Where not only as to their Operation but Being are the Gods of Hamath and of Arphad Where are the Gods of Sephervaim Hena and Iva shall I say or the Gods of Europe Asia Affrica The Aegyptian Nile spawned Fish-Gods their Land brought forth Gods of Grass and Gods that eat Grass their Air was darkned with vollies of winged Deities In Greece the Genius of every species of Animals and Vegetives In Rome Pallor and Terror the Fever and Jaundice grew into Gods They had their he and she-deities for Conception Birth Puberty Marriage Merchandice c. Gods of the Closet of the Market Gods of the Close-stool and Chamber-pot such as 't is a wonder their own Jove did not thunder-strike the adorers of such as one would think Hercules might have scar'd into the holes of the earth with the shadow of his Club or blown away with his Fly-flap But that in the Exile of the lawful Soveraign every one has an equal right to the Crown and in that parity there is not a chip to chose betwixt a Peer and a Peasant a Calf will serve the Israelites for a God when they have forgot him that brought them out of Aegypt When men delight not to retain the Former of all things in their mind every Man will be a God-wright and frame an Image of the Deity of any thing that comes off the Wheel of his ever-running Imagination Yea Philosophy it self in those Times of Ignorance could not castrate the rank Fancies of Democritus and Epicurus of this prolifick God-teeming humour but that they spawn'd as many Gods that is eternal Beings as there are Atoms in their conceipted infinite Worlds In which particular I should think Laertius and Tully to have wronged their memories If I did not see in this Age of improved Learning and divine Light some mens Wind-mill-heads grinding the God head of the one eternal into as many and small grains as there are moats in the Universe If I did not see those Leviathans who make sport with and take their pastime in deriding the Notions of created Spirits and of the adorable Trinity of Persons in that one uncreated Essence as finding no bottom of that immense Ocean which Faith makes fordable to the meanest Christian themselves introducing an Hypothesis of more Spirits for take Divisibility from Matter and nothing remains but an Incorporeal Substance and he that talks of a crooked an hooked a three-corner'd Atome may with as much reason tell us of a Square or Triangular Circle except he can impose upon the World a new Grammar as well as Philosophy or perswade all Greece to forget its Mother-tongue than can stand betwixt York and Lancaster I could make infinite more room for them upon the Cartesian Ground but that is a Field large enough for all the Host of Heaven to incamp in and I shall enlarge their Quarters in my Reflections upon the other Hypothesis which the Doctrine of Atoms introduceth to wit as many Persons in the One Eternal Being as many distinct individual Subsistencies in the one Essence of Eternal Matter as we can imagine Moats in the Sun-beams should they dart themselves ten hundred thousand millions of times further upwards towards the Emperial Heaven than they do downwards to this Globe of Earth and spread themselves round about that vast Circumference in comparison of which this of our habitation is but an Atome For give Eternity to Matter and you give it the Essence of God make it subsist in Atomes each one distinguish'd from another and the result will be so many distinct Subsistencies in that one Essence Give to these Subsistencies a power of moving themselves which you must grant them or say they are moved by another and what can be elder than Eternity or by Chance Chance must be then before them and it must be the life of Reason and that will make e-every Atome an individual Person a Rational Hypostasis So that instead of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost subsisting in one undivided eternal Godhead This new Divinity commends to us more millions of divine Persons than could be reckon'd up in an age should all the men of that Age betake themselves all their life to their Counters That which we interpret A Troop cometh in the Story of Gad's Birth Gen. 30. 11. some Hebrews expound Fortune cometh upon which our learn'd Antiquary expends the first Chapter of his 1 Syntagme de Dais Syriis I will not undertake to determine which is the best Translation perhaps they may both stand with that Text though not better than their conjunction would suit the Birth of the Doctrine of Atomes For since Leah that blear-eyed purblind Epicuraean Philosophy grown under the Age of the Gospel past child-bearing hath upon the knees of her handmaid Zilpah Modern Atheism brought forth into the Christian Air her Son Gad or Fortune as that which made the eternal Atomes so happily meet as to fall into all those comely Forms whereof the World consists Gad or a Troop comes shall I say or a Legion or a Myriad of Troops of Deities God the crooked God the hooked God the obtuse God the sharp God the long God the short Atome for it would be a taking of that Name in vain to apply it to those infinite Forms into which those mens Fancies cast those eternal Beings which notwithstanding they call Atoms with a far greater Solecism than he committed with his Finger who pointed it to the Earth when he was speaking of the glorious Furniture of Heaven and shall rather bestow my time in transcribing that Exclamation which our divine Poet snbjoynes to the History of those and such like vanities of the Polytheists Ah! what a thing is Man devoid of Grace Adoring Garlick with an humble face Begging his food of that which he may eat Starving the while he worshippeth his meat Who makes a Root his God how low is he If God and man be sever'd infinitelie What wretchedness can give him any room Whose House is foul while he adores his Broom Let my stammering Muse add Nor dares not sweep't least from his foot arise So many Motes so many Deities Certainly Epicurus if he were true to his own Principles must have been a nasty Sloven and one whose disciples well deserv'd that compellation which the Satyrist gives them Epicuri de grege porci The Hoggs of Epicurus his Stie For he and his Litter of Followers must lie battening in their own Dung for fear of disquieting that eternal Matter a thing which the Deity does most abominate in their opinion and therefore does not interest it self in the affairs of the World but busies it self in dancing and frisking about and suffers it self to be carried whither Fortune pleaseth and not the Scavinger's Broom or Dung-rake I do not call Cartesius an Atheist though doubtless his Philosophy has made many but I think I may well enough call his a Feminine Philosophy in comparison of that of Plato or Aristotle grounded upon Principles
Proaem Empedocle Plinius sic nobile illud apud Graecos volumen Heraclidis septem diebus feminae exanimis ad vitam revocatae The like does Plutarch report of Aristaeus in his Romulus and of Thespesius de sera numinis vind We have here supererrogated having produc'd Pagan Testimony not only for the proving of matter of Fact to wit that this Article which we now profess was delivered by the Apostles to the Primitive Church but also their Confessions of the possibility of the thing believed § 6. Article 6. He ascended into Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God The Argument of Christ's Divinity drawn from his assumption into heaven they darken with so great a volly of Examples of their own Hero's as it would tire me to take up those Arrows one by one But that he ascended with that body that was crucified Celsus one while attributed to to delusion it being impossible as he argues that a body can be made immortal that being the Creature of inferiour Nature not of God as the soul is and all other immortal beings This Principle he borrows of the Manichees out of the dispute betwixt Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ lib. 4. cal 22. 23. Another while granting it true he denys it to be a sufficient proof of Christ's Deity because Cleomenes had by what Art God knows obtain'd that agility of body as he could fly up as fast and as far as a dart could even out of sight and that was as far as the Disciples could see Christ ascend But the gift which Christ shed forth after his Ascension spake him to have ascended far above the highest Heavens And as to the truth of this assertion That this was an Article of the Apostolical faith that Christ did ascend into heaven This Epicures carping at it is proof sufficient and his not daring to stand to his first Cavil that it was impossible but flying to another Salvo But it was no more than others before him bad done who yet thereby obtained not the repute of their deserving divine Honours is a tacit Concession to the Truth of the thing it self which is more than I here need to prove I will therefore hasten to the next Article which because of its relation to this I shall annex to the same Section Article 7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead The Epicurean Beast runs full mouth upon this Article and raiseth this crie It is the common guise of all Fanatick Prophets to profess themselves God or the Son of God or the divine Spirit and to give out such pretences as your Jesus made I am come into the world to save it from those impending judgements that are ready to fall upon it for its sins happy they that believe in me I will appear for their salvation when I come again in glory and great power with the heavenly host at which my coming I will adjudge all that reject me to everlasting Fire and they that now despise my menacies shall then when its too late to repent mourn and lament No Christian Catechist can better express the mind of this Article than this Philosopher here doth lib. 7. cal 3. A man of greater Reading than Celsus will be hard put to it to find one man before Christ's coming who did so much as pretend to his being appointed of God to be the Judge of all men And for those Mock-christ's who afterwards would have rob'd the blessed Jesus of this Prerogative and challeng'd it to themselves not one of them could shew their Commission under Gods hand as he did § 7. Article 8. I believe in the holy Ghost 1. As this implies the Equality and Consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father and the Son and his being therefore together with them to be worshipped as the Nicen Fathers expound it Porphyrie who for all Celsus his brags that he himself understood the bottom top and middle of our Religion was the best acquainted with our Scriptures both old and new of any Heathen Philosopher parallels it with his Master Plato's Opinion in St. Austin de Civitate 10. 