though it may be and it is certain they have not in all Ages known according to what is in the Prophesie of St. John what Jesus Christ will do next yet that still by the spirit of Prophesie as it were the Saints have been guided to seek for those things at the hands of God and Christ which he was about to accomplish Also that the Saints in Heaven before the day of Judgment have a share and an hand in Christs government of the world and that they have a knowledg by the Angels that are continually Messengers from Heaven to Earth of the great things that are done here And he that writeth the Epistle to the Reader maketh this Application of Mr. Goodwins Doctrine Now saith he what may we think the Saints in Heaven who within these ten years last past lost their lives in the Cause of Christ he meaneth the Army-Saints from the year forty-four to that of fifty-four who dy'd in maintenance of the Bad Old Cause are EMPLOYED ABOUT at this time they understanding by the Angels what great changes are come to pass on our Earth Those of whose Saintship we have better assurance though in a state of rest and light are esteemed by the Fathers but a kind of Free Prisoners not being acquitted by the publick Sentence of the General Judgment And their opinion who give them a Lieutenancy under God in the Government of the World before that day does recall to my mind the Argument used by that truly great man Sir Walter Raleigh in his own unhappy Case He pleaded that the grant of a Commission from the King did argue him to be absolved and that he who had power given him over others was no longer under a sentence against his own life Abraham and Isaac do not now rule us and it may be they are ignorantt of us which whilst I affirm I do not wholly ground my Assertion on the Text in Isaiah That soundeth otherwise whether we take it in its positive or hypothetical sense It s positive sense may be this Doubtless thou art our Father notwithstanding we live not under the care of Abraham or Isaac but are by many generations removed from them who therefore knew us not or own'd us not we being not men of their times we are their seed however though at a great distance and to such also was thy promise made And for the Hypothetical sense it may be this Be it supposed that Abraham knows nothing of us yet certain we are that thou art the God of Israel whose knowledg and care of thy people never faileth I admit here that the Saints pray for the Church in general that Angels are concerned in particular Ministrations but that Angels and even Saints have shares of the Government of the World though in subordination to God so as to be Commission-Officers under the King of Heaven and not only Attendants on his Throne and as it were Yeomen and Messengers of his Court the general condition of the Angels I cannot admit without peril of Idolatry This in my conceit is the great resemblance betwixt the Romanists and the Gentiles Both of them suppose the World to be ruled under God by several Orders of Daemons and Heroes though I have confessed already that they are not so exactly alike but that Rome-Christian may be distinguished from Rome-Pagan For the Gentiles so much hath been shewn already and it may appear further from the place of the Greek Historian cited in the Margent And for the Romanists that too hath already been manifested in part and shall be further declâ—…red and Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law or Commentary on the Twelve Tables does very honestly confess it He having commented on that Law which ordereth the worship of the Heathen gods both Daemons and Heroes letteth fall words not unfit to be here gathered up by us Christians saith he meaning those of the Roman Communion retain a Religion like to this for they worship God immortal and for those that excel in Virtue and shine with Miracles first with great pomp and inquisition they register them among the Deities or Saints and then they worship them and after that they erect Temples to them as we see in the case of S. John S. Peter S. Catherine S. Nicholas S. Magdalen and other Deities In this point then let us join issue and offer on our side the manifestation of these particulars First On what occasions this worship of Ruling-spirits came into the Church Secondly How it derogateth from the honour of God as Governour of the World Thirdly How it derogateth from the honour of Jesus as the Mediator and King ordained by God First For the occasions of this Worship I conceive them to be especially these two The Celebration of the Memory of the Martyrs at their Tombs and the compliance of the Christians with the Northern Nations when they invaded Italy and other places in hope of appeasing them and effecting their conversion First I reckon as an occasion of this Worship the celebration of the memory of the Martyrs at their Tombs and Monuments and Reliques and in the Churches sacred to God in thankfulness for their Examples The thankful and honourable commemoration of the Martyrs was very ancient and innocent at the beginning For as the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna concerning the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp testifies They esteemed the bones of the Martyrs more precious than Jewels They kept their Birth-days that is the days of their Martyrdom on which they began most eminently to live they pursu'd them with a worthy affection as Disciples and Imitators of Christ but they worshipped none but Christ believing him to be the Son of God But laudable Customs degenerate through time And this in the fourth Century began to be stretched beyond the reason of its first institution as appeareth by the Apostrophe's of St. Basil St. Gregory Nazianzen and others of that Age. Afterwards the vanity of men ran this Usage into a dangerous extreme and those who had been commemorated as excellent and glorified Spirits and whose Prayers were wished were directly invoked and worshipped as the subordinate Governours of Gods Church This Veneration of the Martyrs which superstition thus strained was occasioned by the Miracles which God wrought where his Martyrs were honoured Times of Persecution at home and of Invasion from abroad required such aids for the Encouragement of Catholick Christians and the Conversion of Infidels and misbelievers Thus in the days of St. Austin in whose Age the Getae or Goths sacked Rome and many of the barbarous people imputed the present misfortunes of Italy to the Christian Religion God pleased to work Miracles at the Bodies of the Martyrs Protasius and Gervasius in the City of Milan Thus as is reported by Procopius and Egnatius he miraculously saved those Christians at Rome and Pagans also both in the time of Alaricus and Theudoricus who
her as Queen of Heaven the Author of the Monument of Galeacius Caracciolus dedicateth it in the quality of a Marble-Chappel in thankful acknowledgment of the many favours she conferred on that Marquis and of the many evils from which she secured him At Rome in the Church Mariae S. Angeli the Inscription seemeth to install the Virgin into that Presidency over it which before was held by some god of the Gentiles A like change is insinuated in the Inscription found in the AEdes Martis turned into the Temple of St. Martina Now what seemeth all this but refined Heathenism When men trust in St. Hubert as the Patron of Hunters do not they the like to those who trusted in Diana the Goddess of that Game and the Patroness of Forests upon which account she was of old the celebrated Deity of this Island which then was a kind of continued Wood When they apply themselves in a strom to the Virgin Mary do not they the like to those who in perils by water called on Venus When they put confidence in St. Margaret or the Virgin Mary as the Patronesses of Women in Travail and Children in Infancy do they not follow their pattern who relied on Diana Statina or Cunina in such cases When they pay their Vows to the Virgin for the safety of their Children do they not like Bassa or Sulpitia in the Inscriptions of Gruter who paid theirs in the same case to Lucina or Juno and to Castor and Pollux And is there so vast a difference betwixt the devotion of a Heathen Conquerour who offened his Sword to Mars and of Henry of Valois who obtaining a great Victory over the Rebels in Flanders consecrated to the Virgin the Horse on which he charged and the Arms with which he so successfully fought On both sides here is confidence in a Coelestial creature as a substitute of the supreme God and thanks most solemnly paid to it Only for the Objects the one sort of them is Christian the other Pagan but both kinds were reputed Divine and worthy by their Adorers both were judged Coelestial Magistrates and Senators as the Saints are called by Horstius and the Catechism of Trent And by the Intercession of such Senators is often meant in the Church of Rome their prevalence with God in executing the office of their Patronage Hence they sometimes pray to God That the glorious Intercession of the ever-blessed and glorious Virgin Mary may protect them and bring them to life everlasting The particular Instances of the Romish Patrons and Patronesses are too many to be here Historically spoken of I find enough of them together in the learned Homily against the peril of Idolatry and with them I will at present content my self What I pray you saith that Homily be such Saints with us to whom we attribute the defence of certain Countries spoiling God of his due honour herein but Dii Tutelares of the Gentile Idolaters such as were Belus to the Babylonians and Asfyrians Osiris and Isis to the Egyptians Vulcan to the Lemnians and to such other What be such Saints to whom the safe-guard of such Cities are appointed but Dii Praesides with the Gentiles Idolaters such as were at Delphos Apollo at Athens Minerva at Carthage Juno at Rome Quirinus c. What be such Saints to whom contrary to the use of the Primitive Church Temples and Churches be builded and Altars erected but Dii Patroni of the Gentiles Idolaters such as were in the Capitol Jupiter in Paphus-Temple Venus in Ephesus-Temple Diana and such like When you hear of our Lady of Walsingham our Lady of Ipswich our Lady of Wilsdon and such other what is it but an imitation of the Gentiles Idolaters Diana Agrotera Diana Coriphea Diana Ephesia c. Venus Cypria Venus Paphia Venus Gnidia Terentius Varro sheweth that there were three hundred Jupiters in his time There were no fewer Veneres and Dianae We had no fewer Christophers Ladies and Mary Magdalens and other Saints They have not only spoiled the true Living God of his due Honour in Temples Cities Countries and Lands by such devices and inventions as the Gentiles Idolaters have done before them but the Sea and Waters have as well especial Saints with them as they have had gods with the Gentiles Neptune Triton Nereus Castor and Pollux Venus and such other in whose places be come St. Christopher Clement and divers others and specially our Lady to whom Shipmen sing Ave Maris stella Neither hath the fire scaped the Idolatrous Inventions for instead of Vulcan and Vesta the Gentiles gods of the Fire our men have placed St. Agatha and make Letters on her day for to quench fire with Every Artificer and Profession hath his special Saint as a peculiar God As for example Schollars have St. Nicholas and St. Gregory Painters St. Luke neither lack Soldiers their Mars nor Lovers their Venus amongst Christians All Diseases have their special Saints as gods the curers of them The Pox St. Roche the Falling-evil St. Cornelis the Toothach St. Appolin c. Neither do beasts and cattel lack their gods with us for St. Loy is the Horseleach St. Anthony the Swineherd c. Where is Gods Providence and due Honour in the mean season Who saith The Heavens be mine and the Earth is mine the whole World and all that in it is I do give victory and I put to flight Of me be all counsels and help c. Except I keep the city in vain doth he watch that keepeth it Thou Lord shalt save both men and beasts But we have left him neither Heaven nor Earth nor Water nor Country nor City Peace nor War to rule and governn either men nor beasts nor their diseases to cure We join to him another helper as if he were a Noun Adjective using these sayings Such as learn God and S. Nicholas be my speed Such as neese God help and S. John To the Harse God and S. Loy save thee The Papists have read such Discourses as these and they endeavour to abate the force of them by the following evasion The reasonableness of making addresses to one particular Saint rather than another in some particular occasions will appear from the consideration upon which it is usually done And that is not a division of Offices among the Saints every one of whom may equally intercede without entrenching upon the propriety of another and their intercession may be implored by us in all kinds of necessities whatsoever But it is grounded upon a reflexion which the Suppliant makes either upon some signal Grace which shined in that Saint above others as Patience Humility Chastity c. for which reason the Church saith of every one of them Non est inventus similis Illi there was no other found like to him or upon the particular manner of his suffering Martyrdom or some particular Miracle or such like
by the instance of the Brazen Serpent set up by one of Gods Vicegerents and upon its abuse destroyed by another and by that of the Cup of Joseph This Cup by which he Divined was probably an instrument used in some Sacrifice some drink-offering and in the use of which God vouchsafed him a Spirit of Prophesie with relation to the affairs of Egypt Now if the Egyptians afterward made use of this Cup or any other in form of it without any precept or promise from God Almighty and trusted in it as in the cause of Divination they then were Idolaters in this last kind of that impiety And this one would think was the Egyptian practice who readeth Lucian in his Book of Sacrifices and observeth him there deriding the Egyptians because they made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a drinking Pot a God And such a Cup may that be thought which is described in the hand of Isis in her Mystical Table rather than a Measure as Pignorius contendeth as likewise that mentioned by Arnobius in the right hand of Bacchus who often makes a Figure in the forementioned Table But this as it referreth to Joseph is but conjecture scarce so much as opinion I therefore dismiss it Yet I must not dismiss the Argument it self till I have further distinguished both concerning the Objects or Idols of that Honour which is given from God and the ways by which it is translated from the proper to the false Deity These Idols are either Personal Internal or External Objects By Personal Objects I mean the Idolaters themselves who become their own Statues and worship their very selves by the estimation they have of their Persons as Christs or of their Souls as real portions of the Essence of God the fancy of some followers of Plotinus of old who said Their Souls at death returned to the seminal Reason and of some Quakers at this time who say as Edward Burroughs the morning before he departed this Life That his Soul and Spirit was centred in its own being with God Internal Objects are the false Idea's which are set up in the fancy instead of God and his Divine perfections For he who fancieth God under the Idea of Indefinite Amplitude or Extension of matter or of Light or Flame or under the notion of an irresistible Tyrant and applies himself to him as such without the use of any visible external Statue or Picture is as certainly an Idolater as he who worshippeth a Graven Image for he giveth Divine Honour to an Idea which is not Divine Only here the Scene being internal in the Fancy the scandal of the sin is thereby abated External Objects are such which have a subsistence distinct from the Phantasms which are by motion impressed on the Brain And the Catalogue of these is a kind of Inventory of nature I will here give only a summary account of them for the particulars are endless Idolaters have worshipped Universal Nature the Soul of the World Angels the Souls of men departed either by themselves or in union with some Star or other Body They have likewise worshipped the Heavens and in them both particular Luminaries and Constellations the Atmosphere and in it the Meteors and Fowls of the Air the Earth and in it Man together with the accidents of which he is the subject such as Fortitude and Justice Peace and War And further on earth they have deified Beasts Birds Insects Plants Groves Hills artificial and artless Pillars and Statues Pictures and Hieroglyphics mean as that of the Scaribee it self resembling the Sun so many ways as Porphyrie fancieth together with divers fossils and terrestrial Fire They have furthermore adored the Water particularly that fruitful one of the Nile and in it the Fishes and Serpents and Insects as likewise the creatures which are doubtful Inhabitants of either Element such as the Crocodile in Egypt Kircher hath found the Temples of many of these Idols even in that polite Nation of China For he hath a Scheme containing the Temple of the Queen of Heaven the Temple of Heaven the Altar of Heaven the Temple of Demons and Spirits the Temple of the Planet Mars the Altar of the God of Rain the Altar of the King of Birds the Altar of the Earth the Temple of the President of Woods the Temple of Mountains and Rivers the Temple of the Spirit of Medicine the Temple of Gratitude and of Peace the Temple of the President of Mice and of the Dragon of the Sea Menander from Epicharmus summeth up the Idols of the World under these fewer heads of the Wind the Water the Sun the Earth the Fire But he is therefore deficient in his computation neither was it his purpose to make it accurate Thus the Image of God who made all things has as in a broken mirror been beheld without due attention in the several parts of the frame of the World and by the foolish Idolater distinctly adored And this adoration being used towards external Objects and not confined to mans secret thoughts hath with the more success and scandalous dishonour to God been propagated in the World And this remindeth me of the distinction which I designed also to make betwixt the ways by which Gods Honour is derived on creatures For it is either done by the inward estimation of the mind directing its intention in an Act or course of internal Worship or by the external signs of Religious Reverence It is done by both these together or by either of them apart There is no publick worship without manifest signs of it the heart in it self not being discern'd by mans eye but discovering it self by external tokens The Ifraelites saith St. Cyril worshipped the Calf and they did it by crying out these are thy gods f In them the mind and the outward signs of it went together But others by the meer outward shews of Adoration how unconcern'd soever they may have kept their minds have committed Idolatry Such as the Thurificati in the Primitive Church who believing the Gospel offered Incense before an Heathen Idol that being made a sign of their departure from Christianity and their approbation of Gentilism They thereby did an act of open dishonour to the true God and they used external means apt to incline others either to worship Idols instead of Him or to confirm them if they were already Idolaters in their detestable profaneness Such Idolaters it may be were some Englishmen who went to Sea with Mr. Davis in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in order to the discovery of a North-West passage to Cataia China and East-India On the 29th of July in the year 1585 they discovered Land in 64 degrees and 15 minutes of Latitude bearing North-East from them They found this Land an heap of Islands on one of which they went on shoar There some few of the Natives made towards them and amongst that little herd of barbarous people one pointed first upwards wirh his
themselves will disown Touching Artificial things and lifeless Statues the more Jgnorant sort worshipped them for their surprizing form and costly matter Such the Bramins in India moved to the worship of the great Idol Resora fixed nigh Jagrenate which is one of the mouths of Ganges For they fram'd him very curiously and set him forth very richly giving him two Diamonds for his Eyes and hanging another about his Neck And of these the least weighed about Fourty Carats Others not so very ignorant as to think with the former that the Deity was Gold or precious Stones venerated their Images as the places of residence of Divine Powers or perhaps as their Bodies or Closets their Temples being their Houses or common dwelling-places These were sacred to their Gods not as shelters of their Statues from Sun Wind or Rain as the Heathens in Arnobius cunningly apologize but as instruments whereby they might have their Gods with them behold them before their Eyes speak immediately to them and with them as present persons mingle as it were their Religious Colloquies Many Figures Statues and Images were made at first for very differing ends They were made as Memorials of a departed Child or Friend or Hero As Remembrancers of a living Friend or Governour remaining at a distance from us on earth as Monuments of some great Accidents in the World and preservers of the memory of things to late posterity the use they say of the Pillars of Seth. Likewise they were made as Mathematical Instruments as also as Hieroglyphicks and mystical Emblems such as a Dog the emblem of Sagacity and an Egg the Hieroglyphick of the material World The vanity of man the Imposture of the Heathen Priests the artifice and splendour of the Statues themselves effects apt to stir up admiration which followed their setting up or their remove or their worship though arising from other undiscerned Causes together with a multitude of feigned stories concerning their original or their discovery These things inclin'd the World to an opinion that they were receptacles of Divinity Each Temple of the Heathen was like that mentioned by Lucian in his Second Book of true Histories a Temple of Imposture And many Images were but the Instruments of Juglers Some of them were feigned to sweat and move as those in the great Temple of Syria mention'd by the Author of the Syrian Goddess Some were made very beautifully and some in such horrid shapes that they almost affright us in their Pictures Such are those Pictures which Lorenzo Pignoria has added to the Book of Cartari concerning the Images of the ancient Gods Some were in such manner contriv'd that they seem'd to hold immediate commerce with Heaven Thus in the Image of Serapis at Alexandria a little Window was so framed by Art that the Sun shone on the eyes lips and mouth of it and that the people believed it to be kissed by that Deity Some have been feigned to drop down from the Heavens as those of Troy and Ephesus Some to have been transported from place to place in the Air as the forementioned Image of Serapis said to be translated in a moment from Pontus to Alexandria And some by direction of Spirits to have been digged out of the earth or to have been miraculously pulled out of the Sea as the Golden Tripos of Apollo And pity it is that such Arts should be used by them who profess the Christian Religion which needeth no pious frauds for the support of it but is best propagated as it was from the beginning by plain and sincere dealing But some Roman-Catholicks have too frequently imitated the Sophistry of the Heathens and particularly in promoting the dangerous worship of our Lady at Loreto and Guadalupa It seems that her Image lay concealed in this latter place for the space of more than 600 years till it was by miracle as they say after this manner discovered An Heardsman seeking his strayed Cow found her at last but to appearance dead He went about therefore to take off her Skin but whilst he was attempting of it the Beast to his great astonishment did miraculously revive Then also did the Holy Virgin appear to him in glorious splendor and bid him not fear And she further gave him order to call the Ecclesiasticks of the City and in her name to promise them that if they digged in that place they should find her Image The poor man fearing they would not believe his report she promised to enable him with this sign to wit That he finding his Child dead at home should be able by his word to raise it to life again before them This being done the Image is sought and found for they that hide have ill memories if they can't find again and it is plac'd in a magnificent Temple and it becomes famous for working Miracles true as that of its own discovery By such Arts as these the people being induced to think that Images were the dwelling-places of Divine Powers it was difficult for them that had blind zeal thenceforth to suspend their Religious veneration The like means inclin'd them to worship Beasts or Birds as shrines and living Statues of some Deity Thus the Egyptians made the figure of the Bird Ibis the emblem of their Delta which it seems by its open Bill it represented though my fancy conceiveth not how it could represent the Basis of it and therefore under the favour of Schualenberg it fixeth rather on the Passus Ibidis or Trigon it made at every step To this they added That a certain Medicine of extraordinary virtue was found out by those Birds that a Feather of them stupified the Crocodile that they were hatch'd out of the Egg of a Basilisk that they defended Egypt from the flying Serpents of Arabia And this was enough with that Idolatrous Nation to turn the bodies of those Birds and the very figures of them likewise into Receptacles and Treasuries of Celestial virtue and to give Religious honour to them Concerning men on earth the pride and pomp of the great and the low and slavish dispositions of the mean begat sometimes the flattery sometimes the worship of them as Gods in humane shape This Honour was arrogated by Nebuchadnezzar who erected a mighty Colossus of Gold to no other Deity than himself requiring sacrifice and Religious adoration to be offered to it which when Sidrac Misach and Abednego refused to do he expostulated with them after the manner of an eminent Deity saying What God is there potent enough to deliver you out of my hands Of this blasphemous arrogance there were many instances in succeeding Ages and that of Alexander cannot escape the common Reader and he may find too many others in the Book of Political Idolatry written by the Learned Filesacus This kind of Idolatry flatterers helped forward and promoted as much as in them laid even amongst Christian Princes They fram'd for them the heavenly stile
