But presently comes Abraham fals upon the Victors takes the five Kings and with them Lot also Prisoner by means whereof both Lot and they became Abrahams captives to be disposed of as he pleased who had got the mastery So was it with the sons of men till they were rescued from the Devill by this son of Abraham We were the miserable children of this captivitie They to whom we were captives were taken captive themselves and we with them So both came into Christs hands were both made his Prisoners and both accordingly led in triumph on this glorious day Both indeed led in triumph but with this great difference Their being led in triumph was to their confusion they were condemned also as we saw before to perpetuall prisons there to expect the torments of the day of judgment We by this new captivity were released of our old restored unto the glorious liberty of the sons of God And this was felix captivitas capi in bonum a fortunate Captivity that fell out so happily And yet it did not end so neither as if the giving of us our lost liberty had been all intended though we perhaps had been contented well enough had it been no more One part of this great triumph doth remaine behind the dona dedit of the Psalmist the scattering of his gifts and Largesse amongst his people Missilia the old Romans called them to make his conquest the more acceptable to all sorts of men And this he could not do untill his Ascension till he had took possession of the heavenly palaces Every good and perfect gift coming from above as St. Iames hath told us I speak not of those gifts here which concern the Church the body collective of the Saints the whole Congregation The giving of those gifts was the work of Whitsuntide when the Apostles received gifts for the publick Ministery and for the benefit of the Church in all times succeeding I speak of such gifts only now as concerne particulars which he conferreth upon us with a liberal hand according to our wants and his own good pleasure Are we in danger of our enemies By being ascended into heaven he is the better able to deliver us from them for standing on the higher ground he hath got the vantage from whence he can rain down fire and brimstone on them if he thinke it necessary Ascensor Coeli auxiliatur He that rid upon the Cloudes to Heaven is our helpe and refuge saith Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy Are we in want of necessaries to sustain our lives He shall send down a gracious rain upon his inheritance the former and the latter rain as the Prophet cals it Are we unfurnished of such graces as are fit for our Christian calling Out of the fulnesse of his treasure shall we all receive and that too grace for grace saith the great Evangelist that is to say not all of us one and the same grace but diversi diversam to every man his severall and particular grace as Maldonate and I thinke very happily doth expound the Text. For unto one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdome and to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit To another working of miracles to another prophecie to another discerning of spirits to another divers kinds of tongues To one a supereminâ—nt faith to another an abundant charity to every man some gift or other the better to prepare him for his way to Heaven and make him the more welcome at his coming thither And this indeed is the main gift we are to look for the greatest benefit we can receive by Christs ascensun All other gifts are but in order unto this to provide heaven for us In that he is ascended into heaven in our humane nature he lets us know that heaven is to be ascended and that our nature is made capable of the like ascension if we have ascensiones in corde first and ascend up to him in our hearts by saith and piety Nay therefore did our Saviour ascend into heaven that he might shew us the way thither bespeak our entertainment for us and prepare our lodging I go saith he to prepare a place for you Ioh. 14.3 And so perhaps he might doe and we never the better he might prepare the place and we not come at it He tels them therefore in plain termes If I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto my self that where I am there ye may be also This is indeed the greatest fruit and benefit which redounds to us by Christs Ascendit in altum by his ascending up on high He overcame the sharpnesse of death by his resurrection by his ascension he set open the Kingdome of heaven unto all believers that where he is we may be also Such other of the fruits and effects hereof as be in ordine to this will fall more fitly under the consideration of the next branch of this Article his sitting at the right hand of God the Father and till then we leave them In the mean time it will be fitting for us to take up that Psalme of David and sing Non nobis Domine non nobis that this great work was not wrought for our sakes alone There is a Nomini tuo da gloriam to be looked on too somewhat which Christ acquired thereby unto himselfe that must be considered He was made lower then the Angels in his humane nature not to be crowned with immortality and glory till in his humane nature he ascended into heaven All power had formerly been given him both in heaven and earth He had a jus ad rem then when he sojourned here The exercise of this authority or the jus in re at least the perfect manifestation of it in the eyes of men was not till he had took possession of the heavens themselves the Palace royal of his kingdome Iesus he was a Saviour from his very birth acknowledged by St. Peter for the Christ of God and in his mouth by all the rest of the Apostles Yet finde we not that they looked otherwise on him then as some great Prophet or at the most a Prince in posse if all things went well with him They never took him for their God and Lord though many times they did for their Lord and master nor did they worship and adore him untill his ascension Then the text saith indeed they did it but before that never And it came to passe saith St. Luke that while he blessed them he was parted from them and carried up into heaven and they worshipped him and returned to Hierusalem with great joy The Papists make a great dispute about this question An Christus sibi aliquid meruerit i. e. Whether Christ merited any thing for himself or for mankinde only In the true meaning of the word and not as they mean merited it is plain he did For properly
incorporeae naturae convenienter ista absque assumptione carnis aptantur nec sedis coelestis perfectio Divinae naturae sed humanae conquiritur It was then in his natural body that Christ ascended into heaven in it he hath acquired and for it all those high preheminences which have been formerly expressed not altering thereby the nature which before it had but adding a perfection of that glory which before it had not and making it though a natural body still yet a body glorifyed And this is generally agreed upon by all the fathers affirming with a joynt consent this most Catholick truth that notwithstanding the accessions of immortality and glory to the body of Christ yet it reserved still all the properties of a natural body Christ saith St. Hierome ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father manente ea natura carnis the very same nature of his body remaining still in which he was born suffered and did rise again And then Non enim exinanita est humanitatis substantia sed glorificata The substance of his body was not done away but only glorifyed St. Augustine as fully but in fewer words Christum corpori suo majestatem dedisse naturam tamen corporis non ademisse that Christ by giving majesty to his body did not destroy the nature of it As plainly but more fully in another place Huic corpori immortalitatem dedit naturam non abstulit Christ saith the Father hath apparelled his flesh with immortality but he hath not taken from it the nature of flesh And therefore it concerneth us to take good heed ne ita divinitatem astruamus hominis ut veritatem corporis auferamus not to maintain his divinity on such faulty grounds as utterly ruine his humanity or so advance the man as to spoyle his body Pope Leo to this purpose also Caro Christi ipsa est per essentiam non ipsa per gloriam The flesh or body of Christ in substance is the same it was in glory it is not the same Others might be produced to the same effect were not these three sufficient to confirme a point so little subject to dispute amongst men of reason And to say truth the quarrell is not of the Thesis or the point it self that the body of Christ retained still the properties of a natural body which before it had but in the Hypothesis or supposition which is built upon it For if our Saviours body still retain the properties of a natural body it must be circumscribed in a certain place and have a local being as all bodies have Otherwise by St. Augustines rule it will be no body For tolle ipsa corpora qualitatibus corporum c. Take away from bodies the properties of bodies and there will be no place or ubi for them to be in et ideo necesse est ut non sint and then the same bodies must needs be no bodies It followeth then upon this rule of that learned Father that the body of Christ though glorifyed is a natural body and consequently circumscribed in some place of heaven and yet because a glorifyed body though a body naturall is so restrained to heaven and the glories of it that no place else is capable of him St. Augustine shall make good the first proposition and St. Cyril the second and then let Gratian make the Syllogisme by adding a conclusion to the former premises St. Augustine telleth us for the first Ne dubites Christum esse in aliquo loco coeli doubt not saith he but that the body of Christ is in some place of heaven Not doubt it Why Propter veri corporis modum because it is agreeable unto the nature of a true body that it should be so St. Cyril for the second thus Non poterat Christus cum Apostolis versari in carne c. Christ could not converse with his Apostles in his body or flesh after he had ascended to his heavenly Father The inference shall be made by Gratian though in Augustines words Corpus in quo resurrexit in uno loco esse oportet The body in which Christ rose must needs be in one place like to other bodies Nor is this more although it seem too much to the Pontificians then what St. Peter said before in a Sermon of his Oportet illum coelos capere viz. that the heavens must contain him till his coming again till all things be restored and perfected in the day of the Lord. Which being so it was unseasonably done of Pope Nicolas to labour the introducing of the new article of Transubstantiation into the Creed before he had expounded that of Christs ascension being so plainly contrary to that new devise that they cannot both stand together in the same belief And when Pope Pius the fourth did publish a new Creed of his own and therein did requre this amongst other Articles that we believe that in the Sacrament of the Eucharist there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into Christs body and of the wine into his bloud which conversion the Catholick Church calleth Transubstantiation he considered neither how repugnant his new Creed would be to that which the Apostles had before delivered nor how destructive to the works of Gods Creation For first if Christ our Saviour be ascended in his naturall body and that the heavens are to contain him till his coming to judgment as both the Scriptures and the Creed do expressely say how can we have his body here upon the earth as often as the Priest is pleased to offer Hoc est corpus meum without confuting both the Creed and the text together Secondly if the bread be transubstantiated into our Saviours body so that it becometh forthwith to be whole Christ both body and soul and his divinity too into the bargain as they say it doth marke what most monstrous paradoxes and absurdities will ensue upon it For first we have a new Divinity of a Creatures making and secondly our Saviour Christ must have as many natural bodies as all the Priests in Christendome say several Masses which is to make him far more monstrous then the Giant Geryon and not to have three bodies only but three hundred thousand Or else this naturall body of Christ must be entire and whole both in heaven and earth and on the earth in as many several places at the self same time as there are dayly Masses said in the Church of Rome which is to take away the Properties of a body natural For tolle spatia locorum corporibus nusquam erunt si nusquam erunt nec erunt ipsa as St. Augustine hath it Take away from a body limitation of place and it will be no where and if no where then it is no body And next we shall have bodies made of flesh and bloud and bones and sinews and all things requisite to the being of a natural
of Christs disciples shall goe to an invisible place appointed them by God and there shall remain unto the resurrection and after receiving their bodies and rising perfectly that is corporally as Christ did rise shall so come to the Vision or sight of God Tertullian next It is saith he apparent to any wise man that there is a place determined which is Abrahams bosome for the receiving of the souls of his sons which region I mean Abrahams bosome though it be not heavenly but Tertullian was out in that sublimior tamen inferis yet being higher then the inferi or places below shall give comfort to the souls of the righteous untill the resurrection and the end of all things bring the full reward So Hilarie B. of Poyctiers The day of judgment is the day of everlasting happinesse or punishment till which time death hath every one under his dominion whilest either Abrahams bosome or the house of torments reserveth every man to judgement St. Ambrose to the same effect till the fullnesse of time come the souls expect their due reward for some of which pain for others glory is provided Next him St. Augustine his convert After this short life thou shalt not as yet be where the Saints shall be to whom it shall be said in the day of judgement Come ye blessed of my father c. Thou shalt not be there as yet who knoweth not that but there thou shalt be where poor Lazarus was seen a far off by the proud richman In that rest shalt thou securely expect the day of judgment in which thou shalt receive thy body and be changed and be made equall with the Angels St. Bernard thus you perceive that there be three states of the soul the first in this corruptible body the second without the body the third in perfect blessednesse The first in the Tabernacles the second in the Courts the third in the house of God into which most blessed house of God the souls of the Saints shall not enter without us nor without their own bodies I had not named St. Bernard amongst those Antients but only to the end that it might be seen that this was generally the doctrine of the Western Church as to this particular untill the invocation of the Saints departed became first to be put in practise and afterwards to be defended and imposed as good Catholick Doctrine For they saw well that unlesse it were received for an Orthodox truth that the Saints departed were admitted presently into the beatificall vision of Almighty God and in him see as in a Mirrour what things soever could be done or said on the earth beneath it were in vain to make unto them either prayers or vows not being yet estated in their own full glories and consequently not admitted to the presence of God And on the very same reasons for which the Church of Rome doth admit the Saints to enjoy the blessed vision of Almighty God in the heaven of glories did Calvin labour to decrie the received opinion in that point though by long tract of time engendering prejudice and prepossession in the hearts of men against any contrary position it was become the generall tenet of the Protestant Schools For well he knew that if that doctrine could be rooted out of the minds of men by which the Saints were brought though before their time into an habitation in the highest heavens that of the invocation of the Saints departed which depends upon it must of necessity perish with it But whatsoever moved him to opine so of it for I am confident it was not any love to the antient Fathers certain it is that he hath freely declared his opinion in it in several places of his writings In that entituled Psychopannychia he doth thus expresse it The souls of the Saints after death be in peace saith he because they are escaped from the power of the enemie but shall not raign with Christ their King untill the heavenly Hierusalem shall be advanced to her glory and the true Solomon the King of peace shall sit on high on his tribunal And this he doth not only say and leave the proof thereof to his ipse dixit as if that were enough to carry it over all the world but cites Tertullian Chrysostome Augustine Bernard some of whose words we saw before to confirme the point But seeing that tract of his hath been called in question as if it did incline too much towards the Anabaptists we will next look upon his book of Institutions where we finde him saying That since the Scripture every where biddeth us to depend upon the expectation of Christs coming and deferreth the Crown of glory till that time we are to be content with the bounds that God hath appointed us viz. that the souls of the godly having ended their warfare depart unto an happy rest where with a blessed joy they look for the fruition of the promised glory and that so all things shall stand suspended untill Christ appeare The same he also intimateth in another place where he resolveth That not only the Fathers under the Law but even the holy men of God since the death of Christ are but in profectu in progresse as it were to that perfect happinesse which is to be conferred upon them in the day of doom that in the mean time they abide in atriis in the out-courts of Heaven and there expect the consummation of their beatitude And finally none but our Saviour Christ saith he hath entred into the heavenly Sanctuary where to the end of all the world Solus populi eminus in atrio residentis vota ad deum defert he alone represents to God the desires of his people sitting a far off in the outward Courts I know that Bellarmine doth quarrell at these passages of Calvins and I cannot blame him He and the common interesse of the Church of Rome were so ingaged in the defence of the other opinion without which that of the invocation of Saints must needs fall to the ground that it concerned them all to calumniate Calvin as the broacher of new Doctrines in the Church of Christ though in this point they finde him countenanced by most antient writers Neither doth Calvin stand alone in this opinion being seconded though not in so expresse terms as himself delivereth it by Bucer Bullinger Martyr Musculus and some others also And wonder t is not that he was followed by so many but by so few prime men of the reformation to whom his name and authority were exceeding dear And if the case stand so with the Saints above no question but it standeth so too with the souls below For contrariorum par est ratio as the old rule is And to the truth we have not only the testimonie of the holy Scriptures saying expressely that God reserveth the unjust unto the day of judgement to be punished 2 Pet. 2. but of so many of the
Fathers as do touch upon it as may appear by that of Hilarie and Ambrose before delivered By which the other passages of holy writ as Iude v. 6. Mat. 8.29 and Rom. 2.5 it is plain and manifest that the torments of the damned and the Devils too which are inflicted on them for the present time are far lesse then the vengeance of eternal and external fire reserved untill the day of judgement and then augmented upon all the reprobate both men and Angels For grant the most which had been said by any of the Antients as to this particular and we shall finde that it amounteth to no more then this that the souls of wicked men departed are presently made to understand by the righteous judge the sentence due unto their sins and what they are to look for at the day of doome Postquam anima de corpore est egressa subito judicium Christi de salute cognoscit as St. Augustine hath it Which being once made known to the sinfull soul standing before the throne of Christ in the sight of heaven she is forthwith hurried by the evill angels to the mansions of hell where she is kept as in a Prison under chaines and darknesse untill the judgement of the great and terrible day Iude v. 6. And so we are to understand those words of St. Cyril saying Anima damnata continuo invaditur a daemonibus qui eam crudelissime rapiunt ad infernum deducunt unlesse we rather choose to refer the same unto the executing of the sentence of their condemnation at the day of doome as perhaps some may But howsoever they be hurryed by the Devils into the darknesse of hell as to the place wherein they are to be secured till the day of judgement yet that they feel that misery and extremity of torments which after the last day shall be laid upon them neither they nor any of the Antients have delivered to us For of that day it is not the day of their death of which Scriptures doe report such terrible things saying that the heavens shall vanish away and be rolled up like a scroule that all the mountaines and the hils shall be moved out of their places and that the Kings of the earth and the mighty men c. that is to say the wicked of what sort soever shall say unto the hils and rocks Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath is come and who is able to endure it And certainly the terrors of that day must needs be great incomprehensible not only to the guilty conscience but even unto the righteous souls who joyfully expect the coming of their Lord and Saviour For in that day the Sun shall be darkened and the Moon shall not give her light the Stars shall fall from heaven and all the powers thereof shall be shaken And the signe of the Son of man shall appear in heaven and then shall all the kindred of the earth mourne and they shall see the son of man coming in the cloudes of heaven with great power and glory And he shall send his Angels with the great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together the Elect from the four windes from one end of the heaven to the other So far we have described the fashion of that dreadfull day from the Lords one mouth St. Luke unto these former terrors doth add the roaring of the Sea and the waters also St. Peter that the elements shall melt with fervent heat and that the earth also and the works thereof shall be utterly burned In this confusion of the world and general dissolution of the works of nature the Lord himself shall descend from heaven in a shout and in the voice of an Archangel and the sound of a trumpe and the dead in Christ shall rise first Then we which live and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds for though we shall not all die we shall all be changed 1 Cor. 15.51 and all together shall meet the Lord Jesus in the Aire The meaning is that at the sounding of this last trump the very same bodies which the Elect had before though mangled by tyrants devoured by wild beasts or burnt to ashes shall be raised again and being united to their souls shall be made alive and rise out of the bed of sleep like so many Iosephs out of prison or Daniels from the den of the roaring Lyons But as for such of the Elect who at that sudden coming of our Lord shall be found alive the fire which burneth up the corruptions of the world and the works thereof shall in a moment in the twinkling of an eye as St. Paul telleth us overtake them as it findeth them at their several businesses and burning up the drosse and corruption of their natural bodies of mortall shall make them to be immortall which change shall be to them in the stead of death In this sort shall they meet the Lord coming in the cloudes of the Aire where the Tribunall or judgement-seat of Christ shall be erected that the ungodly man the impenitent sinner who is not capable of coming into heaven for so much as a moment for no unclean thing or any one that worketh abomination shal finde entrance there Apocal. 21.27 may stand before his throne to receive his sentence So witnesseth St. Iohn in the Revelation And I saw a great white throne and him that sate on it from whose face fled away both the earth and the heaven And I saw the dead both small and great stand before God and the books were opened and another book was opened which is the book of life and the dead were judged of those things which were written in the books according to their deeds And the Sea gave up the dead which were in her and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them and they were judged every man according to his works And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire To the same purpose and effect doth Christ himself describe this day and the manner of his coming unto judgement in St. Matthews Gospell that which St. Iohn calleth the white throne being by Christ our Saviour called the throne of his majestie Mat. 25.31 At which time all the nations of the world being gathered together before him the good being separated from the bad and a brief repetition of their works being made unto them the righteous shall be called into the Kingdome prepared for them from the foundations of the world the wicked man be doomed to fire everlasting prepared for the Devil and his Angels For though Lactantius seem to think that the wicked shall not rise in the day of judgement and doth it as he sayeth himself literis sacris contestantibus
that Hierusalem was seated in the midst of the earth and thereupon is called by some Geographers Vmbilicus terrae and that aswell Mount Olivet as the Valley of Iehosaphat did both stand Eastward of that City From hence it is by some inferred and their illation backed by no mean authority that Christ our Saviour did ascend up into the East part of Heaven I mean that part of Heaven which answereth to the Equinoctial East upon the Earth that in that part of Heaven he sitteth at the right hand of the Throne of Almighty God and from the same shall also come in the day of Judgement The use that may be made out of this illation shall be interwoven in the file of this discourse and altogether left unto the judgement of the Christian Reader That he ascended up into the Eastern part of Heaven hath been a thing affirmed by many of the Antients and by several Churches not without some fair hints from the Scripture also Sing unto God ye Kingdomes of the earth c. saith the Royal Psalmist To him that rideth on the Heavens as it were upon an horse said our old Translation to him that rideth on the Heaven of Heavens from the beginning as our new would have it But in the Arabick it runs thus Sing unto the Lord that rideth on the Heaven of Heavens in the Eastern part And so the Septuagint that rideth on the Heavens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 towards the East This Origen who very well understood the Eastern languages applyeth to CHRIST utpote a mortuis post passionem resurgens in Coelum post Resurrectionem ad orientem ascendens i. e. who rose from the dead after his passion and ascended up into Heaven towards the East after his Resurrection And so the Aethiopick reads it also viz. Who ascended up into the Heaven of Heavens in the East Thus Damascen affirms expressely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that when he was received into Heaven he was carryed up Eastward And unto this that of the Prophet Ezekiel may seem to allude where he saith that the glory of the God of Israel Remember who it is which is called in Scripture the Glory of his people Israel Luk. 2. passâ—d through the Eastern gate Therefore that gate was shut up and might not be opened but to the Prince That being thus ascended into Heaven above he sitteth in that part thereof at the right hand of God must needs be granted if God be most conspicuously seated in that part himself And to prove this we finde this in the Apostolical constitutions ascribed to Clemens take notice by the way of the Antiquity of the custom of turning towards the East in our publick prayers so generally received amongst us who describing the Order of Divine service then used in the Church concludes it thus Then rising up and turning towards the East Let them pray to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who sitteth upon the Heaven of Heavens in the Eastern part To this agreeth that of the Prophet Baruch saying Look about thee O Hierusalem towards the East and behold the joy that cometh unto thee from God Towards the East that is to say saith Olympiodorus an old Christian writer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 towards IESVS CHRIST our Lord the Sun of righteousness And this way also looketh that part of the old Tradition derived as Irenaeus telleth us who lived neer those times ab Apostolorum Discipulis from those which heard it of the Apostles that is to say that the receptacle of the just and perfect men is a certain Paradise in the Eastern part of the third Heaven An argument that the glory of God is most conspicuous in that part also of the Heaven of Heavens the proper mansion of the Highest as before was shewn Finally that from the Eastern part of Heaven he shall make his last and greatest appearance at this day of judgement although it followeth upon that which is said already hath much stronger evidence An Arabick Author writing on the duties of Christian Religion and particularly of that Prayer directeth us to turn our faces when we pray to the Eastern Coast because that is the Coast concerning which Christ said unto whom be glory that he would appear from thence at his second coming To the same purpose the Arabick Code hath a Canon saying When ye pray turn your selves towards the East For so the words of our Lord import who foretold that his return from Heaven at the later day should be like the Lightning which glittering from the East flasheth into the West His meaning is that we should expect his coming from the East Iohn Damascen to the same effect thus For as the lightning cometh out of the East and shineth even unto the West 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so also shall be the coming of the Son of man in which regard we worship him towards the East as expecting him from thence And this saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is an unwritten tradition delivered to us from the very Apostles Take for a close this of an old Confession of the Eastern Church viz. We pray towards the East for that our Lord Christ when he ascended into heaven went up that way and there sitteth in the heaven of Heavens above the East And in very deed we make no doubt but that our Lord the Christ as respecting his humane nature hath his seat in the Eastern part of the Heaven of Heavens and sitteth with his face turned towards this world To pray therefore or worship towards the East is to pray and worship towards our Saviour Nor is this only the Tradition of the Eastern and Southern Churches as by the fore-cited Authors it may seem to be We had it also in the West For Paulus de Palacios a Spanish writer makes it the general Tenet of all Christian people quod in Oriente humanitas Christi-sedeat that Christ in reference to his humane nature sitteth in the Eastern part of Heaven and that he is to come from thence where now he sitteth And in an old Festival in this Church of England the Priest used thus upon the Wake days or Feasts of Dedication to exhort the people viz. Let us think that Christ dyed in the Este and therefore let us pray besely into the Este that we may be of the number that he died for Also let us think that he shall come out of the Este unto the Doom Wherefore let us pray heartily to him and besely that we may have grace of contrition in our hearts of our misdeeds with shrift and satisfaction that we may stand that day on the right hand of our Lord IESV CHRIST And so much for this Eastern passage for which I am principally beholding to that learned peece of Mr. Gregory late of Christs Church in Oxon whom as I much esteemed when he was alive so have I made this free acknowledgement to the honour of his memory now
it a greater condemnation to our selves than men were aware of So could I wish the like Caution in all others also lest unawares they utterly exclude themselves out of Christianity For as Pope Gregory the first said unto some of the Bishops of his time concerning the Patriarch of Constantinople who had then took unto himself the title of Oecumenical or Vniversal Bishop viz. Si ille universalis or which is the same Catholicus est restat ut vos non sitis Episcopi so may we also say in the present case if we once grant them to be Catholickâ— we thereby do conclude our selves to be no Christians or at best but Hereticks Christian perhaps they have no fancy to be called the name of Christian in most parts of Italy being grown so despicable that Fool and Christian in a manner are become Synonyma Italico Idiomate per Christianum hominem stupidum stolidum solent intelligere as Hospinian tells us from the mouth of one Christian Franken who had lived amongst them Since then they have no minde to be called Christians nor reason to be called Catholicks let us call them as they are by the name of Papists considering their dependance on the Popes decision for all points of Faith And possibly we may gratifie them as much in this as if we did permit them the name of Catholicks For Bellarmine seems very much delighted with the Appellation flattering himself that he can bring in Christ our most blessed Saviour within the Catalogue of Popes and that he hath found a Prophecy in St. Chrysostom to this effect Quandoque nos Papistas vocandos esse That Papist in the times then following should be the stile and title of a true Professor Great pity it is but he and his should have the honor of their own discovery and Papists let them be since the same so pleaseth Now as the Papists make ill use of the name of Catholick so do their opposite faction in the Church of Christ conclude as falsly and erroneously from the title of Holy The Church is called Holy and is called so justly because it trains men up in the ways of godliness because it is so in its most eminent and more noble parts whom God hath sanctified by the Graces of his holy Spirit and finally because redeemed by the blood of Christ to the intent that all the faithful Members of it being by him delivered from the hands of their enemies might serve him without fear in righteousness and holiness all the days of their lives Not holy in the sense of Corah and his factious complices who made all the Congregation holy and all holy alike nor holy in the sense of some Antient and Modern Sectary who fancy to themselves a Church without spot or wrinkle a Church wherein there are no vessels of wrath but election onely and where they finde not such a Church they desert it instantly for fear they should partake of the sins and wickednesses which they observe to be in some Members of it Our Saviour Christ who better knew the temper of his Church than so compares the same in holy Scripture to a threshing floor in which there is both Wheat and chaff and to a fold wherein there are both Sheep and Goats and to a casting net which being thrown into the Sea drew up all kinde of Fishes both good and bad and to an house in which there are not onely vessels of honor as Gold and Silver but also of dishonor and for unclean uses and to a field in which besides the good Seed which the Lord had sown Infelix lolium steriles dominantur avenae the enemy had sowed his Tares In all and every one of which heavenly Parables our Saviour represented unto his Disciples and in them to us the true condition of his Church to the end of the world in which the wicked person and the righteous man are so intermingled that there is no perfection to be looked for here In which erroneous doctrines are so mixt with truth that it can never be so perfectly reserved and purified but errors and corruptions will break out upon it Perplexae sunt istae duae civitates in hoc seculo invicemque permistae saith the great St. Augustine The City of the Lord and the City of Satan are so intermingled in this world that there is little hope to see them separated till the day of judgement Though the foundation of the Church be of precious stones yet there is wood and hay and stubble in her superstructures and those so interwoven and built up together that nothing but a fatal fire is of power to part them I mean the fire of conflagration not of Popish Purgatory Were it not thus we need not pray to God for the good estate of the Church Militant here on Earth but glory as in the Triumphant as they do in Heaven And yet the Church is counted Holy and called Catholick still this intermixture notwithstanding Catholick in regard of time place and persons in and by which the Gospel of our Saviour Christ is professed and propagated Holy secundùm nobiliores ejus partes in reference to the Saints departed and those who are most eminent for grace and piety And it is called Ecclesia una one holy Catholick and Apostolick Church though part thereof be Militant here upon the Earth and part Triumphant in the Heavens The same one Church in this World and in that â—o come The difference is that here it is imperfect mixt of good and bad there perfect and consisting of the righteous onely Accordingly it is determined by St. Augustine Eandem ipsam unam Sanctam Ecclesiam nunc habere malos mixtos tunc non habituram For then and not till then as Ierom Augustine and others do expound the place shall Christ present her to himself a most glorious Church without spot or wrinkle and marry her to himself for ever Till that day come it is not to be hoped or looked for but that many Hypocrites False Teachers and Licentious livers will shroud themselves under the shelter of the Church and pass for Members of it in the eye of men though not accounted such in the sight of God The eye of man can possibly discern no further than the outward shew and mark who joyn themselves to the Congregation to hear the Word of God and receive his Sacraments Dominus novit qui sunt sui The Lord knows onely who are his and who are those occulti intus whose hearts stand fast in his Commandments and carefully possess their Souls in Truth and Godliness And yet some men there are as there have been formerly who fancy to themselves a Church in this present world without spot or wrinkle and dream of such a Field as contains no Tares of such an House as hath no Vessels but of honor sanctified and prepared for the Masters use The Cathari in
of those imperfections it may be said that then they are not raised in the self-same bodies To this we have the resolution of St. Augustine also affirming That in that glorious day the substance of their bodies shall continue as before it was but the deformities and imperfections shall be taken away Corporibus ergo istis naturae servabitur vitia autem detrahentur as the Father hath it A resolution which St. Paul doth seem to favor saying That the body shall be raised in glory though it be sown in dishonor as do his following words the former viz. Though it be sown in weakness in the weakness of old age or infancy shall be raised in power For neither is it likely that infancy being imperfection and old age corruption can stand with the estate of a glorified body or that our Lord which made the blinde to see and the lame to go which came to seek his grace on Earth will not much rather heal them of their imperfections whom he vouchsafeth to admit to the glories of Heaven A glorious place is fit for none but glorified bodies And so far glorified shall the bodies of Gods servants be as to be raised in power whereby they shall be freed from all wants and weaknesses in incorruption which shall make them free both from death and sickness in glory which shall make them shine with a greater splendor than any of the Stars of Heaven as did the face of Moses in the Book of Exodus and that of Stephen the Proto-martyr in the Book of the Acts and lastly in agility by which they shall be like the Angels mounting as on the wings of an Eagle to meet the Lord JESUS at his coming In reference unto these spiritual qualities St. Paul affirms That it was sown a natural body but shall be raised a spiritual body Natural for the substance still spiritual for the qualities and endowments of it Spiritualia post Resurrectionem erunt corpora non quia corpora esse desistunt sed quia spiritu vivificante subsistunt as St. Augustine hath it Another Quere yet remaineth which had been moved it seems in St. Augustines time by some whose curiosity did exceed their judgments The Question was Whether the woman should be raised to eternal glory in her own sex or the more noble sex of man Alas poor Souls what monstrous crime had they committed that they should be excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven Of what strange errors and mistakes must guilty-nature be accused when she framed that sex or rather God when he created it at first out of Adams side by which it is supposed uncapable of immortality Yes certainly say they for it seemeth to us that Christ hath so adjudged it saying That in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage And if no marriage then no woman the woman being therefore made that she might be married Vain men why do they talk so idly in the things of God! Nuptias negavit dominus in resurrectione futuras non foeminas as St. Augustine noteth The Lord hath not excluded women from the Resurrection onely in answer to a captious Question which the Saduces made he returned them this That in that day there should be neither care nor notice taken of those worldly matters This is the sum and substance of our Saviours Answer and this is nothing to the prejudice of the Sex or Persons Nor need we doubt but as that Sex have done most acceptable service to the Lord their God either in keeping constantly the faith of wedlock or in preserving carefully an unspotted chastity or suffering resolutely for the testimony of the Faith and Gospel so shall they also in those bodies receive the crown reserved for so great obedience But what need more be said of this needless Quere which Christ our Saviour hath prevented and resolved already Who therefore first appeared to those of the Female Sex that making them the publishers of his Resurrection he might assure them of their own Qui ergo utrumque sexum instituit utrumque restituet God saith St. Augustine as he made both Sexes will restore both Sexes and raise up both in their own proper and original being unto Life eternal Other particulars of the manner of this Resurrection as the dreadful terror of the day the sounding of the Trump the conflagration of the world and the like to these have either been already handled or else will fall within the compass of the following Article That which remains to be considered at the present will be matters practical first in relation to our friends and then in reference to our selves and our own affairs First in relation to our Friends That we bemoan not their departure with too great extremity or sorrow for them without hope as if lost for ever Were it indeed so irrecoverable a losâ— that either their bodies were for ever banished from their souls or that their souls did die and perish with their bodies it were a misery to which no sorrow could be equal But being so assured of a Resurrection it is not to be supposed of them which die in the Lord that they are either lost to themselves or us They onely have withdrawn themselves for a certain season from the vanity and troubles of this present world and shall return at last unto life again both to our comfort and their glory In this respect it was the antient custom of the Church of Greece and is not yet worn out of use 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To set boyled Corn before the Singers of the holy Hymns which are accustomed to be sung at the commemoration of the dead who sleep in Christ. And this they do to manifest their hopes in the Resurrection of which the Corn is so significant an embleme as before was shewn And to say truth Death if considered rightly is the gate of life and of a life not to be shaken with adversities or subject unto change of fortune Hanc Deus fidei praestat gratiam ut mors quam vitae constat esse contrariam instrumentum foret per quod in vitam transiretur it is St. Augustines note But what need Augustine be alleged when we may hear the same of the antient Druides of whom the Poet tells us that they held this Paradox Longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est That death was but the middle way to a longer life If then our Ancestors in those dark times of ignorance when they knew not Christ conceived no otherwise of death and the terrors of it than as the way unto a life of more excellent nature then certainly a nobler and moâ—e chearful constancy must â—eeds be looked for at our hands who are not onely more assured of the immortality of the soul which they blindly guessed at but of the Resurrection of the Body also which they never heard of The next consideration doth concern
