God and do pray for the prosperity of the Emperor but that they ask it of him whom they know alone to be able to grant it Nor do we condemn Lactantius who declares That those who pray to deceased Saints do Sin both against Reason and Piety revolt against God break all sorts of Laws and in Worshiping dead Men do commit an unpardonable Fault But if the Romish Church does side with those Ancient Hereticks who as Theodore◠informs us held That whosoever will have a free Access to God ought first to endeavour to secure to himself the Favour of Angels and if we find fault with that Church for doing the same we leave it to our Readers to examin whether we do condemn also that Ancient Doctor who answered these Hereticks That it is but a pitiful subterfuge to say that we make our addresses to the Creatures only upon the account of making by their means our Approaches to God as they are us'd to do who desire to be introduced to the King by making first their Application to his Officers True it is that to be admitted to the audience of a King and to be promoted by him it is necessary first to speak to and court those who do attend him because a King being but a Man cannot of himself know whom to trust with the administration of his Affairs but as he receives information from those that are about him But that we may approach God who is Omniscient there is no need of imploring the Patronage of Men. It is enough if we have a sincere and upright heart and a religious mind for God will answer in any place of the Vniverse whosoever speaks to him in that holy disposition How unjustly then are we condemned by the Romanists for holding Opinions contrary to those of the Ancient Church concerning the Saints since in conformity to that Church of the first Ages we do not address our Prayers to any but God through Jesus Christ We do as she did honour the Saints and reverence their memory we propose their Examples to our Imitation we applaud their Triumph and do Crown them with praise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Imitation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Praise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Commemoration were all the duties which the Piety of the Primitive Christians pay'd to the Saints And if we do restrain our selves within the same bounds we have for us the most Authentick Acts of Antiquity as the 34. and 57. Epistles of St. Cyprian wherein this blessed Martyr speaks of the Commemoration which the Church made of Martyrs and the 3. ch of the Book Corona militis by Tertullian in which are mentioned the Oblations which in those times were offered for the dead especially for Relations and Friends But chiefly we have on our side the Declaration of the Ancient Church of Smyrna concerning St. Polycarp's Body related by Eusebius and in the Acts of this Blessed Martyr Printed byVsserius and which are quoted by Mr. de Valois in his Notes It is a very memorable Fact and which happened about the year of Our Lord 167 and is as follows The Jews being unwilling that the Christians should have the comfort of burying their Polycarp represented to the Pagan Magistrates that if the Christians were permitted to keep the Body of that Holy Martyr they would soon forsake their Master to serve his Disciple not knowing said the whole Church of Smyrna That it is impossible we should leave Christ who hath suffered for the Redemption of all those who are saved through the whole World and that we should pay a religious Worship or address our Prayers to any other but him For as to Christ we adore him as being the Son of God whereas we love the Martyrs as the Disciples and Imitators of the Lord. And certainly this is nothing but what is very just considering the Zeal and fervent Love they had for their own King and Master God grant that we may so imitate their Piety that we may be partakers of their Glory Which discourse of the Church of Smyrna as it is our Apology so it is a condemnation of the Worship which the Romish Church renders now a days to Saints And if the Ancient Church speaks thus of true Martyrs we may easily judge how it would have behaved it self towards false and supposititious ones such as are the Souldiers of the Theb. Legion Tenthly Father Malbranche is without contradiction one of the greatest Wits of our Age did he not too much affect to be an Original His System concerning the Worship of Saints and the way he takes to defend the Practice of his Church is as follows First he lays down for a Foundation that all our good things come from God and that he is the only cause and dispenser of them Secondly He saith That when we receive from him any thing that is good Christ is the occasional Cause thereof God by an Eternal Law having decreed not to communicate any Good to Mankind but at Christ's Desire and Request Which Tenet of his is set forth more largely both in his Christian Meditations and his Treatise of Nature and Grace Thirdly He declares That it is not in the