There Euphantus as may be probably imagined found Baal or some such word in the original Egyptian and gave us instead of it the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Such honour of the Sun we find on the Antient Egyptian Obelisk interpreted by Hermapion and restored to its antient beauty by Sixtus Quintus On it the Sun is set forth as God as the Sovereign disposer of the World which it seems he committed to the Government of King Ramestes Others there were who mistook for the one supreme God the Soul of the World and it may be thought the Sun the Head in that great animated Body or the place of that Souls principal residence On this fashion Osiris in Macrobius describeth his Godhead The Heavenly world is my head my belly the Sea my feet the Earth In Heaven are my Ears and for my all-seeing Eye it is the glorious Lamp of the Sun Pornutus likewise reciting the Dogmata of the Heathen Theology discourseth to this effect As we men are governed by a Soul so the world hath its Soul also by which it is kept in frame And this soul of the World is called Jupiter Aristotle himself doth somewhere stile God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a mighty Animal So apt are the highest Aspirers in Philosophy to fall sometimes into wild and desperate errors Amongst the Romans who excelled Varro in knowledg And yet S. Austin saith of him that he believed no higher God than the Soul of the World but that by disgusting Images as debasers of Religion he approached nigh to the true God Others both in Egypt and Persia worshipped for the true God a part only of his Idea whilst they removed from it the justice and mercy of sending preventing or taking away any temporal evils in which they thought the supreme Deity not concerned whilst they believed certain Demons to be the chastizers of those who had not purged themselves sufficiently from matter PART 3. How far the Gentiles owned one true God BUT it is not fair to fight always on the blind-side of Nature I come therefore in the next place to acknowledg that some Gentiles used a Diviner Reason than others and owned one supreme God the King of the World and a Being distinct from the Sun or the Universe or the Soul of it This appeareth from the Confession of many Christians and from the words of the Gentiles themselves First Divers of the Fathers though they shew the generality of their gods to have been but creatures yet they confess they had amongst them some apprehension of one supreme eternal Deity S. Chrysostom in a second Discourse in his sixth Tome concerning the Trinity doth charge upon the Arians and Macedonians the crime of renewing Gentilism whilst they professed one great God and another Deity which was less and created For it is Gentilism said that Father which teacheth men to worship a creature and to set up one Great or greatest God and others of inferiour order In this Discourse St. Chrysostom acknowledgeth that the Gentiles adored the one Sovereign God for him the Arians believed in and were in that point good Theists though no Orthodox Christians notwithstanding he accuseth them of Subordinate Polytheism S. Cyril of Alexandria speaks the same thing and in more plain and direct words It is manifest said he that they who Phylosophized after the Greecian manner believed and professed one God the builder of all things and by nature superiour to all other Deities And to come to the second way of proof above mentioned S. Cyril is very copious in the authorities which he produceth out of the Heathen Writers in order to the strengthening of his Assertion that they believed in one infinite God He introduceth Orpheus speaking as Divinely as David himself God is one he is of himself of him are all things born and he ruleth over them all He again after he had cited many Philosophers bringeth in the Poet Sophocles as one that professed the true God and the words which he there calleth to mind are worth the Transcribing Of a truth There is one God who made the Heavens and the spatious Earth and the goodly swelling of the Sea and the force of the Wind. But many of us mortals erring in our hearts have erected Images of gods made of Wood or Stone or Gold or Ivory as supports of our grief And to these we have offered sacrifices and vain Panegyricks conceiting in that manner that we exercised Piety He forbeareth not after this to cite Orpheus again and the Verses have their weight and contain this sense in them I adjure thee O Heaven Thou wise work of the great God! I adjure thee thou voice of the Father which he first uttered when he founded the whole World by his Counsels The Father calls to mind likewise many sayings of Porphyry and of the Author falsly called Trismegist But they were too well acquainted with Christianity to have Authority in this Argument of the one God of the Gentiles Such a Gentile one who dreamt not of any Gospel was Anaxagoras who as Plutarch testifies did set a pure and sincere mind over all things instead of fate and fortune In Laertius we may hear him speaking in his own words and they admit of this interpretation All things were together or in a Chaos Then came the Mind and disposed them into order But on this declaration of Anaxagoras I will not depend because his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or mind might be such as the Platonick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Soul of the World I like better the words of Architas the Pythagorean who speaks of God in the singular and says he is supreme and governs the World But nothing is more close to the purpose than that which hath so often been said by Plato It is his opinion recited in Timaeus Locrus That God is the Principal Author and Parent of all things And this he adds after an enumeration of the several Beings of which the Universe consisteth He affirmeth in his Politicus “ That God made the great Animal of the World and that he directeth all the motions of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that there are not two Gods governing the World with differing Counsels In his Sophista he determineth that God was the maker of things which were not that is as such before he framed them In his Timaeus he calleth God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Maker and Father of every being Adding that it is difficult to find out this Father of the Universe and that when he is found out it is not fit to declare him to the vulgar He was it seems a Jehovah not ordinarily to be named They who have read his works with care know what distinction he maketh betwixt God and the gods And how he extolleth the Divine goodness and maketh it the very Essence of the supreme God It is indeed to be
Son of God the making of the Universe as they plainly sound and either wanted such confidence as the Socinians or rather such Grammatical subtlety by which they wrested them to a very different sense The places of Scripture which I mean are such as these All things were made by the Word and without him was not any thing made that was made Christ is the Image of the invisible God the first-born of every Creature For in or by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers All things were created by him and for him And he is before all things and by him all things consist These words together with all other places of a like nature the Socinians do industriously and violently draw to a scope at which they were never aimed It is true that the aim of St. Paul in the place now cited has not been so particularly and critically discerned by some of the most Catholick Commentators But in general all of them well understood that these Expressions The Worlds Things visible and invisible all things that were made things in Heaven and things on Earth were such as no Jews or Christians commonly used in speaking of the founding the Christian Church and making the new world of the Gospel And where it is said That every house is built by some man but he that built all things is God there to interpret it after this fashion of Gods revealing the Christian Oeconomy as they may if they please for the same Key may serve for all such places is an absurd Comment which hath no need of confutation But with them who have denied first the Satisfaction of Christ and for the sake of that error his Divinity and then for the sake of that second error his Praeexistence and Creative power The beginning of the Logos is at the beginning of the Gospel and the Creation of all things is the new Creation in Evangelical truth and righteousness how harshly soever these Interpretations sound to the ears of the Judicious Why go they not on and say that God is called the Creator of Israel and therefore may mean the first words of the Book of Genesis of that people and not of the Material World Why do not they Comment in this manner on the words in the Acts God that made the World and all things therein that is the Gospel with all its appurtenancies seeing that he is Lord of Heaven and Earth that is of the new Evangelical Heaven and Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness dwelleth not in Temples made with hands They err who think the Apostle in that place to the Colossians did in Allegorical manner allude to Moses No he plainly opposeth himself to Gnosticism which was then on foot though put afterwards into many new dresses and to the Simonian Scheme of the world more like to that of Pythagoras than that of Moses though Moses has been thought to Platonize as some speak which to me does not so plainly appear from the words he has left us St. Paul calleth Christ the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Image of God and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first-born of every creature not thereby affirming that Christ was not very God but his first creature of a different substance but opposing him to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Images and the Beginning of the Platonick Simonians He therefore seems to me to speak to this effect You boast of I know not what first-borns and Beginnings which created other things Behold here the true First-born and Beginning who indeed made the World Thus Ignatius opposeth to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Gnosticks the Son of God affirming that there was one God of the Old and New Testament and one Mediator betwixt God and Men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the creating and governing of all things and those who believe otherwise he in the following Page condemneth as the Disciples of Simon Magus The Thrones Dominions Principalities Powers mentioned in the next Verse are in like manner opposed to the Principles or Angels which those Hereticks fancied to be subordinate Creators and Governours of the visible World Epiphanius in his Twenty-third Heresie of the Saturnilians declareth their odd opinion concerning one Unknown Father and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Virtues Principalities and Powers made by him and of the inferior creatures made by them And in his Twenty-sixth Heresie of the Gnosticks he setteth down the order of their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Heavenly Principalities How little now do these names differ from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Dominions the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Principalities the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Powers of St. Paul the Apostle And that Apostle doth no more assert in this place the creation of such Orders than he doth the making of the Gnostick AEons in the first Chapter to the Hebrews where he affirmeth of Christ that he made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In such places he said in effect that the Logos was the true Principle which they mistook in their notion and miscalled by other names though they were in a kind of pursuit of him but in the dark and in false ways That it was he that made the World visible and intellectual by what names soever they called it or into what Classes soever they had disposed it and that this was not the effect of any such powers as they dreamed of they having no existence but in the shadows of their own imagination In the following Chapter he opposeth the Principles of Christian Religion to the Elements of their Philosophy And in the next Verse he opposeth to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Simonians the fulness of the Deity which dwelt in Christ. And after that he twice mentioneth his Headship over all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Principalities and Powers And thence he most aptly proceedeth to the condemnation of the worship of Angels For of them the Gnosticks made egregious Idols I am the more confirmed in this Discourse upon St. Paul's words by those of Irenaeus God said he in his refutation of the Gnostick Heresie did make all things both visible and invisible sensible and intelligible not by Angels or other Virtues But by his Word and Spirit This God is neither Beginning nor Virtue nor Fulness That is as I suppose it was read in the Greek Copy which the Learned world much wanteth neither 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no Gnostick Principle but true and very God Neither am I concerned at the Objection of those who ascribe these Terms to Valentinus for 't is plain he was not the Inventer It appeareth by the studiousness of Socinus in order
to the eluding of the force of such places that he believed an acknowledgment of Christ as Creator was in effect a confession of his Godhead This then being by Arius granted and by Socinus denied that Christ created the Natural World it is that single point in which Arius apart from Socinus is chargeable with Idolatry And certainly he is not accused upon slight and idle suspicion if the charge be drawn up against him either from Scripture or Reason In the Scripture God himself doth prove himself to the World to be the true one God by his making of all things In what other sense will any man whose prejudice does not bend him a contrary way interpret the following places Who hath measured out the waters in the hollow of his hand and meted out the Heavens with a span and comprehended the dust of the Earth in a measure and weighed the Mountains in scales and the Hills in a ballance Who hath directed the spirit of the Lord or being his counseller hath taught Him Thus saith the God the Lord he that created the Heavens and stretched them out He that spread forth the Earth and that which cometh out of it He that giveth breath unto the people upon it and spirit to them that walk therein I am the Lord that is my name and my Glory I will not give to another Thus saith the Lord that created thee O Jacob and formed thee O Israel Fear not Before me there was no God formed neither shall there be after me The Lord is the true God he is the living God and an everlasting King or the King of Eternity Thus shall ye say unto them the Nations The gods that have not made the Heavens and the Earth even they shall perish from the Earth and from under these Heavens He hath made the Earth by his Power he hath established the World by his Wisdom and hath stretched out the Heavens by his Discretion Thus speaketh the Scripture In the next place let it be considered whether Reason can dissent from it What notion will Reason give us of the true God if it supposeth such wisdom and power in a creature as can make the World For does not Reason thence collect her Idea of God conceiving of him as of the mighty and wise framer of the Universe thus the very Americans themselves I mean the Peruvians did call their supreme God by the name of Pachaia Chacic which signifies as they tell us the Creator of Heaven and Earth In this then Arius is particularly to be condemned in that he supposeth the Creator a Creature and yet professeth to worship him under the notion of the Maker of all things It is true that Arius gave not to Christ the very same honour he did to the Father And his Disciples in their Doxologies were wont in cunning manner to give Glory to the Father by the Son And such a Form Eusebius himself used and we find it at the end of one of his Books against Sabellius Glory be to the one unbegotten God by the one only begotten God the Son of God in one holy Spirit both now and always and through all Ages of Ages Amen Neither do the Arians give any glory to Christ but that which they pretend to think enjoined by God the Father But if Christ had been a Creature the Creator would not by any stamp of his Authority have raised him to the value of a natural God and such a God they honour whatsoever the terms be with which they darken their sense for he is honoured by them as Creator and Governour and dispenser of Grace PART 3. Of the Idolatry of the Socinians THe point in which Socinus offendeth by himself is the Worship he giveth Christ whilst he maketh him but a man and such a man as is but a machine of animated and thinking Matter for though he declineth not the word soul or spirit I cannot find at the bottom of his Hypothesis any distinct substance of a Soul in Christ. If that Principle had been believed by him why doth he suppose the Lord Jesus bereaved of all Perception as long as his Body remained lifeless in the Grave Why do his Followers maintain that the dead do no otherwise live to God than as there is in him a firm purpose of their Resurrection for so the Vindicator of the Confession of the Churches of Poland written by Shlichtingius is pleased to discourse We believe said he not only that the Soul of Christ supervived his Body but also that the Souls of other men do the like But if Cichovius thinketh that the dead do otherwise live to God than as it is always in the hand and power of God to raise them up and restore them to life let him go and confute Christ where he saith I am the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living Now Reason the great Diana of Socinus though he often took a cloud of fancy for his Goddess can't but judg it a disparagement to the Idea of a God to suppose such Divinity as can govern the World and hear and act in all places at once as Christ is by Socinus confessed to do in a portion of living Matter not six-foot square reserved in the Heavens and perceiving by the help of motion on its organs Arius advanced the Idea of Divinity to a much higher and more becoming pitch for he overcome with the plain evidence of Scripture maintained the Praeexistence of the Logos and supposed him to be a distinct substance from Matter And he might consequently affirm with consistence to his Principles that Christ could know without the mere help of motion and be spread in his substance to an amplitude equal with that of the Material World For the Material World is but a Creature one Body of many Creatures and it implieth no contradiction to say of God that he can make one Creature as big as the collection of all the rest But notwithstanding such amplitude there would still be wanting infinite Wisdom For in the Idea of God we have no other notion of it than as of such a Wisdom as sufficeth to frame the World and to govern it after it hath been framed Now this latter Point is that in which both Arius and Socinus are together condemned whilst both worship Christ as one who under God disposeth and governeth all things It is true that he is such but such he had not been if he had not been consubstantial with the Father In that sense he is the Father's Wisdom and whilst Arius and Socinus adore him as Gods Wisdom yet not as God they ascribe to the Creature the Attribute by which the Creator is known For the Scriptures they in opposition to all other gods do as well ascribe the Government as the Creation of the World to that one God of Israel Hear them speaking in this matter with so
loud and plain a voice that he who is dull of hearing cannot mistake them unless he by obstinacy make himself deafer still and will not distinctly hear them In them we find this Prayer made by the pious King Hezekiah when he was distressed by Sennacherib O Lord of Hosts God of Israel that dwellest between the Cherubims Thou art the God even thou alone of all the Kingdoms of the Earth Thou hast made Heaven and Earth Incline thine ear O Lord and hear open thine eyes O Lord and see and hear all the words of Sennacherib who hath sent to reproach the living God Of a truth Lord the Kings of Assyria have laid wast all the Nations and their Countries and have cast their Gods into the fire for they were no gods but the work of mens hands wood and stone therefore they have destroyed them Now therefore O Lord our God save us from his hand that all the Kingdoms of the Earth may know that thou art the Lord even thou only Other places there are to the same purpose and amongst them these Let them the Nations or Gentiles give glory unto the Lord and declare his praise in the Islands The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man He shall prevail against his enemies I have declared and I have saved and I have shewed when there was no strange god among you therefore ye are my witnesses saith the Lord that I am God Yea before the day I was he I will work and who shall let it Thus saith the Lord the Redeemer I am the Lord your holy one the Creatoâ—… of Israel your King He that raiseth you out of mean estate and ruleth over you Thus saith the Lord who maketh a way in the Sea and a path in the mighty waters Who would not fear thee O King of Nations The stock is a doctrine of vanities but the Lord is the true God he is the living God and an everlasting King Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain so the Lord shall make bright clouds and give them showers of rain to every one grass in the field For the Idols have spoken vanity The eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole Earth The King of Chaldea shall gather the captivity as the sand and shall scoff at Kings Then shall his mind change and he shall pass over and offend imputing this his power unto his god Art thou not he from everlasting O Lord my God mine Holy One we shall not die O Lord thou hast ordained them the Powers of Chaldea for judgment and O mighty God! Thou hast established them for correction Who hath f directed the Spirit of the Lord or being his counsellor hath taught him with whom took he counsel and who instructed him and taught him in the path of judgment Behold the Nations are as a drop of a bucket See here the Spirit of God asserting the Divinity of the one God of Israel against Idols by displaying his Wisdom and Power in the Natural and Political Government of the World But lest the evidence of these places should be weakened by any as Scriptures of the Old Testament relating to times before our Lord was actually made by the Eternal Father the King of the World I will add a few more which may tend to the preventing of such an Evasion Isaiah prophesying of the Baptist and of the blessed times of the Gospel introduceth that voice thus crying out to Jerusalem and Judah Behold your God Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand and his arm shall rule for him He shall feed his flock like a shepherd In the same Isaiah for I scarce seek further than that Evangelical Prophet the God of Israel repeateth this profession Before me there was no God framed neither shall there be after me Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel and his Redeemer the Lord of Hosts I am the first and I am the last and besides me there is no God And yet of the Logos the Socinians will profess as did Nathaniel Thou art the Son of God thou art the King of Israel and as doth the Book of the Revelation that he is Alpha and Omega the first and the last The God of Israel had said also in the foregoing Chapter I even I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour Is there a God besides me yea there is no God I know not any Yet of the Logos Socinians and Arians make confession in the words of St. John saying That he was in the beginning with God the Father The design of all these places ought not in reason to be baffled by saying with confidence these two things First That the Power which Christ had was given him by God and in order to his Glory Secondly That it is not unlawful but our duty to worship a Creature by Gods command though without his permission it be Idolatry If Christ had not been more than a creature God would not have enjoined us so high a Worship of Him neither would it have been consistent with his incommunicable Omnipotence and Wisdom to have given him all power in Heaven and in Earth This as Athanasius speaketh were to turn his Humane Nature into a second Almighty The Logos was so before all Worlds and ceased not to be so by assuming the Humane Nature into Unity of Subsistence To say then that Christ is a Creature yet made such a God who can hear all Prayers supply all wants give all Graces needful to his Body the Church know all the secrets of all Thoughts not directed to him govern and judg with Wisdom all the World and to Worship him under this Divine Notion what is it else than the paying an homage to a presumed Creature which is due only to the one very God for what apprehensions greater than these do we entertain concerning the true God when we call upon him confide in him or revere him He then that meeteth such an Inscription in Racovia as he may find often in Misna in this manner D. O. S. and at length Deo Omnipotenti Sacrum and meant of Christ to whom in the Verses set underneath the application is particularly made How must he expound it He must either interpret it of Christ Transubstantiated as 't were by their fancy into the Father or worshipped like Neptune in the D. M. at Rome in the quality of the true God whilst he is confessed to be but a Creature For they will own but one God in nature and person and yet will give to Christ not acknowledged as a coeternal Subsistence that which belongeth in eminent manner to his Idea His Idea sure it is for that Being appeareth to our mind as the best and greatest which with such mighty Goodness Power and Wisdom governs the insensible sensible rational and Christian World I end this Chapter with the
them has in all cases such power by commission that little motive is left for immediate application unto God and much trust and gratitude due to him is paid to these Delegates Fifthly The Angel whose protection Jacob implored for the safeguard of Ephraim and Manasses as having had himself experience of his aid was a Diviner Spirit than either Michael or Gabriel even the Logos of God This is the opinion of Novatianus declared once and again in his Book of the Trinity This is the opinion of many of the Fathers whose Testimonies shall be produced in my Fourteenth Chapter At present it may suffice to bring forth that plain one of St. Cyril of Alexandria in his Thesaurus An Angel is said to have striven with the Patriarch Jacob and this Divine Writ testifies but the holy man retaining him said I will not let thee go unless thou bless me Now this Angel was God which the words of the Patriarch shew whilst he saith I have seen God face to face Him appearing to him as an Angel he desireth to bless the Children And a while after he thus discourseth When Esau his Brother designed against him he did not invoke an Angel but God saying Take me O Lord out of the hands of my brother Esau for I stand in fear of him Sixthly The story of Raphael protecting Tobias is not found in Canonical Scripture But if it be notwithstanding a true report this being a peculiar favour of God in an extraordinary case it doth not encourage men in all emergencies to pray for the like without a promise from God He sendeth not all to be our guides who may sympathize with our estate The Angels who never sustain'd infirmity do not so neither doth the ministration of an Angel argue that of a Saint Nor doth it follow that God doth use such ministrations so frequently and visibly under the Gospel as under the Law in which dispensation his Shechinah in which the Angels attended was shewn often on Earth Seventhly If St. Roch once assisted the infected it is not proved thence that God sends him where-ever he sends that heavy judgment And how appeareth it that he ever helped at a distance in that dreadful sickness which requires a Domine Miserere Why because say they the infected prayed to him and were healed But the event is not always the effect and God in pursuance of his own greater and mysterious ends doth often answer the matter of the requests of the superstitious and the wicked And often there are other ordinary second Causes which men fancy by the event to have been more extraordinary and divine They who among the Heathens prayed to Lavina for her assistance in a cleanly cheat might impute the effect unto their Goddess though she never understood them and their own cunning brain and slight of hand brought the couzenage to pass with such undiscovered Art S. Austin will furnish us with a better instance a matter of fact In his Eleventh Chapter de Curâ pro mortuis he telleth of one Eulogius a Master of Rhetorick in Carthage who was perplexed with a knotty place in the Rhetoricks of Cicero which he was next day to interpret to his Schollars And in that night saith the Father I interpreted unto him in his dream that which he understood not Nay not I but my Image I being wholly ignorant of this affair and being so far beyond the Sea doing or dreaming some other thing and being wholly careless of his cares The mans brain was heated and amongst other Images that of S. Austin came in his mind he being then the fam'd Schollar in Africa and his dreams as often it happens were luckier than his waking thoughts and he imputed to St. Austin that which followed his Apparition in the brain though that was not the cause of it Eighthly if St. Michael was once sent to succour the Jews it is not to be thence concluded that Saints do the like or that he himself hath always the same Office in reference to the quality or the object of it or that Angels appear alike under the dispensation of the Logos substituted without union to manhood and that of him incarnate and installed King of the World nor do all the Learned think that by Michael is always meant an Angel In sum the Romanists are not so much charged with Idolatry for praying to such Saints as most sympathize in their conjecture with their present conditions as for trusting in them as such whom God hath impower'd to succour all Christians in equal circumstances and like places and for returning the thanks to them which are oftenest due to the immediate Providence of the Omnipresent God If they do not apply themselves to them as such why do they use such Forms in their Prayers Why do they give them the name of Patron and Guardian-Saints Why do they as well call on the Virgin as on the highest Angel for Guardianship Why do the Popes in their many Bulls declare them to be Patrons of such places and helpers in such particular cases Why are the people directed in the choice of them and advis'd to an especial affiance in them Why is there mention in their Authors of their appearance in person to their Supplicants with present aid and further assistance This is done by Bernardin de Bustis and recited in a Manual Printed at Paris with approbation in a Discourse of the seven Joys of the Virgin to wit in their account her Annunciation by the Angel her Visitation by Elizabeth the glorious Birth of Christ the Adoration of the Magi the Retrieve of her Son in the Temple the appearance of Christ after his Resurrection and her happy departure and Assumption into Heaven With these Joys saith Bernardin St. Thomas of Canierbury a devout servant of the Virgins did every day salute our Lady To him as he proceeds she one day appeared when he was at his Prayers and she assured him that his saluting her with her seven Joys on earth which sometimes were said to be but five was very agreeable to her but that the saluting of her with her seven Joys in Heaven to wit her Exaltation above the Angels her illuminating Paradise as the Sun does the World the reverence paid her by Angels Archangels Thrones and Dominions her being the Conveyer of all the Graces which Christ bestoweth her sitting at the right hand of her Son her being the hope of sinners in such sort that all who praise and reverence her are by the Father recompenced with eternal Glory the augmentation of her graces and favours in Paradice until the Day of Judgment was acceptable to her in a higher degree And she promised to him and to others also who should daily repeat these Salutations adjoining to each an Ave Maria that she would be present with them at the hour of death and that for her sake they should be saved In which instance we have the Patronage of the