23. quoted by R. vives and thus exprest by Porphyrie as St. Cyril contrà Julianum relates it Plato as well as the Christians held three Subsistences in the divine Essence to wit the All-Good and All-Great God the Father then the Creator God the Son and the third the Soul of the World the holy Ghost Tres Substantias in Essentia divina statuit Deum Opt. Max. deinde Creatorem tertiam Animam Mundi to wit that which moved upon the Waters the Lord and giver of Life as the abovesaid Fathers describe him What Beetle-brow'd Novices in Christianity are the Socinians who will not acknowledge the Revelation of the ineffable sacred Trinity to be communicated in these Evangelical VVritings wherein the Athenian Owls the Pagan Philosophers saw it so plainly exhibited as they not only take notice of it as an Article of our Religion in their Polemical Animadversions but offer to make proof that this point of Doctrine was embraced by their Wisemen even before it was attested by those wonders which God set as his seal for the confirmation of the Gospel So little did they deem it to be against Reason as by the conduct even of Reason they stumbled upon that Divine Notion which the Socinians will not submit their vain Reason to the belief of upon the strongest of all Reasons Divine Revelation proved to be so by the clearest of all evidences the demonstration of power exerted at the first manifest revelation of this Mystery at the Baptism of Christ when the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended upon the Son and a voyce was heard from the Father 2. As it implies still to go along with the same Father the Churches confession of her belief that the holy Ghost spake by the Prophets It is thus assronted by Celsus lib. 8. cal 16. what you boast of the Spirit speaking by your Old and New Testament-prophets we can out-vie if we had a mind to repeat those many Oracles of our Prophets and Prophetesses who sung future things with a Prophetick voice which they suck'd in from the Recesses of the Gods those many which were delivered from the Entrails of Sacrifices and premonstrated from other Prodigies or reveiled by the vive-voyce of the Gods themselves appearing in visible forms How many Cities have been founded by the advice of Oracles and been freed from Famine and Pestilence by following their direction or brought to utter ruine hy forgetting or despising their Counsels How many Colonies have been sent forth upon their Order thriving exceedingly while they followed their counsel To how many Princes and private men has it been fortunate or fatal to observe or sleight them How many barren Women have become fruitful How many maimed persons have recovered the use of their Limbs How many distracted persons the use of their Reason by following the advice of Oracles
and first of his thirty first However this will make no difference here for be it first or last it comes all to one as to the vindicating of this commonly-received Truth that St. Luke dates Christ's Birth and Baptism on the same day But for the Reasons pre-alledged I adhere to Scaliger And therefore if you demand where St. Luke testifies this I answer where he saith that Jesus when he was baptized was thirty years of age that is on that day which terminated his thirtieth and gave beginning to his thirty first Secondly and if St. Luke had not thus punctually delineated the Time of Christ's Age when he exhibited himself to the Baptist as a Candidate for Ordination Yet the same thing might be collected from that Law under which the Law-giver put himself that he might fulfill all righteousness prohibiting the Priests to officiate till they were thirty and commanding them then to enter upon the exercise of their sacred Function Numb 4. They shall serve from thirty years old and upwards By virtue of this Law Christ would have been a Transgressor had he intruded himself into the sacred Ministry before his thirtieth year was compleated and therefore till then he doth not shew himself to Israel no not to his own Parents for his Mother was uninstructed in the knowledge of her Son not to his Fore-runner for the Baptist though he knew Christ was in the croud yet who was he he knew not till he saw the Spirit descending upon him but kept at home and was subject to and under the Nurture of Father and Mother So wide is that Gloss from the sence of that Text where we have account of Christ's being amongst the Doctors which stiles it Christ's disputing with them which was nothing else but his exhibiting himself at twelve years as an Israelitish Catechumen to ask the Law the Tearms of the Covenant which he enter'd when he receiv'd Circumcision and to receive their Answers to what he propounded or to answer their Questions not as their Doctor but Scholar and upon his examen and their approbation of him who sate in Moses Chair personally to enter into that Covenant which his Sureties had enter'd into in his name at his Circumcision The Work of his Father which he had there to do was to be a Scholar not a Teacher And on the other hand he would not have been an exact fulfiller of that Law if he had delaid the tender of himself to Ordination beyond the time fixt by the Law and not applyed himself to the Baptist at whose laying hands upon him he knew he was to receive the Holy Ghost and be visibly separated to that Work which his Father had fore-ordained him to assoon as ever he was legally capable of it in respect of Age upon this account Christ urged the Baptist in these words suffer it now for thus it behoves us to fulfill all righteousness Christ had no need to be baptized with John's Baptism the Baptism of Repentance for remission of sins neither did he receive that Baptism but John's Baptizing of him was of another kind than his Baptizing of other persons to wit and external Rite in the administration whereof Christ was to be visibly set apart and called by God to his Office of Preaching See Dr. Hamond's Annot. the Law therefore the Righteousness whereof Christ fulfill'd in being baptized by John was that which prohibited Prophets to run till they were sent of God But this was not all the Righteousness which Christ fulfill'd now but also of that other Branch of the Law commanding them whom God had separated to the service of the Sanctuary to enter upon that Function as soon as they were thirty years of Age and therefore our Saviour inserts this note of time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 suffer it now now that the impediment of Age is removed I must not defer my entrance upon the work of Teaching Nay if there had not been such a Law Christ's Love to us would have been a Law to himself He who when the time was come that he should be offer'd was straightned till his Baptism of blood was accomplish'd that went into the Garden to meet the Traytor would sure not be well at ease when the time was come assigned by the Law of his Father that he should be inaugurated in the Office of the great Prophet till he was baptized with that Baptism of Water by John and of the Holy Ghost by his Father by which he was to be consecrate to that Office Would this tender Shepherd of Souls for his love and for his pitty let a day pass after the removal of the impediment of Under-age before he put himself into a capacity of seeking and saving the lost Sheep of Israel How have they learned Christ either as to his Obedience to his Father or his Compassion to his Brethren who scruple the belief of this point which the Primitive Church Universally embraced upon so good and solid Reasons as who so questions the force of them must present the blessed Jesus to their own minds as a person that cared not what the Father said not what we ail'd § 3. Propos. 3. This being concluded on and laid for a Ground that Christ's Birth and Baptism fell on the same day of the year I proceed with this Light before me by the help of those Chronological Observations I have or shall irrefragably make good to find out the Day of Christ's Nativity The Mother of John Baptist was going in her sixth month at the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin and Conception of Christ St. Luke 1. 36. And loe thy cousin Elizabeth hath conceived a son 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and this is her sixth month saith the Angel Gabriel when he was sent to Mary the blessed Mother of our Lord in the sixth month that is of Elizabeth's Conception vers 26. about these days of Zacharie's returning home from fulfilling his Office in the Temple in the Course of Abias that is the eighth in order of those twenty four into which David divided the Priests 1 Chron. 24. 10. the eighth Lot fell to Abijah Elizabeth conceived and hid her self five months and in the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to a City of Galilee named Nazareth unto a Virgin espoused to an husband whose name was Joseph and the name of the virgin was Mary Certainly if it had not been of use to us to know the Time of our Saviour's Conception the Holy Ghost would not have given this Character of it twice in ten Verses Nor a Rule to find it out in his specifying the Course of Abias falling out immediately before the Baptist's Conception if that Rule had not been both sure and applicable to this Question He would never have beaten the Air with those Chronological Descriptions of it had it been vain for us to know the time or impossible for us to find it out so manifestly false is that Fanatick Conceit which the Novelist
