〈◊〉 which is equivocal he supposes the Chronicle of Eusebius and his History were written before his Work of Evangelical Demonstration and as less elaborate were of less Authority For whence does he inferr it Eusebius in the thirteenth Chapter of his sixth Book of his Evangelical Demonstration had used these worrds And if our own enquiry into things that concern our selves is of any account we have seen with our own eyes Sion which was of old so celebrious plowed up with Oxen and subjected to the Romanes And every one knows that Eusebius who lived not far from Sion and was a Native of the Countrey might discourse to that effect with the more certainty by reason of his having had the opportunity to go thousands of times to the Place nay what is more that at this day as in the Time of Adrian who re-edified Jerusalem under the Name of Aelia Sion which in our Saviour's Time was within its Walls and the Fortess thereof is wholly out of the Compass of it and in a manner uninhabited so that the ground thereof is and may be cultivated by the labour of Oxen. But Hentenius imagining that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could not signifie any thing but his Ecclesiastical History suffered to slip out of his Memory what the Place of the Authour he had in hand should have suggested to him to wit that that very word is there as frequently in other good Writers used to denote an enquiry a survey a visit as when Plutarch in his Book Of the Cessation of Oracles and Theodoret in the second Chapter of the first Book of his Ecclesiastical History make use of it and when Suidas explicates the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nay further though we were apt to understand it otherwise Eusebius himself would not permit it nor yet that we should suppose his Evangelical Demonstration was or was written after or of greater account or more elaborate and correct then his History since that in the third Chapter of the first Book of his History he cites the Demonstration saying Having disposed into Commentaries purposely designed for that end the Extracts of the Prophets concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ and in others demonstratively confirmed the things which have been declared of him and clearly proves that he had written it before and it follows not that if he had writ it afterwards it should be ever the more elaborate for as much as The Life of Constantine whereof contrary to what many at this day think he declares himself the Authour was written after the year 337. long after his Ecclesiastical History yet was never the more elaborate since that what it hath common with the History is alleged in express Terms in several places which shews that Eusebius had not any thing better to entertain us with nor could have expressed himself in better Terms then he had done in his History which he carried on but to the the year 325. The same may be said of his Chronicle which being cited as well in the Evangelical Praeparation as in his Ecclesiastical History must of necessity have been written first For it is so far upon that account from being less correct and elaborate that on the contrary we must necessarily by it correct several Passages which he hath without sufficient recollection thrust into his History which in that regard is the less elaborate Add to this the likelyhood there is that the Chronicle which at present makes mention not onely of the Death of Licinius of the Councel of Nice and the wretched end of Crispus killed in the year 326. was reviewed by him after the setting forth of his History and consequently more elaborate then any other of his Works which Consideration contributes as much or more then any thing hath been said to the conviction of Hentenius of mistake and to the making of his imagination of no account It is therefore manifest by the Testimonies of St. Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian Eusebius and St. Hiâ—rome in the places alleged as also by Severus Sulpitius in the second Book of his Sacred History by Paulus Orosius in the tenth Chapter of the seventh Book of his History by Primasius Bishop of Adrumetum in his Commentary upon the Apocalyps by Jornandes in his Book De Regn. success by Isidore of Sevil in his Chronicle and his Book of the Death of the Saints by the Authour of the Preface put before the Treatises of St. Augustine upon St. John by Maximus on Dionysius his tenth Epistle by the Counterfeit Abdias and Prochorus in the Life of St. John by Bede on the Apocalyps and Of the six Ages by Him who wrote Of the Martyrdom of St. Timothy by Ambrose Ansbert upon the Apocalyps by Paul the Deacon in Miscelia by Freculsius of Lizieux Tom. 2. Book 2. Chap. 7 and 8. by the Romane Martyrologies of Bede Usuard Ado Notker c. by Michael Syncellus in Encomio Dionysii by Regino by Arothas Arch-Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia by Simeon Metaphrastes by the Greek Fasti by the Arabian Prolegomena by Hermannus sirnamed Contractus by Lambert of Schaffnabourg by Marianus Scotus by Zonaras by Cedrenus by Nicephorus Callistus in the eleventh Chapter of his first Book and the fourty second Chapter of his second Book by Georgius Paechymerius on â—ionysius his Episiles and by almost all those that have written since the Time of St. John that that great Apostle received the Revelations from God under Domitian near the end of his Reign that he was recalled from Paâ—mos by Nerva and writ his Gospel after his return to Ephesus and ended this Life in the third year of Trajan so that whosoever will have the Obstinacy to maintain the contrary must needs before he pretend to have any credit given himself wholly take away that of all Antiquity Fourty two years after the re-establishment of Saint John at Ephesus and thirty eight years after his Death the Emperour Adrian troubled with a mortal Disease and without Issue did upon the five and twentieth of February in the year 138. adopt Antoninus sirnamed The Debonnaire conditionally that the Adoption should be extended to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus the Sons of his former adopted Son who died on the first of January in the year 137. and he himself coming to die the 12th of July following immediately thereupon came abroad the Poem attributed to the Sibyls wherein the Authour who towards the end of the 8th Book assigned the utter destruction of Rome to happen in the four hundred ninety eighth year after its Foundation coincident with the year 195. of our Saviour upon this very account that giving two several times a List of the Emperours he reckons after Adrian Antoninus and his two adopted Sons evidently shews that he lived and writ after their Adoption His own words make it manifest After him that is to say Trajan another one with a Silver Head that is to
a good Conscience which in the Business of Religion cannot advance any thing either false or superfluous much less ought that is repugnant to what it hath undertaken to prove CHAP. XLVI Of the Reasons which might have moved the Antients to Interr their departed Friends in the Churches consecrated to the Memory of the Saints ALl this thus presupposed as it may well be in as much as the necessary result from it is that that Part of Antiquity which prayed for the dead had not any thought of either the Purgatory where the Church of Rome teaches that they burn or their deliverance out of that grievous Pain but intended onely to desire of God that he would be pleased to pardon their Sins at the day of his Son 's Last coming deliver them from the general Conflagration of the World and give their Bodies a glorious Resurrection it remains to discover what may have been their intention who have ordered their Friends to be Buried near the Martyrs or at least in the places and Edifices dedicated since the peace of the Church to their Memory To proceed in a more certain order and take things at their proper Sources I observe First That the Christians no more then the Jews had not at the beginning any common Cemiteries or Church-yards but that every one made choice of such place for his Sepulchre as he thought fit and that it was thus the most antient Monuments yet remaining among us give sufficient Testimony Secondly That according to the Politicks of the Jews and Romans Sepulchres were not within Cities but onely near and about them Thirdly That as among the Jews and Heathens there were certain particular Places of Sepulture for those of the same Family so the resentments of Christian Fraternity whereby all the Saints make up the Family of God and are Members one of another prevailed so far upon the Spirits of the Faithfull that they begat in them as far as the Extremities of those Times permitted a desire that their Bodies might be deposited near those of their Brethren who had before fought the good Fight of Faith and held fast the confidence and the rejoycing of the hope firm unto the end Fourthly That the Church during the rigour of the Persecutions having been forced to Assemble to serve God before day and to seek the safety of her Children in the silence of the Night and the Solitudes of Cemiteries Places not onely of no great shew but such as were if the Scituation permitted it for the most part under Ground as the Catatumbs about Rome and could not upon that accompt give any Jealousie to the Pagans the Faithfull who were there daily animated to Constancy by the Instruction of their Pastours and the sight of the Tombs which they considered as so many Trophies of their Brethren seeing the Mystical Table purposely placed towards that part where their bodies rested as it were to make unto them a literal Application of the Words of St. John who affirms that he saw under the Altar the Souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the Testimony which they held derived from all these Considerations that noble desire of remaining conjoyned with the Saints of God in Life and Death and when the time should come depose their own Bodies as it were into the Bosom of those Friends whose Examples they had followed in all the course of their Lives Fifthy That after the Conquest of Paganism under the Reign of Constantine the Great Constantius his Son who at the time he was most violent against the Orthodox bethought him of making the first Transportations of Saints bodies in as much as upon the first of June 356. he transferred to Constantinople the body of St. Timothy which he had taken out of Ephesus and the third of March following caused to be brought from Patras the bodies of St. Andrew and St. Luke Constantius I say raised in all those that came after him such a desire to attempt the like Translations that there can hardly be named any one of the antient Martyrs and Confessours whose body hath not been digged out of the Earth and torn in Pieces to be distributed into many several places In imitation of Princes private Persons