oxe to th' yoke the Hawk to lure or string The warbling Lute or count the Stars by name Or other Arts whose birth we know by fame Whose growth we see come on with age We owe to thee great Caesar Triumphs many More Temples built and Temples that lay waste Repair'd more Cities Gods and Shews than any But most that thou hast taught Rome to be chaste Whom we invoke for Gods 't is Jove's decree Were Men of Bounty once and Gallantry But now with highest Deities attend On our affairs and us toth ' Gods commend The Father Word and Spirit God alone That Cotternal Three in one Thy will Theodames for Hecate Forc'd by thy charms dares not say nay Your Charms from me against my will commands These Responds I have said now loose my bands Judea worshippeth alone The God elsewhere unknown Him Pan men call Because he succours all They lay on tepid Altars Babes not born Of Mothers Wombs but from their Bellies torn Issa Bills sweeter than a Dove Issa's more blith than Mal or Siss No Pearls equal Issa's love What Issa's this Publius his Bitch Thus against Hercules vext the field to lose From wounded Hydra heads more fierce arose Who outstript all the Sophs in this Essay Quenching their Star-light with his Solar Ray.
as asserted by the Church in those writings which opposed Christian Religion § 1. Maker of Heaven and Earth § 2. His only Son § 3. Conceived by the holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary § 4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate c. § 5. Rose again the third day § 6. Ascended into Heaven thence c. § 7. The Holy Ghost § 8. Holy Catholick Church c. CHAP. V. The Truth of the Gospel-History attested by Secular Writers § 1. Old Antagonists did not persist in the denial of any point of Gospel-History save that of Christs Resurrection and the manner of their denying it proves the Truth of it § 2. Josephus his Story of John Baptist accords with Gospel-History § 3. His Text in testimony of Jesus vindicated from the Exceptions of Vossius c. § 4. Josephus his date of Christs and the Baptists Story falls in with Gospel-Chronology § 5. The Stories of Herod Herodias Aretus Artabanus Philip Lysanias in Josephus Tacitus Suetonius timed to Sacred Chronology § 6. The Twin-Priesthood of Annas and Caiphas at Christs Baptism and Passion cleared § 7. The Date of Philip the Tetrarch his Death CHAP. VI. The Date of Christs Birth as it is asserted by the Church maintain'd by Scripture § 1. Christ homaged by the Magi early after his Birth § 2. Christ born and Baptized the same day of the year § 3. God would have the Church observe the day of Christs Birth The Priestly Courses the Character of it which from the first Institution by Solomon to the last and fatal year of the Second Temples standing were never interrupted § 4. The Calculation of these courses leads us to the Conception and Birth of the Baptist and our Saviour § 5. Christs Baptism and John's Ministry in the same year of Tiberius Reign point out the same thing Objections answered § 6. The taxing of all the world ill-confounded with that of Syria CHAP. VII Josephus his Suffrage to the Evangelists in the Substance of their History of Christ. § 1. He appropriates the Compellation Christ to our Jesus speaks of the Churches growth in a Gospel-stile § 2. Describes Christs Disciples by Evangelical Characters gives the Evangelists Reasons why others did not embrace the Gospel § 3. He peremptorily asserts Christs Miracles how he came to a certain information thereof Appion and Justus would have found it out if he had proceeded here upon presumptions and uncertainties § 4. He describes Christs Miracles after the Evangelical Model § 5. And affirms them to have been such as the Prophets had foretold The Touch-stone of Canonical History § 6. He asserts Christs Resurrection with all its Circumstances CHAP. VIII Josephus confirms St. Lukes History of Herod Agrippa § 1. He paints him in Evangelical Colours as the Jews favourite as a Prodigal as much in the Tyrians Debt and therefore displeased with them c. § 2. He Dates his Death according to St. Luke St. James Martyred in the third a Famine at Rome in the second and third In Judaea in the fourth of Claudius § 3. He describes his Death after St. Lukes Style Two Acclamations immediately after the second he was struck by a Messenger of Death an Owle § 4. Angels assume what form the divine mandat prescribes Evil Angels God's Messengers § 5. Herod the Great died of the like stroke Josephus gives the natural Symptoms of Agrippa's Disease § 6. A Digression touching St. Paul's Thorn in the Flesh. CHAP. IX Other Secular Witnesses to the Truth of Sacred History § 1. Phlegon of the Darkness and Earthquake at Christs Passion § 2. Thallus his mistaking that Darkness for an Eclipse § 3. The Records of Pagan Rome touching that and other Occurrences § 4. The Chronicles of Edessa though Apochryphal yet true Julian's Prohibition of the use of secular Books in Christian Schools his Testimony § 5. Moses his History of Joseph attested by Pagans § 6. His History of himself § 7. Of Noah Balaam c. avouched by Secular Writers CHAP. X. The Adversaries forced upon very great Disadvantages to their own Cause by reason that they could not for very shame resist the Evidences brought in defence of Sacred History § 1. Christ accused of working by the Prince of Devils that Accusation withdrawn in open Court and this Plea put in against him that he made himself a King and therefore was an Enemy to Caesar § 2. Pety Exceptions rebound upon the heads of their Framers § 3. The Modern Sceptick's half-reasons too young to grapple with old Prescription § 4. Christs Works Gods Seal to his Mission § 5. The present Age as able to judge of the Nature of those Works as that was wherein they were done § 6. Atheistical Exceptions against particular points of Religion an Hydra's head yet they all stand upon one neck and may be cut off at one blow by proving the Divine Original of Religion BOOK IV. THE ARGUMENT 4. The Divine Original of Sacred Writ is as demonstrable as the being of a God from the Infinity of Wisdom express'd in its Prophecies and of Power in its miracles THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. The Being of a Deity Demonstrated § 1. The Existence of a Deity demonstrable from the frame of the world the composition of humane bodies § 2. The Garden of the Earth did not fall by chance into so curious and well order'd knots The ingenuity of Birds sings the Wisdom of their Maker c. § 4. The Heavens declare the glory of God CHAP. II. The Author of Christian Religion hath stamp'd thereon no less manifest Prints of infinite Science than the Maker of the World hath left upon that his Workmanship § 1. Heathen Prophecies the Result of Ratiocination § 2. From general Hints which for mens torments God might permit the Devil to communicate § 3. The Ambiguity of Oracles on purpose to hide the Ignorance of them that gave them § 4. It was by chance they spake truth § 5. Scripture-Oracles distinct of pure Contingencies their Sence plain punctually fulfill'd CHAP. III. Instances of Prophecies fulfill'd whose Effects are permanent and obvious to the Atheists Eyes if he will but open them § 1. Predictions that Israel would reject their own Messia made by Jews Confession many hundreds of years before Christ. § 2. The Prophets foretell Gods Rejection of the Jews for their Rejection of his Son § 3. Texts proving a final Rejection Christs Blood calls down this vengeance § 4. These Menacies executed to the full Temple City and all vanish'd Spirit of Prophecy past from the Synagogue to the Church CHAP. IV. Gematrian Plaisters too narrow for the Sore § 1. The Ark. § 2. Holy Fire § 3. Urim and Thummim § 4. Spirit of Prophecy in the Second Temple § 5. Exorcisme and Bethesda's all-healing vertue the second Temples Dowry CHAP. V. The Jews rejected Messias to be called the God of the whole Earth and all other Gods eternally to be rejected § 1. The God of Israel every where worship'd where Christian Religion
upon the politick use which the Roman Senate made of that Eclipse of the Sun that hapned at the translation of Romulus they perswading the multitude to ascribe it to the vertue and splendor of that new made God outshining the Sun And his comparing it with that that fell out at Christs passion on the fourteenth day at the full of the Moon when those great luminaries in the course of nature were to be directly opposite to and as far from each other as East and West as North and South and that therefore the Moons body could not at that time be brought as a skreen before the Sun by any power less than his that measures the whole circumference of Heaven with his span and at his own pleasure dispenseth with those otherwise unchangeable ordinances Jeremy 31. 36. Upon which consideration Dionysius the Areopagite St. Paul's convert Act. 17. 33. cryed out to his then fellow Student Either God is suffering for or sympathizing with the suffering world But hear we the account that himself gives of this in his Epistle to Bishop Polycarp Apollophanes you say calls me a patricide because I urge the sentences of the Grecians against the Grecians But ask him I pray you what he thinks of the Suns Eclipse hapning while our Saviour was upon the Cross For we were both together at Heliopolis and stood unexpectedly beholding the Moons interposition of her self before the Sun from the ninth hour till almost sun-set If thou canst or darest Apollophanes refel these things or deny them was not I with thee both seeing and with admiration inquiring into this wonder Didst not thou thy self then fall a divining what the matter might be Didst not thou then burst out into these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These are mixings of Heaven and Earth as Plutarch speaks in his Treatise of exile 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oh good Dionysius what change of divine things does this portend Did not I then reply Oh Apollophanes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 either the frame of the world is dissolving or God is suffering Whoso questions the genuineness of this authority may be confirmed in the truth of the things viz. that the Pagan Philosophers observ'd that Eclipse and conceived it miraculous by what St. Origen tells Celsus Orig. cont Celsum lib. 2. colum 27. that Phlegon a Pagan Writer had recorded and made mention of this Eclipse as a wonder in the thirteenth or fourteenth Book of his Chronicle And by Tertullian his asserting to the faces of the Roman Judges that this Eclipse was entred in their own publick Records as a Prodigy Tertul. apol cap. 27. Eum mundi casum in archivis vestris habetis To which Records he would never have appealed before those adversaries of Christ in whose custody those Records were had he not been so well verst in their Antiquities and publick Rolls as he was sure there they might find this miracle entered The signs in Sun and Moon which the Heathens urged to obtain belief of those Deities they introduc'd were shown to an age that had not learnt the first Elements or forgot them of the Book of Nature but suffering a greater Eclipse of knowledge than the Sun did of light permitted it self to be led as a blind man in a string whither its guides pleased But the signs of Christs coming of our Gods manifestation in the flesh were presented to an age in which the greatest mysteries of Nature her most hidden secrets were by the sagacity of inquisitive wits found out and ransack'd Aristotle is stiled by some the praecursor of Christ in naturalibus Heylin Geog. pag. 2. And particularly the reason of Eclipses so familiarly known as that at Christs passion was generally esteem'd to have faln out beside the common rule non ex canonico syderum cursu to use St. Austins Phrase De Civitate 3. 15. Quam solis obscurationem non ex canonico syderum cursu accidisse satis ostendit quòd tunc erat Pascha Judaeorum The bastard slips of Pagan Gods grew up when men scarce knew men from trees but the root of Jesse put forth the branch when the earth was covered as much with the knowledge of Vegetables from the Hysop to the Cedar as with Vegetables when the Physical Sciences stood in a full body ready to receive the Gospels charge No hopes then of atchieving any things worthy its pretensions but by breaking through the thickest ranks of the best disciplin'd natural Philosophers CAP. II. Poetry improv'd to the utmost about our Saviours birth Sect. 1. POesie that art of feigning that ape of Gods creating power framing most exquisite pieces out of nothing but the Ideas of the mind was screwed up to its loftiest strain when our divine Apollo the God of wisdom the wisdom of God modulated his sacred Pipe if I may without prophaning it allude to that Evangelical passage we have piped unto you c. It is Bullingers observation Seculum hoc si quod aliud poetarum feracissimum in Dan. par 2. tabul 5. That this was an age of all others most fertile in Poets It was not long before our Saviours birth that the most eminent Greek Poets flourished Such were  Anno mundi Sophocles 3490 Bacchilides 3540 Eupolis Aristophanes 3660 Menander Cratinus 3670 Theocritus Aratus 3680 Lycophron Callimachus 3700 By whose pregnant and witty invention how far Poetry was improved may be sufficiently evidenc'd from what the most judicious Plutarch Moral tom 2. compar Aristophanis Menandri delivers concerning one of them viz. Menander That his style was so squared and tempered as it kept an equal tenour in the greatest variety of expressing the several passions That he could make his shoâ—e fit every foot his visor every face his vest every body That he had an art of affecting all sorts of persons and so framed his Poesie as it was the common Note-book of all the good men that Greece had brought forth proceeding every where with a most inevitable power of perswading The Latine Muse having those admirably sweet-ton'd Nightingals of Greece to set her lessons got upon the wing and soared the highest pitch almost as soon as she had broke the shell at the dawning of our Saviours day when flourish'd Plautus Terence Pacuvius Lucretius Archias and Catulus Catullus Virgil Horace Manlius Gallus Propertius Tibullus and Ovid were almost our Saviours contemporaries Whom succeeded Persius Seneca Lucan Silvius Italicus Martial Juvenal Sleidan clavis lib. 1. As if the Muses had been contending which Quire should excel other That which before his birth sang his Genethliacon whereof Virgil was the Master and performed his part so well in discanting upon the Sibylline Oracles in his fourth Ecloque as St. Austin doubts not to affirm that he therein congratulates the Nativity of our Jesus and supposes St. Paul to have cast one corner of his eye upon that and other the like gentile Testimonies in his farewel speech to the Jews Loe we turn to the gentiles i. e.
pieces At the lowest rate it demonstrates to what an height those curious cursed arts were then grown to Can we think that St. Paul would have singled out that place where Satan was inthron'd to have wrought miracles in for the confirmation of the Divinity of the Gospel had they not been special miracles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Luke stiles them Act. 19. 11 12. Would he have given experiments of the healing vertue conveyed from his body to aprons and handkerchiefs where counter-charming amulets were of that common use as the proverb of Ephesia Alexipharmaca speaks them to have been What would it have profited to have invocated the name of the Lord Jesus over the sick there where were extant such a number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of books teaching how to unravel the Conjurers work had the Apostle not been assured that the vertue of that name and of his own body through that name was both as to cause and effect above every name above any word they could find in their books of curious Arts that name of Judahs Gods imposing having infinitely more power than the word of Ida's Tactyls invention though it came not with that boysterous harshness as did their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as Clemens reckons them in the place above quoted Sect. 2. This Image of Diana this counterfeit of the Divine Magia descending from faln Jupiter was not only worship'd at Ephesus and in all Asia but throughout the Roman Empire In whose Metropolis the Sect of those black Philosophers was grown so numerous under Tiberius as his decree to banish them the City had taken effect if the multitude of Families which that hook threatned to extirpate and their promise to give over the practice of those curious arts had not made the Emperour relent Sueton. Tiberius 36. By this connivance Magical operations attain'd to that perfection in Nero's Reign as men could not promise themselves to find their grounds on that side of the hedge next morning where they left them over-night For Pliny lib. 28. reports that at that time an Olive-yard belonging to Vectius Marcellus was by Magick removed one night unto the other side of the high-way A thing so strange as I should hardly give credit to Livies report but that I find Apuleius make mention of it in his Apologie as a thing so usual and ancient as the Laws of the twelve Tables made provision against it by making it capital The naming of Apuleius his Apology brings to mind the occasion of it which was to purge himself of the crime of Magick wherewith he was charged before Claudius Maximus Lievtenant of Africa as Apollonius Thyaneus was of the same crime before Domitian A pair of the fiercest Pagan adversaries to our Religion August de Civitat 8. 19. The Jews indeed had a sharper edge against us and as strange a back as Hell could forge coming not one whit behind the Gentile in his proficiency in the black Art being grown more Samaritan than the Samaritan himself 1. Not only in their charmings by the explication of the Tetragrammaton Jehovah in twelve and in forty two letters to which they imputed that force as they affirm'd with no less blasphemy to their own than our Religion that Moses wrought all his miracles by means of Shemhamphorash the twelve-letter'd explication of the name Jehovah ingraven on the rod of God And that our Jesus by vertue of the same sowed within his skin effected those great works which he performed And that Rabbi Chanina by vertue of the two and forty letter'd name of God did whatsoever he would The Jews father'd this Art upon Solomon who they say left forms of conjurations of the efficacy whereof one Eleazar gave proof before Vespasian and his Sons and their whole Army Josephus being present as himself reports Antiquit. lib. 8. cap. 2. Yea that whosoever knew these explications being modest humble of a middle age not given to anger or drunkenness and wore them about him would be belov'd above and below in heaven and in earth rever'd and fear'd of men and heir of this and the world to come Buxtorf lexic. voce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. But in their Wisemens reading certain verses over wounds laying Phylacteries upon sick persons charming away serpents and an evil eye of which practices the Jerusalem Talmudists amongst whom our Saviour converst make frequent mention In particular they tella story in Sotah of R. Meirs being too hard for an Inchantress and in Sanhedrim R. Joshuah out-vying a Samaritane conjurer of Tyberias quoted by Dr. Light foot in his Harmony It were endless to trace Josephus through all those passages where he describes Judaea in our Saviours time to have been over-run with Magical Juglers Under Felix saith he Judaea was again full of Magical Impostors and Seducers of the unskilful vulgar who by their inchantments drew companies into the wilderness promis4ng they would shew them from heaven manifest signs and prodigies at the same time a certain Jew out of Aegypt came to Jerusalem professing himself a Prophet who perswaded the multitude to follow him unto Mount Olivet promising that from thence they should see the walls of Jerusalem fall so flat as through their ruines there should be a way opened into the City Joseph Ant. Jud. 20. 6. Which Aegyptian in another place he styles Magician Jos. 〈◊〉 Jud. 2. 12. Nay he scarce mentions a sticker in the Jewish wars upon whom he sets not this brand that he was a jugling conjurer Such was John the son of Levias c. Josep 〈◊〉 J. 4. 4. Sect. 3. The Primitive Church was so beset with these snares of Hell as she thought good to caution her Catechumens of the danger of falling into them â—not only by informing them that in their renouncing the Devil and all his worship at Baptism they renounc'd Auguries Divinations Amulets Magical Inscriptions on Leaves Witchcraft Incantation and calling up of Ghosts Id. Catech. illuminat 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But by inserting into the Greek Liturgies this form of abrenuntiation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I renounce Conjurations Charmes Amulets and Phylacteries St. â—yril Catech. Mystag 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem Cat. c. But what need we any other Witness of the infamy of that Age for the then general spreading of this Diabolical Art than the Satyrical reflections which their own Poets made upon it Juvenal in his sixth Satyr Horace in his Epode against Canidia and Virgil in his Pharmaceutria do in the chain of their Golden Verses hale that Cerberus out of his Kennel into so clear a Sun-shine so manifestly discover those depths of Satan and bring to light those hidden things of darkness as the reading of their Poems is enough to initiate their over-curious Readers in those mysteries of iniquity which were then working and the translation of them might lay a temptation before the ductile vulgar to essay the efficacy of their
