obliged the world so that all due homage and divine reverence to the Person of Christ must be laid aside and this bold Impostor silence the constant faith of Christians by his high pretensions of being the Head and Father of such a Family whose Inscription must be Love who with this Family of his is God and Christ and Cherubims and Seraphims Angels and Arch-Angels already busie in their office of judging the quick and the dead and gathering the elect from all the corners of the Earth 5. But in my apprehension at the very first sight he shews himself very injudicious if not malicious in making a difference betwixt the true Houshold of Faith and Family of Love besides his gross and impudent injustice in usurping that badge of honour to himself that was won by another in a field of bloud For as I was going to say what has this H. N. done to merit this title more then in scribling many fanatical Rhapsodies of unsound language abusively borrowed from the sacred Scriptures and in perverting the sense and supplanting the end by his wicked elusions and vain Allegorical evasions and so under pretense of beginning an higher dispensation of Righteousnes and Religion in the world then ever was yet treacherously introducing in stead of true Religion nothing but Sadducisme Epicurisme and Atheisme This voluminous Enthusiasme of his together with the gracing of the Family with the splendour of his crimson habiliments is all I find that can pretend to any contestation or competition with the true Master of Divine Love or to any obligation of his Followers 6. I must confess our Saviour compiled no Books it being a piece of Pedantry below so noble and Divine a person But that short Sentence which he writ with his own most precious bloud As I have loved you so love you one another is worth millions of Volumes though written with the truest and sincerest Eloquence that ever fell from the pen of an Oratour Nor did he wear any gay Clothes but when by force the abusive souldiers put a scarlet robe upon him indespight and mockery Nor was he resplendent in any colours but what was the die of his own bloud in his solemn and dreadful Passion when he was so cruelly scourged when out of agonie of mind he sweat drops of bloud when he was nailed to the Cross and the lance let bloud and water out of his side All which ineffable and unsupportable torments this innocent Lamb of God suffered for no demerit of his for what thank is it to suffer for a factious Impostor or open evil doer but out of mere compassion and hearty love to mankind that he might by this bitter Passion of his and the glorious consequences of it his Resurrection and Ascension gain us to God And now let all men judge if there can be possibly any Authour or pretended Instructer of the World in that holy and divine Love indeed comparable to the Lord Iesus who has given this unparallel'd demonstration of his love unto us CHAP. III. 1. The occasion of the Familists usurpation of the Title of Love 2. Earnest precepts out of the Apostles to follow Love and what kind of Love that is 3. That we cannot love God unless we love our neighbour also 4. An Exposition of the 5 and 6 verses of the 1 chapter of the 2 Epist. of S. Peter 5. Saint Paul's rapturous commendation of Charity 6. His accurate description thereof 7. That Love is the highest participation of the Divinity and that whereby we become the Sons of God And how injurious these Fanaticks are that rob the Church of Christ of this title to appropriate it to themselves 1. HEarken therefore to me yet that would follow after righteousness ye that seek the Lord Look unto the rock whence you were hewen and to the hole of the pit from whence you were digged Look upon him whom ye have pierced and whose bloud is the seed of the Church whose Spouse was taken out of his side as Eve out of the side of Adam Acknowledge your original and recount with your selves the price of your Redemption even the inestimable bloud of that immaculate Lamb Christ Jesus The sense whereof is the strongest cement imaginable to unite us to our Saviour and one unto another But the Church having been given up so long a time to bitter factions and persecutions to warre and bloudshed and all manner of enmity and hostility one against another it is no wonder if a stranger has invaded that Title which she may justly be thought to have either refused or forfeited For my own part I know not how to apologize for either the fond opinions or foul miscarriages of the Wilderness of Christendome But sure I am That the Banner over the true Spouse of Christ is Love That Love is the badge and cognoscence of all his faithful members by which they are known to be His living members indeed That Love and Peace is the last Legacy which was left to the disciples by their dying Lord and Master an inheritance entailed upon all the true sons of God for ever That Love is the fulfilling of the Law and has filled almost every page of the Gospel and all the Writings of the Apostles and when they speak of Faith it is none other Faith then that which worketh by Love 2. Out of the many repetitions and inculcations of this holy and heavenly Vertue I was a gleaning out some to present you withall for an evidence how serious the Gospel of Christ is and how sufficient in the urging of his indispensable duty We go on therefore and adde to what we have already cited these following places Galat. 5.6 For in Iesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but Faith which worketh by Love And if Circumcision be nothing without Faith working by Love what can Baptizing or Rebaptizing or any external ceremony be without this true Faith whose life and spirit is Love which the Apostle directs us to And after v. 13 14. For brethren ye have been called unto liberty only use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh but by love serve one another For all the Law is fulfilled in one word even in this Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self Where this Law of Love is so carefully described that the abuse of this Title to Lust and Libertinisme is plainly excluded against such as talk so much of Love and are but Libertines at the bottom Which caution also is very soberly and prudently put in by S. Iohn Ep. 1. chap. 5. v. 2. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his Commandements Which is a plain demonstration that that Love which Saint Iohn exhorts to so copiously in his Epistle is a Love purely divine and such as no man can be assured he doth practise unlesse he keep all the Commandements of God For even a carnall man may love the Children of
fruit of Godliness properly so called Nor can we applie our hearts seriously and sincerely to this kind of Godliness long but we shall find answers to our praiers and breathings after God beyond both our own expectation and the belief of others and therefore enjoying the victory through the Divine grace that is sufficient for us and getting so glorious a triumph over our lusts we finding our Souls transported with an high sense of thankfulness to our Redeemer and Benefactour who wants nothing of our retributions himself the stream of our affections is naturally driven downwards to his Church to the Saints that dwell upon earth and those that excell in vertue or at least pretend unfeigned endeavours after it And this is properly brotherly Kindness which carries our affections to those that profess the same Religion with our selves Which brotherly Kindness arises not only out of this consideration of thankfulness toward God but out of the very temper and condition of the Soul thus purified according to what S. Peter intimates that having purified our Souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit the end and result thereof is the loving our brethren Or else what serves this Purification for Shall Envy shall Hatred shall Lust shall Ambition shall Luxury shall those enormous desires and affections be cast out of the Soul by Sanctity and Purity that she may be but a transparent piece of ice or a spotless fleece of snow Shall she become so pure so pellucid so crystalline so devoid of all stains and tinctures of all soil and duller colours that nothing but still shadows and Night may possess that inward diaphanous Purity Then would she be no better then the nocturnall Air no happier then a statue of Alabaster All would be but a more cleanly sepulchre of a dead starved Soul But there is no fear of so poor an event upon so great preparations For Love and Desire are so essentiall to the Soul that she cannot put them off but change them She is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Psellus calls her an immaterial and incorporeal fire an unextinguishable activity and will catch at some Object or other And therefore if she has ceased to love the world and the Lusts of her own body she will certainly love the body of Christ the Church and study how to help them and advantage them Nor can she stop here but this pure and quick flame mounts upwards and is reflected again downwards and vibrates every way reaching at all Objects in Heaven and in Earth as natural fire enters all combustible matter And therefore in her pure and ardent speculations of the Godhead and his unlimited Goodness and also her observations of the capacity of the whole Creation of receiving good both from him and one another she overflowes those narrow bounds of brotherly Love and spreads out into that ineffably-ample and transcendently-divine grace and vertue universal Charity which is the highest accomplishment the Soul of man is capable of either in this life or that which is to come and thus at last she becomes perfect as her Father which is in Heaven is perfect 5. This is that most excellent way which S. Paul speaks so transportedly and triumphantly of 1 Cor. ch 13. Where having first numbred out the manifold Gifts that God bestowed upon his Church as Preaching Prophesying working of miracles gifts of healing and diversity of tongues he immediately breaks out in the rapturous commendations of Charity above all Though I speak with the tongues of men and of Angels and have not Charity I am become as a sounding brass and a tinckling cymball And though I have the gift of Prophecie and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have no Charity I am nothing And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not Charity it profiteth me nothing And after he has raised our expectation and estimation of this Heavenly grace with these high words of his he does not as the vain Enthusiast does heat our phancies and leave our judgment in the dark but he does very distinctly and copiously describe to us the nature of this Divine vertue so that we may plainly know where to be and what to seek after and how to be satisfied whether we have attained to it or no. 6. Charity suffereth long and is kinde Charity envies not Charity vaunteth not it self is not puffed up doth not behave her self unseemly seeketh not her own is not easily provoked thinketh no evill complies not with iniquity but rejoiceth with the truth Beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things This is a very full and lively description of Love and Charity and the character of the sweetest and Heavenliest perfection that is communicable to the nature of man and so warmly poured out from the sincere heart of this rich possessour of it the holy Apostle that it is to me more moving then all the canting language of the highest fanatical Pretenders to the profession of this Mystery 7. This is the highest participation of Divinity that humane nature is capable of on this side that Mysterious conjunction of the Humanity of Christ with the Godhead and therefore this is that whereby we become the Sons of God as S. Iohn has evidently declared in his 1. Epistle general ch 4. Beloved let us love one another for Love is of God and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is Love And vers 10. Herein is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins Beloved if God so loved us we ought also to love one another No man hath seen God at any time If we love one another God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us And again vers 16. God is Love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him Several other Testimonies there are of the high estimate the true Church of Christ has of this holy Vertue of Love but what I have already cited is sufficient to shew how urgent the Precepts of the Gospel are for this excellent branch of the Divine life which we call Charity as also how inexcusably injurious impious and blasphemous to Christ those fanatical Impostors are that revolt from the Church superannuate Christ's offices and antiquate the Christian Religion under a pretence of an higher dispensation and Revelation upon which they have set the Title or Superscription of Love adorning themselves with the Churches colours that by this evil stratagem they may the more safely fall upon her and destroy her at least seduce the most simple and many times the best-meaning members of the Church from their true Head Christ Jesus who ransom'd them with his own most precious bloud Whose Soveraignty over
some time or other should send into the world such a Prince and Redeemer of his People out of the Captivity of the Devil as we have described who having declared the Promises of Eternal life to his faithful Followers and so raised himself a party against the Powers of the Dark Kingdome should exercise the Creation with this noble and high-concerning Conflict and after a due time of trial of the Faith Resolution Constancy Love and Obedience of his Adherents return visibly again at last according to promise giving Victory Peace and a Blessed Immortality to his own and pouring down Wrath and Vengeance and utter Destruction upon his implacable and contemptuous Enemies This Providential Contrivance I say looking upon it in the Idea is so Congruous and Rational that there is no wise and vertuous man but will easily assent that it will some time or other be set afoot in the World But I shall now endeavour to make good That it is already on foot and that this Period of Providence is begun in the Appearance of Iesus Christ the Son of God and of the blessed Virgin that is That our Christian Religion as it relates to the Person of Christ according as I have propounded it and displaied it in the main Branches thereof is not a mere Idea but a real and actual Truth Which I think will be sufficiently demonstrated if I prove That the expected Messias is come and That the Writings of the New Testament are true For nothing then can defeat our design unlesse a man will be so wild as to pervert the Literal sense of those Writings and turn every thing miraculous there into an Allegory CHAP. XII 1. That the chief Authour of this Mystical Madness that nulls the true and literal sense of Scripture is H. Nicolas whose Doctrine therefore and Person is more exactly to be enquired into 2. His bitter Reviling and high Scorn and Contempt of all Ministers of the Gospel of Christ that teach according to the Letter with the ill Consequences thereof 3. The Reason of his Vilification of them and his Injunction to his Followers not to consult with any Teachers but the Elders of his Family no not with the Dictates of their own Consciences but wholy to give themselves up to the leading of those Elders The irrecoverable Apostasie of simple Souls from their Saviour by this wicked Stratagem 4. His high Magnifications of himself and his Service of the Love before the Dispensation of Moses John the Baptist or Christ himself 5. That his Service of the Love is a Third Dispensation namely of the Spirit and that which surpasses that of Christ with other Encomiums of his doctrine as That in it is the sounding of the last Trump the Descent of the new Jerusalem from Heaven the Resurrection of the dead the glorious coming of Christ to Iudgment and the everlasting Condemnation of the wicked in Hell-Fire 6. That H. Nicolas for his time and after him the Eldest of the Family of the Love in succession are Christ himself descended from Heaven to judge the World as also the true High Priest for ever in the most Holy 1. THere being therefore this only obstacle to our prosperous procedure in this Affair and the spreading of this mystical Madness being most of all from the esteem and Authority of that highly-adored Enthusiast H. Nicolas of Amsterdam I find my self necessitated to make here some stop to discover his enormous doctrines and the groundlesness of them as well to undeceive his seduced Admirers as to justifie my own publick Dislike of him that I may not seem to have been in the least measure either rash or injurious And that we may the better proceed therein I shall first present him to you in all his ruffe and glory adorned with the testimonies of his own style such as he would appear to the World to be and then examine if there be any ground of believing him to be such and lastly offer reasons whereby I shall clearly demonstrate that he is not what he pretends to be 2. And that his Lustre may seem as big as he desires you shall first hear what pittifull things all are that are not found of his Sect if you will believe his censure of them namely That there is no Knowledge of Christ nor of the Scripture but in his Family That without his God-service of the Love all the God-services Wisdome and Doctrine out of the Scripture let them be taught by those that are never so well learned therein is but witchery and blindness And that as many as misbelieve and oppose his Service of the Love are earthly and devilishly minded And that there is no Remission of sins out of his Communialty That it is assuredly all false and lies seducing and deceitfull what the ungodded or unilluminated men out of the Imagination or riches of their Knowledge and out of the Learnedness of the Scriptures bring forth institute preach and teach That all Teachers and Learners out of his Communialty are a false Christianity and the Devil's Synagogue or School yea a Nest of Devils and all wicked Spirits And of their Knowledge compendiously and at once he pronounces It is a false Being the Devil the Antichrist the wicked Spirit the Kingdome of Hell and the Majesty of the Devil No better then this is the most sober and carefull reasoning out of the Holy Scriptures or the simple apprehension of the History of Christ and all his Promises be they by never so sincere and devout Souls if they be not of his blessed Family of the Love who have the luck to be the only-illuminated in the World Of this you may read more fully in his first Exhortation Chap. 15. and 16. Which Ugly and uncharitable Character he gives of all Christians besides his own Family who yet are indeed as you shall hear anon no Christians at all must needs imbitter the Spirits of his professed Followers and envenome them beyond all measure against the Ministry of the Gospel according to the Letter thereof Which yet clearly enough sets out to us the History of Christ his Promises and Precepts neither is there any Mystical meaning that is true that is not literally set down in the Text. So that all their boast is but of Allusions and Phrases nor can they produce any thing that is not already plainly before our eyes in the Letter it self And therefore if they have any choice Secret to themselves it is the Mystery of Infidelity and Unbelief a bold and groundless Presumption that the History is not true 3. Which Presumption makes them so peremptorily conclude all the Scripture-learned under Ignorance none of them hither to having been so nasute as to smell out the least falsity in the oldness of the Letter And therefore that their Novices may not be entangled nor distracted through the simple Belief or plain Doctrine of ordinary Christians he exhorts them not to hearken to nor
it most consists of namely Humility Charity and Purity and therefore it will not be unseasonable to shew how expresly and particularly urgent the Gospel is for the promoting these three Graces 3. Our Saviour Christ Matth. 11. makes a solemn invitation to the first of these Vertues propounding himself an Example Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your souls And Matth. 5. v. 5. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth It is a promise from the same mouth The meaning of both which places is That Humility and Meekness beget a great deal of Peace and Tranquillity and enjoyment of a mans self even in this life whenas Pride exposes a man to perpetual Discontent and Impatiency Besides that the Proud man is as it were the Butt that the Almighty shoots his Arrows against to gall wound and vex the very hackstock of Divine vengeance and the sport and pastime of Misfortune God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble But my purpose is not to interpret such easie places as I alledge but merely to bring them into the Readers view And there are many more yet that testifie of the Excellency of this Grace of Humility For our Saviour again Matth. 11. entitles those Vertues especially to the knowledge of the Mystery of the kingdome of God I thank thee O Father Lord of Heaven and Earth because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes Even so Father for so it seemeth good in thy sight And Matth. 18. Christ being asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven called a little childe unto him and set him in the midst of them and said Verily I say unto you Except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of Heaven Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little childe the same is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven And Chap. 20.25 Ye know that the Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and they that are great exercise authority upon them But it shall not be so among you but whosoever will be great among you let him be your Minister and whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant Even as the Son of man came not to be ministred unto but to minister and to give his life a ransome for many In which passage is insinuated that useless and pompous honour is to have no place in the Church of Christ but that if any mans office be more honourable then another it must be also more serviceable especially in matters appertaining to Religion For to the like purpose is that Matth. 23. where the Pride and Hypocrisie of the Scribes and Pharisees is taxed For they binde heavy burthens saith our Saviour and grievous to be born and lay them upon mens shoulders but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers But all their works they do to be seen of men they make broad their Phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments and love the uppermost rooms at Feasts and the chief seats in the Synagogues and greetings in the market-places and to be called of men Rabbi Rabbi But â—â— not you called Rabbi saith our Saviour for one is your Master even Christ and all you are brethren And call no man your Father upon Earth for one is your Father which is in Heaven Neither be you called Masters for one is your Master even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your Servant And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted 4. Hitherto our Saviour and that very fully In whose foot-steps the Apostles also insist Rom. 12.16 Be of the same minde one towards another Minde not high things but condescend to men of low degree Be not wise in your own conceits And Eph. 4. I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called in all lowlinesse and meeknesse with long-suffering forbearing one another in love And Titus 3. Put them in minde to be subject to Principalities and Powers to obey Magistrates to be ready to every good work To speak evil of no man to be no brawlers shewing all meekness to all men So that we see the Christian Religion meets as well with the saucinesse of the Inferiours as with the affected domination of Superiours Thus expresly does the Gospel recommend Humility to the World CHAP. II. 1. Christs enforcement of Love and Charity upon his Church by Precept and his own Example 2. The wretched imposture and false pretensions of the Family of Love to this divine Grace 3. The unreasonableness of the Familists in laying aside the person of Christ to adhere to such a carnall and inconsiderable Guide as Hen. Nicolas 4. That this Whifler never gave any true Specimens of reall love to Mankinde as Christ did and his Apostles 5. His unjust usurpation of the Title of Love 6. The unparallel'd endearments of Christs sufferings in the behalf of Mankinde 1. THe next Branch of the Divine Life is Christian Love or Charity then which nothing is more inculcated in the New Testament Christ has left it as his Motto and the Motto of his Church the Symbolum or Word whereby it may be known to whom they belong Iohn 13.34 A new commandement I give unto you That ye love one another as I have loved you that ye love one another By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye love one another As if he should have said You may have heard something indeed out of Moses of loving ones neighbour as himself which Precept as it did not reach so far as I intend this of mine and that which it reached at is utterly laid aside and neglected I now afresh set it on foot and upon such terms and in such a degree and manner as never was yet For I would have you love one another even as I have loved you that is so heartily and sincerely that you will be ready to lay your lives down one for another if need require Which is more express Chap. 15.12 This is my commandment That ye love one another as I have loved you Greater love hath no man then this that a man lay down his life for his friends Which Christ doing for his Church especially in those circumstances he did is an unparallel'd specimen of true love indeed and the highest obligation that can be of our loving both him and one another 2. Which things while I consider I cannot with patience think upon the gross imposture of that bold Enthusiast of Amsterdam who giving no sound evidence of any such Love as may be deemed