began to exercise that Piece of Will-worship those who wanted Authority to countenance their Actions taking the liberty to make use of Violence and commit Robberies not to speak of the Adulterations and Impostures which in less then thirty years were come to that Excess that on the six and twentieth of February 386. it was thought necessary to repress it by an Express Law to this Effect Humanum corpus nemo ad alterum locum transferat nemo Martyrem distrahat nemo mercetur c. Let no man translate any man's body from one place to another let no man sell no man set to a Price any Martyr But since that time the Disease growing too violent for the Remedy what had been accompted an Execrable attempt became an Act of Religion and there wanted not an Emulation among those that practised it who should be most criminal and whereas at the beginning People thought it enough to consider the Monuments of Martyrs and Confessours onely as the glorious marks of their Christian Profession with such a respect as admitted not the violation of their bodies they came in time to exercise that rudeness upon them as is done on a Prey exposed to the covetousness of the first that lays hands on it every one endeavoured to keep his share their very bones were cut to Pieces and instead of honouring their Memory and celebrating their Virtues by a pious imitation thereof they turned their Veneration towards the Repositories into which they were disposed If on the one side Antiquity reduced to those Extremities as to keep its Assemblies in Cemeteries thought it a glory to place the Eucharistical Table under their Tombs to teach every one of her children that they belonged both living and dead to that Great Saviour who hath commanded us to shew forth his death till his coming again Posterity on the other which had the opportunity to build as many Temples as they pleased and where they pleased hath suffered their Liberty to degenerate into Superstition imagining that no Altar was to be erected but it must be made a Repository of Reliques and the disorder as it were by an universal Deluge spread it self so suddenly over all that the General Councel of all Africa Assembled at Carthage on the thirteenth of September 401. was forced to make Provision against it by this remarkable Decree Placuit ut Altaria quae passim c. It hath been thought fit that the Altars which are erected up and down the Fields and High-ways as Memorials of the Martyrs wherein there are not any Body or Reliques of the Martyrs interred be if possible demolished by the Bishops under whose Jurisdictions those Places are But if by reason
Resurrection the Presupposition whereof does not in â—…e either that the Faithfull depart this Life to go into a place of Torments or that there is any necessity of Bewailing them or Praying for them after their Death the consequence being not good He shall rise up in Glory therefore He is in a place of Pains and must be delivered thence by Prayers Thirdly There is read the thirteenth Verse of the fourteenth Chapter of the Apocalyps where the Spirit of God advertising St. John by a voyce from Heaven that from henceforth those who die in the Lord are blessed and rest from their Labours demolishes the very Foundation as well of Prayer for the Faithfull departed as of Purgatory where it is pretended they suffer the temporal Punishment due to their Sins For if they are Blessed and upon that accompt in possession of what might be desired on their behalf they stand in no further need that any thing should be desired for them And again if they are Blessed and rest from their Labours from henceforth they are from henceforth exempted from Pain it being impossible that to be Blessed and to rest should signifie to be Tormented and on the contrary that to endure the burning of an infernal Fire should be to rest from one's labour and enjoy the Bliss consequent thereto Fourthly There is read from the one and fiftieth Verse of the fifteenth Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians to the fifty seventh inclusively expressing the Assurance which the Apostle gives the Church of her Blessed Resurrection whereby Death shall be swallowed up in Victory and every Believer cloathed with Immortality and every one knows that from this Proposition he shall rise again in Incorruption the Law of Ratiocination will never suffer this Inference to be drawn Therefore he is tormented and stands in need of being prayed for before he rises again Fifthly There is read the fourth Verse of the three and twentieth Psalm and the second third and fourth of the Two and fourtieth which onely represent the State of the Faithfull Person during the course of this Life and not that which is to follow upon his departure hence Sixthly There is read out of the eleventh Chapter of St. John from the one and twentieth Verse to the seven twentieth inclusively where the Son of God calling himself the Resurrection and the Life testifies that he who believes in him shall live and shall never die which to a Person that hath but the least use of Reason will never give any ground to Inferr that he who shall live and shall never die shall for a certain time after the dissolution of his Body be confined to a place of Torment where he shall stand extremely in need of the Prayers of the surviving Seventhly There is read out of the 6th Chapter of St. John the three and fiftieth and four and fiftieth Verses where the Son of God recommending the Eating of his Flesh and the Drinking of his Blood promises him who shall eat and drink thereof that he shall have eternal Life and shall be raised up again at the Last day Eighthly Immediately after there are read the second time as well the same Words as the precedent beginning from the one and fiftieth Verse which hath I know not how made shift to gather this Preface In illo tempore dixit Jesus Discipulis suis turbis Judaeorum c. Then Jesus said to his Disoiples and to the multitude of the Jews upon which I have further to observe that there is not the least necessity of concluding from the Promise made by the Son of God that those who participate of his Flesh and of his Blood should after Death be destined to endure the Punishment of a Subterranean Fire and therein tormented expect to be relieved by the Prayers of their surviving Brethren Ninethly There are read with the same Preface which yet is not to be found in any Part of the Chapter the 21 22 23 and 24th Verses of the fifth Chapter of St. John where our Saviour in as much as he affirms by Virtue of the power of Judging which he received of his Father that he who believes in him hath eternal life and shall not come into Judgment but shall pass or rather as the Greek the Syriaok and the Latine Version recommended by the Councel of Trent have it is passed from Death to Life in as much I say as our Saviour obliges the Believer to be certainly perswaded that he shall not after this Life be liable to any Pains whatsoever for his Sins since they are things absolutely incompatible that being passed from Death he should have eternal Life as the inviolable Promise of his Saviour expresses and that he should be to endure for ever so short a space of time the Torments of Death and Hell as the present Church of Rome supposes that he shall not come into Judgment as the Gospel expresly declares and that he shall come to Judgment to be therein condemned for a time according to what the Church of Rome teaches those of her Communion Tenthly and Lastly With a Preface taken up I know not whence there are read the thirty seventh the thirty eighth the thirty ninth and the fourtieth Verses of the sixth Chapter of St. John where our Saviour promising to raise up at the Last day those who believe in him gives them such comfort by the assurance of their final felicity as might raise them out of all fear that between the Moment of their Death and the day of Judgment they should suffer any Punishment and be sensible of any need they should stand in of the Suffrages of the Living In fine there are read as on the second of November and with the same Preface the twenty fifth the twenty sixth the twenty seventh the twenty eighth and the twenty ninth Verses of the fifth Chapter of Saint John which we have already observed to make nothing to the Business either of Purgatory or Prayer for the Dead On the Contrary from all these Lessons it is necessarily manifest First That the Church of Rome who at the present make use of them as inducements to the Living to take care of the Dead hath not haply any thing more Answerable to her Intentions and makes a silent Confession that her Service for the Departed and the Belief of her Purgatory have not any Foundation in the Word of God are the voluntary Devotions of men intruding into those things which they have not seen and for that Reason branded with the Censure of the Holy Spirit speaking by the mouth of St. Paul 2 Coloss xviii 22 23. Secondly That the Primitive Church who had introduced into her Liturgie the Commemoration of the Faithfull Departed many Ages before any of her children had conceived the least thought of Purgatory which is at this day maintained by Superstition and Interest had no other Design in it then by all these Lessons which Treat of the general
made on their behalf at Ferrara on Saturday june xiv One Thousand Four Hundred Thirty Eight is as to what concerns them still in force and though they prayed even at that time for their Dead and presupposing as the Church of Rome would have it that some sins were venial and some Souls in the midst between Virtue and Vice made it a question whether God granting them the remission of their sins after this life makes use of any punishment or out of his Clemency gives absolution to men as inclined to mercy by the Prayers of the Church and whether in case he does make use of punishment it consists in Purgation by Fire and not rather in restraint obscurity and grief yet did they sufficiently determine themselves in these words We say that it stands more with the goodness of God not to despise a small good then to account worthy punishment a small sin leaving it to be inferred that he freely pardoned it Immediately after Mark of Ephesus in his Manifesto addressed To all Christians as well of the Continent as the Islands having made his complaint that some endeavours had been used to reduce his Countrey-men into a base Captivity and to bring them down to the Babylon of the Customs and Opinions of the Latines proposes their Sentiment concerning the Dead in these Terms We affirm that neither the Saints obtain the Kingdom prepared for them and the ineffable good things neither do Sinners fall into Hell but both expect their own Lot and that belongs to the time to come after the Resurrection and last Judgment But Gregorius Proto-Syncellus who was for the Concordate charges the said Mark with contradicting in that not onely the Fathers as St. Chrysostome