the great instance of the strictness and caution of the Roman Church in examining and approving Visions and Revelations consists almost wholly of a very plentiful narration of her Raptures and Visions She began she saith to be awakened about six or seven years old her Mother having made her to say her prayers and be devout to our blessed Lady and some other Saints wherein she very much out-went S. Paul who never so much as once mentions her in all his writings After this she relates her very great sickness so great that she saith it alwayes deprived her almost of her senses and sometimes altogether and after she had read the third A B C a Book of Mystical Divinity she saith she came to quiet prayer and arrived to passive unions before she was twenty years old and herein again she far out-went S. Paul She confesses that she was in so great torment that they were afraid who were about her that she would have gone mad that she was put into such a heat that her sinews began to shrink with such intolerable pains that she could take no rest neither day nor night but was continually oppressed with a most profound Melancholy These are the very words written by her self as they are translated out of Spanish by an English Iesuit after this she saith she fell into a trance so that she remained without sense almost four dayes after which she remained under violent Torments and her head exceedingly distempered and was not perfectly recovered in three years Then she took S. Joseph for her Patron whom she called her Father and Protector and whereas other Saints help us in some one necessity she had experience that this Saint helpeth us in all and that our Lord will give us to understand that as he was subject to him on earth so likewise in Heaven he obtaineth whatsoever he asketh I am very much mistaken if this savour not of other kind of Divinity than ever S. Paul preached And she adds that she had a great zeal to perswade others to be devout to this glorious Saint because he helpeth those souls exceedingly which commend themselves to him especially those that desire a Master to teach them how to pray I suppoâ—e she means this contemplative way After such an account given of her self I do not at all wonder at the frequency of her Visions and Raptures in one she saith she saw Christ more plainly with the eyes of her soul than she could have seen him with the eyes of her body and she looked upon it as a temptation of the Devil that she was ready to think this was nothing but Imagination After this she relates at large how she came to be swallowed up in the depths of Mystical Theologie and talks of Gods suspending the operations of the understanding in which she saith it understandeth more in the space of a Creed without discoursing than we can understand with all our earthly diligences in many years This she calls being wholly ingulfed in God and distinguisheth this State wherein the soul seems to be altogether out of her self from Visions and she describes the third degree of Prayer to be a glorious frenzy an heavenly folly in which she saith she had been as it were frantick and drunken in this love and could never understand how it was and in this State she saith they speak many words in Gods praise without order at least the understanding is nothing worth here for she adds that then she speaketh a thousand follies and she knew one who being no Poet chanced to compose very significant Verses extempore declaring his pain very well not made by his own wit But there is a degree beyond this which she calls the State of not feeling but enjoying without understanding what we enjoy but how this Union is and what it is she cannot give it to be understood but leaves it to the Mystical Theology Afterwards she distinguisheth between Union and Raptures and saith that these exceed Union which he that writes the Glosses in the Margin saith that she means that the soul enjoyeth God more in raptures but she tells us that Union seemeth beginning midst and end but our Lord must declare this i. e. she knew not what she meant herself In some of her raptures she speaks of Gods carrying away her soul and almost ordinarily her head also after her so that she could not detain it and sometimes her whole body lifting it up in these she saith she undergoes great violence and she was quite tyred with them at other times she saith her body was so light in raptures that all the heaviness of it was taken away or rather that the body remaineth as it were dead without doing any thing in which sometimes the senses are wholly lost but ordinarily they are troubled and in the height of raptures she saith they neither hear nor see nor feel in her opinion no power hath the use of it self nor knoweth what passeth in this occasion nor are we capable of understanding it In this state she saith the soul is ingulfed or to say better our Lord is ingulfed in her and keeping her in himself for a little space she remaineth with her will alone and sets forth the body as bound for many hours in it and yet sometime the understanding and memory distracted and after they return to themselves When the rapture is over it happeneth sometimes that our powers are so absorpt and as it were drowned for a day or two or three that it seemeth they are not in themselves There are these circumstances more to be observed concerning her 1. That she was under great bodily weakness all this while 2. That at this time when she had so many of