Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
justice_n	judge_n	king_n	power_n	3,562	5	5.1146	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64364	Of idolatry a discourse, in which is endeavoured a declaration of, its distinction from superstition, its notion, cause, commencement, and progress, its practice charged on Gentiles, Jews, Mahometans, Gnosticks, Manichees Arians, Socinians, Romanists : as also, of the means which God hath vouchsafed towards the cure of it by the Shechinah of His Son / by Tho. Tenison ...	Tenison, Thomas, 1636-1715.	1678 (1678)	Wing T704; ESTC R8	332,600	446

say their meaning is by a figure only to desire them to procure their requests of God how dare any Christian trust his soul with that Church which teacheth that which must needs be Idolatry in all that understand not that figure They who believe not that these are his words are sure unacquainted with the writings of the Author and the great Integrity of the Reporter It is certain that among our selves in our more ordinary conversation such forms of speech are used towards men which in their extent are applicable to God We say that such Students had their Grace in the Senate-house or that there they have been created Doctors a phrase it seems too crude for the digestion of some nice stomacks When the weak are pursued by a savage Beast or by a man cruel as such a creature they run into the arms of kinder persons and desire them to save them and deliver them And because these Forms are used to men by those who own nothing but what is humane in them and because the matter of their request is apparently such too and in the power of man these equivocal phrases are by general acknowledgment determined to one sense But were civil Forms more liable to mistake a Church sure should exercise a more tender care in those of Religion and chuse such as might be apter to edifie than mislead the meanest in her Communion Now in such Forms of common speech as I have mentioned though there is not any proper worship of men yet there is more desired of them than that they would pray to God for us When Esau beseeched his Father to bless him he did not merely request him to pray for a blessing but to pronounce over him that sentence of Benediction which he as the Father of that Family had commission from God to pronounce with authority and to effect And when an importunate widow does by her repeated crys for vengeance or publick justice for deliverance and safeguard render the very ears of an unjust Judg attentive she intreats more of him than that he would speak for her to the King She supposeth him in commission and indued with power to help her though she knows him in this very point of his assistance to be subordinate to his Prince There is more in the Forms of the Roman Church than the bare indiscretion of them And though the incommunicable honour of God be not by their measure the rule of Faith devolved on the creature for a Papist so interpreting those Forms should by that Church be condemned as an Heretick and a violater of the fundamental Article of one God in Trinity yet still to me it seemeth that the honour which God hath not actually communicated is by them misplaced on Angels at least on Saints I do not in saying this ground my perswasion barely on the common Argument of that Ubiquity which many conclude to be ascribed to Saints and Angels in the Invocation of them The foundation of that Argument is laid on a matter which is disputed For they who contend that the Angels hear or know what is done on Earth do expresly deny Ubiquity to them Though some private Romanists have mentioned appearances of the person of the Virgin in distant places at the same time and others have represented her or some other Saint as dwelling in a particular statue And to such it is proper to put the question of Arnobius Let us suppose said he that there are ten thousand Statues of Vulcan in all the world can that one Deity be in so many thousand habitations at one time But others infer this knowledg in the Saints and Angels partly from the perfection of their spiritual nature by which saith Dr. Holden they know all the natures motions and actions of Corporeal things partly from their personal presence as Guardians of men and as Gods Retinue in Religious Assemblies and partly from the Revelation of God and from what they call the Glass of the Trinity a mirrour of which I profess my self very ignorant and which my curiosity desires not to look into and which the inventers might in reverence have spared rather than to have exposed the essence of God as a substance reflecting all visible Ideas They gather this also in part from the Intelligence given by some Angels unto the rest who are of the same community This they say plausibly concerning Angels for of Saints they have much less ground thus to speak Only this may be allowed them concerning both that being spirits we know not whether such distance as that of this world does hinder communication For if it be not done by motion they may possibly as well understand at the distance of an hundred miles as at that of a furlong This only I observe by the way as an Objection That the Ancients who are said to Platonize held neither Angels nor Souls departed to be uncloathed Spirits but united to Bodies of AEther or AEr Wherefore it seemeth that their knowledg of external material objects must depend on Physical motion which by distance