to signifie the place of meeting and the people which did therein meet That by these words Ecclesia quae est domi ejus St. Paul meaneth not a private family but a Congregation Severall significations of the word in the Ecclesiasticall notion of it The Clergy sometimes called the Church The Church called Catholick in respect of time place and persons Catholick antiently used for sound and Orthodox appropriated to themselves by the Pontificians and unadvisedly yeelded to them by the common Protestants Those of Rome more delighted with the name of Papists then with that of Christian. The Church to be accounted holy notwithstanding the unholinesse of particular persons The errour of the old and new Novatians touching that particular confuted by the constant current of the book of God Neither the Schismatick nor the Heretick excluded from being Members of the Catholick Church The Catholick Church consists not only of Elect or Predestinate persons The Popes supremacy made by those of Rome the principall Article of their faith Of the strange powers ascribed unto the Pope by some flattering Sycophants as well in temporal mattters as in things Spiritual The Pope and Church made termes convertible in the Schools of Rome The contrary errour of the Presbyterians and Independents in making the Church to be all body St. Hieroms old complaint revived in these present times The old Acephory what they were and in whom revived The Apostles all of equall power amongst themselves and so the Bishops too in the Primitive times as successors to the Apostles in the publick government Literae Formulae what they were in the elder ages Of the supremacy in sacred matters exercised by the Kings of Iudah and of that given by Law and Canon to the Kings of England CHAP. III. Of the visibility and infallibility of the Church of Christ and of the Churches power in expounding Scripture determining controversies of the faith and ordaining ceremonies WHat we are bound to believe and practise touching the holy Catholick Church in the present Article The Church at all times visible and in what respects The Church of God not altogether or at all invisible in the time of Ahab and Elijah nor in that of Antiochus and the Maccabees Arianisme not so universal when at the greatest as to make the Church to be invisible The visibilitie of the Church in the greatest prevalency of the Popedom not to be looked for in the congregations of the Albigenses Husse or Wicliffes answer to the question Where our Church was before Luthers time the Church of Rome a true Church though both erroneous in Doctrine and corrupt in manners The Vniversal Church of Christ not subject unto errour in points of Faith The promises of Christ made good unto the Vniversal though not to all particular Churches The opposition made to Arianism in the Western Churches and in the Churches East and West to the Popes Supremacy to the forced Celibat of Priests to Transubstantiation to the half Communion to Purgatory Worshipping of Images and to Auricular confession General Councels why ordained how far they are priviledged from errour and of what authority The Article of the Church of ENGLAND touching General Councels abused and falsified The power of National and Provincial Councels in the points of faith not only manifested and asserted in the elder times but strenuously maintained by the Synod of Dort Four Offices of the Church about the Scripture The practises of the Iews and Arians to corrupt the Text. The Churches power to interpret Scripture asserted both by Antient and Modern Writers The Ordinances of the Church of how great authority and that authority made good by some later Writers The judgement and practice of the Augustane Bohemian and Helvetian Churches in the present point Two rules for the directing of the Churches power in ordaining Ceremonies How far the Ordinances of the Church do binde the Conscience CHAP. IV. Of the Communion which the Saints have with one another and with CHRIST their Head Communion of affections inferreth not a community of goods and fortunes Prayers to the Saints and adoration of their Images an ill result of this communion THe nature and meaning of the word Communio in the Ecclesiastical notions of it The word Saints variously taken in holy Scripture In what particulars the Communion of the Saints doth consist especially The Vnion or Communion which the Saints have with CHRIST their Head as Members of his Mystical body proved by the Scriptures and the Fathers The Communion which the Saints have with one another evidenced and expressed in the blessed Eucharist Of the Eulogia or Panes Benedicti sent from one Bishop to another in elder times to testifie their unity in the faith of Christ. The salutation of the holy kiss how long it lasted in the Church and for what cause abrogated The name of Brothers and Sisters why used promiscuously among the Christians of the Primitive times Of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Love Feasts in the elder ages The readiness of the Christians in those blessed times not only to venture but to lay down their lives for one another Pleas for the community of the Estates studied by the Anabaptists and refelled by the Orthodox The natural community of mankinde in the use of the creatures contrary unto Law and Reason and to the pretentions also of the Anabaptists themselves The Orthodoxie in this point of the Church of England A general view of the communion which is between the Saints departed and those here on earth The Offices performed by godly men upon the earth to the Saints in Heaven That the Saints above pray not alone for the Church in general but for the particular members of it The Invocation of the Saints how at first introduced Prayers to the Saints not warranted by the Word of God nor by the writings of the Fathers nor by any good reason Immediate address to Kings more difficult then it is to God The Saints above not made acquainted in any ordinary way with the wants of men Arguments to the contrary from the Old Testament answered and laid by An answer to the chief argument from the 15. chapter of St. Luke Several ways excogitated by the Schoolmen to make the Saints acquainted with the wants of men and how unuseful to the Papists in the present point The danger and doubtfulnesse of those ways opened and discovered by the best learned men amongst the Papists themselves Invocation of the Saints and worshipping of their Images a fruit of Gentilisme The vain distinctions of the Papists to salve the worshipping of Images in the Church of Rome Purgatory how ill grounded on the use of Prayers for the dead Prayers for the dead allowed of in the primitive times and upon what reason The antient Diptychs what they were The heresie of Aerius and the Doctrine of the Church of England concerning Prayer for the dead Purgatory not rejected only by the Church of England but by the whole Churches of
everlasting and after preached by the Apostles both to Iew and Gentile was finally committed unto writing to this end and purpose that by reading it or hearing it read and declared by others we may believe that IESVS is the CHRIST the Son of God and that believing we may have life through his name as St. Iohn assures us And though this be affirmed by him of his Gospel only I mean that written by himself yet we may safely say the same of all the rest of the Apostolical and Evangelical writings as being dictated by the same Spirit writ by men equally inspired and all conducing to this end to teach us to know IESVS CHRIST and him crucifyed and to enable us to give a reason to all that aske of the faith that is in us But being the writings of the Evangelists and Apostles were of too great a bulk to be committed unto memory and that there were some things in them so obscure and difficult that many ignorant and unstable but well meaning men both might and did wrest them to their own destruction other things which related rather unto moral duties then to points faith it was thought fit by the Apostles to draw the points of saving faith such as were necessarily to be believed of all Christian people into a briefe and narrower compasse It was not for the ordinary sort of men to trouble themselves with doubtful disputations as St. Paul calleth them whereof many do occurre in his Epistles disputes of too great difficulty and sublime a nature for every man especially the weak in faith either to understand or conceive aright Nor was it possible that men of mean parts and laborious callings of which the Church consisted for the most part in the first beginning should either have so much leasure as to read over their writings or so much judgment as to gather and collect from thence what of necessity was to be believed that they might be saved what not or so much memory as to treasure up and repeat by heart the infinite treasures of divine knowledge which are comprehended in the same And if it were so as no doubt it was when the Apostles and Evangelists had left those excellent Monuments of themselves in writing which the Church hath ever since enjoyed to which men might resort as occasion was for their information and instruction how necessary then must we think it was for some such Summarie and Abstract of the Christian faith to be resolved upon amongst them which men of weak memories might repeat by heart and men of shallow comprehensions righly understand Those blessed souls knew well none better how to apply themselves to the capacities of the weakest men that there were many Babes in Christ who were to be fed with milk and not with meats and that if they became not all things unto all men they must resolve amongst themselves to save but few Upon this ground then which what juster could there be to induce them to it it is conceived they drew up that brief abstract of the Christian faith which we call the CREED and couched therein whatever point was necessary for all sorts of men in all times and all places of the world both to believe in their hearts as also to professe and confesse upon all occasions though to the apparent hazard of their lives and fortunes And why this might not be that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that form of sound words whereof St. Paul saith to Timothy Hold fast that form of sound words thou hast heard of me I must confesse that I could never yet see a convincing reason Certain I am that Irenaeus who lived very near the Apostles times hath said of this confession of the faith this Creed which hath so generally and unanimously been received over all the world Ecclesia per universum orbem usque ad fines terrae c. The Church saith he throughout the world even to the ends of the earth received from the Apostles and their Disciples that faith which believeth in one God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth c. and in IESVS CHRIST the Son of God incarnate for our salvation and in the holy Spirit which preached by the Prophets the dispensation and coming of God and the birth of CHRIST our Lord by the Virgin his passion resurrection and ascension with his flesh into heaven and his coming from heaven in the glory of his Father to raise up all flesh and to give just judgement unto all Which words lest possibly we might interpret of the doctrine of faith which questionlesse was alwayes one and the same over all the world and not of any summary or abstract which they had digested for the use and benefit of Gods people or think that they relate rather to the substance of faith then to any set and determinate form of words in which that substance was delivered let us behold what the same Father hath delivered in another place This faith saith he which the Church though dispersed through the world received from the Apostles and their Disciples yet notwithstanding doth it keep it as safe as if it dwelt within the wals of one house and as uniformly hold N. B. as if it had but one only heart and soul and this as consonantly it preacheth teacheth and delivereth as if but one tongue did speak for all He addes which makes the point more plain that though there be different languages in the world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet the effect and summe of the tradition i. e. the faith delivered in that forme is one and the same and I presume he means not by tradition those doctrines of faith which are delivered in the books and writings of the Evangelists and Apostles Finally he concludes with this expression and it is worthily worth our marking in the present case that he amongst the Governours of the Church who is best able to speak saith no more then this and no lesse then this the simplest and the most ignorant person which certainly he had not said but that there was one uniforme and determinate order of words which every one was bound to learn and adhere unto Tertullian he speaks plainer yet and affirmes expresly regulam fidei unam omnino esse solam immobilem et irreformabilem that there is but one rule of faith at all and that unmoveable and unalterable How could he say that there was but one rule of faith in the Church if every several Church had a several rule or that it was unmoveable and unalterable as he saith it was if there were no certain form of words prescribed which men were to keep to but every one might change and alter as he saw occasion So that I take it for a truth unquestionable that in the first ages nay the first beginnings of the Church of CHRIST there was a certain form of words prescribed for the ease and benefit of the Church a summarie or abstract of the Articles
of Reliques single life of Priests and the like to these Assuredly they are all so far from having the general consent of all times that generally they have had the consent of none no not so much as in the Church of Rome it self till the candle of all good literature was put out by the night of ignorance But for the Creed of the Apostles trie it according to these rules by both or either and it will evidently appear not only that it hath been universally and continually received in the Church for theirs but that the most famous and renowned men of all times and ages have so received it from their Fathers and recommended it for such to the times ensuing no man gainsaying or opposing till these later times in which the blessed Word of God cannot scape unquestioned So that we have as much authority as the Tradition of the Church the consent of Fathers and the succession of all times can give us to prove this Creed to have been writ by the Apostles by them commended to the Churches of their several plantations and so transmitted to our selves without interruption And no authority but divine immediately declared from the God of heaven is to be ballanced with this proof or heard against it Thus having proved that the Creed was writ by the Apostles and proved it by as great authority as any can be given by the Church of CHRIST and the consent of the most renowned Writers of the Primitive times Let us next see what reputation and esteem it carryed in all parts of Christendome and draw from thence such further arguments as the nature of that search will beaâ— And first it is a manifest and undoubted truth that as this Creed was universally received over all the world ab ipsis Apostolorum temporibus from the very times of the Apostles as Vigilius hath it without the least contradiction or opposition so hath it passed from hand to hand for above these 1600 years without alteration or addition This we did touch upon before but now press it further and use it for another argument that none but the Apostles were or could be the Authors of it and that if it had otherwise been esteemed of in the former times it would have been obnoxious unto alterations yea and to contradiction also as others the most celebrated Creeds in the Christian world It was the saying of Pope Gregory the Great that he esteemed of the four first General Councels no otherwise then of the four Evangelists And who is there to whom the name of Athanasius and the Nicene Councel and the first general Councel holden in Constantinople is not most venerably precious And yet the Creed of Athanasius hath found such sory welcome in some parts of the world as to be called either in dislike or scorn the Creed of Sathanasius and he himself condemned of extreme arrogance if not somewhat worse for imposing it upon the consciences of all Christian men as necessary to their salvation Non potuit Satan altius evehere humanam formulam as the Remonstrants please to phrase it The Nicene Creed was of no long continuance in the Church of Christ before these words secundum Scripturas according to the Scriptures were added to the Article of the Resurrection And to the Constantinopolitan the Churches of the West have added Filioque in another Article and no mean one neither that namely of the proceeding of the holy Ghost without the leave and liking of the Eastern Prelates The reason of which boldness is because they are and were conceived to be humane formula's of Ecclesiastical constitution only no divine authority and therefore might be altered and explained and fitted to the best edification of the Church Whereas the Creed of the Apostles is come unto our hands without alteration in the same words and syllables as it came from them none ever daring in the space of so many years to alter any thing therein though many have applyed their studies to explain the same And this I make a second argument evincing the Authority and Antiquity of the sacred Symbolum that men of most renown and credit for the times they lived in did purposely apply their studies to expound this Creed with as much diligence and care as any part or most parts at least of the holy Scriptures Witness the fourth Catechism of St. Cyril Bishop of Hierusalem two of the Homilies of St. Chrysostom some of St. Augustines Sermons de Tempore his two whole Tracts de fide Symbolo de Symbolo ad Catechumenos all principally made for explanation of this Creed together with the Commentaries of Ruffinus Maximus Taurinensis Venantius Fortunatus B. of Poyctiers antient writers all and all composed upon no other text or argument but this Creed alone Not to say any thing at all of the learned works of many eminent men in the ages following and of the present times we live in though otherwise of different perswasions in Religion A thing which cannot be affirmed of the Nicene Creed or any other Creed whatever none of which have been commented or scholied on by any of the antient Doctors of the Catholick Church or of the disagreeing parties in the present times And to say truth there was good reason why this Creed should be thus explained why such great pains should be bestowed to expound the same it being a very antient custome in the Church of CHRIST not to admit any to the sacred Font but such as made a publick profession of their faith according to the words of this Creed and understandingly recited it in the Congregation Mos ibi servatur Antiquus apud eos qui gratiam baptismi suscepturi sunt publice i. e. fidelium populo audiente Symbolum reddere so saith Ruffinus for his time of the Church of Rome we may affirme the like for those of Antioch Hierusalem Africa upon the credit of St. Chrysostome Cyril Augustine in their works now mentioned Nor was it long before it was ordained in the Councell of Agde Ann. 506. that in regard of the great confluence of all persons to the Church to receive the Sacrament of Baptisme upon Easter day the Creed should be expounded every day in the way of Sermons to the people from the Sunday we call Palme Sunday to the Feast it self Symbolum ab omnibus Ecclesiis ante octo dies Dominicae resurrectionis publice in Ecclesia competentibus praedicari as the Synod hath it Nay they conceived the learning of this Creed by heart so necessary in the former times that it was first desired and afterwards enjoyned that all should learn it and retain it in their hearts and memories who either were desirous to be counted good Catholick Christians or to partake of any of the solemne offices in the Christian Church St. Augustine commended it unto his Auditors that for the better keeping it in memory they should repeat it to themselves Quando surgitis quando vos collocatis ad
also as before was shown Which if it may not be admitted in the Articles of the Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints with the rest that follow I see no cause why it should be admitted in the front of all which was to be the leading Case unto all the rest But other men of higher mark have seen this before me who give no other sense theâ—eof in this place of the Creed then to believe that there is one only eternal God the Maker of all things For thus the Book entituled Pastor and commonly ascribed to Hermes St. Pauls scholar Ante omnia unum credere Deum esse qui condidit omnia i. e. Before all other things believe that there is one God who made all things Origen thus Primum credendus est Deus qui omnia creavit i. e. In the first place we must believe that there is a God by whom all things were created S. Hilary of Poyctiers thus In absoluto nobis facilis est aeternitas Iesum Christum a mortuis suscitatum credere i.e. Eternity is prepared for us and made easie to us if we believe that Christ is risen from the dead And finally thus Charles the Great in the Creed published in his name but made by the most learned men which those times afforded Praedicandum est omnibus ut credant Patrem Filium Spiritum sanctum unum esse Deum omnipotentem i. e. the Gospel must be preached to all men that they may know that the Father Son and holy Ghost is one God Almighty Which resolution and authority of the antient Fathers is built no doubt upon the dictate and determination of S Paul himself who did thus lead the way unto them viz. He that câ—meth to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him Where the first Article of the Creed I believe in God is thus expounded and no otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I believe that God is that there is a God According to which Exposition of the blessed Apostle our Reverend Iewell publishing the Apology and Confession of the Church of England did declare it thus We believe that there is one certain Nature and Divine power which we call GOD c. and that the same one God hath created Heaven and Earth and all things contained under Heaven We believe that Iesus Christ the only Son of the Eternal Father when the fulness of time was come did take of that blessed and pure Virgin both flesh and all the nature of man c. that for our sakes he died and was buried descended into Hell c. We believe that the holy Ghost is very God c. and that it is his property to mollifie and soften the hardness of mens hearts when he is once received thereunto c. We believe that there is one Church of God and that the same is not shut up as in times past amongst the Iews into some one corner or Kingdom but that it is Catholick and Universal and dispersed throughout the whole world c. and that this Church is the Kingdom the Body and the Spouse of CHRIST c. To conclude we believe that this our self same flesh wherein we live although it dye and come to dust yet at the last shall return again to life by the means of Christs Spirit which dwelleth in us c. and that we through him shall enjoy everlasting life and shall for ever be with him in glory Which consonancy of expression being so agreeable to that observed before by the antient Fathers and that observed before by the antient Fathers so consonant unto the expression of S. Paul the Apostle is the last reason which I have for this resolution that the so much applauded explication of the phrase in Deum credere is not to be admitted in this place of the Creâ—d And this shall also serve for a justification of that gloss or Commentary which I have given on this first Article viz. that to believe in God the Father Almighty is only to believe that there is one Immortal and Eternal Spirit of great both Majesty and Power which we call GOD and that this God is the Father Almighty the Father both of IESVS CHRIST and of all mankinde who as a Father hath not only brought us into the world but hath provided us of all things necessary both for body and soul protecting us by his mighty power and governing us and our affairs by his infinite wisdome But against this there may be some objections made which must first be answered before we come unto the further explication of this Article For if Faith be no other then a firm assent to supernatural truths revealed the Reprobate as they call them may be said to have faith which yet is reckoned in the Scripture as a peculiar gift of God unto his Elect which is therefore called Fides electorum or the Faith of the Elect Tit. 1.1 2. If to believe in God the Father Almighty and in IESVS CHRIST his only Son c. be only to believe that there is a God and that all those things are most undoubtedly true and certain which be affirmed of IESVS CHRIST in the holy Scripture the Devil may be reckoned for a true believer S. Iames assuring us of this that the Devils do believe and tremble Iam. 2.19 And 3. if the definition and the explication before delivered be allowed for currant it will quite overthrow the received distinction of Faith into Historical temporary saving or justifying faith and the faith of Miracles so generally embraced in the Protestant Schools This is the sum of those objections which I conceive most likely to be made against me but such as may be answered without very great difficulty For that the Reprobate as they call them may have Faith in CHRIST is evident by many instances and texts of Scripture Of Simon Magus it is written in the Book of the Acts that he believed and was baptized and continued with Philip the Evangelist Adhaerebat Philippo saith the Vulgar he stuck so fast unto him that he would not leave him Ask Calvin what he thinks of this faith of Simons and he will tell you Majestate Evangelii victum vitae salutis authorem Christum agnovisse ita ut libenter illi nomen daret that being vanquished by the power and Majesty of the Gospel of Christ he did acknowledge him to be the Author of salvation and eternal life and gladly was inrolled amongst his Disciples And whereas some had taught and published amongst other things that Simon never did believe but counterfeited a belief for his private ends Calvin doth readily declare his dislike thereof acknowledging this faith of Simons to be true and real though but only temporarie Non tamen multis assentior qui simulasse duntaxat fidem putant quum minime credâ—ret I cannot yeild to them saith he which think
thing in property they could call their own but were indeed a people of so extreme a poverty that they no more needed the helps of God or man then the Beasts of the field Fennis mira feritas foeda paupertas non arma non equi non penates as he tels us there And more then so they had attained saith he to the hardest point Vt ne voto quidem opus sit that they had no need nor use of prayers to the gods on high For what need they make supplication to the gods and goddesses for blessings on their Corn and their Wine or Oyl who neither sowed nor planted nor used any husbandry What should they do with houshold gods who had no houses but the Earth only for their bed and the Heavens for the Canopy And yet perhaps these Fenni were not altogether without the knowledge of GOD or to be counted absolute Atheists more then the barbarous people of other new discovered Countries but that they had this Character bestowed upon them because they shewed less signs of any Religion then those Nations did with whom the Romanes had had longer acquaintance and so were more experienced in their rites and customes And of all men that flourished before Tullies time there were none stigmatized with the brand of Atheism but only Diagoras Melius and Protagoras the Cyrenaean to whom some added Enhemerus the Tegaean also Of the two first indeed it is said by Lactantius Protagoras deos in dubium vocavit Diagoras exclusit that Protagoras first called the beeing of the gods in question and that Diagoras was the first who denyed it absolutely who therefore was surnamed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Atheist as Minutius hath it And yet perhaps it will be found upon further search that neither of the three did doubt or deny this truth that there was a God but that they got this ill repute amongst the Gentiles for scoffing and deriding those Idol-gods whom their neighbors worshipped For of Diagoras it is said that when he cast the Statua of Hercules into the fire he did it with this scoffe or jeere In hoc decimo tertio agone mihi inservias that he should serve him now in that thirteenth labor as he had done Eurystheus in the other twelve And as well known is that of Protagoras also who is said to have thus mocked at the Idolatries of the old Egyptians Si dii sunt cur plangitis si mortui cur adoratis i. e. If they be gods why do you lament them for in the rites and sacrifices of the goddess Isis they used to make great lamentations if dead why do you then adore them As for the third man Euhemerus for these were all of note who stand thus accused he was accounted guilty of Atheism for no other reason but because he had composed an history of the birth lives and actions of the Heathen gods proving that they had been no other then some famous men whose Statua's had been turned to Idols and themselves worshipped by the people in tract of time for some powers Divine Which book of his Lactantius and some others of the Primitive Writers do make very good use of in their discourses with and against the Gentiles 'T is true that on those grounds and on those occasions which are spoken of by Enhemerus the greatest part of the old Heroes as Saturn Iupiter Apollo Neptune Mars Hercules and the rest of that infinite rabble became by degrees to have divine honours conferred upon them And 't is as true that the Egyptians worshipped Apis in the form of an Oxe or the Oxe rather under the name of Apis as being of greatest use to them in the course of their tillage and so they did also Leekes and Onions and divers other of the fruits of the Earth also by which they lived and some strange creatures also which they dreaded most quis nescit qualia demens Aegyptus portenta colat as the Poet hath it As true it is that other Nations worshipped the Sun and Moon and all the rest on the heavenly bodies unto whose glorious light and influences they thought themselves so much heholding Which may be used as a further and most invincible argument to prove that the knowledge of this truth that there was a God was naturally ingraffed in the souls of all men and that this natural inclination was so powerful in them that they rather would have any gods then none at all and therefore made themselves such gods as came next to hand worshipping STOCKS and Stones and Leekes and Onyons and whatsoever else their blinde fancies dictated And this I take it gave the hint to Democritus first and after him to Epicurus and the whole Sect of the Stoicks to set up FATE and Fortune in the place of the Gods or otherwise to invest dame Nature with the powers of a Deity For finding that the biass of all sorts of people inclined them strongly to believe that there was a God they were content to let the gods hold their place in Heaven but then they robbed them of their power or supreme providence in governing the World and ordering the affairs thereof And this was the disease of Davids fool in the Book of Psalms who used to say in his heart that there was no God Not that he was so very a fool as to think there was no God at all but that he thought the God of Heaven was so far above him and so imployed in matters of an higher nature as neither to take care or notice of the things beneath Which therefore he◠as Democritus and the Epicureans after did ascribed to Chance and Fortune or to Fate and Nature And as it seems this errour in the time of the Poet Iuvenal found such a general entertainment amongst the Romanes that he thought fit to tax it in his Satyres thus Sunt qui Fortunae jam casibus omnia ponunt Et Mundum nullo credunt Rectore moveri Natura volvente vices lucis anni Atque ideo intrepide quaecunque Altaria jurant That is to say Some think the World by slippery chance doth slide That days and years run round without more guide Then Natures Rule From whence without all fear Of Gods or men they by all Altars swear But howsoever this opinion carrying a less shew of impiety then that of Diagoras and Protagoras had done before became more generally to be received among the Gentiles yet in effect in rather changed then bettered the state of the question And though it did not strike down all the gods at a blow yet by degrees it lessened their authority amongst the people and brought them to depend wholly upon chance and fortune or on fate and destiny that in the end there might be no other God thought of none of the Heavenly Powers be sued to or adored at all Which plainly was their aim as St. Austin telleth us where notwithstanding their pretences he
affirms this of them that all they did conduce to no other end quam ut nullus omnino aut rogetur aut colatur Deus And in this state the business stood when the first Advocates which pleaded in the behalf of the Christian faith did undertake the vindicating of Gods power and providence and laboured to possess the world with a right opinion both of the Beeing and divine Nature of GOD and also of his soveraign power in ordering the course of nature and governing all sublunary affairs of what kinde soever Whose arguments being drawn especially from the light of reason and therefore fittest to convince the gainsaying Gentiles are elegantly summed up by Minutius Felix out of whose excellent Dialogue I shall here present them according as they lay before me and then confirm the truth of that which he there delivereth out of the works and writings of the old Philosophers and other learned men amongst those Gentiles whom prejudice and prepossession had not formerly blinded The difference saith he betwixt us men and beasts doth consist in this that they whose faces are inclined to look down to the earth seem to be chiefly made to look after their provender But we whose countenances are raised up towards the Firmament to whom is given both speech and reason by which we may know feel and imitate the works of God must needs be counted inexcusable should we be ignorant of that divine light which doth even thrust it self on our eyes and senses It is an high degree of Sacriledge to seek for that upon the Earth which is not to be found but in Heaven on high Which makes them seem to me to lâ—â—ve neither understanding sense nor so much as eyes who would not have this World accomplished by the Divine wisdome of God but compacted only of several parcels joyned together by chance For what can be so obvious so confessed so manifest whether we lift up our Eyes to Heaven or behold those things which are beneath and round about us then that there is some Divine power of most exquisite judgement by which the whole frame of Nature is inspired moved maintained and ordered Behold the Heaven it self of what a vast circumference and how swiftly moved bespangled in the night with stars illustrated in the day time with the beams of the Sun and thou mayst know by that the wonderful and divine disposure of its Supreme Governour Observe the year how it ends the circular motion of the Sun the moneth distinguished by the increase and wane of the Moon the mutual succession of light and darkness that rest and labour may by turns succeed one another Let us relinquish to Astronomers a more exact discourse of the Stars and Planets whether they serve to direct the course of Navigation or usher in the seasons of seed and harvest which as they were not made created nor disposed of without a Supreme Workman of most perfect wisdome so could they not be comprehended and made intelligible but by great art and understanding When the orderly method of the season distinguisheth it self by the constant variety of several fruits doth it not openly avouch who is the Author and the Parent thereof that is to say the Spring bedecked with flowers and the Summer with corn the Fall made acceptable by its fruits and the Winter necessary by its Olives Besides how great an argument is it of an heavenly Providence to interpose the temperament of the Spring and Autumn lest if it were all Winter it should freeze us with cold or if it were all Summer it should scorch us with heat that so one part of the year might fall into the other without producing any sensible or dangerous alteration in the state of things Behold the Sea how it is bounded with the shore which it may not pass the Earth how it is fructified with trees which it self produceth the Ocean how it is divided between ebbs and flouds the Fountains how they flow with continual streams the Rivers how they pass away with perpetual waters What need I speak of the perpendicular height of Mountains or the declivities of the hils or the extension of the fields What need we speak of that variety of weapons wherewith brute beasts are armed for their own defence some fortified with horns others palisadoed with teeth some furnished with hoofs some provided of stings and others having means to preserve themselves either by the nimbleness of their feet or the help of their wings Especially consider the comeliness and beauty of our own bodies made of an upright structure an erected countenance the eyes advanced as Sentinels in the Keep or Watch-tower and all the rest of the senses placed in the Fort or Capital and will not that acknowledge GOD for its sole Artificer An endless work it were to run over all particular members take this once for all that there is not one part in all the body which serveth not both for necessary use and ornament also And which is yet more wonderful then all the rest though there be the same structure of all yet hath every man his several and proper lineaments by which though we are all alike yet are we also so unlike as to be easily discerned from one another The manner of our birth and the desire of procreation is it not given by GOD alone That the dugs spring with milk when the Babe doth ripen and that the Infant groweth up by that milky dew proceeds it not from the same Author Nor doth GOD take care only of the whole but of every part The Isle of Britain which is defective in the heat of the Sun is notwithstanding refreshed with the warmth of the Sea which doth incompass it Nilus doth satisfie for the want of rain that is in Egypt Euphrates fatneth Mesopotamia and Indus is reported both to sow and water the Eastern Regions If then as often as thou entrest into any house and seest in what an excellent order all things therein are both disposed of and set â—ut at the best advantage thou canst not choose but think there is some Lord or Master of it which hath so disposed it and one that is much better then the things themselves so in this great house the World when thou observest the Heaven and Earth the order law and providence by which they are guided how canst thou choose but think that there is some Lord of this Vniverse the Author of those Stars and Constellations of far more beauty then the loveliest of those several parts But possibly thou mayst not so much call in question whether there be a Divine Providence which ruleth all things as whether it be subject to the power of one or of many Gods which will be no great difficulty to determine neither if we observe the Arts of Empire used in Earthly Kingdoms which have their pattern from above For when did ever any partnership in Empire either begin upon good tearms or not end in bloud