declaring the Councel of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 enim Deos non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for they called according to the Aeolick Dialect God Sios not Theos and Counsel not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 biâ—t 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thence the Sibyls were so called who were Ten. All whom he reckons up under those Authors who wrote of them severally The first the Persian of whom mention is made by Nicanor who wrote the Gests of Alexander The second Libyssa whom Euripides mentions in Lamiae prologo The third Delphick of whom Chrysippus speaks in his Book of Divination The fourth Cumaea in Italy of whom Nevius in his Punick War and Piso in his annals make mention The fifth Erythraea whom Apollodorus Erythraeus affirms to have been his Citizen and at the Gracians expedition against Troy to have prophesied the overthrow of that City and the lying Pen of Homer The sixth Samia of whom Eratosthenes writes That he had found in the ancient Annals of the Samians that she had prophesied of him The seventh Cumana by name Amalthaea or as some call her Demophile as others Herophile She brought nine Books to Tarquinius Priscus demanding three hundred Philippicks for them a price which the King would not give but taught at the madness of the Woman upon which she burnt three of them in the King's presence and demanded the same price for the remainder at which the King more admired her folly But she persisting upon the same price after she had burnt other three for the three then remaining the King gave it her The number of these Books was increased after the repair of the Capitol because they gathered up and brought to Rome all the Books of any of the Sibyls that could be found either in the Grecian or Roman Cities Vide Tacit. annal 6. The eighth Hellespontica whom Heraclides Ponticus writes to have flourished in the time of Cyrus The ninth Phrygia who prophesied at Ancirae The tenth Tyburtina whose name was Albunea who is worship'd at Tybur as a Goddess The Verses of all these Sibyls are extant and divulged up and down except of Cumana whose Books are conceal'd by the Romans it being unlawful for any to look into them but the Quindecim-viri Their several Books but without distinction of Names saving that Erythraeas Name is inserted in her Verses being more famous and noble than the rest of whose Prophecies Fenestella a most diligent Writer speaking of the Quindecim-viri tells us That C. Curio the Consul made a motion to the Senate that Embassadors should be sent to Erythrae to search out Sibyls Verses and conveigh them to Rome and that P. Gabinius M. Octavilius and L. Valerius being sent upon that errand collected a matter of a thousand Verses out of private Manuscripts Touching Tully's Quotations of the Sibylline Oracles I have spoke before Lib. 1. cap. 9. sect 5. and shall to what I have made there upon that Subject add now these Animadversions That the Sibylline Oracles were not only in being before Christ's time but a moat in the eyes of those who were averse to Monarchy because they were interpreted to point at the erecting an universal Monarchy and to boad that indefinitly and in general before Christ's Incarnation which the Church after his taking of flesh applied to him in particular So as the Church was so far from inventing the Oracles as she did not so much as invent the application of them to the Messias but had that done to her hand by other Heathen Divines who conceived they had respect unto him that was to be born King of the Jews For though I believe the more ancient Times look'd upon them as deliramenta as little better than the dotages of old Women because of their denouncing certain monstrous Miracles without describing either how or when or by whom those things were to be effected of which deficiency both Lactantius after and Cicero before Christs Birth take notice yet when the Eastern Prophecy touching the Messias came to light by means of the Septuagint those Scripture-oracles by their punctual describing of every circumstance gave that light to those more general Sibylline Oracles as they grew formidable to that party that could not endure to hear of a change of the Worlds Government into that form which both of them foretold the rising up of And when the general ones in Sibyl and the more distinct ones of sacred Scripture came to receive their accomplishment their sense grew more plain and the application of them more obvious which till then was unintelligible The voices of the Prophets sounded in the ears of the Jewish people for above fifteen hundred years and yet were not understood till Christ's Doctrine Actions and Passion had commented upon them I do not at all wonder with the learned Dalaeus de usu patr lib. 1. cap. 3. that Ruffinus in zeal to Origen should forge an apology for him under the name of Pamphilus nor that he should father a Treatise of Sextus the Pythagorean Philosopher upon Sixtus the holy Martyr nor that he of whom St. Jerom complains should forge a Letter under his name wherein he makes him confess the Hebrews had by their delusions perswaded him to translate the Bible after that maner he did But rather at his ranking the most ancient Fathers among Forgers for their quoting the Sibylline Oracles and most of all at the reason he gives because Celsus objected that against Christians For had he consulted the place he might have taken notice of Origen's Reply That if Celsus his Epicurism would give him lieve to put himself to the trouble of examining the Authors out of which they made their quotations he would find they did not forge them of their own heads but found them in Authors of high esteem among all Philosophers but those of Celsus his Sect Origen contrà Celsum lib. 7. Calum 16. Besides it is not like that such holy men would support so strong an edifice with so weak a prop of a pious fraud or borrow help from a falshood to evince the Truth If they durst have been so impudently ventrous how easie had it been for their learned Adversaries to have detected the Imposture and silenced the Christian Advocates with reproach and shame as Dr. Heylin in answer to Casaubon Geogr. Marmoricâ pag. 931. If it be question'd how they came into the Christians hands Lactantius inform us out of their own Writers That the Books of all the Sibyls save Cumana were vulgar and in every Man's hand that would reach for them And though Augustus caused a thousand Sibylline Oracles to be burnt which by the number seem to be those very Verses of Erythraea which the Roman Legats collected against which he might perhaps have a pique upon reason of State because of their agreement with that Eastern Oracle which had put the World into those expectations of a change as that wise Prince thought ought not to be cherished as tending toward the keeping of
their sacred Conventions and to collect Oblations and Moneys for their Sacrifices and lays before them the Decree of Sex Caesar who when he was Consul though he interdicted all other Fraternities yet he allowed the Jews to hold Religious Meetings and to gather Collections in order to the maintenance of their Religious Services and his own Example who permitted the Jews to live after the custom of their Forefathers and their own Laws Josephus Ibidem Dolobella after Caesar's Murder writes to the Ephesians and all the Asians that it was his pleasure as it had been of all the Emperours his Predecessors that the Jews should be permitted to use the Customs of their Fathers to meet for holy Exercises as their Law commanded and to confer their accustomed Oblations towards maintaining their Temple and the Services thereof Joseph antiq 14. 17. and to spare other instances Titus aggravated the Rebellion of the Jewish Priests whom he charges to have been the Incendiaries of the War from the favours which the Romans had shewed the Jews ever since their Conquest amongst which hereckons this for one of the chief That they had always been allowed to receive the Tribute which by their Law was due to God and to collect free gifts for the use of the Temple Quódque maximum est Tributum capere Dei nomine ac donaria colligere permissimus Joseph Bel. Jud. l. 7. c. 13. There is no convincing of him that shuts his eyes against this Light 3. The Jews therefore till Vespasian were not commanded to pay the Didrachma to any but their own Collectors for the use of the Temple which he ordering to be paid to the Capitol made a greater Incroachment upon their sacred Privileges than any former Conquerour had done even to the utter subversion of their holy State making as much as in him lay the God of Judah a Tributary King to the Gods of Rome Not that he himself was conquer'd by those Gods as Vespasian blasphemously implyed by transferring his Tribute to them in the Conquest of his people the Jews August de consensu evang l. 1. 14. Non quòd ipse sit victus in Hebraeo populo suo qui Regnum ejus Romanis expugnandum delendúmque permisit whose Kingdom he permitted the Romans to carry away by force For though the Conquerours at the present triumph'd over him and made their Idols set their seet upon the subjugated Neck of this sleeping Lyon yet it was not long ere he rouzed up himself and having taken his Kingdom from that Prophetick Nation because then he was come who was promised by it he by Christ subdued to his name that Roman Empire by which that Nation had been subdued and converted it by the Force and Devotion of the Christian Faith to the Overthrow of Idols an admirable thing saith St. Austin de consensu evangel lib. 1. cap. 14. That he whom the conquered had so offended as he would no longer reign over them and the Conquerours would not then receive for their King is now worship'd of all Nations and manifested to be that very God of Israel of whom so long before was prophesied Isa. 54. 