as asserted by the Church in those writings which opposed Christian Religion § 1. Maker of Heaven and Earth § 2. His only Son § 3. Conceived by the holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary § 4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate c. § 5. Rose again the third day § 6. Ascended into Heaven thence c. § 7. The Holy Ghost § 8. Holy Catholick Church c. CHAP. V. The Truth of the Gospel-History attested by Secular Writers § 1. Old Antagonists did not persist in the denial of any point of Gospel-History save that of Christs Resurrection and the manner of their denying it proves the Truth of it § 2. Josephus his Story of John Baptist accords with Gospel-History § 3. His Text in testimony of Jesus vindicated from the Exceptions of Vossius c. § 4. Josephus his date of Christs and the Baptists Story falls in with Gospel-Chronology § 5. The Stories of Herod Herodias Aretus Artabanus Philip Lysanias in Josephus Tacitus Suetonius timed to Sacred Chronology § 6. The Twin-Priesthood of Annas and Caiphas at Christs Baptism and Passion cleared § 7. The Date of Philip the Tetrarch his Death CHAP. VI. The Date of Christs Birth as it is asserted by the Church maintain'd by Scripture § 1. Christ homaged by the Magi early after his Birth § 2. Christ born and Baptized the same day of the year § 3. God would have the Church observe the day of Christs Birth The Priestly Courses the Character of it which from the first Institution by Solomon to the last and fatal year of the Second Temples standing were never interrupted § 4. The Calculation of these courses leads us to the Conception and Birth of the Baptist and our Saviour § 5. Christs Baptism and John's Ministry in the same year of Tiberius Reign point out the same thing Objections answered § 6. The taxing of all the world ill-confounded with that of Syria CHAP. VII Josephus his Suffrage to the Evangelists in the Substance of their History of Christ. § 1. He appropriates the Compellation Christ to our Jesus speaks of the Churches growth in a Gospel-stile § 2. Describes Christs Disciples by Evangelical Characters gives the Evangelists Reasons why others did not embrace the Gospel § 3. He peremptorily asserts Christs Miracles how he came to a certain information thereof Appion and Justus would have found it out if he had proceeded here upon presumptions and uncertainties § 4. He describes Christs Miracles after the Evangelical Model § 5. And affirms them to have been such as the Prophets had foretold The Touch-stone of Canonical History § 6. He asserts Christs Resurrection with all its Circumstances CHAP. VIII Josephus confirms St. Lukes History of Herod Agrippa § 1. He paints him in Evangelical Colours as the Jews favourite as a Prodigal as much in the Tyrians Debt and therefore displeased with them c. § 2. He Dates his Death according to St. Luke St. James Martyred in the third a Famine at Rome in the second and third In Judaea in the fourth of Claudius § 3. He describes his Death after St. Lukes Style Two Acclamations immediately after the second he was struck by a Messenger of Death an Owle § 4. Angels assume what form the divine mandat prescribes Evil Angels God's Messengers § 5. Herod the Great died of the like stroke Josephus gives the natural Symptoms of Agrippa's Disease § 6. A Digression touching St. Paul's Thorn in the Flesh. CHAP. IX Other Secular Witnesses to the Truth of Sacred History § 1. Phlegon of the Darkness and Earthquake at Christs Passion § 2. Thallus his mistaking that Darkness for an Eclipse § 3. The Records of Pagan Rome touching that and other Occurrences § 4. The Chronicles of Edessa though Apochryphal yet true Julian's Prohibition of the use of secular Books in Christian Schools his Testimony § 5. Moses his History of Joseph attested by Pagans § 6. His History of himself § 7. Of Noah Balaam c. avouched by Secular Writers CHAP. X. The Adversaries forced upon very great Disadvantages to their own Cause by reason that they could not for very shame resist the Evidences brought in defence of Sacred History § 1. Christ accused of working by the Prince of Devils that Accusation withdrawn in open Court and this Plea put in against him that he made himself a King and therefore was an Enemy to Caesar § 2. Pety Exceptions rebound upon the heads of their Framers § 3. The Modern Sceptick's half-reasons too young to grapple with old Prescription § 4. Christs Works Gods Seal to his Mission § 5. The present Age as able to judge of the Nature of those Works as that was wherein they were done § 6. Atheistical Exceptions against particular points of Religion an Hydra's head yet they all stand upon one neck and may be cut off at one blow by proving the Divine Original of Religion BOOK IV. THE ARGUMENT 4. The Divine Original of Sacred Writ is as demonstrable as the being of a God from the Infinity of Wisdom express'd in its Prophecies and of Power in its miracles THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. The Being of a Deity Demonstrated § 1. The Existence of a Deity demonstrable from the frame of the world the composition of humane bodies § 2. The Garden of the Earth did not fall by chance into so curious and well order'd knots The ingenuity of Birds sings the Wisdom of their Maker c. § 4. The Heavens declare the glory of God CHAP. II. The Author of Christian Religion hath stamp'd thereon no less manifest Prints of infinite Science than the Maker of the World hath left upon that his Workmanship § 1. Heathen Prophecies the Result of Ratiocination § 2. From general Hints which for mens torments God might permit the Devil to communicate § 3. The Ambiguity of Oracles on purpose to hide the Ignorance of them that gave them § 4. It was by chance they spake truth § 5. Scripture-Oracles distinct of pure Contingencies their Sence plain punctually fulfill'd CHAP. III. Instances of Prophecies fulfill'd whose Effects are permanent and obvious to the Atheists Eyes if he will but open them § 1. Predictions that Israel would reject their own Messia made by Jews Confession many hundreds of years before Christ. § 2. The Prophets foretell Gods Rejection of the Jews for their Rejection of his Son § 3. Texts proving a final Rejection Christs Blood calls down this vengeance § 4. These Menacies executed to the full Temple City and all vanish'd Spirit of Prophecy past from the Synagogue to the Church CHAP. IV. Gematrian Plaisters too narrow for the Sore § 1. The Ark. § 2. Holy Fire § 3. Urim and Thummim § 4. Spirit of Prophecy in the Second Temple § 5. Exorcisme and Bethesda's all-healing vertue the second Temples Dowry CHAP. V. The Jews rejected Messias to be called the God of the whole Earth and all other Gods eternally to be rejected § 1. The God of Israel every where worship'd where Christian Religion
dispencing of it as to several other heads of it While Celsus will needs make the Royal Law useless and needless as to the most part of it There is nothing saith he in the Christian Discipline new or worthy of commendation but is common to it and the Philosophers who before Christ have taught that there is to be expected Rewards of Virtue and Mulcts for Sin in the other World Orig. contr Cel. 1. 4. Christ tell us saith he we ought not to worship Gods made with hands that the Father is to be worship'd in Spirit Why we Philosophers account not Images of the Gods to be Deities we know that the Workmanship of wicked Artificers and villanous men as many times they are that grave these Images cannot be Gods we have learn'd of Heraclitus that they who adore liveless Statues do as simply as they that talk to Walls of the Persians that the Deity is not comprehended within any Structure made with hands and of Zeno Citiensis in his Book of the Common-wealth that he need not build Chappels that prepares the Temple of his own Soul for the entertainment of God Those very Laws which the Madaurencian Philosophers blamed as destructive to humane Societies Celsus mentions with Commendation as far more ancient than Christ. They have also saith he these Laws Thou must not repel injuries If any man smite thee on thy cheek turn the other to him this is an old Dictate long since utter'd by Socrates when he was disputing with Crito and mention'd by Plato in his Timaeus Orig. contr Cel. 7. 17. upon the same account he mentions the commendations which Christ gives to Humility Purity of Heart Pacateness of Spirit c. as better expressed by Plato in his Books of Laws advising him that would be happy to pursue Righteousness with an humble pure and pacate Mind Id lib. 5. cal 8. And the Caution that Christ gives against Covetousness Celsus in the same place affirmeth to have been derived from Plato whose saying that it is impossible for any man to be very rich and very good he parallels to that of Christ It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven The mortiferousness of these Waters is to be cured by casting in that cruze of Salt which I have already exhibited and brought to hand in the second Book where I shewed that whatsoever points of abstruse knowledge occurr in the Schools they are beholding to the Temple for and are but Beams of that Light which Christ or his Spirit in the Prophets communicated to the World the last of which Prophets Writings are near as old as the first of Gentile Philosophers It were endless to enumerate the ecchoes of Christs Law which those Rocks that oppose it so articulately reverberate as a steadily listning Ear may take in the beginning middle and end of every Evangelical Precept from those mock-sounds in Heathen Authors I shall not therefore enlarge this Section with more Instances but conclude it with this Observation That the Adversaries in making reply to our urging them with the excellencie of Christs Law would not have taken that course as puts them upon such self-contradictory Salvoes if they durst for very shame the contrary was so palpable have denied them to be Christs Briefly we find in the Pagan Writers what they took to be Christ's Law and that which they opposed as such is the very same with that that the Gospel presents as such not one Egg is more like another than that Bracelet of Pearls which our Saviour fitted to the necks of his Disciples is to that which these impure Swine trample under their feet CHAP. IV. Every Article of the Apostles Creed to be found as asserted by the Church in those Writings which opposed Christian Religion § 1. Maker of Heaven and Earth § 2. His only Son § 3. Conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary § 4. Suffered under Pontius Pilat c. § 5. Rose again the third day § 6. Ascended into Heaven thence c. § 7. The holy Ghost § 8. Holy Catholick Church c. § 1. 3. THe sum of the Christian Faith taught by Christ and his Apostles is intirely and in every branch of it recorded as such in the Authors that disputed against it For order and brevities sake I shall here instance in the several Articles of it comprised in that most admirable Compendium of it the Apostles Creed which as it has been taken for such by all Christians so it has been opposed as such by all Adversaries Article 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth That this Article as it is now profest by the Church and laid down in the New Testament was from the beginning held forth as a point of that Doctrine which Christ and his Apostles Preach'd and therefore not wrongfather'd upon them is manifest from those quotations out of Pagan Authors who affronted it upon that very account and only Reason because it was Christ's Doctrine Celsus from the practice of the Ophiani Hereticks who worship'd the Serpent as bestowing upon our first Parents the knowledge of good and evil a gift which God envied them as they blasphemously speak objects that Christians contrary to that faith which they profess worship another God than the Creator of all things to wit the Serpent Or. Con. Cels. 5. 16. As Celsus doth here confess that that Doctrine which our Bible exhibites touching Gods prohibiting Adam to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and the Serpents prevailing with Adam to eat of that Tree and the opening of Adam's eyes thereupon to discern good and evil and the Serpents infinuating to Adam that God envied him that knowledge c. was the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles so his charging upon the Church that impious Practice of these Heriticks misgrounded upon the Churches Faith and which the Church exprest her abhorrencie of was no more equal dealing than that which the Romanists measure out to the British and other Protestant Churches when they lay to her charge the practices of such as are at as great a distance from Communion with her as with them You Christians saith Celsus profess you believe in and worship God the Creator of this Universe but since Plato saith it is hard to find out and know that God and impossible to communicate the knowledge of him to another is it like that you of all other men should attain to the knowledge of this God being fast bound in chains of ignorance so as you cannot see what is pure Idem 7. 14. Compare what the Christians teach with what the Philosophers guess concerning God and the controversie which of us have attained to a more perfect knowledge of God will easily be determined That God created man after his own Image was the Doctrine of Christ and the Primitive Church appears from Celsus his arguing that if the Christans
the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be the Son of God by whom he made the World to be in the Order and Degree of a Principle which was all I produc'd it for in this Section but my general Position laid down in the first Section of this Chapter That what the Gospel asserts in Thesi of our Jesus the Platonick School asserted in Hypothesi concerning him that was to relieve Mankind Plato's Doctrine of Purgation came so near ours saith St. Austin de vera Religione cap. 4. as many Platonicks upon that account turn'd Christian Paucis mutatis verbis sententiis aut si hoc non facerent nescio utrùm possent ad ea ipsa quae appetenda esse dixerunt cum istis faecibus viscóque revolare ex Platonis Phaedro de Legibus Timaeo With the alteration of a few words and sentences and if they had not I cannot tell how they could with the Birdlime and dregs of those their Errors which Christian Religion confuteth have flown back to that good they said was to be desired and those their sound Principles which both we and they joyntly hold The only thing they disgusted being the application of those things to Christ they stumbling at the same Stone at which the Jews stumbled the Cross of Christ and taking it in scorn that so mean a man as Jesus of Nazereth should be reputed to be the Saviour to be that Principle that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Son of God that was to enlighten every one that comes into the World out of whose fulness all our wants were to be supplied by the participation of whose Wisdom we are made wise c. For St. Austin when he saith He could not find in their Books that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was come into the World came to his own and his own received him not took upon him the Form of a servant and humbled himself to the death of the Cross. Must not be understood to deny that it was to be found or that himself had found in the Platonick Writings that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in order to humane Redemption was to come into the World to assume our nature to be wounded for our Transgressions for whoever it was by one or more that man-kind was to be relieved that one or more must as we have heard the Oracle the God of Philosophers as they stiled him deliver descend from his or their supercelestial place into his Dungeon of Earth and in 〈◊〉 or their assumed body or bodies endure all the miseries of this life c. as Sect. 3. cap. 4. hath been quoted out of which sentence not only of Plato but of all that exchanged not the old Traditional Philosophy for the Kitching-Experiments of Greece whom Jamblicus compares to Ships without Balast for that they had emptyed themselves of what they had received by the old Tradition de mysteriis tit de nominibus sacris we have been all this while boulting the Bran of their conceipted Multiplicity of God-saviours by the Sierce of their more sober and considerate Doctrine poured out into the bosom of their friends sequestred from the Censure of the Vulgar before whom it was not safe to speak all they thought Difficile est negare credo si in concione quaeratur sed in hujusmodi concessu facillimum Cicero de natura deorum lib. 1. It is an hard matter I confess to deny this in the hearing of the multitude but very easie in such a select Assembly of friends and Philosophers And have thereby gain'd from them the unforc'd confession of this Evangelical Truth That man's restauration unto Communion with and Conformity to God cannot be obtained by the Incarnation of separate Spirits or blessed Souls but of God himself descending into the Dungeon of this Earth assuming our Nature and in that Nature suffering what was due to us and delivering to us the Divine Oracles Plato therefore in assigning this effect to a Multiplicity of holy Souls or Spirits coming down from Heaven in several Ages and Countreys was a popular Complyance with the vulgar Errour either out of fear to in 〈…〉 his Master Socrates his fortune or out of design to have the World believe as some of his great admirers did that himself was one of those officious Spirits or if he spake as he thought it was the froth and ebullition of that vanity of mind judicially inflicted upon such as knowing God did not worship him as God That this was his Errour and such an Errour as himself in his lucid Intervals renounc'd and was forsaken in by his own followers hath been sufficiently cleared if the weight of this point and the dissatisfaction of some most deservingly eminent Modern Divines did not make it shake upon its strongest supporters and as it were by its nods becken to us to strengthen it by Buttresses I shall therefore beg my Readers patience which I doubt not but to obtain of him if he can but construe that of the Epigrammatist Non sunt longa quibus nihil est quod demere possis Sed tu Cosconi disticha longa facis Mart. while I make it yet more manifest CHAP. V. None of their Local Saviours were able to save § 1. Their white Witches impeded in doing good by the black Lucan's Hag more mighty than any of their Almighties § 2. None of their Saviour's Soul-purgers § 3. Porphiry ' s Vote for one universal Saviour not known in the Heathen World Altars to the unknown Gods whether God or Goddess § 4. The unknown God § 5. Great Pan the All-heal his death § 6. Of their many Lords none comparable to the Lord Christ to us but one Lord. § 1. POrphyry Aug de Civitat 10. 9. 10. reference from experience confesseth the inability of those reputed good Spirits or God-Saviours to whom the Heathen applyed themselves for cure to gratifie the commerce to them their most severe worshippers in their desired Soul-purgations in that they were often impeded by their Superiours and their Superiours manacled in the Conjurers bands so as they durst not effect the desired Purgations so terrified by the black Witch as the white Witch could not loose them from that fear and set them free to do that good to which their own natures inclin'd them and their most religious Votaries solicited them Whereupon St. Austin facetiously thus explains Ergo ligavit iste iste non solvit O animae praedicanda purgatio ubi plus imperat immunda invidentia quà m impetrat pura beneficentia ubi plus valet malevolus impeditor quà m beneficus purgator animae The Cacodemon it seems could bind and the good Angel could not lose Oh praise-worthy purgation of Soul where unclean Envy obtains that power which pure Bounty cannot where the malicious opposer is of more strength than the liberal purger of the Soul But however ridiculous either the opinion or grownd of it were This Doctrine the Platonicks grounded upon that complaint which a
Proaem Empedocle Plinius sic nobile illud apud Graecos volumen Heraclidis septem diebus feminae exanimis ad vitam revocatae The like does Plutarch report of Aristaeus in his Romulus and of Thespesius de sera numinis vind We have here supererrogated having produc'd Pagan Testimony not only for the proving of matter of Fact to wit that this Article which we now profess was delivered by the Apostles to the Primitive Church but also their Confessions of the possibility of the thing believed § 6. Article 6. He ascended into Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God The Argument of Christ's Divinity drawn from his assumption into heaven they darken with so great a volly of Examples of their own Hero's as it would tire me to take up those Arrows one by one But that he ascended with that body that was crucified Celsus one while attributed to to delusion it being impossible as he argues that a body can be made immortal that being the Creature of inferiour Nature not of God as the soul is and all other immortal beings This Principle he borrows of the Manichees out of the dispute betwixt Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ lib. 4. cal 22. 23. Another while granting it true he denys it to be a sufficient proof of Christ's Deity because Cleomenes had by what Art God knows obtain'd that agility of body as he could fly up as fast and as far as a dart could even out of sight and that was as far as the Disciples could see Christ ascend But the gift which Christ shed forth after his Ascension spake him to have ascended far above the highest Heavens And as to the truth of this assertion That this was an Article of the Apostolical faith that Christ did ascend into heaven This Epicures carping at it is proof sufficient and his not daring to stand to his first Cavil that it was impossible but flying to another Salvo But it was no more than others before him bad done who yet thereby obtained not the repute of their deserving divine Honours is a tacit Concession to the Truth of the thing it self which is more than I here need to prove I will therefore hasten to the next Article which because of its relation to this I shall annex to the same Section Article 7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead The Epicurean Beast runs full mouth upon this Article and raiseth this crie It is the common guise of all Fanatick Prophets to profess themselves God or the Son of God or the divine Spirit and to give out such pretences as your Jesus made I am come into the world to save it from those impending judgements that are ready to fall upon it for its sins happy they that believe in me I will appear for their salvation when I come again in glory and great power with the heavenly host at which my coming I will adjudge all that reject me to everlasting Fire and they that now despise my menacies shall then when its too late to repent mourn and lament No Christian Catechist can better express the mind of this Article than this Philosopher here doth lib. 7. cal 3. A man of greater Reading than Celsus will be hard put to it to find one man before Christ's coming who did so much as pretend to his being appointed of God to be the Judge of all men And for those Mock-christ's who afterwards would have rob'd the blessed Jesus of this Prerogative and challeng'd it to themselves not one of them could shew their Commission under Gods hand as he did § 7. Article 8. I believe in the holy Ghost 1. As this implies the Equality and Consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father and the Son and his being therefore together with them to be worshipped as the Nicen Fathers expound it Porphyrie who for all Celsus his brags that he himself understood the bottom top and middle of our Religion was the best acquainted with our Scriptures both old and new of any Heathen Philosopher parallels it with his Master Plato's Opinion in St. Austin de Civitate 10. 23. quoted by R. vives and thus exprest by Porphyrie as St. Cyril contrà Julianum relates it Plato as well as the Christians held three Subsistences in the divine Essence to wit the All-Good and All-Great God the Father then the Creator God the Son and the third the Soul of the World the holy Ghost Tres Substantias in Essentia divina statuit Deum Opt. Max. deinde Creatorem tertiam Animam Mundi to wit that which moved upon the Waters the Lord and giver of Life as the abovesaid Fathers describe him What Beetle-brow'd Novices in Christianity are the Socinians who will not acknowledge the Revelation of the ineffable sacred Trinity to be communicated in these Evangelical VVritings wherein the Athenian Owls the Pagan Philosophers saw it so plainly exhibited as they not only take notice of it as an Article of our Religion in their Polemical Animadversions but offer to make proof that this point of Doctrine was embraced by their Wisemen even before it was attested by those wonders which God set as his seal for the confirmation of the Gospel So little did they deem it to be against Reason as by the conduct even of Reason they stumbled upon that Divine Notion which the Socinians will not submit their vain Reason to the belief of upon the strongest of all Reasons Divine Revelation proved to be so by the clearest of all evidences the demonstration of power exerted at the first manifest revelation of this Mystery at the Baptism of Christ when the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended upon the Son and a voyce was heard from the Father 2. As it implies still to go along with the same Father the Churches confession of her belief that the holy Ghost spake by the Prophets It is thus assronted by Celsus lib. 8. cal 16. what you boast of the Spirit speaking by your Old and New Testament-prophets we can out-vie if we had a mind to repeat those many Oracles of our Prophets and Prophetesses who sung future things with a Prophetick voice which they suck'd in from the Recesses of the Gods those many which were delivered from the Entrails of Sacrifices and premonstrated from other Prodigies or reveiled by the vive-voyce of the Gods themselves appearing in visible forms How many Cities have been founded by the advice of Oracles and been freed from Famine and Pestilence by following their direction or brought to utter ruine hy forgetting or despising their Counsels How many Colonies have been sent forth upon their Order thriving exceedingly while they followed their counsel To how many Princes and private men has it been fortunate or fatal to observe or sleight them How many barren Women have become fruitful How many maimed persons have recovered the use of their Limbs How many distracted persons the use of their Reason by following the advice of Oracles