built the two Books De miraculis Martyrum writ by Gregory Turonensis who shuts up his first Book thus It behoves us therefore to desire the Patronage of Martyrs c. and his second thus We therefore well considering those Miracles may learn that it is not possible to be saved but by the help of Martyrs and other Friends of God But Simeon Metaphrastes deserves the Whet-stone from all that ever professed this holy Art of Lying for the advantage of Truth who notwithstanding that in his Preface to the strange Romance of Marina he blames others for forging Stories of the Saints and polluting their true Memorials with most evident Doctrines of Devils and Demoniacal Narratives yet himself splits upon the same Rock and so Shipwracks his Credit with all Intelligent Persons as Baronius himself is ashamed of him in notis ad martyrologium Roman Jul. 13. I need not multiply Instances the World swarms with lying Legends Their avowed Doctrine of Mental Reservation of Equivocation to promote the Cause of Religion casts up as wide a Gulf betwixt Gospel-Tradition and theirs as is betwixt Heaven and Hell the God of Truth and the Father of Lyes Quomodo Deus Pater genuit filium veritatem sic Diabolus genuit quasi filium Mendacium August 42. tract in Johan 8. 44. these introduc'd by Persons that account it meritorious of Heaven to forge the grossest Fables so it be in service of the Church which the Apostle calls speaking Lyes in Hypocrisie 1 Tim. 4. 2. vide Meed in locum Those publish'd by Men who less fear'd dying than lying who chose rather to suffer the cruellest Death to lay themselves obnoxious to the Calumnies of captious Adversaries through their Parasie their Freedom of Speech then to tell the most innocent and officious Lye and therefore the unlikeliest Men in the World to abuse the World with Figments and devised Stories and Persons from whose Hand a Man might with more safety and security have taken a Cup suspected to have Poyson in it than a Cup of Wine from the Hand of the most Divine Philosoper as Apollodorus said of Socrates in comparison of Plato Athenaeus dyprosoph l. 11. c. 22. Christian Religions APPEAL To the BAR of Common Reason c. The Second Book The Apostles were not themselves deluded no Crack'd-brain Enthusiasticks but Persons of most composed Minds CHAP. I. The Gospel's Correspondency with Vulgar Sentiments § 1. The Testimony of the Humane Soul untaught to the Truth of the Christian Creed in the Articles touching the Unity of the Godhead his Goodness Justice Mercy The Existence of wicked Spirits § 2. The Resurrection and Future Judgment Death formidable for its Consequences to evil Men No Fence against this Fear proved by Examples § 3. In hope of future Good the Soul secretly applauds her self after virtuous Acts. This makes the Flesh suffer patiently § 1. WHat Exception can be made against so impartial a Relation of Men possessed with such a mortal Detestation of Forgery made to an Age so well accommodated against Delusion by all internal and external Fortifications imaginable cannot in my shallow Reason be conjectured except it be that of Celsus and his Modern Epicurean Disciples That the Apostles themselves were deluded or which is worse infatuated For who but raving and dementate Persons would have ventured to put off Adulterate Wares to so knowing an Age But then how could they have framed the Doctrine and History of Christ in such a Decorum in so exact a Symmetry of Parts not only among themselves but to the great World as Lactantius argues Abfuit ergò ab iis fingendi voluntas astutia quià rudes fuerunt quis possit indoctus apta inter se cobaerentia fingere cùm Philosophorum doctissimi ipsi sibi repugnantia dixerint haec enim est mendaciorum natura ut coherere non possint illorum autèm traditio quià vera est quadrat undique ac sibi tota consentit ideò persuadet quià constanti ratione suffulta est Lactant de justicia lib. 5. cap. 3. The Apostles had neither Will to feign nor any crafty Design upon the World because they were plain Men and what illiterate Man can have the Art to make Fictions square to one another and hang together seeing the most learned of the Philosophers have spoke things jarring amongst themselves for this is the Nature of Untruths that they cannot be of a Piece But the Tradition of the Apostles because it is true one part falls out even with another and it agrees perfectly with it self and therefore gains upon Mens Minds because it is underpropp'd with that stedfast reason and on every side Squares with Principles of Reason Origen useth this Argument Cont. Cels. l. 3. willing him to consider if it were not the Agreeableness of the Principles of Faith with common Notions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that prevailed most upon all candid and ingenuous Auditors of them For how can that be the Figment of deluded Fancies the issue of shatter'd Brains that 's so well shap'd as it bears a perfect Proportion to and Correspondency with whatsoever hath had the common Approbation of Mankind Being calculated 1. To the Meridian of common Sentiments to the Universal Religion of the whole World to the Testimony of every natural Soul to whose Evidence Christian Religion appeals by her Advocate Tertullian in his admirable Treatise De Testimonio Animae I call in saith he a new kind of Witness yet more known than any Writing more tost than all Learning more common than any Book that 's put forth greater than whole Man that is the All that is of Man Come into the Court Oh Soul whether thou beest Divine and Eternal as most Philosophers think and by so much the rather not capable of telling a Lye Or not Divine but Mortal as Epicurus thinks and so much the rather thou oughtest not to lye for Fear of distracting thy self at present with the Guilt of so Inhumane a Vice whether thou art received from Heaven or conceived of Earth whether thou art made up of Numbers or Atoms whether thou commences a being with the Body or art infused after the Body from whencesoever and howsoever thou makest Man a Rational Creature most capable of Sense and Science But I do not retain thee of Council for the Christian such as thou art when after thou hast been formed in the Schools and exercised in Libraries thou belchest forth that Wisdom thou hast obtained in Aristotle's Walks or the Attick Academies No I appeal to thee as thou art raw unpolish'd and void of acquired Knowledge such a one as they have that have only a bare Soul such altogether as thou comest from the Quarry from the High Way from the Looms I have need of thy Unskilfulness for when thou growest never so little crafty all men suspect thee I would have thee bring nothing with thee into this Court but what thou bringest with thy self into Man but
Except we furnish our selves with Weapons from God's Armory from the Tower of David from the Magazine of Sacred Writ we shall be in as bad a case as the Israelites were when there was not one Sword nor Spear amongst them and have nothing to defend our selves against the Imputation of Tyranny but must be forc'd as our last and only Refuge to betalie ourselves to the Herculean Argument of Club-Law We may because we can For a negat sibi nata nibil non arrogat armis When the Roman Legates demanded of Brennus what Ground he had of Quarrel with the Clustans the same saith he that you had with the Albanes Fidenates and Ardeates because they being fewer and weaker will not impart what they have to us who are stronger we herein observing the old Law which Gods and Men and Beasts are under that the weaker should yield to the Stronger Platar Camil. A desperate Principle of Hectorishi which if it make Root in Men's Hearts will turn the whole World of Mankind into a Wilderness of Savage Beasts and deprive Prince and Peasant of all possibility of securing either Life or Fortune any longer than these Snakes are frozen I leave therefore these Inhumane Placits to the severe Animadversion of all Republicks that are not weary of their own happiness § 6. Religion so dexterously resolves these Questions as Reason acquiesceth in her Determinations While I observe how aptly how dexterously the Ladies hand of pure and undefiled Religion unties these Knots Man had not Power so much as over the green Herb to deprive it of its Vegetive Life no not in Order to the Preservation of his own but by Gods Donation Gen. 1. 29. Seeing that Life of Vegetation was not given by Man by what Right but the Indulgence of him that gave it could he deprive the Creature of it and withal inflict perhaps beside the Evil of Loss the Evil of Pain for that some Plants ar esensitive is manifest and I have heard some Florists affirm it with so much Confidence and assay to confirm it with such Arguments as of the two Problemes I had rather undertake the Proof of this That all Vegetives have Sence than this That any Atheist hath Reason This Grant of the green Herb for Meat being made to every Fowl and Beast and creeping thing as well as Man as it argued the Paternal Care of that provident Housholder towards every Member of his great Family so it prohibited man from falling upon those Creatures which were set at the same Table with himself till God enlarged his Quarters and mended his Commons in the Charter granted to Noah Gen. 9. 2 3. every Beast of the Earth every Fowl of the Air all that moveth upon the Earth and all the Fishes of the Sea into your Hand are they delivered every moving thing that liveth shall be Meat for you even as the green Herb have I given you all things An Account so rational as the Stoicks had no sooner receiv'd an Inkling of it by Oral Tradition but they yielded assent to it and enroll'd this among their Maxims concerning Justice That all things that were brought forth upon Earth were made for Man's use Lactant. de ira Dei cap. 13. Unde hoc nisi de nostris Whence had they this but from our Scriptures saith St. Ambrose Officior l. 1. cap. 28. they learn'd of us how all Creatures by Gods subjecting them to Man were put under our Feet Psal. 8. and therefore concluded that Man might justly make use of them as being made for him Ovid's Pipe borrows Breath of Moses his Lips in his Sanctius his animal mentisque capacius altae Deerat adhuc quod dominari in caetera posset Natus homo est Where having according to the Method of Scripture described the Creation of Heaven and Earth with its Inhabitants he introduceth the Story of Man's Creation with this Preface There wanted yet a more Divine Creature that God might set over the rest of the Works of his Hands and make Lord of the Universe speaking of Man's Dominion as a Vulgar Notion universally subscribed to but of the Ground of that Dominion viz. God's preferring him to it as a Point of hidden Wisdom and revealed by that Deity he invocates It were easie to multiply Examples not only of particular Men but of whole Nations who have both confessed the Impossibility of finding out by light of Nature the reason of Man's Soveraignty over the Creatures and acquesc'd in the Reasons produc'd by Christian Religion as soon as they have been propounded to them but the matter is so manifest and every where obvious as these few may serve for a Taste Mercurius Trismeg in his Pimander Dial. 1. introduceth the Divine Mind informing him that God had that respect for Man who bare the Image of his Creatour as he granted to him the Lordship over all his Works Cicero out of Chrysippus could say the Hog could not possibly be serviceable to Man but at the Table whose Soul serves only for Salt to keep their bodies from stinking till they are fit for Slaughter but yet confesseth that to find out the Counsel of God and the Reason of his ordering things as we see he doth for Man's Behoof is not within the reach of Humane Counsel and that no Man can in this Knowledg as well as any thing else be eminent without the help of Divine Inspiration Nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit de Natura deor lib. 2. 113. CHAP. III. Natural Conscience ecchoes to Christian Morals § 1. A Dispraise to dispraise Vertue or praise Vice The Comicks Liberty restrained § 2. How the worst of Men became to be reputed Gods § 3. Men were defied for their Virtues Vice ungodded Gods § 4. Stage-Gods hissed at The Infamy of Players The Original of Mythology § 1. Christian Morals had the Universal Approbation of the Heathen World NO less clearly does every Man's Conscience eccho to our Christian Morals than we have heard it resound its assent to these our Placits and Theorems But it were an endless labour to compare every line of the Gospel drawn by the pencil of Christ and the holy Apostles paralel to what is drawn by the hand of Nature upon every Soul There being no Language that does not eccho to the sound of their Doctrine I will therefore wave here the prosecution of Particulars and confine my discourse to this Observation That Those men that in all Nations and Ages have lived nearest the Rule of Evangelical Morals have obtained the best Memorials and most sweet smelling Names among all these to whom their Histories have been communicated And those men's Memories have stunk most in the Nostrils of the generality of Man-kind whose Lives have been most contaminated with bidding defiance to Gospel Precepts What undebauch'd Soul does not that Encomium of Chastity arride which an Heathen could sing to Domitian Censor maxime principumque Princeps Cum tot jam tibi debeat
Conscience to the relief of Bustris and as some say Thyrses from those just charges of barbarous Inhumanity the World had loaded them with and to the affronting of innocent Socrates and vindicating his unequal Judges But with what success appears from Isocrates his tart Reflections upon those Orations from the excuse that Demetrius Phalereus makes for him that he writ those Orations only in Jeast to give the World a Specimen of the fertility of his Wit upon so steril Subjects and from Virgil's stiling Bustris illaudatus unprais'd for all he knew that both Polycrates and Isocrates had writ Orations whose Theme was the praise of Busiris And from Isocrates that the Argument is not good nor such as an honest discourse can be made upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isocr Bus. laud. Peruse Christ's Sermon in the Mount and examine whether the Doctrine he therein delivers be not that which the World has declared it self to have a Transcript of by its blessing those that he blesseth by its cursing those that he curseth by its groping after those Vertues he commends by its boggling at those Debaucheries he condemns What has raised the Heroes in all Ages to an Esteem for Vertue but Humility Mercifulness Purity Peaceableness aspiring to the top of Vertues Stairs by a patient bearing of Evil and doing Good What has ever been accounted the heroick degree of Vertue but that Mark Christ sets those that would be perfect Which of the Moralists in their condescentions to humane weakness stated the minimum quod sit of vertue more favourably and more to the incouragement of the smallest sparks then our Saviour has who will not have the smoaking flax quenched with the injection of the least fear of his non-acceptance of a Cup of cold water A Point wherein Plato so fail'd as Athenaeus passeth this Censure on him Plato made Laws not for men really existing but of his own feigning so that when all is done he hath men to seek who are capable of power to perform the Rules he lays down he ought to have writ things practicable ic non optandis viris haec scribere sed iis qui haec ipsa amplecti possunt Dipnosoph l. 11. cap. 21. What has intail'd an indefeasible infamy upon Mens Memories but such like Enormities as the Gospel decries What but Luxury Effeminateness Cruelty Unrighteousness Fornication Wickedness Covetousness Maliciousness Envy Murder Debate Malignity c. have made the Names odious of that wallowing Hog Sardanapalus a perfect Scholar of Metrodorus that sordid Epicurean who blamed his Brother Timocrates for making the least doubt of this Doctrine That all things belonging to a happy Life were to be measured by the Belly Cotta in Cicer. de nat deor l. 1. that devouring God-belly-gulph Heliogabalus that shame of the Country in whose Lap he was litter'd to use Valerius his words Gemellus who entertain'd the Consul and Tribunes with naked She-servitors That helluo of his large fortunes Clodius who by breakfasting with dissolved Pearls brought his Estate to that low ebb as he had not a drie Crust to sup with in the Afternoon of his life but what he begg'dat more provident mens doors Of Xerxes who so far effeminated his Subjects by his own example and his propounding of Rewards to the inventors of new pleasures as their hands and inventions failed him in securing to him the possession of his Imperial Crown Of Sylla who transmitted his own shame to all succeeding Ages by causing his cruelty in murdering 470 proscribed Persons to be entred in the publick Rolls Of Marius Nero Phalaris and all that have been handed down to posterity as the Monsters of the Age they lived in Our Cade and Kett and Straw our Rosamond Shore have not their infamy yet derived down to so many Generations but should the World continue yet as many as it hath done it would be born down the Stream of Time to the very last of them and had they lived in a Pagan Age and Climate they would have given the same sence of these Opprobries of our Nation and Religion that that Christian Age did wherein they lived The sacred Compilers then of the Gospel were men of no vulgar Conceptions that could frame a Religion so every way fitting the common conceptions of Mankind and sute their Last to every Foot not swoln with Pride or Prejudice so that the Voice of God that they publish'd is the Voice of the People and finds a party for it in every human Soul not degenerate Pagans and Mahometans being so far Christian as they have any thing in them praise worthy among whom there is nothing cried up for Vertue but what glitters like and has some kind of resemblance to Gospelvertue § 2. The Poets Jove was not vulgarly reputed a God The only valuable Exception against this Argument is the Instance of the Pagan Idols who being the worst of men were yet prefer'd in the opinion of the World to the honour of Gods which gave occasion to that Sarcasm of Euripedes That Jupiter Neptune and Saturn and the rest of the Gods deserv'd to be banish'd Heaven as being guilty of those Debaucheries would render men unworthy to tread upon Earth and to Menippus in Lucian to declaim against their Rapes Incests c. and to Terence to flout the great Jove for giving encouragement to Chaerea to perpetrate that Rape upon his Mistress in imitation of Jove's upon Danae In answer to which and to clear the World from the imputation of deifying the most debauch'd Persons that ever lived by which Act it would have confounded all Principles of Morality let it be considered That the Poets Jove had not so much as among the silly Rable the repute of a Deity for had they indeed esteemed that Letcher a God his Example would have had influence enough upon it to have turn'd the whole World into a Brothel-house in spite of all Laws to the contrary For as St. Austin observes Magis intuentur quid Jupiter fecerit quà m quid docuerit Plato vel censuerit Cato de civit 2. 7. They that took those Poetical Monsters for Deities must needs have been more swayed with their example than with Plato's precepts or Cato's practice Now there being so few that pleaded the authority of Jove's Example to patronize their own Crimes and they that had the face to do it being universally badged with the imputation of impiety for making that Plea is evidence enough that he was not cordially worshipp'd under that form which the Poets presented him in What needed those adulterous covetous ambitious Suiters in Persius have whisper'd into his Ears their impious Prayers if they had not reputed him worse than that most corrupt Judge Statius Albius who as bad as he was had any man begg'd his favour in such like Cases would with expressions of amazing horrour have rejected the motion Might they not have avowed and justified their impure and unjust Requests as much as nay rather than those that
