reguard the ceasing therefrom or any commands of God requiring it so long as his guides and leaders that pretend to have the keys of Heaven in their hands assure them that if but an hour or two before their deaths they confess their Sins and are sorry that they have endangered their Souls thereby and be a little attrite or troubled for them receiving absolution from the Priest and their extreme Unction they may by the vertue of the Sacraments to convey grace ex opere operato be secured against damnation and be eased too in and freed from their Purgatory pains if they be but bountiful to their Church and its Priests by the benefit of their devotions and the Saints Supererrogations so that by this first part of the Touch-stone they appear clearly convicted of being far from being an Infallible Church yea or a true and right Church of Christ especially if we also take in what some of them assert and their doctrine of probability therefore makes safe for all to believe viz. that no man is bound of necessity to love God but that is a work or frame of more perfection without which observing their Church Orders and receiving their Sacraments they may be saved Surely by our Saviours doctrine to love God is the first and great Commandment and that they that teach that men may be saved though destitute thereof cannot be under the commendation of keeping Gods commandments 2. And as much faulty are they with reference to the other branch of the character of the true Church opposed to the false Church or the Beast and his Image worshippers namely the keeping the faith or testimony of Jesus which they keep not that corrupt it and add their mixtures to and with it as the false Apostles kept not the faith of Jesus though they might hold as truths all the Articles of the Creed and teach them to others while they added thereto the necessity of being Circumcised and of keeping the Law of Moses unto Salvation no more than they would be commended for keeping for any ones use good and wholsome Wine commited to their custody and charge who would indeed deminish nothing of it but yet would mix with it some of those Stygian Waters which had a poysonous nature in them or other poysons whereby they might be made deadly to them that drink thereof such a Person might indeed plead that he had kept by him all the Wine deposited with him and took nothing of it away yea and that he gave out again all that other keepers of it who keep it Pure and give it out such as it is given do and something more but I suppose with no likement or commendation of him that commits it to him for the benefit of those that will drink of it just such keepers that is to say corrupters of the faith of Jesus are the Papists and their Church They retain with them indeed the whole Bible and all the Gospel and Gospel truths therein but so as to keep them in their Bibles from the generallity of the People that they may not read or hear them read to them yea and they retain with them and possibly Preach to the People and Teach them all the Articles of the Creed at least in an unknown Latin Tongue or if they also interpret them yet to be sure they teach them many other things as matters of faith necessary to be believed by them as much as any of the said Articles though they be quite different from all that Christ and his Apostles delivered to the Church to be believed by us as for instance they teach that God the Father and Christ and the Holy Ghost are one God in three Persons to be believed on and called upon by Men but they corrupt that with this addition of their own that the Saints also are to be called on and that they ought to believe on them to receive help by their intercessions being worshiped by them they teach that Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the World that he dyed for our Sins and offered up a Propitiatory Sacrifice to God for the whole World but then they add and mix of their own therewith that their Priests can do dayly make him of a Wafer and offer him up as an effectual unbloody sacrifice for the quick and dead to and that they ought to believe and expect to receive the forgiveness of their Sins through their Sacraficing him a most horrible impiety and indignity to his Cross and Passion and the alone virtue and efficacy thereof and a monstrous addition to and corruption of the faith once delivered of God to the Saints in his Apostles doctrine They hold and teach that Christ is risen from the dead and ascended into Heaven and sits at the Right Hand of God but they mix therewith and teach their Children and Followers to believe that the same very real Body that suffered and is in Heaven is also dayly in the Host at their Mass and is hung up in the Pix or Box that they put him into and that they carry up and down when they please in Procession and that they really tear him with their Teeth and eat him Lib. de Natura Deorum and therein they do what the Heathen Cicero abhorred to think of in their Pagan worship for he said quem tam amentem esse putas qui illud quo vescatur Deum credat esse that is who thinkest thou is so mad as to think that to be a God that he eats or is fed with those Papists are so mad as to think and teach so they hold and teach that there is a Heaven to reward the righteous and a Hell to Punish the wicked and so our Saviour delivered in his faith or testimony but withal they add that there is a third place between both called Purgatory wherein Souls that are not fit for Heaven when they dye may be purged by enduring pains and torments there and that the Pope hath the keys of this place to and can let Souls out of it c. And this Christ never taught nor his Apostles they believe and teach that there is a Holy Ghost and that he is to be believed in but they teach also corruptly that he is confined as it were to them of the Church of Rome and that their determinations or the determinations of their Popes out of St. Peters Chair are his infallible Oracles to be as much believed and held as fast as or more than the sayings of the holy Prophets Apostles in the Scriptures They teach that there is a holy Catholick Church but they add and mix with that also this Poysonful Doctrine that the Church of Rome only are that Church and that men are to resolve their faith into its sayings and conclusions and that the Pope is the visible Head of the whole Catholick Church and Christs Vicar on earth they teach a Communion of Saints but they teach also