will attest the intire sum and compleat form of sound Words to have been from Heaven For God by granting Miracles to be wrought by Christ and his Apostles in Christ's Name did immediately seal to Gods sending Christ and Christ's sending his Apostles as Heavens Plenipotentiaries to treat with the World about the Matters of Eternal Life The miraculous descension of the holy Ghost upon our Saviour at his Baptism was to point him out to his Fore-runner John the Baptist as that true Light which according to Prophecy and the general expectation of the Jews was come into the World he it is upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descend Upon seeing of which and hearing that voyce from Heaven This is my well-beloved Son the Baptist asserts him to be that Prophet which God promised to send to communicate his whole pleasure to the sons and daughters of men Christ's transformation in the holy Mount was to confirm the three Apostles in the Truth of that Voyce they heard This is my Son hear him that is whatever he shall speak in my Name what terms soever he shall propound to the World what way soever he shall chalk out to reconciliation let them be observ'd let no other be expected For I have made him my Ambassadour and given him full power to treat with the World When the Apostles returned from working Miracles the Question that Christ propounded to them was Whom do men say I am and the question he put to such as upon hearing or seeing the miraculous Cures he wrought on others applyed themselves to him for Cure was Believest thou that I am be Infinite Examples might be produc'd But this Proposition Miracles do immediately confirm the Divine Authority of the Speaker and consequently the Truth of whatsoever he delivers is so evident as it needs no proof 4. Lastly Matters of Fact granted and the Supernaturalness of any one thing done in confirmation of the Gospel proved affords Christians of the meanest Capacities ability sufficient to confirm themselves in a full assurance of the Truth of all Gospel assertions to convince the subtilest Gain-sayers as that Laick did the Arrians in the Council of Nice and to answer all Objections that ever were made or can be invented from those seeming absurdities impossibilities contradictions c. which the wittiest Sophister can make himself believe he finds in the Evangelical Religion For there cannot be yea and nay with God nor any thing impossible to him to whom it is possible to raise the dead and to do such stupendious Works as were wrought for the demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Gospel Si Ratio contrà Scripturarum authoritatem redditur quamlibet acuta sit fallit verisimilitudine nam vera esse non potest rursùs si manifestissime certaeque rationi velut Scripturarum authoritas objicitur non intelligit qui hoc facit non Scripturarum sensum ad quem penetrare non potest sed suum potiùs objicit veritati nec quod in eis sed quod in seipso velut pro eis invenit opponit August Marcellino Ep. 7. If Reason be alledged against the Authority of divine Scripture be it never so acute it is not true but deceives us with an appearance of Truth with a shadow of Reason Again if the Authority of Scripture seem to oppose manifest and certain Reason he that alledgeth that Authority does not understand the Text he quoteth and objects against that Truth which Reason presents not the sence of Scripture which he is not able to dive into but his own conceipt Neither doth he oppose against such Reason what he finds in the Text but his own gloss and Comment which he frames to himself And therefore when that Affricane Light thought he found any thing in Scripture that seemed contrary to Truth he concluded That it was but either a shew of Truth or a shew of Scripture and that either the Copy was corrupt or the Translation false or that he himself did not understand the Text aright August Hieron Ep. 19. vel mendosum ese codicem vel interpretem non esse assecutum quod dictum est vel me minimè intellexisse The same Purity and infinite Perfection of the Divine Nature that makes it impossible for God to lye makes it impossible that he should give his approbation and the Imprimatur to a self-contradicting absurd or unreasonable Book § 6. Judicious Plutarch in his Treatise of the Fortune of Alexander compares his attempt to subdue the World to Hercules his Combat with Hydra in that though he had no sooner dispatch'd one War but another sprung up yet by searing the places of the neck where the heads grew which he cut off he prevented the pullulation of fresh heads from those places that is by fortifying the places he gain'd with Garrisons he prevented the rising of the conquer'd at his back by which means at last he conquer'd all Nations Of like difficulty and immense labour is the undertaking to subdue Atheism in an heart posfest with which is a world of Devices and a Tongue prompted by such an heart is a World of Iniquity if not Epicurean infinite Worlds Jacob. 3. 6. Three of this Hydra's most lofty and blasphemous Heads are already dispatch'd and the Topicks whence they were rais'd the necks on which they grew sear'd by so feeling an application of each Argument to the Serpents only beloved temporal and earthly concerns as it may be hoped his delicacy will hardly indure the pain of a new fracture in those tender parts by the reviving of those Arguments against the Gospel which speak him a mere Novice in the great affairs of the World and not to know the State of that virile Age of the Roman Empire when the Gospel was first publish'd or render him uncapable of knowing when to hum when to kiss in a Play-house or of maintaining his right to what he challengeth as his Fathers Heir as his Mothers Son It may be some daunting to the Atheists some encouragement to the Church to see so many heads lye gasping at the feet of the meanest of her Sons And perhaps satisfie the expectations of modest persons as to what my Title promiseth to see three of those Horns that have with the greatest spite and disdain been pushing at the Gospel cast out by one so unskilful a Carpenter A work for three of the ablest Artists for God allows to every Horn a Carpenter Zech. 1. 20. Had this Monster no more Horns than Zechary saw in that prophetical Vision had this Hydra no more heads than Alexander's World had Kingdoms than that Lernean Serpent which Hercules flew had heads be they seven according to Naucrates Erythraeus nine according to Zenodotus or fifty according to Heraclides Ponticus his opinion my success hitherto might give me hopes at last to excind the last of them But how many Heads this Monster of Monsters hath he only knows before whom Hell is bare-fac'd and who searcheth the above-measure
call upon us to stand astonish'd and so much more as we cannot conceive any other Reason thereof but the Divine Will yet for men to frame to themselves an Image of Divine Justice inconsistent with that Mercy which God hath proclaim'd he hath treasured up in his Christ for all Nations to be manifest in its due and appointed time and in defence of their own foolish imaginations to plead Gods secret Counsel against his reveiled Purpose is to add the sin of Sacrilegious Impiety to that of barbarous inhumanity § 4. Thirdly In both which the Placits of the Millenaries touching the Gogick War are so deeply immerst as I wonder how such conceits could find place in the pious head of Mr. Meed as those are which he lays down rol 2. pag. 714. where propounding to himself this Question from what quarter of the World from what kind of men that huge Army was to come that should incompass the holy City he resolves it must be raised in America and consist of the Inhabitants of that Hemisphere that 's opposite to ours And next enquiring into the Cause of that their invading our World into the Arguments whereby Satan should ensnare them into this engagement he determines it can be for no other reason but that they may mend their Quarters possess themselves of a more fertile Soile and live and die here in this upper Hemisphere where they may enjoy a Resurrection which perhaps they think is a priviledge appropriated to this World of ours For this it is that they shall invade the holy City that is this upper half of the Earth the sole Seat of Righteousness and for their making this invasion in pursuit of these ends God shall rise up against them as so many Gyants fighting against Heaven and in an instant destroy them by Fire from Heaven Volum 2. book 3. p. 712. Let us examine these Responds of the greatest Oracle of the most refined Learning that ever opened its mouth in defense of the Millenaries Cause 1. Say that World be now as horrid as Germany or Gallia was in Caesars time may not the Cultivation thereof for more than a thousand years render it as fertile and delectable then as our World is now The old Serpent must be grown into his dotage if he can after a thousand years musing in his Den study out no better an Argument than that Topick affords to engage the Americans to invade this upper World 2. How can it be a manifestation of the righteous Judgment of God to destroy the Americans for that Crime which the Christian Hemisphere is a thousand times more deeply immerst in the guilt of than they who have suffer'd those things by us while we have been harasing those Countries as were enough to prejudice them for ever against the reception of that Religion whose professors are so unjust and barbarously cruel were it not that the Almightiness of Prophetick Truth will carry on the purpose of God against all the blocks that can be laid in their way to Christ by man Josephus scarce any where more bewrayes the spirit of a Pharisee than in lib. 12. cap. 13. of his Antiquities where he censures Polybius for saying Antiochus Epiphanes came to a miserable end for attempting to plunder Diana's Temple for saith he the intention of Sacrilege which he did not actually commit seems not to have been a thing worthy of such a punishment yet in the sequel of his discourse he recovers himself and speaks like a man of Reason If Polybius think that to have been a sufficient cause of his ruine with how much more probability may it be affirm'd that the vengeance of Heaven overtook him for that Sacrilege which he not only intended but perpetrated upon the Temple of Jerusalem with how much more reason may I argue against this cause of the Americans overthrow assigned by this learned man Must they perish for but designing an encroachment upon us who have made so many unjust encroachments upon them Must their thoughts of retaliation of repaying the inhabitants of this upper Plane that measure they have been meeting to them be punish'd by the Righteous Judge of all the Earth that respects not persons with so severe and suddain a destruction 3. How much less can the inflicting of so dreadful a vengeance upon them be imputed to their seeking a place of burial amongst us where they may lye down in hope of a Resurrection as conceiving in this part of the World to be that Elizium beyond God knows what Hills where the Souls of righteous men rest in joy as Dr. Heylin reports of them in his America can any thing be more strange or abhorrent to Christian ears than that either Satan should tempt them to or God punish them for such an undertaking 4. As it is an Article of Faith that the Church is Catholick that is at once in all its members in point of necessary Doctrine they all and every one in all ages and places holding the same form of sound words And successively in respect of Place as well as Time And therefore to assert the exclusion of any place much more one half of the Earthly Globe finally out of that Church bids defiance to the Christian Faith So 't is the confession of all that this Church shall be militant here on Earth as to the state of every particular Member who have remains of corruption within them to grapple with and as to the general state of the whole being incombred in all places with the bad neighbourhood of such visibly wicked ones as either maliciously excind themselves by separation or are justly for their contumacy cast out of her Communion such as make up the Devil's Chappel where-ever God hath his Church From whence will necessarily flow these inferences 1. That to put such an Interpretation upon dark and prophetick Texts as makes them present the Church on Earth in a state so triumphant as leaves her neither spawn of Corruption within nor the Seed of the Serpent without for the exercise of her Repentance Faith Hope Charity Patience is a giving of the lye to those numerous plain and open-fac'd Texts whose uncontroverted sence and words not capable of perversion inform us the direct contrary That the Net of the Gospel gathers good and bad which shall not be sever'd one from the other till the last day That the Tares grow with the Wheat till the end of the World That is the Local and visible Church shall have a mixture of formal Members in it that are not of it Insomuch as when Christ was personally present with the College of the Apostles they were not all clean that Church of his own gathering had a simpering Judas who could cry Hail Master and Kiss his Lord while he betray'd him And as all the visible Members are not good so the best and sincerest Member is not all good Venus hath her Mole the Moon her spots the best Christian his infirmities there is not a
gloss Where the Emperours and Senates shooe pinch'd them How much this State-maxime prejudic'd the Apostles CHAP. V. A prospect of the Holy Age the Age wherein the Gospel was first publish'd in respect of its skill in Theology § 1. Natural Theology then in its highest acme by the improvement of the Pythagorick Platonick and Socratical Philosophy Within that Century lived Varro his Encomium Scaevola and Caesar great Divines Cicero and Cratippus well seen in Natural Theology Seneca the Miracle of Humane Divines Thraseas under Nero a Martyr for Moral Divinity § 2. Prophetical Theology exploded by Pagan Philosophers Divination by Dreams and Oracles censur'd by Cicero Apollo ' s Oracles ambiguous at last silenc'd Phoebus Philippizing Chaldean prognosticators vain Praenestine Lots and Auguries decided Divination by Prodigies taunted This a barr to credulity towards the Gospel § 3. Historical Divinity decried in the Schools when the History of the Blessed Jesus was first published as reporting things unworthy of God The Apostles could never have hoped to induce the disputers of this world to a belief of as unlikely stories had they had no more than an arm of flesh to trust to The conclusion of the whole matter God's Tabernacle set in the Sun shining out in its greatest lustre of humane Sciences § 4. The Civick Religion both with the Vulgar and Politicians in high respect in our Saviours Age proved from the Philosophers salvo's by consequence and directly from several examples The world was enjoying her self Pigmalion like in the warm embraces of her-own-made sacred animals CHAP. VI. The Advantage the World had to try Apostolical Doctrine by the Touch-stone of the Septuagint § 1. The Septuagint was the worlds guard against all possible delusion The light of the Original Tradition shone out of the East Judaea the Navel of the earth had plenty thither Pythagoras Socrates Plato c. finding a Famine at home travell'd for the Corn of Heaven c. § 2. Josephus and the Church History of the Translation of the Seventy defended against Scaliger ' s exceptions Hermippus and Aristaeus reconciled by Anatolius The Authority of Socrates comes short here of Josephus § 3. The Sanhedrim held correspondency with the dispersion no harder a task for the Jews whose Mother-tongue was Hebrew and who for Commerce sake were forc'd to learn the Greek the common Language of the Empire to turn the Hebrew into Greek than for the Belgick Churches amongst us to turn a Dutch Bible into English § 4. Whence Ptolemy learn'd that curse he pronounc'd upon them that should add or take from the Seventy's Translation Whence the fiction of three days darkness and the application of Solomon ' s Text there is a time to rend § 5. The Legend of the golden letter'd Jehova Ptolemy might be a bad man and yet curious in point of Learning He was a kind of Jewish Proselyte and as good a one as Herod Poppaea c. God can make bad men Instruments of good The Fathers and Primitive Churches esteem of the Septuagint § 6. The Candour of the blessed Jesus in sending the picture of the Messiah drawn by the Prophets before he came in person that there might be no mistake of the person in appealing to a Religion pre-existing to and co-existing with that of his erecting CHAP. VII The World over run with Barbarous Ignorance when the Impieties of Turk Pope and Pagans imposed themselves upon its Credulity § 1. Platina his Censure of the sixth Century Pope Sabinian an Enemy to Learning monstrous Presages Phocas in Baronius his stile the Red Dragon gave the Title of Universal Bishop to Boniface the third § 2. As Darkness increased the Pope incroached till at last he set his foot upon the Necks of Princes The Eyes of those Centuries the Lights of the Church as they will be called were Darkness Formosus Stephen Romanus Theodore the second John the tenth and nine Popes succeeding him in less than nine Years Benedict the fourth Leo the fifth all Heads of the Roman Church like that Head in the Carvers Shop brainless These in the ninth Century § 3. The Popes of the tenth Century Baronius stiles abomination in the holy Place Genebrard reckons from the Hermophrodite Pope John or Joan above fifty in two hundred Years who were little better than Incarnate Devils amongst whose Predecessors was John the thirteenth a Stallion Benet the ninth in time succeeds a Monster made up of a Boar below and an Ass above § 4. The Popes of the eleventh Century light their Candle at the Devil's Match Silvester compounded with the Devil for the Papacy Onuphrius his Evasion obviated Benet rides the Devil in Purgatory He was a wondrous great Scholar that had learn'd his Grammar § 5. Paganism crept in in the dark before Commerce Heathens care to conceal their God-Births Minerva turns the tatling Crow out and takes the Bird of Night the Owl into her service the Eleusine Mysteries Mercury ' s hand upon his mouth Alexander must not reveil Aegyptian Mysteries nor Petronius his Ruffians the Secrets of Priapus As Traffick increased the World gives over teeming with new Gods Alexander Plato Caesar Aristaeus were born out of time to be made Gods As the Theology of those obscure times came to be enquired into by several Nations comparing Notes it grew out of Credit Euemerus his Sacred History Annons Birds CHAP. VIII The Apostolical Age was fortified against Surprisal by the External Advantages of Posts and Peace § 1. They find as speedy a way for conveyance of News as we Vibullius Caesar Sempronius Tiberius their incredible Posting Intelligence flew in Persia as fast as Cranes The Roman Eagle as swift of Wing as the English Unicorn is of foot § 2. That Age enjoyed so long a Peace as Intelligence might pass without Interruption Janus's Temple shut by Augustus a rare thing in the Roman Annals § 3. Tiberius had a peaceable Reign so had Caligula all the Warlike Marches that be made was in pursuit of the Cowardly Ocean running from him at the Tide and in lopping down the Bows of a Coppice Palsey-headed Claudius felt no shakings in his Empire no Trumpet of War then sounded but that of the Silver Triton in the Ficine Lake In Nero ' s third Year they had much ado to draw the Sword it had layen so long rusting in the Scabbard § 4. This peaceable Season was the Seed-time of Christ's Labourers wherein they dispenc'd the Gospel through the Empire CHAP. IX The Judean Stirs were the Empires Advantage against Surprisal § 1. Objections from the Commotions in Judea answered and retorted Those inconsiderable and not so great as that delicate and repining People would represent them § 2. The Stirs that were in Judea put the Ministers of State upon a more diligent enquiry into what there fell out whereby they got a more full information of the state of that great Controversie between the Jews and Christians § 3. The Judean Commotions drew the Imperial Eagle to
the point of obtaining Divine Honour at the Romans hands Augustus erected an Altar To the first begotten Suidas his story of Augustus his Altar defended Augustus his unhappiness in his Issue might probably put him upon referring the choice of a Successour to the Oracles determination His slighting Apollo argues the Answer he received not to have made for Apollo's credit § 5. Some passages touching this Argument in Tertullian cleared from the Anabaptistical gloss Where the Emperours and Senates shooe pincht them How much this State-maxime prejudic'd the Apostles § 1. NOtwithstanding that the World was so well fortified against Seduction by its being so well seen in the above-mentioned Arts yet had the Gospel found it in a disordered posture through its defect of polity this might have given an advantage to the Assaylants to subdue it to the belief of things not rationable or credible While every man is left to do what is good in his own eyes as the Jews were when there was no King in Israel the stragling Sheep may easily become the prey of Wolves and Foxes How many vast valiant expert and while well marshall'd terrible and inconquerable Armies have through want of Discipline in a disordered march been put to the Rout by a less strong and worse skill'd Enemy But the Gospel charged the world when it stood in a full field and well ranked body to receive the on-set not in that condition wherein the Danites found Laish careless and heedless without a Magistracy to put them to shame in any thing and keep them in order which was the great incouragement their Spies gave them to make an attempt upon that City Weem's Exercitations on Judg. 18. 7 8 10. For that part of the world wherein the Apostles obtain'd most ground was then united under the newly erected Standard of Augustus as General and under the Conduct of twelve as famous Gown'd Captains I mean Lawyers and Politicians as ever appear'd at one Muster viz. Sleidan Clav. Hist. lib. 2. Lucillus Balbus P. Octavius Balbus C. Aufidius C. Juventius C. Orbius Sext. Papirius Lucius Servius Sub. Rufus Tesâ—a Offilius Casselius Tubero all flourishing in the Reign of Augustus who himself was the most substantial and well weighed Statist that meer Nature has exhibited to the world equal'd by few that have had the benefit of Sacred Politiques but for that they may thank their studying Machiavel more than Melchisedeck Of him the Heroick Poet under the shadow of Counsel draws as high an Encomium as any Prince is capable of in point of prudence for the Administration of Empire Excudent alii spirantia molliùs aera Tu regere Imperio populos Romane memento Hae tibi erunt artes Let others learn to mould brass do thou learn to govern men To these succeeded Sleidan Clav. Hist. l. 2. Caesius the two Aufidii l'acuvius Flavius Priscus Varus Labeo Father and Son the Son of that repute as he left his name to a Sect of Lawyers Nerva Father and Son to one of whom Coccejus Nerva Tacitus ascribes all kind of Knowledge both in Humane and Divine Laws and reports him to have been a man of that foresight in Civil Affairs as to prevent the seeing of that mischief which the dissoluteness of Tiberius at his beloved Capreae would immerse the Empire in he chose to end his dayes by a voluntary death notwithstanding the Emperours perswasions to the contrary Annal. lib. 6. both the Longini from whom the Cassian Sect had its Sirname and Original All these under Tiberius Alsted Cron. Juridicorum who in point of vafrous cunning deserv'd the name of Fox as much as he upon whom our Saviour bestowed that title Herod This was the Scheme of that Heaven of the Roman Empire when the Son of Righteousness enter'd upon his race from the one to the other end of it through the Zodiack of his Twelve Apostles beyond the circumference of whose Doctrine once deliver'd that Sun never moves in his illuminating the world with saving Light all pretended supernatural Revelations eccentrical to that are but the dwindles of blazing stars The two Luminaries Augustus of stay'd policy Tiberius of versatile craft moving successively through a Zodiack of Twelve Statists stars of the greatest magnitude that ever shin'd at once in the firmament of that State The two first Judges of the Universe that enter'd upon that preferment by way of inheritance assisted each of them with a full Jury of as able Lawyers as ever past Verdict together sitting successively upon the Bench when the Cause of the Gospel was first pleaded as if they had been impannell'd on purpose to take notice of the Evidence brought into Court The Empires skill in Law was at its highest exaltation when the Royal Law came out of Sion our great Law-giver disdaining to vie the Arcana of his Empire with any State-maximes but the very best of humane invention Would the blessed Babe have ventured to thrust in his head among these sage Councellours had he not been the everlasting Councellour the Antient of Dayes to set up his Post against this Post had it not been like that at the Temple Gate stability it self to erect his Kingdom against this so well model'd an Empire had not his been the gift of him that said Thou art my Son c § 2. Especially if it be further considered That the genius of the Roman Polity disgusted the introduction of any Foreign over the head of its own Domestick Religion Ovid shuts up the discourse of the translation of Aesculapius with an Epiphonema His tamen accessit delubris advena nostris though he had begun it with this Salvo of the Roman maxime Not to receive any foreign God till he had given a sign of his renouncing his former Altars quáque ipse morari Sede velit signis calestibus indicet optant Annuit his motisque deus rata pignora câ—istis Et repetita dedit oráque retro Flectit antiquas abiturus respicit aras c. Met. 15. The Senate would not allow their General Lutatius in the Punick War to consult the Oracle of the Goddess Fortune at Praeneste for this reason alledged by Valerius Max. cap. 3. l. 1. because the Roman Republick ought not to be administred by the Conduct or Counsels of any God but their own Tiberius himself saith Tertullian Apolog. cap. 5. could not obtain of the Senate an Edict to have our Jesus canonized for a God at Rome though he moved earnestly for it upon Pilate's Letters informing him what had past in Judaea Celsus that fierce enemy of Christian Religion in Orig. l. 4. Cal. 11 12. will allow the Jews their own Religion and if they please to esteem Christ their Lord and King illa se jacret in aula he will not envy him that honour in his own Countrey but that that obscure and despicable Nation should impose a God and a Religion upon the whole world this is that he so highly disgusts The Pestilence raging and the people running