is scattered or diverted from the streightness of its lines and consequently from the exact truth of its intelligence It is most probable that Angels are often absent from grown men especially whilst they remain in ordinary circumstances And the Scripture speaks of the Angels as being on this or the other occasion sent to men and then removed from them This is manifest in the known cases of Abraham Daniel S. Peter S. John and the blessed Virgin her self More probable still it is that the same Angel hath not intelligence not only of all the affairs of the world but of all the prayers that are addressed to him For many such Addresses being very improper and sometimes immoral we must not think that God or other good Angels are concerned in telling him the news of them unless it be in order to punishment And for the Saints whom God hath not that we know of made ministring spirits who are not before the Resurrection and final Judgment in complete glory of whose appearing after death the Scripture hath given us in the Old Testament but one instance and that a very doubtful one it not being certain whether it was the Apparition of Samuel or of the Devil or the Imposture of the Witch of Endor speaking inwardly And in the New but that one as I remember of Moses and Elias when Christ was transfigured It is not so much as by probable arguments yet evinced that they know our particular estate though it is evident that they wish well to the world of mankind and especially to the body of the Christian Church For sure they lose not their affection in Heaven where whilst some other Graces cease Charity is eternal and in perfection Wherefore though the praying to Saints and Angels may not necessarily infer their Ubiquity and for that reason be called Idolatrous yet if they hear us not it may

up their acknowledgments to the Queen of Heaven When God healeth them they sacrifice to AEsculapius as to him that removed their distemper from them This is a very great Iniquity and the common grounds or occasions of it are highly unworthy of the true God For most of them who believe not his immediate Providence do measure his actions by those of worldly Potentates They conceive him out of state to do little by his own person or out of ease and softness to commit the management of his affairs to others both by temporary command and by standing Commission As if the greatest variety of business could distract or weary him who is Infinite in Knowledg and Greatness and Power Thus St. Cyril judged of them who substituted lesser Deities under him that was supreme He thought that they impeached God of Arrogance or floth or want of Goodness which envieth none the good it can do And Isaiah tacitly upbraideth those who distrusted his Providence of the like vile opinion concerning him whilst he saith of the Creator that He fainteth not neither is weary Secondly The Gentiles were Idolaters through the worship they gave to such Demons as were evil spirits It is true that Plato owned no inferior Deities but such as were by him esteemed good He maintaineth this in his Tenth Book of Laws and St. Austin confesseth it to be his judgment He saith in his Phaedo That none were to be registred among the gods but such who had studied Philosophy and departed pure out of this life When he speaketh of Demons who afflict men he is to be interpreted rather of good Spirits executing Justice than of evil Angels venting their malice But whatsoever his opinion was it is most evident that the generality of the Heathens worshipped such Demons as were morally malignant And such Porphyry esteemed those Genii who had bloody Sacrifices offered to them The Gentiles sacrificed to Devils to the Powers of the Kingdom of Darkness which were not only not God but enemies and professed Rebels against him They were in Porphyry's account Terrestrial Demons such who had gross Vehicles and consequently were of the meaner and viler sort of their Genii and as they love to speak sunk deepest into matter Psellus and Porphyry represent them as united to a body of so gross contexture that they could smell the Odors of the Sacrifices and be fat with the steam of human blood Lucian in his Book de Sacrificiis abounds with pleasant or rather to them who pity the decays of human nature with very sad stories of the Revels of Demons Whether they were Terrestrial ones or not I here forbear to dispute but I conclude concerning them that they were evil Their nature shews it self by the services which they accepted by the persons whom they have favoured and by the appearances and wonders with which they sometimes encouraged them The Rites with which they were worshipped were bloody rude unclean such as an honest man would be ashamed to observe Porphyry though a Gentile hath recorded many of the bloody Sacrifices offered by the Rhodians Phoenicians and Graecians and he telleth of a man in his time sacrificed in Rome at the Feast of Jupiter Latialis The like barbarity was commonly used in the worship of Moloch and Bellona And he must have such a measure of Assurance as will suffer him no more to blush than his Ink who writes down all the Obscenities used in her worship whom they usually called the Mother of the Gods Origen telleth Celsus concerning the Christians That they had learned to judg of all the Gods of the Heathen as of Devils by their greediness of the blood of their Sacrifices and by their presence amidst the Nidors of