power of restoring us to all that we have lost by being under the Usurper 15. That also in this Head all the notable Objects of the Religious propensions of the Nations should be comprized in a more lawfull and warrantable manner 16. That this Idea of Christianity is so worthy the Goodness of God and so sutable to the state of the World that no wise and vertuous Person can doubt but that it is or will be set on foot at some time by Divine Providence and that if the Mâ—ssias be come and the Writings of the New Testament be true in the literal sense it is on foot already 242 CHAP. XII 1. That the chief Authour of this Mystical Madness that nulls the true and literal sense of Scripture is H. Nicolas whose Doctrine therefore and Person is more exactly to be enquired into 2. His bitter Reviling and high Scorn and Contempt of all Ministers of the Gospel of Christ that teach according to the Letter with the ill Consequences thereof 3. The Reason of his Vilification of them and his Injunction to his Followers not to consult with any Teachers but the Elders of his Family no not with the Dictates of their own Consciences but wholy to give themselves up to the leading of those Elders The irrecoverable Apostasie of simple Souls from their Saviour by this wicked Stratagem 4. His high Magnifications of himself and his Service of the Love before the Dispensation of Moses John the Baptist or Christ himself 5. That his Service of the Love is a Third Dispensation namely of the Spirit and that which surpasses that of Christ with other Encomiums of his doctrine as That in it is the sounding of the last Trump the Descent of the new Jerusalem from Heaven the Resurrection of the dead the glorious coming of Christ to Judgment and the everlasting Condemnation of the wicked in Hell-Fire 6. That H. Nicolas for his time and after him the Eldest of the Family of the Love in succession are Christ himself descended from Heaven to judge the World as also the true High Priest for ever in the most Holy 247 CHAP. XIII 1. An Examination of all possible Grounds of this fanâ—tick Boaster's magnifying himself thus highly 2. That there are no Grounds thereof from either the Matter he delivers or from his Scriptural Eloquence Raptures and Allegories 3. The unspeakable Power and Profit of the Letter above that of the Allegorie instanced in the Crucifixion Resurrection Ascension of our Saviour and his coming again to Iudgment 4 That Allegorizing the Scripture is no special Divine gift but the fruit of either our Naturall Phansie or Education 5. That he had no grounds of magnifying himself from any Miracles he did 6. Nor from being any Special Preacher of Perfection or Practiser thereof 7. Of that Imperfection that is seated in the impurity of the Astral Spirit and ungovernable tumult of Phansie in Fanatick Persons 251 CHAP. XIV 1. That neither H. Nicolas nor his Doctrine was prophesied of in Holy Scripture That of the Angel preaching the Everlasting Gospel groundlesly applied to him 2. As also that place Iohn 1.21 of being That Prophet 3. His own mad Application of Acts 17. v. 31. to himself 4. Their Misapplication of 1 Cor. 13. v. 9 10. and Hebr. 6. v. 1 2. to the Doctrine of this new Prophet 5. Their arguing for the authority of the Service of the Love from the Series of Times and Dispensations with the Answer thereunto 6. That the Oeconomie of the Family of Love is quite contrary to the Reign of the Spirit 7. That the Author is not against the Regnum Spiritûs the Cabbalists also speak of but only affirms that this Dispensation takes not away the Personal Offices of Christ nor the External comeliness of Divine Worship 8. That if this Regnum Spiritûs is to be promoted by the Ministry of some one Person more especially it follows not that it is H. Nicolas he being a mere mistaken Enthusiast or worse 255 CHAP. XV. 1. That the Personal Offices of Christ are not to be laid aside That he is a Priest for euer demonstrated out of sundry places of Holy Writ 2. That the Office of bâ—ing a Iudge is also affixed to his Humane Person proved from several Testimonies of Scripture 3. Places alledged for the excluding Christ's Humanity with Answers therein 4. The last and most plausible place they do alledge with an Answer to the same 258 CHAP. XVI 1. That Hen. Nicolas does plainly in his Writings lay aside the Person of Christ as where he affirms That whatever is taught by the Scripture learned is false and That all the Matters of the Bible are but Presigurations of what concerns the Dispensation of his blessed Family 2. Other Citations to the same purpose and his accursed Allegory of Christ's celebrating his Passeover with his disciples whereby he would antiquâ—te and abolish the true Historical knowledge of him 3. Several places where he evidently tâ—kes away the Priestly Office of Christ. 4. Others that plainly take away his glorious Return to Iudgment and the Resurrection of the dead in the true and Apostolical sense 262 CHAP. XVII 1. His perverse Interpretation of that Article of the Creed concerning Life everlasting 2. His misbelief of the Immortality of the Soul proved from his forcible wresting of the most pregnant Testimonies thereof to his Dispensation and Ministry here on Earth 3. Their interpreting of the Heavenly Body mentioned 2 Cor. 4. and the unmarried state of Angels to the signification of a state of this present Life 4. That H. Nicolas as well as David George held there were no Angels neither good nor bad 5. Further Demonstrative Arguments that he held the Soul of man morâ—al 6. How sutable his laying aside of the Person of Christ is to these other Tenets 7. That H. Nicolas as highly as he magnifies himself is much below the better sort of Pagans His irreverent apprehension of the Divine Majesty if he held that there was any thing more Divine then himself 268 CHAP. XVIII 1. The great mischief and danger that accrues to the World from this false Prophet 2. The probable Ferocity of this Sect when time shall serve and eagerness of executing his Bloudy Vision 3. That Familisme is a plot laid by Satan to overthrow Christianity 4. What the face of things in likelihood would be supposing it had overrun all 5. The Motives that inforced the Authour to make so accurate a Discovery of this Imposture 271 CHAP. XIX 1. That Familism is a Monster bred out of the corruptions of Christianity and ill management of affairs by the Guides of the Church 2. The first Particular of ill Management intimated 3. The second Particular 4. The third Particular 5. The fourth 6. The fifth Particular 7. That this false Prophet H. Nicolas was raised by God to exprobrate to Christendome their universal Degeneracy Prophaneness and Infidelity 8. That though the Evil be discovered it is not to
heaven while he is such this murderous disposition being a demonstration that he is not born of God but of him that was a murderer from the beginning For Love being the very Heart and Center of Regeneration if there be no Antipathie in us against that which is so contrary to the deepest Principle of the Divine life it is a sign there is none of that Life in us Wherefore this Hypothesis of Mr. Mede cannot be made harsh or odious by the Opposer's surmise there being a capacity of being saved in such as I have above described though of the Papall denomination which are as it were the Woman in the wilderness And for that incapacity of being saved in the other there wants no Apocalypse to reveal the certainty thereof Nor do I know a more uncharitable opinion in the World then that which promises them Salvation that are so far from Charity themselves that they are professedly persecuters and murderers of the innocent nay of the sincere and faithful members of Christ. 27. But the Subtilty of our Adversaries is such that they will reply That there are as many snares and impediments in the Reformed Churches to true Holiness if not to all Holiness in the Opinions of Solifidianisme and Eternall Decrees and as great a demonstration of their utter insensibility of that Principle of the Divine love into which every true Christian is regenerated in their doctrine of Absolute Reprobation and inevitable damnation of innumerable myriads of men Providence determining them upon all the wayes and means thereto as in the Romanists either censuring all out of their Church to be in a state of perdition or in their inflicting a Temporal death upon them that gainsay the Articles of their Church For what is this in comparison of being content that all the World in a manner should be adjudged to everlasting torments for doing such things as they were from all Eternity decreed to do nor could any way possibly avoid it This Objection I must confess is very shrewdly levelled at the mark nor can I well undertake within the narrow limits of my now almost-ended Preface to make a full and direct Answer to the things themselves Onely I shall return thus much First That all of the Reformed Churches are not Solifidians nor hold any thing concerning the Divine Decrees inconsistent with either the Goodness of God or the Advancement of Godliness and that for my own part I am one of that number And then Secondly They that do do not profess themselves infallible in their opinion nor judge others to be in a damnable condition that are not of it and therefore do not low-bell men into their own errour by either uncharitable censurings or bloudy persecutions nor become incorrigible themselves upon pretence of Infallibility but are in a fair way of acknowledging the Truth when it shall be rightly and advantageously proposed Thirdly Their errours are not so many nor managed with that meditated craft and design as in the old Apostate Church they being not invented to serve some avaritious or ambitious end but fallen into if I may so speak by chance upon reading some passages of Scripture that looked upon alone may seem to favour their Conclusions and by reason of the obscurity of the things themselves such as have puzled contemplative men in all Ages and Places And fourthly and lastly If they have made their own Inventions and argumentative Conclusions Articles of Faith it is because they are not yet sufficiently cleansed from the corruption they contracted under the Mother of Apostasy which mainly consists in this in adding the fallible deductions of humane Reason to the infallible Articles of the ancient and Apostolick Faith So that whatever hazard of Salvation there is in the Reformed Churches it is by reason that they do still Romanize and do not clear up into a certain and uncontroverted Apostolick purity exhibiting nothing for Fundamentals but what is expresly so in the Text it self without the slipperyness of humane Ratiocination Which certainly as it is their Duty so is it also their greatest Interest and the most effectuall way for Peace and Righteousness upon Earth 28. As for that abusable Opinion of Imputative Righteousness that I have shewn my dissatisfaction touching that point which ordinarily the worst of men most of all build upon though I do not deny but well-meaning and piously-disposed persons may also heedlesly take up the forme I hope the judicious will not misconstrue it nor take it ill that I have been so free and faithful as to discover the danger and groundlesness of this overmuch Idolized doctrine For indeed it is a very Idol that is Nothing as the Apostle describes an Idol to be I mean nothing of it self but a mere Phrase if you prescind it from what is comprized in Remission of sins through the bloud of Christ shed upon the Cross. For this Remission of sins contains in it such a reconciliation with God that we are safe from all the Effects of his wrath both concerning this state and that which is to come that is to say we shall not be punished by his withholding his Grace from us here or that Glory which is expected in the other Life For these deprivements being the results of sin if we were not secured from them our sins were not remitted which is against the Hypothesis Now I appeal to the judgement and conscience of the most zealous assertour of Imputative Righteousness if he can find any thing more comprized therein then such a remission of sins as we have defined and whether when he talks of being cloathed with Christs righteousness in this imputative sense he can understand any thing but being as it were armed and defended from the wrath of God and all the ill consequences thereof For if this Righteousness we are thus cloathed with were a Righteousness that really kept us suppose from Envy from Drunkenness from Adultery and made us Charitable Sober and Chast it were not then imputative but inherent From whence it plainly appears that if you prescind it from remission of sins through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross this Phrase of Imputative Righteousness has no signification at all and that therefore there is no loss or damage done to our Religion if it be not accounted a distinct Article from the remission of sins in the bloud of Christ. For it cannot afford any true and useful sense distinct there-from nay I may say any that is not very mischievous and dangerous and such as tends to that loathsome and pestilential errour of Antinomianisme But if you will understand by it Remission of sins I do again appeal to the sagacious if there may not yet be a great deal of fraud and hypocrisie in making choice of such an Expression as does easily insinuate to over-many a needlesness of seriously endeavouring to be really righteous we being so warmely secure by the imputation of anothers and does omit such circumstances
themselves yet to be so streight to one another as not to acknowledge that mutual Right seems enormously harsh and unchristian For we all agreeing in the Truth of the Scriptures which certainly are sufficient to Salvation since the Belief and Practice of what is plain in them will not fail to carry a man to Heaven what an unreasonable thing is it that there should be that hatred and persecution against those that God so well approves that he will save them and Christ so dearly loved that he gave his life a ransome for them Again there being also a necessity as I have said in the Persecuted of thinking as he does and an uncertainty in the Opinions that the Persecutour would promote as being demonstrable by neither Reason nor Scripture how unwarrantable an action is it to do a certain injury for an uncertain conceit To all which you may adde That the Love of Knowledge is but the work of the Devil how much more then is bitter Zeal and brawling about it but the depretiating of humane devices tends much to the exaltation of true Sanctity that mask of Hyprocrisie patcht up of empty Opinions and Formalities being by this means torn off and leaving the face bare that their Complexion may be more discernable how pure and sincere it is or how unsound cadaverous and deformed And lastly a mutuall agreement of bearing with one anothers dissents in the Non-fundamentals of Religion is really a greater Ornament of Christianity then the most exact Uniformity imaginable it being an eminent act or exercise of Charity the Flower of all Christian graces and the best way I think at the long run to make the Church as Uniforme as can justly be desired For if true Christian Love could once get the rule in the Hearts of men the Apostle will undertake for her that she shall do nothing unseemly For Charity is indeed the Mother of Unity and bond of Perfection and he that is really spirited thereby I dare promise for him that he will never oftentate his Sanctimony by a pretended queziness of Conscience as if he had a more delicate sense and a more peculiar discernment in things appertaining to Godliness then others have But whatever a good round force would urge him to out of love to himself and his own safety he would not fail of his own accord to comply therewith out of the love of Order and the Reverence he bears to the authority of the Church he lives under Nor on the other side would the Church ever offer to obtrude upon her children what is either false or useless For they both of them being once imbued with that Divine sense we speak of cannot but be well assured That neither Circumcision nor Uncircumcision availeth any thing but Faith working by Love And whosoever walketh by this Rule peace be upon him and upon the true Israel of God H. M. From my Study at Christs Coll. in Cambridge Iune 12. 1660. AN EXPLANATION OF The grand Mystery OF GODLINESS CHAP. I. 1. The Four main Properties of a Mystery 2. The first Propertie Obscurity 3. The second Intelligibleness 4. The third Truth 5. The fourth Usefulness 6. A more full Description of the Nature of a Mystery 7. The Distribution of the whole Treatise 1. EVery legitimate Mystery comprehends in it at least these Four Properties It is a piece of Knowledge First competently Obscure Recondite and Abstruse That is It is not so utterly hid and intricate but that in the Second place It is in a due measure Intelligible Thirdly It is not only Intelligible what is meant by it but it is evidently and certainly True Fourthly and lastly It is no impertinent or idle Speculation but a Truth very Usefull and Profitable We may well add also for some Religious End 2. This Obscuritie and Abstruseness makes not only the Mystery more solemn and venerable to those to whom it is communicated but hides it also from their eyes that are not worthy to partake thereof From whence some Criticks have derived Mysterium from the Hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to hide Which is well aimed at as to the sense But others with more judgment in Grammar acknowledge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be a proper Greek word and fetch the Derivation of it from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because they to whom it is communicated are to keep silence and not to impart it to unmeet persons And in this sense Chrysostome expounds Mysterium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A matter wonderfull unknown and not to be easily or rashly communicated to others 3. Nor indeed could it be at all if it were utterly Unintelligible Wherefore Intelligibleness adds this further requisite also to a Mystery that it thereby becomes Communicable to such as are fitly prepared to be instructed therein For which reason the Etymologists give also this Notation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it is from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is to teach and instruct a man in Divine matters so far forth as the party is fit to receive Hence is also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mysta a Scholar or Commencer in Divine Mysteries one that is more slightly imbued in the knowledge of such Holy things 4. But there is afterward a clearer manifestation and a fuller satisfaction and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then becomes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being now more firmly ascertained of the Truth which he did but obscurely apprehend before From which Clearness and Certainty of the thing represented there necessarily arises a full and free assent of his Understanding without any further doubt or hesitancy the Proverb being made good in this case That Seeing is Believing 5. But that there may not be a mere dry Belief without any love or liking of the Object thereof we added also that this Mystery is not only certainly True but very concerningly Usefull and Profitable which though the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it self does not implie yet another in the same language and of the like sense does which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Initiations into sacred Mysteries The Usefulness whereof a Platonist admirably well describes not without a verbal allusion in this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which if we would render it in our more familiar language sounds thus The scope or aim of all Religious Mysteries is the bringing back faln man into his pristine condition of Happiness and to lead him again to that high station which he then first forsook when he preferr'd his own Will and the pleasure of the Animal life before the Will of God and that Life and Sense which is truly Divine 6. Wherefore not to dwell too long on the threshold we conclude briefly and in general that a Mystery is a piece of Divine knowledge measurably Abstruse whereby it becomes more Venerable but yet Intelligible that it may be Communicable and
therefore all the Three Hypostases being alike offended at Sin and alike prone to pardon the Sinner and recover him to Obedience contrived such a way of declaring their pardon as might shew their highest dislike of sin and win most upon the Sinner by moving his affections to a serious Sorrow and Remorse Wherefore the Divine complotment was this That the Eternal Son of God should be made Flesh and to testifie the Hatred of God to Sin and his Love to mankind should be sacrificed for an Atonement for the sins of the world Then which a greater Engine cannot be imagined to move us to an Abhorrence of sin and to the Love of his Law that thus redeemed us and wrought our reconciliation with the Father To whom being as I may so say the Head in the Divinity and of all things and having in his Paternal right the First power of punishing and pardoning this Pacification is naturally directed For it is as if a Father of a Family or the Prince of a Nation having a minde to pardon some Malefactor that he might not seem too prone to Mercy and so encourage men to Rebellion should plot with his Eldest Son to be an earnest Intercessor in the behalf of the party when yet the Son disrelisheth the crime of him he intercedes for as much as his Father did There is the same Reason in the Intercession of Christ with the Eternal Father saving that it was with more earnestnesse and greater agony even unto death and of farre higher consequence But that such an Intercession and Pacification as this should be made up in the solitary Scene of one Person is impossible 5. Wherefore the denying of either the Divinity of Christ or the Trinity seems a Subversion of the Christian Religion And not onely so but that Fanatical piece of Magnificency of some Enthusiasts who would make their Union with God the same with that of Christ's For then were they truly God and Divine Adoration would belong unto them or if not it is a sign they are not God and that therefore Christ is not Either of which confounds or destroys our Religion But if you demand what the Difference is betwixt the Union of Christ and Ours with the Divinity I have intimated it before In one the Divinity is Forma informans in the other but Forma assistens in the one it is as Lux in Corpore lucido in the other as Lumen in Corpore diaphano The Divinity in Christ is as the Light in the Sun the Divinity in his Members as the Sun-shine in the Aire 6. And this distinction and due distance being kept which some saucy and high-flown Enthusiasts do not observe there is yet scope and encouragement enough for them to strive to be full as good as they pretend I am sure farre better then they are there ordinarily being no difference betwixt them and the meanest Christians but that their Tongues are swelled with greater tumor and turgency of speech and their Minds filled with more vain phantasyes and exorbitant Lunacyes whenas the other speak conformably to the Apostolick Faith and with less noise live more honestly But that no less Union with God then Real and Physical Deification must make them Good is a sign they are stark naught and that Pride has laid wast their Intellectuals For is not that Spirit that created and framed all things able to reforme us unto the most unblamable pitch of Humility Self-denial Dependency upon God Love of our neighbour Obedience to Magistrates Faith Temperance and Holiness without being any more Hypostatically united with us then with the Earth Sea Sun Moon and Starres and the Natural parts of the Creation Wherefore we conclude That to assert That the Union of any true Christian with God is the Same with that of Christ's is a bold useless and groundless Opinion and inconsistent with and destructive of the Christian Religion 7. We have seen How Necessary and Essential to Christianity the Doctrine of the Divinity of Christ is and consequently of the Trinity without which the other cannot be rightly conceived and therefore we do not onely disapprove of those frivolous slanders and cavils that would brand that Sacred Mystery with the infamous note of Paganisme but highly magnifie and humbly adore the Providence of God that that Truth should be kept so long warme and be so carefully polished by those Heathens that knew not the main Use thereof or to what end the Tradition was delivered to the ancient Patriarchs Prophets or holy Sages of old in either Aegypt or Iudaea from whence Pythagoras and Plato had it and prepared those parts of the World where their Philosophy had taken foot-hold to an easy reception of Christianity but this we have glanced at elsewhere CHAP. VI. 1. The danger and disconsolateness of the Opinion of the Psychopannychites 2. What they alledge out of 1 Cor. 15. set down 3. A Preparation to an Answer advertising First of the nature of Prophetick Schemes of speech 4. Secondly of the various vibration of an inspired Phansie 5. Thirdly of the ambiguity of words in Scripture and particularly of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 6. And lastly of the Corinthians being sunk into an Unbelief of any Reward after this life 7. The Answer out of the last and foregoing Premisse 8. A further Answer out of the first 9. As also out of the second and third where their Objection from verse 32. is fully satisfied 10. Their Argument answered which they urge from our Saviours citation to the Sadducees I am the God of Abraham c. 1. WE proceed now to the Third and Last Point propounded which is Concerning the state of Souls departed which we assert not to sleep that is not to be void of all Operation and Sense of Joy or Punishment but that they have a Knowledge and Apprehension of their own condition be it Good or Bad. Which Article I hold as undoubtedly True though not so indispensable as the Two former and though not so Necessary yet exceeding Convenient to be entertain'd It being a great Abater to our zeal and fervency in Religion to think that in the end of our life we shall be dodged and put off by a long senseless and comfortless Sleep of the Soul under the sods of the Grave for many hundreds if not for some thousands of years Besides an indulgence to such a Dulness and Heartlesness of Spirit as to be content to intermit the Functions of Life for so long a time may at last work the Soul into a sottish mistrust of ever being awaked and make her conclude the Mystery of Christianity within the narrow verges of this mortal life as David George and other Enthusiasts did who were more in love with many Wives then with any Article of Faith that promised such pleasures as might not be reaped in this Flesh. 2. But we are here to deal not with such vain Fanaticks but with severely-devoted Sons of
Love of the Divine life and whatever design is imposed upon her by that Principle 7. The Example of this Fortitude is admirable in our blessed Saviour and transcends as much the general Valour recorded by the Pens of Poets and Historians as the valour of those Heroes does exceed the salvage fierceness and boldness of Bears Wolves and Lions For a man to encounter Death in an exalted heat and fire of his agitated Spirits is not much unlike a mere drunken fray where their blood being heated with the excesse of Wine the Combatants become unsensible of those mortal Gashes they make in one anothers bodies But to fight in cold blood is true valour indeed and the greater by how much more the occasion of the enterprise approves it self noble and the parties are not at first engaged by any rage or passion For then they sacrifice their lives but to a rash fit of Choler or at least to that Tyrant in them Pride which they for the better credit of the business ordinarily call The sense of Honour else they could willingly upon better thoughts save themselves the pains and danger of the Combate 8. But to speak of Valour more lawfull and laudable which is to meet the enemy in the field where their minds are enraged and heightned by the sound of the Drum and the Trumpet which are able to put but an ordinarily-metall'd man out of his wits it is yet counted a very valiant and honourable Act if a man in this hurry and tumult of his Spirits makes his sword fat with the blood of the slain and mows down his Enemies on every side as a Sacrifice to his Country and Friends I mean to his wife and children and all that are near unto him Which yet may be parallel'd with the Courage and Rage of Wolves and Tigres who will fiercely enough defend their young by that innate valour and animosity in them without help of any external artifice to heighten their boldness But the Valour and Fortitude of the ever-blessed Captain of our Salvation has no parallel but is transcendently above whatever can be named For what comparison is there betwixt that Courage which is inspired from the pomp of Warre or single Combat from the heat and height of the Natural Spirits from the rage and hatred against an Enemy or from the love to a Friend and such a Fortitude as being destitute of all the advantages of the Animal life nay clogg'd with the disadvantages thereof as with a deep sense of Death Fear Agony and Horror yet notwithstanding all this in an humble Submission to the Will of God and a dear Respect to that lovely Image of the Divine life wades through with an unyielding constancy and this which is not to be thought on without astonishment and amazement not to rescue or right a Friend but to save and deliver a malevolent Enemy 9. We have seen how Iustice Temperance and Fortitude are in a supereminent manner comprehended in the Divine life which taking possession of the Middle life or Rational powers must needs beget also in the Soul the truest ground of Prudence that may be For this Divine life is both the Light and the Purification of the Eye of the Mind whereby Reason becomes truly illuminated in all Divine and Moral concernments Which Mystery though it cannot be declared according to the worthiness of the matter yet some more external intimations may serve for a pledge of the Truth thereof As for Example in that it does remove Pride Self-interest and Intemperance that clog the Body and cloud the Soul it is plain from hence of what great advantage the Divine life is for the rectifying and ruling our Judgements and Understandings in all things 10. I have endevoured according to the best of my Abilities briefly to set before you the Excellency of that Life which we call Divine But it is impossible by words to conveigh it to that Soul that has not in her in some measure the Sense of it aforehand Which if she have it is to her the truest Key to the Mystery of Christianity that can be found and in this light a man shall clearly discern how decorous and just a thing it is that This Life which is transcendently better then all should at last after long Trials and Conflicts triumph over all and that for this purpose Jesus Christ should come into the world who is the Author and Finisher of this more then Noble and Heroical Enterprise BOOK III. CHAP. I. 1. That the Lapse of the Soul from the Divine life immersing her into Matter brings on the Birth of Cain in the Mystical Eve driven out of Paradise 2. That the most Fundamental mistake of the Soul lapsed is that Birth of Cain and that from hence also sprung Abel in the mystery the vanity of Pagan Idolatry 3. Solomon's universal charge against the Pagans of Polytheisme and Atheisme and how fit it is their Apology should be heard for the better understanding the State of the World out of Christ. 4. Their plea of worshipping but one God namely the Sun handsomely managed by Macrobius 5. The Indian Brachmans worshippers of the Sun Apollonius his entertainment with them and of his false and vain affectation of Pythagorisme 6. The Ignorance of the Indian Magicians and of the Daemons that instructed them 7. A Concession that they and the rest of the Pagans terminated their worship upon one Supreme Numen which they conceived to be the Sun 1. HAving with a competent clearness as I hope set forth the Nature of the Divine life to such as have a Principle to judge thereof as also of the Animal we shall the more fully understand wherein consists the lapse or revolt as well of the rebellious Angels as of fallen Man Which was in that they forsook the Law of the Divine life and wholy gave themselves up to the Animal life ranting it and revelling it there without any measure or bounds Of which this seems to be the sad effect that the Soul of man had quite forgot his Creatour being fully plunged and immersed into the very feculency of the Material world For that Faculty in him whereby he is capable of Corporeal joy which is the Mystical Eve had grown so rampant and lawless that it had quite devoured and laid waste those more noble and delicate Senses of the Mind and had so intimately joyned him in love and dependance on the Matter that his Soul having forsaken God her true Lord and Husband by a lively adhesion stuck so close to this gross Corporeal Fabrick this outward sensible Universe that in this near and affectionate conjunction with it she made good in the Mystery that which is said in the Letter concerning Eve after she was driven out of Paradise She brought forth her first-born Cain whose birth in the Mystical sense is nothing else but that false conceit that the reason of his name imports 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have got a man or