the veneration of Antiquity the commonness of Custom lull'd it into a Lethean forgetfulness of its own handy-work as the perswasion that they were Gods indeed and that to their Religious Observances they were indebted for all the benefits were powred down upon them could not be eradicated by the closest and most convincing Arguments The conceit that they had found the Lips of those Statues warm in propitious responds their bosoms soft in gracious returns to their votaries that they had felt the beating of their Pulses in their declared liking or disliking of Persons and Actions proportionable to the Worlds Genius had so far prevail'd with this Pigmalion as his knowledge of the contrary is cast into a dead sleep while he is entertaining himself with these pleasing dreams Now had the Apostle attempted to interrupt the world in those fancied enjoyments with fancies had they instead of those Sacred Animals thrust into the Bed a dead Image or a Pillow stufft with Hair what could they have expected but to have been deservedly clamour'd against as men upbraiding the World with the imputation of more insensate Stupidity than can possibly seise upon a Rational Soul what leave those Gods under whose wings I have been brooded to this perfection of honour and happiness whose present relief I have as often found as invocated for one that was but the other day in Clouts and could not save himself when he was dared to do it to his face nor be heard in that fervent Prayer for releif he preferr'd to him whom he called his God and Father What reply could they have return'd to these expostulations had they seen no more in Christ than Man had they not known him to be the living as well as express Image of the living God to be that eternal word which by his power bears up all things and of power enough to bear down before him those strong men who had got such firm possession of the house as none no not among the most Rational Philosophers could 〈…〉 out but a stronger than they CHAP. VI. The Advantage the World had to try Apostolical Doctrine by the Touch-stone of the Septuagint § 1. The Septuagint was the worlds guard against all possible delusion The light of the Original Tradition shon out of the East Judaea the Navil of the earth had plenty thither Pithagoras Socrates Plato c. finding a Famine at home travell'd for the Corn of Heaven c. § 2. Josephus and the Church History of the Translation of the Seventy defended against Scaliger ' s exceptions Hermippus and Aristaeus reconciled by Anatolius The Authority of Socrates comes short here of Josephus § 3. The Sanhedrim held correspondency with the dispersion no harder a task for the Jews whose Mother-tongue was Hebrew and who for Commerce sake were forc'd to learn the Greek the common Language of the Empire to turn the Hebrew into Greek than for the Belgick Churches amongst us to turn a Dutch Bible into English § 4. Whence Ptolemy learn'd that curse he pronounc'd upon them that should add or take from the Seventy's Translation Whence the fiction of three days darkness and the application of Solomon ' s text there is a time to rend § 5. The Legend of the golden letter'd Jehova Ptolemy might be a bad man and yet curious in point of Learning He was a kind of Jewish Prosylite and as good a one as Herod Poppaea c. God can make bad men Instruments of good The Fathers and Primitive Churches esteem of the Septuagint § 6. The Candor of the blessed Jesus in sending the picture of the Messiah drawn by the Prophets before be came in person that there might be no mistake of the person in appealing to a Religion pre-existing to and co-existing with that of his erecting § 1. THis Age wherein the Gospel was first preach'd had besides all those fore-mentioned guards against surprisal the advantage of a peculiar Expedient to try the truth of what the Apostles publish'd even at their own bar and by their own avowed Principles and to have proved it false had it indeed so been to the Apostles own faces themselves being Judges by means of Ptolemy's having procured some hundreds of years before our Saviours incarnation the Translation of the Old Testament into that Tongue that had 〈◊〉 the vulgar Tongue of the Empire some while before and was in the age of the Apostles familiar to the learned Romans Those sacred Oracles having been lock'd up from former ages in Hebrew a Tongue barbarous to the Western World So that it could have no knowledge of the Contents of those Divine Writings but what was communicated by the Oral Tradition of Jewish Teachers From whence notwithstanding those most famous and incomparably knowing Philosophers that travell'd for Learning into Judaea Aegypt and the Countries circumjacent gather'd such Maxims as served them like so many straight Rules to discover in a great measure the crookedness and deviations of the commonly received opinions touching God and Nature The first Graecian Theologists Pherecydes Pythagoras and Thales are acknowledged with one mouth to have been the Scholars of the Aegyptians Chaldaeans and Hebrews as Josephus saith contra Appion lib. 1. for the confirmation of which he alledgeth the authority of Hermippus a Pagan Historian who in the life of Pythagoras lib. 1. writes that Pythagoras did translate out of the institutions of the Jews many things into his philosophy and Clearchus Aristotle's Scholar who in his Dialogue of the Jews brings in his Master confessing he had learned the best part of his knowledge of a certain Jew The Swarm that hived in Plato's mouth came from Mount Carmel and was a Call of the School of the Prophets there The Honey which that Attick Bee made was gathered from the Flowers of Moses's Paradise and Solomon's garden of which his Philosophy so perfectly relisheth as many of our ancient Christian Writers wondering at the congruity of his Doctrine to Christian Verity conceived he had conference in Aegypt with the Prophet Jeremy of which opinion St. Austin sometimes was but retracted it upon the account of that light which Cronology gave him to see his error it being thence apparent that Plato was born almost an hundred Years after Jeremy was dead and pitcheth upon this that this busie and industrious Bee suck'd that part of his Philosophy from the lips of an Interpreter as he did the Aegyptian as well as he could de civit 8. 11. titulus Unde Plato illam intelligentiam potuerit acquirere qua Christianae pietati propinquavit Whence Plato might possibly acquire that Understanding whereby he approach'd so near to Christian Religion Of which that learned Father there makes proof by instancing in several Platonick Sentences and Notions so agreeing in the Main and yet differing in the Circumstance as speaks Plato to have partly understood Moses his sence but not his words But what need I urge the Authority either of St. Austin or Justin Martyr who in
Senatus nè legantur quidem libri 4. That Caesar's using this stratagem to procure to himself the Title of King by an Argument drawn from the danger would otherwise accrew to the Romans si salvi esse vellemus that is by threatning them with an expectation that some Nation or other would have the wit to take hold of the opportunity and now that the whole World was expecting the accomplishment of that Prophecy would tender a Person to the Romans themselves to be their King if they did not in this particular get the start of other States and therefore it would be their wisest course to change the name of Dictator into that of King this strategem I say of Caesar was looked upon by Cicero to be of that consequence tendency to the over-turning of that Form of Government under which that City had grown up to those dimensions of Greatness and to the Introduction of Monarchy as that Commonwealths-man thinks it worth the while to obviate those Pretences by invalidating the Authority of all Oracles and by charging the Antistites to whose custody those Oracles were committed that they would as the better Ages before them had done still keep them still secret and not permit the People of Rome to be sollicited by Arguments drawn from thence to think of changing the Government and bringing in a new Form To dispatch at once this Point of the Sibylline Oracles I find a great deal of pudder about them both under Augustus and Tiberius which I think must be imputed to Julius his troubling those waters in his fishing for the Title of King out of them Tacitus annal lib. 6. 125. which in effect he obtained for he came into the Senate in Scarlet after the guise of the Alban Kings The Senate gave him the Title of Redeemer and ordered a temple to be built and dedicated to Liberty with this Inscription on his Ivory Statue The Unconquerable God and that his Image should be erected in the Capitol by the ancient K. standing upon the Globe of the World with this Inscription Semideus est Dion 43. Hinc illae lacrymae in Tully And truly when I diligently read through his two Books of Divination he seems to have had no other Scope in his whole Treatise than to prevent those destructive as he thought Alterations of Polity which the belief of Sibyls Prophecy and the Eastern Fame would incline the City to if their great Commanders were suffered to tread in Caesar's steps and to urge the belief of them upon the Senate and their Authority in order to the restoring of the so long-since exploded Kingly Government § 6. But Tully washeth the Ethiopian while he seeks to eradicate the belief of this Prophecy out of the minds of the People or to disswade the Great Ones from giving out themselves for the persons pointed at in this Oracle For though Augustus rejected the Title of Lord as also that of Emperour and made shew once of deposing the Imperial Crown yet in those pretensions to humility this Politick Prince set his face counter to the Stairs towards which he rowed and as to his ambition of the Universal Crown his History is far more fertile of such like stratagems than Julius's Suetonius reckons no less than 17 Prodigies which spoke Augustus to be a person design'd by Heaven for that Universal Monarchy or something equivalent to it I shall name those only which bear manifest prints of the Oriental Prophecy The Velitri had an old Tradition that a Citizen of theirs should in process of time gain the possession of the whole World quandóque rerum potiturum the very words whereby both Suetonius and Tacitus express the sence of the Eastern Oracle the Devil being in this God's Ape and by this animating them to wage War with the Romans till their striving for a dead Horse as the Jews in Vespasians Wars had brought them to the brink of ruin and would utterly have destroyed them if they had not at last been perswaded that that Respond portended the Sovereignty of Augustus who was educated though not born amongst them Suet. Octav 94 Penè ad exitium suicum populo R. belligeraverant serô tandem documentis apparuit ostentum illud Augusti potentiam portendisse Observe still how the Roman writers stretch the Sence of Oriundus Julius Marathus relates and Suetonius from him that some Months before the Birth of Augustus a Prodigy was seen at Rome and heard to declare that Nature was teeming with one who should be King of the Romans Prodigium Romae factum publicè quo denunciabatur Regem pop R. naturam parturire c. at which the Senators were so dismaid as a Vote had like to have past upon the same score that Herod slew the Bethlemitish Children to put to death all the Males that should be born that year but that the Senators whose Wives were big bellied in hope that their Issue might attain that honour hindred the promulgation of it His Mother Atia made report which Suetonius saith he read in Asclepiades Mendetes his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 how Apollo cuckolded her Husband Octavius by his Proxie a Dragon sacred to him creeping into her bed and committing with her while she was celebrating his nightly Rites Augustum natum mens◠decimo ob id Apollinis filium existimatum c. Of the truth whereof she produced this Evidence that from that time she had a Mole in form of a Dragon imprest so in grain upon her Body as it could not by any art be obliterated in remembrance of which and in token that Nero was of Apollo's Line his Mother Agrippina made him wear a Bracelet of Snake-Skin on his Right Arm which those whom Messalina sent to murther him in his Bed thinking to be a Snake indeed they ran away affrighted not daring to lay violent hands upon him whom they deemed by that sight to be under Apollo's Protection Sueton. Nero 6. An exact Transcript of those Lines in the Oriental Prophecy that describe him that was to be King of Nations to be the Son of God only we may observe here the prints of his cloven Foot whose Interest it is to disturb the right order of Sacred Prophecies by jumbling together into one Mass its most Heterogeneal Parts by joyning in this Omen in one Person the Womans and the Serpents Seed The same Atia while she was with Child of Augustus dreamt that she saw her Entrails trailing round about the Earth and the whole Circumference of Heaven and her Husband that he saw a Sun-beam dart out of her Womb Suetonius Octav. 94. Explicari per omnem terrarum caelique ambitum Fancies injected into them from those Passages in the Eastern Prophecy that delineate the King of the Jews in Colours borrowed from the Sun sending forth his Light drawing out his Line to the ends of the World P. Nigidius on that Day wherein Catiline's Conspiracy was discust observing his Father Octavius to come tardy to the
praemio 7. 7. If the Truth dispers'd among several Persons and scatter'd among several Sects were by any man collected into one and digested into a body it would without doubt not dissent from us When Apollodorus offer'd to Socrates a precious and gorgeous Tunick and Pall to put on when he drank the poyson and to be wrapped in when he was dead Socrates turning to Crito Simacus and Phaedo what an honourable opinion saith he hath Apollodorus of me if he think to see Socrates in this Robe after I am dead if he think that that which will then lay at his feet is Socrates I know not my self who I am Aelian var. hist. 1. 16. This Socratical Aphorism Tully expresseth thus Mens cujusque is est quisque Is one Egg more like another than this of the Schools to that of the Gospel where Jesus concludes Abraham to be still living from Moses his stiling God the God of Abraham so many years after his decease That of Abraham he left behind him in his Sepulchre is not Abraham but that of him that still lives But it would require an Age to transcribe by retail those numerous Philosophical Axioms which speak the Language of Scripture so perfectly as the whole matter of controversie betwixt the Fathers Apologizing for and the Philosophers contending against our Religion was brought by mutual consent to this point Whether the wise men of the World receiv'd those Doctrines from our Scriptures or the Pen-men of the Scripture from their Schools Celsus in Origen contends earnestly that whatsoever was solid in the Christian Religion was borrowed from the Philosophers by whom it was better and clearlier delivered He instanceth in our affirming God to dwell in light inaccessible this saith he is no more than what Plato teacheth in his Epistles that the first Good is ineffable In our Saviour's commending Humility This is Plato's Doctrine saith Celsus teaching in his Book of Laws that He who would be happy must be a follower of Justice with an humble and well-composed mind In Christ's saying 'T is easier for a Camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven what is this saith he other than that of Plato It is not possible that a man can be very rich and very good From the fame Fountain Celsus will have Christ to draw that saying Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadunto life and few there be that find it and that our Doctrine of the fall of Angels and their being reserved in chains was derived from the Poet Pherecides and Homer vide l. 4. col 9. The Patrons of the Christian Cause on the other hand contended that the waters of the Academy were drawn from the wells of the Sanctuary that the Sun of knowledg arose in the East and thence displayed its Beams over the World St. Ambrose proves that Plato borrowed of David in Psalm 35. And upon that in Isaiah 40. For she hath received at the Lords hand double to her iniquity saith he Plato eruditionis gratiâ in Aegyptum profectus ut Mosis gesta Legis praecepta Prophetarum dicteria cognosceret c. in psalm 118. serm 18. St. Austin quotes St. Ambrose proving from Chronology that the Grecians borrowed of the Jews not è contrà and thence commends the reading of Secular History de Christiana Doct. lib. 2. cap. 28. and in his Epistle to Polinus and Therasias writes thus Libros Ambrosii multùm desidero quos adversùs nonnullos imperitissimos superbissimos qui de Platonis libris Dominum profecisse contendunt dilligentissimè copios ssimè scripsit Aug. Epist. 34. And not barely affirm'd it but brought in evidence for the proof of it either from common Principles of Reason or the Authority of heathen Chronologers St. Origen thus Contra Cels. lib. 6. cal 1 2 3 c. Moses was long before the most ancient of your Philosophers and therefore they must borrow light from him but it was impossible he could light his Candle at theirs before they were lighted and the Apostles were the unlikeliest men in the World to understand your Philosophers The same Father Origen contrà Celsum lib. 1. cal 13. in answer to Celsus objecting Moses his Juniority to the Heathen Theologues saith that Hermippus in his first Book of Lawgivers declared how Pythagoras translated his Discipline from the Jews into Greece and that there was extant a Book of Haecateus in which he so approves of the Jewish Philosophy as Herennus Philo in his Commentar de Judaeis questions whether it be the genuine Book of Haecateus whose name it bears it seeming to him improbable that an Heathen Philologer would write so much in their commendation St. Austin in his eighteenth Book de Civitate from Chap. 2. to the end of that Book demonstrates by Chronology that our Prophets were elder than their Philosophers And in his 8. 11. de Civitate Dei affirms Plato to have transcribed the description of the first matter in his Timaeus mentioned also by Cicero and thus translated Mundum efficere volens Deus terram primo ignemque jungebat When God was about to frame the World he first joyntly made the matter of Fire and Earth from that of Moses In the beginning God made the Heaven and Earth Gen. 1. 1. Plato by Fire understanding Heaven And his notion of the Air upon the Water to have been Plato's mis-conception of that of Moses The Spirit moved upon the Waters And his Dogma in Phaedone 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Every right Philosopher is a lover of God to have been derived from the sacred Fountains where nothing flows more plentifully than such like Doctrine But that which made this most learned Father almost believe altogether that Plato had read Moses was his observing Plato to have been the first Philosopher who called God by that name which God reveal'd himself by to Moses in his Embassy to Pharaoh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am that I am or That that is A name appropriated to God by Plato in his Timeus calling God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The ever-being and so familiar with the Platonicks as in their Master's stile they superscribed their Treatises concerning God with this Title 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of him that is A name saith St. Austin I find in no Books before Plato save in those where it is said I am that I am This was modestly said of that cautious Divine for the truth is Alcimus writes to Amynthas that some Philosophers had got that Notion by the end before Plato naming Epicharmus and quoting those words of his at which Plato lighted his Candle and Plato himself in his Sophista confesseth little less But it comes all to one as to our Argument for Epicharmus was a Pythagorian and that Pythagoras the circumcised Philosopher received that and all his other refined Notions from Moses his Writings or by discourse from the Jewish
mirum cùm Daemones c. Mar. 1. 24. Some of their Philosophers as Porphyry writes enquired of their Gods what they could say concerning Christ and that they were forc'd in their Oracles to commend Christ which is not at all to be thought strange seing we read St. Marc. 1. 24. That the Devils confest him to be the Son of God But let us hear Apollo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This King God in the Apostle's phrase the only Potentate and Creator of all things the Earth the Heaven and Sea revere before whom hellish darkness and Demons tremble And therefore Sibyl chides the Grecians for their extreme vanity Lactant. de falsa Relig. lib. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Greece why dost thou put thy trust in provincial Presidents who are but men Why dost thâ—â— bring vain oblations to dead men Why dost thou sacrifice to Idols Who injected this folly into thy mind that thou should do these things and neglect the person of the great God This was that Grecian folly which as I said at my entrance upon my discourse upon Plato's reporting his own and those Barbarians Opinion from whom he learn'd his Philosophy Grecizing Moses intermixt the true Tradition with making it speak the Language of his own Country wherein he was not only forsaken by his own School but exploded by the adherents to the Sibylline Books out of which these last-quoted Verses give so express a Reproof of that and so full Proof of the contrary Doctrine that men are to expect salvation and in order to the obtaining of it to put their trust not in many but one Saviour who is the Person of the great God as I shall burden my Reader with no more Allegations nor any further discourse upon that point but proceed to another Hypothesis of the Ethnick Theologues concurring with the Fundamentals of the Gospel and exprest in that forecited passage in Plato viz. CHAP. VII Man healed by the Stripes and Oracles of God-man § 1. Jew hides face from Christ. Greatest Heroes greatest sufferers the expiatory painfulness of their Passions § 2. Humane Sacrifices universal § 3. Not in imitation of Abraham Porphyry ' s Miscollection from Sancuniathon Humane Sacrifices in use in Canaan before Abraham came there And in remotest Parts before his facts were known In Chaldea before Abraham ' s departure thence § 4. It was the corruption of the old Tradition of the Womans Seed's Heel bruised Their sacred Anchor in Extremities § 5. The Story of Kings of Moab and Edom vulgarly mistaken different from Amos his Text. King of Moab offer'd his own Son the fruit of the Body for the sin of the Soul § 6. What they groped after exhibited in Christ's Blood § 7. Man's Saviour is to save Man by delivering divine Oracles Heroes cultivated the World by Arts and Sciences § 8. Gospel-net takes in small and great The Apostles became all things to all men how § 1. A Relique of the old Tradition delivered in Paradise and wrapp'd up in those clauses The Serpent shall bruise the heel of the Womans Seed and he shall break the Serpents head the first implying Christ's Passion and the latter his undeceiving the World by delivering true Oracles to the World which had been cheated by the Devil 's false ones Of the first Member of this Tradition we find reserves in the Sibylline Books quoted by Lactantius de vera Rel. lib. 4. cap. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He shall become miserable contemptible without form that he may give hope afford help to miserable men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He shall fall into the hands of sinners and infidels who shall with impure hands box him about the ears and spitefully spit upon him and he shall give his most innocent back to scourges 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they smite him upon the cheek he shall hold his peace so as Men shall not take him for the Word oe understand why he came to wit to make the dead hear his voice and he shall wear a Crown of thorns 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They shall give him Gall to eat and Vinegar to drink these are the Commons which that inhospitable Generation will allow him By which misusages his face shall be so marred as his own shall hide their faces from him as seeing nothing in him that was desirable that could speak him to be The desire of the Nations for thus sings another Sibyl of the Land of Judea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fool that thou art thou canst not know thy own God through the vizour of that contempt thou casts upon him These Responds eccho so distinctly to the Voices of the Prophets and so exactly sute the History of the Gospel as had they all proceeded from one mouth they could not have made a more perfect Harmony That the Writings of the Philosophers are Repositories of the same Doctrine hath been already evidenc'd out of Plato who affirms that it is the Opinion of those Barbarians of whom he learn'd his Philosophy as also of the Brachmans Odrysenans Getes Egyptians Arabians Chaldeans and all that inhabit Palestine That those blessed Souls who leave their supercelestial place and vouchsafe for the relief of Mankind to assume humane Bodies do in order to that undergo all the miseries of this Life To which Isocrates gives his Vote in the name of the greatest part of the World telling us in his Euagoras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That most of those that were reputed Semidei half-God half-man and those the most famous were reported to have undergone the greatest calamities and that in pursuit of achievements which were more full of danger to themselves than of Immediate profit to others Isocrat Hel. laudatio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which he giveth instance Orat. ad Philippum in Hercules whom notwithstanding with the same breath he affirms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to have had more Wisdom than Fortitude Now how it could stand with his Wisdom to imploy his Fortitude in those dangerous and painful labours which brought so much hardship upon himself and no profit to others can hardly be resolv'd except he undertook those labours otherwise in vain as Expiations and spent his sweat and blood as Libations as Propitiations to appease the incensed Deity not for his own but his Countries sins for The God-begotten saith Isocrates Busirid laudat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are free from sin and have all Vertues in their perfection By this oblation of himself for others Hercules his labours were beneficial to the whole World 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he procured to himself the Surname of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clemens Alexandr Protrept The driver away of evil
