head and half pourtraict Christians used upon their altars even as they do at this day amongst other things of his great simplicity and ignorance Some will haply say if this were all that is done to saints to keep the pictur and read the lives of such renowned personages who consecrated themselvs to Gods glory and service for the incitement of our affections unto the like virtuous atchievements I should not much blame it But papists over and above this do pray to saints too and that is no wayes excusable Give me leav to reply to this That which you now say you cannot much blame has been made so odious that never a Catholick in England durst for this hundred years so much as let a Crucifix hang in his chamber lest both he and it should be torn asunder by us And what you judg in excusable their praying to saints which I have so often heard and read in our protestant Churches and books objected so eagerly and constantly against them when I found it other-wayes than we in England conceiv it to be I was glad both for their sakes and ours too I did therfor curiously examin and turn over the whole Roman Breviary and Missal which is the devotion of the Catholick Church and contains almost a fourth part of it a commemoration of several Saints according to the daies of the year wherin they flitted hence into a better life And I did not meet with so much as any one prayer addressed to any saint or angel of heaven no not upon those dayes wherin commemoration of them is made but directed all of them from the very first prayer to the last unto God the father by Jesus Christ in the unity of the holy ghost either exprest or implied And their practis herin is conform to antient tradition confirmed by their own law in a councel at Carthage under Pope Siricius an 397. wherin it was declared and ordained that all publick prayers of the Church should be made directly unto God the Father And Catholicks even upon a saints day making their prayer to God beg only of him amongst other their requests that the good works of such a saint in whom he glorified himself may speak better things for them than they can themselvs deserv For example upon St. Bennets day Intercessio nos quaesumus Domine Benedicti Abbatis commendet ut quod nostris meritis non valemus ejus patrocinio assequamur Upon the feast of St. Francis O God who by the merits of St. Francis doest inlarge thy Church with a new off-spring grant unto us by the imitation of him to despise earthly things and enjoy celestial And so run all the other praiers of the Church wherin any invocation of saints is made directed ever unto almighty God by his son Jesus Christ And this is no more than what was ever don in the Hebrew Church both befor and after Christianity was in the world as the works of ancient Rabbies can witnes and no less holy writ it self when it makes almighty God sooner as it were condescending to the peoples petition by the mediation of the merits of glorious patriarchs whom he singularly favoured and his wrath and displeasur against the Jews then at a height when he refuses to hear those saints in their behalf If Moyses and Samuel saith the sacred text Jer. 15. should stand before me yet is not my soul unto this people that is to say he would not in the behalf of such desperate wicked people accept of the praiers even of those saints that were most dear unto him and this was spoken by the prophet long after Moses and Samuel was dead Long before this the Patriarch Jacob does most plainly insinuate this custom of saints invocation as ordinary and familiar among the Hebrews when being to bless his two nephews Ephraim and Manasseh he speaks thus The angel who brought me out of all my evils bless these children and upon them be invocated my name and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac Gen. 48. And ther is a formal prayer to that purpose Exod. 32. which expresses as much invocation of saints as any or all the praiers of the Christian Church do ever use Remember saith Moses remember O God Abraham Isaac and Israel thy servants unto whom thou hast sworn by thy self saying I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven Which prayer was after imitated by Daniel c. 3. Withdraw not O Lord thy mercy from us for Abraham thy beloved Isaac thy servant and Israel thy holy one And if Daniel and Moses praied to saints well may we do it and if that of theirs was not a praying to saints but only to almighty God by the concurrence of their merits then is the Catholick Church to be not excused only but commended for she does the like in those prayers of hers she makes any mention either of saint or angel and no otherwise In their letanies indeed and short ejaculations Catholicks seem to invocate saints directly when in one part of them they say Holy Mary pray for us St. Peter pray for us c. But this though in words and sound it seems direct yet in sense and purpose it is indirect so that sancta Maria ora pro nobis omnes sancti Dei intercedite pro nobis is in sense but this Sancta Maria omnes sancti intercedant pro nobis ad Dominum ut nos mereamur c. And if we ponder it right it must needs be so for when I pray any one to pray for me considering the object and matter of my desire which both of us must joyn in I do not properly speaking pray to him but by him and only desire in my good affection that the prayers he makes for all may be available unto me And this is the more apparent becaus the letanies are directed unto God beginning continuing and ending with him Lord have mercy Christ have mercy Lord have mercy Father of heaven God Have mercy on us O Son redeemer of the world God Have mercy on us c. Holy Mary pray for us St. Michael pray for us c. Be propitious spare us O Lord. From all evil Deliver us O Lord c. By the mystery of thy incarnation Deliver us O Lord. By thy nativity Deliver us O Lord c. We sinners Beseech thee to hear us That thou grant us peace We beseech thee to hear us c. Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world spare us O Lord c. Lord have mercy Christ have mercy Lord have mercy Our Father c. Thus the letanies run and he that directs continues and ends his letany or praier to God must needs pray to him and objectively to none but him So that the interposition of any intercessour must needs be indirect in sense however it be exprest in words and can signifie no more but this that God would gratiously accept of the prayers they make in our behalf For
that they do pray for their brethren and adoptives of the same bliss both reason and holy writ sufficently assure us Nor is this way of expressing our desires unusual in holy Scripture Bless ye our Lord all the works of our Lord bless ye our Lord O angels of God O sun and moon bless ye our Lord O stars of heaven bless ye our Lord praise ye and magnifie him for ever c. Thus pray the three confessours in Daniel And the whole 148. Psalm runs in the same tenour Prais our Lord all ye angels of his prais him all his powers prais ye him O sun and moon prais him all the stars of light c. Here is an invocation direct in words not only of the saints and angels but stars and meteors earth and seas frost and snow heat and cold light and darknes And yet I am not bound who use that devotion to make it good that the sun and moon or other things there invocated hear me when I speak to them in this manner sith I do but only express my affection and desire that sun and moon heaven and earth frost and snow heat and cold mountains and hills be in their manner instrumentall to the almighties prais and honour whether in words I speak directly to the sun and moon as I do in that Psalm or express my self otherwise saying May the sun moon heaven and earth concurre with me to the honour and prais of God mighty the affection and meaning is still the same Nay the kings and princes of the earth whom in that same Psalm I invocate to my assistance do not more hear me when I say that Psalm in my chamber than do the mountains and hills In like manner it is all one for me to say either thus Let the prayers of the saints and angels of God assist my condition with the almighty holy one or thus Pray for me O saints and angels of God to assist my poor condition with God almighty and holy The devotion is as good this way as the other and all one and the same thing And the antient Christians used indifferently either the one way or the other according as they deemed either this or that more agreeable and pathetical to the exciting of their devotion and obtaining their desires with God Nor did those wise and devout people over enter into the curiosity whether the spirits of another world did either see or hear or know what we speak or think or do in this much less did it ever enter into their creed that they do so After a thousand years arose our Schoolmen who amongst other of their subtilities raised the difficulty Whether Saints in another life hear and see all our motions in this and generally they defended and neatly declared both that they did it and also how it might be done namely by the mirrour of divine essence seen and enjoyed by the blessed But this is a meer nice theological subtility and no busines of faith at all neither for the mode how it is done nor yet for the doctrin that it is done And if those schoolmen thought this their doctrin necessary for any practis of saints-invocation in the Church they showed themselvs not so good rhetoricians as they were logicians He that will defend pure naked faith is not bound to enter upon any such dispute with the adversary or go any further than his faith reaches for so he does but intangle religion and expose it to needles doubts But this is a great mistake of many men otherwise of very great parts that they think what they have heard in the schools of S. Thomas or Scotus is all of it de fide not considering that the schoolmen raised a thousand questions and invented several declarations like ramparts about the cittadel of Faith to inable men to speak against all opposition several wayes either in the way of St. Thomas or Scotus Gandavensis Durandus Aureolus or other doctour not to oblige them to defend those waies as the cittadel it self when it shall com by any adversary to be opposed And although with som Antichristian great wits as Plotin Porphyrius Julian such subtilities may be spoke of yet still with this caution it must be done that they first understand that Christians are not bound when they defend the simplicity of their faith to make good those subtilities besides it But with a grosser textual opponent as our Protestant is such curiosities are not at all to be touched For he concludes presently that invocation of saints is not to be used if any one go about to tell him that they hear our prayers and make it not sink into his head how they can do it And thus catholick faith is prejudiced for want of wise comportment in the defendant There is also another little defect in som