before the beginning of time and shall be also as it is when time it self shall be no more In this regard he tels us also of himself that he is A and Ω or the first or the last which was and is and is to come still the same for ever And finally in this respect it is said by Tertullian Ante omnia Deus erat solus et erat sibi tempus mundus et omnia i. e. Before all things were God was and he was also to himself time the world and all things He was alone quia nil aliud extrinsecus praeter illum because there was not any thing without or besides him and yet not then alone if we weigh it rightly Habebat enim Deum quod habebat in semet ipso c. for he had alwayes with him that divine wisdome which he had alwayes in himself And so the old Philosophers are to be expoonded when they say of God that he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immortal and eternal or everlasting that is to say not only a parte post as Angels and the souls of men are called mortal but also a parte ante which none was but God Which makes up that conclusion of the royal Psalmist Before the mountaines were brought forth or ever the earth and the world were made thou art God from everlasting and world without end world without end a parte post from everlasting also a parte ante but in both eternall Of the same nature is that infiniteness in Almighty God in respect of dimensions which by a name distinct may be called immensity whereby he is of infinite extension not circumscribed with any bounds filling all places whatsoever but contained of none Of this immensity or unmeasurableness doth the Prophet speak saying Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his Hand and meted out heaven with his span and comprehended the dust of the earth in his three fingers after such a manner as men take up a dust or sand and weighed the mountaines with scales and the hils in a balance Who taketh up the Isles as a very little thing before whom all nations are as nothing as the drop of a bucket This by an other name and in other respects is also called Vbiquity or Omnipresence by which our GOD is present in all places every where and confined to none but as a sphere as very understandingly said Trismegistus whose Center is every where his circumference no where In reference to this we finde it said by Moses of the Lord our God that he is God in Heaven above and in the earth below The very same with that of the royal Psalmist If I climb up into Heaven thou art there if I goe down into Hell thou art there also And so we have it both in Moses and in the Psalms In reference unto this it is said by Ieremy Do not I fill Heaven and Earth saith the Lord And Can any man hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him And so we have it in the Law and the Prophets too And though the Gentiles did exceedingly stomach at the primitive Christians for giving this Vbiquity or Omnipresence to their Lord and God Discurrentem scilicet illum volunt et ubique praesentem as Cecilius in the Dialogue did object against them yet did the Fathers of all times stand most stoutly to it and would not yeild a jot to their importunities For thus saith the renowned Augustine Deus meus ubique praesens ubique totus nusquam inclusus My GOD saith he is in all places present in all places wholly but so in all places as contained in none More fully Gregory the great Deus est intra omnia non inclusus extra omnia non exclusus supra omnia non elatus i. e. GOD is in all things but not inclosed he is without all things but not excluded he is above all things but not lifted up and finally beneath all things and yet not depressed And though it may be truly said of the sons of men Qui ubique est nusquam est he that is every where is no where that is to say he that ingageth himself in every business will goe thorow with none yet so it cannot be affirmed of the God of Heaven unlesse perhaps it be in a qualifyed sense interpreting nusquam esse by non includi And in that sense is that saying of St. Bernard exactly verifyed Nusquam est et ubique est i. e. He is no where because no place either reall or imaginary can comprehend or contain him and he is every where because no body no space nor spirituall substance can exclude his presence Proceed we next to the third species or kinde of infiniteness which we called the infinity of comprehensions by which all things whatsoever as well things future as things past are alike present to him and for ever before him by which he knoweth things that are not as if they were and doth accordingly decree and determine of them with as much perspicacity of wisdome and infallibility of judgment as if they were actually before his eyes For first God being of an infinite knowledge most perfectly and simply knoweth all things in himself which ever were or shall be in the times to come and then being of an infinite wisdome to dispose of all things as may conduce most to his honour and glory hath either given them bounds which they shall not passe or left them a dispositive power of their own occasions putting upon things necessary the law of necessity and leaving things contingent to the lot of contingency The due consideration of which weighty point brought the Apostle to cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O the depth of the riches of the wisdome and knowledge of God Which two though two distinct acts and attributes in our apprehension yet differ not in GOD as before was said nor perhaps very much in themselves at all For wisdome is but the excellency of knowledge consisting either in the dignity or usefulnesse of the matter known or the more perfect manner of discerning what they truely are And of this wisdome or more usefull kind of knowledge there are these two offices the one stedfastly to propose a right end the other to present a right choice of means for effecting thereof But being it is equally consonant to Gods infinite wisdome and not a whit derogatory to his infinite power that some things should be as truely contingent as other are really and truely necessary therefore hath God been pleased as well to decree contingency as to decree or fore-determine of necessity Hereupon it will follow by good rules of Logick that though there be an immutability in the counsails of God arising from the infiniteness of his knowledge and wisdome yet that there are some things which might not have been and that some things are not which yet might have been or might have been far
whom with thee and the holy Ghost be praise for ever But leaving these more intricate speculations to more subtill heads The name of Father in this sense is ascribed to God by two severall titles First Iure Creationis by the right of Creation by which he is the Father of all mankinde And secondly Iure Adoptionis by the right and title of Adoption by which he hath anew begotten us in St. Peters language to an inheritance immortall undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved for us in the Heavens First GOD is said to be our Father in the right of Creation by which as all the World and all things in the same contained may be called the workmanship of his hands so may all mankinde be called his children not only those which trust and believe in him but also those which know him not nor ever read so much of him as the Book of nature those which yet live as out-lawes from the rule of reason and barbarous and savage people of both the Indies Thus Malachi the last Prophet of the Iewes Have we not all one Father hath not God created us Thus the Apostle of the Gentiles doth affirme of GOD that out of one bloud he hath made all kindreds of men And CHRIST himself who brake down the partition wall between Iew and Gentile Call no man Father on Earth for one is your Father which is in Heaven Not that the Lord would have us disobedient to our naturall Parents or ashamed to own them for this is plainly contrary both to Law and Gospeâ—t but that we should refer our being unto him alone which is the fountain of all beeing Solus vocandus est Pater qui creavit said Lactantius truly Now God is said to be our Father by the right of Creation for these following reasons as first because he was the Father of the first man Adam out of whose loyns we are descended or of whose likeness since the fall we are all begotten Therefore St. Luke when he had made the Genealogie of our Saviour CHRIST in the way of ascent doth conclude it thus which was the son of Seth which was the son of Adam which was the Son of God the son of God but not by generation for so our Saviour only was the Son of God and therefore it must be by Creation only Secondly GOD is called our Father because he hath implanted in our Parents the vertue Generative moulded and fashioned us in the secret closets of the Womb. Thy hands have made me and fashioned me Thine eyes did see my substance being yet imperfect and in thy book were all my members written saith the Royal Psalmist The bodies of us men are too brave a building for man and Nature to erect And therefore said Lactantius truly Hominem non patrem esse sed generandi ministrum Man only is the instrument which the Lord doth use for the effecting of his purpose to raise that godly edifice of flesh and bloud which he contemplates in his children Last of all for our souls which are the better part of us by which we live and move and have our beeing they are infused by GOD alone man hath no hand in it God breathes into our nosthrils the breath of life and by his mighty power doth animate and inform that matter which of it self is meerly passive in so great a wonder In each of these respects and in all together we may conclude with that of Aratus an old Greek Poet as he is cited by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for we are all his off-spring all of us his children The second Interest which GOD hath in us as a Father in the way of adoption by which we are regenerate or anew begotten to a lively hope of being heirs unto the promises and in the end partakers of eternal glories by which we are transplanted from our Fathers house and out of the Wilderness and unprofitable Thickets of this present world and graffed or inoculated on the Tree of life Adoptare enim est juxta delectum sibi quos quisque velit in filios eligere Adoption is the taking of a childe from another family to plant and cherish in our own say the Civil Lawyers and he that so adopteth may be called our Father by approbation of the laws though not by nature Examples of this case have been very ordinary from Moses who was adopted for her son by the daughter of Pharaoh though he refused to be called the son of Pharaohs daughter as St. Paul said of him down through all the stories both of Greece and Rome And if it may be lawful to make such resemblances the motives which induced GOD to proceed this way and other the particulars of most moment in it do seem to carry a fair proportion or correspondency with such inducements and particulars as hath been used by men on the same occasions For in the Laws adoption was to be allowed but in these four cases First Quod quidam Matrimonii onera detrectarent because some men could not away with the cares of Wedlock Secondly Quod conjugium esset sterile because God had not blessed the marriage with a fruitful issue Thirdly Quod liberi ipsorum morerentur because their own children by untimely death or the unluckie chance of War had been taken from them in which last case adoption by especial dispensation was allowed to women Fourthy Quod liberi ipsorum improbi essent degeneres because their own children were debauched and shameless likely to ruine that estate and disgrace that family into which they were born And upon such grounds as these is GOD in Scripture said to adopt the Gentiles to make them who by nature were the sons of wrath and seemed to be excluded from the Covenant which he made with Abraham to be the heirs of God and Coheirs with Christ. God looked upon the Iews as his natural children And at the first one might have known them easily for the sons of God by the exemplarie piety of their lives and actions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as men know commonly their neighbour children by a resemblance to their Fathers St. Paul hath made a muster of some chiefs amongst them in the 11. chap. to the Heb. But they being took away by the hand of death there next succeeded in their room a gâ—neration little like them in the course of their lives and therefore little to the comfort of their heavenly Father For his part he was never wanting unto his Vineyard nor could there any thing be done to it which he did not do yet when he looked for grapes in their proper season it brought forth nothing but wilde grapes sit only for the wine-press of his indignation So that the Lord was either childless or else the Father of a stubborn and perverse generation of whose reclaim there was no hopes or but small if any
deceit and villanie and mischievous imaginations and invincible malice But of all miracles of Omnipotence mentioned in the Scripture there is not in my judgement any one more eminent then that which he wrought upon the children of Ammon and Moab and those of Mount Seir when they joined all their Forces together against Iehosaphat the good King of Iudah For by a strange misprision which God sent amongst them the children of Ammon and Moab fell upon the inhabitants of Mount Seir and slew them and destroyed them utterly and when they had made an end of the Inhabitants of Seir every one to destroy another Never so great a slaughter made never so signal a deliverance given to the people of God by the swords of their Enemies even by the swords of those who had joined together to root out their memorial from the face of the earth If now we should dâ—scend from Scriptures to Ecclesiastical History shall we not finde the great power of God exemplified as visibly in the protection and defence of the Christian Church and that not only in the miraculous propagation and increase thereof and bringing to calamitous ends her greatest enemies but working on the hearts of the sharpest Persecutors to intermit their rage and lay down their fury Witness the Edict of Trajan the Author of the third Persecution De Christianis non inquirendis that no such Inquisition should be made against them as in former times that of the Emperour Adrian Ne Christianus indicta causa puniatur that no Christian should from thenceforth be punished without some crime laid to his charge in which he had offended against the Laws Antonine adding unto this ut delator poenae subjaceat that the Promoter should be lyable to punishment if he proved it not The like of Marcus as great a Persecuter at the first as any which had been before him who did not onely stay the fury of the Executioners but mortem iis minabatur qui Christianos accusabant but threatned death to the accusers Nor staid God here but for the further manifestation of his mighty power in ruling and over-ruling the hearts of men he wrought so wonderfully and Omnipotently on the hearts of some of their greatest enemies that from their bitter and most violent Persecutors they became their Patrons Witness the Mandate or edict of the Emperor Galienus not only for the intermitting of the persecution which Valerianus his Father had raised against them but authorizing the Prelates and other Ministers Vt cuncta munia pro consuetudine obirent to perform all the sacred Offices which belonged unto them Finally witness the like Edict of Maximinus one of the chief Instruments of Diocletians butcheries and a great slaughterman himself when he came to the Empire commanding that the Christians should be left to their own Religion and not compelled as formerly under pain of death to offer sacrifice to Idols but wonne if possibly it might be blanditiis adhortationibus by the fairest means and the best perswasions that the wit of man could lay before them These things as they were marvellous in the eyes of all men so marvellous that they could not choose but see and say A Domino haec facta that they were all of them of the Lords own doing so was it as easie to be seen that they were the effects of his Omnipotence proceeding from the love and power of a Father Almighty ARTICLE II. Of the Second ARTICLE OF THE CREED Ascribed unto St. IOHN 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Creatorem Coeli et Terrae i. e. Maker of Heaven and Earth CHAP. IV. Of the Creation of the World and the parts thereof that it was made at first by Gods mighty power and since continually preserved by his infinite Providence WITH very great fitness doth the Article of the Worlds Creation come next the Attribute of Almighty as being that act which might alone entitle GOD unto Omnipotence were there none besides For what but an Omnipotent power could out of no praeexistent matter create that goodly edifice of Heaven and Earth and all things in the same contained which every naturall man beholdeth with such admiration that possibly he cannot choose but say with the royall Psalmist The Heavens declare the glory of God and the Earth sheweth his handy work A work so full of wonder to the antient Gentiles that some of them made the world a God Vis illum i. e. Deum mundum vocare non falleris as it is in Seneca others more rationally conceiving GOD to be the soul of the World as giving animation or being to it And though they erred as well in making the World a God as making GOD to be the Soul of the World yet they might very well have said as one since hath done that the World is nothing else but God unfolded and manifested in the Creature Nil aliud Mundus universus quam Deus explicatus as Cusanus hath it And certainly the speciall motions which did induce GOD unto this great work were a desire and purpose to expresse his power to exercise his providence and declare his goodness For though GOD needed not to have made the World in regard of himself for the World we know was made in the beginning of time but GOD is infinite and eternal before all beginnings yet it seemed good to him to create it at last as a thing most conducible to his praise and glory Some measuring the God of Heaven by their own affections and finding nothing so agreeable to their own dispositions as to be in company conceive that God being at last weary of his own solitude did create the World that he might have the company of the Angels in Heaven and make a start into the Earth when he saw occasion to recreate himself with the sons of Men. Quae beata esse solitudo queat What happiness said Hortensius can be in solitude To which Lactantius not being furnished with a better doth return this answer that GOD cannot be said to be alone Habet enim Ministros quos vocamus nuncios as having the society of the holy Angels But then Lactantius must suppose that the Angels have been coeternal with GOD himself which were to make all Gods and no God at all or else his Answer is no answer as to that Objection How much more rightly might we have thus replyed unto them that the supreme contentment possible to Almighty God is by reflecting on himself and in himself contemplating his own infinite glories which being co-aevall with himself even from all eternity he needed no no more company before the World was made then he hath done since Lactantius being a man of a very geat reading though indeed a better Humanitian then Divine could not but know those sweet delights which a man habited in learning takes in contemplation and the society which he hath of his own dear thoughts though never so much removed
from the sight of men And if the wise Gentile could affirme so sadly nunquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset that he was never lesse alone then when he was by himself what need can any rational man suppose in Almighty God of having more company then himself in If this suffice not for an answer to that needlesse demand What God did before he made the World let him take that of Augustine on the like occasion who being troubbled with this curious and impertinent question is said to have returned this answer Curiosis fabricare inferos that he made Hell for all such troublesome and idle Questionists But it pleased God at last when it seemed best unto his infinite and eternal wisdome to create the World and all things visible and invisible in the same contained A point so clear and evident in the Book of God that he must needs reject the Scripture who makes question of it And as the Scripture tels us that God made the World so do they also tell us this that because he made the World he is therefore God For thus saith David in the Psalms The Lord is great and very greatly to be praised he is to be feared above all Gods As for the Gods of the Heathen they are but Idols but it is the Lord which made the Heavens Where plainly the strength of Davids argument to prove the Lord to be God doth consist in this because it was he only not the gods of the Heathen which created the World The like we also finde in the Prophet Ieremy The Lord saith he is the true God he is the living God and an everlasting King and the Nations shall not be able to abide his indignation Thus shall ye say unto them The Gods that have not made the Heavens and the Earth even they shall perish from the Earth and from under these Heavens He hath made the Earth by his power and established the World by his wisdome and hath stretched out the Heavens by his discretion In which two verses of the Prophet we have proof sufficient first that God made the World by his power and wisdome and secondly that this making of the World by his power and wisdome doth difference or distinguish him from the gods of the Heathen of whom it is affirmed expressely that they were so far from being able to make Heaven and Earth that they should perish from the Earth and from under Heaven But what need Scripture be produced to assert that truth which is so backed by the authority of the Learned Gentiles whose understandings were so fully convinced by the inspection of the Book of nature especially by that part of it which did acquaint them with the nature of the Heavenly Bodies that they concluded to themselves without further evidence that the Authour of this great Book was the only God and that he only was that great invisible power which did deserve that Soveraign title And this Pythagoras one of the first founders of Philosopie amongst the Grecians who in all probability had never seen the works of Moses as Plato and those that followed after are supposed to have done doth most significantly averre in these following verses which are preserved in Iustin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which may be thus paraphased in our English tongue He that will say I am a Power divine A God besides that one let him first make A world like this and say that this is mine Before he to himself that title take For the next point that God the Father Almighty did create the World it is a truth so clear and evident in the Book of God that he must needs reject the Scripture who makes question of it it being not only told us in the holy Scriptures that God made the World but also when he made it and upon what reasons with all the other circumstances which concern the same The very first words of Gods book if we look no further are in themselves sufficient to confirme this point In the beginning saith the Text God created the Heaven and the Earth As Moses so the royal Psalmist He laid the foundations of the Earth and covered it with the deep as it were with a garment and spreadeth out the Heavens like a curtain He made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that therein is And so the whole Colledge of the Apostles when they were joyned together in their prayers to God Lord said they thou art God which made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that in them is Made it but how not with his hands assuredly there is no such matter The whole World though it be an house and the house of God cum Deo totus mundus sit und domus said the Christian Oratour yet it is properly to be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an house not made with hands How then He made it only by his word Dixit et facta sunt He spake the word and they were made saith the sweet finger of Israel There went no greater paines to the Worlds creation then a Dixit Deus And this not only said by Moses but by David too Verbo Domini coeli firmatī sunt et spiritu oris ejus omnis virtus eorum i. e. By the word of the Lord were the Heavens made and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth In which it is to be observed that though the creation of the World be generally ascribed unto God the Father yet both the Son and the holy Ghost had their parts therein Verbo Domini by the word of the Lord were the Heavens made saith the Prophet David In the beginning was the Word All things were made by him and without him was nothing made saith St. Iohn the Apostle The Spirit of God moved upon the waters saith Moses in the Book of the Law and Spiritu oris ejus by breath of his mouth were all the hosts of Heaven created saith David in the book of Psalmes Made by his word but yet not made together in one instant of time to teach us men deliberation in our words and actions and to set forth unto us both his power and wisdome His power he manifested in the Method of the worlds creat on in that he did produce what effects he pleased without the help of natural causes in giving light unto the World before he had created the Sun and Moon making the earth fruitfull and to bring forth plants without the motion or influence of the Heavenly bodies And for his wisdome he expressed in as high a degree in that he did not create the Beasts of the field before he had provided them of fodder and sufficient herbage nor made man after his own image before he had finished his whole work filled his house and furnished it with all things necessary both for life and pleasures
Some time then God thought fit to take for perfecting the great work of the Worlds creation six dayes in all of which the first did lay the foundation the rest raised the building The foundation of it I conceive to be that unformed matter out of which all things were extracted in the other five dayes which Moses first calleth the Heaven and the Earth because they were so in potentia but after telleth us more explicitely that that which he called Earth was inanis et vacua without forme and void and that which he called Heaven was but an overcast of darkness or tenebrae super faciem Abyssi as the Vulgar reads it Of which Chaos or confused Masse we thus read in Ovid who questionless had herein consulted with the works of Moses before his time communicated to the learned Gentiles Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia Coelum Vnus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe Quem dixere Chaos rudis indigestaque moles Nec quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum c. Which I shall English from Geo. Sandys with some little change Before the Earth the Sea or Heaven were fram'd One face had nature which they Chaos nam'd An undigested lump a barren load Where jarring seeds of things ill-joyn'd abode No Sun as yet with light the World adorns Nor new Moon had repair'd her waning horns Nor hung the self-pois'd Earth in thin Air plac'd Nor had the Ocean the vast shores imbrac'd Earth Sea and Air all mixt the Earth unstable The Air was dark the Sea un-navigable No certain form to any one assign'd This that resist's For in one body join'd The cold and hot the dry and humid fight The soft and hard the heavy with the light Out of this Chaos or first matter did GOD raise the World according to those several parts and lineaments which we see it in not as out of any pre-existent matter which was made before and had not GOD for the Authour or Maker of it but as the first preparatory matter which himself had made including in the same potentially both the form and matter of the whole Creation except the soul of man only which he breathed into him after he had moulded up his body out of the dust of the earth And therefore it is truly said that GOD made all things out of nothing not out of nothing as the matter out of which it was made for then that nothing must be something but as the terminus a quo in giving them a reall and corporeal being which before they had not and did then first begin to have by the meer efficacy and vertue of his powerful world And though it be a maxime in the Schooles of Philosophy Ex nihilâ— nil fit that nothing can be made of nothing that every thing which hath a being doth require some matter which must be pre-existent to it yet this must either be condemned for erroneous doctrine in the chaire of Divinity or else be limited and restrained as indeed it may conâ—idering from whence it came to visible and natural agents which cannot goe beyond the sphere of their own activity Invisible and supernatural agents are not tyed to rules no not in the production of the works of nature though nature constituted and established in a certain course work every thing by time and measure in a certain rule Now as the World was made of nothing that is to say without any uncreated or precedent matter which may be possibly conceived to have been coexistent with the God-head it self and thereby gained a being or existence which before it had not so had it a beginning too that is to say a time in which it first did begin to be what before it was not This Moses calleth principium a beginning simple In principio creavit Deus Coelum et Terram In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth which is all one as if he had said the Heaven and the Earth had a beginning and that this unformed Masse of Chaos was the beginning or first draught of them the first in order of time because made before them not in the way of causality as the cause thereof Coelum et Terra in principio i. e. ante omnia facta sunt as Simon Pottius hath observed in his notes or Scholies on St. Iohns Gospell So that whether we do expound those words that the Heaven and Earth had a beginning or that Moses by those words did mean that out of that which he calleth the Heaven and the Earth as out of the beginning or first matter all things were created it comes all to one because it is acknowledged that that first matter was created by God and therefore of necessity was to have a beginning Nor doth the Scripture only tell us that the World had a beginning but by the help of Scripture and the works of some Learned men we are able to point out the time when it did begin or to compute how many years it is precisely from the first beginning without any notable difference in the Calculation For though it be most truly said Citius inter Horologia quam Chronologia that clocks may sooner be agreed then Chronologers yet most Chronologers in this point come so near one another that the difference is scarce observable From the beginning of the World to the birth of Christ in the account of Beroaldus are 3928. years 3945. in the computation of the Genevians 3960. in the esteem of Luther and 3963. in the calculation of Melanchthon between whom and Beroaldus being the least and the greatest there is but 35. years difference which in so long a tract of time can be no great matter Now if unto the calculation made by Beroaldus which I conceive to be the truest we add 1646. since the birth of CHRIST the totall of the time since the Worlds Creation will be 5576. years neither more nor lesse And to this truth that the World had a beginning whensoever it was and was not of eternal being or a self-existency most of the old Philosophers did consent unanimously guided thereto by this impossibility in nature that any visible work either natural or artificial should either give it self a being or have that being which it hath from no cause precedent For from that principle Tully argueth very rightly that as a man coming into a goodly house in which he found nothing but rats and mice could not conceive that either the house had built it self or had no other maker but those rats and mice which were nested in it so neither can it be imagined that either this World should be eternal of a self-existency or was composed by any natural agent of what power soever And this is that which is more briefly and expressely said by St. Paul to the Hebrews viz. That every house is built by some man but he
that built all things is God T is true that Aristotle being a great enquirer into the works of nature conceived the World to be eternal and yet not alwayes constant unto that opinion But then it is as true withall that there was something else which inclined him to it then his meer admiration of the works of nature Democritus and some others of the old Philosophers had been of opinion that the World was made in the first beginnings fortuitis atomorum concur â—ionibus by the accidentall union or communion of severall parcels of which the Vniverse consisted that man himself was only voluntaria Elementorum concretio a voluntary mixture of all the Elements into which he finally was resolved To which absurd opinion as indeed it was though it then found a generall embracement amongst most Philosophers when Aristotle knew not how to submit his most exquisite judgment and yet was destitute of such further light as might more fully have instructed him in the true Originall he rather chose to grant the world to be eternal then to be made of such ridiculous and unsound though eternal Atoms Et maluit pulchram hanâ— Mundi faciem ab aeterno esse quam aliquando ex aeterna deformitate emersisse as Vallesius pleades in his behalf and I thank him for it who am I must confesse a great friend of Aristotles the Praecursor as some call him of our Saviour CHRIST in naturalibus as John Baptist was in divinis And now I am thus fallen on these old Philosophers I shall produce the testimonies of some chiefs among them for proof of this that the Creation of the World was an effect of the most infinite power of Almighty God the knowledge whereof in such particular termes as by them delivered was first communicated to the Grecians by the wise men of Egypt who questionlesse had learned it of the Hebrewes when they lived among them And first Mercuâ—ius Trismegistus not only doth affirme that God made the World but that he made it by his word that he did only say Existat Sol let the Sun arise and presently the Sun shined on the face of the earth and that by the power and efficacie of the same Word the Elements were distinguished the Heavens beautifyed with stars the Earth adorned with herbs and plants of each several sort as his words are cited by St. Cyrill Thales one of the wise men of Greece who had spent some part of his time in Egypt and was the first qui de Coelestibus disputavit who brought the knowledge of divine matters amongst his Country-men making the Element of water to be the first matter as it were whence all things proceeded Deum autem eam mentem quae ex aqua cuncta formaverit and that God was that infinite minde or understanding which out of that created all things In which he comes so neer the next laid down by Moses that Minutius reckoneth him to have affirmed the same thing though in different words Vides Philosophi principalis opinionem nobiscum penitus consonare Plato doth seem to speak so doubâ—ingly in this point that many did conceive that he inclined to the opinion of the Worlds eternity But besides that this is one of the great controversies betwixt him and Aristotle Plutarch who was well versed in his works and writings doth absolutely free him from that imputation not only saying of those who did so conclude that they did torquere verba ejus extend his words upon the Rack to make them speak that which he never meant but positively affirming that in his Book inscribed Timaeus he treated of the Worlds Creation as the chief scope and subject of that discourse For Aristotle next though in his books of Physicks or natural Philosophy he labour to maintain the Worlds Eternity upon the grounds before delivered yet in his Metaphysicks where he speaks of abstracted notions and travailed in the search of materials he doth expresse himself in another manner Qui Deum seu mentem causam autorem dixit c. He saith that excellent Philosopher who doth affirme that God is the cause and Author not only of all living creatures but even of nature it self and of the universall World and the course thereof speakes like a sober-minded man they which say otherwise being rash unadvised persons And this he doth expresse more clearly in his tract inscribed De Mirabilibus if at the least that tract be his where he declareth that naturally the Sea both did and would overwhelm the whole face of the Earth because higher then it in situation but that it is restrained by the power and command of GOD to the intent the Earth might serve the better for the use of men and other living creatures which inhabit on it What he hath said of God in his book De Mundo where he calleth him the Father both of Gods and Men hath been shewn before Theophrastus a great follower of Aristotle not only doth maintain that the World was created by God but that he was ex nihilo without any pre-existing or precedent matter And Galen that great Doctor in Physick who had no more religion in him then what might serve for a Physitian and an Heathen too having surveyed and as it were dissected all the parts of the World concludes at last that it was very fit both for him and all men Canticum compâ—nere in Creatoris nostri laudem to make an Hymne in honour of their great Creator and therein to express his wisdome his great power and goodness The Latines as they borrowed their Philosophy from the learned Greeks so did they take up such opinions as they found most prevalent amongst them though otherwise divided into several Sects as the Grecians were Varro as the most antient so the most learned of the Romans as St. Augustine out of Cicero doth affirme he was reckoneth the first Period or Aera at which he doth begin all his computations from the creation of the World and makes it the opinion both of Zeno and the Stoicks generally that the World had a beginning and should have an end Cicero though an Academick and consequently a Sceptick in all points of controversie doth yet conclude Deum condidisse et ornasse hominem mundum etiam mare terram divino nutui parere that GOD made man and â—urnished him with those endowments which he still enjoyeth and that the World the Sea and Earth are obedient unto his command Remember what was said before of the Rats and Mice and then no question need be made what he thought herein For Seneca as he was a Stoick so there is little doubt but that he held those Tenets which Varro doth ascribe to the Stoicks generally But yet to take him in our way we shall hear him saying that God created all the World yea and Man himself And of this truth he was so certain that he thought it losse of