Taurican Chersonesus who sacrificed all the Strangers they could lay hands on to Diana quoting for this Enripedes That pair-royal of Friends Pylades and Orestes had died no other death if they had slain their Keepers and stolen away the Goddess Lucian Toxaris The next whom Clemens instanceth in are the Thessalians among whom the Inhabitants of Pella sacrifice an Achaean to Releus and Chiron for which he quotes Maninius in his Collection of Wonders The Cretensians among whom the Lycians sacrifice men to Jupiter for this he quotes Anticlides in reditibus The Lesbians who as Dosidas saith pacified Bacchus with humane Hostes. The Phocensians whom Pythocles in his third Book de Concordia affirms to have sacrificed Men to Diana Taurica The Athenians among whom as Demaratus writes in his first Book of Tragical Things Ericthonius for the pacifying of Proserphone sacrificed his own Daughter And the Romans among whom as Dorotheus relates in his fourth Book of the Affairs of Italy Marius sacrificed his Daughter Diis Averruncanis To the Gods that expel mischief Lactantius de falsa Relig. lib. 1. cap. 21. proves this to have been an ancient Custom in Italy to precipitate Men from the Milvian Bridge for the appeasing Saturn's wrath out of Ovid's in Fastis quotannis Tristia Leucadio sacra peracta Deo And to sacrifice to the same God their own Children After whose Dialect Micah 6. 7. the Prophet introduceth apostate Judah querying Shall I give my first born for my trangression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul to which the Spirit returns this pat answer He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what the Lord requires of thee viz. to do justly and love mercy neither of which can be done in this barbarous inhumanity to thy own Bowels and to humble thy self to walk with thy God not to outrun God in thy hastening to bring forth a Saviour before the fulness of Time c. In the same place the same Lactantius relates out of Poscennius Festus this Story That the Carthaginians being overcome by Agathocles King of Sicily and conceiving that to be the effect of God's displeasure against them for the rendring of Heaven propitious sacrificed two hundred Noblemens Sons Of the same bran saith he are the Rites of the Mother of the Gods whose Priests attone her with the Blood of their Genitals and of Bellona wherein her Priests lance and slash their own shoulders with Swords which they carry in both their hands as they run like frantick men about her Altars the very same Oratory which the Priests of Baal used who in their contest with Elijah when he lent a deaf ear to the sound of their Prayers lifted up to him the voice of their blood as that they doubted not but would obtain for them a favourable audience Herodotus in his Euterpe pag. 128. relates how at Busiris in the Festivals of Isis after the Sacrifice the whole Company being many thousands lash themselves till blood come and that in Papremis the Company that assemble to worship the Deity of that place fall together by the ears and wound yea kill one another Dion Roman histor lib. 43. reports that Julius Caesar to propitiate Mars caused to be sacrificed to him two of those Mutineers who raised a commomotion in the Camp because of Caesar's Prodigality in his exhibiting showes and Plays to the Senate and People grudging that so much water should run beside their Mill for which he saith he had neither Sibylline nor any other express Oracle but only Custom Pliny lib. 36. writes that the Moors sacrificed Men to Hercules others say to Saturn as Plato by name in his Minoe and Dionysius Halicarnassus as also Theodoritus Cyrenaeus Tacitus de moribus Germanorum saith That the Germans do on certain stated days appease Mercury with humane Sacrifices That the Semnones the most ancient Stock of the Suevians on certain anniversary holy Days meet together in a sacred Grove and begin the solemnity of the day with sacrificing a man for the Common Good for so I translate his caeso publicè homine That the Reudigni Aviones Angli Varini Eudoses Snardones Nucthones in the service they perform'd to the Mother of Gods whom they call Hertham that is Earth the very English of the Grecian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 drowned those that had officiated in the Procession The same Historian Tacitus an 14. fol. 207. tells us that Suetonius Paulinus at the taking of the Ifle of Man found Groves devoted there to bloody Superstition for they used to sacrifice Captives at their Altars and to look into their inwards by way of Auguration Dictys Cretensis who was comrade to Idomenoeus in the Trojan War wrote a Journal of that War which Paxis presented to Nero and Septimius Romanus translated into Latin in which Treatise de Bell. Troj lib. 1. we are told that for the appeasing of Dianas displeasure against Agamemnon for slaying the Hart that was feeding in her Grove his Daughter Iphigenia was required in sacrifice Upon this ground Euryphylus in Virgil perswades the Grecians when they were returning from Troy to appease the angry Deity with humane Blood with the blood of Polixena Aeneid lib. 2. Sanguine placastis ventos virgine caesa Cùm primùm Iliacas Danai venistis ad auras Herodotus Melpomene relates how the Getes the most morallized of all the Scythians send every year to their God Zamolxis a Man whom they had first sacrificed And how the Messagetes immolate in their old Age all Persons of note counting none happy but them that die that kind of death Herod Clio. And lastly how the whole Scythian Nation do sacrifice to Mars whom they esteem the chief God one of every hundred Captives whose Blood they gather into a Basin and with it besmear a Fauchion which with them is the Idol or Representation of Mars Herodot Melpomene This Custom reached to the farthest Western Nations as Plutarch de superstitione observes who if they had Children of their own sacrificed them to Saturn if not bought other mens Children to that purpose as men buy Lambs or Chickens While they were sacrificing their Mothers were to stand by and look on who if they shewed any sign of sorrow they were ever after accounted opprobrious persons Yea as far as the then reputed World's end Hercules Pillars as Timaeus the Historian affirms in his rebus Deliacis for the Inhabitants near to those Pillars saith he use to sacrifice their Kinsfolks if they reach the seventieth year Strabo lib. 11. reports that in Albania a Country near the Caspia◠Sea they used to sacrifice to the Moon their supreme Deity those of their initiated servants that had most of that Goddess in them after they had been sumptuously feasted a whole year before These two last I report upon the Credit of Natalis Comes Mytholog l. cap. 17. de victimis not out of penury for to the best of my knowledge there is not an old Historian extant that gives
lib. 1. cap. 10. 11. But to spare the labour of multiplying Instances that place of Plato I mention'd at the beginning of this discourse is abundantly sufficient where those blessed spirits that descended to take care of Mankind are said to have given them Laws neither that of Origen against Celsus lib. 5. cap. 1. whom he charges in his affirming that never any God or Son of God came down from Heaven to reveal divine Counsels to oppose the Vulgar and received Opinion of Philosophers and proves that charge by many clear instances one of which we have Act. 14. 12. when St. Paul had by a word speaking presently and perfectly cured the man that was born lame the Lystrians conceived him to be Mercury appearing in humane form because he was the chief speaker clearly expressing this to be their Opinion that the healing God was to be the great Gods Messenger and to restore men's discomposed Minds as well as Limbs by his word the very Office which the Prophets assigned to the Messias and the Apostles and Evangelists applyed to Christ A prophet shal the Lord raise unto you of your brethren like unto me as touching his humane but infinitely superiour to me in respect of his divine Nature And that 's the scope of that so much abused Text all thy children shall be taught of God Isa. 54. 13. if Christ be better at expounding Scripture than our new illuminates Who when the Jews excepted against his affirming himself to come down from Heaven because they knew his Father and Mother supposing him to be the Son of Joseph as they said Joh. 6. ver 42. gives them this reply That no man could come to him that is as one that came down from Heaven and whom they were bound to hear under pain of extermination except the Father drew him ver 44. not as a log by main force of hand but as a man by strength of Argument by teaching him the meaning of that Text in the Prophet and they shall all be taught of God ver 45. which cannot be understood of the person of the Father for no man hath seen the father but the son ver 46. Nor of the Spirits teaching for that the Church had from the beginning thou gavest them thy good spirit Nehem. 9. 10. But of the Person of the Son who was in the Fullness of Time to assume Flesh and dwell among us and teach not only Jews but Gentiles what they must do to be saved So as in the last revelation of the divine Will God will no longer deal by proxy but himself in the Person of the Son will speak face to face which you might have learn'd in Hypothesi had you diligently weighed that Text of Isa. and though I in respect of my humane Nature am the son of Mary and as you suppose of Joseph whom you know yet at my Baptism you might have learn'd that I had another Generation for then my Father bare witness by a voice from Heaven that I was the son of God and at my transfiguration having avouched me to be his well beloved Son he gave command that I should be receiv'd as that Prophet whom all are to hear every man therefore that hath heard and learn'd this of my Father concerning me that I am that great Prophet that was to come into the World like to my Brethren as to my Manhood but equal to the Father touching my Godhead will certainly come to me and learn of me as to those whom my Father by these clear convictions and furthermore by that Seal he hath set to my Commission to teach in those Miracles I work does not draw into a full perswasion 't is impossible that they while they are under that obstinacy should come unto me Hence it is that our Saviour so much presseth and layeth so much stress upon the believing that he was he that should come to tell men all things hence St. Paul begins his Epistle to the Hebrews with the proof of this that Jesus of Nazareth was that divine Person the express Image of the Fathers person by whom according to the Prophecies that went before God hath spoak in the last that is the Evangelical Age. § 8. Humane Laws we say are Nets which small fish escape through and great ones break but Christ's Law is so framed his Gospel net so knit as the Vulgar fry stick in it by the Finns and Gills of common Sentiments And the greatest disputers are intangled in it by strugling It takes the poor of this World by the compliance with their innate Notions and the wise in their own craftiness By it Learning was pos'd Philosophy was set Sophisters taken in a Fisher's net Plato and Aristotle were at a loss And wheel'd about again to spell Christ's Cross. As our great British Divine and Divine Poet sings in his Church tit Providence in which Poem as he hath given us an abstract of Church-history so I fear there is a more discerning spirit of Prophecy expressed therein than in all our modern golden Dreams and Comments upon Daniel and the Revelation these Predictions being but guessings at if not perversions of the sence of dark Texts his the applications of as clear menaces as any are in the whole Bible and these too commented upon by the constant method of Providence in the World which usually so shapes its rewards and Punishments to mens demerits as for our knowing what will betide our selves we need not consult ambiguous Oracles but such plain sanctions of the royal Law as have been made good upon and befallen other Churches for examples to us for if we will not be diverted from following Egypt and Greece's steps we must arrive at their dismal end if we by our debaucheries of mind or life put the Gospel from us and draw upon our selves strong delusions a Revelation-Criticism will not secure the one to us nor us from the other But to return from this Digression The constitution of Christian Religion is such as it finds all that is of man left in man a party for it in the Market and all true Philosophy a party for it in the Schools of Philosophers saith Clem. Alexandr Strom. l. 1. pag. 94. whether of the Barbarians or Grecians I mean not the Stoick Platonick Epicurean Aristotelian but whatsoever any Sect rightly taught whatsoever they taught Pious or Just is but a Branch of eternal Truth pluck'd from the Tree of Life the ever-being Word An observation grounded upon these Prophecies I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen and close up the breaches of it and build it as in the days of old build the old wasts raise up the former desolations the foundations of many generations Amos 9. 11. Isa. 61. 4. Isa. 58. 12. and this to the end that the residue of men that is the Gentiles might seek the Lord Act. 15. 16. as St. James expounds the Prophets which inforceth us to interpret those Prophecies not of Persons only but
brought them out of Egypt which Covenant they brake and promising to erect a new Priest-hood not after the order of Aaron but Melchisedech From both which common places the Apostle argues strenuously Heb. 8. and 7. when he saith the new he maketh void the old where the Priesthood is changed there must of necessity be a change of the Law The Old Testament points out him that is to be a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech as to come of the Tribe not of Levi but Judah which Topick the Apostle pursues and applies to the blessed Jesus who according to the Prophecies that went before of him sprang of the Root of Jesse came from the loins of David and was the Lyon of the Tribe of Judah of which Tribe none by the Law were to be made Priests but of the Tribe of Levi and that therefore the Levitical Law was prescribed against in the Prediction of Jacob and in the preheminence of this Melchisedokian Preist before the Aaronical hinted by Melchisedech's Blessing and receiving Tithes of Abraham while Levi was yet in his Loyns almost four hundred years before that Law which assigned Levi to the Priest-hood And lest this Law which assigned Levi to that Office might be interpreted as vacating Melchisedech's the Apostle observes that long after Aaron had been made a Priest and that without an Oath that Kingly High Priest after the order of Melchisedek was made a Priest by Oath Hebr. 7. 17. 18. In the Old Testament Malac. 1. 11. God expresseth his dislike of Levitical Sacrifices and Ordinances in comparison of another Sacrifice and Service that was to be exhibited A point acknowledged by the Jewish Rabbies who upon these Texts have these reflections Psal. 69. Laudabo nomen dei placebit deo super vitulum novellum cornua producentem ungulas This is the new worship that shall be given to God in diebus Christi saith Aben Ezra A worship will please God better than the Oxe which Adam sacrificed Qui perfectus erat de terra creatus a perfect Oxe answerable to one three years old the day he was created having hoofs and horns saith R. Solom Than that three years old Oxe of the Peace-offering or so large as he can push with his horns or so great and comely as he makes men contend about him saith R. David all center here that the most choice Legal Sacrifices are not comparable to that spiritual Worship which should be introduc'd in the days of the Messias Without relation to which legal observances were not good nor such as by which they should live Ezeck 20. 25. God protesting he never spake to their Fathers touching Sacrifices and Oblations abstracted from that end of the Law Jerem. 7. 22. and chiding them for treading his Courts for making many and fervent Prayers for offering Incense for bringing their Oblations and burnt Offerings without having an eye to the spiritual part of worship and to Christ the Life and Spirit of all acceptable Worship Isa. 1. Of which imperfection and faultiness of the first Covenant the Apostle takes notice as that which made way for the second Heb. 8. 7. In the Old Testament God promiseth that under the Kingdom of Messias he would take Priests and Levites out of all Nations Isa. 66. 21. that strangers should be Israel's Pastors Plough-men and Labourers in the Vine-yard Isa. 61. 5. What must then become of the Law prohibiting any but the sons of Aaron to approach the Priest's Office to minister in the Sanctuary Levi must lose his Plough when Messias makes Gentiles put their hands to his and therefore there is much more of ingenuity and correspondency to their own Prophets than in modern Jews in that story of the Jerusalem Gomarists told by R. Judab of a certain Jew who being at Plough and hearing an Arabian telling him that Messiah was born presently loosed his Oxen and sold his Plough and Gears Lightfoot Harm pag. 9. Lastly for to instance in all the Topicks of this tendency would put me upon transcribing the greatest part of the Prophets and the Epistle to the Hebrews in the Old Testament we are told That Jerusalem it self the Temple the place elected by God for Legal Worship should become a perpetual desolation within a few years after the coming of Christ That Rook's Nest as they had made it should be pulled down Dan. 9. 26. and then sure the whole brood of those callow and imperfect Rudiments annex'd to it laid in it must fall to the ground That a time would come when the true Jove would shake that his lap wherein his grand Seer the Eagle-eyed Moses had laid the Eggs of his Ceremonial Laws Haggai 2. 6. I will shake not the earth only but the heavens that is as St. Paul Heb. 12. 27. expounds that Text not only the Vanity of the Gentiles but the Jewish Religion though of Divine Institution so far as it is to be shak'd Or which comes all to one The heaven that is the heavenly Sanctuary the Temple God's Court the place of his Residence where he dwelt between the Cherubims That Sion would be ploughed up Micah 3. 12. Sion shall be ploughed as a field and Jerusalem shall become heaps and the mountain of the Lord's house as the high places of the Forrest This the Chaldees alledg in behalf of Jeremy Jer. 26. 10. and the Rabbies observe the accomplishment of it then when Turnus Rufus ploughed up the place of the Temple Dr. Lightfoot Vespacian 2. paragr 1. and what must become then of the whole Crop of the Temple-Ceremonies which had been there sowen and of the Eggs there deposited That Jerusalem the dish wherein Levitical services were to be served up should be turned up-side-down and wiped as a man wipes a Dish 2. King 21. 13. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It shall be turned upside down upon the face thereof What can that portend but the spilling of the Cates So that to a considerate Spectatour it cannot but be matter of highest admiration to see that blinded Nation groping for the door when the house is fallen flat to the ground and like a company of dispersed Ants whose hill is digged up carrying their Eggs in their mouths above this sixteen hundred years not knowing where to lay them but expecting still their old Ant-hill should grow up again out of the dust wherein it has lain all that while not considering that by this time their Eggs must needs be grown addle Alas what a spirit of slumber hath divine Vengeance powred upon them seeing they still persist in denying that Holy and Just One after Moses hath so peremptorily and palpably denyed them after God hath pull'd them from him and hedged up their way to his Law by an absolute impossibility of observing it The Temple wherein the greatest and most eminent part of that Law was only performable being by his irresistible hand demolish'd and kept from being again erected in spight of all the attempts of
the most daring enemies of our Jesus and the Nation to which they are peculiarly calculated being dispersed and ceasing to be a Nation Nay after themselves have in effect renounc'd the Religion of Moses and betaken themselves to the Religion of the Patriarchs which yet is unpracticable among them in the point of Sacrifices so that they worship God in a way which neither their Fathers nor their Fathers-fathers knew A way taken up by themselves since the demolishing of their Temple and dispersion of their Nation wherein they add and take from their own Law contrary to the Divine Sanction In vain do they urge those Texts that seem in the Letter to import the perpetuity and irrevocableness of Moses Law such as Deut. 29. 29. Things revealed belong to us and our children for ever Lev. 23. 14. First fruits a statute for ever and the passover a statute for ever Ex. 12. 17. For if they will allow David to speak in Moses his Language when he applies ever to the Temple Psal. 132. 13. This is my rest for ever and allow their own eyes to interpret David's ever now they see the place of his residence for ever demolished the Chain wherein they think themselves still bound to Moses will fall off of its own accord can the ever of Oblations possibly be stretched beyond the ever of that Sanctuary to which they are limitted As vain is the exception against the cogency of this Argument from the Instance of the first Temples laying waste during the Babylonish Captivity during which time though the Law as to the practise of it was in some points suspended yet it was not abolished For 1. The Law had a shrewd shake and was loosen'd in its sinews by the ruine of the first Temple Gods withdrawing then the Ark of his Presence and Covenant from them was a sign he would quickly grow weary of sitting on Mount Sion now that his foot-stool was removed his not vouchsafing to give them Fire from Heaven for their Sacrifices in the second as he had done in the Tabernacle and first Temple and yet accepting their Offerings made by strange fire so directly contrary to the Law was an Argument that he stood not so much upon Levitical punctilios as he did at first when he punish'd Nadab and Abihu with suddain death for offering with strange fire If the Jews will avouch their own story upon Dan. 6. 4. Ut invenirent occasionem Danieli ex latere regis where interpreting latus regis to be the Queen or the King's Concubines they tell us that Daniel was an Eunuch they must be forc'd to a confession that God stood not much upon the Ceremonial Law when he preferr'd an Eunuch who by that Law was not to come into the Congregation into that intimate Communion with himself as to reveal to him more of his Counsel than he did to any Prophet beside Moses Jerom. in locum I urge these Instances as Arguments ad hominem they being the Jews concessions though in themselves not true as I shew elsewhere It is from their own Premisses I infer this Conclusion That God weaned them by degrees from Moses antiquating one Ceremony after another till at last Christ cancell'd the whole Hand-writing of Ordinances breach upon breach was made in that wall of partition till Christ took it wholly away and rac'd it to the ground 2. God promised to return that Captivity to restore to them their own Land and to repair the ruines of the first Temple but this Captivity will never be return'd the second Temple will never be repair'd but both Nation and Place are to be perpetual Desolations Of this I make proof elsewhere and therefore here shall propound this only Argument to evince the truth of it viz. That during the desolations of the first the Spirit of Prophecy was not with-held from them God raised them up Prophets in Babylon he then set them up Way-marks guides to their Cities again he whistled to his Flock scatter'd in that gloomy and dark day of their wandring to prevent their total dispersion and to keep them within the hearing of Cyrus his Proclamation But since the desolating of the second Temple they have had no Voice no Vision none to answer how long no Prophets have risen up among them but false ones as themselves acknowledg such as Ben Cozba of whom their Taba in Taanith per 4. halac 6. and Maymon in Taanith per. 5. quoted by Dr. Lightfoot Vespacian 1. Sect. 1. thus write It was on the 9. day of the Month Ab that the great City Bitter was taken where were thousands and ten thousands of Israel who had a great King over them whom all Israel even their greatest wise men thought to have been Messias And before him and Jerusalem's fall according to our Saviour's Prediction the many false Christs of whom Josephus in the History of that Age gives many instances § 3. As the Ceremonial Law fell with its own weight was disannull'd by its own Vote and cancel'd by vertue of its own Ordinances So that Old Testament-law which cannot be shaken 1. Is confirm'd and establish'd in the Gospel upon better Principles and more powerful Motives 2. And improved by our Royal Lawgiver in many branches of it that budded not under that Testament 3. And in the whole of it to the utmost heroick degree of Christned Morality 1. That an humane Soul cloathed with Mortality is capable of 2. Or can be drawn to by the most powerful Attractives of the Spirit of Grace 3. Most plentifully poured forth upon all that sincerely embrace the Gospel Of all which points I shall speak distinctly not only because they demonstrate that Christ came not to destroy but to perfect and fill up the Law but do also present Christ and the Gospel to us in a quite other form than the faithless Solifidian draws them in whose Models of Christianity look as if they were designed to shame Religion 1. The Salvifick Grace teaches us in the Gospel to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts to live godly righteously and soberly with more masculine and strenuous Motives than were propounded under the Law The Argument then was I am the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage but that which was but implyed in that is in the Gospel clearly expressed and obedience prest from our deliverance from the bondage of Satan the vassalage of our own Lusts the chambers of eternal Death The motive expressed there was That thy days may be long in the land a land slowing with milk and honey here the darkness of Type that was upon the face of that earth is dissipated the waters that overwhelm'd it are divided from it and the dry Land made to appear that Land that is very far off far above all visible Heavens The Childrens Rattles and Nats being laid aside the Gospel openly hangs out Prizes becoming men of full age to run for in that Race