5. The redeemer the holy one of Israel the God of the whole earth shall he be called Now was fulfilled the Prophecy of Moses Deut. 28. 64. The Lord shall scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth unto the other and there thou shalt serve other Gods which neither thou nor thy fathers have known even wood and stone Let the Jew shew if he can in what other Dispersion but this under Vespasian they served Gods of Wood and Stone In the Babylonish Captivity they had that constantly in their mouth The Gods that made not heaven shall utterly perish from under this heaven Jer. 10. 11. and were so far from falling down before their Idols as they chose rather to be cast into the Lion's Den into a fiery Furnace Or in what sence during this last and fatal Dispersion they have been induc'd to serve Gentile-Gods of Wood and Stone but in their being forc'd to pay that homage of Soul-tribute to the Capitoline Gods which was the holy one of Israel his due while he stood in that relation to them which being ceased they as Slaves become tributary not only to a foreign State for that had been their frequent portion without impeachment of God's peculiar Sovereignty over them even then when he ruled over them in fury that being a gracious Dispensation to bring them back into the Bond of the Covenant they that formerly led them captive and tyrannized over them were but as their Shepherd's Dogs to fetch them in again when they strayed away and would not be reclaim'd by their Shepherd's Whistling to them in the Ministry of their Prophets but forreign God's Master Mede's Paraphrase upon the Text last quoted doth in part express my sence that is they should serve them not religiously but politically inasmuch as they were to become Slaves to idolatrous Nations it being his Conceipt that God 's are here put for Nations serving strange Gods But saving the honour I bear to the memory of that worthy Person then whom few of Christ's Oxen have labour'd more strenuously on Christ's Floor in not treading out his Master's Corn the Encomium which St. Austin gives St. Jerom. I humbly conceive Titus with the point of his Spear hath writ in the Dust of Jerusalem so clear a Comment upon this Text as we need not fly to the refuge of a Trope for its Exposition when we see that People become Servants not only to the idolatrous Romans but the Idols of Rome whom they serve not Religiously but politically being forc'd their Conscience the Seat of all Religious Worship reclaiming to do that Homage to them while they pay the Tribute of their Soul to the Capitol which was the God of Israel's due but now as inacceptable to him as the Tythe of the Whore's hire was of old of which Philo Judaeus lib. 2. de Monarchia hath this Observation It was not with the Money that God found fault but the person that offer'd it was together with her hire abominable how vile therefore must she be in Gods sight whose Money he accounts prophane and adulterate may not we as rationally conclude that God expressed his abominating the Jewish Nation by his refusing to accept the price of their Souls and his assigning them to pay it and thereby to accknowledg Fealty to strange Gods and such Gods so it follows in Moses Prophecy as neither they nor their Fathers knew which could be no other than the Roman for the Gods of Egypt Syria Chaldaea c. whither they had been formerly carryed captive their Fathers knew too well and had often gone a Whoring after them But these Gods whom Vespasian made them serve and become Tributary to their Fathers scarce ever heard of and themselves never acknowledged till now that God set the wicked over them and plac'd Satan at
thinking they were God's But the Jews are forc'd to homage them whom they knew were no Gods and therefore were holy to these their new Lords after a peculiar way of seperation and different from all the People in the World Henceforth their holy Lamps and Book of their Law must be deposited among the Gentiles in their Metropolis and perhaps in the Emperour's Palace that all Nations upon the Earth might vindicate God's severity against the Fedifrages and proclaim the Equity of his Ways after a Perusal of the Covenant betwixt God and them That the Gentiles might be lighten'd to the acknowledgment of that Lord Christ whom the Jews had rejected to whom Lamp and Law would be more useful than they had been to that blind Generation which by malicious Ignorance had put out its own Eyes § 3. But these wonders that these Utensils should escape the Fire should be singled out for Triumph and a Jewish Priest's committing all this to perpetual Memory which so clearly expresseth God's cancelling his Covenant with the Jews and his calling the whole World to be Witness of his giving them so full a discharge have nothing worthy of admiration in them in comparison of that for which principally I made the premised Allegations viz. That Judah's God should all this while hold his peace if indeed he were at that time Judah's God and had not renounc'd all Relation to those sometimes holy Things holy People nay and holy Name too For the Roman Eagle flutter'd in Triumph equally over all these That he should suffer the Actors of these Tragedies to reign in honour to depart in peace one of their own Priests urgeth this Argument Joseph Bel. Jud. l. 6. cap. 11. God was wont to avenge you on your Adversaries but Vespasian may thank the Jewish Wars for the Empire these Fountains and for instance that of Siloam which were dry to you run so plentifully to Titus as to afford Water enough for his Men for his Cattel and the flowing of the Grounds he has gain'd Therefore I believe God hath left the Temple and is fled from you and takes part with them with whom ye war I shall therefore prosecute this Argument more particularly This I say can never be sufficiently admired that Israel's quondam God should suffer the great-Instruments of their Misery to live applauded as the Delights and Darlings of Humane Kind to die bewailed with no loss sorrowful resentment of the Publick than that which men feel for and express at the loss of their own dearest and most intimate Relations and to be followed to the Funeral Pile with more Praise than Flattery her self could pour out upon living Princes Titus cognomine paterno amor deliciae humani generis Excessit quod ut palà m factum est non secus atque in domestico luctu maerentibus publicè cunctis Senatus tantas mortuo gratias egit laudésque quantas congessit nè vivo quidem unquam atque praesenti Suetonius Titus cap. 1. 11. Vespasian had no Mene Tekel writ against him for that Apparition he saw in his sleep of a pair of Ballances hanging up in the Porch of the Palace with Claudius and Nero in one and himself and Children in the other Scale was a Vision of Peace importing the Translation of the Imperial Crown out of the Julian into his the Flavian Family and the continuance of it in that Family as long as it had remain'd in the former during the Reigns of Claudius and Nero and that with such Felicity as the happy and beneficial Reigns of him and his Sons should counter-ballance the Mischiefs which the World receiv'd by the male-administration of those two last degenerate Branches of the Julian Stock By which Vision and other Portents he was so well assured of his Son's Succession as he was wont to ascertain the Senate That in spight of all treasonable Attempts to the contrary he was sure his Son or no body should reign after him Sueton. Vespasianus cap. 25. Titus indeed complain'd at his death that he had done one act for which he repented and but one Neque enim exstare ullum suum factum paenitendum excepto duntaxat uno Sueton. Titus cap. 10. So far was God from writing such bitter Bills against him that might make his Countenance fall his Joynts shake and his Knees smite against one another as he did against his Fellowblasphemer as he with hands stretched out to Heaven and a naked Breast complain'd to the God of Heaven almost in Job's Phrase I am cut off but not for my iniquity for I do not remember that ever I did any Act to be repented of except one What that Fact was he neither discovered saith mine Authour nor is it easie for any man to tell some thought it was his too much intimacy with Domitia his Brother's Wife but if that had been so that impudent Woman would have boasted of her being nought with so great and good a Man for she was a Woman not shy of keeping her own Counsel in such Cases If I may give my Conjecture I suppose it might probably be his seeking to obtain the Judaean Crown for himself a Design which his Father was jealous he had in his head and for which he incur'd hatred and blame while he served his Father in the Judaean Wars However it could not be his slaughtering and captivating the Jews his sacking their City and Temple his carrying away the holy Spoils for here were such a Multiplicity of Acts as to have confessed himself guilty in those things had been to have accused the greatest part of his Life after he came upon the the open Stage which was in a manner spent in Actions of this tendency And had God for vindicating the Glory of his sometimes-great Name charged upon his Conscience the guilt of his challenging the God of Judah he would have charged it so home as to have made him confess and give glory to God And to speak the naked Truth though the Rabbies put a blasphemous Gloss upon the words of Titus yet he did not thereby intend to affront that God who sometimes had been Judah's God but knowing that he came against Judea at the call and by the conduct of that God to dishearten them and encourage his own men he told them Their God was put to Sea that is he had forsaken the protection of them and their Land their strength was departed from them upon which account he subjoyn'd Let him come and give me Battel that is try if with all your strongest cries you can engage him to take your part who I am sure takes mine against you The words indeed sound like Nabsheca's or Nebuchadnexxar's but the difference of the times make their sence as different from theirs as Light from Darkness The God of Heaven was then God of the Jews and those Nations indivisible and therefore they in the name of their Idols defied the God of Heaven under the name of the God of Israel But