praemio 7. 7. If the Truth dispers'd among several Persons and scatter'd among several Sects were by any man collected into one and digested into a body it would without doubt not dissent from us When Apollodorus offer'd to Socrates a precious and gorgeous Tunick and Pall to put on when he drank the poyson and to be wrapped in when he was dead Socrates turning to Crito Simacus and Phaedo what an honourable opinion saith he hath Apollodorus of me if he think to see Socrates in this Robe after I am dead if he think that that which will then lay at his feet is Socrates I know not my self who I am Aelian var. hist. 1. 16. This Socratical Aphorism Tully expresseth thus Mens cujusque is est quisque Is one Egg more like another than this of the Schools to that of the Gospel where Jesus concludes Abraham to be still living from Moses his stiling God the God of Abraham so many years after his decease That of Abraham he left behind him in his Sepulchre is not Abraham but that of him that still lives But it would require an Age to transcribe by retail those numerous Philosophical Axioms which speak the Language of Scripture so perfectly as the whole matter of controversie betwixt the Fathers Apologizing for and the Philosophers contending against our Religion was brought by mutual consent to this point Whether the wise men of the World receiv'd those Doctrines from our Scriptures or the Pen-men of the Scripture from their Schools Celsus in Origen contends earnestly that whatsoever was solid in the Christian Religion was borrowed from the Philosophers by whom it was better and clearlier delivered He instanceth in our affirming God to dwell in light inaccessible this saith he is no more than what Plato teacheth in his Epistles that the first Good is ineffable In our Saviour's commending Humility This is Plato's Doctrine saith Celsus teaching in his Book of Laws that He who would be happy must be a follower of Justice with an humble and well-composed mind In Christ's saying 'T is easier for a Camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven what is this saith he other than that of Plato It is not possible that a man can be very rich and very good From the fame Fountain Celsus will have Christ to draw that saying Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadunto life and few there be that find it and that our Doctrine of the fall of Angels and their being reserved in chains was derived from the Poet Pherecides and Homer vide l. 4. col 9. The Patrons of the Christian Cause on the other hand contended that the waters of the Academy were drawn from the wells of the Sanctuary that the Sun of knowledg arose in the East and thence displayed its Beams over the World St. Ambrose proves that Plato borrowed of David in Psalm 35. And upon that in Isaiah 40. For she hath received at the Lords hand double to her iniquity saith he Plato eruditionis gratiâ in Aegyptum profectus ut Mosis gesta Legis praecepta Prophetarum dicteria cognosceret c. in psalm 118. serm 18. St. Austin quotes St. Ambrose proving from Chronology that the Grecians borrowed of the Jews not è contrà and thence commends the reading of Secular History de Christiana Doct. lib. 2. cap. 28. and in his Epistle to Polinus and Therasias writes thus Libros Ambrosii multùm desidero quos adversùs nonnullos imperitissimos superbissimos qui de Platonis libris Dominum profecisse contendunt dilligentissimè copios ssimè scripsit Aug. Epist. 34. And not barely affirm'd it but brought in evidence for the proof of it either from common Principles of Reason or the Authority of heathen Chronologers St. Origen thus Contra Cels. lib. 6. cal 1 2 3 c. Moses was long before the most ancient of your Philosophers and therefore they must borrow light from him but it was impossible he could light his Candle at theirs before they were lighted and the Apostles were the unlikeliest men in the World to understand your Philosophers The same Father Origen contrà Celsum lib. 1. cal 13. in answer to Celsus objecting Moses his Juniority to the Heathen Theologues saith that Hermippus in his first Book of Lawgivers declared how Pythagoras translated his Discipline from the Jews into Greece and that there was extant a Book of Haecateus in which he so approves of the Jewish Philosophy as Herennus Philo in his Commentar de Judaeis questions whether it be the genuine Book of Haecateus whose name it bears it seeming to him improbable that an Heathen Philologer would write so much in their commendation St. Austin in his eighteenth Book de Civitate from Chap. 2. to the end of that Book demonstrates by Chronology that our Prophets were elder than their Philosophers And in his 8. 11. de Civitate Dei affirms Plato to have transcribed the description of the first matter in his Timaeus mentioned also by Cicero and thus translated Mundum efficere volens Deus terram primo ignemque jungebat When God was about to frame the World he first joyntly made the matter of Fire and Earth from that of Moses In the beginning God made the Heaven and Earth Gen. 1. 1. Plato by Fire understanding Heaven And his notion of the Air upon the Water to have been Plato's mis-conception of that of Moses The Spirit moved upon the Waters And his Dogma in Phaedone 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Every right Philosopher is a lover of God to have been derived from the sacred Fountains where nothing flows more plentifully than such like Doctrine But that which made this most learned Father almost believe altogether that Plato had read Moses was his observing Plato to have been the first Philosopher who called God by that name which God reveal'd himself by to Moses in his Embassy to Pharaoh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am that I am or That that is A name appropriated to God by Plato in his Timeus calling God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The ever-being and so familiar with the Platonicks as in their Master's stile they superscribed their Treatises concerning God with this Title 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of him that is A name saith St. Austin I find in no Books before Plato save in those where it is said I am that I am This was modestly said of that cautious Divine for the truth is Alcimus writes to Amynthas that some Philosophers had got that Notion by the end before Plato naming Epicharmus and quoting those words of his at which Plato lighted his Candle and Plato himself in his Sophista confesseth little less But it comes all to one as to our Argument for Epicharmus was a Pythagorian and that Pythagoras the circumcised Philosopher received that and all his other refined Notions from Moses his Writings or by discourse from the Jewish
the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be the Son of God by whom he made the World to be in the Order and Degree of a Principle which was all I produc'd it for in this Section but my general Position laid down in the first Section of this Chapter That what the Gospel asserts in Thesi of our Jesus the Platonick School asserted in Hypothesi concerning him that was to relieve Mankind Plato's Doctrine of Purgation came so near ours saith St. Austin de vera Religione cap. 4. as many Platonicks upon that account turn'd Christian Paucis mutatis verbis sententiis aut si hoc non facerent nescio utrùm possent ad ea ipsa quae appetenda esse dixerunt cum istis faecibus viscóque revolare ex Platonis Phaedro de Legibus Timaeo With the alteration of a few words and sentences and if they had not I cannot tell how they could with the Birdlime and dregs of those their Errors which Christian Religion confuteth have flown back to that good they said was to be desired and those their sound Principles which both we and they joyntly hold The only thing they disgusted being the application of those things to Christ they stumbling at the same Stone at which the Jews stumbled the Cross of Christ and taking it in scorn that so mean a man as Jesus of Nazereth should be reputed to be the Saviour to be that Principle that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Son of God that was to enlighten every one that comes into the World out of whose fulness all our wants were to be supplied by the participation of whose Wisdom we are made wise c. For St. Austin when he saith He could not find in their Books that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was come into the World came to his own and his own received him not took upon him the Form of a servant and humbled himself to the death of the Cross. Must not be understood to deny that it was to be found or that himself had found in the Platonick Writings that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in order to humane Redemption was to come into the World to assume our nature to be wounded for our Transgressions for whoever it was by one or more that man-kind was to be relieved that one or more must as we have heard the Oracle the God of Philosophers as they stiled him deliver descend from his or their supercelestial place into his Dungeon of Earth and in 〈◊〉 or their assumed body or bodies endure all the miseries of this life c. as Sect. 3. cap. 4. hath been quoted out of which sentence not only of Plato but of all that exchanged not the old Traditional Philosophy for the Kitching-Experiments of Greece whom Jamblicus compares to Ships without Balast for that they had emptyed themselves of what they had received by the old Tradition de mysteriis tit de nominibus sacris we have been all this while boulting the Bran of their conceipted Multiplicity of God-saviours by the Sierce of their more sober and considerate Doctrine poured out into the bosom of their friends sequestred from the Censure of the Vulgar before whom it was not safe to speak all they thought Difficile est negare credo si in concione quaeratur sed in hujusmodi concessu facillimum Cicero de natura deorum lib. 1. It is an hard matter I confess to deny this in the hearing of the multitude but very easie in such a select Assembly of friends and Philosophers And have thereby gain'd from them the unforc'd confession of this Evangelical Truth That man's restauration unto Communion with and Conformity to God cannot be obtained by the Incarnation of separate Spirits or blessed Souls but of God himself descending into the Dungeon of this Earth assuming our Nature and in that Nature suffering what was due to us and delivering to us the Divine Oracles Plato therefore in assigning this effect to a Multiplicity of holy Souls or Spirits coming down from Heaven in several Ages and Countreys was a popular Complyance with the vulgar Errour either out of fear to in 〈…〉 his Master Socrates his fortune or out of design to have the World believe as some of his great admirers did that himself was one of those officious Spirits or if he spake as he thought it was the froth and ebullition of that vanity of mind judicially inflicted upon such as knowing God did not worship him as God That this was his Errour and such an Errour as himself in his lucid Intervals renounc'd and was forsaken in by his own followers hath been sufficiently cleared if the weight of this point and the dissatisfaction of some most deservingly eminent Modern Divines did not make it shake upon its strongest supporters and as it were by its nods becken to us to strengthen it by Buttresses I shall therefore beg my Readers patience which I doubt not but to obtain of him if he can but construe that of the Epigrammatist Non sunt longa quibus nihil est quod demere possis Sed tu Cosconi disticha longa facis Mart. while I make it yet more manifest CHAP. V. None of their Local Saviours were able to save § 1. Their white Witches impeded in doing good by the black Lucan's Hag more mighty than any of their Almighties § 2. None of their Saviour's Soul-purgers § 3. Porphiry ' s Vote for one universal Saviour not known in the Heathen World Altars to the unknown Gods whether God or Goddess § 4. The unknown God § 5. Great Pan the All-heal his death § 6. Of their many Lords none comparable to the Lord Christ to us but one Lord. § 1. POrphyry Aug de Civitat 10. 9. 10. reference from experience confesseth the inability of those reputed good Spirits or God-Saviours to whom the Heathen applyed themselves for cure to gratifie the commerce to them their most severe worshippers in their desired Soul-purgations in that they were often impeded by their Superiours and their Superiours manacled in the Conjurers bands so as they durst not effect the desired Purgations so terrified by the black Witch as the white Witch could not loose them from that fear and set them free to do that good to which their own natures inclin'd them and their most religious Votaries solicited them Whereupon St. Austin facetiously thus explains Ergo ligavit iste iste non solvit O animae praedicanda purgatio ubi plus imperat immunda invidentia quà m impetrat pura beneficentia ubi plus valet malevolus impeditor quà m beneficus purgator animae The Cacodemon it seems could bind and the good Angel could not lose Oh praise-worthy purgation of Soul where unclean Envy obtains that power which pure Bounty cannot where the malicious opposer is of more strength than the liberal purger of the Soul But however ridiculous either the opinion or grownd of it were This Doctrine the Platonicks grounded upon that complaint which a
of any longer deceiving the Nations as Virgil out of Sibyl had prophesied in his Pan etiam Arcadiâ dicat se judice victum Pan even Arcadia being judge shall confess himself conquer'd if he dares strive with me For this was that Pan whereof Plutarch from Aemilianus a man both wise and serious as that great Critick of Men characterizeth him tells this Story in his Book of the decay of Oracles That as Aemilianus was sailing for Italy a voice was heard from the Isle Paxae calling to Thamus the Master of the Vessel and commanding him when he came over against the Palodes to tell the Inhabitants that the great Pan was dead which injuction he had no sooner performed but there was heard from the Island a sad and wonderful groaning the news of this Prodigy arrives at Rome with those Passengers and quickly comes to the ears of the Emperour Tiberius who sends for Thamus and being by him assured of the Truth of the Report makes a diligent inquiry of the learned men of Rome who that Pan should be This fell out toward the latter end of Tiberius his reign For Plutarch flourished under Trajan about the 100. year of Christ Alsted Chronol 40. and Philip who tells this Story in Plutarch had then with him those to witness it who had heard Aemilianus tell it when he was an old Man and must therefore be near our Saviours Crucifixion else the Mariners would not have found Tiberius at Rome but at Capreae Whence appears how grosly his Theologues were mistaken in their determining this Pan to have been the Son of Mercury and Penelope and the reasonableness of this Conjecture That he was some Cacodemon who as the Coriphaeus of all those Thieves who came before Christ had made the World believe he was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Macrobius his phrase Saturnal l. 1. c. 17. the All-heal One Saviour 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem Saturn l. 1. c. 22. the Lord not of the Woods as the Poets interpreted that Title but as Macrobius expounds it of universal Nature whose influence disperfeth it self round about the World whom the Mythologists do therefore make the representation of the Universe because they could not find any person appearing in the World to whom they could apply these Titles and those descriptions which both Grecians and Aegyptians make of Pan. So that here we have the Confession of the greatest Theologues and the best cultivated Nations That their received 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Isidore Peleusiota in the Epistle above-quoted stiles them God-saviours or bealing Gods were so far from being able to cure Souls as they durst not relie upon them for the removal of the Pestilence a bodily Malady but applied themselves to a God whom they expected would in time discover himself to the World though then a stranger to all Gentiles and known only in Judea as not only Lucan before alleged but long before him Orpheus confesseth in his Hymn de Deo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whom no man ever saw but a certain only begotten who proceeded from the ancient stock of the Chaldeans to wit that water-born Law-giver Moses as he afterward stiles him alluding I suppose to God's showing Moses his back-parts § 6. A principle wherein the Patrons of the Christian and of the Pagan Cause were so well agreed as they put the Controversie betwixt them to this issue Whether in common Reason our Jesus was like to be that one unknown universal Redeemer or some one in the Crowd of their reputed Saviours Hence Julian in his Treatise against the Galilaeans singles out Aesculapius to outvie Christ in the claim of the common Saviour who being the Son of Jove descended from Heaven to Earth in the Sun-beams for the health and welfare of Mankind And Celsus in Origen lib. 7. calum 14 15 16 17. having argued against the likelihood of the Christian Assertion That Jesus of Nazareth is that to the Gentile World unknown God who being the desire of all Nations came to redeem them from those miseries from which their received Saviours could not free them it being as he thinks unreasonable to imagine that the so very inconsiderable Nation of the Jews a people so far out of Gods special care as he did not provide for them so much as a place upon Earth wherein they might live together but permitted them to be scatter'd over the face of the whole Earth should attain to the knowledge of the true God-saviour so hard to be found out rather than the studious and most inquisitive Philosophers labours to outvie the blessed Jesus with Hercules in the power of repulsing all external adversary force called therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Scatter-evil as Clemens Alexand. observes in his Protreptic With Aesculapius for the Virtue of expelling bodily Diseases who for all his skill could not cure the Roman Matrons of that epidemical Abortion which befel them at the time of the War with Pirrbus Orosius l. 4. But St. Austin excuseth him for that as professing himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non Obstetrix a prime Physician but no Midwife de Civitate l. 3. c. 17. And therefore Celsus providently adviseth that if we suspect the sufficiency of these Two to relieve the World of all its incumbrances we joyn to them as auxiliary Saviours Orpheus who without doubt saith he was inspired with a divine spirit and suffered death for the divine Doctrine he delivered Observe Reader that the Epicureans could not get out of their Minds nor refrain their Tongues from acknowledging that men are relieved by the Death and Doctrine of their Saviour Or Sibyl whose authority Christians so sar prize as they quote her Verses for the proof of Christs Divinity An Heathen Epicurean was the first man that derided the Christian Doctors for quoting the Sibyllines in favour of our Faith talidedecore gloriamur Or Anaxarchus and Epictetus who gave so great examples of patient and heroick suffering In this discourse as Celsus cunningly begs the Question and takes it for granted that these Saviours of his naming outweigh our Saviour whereas their is more weight in his little finger than in the loins of a thousand such like Mock-saviours So he openly confesseth that not any one of the Gentile reputed Heroes was sufficiently qualified to be the common Saviour and subscribes to what I am proving That none can be the Universal Redeemer but he that hath in himself the combination of all those salvifick Vertues which the Heathen conceiv'd to be dispers'd amongst all their Deities How much better doth our Apostle state and determine this Question 1 Cor. 8. 5. 6. There are Gods many and Lords many but to us there is but one God the Father of whom are all things and we for him And one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things and we by him understanding by God 's the supreme and sempiternal Deities which the Gentiles worshipp'd By Lords those half-God half-man Mediatours whom they
Moses faithful Christ no austere Master Laws for Children for Men for the Humane Court for Conscience Christ clears Moses from false Glosses § 4 It was fit that Christ should demand a greater Rent having improved the Farm St. Mat. 5. 17. explain'd Christian Virtue a Mirrour of God's admired by Angels St. Mat. 7. 26. urged The Sanction of the Royal Law § 5. St. Paul ' s Notion of Justification by Faith only explain'd it implies more and better work than Justification by the works of the Law Judaism hath lost its Salvifick Power Much given much required The Equity and Easiness of Christ's Yoak Discord in the Academy none in Christs School § 1. THe Gospel is so fram'd as it exhibits to us the Substance of the Law 's Types wherein the things pertaining to the Person Office and Kingdom of the Messias were umbrated without reference to which most of them are such childish and beggerly Toys as the instituting of them is manifestly unworthy of infinite Wisdom and that solemn pomp of signs and wonders that went before them as inducements to the Israelites to receive them with due reverence would be in the most candid Interpretation of impartial Reason no better than the Mountains swelling and going in hard labour to bring forth a ridiculous Mouse From which imputation of folly observed and objected by the Heathens against their Lawgiver the most learned Mythologist Philo Judaeus though he attempt to vindicate Moses yet missing Moses his Scope and not looking to the end of his Law he falls far short of his purpose and makes worse work of it than a Novice-Christian would that has but learn'd this Principle the Law was a shaddow of good things to come but the body that casts those shadows is Christ A Tast whereof he gives us in his Treatise of Circumcision wherein having premis'd how unlikely it is that so severe a Ceremony should be taken up upon weak Grounds he lays down these wise reasons for it 1. The prevention of the growing of the Carbuncle in that part Just as if a man should advise to have the Head chop'd off to prevent the aching of it 2. That that Membrane might not be a receptacle of uncleanness upon the same reason they must not only with the Egyptian Priests shave off their hair which he grounds upon the same reason but slit their Noses and crop their Ears and dismember themselves of other Vessels receptory of Excrements 3. For the procuring of Foecundity of which he saith it is a necessary Cause aiunt enim ità semen rectà ejaculari integrum nec diffluit per sinus preputii As if Nature could not frame her own Tools in a form fittest for the use she intends them And yet these Grounds of Circumcision he saith came to his ears by the Tradition of divine men his Ancestors who most diligently expounded Moses Of the like grain are the Reasons he gives why God prohibited the planting of Groves about the Tabernacle because it was not meet to bring man's or beast's Dung near the Tabernacle to manure the Trees and make them flourish Philo de monarchia 2. Of Gods commanding the Priests to wear linnen while they officiated Because such garments are not made of a matter proceeding from mortal Creatures as woollen are Eadem cum ratione insanit with the same kind of reasons he plays the fool in making the High Priests Apparel a resemblance of the World his Jacinth colour'd Vest tipifies the Sublunary his Pectoral the Celestial Region the two Emeralds on either Shoulder the two Haemispheres the twelve Stones therein the twelve Signs of the Zodiack Its name Rationale does denote that all things comprehended by the Heavens were made and adorn'd upon Principles of the best Reason Thummim or Verity does denote that no lye can come into Heaven Urim or Clarity that all the light which is in the sub-celestial flows from the celestial Bodies The Flowers on the Fringe do tipifie the Earth whence they spring the Pomgranates Water called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for their fluidness the Bells the Harmony and Concent of the Parts of the World among themselves Philo de monarch 2. With how much more credit do the Evangelists bring off Moses when they present Christ as the substance of that Mannah that Bread of Heaven that Angel's Food wherewith the Jews were sustained in the Wilderness of that Rock of which they all drank of that brazen Serpent lifted up to heal those who were stung of fiery Serpents of that Pascal Lamb by the sprinkling of whose Blood they were preserved from the stroak of the destroying Angel a Lamb of the Flock without blemish a perfect man of the stock of Abraham and without sin and taken up carried in procession into Jerusalem on the same day whereon their Paschal Lamb was seperated from the Flock his Blood the thing signified by the Blood of Bulls and Goats his Divine Nature by the Goat that was dismist the Scape-goat his human by the Goat that was sacrificed his Body the substance of Tabernacle and Temple wherein the God-head dwelt bodily his Priest-hood as to the offering of the great Propitiatory typified by Aaron's Priesthood as to his Blessing in the vertue of that Sacrifice by Melchisedech's Time would fail me to enumerate particulars See more of them in St. Jerome's Preface to his Exposition of Hosea Velum Templi scissum est ominum Judaeorum secreta patuerunt Verus Helizaeus aquas steriles atque mortiferas sapientiae suae condivit sale fecit esse vitales Marath aqua legis ligno patibuli dulcorata est The Veil of the Temple was rent in twain from top to bottom to signifie that all the Jews Mysteries were by Christ laid open He being that true Elisha who with the salt of his Wisdom season'd those steril and mortiferous Waters of the Sanctuary and made them healthful It was by the wood of his Cross that the bitter water of the Law was sweetned The Apostles setting the Watch of the Gospel so exactly to the Dial of the Ceremonial Law as to keep touch with all its Minute-shadows their drawing the features and proportion of Christs Face so as to resemble that Image which the glassy Sea of Mosaical Rites reflects So as in those Draughts we see his glory as the glory of the only begotten Son of God full of Grace as to himself full of truth as to them and thereby also rendring the Law it self full of Grace and worthy to be esteem'd the progeny of the Divine Mind speaks them to have had their wits about them § 2. The Gospel is perfectly consonant to the Old Testament in respect of its Precepts and Ordinances It hath indeed abolished the Ceremonial Law but without clashing with the Sanction of that Law and upon clear and indubitable Old Testament-principles where we hear God saying he would make a new Covenant with them not according to the Covenant he made with their Fathers when he
