at his feet as before a God This Jesus was the Ark of the new Covenant and of the Testimony of God the witness of God faithful and true as he is stiled in the Revelation of Saint John Jesus was in effect the whole house of Gods especial presence the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the name which Philo gives the Tabernacle or the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or it may be if it were rightly printed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Josephus calleth the Zodiack or the Sun moving in it the portable the walking Temple who like the rolling Sun which dispenseth his influence far and near went about doing good having no resting-place for his Head till he was fixed on Mount Sion above This is the Ark of God exalted first on the Cross and then to Heaven Whence God commandeth his blessing sending him by his Spirit and Gospel to bless and to turn all of us from our iniquity This Ark is the true Mercy-seat the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Propitiatory as he is called in the Epistle to the Romans and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. John calleth him that is the Propitiation for our sins St. Hierom Commenting on those words in the Version of Ezekiel in the 43d Chapter and 14th verse from the lesser settle to the greater settle and observing them to be rendred on this wise by the Seventy Interpreters From the lesser to the greater Propitiatory He applys the lesser Propitiatory to Christ in the form of a servant and the greater to Christ glorified in the Heavens Here is then both the Aaron and Aharon the true Ark and Priest of the most high God This Ark or rather this entire Temple of God like the Tabernacle in Shiloh seemed for a time forsaken possessed by the great Philistin for what is stronger than death and laid in the dust but God raised it up after three days in greater glory and so as that it is never to fall again This Ark was after a few days taken up into the true Sanctuary of God where it remaineth till the restitution of all things and whither our eyes and hearts are to direct themselves in all Religious worship From that Sanctuary he appear'd in a glorious light to his first Martyr St. Steven when well awake and whilst he directed his countenance towards Heaven whither his spirit was ready to take its way He being full of the Holy Ghost or divine energy looked up stedfastly into Heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God Thence also he appeared to Saul in a light so vehement that for a time it took away the use of his eyes Thence he sent the Holy Ghost at Pentecost become now as it were the Substitute and Shechinah of the Glorified Jesus This hovered as a glorious flame over the heads of the Apostles declaring them thereby the Representatives of Christ on earth Under this notion Christ is worshipped by true and intelligent Christians This was the meaning of the Fathers in the Council of Constantinople who denounced Anathema against those who professed not that Christ ascended was Intellectual flesh neither properly flesh nor yet Incorporeal but visible to them who have pierc'd him without grossness of flesh They believ'd it a great point of Christianity that Jesus God-man sate in the Heavens in illustrious visible glory And this St. John saw in a Vision in which the Logos the God Omnipotent the King of Kings and Lord of Lords or Lamb God-man appeared on his Throne Crowned and with eyes like flames of fire To this effect is a saying of Eusebius cited by Bishop Andrews on the second Command I suppose he meaneth Eusebius Dorylaeus for he referreth to the second Ephesine Synod though I have not met with it in the Acts of that Council Eusebius it seems telleth Constantia That she must not any longer desire an Image of Christ as he is infirm man For now said he his Glory is much greater than it appeared on the Mount which if his Apostles were then dazled with how can it now be expressed This visible Glory of Christ the Ancients supposed situate in the Eastern part of the Heavens and it occasion'd as I think their directing of their worship towards the East The Gentiles who worshipped the Sun differed much from this external direction of their Faces For they respected especially the East-point by reason of the Sun-rising thence And often at other parts of the day they altered their posture They sometimes vall'd themselves saith Plutarch and turned themselves about with respect to the Heavenly motions And Trismegistus in Asclepio relates that it was a custom of some of the Gentile-Devotionists at mid-day to look towards the South and at Sun-set to look towards the West It was at the rising of the Sun when Lucian was turned towards it by Mithrobarzanes the Chaldaean Priest who mumbled his Prayers in a low and indistinct tone at the rising of that false God They respected not always the Eastern Angle though they had especial regard to it when the Sun appeared in it They respected also the South and West-points in their worship Hence Harpocrates a child represented amongst them the Sun in its rising Orus a young man the Sun in its Meridian Osiris an old man the Sun-setting This was also the way of the Manichees who supposed the Sun to be the Tabernacle of Christ. Of them St. Austin saith that their Prayers rolled about with the Sun But the Ancients thought the Shechinah of Christ more fixed and therefore did not in such manner alter their Quarter And that Quarter they esteemed proper to the Shechinah having read of the Messiah in the Old Testament under the name of the East and following the Translation of the Seventy which thus readeth Psalm 68. 33. Sing unto God who ascendeth above the Heaven of Heavens on the East They also esteemed Jerusalem the middle of the Earth and the parts which lay Easterly from thence they called the East and amongst them Eden about Mesopotamia And they had a Tradition that Christ was Crucified with his face towards the West but that he ascended with his face towards the East and went up to a place in the Heavenly Paradise standing as it were over that of the Earthly But whatsoever men may conceive of the space possessed by Christs meer body they ought not to think of his Shechinah as of a confined light in some one Quarter of the Heavens but as a glorious luster filling all Heavens and shining towards this Earth as a Circumference of Glory on a single point They ought to lose their imaginations in an Abyss of Light One saith and not amiss upon this subject That as Earth heightned unto a flame changeth not its place only but form and figure so the person of our Saviour was raised to a greatness a
disguis'd himself in Persia under the name of Budda deriv'd his folly from his Master Scythianus a Saracen in Egypt Scythianus was learned in the Writings of the Grecians and wrote four Books of Pythagorean Magick And Lucas Holstenius rightly observeth that the twofold 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Pythagoreans which comprehendeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the contrary combinations of the principles of unity and division was the root of the two contrary Manichaean Powers These Pythagoras learned from the Egyptians who besides a good principle own'd Typhon called also Seth Bebon and Smy a principle of Evil and Tyranny For Manes he strain'd the conceit of the Pythagorean Soul of the World to such a degree of extravagance that he plac'd a perceptive spirit as Epiphanius noteth in every Creature He would not so much as break his Bread or cut a Pot-herb though he had cruelty enough to eat them For certainly if Bread were still alive after grinding and baking it remained so in the broken pieces of it But how wild a flight does mans fancy take when it moves it self only upon its own wings I do not recall any passage in History which sheweth concerning this monstrous Heretick that he either prayed or sacrificed to this principle of evil If he did neither he yet made an Idol of it by exalting it in his mind to that undue supremacy And on the other hand he turned the Author of all good into another Idol For as we are instructed by Theodoret in his first Book of Heretical Fables he confined that Principle to three quarters of the World bestowing the Southern parts upon Matter the dark Principle or the Devil He likewise sacrilegiously robbed God of that part of his Providence which dispenseth righteous judgments Further as the same Theodoret relateth he sometimes called the Sun and Moon his Deities Sometimes he called the Sun Christ and prov'd it as Enthusiasts prove their Dreams by the Eclipse it suffered at his Crucifixion Sometimes he maintained them to be two Ships which conveyed the Souls which depart hence from Matter to Light With reason then did St. Austin thus confess his Manichaean impiety My vain fantasm and my error was then my God But of the Gnostick and Manichaean extravagance enough I I come in the next place to speak of people much more sober and yet not without a mixture of madness CHAP. IX Of the Idolatry with which the Arians and Socinians are charged PART 1. THE Honour of God under Christianity can be by none secured but by such who acknowledg the Godhead of his Son The Gentiles not understanding this truth but looking upon Christ as in the flesh without any Personal union of it to a subsistence in the Godhead reproached the Christians for their worship of him And they made this to be the cause why the Heavenly Powers were angry with them as they judged and afflicted them with persecution because they put up daily prayers to one that had been a man and one that died on a Cross though the objection held against their Hercules and many other of their Deities who once were men and died in pain and shame What else was AEsculapius whom their Jove themselves confessing it smote with his Thunder Had they known Christ to have been a Divine person incarnate they would have worshipped him themselves and own'd him as the only substitute whom the Father could have so used without diminution of the Divine honour Hence St. Paul maketh the confessing of Jesus to be the supreme Lord to whom all things in Heaven and Earth and under the Earth are to do obeisance to be a duty that promoteth the glory of God the Father This glory the Arians and Socinians are said to diminish and they are the persons whom I am next to consider Arius the Lybian a Priest of Alexandria is accused by the Fathers both as an Heretick and as an Idolater and his Idolatry is charged upon him as the just â—…onsequence of his Heretical opinion And Irenaeus hath observed concerning most Heresies That the maintainers of them do acknowledg one God yet by their corrupt mind do so alter the notion of him that they become ungrateful to him that made them as did the Gentiles by their Idolatry Arius heated by the Dispute betwixt Bishop Alexander and himself maintained at length with obstinacy and uproar that Christ had a beginning of his existence That there was a time when he was not though he was before the world That he was not what Origen or Maximus called him the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Consubstantial Word of the Father That he was therefore not the one Deity the God of Israel but a made or created God And that the Father or true God did by him as by his instrument create all other things Servetus if I well remember his opinions was a man yet much more extravagant than Arius for he conceived Christ to be a Divine Light which God used as