them by which they deceived those who made not God their refuge And in another place he proveth this truth out of their own Histories and he instanceth particularly in their Deity Hercules and he objecteth against him his immoral love and that vile effeminacy which their own Authors record I will not tell over again their foolish stories so very often told already but offer to the Reader a Relation of fresher date out of Idolatrous America In Mexico saith an Author who had sojourned in that City the Heathens had dark houses full of Idols great and small and wrought of sundry Metals these were all bathed and washed with blood the blood of men the walls of the houses were an inch thick with blood and the floor a foot The Priests went daily into those Oratories and suffered none other but great Personages to enter with them And when any of such condition went in they were bound to offer some man as a Sacrifice that the Priests might wash their hands and sprinkle the house with the blood of the Victim With such Sacrifices no good Angel could be pleased wherefore the worship of such being an honour done not to God or his Ministers but to the Devil and his Angels who live in perfect defiance of true Religion is an Idolatry so detestable that I have not at hand a name of sufficient infamy to bestow upon it PART 8. Of their Idolatry in worshipping the Images of Demons THirdly The Gentiles were Idolaters in worshipping the Statues or Images of Demons or Heroe's either as those Powers were reputed the Deputies of God or as they were really evil spirits The Religious Honour given to the Prototype was Idolatrous and therefore the Honour done to the Image respecting the Prototype was such also So he that bows towards the Chair of an Usurper does give away the honour of the true Soveraign because the external sign of his submission is ultimately referred to the Usurper himself The Honour which the Gentiles did to their Statues redounded generally to their Demons for their Theology did not set up such Images whatsoever vulgar fancy or practice did as final objects of worship or Gods in themselves It set them up as places of Divine Residence wherein the Genii were thought to dwell or to afford their especial presence in Oracles and other Supernatural aids as the true God was said to dwell amidst the Cherubims The Egyptians as Ruffinus storieth entertained this superstitious perswasion amongst a multitude of others That if any man had laid violent hands on the Statue of Serapis the Heavens and the Earth would have been mixed together in a new Chaos Olympius the Sophist exhorteth the Gentiles still to adhere to the Religion of their Gods notwithstanding the Christians defaced their Statues And he gave them this as the reason of his counsel Because said he though the Images be corruptible things yet in them did dwell Virtues or Demons which from the ruins of their Statues took their flight to Heaven This Opinion Arnobius and Lactantius acknowledg to have been common among the Gentiles and we may still read it in the writings of the wiser shall I say

some Goropius Becanus would confidently say that the truth shineth so fairly through the Fable that we may discern in it Moses Bacchus Osiris Apis to be one man under four several names Other Particulars might still be added in this Argument as that some Heathens imagined Bacchus to have been worshipped in the Temple of the Jews under the Emblem of the Vine and that Osiris as well as Harpocrates is described with his finger upon his mouth representing as some would guess the slow speech of Moses But enough I think has been said already to render it probable that Moses was Apis the thing which by such proofs and reasons as Philology admitteth in other cases was to be evinced PART 7. Why Moses might be Idolized among the Egyptians I Have been long already in this disquisition but I am not yet at the end of it For the curious may further offer to me with pertinence these following Questions First How Moses came to obtain such Divine Veneration among the Egyptians on whom he drew very grievous plagues and from whom he removed a great Army of their necessary servants Secondly Why Moses was honoured by an Ox Thirdly Whence that Symbol received the name of Apis Fourthly At what time this Idolatrous Worship of the Symbol of Moses commenced in Egypt Fifthly When and for what reason it was divided into the Worship of Apis and Mnevis I shall return something in answer to each Query but I do not sooth up my self with the vain hope of giving such an answer as shall fully satisfie others or so much as my self This caution would have been the less necessary if all the other Queries had been as easie to be resolved as the first concerning the Worship given in Egypt to the Symbol of Moses It is not my opinion alone that he was there honoured after death with Religious Veneration Saint Cyril of Alexandria said the same many ages ago And it was not his bare opinion but he proved it by the Authority of Diodorus Siculus The place of St. Cyril which I here refer to is this Moses was well known to the Greek Historians For Polemon in his first Book of Grecian History maketh mention of him So do Ptolemaeus Mendesius Hellanicus Pholochorus and Castor and many others Diodorus who inquired very curiously into the affairs of Egypt says he heard of him from their Wisemen and of him he thus writeth After the ancient way of living in Egypt