other World But of this enough CHAP. XVII 1. The Third Observable The Mediation of Daemons 2. This Superstition glanced at by the Apostle in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that Daemons are the Souls of men departed according to Hesiod 3. As also according to Plutarch and Maximus Tyrius 4. The Author's inference from this position 1. THE Third thing Observable is their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Daemons I mean their Dii Medioxumi or rather Those Spirits that were Mediatours as I may so call them betwixt the Supreme Deities and Men. According to this sense is that of Plato in his Symposion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. God intermingles not himself with man but all the Converse and conference betwixt the Gods and Men is performed by Daemons And the same Philosopher saies plainly and expresly That these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 receive the praiers and oblations that men make and present them to the Gods and bring back from them rewards and injunctions which they communicate some way or other to men But this is not Plato's opinion alone but of most of the ancient Philosophers that would venture to say any thing at all in Religion as of Zoroaster Thales Pythagoras Celsus Plutarch Apuleius and who not Nay this conceit is so natural that it is found among the rude Americans who profess that their Zemes are no other then Mediatours and Messengers from the great God that is Eternal and Invisible as Peter Martyr relates in his first Decad lib. 9. concerning the Inhabitants of Hispaniola 2. This opinion of the Heathen was glanced at by the Apostle Coloss. 2.18 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Grotius observeth upon the place Nor does the difference of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make any difference in the thing the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo has noted and either of them is competible to the Soul out of the Body as the same Author also acknowledgeth But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies also the Soul in the Body according to Xenocrates in Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. In like manner that he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. happy who has a good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Genius as Xenocrates says that be is happy or has a good Genius that has a good Soul For the Soul is every man's Daemon or Genius But the more proper sense and that which we mean in this place is that of Philo to whom we may add the suffrage of Hesiod out of Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. But Soules that have quit themselves from Generation and are for the future free from the incumbrances of the Body become Daemons carefull Inspectours over mankind according to Hesiod From whence haply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divido it signifying the very same that Anima separata 3. And Plutarch himself subscribes to Hesiod's opinion That Souls freed from their Bodies become Daemons or Genii and that they goe up and down the Earth as being observers and rewarders of the actions of men and that though they be not actors themselves yet they are abbettors and encouragers of them that act as old men that have left off the more youthfull sports love to set the younger sort to their games and exercises themselves in the mean time looking on So Plutarch in his De Genio Socratis and Maximus Tyrius endeavour at large to prove that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Genii are nought but the Souls of men departed who are occupied much-what in such emploiments as they were in the flesh 4. From whence it will follow that Good men that were full of humanity love to mankind will prove good Genii by how much their Love is greater and their Spirits more free and universal that they will have a more generall inspection or at least they will be more fit for it were they but armed with sufficient Power and Authority from above answerable to that noble dear affection they bear to man and in that themselves have been in the flesh and tasted what belongs to our condition they will be the more kindly Mediatours and Negotiatours in our affairs So reasonable is this opinion of the Pagans concerning the Intercession of their Genii but their Worshipping of them as rash they having no sufficient warrant thereunto CHAP. XVIII 1. The Fourth and last thing to be noted namely their Heroes who were thought to be either begot of some God or born of some Goddess the latter whereof is ridiculous if not impossible 2. The former not at all incredible 3. Franciscus Picus his opinion of the Heroes feigned so by the Poets as begot of the Gods that they were really begotten of some impure Daemons with Josephus his suffrage to the same purpose 4. The Possibility of the thing further illustrated from the impregnation of Mares merely by the Wind asserted by several Authors 5. The application of the History and a further confirmation from the manner of Conception out of Dr. Harvey 6. Examples of men famed for this kind of miraculous Birth of the Heroes on this side the tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. THE Fourth and last thing I would propound to your view is their Heroes which are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also that is the Souls of men departed this life but there was something special in their Birth in that they were conceived to be born of some Goddess impregnated by a man or of some woman impregnated by some God From whence Plato would give the reason of the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love Because the Heroes were begot by some God or Goddess falling in love with Mortals Such was the birth of Aeneas as Antiquity has conceited who was begot on Venus by Anchises and of Achilles the Son of Thetis by Peleus But that Goddesses that is Spirits susteining the person of Women should bring forth Children though there be pretended true stories of such things and that it may be it is not impossible yet it seems to me very incredible 2. But that the Genii or Spirits which Antiquity called Gods might impregnate Women so that they might bring forth children without the help of a man seems not to me to be at all incredible and most of your Heroes have been reported to be such the greater number of the most famous of them being certain By-blows of Iupiter upon several women he fell in love with For he is said to beget Hercules upon Alcmena Pelasgus of Niobe Sarpedon of Laodamia Dardanus of Electra Amphion of Antiope Minos and Rhadamanthus of Europa of Leda Castor and Pollux and Perseus of Danae His four last Adulteries are handsomely comprized in a Distich by the Epigrammatist with the fashion or fraud he
made none but our selves onely imagine them Again as for Idolatry another known Character of the Beast cannot we find that also amongst our selves I do not mean Covetousness onely which the Apostle cals Idolatry but the adventuring to erect Imaginations if not Images of God some more horrid and affrightful then those that stand in the most polluted Temples of the Pagans the Statue of Saturn tearing his own children a pieces with his teeth and eating of them is but an Hieroglyphick of Mercy in comparison thereof while in the mean time the mournful Witnesses testifie both out of Moses and out of S. Iohn That the nature of God is quite another thing God is Love and he that abideth in Love abideth in God and God in him The Lord the Lord God gracious and merciful long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth And yet what forcible assaults are there to set up this Idol or false Image in the Temple of every mans Minde which otherwise should be consecrated to the Love of God and the warm and comfortable residence of his Holy Spirit That also is a blind Image of God worse then the Pagan Cupid which some conceited Fondlings set up in favour of themselves That God sees no sin in his Elect let them sin never so grosly whenas the Scripture expresly affirms That his eyes behold his eye-lids try the Children of men and That he is of purer eyes then to endure iniquity any where To say nothing that Opinions themselves that are framed by humane curiosity in points of Religion though otherwise harmless become Idols and have the very same effect that Idols have that is They lay asleep the Minde and besot it so that it becomes senseless of the indispensable motions of the Divine life And further That the tricking up our selves with such curiosities is but a self-chosen holiness and a worshipping and serving God after our own humour which assuredly is little better then Idolatry 8. And lastly more compendiously and at once Let us consider the nature of the Witnesses slain by the Beast of the bottomless pit Which is a childish thing to conceit to be Two persons forasmuch as they prophesy for 1260 years together as Mr. Mede has well defined and I also adde that they are dead in another sense even that time they are said to prophesy as I have above noted and I think there is very little doubt to be made of the Interpretation Let us therefore now consider what these Two Witnesses are And truely according to the richness of Prophetick expression I do not think they are restrained to one single signification but type out at least these two things The Old and New Testament which by a Prosopopoeia are here called the Two Witnesses or else The Magistracy and Ministery forasmuch as those things they are described by are allusions to Moses and Aaron and to Zerobabel and Ieshua The Concinnity of the former interpretation does not depend onely on that obvious allusion to that Latine word Testament but is further ratified from the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 frequently signifiing the Laws or Institutes of God rendred also for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not to adde that the Old and New Testament are whether they were called so or no Two eximious Witnesses of the Mind of God unto the World Wherefore now more Prophetico making these Two Books Two persons they may be said to be alive or slain either in a Political or Moral sense They would be alive in a Political sense if they had the only rule in the transactions of the affairs of Church and Commonwealth that there should be no injunctions as indispensable in matters of Religion but such as they plainly determine much less any thing against them And so likewise in State-affairs all Oppression and Tyranny would be prohibited Wherefore while the Inventions of men rule in the Church instead of the Dictates of those holy Oracles and while course Oppression and Tyranny over the members of Christ is prevalent that is while men think they have power and wealth and wit and policy merely to tread down the people and not to succour them and guide them for their real good and to ennoble their spirits as much as they are capable rather then to make them besotted vassals and slaves to put out their eyes to make mill-horses of them that they may the better droile and drudge for the satisfaction of their lusts whereever things are carried on this way the Beast of the bottomless Pit has slain the Two Witnesses in the Political sense the Law of God in the mean time protesting against their proceedings both in the Old and New Testament as is plain to every one that peruses those Writings The Witnesses also would be alive in a Moral sense if those indispensable Precepts of life witnessed by them were really turned into life and practice in us For the External Word is but a dead letter but then is properly alive when that life is begotten in us whereof it testifies Which if it be neglected as also their Rule so farre forth as it respects Ecclesiastick Policy be declined and men act both in Political affairs and in their private capacities according to the Rules of men and their unprofitable Institutes and thereby neglect the indispensable Commands of God who cannot but see that the Two Witnesses we speak of are plainly slain and that the Old and New Testament are but as two liveless carkasses lying unburied indeed for they will not burn them and put their ashes into an urne and hide them under ground for fear of the people but useless and unactive having no power to curb the wicked enormities of the world who have taken up another self-chosen Law to themselves minted and forged by the false Antichristian Church consistent enough with nay very favourable to all those pomps and vanities that we are sworn against in our very Baptisme Whence it is said that the Inhabitants of the World are so glad and triumphant and send gifts to one another upon the slaying of the Witnesses their death conducing so much to the uncurbed fruition of all worldly and carnal enjoyments but the Church in the mean time becoming no better then Sodome and Aegypt a land of Tyranny and Beastliness a City of Carnality and Oppression Wherein to proceed to the other sense Moses and Aaron Zerobabel and Ieshua the holy and legitimate Magistracy and Ministery are slain that is kept out of all Political power by this Beast out of the bottomless pit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which as it may signifie the Sea may be understood of the Ten-horned Beast but as it may signifie a deep pit in the earth such as that from whence Smoke came and the Locusts may signifie the Two-horned Beast who is said to come out of the Earth and is the Master of that Wisdom that is earthly sensual and devilish and which is accompanied with bloudy zeal and
believe any other Service or Information but what is administered by the Elders in the house of the Love enjoins them to give up their Understandings wholy to the Eldest of the Family and to give ear to none else but the Teachers of his own Sect. Nay he will not so much as suffer them to appeal to the Light that is within them nor to judge themselves nor be judged by their own Consciences but only by the Elders of the house of the Love concerning whom they must not have the least suspicion of Errour or Unfaithfulness Which is the greatest Tyranny and Slavery upon the Soul of man that can be devised and a shrewd Indication that those Elders will approve and advise things against express Scripture Reason and Conscience And thus is many a poor simple Lamb catched out of the Fold of Christ and carried quite away without recovery into the thickest and remotest Woods and darkest Caverns or Dens to be devoured by this white Wolf who by his gracious speeches heart-melting insinuations soft-soothing language that is oiled and perfumed with nothing but Love first intices the little ones after whom his mouth most of all waters to a great esteem of himself and then utterly extinguishes in them to their Eternal Destruction all that Faith they had in the Person and Promises of our ever-blessed Saviour Which he does by intercepting all aid that the use of Reason and the Knowledge of the Scripture could administer giving them such hard language as we have above recited the civilest aspersion he bestows being the Imagination of the Knowledge but magnifying himself and his Service of the Love that is his own Doctrine above whatever yet appear'd to the sons of men as you shall now hear 4. For he sets himself above Abraham Moses David and all the Prophets above Iohn the Baptist yea above the Person of Christ himself For indeed he will allow that the service of the Fathers in the Covenant of Circumcision until Moses was the Forefront of the true Tabernacle and that Moses in figures and shadows set out the true being of the true sanctuary of God in the Spirit and that to David and the Prophets was shewn the true Being in the Spirit of their sight That Iohn the Baptist was a Preparation by Repentance to an entrance into the Holy of the true Tabernacle and that this Holy of the true Tabernacle is the Service of Christ in the Belief But the Holy of Holies or the Most Holy this he reserves to himself and his Service of the Love Wherein as he boasts is the Perfection of Life the Completion of all Prophecies from the beginning of the World the righteous Judgment of God the Throne of Christ before which all things must needs be manifested the perfect Being of the Godhead and the true Rest of the chosen of God He calls also this his Service of the Love the Last Day and the Perfection and Conclusion of all the works of God Whereby he would intimate it to be an everlasting Seventh day or Sabbath And yet he will have it also the Eighth Day as if he affected an holy-day beyond that of God himself and a time beyond Eternity 5. Again in his Prophecie of the Spirit of Love he sets himself highest in the enumeration of the Three principal Services namely the Service of the Law under God the Father the Service of the Belief under Christ the Saviour and the Service of the Love under the Holy Ghost The affectation of which office he learnt of his master David George as is noted by them that have wrote of these Enthusiasts I omit to speak of lesser Encomiums of his doctrine as That it is the last Trump that sure word of Prophecie that his day of the Love is that new day that the Lord has made abundant in clearness and full of Eternal joy the new Ierusalem descending from Heaven and the Inheritance of the Right-perfection We will conclude all with what he writes in his Revelation of God Behold presently in this day is the Kingdome of the God of Heaven and his Righteousness the godly Majesty and his Glory as also the salvation of Christ and the eternal life appeared in perfect Clearness with great Triumph and Ioy The Resurrection also of the dead the cleansing of the Earth the blessing of all Generations the righteous Iudgment of God the Glorious coming of Christ with all the thousands of Saints and the everlasting Condemnation of all ungodly in the hellish Fire What therefore can you expect more then is accomplished in his Service of the Love and what greater Person can there be then he who sets so glorious a Dispensation on foot on the earth Let us therefore take notice what he makes himself in the midst of this Glory and Pomp which he sets out 6. As if it were a small thing for him to be raised from the dead and to be anointed with the holy Ghost he boasteth further that God has sealed in him the Dwelling of his Glory and of his Holy Name and elsewhere that he is Godded with God and consubstantiated with the Deity and expresly in his Evangely Chap. 34. he declares how God has manned himself with him and Godded him with his Godhead to a living Tabernacle a House for his dwelling and to a seat of his Christ the seed of David and how the Judgment-seat of Christ is revealed out of Heaven from the right hand of God and that on the same Judgment-seat of Christ there sitteth one meaning himself in the Habitation of David which judgeth uprightly thinketh upon equity and requireth righteousness and that through him God will judge the compass of the Earth This in his Introduction to the Glass of Righteousness is the right Messias the high Priest for ever in the most holy the noble King of Israel and Iuda that possesses the seat of his Father an everlasting peaceable Prince over the house of Iacob according to the promises But you 'l say this cannot be understood of H. Nicolas but of Christ according as he has wrote elsewhere that there is in his Communialty of the Love a true Iudge Iesus Christ our Lord and King which executes the right Iudgment of his Father according to the truth But we are also to understand that This Christ that sits on the throne of his Father David is the eldest Father of the Family of Love as appears out of his Evangelium Cap. 31. sect 14. and 16. Which places compared with what has been recited it is clear that H. Nicolas is this Christ on the seat of David for his life-time and which is still worse and the seed of endless Madness and Blasphemie that this wild Presumption of the eldest in the Family being the very Christ from Heaven returned to judge the World with equity will be entailed upon their Successors for ever And that the appearance of this Christ may be the more glorious
and more answerable to the very Phrase of Scripture he is accompanied with Angels as well as Saints some of his Elders being adorned with the glittering title of Seraphims as is to be seen in the Legend of his life entituled Mirabilia Dei as also in his Glass of Righteousness CHAP. XIII 1. An Examination of all possible Grounds of this fanatick Boaster's magnifying himself thus highly 2. That there are no Grounds thereof from either the Matter he delivers or from his Scriptural Eloquence Raptures and Allegories 3. The unspeakable Power and Profit of the Letter above that of the Allegorie instanced in the Crucifixion Resurrection Ascension of our Saviour and his coming again to Iudgement 4. That Allegorizing the Scripture is no special Divine gift but the fruit of either our Natural Phansie or Education 5. That he had no grounds of magnifying himself from any Miracles he did 6. Nor from being any Special Preacher of Perfection or Practiser thereof 7. Of that Imperfection that is seated in the impurity of the Astral Spirit and ungovernable tumult of Phansy in Fanatick Persons 1. BUT enough has been related to shew that transcendent esteem this Enthusiast had both of himself and also would insinuate into others of his own Person and Doctrine Let us now consider what Right or Ground he had to assume so much to himself or others may have to attribute so much unto him And to bring all the Inducements imaginable into view This high conceit of his of being so supereminent a Person must arise either from the Matter he does deliver or his Eloquence or the Raptures he was in when he penn'd down his Revelations as he would have them thought or from the Mysteriousness of his Allegories or from his Evangelizing the Perfection or lastly for that he was prophesied of in the Scriptures as he in whom all things should be fulfilled 2. Now for the main Matter he delivers plainly and above-bord it is the excellency of Love Which is so Essential a Truth to Christianity and plainly inculcated in the Gospel and so effectually recommended that there is no true Christian can miss of it So that we need no new Instructer in that divine Grace much less any inspired Prophet to teach us what is so plain to us already And therefore if there be any thing new in this doctrine of Love it must be such a kind of Love that is new to Christians I mean to true Christians but not to the Gnosticks nor the School of Simon Magus who spoke as magnificently of himself as this Impostor can do possibly And for his Scriptural Eloquence his Raptures and Transportations in the penning down his Writings how that such things arise frequently from Nature and Complexion is abundantly declared in my Enthusiasmus Triumphatus to say nothing of worser Assistences then mere Complexion as also the dexterity of Allegorizing which yet how distortedly he performs I shall note anon 3. In the mean time I hold it well worth our observation how giddy and injudicious those persons are that are so mightily taken with the Mystical sense of such parts of the History of Christ as are most profitable in the belief of the mere Letter such as his Passion Resurrection Ascension his Session at the right hand of God and his coming again to Iudgement when he will change these vile bodies of ours into the similitude of his Heavenly body For making this a mere Representation of something to be performed within us namely his Crucifixion of our mortifying of the old man his Resurrection of our rising to newness of life his Ascension into Heaven and sitting at the right hand of God of our entrance into and rule and reign in the Heavenly Being with Christ in the Spirit and his Returning to Iudgement the judging and governing our natural and earthly man with Righteousness and Equity which Allegories or rather not so good is the deepest Wisdome and divinest Revelation that is to be found in this admired Prophet such Allusions I say and Similitudes as these have no more force nor efficacy to urge us or help us on to those Accomplishments they represent then if the History of Christ were a mere Fable But if in stead of making them Resemblances we should use them as Arguments from a true History they have a power unspeakable for the making us good For thus any ingenuous Spirit would melt into remorse when he considers how the Son of God out of mere love and compassion to him was crucified for him and thereby will willingly submit to all the pain of Mortification in a kindly Gratitude to his Saviour And from the belief of the Resurrection of Christ from the dead will be the further animated in his pursuance of the Resurrection to an holy life being assured of Eternal enjoyment of his labours by a blessed Immortality of which also His Ascension into Heaven is a further pledge and his sitting at the right hand of God the greater motive to take off his mind from earthly desires and to think of those things that are above And lastly his certain hope of obtaining that crown of glory which Christ the righteous Judge shall give unto him at the last day I mean that glorified and Heavenly Body will be the greatest ingagement imaginable to spend the strength of his natural body in his service to expose it to all hardships yea to death it self if need so require for the honour of his Saviour and in the mean time to possess it in all Sanctity possible in a gratefull observance of his commands from whom we expect the Redemption of our Bodies 4. Wherefore the Literal meaning of the History of Christ being so powerful and effectual to the making of us good it is a sign of a great deal of folly and levity to dote upon mere Allegories and Allusions that have no force at all in them to move us to Godliness and Vertue or to surmise that there is any thing Spiritual or Divine in the mere allegorizing of the Scripture For there is nothing Divine saving our full assurance of the holy Truths themselves that are delivered in the Gospel whether they be Life or History for this is a spiritual gift indeed But that we conceive that one may represent the other that is only the natural Nimbleness of our Phansy or a Dexterity accruing to us from Use and Education such as I question not but was in Saint Paul who was brought up a Pharisee theâ—efore was well versed in their Midrash or Mystical meaning of the History of the Old Testament which made him so prone to such applications in the New But this was no such special Inspiration or peculiar spiritual Attainment in him above the rest of the Apostles but merely a Cast of his Office a Specimen of his former Education which accustomed him to Allusions and Allegories in the interpreting of the Law So that I much pity those poor souls