these raptures she confesses her self that she was very backward and in the beginnings of vertues and mortifications 3. That her great friends who had examined and considered her case declared to her that they looked upon all these things as delusions of the Devil upon which she applyed her self to the Jesuits who encouraged her very much and told her it was the Spirit of God and henceforward they were the great men who gave her directions not to resist those impulsions and elevations as she had been advised before and put her upon greater perfection then she fell into her raptures and understood in one of them that hence forward she was not to converse with men but Angels and after this she had such kind of voices very frequent within her which she saith are very formal words but not heard with corporal ears but understood much more plainly than if they were heard and these speeches she saith afterwards were very continual with her and she had visions very frequently in one of which she saw only the hands of Christ and in another his divine
Countenance which seemed wholly to abstract her and afterwards she saw him altogether but not with her corporal eyes she confesses and she satisfied her self it could not be her imagination only although her Confessor told her so because the beauty was so great as to exceed her imagination yet he still encouraged her when as appears by her own confession others about her whom she had a great opinion of endeavoured to convince her it was only her imagination to her great trouble insomuch that she saith the contradiction of the good were sufficient to have put her out of her wits This Vision of the Beauty of Christ continued ordinarily with her for two years and an half in which she had a great desire to see the colour of his eyes and what bigness they were of but never could obtain that favour When the Iesuit-Confessor was out of the way others told her plainly it was the Devil that deluded her and they bid her cross her self when she saw a Vision she held a Cross in her hand to save her self the trouble and Christ took it in his and gave it her again with four Precious Stones which had the five wounds artificially engraven upon them which no body could see but her self After this she had a vision of Angels and clearly discerned the coelestial Hierarchy but she supposed one of those she saw to be one of the Seraphins who pierced her heart with a fiery dart and when he pulled it out again it left her wholly inflamed with great love to God but under excessive pain which yet caused so great pleasure that she could not desire to 〈◊〉 removed in the dayes that this 〈◊〉 she saith she was like a Fool she desired neither to see nor speak but to embrace her pain Not long after she relates how sometimes for three weeks together her imagination would be so tormented with trifles and toyes that she could think of nothing else then she fell into such a fit of dulness and heaviness without any kind of sense or remembrance of her former Visions and Raptures or else no otherwise than as of a dream to afflict and then she was full of doubts and suspicions that all was but imagination and if she conversed with any the Devil put her in such a distasteful spirit of anger that it seemed as if she would eat all not being able to do otherwise Then again she had comfort in an instant sometimes with a word sometimes with Visions which continued for a time more frequent than before then she thought that her bodily sickness was the cause of her former disturbance and that her understanding was so unruly that it seemed like a furious fool whom no body could bind neither was she able to keep it quiet for the space of a Creed At other times again she compares her self to an Ass being in a manner without any feeling and so it falleth out oft-times she saith that one while she laughed at her self and other times she was much afflicted and the inward motion provoked her to put posies and flowers upon Images and such kind of imployments After this the scene of her imagination was quite changed for it represented nothing but Devils to her in which state she tryed one pleasant experiment viz. how much more the Devils are afraid of Holy Water than of the Sign of the Cross from the Cross they fly but so as to return presently but from the Holy Water so as to return no more Methinks then she should have used it but once and it was not more terrible to Devils than she found it comfortable to her soul for she saith that she found a particular and very evident comfort when she took it and such a delight which strengthned her whole soul which she found very often and considered it with great reflection then she relates her being in Spirit in Hell and what she endured there and towards the conclusion her being placed in Heaven in a rapture and seeing what was done there where she saw her Father and Mother c. after which she adds that our Lordshewed her greater secrets What! than what is done in Heaven for it is not possible she saith to see more than was represented unto her the least part of it was sufficient to make her soul remain astonished and found it impossible to declare some little part of it And now we find her at S. Pauls height and need go no farther in the account of her Visions which continues to the end of her Book but let me ask O. N. who hath particularly recommended this life to the consideration of any sober Protestant whether he doth in good earnest