time to enquire any further after the beginnings of things who made them and did first extract them out of the common masse or Chaos where before they lay Quid quaeâ—am saith he quae sint initia universorum quis rerum formator qui omnia in uno mersa et materia inerti convoluta disâ—reverit Macrobius speaks more plainly yet although he somewhat failed in his computation affirming that the World must be lately made Cujus cognitio bis mille annos non excedat considering that there was no monument or record thereof which could entitle it to the age of two thousand years The like may be affirmed of the Poets who do ascribe the glory of the Worlds Creation unto God alone Ovid in plain significant termes Sine ulla nominis dissimulatione as Lactantius hath it without boggling or scrupling at the name of God Virgil more covertly under the names of Mens and Spiritus under the which names the old Philosopers used to mask him For Ovid having before described the general Chaos then addes Hanc Deus et melior litem natura diremit Nam Coelo terras et terris abscidit undas That is to say But God the better nature this decides Who Earth from Heaven the Sea from Earth divides And shortly after speaking of the Creation of Man he gives God these most honourable titles the Maker of all things the Authour of a better World or Ille opifex rerum mundi melioris origo in his proper language Virgil although he speaks more covertly as before was said yet he ascribeth that to his Mens or Spiritus which Ovid in more plain terms doth assigne to God and so coâ—es somewhat near the truth Non longe fuit a veritate as Lactantius noteth For in his Aeneads thus he tels us Principio Coelum et Terras camposque liquentes Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque Astra Spiritus intus alit totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se â—orpore miscet Which may be Englished thus in brief Heaven Earth and Seas the Sun and Moons bright sphere In the beginning by some Spirit were Divinely cherish'd which diffus'd through all Did like the Soul quicken this massie Ball. In which we have not only intimated the powerfull influence of the Spirit but the words In principio which are used by Moses But to returne again to the Word of God we finde not only there that God made the World and that he made it in such time as himself best pleased but also the course and method which he used in so great a work A work which took up six whole dayes as before was said God taking a delight as it were in his own productions and giving them the commendation of good as they were created or pretermitting that commendation as sometimes he did when any thing was wanting unto that perfection which was after added For in the work of the second day wherein God did divide the waters above the firmament from those which were disposed beneath it we do not finde this approbation et vidit Deus quod esset bonum because that did not bring the waters to that use and perfection which after they received when they were separated from the Earth and gathered together into one body which he called the Sea And this consideration is alone sufficient to consute a strange conceipt of some late Divines Who on pretence of some authority out of Augustines works have told us that all things were created at once by the power of God and that not only in one day sed in eodem momento or eodem nunc as Vallesius phraseth it the distinction of six days being made by Moses the better to complie with our incapacities For questionlesse there cannot be a better reason why God should passe no approbation on the second days work and double it upon the third but that the separation of the Waters not being fully perfected till the said third day required one special approbation from the mouth of God as the production of the earth and the fruits thereof which was the work of that day also did require another But here a question may be made concerning those waters which are said to be above the firmament or rather of the firmament which is said to divide them I know the general opinion of most writers is that by the Firmament in that place we are to understand the Air as being interposed inter aquosam et humidam superioris Regionis molem etâ— aquas marium fluminumque between the waters of the upper Regions and that which is dispersed in the Seas and Rivers So Iunius for the Protestant Doctors and Estius for those of the Church of Rome do expound that Text and for my part I have not been unwilling to conforme to that in which both parties are agreed But I have met of late with the Observations of a right learned man upon some passages of Scripture in which I finde some strong presumptions that an Abysse of Waters must needs be granted to be above the highest Orbe whose Arguments I shall lay down as I finde them there and so refer the matter wholly to the Readers judgment For first he saith and I think very truly that the Waters above the Heavens called upon by David and the three Children in their Song to praise the Lord cannot be taken for the watery Region of the Air because in the same Canticle by an expresse enumeration of all the Meteors this Region is invited to the like celebration O every showres and dew blesse ye the Lord and magnifie his name for ever saith the Benedicite Fire and hail snow and vapour winde and storm fulfilling his word saith the book of Psalmes Psal. 148. He telleth us secondly that in the separation of the waters spoken of by Moses the waters below the firmament were gathered together into that Receptacle which he called the Sea and that in the space above the firmament he laid up the rest of the deep as in a store-house Psal. 33.7 From whence when he uttered his voice as at the flood there was a multitude or noise of waters in the Heavens Ier. 10.13 Which lest it might be gratis dictum he proves it by the story of the generall Deluge in which the waters being said to prevail at least 15. cubits above the top of the highest mountains must needs have more time then 40. days and 40. nights for their falling down according to the course of nature unlesse there had been some supply from this great Abysse and that God by an high hand had forced down those waters which he had laid up there as in a store-house And that there was such a supplie from this infinite and inexhaustible store-house he shewes out of those words of the 7. of Genesis where it is said that the fountains of the great deep or as the Angell calleth them in the Book of
for God had sent him into Egypt before hand for their preservation So also in the case of our blessed Saviour of whom Ioseph was a Type or figure the Lord determined out of his counsel and fore-knowledge as St. Peter telleth us that he should be the Propitiation for the sins of the world and in due time he made the avarice of Iudas and the malice of the Scribes and Pharisees his means and instruments that by their wicked hands and obdurate hearts he might be crucified and slain So used he the ambition of the Kings of Babylon to punish and chastise his people of the house of Iudah and the desire of glory which he found in Titus for the subversion of that wicked and perverse generation who had not only made themselves drunk with the bloud of the Prophets but against all rules of Law and Iustice had filled themselves with the bloud of the Son of God Thus when he had a minde to assay Iobs patience he used the Chaldees and wilde Arabs who did trade in theevery to fall upon the heards of his Kine and Camels and was content the Devil should try some experiments on his body also to leave the fairer pattern of unconquered patience for the times to come And though in these and other occasions of this nature he make use of the wicked to effect his purposes yet he rewardeth them answerably to their deservings proportioning their Wages to their own intentions and not according unto that effect which he works out of them Recipient vero non pro eo quod Deus bene usus est eorum operibus malis sed quod ipsi male usi sunt Dei operibus bonis said Fulgentius truly And though some of them have the hap or the seeming happiness to go down into the grave in peace and carry the reputation with them of successeful wickedness yet God will finde them out at last and meet with these sowre grapes in his general Vintage and tread them in the Wine-press of his indignation And to say truth there are as great and weighty reasons why some mens punishments should follow after them as that the rest should have a triall and essay of their future miseries by those which they endure in this present life For as St. Augustine well observeth if all mens sins were punished in this present world Nihil ultimo judicio reservari putaretur it would occasion some to think that there were no necessity nor use of the general judgement and on the other side if none Nulla esse divina providentia crederetur others would be too apt to think that there were no Providence and say with him in Davids Psalms Tush God doth not see it God therefore doth so order the affairs of this present life as may be most subservient unto that to come not giving such success to the prayers of his servants as they think most conducible unto their estates but as he thinks most expedient for them in reference to a better life then what here they have And if he do not always give the victory to the justest cause but that the good man may complain as once Cato did Victrix causa placet superis sed victa Catoni that the worst cause sped best in the chance of war that also is a special testimony of his heavenly Providence For either they which seem to have the justest cause may manage it by wicked and ungodly instruments or else relye too much on the Arm of flesh or God may possibly foresee that they will use the Victory unto his dishonour or grow secure and negligent of all pious duties upon the strength of that success In all which cases if God give them over to the hands of their enemies they have no reason to complain of Almighty God as if he either were not just in his distributions or that his Providence were asleep or too highly busied to look upon such passages as are here beneath God doth that which is most agreeable to his heavenly justice in punishing the sins of those whom he loves most tenderly with some temporal punishments that they may scape the wrath of the day to come and lets the wicked man go on with success and glory until he hath made up the measure of his sins and wickednesses and so is fitted and prepared for the day of slaughter But of this Argument it is enough to have said a little the Providence of God in governing the affaires of the present world being a point so generally granted by the sober Heathens that Aristotle being asked what answer should be given to those who made question of it is said to have replyed The whip His meaning was that they who ware so irreligious as to make any doubt of Gods heavenly providence were rather to be answered with stripes then with demonstrations And with this resolution I conclude this Chapter and the point together CHAP. V. Of the Creation of Angels the ministry and office of the good the fall and punishment of the evill Angels And also of the Creation and fall of Man OF the Creation of the World we have spoken before and are now come to speak of the creation of Angels and Men as the more noble parts thereof These though included in those words of Heaven and Earth according as they stand in the Creed are more significantly expressed by the Nicene Fathers who to those words of Heaven and Earth have added as by way of Glosse or Commentary and of all things visible and invisible That under the notion of things visible they intended Man as well as any other visible work of the whole Creation is a thing past question And that by things invisible they did mean the Angels will prove to be as clear as that and testifyed by St. Paul expressely saying that By him all things were created whether in Heaven or Earth visible or invisible whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers all things were created by him and for him In which we have not only the Apostles testimony that by the things invisible are meant the Angels but an enumeration of the severall rankes and degrees of Angels which were created by the power of the Lord our God Of these degrees and ranks we shall speak anon having prepared our way unto that discourse by taking first a short survey of the angelical nature For the quid nominis to begin first with that it is meerly Greek and English word Angel and the Latine Angelus being the same in sound and sense with the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nuntio which is to carry a message or to go of an errand Angelus then is no more then nuncius an Angel but a messenger in our English language And so it it expressed by Lactantius saying Habe◠enim Ministros quos vocamus nuncios This as it notifyeth their name and the reason of
it so doth it signifie their office for Angelus nomen est officii non naturae as the Fathers tell us which is to be the messengers from God to Man as oft as there is any important businesse which requires it of them to be the Nuncios as it were from Gods supreme holiness to manage his affaires with the sons of men And unto this the Apostle also doth agree telling us that they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or ministring Spirits sent forth to minister unto them that shall be heires of Salvation Spirits they are according to the nature in which they were made and Ministring Spirits or Ministers as he calleth them out of David v. 7. with reference to the office unto which designed We have their nature in the word Spirits which sheweth them to be pure incorporeal substances not made of any corrupt matter as the bodies of men and so not having any internall principle of being they can have none neither of dissolution and yet as Creatures made by the hand of God they are reducible to nothing by the hand that made them although they have not in themselves any passive principle to make them naturally moral It is the priviledge or prerogative of Almighty God to be purely Simple without composition parts or passion The Angels though they come most near him yet fall short of this Who though they are not made of a matter and forme and so not naturally subject to the law of corruption yet are they made up or compounded of Act and Power or Actus aud Potentia in the School-mens language an Act by which they are a Power into which they may be reduced And being so made up of an Act of being and a Power of not being though probably that Power shall never be reduced into Act they fall exceeding short of the nature of GOD whose name is I AM and is so that it is impossible that he should not be or be any other then he is God being as uncapable of change as of composition Nay so great is the difference betwixt their nature and the nature of God so infinitely do they fall short of his incomprehensible and unspeakable Purity that though in comparison of Men as well as in themselves they are truly Spirits yet in comparison of GOD we may call them bodies But whatsoever their condition and ingredients be they owe not only unto God their continuall being by whom they are so made as to be free from corruption but unto him they are indebted for their first original without which they had not been at all St. Paul we see doth reckon them amongst things created and so doth David too in the Book of Psalmes Where calling upon all the Creatures to set forth Gods praises he first brings in the Angels to performe that office and then descends unto the Heavens and the other Creatures O praise the Lord of Heaven saith he praise him in the height Praise him all ye Angels of his praise him all his Hostes Praise him Sun and Moon c. Then addes of these and all the rest of the hosts of heaven He spake the word and they were made he commanded and they were created This with that passage of St. Paul before mentioned make it plain enough that the Angels were created by Almighty God And to this truth all sorts of writers whatsoever which do allow the being of Angels do attest unanimously Apollo in the Oracles ascribed unto him having laid down the incommunicable Attributes of God concludes it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that such is God of whom the Angels are but the smallest portion Where though Apollo or the Devil in Apollo's statua would fain be thought to be an Angel and as an Angel would be thought to have somewhat in him which might entitle him to be a Godhead yet he confesseth plainly that he owed his being to the power of God and was to be obedient unto his commands Hosthanes one of the chief of the Eastern Magi not only did allow of Angels as the Ministers aud messengers of the only God but made them so subservient to his will and power ut vultu Domini territi contremiscant that they could not look upon him without fear and trembling A Creature therefore doubtlesse not of self-existence and a Creature of Gods making too or else what need they tremble when they look upon him Of Plato it is said by Tertullian briefly Angelos Plato non negavit but by Minutius more expressely that he did not only believe that there were Angels but came so near the knowledge of their constitution as to affirme that they were inter mortalem et immortalem mediam substantiam a substance of a middle nature betwixt immortall and mortall that is to say not so eternally immortall as Almighty God nor yet so subject to mortality as the children of men And herein Aristotle comes up close to his Master Plato affirming more like a Divine then a Philosopher that to the perfection of the World there were required three sorts of substances the first wholly invisible which must be the Angels the second wholly visible as the Heaven and Earth and the third partly visible and invisible partly or made up of both And this saith he is none but man compounded of a visible body and an invisible soul. The Angels then though reckoned amongst things invisible yet being reckoned amongst such things as necessarily concurred to the Worlds perfection must have the same Creator which first made the World and made it in that full perfection which it still enjoyeth and such as hath before been proved could be none but GOD. The matter in dispute amongst learned men is not about the Power by which but the time when they were created In which as in a matter undetermined by the word of God every man takes the liberty of his own opinion and for me they may Some think that their Creation is included in the first words of Genesis where God is said to have created the Heaven and the Earth others when God said Fiat lux Let there be light and that from thence they have the title of the Angels of light Some will not have them made till the fourth day when the Sun and Moon and others of the Stars were made whose Orbes they say are whirled about by these Intelligences Cum ab omnibus receptum sit ab illis Coelos torqueri saith Peter Martyr But that they were created in one of the six dayes is the received opinion of all late Divines whether they be of the Pontifician or the Protestant party If so I would fain know the reason why Moses writing purposely of the Worlds Creation should pretermit the Master-peece of that wondrous work and not as well take notice of the Creation of the Angels as of the making of the Heavens and the Sun and Moon or of the Earth and other sublunary Creatures I know the common
of mankinde and a necessity was laid upon them to obey his pleasure Nec quicquam est in Angelis nisi parendi necessitas said Lactantius truly And so far we have all things clear from the holy Scriptures But if we will beleeve the learned as I think we may there is no signal punishment of ungodly people ascribed to God in the old Testament but what was executed by the ministry of these blessed spirits except some other means and ministers be expresly named That great and universal deluge in the time of Noah was questionless the work of Almighty God I even I do bring a flood of waters upon the Earth Gen. 6.17 But this was done by the ministery and service of the holy Angels Ministerio Angelorum saith Torniellus whom he employed in breaking up the fountaines of the great deep and opening the cataracts of Heaven for the destruction of that wicked unrepenting people Thus when it is affirmed in the 14. of Exodus that the Lord looked into the hoste of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and overthrew them in the midst of the Sea v. 24.27 Non intelligendum est de Deo sed de Angelo qui erat in nube we must not understand it of the Lord himself as Tostatus hath it but only of the Angel or ministring spirit of whose being in the cloud we had heard before And when we read that in the battail of the five Kings against the Israelites the Lord cast down great stones upon them from Heaven Iosh. 10. it is not to be thought saith he Quod Deus mitteret sed Angelus jubente Deo that this was done by Gods own hand but by the holy Angels at the Lords appointment The like may be affirmed of those other acts of power and punishment whereof we finde such frequent mention in the book of God which though they be ascribed to God as the principall Agent yet were they generally effected by his holy Angels as the means and instruments But the most proper office of the holy Angels is not for punishment but preservation not for correction of the wicked but for protection of the just and righteous person That 's the chief part of their imployment the office which they most delight in and God accordingly both hath and doeth employ them so from time to time For by the ministery of his Angels did he deliver Ismael from the extremity of thirst Daniel from the fury of hunger Lot from the fire and trembling Isaac from the sword our infant Saviour from one Herod his chief Apostle from another all of them from that common prison into the which they had been cast by the Priests and Pharisees But these were only personal and particular graces Look we on such as were more publick on such as did concern his whole people generally and we shall finde an Angel of he Lord incamping between the hoste of Egypt and the house of Israel to make good the passage at their backs till they were gotten on the other side of the Sea another Angel marching in the front of their Armies as soon as they had entred the land of Canaan and he the Captain of the Lords hostes Princeps exercituum Dei as the vulgar readeth it but whether Michael Gabriel or who else it was the Rabbins may dispute at leasure and to them I leave it Moreover that wall of waters which they had upon each side of them when they passed thorow the Sea as upon dry ground facta est a Deo per Angelos exequentes that was the work of Angels also directed and imployed by Almighty God as the learned Abulensis notets it Which also is affirmed by the Iewish Doctors of the dividing of the waters of Iordan to make the like safe passage for them into the promised land the land of Canaan The like saith Peter Martyr a learned Protestant touching the raysing of the Syrians from before Samaria when the Lord made them hear the noise of Cariots and the noise of horse-men that it was ministerio Angelorum effected by the ministery of the holy Angels whom God imployed in saving that distressed people from the hands of their enemies And by an Angel or at least an angelical vision 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a dream or Oracle delivered to them in their sleep as Eusebius telleth us did he forwarne the Christians dwelling in the land of Palestine to remove thence to Pella a small town of Syria and so preserved them from the spoyle and fury of the Roman Armies This was Gods way of preservation in the times before us and it is his way of preservation in all ages since GOD is the same God now as then his holy Angels no lesse diligent in their attendance on us then they have been formerly Let us but make our selves by our faith and piety worthy to be accounted the Sons of God and the heires of salvation and doubt we not of the assistance of these ministring spirits in all essaies of personall or publick dangers T is true the apparitions of the Angels in these late times have been very rare not many instances to be found in our choycest Histories But then it is as true withall one of the most eternall truths of holy Scripture that the Angel of the Lord encampeth about all them that fear him and delivereth them Whether we see or see them not it comes all to one and so resolved by Clemens of Alexandria an old Christian writer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Lord saith he doth still preserve us by the ministery of his holy Angels though we behold them not in any visible shape as the antients did And to say truth this general protection of the Angels is a point so clear so undeniable in true Divinity that he must needs renounce the Scripture which makes question of it Some difference indeed hath been about Angel-gardians and the particular protection which we have from them to whom God hath committed the tuition of our severall persons And yet even this if we make Scripture to be judge according to the exposition of the antient Writers will prove a point as clear and as undeniable as that of the protection which we have in general For Origen who lived in the third century from our Saviours birth reckoneth it for a tenet of undoubted truth and generally imbraced in the Christian Church long before his time that all Gods children from their birth or at least their Baptisme had their angel-keepers Lactantius speaks more generally as of all mankind Ad tutelam generis humani misit Angelos though possibly he might mean no otherwise then did the other Catholick writers of the times he lived in and those who followed close in the age succeeding St. Basil in Psal. 33. and Psal. 58. St. Chrysost. on the 18. of Matthew The Authour of the Imperfect work Hom. 40. Theodoret in l. 5. divinorum Decretorum do
did begin so he hath continued there being almost no sin committed which he tempts not to For though it be possible enough that men may sin without the temptation of the Devil by reason of the infirmity of the flesh and the concupiscences of several lusts which they bear about them yet commonly the Devil hath a part in all temptations and either findeth matter in us to work upon or stirreth up the dead seeds of sin which do lie raked up in our hearts like embers or fire in ashes For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts murders adulteries fornications theâ—is and the like foul acts as Christ himself hath told us in S. Matthews Gospel And every one is tempted as St. Iames affirmeth when he is inticed and drawn aside of his own concupiscence So that the matter of sin lieth within our selves the Devil doth but actuate and inform that matter and reduce the powers thereof into overt act co-operating to the sin but causing directly the temptation Between the temptation of the Devil and the act of sin there must go a consent of heart and an inclining of the will to the sin presented and this is mans own act who is free to evil and is not necessitatâ—d to consent to the evil motion the over-ruling of mans will being Gods Prerogative though possibly he have not present grace enough to foil the temptation The Devil may present to us such a pleasant object though under other notions then that of sin which he knows like enough to work on our humane frailty and work upon us as he doth by all subtile suggestions to consent unto it And though he cannot force us unto such consent yet in regard he seldom faileth by his cunning practises of gaining that consent which he cannot force not only the temptation but the sin it self is often times ascribed unto him in the holy Scripture Thus it is said that Satan provoked David to number Israel 1 Chron. 21.1 that the Devil put it into the heart of Judas to betray his Master Ioh. 13.2 that Satan had filled the heart of Ananias to lie against the holy Ghost Act. 5.3 And in the same respects it is that he is so often called the Tempter as Matth. 4.3 1 Thes. 3.5 And the Apostle speaking unto married people adviseth them not to be long asunder but to come together again that Satan tempt them not for their incontinency 1 Cor. 7.5 Upon this diligence of Satan to tempt men to sin and his well husbanding of all advantages which are presented to him to promote that work it was not only the opinion of some learned Gentiles but of some of the antient Christians also that every man had his evil Angel which did continually attend upon him to tempt him to the works of sin and the deeds of darkness For the Christians Cassianus telleth us quod unicuique nostrum duo cohaereant Angeli i. e. bonus malus that is to say that unto every one of us there adheres two Angels a good and an evil For the good Angel he brings proof indeed from the holy Scripture but for the adhaesion of the evil Angel he relyeth principally on the Book called Pastor which always counted an Apocryphal book in the judgement of the Catholick Church makes me suspect the Tenet for Apocryphal also And yet some think that St. Paul doth allude unto this opinion where he telleth us of an Angelus Satanae that lay heavy on him a messenger of Satan as our English reads it which was given to buffet him But for the Gentiles it is clear that they so opined Lactantius reporting it as their opinion quod singulis hominibus adhaereant that every one had his Daemon or his evil Angel attending on him whom they worshipped by the name of their proper Genii And for his general affirmation I consent unto him In his particular proof I must needs dissent For amongst others of his proofs he hath that of Socrates qui circa se assiduum Daemona Ioquebatur qui sibi puero adhaesisset cujus arbitrio nutu vitae 〈◊〉 regereâ—ur who used to speak of a certain Daemon who was always about him and had accompanyed him from his childhood by whose direction and appointment his whole life was ordered The same Tertullian telleth us of him Apologet. c. 37. and Minutius Felix in his Dialogue But notwithstanding the authority of these learned men I rather think that this Angel whom they call Daemonium was his Angel-Guardian then any of the damned and malignant crew such as were properly called Daemons the life of Socrates being too full of moral vertue to be directed by the counsels of an evil Angel For though I cannot grant as before I said that every man how wicked and unjust soever whether he be Iew or Gentile Turk or Infidel hath his Angel-Guardian which is the now received opinion of the Roman Schools yet that few selected ones among the Gentiles such as Socrates was who led their lives according to the Rules of Vertue and died as he did in defence of the only God against those many Idols which the Heathen worshipped might by Gods special grace have their Angel-Guardians I am not willing to deny And now I am fallen upon these Daemons I must take notice of another of the Devils practises which did as much promote his Kingdom of darkness as any temptation unto sin of what kinde soever I mean the raising of these Daemons into the rank and reputation of Celestial Deities and speaking by them in the mouths of the Heathen Oracles For by this means they gained on earth what they lost in Heaven and though they could not make themselves equal to God in power and greatness while they continued in the Heavens yet they found ways to be adored as God by poor ignorant people whose souls they had seduced to that wretched blindeness Of these Lactantius telleth us that they were called Daemones i. e peritos rerum scios from their general knowledge which the word Daemon doth import in the Greek Original that they had a Soveraign Prince amongst them whom they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Prince of Devils that counterfeiting first the persons of deceased Kings they aim to be worshipped in their Statua's and became so impudent at last Vt Dei nomen sibi deorum cultum vendicabant that they challenged to themselves the name of God and the divine worship which of right did belong unto it And to train up the people in this blinde Idolatry having first taught them to adore the images of some famous men whom they had caused to be entituled by the name of Deities sub statuis imaginibus consecratis delitescunt they shrouded themselves within their consecrated shrines and Images and from thence gave out Oracles touching things to come and sometimes so possessed the breasts of their Priests and Votaries that they did seem to be inspired with
the Spirit of prophesie as Minutius Felix well observeth Nay being spirits as they are of an excellent knowledge and either by a foresight which they have of some things in future or by conjecturing at events out of natural causes or coming by some other means to be made acquainted with the will of God they took upon them to effect what they knew would follow and to be the Authors of those publick blessings which were hard at hand so that indeed it was no wonder Si sibi Templa si honores si sacrificia tribuuntur if thereupon the people would erect them Temples and offer sacrifice unto them and yeild them other Divine honours fit for none but Gods By means whereof they did not only raise themselves into the Throne and Majesty of Almighty God and captivated almost all the world in a blinde obedience to their will and commands Sed veri ac singularis Dei notitiam apud omnes gentes inveteraverunt as the same Lactantius rightly noteth but in a manner had defaced the knowledge of the true one and only God over all the earth And in this blindeness and Idolatry did the world continue till the birth of CHRIST the Idols of Egypt falling down flat before him when he was carryed into that countrey in his Mothers arms as Palladius telleth us and all the Oracles of the Gentiles failing at the time of his death as is collected out of that work of Plutarchs inscribed De defectu Oraculorum Which preparation notwithstanding these Devils or Daemons call them which you will had gotten such possession of the mindes of men that the Apostles and Evangelists found it a far easier matter to cast the Devils out of their bodies then out of their souls and long it was before the rising of the Sun of righteousness was able to dispel those thick clowds of darkness wherewith they had thus overspread the whole face of the Earth Which with their power and influence in the acts of sin occasioned the Apostle to make this expression that he wrestled not against flesh and bloud but against Principalities and Powers against the Rulers not of this world but of the darknesse of this world and against spiritual wickednesses in high places By which words as he means the Devils and infernal spirits against which the man of God is to combate daily so by those words he gives me a just ground to think that the Angels which did fall from the primitive purity and have since laboured noithing more then the ruine of man were chiefly of those Orders of Aâ—gels which are called Principalities and Powers in the holy Scriptures And this I am the rather induced to think because I finde them called by those names in another place where the Apostle speaking of Christs victory over Hell and Satan describes it thus that having spoiled Principalities and Powers he made a shew of them openly and triumphed over them But of this argument enough It is now time that we proceed to the Creation and fall of man as that which more immediately conduceth to the following Articles of the Incarnation death and passion of our Lord and Saviour And first for mans Creation it was last in order though first in Gods intention of the six days work it being thought unfit in Gods heavenly wisdome to create man into the world before he was provided of a decent house and whatsoever else was necessary both for life and comfort For it we look unto the end for which God made many of the inferiour creatures reperâ—â—mus eum non necessitati modo sed oblectamento voluisse consulere as Calvin rightly hath observed we shall finde that he not only intended them for the necessities of mans life but also for the convenience and delight in living And whereas all the rest of the six days work were the acts only of his power the creating of man doth seem to be an act both of power and wisdome In all the rest there was nothing but a Dixit Deus he spake the word and they were made saith the Royal Psalmist But in the making of man there was somewhat more a Faciamus hominem a consultation called about it each Person of the Trinity did deliberate on it and every one contributed somewhat to his composition For God the Father as the chief workman or the principal agent gave him form and feature in which he did imprint his own heavenly Image The Son who is the living and eternal Word gave him voyce or speech that so he might be able to set forth Gods praises and the holy Ghost the Lord and giver of life as the Nicene Fathers truly call him did breath into his nosthrils the breath of life Or if we look upon it as one act of all we shall finde man agreeing with many of the creatures in the matter out of which he was made but very different from them all both in form and figure For though God pleased to make him of the dust of Earth to humble him and keep him from aspiring thoughts as oft as he reflected on his first Original yet did he make him of a straight and erected structure advanced his head up towards the Firmament and therein gave him the preheminence over all creatures else which had been made before of the same materials And this is that which Ovid the Poet thus expresseth Pronaque cum spectant animalia caetera terram Os homini sublime dedit coelumque videre Iussit erectos ad sydera tollere vultus That is to say And where all Creatures else with down cast eye Look towards th' Earth he rais'd mans Head on high And with a lofty look did him indue That so he might with ease Heavens glories view A thing of principal moment if considered rightly not only to the beeing but well being of man who is hereby instructed by the Lord his God that in the setling of his desires and affections he should take counsell of his making so to advance his meditations as God doth his head and not by fastning both his looks and thoughts on the things below him to disgrace as much as in him is the dignity of his creation and consequently merit to have had the countenance even of those very beasts whose minde he carryeth For I am verily perswaded that if the worldly minded man and such as are not well instructed in the things of God did but consider of the figure of his body only that very contemplation would promote him in the way of godliness and rectifie such errours and misperswasion wherewith his soul hath been misguided in the way of truth Certain I am that Lactantius whom I have so often cited in this present work examining the Original and growth of Atheism with which the world had been infected in the former times makes this amongst some other causes to be one of the principal that men had formerly neglected to look up
by him suffered the generality of them at the least to walke in their own wayes and fulfill those lusts to which they naturally were addicted And some there were who by conforming of their lives to the Law of nature and cherishing those good motions which they felt within them attained unto so clear a knowledge of the nature of God and such an eminent height in all moral vertue that greater was not be found amongst those of Israel For what could any Iew say more of the nature of God his divine Attributes his Power and Providence the making of all things out of nothing by Gods mighty hand and the sustaining of the same by his infinite wisdome then we have formerly declared to have been believed by the most knowing men amongst the Heathens whom they called Philosophers Insomuch as we may justly think as Octavius did Aut nunc Christianos Philosophos esse aut Philosophos jam tunc fuisse Christianos that in this point Philosopher and Christian had been termes convertible Nor did they rest themselves contented with that general knowledge of his eternal Power and Godhead which they had studied and found out in the book of nature but they knew also very well that God was to be worshipped by them in their best devotions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the first place to worship God is one of the first counsels in the Grecian Oratour And it was Catos first rule which we learnt at School that God being as he is a Spirit is to be worshipped by us with spiritual purity Si Deus est animus nobis ut carmina dicunt Hic tibi praecipue sit pura mente eolendus Which may be Englished in these words If God as Poets say a Spirit be Then with pure minde let him be serv'd by thee Which principle of natural piety being planted in them there is no point of reverence whatsoever it be either required of or practised by the people of God in his outward worship which was not punctually performed by the antient Gentiles Of Solomon it is said in the book of Kings that when he had made an end of praying all his prayers and supplication to the Lord he rose from before the Altar of the Lorld from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up unto the heavens Where we finde kâ—eeling on the knees and lifting up of the hands to be the usuall as indeed the fittest posture in the act of prayer Finde we not that the Gentiles did observe the same and went as far as Solomon if not beyond him First for the lifting up of hands we finde in Homer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Virgil Duplices tendens ad sydera palmas in Ovid Vtraque Coelo brachia porrexit and finally Tendere palmas ad delubra deum in an old Latine Poet cited by Lactantius And as for kneeling on their knees they so little scrupled it that they conceived themselves not to do enough in the adoring of their Gods unlesse they flung themselves prostrate on the ground before them Of which Ovid thus speaking of Deucalion and Pyrrha Vt Templi tetigere gradus procumbit uterque Pronus humi gelidoque pavens dedit oscula saxo Which is thus Englished by G. Sandys Then humbly on their faces prostrate laid And kissing the cold stones with fear thus prai'd The like may be affirmed of lifting up the eye to the throne of grace when we petition God for his mercies towards us Which as it is exemplifyed in that of David Early in the morning will I direct my prayer to thee and will look up so do we finde it parralleled in that of Virgil Illi ad surgentis conversi limina solis which if it rather seem to speak of turning to the East in the act of prayer then of lifting up the eyes to heaven let us take that of Ovid which is plain enough where speaking of poor Io and her prayers to Iupiter he saith that she looked up to Heaven tendens ad sydera vultus when she made her prayers And lest it should be thought as perhaps some will be apt to think that they stood more upon the outward reverence of the body then the inward purity of the soul in the act of worship remember Catos pura mente which before we had And add to that the memorable saying of the wiseman Socrates that God regardeth not so much the perfumes which were used in sacrifices as the souls and virtues of mortal men or that of Persius one of the Latine Poets who doth require that in all their addresses to the Gods they should be sure to take along with them Compositum jus fasque animi sanctosque recessus Mentis i. e. a soul replenished with righteousness and religious thoughts Upon which words Lactantius who doth cite them giveth this glosse or descant Sentiebat non carne opus esse ad placandam coelestem Majestatem sed mente sancta that he conceived the sanctity of the minde to be more necessary for the appeasing of the Gods then any service of the body But being that these applications and addresses howsoever qualifyed were made to those that were no Gods they cannot scape the censure which St. Paul gives of them that knowing God they worshipped him not as God but became vain in their imaginations changing the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things The like may also be affirmed of those frequent sacrifices wherewith they sought to expiate their offences and appease the anger of their Gods The rites and reason of the which they received from Noah and not from any diabolicall suggestion as some men conceive as Noah had them by tradition from the elder Patriarchs For being well enough perswaded that the Gods were much offended at the sins of men and finding many terrible effects of divine vengeance to pursue them they could not better study their own indemnity then to have recourse unto those sacrifices which had been found effectual in the former times for the appeasing of Gods anger and expiating those offences which they had committed Examples of this kinde in all antient Authors Greek and Latine are obvious to the eye of every reader T is true the Devil did maliciously pervert this Institution and caused it in tract of time to be so altered in the object that in stead of being offered to the God of Heaven they sacrificed to Idols made of silver and gold even the work of mens hands worshipping and serving the creature more then the Creatour as St. Paul saith of them whereby the truth of God was changed into a lie and that which first was instituted for a Propitiation became to them a manifest occasion of falling into greater and more hainous sin And it is also true that the Devil not content with this first imposture in drawing to himself