it may be concluded that all Governours in this world Ecclesiastical and Civil all Princes and Magistrates all Patriarchs Archbishops Bishops Superintendents and Presidents are so many Idols and Ordinances dishonourable to God and his Son But judicious men will consider that the Governments on earth are not the patterns of the invisible world Here God ruleth in this manner not for his own sake but for ours we being mortal men and needing the aids of men like our selves whilst we sojourn in this body and for him to administer immediately to our outward infirmities in this world were for him to be always grosly incarnate This conceit of the invisible world as modelled like the visible hath brought forth that excuse of a voluntary humility in the Romish Suppliants who as if the Court of Heaven were like that on Earth dare not presume to come immediately to the King but apply themselves to him by the mediation of some of his Officers A King is but a man and cannot hear all complaints in person and redress all grievances Could he do it with the Power and Wisdom and Grace and easie operation of a Deity all might then have immediate access to him or to him by the Prince his Son supposed to be of a like nature and quality And who on earth when he is invited by the Monarch himself to apply himself to him immediately or to him by his Son addresseth himself to neither but to some meaner Favourite of whose interest for the dispatch of his Affair he hath no assurance given him Thirdly should we lay aside this consideration of that Presidentship and Patronage to which the Romanists entitle so many Saints yet the very frequency used in addresses to them though by mere request of their Praiers for us would not a little tend to the diminution of the honour of God and Christ. It is notorious to those who pass the Seas in the same Bottoms with Romish Mariners that those Seamen in a storm apply not themselves immediately to God but repeat the Hymn to the holy Virgin of Hail Star of the Sea To this purpose is that which Lipsius telleth of Thirteen men in peril by a Tempest in their passage to Antwerp Amongst them the Master conceiving no hope of saving the Vessel or the lives of the Passangers exhorted them to submit themselves wholly to God and so to pass to a better state after the loss of this But it seems one amongst them suggested Vows and Invocations to the Lady of Halla and his counsel is embraced Straightway says he a light shone on the Vessel and the Tempest ceased and the Vessel arrived at the Haven with loss of goods but not of the Passengers who repaired to Halla and profesled themselves to owe their life to the Virgin and paid with faithfulness the Vows they had made It had been more pious surely to have thanked God and the Virgin or rather God alone who it may be by other means or by himself was their deliverer But superstitious men judg of Causes by the concomitancie of the effects and not by the virtue which produceth them And this is not only the fruit of superstition in the rude and ignorant but in the politest of the Ecclesiastics The very Jesuites for so did Father Garnet at his execution afford God the less of their Application by being so busied at their last hour with their aforesaid Mary Mother of Grace Mother of Mercy defend us from the enemy and protect us in the hour of death which Versicles say the composers of the confession of Saxony we heard a Monk a Professor of Divinity inculcate very often to a dying man without any mention of Christ Jesus And it hath been commonly observed as a great blot in the Romish devotions That they use many Ave Maria's to one Pater Noster Which Collects by the way being repeated by them with such careless haste the jabbering of any thing in an indistinct heedless way is by us called patering Labbe a learned Jesuite though in his sickness he was not forgetful of Christ his Saviour yet he mentions the frequency of his addresses to the Virgin during the rage of his Feaver This a stander by not knowing his principles would have judged to have been the effect of his distemper Thus then this new Marian devotion much diminisheth and sometimes quite justleth out the ancient and unquestionable worship of Jesus as they say S. Ambrose is almost forgotten already at Milan through the newer veneration of S. Charles Borromee Two things now may be perhaps jointly pretended towards the disabling the foregoing Discourse and I will return a brief answer to them First It is taken for confessed That those to whom the Romanists pray as unto Patrons and Patronesses are real Saints in Heaven Secondly The Romanists pretend to prove that God hath declared himself to have conferred such honourable office place and power upon these Patrons by the miracles they have wrought for the behoof of their Clients For the first suggestion It is confessed that they worship none but such as have been thought professors of Christianity and such who are reputed to be exalted above either Hell or Purgatory Notwithstanding this I dare not avouch the eminent Saintship and glorified estate of all that are canonized They who read without partiality the History of S. Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury will be inclined to think him put into the Kalender by as much mistake as many other things are put into our vulgar Almanacks I see that even some of the Roman Communion do impute his saintship rather to the fervour of his zeal than to the ground of his Cause What can a man that reverenceth God think of the Saintship of St. Bernardin of Siena when he considereth of his Doctrine apt to give pain to the modesty of the Virgin almost in Heaven it self This Saint after a logn comparison betwixt God and Blessed Mary thus thus blasphemously concludeth If then we give to each their due in that which God hath done for man and which the Virgin hath done for God himself you see for your comfort that Mary hath done more for God than God for man whence God for the Virgins sake is much obliged to us Methinks by these words he is just such another Saint as the Author of the Conformities who writes the parallel of Christ and St. Francis and giveth to St. Francis the preheminence What can a peaceable Christian think of the Saintship of Pope Hildebrand or St. Gregory the seventh Was it not he who imbroiled the World who taught that Kings and Dukes had their original from those who not knowing God did by pride rapines perfidiousness murthers and by almost all manner of wickednesses through the instigation of the Devil the Prince of this world affect to domineer over their equals or other men with blind ambition and intolerable presumption who deposed Henry the fourth King of
the Son of God whom the Father hath appointed to judg the world Eusebius thinketh he hath warrant to say from the words of the same Moses For so the Father interprets the Prophet when he speaks of this Lord the Word the sensible descending Shechinah raining from the Lord or invisible Father fire and brimstone out of Heaven or the Region of the Clouds And in this particular the Council of Sirmium is so peremptory and so severe that it anathematizeth all who affirm those words The Lord rained from the Lord to have been spoken not of the Father and the Son but of the Father raining from himself that dreadful fire and brimstone This Lord then is the same with him of whose appearance we read in the Chap. 17. of Genesis It is said in the 22 verse of that Chapter That God went up from Abraham so runs the Hebrew Text. But the Chaldee Paraphrast calleth him who ascended Fulgur Dei that is the luster of the Divine Shechinah drawn up as it were towards the firmament of Heaven Of the appearance of Three in human shape to Abraham St. Hilary of Poictiers discourseth at large And in that Discourse he contendeth That the person to whom Abraham did particularly address himself calling him his Lord was the Son of God attended then only but with two visible Angels And this interpretation seemeth more probable than that of S. Cyril of Alexandria who because three appeared and Abraham spake as unto one concludeth thence an Apparition of the Trinity in Unity The same S. Hilary conceiveth the same Lord to have formerly appear'd to Hagar whom he observeth to give to him the like titles of Lord and God and to have receiv'd from him the promise of a numberless off-spring Moses himself before he mentions these titles given by Hagar had indeed call'd him who appear'd to her by the name of an Angel or the Messenger or Officer of the Lord. But even that name if spoken with emphafis is not improperly ascribed to the second Person or Logos who was the Shilo that is as Grotius doth interpret it the sent of God Of the name Angel there given to the Shechinah S. Hilary delivers his opinion after this manner To Agar saith he spake the Angel of God And he was both God and Angel God of God and called Angel as being the Angel of the Great Council So he is called saith Tertullian and styled a Messenger not as a name designing his Nature but his Office And they are superficially skill'd in Philo the Jew who know not that he calls the Logos both Gods Image and his Angel Jusiin Martyr also sheweth to Trypho the Jew that the God who appeared to Abraham was the Minister of the Universal Creator and he afterwards gives this as the reason why the Word is call'd an Angel to wit that he may be known to be the Minister or Substitute of the Father of all things Justin Martyr might here have respect to the words of St. Paul who teacheth that all things are of the Father and by the Son The Son was that Angel of God who strove with and blessed the Patriarch Jacob. Hence Jacob in grateful memory of that blessing call'd the place Peniel having there seen the Face that is the Shechinah or Image of God personated by the Logos his Son That Shechinah though it appeared without human figure might not unfitly be called the Face because it was that Divine Presence to the Majesty of which as to the Face of a Prince the religious subjects of the true God made their application This again is the opinion of Eusebius and St. Hilary and Justin Martyr our three former witnesses This last-named Father telleth Trypho the Jew That it was the Son of God who appear'd both to Abraham and Jacob and that it was absurd to think the Immensity of the Godhead leaving the Heavens should it self appear in a narrow and limited space on earth And the forementioned Fathers of the Council of Sirmium denounced in their Creed a solemn Curse against those who should maintain that it was the unbegotten Father and not the Son who strove with Jacob. Whilst God by such appearances as these encouraged true Religion in the holy Line the ungodly Race especially of Cham did further blot out the Image of God by receiving the impressions of numberless Idols of which some excelled others but none were worthy the veneration they paid to them The Idols which admitted of much better apology than many of their fellows and which approached nighest the Shechinah of God on earth when figured were mighty Potentates and Benefactors And so the Author of that Book de Mundo which hath been commonly ascribed to Aristotle representeth God as some Puissant King of Persia sitting in his Royal Palace at Susa or Ecbatane and giving Laws to all Asia and receiving intelligence of all its affairs Besides this more generous Idolatry there were many other kinds and those so apparently ridiculous that barely to repeat them were in effect to deride the Nations guilty of them Amongst other places Egypt was the nursery of these Follies There every thing which could help or hurt or represent and be assumed by a Daemon or acted by one of his Impostures was conceived to have in it a Divine power and received Religious worship The Rains of AEthiopia swell their River and break over into fruitfulness and the Nile is straitway a God Some natural or political cause preventeth or removeth some annoyance and the effect is ascribed with Divine Praises to the vain and insufficient Talisman for as Jamblicus speaking professedly of their Mysteries doth inform us They conceived a Divine Power able to procure or prevent good and evil did straightway adjoin it self to that piece of matter which was congruously chosen and figured according to some Coelestial aspect The Constellations are by fancy and such as is sometimes injudicious enough formed into the shapes of certain Creatures on earth and those Creatures are worshipped after having been supposed either eminently to contain the virtues or with singular perception to be sensible of the operations of such knots of Stars The seed of Abraham sojourning in this Land which abounded with Idols and with a great number of external rites and being by custom very prone to them and as it were moulded into a ritual temper it pleased that God who condescendeth sometimes as an indulgent Father to lisp with Infants to consider their infirmity when he led them out of bondage by the hand of Moses He therefore by the same Moses gave to that people such an Oeconomy a dispensation containing a visible Shechinah and a great many Ceremonies as might innocently gratifie their busie tempers and sensitive inclinations and divert them from the worship of false gods and from those abominable formalities with which in Egypt those Idols were
wings the mysteries of the Ark how strongly from thence I will not say that there is a more deep sense of the Text of Moses PART 6. Of the cure of Idolatry by the Image of God in Christ God-man AMongst the Mosaic Symbols the Ark certaâ—…nly was none of the meanest This Holy vessel without peradventure had most singular reference to Christ as God-man who at least from his Baptism hath been in that quality of God-incarnate exhibited to the World as the Divine Shechinah At Bethlehem the Son of God was Born the Town where the settled place for the Ark of God was discovered to David So much we learn from the words of Solomon in the sixth verse of the Hundred and second Psalm He there repeateth a saying of David his Father concerning the Ark Lo we heard of it at Ephrata Castalio plainly confesseth that he understood not what that expression meant For my part whilst I am in pursuit of the present Argument I cannot think the Text to be tortur'd by St. Hilary who will have it to confess Christ as the true Ark of God discovered typically at Bethlehem to David and afterwards manifested in the flesh to the World in the same City of David It is heard of in Ephrata Ephrata saith he is the same with Bethlehem where our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary There therefore the rest of God is heard of where first of all the only begotten God inhabited a body of humane flesh This is the Ark which rested in the Tribe of Judah for out of that Tribe our Lord sprang To this Ark as soon as he came into the World the very Princes or Wisemen of the Gentiles bowed down in the Cave at Bethlehem the star or miraculous meteor as an appendage of the Shechinah standing above it This Ark tabernacled among men and they saw his Glory when Baptized when transfigured This Ark giveth through Jordan or the Baptismal Laver a passage into the mystical Canaan On this Ark or Holy vessel of Christs body when he was Baptized by John in Jordan the glory of the Shechinah appeared a mighty lustre as Grotius hinteth hovering after the fashion of a Dove upon these waters of the second Creation On him the Holy Ghost dwelt or rested as God was said to do in the Tabernacle In him as the Law of God in the Ark and the Will of God known from the Oracle of the Shechinah were deposited all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg He is the great Oracle of God whom by a voice from Heaven out of a bright Cloud or Gods excellent Glory we are commanded to hear In him was the sum of the Law and the Prophets and he was the light of Israel of the Gentiles of the whole world To this Logos Clemens Alexandrinus ascribeth the mysteries of the Jews and Gentiles as to the great Teacher of them before his Incarnation So that he as a Divine subsistence and substitute of the Father giving the Law of Reason to Adam the Jewish Law to that people by Moses and to all the world the Christian Law or Will of God no Title could be more proper for him than that of the Divine Word And this Logos was not only the Wisdom but the Power of God and meriteth the name of the Ark of Gods strength In him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily The Deity sojourn'd in an Ark of flesh or within the vail of it And in this sense I think some of the Ancients are to be interpreted who called Christ so often 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a God-carrying-man as our Language may truly though harshly render the Greek word though Nestorius abus'd the signification of it so far as to make it intimate a duality of persons in Christ. This Ark was the face or visible presence of God and he that had seen him as Messiah had in that sense seen the Father This body was not the very Godhead as Muggleton blasphemeth but the Godhead did in it shew forth it self to men in signs of mighty Power Holiness and Wisdom This Evangelical Ark was the Image of the invisible God not indeed the very picture or statue but as St. Hilary stileth him the Personator of his Essence It is true he saith of some of the Jews That they had never seen the shape of the Father his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Appearance And this he saith truly in two respects though him they saw when he thus spake to them For first there were none of them who saw him baptized or transfigured for in the same place he denies that they ever heard the voice of God And then these were unbelieving Jews and therefore saw him as meer man as one of the worst of men in their conceit an Impostor and Magician and not as the Messiah the Son the Incarnate Shechinah of God To such therefore as under those misapprehensions of him he saith elsewhere Why call you me good there is none good save one that is God However Christ in truth though not to the eyes of Infidels was the Image of the invisible Father and one whose design was to put all the Idols and Images of the Superstitious world under his feet Of this the Prophets foretold and this the world hath seen fulfilled Oracles by degrees ceasing and now scarce any footsteps remaining of that Triumvirate of gods for their gods had been men and those some of them no Heroes in virtue Jupiter the god of the Heavens Neptune of the Sea Pluto of the Earth It is said by the Arabick Author of the Prodigies of Egypt that when Noah named one God Idols fell prostrate It is more true of him who began the new world of the Gospel that when he appeared as the Image of the one true God Idolatry vanished before him And the Fathers will have it that when in his Childhood he went into Egypt and was brought to Memphis the Egyptian Idols fell at his feet And St. Hierom whose manner is as much to cite in his Commentaries the opinions which he had collected as to set down his own does tell of some who applied to Christ and the Virgin those words of Isaiah Behold the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud and shall come into Egypt and the Idols of Egypt shall be moved at his Presence From this Image of God in his Son Incarnate this Ark of flesh Divinity often shone on earth before his Instalment at Gods right hand The mighty power of God in his Life Miracles Preaching and sometimes in his Attendants the Angels and in his very bodily appearance Thus at his Transfiguration his raiment shone as the light he being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the brightness of the Glory or Shechinah of God And afterwards such Heavenly Majesty shewed it self in him that those who came to apprehend him as a Malefactor fell
Heaven and Earth his coelestial mind being united to a body of gross flesh and blood his understanding receiveth instruction through the gates of the outward senses and is in especial manner assisted by Phantasms which Light pictureth in the Brain This frame of man rendreth him covetous in his speculations of the help of some external and visible Object And amongst the numerous progeny of mankind there are very few heads metaphysical enough for that Proverb of the Arabians Shut up the five Windows that the House may be fill'd with Light It is the same thing to the vulgar not to appear and not to be and they would therefore have a visible Deity and one who might in a more bodily manner be present with them For this Reason when Osiris was worshipped throughout Egypt and his living Image was visible only in the superior part of it the Metropolis of Memphis the Priests took occasion to set on foot a Schism and those of Heliopolis would also have a sacred Bull that their Deity might be as visible and present to them as to the other Egyptians This Reason the Brachman gave to Monsieur Bernier for the erection of the Statues of Brahma and of other Deiitas or Deities To wit That something might be before the eyes of the worshipper for the fixing of his mind Of the like temper were the Heathens spoken of by Lactantius in his second Book of the Origine of Error They were jealous lest all their Religion should be a vain beating of the Air if they saw nothing present which they might adore This Affection then for Sense this wisdom of the Flesh is a general Cause of the Worship of material Idols But they being of divers kinds have accordingly divers more special Causes Such who worshipped Universal Nature or the Systeme of the material World perceived first that there was excellency in the several parts of it and then to make up the grandeur and perfection of the Idea they joyned them alltogether into one Divine Being Thus probably did Idolaters But Atheists also serv'd themselves on this Pretence as they do at this day seldome receding from any profitable Art Such a one of old was Pliny who maketh God and Nature the same And such a one in these times is the bold Author of Tractatus Theologico-politicus who defineth God the infinite power of matter Those who worshipped Nature in the parts of it were such as Pliny observeth who laboured under a weakness and narrowness of imagination It was his opinion That frail and wearied mortality mindful of its own infirm condition distributed Nature into its several parts that every one might worship that portion of it which was useful to him Usefulness indeed was a common motive And Cicero affirmeth in his first Book of the Nature of the Gods That the Egyptians consecrated no Beast from whence they did not derive some profit And in his second Book of the same Argument he citeth it as the saying of Perseus the Scholar of Zeno That they were held to be Gods from whom great advantage accrued to mans life Neither is there any name so commonly given amongst all Nations to Divine Power as that which signifieth the Goodness of it Such is the ancient Kod of the Germans in the Vocabulary of Goldastus and their more modern Gott or God which we have borrowed from them But Usefulness though it was a very common motive yet it was not the only one which inclined the World to Idolatry For that which ravished with its Beauty as the Rainbow worshipped saith Josephus Acosta by the Peruvians though not by those of Egypt who dwelt under a serene Heaven That which affrighted with its malignant Power as the Thunder worshipped saith the same Acosta by the Yncas of Peru and by the ancient Germans also who as Grotius noteth called their God of Heaven by the name of Thorn which signifieth him that Thundereth That which astonish'd with its greatness as the mighty swellings of the Earth in high Mountains worshipped here by the ancient Britains That I say which was beautiful hurtful or Majestick became a Deity as well as that which profited with its use Now all these powers being united in the Sun whose beauty is glorious whose heat scorcheth and refresheth and is the cause of barrenness in some places and in others of fruitfulness whose motion is admirable whose Globe of Light appeareth highly exalted That of all other parts of the visible World hath been the celebrated Idol For other parts of insensible nature lesser virtues were discerned in them But their motion and the cause of it being either not known or not consider'd the Gentiles esteemed of them as such Subjects in which a coelestial vigor resided Ignorance of nature was in them the Mother of Idolatry as ignorance in Art was the cause of that admiration amongst the Caribbians which ascribed the effect of Fire-locks to a Demon. On the same account Garlick and Onions obtain'd the reputation of Deities in Egypt Of such St. Chrysostom somewhere taketh notice and of the Apology which they made saying That God was in the Onion though the Onion was not God By this Onion they meant not the common and very delicious one among them which they were not forbidden to violate but did daily eat it but a certain Scilla which poysoned Mice and had a strange fiery virtue in it and was called the Eye of Typhon And I suppose it to be of the same kind with that of which the juice was used in the Lustration of Menippus in Lucian when he was initiated into the mysteries of Zoroaster It decreased saith saith Kircher in the increase of the Moon and increased in the decrease of it for the truth of which let it rest upon the Relato Concerning Beasts Birds Fishes and Insects they in like manner were ador'd for their beauty their beneficial hurtful or astonishing properties They were sometimes worshipped for these and other such reasons in the whole species of them For so Diana being turn'd as they feigned into a Merula a Mearl or Black-bird the whole kind of them was made sacred in the quality of her living Statues Sometimes some one sort of them was worshipped by reason of a particular effect of theirs esteemed of with high veneration by the World So the Mice Sminthoi were deified which eat in sunder the Cables of the Enemies of Troas Likewise such living creatures were worshipped as Beings which contained in them the Souls of some departed Hero's Friends and Benefactors or which were themselves portions of the Soul of the World Beasts at this day are upon both these accounts idoliz'd by the Pendets of Indostan And after this manner it is that they explain the several appearances of their Deity of which the first they say was in the nature of a Lion the second of a Swine a strange Cabbala and such as the Jews