that which they talk of under their Deities and Heroes the people as they report were first brought to live by written Laws by a man of a very great mind and of a most memorable new way of life among the Jews one Moses who was called a God For as St. Cyril proceedeth to note on this place of Diodorus when they saw Moses most accomplished with every virtue they called him a God and as I think of some of the Egyptians they gave him divine honour being ignorant that the supreme God had said thus to him Behold I have given thee as a God to Pharaoh Here we have it asserted that Moses was highly honoured in Egypt And there were reasons enough for the honouring of him and they might prove the occasions of making him an Idol For Idolatry is veneration overmuch strained Moses was born and educated in Egypt he was reputed the Son of Pharaoh's daughter he was learned in all the Learning of the Egyptians he shined in that Court as the Moon amongst the little and confused Lights of the Galaxie He was the Instrument of God in doing mighty wonders mighty beyond the power of Natural Artificial or Diabolical Magick And these wonders God wrought by him in the eye of the African World The holy Scripture reporteth of him that He did marvellous things in the fields of Zoan or Tanis the Metropolis of the lower Egypt Also that that he was very great in the land of Egypt in the sight of Pharaohs servants and in the sight of the people The Son of Syrach calleth him The beloved of God and man and sheweth the favour of God towards him in making him glorious in the sight of Kings And though he fled out of Egypt he was even then a benefactor removing a people whom the Egyptians dismissed with gifts and causing their Plagues when himself disappeared to vanish away And though he had no way proved a Benefactor his very power of sending Plagues had been enough to deifie him with that people who scarce distinguish'd as we do betwixt good and bad Angels but looked on them that wrought temporal evil as Ministers of Justice and not as envious and malicious spirits Power to do hurt was reverenced by them and they worshipped Typhon as well as Osiris At the Red-sea he astonished Egypt with a Miracle too great and difficult for the united power of all their gods who could neither oppose it nor do any thing equal to it And though hereby he conveighed Israel out of Egypt yet that deliverance of them could not but represent him to all that heard the fame of it as a kind and compassionate man who saved his own Nation from the tyranny of a Prince whose rage swelled more than that of the waves in which he perished Pharaoh certainly oppressed his own people as well as the Israelites For a proud and cruel Prince is like a Wolf who has no kindness for any beast though he be fiercest towards the sheep And the fall of a Tyrant makes an agreeable sound in the ears of all the slaves which he hath bored whatsoever the hand be by which he is humbled Moses still grew in Eminence by his conversation with God by his conduct by his delivery of the Law by the success of his arms which Philo esteemeth very extraordinary whilst he warred without money the nerve of War and last of all by the power of his Miracles He was so eminent a person that R. Josua the Son of Sohib hath exalted him not only above the Patriarchs but even above all Creatures in Heaven and Earth placing the very Angels at the feet of this Prophet Artapanus likewise relateth concerning him that he was in singular favour with the people and obtained the name of Hermes and honour equal to their Deities From the same authority of Artapanus Eusebius reporteth that in memory of the Rod of Moses a Rod was preserved with veneration in every Egyptian Temple and particularly in the Temple of Isis. Egypt then never enjoying so great a person as Moses if I except the Messiah carried thither in the days of his Infancy and there obscured It is not exceeding strange that a Nation so apt to multiply her gods should Canonize him Neither is it on the other hand to be admired that in latter Ages their Reverence should be abated In the days of Diodorus Siculus the Egyptians reviled Moses so far were they from adoring him as a god The cause

Analogy I mean such Objects as bear some Metaphorical proportion to some excellencies of God though they be not the proper Images Statues or Pictures of them Such an Image was that of Jupiters remembred by Vignola in his Discourse of the five Orders in Building He mentioneth there a Capital in which were the Images of four Eagles instead of Stalks and instead of Fruits and Flowers four Jupiters faces with Thunderbolts under them A Representation this may be judged of the power piercing eye quick execution of will in their own Jove in the four Quarters of the World Such an Analogical Image of the true God do some Papists esteem the Statue or Picture of an aged man whose years and experience are apt to signifie the Eternity and Wisdom of God and that of a Dove to signifie his purity and simplicity in a manner suitable to our conception In both these Instances I think they are mistaken Daniel as shall be shewed in the last Chapter did not mean the Godhead or the Father by the Ancient of Days Neither ought his transient Vision which had something humane mixt with it be made a standing-pattern in Religion Such Visions being impressed on the fancy could not be there represented without some earthly Imagery which the