his Instrument in making the World and his flesh to be made out of the very substance of God And by that which I have seen of his I judg him fitter to have been chained up as a mad-man than burnt as an Heretick Arius had his flaws too but with much more consistence He having thus degraded Christ into the condition of a creature was for that reason condemned as an Heretick And because he still worshipped Christ with Divine incommunicable honour he was also accused of Idolatry Amongst his Accusers Athanasius is one of the principal and he is frequent and earnest in his declamations against him In his first Oration against the Arians there is a discourse which appertaineth to the present occasion and this is the meaning of it The Apostle rebuketh the Gentiles for worshipping the Creation saying That they served the Creature besides or as the Translator renders it before God the Creator And these to wit the Arians affirming of the Lord that he is a creature and serving him or giving him Latria as a creature how differ they from the Gentiles How can it be if so they think that the accusation of St. Paul before cited shall not also appertain unto them Such again is his discourse in his fourth Oration and this is the scope of it If there be not such a Logos or co-essential Word as we speak of if from not being it came into being and was made a creature it is either not true God seeing 'tis in the number of created Beings or if by the power of Truth in Scripture they are forced to confess it to be true God then they acknowledg two Deities the one the Creator the other a Creature Then serve they two Masters the one uncreated the other created Then have they two Creeds one in which they profess to believe the true God the other in which they own a Deity made and formed by
loud and plain a voice that he who is dull of hearing cannot mistake them unless he by obstinacy make himself deafer still and will not distinctly hear them In them we find this Prayer made by the pious King Hezekiah when he was distressed by Sennacherib O Lord of Hosts God of Israel that dwellest between the Cherubims Thou art the God even thou alone of all the Kingdoms of the Earth Thou hast made Heaven and Earth Incline thine ear O Lord and hear open thine eyes O Lord and see and hear all the words of Sennacherib who hath sent to reproach the living God Of a truth Lord the Kings of Assyria have laid wast all the Nations and their Countries and have cast their Gods into the fire for they were no gods but the work of mens hands wood and stone therefore they have destroyed them Now therefore O Lord our God save us from his hand that all the Kingdoms of the Earth may know that thou art the Lord even thou only Other places there are to the same purpose and amongst them these Let them the Nations or Gentiles give glory unto the Lord and declare his praise in the Islands The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man He shall prevail against his enemies I have declared and I have saved and I have shewed when there was no strange god among you therefore ye are my witnesses saith the Lord that I am God Yea before the day I was he I will work and who shall let it Thus saith the Lord the Redeemer I am the Lord your holy one the Creatoâ—… of Israel your King He that raiseth you out of mean estate and ruleth over you Thus saith the Lord who maketh a way in the Sea and a path in the mighty waters Who would not fear thee O King of Nations The stock is a doctrine of vanities but the Lord is the true God he is the living God and an everlasting King Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain so the Lord shall make bright clouds and give them showers of rain to every one grass in the field For the Idols have spoken vanity The eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole Earth The King of Chaldea shall gather the captivity as the sand and shall scoff at Kings Then shall his mind change and he shall pass over and offend imputing this his power unto his god Art thou not he from everlasting O Lord my God mine Holy One we shall not die O Lord thou hast ordained them the Powers of Chaldea for judgment and O mighty God! Thou hast established them for correction Who hath f directed the Spirit of the Lord or being his counsellor hath taught him with whom took he counsel and who instructed him and taught him in the path of judgment Behold the Nations are as a drop of a bucket See here the Spirit of God asserting the Divinity of the one God of Israel against Idols by displaying his Wisdom and Power in the Natural and Political Government of the World But lest the evidence of these places should be weakened by any as Scriptures of the Old Testament relating to times before our Lord was actually made by the Eternal Father the King of the World I will add a few more which may tend to the preventing of such an Evasion Isaiah prophesying of the Baptist and of the blessed times of the Gospel introduceth that voice thus crying out to Jerusalem and Judah Behold your God Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand and his arm shall rule for him He shall feed his flock like a shepherd In the same Isaiah for I scarce seek further than that Evangelical Prophet the God of Israel repeateth this profession Before me there was no God framed neither shall there be after me Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel and his Redeemer the Lord of Hosts I am the first and I am the last and besides me there is no God And yet of the Logos the Socinians will profess as did Nathaniel Thou art the Son of God thou art the King of Israel and as doth the Book of the Revelation that he is Alpha and Omega the first and the last The God of Israel had said also in the foregoing Chapter I even I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour Is there a God besides me yea there is no God I know not any Yet of the Logos Socinians and Arians make confession in the words of St. John saying That he was in the beginning with God the Father The design of all these places ought not in reason to be baffled by saying with confidence these two things First That the Power which Christ had was given him by God and in order to his Glory Secondly That it is not unlawful but our duty to worship a Creature by Gods command though without his permission it be Idolatry If Christ had not been more than a creature God would not have enjoined us so high a Worship of Him neither would it have been consistent with his incommunicable Omnipotence and Wisdom to have given him all power in Heaven and in Earth This as Athanasius speaketh were to turn his Humane Nature into a second Almighty The Logos was so before all Worlds and ceased not to be so by assuming the Humane Nature into Unity of Subsistence To say then that Christ is a Creature yet made such a God who can hear all Prayers supply all wants give all Graces needful to his Body the Church know all the secrets of all Thoughts not directed to him govern and judg with Wisdom all the World and to Worship him under this Divine Notion what is it else than the paying an homage to a presumed Creature which is due only to the one very God for what apprehensions greater than these do we entertain concerning the true God when we call upon him confide in him or revere him He then that meeteth such an Inscription in Racovia as he may find often in Misna in this manner D. O. S. and at length Deo Omnipotenti Sacrum and meant of Christ to whom in the Verses set underneath the application is particularly made How must he expound it He must either interpret it of Christ Transubstantiated as 't were by their fancy into the Father or worshipped like Neptune in the D. M. at Rome in the quality of the true God whilst he is confessed to be but a Creature For they will own but one God in nature and person and yet will give to Christ not acknowledged as a coeternal Subsistence that which belongeth in eminent manner to his Idea His Idea sure it is for that Being appeareth to our mind as the best and greatest which with such mighty Goodness Power and Wisdom governs the insensible sensible rational and Christian World I end this Chapter with the
Idolatry First then I enquire how far the Gentiles owned one supreme God This enquiry is not capable of any nice and accurate resolution For there is no one Systeme of the Gentile Theology as there is of Judaism Mahometanism and the Christian Religion Divers persons in divers places had divers apprehensions concerning a Deity and divers Rites of worship And those distinct Rites by the commerce of Nations were often so mixed together that they made a new kind of Religion It is not unlikely that the dregs of the people among the Gentiles whom God had given up to brutishness of mind did rise little higher than Objects of sense They worshipped many of them together each as supreme in its kind or no otherwise unequal than the Sun and the Moon or the other coelestial bodies by the adoration of which the ancient Idolaters as Job intimateth denied or excluded the God that is above Porphyry himself one of the most plausible Apologists for the Religion of the Gentiles doth own in some the most gross and blockish Idolizing of mean Objects He telleth us that it is not a matter at which we should be amaz'd if most ignorant men esteemed wood and stones Divine Statues seeing they who are unlearned look upon Monuments which have inscriptions on them as ordinary Stones and esteem valuable Tables as pieces of common wood and regard Books no otherwise than as so many bundles of Paper Sensible objects arrested the stupid and unactive minds of the vulgar who like those indevout Idolaters of Japan reason'd no further concerning the original or Government of the World For few Heads are exercised by Philosophy and we meet not with one Peasant of a Thousand among our selves who asks how the Sun enlightens this Globe though he believes the body of it no bigger than his Bushel Such Heads are inclined to turn the Truth of God into a Lie to exchange the Sovereign Deity for that which is esteemed a God but is not and to multiply the kinds of it according to the variety of considerable effects and appearances whose Causes are only known to the Secretaries of Nature It is more probable still that many Gentiles reached no higher in their devotion than to Demons Saint Paul taxeth them with offering to Devils and not to God The same Apostle inform'd the Lycaonians that the design of his Preaching was the converting of men from vanities that is from their many Idols which were not what they were judged to be which being no Deities were in that respect nothing and vanity unto one God the true and living God from whom therefore these many Idols had withdrawn many of the Heathen The Inferiour objects had thrust the Superiour out of possession as in the Case of that woman under the Papacy who is said to have forsaken God for the Virgin and the Virgin in Heaven for that Lady as she called her which she saw before her eyes in the Church Divers Idols I say might crowd the Sovereign God out of their minds Jehovah might be banished whilst their imaginations were filled with many hundreds of Jupiters with no fewer than Thirty thousand in the account of Hesiod if he swelleth not the reckoning with Names and Sir-names instead of distinct Gods Some of the Gentiles who knew God that is had means by the things that are seen of ascending to the knowledg of the invisible Creator did notwithstanding not truly know him nor reach him by