that are so transported and overcome with those Allusions and Allegorical Reflexions as such high Attainments that they think themselves illuminated above the capacities of all other Mortals being more pleased with the gaudy colours of the Rainbow then with the pure light which is reflected thence Which yet all true Christians plainly see and feel in the simplicity of its own nature without any such cloudy refractions and know that the rest is not the dictate of the Spirit but the mere service of Phansy lending its aid to the setting forth of divine Perceptions And yet this slight sallad is the chief food this pretended Prophet feeds his followers withall and the greatest demonstration of his being extraordinarily called and inspired 5. For as for Miracles he never did any as you may see in that Book of his Life entituled Mirabilia Dei where nothing miraculous is recorded unless a certain Prophetical Dream wherein he seemed to be frighted together with some devotional expressions after he awakened out of it as also a lucky escape out of the hands of his Persecutors who haply being not so vigilant as they might be the phrase of the story makes them struck with blindness and lastly his witty questions and answers to the Priest or Confessor when he was a child wherein he does so fully utter the chief of his Doctrine that he seems as wise at eight years old as ever he was since though he lived to a very considerable Age. But any one that has any insight in things may easily discern that the Discourse was never intended for a true History but a spiritual Romance So that as petty businesses as these are they have no assurance of their truth 6. Now for his Pretensions of being the most eminent Preacher of Perfection it is a mere Boast For whether he means by Perfection Love which is the perfection of the Law it cannot be more clearly and advantageously preached then it is in the New Testament by Christ and his Apostles And what Comparison is there betwixt such a Teacher of Love who being the declared Son of God by Signes and Miracles gave his life out of dear compassion to mankind and a soft Fellow that onely talks fine phrases to the World Or whether he pretend to a more general Perfection in the divine Graces or holy Life whose Root is true Faith in God and his Promises through Christ and the branches Charity Humility and Purity it shall appear anon that as for true Faith he is perfectly fallen from it and that he is as a dead tree pulled up from the root And for the present it is evident also out of his own writings not to charge him with accusations out of others that he is far from being perfect either in Charity Humility or Purity For what greater sign of Uncharitableness then to charge all men that are not of his Communialty to be of the Synagogue of Satan and children of the Devil and what greater Pride then to prefer himself before Abraham Moses and Christ and make as if he were God himself come to judge the World with his thousands of Saints and Seraphims And lastly what greater Symptoms of Lust Impurity then to be sunk down from all sense and presage of a life to come To say nothing of his complaints in his Glasse of Righteousness of such as came in to spy out their liberty and his lusty animations against Shamefacedness and Modesty in men and women and their shiness to such acts as ordinary Bashfulness is loath to name Which in my apprehension are very foul spots in that Glasse of his as if it had been breathed upon by the mouth of a menstruous Woman 7. But there is also a more subtil Uncleanness from which who is not free if he knew his own weakness he would be ashamed to profess himself perfect and that is the Impurity of the Astral Spirit in which is the Seat and Dominion of unruly Imagination Hence are our Sidereal or Planet-strucken Preachers and Prophets who being first blasted themselves blast all others that labour with the like impurity by their Fanatick Contagion Those in whom Mortification has not had its full work nor refined the Inmost of their natural Complexions are subject to be smitten and overcome by such Enthusiastick storms till a more perfect Purification commit them to the safe custody of the Intellectual Powers Wherefore let this pretended Prophet boast as much as he will of his glorious Resurrection from the dead it is manifest to the more perfect that he has not yet so much as passed through that Death that should have led him to the unshaken Kingdome of Truth and letten him in to the immovable Calmness and serene stilness of the Intellectual World where the Blasts and Blusters of the Astral Spirit cease and the Violence of Phansy perverts not the faithful representations of Eternal Reason For God is not in these fanatick Herricanoes no more then he was in the tempestuous Wind Earthquake or Fire that passed before the Prophet Elias But the Divine Truth is to be found in that still small voice which is the Echo of the Eternal Word not urg'd upon us by that furious Impulse of complexionall Imagination but descending from the Father of lights with whom there is no shadow of change This was an Attainment out of this Boasters reach of which he had not the least sense or presage and therefore was wholy given up to the hot scalding Impressions of misguided Phansy in his Astral Spirit Which being strangely raised and exalted in this false light has a power by words or writings to fire others and to intoxicate them with the same heat and noise in their enravished Imagination whereby that still and small voice of Incomplexionate Reason cannot be heard CHAP. XIV 1. That neither H. Nicolas nor his Doctrine was prophesied of in Holy Scripture That of the Angel preaching the Everlasting Gospel groundlesly applied to him 2. As also that place Iohn 1.21 of being That Prophet 3. His own mad Application of Acts 17. v. 31. to himself 4. Their Misapplication of 1 Cor. 13. v. 9 10. and Hebr. 6. v. 1 2. to the Doctrine of this new Prophet 5. Their arguing for the authority of the Service of the Love from the Series of Times and Dispensations with the Answer thereunto 6. That the Oeconomie of the Family of Love is quite contrary to the Reign of the Spirit 7. That the Author is not against the Regnum Spiritûs the Cabbalists also speak of but onely affirms that this Dispensation takes not away the Personal Offices of Christ nor the External comeliness of Divine Worship 8. That if this Regnum Spiritûs is to be promoted by the Ministry of some one Person more especially it follows not that it is H. Nicolas he being a mere mistaken Enthusiast or worse 1. AND therefore being blinded with the wind and dust of this Fanatick Tempest they are carried on
the Immortality of the Soul the main Branches of the ancient Cabbala was also communicated But it is no where said nor can be conceived That God the Father distinctly from the Son and Holy Ghost gave the Law to Moses but it was an act as all acts ad extra are of the entire Godhead Nor is the Father nor the Holy Spirit excluded in the oeconomie of the Gospel but their Glory is acknowledged coequal and their Majesty coeternal Nor again can the Church ever cease to be under the Belief of Iesus Christ so as that any other God-service should justle that out by its succession For the Belief of the Promises of Christs coming again visibly to Judgement and Crowning his true members with Eternal Life and Glory must of necessity continue till the Promises themselves be fulfilled Which are but phantastically conceived to be fulfilled in the Service of the Love 6. Moreover how can that Dispensation pretend to be the Ministry of the Spirit where men are kept off from believing the inward manifestations of their own Mind where alone they can be properly said to be taught of God and urged to give up all their Light and Consciences to be rul'd at the pleasure of the Elders of his Family This is not to be inspired by God but to be taught merely by men and to be carved and shaped out like a piece of dead Marble by the hand of the Statuary So wholy unlike the Dispensation of the Spirit is this Oeconomie of the Service of the Love Beside that it is a piece of Rapine and Robbery to appropriate that to their Family which is the Peculiar of every true Believer in Christ who assuredly have the assistance of the Holy Spirit as I have proved at large in the following parts of my Discourse 7. But if any one will adventure to affirme That after this dead Forme of Religion and external flattery of the Person of Christ which has continued too-many Ages there will succeed a more general Reign of the Spirit of Life and experimental knowledge of his Sceptre and Power in us subduing all his enemies there under his feet and renewing the World in true Righteousness and Holiness it is that which I in no wise oppose nay I must confess I have a fatal and unalterable propension to think it to be true and that this may be that Regnum Spiritús which the Cabbalists of old did presage and does begin with the Reviving of the Witnesses in the Apocalypse of S. Iohn Of which things I have already spoke But in the mean time this is not the special work of any one man but like the Vision of Ezekiel where Breath comes from the four Winds of Heaven upon the bones already covered with sinews flesh and skin and behold they lived and stood upon their feet an exceeding great Army an orderly Company such as the Church of Christ ought to be For this Internal power of the Spirit will not annul or destroy the External Frame of Christian Religion as it referrs to the Offices of the Person of Christ the Head of his Church as these Satanical Impostors would pretend but rectifie and corroborate it and make it more irreprehensibly and enravishingly beautifull as there was more lustre in those raised Bodies after the Spirit of life had entred into them then when they were mere dead carkasses 8. Besides if we did conceive that this Dispensation of Christ in the Spirit was to be in a more special manner promoted by the Ministry of some one Person it does not at all follow that H. Nicolas is the man and not onely so but I am confident I shall make it manifest that it is impossible that it should be he Which I shall have sufficiently performed when I have demonstrated that he is nothing at all of that which he pretends to be but only a mere mistaken Enthusiast if not worse which was the last part of my Purpose And this I conceive is fully evinced by proving him to have laid aside all the Offices of the Person of Christ as he is Man and intercepted all the hopes of his Visible Return to Judgement in the clouds of Heaven and of rewarding all true Believers with that glorious Crown of Life in an Heavenly Body at the last day Which things are so clear in Scripture that the Scripture it self must loose its authority if these things once loose their belief as is manifest by what we have said already in this present Treatise And therefore he that denies these things it is plain he is not inspired of God but is a Minister and Factor for the Devil CHAP. XV. 1. That the Personal Offices of Christ are not to be laid aside That he is a Priest for ever demonstrated out of sundry places of Holy Writ 2. That the Office of being a Iudge is also affixed to his Humane Person proved from several Testimonies of Scripture 3. Places alledged for the excluding Christ's Humanity with Answers thereto 4. The last and most plausible place they do alledge with an Answer to the same 1. NOW that the Humane person of Christ as I may so call it is not to be laide aside is evident not to repeat what I have elsewhere alledged from the whole Epistle of the Author to the Hebrews For he that there is said to be an high Priest for ever is that very man who was crucified on the Cross at Ierusalem who was said to be like unto his brethren in all things that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things appertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted he is able to succour them that tempted And it is further clear that it is this very man we speak of in that he is said to be born not of the Tribe of Levi but of the Tribe of Iuda chap. 7.14 and yet he is there declared a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec Read the whole Chapter nothing can be more clearly asserted then the Everlasting high-Priesthood of this man who sanctifying the People with his bloud suffered without the gate Which are such particularities as must needs affix the Eternal high-Priesthood to the Humane person of Christ. Again in that he is said to suffer but once it is apparent that it is to be literally understood of his Humane person And every priest standeth dayly ministring and offering oftentimes the same Sacrifices which can never take away sins But this man after he had offered one Sacrifice for sins for ever sate down at the right hand of God c. And yet more fully in the foregoing Chapter For Christ is not entred into the holy places made with hands which are the figures of the true but into Heaven it self now to appear in the presence of God for us Nor yet that he should offer himself often as the high priest entreth into
Incarnation But the former sense is more plain and passable And for the other place it is nothing but an exhortation to Perseverance from the constancy of the Christian Rulers and Governours who persisted in their Faith to the end and the Apostle tells them hereupon that the Faith is the same still and Christ's assistance the same now that it was then to them and will be ever the same to all true Believers Which surely is all that is meant by Jesus Christ the same yesterday and to day and for ever For to make yesterday to signifie from everlasting is very rash and cross to the phrase of Scripture Psal. 90. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday and Job 8. For we are but of yesterday and know nothing Which is very true of these new upstart Interpreters 4. But their last and most plausible allegation is that out of the Corinthians Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh yea though we have known Christ after the flesh yet know we him so no more Here they think they have full commission to lay aside the Humane person of Christ from the Example of S. Paul But their mistake is in not knowing the Hebrew Idiom of this place of Scripture For as that excellent Interpreter Hugo Grotius has noted the words are to be rendred yea though we might have known Christ after the flesh that is to say Though I with others might have known Christ after the flesh and conversed with him here upon earth nay have been something a-kin to him as certain boasted themselves it seems at Corinth yet henceforth saith he we should know him after this manner no more but as an Heavenly Prince in whom he has the most interest that is the most nearly renewed into the image of his life Or without this Hebraisme It may be an oblique Monition to the aforesaid persons and have rather the nature of an Exhortation to them then of a Declaration concerning himself which they would be more certainly enforced to take to themselves by how much more plain it was that Paul never knew Christ according to the Flesh. That it has some such meaning as this and not that of our Adversaries is plain from the precedent verse where he expresly retains the Humane person of Christ in his Priestly office For that he saith that he is that one man that died for all not killed by all as I noted above that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him that died for them and rose again Which is not sense if it be not understood of the Humane person of Christ. And verse 20 he does plainly profess himself the Ambassadour of the crucified Iesus or Legate of the great Angel of the Covenant Now then we are Ambassadours for Christ as if God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the Righteousness of God in him Of which there can be no possible meaning that excludes the Humane person of Christ from his Priestly office We have therefore abundantly demonstrated That the Person of our Saviour is not to be laide aside but that he is a Priest for ever according to the Scriptures CHAP. XVI 1. That Hen. Nicolas does plainly in his Writings lay aside the Person of Christ as where he affirms That whatever is taught by the Scripture-learned is false and That all the Matters of the Bible are but Prefigurations of what concerns the Dispensation of his blessed Family 2. Other Citations to the same purpose and his accursed Allegory of Christ's celebrating his Passeover with his disciples whereby he would antiquate and abolish the true Historical knowledge of him 3. Several places where he evidently takes away the Priestly Office of Christ. 4. Others that plainly take away his glorious Return to Iudgement and the Resurrection of the dead in the true and Apostolical sense 1. WE shall now make it as evident that this pretended Prophet we speak of does lay him aside whereby we shall clearly convince the World of his falshood and imposture And this shall be chiefly out of his own Writings Out of which we shall first produce such passages as in a more general manner infer what we aim at As certainly such places doe as expresly declare That whatsoever is taught of Christ out of his Communialty of the Love is all false Whence it does plainly appear That the Articles of the Apostles Creed understood according to the Letter are held false by this inspired Communialty For these Articles are taught by them that are not of Hen. Nicolas his Family In his First Exhortation Chap. 5. he plainly declares That the true Belief in Jesus Christ is not to be found in any people upon Earth that walk without the Communialty of the Love And Chap. 16. Sect. 15 16. he tels us That it is a presumption against God and his Saints that any one out of the Learnedness of the Letter or out of the Imagination of the Knowledge taketh upon him to be a Teacher or Preacher or to institute or intermeddle in any God-service or Worship unless he be an illuminated Elder of the house of the Love And Sect. 17. He does affirm That it is all assuredly false and lies seducing and deceitfull whatever is taught by others out of the Learnedness of the Scripture Again in his Evangely Chap. 32. there also he asserts That to those that are without the Family of Love all the matters of Christianity to them are in Images Figures and Shadows in Similitudes Parables and closed Books Where his meaning is easily understood out of Chap. 30. sect 17. For these Figures he makes Shadows of the true and spiritual things which were heretofore through Iesus Christ come to pass seen heard and preached and have stood for a memorial of the true spiritual things which should in the time to come come to pass namely by this inspired Minister Whereby the History of Christ is made a mere Allegory and prophetick Prefiguration of what is fulfilled in his Dispensation of the Communialty of the Love wherein all becomes fulfilled in Christ whatsoever was written of him as he plainly asserts Chap. 1. sect 10. And he more abundantly declares himself in his Prophecie of the Spirit of Love Chap. 13. That a man out of his natural and Scripture-learned understanding has not any light or knowledge at all of the Christian Mystery yea he is so utterly void of the same that he cannot understand the smallest tittle thereof he may indeed speak out of the written Word but understandeth nothing thereof according to the truth but it is all covered and sealed before him in Similitudes Images Figures and Parables Where again it is easie to infer That this great Prophet holds nothing of the Articles of the Christian Faith to be true in that sense
the Love sect 3. and 7. See him also upon the Beatitudes sect 6. And it is no wonder we hear nothing of that Reconciliation made by the Cross of Christ for he does plainly aver sect 34. That the true being in the Love is that peace with God and man mentioned Ephes. 2.14 and the true Testament that standeth fast for ever And Exhortation chap. 12.44 Remission of sins is gained only by submitting to the House of the Love The same that David George boasted of his doctrine Therefore my beloved children change ye not nor turn away your selves from the House of Love For there is in the same the stool of grace to an everlasting remission of sins over all such as cleave thereon and to a peace and rest of the life to all such as humble them there-under By such slips and omissions as these those that are not very dull of perception may easily spel out his meaning Which yet is more clear by other places of his Evangely chap. 13. Where he setleth the Everlasting Priesthood not upon Christ's person but makes this Kingly Priest no person at all but a thing a state or condition of him and his followers here upon earth And therefore he calls there this mystical Christ The Lords Sabbath The seventh day in the Paradise of God The perfection c. And chap. 22. he makes the entrance of Christ into heaven and his visible ascending up thither and sitting at the right hand of God and sending down the holy Ghost at the day of Pentecost which was a real effect of his eternal Priesthood and Intercession with God for his Church nothing but the appearing of him according to the Spirit out of the Heavenly Being in their Minds or Souls upon which he sent down his Spiritual or Heavenly Powers Wherefore this Mystical Christ is the only high Priest that he acknowledgeth and will allow him no otherwise then in this mystical and spiritual sense to be an everlasting and true Christ of God See the place of which you will assure your self I have given the right sense if you compare it with chap. 26. sect 10 11 12. where he more plainly affirms That it is the upright being of the Love Christ after the Spirit which he calls the true light which is that high Priest that abideth for ever at the right hand of God in the Heavenly Being Which phrase Heavenly Being alwaies signifies morally or mystically with him and means something within us And yet he has the impudence to alledge Acts 1. v. 11. where Christ is said to ascend into Heaven literally and naturally so called his disciples gazing upon him as he went up Thus you see how industriously nay how madly and rashly he shuffles out the Humane person of Christ from his Priestly Office every where And as he will have the Heaven or most Holy within us so will he have his Sacrifice and Passion within us too Introduct chap. 8.38 Where doe any now saith he keep the Supper of Christ where they break distribute and eat the bread which is the true Body of Christ to a remembrance of Christ that he hath suffered in us for the sins cause the death of the Cross and so his death is published till he come in his glory Where it is plain that the Crucifixion of Christ is a mystery in us and it is insinuated a duty too For the Body and the Flesh of Christ is Christ according to the History Which Christ according to the Flesh is to be slain in us if we celebrate the Passeover aright and thus we must publish his death till he come in glory that is in the Spirit 4. And truely no other is his glorious coming to judgment with this Sect then this Mystical and Spiritual coming which was the second part I intended to pursue which I question not but I shall make as clear as noon-day Of this there are so many Testimonies and so pregnant that the only fear is of being too copious in the proof of this matter Revel Dei cap. 7. There his illuminate Elders together with his Family of Love are the Heavens in which Christ the Son of God comes gloriously and triumphantly to judgment to reign with God and his righteousness everlasting upon earth Which plainly excludes the ending of the World and that coming of Christ that all Christians expect And chap. 15. sect 6. he affirms that in this Eighth day which is the day of the Spirit of Love all the dead that are deceased in the Lord Iesus Christ do rise from the death and all Generations of Heaven and Earth do become judged in the judgement of God with equity Again in his Introduct Chap. 1. he saith That now the true glorious God who is the Resurrection and the Life revealeth his Saints out of his bosome where since the time they fel asleep they have rested untill this day of the Love because they should now in these last times in the resurrection of the righteous be manifested with Christ in glory to a righteous judgement of God on the earth And chap. 12. he there also affirms That in this day of the Love there appear and come to us livingly and gloriously all God's Saints which in times past died and fell asleep in God And chap. 22. there he also tells us how that in sure and firm hope of everlasting life the upright believers have rested in the Lord Iesus Christ till the appearing of his coming which is now in this day of the Love revealed out of the heavenly Being with which Iesus Christ the former Believers of Christ who were fallen asleep rested or died in him are now also manifested in glory being raised from the dead to the intent that they should reign alive with him over all his enemies To which you may add what he has wrote chap. 16. in his Prophecy of the Spirit of Love Make you to flight make you to flight yea get you now all out of the way ye enemies of the Lord and of his service of the Love and give the Lord with his holy ones the roome yet shall ye not escape the vengeance of God For he saith the Lord cometh to judge betwixt the Family of the Love and the rest of the world where-through the Earth is now moved the Heavens troubled the Elements melt with heat and the token of the coming of the Son of man appears in Heaven with which rumour or rushing noise of the power of God and his holy ones the last trumpet doth also presently give forth her sound through whose blast of her vehement sound and through the appearing of the coming of Christ the dead shall stand up and arise unto the judgement of God who having revenged the bloud of his holy ones that the sinners have spilt and shed upon the earth he puts this pure Family in peaceable Possession thereof that they may reign there-over or judge the same with righteousness from henceforth world without
end So that the completion of all the Prophets ends in the Triumph of Familism the same which David George boasted of himself See also chap. 15. sect 5. Lastly in his Evangely chap. 35.8 Behold in this same day namely of the Love is the Resurrection of the Lords dead come to pass through the appearing of the coming of Christ in his Majesty according to the Scriptures And a little after sect 9. In which resurrection of the dead God sheweth unto us that the time is now fulfilled that his dead or the dead that are fallen asleep in the Lord rise up in this day of his judgement and appear unto us in Godly glory which shall also henceforth live in us everlastingly with Christ and reign upon the Earth Of which the plain sense is That the Souls deceased so many hundred years agoe are alive again in these of the Family of Love and shall reign everlastingly in them with the Mystical Christ on the Earth Which plainly excludes that other Iudgement or Resurrection in the Literal sense as I said before Again chap. 4. sect 15. For this cause our hope standeth now in this day very little on many of the Inhabitants of the world but we hope with joy much more on the appearing of the dead that die in the Lord or are dead in him to wit that they in their resurrection from the death shall livingly come unto and meet with us For all the dead of the Lord and members of Christ shall now live and rise with their Bodies and we shall assemble us with them and they with us to one body in Iesus Christ into one lovely Being of the Love and be altogether concordable in the Love and peace of Iesus Christ. CHAP. XVII 1. His perverse Interpretation of that Article of the Creed concerning Life everlasting 2. His misbelief of the Immortality of the Soul proved from his forcible wresting of the most pregnant Testimonies thereof to his Dispensation and Ministry here on Earth 3. Their interpreting of the Heavenly Body mentioned 2 Cor. 4. and the unmarried state of Angels to the signification of a state of this present Life 4. That H. Nicolas as well as David George held there were no Angels neither good nor bad 5. Further Demonstrative Arguments that he held the Soul of man mortall 6. How sutable his laying aside of the Person of Christ is to these other Tenets 7. That H. Nicolas as highly as he magnifies himself is much below the better sort of Pagans His irreverent apprehension of the Divine Majesty if he held that there was any thing more Divine then himself 1. FInally as for that Article of the Creed concerning Life everlasting his exposition is this We confess that the same everlasting life is the true Light of men and that God hath made and chosen him the man thereto that he should live in the same light everlastingly Where by him the man he means the succession of mankind as any one may know that is but a little acquainted with his manner of writing and by everlasting life and the true light of men he means the Light of the Love and the Service thereof which he presages shall abide for ever Which therefore he cals the house of God's dwelling the eternal rest of his holy ones the everlasting fast-standing Ierusalem the true and indisturbable kingdome full of all Godly Power Ioy and of all heavenly Beautifulness wherein the land of the Lord with fulness of Eternal life and lively sweetness is sung from everlasting to everlasting With such sweet Charms and pleasing enchantments does this grand Deceiver lull asleep his little ones into an utter oblivion and perfect misbelief of those precious Promises of Everlasting Happiness made to us by Christ who hath brought Life and Immortality to light 2. For that there is with no other Life but this nor any Immortality of the Soul or blessed Resurrection which consists in the Soul 's being invested with an Heavenly and Spiritual body according to the plain and literal sense of Scripture his gross abuse of those two main proofs thereof 1 Cor. 15. 1 Thes. 4. do plainly demonstrate which he does wildly distort as he doth the rest of the Scripture to a mere prediction of his Service of the Love in which he will have every thing of the last Day and of the Resurrection fulfilled that we may be sure that there is nothing else to be expected but this For in this the last trump sounds Christ appears in the Heavens being come to judgement those very Saints that in time past died and fell asleep in the Lord are now raised up in glory and that with their bodies and livingly come unto and meet with us according to that in 1 Thes. 4. and lastly these raised Saints that is the Family of Love shall thus reign with their mystical Christ upon earth for ever world without end What interpretation of Scripture can more accurately and radically take away all expectation of Christs personal coming to Judgement and the hope of a Blessed Immortality included therein by the resurrection of the dead then this of this bold Author Which we may be the better assured he intends in that his applications are so miserably forced and yet he has no better proofs then these for the ratifying of his Service of the Love For if he thought they did signifie that which all Christians think they do he could fancy no force at all in them for the establishing of his Doctrine but the orthodox meaning seeming to him utterly incredible makes him confident that he has found out the right sense if he deal bonâ fide and takes not the Scripture for a mere Fable which he may abuse as he pleases 3. For we may observe him using the same industry in eluding the force of such places as are plain for an Immortal state after this life even there where he may seem unconcerned if he held the Soul of man Immortal As that 2 Cor. 5. where the Promise of the Heavenly or Spiritual body is evidently set down as appears further out of the last verses of the precedent chapter and yet these Familists are not ashamed to expound it of the most holy of the true Tabernacle in their canting language whereby they mean the perfection of the Love a state in this life as you may see in their Mirabilia Dei. And in the Spiritual Land of peace That which is writ Luk. 20.35 concerning the children of the Resurrection that they are neither married nor given in marriage but are as the Angels of God he applies to the state of the Service of the Love and makes it fulfilled in his life Which is an Allegory so cross and crooked that nothing but an unbelief of the literal sense could ever have put a man upon the framing of it besides that scurvy intimation it bears along with it of community of wives the very same doctrine that David George is said to