first of these respects the blessed Angels have the title of the sons of God Where wast thou saith the Lord in the book of Iob when I laid the foundation of the earth when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy The sons of God that is to say the holy Angels Per filios Dei Angeli intelliguntur saith the learned Estius on the place And so St. Augustine doth determine who hereupon inferreth that the Angels were created before the stars and not after the six days were finished as some it seems had taught in the times before him Iam ergo erant Angeli quando facta sunt sydera facta sunt autem sydera die quarto as he most rationally concludes from this very text In this respect also the Saints in glory are called the sons or children of God and said to be equall to the Angels in St. Lukes Gospell not that they have all the prerogatives and properties which the Angels have sed quod mori non possunt saith the text but because they are become immortall and no longer subject as before to the stroke of death In the last meaning of the word though all the Saints and holy men of God may be called his children because they are adopted to the right of sons and made co-heires with CHRIST their most blessed Saviour yet is the title more appliable to the Prophets of God at least appliable unto them after a more peculiar manner then unto any others of the children of men I have said saith David ye are Gods and ye are all the children of the most High Of whom here speaks the Psalmist of Gods people generally or only of some chosen and select vessels Not of Gods people generally there 's no doubt of that though both St. Augustine and St. Cyril seem to look that way but of some few particulars only as Euthymius and some others with more reason thinke And those particulars must either be the Princes and Judges of the earth who are called Gods by way of participation because they do participate of his power in government or else the Prophets of the Lord who are called Gods and the sons or children of the most High by way of communication because God doth communicate and impart to them his more secret purposes that they might make them known to the sons of men Them he called Gods as Christ our Saviour doth expound it then whom none better understood the meaning of the royal Psalmist ad quos sermo dei factus est i. e. to whom the word of the Lord came as our English reads it And what more common in the Scripture then this forme of speech factum est verbum Domini c. The word of the Lord came to Isaiah Isa. 38.4 The word of the Lord came to Ieremiah Ier. 1.2 The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel Ezek. 1.3 et sie de caeteris If then such men to whom the word of the Lord came might justly be entituled by the name of Gods and called the sons of the most High assuredly there was not any of the children of men which could with greater reason look to be so called then the holy Prophets And yet in none of these respects abstracted from an higher consideration is CHRIST our Saviour here called by the name of the Son of God or so intended in this Creed For Angel he was none in the proper signification of the word though called the Angel of the Covenant in the way of Metaphore Nor did he take the nature of Angels but the seed of Abraham as St. Paul tels us to the Hebrews We may not think so meanly of him as to ranke him only in the list of the Saints departed it being through the merits of his death and passion that the Saints are made partakers of the glories of heaven and put into an estate of immortality T is true indeed he was a Prophet the Prophet promised to succeed in the place of Moses that Prophet in the way of excellence in the first of Iohn v. 21 25. But then withall as himself telleth us of Iohn the Baptist he was more then a Prophet that word which came unto the Prophets in the times of old and to whom all the Prophets did bear witness for the times to come A King indeed he is even the King of Kings though not considered in that notion here upon the earth nor looked on in that title in the present Article Or if we could reduce him unto any of these yet take him as an Angel or a Saint departed or a King or Prophet every of which have the name of Sons in the book of God he could not be his only Son the only begotten Son of God the Father Almighty who hath so many Saints and Angels so many Kings and Prophets which are called his Sons It must needs follow hereupon that IESVS CHRIST our Lord is the Son of God by a more divine and near relation then hath been hitherto delivered And hereunto both God and Man the Angels and internal spirits give sufficient testimony The Lord from heaven procliamed him at his Baptisme and Transfiguration to be his well beloved Son in whom he was well pleased And Peter on the earth having made this acknowledgement and confession saying Thou art Christ the Son of the living God received this confirmation from our Saviours mouth that flesh and bloud had not revealed it unto him but that it came from God the Father which is in Heaven The Angel Gabriel when he brought the newes of his incarnation foretold his mother that he should be called the Son of God the Son of the most High in a former verse And a whole Legion of unclean Spirits in the man possessed joynes both of these together in this compellation IESVS thou Son of God most high A thing not worthy so much noise and ostentation had he not been the Son of God in another and more excellent manner then any of the sons of men who either lived with him or had gone before him had there not been something in it extraordinary which might entitle him unto so sublime and divine a priviledge Though Iohn the Baptist were a Prophet yea and more then a Prophet yet we do not finde that the Devils stood in awe of him for Iohn the Baptist did no miracles or looked upon him in the wilderness as the Son of God To which of all the holy Angels as St. Paul disputes it did the Lord say at any time Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee And who can shew us any King but him that was the Son of God as well as of David whom God the Lord advanced to so high an honour as to cause him to sit down at his own right hand till his enemies were made his footstoole Though Angels Kings and Prophets were the sons
of God by a communication of more speciall Grace then had been granted generally to the sons of men yet none but CHRIST our Lord is honoured with those high prerogatives of being called his own Son his only Son his only begotten Son the first born of every Creature the first born from the dead and the heir of all things that so in all things he might have the preheminence Which glorious attributes and titles being laid together do put a very signall and materiall difference between the sons of God by adoption and grace and IESVS CHRIST our Lord and most blessed Saviour who is his son by nature his begotten Son begotten by his Father before all times generatione 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by an unspeakable manner of generation without help of woman and yet made of a woman in the fulness of time generatione 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a supernatural kind of generation without help of man In terris sine Patre in coelis sine Matre as it is in Origen Without a Father on the earth without a Mother in heaven the very true Melchisedech which hath no descent who neither had beginning of days as the Son of God the Father alone nor shall have any end of life as he is the Son of God and the Virgin Mary Now of this twofold generation of the Son of God we will first speak of that which is last in Order his generation in the womb of the Virgin Mary in which he was incarnate by the holy Ghost and was made flesh and dwelt amongst us for a season that we might live with him for ever For being begotten and conceived in the Virgins womb after such a supernatural and wonderful manner by the Almighty power of God he is in that regard if there were no other Gods own Son or his son by nature his only and his only begotten Son take which phrase we will The Angel Gabriel doth affirme this twice for failing Behold thou shall conceive and bring forth a Son and shalt call his name Jesus he shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest And then unto the Virgins Quaere he returns this answer The holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God What called the Son of God only and not be so really Not so but that being really and truly the Son of God he shall declare the same by such several means ut sic merito ab omnibus vocetur that so he shall be called and counted over all the world For that he was really and truely the Son of God by this his generation in the fulness of time the miraculous manner of his conception without any other Father then the power of God doth most assuredly evince A son begotten in that manner may very well be called natura filius non tantum beneficio filius a son by nature not by grace and indulgence only saith the learned Maldonate Quia non ex viro sed ex solo Deo concipiendus because begotten not by man but by God alone Nay so peculiarly doth this miraculous manner of his generation entitle him to be the true and proper Son of Almighty God that so he might be justly called and accompted of had he not been the Son of the living God by a preceding generation even before all times And so doth Maldonate resolve it in his Commentaries on St. Lukes Gospel though otherwise a great assertor of the eternal generation of the Son of God whose words I shal put down at large for the greater certainty Etiamsi Christus Deus non fuisset illo tamen modo genitus quo genitus fuit merito Dei Filius vocatus fuisset non solum ut caeteri viri sancti sed singulari quadam ratione quod non alium quam Deum haberet patrem neo ab alio quam ab eo generatus So he I think exceeding rightly to the point in hand His instance or exemplification in the case of Adam who is called the Son of God by the same St. Luke quia non a viro sed a Deo genitus erat because he was begotten by God and not by Man I cannot by any means approve of the production of our Father Adam not being to be reckoned as a generation but to be esteemed of as a work of Creation only But to proceed as Christ is properly and truly the Son of God by this his generation in the womb of his Virgin-mother so in the same respect is he called in Scripture the only and the only begotten Son of God the Father I know that generally the style or attribute of the only begotten Son of God is used for an argument or convincing reason to prove that Christ our Saviour is the Son of God by an eternall generation long before all worlds But by their favours I conceive that he is called Gods only begotten Son either in reference to this his generation in the womb of the Virgin because the only Son of God which was so begotten or else because he was most dearly loved of his heavenly Father as commonly an only Son is best and most affectionately beloved of an earthly Parent To the first sense I have the testimony of Vrsinus a Divine of the reformed Churches who though he hold that CHRIST is principally called the only begotten Son of God secundum divinitatem suam according to his Divine nature yet he concludes that aliquatenus after a sort he may be called so in his humane nature His reason is Quia etiam secundum hane tali modo est genitus quali nunquam quisquam alius ex Virgine nimirum incorrupta vi Spiritus sancti that is to say because according to that nature he was begotten in such a manner as never any had been before or since as being conceived of a pure Virgin by the holy Ghost And to the second sense I have that of Maldonate who on these words Hic est filius meus dilectus in the 3. of Matthew observes that filius dilectus and filius unigenitus are termes reciprocal that not alone in Homer but in holy Scripture the best beloved Son is called the only begotten and on the other side that by only begotten in St. Iohn he means best beloved God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that is to say his best beloved Son For unigenitum posuit pro charissimo as his words there are But what need Maldonate be produced in so clear a case which hath so plain an evidence from the word of God For read we not that God commanded Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as our English reades it unigenitum filium tuum the only begotten Son as the Vulgar hath it So the Greek reads it also
Saviour going to his Passion gave her the print of his face in a linnen cloth for the death of Christ but the Greek Legends do ascribe this prosecution unto Mary Magdalen as being of more credit in those parts and both true alike Certain it is that in his hasty proceedings against CHRIST our Saviour he had most wilfully broke an Edict of Tiberius the then Roman Emperour by whom it was decreed Vt supplicia damnatorum in decimum usque diem differrentur as Suetonius hath it that the execution of the sentence upon men condemned should be deferred till the tenth day But I finde not this laid unto his charge He had guilt enough besides of more publick nature then the murder of one innocent person Iosephus telling of a great slaughter which he made of the Samaritans a little before his calling home and Philo accusing him to Caius of rapine bribery oppression many cruel murders of men uncondemned which were the things most likely to procure his banishment Nor could he live long quiet at Vienna neither the vengeance of the Lord still following after him his guilty conscience still condemning and Caius Caligula the Roman Emperour putting so many indignities upon him that he thought best to rid himself at once out of all his troubles and so slew himself as both Eusebius and Orosius do report the story For Caiaphas next Iosephus telleth us that he was deprived of the high Priesthood by the same Vitellius who removed Pilate from his Government the infamy and disgrace of which deprivation did so work upon him that he grew weary of his life and at last laid violent hands on himself also to save the Executioner a labour as we read in Clemens The like foul ends befell Annas together with the rest of the Chief Priests and Scribes and Pharisees who had an hand in the conspiracy against our Saviour of whom Nicephorus tels us but in generall only Quod ipsi dignas variasque dederunt poenas that they all came to just but miserable deaths as the wickedness of the fact deserved As for the whole Nation of the Iews who were so bent upon the death of their Messiah that they cryed aloud his bloud be upon us and our children what a miserable destruction fell upon them very shortly after and how they have been hunted since from one place to another is a thing so well known that I need not tell it All I shall note is this particular passage of the Divine justice that they who bought their Saviour for thirty peeces of silver were themselves sold at thirty for one peece of silver in the open Market A true but a most wonderful character of the finger of God And so I leave them to Gods mercy and proceed unto the following Article ARTICLE VI. Of the Sixt ARTICLE OF THE CREED Ascribed to St. THOMAS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Descendit ad inferos tertia die resurrexit a mortuis i. e. He descended into Hell the third day he rose again from the dead CHAP. VIII Of the locall descent of Christ into hell Hades and inferi what they signifie in the best Greek and Latine Authors and in the text of holy Scripture An examination and confutation of the contrary opinions WE made an end of the Humiliation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the former Chapter for to a lower condition then that of the ignominie of the grave we could not possibly expect that he should be brought We must next look upon his exaltation the first degree or step to which was his descent into hell But this perhaps may seem to some to be a very strange kind of preferment a point so far from being any part of his exaltation that it may worthily be accounted his very lowest degree of humiliation a fall farre lower then the Grave And so it had been out of doubt had he descended down to hell to have felt the paines of it or to have been tormented though but for a moment in the flames thereof T is not the place but the intent not the descending but the businesse which he went about which makes the difference in this case and the intent and purpose of his going thither was to begin his triumph over Satan and all his Angels to beat the Devill in his own strongest hold and fortresse and take possession of that part of his kingdome whereof God had given the keyes unto him And to descend on such a businesse is I presume no matter of humiliation Doth not the Scripture tell us in another place that the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of the Arch-angel and with the trumpet of God when he comes to judge the quick and the dead yet that descent of his upon that occasion will be the highest step of his exaltation there 's no doubt of that To descend then is no humiliation of and in it self but in relation to the businesse we descend about And the intent or purpose of his descent was to spoyle principalities and powers that is to say the Prince of the world and the powers of darknesse and having spoyled them to make a shew of them openly and triumph over them to shew himself unto the Devils and infernall spirits and to receive the homage of the knee from them as his slaves and vassals that being reckoned as a part of his exaltation that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow as well of things under the earth as either of things upon the earth or the things in heaven To this the Fathers do attest and some Councels also some of which shall be here produced Our Saviour Christ had power saith Athanasius to shew incorruption in the grave and in his descent to hell to dissolve death and proclaime resurrection unto all St. Cyprian thus When by the presence of Christ hell was broken open and the captivity made captive his conquering soul being presented to the sight of his Father returned again unto his body without delay St. Augustine more plainly yet Reddunt inferna victorem c. Hell returned back again her Conquerour and whiles his body lay in the grave his soul triumphed over hell And finally thus the fourth Councell of Toledo CHRIST say the Fathers there assembled descended to hell devicto mortis imperio and having subdued the kingdome of death rose again the third day More testimonies to this purpose might be here produced but that they are reserved to another place when we shall come to speak of those particular motives which did induce our Saviour to make this descent and of the benefits redounding to the Church thereby These are enough to let us see that his descending into hell is to be reckoned as a part of his exaltation which was the matter to be proved To which we shall make â—old to add this one reason more that is
of them in their severall Commentaries on the text saying the same thing though in divers words And finally it is so interpreted by St. Augustine also Nec frustra fortasse non satis fuit ut diceret mors aut infernus sed utrumque dictum est c. that is to say Nor happily without cause did he not think it enough to say that death or hell divisively had cast up their dead but he nameth both death for the just who might only suffer death and not also hell hell for the wicked and unrighteous who were there to be punished Thus have we looked over all those places where the word Hades doth occurre in the new Testament except that one which is in question whereof more anon and finde it constantly both englished and interpreted by that of hell according as we commonly understand the word for the place of torments T is true the word admits of other notions amongst some Greek Authors But that makes nothing to us Christians who are to use it in that sense in which it is presented to us in the book of God interpreted and expounded by the Antient Fathers and the tradition of the Church For though the sacred Penmen of the new Testament writing in Greek were of necessity to use such words as they found ready to their hands yet they restrained them many times to some certain and particular meaning which they retain unto this day as words of Ecclesiastical use and signification Of this kinde are Ecclesia Evangelium Episcopus Presbyter Diaconus Martyr and the like which being words of a more general signification in their first original are now restrained to such particular notions as the first Preachers of the Gospel thought most fit to reserve them for Of this kind also is Diabolus which properly and originally did signifie no more then an Accuser but is now used by all writers both in Greek and Latine to denote the Devil And of this kind is Hades also which whatsoever it might signifie in some old Greek writers more then the Place or Region of hell or the Prince thereof is now restrained in general speech to signifie only hell it self or the house of torments the habitation of the Devill and his Angels But this we shall the better see by taking a short view of the use and signification of the word amongst the best and most approved of the old Greek Ecclesiastical writers And first Iosephus though no Christian yet one that very well understood the difference between heaven and hell telleth us of those whose souls were cleansed and favoured of God that they inhabit in the holiest places of heaven but that they whose hands wax mad against themselves or who laid hands upon themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their soules were to be received in the dark vaults of hell or Hades Theophilus the sixt B. of Antioch about 170. years after Christ citeth this verse out of the works of the Sibyls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they sacrificed to the Devils in hell or Hades In the same times lived Iustin Martyr who doth thus informe us After the soul saith he is departed from the body straightwayes there is a separation of the unjust from the just both being carryed by the Angels into places meet for them that is to say the souls of the just into Paradise where is the fellowship and sight of Angels and Arch-angels with a kind of beholding of Christ our Saviour 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the souls of the unjust to places in hell or Hades of which it was said in Scripture unto Nebuchadnezzar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Hades below was stirred to meet him Isa. 14. And to this purpose he both citeth and alloweth those words of Plato where he affirmes that when death draweth near to any man then tales are told 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the things in Hades how he that here doth deal unjustly shall there be punished c. Next him Eusebius speaks thus in the person of Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. I see my descent to hell or Hades approach and the rebellion against me of the contrary powers which are enemies to God And that we may be sure to know what he means by Hades he tels us out of Plato in another place that the souls of wicked men departing hence immediately after death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 endured the punishments of hell or Hades of their doings here After man was fallen saith Athanasius and by his fall death had prevailed from Adam to Christ the earth was accursed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hell or Hades opened Paradise shut up and heaven offended but after all things were delivered by Christ the earth received a blessing Paradise was opened 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hades or hell did shrink for fear and heaven set open to all believers And in another place he speaketh of two severall mansions provided by Almighty God for the wicked man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the grave and Hades whereof one is to receive his body and the other his soul. St. Basil thus Death is not altogether evill except you speak of the death of a sinner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. because that their departure hence is the beginning of their punishments in hell or Hades and besides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the evils which are in hell or Hades have not God for their cause but our selves c. And after shewing that Dathan and Abiram were swallowed up of the earth he addes that they were never a whit the better for this kind of punishment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for how could they be so that went down to Hades or hell but they made the rest wiser by their example Infinite more might be alleaged from the Fathers of the Eastern Church to shew that when they spake of Hades they meant nothing but hell and should be here produced were not these sufficient Only I shall make bold to add the evidence of two or three of the most eminent of the latter writers to shew that in all times and ages the word retained that notion only which had been given it in the Scriptures and the old Greek Fathers Thus then Cydonius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that there is in Hades hell vengeance for all sinnes committed not only the consent of all wise men but the equity of the divine justice doth most fully prove Aeneas Gazaeus he comes next and he tels us this that he who in a private life committeth smal sins and laments them escapeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the punishments that are in Hades And finally Gregentius thus Christ took a rod out of the earth viz. his precious Crosse and stretching forth his hand struck all his enemies therewith and conquered them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that is to say Hades or hell death sin and that subtile serpent So
the meaning of this text will be briefly this that according to the Christian faith these actions which to men seemed so impossible those namely ascending up into heaven and descending down into the deeps of hell were performed for us in the person of Christ and therefore now to doubt of either were nothing else but to enervate and weaken the power of Christ who most perfectly hath accomplished both to save us from the one and bring us to the other Besides the Reader may take notice that that which our Translatours have rendred by these words the deep is called in the Greek Original by the name of Abyssus which signifieth a bottomlesse pit and is so taken and translated in the Revelation Chap. 9.2 11.7 where it can probably meant of no place but hell In the next place we meet with that of the Ephesians where it is said When he ascended up on high he led captivitie captive and gave gifts unto men Now that he ascended what is it but that he also descended first into the lowest parts of the earth He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fil all things Now in these words we may observe First that before Christs ascending by way of relation the Apostle putteth Christs descending Secondly that because descending and ascending must have contrary extremes from which and to which the motion is made therefore St. Paul opposeth the lowest parts of the earth to which Christ first descended unto the highest heavens of all above which he ascended Thirdly that these lowest parts of the earth could not be the grave as some men would have it which is seldome two yards deep in the ground and so not opposite in that respect to the height of the heavens according to the words and inference of the Apostle And Fourthly that the end of his descending was to lead captivity captive to beat them from the place of their chiefest strength even as the end of his ascending after he had led captivitie captive was to give gifts to men For what place fitter for the scene of so great an action as the full conquest of death sin and Satan the final dissolution of the kingdome of darknesse then the chief seat and fortresse of their whole empire which is hell it self situate in the lowest parts of the earth as before was shewn And hereunto agreeth the exposition of the antient Fathers St. Irenaeus citing these very words of the Apostle that Christ descended into the lower parts of the Earth makes them equivalent with those words of David concerning Christ viz. thou shalt not leave my soul in the neathermost Hell saying Hoc David in eum prophetans dixit and so much David said of him by way of prophesie Tertullian alleadging the same words of the Apostle concludeth thence Habes ergo Regionem Inâ—erum subterraneam i. e. by this thou mayst perceive that the place of Hell is under the earth Chrysostom thus Christ descended to the lower parts of the earth beneath which there are none other and he ascended above all higher then which there is nothing St. Ambrose on these words of Paul gives us this short gloss After death Christ descended to Hell whence rising the third day he ascended above all the heavens St. Hierome on the same saith thus Qui descendit in anima ad infernum ipse cum anima corpore ascendit in Coelum that is to say he that descended to Hell in his soul only ascended into Heaven both with soul and body Primasius doth not only concur with Hierom in his Exposition of the place but repeats also his very words Oecumenius out of Photius thus To the lower parts of the earth he meaneth Hell beneath which place there is no lower Next Haymo Christ descended first into the lower parts of the earth that is into hell and after ascended into heaven Which said he gives this reason of his Exposition as Hierom and Primasius had done before that by the lower parts of the earth he must needs mean hell which is called infernus in the Latine because it is lower then the earth or rather under it And finally Theophylact thus asks the question Quem in locum descendit into what place did Christ descend And presently returns this answer in infernum c. into hell which St. Paul calleth the lowest parts of the earth after the common opinion of men There is another part of this Text of Scripture touching the leading of Captivity Captive of which we have said nothing from the antient Writers because I purposed to consider it with another Text neer of kin unto it where it is said that having spoyled principalities and powers he made a shew of them openly triumphing over them In both which texts we must distinguish between the taking of Captivity captive and the leading of them as in triumph being once so taken between the spoyling of those principalities and powers the Apostle speaketh of and the open shew or triumph which was made upon it The first was only the great work of Christs descent into Hell the other the chief pomp and glory of his Resurrection and Ascension For clearing of which point we may please to know that the Devil since the fall of man laid a claim to mankinde and held him like a captive in the bonds of sin by means whereof as he drew many after him into the pit of torments so he presumed to have the like advantages over all the rest And though Christs over-mastering Satan began here on the earth when he cast him out of such as he had possessed yet his full and final conquest could not be accomplished till he had followed and pursued him over all the world driven him at last into the very heart and seat of his Dominion which was Hell it self and there in the presence of his Angels and other instruments of mischief destroyed his power dissolved his Empire and put a period to his tyranny over the sons of men And this is that to which the Fathers doe attest both with heart and hand but none more clearly to this purpose then St. Athanasius The Devil saith he was fallen from Heaven he was cast from the earth pursued through the ayr every where conquered and every where straightned in which distress 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he determined to keep Hell safe which was all that was left him But the Lord a true Saviour would not leave his work unfinished nor leave those which were in Hades as yeilded to the enemie so that the Devil thinking to kill one lost all and hoping to carry one to Hell or Hades was himself cast out By means whereof Hades or Hell is abrogated death no more prevailing but all being raised unto life neither can the Devil stand any more against us but is fallen and indeed creepeth on his brest and belly Which
said he addes this of the Saints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that thus in fine they saw Hell spoyled Epiphanius in this order marshalleth the acts of Christ He was crucified buried 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he descended to places under the earth he took captivity captive and rose again the third day By which we see that the taking of captivity captive was one of the effects of his descent into Hell and that both his descent and victory over Hell and Satan are placed between his burial and Resurrection In the Homiliâ—s which Leo the Emperour made for the exercise of his style and the Confession of his Faith wherein no doubt he had the judgement and advice of the ablest men that were about him he doth thus deliver it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Christ is risen saith he bringing Hades or the Devil prisoner with him and proclaiming liberty to the Captives He that held others bound is now bound himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ is now come from Hell or Hades with his ensign of triumph as appeareth by the sowre and heavy looks of those which were overthrown that is to say of Hades meaning there as first the old Satan himself together with Death also and the hateful Devils Dorotheus in his Book de Paschate very plainly thus What means this that he led captivity captive It means saith he that by Adams transgression the Enemy had made us all captives and had us in subjection and that Christ took us again out of the Enemies hand and conquered him who made us captive And then concludes Erepti igitur sumus ab Inferis ob Christi humanitatem that we were then delivered from the power of Hell by the manhood or humanity of Christ our Saviour St. Cyprian though more antient and not so clear as he in this particular doth yet touch it thus Descendens ad inferos captivam ab antiquo duxit captivitatem that Christ descended into Hell brought back those captives which had before been captivated And in another place which we saw before When in the presence of Christ Hell was broken open and thereby captivity made captive his conquering soul being first presented to his Father returned unto his body without delay But to look back again to the old Greek Fathers who are far more positive and express in this then the Latines are we are thus told by Athanasius in another place that the Lord rose the third day from the dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 having spoyled hell trodden the enemy under foot dissolved death broken the chains of sin with which we were tyed and freed us which were bound from the chains thereof St. Cyril of Alexandria thus Our Lord saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. having spoyled death and loosed the number of souls which were detained in the dens of the earth rose again the third day from the dead Which words of Cyril are repeated and approved in the Councel of Ephesus and afterwards confirmed in the fifth General Councel holden at Constantinople St. Hierom finally on the parable of the strong man which was bound and spoiled Mat. 12. gives this observation which I had almost pretermitted viz. that this strong man was tyed and bound in Hell and trodden under the Lords feet and the Tyrants house being spoyled captivity also was led captive In which quotations from the Fathers we must take this with us that when they speaking of spoyling Hell and vanquishing the powers thereof they do allude as evidently to the spoyling of principalities and powers mentioned in that to the Colossians as they insist upon the taking of captivity captive expressed in that to the Ephesians In a word take the sum of all which by the Antients is delivered upon those two Texts in these words of Zanchius a very learned Writer of the Reformed Churches The Fathers saith he for the most part are of this opinion that Christ in his soul came to the place of the damned to signifie not in words but with his presence that the justice of God was satisfied by his death and bloudshed and that Satan had no longer power over his Elect whom he held captive c. As also that he might carry all the Devils with him in a triumph as it is Coloss. 2. He spoyled powers and principalities and made an open shew of them leading them as captives in a triumph by the vertue of his Cross by which he had purged away sins and appeased the justice of God So Zanchius But the most clear and pregnant place of holy Scripture for proof of Christâ— descent into Hell is that of the 2. of the Acts where the Apostle citing those words of David Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hell nor suffer thine holy One to see corruption applyeth it thus unto our Saviour that David seeing this before spake of the Resurrection of Christ that his soul was not left in Hell neither did his flesh see corruption In which particular words those before recited it is clear and manifest that the soul and body of Christ were by God appointed to be superiour to all contrary powers that is the soul to Hell and the flesh to the grave and that from both Christ was to rise an absolute conquerour that he might sit on his heavenly Throne as Lord over all not by promise only as before but in fact and proof But for the whole Sermon of St. Peter made on this occasion it may be summed up briefly to this effect that is to say that the Prophesie of David neither was nor could be fulfilled in any no not in David himself but only in the promised Messiah for that his soul should not be left in Hell or Hades nor his flesh see corruption but was fulfilled in that Christ whom ye cruelly crucified He it is that is risen Lord of all in his own person the sorrows of death being loosed before him he is ascended up to Heaven as David likewise foretold of him and there sitteth on the right hand of God untill all that be his enemies in the rest of his Members be made his foot-stool and thence hath he shed forth this which you now see and hear even the promise of the holy Ghost received of the Father for all his And therefore know ye for a surety that God hath made him both Lord and Christ i. e. Lord over all in Heaven Earth Hell and Christ even the Anointed Saviour of all his Elect. And to this purpose saith St. Augustine Quamobrem teneamus firmissime c. Wherefore let us most firmly hold that which is comprehended in our Faith or the heads thereof confirmed by most sound authority namely that Christ dyed according to the Scriptures and was buried and according to the Scriptures also rose again the third day with the rest of those things which are most clearly testified of him in the written Word