that wisdom or vain sort of Philosophy which did not edifie them though it puffed them up PART 2. Of their worship of Universal Nature c. as God THis is the common oppinion concerning many of the Gentiles but there is not sufficient reason to believe the same thing concerning them all For it is evident from the History of ancient and modern Idolatry and from the Writings of some of the Gentiles that the acknowledgment of one supreme Deity was not wholly banished from all parts of the Pagan World But herein likewise some of them greatly erred For first There were those amongst them who acknowledged Universal Nature as that one supreme Deity This Deity the Egyptians vailed sometimes under the names of Minerva and Isis before whose Temple Sai as Plutarch witnesseth this Inscription was to be read I am all that which was and is and will be hereafter And in her Image were placed the emblems of all the kinds of things with which Nature is furnished Such a Deity the Arcadians worshipped under the proper Title of Pan who as Pornutus contendeth is the same with the Universe The same Pornutus proceedeth in shewing that his lower part was shaggy and after the fashion of a Goat and that by it was meant the asperity of the Earth Bardesanes Syrus describeth at large the Statue of the Universe by which the Brachmans worshipped Nature It was an Image of Ten or Twelve Cubits in heighth It had its hands extended in the form of a Cross. It had a face Masculine on the one side and Feminine on the other It had the Sun on one of its breasts and on the other the Moon And on the Arms were to be seen a very great number of Angels together with the Heavens Mountains Seas Rivers the Ocean Plants and Animals and such other parts in Nature as make up the Universe Yet I cannot say that this was the Statue of their supreme Deity For they tell us concerning it that this was the Image which God set before his Son when he made the World as a pattern by which he should form his Work But I may say it more truly of some worshippers of Isis that they supposed her supreme and did adore her not with others as the inferiour Earth but in the quality as I just now noted of universal Nature So Pignorius hath taught us and before him Servius and Macrobius Hence was it that the Infcription on an Antient Marble at Capua owneth Isis as all things A like opinion may be with ground entertained concerning Vesta and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fire or Sun in the midst of her Temple as Plutarch in Numa hath suggested Wherefore no Image was consecrated to her besides that of her Temple which by its roundness denoted the World and by its sempiternal fire the Sun in it That fire was renewed each year on the first of March in allusion sure to the vigour of that Planet which then beginneth in especial manner to comfort those parts of the Earth Others again amongst the Gentiles ador'd the Sun as the one Sovereign Deity Such were they in Julius Firmicus who expressed their devotion in this form O Sol Thou best and greatest of things Thou mind of the Universe Thou Guide and Prince of all A like Egyptian form translated out of that language by Euphantus is remembred by Porphyrie and thus it beginneth O Sun thou Lord of all and ye the rest of the Gods
Hierom judged that this Abraxas was the Sun or the Mithra of the Persians because its Annual course doth make up the abovesaid number of days But a good Reason ought to weigh down his Authority and there is a reason sufficient to perswade us that they meant some other supreme God For in the seven Spheres they included the Sun as one of the Planets and therefore did not intend him as the Deity that was above Saturn himself but their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Logos or Artist of all or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 himself For he in Epiphanius possesseth the place of the highest Orb. And in many of the Basilidian Gems particularly in that in the custody of Baronius that name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is inscribed though the Omega be misrepresented in the form of a W. They who consider this Systeme of their Deities will be apt to think them those Coelicolae which the Emperours condemned their Religion being a sort of Astrological Magick Now this their worship of the Heavens or Angels came as I said from the Schools of Thales and Plato together with some tinctures from the Heathen Poets and particularly from Hesiod in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But the Systeme of it was much further enlarged and varied also with Mystical signs and interpretations And they ran a kind of Enthusiastick descant upon a more natural or Geometrical ground He that fixeth his attention on the Platonick Scheme of the World observing the several proportions which Plato fancied in the adjusting of its parts when it was first framed He that reads in Timaeus Locrus of the hundred and fourteen thousand six hundred ninety and five divisions of the Soul of the World and in Alcinous of the Octoedral Icosaedral Duodecaedral figures in the composing of the Universe He that readeth further in Irenaeus of the Principle called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Divine fulness and of the Quaternations Octonations Decads Dodecads and numberless Conjugations of the AEons of the Gnosticks who began their Fancies very early though the Scheme of them was successively varied as likewise the very wording of it the Simonians changing their Masters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into St. John's Logos after his Gospel became publick such a one will guess without the gift of Prophesie what Doctrines did set their imaginations on work He will not wonder that the Disciples of Simon Magus worshipped in private the Image of Pythagoras They will not think it strange that the Valentinians in Irenaeus called their first Tetrad the Pythagorick Tetractys Celsus mistaketh these Gnosticks for true Christians and compareth their Mystical scale of things with that of the Mithriacs or Persian Divines Origen supposeth those whom he pointeth at to be the Sect of the Ophians a kind of spawn of the Gnosticks And he mentioneth a Diagram of theirs which had fallen into his hands and in which they described the Soul of the World penetrating all things under the name of Leviathan If that Diagram had been preserved it might have been compared with other Pythagorick and Magick Systemes and a Torch might have been lighted from it for further discoveries of that nature than can now be made For the Ophites they were manifest Idolaters worshipping a living Serpent for Christ And the Gnosticks were no better whilst they worshipped their Angels as Rulers of the World Hence Marcus the Gnostick is reproached expresly in Irenaeus after the mention of the AEons as a maker of Idols Neither is St. Hierom of another mind for on the third Chapter of Amos thus he discourseth Every Heretick feigneth what pleaseth himself and then he worshippeth his own fiction Thus did Marcion with his idle Deity Valentinus with his thirty AEons Basilides with his god Abraxas As these were the sink of Hereticks so were they the principal of Idolaters giving to the Devil himself by way of honour the title of Cosmocrator or Ruler of this World As if he had been such by the Commission of that Demiourgus whose creature they say he was and not by the consent of wicked men Idolaters then they were in the first place with respect to the Daemons whom they worshipped And in the second place I am inclined to think them such with respect to the Images of their Deitie and his Daemons Some such things were the Gems of the Basilidians preserved till these late times Joseph Scaliger had one of them in his possession and the excellent Peireskius very many Amulets they were and Symbols too of their Deities whose names of Abraxas Michael Gabriel Ouriel Raphael Ananael Prosoraiel Yabsoe names of their god and their seven Angels the Presidents of their seven Heavens were inscribed on them together with the Figures of Men Beasts Fowls Plants Stars the Schemes of which may be seen in Pignorius Abraxas is represented with humane body with buckler and whiâ—… or sword in hand as Ensigns of Power and with Serpents as feet Of a like abuse of Magical Gems the Jews and Mahometans themselves have been guilty And what are such Gems but Idols when there is an expectation from them of supernatural virtue which God hath not communicated to them Irenaeus reporteth of the Gnosticks that they had Pictures and Images and particularly one of Jesus made by Pilate also that they crown'd them and set them with the Images of Pythagoras Plato and Aristotle and other Gentile Philosophers observing or worshipping them after the manner of the Heathens The like is said by Epiphanius in his Twenty-seventh Heresie and by Theodoret in his first Book of Heretical Fables where he informeth us that Simon 's Statue was like to that of Jupiter's and Helen's like to that of Minerva's and that they were worshipped with Sacrifice and Incense The same is written by St. Austin who further mentions the Idolatry of Marcellina one of that Sect who worshipped together with the Images before remembred the Statue of Homer I will end this Discourse of the Idolatry of the Gnosticks with the following words of the very learned Mr. Thorndike For the Idolatry of the Gnosticks which I am confident is mentioned in divers Texts of the new Testament it may well be counted the Idolatry of the Pagans though pretending to be Christians Because they did not stick to exercise the same Idolatry when occasion was offered though they had their own Idolatries besides whether peculiar to their several Religions or as Magicians PART 2. Of the Idolatry of the Manichees WIth the Gnosticks I will join the Manichees both agreeing in obscene Superstitions and in the worship of the principal evil Daemon and both being branches from the same Magical Trunk of Pythagorean Philosophy Cubricus or Manes took the occasion of his Heresie from his Marriage with the Widow of Terbinthus who died in exercising his Magical Tricks Terbinthus who also