The Jew in Celsus lib. 2. 6. upbraids the Christian for believing in him that could not avoid or evade those dangers that Death he was brought to by the Treason of his own Disciple but suffer'd himself to be apprehended arraigned condemned and crucified for all that he fore-knew and fore-told his Disciples of those things that befell him And that they put their confidence in Jesus who not only in appearance suffer'd these things but really openly before many Witnesses as themselves say what God Angel or but wise Man would wittingly and willingly have been taken in those snares which were laid in his sight if he could have help'd it Is it not a wonder that Christ by telling Judas of his Treason Peter of his Denial should not have been so far revered they believing him to be God as to prevent the Apostacy of the one the Lapse of the other or did he not by foretelling it teach them to do it and lay snares for the Companions of his Table God is impassible why then did Christ if he were God suffer such an Agony for fear of death as made him sweat like drops of Water and Blood and cry out to be saved in the Garden in these words Father if it be possible let this Cup pass from me and complain on the Cross in these My God my God why hast thou forsaken me The Christians after all their Promises produce for the Son of God not a pure and holy Word as they term Christ but a man affected with most ignominious suffering beaten with stripes spit upon and nailed to the Cross whence he could not descend though provoked to do it It was then sure high time for him to declare himself God when the Jews insulted over him before Pilat when in mockage they put on him a purple Robe put a Reed for a Scepter into his hand and set a Crown of Thorns upon his head with the pricking whereof as also of the Nails and Spear Blood issued out from him I pray what kind of Blood was that that flowed from your crucified God was it not like that which issued from the wounded hand of Venus Cruor qualis divis manat ille beatis Can you blame us Jews for not embracing for our Prince Messiah one that while he lived could not get above eleven or twelve Disciples and those Fishermen and Publicans the most dis-ingenuous kind of men and most easie to be seduc'd who rather than they would run the hazard of suffering with him did with most fearful execrations deny him One who while he was upon the Cross was so impatient of pain as he thirsted and greedily gulp'd in a draught of Vinegar and discovered more impatiency than an ordinary man would have done You say indeed he descended into Hell Observe by the way that our over-wise Disputers who question the Antiquity of the Article of the Descent are more ignorant of the Christian Faith than this dull-pated Epicurean Philosopher this Article was so obvious to Celsus as he made it the subject of Derision and yet is so dark to men that can see through a Mill-stone as we must take it for a courtesie if they will allow us to make it the Object of our Faith Was it to get Disciples there seeing he could get so few among the living lib. 2. cal 41. the Jew mentions Christ's last words at giving up the Ghost the Earthquake and Darkness that attended his death On these Scenes Celsus as he discovers the truth of the delivery of these parts of the History of Christ and his knowledg of that History so it bewrays his ignorance in the Contents of the Old Testament wherewith if he had been acquainted he would never have brought a Jew upon the stage thus to flout at the blessed Jesus for suffering those things which their own Prophets foretold were to befal their Messias to wit that he was to be apprehended arraigned and condemned as a Lamb not opening his mouth that he was to have Vinegar given him to drink that he was to be betrayed by Judas forsaken of his Disciples denyed by Peter c. So that Celsus could not have devised how to evince the Jew more effectually that Jesus is the Christ than by these very Arguments that he puts into his mouth against him nor more manifestly have confirm'd the Truth of that Evangelical Assertion That the Jews stumbled on this stone of Christs outward Meanness they dreaming of a Messias who would come in external Pomp. While you Christians saith Celsus unpersonated lib. 3. cal 9. worship for God one that was apprehended and condemned and put to death you are but Apes of the Getae who worship Xamolxis of the Cylicians who adore Mopsus of the Acarnanians who give divine honour to Amphilochus of the Thebanes who revere the Deity of Amphiaraus and of the Lebadiensians who repute Trophonius a God Upon this point he beats again lib. 6. 12. You contemn our Jove because the Cretians shew his Sepulchre in their Island why do you then worship Jesus who was buried Their Jove never declared himself to be the eternal Son of God by his Resurrection from the dead as our Jesus did And lib. 6. 18. that prophane Wretch thus scoffs at the Christians using these words The Tree of Life the Blood of the Cross c. such words are often in their mouths I suppose because Jesus was crucified and his Father Joseph a Carpenter sure had he been thrown down from a Rock precipitated into a deep Dungeon or strangled in an Halter had he been a Currier a Bricklayer or a Blacksmith we should have heard the Christian extol to the Heavens the Rock of Life the Dungeon of Resurrection the Halter of Immortality the blessed Stone the Iron of Love the holy Pelt So much foolishness was the Cross of Christ to this Grecian But these Scoffs Lactantius well answers tot latrones semper perierunt quotidiè pereunt quis eâ—rum post crucem suam non dico Deus sed homo appellatus est de justitia l. 5. cap. 3. And he must be a weak Christian that needs any other help to get over these Blocks without stumbling than what Christ hath afforded in his Resurrection for as in these he declared himself Man made under the Law and pointed out by Prophesie so in that he demonstrated himself God This Article was opposed as Apostolical by the Affrican Gentiles as well as European the sound of it went over the Sea But what need we more than the Jews reproaching us with it in stiling our Saviour Suspensus and the confession of Benjamin Tudelensis in itinerario that Jesus was put to death at Jerusalem Grotii annotat ad lib. 2. pag. 153. and the Vote of Tacitus annal l. 15. that Christ of whom the Christians are denominated suffer'd by Pontius Pilate the Governour in the Reign of Tiberius § 5. Article 5. The third day he rose again from the dead You therefore believe Christ to
Works of Christ and their Magi will be discust in its proper place I am now only to shew what inconvenience the Learned Gentile was put upon while he is forc'd upon making this Exception as not having the face to deny the Matters of Fact 1. By the Evidence of Christ's great Works he is convinc'd that Christ was a good an holy Man for none but such were privileged with a Power of doing such Works as he did By the same Evidence he must confess that Christ is God for he profest himself to be one with and equal to the Father and a good man will not lye 2. Again if Christ were an holy Man and by his Holiness had attain'd the Magick Art he would have communicated the Principles of that Art to others for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a good man is a common good communicative of his profitable knowledge The Pagan here was driven to this Reply That Christ did write Books of the Magick Art and dedicated and delivered them to St. Peter and Paul They could not saith St. Austin have pitch'd upon a more ridiculous answer the falshood thereof laying open to the youngest Catechumen who can tell these gray-beards that Christ was ascended into Heaven before St. Paul became his Disciple But they had seen the Memories of those two Apostles celebrated together and had heard them spoken of as the prime Apostles the one of the Circumcision the other of the Incircumcision and therefore they joyn'd them in this Fable as the likeliest persons by whose hands Christ might diffuse the Principles of the Magick Art through the World of Jew and Gentile Or they might take up this Conceipt from the Helcesaitae of whom Eusebius thus writeth St. Origen in Psal. 80. mention'd a kind of Hereticks called Helcesaitae who gave out that they had a Book which fell down from Heaven which who so heard and believed the doctrine thereof should receive an otherwise Remission of sins than that which Christ dispensed This should be a Book of Magick by that Title in Justinian's Codex de maleficis mathematicis o◠Incantationes quibus utebantur where amongst others that Heresie of the Helcesaitae is condemned Euseb. hist. lib. 6. cap. 31. § 5. But the mischief of mischiefs that the Jew has brought upon his own and his fellows Causes in his not being able to resist the Truth of the Evangelical History is this That hereby he has afforded the Christians of this last Age an even ground to play with them upon at all other Weapons in all the remaining Controversies touching that Subject 1. It being confest that the Doctrine of the Gospel was deliver'd by Christ and his Apostles and witnessed to by such wonderful Works as are therein reported for the determining of this Question whether those Works are truly and properly Miracles and sufficient indications that the perpetrators of them were commission'd by God as his Embassadors to treat with man we of this Age are every way as well instructed as they that were or as we our selves could have been had we been Eye-witnesses of them whether Pompey or Caesar had the better Cause it being supposed that Antiquity has given us the true state of it may as well and perhaps more impartially be resolved by Modern Civilians than by Cato or Cicero though there may be more danger of mistake in resolving this Case than ours for the precise Rules that Lawyers are in that case to proceed by are not the universal Maximes of Right but as they are confin'd limited and manacled by the then Laws of the Roman State where that might have been just or unjust two thousand years ago that would be the quite contrary now in respect of those mutations have in the interim befaln their Politicks But in our Case we are to walk by standing and fixed Principles in Nature of eternal Verity nothing can be a Miracle or not a Miracle now that would not have been so three thousand years ago State-maximes are not like the Laws of Medes and Persians unalterable but the Covenant which God hath made with Day and Night the Ordinances of Sun Moon and Stars cannot be broken but by the immedate hand of him that made them Jer. 32. 