St. Gregory Nazianzene Gregory of Rome Damascene and Maximus but even himself for as much as in one of his Sermons in honour of Elias the Prophet he had maintained that he enjoyed the clear Vision of God and was in the presence of his Majesty in the Heavens with the Angels and Saints who have put off the garment of the body And indeed it is possible that Mark either to discover the greater alienation from the Opinions of the Latines or to shew himself to be of their number among those of his Nation who as is expressed in the Acts of Florence hold that the Saints departed are in and enjoy bliss in their proper place expecting the perfect Crown which hath been promised them may have said it and that the more common Opinion of the Greeks may have been from that time such as the same Acts represent it saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The Greeks conceive that there may be a fire and partial punishment of Souls and that the Souls of Sinners go to an obscure place a place of grief and that they are afflicted and punished in part being deprived of Divine Light and that by Prayers and the Services of the Priests and Alms they are purged or rather delivered out of that dark Place and Tribulation and that they are freed And the Greeks contrary to the Italians confess that they are purged not by fire or the action of fire but that onely Prayer and Supplication and Alms have that effect Accordingly the Greeks living in Venice in the year 1560. declared their Sentiment in Terms much to that purpose when they made answer to the Tenth of the Cardinal of Guise's Questions as hath been already observed And it is likely enough that whoever as they did imagines to himself Souls which are neither good nor bad runs into a necessity of feigning some such thing concerning the Treatment they are to receive after their departure out of the Body But there is not any thing can give us a more certain accompt of their Opinion then the Forms of Service daily used by them at the Enterment of their Dead for we have in them as in those of the Latines Lessons out of the Scripture as for instance the first Verse of the fifty first Psalm all the ninety first the first part of the hundred and nineteenth the twelfth seventy second and seventy third Verses to the hundred thirty third and the hundred seventy fifth and hundred seventy sixth the fourty second of the twenty third Chapter of St. Luke out of the fifth of St. Matthew from the third Verse to the tenth inclusively out of the fourth of the first to the Thessalonians from the thirteenth Verse to the seventeenth inclusively the twenty fourth and thirtieth Verses of the fifth of S. John the sixth Verse of the hundred and twenty sixth Psalm the seventh of the hundred and sixteenth the fifteenth of the hundred and third the whole twenty third Psalm the fifth Verse of the sixty fifth the twelfth and seventeenth Verses of the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romanes the seventeenth of the fifth of St. John the first of the twenty fourth Psalm out of the fifteenth of the first Epistle to the Corinthians from the beginning to the eleventh Verse the thirty fifth of the sixth of S. John the first Verse of Psalm the eighty fourth the thirteenth of the twenty fifth the seventh Verse of the sixth to the Romanes the thirty ninth of the sixth of St. John the sixth of the fourteenth to the Romanes which contain either Lessons of Piety and Humility for the Living as the places of the hundred and third and hundred and nineteenth Psalms and of the fifth of St. Matthew or Descriptions of the Goodness of God towards those that fear Him as the twenty third and ninety first Psalm or Implorations of His Mercy for the last Day as the forty second of the twenty fourth of St. Luke and the first Verse of the fifty first Psalm or Assurances of the Beatitude Immortality and Glorious Resurrection of the Faithful as all the other places among which there is nothing alledged out of the second Book of Maccabees which the Church of Rome takes at this day for one of its principal Grounds nor yet out of any other of the Apocryphal Books Whence it evidently results that those who compiled the Office of the Greeks and put into it those Texts of Scripture had not in that any apprehension contrary to the Sentiment of the Protestants There are also in the said Forms abundance of Prayers stuffed with Invocations to the Blessed Virgin and to Martyrs all which are irrefragable marks of the alteration of the antient Service and insoluble Arguments of the adulteration of belief among the Greeks whose first Liturgies contained Prayers for all the Saints without any exception and the Fathers held as a Principle of Religion that God alone was to be invocated that the worship of Persons departed is not to be accounted by us for Religion for as much as if they lived piously they are not for that to be so looked on as if they sought such Honours but will that he should be served by us by whom we being illuminated they rejoyce
had no other Authours then the ancient Sibyls celebrated by Varro and that they had been chast and inspir'd of God yet hath he not escap'd a mistake as we shall make appear more at large hereafter 7. That the Author of the third Book neither was nor would be thought the Erythraean Sibyl but wife to one of the sons of Noah come from Babylon to Greece for those are her own words These things I tell thee far from the walls of Babylon c. The men of Greece will say I am of another Countrey born in Erythraea c. 8. That the first Book is as all the ensuing of the same vein 9. that the impudence and whoredom so much bewail'd in the second and seventh books were by the third acknowledg'd for the proper description of the pretended wife to Noah's son who cries Men will say I am of another Countrey and shameless In a word that all the eight books are the extravagant fictions of the same Impostor who under pretence of advancing the truth hath perfidiously dishonour'd it CHAP. V. The recommendation of the Writing pretended to be Sibylline attributed by Clemens Alexandrinus to St. Paul examined TO qualifie with more ease the reproach consequent to so unworthy an attempt and in some sort to save his reputation that was guilty of it there are many who as it were out of a certain emulation alledge that St. Paul himself recommended the reading of the Sibyls and to justifie their assertion bring in Clemens Alexandrinus speaking in these terms Besides the preaching of St. Peter the Apostle St. Paul will declare the same saying take also the Greek books acknoweledge the Sibyl how she discovers one onely God and the things that are to come and taking Hystaspes read and you will find the Son of God much more manifestly and openly described But I shall not stick to presume their pardon though I affirm they heap evil upon evil For if it be blame-worthy for a man as St. Justin did to subscribe a piece of forgery which he was not able to discover how odious must needs be the malice of that false witness who to deceive Clemens Alexandrinus and other Christians would needs maintain the supposititiousness of the Sibylline writings by a worse Imposture and feign that St. Paul himself had brought them into credit by his recommendation If souls perfectly vertuous cannot without difficulty endure that Encomiums of chastity should be bestow'd on common Prostitutes who among such as are truly Christian will be able to suffer comparisons to be made between the Prophets of God and persons in the depth of an extravagant melancholy between their celestiall Oracles and the disorder'd resueries of the other and that the Projector of so base a cheat should presume to give it the greater reputation produce the Apostle as a complice of his sacrilegious insolence And yet there are those who would that out of this vessel of election should come the words alledged by Clemens and whereas there cannot any such thing be found in his Epistles they imagine them spoken by him in his popular Sermons as if it were possible that he who sacrificed his life in a glorious martyrdom in the 65. year of our Lord should give his approbation to a piece full of errors and forg'd since the year 137. as it were out of a design by that recommendation to oppose the Authority as well of the old Testament and the Son of God himself as his own preaching and the most excellent of his Epistles For if among the Heathens the Sibyl and Hystaspes have not onely declared one God and manifested the things to come but also describ'd the Son of God after a manner more clear and convincing with what credit could David have written It is in Jury that God is known God sheweth his words unto Jacob his Statutes and his Judgements unto Israel He hath not dealt so with other nations and as for his judgements they have not known them Or how comes it that the Saviour of the World hath decided the case on the behalf of the Jews saying Salvation is of the Jews And upon what ground doth St. Paul make this precise Declaration to the Lycaonians God in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own wayes and speaking to the Athenians the most refin'd people of all the Europaeans call the times preceding the publication of the Gospel The times of ignorance and maintain in his Epistle to the Romans the advantage of the Jew to be much every way chiefly because that unto them were committed the Oracles of God Again that to the Israelites pertaineth the glory and the covenant and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the promises and put other nations in comparison of them into a qualification of such as are no people and a nation voyd of understanding Certainly if the Gentiles according to the pretended presupposition of St. Paul in Clemens Alexandrinus have been depositaries of the Oracles of God more clear and manifest then the Prophets they neither have nor ought to have granted that God hath not shewen them his Ordinances and Judgements and that on the Jews behalf over whom they were notoriously advantag'd the advantage was much every way For since before the Incarnation of the Messias they had in their hands the illuminating predications of the Sibyls which furnish'd them with historicall descriptions of what in the Propheticall Writings is but aenigmatically proposed their time was not a time of ignorance but of light and knowledge more distinct then that of the Jews and it must have been false that God was only known in Jury since that we do not esteem ignorant at least comparatively to another him who in the same matter of fact knowes as much if not more then the most knowing and that these propositions are formally contradictory the advantage is of the Jews and the advantage is not of the Jews Again the advantage of the Jews over the Gentiles consists having the Oracles of God committed to them and the Oracles of God committed to the Gentiles by the means of the Sibyls are more clear and manifest then those of the Jews From all which I must needs inferr that it being impossible a person sound in his intellectuals should at the same time hold both parts of the same contradiction and there being yet a greater impossibility that such as are inspir'd from God should be guilty of such a miscarriage St. Paul did not onely not say what is attributed to him in Clemens Alexandrinus but could not have said it And thereupon I shall desire the prudent Reader to take four things into his consideration 1. That he who hath presum'd to borrow his name to gain the greater credit to his fond imaginations does by the generall description he hath given us of what is contain'd in the pretended Sibylline predictions saying they declare one onely God discover things