though it may be and it is certain they have not in all Ages known according to what is in the Prophesie of St. John what Jesus Christ will do next yet that still by the spirit of Prophesie as it were the Saints have been guided to seek for those things at the hands of God and Christ which he was about to accomplish Also that the Saints in Heaven before the day of Judgment have a share and an hand in Christs government of the world and that they have a knowledg by the Angels that are continually Messengers from Heaven to Earth of the great things that are done here And he that writeth the Epistle to the Reader maketh this Application of Mr. Goodwins Doctrine Now saith he what may we think the Saints in Heaven who within these ten years last past lost their lives in the Cause of Christ he meaneth the Army-Saints from the year forty-four to that of fifty-four who dy'd in maintenance of the Bad Old Cause are EMPLOYED ABOUT at this time they understanding by the Angels what great changes are come to pass on our Earth Those of whose Saintship we have better assurance though in a state of rest and light are esteemed by the Fathers but a kind of Free Prisoners not being acquitted by the publick Sentence of the General Judgment And their opinion who give them a Lieutenancy under God in the Government of the World before that day does recall to my mind the Argument used by that truly great man Sir Walter Raleigh in his own unhappy Case He pleaded that the grant of a Commission from the King did argue him to be absolved and that he who had power given him over others was no longer under a sentence against his own life Abraham and Isaac do not now rule us and it may be they are ignorantt of us which whilst I affirm I do not wholly ground my Assertion on the Text in Isaiah That soundeth otherwise whether we take it in its positive or hypothetical sense It s positive sense may be this Doubtless thou art our Father notwithstanding we live not under the care of Abraham or Isaac but are by many generations removed from them who therefore knew us not or own'd us not we being not men of their times we are their seed however though at a great distance and to such also was thy promise made And for the Hypothetical sense it may be this Be it supposed that Abraham knows nothing of us yet certain we are that thou art the God of Israel whose knowledg and care of thy people never faileth I admit here that the Saints pray for the Church in general that Angels are concerned in particular Ministrations but that Angels and even Saints have shares of the Government of the World though in subordination to God so as to be Commission-Officers under the King of Heaven and not only Attendants on his Throne and as it were Yeomen and Messengers of his Court the general condition of the Angels I cannot admit without peril of Idolatry This in my conceit is the great resemblance betwixt the Romanists and the Gentiles Both of them suppose the World to be ruled under God by several Orders of Daemons and Heroes though I have confessed already that they are not so exactly alike but that Rome-Christian may be distinguished from Rome-Pagan For the Gentiles so much hath been shewn already and it may appear further from the place of the Greek Historian cited in the Margent And for the Romanists that too hath already been manifested in part and shall be further declâ—…red and Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law or Commentary on the Twelve Tables does very honestly confess it He having commented on that Law which ordereth the worship of the Heathen gods both Daemons and Heroes letteth fall words not unfit to be here gathered up by us Christians saith he meaning those of the Roman Communion retain a Religion like to this for they worship God immortal and for those that excel in Virtue and shine with Miracles first with great pomp and inquisition they register them among the Deities or Saints and then they worship them and after that they erect Temples to them as we see in the case of S. John S. Peter S. Catherine S. Nicholas S. Magdalen and other Deities In this point then let us join issue and offer on our side the manifestation of these particulars First On what occasions this worship of Ruling-spirits came into the Church Secondly How it derogateth from the honour of God as Governour of the World Thirdly How it derogateth from the honour of Jesus as the Mediator and King ordained by God First For the occasions of this Worship I conceive them to be especially these two The Celebration of the Memory of the Martyrs at their Tombs and the compliance of the Christians with the Northern Nations when they invaded Italy and other places in hope of appeasing them and effecting their conversion First I reckon as an occasion of this Worship the celebration of the memory of the Martyrs at their Tombs and Monuments and Reliques and in the Churches sacred to God in thankfulness for their Examples The thankful and honourable commemoration of the Martyrs was very ancient and innocent at the beginning For as the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna concerning the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp testifies They esteemed the bones of the Martyrs more precious than Jewels They kept their Birth-days that is the days of their Martyrdom on which they began most eminently to live they pursu'd them with a worthy affection as Disciples and Imitators of Christ but they worshipped none but Christ believing him to be the Son of God But laudable Customs degenerate through time And this in the fourth Century began to be stretched beyond the reason of its first institution as appeareth by the Apostrophe's of St. Basil St. Gregory Nazianzen and others of that Age. Afterwards the vanity of men ran this Usage into a dangerous extreme and those who had been commemorated as excellent and glorified Spirits and whose Prayers were wished were directly invoked and worshipped as the subordinate Governours of Gods Church This Veneration of the Martyrs which superstition thus strained was occasioned by the Miracles which God wrought where his Martyrs were honoured Times of Persecution at home and of Invasion from abroad required such aids for the Encouragement of Catholick Christians and the Conversion of Infidels and misbelievers Thus in the days of St. Austin in whose Age the Getae or Goths sacked Rome and many of the barbarous people imputed the present misfortunes of Italy to the Christian Religion God pleased to work Miracles at the Bodies of the Martyrs Protasius and Gervasius in the City of Milan Thus as is reported by Procopius and Egnatius he miraculously saved those Christians at Rome and Pagans also both in the time of Alaricus and Theudoricus who
was invok'd And he accordingly taketh notice of the Praises of Heart and Voice which every preserved Citizen did offer to that Goddess In his eleventh chapter he telleth how a man possessed with the Devil was by this Tutelar Deity as he there calls her delivered from so wicked and dangerous an Inhabitant And after having told his story he falleth to his Prayers in this manner O powerful O merciful Goddess defend us also from this subtil Serpent And thou who didst once bruise his head in thy Conception assist us so effectually that his tail may neither scourge us nor throw us on the ground Then after having ended his Legend consisting of divers Miracles wrought at her shrine he falls again to his Prayers in his thirty-sixth or last Chapter and this is the form of his Address O Goddess thou art the Queen of Heaven of the Sea of the Earth above whom there is nothing but God Thou Moon next to him the Sun whom I implore and invocate Protect and take care of us both in publick and private Thou hast seen us these forty years tossed in a publick storm O Mary calm this tumultuous Sea He concludeth with a Poetical Consecration of a silver-Pen to her who had as he believ'd been the author and finisher of his studies Now then such kind of Worshippers do in part revive one degree of the Idolatry of the Gentiles who divided Places Persons Things Actions subject to the Supreme God amongst Sempiternal or Canoniz'd Spirits The chief Architect of the Egyptian Pharos put upon his Workmanship this Inscription Sostratus of Gnidos the Son of Dexiphanes to the Gods Protectors for the safeguard of Sailers What now is the difference betwixt this Inscription and one made by a Papist in honour of S. Nicholas upon the little Church nigh the Wurbel in the Danube None sure unless it be this that the first is in veneration of a Christian Saint the other of good Genii For we are told by those whose credit is as unquestionable as their Learning and who have been upon the place that the Church is dedicated to S. Nicholas That he is the supposed Patron of that dangerous Whirlpool in that River that he is believ'd to take peculiar care of such as pass that way and that a little Boat comes to you as soon as you are out of danger and receives what acknowledgment you please or what perhaps you may have promised to give when you were in some fear It may be God alone calmeth those waves at least without a Saint and S. Nicholas receiveth much of the acknowledgment the whole possibly from the common men of the Vessel whom danger teacheth to pray whilst superstitious ignorance misleadeth them from praying aright Martinus de Roa though a learned Jesuit and a Spaniard does openly declare the nature of this Romish practice he does not seek to give a false colour to it but he shews it as a Practice which plainly agreeâ—…th with the worship of the Gentiles He speaketh out saying that it is a Rite amongst them to call upon the tutelar Deity of the Nation as upon St. James in Spain at the beginning of their Battels And this custom he parrallels with that of the Macedonians in Justin who in their battels called sometimes upon Alexander and sometimes upon Philip as upon Gods invoking their aid for the success of their Armes And then he subjoyneth the practice of the Germans who as Tacitus reporteth joyned not in fight with their enemies 'till they had solemnly prayed to Hercules This kind of worship the Pope continueth to encourage by setting up new Saints as Tutelar Spirits in his Canonizations of them Thus for inscance sake Pope Clement the Tenth confirmed the decree of Pope Clement the ninth in which St. Rosa is created Patroness of the City Lima the chief Town and the Archiepiscopal seat in Peru and principal Protectress of the same Kingdom of Peru and of all the Provinces and Kingdoms of the Terra firma of all the Peruvian America and of the Philippine Islands And this it seems was done to this end that an addition might be made to the veneration of that Saint and that through her intercession the People of those parts might the more strongly hope for Patronage or Protection So S. Thomas de Villanova is canonized by Alexander the seventh who whilst he registreth him in the Calendar of his gods useth this Exhortation Wherefore let us go with boldness to the throne of the Divine mercy praying with heart and voice that S. Thomas may preside over Christian people by his Merit and Example that he may assist them with his Prayers and Patronage and that in the time of wrath he may become their Reconciliation Such Deities the Papacy setteth up and nothing is more common than for the people of that Church to fall down and worship them in that quality Neither can Travellers shun such Statues and Inscriptions as give them advertisement of this worship of Tutelar Saints Such an Inscription is that at Brussels betwixt the Quire and the Sacristy of the Cathedral The Monument is dedicated by Maximilian Duke of Bavaria and Archbishop and Elector of Colen to the immaculate Virgin and to S. Lambert as to the Tutelar Deities of that Church and Countrey S. Michael also is the special Protector of that City and upon the top of its Townhouse stands his Statue in brass Who can go into Lentini and not have notice of the three French Brethren and Martyrs Alsio Philadelfo and Cirino venerated there as its Patrons and Guardians Who travelleth to Utopolis or S. Veit and seeth not the four Chappels on the four Hills of S. Veit S. Ulrick S. Laurence S. Helena or heareth not of St. Veit or St. Faith as of one that cureth the Dancing-sickness known by the name of Chorea sancti viti Who entreth Paris and heareth not St. Geneviefve celebrated as the Protectress of it And is not she called the Guardian of France and the North-star of her Imperial City Who understandeth the ancient estate of England and is ignorant of the Veneration which it hath had for its presumed Patron St. George So great it was that when certain Holy-days were abrogated in the Reign of Henry the Eighth the Feast of St. George was excepted as well as those of the Apostles and our Lady Who crosseth the Ocean and visiteth the Mexican America and observeth not that St. Joseph is made the Patron of new Spain The Synod of Mexico confirmed at Rome hath declared him to be such and given particular order for the celebration of his Holy-day I am not able to recount to how many places persons and things the Protection of the holy Virgin is said to extend The fancy of the eloquent Jesuit Rapine hath made her to preside over Clouds and Tempests over Tillage and Pasturage over Flocks and Herds To