Power of the Saints to impart any of these Goods unto us and that we ought not so much as to say That they are the occasional Causes of them it being a Privilege that belongs to none but Christ as he is the Mediator of the New Covenant and the High Priest of Things Eternal It is at the Desire of Christ and not at those of the Saints that God by an Eternal Law hath bound himself to communicate his Graces Fourthly Nevertheless he adds that the Saints do excite and incline the Desires of Christ toward us in which chiefly he makes the force of their Intercession to consist Fifthly and lastly He believes that they have the Power to heal Sicknesses and to bless with fertility our Fields because the Order of the Universe seems to require that inferior things be made Subject to the Power of the Superior Beings I know not how Father Malbranche with all the Sagacity and Sharpness of his Wit can reconcile these Principles of his both with the Doctrine and Practice of his Church For having Established in the First That God is the only Dispenser of all good things hence it follows that the asking the Saints for Graces which come only from the hand of God is down-right Idolatry And when he saith secondly That God does not dispense his Graces but at the Desire of Christ who is established by him the Mediatour of the New Covenant and the High-Priest of Things Eternal and that he alone can make Intercession for us to his Father in determining and contracting by his desires the general Laws of God's Mercy to some particular Sinners whom he hath more kindness for we may easily conclude that the imploring the Mediation of Saints and asking them to pray directly and
AN Historical Dissertation UPON THE THEBEAN LEGION Plainly proving it to be Fabulous BY JOHN DVBOVRDIEV M. A. Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of Schomberg and Leinster and one of the Ministers of the French Church in the Savoy LONDON Printed for R. Bentley in Russel-street in Covent-Garden 1696. TO THE Right Honourable My LORD MOUTHERMER Eldest Son to the Right Honourable The Earl of MOUNTAGUE Master of the Wardrobe and one of his Majesties most Honourable Privy Council My Lord I Could not deny my self the Pleasure of Dedicating this little Book to your Lordship having the Honour of seeing you twice or three times a Week but never without being Charm'd with you Behaviour and your many Excellent Qualities The ill Practices of this Age have so far infected the Noblemen and made them so solicitous of their private Interests that it is to be feared we may live to see those times return again upon us when Mens worth was measured by their Riches and Persons of Quality were proud of their ignorance Ingenium quondam fuerat pretiosius auro At nunc barbaria est grandis habere nihil One cannot without grief see so many Young Noblemen the Hopes of the Church and Flower of the State spend the best of their Years in Pleasures and Idleness And tho' they have no Noble Qualities which can Entitle them to the Worlds respect yet they still hope to recommend themselves to their esteem by their Noble Birth their Splendid Living and the flattery of Sycophants But you my Lord are far from thinking that the advantages of Nature and Fortune can make amends for all other Defects or ought to incline you to despise the Study of Curious Arts and Polite Learning The constant Application by which you improve those rare Talents you brought into the World with you the great attention you give to the Instructions of your Masters the pleasure you take in having your Judgment informed and the Impression which right Notions make upon you do clearly discover the just Opinion you have of what things are truly worthy of Honour Tu sola animos mentemque peruris Gloria te viridem videt immunemque Senectae Thamisis in ripa stantem juvenesque Vocantem As the Roman Noblemen used to return from Athens and Marseilles laden with the Spoils of Greece and perfected in the choicest Studies that they might be qualified for sitting and speaking in the Senate doubtless My Lord you are moved by the same Spring when you consider that the Parliament to which your Birth will one Day call you is the most August Assembly in the World whose greatness was never perhaps so well understood as since this present War when we see all Europe waiting upon their Consultations and that their Winter Resolutions Govern the Actions of the Summer How happy are you My Lord in a Wise and a kind Father who has added to so solid a Judgment so great Experience of the World who not thinking it sufficient to give you the ablest Masters in all Sciences reserves the inspection of your Studies and Education to to his own fondness and care And how Happy is your Father in such a Son who makes so good use of his Admonitions and Example and by the Blossoms of your Spring promise him so fruitful an Autumn But that which strikes me most in you My Lord is the observing as often as I have the Honour of waiting on you that the