of their Divinity and their Divine Precept words said to be used by Theodosius and Valentinian themselves Pacatus Drepanius in his Panegyric to Theodosius the Great describes the Emperour as one from whom Navigators expect a calm Sea Travellers a safe return and Soldiers Victory And of Constantine the Son of Constantius the uncertain Author of his Panegyrick affirmeth in deep Complement That his Beauty was great as his Divinity was certain But much of this flattery is so gross that it can scarce be swallowed by the common people who in private smile at their own publick fawnings For Spirits of all kinds men have seen some Apparitions and heard of more They have also had notions in the brain representing to them Images as spectres in the Air They have rightly judged the Soul so Divine in its operations as to superexist They have seen many external effects and could not guess at the Cause or ascribe it with such probability to Nature as to some higher invisible Power They have seen appearances in the Heavens and the very appearances have form'd in their fancy the counterfeit Idea of a Spirit For so the Heathen of the Eastern India believed the shadow of the Moon on the Eclipsed Sun to be a black Demon contending with it Men thus believing partly from good and partly from fanciful Reasons the existence of Demons and Ghosts and apprehending them truly as more spiritual active and superiour Beings it is not to be admired that their weakness ador'd them as dispensers of good and evil here below Touching Souls departed in particular Gratitude deified some but Admiration put more names into the Calendar The people were transported by their power and splendor on Earth and they thought their Puissance would increase in higher Regions Souls appeared otherwise to their mind than Bodies do to the eye to which they seem the lesser the higher they ascend And to this end the Devil was wont to represent Ghosts unto the eye or fancy of the Gentiles in vast proportions Such mighty figures Jamblichus where he writeth of the Egyptian mysteries ascribeth to Principalities and Archangels So that Solomon might aptly call the state of the dead the Congregation of Rephaim or Gyants Towards the advancement of the Souls of Heroes in the opinions of the Idolizers of them much was contributed by strange appearances real or invented at the time of their death So the Soul of Paul the Hermite was the more divinely esteemed of because S. Anthony as they tell us saw it flying to Heaven So Julius Caesar became one of the Roman gods whilst a Comet shining for Seven days together was judg'd to be his Soul receiv'd into Glory And this conceit they further inculcated by adding a Star to the top of his Statue Such Canonization of Heroes hath likewise been promoted by strange effects done or counterfeited at their Sepulchres and sometimes by their obscure manner of going out of the World which the people esteem'd an heavenly translation Empedocles hoping this way to arrive at Divine honour threw himself secretly into the flames of AEtna but his two Pattens which that Gulf of Fire cast up discovered his vain and miserable end Concerning the Soul of the World men seeing in all parts of the Creation motion and virtue judged erroneously of the greater World as they did truly of the lesser world of Man and made one Soul to be the Sovereign principle which actuated every part of it And some of the Stoicks esteem'd this Soul as a Form informing the Universe But the Platonists judged it rather a Form assistant imagining it unsutable to its Deity to be mixed with or vitally united to the grossest subcelestial matter and to have perception of all the motions of it This conceit is driven very far by the Indian Cabalists or Pendets Creation say those Doctors is nothing else but an extraction and an extension which God maketh of his own substance of those webs he draws from his own bowels as destruction is nothing else but a reprisal or taking back again of this Divine substance and these Divine webs into himself so that the last day of the World which they call Maperle or Pralea when they believe that all shall be destroyed shall be nothing else but such a general Reprisal This conceit in the superstitious maketh all things in nature adorable as parts of God And in the Atheistical it deifieth nothing at all for at the bottom of this imagination they think they see not God but Nature With them Coelum is the material Heaven Juno is the upper Air Neptune is the natural cause of water in the Caverns of the Earth Pluto is the thick Air next to this Globe and Rhea is the natural cause of showers Towards all the Idolatries already mention'd much was contributed by the figurative expressions of Orators especially by their Apostrophe's in the Encomiums of departed Hero's as also by the elegant fictions of Poets whose invention hath been justly reputed one of the great store-houses of Idols And for the Idolatry of Qualities I know not whence to fetch it so readily as by going thither For though the first ground of it was the consideration of many of these Qualities in their eminent degree as means by which the Pagan Heroes were Deified yet Poetry helped on that cause by shaping these Qualities into personal Powers negotiating as it were betwixt Heaven and Earth and conveighing them as the Angels did the Soul of Lazarus into a more heavenly habitation Poets design to move to surprize to make deep impression on the People They cannot do this so readily by proposing abstracted Truths to the mind as by cloathing them in such Metaphors and Pictures as may affect the brain Hence it is that they have used such a variety of fictions in which they have cloathed every thing they say with the appearances of a Person Peace and War Fame and Justice have such personal shape and action given to them as is necessary for the making a greater impression upon the Hearers For to give an ordinary instance in this matter it doth not so much affect us when a man says barely that a Kingdom shall want supplies of Bread as when he describes famine riding towards us pale and meager upon a Sceleton of Man or Beast attended with thousands of such ghastly objects from whence the uncloathed bones stare upon us and tell us that we after the dreadful extremities of hunger and thirst enforcing us to prey upon Toads and Serpents upon our Relations and our very selves shall become lean languishing dying as they By this transitory view of the Causes and Occasions of Idolatry so full of folly error and mistake it manifestly appeareth upon what weak and clay-like feet the Idols stand which the world hath worship'd with so vigorous a Devotion CHAP. IV. Of the Time in which the Vanity of Man introduced Idolatry into the World THe Nature
was not come to any determinate belief concerning the Stars whether they were Gods or only the Statues of them But upon supposition that they were Statues the part to which he is most inclined he would have them honoured beyond all Statues on earth as being made such by a Divine Power Secondly The Gentiles were guilty of Idolatrous Worship in making some at least of the natural Statues of God voluntary and authoritative disposers of good and evil under God in the World though not as the supreme dispensers of them They believed the Stars to be animated at least with an assistant form and as Maimonides reporteth of them created by God for the Government of the World And we receive it upon the valuable Authority of Garcilasso de la Vega that the Ynca's of Peru adored the Sun as the visible Deity by which the greater God who was invisible ruled this World A due confideration of this Fancy amongst the Gentiles leadeth us to the true Original of Astrology and to a right account of Talismanick Statues The present Astrology pretendeth to be Natural and Philosophical and to solve the effects it foretelleth if any it doth besides those of Light and Shadow as in Eclipses by the mechanical influence of the Stars which variously combine their light and heat But the Egyptian Chaldean and Grecian Astrology was in truth an Astrological Magick built upon the hypothesis of their Demons and the Heavens which they governed And they did not think that the Stars wrought a mighty effect or impregnated a Talisman by their proper virtue but as they were either Intelligences themselves or divinely influenced and directed by the Demons which resided in them and governed part of this lower World The Chaldeans assigned Twelve Gods as Governours of the year and apportioned to each of them one sign in the Zodiack To these they added Thirty Auxiliary Gods in Thirty Stars of which Fifteen were to have inspection on things below the earth and Fifteen above it And in the Kalendar of Julius Caesar each God had a Month under him and in it the several Constellations Juno governed January Neptune February Minerva March Venus April Apollo May Mercury June Jupiter Quintilis or July Ceres Sextilis or August Vulcan September Mars October Diana November Vesta December At this day the Astrological Judgments refer to demonology Thus Saturn the severe Demon is made to signifie malicious persons Mars the Bloody Demon furious proud valiant persons and by their Influence to dispose to such Qualities The Horoscope or Ascendant is made the principal of all Angles or if not that then the Culmen Coeli by Ptolomy and this judgment at first came from the worship of the Sun the principal Demon and most reverenced in those Angles In this worship then although subordinate The Gentiles placed Gods Authority where God himself had not done it and their Hopes and Fears and Thanks respected certain Creatures when they were due to God dispensing good and evil immediately by himself or if by them doing it by them as ministerial Causes not as sharers in his Government But of this more when I come to consider their worship of Demons of which the Stars themselves were one sort to some of them whilst they ascribed to them a high degree of perception and voluntary Power They thought of the Sun as of an Archangel though the Disciples of the Philolaick Systeme called it only the Organ of God and the Divine Harp by reason of the Harmony which its motion gave to the rest of the coelestial Bodies Again they erred in their worship about the artificial and instituted Statues of God Some of these Statues were possibly at first no more than monumental Pillars and Records of some extraordinary work of God discerned to be the effect of his finger by proof of sufficient Reason And so far the Gentiles were commendable as well as Jacob of the Line of Abraham For it is the nature of true and grateful devotion to retain and propagate the memory of Gods Acts which by the eminent Wisdom Mercy Power and Justice of them are proper for the exciting of admiration But I cannot go on in praising them for the honour they gave to other kinds of Statues which their fancy erected to the supreme God Of these some had less Art bestowed on them being great pieces of Wood or Stone without any Imagery of Man or Beast of Fish or Fowl carved or painted on them Some regular figure they sometimes had as that of an Egg which they supposed in many things and particularly in its figure to resemble the World Such Statues they worshipped two ways first as the Symbols of Gods especial presence Secondly as pledges of his favour to them wheresoever he was so long as they held them in possession and both ways they egregiously offended They offended by worshipping such Statues as the Symbols of Gods especial presence For thereby they ascribed the relative honour due to Gods true Shechinah to an Object which was exalted to that Divine condition not by his approbation but by their fancy And if their fancy was moved to this false estimation by some amazing effects wrought before them upon the performance of their Religious Rites they were Idolatrous in that case by honouring the power of Demons asGods Omnipotence For God permitted evil Spirits to seduce those Pagans by strange and uncommon operations wrought at their Statues who refused to live in the use of their Reason Further They transgressed in using Statues as the pledges to assure them of Gods favour so long as they remained with them Such were the Ancilia and the Palladium introduced by Numa amongst the Romans He did not celebrate them as Statues in which God dwelt but as secret pledges of Empire And this conceit also begat Idolatry amongst them for they gave that honourable trust due to God and his Shechinah and the pledges of his favour to things devised by politick men and such as God neither formed nor sent nor appointed as Instruments of defence amongst any people Other Statues they used as Images and representations of the supreme God This practice Macrobius doth not deny but he denieth it to be Antient And it is plain by his Context that he referreth to Plato and to the Platonick notions which exalted God above all the parts of Nature And for Plato it was agreeable to his principles to abstain from all representations of God whom he believed to be incomprehensible Viretus saith of him that seeking after some matter fit for the Image of God he could find none proper for that Divine purpose But he here committeth a double mistake For in the place which he meaneth Plato speaketh not of any matter for the Image of God but for the Statues of the Gods and at last he pitcheth upon certain materials for that use The Philosopher thought Gold and Silver unfit because they were invidious
up their acknowledgments to the Queen of Heaven When God healeth them they sacrifice to AEsculapius as to him that removed their distemper from them This is a very great Iniquity and the common grounds or occasions of it are highly unworthy of the true God For most of them who believe not his immediate Providence do measure his actions by those of worldly Potentates They conceive him out of state to do little by his own person or out of ease and softness to commit the management of his affairs to others both by temporary command and by standing Commission As if the greatest variety of business could distract or weary him who is Infinite in Knowledg and Greatness and Power Thus St. Cyril judged of them who substituted lesser Deities under him that was supreme He thought that they impeached God of Arrogance or floth or want of Goodness which envieth none the good it can do And Isaiah tacitly upbraideth those who distrusted his Providence of the like vile opinion concerning him whilst he saith of the Creator that He fainteth not neither is weary Secondly The Gentiles were Idolaters through the worship they gave to such Demons as were evil spirits It is true that Plato owned no inferior Deities but such as were by him esteemed good He maintaineth this in his Tenth Book of Laws and St. Austin confesseth it to be his judgment He saith in his Phaedo That none were to be registred among the gods but such who had studied Philosophy and departed pure out of this life When he speaketh of Demons who afflict men he is to be interpreted rather of good Spirits executing Justice than of evil Angels venting their malice But whatsoever his opinion was it is most evident that the generality of the Heathens worshipped such Demons as were morally malignant And such Porphyry esteemed those Genii who had bloody Sacrifices offered to them The Gentiles sacrificed to Devils to the Powers of the Kingdom of Darkness which were not only not God but enemies and professed Rebels against him They were in Porphyry's account Terrestrial Demons such who had gross Vehicles and consequently were of the meaner and viler sort of their Genii and as they love to speak sunk deepest into matter Psellus and Porphyry represent them as united to a body of so gross contexture that they could smell the Odors of the Sacrifices and be fat with the steam of human blood Lucian in his Book de Sacrificiis abounds with pleasant or rather to them who pity the decays of human nature with very sad stories of the Revels of Demons Whether they were Terrestrial ones or not I here forbear to dispute but I conclude concerning them that they were evil Their nature shews it self by the services which they accepted by the persons whom they have favoured and by the appearances and wonders with which they sometimes encouraged them The Rites with which they were worshipped were bloody rude unclean such as an honest man would be ashamed to observe Porphyry though a Gentile hath recorded many of the bloody Sacrifices offered by the Rhodians Phoenicians and Graecians and he telleth of a man in his time sacrificed in Rome at the Feast of Jupiter Latialis The like barbarity was commonly used in the worship of Moloch and Bellona And he must have such a measure of Assurance as will suffer him no more to blush than his Ink who writes down all the Obscenities used in her worship whom they usually called the Mother of the Gods Origen telleth Celsus concerning the Christians That they had learned to judg of all the Gods of the Heathen as of Devils by their greediness of the blood of their Sacrifices and by their presence amidst the Nidors of them by which they deceived those who made not God their refuge And in another place he proveth this truth out of their own Histories and he instanceth particularly in their Deity Hercules and he objecteth against him his immoral love and that vile effeminacy which their own Authors record I will not tell over again their foolish stories so very often told already but offer to the Reader a Relation of fresher date out of Idolatrous America In Mexico saith an Author who had sojourned in that City the Heathens had dark houses full of Idols great and small and wrought of sundry Metals these were all bathed and washed with blood the blood of men the walls of the houses were an inch thick with blood and the floor a foot The Priests went daily into those Oratories and suffered none other but great Personages to enter with them And when any of such condition went in they were bound to offer some man as a Sacrifice that the Priests might wash their hands and sprinkle the house with the blood of the Victim With such Sacrifices no good Angel could be pleased wherefore the worship of such being an honour done not to God or his Ministers but to the Devil and his Angels who live in perfect defiance of true Religion is an Idolatry so detestable that I have not at hand a name of sufficient infamy to bestow upon it PART 8. Of their Idolatry in worshipping the Images of Demons THirdly The Gentiles were Idolaters in worshipping the Statues or Images of Demons or Heroe's either as those Powers were reputed the Deputies of God or as they were really evil spirits The Religious Honour given to the Prototype was Idolatrous and therefore the Honour done to the Image respecting the Prototype was such also So he that bows towards the Chair of an Usurper does give away the honour of the true Soveraign because the external sign of his submission is ultimately referred to the Usurper himself The Honour which the Gentiles did to their Statues redounded generally to their Demons for their Theology did not set up such Images whatsoever vulgar fancy or practice did as final objects of worship or Gods in themselves It set them up as places of Divine Residence wherein the Genii were thought to dwell or to afford their especial presence in Oracles and other Supernatural aids as the true God was said to dwell amidst the Cherubims The Egyptians as Ruffinus storieth entertained this superstitious perswasion amongst a multitude of others That if any man had laid violent hands on the Statue of Serapis the Heavens and the Earth would have been mixed together in a new Chaos Olympius the Sophist exhorteth the Gentiles still to adhere to the Religion of their Gods notwithstanding the Christians defaced their Statues And he gave them this as the reason of his counsel Because said he though the Images be corruptible things yet in them did dwell Virtues or Demons which from the ruins of their Statues took their flight to Heaven This Opinion Arnobius and Lactantius acknowledg to have been common among the Gentiles and we may still read it in the writings of the wiser shall I say
Candles set before it in the time of its worship They carried it sometimes in Procession under a rich Canopy with noises of Musick with Perfumes and lighted Tapers There were other inferior Idols serving as his Attendants And they had Diadems like to those of the Images of Saints at Rome or like to the Regno or Pontifical Crown of the Pope He said it who was both a Roman and a Roman Catholick And his description of Virena puts me in mind of that of the Virgin of Halla made by Lipsius It stands aloft it is lighted with Tapers it is of silver the Image of Christ and of the Twelve Apostles are nigh it an Angel stands on either side a silver Lamp hangs by This pomp amuseth it is well if it hath not a more Idolatrous effect The forecited Della Valle describes a Carr in Ikkeri in which the Idols were carried in pompous Procession the Carr was exceeding high and so very great that scarce any but one of the widest Streets of Rome would he saith have been capable of receiving it and giving it passage Arnobius observeth concerning the Gentiles That they designed to create Fear by the manner in which they framed the Statues of the Gods Hence as he noteth Sythes and Clubs and Thunder-bolts were appendages to their Idols I will end these Instances with a Discourse of St. Austin's in his fourth Epistle For Idols who is there that doubts whether they be void of all perception But when they are by an honourable sublimeness placed on their Thrones and observed by them who pray and offer Sacrifice those Idols by the likeness of animated members and of organs of sense though indeed there be no life in them do so affect the minds of vveak people that they appear to them to live and to breathe They do so especially through the veneration of the multitude vvhilst so pompous and so divine a worship is bestovved on them There being then in most of such Idols no divine virtue but an artificial form and motion they vvho worshipped them whatsoever they intended to worship in them were truly said to worship them themselves This I may illustrate by the confession of Arnobius who was once himself a Pagan Infidel I worshipped said he Oh my blindness such Gods as came out of the Smith's Furnace and such as were fashioned by the Hammer and Anvil I worshipped the bones of Elephants for they as Peireskius noteth were honoured by mistake for those of Giants I adored a smooth stone and a Wooden statue I flattered the Image as if there were a Deity present there I spake to it I asked benefits of it though it perceived nothing The Prophets therefore used an Argument most accommodable to the Gentiles and tending the most ready way to their conviction For if they vvould not have been most sottishly credulous if they would not have permitted their fancies to have imposed upon their understandings if they would but have examined matters of fact with any degree of diligence and impartiality the generality of them might have known concerning their Images that they had usually no more of Inspiration or Divinity in them than the stones of their streets or the posts of their doors The Fathers in their Disputations with the Heathens do frequently use this Argument against their Images and deride them for worshipping things which can neither help men nor themselves And thence by the way I take leave to observe that if they believ'd the Bread to be Christs real natural body they argued with Inconsistence For then it would have been an obvious retort that the object which they themselves worshipped in the Sacrament could not deliver it self from a contemptible Mouse From the importance of this Discourse some answer may be returned to an Argument used by the Learned Mr. Thorndike who supposed Idolatry to consist in Polytheism He would prove the Calf or Idol of Samaria to have been the ultimate object of them who adored it because in Amos it is objected to them That the Workman made it and therefore it was not God Here the Prophet only useth an Argument which appealeth to their own reason and which they might have used themselves but did not Judg among your selves said he in effect whether this Statue thus framed can be a God what divine power soever you think to reside in it yet you do by interpretation make it your God because you worship that which is before you and there is nothing but the Image it self nothing in it no virtue issuing from it Wherefore notwithstanding your imagination which your common reason might correct the thing it self is your Deity or your Idol And the Prophet does not only argue against an Idol as against a thing made with hands but also as a Statue which contained in it no more of Coelestial influence than a common Image For he foretelleth in the sixth verse that it was to be broken and in the fifth seventh and eighth verses he observeth that it could not save them from Captivity but on the other hand exposed them to it PART 9. Of their Worshipping Daemons more than God LAst of all the Gentiles were Idolaters by justling out the Worship of the Supreme God or very much of it through their officiousness in the service of Inferior Deities They could not but be guilty if they gave away Gods honour in whole or in part And in part at least it is certain that they converted it to the use of Creatures God who governeth the World ought to have received the honour of their devout Prayers and becoming Sacrifices and the greatest part of these and sometimes the whole of them was offered to Daemons For who esteemeth that Tenant faithful to the honour and interest of his Lord who payeth the greatest rent to another and offereth him a pepper-corn though he hath reserved the whole propriety and the very reception to himself Divers Masters cannot be at the same time observed with equal duty and Devotion cannot flow in the same plenty in divers streams as in one Therefore when Tarquinius Priscus multiplied Deities and introduced Statues among the Romans their Religion was immediately much debased when they had many Jupiters and a great croud of other Deities and every Deity had its Statue its Altar its Sacrifice its Temple little time was left and as little zeal for the Worship of the God of Heaven and Earth To him some of them scarce ever said a Prayer or offered a Sacrifice Porphyry thought not such services to be agreeable to the Supreme God but he concluded that men were to adore him Without words without Sacrifices in silence with a pure mind But this was a Worship so abstracted that few other Heathens either performed it or so much as understood it Yet some might do both For Confusio the famed Philosopher of China acknowledg'd one Supreme God but he did not serve him with