think that M. Teresa had the same kind of Raptures that S. Paul had I know he must not say otherwise since the Roman Church hath Canonized her for a Saint but I think they had done her a greater kindness to have appointed her good Physicians in time instead of her Iesuitical Confessors I could hardly have thought that among Christians I should have found S. Pauls Rapture parallel'd by such as these but we have lived to see strange things If S. Paul had discovered in his Writings so many Symptoms of a disturbed fancy such an oppression of Melancholy such rovings of Imagination such an uncertainty of temper could we ever think the world would have believed that Ecstasie which he expresseth with so much Modesty and makes so many Apologies for himself that he was forced to mention it by the false Apostles boasting of their Revelations It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory I will come to Visions and Revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago c. Of such a one will I glory yet of my self I will not glory but in mine infirmities but now I forbear lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be or that he heareth of me Although he had many Revelations he mentions but one and that with the greatest modesty that may be under a third person and that above fourteen years ago He tells no long stories of a succession of Visions and Raptures and sights of Angels and Devils mixed with many impertinencies and indications of a disordered Imagination But saith O. N. that could not be in S. Teresa considering the diligence that was used for several years in the tryal of her Spirit and her Visions were confirmed to be from God by a general attestation of them throughout the Christian World even those who suspected and questioned them at first afterwards magnifying them But I desire no other evidence in this case than what she gives her self supposing the matters of fact to be true according to her own relation not that I would condemn her according to Mr. Cressy 's soft language as a hypocritical Visionaire
abstinence and force they offer to nature and the very kinds of their works which cannot be understood of any other than the Egyptian Monks and so Petavius and Holstenius confess And after he hath thus described them he gives this character of their way that it was barbarous and contrary to human nature for saith he we are not pure and unmixed minds but joyned together with bodies so that we cannot be wholly imployed in contemplation of divine things but our minds must divert themselves to other matters and this saith he they confess themselves by the great necessity of working which they lay upon all I could wish that we were so framed that we could live wholly in contemplation but since that is impossible I wish then saith he sometimes to be taken up with the best things and at other times to partake something of the delight and pleasure of life For I know my self to be a man and not a God to be wholly above these pleasures nor a beast to be under the power of them and therefore that state of life which is between these 〈◊〉 most agreeable to human nature And then falls upon them for preferring manual labour before the exercise and improvement of the mind in knowledge and useful Learning which is both an imployment and pleasure to the mind But in their adamantin way as he calls it there is no order no gradual improvement but all depends upon motions and impulses and strange heats and transports whereby they hope for the end without the means and aim at things above reason without the exercise of it How do these things agree to be now above the Heavens and presently to be twisting Reeds and making Baskets But mans excellency lyes in his Reason which they take the least care about and those will attain mans end the soonest that act most agreeably to his nature He doth not deny that there have been some extraordinary minds which without arts or improvements can do as much as others with them but these are as rare as the Phoenix in Egypt but the common sort of mankind are uncapable of this and all their labour and pains is to no purpose that think to attain to the perfection of the mind by any other way than by improvement of the mind it self And it is not safe or lawful for us to think that God should dwell in any other part of us than in our mind which is his proper Seat They mightily cry up temperance and continence and admire themselves for those things which in themselves are the least any further than they serve to higher ends And afterwards he takes notice of their confident pretences to the knowledge of divine things they saith he are Divines like Cadmus his souldiers sprung out of the earth and in good earnest condemns them at last not only for their barbarous way of living but for a strange mixture of Pride and Ignorance having very absurd opinions and yet very arrogantly assuming to themselves a greater measure of divine knowledge than others had for they had a particular way of improving their minds by ignorance which was a sort of Mystical Divinity among them too By this and his Epistle to Hypâ—tia wherein he describes them again by those peculiar vertues of their ignorance and confidence we may see what opinion this great man had of the Monastick way when it was in its greatest height and it was not a meer matter of hypocrisie as it hath been for the greatest part in the Western Church but men did truly and honestly