pleasure you take in sound Literature and gentile Studies which would otherwise be your chief delight do yield to your stronger Love of Virtue and Honesty What may we not expect from that regard you have for your Preceptors that Complaisance to your Equals and Courtesie to your Inferiours the acknowledgments you pay unawares to those whose Duty is to serve you your generous Inclinations your sweet Nature your Modesty and Affability which Charm every Body that comes near you the perfect Obedience and profound Respect which you pay to your Father on all occasions and above all your Religion and Piety which added to all your other rare Qualities shew you to be the Care of Heaven which seldom or never bestows so many Excellencies on the same Person sparguntur in Omnes In te mixta fluunt quae divisa beatos Efficiunt collecta tenes I think My Lord I may very well be allowed to quote Latin Authors to you since you already understand their Language and its needless to speak of the Progress you have made in the French after having seen an Answer which Mr. de St. Euremont wrote to a Letter you sent him whereby it appears how full of admiration he was at your Wit the Correctness of your Style and justness of your Thoughts and when Mr. de St Euremont has decided so much in your Favour it 's better than if your Lordship had the Approbation of the whole French Academy I beseech God to confirm you more and more in his Love and Fear and fill you with the Blessings of his Holy Spirit I am My LORD Your most Humble and most Obliged Servant John Dubourdieu AN Historical Dissertation UPON THE MARTYRDOM OF THE Thebean Legion CHAP. I. The Occasion of this Essay THE Duke of Schomberg whom I had the Honour to serve as Chaplain arrived at Turin the 18 th of July 1691. He found the State of Affairs there in a bad Posture and the People in a great Consternation The French had lately Fortified Carmagnole Coni was Besieg'd and given over for lost Monsieur la Hoguette had forced the Passages of the Valley of Aoste which gave him entrance into the Country of Verceil and the Frontiers of the Milanese Our Army instead of making some motion to disturb the Enemy Incamped upon the Descent of Mountcallier being Spectators of the waste and burning of the Plains below Turin dreaded every hour being invested There was an universal fear and the retreat of the Princesses to Verceil added yet more to the terrour of the Inhabitants The Favourers of France gave out publickly that his Royal Highness would unavoidably be stripp'd this Campaigne of all his Territories and that he had no way left but to submit to the King's mercy Certain it is that without that firmness and greatness of Soul which his Royal Highness shewed on this occasion all had then been lost and though the beginning of his Reign seems to prognosticate a series of Heroick Actions yet this part of his History will be none of the less Illustrious Emmanuel Philibert oppressed during the Wars between Charles the V. and Francis the I. sunk at last under the weight of his Misfortunes He had the weakness to take upon him the Name of St. Mark 's Son and that he might be assisted by the Venetians he Sacrificed to that Republick the prcedency he had in all the Courts of Europe The Affairs of his now Royal Highness were almost as desperate Nevertheless a manly and undaunted Air did always appear on
immediately to God for us is a high Injury offered to the Priesthood of Jesus Christ Now as to his third Tenet viz. That the Saints have not the Power to convey to us those Graces which we want and that we ought not so much asto look upon them as the occasional Causes of them if this opinion of his be true what will become of so many Litanies and Prayers set down in the Popish Breviaries and in their Prayer and Mass-Books in which they ask the Saints to cleanse them from all their Sins to preserve them from the Sicknesses of the Spirit to inflame their hearts with the Fire of Charity to deliver them from Hell-fire to open the Gates of Heaven to them and to make them sit on Thorns with the glorious Company of the Blessed above c. Lastly if according to Malbranche's fourth and fifth Principles all the good Services which the Saints are able to do are only to move and excite Christ's desires towards us and to give us ease in our Afflictions or afford us a good Crop he Asserts these last Tenets in so dubious a manner and so faintly though upon any other matter he uses to be very Vigorous and Positive that it is an easy thing to discern that he himself is not very well convinced of it 'T is saith he The Opinion of the Church that the Saints do know all our wants We may pray to the Saints that they be pleased to stir up the desires and the Charity of Jesus Christ One Saint perhaps is more in Favour and hath more Access to Christ upon his own Holy-day than at another time or than another Saint It may be also that they have the power of healing our Sicknesses or of procuring us a plentiful Year We