Israel the remnant of Israel after the flesh that had renounc'd Judaism and become Christians and the spiritual Seed the Gentiles coming in to the Gospel in a full body might be saved In which Interval the carnal Seed were enemies that is in part cast off for the Gentiles sake that they might be grafted in in the room of those four Branches but yet the election the remnant of them that believed beloved for the sake of the Fathers God having a kind of hankering after them even the whole Nation upon the account of their being the Off-spring of his friend Abraham and therefore retaining the Nation by the handle as it were of the Remnant and rejecting them but in part and by degrees till he wholly cast them off and removed his Court from them unto the Gentiles having demolished his Palace amongst them and made the Throne of his Glory a perpetual desolation Hence St. Austin states the Time of the Scepters departure so as he makes Kingdom and Temple and Priesthood and Sacrifice and that Mystical Unction upon the account whereof their Kings were called Christ's or anointed to depart all together at that time when the Resurrection of Christ having been preach'd to and embrac'd by the Gentiles they were subdued by Vespasian From the ceasing of all which then he argues they were only Types of Christ de consensu Evangelist l. 1. c. 13. Nec alia re magis claruit illius Gentis Regnum Templum Sacerdotium Sacrisicium unctionem illam mysticam non fuisse nisi praenunciando Christo deputata quà m quòd occisi Christi Resurrectio postquà m caepit credentibus gentibus praedicari illa omnia cessaverant niscientibus Romanis per quorum victoriam nescientibus Judaeis per quorum subjugationem factum est ut omnia illa cessarent To this our Saviour hath respect and comments upon it in his Prophecy of this Destruction of the Jewish State the Departure of the Scepter St. Mat. 24. 14. where having named some other things that were to precede it he adds this as the last Sign This Gospel of the Kingdom i. e. of the Messiah shall be preach'd to all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall the end come i. e. the end of the Jewish State when the Gentiles by the preaching of the Apostles through the whole Roman Empire should be gather'd unto Christ then should the Jewish Church-Commonwealth I mean that particular form of Government which God prescribed to them as a Nation admitted to the participation and fellowship of his Grace with Junius de politia Mosis cap. 5. be utterly dissolved which till then had continued united under some Polity or Form of Government under God as their King from its first beginning The Jews as Josephus ant 14. 10 12. affirmeth and proveth out of Strabo that he might not be thought to flatter his own Nation being till then not only in Judaea under the Government of their own Nobles having Judicatures erected by Gabinius the Roman General consisting of their own Elders and proceeding by their own Laws but in Cyrene Egypt and other places of their former Dispersions having Magistrates of their own and using their own Laws no otherwise than in an absolute Commonwealth But was then melted down into and swallowed up by the Roman Empire Euseb. cron deletis Jerusalimis Regnum Judaeorum defecit the learned Scaliger mistakes the meaning of that term animadv ad Eus. Cron. pag. 198. b. for Eusebius means plainly that Jerusalem being destroyed the holy Kingdom which God till then had erected over them ceast Their Thearchy then expired their King-of-old broke up his Court amongst them so as thenceforward they have had no King but Caesar the right Scepter of that Kingdom of Judah which God had wielded over them then visibly departed when the Palace of their great King was finally desolated their holy State and Oeconomy was now rooted up the divine Ordinances once planted amongst them were now extinguished Dr. Lightfoot parergon 178. and themselves banish'd Heaven and Earth coeli soli sui extorres sine homine sine Deo rege Tertul. advers Gent. cap. 21. without either man or God-king And instead of the Kingdom of the Messiah which they expected would have been erected over them at the expiration of that Divine Polity establish'd by Moses and rejected when it was come nigh them they were brought under the Anti-Messiacal if for illustration I may here use that word in place of Antichristian Dominion of Vespasian Judaei non receperunt Christum suscepturi Antichristum Aug. ap de diversis tom 10. in die paschae Repulerunt agnum eligerunt vulpem ideo partes vulpium facti sunt August tom 8. pag. 262. The Jews rejected Christ being afterwards to embrace Antichrist they refused the Lamb and chose the Fox and therefore became the portion of Foxes who had been God's portion For Vespasian whose Vassals they became imposed himself upon them not only as the Emperour of Rome but as their King Messiah and was reputed so not only by the Romans but by Josephus himself and the sober Party of unbelieving Jews vide Dr Hammond's note b. on Mat. 24. and whatever the Zealots thought in secret they were forc'd to make open Abrenunciation of their King of old and to enter a Recognizance to accept of Caesar's Gods in his room by the payment of that half-shekel to Jupiter Capitolinus which was used to be paid to the Temple while God was their King as an acknowledgment of homage upon no other but this new tenure were they allowed the use of their old Laws Xiphilin E. Dione Vespasian pag. mihi 537. ab eodem Tito jussi sunt quotannis didrachma 〈…〉 pendere Jovi Capitolino ii qui patrias leges eorum tuerentur Doubtless we have too much gratified the mis-believing Jews and laid Stumbling-blocks in their way by our conceiving that the departure of the Scepter implies primarily a change of the external Form of their Government or deprivation of liberty to use their own Laws and to enjoy Judges of themselves things but accidental to that Theocraty Government wherein God presided more immediately and specially over them than other Nations which was exercised under several Forms and with such variety as to those Circumstances and external Privileges as sometimes they enjoyed sometimes were deprived of them Grotius de jure pacis belli l. 1. cap. 4. par 7. pun 5. proves that the Manichees taking up Arms against Antiochus can be defended by no Plea but that of extreme necessity not from the Jews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. For they had been subdued by Nebuchadnezzar and brought under an absolute not conditional Subjection to the Assyrian Empire To which Supremacy over them the Persians first and then the Macedonians succeeded and they did not stipulate with Alexander or his Successors but came without making any Conditions under his and his Successor's Jurisdiction as they
dispencing of it as to several other heads of it While Celsus will needs make the Royal Law useless and needless as to the most part of it There is nothing saith he in the Christian Discipline new or worthy of commendation but is common to it and the Philosophers who before Christ have taught that there is to be expected Rewards of Virtue and Mulcts for Sin in the other World Orig. contr Cel. 1. 4. Christ tell us saith he we ought not to worship Gods made with hands that the Father is to be worship'd in Spirit Why we Philosophers account not Images of the Gods to be Deities we know that the Workmanship of wicked Artificers and villanous men as many times they are that grave these Images cannot be Gods we have learn'd of Heraclitus that they who adore liveless Statues do as simply as they that talk to Walls of the Persians that the Deity is not comprehended within any Structure made with hands and of Zeno Citiensis in his Book of the Common-wealth that he need not build Chappels that prepares the Temple of his own Soul for the entertainment of God Those very Laws which the Madaurencian Philosophers blamed as destructive to humane Societies Celsus mentions with Commendation as far more ancient than Christ. They have also saith he these Laws Thou must not repel injuries If any man smite thee on thy cheek turn the other to him this is an old Dictate long since utter'd by Socrates when he was disputing with Crito and mention'd by Plato in his Timaeus Orig. contr Cel. 7. 17. upon the same account he mentions the commendations which Christ gives to Humility Purity of Heart Pacateness of Spirit c. as better expressed by Plato in his Books of Laws advising him that would be happy to pursue Righteousness with an humble pure and pacate Mind Id lib. 5. cal 8. And the Caution that Christ gives against Covetousness Celsus in the same place affirmeth to have been derived from Plato whose saying that it is impossible for any man to be very rich and very good he parallels to that of Christ It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven The mortiferousness of these Waters is to be cured by casting in that cruze of Salt which I have already exhibited and brought to hand in the second Book where I shewed that whatsoever points of abstruse knowledge occurr in the Schools they are beholding to the Temple for and are but Beams of that Light which Christ or his Spirit in the Prophets communicated to the World the last of which Prophets Writings are near as old as the first of Gentile Philosophers It were endless to enumerate the ecchoes of Christs Law which those Rocks that oppose it so articulately reverberate as a steadily listning Ear may take in the beginning middle and end of every Evangelical Precept from those mock-sounds in Heathen Authors I shall not therefore enlarge this Section with more Instances but conclude it with this Observation That the Adversaries in making reply to our urging them with the excellencie of Christs Law would not have taken that course as puts them upon such self-contradictory Salvoes if they durst for very shame the contrary was so palpable have denied them to be Christs Briefly we find in the Pagan Writers what they took to be Christ's Law and that which they opposed as such is the very same with that that the Gospel presents as such not one Egg is more like another than that Bracelet of Pearls which our Saviour fitted to the necks of his Disciples is to that which these impure Swine trample under their feet CHAP. IV. Every Article of the Apostles Creed to be found as asserted by the Church in those Writings which opposed Christian Religion § 1. Maker of Heaven and Earth § 2. His only Son § 3. Conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary § 4. Suffered under Pontius Pilat c. § 5. Rose again the third day § 6. Ascended into Heaven thence c. § 7. The holy Ghost § 8. Holy Catholick Church c. § 1. 3. THe sum of the Christian Faith taught by Christ and his Apostles is intirely and in every branch of it recorded as such in the Authors that disputed against it For order and brevities sake I shall here instance in the several Articles of it comprised in that most admirable Compendium of it the Apostles Creed which as it has been taken for such by all Christians so it has been opposed as such by all Adversaries Article 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth That this Article as it is now profest by the Church and laid down in the New Testament was from the beginning held forth as a point of that Doctrine which Christ and his Apostles Preach'd and therefore not wrongfather'd upon them is manifest from those quotations out of Pagan Authors who affronted it upon that very account and only Reason because it was Christ's Doctrine Celsus from the practice of the Ophiani Hereticks who worship'd the Serpent as bestowing upon our first Parents the knowledge of good and evil a gift which God envied them as they blasphemously speak objects that Christians contrary to that faith which they profess worship another God than the Creator of all things to wit the Serpent Or. Con. Cels. 5. 16. As Celsus doth here confess that that Doctrine which our Bible exhibites touching Gods prohibiting Adam to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and the Serpents prevailing with Adam to eat of that Tree and the opening of Adam's eyes thereupon to discern good and evil and the Serpents infinuating to Adam that God envied him that knowledge c. was the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles so his charging upon the Church that impious Practice of these Heriticks misgrounded upon the Churches Faith and which the Church exprest her abhorrencie of was no more equal dealing than that which the Romanists measure out to the British and other Protestant Churches when they lay to her charge the practices of such as are at as great a distance from Communion with her as with them You Christians saith Celsus profess you believe in and worship God the Creator of this Universe but since Plato saith it is hard to find out and know that God and impossible to communicate the knowledge of him to another is it like that you of all other men should attain to the knowledge of this God being fast bound in chains of ignorance so as you cannot see what is pure Idem 7. 14. Compare what the Christians teach with what the Philosophers guess concerning God and the controversie which of us have attained to a more perfect knowledge of God will easily be determined That God created man after his own Image was the Doctrine of Christ and the Primitive Church appears from Celsus his arguing that if the Christans
denyed that God was first to be represented by Images made like man they overthrew their own Doctrine that man was made after the similitude of Cod. Id. Ib. cal 19. The Son is the only express Image of the Fathers Person and therefore we worship him by that Image only Nay he argueth for the worshipping of Angels and Daemons from what Opinions Christians hold touching the Creation you profess saith he that all Creatures are governed and order'd by the appointment of God that Angels Devils Men and all Creatures have assigned them powers allotted by him such as he thinks meet to confer upon them why then may not we worship them as Creatures endowed with power to help or hurt us as the Princes Favourites Id. lib. 7. cal 20. as if we could not honour them as Gods friends without imparting to them their Masters due divine honour He gives still further and clearer evidence of the delivery of this Article of our Christian Faith while he indulgeth himself the liberty to deride that Truth which was once delivered to the Saints The Jews saith he in a corner of the VVorld Palestine conspiring together invented the Fable of Gods forming Man and breathing into him the breath of Life of VVoman brought out of his side of man's receiving a Precept from God and preferring the Serpents Precept above Gods of Gods casting Adam iuto a sleep and taking Eve out of Adam's rib c. Orig. Contr. Celsum lib. 4. cal 15. It is easier to call this Sacred History a Fable than to prove it one This same Epicurean Hog thus grunts out Calumnies against the Circumstances of Gods making Heaven and Earth lib. 6. 23. 24. c. God said let there be light Did the Maker of all things borrow Light to work by as we light our Candle at our Neighbours God did not borrow but made Light not for himself to see by but to illustrate his Creatures Can any thing be more ridiculous than to assign certain days to the Creation of the World in the first whereof God perfected one kind of being in the second another in the third another c. and in the sixth and last Man The Matter of visible and invisible things God created in a moment and in the same moment educ'd the invisible World out of that Matter But that he should for instance create a Natural Day which was his first days work consisting of twenty four hours in less than twenty four hours implies a Contradiction and that day being the first and pattern of all the rest that is consisting the first half of it of night and the other of day it was impossible but that Darkness must be upon the face of the Deep one twelve hours and Light in the upper Hemisphere other twelve hours Or that he should to instance in the fourth days work make Sun and Moon and set them in the Firmament of Heaven and make them successively make a day and night in less time than twenty four hours does equally imply a Contradiction And for the rest they being more gross bodily substances educ'd out of the first Matter it implies a Contradiction that they should move in an instant to those forms the Divine Power first bestow'd upon them and it was most congruous seeing they could not be made but in some time to perfect them also in such a proportion of time by his own free choice as the nature of the things themselves required which were made the first and fourth day Besides the Light created on the first day which must necessarily move sphaerically or it could not have made a natural day might be instrumental towards the producing those powers which God by his Fiat gave the Matter into effect and then before the earth was all over-spread with Grass and Cattle and the Sea with Fish c. that Light must shine upon them from one end of the Heaven to the other which could not be done in less space than twenty four hours And that God should rest on the seventh day as if like a lazie Artificer he had been tyred and must then keep holiday Could there be days before the Sun was made whose Motion measures Time that lucid Cloud created the first day had a circular Motion and thereby measured time till on the fourth day God made the Sun Vide Zanch. de operibus Dei par 1. l. 1. c. 2. There is nothing saith he in the whole History of Gods making the World according to the Christian Hypothesis but what is incompetent to the Divine Nature but their credulity proceeds from their believing that God made Man after his own Image an opinion as absurd as any of the rest for he is not at all like us but incomprehensible innominable wherein he contradicts not only his own late recited opinion but his own Sect for Apuleius the Epicurean in Tull. de Natura deorum lib. 1. shapes God in all points even of bodily Members like to Man And manifestly wrests Moses who discourseth of the Creation in such borrowed Terms as are most familiar in vulgar use and introduceth God resting not out of lassitude but in complacencie with the Goodness and Beauty of his Work and that for our imitation that we might rest in contemplation of that eternal Wisdom in which he made them neither did God in that rest cease from work altogether but from Creating-work § 2. Article 2. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord. If the Christians saith Celsus worship'd no other but God the Father Maker of Heaven and Earth they might without blame contemn all our Gods but who can endure that they should despise those whom the whole World in a manner do worship for Deities and in the mean time cry up Christ for God who we all know was but born the other day Christ as to his Man-hood was born in the fulness of Time assigned by the Prophets as he was God his Generation was from Eternity Nay that they should not worship the Father but together with this Author of their Religion whom they call the Son of God Orig. con Cel. 8. cal 3. 4. The Christians worship the Father through the Son and whosoever expects acceptance with the Father but through the Son worships an Idol a God of his own framing They avoid our Altars Statues Temples sacred Rites that they may keep untainted that Faith they have plighted to Christ they will not with 〈◊〉 worship the one God the common God of all Nations that they may among themselves worship Christ as God Id. Ib. cal 6. To which Pliny gives his suffrage in the place fore-quoted The Christians sing Psalms to one Christ whom they repute to be God And Licinius in his Speech to his Soldiers encouraging them to the engagement against Constantine with this Argument that he had cast off the Gods of his Father and Country and put his trust in a new and strange God one Jesus of Nazareth Euseh de vita Constant. l.