live in poverty and real abstinence and continual labour with Psalms and prayers hoping by those means to come to the greatest perfection of our Souls but he saw through all this and found that when they labour'd only or chiefly to keep down the inclinations of the body spiritual pride and self-opinion were like to get the better of their Souls And S. Hierome who had some experience of this way describes the temptation of spiritual Pride as the most common and dangerous snare which the most severe and mortified men were apt to fall into nay he saith that Antony himself fell into this by reflecting on the perfection of his life and that he was cured by an Angel which revealed to him the greater perfection of Paul the Eremite One would wonder to meet with so many combats with Devils as we find in the History of the old Monks either it was as S. Hierome intimates concerning some that they feigned them for greater reputation among the people or that state could not be so much perâ—â—cter than others wherein the Devils were allowed to converse so much more freely with men than in other places And if any one will read but S. Ieroms description of his own temptations in the Desarts or his life of Hilarion he will easily find it is not running away from the world will make men more perfect unless they could leave their passions behind them and that a constant care of our mind and actions in the midst of our imployments is not only more pleasing to God but a more likely way to subdue all disorderly passions than the severest life of a Monk or an Eremite We have no reason then to believe that either the Monastick state at first or the Benedictin Rule did come from any divine inspiration but as this was borrowed from the former Rules so the former was taken up out of an unreasonable opinion that God is better pleased by our running from the World than by serving him in it § 8. 2. That the Benedictin Rule hath manifest signs of human Weakness in it and therefore cannot be supposed to come from divine inspiration Of which the first is misapplication of Scripture To this purpose the Person of Honour mentions the bringing of that place We have not received the spirit of Bondage again to fear but the spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father to prove that the Abbot doth supply the Room of Christ in the Monastery Christ himself being the supream Abbot To which Mr. Cr. answers by expressing his wonder how he could find the least defect incongruity or want of prudence in that passage and he spends very needless pains to prove that Abbots being lawful Superiours for the direction of Souls the most proper title that can be given them is that of Father and that Abba signifies Father Very well but what is this to the producing that place for it methinks Our Father which art in Heaven had been altogether as proper for that would have shewed the title of the Abbot as well and withall that the Abbot was Gods Vicar upon earth God himself being their Abbot in Heaven And if S. Benedict had thought upon this place all that Mr. Cr. saith would have held as well to prove there was not the least incongruity in producing it and it would have afforded altogether as useful an admonition to the
precarious Princes and in a much more proper sense than the Popes use that Title The Servants of Servants Supposing then the Legislative and Civil Power to be equal since the Reformation and before our work is to compare the other circumstances together and if it appear that the Plea of Conscience and Religion did equally hold then and notwithstanding that the penalties were as great upon the same or far less occasions I hope our Laws will at least appear as just and reasonable as those were § 4. To make this out I must give an account of the State of those times and the Reasons and Occasions which moved the Law-makers to enact those Poenal Statutes in which I shall shew these two things 1. That they began upon a controversie of Religion and that the Poenal Laws were made against those persons who pleaded Religion 2. That the Reasons and Occasions of the Poenal Laws since the Reformation were at least as great as those 1. That the antient Poenal Laws were made upon a Controversie of Religion And to give a clear account of the Rise and occasion of them I must begin from the Norman Conquest for then those Foundations were laid of all the following controversies which happened between the Civil and Ecclesiastical Power On the behalf of the Ecclesiastical Power was the plea of Conscience and Religion on the behalf of the Civil Power nothing but the just Rights of Princes and the necessary preservation of their own and the publick safety And this Controversie between the Two Powers was managed with so much zeal and such pretences of Conscience on the behalf of the Ecclesiastical Power that the Civil Power notwithstanding the courage of some Princes and the resolution of Parliaments had much ado to stand its ground or to be able to preserve it self from the encroachments and Usurpations of the other So that to see Princes give any Countenance to the same pretences would be almost as strange as to see them turn Common-wealths-men I know there were good Laws frequently made to strengthen the Civil Power but the very frequency of them shewed how ineffectual they were For what need many Laws to the same purpose if the first had any force at all and the multiplication of Laws for the same thing is a