see by these shy and uncertain expressions how hard he is put to it to reconcile his Opinions with the Doctrine and Practice of his Church For indeed there is a palpable incompatibility of his Principles with that Religious Worship which the Romish Church pays to the Saints And we need only to examin the Principles which he had already laid before viz. That the Church by praying to the Father through the Son does acknowledge the Son to be equal and of one substance with the Father For if he were not so saith he we could not call upon him And likewise he had already said that the Father hath tyed his Blessings and Treasures to Christ's Desires and that this is the Reason why we ought to adore the Father and to call upon Christ But what he after adds deserves especially our consideration namely that these Desires of Christ are the desires of his human Will that his Flesh is the Principle of these Desires which make all the riches of the Church and the Sanctification of the Elect And that this is the reason why Religion teaches us to Address sometimes our Prayers to the Father because if we never did invocate any but Christ by reason of those Priviledges which God hath by an eternal Decree adapted to his Desire to those human desires he saith which do proceed from the Child of the Blessed Mary we should be in danger of adhering to Christ as he is a Man and of trusting in his Flesh with the same kind of Love and Trust which we owe only to the Infinite and Soveraign Being We may easily perceive that this way of reasoning is quite contrary to the Doctrine of the Roman Church and to that Worship it renders to Saints The Esteem indeed which I have for Great Men is such that I cannot forbear having also a kind of respect even for their odd fancies and by-ways of Writing which made me take notice by the by of Father Malbranchâ— his System concerning the worshipping of Saints though I know in the bottom of it there is no more reality than in a shadow or dream But after all should we suppose his Opinion to be not altogether groundless who would venture to say that supposititious Saints such as we have proved those of the Theb. Legion to be can move and excite Christs desires Therefore the Roman Church ought to confess that she hath erred in permitting and approving the Worship which is paid to them FINIS Some BOOKS Printed for R. Bently Books in Folio 1. BEaumont's and Fletcher's Plays in one Volume containing 51. Plays 2. Mr. William Shakespear's Plays in one Volume 3. Towerson's Works compleat in one Volume 4. Dr. Allestry's Sermons in one Volume 5. Dr. Comber's Works the four Parts in one Volume 6. The Council of Trent By Father Paolo 7. Toriano's Italian Dictionary 8. Mr. Milton's Paradice lost with 13 Copper Cuts finely engraven to express the whole Poem 9. Milton's Paradice Regain'd in the same Volume Paper and Print to bind with it 10. Fodina Regalis or the History of the Laws of Mines By Sir John Pettus 11. Bishop Brownrig's Sermons Books in Quarto 1. The Burnt Child dreads the Fire 2. A Treatise of our Sanguinary Laws against Papists 3. Dr. Whitby's Answer to S. Cressy 4. Mr. Nathanael Lee's Plays in one Volume 5. Mr. Thomas Otway's Plays in one Volume Books in Octavo 1. Dr. Whitby Of Idolatry 2. Dr. Whitby of Host-Worship 3. The Life of the Marshâ—l Turenns 4. The Secret History of the House of Medicis 5. Cronelius Agrippa Of the Vanity of Arts and Sciences 6. Mauger's French Grammar Edit 13. 7. Lipsius Of Constancy 8. Agiates Queen of Sparta 9. Nicorotis 10. Plurality of Worlds Translated by Mr. Glanvil 11. Boyle's Art of Poetry Traslated by Mr. Soames 12. Poems and Songs by Mr. Cuts 13. Sir James Chamberlain's Poems 14. Mr. Coppinger's Poems 15. Madam Colonna's Memoirs 16. Hudibras compleat in Three Parts 17. Seneca's Morals By Sir Roger L' Estrange 18. Comber's Companion to the Altar 19. Godfrey of Boloign A Poem 20. Plato's Apology of Socrates 21. Natural History of the Passions Books in Duodecimo 1. Present state of England 2. Enter into thy Closet 3. Moral Essays in Four Volumes 4. A perfect School of Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth 5. A Prospect of Human Misery 6. Vanity of Honour Wealth and Pleasure 7. Bishop Andrew's Devotions 8. Covent-Garden Drollery 9. Zelinda A Romance 10. Happy Slave 11. Hatige or the King of Tameran 12. Homais Queen of Tunis 13. Triumphs of Love 14. Obliging Mistress 15. Uufortunate Hero 16. Countess of Salisbury 17. Count Teckely 18. Essex and Elizabeth 19. The Pilgrim 20. The Empire betray'd by whom and how 21. The Character of Love 22. Don Henrick 23. Princess of Fez. 24. Marce Christianissimus 25. Gallant Ladies in two Parts 26. Victorious Lovers 27. Love in a Nunnery 28. Duke of Lorain 29. Minority of St. Lewis 30. Queen of Majorca 31. Count de Soysons 32. Clytie 33. Dialogues of the Dead in Two Parts 34. Neapolitan Or the Defender of his Mistress 35. Instructions for a young Nobleman 36. Five Love-Letters from a Nun to a Cavalier 37. Five