late catholick writers that in their controversies with Protestants wherein they hold that it is lawful to pray unto saints they consider not that they mean it one way and their adversary another This should first have been cleared before they had proceeded to perswade what could never enter into our Protestant heads in the sens they understood it For properly and strictly speaking to pray saints or by them is one thing to pray to them is another that intimates the means this the final end and object of our prayer and the Catholick uses it in the first sens the Protestant understands it in the latter as I know by my experience and conversation with them in all places St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans as elswhere very frequently calls the Christians Sanctos saints and in the end of that epistle earnestly importunes them to help him in their prayers for him unto God And yet will Protestants never be perswaded for all that that S. Paul prayed to saints and indeed in their sens he did not but that he did pray to saints in the catholick sens that is prayed saints or prayed by saints no rational man can deny And such and no other is the devotion of catholicks in this kind save only that their practis is more plausible than that of St. Paul now mentioned If the prayers of such as be in viâ and sinners in som part of their conversation though saints in profession be so useful and may commendably be desired much more those of consummate saints in patriâ absolute friends of God and partakers of his glory these the sacred text assures us that they pray for their brethren but men in this life although they be requested may neglect to do it their prayer is surely effectual one way or other to our good when men of this life may obtain for us haply nothing at all Nor is it of any purpos whether they hear us or no sith we do but pray them to do for us what we are assured they do for all and so apply the benefit of their prayers to our selvs or pray by them not to
wonder take any one kingdom under his spiritual jurisdiction and they shall remain a hundred yea thousand years in all peace and unity upon religions account But let that kingdom once divide and separate from him and presently all those very self same byshops who before in their subordination to the Pope easily mannaged the peoples consciences and kept them in a most orderly peaceablenes not know in their separation from him which way to turn themselves but that heresies and schismes will rise and augment themselves without end in despight of all their power and endeavours as if unity and truth and peace were tied to the Popes chair Those that understand not catholick religion have stood many of them exceedingly amazed at this consideration and not without caus for whence can this happen It is not becaus Popes are all saints and only they for the venerable and renowned priests under him and great multitudes of people about him in all nations which shine like stars in the firmament may be without controul as good and holy many of them as himself and although Popes be for the most part very good civil and discreet men yet if it should happen that som one be no better than he should yet even that man shall be as zealous of unity in religion and preserv it as exactly as the best which exalts our wonderment unto such a height that we are even forced to acknowledg that there is some great secret in this business not easily to be resolved for all other byshops and princes the more worldly and sensual they be the less care have they of their flock and people If we shall say that these be the great powers of God upon him the doubt is at an end and a reason appears why people do fear so much to be excluded his communion if this be not admitted I am at a loss and can find no reason why a good king and true head of his Church if himself or the people can make him so should not be able by his acknowledged autority and sword to keep his own subjects in an unity of faith and peace as well as a bad Pope for so we beleev them all to be and pretended head keeps together other mens subjects of different manners and languages without sword or axe or corporal rods only by the meer love of his communion and fear they have to lose it Nor can we say that new opinions about religion are never broacht among catholiks for this as it cannot be expected amongst so many millions of great wits and spirits that be amongst them up and down the world so is it so far from being true that all the heresies that have rose in Christianity were invented ever by some catholick I mean that had been formerly such for his opposition to and apostacy from his general Pastour makes him ceas to be catholick any longer and generally by priests who preferring their own judgments before their pastours and the tradition they had hitherto walked by in the pride of their hearts led people after them out of the fold of the Church And whoever does so puts himself by his own autority in locum Petri and is to be looked upon by all good Catholicks who have care of their own salvation as a dangerous guide Thus did first begin our own Protestancy by Martin Luther Calvin and other fallen priests and the fall of murmuring Judas from the colledg of apostles of contesting Adam and Eve from the bliss of paradise of dissenting Lucifer and his angels from heaven who are said to dispute with Michael and his angels as Luther did with Eckius and his fellow Catholicks