Fathers as Clemens Alexandrinus who in the first of his Books entituled Stromata transcribes these three Verses of an Idolatrous Sibyl 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ye Delphians who Apollo's Servants are To you great Jove's mind I 'me come to declare Being with my Brother Phoebus much incens'd And Lactantius who acknowledges that after consultation with the Sibylline Oracles the Romanes beset themselves to appease Ceres sending Ambassadours to Enna and had made search in Asia for the Mother of the Gods and St. Augustine who takes notice of the Transportation of Aesculapius might well had they lai'd Prejudice aside have concluded That the Poems out of which they drew Proofs against Idolatry though for no other reason then that they were directly opposite to the Oracles consulted by the Romanes could not be of the same Vein with those antient Sibyls which had been for so many Ages the Admiration of the Heathen and the proper ground of their Superstition For how should it come to pass that the same Mouth should at the same time breath Life and Death They had also another very clear Proof to wit That not any thing of all that is related by the Heathen as from the Sibyls is either as to the Substance or in express Terms in the eight Books of the pretended Daughter-in-law of Noah For where shall we finde in all that simple Rhapsody the least Track of what Cicero and Dionysius Halicarnassaeus and e Livy and Suetonius and Solinus and Plutarch and Pausanias and Dion and Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus and Procopius and if you will Lucian and Eustathius upon the Description of the Universe written by Dionysius the African cite for Sibylline And Saint Augustine who had observed in his Book Of Grammar that there were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three mischievous K. designed in the Sibylline Books where could he have found them in these Nay they should have thought it a violent presumption of their Supposititiousness that not one of the Heathens ever cited I will not say one Verse or one Hemistick but the least conceit taken out of these Books For if as is presupposed the Romanes had had them in their Custody with the rest could they have always forborn to make some Mention or give some Account of them But to make it appear that the Christians had not any knowledge of the Pieces which were in the Custody of the Quindecem-viri and that the Heathens had never admitted any thing of what the Christians opposed thereto as taken out of their Bosoms excepting onely those three Verses which we just now Transcribed out of Clemens Alexandrinus Strom. 1. the three ensuing cited by Theophilus Arch-Bishop of Antioch against the Generation of the Gods according to the Heathen If they should engender and continue immortal there would be more Gods generated then men and there would be no place left for Mortals where they might subsist these two others of the same Vein copied by Lactantius There will be Fire and Darkness when he shall come in the midst of the black Night and Hear me ye Mortà ls the eternal King reigns and this Exclamation in Prose attributed to the Erythraean Sibyl by Constantine the Great Why Lord dost thou impose on me a necessity of Prophecying and dost not reserve me rather raised up on high from the Earth till thy blessed coming I say besides these four Shreds there is not a Verse produced by the antient Christians since Martyr's Time which may not be read either word for word or in Terms equivalent in the body of those Eight Books attributed to the Daughter-in-law of Noah which being mangled and imperfect in many places nothing hinders but that the Allegations of Theophilus and Lactantius might be drawn out of them Now what the Fathers have not derived but from this source clearly proves they knew not any other and that it was not opened to them by the Heathen who not onely drew not any thing out of it but cryed out against it assoon as ever it appeared by their Charges of Forgery put in against it as is apparent by the Words of Celsus saying to the Christians You have with good reason proposed the Sibyl but it is now in your own power to thrust in at randome among the Pieces which are hers many things that are reproachfull for this Discourse was an earnest Charge against the Christians concerning the Suppositiousness of the Eight Books as also by Constantine's own Observation writing upon occasion of the pretended Acrostick of the Erythraean Sibyl There are many who believe not that the Sibyl foretold things of our Saviour and acknowledging that the Erythraean Sibyl was a Prophetess have a jealousie that some one of our Religion not unfurnished with a Poetick Vein is the Authour of those Poems that they are adulterate but nevertheless called the Oracles of the Sibyl Whereto Origen's Answer gives no great satisfaction He affirms says he of Celsus that we have thrust in among the Writings of the Sibyl many things and such as are reproachfull and does shew neither what we have thrust in which he might have done if he could have shew'd Copies more antient and uncorrupt and such as had not what he conceives to have been foisted in nor yet that those things are injurious and reproachfull For it was not Celsus's intention to acknowledg that the eight Books out of which the Fathers had made Extracts were legitimate and to quarrel onely at the insertion of some things that were false but to reproach the Christians that they had shuffled together as much as lay in their power those eight Books Pieces notoriously spurious among the Writings of the Sibyl which were pretended to be legitimate Secondly Origen's Reply that to prove the spuriousness of the things produced by the Christians it was necessary to shew Copies that were more antient more correct and such as wherein those things were not was no way to the purpose For first The complaint of Celsus no less concerned the body of the eight Books then the Sentences extracted out of them by the Christians Secondly His Negative was not These eight Books are not perfect but They are not Legitimate and taking them for Supposititious and shuffled in among the Legitimate Works not long before he thought not himself obliged to seek out what could never have been found â—…ntient Copies of an Imposture newly advanced Thiâ—…y To require a Pagan to produce antient Copies of the true Sibylline Writings was to make a ridiculous and uncivil request to him since first There could not have been through the whole Romane Empire besides the Original preserved under the Base of Apollo Palatinus but that onely Copy which had been Transcribed by the High Priests in the Time of Augustus Secondly For that it was not in any case permitted that any private Person should
to imagine any such thing of the Proconsul of Asia nor to presuppose that to comply with that Extravagance he had driven St. John who was not within his Jurisdiction from any place when at the same time that the Jews were forced to depart Rome St. Paul Priscilla Aquila and Apollos who were no less of Jewish Extraction then John sojourned at Ephesus without disturbance their Brethren according to the Flesh enjoyed there as much liberty as ever nay even when Demetrius had with those of his Profession made an Insurrection in the City against Saint Paul they thought themselves sufficiently Authorised to pacifie the Tumult thrusting out Alexander their Brother out of the Multitude and charging him to speak to the enraged People for if it were to no purpose that they attempted it it was at least without apprehension of any danger either to themselves or him Whence it follows that not onely without any necessity but also without any ground it is imagined that St. John who was not yet come to Ephesus when the Edict of Claudius came forth against the Jews was driven thence by Virtue of that Edict which no way concerned him and that if there never could be any excuse to introduce Novelties into the Business of Religion we should be much further from advancing ruinous Hypotheses to maintain the more ruinous Design of opposing common Sentiments So that no man should think it strange if through the just Judgment of God those who take a pleasure in contradicting things that are most evident unadvisedly engage themselves in inconsistent Opinions to the prejudice of their Reputation and such as are more apt to raise Compassion for their Weakness then Jealousie upon account of the great Esteem due to them CHAP. IV. A Refutation of the Sentiment of Johannes Hentenius of Maechlin concerning the Time of the Apocalyps HAving demonstrated the Improbability of the Sentiment as well of St. Epiphanius as of him who would needs make it his ground to build upon not considering he should do himself a thousand times more injury by following it contrary to the Truth then he could have done by contradicting it to promote the Truth he made it his Design to establish I conceive it lies upon me to discover the absurdity of another fond Conceit which to bring with less inconvenience the Tradition of the Church into Dispute about the year 1545. hath referred the writing of the Apocalyps to the Time of Nero ten years and more later then according to the Computation of Saint Epiphanius Johannes Hentenius an Hieronymite born at Maechlin who is the Authour of it would needs in his Preface upon the Commentary of Arethas entertain us with the following Discourse It seems to me that John the Apostle and Evangelist who is also called the Divine was Banished to Patmos by Nero at the very same time that he put to death at Rome the blessed Apostles of Christ Peter and Paul Tertullian who lived near the Times of the Apostles affirms as much in two several places Eusebius also treats of the same thing in his Book of Evangelical Preparation though in his Chronicle and Ecclesiastical History he saith it happened under Domitian which St. Hierome and divers others follow But to these last mentioned Books as such as were written some years before there is not so much Authority attributed as to that of Evangelical Preparation which was