certain sign of defect in the Government To undeceive therefore all those who judge of the State of Affairs by the Book of Statutes I shall deduce the History of this great Controversie between the Ecclesiastical and Civil Power in England so far as to shew the necessity there was found of putting an issue to it by casting out the Popes pretended Power and Iurisdiction in this Nation The two first who began this Dispute were both men of great Spirits and resolute in their undertakings I mean william the Conqueror and Gregory the seventh who was the first Pope that durst speak out and he very freely declares his mind about the subjection of the Civil Power to the Ecclesiastical and the exemption of all Ecclesiastical Persons and Things from the Civil Power In his Epistle to Herimanus Bishop of Metz about the excommunication of Henry the fourth and absolving his Subjects from their Allegiance he thus expresses himself Shall not that power which was first found out by men who knew not God be subject to that which God himself hath appointed for his own honor in the World and the head of which is the Son of God Who knows not that Kings and Dukes had their beginnings from men who gained their Authority over their equals by blind ambition and intolerable presumption by rapines and murders by perfidiousness and all manner of wickedness Is not this a very pretty account of the Original of Civil Power by the Head of the Church But this is not all for he adds While Princes make Gods Priests to be subject to them to whom may we better compare them than to him who is the Head over all the Sons of Pride who tempted the Son of God with promising him all the Kingdoms of the World if he would fall down and worship him This is better and better it seems it is as bad as the sin of Lucifer for Princes not to be subject to the Pope and it is like the Devils tempting Christ to offer to make Priests subject to the Civil Power Who doubts saith he that Christs Priests are to be accounted the Fathers and Masters of Kings aud Princes and all the faithful Now saith he is it not a lamentable madness if the Son should offer to make the Father subject to him but one of his Successors did not think so that set up Henry the fifth against his own Father or the Scholar his Master or to think to bind him on earth by whom he expects to be loosed in Heaven These were the Demonstrations of that Age and the main supports of the Cause and in his Epistle to William King of England he tells him that God had appointed two kinds of Government for mankind the Apostolical and Regal that is much that the same Government should come only from the sins of men and yet be from the appointment of God but we are to consider he writ this to a King whom he hoped to perswade and therefore would not tell him the worst of his thoughts about the beginnings of Civil Power but saith he these two powers like the Sun and Moon have that inequality by the Christian Religion that the Royal Power next under God is to be under the care and management of the Apostolical And since the Apostolical See is to give an account to God of the miscarriages of Princes his wisdom ought to consider whether he ought not without farther delay take an Oath of Fealty to him For no less than that would content him but William was not so meek a Prince to be easily brought to this as Robert of Sicily Richard of Capua Bertram of Provence Rodulphus and several others were whose Oaths of Fealty to him are extant in the Collection or Register of his Epistles But William gives him a resolute answer which is extant among the Epistles of Lanfranc that for the Oath of Fealty he had not done it neither would he because he never promised it neither did he find that ever his predecessors had done it to Gregories predecessors The Pope storms at this and writes a chiding Letter to Lanfranc Arch-bishop of Canterbury who like a better subject to the Pope than to the King writes an humble excuse for himself to the Pope and tells him he had done his endeavour to perswade the King but could not prevail with him And Cardinal Baronius saith the Pope took it very ill at his hands considering the kindness he had received from the Papal See For Alexander the second favoured his cause against Harold and sent him a consecrated Banner and if we may believe Henricus de Silgrave the Pope gave him his title
him but that the Pope had a temporal Power over Princes to hear and determine Causes between them and their Subjects And in his Letter to the Pope upon this appeal he saith that he was called as a Laick to answer before the King and that he insisted upon this plea that he was not to be judged there nor by them For what would that have been but to have betrayed your Rights and to have submitted spiritual things to temporal and if he should have yielded to the King it would have made him not a King but a Tyrant And whereas the Bishops pleaded obedience to the King he saith they were bound corporally to the King but spiritually to himself What in opposition to the King about his own Rights which were so plain in this case at Northampton that the Bishop of Chichester charged him both with Perjury and Treason because these things related to the Kings temporal Honour and Dignity and therefore the Bishops were not bound to obey their Archbishop The Pope applauds Becket for what he had done and nulls the sentence against him which was still taking more upon him the exercise of a