the Alexandrian among whom the fresh memory of Jesus and his Fore-runner the Baptist a person of blessed memory with both him and them must needs lead them to confer upon the Stories of them and to compare Notes With Titus we find him at Antioch where the Name of Christian by which he commemorates Christ's Followers was first imposed upon Christians taken up as the learned Junius thinks by themselves to distinguish them from such as called themselves Galileans and Nazarites as if they embraced the Gospel but of whom for their Judaizing the Church was ashamed and wiped their names out of her Calendar At Jericho at Bethany and all Judaean Towns where Christ convers'd from the Inhabitants and inspection of which places he either saw those manifest tracks or received that full satisfaction of what he reports of Christ's miraculous Works as makes him thus positively assert the Truth of those Matters For where else among whom else could he gain that certain knowledge that he himself requires in an Historian and professeth himself to have had of those things he records both in his Books of Antiquities and the Wars He that promiseth to others saith he the Tradition of Facts really done must himself first have a perfect understanding of those things either because he was present at the doing of them or understood them by those that saw them done which Rule I have strictly observed in both my Treatises Josep contrà Appion l. 1. He could not be a Spectator of the Works of the Effects of them he might upon those persons upon whom they were wrought in those places where Monuments of them remain'd but where could he have better information by Eye-witnesses than the Inhabitants of those Countries and Villages where Christ manifested his Glory and Josephus so long convers'd Of the Truth of such information that he was undoubtedly assured will be yet more evident if we observe how narrowly he was watch'd by those two men of an evil-Eye towards him and his History Appion a learned Gentile Philosopher and Justus so zealous a Jew as Agrippa became his Advocate to the Emperour against the accusations of the Decapolitanes presenting him as the sole Author of his Countries Apostacy from its Allegeance and born and living in that part of Galilee where our Saviour chiefly convers'd How glad would either of these have been to have taken Josepus tardy in so considerable a point of his History and how easily might they have catch'd him tripping here if he had not look'd so well to his feet as to deliver nothing concerning our Saviour but what he was certain of and could make good against all cavils How comes it to pass that those critical Adversaries who scarce leave one Story in either of his Treatises untouch'd against which they could make any plausible Exception have not a word to say against this but because the Evidence of its Truth was so apparent as there was no contradicting of it Nay would not these pick-quarrels have found fault if not with the falsity yet at least with the presumption of this Passage if they had not been convinc'd that he went not upon presumptions but undoubted Grounds Photias de Justo Tiberiadensi writes that in Emulation of Josephus he wrote the History of the Jews from the time of Moses unto the death of Agrippa the seventh King of the Herodian Race and last of the Jews who began his Reign under Claudius augmented his Kingdom under Nero and more under Vespasian and dyed in the third year of Trajan to whom Justus dedicated his History I report this quotation at large as well to certifie a mistake of my own touching Josephus his Appeal to Agrippa for the Truth of his Judaick Wars it being this Agrippa and not as I then supposed he whom Caligula preferr'd for that was he of whom the Text of St. Luke speaks who dyed in the fourth of Claudius of worms while Josephus was in his Nonage as also to shew that this Justus had time enough betwixt Josephus his finishing his History under Domitian and his finishing his own under Trajan to examine and find fault in it and that if he could have detected Josephus of falsity in this his Story of Christ the Heathen World and this persecuting Emperour who hated Christians to death would have been sure to have heard of it by Justus Never did any Secular Historian pass a more severe scrutiny than Josephus did and in no part of it more than this of Christ and the Baptist. To proceed therefore in his Testimony § 4. 1. By the Characters he stamps upon Christ's mighty Works he manifestly distinguisheth them from all others and points them out to be those very individual ones which are recorded in the Gospel 1. In that he makes Christ the Maker of them the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Former of them by his own power a word more properly attributed by the Christian Church in our common Creed unto God to express his creating Heaven and Earth without pre-existent Matter or co-existent Helpers than that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the Philosophers as Justin Martyr observes in his Protrepticks ad gentes the Christian VVord expressing the Christian Sence of that Article est enim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 qui ex nihilo aliquid facit and Plato's word expressing the Philosophers sence of the Original of the VVorld to wit that of Matter eternally pre-existing was made the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the well order'd Frame of the Universe the confused Chaos was brought into shape by the Ministry of co-eternal petty Gods the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or chief worker drawing the Model and over-seeing the VVork Or if the Sirname of Martyr fright our dainty Scepticks from reading that Author Sir Philip Sidney that Prince of Romancers in his commendation of the Art of Poetry will inform him what the proper importance of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is According to which Josephus his applying it to Christ implies that he thought those strange Effects wrought by Christ not to have been educ'd out of the active Potentiality of the Matter upon which or means by which he operated but to have been the immediate Emanations of Christ's Power as the Fountain cause and hereby he discriminates Christ's Miracles not only from the Effects of natural Magick produc'd out of natural Causes though latent to us Owls yet naked and barefac'd to those Spirits that have their name from Intelligence but from those which were wrought by Moses by the Prophets or Apostles those being effected by another Power in another name than their own but what Jesus of Nazareth did he did as having power in himself not as a subordinate Agent but principal That which never man pretended to but he that which never was ascribed to any man but him and yet ascribed to him by such as did not write Christian. He describes Christian Miracles according to the Gospel rule 2. In his affirming these Works to
nullus aeger ineptiùs deliravit saith Lactant. de fal Sapientia lib. 3. cap. 17. There is saith Epicurus no orderly disposition of things for many things are made otherwise then they ought to have been And this Divine man saith our Lactantius found a great many faults in Gods works whose Cavils if I had time to refell one by one I would easily show that this querâ—lous Philosopher was neither a wise man nor well in his wits but a person than whom though he was sound and thristy in his Body never any Sick man raved more madly But sure his tongue ran before his wit Nor do I think that Alphonsus King of Spain was in earnest when he said that had he been with God at the Creation he could have directed the Sun a better course than that which he steers Or if he was he had the Moon then in his Crest or was himself the greatest errour that ever nature committed For though another course of the Sun might have been more convenient for Alphonsus his Kingdoms as well as another course and place of the Sea and though the end of his keeping within the Zodiack which Cleanthes fancies to wit this that the Sun being a Globe of Fire the Food of whose Vitals was Moisture that he might not die of thirst would not recede further from the Mediterranean than that he might reach if not his Lip yet with the help of a long arm his Spoon into it and sip from thence his dayly nutriment might have been better obtain'd if he had in his course been led always to face the Ocean Yet to him that considers what a general benefit it is to the whole world that the Sun follows that line he does in his dayly and yearly course how by this means his Light and Heat is most equally distributed the as profitable as pleasant interchanges of Winter and Summer of Spring and Autumn procured and all sublunary Creatures have assigned to them as fit proportions of time to work and rest in as could be devised To him I say that considers this it will appear that an house built thus Magnificent and furnisht with all imaginable conveniences and all the members and parts of it disposed into so comely an Order wherein every particular serves it self in serving the Community was neither built for nor by Rats and Mice but by that infinite being who had in his mind before the production of it a preexisting eternal and perfect Idea of all its Parts Uses Appurtenances and Circumstances If the fortuitous concourse of Atomes saith Cicero could produce so comely a Structure as the Universe why do not they produce a Portch a Temple a City which are far more easie and have infinitely less Workmanship Who can think him worthy of the name of Man who when he sees such certain and regular Motions of the Heavens such fixed Orders and Ranks of the Stars and all things in Heaven and Earth so aptly connext and joyn'd together can deny that the greatest Reason hath been and is imployed in the making sustaining and guiding of them Or conceipt that those things fall out by chance they are disposed by such deep Council as non-plusseth all humane wit to comprehend it when we see things moved by Engines we make no question but that those are the works of Reason and when we see the Câ—lestial Bodies wheeling about with so admirable Celerity and most constantly making their anniversary Vicissitude to the greatest benefit and conservation of all things do we make the least doubt but that they follow the conduct not only of Reason but the highest and Divinest Reason Quî igitur convenit signum aut tabulam pictam cùm aspexeris scire adhibitam Artem cúmque procul cursum Navigii videris non dubitare quin id ratione atque arte moveatur aut cùm Solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua contemplere intelligere declarari horas arte non casu mundum autem qui has ipsas artes eorum artifices cuncta complectitur consilii rationis esse expertem putare Quòd si in Scythiam aut Britanniam Sphaeram aliquis tulerit hanc quam nuper effecit Possidonius cujus singulae conversiones idem efficiunt in Sole in Luna et in quinque Stellis errantibus quod efficitur in caelo singulis diebus noctibus quis in illa barbarie dubitet quin ea Sphera fit perfecta ratione Archimedem arbitramur plus voluisse in imitandis Spheris quà m Naturam in efficiendis Ille apud Actium Pastor qui navem nunquam ante vidisset ut procul novum vehiculum Argonautarum è monte conspexit primò admirans perterritus dubitat quid sit at juvenibus visis auditóque nautico cantu consimilem ad aures cantum refert de Nat. Deor 2. 7. How incongruous are these Epicurean imaginations If thou dost but cast thine eye upon a Sign Post or Painted Table thou would be ashamed to question whether Art had been used therein or chance had put them into that form If thou seest a Ship under Sail thou doubts not but Reason and Art are imploy'd in the conduct of it If thou take a view of a Sun-dial or an Hour glass wherein the half hours or quarters are marked out thou perceives that those Lines were drawn not by Chance but Art But when thou contemplates the World which comprehends these very Arts and Artificers and all things else thou thinkest it void of Counsel and Reason Put case a man should carry that Sphere which Possidonius lately made whose several Motions make the same progress in the Sun Moon and five remaining Planets which themselves make in the Heavens every day and night into Scythia or Britain poor Britain how art thou Posting back to thy old Scythian-equalling barbarousness who among those Savages would make question but that Art and Reason had an hand in framing that Sphere Can we think that Archimedes had his mind more imploy'd in imitating the Spheres then Nature in making of them That Shepherd of Actium who had never seen Ship before when the Ship of the Argonautes came within his Ken at first wondring and affrighted doubted what it was but when he saw the Marriners and heard the Seamens Songs he return'd the like Songs to their ears Put case saith Aristotle as he is quoted by Balbus in Cicer. de Nat. Deor. 2. That some men who had always lived underground should be let out of that Dungeon and be permitted to come upon the surface of the Earth where on a sudden they should see the Earth the Sea and Heaven perceive the greatness of the Clouds the force of the Winds look upon the Sun and understand the vastness of its Bulk the Beauty of its Face and the force of his Influence the efficacy of its Light making Day of its Heat cherishing and refreshing all creatures and next when day is shut in should fix their eyes upon the many thousand fixed
obtains place § 2. The God of Israel hath his Priests amongst the Gentiles § 3. No acceptable Oblation but what Christians offer tender'd to Israels God § 4. The Gospel hath utterly abolish'd Idols made Virmin-Gods creep into holes § 5. Daphnaean Apollo choak'd with the Bones of Babilas Heathen Testimony for the silencing of Oracles the Vanity of their Reasons § 6. Gross Idolatry in the Roman Pale by her own Doctors Confessions and Definitions the Legend of the Golden Calf yet not in the proper and prophetick sence § 1. A Third point of Prophecy the accomplishment whereof is permanent and now in being to the beholding of which I refer the Atheist for Conviction that the Author of our Scriptures hath an infinitely perfect fore-comprehension of Contingencies Is that wherein it is fore-told That this by them rejected Messiah of the Jews was to be called The God of the whole Earth That this Christ this Son of God against whom the Jews took Counsel the Bond of whose Covenant they brake asunder the Cords of whose Royal Laws they cast from them was to receive of his Father The Heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the Earth for his possession Psal. 2. was to Reign from Sea to Sea and to fill The whole Earth with his Majesty Psal. 71. That to this Shilo after the Departure of the Scepter from Judah The Gentiles should be gathered Gen. 49. That this Branch out of the Root of Jesse wherein the Jews saw no form nor comliness is to reign over the Centiles Isa. 21. in whom the Gentiles are to trust Isa. 42. to whom the Nations are to come saying Our Fathers have inherited vanity Jer. 16. That in the days of this Kings Son All the ends of the earth shall remember themselves and turn to the Lord and all the kindreds of the Nations shall worship before him Ps. 22. That to him Princes should come out of Aegypt Aethiopia should soon with the first stretch out her hands unto God That his Dominion shall be so far extended as all Kings should worship him all Nations do him homage Psal. 68. 31 That it was too small a thing that he should raise up the Tribes of Jacob and that therefore God would give him for a Light to Lighten the Gentiles and to be his Salvation to the ends of the earth Is. 49. 6. That at what time the Lord of Hosts should refuse to accept an offering at the hands of the Jews and take no pleasure in them or their Legal services his Name should be dreadful among the Heathen great among the Gentiles and that in every place from the rising of the Sun to the going down thereof The God of Israel should have Incense offered to his Name and a pure offering Mal. 1. 10. and 14. Let the Atheist consult his Reason and then try if he can conceive how that God who spake by the Prophets so many things touching the Messias which are all come to pass and verified in the blessed Jesus could possibly be ignorant of or falsifie in the main in the Subject it self of all those Prophesies the Person of the Messias Or that he who foresaw the Rejection of the Jews would not provide himself of another People But I will not put him to the expence of what he hath not in the purchase of Faith His own Senses where ever he comes will inform him of the accomplishment of these Predictions what part soever of the old World he travels through he may hear the Name of the God of Israel celebrated he may see the Trophyes of Christs Victories standing there hear the Confession of all men with one mouth that the God of Abraham is the God that made Heaven and Earth with which rebound the Mahometan Moscos the Christian Churches the Jewish Synagogues for Pagan Temples he will find none where the Gospel has been Let him ask where he comes at the hearing of what Doctrine it was that their Gentile Progenitours came in to the acknowledgment of the God of Israel confessing that their Fathers had inherited Vanity had made lyes their Refuge I am perswaded the Mahometan will have so much Ingenuity as to confess that their Religion found all those parts of the World whither it hath come worshipping the God of Israel and therefore that was not the Light God set up to the Gentiles to bring them in to guide them to the one true God of Israel that theirs found the world inheriting the Christian Religion which Mahomet himself will not call a Vanity but for the time its Virtue lasted that is till he put forth his Alcharon confesseth to have been a saving and the only saving Religion as being the Appointment of God himself by the hand and Ministry of his Beloved Son Jesus Christ the greatest Prophet that ever was till Mahomet by Mahomets own Confession And the Jew may easily be confuted if he shall have the simplicity to say that that is a Prophecy of the Repentance of their Forefathers when they forsook the Idolatries of the Nations they were mixed with for 't is the Gentiles are to come and say Our Fathers inherited Vanity and the truth is the repenting Jews could not in verity make this Confession for though they for some time took long Leases of the Idolatry of the Heathens yet those Idolatries never obtain'd that Prescription as to become their Inheritance as they did in the Heathen World where long time out of mind from Father to Son no other Gods but Idols were worship'd Or if he should have the face to deny that it was the Preaching of the Gospel which prevail'd with the Nations of the World to come in to Israel's God confessing that the Religions of their Forefathers were all Vanity For before the Preaching of the Gospel 't is manifest that all Nations walked in their own way and in the name of their own Gods and the Jew was so far from introducing the Worship of their sometimes God into the Roman Capitol as they had much adoe to keep that Monster of all Roman Gods Caligula from receiving Divine honours in the Temple of Jerusalem and could not prevent the erecting of his Statue in their Temple at Alexandria nor the Adoration of it in the Presence-Chamber of the God of Israel Besides let them say by which of their Rabbies India by which Aethiopia by which Spain by which Eritain the utmost Coasts of Europe Asia Affrica were converted from Idols to the One living God as we can shew by what Apostles and Apostolical Persons the World was by piece-meal brought under the Obedience of God and of his Christ. § 2. Let him next observe if Israels God have that service perform'd to him which by his Prophets he had declared he would only accept when he should be called the God of all the Earth any where but in the Christian Church If since his rejection of the Levitical Priesthood which then virtually commenc'd when Christ as a Priest