it may be concluded that all Governours in this world Ecclesiastical and Civil all Princes and Magistrates all Patriarchs Archbishops Bishops Superintendents and Presidents are so many Idols and Ordinances dishonourable to God and his Son But judicious men will consider that the Governments on earth are not the patterns of the invisible world Here God ruleth in this manner not for his own sake but for ours we being mortal men and needing the aids of men like our selves whilst we sojourn in this body and for him to administer immediately to our outward infirmities in this world were for him to be always grosly incarnate This conceit of the invisible world as modelled like the visible hath brought forth that excuse of a voluntary humility in the Romish Suppliants who as if the Court of Heaven were like that on Earth dare not presume to come immediately to the King but apply themselves to him by the mediation of some of his Officers A King is but a man and cannot hear all complaints in person and redress all grievances Could he do it with the Power and Wisdom and Grace and easie operation of a Deity all might then have immediate access to him or to him by the Prince his Son supposed to be of a like nature and quality And who on earth when he is invited by the Monarch himself to apply himself to him immediately or to him by his Son addresseth himself to neither but to some meaner Favourite of whose interest for the dispatch of his Affair he hath no assurance given him Thirdly should we lay aside this consideration of that Presidentship and Patronage to which the Romanists entitle so many Saints yet the very frequency used in addresses to them though by mere request of their Praiers for us would not a little tend to the diminution of the honour of God and Christ. It is notorious to those who pass the Seas in the same Bottoms with Romish Mariners that those Seamen in a storm apply not themselves immediately to God but repeat the Hymn to the holy Virgin of Hail Star of the Sea To this purpose is that which Lipsius telleth of Thirteen men in peril by a Tempest in their passage to Antwerp Amongst them the Master conceiving no hope of saving the Vessel or the lives of the Passangers exhorted them to submit themselves wholly to God and so to pass to a better state after the loss of this But it seems one amongst them suggested Vows and Invocations to the Lady of Halla and his counsel is embraced Straightway says he a light shone on the Vessel and the Tempest ceased and the Vessel arrived at the Haven with loss of goods but not of the Passengers who repaired to Halla and profesled themselves to owe their life to the Virgin and paid with faithfulness the Vows they had made It had been more pious surely to have thanked God and the Virgin or rather God alone who it may be by other means or by himself was their deliverer But superstitious men judg of Causes by the concomitancie of the effects and not by the virtue which produceth them And this is not only the fruit of superstition in the rude and ignorant but in the politest of the Ecclesiastics The very Jesuites for so did Father Garnet at his execution afford God the less of their Application by being so busied at their last hour with their aforesaid Mary Mother of Grace Mother of Mercy defend us from the enemy and protect us in the hour of death which Versicles say the composers of the confession of Saxony we heard a Monk a Professor of Divinity inculcate very often to a dying man without any mention of Christ Jesus And it hath been commonly observed as a great blot in the Romish devotions That they use many Ave Maria's to one Pater Noster Which Collects by the way being repeated by them with such careless haste the jabbering of any thing in an indistinct heedless way is by us called patering Labbe a learned Jesuite though in his sickness he was not forgetful of Christ his Saviour yet he mentions the frequency of his addresses to the Virgin during the rage of his Feaver This a stander by not knowing his principles would have judged to have been the effect of his distemper Thus then this new Marian devotion much diminisheth and sometimes quite justleth out the ancient and unquestionable worship of Jesus as they say S. Ambrose is almost forgotten already at Milan through the newer veneration of S. Charles Borromee Two things now may be perhaps jointly pretended towards the disabling the foregoing Discourse and I will return a brief answer to them First It is taken for confessed That those to whom the Romanists pray as unto Patrons and Patronesses are real Saints in Heaven Secondly The Romanists pretend to prove that God hath declared himself to have conferred such honourable office place and power upon these Patrons by the miracles they have wrought for the behoof of their Clients For the first suggestion It is confessed that they worship none but such as have been thought professors of Christianity and such who are reputed to be exalted above either Hell or Purgatory Notwithstanding this I dare not avouch the eminent Saintship and glorified estate of all that are canonized They who read without partiality the History of S. Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury will be inclined to think him put into the Kalender by as much mistake as many other things are put into our vulgar Almanacks I see that even some of the Roman Communion do impute his saintship rather to the fervour of his zeal than to the ground of his Cause What can a man that reverenceth God think of the Saintship of St. Bernardin of Siena when he considereth of his Doctrine apt to give pain to the modesty of the Virgin almost in Heaven it self This Saint after a logn comparison betwixt God and Blessed Mary thus thus blasphemously concludeth If then we give to each their due in that which God hath done for man and which the Virgin hath done for God himself you see for your comfort that Mary hath done more for God than God for man whence God for the Virgins sake is much obliged to us Methinks by these words he is just such another Saint as the Author of the Conformities who writes the parallel of Christ and St. Francis and giveth to St. Francis the preheminence What can a peaceable Christian think of the Saintship of Pope Hildebrand or St. Gregory the seventh Was it not he who imbroiled the World who taught that Kings and Dukes had their original from those who not knowing God did by pride rapines perfidiousness murthers and by almost all manner of wickednesses through the instigation of the Devil the Prince of this world affect to domineer over their equals or other men with blind ambition and intolerable presumption who deposed Henry the fourth King of
the Germans and absolved his Subjects from their Oath of Allegiance and who endeavour'd to set up a Papal Monarchy to the disquiet of all Nations Neither is it for the Honour of the Gospel of Peace to Saint either Pope Victor or Pope Stephen who first took upon them to be Bishops or rather Censurers out of the Diocess that belonged to them Nor did the ancient Church own them as Saints or Martyrs as doth the modern one of Rome Interest of State hath oftentimes exalted them to the Honour of Saints who had never obtained that high Title by their meer piety of life It hapned tolerably in respect of the person when Thomas Aquinas was registred among the Saints for he was a man of great Scholastick Learning and of a mighty zeal in the Roman way But for the true reason of his being Canonized it was secular enough For Pope John the Two and twentieth to depress the Franciscans who did for the most part adhere to the Emperour Lewis of Bavaria Excommunicated by him did canonize that Doctor and his Doctrine directly opposite to that of the Followers of St. Francis in the Article of the Virgins Immaculate Conception Money also maketh such gods being first made one it self And who knows whether it hath not sometimes Canonized evil men For they whom it thus bribeth are not usually beyond the outward colour and pretence respecters of Saintship Canonization they say secureth Christians from worshipping the damned instead of the blessed I wish saith the Archbishop of Spalato that it brings not to pass that very thing which they think it preventeth In this as he goes on are the faithful safe if they reduce their worship to the sole worship of God And here it is worthy our observation that Gregory the ninth complained on his death-bed of that vicious easiness of his whereby he listned to the dreams and visions of such who pretended to great sanctity and occasioned great schisms and disturbances in the Church He meaneth this in all likelihood of Catherine of Siena by whom he was deluded and thereby drawn into a desperate schism yet she is St. Catherine and her Clients are many It is a strange infallibility with which the Pope is invested if he can judg without error of the manners of such whom he has seldom in his eye and who want not their flatterers whatsoever is their party It is therefore much safer to own the ancient Saints such as St. Chrysostome and St. Ambrose whom the whole Church Canonized by its consent than such Modern ones as St. Catherine and St. Thomas of Canterbury whom the Authority of the Pope hath put into the Calendar Of some then the Saintship is doubtful and of some the very existence For are not the three Kings of Colen as such a very fiction yet are they worshipped in the Roman Church as Guardian-Saints And Horstius prayeth them to obtain for him the frankincense of devout Prayer the myrrh of Mortification and the gold of Charity Is not think you St. Almachius a substantial Patron yet such a one there is in some Roman Calendars the title of Sanctum Almanacum being first by mistake written too low against the first day of January yet a Saint he must be And Baronius is loth to part with him and in his Martyrology he will have him to be the same with St. Telemachus But secondly They will prove their Saints to be both Saints and Patrons by the miracles they work upon Invocation Thus the Popes in the Bullarium recite the many miracles wrought by their Saints and then they decree them a place in the Calendar Thus the Catechism of Trent proves the honour of Patrocinie to be due to the Saints by the wonders seen at their Sepulchres and Relicks Thus Baronius telleth of the Saintship and Miracles of the abovesaid Gregory the seventh and of a virtue in his Garments equal to that in the handkerchers of the Primitive Christians mentioned in the Acts. Thus Mr. White boasteth of the restitution of a leg cut off and buried four years to a young man who prayed to our Lady of Pilar affirming the story to be sufficient to convert the whole world To this second Allegation many things may be returned First When God wrought Miracles at the Tombs of the Martyrs he wrought them not as answers to them who invoked Martyrs for in those times they were honoured as Saints and as Soldiers dying in Christs cause and not invoked as Patrons but he thereby encouraged Christians