Temples Altars Priests or Prayers though by such worship he Idolized the Heavens the Earth and Man Let this then from the Premises be the conclusion of the present Chapter that the Gods of the Heathen are Idols and Vanities and unworthy the submission of any reasonable creature CHAP. VI. Concerning the Idolatry of the Jews and particularly of their worshipping the Golden Calf Also of the Egyptian Symbol of Apis as at that time not extant And of the probable Reasons which set up Moses as the Original Apis. PART 1. Of the Provisions made by God against Idolatry among the Jews THE Israelites by their Constitution were of all Nations a people the most averse to Idolatry Their first Commandment prescribeth the Worship of one God Their second forbiddeth external religious honour to graven Images which by the exhibition of that honour whatsoever they were before become very Idols Wherefore St. Cyprian thus renders the sense of the Command Thou shalt not make to thy self an Idol And the contention about the Translation of Pesel by Graven thing Idol or Image is with respect to the design of Moses an unnecessary Grammar-War This second Command against the Worship of Images the Jews have esteemed the great Command of all Their very Moneys have had on the Obvers the name of Moses inscribed and on the Revers that second precept or prohibition Their third Command Thou shalt not take or bear in thy mouth the name of Jehovah thy God in vain may seem also to discountenance Idols and to forbid all Oaths of promise made by them in the name of God by which they often called their false Deities It may seem to forbid not so directly the breach of Neder a Vow to the Lord as Schefugnah according to the distinction of the Jews a Vow by the Lord or by his Name when that Name was used in signifying some Idol I say it may seem so to do for that it does so I rather guess than affirm In this conjecture I am helped by Tertullian That Father discoursing concerning the unlawfulness of naming the Gods of the Gentile-world maketh use of this distinction he teacheth that the bare naming of them is lawful because it is necessary in Discourse but he condemneth the naming of them in such manner as if they were really Gods After this distinction he pursueth the Argument in this manner The Law saith You shall make no mention of the names of other gods neither shall they be heard out of your mouths This it commanded that we should not call them gods For it saith in the first part or Table of it Thou shalt not take up the Name of the Lord thy God in vain that is in an Idol He therefore fell into Idolatry who hononred an Idol with the name of God But if they must be called gods I should add something by which it may appear that I do not own them to be Gods For the Scripture it self calls them gods but then it addeth by way of discrimination their gods or the gods of the Nations In such manner David called them gods when he said the gods of the Nations were Devils It is a customary wickedness to say Mehercule And it proceeds from the ignorance of some who know not that they swear by Hercules Now what is swearing by those whom in Baptism you have forsworn or renounced but a corrupting of the Faith with Idolatry For who does not honour those he swears by To this purpose are those words in Hosea Though thou Israel play the Harlot yet let not Judah offend and come not ye unto Gilgal neither go ye up to Beth-aven or Bethel now become a house of iniquity vanity or Idolatry nor swear the Lord liveth That is seeing they worship the Golden Calves which are really Idols though they give to them the name of Jehovah as setting them up for his Symbol yet use not you that word there or the form of their oath by Jehovah for thereby you will take up the name of God and the name by which he is most eminently distinguished in vain or in an Idol Idols are Elilim or vanities they are very lyes at once to use the terms the Prophet gives them and to allude to the Syriack Version of the third Command Thou shalt not take up the name of the Lord thy God with a lye He therefore who sweareth by them without distinction calling them gods or giving them any names which signifie Divine Power He that sweareth or voweth by Coelum or Coelus that is the Heavens by Pluto or the Earth such a one does not only dishonour the name of the true God but he doth also by interpretation forswear himself for he sweareth by an Idol lie or vanity vowing by its help to perform his Oath which therefore he cannot by that means perform because he trusteth to an helpless thing though by his trust he honoureth it as a Divine Power Further one great end of the fourth Command was the prevention of Idolatry The seventh day was observed as a Memorial of that one God the Creator of the World and the God of Israel and they who kept it holy kept it holy to Jehovah and made profession hereby that they were not Gentiles who worshipped many Gods but the seed of Abraham who served but one the God of that Patriarch and of Isaac and Jacob. This saith Mr. Mede was the end of the Sabbath that thereby as by a Symbolum or sign that people might testifie and profess what God they worshipped He ought it may be to have spoken this with limitation and called it a great end and that it was such is evident from the Text of Moses than whom no man better understood the Levitical Oeconomy To him God spake saying Speak thou also to the children of Israel saying Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep for it is a sign between me and you throughout your Generations that ye may know that I am the Lord who doth sanctifie you or set you apart as my Worshippers distinct from those who worship Idols Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout their Generations for a perpetual Covenant It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever For in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth and on the seventh day he rested or ceased and was refreshed or was pleased with that exceeding good and beautiful frame of things which his Wisdom Goodness and Power had made A like end there was of the Levitical Sacrifices God needed them not the Sacrifice of a pure and humble mind was more agreeable to him who is an Intellectual Spirit But the Israelites doted on such a gross manner of expressing their devotion And seeing they must needs offer Sacrifice it pleased God to give them a Law which might at once indulge them in their inclination and restrain them from sacrificing unto
and Earth though principally over the latter of them In Egypt he was received with great devotion as if he had been a kind of husband to their Isis when she signified the Earth and a god proper for their Nilus and their fertile soil To this invention they soon added and sometimes they confounded him with their Apis and Osiris and sometimes they honoured him as the Sun or Nature or the Soul of the World In the Temple of Alexandria his mighty Image reached one side of it with its right hand and the other with its left and it was made of all woods and metals and by an artificial window as has been said already it admitted the Sun-beams In some of its Statues he represented Jupiter in the Head Neptune in the Belly as also Pluto and other Stygian Deities in the Ears Mercury and Apollo in the Eyes Thus it fared with this Idol which when Superstition had dressed it was the least part of its former self There is something in the name AEsculapius which soundeth like Apis and on him some have fixed He indeed is of sufficient Antiquity if he be what a learned man thinks him King Tosorthrus the successor of Menis But I meet with no reason offered for the proof of these matters The sound of the name in Latine and Greek I allow not as a reason the ancient Egyptian name was neither AEsculapius nor which is further removed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these being apparently of other Countrys Add to this that the Greeks in the Stromata of Clemens oppose Apis to AEsculapius and make the first the Inventor the second the Improver of Physick Somewhat like to this is said by St. Cyril who following the chase of Pagan Mythologers doth make Apis the Inventor of Physick and the Teacher of it to AEsculapius who thenceforth it seems left Egypt and travelled the World for the gaining of Riches by this useful Art which in after-times was said Proverbially to give them And to this Tale belongs another of Serapis and AEsculapius as both meant by Pluto who is conversant amongst Metals Stones Roots Plants Subterraneous Treasure and whatsoever conduceth to the health and life of man You see towards what Nation and what times this AEsculapius Apis or Serapis inclines and that Moses never knew him There is still as little certainty in their opinion who confound the Egyptian Apis with Apis the Argive the Son of Phoroneus which Apis Gerard Vossius supposeth to be that Jupiter who was incestuously familiar with Niobe Of the number of them who make the Egyptian Apis the same with the Argive Hecataeus is one And he being himself an Argive is tempted to a vain Fable in honour of his Country Arnobius out of mistake rather than pride confoundeth Times and Persons whilst he saith of Apis that he was born in Peloponnesus and called in Egypt Serapis They had spoken righter who called Serapis the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Coffin or Grave of Apis if they had meant this of Pluto as the God of the Earth who as 't were swallowed up the Worship of Apis in his own at Alexandria Herodotus himself though he never nameth the name of Serapis it being not then invented is yet in a great error when he maketh Epaphus and Apis to be the same For Epaphus Great Grandfather to Cadmus was as AElian noteth some Ages after him But we owe it to the Pride of Grece that her Accounts are so antedated and corrupted Little truth in the present Argument may we expect from Aristippus a Grecian Mythologer in his Arcadian story or from Aristeas the Argive Of them the first maketh Apis the Son of Phoroneus the Founder of Memphis the other affirmeth him to be that very Serapis whom the Egyptians worshipped In the mean time Pausanias blotteth the very name of Apis out of the line of the Argives and AEschylus will not allow him the place of a King Apollodorus who owneth him in that quality is so far from transporting him into Egypt and honouring of him as the builder of Memphis a City built by Menis whose memory it retains in the very name of it that he finds both his Cradle and Grave in his Fathers Country His Father left him too deeply engaged in a quarrel with Telxion and the Telchines to become a Conquerour in Egypt and it was by their Stratagems that he died so immaturely and without issue in Apia or Peloponnesus But if it were granted that the Argive were also the Egyptian Apis I see not the advantage which it could give to them who make his Symbol the Pattern of the Golden Calf For both Asricanus and Tatianus prove it of Moses that he was equal with Inachus whom Phoroneus the Father of Apis is said to succeed The truth is we are here fallen amongst dark and uncertain times and can scarce tread with assurance in any path of Grecian story till we are come to the times of Theseus And so much Plutarch with singular honesty and truth hath openly acknowledged For Inachus himself some think him a Fiction some a Man others a River and amongst these latter is Pausanias The Original Apis adored in Egypt was no doubt a man but who he was it is hard to discover so great is the perplexity which the blending as it were of his Worship with that of Serapis after the Macedonian Conquest has occasioned in this Argument Bacchus AEsculapius and Serapis each of them in Coins Marbles and Books have the form sometimes of a bearded or aged man and sometimes of a child And this variety of form teacheth us that there was a more ancient and more modern Bacchus AEsculapius Apis or Serapis though under other names For the Grecian Serapis whatsoever his Age was in Grece his Worship was esteemed modern in Egypt The Egyptians saith Horus meaning all the people of that Nation received not either Saturn or Serapis into their Temples till after the death of Alexander the Great In his time they were admitted in his City of Alexandria of which Pausanias saith that it was famous for the Temple of Serapis but could not with colour of reason pretend to the Antiquity of that in Memphis Of the Naucratitae in Egypt Celsus himself confesseth that it was not long since they received the Deity of Serapis Tacitus gives intimation of the union as it were of Apis and Serapis into one Idol where he speaketh of a Temple built in Rhacotis the place it may be taking its name from the Shrine to the modern Serapis in the very place where one had been anciently consecrated to Serapis and Isis. That is as he ought to have written it of Apis or Osiris together with Isis. After the death of Alexander the Ptolomies advancing the Power of Grece the Superstitions of Serapis were not confined to Alexandria but were imposed on all Egypt In this
some Goropius Becanus would confidently say that the truth shineth so fairly through the Fable that we may discern in it Moses Bacchus Osiris Apis to be one man under four several names Other Particulars might still be added in this Argument as that some Heathens imagined Bacchus to have been worshipped in the Temple of the Jews under the Emblem of the Vine and that Osiris as well as Harpocrates is described with his finger upon his mouth representing as some would guess the slow speech of Moses But enough I think has been said already to render it probable that Moses was Apis the thing which by such proofs and reasons as Philology admitteth in other cases was to be evinced PART 7. Why Moses might be Idolized among the Egyptians I Have been long already in this disquisition but I am not yet at the end of it For the curious may further offer to me with pertinence these following Questions First How Moses came to obtain such Divine Veneration among the Egyptians on whom he drew very grievous plagues and from whom he removed a great Army of their necessary servants Secondly Why Moses was honoured by an Ox Thirdly Whence that Symbol received the name of Apis Fourthly At what time this Idolatrous Worship of the Symbol of Moses commenced in Egypt Fifthly When and for what reason it was divided into the Worship of Apis and Mnevis I shall return something in answer to each Query but I do not sooth up my self with the vain hope of giving such an answer as shall fully satisfie others or so much as my self This caution would have been the less necessary if all the other Queries had been as easie to be resolved as the first concerning the Worship given in Egypt to the Symbol of Moses It is not my opinion alone that he was there honoured after death with Religious Veneration Saint Cyril of Alexandria said the same many ages ago And it was not his bare opinion but he proved it by the Authority of Diodorus Siculus The place of St. Cyril which I here refer to is this Moses was well known to the Greek Historians For Polemon in his first Book of Grecian History maketh mention of him So do Ptolemaeus Mendesius Hellanicus Pholochorus and Castor and many others Diodorus who inquired very curiously into the affairs of Egypt says he heard of him from their Wisemen and of him he thus writeth After the ancient way of living in Egypt that which they talk of under their Deities and Heroes the people as they report were first brought to live by written Laws by a man of a very great mind and of a most memorable new way of life among the Jews one Moses who was called a God For as St. Cyril proceedeth to note on this place of Diodorus when they saw Moses most accomplished with every virtue they called him a God and as I think of some of the Egyptians they gave him divine honour being ignorant that the supreme God had said thus to him Behold I have given thee as a God to Pharaoh Here we have it asserted that Moses was highly honoured in Egypt And there were reasons enough for the honouring of him and they might prove the occasions of making him an Idol For Idolatry is veneration overmuch strained Moses was born and educated in Egypt he was reputed the Son of Pharaoh's daughter he was learned in all the Learning of the Egyptians he shined in that Court as the Moon amongst the little and confused Lights of the Galaxie He was the Instrument of God in doing mighty wonders mighty beyond the power of Natural Artificial or Diabolical Magick And these wonders God wrought by him in the eye of the African World The holy Scripture reporteth of him that He did marvellous things in the fields of Zoan or Tanis the Metropolis of the lower Egypt Also that that he was very great in the land of Egypt in the sight of Pharaohs servants and in the sight of the people The Son of Syrach calleth him The beloved of God and man and sheweth the favour of God towards him in making him glorious in the sight of Kings And though he fled out of Egypt he was even then a benefactor removing a people whom the Egyptians dismissed with gifts and causing their Plagues when himself disappeared to vanish away And though he had no way proved a Benefactor his very power of sending Plagues had been enough to deifie him with that people who scarce distinguish'd as we do betwixt good and bad Angels but looked on them that wrought temporal evil as Ministers of Justice and not as envious and malicious spirits Power to do hurt was reverenced by them and they worshipped Typhon as well as Osiris At the Red-sea he astonished Egypt with a Miracle too great and difficult for the united power of all their gods who could neither oppose it nor do any thing equal to it And though hereby he conveighed Israel out of Egypt yet that deliverance of them could not but represent him to all that heard the fame of it as a kind and compassionate man who saved his own Nation from the tyranny of a Prince whose rage swelled more than that of the waves in which he perished Pharaoh certainly oppressed his own people as well as the Israelites For a proud and cruel Prince is like a Wolf who has no kindness for any beast though he be fiercest towards the sheep And the fall of a Tyrant makes an agreeable sound in the ears of all the slaves which he hath bored whatsoever the hand be by which he is humbled Moses still grew in Eminence by his conversation with God by his conduct by his delivery of the Law by the success of his arms which Philo esteemeth very extraordinary whilst he warred without money the nerve of War and last of all by the power of his Miracles He was so eminent a person that R. Josua the Son of Sohib hath exalted him not only above the Patriarchs but even above all Creatures in Heaven and Earth placing the very Angels at the feet of this Prophet Artapanus likewise relateth concerning him that he was in singular favour with the people and obtained the name of Hermes and honour equal to their Deities From the same authority of Artapanus Eusebius reporteth that in memory of the Rod of Moses a Rod was preserved with veneration in every Egyptian Temple and particularly in the Temple of Isis. Egypt then never enjoying so great a person as Moses if I except the Messiah carried thither in the days of his Infancy and there obscured It is not exceeding strange that a Nation so apt to multiply her gods should Canonize him Neither is it on the other hand to be admired that in latter Ages their Reverence should be abated In the days of Diodorus Siculus the Egyptians reviled Moses so far were they from adoring him as a god The cause
disguis'd himself in Persia under the name of Budda deriv'd his folly from his Master Scythianus a Saracen in Egypt Scythianus was learned in the Writings of the Grecians and wrote four Books of Pythagorean Magick And Lucas Holstenius rightly observeth that the twofold 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Pythagoreans which comprehendeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the contrary combinations of the principles of unity and division was the root of the two contrary Manichaean Powers These Pythagoras learned from the Egyptians who besides a good principle own'd Typhon called also Seth Bebon and Smy a principle of Evil and Tyranny For Manes he strain'd the conceit of the Pythagorean Soul of the World to such a degree of extravagance that he plac'd a perceptive spirit as Epiphanius noteth in every Creature He would not so much as break his Bread or cut a Pot-herb though he had cruelty enough to eat them For certainly if Bread were still alive after grinding and baking it remained so in the broken pieces of it But how wild a flight does mans fancy take when it moves it self only upon its own wings I do not recall any passage in History which sheweth concerning this monstrous Heretick that he either prayed or sacrificed to this principle of evil If he did neither he yet made an Idol of it by exalting it in his mind to that undue supremacy And on the other hand he turned the Author of all good into another Idol For as we are instructed by Theodoret in his first Book of Heretical Fables he confined that Principle to three quarters of the World bestowing the Southern parts upon Matter the dark Principle or the Devil He likewise sacrilegiously robbed God of that part of his Providence which dispenseth righteous judgments Further as the same Theodoret relateth he sometimes called the Sun and Moon his Deities Sometimes he called the Sun Christ and prov'd it as Enthusiasts prove their Dreams by the Eclipse it suffered at his Crucifixion Sometimes he maintained them to be two Ships which conveyed the Souls which depart hence from Matter to Light With reason then did St. Austin thus confess his Manichaean impiety My vain fantasm and my error was then my God But of the Gnostick and Manichaean extravagance enough I I come in the next place to speak of people much more sober and yet not without a mixture of madness CHAP. IX Of the Idolatry with which the Arians and Socinians are charged PART 1. THE Honour of God under Christianity can be by none secured but by such who acknowledg the Godhead of his Son The Gentiles not understanding this truth but looking upon Christ as in the flesh without any Personal union of it to a subsistence in the Godhead reproached the Christians for their worship of him And they made this to be the cause why the Heavenly Powers were angry with them as they judged and afflicted them with persecution because they put up daily prayers to one that had been a man and one that died on a Cross though the objection held against their Hercules and many other of their Deities who once were men and died in pain and shame What else was AEsculapius whom their Jove themselves confessing it smote with his Thunder Had they known Christ to have been a Divine person incarnate they would have worshipped him themselves and own'd him as the only substitute whom the Father could have so used without diminution of the Divine honour Hence St. Paul maketh the confessing of Jesus to be the supreme Lord to whom all things in Heaven and Earth and under the Earth are to do obeisance to be a duty that promoteth the glory of God the Father This glory the Arians and Socinians are said to diminish and they are the persons whom I am next to consider Arius the Lybian a Priest of Alexandria is accused by the Fathers both as an Heretick and as an Idolater and his Idolatry is charged upon him as the just â—…onsequence of his Heretical opinion And Irenaeus hath observed concerning most Heresies That the maintainers of them do acknowledg one God yet by their corrupt mind do so alter the notion of him that they become ungrateful to him that made them as did the Gentiles by their Idolatry Arius heated by the Dispute betwixt Bishop Alexander and himself maintained at length with obstinacy and uproar that Christ had a beginning of his existence That there was a time when he was not though he was before the world That he was not what Origen or Maximus called him the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Consubstantial Word of the Father That he was therefore not the one Deity the God of Israel but a made or created God And that the Father or true God did by him as by his instrument create all other things Servetus if I well remember his opinions was a man yet much more extravagant than Arius for he conceived Christ to be a Divine Light which God used as his Instrument in making the World and his flesh to be made out of the very substance of God And by that which I have seen of his I judg him fitter to have been chained up as a mad-man than burnt as an Heretick Arius had his flaws too but with much more consistence He having thus degraded Christ into the condition of a creature was for that reason condemned as an Heretick And because he still worshipped Christ with Divine incommunicable honour he was also accused of Idolatry Amongst his Accusers Athanasius is one of the principal and he is frequent and earnest in his declamations against him In his first Oration against the Arians there is a discourse which appertaineth to the present occasion and this is the meaning of it The Apostle rebuketh the Gentiles for worshipping the Creation saying That they served the Creature besides or as the Translator renders it before God the Creator And these to wit the Arians affirming of the Lord that he is a creature and serving him or giving him Latria as a creature how differ they from the Gentiles How can it be if so they think that the accusation of St. Paul before cited shall not also appertain unto them Such again is his discourse in his fourth Oration and this is the scope of it If there be not such a Logos or co-essential Word as we speak of if from not being it came into being and was made a creature it is either not true God seeing 'tis in the number of created Beings or if by the power of Truth in Scripture they are forced to confess it to be true God then they acknowledg two Deities the one the Creator the other a Creature Then serve they two Masters the one uncreated the other created Then have they two Creeds one in which they profess to believe the true God the other in which they own a Deity made and formed by
ground This opinion and practice had been the more tolerable if they had restrained it unto Angels of whose presence knowledg ministration the Scripture hath spoken but they extend it to Saints and for the holy Virgin their devotion is greater towards her than towards the highest Angel she being called the Queen of those Heavenly Powers The Authoress of the Spiritual Institutions prays not only to the Angels to the Angel-Guardian of her Person and to the Angel-Guardian of her Religion that is of her Order but likewise to St. Bernardine St. Placidus and other Saints as to her selected Patrons And Horstius a man of rank devotion towards Spirits and often to be remembred by me treateth first of the Worship of Saints and of them as Patrons and then of the Worship of Angels and Angel-Guardians Concerning Angels he sheweth that holy men such as he so esteemeth did both pray to their Guardian-spirit and to such Angels as were Presidents of Kingdoms Provinces Cities Towns with solioitous zeal and he nameth St. Xavier St. Aloysius and St. Francis and calleth to mind the singular devotion of the last towards St. Michael the Archangel Then for the Saints he celebrates them as such Who being formerly servants and stewards are now set over all the Goods of their Lord in the land of the living He saith that it belongeth to their praise and glory that their Aid be invoked and that they protect us in necessity And he teacheth his Reader thus to worship the Virgin Holy Mary Mother of God and Virgin I though unworthy to serve thee yet trusting in the clemency of thy Motherly heart chuse thee this day before my Guardian-Angel and the whole Court of Heaven for my Mother and peculiar Lady Patroness and Advocatrix And I firmly resolve henceforth to serve thee and thy Son with fidelity and perpetually to adhere to you I beseech thee by that love by which thy Son when he was giving up the Ghost upon the Cross commended himself to his Father and thee to his true Disciple and him again to thee to take me into thy care and protection and be thou with me in all the straits and dangers of my whole life but especially help me in the hour of my death Amen I have said that it is more tolerable to pray thus to Angels than it is to Saints but I can find little ground in Reason or Scripture thus to worship the Angels themselves Reason teacheth that God who made the World is the Governour of it The Scripture teacheth that there are distinct Orders of Angels but it disalloweth of such Lieutenancy under God as men have ascribed to them It mentioneth Thrones and Powers and Dominions and Principalities yet rather in allusion to the Gnosticks as was above conjectured than by way of assertion of such Orders Those Hereticks Irenaeus provoketh to tell what is the nature of Invisible Beings what is the number and order of Angels what are the Mysteries of Thrones and the diversities of Dominions Principalities Powers Virtues and he assureth us they were at a loss So ignorant was the Christian World in his time of the Nine Orders of the feigned Dionysius the Areopagite That there are distinct Orders of Spirits that there are Angels and Archangels I firmly believe But it does not thence follow that the Government of the World is shared amongst them though they have a Ministerial part in the affairs of it Archangels seem no other than the seven Spirits typified by the seven Lamps in the Temple Their Office was as elect and eminent Spirits to minister before the Throne of God and on solemn occasions to be sent in Embassie to the World Such a one was Gabriel who stood in the Presence of God and was sent to the Blessed Virgin Nothing of this inferreth their distinct Provinces committed to them but it sheweth only the dignity of their station and their occasional Ministry Neither doth it follow from the seven Angels mentioned as Presidents of the seven Churches of Asia that they as some have taught were under the Charge and Patronage of seven Spirits For St. John is required to write to these Angels and to reprove their faults as the abatement of Love in the Angel of Ephesus and his Church And he makes distinct mention of the seven Spirits and the seven Stars which latter he had shewed to be the Angels of those Churches and who were therefore no other than the Bishops of them called by a name which is given the High Priest in the Prophet Malachy and by the Jews in Diodorus Christian Religion owneth but one proper Substitute under God one Paraclete or Patron for so that title signifies one proper Mediator the glorified Jesus the Spirits under him are but Angels or Messengers though sent abroad on different Embassies Wherefore I know not how to approve of the expression of a late very grave and learned Author who speaketh of the Invisible Regiment of the World by the subordinate Government of good and evil Angels It is true that the good are a Community and so in some sort are the bad but their divers Orders concern their own society most and they are not to be construed as the Orders and Powers in the frame of Gods Government of the whole World It is also to be confessed that Elisha's servant to reflect a little on his instance saw fiery Chariots and Horsmen in the Mount and that this was a representation of Gods Angels in the scene of a Camp But no other Argument ought to be fetched thence besides that which concludeth that there is a greater power in God and his Coelestial Ministers than in the Armies of the World He that will torture this Vision and make it confess commission-Officers amongst them ought also to make them ride on Horses and Chariots For evil Angels their dominion is oftner mentioned than that of the good But certainly though they are called in Scripture Principalities and Powers no man that carefully attendeth to his words will call them also subordinate Governours of the World For they are professed Rebels against God who doth not own or treat them as his subjects but he being provoked by the perverseness of wicked men permitteth those rebellious Daemons to exercise great power amongst the children of disobedience who are in indirect Covenant with them It is worse still to say that God ruleth the World by Saints than to affirm so much of him in reference to his holy Angels yet this the Romanists openly maintain and some also who have not only disputed but even raved against the Church of Rome For so it is said by Thomas Goodwin in his Sermon of the fifth Monarchy That the Saints on earth have by their Prayers an influence in the managing the affairs of the World and into the accomplishment of all the great things that Christ doth for his Church That