after Aarons order made upon the Altar of his Cross by the oblation of himself a full and perfect Propitiation for the sins of the whole World and was then actually inflicted when in the virtue of that Attonement God sent him as a Priest after the Order of Melchisedech to bless the Nations by turning them from their sins If this God of Israel hath where he is invocated any Priests taken from among the Gentiles but those of Christs Institution that call themselves and are called that is known by the name of the Priests of the Lord. He may find this name scorned by such punie Antichrists as the Gospel tells us have ever been and foretells us will ever be in the Church but not of the Church who being under a Form of Godliness deny the Power and either out of a blind zeal or for a cloak of Covetousness decry the Evangelical Priest-hood casting contempt upon and practising to abolish that Name which the God of Israel hath said the Evangelical Ministers should be called by doing what in them lay to overturn the Foundation of Christian Faith For if there be not an order of Men taken out from the rest from among the people called the Priests of the Lord the Gentiles are not yet called nor that God whom we invocate the God of Israel nor that Jesus whom we worship the Christ the promised Messiah for of the days of Messias it is prophesied Is. 66. 8. I will gather all Nations and Tongues and they shall come and see my glory and this I will do by setting a Sign amongst them by erecting the Standard of the Cross For those that escape those of the Jews that save themselves from the untoward Generation by embracing Christ I will send to the Nations disperse them over the World to Tarshish Pul and Lud to Tubal and Javan to the Isles afar off that have not heard my fame neither have seen my Glory and they shall declare my Glory Preach Christ the Brightness of my Glory Heb. 1. 3. among the Gentiles And they shall bring all your Brethren for an offering unto the Lord out of all Nations and of them that shall be converted out of all Nations I will take for Priests and Levites For as the new Heavens that I create remain before me so shall your Seed and your Name remain for ever And again Isa. 61. 6. Ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord men shall call you the Ministers of our God See here what tender Consciences those tender ear'd men have and how well those Laodicean Church-men consult the promoting of the honour of Christ and the salvation of Souls through his Blood that rather than we should offend the itching ears of those white Devils would have us wave the use of so harsh a word so grating a name as that of Priests though it be of the mouth of the Lords naming and the bearing of it among the Gentiles one of those Demonstrations of the Spirit of Prophesie that Christ is come and that he whose Priests we are is the God that made Heaven and Earth Not but that the Romish Sacrificers have Sacrilegiously abused this name to the abetting their Sacrifice of the Mass or as if names or things whose use is not necessary may not be laid aside when abused as God took the name of Baal out of his peoples mouth after it had been appropriated to Idols and Hezechiah broke the Brazen Serpent after the Idolatrous use of it Yet he that upon that pretence would banish the name of Jehovah or other Names of God out of Christian use would leave us never a Name to call him by for all his Names that the Gentiles could get at the Tongues end they applied to their Idols and should we exterminate every Word or Thing that has been made an evil use of we must speak by Signs renounce our Creed our Meat Drink and Sleep How much more cautious should we be of entertaining those Principles of a squeasie and mis-inform'd Conscience as induce us to a disuse of that Name which God himself hath stampt upon the Ministers of the Gospel as their Memorial for ever But Odi prophanum vulgus arceo I should blame my self for making this excursion before the Atheist if it were not to inform him that in case while he is seeking for the accomplishment of this Prophesie he meet with such as disclaim this and call themselves by another Name and thereby be confirm'd in his Atheism the Church is free of his blood for there never hath been any Christian Church upon Earth whose Ministers are not known and called by the name of the Priests of Israel's God § 3. Let him enquire what Sacrifices and Oblations have been offered him since his Name was Great in all the World but that commemorative one of the great Propitiation which our high Priest made once for all That Thanksgiving-Sacrifice of the Eucharist that well-pleasing Sacrifice of a sweet odour we tender him in our Works of Charity in our honouring him with our substance that living and reasonable Service wherein we offer up our selves Souls Bodies and Spirits to the disposal of his Royal Law What Incense hath been burnt before him but Prayer from a Devout and flaming Heart What Libations have been powred out in his presence but penitential Tears flowing from a contrite spirit Let him travel Aegypt through and through he will find no Altar there erected to the God of Israel but that Table-throne of Grace whereon we offer to him his Creatures of Bread and Wine and make a Commemoration of his Son's Death No Pillar there set up to the Lord but the eternal Monument of his dear Love the Triumphant Standard of the blessed Cross. He will find the Jew the Assyrian the Aegyptian serving the God of Israel joyntly in the practise of no Religion but the Christian. And then I leave it to the Atheists Discretion to judge whether it be conceivable that that God who was so wise as to foresee and so powerful as to effect this great Change we see wrought in the World by the Gospel should be so far wanting to himself and those of Mankind that most sincerely love him as to have none to worship him in a way of his own Institution this sixteen hundred years ever since he by his Providence hath made it impossible to tender him that Worship himself had formerly commanded the place being destroyed where God will only accept of such like services and the Jews having been terrified from rebuilding it under Julian so as they never since durst reattempt it The Story of which their Consternation is thus reported by Greg. Nazianzen Oratione 48. in Julianum 2. Julian invited the Jews to return into Judaea and rebuild their Temple whereupon multitudes of them repair thither and busie themselves in that work with as much zeal as our City-Matrons exprest When those Forts and Lines of Communication were cast up whereby they
excluded themselves from the Protection of the best of Kings and cooped up themselves to be a prey to the worst of Tyrants for as ours then so the Jewish Matrons now spared neither their tender Limbs nor fine Cloaths nor richest Jewels but as they expended their Treasures in hiring Labourers so they themselves did not disdain to serve the Workmen by carrying Baskets of Rubbish till both Masons and Servitours were forc'd from their work by Balls of Fire issuing from the trembling and gaping Earth by which they that were not kill'd had their Garments or Bodies inured with the Sign of the Cross by which Marks of God's displeasure many of them were so far convinc'd that no other Religion was acceptable to God but the Christian as they with one voyce invocate the help of Christ and were by Baptism initiated in the Christian Faith The substance of this Story I have elsewhere alledged out of Ammianus Marcellinus one of Julian's Captains And Nazianzen affirms that when he wrote this Oration these Prints and Marks upon their Cloaths were still to be seen Is 't then I say imaginable in reason that ever since the disannulling of the Mosaical Service of Legal Sacrifices God has been no where worship'd in a way of his own institution Or is it possible to point out any People upon Earth save the Christian Church that worship him in that way which God himself foretold he would erect at the vacateing of the old § 4. The fourth and last instance I shall give of Prophecies touching meer Contingencies that have been so palpably fulfill'd as the Effect of the accomplishment is now existing is of those which foretold That after Israel had cast off their Messiah and their God cast off them and taken the Gentiles to be his People Those Gentiles as they came into Christ should cast a way all their former Idol-Gods so as never again to return to them Of which Tenour are those Texts Isa. 2. 18. 20 21. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day and the Idols shall he utterly abolish and they shall go into the holes of the Rocks and into the Caves of the Earth for fear of the Lord and for the Glory of his Majesty when he ariseth terribly to shake the earth In that day shall a man cast his Idols of Silver and Gold which they made each one for himself to worship to the moles and to the batts This day is that when all Nations shall flow unto the Mountain of the Lords House c. ver 1. The same Prophecy is repeated Is. 31. 7. and the Effect of it dated when the Lord the Shepherd of Israel shall rise up against the multitude of Shepherds called forth against him the whole Crew of Idols erected by the Gentile world to affront the Majesty of Heaven and make no more of them than a Lyon doth of unarmed Shepherds who would scare him away with their voyce when he comes to take their Flock from them and when those Flocks shall be turned unto that God from whom the Children of Israel have deeply revolted In that day shall every man cast away his Idols c. And Isa. 45. and 46. Chapters When all the ends of the Earth shall look unto God when to him every Knee shall bow every Tongue shall swear c. Then Bel boweth down Nebo stoopeth their Idols were upon the Beasts your carriages were heavy laden they are a burden to the weary Beasts they stoop they bow down together they could not deliver the burden but themselves are gone into Captivity That is the Heathen Great Pontiffs and Philosophers shall not be able to maintain the Cause of those false Gods whom by office and inducement of State they are bound to support but shall fall down under the weight of that Vanity and Impiety the Gospel shall charge them with and throw off their load and themselves become Christs Captives so mighty were the Weapons of the Apostles Warfare to cast down those vain Imaginations that had exalted themselves against the knowledge of the true God and to bring into obedience to Christ the strongest holds that Satan by his Deputies held in the Heathen World And Zech. 13. 2. In that day when a Fountain should be open'd to those Inhabitants of Jerusalem to that House of David that should mourn every Family apart over him whom they had pierced which cannot be meant of the Jews after the Flesh for it was the Gentiles that pierced Christ it was the Roman Soldiers that platted the Crown of Thorns and set it upon Christs Head that Nailed his Hands and Feet to the Cross that peirced his Side with a Spear to which external peircing of Christs Body and not to that Sword which the unthankful Jew ran through his Soul the Evangelist applies this Text John 19. 37. The Spirit of Grace and Supplication is not promised to the breakers of his Heart but Bones the Gentiles Heart that broke his Bones shall be broken when the spirit convinceth them of that sin but the Jews generally lost under Judicial blindness in that day I say that the spiritual Judah shall repent and be baptized St. Jerom expounds this Fountain to be Christian Baptism that Laver of Regeneration It shall come to pass saith the Lord of Hosts that I will cut off the names of the Idols out of the Land c. and cause the unclean spirits to pass out of the Land Was ever any thing foretold with more plainness and perspicuity most of those Oracles and a great many more which for brevity sake I omit are as transparent as if they had been writ with a Sun-beam in this copious variety of expressions there is not one ambiguous Word not one dark Syllable a Child may run and read these Visions Would then such eminent Persons as their Prophets were in their several Generations have run the hazard of having their Memories traduc'd in after-ages by such plain speaking having no imaginable Secular Temptation to it but against it had they not been beyond all possibility of mistake assured of the Infallibility of that Spirit by which they were moved Now the same Degree of Assurance which they had à priori from the Cause we may have à posteriori from the Effect they could not by that more then Scientifical Vision of those things in the Divine Mind that essential Cognition that simple Contact and Feeling of God's Will Tactus quidam divinitatis notitiâ melior essentialis cognitio divinorum contactus quidam essentialis simplex Jamblicus de cognit divinorum be more certain that this would be than we may that it is come to pass by observing the Event For never were any Predictions more manifestly fulfill'd than these not one title of them is faln to the Earth There is not now nor has not been in any part of the World since Christian Religion was planted in it the least Relique of those numberless Pagan Gods it swarmed with before that
Where not only as to their Operation but Being are the Gods of Hamath and of Arphad Where are the Gods of Sephervaim Hena and Iva shall I say or the Gods of Europe Asia Affrica The Aegyptian Nile spawned Fish-Gods their Land brought forth Gods of Grass and Gods that eat Grass their Air was darkned with vollies of winged Deities In Greece the Genius of every species of Animals and Vegetives In Rome Pallor and Terror the Fever and Jaundice grew into Gods They had their he and she-deities for Conception Birth Puberty Marriage Merchandice c. Gods of the Closet of the Market Gods of the Close-stool and Chamber-pot such as 't is a wonder their own Jove did not thunder-strike the adorers of such as one would think Hercules might have scar'd into the holes of the earth with the shadow of his Club or blown away with his Fly-flap But that in the Exile of the lawful Soveraign every one has an equal right to the Crown and in that parity there is not a chip to chose betwixt a Peer and a Peasant a Calf will serve the Israelites for a God when they have forgot him that brought them out of Aegypt When men delight not to retain the Former of all things in their mind every Man will be a God-wright and frame an Image of the Deity of any thing that comes off the Wheel of his ever-running Imagination Yea Philosophy it self in those Times of Ignorance could not castrate the rank Fancies of Democritus and Epicurus of this prolifick God-teeming humour but that they spawn'd as many Gods that is eternal Beings as there are Atoms in their conceipted infinite Worlds In which particular I should think Laertius and Tully to have wronged their memories If I did not see in this Age of improved Learning and divine Light some mens Wind-mill-heads grinding the God head of the one eternal into as many and small grains as there are moats in the Universe If I did not see those Leviathans who make sport with and take their pastime in deriding the Notions of created Spirits and of the adorable Trinity of Persons in that one uncreated Essence as finding no bottom of that immense Ocean which Faith makes fordable to the meanest Christian themselves introducing an Hypothesis of more Spirits for take Divisibility from Matter and nothing remains but an Incorporeal Substance and he that talks of a crooked an hooked a three-corner'd Atome may with as much reason tell us of a Square or Triangular Circle except he can impose upon the World a new Grammar as well as Philosophy or perswade all Greece to forget its Mother-tongue than can stand betwixt York and Lancaster I could make infinite more room for them upon the Cartesian Ground but that is a Field large enough for all the Host of Heaven to incamp in and I shall enlarge their Quarters in my Reflections upon the other Hypothesis which the Doctrine of Atoms introduceth to wit as many Persons in the One Eternal Being as many distinct individual Subsistencies in the one Essence of Eternal Matter as we can imagine Moats in the Sun-beams should they dart themselves ten hundred thousand millions of times further upwards towards the Emperial Heaven than they do downwards to this Globe of Earth and spread themselves round about that vast Circumference in comparison of which this of our habitation is but an Atome For give Eternity to Matter and you give it the Essence of God make it subsist in Atomes each one distinguish'd from another and the result will be so many distinct Subsistencies in that one Essence Give to these Subsistencies a power of moving themselves which you must grant them or say they are moved by another and what can be elder than Eternity or by Chance Chance must be then before them and it must be the life of Reason and that will make e-every Atome an individual Person a Rational Hypostasis So that instead of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost subsisting in one undivided eternal Godhead This new Divinity commends to us more millions of divine Persons than could be reckon'd up in an age should all the men of that Age betake themselves all their life to their Counters That which we interpret A Troop cometh in the Story of Gad's Birth Gen. 30. 11. some Hebrews expound Fortune cometh upon which our learn'd Antiquary expends the first Chapter of his 1 Syntagme de Dais Syriis I will not undertake to determine which is the best Translation perhaps they may both stand with that Text though not better than their conjunction would suit the Birth of the Doctrine of Atomes For since Leah that blear-eyed purblind Epicuraean Philosophy grown under the Age of the Gospel past child-bearing hath upon the knees of her handmaid Zilpah Modern Atheism brought forth into the Christian Air her Son Gad or Fortune as that which made the eternal Atomes so happily meet as to fall into all those comely Forms whereof the World consists Gad or a Troop comes shall I say or a Legion or a Myriad of Troops of Deities God the crooked God the hooked God the obtuse God the sharp God the long God the short Atome for it would be a taking of that Name in vain to apply it to those infinite Forms into which those mens Fancies cast those eternal Beings which notwithstanding they call Atoms with a far greater Solecism than he committed with his Finger who pointed it to the Earth when he was speaking of the glorious Furniture of Heaven and shall rather bestow my time in transcribing that Exclamation which our divine Poet snbjoynes to the History of those and such like vanities of the Polytheists Ah! what a thing is Man devoid of Grace Adoring Garlick with an humble face Begging his food of that which he may eat Starving the while he worshippeth his meat Who makes a Root his God how low is he If God and man be sever'd infinitelie What wretchedness can give him any room Whose House is foul while he adores his Broom Let my stammering Muse add Nor dares not sweep't least from his foot arise So many Motes so many Deities Certainly Epicurus if he were true to his own Principles must have been a nasty Sloven and one whose disciples well deserv'd that compellation which the Satyrist gives them Epicuri de grege porci The Hoggs of Epicurus his Stie For he and his Litter of Followers must lie battening in their own Dung for fear of disquieting that eternal Matter a thing which the Deity does most abominate in their opinion and therefore does not interest it self in the affairs of the World but busies it self in dancing and frisking about and suffers it self to be carried whither Fortune pleaseth and not the Scavinger's Broom or Dung-rake I do not call Cartesius an Atheist though doubtless his Philosophy has made many but I think I may well enough call his a Feminine Philosophy in comparison of that of Plato or Aristotle grounded upon Principles
received by uninterrupted Tradition though they neither could retrieve all Principles of that Nature nor through want of the rest always rightly apply those they had received And it seems a wonder to me that so many who would be counted men in understanding should be so affected with his Systems which he himself if my memory fail me not in his Preface to his Natural Philosophy affirmeth he could make no man understand or relish so well as one woman who though she was a person of honour and of as great a capacity as any as all of that Sex yet sure she was not a competent Judge of such Speculations had they been truly Masculine She might perhaps have judged of a Poem upon the presumption of Sapphos Dexterity of an Oration and have not gone beyond those bounds to which that Sex reached in the persons of Amaesia Affrania Hortensia she might perhaps have found by enquiring of her Cooks or Scullions that his Kitchin-experiments were true and by her own Discretion see some of them subvert some of the Conclusions of the old Philosophy as one fool may spy more faults than an hundred wise men can mend But that they were a Foundation firm enough for his Conclusions that she and only she should discern is an affront to our whole Sex if indeed his Philosophy be calculated to the sublimest Principles of the most Masculine and Strenuous Wits and not Female and Vulgar Capacities who are easily imposed upon by the fallacy of non causa pro causa Though It must be acknowledged to the praise of that excellent Lady that her Philosophical Genius so far transcended the common standard of her Sex as to make credible that Story which Socrates relates of the Alexandrian Hypatia the Daughter of Theon the Philosopher who excell'd all the Sophisters of her time and either preceded or succeeded Platinus in Plato's School Lib. 7. 15. Socrat. Scholast hist. But I have dwelt too long upon these Minim Deities were it not that from their introduction we may learn to what Vanity of mind divine Justice gives those men up that desire not the knowledge of the Almighty and how aptly the Prophet speaks when he saith they should creep into the holes of the earth For at the appearance of the Sun of Righteousness this whole brood of Vermine disappear'd these Hodmadods crept into their shells these Worms into their holes these never stood one fight with our Lord of Hosts their Adorers never struck one stroke in their defence as they did for their celestial Gods the Host of Heaven which they worship'd the Gods of the greater and lesser Nations But all in vain For those strong men that kept the house are all turn'd out of possession by the blessed Jesus and spoil'd of all their Ensigns of divine honour Jove of his Thunder-bolt Christs still voyce drowning the noise of his Thunder Apollo of his Bow and Arrows Christ's Arrows proving more sharp in the sides of Python the Serpent than his Mars of his Faulchion Christ's two-edged Sword proving the better mettled Blade Minerva of her Spear being not able with her Target to defend her self against the Artillery of the Cross Mercury of his Caduceus by the more sweet Charms of the Apostles The Lion of the Tribe of Judah uncas'd Hercules and pull'd off his Lions Skin over his ears As that Light of Light appeared in the East and gradually shone to the West the World ceas'd to fear those Hobgoblins that had affrighted her in the dark men learn'd to look upon the Sun without the Ceremonies of Adoration without kissing the hand or bending the knee As the Bread that came down from Heaven hath been broken to the several Nations of the Earth they gave over baking Cakes to the Queen of Heaven As the Gospel introduc'd the fear of the One blessed God she shak'd off the fear of false Gods broke down their Altars demolish'd their Temples contemn'd their Oracles and stampt their Images to powder As the God that made Heaven reveil'd himself by the Preaching of the Gospel the Gods that did not make Heaven and Earth have been abolish't from off the Earth from under Heaven The Romans Celebration of the Funeral of that Coblers Crow two years after our Saviours Passion Gilbert Genebrand in his Chronic. conceives to have been a presage that now the Gospel was begun to be publish'd the black Crow that is Satan was shortly to expire at Rome where had been his chief seat and babling as he is quoted by Vossius Atrium mali spiritûs infractum imperium obrutum quasi sepultum iri Vos de Idol 3. 89. This was but short warning however all on a suddain as in a Pannick Fear the whole Army of Celestial Terrestrial and Infernal black and white Daemons take themselves to their heels and quit their ancient seats as soon as the Lord of Hosts appears pitching his Tent amongst men and Tabernacling in Humane Flesh. So that now a Child may lead those Lions at whose voice the World trembled before God utter'd his voyce none frequent those Fountains Caves Groves Oaks for Counsel at the lips of whose Oracles formerly the whole World hung for advice in all Matters of weight thither men repaired there they enquired about planting of Colonies building of Cities about Peace and War c. Plutarch conviv mor. tom 1. p. 377. But they have all lost their Tongues since God spake to us by his Son Jove's Fountain of Castalion and that otherof Colophon saith Clem. Alexand. adhaetat are commanded silence and all other Prophetick Springs have lost their divining tast whose proud streams swell'd of old with the honour of being reputed the seats of Sacred Oracles One of those silenc'd Oracles that of the Daphnean Apollo in the Suburbs of Antioch Julian would have cured of his dumbness and he attempted the like elsewhere Am. Marcol Julianus 22. 12. Multorum curiosior Julianus novam consilii viam aggressus est venas fatidicas Castalionis recludere cogitans fontis quem obstruxisse Caesar dicitur Hadrianus mole saxorum ingenti veritus rè ut ipse praecipientibus aquis capessendam Rempublicam comperit etiam alii similia docerentur ac statim circum humata corpora statuit exindè transferri eo ritu quo Athenienses insulam purgaverant Delon Julian his curiosity in the matter of Religion in order to the Defence of Paganisme against the Christian Faith which he had renounc'd put him upon this new Project thinking to open the Veines of the Castalion Fountain which the Emperour Hadrian is reported to have obstructed with a huge heap of stones fearing least as he was invited to undertake the Empire by the Oracle of that Spring others also might be taught the like he forthwith commands the Corps that were there inter'd should be removed thence after the same rite as the Athenians purged the Island of Delos What success he had here or in other places that Historian doth not relate which