in times of Persecution and honoured their Religion in the sight of the Heathen Secondly There is no reason to expect such Miracles in the setled Ages of Christian Religion though there might be at the first planting of it And Thirdly We have had a long time a fixed rule from whence we may learn the practical truth and duties of our Religion the Word of God Neither hath God left so great a part of his Worship as Prayer to be derived from the dreams of the Melancholy or the delusions of Satan or the Tales of men who write Legends for the advantage of their cause or other tricks of politick persons He hath required us in Scripture to call upon him through Jesus Christ and he hath confirmed this and his whole Gospel by the real Miracles of his Apostles after those of his Son and the Gospel being thus fixed we are not to expect any new discoveries of Evangelical duty by the voice or miracle of an Angel from Heaven who if he should be in such manner sent to us with any new Doctrinal or Moral Revelation ought to be looked on by us as one that trieth our Faith and not as one from whom a new rule of faith or manners is to be received Fourthly Many Romish Miracles are events not effects A Popish woman is extremely sick in body she causeth an Image of the Virgin as is the fashion now among some Romanists in England to be hanged within her curtains at the feet of her bed She invoketh the Virgin and useth Physick she recovers by Art by strength of nature by any other way of Gods Providence and the Virgin is entituled to the Cure because the event followed their Invocation of her Fifthly Many of the Miracles are too light to be ascribed to the Saints of Heaven The credulous Lipsius confirms the Invocation of our Lady of Halla by stories some of them very strange and some very ludicrous He tells of a Boy raised by her from the dead after three days Of a Taylor whom she helped to his needle and thread after they had been swallowed down by him Of a Soldier who by Miracle lost his nose having threatned to cut off that of her Image So Cantapratanus and Antoninus tell at large how the Virgin mended the hairy shirt of Saint Thomas of Canterbury Sixthly Many of them are mere cheats performed by cunning men under
Serpent in the Wilderness even so must the son of man be lifted up 'T is the Son of Man here plainly made the Antitype and not the old Serpent as a learned man would have it destroyed indeed on the Cross but not said by the Scripture to be lifted up upon it And though the Saraph was not Christ yet it was the Symbol by which he appeared and by its stretched-out wings it may seem to the Fancy at least very aptly to express Christs Crucifixion with arms extended If it be here said that to make this Serpent a Saraph and a part of Christs Shechinah is to overthrow that which was suggested before of the concealment of the Seraphim in the Ark and of the Cherubim behind the Veil from the eyes of the people prone to Idolatry this being exposed to their daily sight I answer in two Particulars First It was agreeable to the Wisdom of God to give some Type of Christ as crucified that being one great part of that substance of the Gospel of which the Law was a shadow though he pleased not to do it too plainly in the shape of an humane body on a Cross. And no other Type I think occurreth under Judaism but this of the brazen Saraph Secondly Here was not such occasion of Idolatry as might have been taken from the Ark for that was an Oracle and a Divine Light shone forth and a Divine Voice was heard and signs of Adoration to God were there commanded But this was no Oracle It doth not appear that at this symbol any extraordinary cloud or glory shone that hence any Coelestial thunder was heard Only men were helped in thinking on God by the symbol of an Angel which executeth Gods will on Earth whilst a secret virtue from the unseen God made them whole He that turned himself towards it saith the Book of Wisdom was not saved by any thing that he saw but by Thee that art the Saviour of all And if the people had been then prone to Idolize that Symbol it had not remained undefaced till the days of Hezekiah This then is my conjecture and I offer it no otherwise about the Urim and likewise about the Brazen Serpent For Thummim I imagin it to be a thing of a very differing nature So do they who take it to be deriv'd from the Jewel in the Brest-plate of the High-Priest of Egypt called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is true such a Brest-plate there was in Egypt and it is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus and AElian And Diodorus supposeth it to have consisted of many Gems but AElian calleth it an Image made of a Saphire It is also confessed that the Seventy Interpreters do render Thummim by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But here two things are to be observed First This Egyptian Pectoral deserving the name of truth it being put on as an ornament for the Bench in the execution of justice and maintenance of truth as we learn from Diodorus and AElian and not in order to the delivery of Oracles may as well have been taken from the Brest-plate of the High-Priest of the Jews There is no mention of it in Herodotus and before the Graecian times And Diodorus when he speaketh of it he referreth to those days when Heliopolis Thebés and Memphis were the three head-Cities in Egypt out of each of which ten Judges were chosen and for On or Heliopolis it had a publick Temple built in it for the Jews with the consent of Ptolomy Philadelphus by Onias the High-Priest who was then by the power of Antiochus deprived of his Authority and Office in Judaea And concerning the Egyptian Pectoral its name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is plainly modern It may in the second place be observed that upon supposition that this Pectoral was originally Egyptian it doth not follow that the Seventy meant the same thing by their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Egyptians did by theirs It may be rather guessed that those Interpreters translating divers words and phrases which grated on Egyptian matters in such prudential manner that Ptolomy might not be offended as is manifest that they did in several places of their Version they made use of this name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as of a name which would at once recommend them to his favour and well express the sense of Scripture or the meaning of Thummim Now if Urim be Images in the lesser Ark of the Pectoral answering in some sort to the Cherubim on the greater Ark what possibly can Thummim be but a copy of the Moral Law put into the Pectoral a copy written in some Roll or engraven in some stone according to the pattern of the Tables brought down from the Mount for what else was there in the other Ark nothing sure though some Rabbins and after them the learned Hugo Grotius believed otherwise Josephus thought nothing else to be there and he had ground for his opinion from the holy Scriptures For it is said in the first of the Kings That there was nothing in the Ark save the two Tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb. And this is repeated in the second of Chronicles And to say as some adventure to do that the Manna and the Rod of Aaron were there in the time of Moses and taken out in process of time lest the Manna should putrifie and the Rod be worm-eaten as if they could any-where have been so long preserved without miracle soundeth very like to a Rabbinical whimsey For the places of Scripture alledged by Grotius in favour of his opinion they answer themselves For in Exodus it is not said that Moses commanded Aaron to take a pot of Manna and to put it into the Ark but that he required him to lay it up before the Lord or before the Ark where the Lord by his Shechinah then dwelt Also in Numbers it is not said that God commanded Moses to put the Rod of Aaron into the Ark but that he required him to bring it before the Testimony that is the Ark of the Covenant Wherefore that of the Author to the Hebrews In the Holiest of all was the Ark of the Covenant wherein was the Golden pot that had Manna and Aarons Rod that budded and the Tables of the Covenant must be interpreted as if in signified both in and by So saith Capellus upon the place it is usual for them who live by Rome to say they live in it So in Cariathjarim in the Book of Judges signifieth nigh it They pitched saith the Text in Kiriath-jearim in Judah wherefore they called that place Mahaneh-Dan unto this day behold it is behind Kiriath-jearim Neither doth Gorionides say as Grotius maketh him that the Manna and Rod were in the Ark for he speaketh of the Holiest and saith they were there not determining in what part of it they were placed Thummim was not an Image as the Urim were neither
glory vastly differing from and surmounting any Image all Images of things visible or invisible in in this Creation So 't is fitly expressed saith he in Heb. 7. 29. He was made higher than the Heavens He was heightned to a splendour enlarged to a capacity and a compass above the brightest beyond the widest Heavens From this Heavenly Throne Christ will come at the day of Judgment in a Shechinah of Clouds and flaming-fire the mention of which fire sometimes in the Scripture and in the Commentaries of the ancient Fathers without express addition of that great day has as I conjecture accidentally led part of the Christian World into its mistakes about Purgatory in relation to which place I must yet confess my self to be one of the Nullibists This Shechinah in milder but most inexpressible luster I suppose to be that which the Schools call the Beatifick Vision and which the Scripture intendeth in the promise of seeing God face to face PART 7. Of the Usefulness of this Argument of Gods Shechinah THis Argument of Gods Shechinah may be many ways useful if Intelligent persons draw such inferences from it as it offereth to their judgment I will hint at some of them for to insist on any unless it be those which concern the worship of Angels or Images is beyond my scope And first of all by due attention to the premisses an Anthropomorphite may blush at his rude conceit about the humane figure of the Divine substance whose spiritual and immense amplitude is incapable of any natural figure or colour though God by his Logos using the ministry of inferiour creatures hath condescended to a visible Shechinah Hence secondly those people who run into the other extream the Spiritualists and abstractive Familists may be induced to own the distinct substance of God and the visible person of Christ and not to subtilize the Deity and its Persons and all its appearances into a meer notion or into some quality act or habit of mans spirit or to bow down to God no otherwise then as he is the pretended light or love in their own breasts Thirdly If this consideration had entered with sobriety into the minds of those German Anabaptists who with zeal contended that the very essence or substance of the Father was seen in the Son and the very substance of the Spirit in the Dove their disputations would have been brought to a speedy issue or rather they would never have been begun They would have known how to have distinguished betwixt the invisible God and the visible face or Shechinah not as the very shape but as the emblem and significative Presence of the Divinity Fourthly For want of some such notion as this many other men of fanatick heads such as were most of the Hereticks who