signifie nothing else But what does the Pape or Christian pastour do in this case When the tumult is once raised and a disorder begun in any part of his flock by som proud turbulent spirit amongst them the Pape first whistles him and his fellow petulcous rams into order by charitable admonition which still increases lowder by degrees and if this will not serv but that they will still be refractory he casts in his shepheards crook amongst them and divides the turbulent from the peaceful and so the infection stayes The disquiet ones being driven out depart in a rout together but within a while they separate and walk by sixes and seavens and subdivide at length so often that at last they go single whiles every sheep amongst them will be a ram and every ram a shepheard But the other quiet ones that hear the voice of their sheapherd and follow him in peace as becoms sheep to do enjoy all happines and spiritual content amongst themselvs to the unspeakable comfort of their souls under him whom Christ the great Messias hath set over them and this is called the Catholick flock which for the love they bear to their honoured pastour and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we commonly call Papists and somtimes becaus they will not forsake either their sheapheard or divine pastures of truth and sacraments wherein they have been brought up when we would speak more civilly we call them Recusants If any one shall think I speak too much in favour of catholick religion let such know that I favour nothing but truth and peace and it is the part of an ingenuous and well bred nature to support what he can the weaker side especially if he know it to be innocent and injuriously opprest as it often happens in this world that the stronger in right may be the weaker in repute Nor can any fewd amongst us ever be ended which is the thing I aim at so long as errour and injustice are maintained And although we quarrel furiously one with another yet considering that our strifes amongst our selves proceed upon the very same grounds and motives we pretend all of us to have against the general adversary we all hate till this capital dislike of Popery be diminished our other fewds must needs be kept alive No peace amongst our selves till we revoke our words and ill deeds against our innocent neighbours and at last comply charitably with them against whom our first dissention sprang up in this land Ephraim is against Manasses and Manasses against Ephraim but both against Juda and becaus they are both against Juda their lawful superiour therefor are they so furiously bent against one another whiles Ephraim to be in Juda's place who is thrust out by both parties labours to depress Manasses and Manasses for the same reason to trample upon Ephraim Thus is Presbyterian against Independent and Independent against Presbyterian but both against the Papist Protestant against Puritan and Puritan against Protestant but both against the Catholick And as soon as the Protestant had by violence supplanted and cast his Roman-neighbours out of all their dignities honour and livelihood the rancour had utterly ceased had not the Puritan rose up out of the Protestant bowels and subverted him by the same means he had used to his catholick foregoers and
men for my name but who shall persever unto the end he shall be saved But I hope our countreymen will at length discern their own dangerous mistake and perceiv with me that the Popish Mass which is the old opostolical devotion merits not the hatred and mischief we have either wrought or intended the observers of it in our land Hitherto then I hope we have no reason to hate popery upon the account of their Messach which is indeed the chiefest piece of our division and occasion of the many contumelies we put upon them especially considering that in our own Communion so far as it goes we do but imitate great part of it and that in their very words § 23. B. V. Mary AL Catholiks I could ever see or hear or read of bear a most devout respect to the Virgin MARY whom others care not how they villify and dishonour either by their words or writings and I cannot but dislike this our uncivil carriage to say no wors of it as much as I do approve of their piety Surely that Virgin of whom God would be incarnate and with whom he lived so many years together must needs be a person of strang perfection and worthy of great esteem amongst all such as worship her Son and look upon him indeed as their Redeemer He that loves him that begets saith the good apostle loves him that is begotten and I should think he that worships him that is begotten must needs have some respect for her that bare him The blessed Virgin was her self so confident of this that she was bold to say Ecce enim ex hoo beat am me dicent omnes generationes all generations all nations saith she shall call me Blessed And surely if this be true and in gospel it passes for divine words we that instead of calling her Blessed presume so highly to villify and blaspheme her even in our publick streets for which in catholick countries we should be in danger of being stoned to death by the people show our selvs to be a nation that belongs not to the Magnificat Indeed all here amongst us are not so rude but such as be are neither punished nor questioned for it And what in the name of God hath the Virgin Mary don to us what ill or harm hath she ever wrought us that any English Christian should cast so many gibes and show