I should need many words to express it that the Worship of Images hath proceeded too far and the Faction or rather the Superstition of the Vulgar hath been indulged more than enough insomuch as to that height of Adoration which even the Pagans gave to their Images and to the extreamest vanity which the Heathens shewd in fashioning or adorning their Idols there seems nothing wanting among us And therefore perswades the Emperour that the ancient Doctrine might be restored and the new restrained Though the like hath befaln the Roman Church which befell the Jewish in the Wilderness When Moses as their Legends tell us to try who was guilty of forcing Aaron to cast the Golden Calf order'd them to drink of that water into which he had cast the powder of that Idol which the Idolaters greedily gulping spilt some of it upon their Chins whence their Beards became of a Golden colour and betrayed them to the avenging Sword of their Innocent Brethren A Romance hansomly exprest by Peter Rhenensis as he is quoted by Mr. Selden in his Syntagme de aureo vitulo whose Poem hath this close Hebraei tradunt Mosen fecisse quod audis Vt sciret solos hac ratione reos Nam rutilans auro monstrabat barba nocentes Dum patulo latices fluminis ore bibunt Aurum quod fudit Aaron descendit eorum In barbas tantùm qui coluere bovem Let who please dispute the truth of this Story I shall only give the English and Moral of it To try the guilty Moses as 't is said Made Israel drink the powder he had braid The Calf into Those Reliques of their sin Greedily hausted drilling on their Chin Gold-die th' Idolaters beards and mark them out For Levie's Sword from 'mongst the guiltless rout Thus the Church of Rome hath contracted the colour of the Calf upon the Golden locks of her Shrines and Images by drinking too deep and too gredily of the Cup of Pagan Abominations and thereby hath bewrayed herself to have the Calf in her heart a very strong inclination to the grossest Idolatries of Rome Heathen and to stand in extream need of that Admonition which Cassander gave her that she would remove the scandall she hath given to the Mahometans to the Reformed Churches and the soundest part of her own Communion by countenancing such Doctrines and Practices as in the Judgment of her own Doctors consequentially abett as perfect Paganism as ever reign'd in the Pagan World Yet notwithstanding all this if we lay aside this jangling with words and take Idolatry in its native proper and old prophetick sence a sence which any thats come to the stature of a man may stride over at once And not suffer ourselves to be abused by those over-acute unhappy Wits who cut this Term into as many Thongs as will compass the whole body of Romish Superstition and by sub-dividing those thongs would bring the innocent and pious Ceremonies of the Church of England within the compass of that word Idolatry by which art 〈…〉 thing which we disgust and will not comport with our most carnal humours may be brought under a suspicion of being Idolatrous For Quantitas continua est in infinitum divisibilias A dexterous hand may cut as many Thongs out of one Thong with a pair of French Scissers as a Bungler with a pair of Garden-Shears can cut Thongs out of one hide Let us then leave this Logomachie this contending about shadows and not presume either to teach the Holy Ghost to speak or to wrest his words from their genuine sence to our humours and nothing will be more apparent to us than that neither the Church of Rome nor any other Society of men whatsoever that once embrac'd Christianity have Apostatized to the embracing of any of those Pagan Gods whom the Gospel ejected or to the Worship of any God but of that only wise and Eternal God that made Heaven and Earth Him alone the Mahometans him alone the Papists worship with that degree of divine honour which is proper to the Deity And as to the Church of Rome she so far abhorrs Idols in the sence of those Texts which foretell their downfall under the Gospel as she is famously known to have converted in these last days some Heathen Nations from Idols to the living God And that not only by force of hand as the Spaniards attempted upon the Americans at their first arrival there but by force of Argument and evidence of Miracles not such feigned and Legerdemain Sleights of hand as she pretends to do in order to the conviction of those who have either upon just cause forsaken her Communion in those things wherein she has forsaken the Communion of the Catholick Church or have been shut out of her Communion though they could have been content for peace sake to have walked with her in point of External practice meerly because they could not find in their heart professedly to abjure the Communion of the blessed Apostles the Primitive and Universal Church Such as cordially believe in Jesus Christ for whom Miracles were never intended by God but for them that believe not And therefore though her Priests in offering to shew Miracles in Christendom declare themselves so far to be Ministers of Satan or of him whose coming is after the power of Satan with lying wonders yet among the Infidel Americans they may and certainly do work Miracles not as Papists but as Christians not in the virtue of Papal Innovations and singularities but of the remains of the old and Catholick Christian Religion mixt therewith As I believe any of our Ministers might do did their zeal to propagate Christs Kingdom carry them out to Preach the Gospel where it only can be preach't in propriety of speech to that yet Heathenish part of the World This Point our Hot-spurrs might do well to consider who stretch their Stentorian throats with outcries against the Churches Apostracy to Pagan Idolatry whereby in effect they decry the blessed Jesus and pronounce him an Impostor and not the very Christ. For the Prophet Christ is by the power of his Law and Spirit utterly to abolish Heathen Idols out of the several Nations of the World upon their submitting to his Sceptre So as they should never regain their old Territories but be and remain totally and finally exterminated from off the face of the whole Earth and from under the whole Heaven CHAP. VI. Touching the Millenium Revel 20. § 1. Pagan Idols Fall and Satans binding Synchronize Christianity grew upon the Empire by degrees § 2. Charity 's Cloak cast over the first Christian Emperours § 3. Theodosius made the first Penal Laws against Paganisme § 4. Honorius made Paganism Capitall then was Satan bound § 1. IN complyance with which Old Testament Prophecies the Spirit of Jesus reveils Rev. 20. 1. c. to St. John That upon the Roman Empire's embracing of Christianity Satan should be cast into the bottomless Pit and there chain'd and sealed up untill
have done for the same space is a Castle-built in the Air of Fancy without Scripture-grounds I have given my reasons why I cannot subscribe to them that think the Millenium finish'd and some why I think it began where the Antimillenarians generally dated it and shall make further proof of both those Points in laying down the Reasons why I dare not follow those that think it is not yet begun 1. I dare not chuse for my Guides in interpreting Scripture such as have palpably misled their followers as often as they have assayed to point out the beginning of their fancied Millenium Of this Bran were they who a while ago have perswaded the world that Satan was to be bound in that anno mirabili that wonderful year 1642. that very year when Hell broke loose And when those ductile Souls who by their perswasions were induc'd into a belief that at the top of that hill at the fulness of that Time they should touch the Moon with their fingers found themselves abused These Crafts-masters in perverting the Word of God encourage their Idiotproselites who had not so much wit as Children to dread the fire after it had burnt them to lift up their hands that hang down to strengthen their knees enfeebled by their disappointment of as great hopes as they have of Heaven and to walk after those blind Guides in hope still to see the Dawning of this day of a 1000 years from Hill to Hill from Date to Date till at last the frustration of their expectations that the Heavens would fall and Men would catch Larks anno 1666. converted most of their Scholars into Papists or Atheists having gaped all that year after Christs Reign on Earth which they then hoped to see as verily as the Mexicanes expect the end of the World the last day of their Rota an Almanack calculated for 52 years they would have made work for the Tinker had they at every approach of their conceited Millenium broken all their Pots Kettles Plate and all kind of utensils and houshold-stuff as the Mexicanes do theirs the last day of their Rota as conceiving they shall never more have need of such things Scaliger de emendat ad finem lib. 3. But I wonder more that the Learned and Judicious Alstede should court this Cloud with so indefatigable an importunity as in order to his laying hands upon it he runs at one breath to the top of four Hills makes no less than four Epocha's for the beginning of it Upon such Principles as Alsted proceeded upon viz. the great Conjunctions Albumazar foretold the expiration of Christian Religion after it had reigned a thousand years above six hundred years ago And R. Abraham Avenaris gatherd that the Messias would come in the year of Christ 1444. there being in that year a Conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn in Cancer or at the utmost anno 1464. when there was the same Conjunction in Pisces Frustrà Miselli aliûm expectant Messiae adventum quam gloriosum illum quo in nubili veniet ad judicandum orbem Vossius de origine idolelat 2. 48. But in vain saith Vossius do these wretched Jews expect any other coming of the Messias than that glorious one when he will come in the Clouds to judge the World Are not Protestants as bad as they in looking for any other Christian Millenium than that which is now current seeing Mahometans expect the expiration of Christian Religion at the end of this Millenium upon the very same grounds that some of us expect the Millenium yet to come and that upon no better Principles than John Aunius a Popish Doctor of Wittenberg assured to the Emperour Victory over the Turks and to the Pope the whole Worlds coming in to and continuing under his obedience for a thousand years to begin anno 1481. But the issue saith Beroaldus Chron. l. 3. c. 6. shewed by what spirit he was led and bewrayed the madness of the Prophet And doubtless Pope Sixtus the Fourth would have been as mad as he had he prick'd up his Ears to have them claw'd by that wide-gaping Promiser as our Fanaticks did theirs to listen to the Alarms that Alsted gave them to their holy Wars For to return to him His first Aera of the Reign of Saints of the blessed Millenium should have commenc'd Anno 1622. when I was scarce got out of my Childs Coats and therefore I my self could not make observation of any glorious Change then happening but I was told that the Sun still kept the same station in the Heavens and had the same operation upon Earth which it used to have within the Memory of Man that the Moon retain'd the same spots in her face which she had when Alsted first saw her that Boyes were as towardly Neighbours as loving Princes as Gracious Subjects as Loyal the Rich as Liberal the Poor as well reliev'd in times past as since that year His second Aera bore date anno 1636. I was then of age to observe how the Bonny Scot got him up to this Hill to see Christ enthron'd on the Presbyterian Tribunal and all that would not submit to that his Government sitting on the Stool of Repentance who have since without walking in the Counsel of the Ungodly sate in the seat of truly divine Scorners of all such Bug-bears The third an 1642. upon that Mount were seen the feet of them that preach'd the everlasting Gospel as they blasphemously called that Form of Government they were then about to erect upon the ruines of whatever was Ancient Sacred and should have been dearer to us than our lives that publish'd to our English Sion those glad tydings that now the time was come that the Saints must reign St. Rebels St. Plunderers St. Murderers St. Regicides The fourth an 1694. But our hot-spurrs had not patience to wait so long many of these covetous wretches who under a cloak of Religion trouble the Waters that themselves may fish for Preferment and Estates may have death gnawing upon them before that time come and therefore that they might be guawing the bones and eating the flesh of the mighty they anticipate the time and pitch upon an 1666. as the season appointed of God for the Conversion of the Jews the Fall of Antichrist the binding up of Satan and the Reign of Saints things ill put together for though I believe that the Reign of Saints which they look for will be coetanous to the Jews Conversion that is they will both be ad Graecas calendas when Geese piss holiwater yet I think the Reign of such Saints as they are will rather be the Rise than Fall of Antichrist and the effect rather of the loosing than binding the Devil As they mist it in the mis-joyning of things incompatible so they were strangely wide in their Calculation leaving out the round sum a thousand and pitching upon the fragments However they did wisely at last to trust to Alsted no longer after he had
man upon Earth that sinneth not and whoever saith he hath no sin he sins in saying so So that the old Serpent when he shall be let loose again will find wicked instruments of his malice against the Church his own evil Seed among the Wheat where-ever that is sown and therefore the Millenaries in confining him to the lower Hemisphere to gather his Army in by which he is to assault the Holy City not only contradict their own Texts which assigns him the four corners the four Quarters of the Earth the whole breadth of the earth the whole compass of the Globe from East West North and South which I could bear with them in knowing that the Prophets have a peculiar language by themselves in their Proverbials and Hyperbolics but the whole current of sacred Scriptures commented upon by the uninterrupted series of Providence in all ages § 5. Second Nay that at the approaching of the general Judgement when that War of Gog and Magog shall commence The Churches most eminent Seat and the most glorious entertainment of the Gospel will be in those Chambers of the South in that new discover'd World to which it is hasting apace from our Hemisphere The far greatest part thereof all the West of Asia the East West and South of Affrica and the sometimes most flourishing and best peopled parts of Europe being already over-run with Mahometan Barbarousness and the remaining parts of it by our great provocations and impieties against God and by our dissentions and discord among our selves hasting to open a way for the Turk to enter the City of God through the breaches we dayly make and widen in the Walls of Sion We sin and he wins we contend and he conquers we presume that because we are the Temple of the Lord the City of God we are inconquerable and in the mean while he takes our Forts and batters our Walls about our ears our ears which we stop and will not hear the voyce of the Charmer charm he never so wisely and therefore I fear I should but spill my Ink in bestowing it in recording the Turks dayly encroachment upon the Christian Pale his making Conquests by inches over the Western as he did by Ells over the Eastern Church or in describing those Marks of future bane those Prints of divine displeasure and certain forerunners of Gods rejection of a people as deeply imprest upon the Western as they were upon the Eastern and Southern Patriarchates when God deliver'd those Churches into his and their enemies hands If we go to his place at Shilo where once he put his Name enquire for what wickedness he made his Glory depart from Jerusalem Ephesus Antioch Alexandria Constantinople we shall find the very same provocations reigning in these parts of Europe the same infatuation of Counsels the same strong delusions the same debaucheries and abominations and our selves as ripe for excision looking as white for harvest as they did when the Mahometans Sickle reaped those goodly Fields Suppose ye that they were greater sinners I tell you nay but except we repent we shall all likewise perish But I look too long upon the dark side of that cloudy Pillar that has been passing from the East the place where the Gospel first set out towards the West and as it moves deprives the Church of her Head attire Christian Princes of those her dry Nurses and Guardians yet not of her wet Nurses or the inward Glory of her Garments for she shall reign still with Christ even upon this Earth in those remnants of her seed dispersed over the face of it The Sun of a Christian Magistracy shall not be seen where this Night hath or shall encroach upon the Church but her eyes shall see her Teachers still and her ears hear This is the good old way walk in it and find rest the Stars will appear behind the Cloud as they did in the Primitive Church before Princes became her Nurses and as they do now within the Turks Dominions where Princes have ceas'd to be her Nurses And when Mercy triumphing over Judgement shall have left us such a Nail such a stump of the Tree of Life in our Hemisphere The Covenant that God has made with the Christian World being like that he hath made with day and night of which he saith if those ordinances shall depart from me then shall the whole seed of Israel be cast off the Covenant he made with the Ordinances he gave to the Carnal Seed were but Temporary and therefore that seed was wholly cast off but the Covenant he made with the Spiritual Seed is an everlasting Covenant and therefore that Seed of Gentile Believers shall never be wholly cast off The new Israelites in shew and profession only when this Sun of persecution for the Gospel ariseth when the Temptations of the World shall be laid before them when none shall live under the benign influence of their Mahometan Rulers but those that wheel about with them to the embracing of that Brutish Religion shall forsake Christ and embrace the present World But the Israelites indeed in Faith and Practice shall never be prevail'd with to renounce Christ but that poor and peeled People shall bear up his Name in all Nations upon whom it hath been called to the end and consummation of the World When I say the infiniteness of the divine compassion shall be so bounded and streightned by the circumjacent Guilt of our multiplyed and crying sins and by the innate veracity of divine Menacies as all it can obtain for us against the pleas of both is no more then this when our golden Dreams of glorious days end in this God will provide Kings and Queens to be Nursing Fathers c. to the American Churches who shall dandle them upon their knees and that perhaps for as many ages as we have been dandled I say perhaps because I would not pry into Gods secret Purposes nor limit the holy One in that point wherein I cannot observe him to walk by any Rule but that of his own good pleasure whereby both to Persons and Nations he lengthens or shortens their day of Grace so as the Sun hath been set near a 1000. years ago upon most of Asia and yet shines upon us in the West of Europe upon whom it rose before it did upon them I mean the cherishing Light of a Christian Magistracy for we had our Lucius before they had their Constantine However this is certain that how long or short soever God hath in his eternal Counsel determin'd that space that they shall have their time of Grace as well as we and we shall have no more than our time and therefore as the night shall grow upon us that had day before them the day shall grow upon them and when the Sun is farthest from our Horizon it will be highest in theirs § 6. And this affords us another Argument against those who limit the Millenium to a precise number of years and yet