antient Romans when any of their Generals did return victorious against a powerful and considerable enemy to honour him with a Triumphant reception into the City of Rome The pomp and manner of which was that the General apparelled in a garment of state called Trabea or Vestis Triumphalis and having on his head a garland of lawrel and sometimes a Crown of gold which the Senate had bestowed upon him was carried in a rich and open Chariot the Senators and others of the principal Citizens going forth to meet him and conduct him in the spoyls and treasures gotten in the war passing on before the souldiers with their Coronets their bracelets and other militarie rewards following next the General and in the Rere of all those miserable men whether Kings or others whom the unlucky chance of war had now made Captives Examples of this kinde in the Roman stories are obvious to the eye of every Reader And such as this if I may safely venture upon such comparisons is the Ascension of the Lord described to be by the Royal Psalmist He made a chariot of the clouds and so ascended up on the wings of the winde apparelled in the Robe of his own righteousness more glorious then a Rayment of needlework wrought about with divers colours and having on his head that Crown of eternal Majesty which the Lord God his Heavenly Father had conferred upon him in testimony of that Soveraign power over Heaven and Earth which he since hath exercised But of this we shall speak more anone To make his entrance into Heaven the more magnificent the Blessed Angels those great Citizens of the new Hierusalem did attend upon him conducting him into the place of endless glories as erst they had done Lazarus into Abrahams bosome St. Austin so affirmed it saying Sublatus est Christus in manibus Angelorum c. The Lord was carryed up by the hands of Angels when he ascended into Heaven not that he would have fallen had not they supported but that they might serve him in that work so saith St. Athanasius for the Greek Church also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that being carryed up by Angels he ascended thither as man and took our flesh upon him into Heaven St. Cyprian saith that though he did not need the Angels to support or carry him yet that they did attend him in that glorious triumph and praecedentes subsequentes applaudebant victori And thereto Nazianzen agrees also if Christ ascend saith he to Heaven ascend thou with him and joyn thy self unto the Angels which did accompany him or receive him Take which of these you will and we finde the Angles to have no small part in our Saviours Triumph And certainly it stood with reason that they who had ministred unto him in the whole course of life when he did seem to be in disgrace and poverty should have the honour to attend him in the time of his glories and if we do observe it well we shall finde no special passage of our Saviours life in which the blessed Angels did not do him service An Angel served to usher in his incarnation to proclaim his birth unto the Shepheards to join in consort with the rest of the Quire of Heaven and sing the Anthem of Gloria in excelsis Deo No sooner was he born but all the Angels of the Lord did adore and worship him saith St. Paul to the Hebrews when he had overcome the Devil in the Wilderness the Angels came and ministred unto him as St. Matthew hath it and being at his last conflict with him in the garden of Gethsamene an Angel of the Lord did come down to comfort him To testifie unto the truth of his resurrection we have two Angels cloathed in white proclaiming this glad news that the Lord was risen and here we have two men in white which were Angels doubtlesse assuring the Apostles of their Lords ascension Not that there were no more then two because no more spoke of but that two only staid behinde to testifie unto the truth of so great a miracle Who as they also certifyed them in the way of prediction that in the same manner as he went from thence into heaven he should return again in the day of judgment so in that day they shall not only wait upon him but have their speciall place and ministry as we shall see hereafter in the following Article But in our Saviours train there were more then Angels To make this triumph answerable to the former Platforme there must be Souldiers also to attend his Chariot which must receive their severall rewards and crowns for their well deservings and captives there must be to be led in triumph and to be made a spectacle unto men and Angels And so there was Ignatius telleth us in plain termes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he went down to hell alone but he ascended to his father with a great train after him And before him Thaddeus whom St. Thomas the Apostle sent to the Prince of Edessa used the self same words More company there was then than the holy Angels of more sorts at least for those of whom Thaddeus and Ignatius spake were such as did ascend from the parts below but who these were hath been a matter much disputed in these latter times Shall we affirme as generally the Papists do that they were the souls of the Fathers who died under the Law whom our redeemer brought from Limbo when he went down into hell I thinke we need not be reduced into that straight neither And as for my opinion in that point it hath been shewn already in another place All I shall add now in brief is this that they which did ascend in our Saviours train and made up a great part of his glorious triumph were either his Souldiers or his Captives His Souldiers I call those of the Saints departed whose graves were opened at the time of his resurrection who being united to their bodies rose and came out of the their graves and went into the holy City and appeared unto many It was not probable that they were raised from the dead to die again much lesse to be left wandering up and down the earth as if they had no certain ubi to repair unto Nor could they ascend into the heavens before our Saviour who as in all things so in that also was to have the preeminence They must then ascend with him as a part of his train and go in with the Bridegroome as the wise Virgins did when the doors were open For my part I can see no reason why being made partakers of his resurrection they should be rejected or cast off at his ascension That they were Saints whose bodies had been raised by so great a miracle is affirmed expressely in the text and therfore were in some possession of the heavenly glories And that their bodies had been putrefyed
for an Historical truth it might as well be made appliable to Pauls negative Character according to the former interpretation as that Melchisedech should be Sem whose Ancestors and posterity both are upon record in the old Testament and the new though not delivered us as his by the name of Melchisedech But leaving this unto the credit of the Authors we must next look upon Melchisedech whosoever he was as the Priest of God And Melchisedech King of Salem saith the text brought forth bread and wine And he was the Priest of the most high God And he blessed him Abram and said Blessed be Abram c. And Abram gave him tithes of all In this we finde Melchisedech invested with the two great offices of a King and a Priest the King of Salem and the Priest of the most high God Nor was it strange or extraordinary in those times that it should be so the Principality and the Priesthood in those early dayes yea and a long time after in the Roman Empire being commonly united in the self same person Look on him as a King one that did share in the successe of Abrams victory and then we finde him entertaining this triumphant Conquerour with a royal feast And Melchisedech King of Salem brought forth bread and wine That he did only as a King as a Princely friend willing to set forth some refreshment to the wearied Souldiers Melchisedech King of Salem brought forth bread and wine It was the Kings act as a King and for such recorded before we finde any thing spoken of him as the Priest of God And when we finde him spoken of as the Priest of God we finde no mention of his entertainment of his bread and wine That belonged to him as a King but only that he blessed Abram and received tithes of him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the text that is to say he tithed him or took tithes of him not as the gift of Abram but his own just dues By these two acts of blessing and receiving tithes the Priesthood of Melchisedech is described by Moses and by the same only doth St. Paul describe it not obiter or on the by but where he speaks of him in a set discourse and from his Priesthood doth proceed unto that of Christ whom God ordained a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech Nothing in the Apostle of the bread and wine for that concerned him not as he was a Priest in which capacity only St. Paul looks upon him and looking on him only in that capacity he findeth him only as a Priest to blesse and to tithe He met Abraham saith St. Paul returning from the slaughter of the Kings and blessed him To whom also Abraham gave the tithes of all Nothing here spoken of the bread and wine as an entertainment given by a Royall and magnificent Prince to a friend and neighbour nor as a Sacrifice neither to the most high God as he was a Priest which thing the Papists mainly stand for and marvail that S. Paul took no notice of it Miror in hoc capite inter tot Similitudines quibus Melchisedech Christum repraesentat nihil dixisse de Sacrificio panis vini c. I wonder saith Mariana that in this Chapter Heb. 7. amongst so many resemblances wherein Christ is made like unto Melchisedech there is no mention made of the Sacrifice of bread and wine which Melchisedech offered Gen. 14.18 being a type or Symbol of the sacrifice of the holy Eucharist But the best is St. Paul knew better what Melchisedech did and knew much better how impertinent it would be for his present purpose which was to parallel Christs priesthood with Melchisedechs then any the best learned man in the Church of Rome And therefore here is nothing to be wondred at if speaking of him as the Priest of the most high God he takes no notice of his actions as he was a King And for the Sacrifice which they dream of and would force from thence the better to advance the pedegree of the Romish Masse it is a thing so inconsistent with the meaning of Moses that neither the letter of the text nor any circumstance of the History nor the generall consent of Fathers nor any Orthodox Rule of interpretation doth give any countenance at all â—nto it As for the parallel made by the Apostle betwixt Christ and him which is the third thing to be considered it consists most especially in these two points first in the identity of their titles and then in the performance of their severall Offices First for their titles St. Paul telleth us that Melchisedech by interpretation is the King of righteousnesse and that King of Salem signifyeth a King of Peace Such also is our blessed Saviour not only called in Scripture the Prince of peace but our peace it self Ephes. 2.14 not only acknowledged by his enemies for a man of righteousnesse but righteousnesse it self in the very abstract and therefore said by the Apostle to be made our righteousnesse 1 Cor. 1.30 Melchisedech was the only King that ever by divine providence or an heavenly calling was a Priest also of the most high God and therein a fit parallel for Christ our Saviour whom God having raised him from the dead made both Lord and CHRIST that is to say both King and Priest Lord over all the Kings of the earth and clothed in a garment down to the feet girded about the pappes with a golden girdle such as the high Priest used to wear as St. Iohn describes him Melchisedech was King of Salem which afterwards being called Hierusalem became the royall seat of David and the Kings of Iudah our Saviour Christ was publickly acknowledged to be King of the Iews and crowned though with a Crown of thornes within Hierusalem it self the imperiall City and doth now reigne and shall for ever in the new Hierusalem whereof more hereafter The greatest difficulty lieth in the Negative Character that he was without Father without Mother without descent or Genealogie having neither beginning of dayes nor end of life and how he may be likened unto Christ in this or Christ to him in all these particulars hath very much perplexed the brains of some learned men For admitting Melchisedech to have neither father nor mother nor genealogie nor descent according to the former construction of it yet this can no ways be applyed unto Christ our Saviour whose genealogie is recorded by two Evangelists who had a Mother on the earth and a Father in Heaven Therefore the best solution is for ought I can see to say that those particulars of this negative Character without father without mother without descent do all but serve to usher in that which followeth next viz. that he was without beginning of dayes or end of life no mention being made of his predecessors or of any one that did succeed him in that sacred office Or else because it followeth
after this description without father c. that he was likened unto the Son of God and continueth a high Priest for ever it may be said that he did purposely devest himself of all natural relations putting off all references unto Father and Mother wife and children which necessarily do represent both a beginning and end of days that being thus transformed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Apostle and turned out of his own proper and natural shape he might be made more like to the Son of God who being told that his Father and Mother sought him weeping seemed not to note their tears or regard their sorrows but put them off with this short answer Wist ye not that I must goe about my Fathers businesse But take it in the former sense because most received and then Melchisedech is a perfect type or embleme of our Saviour Christ who as he had no beginning of dayes â—or in the beginning was the word before time it self So shall he have no end of life the man CHRIST IESVS being freed from the powers of death and made by God a Priest for ever till time be no more after the order of Melchisedech In the performance of the office which is the next part of the parallel our Saviour did all that Melchisedech did and consequently may pretend to all which Melchisedech claimed Melchisedech blessed Abraham so the text informes us and questionlesse that blessing was accompanied with prayers to God that he would ratifie the blessing then pronounced upon him Blessed saith he be Abram of the most high God possessour of heaven and earth And blessed be the most high God which hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand In which we finde Melchisedech the high Priest of God not only blessing Abraham in the name of God but offering prayers and praises unto God for so great a victory in behalf of Abram which are two principall parts of the Priestly function And these our Saviour did performe as soone as he was consecrated and established in his holy and eternall Priesthood For after his glorious resurrection from whence his Priesthood doth commence as before was proved and before he did withdraw his bodily presence from his Disciples it is said that he lift up his hands and blessed them And questionlesse his blessing was accompanied with prayers to God that he would furnish them abundantly with all gifts and graces which were necessary for the Ministery he had called them to he having told them formerly and it proved accordingly that he would pray unto his Father to send down the Comforter by whom they should be guided in the wayes of truth Nor did he so accumulate his blessings upon them alone that he hath none left in store for us St. Peter hath resolved it otherwise saying to the Iewes that God had raised up his Son Jesus and had sent him to blesse them in turning away every one of them from his iniquities And yet this blessing came not to the Iewes alone but upon the Gentiles and for that we have St. Paul to witnesse CHRIST saith he hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law being made a curse for us that the blessing of Abraham might come unto the Gentiles The difference only is in this that Christ is more authentick and authoritative in his blessings then Melchisedech was Melchisedech indeed blessed Abraham but he blessed him only in the name of the most high God and not as having power to confer the blessing But Christ doth blesse us of himself by his own authority and hath withall a power to make good the blessing All power saith he is given me both in heaven and earth and therefore power to give the blessings of the earth and the blessings of Heaven the blessings of this life and the life to come Nor are we only blessed by him in the sense aforesaid but we are also blessed for him we are blessed through him and all unto this end and purpose to be everlastingly blessed in him For him it is that we are blessed and therefore dare not aske any good thing at the hands of God but it is propter merita Iesu Christi for the merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ which either explicitly or implicitely is in all those prayers which we do or ought to make to the Lord our God Through him it is that we are blessed he being as it were the Conduit or Channell through which the blessings of the Lord are conveied unto us in which regard the Church concludeth most of her formes of prayer with this solemne clause per Dominum nostrum I. C. through Jesus Christ our Lord. And finally we shall at last be blessed in him when we are made partakers of that endless happiness which formerly consisteth in our union with him when we are so united to him that we seem to be incorporated in him and all make up together but one glorious body whereof CHRIST IESVS is the head The next part of the Priestly function consisted in offering up the peoples prayers to Almighty God or offering up his own prayers for the weal of the people Melchisedech did both in the case of Abraham for first he prayed unto God for a blessing on him and then he praised God in his Name for his blessings to him And so doth Christ our Saviour also St. Iohn who had presented him unto our view in the first Chapter of the Revelation clothed in Priestly garments as before was said doth in the eight present him in the execution of his Priestly Office For there he telleth us of an Angel standing before the Altar having in his hands a golden Censer to whom much Incense was given that he should offer it with the prayers of all Saints those upon the earth upon the golden Altar which was upon the Throne vers 3. This Angel was our Lord Christ Iesus as St. Augustine telleth us the Mediator of the New Covenant as the Scriptures call him who offereth up the prayers of his faithful servants to the Throne of God and addes much also of his own incense which was given unto him to offer it together with the prayers of the Saints that so they might be made more acceptable in the sight of God This that he doth and doth it by the vertue of the Priestly function is more cleerly evidenced by St. Paul This man saith he discoursing of our blessed Saviour because he continueth for ever hath an unchangeable Priesthood and therefore he is also able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them And for performance of this Office his sitting at the right hand of God doth so fitly serve as if he were advanced to it for this purpose only We touched upon this string before and now to make the Harmony more compleat and perfect I shall adde that also of St. Paul in another
under him saith the Apostle Nor must we understand it so as it Christ delivering up the Kingdome had no more to doe but was reduced to the condition of a private Saint that were injurious to the dignity of our Lord CHRIST IESVS Nec sic arbitremur eum traâ—iturum Deo Patri ut adimat sibi as St. Austin hath it we must not think saith he that he will so deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father as to devest himself of all Power Majesty Not so His meaning is but this at most taking the word Kingdome in the usual and accustomed sense that the form of governing this Kingdome shall then be altered Sâ—n Hell and Death being all subdued as in himself before so in all his Members and Heaven replenished with those Saints for whose sakes principally he received the Kingdome And though this Exposition be both safe and general yet I conceive it may admit another sense and such as do most happily avoid those difficulties which otherwise it may seem to be subject to What then if we should say that by Regnum here we are so understand only filios Regni if by the word Kingdome in this place St. Paul meaneth those who are called the Children of the Kingdome in another place and that by the delivering up of the Kingdome unto God the Father we are to understand no more then the presenting of his children Behold I and the children whom thou hast given me to the fight of God to be received into his glories and crowned by him with immortality Assuredly if I should both say it and stand to it too I should not think the Exposition either forced nor new Not forced for Metonymies of this kinde in the Book of God and in all Classick Authors too are exceeding obvious For Classick Authors first to name two or three we have in Tacitus Matrimonium Principale pessimum principalis Matrimonii instrumentum for the Princes wife And in the Poet Coelum Heaven for Coelites the heavenly Citizens as Coelo gratissimus amnis a River very acceptable unto those in heaven O Coelo dilecta domus an house beloved of the Gods in another Poet. Thus also in the holy Scripture Regale Presbyterium a Royal Priesthood 1 Pet. 2. vers 8. is put for a society of Royal Priests Regnum which is the word here used is in our English rendred Kings Fecit nos Regnum sacerdotes saith the Vulgar Latine He hath made us Kings and Priests saith our Translation Apoc. 1. vers 6. And more then so in the 13. of St. Matthewes Gospel the word Regnum is directly used by Christ our Saviour pro filiis Regni the Kingdome for the sons of the Kingdome The Kingdome of Heaven saith he is like a Merchant man i. e. the children of the Kingdome of Heaven are like to Merchant men seeking godly pearls vers 24. Use but the word so here as in that of St. Matthew and the delivery of the Kingdome unto God the Father will signifie no more then the presenting of the Saints as before I said or tendring Gods adopted Sonnes which are the children of the great King and the Kingdome too to their heavenly Father This shews the Exposition is not forced we are sure of that And we have hopes to prove that it is not new being I think as old as St. Augustines time For asking this question of himself What is the meaning of this Text Then shall he deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father He makes this answer Quia justos omnes in quibus nunc regnat c. The meaning is that he shall bring the righteous persons in whom he reigns as Mediator between God and man unto the blessed Vision of Almighty God that they may see him face to face And in another place to the same effect It is as much as if he should have said in other words Cum perduxerit credentes ad contemplationem Dei Patris Then shall he bring the faithfull to behold the face of God the Father Which Faithfull or the body of his holy ones he cals plainly in another place by the name of Regnum the word here used by the Apostle affirming of the Saints of God eos ita esse in Regno ejus ut ipsi etiam sint Regnum ejus They are saith he estated in the Kingdome of God but so as to be his Kingdome also But this discourse is out of season though not out of the way For though our Saviour shall deliver up the Kingdome unto God the Father in what sense soever we understand it yet shall not this be done till after the day of general Judgement till he hath judged the quick and dead and given to every one according to his works Which is the last act of his Regal Office and the subject of the following Article ARTICLE VIII Of the Eighth ARTICLE OF THE CREED Ascribed unto St. MATTHEW 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Inde venturus judicare vivos mortous i. e. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead CHAP. XV. Touching the coming of our Saviour to Iudgement both of quick and dead The souls of just men not in the highest state of blisse till the day of judgment and of the time and place and other circumstances of that action WE are now come unto the last and greatest act of the Regal Office the supreme power of Iudicature and to the best part also of the Royall power potestas vitae mortis the power of life and death as the Lawyers call it All other acts of the Kingly function he executeth sitting at the right hand of God in the Heavenly places But when he cometh to judge both the quick and the dead his Judgement-seat shall be erected in some visible place though still at the right hand of Almighty God where both the wicked shall behold him to their finall confusion and his obedient Servants finde accesse unto him to their endlesse comforts And this is also the last and highest degree of his exaltation the last in order but the highest in esteem and honour The first step or degree of his exaltation was his descent into hell to beat the Devill at his own home in his strongest fortresse and take possession of that part of his Kingdome Devils as well as Men and Angels things under the earth as well as on the earth and above the heavens being to bow the knee before him and be subject to him This was done only in the fight of the Devils and the infernal fiends of hell but in the next which was his resurrection he had both men and Angels to bear witnesse to it and some raised purposely from the dead to attend him in it The third degree or step for he still went higher was his ascending into heaven performed openly in the sight of the people and so performed that it excelled all the triumphs which were gone
that as they sinned together or served God together so they may share together of reward or punishment But because many times the soul sins without the body and many times without it doth some works of piety which God is pleased to accept of therefore as requisite it is that the soul separated from the body should either suffer torment or enjoy felicity according as it hath deserved in the sight of God whilest yet the body sleepeth in the grave of death And on these grounds next to the dictates and authority of the book of God the doctrine of the general judgement hath been built so strongly that only some few Atheists amongst the Gentiles and none but the wicked Sect of Manichees amongst the Christians had ever the impudence to denie it That which concernes us most as Christians and doth especially relate to the present Article is that this judgement shall be executed by our Saviour Christ sitting with power at the right hand of God the Father but in the nature and capacity of the Son of man Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the power of God and coming in the clouds of the Aire Mat. 26.64 See the same also Mark 14.62 and Luk. 22.69 The like we have also in St. Iohns Gospell The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Son Chap. 5 22. What to the Son according to his eternal generation as the Word of God Not so but to the Son of man For so it followeth in that Chapter viz. And hath given him power also to judge because he is the Son of man V. 27. And this we have directly from the Lords one mouth The Apostles also say the same St. Peter first God raised him up the third day and shewed him openly And he commanded us to preach unto the people and to testifie that it is he which is ordained of God to be judge both of quick and dead St. Paul next Henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of righteousnesse which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day and not to me only but to all those that love his appearing So for St. Iude Behold the Lord shall come with thousands of his Saints to give judgment against all men and to rebuke all that are ungodly amongst them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed and of all the cruel speakings which ungodly sinners have spoken against him And this he citeth out of the Prophecies of Enoch the seventh from Adam which sheweth that even the Patriarchs before the flood were thoroughly possessed with this sacred truth and therefore not concealed from the holy Prophets which have been since the world began That it was manifested also to the antient Gentiles I have no reason to believe For though they might collect upon grounds of reason that there should be a day of judgement in the world to come yet that this judgement should be executed by the man CHRIST IESVS could not in possibility be discovered to them by the light of reason nor indeed by any other sight then by his alone who was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles as well as to be the glory of his people Israel And therefore in my minde Lactantius might have spared that part of his censure upon the judgment of Hydaspes before remembred in which he approves of his opinion concerning the last day or the day of doom but addeth that his not ascribing this great work to the Son of God was omitted non sine daemonum fraude by the fraud and suggestion of the Devill If Hermes or Mercurius surnamed Trismegistus understood so much quod tamen non dissimulavit Hermes as it followeth after and that the verses by him cited from the antient Sibyls were by them spoken and intended as he saith they were of CHRIST our Saviour and of his coming unto judgement in that dreadfull day we must needs say they had a clearer Revelation of it then any of the Prophets of the most high God which for my part I have not confidence enough to say For in which of all the Prophets finde we such a description of Christs coming to judgement as this which he ascribeth to one of the Sibyls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say Rolling up heaven earths depths I shall disclose Then raise the dead the bonds of fate unloose And deaths sharpe sting and next to judgment call Both quick and dead judging the lives of all Letting this therfore passe as a thing improbable that any of the Heathen Prophetesses should know more of Christs coming to judgement then was revealed to any of the holy Prophets or else deliver it in more clear expressions then do occurre in any of the Prophetical writers we shall proceed unto the execution of this judgement by our Lord and Saviour according to the scope of this present Article For which although no reason was or could be given by those antient sages as those which lived before the coming of CHRIST and consequently were not made acquainted with his life and actions yet there is reason to induce a Christian unto this belief were we not biassed to it by the text of Scripture For what could be more just in Almighty God then to advance his Son to the seat of judgment to the end that having been dishonoured publickly both in life and death scorned and contemned and brought unto a shamefull end in the eye of men he might have opportunity to shew his great power and majesty in the sight of all but specially of his barbarous and ungodly enemies And unto this the Prophet Zachariah alludeth saying They shall look on me whom they have pierced Which words although St. Iohn applyeth in his holy Gospel unto the piercing of Christs side Chap. 19.37 yet in the Revelation he applyeth it to his sitting in judgement Behold saith he he cometh in the clouds and all eyes shall see him and they also that pierced him Chap. 1.17 And from these words it is conceived I think not improbably that the wounds in our Saviours body shall then be visible to the eyes of all spectatours to the great comfort of the faithfull who do acknowledge their redemption to the bloud of the Lamb and to the astonishment and confusion of all his enemies but most especially of them qui vulnera ista inflixerunt by whose ungodly hands he was so tormented Here then we have good grounds to proceed upon both in the way of faith and reason for the asserting of the day of general judgement And yet somewhat further must be said to remove a difficultie which may else disturbe us in our way before we look into the particulars of it For possibly it may be said that there will be but little use of a general judgement except it be
he is deceased Having thus took some pains concerning the time and place of this great action let us next proceed unto the manner from thence unto the method of it and so make an end And in the manner of his coming there are specially thâ—se three things to he considered viz. the sign of the Son of man the sound of the Trumpet and the Ministry of the blessed Angels in all of which we shall finde something worth our Observation Touching the sign of the Son of man which our Saviour speaks of as of a certain note and token of his coming to judgement it stands thus in Scripture Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in Heaven and then shall all the tribes of the Earth mourn and they shall see the Son of man coming in the Clowds of Heaven with power and great glory Mat. 24.30 This sign then whatsoever it is is the prodromos or fore-runner of Christs coming to judgement of his second coming as was the Star which shined in the East of his birth or first coming into the world And this to make the Parallel more full and pertinent shall appear visibly in the East also if the Authors whom I have consulted do not much mistake it If you would know what sign this is I answer that it is the sign of the Cross a sign like that which Christ vouchsafed to shew from Heaven to the famous Constantine Of whom Eusebius hath reported from his own mouth too that being imbarked in a war against Maxentius and much perplexed in minde about that affair there shewed it self unto him in an afternoon the form of a Cross figured in the Ayr and therein these words written 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say in this sign thou shalt overcome He addes that after that Christ appeared to him in his sleep holding forth the very like sign unto him bidding him cause the like to be framed or fashioned in the Standard-Royal and it should give him victory over all his enemies Which apparition of the Cross or sign of the Son of man in the time of Constantine was a fore-runner as it were of that petit Sessions which Christ at that time held against the cruel Persecutors of his Church and people Diocletian Maximinus Maximianus Licinius and the aforesaid Maxentius all which in very little time were brought to most shameful ends And that the sign of the Son of man which our Saviour speaks of as the fore-runner of the great and general Sessions shall be no other then the sign of the Cross shining in the Ayr hath the approved authority of the Antient Fathers and the consent and testimony of the Western Church and of the Aethiopick also For if you ask St. Hierom what this sign shall be his answer is Signum hic Crucis intelligimus that it was to be understood of the sign of the Cross. St. Augustine also saith the same Quid est signum Christi nisi crux Christi what is the sign of Christ or the Son of man but the sign of the Cross Prudentius a Christian Poet of the Primitive times in an Hymne of his saith of this sign Iudaea tunc signum crucis experta that then the Iews shall have experience of the sign of the Cross. Our venerable Bede is of the same minde in this with the other Fathers Nor is it marvail that he was for it was grown by this time the received opinion of the Western Church as appears plainly by that Anthem in her publick Rituals viz. Hoc signum Crucis erit in Coelo c. This sign of the Cross shall be seen in Heaven at Christs coming to judgment So also for the Eastern Churches that it shall be the sign of the Cross S. Chrysostom affirms expressely saying withall that the light or lustre of it shall be so glorious that it shall darken and obscure the Sun Moon and Stars Euthymius and Theophylact say as much for the Greek Churches and so doth Ephrem Syrus for the Syrian also The Aethiopian Church is so peremptory in it that it it is put into the Articles of their Creed as their Zaba cited by Mr. Gregory doth affirm for certain And finally that it shall appear in the East is with no less certainty affirmed by Hippolytus Martyr a Bishop of the Primitive Ages whose words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i e. For a sign of the Cross shall rise up in the East and shine from East to West more gloriously then the Sun it self to give notice to the world that the Iudge is coming And to say truth there may be very good reason for this old Tradition of the Cross. For what can be more honourable to our Lord and Saviour or more full of terrour to his enemies then that the Cross of Christ which they counted foolishness and more then so esteemed the greatest obloquie and reproach of the Christian faith should at that day be made the Herald to proclaim his coming and call all Nations of the world to appear before him No wonder if the Tribes of the Earth did mourn when that so hated sign did appear in Heaven to call them to receive the sentence of their condemnation For the Trump next we finde it mentioned in all places almost in which we meet with any thing of the day of Iudgment Our Saviour telleth us of the coming of the Son of man that he shall send his Angels with a great sound of a Trumpet Matth. 24.31 St. Paul the like In a moment in the twinckling of an eye at the last trump for the Trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed 1 Cor. 15.52 And in another place more fully The Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout with the voyce of the Arch-Angel and with the trump of Christ and the dead in Christ shall rise first 1 Thes. 4.16 Now that which Christ and his Apostle say of the time to come the same St. Iohn saith of it as of a thing done before his face speaking expressâ—ly of this trumpet both in the first chapter of his Revelation vers 10. and in the 4. chapter vers 1. So far it is agreed on without doubt or scruple But then the difference will be thus whether the speech be proper or only figurative whether it were a real Trumpet or but Metaphorical If figurative then the phrase doth signifie no more then this that Christ shall finde a means to call all the Nations of the world to appear before him as if it were with the sound of a trumpet the trumpet being used amongst the Iews by Gods own appointment for calling the Assembly and removing the camp of Israel If but a Metaphorical Trumpet then it may signifie no more then a mighty noise wherewith the dead shall be awakened from the sleep of the Grave such as that voyce spoken by
Of the Authority or Power of remitting sins we shall speak more appositely hereafter in the following Article At this time I shall onely speak of the Form of words which some of the pretenders unto Reformation in Queen Elizabeths time did very much except against affirming That to use the words of our Redeemer and not to give the gifts withal was nothing but a meer mockery of the Spirit of God and a ridiculous imitation of our Saviours actions But unto this it is replied by Judicious Hooker that not onely the ability of doing miracles speaking with tongues curing diseases and the like but the authority and power of ministering holy things in the Church of God is contained in the number of those gifts whereof the Holy Ghost is the Author And therefore he which gives this power may say without folly or absurdity Receive the Holy Ghost meaning thereby such power as the Spirit of Christ hath pleased to endue his Church withal And herein he is seconded by that living Magazin of Learning Bishop Andrews who reckoneth the Apostleship or the very office to be a Grace one of the graces doubtless of the Holy Ghost such as St. Paul calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The grace we English it the gift of ministring unto the Saints 2 Cor. 8.4 For that the very Office it self is a grace St. Paul saith he avoweth in more places than one and in particular Mihi data est haec gratia according to the gift of the grace of God which is given unto me Ephes. 3.7 Where he speaks of his Office and of nothing else And such as this saith he was the grace here given of Spiritum called a Spiritual and of Sanctum an holy Calling from them derived unto us by us to be derived on others to the end of the World and that in the same form of words which our Saviour used For being the especial power which Christ at that time gave unto his Apostles consisted in remitting and retaining of sins and seeing that the same power is given by the Church of Christ why should not the same words be used as were used at first why may not the same words be used in conferring this grace of an holy calling whereby their persons are made publick and their acts authentical and they inabled to do somewhat about remitting of sins which is not of the like avail if done by others though perhaps more learned than they and more vertuous too but have not the like warrant nor the same accipite as is conferred in holy Orders Nor do I utterly deny but that together with the power the Holy Ghost doth give some fitness to perform the same though not in any answerable measure to the first times of the Church when extraordinary gifts were more necessary than in any time since For as the ointment which was poured upon Aarons head did first fall down upon his Beard and after on the skirts of his garments also So we may reasonably believe That the holy Spirit which descended on the head of Christ and afterwards on his Apostles as upon his beard hath kept some sprinklings also to bestow on us which are the lowest skirts of his sacred garments So far we may assuredly perswade our selves That the Spirit which calleth men to that holy Function doth go along with him that is called unto it for his assistance and support in whatsoever he shall faithfully do in discharge thereof and that our acts are so far his as that Whether we Preach Pray Baptize Communicate Condemn or give Absolution or in a word whatsoever we do as the Despensers of Gods Mysteries our Words Acts Judgements are not ours but the Holy Ghosts For this I have the testimony of Pope Leo the first a Learned and Religious Prelate of the Primitive times Qui mihi oneris est Autor ipse administrationis est adjutor Ne magnitudine gratiae there gratiae is used for the office or calling as before St. Paul succumbat infirmus dabit virtutem qui contulit dignitatem Which is in brief He that hath laid the burden on us will give strength to bear it But behold a greater than Pope Leo is here Behold saith Christ to his Apostles I am with you always to the end of the world that is to say Cum vobis successoribus vestris as Denys the Carthusian rightly with you and your Successors in the Work of the Ministry to guide them and assist them by his holy Spirit And when he said unto them upon other occasions He that heareth you heareth me and whatsoever ye binde on Earth should be bound in Heaven Did he not thereby promise so to own their actions that whatsoever they should say or do in order to the propagation of his Gospel and the edification of his Church should be esteemed as his act his act by whose authority and power it is said or done But the assisting of the Church and Ministers thereof with his Power and Spirit is not the onely publick benefit though it be the greatest which it receiveth immediately from the Holy Ghost Without some certain standing Rule by which the Ministers of the Gospel were to frame their doctrine and the rest of the people guide their paths in the way of godliness both Priest and People would be apt to pretend new Lights and following such ignes fatui as they saw before them be drawn into destruction both of body and soul. And on the other side Tradition hath been always found to be so untrusty in the conveyance of Gods will and pleasure to the ears of his people that in small tract of time the Law of God became obliterated in the hearts of men the righteous Seed degenerating after carnal lusts and Abraham himself serving other gods for want of a more certain rule to direct their actions Therefore to take away all excuse from back-sliding men it pleased God first to commit his Law to writing the Two Tables onely and afterwards to inspire many holy Men with the Spirit of Wisdom Power and Knowledge to serve as Commentators on that sacred Text whose Prophecies Reproofs and Admonitions being put into their mouths by the Holy Ghost for Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man but holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost as St. Peter hath it So by direction of the same Spirit were they put into writing Propter vivendi exemplum libros ad nostram etiam memoriam transmiserunt in the words of Ierom The Lord himself did on Mount Sinai give the Law the very Letter The Prophets and other holy Men of God being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 especially inspired to that end and purpose did compose the Comment By the same Spirit were the Evangelists and Apostles guided when they committed unto writing the most glorious Gospel and other the Records and Monuments of the Christian Faith The