an after Work on which more care and exactness was bestowed Thus are we furnished by this man with a third Opinion inconsistent as well with the two precedent as the Truth it self which declares onely for the first confirmed by St. Irenaeus and others of the Antients and what should make this new Production the more contemptible is that it will be found grounded onely upon Chimaerical Suppositions and taking it at the best advantage speaks nothing positively Affirmative For whereas it is confidently affirmed that Tertullian assures us in two several places that Saint John was Banished at the time of the Martyrdom of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul it is absolutely false that Father who makes mention of the Sufferings of the Saints Peter Paul and John jointly all together in one onely place to wit in the thirty sixth of his Praescriptions expressing it onely in these Terms That Church to wit that of Rome is very happy for which the Apostles spent their Doctrine and spilled their Blood where Peter was equalled to the Passion of his Lord that is to say Crucified where Paul was crowned with the same way of Departure as John that is to say Beheaded as St. John Baptist was where the Apostle John after he had been cast into the seething Oil yet suffered nothing was Banished into the Isle Whence it is evident that his Design was to shew that St. John was persecuted not at the same Time but at the same Place where St. Peter and St. Paul were so that his Discourse which proves nothing of what is in Question abates nought of its Truth though it be believed that Saint John's Banishment happened under Domitian and that eight and twenty years after the Martyrdom of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul under Nero. Besides the place before cited there is in all the Works of Tertullian no more mention of the Writing of St. John then there is of the Discovery of the West-Indies so that Hentenius who brags that he had read what he says in them must needs read it in his Sleep Nor is there less Imposture in what he attributes to Eâ—sebius who in his third Book of Evangelical Preparation and the seventh Chapter having spoken of the Imprisonment of all the Apostles by the High-Priests of Jerusalem and afterwards of their Scourging of the Stoning of St. Stephen of the Decollation of St. James the Son of Zebedaeus of the Restraint of St. Peter and the Stoning of St. James the Brother of our Lord adds Peter was crucified at Rome with his Head downwards Paul had his Head cut off and John was Banished into an Isle For it is manifest that this Discourse designing neither the Place nor the Time of the Sufferings of these Holy men cannot oblige any Body to believe that they were persecuted by the same Tyrant and at the same Time and that nothing hinders but that according to Eusebius himself as well in his Chronicle as History the two former were put to Death by the command of Nero and the last Banished eight and twenty years after by Virtue of a Decree of Domitian's So that for a man to imagine the contrary from Eusebius cannot be without wresting his Words and to think to deduce it from the same words by the force of Ratiocination will amount to as much as a discovery of want of Reason and argue that the Person who attempts it dreams waking The said Authour thinks to give us a third Proof for confirmation of his Opinion when relying on a wrong Interpretation of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
either abolished or so altered that they contain not any thing of what was in them before of greatest consideration And thence it is come to pass that in those who go under the name of St. James St. Peter St. Basil and St. Gregory we meet not with as in the first Prayers to God for the Saints but Prayers to the Saints the fear of making them equal with Jesus Christ being by degrees vanished and experience forcing us to acknowledg that all the imaginations of men as well what are good as what bad pass away but that Jesus Christ alone is and shall be the same eternally as St. Paul to our comfort gives us to observe in the 8th Verse of the 13th Chapter to the Hebrews CHAP. XX. The Motive of Dionysius the pretended Areopagite taken into consideration HE who about the year 490. took upon him the name of St. Denys the Areopagite to gain the greater credit to his Books Of the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies grounds upon one onely consideration the Commemoration of the departed which was made in his time in the Publick Service and declares his sentiment with the ordinary ostentation in these Termes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The recitation of the sacred Rolls which is made after the kissing of the Pax declares the names of those who have lived holily and who are irreturnably gone to the perfection of virtuous life exhorting and leading us to the most blessed and Godlike condition by resemblance of them and pronouncing them as it were living and as Theology expresses it not dead but passed from death to a most divine life But withall observe that they are reposited by sacred Memorials in the Remembrance of the Deity and not according to the manner of men transmitted from the fancy to the memory but to speak suitably to God according to the venerable and irrecoverable knowledg of the God-like deceased which is in God For as the Oracles say he knows those who are his and The death of his Saints is precious in his sight the death of the Saints being named instead of their accomplishment in sanctity Think devoutly upon this viz. that the venerable Signs whereby Christ is signified and participated having been placed upon the divine Altar immediately after follows the Description of the Saints declaring thus much that they are inseparably conjoyned by the supercelestial and sacred union which is between them This Discourse which makes no mention of any thing but the recital of the Names of the Departed denoting the perpetuity of the blessed life they enjoy in consequence of their living conformably to the will of God might stand without the use of any Prayer made on their behalf by the living But in the seventh Chapter he not onely speaks very clearly but expresses his meaning of it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The divine Hierarch or President over things sacred advancing makes the holy Prayer for the Person departed and after the Prayer the same Hierarch kisseth him and afterwards all that are present do the like Now the prayer requires of that Goodness which divinely governs all things that whatsoever sin the departed hath through humane frailty committed might be forgiven him and that he might be placed in Light and in the Region of the Living in the Bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob whence trouble and sorrow and sighing shall flee away Thus does this learned but insincere Authour ground what he says on the sixty of St. Epiphanius's Motives as the most rational of all and hath perswaded thereto all the Modern Greeks And as St. Epiphanius's alledging of several other Considerations argues he writ before the pretended Areopagite ever thought of his Supposition so this latter's copying the words of the Constitutions attributed to St. Clement and above transcribed and not allowing of Prayer for the damned shews that his work is later and of as little authority CHAP. XXI The Motives of Tertullian examined TErtullian before any of these Authours alledged two Motives of praying for the Dead that is to say their refreshment and the hastening or advancement of their Resurrection For this Great man I know not how bewitched by the pretended Sibylline Writing supposed that before the last Judgment the Son of God being descended upon Earth to establish a new Kingdom in Jerusalem and to govern it himself should bring together all his Faithfull and should there fill them with all delights even corporeal for the space of a thousand years And whereas St. John had foretold in his Apocalyps that the Old Serpent being bound for a thousand years there should be a first Resurrection in favour of their Souls who were beheaded for the witness of Jesus he with Justin Martyr Papias St. Irenaeus and all those who have since gone under the name of Millenaries took that Praediction literally and wresting it to a contrary sence imagined that during the thousand years of Christ's Reign which he pretended should be in Jerusalem the most eminent for Sanctity among the Faithfull departed should rise again before the rest of mankind but successively and every one at this appointed time so as that if one took possession of his body in the first of the thousand years another should not have that privilege till a hundred two or three hundred years after and so to the end of that period of ten Ages and that those should have least advantage thereof whose Resurrection should be either delayed till near the end of the thousand years or put off till after it and referred to the last day assigned for the general Resurrection as well of the rest of the Just as the Wicked To induce us to embrace that Opinion St. Irenaeus in the thirty fourth Chapter of his fifth Book making a coherence between the words of St. John in the twentieth Chapter of the Apocalyps and those of the Son of God in the twelfth of St. Luke said Hoc est quod à Domino dictum est c. This is it which is said by our Saviour Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching Verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat and will still come forth and serve them and if he come in the Evening-Watch and finde them so doing they are blessed because he shall make them sit down and shall serve them nay though it be in the second or the third Watch they are blessed The same thing saith also John in the Apocalyps Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection For comparing the Faithfull departed to the Servants that wait for the return of their Lord he would have those that are raised the first those who next to them and those who after them designed by those who are visited at the first second and third watch And Tertullian having embraced the same Opinion presupposes that the Faithfull might either