see it daily happens in questions de Jure and all Propositions built upon articifial Arguments A man may be perswaded of the Truth of the Affirmative to day and to morrow be confident of the Negative if that come arm'd to his thinking with better Reasons But now in Matters of Fact delivered by the Universal Tradition of those that were upon the place we cannot acquit our selves of the belief of them we cannot extricate our selves out of those Chains that are clapt upon our judgement by the most Proteus-like change thereof though into an hundred forms and shapes Let one for instance that upon such an account is perswaded that King Henry the Eighth is dead try if he can writhe himself out of the belief of it by all the versatile windings which the most serpentine invention can prompt if he can hale that Conceipt out of his Mind with a whole Team of the strongest Arguments he can yoak together he will find he labours as much in vain as the Sea-men did in their attempts to bring the Vessel that was freighted with the reputed Mother of the Gods to shore after she was faln a ground The Hair-lace of the vestal though under a suspition of incontinency did more than all their Cables could But in our Case the single twine of current Tradition the votary of the never-dying Flame the preserver of the immortal Memory of things past will draw the mind to a full irreversible Assent against all contrary halings of the Cart-ropes of artificial Reasonings notwithstanding our jealousies of a possibility of Error or Adulteration Nay Universal Testimony forces the belief of those things upon us which we would not believe could we any way baffle the Evidence when it informs us of the death of Friends of the defeating of our Armys of the loss of our Garrisons of the sinking of our richly-laden and homeward-bound Vessels though we could wish to keep St. Thomas his Resolution of not believing till we see and handle the truth of those Relations though we put in an hundred caveats of hope that it s otherwise yet there 's no resisting the evidences of such a Testimony It lays our tatter'd Ships our dismembred Soldiers the pale-fac'd Corps of our Relations though at never so great a local distance from us so manifestly before us as we cannot but hear their dying groans handle their wounds and see them laid out In this Magick Glass we behold our Sea-men pinion'd our Goods rifled our Tackling torn our Masts floating and whatever we would not see nor hear as sensibly as feelingly as if we were upon the place It begets in us a belief of otherwise most unlikely incredible things of such occurrences as without this all the Reason imaginable could not have perswaded us to assent to Abstract Caligula's causing the way to be swept from Rome to Belgium before that Army wherewith he furiously charged the Sea from that Reason which the Currency of that History commends it with to our Belief and then should we muster up all the Mediums in Aristotles Topicks to assail and conquer our Minds to a perswasion That a person advanc'd to such honour in so wise a State might possibly be so pompously mad as to play such freaks or that those Sons of Mars at whose prowess the World trembl'd should be such tame Fools as to be commanded by him to play such Munkey-tricks the issue would shew that to be as vain and fruitless a Charge upon our Judgements as his was against the Ocean But yet the Validity of the Historical Testimony hath in spight of all unlikelyhood gain'd Universal Credit for these Stories It was Heresie at Rome a while ago to assert there were Antipodes the Mathematicks those demonstrative Sciences could not convince the sacred Colledge but that men must fall into the skie if their feet were opposite to ours The Books that made offer to make proof thereof by the strongest Reasons imaginable were as heretical committed to the devouring Flames Aventinus annal Boiorum lib. 3. And in a more knowing Age this Opinion of the Earths globous Form was derided by Lactantius est quispiam tam ineptus qui credat homines esse quorum vestigia sunt superiora quam capita aut ibi quae apud nos jaceat Universa pendere fruges arbores deorsùm versùs crescere pluvias nives grandinem sursùm versús cadere in terram miratur aliquis hortos pensiles inter septem mira narrare quum philosophi agros maria urbes montes pensiles faciunt with more shew of Reason than can be brought against the Evangelical History Instituti lib. 3. cap. 24. Can any man be so egregious a fool as to think that there are men who walk with their feet higher than their heads or a place where such things as here lay upon the ground hangs in the Air that Plants grow with their tops downwards that Rain Snow and Hail fall upwards upon the earth why should we wonder at the pensil Gardens of Babylon one of the seven wonders of the World seeing Philosophers make pensil Fields Walls Cities and Mountains But I presume for all this show of reason to the contrary men are now as verily perswaded that the Earth is round and that there are Antipodes as they are that there is an Heaven What hath conquer'd them to this belief have better Reasons been laid before them none but this of Universal Tradition Since the improvement of Navigation men daily make voyages thither and learn by the report of the Inhabitants of that lower Hemisphere that that part of the World is not grown up of late as a bunch upon the back of ours but of as long a standing as it and hence springs the undoubted confidence of its Existence now and its Pre-existence to our knowledge and discovery § 2. To the other part of the Objection I make this twofold reply 1. In our present Case we are out of danger of receiving damage by being over-credulous were that Testimony which commends to my Belief Gospel-matters of Fact less credible than it is my acquiescing therein would be transcendently advantageous but no way possibly prejudicial a Report goeth abroad that some great Prince upon the motion of his Son who by certain condescentions has promerited the King's favour for them hath sent out his Declaration to his Subjects wherein he proclaims liberty to Captives tenders to those that will embrace his Son and deport themselves as becomes Men advancement to the highest honours and menaceth to such as will not by such inducements be reclaim'd from a bestial Life the most exquisite Tortures that can be invented by abused Love who but short-reason'd Idiots would be over-curious too nice in believing such a Report which if it prove true he is made that conforms to it he undone that does not however the Terms are but reasonable complying therewith at present prefers a man to the Lordship of himself and he
denyed that God was first to be represented by Images made like man they overthrew their own Doctrine that man was made after the similitude of Cod. Id. Ib. cal 19. The Son is the only express Image of the Fathers Person and therefore we worship him by that Image only Nay he argueth for the worshipping of Angels and Daemons from what Opinions Christians hold touching the Creation you profess saith he that all Creatures are governed and order'd by the appointment of God that Angels Devils Men and all Creatures have assigned them powers allotted by him such as he thinks meet to confer upon them why then may not we worship them as Creatures endowed with power to help or hurt us as the Princes Favourites Id. lib. 7. cal 20. as if we could not honour them as Gods friends without imparting to them their Masters due divine honour He gives still further and clearer evidence of the delivery of this Article of our Christian Faith while he indulgeth himself the liberty to deride that Truth which was once delivered to the Saints The Jews saith he in a corner of the VVorld Palestine conspiring together invented the Fable of Gods forming Man and breathing into him the breath of Life of VVoman brought out of his side of man's receiving a Precept from God and preferring the Serpents Precept above Gods of Gods casting Adam iuto a sleep and taking Eve out of Adam's rib c. Orig. Contr. Celsum lib. 4. cal 15. It is easier to call this Sacred History a Fable than to prove it one This same Epicurean Hog thus grunts out Calumnies against the Circumstances of Gods making Heaven and Earth lib. 6. 23. 24. c. God said let there be light Did the Maker of all things borrow Light to work by as we light our Candle at our Neighbours God did not borrow but made Light not for himself to see by but to illustrate his Creatures Can any thing be more ridiculous than to assign certain days to the Creation of the World in the first whereof God perfected one kind of being in the second another in the third another c. and in the sixth and last Man The Matter of visible and invisible things God created in a moment and in the same moment educ'd the invisible World out of that Matter But that he should for instance create a Natural Day which was his first days work consisting of twenty four hours in less than twenty four hours implies a Contradiction and that day being the first and pattern of all the rest that is consisting the first half of it of night and the other of day it was impossible but that Darkness must be upon the face of the Deep one twelve hours and Light in the upper Hemisphere other twelve hours Or that he should to instance in the fourth days work make Sun and Moon and set them in the Firmament of Heaven and make them successively make a day and night in less time than twenty four hours does equally imply a Contradiction And for the rest they being more gross bodily substances educ'd out of the first Matter it implies a Contradiction that they should move in an instant to those forms the Divine Power first bestow'd upon them and it was most congruous seeing they could not be made but in some time to perfect them also in such a proportion of time by his own free choice as the nature of the things themselves required which were made the first and fourth day Besides the Light created on the first day which must necessarily move sphaerically or it could not have made a natural day might be instrumental towards the producing those powers which God by his Fiat gave the Matter into effect and then before the earth was all over-spread with Grass and Cattle and the Sea with Fish c. that Light must shine upon them from one end of the Heaven to the other which could not be done in less space than twenty four hours And that God should rest on the seventh day as if like a lazie Artificer he had been tyred and must then keep holiday Could there be days before the Sun was made whose Motion measures Time that lucid Cloud created the first day had a circular Motion and thereby measured time till on the fourth day God made the Sun Vide Zanch. de operibus Dei par 1. l. 1. c. 2. There is nothing saith he in the whole History of Gods making the World according to the Christian Hypothesis but what is incompetent to the Divine Nature but their credulity proceeds from their believing that God made Man after his own Image an opinion as absurd as any of the rest for he is not at all like us but incomprehensible innominable wherein he contradicts not only his own late recited opinion but his own Sect for Apuleius the Epicurean in Tull. de Natura deorum lib. 1. shapes God in all points even of bodily Members like to Man And manifestly wrests Moses who discourseth of the Creation in such borrowed Terms as are most familiar in vulgar use and introduceth God resting not out of lassitude but in complacencie with the Goodness and Beauty of his Work and that for our imitation that we might rest in contemplation of that eternal Wisdom in which he made them neither did God in that rest cease from work altogether but from Creating-work § 2. Article 2. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord. If the Christians saith Celsus worship'd no other but God the Father Maker of Heaven and Earth they might without blame contemn all our Gods but who can endure that they should despise those whom the whole World in a manner do worship for Deities and in the mean time cry up Christ for God who we all know was but born the other day Christ as to his Man-hood was born in the fulness of Time assigned by the Prophets as he was God his Generation was from Eternity Nay that they should not worship the Father but together with this Author of their Religion whom they call the Son of God Orig. con Cel. 8. cal 3. 4. The Christians worship the Father through the Son and whosoever expects acceptance with the Father but through the Son worships an Idol a God of his own framing They avoid our Altars Statues Temples sacred Rites that they may keep untainted that Faith they have plighted to Christ they will not with 〈◊〉 worship the one God the common God of all Nations that they may among themselves worship Christ as God Id. Ib. cal 6. To which Pliny gives his suffrage in the place fore-quoted The Christians sing Psalms to one Christ whom they repute to be God And Licinius in his Speech to his Soldiers encouraging them to the engagement against Constantine with this Argument that he had cast off the Gods of his Father and Country and put his trust in a new and strange God one Jesus of Nazareth Euseh de vita Constant. l.
2. c. 5. but this new God of Constantine was too hard for all Licinius his old Gods insomuch as being disappointed of their aid he exauctorated them and run about seeking other Gods to relieve him Id. Ib. c. 15. Touching Christ's Title the Son of God attributed to him by Christians Celsus his Jew lib. 1. cal 26. thus expostulates with the blessed Jesus Seeing thou sayest that every man is the Son of God by Providence or Creation and that Persons so and so qualified are his Children by Favour or Grace wherein dost thou excel all other men who givest out thy self to be his Son after a more excellent way Resp. He was begotten of the Substance of his Father we are born again of the will of God The blasphemous Familists and Quakers may here learn into whose Tents they are removed And in the same Book cal 33. thus he descants upon Gods calling his Son into and out of Aegypt What need was there that when thou wast an Infant thou shouldst be carried into Aegypt to escape the fury of Herod's Sword for fear of death cannot fall upon God Was it in obedience to thy Father who sent his Angel to call thee thither Why could not that great God whom thou calls Father with as little trouble have secured thy life at thy own home in thy native Country as he put himself and his Angels to in sending first one to call thee into a strange Land and then another to recal thee into thy own This was done that the Scripture might be fulfill'd Out of Aegypt I have called my Son that the Reality of his Humane Nature might be evidenc'd that his glorious Deity might be demonstrated by the Angels attending upon him as the only begotten of the Father Upon Herods murthering the Innocents he descants lib. 4. cal 27. ridiculum cùm Herodes irabundus occidit infantulos Could not he whom thou calls Father have secur'd thee from Herod He brings in in his first Book the Jew calumniating Christ to have learned Magick in Aegypt by the improvement whereof after his returnâ— into Judaea he attempted to make men believe he was King Messias cal 20. and in the 28 cal he repeats the whole story of the Wisemens coming to worship Christ of their telling Herod the King of Israel was born of Herod's slaying the Bethlehemitish Insants c. And thus casts his scoffs cal 23. upon the voice that came from Heaven at Christs Baptism Thou sayest the form of a Dove lighted upon thee and a voice then came from Heaven saying This is my Son What VVitness is there of this worthy of credit who beside thy self and thy Companions saw this Vision heard this Voyce The mighty VVorks wrought by our Saviour were so many Witnesses that he was the Son of God and that God was with them in all they said and writ And why doth not Celsus make the like Exception against the reports of his healing the Sick casting out Devils and raising the dead c. but because those Miracles were wrought in the sight and hearing of multitudes uninterested And yet even here John the Baptist saw and heard all whom not to have been Christs Disciple but to have been murdered by the command of Herod not for following Christ but reproving Herod Josephus testifieth who also affirmeth that multitudes flocked to John's Baptism and the sacred History tells us that Jesus was baptized when all the People were baptized Luk. 3. 22. and that he came to John to be baptized of him while John was exhorting those multitudes that came out of Jerusalem Judaea and about Jordan Mat. 3. 5. 13. § 3. Article 3. Who was conceived by the holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary Celsus in Orig. 4. cal 1 2 3 c. thus states the Controversie betwixt the Christian and Jew touching the coming of the Son of God down from Heaven for us men and our salvation as the Nicen Creed prefaceth this Article The Christians say there is already descended the Jews say there is to descend from heaven a certain God or Son of God who is the Justifier and Saviour of mortal men A Conceipt saith he so absurd and unbeseeming the Deity as it needs no other Confutation but its bare men tioning Resp. Celsus here verifies that of the Apostles the Gospel is foolishness to the Greeks but to them that believe the Power and Wisdom of God and yet this Hypothesis that God would descend into this dungeon of the Earth for the salvation of Mankind was held by the Platonicks 〈◊〉 hath been proved But hear we how Celsus cavils against it For what new thing could come into Gods Mind that he should now at last descend to us Did he come to know how the affairs of mâ—nstood here on earth Did not he know all things without coming to see or if there had been any thing amiss could not he have rectified it by his Divine Power without sending his Son what pity it is that Celsus was not of Gods Council to be born amongst us he must of necessity desert his own habitation above if he descend to us The Porphyrian Scepticks in St. Austin Epist. 2. speaks in the same tenour Mundi Dominus Rector tamdiu à sedibus suis abest atque ad unum corpusculum totius mundi cura transfertur The Lord of the Universe was so long absent from his own seat and the care of the whole World is transferr'd to the body of one Woman Novit ubique totus esse nullo contineri loco novic venire non recedendo ubi erat novit abire non deserendo quà venerat God is altogether every where and contain'd in no place he can come without forsaking the place where he was he can depart without deserting the place from whence he came But Celsus proceeds Did God or the Son of God therefore come down from Heaven and dwell among us that he might make himself known to the World that had been ignorant of him before as Princes go on Progress to shew their Magnificence to their Subjects in the Country Did God then now at last after so many Ages laps'd think of justifying men whose Salvation he neglected for so long a time before St. Austin Epist. 49. quest 2 da. proves that pious persons before Christs coming were saved by Christ whose Grace was at no time wanting to any Nation and that the varying of the Mode of Worship according as the divine VVisdom thinks expedient for mens salvation does not make a various Religion But hear we Celsus confirming the Tradition of this point of Christian Faith while he objects against the Doctrine delivered If the Christians be in earnest when they say they believe that God so loved the World that he sent his only begotten Son into the World to save it what other arguments than what are drawn from that Love need be urged to constrain men to love God and live unto him and therefore Christ did foolishly in
of such a speech to Grammar-rules for had that been the Evangelists sence he would have said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was beginning his thirtieth year and its insignificancy as to the describing Christs age for he was beginning his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his thirty years and all the years besides he lived first on earth and since in heaven the first minute he was born And therefore I wonder how it escapt that most learned Man's observation that Josephus as he renders him if his Printer did not mistake in his twenty second of Tiberius makes Philip's Reign younger than our Saviour and a good deal younger if we take in here that note of his in emend temp l. 6. concerning Philip the Tetrarch's Reign to wit that according to Josephus he held his Tetrarchate but thirty six years compleat for this perfectly accords Josephus with his own and some other Learned mens opinion touching the time that Herod lived after the Birth of Christ which they at the utmost extend not to two years For if Philip was but Tetrarch full thirty six years in Tiberius his twenty second and Christ had begun thirty one in the fifteenth of Tiberius his thirty eighth must be begun in Tiberius his twenty second and so his Birth stated one compleat year and a good part of another before Herod's death But because I presume the Quotation out of Josephus of Philip's Death in the twenty second of Tiberius was the mistake of the Printer for the place in Josephus specifies the twentieth year I will at present lay no greater stress upon this Argument than what may incline the ingenuous Reader not to think me immodest in this Proposal That perhaps what befel Scaliger by the Press might happen to Josephus by an inobservant Pen and that twenty might be crept into his Text instead of twenty two or twenty three until I give him out of Josephus himself the Reason of this my surmise to wit That his dating Philip's Death in Tiberius his twentieth will no way consort with those stories which he saith bore the same date with Philip's Death such as Pilat's being turn'd out of Office which in all reasons could not be long before the Death of Tiberius in the twenty third of his Reign which yet he layeth in the precedent Chapter And that of Vitellius his making peace with Artabanus and his procuring him to send his Son an hostage to Tiberius to which he immediately subjoyns the Narration of Philip's Death with this Chain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Then dyed Philip c. Now that Artabanus had not made peace with Caesar in the twentieth year of Tiberius appears out of Tacitus Annal. l. 6 pag. 134 c. where the first mention of the occasion of Artabanus his War with Vitellius is made in the Consul-ship of C. Gessius and M. Servilius who were the last pair of Consuls but two in Tiberius his Reign and therefore belong to his twenty first year of which he gives this account That Artabanus who till then for fear of Germanicus had been faithful to the Romans and just towards his own subjects taking heart from the decrepid old age of Tiberius and successfulness of his own arms against some neighbouring Countries and gaping after the Armenian Kingdom whose King Artaxias was thenâ— lately dead did not only impose his eldest son Arsaces upon Armenia but also sent to demand the treasure that Vonon had left in Syria and Cilicia together with the ancient bounds of the Persian and Macedonian Empire threatning that he would invade all the Countries that Cyrus first and afterwards Alexander had posses'd upon this his nobles by the practices of Vitelius the deputy of Syria conspire against him go to Rome and obtain of Tiberius to appoint Phrahates King of Parthia Phrahates by deserting the Roman custom of living to which he had been inured his body not brooking that change contracts a mortal sickness He being dead Tiberius institutes Tiridates in his room King of Parthia and Mithridates King of Armenia Mithridates takes Artaxata the chief City of Armenia and by help of Pharasmanes forceth Artabanus out of Armenia and Parthia What is hitherto reported of Artabanus as it cannot in reason be otherwise conceiv'd Tacitus affirmeth to have been two Summers work and therefore seeing the occasion of thâ—se transactions against Artabanus to wit the Embassie of his Nobles and complaint against him to Tiberius fell in Tiberius his twenty first they could not be ended at the soonest before the twenty second of Tiberius was almost expired quae duabus â—statibus gesta coujunxi quo requiesceret animus à domesticis malis These Parthian affairs saith he which lasted two Summers I have here handled altogether that I might divert my thoughts from the unpleasant meditation of our domestick mischiefs Sueton. in Tiberio cap. 66. reports Tiberius his receipt of Letters from Artabanus as that which was the last experiment he had of the World's Opinion of him and prest him to write that desperate Letter to the Senate wherein he protesteth he found God so bent to his ruine as he knew not what to write Postremò semet ipse pertaesus talis epistolae principia tantùm non summam malorum suorum professus est quid scribam c. The contents of Artabanus his to him were the upbraiding him with his Parricides Murders Sloath and Luxury and the advising him that he would satisfie the great and most just hatred of the Roman Citizens by laying violent hands upon himself he would never have writ at this rate had his Son been then an Hostage with Tiberius But Suetonius is an Historian no Chronologer Tacitus is both we will therefore return to him who after he hath declared what cruelty Tiberius exercised at home during those two years wars with Artabanus abroad he returns again to the prosecution of his Story telling how his Nobles repenting of the change restored Artabanus to his Kingdom of Tiridates his flight into Syria and of the fire that happen'd the same year at Rome from whence Tiberius taking occasion to redeem his credit with the Romans and making an estimate of the value of the streets and houses that were consumed he assigned 1000 Sestertiums towards the repair and Commissioners to assign to every one their proportion thereof according to the loss they had sustain'd This so ingratiated him with the People as every one strives who shall out-wit others in inventing new honours for him which whether he receiv'd or omitted by reason of the so near approach of his death is uncertain saith my Author For soon after his last Consuls Cn. Acerconius and C. Pontius enter'd into Office and the seventeenth of the Calends of the next April Tiberius his breath was stopt Now it was after this restoring of Artabanus to the Parthian Crown which Tacitus thus clearly dates in the twenty second of Tiberius that the Emperour wrote to Vitelius to make peace with Artabanus Ubi
their obtaining a far more exceeding weight of eternal Glory but not universal Precepts obliging all Christians Gerson de religionis perfectione Religio Christiana sub uno supremo Abbate Christo sola est salutaris perfecta nibilominùs distincta gradibus meritorum ordinum qui votis aliquibus se subjiciunt ultrà legem communeâ— Christi Christian Religion profes'd under one supreme Abbat Christ is the only saving and perfect Religion It is notwithstanding distinguish'd according to the degrees of Merits and Orders So as they are most perfect who subject themselves to certain Rules beyond the common Law of Christ. Thus did these esteem the Royal Law to be an excellent Rule of Life and Heart for such as aim'd at perfection of Grace and Glory but for those that could content themselves with the common scantling they might be saved by that Religion by which their Fore-fathers had been saved there was no necessity of practising so chargeable and austere a Doctrine as that of Christ. The moralized Gentile had that Opinion of the Christian Religion in comparison of his own as he had of his own in comparison of all the rest the Jew had that esteem of Christ compared with Moses as he had of Moses compared with all other Legislators or to come to an Instance will both administer more light to this business and whereof we have from the Ancients a better account as he had of the common Jewish Religion in comparison of those stricter Sects of the Pharisee and Essene as leading to that height of Virtue as few are capable of attaining to to that Communion with God as is inaccessible saving by persons of a better Clay and therefore obtains the good word of all that are not brutified and led by untamed Passions as that which leads to the most perfect Beatitude and a trade of Life far excelling all others but not practicable in common Converse and therefore obtains observance from few As Philo speaks of the Essenes Meritò ut absolutae probitatis receptum in multis orbis regionibus a Graecis atque barbaris ordo tendens ad faelicitatem perfectissimam Philo de vita contemplativa They are deservedly entertain'd as men walking by a Rule of absolute perfection in many regions of the World both Grecians and Barbarians applaud their Order as tending to the most perfect happiness It is adored and reverenc'd at a distance by all but not approach'd to except by such as a kind of divine fury drives on to lay violent hands upon it having first laid violent hands upon themselves and thereby become dead to this mortal Life amore correpti rerum caelestium quasi divino furore perciti prae immortalis cupidine vitâ hac mortalidefuncti Id. Ibid. Josephus himself is a notable Example of this praising the Heroick degree of Virtue as absolutely the best but yet chusing a more remiss degree as best for him for though he far prefers in point of worth the Essene above the Pharisee in his discourses of them Antiq. 15. 13. he presents the Pharisee as indulg'd by Herod out of that respect he bore to Pollio a chief Master amongst them but out of the reverence which Herod had to the Religion it self of the Essenes he remitted to them the taking of the Oath of Allegiance which he imposed upon the other two Sects as conceiving the Essenes Virtue and Justice would oblige them more to duty than an Oath would the Pharisees or Sadducees And he spends so much of a long Chapter cap. 7. de Bell. Judaic 2. in commending the Essenes for that admirable degree of Temperance Tolerance Pacateness of Spirit contempt of Earth love of Heaven which they attain'd to as he almost forgets to describe the two other Sects as not worthy to stand in competition with this And in the History of his own Life gives the preheminency for Virtue to the Essenes whose Rules he followed under Bannus three years without intermission Yet when he came to near twenty and began to consider where he was and how to provide for a subsistence in this world sutable to his mind he chose the Religion of the Pharisees whom he saw on the sunny-side of the hedge as most conducible to a Civil Life as a way wherein he might safely walk towards the obtaining immortal happiness though not administring so large an entrance into it as that of the more mortified Essenes yet more easie to be kept without loss of his Secular Interests and laying more in the way Preferment c. As he himself informs us in the History of his own Life Jamque undeviginti annos natus civilem vitam aggressus sum addictus Pharisaeorum placitis Of whom notwithstanding he gives this Character that they were a slie and arrogant kind of Men pragmatical in Affairs of State enemies to Kings beguiling silly Women with shews of holiness Antiquities l. 13. c. 3. But however that Sect he chuseth as most convenient for a Civil Life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isocrat de pace Thus he adhered to the Religion of Moses in practice though he honour'd Christ's Doctrine in heart before it with Philo his Eunuch philosopher Philo de Josepho approving it in judgement as the most wholesome but relishing the other as more tooth-some loquitur ut oportet sed sapit contrarium Of the same make were those multitudes of Believers to whom Jesus would not trust himself knowing what was in them those of the Rulers and Pharisees who believed but did not practice his Doctrine for fear of being cast out of the Synagogue through love of the praise of men c. such were the Gnosticks the Ebionites the Hemerobaptists and the whole Frie of Mungrel-Christians who not being able to expung out of their Minds an honourable Opinion of Christ nor out of their Wills an enmity to the pureness of his Doctrine compounded the quarrel betwixt Conscience and Affection betwixt Reason and Passion § 3. Of Christ's working of Miracles which he propoundeth as another Cause of so many Disciples flocking after and adhering to him Josephus thus writes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hic fuit mirabilium operum patrator He was a dâ—er of admirable Works Every word and almost syllable hath its Emphasis 1. The VVorks wrought by Christ were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wonderful beyond and beside the ordinary course of Nature not only in the opinion of the Vulgar who are easie to be imposed upon by Thaumatourgists by reason of their ignorance in the Reason and Cause of Effects but in the judgement of the most knowing persons for doubtless such was Josephus and such those with whom he convers'd in order to his receiving satisfaction in this Case and therefore if he had not been well assured that as it was beyond the power of the most approved minds to find out so it was out of the Sphere of Natures Activity to afford Causes of such Effects he would not have given them this Atrribute