Ecclesia malignantium as the Psalmist calls it Or if you will we may by these behold the Church in her chief ingredients which are the sanctimony of life and conversation it is an holy Church and the integrity of her doctrine free from all Heresie and Error in the title Catholick For the word Catholick is not onely used to signifie Universality of extent but purity of doctrine also The first in the natural the second in the borrowed sense of the word In the first sense the Church is called Catholick in respect of place Thou hast redeemed us by thy blood out of every kinred and tongue and people and nation To which accordeth that of an Antient writer saying Ab ortu solis ad occasum lex Christiana suscepta est That the Gospel of Christ had been admitted from the rising of the Sun to the setting of it that is to say In all parts of the world And it is called Catholick too in respect of persons who are promiscuously and indefinitely called to the knowledge of Christ In whom there is neither Iew nor Gentile bond nor free male nor female but all called alike And so Lactantius telleth us also Universos homines sine discrimine sexus vel aetatis Minutius addes Aut dignitatis ad coeleste pabulum convocamus Lastly it hath the name of Catholick in respect of times as comprehending all the faithful since our Saviours days unto the age in which we live and to continue from henceforth to the end of the world Of which duration or extent of the Church of Christ the Angel Gabriel did fore-signifie to his Virgin-mother that he should reign in the house of Jacob for ever and of his Kingdom there should be no end And in this sense it doth not onely include that part of the Church which is now Militant on the Earth but also that which is Triumphant in the Heaven of Glories Both they with us and we with them make but one Body Mystical whereof Christ is Head and all together together with the Antient Patriarcks and other holy men of God which lived under the Law shall make up that one glorious Church which is entituled in the Scriptures The general Assembly the Church of the first-born whose names are written in the Heavens For the better clearing of which Vnion or Concorporation which is between these different Members of the Body Mystical the Fathers of the Constantinopolitan Council added the word One unto the Article reading it thus And I believe one holy Catholick and Apostolick Church Catholick then the Church may be rightly called in regard to extent whether it do refer to time place or persons and it is called Catholick too in respect of Doctrine with reference to the same extensions that being the true Catholick Doctrine of the Church of Christ Quae semper quae ubique quae ab omnibus credita est which hath always and in every place been received as Orthodox and that too by all manner of men according to the Golden Rule of Lerinensis Catholick in this sense is the same with Orthodox a Catholick Christian just the same with a true Professor by which the Doctrine is distinguished from Heretical and the men from Hereticks Iustinian in the Code doth apply it so Omnes hanc legem sequentes Christianorum Catholicorum nomen jubemus amplecti That for the persons the Professors it followeth after for the Doctrine Is autem Nicenae adsertor fidei Catholicae Religionis verus cultor accipiendus est c. A National or Topical Church may be called Catholick in this sense and are often times entituled so in Ecclesiastical Authors For Constantine the Emperor writing to the Alexandrians superscribed his Letters in this form 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. To the Catholick Church of Alexandria And Gregory Nazianzen being then Bishop of Constantinople calls himself in his last Will and Testament 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The Bishop of the Catholick Church in the City of Constantine Of this word Catholick in this sense there hath been different use made as the times have varied The Fathers of the purest times made use of it to distinguish themselves from Hereticks according to that so celebrated saying of Pacianus Christianus mihi nomen est Catholicus cognomen Christian saith he is my name and Catholick my sirname by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks And so long as the main body of Christianity retained the form of wholesome words and kept the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace it served exceeding fitly for a mark distinctive to known an Orthodox Professor from those who followed after Heretical and Schismatical Factions But when the main Body of the Church was once torn in peeces and every leading faction would be thought the true Church of Christ they took unto themselves the names of Catholicks also as if the truth was not more Orthodoxly held by the soundest Christians than it was by them And this hath been a device so stale and common that the Nestorians in the East though antiently condemned for Hereticks in the Third General Council do call their Patriark by the name of Catholick that is to say The Catholick or Orthodox Bishop as Leunclavius telleth us very rightly not Iacelich as the Copies of Brochardus and Paulus Venetus do corruptly read it In the same Error are our great Masters in the Church of Rome who having appropriated to themselves the name of Catholicks and counting all men Hereticks but themselves alone First cast all others out of the Church by the name of Hereticks who do not hold communion with them in their sins and errors and then defend themselves by the name of Catholicks from having dealt unjustly with their Fellow-Christians men every way more Orthodox than they be themselves Just so the Collier justified himself for a true Believer because he believed as the Church believed though he knew not the doctrine of the Church and the Church believed as he believed though the Church troubled not it self about his opinions I know the great Cardinal presumes very much on the name of Catholick making it to be one of the signs of the true Church now because an adjunct of the true Church in the Primitive times And wonder it is that we are grown so prodigal of late as to give it to them A courtesie which they receive with a great deal of joy and turn the bare acknowledgement to their great advantage there being no Argument more convincing than that which is drawn from the confession of an adversary Upon this ground doth Barclay build his Triumph for the cause of Rome Adeo probanda est ecclesia nostra à nomine Catholicae quod extorquet etiam ab invitis hareticis as he brags it there For my part as I never gave it them in writing nor in common speech as thinking
become so monstrous that it is grown bigger than all the rest of the Body For do not his own Canonists say that the Pope hath power of both the Swords that Christ committed to St. Peter and in him to them Terreni coelestis imperii jura The rights both of the Earthly and Heavenly Kingdoms Was it not openly affirmed in the Council of Lateran In Papa esse omnem potestatem c That in the Pope there was vested an authority over all powers both in Heaven and Earth And in pursuance of this power have they not frequently deposed Kings absolved the Subjects of the Oaths of Allegiance and disposed of Kingdoms till at last his Parasites came to broach this Tenet Papam esse verum Dominum temporalium ita ut possit auferre ab alio quod alias suum est c. That is to say That the Pope onely is the true and direct Lord of all Temporal States so that he may deprive whom he will of his estate without any remedy All Bishops and Princes whatsoever not being the Proprietaries of their own estates but Bailiffs and Stewards under him Thus also in Spiritual matters do they not teach that the whole World is his Diocess that he is Ordinarius omnium hominum and Episcopus totius orbis the ordinary Judge of all mankinde and Bishop of the whole world and that being thus possessed of this general Bishoprick Omnes Episcopi descendunt à Papa quasi membra à Capitè de plenitudine ejus omnes recipiunt All Bishops derive their power from him as the Body doth motion from the Head and that of his fulness they have all received That if the Pope should teach as he may and doth Virtutes esse vitia vitia esse virtuâ—es That vertue is vice and vice vertue we were bound to believe him And more than so That what crime soever he commit he is not to be censured or condemned for it Nec à Concilio nec à tota Ecclesia nec à toto mundo neither by a Council nor by all the Church together nor the whole World neither So privileged in a word he is that as one of them saith Si Papa innumerabiles populos catervatim secum ducat mancipio Gehennae c. If the Pope draw infinite companies of people with himself to Hell yet must no mortal man presume to reprove him for it Why so The Reason is most plain and evident Quia Papa Christus unum faciunt Consistorium because the Pope and Christ conjunct do but make one Consistory and consequently it must be as great a Sacrilege to question the acts of the Pope as those of Christ. We see by this to what a monstrous greatness this Head is grown how unproportionable to the Body his own Creatures make him And yet he is not onely greater than all the Body but he is all the Body too the Pope and Church being grown to be Terms and Convertible For so saith Gregory de Valentia Per ecclesiam caput ejus intelligimus c By the Church we mean her head and by that the Pope Dominicus Bannes affirms the same Pro eodem omnino reputatur autoritas ecclesiae universalis autoritas summi pontificis The authority of the Pope and that of the Universal Church is altogether the same The whole authority of the Church abideth in him saith Thomas Aquinas It remains all in him saith Silvester another of their principal Schoolmen Bellarmine is more plain than any Papa potest dicere ecclesiae i. e. sibi ipsi The Pope saith he may tell the Church that is himself His meaning is That lest the Pope should want Remedy when offence is given him he may be Judge in his own cause and on complaint unto himself see the matter mended But this he learnt of Innocent the Third Pope of that name who challenged to himself the cognizance of some points in difference between King Philip of France and Iohn King of England because it is written in the Gospel Dic ecclesiae as I have read in some good Author but cannot call to minde in whom Never did Text of Scripture meet with two such learned Glossaries never was Pope and Cardinal better matched nor need I adde more in so clear a case unless it be that commonly they call the Pope Virtualem Ecclesiam or the Vertual Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek because what power soever doth of right belong to the Body Collective of Christs Church the Church Essential as they term it is vertually contained in his person onely Me thinks it might have been enough for a single man to have been counted onely for a Chapel of Ease But such is the ambition of the Pope of Rome that unless he may be taken for the Catholick Church he passeth not for being reckoned for a Church at all And yet this of the two is the lovelier Error Better the Church be all head than no head at all And such a Church that is all body and no head at all have some of our Reformers modelled in their later Platforms The Presbyterian Party first began this Monster which those of the Independent way have now fully perfected The Presbyterian Form being hatched in a popular state but such as did acknowledge a supream command in the great Council of that City first make all Ministers equal amongst themselves and then associate with each Minister two or more Lay-Elders whom they invest joyntly with all manner of Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction which antiently and of right did belong to Bishops But this Presbytery thus constituted is not so supream but that it is accomptable to the Classis within which it is as that unto the Provincial Assembly and all unto that National Meeting which being made of the Deputed Ministers and Lay-Elders out of each Presbytery hath the name of General not such a General Assembly as St. Paul speaks of though possibly the name may allude to that For neither are they the Church of the first-born nor all of them at all times of the number of those whose names are written in the Heavens But let them call it what they will they have given us such a Model of Church-Government as was not known amongst the Antients and made it in effect but an headless body The Ruling Members being all equal in themselves and yet so Heterogeneous in the whole Compositum that the greatest part thereof are men of inferior quality men of Shops and Trades and consequently uncapable of Spiritual Powers Which if it do not make the Church to be all Body doth yet come very near it to a Tantamount But what the Presbyterians wanted to compleat this Monster hath since been added by the Brethren of the Independency who living in the waste and deserts of New England where every man was a king in his own opinion and had so much of Caesar in him
be Saints in the Church Triumphant But whether it be there or here a mutual communion there is always to be held between us between the Saints upon the Earth though Saints by outward calling onely united in the joynt participation of the Word and Sacraments and the external Profession of the Faith and Gospel but more conspicuously between those which are Saints indeed not onely nominally but really and truly such in that harmony of affections and reciprocal offices of love which makes them truly one Body of Christ though different Members And a communion there is too of this later kinde between the Saints upon the Earth and those which have their consummation in the Heaven of Glories who though they have in some part received the promise yet being fellow-members of the same one Body they pray for and await our ransom from this prison of flesh without which God hath so disposed it they should not be made perfect Which said we may now clearly see in what particulars the Communion of Saints intended in this Article doth consist especially which may be easily reduced unto three heads 1. A Communion in the Mysteries of our Salvation by which they are made members of one another and of Christ their Head 2. A Communion of Affections expressed in all the acts of love and charity even to the very communicating of their lives and fortunes And 3. A communion of entercourse between the Saints in Heaven and those here on Earth according to the different states in which God hath placed them All other kindes of Christian Communion are either contained in and under these or may be very easily reduced unto them And first for the Communion in the Mysteries of our Salvation and the benefits which redound thereby to the Church of Christ St. Paul hath told us That the Cup of blessing which is blessed in the holy Eucharist and the Bread there broken is the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ and that being made partakers of that one Bread we are thereby made though many to be one Bread also and one Body even the Body of Christ one Bread though made of many grains and one Body though composed of many members A better Paraphrase upon which place of the Apostle we can hardly finde in all the writings of the Fathers than that of Cyril Ut igitur inter nos Deum singulos uniret quamvis corpore simul anima distemus modum tamen adinvenit consilio patris sapientiae suae convenientem Suo enim corpore credentes per Communionem mysticam benedicens secum inter nos unum nos corpus efficit c That Christ might unite every one of us both with our selves and with God though we be distant from each other both in body and soul he hath devised a way agreeable to his own Wisdom and the Counsel of his Heavenly Father For in that he blesseth them that believe with his own Body by means of that Mystical Communion of it he maketh us one body with himself and with one another For who will think them not to be of this Natural union which be united in one Christ by the Union or Communion of that one holy Body For if we eat all of one Bread we are all made one Body in regard Christ may not be dis-joyned nor divided In which full passage of the Father we finde an union of the faithful with Christ their Head as well as a conjunction with one another effected by the Mystical communion of his Body and Blood A double union first with Christ and with each others next as the members of Christ. The union which we have with Christ is often times expressed in Scripture under the figure and resemblance of the Head and Members which as they make but one Natural Body so neither do they make but one Body Mystical Know you not saith the Apostle that your bodies are the members of Christ 1 Cor. 6.15 That ye are the body of Christ and members in particular 1 Cor. 12.27 That we are members of his body and of his flesh and of his bones Ephes. 5.30 And doth not the same Apostle tell us That God hath given Christ to be head over all things unto his Church Eph. 1.22 That Christ is the head of the Church Vers. 23. And that from this head all the body by joynts and bonds having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God Col. 2.19 Occumenius hereupon inferreth That neither Christ without the Church much less the Church without her Christ but both together so united make a perfect body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as that Author hath it Others of more antiquity do affirm the same For thus St. Chrysostom Quidnaem significat panis Corpus Christi quid fiunt qui accipiunt Corpus Christi What signifieth the Bread The Body of Christ What are they made that do receive it The Body of Christ. St. Augustine thus Hunc cibum potum societatem vult intelligi corporis membrorum suorum i. e. He would have us understand that this meat and drink is the fellowship of his body and of his members What of the members onely with one another Not onely so but of the fellowship or communion which they have with him that is their head who though he be above in the heavenly places and is not fastned to his body with any corporal connexion yet he is joyned unto it by the bonds of love as the same Father hath it in another place Habet ecclesia caput positum in coelestibus quod gubernat corpus suum separatum quidem visione sed charitate annexum St. Cyprian speaks more home than either both to the matter and the manner of the union which we have with Christ. Nos ipsi corpus Christi effecti Sacramento re Sacramenti capiti nostro conjungineur unimur We are then made the Body of Christ both by the Sacrament and the grace represented by it when we are joyned or united unto Christ our Head Not that we are not made the members of Christs Mystical Body but onely by a participation of the Sacrament of his Body and Blood but that this Mystical union and communion which we have with Christ is most fitly represented by it For otherwise St. Paul hath told us That by one Spirit we are all baptized into that one Body and consequently made the members of Christ. According unto that of Divine St. Augustine Ad hoc baptisma valet ut baptizati Christo incorporentur membra ejus efficiantur To this saith he availeth Baptism that men being baptized may be incorporated unto Christ and made his Members But this supposeth a relation to the other Sacrament of which although they may not actually participate before they die yet they have either a desire to it if they be of age and a right or interess in it
misunderstood dictates of those old Philosophers For where the Scripture saith They had all things common we are to understand it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the use and communication and not in referenee to the right and original title The goods of Christians were in several as to the right title and possession of them but common in the merciful inclination of the owner to the works of mercy And this appears exceeding plainly by the Text and Story of the Acts. For the Text saith That no man said of any thing that it was his own no not of the things which he possessed which plainly shews That the possession still remained to the proper owner though he was mercifully pleased to communicate his goods to the good of others But this the story shews more plainly For what need any of the Possessors of Lands or Houses have sold them and brought the prices of the things which were sold and laid them down at the Apostles feet to be by them distributed to the poorer Brethren If the poor Brethren might have carved themselves out of such estates and entred on them as their own or with what colour could St. Paul have concealed this truth and changed this natural community to a communication Charge them which be rich in this world saith he that they be willing to communicate a communication meerly voluntary and such as necessarily preserves that interess which the Communicators have in their temporal fortunes And so Tertullian also must be understood For though it be omnia indiscreta in regard of the use or a communion if you will with the Saints maintained with one another in their temporal fortunes yet was it no community but a communication in reference to that legal interess which was still preserved and therefore called no more than rei communicatio in the words foregoing The like may be replied to the other Argument drawn from the quality of friendship and the authority of Aristotle and the rest there named That which I have is properly and truly mine because descended on me in due course of Law or otherwise acquired by my pains and industry and being mine is by my voluntary act made common for the relief and comfort of the man I love and have made choice of for my friend yet still no otherwise my friends but that the right and property doth remain in me Quicquid habet amicus noster commune est nobis illius tamen proprium est qui tenet as most truly Seneca As for the practise of the Spartans and that natural liberty which is pretended to be for mankinde in the use of the Creatures It is a thing condemned in all the Schools of the Politicks and doth besides directly overthrow the principles of the Anabaptist and the Familist and their Confederates who are content to rob all mankinde of the use of the Creatures so they may monopolize and ingross them all to the use of the Saints that is themselves But the truth is that these pretences for the Saints are as inconsistent with the Word and Will of God as those which are insisted on for mankinde in general For how can this Community of the Saints or mankinde agree with any of those Texts of holy Scripture which either do condemn the unlawful getting keeping or desiring of riches by covetousness extortion theevery and the like wicked means to attain the same or else commend frugality honest trades of life and specially liberality to the poor and needy Assuredly where there is neither meum nor tuum as there can be no stealing so there needs no giving For how can a man be said to steal that which is his own or what need hath he to receive that in the way of a gift to which he hath as good a Title as the man that giveth it I shut up all with this determination of the Church of England which wisely as in all things else doth so exclude community of mens goods and substance as to require a Christian Communication of and communion in them The riches and goods of Christians saith the Article are not common as touching the right title and possession of the same as certain Anabaptists do falsly boast therefore no community Notwithstanding every man ought of such things as he possesseth liberally to give Alms to the poor according to his ability and there a Communion of the Saints in the things of this world a communication of their riches to the wants of others But the main point in this Communion of the Saints in reference to one another concerns that intercourse and mutual correspondency which is between the Saints in the Church here Militant and those which are above in the Church Triumphant The Church is of a larger latitude than the present world The Body whereof Christ is Head not being wholly to be found on the Earth beneath but a good part thereof in the Heavens above Both we with them and they with us make but one Body Mystical whereof Christ is Head but one Spiritual Corporation whereof he is Governor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we read in Chrysostom And if he be the Head of both as no doubt he is then must both they and we be members of that Body of his and consequently that correspondence and communion must be held between us which is agreeable to either in his several place So far I think it is agreed on of all sides without any dispute The point in question will concern not the quod sit of it that there is and ought to be a communion between them and us but quo modo how it is maintained and in what particulars And even in this I think it will be granted on all hands also that those above do pray unto the Lord their God for his Church in general that he would please to have mercy on Ierusalem and to build up the breaches in the walls of Sion and to behold her in the day of her visitation when she is harassed and oppressed by her merciless enemies How long say they in the Apocalypse O Lord holy and true how long dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell upon the earth And as they pray unto the Lord to be gracious to us so do they also praise his name for those acts of mercy which he vouchsafes to shew to his Church in general or any of his servants in particular The joy that was in Heaven at the fall of Babylon which had so long made her self drunk with the blood of the Saints and Martys and that which is amongst the Angels of Heaven over every sinners that repenteth are proof enough for this were there no proof else We on the other side do magnifie Gods name for them in that he hath vouchsafed to deliver them out of the bondage of the flesh to take their souls unto his mercy and free
all them that are sanctified Blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances which was against us and nailed it to his cross for ever to the end that being mindful of the price wherewith we were bought and of the enemies from whom we were delivered by him We might glorifie God both in our bodies and our souls and serve the Lord in righteousness and holiness all the days of our lives For if the blood of Bulls and of Goats and the ashes of an Heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctified to the purifying of the flesh in the time of the Mosaical Ordinances How much more shall the Blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God in the time of the Gospel This is the constant tenor of the Word of God touching remission of our sins by the Blood of Christ. And unto this we might here adde the consonant suffrages and consent of the antient Fathers If the addition of their Testimonies where the authority of the Scripture is so clear and evident might not be thought a thing unnecessary Suffice it that all of them from the first to the last ascribe the forgiveness of our sins to the death of Christ as to the meritorious cause thereof though unto God the Father as the principal Agent who challengeth to himself the power of forgiving sins as his own peculiar and prerogative Isai. 43.25 Peculiar to himself as his own prerogative in direct power essential and connatural to him but yet communicated by him to his Son CHRIST IESUS whilest he was conversant here on Earth who took upon himself the power of forgiving sins as part of that power which was given him both in Heaven and Earth Which as he exercised himself when he lived amongst us so at his going hence he left it as a standing Treasury to his holy Church to be distributed and dispensed by the Ministers of it according to the exigencies and necessities of particular persons For this we finde done by him as a matter of fact and after challenged by the Apostles as a matter of right belonging to them and to their successors in the Ministration First For the matter of fact it is plain and evident not onely by giving to St. Peter for himself and them the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven annexing thereunto this promise That whatsoever he did binde on Earth should be bound in Heaven and whatsoever he did loose on Earth should be loosed in Heaven But saying to them all expresly Receive the Holy Ghost Whose sins soever ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained And as it was thus given them in the way of fact so was it after challenged by them in the way of right St. Paul affirming in plain terms That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself by not imputing their trespasses unto them but that the Ministery of this reconciliation was committed unto him and others whom Christ had honored with the title of his Ambassadors and Legates here upon the Earth Now as the state of man is twofold in regard of sin so is the Ministery of reconciliation twofold also in regard of man As he is tainted with the guilt of original sinfulness the Sacrament of Baptism is to be applied the Laver of Regeneration by which a man is born again of water and the Holy Ghost Iohn 3.5 As he lies under the burden of his actual sins the Preaching of the Word is the proper Physick to work him to repentance and newness of life that on confession of his sins he may receive the benefit of absolution Be it known unto you saith St. Paul that through this man CHRIST IESUS is preached unto you remission of sins and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses And first for Baptism It is not onely a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christian men are discerned from others which be not Christned as some Anabaptists falsly taught but it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth whereby as by an instrument they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church the promises of the forgiveness of sin and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost are visibly signed and sealed Faith is confirmed and Grace increased by vertue of Prayer unto God This is the publick Doctrine of the Church of England delivered in the authorised Book of Articles Anno 1562. In which lest any should object as Dr. Harding did against Bishop Iewel That we make Baptism to be nothing but a sign of regeneration and that we dare not say as the Catholick Church teacheth according to the holy Scriptures That in and by Baptism sins are fully and truly remitted and put away We will reply with the said most Reverend and Learned Prelate a man who very well understood the Churches meaning That we confess and have ever taught that in the Sacrament of Baptism by the death and Blood of Christ is given remission of all manner of sins and that not in half or in part or by way of imagination and fancy but full whole and perfect of all together and that if any man affirm that Baptism giveth not full remission of sins it is no part nor portion of our Doctrine To the same effect also saith judicious Hooker Baptism is a Sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church to the end That they which receive the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ and so through his most precious merit obtain as well that saving grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness and also that infused divine vertue of the Holy Ghost which giveth to the powers of the soul the first dispositions towards future newness of life But because these were private men neither of which for ought appears had any hand in the first setting out of the Book of Articles which was in the reign of King Edward the Sixth though Bishop Iewel had in the second Edition when they were reviewed and published in Queen Elizabeths time let us consult the Book of Homilies made and set out by those who composed the Articles And there we finde that by Gods mercy and the vertue of that Sacrifice which our High Priest and Saviour CHRIST IESUS the Son of God once offered for us upon the Cross we do obtain Gods grace and remission as well of our original sin in Baptism as of all actual sin committed by us after Baptism if we truly repent and turn unfeignedly unto him again Which doctrine of the Church of England as it is consonant to the Word of God in holy Scripture so is it also most agreeable to the common and received judgment of pure Antiquity For in the Scripture it is said
judicii pronouncing them with his own mouth to be forgiven in Heaven According to the promise made unto St. Peter or the Church in him when he delivered him the Keys that whatsoever he did loose on Earth should be loosed in Heaven And so we are to understand St. Chrysostomes words Iudex sedet in terris dominus sequitur servum The Judge remains upon the Earth the Lord followeth the servant His meaning is That what the servant doth here upon the Earth according to his Masters will the same the Lord himself will confirm and ratifie To which effect it is affirmed by others of the Antient Writers but in clearer words That the judgment of man goeth before the judgment of God The Priest is then a Iudge to pronounce the sentence and not a Cryer onely as some say to proclaim what the Judge pronounceth and as a Judge doth actually absolve or condemn the sinner by the same power of pardoning or retaining sins which he had from Christ or which Christ executes by him as his lawful deputy For as Kings are said to minister Justice to their Subjects though they do it not in their own persons but by a power devolved on subordinate Officers and as Christ himself may properly be said to have fed the multitudes though he gave the loaves onely unto his Disciples and his Disciples to the multitudes So he may also be affirmed to absolve the penitent although he do it by the mouth of the Priests or Ministers it being his act 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and theirs but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 originally his and ministerially theirs the same power in both And this may further be made good by that form of Speech used by our Saviour in the delegation of this power unto his Apostles and by them to his Ministers in all ages since being the very same with that which he himself hath given us in the Pater noster In his Commission it is thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose sins soever ye remit Iohn 20.23 And in the Lords Prayer it is thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and forgive us our sins Luke 11.4 The same word used in the original for the one and the other And if it be a Solecism to say as no doubt it is That we desire no more of God in that clause of the Prayer than that he would signifie or declare that our sins are pardoned The Solecism must be as great for ought I can see to say That they are onely signified or declared to be pardoned by the mouth of the Minister Now that this is the meaning and intent of the Church of England some of our Romish adversaries do not stick to grant though others to calumniate this most Orthodox Church have given out the contrary For one of their great Controversors hath declared in print that it is the doctrine of some of the Protestants That Priests have power not onely to pronounce the remission of sins but to give it also And that this seemeth to be the doctrine of the Communion Book in the Visitation of the sick where the Priest saith And by his authority committed unto me I absolve thee from all thy sins c. And therefore when a foul-mouthed Iesuite had been pleased to charge us with denying power unto the Priests of forgiving sins Bishop Usher telleth him to his face That he doth us wrong and proves it by the very formal words in our Ordination Whose sins soever ye remit they are remitted and whose sins soever ye retain they are retained But no man can say more to this than hath been said already by Bishop Morton now Lord Bishop of Durham The power of absolution saith that learned Prelate whether it be general or particular whether in publick or in private is professed in our Church where both in our Publick Service is proclamed Pardon and Absolution upon all Penitents and a particular applying of particular Absolution unto Penitents by the Office of the Ministery And greater power than this hath no man received from God And this hath also been acknowledged by the Leaders of the Puritan faction who in their Petition to King Iames at his first coming to this Crown excepted against the very name of Absolution as being a Forinsecal and Iuridical word importing more surely than a Declaration which they desired to have corrected And thereupon it was propounded in the Conference at Hampton Court That to the word Absolution in the Rubrick following the general Confession these words Remission of sins might be added for Explanations sake And though Dr. Raynolds one of the Four Proctors for the said Petitioners in the foresaid Conference may be conceived to have been of the same opinion with these of the agrieved sort whom he did appear for yet he was so well satisfied in the power and nature of Sacerdotal Absolution that he did earnestly desire it at the time of his death humbly received it at the hands of Dr. Holland the Kings Professor in Divinity in the Vniversity of Oxon for the time then being and when he was not able to express his joy and thankfulness in the way of speech did most affectionately kiss the hand that gave it But what need more be said for manifesting this judicial power in the remitting of sins than what is exercised and determined by the Church in the other branch of this Authority in retaining sins By which impenitent sinners are solemnly and judicially cut off from the sacred Body of the Church and utterly excluded from the company and Communion of the rest of the faithful Of which the Church hath thus resolved in her publick Articles viz. That person which by open denunciation of the Church is rightly cut off from the unity of the Church and Excommunicate ought to be taken of the whole multitude of the faithful as an Heathen and Publican until be be openly reconciled by penance and received into the Church by a Iudge that hath authority thereunto Where clearly we have found a Iudicial power and a Iudge to exercise the same and that not onely in the point of retaining sins in case of excommunication but also in reconciling of the penitent in remitting sins in the way of ordinary absolution Which whether it be given in Foro poenitentiae or in Foro Conscientiae either in private on the confession of the party or publickly for satisfaction of the Congregation doth make no difference in this point which onely doth consist in the proof of this That the Priests or Ministers of the Gospel lawfully ordained have under Christ a power of forgiving sins Which comfortable doctrine of the remission of sins by Gods great mercy at all times and the Churches Ministery at some times as occasion is is the whole subject of this branch of the present Article Proceed we next to those great benefits which we reap thereby The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting ARTICLE XI
our selves and lessoneth us not to set so high a price upon our lives but that we may be willing to lay them down as often as the preservation of Religion the safety of our Country or the necessary service of the State do require it of us A duty which we should not doubt to discharge most gladly did we consider as we ought that loss of life on such occasions is but like the putting off of our garments over night to be worn again upon the morrow For certainly those men acquit themselves with the bravest spirit who least regard the terrible approach of death Nor can there be a stronger Motive to induce us to it than that the Bodies so abandoned to the Sword of the Enemies or to the Persecutors of the Church of God shall be revived and reunited to the Soul again It is reported of the Druides whom before I spoke of that they taught amongst these Northern Nations not onely an immortality of the Soul but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or transmigration of it into other bodies And it was thought an happy error to be so perswaded for being throughly possessed with this opinion they never feared to run upon the greatest dangers to brave them with undanted courage and to encounter with the violentest and most terrible engigns which were then invented So poor a matter was it thought to be coy and sparing of those lives which they were sure to finde again in another body Felices errore suo quos ille timorum Maximus haud urget lethi metus inde ruendi In ferrum mens prona viris animaeque capaces Mortis ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae Which may thus be Englished Thrice happy they whom the extreamest fear Of death afflicts not who upon the spear Dare boldly run and in their hearts disdain To spare that life which shall return again How brave a courage then ought we to carry with us in our Christian Warfare who have such excellent advantages above those Antients To us it is ascertained by the Word of God not that our souls shall be transmitted into other bodies but be conveyed immediately to a place of rest there to expect a Resurrection of those bodies which before they lived in To us it is ascertained by the Word of God that each several Atom of the body shall be recollected and married to the soul for ever that the bones which were broken may rejoyce and that the body and soul being thus united shall pass immediately into the glories of eternal life prepared for them before the beginnings of the world A brave encouragement to gallant and heroical resolutions Preciumque causa laboris in the Poets language The cause and recompence of all our labors But some I know have otherwise provided for themselves than so and found out a Terrestrial Paradise wherein they shall enjoy for a thousand years all the pleasures of Earth before they be admitted to the joys of Heaven A fancy if I may so call it of no mean antiquity defended by some principal men of the first times of the Church who took it upon trust without more enquiry and having made it better than at first they found it commended it unto the Church for good Catholick doctrine For some there were even in the infancy of the Gospel who being too much in love with this present world conceited to themselves such a sensual and voluptuous kinde of life after the Resurrection from the dust of the Earth wherein they should have use of women and wallow in all carnal and libidinous pleasures which the most Epicurean soul could affect or covet A fancy meerly Iewish in its first original afterwards entertained by some Heretical Iudaizing Christians and finally rather rectified than refelled by many of the Fathers in the Primitive times And first beginning with the Iews we shewed in our discourse of the Kingdom of Christ how much they were besotted with the expectation of a Temporal Monarchy looking for such a Messiah as should come with power restore again the Crown of Iudah to the house of David and make that Commonwealth more formidable to the Neighboring Princes than ever it had been in the times before And to befool themselves the more in this fond conceit there was no promise nor no prophecy in the Old Testament intended to the building up of the Spiritual Temple or to the raising of Christs Kingdom in the souls of men which they applied not to the founding of a Temporal Monarchy the repairing of Ierusalem the new erecting of the Temple and to the re-establishment of Circumcision and other of the Rites and Ceremonies of the Law of Moses Concerning which consult St. Ierom in his Comment on Isai. 31. and on Ezek. 36. and on Micah 4. Tertullian in his third Book against Marcion cap. ult and divers others of the Antients not to say any thing in this place of the Iewish Rabbins who run all that way In which it will appear that they both did and do expect a restitution of their temporal power and all the pleasures of a rich and flourishing Empire which are most correspondent to a carnal minde Which fancy being taken up and so strongly fixed that there was no removing of it out the hearts of the Iews was forthwith entertained by some nominal Christians who out of a compliance with that obstinate people embraced not onely many of their Rites and Ceremonies but of their dreams and fancies also Whom therefore Ierom calleth Christianos Iudaizantes Iudaizing Christians in many places of his works in which Iudaei Christiani Iudaizantes or Iudaei eorum erroris haeredes the Iews and those that do inherit their Superstitions march along together Of these the first was that Arch-heretick Cerinthus who did not onely set on foot in the Church of Christ the Festivals and Sacrifices of the Law of Moses but also taught Regnum Christi post Resurrectionem terrenum fuisse carnem nostram Hierosolymis cupiscentiis voluptatibus carni servituram That after the Resurrection Christ should have an Earthly Kingdom in which his followers should enjoy in their New Ierusalem all the delights and pleasures of the flesh of what kinde soever And this not onely to endure for a little while the ordinary life a man or so but for a thousand years compleat as Nicephorus addeth Marcus another leading Heretick was of this opinion and so was Nepos also an Egyptian Bishop who teaching first That all the promises made by God in holy Scripture Iudaico more reddendas esse were to be understood according to the Iewish Glosses did thereon build this following Tenet That the Saints should for a thousand years injoy all manner of corporal delights and pleasures in the Kingdom of Christ which after the resurrection should be founded here upon this earth Against this Nepos and his doctrine in this particular Dionysius that great and learned Bishop of Alexandria wrote