so much disesteem to that blessed creatur whom the whole catholick world the angels of heaven nay our Lord himself and that great God that made heaven and earth have set in so high a place of honour Will our incivility as it hath no ground or reason admit likewise of no limits It may be feared that the spirit of Luther anisme is some very foul one for it hath moved the professours of it in several places unto most unseemly language and highest disesteem of very thing that is venerable Not only princes and prelates priests and altars shrines and sacrifice byshops and their sacred ordinations the real presence tribunal of our reconciliation and the like but the very saints and angels of heaven nay the most innocent blessed Maid whom the very Turks do honour to this day and that she may not be thought the wors of for that an angel from heaven saluted by the mandate and in the name of him who is primogeneal Life and substantial Truth with the title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Most beloved and Gratious escape not the lash of our lips and pens And yet this is not all neither Do not I know that the primitive protestants in forreign parts have uttered some openly some more obscurely in their writings many odde words against the very honour of Jesus Christ himself although our more moderate Church of England I am confident hates them for it Did not Calvin taunt at his ignorance and passion and too much haste for his breakfast when he crust the figtree that had not fruit upon it when he sought it if he had studied catholick divines they would have taught him a more modest and pious interpretation than that idle wicked one of his own Did not Michael Servetus that bold apostate Spanish youth speak openly amongst his fellow protestants in Geneva that he wondered that they had raised all their controversies so many as they had against the Church which is named the body of Christ and yet never a one against Christ the head of that body did not Valentine Gentile that unhappy Italian after he had revolted to Calvin take it ill that all the reformed Churches agreed yet with the papists in the beleef of a Trinity and with him sided Matheus Gribaldus Lismanin Francis David and Jacobus Paleologus though this last recanted afterward and returned happily to his catholick faith And who-knows not that Luther Brentius Calvin Suinglius yea and Erasmus too who though he yet remained catholick would be nibling now and then at Arrian and Socinianisme let fly many a secret dart at Christ and the sacred Trinity though they were not yet so bold as to profess openly with som others of their brethren whom they saw to suffer in their repute for it any such opinion till they found the world in a more forward disposition to accept it and all these bent their bowes and fitted their arrowes to the string that if not openly yet at least in the dark and in Lunâ as the prophet phrases it they might shoot and hit every thing that is sacred even Christ himself So true it is that he who loves him that begets loves him that is begotten and he that hates the one does not truly love the other But the penmen of our creed and gospel who made honourable mention of the Virgin Mary were of another spirit than we be that so much dishonour her although for fashion sake we read over those holy penmens words A certain protestant byshop did not many years ago examin a catholick child that stood before him if he could say his prayers the boy replying yes said first his Pater noster after that began his Ave Maria which catholicks use to repeat in memory of Christs incarnation at which words nay quoth the byshop let her alone let her alone we have nothing to do with her The child went on to his Creed and when he came to conceptus est de spiritus sancto natus ex he sodainly stopt and she is here again quoth the child she is here again my Lord what shall I do with her now you may let her pass quoth the byshop in your Creed but not in your prayers As though we might have faith but neither hope nor charity for her But if we seriously consider the spirit of those who wrote either our Gospel or Creed we shall find that of Roman catholicks to have a most near consanguinity with it and loving them we cannot hate these for the respect they bear his virgin Mother whom we all worship §. 24. Images IN all places where
I came I beheld great store of pictures and images in Churches of Roman catholicks which being in the postures either of their bloody martyrdoms which for their religion they underwent or apostolical sacrifice or sacred retirements meditations or other exercise of their faith hope or charity either towards God or their neighbours apostles martyrs confessours hermites monks virgins kings queens byshops as they made a goodly show so did they mightily assist the fansy unto a more united thought of the religion people came into the Church to fulfil and solemnise But the altar is seldom without the pourtraicts of Jesus and his Virgin Mother but never without the Crucifix the sight of all which is apt to cast into the mind of such as enter into the Church that meditation of the apostle in his epistle to the Hebrewes Non accessistis ad tractabilem montem accensibilem ignem c. Ye are not com to the high towring mount flaming fire and whirlwind and darknes and storm and sound of trumpet and nois of words which they that heard excused themselves and requested to hear it no more and it seemed so terrible that