Whereby it clearly appears that he and no doubt with him the Councels of Rome and Carthage and Pope Innocent admitted two Canons or Catalogues of the Holy Scriptures one more strict viz. that of the Jews whereto all the Greeks and some of the Latines confined themselves and to which he thought himself obliged particularly to submit holding for a Rule of Faith and Canonical the Books contained therein and another larger proposed as well by him and Pope Innocent as by the Councels of Carthage and Rome as comprehending the Books which in some certain respect viz. the publick reading thereof in the Church and the common Edification arising from them though they were not esteemed to appertain to the Rule of Faith were called Canonical Sacred and Ecclesiastical by the Latines And indeed to make his meaning more obvious to the meaner Capacities he saies that the Church holds the Books of the Maccabees to be Canonical not as absolutely and properly as those comprehended in the Canon of the Jews and Greeks which contained the Rule of Faith but improperly and taking the word Canonical in a larger signification which the better to insinuate he saies They are held to be Canonical propter quorundam Martyrum passiones vehementes atque mirabiles c because of the grievous and miraculous Sufferings of some Martyrs and in the three and twentieth Chapter of his second Book Against Gaudentius that the writing of the Maccabees recepta est ab Ecclesia non inutiliter si sobriè legatur vel audiatur c. is received by the Church not without profit if it be read or heard soberly as if he had said in terminis that she accounted it among the Canonical in a certain respect onely not through an obedience of Faith but out of a desire of Edification and upon that accompt was it to to be read and understood soberly without which caution the admission of it into the Canon or Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Books would not have been profitable Consonantly to this sence Ruffinus after he had proposed Secundùm Traditionem Majorum c. according to the Tradition of our Ancestours the Catalogue of the Books truly and properly Divine and Canonical concludes it in these Terms Haec sunt quae Patres inter Canonem concluserunt ex quibus Fidei nostrae assertiones constare voluerunt These are the Books which the Fathers have comprehended in the Canon out of which they would have the Assertions of our Faith to be made manifest To which he immediately adds Sciendum tamen est quòd alii Libri sunt qui non Canonici sed Ecclesiastici à Majoribus appellati sunt c. quae omnia Legi quidem in Ecclesiis voluerunt non tamen proferri ad authoritatem ex his Fidei confirmandam c. Yet is it to be known that there are also other Books which were called by our Ancestours not Canonical but Ecclesiastical c. all which they were willing should be read in the Churches but not cited to confirm the authority of Faith Upon which it may be noted that this Sentiment being revived by Cardinal Cajetan was so stiffly maintained in the Councel of Trent that from the two and twentieth of February 1546. to the ninth of March the Assembly continued divided into three Opinions some desiring that the Scriptures might be distinguished into three Classes of different Authority others that they should be disposed into two and the third Party which prevailed on the fifteenth of March requiring that a Catalogue should be drawn up without any Distinction apparent in the Decree By which Decree the Councel intending to thunder-strike at least in appearance the Sentiment of the Protestants though they saw it strongly maintained by many of their own Body declared that they comprehended in the Index of Sacred Books those which the Protestants in imitation of the Greeks and most of the Latine Fathers admitted not into the Canon which might be understood in the sence proposed by Ruffinus and without any derogation from those which the Church ever held properly and absolutely Canonical In the next place the Councel anathematized those who would not receive them for Sacred and Canonical which might also very well be observing the Distinction of Ruffinus and Cajetan which makes nothing against the Protestants And at last they declare their Anathema is discharged to let the World know what Testimonies and Arguments principally they should make use of to confirm Tenents and regulate Morality in the Church insinuating further in favour of the Partizans of Cardinal Cajetan who as to the main Ground agreed with the Protestants the distinction which they had made after Ruffinus of the Books properly Canonical subservient as well to the Confirmation of Faith as restauration of Manners and the improperly and in a certain respect Canonical appointed onely for the restauration of Manners This presupposed it clearly appears that the Fathers who had any knowledg of the second Book of the Maccabees upon this very accompt that they either absolutely denied it or onely half-granted it and upon great Qualifications the Title of Canonical could not any way ground upon the report of it the right which the Church of Rome pretends to at this day for Praying for the dead and that that Report could not be urged any further then to an Attestation that it had really been in use from the Time of the Maccabees And indeed St. Augustine the first who cited it to that purpose and at the very place where he alledged it pretended not to go any further for his Discouse cited by Julian of Toledo runs thus In Maccabeorum libris legimus oblatum pro mortuis sacrificium Sed etsi nusquam in Scripturis veteribus omnino legeretur non parva est universae Ecclesiae quae in hâc consuetudine claret authoritas c. We read in the Book of Maccabees that Sacrifice was offered for the dead but though there should be no such thing any where in the antient Scriptures yet is the authority of the universal Church which shines in that Custom not of little weight Fourthly Besides the precedent Reasons which demonstrate the impossibility of deriving the Original of Oblations and Prayers for departed Christians from the pretended Example of Judas Maccabaeus and the Application which the Abridger of Jason the Cyrenian conceived he ought to make of it this no less considerable then the rest is to be added viz. that the first who undertook the Patronage of such a Custom built very much upon the not-written Tradition onely and by that means acknowledged and professed that neither they nor in their Judgment their Predecessours had any ground to recurr to the Authority of any Scripture either properly or improperly said to be Canonical and consequently that their imagination is absolutely Erroneous who believe that the Antients grounded their Custom on the fourth of Tobit or on the seventh of Ecclesiasticus or lastly on the twelfth of the second of
ballance so many stones and pieces of Timber out of his Churches that the good works of Charles had out-weighed the evil and that notwithstanding he had taken away his Soul from them And lastly towards the declination of the tenth Age to advance the reputation of the Order of Clugni and indeed of all the Religious Orders in general Peter Damiani Cardinal of Ostia and from him Sigebert have left in writing That a Religious man by Country of Rouërgue coming from Jerusalem entertained for some time in Sicily by the kindness of a certain Monk was told by him that in the Neighbour-hood there were certain places casting up flames of fire and called by the Inhabitants the Cauldrons of Vulcan in which the Souls of the departed endured several punishments according to their deserts and that there were in those places certain Devils appointed to see the execution done Of whom he said that he had often heard their voices indignation and terrours as also their lamentations when they complained that the souls were taken out of their hands by the Alms and Prayers of the Faithfull and especially at that time by the devotions of those of Clugni who incessantly prayed for the repose of the deceased That the Abbot Odilo receiving this information from him ordained in the year 998. through all the Monasteries subject to his Order that as the solemnity of All-Saints is observed on the first of November so the next day should be celebrated the memory of all those that rest in Christ which Custom passing to several Churches proved the ground of solemnizing the memory of the faithful departed Hence then came it 1. That Princes and the People moved with compassion for their kindred and friends and conceiving a fear of themselves with Consciences disturbed and racked with amazement multiplied their Donations to Churches and Monasteries even to infinite 2. That in the Instruments of those Donations they began to insert as necessary and essential this President whereof it were hard to produce many Examples more antient pro remedio animae animae parentum c. for the relief of my soul and the souls of my kindred And 3. That whereas Antiquity would hardly have been brought to grant any true and real apparition of souls some endeavoured to perswade people they are so common that they happen every minute To be short they thought they might with some probability introduce into the Church what the Platonick Philosophy had suggested to Virgil who gives us this draught of the state of separated Souls and of what he conceived of Hell Quin supremo cùm lumine vita reliquit Non tamen omne malum miseris nec funditùs omnes Corporeae excedunt pestes penitúsq necesse est Multa diu concreta modis inolescere miris Ergò exercentur poenis veterúmque malorum Supplicia expendunt aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos aliis sub gurgite vasto Infectum eluitur scelus aut exuritur igni c. Nor when poor souls they leave this wretched life Do all their evils cease all plagues all strife Contracted in the body many a stain Long time inur'd needs must ev'n then remain For which sharp Torments are to be endur'd That vice invet'rate may at last be cur'd Some empty souls are to the piercing winds Expos'd whilst others in their sev'ral kinds Are plung'd in Icy or sulphureous Lakes c. For according to the Visions of Germanus Bishop of Capua and the Hermite of Sicily it would be insinuated that the Souls might be purged by Baths and subterranean fires and there remained onely to make it absolutely Heathenish Mythologie to feign some exposed to the Winds and hung up in smoak for which the Councel of Florence as it were to excuse Dante and Ariosto hath taken care supplying what the precedent Theologie of the Cloisters to whose advantages all these Relations do ever contribute seemed to have omitted CHAP. XXIX Proofs of the Novelty of the precedent Opinion of Purgatory THe precedent opinion concerning Purgatory came so lately into play that in the year 593. Petrus Diaconus astonished at the novelty of it was in a manner forced to make this question to St. Gregory Quid hoc est quaeso te qùod in his extremis temporibus tam multa de animabus clarescunt quae antè latuerunt ità ut apertis Revelationibus atque ostensionibus venturum saeculum inferre se nobis atque aperire videatur c. What means it I pray thee that in these last times so many things which before were hidden are now become so manifest concerning souls that the world to come seems by clear Revelations and Declarations to bring and discover it self to us And as by what we have heard of Odilo Abbot of Clugny it might be evident that at the expiration of the tenth Age but 400 years after St. Gregory that Religious man by Country of Auvergne extreamly moved at the discourse of I