Temporal Power over the King But Fitz Stephen who saith he was present at Northampton with Becket saith that when the Bishop of Chichester charged him with his Oath at Clarendon he replyed that what was against the Faith of the Church and the Law of God could not lawfully be kept now these customs were never supposed to be against the Faith of the Church till Gregory the seventh had very subtilly found out the Henrician heresie i. e. the heresie of Princes defending their own Rights against the Papal Usurpations and he particularly insisted on this that the Pope had condemned those Customs and he adds that we ought to receive what the Roman Church receives for he knew no difference between the Câ—urt and Church of Rome and to reject what that rejects and concludes all with this that his Oath at Clarendon was an unlawful Oath and could not bind him But what pretence were there for this if he had only contended for the antient Municipal Laws what unlawfulness could there be in swearing to observe the Kings Laws although different from former Laws So that the only way to excuse him from manifest perjury is to suppose that he looked on the Customs of Clarendon as repugnant to the Popes Decrees and therefore not to be kept by him and the Pope tells him that God had reserved him to this time of tryal for the confirmation of Catholick and Christian Truth in which it must be implyed that which Becket defended against the King was a part of the Catholick Faith in the Popes judgement In his Epistle to Robert Earl of Leicester he pleads for the Liberty of the Church which Christ hath purchased with his blood who then saith he dares bring her into slavery who art thou that judgest another mans servant to his own Master he ought to stand or fall And all that he adviseth to for making up the breach is their repentance and satisfaction for the injuries done to Christ and his Church And whereas the Bishop of London had told him that the King was willing to submit to the judgement of his Kingdom about his antient Rights Becket replyes Who is there in Earth or Heaven that dares judge of what God hath determined humane things may be judged but divine must be left as they are In his Epistle to all the Clergie of England he saith that at Northampton Christ was judged again in his person before the Tribunal of Pilat for him he understands by the name of President In his Epistle to the King he pleads that the Liberty of the Church which he contended for was purchased by Christs own blood and adds farther to the very hearts desire of Gregory the seventh that it was certain that Kings did receive their power from the Church and not the Church from them but only from Christ from whence he infers that the King could not draw Clergie-men to secular Tribunals or establish the Customs in dispute between them I do not say as Hoveden doth that these words were spoken in a Conference at Chinun for they are a part of the Epistle sent to the King not long after his banishment and written in justification of his opposition to the Rights which the King challenged Therefore I desire to know what theâ—e words can signifie to his purpose unless they do imply such a derivation of Civil Power from the Church that the Church may take cognizance of male-administration or of the Civil Authorities taking to it self any of the priviledges belonging to the Church For if all this related only to the Ceremonies of Coronation it were to no more purpose than for an Archbishop of Canterbury to plead now that the Kings power is derived from the Church because the ceremony of inauguration is performed by him Who would not smile at such a consequence But we know that the Popes temporal Power over Princes was never more asserted than in that Age that Alexander the third at that time challenged and exercised it over the Emperour and other Princes and that no man was more stiff in the Popes Cause nor more eager for the exercise of his Power over our King than Becket was and his actions discovered this to be his opinion why then should men study to find evasions for these words which neither agree with the course of his actions nor with the doctrine of that Age Doth not Becket himself magnifie the Popes power to the greatest height In his Epistle to the Bishâ—p of London he saith that none but an Insidel or Heretick or Schismatick dares dispute obedience to the Popes commands that no one under the Sun can pluck out of his hands And in one of his Epistles to the Pope he makes very profane addresses to him applying what the Scripture saith only of God and Christ to him Exurge Domine noli tardare super nos illâ—mina faciem tuam super nos fac nobiscum secundum misericordiam tuam Salva nos quia perimus and immediately adds let not our adversaries triumph over us yea the adversaries of Christ and his Church quia nomen tuum invocavimus super nos And lest any should think these were addresses to God although contained in a Letter to the Pope it follows Non nobis Domine non nobis sed in nomine Domini nostri Iesu Christi fac tibi grande nomen repara gloriam tuam For at this time the Kings Ambassadors promised themselves great things in the Court of Rome and boasted of the Favour they had which put Becket into such a Consternation that in the very Agony of his Soul he poured out these prayers to the Pope And we may judge of Beckets opinion in this matter by that of his great Friend Cardinal Gratianus for when the King saw himself