introduced novelty and tumult into the Church about the Persons of the Trinity and nature of Christ have plunged themselves into unintelligible conceits Of this number were the Basilidians who call'd the body of the Dove the Deacon and the Valentinians who stil'd it the spirit of cogitation which descended on the flesh of the Logos thereby darkning the understanding with phrases If they had apprehended the Logos in his Praeexistence or Incarnation as the Shechinah of God and would have expressed that notion without phantastical or amusing terms they might have instructed others and seen the truth also better themselves when they had clothed it in fit and becoming words Fifthly This notion may not be unuseful for the unfolding the Scriptures which speak of the Praeexistence of Christ before he was God-man and explain them naturally and not with such force and torture as they are exposed to in the Soâ—…inian Comments He that saith Abraham saw the Shechinah of the Praeexisting Logos and thence inferreth that Christ was before that Patriarck speaketh plain sense But he that says Christ was not till more than 2000 years after Abrahams death yet that he was before him because he was before Abraham was Abraham or before all Nations were blessed in his seed the Gentiles not being yet called such a one speaks like a Sophist not an honest Interpreter and forgets that Christs answer before Abraham was I am follows upon this Interrogatory of the Jews Thou art not yet fifty years old and hast thou seen Abraham Sixthly This notion may further shew the error of those Semi-Socinians such as Vorstius and his Disciples who confound the Immensity of the God-head and the visible Glory of the Shechinah which God hath pleased as it were to circumscribe They will allow this King of the world no further room for his Immense substance than that which his especial Presence irradiates in his particular Palace Which conceit though in part it be accommodable to the Shechinah yet is it a presumptuous limitation of the great God when it is applied to his substance which Heaven and Earth together cannot contain Furthermore it is from hence in part that we see and pity the blindness of some of the modern Jews who notwithstanding they are the professed enemies of Divine Statues and Images and have reason enough to believe that the Ark of God hath dwelt among us in a body of flesh and now shineth in the Heavens do yet hope some say for an especial presence of God by furnishing with a Chest and Roll of their Law the places of their Religious Assemblies Again by considering with St. Chrysostome the Temple of Solomon as a Type not only of the sensible but also of the invisible world and by considering further the Shechinah and Ark of God more especially in the Holiest of all than in the Sanctuary and more exterior Courts and spaces we may illustrate that very useful and most probable notion of the degrees of Glory and of the several Mansions prepared for several Estates in the Kingdom of Glory where notwithstanding every part will be so far though inequally filled with luster that all may be said with open face to behold the Glory of God and not those only next the Coelestial Ark or Throne in the most holy place But these things as I said are beyond my scope though appertinencies to my Argument and therefore I will no further pursue them but proceed to those uses of the notion which lye more directly in the way of my design The first of them concerneth the worship of Angels the second of Images PART 8. Of the Usefulness of this Argument of Gods Shechinah with relation to the Worship of Angels and Images FIrst The Worshippers of Angels plead for their practice from those places in the Old Testament which seem to speak of high Veneration used towards them T. G. argueth from the Prayer which indeed is rather the wish of Jacob where he saith The Angel who delivered me from all evils bless these Children The Manual called the Abridgment of Christian Doctrine would prove the Worship of Dulia to belong to Angels from the falling of
c. 22. p. 392. Sic Cher. Ser. aurea in Arcâ figuratum exemplum certè simplex ornamentum accommodata suggestui longè diversas habendo causas ab Idoiolatriae conditione ob quam similitudo prohibetur c. g T. G. Cath. 〈◊〉 Idol p. 20â—… a In Tom. 1. Op. S. Hieron p. 123 124. b Socr. Eccl. Hift. p. 191. l. 3. c. 18. c See Epist. S. Hieron ad Ripar Presbyt op Tom. 2. p. 118. d See Bishop Whites Orthod Faith p. 111. Capit. Caroli Magni c. 26. p. 271. Dr. Still against T. G. p. 710 711 c. e In Votâ—… pro Pace p. 41. a Act. 14. 8 tâ—… 13. b Exod. 28. 30. a Philo Jud. de Prosugis p. 466 B. b Dr. Jackson in vol. 3. p. 803. c H. Grotius in Exod. 28. 4. And Munster in v. 5. p. 653. Crit. Maj. d Exod. 28. 5 8. a Breast-plate an Ephod a Robe a broider'd Coat a Miter a Girdle v. 36. a Plate of gold e Hosea 3. 4. f LXX 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. sine urim g Doctiss. D. Spenc. in Dissert de Urim Thummim c. 5. sect 2. p. 251 252 253. h S. Hier. Tom. 3. ad Dam. p. 117. Seraphim sicâ—…t in interpret nom Hebr. invenimus Ardor aut Incendium interpretantur Tom. 5. p. 29. Seraphim interpretantur 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not the LXX who in Isa. 6. 2. use 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quod nos â—…e possâ—… Incendentes seu comburentâ—…s i In Judic c. 17. v. 4. p. 2123. ap C. M. k S. Hiâ—…ron ad Marcell Tom. 3. op p. 72 73. l Exod. 26. 31. With Cherubims shall it be made Vers. Arab. With Pictures a S. Hieron in Isa. 6. p. 29. Tom. 5. op In Cherubim ostenditâ—…r Dominus ex Seraphim ex parte ostenditur ex parte celatur Idem Tom. 3. op ad Damasum Papam p. 121. Super Cherubim sedere Deum scriptum est super Seraphim verò sedere Deum nulla script commemorat ne ipsa quidem Seraphim circa Deum stantia excepto present loco viz. Isa. 6. in SS invenimus b Exod. 25. 18 19 20 21 22. c Levit. 8. 8. a Numb 2â—… 6 8. b Deut. 8. 15. c Herod l. 2. p. 132. â—…ic de Nat. Deor. l. 1. d Isa. 14. 29. e Abarb. Com. in Leg. fol. 305. ap G. Moebium de AEneo Serpente Exerc. 2. c. 2. sect 11. f Gages Survey of the West-Indics p. 117. g Herodot in Eâ—…ter p. 132. h See Pignor. de Mâ—…â Isiacâ p. 23. a Max. Tyr. dissert 38. p. 373. b Eras. Stel. ad Init. l. 1. de Antiq. Boruss samog c See Tertullde paescrip Her c. 47. p. 220. d Kircher in Oedip synt 18. p. 508 509. c. 1. e Wisd. 16. 5 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f See Porphyr de Abstin l. 4. p. 155. giving the like reason for the worship of the Egâ—…ptian Hawk 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. g Diod. Sic. l. 3. c. 10. p. 143. See Max. Tyr. diss 38. p. 373. h Voss. de Idol l. 9. c. 11. p. 234. i Pignor. de mensâ Isiaca p. 24. k Herod l. 2. p. 132. A. l Euseb. de praep l. 1. c. 10. p. 41. a Kirch Oed. Tom. 3 p. 160 199. b Macrob. l. 1. Sat. c. 20. p. 295. c See Cartari's Imag. p. 156. d Kirch Sphinx mystagoga p. 57. e Eus. de praep Evang. l. 1. c. 10. de Phaen. Theol. p. 41 42. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. f Elucid Pseudo Anselmi l. 1. c. 15. p 461. Disc. Quamdiu suerâ—…nt in Paradiso Mag. Septem al. Sex horas a Mr. Mede's Works p. 292. b Oëdip Egypt Synt. 3. c. 4. c Maimon More Nevochim par 2. c. 30. p. 280. d Id. ibid. par 1. c. 49. p. 73. e Isa 6. 2 6. a Tertull. de Praescr Haer. p. 220. C. Iftum suisse serpentem cui Eva ut filio Dei crediderat b Id. adv Val. c. 2. p. 251. Illa i. e. Columba a primordio Divinae Pacis Praeco I lle i. e. Serpens a primordio divine Imaginis Praedo c Maim More Nev. par 3. c. 45. p. 476. d S. Hier. in Isa. c. 6. Tom. 4. p. 29. e See Doctiss. D. Spenceri Diss. de ur Thum. p. 16 17 18. f Levit. 8. 8. a I Sam. 23. 11 12. The Lord said by the Ephod he will descend they will deliver ye up * See notwithstanding Dr. Spencer Dissert de ur Thum. p. 34 c. b Exod. 28. 1 2 3 4 5 6. c Numb 21. 8. Ar. Mont. vers Fac Tibi Saraph a Numb 21. 8. Lxx. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ar. Mont. super vexillum b Joh. 3. 14. c D. Jackson vol. 2 p. 916 917 c. * Marius ap Moëb de AEn Serp. Ex. 2 e. 2. Sect. 15. Atque ità lignum â—…oc Crucis gessisset figuram sicuti Christi 〈◊〉 Typum gessit hic Sâ—…rpens d Wisd. 16. 7. See Chald. Par. in Num. 21. 8. He shall recover if he direct his heart to the Word of the Lord. Targ. Hieros If he lift his face to his Father in the Heavens a Diod. Sic. l. 1. Bibl. c. 75. p. 66. b AEl var. Hist. l. 14. c. 34. c See LXX Scalig. de Emend Temp. l. 7. p. 654. * Consider Exod. 24. 7. a Grot. in Heb. 9. 4. p. 4268. in M. C. b Joseph 8. 2. c King 8. 9. d 2 Chron. 5. 10. e Exod. 16. 33. f Numb 17. 10. g Heb. 9. 3 4. h Judg. 18. 12. i 1 Sam. 28. 6. a Diod. Sic. l. 1. c. 87. p. 76. * Psal. 119. 142 151. * Psal. 19. 7. * Psal. 119. 96. b Ecclus. 33. 3. Sec. Vers. LXX c. 36. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Scal. de Emend Temp. p. 654. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 h. e. tanquam urim Thummim c Joh. 1. 17. d Deut. 33. 8. e Munster in Exod. 28. de urim Thummim Quales fuerint Res nemini mortalium constat a Josh. 5. 13 14 15. b See Hen. Valesii not in Euseb Eccl. Hist. l. 1. c. 2. p. 7. d Usher in Annal vet Testam p. 21. Ed. Paris a See Bisterfeld contr Crell l. 1. Sect. 2. c. 30. p. 298. b Psal. 17. 15. c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 d 1 Kings 8. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. e 1 King 8. 12 13. f 2 Chron. 6. 1. g 2 Chron. 5. 13. h Matt. 17. 5. i 1 King 9. 2. k 1 King 3. 5. l 1 King 19. 8 10 14 15. m S. Hieron Tom. 5. oper fol. 211. D. n Isai. 6. 1 2 3 4. o John 12. 41. p See Ezek. 10. 18. c. 11. 23. q Cippi Hibraici p. 24. r Pseudo Anselmi Elucidar c. 24. p. 476. a See Othon Lex Rabbin p. 476 477. b Dan. 7. 9 to 15. c S. Hier. in Dan. p. 587. Also Euseb. in l. 1. c. 2. Eccl. Hist. p. 10. a See