though the Will appear as authentick as any can do should pretend that they had burnt the true Will and forged this to his damage whenas yet he cannot prove the least tittle of this Imputation Nay I may say it is far more foolish then this For this may be feasable to burn a single Writing and then make a new one in the stead But it is altogether impossible for the Enemies of the Church ever to have suppressed or made away with those First true Copies of the Gospel which doubtlesse were in the custody of many thousand persons in severall parts of the world For the Writings being so very little in bulk and of so great concernment what Christian would not have a copy of them that was but able to reade Besides that there is not the least hint in History of any such thing Nor indeed can any Historian witnesse of matters of this kinde For who could assure him if there had been any attempt of burning them that they were all burnt and if any were but left they would multiply again in a moment and that but few would be delivered up we may be very well assured when they bore such love to that Truth they conteined that they preferred it before their own lives 3. It is therefore undoubtedly true that the Copies that we have this day of the Evangelists are Transcripts from their first Originals without any Interruption The only scruple that remains now is concerning our third and last Conclusion whether they may not be altered and depraved in some measure in so long succession of time either by chance or the pious frauds of the Church To which I answer in the first place That it is incredible but that the Gospels should escape as well as the Writings of Plato Aristotle or Tully if we look at only such alterations as may proceed from the heedlesnesse of the Transcribers and yet no man doubteth but that their Writings do now fully communicate their mindes to the World concerning those things they do declare as fully and perfectly as they themselves writ them And as for any pious frauds of the Church I answer That the Church was more simple and honest in the Apostolical times and some Ages after within which compasse so many Copies of the Gospel were extant and so dispersed throughout the World that they could not adulterate those Writings if they would For as I have said already those Writings being of so little a bulk and consequently the Transcription of them so easie the Copies would be multiplied almost equally to the number of Christians I mean of those that could reade and being so holy a Writ the Transcription be made with all possible care and circumspection For certainly Christians were very serious in their Religion in those dayes Besides it is very reasonable to believe that a special Providence would keep off both chance and fraud from wronging so Sacred Writings in any thing materiall and if not materiall what are they the worse Not to mention how Awe and Reverence to such holy Writings would naturally hold them off from mingling any thing by way of fraud or intermedling with them and the Effect makes good this presage For in perusing of them we plainly discover that Harmony and agreement of one thing with another that we may be well assured that there is nothing spurious or adulterate foisted into the Text. The multitude of various Lections also further confirms our Conclusion which is an argument of the multitudes of Copies I spoke of and the collection of these various readings a Testimony even of the faithfulnesse of these later Ages oft he Church and of the high reverence they had to these Records in that they would not so much as embesell the various Readings of them but keep them still on foot for the prudent to judge of And lastly upon perusall of those various Readings the clear discovery that nothing at all is lost of the Truth of Christian Religion by any of them and consequently no detriment or prejudice done to any but such as are more for factions and opinions then the real power of Godliness this also ratifies the Truth we drive at namely That those Copies of the Gospel which we daily peruse are incorrupted and that therefore those things contained in them are certainly true as being writ by the pens of those who had sufficient knowledge of what they declare being either Eye-witnesses of the same or conferring with them that were and both of that unsuspected Integrity that the like is not to be found in any Witnesses else in the World CHAP. XII 1. More particular Characters of the Person of the Messiah in the Prophecyes 2. His being born at Bethlehem 3. And that of a Virgin 4. His curing the lame and the blinde 5. The piercing of his hands and feet 1. THus have we undeniably demonstrated the Truth of the Gospel and the things therein contained and consequently the Certainty and Reality of the Christian Religion which being done we can now more seasonably adde some few Characters more of the Person of the Messiah so particular and expresse that it may justly ravish us with the admiration of so punctuall a Providence as is discoverable therefrom in Predictions and Prophecies I will not instance in many because we have already finished our designe and those that love to abound more in matters of this nature may consult others that have handled them more fully and copiously We shall only resume what we above mentioned of his being born at Bethlehem of the Family of David and that of a Virgin his making the blinde to see and the lame to walk the piercing of his hands and feet and their casting lots for his vesture That these things were true of him the Gospel plainly testifies and that they were prophesied of him is as plain out of the Prophecies of the Old Testament which we shall here recite 2. And first that of Micah But thou Bethlehem Ephratah though thou be little among the thousands of Judah yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in Israel whose goings forth are from old from the dayes of Eternity This is a very particular description of the Person of the Messiah from the place of his birth And it was the confessed glosse of the chief Priests and Scribes upon this Text as appears Matt. 2.4 5. To which Episcopius addes the suffrage of the Chaldee Paraphrast and R. Solomon Iarchi But that which makes this prediction and the divine Providence more admirable are the Circumstances of its completion For Bethlehem was not the Town of abode of either Ioseph or Mary nor went they thither at that time of their own accord nor upon an ordinary occasion but Augustus surely not without some special incitation from above made a Decree that all the World that is all under the Romane Empire should have their names enrolled in publick Records Wherefore all
rightly either Morall or Divine only tumbling out a Rhapsody of swelling words distorted Allegories and slight allusions to the History of Scripture intermingling them or strinkling them ever and anon with the specious name of Love though there be no motive nor reason that urges the thing it self all the while would give out himself such a Master of this Mystery as that Christianity must be super-annuated and all the devotionall Homage due to our Saviour laid aside all his Offices silenced his Passion slighted nay derided his visible Return to Judgement anticipated and eluded his Resurrection and Ascension misbelieved and the promise of Eternal Life swallowed up in the present glorious enjoyments and enrichments of them that will give up their soundness of judgement and reason to be led about with the May-games and Morrice-dances of that sweet Sect that have usurped to themselves the Title of the Family of Love Whenas the Authour of this Faction as I am well enough informed was more likely to prove a Pimp or second Sardanapalus then a true Instructor of the World in so holy a Mystery being infamous for having suspected Females in his House and living splendidly and deliciously above his rank noted for his crimson-Satten doublet and other correspondent habiliments as also for his large Looking-glass wherein he often contemplated his whole begodded Humanity and composing his long beard and stroaking down his Satten sides might strut in admiration of himself that he found the World so favourable to his false Impostures and lastly ridiculous for his women-Scribes and other such like soft doings not to say impure and obscene All which to any man that has but a moderate nasuteness cannot but import that in the title of this Sect that call themselves the Family of Love there must be signified no other love then that which is merely Natural or Animal though the Preacher of this Love-mystery bears himself so aloft and is so high upon the wing that he cannot phansie himself any thing lesse then that Apocalypticall Angel flying in the midst of Heaven and preaching the everlasting Gospel to the Inhabitants of the World And truly this Gospel of Henry of Amsterdam is likely to be as lasting as the generations of men and I may adde as universall as both Men and Brutes 3. Hear O Heavens and hearken O Earth while I pleade the cause of the just one and despised against the rebellious Hypocrites Thus saith the Lord God Behold I lay in Sion for a foundation a stone a tried stone a precious corner-stone a sure foundation and he that believes thereon shall not be ashamed Iudgement also will I lay to the line and righteousness to the plummet and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lyes and the waters shall overflow their hiding-places That this corner-stone and sure foundation is Christ that suffered at Ierusalem we are infallibly informed by those that were truly inspired the blessed Apostles That the refuge of lyes and hiding-place is most naturally applicable to this skulking Family is apparent in that the summe of their Religion is nothing but a bundle of lying Allegories and Canting Terms whereby they deal falsly with men and under the pretence of fine Mystical speeches would thrust out of the World the choicest and most beneficiall Truth that ever was imparted to the Sons of men I mean the Truth of the Gospel in the plain simplicity thereof whereby we are so clearly taught what we are to be to do and to expect And the Storm that shall overtake them and the Deluge that shall fall in upon them in their hidden dwellings shall be those Torrents of Reason and that irresistible conviction from the sincere and true-hearted followers of Christ. Tell me therefore O ye conceitedly-inspired whose phancies have blown you above Gospel-dispensations why do you run into the errour of the Jews and refuse this precious corner-stone this sure foundation and build upon disunited Sand and rotten Quagmires that will bear no weight Why do you lay aside Christ in the truth of his History the most palpable pledge of Divine Providence of God's Reconciliation to men and of future Happiness that ever was exhibited to the World and chuse for your Guide a mere Allegorical Whisler an Idol-Puppet dressed up in words and phrases filched out of the Scripture but perverting and eluding the main scope and most usefull meaning thereof Why have ye forsaken the only-begotten Sonne of God and given your selves up to the deceivable conduct of a mere carnall man and wholy destitute not only of true faith in God and Christ but of all substantial Knowledge and Reason Why are you so rash and giddy as to believe one that only testifies of himself and is so impudent a Plagiary as to offer you no wares but such as he has stolne from you if you pretend to be of the Christian Church and those so poisoned and adulterated that you cannot receive them without the danger of being struck into a misbelief of the truth of Christs Gospel and of revolting from him to whom so many illustrious Prophecies of old so many Miracles done by himself to whom his wonderfull Resurrection from the dead and audible voices from Heaven while he was living gave ample testimony that he was indeed the true Son of God 4. What indearing evidence or argument has this Mercer of Amsterdam given you of true compassion and love to mankinde that you should vaunt him so transcendent a Mystagogus in so divine a Mystery that you equalize him to nay exalt him above Christ and his Apostles Did he not live a lazy easie soft life as other rich Shop-keepers do whenas not only our Saviour himself but also his Apostles lived an hard Asketick life full of dangers and afflictions also from without Let S. Paul speak for the rest for they were in a manner all of them in the same case and might justly expostulate with these high fanatick Pretenders in the same words Are they Ministers of Christ I speak like a fool I am more in labours more abundant in stripes above measure in prisons more frequent in deaths often Of the Iews received I fourty stripes save one thrice was I beaten with rods once was I stoned thrice I suffered shipwrack a night and a day have I been in the Deep in Iourneyings often in perils of water in perils of Robbers in perils by mine own Countreymen in perils by the Heathen in perils in the City in perils in the wildernesse in perils at the sea in perils among false brethren in wearinesse and painfulnesse in watchings often in hunger and thirst in fastings often in cold and nakednesse c. To all which you may adde very despightfull and torturous deaths which most of them underwent at last and all this out of a faithfull love to their Lord and Master Jesus Christ and a dear regard to the good and Salvation of mankinde But what was it wherewith this H. N.
his Church cannot cease himself not ceasing to be but he is a Priest and King for ever according to the Prophecies CHAP. IV. 1. Our Saviour's strict injunction of Purity from whence it is also plain that the Love he commends is not in any sort fleshly but Divine 2. Several places out of the Apostles urging the same duty 3. Two more places to the same purpose 4. The groundless presumption of those that abuse Christianity to a liberty of sinning 5. That this Errour attempted the Church betimes and is too taking at this very day 6. Whence appears the necessity of opposing it which he promises to doe taking the rise of his Discourse from 1 Iohn 3.7 1. THE third Branch of the Divine Life is Purity In the urging whereof both Christ and his Apostles being so earnest it is plain that that Love which they recommend to the World can be no suspected affection like that which the canting language of the Enthusiasts may justly be thought to favour but that it is that pure and holy Love indeed which deservedly we have styled Divine And how severely this Purity we speak of is required I shall give you some few but very sufficient instances Matth. 5.27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time Thou shalt not commit adultery But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already with her in his heart And if thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee for it is better for thee that one of thy members should perish then that thy whole body should be cast into Hell And if thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee c. What more serious and earnest monition can there be made to Continence and Abstinence from sensual pleasures then this of our Saviour who upon no less penaltie then the torments of Hell interdicts us all looseness and uncleanness forbidding us all preludious preparations to the foul acts of Lust and not permitting so much as an imaginary scene of illicit transactions to which our will could really assent if opportunity were offered 2. And we shall find the Apostles insisting in the footsteps of their Master in this matter 2. Corinth 6. Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separated saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you And I will be a Father unto you and ye shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty Having therefore these promises dearly beloved let us cleanse our selves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of God And 1 Thessalon 5. The God of peace sanctifie you wholy and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Iesus Christ. And in the former chapter ver 3. For this is the will of God even your sanctification that ye should abstain from fornication That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour not in the lust of concupiscence as the Gentiles that know not God And 1 Corinth 6. ver 13. Now the bodie is not for fornication but the Lord and the Lord for the bodie And God hath both raised up the Lord and will also quicken us by his own power Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot God forbid And a little after Flee fornication Every sin that a man doth is without the body but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body What know ye not that your Body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost in you which ye have of God and ye are not your own For ye are bought with a price therefore glorifie God in your bodie and in your Spirit which are God's Also Coloss. 3.5 Mortifie therefore your members which are upon the earth Fornication Uncleanness immoderate affection evil Concupiscence and Covetousness which is Idolatry For which things sake the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience Parallel to which is that Ephes. 5.3 Walk in love as Christ also hath loved us but fornication and all uncleanness and covetousness let it not be so much as once named amongst you as becomes saints Neither filthiness nor foolish talking which are not convenient but rather giving of thanks For this ye know that no whoremonger nor unclean person nor covetous man who is an Idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdome of Christ and of God Let no man deceive you with vain words for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience Be not you therefore partakers with them And 1 Corinth 6.9 Know ye not the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdome of God Be not deceived neither fornicatours nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdome of God 3. I have made a more ample collection of the enforcements of this duty of Purity and Sanctity then I intended and yet I cannot abstain from adding of two more the one out of S. Peter 1 Epist. ch 2. Dearly beloved I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. The other out of him which I have already so often cited Rom. 13.12 The night is far spent and the day is at hand let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light Let us walk honestly as in the day not in rioting and drunkenness not in chambring and wantonness not in strife and envying But put ye on the Lord Iesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof 4. I have now abundantly shewn how plainly and explicitly Christ and his Apostles urge all men that are hearers of the Gospel to be carefull and conscionable doers of the same that they should be holy even as Christ was holy in all manner of conversation that they are bound to endeavour and aspire after the participation of the Divine life and all the Branches thereof Humility Love and Purity hating even the garment spotted by the flesh as the Apostle Iude speaks And how this Holiness and Righteousness is required of them with no less seriousness and earnestness then upon the forfeiture of their eternal Salvation if they do not act according to those Precepts Insomuch that I stand amazed while I consider with my self that hellish and abominable gloss that some have put upon the Gospel as if it were a mere school of loosness and that the end of Christs coming into the world was but to bring down a commission to the sons of men whereby they might be enabled to sin with authority I am sure with all desirable security and impunity nothing
that lye in the highest Paroxysms of sickness the actions of whom are rather to be deemed Actiones Hominis then Humanae and so they to be acquitted of them But those words are so sober that they want no such Apologie especially if it be free to interpret them according to the latitude of the Hebrew Text from whence they are taken For lama will signifie how as well as why and then it is nothing but a speech of one bemoaning himself in the present sense of his insupportable desertion 9. What others gather of Distractedness in our Saviour and broken Forgetfulness that he should pronounce himself forsaken of him who himself was for he was God and so complain of an impossibility that Allegation argues more shortness of Understanding in themselves For the Humanity of Christ was not God for so he had not been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God and man but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 twice God but he being only God by Union even that union holding there may be this desertion of the Humanity As the Sun at Christ's Passion not disjoined from the World yet for the time deserted the World by withdrawing its light from it But if this will not doe there is another way to make good this Imputation of Madness against Him who was deservedly styled the Wisdome of God And this they will confirm even by the verdict of his own friends Mark 3.21 And when his friends heard of it they went out to lay hands on him for they said He is beside himself But indeed this is the fate of all almost that are more then ordinarily wise to be accounted little better then mad For they having either higher or contrary apprehensions to the vulgar and consequently acting many times contrary to them they can hardly escape the suspicion of Madness the multitude of their judges even the meanest of them having not so mean a conceit of himself but that he is even infallible in those things which he has for so long a time together held as true without any controll in himself or of others And I remember a passage somewhere in Trismegist where the Instructer in high mysteries when he had enlightned his Son Tatius forewarns him of the reproach he would undergoe from the Vulgar that he would certainly seem to them as a man distracted And this also was the condition of Democritus whom the people out of over-much pitty and officiousness desired Hippocrates to use his best skill to cure as troubled with the Phrensy which he intending to set to the next day was over night advertized by a divine vision or dream that it was not Democritus that was mad but the People And to return again to the Text alledged if we follow the not-unprobable conjectures of some the people will also be here found to be the mad-men and not Christ For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will agree as well with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as with Christ and the actions of the Multitude are more suitable with madness then any thing recorded there of him For the people did tumultuously flock together and was so troublesome it seems that men could not eat their meat quietly for them wherefore there being that fervour and heat in the multitude Christ's friends went out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to take Christ by the hand and lead him out of the Croud or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Multitude 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For it was said the Multitude or People are mad or beside themselves Which is a thing too often credible whether this Text prove it or no. 10. As for the Tenth and Eleventh accusations of Debaucherie and Looseness of life Prodigality and needless Lavishments which are a near strain to the height of the worst kind of Madness they are expresly set down in Scripture And our Saviour himself knew what a fame went of him Luke 7.33 34. Iohn the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine and ye say He hath a Devil The Son of man is come eating and drinking and ye say Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber a friend of Publicans and Sinners For in the following verses that woman in the city which is said to be a sinner which bestowed so much cost and affection upon our Saviour was such an one prostitutae pudicitiae mulier as Beza interprets it But what her demeanour was toward our Saviour Christ is there set down She stood behind him weeping and began to wash his feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment Which ointment in the other Gospel is said to be a box of Spikenard very pretious Which familiar and affectionate officiousness and sumptuous cost together with that sinister fame that woman was noted with could not but give much scandal to the Pharisees there present For that dispensation of the Law under which they lived making nothing perfect but only curbing the outward actions of men it might very well be that they being conscious to themselves of no better motions within then of either Bitterness or Lust how fair soever they carried without could not deem Christ's acceptance of so familiar and affectionate service from a woman of that fame to proceed from any thing better then some loose and vain principle and that therefore the Prophet was grown idly-minded or that he was no Prophet at all But he was both a Prophet and constantly sober-minded and unblamable even in this matter For he knew that she had been sometime a Convert as well as heretofore a Sinner whose Conversion our Saviour he having several times conversed with her either begun or confirmed by that his conversation For he balk'd no company as a good Physitian declines no patient nor disease And certainly that great miracle which Iesus wrought upon her brother for this was Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus whom Christ raised from the dead could not but fully settle her in a firm faith and love of God and Jesus Christ whom he had sent Whereby her heart at that time being full of the joiful remembrances of the mercy and goodness of God every way exhibited to her by this man Christ as Remission of sins true Instructions in Righteousness Newness of life and the regaining of her dear brother Lazarus from the grave out of a deep sense of the love of God and thankfull regard to him through whom all that was manifested and made good to her she did overflow with kindness and thankfulness the expressions whereof moving no sense of evil to our Saviour his sanctified body being as pure and immovable as consecrated marble the golden wings of the Cherubims in the Temple or that very alabaster that bore in it the pretious ointment it had been not only Incivility but even Impiety to have given any check or discountenance to this devout Convert in this her full carier of sincere love and thankfull affection Which certainly whatever it