26. 33. 20. And therefore we who live now are better abilitated to judge when the interposition of that hand suspends the operation of those Ordinances than they who lived before us saving the advantage they had of us by means of the first Traditional Learning communicated either by God to Adam or by Adam to the Patriarchs or acquired by those long-livers before the Flood the length of whose Age allowed them so large a time to conn those Lessons which the hand of creating Omnipotencie had writ in the Volume of the Universe and deliver'd by their survivour Noah to the Generations after the Flood the benefit whereof the Devil did not so much envy to humane kind as he did the Tradition of Religion and therefore that was better preserv'd than this Though our own be but a Pigmey-experience yet it stands upon the Giants Shoulders of the experience of former Ages by means of which upper ground we daily make new Discoveries and take out new Lessons out of the Book of Nature facile est inventis addere To say nothing of the Modern helps we have Of Scripture-physicks by which many of the old Philosophers mistakes are discover'd and we lighted to a clearer discovery of Nature than Nature could make of her self Of Accademies where we enjoy all imaginable expedients of Arts towards the perfecting our Minds in the knowledge of Natures Laws and Learning to judge when those Laws are either suspended or improved beside or beyond their own Line the benefit of which opportunity would yet be improved if we would subordinate Philosophy to Divinity in point of Authority and Use of Authority in preferring the Light of the Sun to the blaze of that Candle of the Lord within us of Use in studying natural Ethicks and Physicks to the end we may know where Nature ends as to both and where Grace and the God of Nature begins to out-do those ordinary Powers that are planted either in the great World or its Epitome 2. The Truth of the Gospel-Narrative yielded If upon due examination but any one of those mighty Works therein reported to have been done do undoubtedly appear to be a Miracle we may we must without the least haesitancie rest assured of the Infallibility of the Evangelical Doctrine For Gods Faithfulness and abhorrencie of Falshood will no more consist with his setting one Seal to a Lye than a thousand The Magicians vying with Moses in some of those Wonders he wrought before Pharaoh did not prejudice his Divine Commission seeing Moses did some things in confirmation thereof which they could not imitate but confess'd to be the Finger of God 3. Any one Action of Christ proved irrefragably a Miracle will seal to the Truth of the whole Body of Gospel-doctrine
parts of any Beast Theophilact was happy in such a second who by reason of his great Reading quick Apprehension and solid Judgment might with less ostentation have said to Theophilact than the Philosopher to his Schollar Do thou invent Opinions and I will make them probable for doubtless such hath he made this and that being the highest Epithete which the modest Doctor fastens upon it I hope it will not be imputed as immodesty in me to take the liberty of shewing my dissent from a person of so deservedly admired worth and well deserving of the Church both as to the Opinion it self and the Reason he brings why he will no further insist upon it than to make it probable because the Christian Religion is no way concern'd in the miraculousness of this Cure if such it were it being afforded the Jews before Christs coming and continued to them at this time of their resisting and opposing Christ. For as it is of apparent use to the Christian Cause and to the Conviction of the Jews to mind them of the Tokens of Gods favour they enjoy'd till the guilt of that innocent Lamb's Blood cancel'd their Charter infaelicissimum infortunii genus est fuisse faelicem the brighter the Sun shone at its going down upon them the more certain indication it gave of its setting So this Exposition of the Text by Theophilact beside the force it offers to the Words offers violence to common Sence of which I could give several instances but will content my self with that reply which Dr. Hammond gives to that Objection which he conceives the chief to wit That 't is unconceivable how the healing Virtue of that Pool had it arose naturally from the fresh warm blood of the Entrails of the Sacrifices that were washed there could be limited to one to him that first stepped in after the troubling of the Waters for that reason of this which the Doctor assigns arising from the circumstance of the place containing these Medicinal Waters which might be of no larger capacity than to hold one at once as that is the only circumstance that can be imagined to avoid the force of the Objection so that Hypothesis implies a plain Contradiction to all other circumstances of the case as themselves state it for what needed an Officer go down into so narrow a hole when he might have stood at the top and have poakt up the grosser matter from the bottom with a Pole Nay what room could there be for him to bestir himself or to use a Colt-staff in the bottom to stir up the congeal'd blood in so narrow a compass or with what water must that water be washt wherein so many hundreds of Entrals were wash'd for doubtless if it was contain'd in so narrow a compass it stood in as much need of washing as the Entrails themselves and the immersing fresh Entrails therein after an hundred or according to their account many thousands had been wash'd therein would have been the defiling of them rather than their cleansing Besides had this curing of only one been but once or at the most three times a year and that by a natural Virtue infused into the water the stirring of the Sedements from the bottom it was wholly in the Officers power to admit whom he pleased to step in and then those multitudes of impotent folk that lay there waiting for the stirring of the water and some of them so long as the man whom Christ cured must have been more crazie in their mind than bodies if they could not collect it was in vain there to expect good if they could not make the Officer their Friend Lastly what need of a Temple-Officer's going down to stir the water when those whose impotencie lay in their eyes or any where but in their feet might themselves have done all that he could do to wit with their Feet or Hands or Crutches stir up the congealed Blood and make it mix with the Water and really 't is hard to conceive that among a great multitude of poor Cripples their should not be some who when they saw their time would not strain courtesie with good manners and make no more scruple of stepping in before the Angel than the Mayors Horse did of drinking before Queen Elizabeths Had he been no more than a Temple-Officer and not as the King's Manuscript reads it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Angel of the Lord whose stirring of the Pool put a supernatural Virtue into it which by divine dispensation was so bounded as to the Effects thereof as it should but cure one at a time and that time not to be foreseen as their stated Festivals were but purely at the divine Arbitriment and therefore to be waited for by those that came thither for cure of which he that first stept in failed not to partake while the five Books of Moses the Books of Gods Covenant with their Fathers as so many Porches encompassed that Nation St. Aug. de verbis Dom. Serm. 42. But that Covenant of Peace removed from them this Pool though still to be seen hath no more Virtue in it now nor ever had since the Holie Ghost hath chosen the Christian Font-water to sit upon St Jerom. de locis Haebraicis than the Castalion or Colophon Wells I could instance in more Privileges which the Second Temple was endowed with beyond the First which as if they had been entail'd upon it fell with it But it would be an infinite labour to recount all the Particulars of that Inventory of Divine Benefits Arguments of Gods special favour to that people which they died seis'd of at the expiration of their State and demolishing of their City and Temple Gods withdrawing of which from them is as full an evidence of their Rejection as his vouchsafing them to them was formerly of his bearing them more upon his heart than all the Nations of the Universe besides Alas how many days hath that wretched Nation continued without a King and without a Prince without a Sacrifice and without an Idol without an Ephod and without a Teraphim without God or any token of his presence save that whereby he watcheth over them for evil under all which heavy stroaks they are as insensible as Solomon's Fool that slept upon the Mast So that to crown his Judgements God hath taken from them that tenderness of Heart which their Forefathers had in the Babylonish Captivity who were jealous of themselves that God had hardned their hearts from his fear to their greater Ruine but these though that of their own Prophets Isa. 6. be palpably fulfill'd upon them and all the Curses written in Gods Book laying with all their weight upon their loynes yet none of them say What have I done Wherefore is all this evil brought upon us CHAP. V. The Jews rejected Messias to be called the God of the whole Earth and all other Gods eternally to be rejected § 1. The God of Israel every where worship'd where Christian Religion