original Quaker but as of one who by believing that God is not distinct from the Saints and by worshipping that which he calls his Light or Christ within him rejecteth the Person of our Redeemer and committeth Idolatry with his own imagination must not they make a like judgment of such as Anna Trapnell who believed for a while that God dwelt essentially in his Saints must not they also judg of Lodowick Muggleton as of a mad-man or of an Impostor selling his Blessings at a very profitable rate or of an Idolater worshipping nothing for the one true God but a confined person of flesh and bones For he owneth no other Godhead than that which was conceived in the womb of the Virgin and circumscribed by it for a season and as he blasphemously continues to speak such as lost it self for a while both in honour and knowledg not knowing till he was glorified that himself was God the Father but that Elias was his God and his Father For that also is one of his Blasphemies That God not finding it safe to trust the Angels upon his descent from Heaven he committed his place to the safer trust of Moses and Elias A blasphemy worse if possible than that in Irenaeus of the extravagant Gnosticks who supposed the place of the Logos to have been on earth supplied by the Angel Gabriel But I forbear any further repetition of his abominable Fancies which will cause as great pain in the ears of pious Christians as the Justice of the Magistrates has lately done in his own I shut up this Chapter with the Prayer of that Learned French-man Isaac Casaubon Thou O Lord Jesu preserve this church of England and give a sound mind to those Nonconformists who deride the Rites and Ceremonies of it CHAP. XIV Of the means which God hath vouchsafed the World towards the cure of Idolatry and more particularly of his favour in exhibiting to that purpose the Shechinah of his Son PART 1. Of the Cure of Idolatry THE Notion of Idolatry being stated and also illustrated by the practice of it amongst Gentiles Jews Mahometans and Professors of Christianity I proceed to shew the means which God in pity of our weakness hath given us towards the Cure of this Evil. Against all manner of false Gods and ruling-Daemons he gave to all the world a Principle of Reason which teacheth that there is one Supreme Being absolute in Perfection and by consequence that he being every-where by Almighty Power Wisdom and Goodness is every-where to be adored and trusted in as the only God The same Principle of Reason teacheth them that God can neither be represented by an Image nor confined to it neither knoweth it much more of the inferiour Powers of the invisible World save that they are and consequently it hath no ground for addresses to them For the Jews they had an express command for the worship of one God without Image and many declarations of God as governing the world by his immediate Providence Also Christian Religion sheweth plainly that the gods of the Heathens were Doemons or evil spirits and that there is but one God and one Mediator to be by Christians adored It establisheth a Church or Corporation of Christians who agree in the worship of one God in Trinity In Baptism or the Sacrament of admittance into that Society it prescribeth a solemn Renuntiation of the Devil and his works of which a part were the Pomps or Processions in honour of Idols In the Sacrament which is a memorial of the Passion of Christ the Head and Founder of this Society it offereth to us the Cup of the Lord in opposition to the cup of Devils On the First-day of the Week set a-part for publick worship it maketh a Remembrance of the Creation of the world by the Son by whom the Father made all things and not by any Doemons as also of the Resurection of Christ from the dead by which he conquered the powers of darkness In the Form of Prayer which our Lord taught the Church it prayeth for deliverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from that evil one from Satan the destroyer as Rabbi Judah was wont to petition and in the Doxology it ascribeth not with the Heathen world which then lay in maligno illo under the Power of the God of this world in general Idolatry the Kingdom Power and Glory to the Devil but to that one true God who was the Father of Jesus Christ. But upon most of these Subjects I have already inlarged It remaineth therefore that I speak of the means which God hath specially vouchsafed in the case of Images a Subject not commonly discoursed of and hinted only in the former Papers This Disquisition I will begin with the notion of the Invisibility of God proceeding thence to the condescension he vouchsafes towards the very eye and fancy of man in the Shechinah of his Son There is in the very Creation a great part of invisible matter and motion Many things besides God Almighty are not immediately subject to mans sense though his Reason can reach them after a Philosophical consideration of their palpable effects God indeed could have made that matter which is now invisible to have been seen by man in all the minute and curious Textures of it For what should hinder that omnipotence which formed the light and created the soul from framing the Fibers of the Nerves in such delicate manner in this life what possibly he may do in the coelestial body as to give to man a kind of natural Microscope But for his own Divine substance which hath neither limits nor parts nor Physical motion which is the division of Parts nor figure which is inconsistent with immensity nor colour which is an effect of figure and motion upon the brain it is certain that in this body we cannot see it and there is great reason to doubt whether we can do so in any other which though it be coelestial is still but body For this sight then we are not to hope unless we mean it of the fuller knowledg of Gods will and interpret the antecedent by the consequent in that place of Scripture which saith No man hath seen God at any time the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father he hath reveal'd him St. John in that place denieth expresly actual sight as also he doth again in his first Epistle Tertullian in his refutation of Praxeas discourseth of the invisibility of God and the visibility of the Son of God illustrating his sense by the appearance of the Sun which is not seen in its very body but by its rays And he further noteth of St. Paul that he had to this purpose denied both the actual and potential sight of God No man said that Apostle hath seen God nor can see him No man whilest alive can see God as he is as he dwells in Heaven the Palace and
Throne of his most eminent Glory He cannot behold that now unless in such a glymps as St. Stephen enjoy'd which he shall see after the Resurrection when the vail of this gross body shall be removed for to the meek in heart it is promised that they shall see God To them shall be revealed that secret of faces which the Jews so often speak of and adjourn to the future life But for the substance of the Godhead it is for ever invisible the infinity of it which Tertullian seemeth to call the fulness of the Deity and denieth to have been seen by Moses can no more be taken in by mans eye than a whole circle of the Universe can be taken in at the same moment by the glass of a Telescope And for the Essence of it it seems indiseernible even to the very Angels For although Angels be spirits yet they possessing a space are of a far differing nature from the divine substance which filleth and pierceth all things The Ranters indeed professed to see in this life the very Essence of God but the true God was not every thing which they dream'd of Now man in this earthly state receiving knowledg chiefly from the senses he is exceeding covetous of sensible helps in his research after the most abstracted notions which inclination being vehement in the vulgar who are generally of very gross apprehension they pursue not the object of their minds be it the most Divine and Spiritual God himself with pure and unmixed reason but they at best blend it with some bodily phantasm and often dwell wholly upon such an Image and the external object of it insomuch that their imagination worshippeth that which should be entertained only as the help and instrument of their mind So that although the natural desire of a visible object be not the necessary cause yet it is the occasional root of all that proper Idolatry or Image-worship which divided it self into more kinds than there are Nations in the world PART 2. Of the Cure of Idolatry by the Shechinah of God GOD knowing well the frame and infirmity of man though himself did not erect it so as now it stands with much decay and many breaches was pleased to condescend to the weak condition of his nature and to vouchsafe him a kind of visible presence lest in the entire absence of it his fancy should have bow'd him down even to such creatures to which man himself being compared is a kind of subcaelestial Deity It pleased then the wise and merciful God to shew to the very eyes of man though not his spiritual and immense substance or any statue or picture of it properly so called yet his Shechinah or visible glory the symbol of his especial Presence This divine appearance I suppose to have been generally exhibited in a mighty lustre of flame or light set off with thick and as I may call them solemn Clouds Nothing is in nature so pure and pleasant and venerable as light especially in some reflexions or refractions of it which are highly agreeable to the temper of the brain By light God discovereth his other works and by it he hath pleased to shadow out himself and both secular and sacred Writers have thence taken plenty of metaphors dipping as it were their pens in light when they write of him who made Heaven and Earth “ Jamblichus in his book of the “ Egyptian Mysteries setteth out by light the Power the Simplicity the Penetration the Ubiquity of God R. Abin Levita supposeth it to be the garment of God it having been said by David that he cloatheth himself with it Maimonides supposeth the matter of the Heavens to have a risen from the extension of this vestment of Divine Light Eugubinus supposeth the Divine Light to be the Empyrean Heaven or habitation of God And this he thinketh to be the true Olympus of the Poets so called quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it shineth throughout with admirable glory S. Basil calleth the Light of God not sensible but intelligible and conceiteth that after that first uncreated the Angels are a second and created light Such sayings though they have in them a mixture of extravagance yet in the main they teach the same with the Scripture that God is light or that there is nothing in the Creation so fit an Emblem of him and so fit to be used in his appearance to the world Thus therefore is the Shechinah of God described in the Prophecy of Habakkuk God came from Teman and the holy One from Mount Paran Selah His glory covered the Heavens and the Earth was full of his praise And his brightness was as the light he had horns or beams coming or streaming out of his hand or side Whether the Shechinah of God ever appeared out of a vision in light organiz'd in mans shape I am not certain though such a Representation be apt to excite the veneration of mankind For even when Herod spake from his Throne of Majesty and the light was with singular advantage reflected from his Robe of silver the amused people were the more readily induced to celebrate him as a God on Earth But of the figure of the Shechinah I profess my self uncertain and often ruminate upon the Chaldee Oracle which adviseth us when we see the most holy Fire shining without a form or determinate shape then to hear the voice of it that is to esteem it then the true Oracle of God and not the imposture of a Daemon And such a fire Psellus the Scholiast on this Oracle affirmeth to have been seen by many men And I might shew somewhat like it in the Instances of Abraham and Moses But there has been seen a false Fire also and the Massalians whom Epiphanius calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bending down their head to their navel professed they saw a divine fire and received the ardor of a divine spirit being either deluded by the Devil or deceived into this conceit by some odd fantasms which arose from the nerves extended in an uncommon posture Now for the Shechinah or visible glory of God in this world for whether it appeared to any as in the other till the day-break of the Gospel will bear a dispute it was in all likelihood effected not by the Father whom no man hath seen but by the second Person in the Trinity the King and Light of the World who was afterwards Incarnate Both the Orthodox and the Haeretical have maintained the visibility of the Son and the invisibility of the Father though upon different reasons This did Origen this did the Arians Thus Bisterfeldius in that very Treatise in which he defendeth against Crellius the natural Divinity of the Son of God doth maintain that the Father is invisible to the very Angels and that Christ even in the Ages long before the Gospel was the visible Image of the Father Now the reason why true Catholicks affirm the Father to