know not what Pilgrim of Rouërgue had the confidence to put the last hand to the draught of Purgatory which the first Antiquity had been ignorant of for five whole Ages so from this very Position that it was not believed from the beginning it follows that it neither is nor can be a Catholick Tenet But this hath appeared also by other means viz. First by the opposition of the Greeks and all the East which was no less constant and earnest then that of Peter De Bruis Henry his Disciple the Waldenses and the Albigenses and at the present all the Protestants in the West Secondly By the falling off of the Latines who have in some measure quitted the Sentiment of St. Gregory and Odilo which was restrained onely to the pain of fire when upon the ninth of June 1439. but some few hours before Joseph Patriarch of the Greeks then dying had signed his last Declaration running in general Terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I confess the Purgatory of Souls they thought good to declare themselves by this indefinite expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Souls of a middle condition between the just and sinners are in a place of torments and whether it be fire or darkness or tempest or some other thing we differ not about it Thirdly By the Concordate signed by them on Sunday July the fifth and published the next day under the name of Pope Eugenius in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We decree that if those who have unfeignedly repented them of their sins die in charity towards God before they had by works worthy repentance made satisfaction for their sins as well those of Commission as Omission the Souls of such are after death purged by Purgatory pains Fourthly By the formal disallowance and Protestation of the Greeks immediately after their return against what ever extreme necessity had extorted from those of their Nation at Florence maintained by publick Writings by Mark
Devils what pretence can there be to continue the Prayers which infinuate such a perswasion And if the Ground-work of such Prayers be taken away what reason can be alledged sufficient to authorise the continuance of them Can it be said It is lawful and consistent with the Piety of the Church to put up to God Requests that are erroneous according to her own Sentiment and impossible according to the perswasion she hath of the merciful disposal of her Saviour in respect of his Elect whom he hath taken away from the Evil to come to sleep in a sleep of Peace and to rest from their Labours And supposing these things grounded upon the express Text of the Scripture and the Canon of the Mass whâ—ch makes commemoration to God onely of those who sleeping a sleep of Peace are accordingly in Peace should not men think themselves obliged either to discard those Prayers which contain a formal expression of what is contrary to Peace in respect of those for whom they are made and prove so much the more fruitless and inconvenient by how much the Foundations thereof are undermined by rejecting the Hypotheses as well of the pretended Sibyllmâ— Writing as of Justine Martyr or by retaining them to run into the Inconvenience of a Contradiction and that so much the more inevitable the more unadvisedly they engage themselves upon the maintaining of both the Terms of it at the same time affirming on the one side that those who are to be delivered out of the Bonds of a dreadful death and from the Gates of Hell a place of Trouble and as the Text of the Prayer bears it of Pains are neither in Death nor in Bonds nor in Hell that those far from whom must be driven away the Princes of Darkness are not onely not engaged in any War against them but are in a condition to sleep the sleep of Peace to be in possession of Peace to rest in the enjoyment of that Peace from their Labours And on the other side that those who are taken away from the evil to come so as they sleep in Peace and rest from their Labours are in the most dreadful Abyss of Miseries in the horrour of the most irrevocable War and the extremity of Troubles And what does this amount to less then to affirm that they are and are not either in Peace and Rest or in Trouble and War and consequently that they both can and cannot be delivered out of them Time was when those who followed the Party of the Millenaries imagining that during the term of a thousand years which they assigned for the Earthly Kingdom of our Saviour in Jerusalem there should be a Resurrection preceding the general one of the last-Last-day and upon that accompt be called the First thought they had just ground to beg that their deceased Friends might have their part in that first Resurrection But as soon as their Imagination lost to all credit came of it self to be absolutely laid aside the use of that kind of Prayers came upon this very score that every one thought them ill-grounded 〈◊〉 to be so far abolished that there is no Track of them in any of the Formularies that are come to us but onely in the â—â—othick Which if who sees not there is the same Obligation to â—brâ—gâ—te the Praâ—ers which are as hath been clearly demonstrated formally contradicted by the Canon of the Mass whereby the Church of Rome is wholly directed at the present CHAP. XXXI That the Passage in the twelfth Chapter of the second Book of the Maccabees hath no relation to the Opinion of Purgatory nor to the Service of the Churches THe Doctours of the Romane Communion pretend that the Christians of the second Age grounded their Prayers for the Dead upon the Authority of the second Book of the Maccabees unknown as we have observed to the Jews who were contemporary with the Apostles or at least slighted by them and looked upon with so much indignation by the Christians that not any one of them before St. Augustine cited it with any respect to the Offices rendred by the surviving Faithfull to their departed Brethren Nay indeed none among them could without destroying his own presuppositions concerning the State of the Dead make any advantage of that Testimony which notoriously wrests the action and intention of Judas Maccabaeus to a wrong sence and applies it to the false Hypothesis which the Jews of the last times did and do still maintain so much the more obstinately the more they are perswaded that it may be derived from the words of the first Psalm in the fifth Verse saying that the wicked shall not stand or as the Greek Version and the antient Latine hath it shall not rise up in Judgment Since therefore they were of this extravagant Opinion that the Resurrection of the Last-day should be onely for the Just and that those who had concluded a criminal Life in the Wrath of God should not participate thereof it must needs be that having perswaded thereto either Jason the Cyrenaean or his Abridger the said Jason or other man had conceived it necessary that Judas should make a Prayer for a sort of unhappy wretches whom he acknowledged destroyed in their Sacrilege to the end that being freed from their sin they might be made capable of the Resurrection which according to their prejudicated judgment was to be peculiar onely to those who had continued and concluded their lives in piety This Imagination could not relate to any of the Opinions of the antient Christians assured by St. Paul that every one should appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ to receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad and unanimously presupposing that Judgment should be given of all good and bad according to their works and consequently believing that there would be a double Resurrection that is to say that of the righteous to eternal life and glory and that of the wicked to death and shame and everlasting contempt But let us put the Case that the Sentiment whether of the Authour of the Second Book of the Maccabees or of his Abridger was absolutely conformable to so manifest and so known a Truth and that he alledged this onely end of the Prayer attributed by him to Judas that the Dead for whom onely he pretends that he made it being freed from their sins were thereupon conveyed to the enjoyment of Beatitude which shall have its full accomplishment in the Resurrection which the Fathers call the proper Faith of Christians and the consummation of the glory which they expect Nay let us put the Case that the Latine Church had from the beginning a great esteem for the Testimony of that Person if as is supposed she drew up her Service according to the President of Judas Maccabaeus whence comes it that in the Canon of the Mass she hath made no mention of the Resurrection
the Church of Saint Felix of Nola had reduced him to confess his Perplexity For though he had commended the Affection as well of the deceased as of their Mothers yet as it were acknowledging he knew not why and that he was not very well assured of what he did he desires to be informed by St. Augustine asking him Utrùm profit cuiquam post mortem quòd corpus ejus apud Sancti alicujus memoriam sepeliatur c. Whether it be beneficial to any one after Death that his Body be buried in the Memorial of some Saint which signifies no less in Effect then to be reduced to the same Predicament as St. Cyril of Hierusalem Denys the pretended Areopagite and Athanasius of Antioch who before and after Paulinus made this Question Of what benefit to the Dead were the Prayers made by the surviving for them CHAP. XLVIII The Sentiment of St. Augustine concerning the Burial of the Faithfull in Churches enquired into SAint Augustine in his Treatise De cura pro mortuis to give greater satisfaction to his Brother lays down that the Care which is taken of the dead Body the manner of Sepulture and the Funeral Solemnities are rather Alleviations of the grief of the Living then of any assistance or benefit to the Dead Secondly That the care taken of the Funeral and the choice of the place for Burial are Effects of the Piety of the surviving towards the Dead Thirdly That the advantage which may be drawn from the Interrment of the deceased Person in the Church of some Saint can be no other then that of recommending him more commodiously and affectionately to the Saint as to a kinde of Patron that that Office might be done to the deceased Party though his Body were not present in the same place and that the Sepulture of it in the same place is to no other end then to excite a desire and affection to pray for him Fourthly That what is said of the Visions of Souls is to be understood in the same manner as we do the Dreams we have of those who are yet alive and think not in the least of what the Imagination of the such as are asleep attribute to them as when Evodius afterwards Bishop of Uzalis dreamed that St. Augustine shewed him the sence of a Passage in Cicero's Rhetorick and when Curmas Curialis dreamed of the death of Curmas the Lock-Smith and imagined that he saw St. Augustine and the Priests of his City exhorting