in his Treatise upon St. Matthew chap. 35. affirms and St. Jerom upon Eusebius his Chronicle notes giving this Testimony of that miraculous defection In the fourth year of the 202 Olympiad in the Reign of Tiberius this Olympiad concurrs with the 18 of Tiberius Gualter's Chronolog Bullenger in Daniel happened the greatest and most famous Eclipse of the Sun that ever was the day being at the sixth hour turn'd into night so as the Stars appeared which Eclipse was accompanied with such an Earthquake as many Houses of Nice in Bithynia fell to the ground Of which Earthquake Phlegon out of the History of Apollonius the Grammarian gives this further account that by it were overthrown many and the most famous Cities of Asia which Tiberius afterwards repaired in memorial whereof were stampt those Silver-pieces that had on one side the Image of Tiberius on the other of Asia with this Motto Civitatibus Asiae restitutis one of which Scaliger saw in the custody of William Gorlaeus Scal. in Euseb Chron And Pliny this description Maximus terrae memoriâ mortalium extitit motus Tiberii principatu 12 urbibus Asiae unâ nocte prostratis There was in the Reign of Tiberius the greatest Earth-quake that has faln out in the memory of man whereby in one night 12 Cities of Asia were ruin'd Tacitus this Twelve of the Famous Cities of Asia fell that year by an Earthquake of which many men were swallowed up by which the highest Mountains were levelled the lowest Vallies elevated lib. 2. where he mentions most of the Cities that underwent this sad accident And Seneca this hint upon occasion of that which afterward happen'd in Campania Asia duodecim urbes simul perdidit Asia lost twelve Cities at once by Earth-quake Natur. quest lib. 6. cap. 1. Whether Tacitus have stated this Earth-quake so long before the Passion of our Lord as he seems to do at the first and overlie sight and whether he has then stated it right and might not be mistaken in that as he is frequently in his Chronology or how the stating it so early stands with his interweaving it with the story of Artabanus which fell out so near the latter end of Tiberius I shall leave to the Sceptick to discuss and am content to shake out of the lap of my discourse these Testimonies concerning this Earthquake when he shall have disproved my Opinion that this was it which happen'd at that time when the veile of the Temple rent and the Rocks trembled vide Scal. de emend l. 6. pag. 564. § 2. Of this same miraculous darkness wrote Thallus the Chronographer whose Testimony the most Learned and Ancient Christian Antiquary Affricanus cites in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thallus calls that Darkness which overshadowed the Sun at Christs Crucifixion an Eclipse but without all reason as I conceive for it happen'd at the full of the Moon when she was so far from being perpendicular under the Sun as she was in opposition to him in so much as the Moon her self suffered an Eclipse that day at Sun-setting as Scaliger hath demonstrated by Astronomical Calculation de emendat 6. Of which also as well as of this twofold Heathen Testimony S. Tertullian takes notice in his Apology for the Christian Religion Eodem momento dies medium orbem signante sole subducta est deliquium utique putaverunt qui id quoque super Christo praedicatum non sciverunt At the minute of time when our Lord suffered the Sun in the mid Heaven day with-drew it self so as they that never knew how it had been prophesied of Christ that while that Shepherd was smitten it should be neither day nor night but betwixt both a Nucthemeron of God's own creating thought that diminution of light to have been an Eclipse § 3. The Roman Archives and publick Records Into which was entred and ingross'd amongst other strange accidents this also of darkness in the Reign of Tiberius where this wonder was to be read in Tertullian's time as himself testifieth in his Apology eum mundi casum relatum in Archivis vestris habetis Sane egregium tam celebris diei monumentum Scalig. de emend 6. An excellent monument of so famous a day as that was whereon the darkness was so great and universal as to be thought worthy of an intrado into the publick Records amongst the portentous Contingencies of that Age. But Pilate's Letter to Tiberius concerning our Saviours Crucifixion with what past thereupon at Rome preserv'd till Tertullian's days in the same Records is a more remarkable piece of Roman Antiquity for that Apocryphal Gospel as in point of Time it got the start of the Canonical so it contains the sum thereof viz. That the blessed Jesus through the envy of the Elders of the Jews for the fame he got by his miraculous healing of Diseases stilling the wind and seas raising the dead c. was deliver'd to Pilate to be Crucified that though his Sepulcher by Pilate's order upon the motion of the Elders was watch'd yet his Sepulcher was found empty the third day after which he convers'd upon Earth forty days and then ascended into Heaven Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus Tiberio nunciavit Ter. ap cont gent. 21. upon which information given to Tiberius by Pilate and other Roman Officers that lived in Judaea the place where Jesus exerted those indications of his Divinity the Emperour made a motion in the Senate that Jesus should be Canonized for a God which though upon a Maxime of State the Senate refused to grant yet Caesar persisting in an honourable esteem of Christ prohibited the Jews to persecute Christians upon severe penalties to be inflicted upon those that did disturb them by the Roman Deputies in Judaea and elsewhere where the Jews inhabited for the proof of all which he appeals to the Roman Chronicles Tertul. apol cont gentes 5. upon which Francis Zephirus thus paraphraseth So famous and so many were the Miracles of Christ reported to Tiberius out of Judaea as though the Secular Historians whether out of envy to the Christian name or adulation to the Emperours whose Gests they would be thought alone to admire had not mention'd them yet a great part of them might have been read in the Writings of those who were enemies to the Christian name as long as the Books of Fasts the Acts of the Senate and the Commentaries of the Emperours were extant § 4. The Edâ—ssen Chronicles shared with the Roman in the honour of being the Repository of the Evangelicall Stories concerning the mighty works of the blessed Jesus Out of whose Annals extant in the Syrian Tongue in his dayes Eusebius Eccles. hist. lib. 1. cap. 13. translates word for word this Story The fame of Christs Miracles drew infinite numbers of persons to apply themselves to him for cure of their Maladies among whom Abgarus the King of Edessa Tacitus mentions this King of Edessa annal 12. pag. 157. though he miswrite him Abbaras as Scaliger observes
de emend temp 6. tit quinta pascha pag. 561. being faln into a grievous and in humane appearance incurable Disease sent a Messenger to Jesus with a supplicatory Letter that he would please to come and heal him of these contents Abgarus Prince of Edessa to the propitious Saviour that hath appeared in the Flesh in the Confines of Jerusalem health I have heard of those miraculous Cures which thou doest without application of Medicines and Herbs for it is reported that thou givest sight to the blind causest the lame to walk cleansest the Leprous castest out Devils and unclean spirits curest the most inveterate sicknesses and recallest the dead to life from which I conclude one of these two things that either thou art God come from Heaven and doest those things or the Son of God that bringest such things to pass wherefore by these my Letters I beseech thee to take the pains to come and cure me of my malady wherewith I am sore vexed I have heard moreover that the Jews murmur against thee and go about to mischiefe thee I have here a little City and an honest people which will suffice us both To this Jesus sends this Reply Blessed art thou Agbarus because thou hast believed in me when thou sawest me not for it is written of me that they which see mee shall not believe in me that they which see me not may believe and be saved Concerning that which thou writest unto me that I would come unto thee I let thee understand that all things touching my Message are here to be fulfill'd and after the fulfilling thereof I am to return to him that s 〈…〉 me But after my Assumption I will send one of my Disciples unto thee who shall cure thy Malady and restore life to thee and them that be with thee Out of the same Records Eusebius reports how after our Lords Ascension Thaddaeus one of the seventy was sent to Edessa who cured and converted Agbarus and preach'd the Gospel to his Subjects c. I know that Gelatius in a Council of 70 Bishops Crab. Con. Tom. 1. decret Gelasti pag. 993. decreed those Epistles Apochryphal as he did also the VVritings of Tertullian and Eusebius his Ecclesiastical History to prevent their being received with the like reverence wherewith we embrace the Canonical Scripture but neither he nor any body else either Christian or Pagan question'd the Truth of this Relation till Nicephorus discredited it by his forged additions of Christs sending his Picture to Agbarus drawn on an Handkerchiefe and of the strange Effect that Image had when that City was besieged and those other ridiculous storyes relating to that business The Sceptick I know will except against these last Allegations that their Originals are not extant in answer to which I commend to the Umpirage of common Reason these Queries 1. Whether it stand with Reason that men who stood so much upon their credit as the ancient Christians did would appeal to common Records for the probat of these things had they not then been to be read in those Authors or Chronicles out of which they made their Allegations 2 By what means it came to pass that the Adversaries of our Religion who lived upon the place and had opportunity enough to-examine those Quotations and whom interest would have prompted to enquire into these things did not make their exceptions against the Apologists of the Christian Cause 3. Whether the Christian Church or the Pagan Adversaries were most like to obliterate those Antiquities the Christian whom they favour'd or the Pagan whom they confuted considering what artifices Julian the Apostate used to suppress Learning forbidding Christians to be trained up in prophane Literature Ec. Hist. 3. 10. Socratis Scholast which Facts of Julian Ammianus Marcel though a great admirer of him and the Pagan Religion condemns as worthy to be buried in eternal silence Illud autem inclemens obruendum perenni silentio quod arcebat docere magistros rhetoricos grammaticos ritus Christiani cultores Am. Marcel 22. 10. As that whereby Julian designed to deprive the Christians of the knowledge of those Pagan Writings and Records out of which the Christian Apologists had collected such palpable Testimonies for the defence of Gospel-history and to bury the Originals out of which they had made their Quotations in perpetual oblivion as advantagious to our Cause by their confessing the Truth of the Matter of Fact Lactantius by name whose scope was Quia nondum capere poterat divina prius humana testimonia ethnico offerre id est Philosophorum Historicorum ut suis potissimùm refutaretur Authoribus quo si eruditi homines se conferre caeperint evanituras brevi religiones fallas Because the Heathen World was yet uncapable of Divine first to offer it Humane Testimonies of Heathen Philosophers and Histories that it might at least be confuted by its own Authors Which method if Learned men would take false Religions would quickly vanish See more in Eusebius his Apology for Origen where he shews how he and other Christian Doctors foil'd the Pagans at their own Weapons and Dionysius the Areopagite his Epistle to Polycarp For not dealing in this way but by Texts of sacred Writ with Demetrianus Lactantius blames St. Cyprian Lact. de justicia l. 5. c. 4. Let Julian who was thus careful to suppress Pagan records bring up the Rear of Gentile Witnesses to the Truth of the Evangelical Writings as to their being rightly Father'd upon those Authors whose Names they bear who as Cyril Contra Julianum lib. 10. testifieth Apertè fatetur Petri Pauli Mathaei Marci Lucae esse ea quae Christiani legunt iisdem nominibus inscripta confesseth That the Books which the Christians read inscribed with the names of Peter Paul Mathew Mark Luke are the genuine Writings of those men § 5. I should put the utmost of my Readers patience to trial should I shew the Prints of Old-Testament-stories in the Antiquities of the Heathen I will therefore content my self with these few particulars and for the rest refer him to Blundel Vossius c. The History of Joseph was presented in the Aegyptian Apis saith Ruffinus lib. 2. historiae Ecclesiast and produceth Pagan Writers affirming that a certain King or Steward of Aegypt in a time of Famine relieved the people out of his Storehouses to whom therefore after his Decease they built a Temple wherein an Ox was kept at the publick Charge as an Embleme of the best Husbandman a creature saith Diodorus Siculus l. 1. cap. 2. exceeding helpful to Husbandmen which Varro l. 2. c. 5. de re rusticâ stiles the Husbandman's Companion and the servant of Ceres Upon which consideration was grounded that Athenian Law that no man should kill an Oxe that Plowed the ground 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Because he is a kind of Husbandman and a partaker with man in his labour Aelianus var. hist. l. 5. c. 14. and therefore Appianus de belis Mithridat makes it an
Deceiptfulness of those Hearts that are witty in contriving their own destructiou To proceed therefore in cutting off the several Heads of Atheistical Prejudice one by one would be more than an Herculean Labour and as vain as that which Pirrhus imploy'd in the conquest of the Roman Armies which he could not faster defeat than others rose up in their stead the ranckness of the Roman Blood scorning to be stanch'd by all the Searing-irons he could apply to the Wounds he gave that Cities then rising greatness but putting forth its plastick Virtue in the fresh production of so many martial Spirits as taught that gallant Epirot by the loss of his Kingdom to construe Apollo's Oracle to a sinister sence as to his own fortune of which Cyneas gave him a good item when he told him he was combating with the Lernean Hydra and the Poet gives an elegant description Non Hydra secto corpore firmior Vinci dolentem crevit in Herculem No less numerous and fierce are the assaults which Atheism makes against particular Gospel-enunciations and Conclusions It ferrets every Text from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the Revelation to find breaches in Jerusalem's pearly Walls Seams in Chrst's Coat Errata in that Edition of Heavens mind this is impossible that is too ordinary this is impious that incongruous this is defective that redundant he complains here of affectation there of boldness here of obscurity there of plainness The Christian Aedipusses the Fathers of old the School-men of late untied these knots as fast as Sphinx could knit them and with indefatigable industry pursued the enemies of the Cross of Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 clearing all the Texts and Propositions excepted against from the misprision of those Crimes were lay'd to their charge and proving that our Religion had nothing in it against either Reason or good Manners nothing unworthy of its Divine Original or unsuitable to its merciful ends In their managing of which holy War I cannot tell whether I should more admire the solidness of their Judgements or the heat of their Divine Zeal the labour or success of those Angels of Michael contending with the Devil and his Angels In which way of combating he that would now follow them must be so much more patient of labour than they were as Atheistical prejudice is more prolifick now than then and fall so far short of them in point of success as Pagans are less under judicial obduration than Apostate Christians Must we suffer then this many-headed Cerberus to go unmuzzl'd out of the Lease barking against the Light of Heaven and drivelling his poysonful Foam upon the Flowers of Paradise Must the new sprung Heads of Hydra still stand rampant upon her stiff-Neck and hiss without controul against Religion Must we in despondencie cast away our Sword and yield the Field to this Monster Is there after the dismounting of these three Heads of Prejudice no way whereby we may reach the rest Nero wish'd that all the heads of the Senators stood upon one neck that he might dispatch them at one blow The opportunity which he impiously wish'd against the Senate God hath graciously vouchsafed us against the Atheist for though these three Objections of his against Christianity that have been answered stand upon several Grounds as distinct Necks and therefore are not to be cut off but one by one yet all his remaining Objections stand upon one neck center in this one point Say Christ and his Apostles meant honestly say they were wise men say we have in the Gospel a true account of their doings and sayings yet they were but Men and as men discover their weakness in such and such Texts in these and these passages which had they been divinely inspired would never have faln from their Lips or Pens If then we can demonstrate the Errour of their Conclusion we make the Sophistry of all their Premises upon which they labour to ground it apparent a man of the weakest Intellect that hath seen Snow will conclude all arguments brought to prove it is not white Fallacious If we can manifestly prove the contradictory to what they would conclude That the Sacred Scriptures are of Divine Original the weakest Christian by help of that natural Logick that is every man's Birth-right though he cannot discern the particular irregularity of the Atheists discourse as to Mood and Figure yet may certainly and scientifically conclude in the gross that the Atheist's Arguments are not cogent and necessarily concludent and may stop all his blasphemous mouths charm into a dead sleep the hundred squint eyes he casts upon Religion with one Bolus with one Caducaeus and be his Heads a thousand give them their deaths wound at one blow and so cut the Sinnews that makes him go with a stiff neck as if his Heads have brains in them they shall stoop and vail to that Majesty which the Gospel challengeth and shall be confirm'd in the just possession thereof by the probat of this Position In the Fourth Book The Divine Original of the sacred Gospel and the Old Testament of which it is the perfection is as demonstrable as the Being of a Deity Christian Religions APPEAL To the BAR of Common Reason c. The Fourth Book The Divine Original of Christian Religion is as demonstrable as the being of a God CHAP. I. The Being of a Deity demonstrated § 1. Atheistical exceptions against particular points of Religion an Hydra's head yet they all stand upon one neck and may be cut off at one blow by proving the Divine Original of Religion § 2. The Existence of a Deity demonstrable from the frame of the World the composition of humane bodies § 3. The Garden of the earth did not fall by chance into so curious and well ordered knots the ingenuity of Birds sings the wisdom of their maker c. § 4. The Heavens declare the Glory of God § 1. IT hath been a question agitated in the Schools whether the Notion of a Deity be not so imprinted on the Tables of the Heart as 't is not possible to be razed out So congenial to the humane mind as it cannot frame a conception inward answerable to this outward expression There is no God a Sentence in the Fools mouth and heart and perhaps in his Brutish imagination but not to be transcribed thence into his upper soul whose pre-notions repulse all thoughts of entertaining it Alexand. Alens sum par 1. quest 3. memb 2. An ita deus sit cogitare non esse vide Trismig periand Jamblicus makes the knowledge of God so essential to the soul as he saith to know God is the very essence thereof Jamblic de mysteriis 6. titulo de cognitione divinorum Ante omnem rationis usum inest naturaliter dei notio imò tactus quidam divinitatis melior quam notitia Intellectus divinus dat esse animae per intelligere suum essentiale ergo esse animae est quoddam intelligere
nullus aeger ineptiùs deliravit saith Lactant. de fal Sapientia lib. 3. cap. 17. There is saith Epicurus no orderly disposition of things for many things are made otherwise then they ought to have been And this Divine man saith our Lactantius found a great many faults in Gods works whose Cavils if I had time to refell one by one I would easily show that this querâ—lous Philosopher was neither a wise man nor well in his wits but a person than whom though he was sound and thristy in his Body never any Sick man raved more madly But sure his tongue ran before his wit Nor do I think that Alphonsus King of Spain was in earnest when he said that had he been with God at the Creation he could have directed the Sun a better course than that which he steers Or if he was he had the Moon then in his Crest or was himself the greatest errour that ever nature committed For though another course of the Sun might have been more convenient for Alphonsus his Kingdoms as well as another course and place of the Sea and though the end of his keeping within the Zodiack which Cleanthes fancies to wit this that the Sun being a Globe of Fire the Food of whose Vitals was Moisture that he might not die of thirst would not recede further from the Mediterranean than that he might reach if not his Lip yet with the help of a long arm his Spoon into it and sip from thence his dayly nutriment might have been better obtain'd if he had in his course been led always to face the Ocean Yet to him that considers what a general benefit it is to the whole world that the Sun follows that line he does in his dayly and yearly course how by this means his Light and Heat is most equally distributed the as profitable as pleasant interchanges of Winter and Summer of Spring and Autumn procured and all sublunary Creatures have assigned to them as fit proportions of time to work and rest in as could be devised To him I say that considers this it will appear that an house built thus Magnificent and furnisht with all imaginable conveniences and all the members and parts of it disposed into so comely an Order wherein every particular serves it self in serving the Community was neither built for nor by Rats and Mice but by that infinite being who had in his mind before the production of it a preexisting eternal and perfect Idea of all its Parts Uses Appurtenances and Circumstances If the fortuitous concourse of Atomes saith Cicero could produce so comely a Structure as the Universe why do not they produce a Portch a Temple a City which are far more easie and have infinitely less Workmanship Who can think him worthy of the name of Man who when he sees such certain and regular Motions of the Heavens such fixed Orders and Ranks of the Stars and all things in Heaven and Earth so aptly connext and joyn'd together can deny that the greatest Reason hath been and is imployed in the making sustaining and guiding of them Or conceipt that those things fall out by chance they are disposed by such deep Council as non-plusseth all humane wit to comprehend it when we see things moved by Engines we make no question but that those are the works of Reason and when we see the Câ—lestial Bodies wheeling about with so admirable Celerity and most constantly making their anniversary Vicissitude to the greatest benefit and conservation of all things do we make the least doubt but that they follow the conduct not only of Reason but the highest and Divinest Reason Quî igitur convenit signum aut tabulam pictam cùm aspexeris scire adhibitam Artem cúmque procul cursum Navigii videris non dubitare quin id ratione atque arte moveatur aut cùm Solarium vel descriptum vel ex aqua contemplere intelligere declarari horas arte non casu mundum autem qui has ipsas artes eorum artifices cuncta complectitur consilii rationis esse expertem putare Quòd si in Scythiam aut Britanniam Sphaeram aliquis tulerit hanc quam nuper effecit Possidonius cujus singulae conversiones idem efficiunt in Sole in Luna et in quinque Stellis errantibus quod efficitur in caelo singulis diebus noctibus quis in illa barbarie dubitet quin ea Sphera fit perfecta ratione Archimedem arbitramur plus voluisse in imitandis Spheris quà m Naturam in efficiendis Ille apud Actium Pastor qui navem nunquam ante vidisset ut procul novum vehiculum Argonautarum è monte conspexit primò admirans perterritus dubitat quid sit at juvenibus visis auditóque nautico cantu consimilem ad aures cantum refert de Nat. Deor 2. 7. How incongruous are these Epicurean imaginations If thou dost but cast thine eye upon a Sign Post or Painted Table thou would be ashamed to question whether Art had been used therein or chance had put them into that form If thou seest a Ship under Sail thou doubts not but Reason and Art are imploy'd in the conduct of it If thou take a view of a Sun-dial or an Hour glass wherein the half hours or quarters are marked out thou perceives that those Lines were drawn not by Chance but Art But when thou contemplates the World which comprehends these very Arts and Artificers and all things else thou thinkest it void of Counsel and Reason Put case a man should carry that Sphere which Possidonius lately made whose several Motions make the same progress in the Sun Moon and five remaining Planets which themselves make in the Heavens every day and night into Scythia or Britain poor Britain how art thou Posting back to thy old Scythian-equalling barbarousness who among those Savages would make question but that Art and Reason had an hand in framing that Sphere Can we think that Archimedes had his mind more imploy'd in imitating the Spheres then Nature in making of them That Shepherd of Actium who had never seen Ship before when the Ship of the Argonautes came within his Ken at first wondring and affrighted doubted what it was but when he saw the Marriners and heard the Seamens Songs he return'd the like Songs to their ears Put case saith Aristotle as he is quoted by Balbus in Cicer. de Nat. Deor. 2. That some men who had always lived underground should be let out of that Dungeon and be permitted to come upon the surface of the Earth where on a sudden they should see the Earth the Sea and Heaven perceive the greatness of the Clouds the force of the Winds look upon the Sun and understand the vastness of its Bulk the Beauty of its Face and the force of his Influence the efficacy of its Light making Day of its Heat cherishing and refreshing all creatures and next when day is shut in should fix their eyes upon the many thousand fixed