enlightned reason of the Prophet could separate from the Diviner part which is the thing principally intended Now to bring the whole scene with its glory and its imperfection before the eyes of the people in Gods standing-worship is to confound in their Imaginations things sacred and secular and to adulterate their Devotion Then for the Image of a Dove the Text in the Gospels proveth no more than that the Spirit imitated the gentle hovering of that Bird And the learned think it did so in the appearance of a bright cloud hovering with gentle motion over the waters and the Person of our Lord baptized in them It is plain by the words of St. Austine that he thought it Idolatrous to contemplate God in our mind according to the extent of those expressions which we use in speaking of him And the like certainly he judged of contemplating God according to Dreams and Visions which are partly humane and partly divine Thus then that great Light of Africa discourseth We believe that Christ sitteth at the right hand of the Father Yet thence are we not to think that the Father is circumscribed with humane form so as to occur to our mind contemplating of him as one that has a right and a left hand or as one sitting with bended knees left we fall into that sacriledg for which the Apostle condemneth those who turned the glory of the Incorruptible God into the similitude of corruptible man Such a Statue is not without impiety erected to God in a Christian Temple much more in the heart where the Temple of God is truly situate if it be purged from earthly concupiscence and error St. Austin then as Spalatensis reflecteth on these words would have advised that the Visions of Daniel and other of that nature produced by Bellarmine should be contemplated with the mind and not be pictured especially in Churches that they should be resolved into their true signification and not impressed upon the brain lest through the Picture of an Old man or Dove the defects of Age wings and bill possess the imagination There is danger in using any Images of Animals as Statues or Pictures of God for they will be made not Images only of Analogy but of representation by the ignorant whilst shape and life are personally set forth But there is not so great danger in the Images of things without life especially if they be flat Pictures not Protuberant Statues nor Pictures which the Artist hath expressed with roundness The worse and the more flat the work is the less danger there is of its abuse Titian hath painted the Virgin and the Child Jesus so very roundly that as Sir Henry Wotton a very good judg both of the pictures and dispositions of men saith of it a man knows not whether to call it a piece of Sculpture of Picture In some kinds of Pictures if there be found analogy and that analogy be discreetly expressed as by the name Jehovah or according to the Jewish modesty Adonai incircled with clouds and rays of glorious Light I know no sin in the making of it or contemplating in it in a Metaphorical way some of the Perfections of the infinite God in such manner expressed A devout man would not put a Paper with such an impression to vile uses He would think it fitter for his Closet than for his Chamber of Grimaces though he would not think it the representation of God or give it Divine honour by inward estimation or outward signs By Images of memory I mean such Objects as contain in them no analogy to the Divine Perfections nor any pretended representation of them but yet are apt to put us in mind of God being erected as Pillars or Monuments in places where he has done some great and excellent work Such was the Pillar of Jacob and in the making of such there is no unlawfulness nor in exhibiting before them such signs of honour as are proper to be shewed before a monument of Divine Wisdom Power or Goodness unless in times and places where other such Statues are erected to false gods and the erection and honour of them is by common construction the mark of their Worshippers Such Images of memory are often exhibited by God himself Such was the pillar of Salt into which the body of Lots Wife was converted a pillar of Remembrance of Gods justice and of admonition to them who look back towards the pollutions which they have escaped Such was the adust earth which Solinus speaks of in those places where the inhabitants of Sodom were destroyed by Sulphureous flames from Heaven though it was no pillar yet was it a monument of Divine power and severity towards their unnatural lusts And he that carves engraves or paints these holy Histories may be an useful Artist By Images of Representation I mean Statues or Pictures made by art with intent to exhibit the likeness of the person The making and worshipping such Images of him God himself condemneth appealing to the world whether there be any thing in nature to which he can be resembled Such a Representation is undue though made according to the best pattern in the visible world and much more if it be made in viler and as the Heathen were wont to do in the Images of Priapus and Attis in immoral figures And the Worshipper who gives to it veneration as to an Image of God does highly dishonour him by changing his essential glory into such similitudes And it is not so ignominious for Caesar to be painted in the similitude of an Ass or of the worst Monster in the Sculptures of Licetus as for God to be represented in the pretended likeness of his Deity by