was invok'd And he accordingly taketh notice of the Praises of Heart and Voice which every preserved Citizen did offer to that Goddess In his eleventh chapter he telleth how a man possessed with the Devil was by this Tutelar Deity as he there calls her delivered from so wicked and dangerous an Inhabitant And after having told his story he falleth to his Prayers in this manner O powerful O merciful Goddess defend us also from this subtil Serpent And thou who didst once bruise his head in thy Conception assist us so effectually that his tail may neither scourge us nor throw us on the ground Then after having ended his Legend consisting of divers Miracles wrought at her shrine he falls again to his Prayers in his thirty-sixth or last Chapter and this is the form of his Address O Goddess thou art the Queen of Heaven of the Sea of the Earth above whom there is nothing but God Thou Moon next to him the Sun whom I implore and invocate Protect and take care of us both in publick and private Thou hast seen us these forty years tossed in a publick storm O Mary calm this tumultuous Sea He concludeth with a Poetical Consecration of a silver-Pen to her who had as he believ'd been the author and finisher of his studies Now then such kind of Worshippers do in part revive one degree of the Idolatry of the Gentiles who divided Places Persons Things Actions subject to the Supreme God amongst Sempiternal or Canoniz'd Spirits The chief Architect of the Egyptian Pharos put upon his Workmanship this Inscription Sostratus of Gnidos the Son of Dexiphanes to the Gods Protectors for the safeguard of Sailers What now is the difference betwixt this Inscription and one made by a Papist in honour of S. Nicholas upon the little Church nigh the Wurbel in the Danube None sure unless it be this that the first is in veneration of a Christian Saint the other of good Genii For we are told by those whose credit is as unquestionable as their Learning and who have been upon the place that the Church is dedicated to S. Nicholas That he is the supposed Patron of that dangerous Whirlpool in that River that he is believ'd to take peculiar care of such as pass that way and that a little Boat comes to you as soon as you are out of danger and receives what acknowledgment you please or what perhaps you may have promised to give when you were in some fear It may be God alone calmeth those waves at least without a Saint and S. Nicholas receiveth much of the acknowledgment the whole possibly from the common men of the Vessel whom danger teacheth to pray whilst superstitious ignorance misleadeth them from praying aright Martinus de Roa though a learned Jesuit and a Spaniard does openly declare the nature of this Romish practice he does not seek to give a false colour to it but he shews it as a Practice which plainly agreeâ—…th with the worship of the Gentiles He speaketh out saying that it is a Rite amongst them to call upon the tutelar Deity of the Nation as upon St. James in Spain at the beginning of their Battels And this custom he parrallels with that of the Macedonians in Justin who in their battels called sometimes upon Alexander and sometimes upon Philip as upon Gods invoking their aid for the success of their Armes And then he subjoyneth the practice of the Germans who as Tacitus reporteth joyned not in fight with their enemies 'till they had solemnly prayed to Hercules This kind of worship the Pope continueth to encourage by setting up new Saints as Tutelar Spirits in his Canonizations of them Thus for inscance sake Pope Clement the Tenth confirmed the decree of Pope Clement the ninth in which St. Rosa is created Patroness of the City Lima the chief Town and the Archiepiscopal seat in Peru and principal Protectress of the same Kingdom of Peru and of all the Provinces and Kingdoms of the Terra firma of all the Peruvian America and of the Philippine Islands And this it seems was done to this end that an addition might be made to the veneration of that Saint and that through her intercession the People of those parts might the more strongly hope for Patronage or Protection So S. Thomas de Villanova is canonized by Alexander the seventh who whilst he registreth him in the Calendar of his gods useth this Exhortation Wherefore let us go with boldness to the throne of the Divine mercy praying with heart and voice that S. Thomas may preside over Christian people by his Merit and Example that he may assist them with his Prayers and Patronage and that in the time of wrath he may become their Reconciliation Such Deities the Papacy setteth up and nothing is more common than for the people of that Church to fall down and worship them in that quality Neither can Travellers shun such Statues and Inscriptions as give them advertisement of this worship of Tutelar Saints Such an Inscription is that at Brussels betwixt the Quire and the Sacristy of the Cathedral The Monument is dedicated by Maximilian Duke of Bavaria and Archbishop and Elector of Colen to the immaculate Virgin and to S. Lambert as to the Tutelar Deities of that Church and Countrey S. Michael also is the special Protector of that City and upon the top of its Townhouse stands his Statue in brass Who can go into Lentini and not have notice of the three French Brethren and Martyrs Alsio Philadelfo and Cirino venerated there as its Patrons and Guardians Who travelleth to Utopolis or S. Veit and seeth not the four Chappels on the four Hills of S. Veit S. Ulrick S. Laurence S. Helena or heareth not of St. Veit or St. Faith as of one that cureth the Dancing-sickness known by the name of Chorea sancti viti Who entreth Paris and heareth not St. Geneviefve celebrated as the Protectress of it And is not she called the Guardian of France and the North-star of her Imperial City Who understandeth the ancient estate of England and is ignorant of the Veneration which it hath had for its presumed Patron St. George So great it was that when certain Holy-days were abrogated in the Reign of Henry the Eighth the Feast of St. George was excepted as well as those of the Apostles and our Lady Who crosseth the Ocean and visiteth the Mexican America and observeth not that St. Joseph is made the Patron of new Spain The Synod of Mexico confirmed at Rome hath declared him to be such and given particular order for the celebration of his Holy-day I am not able to recount to how many places persons and things the Protection of the holy Virgin is said to extend The fancy of the eloquent Jesuit Rapine hath made her to preside over Clouds and Tempests over Tillage and Pasturage over Flocks and Herds To
Virgin asserted and also a proof of the Imposture of such Appearances from the Story it self which representeth not a blessed Saint ascribing all Glory to the great God but a vain perfon delighted with the unjust flatteries of her self This then is the way in which I conceive the Church of Rome giveth away a degree of the Honour of God the Father to wit by her disposal of the Government of the World though in subordination to his Supremacy unto Angels and Saints without any sufficient declaration from him that he hath been willing so to prefer them and by her worshipping of them in that quality which her own imagination hath enstated them in I am next to consider how the Church of Rome doth by such estimation and worship entrench on the Divine Honour with respect to Christ as Mediator God hath not owned any Substitute besides his Son who hath all power given to him being as God-man most capable of it And though the Church of Rome doth acknowledg Christ to be the Author of Salvation and the Supreme Patron and Mediator yet still it doth entrench upon his Honour in its worship of Saints three several ways First More particularly in that Worship which is given to the Virgin In the second place More generally in the worship given to so many Saints and Angels Thirdly In the frequency of the worship given both to the Virgin and to the other Heavenly spirits First The Honour of Christ is particularly abated in the customary worship of the blessed Virgin Abated I say not quite removed For the Prayers to her are still per Dominum through Christ her Son though it seemeth sometimes to be intimated as in the Monstra Te esse Matrem Shew thy Mother-hood in the Hymn Ave Maris stella that she can command his Answers And when God is invoked by her Merits her Merits are supposed to be derived from his But an abatement there is of Christs Honour by that supereminent Advancement which is given to her by the practice of that Church without any declaration contrary to it For that Church doth set her as Solomon did his Mother in the Throne with himself though on that hand which signifies that he is still the Supreme Now it is manifest that Honour is diminished both where it is equally shared and where a second keepeth not distance but doth obtain a point next to the first For from degrees of Power and Distance arise degrees of Honour and a Prince that sitteth alone in the Chair of State is thereby in possession of higher Honour than he who hath a Second sitting next him though on the less honourable hand And accordingly it was esteemed a defect in Policy both through the occasion given by it of being supplanted and through the diminution it made of Supreme Honour of which each degree is a degree of Power when any Princes in the Roman Empire such as AElius Adrianus and Antoninus the Philosopher admitted Seconds to sit with them in the Throne of Government though themselves reserved still the first Place and remained as it were the Heads of the Empire Now it is the practice of the Church of Rome to celebrate the Virgin as a kind of Co-Ruler with her Son to salute her as we heard but now from the Office of her Seven Allegresses as a Queen on the right hand of Christ in his Throne The Scripture hath in it this Prophecy of the Messiah There shall come forth a Rod out of the stem of Jess and a branch or flower shall grow or rise out of his roots Hierom Xaverius hath wrested this place even from the sense of the Vulgar Translation and he thus readeth it in his Persic Gofpel A true branch shall rise out of the root of Jesse and out of that branch a flower shall be born Misapplying the first to the Virgin and the second to Christ whilst both are spoken of him To this misinterpretation he might be led by the Hymn in the Breviary which saluteth her by the Title of the Holy Root And it is evident by the Psalter of Bonaventure which is known to turn Lord into Lady throughout the Psalms not omitting to Travest that place of The Lord said unto my Lord into Our Lady said unto my Lord Sit thou on my right hand and by Salazar who in his Commentary on the Proverbs interpreteth Wisdom of the Virgin that the Marians would scrue up the sense of the Old Testament into the assertion of a kind of coequality of the Virgin with Christ. Hence Baronius himself calleth her the Ark in one place and in another the Tabernacle The things relating to Christ under the New Testament are equally perverted by this inordinate devotion to that Virgin who cannot give those a welcome reception who with such affront to her Son make their Court to her As the Scripture mentioneth the Nativity of Christ celebrated by a Quire of Angels so doth the Roman Church observe the Nativity of the Virgin from a story of melody heard from Heaven by a devout man in a Desart on her birth-day Hierom Xaverius hath set down this Story for Gospel among the Indians and Innocent the fourth upon that report caus'd the dav to be Sacred As Christs triumphant Ascension is spoken of in the Scripture and observed in our Church so in the Legends of Rome there is frequent mention of her Assumption and it is in that Church celebrated with pomp Before that Office she is pictur'd in the Missal lately Printed at Paris ascending with a glory about her head in equal shew of triumph with Christ. As Christ is said in the Te Deum to have opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all Believers so is the Virgin called by them the Gate and the Hall-gate of Heaven As he is called Gods beloved Son so is she called Gods beloved Daughter As Christ is said to be exalted above all things in Heaven and Earth so is the Virgin called the Queen of Heaven and sometimes the Queen of the Heavens in reference to the Angels and sometimes the Queen of Heaven and Earth Nay the Jesuit Rapine hath enstated her in that Empire without any mention of the King her Son as above her As Christ is acknowledged by Christians to be the Head of the Church and the only Mediator and Advocate so the Virgin is stil'd in the Synod of Mexico the Universal Patroness and Advocatress As the day has been divided into several portions in which devout people have prayed to God and Christ so seven Canonical Hours have been appointed for the worship of the Virgin As God and Christ have the Sunday sacred to them so in the Roman Church the Virgin hath Saturday On that day therefore saith Augustine Wichmans more Requests of miserable mortals are sealed by her the Chancelaress of the greatest King in the Court of Heaven than on all the
spake to you in Horeb from the midst of the fire which that most wise Lawgiver therefore said lest being seduced by error or mistake they should make an Image of the Divinity and so give the honour due to God unto a creature Yet that such Images are made and honoured in the Roman Church is very notorious And it is not long since here in England some Protestants saw a silver Image of God the Father carried in Procession in the Passion-week and venerated with shews of high devotion The Learned who are cautious forbear the open defence of such Images yet they call them Judaizers who esteem the worship of God by them to be Idolatry And in their discourses they seem to favour this Practice so far as the tenderness of that subject will suffer it to be touched by saying there is no. express Text against it together with other very kind expressions which discover their inclination Also the frequency and allowance of such Pictures which under their strict Discipline is scarce to be imputed to the liberty of Painters and Engravers she weth many Ecclesiasticks to be well-willers to them though not as true representations the heresie of the gross Anthropomorphites being as such renounced by them I instance only in that frontispiece which is put before every of the three parts of the Roman Pontifical Printed at Lyons There on the Top in a very wooden cut is pictured an old man with a Globe in his hand and a glory streaming from all parts of him On his head there is a Triple Crown or Miter and over it this Motto Holy-Trinity one God have mercy upon us At the bottom the Pope is plac'd in a like Garb with Miter and Key and a glory about his head I do not say that the worship of such Images is Idolatry by virtue of the first or with us the second command considered as a Mosaical precept The Tables of stone themselves have long ago been broken in funder in that sense even by the very finger of God For we are not under the Law of Moses but under the Covenant of the Gospel But if there be any natural reason in that Law it is eternal and unalterable like the great Author of it By virtue of that precept it was as many think unlawful for any Jew to make any protuberant statue either of God or Demon or Man or Animal and much more to exhibit signs of reverence before them For the very making of Images would have induced that ritual people to the worship of them they wanting little besides an outward object to receive the signs of their inward inclination And if they had exhibited such signs before an Image the Gentiles would have expounded them as a compliance with their worship Of these things God was jealous and therefore gave command that the Monster of Idolatry should not exâ—…t so much 〈◊〉 in any seed or Embrio of it And whenâ—…ever men are in such circumstances that an Image is a snare to themselves and to others an apparent scandal or a confirmation of them in their evil way this command doth oblige them by parity of Reason And in the days of Tertullian The Christians seem to have been nigh such circumstances being â—…ngled amongst the Heathen and so prone to their works that as he in an holy indignation professeth there were more lights hung out at the doors of the Christians then at those of the Heathen themselves Lights not for the direction of the passengers but for the honour of Idols He therefore sutably to the exigence of that time urged the second command with a kind of Mosaick strictness and declamed against all Statuaries and Painteâ—… as Artists of the Common-wealth of darkness But a Reason there is in that command which doth always oblige and the force of it reacheth to mankind Two things I suppose are perpetually forbidden by it The first is the making of any Image of any false God and the honouring of it in that quality when it is made I say in that quality for it is not unlawful to carve or paint the Images of false gods by way of story or in order to the exposing of them in the particulars in which they are ridiculous or to value them if they be ancient and done by good hands as rarities of price and he hath little of judgment or charity who condemns every Antiquary as an Idolater The Genevians have usually here in their Houses the Pictures of Calvin and Luther and such others together with those of the Pope and the Devil spending vainly their breath against the Light which they had set up And we suffer in England the Pictures of false gods in the Ovid of Mr. Sandys as well as they do in Italy the Images of Cartari The second thing is the attempting the representation of the true God and the worshipping of it as his Image I say the attempting of it to avoid the Cavil of the Author of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for he mocketh at this ground of the command namely because Gods infinite essence cannot be represented as a reason which idly establisheth a Law from the impossibility of the breaking of it And he profanely compares it to the reason of the Monsieur who forbad his Bowyer to make him shafts of a Pigs Tail because no shafts could be made of it And yet it is a reason insisted on by the very Catechism of the Council of Trent above-cited But who knows not that such an Image was forbidden not properly to be made or perfected but to be attempted to be made because the workman would fail in his attempt not only to his own shame but the dishonour of the true God The Idols of the Heathen might be represented For being nothing but creatures of God or Phantasms the creatures of their brains they were capable of some resemblance They appeared to the eye and in a Picture in the fancy and consequently might be imitated by mans Art But the essence of God is like nothing that is finite neither like Man nor like the Heavens which latter Diodorus most falsly and irrationally maketh to be the God of Moses adding that therefore he forbad all Images of him in humane figure whilst he forbad the likeness of any thing in the Heavens Earth or Waters Nor can Gods essence so appear by it self as to shew its very self We have a notion of God but no proper Idea of him for that importeth in the force of the word an object with its Imagery perceived in the brain Hence the Synod of Nice it self did not favour any Images of the Divinity But ere I proceed further in this Argument I think it necessary to premise a distinction of Images and to consider how much or how little of the Idol is in each of them Of Images then I consider four sorts taking the liberty to call them Images of Analogy of Memory of Representation of Presence By Images of
as King Pauper Absit God forbede He speketh not to the ymage that the Carpenter hath made and the Peyntour painted but if the Priste be a fole for that stocke or stoone was never Kynge but he speketh to him that dyed on the Croce for us al to him that is King of alle thynge The xiii Chaptre Pauper The Lawe clepith ymages venerable and worshipful for ther shuld no man dispyse them ne defoul hem brenne them ne breke them De Consecrat di iii Venerabiles and for this manner of Veneration and worship saith the Lawe in the same place summe doctoures that Ymages Boke or Vestment and Chalice may be worshipped with Dulia But they take that Dulia fulle largely and full unproperly for such worship and veneration is ne service ne subjection as I said before For them who can instruct their minds help their memories excite their passions and fix their fancy by praying before an Image they are at liberty to use such helps in their private Closets In publick let them consider whether the scandal of others be not a greater evil than this kind of help can be a good And to me it seemeth that what help soever it may be to dispose and prepare us yet in the very act of devotion it is an impediment for then we exercise the heart and mind rather than the eye and the imagination which latter when it hath an Idea of God-man it apprehendeth him as in glory And in this point Thomas a Kempis himself was not determined in his judgment for in one place he commendeth the use of a Crucifix in praying to God and yet in another place he prescribeth a form of Prayer in which God Almighty is intreated to free the mind from bodily fantasms For St. Austin He thought that no body could worship or pray with his eyes fixed on an Image but he must be so affected as to think it hears him and will give him the aid which he implores He saith in another place that the figure of the parts of an humane body doth even extort this that the soul which lives in the body shall thereby be the apter to think that body perceives which it sees like to its own And that Images avail more to the bowing down of the unhappy mind in that they have a mouth eyes ears and feet then to the correcting of it by their not speaking seeing hearing or walking Bellarmine himself confesseth that they who adore God in an Image or Creature do expose themselves to great peril and are compelled to use the most subtle distinctions which the Learned scarce understand much less the vulgar Let them see to it who lay such snares in the way of the people whatsoever they intend they may plainly foresee that their feet will be taken in them and that many thousands have been so caught they may know from History and Experience Most unhappy have been the consequences of the second Synod of Nice which decreed the relative worshipping or bowing down to Images which by its President Tarrhasius and its defender Adrian the first owned a Transition of the worship through the Image to the Prototype like an arrow which first passeth actually through the Medium e're it hitteth the mark and which in the opinion of Mr. Thorndike brought in and authorized Addresses to solitary Images of Saints Since that time Gods worship has been exceedingly depraved and such bold men as Naclantus Bishop of Clugium have openly declared that the same Latria or Divine honour is due to the Image which is due to the Prototype And it hath been shewed a while ago that the Pontificale it self affirmeth Latria to be due to the Cross without distinguishing of it into absolute and relative But I would not misconstrue one unadvised passage as the constitution of the whole Church of Rome and a condition of its communion though I cannot but from the premisses conclude the danger of its communion or the peril of Idolatry in it Further there is another kind of Idolatry towards the Image of Christ visible in the practice of many Romanists though not enforced by the Decrees of their Church I mean that divers make it a Divine Shechinah or Image in which Christ eminently dwells and miraculously operates It was the custom of Asclepiades the Philosopher as in the 22d Book of Ammianus we are informed to carry with him whithersoever he journeyed a little silver-Image of the Goddess Coelestis 'T is probable that he hoped amongst other things for the fairer weather for she was Urania the Goddess of the Clouds And a late King of France is said to have carried about with him as his Coelestial Guardian a Crucifix of Lead If other Roman Catholicks wear it about their necks as a Remembrancer and not as an Amulet they have the greater protection from God for their removing a superstitious defensative And it is great pity that such things should be laid before the people as instruments of Inchantment by the literal sound at least of the Ritual and Pontifical which bless Crosses and Relicks as weapons of defence against evil Spirits Tempests malignant air Thieves Invaders hurtful beasts And he does not dwell within many doors of a Prophet who cannot guess at the proneness of the people to superstitious usages The Rebels of Devonshire in the Reign of Edward the sixth in their march to the siege of Exeter carried before them as the Jews did the Ark of God in the times of old the Pix or consecrated Host born under a Canopy with Crosses Banners Candlesticks Holy-bread and Holy-water and other things though the walls of Exâ—…ter fell not down before this false Ark as Dagon did before the true And it is commonly known what virtue is ascribed to the Pope's Agnus Dei's and how the people use them as holy Statues in which Christ's Divine Virtue so resides as by its glorious presence and power to expell all enemies ghostly and bodily Here trust is put in a Creature as a Shechinah of Christ which is not such and consequently that trust is no better than a reliance on an Idol PART 2. Of the Idolatry charged on the Romanists in the Worship of the Images of Saints Touching the Images of the Saints and the Veneration of them it is fit I say something but the Premisses being considered I have the less need of being voluminous It is a question whether any such Images can be made with any suitableness to the Prototypes Christ indeed hath raised his own body long ago and it is contained in the Heavens But of Saints who are yet in an imperfect estate whose bodies are yet asleep in the dust what Praxiteles or Titian can give us fit Statues or Pictures of them What they were we may by Images and Pictures conceive But what they now are in the present heavenly condition with relation to which the Romanists worship