Madness by the formal Pharisee 12. His Proneness to judge the true Christian according to the motions of his own untamed corruptions 13. His prudent choice of the vice of Covetousness 14. The Unreasonableness of his censure of those that endeavour after Perfection 15. His ignorant surmise that no man liveth vertuously for the love of Vertue it self 16. The Usefulness of this Parallelisme betwixt the Reproach of Christ and his true Members 1. AND thus you have seen Christ vindicated from all those several Suspicions and Aspersions laid upon him by malicious and ignorant men whereby they would represent him as not possessed of nor acting from so Noble and Divine a Principle of Righteousness as he himself profest and his Followers have ever witnessed of him In which I confess I have been something more large then might have been expected in pleading the cause of a Person so perfectly pure and innocent But I considering our Saviour Christ not so much in himself as in his members I mean his true members who have one common Spirit with him and how they are liable to the same accusations and misconstructions of spightfull and inconsiderate men that himself was in the flesh I thought it fit more fully to insist upon the clearing and well and rightly interpreting of all the Carriages of Christ that thereby those that call themselves his members may know better how to interpret one another or if they be not so themselves that they may however learn not to judge rashly and inconsiderately of them that are and walk indeed as he walked And that my foregoing pains may be the more effectual to this purpose I shall not stick to second them so far as to shew how men ordinarily cast the same or the like soil and dirt upon the truest members of Christ that they did upon Christ himself 2. And that you may take in this with the more evidence give me leave to prefix in your mind the right Image of a true Christian or living member of Christ. And such an one is he who is a branch of the same Vine has derived into him the same sap and Life partakes of one and the same Divine spirit with Christ the fruit whereof is to love God with all a mans heart and with all his Soul and his neighbour as himself and to doe so to others as he himself would be done to And that I may not name that only which seems nothing in too many mens eyes I add also To know and acknowledge the only true God and Iesus Christ whom he hath sent And surely whosoever has this in its due measure and vigour of life is conscious to himself and finds the sweet of so great and glorious an accomplishment of Mind that whatever the Wit or Humour of man can add to it will seem of little more value then dust and straws we tread under our feet 3. And now I have told you what a true and living Member of Christ is let me also tell you what a false or titular or Pharisaical Christian is And he is this One that has not the Divine Sap or Spirit derived to him as being and growing in and becoming one with the true Vine Christ Jesus and is not possess'd nor is sensible of that Sufficiency Joy and Satisfaction that is in the inward Life of Christ and the Spirit of Righteousness and eternal and undispensable Truth of God But being dead to what is most necessary pretious and saving in Christianity and only alive or mainly to the Spirit of the world loves himself with all his heart and all his soul and God and his Neighbour only for his own sake or rather uses and rides his Neighbour having haltered him or obliged him with some prudentially and judiciously-bestowed courtesies and worships God rather then loves him nè noceat beseeching him that upon a special Dispensation though he be no better then others nor ever intends nor hopes to be better yet that it may be better with him in the end then with other folk Let me die the death of the righteous and let my latter end be like his Or it may be what is little better then that in stead of the living Righteousness of Christ he will magnifie himself in some humorous pieces of Holiness of his own For he imagines there is a God and that it is safe to make a friend of him one way or other and therefore that his conscience may be the better excused from those things that are more weighty and substantial he will take up things according to his own humour and phansie as fasting twice in the week making long prayers hearing long sermons sticking curiously to some unnecessary uncertain and fruitless opinions concerning God and Religion such as are warrantable neither out of Scripture nor Reason and growing very hot and zealous in the agitation of these things though to the Disturbance of the Church of God and Injury of his Neighbour yet these trinkets and trumperies of his own humour and complexion this Heat this Noise this Zeal these are the Altar Fire and Holocaust wherewith he sacrifices to God and presents himself an Oblationer before the Almighty And all this to be excused from that which is the very End of all Religion and Worship that is the sacrificing of our own corrupt life and acquiring that prize that is set before us the holy Spirit of Righteousness Equity and Purity whose moderation and guidance is the Light of the world and the Life of man 4. And having thus though but loosely and rudely scattered the delineaments of these two opposite professours of Christianity the true Christian and Pharisaical Humorist I shall from hence as from the Cause and Original derive evidence and light to what I shall now propose to you by way of Parallelisme betwixt what our Saviour in his own person suffered of false Accusations and Aspersions and what his true and living Members are obnoxious to from that Spirit of Pharisaisme that has ever and does to this very day rule still in the world And first of the first Accusation that was laid to our Saviours charge viz. Blasphemy He hath spoken Blasphemy Matth. 26. It is apparent the Pharisaical nature being desirous to be excused from destroying and bringing to nothing in ones self all haughty and ambitious Designes Self-seeking Covetousness and Intemperance doth easily endeavour to make amends for this and to pacifie the conscience and approve ones self to God by laying out all our parts in spinning excellent high Subtilties and amazing Mysteries from any hints taken in Scripture and in adorning the nature of God and Religion according to the garishness of a mans own natural Phansie and Nicety of Wit Whence it may come to pass that these Traditionary Pharisees having made it their business to rack their natural unregenerate minds to find some magnificent conceptions as they imagine them to bestow upon the Deity that one freed by Christ
no better a dispensation then under the Law is plainly a Stranger to them For the Law conveies no life but all congruity sympathy and vital affinity must arise out of a Principle of life And hence it is that the Law makes nothing perfect and that Righteousness cannot be of the Law as I have above intimated out of the Apostle The Law therefore giving no life a mere Legalist is even a stranger to those things he practices and imitates under the Law and acts so as the Parot speaks by external imitation not from a due inward Faculty Secondly This Agar her condition was a bond-woman and what I pray you is it to be in bondage or not sui juris but to be constrained to act ad nutum alterius And in this condition are all those that are under the Law For they do not act according to a free inward and living Principle in them but are fain to be curb'd and fettered by an outward imposition which is perfect and proper bondage And there is no bondage but to doe or suffer otherwise then a man would himself 3. Thirdly Of this Agar is begot Ismael What 's that Ismael may signifie these two things viz. either one that has only a knowledge of God by hearsay from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 audire and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deus or so far as some external letter conveies it to him resolving all his faith in things concerning God into an outward Scripture only and haply is so earthly and carnal that he would scarce believe there were a God unless it were for the Scripture Or else from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 obedire from obeying God in a servile and external forc'd way For Obedience implies some kind of reluctancy or that that which we obey in goes something against the hair with us but yet in obedience to the Commander we doe it nevertheless as being bound to obey And this is most of all proper to them under the first Covenant For that Law not giving life there is no Principle of life and natural and genuine compliance of the Soul of man with the spirituality of the Law under the First Covenant and therefore that of the Law which he endeavours to perform must needs go cross to him and it will be merely the obedience to the Precept not the love of the thing that will make him endeavour the performance And this is the true condition of Agar's Son Ismael And it would not be unseasonable to add also that he is a great and fierce Disputer upon the letter a notable Polemical Divine and his ignorance and untamedness of his carnal heart makes him very bold and troublesome his hand is against every man and every mans hand against him as the Scripture witnesses of him But I will not insist upon these things Fourthly and lastly This Ismael the Son of Agar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was begotten and born after the flesh or according to the ordinary and accustomary power of Nature And such an one is he that is merely under the First Covenant He is not born of the Spirit or regenerated 〈…〉 nary power and assistance of God which he that is un 〈…〉 Covenant takes hold of by Faith in the Promise but toiles and tugs with that Understanding and ordinary Naturall power is in him of externally conforming himself to the proposed Rule and under this poor dispensation when he is come to the best of this his either birth or growth he is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is but Flesh and not Spirit For that which is born of the Flesh that is of our own natural abilities is but Flesh but that which is born of the Spirit that is of God and his Divine seed in us that is Spirit the true Spiritual man the Lord from Heaven Heavenly in a Mystical sense But this under the Law is but the Son of the Flesh or the Earth is not a Son of that Ierusalem that is from above the Heavenly Ierusalem which is the Mother of as many as are real and true Christians For this is Sarah the Free-woman but the old Ierusalem is in bondage with her Children as the Apostle plainly tells us 4. And thus far have I described the condition or nature of the Old Mosaical Covenant so far forth as is intimated in the Text. I proceed now to the Second or New Covenant under Christ. And the first Particular in the Protasis here is Sarah Domina a Free-woman libera à vitiis ac ritibus as the Interpreter speaks very well one that is not commanded into obedience by others but is sui juris does what she pleases and so she may very well for nothing pleases her but what is good and therefore fit to be done For Sarah or the New Ierusalem from above is of one Spirit and one mind with Christ. And this is the true Church of Christians in whom the body of sin being dead they are free from it as the Apostle speaks to the Romans being quit thereof they walk freely and safely etiam custode remoto that surly Paedagogue the Law no longer dogging them at the heels For whatever it can suggest from without the Spirit of God whispers to them from within or indeed that living Form of all holinesse and righteousnesse the Image of Christ recovered in them guides them as easily and as naturally to as our external Senses guide our Natural man in this outward and visible world This therefore is the condition of the Church of Christ and every true member of it at least arrived to its due maturity and perfection that every Soul there is as Sarah Domina as a Queen Regent in her little world her self acting nothing forcedly but freely as from a living principle and keeping those under her in due order and subjection Which condition undoubtedly the Scripture does point at in such phrases as these He hath made us Kings and Priests and elsewhere You are a Kingly Priesthood and the like 5. Secondly Of this Sarah was born Isaac which signifies Laughter and is a signe of Chearfulness and Ioy. Because he that is a true Christian acts and walks with joy and chearfulnesse in the waies of holinesse and righteousnesse And herein is he mainly distinguished from Ismael who acts merely out of obedience to an external form and so forces himself against the hair to do or omit that which were it not that he was bound in obedience to do or omit he would take the boldnesse to neglect his inward principle being contrary to it As for example he would revenge did not the Law forbid him he would immerse himself into all manner of Sensual pleasures were he not aw'd as an hungry dog by the lash and penalty of the Law and so in other things But the Soul of a true Christian in whom Isaac is born does not act what is good or omit what is evil out of any force or fear of
and is on the right hand of God Angels and Authorities and Powers being made subject unto him There is a further enumeration of the Angelical classes Colos. 1. where the Apostle speaking of this high exaltation of the Person of Christ he intimates not only the Subjection of the Orders of Angels to him but their Reconciliation to God by him and as some would have it a fuller Confirmation of them in his favour vers 15. Who is the Image of the invisible God the First-born of every Creature For by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers all things were created by him and for him and he is before all things and by him all things consist And he is the Head of the body the Church He is the Beginning the First-born from the dead that in all things he might have the preeminence For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell And making peace through the bloud of his Crosse to reconcile all things by him unto himself whether they be things in Earth or things in Heaven So mighty and wonderfull was the result of the Humiliation of our Saviour and so clear and warrantable an Object is he of Divine Adoration 3. Thus is the Divine Life Triumphant in the Person of Christ the Head of his Church But another main design of the Gospel is That the Divine Life may be advanced in us that is that Faith in God through Christ that Humility Love and Purity may have their due growth in us here that thereby we may be fitted to receive that immortal Crown of Glory which he will bestow upon all true believers at the last day when he shall carry his whole Church with songs of Joy and Triumph into his celestial Kingdome That this is the main purpose of the Gospell I have already sufficiently proved and therefore need adde nothing in this place 4. The fourth and last Rule or Measure of Opinions is The Recommendableness of our Religion to those which are without that is to say We must have a special care of affixing thereto any of our own Inventions or Interpretations of Scripture for Christian Truths which may seem uncouth and irrational to strangers and such as are as yet disengaged For though those that by reason of their education have had full acquaintance with Christianity will adhere to their Religion though it may be corrupted with many false glosses and fond opinions of men as indispensably obtruded as the undoubted Scripture it self yet strangers that are free and unaccustomed to them will not fail to boggle at them and being offered to them also with equal Authority with the very Word of God they will be necessitated to fly back and to relinquish the Holy Truth by reason of the indissoluble intertexture of the gross falshoods they find interwoven with it A thing that is seriously to be considered by all those that bear any love to the Gospel and desire that it may be propagated and promoted in the World For certainly it was intended for a more general good and larger diffusion then has been hitherto by reason of its having fallen into faithless and treacherous hands who make it only an instrument of gaining wealth and power to themselves and of riding the people and not of gaining souls to God CHAP. IV. 1. The general use of the foregoing Rules 2. A special use of them in favour of one anothers persons in matters of opinion 3. The examination of Election and Reprobation according to these Rules And how well they agree with that Branch of the Divine Life which we call Humility 4. The disagreement of absolute Reprobation with the first Rule 5. As also with the third 6 And with the second and fourth 1. THese are the four main Rules which I conceive very usefull to examine either other mens Opinions or our own And if the heat of our spirits or the confidence of others would urge upon us pretended Truths for to admit of open falsities or forgeries for what advantage soever is intolerable that are not subservient to these designs above named we may well look upon them as idle curiosities and if they pretend also to Revelation or Inspiration that it is nothing but Madness and fanatick Delusion But if they do not only not promote but countermine those designs above mentioned they are to be looked upon then not as frivolous but dangerous and impious and so to be declined by all means possible And lastly though they appear such as may contribute something to those designs if followed and embraced yet I must adde also this caution that they are not to be forc'd so as that unless a man will profess them he must be accounted no good Christian. For they coming from a fallible and doubtfull hand they ought not in reason to infringe that undoubted right of Christian liberty the Scripture alone being full enough to perfect a Christian both in life and doctrine 2. There is also a further use to be made of these Rules in favour of one anothers persons though of different Opinions that is by taking notice what good they drive at as well as what evil they tend to which makes much for peace and brotherly kindness and may blunt the edge of eager and bitter zeal that makes the over-fervid Zelot think that he that is of a contrary opinion to him intends nothing but mischief by his opposite doctrine In examining therefore every Opinion we are to observe what design of the Gospel it agrees with as well as what it crosses And that the Use of our Rules may the better appear I shall now shew the practice of them by trying some few Opinions of no small note by this Touchstone For it were an endless business to examine all and needless because by these examples he that lists may examine the rest indeed any that either has been or ever will offer it self to the World in matters of Religion 3. The first that occurrs is such an Election and Reprobation that wholly excludes Free will The Controversie is so well known that I need not state it Applying this doctrine to the four Rules I have set down I find in the Third that it has some compliance with that choice branch of the Divine Life namely Humility and a submission of a mans self and all the World to the will of God It is the Lord let him doe what he pleases And that therefore a serious and humble Soul being much taken up and transported with this consideration may think of nothing else but take this Doctrine to be very Truth nay live and die in it and go to heaven when he has done Whence it were a piece of Satanical Fury to persecute any such Opinionist and want of Charity these living as well as other Christians not to bear as good affection to them as to
making Christian Religion recommendable to them that are without 7. As also he does herein against the third Rule in no small measure For by spoiling Christ of his Divinity and of being acknowledged in very truth the Son of God all those condescensions of his which he stooped to for our good the esteem of them is much slackned and relaxed and will not stick the mark so strongly as upon this ancient and universal Hypothesis of the Church of Christ who did acknowledge that he was really the Son of God which must needs enhance the esteem of his Sufferings exceedingly and therefore more effectually melt our affections into the greater remorse for Sin and stouter resolutions to mortifie and kill all inordinate motions and desires all perverse and corrupt suggestions of our Natures be it never so harsh to us and bring them under the scepter of the crucified Jesus Which this Sect so little considers that they very hardly are drawn to acknowledge Christs death a Sacrifice for sin and so by their dry harsh and rash reasonings expunge one of the chiefest Powers and choicest Artifices of the Gospel for the making men good CHAP. VII 1. Imputative Righteousness Invincible Infirmity and Solifidianism in what sense they seem to complie with the second and last Rule and how disagreeing with the third 2. The groundlesness of mens Zeal for Imputative Righteousness 3. And for Solifidianisme 4. The conspiracy of Imputative Righteousness Solifidianism and Invincible Infirmity to exclude all Holiness out of the Conversation of Christians 5. That large confessions of Sins and Infirmities without any purpose of amending our lives is a mere mocking of God to his very face With the great danger of that Affront 1. THE last Examples of applying and examining of Opinions according to the Rules we have set down shall be in Imputative Righteousness in Perfection and Infirmity in Iustification by Faith alone and in the Reign of Christ upon Earth And as for Imputative Righteousness Infirmity and the Opinion of the Solifidians I must confess they seem to pretend much to the exaltation of the Person of Christ and to make men sensible of their great need of him and seeming to promise ease and security to careless sinners may also make the Gospel more passable to those that are without that have a minde to enjoy this world as well as that which is to come and is as plausible to such kinde of people as Roman Indulgences and Pardons Absolution upon slight Penances and the like To which kinde of errours and miscarriages I cannot but impute a great part of the degeneracy of Christendome at this day Nor can I imagine how the more perfectly Reform'd Churches could have failed of proving generally excellent Christians indeed if these Opinions of Imaginary Righteousnesse Empty Faith and the Invinciblenesse of Sin had not stept into the room of those Follies and Errours they had fled from Whence it is apparent how highly they transgress against the third Rule and consequently how cautious men should be of either receiving them or communicating them to others 2. For as for Imputative Righteousness it is very suspicious seeing the Scripture is silent therein that it is the suggestion of Hypocrisie and Deceit to undermine that due measure of Sanctification whereunto we are called For otherwise this invention is utterly needless the Sacrifice of Christs Passion being sufficient to expiate whatever sins we fall into from any pardonable Principle Which Sacrifice were utterly needless if the perfect Righteousness of Christ were so imputed to us as that we might reckon it our own For then were we as righteous as Christ for he has no greater Righteousnesse then his own whereby he is righteous And this Righteousness consisting as well of abstaining from sins as doing acts of Righteousnesse it is plain that all this is imputed to us and that therefore hereby we are to be accounted of God as never to have sinned and therefore there wanted no Expiation for sin and so Christ died in vain For the imputation of his Righteousness will serve for all Wherefore an opinion so absurd one cannot imagine why any should be so well pleased with unless they intended it a shelter for sin and to excuse themselves from real Holinesse and Righteousnesse 3. Neither do I know to what end but this men should so zealously press the Opinion of being saved by Faith alone in such a perverse sense as some do not meaning thereby a living Faith working by Love but we must be justified by Faith prescinding from Charity Obedience and whatever is accounted Holy and Just. But it is plain that unless a man will say he is justified by a dead Faith which is no more true Faith then a dead corps is a man that real Sanctity will as surely accompany Faith as Light does the Sun and that the controversie is as ridiculously raised of Faith whether it alone justifie as if one should move a question whether the Sun alone makes it day For if they mean the Sun without the raies it is evidently false but if they mean the Sun alone without the Moon or Stars it is as evidently true But by prescinding life from Faith and contending that it justifies is as incongruous as to assert that the Sun without Light makes day and as mischievous as to insinuate that inward Sanctity is not necessary to Salvation And therefore when they talk of Faith alone they ought to explain themselves so as that they may not be understood to exclude Christian Holiness but Iudaicall and what other needless imperfect and superstitious Principles of Justification men have stood upon in the world and withall to urge an operative Christian Love which is the fulfilling of the Law 4. To this Imputative Righteousnesse and Iustifying Faith from which they would fain disjoyn real Sanctity they adde Christian Infirmity whereby they would insinuate the Invinciblenesse of Sin So that two of these Opinions suggesting That that due degree of Righteousness we have spoken of nay indeed any degree thereof is needlesse and this other That it is impossible what can this tend to but an utter neglect of all Holiness in Christian Conversation The profession of which frame of Religion though some take it to be a great piece of service of God yet that Apostle whose expressions they too often abuse declares that it is a mere mocking of him as if they did naso suspendere adunco 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be not deceived God is not mocked as a man sows so shall he also reap For this abuse and perverse application of the Mystery of Christianity to lewdness and secure wickedness is a mere deluding and mocking of the benigne counsel of God in Christ. It is to flear in the face of Heaven and under pretence of extolling Christ really to subvert his Kingdom upon earth 5. Is not this a mere mocking and confronting of the Divine Majesty whenas he has sent Christ into the World on