man upon Earth that sinneth not and whoever saith he hath no sin he sins in saying so So that the old Serpent when he shall be let loose again will find wicked instruments of his malice against the Church his own evil Seed among the Wheat where-ever that is sown and therefore the Millenaries in confining him to the lower Hemisphere to gather his Army in by which he is to assault the Holy City not only contradict their own Texts which assigns him the four corners the four Quarters of the Earth the whole breadth of the earth the whole compass of the Globe from East West North and South which I could bear with them in knowing that the Prophets have a peculiar language by themselves in their Proverbials and Hyperbolics but the whole current of sacred Scriptures commented upon by the uninterrupted series of Providence in all ages § 5. Second Nay that at the approaching of the general Judgement when that War of Gog and Magog shall commence The Churches most eminent Seat and the most glorious entertainment of the Gospel will be in those Chambers of the South in that new discover'd World to which it is hasting apace from our Hemisphere The far greatest part thereof all the West of Asia the East West and South of Affrica and the sometimes most flourishing and best peopled parts of Europe being already over-run with Mahometan Barbarousness and the remaining parts of it by our great provocations and impieties against God and by our dissentions and discord among our selves hasting to open a way for the Turk to enter the City of God through the breaches we dayly make and widen in the Walls of Sion We sin and he wins we contend and he conquers we presume that because we are the Temple of the Lord the City of God we are inconquerable and in the mean while he takes our Forts and batters our Walls about our ears our ears which we stop and will not hear the voyce of the Charmer charm he never so wisely and therefore I fear I should but spill my Ink in bestowing it in recording the Turks dayly encroachment upon the Christian Pale his making Conquests by inches over the Western as he did by Ells over the Eastern Church or in describing those Marks of future bane those Prints of divine displeasure and certain forerunners of Gods rejection of a people as deeply imprest upon the Western as they were upon the Eastern and Southern Patriarchates when God deliver'd those Churches into his and their enemies hands If we go to his place at Shilo where once he put his Name enquire for what wickedness he made his Glory depart from Jerusalem Ephesus Antioch Alexandria Constantinople we shall find the very same provocations reigning in these parts of Europe the same infatuation of Counsels the same strong delusions the same debaucheries and abominations and our selves as ripe for excision looking as white for harvest as they did when the Mahometans Sickle reaped those goodly Fields Suppose ye that they were greater sinners I tell you nay but except we repent we shall all likewise perish But I look too long upon the dark side of that cloudy Pillar that has been passing from the East the place where the Gospel first set out towards the West and as it moves deprives the Church of her Head attire Christian Princes of those her dry Nurses and Guardians yet not of her wet Nurses or the inward Glory of her Garments for she shall reign still with Christ even upon this Earth in those remnants of her seed dispersed over the face of it The Sun of a Christian Magistracy shall not be seen where this Night hath or shall encroach upon the Church but her eyes shall see her Teachers still and her ears hear This is the good old way walk in it and find rest the Stars will appear behind the Cloud as they did in the Primitive Church before Princes became her Nurses and as they do now within the Turks Dominions where Princes have ceas'd to be her Nurses And when Mercy triumphing over Judgement shall have left us such a Nail such a stump of the Tree of Life in our Hemisphere The Covenant that God has made with the Christian World being like that he hath made with day and night of which he saith if those ordinances shall depart from me then shall the whole seed of Israel be cast off the Covenant he made with the Ordinances he gave to the Carnal Seed were but Temporary and therefore that seed was wholly cast off but the Covenant he made with the Spiritual Seed is an everlasting Covenant and therefore that Seed of Gentile Believers shall never be wholly cast off The new Israelites in shew and profession only when this Sun of persecution for the Gospel ariseth when the Temptations of the World shall be laid before them when none shall live under the benign influence of their Mahometan Rulers but those that wheel about with them to the embracing of that Brutish Religion shall forsake Christ and embrace the present World But the Israelites indeed in Faith and Practice shall never be prevail'd with to renounce Christ but that poor and peeled People shall bear up his Name in all Nations upon whom it hath been called to the end and consummation of the World When I say the infiniteness of the divine compassion shall be so bounded and streightned by the circumjacent Guilt of our multiplyed and crying sins and by the innate veracity of divine Menacies as all it can obtain for us against the pleas of both is no more then this when our golden Dreams of glorious days end in this God will provide Kings and Queens to be Nursing Fathers c. to the American Churches who shall dandle them upon their knees and that perhaps for as many ages as we have been dandled I say perhaps because I would not pry into Gods secret Purposes nor limit the holy One in that point wherein I cannot observe him to walk by any Rule but that of his own good pleasure whereby both to Persons and Nations he lengthens or shortens their day of Grace so as the Sun hath been set near a 1000. years ago upon most of Asia and yet shines upon us in the West of Europe upon whom it rose before it did upon them I mean the cherishing Light of a Christian Magistracy for we had our Lucius before they had their Constantine However this is certain that how long or short soever God hath in his eternal Counsel determin'd that space that they shall have their time of Grace as well as we and we shall have no more than our time and therefore as the night shall grow upon us that had day before them the day shall grow upon them and when the Sun is farthest from our Horizon it will be highest in theirs § 6. And this affords us another Argument against those who limit the Millenium to a precise number of years and yet
Children from the Roman Suburbs but it was for their contempt of thy holiness for daring to abuse the piety of Roman Matrons towards thee for diverting to their proper use the presents and rich donatives which the proselytes of thy religion committed to their hands to conveigh to thee he vindicated thy honour upon thy bastard Sons not their crime with thy ruine as he did that of the Priests of Isis at the same time he left thy walls standing and thy Religion free and under the care of thy most indulgent foster-foster-father King Agrippa one of his greatest Favourites Thy Clients under Nero found that favour in the Imperial Court by means of his Wife Poppaea a zealous Votary to thy Religion as they obtain'd a Decree for the Demolishing of that Tower which the Roman President had erected to out-face thy holy of holies Yea by Poppaea's interest in Nero's affection so great as to gratifie her jealousie that the Womb that bare him corrival'd Poppaea and had a greater share of Nero's love than she would spare from her self that womb must be ripped up So benign an aspect did his Reign malevolent to all other cast upon thy Children as they were thinking once to have added twenty Cubits to thy height and dimensions to those parts of thy Foundations that had proved too slender to bear that weight of magnificence Herod had laid upon them Joseph antiq 15. 14. Under the Monster of men the Bane of the World thou makes shew of rising to greater renown and when thy Children waxed so wanton under the Indulgence of the Empire as to kick against its Majesty as I have seen children when they are strutted with the Milk Play with the Breast till their scratching it procures them a Motherly blow and play with its Authority and to call for stroaks Good God ' what gentle correction was designed for them Vespasian the Love and Darling of Mankind he who counted that day lost wherein he perform'd not some office of Humanity is the Rod that 's laid upon their back the Empire takes up an handful of Marsh-rushes to chastise her Rebels with was she like to draw blood with such a Rod Could the stroak of so soft an hand have caused blewness much less Mortality of wounds had not the vengeance of Heaven gangren'd the place Could that gentle silk twine have pull'd down thy Towers that Lambs Horn have pusht down thy walls had they not been seconded with the unseen power of that Sentence Christ had past upon thee Ask thy Neighbours the Chaldeans whether they could observe any Signes of thy Ruine among those Lights God had plac'd in the Firmament to be Signs That book was never more studied by the Eastern Astrologers than in that age when the expectation of the arising of the Star of Jacob that bright Morning-star had put the whole East into as passionate a Contest who should see it first as that betwixt the seven Princes of Persia who hung forth the Imperial Crown as his