them who on earth can reveal to us whilst eye hath not seen it neither hath ear heard it But for the Images or Pictures of the Saints in their former estate on earth if they be made with discretion if they be the Representations of such whose Saintship no wise man calleth into question if they be designed as their honourable Memorials they who are wise to sobriety do make use of them and they are permitted in Geneva it self where remain in the Quire of the Church of St. Peter the Pictures of the twelve Prophets on one side and on the other those of the twelve Apostles all in wood also the Pictures of the Virgin and St. Peter in one of the Windows And we give to such Pictures that negative honour which they are worthy of We value them beyond any Images besides that of Christ we help our memories by them we forbear all signs of contempt towards them But worship them we do not so much as with external positive signs for if we uncover the head we do it not to them but at them to the honour of God who hath made them so great Instruments in the Christian Church and to the subordinate praise of the Saints themselves They who worship such Images do either worship them as the Statues of such invisible Powers as do under God govern the world or of holy Spirits who hear them in all places and pray to God particularly for them or who only pray for them in general or as so many Shechinahs of ruling or interceding Saints And First If they worship them as Representations of ruling Daemons they are Idolatrous For they thereby give away the honour of Gods reserved power to a Creature They honour as Clients the statue of a Saint whilst God is by right their Patron Secondly If they worship the Images of Saints only as holy spirits who pray for them and hear them in any place by the help of that God whose essence is every-where and who enabled the Prophet to know the actions of Gehazi when he was out of his sight they are still thereby in peril of Idolatry for if God does not enable them to hear and they pray with confidence in them as hearing they relye on a power in the Creature which God hath not communicated to it Thirdly If they honour the Images of Saints only as holy spirits who in general pray for them they are not to be thence condemned as Idolaters for should they so far debase their reason as to give to the Image the same honour which is due to the Saint they honour but a creature that is inferior with the honour of a creature superior to it who prayeth for them in the mass of mankind And if they bow to such an Image that external sign of worship can't reasonably be interpreted by the beholders as a sign of Divine honour because they bow to that which appears no other than the Image of a Saint and not a Crucifix or Image of Christ the eye sufficiently distinguishing these and therefore it hath no higher honour than the Prototype which is a Creature I except here such bowing and kneeling to the Image of a Saint as is in use in the Roman Church and is accompanied with a form of Prayer proper to be addressed to God and particularly that form which Christ hath taught us For though the Catechism of Trent requireth the Parish Priest to let the people understand that when any one pronounceth the Lords-Prayer to the Image of a Saint he should think only that he joineth his Prayers with those of that Saint to God for him Yet the people are not so apt to receive the instruction and to be free from mistake and this the Catechism it self supposeth whilst it speaketh of the need there is of the greatest caution in this matter need of it not only for the moment of the thing but for the easiness of erring in it Fourthly If they worship them as Shechinahs of ruling Daemons they honour that as the presence of a power which God is pleased every-where to exercise and which he hath not fixed in such Statues in order to any eminent operation Wherefore they give the honour of Gods Schechinah to that which is not such and their trust is in an Idol And here the practice of the Church of Rome is scandalous if its constitution be not There is a common perswasion among that people that Prayers are more effectually heard and that Miracles are sooner done before an Image than in the absence of it That one Image is a more excellent Shechinah than another that our Lady will perform things at Loretto which she will not do at Rome it self And they who desire blessing of St. Winifred think they soonest attain it at her well The Liber Festivalis as they called it in use here in England in the time of Henry the seventh aboundeth with stories of Divine power working in Images and amongst other tales it telleth of the power of the Image of St. Nicholas in keeping mens Goods in safety and how certain Thieves who were permitted for a time to steal a few Goods committed to its care were by St. Nicholas forced to speedy restitution We read in Krantzius that Count Gerhard Uncle to Waldemare of Sleswick went to battel against the Danes with the Image of the Virgin about his neck after the manner of Sylla the Dictator who used in such emergencies certain little statues of Apollo or Jove one of which after his escape in a very dangerous Fight he kissed saying O Jupiter I had almost fallen with you this day and you with me And the Books of the most learned Papists are full of Legends which by telling of the motion of the Images themselves in wonderful manner or of the miraculous events succeeding the Addresses made at them do incline the people to come thither with confidence as to the Shechinahs of God Curtius the Provincial of Belgium is one of these writers and I find this story in him There was a certain poor man who in extreme need beseeched our Saviour to preserve him from perishing by some small Alms. At this Prayer the Image or rather Christ in the Image bowed himself and gave to the beggar his right shoo as a help in his need Away went the man with this new prize but the neighbours hearing of it redeemed the shoo with the equal weight in gold But that shoo to this day could never be fitted again to the foot but is supported with a Chalice It seems this Crucifix was made of Cedar by Nicodemus himself but methinks with no good fancy the Artist having carved a Crown of Gold instead of one of Thorns upon the head of our holy Lord. Lipsius a man rather learned than wise telleth of the many drops of blood which distilled from a certain wooden Image of the Virgin at Halla And on this he looked as on a miracle
the bread of common Tables and not the natural body of Christ Also before the Administration of it which is done in a form of Prayer which requireth our Reverence the people are generally on their knees in devotion to God If any begin then to kneel their kneeling is by the Church declared to be at the Sacrament not to the Elements of it as they of Rome do towards which she alloweth not so much as a Prosopopeia in her Prayers and which are neither the Statues nor the Pictures of Christs Person though they be apt memorials of his Passion and are more safely received in their ordinary form than with such Figures as the Roman Church impresseth upon them of which great variety is to be seen in the Electa of Novarinus Further The Church of England to avoid all pretence of cavil and exception hath besides her Article against the Corporal Presence given to the world an express declaration of her design in the injunction of Kneeling She declareth that this is done in reverence and humility to Christ and not to the shews or substance of the Elements or to the natural body of Christ under the shews of Bread They who are acquainted with the writings of Monsieur Daille have no more reason to think him a Romanist than they have to take Bellarmine for a zealot amongst the Reformed Now this is the acknowledgment of that grave and learned person in his Apology for the Reformed Churches Whilst the Church of England declareth as it doth against the adoration of the external Elements their kneeling at the Communion cannot be taken for the worshipping of the Bread nor be thought any thing else but the worship of Christ himself reigning in the Heavens In this external Adoration of Christ the Church of England followeth the ancient Church which though it often adored by bowing and not kneeling yet sometimes it used that gesture and was never wanting in some sign of Reverence Such Adoration is mentioned by St. Chrysostom and particularly the gesture of kneeling or prostration in some places though Monsieur Larrogne hath not pleased when he had just occasion so to do to take notice of it That eminent Father in his third Homily on the Epistle to the Ephesians thus upbraideth the irreverent and indevout Communicant The Royal Table is prepared the King himself is present and standest thou gaping about Thy Garments are unclean and art not thou at all concerned at it But they are pure that is the Royal Table and the King of that Marriage-Feast wherefore fall down and communicate For the third Ceremony the bowing at the name of Jesus it is also enjoined not as duty in its nature necessary to salvation but as a decent sign of our inward esteem of that inestimable benefit which that name brings to our mind Of that just esteem and not meerly of the outward Ceremony I hope that zealous Gentleman spake who is reported to have wished that every knee might rot which would not bow at the Name of Jesus By bowing at this Name we advance not the Son above the Father but adore the whole Trinity whilst by the cue or sign of this name we are reminded of the greatest mercy that ever God vouchsafed the Name of Jesus displaying the wisdom and mercy of God beyond those of El Jah Adonai or Jehovah And for us to bow when-ever we hear that Name solemnly pronounced is no more to commit Idolatry than is our crying out at the reading of the Gospels Glory be to thee O Lord or O the depth of the riches of Gods mercy in Christ. For these words and that gesture are but external signs of the same inward acknowledgment and adoration And they who think we worship the very name when we bow at it are as grosly mistaken as the ignorant people in Athenaeus for some there mentioned when they heard others cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God save you or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God grant you life at the sneezing of any conceited that they adored either the very sternutation or the brain of man which then discharged it self of the fumes which oppressed it The Church of England doth not enjoin men to bow to the Name of Jesus as to an Object but only at it as at a signal by which they are admonished of the time of paying Reverence to God Neither is there any such form used in our Church as in the Church of Rome which to the Priests travelling into England prescribeth this out of the Missal of Sarum O God who hast made the most glorious name of our Lord Jesus Christ thy only begotten Son amiable to the faithful with the highest affection of suavity and terrible and dreadful to evil spirits mercifully grant that all they who devoutly worship this name on earth may perceive in this present life the sweetness of holy consolation and obtain in the life to come the joy of exultation and endless Jubilee by the same Lord. It is my opinion that the Judicious of that Church mean by that Name our Saviour himself as Redeemer of the World but the Church expresseth it self in such manner that to the people the Name of Jesus soundeth like some distinct adorable object For it speaketh of worshipping that Name it hath the Mass of the Name of Jesus the Litany of the Name of Jesus and such-like Forms which are apt to entangle common Hearers St. Ludgard would have such honour done not only to Christs Name but to that of the Virgin and he adviseth that when these words in the Tc Deum are repeated When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man thou didst not abhor the Virgins womb that then we bow down to the very ground And it is said d of St. Gerard Bishop of Canadium that is of Chonad in Hungary that by his zeal for the honour of the holy Virgin he brought it at length so to pass in that Country that when they heard the Name of our Lady pronounced they straightway fell on their knees and bowed their heads towards the earth And indeed nothing stoopeth lower than Superstition But in the Church of England the bowing is neither that of Superstition nor Idolatry but of Religious Reverence at the hint of a word which setteth forth to us all the dimensions or rather the infinity of the Divine Wisdom and Love Lee not then the ignorance or malice of men who make Court to nothing but their own Diana accuse that excellent Church of Idolatry which hath so carefully purged her self of Idols though not of all manner of Rites That had been to have swept away the convenient Ornaments of Gods house together with the durt of it the name which the Jews give to an Idol Of some in England who have rent themselves from the safe Communion of that Church there may be juster reason for such complaint What can judicious men think of the true
original Quaker but as of one who by believing that God is not distinct from the Saints and by worshipping that which he calls his Light or Christ within him rejecteth the Person of our Redeemer and committeth Idolatry with his own imagination must not they make a like judgment of such as Anna Trapnell who believed for a while that God dwelt essentially in his Saints must not they also judg of Lodowick Muggleton as of a mad-man or of an Impostor selling his Blessings at a very profitable rate or of an Idolater worshipping nothing for the one true God but a confined person of flesh and bones For he owneth no other Godhead than that which was conceived in the womb of the Virgin and circumscribed by it for a season and as he blasphemously continues to speak such as lost it self for a while both in honour and knowledg not knowing till he was glorified that himself was God the Father but that Elias was his God and his Father For that also is one of his Blasphemies That God not finding it safe to trust the Angels upon his descent from Heaven he committed his place to the safer trust of Moses and Elias A blasphemy worse if possible than that in Irenaeus of the extravagant Gnosticks who supposed the place of the Logos to have been on earth supplied by the Angel Gabriel But I forbear any further repetition of his abominable Fancies which will cause as great pain in the ears of pious Christians as the Justice of the Magistrates has lately done in his own I shut up this Chapter with the Prayer of that Learned French-man Isaac Casaubon Thou O Lord Jesu preserve this church of England and give a sound mind to those Nonconformists who deride the Rites and Ceremonies of it CHAP. XIV Of the means which God hath vouchsafed the World towards the cure of Idolatry and more particularly of his favour in exhibiting to that purpose the Shechinah of his Son PART 1. Of the Cure of Idolatry THE Notion of Idolatry being stated and also illustrated by the practice of it amongst Gentiles Jews Mahometans and Professors of Christianity I proceed to shew the means which God in pity of our weakness hath given us towards the Cure of this Evil. Against all manner of false Gods and ruling-Daemons he gave to all the world a Principle of Reason which teacheth that there is one Supreme Being absolute in Perfection and by consequence that he being every-where by Almighty Power Wisdom and Goodness is every-where to be adored and trusted in as the only God The same Principle of Reason teacheth them that God can neither be represented by an Image nor confined to it neither knoweth it much more of the inferiour Powers of the invisible World save that they are and consequently it hath no ground for addresses to them For the Jews they had an express command for the worship of one God without Image and many declarations of God as governing the world by his immediate Providence Also Christian Religion sheweth plainly that the gods of the Heathens were Doemons or evil spirits and that there is but one God and one Mediator to be by Christians adored It establisheth a Church or Corporation of Christians who agree in the worship of one God in Trinity In Baptism or the Sacrament of admittance into that Society it prescribeth a solemn Renuntiation of the Devil and his works of which a part were the Pomps or Processions in honour of Idols In the Sacrament which is a memorial of the Passion of Christ the Head and Founder of this Society it offereth to us the Cup of the Lord in opposition to the cup of Devils On the First-day of the Week set a-part for publick worship it maketh a Remembrance of the Creation of the world by the Son by whom the Father made all things and not by any Doemons as also of the Resurection of Christ from the dead by which he conquered the powers of darkness In the Form of Prayer which our Lord taught the Church it prayeth for deliverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from that evil one from Satan the destroyer as Rabbi Judah was wont to petition and in the Doxology it ascribeth not with the Heathen world which then lay in maligno illo under the Power of the God of this world in general Idolatry the Kingdom Power and Glory to the Devil but to that one true God who was the Father of Jesus Christ. But upon most of these Subjects I have already inlarged It remaineth therefore that I speak of the means which God hath specially vouchsafed in the case of Images a Subject not commonly discoursed of and hinted only in the former Papers This Disquisition I will begin with the notion of the Invisibility of God proceeding thence to the condescension he vouchsafes towards the very eye and fancy of man in the Shechinah of his Son There is in the very Creation a great part of invisible matter and motion Many things besides God Almighty are not immediately subject to mans sense though his Reason can reach them after a Philosophical consideration of their palpable effects God indeed could have made that matter which is now invisible to have been seen by man in all the minute and curious Textures of it For what should hinder that omnipotence which formed the light and created the soul from framing the Fibers of the Nerves in such delicate manner in this life what possibly he may do in the coelestial body as to give to man a kind of natural Microscope But for his own Divine substance which hath neither limits nor parts nor Physical motion which is the division of Parts nor figure which is inconsistent with immensity nor colour which is an effect of figure and motion upon the brain it is certain that in this body we cannot see it and there is great reason to doubt whether we can do so in any other which though it be coelestial is still but body For this sight then we are not to hope unless we mean it of the fuller knowledg of Gods will and interpret the antecedent by the consequent in that place of Scripture which saith No man hath seen God at any time the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father he hath reveal'd him St. John in that place denieth expresly actual sight as also he doth again in his first Epistle Tertullian in his refutation of Praxeas discourseth of the invisibility of God and the visibility of the Son of God illustrating his sense by the appearance of the Sun which is not seen in its very body but by its rays And he further noteth of St. Paul that he had to this purpose denied both the actual and potential sight of God No man said that Apostle hath seen God nor can see him No man whilest alive can see God as he is as he dwells in Heaven the Palace and
Throne of his most eminent Glory He cannot behold that now unless in such a glymps as St. Stephen enjoy'd which he shall see after the Resurrection when the vail of this gross body shall be removed for to the meek in heart it is promised that they shall see God To them shall be revealed that secret of faces which the Jews so often speak of and adjourn to the future life But for the substance of the Godhead it is for ever invisible the infinity of it which Tertullian seemeth to call the fulness of the Deity and denieth to have been seen by Moses can no more be taken in by mans eye than a whole circle of the Universe can be taken in at the same moment by the glass of a Telescope And for the Essence of it it seems indiseernible even to the very Angels For although Angels be spirits yet they possessing a space are of a far differing nature from the divine substance which filleth and pierceth all things The Ranters indeed professed to see in this life the very Essence of God but the true God was not every thing which they dream'd of Now man in this earthly state receiving knowledg chiefly from the senses he is exceeding covetous of sensible helps in his research after the most abstracted notions which inclination being vehement in the vulgar who are generally of very gross apprehension they pursue not the object of their minds be it the most Divine and Spiritual God himself with pure and unmixed reason but they at best blend it with some bodily phantasm and often dwell wholly upon such an Image and the external object of it insomuch that their imagination worshippeth that which should be entertained only as the help and instrument of their mind So that although the natural desire of a visible object be not the necessary cause yet it is the occasional root of all that proper Idolatry or Image-worship which divided it self into more kinds than there are Nations in the world PART 2. Of the Cure of Idolatry by the Shechinah of God GOD knowing well the frame and infirmity of man though himself did not erect it so as now it stands with much decay and many breaches was pleased to condescend to the weak condition of his nature and to vouchsafe him a kind of visible presence lest in the entire absence of it his fancy should have bow'd him down even to such creatures to which man himself being compared is a kind of subcaelestial Deity It pleased then the wise and merciful God to shew to the very eyes of man though not his spiritual and immense substance or any statue or picture of it properly so called yet his Shechinah or visible glory the symbol of his especial Presence This divine appearance I suppose to have been generally exhibited in a mighty lustre of flame or light set off with thick and as I may call them solemn Clouds Nothing is in nature so pure and pleasant and venerable as light especially in some reflexions or refractions of it which are highly agreeable to the temper of the brain By light God discovereth his other works and by it he hath pleased to shadow out himself and both secular and sacred Writers have thence taken plenty of metaphors dipping as it were their pens in light when they write of him who made Heaven and Earth “ Jamblichus in his book of the “ Egyptian Mysteries setteth out by light the Power the Simplicity the Penetration the Ubiquity of God R. Abin Levita supposeth it to be the garment of God it having been said by David that he cloatheth himself with it Maimonides supposeth the matter of the Heavens to have a risen from the extension of this vestment of Divine Light Eugubinus supposeth the Divine Light to be the Empyrean Heaven or habitation of God And this he thinketh to be the true Olympus of the Poets so called quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it shineth throughout with admirable glory S. Basil calleth the Light of God not sensible but intelligible and conceiteth that after that first uncreated the Angels are a second and created light Such sayings though they have in them a mixture of extravagance yet in the main they teach the same with the Scripture that God is light or that there is nothing in the Creation so fit an Emblem of him and so fit to be used in his appearance to the world Thus therefore is the Shechinah of God described in the Prophecy of Habakkuk God came from Teman and the holy One from Mount Paran Selah His glory covered the Heavens and the Earth was full of his praise And his brightness was as the light he had horns or beams coming or streaming out of his hand or side Whether the Shechinah of God ever appeared out of a vision in light organiz'd in mans shape I am not certain though such a Representation be apt to excite the veneration of mankind For even when Herod spake from his Throne of Majesty and the light was with singular advantage reflected from his Robe of silver the amused people were the more readily induced to celebrate him as a God on Earth But of the figure of the Shechinah I profess my self uncertain and often ruminate upon the Chaldee Oracle which adviseth us when we see the most holy Fire shining without a form or determinate shape then to hear the voice of it that is to esteem it then the true Oracle of God and not the imposture of a Daemon And such a fire Psellus the Scholiast on this Oracle affirmeth to have been seen by many men And I might shew somewhat like it in the Instances of Abraham and Moses But there has been seen a false Fire also and the Massalians whom Epiphanius calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bending down their head to their navel professed they saw a divine fire and received the ardor of a divine spirit being either deluded by the Devil or deceived into this conceit by some odd fantasms which arose from the nerves extended in an uncommon posture Now for the Shechinah or visible glory of God in this world for whether it appeared to any as in the other till the day-break of the Gospel will bear a dispute it was in all likelihood effected not by the Father whom no man hath seen but by the second Person in the Trinity the King and Light of the World who was afterwards Incarnate Both the Orthodox and the Haeretical have maintained the visibility of the Son and the invisibility of the Father though upon different reasons This did Origen this did the Arians Thus Bisterfeldius in that very Treatise in which he defendeth against Crellius the natural Divinity of the Son of God doth maintain that the Father is invisible to the very Angels and that Christ even in the Ages long before the Gospel was the visible Image of the Father Now the reason why true Catholicks affirm the Father to
that great Wit to rail at Opinions without offering reasons for his contrary judgment and here he offereth two The First he taketh from those first words of the Epistle to the Hebrews God who at divers times and in divers manners spake to our forefathers by the Prophets hath in these last times spoken to us by his Son The Second he taketh from the second and third verses of the second Chapter in which the Holy Author preferreth the Gospel before the Law because the Law was given by Angels that is saith he by the Angel sustaining the person of God and for that reason mentioned by St. Steven in the singular number and by many more such spirits making up that glorious train but the Gospel by the Lord Jesus the Son of God Upon the seeming force of such Reasons I find Curcellaeus and others agreeing in the sentence of Grotius Now for the first Objection I may remove it out of the way by saying no more than that God spake formerly by his Son as his Logos or Minister and in the latter times by him as his Son Incarnate or as begotten by the Holy Ghost of the substance of the Blessed Virgin The same Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saith of the Throne of Christ as Gods Logos that it was from everlasting and yet we well know that his Kingdom as Messiah Mediator Incarnate or the Word made flesh was but then at hand when his Harbinger John took upon him the Office of Baptist And Justin Martyr thought not himself in an error when he said That the Logos both spake by the Prophets things to come and also by himself being made subject to like infirmities with us The Word was Gods Minister before and under the Law but not in the same quality as under the Gospel In those times he spake not himself immediately for how can a Divine Subsistence be meerly of it self corporally vocal But he spake I conceive by some principal Angel assumed as hath been said without personal union assisted by him in a miraculous motion of the air or brain Under the Gospel he spake with his own mouth as having assumed human nature into unity of Person This word Person if I may make a digression of two or three lines deserveth not the clamour with which Socinians hoot at it especially when we consider it as now we do with relation to Christ as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Face or personating Shechinah of God They then that rightly distinguish betwixt Christ as Gods Word and Shechinah under the former Covenants and as Mediator and Gods Son incarnate under the Gospel will not much be perplexed with such places of Scripture as speak sometimes of Christs Praeexistence and oftner of his coming into the world in the fulness of time And thus much Monsieur le Blanc himself taketh notice of in his Theological Theses He there favoureth the opinion of Christs praeexistence He owneth him as the Minister of God of old but not properly as Mediator which he saith including Christs Priestly Office did of necessity require not only a mission of one Divine Person by another but a Divine Person incarnate Now from that which I have suggested in this answer to the first Objection of Grotius it will be a matter of small difficulty to infer a Reply unto his second For an assumed Angel being us'd by the Divine Logos as the immediate Minister of himself to the people and Christ speaking with his own mouth under the Gospel as God-man and the great mystery of the Gospel consisting in the manifestation of God in the flesh the Apostle had sufficient reason to prefer the Gospel before the Law We have before us a matter of lesser astonishment when we think of Divinity speaking by an Angel to which it is not vitally united than when we contemplate it as manifesting it self in the quality of God-man in unity of Person with human nature Such were the thoughts of St. Hilary of Poictiers who in our present Argument thus discourseth Then God only was seen in the shew of man He was not born Now he who was seen is also born For Athanasius he contendeth that Christ was call'd the Son long before he was incarnate and that Moses himself knew of the future Incarnation as well as he saw the present Appearance of the unincarnate Logos I conclude then notwithstanding these Objections That there is almost as good warrant for reading the Preface to the Decalogue in this manner Christ spake all these words and said as the ancient Saxon Prefacer had thus to read as he does that part of the fourth Commandment For in six days Christ made the Heaven and the Earth God who by his Logos gave all Physical Laws to Nature did also by the same Word give the Moral Law to Israel In the beginning of that Law saith St. Austin God prohibited the worship of any Image besides one the same with himself that is to say the Logos his Son whom Moses saw it being promised to him that God should apparently converse with him and that he should behold the similitude or Image or as the Seventy render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Glory or glorious Shechinah of God Whether at the giving of the Law Moses saw the Shechinah in human figure his Text does not inform us yet it doth not necessarily follow that Moses or Aaron saw no figure because the people did not For there was much more danger in them who had had the education of slaves and who labour'd under gross and sensitive apprehensions than there was in Moses a Learned and Prudent person of abusing such similitude in the framing of Idols and one would think that at the receiving of the Tables he saw something in human figure for he is said to have seen the back-parts of God or his Shechinah or the shew of a man inverted or rather a less degree of luster in the Shechinah neither he nor any man living being able to behold the face or full luster of it which perhaps might then appear to the attending-Angels So that the desire of Moses was in effect like that of Eudoxus who desir'd to see the Sun just by him If it should have been granted he must have pay'd down his life as the expence of his curiosity And indeed the seeing of the Face of God in that sense was at that season the less necessary because God had just then made a promise of his Shechinah or presence in the Tabernacle to go along with him and to support him against the incredulity of the people to whose eyes such a Shechinah as they could bear was in wisdom to be accommodated Whilst Moses was beholding this Pattern in the Moant and receiving Laws from the Presence of God the people seeing neither as at his departure they had done the Glory of God in Clouds and Flame nor as in the