persons at great distances off nor doth cease till a due distance after the congress 7. Concerning Preaching that which is most remarkable is this That whereas there are three chief kindes thereof namely Catechizing Expounding a Chapter and Preaching usually so called whereof the first is the best and the last the least considerable of them all this worst and last is the very Idol of some men and the other rejected as things of little worth But assuredly they are of most virtue for the effectual implanting the Gospel of Christ in the mindes of men and of the two as I said Catechizing the better because it enforces the catechized to take notice of what is taught him and what is thus taught him is not so voluminous but that he can carry it away and remember it for ever and withall the most Useful as being the very Fundamentals comprized in the Christian Creed or the first and most natural results from them tending to indispensable duties of life and therefore will alone if sincerely believed and faithfully practised carry a man to Heaven But the next profitable way of Preaching is Expounding of a Chapter provided that he that does so makes it his only business without any vain excursions to shew his reading to render those places of the Chapter that are obscure easie and intelligible to the capacity of the Auditors with some brief but earnest urging of their duties from such passages as most necessarily tend thereto This will make the private Reading of Scripture pleasant to his charge And it will prove the more effectual for their good if he contain himself within the New Testament and fetch only so much out of the Old as will be subservient for the full understanding of the New There is nothing so likely to convince the Conscience as this when men are able to reade and understand the Text of Scripture it self and are sensibly beat upon by the power of that Spirit that is found in those Writings far beyond all the fine Speeches and Phrases of humane Eloquence Which yet is the greatest matter in this Third way of Preaching and the truest use that can be made of it namely not to fill the peoples head with unprofitable or hurtful Opinions but by the artifice of a more florid and flowing style to raise the affections of the Auditors to the love and pursuit of such things as are commanded us by the Precepts of the Gospel I confess therefore This exercise may be of laudable use in such a Congregation where all the people are throughly grounded in the Fundamentals of Christianity and are well skilled in the knowledge of the Bible otherwise if the other Two necessary wayes of Preaching be silenced by this more overly and plausible way it is to the unspeakable detriment of the flock of Christ. Which will happen even then when it is performed after the very best manner How great then is the evil think you when the exercise of their popular Eloquence is nothing but a Stage of ostentation and vain-glory to the Speaker and begets nothing but an unsound blotedness and ventosity of Spirit in his hearers and admirers they being intoxicated with lushious and poisonous Opinions which tend to nothing but the extinguishing of the love and endeavour after true Righteousness and Holiness and the begetting in them a false security of minde and abhorred Libertinisme Had it not been far better that they had rested in the Fundamentals of their Faith comprised in the Apostles Creed with an obligation on their Conscience to live according to the Laws of Christ and his holy Precepts then to be led about and infatuated by the heat and noise of such false Guides 8. Concerning Praying it is an Epidemical mistake That men think extemporary Prayers are by the Spirit and that the Spirit is not in a Set Form Whenas in truth the Spirit may be absent in the highest extemporary heats and present in the use of set Forms where there may appear greater calmness and coolness For the Spirit of Praier does not consist in the invention of words and phrases which is rather a Gift of Nature as the Faculty of extemporary speaking in other cases is proceeding from heat and phansy and copiousness of the Animal Spirits but in a firm belief in God through Christ and in an hearty liking and sincere desire of having those holy things communicated to us that we pray for And therefore he that reads or hears a publick Liturgy read in such a frame of minde as I have described does as truly pray by the Spirit as he that invents words and phrases of his own For there is nothing Divine but this holy Faith and Desire the rest is mere Nature And it is a demonstration how ignorant these men are that talk so loud of the Spirit whenas they cannot so much as discern what is truly Spiritual from what is but Animal and Natural To which you may adde That if none pray by the Spirit but those that invent their own words the whole Congregation are very Spiritless Prayers they all hanging upon the lips of the Minister who alone will be acknowledged to pray by the Spirit Whose pretended assistance is not yet always so powerful as to protect him from the incurring of the danger of Non-sense and of making the Publick Worship of God insipid or else distasteful and loathsome or which is even as ill contemptible and ridiculous 9. Wherefore it is far more safe as it is undoubtedly more solemn to use a publick Liturgy that bears the authority of the whole Church then to venture so holy and devotional a performance upon the uncertainty of any mans private spirit who will be but tempted to ostentate his own conceited Eloquence or forced to discover his own weakness and folly Whenas a set Form will prevent all Pride and knackishness and preserve the publick worship in its due reverence and honour especially where it is contrived with that cautiousness that nothing is expressed therein that engages the Minde in controverted Opinions but speaks according to the known tenour of Scripture undepraved by humane glosses 10. But you will say if a Minister be cut so short in these performances of extemporary Praier and expatiating Preachments how shall he be able to give any eximious Testimony of his abilities in his calling how shall he have the opportunity of shewing his Gifts To which I answer That the end of the Ministry is not the Ostentation of any mans particular Gifts but the Edification of the People which are better edified by diligent catechizing and faithful and judicious expounding of the Scripture then by loose and ranging Discourses out of the Pulpit where he that speaks having taken leave of his short Text may fill the ears of his Auditors with nothing but the noise of his own conceits and inventions whenas in the Exposition of a whole Chapter suppose at a time the peoples mindes will be kept closer to those
That the punctual Correspondence of the Event to the Prediction of the Astrologer does not prove the certainty of the Art of Astrology 5. The great Affinity of Astrology with Daemonolatry and of the secret Agency of Daemons in bringing about Predictions 6. That by reason of the secret or familiar Converse of Daemons with pretended Astrologers no argument can be raised from Events for the truth of this Art 7. A Recapitulation of the whole matter argued 8. The just occasions of this Astrological excursion and of his shewing the ridiculous condition of those three high-flown Sticklers against Christianity Apollonius Cardan and Vaninus 356 BOOK VIII CHAP. I. THE End and Usefulness of Christian Religion in general 2. That Christ came into the World to destroy Sin out of it 3. His earnest recommendation of Humility 4. The same urged by the Apostle Paul 361 CHAP. II. 1. Christs enforcement of Love and Charity upon his Church by Precept and his own Example 2. The wretched imposture and false pretensions of the Family of Love to this divine Grace 3. The unreasonableness of the Familists in laying aside the person of Christ to adhere to such a carnal and inconsiderable Guide as Hen. Nicolas 4. That this Whifler never gave any true Specimens of real love to Mankinde as Christ did and his Apostles 5. His unjust usurpation of the Title of Love 6. The unparallel'd endearmentâ— of Christs sufferings in the behalf of Mankiâ—d 364 CHAP. III. 1. The occasion of the Familists usâ—rpation of the Title of Love 2. Earnest precepts oâ—t of the Apostles to follow Love and what kind of Love that is 3. That we câ—nnot love God unlesse we love our neighbour also 4. An Exposition of the 5 and 6 verses of the 1 chapter of the 2 Epist. of S. Peter 5. Saint Paul's rapturous commendation of Charity 6 His accurate description thereof 7. That Love is the highest participation of the Divinity and that whereby we become the Sons of God Aâ—d how injurious these Fanaticks are that rob the Church of Christ of this title to appropriate it to themselves 368 CHAP. IV. 1. Our Saviour's strict injuction of Purity from whence it is also plain that the Love he commends is not in any sort fleshly but Divine 2. Several places out of the Apostles urging the same duty 3. Two more places to the same purpose 4. The groundless presumption of those that abuse Christianity to a liberty of sinning 5. That this Errour attempted the Church betimes and is too taking at this very day 6. Whence appears the necâ—ssiâ—y of opposing it which he promises to do taking the rise of his Discourse from 1 Iohn 3.7 373 CHAP. V. 1. The Apostle's care for young Christians against that Errour of thinking they may be righteous without doing righteously 2. Their obnoxiousness to this contagion with the Causes thereof to be searched into 3. The first sort of Scriptures perverted to this ill end 4. The second sort 5. That the very state of Christian Childhood makes them prone to this Errour 6. What is the nature of that Faith Abraham is so much commended for and what the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 7. A search after the meaning of the term Justification 8. Justification by faith without the deeds of the Law what may be the meaning of it 9. Scriptures answered that seem to disjoin Reall Righteousness from Faith 10. And to make us only righteous by imputation 11. Undeniable Testimonies of Scripture that prove the necessity of real Righteousness in us 376 CHAP. VI. 1. Their alledgement of Gal. 2.16 as also of the whole drift of that Epistle 2. What the Righteousness of faith is according to the Apostle 3. In what sâ—â—se those that are in Christ are said not to be under the Law 4. That the Righteousness of faith is no figment but a reality in us 5. That this Righteousness is the New Creature and what this new Creature is according to Scripture 6. That the new Creature consists in Wisdome Righteousness and true Holiness 7. The Righteousness of the new Creature 8. His Wâ—sdome and Holiness 9. That the Righteousness of faith excludes not good Works The wicked treachery of those that teach the contrary 384 CHAP. VII 1. That no small measure of Sanctity serves the turn in Christianity 2. As appears out of Scriptures already alledged 3. Further proofs thereof out of the Prophets 4. As also out of the Gospel 5. And other places of the New Testament 6. The strong Armature of a Christian Souldier 7. His earnest endeavour after Perfection 388 CHAP. VIII 1. That the Christians assistance is at least equal to this task 2. The two Gospel-powers that comprehend his duty 3. The first Gospel-aid The Promise of the Spirit with Prophecies thereof out of Ezekiel and Esay 4. Some hints of the mystical meaning of the last 5. Another excellent prediction thereof 391 CHAP. IX 1. The great use of the belief of The Promise of the Spirit 2. The eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his bloud what it is 3. Further proof of the Promise of the Spirit 4. That we cannot oblige God by way of Merit 5. Other Testimonies of Scripture tending to the former purpose 395 CHAP. X. 1. A Recapitulation of what has been set down hitherto concerning the Usefulness of the Gospel and the Necessity of undeceiving the world in those points that so nearly concern Christian Life 2. The ill condition of those that content themselves with Imaginary Righteousness figured out in the Fighters against Ariel and Mount Sion 3. A further demonstration of their fond conceit 4. That a true Christian cannot sin without pain and torture to himself 398 CHAP. XI 1. That the want of real Righteousness deprives us of the Divine Wisdome proved out of Scripture 2. As also from the nature of the thing it self 3. That is disadvantages the Soul also in Natural speculations 4. That it stifles all Noble and laudable Actions 5. And exposes the imaginary Religionist to open reproach 6. That mere imaginary Righteousness robs the Soul of her peace of Conscience 7. And of all divine Ioy 8. Of Health and Safety 9. And of eternal Salvation 10. That God also hereby is deprived of his Glory and the Church frustrated of publick Peace and Happiness 400 CHAP. XII 1. Of the attending to the Light within us of which some Spiritualists so much boast 2. That they must mean the Light of Reason and Conscience thereby if they be not Fanaticks Mad-men or Cheats And that this Conscience necessarily takes information from without 3. And particularly from the Holy Scriptures 4. That these Spiritualists acknowledge the fondness of their opinion by their contrary practice 5. An appeal to the Light within them if the Christian Religion according to the literal sense be not true 6. That the Operation of the Divine Spirit is not absolute but restrained to certain laws and conditions as it is in the Spirit of
Nature 7. The fourth Gospel-Power The Example of Christ. 8. His purpose of vindicating the Example of Christ from aspersions with the reasons thereof 408 CHAP. XIII 1. That Christ was no Blasphemer in declaring himself to be the Son of God 2. Nor Conjurer in casting out Devils 3. That he was unjustly accused of Prophaneness 4. That there was nothing detestable in his Neutrality toward Political Factions 5. Nor any Injustice nor Partiality found in him 6. Nor could his sharp Rebukes of the Pharisâ—es be rightly termed Railing 7. Nor his whipping the Buyers and Sellers out of the Temple tumultâ—ary Zeal 8. Nor his crying out so dreadfully in his Passion be imputed to Impatience or Despair 9. The suspicion of Distractedness and Madness cleared 10. His vindication from their aspersions of Looseness and Prodigality 11. The câ—oâ—ked and perverse nature of the Pharisees noted with our Saviours own Apology for his frequenting all companies 12. That Christ was no Self-seeker in undergoing the Death of the Cross for that joy that was set before him 412 CHAP. XIV 1. The reason of his having insisted so long on the vindicating of the Life of Christ from the aspersions of the Malevolent 2. The true Character of a real Christian. 3. The true Character of a false or Pharisaical Christian. 4. How easily the true members of Christ are accused of Blasphemy by the Pharisaical Christians 5. And the working of their Graces imputed to some vicious Principle 6. Their censuring them prophane that are not superstitious 7. The Parisees great dislike of coldness in fruitless Controversies of Religion 8. Their Ignorance of the law of Equity and Love 9. How prone it is for the sincere Christian to be accounted a Railer for speaking the truth 10. That the least Opposition against Pharisaical Rottenness will easily be interpreted bitter and tumultuous Zeal 11. How the solid Knowledge of the perfectest Christians may be accounted Madness by the formal Pharisee 12. his Proneness to judge the true Christian according to the motions of his own untamed corruptions 13. His prudent choice of the vice of Covetousness 14. The Unreasonableness of his censure of those that endeavour after Perfection 15. His ignorant surmise that no man liveth vertuously for the love of Vertue it self 16. The Usefulness of this Parallelisme betwixt the Reproach of Christ and his true Members 422 CHAP. XV. 1. The Passion of Christ the fifth Gospel-Power the Virtue whereof is in a special manner noted by our Saviour himself 2. That the Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness was a prophetick Type of Christ and cured not by Art but by Divine Power 3. That Telesmatical Preparations are superstitious manifest out of their Collections that write of them 4. Particularly out of Gaffarel and Gregory 5. That the Effects of Telesmes are beyond the laws of Nature 6. That if there be any natural power in Telesmes it is from Similitude with a confutation of this ground also 7. A further confutation of that ground 8. In what sense the Brazâ—n Serpent was a Telesme and that it must needs be a Typical Prophecie of Christ. 9. The accurate and punctual Prefiguration therein 10. The wicked Pride and Conceitedness of those that are not touched with this admirable contrivance of Divine Providence 11. The insufferable balsphemy of them that reproach the Son of God for crying out in his dreadful Agony on the Cross wherein is discovered the Unloveliness of the Family of Love 429 CHAP. XVI 1. The End of Christs Sufferings not onely to pacifie Conscience but to root out Sin witnessed out of the Scripture 2. Further Testimonies to the same purpose 3. The Faintness and Uselesness of the Allegory of Chrâ—sts Passion in comparison of the Application of the History thereof 4 The Application of Christs Sufferings against Pride and Covetousness 5. As also against Envy Hâ—â—red Revenge vain Mirth the Pangs of Deaâ—h and unwarrantable Love 6. A General Application of the Death of Christ to the mortifying of all Sin whatsoever 7. The celebrating the Lords Supper the use and meaning thereof 436 CHAP. XVII 1. The sixth Gospel-Power is the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. The priviledge of this Demonstration of the Soul's Immortality above that from the Subtilty of Reason and Philosophy 2. The great power this consideration of the Soul's Immortality has to urge men to a Godly life 3. To â—ean themselves from worldly pleasures and learn to delight in those that are everlasting 4. To have our Conversation in Heaven 5. The Conditions of the Everlasting Inheritance 6. Further enforcements of duty from the Soul's Immortality 440 CHAP. XVIII 1. The Day of Judgement the seventh and last Gospel-power fit as well for the regenerate as the unregenerate to think upon 2. The Uncertainty of that Day and that it will surprize the wicked unawares 3. That those that wilfully reject the offers of Grace here shall be in no better condition after Death then the Devils themselves are 4. A Description of the sad Evening-close of that terrible Day of the Lord. 5. The Affrightment of the Morning-appearance thereof to the wicked 6. A further Description thereof 7. The Translation of the Church of Christ to their Aethereal Mansions with a brief Description of their Heavenly Happiness 443 CHAP. XIX 1. That there can be no Religion more powerful for the promoting of the Divine Life then Christianity is 2. The external Triumph of the Divine Life in the person of Christ how throughly warranted and how fully performed 3. The Religious Splendour of Christendome 4. The Spirit of Religion stifled with the load of Formalities 5. The satisfaction that the faithfully-devoted Servants of Christ have from that Divine homage done to his Person though by the wicked 447 CHAP. XX. 1. The Usefulness of Christianity for the good of this life witnessed by our Saviour and S. Paul 2. The proof thereof from the Nature of the thing it self 3. Objections against Christianity as if it were an unfit Religion for States Politick 4. A Concession that the primary intention of the Gospel was not Government Political with the advantage of that Concession 5. That there is nothing in Christianity but what is highly advantageous to a State-Politick 6. That those very things they object against it are such as do most effectually reach the chief end of Political Government as doth Charity for example 7. Humility Patience and Mortification of inordinate desires 8. The invincible Valour that the love of Christ and their fellow-members inspires the Christian Souldiery withall 449 BOOK IX CHAP. I. THe four Derivative Properties of the Mystery of Godliness 2. That a measure of Obscurity begets Veneration suggested from our very senses 3. Confirmed also by the common suffrage of all Religions and the nature of Reservedness amongst men 4. The rudeness and ignorance of those that expect that every Divine Truth of Scripture should be a comprehensible Object of their understanding even in the very modes and
of what was to come to pass For after this Moses and Elias vanished and his disciples when he had raised them up from the ground for they had fallen flat on their faces out of fear lifting up their eyes saw no man save Iesus onely 9. Fourthly and lastly It was a very fit and powerful Instance to assure men of the Immortality of the Soul and to beget a more unshaken belief of the Resurrection of Christ out of the grave and therefore Christ bad his disciples tell no man of the Vision but reserve it till its due use and time that is till Christ had risen from the dead to be added as a further confirmation of that mystery of enjoying of Life and Immortality in a glorified Body against that dull infidelity of Atheisticall men that think the Soul of man cannot act unless in the flesh 10. In the First and Last of these memorable accidents we rehearsed there is an eminent witness from Heaven of the Excellency of Christs person to which that nothing remarkable may be omitted we shall adde also that recorded in John 12. where Christ praying Father glorify thy name there came a voice from Heaven saying I have both glorified it and will glorifie it again CHAP. IV. 1. What miraculous accidents in Apollonius his life may seem parallel to these of Christs His superstitious fasting from flesh and abstinence from wine out of a thirst after the glory of foretelling things to come 2. Apollonius a Master of Iudiciary Astrology and of his seven Rings with the names of the seven Planets 3. Miraculous Testimonies given to the eminency of Apollonius his Person by Aesculapius and Trophonius how weak and obscure 4. The Brachmans high Encomium of him with an acknowledgment done to him by a fawning Lion The ridiculous Folly of all these Testimonies 1. WE have now gone through the chiefest things that happened to Christ in an extraordinary manner before his Passion Before we proceed any further being mindful of our promise we shall give a glance at what may seem parallel in the life of Apollonius And to the miraculous Fast of Christ undergone for so sober purposes which he was carried to by the power of the Spirit I finde nothing to be compared in that famous Philosopher if he deserved so solid a Title but his continual voluntary abstinence from flesh and wine Which needless Superstition is coloured with as contemptible an End that is a vain affectation of glory by foretelling of things to come a faculty that mightily pleases and tickles the natural man and the affectation thereof shews the Levity and Pride of Apollonius his Spirit as also of his grand Instructers in that Science the Brachmans of India who having asked Damis if he had any skill in Divination and he professing that his study and knowledge reached no further then to things usefull and necessary laughed him to scorn 2. But Philostratus writes of Apollonius as wholy giving himself up to the study of Divination and Iudiciary Astrology and how Iarchas the chief of the Brachmans gave him seven Rings with the names of the seven Planets inscribed upon them as also that Apollonius wrote four books of this Art Which things are a demonstration of his gross ignorance in Nature and Philosophy and of the petty temper of his Spirit and that there was nothing truly divine in him though the deceived Pagans adored him for a God For those that descend to such Arts it is a sign there is no solid knowledge in them much less any supernatural principle either in them or assisting to them but that their predictions are Diabolical or else that they are mere Whiflers and Juglers and have no extraordinary assistance at all 3. I shall adde but another parallel and so proceed and that is the Testimonies concerning the Eminencie of their persons in which there is as great a difference as of their persons themselves The person of Christ being witnessed to by an audible voice from Heaven God affirming thereby to the World that he was his beloved Son and requiring their obedience to him but the Eminency of Apollonius being recommended by none but the Ghost of Aesculapius and Trophonius whose den he entred and as it became a Necromancer confabulated there a long time with him as he did also with Achilles at his tombe who imploy'd him to renew his annual Rites and Honours in Thessalie But this recommendation of his was not immediate from either but by their Priests who being informed the one by a dream the other by some obscure voice in the Temple of which there was no witness but the Priest himself gave out great matters of Apollonius 4. We may adde also the Testimony of the Brachmans those famous Magicians whom Apollonius so much applauding they claw'd him again and concluded among themselves that he was worthy to be honored as a God both alive and after Death Nay we will give him in all to make up the weight A certain tame Lion in Aegypt seem'd also to acknowledge his Divinity coming to him as he was sitting in the Temple and crouching under him who when Apollonius told the people that he was that ancient Aegyptian King Amasis come into a Lions body the Beast began to roar and lament and weep bitterly as begging his succour in so bad a condition Which Apollonius being sensible of got the Lion to be sent to Leontopolis a City of Aegypt and there to be kept in such sort as was more sutable to his Royal Soul How obscure confounded and ridiculous are all these Testimonies of the Eminency of the person of that subtil Impostor So base and evanid is all humane contrivance against the Glory and Soveraignty of Christ the true Son of God CHAP. V. 1. Three general Observables in Christs Miracles 2. Why he several times charged silence upon those he wrought his Miracles upon 3. Why Christ was never frustrated in attempting any Miracle 4. The vanity of the Atheists that impute his Miracles to the power of Imagination 5. Of the delusive and evanid viands of Witches and Magicians 1. VVE come now to what Jesus miraculously did in his life-time We may referre the most of his Miracles to these four heads His feeding the hungry multitudes His healing the sick His raising of the dead and his dispossessing of Devils In all which you may observe First That his wonder-working power was exercised upon known and familiar objects such as often occurre amongst men For such are Hunger Sickness Death and Possession of Devils or Witchery not that I think them both one but that sundry persons are possessed that way and it may be most frequently Secondly That Christ puts forth his power no where out of any levity or vain ostentation but as the necessities of men required it all his Miracles being a perpetual exercise of love and compassion to mankind To which we might adde also in the Third place what is likewise general to them all his purpose
of glorifying God by them and laying foundations of Faith for the people to believe in him as the true Messias 2. Which belief yet he would not accelerate too fast that it might not prevent his Suffering nor yet accelerate his Suffering too fast before he had done the due preparatory works which he had to do Which made him sometime to seem unwilling to do over-publick Miracles as that at the wedding of turning water into wine and after he had fed the multitude he hid himself that they might not make him King and several times when he miraculously healed men with more privacy he strictly charged them that were thus healed to tell no man as well that he might not over-hastily precipitate belief in men as I have already intimated as also to keep himself from the rage of the Pharisees till the due time of his Suffering was at hand In the mean while his Miracles and Doctrine was to distill into the mindes of men by degrees to prepare them for a fuller belief upon his Resurrection from the dead 3. It would be too voluminous a business to rehearse the story of every particular Miracle and to descant upon it What we have thus advertised in general is most considerable and most profitable to be noted Nor need we adde any thing to facilitate the belief of them to those that are not such Infidels as not to believe the Existence of either God or Spirit For others will very easily conceive that Christ being joyn'd with that Eternal Word that healeth all things might heal those that are absent either by his word or by the Ministery of Angels who were alwaies to attend him And it is no wonder that Christ should never be mistaken in any attempt or presage he being so livingly united with the Eternal Wisdome of God and being of one Will and Spirit with him not disturb'd or distracted with any excursions or impetuosities of his own Will 4. The whifling Atheists impute all to the natural power of Imagination and please themselves mightily in the abuse of those passages in the Gospel that seem to assert that Christ was hindred from working of Miracles because of the Unbelief of the people as it is said in the Gospel of S. Mark that he could do no mighty works because of their unbelief But it was not a natural but moral impossibility he could not induce his minde thereto he being provoked to so just indignation against his own Country that despised him But say in good sadness poor blind and baffled souls How can the natural strength of Imagination heal the absent to say nothing of the present sick of ordinary diseases such as the Leprosy Palsy and Dropsie who ever cur'd those by mere Imagination How then shall Imagination recover Sight even to them that were born blind how shall it raise the dead in whom there is no Imagination at all as in Iairus his daughter and Lazarus who had lien four days in the grave Can Phansy feed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes or four thousand besides women and children with seven loaves and a few little fishes being almost hunger-starv'd by three dayes recess into the wilderness 5. Which things though not so substantially performed are notwithstanding in some measure imitated by Witches and Magicians I mean in their junketings whose viands are observed to afford so little satisfaction to nature that they leave oftentimes the partakers of them as weak and faint almost as if they had eaten nothing as Bodinus relates of the Magical entertainments of that Nobleman of Aspremont whose guests by that time they had rid a little space from his house were ready to faint and fall down both horse and man for hunger and also to be of such a fugitive consistence that they ordinarily vanished at the taking away of the cloth whenas in both these Miracles many Baskets full of the fragments were reserved CHAP. VI. 1. Of Christs dispossessing of Devils 2. An account of there being more Daemoniacks then ordinary in our Saviours time As first from a possible want of care or skill how to order their Mad-men or Lunaticks 3. The second from the power of the Devil being greater before the coming of Christ then after 4. That not onely Excommunication but Apostasy from Christ may subject a man to the Tyranny of Satan as may seem to have fallen out in several of the more desperate Sects of this Age. 5. An enumeration of sundry Daemoniacal symptoms amongst them 6. More of the same nature 7. Their profane and antick imitations of the most solemn passages in the History of Christ. 8. A further solution of the present difficulties from the premised considerations 9. A third and fourth Answer from the same of their cure and the conflux of these Daemoniacks into one Country 10. A fifth from the ambiguity of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 11. The sixth and last Answer That it is not at all absurd to admit there was a greater number of real Daemoniacks in Christs time then at other times from the useful end of their then abounding 1. AS for our Saviours dispossessing or ejecting of Devils out of men as his raising of the dead was a pledge and prefiguration of that power he professed was given him of crowning them that believed on him with life and immortality at the last day so was this a very proper Prelude to that utter overthrow he was to give the Kingdome of Satan he being to dispossess him of all places at last There 's nothing can seem harsh to them that believe there are Spirits and none but sensuall profane and foolish men will misbelieve such things there is nothing I say can seem harsh in this kind of Miracle unless it be the multitude of persons then possessed or the multitude of Devils in one possessed person whose name was Legion 2. But as for the First there may be many Answers none whereof want their use and weight Wee 'l begin with what seems of meaner consideration first where we will not omit to mention that the Redundancy of Daemoniacks in Christs time above what we observe in later Ages may proceed from the differences of the skill and care that was then had of Mad-men and Lunaticks in Iudea and the adjacent Countries of the Gentiles from whence no small part of them came and what is used now a-daies It is I say questionable whether they had so good provision for distracted people at those times and in those places for keeping them within and ordering their distemper to the greatest mitigation they were capable of For the stronger it is the more effectual allurement is there to bring some evil Spirit or other into the body of a man For he ceasing to be his own another does the more naturally become the master of him As he that is not his own man through the soveraignty of drink will find also many other masters buisy about him all the boyes