how many Cities have Perished regardless or forgetful of their warnings how many Colonies have been led out by their directions and have been increased with great felicities while they have not neglected their commandments how many both Princes and private Persons have fared well or ill upon these accounts how many being troubled for want of Children by taking heed to them have obtained their desires how many have escaped the Anger of the Demons or devils how many that have been Lame in their Members have recovered their former soundness again how many doing violence to their holy things have forthwith been variously punished some have gone out of their Wits some have of their own accord confessed their evil facts others have made away themselves others have fallen into incurable diseases nor wants there examples of some who have been killed by a dreadful voice that hath proceeded forth from the cells or secret places of their Temples Such strange wonderful things could that Heathen boast of concerning his false Gods and their wicked Worship as I might also mention some instances that St. Augustine speakes of in his tenth Book de civitate Dei Cap 16. as of Aeneas his Images going of themselves from one place to another of â—arquinius cutting a Whetstone through with a Raisour of a Woman with her girdle only fastned thereto drawing a Ship that stuck so fast in the River Tybâ—r as it could not be moved as a Testimony of her Chastity and of another carrying Water in a sieve from the said River upon the like account not to mention the strange things done by Apollonius which Philostratus would make the world believe might be equallized with the Miracles wrought by Christ Surely these nor any nor all of these were no good evidences that they were Gods Church and that they or their doctrine or worship were approved of him though the Signs and Wonders seem not much Inferior to what either Theodoret in his 8. Book before mentioned relates of miraculous Cures done or helps obtained at the Monuments of the Martyrs or what some others have elsewhere related as St. Gregory or perhaps some of those things mentioned by St. Augustine lib. 21. de Civitate Dei cap. 8.9 c. But 2. Besides this there is another thing to be said to the Plea of the Roman Churches Miracles that a great many of them are fained forged matters and therein she is a lying false Harlot to go about to gull Souls with her lying and false delusions not but that those mentioned by St. Augustine or others of the Fathers might many of them be true and God might work many miracles at such places as were dedicated to the memory of the Martyrs and of his holy servants to draw people thereby to the beliefe and obedience of his truth which they had confessed and suffered Martyrdom for but doubtless Sathan and his instruments have also taken occasion thence either to work by Gods permission diverse strange things to punish those that therefore departed from the purity of the worship of God and Christ or also to counterfeit and pretend what was not indeed wrought to draw the minds of People into deceit I shall not search books for confirmation hereof seeing if any man will vouchsafe seriously to peruse what the Learned D. Stillingfleet hath largly discoursed on this subject of their pretended miracles he may be satisfyed sufficiently hereof only I shall set down hear what the forementioned Fryer Mr. Anthony Aegan in his recantation Sermon relates which is to this purpose That about seven years before his said Recantation Sermon made at London April 6. 1673. a Priest near the City of Limrick by name William Sarchwel had for fifty shillings hired a Woman to pretend her self a Cripple from her birth and that she had a revelation that if she dipt her self in such a Well while a Priest said Mass by the place she should be recovered of her Infirmity whereupon she came halting at a time appointed to the Well and returned out of it as one perfectly cured which became a miracle to the people and both got to the contriver a vast some of Mony and confirmed the People in their superstition which he tells us the said counterfeit Woman after some time upon some remorse of conscience confessed to him the said Anthony Aegan which he made her declare to the whole Congregation before he absolved her as also he tells of a Fryer of great note and zeal that told him that he was at a Franciscan Convent beyond the Seas where was the Image of the B. Virgin made with a scrue in the head thereof where they put in some water and having a string that came undeserned to a place where the Fryers stood when they thought the People had brought a good offering then by the help of that string they could unloose the scrue and then the Image of the B. Virgin would seem to weep and that was one of their Miracles which the relator said was a great scandal to him and that therefore he complained of it to the General of their Order who answered him that should he make a reformation in that particuler that Convent should starve to which he adds that the Monks of a certain Convent put a like cheat upon St. Barnard by an instrument carrying the Voice to the Image of the said Virgin Mary causing her to salute him with a salve Barnarde when he came into the Church but he apprehending the Cheat gave no other return to the complement but this that it is ashame for a Woman to speak in the Church but adds the said Fryer Aegan of all the fine stories commend me to this new Miracle they talk of for the confirmation of transubstantiation viz. that in a certain place in the King of Spains dominion as the Mass was celebrated all the perfect effigies proportion of a man rose out of the host but when the People came too near that they might see the Miracle plainly he Vanished away on which he only relates a remark made by a Facetious Person to the relatot of it you suppose said he that it was Christ himself that appeared and it seems upon the approach of the People he vanished away which is the only circumstance to make the Story credible for he might suppose the People were come to eat him and so he vanished I shall add to it this remark of my own that many of their Miracles are such as will not abide the search and tryal but upon a near approach to that end vanish into nothing but pretence and delusion Now if we put both these together both that false Prophets and Persons of false Religion may do signs and wonders especially lying signs and that many that are boasted of in the Church of Rome are the lying cheats and delusions of their Priests then will their Plea of Miracles be too far from evidencing them to be the true Church of Christ that it