Where not only as to their Operation but Being are the Gods of Hamath and of Arphad Where are the Gods of Sephervaim Hena and Iva shall I say or the Gods of Europe Asia Affrica The Aegyptian Nile spawned Fish-Gods their Land brought forth Gods of Grass and Gods that eat Grass their Air was darkned with vollies of winged Deities In Greece the Genius of every species of Animals and Vegetives In Rome Pallor and Terror the Fever and Jaundice grew into Gods They had their he and she-deities for Conception Birth Puberty Marriage Merchandice c. Gods of the Closet of the Market Gods of the Close-stool and Chamber-pot such as 't is a wonder their own Jove did not thunder-strike the adorers of such as one would think Hercules might have scar'd into the holes of the earth with the shadow of his Club or blown away with his Fly-flap But that in the Exile of the lawful Soveraign every one has an equal right to the Crown and in that parity there is not a chip to chose betwixt a Peer and a Peasant a Calf will serve the Israelites for a God when they have forgot him that brought them out of Aegypt When men delight not to retain the Former of all things in their mind every Man will be a God-wright and frame an Image of the Deity of any thing that comes off the Wheel of his ever-running Imagination Yea Philosophy it self in those Times of Ignorance could not castrate the rank Fancies of Democritus and Epicurus of this prolifick God-teeming humour but that they spawn'd as many Gods that is eternal Beings as there are Atoms in their conceipted infinite Worlds In which particular I should think Laertius and Tully to have wronged their memories If I did not see in this Age of improved Learning and divine Light some mens Wind-mill-heads grinding the God head of the one eternal into as many and small grains as there are moats in the Universe If I did not see those Leviathans who make sport with and take their pastime in deriding the Notions of created Spirits and of the adorable Trinity of Persons in that one uncreated Essence as finding no bottom of that immense Ocean which Faith makes fordable to the meanest Christian themselves introducing an Hypothesis of more Spirits for take Divisibility from Matter and nothing remains but an Incorporeal Substance and he that talks of a crooked an hooked a three-corner'd Atome may with as much reason tell us of a Square or Triangular Circle except he can impose upon the World a new Grammar as well as Philosophy or perswade all Greece to forget its Mother-tongue than can stand betwixt York and Lancaster I could make infinite more room for them upon the Cartesian Ground but that is a Field large enough for all the Host of Heaven to incamp in and I shall enlarge their Quarters in my Reflections upon the other Hypothesis which the Doctrine of Atoms introduceth to wit as many Persons in the One Eternal Being as many distinct individual Subsistencies in the one Essence of Eternal Matter as we can imagine Moats in the Sun-beams should they dart themselves ten hundred thousand millions of times further upwards towards the Emperial Heaven than they do downwards to this Globe of Earth and spread themselves round about that vast Circumference in comparison of which this of our habitation is but an Atome For give Eternity to Matter and you give it the Essence of God make it subsist in Atomes each one distinguish'd from another and the result will be so many distinct Subsistencies in that one Essence Give to these Subsistencies a power of moving themselves which you must grant them or say they are moved by another and what can be elder than Eternity or by Chance Chance must be then before them and it must be the life of Reason and that will make e-every Atome an individual Person a Rational Hypostasis So that instead of God the Father Son and Holy Ghost subsisting in one undivided eternal Godhead This new Divinity commends to us more millions of divine Persons than could be reckon'd up in an age should all the men of that Age betake themselves all their life to their Counters That which we interpret A Troop cometh in the Story of Gad's Birth Gen. 30. 11. some Hebrews expound Fortune cometh upon which our learn'd Antiquary expends the first Chapter of his 1 Syntagme de Dais Syriis I will not undertake to determine which is the best Translation perhaps they may both stand with that Text though not better than their conjunction would suit the Birth of the Doctrine of Atomes For since Leah that blear-eyed purblind Epicuraean Philosophy grown under the Age of the Gospel past child-bearing hath upon the knees of her handmaid Zilpah Modern Atheism brought forth into the Christian Air her Son Gad or Fortune as that which made the eternal Atomes so happily meet as to fall into all those comely Forms whereof the World consists Gad or a Troop comes shall I say or a Legion or a Myriad of Troops of Deities God the crooked God the hooked God the obtuse God the sharp God the long God the short Atome for it would be a taking of that Name in vain to apply it to those infinite Forms into which those mens Fancies cast those eternal Beings which notwithstanding they call Atoms with a far greater Solecism than he committed with his Finger who pointed it to the Earth when he was speaking of the glorious Furniture of Heaven and shall rather bestow my time in transcribing that Exclamation which our divine Poet snbjoynes to the History of those and such like vanities of the Polytheists Ah! what a thing is Man devoid of Grace Adoring Garlick with an humble face Begging his food of that which he may eat Starving the while he worshippeth his meat Who makes a Root his God how low is he If God and man be sever'd infinitelie What wretchedness can give him any room Whose House is foul while he adores his Broom Let my stammering Muse add Nor dares not sweep't least from his foot arise So many Motes so many Deities Certainly Epicurus if he were true to his own Principles must have been a nasty Sloven and one whose disciples well deserv'd that compellation which the Satyrist gives them Epicuri de grege porci The Hoggs of Epicurus his Stie For he and his Litter of Followers must lie battening in their own Dung for fear of disquieting that eternal Matter a thing which the Deity does most abominate in their opinion and therefore does not interest it self in the affairs of the World but busies it self in dancing and frisking about and suffers it self to be carried whither Fortune pleaseth and not the Scavinger's Broom or Dung-rake I do not call Cartesius an Atheist though doubtless his Philosophy has made many but I think I may well enough call his a Feminine Philosophy in comparison of that of Plato or Aristotle grounded upon Principles
received by uninterrupted Tradition though they neither could retrieve all Principles of that Nature nor through want of the rest always rightly apply those they had received And it seems a wonder to me that so many who would be counted men in understanding should be so affected with his Systems which he himself if my memory fail me not in his Preface to his Natural Philosophy affirmeth he could make no man understand or relish so well as one woman who though she was a person of honour and of as great a capacity as any as all of that Sex yet sure she was not a competent Judge of such Speculations had they been truly Masculine She might perhaps have judged of a Poem upon the presumption of Sapphos Dexterity of an Oration and have not gone beyond those bounds to which that Sex reached in the persons of Amaesia Affrania Hortensia she might perhaps have found by enquiring of her Cooks or Scullions that his Kitchin-experiments were true and by her own Discretion see some of them subvert some of the Conclusions of the old Philosophy as one fool may spy more faults than an hundred wise men can mend But that they were a Foundation firm enough for his Conclusions that she and only she should discern is an affront to our whole Sex if indeed his Philosophy be calculated to the sublimest Principles of the most Masculine and Strenuous Wits and not Female and Vulgar Capacities who are easily imposed upon by the fallacy of non causa pro causa Though It must be acknowledged to the praise of that excellent Lady that her Philosophical Genius so far transcended the common standard of her Sex as to make credible that Story which Socrates relates of the Alexandrian Hypatia the Daughter of Theon the Philosopher who excell'd all the Sophisters of her time and either preceded or succeeded Platinus in Plato's School Lib. 7. 15. Socrat. Scholast hist. But I have dwelt too long upon these Minim Deities were it not that from their introduction we may learn to what Vanity of mind divine Justice gives those men up that desire not the knowledge of the Almighty and how aptly the Prophet speaks when he saith they should creep into the holes of the earth For at the appearance of the Sun of Righteousness this whole brood of Vermine disappear'd these Hodmadods crept into their shells these Worms into their holes these never stood one fight with our Lord of Hosts their Adorers never struck one stroke in their defence as they did for their celestial Gods the Host of Heaven which they worship'd the Gods of the greater and lesser Nations But all in vain For those strong men that kept the house are all turn'd out of possession by the blessed Jesus and spoil'd of all their Ensigns of divine honour Jove of his Thunder-bolt Christs still voyce drowning the noise of his Thunder Apollo of his Bow and Arrows Christ's Arrows proving more sharp in the sides of Python the Serpent than his Mars of his Faulchion Christ's two-edged Sword proving the better mettled Blade Minerva of her Spear being not able with her Target to defend her self against the Artillery of the Cross Mercury of his Caduceus by the more sweet Charms of the Apostles The Lion of the Tribe of Judah uncas'd Hercules and pull'd off his Lions Skin over his ears As that Light of Light appeared in the East and gradually shone to the West the World ceas'd to fear those Hobgoblins that had affrighted her in the dark men learn'd to look upon the Sun without the Ceremonies of Adoration without kissing the hand or bending the knee As the Bread that came down from Heaven hath been broken to the several Nations of the Earth they gave over baking Cakes to the Queen of Heaven As the Gospel introduc'd the fear of the One blessed God she shak'd off the fear of false Gods broke down their Altars demolish'd their Temples contemn'd their Oracles and stampt their Images to powder As the God that made Heaven reveil'd himself by the Preaching of the Gospel the Gods that did not make Heaven and Earth have been abolish't from off the Earth from under Heaven The Romans Celebration of the Funeral of that Coblers Crow two years after our Saviours Passion Gilbert Genebrand in his Chronic. conceives to have been a presage that now the Gospel was begun to be publish'd the black Crow that is Satan was shortly to expire at Rome where had been his chief seat and babling as he is quoted by Vossius Atrium mali spiritûs infractum imperium obrutum quasi sepultum iri Vos de Idol 3. 89. This was but short warning however all on a suddain as in a Pannick Fear the whole Army of Celestial Terrestrial and Infernal black and white Daemons take themselves to their heels and quit their ancient seats as soon as the Lord of Hosts appears pitching his Tent amongst men and Tabernacling in Humane Flesh. So that now a Child may lead those Lions at whose voice the World trembled before God utter'd his voyce none frequent those Fountains Caves Groves Oaks for Counsel at the lips of whose Oracles formerly the whole World hung for advice in all Matters of weight thither men repaired there they enquired about planting of Colonies building of Cities about Peace and War c. Plutarch conviv mor. tom 1. p. 377. But they have all lost their Tongues since God spake to us by his Son Jove's Fountain of Castalion and that otherof Colophon saith Clem. Alexand. adhaetat are commanded silence and all other Prophetick Springs have lost their divining tast whose proud streams swell'd of old with the honour of being reputed the seats of Sacred Oracles One of those silenc'd Oracles that of the Daphnean Apollo in the Suburbs of Antioch Julian would have cured of his dumbness and he attempted the like elsewhere Am. Marcol Julianus 22. 12. Multorum curiosior Julianus novam consilii viam aggressus est venas fatidicas Castalionis recludere cogitans fontis quem obstruxisse Caesar dicitur Hadrianus mole saxorum ingenti veritus rè ut ipse praecipientibus aquis capessendam Rempublicam comperit etiam alii similia docerentur ac statim circum humata corpora statuit exindè transferri eo ritu quo Athenienses insulam purgaverant Delon Julian his curiosity in the matter of Religion in order to the Defence of Paganisme against the Christian Faith which he had renounc'd put him upon this new Project thinking to open the Veines of the Castalion Fountain which the Emperour Hadrian is reported to have obstructed with a huge heap of stones fearing least as he was invited to undertake the Empire by the Oracle of that Spring others also might be taught the like he forthwith commands the Corps that were there inter'd should be removed thence after the same rite as the Athenians purged the Island of Delos What success he had here or in other places that Historian doth not relate which
which actuated the Divining Faculty of the Mind as the Light doth the Eye and made it exert it self in prophesying which in time were either wasted or diverted to some other place as it happens to Fountains which in length of time either dry up or flit by reason that the subterranean Fire which distills them either goes quite out for want of fuel or Creep after its fomes till it meet with matter enough to feed it and caverns long enough to be Limbecks for such distillations A Salvo which is neither broad enough for the sore for it cannot be a sufficient reason why all the Oracles should at once be silenc'd nor consist with common Principles touching those delusive Responds and exploded by Cicero de divinat nor comparable to that which the Christian brings and the Oracle of Apollo himself was forc'd to acknowledge though so much against his will As when the obstinate Pagans would not rest satisfied with that answer but labour'd to overcome his obstinate silence and by Charms extort a better Respond from his Tripos that he might be no longer forc'd to speak so much to his own disgrace he stifled his Prophetess whom against her will they thrust into the Cave when by all ordinary dumb shows he had first exprest his dislike of their making enquiry at his Oracle the Victim standing still as without sense at the first libations and scarce shrugging when they rain'd powr'd whole showers of water upon him What could the poor dumb Idol do more towards the rebuking the madness of the enquirers that would still be asking questions of him after he had so often and with so much passionate grief told the world he was tongue-tied from giving any other answer then this That he was forbid by an higher power the Hebrew Child whom all Gods are commanded to obey and worship to give answers What could the poor dumb Beast do more towards the stopping them in that prohibited way than to stand stone still neither winnying as we say in the North nor wagging the Taile neither tossing her horns nor shaking her ears when water was poured on her head it being a received Maxim in the Pontifical Schools That when the Libations proceeded not Canonically it was an infallible sign of the aversion of the Daemon of his dislike of what they were about Capram argui frigida affusa si non moveatur Non enim esse animae secundùm naturam affectae non moveri atque affici cum libamenta inverguntur Constanter verum est litare signum esse exiturae sortis non litando demonstrari responsum nullum exiturum iri Plut. ibid. 677. And a Principle with the Delphick Priests that if the Sacrifice during the libation did not furiously rage and fling about not her head only but her whole body it was a demonstration that Apollo would give no answer had no mind to speak at that time Quos perdere vult Jupiter dementat whom God intends mischief to he takes sense from and therefore though the G 〈…〉 sullen stupidity spake Apollo's sullen silence yet Pythia must down into the Cell she must take the question and fit brooding upon the Tripos to hatch an Answer but no Answer she receives from the Daemon saving that which stopt her own breath and all future access to Delphos For at her first entrance into the prophetick Cave she was replete with a malignant and dumb Spirit and by hideous shrieks exprest she was not able to bear the burthen of the enraged Daemon by whom after she had been every way tost she was at last hurl'd up to the mouth of the Den in so ghastly a posture and with so terrible a clamour as frighted away not only the inquirers but the whole College of the Priests and Nicander the Wizzard This is the last news we hear in Pagan Authors of the Delphick Oracle § 6 Of the hitherto-accomplishment of the last Branch of those kind of prophetick Texts viz. That where the Gospel comes it utterly abolisheth all Pagan Idols so as they shall never get footing there again our eyes may inform us if we carry them through those Countries where Christian Religion hath once been establish'd though many of them have by publick Sanction since exploded it yet we shall find Christ still keeping possession of those Countries by parties professing the Gospel there in all Mahometan Nations there is a remnant of Christians And though Christian Religion be discountenanced by the Secular Power yet hath there not been any where a restauration of any of the Pagan Gods or any God allowed to be worship'd but the God of Israel the God that made Heaven and Earth Though the Christian World be deplorably immers'd in Metophorical Idolatry of Pride and Self-adoration of Avarice and making Gold its hope and delight of sensuality and making a God of the Belly which is in us the same translated foolery that the worshipping of Garlick was in the old Aegyptians Though the School-doctrine touching the worshiping of Angels Images and Saints departed bids fair for the restauration of the Pagan Doctrine of Daemons and would bring the vulgar into extream peril of as gross as senseless Idolatry as any the Heathens committed if it were practised which I add because I think the veriest Ideot a wiser man than to follow the Dictates of those great Clarks who always musing in their Cells bring forth sometimes through want of concourse with men as inform Notions as those lumps of Flesh or concealed Menstrâ—a's which some Virgins are delivered of without the knowledge of Man when the Passive Seed of that Sex betaking it self to the Matrix obstructed and wanting the Plastick male Sperm to digest it into form piles it self into a rude heap So monstrous are some of the Issues of these mens brains brought forth upon this subject as Cassander that wise and yet zealous Papist cannot lick them into any tollerable or practicable Form and therefore adviseth Charles the Fifth that Biel's Doctrine which substitutes the Virgin Mary or other Saints in the Office of Christs Mediatorship might be exploded that those Titles given her of Queen of Heaven Queen and Mother of Mercy our Life our Hope Light of the Church Advocate and Mediatrix might be laid aside that those Liturgical forms wherein a power is ascribed to her to command Christ now Reigning in Heaven might be expung'd Such as these Ora matrem jube filio If you pray to the Mother you command the Son Oh faelix puerpèra Nostra pians scelera June matris impera Redemptori That he would wholly prohibit all ostentation of Reliques and take care that the people might be taught to reverence the true Reliques of Saints only to wit the Examples of their Piety and Vertues And as to the Worshipping of Images he wisheth that the German and Gallican Churches had still persisted in the Opinion of the Ancient Church and of their Progenitors for it is saith he more manifest than that
I should need many words to express it that the Worship of Images hath proceeded too far and the Faction or rather the Superstition of the Vulgar hath been indulged more than enough insomuch as to that height of Adoration which even the Pagans gave to their Images and to the extreamest vanity which the Heathens shewd in fashioning or adorning their Idols there seems nothing wanting among us And therefore perswades the Emperour that the ancient Doctrine might be restored and the new restrained Though the like hath befaln the Roman Church which befell the Jewish in the Wilderness When Moses as their Legends tell us to try who was guilty of forcing Aaron to cast the Golden Calf order'd them to drink of that water into which he had cast the powder of that Idol which the Idolaters greedily gulping spilt some of it upon their Chins whence their Beards became of a Golden colour and betrayed them to the avenging Sword of their Innocent Brethren A Romance hansomly exprest by Peter Rhenensis as he is quoted by Mr. Selden in his Syntagme de aureo vitulo whose Poem hath this close Hebraei tradunt Mosen fecisse quod audis Vt sciret solos hac ratione reos Nam rutilans auro monstrabat barba nocentes Dum patulo latices fluminis ore bibunt Aurum quod fudit Aaron descendit eorum In barbas tantùm qui coluere bovem Let who please dispute the truth of this Story I shall only give the English and Moral of it To try the guilty Moses as 't is said Made Israel drink the powder he had braid The Calf into Those Reliques of their sin Greedily hausted drilling on their Chin Gold-die th' Idolaters beards and mark them out For Levie's Sword from 'mongst the guiltless rout Thus the Church of Rome hath contracted the colour of the Calf upon the Golden locks of her Shrines and Images by drinking too deep and too gredily of the Cup of Pagan Abominations and thereby hath bewrayed herself to have the Calf in her heart a very strong inclination to the grossest Idolatries of Rome Heathen and to stand in extream need of that Admonition which Cassander gave her that she would remove the scandall she hath given to the Mahometans to the Reformed Churches and the soundest part of her own Communion by countenancing such Doctrines and Practices as in the Judgment of her own Doctors consequentially abett as perfect Paganism as ever reign'd in the Pagan World Yet notwithstanding all this if we lay aside this jangling with words and take Idolatry in its native proper and old prophetick sence a sence which any thats come to the stature of a man may stride over at once And not suffer ourselves to be abused by those over-acute unhappy Wits who cut this Term into as many Thongs as will compass the whole body of Romish Superstition and by sub-dividing those thongs would bring the innocent and pious Ceremonies of the Church of England within the compass of that word Idolatry by which art 〈…〉 thing which we disgust and will not comport with our most carnal humours may be brought under a suspicion of being Idolatrous For Quantitas continua est in infinitum divisibilias A dexterous hand may cut as many Thongs out of one Thong with a pair of French Scissers as a Bungler with a pair of Garden-Shears can cut Thongs out of one hide Let us then leave this Logomachie this contending about shadows and not presume either to teach the Holy Ghost to speak or to wrest his words from their genuine sence to our humours and nothing will be more apparent to us than that neither the Church of Rome nor any other Society of men whatsoever that once embrac'd Christianity have Apostatized to the embracing of any of those Pagan Gods whom the Gospel ejected or to the Worship of any God but of that only wise and Eternal God that made Heaven and Earth Him alone the Mahometans him alone the Papists worship with that degree of divine honour which is proper to the Deity And as to the Church of Rome she so far abhorrs Idols in the sence of those Texts which foretell their downfall under the Gospel as she is famously known to have converted in these last days some Heathen Nations from Idols to the living God And that not only by force of hand as the Spaniards attempted upon the Americans at their first arrival there but by force of Argument and evidence of Miracles not such feigned and Legerdemain Sleights of hand as she pretends to do in order to the conviction of those who have either upon just cause forsaken her Communion in those things wherein she has forsaken the Communion of the Catholick Church or have been shut out of her Communion though they could have been content for peace sake to have walked with her in point of External practice meerly because they could not find in their heart professedly to abjure the Communion of the blessed Apostles the Primitive and Universal Church Such as cordially believe in Jesus Christ for whom Miracles were never intended by God but for them that believe not And therefore though her Priests in offering to shew Miracles in Christendom declare themselves so far to be Ministers of Satan or of him whose coming is after the power of Satan with lying wonders yet among the Infidel Americans they may and certainly do work Miracles not as Papists but as Christians not in the virtue of Papal Innovations and singularities but of the remains of the old and Catholick Christian Religion mixt therewith As I believe any of our Ministers might do did their zeal to propagate Christs Kingdom carry them out to Preach the Gospel where it only can be preach't in propriety of speech to that yet Heathenish part of the World This Point our Hot-spurrs might do well to consider who stretch their Stentorian throats with outcries against the Churches Apostracy to Pagan Idolatry whereby in effect they decry the blessed Jesus and pronounce him an Impostor and not the very Christ. For the Prophet Christ is by the power of his Law and Spirit utterly to abolish Heathen Idols out of the several Nations of the World upon their submitting to his Sceptre So as they should never regain their old Territories but be and remain totally and finally exterminated from off the face of the whole Earth and from under the whole Heaven CHAP. VI. Touching the Millenium Revel 20. § 1. Pagan Idols Fall and Satans binding Synchronize Christianity grew upon the Empire by degrees § 2. Charity 's Cloak cast over the first Christian Emperours § 3. Theodosius made the first Penal Laws against Paganisme § 4. Honorius made Paganism Capitall then was Satan bound § 1. IN complyance with which Old Testament Prophecies the Spirit of Jesus reveils Rev. 20. 1. c. to St. John That upon the Roman Empire's embracing of Christianity Satan should be cast into the bottomless Pit and there chain'd and sealed up untill