out Lord save us we perish So natural decorous and becoming are all the Actions and Miracles of Christ. 5. There is only one behinde Instantia monodica as a man may call it an Example not parallel'd in the whole History of the Gospel which is The cursing of the Fig-tree the meaning whereof has puzzled many as the narration it self has scandalized some as if this act was guilty not only of Levity but of a ridiculous kinde of Ferocity with a semblance of Injustice if Injustice can be committed against a Tree For was there any reason that a Tree should be cursed for not bearing fruit when the time of year was not yet for the bearing thereof This seems very odd and preposterous But if it be rightly understood there is nothing more grave more sober nor more weightily mysterious 6. For my own part I make no question but that the genuine meaning of it is this and what it signifies it sets out to the very life viz. That the most acceptable and desireable fruit of the everlasting Righteousness was not then found in the Iudaical dispensation nay I add further That it was never intended that that Tree should bring forth any such fruit but only the fair Fig-leaves of an External and Ceremonial Righteousness and a more overly and Legal kind of Morality but the more perfect fruits of the regenerating Spirit were not to be found there though Christ came into the world to exprobrate to them the want thereof and so to put a period to the Iudaical dispensation so as that it should quite wither away and fall to nothing as we find it come to pass at this very day Which Consideration amongst others that occur in Scripture more evidently confirms what we finde true in effect That according to the Eternal counsell of God Christ was mainly intended for the Gentiles and that breaking this shell of Iudaisme in which he was brooded under so many Types and Shadows he should take his flight thence and after spread his wings from one end of the Earth to the other 7. But this Mystery having something of seeming harshness in it to men of less profound minds such was the sweetness and inoffensiveness of our Saviour's temper that he would neither scandalize them nor grate too hard against the Iudaical Oeconomy which that Nation so highly reverenced and therefore recorded this Truth only in this Enigmatical miracle 8. And thus to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was not only usual with the Prophets but practised also by our Saviour himself in other cases as well as in this As in the manner of his healing him that was born blinde John 9. where the Ceremonies he useth seem very uncouth and strange before one knows the meaning of them but rightly understood they must be acknowledged admirably fit for the purpose I mean not for curing of the blinde For what can clay and spittle and the water of a pool avail for the restoring of Sight to one that was born blind but for mysteriously setting out some grand Truths concerning Iesus 9. As that he was the Son of God or that Eternal Word whereby God created the World and framed man of the Earth in token whereof he tempers Clay and Spittle he being about to rectifie and amend the workmanship of his own hands To which Erasmus seems plainly to allude in his Paraphrase upon the place Ejusdem autem Autoris est restituere quod perierat qui condider at quod non erat Besides another Truth of very great importance which is set out to the very life in this Typical cure viz. That we are to expect the Renovation of our minds and our Regeneration from that power that created us That no man can come to Christ as he is a visible person unless the Father that is the Eternal Divinity draw him or as the Apostle speaks to the Corinthians That no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost 10. Now I say That Christ's tempering Clay and Spittle does emblematize the Eternal Deity that created all things and his acting first upon the blinde man so sending of him to the pool of Siloam by which undoubtedly is meant Shilo or the Messias this does plainly figure out the forementioned Truths That those that do come to Christ and faithfully adhere to him are prepared and given to him of God and that by Faith in him they are purg'd and purified from all blindness and filthiness by the assistance of that Spirit which is promised to all that believe in him according to what Christ himself has pronounced He that believeth on me out of his heart shall flow streams of living waters which he understands of the Spirit of which these waters of Siloam are therefore a very fit Figure or Emblem they fitly denoting even from the very name as I have already intimated the clearing and healing Spirit of Christ who is the Shilo or Siloam wherewith we are to be washed and cleansed from that foulness and earthly-mindedness which we had contracted in the state of Nature or First creation before the act of Regeneration has passed upon us 11. We have considered the Miracles of Christ let us give a short glance on his Prophesies In which that which is mainly considerable is that they are very few Which I look upon as a reprehension and reproach of that natural itch in mankind to Divinations and Predictions of which Impostors usually much boast and a Nation of America though more Atheistical then all the rest are so vehemently set upon that they often even grow mad again with that study But very little fell from our Saviour's mouth by way of Prophesie but what was in a manner of indispensable concernment to be foretold Such as his own Sufferings and Resurrection the Destruction of the City the General Iudgment He exercised also his power of Divination in his conference with the woman of Samaria but his applications there were so serious that he forgot the sense of hunger being more pleased with the attempts of her conversion and her Country-men then with the most delicate junkets that could be set before him He foretold also who should betray him but it was to demonstrate that both his Betraying and all his Sufferings else they being foreseen might have been avoided and therefore that he underwent them willingly To which also those Predictions tend When I am lifted up I shall draw all men unto me as also of the good Shepheard laying down his life for his sheep and then presently adding And other sheep I have which are not of this fold meaning the Gentiles who were to be brought in by his Death Which is a plain Demonstration that Christ suffered death voluntarily out of his entire love to the World and that he knew aforehand what an Effectual instrument his Passion would prove for the conversion of the Gentiles to
the true knowledge of God CHAP. IX 1. The Miracles of Apollonius compared with those of Christ. 2. His entertainment at a Magical banquet by Iarchas and the rest of the Brachmans 3. His cure of a Dropsy and of one bitten by a mad dog 4. His freeing of the City of Ephesus from the plague 5. His casting a Devil out of a laughing Daemoniack and chasing away a whining Spectre on Mount Caucasus in a Moon-shine night 6. His freeing Menippus from his espoused Lamia 1. WE have now done with the Actions of Christ such as were more extraordinary and miraculuos we will proceed to his Passion after we have made a short comparison of the most famous exploits of Apollonius with these of our Saviour according to those Heads we have already insisted upon His miraculous feeding of the People His curing diseases His casting out Devils His raising of the dead and His predictions of things to come 2. As for the First I do not remember any example of it in Apollonius his life only Philostratus writes that Apollonius himself was entertained by the Brachmans at such a banquet as was provided in a miraculous manner together with the King of Media where three-sooted tables were brought in and plac'd in the midst without the help of any mans hand as also the floor spread with odoriferous herbs and flowers and bread wine fruits and sweet-meats on plates conveighed through the air and set upon those tables without any servitours to carry them Which story being so very like the junketings of Witches and the behaviour of Iarchas and his brother Brachmans being so full of scorn and insolency towards the King and the very chief of his retinue his brother I mean and his sons may fully confirm any man that they were no better then Magicians nor their great Favourite and disciple Apollonius any other then a Wizzard and a Necromancer as his conjuring up of the Ghost of Achilles does further prove 3. As for his Cures I do remember but Three the First of which seems to have more of the power of Nature and Morality then of a Miracle he curing a young man of a Dropsie by precepts of Temperance in the Temple of Aesculapius The other was of one bitten by a mad Dog who was so distempered therewith that he would bark goe on all four and couch on the ground like a Dog But it looks so like a piece of Witchery and Apollonius was so punctual in discovering what the Inhabitants of the place which was Tarsus could not inform him of as of the colour shaggedness and other qualities of the Dog as also where he was that it is a suspicion that he that cured the disease did inflict it himself or rather his Familiars for him and so it is likely that the dog as well as the man was bewitched For he came along from the river-side where he was shivering as if he had an ague so soon as Damis had whispered in his Ear that Apollonius would speak with him who told the people also while he was cherishing him and stroaking him that the Soul of Telephus the Mysian was entred into him which is a further confirmation of our conjecture But indeed all the circumstances of the Story are either ludicrous and ridiculous or else impious As his making the Dog cure the man by licking of him and then himself curing the Dog by praying to the River Cydnus and slinging the Dog into the stream 4. But the most famous cure of all is that when he freed the City of Ephesus from the plague But it being discovered already what a kind of man this Apollonius was viz. a mere Magician I cannot but suspect that the case is the same with that former and that the whole City suffered so direfull a disease as the devouring pestilence by the hand of the Devil to get the greater renown to Apollonius that stout Hyperaspistes of Paganisme who for the advancing of his own credit was to free them from this raging evil Of which opinion of ours there are two grand Arguments The one his assembling the people in the Theatre and there incouraging them to stone an old ragged Begger which he perswaded them was the plague but it seems it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a destroying Daemon as it appeared by his eyes as he was a stoning and by that delusion of a shagged Dog as big as a Lion found under the heap of stones when the people had thought to have seen him there in his former shape of a patch'd Begger The other Argument is the Ephesians erecting the Image of Hercules Apotropaeus in the place where this old Mendicant was stoned which is a sign that Pagan Idolatry was the upshot of the plot Wherefore I look upon these two last Cures as done out of suspicable Principles and upon extravagant Objects 5. As for his casting out Devils I do not remember any example thereof saving one and that was of a young man of Corcyra who was a laughing Daemoniack out of whom at Athens by a many repeated menaces and imperious railings he at last ejected the Evil Spirit who for a sign of his departure made a great Image tumble down from the royal Porch in the City with a great noise and clatter To this Head we may refer also though by an improper reduction his conjuring of a Phantasme that appeared to him and his fellow-travellers as they were journying on Mount Caucasus in a bright Moon-shine night Which Phantasme went before them sometime in one shape and sometime in another but by many vehement chidings by many railings reproaches and execrations was made to disappear at last and to depart crying and whining at the discourteous usage 6. We may add to these the story of Menippus and the Lamia Who in the form of a beautifull young woman made love to Menippus and at last perswaded him to marry her But Apollonius being at the Nuptials discovered the illusion and by reproaching the Bride made I think the whole Edifice which was supposed to be plac'd near Corinth I am sure the furniture and riches thereof all the moveables the Tapestry the gold and silver vessels nay the pages servants and officers of this fair Lady to vanish at once and her self only left was compelled to confess her self a foul carnivorous Fiend So either frivolous or exorbitant are all the miraculous exploits of this deified Impostor But all the Objects of our Saviour's Miracles were as I at first noted more obvious and familiar which is the greater assurance as well of the Innocency and Sincerity of his Person as of the Truth of his History CHAP. X. 1. Apollonius his raising from death a young married Bride at Rome 2. His Divinations and particularly by Dreams 3. His Divinations from some external accidents in Nature 4. His Prediction of Stephanus killing Domitian from an Halo that encircled the sun Astrology and Meteorology covers to Pagan Superstition and converse with Devils 5. A
of Christ and mournful and melting Tunes proper to these Songs composed by the Church Which Passion-songs would be also usefull upon Communion-dayes they containing in them Devotional desires and resolutions of crucifying our affections and lusts and of faithful love to Christ and to one another which are the Great things that the Passion of Christ points us to and would enforce upon us Wherefore the Morning-singings on a Communion-day may very well be supplied by these Passion-songs But at the Receiving of the Communion while the Bread and the Cup pass about some Psalmes of David that appear most proper and that declare the great Goodness and Mercies of God or some Songs of the Churche's composing appropriate to the purpose full of thankfull acknowledgments and holy resolutions may be sung all the time in more chearful Tunes such as the Ascension-songs and Resurrection-songs are sung in All which Songs of the Church are to urge duty upon men and press on holiness upon considerations naturally flowing from the belief of the things we do solemnize If to the singing of these skilfully-composed Songs and choice Psalmes there were added also the help of an Organ for the more certain regulating of this singing part of Devotion and the more affectionate performance thereof it will not be easie to imagine what is wanting to a due and unexceptionable filling up of all comely circumstances of that Publick worship that is fit to be practised by professed Christians unless you would bring in also Images and Pictures 17. But to speak my sense and judgment of things freely The mere placing of Images or Statues in a Church is a very bold and daring Spectacle but the bowing towards them or praying with bended knees and eyes devoutly lift up to them is intolerable if Pagan Idolatry be so nay in some regard worse that is more irrationall and ridiculous forasmuch as these Statues are not supposed to be the Receptacle of the Spirit of him they pray to So that their way of Devotion is utterly groundless senseless and sottish as well as impious and Idolatrous Pictures I must conâ—ess are a more modest Representation and the consideration of the vile reproaches some foul mouths have heretofore and do sometimes still cast upon the crucified Iesus may tempt the devotional Lovers of his Person to a conceit that if there were a Representation of his Crucifixion in picture and that they bowed to it at their coming into the Church it were but an innocent satisfaction to themselves so publickly to do their homage to their Saviour in that Representation that he is most scorned and reproached in and but a just compensation to him for the reproaches that vile and wicked persons cast out against him But to this I answer first That the determining our Worship to any part of the Church would look like the turning of our Christian Meeting-Houses into Temples contrary to what is written I saw no Temple there And then in the second place Though the fetches of mans Wit are very fine and subtile in these cases yet it is expresly said that God is a jealous God and there are many scrupulous and jealous men as well in Christendome as out of Christendome and therefore a practice that is not right in it self and so exceeding scandalous to others ought by no means to obtain in the publick Worship of Christians If there be any permission of Pictures therefore in the Church it must not be for worship but for ornament which they will scarce be without considerable cost nor that cost again well placed unless there be some Edification by them And therefore I doe not conceive how they will be tolerable at all without some proper Inscriptions also adjoyned As upon the Picture of the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ some such Inscription as that of Saint Paul If you be risen with Christ seek those things that are above Upon the Picture of the Passion of Christ some such as these When I am lifted up I shall draw all men unto me Those that are of Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts Greater love hath no man then this that he lay down his life for his friends This is my commandement that as I have loved you so you would likewise love one another And thus every Piece which are not to be many should have their proper Inscriptions without which they should not be permitted in the Church as being fit for nothing but to amuze the sight But now they are no sooner seen but they set a mans Mind awork and cause him to think of the most important meaning of the chief passages of the History of Christ. Of which none are more effectuall then that of his Passion which together with the Passion-songs and Tunes and Organs may wound the Heart of a man and let out more corrupt bloud at one touch then the faint hackings of a dry Discourse of an hour or two long Which helps and ornaments of Publick worship will fill up all the numbers of all warrantable splendour and comeliness and keep out if precisely kept to all shadow and suspicion of either Superstition or Idolatry But if any should be so weak or scrupulous as to take offence at so unexceptionable use of Pictures in the Church and particularly if our Religion should be the less recommendable thereby to either Iews or Turks whose conversion we are not onely to desire but with seriousness and faithfulness to apply our selves to at least to remove all scandals and stumbling-blocks out of their way rather then any such dispensable Punctilios should hinder the enlargement of Christs Kingdome in the essential Soveraignty thereof comprehended in the express Precepts of the written Word a full Pencil of white directed by Charities own hand should wipe out all these well-meant delineations and Inscriptions and to compensate the loss that one of S. Paul should succeed If any man seem to be contentious we have no such custome neither the Churches of God 18. To conclude Such is the Truth and Simplicity of Christian Religion that if the authority of the Church think good to recommend any Additional circumstances of divine Worship they must not be for ineffectual Pomp and Show but for real Use and Edification affecting such a beauty and comeliness as Nature does in living Creatures whose pulchritude is the result of such a Symmetry of Parts and tenour of Spirits as implies vigour and ability to all the functions of life And truly there should be no more Ceremony in the Church then the Use thereof may be obvious to understand and the Life and Power of Holiness may throughly actuate that our Minds may not be amused lost sunk in or fixed upon any Outward things here but be carried from all Visible pomps to the love and admiration of our Blessed Saviour in Heaven and of that Heavenly and Divine Life that he came into the world to beget in
the hearts of all true Believers And what we have said of additional Ceremonies there is the same reason of deductional Opinions they are to have their recommendation from their Use and Efficacy in promoting Life and Godliness in the Souls of men But their obtrusion is as unwarrantable as of the other if not more Forasmuch as Ceremonies are most-what indifferent Opinions never but determinately true or false or to be held so by them that either doubt or think the contrary Which therefore is a greater violence to ingenuous Natures As also the Usurpation greater to intrude into either the Prophetick or Legislative office of Christ then to affect to be onely the master of the Ceremonies and the Superstition alike since Superstition is nothing else but a fear and scrupulosity about such things as bear no estimate in the eyes of God as certainly neither of these do one way nor other neither Opinions that concern not Life and Godliness nor Ceremonies that are of an indifferent nature and may of themselves be either practised or omitted And therefore for men to be affected timorously and meticulously in these things it is a sign they understand not the royal Law of Christian Liberty and commit that which is the main vice included in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Superstition in that they phansy to themselves a pettish and captious Deity Whence it is manifest that the over-careful using or scrupulously omitting of indifferent Ceremonies as also over-much solicitude in the rejecting or embracing of useless and uncertain Opinions is no commendable Worship or Service but rather an implicite Reproach of the Holy Godhead they profess to adore THE END The CONTENTS PREFACE 1. THE Authors natural averseness from writing of Books fol. v 2. That there was a kind of necessity urged him to write what he has wrote hitherto ibid. 3. The occasion of writing his Psychozoia ibid. 4. As also of his Poem Of the Immortality of the Soul vi 5. His Satyricall Essays against Enthusiastick Philosophie ibid. 6. The great usefulness of his Enthusiasmus Triumphatus and of this present Treatise for suppressing Enthusiasme ibid. 7. The occasion and preparations to his writing his Antidote against Atheisme and his Threefold Cabbala vii 8. The urgent occasion of writing this present Treatise as also of his Discourse Of the Immortality of the Soul ibid. 9. His account of the Inscription of this present Treatise viii 10. His Apology for his so copiously describing the Animal Life x 11. And for his large Parallel betwixt Christ and Apollonius ibid. 12. The reason of his bringing also Mahomet upon the Stage and H. N. and of his so large Excursions and frequent Expostulations with the Quakers and Familists xi 13. That the wonderful hopes and expectations of the Religious of the Nation yea of the better-meaning Fanaticks themselves are more likely to be fulfilled by this happy restoring of the KING then by any other way imaginable xii 14. Wherein consists the very Essence and Substance of Antichristianisme xiii 15. That the Honour of beginning that pure and Apostolick Church that is so much expected seems to have been reserved by Providence for CHARLES the Second our gracious Soveraign with pregnant arguments of so glorious an hope ibid. 16. The reasons why he did not cast out of his Discourse what he had written concerning Quakerisme and Familisme notwithstandâ—ng the fear of these Sects may seem well blown over through the happy settlement of things by the seasonable return of our Gracious Soveraign to his Throne xiv 17. The reason of his opposing the Familists and Quakers above any other Sects xv 18. His excuse for being less accurate in the computation of Daniels weeks ibid. 19. As also for being less copious in the proving the expected restorement of the Church to her pristine purity together with a Description of the condition of those happy ages to come xvi 20. That this Discourse was mainly intended for the information of a Christian in his private capacities xvii 21. What points he had most probably touched upon if his design had urged him to speak any thing of Church-Government ibid. 22. A Description of such a Bishop as is impossible should be Antichristian xx 23. Why he omitted to treat of the Reasonableness of the Precepts of Christ. xxi 24. That the pains he took in writing this Treatise were especially intented for the Rationall and Ingenuous xxii 25. His Apology for the sharpness of his style in some places ibid. 26. An Objection against Mr. Mede's Apocalyptick Interpretations from the supposed sad condition of all Adherers to the Apostate Church with the Answer thereto ibid. 27. The Adversaries Reply to the foregoing Answer with a brief Attempt of satisfying the same xxv 28. An Apology for his free dislike of that abused Notion of Imputative Righteousness xxvi 29. His Defence for so expressly declaring himself for a duly-bounded liberty of Conscience xxvii BOOK I. CHAP. I. THe Four main Properties of a Mystery 2. The first Property Obscurity 3. The second Intelligibleness 4. The third Truth 5. The fourth Usefulness 6. A more full Description of the Nature of a Mystery 7. The distribution of the whole Treatise fol. 1. CHAP. II. 1. That it is fit that the Mystery of Christianity should be in some measure Obscure to exclude the Sensuall and Worldly 2. As also to defeat disobedient Learning and Industry 3. And for the pleasure and improvement of the godly and obedient 4. The high Gratifications of the Speculative Soul from the Obscurity of the Scriptures 3 CHAP. III. 1. The Obscurity of the Christian Mystery argued from the Effect as from the Iews rejecting their Messias 2. From the many Sects amongst Christians 3. Their difference in opinion concerning the Trinity 4. The Creation 5. The Soul of Man 6. The Person of Christ 7. And the Nature of Angels 5 CHAP. IV. 1. That the Triniâ—y was not brought out of Plato's School into the Church by the Fathers 2. A Description of the Platonick Trinity and of the difference of the Hypostases 3. A Description of their Union 4. And why they hold All a due Object of Adoration 5. The irrefutable Reasonableness of the Platonick Trinity and yet declined by the Fathers a Demonstration that the Trinity was not brought out of Plato's School into the Church 6. Which is further evidenced from the compliableness of the Notion of the Platonick Trinity with the Phrase and Expressions of Scripture 7. That if the Christian Trinity were from Plato it follows not that the Mystery is Pagan 8 9 10. The Trinity proved from Testimony of Holy Writ 7 CHAP. V. 1. That the natural sense of the First of S. Iohn does evidently witness the Divinity of Christ. 2. A more particular urging of the circumstances of that Chapter 3. That S. Iohn used the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Iewish or Cabbalistical notion 4. The Trinity and the Divinity of Christ argued from Divine worship due