here was not a taking Gods name in vain and a notorious leading men to debauch their consciences I know not what is as for the fourth commandment they keep not that while they keep Markets on the Sabbath day and less observe it than many of their own instituted holy days the fifth commandment how little they reguard their often absolving Children from ingagements to honour their Parents and obey them yea their stirring up Children somtimes against them as Gregory the ninth stirred up Henry the Son against his Father Frederick the second Emperour of Germany and how often they have discharged subjects from their due allegiance and obedience to their lawful Sovereigns stirred them up to rebel and rise in War against them both our own Cronicles and the Histories of other Nations do abundantly evidence And then as for the sixth commandment their Murthering of Princes and the many great Slaughters and Massacres yea destructions both of Souls and Bodies occasioned and caused by the Roman Church and her Bishops before hinted at sufficiently declare how little care they have thereof That they little reguard the seventh both their forbiding Marriage to their Priests without any order or command of God and Christ to that purpose nay contrary to the express permission and allowance thereof of God in the Scriptures for both our Lord Jesus Christ himself chose Married Persons to be Apostles at least Peter was such when he chose him for we read before that of his Wives Mother Mark 1.30 with 3.16 Which he would not have done surely had he judged a Wedded State incompatible or inconsistent with the Ministry which he instituted yea and that St. Peter and other Apostles led their Wives about with them when they were Apostles is evident in 1 Cor. 9.5 And the Apostle expresly both in his Orders about Bishops and in those about Deacons orders and much more allows that they be Husbands of one Wife and have their Children in subjection which they would not have done had they forbidden Marriage to the Bishops and Ministers of the Church or judged it unfit for them as these according to his predictions of false Teachers that would depart from the faith do 1 Tim. 3.2.4.11.12 with 4.12.3 By which means they often put them upon the practice of uncleanness whoredoms furnications and the like mischiefs and allow them to keep Concubines for Money besides the Practice of Sodomy even in the Popes themselves some of them and the notorious Wickedness of one of their Cardinals that wrote and Wrote published a Book in commendation thereof their allowing publick Stews for Mony even in Rome it self are sufficient Proofs And that they as little keep the eighth Commandment their insatiable covetousness and many frauds to get Mony some whereof have by the way been hinted at yea their grasping whole Kingdoms to themselves from their lawful Princes as they did a great part of Italy yea and Rome it self from the Emperours to which they belonged and our Kingdom of England in King Johns time and taking away by force the Kingdoms of some Princes from them and giving them to others whom they have incouraged to get them from them as appears in the History of the Albingenses and the attempts of their Popes and Sea of Rome against our late Queen Elizabeth are sufficient demonstrations besides the most horrible theft of all others they are guilty of in stealing or taking forcibly from men the word of God not suffering men to know or be instructed into that therein taking away the key of knowledg and shutting up the Kingdom of Heaven against them and robbing their Souls thereof a theft which God complained of in the false Prophets of Israel when he saith Behold I am against the Prophets which steal my word every one from his Neighbour Jer. 23.30 Against the ninth Commandment is all their reproaching and branding falsly as Hereticks those that will not subscribe to their corruptions stirring up Princes and People against them to make Havock of them And that the tenth commandment is little set by their Doctrine that denyes the first stirrings and motions of Sin to be Sins and their Doctrine of venial Sins and their insatiable covetousness may be evidence enough so that they are horribly guilty of not keeping the commandments of God the like may be observed too of their keeping the things given in commandment by our Lord Jesus Christ that they keep none of his commandments purely and incorruptly for whereas he commanded Baptism into the Name of the Father of the Son of the Holy Ghost they have corrupt that with many devises as of oyl and cream and spettle and the like Fopperies his commandment of his Supper to take and break and eat Bread set a part with blessing to that purpose and drinking the Cup in Remembrance of him and as a commemoration of his death they have horribly corrupted and changed into a sacrifice propitiatory and unbloody available for obtaining remission of Sins for the quick and for Dead and into private Masses and half Communions and the Pageantry of carrying the consecrated Host as a God in Procession the command of Preaching the word sincerely they have exchanged into teaching for Doctrines of men that is their own precepts and devises and his command about prayers and supplications unto God they have corrupted by injoyning Prayers in unknown Tongue and to others besides God even to Saints and Angels But what needed I to have been so larg in going over these several commandments when the complexion of much of their divinity is a clear patronage of all manner of Sin and Naughtiness while they promise to men the pardon thereof upon so easy termes as the only being at some small time before they dye grieved that they have sinned though without any real contrition of heart for it or love to God and so hearty sorrow that they have offended him as springing therefrom provided that they receive but the Sacrament as they will have it of their extream Unction and the absolution of one of their Priests and have devised a Purgatory in which after death they may be Purifyed though they continue till death in their Sins from the pains of which also they perswade men they may be soon delivered by the propitiatory sacrifices which they say they can and do dayly make in their Masses both for the quick and for the dead and by the indulgences which are in the Popes dispose and which for such sums of Mony given to their Church-men or for such uses as they prescribe as for the procuring Masses Dirgies and such like fopperies they propose to sale what are all these devises of this covetous Church and its Church-men but ways of making merchandise of mens Souls and an incouraging them in and unto an impenitent breach of all Gods commandments all their days for who that loves his lusts and lives in any pleasurable or profitable way of Sin will much