will have it commence at Constantine's Reign not considering that though the Revelation-prophecies have the Roman Empire for their Stage and therefore we cannot pitch upon a fitter time for the beginning of the Millenium than when the Laws of that Empire bound up Satan from cheating the World with Paganism it being the common notion of the World then when St. John gave out his Revelations that the bounds of the Empire were coincident with those of the habitable Earth Yet now the bounds of the Earth being found to be of a far larger extent we ought to stretch our conceptions touching the matters of those Prophesies that are yet infieri and current as the Reign of the Saints with Christ on the Earth is and shall be as long as the Earth is inhabited and as far as the earth is or shall be inhabited to an extent answerable to that of the things themselves And therefore are not to limit the Time of this Reign to any narrower compass of years than will be sufficient for the perfecting of the Call of that whole new-found World inhabited by the seed of Adam and within the bounds of that inheritance which was promis'd to Christ which as it cannot in reason be conceived to take up less time than will make the years since Satans binding so many more than a thousand as a child may count them to exceed that precise number so we cannot cast the call of those Nations into any other Epocha but that of St. John's thousand years for nothing is to intervene the expiring of that propheticall Millenium and the Day of general Judgment but that little space wherein Satan shall be let loose to deceive the Nations a very unmeet season for such a work and therefore I wonder that some very Learned and Judicious Persons should so soundly nap it here as to dream that Satan hath been let loose ever since the Turks took Constantinople when on the contrary God is making his Chain shorter than it was and not allowing him to Reign all over America as he did before Neither is he permitted so much as to tempt this upper Hemisphere to lick up its vomit of old Gentilism which is the only thing he is during the Millenium restrained from as Dr. Lightfoot well observes and the sad experience of all Ages demonstrates wherein he has been is and will be Persecuting the Womans Seed as far as his Instruments dare sowing his Tares among the good Seed deluding those that receive not the love of the Truth with as monstrous and damnable Errors as the Pagan Ages were given up to and tempting them to all the old Debaucheries and unnatural sins of that and the new invented ones of this Age which were not named among the Gentiles soliciting the Saints themselves and sometimes leading them captive to those sins they feel the bitterness of as long as they live Briefly he is bound up from being the God of the World as he was while he and his Angels were Worship'd as Gods but he is permitted still to play all other parts of a Devil in the World and will be till the Church exchanges the Armour of God for the Garment of Immortality so long as she stands having her Ioines girt about with Truth having on the Breast-plate of Righteousness and her feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace while she wears the Shield of Faith the Helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit while shee 's arm'd on the right hand and left while she stands thus in praecinctu upon her guard and is bid to stand so by the Captain of her Salvation which word of command she must be under till both Christ's and his Apostles Precepts be out of door we may be sure she has not only Flesh and Blood to wrestle with but Principalities and Powers the Rulers of the Darkness of this World and spiritual wickednesses in the Etherial places Besides that it will be unseasonable to assign that time for a season of grace to one half of the World wherein Satan is let loose to reinforce Paganism the shortness of that space of his loosing will not give room enough for the preaching of the Gospel to such multitudes of Nations and Languages It is an old Tradition of the Jews quoted by Dr. Lightfoot upon Rev. 20. That in the day when Judgment is upon the World and the holy blessed God sits upon the Throne of Judgment Satan who deceives high and low shall be found destroying high and low and taking away souls Methinks St. John in this Vision speaks to the heart of those Jews and Tertullian expounds this Text of the Revelation by that Tradition in his Treatises against the Manichees cap. 24. and de Anima cap. 35. and 38. where he hath this passage Post cujus regni mille annos intrà quam aetatem concluditur sanctorum resurrectio c. after the thousand years of which Reign of Christ within which age is included the Resurrection of the Saints c. I know Mr. Meed would have him to speak here of a Resurrection that shall be at the beginning of the Millenium but his prefixing before the mention of this Resurrection post cujus Regâ—i annos after the 1000. years of whose Reign seems to assign it to the latter end of the Millenium And Lactantius dates the loosing of Satan when the Millenium shall begin to end cùm caeperit terminari that is upon its expiring but within the compass of it at which time saith he the last wrath of God shall fall upon the Nations and when the 1000 years are fully compleat the World shall be renewed and the Heavens shall be rolled up and the Face of the Earth shall be changed at the very same time shall be the second and publick Resurrection of all men even of the unjust to eternal torments to wit such as have worship'd Gods made with hands and have either not known or denied the Lord of the World they and their Lord and his Angels and Ministers shall be apprehended and adjudged to punishment in the sight of the Holy Angels and just men Lactande divino praemio lib. 7. cap. 26. Having therefore these Authorities before me I hope the ingenious Reader will not reckon this Problem either a novelty or singularity CHAP. VIII That Satans loosing will not be till the Dawning of the day of Judgment Problematically discu'd § 1. Elect gather'd into the Air over the Valley of Jehoshaphat Chancells not all Eastward but all toward that Valley § 2. The Elect secur'd Satan re-enters and drives his old Demesne The wicked destroyed as Rebels actually in armes Believers tried as Citizens by the Books of Conscience and Book of Royal Law § 3. Gogg Rev. 20. a greater multitude than will meet before the day of Judgment When Prophesies are to be expounded Literally when Figuratively § 4. The Ottoman Army is not this Gogick § 5. The Fire of the last Conflagration carrieth
hominum But after the mention of those things going before giveth a punctual account of Christs way of proceeding in judging his own flock for those he judgeth from his white Throne can be no other but such as could claim the benefit of the Covenant of Grace such as could say Lord Lord and plead we have prophesied in thy name in thy name we have cast out Devils we have eat and drank in thy presence or something of that nature whereby they will challenge the benefit of the Book and pretend their names are writ in it till Christ open the Book lay before them the Terms of that Covenant and by the evidence of their own Conscience convince them they cannot claim that Salvation was tender'd in the Gospel for that they have not observ'd the Conditions on which it was offerd they have not fed the hungry cloath'd the naked they have not been merciful humble meek pure in heart peace-makers by which names the heirs of the Evangelical blessings are set down in the Book of Life of the same tendency is that description of the general Judgement which our Saviour gives wherein he passeth over the judgment of Infidels and confines his discourse to his way of process with his own Flock with elect and reprobate Professors of worshipping the one God through the Seed of the Woman The Goats are part of Christs visible Flock the excrescencies of his Mystical Body that serve for Ornament and therefore the Churches hair is compared to a Flock of Goats Cant. 4. 1. Cant. 6. 5. and the Kidds of the Flock mentioned as well as the Lambs Can. 1. Hence St. Jerom well observes that the barren and Fetid Hee-Goats not the Shee-Goats that go up from the washing and bear Twins Cant. 4. 2. shall be separated from the Flock in Mat. 25. Rhem. Test. note in Mat. 25. 32. They are separated who in the visible Church lived together as for Hereticks they went out of the Church before separated themselves and therefore not separated here as being judged already There being none amongst the Goats of that Flock who could plead they had not seen or known Christ but only that they had not seen him so and so they believed he was ascended into Heaven and sate at the right hand of God but little thought he was hungry and thirsty and opprest in his poor Members on Earth and the only thing that is laid to their charge being their transgressing the Royal Law their not living up to Evangelical Precepts their not practising those Christian Duties they had an opportunity to perform living in the Communion of Christs Members No larger bounds doth David or Asaph set himself Ps. 50. where having only hinted Gods destroying the Infidels at his glorious appearance by the fire that burnt before him and that horrible tempest round about he giveth an account at large how God after that will proceed to the trial of such as were in Covenant with him called his people vers 4. his Saints that have made a Covenant with him by Sacrifice ver 5. that have enter'd Covenant by Circumcision or given up themselves as a Sacrifice to God by promising to be his Servants as R. David explains that Text Faedus per Sacrificium ut Exod. 24. 8. Moses faedus ferit offerebat sacrificia dicendo ecce sanguis faederis in Daresh faedus Circumcisionis Rab. David in p. 50. de die judicii futuro quando redemptor venit ut Joel 3. 1. ver 4. advocabit caelum ad Angelos caeli ut vindictam sicut in exercitum Assur exequentur 2 Reg. 19. 35. that they being dispatcht he may judge his people Postquà m Deus vindictam in hostes suos ex gentibus ostendit tunc ex Israele peccatores exterminat Zach. 13. 8. duae partes exterminentur Isa. 4. 3. omnis scriptus in libro erit sanctus Not only by calling but election when the Lord shall have washed away the filth and shall have purged the blood from the midst of Jerusalem by the spirit of judgment Before these and these alone the Book of Life the Covenant is open'd vers 7. Hear O my People and I will speak O Israel I will testifie unto thee I will call Heaven and Earth to testifie against thee Quod fâ—dere me Deum tuum agnoscere obligatus es pro peccatis tuis reprehendam te non pro sacrificiis quia in Decalogo non est mentio sacrificiorum nec est haec res magna in oculis meis utrùm sacrifices vel non That by covenant thou wast bound to acknowledge me thy God and I will reprove thee for thy sins not for Sacrifices because in the Decalogue there is no mention of Sacrifice neither is this a thing of any value in my eyes whether thou sacrifices or not Vicars decupla in Psal. 50. And then the Books of Conscience are open'd their sins the Transgressions of the Royal Law are ser in order before the faces of such as have taken the Covenant in their mouths but hated to conform unto it when thou sawest a Thief thou consentedst unto him and hast been a partaker with the Adulterer c. Of the same Tenour is the discourse of St. Paul 1 Thes. 4. upon which Musculus hath this note Non recenset omnia quae futura in adventu Domini sed ea tantùm idque in summa quae concernunt salutem fidelium de perditione vero impiorum Deque ruina mutatione totius mundi nihil meminit The Apostle doth not rehearse all things future at the Advent of the Lord but only those things and that briefly which concern the salvation of the faithful but of the perdition of the wicked and change of the world he makes no mention § 6. 4. Though I approve not the Sentence of Lactantius and the old Millenaries that the Saints shall rise a thousand years before the wicked yet I cannot cordially subscribe to that of Gennadius Massiliensis de eccles dogmat cap. 6. Erit resurrectio mortuorum omnium hominum sed una in simul semel non prima justorum secunda peccatorum ut fabula est somniatorum sed una omnium There will be a resurrection of all men but one at the same ininstant of time not the first of the just and the second of the unjust as some men dream but one of all men This opinion I say I cannot subscribe to as conceiving it to thwart the Assertion of Saint Paul 1 Corin 15. 23. all shall be made alive in Christ but every man in his own order Christ the first fruits then those that are Christs at his coming then the end c. and 1 Thes. 4. 16. the dead in Christ shall rise first first not in respect of those in Christ that shall be alive for as we that are alive shall not prevent them that are asleep so neither shall they that are asleep prevent us that are alive seeing we shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye
giving in their Verdict whose Vulgar in passing their Suffrages minded nothing less than the observation of their Oaths Lucan phars 1. Hine rapti fasces pretio sectórque favoris Ipse sui populus letalisque ambitus urbi Annua venali referens certamina campo And lastly such Gods as when they had a mind to protect the Innocent or punish the guilty could not which Impotency they exprest by their tears as Women and Children use to do when they cannot have that Revenge which they seek Thus the Image of Apollo Cumanus when the Romans waged War against the Achaians and King Aristonicus was reported to have wept for the space of four dayes Julius Obsequens fragm de prodigiis Thus the Image of Juno Sospita at Lariniunt L. Aemilio Paulo Cn. Balbo Pamphilo Coss. wept before a great Pestilence Thus in the Civil Wars Lucan brings in the native and houshold Gods weeping Indigitos flevisse Deos urbisque laborem Testatos sudore lares And therefore as St. Austin well observes Numa considering that the Trojan Gods which Aeneas brought into Italy could neitâ—â—r preserve the Kingdom of Troy nor Lavinium from ruine did wisely p 〈…〉 de other Gods to be either the Keepers or coajutors of those de civitat 3. 11. We must then find another Father for these miraculous punitive Accidents even that God who hath both severely prohibited all un-natural Brutishness in the Book of Conscience and all sin in the Books of Sacred Scriptures as that which he abhors and his pure Eyes cannot endure and proportion'd his Menacies to the several degrees of Guilt and of mens impenitencies who therefore punish'd impiety against and perjury by the names of false Gods upon them that thought them Gods indeed not for what they did but for what they thought to wit that those Temples which they rifled those Statues which they disrobed had the spirits of the living Gods dwelling in them that those Idols by whom they sware had Ears to hear and Eyes to see and Hands to revenge and yet they would venture upon their displeasure punitur quia tanquam deo fecit The Sacrilegious person is punish'd though he rob that that is not God because he doth it unto that he thinks is a God saith Seneca de Ben. 17. 7. Opinio illum sua obligat paenae his opinion makes him obnoxious to punishment It is St. Jeroms opinion in Daniel 6. Quamdiu vasa fuerunt in idolio Babylonis non est iratus dominus videbantur enim rem dei secundùm pravam quidem opinionem tamen divino cultui consecrasse postquà m autem humanis usâ—bus divina contaminant statim paena sequitur post sacrilegium God was not angry while the Sacred Vessels that were taken out of his Temple were in the Idols Temple of Babylon for they did as it were consecrate the things of God to a divine use though according to a false opinion but after that the things consecrate were prophan'd by a common use punishment immediately followed that Sacrilege And St. Austin's saying Et qui per lapidem jurat si falsum jurat perjurus est non te audit lapis loquentem sed punit Deus fallentem The Calf which was cut in twain when the King of Babel took an Oath of the King of Judah and made him pass through the parts of it was divided and laid in twain by Nebuchadnezzar's Priests was on his part a Sacrifice to the Gods of Babel for he that administred the Oath was to divide and lay the Calf in parts between which he that made Oath was to pass as is manifest in that adorable instance of Gods condescention that Abraham should take him sworn Gen. 15. 9. The whole Ceremony in this Form of Swearing will be best conceiv'd by comparing this Text with two passages in Livy Tu Jupiter ita illum ferito ut ego hunc porcum lib. 1. pag. 15. Deos precatus ita se mactarent quemadmodum ipse agnum mactasset lib. 21. and perhaps on the King of Judahs part yet the God of Israel calls it his Oath and the Covenant which was made before him Jer. 34. 18. Ez. 17. 19. and threatens to avâ—â—ge the breach of it by a judgment sutable to that form of words was used in that form of swearing Let God divide or scatter me as this Beast is divided betwixt whose parts I pass I will give the men that have transgressed my Covenant that have not performed the words of the Covenant which they made before me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sept. bis when they cut the Calf in twain and passed between the parts of it to wit the Princes of Judah and of Jerusalem which passed between the parts of the Calf I will even give them for meat unto the Fowles of Heaven and the Beasts of the Field Ver. 17. I will give them to be removed into all the Kingdoms of the Earth Sept. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for a dispersion the very curse they invocated upon themselves in case of Perjury Our English makes it doubtful whether the Jews or Babylonians divided the Calf but yet the mentioning of the Jews passing through the parts of it in the 19 verse without that other circumstance the dividing of it and the Translation of Junius and Trem. quum transiverunt inter dimidiatas partes ejus vituli quem dissecuerant in Duo plainly divides those actions between the Babylonian and the Jew and then the Septuagints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 parallel to Virgils Cùm faciam vitulâ The Calf which they Sacrificed will clearly infer my other Observation that the Calf was at least reputatively a Sacrifice now a Sacrifice to the true God it could not be as being not offer'd in the Temple into which it was not lawful for the Gentiles to enter and sure the Babylonians were present at the King of Juda's taking the Oath in this form To proceed to such instances as Pagan records mention Cleomenes in a fury divinely inflicted kil'd himself whether this judgment befell him for his inhumanity towards suppliants as the Argives or for violating Orgades a Region consecrate to the Eleusine Gods as the Athenians or for corrupting Apollo's Interpreter as the Delphians interpreted it we can permit them to dispute but that their Apollo inflicted this madness upon him who himself conspired with him the death of the innocent Demaratus by giving out lying Oracles or at best connived at his Prophetess Sacrilegious complying with Cleomenes is as far from all likelihood of truth as that Oracle was The Megarenses after they had prophan'd the Land which belonged to the Eleusine Gods never enjoy'd good days neither could they by any means mitigate the anger of those incensed deities saith the same Author Pausanias Laconicis Had those Gods inflicted upon them that punishment of their Sacrilege their wrath would certainly have been appeased upon their applying themselves to them in so supplicant a way as Israels Gods was towards the repenting Ninevites clemency to the
the Illumination of Faith could not understand what Christ meant when he spake to them of his Resurrection and were ready to give up their hopes that he was he that should redeem Israel when they saw him giving up the Ghost and hanging down his Head upon the Cross as St. Thomas though he had seen Lazarus rais'd from the dead and heard it reported by credible Witnesses that Christ was risen would not believe it As Celsus Orig. cont Cels. l. 2. cal 41. rather than grant the Truth of the Christian Hypothesis denied the possibility of it As it seemed good to the holy Ghost to confirm the report of Christs Resurrection by all those Signs which the Apostles wrought after his Ascension by the name of the Holy Child Jesus while with great power they gave witness of his Resurrection Acts 4. 33. Yea so much did divine Goodness condescend to Humane imbecility as to give a fuller proof of that point so far above Reasons comprehension and much more out of the Sphere of Natural Power than the report of Eye-witnesses than the Confession of Adversaries than the Seal of those Miracles afforded by that Grace that was upon all the Publishers and fell upon all the Receivers of that Doctrine a Grace enabling them to live up to the Gospel and to bring forth those Fruits of Holiness Righteousness Temperance Meekness as sufficiently commended to the morallized part of the World that Root of Faith from whence they issued as far outstript the most glorious glittering productions of the Moral Philosophers as infinitely transcended the results of fantastick Credulty and put all other Religions to the blush at the sight of their own impotency CHAP. XII The Supernatural Power of Salvifick Grace § 1. The Church triumphs over the Schools § 2. Christianity layes the Axe to the Root § 3. The Rule imperfect before Christ. § 4. The Discipline of the Schools was without Life and Power § 5. Real exornations before Verbal Encomiums § 1. HEre Christian Reader I must crave thy help and beg thy aid towards the convincing the World of the Divine Original of Christian Religion which though it apparently bear the stamps of heavenly Wisdome in its Prophecies of in finite Power in its Miracles commends it self more to the Consciences of men by engaging its Fautors to a Conversation answerable to its Sacred Rules than by affording the most substantial Grounds of discoursing in its Defence by any other Arguments Religion is better maintain'd by Living than Disputing A Gospel-becoming Converse falls under the Observation and speaks to the Hearts of all men even of those who are not able to fathom the depth nor feel the ground of the most rational verbal Discourse well exprest by the Apostle of the Circumcision 1 Pet. 3. 1. Dr. Hammond annot in the Argument whereby he perswades Christian Matrons to be in subjection to their own though Gentile Husbands that if any obeyed not the Word submitted not to the Gospel upon the Demonstration of the Spirit and of Power they also without the Word which the Apostles preach'd in confirmation of the Resurrection of Christ might be won by the Conversation of their Wives while they beheld their chaste Conversation that Modesly which the true fear of God Christian Religion which alone rightly Disciplines persons in that fear taught them In his motive 1 Pet. 2. 12 13. to Christian Subjects to yield obedient subjection to their Heathen Magistrates and in that point particularly to lead an honest life among the Gentiles that whereas they were evil spoken of as Jews by reason of the turbulency and frequent rebellions of their Countrymen the Gentiles might see that Christian-Jews were of another spirit than the rest of that Nation and upon that account might revere them for their good works and glorifie God the Author of a Religion that had made them so much more meek regular and quiet under the Heathen Government which was over them than the other Jews were when the Proconsuls should be sent to make enquiry of the Commotions made by the unbelieving Party of that Nation It was by this Argument that the old Laic-Confessor silenc'd convinc'd and converted that proud and subtile Philosopher who bore up himself against all the Reasonings of the Learned Teachers of the Nicence Council Crab. tom 1. pag. 249. In the name of Jesus Christ saith he O Philosopher hear the Dictates of Truth There is one God Maker of Heaven and Earth who Created all things visible and invisible by the power of his Word and confirm'd them by the Sanctity of his Spirit This Word therefore which we call the Son of God having mercy on Mankind vouchsafed to be born of a VVoman to converse with Men and die for them and will come again to give sentence upon the Lives of all men By the belief of those things we Christians are freed from Error and from that Religion wherein Men live like Beasts into a state of living like Men. Upon this the Philosopher cries out that he is a Christian and assures his Fellows he was drawn to it not upon light grounds but by that ineffable Vertue which attended the embracing of Christianity In this Argument the ancient Patrons of the Christian Cause triumph'd over all other Religions and Disciplines The Christian Churches saith Origen contr Cels. lib. 3. cal 8. compared with other Societies are really the Lights of the VVorld who is there that must not confess if he make an impartial collation of them that the worst part of the Church excells vulgar assemblies for the Church of God at Athens for instance is meek and quiet c. the Pagan Assemblies seditious turbulent c. And to that Calumny of Celsus that the Christians invited the worst of sinners Origen makes this Reply that the Christian Philosophy did dayly reform the most degenerate Natures not by converting one or two in so many Ages as Phaedo who coming Piping hot out of the Stewes into Plato's School took those impresses from his Doctrine as Plato in his Dialogues brings Phaedo in discoursing of the Immortality of the Soul Or Palemon who by attending to Philosophical Discipline became of a Ruffian so temperate as he succeeded Xenocrates in his School but great multitudes Christs Fishers of men caught them by whole shoales when these Philosophical Anglers drew them up by unites Tertullian apolog 46. outvies the greatest Philosophers with common Christians Thales one of the seven VVisemen could not satisfie Craesus when he askt him what God was but required time for the return of an answer and the more he thought upon it was further off from finding a solution when every Mechanick Christian hath found and can shew all that can be askt concerning God though Plato says the framer of the Universe is neither easie to be found out nor to be exprest If we compare them in point of Chastity we read that one part of the Attick sentence against Socrates condemn'd him of Sodomy