at his feet as before a God This Jesus was the Ark of the new Covenant and of the Testimony of God the witness of God faithful and true as he is stiled in the Revelation of Saint John Jesus was in effect the whole house of Gods especial presence the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the name which Philo gives the Tabernacle or the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or it may be if it were rightly printed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Josephus calleth the Zodiack or the Sun moving in it the portable the walking Temple who like the rolling Sun which dispenseth his influence far and near went about doing good having no resting-place for his Head till he was fixed on Mount Sion above This is the Ark of God exalted first on the Cross and then to Heaven Whence God commandeth his blessing sending him by his Spirit and Gospel to bless and to turn all of us from our iniquity This Ark is the true Mercy-seat the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Propitiatory as he is called in the Epistle to the Romans and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. John calleth him that is the Propitiation for our sins St. Hierom Commenting on those words in the Version of Ezekiel in the 43d Chapter and 14th verse from the lesser settle to the greater settle and observing them to be rendred on this wise by the Seventy Interpreters From the lesser to the greater Propitiatory He applys the lesser Propitiatory to Christ in the form of a servant and the greater to Christ glorified in the Heavens Here is then both the Aaron and Aharon the true Ark and Priest of the most high God This Ark or rather this entire Temple of God like the Tabernacle in Shiloh seemed for a time forsaken possessed by the great Philistin for what is stronger than death and laid in the dust but God raised it up after three days in greater glory and so as that it is never to fall again This Ark was after a few days taken up into the true Sanctuary of God where it remaineth till the restitution of all things and whither our eyes and hearts are to direct themselves in all Religious worship From that Sanctuary he appear'd in a glorious light to his first Martyr St. Steven when well awake and whilst he directed his countenance towards Heaven whither his spirit was ready to take its way He being full of the Holy Ghost or divine energy looked up stedfastly into Heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God Thence also he appeared to Saul in a light so vehement that for a time it took away the use of his eyes Thence he sent the Holy Ghost at Pentecost become now as it were the Substitute and Shechinah of the Glorified Jesus This hovered as a glorious flame over the heads of the Apostles declaring them thereby the Representatives of Christ on earth Under this notion Christ is worshipped by true and intelligent Christians This was the meaning of the Fathers in the Council of Constantinople who denounced Anathema against those who professed not that Christ ascended was Intellectual flesh neither properly flesh nor yet Incorporeal but visible to them who have pierc'd him without grossness of flesh They believ'd it a great point of Christianity that Jesus God-man sate in the Heavens in illustrious visible glory And this St. John saw in a Vision in which the Logos the God Omnipotent the King of Kings and Lord of Lords or Lamb God-man appeared on his Throne Crowned and with eyes like flames of fire To this effect is a saying of Eusebius cited by Bishop Andrews on the second Command I suppose he meaneth Eusebius Dorylaeus for he referreth to the second Ephesine Synod though I have not met with it in the Acts of that Council Eusebius it seems telleth Constantia That she must not any longer desire an Image of Christ as he is infirm man For now said he his Glory is much greater than it appeared on the Mount which if his Apostles were then dazled with how can it now be expressed This visible Glory of Christ the Ancients supposed situate in the Eastern part of the Heavens and it occasion'd as I think their directing of their worship towards the East The Gentiles who worshipped the Sun differed much from this external direction of their Faces For they respected especially the East-point by reason of the Sun-rising thence And often at other parts of the day they altered their posture They sometimes vall'd themselves saith Plutarch and turned themselves about with respect to the Heavenly motions And Trismegistus in Asclepio relates that it was a custom of some of the Gentile-Devotionists at mid-day to look towards the South and at Sun-set to look towards the West It was at the rising of the Sun when Lucian was turned towards it by Mithrobarzanes the Chaldaean Priest who mumbled his Prayers in a low and indistinct tone at the rising of that false God They respected not always the Eastern Angle though they had especial regard to it when the Sun appeared in it They respected also the South and West-points in their worship Hence Harpocrates a child represented amongst them the Sun in its rising Orus a young man the Sun in its Meridian Osiris an old man the Sun-setting This was also the way of the Manichees who supposed the Sun to be the Tabernacle of Christ. Of them St. Austin saith that their Prayers rolled about with the Sun But the Ancients thought the Shechinah of Christ more fixed and therefore did not in such manner alter their Quarter And that Quarter they esteemed proper to the Shechinah having read of the Messiah in the Old Testament under the name of the East and following the Translation of the Seventy which thus readeth Psalm 68. 33. Sing unto God who ascendeth above the Heaven of Heavens on the East They also esteemed Jerusalem the middle of the Earth and the parts which lay Easterly from thence they called the East and amongst them Eden about Mesopotamia And they had a Tradition that Christ was Crucified with his face towards the West but that he ascended with his face towards the East and went up to a place in the Heavenly Paradise standing as it were over that of the Earthly But whatsoever men may conceive of the space possessed by Christs meer body they ought not to think of his Shechinah as of a confined light in some one Quarter of the Heavens but as a glorious luster filling all Heavens and shining towards this Earth as a Circumference of Glory on a single point They ought to lose their imaginations in an Abyss of Light One saith and not amiss upon this subject That as Earth heightned unto a flame changeth not its place only but form and figure so the person of our Saviour was raised to a greatness a
glory vastly differing from and surmounting any Image all Images of things visible or invisible in in this Creation So 't is fitly expressed saith he in Heb. 7. 29. He was made higher than the Heavens He was heightned to a splendour enlarged to a capacity and a compass above the brightest beyond the widest Heavens From this Heavenly Throne Christ will come at the day of Judgment in a Shechinah of Clouds and flaming-fire the mention of which fire sometimes in the Scripture and in the Commentaries of the ancient Fathers without express addition of that great day has as I conjecture accidentally led part of the Christian World into its mistakes about Purgatory in relation to which place I must yet confess my self to be one of the Nullibists This Shechinah in milder but most inexpressible luster I suppose to be that which the Schools call the Beatifick Vision and which the Scripture intendeth in the promise of seeing God face to face PART 7. Of the Usefulness of this Argument of Gods Shechinah THis Argument of Gods Shechinah may be many ways useful if Intelligent persons draw such inferences from it as it offereth to their judgment I will hint at some of them for to insist on any unless it be those which concern the worship of Angels or Images is beyond my scope And first of all by due attention to the premisses an Anthropomorphite may blush at his rude conceit about the humane figure of the Divine substance whose spiritual and immense amplitude is incapable of any natural figure or colour though God by his Logos using the ministry of inferiour creatures hath condescended to a visible Shechinah Hence secondly those people who run into the other extream the Spiritualists and abstractive Familists may be induced to own the distinct substance of God and the visible person of Christ and not to subtilize the Deity and its Persons and all its appearances into a meer notion or into some quality act or habit of mans spirit or to bow down to God no otherwise then as he is the pretended light or love in their own breasts Thirdly If this consideration had entered with sobriety into the minds of those German Anabaptists who with zeal contended that the very essence or substance of the Father was seen in the Son and the very substance of the Spirit in the Dove their disputations would have been brought to a speedy issue or rather they would never have been begun They would have known how to have distinguished betwixt the invisible God and the visible face or Shechinah not as the very shape but as the emblem and significative Presence of the Divinity Fourthly For want of some such notion as this many other men of fanatick heads such as were most of the Hereticks who introduced novelty and tumult into the Church about the Persons of the Trinity and nature of Christ have plunged themselves into unintelligible conceits Of this number were the Basilidians who call'd the body of the Dove the Deacon and the Valentinians who stil'd it the spirit of cogitation which descended on the flesh of the Logos thereby darkning the understanding with phrases If they had apprehended the Logos in his Praeexistence or Incarnation as the Shechinah of God and would have expressed that notion without phantastical or amusing terms they might have instructed others and seen the truth also better themselves when they had clothed it in fit and becoming words Fifthly This notion may not be unuseful for the unfolding the Scriptures which speak of the Praeexistence of Christ before he was God-man and explain them naturally and not with such force and torture as they are exposed to in the Soâ—…inian Comments He that saith Abraham saw the Shechinah of the Praeexisting Logos and thence inferreth that Christ was before that Patriarck speaketh plain sense But he that says Christ was not till more than 2000 years after Abrahams death yet that he was before him because he was before Abraham was Abraham or before all Nations were blessed in his seed the Gentiles not being yet called such a one speaks like a Sophist not an honest Interpreter and forgets that Christs answer before Abraham was I am follows upon this Interrogatory of the Jews Thou art not yet fifty years old and hast thou seen Abraham Sixthly This notion may further shew the error of those Semi-Socinians such as Vorstius and his Disciples who confound the Immensity of the God-head and the visible Glory of the Shechinah which God hath pleased as it were to circumscribe They will allow this King of the world no further room for his Immense substance than that which his especial Presence irradiates in his particular Palace Which conceit though in part it be accommodable to the Shechinah yet is it a presumptuous limitation of the great God when it is applied to his substance which Heaven and Earth together cannot contain Furthermore it is from hence in part that we see and pity the blindness of some of the modern Jews who notwithstanding they are the professed enemies of Divine Statues and Images and have reason enough to believe that the Ark of God hath dwelt among us in a body of flesh and now shineth in the Heavens do yet hope some say for an especial presence of God by furnishing with a Chest and Roll of their Law the places of their Religious Assemblies Again by considering with St. Chrysostome the Temple of Solomon as a Type not only of the sensible but also of the invisible world and by considering further the Shechinah and Ark of God more especially in the Holiest of all than in the Sanctuary and more exterior Courts and spaces we may illustrate that very useful and most probable notion of the degrees of Glory and of the several Mansions prepared for several Estates in the Kingdom of Glory where notwithstanding every part will be so far though inequally filled with luster that all may be said with open face to behold the Glory of God and not those only next the Coelestial Ark or Throne in the most holy place But these things as I said are beyond my scope though appertinencies to my Argument and therefore I will no further pursue them but proceed to those uses of the notion which lye more directly in the way of my design The first of them concerneth the worship of Angels the second of Images PART 8. Of the Usefulness of this Argument of Gods Shechinah with relation to the Worship of Angels and Images FIrst The Worshippers of Angels plead for their practice from those places in the Old Testament which seem to speak of high Veneration used towards them T. G. argueth from the Prayer which indeed is rather the wish of Jacob where he saith The Angel who delivered me from all evils bless these Children The Manual called the Abridgment of Christian Doctrine would prove the Worship of Dulia to belong to Angels from the falling of
and predisposed it for the reception of the Christian Faith B. That kind of Immortality which they held was not agreeable to Christian Doctrine They asserted indeed the Incorporeal and indissoluble nature of the substance of mans soul but by the Dogma of its Circulation through several Bodies they taught a false and uncomfortable Faith which our Lord never justified He taught not only that the Soul was not a concretion of separable Atoms and that it was a substance not to be killed a substance subsisting after death but that it was if righteous immortal in unchangeable blessedness He did not dishearten the virtuous by saying as did Pythagoras that the Soul after having attained the height of the Heavenly state might come down again from the top of the Circle and be happy and unhappy in eternal Rotations and Vicissitudes For this reason St. Austin in the first Book of his Retractations speaking of the Souls ascent into Heaven thinketh it had been safer to have expressed himself by the word Going than that of Returning lest any should believe he favoured the Platonick notion of its being thrust down from its seat in Heaven A. Of Platonism enough I will trouble you again as I did at the beginning with a few Remarks of another kind and then I will suffer you to be quiet B. Pray let us hear them A. In Chap. 5. pag. 52. you make Pagods to be the Statues whereas they are only the Temples of Idols B. I use not my own words but Vincent le Blanc's and with him many others agree though I do not remember that either in Sir Thomas Roe's Voyage to the East-Indies or in Monsieur Tavernier's Travels Pagod is otherwise used than for a Temple But why may it not signifie both the Statue and the Temple At Rome they do not think it absurd to call the Saint the Church the Image Sancta Maria. A. It may be so I pass to another Note In Chap. 6. pag. 97 98. you expound the second Commandment or prohibition of a Vow forbidden to be made to an Idol or Vanity in the name of El Elohim Jehovah or if you will have it so Jahveh or in any other name of the God of Israel So far the Novelty perhaps is passable But then to obviate an Objection which may be made from our Lords Interpretation Thou shalt not forswear thy self you add this That he who voweth by an Idol seeing he cannot be enabled by it to perform his Vow is therefore in effect forsworn And this looks more like an Evasion than an Answer B. It doth so Nor will I go about either to defend that or the Exposition which occasioned it Thus much only I chuse to subjoin That a Jew or a Christian vowing by an Idol though coloured with some Name of the true God is actually forsworn because he breaketh either the Mosaical or Evangelical Covenant an especial part of which is the renunciation of the worship of all Daemons In speaking to the first Commandment in p. 97. I am guilty of a fault of omission which you take no notice of A. What may that be B. I ought to have observed that the Jews did generally interpret that Prohibition against the worship not so much of any other supreme god as of the middle powers or supposed Mediators betwixt God and Man A. There needs no command against the worship of many supreme gods that being a contradiction to the sense of mankind B. True when you use the words many supremes But the common people think not of the World as one Body necessarily placed under one Governour but they may be brought to think of the Kingdom of Heaven as they do of the kingdoms in this world where there is no Universal Monarch They may think there are several coequal gods in their several Precincts Nay generally the Barbarous in several Countries may be apt to think their Topical god superior to all others The ignorant Frier thought the French King his Master the greatest on earth when he irreverently compared him to God the Father and called our Holy Lord the Dauphine of Heaven And some poor Peasants believe there is scarce one higher on earth than the Lord of the Mannor A. I have met with such in my time But I go on In Chap. 6. p. 122 and in other places you much disparage the Ancient Histories of Greece B. Plato himself speaking of the first Phoroneus Deucalion and others suggesteth that their stories are fabulous And that which he there remembers of the Discourse of the Priests of Sais to Solon about the Antiquities of Egypt and Greece and of Athens as an Egyptian Colony is at first hearing so Idle a Tale that I wonder the Philosopher or any discreet Reader of him hath had any reverence for it A. I confess I have not Give me leave to trouble you with one objection more In Chap. 7. p. 146. You say Two things concerning the Idolatry of the Mahometans which will not pass First You affirm that they pray to Mahomet whereas they are forbidden to do any such thing by their great Article of Faith in one God Secondly You say it is most notorious that they do so whereas some judicious Persons who have lived amongst them and such who are of better credit than the Author you cite do profess they could never observe them doing it B. To your first exception I thus answer Their Article of Faith in one God was not so much designed against the worship of subordinate powers as against the acknowledgment of three coequal Subsistences in the God of the Christians It is one of the Dogmata of the Moslemans saith Gabriel Sionita That God is One and that there is no other equal to Him And this last Clause Mahomet added with direct design against the Christian Trinity And he would not have been so vehement in his charge of Idolatry against the Christians if they had worshipped Christ and the Holy Ghost with subordinate honour and not as very God For your second Exception I must confess that the words most notonious may seem a little too bold they relating to a matter which is under dispute as likewise that on your side there are Authors of better credit then Monsieur de la Guilliotiere whom I have produced I have not much relyed upon his word since I was taught by a person of great integrity that his Book of Athens to his knowledg was wide of the truth But Monsieur de la Guilliotiere is not my only Author I am told by others that the worship of Heroes and trust in their Aids as Patrons under God is to be charged on Mahometans if not on the constitution of Mahomet who taught expresly the Intercession of Saints Busbequius relateth that the Turks believe their Hero Chederle a kind of Mahometan St. George to be propitious in War to all who implore his Aid He further telleth that the
too that God walked in Paradise Hear the answer I make to this Objection God indeed and the Father of all things is neither shut up in a place nor found in it For no place is there in which God can in such manner dwell In the mean time his Word by which he made all things being the Power and Wisdom of the Father himself personating the Father who is Lord of all came into Paradise in his Person and spake unto Adam who in the Scripture is said to have heard the voice of God Now Gods voice what is it else but the very Logos or Word of God which is likewise his Son After Adam was driven out of Paradise the Logos appointed a kind of Shechinah in the appearance of Angels to guard the way of the Tree of Life These I conceive were a Cherub and a Saraph and that the latter an Angel in the opinion of Maimonides himself was meant by the flaming-sword turning every way the versatile tayl of a Saraph or flame-like winged Serpent not being unaptly so called And this conceit when I come to explain my self about Urim and the brazen Serpent will seem less extravagant than now it may do in this naked Proposal And yet as 't is thus proposed 't is not so idle as that of Pseudo Anselm who will have this guard to be a Wall of Fire incompassing Paradise In process of time when Cain and Abel offered to God their Eucharistical Sacrifices the Son of God again appeared as Gods Shechinah and testified it may be his gracious acceptance of the Sacrifice of Abel by some ray of flame streaming from that glorious visible Presence and re-acting to it whilst he shewed himself not pleased with the offering of Cain by forbearing as I conjecture to shine on his sheaves or to cause them to ascend so much as in smoke towards Heaven And with this conjecture agreeth the Translarion of Theodotion in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Lord had respect to the oblations of Abel and set them on fire That seemeth to be the most ancient way of answering by Fire some obscure characters of which we may discern in that lamp of fire which passed betwixt the pieces of Abrahams Sacrifice And much plainer footsteps of it are to be seen in the contest of Elijah with the Prophets of Baal whom that true Prophet of the God of Israel vanquished by that sign triumphing also thereby over that false Deity which they so vainly and with Battologie invoked I doubt not but God vouchsafed to men many other appearances of his glorious Shechinah besides those granted to Adam and Abel before he expressed his high resentment of the immorality of the world in the Flood of Noah But we have no large Registers of the Transactions of those times PART 4. Of the Shechinah of God from Noah to Moses THis eminent declaration of God as a God of judgment by sending such a deluge not having its due effect on Cham God with great justice withdrew as I conceive this glorious Shechinah from him and his Line which continued his wickedness as well as his name From them he withdrew it especially though to the rest it appeareth not to have been a common favour Cham and his race being thus left to the vanity of their own brutish minds that race in the first place worshipped the Sun as the Tabernacle of the Deity that being the object which next to Gods Shechinah did paint in the brain an Image of the most venerable luster and perhaps likest to that glorious flame of Gods Shechinah which had formerly appeared for so glorious was that Planet in the eyes of the very Manichees in after-times that they esteemed it the seat of Christ after his Ascension and Installment in Heaven I have guessed already that this kind of Idolatry was exercised and with design promoted at the building of the Tower of Babel Now towards the prevention of that impious design the Shechinah of God appeared on the place For so Novatianus argueth from those words in the Eleventh of Genesis Let us go down It could not said he be God the Father for his Essence is not circumscribed nor yet an Angel for it is said in Deuteronomy That the most high divided the Nations It was therefore he that came down of whom St. Paul saith He who descended is he who ascended above all Heavens So that the Arabick Version the Angels came down must be interpreted of that part of the Shechinah which is made up by their attendance on the Son of God Whilst God was thus angry with the race of Cham it pleased him to vouchsafe though not in the quality of a daily favour the appearance of his Shechinah to that separate or holy seed from whence his Son not yet incarnate was to take the substance of his flesh A great Instance of it we have in the appearance which he vouchsafed to Abraham who often saw the Shechinah of God and in that manner communed with him so great was the ignorance of the Jews and causless their malice when they raged against the Son of God because he professed himself to have existed before that ancient Patriarch Such fall under the heavy sentence of the Council called at Sirmium a City of the lower Pannonia where the Eastern Bishops concluded on a Creed against Photinus who Haeretically maintained That Christ appeared not before he was born of the Virgin Of that Creed this is one of the Decretory clauses Whosoever saith that the unbegotten Father only was seen to Abraham and not the Son let him be accursed The second Chapter of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius is wholly spent in the proof of the Pre-existence of Christ. And in that place as also in his Book of Evangelical Demonstration he insisteth amongst many other Examples on that of Abraham to whom Almighty God did once by his Son shew himself a while in the common similitude of a man at the Oak of Mamre the Shechinah in its especial luster being for a short season intercepted That Place from this occasion was for many ages esteemed sacred so high a respect there is in man for the visible presence of a Divine Power But such things being apt to degenerate into abuse the same place by degrees became sacred in the sense of the Heathens that is polluted with many idolatrous superstitions At length the Piety of Constantine the Great did there erect a Church for the worship of Christ who had appeared in that place in a like form they say to that which he afterwards assumed with personal union Another appearance was vouchsaf'd to Abraham when the Judgment of Fire was imminent over Sodom Moses witnesseth That he who revealed this overthrow to the Patriarch was truly God whilst he introduceth Abraham using towards him the Divine style of the Judg of all the earth and that this Lord and Judg was