Moyses himself stood trembling and affrighted but ye are come to Mount Sion to the city of our living God to celestiall Jerusalem and society of angels the Church of primitive Christians conscript in heaven to God the Judge of all to the spirits of just perfect men to Jesus the mediatour of a new testament and to the Aspersion of blood speaking better things than Able And all these representations so much concurring to devotion and piety as they do the doctrine and men who tore them down and cast them out of our English Churches and broke and hewed them in pieces with so much rage could not be any friends whatever they might pretend either to our mount Sion or the citty of our living God the celestial Jerusalem society of angels the Church of primitive Christians or to the spirits of just men perfected or to Jesus mediatour of the new testament or lastly to the aspersion of blood speaking better things than Abel all which was there pour-traited and described It is the judgment of all men that the violation of an Image redounds to the Prototype and therefore Kings not only in Christendom but beyond it use to punish a grand traitour either deceased or fled even in his effigie Every particular person loves to behold the picture of him he esteems and again if he hate the person he detests the face thus even our late rebells here in England after they had murthered our good King shot his pictures with bullets and broke them with their cimiters and spears all the land over Thy adversaries saith the Prophet have roared and raged in the midst of thy synagogues and for thy ensigns have set up their own banners as once of those who with strong exes cut up the thickest of timber unto the temples structure it was esteemed an honourable and noble work in them so is it countd now if any on the contrary break in pieces thy sculptures with axe hammers they were Gods enemies then that did all this and that brake down his sculptures and by those very works of theirs concluded to be his enemies by a great Prophet who well enough understood who was Gods friend and who his foe If any would consider the constitution and exigence of mans nature he would soon find not only the convenience but necessity of such helps as ocular representations afford us for the fansy hath nothing but what it receives from the senses and the intellect works upon nothing but what it has from fansy and therfore did God make man in the last place after heaven and earth was framed to the end that in so great a variety of sensible objects he might find somthing to think of even in the first instant of his being wheras if he had been made before other things he had stood like a stock or stone without any possibility of a thought Now nothing administers to the fansy and consequently to the mind with that variety and life and power as doth the eye the supplies of the ear care but dead things to it especially in the account of exciting desire and love let Cicero speak a whole day upon the beauties of a princely seat countrey city man or woman yet when the eye comes once to see the thing in its own properties it discerns and represents more at one glance than could his or all the oratory in the world ever by the help of the ear imprint into the mind Indeed who is so ignorant that he has not observed ere this that the eye has a hundred fold the actuosity of the ear nor is it unknown what strange melting affections are caused in the heart by a continual sight and meditation of some sacred pictur of the Crucifix when sermons float by and effect little or nothing in comparison even as worldly objects so long as they are coached in aiery words pass away like wind but once seated in the throne of the eye they move impetuously Nor can all the ministers in the world give me a reason why the eye in a sacred purpos may not have the helps of her species as well as the ear have hers or why the minde that is to be moved and can never be moved too much in such things may not as well have the quicker as duller assistance For when any one preaches upon the Passion of Christ does he do any thing els but labour to work out such representations in the ear and minde as oratory may effect for the moving of affections corresponding to such an object and if such good meditations put into a book of devotion be assisted with an ocular representation which is more quick and full and carries more of life with it what harm is it surely he that deprives me of the more lively helps never means whatever he pretend I should have any cordial feeling of the things he talks of And verily the Protestant pretenses for their removal of images out of our Churches are but simple ones and the simpler they be the the better it seems they serve the deluded vulgar First say they God has in his commandements forbidden the making of graven images Good and has he so do you not find too that he commanded it see if he did not give order in the same scripture for Cherubins and Seraphins to be made and set up in his sanctum sanctorum over the ark what then did God or Moses forget himself and contradict his own words or are you blind or only catholicks fools or what is the matter Look seriously and you shall find that Moses forbad prophane and forreign images but he commanded his own though he disliked the ugly face of Molech Dagon and Astaroth yet did not he therefor will his people should tear down his own Cherubins And Christians likewise have not any images of Simon