Infidels into the Abyss The Goats are cast into it after they are convict by the Covenant of Grace White Throne New Heaven and Earth Flames of Fire divided § 6. They that are in Christ rise first but Infidels are first Judged The Objection from their being in termino § 7. The Jews Septimum Millenarium is the eternal Sabbaoth The days of a Tree Isa. 65. 28. The Text Paraphrased § 1 THat this loosing of Satan shall not be till the Dawning of the Day of Judgement touching which I humbly submit to the candid Censure of the Church these my conjectures with my Reasons for them That Text Rev. 20. He shall gather them together from the four corners of the Earth seems to allude to Mat. 24. 31. and to be subsequent to that gathering of the Elect. He shall send his Angels with a great sound of a Trumpet and they shall gather his elect from the four winds and from the one end of the heaven unto the other touching which first gathering of the Elect St. Paul tells us it shall be in order to their meeting of Christ in the day of Judgment at the sound of which Trumpet the dead in Christ shall rise first and then those Christians whom that day shall find alive shall in the twinckling of an eye be changed into the same form and condition of body with those that arose from the Dead and be caught up in the Air to meet Christ. Qui merebantur compendio mortis per demutationem expunctae concurrere cum resurgentibus Tertul. de resur cap. 41. They who obtained by that short cut of death cancel'd by change the priviledge to run together with them that rise to the place of Judgment And the ancient Church generally thought that the Center to which this gathering of the Saints should be is the Valley of Jehoshaphat whither she expected Christ would come to judge the World and in testimony of that her expectation and that she might in all her religious Assemblies be found waiting for that appearance of her Lord and be mindfull of that our general gathering unto Christ she turn'd her face while she worship'd toward that point of the Earth and therefore the sacred Places of Publick Worship were built with their Chancells where the Communion-Table the visible Throne of Grace stood at the East end if the place were Westward but at the West end of their Church if the place were East of that Valley that so in what coast soever the Name of Christ was invocated their Eyes and Minds might be directed thither this is the very reason why the Chancel of the Patriarchall Church of Antioch stood at the West-end and without doubt all the Churches within that Patriarchat that stood East of Judea were conformable to the Mother-Church as that was to the Practise of the Universal which from every point of the Circumference had its Lines drawn to that Navel of the Earth that Center of the general Assembly And therefore Socrates is out in his giving the standing of the Chancel of that Church contrariwise to the Chancels of the European and Natolian Churches for an Instance of the different Usages and Rites of some Churches from others for though in the rest of the Examples that he produceth one Church differ'd from another without breach of Charity or contempt of Religion yet in this Ceremony of looking towards the Valley of Jehosaphat there was an Universal Conformity no Church having so little manners as to turn her breech upon the place of Judgment while she worshipp'd the Judge and made Confession of her belief that she dayly expected his appearance over that place where at his ascension he was taken out of the sight of his Disciples into heaven and his Angels after that assured them that he should so come in like manner as they had seen him go into Heaven Which among other circumstances must imply that of the Place if not mean that above any other For as to other manner of his second Coming it will be with a far greater Train of Angels than they then saw him ascend with and in far greater Glory § 2. The Elect that is all that have profest the Worship of the true God or as David calls them Gods Saints that have made a Covenant with him by Sacrifice being gather'd to the place of Judgment or during their gathering thither For it seems Tertullian thought the Pagans would be at the heels of the rising Saints and that they might not surprise the Saints then living they should be changed in a moment and in the twinkling of an eye be in readiness to march up to the place of Judgement with those that are risen before the Antichristian party both of the then living and immediately to be rais'd could seize upon them Hujus gratiae privilegium illos manet qui ab adventu Domini deprehendentur in carne propter duritias temporum Antichristi moriebuntur compendio mortis c. Tertull. Ibidem This Election I say being gathered or a gathering to the place of Judgements the reprobates that is all Idolaters the whole Pagan World that have lived and died in Gentilism shall be raised and those that are living shall be changed And Satan now let loose the whole Church waiting in the Air the Judges coming will re-enter upon his old Demesne and drive all the Cattle he there finds as his own as weises and strays from the great Shepherd of Souls and perswading them perhaps that he raised them from the dead and would now at last be reveng'd on Christ and his Saints and dequoying them into an opinion that they had a fair opportunity of making havock of the City and People of God altogether of swallowing up the little Flock of Christ at one morsel now they were all in a body and a body so contemptible in comparison of those multitudes which he headed being as the Sand on the Sea-shore or by whatsoever insinuations he will prevail with them to march up under his and his Angels conduct from all parts of the World Gog and Magog tectum intectum as St. Jerom expounds Ezek. 28. and 29 the hidden Climes of the lower the known World of the upper Hemisphere against the holy Land and the Camp of the Saints which while they are encompassing the Judge appears and with that devouring fire that goes before him destroyes them in a moment For they being taken in the act of Rebellion as Cora and his Complices divine justice shall not need to proceed against them in a formal way of trial but the Earth chapt with this Fire of the last Conflagration cleaves asunder opens her mouth and receives them with the dregs of the whole Creation into that Abyss whither that Deluge of Fire to which the Heaven and Earth that now are are reserved shall drive them Judicium quod est retributio pro peccatis omnibus competit judicium quod est discussio meritorum solis fidelibus nullo
put upon them are a pack of as palpable Untruths as ever were asserted Not one of them wants its mate as we apply them to the blessed Jesus and the things appertaining to his Kingdom But they are barren of Effect and most of them past Child-bearing if they have not brought forth allready those Children which the Christian Church fathers upon them If their Messias be not already exhibited he can never be exhibited in that place at that time and with such other Circumstances as the Prophets assign The Temple which he was to fill with Glory is demolish'd the Polity during the standing whereof Shilo was to come is dissolv'd the Weeks within the compass whereof Messias was to make attonement for sin at the end whereof desolation was to come in like a flood are long since expired The Idols which at the appearance of his glorious Majesty were to creep into holes are already exterminated from off the face of this Earth so that if he has not already appeared it is impossible that at his appearance he should find any Gentile Idols to abolish from off this Earth and from under those Heavens which the Prophet pointed at and taught the Jews to point at during the Babilonian Captivity in making this profession Jer. 10. 11. Thus shall ye say unto them the Gods shall perish from under those Heavens that is which are over Chaldea Let the Atheist search if he can find in all that Tract one Heathen Idol CHAP. X. The Demonstration of Power § 1. Christians Gleanings exceed Pagans Vintage § 2. Christian stories of undoubted Pagan of dubious Credit § 3. Pagan Miracles mis-father'd § 4. Rome ' s Prosperity whence § 5. Wonders among Gentiles for the fulfilling of Prophecies § 6. For the punishment of Nations ripe for Excision § 7. Empires raised miraculously for the common good § 1. VVE have seen the Prints of incomprehensible Wisdom upon the Creatures and thence demonstrated the Being of a God we have seen the like impresses upon the Sacred Scriptures and thence proved that God to be the Author of them who contrived the Universe The next demonstration of a Deity is the impressions of infinite Power stampt upon his Works those Rhetorical Figures sprinkled in the Book of Providence which render the Contents of it more illustrious the divine Eloquence of it more august and specious For as in humane speech the moderate and decent aspersion of new and unusual words add a splendour to it so Miracles add a grace to the divine Eloquence and an Emphasis to that discourse God entertains the World with while he speaks to it by the Dumb Creature Sicut humana consuetudo verbis ità divina potentia etiam factis loquitur sicut sermone humano verba nova vel minus usitata moderate decenter aspersa splendorem addunt ita in factis mirabilibus quodammodo luculentior est divina eloquentia August ep 49. quest 6. In which strain the God of Israel the Father of the blessed Jesus hath as far out-stript all other pretenders to Divinity and Authors of Religions as the Feates of the Artillery Garden are exceeded by the wisest Stratagems of the greatest Captains the products of a Wheel-wright by Archimedes his Engines A blind mans catching an Hare by chance by the success and Achievements of Diana and her Quire of Huntresses or Don Quixots Windmill engagements by the Exploits of Caesar or the Sorcerers Serpents by that of Moses which if we compare together we shall find the stupendious Effects wrought by the Heathen Gods to have been 1. So few as an hundred of those Deities may be allowed to club for the production of one Miracle though no greater than the swelling of a Lake while the Romans besieged the Vejentes Exoptatae victoriae iter miro prodigio Dii immortales patefecerunt Val. Max. 1. 6. 3. a multitude of Gods are fain to joyn hands to open this light door What is this in comparison of the way through the red Sea No less than two durst venture to cast the scales at the Regil-lake on the Romans hands when their Army and the Tusculancs were so equally pois'd as neither would give one foot back It was as much as two of them could do and that on horse back to bring P. Vatinius word to Rome in a whole day of King Perses his overthrow in Macedonia Briefly put together all the miracles that Authors of any credit have father'd upon all their Gods or have reported to have been done in their names and the Miracles wrought by Moses alone in the Name of the God of Israel to prove that he was his Messenger the Miracles wrought by Christ alone in his own Name and Person to prove that he was the eternal Son of Israels God the Miracles wrought by St. Peter alone in the name of Christ to prove his Masters Resurrection and his own Delegation will far out-vie them Nay the after gleaning of Christs Miracles I mean those which were wrought at the Memories of Martyrs as low as the third and fourth Centuries are more than the whole Vintage of Pagan Prodigies deposited in Authors of undoubted credit as in Barnes Cypriani tract 1. cont Demetrianum O si audire eos velles videre quando à nobis adjurantur torquentur spiritualibus flagris verborum tormentis de obsessis corporibus ejiciuntur quando ejulantes gementes voce humanà potestate divina flagella verbera sentientes venturum judicium confitentur Veni cognosce esse vera quae dicimus Et quia sic Deos colere te dicis vel ipsis quos colis crede aut si volueris tibi credere de teipso loquetur audiente te qui nunc tuum pectus obsedit qui nuno mentem tuam ignorantiae nocte caecavit Videbis nos rogari ab eis quos tu rogas timeri ab eis quos tu times quos tu adoras videbis sub manus nostras stare vinctos tremere captivos quos tu suspicis veneraris ut dominos Certe vel sic confundi in istis erroribus tuis poteris cùm conspexeris audieris Deos tuo's quid sint ad interrogationes nostras statim prodere praesentibus licèt vobis praestigias fallacias suas non posse caelare So plentifully was this sweet and powerful savour of the Ointment of Christs Name poured out in the Age of St. Austin as that Learned Father having in his Book de vera Religione given Reasons why Miracles were not then so frequent as formerly lest he might thereby be understood to deny that the Church retain'd the gift of Miracles in his time upon second thoughts dares not commit that Tractate to the hands of Posterity without this animadversion upon it in the unparallel'd Books of his Retractations lib. 1. cap. 13. I argued indeed saith he in that Book of the true Religion that the Pagans had no reason to expect Miracles now but I never
the Illumination of Faith could not understand what Christ meant when he spake to them of his Resurrection and were ready to give up their hopes that he was he that should redeem Israel when they saw him giving up the Ghost and hanging down his Head upon the Cross as St. Thomas though he had seen Lazarus rais'd from the dead and heard it reported by credible Witnesses that Christ was risen would not believe it As Celsus Orig. cont Cels. l. 2. cal 41. rather than grant the Truth of the Christian Hypothesis denied the possibility of it As it seemed good to the holy Ghost to confirm the report of Christs Resurrection by all those Signs which the Apostles wrought after his Ascension by the name of the Holy Child Jesus while with great power they gave witness of his Resurrection Acts 4. 33. Yea so much did divine Goodness condescend to Humane imbecility as to give a fuller proof of that point so far above Reasons comprehension and much more out of the Sphere of Natural Power than the report of Eye-witnesses than the Confession of Adversaries than the Seal of those Miracles afforded by that Grace that was upon all the Publishers and fell upon all the Receivers of that Doctrine a Grace enabling them to live up to the Gospel and to bring forth those Fruits of Holiness Righteousness Temperance Meekness as sufficiently commended to the morallized part of the World that Root of Faith from whence they issued as far outstript the most glorious glittering productions of the Moral Philosophers as infinitely transcended the results of fantastick Credulty and put all other Religions to the blush at the sight of their own impotency CHAP. XII The Supernatural Power of Salvifick Grace § 1. The Church triumphs over the Schools § 2. Christianity layes the Axe to the Root § 3. The Rule imperfect before Christ. § 4. The Discipline of the Schools was without Life and Power § 5. Real exornations before Verbal Encomiums § 1. HEre Christian Reader I must crave thy help and beg thy aid towards the convincing the World of the Divine Original of Christian Religion which though it apparently bear the stamps of heavenly Wisdome in its Prophecies of in finite Power in its Miracles commends it self more to the Consciences of men by engaging its Fautors to a Conversation answerable to its Sacred Rules than by affording the most substantial Grounds of discoursing in its Defence by any other Arguments Religion is better maintain'd by Living than Disputing A Gospel-becoming Converse falls under the Observation and speaks to the Hearts of all men even of those who are not able to fathom the depth nor feel the ground of the most rational verbal Discourse well exprest by the Apostle of the Circumcision 1 Pet. 3. 1. Dr. Hammond annot in the Argument whereby he perswades Christian Matrons to be in subjection to their own though Gentile Husbands that if any obeyed not the Word submitted not to the Gospel upon the Demonstration of the Spirit and of Power they also without the Word which the Apostles preach'd in confirmation of the Resurrection of Christ might be won by the Conversation of their Wives while they beheld their chaste Conversation that Modesly which the true fear of God Christian Religion which alone rightly Disciplines persons in that fear taught them In his motive 1 Pet. 2. 12 13. to Christian Subjects to yield obedient subjection to their Heathen Magistrates and in that point particularly to lead an honest life among the Gentiles that whereas they were evil spoken of as Jews by reason of the turbulency and frequent rebellions of their Countrymen the Gentiles might see that Christian-Jews were of another spirit than the rest of that Nation and upon that account might revere them for their good works and glorifie God the Author of a Religion that had made them so much more meek regular and quiet under the Heathen Government which was over them than the other Jews were when the Proconsuls should be sent to make enquiry of the Commotions made by the unbelieving Party of that Nation It was by this Argument that the old Laic-Confessor silenc'd convinc'd and converted that proud and subtile Philosopher who bore up himself against all the Reasonings of the Learned Teachers of the Nicence Council Crab. tom 1. pag. 249. In the name of Jesus Christ saith he O Philosopher hear the Dictates of Truth There is one God Maker of Heaven and Earth who Created all things visible and invisible by the power of his Word and confirm'd them by the Sanctity of his Spirit This Word therefore which we call the Son of God having mercy on Mankind vouchsafed to be born of a VVoman to converse with Men and die for them and will come again to give sentence upon the Lives of all men By the belief of those things we Christians are freed from Error and from that Religion wherein Men live like Beasts into a state of living like Men. Upon this the Philosopher cries out that he is a Christian and assures his Fellows he was drawn to it not upon light grounds but by that ineffable Vertue which attended the embracing of Christianity In this Argument the ancient Patrons of the Christian Cause triumph'd over all other Religions and Disciplines The Christian Churches saith Origen contr Cels. lib. 3. cal 8. compared with other Societies are really the Lights of the VVorld who is there that must not confess if he make an impartial collation of them that the worst part of the Church excells vulgar assemblies for the Church of God at Athens for instance is meek and quiet c. the Pagan Assemblies seditious turbulent c. And to that Calumny of Celsus that the Christians invited the worst of sinners Origen makes this Reply that the Christian Philosophy did dayly reform the most degenerate Natures not by converting one or two in so many Ages as Phaedo who coming Piping hot out of the Stewes into Plato's School took those impresses from his Doctrine as Plato in his Dialogues brings Phaedo in discoursing of the Immortality of the Soul Or Palemon who by attending to Philosophical Discipline became of a Ruffian so temperate as he succeeded Xenocrates in his School but great multitudes Christs Fishers of men caught them by whole shoales when these Philosophical Anglers drew them up by unites Tertullian apolog 46. outvies the greatest Philosophers with common Christians Thales one of the seven VVisemen could not satisfie Craesus when he askt him what God was but required time for the return of an answer and the more he thought upon it was further off from finding a solution when every Mechanick Christian hath found and can shew all that can be askt concerning God though Plato says the framer of the Universe is neither easie to be found out nor to be exprest If we compare them in point of Chastity we read that one part of the Attick sentence against Socrates condemn'd him of Sodomy
the holiness of that Society whereof they are no Members nor the Efficacy of that Religion they either never came under the power of or have rejected the yoak of what must it be presum'd that the Sun shines not that its beams warm not because those men see not its Light are not refresh'd and vegetated with its Warmth who either shut their eyes or remove into a Clime it never visits Dr. Hammond An. in Heb. 4. 2. But the word that was heard did not profit those who were not by Faith joyned to them that obeyed it Shall we condemn the Seed because it thrives not to maturity of Fruit in the ground of a dishonest heart where either the fowles of the Air pick it up or it wants depth of earth or is choak'd with Thorns and Weeds Shall we question whether Christ be risen because men whose affections are so strongly set upon the earth as they cannot elevate them towards Heaven are not risen with him when we see such palpable Effects and Demonstrations of it in his raising those to a newness of Life who do not resist grieve or quench his Spirit but with an humble teachableness follow its conduct in that way of holiness his Word hath chalk'd out before us In order to our perseverance in this way and confirmation in our assurance that it will infallibly lead us to Peace here and eternal Glory hereafter I have undertaken this vindication of the Christian Faith against the prejudices which our modern either Scepticks or Atheists have taken up against it which as they took their rise from the Scandals which have been cast upon Religion by the woful miscarriages of men professing it in guile and hypocrisie so they must fall before a Spirit of Grace and Glory resting upon the embracers of it in Truth and Sincerity and shining out upon the World in their so peaceable humble meek and every way Christian deportment and men seeing their good works may glorifie their Father who is in Heaven and revere that Discipline as proceeding from that Father of Lights by whose influence the wildness of common Nature is abated and its vertuous Seeds so improved as to bring forth Fruit chearing the heart both of God and Man To which if thou beest instigated Christian Reader to aspire by the perusal of this Discourse and so become one of Christs Witnesses by sealing to the Truth of the Gospel by a Life answerable to its most holy just and yet easie Precepts thou wilt lay up for thy self a good Foundation for time to come and contribute towards the conviction of the Adversaries of the Christian Faith by an Argument so familiar as it incurrs into every mans sense and so strenuous as the most stubborn Atheist will not be able to resist it but be forc'd to confess the unreasonableness of his own Exceptions against a Religion that brings forth such Divine Effects Would we all study thus to adorn the Doctrine of God our Saviour in all things such real exornations would render Religion more venerable in the eyes of the VVorld than all verbal Encomiums those whom the close fist of the most Logical Arguings cannot force the commanding beck of that open-handed Eloquence would allure to a silent admiring of that sacred Fountain whence they see such healing VVaters flow That this my Request to my Readers may take effect I shall back it with that Request to God which my Dear Mother the Holy Church of England hath put into her Childrens mouth More especially we pray for the good estate of the Catholick Church that it may be so guided and govern'd by thy good Spirit that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of Truth and hold the Faith in Unity of Spirit in the Bond of Peace and in Righteousness of Life And this we beg for Jesus Christ his Sake To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all Honour and Glory world without end Amen FINIS To their old Cells and Altars the whole crew Of Guardian Gods Troy falling bid adieu While impious Caesar and his Godded rout Spurn Phoebus Tripos with insulting foot The learned Varro useth to expend So many hours in reading as we deem A winged minutes scantling can scarce lend It self unto his pen yet that doth seem To trust more notions to his sweating Page Than quickest eye can run o're in an Age. To my dark Cabin in the Stygean strand Dismiss me or if that be too much ease Send me to Phlegethon where I may stand Rather than here chin-high in fiery seas Haled from Styx to Thebes my ancient seat Had I my choice hard choice I would retreat If Heaven the fire and Earth the dam of things Had been from Ever whence is 't no Poet sings Of Wars more old than Troy of Floods than Noah Of Rapes than Jove and thousand wonders moe Had men nor hands to act nor hands to write During the seculum Prae-Adamite Had Nile for ages numberless no Reed Nor Bees Wax nor Trees Bark nor Hills a breed of Sheep nor Sheep a Skin nor Goose a Quill Nor Polypus his native Ink distil Or Man the Goose of all not wit to learn To make a Pen much less to guide a Stern Or build a Ship or break a Horse or bring The Oxe to th' yoke the Hawk to lure or string The warbling Lute or count the Stars by name Or other Arts whose birth we know by fame Whose growth we see come on with age We owe to thee great Caesar Triumphs many More Temples built and Temples that lay waste Repair'd more Cities Gods and Shews than any But most that thou hast taught Rome to be chaste Whom we invoke for Gods 't is Jove's decree Were Men of Bounty once and Gallantry But now with highest Deities attend On our affairs and us toth ' Gods commend The Father Word and Spirit God alone That Cotternal Three in one Thy will Theodames for Hecate Forc'd by thy charms dares not say nay Your Charms from me against my will commands These Responds I have said now loose my bands Judea worshippeth alone The God elsewhere unknown Him Pan men call Because he succours all They lay on tepid Altars Babes not born Of Mothers Wombs but from their Bellies torn Issa Bills sweeter than a Dove Issa's more blith than Mal or Siss No Pearls equal Issa's love What Issa's this Publius his Bitch Thus against Hercules vext the field to lose From wounded Hydra heads more fierce arose Who outstript all the Sophs in this Essay Quenching their Star-light with his Solar Ray.