a full discourse which he entituled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A Discourse of Promises and finding that he grounded his erroneous Tenets on the Revelation he wrote another on that Book which he inscribed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or The confutation and reproof of the Allegorists Nor did he labour by his pen onely but by conference too making a journey or Episcopal Visitation into Arsenois a Province of Egypt where this opinion was most cherished of purpose to dispute down this erroneous Doctrin◠In which he sped so answerably unto his desires that many of the chief Sticklers in it did recant their error et veritatem una nobiscum confite bantur and chearfully imbrace that truth which he brought unto them This Doctrine being set on foot though by such vile Hereticks and seeming to have ground and countenance from the Revelation was by the Fathers and other Writers of the first times of the Church thought fitter to be rectified and reformed than abandoned wholly And thereupon a new conceit was taken up and dispersed abroad unto this effect That after the Resurrection Christ should have an Earthly Kingdom the principal Seat whereof should be Hierusalem Hierusalem new built of gold and most precious stones Hierusalem aurea gemmata as St. Hierom calleth it in which the Saints should reign with him for a Thousand years in all manner of happiness and after that accompany him to the Heaven of Heavens and there live for ever This was the sum of the Opinion thus refined and rectified But for the Readers satisfaction and my own together I shall describe it more at large that we may see the better what we are to think of it and therein I shall follow Lactantius chiefly who hath more copionsly presented the true state thereof than any other of the Antients By him we are informed that after the destruction of the Roman Empire which must be utterly subverted before any of these things shall come to pass there shall follow great plagues unseasonable weather a general mortality of all living Creatures many strange Prodigies in the Air the Stars fall down from Heaven and the whole course of nature shall be out of order Things being in this dreadful state the Lord shall send into the world the great Prophet Elias who shall convert many unto God with great signs and wonders but in the midle of his work Antichrist shall arise out of Syria encounter with that great Prophet kill him in the Fight leaving him for three daies unburied after which time he shall revive and be taken up into Heaven After this shall presently ensue a terrible persecution of those righteous persons who will not worship this proud Tyrant calling himself the Son of God and practicing to seduce the people after the working of Satan by power and signs and lying wonders insomuch that all the Saints shall be compelled to retire themselves into the Wilderness and there abide in great distress calling continually for help to the Lord their God For their relief Christ shall descend at last with the Hosts of Heaven fight with this dreadful Tyrant overthrow him often and finally take him and his Confederates Prisoners whom he shall presently condemn to their merited torments Then shall the graves be opened and the bodies of the Saints shall arise and stand before the Iudgement seat of Christ the Conqueror and being united to their souls shall be incorporated with those righteous persons which are found alive and both together constitute an earthly Kingdom to our Lord and Saviour who shall reign over them or with them rather for a Thousand years triumphing over the remainder of their mortal Enemies who shall not be extinguished but preserved to perpetual slavery During this time the Devil shall be bound in chains that he do not hurt the Saints inhabiting the holy City in all peace and happiness the Sun shall shew more glorious than ever formerly the Earth become more fruitful than it was before producing most delicious fruits of its own accord the Rocks shall yeeld the sweetest hony and all the Rivers flow with Milk and Wine After which Thousand years expired the Devil that old Murderer shall get loose again stir up the Nations of the Earth to destroy the Saints and not onely lay siege unto the holy City But fire and hail and tempests from the Heavens above shall make so general and terrible a destruction of them that for Seven years there shall no other wood be burat but their Spears and Targets Then shall the Saints be brought into the presence of Almighty God whom they shall serve for evermore and at the same time shall be the Second and most general Resurrection in which the wicked shall be raised to eternal torments and damned for ever to the lake of fire and brimstone This is the substance of the Story as Lactantius telleth it which whether it have more of the Iew or of the Poet in it it is hard to say That of the great defeat of Antichrist and the burning of the Spears and Shields for Seven years together is branded by St. Hierom for a peece of an old Talmudical Tale the Iewish Rabbins making the like endless fables interminabiles fabulas as the Father calleth them of Gog and Magog who for a while shall tyrannize so cruelly over those of Israel but be at last subdued and slain with as great an overthrow as he affirmeth of Antichrist and his Confederates That of the flourishing estate of Christs earthly Kingdom was reckoned in those times when it was most countenanced to be but a Poetical fiction Figmenta haec esse Poetarum quidam putant as Lactantius doth himself acknowledge And more than so he seemeth to refer his Reader for a further description of this Kingdom to the works of the Poets affirming positively that all those characters shall be verified of this Kingdom of Christ I mean this Millenarian Kingdom Quae Poetae aureis temporibus facta esse dixerunt which by the Poets are affabulated of the golden age for proof whereof for fear we should not take his word he puts down a description of it out of Virgils works But in my minde his own description of it comes more near to Ovids who thus concludes his Map or Character of that blessed time Mox etiam fruges Tellus inarata ferebat Nec renovatus Ager gravidis canebat aristis Flumina tum Lactis tum flumina Nectaris ibant Flavaque de viridi stillabant Ilice Mella Which is thus Englished by Geo. Sandys The fruitful Earth Corn un-manured bears And every year renews her golden Ears With Milk and Nectar were the Rivers fill'd And yellow Honey from green Elmes distill'd But whether it were Iewish or Poetical or compounded of both the fancy being once taken up proved very acceptable as it seems in those elder times to most sorts of people both in the East and Western Churches who did
in the Pharisees For Christ who knew their hearts found their cunning also And therefore did so shape his answer as by declaring the true nature of the Resurrection against the Pharisees to justifie the Immortality of the Soul against the Sadduces 1. Then he tells them how much they were mistaken in the nature of the Resurrection for want of a right understanding of the holy Scriptures Erratis nescientes Scripturas as the Vulgar reads it The Scriptures which do speak of a Resurrection not being to be understood in such an Animal and Carnal sense as the Pharisees did understand them Those bodies which were sown in corruption were to be raised again incorruptible and therefore not to live by the food which perisheth Those bodies which were sown in their mortality by reuniting with the Soul should become immortal and therefore not to stand in need of any Seminal or Carnal way of Propagation For in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage neither can they die any more but are as the Angels of God in Heaven in the condition of their being as to those particulars This said and so much of their doubt resolved as concerned the error of the Pharisees he lets them see the weakness of their own opinion touching the annihilation or extinguishment of the Immortal soul of man And that too from the works of Moses which themselves embraced without consulting any other of the holy Pen-men For when God said to Moses in the present tence I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob it must needs be that Abraham Isaac and Iacob must be accounted of as living at that present time and living otherwise they were not at that present time but as their blessed Souls did live in the sight of God their Bodies being long before consumed and perished though even those bodies by the infinity of comprehension which is in God might be looked upon as living also in reference to that eternal life which was prepared for them in the day of the Resurrection And this I take to be the meaning of St. Luke who doth not onely say in the present tence That the dead are raised but addes these following words to the other Evangelist viz. For all live in him that is to say All men though buried in their dust are living in the sight of Almighty God who sees at once all things that have been are and shall be unto all eternity as if present with him and consequently beholds the Souls of his righteous servants Abraham and Isaac and the rest in the bliss of Paradise as if apparrelled with those bodies which before they had So then the Immortality of the Soul being so fully proved by our Saviours Argument The Resurrection of the dead being the thing which seemed to be scrupled by the Sadduces was concluded also and yet not such a Resurrection the Pharisees dreamed of in which there should be marrying and giving in marriage that is to say In which things should be ordered by the rules of this present life but such a one wherein the Saints of God should be like the Angels discharged from all relations incident to flesh and blood exempt from all humane affections of what sort soever For certainly had not the Argument concluded strongly and convincingly to the point proposed neither the Scribes men better studied in the Scriptures than any of the rest of the Iewish Nation had given this testimony to it Magister dixisti benè as we see they did nor had the mouths of such curious and captious Sophisters been muzzled as we see they were from asking him the like Questions for the time to come both which the story tells us in the close of all But I have staid too long on this Text of Scripture it is now time I should proceed to the rest that follows ARTICLE XII Of the Twelfth Article OF THE CREED Ascribed to St. MATTHIAS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Et Vitam Aeternam Amen i. e. And the Life Everlasting Amen CHAP. VIII Of the Immortality of the Soul and the glories of Eternal Life prepared for it As also of the place and torment of Hell Hell-fire not metaphorical but real The conclusion of all MOrs non extinguit hominem sed ad praemium virtutis admittit Death saith Lactantius doth not put an end to the life of man but rather openeth him a way to receive the recompence of his wel deservings For though the body be returned unto the earth out of which it was taken and that there were no Resurrection to be looked for for it yet in the better part the soul he is incorruptible and immortal not subject to the stroke of death nor to be made a prey unto worms and rotâ—enness In this respect it is to be disposed of in some suitable place and to be punished or rewarded in a suitable manner none but an Everlasting Life or eternal punishments being the doom thereof in the world to come according to the good or evil which in this world it hath projected or accomplished Now that the Soul of man is not onely a spiritual essence which actuates the body in the which it is but an immortal essence too which shall over-live it we have good proof in holy Scripture and that both from the Old Testament and from the New The souls of the righteous saith the wise man are in the hands of the Lord And though the Body go down into the Earth yet the Soul returneth unto him that gave it saith a wiser than he But behold a greater than Solomon or the wisdom of Solomon even CHRIST the wisdom of the Father hath affirmed the same not onely commending his own Soul to Almighty God but teaching St. Stephen and all the rest of the Saints in him how to do the like This day saith he to the good Theef thou shalt be with me in Paradise And more than so he doth convincingly conclude the immortality of the Soul from those words in Exod. I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob which sufficiently doth prove that point This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise Not in their bodies either of them for the body of the one was on the cross and the other in the Grave till the resurrection It must be therefore in their Souls which neither the Cross could crucifie nor the Grave bury St. Iohn affirmeth the same as a matter of fact which in the former Texts except that of Exodus we finde but in hope or promise For speaking of the estate of the Saints departed which he beheld as clearly in an heavenly Rapture as if it had been a thing done before his eyes he telleth us that he saw under the Altar the soules of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they had And they cryed with
a loud voyce saying How long O Lord holy and true delayest thou to judge and avenge our blood upon them that dwell on the earth And of this nature is that passage in St. Lukes Gospel though perhaps it be but Parabolical in which the Soul of Lazarus is carryed into Abrahams bosome as soon as it had left his body So that the wonder is the greater if the tale be true that Paul the third a Christian and a Christian Prelate one of the Popes of Rome in these later Ages should make doubt hereof as they say he did Of whom it is reported that lying on his death-bed he should say to the standers by That he should shortly be assured of three particulars of which he had not been resolved all the time of his life that is to say Whether there were a God Such a place as Hell or That the souls of men were immortal or not A speech which hath so much of the Atheist in it that Christian charity forbids me to give credit to it though possibly his course of life as to say truth he was a man that sought his own ends more than the glory of God might give occasion to the world to report so of him And yet I must confesse my charity is not so perfect as not to beleeve the like report of Pope Iohn the three and twentieth who lived in safer times than this Paul the third and might take liberty to speak whatsoever he thought without fear of giving any advantage to an opposite party For he indeed as it is charged against him in the Council of Constance was of opinion that the Soul of man did die with his body like that of beasts And did not onely hold it as his own opinion but pertinaciously maintained it Quin imo dixit pertinaciter credidit Animam hominis cum corpore humano mori extingui ad instar animalium brutorum as the Council hath it Some who were called Arabici in the former times held the self same error as Eusebius telleth us for which they were accounted for no better than Hereticks and put into the Catalogue of Hereticks of St. Augustines making And yet upon a Disputation which they had with Origen they did desert their error and recant it too the story of which Nicephorus reports at large A Pope may hold the same opinion and pertinaciously maintain it against all Opponents and yet we must not say that he is an Heretick no take heed of that That were to trench too deep upon the privileges of St. Peters Chair But what need any proof be brought from the Word of God to prove the immortality of the Soul of man which was a truth confessed by the very Gentiles who saw no more than what was represented to them by the light of Nature and the dull spectacles of Philosophy By Plato one of the sagest of them it was affirmed expresly and in positive terms who useth also many Arguments in defence thereof Which Arguments though they seem too short to some Christian writers to come up close unto the point yet they approve his judgment in it confessing that De immortalitate animae verum sentiret he held the very truth in that particular But before him Pythagoras and Pherecides did affirm the same although Pythagoras for his part went a way by himself touching the passing of the Soul into other Bodies Transire animas in nova corpora as mine Author hath it It is true that Aristotle seemed to be doubtful of it and problematically sometimes to dispute against it though other-whiles the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eternal and immortal do escape his pen. Nor was it positively denied by any in the Heroick times of learning save onely by Dicearchus Democritus and the Sect of Epicures who placing the chief happiness or summum bonum in corporal pleasures were as it were ingaged to cry down the Soul And yet Lucretius an old Poet and a principal stickler of that Sect doth now and then let fall some unluckly passages which utterly overthrow his cause As this for one Cedit item â—etro de terra quod fuit ante In terras quod missum est ex aetheris oris Id rursum Coeli fulgentia templa receptant Which may be briefly Englished in these two lines To Earth that goes which from the Earth was given And to Joves house that part which came from Heaven In this Lucretius did agree with that of Hermes or Mercurius sirnamed Trismegistus who makes man to consist of two principal parts as indeed he doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the one mortal which is the body and the other immortal which is the soul And of the same opinion was Apollo Milesius and the Sibylline Oracles both which are cited by Lactantius l. 7. c. 13. and Cap. 18.20 But what need more be said in so clear a case when Tacitus reporteth it for the general opinion of all knowing men Cum corpore non extingui magnas animas That the Souls of great and gallant persons were not extinguished with their Bodies Were it not so the Body were in better case than the Soul by far and of more continuance which doth not onely remain a Body for a while as before it was entire and uncorrupted after the Soul is taken from it but by embowelling imbalming and such helps of Art may be preserved from putrifaction many ages together Which Reasons and Authorities of so many Writers and the general consent of all learned men in the times before him prevailed so far at last on one Aristoxemus that finding no way to decry the Souls immortality he fell into a grosser error Negando ullam omnino esse animam denying that there was any Soul at all Quo nihil dici delirius potest than which a greater dotage could not be imagined as it is very justly censured by Lactantius And yet as great a dotage as it seemed to him though coming from the mouth or pen of an Heathen-man hath been revived again in these times of Liberty and a Book printed with the title of Mans Mortality wherein the Author whosoever he was doth endeavor to prove That the whole man as a rational Creature is wholly mortal contrary to that common distinction of Soul and Body Which if it be not the dotage of that Aristoxemus is questionless the Heresie of the old Arabici This Author teaching that our immortality beginneth at the Resurrection at the general judgment and they that the Soul of man dying with the Body de coetero ad immortalitatem transituram was from thenceforth to pass into immortality Such is the infelicity of the times we live in that the more gross the heresie and the more condemned by those great lights of learning in the former times the better entertainment it is sure to finde with unknowing men I purpose not to make an exact discourse
of the Souls immortality but onely to assert it in such a manner as to prepare my way to the present Article which doth in part depend upon it For if there were no Soul at all or if the Soul did perish as do those of Beasts it were in vain to think of a Resurrection or flatter our selves with expectation of eternal life The immortality of the Soul is to be premised before we speak of Heaven and the life to come and that premised or granted as I hope it will be we must next fit it with an Ubi with a constant place of as great perpetuity as a soul it self and with a life as permanent as the place can be Which place or life being we cannot finde it in this present world we must look for it in another and therefore that which in this Creed is called Life everlasting is called in the Nicene Creed The life of the world to come And if it be a Life of the world to come this world and all the beauties of it must first pass away before we can possess our estates in that even as St. Paul hath told us of our Saviour Christ That he took away the first Covenant to establish the second Now that the world shall have an end is a thing so clear in Christianity that never any Heretick in all ages past did call the truth hereof in question And so it was conceived in Philosophy also till Aristotle and the Peripateticks which followed him began to hammer a conceit De aeternitate mundi of the worlds eternity Certain I am that all the old Philosophers before his time and namely Heraclitus Empedocles Anaxagoras Democritus and divers others as also the Stoicks and the whole Sect of the Epicures though in other things they did agree like fire and water were all agreed upon this point That as the world had a beginning so it should have an end The judgment in this case of those old Philosophers Diogenes Laertius will afford us on an easie search And for the said two Sects to take one of each Seneca telleth us for the Stoicks Unus hominum genus condet dies That one day shall bury all mankinde and not all mankinde onely but the whole frame of the Creation totum hunc rerum omnium contextum as he elswhere hath it dies aliquis dejiciet shall in one day be cast down and brought to end The like Lucretius saith for the Epicureans of which Sect he was Una dies dabit exitio multosque per Annos Sustentata ruet moles machina mundi In English thus The goodly frame and engine of this All So many years upheld shall one day fall Nor did they thus agree as by joynt consent touching the Quod sit of this truth That the world should end but they descended to the Quomodo or the manner of it affirming That it shall be consumed with fire St. Ierom doth affirm it of the Gentiles generally that they so conceived it I mean still the Philosophers or the learned Gentiles Quae quidem Philosophorum mundi opinio est omnia quae cernimus igne peritura The Stoiks and the Epicureans also did agree in this Quod mundus hic omnis ignescat That the whole world should be burnt with fire as Octavius telleth us in the Dialogue Eusebius not content to deal in such general terms gives us the names of Zeno Cleanthes and Chrysippus antient Stoicks all who have so declared The like saith Cicero of Panaetius whose fear it was Ne ad extremum mundus ignesceret lest the world should be consumed with fire See to this purpose also Seneca in his Book De Consolatione ad Mart. c. 26. Pliny in his Natural History l. 7. c. 16. The Sibylline Prophecies lib. 2. Oracul Lucans Pharsal and Ovids Metamorph. l. 1. who doth thus express it Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus Quo mare quo tellus correptaque Regia Coeli Ardeat mundi moles operosa laboret Which may be Englished as followeth Besides he call'd to minde that by the doom Of certain Fate a certain time should come When Sea and Land the Court of Heaven the frame Of this great work the world should burn in flame Who can peruse these passages of those Antient Gentiles and not conceive they had consulted with the writings of the Prophet Isaiah where it is said That the Heavens shall vanish away like smoke and the Earth wax old as doth a garment and also in another place That the Heavens shall be rolled together like a peece of parchment that is to say Like a Peece of Parchment shrivelled and shrunk up together by a scorching fire Who can peruse those passages of the antient Gentiles but must conceive that they were partly enlightned by the self-same Spirit with which St. Peter was enspired when he told us in his second Epistle saying The day of the Lord will come as a Thief in the night in which the Heavens shall pass away with a great noyse and the Elements shall melt with fervent heat the Earth also and the works that are therein shall be utterly burnt Cap. 4.10 And in the next save one as followeth Looking for and hastning to the coming of the day of God in which the Heavens shall perish with fire and the Elements melt with fervent heat Were it a thing to be admitted in Chronology I could not but believe that these antient Gentiles had ploughed with St. Peters Heifer and from him borrowed their discourses of the worlds conflagration And now I am faln into the writings of those antient Gentiles and found what they conceived of the Souls immortality and the consumption of this world by a burning fire I will not leave them till they have delivered their opinions also concerning the estate of the soul departed and the glories of eternal life in the world to come In which they have expressed themselves in so clear a manner that we may justly say as Octavius did Aut nunc Christianos Philosophos esse aut Philosophos fuisse jam tunc Christianos That either the Christians are Philosophers or the old Philosophers were Christians For that there was a Paradise or some place of delight and pleasure for the reception of the souls of vertuous persons appeareth by that sacred speech of Zoroaster the antientest of the Sages amongst the Gentiles and one not much short of the time of Abraham with whom he is supposed to have been contemporary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Seek Paradise saith he that is to say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that all enlightned recess of souls as Pletho the Scholiast doth expound it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A Quire of the divine powers encircling the Father as Psellus glosseth on that Text but Psellus on occasion of the words aforesaid goes a little further 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. It concerneth us saith he to make haste unto the light
whole Text is expounded of Christs descent into Hell as hath been proved at large in the foresaid Article This finally is the very place to which the Devils who exclaimed against Christ our Saviour for coming to torment them before their time desired him that they might not go And they besought him saith St. Luke ne imperaret illis ut in Abyssum irent i. e. That he would not command them to go into the deep or rather into the Abysse or the bottomless pit as the word is rendred thrice in the Revelation Abyssus therefore must be Hell or the house of torments prepared for the Devil and his Angels against the judgment of that great and terrible day which they were so afraid to enter that they besought the Lord not to send them thither The third word used for Hell in the holy Scripture is Tartarus used onely by St. Peter and that but once God spared not saith he the Angels that sinned but having bound them with chains of darkness detrusos in Tartaro tradidit cruciandos cast them down into Hell to be kept there to the day of judgment Where Tartarus though Englished Hell is not that very place of torment to which they shall be doomed in the judgment day but the out-skirts or suburbs of it the prison in the which they lie bound in the chains of darkness But whether it be Hell it self or the dungeon to it the antient Gentiles who best knew the true meaning of it have made it a dark place in the deeps of the Earth and therefore called by Ovid Tenebrosa Tartara Thus Hesiod also telleth us of it that the dungeon of Tartarus is as much under the Earth as Heaven is above it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as his words there are And so did Virgil understand it when he told us this Tartarus ipse bis patet in praeceps tantum That Tartarus is twice as deep as the Heaven is high And in a prophecy of one of the Sibyls which I finde often cited by the antient Fathers it is described to be a place in the lower parts of the Earth For speaking of the day of judgment it is there affirmed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That then the gaping Earth shall discover the Tartarean dungeon That they did also use the word for the place of torments is evident by that of Anacreon an old drunken Poet who giveth this reason why he was so loath to die and forsake this world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Because he feared to go to Tartarus And so St. Augustine understood it when he said of Christ That he descended unto Tartarus but felt there no torments The fourth and last word was Gehenna or Ge-Hinnom a word not known amongst the Gentiles and onely used by Christ when he spake to the Iews whose it was originally and by St. Iames in his Epistle to that scattered Nation who very well understood the true meaning of it For Ge-Hinnom or the Valley of Hinnom was a Dell or Valley near Ierusalem in which there was a fire continually burning partly to consume the dead Carkasses and filth of the City and partly for the sacrificing of those wretched Children which were offered to the Idol Moloch Which making it a place both of stink and terror it came to be a type of Hell-fire it self and for the fire of Hell or for Hell it self was used by Christ and his Apostle as before was said the Hebrew word being mollified and made Gehenna Hell is called many times Gehinnon saith Peter Martyr because a Vale being a low and deep place doth resemble Hell Quod infra terram esse creditur which generally is believed to be under the Earth A place of fiery torments saith Martin Bucer and therefore called Gehenna ignis or the Hell of fire in St. Matthews Gospel These are the several words used by the sacred Pen-men of the New Testament when they speak of Hell And all being laid together will amount to this That it is a dark and dismal place in the deeps of the Earth prepared by God originally for the devil and his angels and secondarily for impenitent sinners where they shall fry for ever in unquenchable flames and see no other light but the fire that burns them And this being properly the punishment reserved in Hell for those who are condemned to that bottomless pit I shall insist the more upon it Not looking here upon the separation of the wicked from the love of God or the despair which they grone under or the guilt of conscience which either are but poena damni the loss of that which Gods beloved do enjoy in the Heavenly glories or are in part inflicted on the wicked man in this present life For unto this relates those Parables in St. Matthews Gospel where it is said by Christ That the Angels shall gather out of his Kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity and shall cast them in caminum ignis into the furnace of fire And in the Parable of the Net we have it in the same words in caminum ignis Thus the rich glutton in St. Luke is said to be tormented in those fiery flames And in the twentieth of the Revelation it is called expresly Stagnum ignis sulphuris A lake of fire and brimstone as was said before A truth communicated to and by the Prophets of the former times who give us this description of Tophet or the Valley of Hinnom That the pile thereof is fire and much wood that the breath of the Lord is like a stream of brimstone to kindle it and that the stream thereof shall be turned into pitch and the dust into brimstone And Malachi speaking of the day of judgment telleth us That it shall burn like an Oven and that all which do wickedly shall be as the stubble Quos inflammabit dies veniens whom that day when it cometh shall burn up A truth so known among the Gentiles whether by tradition of their Ancestors or conversation with the Iews we dispute not here that by the verses of the Poets and the works of their most grave Philosophers as Minutius telleth us Illius ignei fluminis admonenâ—ur homines Men were admonished to beware of that burning lake To which it were impertinent to adde the testimonies of the Antient Fathers by one of which it is called Divinus ignis Poenale incendium by a second Ardor poenarum by a third Aeternus ignis by a fourth sic de coeteris And though a Question hath been made as all things have been questioned in these captious times whether this fire be true and real or onely metaphorically called so in the Book of God yet by all sound Interpreters it is thus agreed on as hath been very well observed by a learned Iesuite Metaphoram esse non posse quae sit tam perpetua That such a constancy of expression
Cajetan was a publick Confession and in generals onely sed non confessio Sacramentalis Not such a private and particular one as is now required not such a Sacramental one as is now defended But we might well have saved this particular search it being ingenuously confessed by Michael de Palacios a Spanish Writer That notwithstanding all their pains to found it on some Text of Scripture they are so far from being agreed amongst themselves that it is much to be admired Quanta sit de hac re concertatio What contention there is raised about it and how badly they agree with one another And if they have no better ground for the main foundation how little hopes may we conceive of finding any good in their superstructures And yet upon no better grounds do they exact a most unreasonable particularity of all mens affairs to be delivered to them in confession requiring of all persons being of age a private and distinct confession of all and every known mortal sin open and secret of outward deed and inward consent together with all circumstances thereof though obscene and odrous not fit to be communicated to a modest ear and that too once a year at least if they do not oftner For this we need not go much further than the Council of Trent where we shall finde Oportere à poenitentibus omnia peccata mortalia quorum post diligentem sui discussionem conscientiam habent in confessione recenseri etiamsi occultissima sunt tantum adversus duo ultima Decalogi mandata remember that they divide the last Commandment into two commissa c Which how impossible it is to do should one go about it what an intanglement it may prove unto the conscience of a penitent sinner and what a temptation also to the Priest himself to be acquainted with particulars so unchast and lustful I leave to any sober Christian to determine of who shall finde more hereof in Alvares Pelagius de Planctu Ecclesiae L. 2. Art 2 3 27 73 83. and Agrippa de Vanitate Scientiarum cap. 64. Writers of their own than I think fitting at this time they should hear from me who do not love to rake in such filthy puddles So then the business of Confession doth stand thus between us That we conceive it to be free whereas those of Rome will have it obligatory we that it is Iuris positivi onely but they Iuris divini we that it is a matter of conveniency and they of absolute necessity And then for the performance of it they do exact a punctual enumeration of all sins both of commission and omission together with all the accidents and circumstances thereunto belonging which we conceive in all cases to be impossible in some not expedient and in no case at all required by the Word of God Now as we disagree with those of the Church of Rome about the nature and necessity of private confession so have we no less differences with the Grandees of the Puritan faction about the efficacy and power of Sacerdotal Absolution which they which speak most largely of it make declarative onely others not so much whereas the Church hath taught us that it is authoritative and judicial too Authoritative not by a proper natural and original power for so the absolving of a sinner appertains unto God alone but by a delegated and derived power communicated to the Priest in that clause of their Commission Whose sins soever ye remit they are remitted and whose sins soever ye retain they are retained Iohn 20.23 Which proves the Priest to have a power of remitting sins and that in as express and ample manner as he can receive it But though it be a delegated Ministerial power yet doth not the descent thereof from Almighty God prove it to be the less judicial Then Judges and other Ministers of Justice sitting on the Bench may be said to exercise a judicial power on the lives and fortunes of the Subjects because they do it by vertue of the Kings Commission not out of any Soveraign power which they can chalenge to themselves in their several circuits Now that the Priests or Ministers of the Church of England are vested with as much power in forgiving sins as Christ committed to his Church and the Church to them the formal words Whose sins soever ye remit they are remitted c. which are still used in Ordinations do expresly signifie Which though some of the Grandees of the Puritan faction have pleased to call Papisticum ritum an old Popish ceremony foolishly taken up by them continued with small judgment by our first Reformers minore adhuc in ecclesia nostra retentus and with far less retained by the present Church yet we shall rather play the fools with the Primitive Christians than learn wit of them And for the exercise of this power we have this form thereof laid down in the Publick Liturgy where on the hearing of the sick mans confession the Priest is to absolve him with these formal words viz. Our Lord Iesus Christ who hath left power unto his Church to absolve all sinners which truly repent and believe in him of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences And by his authority committed unto me I absolve thee from all thy sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Amen In which we finde that the Sacerdotal power of forgiving sins is a derived or delegated Ministerial power a power committed to his Ministers by our Lord and Saviour but that it is Iudicial also not Declarative onely It is not said That I do signifie or declare that thou art absolved which any man may do as well as the Priest himself but I do actually absolve thee of all thy sins which no mortal man can but he In this the Priest hath the preheminence of the greatest Potentate And in this sense it is that St. Chrysostome saith Deus ipse subjecit caput Imperatoris manui Sacerdotis i.e. That God himself hath put the head of the Prince under the hand of the Priest For as no man whatsoever although he use the same words which the Minister doth can consecrate the Elements of Bread and Wine into the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ because he wants the power of Order which should inable him unto it so no man not in Priestly order can absolve from sin though he may comfort with good words an afflicted Conscience or though he use the same words which are pronounced by the Minister in absolution The reason is because he wants the power of order to which the promise is annexed by our Saviour Christ which makes the sentence of the Priest to be so judicial which when the penitent doth hear from the mouth of the Minister he need not doubt in foro conscientiae but that his sins be as verily forgiven on Earth as if he had heard Christ himself in foro