prize whose Horse should first Neigh after the Sun was up And for nothing more was that Book then studied than to know the Fortunes of thy Children when and where that person was to be born who was to be King of the Jews that thy King whose Star three of the Magi saw but to the rest it appeared not However had there been any sign in any of the Heavenly Houses of thy Ruine they would certainly have discovered it whose eyes were then so intent upon that Heavenly Volume on purpose that they might there read thy Concerns but in vain shouldst thou solicit the wisest of them the rising of the Sun of Righteousness which neither thou nor they observed was the only Sign was given thee that Sign of Jonas his coming out of the Whales-belly the Bowels of the Earth after he had been three dayes and three nights therein buried that Sign thou mightst have known if thou would when time was but now that and all other Signs of Christs coming against thee are concealed from thee And as vain am I in discoursing with thee whose head layes so low in the dust as thou canst not hear me Nor have I more to say to my Reader upon this Argument for the divine Original of our Religion but only § 6. First that he would weigh not only the strength of the Argument but the Modesty of Religion in her begging no more of the Sceptick pro concesso than what Cartesius himself begs and hath granted him without all dispute as a Ground of his Philosophical Discourse all he begs is the Consequence of this Proposition Cogito ergò sum All that she begs for the probat of her Author is the consequence of this praecogito ergò praesum And if Thinking be an indisputable evidence of Being Fore-thinking must be as good an evidence of Fore-being If finite Cogitation will prove finite Being then infinite Precogitation will prove an infinite Fore-being if the Argument à Conjugatis be of any force And by what evidence can a Philosopher prove to another that himself thinks without the proof whereof no man is bound to believe that he is by the like whereto it may not be proved that there is an Eternal Fore-thinking Being If he present me with a well framed Poem or Oration or some exquisite piece of Art I should conclude that his thoughts were not a wool-gathering while he composed them but is this any whit more evident than that he must be all mind who has form'd so excellent and comly a piece as the World is which the Grecians therefore called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is so beautiful and of so exact a Symmetry of parts Nay to speak properly no man can prove that he thinks but only that he hath thought for the Medium he proves it by must be the Effect of thinking be it a wise Word or Action before either of them can come to the knowledge of another person the thinking which fram'd them is past and gone But God by Prophecy giveth us fore knowledge of his fore-knowledge before the Effect thereof take place and during that intervall exposeth himself to the Censure of the World giving us a larger time to think of his forethinking and to ponderate the infiniteness of it and to arm our selves against delusion than we may with good manners expend in discussing the thoughts of men And by this means we are render'd more expedite to judge thereof when the Event falls out than we can be of any other kind of humane thoughts but such as are employ'd in framing Prognostications the sufficiency whereof any Child may judge of when the time is come when the Effect should follow 2. That to this Argument for the divine Authority of Scripture this consideration will add no small weight That All the Old Testament-Prophecies according to their several times of accomplishment have been fullfill'd to a Tittle in their Evangelical sence but in any other sence that 's
the holiness of that Society whereof they are no Members nor the Efficacy of that Religion they either never came under the power of or have rejected the yoak of what must it be presum'd that the Sun shines not that its beams warm not because those men see not its Light are not refresh'd and vegetated with its Warmth who either shut their eyes or remove into a Clime it never visits Dr. Hammond An. in Heb. 4. 2. But the word that was heard did not profit those who were not by Faith joyned to them that obeyed it Shall we condemn the Seed because it thrives not to maturity of Fruit in the ground of a dishonest heart where either the fowles of the Air pick it up or it wants depth of earth or is choak'd with Thorns and Weeds Shall we question whether Christ be risen because men whose affections are so strongly set upon the earth as they cannot elevate them towards Heaven are not risen with him when we see such palpable Effects and Demonstrations of it in his raising those to a newness of Life who do not resist grieve or quench his Spirit but with an humble teachableness follow its conduct in that way of holiness his Word hath chalk'd out before us In order to our perseverance in this way and confirmation in our assurance that it will infallibly lead us to Peace here and eternal Glory hereafter I have undertaken this vindication of the Christian Faith against the prejudices which our modern either Scepticks or Atheists have taken up against it which as they took their rise from the Scandals which have been cast upon Religion by the woful miscarriages of men professing it in guile and hypocrisie so they must fall before a Spirit of Grace and Glory resting upon the embracers of it in Truth and Sincerity and shining out upon the World in their so peaceable humble meek and every way Christian deportment and men seeing their good works may glorifie their Father who is in Heaven and revere that Discipline as proceeding from that Father of Lights by whose influence the wildness of common Nature is abated and its vertuous Seeds so improved as to bring forth Fruit chearing the heart both of God and Man To which if thou beest instigated Christian Reader to aspire by the perusal of this Discourse and so become one of Christs Witnesses by sealing to the Truth of the Gospel by a Life answerable to its most holy just and yet easie Precepts thou wilt lay up for thy self a good Foundation for time to come and contribute towards the conviction of the Adversaries of the Christian Faith by an Argument so familiar as it incurrs into every mans sense and so strenuous as the most stubborn Atheist will not be able to resist it but be forc'd to confess the unreasonableness of his own Exceptions against a Religion that brings forth such Divine Effects Would we all study thus to adorn the Doctrine of God our Saviour in all things such real exornations would render Religion more venerable in the eyes of the VVorld than all verbal Encomiums those whom the close fist of the most Logical Arguings cannot force the commanding beck of that open-handed Eloquence would allure to a silent admiring of that sacred Fountain whence they see such healing VVaters flow That this my Request to my Readers may take effect I shall back it with that Request to God which my Dear Mother the Holy Church of England hath put into her Childrens mouth More especially we pray for the good estate of the Catholick Church that it may be so guided and govern'd by thy good Spirit that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of Truth and hold the Faith in Unity of Spirit in the Bond of Peace and in Righteousness of Life And this we beg for Jesus Christ his Sake To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour and Glory world without end Amen FINIS To their old Cells and Altars the whole crew Of Guardian Gods Troy falling bid adieu While impious Caesar and his Godded rout Spurn Phoebus Tripos with insulting foot The learned Varro useth to expend So many hours in reading as we deem A winged minutes scantling can scarce lend It self unto his pen yet that doth seem To trust more notions to his sweating Page Than quickest eye can run o're in an Age. To my dark Cabin in the Stygean strand Dismiss me or if that be too much ease Send me to Phlegethon where I may stand Rather than here chin-high in fiery seas Haled from Styx to Thebes my ancient seat Had I my choice hard choice I would retreat If Heaven the fire and Earth the dam of things Had been from Ever whence is 't no Poet sings Of Wars more old than Troy of Floods than Noah Of Rapes than Jove and thousand wonders moe Had men nor hands to act nor hands to write During the seculum Prae-Adamite Had Nile for ages numberless no Reed Nor Bees Wax nor Trees Bark nor Hills a breed of Sheep nor Sheep a Skin nor Goose a Quill Nor Polypus his native Ink distil Or Man the Goose of all not wit to learn To make a Pen much less to guide a Stern Or build a Ship or break a Horse or bring The Oxe to th' yoke the Hawk to lure or string The warbling Lute or count the Stars by name Or other Arts whose birth we know by fame Whose growth we see come on with age We owe to thee great Caesar Triumphs many More Temples built and Temples that lay waste Repair'd more Cities Gods and Shews than any But most that thou hast taught Rome to be chaste Whom we invoke for Gods 't is Jove's decree Were Men of Bounty once and Gallantry But now with highest Deities attend On our affairs and us toth ' Gods commend The Father Word and Spirit God alone That Cotternal Three in one Thy will Theodames for Hecate Forc'd by thy charms dares not say nay Your Charms from me against my will commands These Responds I have said now loose my bands Judea worshippeth alone The God elsewhere unknown Him Pan men call Because he succours all They lay on tepid Altars Babes not born Of Mothers Wombs but from their Bellies torn Issa Bills sweeter than a Dove Issa's more blith than Mal or Siss No Pearls equal Issa's love What Issa's this Publius his Bitch Thus against Hercules vext the field to lose From wounded Hydra heads more fierce arose Who outstript all the Sophs in this Essay Quenching their Star-light with his Solar Ray.