him to receive Baptism Fifthly That the Souls of the Departed neither know nor concern themselves about what is done here that if they did St. Monica his Mother would often discourse with him and God himself would not have said of his children whom he calleth hence before he exercises his Judgments on those which remain that he calls them Lest they might see Evil. Sixthly That the Souls Departed may know somewhat that concerns the Living either from the report of such as Die or from that of Angels or by Revelation from God Seventhly That the perswasion which we have of the assistance given by the Martyrs to those who implore it may be taken in the same sence as that which the Living have of assisting the Dead by their Prayers though they know not any thing in particular of their Condition and onely desire of God for them and on their behalf Grace and Rest Or that of the assistances which the Living think they receive from them there may be made the same Judgment as of the Opinion which the People of Nola had of the Apparition of St. Felix during the time they were besieged by the Barbarians or of the Promise which John the Monk made to shew himself the Night following to a certain Woman who thought she really saw him though he stirred not from the place where he was Eightly That we must not be overy-ready upon the clamours of Evil Spirits complaining that they are tormented by the Martyrs to infer that the Martyrs have in Effect tormented them since that in the Church of the Saints Gervasius and Protasius they said as much of St. Ambrose then living who yet never attributed to himself any thing of what they imputed to him Ninthly That in fine what may be thought of the Sepulture bestowed on the Departed is that it is an Office of Humanity towards them and not any assistance and that Prayers and Oblations may be beneficial to them if by the Life they led before they were in a capacity of receiving the benefit thereof From this Abridgment of the afore-said Treatise of St. Augustine it is manifest that that Great Man who had been Disciple to St. Ambrose and continued even to his Death an intimate Friend to St. Paulinus held nothing of the Hypotheses which those two famous Prelates had advanced with a kinde of Emulation and which the later had afterwards tacitely disacknowledged as such as whereof he himself was not satisfied But though his Conceptions are much more Rational and less Subject to Contradiction yet does it not hinder but they have this palpable Default that he lays down as a thing confessed what he might justly have disputed and what would be at this day actually denied him by the Protestants to wit That he was assured that there accrues a benefit to the Dead from the Prayers and Offerings made for them by the Living and that the Living have a sufficient ground to dedicate to the Dead those two Offices and to suppose upon Authority of the Custom which hath introduced the Exercise thereof into the Church that they effectually relieve them Julian Arch-Bishop of Toledo who in the Preface of his Prognostick to Idalius Bishop of Barcelona ingenuously confesses that neither of them thought himself able to resolve the Difficulties arising from the consideration of the State of the Dead chose rather to follow the Track of St. Augustine then of his Master St. Ambrose and that not without reason CHAP. XLIX The Sentiment of Maximus Tyrius concerning the Interment of the Faithfull Departed in Churches Considered BUt notwithstanding the Authority of that great Luminary of Africk which was not received every where Maximus who held the See of 〈◊〉 in the year 465. and on the eighteenth of November the same 〈◊〉 was present at the Councel of Rome under Pope Hilarus discovers 〈◊〉 Presupposition beyond that of St. Ambrose and Paulinus writing Ideo à Majoribus provisum est ut Sanctorum corporibus nostra corpora sociemus ut dum illos Tartarus metuit nos poena non tangat dum illos Christus illuminat nobis tenebrarum caligo diffugiat cùm sanctis ergo Martyribus quiescentes evadimus Inferni tenebras eorum propriis meritis attamen consocii sanctitate c. For this Reason have our Ancestours made provision that we should joyn our Bodies to those of the Saints to the end that while Hell stands in fear of them no Pain
of both Sexes whereever resting in Christ that being freed from all their sins they may rejoyce with thee world without end And this O mercifull God receive this Hoast offered for the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes whereever resting in Christ that delivered by this super-excellent Sacrifice out of the Chains of dreadfull death they may obtain eternal life And this O God whose property it is ever to have mercy and to forgive be favourable unto the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes and pardon all their sins that being loosed from the Chains of Death they may obtain passage into life And this Free O Lord we beseech thee the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes from all the bands of sin that being raised up among thy Saints and Elect they may live again in the glory of the Resurrection And this O Almighty and everlasting God who rulest as well over the living as the dead and shewest mercy unto all those whom thy fore-knowledge seeth will be thine in faith and good works we humbly beseech thee that those for whom we have appointed to pour out our Prayers and whom either this world does still detain in the flesh or the next hath already received uncloathed of the body may through the greatness of thy clemency be made worthy to obtain the forgiveness of all their sins and joy everlasting And this O Almighty and most mercifull God we humbly beseech thee that the Sacraments which we have received may purifie us and grant that this thy Sacrament be not unto us an obligation to punishment but a comfortable intercession for pardon that it be the cleansing of crimes that it be the strength of the fainting that it be a Bulwark against the dangers of the World that it be the remission of all the sins of the faithfull living and dead through Jesus Christ It might seem at the first sight that all these Prayers in general and every one in particular upon this very accompt that they speak of the forgiveness of sins for those who are departed this life do presuppose if not a Purgatory such as the Church of Rome hath imagined and described it some Ages since at least a certain necessity incumbent on the deceased to make satisfaction to the justice of God after their death But we must necessarily infer the contrary For not to take notice that to punish an evil doer is not to purge him if according to the tenour of the Prayers contained in the Mass of the Dead God forgives the sin of the deceased he does not require he should be punished for it if he loose the Chains he suffers him not to be still bound thereby if he exercises towards him his mercy through Jesus Christ he does not execute against him the rigour of his Justice such as it is conceived is felt by the Souls which they pretend are to pass through the fire of Purgatory Whence it follows that the design of those prayers which desire of God the effect of his mercy in the remission of their sins whom he hath called hence never was nor could be to procure their deliverance out of the torment which they are imagined at this day to suffer and whoever would finde the true meaning thereof is to reflect on the perswasions of those who were the first Authours thereof for they held that all those of whom they made a Commemoration were in as much as they were dead in the Lord gathered by him into Abraham's Bosom where they rested in a sleep of peace as it is expresly set down in the Memento So that no man well-informed prayed for them as for wretched Criminals and such as are deprived of the felicity which God hath prepared for his Saints but as for Champions already triumphant and glorious And yet out of a consideration that the perpetuity of the bliss into which every one presupposed them introduced proceeded from the continuation of the mercy according to which God had at first bestowed it and that it comprehended in it self the ratification of the pardon once granted to the deceased in pursuance whereof they were entred into and continued in the possession of celestial peace and joy the surviving thought fit to desire on their behalf mercy and remission of sins not absolutely as if they were still under the weight of God's wrath but upon a certain accompt to wit in as much as it is necessary that even in Heaven the mercy of God should be perpetually communicated to those whom it had already visited incessantly assuring them of the free gift he had made them first of his grace and afterwards of his glory as believing that those who enjoy so great a happiness are nevertheless to expect a more solemn sentence of Remission and Absolution in that great Day whereof we are all obliged both for our selves and on the behalf of our Brethren living upon Earth and reigning in Heaven to desire the blessed coming In this sence indeed the Antients never made any difficulty to desire on the behalf of the Blessed in Heaven the Pardon they had already obtained in as much as they were to obtain it again after a more glorious manner at the Day of Judgment whereto are particularly referred many of their Prayers As for instance that which we have already cited wherein they desire that their Souls freed from all the Bands of sin may be raised up again among the Saints in the Glory of the Resurrection And again thus Non intres c. Enter not into Judgment with tthy servant O Lord for in thy sight shal no man be justified unless thou grantest him the remission of all his sins We beseech therefore that the Sentence of thy Judgment may not lie heavy on him whom the sincere supplication of Christian Faith recommends but grant that he who while he lived was signed with the Sign of the blessed Trinity may by the assistance of thy Grace avoid the Judgment of Vengeance Again Oremus Fratres charissimi c. Let us pray dear Brethren for the spirit of our Brother whom the Lord God hath been pleased to deliver out of the snares of this world whose body is this day put into the Ground that the Lord would out of his goodness vouchsafe to place him in the Bosom of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that when the day of Judgment comes he may be placed among the Saints and Elect raised up again on the right hand And this taken out of the Ceremonial Deus cui omnia vivunt c. O God to whom all things live and to whom our bodies though they die perish not but are changed for the better we humbly beseech thee that thou command that the soul of thy servant N. be carried into the bosom of the Patriarch Abraham by the hands of thy holy Angels to be raised up again the last day of the great Judgment that what imperfections soever it hath through the deceit of the Devil